Rick Sutcliffe is a horrible person and ESPN’s no better
This is still bugging me hours later, so:
I was watching ESPN’s broadcast of the Braves game tonight, and there was a really, really weird moment where they were discussing Rick Sutcliffe taking time off to go get cancer treatment, and Erin Andrews was in the stands and wished him well or something — I wasn’t really paying attention, it seemed totally pointless — at which point Sutcliffe went off on a bizarre rant about her, how good she looked, her skirt, and how everyone was watching her and her skirt and when they cut to the broadcast booth, his partner had this weird look of terror and shock on his face, and they chatted about how distracting she was around the batting cage.
This should be Rick Sutcliffe’s last job announcing anything. He shouldn’t be hired to do dog races. He shouldn’t be able to ever get a quarter for hawking wares at garage sales.
I don’t care that he has cancer.
I don’t care that Erin Andrews is attractive, or that she wore a skirt.
He should be fired for making comments like that. More than that, he should be fired for this rant, about her.
I don’t care what your opinion of her is: Erin takes an enormous amount of entirely unjustified personal crap. She’s been treated badly by players, awkwardly clutched by coaches. If you put her name into a search engine you need to get decontaminated within minutes of just looking at the results or your eyes will melt. Erin is objectified and degraded in a way that no male sports media figure has ever had to face, and Rick Sutcliffe, working with her, should know that and, if he can’t support her, at least shut up.
It is amazing and embarrassing that no one on the broadcast crew stopped Sutcliffe. No one cut his mike, nothing, and his partner didn’t stop him but instead ended up playing along. The broadcast team and the network let someone use game time to slobber all over another broadcaster for absolutely no reason.
That’s it, that’s all I have. Fuck you, Rick Sutcliffe. Fuck you, other guy in the booth. You’re embarrassments to my gender.
Update: here’s the video.