The final episode of Intentional Talk is no longer the final episode.
According to The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand, Major League Baseball has abandoned its plan to take the long-running MLB Network studio show off the air. Comssioner Rob Manfred, his top lieutenant Noah Garden and other league executives relented after fans and players lobbied vociferously to keep the show alive in overwhelming numbers, The Athletic reported.
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Wednesday afternoon was supposed to be the program’s send-off. Instead, Kevin Millar, Ryan Dempster and Siera Santos are expected to discuss the reversal during their regular 3 p.m. ET window on MLB Network.
That farewell had been on the calendar since Oct. 19, when MLB Network announced that Intentional Talk would remain on the air through the World Series before signing off for good on Nov. 4. Millar, Dempster and Santos devoted the opening of that afternoon’s broadcast to the announcement, and Millar, the lone holdover from the show’s 2011 debut, confessed he had learned of the decision only days earlier and had yet to come to terms with it.
:”I got a call a few days ago. I’m still processing. I’ve cried. I’ve taken walks. I don’t know how to handle it yet. I don’t know what the future is going to hold,” Millar said at the time.
Millar spent much of the monologue paying tribute to the producers and staffers behind the program, saving his warmest words for original co-host Chris Rose, while Santos and Dempster struggled to keep their composure beside him. Dempster likened the trio to a family that converses daily through a group text, and MLB Network’s statement that afternoon hailed the show as one of the network’s institutions while thanking its three hosts for their four years together.
“Intentional Talk has been an MLB Network institution for 16 seasons, showcasing baseball’s great personalities and laugh-out-loud moments to generations of fans.
“From ‘The Best Interview in Baseball,’ to ‘Got Heeeem,’ we thank every person who has contributed to the show’s fantastic run, especially the real 1-5 and ’04 champ Kevin Millar, who has been part of IT since day one.
“We share our gratitude to Siera Santos, Ryan Dempster and Kevin for the last four years and look forward to the trio and fans celebrating the show’s significant success and impact on the game during the World Series and a final show on Wednesday, November 4th.”
Intentional Talk launched in 2011 by pairing Rose, a studio veteran of The Best Damn Sports Show, with Millar, then only a few years removed from his playing career, and Millar later admitted he expected both of them to be fired within three months. Their irreverent, unscripted chemistry instead turned a sleepy weekday slot into one of sports television’s more endearing cult favorites, and the show outlasted several cast changes along the way. Rose departed after a decade when MLB Network declined to renew his contract amid pandemic budget cuts following the 2020 season, and his successor, Stephen Nelson, left in 2023 when the Dodgers hired him as a broadcaster. Santos and Dempster, a fellow Red Sox champion, joined Millar for the show’s most recent four-year stretch.
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Restoring the show solves one problem for the league office, but it does little for the larger one looming over the sport. As The New York Times-owned outlet noted, owners and players are barreling toward a potential lockout at the end of the month, a scenario Ken Rosenthal rated as “quite high” back in March. Manfred, for his part, pushed back against what he called a rush to negativity in media coverage of the labor talks in January, insisting his goal was a full 162-game schedule next year.
Fulfilling that pledge will demand more than the two weeks it took MLB to reverse course on Intentional Talk, and whether owners and players can strike a deal before the month expires will dictate whether Millar, Dempster and Santos return to a 162-game season or a sport idled by a lockout.
The post MLB does a 180, saves ‘Intentional Talk’ on the day of its planned finale appeared first on Awful Announcing.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
