Maintaining a strong internet connection while on the road can present its challenges, sometimes requiring extra time to ensure the technology is stable with minimal latency ahead of a remote interview. In this instance, baseball digital program Foul Territory was aiming to begin its conversation with New York Mets first baseman Pete Alonso, but the show needed a few extra minutes to have him on.
To fill the time, the program began discussing a story about Seattle Mariners infielder Eugenio Suárez and how the team had to pinch hit for him because he was using the restroom. The timing of the situation did not work out because the Mariners’ first two hitters made outs on the first pitch of their plate appearances.
Once the interview with Alonso commenced, he revealed that he had faced a similar occurrence early in the season. Because he had mistimed his pregame coffee, Alonso realized that he had to use the restroom in the middle of the first inning; however, he was due up to bat. In an act of desperation, he decided that he would swing at the first pitch of his plate appearance no matter what happened.
Luckily for Alonso, he received a hanging slider that he crushed out of the ballpark for a home run and immediately retreated to the restroom thereafter. The extemporaneous anecdote provided a synergy between the regular segment and the interview, granting viewers insight into the punctuality of a pregame routine. Entering the interview, show host Scott Braun never would have thought to ask the superstar such a question, the answer to which ended up making headlines.
“The flow of just kind of going between what happens naturally, what’s going on in the game and talking to these guys has just led to some cool and really fun moments,” producer Marc Weiner said. “Again, they’re telling stories that they wouldn’t tell anywhere else because they don’t get asked.”
Part of the value proposition of Foul Territory is its ability to connect with players in a different way that creates compelling, engaging content built for baseball fans. Amid proliferation in athlete-driven media and the rapid promulgation of nuanced storytelling, the team aimed to utilize player-to-player conversation to extrapolate unique perspectives.
Operating under the aegis of Make Plays Media, Foul Territory successfully produced 278 total shows within its first year and featured 301 active player guests on the program. Some of the superstars that appeared within the first year include Los Angeles Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts, Texas Rangers pitcher Max Scherzer and Los Angeles Angels outfielder Mike Trout among others. Foul Territory has worked to foster a modern iteration of baseball coverage, a foundation Braun and executive producer Marc Weiner gradually established over time.
After spending several years at ESPN, Weiner worked at MLB Network for over a decade as a coordinating producer. Yet he had known Braun as a student matriculating at the University of Miami and discussed how fans needed to hear more from baseball players. The duo quickly recognized an ostensible discrepancy between baseball and other sports such as football and basketball in terms of the breadth of content available for consumers. As a result, they both decided to take action by leaving traditional media and launching their own burgeoning digital venture.
“I think baseball has just as many super interesting, vibrant personalities, and our game has as much daily drama as any other sport, so that was very important to me,” Braun said. “I feel like we’re building what the modern baseball network should look like and, of course, the authenticity factor of what you’re getting with shows like these.”
The program streams weekdays across various digital platforms and is also available to consume as a podcast. Most episodes usually contain no fewer than three guests associated with the sport, who subsequently interact with Braun and his bastion of co-hosts. The Foul Territory roster of co-hosts is comprehensive and accomplished featuring position players recently removed from the game. Infielders Todd Frazier, Jason Kipnis and Brock Holt, along with outfielders Adam Jones and Lorenzo Cain are part of this starting lineup and appear across select episodes.
The two co-hosts who appear most often form the backstop, especially since they were both former catchers during their major-league playing careers. Erik Kratz and A.J. Pierzynski, both of whom were familiar with MLB Network while on the field, have continued to remain involved with the sport despite retiring from playing. Both had inclinations as athletes that media careers could be ideal to pursue, with Pierzynski participating in FOX Sports’ MLB postseason coverage while he was still an active player. Kratz was informed by a radio professional that he might be skilled at the craft, and it ended up being something he thoroughly enjoyed. When Kratz and Pierzynski were broached on joining Foul Territory, they felt ebullient to highlight the national pastime in a new way.
“There was a connection to someone that you don’t ever see,” Kratz explained. “You don’t ever get this kind of content and connection with professional athletes, but football and basketball have done an incredible job of it, and baseball, through our show, I think is giving that access to fans that they want, which is going to bring more fans in because everybody can connect with somebody.”
“There’s no show out there like this – at least there wasn’t,” Pierzynski added. “Now there’s kind of a couple that are trying to kind of catch up I feel like, but there was no show out there that was like what we are doing, meaning yes, there’s other baseball podcasts out there but not player-driven.”
Braun is accustomed to working with a large roster of personalities from his time at MLB Network, during which he hosted a variety of programming throughout the schedule. Despite the extensive legion of co-hosts, Braun feels he has narrowed his cohort down. There is minimal strife in reconvening because of the constant basis of communication instituted by he and his colleagues.
“Everyone here wants to be here and they’re watching games, and it’s like a retirement text group on what they’re seeing for the night, so I’m just glad to be a part of that, but that’s what makes it pretty easy,” Braun said. “I kid you not – every single day year-round, including [in the] offseason, there [are] texts going on about whatever the news is or whatever people catch, so that makes it feel like you’re just continuing the communication that you had that night on the show the next day.”
Most of the time, Braun is hosting the show alongside at least one of his co-hosts and frequently travels to effectuate the in-person chemistry. Additionally, Make Plays Media inked a deal to broadcast live shows from the BetMGM Sportsbook at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City, N.J. biweekly on Fridays during last season.
Weiner is responsible for booking the show guests and works with Braun to formulate a production plan that safeguards audience retention and growth. On top of that, the relationships the co-hosts have with active major-leaguers sometimes facilitates booking guests, some of whom share their aspirations to appear on the program.
Braun approaches his hosting akin to a point guard in basketball, yearning to position his teammates for success on every show. Although he did not play baseball at the major-league level, he tries to maintain the sentiments of a clubhouse while remaining aware of the communication and feedback the program is receiving from its fans. The nomenclature of baseball is evinced within the informed confab, levying recondite intel with superficial observation.
“My own opinions are unleashed, so it’s been liberating to just talk and not feel like I have to act,” Braun said, “and sometimes I’m filling in blanks with stats or what I think is a fan or front-office perspective to what the player opinion is out there from our pretty big roster of hosts at this point.”
In operating independent from a league-owned entity, the personalities are able to say whatever they desire. Weiner expressed how the program has closely scrutinized the situation surrounding the Oakland A’s, who currently intend to construct and reside in a new ballpark in Las Vegas, starting with the 2028 season. They have discovered that the content appeals to fans, leading to engagement and interaction off which they are able to advance the conversation.
“My thing also is it’s just rules versus no rules, and I mean that in the best way,” Braun said. “That is a huge win for any sport when you have the talent in your sport talking real or openly about what’s going on with a specific topic, and it’s not one side vs. another side, even though we see that often in our sport with owners and players, but in our case it’s just, ‘What is your real reaction to whatever the top news of the day in the sport is that everyone is talking about?’”
When the show first began, Braun and Weiner needed to explain what the project was to major-league teams and players. The idea was fortunately well received, and they have not been barred from welcoming athletes on to the independent program. The first year of the show featured a total of 794 guests and amassed more than 360 million impressions across social media platforms and YouTube.
“This format doesn’t work at our old shop for all the reasons that we’re talking about, but this format grows the game and publicizes the game in the right way in my mind,” Braun said. “Some of the national sports shows and podcasts that exist are not touching baseball at all, and that’s very different from especially 20 years ago; even 10-ish years ago at this point, so to me, this is a new outlet that brings more coverage to the sport in a way that many of the existing shows can’t do.”
An aspect of the show preparation involves watching baseball and monitoring its news cycle, much of which is synthesized in a production meeting before the program. Once the proceedings begin, Braun and his co-hosts discuss topics and react to news as it happens with a live audience. Throughout spring training, select co-hosts have been making trips to team facilities to observe their process in getting ready for the season and interact with players. Ironically enough, Pierzynski recently traveled to Port St. Lucie, Fla. to host the show from Clover Park, the spring training home of the New York Mets, where the program opened with an interview featuring the aforementioned Alonso.
“‘We’re going to have real conversations about real events and real things that are going on not only in your life, but in the game of baseball in general,’” Pierzynski affirmed he tells players, “and again, it puts them at ease because they know we’re on their side and we’re former players and we know what players like to talk about.”
The preceding interview with Alonso, however, was hardly a standalone or feigned occurrence. Weiner has found that the athletes consume Foul Territory and are often attuned to the discussions, leading them to make unexpected contributions in this regard. Because of this, the guests occasionally contribute to the ongoing conversation rather than being the driver of an entirely new discourse tailored to their lives.
“It does point out that these guys are paying attention to more than their own little world, their team and themselves,” Weiner said. “They’re all really into the game obviously and care about the game, so it brings you opinions and stories from these guys that you wouldn’t get anywhere else.”
The rapport amongst players, both active and retired, assists in enabling the program to foster relationships and present these guests as viewers. Outside of active league personnel, which also includes managers and executives, Foul Territory implements media members such as broadcasters and journalists. Ken Rosenthal, MLB insider for The Athletic and field reporter for FOX Sports, is a regular guest on the show and also hosts his own program, Fair Territory, once per week with Make Plays Media.
Through his guest spots and individual program, Rosenthal has added a digital video component to his media portfolio, something Weiner feels he lost after leaving MLB Network a few years prior. Furthermore, he has discovered that Rosenthal has lended the show added credibility that licenses others the liberty to take the product seriously.
“Everybody knows Ken’s not doing silly stuff,” Weiner said. “Ken is serious; he loves what he’s doing [and] he loves the game, so [it is] huge for him to do that. Certainly as we reached out to other reporters to join us early on, nobody said it, but I am sure it meant a lot for them to know that this is something Ken does, so, ‘Okay, cool, I’m good to go on here and do this.’”
Throughout the show, the hosts converse with fans through chat functionalities on several of the digital media platforms. During the regular season, the show broadcasts from 1 to 3 p.m. EST, recapping the previous day’s action and looking ahead to the slate of games. In spring training though, the broadcasts moved up by two hours to better align with league schedules and serve as a pregame show for the games.
When the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres open the 2024 regular season in Seoul, South Korea, Foul Territory will add a live episode of the show airing immediately after the conclusion of the games. The endeavor is similar to what Foul Territory enacted during the MLB postseason, prompting instant reaction and uninterrupted discussion.
“It’s a hit, and the players have gotten behind it because the players see that it’s something that’s lacking for baseball, but they see that because of what basketball and football have been able to do,” Kratz said, “and everybody will use the excuse, ‘Well, baseball will never be football and basketball,’ and I would kick back against that and I would say, ‘Just not yet.’”
Last July, Foul Territory and Stadium Network agreed to a partnership that distributed the first hour of the program across the OTT streaming network. The agreement also included interactive technology components and appearances from national baseball insider Russell Dorsey, who recently joined Yahoo Sports. While Stadium Network no longer has a linear television component and has a social media focus, Foul Territory and Make Plays Media are open to partaking in discussions with traditional media entities for potential future opportunities.
“Marc and I pride ourselves in communication and we will have phone calls with anybody about content,” Braun explained, “and we like to make sure it stays on the theme of how we’ve become who we are in our first year.”
Ahead of the 2024 season, Foul Territory is poised to add a pitcher to its roster of co-hosts, expanding the collective knowledge of the sport to the details of the mound. The show will correspondingly continue to equip up-to-date technology in its production, recently using a remote three-camera setup for its spring training episodes. As a company, Make Plays Media will aim to serve as an outlet for players looking to have a voice in the media space, similar to what Colin Cowherd has done with his media venture, The Volume.
“We want to build a network of this, and we could branch off to other sports or whatever,” Weiner said, “but we really feel strongly that there’s so much growth potential in baseball that we want to focus on being the go-to baseball place.”
With a successful first year imbued with growth probability by focusing on resonating with consumers, Foul Territory and Make Plays Media are gearing up for a sophomore campaign wherein they hope that trajectory persists. There is a collective notion of unlimited potential for this enterprise, containing professionals passionate about their occupation and conveying it to the fans. The show adopted a motto that reads, “The world is our clubhouse,” ensuring that they bring the sport beyond the parameters of the foul poles and disseminate it to a growing global audience.
“It’s just all about [getting] everybody talking about the sport we love, which is baseball, more than they have in the past, and that is what the future is,” Pierzynski said. “The future is obviously digital. If you look at any company – from ESPN to MLB to NBA [to] NFL – digital has kind of become the way to go, so you’ve just got to get people involved and you’ve got to keep them engaged through a digital platform.”
Derek Futterman is a contributing editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, find him on X @derekfutterman.
