The Triple-A Sacramento River Cats, an affiliate of the San Francisco Giants in the Pacific Coast League, were set to play five games in 2025 as the Gold Diggers, an alternate identity that was ostensibly a tribute to California’s Gold Rush. After a misguided attempt to promote the alternate identity went sideways, the team pulled the promotion and erased all signs of it from their website and social media just a day after it was announced.
The identity was based on a gold-mining, pick-axe wielding character named Dugg, complete with a gold tooth and a baseball head lamp, but there was a double entendre in the name, which the team first described as “playful” and “cheeky,” and subsequently described as “wrong” and “a mistake.” While the character featured in the logo is a male gold miner, the term “gold diggers” is a pejorative and sexist term that portrays women as shallow and only interested in men for their money.
The River Cats made the implicit explicit with a since-retracted social media video that featured young women with dollar signs in their eyes, one of whom is leaving a jewelry store with her obviously older husband, ogling a player walking through Sacramento in the Gold Diggers uniform. After a swift response from local politicians, media, and fans online called the River Cats out for the misogyny of their campaign, the team scrubbed the alternate brand and issued this statement:
“Our recent marketing campaign for an alternative identity clearly missed the mark. 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.”
In the initial announcement of the brand, the River Cats said that it was “inspired by the regional history of the California Gold Rush,” which began just 40 miles from Sacramento in 1848. The identity featured a dollar sign S for Sacramento and a pickaxe handle as baseball bat, and the team noted that mining communities often fielded baseball teams to compete against one another.
However, the knowing wink of Dugg the gold miner let on that the team knew what they were doing. The team acknowledged even before the backlash that “the naming of this brand and the logo suite brings playful and cheeky elements to this identity.”
The Gold Diggers were initially set to make their debut Saturday, April 19, but now the River Cats website lists only fireworks as a promotion for that night.
