Baltimore Orioles MASN announcers Kevin Brown and Ben McDonald had some free time during Tuesday night’s game, so they did a little mental gymnastics.
Specifically, they wondered how to beat legendary Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps in a race. It sounds ridiculous, right? No one could beat Phelps in his prime, and even now, he’d still probably lap everyone.
Brown and McDonald had mentioned Phelps earlier during the game against the Diamondbacks. The swimmer is a huge D-backs fan and has thrown out the first pitch before.
The broadcasters knew they’d need a big head start but disagreed over how much.
“I’ve been doing some research during the breaks,” Brown said. “I think we’d be expected to be about two minutes for 100 meters freestyle. … So let’s say we’re each doing 50, so maybe we could cut a little bit of time out of there.”
“Two minutes for us to go a hundred meters?” McDonald asked. “What if something’s chasing you, would you get there faster? Michael Phelps is going to be chasing you …”
“Michael’s in the 47-48 (seconds range). Since he’s not going for Olympic gold, we’ll give him 50 seconds,” Brown said.
“I think that’s fair, 50, 51,” McDonald said, seemingly giving the question as much thought as would legendary Olympics swimming analyst Rowdy Gaines.
“So maybe, we may need to give ourselves a full 50 meters,” Brown guessed.
McDonald: “Oh, come on!”
Brown: “We may need to do it!”
McDonald: “That’d be so embarrassing.”
Brown: “I don’t think it’s embarrassing, he’s the greatest swimmer of all time.”
Kevin Brown and Ben McDonald debate how much of a head start they would need to beat Michael Phelps, as you do. pic.twitter.com/n6UWvfjJde
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) April 8, 2025
Brown finally conceded they might be able to beat Phelps with a 40-meter head start.
“You want to give him 40 meters?” Brown suggested. “I do 40 meters, he goes, I do the last 10, then you do the last 50.”
“This isn’t going to happen,” Brown said, as Orioles catcher Adley Rutschman grounded out to end the top of the ninth.
“We may have to ask Michael about this; he may know,” McDonald concluded.
It was a fun discussion, but maybe Brown and McDonald could have saved all the calculations and just asked Google’s Gemini AI. Here’s the response it gave: “To give an average swimmer a chance of beating Michael Phelps in a 100-meter freestyle race, they would need a head start of roughly 20-25 meters.”
But wait. It turns out that AI gave a very questionable answer. Anyone who follows swimming knows that Phelps would eat up a 20-meter head start quickly and easily win, even against a competitive age-group swimmer. He’d win even more handily against an “average” swimmer.
This sounds like a charity event waiting to happen the next time the Orioles and Diamondbacks meet for a series.
About Arthur Weinstein
Arthur spends his free time traveling around the U.S. to sporting events, state and national parks, and in search of great restaurants off the beaten path.