{"id":118482,"date":"2025-09-04T15:02:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T15:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/118482\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T15:02:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T15:02:07","slug":"espns-laura-rutledge-made-a-burner-account-to-defend-mlb-husband","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/118482\/","title":{"rendered":"ESPN&#8217;s Laura Rutledge made a burner account to defend MLB husband"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Through thick and thin.<\/p>\n<p>ESPN reporter Laura Rutledge refused to sit by idly when fans would lob insults toward her husband Josh, who played six seasons in MLB from 2012-17. But not wanting to be conspicuous, she created a burner account on Twitter to address Josh\u2019s critics.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen he was with the Angels, I made a fake Twitter \u2014 I\u2019m admitting this, OK? I know this was wrong. I\u2019m not doing it ever since,\u201d Rutledge said <a href=\"https:\/\/www.andrewmarchand.com\/p\/from-china-to-miss-florida-to-monday\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">on the \u201cMarchand Sports Media\u201d podcast<\/a>. \u201cBut this was a one-time thing, and the name was BillyHalo76 or something. And BillyHalo only tweeted positive things about Josh Rutledge, and then the occasional Mike Trout tweet, because I was like, \u2018shoot, someone\u2019s gonna figure this out.\u2019 <\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo if anyone had said something negative about him, I would find them and then BillyHalo would be like, \u2018you\u2019re wrong,\u2019 and back it up with stats. I don\u2019t think Josh knows this. If he watches this, he\u2019s gonna be really mad at me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Laura Rutledge during the Syracuse-Tennessee pregame show on Aug. 30, 2025. Icon Sportswire via Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Josh Rutledge with the Red Sox in 2017. Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Josh Rutledge, a middle infielder, began his career with the Rockies, who traded him to the Angels after the 2014 season. He played with the Angels\u2019 Triple-A affiliate until he was traded to the Red Sox ahead of the 2015 deadline and remained in Boston through the 2017 season.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI really struggled with it,\u201d Laura said of criticism aimed at her husband. \u201cThere were times when he played for the Red Sox \u2026 they had him at third base, and he hadn\u2019t played third base since middle school. He barely played third base. And he\u2019s at the hot corner and they\u2019re in Fenway, he has a couple of errors in a game and people are booing him and I\u2019m like, \u2018shut up!&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Josh retired after a brief stint with the Giants organization in 2018.<\/p>\n<p>Laura has been a rising star at ESPN, recently getting a promotion <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/08\/12\/sports\/laura-rutledge-promoted-to-espns-no-1-monday-night-football-crew\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">to be on the top \u201cMonday Night Football\u201d broadcast<\/a> during the NFL season, working the sideline opposite Lisa Salters.<\/p>\n<p>Laura and Josh Rutledge in 2019. Getty Images for ESPN<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s also the host of \u201cNFL Live\u201d during the week and \u201cSEC Nation\u201d on Saturdays.<\/p>\n<p>Josh and Laura, both 36, got married in 2013 and have two children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Through thick and thin. ESPN reporter Laura Rutledge refused to sit by idly when fans would lob insults&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,5156,5259,794,82982,5262,591,85,9274,5999],"class_list":["post-118482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-colorado-rockies","tag-espn","tag-laura-rutledge","tag-los-angeles-angels","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-sports-entertainment","tag-sports-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}