Newsletter 118: Getting Used to Live Television

I’ve decided to start putting some of the best newsletter essays here on Medium, so more people can read them. You’re still better off just subscribing. This one’s from August 2018, about how I’m trying to get more used to being on live television. It’s still sort of hard! I’ll be on MLB Network all day today, and it’ll never stop making me a little nervous.

This Tuesday, just minutes after the MLB Trade Deadline passed, I got to talk about everything that was happening on the MLB Network on “MLB Now.” A panel of four people — Brian Kenny, Joe Magrane, John Hart and myself — reacted to every last-minute move in real-time on national television. (Well, basic cable, anyway.) I didn’t write a piece about the trade deadline. I wasn’t there to talk about a book I had written. I was just a person on television wearing makeup and opining on the news of the day. I was a pundit. I was paid to simply talk. It’s … it’s strange.

The first real time I spoke nationally on any sort of live program — and we’re not counting “Win Ben Stein’s Money” here — was on Dan Le Batard’s radio show, probably around early 2006. Deadspin was only about four months old and just starting to get noticed, and Le Batard, as usual, was ahead of the curve. His producer emailed the tips line asking if “whoever runs this site” wanted to come on, and I said yes, because I…