Ken Rosenthal, one of the most respected and well rounded baseball writers and reporters, is out at MLB Network. Rosenthal was let go due to previous criticism of commissioner Rob Manfred.
Rosenthal spent 12 years at MLB Network as a reporter. He will continue to serve as a writer and reporter for The Athletic and FOX Sports.
This move is a surprising one by MLB Network. It’s also wrong and pointless. Rosenthal didn’t do anything wrong or immoral. He simply pointed out the hypocrisy with Rob Manfred and how he’s handled the game ever since he took over as commissioner.
To silence a critic because you don’t like what they’re saying says more about Manfred’s character than anybody else’s. Rosenthal is also 100% correct in his approximation of Manfred. The embattled commissioner intentionally conspired with the owners to make bad proposal after bad proposal to the players union when the two sides were negotiating the terms of returning to play amidst a global pandemic, just so the season could be exactly 60 games and he would have to pay the players as little as possible. That was the only way he and the owners were going to agree to paying the players their fully prorated salaries.
He also pointlessly instituted a lockout because he was unwilling to give the players any leverage in what would have been the next Collective Bargaining Agreement. In the last CBA, which just expired, the players had lost a ton of leverage and the vast majority of the revenue was going to the owners. Instead, he and the owners offered some mere olive branches to try and appease the players that still barely gave them any sort of leverage.
It’s a good thing that FOX Sports and The Athletic are still holding on to Rosenthal. He’s arguably the best reporter and writer in all of baseball, and he was simply doing his job by reporting the facts.
This is the real “cancel culture” that people should be worried about. It’s not “cancel culture” to silence somebody who made disparaging remarks towards women wearing domestic violence awareness bracelets, like Brandon Taubman. It’s not “cancel culture” to take Thom Brennaman off the air for dropping a homophobic slur on the air, nor is it “cancel culture” to suspend somebody like Riley Cooper or Myers Leonard for saying something racist or anti-semitic. That’s called doing what needs to be done and holding people accountable for their actions.
Rosenthal did absolutely nothing wrong. As stated before, he was simply doing his job and reporting the facts. It is at least nice to see the outpouring of support for Rosenthal over this incident.
For example, NBA reporter David Aldridge pointed out in a tweet this morning that during his 14-year stint with TBS, when he called out former commissioner David Stern, Stern would call him and cuss him out, but never went to his bosses to try and get him fired. Stern at least understood that it was part of Aldridge’s job to report the facts.
Manfred and MLB Network took it to another level by silencing one of the best reporters in the sport, and ultimately, MLB Network will come to regret its decision to cut ties with Rosenthal. Or so we hope.
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