The Big Lead

Ex-ESPN scribe reflects on network's breakup with MLB: 'It's a business'

By J.P. Hoornstra

Jun 18, 2017; Houston, TX, USA; View of a Father's Day baseball on the set of the Baseball Tonight show by ESPN prior to the game between the Houston Astros and the Boston Red Sox at Minute Maid Park.
Jun 18, 2017; Houston, TX, USA; View of a Father's Day baseball on the set of the Baseball Tonight show by ESPN prior to the game between the Houston Astros and the Boston Red Sox at Minute Maid Park. / Shanna Lockwood-Imagn Images
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Faced with the choice of opting in or opting out of a contract with MLB that cost the network a reported $550 million, ESPN opted out. MLB announced it was doing the same, for reasons of its own.

"Unfortunately in recent years, we have seen ESPN scale back their baseball coverage and investment in a way that is not consistent with the sport’s appeal or performance on their platform," the league announced in a statement. "Given that MLB provides strong viewership, valuable demographics, and the exclusive right to cover unique events like the Home Run Derby, ESPN’s demand to reduce rights fees is simply unacceptable. As a result, we have mutually agreed to terminate our agreement."

It was a cold ending to a relationship between MLB and ESPN that began in 1990 and engendered plenty of warm memories along the way.

The lamentations about ESPN's current baseball coverage didn't merely come from MLB's Manhattan offices. They were echoed by at least one former ESPN baseball staffer Friday, writer Adam Rubin.

"We had a great ESPN baseball reporting team, including national writers like Jayson Stark and Jerry Crasnick who also departed ESPN," Rubin wrote on Twitter/X. "It’s a business. And cord-cutting only has accelerated."

Rubin, Stark (now a columnist with The Athletic) and Crasnick (now on staff with the MLB Players' Association) are just three of many ex-baseball scribes who have left ESPN if not the media business entirely over the last decade.

The cord-cutting effect was reflected in the substance of a memo MLB commissioner Rob Manfred sent to team owners Thursday morning: "[We] do not believe that pay-TV, ESPN’s primary distribution platform, is the future of video distribution or the best platform for our content,” Manfred wrote.

With the future of baseball coverage on ESPN platforms up in the air, the last 24 hours have been a time for many to reflect on the last 35 years of the network's baseball coverage — and appreciate the one year it has left.

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