A generous reading of the situation is that they intentionally misled their audience in a marketing attempt to promote another event. By removing a trans woman from the broadcast. On Pride Day. Not the best look.
Good morning, baseball fans.
There’s been a bit of a controversy brewing about Saturday’s Fox Sports broadcast of the San Francisco Giants game against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Now, I’m usually not the kind of person who really even notices the ceremonial first pitch unless it’s something like Buster Posey’s older twins throwing to him during his ceremony or unless I’m at the game, so I wasn’t even aware anything was amiss during Saturday’s game. But it turns out that Fox Sports decided to mislead their audience about who threw out Saturday’s first pitch.
As we noted over the weekend, it was Pride Day at Oracle Park, which included a really cool moment of history between the two organizations. Both teams and the umpire crew donned Pride themed logo hats in support of the LGBTQ+ community.
Then the Fox Sports broadcast kind of soured the whole thing. During the game on Saturday, the broadcast showed footage of NASCAR driver Kurt Busch throwing out the ceremonial first pitch, insinuating in their lack of specificity that that had been the ceremonial first pitch of Saturday’s game. It was not. It was from Thursday’s game against the Colorado Rockies.
The person who actually threw out the first pitch of Saturday’s game was Amy Schneider, of “Jeopardy” fame who happens to be a trans woman and an Oakland resident. Schneider is the second most successful contestant in the trivia show’s history, the most successful woman. She took the field in a trans pride flag tutu with a Giants jersey and had a decent throw. But unless you were at the game, you probably didn’t see it.
Jeopardy! megachamp Amy Schneider throws out the ceremonial first pitch on Pride Day at Oracle Park. pic.twitter.com/m7ihPTEsze
— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) June 11, 2022
A generous reading of the situation would be that Fox wanted to use Busch’s footage to segue into Fox Sports 1’s coverage of the NASCAR race that would be taking place at Sonoma Raceway this past Sunday, which they did.
But literally erasing a trans woman from a national broadcast on Pride Day just feels extremely lacking in awareness, at best.
It’s not as though it could have been shown on the regional broadcast, because there wasn’t one. But per an NBC News report, Duane Kuiper made sure to at least credit Schneider the next day, saying “I wanted to make a correction from what I watched yesterday on the Fox broadcast. The broadcast implied that Kurt Busch threw out the first pitch yesterday which was not true. It was Amy Schneider from ‘Jeopardy’ fame who threw out the first pitch on Pride Day yesterday. So I just wanted to make sure she got her due.”
As did I. It may seem like a small thing to folks who’ve never lacked it, but positive representation matters, as does its erasure.
What time do the Giants play today?
The Giants and Kansas City Royals wrap up the series today at 12:45 p.m. PT.