One Thing I Think I Think: Peter King Will Go to Extreme Lengths to Watch Baseball

Emily Kaplan is leaving MMQB for ESPN to cover hockey, as first reported by The Big Lead. In a farewell Q&A, she discusses her time at the Peter King venture and shares an amazing anecdote about her boss’ passion for a sport other than football.

"Now, when you spend a lot of time with Peter, you learn about his quirks. Like, nothing will ever deter him from going to a baseball game. For example, we had one leg on the training camp tour where we had to get from Tampa to Nashville, which is about 700 miles, or a 10-hour drive. Peter polled the van: “Who wants to make a detour to a Braves game for dinner?” And literally every single person in the van said, No, we want to just get there. And Peter says, ‘Okay, we’re going to Atlanta.’ I think it added three hours to the trip. We park that big van on a narrow street in Atlanta, get cheap tickets, scarf a hot dog, some ice cream, maybe a beer, watch an inning and a half of baseball, then got back on the road. Naturally, the excursion concluded with Peter calling a Starbucks on I-75 and convincing them to stay open a few extra minutes so he could get a coffee and ‘something to nosh.’ Those 13-plus hours were pretty much peak Peter King."

Reasonable minds can disagree on what to make of this little story. Adding three hours to an already long trip for an inning-plus of in-person baseball might seem a bit crazy to some and a lot bit crazy to others.

The important thing is that it sounds like everyone had a ton of fun, especially the Starbucks employee on the other end of that phone call. But, hey, MMQB is not a democracy. It’s a monarchy and if the head honcho needs to enjoy some hardball al fresco, he’s going to make it happen.