SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Trailblazing "Jeopardy!" champion Amy Schneider is chalking up Fox Sports airing a prior first pitch instead of hers during a San Francisco Giants-Los Angeles Dodgers game last week to a misunderstanding after a call with the broadcast's director.
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Schneider, the Oakland resident who become the first transgender "Jeopardy!" champion and the show’s winningest woman during her record-setting run, said she accepted the director's apology for showing NASCAR driver Kurt Busch's first pitch from two days before and not her own prior to the Giants' annual LGBTQ Pride game last Saturday.
"It was just a misunderstanding, so we can close the book on it," Schneider tweeted on Thursday.
The Giants and the rival Dodgers made history as the first Major League Baseball teams to wear Pride-themed hats on the field during the same game, but Fox Sports showed Busch’s first pitch while promoting a NASCAR Cup Series race in Sonoma the following day.
Play-by-play broadcaster Adam Amin didn’t specify that Busch’s pitch was thrown on Thursday, June 9, or two days before the Giants-Dodgers game. Amin only said that "Kurt Busch threw out the first pitch" during a segment previewing the Sonoma race.
"On Saturday, as part of a promotional package for the weekend's NASCAR race in northern California, we aired a taped first pitch of famed NASCAR driver Kurt Busch," a Fox Sports spokesman told SFGATE on Tuesday. "This promotion was in no way meant to overshadow the ceremonial first pitch for the game as it is not routine for us to air."
Fox Sports didn't respond to KCBS Radio's emailed request for comment about the broadcast, and neither did MLB.
Sports broadcasting blog Awful Announcing noted that a Bakersfield TV station aired a Giants-Dodgers highlight that said Busch threw out the first pitch on Saturday, using the footage Fox Sports aired in its NASCAR promotion.
Fox Sports exclusively aired the Giants-Dodgers game on Saturday. With the Giants airing locally on NBC Sports Bay Area the following day, team play-by-play broadcaster Duane Kuiper said he felt compelled to clarify that Schneider threw out Saturday’s first pitch.
"Want to make a correction from what I watched yesterday," Kuiper said during NBC Sports Bay Area's broadcast on Sunday. "The Fox broadcast, the broadcast implied that Kurt Busch threw out the first pitch yesterday, which was not true. Of NASCAR fame, Kurt Busch threw out the first pitch on Thursday. It was Amy Schneider from 'Jeopardy!' fame who threw out the first pitch on Pride Day yesterday, so I just wanted to make sure she got her due."
Schneider replied, "Well, that's Fox for you," when a Twitter user alerted her to Kuiper's clarification and her absence from the Fox Sports broadcast.
Fox Sports is under the same corporate umbrella as Fox News, both of which are owned by the Rupert Murdoch-founded Fox Corporation. The former network's coverage of LGBTQ issues and people – namely in the case of Florida's Parental Rights in Education bill, which critics have dubbed "Don't Say Gay" – prompted the Human Rights Campaign to demote the corporation from its list of most LGBTQ-friendly workplaces.
Fox Sports' Giants-Dodgers broadcast director said the absence Schneider's pitch wasn't due to her gender identity, nor did the crew receive an edict of how to cover the Giants' Pride festivities.
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