The Right Time with Bomani Jones - How the NFL & ESPN DESTROYED Baseball, Boxing & Tennis | 7.25

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

On today's episode of The Right Time, Bomani Jones is joined by Howard Bryant of ESPN & Meadowlark Media to talk about issues within tennis and Major League Baseball. The show begins with Bo and Howard discussing why fame may be dependent on how old someone is (6:15) and why the decline in SportsCenter means less knowledge across the board in sports (9:32). They move onto tennis and say why it's an American sport yet Americans aren't good at tennis (19:03) and why you no longer need to win tournaments to achieve success in the sport (26:02). After the break, they dive into baseball's issues including why stars like Mike Trout aren't recognizable (33:00), how the MLB lost its grasp on being the summer sport (37:28) and would America even care if a historic record was about to be broken? (50:01) . . . Subscribe to Supercast for Ad-Free Episodes: https://righttime.supercast.com/ Buy 'The Right Time' merch: http://therighttimebomani.com/ Subscribe to The Right Time with Bomani Jones on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts and follow the show on Instagram, Twitter, and Tik Tok for all the best moments from the show. Download Full Podcast Here: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6N7fDvgNz2EPDIOm49aj7M?si=FCb5EzTyTYuIy9-fWs4rQA&nd=1&utm_source=hoobe&utm_medium=social Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-right-time-with-bomani-jones/id982639043?utm_source=hoobe&utm_medium=social Follow The Right Time with Bomani Jones on Social Media: http://lnk.to/therighttime Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time, a wave original. My name is Beaumani Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. It is Howard Bryant Friday.

Howard Bryant, what's going on, man? What's up, Bumani Jones? How are you doing? Hey, man, I tell you this. I was over here at the house hanging out with my brother and another buddy, and one of them popped up with words. you want to hear, which is Howard Bryant is writing a book on Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson.

Oh, boy. It is true. It is true, but we got to wait until January. That's the thing about books, man. I love the instant gratification of writing on the daily. Because you write today, it comes out tomorrow. You write today, this is coming out January 20th. But yes, very fun book.

A lot to talk about there one day. A part, I think this part we can't talk about before we get to January. and this is something that we discussed out there with my buddies that came over, which is, the magnitude of Paul Robeson as an American figure and the magnitude of Jackie Robinson,

I wonder what the inflection point is at what age that you have to start explaining, oh, wait a minute, no, no, no. Like, Robeson, I feel like somebody my age might actually be an outlier for understanding the magnitude of Robeson, but Jackie Robinson, no, like, but you fast forward,

just a couple years past me, and it's kind of like the declining significance of Jackie Robinson has kicked in. It's the problem of the book. It was like, okay, it's the, you know, when you, when you work on history, it's like how many people know what you're talking about. I said to Spike Lee, I said, hey, Spike, you know, you are, you might be the most important figure in the history of Malcolm X. because in 1985, Malcolm X had only been dead 20 years. But his entire narrative had been controlled by white America. He hadn't really been claimed by black people yet. So Spike with the movie and the merch and the time period and all of it completely reclaimed Malcolm for black people.

And Paul Robeson never got that. People don't know who he is. and so as I say, you know, it's, you know, as my, as I always think about throughout this whole thing, it's our job to rediscover our own people. And he might have been literally the coldest dude ever. Like top to bottle cold, whatever this is, I'm going to do it. I can do it. Lawyer, check.

So cold at it. And possibly the greatest football player of my generation. Yeah, we got that. And I got the nerve to be able to be able. to say. Check, stage, check, act, check, Broadway, check, movies, check. What you got? What else you got? Check, check, check, check, check. Highly dignified. That's the other part, too. Like, I get tired of white people talking about black men of that era and talking about their pride and all that stuff about them because it, like, why did they have to demonstrate this

so much? However, you look at Paul Robleson to be like, man, that cat is dignified right there. That's right. And that all comes from. from growing up in Princeton, New Jersey's like, I am not going to be on my knees fed nobody. Neither was my father and neither will I. And we'll just let the chips fall and the chips fell. Now with he and Robinson, it ties in a degree to what we want to talk about here, for those of you who are just jumping in. We got a list of the right time top 25 athletes of the last 25 years, 25 for the 25 in 2025. You see what I'm saying? We're doing the whole thing. We got that set up for y'all check it out we are 15 in or we are 10 in we have gone from 16 to 25 one through 15

are still to come out so be sure to check that out Monday we will give you five more on that list and what we're doing is we're going through the numbers and going through the list but then also so I can live with myself and not just entirely feel like this is engagement farming which is we're kind of what we're doing here um ain't nothing else to talk about homies we're trying to give y'all content where content ain't there. I did this for you because y'all love this stuff. But anyway, what I mean, what I'd like to do and what we are doing, which I think has been enjoyable in this, is just offering some context of the time rather than getting into something about bickering the order of the list or whatever. But for the context of the time, I wanted to talk to Howard now

about two of the sports that are his, you know, at the top of his wheelhouse, baseball in tennis, which is to say 25 years ago, the role that they played, played in the public sporting consciousness, I feel was completely different than it is right now. The biggest stars in those sports were big stars on the same levels as the biggest basketball players, the biggest football players. And hockey also fits in this category also, though the big, only the super duper duper hockey stars were national stars, but it did exist in that way. And now you fast forward 25 years. And I was watching the Wimbledon final, Alcarat, in center, and they showed Chris Everett in the box with Stefan Edberg.

Yeah. And I was like, hey, Stefan Edberg was a really, really big deal for being a consistent top five tennis player from Sweden, serving volley dudes who were not talking about somebody that, like, jumped off the screen athletically for you, but he was that guy. The number four tennis player in the world doesn't get that anymore. And the number four tennis player in the world is America. and still doesn't get it. I mean, it's a different, it's a whole different thing.

I am interested in your theory before I leap into this, though, because I have my own theories on what's happening. But obviously, the entire idea of fame is such a fascinating concept unto itself. It all depends on how old you are and what, you know, like everything else. At what point in the river did you enter, right? I mean, for me, fame was one of the most difficult things to achieve because the avenues to access were so narrow. Like when I was growing up, you had three networks, three. You know how famous you had to be to break that chain?

There are people here making $20 million a year I've never heard of because there is so much opportunity now. There are so many, so much access, so many access points that you might not. know who these folks are and they're loaded. Whereas back then, because it was only three networks, if you got on one of those three networks, if you got on the tonight show, if you got on something like that, the entire country knew who you were. It's a totally different dynamic. So I'm going to look at tennis and baseball through similar lenses, but a bit different. Because also, we could throw boxing in this category. Absolutely. And horse racing. Right. Right. Horse racing. I feel like horse racing is like two generations up. Yeah. But a big fight in the next.

1980s and even through the 90s, and I even say through the two, like the aughts of the 21st century. Yeah. I think that like the biggest boxers were huge stars still in a way that I don't necessarily think is the case right now. Now boxing comes with its own situation. And some of this, of course, is just the evolving trends and tastes of a society. Yeah. Um, so for example, with baseball, baseball is a bit was a big city. professional sport. I think that's a very important part of it. Big city played in summer at a time and in cities where you could go outside during the summer. It was tolerable. Like I think it is associated with the winter, the fall from winter. Like the idea of spring training means something

completely different to people who are from the north and people are from the south because the idea of spring means something different. Right. So you have all these different things that affect, I think, the way that we view these sports. With tennis, I think, A big part of it is right there. the avenues of access to this and the fact that tennis was a sport, I mean, on the three channels, I think of NBC and CBS for the U.S. Open and NBC. So like the idea of like the tradition at breakfast at Wimbledon,

which is ESPN has recently co-opted. But it is like many other things, like the nicknames Queen of Soul and Godfather of Soul back in the day. These things were not created organically. These things were created by marketers, right? The marketers for NBC and selling Wimbledon came up with that. The Godfather of Soul, Every one of these nicknames that you see one of these musicians has,

somebody at a record company came up with it. But it gets drilled home to you over and over again, and then it begins to start feeling like tradition. And so with tennis, we didn't have that many things that came around. And so when Wimbledon comes around, that's the one that really jumps out. It was an occasion. It was like a tent pole on your calendar.

It comes on on Saturday morning, right? You're not doing anything else. or Sunday morning for those championships. You get up and you watch them, then couple that with, and I think this is a huge one for these people of my generation, the declining significance of sports center.

Like, I found that I started knowing a lot less about what was going on on a regular basis in baseball in those sports. When I stopped watching 30 to 60 minutes a sports center a day, I knew who everybody was. When I talked to my friends

who were sports center anchors, they know who everybody is. When I talk to my friends who are sports center, because they don't know who none of these people are. Well, and it all comes down to a couple of things. Number one, it's where do you get your information? Like, and how routinely do you get your information is? You have a breakdown of routine, right?

Routine is usually where you get everything. And once you run out of routine, you realize that things aren't that important. Like, things just disappear. Things don't matter. And also that you have a list of sports that are reliant on those types of programs where you're going to get a snippet of something every single day. Now you can go weeks without getting any of that. And you can go a very long time without having to engage with sports. You don't immediately take an interest in.

Like how did we reach these different spots in the river? How did you become a, how did you know who Stefan Edberg was? you didn't wake up, there's a tennis fan, right? Like, where does it all come from? Some of that osmosis. And, you know, let's face it. This is one of the reasons why it drives me crazy when people talk about the business just pivoting. Oh, the business is pivoting because American capitalists love, love, love to make it seem like there's no such thing as a problem. No, no, no, this isn't pivoting. This is collapsing.

Your industries are collapsing. They're collapsing right in front of you. There's no room for tennis. There's no room for horse racing. There's a little bit of room for golf. It's a football world. And so now you start to determine, okay, what's going to get your time when you talk about fame? And you go, oh, well, how come we don't pay as much attention to this person?

And how come this person was bigger back when I was? Well, because there was more room for everybody. And now there's no room for anybody. And so, and it's not necessarily a money question because, as we know, if there's one thing we do know, there's plenty of money in this country. It is not a money question. It is, it is, your interest is being steered by extremely powerful corporate entities to push you into a given direction. And when you give to this, you take from that and you start seeing what goes by the wayside.

And I think that point is very interesting because I think that we often throw out red herrings as to why things have changed the way they have. for example. I do like, I think in boxing, the American presence for American viewers does matter because boxing interest is a bit more tribal in that sort of way, right? You and I are very interesting in this point.

We're very interesting because there is, and for boxing specifically, right, which is why I didn't mean to catch you off, but I felt I needed to there, is because is there any other sport that you can think of where the 12-year gap between you and me and ages is more significant than boxing?

No. No. There's none. And I still got a pretty good boxing era. Right? But you're Tyson. Yeah. And you got the middleweights, but you were a little kid.

Tyson got the middle weights. And the 90s at least gave us another generation. Like, to me, the end of like the big heavyweight fight, the last giant heavyweight fight for me. And this one barely even counts, really. Lennox Lewis, Mike Tyson in Memphis in 2003 is kind of the last heavyweight fight. Didn't we watch that together? No, not me.

Okay. I could have sworn I was with you for a big fight, but go ahead. I dig around. Go on. No, but with boxing, the American part matters. I don't think that matters as much with tennis, for example, right? Like, for example, Yvonne Lendell, really famous in the United States. We could go through a slew of these other tennis players, really famous in the United States.

And yes, there were some Americans that popped up. And you have the 90s with Sampras and Agassi, you know, and so you have guys. but be on board really, really famous. We could go through a list of other guys from these other countries and be like, no, no, no. That was not the impediment. Now, we just had a run of three great tennis players, none of whom were American,

but probably the best top three there's ever been, playing tennis at a time where you end up with a plausible argument that either of those three could be the greatest player of all time, depending on what metric you decided to use. And I think overwhelmingly people are aware, but don't quite care. And I don't think that's strictly about the fact that they're not from America. I think that's much more in line with what you talk about, which is the money is not in line with giving you a healthy dose of tennis regularly so that you care about it in that way.

Do you believe, Bomani Jones, that if you give them something to watch, they'll watch it? Or do you have to create interest? I think that at least it used to be. Now this is crazy when you got 200 channels plus the streamers and everything else. But like I was thinking the other night about the Black Widow. You remember the Black Widow, the Asian lady that used to play pool. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah.

Dude, we all know who she is because it was on. It's not like we were a bunch of people interested. We were like, ooh, who's that playing pool? And what are you talking about there? That's right. And what are you talking about there? there was a show called Wide World of Sports that had a whole bunch of stuff on there you were never going to see. You remember the king in his court, the dude who played the fast pitch softball. He was on there.

Then you had, you know, the downhill skiing and it wasn't an Olympic year. It was weekly. So, you know, live from Kitsbuehl, you know, you're watching, you're watching all of these different sports. And now, once again, it's all been swallowed whole by football. And there's no room for anything else. And I think that what's really fascinating about this when you're talking about just fame in general is those guys were more famous then and there's way more access now. Like, that metric doesn't always work for every sport. For tennis specifically, you know, you've got to go into the 70s and early 80s. And the reason was because Americans dominated the sport. It's fascinating to me that tennis was bigger, more popular than in the 70s and the 80s than it is right now

or than it is with Federer Adala and Djokovic but none of those, as you were saying, none of them are American. And there's that, you know, American tennis, especially on the men's side, is so beaten down. You know, when I was a kid, you could met, you know, Arthur Ash, John McEnroe,

Jimmy Connors, Agassie. Like, you could name Americans, and it is true, Americans. If Americans is not in it, he's not going to watch. But looking at the way the game is played right now and how good you have to be, being good in tennis is nowhere near enough. You don't even, you know, otherwise there'd be no question. There'd be a tennis boom right now. But it has nothing to do with the popularity of the sport. You can't tell me these guys aren't charismatic. You can't tell me they're not great players.

And they speak English. And I was going to say, and they all, speak English. That was the other point I was going to get to when we talk about baseball. The things you have to have. And they're all good-looking guys, right? It's not like, you know, it's not like they're not telegenic. It's not like they need translators every time they speak. They're not American. And in a game now, who are you competing with? Why is a reserve clock in tennis? Because TV is like, your time is up. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. There's no room. You know, there's no room for anything. right now. And the problem is, there's plenty of room for everything if you allow it to be.

I think the interesting question also gets us to it. I hadn't thought about this, but I have not seen as much, I'm sure that this has been a broader discussion in worlds in which you inhabit in ways that I do not. But the fact that there aren't Americans at that level is kind of crazy when you think about it. Like, how to be wilded at that place. I'm so glad you brought this up because the men in tennis, let's not talk about that. the women, okay? The women require a different conversation. No man has won a major final in tennis, no American man since Roddock in 2003 U.S. Open. No man had won, had even reached a final after Rodic in 2009 when he lost a Federer at Wimbledon, Taylor Fritz when he lost last year.

That's three finalists in a quarter century. Three. You haven't had an American world number one in 20 years. Right? I mean, the game, and the thing about it is the reason why this is important is that this is not that different from the Canadian arguments and the black basketball argument, which is, oh, you know, black people in basketball. We know that in terms of ownership. That game belongs to us, right? But does it? Yanis and Yonkits and Yokic and everybody else? Tennis is an American game. Tennis is dominated by Australians and by Americans. Americans. Three quarters of the sport, its major sports of its major tournaments are English speaking, right? You have to be good at this, but yet Americans aren't. And it's been willing to be sacrificed in a way that you don't see in the other sports. When black people do not win at basketball, there is outrage. When Canadians do not win at hockey, there is outrage. But this sport, you know, we gave this one up. And the argument had been, The argument had been that, well, we don't get, as we being tennis players, we don't get the best American athlete. So we don't get our Michael Jordans.

We don't get our, you know, Kobe Bryant's. We don't get those. You know, those go to the NBA and those go to the NFL. Imagine how good American tennis would be if we got the top American athletes. And to that, I say, yeah. But when did we ever? Dr. J wasn't playing tennis? Jim Brown was not playing tennis.

It has never existed. But it's a good argument to make in terms of finished athletes and who's, you know, which country is getting your best and tennis has never gotten America's best, all good arguments. But tennis has never produced that. So it's something else. Well, I think it also raised an interesting question. And I think the basketball argument is, and what we're seeing happen with certain European players

is in line with this, which is, I hear this discussion a lot more in soccer. Americans vastly overrate athleticism or just raw athletic ability rather than the finer detail type of skills, the hand-eye coordination, the importance of acceleration, deceleration, like the ability to move shuttle stuff,

like short space movement. The things that make somebody like Luca Donchich, and by the way, somebody like James Hart, the things that make somebody like that excellent, things that make somebody like Lugidontich, I mean, Nicola Yolkich, or Larry Bird is another person that fits this description.

Like being able to jump out of the gym has value in places, but being really good at basketball is the part that matters. Now, tennis to me also becomes interesting because it is at once the sport that has changed the most and changed the least.

And I say change the least in the sense that the court is the court, is the court, is the court, and it's the court, as long as I can think of, the court has not changed, right? Like the actual rules of playing tennis has that, well, like the surfaces, yes, but I mean, like the measurements. Yes. Oh, yeah.

It's the same. Yeah. Yeah, the dynamic of tennis is the same. What has changed, obviously, is the equipment. Yep. And beating the dog shit out of the ball became a whole different game. But also created, I think we would generally agree a less interesting sport because it was a sport that, and you correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm from,

coming from too much of a distance, but where there was, there's less stylistic variation at this point than there was before the rackets changed. Thousand percent, thousand percent. Not just the rackets, but the surfaces have changed. So the grass is different now than it was when I was growing up, right? The services have become so homogenized that the real anomaly is grass. Like you had to, you know, you had different champions in some of these services. That's why look at the clay champions before an adult.

You had a whole bunch of dudes up there winning that one. Why? Because Clay was different. Thomas Buster. Exactly, right? Tom, I mean, Sanbris never even got to a French Open final. You know, never even got there. And so here's a guy who won 14 majors, but not on that surface.

Never even got to a final. Venus Williams never, you know, got to won against her sister. But Venus didn't win on clay. And so, but when you got to grass, that was your ass, right? When you went up against them on that surface. and it was only two weeks later, but a totally different surface. And so all of these different things do affect sort of who becomes great. But I think that in terms of fame, like when you're really thinking about great players

and why does it stick here and why doesn't it stick there, it really does to me come down to if you give them something to watch, and this is obviously something that the WNBA is going to talk about in their labor negotiations, if you give them something to watch, they will watch it. That's why I was asking you about this, you know, how you felt and like, okay, you know, the more women's basketball you watch, the more women's basketball we're going to know, or you can't, that doesn't stick. Some sports stick and some sports don't.

I just tend to think that you create the market that you want. And I think that so much of what we have here is a fundamental, creation of the world you want to be. Also with tennis, and we're going to get to a lot more baseball in just a few. But with tennis, when I was younger, like during summers in Houston, so we would have a very limited window where we could do this. But it's me and my brother waking up as early as we possibly could at an age where it was hard for me to wake up early in the morning and at a time in his life where it was hard

for him to get your ass up. and we go out there and we play a couple sets of tennis. And go hit. Right? Like people played tennis in a much different way. Regular people when they got tennis lessons. Like it was a- Play more now.

And that's the thing. That's the beauty of the sport, which is why I find it so fascinating about what sticks and what doesn't, is that there are two sports that are almost equally watching and playing sports. Tennis and basketball. Interesting.

Because I don't see as many tennis. I don't know. You're from Atlanta. But see, that's what I say, but what's funny is the people I do know who play tennis, play tennis. I mean, Atlanta is the number, I think it's number one, even bigger than Los Angeles in New York in terms of per capita, U.S.TA membership, right? Atlanta is tennis central.

Atlanta tournament, the 250, and I think it's, they don't even play that Atlanta anymore. It should be right after the, it should be now. But I know they're in D.C. I don't know if the Atlanta tournament exists anymore. That tournament was huge and multiracial. It wasn't like, oh, this is just little country club sport where they go, you know, play off in a way. Tennis is dominated by the middle class down in a lot of these different places. And I just, what I find to be so fascinating about this sport specifically is it's ties to money,

it's ties to the country club idea and all of that. But when you talk about fame too, you had to win to earn back then. You don't got a win to earn. Like, you look at Jimmy Conn, they were playing 80, 90 matches a year because they didn't make any money. Today you win one major, you get $3 million. You set. You know, you don't have to go run the calendar and run yourself crazy. Whereas, you know, back in the day when those guys were playing, they were playing every single week.

You saw them. They were on the, you know, one thing we didn't talk about, it was a more literate society. Cover of Sports Illustrated. That was the same as being on the Tonight Show. You made the cover of Sports Illustrated. Everybody knew who you were. What is the equivalent today? What is the fame equivalent?

What is the fame quotient where if you get this, you get that? Right? I mean, that's what I mean about that level of fame. Think about if you were a comedian and Johnny Carson put you on, like where are the equivalents, even in the last 25 years? That equivalent, I don't think it exists anymore. Like, which one is it? Like, what do you have to have in order to make your career?

Well, you hit one of the more distressing questions. It applies to my line of work in others, which is being good. How much does that really matter? Exactly. Right? Like, think about how many things that are out there, like, if you think about podcasting, for example, people can tell you the biggest podcast. And when you think in your head, I don't need to call any names out.

You think in your head about what the biggest and most famous podcasts are. How many of them are big and famous for, being good. Like, I'll ask you how big a podcast is, but the people who tell me about it are never telling me how good it is. Well, it's the same as books. But that's the same as books now. I mean, when I look at the New York Times bestseller list, the first thing I look at is how many of these people in the nonfiction list, how many of them write as a primary occupation? They're all celebrities. They're all just famous for something else. Right. And so that's really where the currency is. But once again, who's creating this? Does this have to be like this? Or is this the way

that it's been chosen to be? And so I think that once again, when you start looking at why certain people get certain things, it was so much more a, I'm not going to say meritocracy, because who knows? I mean, the puppet masters have been controlling us for some time now, right? It's just there's more to control, now less to control. But when I'm thinking about why did I fall in love with tennis, it was exactly what you said. And it was breakfast at Wimbledon, but before that, it was NBC, the French Open in the morning, you know, a month earlier, because it was so weird watching them play tennis on dirt. We don't have clay courts in Bosnia and Rona. We don't have clay courts. It's a clay court, right? Which is, by the way, is also why American players aren't as good,

because Americans are hardcore players. And you've got to learn how to play on Clay now. So big serve, big forehand, can't play D-Americans. They go out and just get whooped after the first week. And so all of those things, that level of exposure just changes everything. And the power of ESPN is really like one of the big deals. Because once that whole wide world of sports thing that they inherited from ABC, when that began to disappear, you begin to to lose sight. And suddenly every other sport was, well, if it's not an Olympic year,

I'm not watching it. You used to get a taste of everything. All right. Put a pin in that thought. We're going to come back in just a couple because there is a place where ESPN, I think, becomes a very interesting point of discussion when it comes to baseball. And I'll tell you what that is coming up next. All right. We're back with Howard Bryant. We talked a lot about the role in place the tennis plays in our society and how that's changed in the last 25 years. And I think one of the more stark examples where we can feel the change is in baseball. And of course, a lot of things we talked about before, English speakers and the likes, they come into play. But this, I think,

is the big one. Now, you have made the point about the corporations and where they are sending our eyeballs and our interest in how that affects all these other things. Baseball is interesting because a clear decision was made around ESPN maybe about 15 years ago where somebody I looked at the numbers and said, hey, man, we start talking about baseball, people start changing the channel. So we're not really going to do that no more. It could be the world series. It's not happening, right?

And the rest of us and us being people who do the kind of work that I do, we kind of follow suit because why would you talk about something that people don't talk about? But on the other side of it, people will tell you local baseball ratings and attendance. All those numbers are good, which is to say there is still an interest in baseball, but it is a poor national talker. It is a sport that was at its height, and I don't know how many people make this connection, and maybe I'm wrong.

You let me know. That is a sport that was very well served when the center of the sports consumers' news existence was the local newspaper. And the local newspaper did the job. You can't pay attention to 30 baseball teams at one time in a way you can pay attention to 32 football teams or the way you can pay attention to 30 basketball teams.

Baseball, you watch your team and your league, and you watch that team, 162 games going all around the circuit. And by the time of the year was over, you knew every team there was in that league. You knew everybody's bullpen, all of that stuff. All it took was a couple three games series and you would then be caught up. As the sports consumer became a national sports consumer, the interest in baseball by the people who aren't all the way into baseball, that fell.

And then as a result, we're in a place where we have seen some of the greatest baseball players ever to walk in the last 15 years. Mike Trout's a great example. Otani, of course, right now jumps off the page. And Otani, I think, is famous as an idea, but not famous as a person. And that's not just because of the Japanese factor. Ichiro felt more famous than he did. Hadeo Nomo, when it first got started, felt more famous than he does. And I think that's really, as ESPN became the operation that dictated everybody's coverage, even the networks that compete with them. Baseball is the biggest loser in terms of how we view its biggest teams and its biggest stars. 100%. And I'll throw a couple of other points out there, which you're right.

And I think you and I have talked about this over the years. 2018, maybe, 2017, somewhere in there. I'm at spring training. And, you know, when you live in Massachusetts, It's, you just don't have the same type of, we don't like colors out here, right? It's a very drab place when it comes to shopping when it comes to clothes. So you're always going to go shopping when you're out there on the West Coast, out west. So I go to Nordstrom to go buy some clothes in Spring Train, up in Fashion Center in Scottsdale. And I'm sitting there looking for some shoes and looking for some stuff, whatever I forgot, whatever I wanted to get.

And who's walking through the mall? but Mike Trout, he might as well have been somebody's daddy. Nobody spoke to him. Nobody looked at him, and it wasn't like New York, like, oh, there's somebody famous, but we're New Yorker, so we're just going to act chill, but we see him. We see you. Nobody knew who he was. Nobody even gave a little side there and said, let me go get a little side photo. They didn't know who he was.

And this is in spring training, in Arizona, and Mike Trout at that time is winning back-to-back MVPs and people are comparing him to Willie Mays. That he's quite possibly the greatest baseball player who ever played, right? I mean, we're not just saying, oh yeah, he's best player in the game. You got to remember who Mike Trout was back then. He's the evolution of Ricky Henderson. They were comparing him.

He was like, like LeBron James, the reason why you talk about LeBron James being that good. I don't know where you find him in terms of that. But for me, when I first saw LeBron James play in 2003, the first thing that hit me was he's got the size of magic. He's got the strength of Chamberlain. He's got the speed of Isaiah. He's got the court vision of bird and magic. Right? He's got the aerial game of Jordan.

Right. He's the composite. He's the most devastating physical basketball. basketball specimen ever. That's what they were saying about Mike Trout. You know, he's got the speed of mantle and maize. He's got the power of bonds and Aaron and those guys and McGuire. You know, he's got, he can run the bases, not like Ricky, but he's got Ricky like speed. You know, he's the guy. He's everything. And baseball made a decision to be a regional sport. I have always questioned this. And I don't, and I'm not saying I question it because I'm right.

I'm saying maybe they just looked like looked at the numbers and said, we can't win. That every, all the factors that you're talking about, we can't win. People don't consume this product the way they used to. There were national stars in the 70s. There were national stars in the 80s. You know, if somebody said to me today, who's the most famous baseball player? Not who's the best baseball? Who's the most famous recognizable baseball player?

I don't know. Maybe it's Otani. but when we talk about fame, what are we really talking about? We're talking about Madison Avenue. Pete Rose is doing Aqua Velvet commercials. Reggie Jackson had his own candy bar, and he's doing, I'm sorry, Panasonic. Remember Reggie Vision? Remember those commercials?

Like, those guys, Ken Griffey Jr. was doing Nintendo commercials in the 90s. Like these guys, everybody knew them. Like, you saw somebody's face in you. That's fame. And baseball doesn't have that. right and and part of the reason i believe in my opinion is that technology has done baseball the worst disservice baseball has been served you get more baseball because there's more technology technology has given you everything but in terms of scarcity scarcity creates fame right so if you're a baseball

player and you're the one who gets on the one of those three networks or if you're the game of the week everybody's everybody's watching the same thing they see you today not everyone's watching the same thing you all got the baseball package you're the baseball package So that creates that sort of regionality, you know, that sort of regional nature. But there's no national spot. And now, you know, because baseball's got removed from baseball tonight, baseball has taken its signature product, the World Series, and has refused to compete with week eight in the NFL.

Right. I mean, that's the level of surrender that they've beaten us. But that's the other thing, right? The other thing about it is that the other sports have decided two major, major pieces that people really don't talk very much about was there's a certain protocol, right? That we all kind of had rules, right? Now there are no more rules. And the rule was that once the Stanley Cup and the NBA finals were finished, the rest of the summer belonged to baseball. It doesn't belong to baseball anymore. I remember when I was in spring training, I remember seeing the late great Walt Chockety, who was the GM of the Cardinals at the time.

get all mad at me because I worked for ESPN and Larry Bear at the Giant. Same thing. They're mad at me. He was like, what are you mad at me for? I don't make the decisions. They're like, they were timing when you turned on Sports Center. When did baseball enter the chat? It's the only live sport. And baseball was averaging like 11 minutes. That's after like two commercial breaks. You start talking about baseball. And they're like, we're the only game in town and we can't get on. Y'all are talking about the NBA free agency. You're talking about coming up NFL mini-camps. And baseball can't compete with those soap operas.

And so you start looking at this when you were a kid, when I was a kid. All you talked about all summer was baseball. You know, in addition, periodically, if you had an Olympic year, if you talk, you know, tennis and, you know, you get Wimbledon and whatever. There were a few things taken place in the summer, but the whole damn summer belonged to baseball. until school started. And now baseball doesn't even control the old monopoly it used to have. Changed everything. And it is interesting to me because, as has always been the case,

there is something uniquely breathtaking about an amazing baseball player. Like not just a guy that hits a lot of home runs, right? But a, I say four to five two player, and I say that because like Barry Bonds was a four tool not a five, right? Like we like we don't want to, we don't want to take away some of these people of Sid Bream scoring from second base. I knew that left arm. Yeah, that's all it is.

He had a left arm problem. Yeah, it's the only one. It's the, it's the, I mean, look, the other, the other tools were so amazing that it doesn't matter, right? But like, you know, it gets that as space. But did you see that throw a cunea made the other day for right deal? Yeah, geez. Yeah.

Okay, like, that is maybe the most impressive throw I've ever seen, just because I didn't even think he was trying to do it. His back to the infield? I'm like, there's no way he's actually trying to throw the dude out. And I feel bad for the dude he threw out there. Like, the problem is he didn't hustle, he didn't slide. Why would he? Why would you think that this was a necessary thing to do?

The third basement didn't actually think the ball was coming, but there's something about a guy that could do that because to me, the combination of skills that makes you that type of baseball player, so few of them have anything to actually do with each other. And if you can put them all together, like think about it, what are you good at? I can see a ball start coming from 300 feet away and immediately figure out where I need to run in order to get the ball. And then when I do, I can stop and I can flang that motherfucker right back to wherever it is that it needs to go. And then I can take this stick and hit a moving ball and then run.

Like none of these things have anything to do with each other, but they're so like every man. is athletic. You know what I mean? Isn't that why it's so beautiful when you start taking these pieces and you say, okay, skill number one that you just brought up, there's no value inside of baseball, right? Wrong. That's a wide receiver skill, but can you throw? Right? So it's like, okay, you got piece one, Randy Moss, right? You can go track. Wide receiver can track. Jerry Rice can can track. But once you catch it, can you throw it on a line like Clemente? You know, can you throw it like Vlad? Can you float? Can you throw it like a cune? Right? So you've got all these

different skills that you've got to put together. But the, but the ball stick one, that's the one that you've got to come with on your own, right? I mean, that hand-eyed, the ability to hit that, to hit a baseball, where's the, where's the equivalent? There's really not, not much of one. And it's harder to do than ever. And the guys who do it excellently are less famous. and visible than ever. Let's talk about that, right? I mean, I think that one of the big issues that you have when it comes to baseball is,

and I've really enjoyed this conversation because so much of it has nothing to do with athletics. We're talking business. You know, we're really, you know, if you look for players, you're gonna find him, right? Baseball is a less athletic sport right now. Baseball is a less charismatic sport right now. And no disrespect to Mike,

Trout because, hey, man, you have a right to be comfortable, right? However, you know and I know and the American people know, B'amani Jones, that 30 years ago, the Players Association would have told Mike Trout, your ass is going to the Yankees. I know you like your little retirement community here in Anaheim. Nobody sees you. Mike Trout has been to the playoffs once. Once, 2015, oh, 2014, got swept by Baltimore, right? Once, they would have never allowed that. Think about it. Ken Griffey Jr.

Ken Griffey Jr. played the majority of his career in Cincinnati and Seattle. Cincinnati in Seattle? They were Nintendo and Nike. They were running Griffey for president ads. What are you doing in Seattle? Back then, the union would have been like, look, we need our best where the lights are brightest. And, you know, and Griffey got criticized a little bit for that when he went to Cincinnati.

And we all know he's got his personal issues why he wasn't going to go to New York, but he could have played for the Mets. Could have played for the Dodgers. You know, like, but, you know, when you think about those great players, they end up where the lights are brightest. How much Ken Griffey, Jr. did we get, at least Bonds. Bonds made the World Series once we saw a ball. in the playoffs? You know, these great players, you've got to be on stage. This is one of the reasons

why I say it is harder to be a great player than ever today, even though the nutrition's better, even though the opportunities are better, even though the knowledge is bigger, even though there's so much more that gives this, the advantages are bigger, because the money is so huge, you can get the visibility of a great player, you can get the attention of a great player, you can get the compensation of a great player without being a great player. You don't have to win championships and be everywhere to be loaded, set for life. And that changes fame. That changes how the public sees you, how they view you.

Imagine how different the world is when you got to win to get anything. Right? I mean, it creates, you know, literal hunger. Right? I mean, you are literally hungry. If you don't win, you don't get paid. It's a totally different game. And so we pay the price.

And Mike Trout pays the price. Now, Mike Trout's like, I didn't pay no price. I was right where I wanted to be. Good for him. We paid the price. Imagine being able to see him on the biggest stage. That's why seeing Mookie Betts in Los Angeles is such a big deal. We want to see the best.

when the leaves change during the, for the biggest contests. And if you don't get that, everybody loses. And he specifically went somewhere where people just don't care that much. Like, that's the thing about Mookie Betts in Boston. They care a lot there. That's right.

Like, what make the Red Sox interesting. In two places where people care, because they do care in Los Angeles. Right, but what makes, right, they care in Los Angeles, not so much in Anaheim, at least not in the same way. But the thing that makes the Red Sox interesting

to observe, even if you don't care about them, is how much the people there, like, actually care about what the program is, right? Like, that is a significant thing that makes them interesting. There are three cities in Major League Baseball, like it or not. I'm sorry, Rob Manfred, but you know it to be true, right? Boston, New York, Philadelphia. Those are the three cities.

Maybe you can throw Chicago in there, but they've done a lot of losing in the past 125 years. Sorry, as Philly's too. The Dodgers are always good. But I'm just talking about it in terms of that East Coast, insanity, that passion for that sport. That's, it's different over there. That's why some dudes, Bryce Harper, like, yeah, send me over there for 13 years with no trade. And that's why some other dudes are like, I'm never going to those three crazy cities where they boo you on opening day when there's 161 more of these

things, right? I mean, it is a different thing. And that East Coast piece of it is very, very real. because as a kid growing up up there watching the local news, when you saw those trucks going down to Florida for spring training, you knew winter was almost over. And that was baseball and that brought you to the sport. That made you care about the sport in a way that you didn't care about the other sports. Sports were already going on. And so all of this, and when I was talking earlier about technology hurting baseball,

is that when you talk about fame, you had to watch the All-Star game as a kid because when I grew up, we had three networks because I grew up in a place we didn't have cable till 89. Hold on, three networks and two entirely distinct leads in two different leagues, didn't play each other. Exactly.

So you got to see, if you wanted to see the Dodgers, if you wanted to see Fernando and Steve Garvey and, you know, Hersheiser and all them guys, you got the All-Star game, you got the game of the week, and you got the World Series. And they lived in a whole other universe. And when I said it covering baseball, Tony LaRoucce used to talk about it. He would be like, you know, in the other league. There was no Interleague back then.

The other league. It was a totally different place. You saw them in spring training. You saw them in the All-Star game. And maybe you saw them in the World Series. But now that you've got Interleague every single day, the specialness. of all of it goes away. I don't really, I think the All-Star game should sort of disappear. But once again, if it's not, so where's your fame coming from now? If it's not going to be the All-Stame,

maybe it's going to be the Home Run Derby, right? I mean, so these are the things that when you're talking about fame and you're talking about greatness and not just greatness, but fame, how do we recognize you? That's the stuff. And if you don't have it, you're not getting it. you know, those, when you think about your most famous sports commercials, like all that crossover stuff, or you think about your, the TV shows you used to watch and, you know, Kareem showed up on different strokes or whatever it was, right? Or whatever, whatever it was, where are those crossover opportunities where everybody who doesn't watch your sports still knows who you are? Where are those opportunities? And when you ask, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you yourself, those opportunities, where do they really exist? Is baseball part of it? And if baseball's not part of it, then those opportunities disappear for you. People just aren't going to know you. And yeah, your regional ratings will go up, but it's not the same as everybody knowing who you are. It changes the entire dynamic of fame. And that's the, you know, that's what technology has done.

There's a whole bunch of super millionaires out there that none of us have ever heard of because we're not watching everything. It's impossible to watch everything. So there have been a lot of huge baseball stars through the course of time. There's really only been like one hockey star that ever cut through, which was Gretzky. There was others whose names you would know, but the only like Wayne Gretzky became Tiger Woods in that way.

Like this is the one name that everybody like, what do you know about hockey? I know Wayne Gretzky. May not know who he plays for, may not know anything. He was the name that cut through. Baseball used to have all these different things that cut through. And this is the question. I have yet to come over the answer for but I think about it all the time. You were of the age where you can remember Pete Rose 44 game hitting streak. My father and my brother, by the way, were in Atlanta at the stadium today,

the Gene Garber shut Pete Rose down and ended the 44 game hitting street where Pete Rose sold him to pitch to him like a man instead of throwing them changeups. And then I think he threw them another change up because Gene Garber just through changeups. But I remember Paul Molitor had a 39 or 30 in game hitting streak in 1987. How long of a hitting, like, I don't even know if people know about the DiMaggio hitting streak anymore. How long of a hitting streak would a baseball player have to have for it to be a thing that America cared about, right?

If somebody were to hit 400, does this cut through? Wasn't it Louis Castile? Was it 35 when it was at the Marlins? Yeah. I think it was 35. And I was like, and I remember people kind of on the down low rooting against him, he can't have this record. You can have all the other records you want.

You can't have that one, Luis Castillo, really? You're going to replace DiMaggio, little dropping quality there? That's a great question. The question is, I mean, and I think for context, T.C. Sabathia, who's going into the Hall of Fame next week, called me up one day in his rookie year and said, Joey Otani is the greatest baseball player of all time. I mean, he'd been here two months. he's like he's the greatest baseball player of all time

I was like don't you want to wait a little bit he's like I don't need to he's the greatest baseball player of all time and here's why because he's doing shit at the major league level that we did in Little League

nobody else can do what he's doing he's the best pitcher at the time he's the best pitcher in the league he's the best hitter in the league and he hits home runs too and can run oh they give a stolen bases away but he can still run

but I mean seriously he's like nobody can do that he could literally win 20 games one year if he stayed healthy to do it and think about that that's a LeBron James level like seriously like when you think about that level of talent and nobody cares I'm not saying nobody cares that I'm saying because people care about showy Otoni but it's he should be at that level except for the fact that, you know, he doesn't speak English and he's not, you know, he's not marketing that way. You know, baseball doesn't do that. And also, I don't think it could work anyway. I mean, what are you going to?

You have to speak English in this country if you're going to cross over like that. I mean, remember Sammy Sosa in the late 90s doing those Pepsi commercials and he would just sit at the camera and smile. That ain't going to go all the way. It'll do a little bit, but it's not going to do what it needs to do. To answer your question. I don't even know if it's going to be home runs because people have been so soured by what happened. What do you got to do? You got to, you know, the record is 73.

So if Aaron Judge goes out there and starts threatening in 75, I think people would pay attention. I think it's still home runs. You got to hit the ball over the fence. Yeah, they tried to make 62 a thing again and it don't work like that. It doesn't work like at all. At all. It's okay. All right.

All right. Way to go, buddy. Right. Hey, the American League record. The American League record. Like, no, no, it's, it's 73. So, I mean, seriously, if we're, if, if, if we were on September 1st and Aaron Judge had 66 home runs, people would pay attention. But it would take something like that. That is where we are. This is Howard Bryant, my man, I appreciate you, brother. Oh, man, thank you, as always.

What's the title of the book? Let's Let the People Pre-Order. Title of the book is called Kings and Ponds, Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America. This man sent out the damn cover on the internet and they want to get all shy when somebody got questions about the book. I see how you do. You know what? It's not that I'm shy. It's that my brain is fried.

I'm trying to get this thing done. You've been talking about this book for two years. Exactly. When we get, when we hang up, I have to actually send another. edited version of the manuscript. So it's like... Oh, damn, I thought we was done. No, it's never done until...

You'll know when it's done because I'm going to send you a galley in mid-August, and then once it's bound, then it's done. But right now, we still got pages, man. I didn't realize he was still at it. I would have approached that a whole lot of... I understand. Now I feel like I'm the jerk.

No, no, no, it's great. All I can tell you is it's... The thing that I love about this project more than anything else is that, I mean, it feels like today. just in terms of where this country is going, in terms of how we, you know, the name calling and stuff, there's a lot of McCarthyism going on here.

A lot of past this prologue right now. What a time, what a time. My brother, I greatly appreciate you. Thank you, bro. All right now. And ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on the right time. We do this three times a week.

Brumbly handled everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. Remember, follow the right time. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. I'll talk to you guys in a couple of days. Take it easy.