Elijah Dukes covers missing Wednesday at the Trop
May 24, 2007 at 5:35 pm by Wayne GarciaAaron Peter showed up at Tropicana Field Wednesday loaded for bear: His handmade sign criticized Rays outfielder Elijah Dukes, who that morning graced 1A of the St. Petersburg Times and the cover of the tabloid tbt* in a great scoop about allegations he threatened to kill his wife.
Peter, a season ticketholder, wasn’t surprised that Trop security screeners tore up his “Dukes A Hazzard” sign. But when he went looking for a copy of either newspaper to hold up in protest of Dukes’ alleged domestic threats, he found all the racks in and around the ballpark empty.
Did someone — the Rays? — lift all the copies, something that wouldn’t have been unimaginable back in the days of Vince Naimoli’s ownership?
No. It turns out it was the Times itself that was responsible for the missing papers. In an e-mail response that Peter provided to Creative Loafing, tbt* distribution manager Craig Holley wrote on Thursday:
Aaron – thanks for the heads up. We made the choice not to distribute at Tropicana Field yesterday. Naturally there is a fine line we have to walk at times and that seemed like the best choice. Things are back to normal today.
When I called Holley, he said, “This has been a hot topic today.” He deferred any detailed questions about the matter to higher ups.
Tbt* publisher Joe DeLuca, however, blamed the distribution problem on an error in communication at the newspapers. The Times is often sold outside the stadium by youth groups as a fundraising tool, he explained. On Wednesday, there was no group signed up for the outside sales. DeLuca said that distribution workers misunderstood the message that there would be no fundraising sales and instead believed they were being told not to put out any newspapers at all at the ballpark.
“We did have a screw-up,” DeLuca said late this afternoon. “We made no conscious decision not to distribute tbt*.”
DeLuca said newspapers were back in the Trop for today’s game, with another Rays-Duke story on 1A of the Times. He called Wednesday’s articles “a great story” and nothing the Times would — on purpose — back away from distributing anywhere.
The Times is a major, “exclusive” marketing partner of the Rays. It is the “official newspaper of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays,” and the ball team’s website, devilrays.com, is “presented by the St. Petersburg Times.” It represented the first Internet title sponsorship deal in Major League Baseball when it was announced in 2006.
DeLuca said he spoke to Peter to explain the mistake. But Peter felt the move was no accident.
“It has to be one of the most unethical newspaper decisions I have ever heard of,” Peter said in a telephone call today. “Would you pull the newspaper from the courthouse if you had an unsavory story about a judge?”
Peter said he and his father-in-law went to the game Wednesday. Peter had a copy of tbt* in his hands, with a cover photo of Dukes and a headline that repeated one of the alleged threats he made to his wife: “You Dead, Dawg.” He wanted another one for his father-in-law to hold up, but a search of all the newspaper boxes at the stadium yielded either no papers at all or day-old issues of both the tabloid and the broadsheet daily.
(sign photo courtesy Jeff Wilcox)
