Who knew that last week’s furious preparations at Forman Mills for the rush of customers wanting Phillies merchandise would turn out to be a fire drill for similar madness this week?

Chris Streahle, director of advertising and marketing for Forman Mills, said the wave had already crested by the end of the weekend for anything Phillies when the election arrived last night. And another crush developed this morning.

“We’re seeing a huge increase in Obama T-shirt sales,” said Streahle a couple hours ago, laughing when asked if they have the World Series logo on them. “We had Obama T-shirts, but now the shirts say ‘He is President’ and not ‘Vote for Obama’ and people are ripping them off the shelves. It’s another frenzy. Tees, hats, hoodies. It’s a big part of history and people are buying anything they can.”

Unlike last Wednesday night, the stores didn’t stay open from dusk to dawn to sell Obama apparel. But the approach, Streahle said, was the same.
 
“We actually treated as an if win championship,” he said. “The President Obama shirts could not hit the floors until it was confirmed that he won. We got the boxes yesterday and when we got the news this morning they went out to the sales floor.”