‘Mom of the year' in viral S.F. Giants clip defends husband, smacks down commenters
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The video clip has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. A woman donning a San Francisco Giants jersey balances multiple containers of food while descending Oracle Park's steps with a baby strapped to her chest. The man sitting next to her, presumably her husband, begins to eat before she fully settles into her seat.
"If there's ever a true definition of a multitasking mother, that is the deal right there," Giants broadcasters Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper joked during Tuesday night's game, as the TV cameras stayed on the woman. "I think she's an Olympic champion."
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The broadcasters continued their banter and dubbed the woman "mom of the year," a superlative that millions of commenters across Instagram, X and TikTok embraced as they, following along with the broadcasters, teased the dad for not lending a hand.
A person who identified herself as the woman in the clip broke her silence Friday on Substack. The Chronicle was not able to independently confirm the writer's identity.
The woman, Erika, said in her essay that she and her husband, Ramses, initially laughed at the commentary from Krukow and Kuip, writing that "part of their charm is the way they tell stories about people at the ballpark." But as viewers began hounding her with "deeply disturbing" opinions and encouragement to end her marriage, the Giants superfan said she felt compelled to publicly debunk the narrative that she was caught in an unequal relationship.
"To the people who insulted Ramses, please remember that our children may someday read your words or watch your videos," she wrote on Substack. "I don't want them to search for this memory and find strangers calling their dad a deadbeat. Those are untrue judgments to leave behind about someone you have never met."
In the first half of her essay - which garnered more than 6,000 likes and 600 comments by Saturday afternoon - Erika walked through what really went down in Oracle Park that night.
The mom said she left the stands around the fifth inning to use the restroom, and her husband had offered to take their baby. Erika said she chose to continue holding the child - her "hot pocket" - as a source of warmth against the chilly San Francisco evening.
Erika then grabbed trays of brisket sandwiches and loaded fries on her way back to the seats, where her husband greeted them and moved her jacket so she could sit down, she said.
"He offered to take the containers off my lap, but I told him I was fine holding my food and the nachos we would share later," she wrote. "Finally, before even taking a bite himself, he offered to hand feed me and share his sandwich. I told him to enjoy."
The multitasking mom said she wasn't just running a ballpark errand, though, she was supporting her husband through a period of grief.
Ramses had recently lost a childhood friend and "gifted baseball player," Erika explained in the essay, and she suggested they attend a Giants game to memorialize him. She said allowing Ramses to relax at the baseball game was her way of taking care of her husband in mourning.
"The camera showed what I was carrying in my hands," she wrote. "It couldn't show what he was carrying that night."
Hundreds of Substack commenters commended Erika for sharing her side of the story, some calling it "required reading" in jumping to conclusions about other people's experiences.
Erika said in her essay she hopes their viral moment reminds people - particularly those posting online - to be more comfortable saying "I don't know the whole story."
"Thank you for dubbing me ‘mom of the year,'" she concluded her post. "Please believe me when I tell you I can only be so with the dad sitting next to me."
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