Big mean Ken Rosenthal criticized Rob Manfred, so MLB Network fired him
Don't worry about Ken and his multiple baseball reporting jobs, though. He's doing okay.
Major League Baseball has locked out its players and made its offseason almost a non-event. The owners’ representatives aren’t even talking to the Players Union representatives, no major leaguer is getting signed, teams can’t even talk about players, and Rob Manfred did not hold a press conference yesterday. Therefore, it stands to reason that there is no way that Manfred publicly slipped on a banana peel and landed on his dick, right?
Oh, Rob. How could I ever doubt you?
Rosenthal is the best known and best liked of MLB Network’s stable of reporters, having built a national profile at the Baltimore Sun, then at Sports Illustrated for a decade, The Sporting News for five years, and finally at Fox Sports since 2005 and MLB Network since 2009. When Fox pivoted to video and shut down its regular sports website with words written on it, Rosenthal took a job with The Athletic, like some kind of sportswriter cliche.
Rosenthal, though, is well-liked, entertaining, informative, has a very positive, fun personality on-air, and is notably short. All of these factors have combined to make him popular among both his peers and the public, and have made him the darling of baseball’s journalism world.
So naturally, that’s the kind of guy that MLB Network would want to can. Why? Because of accurate reporting he did a year and a half ago. From the Ne wYork Post:
Rosenthal, a top news breaker, was first kept off the air for around three months, according to sources, after he wrote columns in 2020 — with the season in jeopardy due to the pandemic — analyzing Manfred’s handling of the situation for The Athletic.
There was no stated suspension at the time and it went publicly unnoticed.
Yes, in 2020, MLB Network kept Rosenthal off the air for three months because of his outre criticism of benevolent Major League Baseball commissioner/World’s Handsomest Boy Rob Manfred. Criticism like this:
The best commissioners offer statesmanlike presence and superior vision. Few ascribe those qualities to Manfred, and few would argue baseball is in a better place since he took over for Selig on Aug. 14, 2014. Rather than simply enjoy the fruits of the 2016 CBA, a lopsided victory for the owners, the clubs have gorged on them, alienating the players. And once again, they are valuing their own short-term interests over the long-term interests of the sport.
Is that paragraph going out of its way to be kind to Rob Manfred? No. Is that a journalist’s job? Also no. It is describing him in a way that informs Rosenthal’s readers why the players were distrustful of the owners back in mid-2020. It is giving context for actions and opinions, something which is traditionally known as “reporting.”
But that article, and others like it, which also cast Manfred as the one who was not doing what he needed to in order to have what ended up being a 60-game 2020 season, was too much for him. Rosenthal was off the air at MLB Network, which is owned by the league, which is controlled by Manfred, for three months, and his absence was entirely unacknowledged. He came back to cover that year’s trade deadline and was consistently on the network through December, when his contract wasn’t renewed.
MLB Network simply can’t be a reliable source of unbiased news if they are going to bend to the whims of baseball’s commissioner. They should not be seen as competition to Baseball Tonight or TBS’s panel discussions, but as a league mouthpiece, giving you the party line. Or, as the New York Daily News’s Kate Feldman put it:
State Media. Rob Manfred presents: Pravda! An MLB Network Production.
Rosenthal himself, who has an inside scoop, sure seems to hint at his journalistic integrity being the reason he was let go in this tweet:
So what’s the takeaway here? Whiny Baby Commissioner Does Whiny Baby Thing? Thin-Skinned Man In Position of Power Unable to Handle Accurate Criticism? Additional Grains of Salt Required to Watch MLB Network? Man Who Formerly Had Three Jobs Now Down to Just Two Jobs, Which Is Bad?
Yes, all of that. But also this: no one is safe from a petty man with power. There is no shield, no level of success, no level of popularity, that will keep him from making you a target if you accurately tell people who he is. This makes it even more important to tell people who he is. Rob Manfred is petty and arrogant and has made baseball worse from the minute he became commissioner. He has always deserved zero respect from you. Now, somehow, he deserves less.