The Athletic has live coverage of the MLB Playoffs, including the ALDS Game 2s of White Sox vs Guardians and Yankees vs Rays.
Last Wednesday, Brooke Fletcher did her usual routine as part of her unusual double life.
After a Chicago White Sox game in the Central time zone, she returned to her hotel room, ordered a cheeseburger, fries and a beer and curled up in bed with her iPad to watch her husband, Jake Cronenworth, play second base for the San Diego Padres on the West Coast.
Thanks to room service and hotel Wi-Fi, she was living her unique dream.
“Once I got the champagne and beer out of my hair, yeah, it was the perfect night,” she said.
That’s the twist. She was covering a playoff celebration just hours before her husband partied in one of his own.
Fletcher, in her second season as the field reporter for the White Sox’s regional sports network, CHSN, had just covered the team’s raucous clubhouse after it swept the Houston Astros in the Wild-Card Series.
It was a thrilling victory and a wild party, but that was only the start of a banner night in her marriage, as her husband then got a playoff sweep of his own — against the Chicago Cubs, no less.
Fletcher is happy to be working for a playoff team, especially considering the context of the White Sox’s previous three seasons, but part of her was envious of the Padres wives across the country.
“It was tough seeing the Padres group chat, because I get the notifications with the wives, and they’re doing good-luck shots before the games and stuff like that,” she said. “They’re having fun. I’m like, dang, a shot of tequila sounds kind of nice right now.”
Not that she’s complaining.
“It’s one thing to, like, miss games in the regular season or not be able to go to some, but this is the postseason,” she said. “So I was talking with my mom. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. How am I going to do this?’ And she’s like, ‘This is such a blessing. Just have fun. You’re on this ride, and you’re going to figure it out.’ So that’s kind of the mindset that I have right now. We’re just going to figure it out. It’s all going to work out.”
The two live in Chicago in the offseason, but Fletcher’s marriage is a cross-country relationship from late March through, well, right now, that tests her organizational skills and sleep schedule but not her faith. And sometimes, the baseball scheduling gods reward her. Last season, the Padres played in Chicago for the wild-card round, so she easily segued into wife mode after a 102-loss season for the Sox.
This year, they got lucky.
After the clinch in Houston, Fletcher didn’t go straight to Cleveland with the team. She has a second job doing sidelines for college football with the Big Ten Network, and her assignment this past Saturday was Michigan State at Wisconsin. As it happened, the Padres were in Milwaukee to play the Brewers in the NLDS. So she worked her game Saturday afternoon, then drove to Milwaukee to watch the Padres drop a pair of heartbreakers Saturday and Sunday. After consoling Cronenworth after a 4-3 loss Sunday, she was back to work Monday, flying to Cleveland for Game 2 of the ALDS.
Though CHSN isn’t airing games, she and reporter Connor McKnight are doing work for the pre- and postgame shows and interviews for social media and internet content.
Fletcher and Cronenworth started dating after an online meet-cute, which is to say he DM’d her. The story, as former Padres infielder Eric Hosmer relayed on a podcast, is that when Cronenworth was a rookie, Hosmer told him he had to DM five women a day to try to find a girlfriend. As they passed by a TV in the clubhouse showing a Detroit Tigers game, Cronenworth saw Fletcher working a game and said he was going to message her first. (Hosmer had played with her brother in the Kansas City Royals farm system.)
“Jake messaged me, ‘Hey, how are you?’ and it was so normal. I was like, ‘All right, I guess I’ll respond,’” she said. “I asked around, and he had such a great reputation, and that’s how things got started. When I tell people now we met on Instagram, it’s kind of the norm now.”
White Sox TV reporter Brooke Fletcher and Padres second baseman Jake Cronenworth pose on the field in San Diego. (Courtesy of Brooke Fletcher and Jake Cronenworth)
They were married in January 2025, shortly before she started a new job with the White Sox.
“When Jake and I got married, a lot of people didn’t really understand me wanting to still work,” she said. “‘Why don’t we just go to San Diego?’ and stuff like that. I totally understand that perspective. But Jake and I, we’ve talked about this, and I’ve worked over 10 years in this industry, and it’s always been my dream to cover a team, and the opportunity came up with me to cover the White Sox. … With my family history and everything, I just feel like God puts these opportunities in front of you for a reason.”
She can go to her mom, Angie, or her sister, Brittany, for advice on being a baseball wife. Her dad, Scott Fletcher, played in the majors from 1981 through 1995 and for the Sox from 1983-85 and 1989-91. Her brother-in-law is former Sox second baseman Gordon Beckham.
But her life is unique. For the past two years, they’ve planned out when to meet up in person during the season. They video-call every morning and after his games. It’s a lot of work, but Cronenworth is thrilled to watch her succeed in their shared industry. She’s well respected in the clubhouse and the press box and even joined the booth to serve as an analyst this season.
“It’s fun to know we’re both living out our dreams,” Cronenworth said in Milwaukee. “Obviously, it’s not easy being in two different time zones, and she probably wears it a little bit more because she’s staying up late until our game’s over so we can talk after the game. But it’s awesome.”
The two can talk shop and trade stories. He loves hearing about the White Sox’s success this year, and she’s well-versed in the Padres, as he’s played there since 2020.
“She knows a s— ton about baseball,” Cronenworth said. “(It) obviously comes from a long line of baseball family through her dad and her sister’s husband, Gordon. She’s super, super intelligent when it comes to the game. I think some of the analytics questions get bounced my way more often than not. But she knows the game about as well as anybody else.”
“We’ve bonded on a different level, because it’s one thing to be a wife and experience it from a different way, but I’m feeling the grind,” she said. “Last year, I was exhausted, and I was like, ‘Man, I’m so tired.’ He goes, ‘Yeah, because you’re actually in it with us.’”
Her dual lives intersected earlier this season at a difficult time. On April 18, Cronenworth was hit in the face by a fastball. He passed initial concussion testing and kept playing, but Fletcher noticed he was acting a little standoffish in their twice-daily video chats. At first, she chalked it up to a slump, but when the Sox traveled to San Diego in early May, she realized it was more than that.
“I was talking to him, and he had this glazed-over look on his face, and just something felt off,” she said. “I was like, ‘I think you need to get checked again.’ And I know he had kind of been thinking about it, but I’m glad he finally did. It was really hard not being able to be there for him in person.”
Cronenworth was diagnosed with a concussion and missed almost two months of the season. He returned in late June, and while this has been his toughest season in the majors, he’s in the playoffs. And so is his wife.
So, what happens if the White Sox and Padres find themselves playing each other in the World Series? This situation was not considered in their offseason planning, but they’ve been joking about the possibility for months. San Diego is down 2-0 against the Brewers in the NLDS, but you never know.
“People are blowing up my social media, like, ‘OK, so who are you gonna root for in the White Sox-Padres World Series?’” Fletcher said. “I don’t want to stress about any of that right now. We’re just enjoying the ride at the moment. Everybody pump their brakes.”
— Brittany Ghiroli and Dennis Lin contributed to this report