Women can't attend a Braves game without being objectified on live TV

Two Toronto Blue Jays fans decided to attend their team's game against the Atlanta Braves at Rogers Centre on Tuesday, presumably hoping to just enjoy a normal night at the ballpark. Unfortunately, because they had the audacity to be women at a sporting event in the year 2025, they were forced to spend part of their time navigating a minefield of awkward questions in one of the most uncomfortable broadcast segments in recent memory, courtesy of Braves reporter Riley Ballard.

Ballard approached the two women for an in-game interview during the top of the fifth inning. That in itself isn't too unusual, the sort of thing sideline reporters at baseball games have been doing for years now. But instead of the typical questions about where they're from and who they're favorite player is, Ballard — with an assist from Braves play-by-play man Brandon Gaudin — decided to ask them for their phone number on live television.

Which, it should go without saying, is some incredibly unprofessional behavior from a member of the media. You're there to do a job, not to put two strangers in the position of having to accommodate your feelings on the fly while trying to avoid any sort of confrontation in front of a television audience. Using the privilege of your credential as an excuse to exercise leverage over a woman you've never met before is beyond the pale — or, if you ask certain corners of the internet, worthy of praise.

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Braves reporter somehow earns praise for wildly inappropriate on-air behavior

Unbelievably, Ballard's coworkers didn't seem to see anything wrong with what he did on Tuesday. On the contrary, they were thrilled, taking to social media to give him a victory lap (for ... what, exactly?).

Ballard himself has only offered the briefest of comments since the incident went down, but it sure doesn't seem like he thinks he has anything to apologize for. Instead, he posted a screenshot from the "I got her number, how 'bout them apples" scene from Good Will Hunting. (The fact that Skylar is the one who decides to give Will her number — and that, you know, the two actually had a conversation beforehand — is apparently lost on him.)

As if the total disregard for the two women actually involved in the encounter weren't infuriating enough, Ballard's behavior was also an insult to the many women in sports media who work every day to try and overcome the negative stereotypes that still loom over these sports of spaces.

Among the most pernicious of those stereotypes, one that you'll encounter in even a cursory search of the internet on any given day, is that women enter this industry not out of a love of the game or the work but a simple desire to get athletes' phone numbers. To see a man actually do just that, and receive praise for it no less, is the height of hypocrisy.