Jay Glazer (Photo by Noel Vasquez/Getty Images)
Jeff Passan’s jab at Jay Glazer caught us all off-guard in the best of ways.
Sports news is rarely disseminated on network television these days, with Twitter timelines serving as the primary place to catch up on updates of any kind. Every now and then, however, we get an exception.
ESPN MLB insider Jeff Passan played with fire on Monday, teasing a major update on labor negotiations for a 2020 season. In doing so, he hinted that baseball fans everywhere would have to watch the 6 p.m. ET version of SportsCenter to receive said news, only to balk minutes later. It appears this base on balls was intentional from the start, only to poke fun at a fellow sports media member.
ESPN’s Jeff Passan didn’t hold back when taking an unscripted shot at FOX’s Jay Glazer.
The news, deemed significant by any industry standard, is that MLB’s owners appear finally ready to meet the players halfway in terms of prorated salaries, and a potential shortened season to reflect their financial gain.
Passan is, of course, referring to Glazer’s insistence of keeping us up until the wee hours of the morning to announce that Rams offensive lineman Brian Allen had coronavirus. While it’s unfair to suggest Allen’s contraction of COVID-19 was irrelevant, deeming it news of nationwide importance for sports fans was a stretch, and a rather desperate grab for ratings.
Allen has since recovered, and Glazer himself the victim of backlash from such a decision. Yet, as Passan has proven, this isn’t something that’ll simply roll over with the times.
In a world without any of the American ‘Core Four’ sports leagues in action, we need all the entertainment we can get. Kudos to Passan for providing us with just a smidge of laughter in otherwise dark times, and finally providing us with some MLB labor relations news that doesn’t leave us disgusted.