Right off the bat, Parker Mitchell wants you to know he’s not a “moron.”
The 17-year-old Arizonan may feel compelled to make that clear after a viral video showed a baseball play-by-play announcer misreading the message on the teen’s T-shirt.
The blooper took place during the telecast of the Arizona Diamondbacks’ comeback victory over the Washington Nationals on July 29, when D-Backs broadcaster Steve Berthiaume bungled a quick camera shot of a group of cheering fans.
“I found my new favorite T-shirt ever,” Berthiaume said. “The guy on the right [misreading his shirt]. ‘I can’t. I’m a moron.’”
You guessed it. It was Parker’s shirt. Trouble is the imprinted phrase actually read, “I can’t. I’m Mormon.”
Turns out, Parker is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He lives in nearby Surprise, Arizona, attends the Legacy Parc Ward (or congregation) and is enrolled in a charter school popular with Latter-day Saints.
Word of the announcer’s error spread so quickly online that Parker heard about it well before the final out.
“Another guy from the crowd, he came down to the area that we were at,” the teen said Saturday in an interview. “He started talking to us. He’s like, ‘Dude, you know you’re all over the internet right now?”
Parker hadn’t a clue about his suddenly soaring, albeit anonymous, fame.
“Is it really popular?” he asked. To which his fellow fan responded: “It’s got over half a million views already.”
Make that more than 1.4 million now.
Parker knows the broadcaster’s slip was an honest, yet still hilarious, mistake, made even more so since it happened on Latter-day Saint Family Night at Phoenix’s Chase Field.
“All of my friends know about this. All of my family knows about it. … They think it’s so funny.” he said. “I’ll be walking around at school and kids will be like, ‘Oh, there’s the moron,’ or they’ll say, “Don’t worry. I don’t think you’re a moron.’”
So what would Parker tell Berthiaume about his blown call if given the chance?
“I’d probably say he’s the moron for reading it wrong,” the teen good-naturedly quipped.
(Parker Mitchell) Latter-day Saint Parker Mitchell says he rarely wears this shirt, but he did don it for Latter-day Saint Family Night at a recent Arizona Diamondbacks game.
Truth be told, Parker said, he rarely wears that shirt. After all, it features the word “Mormon,” a nickname church President Russell Nelson is trying to excise from common usage by members and media alike.
“I don’t wear that shirt almost ever,” Parker explained, “but it was LDS Family Night. … I got that shirt in, like, seventh grade when it was still OK to use the term Mormon.”
And without it that night at the ballpark, the Utah-based faith never would have received the free publicity that comes with hundreds of thousands of video hits.
