San Francisco Giants hire female coach
Is it for the free publicity or do the Giants truly believe that ex softball player Alyssa Nakken is the right person for the job?
I'll be honest, I have never heard of Nakken nor to i particularly care for baseball in general (unless I am there watching, that is fun.) However, it is difficult to look at this situation and not feel as though the San Francisco Giants are doing this to stir up some unnecessary controversy to improve ticket sales.
I mean look, it is working. Nobody really talks about the Giants during the baseball season, let alone in the off-season yet here we are... this story is everywhere.
Adding fuel to the fire is ex Giants player Aubrey Huff chimed in with a few tweets that will almost certainly get him in trouble as he, in a later tweet, said "This has #metoo and #BelieveAllWomen written all over it"
To be fair to Alyssa Nakken, she was 3-time all-conference softball player, was an intern with the Giants' club, and has a masters degree in Sports Management. Does this mean that she will be good at her job? I have no idea. But it is difficult to ignore the immediate attention that the Giants, who had a losing season at .475 last year and finished nearly 30 games back, are getting from this.
San Francisco is also an extremely liberal city, so hiring a female coach might, at least financially speaking in terms of ticket sales, be a good move.
I can't say I know much about her at all. It sounds like she's a pretty qualified candidate from what little I've read but it's certainly going to be an uphill battle for her and the rest of the Giants squad to contend with.
That said I can understand a bit of Aubrey Huff's concerns though I think he's misplacing them on gender vs corporatism. Huff's concerns was that in the past he got in trouble for wearing a thong in the presence of a female reporter in the clubhouse. He's extrapolating from that event that all of the "fun" is going to be gone now that a female with be in the clubhouse full time.
I don't think he's completely wrong there's going to be a much different clubhouse dynamic. I just don't think it's entirely to do with only the fact a female has entered the clubhouse. I think it has more to do with baseball moving into a new corporate era that's aimed to create a more "professional" image. I'll leave that up to each person to determine if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
some really good points you made there and yeah Huff is not squeaky clean at all... with his tweets he might have been seeking to get in to the limelight a bit and ride some of this thunder, and well, if he can manage to come across without getting a twitter outrage mob on him in the meantime, his strategy is working also.
I do know this, I will be watching the Giants next season just to see what happens and I don't even like baseball very much.
interesting and controversial waters , Considering their male leadership got them nowhere as they've been sucking air for a while no clue how this move will work. If she can do the job then awesome. If some dude who crossdresses for kicks gets mouthy about it makes ya' wonder what kind a kink he has on this. I feel a lot of dudes who may be a bit murky like to pull women's ponytails since they probably got issues but who knows.
good read and featuring in my upcoming curation nation post initiative about to drop!
here's a guy who gets it also. I still wonder if this woman is actually good at the job though... I suppose it would be really difficult for us to determine that since her role is relatively minor in the grand scheme of things.
The publicity is still riding high though... plenty of people going to be talking about this for a while... From a purely financial perspective, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Huff was actually PAID to make his statements knowing about his cross-dressing past... It's like a Jerry Springer episode just waiting to happen but in the parts of a baseball training camp that people otherwise wouldn't ever care about at all.
If she can do the job better than other people then GREAT!