A woman Giants announcers dubbed “mom of the year” after cameras caught her carrying a baby and an armful of food back to her seat while a man beside her began eating is saying the viral clip didn’t show the whole story.
“Before you decide what our marriage looks like, I would like you to hear from the woman you’re defending,” she wrote.
The woman, who identified herself as Erika, described what happened at Tuesday’s San Francisco Giants game in a Substack post Friday. She said she had taken their daughter to the restroom and offered to pick up food for her husband, Ramses, on the way back. He told her to get him whatever had the shortest line.
When she returned, Ramses asked whether she wanted to eat first, Erika wrote. She told him to go ahead because she had eaten before the game and knew he had not had a full meal that day. He also offered to take the food containers off her lap and share his sandwich, but she declined.
Giants announcers Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper narrated the scene as the camera lingered on the family. They dubbed Erika “mom of the year” and jokingly imagined that Ramses had asked her for ketchup and that she wanted to smack him. Erika said neither exchange happened.
“I understand how it looked on television,” she wrote. “But we could hear each other. The announcers and audience couldn’t.”
The was another reason Erika wanted Ramses to enjoy the game, she said. He had recently lost a childhood friend who was a gifted baseball player, and she had suggested the outing as a way for her husband to remember him.
“The camera showed what I was carrying in my hands,” she wrote. “It couldn’t show what he was carrying that night.”
Erika said she and Ramses initially laughed at the broadcast. But as the clip spread online, strangers began criticizing him and making assumptions about their marriage. Some found the couple’s names and phone numbers, she wrote, and some sent Ramses messages telling him to kill himself.
Erika said she believed that the announcers and Giants production team meant no harm. But she told them their jokes helped turn her husband into a source of ridicule.
“What was a few moments of amusement on your broadcast became days of real pain for our family,” she wrote.
A Giants spokesperson did not return a request for comment.
Erika said she appreciated being called “mom of the year” but asked people to listen when she described her own life.
“You can appreciate what I was doing that night without assuming I have to do everything alone,” she wrote. “Supporting me also means listening when I tell you about my own life.”
