The most-watched man in America right now is a 39-year-old from Rosario, Argentina, who barely raises his voice. The World Cup is here, on our own soil for the first time — the United States, Canada and Mexico — and Lionel Messi is playing as the defending champion in his sixth tournament. He does not trash talk. He does not pound his chest. He leads from behind, they say, which is a polite way of saying he lets the ball and the trophies do the talking. 

Messi has won the thing men spend their whole lives arguing about, eight Ballon d’Ors, a World Cup, more or less every honor the game can hand a person, and he has done it while looking, most of the time, like a shy man who would rather be home. He is the best argument I know against everything the U.S. is currently trying to sell boys about what a man is.

Because at the same moment, on the same screens, a truck company is selling the opposite. Ram Trucks released an ad this year called “In Loud We Trust.” The voice growling over it belongs to Dana White, the president and CEO of the UFC, who does donuts in a blacked-out performance truck while the slogan lands. In loud we trust: A play, in case you missed it, on the words printed on our money. In God we trust, swapped out for an engine. The sacred traded for the subwoofer. The commercial arrived tied to a UFC fight card staged on the White House lawn, and plenty of people loved it. But plenty of people, including a lot of religious folks who did not appreciate their motto turned into a truck commercial, did not.

Here is what the ad is actually selling, underneath the flags and the engines and the whole arsenal of American noise: masculinity as a thing you can purchase and perform. Not do. Perform. It is the same product professional wrestling has sold for decades, but at least the WWE has the honesty to admit the whole thing is staged. The truck ad wants you to believe the roar is real. That if you are loud enough, and your engine is big enough, and your grievance is hot enough, that is the same thing as being a man. It is not. It never has been.

The difference is backbone. Gusto is fine, even wonderful. Messi has gusto, and Paul Newman drove race cars; nobody is asking men to be quiet little mice. The problem is not volume. The problem is volume with nothing underneath it, noise offered as a substitute for the thing itself. Real masculinity is proven in the work, in the results, in the people you protect, and it does not need a camera to exist. 

If you want the whole argument playing out on the world stage, not in a truck ad but in a real room, look at the two men who sat in the Oval Office in February 2025. One of them is a former television comedian. When Russian tanks rolled toward his capital and the U.S. offered to fly him to safety and exile, he stayed, and he answered: I need ammunition, not a ride. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has worn the same olive-green field clothes ever since, because there is a war on and a suit can wait.

The other man told him he did not have the cards and said he was gambling with World War III. Donald Trump demanded, on camera, whether Zelenskyy had ever shown America the proper gratitude for its support. When a reporter in the room asked Zelenskyy why he wasn’t wearing a suit, he said he would wear one when the war was finished. Maybe something better, he said. Maybe something cheaper.

One of those men was performing strength. The other one simply had it. And you could tell — the way you can always tell — by which one of them needed you to be watching.

History is fairly clear on this if you look. The men who most need to broadcast their toughness are, with remarkable consistency, the men who have the least of it. The prop is the tell. The louder the engine, the emptier the tank.

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So let me offer a different lineup, since the country seems to have misplaced it.

There is Messi, who wins the most prestigious trophy in sports, and says almost nothing. Tom Brady, and I say this as a man who loves him, who was never the loudest voice in any room he dominated, only the most prepared. The first one in and the last one out, with seven NFL championships built at an hour of the morning no camera was awake for. Paul Newman, who had every prop the Ram ad is selling, as well as the looks, the cars and the fame, and who spent his actual life on a 50-year marriage and a company that has given away more than $600 million — and who was prouder of making Richard Nixon’s enemies list than of any award he ever won. Desmond Doss, who walked into the worst fighting of World War II without a weapon, refusing to carry one on principle, dragged some 75 wounded men off a ridge under fire and earned the Medal of Honor. He is the loudest possible proof that you do not need a gun to be the bravest man on the hill. Bayard Rustin, who organized the largest civil rights march in American history from the background as an openly gay man in 1963, and let other men stand at the microphone. James Baldwin, who never once had to raise his voice to leave a room permanently changed. Walt Whitman, who wrote this entire country into being in the first person, and signed his love letters to another man with a kiss.

Not one of those men needed a loud engine. Not one of them was quiet because he was weak. They were quiet or steady or unbothered, because the manhood was already there in the work and the spine and the care. A man who has the thing does not need to perform the thing. That is the oldest truth about masculinity there is, and we have somehow arrived at a moment where a truck company has to remind us of it by getting it exactly backwards.

I came to know the difference from the inside. I am a survivor. For years I did the loud thing, or rather the version of it men like me are handed — which is to say nothing, let the pressure build and call the silence strength. It was not strength. That came later, and quieter, when I finally showed up before dawn and did the actual work where no one was filming. Every man I respect knows that hour. It is the opposite of the ad. It is where manhood actually lives.

Today in Atlanta, Lionel Messi and Argentina face England, and the World Cup final is on Sunday in New Jersey. Whether or not Argentina lifts the trophy again, the lesson is already out on the field in plain sight every time Messi touches the ball.

The quietest man in the tournament is the best player in it.

The post At the World Cup, Messi’s quiet leadership outshines MAGA’s noise appeared first on Salon.com.

There was a comeback at MLB’s Home Run Derby on Monday night. And no, we’re not talking about Cardinals outfielder Jordan Walker’s rally to overtake Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber. We’re talking about Netflix, which bounced back strongly following its critically panned coverage of MLB Opening Night.

The streaming giant’s coverage of Yankees-Giants from Oracle Park in San Francisco in March amounted to one big Netflix ad. There was shirtless comedian Bert Kreischer in a branded Netflix kayak in McCovey Cove, Little Brother star John Cena trying to explain ABS, Stranger Things teasers, etc.

Netflix has a three-year, $150 million deal with MLB to show Opening Night, the Home Run Derby, and a special event like the upcoming “Field of Dreams” game. Well, let’s give the sports team at Netflix credit for learning quickly and not making the same mistakes again. 

During its debut coverage of the Home Run Derby at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, Netflix let the event  come to them. It focused on the action on the field; not itself. 

Led by host Elle Duncan, I thought the streamer’s Home Run Derby coverage was light-years better than Opening Night. The studio team of Duncan, Barry Bonds, Anthony Rizzo, Albert Pujols, plus play-by-play announcer Matt Vasgersian was looser, funnier, more relaxed. They kept the focus on mechanics and the mindset necessary to pound baseballs into the distant stands. They let the event breathe—which is saying something given this was only its second MLB event ever.

Still, Netflix is going to Netflix. There was one big swing and a miss. Viewers rightly panned funnyman Will Ferrell, Luke Wilson, and Jimmy Tatro for their awkward attempt to tout their Netflix show The Hawk. Their jokes weren’t funny and their antics only took away from player introductions. 

One viewer wrote on X/Twitter: “Ben Rice was in diapers the last time Will Ferrell was funny please don’t put him on my screen again.” As my Front Office Sports colleague Ryan Glasspiegel tweeted, “The only person who gets booked and ever says anything funny in these scenarios is Shane Gillis.” 

Netflix also needs to improve its camera angles, which generated numerous complaints across social media. Again, a less-is-more approach is the way to go. Don’t try to reinvent something sports television has perfected over the decades.

Some other observations:

• Duncan has proved she’s the right pick to host Netflix’s global sporting events. The former ESPN SportsCenter anchor can host any event with humor, smarts, and style. She had fun right from the beginning, declaring: “I like big bats and I cannot lie.” Duncan was able to get the normally sour Bonds to smile and share some war stories. As she previously predicted to FOS, MLB’s decision to eliminate timed rounds in the Home Run Derby proved to be a hit. As Duncan told me, Netflix is trying to reach casual, as well as hardcore sports fans, with its “eventized” sports. “We’re trying to get the people who are baseball-curious, who are sports-curious, and who are interested in the way Netflix can present something we’ve seen for a really long time,” she said.

• The likable Rizzo had a big night. The former Cubs first baseman had one of the best lines of the night when he described the hulking Schwarber—who he played with in Chicago—as “every beer league softball player’s hero.” Rizzo is proving to be just as good at media as my sources predicted after charming the snarky New York press corps as a Yankee. 

• Little changes matter. It was more entertaining to have “Batting Stance Guy” impersonating the distinctive swings and stances of Bonds, Rizzo, and Pujols than Kreischer acting the fool. 

With more than 325 million subscribers globally, Netflix is here to stay in big-time sports. Given its bounce-back performance last night, I will be curious whether it can keep up the momentum during the “Field of Dreams” game between the Phillies and Twins from the cornfields of Iowa on Aug. 13. 

Again, it’s not rocket science. Keep the focus on baseball, not cross-promotion. Netflix mostly did that Monday night. It’s a promising sign for its future sports coverage.

The post Netflix Bounces Back With Home Run Derby Debut appeared first on Front Office Sports.