When you're working, your responsibility is to stay focused on what needs to happen next.

As AI makes knowledge easier to access, trust becomes harder to replace.

Sunday marked the end of my 19th season covering the Kansas City Royals, and every year, the feeling is one that’s hard to describe. There’s relief, satisfaction, and a little emptiness when the rhythm of the last six months of your life suddenly disappears. Turning the page doesn’t mean you have to forget what was on the last one. It means you find a way to take part of it with you. That’s a lesson worth remembering, inside and Out of the Park.

Over the course of my 30+ year career as a sports broadcaster, I’ve learned that scoreboards tell you what happened, but not always what it means. During my podcast Rounding the Bases that I really get to take listeners beyond the highlights. Recently, I was joined by guest Tommy Breedlove. On paper, he was a high-achieving businessman. But when he looked beneath the surface, it wasn’t everything he’d hoped. Before turning the page to the next chapter, he was forced to confront what the previous one had taught him…and the things left unresolved. 

Be yourself. Pay attention to people you admire and take what you can from them, but ultimately figure out who you are and do it your way.

The standings tell us how the season went. The stories tell us what it meant.

Many of the players I cover, like the young fans in the stands, will feel something a textbook never gave them.

Sometimes recognition isn’t about validating the work. It’s about amplifying it.

Talent matters. But after 32 years in television, I’m convinced that attitude and authenticity are equally as important. Being real is something that has allowed me to build a long career in television. I’ve always been more interested in genuinely connecting through a story than delivering a perfect report, and I think audiences can feel it. Preparation matters, but sometimes authenticity means trusting yourself enough to ditch the script and tell the story happening right next to you. It’s true inside and Out of the Park.

I’ve spent most of my professional career with a microphone in my hand. Trust, leadership, and connection are the themes I talk about most, and each of them comes back to a single word that’s easy to market but difficult to live: Authenticity. Recently, that word took on a deeper meaning for me in a conversation with Steve Garraty, a Vice President of Sales at Salesforce and the author of Greatfruit: How Cancer Led to Living a More Fruitful Life. 

Leadership isn’t always a speech or a grand gesture.

The more automated our world becomes, the more valuable human connection becomes.

When everything suddenly starts moving fast, trust helps you understand where to be, how to show up, how much to ask for and when to get out of the way. 

July once again demonstrated that sports can bring people together in a way that few other things can. Whether it was World Cup fans, a Hall of Fame legend or a clubhouse celebrating one of its own, July was all about being better together inside and Out of the Park. 

Most nights, my job looks pretty straightforward.  I talk about baseball in front of a camera, I’m on a stage speaking about winning trust, or behind the mic interviewing with guests on my podcast, Rounding the Bases. The mission is always the same: showing that we are better together than we are alone.  In a recent conversation, I was joined by retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Chris Kolenda. On paper, his world couldn’t be more different than mine. But as we talked, themes emerged that apply just as much in a clubhouse as they do in a warzone. 

The most important work in baseball happens hours before first pitch.

If I spend all my energy carrying things that aren't mine to carry, I won't have enough left to do the job I've actually been given.

Tolbert told me the lesson came from his parents: always be ready, so you don't have to get ready.

We often think of connection as something that helps us get ahead, but sometimes it has nothing to do with opportunity. It can simply be what carries us through life’s hardest moments, because the best relationships aren’t the ones built when we need them most. They’re the ones that began long before the day we need them arrives. It’s as true in baseball as it is in business and in life…inside and Out of the Park.

In my world, connection is everything. That’s why a recent interview on my podcast Rounding the Bases stuck with me. Bill Miller is the CEO of WellSky, the global healthcare IT company. The scale of his company’s impact is impressive, but not as much as the theme he kept coming back to: That in a world obsessed with technology and AI, connection still wins.