Injured Mets pitcher Matt Harvey was a guest on this morning's Dan Patrick Show and proceeded to give one of the more painfully awkward interviews this year. The phenom pitcher hasn't been media shy in his young career, appearing in ESPN's Body Issue, doing several feature stories, and even interviewing fans about himself in comedy segments.H
However, Harvey was in no mood to talk about his injury this morning with Patrick. He was there with one purpose and one purpose only – to sell the Bejeezus out of Qualcomm.
The interview started going off the rails when Patrick began talking about the specifics of Harvey's injury and his decision not to have Tommy John surgery. Harvey was less than cooperative, saying he was there to talk about Qualcomm. When Patrick pressed again, Harvey danced around the question and refused to answer any more questions about his arm, actually saying "today's about Qualcomm." Here's the video via The Dan Patrick Show, the real fun starts at about the 1:30 mark…
The way DP subtlely botches the sponsor's name at the end of the Harvey interview is priceless. I've never seen an athlete's sponsorship pitch totally derail an interview like that before. Normally when an athlete has something to sell during a radio interview, the pitch is given at the end once the interview portion is finished. It's commonplace in sports radio. But for an athlete to refuse to answer questions because it's getting in the way of his sponsorship pitch? Bizarre.
Did Harvey and the wonderful people at Qualcomm, the leader of next generation mobile technologies, really think the Mets star could get away with not answering questions about his arm in lieu of an extended infomercial?
Harvey is also appearing on Jim Rome's show later today. Hopefully he's not preparing any actual baseball questions and has done his research on the Snapdragon S4 Pro.
UPDATE: Harvey tweeted an apology to the DP Show and more importantly, to Qualcomm, who is apparently still holding him hostage in a dark room somewhere:
Been an exhausting couple of days. Apologies to @dpshow and @Qualcomm
— Matt Harvey (@MattHarvey33) September 18, 2013
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