ESPN’s MLB Highlights Continue To Be A Joke. Literally, In This Case

We’ve discussed this here before: If your team is not the Red Sox or Yankees, don’t expect much -- or anything -- in the way of highlights from ESPN. At best, they’ll show one or two plays from the game. Sometimes they’re the key plays. Sometimes, as was the case last week, they opt to show an insignificant play purely to mock a player.

↵Bengie Molina is slow. No one, not even Molina himself, would argue otherwise. But ESPN saw it fit to point this out by showing a highlight of him being thrown out at home set the music from “Chariots of Fire.” And that was the only highlight they showed from the game -- a game which featured a no-hitter through six innings from Matt Cain, and one which the Giants won.

↵In response, Molina wrote this on his blog Wednesday:

↵↵“In that Marlins game, which we won, Nate Schierholtz went three-for-three with his first home run of the season. Matt Cain pitched six innings of no-hit ball. And the one highlight ESPN shows of that game is me getting thrown out at home? And they’re doing it just for laughs?

↵“Look, you can say I’m the slowest guy in baseball or in all of sports or in the entire world. I don’t take issue with that because I AM the slowest guy. I have always been the slowest guy. I can’t challenge that criticism. But ESPN’s intention was not to criticize but to humiliate.”

↵↵Kevin Kaduk at Big League Stew asks, “Was ESPN being intentionally malicious toward Molina here?” But, to me, that’s not even the real issue. The problem is ESPN’s continual dismissal of non-New England based teams in their highlight packages. We know a lot less people are watching MLB Network than ESPN, but if you’re choosing between the two, the decision should be easy.