The mysterious banner unfurled over the left field wall with a web address belonged to Chevy. And according to The Register, Fox Sports broadcasters weren’t as dumb as they sounded as they were in on it. The whole thing was a ruse to bring attention to the banner and advertse more for Chevy, one of Fox Sports’ biggest advertisers. Pretty slick.
According to the article:
As Fox came back from a commercial break in the bottom half of the third inning, many viewers caught sight of a very long, flashy banner draped over an equally ostentatious advertisement picturing a yellow Corvette. The banner read HHRYA.com with the letters done in pseudo Asian design – clearly the work of professionals. However, the Fox Sports broadcasters Joe Buck and Tim McCarver played off the ad like it was the work of a goofy sports fan, dangling his banner in the hopes of securing a moment of TV glory.
Here’s the chatter as Fox panned across the outfield and then held on the supposed fan’s sign for between 10 and 20 seconds.
“Welcome back to Detroit,” Buck said. “A lot of banners and signs around the ballpark. No surprise there. Somebody just unfurled a big banner behind left field.”
You’ll love the next bit, as Buck devolves into a second grader.
“H-H-R-Y-A. Tim, you’ll have to tell me what that means. I am not sure, but someone went to a lot of trouble, obviously, to put it up out in left center field.”
You’d think that would be the end of the stunt, but no. Fox returned to the action to see baseball’s best pitcher Roy Oswalt face off against Johnny Damon. After one pitch, McCarver brought all the weight of his formidable intellect to bear on the puzzle:
“I don’t know what that sign means, but ‘hooray’ is the first thing that comes to my mind.”
Funny you should mention that, Tim. Hooray is exactly the sound Fox executives made as they cashed their checks from the largest advertiser of the day. Chevy, the sponsor, must have been disappointed as it failed to prepare its HHRYA.com website for the traffic it expected to receive. Visitors to the site were unable to reach the page for about thirty minutes after the “I don’t know what that is” ad appeared.
Hehe, I like the part about Buck devolving into a second grader. That wouldn’t be a stretch.
That said, I knew they couldn’t be that stupid.