Major League Baseball’s official web site ran a story this week about Mark Buehrle of the Chicago White Sox, noting that he’s a passionate advocate for animals. The story featured a quote from Buehrle saying he was so disgusted by Michael Vick’s involvement in dog fighting that when he watches Eagles games, he hopes to see Vick injured.
After publishing that quote, MLB.com decided it wasn’t appropriate and took it out of the story. And that just served as the latest reminder that once you’ve published something on the Internet, you can’t just delete it and make it disappear forever.
The quote from Buehrle, via Craig Calcaterra of HardballTalk, was: “He had a great year and a great comeback, but there were times where we watched the game and I know it’s bad to say, but there were times where we hope he gets hurt. Everything you’ve done to these dogs, something bad needs to happen to these guys.”
The story is still on MLB.com, but the quote is gone, without explanation. The writer of the story, Scott Merkin, has also deleted references to the quote from his Twitter account.
So what happened, it appears, is that Major League Baseball thought the quote cast Buehrle in a negative light, detracting from what was supposed to be a glowing profile about Buehrle’s advocacy on behalf of animals, and therefore deleted the quote from the story and hoped it would just disappear.
But that was stupid. Inflammatory quotes have a way of finding attention on the Internet, and once the quotes are out there, there’s no better way to attract even more attention to them than to try to make them go away.