Getty Image / Steph Chambers
I’m not sure why it started, but the trend in recent years has been to mic up Major League Baseball players while they’re playing in the field. An incident involving Astros shortstop Jeremy Pena showed us just how silly this practice is.
Pena was mic’d up during Apple TV’s broadcast of the Houston Astros and the New York Mets on Friday night when a routine pop-up was hit behind 3rd baseman Alex Bregman. What happened next was pure comedy. Take a look.
Jeremy Peña was mic’d up in the 2nd inning and we got to see him and Alex Bregman communicate on this pop up pic.twitter.com/F9vXUGVENy
— Barstool Baseball (@StoolBaseball) June 28, 2024
It’s incredibly ironic that Jeremy Pena was mic’d up, and yet he and Alex Bregman didn’t communicate at all on the play. Literally, all either one of them had to do was just call the ball and it’s a routine play at even the Little League level.
It begs the question, was the interview distracting him? Even if it wasn’t, why are we doing this? I get that there’s a lot of downtime when players are in the field. But, it just seems completely unnecessary. Why not do it when a player is in the dugout and isn’t due up to hit for a while?
Thankfully, it didn’t end up hurting the Astros, as Met Jeff McNeil was promptly picked off first base. But, again, why are we interviewing players when they’re playing? There has to be a better way.
The Astros lost to the surging Mets, 7-2.