National media came back with a doozy of a mistake during a national broadcast of the SF Giants 7-3 loss to Atlanta on Saturday. In an FS1 (Fox Sports 1) graphic presenting San Francisco's defensive alignment, they used a picture of former Giants player Ford Proctor (who was released by the organization this summer) for Heliot Ramos ( Giants Top 30 Prospect). The most likely culprit is that the person in charge of assigning images misclicked a file that was probably sorted by alphabetical order by team, which may have put Proctor directly in front of Ramos.
Again, this is not the first, second, or even third time a national broadcast has made a player identification error. In fact this almost feels like deja vu at this point.
As I wrote last time, there's a growing desire from baseball fans to have access to visual and statistical content while they're watching baseball broadcasts. But baseball media simply has not staffed up (and in fact has cut staff in many cases) to provide the double and triple-checking required to avoid putting so many mistakes in front of viewers.
Over the last season, networks have used the wrong pictures for players in graphics, misspelled names or left off proper accents, or even failed to replace player names for "batter."
It could be considered all one big accident, and sure, it's not something most baseball fans consider a big deal. But in general, the players who get the short end of the stick when it comes to being identified correctly tend to be those from racial and ethnic backgrounds who have been historically marginalized by the sport and the media surrounding it.
On top of that, the big powers in baseball media make millionsof dollars off these teams and their players via broadcasts but can't staff their offices to provide extra eyes for overworked employees making content on short deadlines?
The players deserve more respect than this, and for that matter, so do the staff members asked to put together content for the conglomerates they work for.
At the very least, Ford Proctor and Heliot Ramos can join David Villar and LaMonte Wade Jr. as another mischaracterized twin duo in the SF Giants clubhouse. Taylor and Tyler Rogers could always use the company.
More must-reads: