David Freese’s awkward interview with lovestruck reporter goes viral (VIDEO)

As a hometown World Series hero, St. Louis Cardinals third baseman David Freese has had more than a few PR opportunities. He presented a country music award with Erin Andrews, was the subject of a makeover in GQ and surprised some Cardinals fans on Ellen.

But for every great opportunity, there's being forced to hang with Jay Leno and Justin Bieber.

Or, as we saw over the weekend, there's also attending the reopening of the "Mr. Freeze"  roller coaster at Six Flags while a local television reporter awkwardly asks if he has a girlfriend, whether he prefers blondes or brunettes and if he thinks she and her friend pretty.

All while telling Freese she loves him, of course.

Watch the interrogation here:

Yeesh. The reporter in question is KSDK's Julie Tristan and she appears pretty pleased with all the attention she's been receiving since the clip hit sites like Deadspin and Larry Brown Sports:

@JulieTristan: "Random dudes are blasting me on twitter because of my silly @dfreese23 story! I must be super famous now! Awesome! :) Thanks Randoms! :)"

Yup, while most of us call it cringeworthy and sexist — can you imagine if this were a male reporter interviewing a female athlete? —  Tristan is calling it silly.

OK, so here's the part where we acknowledge that Tristan is the host of a show called "Show Me St. Louis!" and no one's asking her to be Edward R. Murrow when she gets in front of the camera. She likely sees the success that Kathy Griffin and Chelsea Handler have experienced with similar shticks and thinks it'll work with a local baseball star. (Nevermind that Freese showed up at the Six Flags to raise awareness for  Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri and not answer a series of admittedly "silly" questions.)

But on the same weekend when a female reporter named Sloane Martin bravely called out Chicago Sun-Times columnist Joe Cowley for degrading women in a few different lines of work, it's a bit disheartening to see Tristan add a lot of fuel to the damaging stereotype of a female journalist who's only on the job to meet good-looking men.

Silly fluff or not, Tristan whiffed big time on this one.

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