This is a day old, but it's interesting all the same:
The Los Angeles Dodgers will begin what is believed to be an unprecedented series of game broadcasts tonight aimed at their female fans. Former Fox Broadcasting baseball pregame show host Jeanne Zelasko will serve as the play-by-play announcer while Dodger assistant coach Mark Sweeney will serve as the analyst for what is being dubbed as the DodgersWIN broadcast.
The broadcasts are part of the team's Women's Initiatives Network, a series of efforts designed to bring women closer to baseball and bring baseball closer to their lifestyles. Zelasko said the broadcasts will be more instructive than traditional broadcasts.
"I like to look at our broadcast as we're not afraid to explain something most people might take for granted," Zelasko said. One specific example occurred during a recent run through when Sweeney made references to the six hole, Zelasko said.
"I know what that is in the lineup, but I said to him, `Mark, tell people what you mean.' It's the sixth spot in the lineup," Zelasko told City News Service.
Points for originality, I suppose, but I cant see how such thing won't end up being condescending to women. To the extent a given woman isn't already a baseball fan it's not because she doesn't understand it, it's because either she (a) watched a bit of baseball and decided that she simply didn't like it, in which case no amount of remedial education is going to change her mind (my wife fits this category); or (b) she or her parents decided that at some point that sports weren't for girls, in which case an attitude adjustment, as opposed to an education, is necessary to get the job done.
Whichever the case, baseball is not a terribly difficult game and no one likes to feel stupid. If you treat it like special class, you're likely to put off more people than you attract. This is especially true if an empty head like Jeanne Zelasko is the special ed. teacher.
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For the most part, baseball announcers is restricted to ex-ballplayers looking to stay involved in the game, leaving some qualified people to ponder what could have been. Totally unfair !!!!
good, ballplayers need the work after a career in baseball, U R A LOSER FOR SAYING WHAT U SAID, Go JUMP ROPE with JENNIE and the OTHER GIRLS
i think that what is condescending to women is your stated presumption that female non-baseball fans fall into one of two categories, neither of which appears to be the result the any kind of scientific consideration.
it's probably also condescending to refer to a correction of ingrained sexist social values as an "attitude adjustment."
from a practical standpoint, it's also condescending to suggest that the only pertinent audience for these broadcasts are women who have already decided that they dont like baseball or women who have been culturally influenced to avoid sports in general. you give no consideration to women (or anyone else) who find live baseball games interesting but who find broadcasts to be obtuse and full of jargon. maybe it's more about revising the subtly (and mostly unintentionally, to be sure) sexist language of the broadcasts.
you may not feel that baseball is a terribly difficult game, but, as a baseball fan, i find that to be sorta condescending, since i often have a hard time remembering how positions are numbered or independently explaining the infield fly rule. there are a few things about baseball that arent straightforward, and when lingo and jargon are applied to them, new viewers should be expected to be rather confused.
making things accessible is not condescending. making presumptions is.
Firsty -- the article itself stresses the explanatory/educational nature of the broadcast. I didn't make that up. Nowhere does it suggest that the purpose of these things are to remedy the sexist or obtuse nature of current broadcasts. Hell, I'd guess that a majority of male baseball fans find the broadcasts jargony and obtuse and altogether hard to watch. No one is trying to remedy that.
As for my presumptions: If a woman (or any person) isn't a baseball fan, isn't it necessarily the case that they either don't like baseball or haven't given it a chance, for whatever reason?
And I can't see why my use of the term "attitude adjustment" bothers you. There has long been a prevailing sexist attidude about girls and sports in this country. That attidude sucks and needs to be adjusted. What's the problem?
how is explaining the broadcast distinct from remedying the obtuse and jargon-filled nature of broadcasts? isnt that the whole point?
yes. but why would a non-baseball fan tune in at all? in other words, i think you are ignoring an important group of people...i would assume that the target audience is made up largely of people who would like to watch baseball but who have a hard time following the game the way it is currently called.
well, you said: (b) she or her parents decided that at some point that sports weren't for girls, in which case an attitude adjustment, as opposed to an education, is necessary to get the job done. doesnt that mean that the person in question (or her parents) need an attitude adjustment? i'm not trying to pick nits, and if you didnt mean that the person needed to "adjust" her "attitude," and were referring instead to an attitude of society, then thanks for clearing that up. but i'm sure you can see how i read it completely differently.
but: how do you change attitudes without education? how is educating the fan different from trying to impart different attitudes? doesnt enlightenment ("attitude adjustments") come from insight, from learning?
i think where you lose me is that you seem to be focusing on the idea of a gender-based broadcast, and there are certainly concerns about anything like that. but if the purpose is to educate the listener, to provide a more accessible broadcast/viewer relationship and culture, i dont see how that is condescending, and i really dont think you've explained very well how it might be.
and if the target audience is really who you presume it to be (women who either dont like or dont care about baseball), then how is it that they would feel condescended to? either they're not going to watch anyway, or they dont know enough about the game to believe that the broadcaster is explaining the obvious.
when i first loaded the article and saw the term "six-hole," my mind went immediately to hockey, and i wondered if goalies had suddenly given up one of their pads and invented a new path to the net. i'm sure i've heard the term during a baseball game before, but if i was calling a game (or telling the kids on my little league team where they are hitting) i would never say "six-hole." maybe "the six spot," or something, and i'm sure that i would know what they meant in the context of the broadcast, but as a baseball fan i definitely wouldnt feel talked down to if i heard someone explain what it meant.
i just dont see how broadcasting in an educational way is automatically condescending. it helps a lot if, in certain situations, someone explain something to us as if we were a kid — it is a good way to cut through the kind of jargon that we often dont even recognize anymore.
i used to work for a sports card company, and we had several people in production who were responsible for proofreading. many staff members were sports fans, but not all, and it wasnt until some of our very bright people pointed out that it's nearly impossible for a non (or new) fan to read the back of a baseball card without understanding basic jargon that i had any real idea how confusing sports language can be.
any expert in business would walk into a 100-level business class feeling condescended to if he or she presumed that the lesson was targeted to business experts. but there are people in that class who are really learning something. and that expert would be entirely wrong in presuming that he or she was the class's target audience. you are coming at this from the perspective of a person knowledgable of the sport, and your presumptions about the possible audience of these broadcasts just dont ring true to me.
these games sound like a great idea. MLB is trying to get a bigger audience, which is a good thing, and long overdue. LA has seen a surge in latino fans since the arrival of manny, and they probably recognize an opportunity to grow their fanbase further.
i'd much rather watch a game where the broadcasters are speaking in layman's terms that my wife and kids can not only understand but immediately make sense of on the diamond than listen to someone like bob costas compare every count to some historic situation involving hank aaron. if a person isnt a baseball fan, she probably cant even make sense of what "compare every count" means — if i tell her it means "the strike count," i still have to explain why the strike count includes balls, not just strikes. why isnt it called "the ball-strike count"? why are high numbers in the box score good for every column except E? how do they score errors anyway? why was that infield hit on one side of the line (what line?) called foul and the outfield hit that landed on the same side of the line called fair?
examples aside, what kind of education wouldnt be condescending? i think your premise requires that there would exist some kind of broadcast geared towards women that, if done differently, would accomplish the goal in a better way.
Dude , what is this ??? really....... Iguess now i have reading material for the 3 day weekend, thanks alot.
Craig, I'm not sure I agree with your take on this. I've been married for almost eleven years to a wonderful woman who has always liked going to the ballpark, but for a long time knew little about the sport itself. She's learning more and more all the time, mostly because she asks me questions. I can almost guarantee that she wouldn't know what Sweeney was referring to when he says the "six hole," but she would like to learn. I don't think she'll ever be a diehard fan as I am (for example, she has ties to Chicago and St. Louis, so roots for both the Cardinals and Cubs, something this Cubs fan could NEVER do), but she has grown to appreciate the game and will watch games on TV with me. That's something she would rarely do when we first met about 13 years ago.
I get that, bmoline, but I guess I have to ask whether knowing what "the six hole" is is really that critical to enjoying a baseball game. Same goes for any other jargon. We were all kids once who watched the game and we either picked that kind of stuff up or else we let it wash over us because it didn't really matter (e.g. I didn't really understand the balk rules until I was in my 20s and still don't really understand the infield fly rule; it never really served as an impediment to my enjoyment of the game). To think that women can't pick up the essentials of the game from the mainstream broadcast makes little sense to me.
I'll go one further: demographics matter in advertizing. Is anyone willing to doubt that a big reason for this putatively unisex broadcast is so that the network can go to advertizers and say "we can guarantee you that X% of the audience will be female"?
So I'm in the same place I started: I think this is a silly and cynical thing.
I disagree with you. Growing up, I never thought that baseball was interesting and I think it was mostly due to the fact that I didn't really understand the game (probably is why I still think soccer is boring). It changed for me when I was had to go to a friends high school ball games and his dad would explain things to me when they didn't make sense. Now, even though baseball isn't my favorite sport, I will sit down and watch it and actually enjoy it. Basically, while baseball isn't that hard of a sport to understand, there is a lot of jargon used that can be confusing and potentially offsetting. I don't think it's insulting at all to women since this is probably a major barrier for a lot of women that would otherwise enjoy watching baseball.
I'm with you on this, Craig-- as a female baseball fan who really only got into the game as a result of dating (and later marrying) an obsessive baseball nut, it only took me a year or two to understand everything I needed to know, simply by watching games and asking lots of questions when something came up that I didn't understand... and not just about the announcers' ridiculous comments, either. Anyway, I think there are probably ways they could offer "instructional" broadcasts to people who were more interested in learning about the game, and advertise that the announcers would be offering much more explanation than they normally would. But I don't see why that has to be marketed as a "women's" broadcast. I'm sure you're 100% right that this is really a marketing initiative, not a women's initiative... and putting Zelasko in charge just adds insult to injury.
my condolences to those who have to endure listening to the obnoxious ms. zelasko.
All any female wanting to learn Dodger baseball needs to do is listen to Vin Scully. The man is a legend for a reason.
You attempt to prove your open-mindedness while calling Jeanne Zelasko an "empty head".
Stay classy.
I agree Craig, seems like this isn't needed. And if you wanted to cater to novice fans who want to know more about specifics of the game, why not have a broadcast that does that. It is condescending to assume that the only people who need help understanding a baseball game and/or broadcast are female. I bet this turns into a "novice" broadcast eventually. And doesn't Sweeney need to be in the dugout during Dodger games?
Maybe this would be a good broadcast for younger listeners? Something that elementary kids can listen to so that they better understand the game would seem a more appropriate description of this broadcast.
It seems to me that anyone female that is really interested in learning more about baseball need merely ask someone she knows who is a fan (male or female). Truth is there are many many males who don't know the fine points of baseball; it seems to be a matter of interest level and not gender. As a fan of the game, the upcoming broadcasts, while trying to keep an open mind, will probably have me rolling my eyes and pining for Vince Scully to return to the mic.
Sir, your article is condescending. How dare you make reference to Special
Ed. students in this context. It remains to be seen whether the Dodgers broadcasts will be instructive or not but you have already shown that you have no class and are very condescending!!
My wife is a loyal Mets fan and as I am a Red Sox fan, we are both looking forward to this weekend alot. I can't help but think that she would find the broadcasts with Ms. Zelesko anything but sexist and condesending. The "jargon" used is almost never the problem with understanding the game for any casual fan. That can ignored, guessed at from context or quieried. The harderst things to understand for more casual fans are the strategic nuianances and subtle inner workings of the game. I don't think this broadcast intends to use some cool scorecard graphics to explain a double-switch or charts to show the infield swift used against Ryan Howard. Those things would be helpful to all fans from the casual to the rabid.
All they are doing here is assuming that the largely idiotic language ex-ballplayers use is too "complex" for half the population and inserting a lousy announcer to explain it. Frankly I have no idea why a phrase like "easy cheese" is ever used and I watch hundreds of games a season. I don't actually care either. I doubt anyone will like these broadcasts which sound offensive to women first and all of humanity second.