thelesterlee
Last week, ESPN baseball reporter, Marly Rivera, got into a verbal disagreement with freelance TV reporter, Ivon Gaete, as Rivera and Gaeta waited behind Aaron Judge for an interview while he was signing baseballs for children.
Here’s a clip of what went down:
The moment that ended Marly Rivera
Couldn’t have happened to a worse person🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/BgmZJbSmfy
— Addison (@YankeeWRLD) April 27, 2023
Marly began speaking at Gaete in Spanish until Gaete seemed to not understand what she was saying before Rivera would sarcastically respond with “Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t know you speak English now” before calling her a fucking cunt directly in front of a camera.
Marly Rivera has claimed that she was being set up and singled out. Apparently, Rivera has a history of beef with John Blundell, a vice president of communications for Major League Baseball—who happens to be dating Ivon Gaete, aka the aforementioned fucking cunt.
This very funny exchange led to Major League Baseball doing their own investigation into Rivera and finding out this was not the first time she flipped out at a colleague.
Here’s what her (former) co-workers said about Rivera:
Multiple reporters described to The Post incidents involving Rivera that they said crossed the line from typical scrapping in America’s largest media market to creating a toxic work environment. Last year, she flipped off another reporter and called her a “white b—-” after the reporter attempted to take a photo of a group of Hispanic players that Rivera was taking a picture of, according to two people who witnessed the incident. In another instance, she called a Latino reporter a “fake Hispanic,” according to multiple people who witnessed it.
Obviously that’s inappropriate. We all understand that.
But it’s also very funny that Rivera simply cannot help but murmur insults under her breath at people but very purposely so they hear them. Like, that woman was probably being an annoying white bitch but, ya know, you can’t really speak that way at work.
I don’t want to make it seem as if I’m defending Marly Rivera. She actually always came off as pretty strange. She asked dumb ass questions and loved the sound of her own voice.
Watch her press Aaron Judge about where he would sign in the offseason and use some made-up little kid to make him feel bad.
in honor of marly rivera being fired, let’s take a look back at this video that made every yankees fan mad pic.twitter.com/aHTkOnA7UO
— carli (@carliaclifton) April 26, 2023
If you survived the cringe then yea, you can understand why ESPN didn’t bat an eye firing her.
ESPN is also in the midst of massive employee layoffs which Rivera should’ve been fully aware of and adjusted her behavior accordingly but that’s part of what makes her so funny. She so highly overrates what she brings to the sport. Now that she’s currently a free agent, I doubt sports media companies will be blowing up her phone.
But there’s something weird about this whole situation.
Yes, she stinks at asking questions. And yes, she doesn’t get along with every reporter in the industry but I still don’t think she has done anything any more or less egregious than what some male reporters get away with.
Perhaps I have a soft spot for women in a male-dominated industry or I have sympathy for non-English speakers surrounded by white people but it’s odd to see folks celebrating this woman being fired like she was a poison to baseball when in actuality, male reporters have been mediocre at their jobs and dickheads to their coworkers for generations and no one seems to give a shit but the second it’s a woman behaving that way, she needs to be terminated immediately.
Now, I don’t want to come off as if I’m saying that women should have the equal right to be assholes like their male counterparts.
Anyone whose ego grows so large that they believe they are entitled to special treatment and then attack people who are not giving them that special treatment they think they deserve should be weeded out of these high profile high-paying jobs.
You want to behave that way? Well, you can go be a shift manager at Target. Being able to hang with professional baseball players and having the power to tell their stories to an audience of millions is a privilege that shouldn’t be given to anyone willing to abuse that power to feed their own narcissism.
But I’m a lifelong black baseball fan. I know how this sport treats brown people.
Marly Rivera was uniquely qualified to talk to Spanish players in their native language when a lot of them come to the US as teenagers and never get the chance to learn English. Then all of a sudden their Major Leaguers with cameras and microphones in their faces and can’t speak the language.
Rivera made a lot of guys comfortable in incredibly uncomfortable situations. I will never forgive Yankees fans for the way they talked about Gary Sanchez because he didn’t speak English to them. Demanding people speak English is racism. Just so we’re all on the same page.
I also think fans treat women like idiots when it comes to sports. I can only imagine the way Marly has been treated over the years as the one woman surrounded by a bunch of guys. We just saw the Mets GM, Jared Porter, get caught literally ruining a female reporter’s life because he wouldn’t stop sexually harassing her and trying to pressure her into sex. Mickey Calloway lost his coaching job for sexually harassing FIVE female media members and begging for pussy.
Marly Rivera is a terrible interviewer. She is not shy about telling people when she doesn’t like them. But there are far worse men who are about to receive a fat direct deposit this Friday yet everyone is celebrating Rivera losing her gig.
I guess I just want everyone to take a step back and ask themselves why they have extra excitement for Marly Rivera’s demise more so than the Jared Porters and Mickey Calloways of the world. I think people legitimately have more fun hating women and they themselves don’t even understand why that is. It’s worth asking yourself and interrogating that part of your brain.
It’s the same misogyny that made Marly attack her female peers. It is so embedded in all of us and moments like this are our opportunity to zoom out and examine our own biases.
Marly Rivera sucks but we should all be laughing at her calling the wife of the MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL VP OF COMMUNICATIONS a fucking cunt. That’s something Larry David would do accidentally. Her comedic timing is impeccable.
We shouldn’t be dogpiling like she hurt people. Ivon Gaete used to be a Spanish radio host who got an MLB job from her husband and then pretended to not know Spanish while cutting ahead of Marly waiting for an interview with a player that Rivera kind of has dibs on. Gaete was being a fucking cunt.
All of this while Aaron Judge was like, having a catch with sick dying Make-a-Wish kids or whatever. Marly is so dumb for saying this out loud on camera yet so funny for saying this out loud on camera.
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