A trivia question about the San Francisco Giants’ World Series MVPs in the 2010s gave Keith Hernandez just enough runway to take a jab at Pablo Sandoval’s weight.
Because, of course, it did.
The SportsNet New York (SNY) broadcast booth is often at its best when the game is out of hand. But even before Rafael Devers launched a three-run home run to defend the name of his third base counterpart, Keith Hernandez was already in rare form.
“He always had the weight issues,” Hernandez said of Sandoval. “He just fell off a cliff, but he had some big years for the Giants. Didn’t he go to the Red Sox? Just kind of bombed out there. He came back [to the Giants] and didn’t do the push-ups from the dinner table.”
Whatever that last line was supposed to mean — besides the obvious attempt at fat-shaming — it landed with all the subtlety of Hernandez calling out “piss poor hitting” on a hot mic. And while Sandoval has heard worse, especially during his time in Boston, the line still felt gratuitous.
Sandoval’s weight was a storyline long before he ever put on a Red Sox uniform. Both San Francisco and Boston urged him to slim down at various points, and it followed him throughout his career. But that narrative never defined him in San Francisco, where he was beloved as the “Kung Fu Panda,” a three-time World Series champion, two-time All-Star, and the 2012 World Series MVP. He played big — in every sense of the word — and showed you could still be productive even if you didn’t fit the mold.
Sure, Sandoval showed he could play — and win — while carrying more weight than most. But the discourse around his body was never something he could outrun.
At its worst, it turned into a sideshow.
Giants beat reporter Andrew Baggarly later apologized for posting the above photo of Sandoval, admitting he did his job as a journalist, but not as a human being. He expressed being disgusted by the ugliness and fat-shaming from the “media entities” that hijacked his tweet and turned it into mean-spirited clickbait.
Of course, fat-shaming isn’t new in sports media. And neither is Keith Hernandez saying something out of pocket. But even for him, this one felt tired.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.