Seeing professional athletes do the work of the common person is always entertaining. There’s something people generally enjoy about watching a guy who makes millions of dollars per year try to conquer the rat race. A’s outfielder Michael Taylor has done just that. During the offseason, Taylor has been interning at Bay-Area sports radio station KNBR in California — the official station of the San Francisco Giants. He is responsible for walking around and interviewing people on the street for a segment that is called “Whats Bugging You?” The best part of all is no one really knows who he is.
“I never told anyone he played professionally,” KNBR assistant program director Jenn Violet Kennedy said according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “I was walking him around the building saying, ‘This is my intern, Michael,’ or, ‘This is Michael, he needs to fill out some paperwork.’ And everyone would say, ‘OK,’ and keep going.”
Even former A’s outfielder Eric Byrnes, who hosts a show on KNBR, was simply told that a younger player was going to be interning with the station, so naturally he assumed it was someone playing at a low minor league level.
“I found out a week after he’d started,” Byrnes explained. “I said, ‘Michael Taylor? Of the A’s? Wait a minute, you’ve got to be kidding me. I can’t believe you withheld this information.’ The next thing I said was, ‘Why isn’t he working on my show?’”
Taylor has enjoyed all different types of experiences since beginning his internship, from editing audio to being confronted by a homeless man while out looking for interviews on the street. Despite the fact that even Oakland General Manager Billy Beane had no idea he was on the air, Taylor genuinely sounds like he is in it for the experience.
“We have a lot of time off and I felt like, ‘Why not be productive?'” Taylor said. “This gives me experience in a world I’d like to know something about. One of my best friends told me, ‘You’re the only guy I know who goes to the big leagues for the first time and then gets a job interning for free. What’s wrong with you?'”
Baseball doesn’t last forever. There’s nothing wrong with getting to know an industry you aspire to work in when your baseball career comes to an end. Even some NBA players are doing it. It may sound lame to some people, but Taylor has a step up on a lot of players who hang up their cleats and have no idea what to do with themselves.
