I suppose this is one of those good problems, but it’s still a problem! Fox Sports Florida sideline reporter Tricia Whitaker keeps getting mercilessly drenched by celebrating Rays players, who seem to view live postgame interviews as opportunities to dump truly gargantuan quantities of beer and champagne over her head.
Whitaker was seen squeezing cold booze out of her hair during her delightful interview with Tyler Glasnow following Tampa Bay’s clinching of a wild-card spot Saturday night. She then caught a significant misting when Glasnow was ambushed with a freezing-cold beer shower mid-answer. That whole postgame scene was a chaos of flying booze:
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That was nothing compared to the bath she got Wednesday, after the Rays triumphed over the Oakland Athletics in the AL Wild Card game to advance to a division series against the Houston Astros. Whitaker was last seen in a dry condition immediately after the game, when she interviewed Emilio Pagan down on the field. Things seem to have gone quickly to hell from there. She was already pretty well drenched, and blinking suds out of her eyes, when the studio show checked in for an interview with pitcher Charlie Morton, who took the win Wednesday night. It was in the middle of this interview that all hell broke loose:
Morton tried to save her from the worst of it, to no avail, but Whitaker soldiered ahead with her questions despite now being just completely drenched in beer. She continued to catch splashes while talking to Tommy Pham:
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Whitaker seemed to avoid further soakings during a conversation with Travis d’Arnaud, but she caught another direct spray while interviewing Avisail García moments later:
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There was another brief reprieve during her chat with Kevin Kiermaier, but Whitaker was clearly looking over her shoulder at a nearby beer shower, sensing the danger. This period of uneasy peace was soon broken up when her next interview was interrupted by someone rudely and deliberately blowing vapor or cigar smoke into the shot:
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A pattern was emerging: one clean interview, one befouled interview. Whitaker’s talk with Rays manager Kevin Cash was clean, but her subsequent talk with Austin Meadows featured more suds flying around:
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The most impressive thing about this is Whitaker’s steadfast professionalism, with our heroine enduring sprays and splashes and outright pours while sticking to her questions and getting good answers. Meanwhile, lesser reporters were bribing their way out of similar treatment:
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The least impressive thing is the manners of these damn Rays, which are extremely bad. They’re like a pack of wild animals, using beer and champagne to cow and terrorize innocent outsiders. Thankfully, Whitaker is able to extract joy from these shenanigans:
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She’ll be extracting beer from that outfit for the next 18 months.
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