C.J. Nitkowski says erroneous Fox Sports Southwest graphic didn’t air [updated]

We’ve seen many bad graphic mistakes over the years, but Fox Sports Southwest’s Texas Rangers broadcast appeared to deliver one of the worst ever Tuesday.

Update: Rangers analyst C.J. Nitkowski tweets that this was a placeholder graphic that didn’t make it to air. He tweeted it out here, and the unofficial Rangers Podcast account tweeted the photo 22 minutes later :

https://twitter.com/CJNitkowski/status/892967414727675904

That Rangers Podcast account said it aired on FS Southwest:

Fox sports southwest had it on earlier today.

— Rangers Podcast (@RangersPod) August 2, 2017

In the graphic that was tweeted, every player is wrong other than Rafael Palmeiro, and even his last name’s covered up by the AT&T logo. Which led to plenty of jokes about corporate sponsorships going too far:

Coming in from the bullpen, it's Derek Tampax who has been nails against lefties this year.

— Rangers Podcast (@RangersPod) August 2, 2017

https://twitter.com/BamboozledIdiot/status/892863248806039553

But it’s the player photo mixups that are even better, as they’re not even close. That appears to be Ichiro Suzuki as Sammy Sosa, Rod Carew as Albert Pujols, Adrian Beltre as Manny Ramirez and Roberto Clemente as David Ortiz. At least all of those players are foreign-born, but they’re nowhere near the people they’re supposed to be on the home runs list; Beltre is the closest at 38th in career home runs (regardless of birth), Clemente’s next (tied for 250th), and Ichiro and Carew are well outside the top 300, with 116 and 92 career MLB home runs respectively. And none of them look particularly like the players they’re supposed to be, or are even from the correct teams.

It turns out the photos are from the list of most hits from players born outside the U.S., while the names are from the stated list of most homers. Amazingly, Palmeiro is third on both lists, so they lucked out and got one right. But Rafael AT&T appears on neither.

This being a placeholder graphic makes sense. It seems likely they were building this based off the list of foreign-born players with the most hits, and converted the text and names to HRs before changing the photos. Nitkowski tweeting out the in-progress graphic was fine, too. But it’s unfortunate that someone misrepresented this as something that aired. We apologize for spreading that erroneous information.