Katie Nolan was in utter shock after the copious amount of unapologetic hate led her to lose her job and question her career in broadcasting.
The Apple TV+ reporter spoke on Dan Le Batard’s “South Beach Sessions” about why she was not asked back for the second season of “Friday Night MLB” following outspoken complaints.
“I thought this was gonna go a certain way and I got torn apart that first week and I didn’t speak for the eighth inning because I was so shocked by how much everybody hated me,” Nolan said.
What scared Nolan the most, though, was not losing her job but being the target of continued remorseless threats.
“They reveled in it,” Nolan said. “They loved that. They celebrated that. They were like, ‘We got through to her. We hurt her.’ And that’s when I was like, ‘Whoa.’ Because it’s a lot easier to do the thing where you’re like, ‘That’s just a guy in his mom’s basement and he has no idea you’re reading it and he’s got his own problems and he’s just lashing out.’”
Nolan, who has worked for FOX Sports and ESPN, was originally excited to combine her love of baseball and broadcasting in a seemingly perfect fit.
But Nolan was quickly hit with reality.
“I was like, ‘Look, I love baseball. Baseball’s my favorite of all the sports, let’s go do this! Let’s do this,’” Nolan said. “And then Week 2 I was like, ‘Why did I do this?’”
Despite her best efforts, Nolan said there is a certain threshold of hate she could receive before questioning her career and where her talents will take her next.
“It just gets really hard when you get a lot of people screaming at you and you start to overthink every word you say,” Nolan said. “I’ve never been more self-conscious than I was in a booth for baseball.”
Although she’s a well-versed sports reporter, Nolan says there is misogyny that lies beneath the surface of the criticism.
“But if you say that then they’re like, ‘Everything can’t just be misogyny. Maybe you suck at your job,’ and you’re like, ‘Yeah, maybe,’” Nolan said. “But also, I can tell you from reading the words that were written, there was at least a little bit of misogyny in it because why are they bringing up that I’m a woman? Why is that coming up so often if it has nothing to do with the criticism?”
Despite her best efforts, Nolan acknowledges that a successful career in her industry is defined differently depending on whether you are in the minority or majority.
“If you’re the minority in any way in some type of field, you have to be better, the best,” Nolan said. “Maybe I sucked at baseball, depending on what you were expecting me to do, but another part of me is like, isn’t that true equality? If a woman can go just suck at something and still get to do it, don’t you think that’s how we get to be really fair?”
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