Breastfeeding? Baseball?
Yes, you read the title of this post correctly.
Recently, WFAN New York sports radio host Mike Francesa decided it would be a good idea to put Yankee stadium on blast for their announcement regarding the upcoming addition of “breastfeeding stations” to the ballpark.
During his rant, Francesca made comments like, “Where do you go if you’re nursing during the game? Is this the mall or Yankee Stadium?” and, “I was wondering where those mothers could go during the games, so now that we have chairs with special breast pumps, we’ve got that covered.” (You can listen to the whole segment here.) Francesca actually started to laugh as he read the details regarding the breastfeeding stations.
As a mother who breastfeeds, and supports other women breastfeeding, this audio is infuriating. Seriously, Mike Francesa? What decade is it? And why do you have such an opinion over women feeding their babies, which is a requirement to keep them alive, by the way.
Yankee ticket prices are some of the highest in all of major league baseball. If I am the breastfeeding mother of an infant, and my family decides to invest hundreds of dollars to go see a game on a Saturday afternoon, what does it matter to you if there is a place for me to nurse or pump? It’s not like the station will be obstructing your view of the field, or the base path between second and third base.
Would you be happier if I went to breastfeed in the bathroom, a germ-infested space, where cleanliness is always highly questionable? Would YOU want to eat your lunch in a bathroom, Mike?
Or maybe the woman sitting behind you should just start breastfeeding right in her seat? That seems like an excellent option, seeing as New York state says it is perfectly legal to breastfeed in public, and the state has some of the strongest pro-breastfeeding laws in the country on the books. I would love to see you squirm if that happened.
You asked, “What do breast pumps have to do with baseball?” Well, I am here to tell you that just because breast pumps have nothing to do with YOU when it comes to baseball, there are millions of female MLB fans of childbearing age, and for them, it matters. And as someone who works in the sports media industry, as someone who has made ungodly amounts of cash from people’s love of the game, you should be ashamed of yourself for mocking a franchise for trying to promote a way for more fans to feel comfortable attending games.
And for future reference, us moms didn’t ask for your unsolicited baby feeding advice, so unless you have something nice to say in support of breastfeeding women, we’d appreciate it if you keep your ignorance and misogyny to yourself.
