Stores open all night selling "NL Champs" items

While you're out celebrating, you can stop in to several stores in the Philly metro area and buy some "NL champion" apparel overnight.

Modell's marketing manager Derrick Morgan said earlier today that its stores on Cottman Avenue in Northeast Philly and at Front Street and Snyder Avenue in South Philly will stay open "until they have nobody left in the building" to sell Phillies championship T-shirts ($24.99 for men's, $21.99 for kids) and caps ($20.99). Then every Modell's store in the Philly metro area will open at 6 a.m. with championship T-shirts and caps to sell. Morgan said more merchandise is anticipated to arrive [in the stores] by late this morning.

World Series apparel, of course, will have to wait for a winner in ALCS. "Once the other series is decided," Morgan said, "then they can start printing the other stuff, because they can do matchups, like Rays-Phils or Red Sox-Phils or whatever,then they start printing the World Series stuff. But the National League champ shirts do have a World Series logo on it."

Morgan said this copies something that Modell's stores have done in the past "with the Yankees, the Eagles, the Flyers, the Boston Celtics, the Red Sox. We've all been through this a zillion times."

And Modell's won't be alone. Chris Achilefu, the manager for the Forman Mills store at 2500 Grant Avenue, between the Boulevard and Academy Road, said his store will be open all night. Anyone coming in after 11 p.m. will be given a free T-shirt (not a NL champion Phillies, I should stress) and the first 50 customers after 11 o'clock also will get a hot dog. Achilefu said that the store will have NL champion T-shirts and caps for sale, and that anyone stopping in can sign up to win World Series tickets. The drawing will be held sometime later on next week.

Achilefu said his store was selected because it's the No. 1 Forman Mills in the region for sales of Philly sports merchandise.

Sports Authority stores in Lansdale, Exton, King of Prussia and Warrington on this side of the Schuylkill and also in Turnersville, N.J., are planning to open at 6 o'clock this morning.

Finally, the Phillies will open their Majestic Clubhouse Store at Citizens Bank Park at 8 a.m. today and begin selling National League Champion Phillies T-shirts and caps, the same worn by the players during their celebration in Los Angeles. The store's special postseason hours will be 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday. Phillies merchandising director Scott Brandreth wrote in an e-mail yesterday that "other NL Champs and World Series products would follow in a few days and continue to flow through and during the Series."