Dodgers: Alanna Rizzo details harassment from LAD players

The Dodgers family lost several key clubhouse presences in the wake of breaking their 32-year World Series title drought.

There’s no doubt the locker room will look a bit different without Kiké Hernández and Joc Pederson, no matter how star-studded the roster remains.

And without ambassadors like Sandi Scully and Tommy Lasorda, the team’s historical presence will certainly take a hit as well.

Speaking of the daily machinations of the clubhouse, though, you can’t discount the impending absence of Alanna Rizzo, previously a key part of the broadcast team on SportsNet LA from 2014 through 2020.

Rizzo announced earlier in the offseason that she’d be leaving the network of her own accord in the interest of pursuing future opportunities. An inflexible career in Los Angeles (and endless road cities) was hardly tenable with her fiancé and his children permanently stationed in Massachusetts.

But now that her association with the team has ended, it’s also opened up her ability to share a few of the classically-awful stories she’s accrued over the years spent embedded in baseball’s misogynistic culture.

In the wake of the cross-town Angels’ Mickey Callaway scandal, in which the team’s pitching coach was accused by multiple sources of sending repeated inappropriate messages to female reporters and other baseball figures, Rizzo opened up to the Orange County Register about several inappropriate experiences she had with players during her Dodgers years.

Rizzo cited three specific instances of inappropriate behavior she battled back against in her earlier years with the team.

In her very first year with the team, she reported a player who sent her an “inappropriate” photo to team management, which (it would seem) was handled in-house. Rizzo also recounted the stories of two players who held her to a different standard in terms of granting access; she was asked to dinner multiple times by one, and her presence was repeatedly requested in the hotel room of another.

As J.P. Hoornstra of the Orange Country Register put it:

None of the players are still active in Major League Baseball. Their actions weren’t criminal, but they made the clubhouse a less relaxed working environment for the female reporters in the room. Asking a player for his phone number is less likely to be misinterpreted when the request comes from a man. Asking a player to talk over a drink or a meal? If you’re a female reporter, you can forget about it, Rizzo said.“It’s a completely different set of rules in terms of getting stories, getting scoops, just having conversations with a player,” she said.

The Dodgers did not comment publicly on this story — but their silence was unnecessary in confirming the culture of inappropriate behavior and double standard that exists for all female reporters.

Ideally, the tide is now beginning to turn. Concurrently with the “Me Too” movement, many no longer feel pressure to remain silent regarding the obstacles they’re facing.

Needless to say, Rizzo’s addition to the canon is just the tip of the iceberg.

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