It's OK to bully sports leagues
The MLB needs to take after the NBA and read the comment section.
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Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down the intersection of sports and money—with an extra bit of humor and opinion. Today, we’re getting the club back together 🍻🏀
Now, an ode to home run derbies of yore—and a plea for change—from Sportico’s five-tool player, Matt Palacio. 💥
July 14th, 2008: For just one night during the baseball season our coalition of Yankees and Mets fans would set aside our differences, load up on Mountain Dew, Doritos and double stuf Oreos while we fired up Mario Super Sluggers to pass the time until 8 PM. The Home Run Derby sleepover was a tradition we started in middle school that would last through our college years, and it was awesome.
The final year of the old “Yankee Stadium” was wholeheartedly underwhelming with long DL1* stints for Jeter, A-Rod and Jorge Posada2 as the Bronx Bombers finished third in the AL East and missed the playoffs. Heading into the all-star break, the Yankees (50-45) and Mets (51-44) were both still hoping to pull out second-half miracles, so my friends and I were happy to forget about our allegiances and tune into a New York-less Home Run Derby lineup, unaware that we are about to watch the most ridiculous performance in Home Run Derby history. Being preteens, our only context for the word “rehab” was a 2-4 game stint in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre or Syracuse, so the full weight of Josh Hamilton's performance did not dawn on us for a few more years.
Watching the Home Run derby is one of the fondest baseball memories I have, aside from hitting my first home run that same summer, before I learned that I couldn’t hit a curveball and hung up the spikes two years later. But that steamy July evening in the Bronx has held strong as one of the best baseball broadcasts I have ever watched, complete with countless “BACK BACK BACK”’s, the old-school scorebug, the twinkle in the lights above the friezes in the House that Ruth Built and a record-setting performance. Halfway through his first round at-bat, Hamilton only had 6 home runs. What would take place over the course of his last five outs would become etched in baseball—and Home Run Derby sleepover—history.
We were hanging on every single pitch and every single pitch delivered, it was truly epic. Chris Berman’s call on the broadcast perfectly captured the energy of the moment—“ANOTHER ONE”. The camera showed each and every baseball that was launched into the New York skyline and landing far behind the short porch. It was cinematic. People (myself included) forget that Hamilton actually ran out of gas after the 27-dingers in the first round, and Justin Morneau3 ultimately won the derby that year. Still an unforgettable evening.
July 14th, 2025: Snippets from the group chat pretty much tell the whole story here.
The magic is gone. The timed rounds make it nearly impossible to watch the sheer power of these hitters, who are mashing baseballs faster, farther and higher than ever before. The ONE saving grace would have been a swing off, which was nullified by an impossibly long decimal point-based tiebreaker.
This disappointment was shared across the sports world, from X to the Sportico offices, with many providing unsolicited advice to Major League Baseball:
Now I will finally get to my point: it’s OKAY to bully professional sports leagues.
If you turn the clock back just a month and some change, the NBA actually did something that the fans wanted for once. There was a clamoring online for the old “aura” of the NBA Finals. Fans (including our own Lev Akabas) wanted the giant trophy logo back on the floor, they wanted the old school player intros and broadcast look and feel, and Adam Silver responded. Ahead of Game 5, ABC aired starting lineups introductions for the first time since 2013. Silver even said some form of trophy could return to the courts next year.
These leagues can actually be bullied into doing things that their fans want. If I’m sitting in the MLB offices today, I might be inclined to take a page out of the NBA’s book and make some serious changes to the once glorious Home Run Derby format for 2026. The event could have a new TV partner too; this would be an easy win for them.
But what do I know? I’m just a bitter Yankees fan trying to hold on to some of the nostalgia that helped me fall in love with the game and keeps most life-long fans coming back. It is America's past-time after all 🤷.
Eben’s 🔥 Take: I would like to propose a permanent Club Sportico feature that is random screenshots from Matt’s group chats. I’ve seen a few before this one, and they always make me smile.
Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.
DL sounds so much better than IL, I will not elaborate further.
Shout out Phil Hughes, who spent time on the DL amidst one of his best seasons for the Yanks - pull that name out the next time you have a “random pitchers from the 2000’s” conversation with the fellas. He’s always a hit.
Another great random 2000’s baseball player pull. The Morneau and Joe Mauer combo for the Twins was killer.