MiLB / Sacramento River Cats
It appears that public backlash has robbed the good people of Sacramento, California the chance at wearing ‘Gold Diggers’ minor league baseball apparel. The Sacramento River Cats are a Triple-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants and had a master plan to adopt ‘Gold Diggers’ as the baseball team’s alternate name but that plant go blown up.
The River Cats baseball team announced their plan to adopt the name ‘Gold Diggers’ in a since-deleted YouTube video. From the team’s perspective, it poked fun at the region’s history which was once the global capital for prospectors who headed west to strike it rich digging for gold. The team said the name was “Inspired by the regional history of the California Gold Rush” and added “this new identity offers a connection to the significant impact of this era when Sacramento grew as the closest major city to the gold fields.”
Evidently, the public didn’t see it that was as the video was pulled from YouTube and the alternate team name was scrapped, but not before CBS News Sacramento ran a story on it:
Local Sacramento Bee columnist Robin Epley lit up the teams plan in a recent opinion piece titled “River Cats’ rebrand is misogynistic joke on women — and they just proved it.” Epley wrote “I shouldn’t have to explain why this video is bad, but hey, maybe you hit your head recently: “Gold Digger” is not a nice name. It’s not a name typically used in any fashion other than to insult women.”
The team released an apology statement to nearby SF Gate, stating “our recent marketing campaign for an alternative identity clearly missed the mark. Our intention was to creatively reference the rich history of Sacramento and gold country, but our approach was wrong, and we are sorry for the mistake. We will no longer be using this identity.”
Initially, the plan was for the Sacramento River Cats to wear the ‘Gold Diggers’ baseball uniforms for 5 games this season but after the team pulled the video from YouTube it appears as if the plan to wear the uniforms has also been scrapped.
With that said, the process of having custom baseball uniforms is often a long and laborious ordeal and there’s a better than not chance these uniforms were already made and delivered. If they are sitting at the ballpark then who knows what could happen. The team’s landing page for ‘Gold Diggers’ merch has since been 404’d and serves up an error message though so don’t get your hopes up.