The Atlanta Braves, Freddie Freeman, and fun with live TV

The MLB Network was within ten minutes of a huge gaffe with an Atlanta Braves great during their MVP awards “reveal” show this month.

It was the culmination of a week’s worth of MLB awards as showcased on the MLB Network, when Atlanta Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman finally got his day in the national spotlight after a spectacular season.

… and it was almost an embarrassment that would have happened on live TV.

The Network decided to make a nice gesture by having exceptional players from the past make the actual award announcements via sort variation of a Zoom/Skype/Teams remote call.

For the National League MVP award, legendary Atlanta Braves outfielder Dale Murphy — himself a two-time MVP winner — was tapped to perform this service for them.

Maybe there was an implicit assumption along the way that Freeman was going to be the winner since Murph was also a Brave for the bulk of his own career.  Maybe not, but just the process of inviting a remote-access-only celebrity for this task did require an extra layer of logistics to be performed by the Network.

Namely:  they kinda had to tell Murphy which name he was supposed to declare.

If you can’t read the graphic he pasted into his tweet, it went like this:

• Murphy:  “How are you going to let me know the winner?”
• Murphy follow-up text:  “??”
• MLB Network rep:  “Haha almost forgot.  Freddie Freeman won.”

“Almost” forgot??  Make that “Oops!! I really did forget and I’m glad you saved my bacon!”.  Heck, Murph had to send two texts to get their attention.

Murphy expanded on that on a message in a follow-up to a question about whether that announcement had been pre-recorded (it wasn’t):

At this point during the hour-long show, the Network was in the midst of interviews on-air with the three NL finalists, and Murphy wasn’t the focus of attention at that point.  This was something that (clearly) should have been done hours before.

But… that’s the kind of thing that happens with live TV.

Hey, the most entertaining part of local TV news for me is election nights when people who are used to working off teleprompters suddenly have to actually speak for themselves — extemporaneously.  You get to see who the “smart” ones are… quickly.

But this was a rare glimpse into something comical that could have been a disaster… had Murph not found the right person to actually read his text.

It might have been fun for the Freeman family, too, on that night!