I have probably interviewed 10,000 professional athletes in my life, and I’d say—at best—three percent would make excellent television personalities/analysts/etc. The reason is quite simple: As one emerges as a player, he is repeatedly taught to say as little as possible. Go with cliches, go with compliments, go with as little insight as possible—because the last thing you want to do is make headlines. Negative headlines. Damned headlines. Headlines that convince teams not to hand you $100 million, buy-your-mom-a-mansion contracts.
The result: Lame, boring, flat nonsense.
The other result: Hilarity.
Take the above clip, which is from, oh, 40 minutes after tonight’s World Series Game 5. The Royals clinched, Erin Andrews blathered on about how the Royals never quit, the Royals talked about how the Royals never quit, the Mets talked about how the Royals never quit, bubbly was sprayed, more people talked about how the Royals never quit, I thought to myself how the Royals never quit—then Fox sent us to its table of 100 different ex-Major Leaguers.
Which included Frank Thomas.
I’ve profiled Thomas when he was a Major Leaguer. Nice guy. Big heart. Decent. But a commentator? A deep thinker? Eh, no.
Oh, well. At least we have Harold Reynolds and Pete Rose …
