Jimmy \u201cJomboy\u201d O\u2019Brien isn\u2019t a reporter \u2014 and he\u2019ll be the first to tell you that.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the very first line in his bio on X (formerly Twitter). But he is a media figure. When you build a platform, fill it with content, and shape the conversation around a major league team, you don\u2019t get to opt out of the responsibility that comes with influence. Jomboy may not call himself a journalist, but his weekly interviews with Yankees manager Aaron Boone<\/a> \u2014 now done in place of Boone\u2019s traditional WFAN spot<\/a> \u2014 show just how much that distinction matters.<\/p>\n Which brings us to the Yankees. And Aaron Judge.<\/p>\n On Sunday\u2019s Talkin\u2019 Yanks, Jomboy awarded Judge the \u201cI\u2019m glad you didn\u2019t die in a car accident your senior year of high school\u201d award. Then he asked his producer to pull up a reenactment video Judge made in high school, part of a drunk-driving PSA program, where he\u2019s zipped up in a body bag as if he had, in fact, died.<\/p>\n \ufeff<\/p>\n Yes, they actually showed that.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a scary what if because he\u2019s one of the best hitters ever,\u201d said Jomboy.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd he\u2019s not actually dead; they\u2019re faking it,\u201d Jomboy adds. \u201cIt\u2019s a PSA against drinking and driving. Dude, I can\u2019t believe this is a reenactment, and they actually zip it over his head fully.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, Judge was never in a car accident. The video came from a school awareness campaign. But instead of letting it stay what it was \u2014 a solemn PSA \u2014 they resurrected it for a segment that managed to be jarringly weird and unintentionally grim.<\/p>\n Sure, we get the idea: \u201cWe\u2019re glad Aaron Judge is alive.\u201d That\u2019s a fine sentiment. But when the way you express it involves cueing up footage of your team captain playing dead, zipped into a fake body bag, it might be time to ask whether the bit is worth the joke.<\/p>\n And then, after all that, they tossed in a sunny Mother\u2019s Day shoutout to Judge\u2019s mom, Patty.<\/p>\n Because nothing says \u201cHappy Mother\u2019s Day\u201d quite like watching your son get zipped up like a corpse on your favorite Yankees podcast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jimmy \u201cJomboy\u201d O\u2019Brien isn\u2019t a reporter \u2014 and he\u2019ll be the first to tell you that. It\u2019s the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[106,5,10214,10215],"class_list":{"0":"post-23774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-aaron-judge","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-jomboy-media","11":"tag-talkin-yanks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114500748649553614","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}