Dave Sharapan should be dead. 

That’s not my opinion. I have nothing against the guy. He seems nice enough.

He suffered a very serious stroke in 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Thank God his daughters were home, like kids all across the world at that time. If they weren’t, Dave’s doctors are confident help would have arrived too late and he wouldn’t be with us today.

Sharapan’s backstory is rich and it’s deep. Long before he was co-hosting The Bostonian Vs. The Book with Matt Perrault, the Pittsburgh native was learning the gambling business in one of the most unique ways you can imagine. He dropped everything in the late 90s to move to Curacao and help launch an offshore book. The experience set him up to make a life and a career out of sports betting.

In the Caribbean, Sharapan learned to write tickets, set numbers, you name it. Offshore startups kind of require every employee to know everything. The experience made him a coveted free agent when he returned to the States and began looking for work in Las Vegas.

To get from there to where he is now, it required a visit from his father, who passed away years earlier. Sharapan has no doubt that while he was in a coma following his stroke, the two had a conversation. His dad told him that his life wasn’t over and that he needed to trust that his risks and plans were going to work out. 

When he awoke, he didn’t know where he was, but he was ready to get back to work, not just in the gambling world or at home. He was ready to get back to working on making the life he wanted for himself, his wife and their daughters.

Dave Sharapan is in the spotlight this week in our Meet the Bettors series, presented by Point to Point Marketing. The guy has a lot to say about mixing information with entertainment, how much the audience knows about line movement, and anything else that I brought up.

Demetri Ravanos: Tell me about how the hospital stay changed you. The moment you are released and ready to go home, do you have any thoughts at all about your professional life? Have you had any epiphany at that point about taking all you have learned from working in books and doing guest spots on podcasts and radio and turning it into something more?

Dave Sharapan: I became the mayor of that hospital after I woke up, because I was one of the only people talking. I saw a lot of people that were hurting, a lot of people that were probably never getting out of there. It was the most humbling experience that I’ve had in a long, long time. I sat there and thought, “what am I going to do when I get out of here?” I didn’t know, but I’m going to figure it out.           

So we go downstairs the day I am going home. I hug and kiss each one of these nurses goodbye, take a picture with each one of them because my wife brought my phone so that I was able to take pictures of everything and document it all.           

It was the best reunion I ever had in my life – the hugs, the cries, the tears. Pure joy.           

I’m alive. Alright, what do we do now? I said, “I don’t know, but everything looks different, smells different, sounds different. Let’s just go for a ride.” My wife drove. We went and got a nice steak dinner, and we went home and I said, “I don’t think I’m supposed to go back and book all these tapes and worry about the first half of the Saint Bonaventure game anymore.” So it became a media thing, and I did Perrault’s show on Thursday. The audio of that show is tremendous.           

He was still doing Pushing the Odds. He was one of my first calls when I got out.           

You know, Jess [Sharapan’s wife] was updating everybody. She had my phone, which for five days she’s like, “What am I supposed to tell this person?”           

I said she could tell them I had a stroke, but I’m okay, and that I’ll talk to them next week. She’s like, “Are you sure? Do you need to take time off?” I’m like, “I can’t. There’s no time off. It’s just like the book. Next day there’s gates. You got to show up and work.”           

So I did my show on Thursday, and it was pretty emotional. It was pretty good. It was right then. And I said, “Well, I guess we’re going to try this media thing next,” and I’ve been doing it since. My wife says. You know, “you went into the hospital unable to talk. And since you’ve come out, you haven’t shut up.” 

DR: That’s actually a good jumping off point to something I wanted to ask you, because I’ve watched a few of your different appearances in getting ready for this. You are always you. If you book Dave Sharapan, you’re not getting Dave Sharapan fitting into your show. You are getting a very distinct thing.           

I wonder how many of the younger personalities on gambling Twitter or who came up through various sites get the appeal and importance of character. It’s very clear watching you on MLB Network, watching you and Matt interact on Bostonian vs. The Book, not only are you really into this, but you want people to know who Dave Sharapan is. Do you think people looking to make a go of it in the sports betting media get that you still have to entertain a little bit?

DS: Let me tell you this. I was doing a little podcast on the side called Cash Considerations with a couple other oddsmakers in town, and we were doing it without any media background, without any media guidance, and we were getting more and more and more people listening all the time. Every one of those people that you’re talking about on gambling Twitter, wanted to be on our show.            

I just simply asked them,”You want to be on the show? We’d love to have you,” and it was raw and it was real and it was great.           

I’m in the risk room at the book using Twitter to get information, not to entertain. I needed to know why guys were beating us, the numbers and getting injury information before we were. So, I started to just get on Twitter, just as someone who wanted to be a part of whatever community it was, but it wasn’t really a community. It was more a cesspool. It was just a mix of things that were mostly bad, but there were some good. It was a lot of nastiness.           

The problem with the whole business, and I don’t mean just sports gambling. I’m getting a light speed education in the media business. There’s a lot of ego involved. Everybody wants to be right. I said this in the books for years: the money is just the measuring stick. Everybody just wants to be right. And they want to tell everybody when they’re right, but they don’t tell anybody when they’re wrong.           

The greatest sports better in the history of the world, Billy Walters, will tell you 1% of the people win at this. Well, he’s about right. I’ve taken all of their bets. I’ve been in the books. I’ve seen a lot of these people and that’s where it is.           

I’m living the life every day. I love this business because of the business, but the stories and the characters are really what’s made it for me. I have been blessed to meet so many different people that have come to Vegas to blow it out, to come to Vegas to make a new life.This is one of the most transient places in the world, because people come here with the intention that they are going to conquer sports, or they’re going to conquer poker, or they count cards at blackjack. They have a system for roulette. Oh, okay. Great. The casinos are still open. The books never closed. Right?            

I was doing a hit every single week with Nick Kostos on You Better You Bet and Nick gave me a great piece of advice. He said, “Don’t change. Be yourself. Be authentic,” and it was a great piece of advice at the time.           

I’m telling you what we’re doing. “This is how the book does it. You can pick a side if you like the Steelers minus seven or you like the Browns plus seven, you pick. I can tell you why from both sides, and then I’ll tell you if you really want to know what I’m thinking.           

I took bets almost 20 something years. I never asked why anyone was betting anything. I just make sure the money was good and move the number if we needed to move the number. That didn’t matter to me. A guy’s bet only matters to him, so if you’re talking about it, it has to be entertaining, but it has to be real. 

DR: Tell me about your thought process as you are putting together a rundown. You and Matt are talking about what the show was going to be, or you and whoever you’re going on with are talking about what games it is you want to hit on. What do you think highlights what you do best? Would you rather make room for a game that is an interesting toss up or would you rather talk about a game where you are very confident about your position? 

DS: I’ve been in the book on a Tuesday in July, and have gone, “what would you have to talk about if you had to talk about something today?” and then I’ll look at the board, open up my screen and I’ll go, “Well, this is interesting. Washington Nationals are playing Oakland today.” I could find something interesting about any game and make it a betting opportunity.           

I’ve been in books throughout Vegas for years and had someone come up to me and go, “Look, I’ve never done this before. How do I do it?”.           

I’ll ask, “What are you thinking of doing?”           

“Well, I’m from Tennessee and I want to bet the Titans, but I don’t know how to do it. Should I bet them to win the Super Bowl or the AFC or what?”           

You can bet their season wins over, you can bet to win the division, you can bet them to win each week, so you have a bunch of different options. You can cater advice to the customer.         

So, I think when we do the show like tonight okay, there’s two NBA games. I don’t know what appeal each game has to other people individually. We will talk about them because it’s the event of the day. How much will we sell it? If I don’t have a strong opinion on it, I will say “I don’t have a strong opinion on this, but this is why someone might, or this is why someone would go against that opinion.” Why is the total 205 and a half? “Well, because based on their three previous meetings, the game styled around this number, this is why the number’s this and it might move up. I think, you know if anybody’s going to play this, they’re probably going to play it over.”           

When a guy walks into your joint and says, I want five dimes on the over, you have to respect it. What I learned in the business was when somebody walks in, probably with $20 in their pocket, and they’re betting $10 on over and $10 on the side, that’s actually determining whether they’re eating lunch today. So, you can see it from different perspective. So, when we do the content, we’re trying to talk about what’s important to the audience, not necessarily what’s important to us. 

DR: Do you think, on average, people are more educated about betting as it has become more mainstream, or do you think that because it is more accessible it just means that a higher number of people have just basic knowledge?

DS: I’ve been saying this for a decade. This goes back to, you know, when I even first went to the MGM in 2009. They had the backing of Cantor Fitzgerald and they came here to change the game. You could go back to when, like guys like Richard Shoots and Scottie Scheffler said, we’re going to make all of the information available to everybody at the Stardust. I went to the Stardust once in 1991 and I watched what they were doing. I think that’s probably ultimately what led me back to Vegas, because I was like, “This is so cool. There’s people full of cash, and there’s guys with $5 in their pocket, and they’re both waiting in line to make a play.”          

It’s amazing. The book is a meritocracy. You get what you earn every day.           

Information has never been more prevalent than it is now. The other side of the counter was at a disadvantage back in the day because if you put up a wrong number, you get immediate feedback that second. If you’re wrong again when you move it, you have to find out immediately. Everyone can bet. Not everybody can book. I always say that.           

I think now the information is more even keeled and people would probably be surprised. You know the expression that Vegas knows? I say nobody knows sh** all the time. I mean it! I mean it in life.

I’m telling you, like the amount of tools, the amount of things that you could use to help you either build models, learn algorithms, do all this stuff, it’s all out there. So, I think you have to wade through that cesspool. The good stuff’s all going to float to the top. The rest of it’s going to sink to the bottom. It becomes sedimentary waste at the bottom of the cesspool. So it is better. I’m not saying it’s great, but it is better. But there’s a lot of noise. 

DR: It’s something that I was telling a group of students recently here. I live in North Carolina, and I was talking to a friend’s broadcast journalism class, and we were talking about FOX starting that new basketball tournament in Las Vegas.          

I said, “No matter who you are interviewing with you are tempted to think they are smarter than you. As the NIT is dying, FOX just decided, to start a second NIT. Nobody in any business knows a goddamn thing about what they’re doing.”

DS: Well, it fits. I mean, when you look back at it, that’s kind of a lesson that came out of Covid. Everybody had to stay home. Everybody didn’t have the fancy corner office. I think it was a reset not just for business, but for life. Stay in touch with your family, listen to the people around you and educate yourself every day.          

I mean, I sat in books and have taken bets from everybody. I learned this in Curacao. We didn’t have faces. Everybody was a number. We had to learn who’s betting and who’s winning and why are we not.          

My career path is unique in that baseball is one of my true loves in life. I started in the batter’s box at Yankee Stadium down in Curacao, and when I came to Vegas, I was in Double-A, you know, Midland, Texas. I was like, “what are we doing here?” And it changed. But when CG came, they said, we’re going to change everything. We’re going to get accounts. We’re going to make it like trading on Wall Street. That was their big thing, and they were close. They were very, very close. 

DR: We are now in this time where digital products have to be podcasts. They have to be YouTube shows, they have to work across multiple platforms. So in your mind, as you and Matt are putting a show together, do you think of it as a YouTube show primarily or an audio show primarily? 

DS: We got lucky with having all the right conversations at G2E back in 2021 and a company called props.com said yes. You know, we’ve been telling everybody we can do this for a while, and they said yes. So they gave us an opportunity and said, all right, do it. It’s a show. We’re going to have video. We’re going to have audio. We’re available wherever you get podcasts.

At the time I’m working for Sports Grid as well. I’m on Sports Grid everyday Monday through Friday various roles on various shows. And through the two of us, we came together with being on Sports Grid, a re-air of a TV show every day, on Sirius XM radio 159 every night at the same time. So, they take our live show and they put it on their platforms there. So, we’re both a TV show and a radio show. We’re a podcast. We are on YouTube. We are on Twitter. We put it out wherever you can get it. What we’ve learned is that people consume media on their time, right?

So where we grew up with ‘Must See TV’ on Thursday nights, Seinfeld was on at 9:00 eastern. If you missed it, you either recorded it with your VHS tape and watched it later, or you didn’t know what everybody was talking about at work on Friday. So, now we do the show specifically at the same time every day. We call it the “ish time.” We start at 11:15 Pacific-ish. Sometimes it’s 11:20. Sometimes it’s 11:10.           

Last week, two weeks ago, The Athletic called me and said, “Dave, we want to talk to you about Ohtani. Do you have a couple minutes?” I called Matt and said, “Listen, the reporter from The Athletic wants to talk to me. Can we move back a short time in the show?” He’s like, of course. So we do that.           

It’s everything, but this is our biggest hurdle right now. “What are you guys. Why did you call it Bostonian vs the Book?” We call it that because Matt’s from Boston. I’m from a book. They gave us the logo. Like, it wasn’t some well-thought-out, deep conversation. It was like “We need a name. What are we calling this?”. The guy needed an idea and a name to do the graphics. That was it.           

What I’m finding now is I’m 53 and, you know, had a stroke. I came out of it better. All I want to do is kind of be nine years old again. I love Pittsburgh. Growing up in 1973 was so much fun. The Steelers won the Super Bowl after the Pirates won the World Series. We were the City of Champions. Jack Kemp was literally my next door neighbor. I thought this was the greatest thing in the world.           

So now this is why if someone tells me “we want you to come on the show” I say “well, can I wear a jersey? Because I’m just trying to be myself.”          

That’s what our show is. It’s Matt being Matt. It’s me being me. And it’s a community of people that show up at the same time every day.           

Our biggest show of the week every week is what we call Roll Call Friday. The last 15 minutes of the show we acknowledge every single person from every single place that they’re from, by calling out their name in their three-digit area code. We make a number because that’s what we do in life, right? What I do, we make a number. Let’s say 39.5. That many states plus four and a half countries. We have people show up every week from Canada, from Mexico, from somewhere in the Caribbean, because I know guys that are down there that I still maintain relationships with. They watch the show and love it. Some kid shows up every single week from Croatia to watch our show every day in the middle of the night. So that’s what we’re doing, where it leads to, I have no idea.

DR: Yeah. That’s the beauty and fear of digital media, right? It can be anything. 

DS: It really can. It’s a two man show. It’s Matt and I. We’ll do sales calls, we’ll do interviews, we’ll cut the clips, we do the rundown, and we book the guests.           

I’m not really competing with anybody. I’m just trying to do what I’m doing and make it like it’s not the scariest thing in the world. 

To learn more about Point-To-Point Marketing’s Podcast and Broadcast Audience Development Marketing strategies, contact Tim Bronsil at [email protected] or 513-702-5072.

In late February, FOX Sports Radio host Rob Parker announced he and a group that included former NBA player BJ Armstrong, would be starting ‘Sports Rap Radio’ on Detroit radio station WXYT (1270 AM), which the group is leasing from Audacy. The Detroit News was first to report the story about the new concept of having the nation’s first all-Black lineup of hosts.

“It’s going to be young people getting opportunities and former athletes, from Detroit or with Detroit ties,” Parker told the Detroit News.

Sure enough, over the last few days, Parker has announced some of the talent who will appear on the station, which is set to launch May 16. Armstrong is expected to host a solo show in mid-mornings while former Pistons player Lindsey Hunter will team with Montezz Allen in the afternoons before the station airs Parker’s national show with Chris Broussard, The Odd Couple. Other names Parker has brought on to fill out the lineup include Johnny Hill, Martin Weiss, Rashad Phillips and JR Gamble.

First off, kudos to Rob Parker and his partners for trying something new and different. I love when people have an idea, believe in it and go for it. I like that Parker has brought in some big names within the Detroit sports community to help out. Having the likes of BJ Armstrong and Lindsey Hunter, as well as Parker, helps legitimize what they are doing. It sounds big.

I also love what Parker has said about putting on podcasts from younger broadcasters on some of the station’s off-peak hours. I truly believe that Rob Parker is setting out to make a difference with this station. Good for these guys being willing to give a chance to some voices people may not have heard and mixing them in with the big names.

According to Pew Research, the Detroit metro area has the 9th highest Black population in the United States behind New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Washington D.C., Dallas, Philadelphia, Houston and Miami. So given that and knowing the type of sports town it is, if you are going to try this type of format, Detroit seems like a great place to do it.

Now, sports radio is a niche format as it is, and many might think that taking that niche and making it even smaller is going to make it very difficult to find success. Only time will tell, but my guess is that Parker and his group have done the research and believe the audience will be there.

My hope for them is that the sponsors are there and that they have spent more time building a sales team and talking with prospective customers than anything else. Don’t get me wrong, the content needs to be great, but as well know, great content can only get you so far. You have to be able to monetize it.

Look, this no doubt a high-risk move. Talk radio is expensive. AM radio is on life support and, no matter what either might say, ‘Sports Rap Radio’ is going to be competing with the very group they will be writing a check to each month for the signal. An uphill battle for sure.

I know because I have done deals like this. They start out great, everyone is excited, especially Audacy Detroit who will now get a check each month versus whatever they were making with CBS Sports and BetQL, which couldn’t have been very much, or they wouldn’t be leasing out the station.

These situations start up with the best intentions and there are plans of how to not compete with one another and everyone is feeling good about it. And then the first bump in the road happens and all of a sudden, maybe this wasn’t the best idea. It could be something said over the air, it could be bumping into the same client, it could be lots of things. I can just tell you that a high percentage of these deals do not go well. Hopefully for everyone’s sake in this deal, that is not the case here.

I hope Parker’s group is well capitalized and patient if they really want this to work. Sports talk radio is a very expensive format, and it is going to take time and a lot of money, spent wisely, to keep it going. They have to be everywhere and grow the ‘Sports Rap Radio’ brand with their target audience.

Just last week we saw the end of ‘The Freak’ in Dallas. A very niche format of sports/hot talk, in a big market, with a huge name on board in Mike Rhyner. iHeartMedia gave it about a year and a half before it pulled the plug due to low ratings and high costs. Some of the hosts believed iHeart never had intentions of fully supporting the format.

Rob Parker has talked about ‘Sports Rap Radio’ being something they can take to other markets as they grow, so he has big plans.

Here’s to a fresh idea and hoping it takes off. We need more innovation in the industry.

Best of luck to Rob Parker and his team.

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The Best Thing I Heard Recently

Last week in Chicago, the Bears held a press conference to discuss public funding for a new stadium. At the event, a Pastor began the proceedings with a prayer, asking God, “I don’t know that you play football, but I am asking you to help us. Help us to win some games, help us to get a Super Bowl here, help us to play in the Super Bowl, and bring back the 1985 roaring, cheering fans we had for your glory and for our good.”

A few of the 670 The Score hosts weighed in on the topic including Danny Parkins who said, “It should be parodied on SNL,” and Laurence Holmes who said, “It is the most publicly ungodly thing that I can think of, and everyone involved with that today should be ashamed of themselves.”

Holmes had much more to say on the topic and you can listen to it all by clicking here.

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In Case You Missed It

Earlier this week, Demetri Ravanos wrote a column on the changes that took place with The NFL Today on CBS, where they brought in Matt Ryan and let go of Phil Simms and Boomer Esiason. Demetri wonders while CBS got younger, did it get any better in this move?

I think it is a good question and in the piece, he writes, “No one on the show is a problem individually. The problem is the combination of Brown, Burleson, Cowher, Ryan and Watt. Who can I count on to make me laugh or raise an eyebrow?” 

You can read Demetri’s full column by clicking here.

For over 30 years, Ken Rosenthal has had the attention of Major League Baseball fans, front offices and even the commissioner. He’s been breaking stories and covering some of the most important stories in baseball since his start in 1987. Rosenthal is showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

Growing up in New York, his early goals were pretty simple. “I never wanted to be more than a beat guy on a major sport at a major paper. My dad, figuring I would never make enough money, would tell me early in my career, ‘Maybe one day you’ll be on TV.’ He told Pressbox Online back in 2017.

“I would laugh at him and say, ‘No chance.’” How wrong that would turn out to be.

Baseball fans should also be extremely happy that Rosenthal did not follow some early advice.

One day during the winter break in his senior year of college, he went to the Newsday offices to meet up with sports editor Dick Sandler. Rosenthal needed guidance on how to pursue a journalism career. The advice he got was a bit of a wakeup call.

“He did advise me to go to law school,” Rosenthal recalled to Barrett Sports Media last year. “It did light a fire under me, and my dad was an attorney. I remember he was pretty pissed off when I told him that. I just don’t think you should tell a young person something like that.”

The fire was lit and the rest is history.

ROAD TO FOX/THE ATHLETIC

Rosenthal graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984 and embarked on his career, starting at the York Daily Record in 1984. He quickly moved on to the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, New Jersey for two years. Then Rosenthal landed a full-time job with The Baltimore Sun, where he was named Maryland Sportswriter of the Year five times by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association during his tenure from 1987 to 2000. 

At the same time Rosenthal was also contributing to Sports Illustrated from 1990 to 2000, providing weekly notes during baseball season. He then spent five years at The Sporting News until 2005. That association led him to Fox. The Sporting News had a partnership with FOX Sports and TSN writers would appear on various Fox RSN’s to talk about the local baseball team.  

Since he was the senior baseball writer, he would hold a ‘press junket’ of sorts, sitting in a studio for hours appearing on different city’s shows talking baseball.

Rosenthal started to expand his career. His television ‘hits’ were accompanied by feature stories, breaking news and a weekly column. Television made sense, especially since others in his position were starting to make a name for themselves in the medium. People like Tim Kurkjian, who was always reporting on stories via ESPN.

With the encouragement of his wife, Rosenthal started looking at television more seriously and actually got some offers, from both ESPN and Fox. He chose the higher profile position at FOX Sports. He was told that he would be reporting during the Game of the Week with Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. It would represent a big break and a change in lifestyle, being away from home and focusing his attention completely on the national perspective of the sport.

Later Rosenthal would add duties at MLB Network, before a controversy caused him to lose that job. As I wrote a couple of years ago, Commissioner Rob Manfred did not like a column written by Rosenthal in June of 2020. It in a nutshell it was critical of Manfred’s handling of the start of the pandemic plagued season.  Rosenthal wrote “As if the perception that Manfred is beholden to owners and out of touch with players was not bad enough, he was trending on Twitter (now X) on Monday after performing a massive flip-flop.” That among other things led to the network not bringing Rosenthal back.

Most recently, as of 2017, he became the senior writer for The Athletic and broke one of the biggest stories of the last decade for the publication.

Rosenthal now appears regularly on a very popular podcast Foul Territory which streams live on YouTube 5 days a week. Former MLB Players A.J. Pierzynski, Erik Kratz, Todd Frazier and Adam Jones are the featured performers. Recently he signed on to co-host Fair Territory with Alanna Rizzo on the Foul Territory Network twice a week. That show is live on YouTube.

SCOOPS/ WHY IS HE A “GO TO” INSIDER?

Rosenthal has been behind countless scoops and ‘reported first’ over the course of his career, but one recent scoop stands out. In 2019, Rosenthal and his colleague Evan Drellich at The Athletic broke the story of the Astros sign stealing controversy. The Astros cheated in 2017 by stealing opponents’ signs with the aid of cameras and of course, banging of garbage cans to indicate what type of pitch was coming. It was a story that was well researched and featured former Astros players telling the story to Ken and Evan. The sources for this story were hard to argue with, because these players had first-hand knowledge of how it started, how it played out and what resulted from it. One of the sources, pitcher Mike Fiers, admitted to the setup and then told Rosenthal that he warned his subsequent teams of the deal with the Astros.  It was a well-crafted scoop that was ‘bullet proof’ thanks to Rosenthal and Drellich’s excellent reporting.

That’s the reason to me why Rosenthal is considered one of, if not the most trusted insiders around. He oozes credibility and has a style that’s pretty direct and not too flashy. That certainly helps his reputation as being fair and respectful when it comes to his sources and the stories he breaks.

He is well respected in the industry and isn’t all about just breaking stories. While there is some satisfaction in doing so, I’m sure, the fact is, once you break the story, everyone else jumps in to confirm with their own source. So, the party becomes very crowded and quickly. Rosenthal is a storyteller at heart and you can tell the pride in which he writes a column or feature. Even though many recognize him only from his television appearances, he is a writer doing television, not a television reporter that also writes.

Through it all he is staying true to his roots and continuously knocking things out of the park. Digging deep into a subject, much deeper than any sports fan could imagine. In the end, Rosenthal educates fans with his knowledge and the knowledge of the players he interviews. Longform writing is not easy, trust me, but Rosenthal handles it with ease.

Rosenthal is also very good on television, delivering pregame storylines and also in-game reporting for MLB on Fox games and into the postseason. He’s smooth and polished and as always, his reports are filled with terrific information.

BOWTIES

Rosenthal has become known on television for wearing a bowtie for every broadcast. It is not something he decided to wear, he was actually ordered to wear one. After joining MLB on Fox Game of the Week, his boss, David Hill, insisted he wear the bowtie to distinguish Rosenthal from other reporters.

“Even though I was on television, I always thought [that] what should distinguish me is my work,” Rosenthal told BSM. “A look – I didn’t want any part of that. But he was the boss, and he was a very strong boss and a powerful boss.”

Rosenthal wanted to ditch the practice after the Giants won the World Series that season (2010), but a phone call from a former NFL player changed the tune. Dhani Jones, a former linebacker, founded The Bow Tie Cause to represent different non-profit charities. Jones asked Rosenthal if he’d be willing to support the cause by continuing to wear the tie.

“I never imagined that it would become, I guess, kind of part of my identity, but it is,” Rosenthal said. “When I don’t wear it now – and even if I’m at the ballpark on a Friday preparing for a Saturday broadcast in my regular clothes – some fan or somebody will say, ‘Hey, where’s the bowtie?’ and so it is definitely part of it.”