{"id":917583,"date":"2026-10-06T00:48:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T00:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/917583\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T00:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T00:48:11","slug":"white-sox-tv-reporter-padres-wife-brooke-fletcher-is-pulling-double-duty-this-postseason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/917583\/","title":{"rendered":"White Sox TV reporter, Padres wife Brooke Fletcher is pulling double duty this postseason"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Athletic has live coverage of the MLB Playoffs<\/a>, including the ALDS Game 2s<\/a> of White Sox vs Guardians<\/a> and Yankees vs Rays<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last Wednesday, Brooke Fletcher did her usual routine as part of her unusual double life.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Thanks to room service and hotel Wi-Fi, she was living her unique dream.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce I got the champagne and beer out of my hair, yeah, it was the perfect night,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the twist. She was covering a playoff celebration just hours before her husband partied in one of his own.<\/p>\n

Fletcher, in her second season as the field reporter for the White Sox\u2019s regional sports network, CHSN, had just covered the team\u2019s raucous clubhouse after it swept the Houston Astros in the Wild-Card Series.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 against the Chicago Cubs, no less.<\/p>\n

Fletcher is happy to be working for a playoff team, especially considering the context of the White Sox\u2019s previous three seasons, but part of her was envious of the Padres wives across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was tough seeing the Padres group chat, because I get the notifications with the wives, and they\u2019re doing good-luck shots before the games and stuff like that,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re having fun. I\u2019m like, dang, a shot of tequila sounds kind of nice right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not that she\u2019s complaining.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one thing to, like, miss games in the regular season or not be able to go to some, but this is the postseason,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I was talking with my mom. I was like, \u2018Oh my gosh. How am I going to do this?\u2019 And she\u2019s like, \u2018This is such a blessing. Just have fun. You\u2019re on this ride, and you\u2019re going to figure it out.\u2019 So that\u2019s kind of the mindset that I have right now. We\u2019re just going to figure it out. It\u2019s all going to work out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two live in Chicago in the offseason, but Fletcher\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

This year, they got lucky.<\/p>\n

After the clinch in Houston, Fletcher didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Though CHSN isn\u2019t airing games, she and reporter Connor McKnight are doing work for the pre- and postgame shows and interviews for social media and internet content.<\/p>\n

Fletcher and Cronenworth started dating after an online meet-cute, which is to say he DM\u2019d her. The story, as former Padres infielder Eric Hosmer relayed on a podcast<\/a>, 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.)<\/p>\n

\u201cJake messaged me, \u2018Hey, how are you?\u2019 and it was so normal. I was like, \u2018All right, I guess I\u2019ll respond,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cI asked around, and he had such a great reputation, and that\u2019s how things got started. When I tell people now we met on Instagram, it\u2019s kind of the norm now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"White<\/p>\n

\n 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)<\/p>\n

They were married in January 2025, shortly before she started a new job with the White Sox.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Jake and I got married, a lot of people didn\u2019t really understand me wanting to still work,\u201d she said. \u201c\u2018Why don\u2019t we just go to San Diego?\u2019 and stuff like that. I totally understand that perspective. But Jake and I, we\u2019ve talked about this, and I\u2019ve worked over 10 years in this industry, and it\u2019s always been my dream to cover a team, and the opportunity came up with me to cover the White Sox. \u2026 With my family history and everything, I just feel like God puts these opportunities in front of you for a reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But her life is unique. For the past two years, they\u2019ve planned out when to meet up in person during the season. They video-call every morning and after his games. It\u2019s a lot of work, but Cronenworth is thrilled to watch her succeed in their shared industry. She\u2019s well respected in the clubhouse and the press box and even joined the booth<\/a> to serve as an analyst this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fun to know we\u2019re both living out our dreams,\u201d Cronenworth said in Milwaukee. \u201cObviously, it\u2019s not easy being in two different time zones, and she probably wears it a little bit more because she\u2019s staying up late until our game\u2019s over so we can talk after the game. But it\u2019s awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two can talk shop and trade stories. He loves hearing about the White Sox\u2019s success this year, and she\u2019s well-versed in the Padres, as he\u2019s played there since 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe knows a s\u2014 ton about baseball,\u201d Cronenworth said. \u201c(It) obviously comes from a long line of baseball family through her dad and her sister\u2019s husband, Gordon. She\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve bonded on a different level, because it\u2019s one thing to be a wife and experience it from a different way, but I\u2019m feeling the grind,\u201d she said. \u201cLast year, I was exhausted, and I was like, \u2018Man, I\u2019m so tired.\u2019 He goes, \u2018Yeah, because you\u2019re actually in it with us.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was talking to him, and he had this glazed-over look on his face, and just something felt off,\u201d she said. \u201cI was like, \u2018I think you need to get checked again.\u2019 And I know he had kind of been thinking about it, but I\u2019m glad he finally did. It was really hard not being able to be there for him in person.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, he\u2019s in the playoffs. And so is his wife.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve been joking about the possibility for months. San Diego is down 2-0 against the Brewers in the NLDS, but you never know.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are blowing up my social media, like, \u2018OK, so who are you gonna root for in the White Sox-Padres World Series?\u2019\u201d Fletcher said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to stress about any of that right now. We\u2019re just enjoying the ride at the moment. Everybody pump their brakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Brittany Ghiroli and Dennis Lin contributed to this report<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Athletic has live coverage of the MLB Playoffs, including the ALDS Game 2s of White Sox vs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":917584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,5256,591,1721,1189,85,3276],"class_list":["post-917583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-mlb","tag-opinion","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sports","tag-sports-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917583","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=917583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/917584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}