Former baseball star Alex Rodriguez has a big problem with kids playing video games. During the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast on ESPN, Rodriguez discussed how kids today are not as healthy as the kids in the past because they spend all their time playing video games and not going outside and playing sports.
“This is the first generation of kids that will not outlive their parents,” the former New York Yankees star infielder said, via Awful Announcing. “To think, there’s more kids today playing eSports than physical sports, it’s something as parents we have to really promote going outside.
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“When we grew up, there wasn’t…there was Atari, but you had to go outside and play for…four-five hours. Kids today, too many times, choose to stay inside and play video games.”
Rodriguez was speaking a lot of truth and most parents would agree with him. The only issue with it is he’s an investor in eSports, as he put in money with NRG eSports back in 2017. And when he was asked about eSports in 2018, Rodriguez said he wanted to mentor the kids like he was mentored in baseball.
“One of the things I’m excited about is mentorship,” Rodriguez said to Sports Illustrated. “These kids are highly competitive, they’re working long hours—I grew up in a clubhouse for the last 23 years. Winning players want to be around other winning players in the locker room, but also at the executive level. When the players look at our team, from the management team to our board to our brands to Michael Strahan, Jennifer Lopez, Andy, Mark and myself, we’ve had significant success in so many different ventures. I know that one of the biggest thrills that I ever had was playing for George Steinbrenner and then Hal Steinbrenner. Both of those guys are winners, and that’s something that you take to heart when you’re on the field.
“And then physically and mentally, these guys are going to go through ups and downs. It’ll be helpful to have us on board.”
Rodriguez may not like where video games are headed, but he also knows how much money eSports generates. The fact that eSports is featured on ABC during the weekends and ESPN has a site dedicated to eSports are examples of how popular video games are today. So while Rodriguez is passionate about kids playing fewer video games, it’s not going to happen anytime soon.
