The San Diego Padres had a fun beach hat giveaway planned for Saturday night — then things went terribly wrong.
The Padres accidentally gave out bug-infested hats as a promotion
Welp.
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
It wasn’t long after the first pitch that the Padres discovered an issue, forcing the team to quickly issue a statement.
“We’ve discovered an issue with tonight’s beach hat giveaway. All fans will receive a voucher to receive the item at a later date. We sincerely apologize for the unforeseen inconvenience.”
Normally you might thing there was just a shipping issue, or any number of not-weird reasons a giveaway might have to be cancelled, but there were reports the hats were in the stands already. What could have possibly been so bad that the rug had to be pulled out from under the beach hat giveaway?
The Padres had unwittingly introduced a beetle infestation into their own ballpark, and several fans had already gotten the hats. Credit where it’s due: The team did its best to try and rectify the issue as quickly as possible, which included sending ushers around with plastic bags to retrieve the bug hats before chaos was unleashed.
More than anything, I’m impressed the Padres had a bug expert on retainer who could tell them what the beetles were on a Saturday night during a holiday weekend.
If you somehow have a beetle-infested hat at home then:
1. Congratulations, you now have a bunch of new roommates.
2. Don’t worry, grain beetles are harmless. Unless you have a lot of grain, because they will utterly f*** up your grain.
The Padres issued a make-good for the hats in the form of a rain check.
