Is Mike Trout The Most Poorly Marketed Player In All Of Sports? Probably Sports History?
This just dawned on me when I saw my first Mike Trout highlight of the season, a dunk at a Golden State Warriors practice: has there ever been an athlete as poorly marketed as Mike Trout? I’ve probably seen ten baseball games that he’s played in, all at Fenway and on NESN. Mike Trout is supposed to be one of the next great baseball players, and I don’t see him anywhere. Ever.
You could say it’s a west coast thing, or you could say it’s an I’m not paying attention thing, but guess what? I’ve seen Clayton Kershaw pitch a million times. I see Yasiel Puig and MadBum Vines constantly. I’m pretty sure I saw every single Steph Curry shot this year, whether I was watching live or I saw it on Twitter. But Mike Trout is fucking NOWHERE. My life is spent with social media open in lap, and I stay up way too late. So there’s no way you can put this just on time zones or my own naïveté.
I guess Trout just doesn’t have the star power that Bryce Harper has, he certainly doesn’t have that gorgeous hair, but I don’t think there’s been a day this baseball season where the internet didn’t cover Bryce in some fashion. Most of that was done himself, with Opening Day home runs, Make Baseball Great Again hats, and 100 emoji decals, but the MLB absolutely has to be better with Mike Trout. We’re two weeks into the season and the most press one of the guys hailed as the future of baseball has gotten is over a dunked basketball at the Warriors facility. Yes, Harper has gotten off to a hot start and yes, Harper has done more for himself. But this shouldn’t exclusively be on players to get themselves out there. Mike Trout has been doing this for over four years, there should be buzz about him coming into the season.
He’s supposed to be the next Mickey Mantle and he’s got six national television games this year, zero on ESPN. That’s fucking insanity. One of your brightest stars isn’t going to play on Sunday Night Baseball ALL YEAR and doesn’t play a nationally televised game until late May. I think a lot of the “baseball is dying” and “kids don’t care about baseball” is overhyped, but shit like this has to make you scratch your head. You’ve got a young guy who does incredible things on the baseball field and the most press he gets to start a season is fucking around at an NBA practice. That’s inexcusable.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like Mike Trout is like a history lesson that we all learned in high school and we pretend to still know. “Oh yeah, I know Mike Trout. I know all about him. He’s awesome. He’s a five tooler. Just a great, great baseball player,” but if pressed it would be revealed that that’s just about all we know. Baseball is a very regional sport, but I’d venture to guess that there’s room on the national stage for a white kid from New Jersey. Major League Baseball would be smart to make it a priority to get some more shine on him so he doesn’t spend his entire career as the most underrated player that no one ever has the pleasure of seeing.