The Fun Will Be Televised

From the moment the MLB Network debuted on January 1, 2009, fans realized it was the greatest thing to happen to the game since Theo Epstein. The coverage was deep, intense, obsessive—like a baseball-themed admixture of CNN, Bloomberg, the History Channel, and E! GQ spoke to the team responsible for out-ESPNing ESPN.

by Nathaniel Penn

Tony Petitti, CEO, MLB Network "The idea behind MLB Tonight was to do March Madness every night for Major League Baseball. It’s the centerpiece of the network: seven or so hours of live coverage and as many as fifteen games. We hired Harold Reynolds early on."

Bob Costas, host, Studio 42 with Bob Costas "Reynolds seems to have every player’s number in his cell phone."

Harold Reynolds, analyst, MLB Tonight "Last year, at the trade deadline, I’m on the set and I go, ’Hey, Jerry Hairston just got traded to the Brewers!’ Everyone’s like, ’How’d you know that?’ ’He texted me!’ It was in the moment. Our whole show is unscripted."

Petitti "If a story’s important, we have to be there, even if it may not always be the best story for baseball. I can tell you that we never go downstairs and tell our guys, ’Don’t say this’ or ’I need you to be on this side of the issue.’ "

Costas "I’ve interviewed Bud Selig three times on MLB. The questions aren’t any different than if I were interviewing him on Meet the Press."

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Petitti "We’re all really competitive. We’re always looking for new ways to present the content. I think when we hired Brian Kenny, we figured out that there was a way to analyze and think about the off-season, focusing on the stats."

Brian Kenny, host, Clubhouse Confidential "There’s a revolution in baseball, and we are embracing it. It’s easy to say Albert Pujols has this many home runs, but the evidence is that his on-base, slugging, and walk rates are going down and his chase percentage is going up. It’s funny, but when we talked about Pujols on the show, I didn’t want to hurt his market value. Clearly I didn’t!"

Costas "When you walk into a clubhouse, almost without exception, the MLB Network is on. If I had stayed at HBO, I’d watch the channel all the time. Just as a baseball fan."