At 6:59 p.m. ET, TMZ Sports broke the news that Major League Baseball legend Pete Rose had died.
At 7:16 p.m. ET, Eduardo Pérez was wrapping up an interview on SportsCenter to promote the National League Wild Card games that ABC and ESPN2 would broadcast on Tuesday when he interrupted the segment to mention that Rose was dead. Pérez’s comments were heartfelt, saying “It’s hard” and “a big hit” for baseball fans.
Instead of using the moment to ask Pérez further questions about what was a breaking news story for the network, SportsCenter host Jay Harris seemed in a hurry to end the discussion and move along while “we get more information on that.” Hannah Storm then immediately segued back into Monday Night Football talk without any kind of extra commentary on Rose, MLB’s all-time hits leader and one of the most controversial and notable baseball players of all time.
While his SportsCenter interview about the MLB Postseason was about to end, an emotional Eduardo Pérez delivered breaking news that Pete Rose has died. pic.twitter.com/KeMU4CmHHF
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 30, 2024
In fact, SportsCenter, once ESPN’s flagship news show, spent the next six minutes discussing Monday Night Football before transitioning to a segment around Dikembe Mutombo, whose death was announced Monday morning.
It wasn’t until the show returned from a commercial at 7:34 p.m. ET that they finally did a segment about Rose’s passing, with Storm announcing “breaking news” that the MLB legend had passed away. Storm and Harris had a good discussion about the “complicated legacy” of Rose before showing a Tim Kurkjian-narrated montage that laid out his life story. Kurkjian then joined the show to talk further about Rose.
None of this is a surprise. SportsCenter has shifted away from being a news-first entity for some time now, much like ESPN has moved away from a news focus in general. And the eventual segment the show did on Rose’s passing had depth, valuable conversation, and an appearance from the right person to help provide context (Kurkjian).
But that said, you can’t deny the awkwardness of having Pérez break the story, only for SportsCenter to steer away from it in order to continue promoting MNF. Perhaps there was a concern that the Sunday Night Baseball analyst was speaking out of turn or wasn’t considered reliable enough to run with (To be fair, Jeff Passan cited Pérez in his first mention at 7:31 p.m. ET). Or perhaps ESPN wanted to do their own confirmation before running with such a big story. Or maybe they were already scrambling to get the montage prepped and Kurkjian on the line and wanted to wait until they were ready.
If they were erring on the side of caution, that’s fair. But it still felt strange in the moment to see such a big story swept aside so that we could learn more about the Miami Dolphins.
