The War of the Rosenthal Column

The silly and petty saga of a column, a pissed-off Major League Baseball team, and a strange power-sharing agreement between the Times and Fox—none of which will matter one iota if the Dodgers and Yanks make it to the World Series.

Rosenthal, whose other vocation is a sideline baseball reporter for Fox, subsequently found himself frozen out by the Padres as he covered their series. Photo: Dylan Buell/Getty Images

John Ourand

October 11, 2024

Baseball, with its quirks and superstitions, is a sport often prone to grievances and scandals, both large and small. And this season, in particular, the sagas have drifted toward the latter, with uniform-gate as perhaps the most salient and metaphorically resonant embodiment of the trend. And now, as the league championship series beckon, another overexaggerated, sorta silly controversy—and one perfectly befitting our times—has emerged: the war of the Rosenthal column.