For the first time in MLB history, an "all-female announcing crew called a game" for Orioles-Rays. The YouTube broadcast featured Melanie Newman on play-by-play with Sarah Langs as the analyst. Alanna Rizzo was the on-field reporter, and Heidi Watney and Lauren Gardner hosted the pregame and postgame coverage (AP, 7/20).
At the top of the second inning, Newman "rattled off several names of trailblazing women in sports media." But as she and the others have stressed over the last several days, the "focus should be on the future for women in sports media rather than the past." Newman during the pregame show said, “The important thing today is that door opens. While we celebrate that excitement of the first, the door is staying open." After the game, Rizzo acknowledged that "typically, the goal for a journalist is to chase the story, not be the story." But if "making history alongside her coworkers is what it takes to help women in their field move forward, so be it" (TAMPA BAY TIMES, 7/21).
