After learning earlier this week that Curt Schilling would not be on this weekend’s broadcast of Sunday Night Baseball, the question that arose was whether or not he would be replaced in the booth. An answer came last night, with the news reported by Tom Hoffarth that Jessica Mendoza will be joining Dan Shulman and John Kruk on the call for this week’s Dodgers/Cubs game. Replacing Schilling on SNB caps off an already historic week for the analyst, who became the first female analyst to call an MLB game on ESPN earlier this week with Dave O’Brien and Dallas Braden. The news was confirmed by ESPN’s Ben Cafardo.
Mendoza won two medals as a member of the US Olympic Softball team and is more than qualified to be an analyst. She has fit in well on Baseball Tonight since joining that show last year and working on the Women’s College World Series was right up her alley. Mendoza has done very well at ESPN since joining the network in 2007 and her role at the network has expanded multiple times over the last eight years.
For ESPN, this is a no brainer PR move. Considering how much outrage there was in the aftermath of Schilling’s tweet, the Mothership definitely needed some good press coming out of Bristol. Mendoza is a quality option who has shown that she can handle extra assignments in spades. ESPN made a smart decision and turned lemons into lemonade by replacing Schilling with Mendoza for this week’s edition of Sunday Night Baseball.
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