Minor League Baseball Team Ditches 'Gold Diggers' Nickname After Very Bold Promotional Video

The Sacramento River Cats, the Triple-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, announced earlier this month plans to wear alternate uniforms with the nickname Gold Diggers. A few days after the announcement, the plans were completely scrapped after the organization released a rather wild promotional video.

The River Cats shared with the Sacramento Bee on April 10 that the name change for five games was to pay homage to the California Gold Rush and the "significant impact of this era when Sacramento grew as the closest major city to the gold fields."

If the organization kept it history focused, then it's a safe bet that it would be debuting the Gold Digger name and alternate uniforms this season, but it very much did not.

The organization's promotional video that aired last month featured two women with dollar signs flashing in their eyes when a player arrived in the clip.

So, not entirely the historical definition of a gold digger, but more the gold digger Kanye West was singing about back in 2005.

According to the New York Post, the now-deleted video posted by the organization, a baseball player emerges from a gold mine carrying a pick axe and, when walking through Sacramento, two women accompanied by a man, notice the baseball player and turn their attention away from their companions.

Animated dollar signs appear in the women’s eyes as the players ‘trade’ their pick axes and sacks of golden baseballs for a bat.

Sacramento city council member Lisa Kaplan was not a fan of the ad campaign.

"Missed the mark big time on this River Cats. It is a sexist and demeaning video. I expect better from your organization," she wrote on X.

The team issued an apology later on.

"Our recent marketing campaign for an alternative identity clearly missed the mark," the River Cats said in a statement to SFGate.

"Our intention was to creatively reference the rich history of Sacramento and gold country, but our approach was wrong, and we are sorry for the mistake. We will no longer be using this identity."