Who’s Your Daddy: FOX MLB insider Ken Rosenthal

What is the most important life lesson your dad passed down to you?

He instilled in me a work ethic, and he just always told me you have to work hard. That’s what I’ve tried to instill in my kids, do your best. That was kind of his whole thing. I don’t care what your grades are, but do your best and that stuck with me, it’s something I’ve tried to share with my kids as well.

What is the most memorable sports experience you remember sharing with your dad?

I’ve got a few. I grew up on Long Island…I would say my most memorable experience, there were two, I would say. One was the idea of picking up and going to a Mets game on like a Wednesday night in the summer, spontaneously, and we’d do this a lot. It was always a surprise to me, but I just thought it was the coolest thing. It was a lot cheaper to go to games then, you could do it and maybe buy tickets for five bucks each, sit in the upper deck and just hang out, it was great.

And the other one, I would say, and this is something that it hit me many years later. This was when I was already working, I think I was working at Camden, New Jersey at the time, there was a newspaper there…it’s still there…and I came home to New York and we went to a Ranger game, it was like a November game, Rangers/Penguins, something like that. And I noticed my dad, he was really excited. The Rangers scored, and thing is it’s a meaningless NHL regular season game; I’m happy to be there, don’t get me wrong, but come on, stakes are not exactly high. But he was excited, and it kind of hit me at that moment: that’s where my passion for sports comes from. Look at that, here’s a guy that’s excited about a meaningless November Ranger game and obviously that got passed on. Now it didn’t get passed on to my kids, who really don’t like sports all that much, but it was really cool to see that and just kind of have that realization hit me.

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