Ken Rosenthal

Kenneth H. Rosenthal

• School University of Pennsylvania
• High School Oyster Bay High School

• Born September 19, 1962 in Oyster Bay, NY USA

Biographical Information

Ken Rosenthal is a sportswriter who also serves as a field reporter for FOX Major League Baseball broadcasts and as in-studio reporter for MLB Network. As a writer his principal assignment is as the senior baseball writer for The Athletic.

He grew up on Long Island and after a few years spent with small newspapers was hired by the Baltimore Sun in 1987, where he began to earn a national reputation. He was named Maryland Sportswriter of the Year five times. He stayed until 2000 and starting in 1990 began providing weekly notes to Sports Illustrated. He worked for the ­Sporting News, in its last days under its original formula, from 2000 to 2005 before joining FOX. He won the Sports Emmy Award for his work in 2015 and 2016.

He is known as a prolific writer in addition to his broadcast work, to the point that Baseball Think Factory had nicknamed him "Robo Ken", because it joked that the sheer number of stories he produced could not be the work of a human being, but only a robot. He wrote extensively for FoxSports.com, but when that avenue was cut off for him, he began posting articles on his social media page, before finding a writing home with the newly-founded Athletic in 2017. His prolific writing is a result of the fact he knows everyone in baseball and seems to hear every rumor or breaking story before anyone else.

His willingness to break out stories and to criticize the powers that be got him in trouble on several occasions. During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, he was very critical of Commissioner Rob Manfred's leadership in his stories for The Athletic, which resulted in his being absent of the MLB Network for three months. He returned in 2021, but once again his uncompromising reporting about the 2021-2022 lockout did not please the Commissioner's office, and news emerged in early January of 2022 that he was being dropped from the network permanently as he would not toe the corporate line and his contract, which had expired at the end of 2021, was not renewed.

He is known for always wearing bowties on television broadcasts; they are usually linked to a charitable cause, which the networks highlights.

Further Reading

• Jack Baer: "MLB Network cuts ties with Ken Rosenthal, reportedly over criticism of Rob Manfred", Yahoo! Sports, January 3, 2022. [1]

Related Sites

• Personal web site