Jessica Mendoza attracted a lot of discussion after moving into the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball booth this season, but her son had a different take on her work.
Mendoza moved into the booth in September replacing Curt Schilling, and was immediately subject to a lot of idiotic, sexist criticism. She has handled it well, but she was subject to a different sort of criticism from her own family.
“My older son, when things were at the peak of attention, comes up to me and says: ‘Mom, I know people are saying you’re doing stuff that’s cool,'” Mendoza told the Los Angeles Daily News’s Tom Hoffarth. “‘But I listened, and all you did was talk. It was pretty boring.’ Thanks for that. ‘Well, you could have like danced or done something else. Like do some ninja moves.'”
It’s safe to say that’s the first time Mendoza has received that sort of criticism, though it seems unlikely that ninja moves would have silenced her detractors. Mendoza does talk baseball well, though, and isn’t nearly as boring as her son thinks she is. And she certainly didn’t deserve the horrible things an Atlanta radio host said about her.
Call it tough love.
