When ESPN and Major League Baseball agreed to a mutual opt-out of their existing seven-year media rights deal, it marked a significant paradigm shift in the fabric of the sports media business. With both sides providing differing rationale for the decision and subsequent reporting revealing more details surrounding the divorce, it did not change the fact that the league will cease airing games on ESPN platforms after the forthcoming 2025 season. For Jayson Stark, a former senior baseball writer at ESPN who penned columns and appeared on television, it was somewhat melancholy to suddenly see a 35-year partnership cease in this manner.
“There really is a sadness that goes with that because of what baseball has meant to ESPN and what ESPN has meant to baseball and what Baseball Tonight meant for so many people for the sport and for me personally,” Stark said. “I’m holding out hope that this is not the end. I don’t work there anymore, but I have so many friends who do and such appreciation for the passion for baseball that that group has.”
Even though Stark does not want MLB on ESPN to end, he understands that the composition of programming on the network differs from previous arrangements. During his 17 years covering baseball for the company, he felt invigorated to partake in live television and star on two episodes of Baseball Tonight per day as games were taking place around the league. In fact, he has vivid memories of personnel running towards the desk during commercial breaks to inform them of the latest developments in various matchups.
Stark recalls that ESPN was broadcasting six live games per week with multiple episodes of Baseball Tonight accompanying the coverage, creating a busy schedule that offered writers a new platform to convey information. The network has not regularly aired Baseball Tonight for several seasons, instead opting to largely focus its coverage within the Sunday Night Baseball property and select shoulder programming.
“We now take for granted all the studio shows that break down the game you just saw and the 12 games you didn’t see and the stuff that’s happening behind the scenes, the rumors, the people you talk to,” Stark said. “This was really the first show that did all that, and also the first studio show that you could break into a game live, watch it and talk about it.”
Stark credits sports media luminary Peter Gammons with the success of the show, and he considers him a profound mentor throughout his professional career. When he first started covering baseball, Gammons conversed with him in a manner that made him feel as if he was on equal footing and also implicitly validated his knowledge. Although they are colleagues once again as insiders at MLB Network, Stark acknowledged that Gammons was an invaluable aspect of early ESPN baseball coverage with encyclopedic knowledge and shrewd insights.
“I say this all the time – what Thomas Edison was to electricity, Peter Gammons was and is to our business,” Stark explained. “Everything that we do in modern baseball writing, he invented.”
Many professional sports leagues are prioritizing a wide array of distribution outlets as the reach of linear television diminishes concurrent with a declining pay television penetration rate. Yet streaming services and other digital outlets are trying to identify their niche and thrive amid a saturated media ecosystem. ESPN itself is preparing to launch its Flagship direct-to-consumer service later in the year and offer consumers new ways to view broadcasts and other programming.
“There’s so many people who appeared on that desk on Baseball Tonight and called baseball games on ESPN,” Stark said. “It just left an unmistakable impact on everyone who cares about baseball.”
While Stark hopes baseball can continue being televised on ESPN in the future, he departed the company in 2018 and joined The Athletic. The independent, subscription-based publication covers a variety of sports with a team of adept reporters and editors at the local and national levels. Since joining the company, Stark feels that he has been embedded in a writer-driven operation with freedom to delve into reporting and explore other journalistic interests related to the sport.
“I’ve been really lucky in my life to work in great places with great people, but there’s never been anything quite like this,” Stark said, “and to see The Athletic grow and succeed the way it has, it’s really exciting because we’re going to be there as the voice of sports and inviting this incredible, passionate audience into our sports world in a way that nobody else does because our mission is so different than anyone else’s.”
Stark and his colleagues at The Athletic are looking to take their stories to the next level, and they have seen evidence of this plan paying dividends through growing revenue amid a proliferation in subscribers. Whenever Stark posts links to stories on social media, there are regular comments asking why the piece is behind a paywall. Yet he hopes that once people realize the depth and stellar quality of the content, they will evince the value of a subscription.
“I once had a pro scouting director for a team tell me that his team bought subscriptions for every single pro scout in the organization, and the reason is that nobody has ever covered baseball on a daily basis the way that we do,” Stark said. “So when the writers for our site go to a game, when they’re sitting in the press box – they’re sitting in the same seats, sitting in the same press box, [but] thinking in a totally different way than everyone else.”
Spending much of his day consumed in a maelstrom of phone calls, texts and emails, Stark sometimes ends up writing over multiple days and allotting several hours to remain solely focused on the craft. Furthermore, he remains prepared to convey the story on different platforms, recognizing the invaluable essence of versatility. At the same time, he is trying to attend as many games as possible and maintains hosting obligations on the Starkville podcast alongside ESPN baseball analyst Doug Glanville.
“I’m constantly juggling,” Stark said. “I’m always telling people, ‘I should have joined the circus because it’s a nonstop juggling act,’ but if I were going to sum it all up – this is my favorite expression when I go to describe my job – it’s a labor of love, but it’s a good thing because there’s a lot of labor.”
Stark wanted to be a sportswriter from the time he was 10 years old and set out on a path to achieve his goal writing for The Daily Orange at Syracuse University. After a stint in Providence, R.I. covering the Boston Red Sox, he ended up joining The Philadelphia Inquirer as a beat reporter surrounding the Philadelphia Phillies where he further honed his craft. Stark later took over the “Baseball Week in Review” column from Peter Pascarelli and chronicled the eccentric nature of the game.
“My mom always told me I should write a book and call it, ‘I Never Saw That Before,’” Stark said. “I never really wrote the book, but I have been writing versions of it for many years now, for decades. That column was the first place that I did that and kind of found that voice that I have now and to write.”
Over the years, Stark has recognized some of the idiosyncratic and distinctive qualities of his comprehensive articles parsing different issues in baseball. He examines statistical oddities and quirks through the context of the modern era. On top of that, he also explores other storylines that involve data collection amassed through reaching out to former executives, coaches, scouts and insiders.
“I’m really conscious of the audience always, and I’m not trying to exhaust them,” Stark said. “I’m trying to include them, and I think that’s always my overarching philosophy in everything I write is I’m very appreciative that fans of baseball care about this stuff, and I hear from them all the time, so I’m trying to give them answers to the questions they are always asking.”
Amid an era where local newspapers have transitioned from print issues to digital content and competing with independent content creators and social media platforms for consumers, Stark is concerned about the future of the digital advertising model. Whereas space beneath the masthead used to be invaluable real estate, companies have discovered new ways to reach their target audiences and total addressable markets. As a result, he feels the subscription model will have to be the path forward to engender success.
“When [newspapers] decided as the internet was becoming a thing to just give everything away, there were reasons to do that, I guess to attract an audience, but it left an expectation in people that they shouldn’t have to pay for stuff,” Stark said. “That means it’s always going to be a challenge for all of them to go from giving away the great information that newspapers and longstanding websites have always compiled… to asking people to pay for it. That’s a hard leap for a lot of people.”
The league is entering its third season utilizing the pitch clock, an advent that reduced average game time by 28 minutes over its first two years. Stark believes that its introduction changed the sport and adopted a more compendious rhythm to the games. As ESPN currently prepares to exit national broadcasts of MLB games after this season, he opines that the game needs to find a way to reduce the strikeout rate and give players more chances to display their unparalleled athleticism.
“We have the greatest collection of athletes playing baseball now who have ever played baseball, and the more those athletes are running around the bases and showing what great athletes they are, the more entertaining your sport becomes,” Stark said. “If Max Scherzer strikes out 20, that’s a memory for a lifetime. If seven pitchers on your team strike out 20, it’s like nothing happened that night, the ball was never in play.”
Despite facing industry headwinds and uncertainty about the future of the profession, Stark enjoys his work and does not take any moment for granted. Certain days are harder than others, he contends, but he is nonetheless grateful for the ability to cover the game and was recently inducted into the National Sports Media Association Hall of Fame. In addition, Stark is a recipient of the BBWAA Career Excellence Award, recognition that he finds surreal and avowedly struggles to articulate.
“There’s actual work involved, there’s some sleep deprivation that goes on, but it never feels like work to me with a capital ‘W,’ and if I can say that – that I’ve had a career in a job that I love, that I love doing every day, then I made it, man,” Stark affirmed. “I’ve lived that life that I always dreamed of leading.”
As Stark continues to move forward, he aspires to continue effectuating the growth of baseball and appealing to the audience. While it is entirely plausible that he could receive more honors for his work, it is not something for which he is actively waiting and instead yearns to satiate the passion sports fans bring to the product. Trying to hit a proverbial home run with his stories and interviews, Stark is substantively blending the tradition of this pastime with modern innovation and evaluates his impact, in part, through more than just conventional metrics.
“I love it when people in the story comments say stuff like, ‘This is why I subscribe to The Athletic,’ or, ‘Jayson Stark is why I subscribed to The Athletic,’” Stark explained. “That continues to be rewarding, and as long as I’m doing this, if that’s still the case, then you don’t need to hand me a trophy. That’s better than any trophy.”
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