On Friday, the Life & Culture section at the recently depleted Denver Post ran a front-page feature with the large, all-caps headline, “THE ULTIMATE VISITORS GUIDE TO COORS FIELD.” The accompanying photo showed a beautiful baseball park filled to capacity, glimmering in the afternoon sun. It struck a perfect chord for the start of baseball season.
The problem? The “Coors Field” in the photo was not Coors Field at all. It was quite clearly Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.
Um, that photo isn’t of Coors Field. It’s Citizens Bank Park in Philly. Come on, @denverpost! pic.twitter.com/BEBouNNrA4
— James Merilatt (@jamesmerilatt) April 6, 2018
There’s no real way to explain this one. The two parks do look somewhat similar, with scoreboards in left field and three decks of stands in right, but the giant “PHILLIES” sign at Citizen’s Bank probably should have been a hint.
We can’t know how exactly the Post got the wrong stadium (the photographed game does seem to have included the Rockies, which likely contributed to the confusion), but some people were quick to connect the mistake to the paper’s recent round of layoffs.
https://twitter.com/JeremyHubbard/status/982256585656352771
The Phillies, for their part, seemed to get a kick out of the error, quote-tweeting a photo of Coors Field as if it were Citizens Bank Park and tagging the Post.
https://twitter.com/Phillies/status/982260422744027139
As if the glaring Coors/Citizens Bank mistake weren’t enough, the Post threw in a more subtle one for good measure, erroneously calling the 2007 NL West tiebreaker game the “National League West wild card game” in a photo caption.
love too be in national league west wild card games pic.twitter.com/Xrg6OIuUpn
— jesse spector (@jessespector) April 6, 2018
As the ballpark mix-up buzzed around the internet Friday, the Post acknowledged the mistake and explained that it owed to a “production error.”
Due to a production error, an image of Citizens Bank Park ran in place of Coors Field on the cover of today's Life & Culture section. Please enjoy this beautiful image of Coors Field photographed yesterday. The Denver Post sincerely regrets the error. pic.twitter.com/0bwW2snOLb
— The Denver Post (@denverpost) April 6, 2018
People goof all the time, and we don’t want to beat up too much on whoever was responsible for this error. But as a general rule, readers might not be too interested in reading your visitors guide to a stadium you can’t even pick from a photo array.
About Alex Putterman
Alex is a writer and editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. He has written for The Atlantic, VICE Sports, MLB.com, SI.com and more. He is a proud alum of Northwestern University and The Daily Northwestern. You can find him on Twitter @AlexPutterman.