Now, they ain’t saying they are gold diggers…
That’s because after the Triple-A affiliate (belonging to the San Francisco Giants) team called the Sacramento River Cats announced an in-season marketing campaign where they’d briefly change their team name to the “Gold Diggers,” people got wildly upset. And it wasn’t just the name that caused controversy. A now deleted promotional video was apparently very distasteful, and it’s was evidently so bad that it’s been wiped from the internet.
People can’t even laugh anymore…
Leave it to the sport of baseball to accidentally stumble upon comedy. The sport has been on fire in recent years when it comes to not realizing a mistake before posting something and/or making something available for purchase. First, it was the Oakland Athletics hat that literally spelled out the word “ASS” front and center. Then, it was the Texas Rangers “Overlap” hat that accidentally spelled out Tetas, or “tits” in Spanish.
And who could forget about the Chesapeake Baysox changing their name and logo to the Oyster Catchers… which accidentally gave off NSFW vibes. Let’s just say the logo looked more like a clam than an oyster…
Sports teams – especially at the minor league level – are always trying to get their fans fired up to attend games, and often times, that means special jerseys for specially themed nights. The Sacramento River Cats thought they would change things up for fans by becoming a team of a slightly different name for a couple of games this year. This is a common practice throughout the minor leagues (the minor league team in Nashville occasionally plays as the “Nashville Hot Chickens”), and is a great way to boost ticket and merchandise sales.
The Sacramento River Cats thought they’d pay tribute to the western state’s role in the gold rush that took place from 1848 to 1855 by announcing that their team would be called the “Gold Diggers,” fit with a cash symbol and winking miner logo that’s basically screaming the double entendre to the heavens. And let’s face it, with the number of modern-day gold diggers in northern California looking to dip their hands in the Silicon Valley tech bro bags, the name does have some definite double meaning.
But the River Cats didn’t exactly strike gold with the idea…
And it seems as though the promotional video that the Sacramento Triple-A team put together and posted was the real issue. The now-deleted footage showed a baseball player coming out of a gold mine carrying a pickaxe, and quickly escalated to women with money signs superimposed over their eyes ogling the minor league player. There was even a portion that showed a woman losing interest in her older husband and staring – with money signs on her face – at the younger baseball player.
With the video clearly referencing the more commonly referred to meaning of “gold digger” in the modern day, people quickly labeled the Sacramento River Cats’ move as “misogynistic” and “insulting” to women. That backlash prompted the minor league team to apologize for a lack of sensitivity, and they’ve since decided to punt on the alternate identity altogether, as you can gather in the team’s official statement:
“Our recent marketing campaign for an alternative identity clearly missed the mark. Our intention was to creatively reference the rich history of Sacramento and gold country, but our approach was wrong, and we are sorry for the mistake. We will no longer be using this identity.”
Statement from the Sacramento River Cats:
Our recent marketing campaign for an alternative identity clearly missed the mark. Our intention was to creatively reference the rich history of Sacramento and gold country, but our approach was wrong, and we are sorry for the mistake.…— Matt George (@MattGeorgeSAC) April 11, 2025
Welp…
