Steve Avery Gets SKAAAH-ROOOO-ED

Let’s say you are the owner of a Ford dealership, and let’s say you are holding a contest in which somebody has to hit a target with a football in 30 seconds from 20 yards away to win a two-year lease on a Mustang.  It would make sense to say “no football players allowed.”

It seems nobody thought a baseball pitcher might have an unfair advantage as well, and it certainly seems that nobody anticipated that a former Major League hurler had entered the raffle.

Just such a thing happened last week in Macomb County, Michigan.

Former World Series champion pitcher Steve Avery thought he won a car at Cabrini High School’s homecoming football game Sept. 30.  But, he didn’t.

Avery — a Kennedy High School graduate who spent 11 years in the major leagues, including his final season as a Detroit Tiger in 2003 — had his raffle ticket drawn for a chance to win a two-year lease on a Ford Mustang, sponsored by Taylor Ford.  The contest disclaimer didn’t allow for former professional football players, but did not say anything about baseball players.

First of all, I have to point out that at no time was the actual car the prize…rather, contestants paid their money and took their chances at a two-year lease on a Ford Mustang. That should have been the first clue this raffle was being run by some penny-pinching skinflint types.

What the hell kind of prize is a lease on a car? I get two years to use a car, which I have to pay to insure (not to mention tax and license at delivery). If you’ve never leased a car, there’s also the matter of the mileage restrictions, which if you exceed, you get financially corn-holed when you return the car. In other words, the “prize” is a car which cost me at least 200 bucks a month and I can only drive it about 4 miles a day.

Avery, 41, had 30 seconds to hit a target with a football from 20 yards away in order to win the lease. Fans in the stands, and Avery himself, seemed to believe that he had won the car when he hit the target with a few seconds remaining. A video posted on Taylor Ford’s Facebook page shows Avery throwing his hands in the air and celebrating after he makes the throw.

In other words, Avery held up his end of the deal, and the Ford dealership had no problem using the event for publicity, hence the picture on their Facebook page.  But then, somebody’s “Buzzkill Cheap” gene kicked in.

Tricia Reed, who is in charge of leasing and customer relations at Taylor Ford, said there was confusion about the rules. She said that he had 30 seconds to hit 10 targets, not just the one that he did.

“They knew it at the ticket booths, and it was printed on the tickets, so I’m not sure where the confusion came from,” she said. The photo of Avery posing with a football, the target and Taylor Ford employees has been taken off the dealership’s Facebook page.

Apparently, the guy who took the picture and the people who ran the dealership’s Facebook page didn’t know it either, because everybody  in the moment sure seemed to think Avery had won, and the Facebook page admin certainly posted that picture as if he had won.

After all, this dealership went through this exercise strictly for “look at what good guys we are” publicity; Taylor Ford presented Cabrini High School a check for $9,000 at a pep rally earlier in the day.  But because they are a bunch a cheapskate assholes, they ended up being in the spot-light for screwing over a hometown World Series hero.

After all, at Ford, Quality Is Job #1.

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