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On Saturday, history will be made as ROOT Sports will feature its first-ever all-female broadcast when the Colorado Rockies host the Seattle Mariners.

Jenny Cavnar and Angie Mentik will be in the booth with play-by-play and analyst responsibilities. On the sidelines will be Julia Morales and Jen Mueller, and behind-the-scenes producing and directing the game will be Alison Vigil and Erica Ferrero.

“Out of Denver, they have a lot of women on their staff, and not just in front of the camera, but behind the scenes, they’ve got a female director and producer,” Mueller told Awful Announcing on Thursday. “It’s always been kind of their dream that we would be able to do something together.”

It’s a special crew, of course. That’s before listing their accomplishments.

“The mutual admiration club is finally meeting in person,” Mueller added. “We have all watched each other’s career. Julia is coming up from Houston, then we’ll have Denver, and it’ll be Angie and I from Seattle. We have all watched, followed and crossed paths throughout the years and have cheered each other on.”

All of the women involved in the broadcast watched in 2018 as Cavnar became the first woman to be on the play-by-play mic for a National League game in 25 years.

Then when it was Mentik’s turn in the booth while she took on color responsibilities, the group sent her encouraging texts about her feat. In 2021, she became the first woman to call a Mariners game.

“It’s not just women on a professional stage,” Mueller said. “We’re all friends. That’s what makes this so fulfilling. That’s what makes a broadcast so special.”

Mueller says it’ll be a special broadcast in more than a historical aspect.

“We have a lot of baseball knowledge between us,” she said. “I think you’re going to leave the broadcast knowing that it was really great chemistry, there were a lot of great nuggets that were shared, and it was really fun to watch.”

It’ll also be a shared broadcast. Meaning it’s essentially combining two regional sports networks into one. A challenge on its own.

“Technically, there are things that are going to happen behind the scenes that are a little bit trickier than just the standard broadcast, so there’s a lot of different factors that are going into Saturday,” Mueller said.

 

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Mueller added they’ll look to create an even broadcast so that everyone feels included, mainly Mariners and Rockies fans.

Additionally, the broadcast creates an opportunity for different voices and perspectives in the game, something Mueller says is useful.

“It’s cool that Julie is there, and she’ll be working in the Rockies’ dugout and doing those interviews, but she’s got a great perspective on the AL West, which is awesome,” Mueller said.

Morales’ main gig is as the Astros’ sideline reporter. She’s spent over a decade working with the team.

 

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“Which is awesome when you start talking about changes and a balanced schedule, and the athleticism that will come through from second base now because there’s no shift, she’s got a different perspective,” she said.

It’s an important part of the game that is continuously undergoing growth and transitions.

“It’s important to have different voices in baseball because we are fans too,” Mueller said. “We represent a large portion of the fanbase. Now, our conversations are going to sound different than other broadcasts, and it might not be because we’re women, it’s because we all take a different interest in different parts of the game. Relationships that I have with Mariners players are different than the relationships other reporters have. And when you bring different points of view, when you tell different stories, when you actually hear female voices, it changes your perspective on things.”

[photo: Seattle Mariners, Twitter]

About Jessica Kleinschmidt

Jess is a baseball fan with Reno, Nev. roots residing in the Bay Area. She is the host of "Short and to the Point" and is also a broadcaster with the Oakland A's Radio Network. She previously worked for MLB.com and NBC Sports Bay Area.

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