This week, Bobby and Alex finally discuss the Business Insider report that MLB knowingly used two baseballs — that performed very differently — for the entirety of the 2021 season, without informing players, teams, or fans. They, they’re joined by Citations Needed co-host Adam Johnson to discuss the way the media industry covers lockouts, strikes, and the labor landscape of professional sports in the United States. Follow Adam and Citations Needed on Twitter. Read Adam’s Substack at thecolumn.substack.com.
Links:
Bradford Williams Davis’s Report on the Two Baseballs
Listen to us on Working People or HORSE
Buy some Tipping Pitches Merch!
Songs featured in this episode:
Little Richard — “Miss Ann” • The Promise Ring — “Strictly Television” • Cymbals Eat Guitars — “Chambers” • Booker T & the M.G.’s — “Green Onions”
Episode Transcript
[INTRO MUSIC]
Tell us a little bit about what you saw and and and being able to relay that message to Cora when you watch Kimbrel pitching and kind of help out so he wasn’t Tipping his Pitches. So Tipping Pitches, we hear about it all the time. People are home on the stand, what Tipping Pitches it’s all about. It’s amazing. That’s remarkable.
BOBBY: Alex, friend of the pod and friend of the the podcast co hosts in real life, Jake Mints, obsessed with his family barbecue. He texted me last week and he said, “LOL, Bobby, I just wrote this sentence in an article, quote, who wants to be the dude at the wedding talking everyone’s ear off about Labor Law anyway? Question mark. And then I realized, it’s you.” Do you think that that’s an effective summary of who we are? The guy talking everyone’s ear off at a wedding about Labor Law. I think we’re kind of fun. I was a little bit hurt when Jake said that.
ALEX: Uhh, I for one, think I have to be an absolutely insufferable person to consume Baseball content with you know, like, someone asked me like, hey, so–
BOBBY: That’s different, that’s different. We know, we can watch Mets and A’s games with each other but subjecting other people to that is frankly like hazardous.
ALEX: Right. Yes, yeah. My only point is like, you know, if someone asks me like, “So, baseball offseason heard there’s a lockout going on, what are your thoughts?”. I need to sit them down and say, “Do you really want to know my thoughts?”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Because we are going to be here a while.
BOBBY: We have to have like a prenuptial agreement for the conversation that we’re–
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: –have to have. Yeah.
ALEX: I need you to know you can leave at any time if you want. Okay, blink twice, if you’re feeling uncomfortable. And I’ll and I’ll release you from the conversation and go subject someone else to it.
BOBBY: But the beautiful thing about Tipping Pitches, though, is that even if we’re the guys at the wedding, talking about the nitty gritty of Labor Law, our listeners, are the people sitting at our table talking right back.
ALEX: That’s true. I mean, would you go so far as to say we may be the people talking baseball, Labor Law at at our, at our own weddings, eventually down the road? You know, like, are we gonna–
BOBBY: I kind of feel like that just might be in the general relationship agreement that both you and I enter that you’re not allowed to talk about the podcast at the wedding at either of our weddings, you know? Like we have we had a not a hard and fast rule but uh uh, no business on vacation rule that we ended up talking about business. But really we saved it for when it was just like you and I often–
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: –side we didn’t like make our entire friend group talk about the download numbers. While we were like whale watching, you know?
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah, that’s fair. Work life boundaries are are incredibly important. Ones that we may not adhere to. But in concept they’re they’re very important for for one to have.
BOBBY: The real life answers, it depends on what the baseball labor landscape is like during yours or my wedding. There’s a strike going on. I mean, how are we going to avoid it? It’s gonna come–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –up it’s gonna come up.
ALEX: Wow, that’s gonna be really tough. Please don’t please don’t strike during during any major events, [3:25] please–
BOBBY: And I named your romantic future around the Collective Bargaining Agreement of Major League Baseball, that’s selling–
ALEX: Some–
BOBBY: –me a break a few parts.
ALEX: –some brain poison baseball fans might plan around like the the playoffs or the World–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –Series, right? And we’re thinking like months beyond that. Like, will there be a work stoppage here because it’s gonna be a bad time to to have any sort of ceremony, but–
BOBBY: I think almost the cooler option is planning leat staring right into the skit, you know, getting married, right? When you know that there’s gonna be a big blow up and just being like, you know what, my life takes precedence. That’s cool, that’s like Ben Lindbergh, my colleague at The Ringer, who congratulations to him and his wife, Jesse. They just had a baby, right at the beginning of October and he was like, I’m out. No, 2021 playoffs. That is I I am jealous of that, wow.
ALEX: Imagine being able to just log off.
BOBBY: A pregnant pause, falls over the podcast a hushed silence. Okay, we have a great conversation coming up with Adam Johnson, co host of the Citations Needed Podcast. Honestly, what a–I think I can speak for both of us one of our favorite podcasts out there in the world. If you don’t know about it, please check that out. As if you need Tipping Pitches to tell you listen to Citations Needed. And the Writer of the column.substack.com. We talked about, we get into a lot of stuff about the structure of sports in America and capitalism and all of its evils, but specifically how media covers those things and labor and sports. We’re going to talk a little bit about the Bradford William Davis, Meredith Wills, juiced ball bonanza that we haven’t had time to talk about in the last couple weeks. But before we do all of that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I am Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[5:09]
[Transition Music]
BOBBY: Two very quick reminders for people before we talk about Rob, Rob Manfred and his baseball agenda. Number one, we appeared on the Working People Podcast last week. That was a a real fun time for both of us with Maximilian Alvarez about the the lockout and the ways that the baseball labor struggle relates to the spate of other labor strife in America in the last year plus. So I really recommend people go check that out. And then also, I recommend people check out another thing that we were on which is coming out the same day that you’re listening to this if you are listening, when it comes out on Monday. We appeared on the Horse podcast, one of my favorite Basketball podcasts out there in the world with our good friend Mike Schubert and his co host Adam Mamawala. It is a Basketball podcast that talks about everything but the games which is a great elevator pitch for a podcast that you and I have stolen here for–
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: –Tipping Pitches on occasion. Thank you to Shubes, I don’t think he would be offended by that. We talked about the the lockout again, we’re just on our 2021 lockout tour. And the history of NBA lockouts and their labor struggle and how Baseball and Basketball inform each other in differ. So if you’re interested, you’re basketball fan, or if not, just go check that out, there’s a lot of fun.
ALEX: Yeah, and if you want to hear us talk about lockouts anywhere else [6:45]–
BOBBY: We just put together your media packet for you [6:47]–
ALEX: –on your, on your podcast, maybe we can we can leave you a voicemail discussing it. We can record a voice memo and maybe email it over to you whatever, whatever works for you.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: We will do it.
BOBBY: You could call Alex at 510, no, not your phone number live on the air. The other piece of housekeeping is that merch, bro, if you haven’t gotten your new Tipping Pitches merch. Alex is wearing the shirt right now. Guess what, mine came earlier today. You hear that? That’s the sound.
ALEX: You struggling over there?
BOBBY: That’s the sound of Christmas morning Tipping Pitches Christmas morning or whatever nondenominational holiday or denominational holiday, you want to celebrate. That’s me opening my new shirts. And guess what? You can’t see it because we don’t put this video anywhere because we don’t want to be on video during a podcast. But they look great.
ALEX: They do look great. They feel great, too. I’m always blown away by the quality of the shirts themselves. They’re very comfortable. Wear mine around the house today, for the work day.
BOBBY: Something like union labor improves products.
ALEX: Uhm almost.
BOBBY: Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t gotten my MBA yet. I’m yet to decide. So we talked to Adam for about an hour and you’re about to hear that in a little bit. But I wanted to really quickly talk to you Alex about a kind of bombshell story from our good friend Bradford William Davis that we haven’t had time to talk about because we’ve been doing the CBA ABCs for the last few weeks. Major League Baseball used to different baseball intentionally in the 2021 season. No two ways about it, they admitted it to Bradford because it was incontrovertibly evidence assembled from a an experiment by the astrophysicist Dr. Meredith Wills who is a wonderful twitter follow if you do not follow her at BBL_astrophysics. What what did you, how how did you react to this news? That the Commissioner of Baseball just admitted to I mean, I don’t want to call it tampering but call a spade a spade Alex he tampered with the Competitive Balance of the season.
ALEX: Never in my life over the last two or three years have I consumed so much content about the literal dissection of the fundamental piece that is that is central to the game of baseball, the baseball–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –itself I feel like every 6 to 12 months there’s some sort of development here that usually due to the composition of the baseball and its weight and its effect on drag and–
BOBBY: Bounciness–
ALEX: –and such bounciness, I–
BOBBY: I’m glad I took AP physics in high school. I feel like I understand this more than I would have if I had not done that.
ALEX: Well I I I didn’t take AP physics which is why I am I’m glad that there are people smarter than me doing this work literally cutting baseball’s open and and breaking it down for us. This story is I don’t even feel like like shocking but not surprising covers it, because I was still kind of surprised by this that the Major League Baseball actually do this much you know?
BOBBY: And then like outright admit it like the first time they ever were asked about it, yeah.
ALEX: Right, exactly. Well to to be asked about it, and they were like, “No, we have no idea what you’re talking about”, and then to be shown the proof and then they say, “Okay, yeah–
BOBBY: You got it.
ALEX: –lowkey lowkey?
BOBBY: You got it.
ALEX: Yes, like don’t tell anyone?
BOBBY: Don’t tell anyone Bradford, don’t write this story for Business Insider.
ALEX: And what was jarring to me about this I think was how kind of out in the open it seemed and and key to this whole discussion is the fact of it MLB has kind of constantly been tinkering with the balls, right? And what is up to kind of their performance standards for the balls, these are not new conversations. Obviously, this has been much discussed. The the homerun revolution, the flyball revolution and subsequent deadening of the ball and the the the and the undead inning and the re deadening, right? We’re on like zombie ball number five right now, like it’s really bizarre. But you know, you ha–
BOBBY: It’s like Jurassic Park where they just keep coming back with like a bigger and badder T Rex.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: How many times can you reboot this franchise? We got fuckin Chris whatever his last name is in this shit, Pratt?
ALEX: Yeah. I preferred him as Mario personally.
BOBBY: Uhm, come on, those are my people.
ALEX: But the the gist of the article is that, you know, Major League Baseball said that they they were using these baseballs with, with lighter centers that they perform better on the field. And that’s what they were going to be using in 2021. But they kept making these older baseballs that had these heavier cores and kept using them throughout the 2021 season. It was not a situation where you know, you had older balls for the first month, because MLB was trying to get through a surplus as they kind of tried to pass off. And then for the rest of the year they use these lighter balls, you would see them kind of pop up over the course of the year. And I encourage everyone to read the article itself, which we will link to in the description. Because they, Bradford does a great job of like visually breaking down what this looks like over the course of the season, month to month. And they go very in depth into the batches of production and looking at the individual batch codes on each baseball. I mean seriously, this is like if you if you’re a fan of lowercase b baseball, and I don’t even mean the sport, I mean, the object you’re you’re going to enjoy it.
BOBBY: Which one do you think they sell to people in Target? Because I’m holding up my baseball that I keep on my desk right now that’s signed by Robert De man for junior official Major League Baseball, you think I got a juicy one or a regular one? [12:53] you know, right?
ALEX: Do you have like juice–
BOBBY: –pedestrian balls?
ALEX: Do you have like a kitchen scale? You know, or like you can [13:00]–
BOBBY: [13:00] build and hit some hit some balls and really tell if we can feel the difference? You know–
ALEX: Right. I think–
BOBBY: MLB players could tell they were like yeah, these balls are different. They’re they’re–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –performing differently even if they couldn’t tell in their hand, as Bradford gets into in the story. Uhm, I would also recommend if you want to hear Bradford and Meredith expound even more on it, they had a great interview on effectively wild with friends of friends of the podcast, Meg Rowley and Ben Lindbergh. Where they asked a lot of irrelevant questions that you might be having from Alex nice, cursory exploration into this phenomenon. I think the last thing that I want to say on this before we get to our conversation with Adam is that it’s kind of shocking every time to me how, if you pull the thread of every problem in baseball these days, it just goes straight to the Commissioner–
ALEX: In this case, literally pulled the thread [13:52]–
BOBBY: Being like derelict in his duty, essentially, like to protect the game and to steward the game in a direction that is fair. And in the best interest of the fans and players and I guess owners. Like he really, it’s not an equal lateral triangle by any means. We knew that. But in this case, really, it’s the the owners are like a lion in that triangle that are five times longer than the other two. And, you know, you brought up the flyball revolution. I have been repeatedly frustrated about the way that that has been discussed in mainstream baseball media by. Like old media types, but even by like former players like Alex Rodriguez and booths, and it doesn’t even we don’t even have to single out A. Rod there. There are a myriad of former players who just rail against the way that hitters hit these days. And I’m like, so are you all gonna come out and have a [14:45] now about that? Because the ball that they were being pitched to with was just leading to more fly balls and home runs and exit and exit velocity and like, do we now just, can you undo any of that on unfair criticism? No, you obviously can’t. And the Commissioner of Baseball doesn’t care about that. Doesn’t care about any of the trickle down effect of changing any of this stuff. And we’re in a really bad spot. Like we’re in a really bad spot with distrust among all parties involved in this game right now.
ALEX: Yeah. And I, you know, I, I certainly don’t think we can expect any sort of correction of the record, when it comes to that. And and to a certain extent, like they, it it is obviously, all under the umbrella of the baseball, but they’re kind of some different issues and events at play, right? The tampering of the ball between seasons versus you know, this, this year 2021, multiple balls in use in the in the same season. There are like, kind of a lot of different sub plots here. And–
BOBBY: I hate this extended universe.
ALEX: I know. Yes, I do, too. It’s not it’s not fun at all.
BOBBY: Just make another Star Wars movie.
ALEX: But ultimately, you know, the league does itself a disservice when it is not transparent with players, with the the media. Because you open yourself up to these sorts of arguments that are put forth, right? You know–
BOBBY: The obvious questions of did you want to effect the competition? Did you want–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –to help certain teams win? Or did you want to help certain games end up a certain way? Like, everybody–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –pointed their finger to the Field of Dreams game. Because it seemed like the ball was really flying that day. Everybody involved said it was?
ALEX: Yeah, yeah. And and, you know, if you can’t, if there is not a concrete answer, then you might go looking elsewhere for answers, you might, you might say, players have started to retool their swing. Because how else do you explain? More players just hitting more fly balls, right? And I do think the lake to a certain extent, we have to stop talking about things like they are objective facts–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –you know, like we can’t, you can pull all the data in the world. And at the end of the day, these are still human beings who have made are making the slightest adjustments that are imperceptible to the human eye sometimes. And so the idea that there is any one reason for a spike in homeruns, or a spike in strikeouts or anything like that is folly. But a lot of this really can be solved by, again, transparency upfront from the league. And I think this comes at an especially poor time, when trust between players and management is already really in in tatters right now. And this is certainly not the kind of thing that is going to do anything to repair that relationship.
BOBBY: Now, and I mean, I think that the thing that was bristling on is the way that media and former players, etc, etc, the MLB Network machine has accepted swing plane change as the only reason for any of these changes. And they’ve just like, buried the baseball, you know, like, they’ve buried that as a viable reason that the entire league could change when it’s, there’s merely incontrovertible evidence that it’s the primary reason why it changed in certain seasons. And now you can single out certain guys who definitely did change their swings, and that definitely did lead to more home runs. And you can quibble with certain guys approach and, you know, like a, an all out swing versus a single swing, like all of the stuff that we’ve talked about to death, that’s frustrated me. But, you know, Manfred, sat idly by, while the primary reason for the run scoring environment of the game changed because of an action that he took. And he’s just allowed all of these weird other conspiracy or like, not even conspiracies, but like, all of these weird other offshoots, to to be the explanation for it. And he just used that to his benefit to just do whatever he wanted with it and toy with the game, in a way that just feels really shitty as a fan.
ALEX: Right. Well, MLB Network is state sponsored media of–
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: –Baseball, right? Like it’s it’s–
BOBBY: As our broadcasts.
ALEX: Right, exactly. There’s, I mean, there’s no question kind of why they would shy away from talking about baseball controversy. I mean, you know, it’s why you don’t see in depth breakdowns of labor struggles on Major League Baseball broadcasts, right? That’s why you don’t hear discussions about Minor League treatment because it’s not appealing necessarily to the average viewer of a baseball game and it’s it doesn’t do the league any good to expose itself in that way, right? Much better to kind of keep things between the lines, so to speak.
BOBBY: Until Bradford finds out about them.
ALEX: Yeah, that’s true. Hide the receipts otherwise Bradford will find them.
BOBBY: Then Bradford is painting some clown makeup on Rob Manfred space. Okay, well, of course, we went a little bit longer on this that I intended to. But we get passionate about these things. And it it is really interesting like it is a really real world example of some of the, like I said, dereliction of duty that Major League Baseball has had over the stewardship of Baseball, the sport lowercase baseball. So now let’s, let’s go to our with this long wind up. Now let’s go to our conversation with Adam Johnson to talk about some of the reasons that Major League Baseball feels untouchable in these scenarios.
[20:33]
[Music Transition]
BOBBY: All right, we are now joined by Adam Johnson, co host of Citations Needed in the writer of the column.substack.com. Adam, thank you so much for joining us here on Tipping Pitches.
ADAM: Thank you for having me so much.
BOBBY: Adam, we wanted to have you on because we wanted to talk about you know, we just finished this whole three part series about the way that CBA concepts have been evolving throughout history in Major League Baseball. And of course, that is getting into the weeds into the nitty gritty in a way that not a lot of media always tends to do when they talk about labor fights in sports, or elsewhere in the United States. But we wanted to talk to you because what you guys do so well on Citations Needed is just talk about the way that media trend that don’t always pop out at first, when you look at them. Influence the way that the consumers of the product, in this case, the fans of baseball feel about these issues. So all of that long preamble, the first thing I wanted to ask you and wanted to talk about a little bit is, you know, in your experience talking about how the the media sort of under equipped or chooses not to cover things with an informed point of view in other topics. I wanted to ask about that specific regards to labor, because it seems like a lot of the media that is writing about labor, fights, CBAs strikes, work stoppages in this case, and MLB lockout doesn’t really understand what labor fights are and the different factors that go into them. So, you know, from your perspective, how unequipped is media with regards to labor in America in 2021?
ADAM: Well, I don’t think they’re on equipped as much as they, well, they are, but I I think it’s a deliberate choice. And they’re actively hostile for obvious reasons. Most sports media is run by either Fox or Disney, which now in many ways are the same corporation, because obviously, Disney bought up a lot of Fox assets, they share a lot of personnel. Uhm, so you kind of have Baseball, Football, and Warner media, which also is very close for you basically, like to one and a half corporation to kind of run all sports at this point. In terms of media, right? And these are, you know, 100 100 billion, 200 $250 billion corporations who have who have a vested interest in promoting anti labor ideology, both in terms of how how their management is filtered. And also just in terms of the bottom line. Now, they have covered some labor issues around the margins, ESPN will do an article here and there, but for the most part, they almost never talk about it. And when they do talk about it, they they do reinforce very anti labor tropes. And my view is and what we argued in our episode about the racialized labor, disciplining of sports media, is that I I would argue that either second maybe to public school teachers, the number one way people interface with unions, or non union is through sports media. Through through pop culture, I think most most people’s interpretation of politics is downstream from pop culture. I wish that wasn’t the case. You know, you see, tell us the people and they’re like, Well, I don’t know, you know, it’s like, it is though, you know, a thousand New York Times articles won’t won’t won’t have the same effect of like an AM sports radio show. Like it’s just or or Monday Night Football commentary. It’s just the way people ingested he ology is very rarely, overtly through that those mechanisms. So how will sports media covers labor, even if you don’t care about sports, or even if you don’t give a shit about, you know, baseball players. Because you view them all as jocks or whatever. You should care because you care about labor in general. It’s fundamentally a labor story. And the tropes that have been built against labor and sports through the decades, they permeate through other forms of anti labor ideology. And there’s all these misconceptions about how labor works in sports. And I think that it’s tremendously important that that labor people are people concerned with the important the import of labor in the in the United States and internationally, that they engage with sports because I believe that’s where most people be. That’s the terrain where people really discuss these issues. And so you have a lot of toxic kind of cliches. Ah that you hear very glib, kind of, like, I was listening to Mike Greenberg on ESPN radio for some reason, because when I drive around, I like to punish myself there was AM radio, but that’s kind of very typical of how ESPN talks about it. And he–
BOBBY: Right.
ADAM: –said, during the labor disputes a few weeks ago, this is just millionaires and billionaires are going over this that is the sort of cliche my dad said, like 30 years ago, right? It’s kind of a pat thing. You say–
ALEX: We haven’t updated the language yet, somehow.
ADAM: No. And so like, and then people hear that and they think, Oh, it’s just a bunch of rich babies arguing, you know, both sides. It’s a wash and of course, if it’s both sides, it’s a wash necessarily those in power [25:37] the the actual owners necessarily win that PR battle. This has been a common cliche during various lockouts, NBA 99, Baseball 94, you know, a a a ton of different labor disputes. There’s these kind of path videolo–and pat cliches people say that make it look like players are a bunch of because, you know, we hear the way people hear these contracts these which again, like the, like the build back better build or the contracts are always put over tenure.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ADAM: You know, I know that’s what the contract actually is. It’s not it’s not nominal. It’s actually the sort of nature of the contract. But you hear these like $400 million for, you know, Patrick Mahomes $450 million. Of course, that’s probably like 120 million, because the way NFL contracts are structured. And then, but there’s never this sort of great announcement for billionaire prop for for old team owner profits, right? So we have a very skewed sense of where the money’s going. Obviously, the top the point 1% of players make X amount, we don’t talk about the other 99%, we certainly don’t talk about those. We don’t even make the threshold for being Major League players in baseball, obviously, that tells you don’t even play that. And there so there’s a very distorted view of how much frankly, how much players actually make. In in this, you see this most egregiously in Football, Baseball is very close second, I think. In terms of like, the board, the bubble players, the wash outs, the the people who get injured, the exploitation flavor in Latin America. The short lifespans of people’s playing careers. I mean, really, when they announced contracts, even minor co–contracts for players, they really, really, really ought to, if you’re going to express it in accurately, they should annualize it over an expected lifetime. So if I hear this, this Titan makes $2 million a year, I’m like, wow, to me those year that’s a lot of money. Well, why don’t you annualize that he’s, you know, he’s got an average lifespan of to two and a quarter years in the NFL, when you annualize that over his lifetime. And that comes out to probably like $90,000, a year, after TT&L, right? And so we have a very skewed player, whereas the billionaire who owns the team for 50 years, he’s making that money every year, that year, in, year out, plus, he’s also making more money plus, he, you know, he’s not actually risking his his physical life in his body every day. And I know, that’s not as much of an issue in baseball, though it is, especially for Pitchers. So, you know, again, I think the way in which people, the way in which the media reports this is is deliberately done in a way that obscures those those those power asymmetries. And obscures the nature of labor and why there is tension between labor and capital in sports. That isn’t just a bunch of whiny people on an even playing field, kind of arguing over millions of dollars, when that’s not the case at all. I wish it was, but it’s not.
ALEX: I’d love to kind of dig into that idea of how labor struggles in sports really do kind of inform how we interface with broader labor struggles, and, you know, in the, in the country around the world. Because I think, you know, even even here, we kind of have a tendency to say, well, you know, America’s capitalist ideals inform how we, how we think about sports, right? Because capitalism is ingrained in our, in our, in our bodies. Well, we have a tendency to just side with the owners. But it you you bring up a good point that sports really is kind of at the you know [28:57]–
ADAM: That’s an aspect I want to get into, by the way.
ALEX: Yes, yeah.
ADAM: I want to table that I want to I want to table the sort of center and POV of the owner as the kind of essential nature of we talk about sports.
ALEX: Right.
ADAM: Including from fantasy to this the Moneyball all this sort of, I mean, Moneyball is basically a love letter to to suppressing wages. I mean, that’s that’s what that that whole system is like, how do we explain the most labor and people by paying in the least? And this these are our heroes, right? These are our kind of that’s what maybe a separate deal with continue your point. I want to–
BOBBY: No we–
ADAM: –I want to make sure we talk about that as well.
BOBBY: We’ve had that conversation here on the show. We’ve talked a lot about Moneyball, because Alex is an A’s fan of we love the movie and as as do a lot of people, but I I feel like there is a lack of interrogation of that film. And [29:39]–
ADAM: No, it’s a it’s a love [29:41] it’s a love letter to McKinsey and company firing. You know, an air conditioning factory in Indiana. I mean, it’s, it’s a Bain Capital commercial, it’s about, it’s about exploiting labor for the cheapest. I mean, you know, this is one of the great sort of depressing revelations I had as someone who, you know, I’m a White Sox fan I like of course, you always gonna root for the lower salary team. But then, a couple years ago, I said, “Wait a second”, I mean, not that the Yankees are a charity or like that they’re that they have any ideological interest of being more pro worker, but like, as a matter of course they are, because they pay more.
BOBBY: Right.
ADAM: And salary caps fundamentally are anti worker for a variety of reasons which we can get into. But like, you realize that like, why are we celebrating under paying players? You know, what they’ll say is they’ll say, oh, they go on later make more money. No, not if they hit their head into a bucket cement wall at Tropicana Field.
ALEX: Yeah.
ADAM: You know, we we we are celebrating, maximizing the utility of a billionaire. Which is kind of which, which is in a way that the sport is set up to where their benefit is kind of as a fan or whatever is our benefit. But of course what we’re really celebrating that they’re fucking cheap.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ADAM: Like you don’t need, you wouldn’t need all this, this this exotic, you know, newfangled mathematics, and and how to find diamonds in the rough and all this kind of de–development is fine, I suppose. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. You wouldn’t really need all that if they just paid more.
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah.
ADAM: –there’s artificial market, it’s artificial scarcity.
BOBBY: It’s the whole thing that we say about the Rays and the A’s all the time, presumably, you could find the same good players and just choose to pay them more because you made that–
ADAM: Right.
BOBBY: –decision, and then you’d have a better relationship with your player pool in the future. But that that is not the case. Anyway, Alex.
ADAM: Yeah, we we are celebrating underpaying people which is, which is just phenomenal feat of, of video logical reproduction. But go ahead.
ALEX: Yeah, well, I mean, there’s a whole conversation to be had about how fantasy sports informs how fans, you know, see, see their their own sport, right? You know, it’s like that that whole the the old adage about, you know, temporarily inconvenience millionaires. It’s like fans are temporarily inconvenienced owners, right? They’re like, I could I could do this.
ADAM: Yeah.
ALEX: Give me the opportunity.
ADAM: Oh, yeah. You know, and and it’s anyway, maybe a socialist should should start to do a fantasy app for like, putting themselves in the position of that of the players. How do I maximize my contracts this year? How do I make sure that this player is mildly injured stays on the bench, because he needs he needs to make sure he’s healthy to pick up his two year old daughter. That would be–
BOBBY: Well like, I think it’s because–
ADAM: –instead of just going out there and smashing his ribcage for some some guy sucking down a miller like, moderately better about this, you know.
BOBBY: Yeah, I do think it’s because fans feel a sense of ownership, lowercase ownership over–
ADAM: Yeah.
BOBBY: –the team, because like, they grew up with it.
ADAM: Yeah.
BOBBY: They in a way funded their passion for it, funds it. And so they think like, I’m on the capital side, I’m giving them my money, because I support them. It’s like the way that people who trade they trade stocks, I feel like it’s great if Amazon stock is going through the roof, when that actually doesn’t have any real world benefits for most of the people who have–
ADAM: Yeah.
BOBBY: –a vested interest in Amazon outside of Jeff Bezos and very few other stakeholders in the C suite of that company.
ADAM: And it makes sense because the you know [32:50]. A lot of times there is there is there is an overlapping of interest where the owners interest and the players interests do align, they both want to win both for financial reasons. Obviously, there are bonuses for players reasons, but also non cynical reasons. Players, you don’t really get to a certain level of sports, if you’re not just genuinely competitive, right? Like you’re not going to get get to the Major League Baseball [33:12] if you don’t genuinely want to win just to win not necessarily because of some mercenaries, right? For the most part, those incentives can overlap and be harmonious to be fine. But there are obviously when it comes to things like injury, things like work overload, things like especially in football where everything is so cute and so pronounced so you know, much more higher stakes. Where there is a tension between the well being of a player and the the needs of the owner. And fans will always put themselves because they want, you know I’m I’m a Bears fan for example which is which is a very bleak existence, right? And like yeah, I’ll be like oh you know Justin Fields is is is is questionable for for Sunday and I’m like, you know, part of me is like yeah yeah, you should play because like we want you to get good for next season because obviously we’re not gonna wait this year. And part me like, I don’t know he like broke a couple ribs, maybe you should probably sit this one out. Like a there’s like there’s a demon there’s a sort of sports fan in a in a in a pro worker you know, their intention sometimes.
ALEX: Yeah.
ADAM: And I mean, I don’t even know how you would even manifest that into some kind of draft like scenario. But but no, it’s presumed that there are little there are little ponds you know, they’re called assets there are there are they’re put in you know, a little little widget here a little widget there and and then you use them up and then they you know tore, tear out there ACL you do a little thing. You know, you the players kneel for five seconds that go to a MasterCard commercial they come back and you never hear from the guy and that’s it. And I guess you know, till late until later he has you know CT induced death and then maybe we’ll do a a ceremony about the not mentioned why he died. But anyway, I’m cynical.
ALEX: You and us both, if if if we’re not too careful. It may sound like this is just an episode between myself and Bobby. With the the the topic brought up. Uhm, I wanted to dig into that notion of like the fan as king a little bit more, because it really does seem to track with broader trends in media over the last few decades. Whereas, you know, if you go back as early as the the 20s, the 30s, the 40s, there was obviously unions were the, the backbone of the country, so to speak. And there was a broader, I think, pro blue collar labor movement to the, to the point where media organizations, while maybe not blatantly pro labor actually took the time to kind of examine labor rights versus business rights and, and whatnot. And I think a lot of that has really been conflated in the last few decades. And we’ve seen this promotion of the consumerist as the the the point of view that needs to be taken, first and foremost, right? How does whatever fight that’s being waged impacts the consumer? And we saw that really starkly in the–
ADAM: Yeah, there’s a [36:07]–
ALEX: –1994-95 strike.
ADAM: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: Yeah. And I was curious kind of if, you know, if you can expand on how you’ve seen that shift over the last few decades from this, you know, understanding of labor as essential to just the, you know, society, in our country towards, you know, the saying saying, we don’t kind like, we don’t care how the meat is made, right?
ADAM: I mean, a lot a lot of the problem rests on the fact that no–I think the vast majority of sports fans. Even if they have pro labor tendencies, don’t view players as labor. Like they fundamentally think they’re all millionaires.
BOBBY: Right.
ADAM: You know, they’re not high school public teachers in in South Bronx who make $55,000 a year, therefore, they’re sort of, they’re in some other class, and therefore, I don’t care. And the average person doesn’t probably know the difference between [36:58]–
ALEX: Yeah,
ADAM: –they don’t they, you know, they don’t know how to analyze these things out for a lifetime. And so I think that’s kind of the biggest barrier to get people to care about labor and sports and what, you know, never mind that, you know, the average Minor League, Minor League players, you’ll know when it’s 18 to 8 to $14,000 a year. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s been so. But then there’s this whole lottery system, if you work hard, you can make the big ticket and we could go into that, too. That’s a whole different ideological framework. But I think that’s the big barrier. But you know, one of the things that if you go back and you look at articles again, I hate to keep I know, y’all are baseball podcasts even back to football. But I’m more intimate with the 1987 NFL strike–
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
ADAM: –or lockout, or strike, strike. There was, you look there was pulling at the time, sort of who you sided with. And this is back when NFL players were headed, you know, 10 times worse. I mean, there was think they were they were trying to get a pension. Like–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ADAM: –basically, they haven’t covered medical care.
ALEX: Not really good.
ADAM: Right. And players overwhelmingly supported the Owners. And they viewed players as, as an obviously there’s a massive racial component to this, right? Up any black players asking for too much. But from from then on, even when I was a kid, I remember my my parents, my parents were sort of conservative, you know, ticket prices would go up. Hottest players are getting greedy, Kevin Garnett’s contract, and then the owner would release a press release saying sorry, concession prices gotta go up, we had to pay Kevin Garnett. Which violates the most basic tenet of of supply and demand, which is to say, owners are not going to like not charge what they can charge they charged with taking charge, regardless of labor costs.
BOBBY: Right.
ADAM: It is it is the ultimate the ultimate propaganda against any labor action, since the history of Labor Action is that all prices got to go up. That way, you you you take away sympathy for the worker, and you put sympathy on the side of the owner and you blame workers for getting greedy, even though the economics and internal economics are a total black box and the profits of the owner all largely unknown. But we get these these blaring headlines, you know, $125 million, I think was Kevin Garnett contract over like five years. It was this huge scandal or maybe was like 200, it was 250, over 10 years, $25 million a year. And I remember when that came out in in late 90s was just like, oh, this is gonna raise prices. And you know, Joe, Joe Bob and six pack in Minnesota can’t afford to go to a game anymore. And they they’ve done this for year in and year out in year in year out. They they’ve done it to exploit, you know, city and county and localities for and states for to pay for their, the billionaires to pay for their stadiums. They use this propaganda for a variety of of of of purposes. And what they do is that when a team you know, when a team isn’t doing well, or a team is floundering or, you know, in the case of the White Sox, the owner just hires his buddy Tony La Russa. That the blame is always put on like, oh, we we have we have to highest salary or paying people too much. Or like the owner, the players aren’t delivering. And that’s just the perspective that the average person takes, like you said, there’s this sort of ownership ideology. And it doesn’t it doesn’t really it doesn’t really It’s just so baked into how people think about sports, it’s almost it’s, it seems very difficult to really kind of have people rethink about who’s really responsible for your team losing their work. And again, I think the fundamental problem is just that people think they’re all fucking rich. Because some of them are rich, you know, some of them are what we would consider to be rich. But ultimately, the richest player in any sport is still by definition, making more money, by definition, making more money for some faceless, 80-year old fucking billionaire with a pink face who funds you know, anti abortion candidates who, you know, on some guru living in some fucking castle somewhere. He is making that why more money, by definition, and he’s making by definition. Otherwise, they wouldn’t pay him that money. It’s like when Jerry Jones had that when when when Jerry Jones had Dak Prescott at that press conference last year. When he gave him you know, his big franchise tag or whatever. And Jerry Jones did that smug fucking dickhead racist owner thing where he’s like, “Well, you know, I overpaid him but the best players I ever had I overpaid. Well, Jerry, by definition, by definition, you cannot overpay them. By definition, your what you’re paying them is what the market determines what they’re worth. And by definition, that mark that’s still less than the value they bring to the Dallas Cowboys. Because of that Dak Prescott, you’re fucking 4 and 13. And so like, but there needs to be this constant disciplining, overpaying, greedy, they hit, you know, they hit the jackpot. And this kind of ideological, you know, production just it makes it impossible for people to perceive labor as something for which we should sympathize with, much less, God forbid, have solidarity with in the event that there’s these these labor crisis.
BOBBY: Right.
ADAM: Uhm, and or or later schisms, if you will. And you see this a lot in, in baseball, because baseball, all all baseball, basket–footballs in a close second are just so based on this kind of lottery ism, where you sort of grind it out, year after year after year after year after lucky, your ticket gets called up. And then when your ticket gets called up, you win the lottery. Every single broadcast has this great story about how you were in the minors and you made it you know, you sort of pulled yourself up by your bootstraps, and you focused on the game, you played it the right way. And then overnight, and you got to your salary went to $550,000 and, and that there that there’s this McCobb fucking, you know, Hunger Games element to it. It’s not something we should analyze or criticize. It’s actually a testament to the hard work and Moxie of the person in question. And this lack of systemic analysis of any of this shit, and this kind of this moral pornography of these bootstrap stories that we get over and over and over again, small kid from a small town of Venezuela made a big. Yeah, what about the other 10,000 who fuckin got burned out and like, sign these these exploitative contracts when they were 16 years old. I mean, I could go on and on, right? We don’t hear about that.
BOBBY: I was just listening to your episode about like, the economic cliches that make it into media coverage about the economy or that as a, you know, a political term and the jobs economy and things like that. And it’s strikes me as so similar the way that people who use the phrase most economists agree. Or the economy is up or the economy is down just actually so similar to how a lot of Baseball Reporters, Baseball Writers, Baseball Colonists. Just sort of accept some of the pro owner notions as necessary to the industry of Baseball. Meaning like it is the owners right to gain all of the playoff revenue. Or it is the owners right, because they own the team to be you know, monopolize this industry and make profit because that that is what they do. That is what the owner side doesn’t capital and you know, I’m wondering how how is it possible to unpack some of those ideas? Because it just–
ADAM: The first thing I would say is that there’s something people intuitively knows weird when they watch you know, 25 grown men pound their heads in for four quarters, they win the Super Bowl, right? And then some 95-year old walks up there with his like 18 grandchildren all of them are wearing you know, designer Armani outfits and then the first person who gets handed the trophy is this guy and it’s creepy little family who all looks–
ALEX: Yeah.
ADAM: –like you know, what the fuck did you do? Where did this guy? Who is this guy? I don’t know this guy is, I’ve never seen that. I don’t even know his name, right?
BOBBY: And that’s the thing what’s so shocking to me is that this is like this is a secondary thing for owners. Like this is a side business for all owners–
ADAM: Oh, yeah.
BOBBY: –in pro sports these days. For the for the most part in some sports, it’s slightly–
ADAM: [44:37]
BOBBY: –different like this is their, this is their main source of income if they’ve been–
ADAM: If they’re little faithful–
BOBBY: –here for long enough.
ADAM: –billionaires, billionaires love play toy, they love to take rockets up to space. Look, if I had $10 billion, you know, the first thing I would do with it, the first thing I would do with it, assuming I didn’t have any kind of ideological display. The first thing I would do with it is buy a Baseball team. Of course I would.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ADAM: I mean, everybody would, and the most a lot of people would I’m not most people like you buy baseball games, any fun. You have a little widgets in I’ve been socializing with the players. But the reality is, is I’ve been able billionaire for like a couple years. But then the reality is that–
BOBBY: That would be Cohen is gonna do? Is he gonna socialize it and give it to the players in a couple years?
ADAM: Let’s go that–
ALEX: [45:13] Tweeter long enough–
ADAM: –is that is that so people see the the the weird the weird old man grabbing the trophy. And we know that owners are parasites, they have absolutely nothing to add to the sport. Every owner tomorrow in baseball could go away and be replaced by [45:28]. And the owners could take stock in the company, they could put a couple marketing majors, maybe an NBA guy in charge of it. And pretty much nothing would change. They don’t bring anything of value. They don’t run, they don’t throw, they don’t manage, they don’t know how to coach, they don’t know how to do it. They they are parasites, and yet they make the vast majority of income from these endeavors. And they say, Oh, well, we took the risk. And did you really? Did you really is it really that risky in a closed market with with Supreme Court and Congressional sanction monopoly anti labor practices? There’s no risk in that there’s no risk when the 1960s 619 67 the Congress creates a special fucking tax code for the NFL. There were nonprofits till 2016. They they have monopoly exemptions, the NCAA which is there, which is their development league, eg their training league is totally free, totally state sponsored, totally state sanctioned. There’s no risk at all in owning a team. So even even the kind of Randian argument that these billionaires took some, there’s no risk. There’s no there’s no risk. I remember when when when when when Steve Wilpon bought the Mets. They told us, they told the story to that [46:28] New Yorker in 2009. He bought the team for $100 million, I think in like 99 or 2000.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ADAM: And then they’re asking like 10 years later, he wanted to he was thinking about selling and he put it up for four and a half billion dollars. I think that was probably three times that. And they said, where do you where do you get off? Where do you get off? 10x return? He’s like, look, there’s only one nationally baseball team in New York, there’s going to be one national was only going to be one nationally baseball team in New York in 100 years. And I when I have when I’m trying to you know, it’s all real estate, it seems like you make all the money in real estate. And I use baseball to do that. So when I have the CEO of General Motors Fund, and I have his daughter throughout the first pitch in the game, there’s no price you could put on that. Owning a team is the ultimate alpha dog business move. It’s why they do it’s your hey do you want friend side ticket courtside tickets, buddy, I got you. Let’s suppose the Baxter account next Tuesday. That’s why they fucking do every single day, okay? And so but these people, they don’t do anything, they don’t produce anything. They don’t create anything. It it it is the most like it is the most prototypical marxist criticism capital where you have a ruling class who literally only is there because they have capital. They don’t they don’t actually produce anything. And so, again, I know Steven Soderbergh made a movie about this, I’m sure you all talked about that. But in reality, people know that they don’t really produce a lot. And then player in in in leagues like the NBA, where there’s a little bit more player power, because there’s fewer of them. And there’s a more finite, there’s more, there’s a more finite labor pool, where like.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ADAM: The difference between, you know, there’s less of them, but also the ones that are good, are basically a replaceable. They they have more power, and they know that which is why the owners in the NBA roll over a lot more. Because they know that tomorrow, basically 12 players, 15 players, maybe 20 marquee players could get together and basically start their own whenever they want it.
BOBBY: Right.
ADAM: And there was nothing they could do to stop that. I mean, literally, I mean, maybe maybe 25, right? Because who the fuck is going to watch if you take away 25 players from NBA, and they’re like, Oh, we’re gonna go start the AB you know, the NBA 2.0 over here. Despite all the prestige and the marketing and the emotional bond with like, you know, the Rockets and the Lakers and all this stuff, we would have to switch over, you know.
BOBBY: It happened.
ADAM: I’m not gonna–
BOBBY: I mean, it literally happened, and then the owners had to buy them off from doing that when they found the ABA, and then that is sort of character–
ADAM: Exactly.
BOBBY: –that labor negotiations since then [48:48]–
ADAM: Ex–exactly.
BOBBY: –[48:49] their CBA that make it harder for them–
ADAM: Yeah.
BOBBY: –to do some of the things that the MLB–
ADAM: Exactly.
BOBBY: –union has chosen to do. But that is only because like the the CBA has existed prior to that.
ADAM: Yeah. So basically–
BOBBY: [49:01] labor move of making the ABA.
ADAM: You you have this artifact that emerged from a basically a conspiracy between the Federal Government because again, when the Supreme Supreme Court ruling, I think in like 1910 was it gave baseball exemption from anti antitrust laws?
BOBBY: Yeah, because they ruled that it was not interstate commerce, correct.
ADAM: Right. And they even like created some legal fiction called a national pastime which gave it some some–
BOBBY: Right.
ADAM: –immunity, right? Like–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ADAM: –these things all emerged from this basically this like racist conspiracy for people for fed–the federal government wanted to push wide scale National Sports League. Because they viewed them as being you know, they occupied Saturday and Sunday. They they they had a way of kind of creating national graded social unity without the messiness of socialist parties or unions. And like, there’s just–
BOBBY: That will take the Mets.
ADAM: –just artifacts. Right, it it’s just artifact of a ton of of of these totally, again, with the exception of maybe the NBA, but Football and Baseball, we’re we’re we’re were given massive amounts of federal subsidies and and and giveaways and loopholes. They would not exist without that. I mean, football especially is is was almost entirely manufactured in many ways. And so, you know, this idea that these these owners own it through this began this process of capital accumulation over the decades, they don’t, they they they don’t really need to exist. And I think that if we, if we started over tomorrow and built a society, we would never have a sports league where it’s just some one random guy who, you know, Silicon Valley billionaire owns a team when he doesn’t really add much. Because they’re not even building the stadium’s. Like it’s unclear what they’re actually doing [50:42]–
ALEX: Yeah, it’s uh, yeah, it’s all Greek to me, when it comes to what the fuck owners it’s a black box. I am–
BOBBY: It doesn’t have the phone numbers of people who work at banks like that’s basically it to raise [50:56]–
ADAM: Yeah, [50:56]–
ALEX: [50:57] like address.
ADAM: 3 3 3 McKinsey guys in a trench coat could do this job. It doesn’t have to be an owner, it could be someone who works for the works for the players. Anyway,
ALEX: It is interesting to me because I, you know, and this is partially maybe just because the the space that that I occupy and consume on online on the internet is, you know, skews towards the left. But it does seem to me that in the last couple years, in the last few years, there has been a slight shift in sentiment that is maybe not so blatantly pro owner. And I don’t think that it has come around to be pro player exactly. But in the last, I think, especially 18 months or so the I mean, I think you can say the COVID pandemic has actually done a lot to unearth, like, how craven management practices actually are. And you saw when, when the Players Union and Major League Baseball, were trying to come to an agreement for how to play baseball under COVID, right? In that was back in like March, April, May of 2020. There was kind of a shift in sentiment among fans to be like, hey, maybe the owners aren’t the the good guys here, the players may not be the good guys either. But it’s maybe less billionaires versus millionaires. And maybe the players do really just want to play and the owners are hard balling them to try and wring every little bit of capital out as they can. I is this a a sense that you have seen reflected anywhere else in broader, I guess labor coverage? Or labor consumption? Do you think that that’s really just limited to kind of our ever radicalizing corner of the internet?
ADAM: Yeah, you know, it’s, it’s difficult to gauge, I would say. I would say, no–nothing’s changed. I think that again, yeah, I think it’s probably a bubble issue where there’s a broader awareness of labor. And I know that people who cover, I would say that Journalist who covers sports more than five years ago, are now focused more on labor issues. And I think that probably has a lot to do with newsrooms increasingly becoming unionized. And I think that one of the one of the approaches and strategies for unionizing media. Because again, I do think there’s a disproportionate focus on media unionization, because it’s just people we know. Right, it’s like other people we know at cocktail party, the proverbial cocktail parties in Brooklyn. Which are less so cocktail parties, and we’re like sad little diverse [53:35] writers–
BOBBY: Lot of people are at those cocktail parties–
ADAM: Yeah, exactly. Thank God, I moved out of New York, I remember those years. Now I’m a suspender slapping average man. But I I I think that that one of the logics behind that strategy is that if you have a unionized labor force, not always Washington Post being a good example, they’re unionized, and their labor subsidy. But but broadly speaking, I think some people would care more a lot of digital media people especially. That there’s think labor stories traffic better, I think they they’re more interesting angle. But again, the sort of main line sports coverage. Your Football you know, your broadcast, your pregame show. You know, one of the things I think that has made the whole like play the game the right way bootstrap idiot, you know, kind of mythology, which was starting to erode it a little bit or on the margins. Is the proliferation of of these degenerate gambling apps. You know, it’s it’s it’s hard for it’s hard for Bob Costas you know, not not that he was really guilty of this I would say more like a Chris Collins worth to talk about the the right way to play the game. And then two minutes later, like, you know, the over under and how many sacks you know. You know, Josh Allen’s gonna get a three and a half, it’s like there’s it’s the dissidence is too great. People see, know that it’s this purely predatory business. So when they try to lean on the romance, especially baseball, you know, like they’re in During the ALCS when Bob Costas was given, like, I think he was doing the Charlie Morton over under on how many strikeouts or something. Like Bob Costas, this is so like beneath you, why are you doing this?
ALEX: Yeah.
ADAM: And then like the next literally like with two seconds later, they’re doing this romantic kind of glossy, sepia-toned montage about the history of this or that. And I’m like, it sort of takes away from that. And so I think when you when everything becomes purely commoditized, and the most degenerate most kind of essentialist way, which is what these gambling apps have done. I think when you sort of erode that romance, in in in a bizarre way, it kind of erodes the the the some of the foundations of this kind of racial disciplining system. Not not that I’m saying that gambling apps are practices, I I I think they’re horrible. But I think the proliferation of them is is is that I think the the effects of that we’ll be seeing that 10 years from now, I think we’ll look at it like look at the opioid crisis.
BOBBY: Don’t don’t put in the newspapers that I said gambling apps are practice.
ADAM: Yeah, well, no, what my point is, like, they’re they’re so fucking greedy, that, like, they’re beginning to erode at their own kind of moral mythology.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah.
ADAM: Because they just can’t, they can’t lay off the money. I mean, it’s just fucking money sitting on the table. And you have the biggest gambling companies are right now are Disney and, and, and obviously, Newscorp not that they ever gave a shit. And, and MLB Baseball, it’s just making him you know, making so much money off the ship. And so I you know, so when they try to lean into the kind of play the game the right way shit, which is essential to I think, especially in Baseball, this this, this two tiered, really kind of three tiered system of of of just poverty wages, it it it, I think people may intuitively begin to see that as being a bit incoherent. Like, you know what I mean? It’s it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s so it’s hard to, it’s hard to not do something, it’s just pure mercenary business, when you’re giving odds on how many, you know how many stolen bases. The Second Baseman will have, it doesn’t quite have the romance.
BOBBY: I want to talk about Minor Leaguers in just a second. But really quickly before I want to, you know, sort of paint a picture of how things have changed since the last labor stoppage in Baseball. 1994-1995, it was a lot of from a media perspective, a lot of columnists sharing their opinions on how this was bad for the game, the players and the owners and which side you fall on. You know, we, if you matter which side you fall on, this is bad for the sport because fans don’t get to watch baseball for a year and it will kill it in the long run if we keep having fights like this. So we’ve already put this sort of tag on labor fights as this bad thing rather than a necessary thing to come to an agreement, right? But now we’re 20 years removed from that we have way fewer columnists for different factors. And we have a lot of fans who end up sharing a similar sentiment, or we have like radio hosts like the Mike Greenberg that you’re talking about. Who you know, what you will often hear the line. This is bad for the sport, I don’t care which side wins just figure it out because of fans.
ADAM: Yeah they looked bad, it’s so bad, it’s so bad. It’s the it’s the white guy at the bar is like I’m not right or left, I’m just shooting down mi–
BOBBY: Yes.
ADAM: –it’s sort of thing you say that–
BOBBY: That’s exactly what it is. But I’m wondering why like that old idea which you can see how sports runners would come to that conclusion because they don’t see old columnists who are sitting there in front of their computer, don’t see themselves in players certainly. They see themselves much more closer to owners because they have a much closer lived experience than the superstar successful athlete. But now, it just seems like fans have picked up the mantle and run with that same idea of. What happened in the interim between then that we’re sort of missing that connecting link between this idea and us being able to report something different than that?
ADAM: Well, I mean, because a lot of the people commentating themselves aren’t, are not in unions. They’re temporar–you know, they’re either the elites making $5 million a year to fill up five hours of radio talking about, I don’t know how they do that. That’s like the hardest job in the world actually. They should they should make millions of dollars doing that. But look, I mean, the way one of the ways I think you climb up the ladder is by playing the game of of labor bashing, you do it sort of quietly, do it subtly. There’s a couple guys in ESPN, whose name I can’t remember. But you know, he’s just every little, every little minor interaction. And again, it’s because I’m hyper paranoid and do this for a living. But you can see the way they take potshots at labor all the time. And you can tell who the kind of pro labor guys and anti labor guys are. And I don’t want to be, I don’t want to be raised essentialist on this because I do think that it’s not this clean and neat, but it’s mostly well, it’s mostly the white guys. Are like, you know, and obviously towards the end of the spectrum you have like Tim Tebow. You can’t go five minutes talking about why college players shouldn’t get paid and I want to use authority did for the flag and did it the right way. But there’s there’s just there’s a tremendous incentive to be enforced this to either not talk about it or To reinforce anti labor assumptions about, you know, how we shouldn’t do this for the money, and it’s like, What the fuck are we doing?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ADAM: This is a multi-billion dollar business, you know, doing it for the money? Like, look, it’s never all it’s ever only about the money, you cannot achieve any level of success, I think, than anything, except for maybe like, commodities trading or investment banking. But most jobs are you do it, there’s always like 20%, where it’s not about the money. But it’s mostly about none. Because it’s a huge, multi-billion dollar industry. So, you know, there’s just so much money to be had, you know, again, especially with the huge rise of of other forms of revenue, like gambling. You know, what if the Union wants a piece of that action? What if they thought, look, I’m going to be a chip on some roulette table. I wanna, I wanna I want to get in on that.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ADAM: I mean, there’s all kinds of slippery slopes they don’t want to they don’t want to give labor into and these these handful immediate corporations just make so much so much money at this. I mean, I remember, in 2020, when there was debates around bringing back sports. And it was very, very clear that ESPN had a very specific line, which is it’s time to bring back sports. And that makes sense, because ESPN was losing revenue. I mean, an ungodly amount of revenue every day without having any sports. There was only so much time that Steven Naismith can speculate on the real estate prospects at Tom Brady in Florida, which is while they were talking about. Remember that in April of 2020?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ADAM: Because yeah it it it we’re doing nothing but tea leaf reading about where Tom Brady was gonna go? Because there was no–
BOBBY: Renting Derek Jeter’s house.
ADAM: Yeah.
BOBBY: Looking for a new property.
ADAM: Maybe did a segment on like, how they were how South Korean Baseball was about the star. I mean, they were desperate for content, as as as I was, so I was watching it. And that’s how I knew this. And there was a very clear line that we were just going to rush back, we were going to play a meeting, give a fuck about the players, or the health of the players, or any of that shit. It was just they they they were they they they this is a again, this is a beast. This is a multi multi-billion dollar corporation who has one goal, which is to accumulate and collect more capital. And so the the the they labor aspect, I, you know, wasn’t really even brought up, I don’t think. I mean, maybe again, around the margins, I think, from some x players who have sympathies with the unions, because they used to be in it. But outside of that the kind of bearded you know, white guy barstool type, they don’t give a shit.
BOBBY: Yeah, I mean, it did come up a lot with regards to Baseball coming back specifically, because only in the context of the sense that a labor disagreement was the reason–
ADAM: Right.
BOBBY: –that it might not–
ADAM: Was the reason–
BOBBY: –and it was like their–
ADAM: –labor disagreement [1:02:35]–
BOBBY: They’re dropping the ball like this is this is what baseball always does, it’s always ruins its chance to be to gain another portion of American consciousness back. Because they just can’t agree over the money of things. And it’s like, it’s just so frustrating, because there’s no interrogation of why they can’t agree. Like the players–
ADAM: [1:02:53]
BOBBY: –are saying, and but that’s what I was–
ADAM: Yeah.
BOBBY: –alluding to earlier, the players are saying we want to come back and play. But the owners are the ones putting up this roadblock. And I do think that there was some a little bit of a prospective flip at the time. But it does seem a little bit like we’ve lost that now. And we’re back to sort of that both sidesism, that characterizes every labor stoppage in sports.
ADAM: The owners in in the media in the corporate media have an incentive, they they don’t lose if the labor things go on that long. Because typically, I think–
BOBBY: [1:03:18]
ADAM: –correctly. Well, well, no, they think, well, that’s yes. But also they know, that generally, the public will blame players. Because they’ve been conditioned to do that. I know, that’s not always the case. But I think they know that that time is kind of on their side and they know that. And, you know, players and and pro union labor outlets, maybe could do a better job trying to get ahead of it. I don’t know, maybe that’s something on and on some of the maybe we need more, you know, sports articles, and in these times and in the nation. I don’t know. Not that anyone, you know, those aren’t like Blockbuster outlets not gonna matter that much. But but, you know, I think in a sense, they, they they know that because the sympathies are hard to are hard to get on your side when everyone assumes that everybody’s a multimillionaire. And I think that basic assumption people have that every baseball player how. I mean, when you tell people what the average Minor League player makes, they don’t believe you.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ADAM: They they don’t believe you. They they think you’re lying. I found out I found out my my cousin played briefly in independent ball. So he’s like my personal hero. And he told me what he made is making $250 a week. And I was like, that can’t be right. Like, people don’t believe you–
ALEX: Do you drop to zero in that tax like–
ADAM: Yeah, people don’t believe it. Again, you people, even just a Minor League Baseball player, much less Major League Baseball–
ALEX: Yeah.
ADAM: –players, again, who make money for a very finite amount of time for a very finite amount of reason. And I think once until you sort of convey the the the, when you you properly calibrate how much these numbers mean, versus the people in capital. It’s hard to really kind of flip the sympathy. I think that’s kind of the big barrier, pro labor people on the left, and obviously you all do for a living. I think that’s a big barrier from my from my perspective. Like if I went out and the speak right now and I’m talking to 20 people and said, like, how much do you think a professional baseball player makes? You know, I like that, I would probably get absurd numbers. I think people generally think they’re richer than they are. And I think that’s, that’s a product of how it’s covered. The media covers these blockbuster contracts, it puts them over like 40 years bans. We all laugh about Bobby Bonilla Day, ball for me fucking Bobby Bonilla Day, there’s a million other days where some fucking die blew out his knee has to fucking work at Autozone. So like, fuck you, I don’t think the left Bobby we need to make as much money as [1:05:35] from those assets. So I think that’s I think, I I think that’s the fundamental problems in terms of getting the public to be sympathetic. And I think there are pockets where people become more sympathetic. Because I don’t think people are per se sympathetic to the owners. But the owners are these faceless. These faceless entities. They don’t. I mean, like, I remember when Kevin Durant went to Golden State, there was this or they’re, Oh he’s he’s title chasing, he sold out the people of Oklahoma. And like, the the people Oklahoma, their fucking owner just moved in from Seattle five minutes ago. Do you think–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ADAM: –that the owner of Oklahoma gives a fuck about Oklahoma?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah.
ADAM: Like they were they just tore the hearts out of the entire city of Seattle. I mean, it devastated that city. And basically, no one blamed the owner or maybe they did around the mark they did in Seattle, but not outside of that. And then Kevin Durant was you know, quote unquote, “title chasers” and he’s like this the evil demonic person for fucking two years, you know.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ADAM: We because they’re, he’s a celebrity. And these faceless owners are not celebrities. So there’s nowhere to it it it it. I I think in Political Psychology, it’s called the [1:06:39] it the Emmanuel Goldstein, it’s from 1984. An enemy needs a face.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ADAM: In 1984, they give a face to this mysterious entity or may or may not be real, maybe not existing, maybe an actor. This was paired in Iron Man 3, but like, there’s no there’s no face to like these, the owners, there there may be an exception of like, you know, Mark Cuban or Steve Ballmer, but like. And so I think that makes it harder for people to really marshal outrage or populist outrage. Like, you know, go across the street to your to your sports bar right now. And go startup, go start a conversation with, you know, whoever’s in there. You you’ll be hard pressed to find any of them who can either name who can name the owner or give a shit about the owner. And if you get into the weeds about why a team’s not good, or why a team doesn’t have the revenue, they’ll just blame the players. I mean, that’s just the way it is.
BOBBY: Yeah. And I think that people think of owners as a necessary evil, but like really the first step to having a conversation like this, or like, flipping any sort of sympathy is just to take the necessary off of that. Because they’re not–
ADAM: Right.
BOBBY: –really necessary. Alex, you wanna ask about Minor Leaguer before we get out here?
ALEX: Yeah, before we get out of here. And Adam, you’ve been incredibly generous with your time. So we want to be respectful of that. But I did, you–
ADAM: Go ahead.
ALEX: –mentioned Minor Leaguers. And I wanted to kind of dig into that a little bit deeper. Because it does feel like this kind of inflection point in labor in Baseball right now. Where there actually is this coalescing organized movement in favor of Minor Leaguers do to kind of some disparate groups that are doing their own forms of organizing and various kind of parts of the sport. There’s kind of a growing fan sentiment that hey, maybe Minor Leaguers should be better taken care of it, it you know, the groundswell of support led to Major League Baseball, unilaterally guaranteeing housing for Minor Leaguers, Which I mean, cynically is just a, you know, a way to kind of placate them in case they ever tried–
ADAM: Right.
ALEX: –to push for a union. But, you know, in the last couple years, there has been this kind of groundswell of support. I think, in large part due to the fact that the conditions that they’ve been playing in have been exposed, right? That they actually are–
ADAM: Yeah, there’s more–
ALEX: –in a sense, kind of living in squalor. I’m curious, you know, how you think media can play a role in advancing that fight, or at least exposing that, you you know, the, the playing field on which a a group of workers like Minor Leaguers are playing and, and maybe how, how more broadly speaking, you know, media can not necessarily play the part of being pro owner, you know, can actually–
ADAM: I think it’s about how you contextualize it. Like, again, focus no, stop focusing on these big gaudy 120 $15 million contracts. They don’t because they always say them with the implication that they’re being overpaid, right? And this whole millionaires versus billionaires, if I made $1, every second, I would be a millionaire in 12 days. If I made $1 every second, I would be a billionaire in 31 years. So when Mike Greenberg says, well, billionaires first millionaires, there’s a huge fucking difference between 12 days and 30 years to say nothing the fact, these are mostly multimillionaires. So it’s really like 150-230 you know, somewhat years. So, again, I think this this terminology, millions billion. I think there’s a huge power difference there that gets obscured by the fact that most people don’t actually know the difference between a million and a billion dollars. They don’t know the difference between a half a million dollar salary. And they don’t understand the difference between annual salary and a lifetime salary. And I think one of the things that reporters should do a much better job at conveying mistakes is to talk about the lack of guaranteed contracts. Talk about how people have to how players to eat shit for years but they even make any money at all. So I remember when Yermin Mercedes came up to the White Sox, he was one of the oldest players ever to be a rookie at this fantastic. You know, first two months, he was 28 years old, which means even making dogshit for you know, in the Minor League system for the White Sox for years. He finally gets this big break. He’s trying to basically, he’s playing to get a contract. So he’s, and he he hits a home, he hits a home run when the White Sox are up nine runs, and he gets dressed down in the media by Tony La Russa. And I’m sitting there losing my fucking mind. I’m like, This guy’s got like, he’s from the poorest fucking country. And one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere is from the Dominican Republic. He’s trying to feed God knows how many fucking people. He’s trying, he’s been eating shit in the Minor Leagues for years, okay, making making dogshit living on probably on loans or some form of baby some signing bonus he got when he was 12 or whatever. Like, and in this whole, but the whole time this is discussed, right? The whole time Yermin Mercedes has been discussing, unfortunately, eventually went out Minor League. This whole this whole back and forth between it’s all personality and Tony [1:11:24]. And, you know, Tim Anderson chimed in, it’s like, can someone for the love of fucking God mentioned that this guy’s pain is playing to feed his fucking family. But he’s making $25,000 a years for his for 10 years. And he’s trying to we just got a, you know, a bumped up to half a million, but you know that that won’t last long. Like, can we please get some context of the power dynamics here. And there’s no sense that that fundamentally, when you’re talking about players performances you’re playing, you’re talking about whether or not that it is this. That these are fun that this is about people’s lives, this is about whether or not they can feed their families, whether or not they can buy diapers, like I know that sounds dramatic. But for a lot of these players, these bubble players, especially in the NFL, and in in MLB, it is, and they’re not going to make money past the age of 40. You know, they can’t do this till they’re 70 or 65. So what I would say is like a contextualize the actual power dynamic that billionaires and millionaires is not a meaningful statement any more than 100 [1:12:16] and billionaires a meaningful statement. And talk about when there is these disputes between management, which are coaches and players that we put some, we put some context into the power asymmetry here. That a lot of these players, especially in Baseball are from poor countries, very, very, very poor countries, they’re taking care of a lot of people, they have a lot of they have a lot riding on them. And that maybe we shouldn’t just treat it as some like, you know, laughable kind of funny little story. But these are real estates with real people who come from very poor countries [1:12:45], they come from very poor neighborhoods. Very some oftentimes very poor parts of Eastern Europe, like let’s have a let’s let’s put some, let’s put a human face in some context to the power dynamic. Instead of just treating it like it’s a with some equal playing field, because it’s just, it’s just not outside of like the maybe the most high sky high LeBron James, Patrick Mahomes contracts. Outside of that, these are massive power differences, and they’re just not treated as such.
BOBBY: Yeah, I think, you know, with specific regards to the Minor Leagues, because we talked about this so often. I I I think that just the argument is this is what, when you’re talking about CBA negotiations, the argument is, the owners would do exactly what they’re doing to the Minor Leaguers to the Major Leaguers also, if they did not–
ADAM: Yeah.
BOBBY: –have a union, you know. And it’s like, people start to pull that thread, people in media start to pull that thread people have been reporters for a really long time who never had to think about the Minor Leaguers. Because it wasn’t a topic of conversation or Minor Leaguers. were too afraid to tell their own story, the way that guys like Kieran Lovegrove have told it in the last year or so. And places like ESPN weren’t bothering talking about Minor Leaguers in any other way than this sort of American–
ADAM: Right.
BOBBY: –dream ideology.
ADAM: Yeah.
BOBBY: I think that people start to pull that thread in for the first time. They realize the power dynamic that you’re talking about. And then what mostly happens in media is shrugging. Like they’re like, well, that’s the power dynamic. We’re not going to get billionaires out of the sport. And so they don’t bother really doing [1:14:08]–
ADAM: Because the asshole who struggle to get promoted, the assholes who struggle get promoted. Can you even imagining like a low level dispute analysis and bringing up anything with anything involving labor? Unless you were a very famous X player, you would be you would be shipped down to fucking scrubbing toilets in Bristol, Connecticut, five minutes. I mean, you just do no way you’re gonna succeed ever bring up anything with labor. You’ll get really branded a malcontent. And yes, you’re fucking out. I mean, that’s just the way it is.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Bleak, bleak place to end. But it it is it is true, and it’s why we have these conversations. That’s why we wanted to talk to you about a lot of these contexts and as you see them in the wider sports industry, specifically, Adam, do you want to plug anything specifically? Any places that people can find your work and your other podcast stuff?
ADAM: But we just have The Citations Needed by guests which you can find your finer podcast stores everywhere. And I have I have a substack, the column.substack.com, where I write two or three times a week. Where I tried to do we do media criticism, political analysis, with contributions from Sarah Lazar, who is, incidentally my wife. Ahh, and that’s pretty much it.
ALEX: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us, Adam.
ADAM: Thanks y’all for having me a lot. I I love this topic. I look forward to listening to it and listen, listen to your show. Thank you so much.
[1:15:27]
[Transition Music]
BOBBY: Okay, thank you, Adam Johnson. Of course, check out Citations Needed. If you’re not a listener, I love that podcast, check out Horse. Check out Working People. Check your–
ALEX: Check out Tipping Pitches, run it back.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Just hit the, hit the restart button.
BOBBY: Once you finish this one, start from our first episode, and then make it all the way back to this one before next week’s episode.
ALEX: Yes, sure. There there are dedicated listeners who would do that.
BOBBY: And we love them very, very much. I’m excited about the next month or so of episodes. We have some cool guests coming up some cool ideas in the pipeline that I will not tease too specifically because things can always change. But what better time to tell someone about Tipping Pitches than now during the lockout. During a work stoppage, where we get to do a bunch of fun stuff and also yell about labor.
ALEX: Yeah, and this say hot off the presses here from Evan Drellich 31 minutes ago. The MLB in the MLBPA are unlikely to talk core economics until January. So folks, strap in because you’ve got some time to to to consume some podcasts.
BOBBY: Thank you for consuming this one. We will be bringing you another one to consume in one week’s time.
[1:16:48]
[Music]
[1:16:58]
[Outro]
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: Hello everybody, I’m Alex Rodriguez, Tipping Pitches, Tipping Pitches. This is the one that I love the most Tipping Pitches. So we’ll see you next week. See ya.
Transcriptionist: Vernon Bryann Casil
Editor: Krizia Marrie Casil
Tipping Pitches 
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