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Fanatics began the 2024 MLB season in hot water over the quality of their jerseys and they’ll be ending the season in the same position, as a viral post on social media has revealed that the company is selling a Los Angeles Dodgers World Series shirt with the signatures of the Texas Rangers on the back. The Texas Rangers won the 2023 World Series.
A photo of the Fanatics-made World Series t-shirt is going viral on social media as the back of it is covered in signatures of players on last season’s World Series-winning Texas Rangers team.
In the top right, for example, you can see the middle school-level signature of Aroldis Chapman, who spent the 2024 season with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Fanatics is selling World Series shirts with the 2023 Texas Rangers signatures on the back 😭😭 pic.twitter.com/pMKeAzQtXN
— Baseball Is Dead (@baseballisdead_) November 12, 2024
“I’m sorry how do you screw something up this bad?” one baseball fan wondered.
“They saw Will Smith on there and just rolled with it,” another joked, as catcher Will Smith has been on four straight World Series-winning teams.
“Would say they had AI automate it, but fanatics was crap before AI got involved,” added another social media user.
After the picture made the rounds, Fanatics addressed the issue in a post citing a manufacturer error in the United Kingdom that led to a limited number of shirts being sent out to customers.
The Los Angeles Dodgers, in Shohei Ohtani’s first season with the team, defeated the New York Yankees in five games in the 2024 World Series.
Fanatics was founded in 2011 by CEO Michael Rubin, who has since become a billionaire and is a partial owner of the Philadelphia 76ers and the New Jersey Devils. As of 2024, Fanatics is valued at around $30 billion.
Rubin has socially climbed his way to pop culture’s upper tier with his annual July 4th weekend “white party,” which is attended by some of the most famous people in the world every summer at his home in The Hamptons.