Controversial trailblazing broadcaster Jessica Mendoza’s time as a broadcaster for ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball could be over.
Jessica Mendoza made history in 2015 when she entered an ESPN broadcast booth. She became the companies first-ever female broadcaster. In October of that year, Mendoza became the first woman to ever call an MLB postseason game. In 2016 she became the first full-time female MLB broadcaster in history.
According to Andrew Marchand of the New York Post, “ESPN is working toward removing Jessica Mendoza from its ‘Sunday Night Baseball’ booth.”
Mendoza has become a controversial figure in the last couple of years. It started in 2018 when she took a role as a front office advisor with the New York Mets.
Many fans believed it was a conflict of interest for Mendoza to work for the Mets and ESPN. Nonetheless, ESPN decided to stick with its “Sunday Night Baseball” analyst. It’s worth noting that Alex Rodriguez didn’t hear these calls despite holding a similar role with the New York Yankees.
Things really kicked into high gear during the Houston Astros’ cheating scandal. Mendoza attacked Oakland A’s pitcher Mike Fiers for exposing the Astros’ scandal. At that point, fans completely revolted against her.
Fiers had been hailed as the hero who broke the Astros scandal wide open by the fans. However, his actions didn’t sit well with analysts and former players. Mendoza was the first, but she was joined by Eduardo Perez and Pedro Martinez.
The issue the three have with Fiers exposing the Astros isn’t that he did it, it’s that he waited to expose the cheating until after he left the team and was removed from the situation. He reaped all the benefits of being on that team without facing any of the consequences.
It’s that backstabbing mentality that the players and Mendoza dislike. It’s unlikely that those issues caused her to lose this job.
Marchand also notes that while Mendoza will no longer be on “Sunday Night Baseball,” she will still be with ESPN. She is still expected to be a large part of ESPN’s future. She just won’t be doing it as part of the channel’s biggest broadcast team.
