The Best Fans in Baseball started -- then quickly halted -- selling St. Louis Stronger T-shirts in a bizarre and insensitive challenge to the Red Sox's "Boston Strong" motto.
To honor the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings, the city mowed "B Strong" into the Fenway Park outfield -- like the St. Louis Arch in Busch Stadium's grass.
Cardinal Nation, a fan group with almost 65,000 Facebook members, seemed annoyed by the rallying cry, tweeting on Wednesday: "The Field says Boston Strong I say St. Louis STRONGER." (The tweet has since been removed.)
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Cardinals fan Greg Soutiea said he ran in the Boston Marathon and was near the finish line when the bombs exploded. "The term Boston Strong has nothing to do with sports but is the attitude of a resilient city bouncing back after a terrible tragedy affecting thousands of innocent people," he says in a letter to Fox2Now.
Fenway Park -B strong! #RedSox #WorldSeries http://t.co/qMNrKCwcac
— DanMac (@gojunebug) October 23, 2013
The Boston Red Sox held special ceremonies during this World Series remembering victims of the violent bombings that killed three, injured hundreds and launched an unprecedented manhunt.
Cardinal Nation sold nine St. Louis Stronger shirts for $23 each, according to Booster.com, before stopping sales, removing ads from social media and apologizing.
See what Cardinal Nation had to say for themselves after the jump. Cardinal Nation sold the shirts through Booster, a fundraising site for nonprofits, school groups and other causes.
The shirt description is little help in understanding how such a controversial shirt could come to be. Rather, it comes across like a bad, poorly translated trip. Via Booster.com:
We are a "VOICE" - JACK who showed you every play every moment through the radio, through HIS eyes. We are a father, a son and a scorecard. We are a mother, daughter and a scorecard too.... And now momma' little boy and Nana's "Rocket" We are Yadi, Beltran, Wainwright, Holliday, Freese and Wacha Wacha Wacha. We are a hard nine. We are a kid, an old radio and a disregard for bedtimes. We are curtain calls and the Clydesdales. We are sac bunts, hitting the cutoff and 4-6-3.
Cardinals Nation removed the St. Louis Stronger shirts from its accounts, posting apologies on Facebook:
Follow Lindsay Toler on Twitter at @StLouisLindsay. E-mail the author at [email protected].