The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/a>, the team has sold the naming rights of the area to Ghost Energy.<\/p>\nPhiladelphia Phillies announcer Harry Kalas throws out a ceremonial first pitch before the game vs. the Atlanta Braves. Sports Illustrated via Getty Ima<\/p>\n
His widow told the outlet that her late husband, who called Phillies games for almost four decades, was \u201cbetrayed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTaking down that sign takes away everything he did for the city,\u201d Eileen Kalas told The Inquirer. \u201cI think they betrayed Harry. It\u2019s not about me. It\u2019s about what they\u2019re doing to Harry. I think they betrayed him for everything he did for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
A look at the Statue of the late broadcaster Harry Kalas of the Philadelphia Phillies prior to a game against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Citizens Bank Park on August 17, 2011. Getty Images<\/p>\n
According to the Philly outlet, the team declined to comment on the controversy.<\/p>\n
Eileen Kalas told The Inquirer that the Phillies paid her $20,000 a year to use Kalas\u2019 likeness.<\/p>\n
She will be paid once more this season, since the Phillies missed their deadline to break the contract for 2026, but she will not be paid in 2027.<\/p>\n
Per The Inquirer, the Phillies will continue celebrating wins by showing a clip of Harry Kalas singing \u201cHigh Hopes\u201d on the stadium video board, though Eileen acknowledges that the Phillies will not be able to play the song unless she is paid for 2027.<\/p>\n
Philadelphia Phillies fans view the casket of Harry Kalas prior to the game against the San Diego Padres on April 18, 2009 at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll say, \u2018Eileen Kalas got rid of it. She\u2019s money hungry,\u2019\u201d she said to The Inquirer. \u201cThat\u2019s what they always said. Flip it on me \u2026 I don\u2019t mind if they have things. They just have to pay for it. It\u2019s intellectual property. They know that.\u201d<\/p>\n
She later added: \u201cThey go, \u2018Oh, we\u2019re still going to have the statue.\u2019 What are they going to do with the statue? I\u2019ll take it. I\u2019ll send in a truck, pick it up, and get it out if they want that out, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harry Kalas was the team\u2019s long-time play-by-play announcer from 1971 to 2009 until his death on April 13, 2009, months after the Phillies won the 2008 World Series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Phillies are making a polarizing change. Harry the K\u2019s, an area in left field at Citizens Bank…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2397],"tags":[5,4,144,25,4216,40,185,7486],"class_list":{"0":"post-648046","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-phillies","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-philadelphia","11":"tag-philadelphia-phillies","12":"tag-philadelphiaphillies","13":"tag-phillies","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-sports-media"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116305059298239031","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}