Sports media has seemingly found its own version of Livvy Dunne rizzing up Baby Gronk.
Alright, it’s not that cringeworthy. But the Detroit Tigers pregame broadcast on Bally Sports Detroit went to a strange place when discussing Dunne and her boyfriend Paul Skenes, who will pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates in Game 2 of Wednesday’s doubleheader against the Tigers.
To start, an introductory graphic on Wednesday’s pregame show showed Skenes and Dunne side-by-side as if they were the probable pitchers for Wednesday’s game. Skenes is, but you get the point. Instead of looking at wins, losses, ERA and strikeouts, it was a breakdown of “Gen Z’s New Power Couple” and how many followers each of them boasts on TikTok, Instagram, and X.
Seriously.
Trevor Thompson turned over the segment to Johnny Kane, who needed a second as he pretended to (or perhaps actually did) follow Dunne on Instagram.
“She just gained one more follower,” Carlos Peña quipped.
“I don’t do the TikTok; I was following Paul Skenes,” said Kane. C’mon, man.”
Kane asked Thompson if he’d be interviewing Dunne in the stands at Comerica Park during the doubleheader’s nightcap. Thompson innocuously said that he would try to track her down and see if she was willing to come on Bally Sports Detroit.
That’s when Kane uncomfortably told Thompson to “shoot his shot.”
At first, the comments about the interview seemed much stranger out of context. Thankfully, the phrase “shoot your shot” referred to an interview request, not something more suggestive. However, it’s still a bit awkward considering the significant age difference between Dunne and the three pregame show hosts, who could easily be her fathers.
In a vacuum, Kane likely meant nothing malicious about it. But egging on his colleague to “shoot his shot” in interview form with Livvy Dunne is just strange. It wasn’t intentionally done in bad taste, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t make those of us watching cringe.
All things considered, it could’ve been a lot worse considering the places the Tigers’ broadcast went last year with Matt Shepard as the team’s play-by-play voice. That’s not to say that Wednesday’s moment was by any means kosher, but you can certainly avoid taking the broadcast to a weird place when it doesn’t need to go to one.
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.