The Seattle Mariners suffered a devastating loss on April 15 when Jackson Merrill drove in the game-winning run in the bottom of the ninth inning of the San Diego Padres’ 7-6 win.
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Merrill was credited with a double, the thrilling conclusion to a five-run ninth inning at Petco Park.
Mariners dugout reporter Angie Mentick had a tough night herself.
Not only was she tasked with conducting postgame interviews with players who probably didn’t want to talk about the game they just lost, Mentick was reamed on social media after a fan posted a video of her typing something into her smartphone during the game.
Spoiler alert: Mentick was doing her job. She appeared to be using Google’s Gemini assistant to research “good questions after a tough loss in baseball.” That’s what she typed into her phone, at least.
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Mentick took her share of flack from fans who, like the original poster, questioned her ability to do her job without the help of an AI agent.
But that controversy was tame compared to the existence of the video itself. How many people have to worry about strangers recording their every action on the job?
Thom Brennaman was fired by the Cincinnati Reds when a hot mic caught him using a homophobic slur, a completely unnecessary off-camera remark during a 2020 broadcast. ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith was photographed playing solitaire while in attendance at an Indiana Pacers game.
Mentick, by contrast, was captured doing something to help her on-camera work.
“I’m upset about this person doing this to her because maybe they do know who Angie Mentick is,” Alanna Rizzo said on the April 16 episode of Fair Territory. “But if you had taken half a second to find out who she was, you’d know that she knows baseball. … So what, she’s doing some research, maybe getting another idea, or maybe finding a way to phrase a question differently — or that type of thing — not to mention Angie just had a stroke not that long ago.”
Rizzo and co-host Ken Rosenthal weren’t alone in rushing to Mentick’s defense. For her part, the longtime broadcaster seems to be handling the uproar with a sense of humor.
“Currently asking AI how to handle going viral for using AI,” Mentick wrote on X. “In all seriousness, I’m late to the AI party. Earlier this season I experimented with AI to see if it had any questions to add to my list for my postgame coverage. We’ve come a long way from pen and paper when I started in 1997
“Always learning”
