Alan Truex: Manfred is visionary, albeit in a dark way. Did he choke on Trout?
Since the retirement of Derek Jeter in 2014, baseball has searched for a superstar like him. Telegenic, converses well with media, social and otherwise. Mike Trout? Dead fish in the marketing department. That’s about how Commissioner Rob Manfred views the oh so unobtrusive center fielder of the Los Angeles Angels.
Trout is the best player in his sport but does not have the name recognition of the most mediocre players in the National Basketball Association. Whose fault is that?
“I think we could help him make his brand very big,” Manfred said at the All-Star festivities. “But he has to engage. It takes time and effort. . . . What player marketing takes in today’s world, you gotta be out there on social media.”
Ouch. Is he saying Trout is lazy? He’s so pasty-faced he can’t be spending much Pacific Coast time surfing or lounging in the sun. He has a lumberjack’s blocky physique, obviously not Giancarlo Stanton or Javy Baez laboring three hours a day at body-sculpting. So he has time to work on his Q Rating, right?
But is it anybody’s business but Mike Trout’s? What does he owe the public besides an honest day’s work and an honest life? What does he say about this intrusion by the commish?
Trout does what he always does with his platform: zero. Which is Manfred’s point, precisely. Trout will not engage.
“I am not a petty guy,” he said, “and would really encourage everyone to just move forward.”
The Angels’ front office, not so eager to move forward, issued a statement praising Trout for “prioritizing his personal values over commercial self promotion.”
Sure he could do more in Tinseltown to talk up his industry. But he visits hospitals and schools and romps with his kids and looks at weather reports for a hobby. He’s 26 and he’s no marketeer. But then, is Rob Manfred?
Manfred is an energetic thinker, way outside the box, which is what the sport needs. Baseball 60 years ago and a century before that truly was the National Pastime. But its popularity has been steadily eroding for five decades.
You can be sure Manfred was not shocked when the 89th All-Star Game attracted the smallest viewership since Nielson began its ratings 52 years ago. Fortunately this was a well contested and lively 10-inning game. Imagine if it had been a blowout.
Having never been a true seamhead, Manfred looks at baseball without bias, mythology and preconceived limits. He’s open to what he calls “organic changes.” He’s the sport’s most persistent critic, carping about the sluggish pace of the innings, the dominance of pitching — especially relief pitching — and the annoying resistance of players and their union to his reforms.
Baseball fans, like football’s, are divided on how much reform.
Tony Clark, chief of the ballplayers’ union, warns against such organic change, “where those coming to the ballpark, for whatever reasons, are not 100 percent certain what they’re seeing is the game they want to see.”
Perhaps Manfred can find ways to market his sport without reinventing it or knocking its best player.
Could he say more about Bryce Harper winning Home Run Derby in his own home park? Here’s a 26-year-old 6-3 lefthanded power hitter with a cliff of hair who’s effervescent, smart, charismatic, taking selfies with fans, shouting out to the crowd every 20 seconds whenever he has a microphone. It shouldn’t take a David Stern or Donald Trump to market this.
Granted, there’s the batting average, .216. No one is more diminished by the shifting game than Harper. His stats are something of an optical illusion. He has enough bat control, even with his violent, protracted swing, to dump a single into left field when his team needs it. He hit .330 in 2015 and .319 last year. But his team wants him to hit over the shifted defense. Which he does: 24 homers. And on base a respectable 36%.
At times Harper plays with less effort than Trout, but hey, he works so much harder at his tweeting.
David Ortiz, on MLB Network: “Since you have the shift, you don’t want to ask Bryce Harper to hit .330. You know how many times I’ve seen him hit line drives between first and second or up the middle for an out? That’s supposed to be a hit.”
That’s organic change for you.
Mike Trout is approachable and pleasant, but whatever meaningful thoughts he has he doesn’t share. It’s OK. The NBA thrives with Kawhi Leonard being a sphinx, and it survived 19 years of mumbly Shaq O’Neal and 19 of stony Tim Duncan.
Manfred dreams of LeBron, Twitter flock 21.5 million — 33rd in the world — and 34th in Instagram with 10 mil. “If I could trade the presence of our players on social media with the presence of the NBA players,” Manfred said, “I’d make that trade.”
Ouch again. Is this treason?
Manfred does recognize “our culture is a little different. You’ve got 25 guys in a clubhouse together for 186 straight days. . . . Their time limits are very different.”
Also, baseball is bound – and gagged – by its unwritten rulebook.
No smack. No divas since Barry Bonds set a plush recliner in front of his locker. Manfred perceptively noted: “The stepping out thing is a whole issue. You don’t want to be too out in front.” Even so, “to be fully competitive in today’s world, you do need that presence.”
In truth, Manfred is johnny-come-lately to the cyberverse. According to Jose Altuve, 6-time All-Star, this is the first year MLB allowed players to use cellphones during the Game. “I love it,” he said. “Every single player was taking selfies.”
FOX brought human interest to the occasion by interviewing players in the outfield, through earplugs. Modern marketing is creeping into the sport. With less push from the top than the man at the top wants us to believe. Still, compared to all his predecessors, Rob Manfred is visionary, even if the vision is darker than we’d like. He’s clumsy at the worst possible moments – like, second-biggest stage of the year – but love the effort and audacity.