The Ladies Love The Baseball

We always find it kind of embarrassing when major sports leagues make conscious efforts to try to cater to the female audience. From our experience, a woman is either a sports fan, or she isn't — you know, like the rest of the human population. League executives tend to think of female sports fans they think of their own wives; sedate, obsessively motherly and easily swayed by the waving of shiny objects. The most famous version of this was the NFL's "NFL For Her" campaign, which intended to teach women the rules of football as if they were an infant — albeit an infant who will cook, when need be, and maybe someday raise a linebacker. (The campaign was so embarassing, it has been deleted from the official league Web site. Mostly.)

We were reminded of all this when we saw that the Cleveland Indians are promoting the allegedly hot Grady Sizemore to bring in female fans this year. "Our female market demographic research showed there were 200 percent more women watching Indians games last season," said Indians vice president Bob DiBiasio. "Grady is the big reason."

We have always found it amusing that executives always assume women are watching a game just because certain players are attractive. (The "checking out the players' butts" postulate.) But then we went to the actual Web site for "Grady's Ladies", and we wondered, jeez, maybe they're right. If you're out there, Mr. Sizemore ... run ... get out while you can.

(Thanks to Baseball Musings for this whole post, really.)

"Grady's Ladies" [Official Site] Coco No Longer Got ... Hello 'Grady's Ladies' [Boston Globe]