Minor league baseball teams are long known to resort to wacky gimmicks (Hawaiian shirts, Trump themes, even just being generally “awful”) to drive attendance, but one team is finding itself without an excuse for a promoted theme night that critics are accusing of being sexist.
The Ogden Raptors (Utah), a Dodger rookie league team recently sent out the announcement (which has since been removed), of an “Hourglass Appreciation Night.” If the thinly veiled innuendo of the name managed to sneak past you, the heavy-handed description on the now-removed post will remove all doubt (via Deadspin):
The following tweet shows the actual imagery used by the team in its promotion:
The tone-deaf sexism created a backlash of criticism, prompting the team to realize that referring to women as “thoroughbreds” is unacceptable. The team replaced the original announcement with a statement from the team’s president that, in its own antiseptic, finger-pointing way, offers something resembling an apology:
