A minor league baseball team has altered an important decision that will make it so the people of Sacramento will probably never get to wear officially licensed merchandise bearing the name “Gold Diggers” – not that they ever wanted to.
The Sacramento River Cats, the Triple-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, were planning to use the name as an alternate moniker, but due to some backlash, it won’t be happening.
The team had announced said plans in a YouTube video, which they have since deleted. The way they saw it, it would have been a fun reference to the area’s history as the place to be for folks looking to strike it rich during the era when the precious metal was all most people wanted.
The River Cats claimed that “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.”
The River Cats Will No Longer Be Adopting The “Gold Diggers” Alternate Name
Unfortunately, or fortunately—depending on how you see it (Okay, just fortunately)—the campaign was pulled, and the video was taken down. But CBS got a story out on it in time, ensuring the team got slammed for trying to slip in a misogynistic joke.
Local Sacramento columnist Robin Epley wrote a piece titled “River Cats’ rebrand is misogynistic joke on women — and they just proved it” in which she wrote, “And no, it’s really not funny unless you think 1950s-era tropes about women only seeing dollar signs when sizing up men are funny.”
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The team has since published an apology stating the following:
“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.”
The Cats had planned to wear the “Gold Diggers” unis for five games this season, but it doesn’t appear that wil be the case anymore, given the decision to take the video down… plus they actually said so.
We’re sure there were some fans who were looking forward to copping some “Gold Digger” threads and are now disappointed. They will probably have to settle for printing their own.
