It happens all the time. A fan does something slightly embarrassing at a sporting event, and then the commentators poke fun at him for a minute. On Wednesday, Diamondbacks announcers Bob Brenly and Steve Berthiaume took that tradition way too far, attacking a group of ASU students for committing the horrible transgression of taking too many selfies at a baseball game.
When Fox Sports Arizona’s broadcast of the inconsequential matchup — between the mathematically eliminated Diamondbacks and the last-place Rockies — returned from its mid-fourth-inning commercial break, the camera panned to a shot of several members of the Alpha Chi Omega sorority taking selfies in the stands.
The announcers began to laugh hysterically at the girls. Then, they singled one of them out, saying, “Look at the one on the right. Do you have to make faces when you take selfies?”
They proceeded to make fun of her by caricaturing what they imagined she was thinking, “Wait, one more now. Better angle. Check it, did that come out OK? That’s the best one of the 300 pictures I’ve taken of myself today!”
This went on for around two minutes. About halfway through, one of the announcers thought mocking young people on television wasn’t enough, so he decided to insult the girls’ parents, “Welcome to parenting in 2015,” he said.
How perfect of a parent does he think he is if he believes having a daughter who takes selfies while watching the Diamondbacks not make the playoffs is indicative of bad parenting? If that’s the worst thing your child does, I’d call that great parenting.
Then he parodied some of the other girls, “Hold on, gotta take a selfie with the hot dog. Selfie with the churro. Selfie just of a selfie… Here’s my first bite of the churro. Here’s my second bite of the churro.”
“The beauty of baseball is you can sit next to your neighbor and have a conversation. Or you can just completely ignore them,” one of the broadcasters sneered.
Yep, we got the experts themselves to take a #selfie on our @Snapchat! (Username: dbacks) pic.twitter.com/2jIS2uqYoC
— Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) October 1, 2015
As offensive as that comment was, it came from a reasonable place. Going to a baseball game is usually a group bonding activity. The problem with what he said was that the sisters at the game weren’t ignoring each other. They seemed to be smiling, laughing and having a good time together.
When the game resumed and David Peralta got a hit, the announcer commented, “Nobody noticed,” referencing the girls on their phones. You know who else didn’t notice? The people who weren’t in the 30,504 empty seats at Chase Field that night because the Diamondbacks are almost never a competitive team this late in the season.
He should have been thankful that they came to the game in the first place.
I have very few general guiding principles in my life, but one of them is that I believe people shouldn’t be criticized for liking things that are harmless. The ASU students weren’t interfering with anyone else’s ability to enjoy the game. Bob Brenly and Steve Berthiaume should have realized that the beauty of the selfie is that it only affects your life if you’re the one in it. Because it’s, you know, a selfie.
Reach the columnist at cmfitzpa@asu.edu or follow @CodyFitzStories on Twitter.
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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