Andrew McCutchen has harsh words for Cam Newton's tired baseball take

Former Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton struck a chord Thursday when he said on the 4th and 1 Show that baseball is a "dying sport" whose popularity would be surpassed by the WNBA in 20 years.

To Andrew McCutchen, those were fighting words.

Four days after the Pittsburgh Pirates' outfielder signed a guaranteed $5 million deal, he took to Twitter/X to share his thoughts about Newton's prediction: "He talks about baseball like a person who has never been around baseball talks about baseball."

Newton, 35, and McCutchen, 38, are contemporaries. But Newton's refrain is as old as the game itself. Perhaps Newton is more fond of the Golden Age of Jackie Robinson, when the civil rights icon was running to first base in Cincinnati before sold-out crowds like these:

Newton went on to say that "baseball ain't even being played by Americans anymore," as if the most famous player in McCutchen's franchise history — Puerto Rican native Roberto Clemente — was not born in 1934.

Perhaps driving the nail in the coffin of his argument: McCutchen's latest contract will push his career earnings above $138 million (per Baseball Reference), surpassing the $133.5 Newton made in his career (per Spotrac).

Surely McCutchen will lament cashing his fully vested pension checks, and Newton can lament the Dodgers' deferred-money payouts to Shohei Ohtani, while baseball dies a slow and laborious death all around us. A debate so frivolous that it doesn't deserve a winner and a loser somehow found one of each.

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