Julia Rose, founder of the digital magazine Shagmag, was issued an indefinite ban from Major League Baseball facilities after she and brand executive Lauren Summer lifted their shirts to flash Astros pitcher Gerrit Cole during Game 5 of the World Series.
If you missed exactly what happened, our Charles Curtis explained the entire saga here.
But apparently this wasn’t a hastily planned publicity stunt to promote Rose’s brand. Instead, Rose said she started planning the World Series flashing stunt a year ago and dropped nearly six figures ($80,000) on tickets and travel.
The Shagmag founder spoke to Complex this week and broke down exactly what unfolded with her viral World Series moment.
She said via Complex:
Yeah, so we had it planned almost a year ago. I knew I wanted to do something at the World Series. But we just didn’t know, obviously, who was playing, what game, where it would be, the location or anything. Once we found out who the teams were, we then bought the tickets, I believe, not even a week ago. We had to get tickets for game five. And game five was a gamble, obviously, because if it’s a sweep or something, then we wouldn’t even make it to game five. So we crossed our fingers, and bought tickets last minute.
We were just going to play on one of the girls who ran down with us and do it where our seats were. But when we showed up to the stadium yesterday, one of the GMs at the stadium knew who we were and pulled us aside and basically told us that you have to zip our jackets up because our shirts said SHAGMAG, so they said they didn’t want SHAGMAG on TV, that we couldn’t promote for it, and they had no idea of what we had planned.
Rose added that MLB was evidently tipped off about what they had planned (how? Not sure), but the FOX broadcast angle was changed early on to keep them out of the shot. Between innings, they went to the restroom to remove their sweatshirts and went down to seats that were in the broadcast frame to flash Cole as security tried to intervene.
She continued when asked why she chose the World Series:
Yeah, it’s one of the best sports with the most coverage. You know where the cameras are most of the time. Personally, I’m a huge football fan, but when it comes to football, you know it’s like almost impossible to get on camera. So we knew the cameras and where they’d be, and it’s the kind of just-go-for-it-type thing with baseball.
Rose added that she was prepared for the possibility of getting arrested, but she didn’t expect to receive an indefinite ban from MLB. She claimed that they were detained before receiving the notice from MLB and allowed leave the ballpark.
