Eagles' A.J. Brown offers some self-help advice to his young son: 'It's going to hurt to be great'

Gabriela Carroll, The Philadelphia Inquirer on Mar 28, 2025

Published in Football

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PHILADELPHIA — The Phillies are back, and everyone is getting excited about baseball, including the Eagles. On Opening Day, wide receiver A.J. Brown shared a video of him and his son, A.J. Brown Jr., sitting down to watch the first game of the year. Brown asked his son whether he wanted to play baseball.

Of course, the 2-year-old said, “Yeah,” until Brown gave him the rundown of what it takes to be a pro athlete.

“You want to go to baseball school?” Brown asked, and his son was still in it. Then Brown told him to say goodbye to his mom. The younger Brown immediately started to cry.

“It’s all right,” said Brown, whose first love was baseball and led to the San Diego Padres drafting him in the 19th round in 2016. “It’s going to hurt to be great. It’s going to be OK though, you understand? You’ve got to grind for it, that’s your first lesson. You understand it’s going to hurt, it hurts to be great, son. She’s going to be there for lunch and dinner. We’re homeschooling, no parties, no girls, no friends, no nothing, just baseball, you got it?”

“No,” he responded.

“Tell your mom you’ll see her later,” Brown said, which his son responded to with more tears. “It hurts, but it’ll pay off though. You want to be a man? It’s going to help you feed your family. … You’ll get my check when you get to the bigs.”

A few of Brown’s current and former Eagles teammates, including Fletcher Cox and Nakobe Dean, chimed in to laugh at Brown’s lesson in the comments.