Chuck Harmon – MLB
Salary: $1 million per year
Chuck Harmon, who set the path as the first African-American Reds player, was playing baseball way before many of us were even born between 1954 and 1957. Harmon was born in 1924 in Washington, Indiana, as the 10th son out of 12 children. He was trained to be an athlete by Indiana Hall of Fame basketball player Franklin Wonder Five and went on to win 2 championships in 1941 and again in 1942. After retiring from the Navy, he began his professional career with the NBA and quickly moved up to play professional baseball.
The legendary player played a total of 289 games and was inducted into the University of Toledo Athletic Hall of Fame. Harmon was a loving husband and spent 62 out of 94 years of his life married to his wife, Daurel “Pearl” Harmon. The two had three children. Harmon passed away earlier this year due to old age, but the legacy of contributions to sports will always be remembered. He will always be looked towards as the man who paved the way for African Americans in the NBA.
Linda Cohn - ESPN
Salary: $3 million per year
ESPN SportsCenter anchor, Linda Cohn, is one of the 25 most influential women in sports. Her love for sports started at a very young age, as she was a big sports fan from the time she was little and would watch games on TV with her father. Cohn started playing hockey in high school and continued throughout her entire high school term.
Her first job as a sports anchor started as the WALK-AM radio station anchor in Patchogue, New York and continued working radio for 7 more years until she was hired by ABC, making her the network's first full-time U.S. female sportscaster on national radio. Cohn has worked with ESPN from 1992 and later became a SportsCenter anchor, a role that she still plays today. One of the most widely recognized moments in her career was anchoring her 5,000th SportsCenter episode, that’s more than any other episode in any ESPN anchor's history.
Michael Kay - YES, ESPN Xtra
Salary: $3 million a year
As veteran sportscaster and host of the Michael Kay Show, Michael Kay has spent the last 2.5 decades covering play-by-play sports games and currently holds multiple Emmys for his outstanding coverage of various games. As a native New Yorker, the broadcaster began his reporting career in high-school and began his career in sports in 1982 by working for the New York Post as a general sports writer.
Kay has since become an announcer for the New York Yankees and remains their announcer to this day. In 2002, he began hosting his show, The Michael Kay Show on YES Network and Sirius XM Radio channel 202, in which he talks about a variety of topics related to current sports and popular culture.
Mike Fratello - NBA TV, TNT
Salary: $300,000 per year
Former NBA basketball coach Mike Fratello, also known as "The Czar", is currently known as a studio analyst for NBA TV and often appears in TNT as a commentator. He was awarded Coach of the Month and Coach of the Year on multiple occasions and has a head coaching record of 667-548 and a 54% winning percentage. This puts Fratello in the top 20 NBA all-time regular sessions wins list.
In his personal life, Fratello is involved with various charities including his "Friends of Fratello Foundation". He is also a member of the Orthopedic Council at the Cleveland Clinic. He claims to be a wine enthusiast and even has 2 wine labels named "Fratello di Sangue" and "Fratelli". Originally from New Jersey, Fratello is married to Susan Fratello and they have a son and daughter.
Ryan Ruocco - ESPN
Salary: $2 million per year
The ESPN, Yes Network and DAZN Emmy award-winning sportscaster, Ryan Ruocco is a relatively new figure in the sports arena. His career began in 2006 as lead play-by-play broadcaster for the YES Network and he has since managed to accrue 6 Emmy Award nominations and a Marty Glickman Award in 2018. As part of the younger generation of sportscasters, Ruocco has an active social media profile and often uses Twitter to publish commentary on NBA games. He is currently co-hosting the Uninterrupted's R2C2 podcast with Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia.
At just 32 years of age, the young sportscaster seems to have a long career ahead of him and is already considered a rising star by the various sports networks. In a recent interview, Ruocco described his career as a "dream come true" as things are definitely accelerating and getting better by the year for this young broadcaster.