Instant karma.
Let’s be clear… there’s nothing wrong with a little trash talk. However, those sharp back-and-forth jabs are generally reserved for fans of sports teams. Broadcasters are supposed to stay neutral with their call, even when they are associated (or working for) one specific team.
Announcers can be reprimanded if they show favor for one team over the other. Or worse, they can get penalized by the great, spiritual force of karma. Jenny Cavnar, the Oakland Athletics play-by-play announcer for TV (alongside Dallas Braden and Chris Caray), tried to get cute with the call, and she ended up eating her words.
The A’s were in a tight one with the Tampa Bay Rays, and in the bottom of the 9th inning, Oakland was leading by one run as Rays star Jose Siri was up at bat. After he swung and missed on a pitch, Cavnar proudly made a play on the batter’s name and exclaimed:
“Hey Siri, it’s not your night.”
Get it? Because his last name is the same as the name for the software programming on iPhones? Pretty clever right? I’m sure he’s never heard that one before.
Siri actually didn’t even hear it that specific time, but that didn’t stop him from playing his part in the announcer’s jinx. If you don’t believe in the announcer jinx, how can you still feel that way after watching this?
Shortly after Cavnar made that remark, Jose Siri proved that it actually was his night and absolutely tattooed a ball out of the park for a solo home run, tying the game up at four runs a piece. The A’s announcer had to do her job and call the play as it happened, which made her prior trash talk that much more brutal.
Check it out:
"Hey Siri, it's not your night"
One pitch later: pic.twitter.com/KswfYWLDR2
— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) May 30, 2024
Tragically, the game eventually went into extra innings, where the Tampa Bay Rays came out victorious in a 12-inning thriller. The Rays walked it off and won 6-5 over the A’s, and something tells me that Jenny Cavnar won’t be as quick to trash talk opposing players in crunch time from here on out…
