Even when the sport is in the pink, it can't avoid a red face.

One week before pink bats and pink wristbands were used on Mother's Day to raise awareness of breast cancer, the Chicago White Sox employed their own bit of sexual symbolism.

To exorcize a collective hitting slump, some Robert Benchley disciples on the team brought a couple of inflatable female dolls into the clubhouse.

The dolls were propped up with bats, some of them arranged suggestively. One of the dolls wore a sign over her breasts that read, "You've Got to Push."

Needless to say, the sophomoric gesture did little to dispel the notion that all professional athletes are sexist cretins.

For their part, the White Sox - those hilarious rapscallions - claimed it was all in good fun.

Oh, really?

Do you think the female reporters who cover the White Sox thought it was all in good fun?

How about the female team employees who had to venture into the clubhouse?

Would the players' wives have gotten a good laugh?

Their daughters?

Their mothers?

In any event, commissioner Bud Selig responded forcefully.

Selig, who mandated sensitivity training for Ozzie Guillen when the White Sox manager used a gay slur to describe a sportswriter, called the matter a "team issue" and went back to worrying about pay TV.

And what about Guillen, who has placed his foot in his mouth more often than a 3-month-old contortionist?

He wouldn't apologize for his team's reprehensible behavior.

"I'm not going to say I'm sorry . . . because as soon as I say that, that means I'm guilty of something," Guillen said. "I'm not. I'm not guilty."

New slogans? Now that it seems the Flyers' "Vengeance Now" campaign will join the Sixers' "We Owe You One" in local advertising infamy, it might be a good time to come up with a theme for Philadelphia's next hockey season. How about:

"Death to Infidels!"

"Let's Hit Somebody With a Stick!"

"So's Your Mother!"

"It's Always Giveaway Night When Steve Downie Plays!"

"Let's Play Dress-Up and All Wear Orange!"

"As Long as They've Got Crosby, We've Got No Hope!"

NASCAR note of the week. Perusing the NASCAR.com Web site, I inadvertently stumbled across a blog called "Half Nude Pix."

Now I don't know about you, but the concept of nudity and NASCAR is enough to make my libido shift into reverse and high-tail it out of Dodge at about 158 m.p.h.

Despite the rapid exit, it's possible I'll still need therapy.

Talk about star-studded. According to Tunney, a biography of heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney by Jack Cavanaugh, among the record 135,000 fans who saw Tunney upset Jack Dempsey in 1926 at Sesquicentennial Stadium in South Philadelphia were the following:

Baseball's Babe Ruth, John McGraw and Jacob Ruppert; golfer Bobby Jones; hoodlum Al Capone; eight governors, including New York's Al Smith; politicians Franklin D. Roosevelt, James Farley and Jimmy Walker; actors Charlie Chaplin, Tom Mix, Mae West, Norma Talmadge and William S. Hart; four cabinet members, including Andrew Mellon of the Treasury Department; four of the late Theodore Roosevelt's offspring, Alice, Theodore, Kermit and Archie; publishers William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer and Conde Nast; business tycoons W. Averell Harriman, Charles Schwab and William Wrigley Jr.; Broadway producers Florenz Ziegfeld and David Belasco; English Channel swimmer Gertrude Ederle; merchants Ellis Gimbel, Harry Sinclair and J. Ogden Armour; Philadelphia Orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski; Gen. Douglas MacArthur's wife; and, among the estimated 2,200 millionaires, countless Biddles, Drexels, Vanderbilts and Astors.

According to Cavanaugh, 75,000 people arrived in Philadelphia that day, Sept. 23, on trains from New York and North Jersey.

at 215-854-5068 or ffitzpatrick@phillynews.com.