FS1’s Alex Rodriguez appeared on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” last night, with host Jimmy Kimmel telling him, “I always knew you were handsome, but now seeing you in real life it's like being hit by rays of daisies.” Rodriguez: “Ditto.” Kimmel: “Do you ever miss (the game) now that you’re retired, scratching yourself in front of fans?” Rodriguez: “I miss everything and scratching myself.” Kimmel: “When you would get booed, is that fun? Is that something that energizes you?” Rodriguez: “If you know anything about me, I have a PhD in getting booed.” Rodriguez said of the possibility he will make the Baseball HOF, “Everyone knows I've made some mistakes and served a suspension, and I've come back in that time and tried to do a lot of work. I turned the lens inward.” Kimmel: “All your accomplishments on the field pale in comparison to dating Jennifer Lopez. They should clear out a special wing of the Hall of Fame for that alone” (“Jimmy Kimmel Live,” ABC, 10/2).
Michael Strahan appeared on NBC’s “Late Night” last night and discussed his hectic media work schedule. Host Seth Meyers noted Strahan appears on ABC’s “GMA” in N.Y., “but you also do the Fox Sunday show. So you’re in L.A. on Sunday and then you take a red eye every Sunday night and come here to go to work.” Strahan: “I’m insane. But honestly, I do love working. Every job I have is great, and I think because of playing football for 15 years, everything now is gravy.” Meyers: “I looked at all of your jobs and in none of them is it legal to hit you.” Strahan said of President Trump calling out the NFL protests, “I see it now as a distraction away from other issues that are going on in the world. You got North Korea, you got Puerto Rico, you have so many other things going on that you take the time to pick on football or basketball. I just think priorities need to get in order in order to do what we need to do to make the country better” (“Late Night,” NBC, 10/3).
Author Ta-Nehisi Coates appeared on CBS’ “The Late Show” last night and discussed the ongoing NFL protests. Coates: “It is the natural course that protest starts in a really, really radical place and ends in the place it is now, which is Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys taking a knee and the message being unity, which was not the message when it started. ... But the fact that Kaepernick … actually forced the league to at least in some way address this, I think it's significant. … Kaepernick made this pledge to give away a million dollars to various organizations, and if you go to his website, you can see each month how much he's actually giving away, the organizations he's giving it to and what that money has gone to. So I think it's been very, very successful, actually.” Host Stephen Colbert said, “Some people have said that, ‘Well, this isn’t an inappropriate place to protest, you're politicizing a venue.’” Coates: “It's never appropriate.” Colbert: “If you're comfortable with the protest, it's not a protest” (“The Late Show,” CBS, 10/2).
