Mike Trout stops just short of bashing ESPN fantasy football during interview on ESPN
An in-game interview with Angels star Mike Trout during ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” broadcast turned to football, which is not unexpected considered what happened last month.
Reds outfielder Tommy Pham slapped Giants outfielder Joc Pederson before a game, and it became known the hard feelings between the Major League Baseball players was due to a fantasy football dispute.
Pham then pinned the blame on Trout, who was the league’s commissioner.
Trout said the league is the “talk of the town,” and wasn’t surprised to be asked about it on the ESPN broadcast.
“I’ll tell you right now, probably getting another commissioner,” Trout said of the league. “There’s definitely a waiting list now. Everybody is calling me, texting me, saying, ‘Hey what’s up with this league?’ I think we got something brewing for next football season. We got a couple of guys.”
Trout said it was the first season of the league, and Astros infielder Alex Bregman was the champion.
Other details Pham shared in an interview with The Athletic included everyone paid $10,000 to play, and the last-place finisher in the 12-team league had to pay $10,000.
“That’s a legendary fantasy football league right there,” Trout noted.
Here are some of the big-league baseball players who are part of the league: Trout, Bregman, Pederson, Pham, the Reds’ Mike Moustakas, and the Padres’ Eric Hosmer and Manny Machado.
Moustakas and Hosmer were part of the Royals’ 2015 World Series championship team.
One part of the Trout interview that ESPN didn’t share was a question about if the league was set up on ESPN’s fantasy football site. You can read between the lines of Trout’s response to know that was the root of the problem.
“I think that’s what we ran,” Trout said during the game which was being broadcast on ESPN. “I think that’s why there was some confusion because that website wasn’t .. ah, I can’t say that right now, it’s an ESPN game.”
This story was originally published June 13, 2022 at 10:04 AM.
