To ring in the New Year, Bobby and Alex bring back Michael Baumann, staff writer at The Ringer, for their third annual State of Labor in Baseball, where they survey baseball’s current labor landscape and examine the key dynamics that will define the sport’s coming years. Amid the ongoing lockout, they look at whether the current stalemate tracks with where they thought things would be going, which issues are most important to the current fight, the position the players find themselves in and how it differs from past CBA negotiations, how the plight of amateur and minor league players plays into the ongoing tug-of-war (or doesn’t), whether this current pace of exploitation is sustainable for the sport, and much more.
Follow Michael on Twitter at @MichaelBaumann.
Links:
Songs featured in this episode:
Clarence Carter — “Slip Away” • 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: Hello, Alex. Happy 2022.
ALEX: Hi, Bobby. It’s good to be back.
BOBBY: Are you, are you feeling optimistic about Baseball in 2022?
ALEX: Uhh.. I–
BOBBY: Like, in any way, like, not even in an existential way. Are you optimistic about the A’s? [00:47]–
ALEX: [00:47]. A’s it’s like, I like weirdly I’m, it’s never a good time what I’m more optimistic about the health of the sport than I am–
BOBBY: A’s [0:59]–
ALEX: –as my favorite team.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Because I’m not that optimistic about the health of the sport, I think that we’re we’ll have a majority of a normal season, that maybe like, you know, we might have some weird spring training, like an abbreviated spring training or something like that, and maybe miss a couple of weeks. The A’s may not play at all, or at least may not be worth it.
BOBBY: It might be better clear. They don’t play.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah, it’s not great. I’m really optimistic about the Mets in 2022.
ALEX: As you should be–
BOBBY: –you know, when the clock struck midnight on the East Coast, I was on the phone with my my family. And I said 2022 this year that the Mets won the World Series, that’s what I say at the beginning of every year, but this year, I I started with my chest a little more.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: What do you think about that?
ALEX: Yeah, I mean, hey, I could I could see it, you squint hard enough that your eyes are closed, and you can see pretty much anything you want, right?
BOBBY: I’m glad that the the Owners imposed the lockout, not leaving it up to the players to call astray in the next season–
ALEX: I’m so glad the owner–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –imposed the lockout.
BOBBY: Yeah, not leaving it up to the players to call a strike midseason. So that I didn’t have to balance the fact that the Mets were definitely going to win the World Series this year. With the fact that we lost the season because of a player strike.
ALEX: That will be really tough–
BOBBY: [2:16] my two loves pitted against each other, you know?
ALEX: Right, right. Max Scherzer is out there, you know, agitating for a strike, and you’re like Max, buddy–
BOBBY: Get on the mound.
ALEX: Wait until November.
BOBBY: Well, we’re gonna do our third annual State of labor in Baseball. In this episode, as you could probably tell by the title with Michael Baumann, my coworker at The Ringer. Someone who has been writing and thinking and talking about labor and Baseball longer than we’ve even been doing this podcast. If you haven’t checked out the the last couple, they are our first episode of the year, every year. It might serve you as the listener if you’re a new listener, or if you just haven’t, if you hadn’t been listening yet at that point to go check those out. Because I think that it serves as a good sort of time capsule for the the way that our conversations about these things and the different factors that affect the labor landscape in Baseball have changed over the last couple years. So those are our first episodes of the year for the last few years. Alex, is there anything else that you want us to talk about before we get into that, with Baumann? I mean, I didn’t we saw today we’re recording this on Monday. Midday I saw today that there that MLB and MLBPA still have no dates for when they’re going to go bargain. So if there’s something that you want to talk about, it’s it’s not CBA negotiations, that’s for sure.
ALEX: I’m like, this is weirdly, this is the time of year when we can actually just talk about normal baseball things if we really want to because there’s nothing on the labor front that’s worth breaking down. You know, like, I don’t know, pour one out for Kyle Seager.
BOBBY: Yeah, true.
ALEX: I don’t have a lot to add to that. But I you know, being an A’s fan, I I watched him many times playing against the Mariners and boy talk talk about a gamer. Talk about a real baseball players baseball player.
BOBBY: You’re doing good, keep going.
ALEX: I don’t know what–
BOBBY: Anything else?
ALEX: are the other, what are the other [4:22]–
BOBBY: Just the guy that suited them and booted them every day.
ALEX: He left it all out on the field every–
BOBBY: He did.
ALEX: –single day.
BOBBY: And he went out on top.
ALEX: Yeah?
BOBBY: No, maybe it doesn’t apply. He he went out on his own terms.
ALEX: Yes, he did, yes. After being screwed around by the [4:41] here’s the labor take. Is It Management screwed him around? And he said you know what, I’m not I’m not waiting around for you guys. I’ve I’ve put in my time. I’ll I’ll retire, retire Mariner.
BOBBY: And now he gets to enjoy the rest of his life with all of the money that he made playing the sport of Baseball, which is cool–
ALEX: You know that Kyle Seager hit 35 home runs in 2021? I don’t know that I really did.
BOBBY: Yeah, he’s good still. He was–
ALEX: [5:06] Yeah.
BOBBY: He was like kind of the Mariners best hitter for a large part of the year. I also thought that the way that he announced his retirement was a pretty, pretty cool power move. Just having just having his wife tweet out a screenshot from the Notes app saying, that Kyle Seager’s retiring.
ALEX: Yeah, less, less year long farewell tours, more more Notes app retirements.
BOBBY: Yeah, agreed. Okay, well, let’s go to our conversation with Baumann because it is, as per usual, it is a long and winding one. But before we do that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I am Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[5:48]
[Music Theme]
BOBBY: All right. It’s the third annual State of labor in Baseball. Honestly, Michael Baumann is here. Hi, Michael Baumann.
MICHAEL: Hey.
BOBBY: It warms my heart that you and I can do something that isn’t just bicker about the Phillies and the Mets for three years concurrently.
MICHAEL: It’s, I think the time of bickering about the Phillies and the Mets is about to come to come to an end. I think the the Mets are going to assert superiority in the not too distant future barring something unexpected, like the end of the lockout, which would allow the Phillies to sign Carlos Correa. But–
BOBBY: Well, that’s a nice reverse drinks that you did there. Thanks thanks for doing that. This is the third annual State of labor in Baseball. If you’re listening to this, and you have not listened to the first two, well, they have been our first episode of the new year for the last two years where we gather around and we discuss how things feel with the two sides in Major League Baseball, and obviously this year, it’s top of mind for everybody, not just us. So I’d like to try to make this conversation something other than what even is a lockout? Or what are these two sides even disagreeing upon? But, you know, I did kind of let’s start with the fact that we’re in the midst of an active owner imposed lockout.
MICHAEL: Yeah.
BOBBY: Not to bury the lead didn’t wanna bury the lead too much. Is this going how you expected it to?
MICHAEL: I think you have to, like I have to throw everything I thought was gonna happen two years ago at the window. Because it seemed like things were following a very predictable path. And then COVID happened, which not only took a lot of money out of everybody’s pockets, and sort of shifted the dynamics in unpredictable ways. But it also served as a dress [7:39] for with the negotiations to get the league back on the field last summer. Which were stupid and contentious says many labor management negotiations tend to be ultimately self defeating. And and, you know, I think the Owners left a lot of money on the table for themselves out of spite, but that’s how these things go. So yeah, if you want to go back to like, maybe this time last year is too far in the past. But what I thought was gonna happen six months ago. Yeah, this is exactly what what I thought was gonna happen. Like there was there were headlines today that the union in the league had not met, did and didn’t have any bargaining dates scheduled like, yeah. I mean, there’s no reason for them to until there’s a threat of, you you know, they’ve got their, their philosophical positions, their economic positions, or rhetorical positions, and they need some kind of external stimulus to move the needle. And until that happens, all that’s going to happen, I think, like I saw this summarized on MLB, trade rumors or something, it was, you know, they need a deadline to, to get something going. And yeah, that’s exactly what what’s going to happen. So I would be shocked if we see movement. In the next six weeks, frankly, it’s going to take last spring training games at the very least. And then once the ball does get rolling, I think it will move fairly quickly.
ALEX: Why call a lockout? Like that might seem like a a relatively straightforward question, right? But like this lockout has–
MICHAEL: Yeah.
ALEX: –been imposed, obviously, everything is ground to a halt, as you’ve just alluded to, we’ve seen very little movement on the negotiation front in the past few weeks, and it doesn’t seem like that’s going to change. Can you illuminate a little bit like what the strategic move is there? And like what the what the difference would be if say, Manfred decided not to and they just said, “Well we’ll operate under the the the CBA as it exists right now until we can negotiate a new one.” Obviously, we’ve talked about why they’re not going to play under an old an expired CBA because Owners don’t want to give up the prospect of a strike. But can you can you eliminate that a little bit?
MICHAEL: Yeah, I think that’s what it boils down to. It’s if you look at the history of of gains by the the MLBPA, whether it’s 94, whether it’s 81, or, you know, dating back to I guess free agency wasn’t proximately caused by by the threat of a strike. But the the way the players gain leverage is choosing the timing of the strike. So like the CBA has a no strike, no no lockout clause. And once that expires, either side can stop work whenever they see fit, if they can get a consensus among themselves. So by locking the players out, first, the Owners are taking the hammer away from the players saying, you know, get rid of draft compensation. Or move, you know, give us free agency, your earlier will go on strike the night before opening day. Or we’ll go on strike the night before the All-Star game or the night before, you know the start of the playoffs, which is something that like they really have ownership under or over a barrel at that point. So it’s just about maintaining control. You know, I the line that we saw from from Rob Manfred, that night that it started about how his like, the players forced them to do it, that’s total horseshit. But also, it makes, and it is an escalation. But it it makes strategic sense. I don’t think it’s like the equivalent of you know, of sucker punching somebody. I I, this is just how this game was always gonna get played out. And so yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s just one more thing that the Owners can do to to maintain control of the situation.
BOBBY: Since we don’t know that much about negotiations, which aren’t even happening, there’s not that much to know.
MICHAEL: Yeah.
BOBBY: I don’t want to spend too much time in this conversation, which is, you know, typically more of a general look at the Labor landscape. Talking about the current lockout, although, of course, it’s an important element of this. Alex and I got a question last week in a mailbag, from a listener, about basically asking if you were the union, what’s the one thing that you absolutely must have from these negotiations? And–
MICHAEL: Yeah.
BOBBY: –what is the one thing that you’re willing to concede to get that? Like, you’re not not that you want to give up this thing. But obviously, to get something you got to give something, that’s the way these things work. Now, my answer to this Baumann, you’ll appreciate was, well, I’m not part of the MLBPA Executive Subcommittee.
MICHAEL: Right.
BOBBY: So I don’t know what–
MICHAEL: Okay.
BOBBY: –my constituency wants. So it’s hard for me to really answer this question, because I don’t know what they’re really willing to fight for, as an entire unit, because they don’t really message anything, all that effectively as a Union. But given all of that, that has already been said on this podcast, what is the one must have if you were the union for you? And what would you give up to get it?
MICHAEL: I’ve got to have something that tilts the whether that’s a change to to the free agency timeline, like, you know, what, what the league actually proposed tying free agency to age, I think that’s the way to go. That’s the way to get players paid earlier. And like the NHL model of all things, I think, would be perfect for Baseball. The problem is Owners want to be Owners proposal was, it was 29 and a half, I think was, was where that where that started the NHL, the the free agents cut off, it’s 27. Unless there, there are other circumstances where it could be a little earlier. And getting, you know, getting that timeline move forward. Because the whole thing that like, the whole free agency system was set up for players to prove themselves in their 20s and get paid in their 30s. And that’s the way it worked until about 10 years ago. And that’s when Owners realize suppliers can be more productive younger and they can find these little loopholes, you know, operate the system. I’m not gonna say in bad faith, because people have been thrown out around on Twitter and it makes me want to, like, chop off fingers. Like there’s a technical definition for that. And just because someone’s being an asshole doesn’t mean they’re legally operating in bad faith. But they’re finding loopholes and they’re, they’re pulling at these little threads and nickel and diming the players to the point where where they realize they can just suppress salaries or use the the threat of of leveraging suppress salaries throughout their 20s, during player’s most productive years to keep costs down. And then just not fulfill that second half of the bargain where players get their big free agency payout and in their 30s. That you know that’s not going to hurt the the Bryce Harper’s and Carlos Correa and Mike Trout, those guys are always going to get paid. But it’s the middle class of players who are you know, maybe get non tendered once or they bounced around from team to team in their 20s but are still 10 year productive big leaguers. But are still playing for the MLB equivalent of paycheck to paycheck. And so like you’ve got to find a way to get more people taken care of. And that’s like, that’s priority one and what the specific mechanic of that is, I don’t know. Like I’m not Bruce Meyer, and I’m glad I’m not him for a million reasons. But like, like, this is the toughest part of that job is finding out a way to get something that not only makes like sense from an extra, you know, an economic equity and justice standpoint. But that you can sell your union, which is made up of more than 1000 people of dozens of different backgrounds and interests and, you know. Like we had, we had a hard enough time keeping everybody in line in our union of like a couple dozen people. Something that, that stops that, that stops the, like in service time manipulation and the capital strikes and free agency that we saw a couple years ago and teams tanking. This is all the, these are all branches from that one route that Owners discovered in the, in the early 2000s. And, you know, in the Moneyball era, and, and so finding a way to counteract that and get that pie distributed in a way that fits the, you know, fits how how players are valued, you know. And that could that might not be doable, and that, you know, might require such a structural change, that it can’t be done in one CBA. And I think that you know, that what you decide to dig your heels in for and what you decide to try to do the best you can with now and try to fix in the next CBA that’s one of the toughest, you know toughest types of decisions that that they’re going to have to make. So I you know, I don’t envy the the Executive Subcommittee in the the negotiating team for, for the position they’re in. You know, would I be willing to give up? And this is some like, this is how, you know, I’m not them, I’d be willing to give up a salary again.
BOBBY: I think yeah.
MICHAEL: Like, I’d be willing to institute a salary cap, if if it gets a salary floor, if it makes sure that every team is, you know, trying to compete on at least a medium term window. Like, you know, we all understand, I think even the union understands that sometimes you just need to tear it down and start over. But what we can’t see something like what’s happening in Baltimore, where they’ve been in like, in the absolute shitter for five years, and are farther away from competing than they were when they started. And there’s no end in sight, and it’s just okay, and they can just keep you know, cashing revenue sharing checks for, you know, for is as long as the leak continues the system. And so if, like if the cap, and here’s the other thing, like the lack of a salary cap, which has been, like, the line in the sand since, since the 80s. Like, this is what we lost the 94 World Series over, where the Owners wanted a salary cap. If if giving that like, yes, we don’t have a salary cap right now, but we have a luxury tax threshold that like the fucking Dodgers and the Yankees aren’t willing to exceed and what’s the practical difference? I guess, is my question. And so I’d be willing to sacrifice like, that ideological bastion. And I know the union is not so yeah, I guess it’s sort of a non productive answer to, to that question. But I, it’s something that that’s, that means so little beyond the just that it’s something that you can hold on to. Like, emotionally like it means so little in terms of dollars now, that, that I think you could get a lot more for it and get a lot more money in your members pockets by by giving it up.
ALEX: Do you think that there’s any fear? Because there are already debates going on about the split of of revenue that goes to Owners versus goes to players. Do you think that that that fear of that divide growing even wider is kind of what is making them hesitant? Because obviously you put I mean, you put a salary cap, and even if you put a salary floor in knowing how revenues are skyrocketing in the game, right? Or with these billion dollar TV deals that are coming in and and whatnot. Do you think that that is the cause of any sort of apprehension that it may turn out 5, 10, 15 years from now that whatever the certain salary cap is, or the salary floor is that it’s not keeping up with revenues, as we’ve seen has happened over the last two decades with salaries?
MICHAEL: Yeah, that’s gonna happen no matter what I think. You know, I’m gonna do an MLB show trope and, and go back to hockey again, just because like, this is the sport I I pay the second most attention to. But also because it’s had the most open public labor disputes over you know, over my lifetime. So we have test cases for a lot of this stuff. This was one of the big, the big talking points was or, you know, the was hockey related revenue that in the CBA each side is is allocated a percentage of hockey related revenue, and finding out what hockey related revenue is. It’s been a huge problem. And this is a huge problem in Baseball now, because like you can, like Ben wrote something a couple years ago about how like not every MLB team is showing a profit and like, you know, had had documents and like, you can make those documents say anything. Yeah, there was–
BOBBY: Yeah.
MICHAEL: –one of the Rob’s at BP. I think it was Rob Baines did it. breakdown of like, how–
BOBBY: One of the Rob’s.
MICHAEL: –one of the Rob’s. They’ve got so many Rob’s and they’re all smart, and they’re all wonderful. But he did a breakdown during the I think it was during the negotiations last year over the restart over what MLB teams show his losses, or, you know, what they, how, you know, how they they massage the the books, to, to make it look like they’re not clearing hundreds of millions of dollars a year in, in, in–
BOBBY: In pure profit profits.
MICHAEL: –profits, yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah.
MICHAEL: And he’s like, this is just not how it works at like any, in any other industry in, in North America. Like this is just not how you do the books. And so, you know, if they’re not lying outright, like they’re definitely occluding the truth intentionally, like if we want to parse that. So it it it doesn’t even have to be that clever, like, you know, what you write off through, you know, amortization or something like that. It doesn’t have to be that, that manue like, it’s, well, are the Cubs distinct for Marquee Network, is the business? Are they distinct from the gentrification of Chicago that has turned into the the Ricketts families, you know, major, you know, major projects since they won the World Series. You know, are the Cubs distinct from the Nebraska Republican Party? Like this is all one big pot that’s being you know, being sloshed around. And the money’s getting moved to one place or another. And if it’s all internal, there’s, you know, limited, a limited insight or, you know, limited transparency over like, you know, how much the Cubs are making and how much the Cubs rise in value impacts Marquee Network, or the the real estate developments, you know, in Wrigleyville, and stuff like that. And so pinning that down, and even for a publicly traded company, like Liberty, which owns the Atlanta Braves in which is it has built like, like a Chinese style Plant City in the middle of Cobb County, and what was the woods 10 years ago. Like that’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars and wouldn’t be there if not for the Braves, if not for the half billion dollars in in, in grants and tax racing they got from the county there. So you know, what is all this worth? How much money are they actually actually actually making? It’s, it’s a huge accounting problem. And it’s far beyond my scope of expertise. But it’s all it’s also what makes it hard to say, what is if you say 50% is fair, which I don’t. I think 100% is fair for the players, because labor is entitled to all it creates. But I understand that that’s not a popular position, certainly within the offices of Major League Baseball. But if you say that [22:42]–
BOBBY: Or maybe even within the players union, like, I don’t know.
MICHAEL: Yeah.
BOBBY: Within the 1200 people that make up the player [22:49]–
MICHAEL: It is interesting, like, you’ll see people coming out with like, absolutely deranged, right wing political opinions within the, within the players union. While also being like staunch union guys, it’s like, it’s very interesting–
BOBBY: Yeah.
MICHAEL: –to see the complexities of political intersection within this industry. But anyway, it’s, uhm, so if you say 50, if you say 50% is fair finding out what 50% is–
BOBBY: Yeah,
MICHAEL: –is like a colossal problem. Because there are multiple right answers, depending on how you account for it. And there are also multiple wrong answers that you could credibly pass off as a right answer, if you have good enough accountants. And this is something where the vast resources of of capital [23:36] allow it to to win out. And so you know, it’s just another way in which the the union is fighting an uphill battle. It also complicates my position saying, which is that maybe if you can, depending on what you can get maybe a salary cap system is the is the way to go? Because that’s tied to revenue. And if you can’t find a satisfactory answer for revenue, if you’re going to get lied to about what revenue is, then the salary cap, it’s no good. So yeah, it’s like I said, I don’t envy, I don’t envy Bruce Meyer and the rest of the bargaining team. They’ve got a tough job.
BOBBY: Well, we got we got a question from one of our listeners, John, asking, How good is labor’s current picture of Owner all of of ownerships overall revenue? And the answer is not very good. And I mean, I don’t know how good their picture is versus the public’s picture. But because of what you’re describing, like, because of the accounting tricks you can pull, because of amortization, because the owners are able to credibly cry pour to the public all of the time and reasonably show losses year over year. Like the answer to that question is, it’s not a very accurate picture. So they’re not even trying to institute a salary cap and argue for 50% of that. Because, you know, if you look to the other leagues, like if you looked at the NBA, for example, they have a similar problem to what you described in hockey, where they’re arguing all the time about what is basketball related income, and how much of that are they entitled to. And I think that the MLBPA stance has been like, why would we give up the problems that we know and that we’ve negotiated on for 40 years? For different problems that we’re not sure we’re going to be able to get concessions on anyway, right? Because this came up when we were doing our CBA ABCs episode about revenue sharing, where we’re like, it’s so complicated. Like how money gets passed back and forth between teams and whether or not that actually credibly has any trickle down effect to the players themselves, or whether that just trickles down to the Owners who then use it to like, open up a sports betting partnership. I just wonder sometimes whether it’s even worth, like signing up for that battle. Do you know what I mean?
MICHAEL: Yeah. And it might not be like, it’s, it’s eminently possible I’m wrong about this. So it’s it but like, why give up this problem with to exchange it for more, you know, new more possibly more inscrutable problems? That’s, I don’t have a good answer. I just know that they’re getting screwed now. And they’re getting a lot of the drawbacks of the salary cap system without any of the benefits.
ALEX: I’m I’m curious, I mean, you have you’ve kind of referenced the the 94 strike, and some of the ways that the Owners have really kind of controlled the narrative, really, ever since then, ever since that negotiation, right? But basically, since the turn of the century, Owners have really–
MICHAEL: Hired Rob Manfred is the–
ALEX: Right. Yes, exactly. And while historically, I think the the players union has been regarded as a relatively strong sports union, I think over the last couple decades, we started to seeing that power wane a little bit. But I’m, you know, I’m wondering what you make of the the landscape, as it exists right now, politically, culturally. Do you see the players being poised, better poised to take advantage of the the position that they’re in right now? Because obviously, they are asking for a lot. They are coming off as more militant, more publicly militant than they have been in recent years. And I think you’re starting to kind of see a shift in fan sentiment, as well, on on whose fault it is the billionaires versus millionaires line is being trotted out, although maybe less so as, as it was 20 years ago. So do you, do you see this climate as being one that’s more amenable to the fight that the players are waging right now? Do you think that they’re ready to actually kind of meet this moment, so to speak?
MICHAEL: Yes, and no, I think the union is better internally prepared. I think they’re better at messaging. I think social media has a lot to do with this. I think the disgruntlement of the players over you know, it’s been, you know 26 years of labor peace has been the lin. But dir–you know–
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
MICHAEL: –how costly that piece has been a certain players has gotten them motivated for a fight. And I think there’s better class consciousness that like what I, you know, what I keep putting, you know, pushing back on you see, you know, you see story after story of like, you know, how important what a leadership role matchers are taken, for instance, or like the tradition of the importance of union leadership. Like, this is something that, that A.J. Burnett passed down to Gerritt Cole passed down to James to tie on who’s now you know, who’s now, you know, one of the senior figures in, in his clubhouse. And, you know, that oral tradition, you know, that indoctrination really is, is something that’s, that’s happened. You know, we’ve seen more player empowerment, we’ve seen players become bigger personalities, we’ve seen players take greater control of their own media narratives, through social media through, you know, other outlets that are available to them. And so that, you know, that democratization of, of I guess the bowling pulpit is the has worked in the players, has worked in the players favor, definitely. And I think that, you know, we’re still in a, a culture that is hostile to workers. That you know, I think, like a lot of the the red scare bullshit of the of the Cold War, so hold suedes like this is still traditionally are still like, compared to to the height of union power in the 20th century. This is a very anti labor culture, and it’s been indoctrinated as such, you know, that, you know, you want to talk about corporate control and media and and things like that. And so I, you know, I think broadly speaking, the billionaires versus millionaires, lines still plays. And, but at the same time, there’s a groundswell of discontent with the super wealthy, that is picked up since the the economic crash in 2007-2008. And, you know, that’s shaped the class consciousness of, you know, people of my generation, definitely, and, you know, even players, I think, to a certain extent, and, you know, who are, we’re old enough to, to have been impacted by that. And so, you know, we’ll see I think, you know, we’re seeing societally, like I’d say like a moderate, you know, small and moderate groundswell for for unionization, you know, the RE unionization of certain industries. You know, for socialist political candidates hear their, you know, here and there. But at the same time as, and this is mirrored against or, you know, reflected against a backdrop where, you know, billionaires just so obviously took trillions and trillions of dollars from from workers during the pandemic and have leveraged the pandemic and to have leveraged the pandemic into, you know, this great machine of human immiseration for profit. And that’s not going unnoticed. But what’s also happening is they’re realizing that you know, the people who are rich enough to own baseball teams, the people who are rich enough to go to space. They’ve also realized there’s nothing any of us can do about it. That, like, there is nothing that that workers, whether they’re baseball players, whether, you know, whether in any industry, there’s nothing that we have to threaten them with. So they don’t have to care that they’re unpopular.
BOBBY: So you brought up the 07-08 financial crisis as being like sort of radicalizing for your generation. I think that similarly, for Alex and I generation the, the blowing up of gig work, or like the, you know, the increase of gig work has been kind of radicalizing, like a lot of younger people who have gone into like the, gone into the professional space and like become working young working individuals. And I feel like there’s a big analog for that in baseball, where like, we’re talking more about the exploitation of the Minor League system and the exploitation of younger players, in the same way that we’re talking about how like if you’re an Uber or Lyft driver–
MICHAEL: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: –you’re like being exploited, because you’re not a full time employee who’s like getting a a reasonable wage, hourly wage and health benefits and everything like that. And, you know, I wonder, and this is a very hard question, but maybe something that we can use to pivot to like, more generally, what is the future of these labor negotiations look like with ML–with MLB and MLBPa? I wonder how much longer they can put off the big fight? Of like, tru–like blowing up the system as it structured and or like, or potentially including the Minor League players in the union or unionizing the Minor League player separately, whatever that actually looks like, on on paper. Because, you know, like this economic system, I think all three of us believe can only exist so long with this level of exploitation by the Owner class. Like it will bottom out eventually, because they will pull all of the resources out of it. And they don’t–
MICHAEL: The optimism of you trade here.
BOBBY: They don’t–
MICHAEL: I think their–
BOBBY: –care. No, no, I don’t mean that like, it’ll blow up in the workers will take back the power and it’ll just be municipally owned baseball teams. I just think it will crash and like baseball will be irrelevant, eventually. That might be like 100 years from now. But like the way that it’s currently being exploited is not sustainable forever, right? Do you agree with that sentiment?
MICHAEL: I think forever is a long time. I think that it’s so it’s so entrenched right now. Like here’s how I know that professional sports is not in North America is not a healthy system. Because we haven’t lost a Major League team si–in 40 years, like when when the Cleveland Barons folded me in the, in the NHL, that was the last time we lost a a Major League team, we you know, we haven’t lost an MLB team in more than 100 years. And so like, that’s how we know that, that they’re so insulated from the consequences of their actions. Like, you know, the Owners have taken losses here and there, but they’re making more money than ever, they have more power than since before free agency. So I I think they can continue indefinitely as long as they don’t care. If there’s so like, what can happen, right? To make, to to put that fight, actually, you know, to to bring that that decisive battle of Armageddon. It’s something that would threaten the the viability of of the league. Which I don’t, you know, if the pandemic didn’t do it.
BOBBY: Yeah.
MICHAEL: I don’t know what’s going to. Or it’s something that would turn the tide against, you know, public opinion, so ferociously against this, this poor profit ownership model. That, you know, that it forces the, the lead to capitulate, and you know, here we are, you know, waving the red flag and singing the international [34:44] still living and dying with the, you know, with the assholes who own the the Phillies and the Mets. And so it’s, that’s never going to happen. What I think could happen is they, and this is one disadvantage of the lockout. because they can’t bring in replacement labor, like they could under strike. But if there’s a, you know, if there’s a strike that that threatens the season that like imperils the league. And they break the union, like that’s, that’s the only thing I think is realistic in the, I don’t know, the next 10 years. I think that’s far more likely than, than any kind of any kind of other great realignment of power. Because they’re so protected from outside investment. There’s so so from outside competition, I say, they’re so protected from from even the moderate financial risks of of owning of, like a government protected cartel. There’s no risk, there’s no risk whatsoever to to this economic system. And so I just don’t see what the threat is to Owners that makes them reorganize. Because they’re just making reorganizing either, you know, in either direction. So I think shorter the union dissolving. I, you know, I don’t see any other way that, that we’re going to get something other than something that looks like the system we have now. And, you know, whether that’s changing the the arbitration scale or changing free agency, you know. I it’s possible, they could have a big fight, you know, we could lose half a season, we could lose all season, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t take that off the table. Because I think that those minor differences matter to the tune of billions of dollars a year for lots of people. And, you know, it’s that if that’s not worth fighting over, I don’t know what it is. So I could definitely see a big fight. But I don’t know about the big fight right now.
ALEX: Yeah, it definitely doesn’t feel like the players are radicalized enough to get there, right? You know, even we talk about, you know, the union being more militant than it has been in years. And that really means just like pushing back on Owners claims about profits.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Right? Which is like, you know, you zoom out and I’m like, wow, we still have we still got a ways to go, right? For them to really start talking about the money that’s pouring in and out of the system. And I mean, that doesn’t even you know, touch a Minor Leaguers or or like you know, college players, high school players who get drafted in and and the protections that are not afforded them, right? Like, there’s still so much outside the margins. I feel like that we’re not even close to touching right now.
MICHAEL: Yeah, as hardened as I am by Jerry Blevins’ tweets, I’m aware that they have a limited utility. So I’m, you know, I’m definitely grateful and encouraged to to see that kind of rhetoric coming from players. But I also, you know, realistic about how useful that actually is.
ALEX: I’m curious on on the point of the the draft, I mean, that is a that’s an area in which, I mean, it hasn’t really come up in negotiations at all, in part because it doesn’t benefit the players union, right? They’re not a part of the Union. So they don’t, they’re not compelled to negotiate on behalf of them. But the draft is an interesting, I feel like part of this discussion that is, is often excluded, again for the reasons that they, you know, just mentioned. But the, the draft is like the the Minor Leagues on steroids, so to speak, when it comes to this sort of exploitation, where there’s little to no negotiation that players are, are able to have and, and it’s to the point where Owners are actually interested in kind of bringing that model to the international stage, right? To to further kind of rein in some of the possible spending that’s out there. I’m curious, because I know that there are, you know, the NCAA players, and the NCAA are having their own discussions about organizing. And that’s picked up momentum in the last couple years. I’m wondering if you see any potential changes on the horizon there at all? If the if the the rule for draft is just in its current form, if it’s here to stay forever? Or if you think that this kind of growing wave of class consciousness so to speak, might tip into that arena anytime soon?
MICHAEL: Yeah, I think that’s, well, I think NIL in college is is big. And you know, there’s certain individuals have a lot of leverage in the draft and I think the very star players you know, the players who you you would expect to to actually be big leaguers with any sort of career are going to are always going to have leverage and they’re going to have more now than ever. I think with a, with a shorter draft we’re gonna see players hold out for you know, maybe play an extra year for college which for pitchers in particular is not as dangerous as it was 20 years ago. One thing that with the with the cap on on on spending, players who don’t get jerked around are players who can afford to like who who aren’t basing like their entire family’s financial welfare on this one payday. So, you know, players who come for money like Mark Chappelle, you know, didn’t sign for a dime less than what he wanted. You know, Kumar Rocker could could hold that Kris Bryant, Bryce Harper, or maybe not Bryce Harper, but like, players, players who, who either, you know, aren’t who have other options. Like, you know, Kyler Murray, the the best example of that. So, I don’t think it’s, it’s that big of a loss for Major League Baseball, if more top high school players go to go to college, and they can outsource that development risk of of the the 18 to 21 years, for instance. Now, you know, the players can maybe outside of like LSU, and Mississippi State and, and Texas A&M, there’s no, there’s no like, chance for for players to make, like real money on that out NIL stop, but they can, you know, live better than they did a few years ago. Uhm, but, you know, in terms of of structural change, you know, I think it works for for ownership. And, you know, one thing that’s important to remember is like the union can advocate for for drafted players because they’re not members. And so, it just, it speaks to the, I don’t know, I’ll go back to another hockey example, not the NHL, but when the when the US Women’s National Team held out, threatened to boycott the World Championships unless they got better funding and equal, you know, equal accommodations to, to the men. That strike works because they were on the phone to every single player that they could get to that USA Hockey to get to replace them. From, like they they whipped to the point where there was where the the governing body had no choice but to succeed, basically. Because there was no alternative labor for. You know, no, no reserve army of the unemployed, to, you know, to to use the, you know, the technical term. And so, there will always be a reserve army of the unemployed because of Minor Leaguers, because the international market which impoverishes and [42:05] players from childhood and you know, is close enough to human trafficking that if Adam LaRoche really wanted to make a difference, he’d go to the Dominican Republic with all his anti porn DVDs, instead of going on Safari, like like he decided to do. But because of that, there will always be people who–
BOBBY: Want to detour–
MICHAEL: [42:27]
BOBBY: –into just a bunch of words, I did not expect to be spoken in the podcast.
MICHAEL: Look like, this is why I come on, on this show is so I can get loose, like–
ALEX: Yeah.
MICHAEL: But because but the draft will always create to some extent that reserve army of of surplus labor to that can, you know, they can the ownership can use to to threaten, you know, use replacement players or whatever. So it’s, yeah, you know, it’s, it’s tough, because there’s nobody out there advocating for them. And it’s so much harder to like, I don’t know how you really organize, like high school and college baseball players. The way you could, you know, the the path to minorly unionization looks pretty straightforward, at least from the outside, but I don’t know–
BOBBY: Yeah.
MICHAEL: –I don’t know how you do that for the draft.
BOBBY: I I mean, it looks pretty straightforward. But so does like, climbing Mount Everest, like there is a path and it’s, I guess, straightforward, but also really fucking hard. you know.
MICHAEL: Well you know how it’s done. Like–
BOBBY: Yes.
MICHAEL: –you can there, it it has, like, there’s precedent, and there are procedures, and you know, what those procedures are, even if, even if following through on them is extremely difficult.
BOBBY: Yeah, yeah yeah, exactly. And I agree with that. I mean, I think the growing organization around Minor League Baseball, even though that is with like outside advocacy groups, slash people talking about it on podcasts. I think that is one of the more encouraging things in the baseball labor world since we started doing this State of Labor in Baseball Podcast. Like two years ago. I mean, people were mad about treatment in the Minor Leagues, but people weren’t really saying it out loud in any way that could ever lead back to any kind of change or like retribution or anything like that. And now current Minor Leaguers are going on the record like that, that sort of still is mind blowing to me. Is there something that you’re most encouraged by, Baumann? Since we started doing these podcasts in the last two years? Is there like a, a trend or like an event or a win that you can point to that you’re like, This is something that I wouldn’t have expected?
MICHAEL: Uhm, I think the most encouraging thing is NIL for college athletes. I don’t know if that’s unexpected, I think that was always that’s been coming for 10 years and it was obvious like that was just so such an obvious miscarriage of justice that that it had to get corrected and even in the society we live in. I think what you said about the the Minor League working conditions and pay is is probably my answer. I think, so I’ve got a good friend who’s not a very folksy low country, South Carolina person and a Tax Attorney. And he he said something to me about tax law that is stuck with me. He said the pigs get fat, the hogs get slaughtered. And the Save America’s Pastime Act feels like a hogs get slaughtered moment. Because this was just like they were getting away with with paying Minor League Baseball player $6,000 a year on, you know, having them work year round, and, you know, players living in their cars and putting bunk beds and closets and stuff like that. And that was all kosher, you know, in in our, you know, within the American sports watching public. And that the, the lobbying effort, that they just got a little greedy and weren’t gonna gain that much money by doing that, but I think it’s it shone a light on some of that. And, and this is, you know, this is an easy win for the labor movement. It’s such an easy case to make. And you know, it I think it illustrates to a lot of people, a lot of people think that like a ball guys make $150,000 a year. Because–
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
MICHAEL: –they assume that all pro athletes are, are compensated as well as, like, you know, LeBron James and Mike Trout, and they’re not. And I think a lot of people just genuinely weren’t aware of that. And so this has become, it’s become a case that’s very, very difficult, difficult for MLB to make. And even if there’s no like, legal remedy, you know, even if they’re not going to, even if, you know, there aren’t gonna be people with with pitchforks, you know. If the Bolsheviks aren’t going to make you pay your, pay your rookie ball team a living wage. it’s, it’s not a, it’s more trouble than it’s worth to keep having this. And so even like, the insulting frankly, measures that that MLB or the the MLB teams have done to you know, provide housing and provide modest raises and income. You know, it’s, it’s shameful, but it’s also it’s it’s life changinglly better for the people who are on the ground. You know, now–
BOBBY: Yeah,
MICHAEL: –versus three years ago, even. So, I you know, I think that, you know, if you want something to be optimistic about for the labor movement, it’s, it’s, and this is not just in Baseball, but but elsewhere. it’s like, just get these little wins at the bottom and you start to build class consciousness. You start to, to develop a little bit of, if not momentum, then at least test cases that say, “Okay, this is what’s possible”, and maybe it’s not perfect, but it’s better than it was. And you know, it’s better than it would have gotten and you start to build solidarity among the labor force and, you know, and blah, blah, blah, and, you know, seven steps later, you get the the global proletarian revolution and and so–
BOBBY: Seven easy steps you sound like an infomercial.
MICHAEL: Yes.
ALEX: It’s one trick.
MICHAEL: If I’m, if I’m going to do a grift, I guess that’s that’s probably that’s
BOBBY: That’s pretty good. Yeah, that’s pretty good. Yeah, up all the cynic in me is like they also cut 42 Minor League teams, and they’re probably actually saving money in the long run. But that’s that’s just the cynic in me.
MICHAEL: Yeah, I mean, it’s, I think Minor League, you know, Minor League Baseball is such an important thing for for grassroots growth of the game> Like–
BOBBY: Yeah.
MICHAEL: –I was 13 years old, before I went to a Major League Baseball game for the first time. But by that point, I had been to a couple dozen Minor League games, because they were more accessible and cheap. You know, my parents had three kids and money was tight sometimes. You know, even when the days of the vet like they couldn’t, you know, afford parking and hotdogs for everybody, you know, once a week. So like, I didn’t have the that traditional, like, Oh, I was always you know, sitting on my dad’s lap at a at a game for when I was three years old. Like kinda kind of upbringing and that was a huge part of my development as a young baseball fan. And you know, I imagine that goes even more for for people who didn’t grow up 15 miles from from a big league stadium. And so my hope is that that grassroots baseball if it you know, that void that gets left in terms of infrastructure in terms of desire gets, you know, gets replaced by like, would bat leagues and in Indy ball team. So you get in or, you know, where you know, where it’s available college baseball. Like so you can get like something where you can see relatively high quality baseball. And with your family for relatively little money. And you know, it’s, it’s, I’ve lived in college chance around my 20s that’s been, you know, it’s been a a huge thing is being able to find find baseball on the terms that fit the community. And so I hope that void gets filled. Because I you know, I think there really is an appetite for that. But with that said, I don’t know that we you know, I don’t know that we need as much Minor League Baseball as we’ve got. Just from if if the goal of Minor League Baseball is to service the big league rosters, I think, you know, we probably had a somewhat bloated system. So I can understand that call, from, you know, from that, you know, reason for the Minor Leagues to exist. But I also don’t think it’s the only the affiliate of Minor Leagues are not the only way to service the consumer needs of, or the cultural needs of local grassroots baseball.
ALEX: Yeah, I mean, certainly you think about Rob Manfred idea for One Baseball. And and the Minor Leagues are a huge part of that, or even not necessarily the Minor Leagues, but but Baseball in communities that is not like capital MLB, Major League Baseball, right? Like there are other avenues to that, but it seems like they’re kind of untapped resources at this point.
MICHAEL: And the thing of of the thing of one, you know, One Baseball, that’s not how it works in almost any other sport, almost anywhere else in the world. That like you have, like, I guess, like a broad community of Baseball, but, or you have the broad community of Football or Soccer, Hockey, but anywhere, anywhere, a sport is important. There are multiple levels and multiple ways to interact with it. And so I don’t think MLB should have that much power, like it it’s healthy to have a a strong independent Baseball system. It’s healthy to have a strong college baseball system, or, or an amateur league system. Or to even have, you know, a good relationship between MLB and MPB, and KBO, and the other Major Leagues elsewhere in the world. And, you know, there that’s how you get the sport to serve the community is if it’s not top down, if it’s if it’s built around and you know, built for the people who are going to the park. And I think, you know, we talked about where all this came from, in in terms of the the divorce between the financial incentive to win and the financial incentives in how and how teams actually get paid. I think a lot of that is the influence of [51:51] and streaming, broadcasting rights and the centralization of the big money. You don’t have to fill the building to turn a profit anymore. And if you don’t have–
BOBBY: Yeah.
MICHAEL: –to fill the building, then you don’t have to take consumer concerns into account. You don’t have to, you know, you don’t have to put a winning team on the field. And you know, and I’m not somebody who goes to a lot of live sports, this is not like the or if I do it’s on a you know, it’s on a press pass usually anymore. But still, like this is-
BOBBY: Another member of the press pass elite, Alex.
MICHAEL: Yeah. So it’s, it’s, you know, even if, if, if I’m not the person [52:27]–
BOBBY: Can, can understand what the working man has to fork over for a ticket and a hot dog.
MICHAEL: I understand it all too well. And because I work in media, it’s something I can indulge in as much as I’d like. But but if if you’re not responsible to the people who are in your building, we’re actually going to to your place of commerce, then who are you responsible to? You know, how are how are those consumers to use the ugly, capitalistic term? The people who actually enjoy the sport who make the sport what it is. How are they going to get their their needs heard and their needs met? And I–
ALEX: Yeah.
MICHAEL: –and I think the short answer is they’re not. And that’s what we’ve seen for the past 15 years. So I think it’s healthy for them to find, it’s healthy for for diverse baseball ecosystem, so that people who aren’t like, television executives can have a seat at the table, even if it’s not a seat at the table at the highest level.
BOBBY: Yeah, and I think that’s what I’m talking about when I say like, this level of exploitation of Baseball, as a economic system can only go on so long before you start to actually legitimately lose so many fans that it’s not as profitable for the owners as they’ve been become accustomed to. And like, at that point, they just, they want to bail, or like, they want to start selling all of their teams, and then the entire revenue income system needs to change. Because like, there’s not going to be arsons forever, there’s not going to be this big cable money forever. And they’re gonna need to figure out different ways to make that money now. The choices that they’ve made or started to indicate that they’re making is like, that’s going to become real estate, or that’s going to–
MICHAEL: Yeah.
BOBBY: –become sports betting or, like, that’s going to become a conglomerated streaming service between NBA, NHL and MLB. But I guess I’m just wondering–
MICHAEL: [54:10]
BOBBY: –no comment, I guess I’m just wondering, you know, whether that that will also have to come with a signal back to the fan who actually wants to come to the game. Like whether that will also have to come with you know, starting to spin that plate again of like actually needing to sell out the arena to make as much money as they were accustomed to. Because like I don’t know if the streaming package that they’re gonna negotiate negotiate is ever going to be good as like this golden era of TV rights has been for them. That’s there’s a lot of like unknowns that we don’t really have time to get into here. But I do think that there is like there is a path here where where they do commit more to the actual in person experience and say like, oh, there are fewer and fewer in person experiences that you can actually enjoy, why don’t we make Baseball one of them? Or why don’t we let allow Baseball to continue to be one of them and still profit off of that the same way that we always have. But I I–
MICHAEL: It’s going in the other direction.
BOBBY: Exactly, yeah.
MICHAEL: You can’t extract enough money from every one of 40,000 seats–
ALEX: Yeah.
MICHAEL: –to make up for how much you can make. You know, if you think like, like, right now the stakeholders are the RSN those that aren’t already owned by by the teams. And ESPN and Fox and Turner and like, if you think those, those stakeholders aren’t responsible, or aren’t responsive to fans. Like, wait until you see the full real estate station of Baseball. Or you know, Baseball, basically only existing so it’s something you can convince suckers to bet on. And that’s gonna be a bottomless well money. And it’s, it’s just going to dwarf like, anything that you can like any amount of peanuts and Cracker Jack that you can sell.
BOBBY: Yeah.
MICHAEL: And so, you know, does it does Major League Baseball ever get back to that? Like, barring the total collapse of that revenue stream. I don’t see a path back there. Now, does that create an opening for clever indie Balti or leagues to to pop up? Does it create an opening for you know, for college amateur teams to to market themselves more aggressively? And and maybe take up some of those last can, you know.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
MICHAEL: Family with kids so that we have people who just want to go sit outside and enjoy a nice afternoon have a beer. Like, you know, the the you know, nor God, it took me 20 seconds to come up with the name Norman Rockwell, but–
BOBBY: it is January 3rd, you know.
MICHAEL: Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s a weird time. Our brains not all functioning perfectly. Yeah.
MICHAEL: But that the time, but the place for that won’t be at the big league stadium anymore. And I don’t, I would love to be wrong about this. But honestly, a path back there.
ALEX: I mean, it certainly seems like it has to be coupled, coupled with a shift in mindset of what the purpose of Baseball. Like Baseball is not your it’s not the same experience you’re going to get when you go to a Basketball game, when you go to a Football game. And it’s, I mean, I guess Football games are not a great example. Because those are also not constant action. But I think that, you know, there’s this people go to go to a Baseball game and say, “Well, why is you know, it’s three hours long, why’s it so slow?” And there has to be I think, a mindset shift a little bit of saying, well, this is also it’s a, it’s a social, you know, form of entertainment, right? It’s not something where you’re gonna sit there and be engaged for two straight hours. But you will go and have a couple beers that hopefully don’t cost you $17 apiece and you can you know, have some halfway decent food that isn’t like, you know, pig trimmings stuffed into like a little like sheath of skin, you know. Like there’s actually like a a decent uhh, experience to be to be had there I think but that requires, I think there’s a cultural shift that has to happen as well.
MICHAEL: I think there’s a cultural shift that needs to happen for Alex with with regard–
ALEX: Hotdogs.
MICHAEL: –to pig trimmings Yeah, like I’ve had some good pig pig trimmings in my time.
ALEX: That is, that is true, yes. All I’m, I’m just asking for some quality quality.
MICHAEL: Yeah.
ALEX: Adam LaRoche. There there you go that’s his that’s his beat right now, right? Is the meat market.
MICHAEL: That’s, oh, boy. I’m not going there is looses, I’ve been willing to get on the show. But that I that speaks to how to remember last time I went to a baseball game as a fan like for the purpose of seeing the game as such. Like it was something to do while I hung out with my friends.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Right.
MICHAEL: And that’s a very different way than I consume other sports particularly other live sports. And it but that’s, but that, I think that’s the fundamental like pastoral Americana charm of Baseball is it’s it’s not always urgent, but it’s always there.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
MICHAEL: You know, and–
ALEX: Poetry.
BOBBY: This man’s a writer,
MICHAEL: So may–maybe Major League Baseball as like the primary purveyor of that maybe that the time for that has come and gone and we’re entering a gold you know, golden age of indie ball.
BOBBY: Yeah.
MICHAEL: Maybe the purpose of the game, like if the purpose of the game is to to fill any kind of social media it would be, whether that’s the constant like constant entertainment of Basketball. Or the you know, the the to crock pot comfort of, of your average Baseball game. That’s there is no social media. That is the purpose of base–of Major League Baseball right now. The purpose of Major League Baseball right now is to help increase franchise values and, and the accumulation of wealth and that’s antithetical to anything thing that we’re talking about. So–
BOBBY: It’s it’s why we talk about like, you know, we get asked a lot like what is what is or we get asked frequently enough that it’s come up many times in the podcast like what is the ideal left is future of Major League Baseball? And I’m like those those things are like oil and water kind of but if you’re actually going to [1:00:18]–
ALEX: Probably doesn’t involve Major League Baseball–
BOBBY: Yeah, it yeah.
ALEX: Yeah.
MICHAEL: I actually, I actually hate the answer this because it’s kind of an anarchist answer and I think anarchism is leftism for babies. But like, like total–
BOBBY: Wow.
MICHAEL: –decentralization.
BOBBY: Yeah, yeah.
MICHAEL: Is the, is the ideal leftist future.
BOBBY And municipal ownership of–
MICHAEL: Right.
BOBBY –these teams because that’s really the only way that we can get to what you’re talking about, right? Like last week, I talked about how I wish Major League Baseball stadiums were actually just like public parks. You know, like, like, the amount of money that gets put into a place like Central Park is not totally out of whack with how much money would have to be put into like a baseball stadium and upkeep and to put on an exhibition like that. And except the return for it is like way higher, because Major League Baseball brings in billions and billions of dollars in TV revenue, and you could presumably still sell that to ESPN if like New York city owned the Mets.
ALEX: I I hope in this in this analog scenario, I’m also able to have a picnic in left center field–
BOBBY: [1:01:19]
ALEX: –while a baseball game rages —
BOBBY: Sure.
ALEX: –is around me.
BOBBY: Sure, why not?
MICHAEL: Sure, could at the polo grounds at some point.
ALEX: Exactly.
MICHAEL: There’s a a [1:01:27] in college baseball team that that I don’t know if they still do it anymore, but like they were making the NCAA Tournament while while like setting up a temporary stadium or temporary stadium every weekend and Van Cortlandt Park in New York. And that was their their home field. And so, you know, there’s a way to do it. It doesn’t have to be that bare bones so I think back to like the early MLS, you know, the soccer specific stadiums. I love like Minute Maid Park and and in Target Field in the state of the art like retractable roof and you know, huge jumbotron stadiums, you know, with distinctive architectural features. But if you just want something that safe and clean and comfortable, you can get that for a fraction of what Major League stadiums are going for it for you. And they don’t have to be like tiny bandbox they could be 50, 60, 70,000, 1000 seats. You could build that for, you know, for what, like a quarter of what your if that of what your average stadium goes for now. And that could you know service the same product with cheaper ticket prices, cheaper concessions prices and, and make it more accessible to the community. But it’s not flashy, like we’ve got to have complexity, we’ve got to have prestige. It’s an, you know, it’s an anti–
BOBBY: Yeah.
MICHAEL: –populist movement for something that, you know, for a long time. And in many parts of the world still is an extremely popular sport. And so it’s just not the direction that, that our society is prone to take things but like, you could have a great baseball park for something suitable for Major League Baseball or AAA for like 3, $40 million, instead of 2 billion or whatever it takes to build one now. If you’re just willing to forego, like, the luxury boxes and the bells and whistles and–
BOBBY: Yeah.
MICHAEL: –and you know, make something that works and make something that’s cost effective, but that’s, you know, this is just not the way that you know, the way that things go now.
BOBBY: Yeah, because it doesn’t increase franchise values.
ALEX: Right exactly. You look at the the the ballpark they put together for the Field of Dreams game, right? Which is like not necessarily frills, left and right, right? And but you could easily easily raise those cornfields and like put a bunch of–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –bleaching, bleachers in centerfield. And like, that’s actually a a a decent looking like, ballpark that I think services the game, maybe more than than something that has, you know, blaring bells and whistles and flashing lights left and right.
BOBBY: I think the answer here is us three. After we get off this podcast, we write a plan to earn some venture capital money to make a startup baseball league where it’s not broadcast on television can’t make any money through that. It’s all about the in person experience. What do you think?
MICHAEL: I mean, there’s–
BOBBY: Baumann’s thinking it through, he’s willing.
MICHAEL: [1:04:27] shot that there has [1:04:29]–
ALEX: Yeah, he’s buying in.
MICHAEL: –some kind, there hasn’t been like a serious competitor to MLB since since integration. And I’m ju–like every other league has had somebody come for them or at least like try to force a merger partner to provide something of similar quality but with some kind of alternative viewpoint. And I guess maybe the fact that all those ventures failed is, you know, a good argument not–
BOBBY: Yeah.
MICHAEL: –not to spend $200 billion on it, but or $200 million, or whatever it would cost to to start max FL but–
BOBBY: I mean the ABA didn’t really fail, but they also had–
MICHAEL: No.
BOBBY: –like superstars, you know, like–
MICHAEL: Right, [1:05:07]
BOBBY: –they also have players–
MICHAEL: Yeah.
BOBBY: –they had, they had players willing to like make radical labor action or take radical labor actions. Even if they weren’t thinking of it as radical labor actions. It was kind of radical to like, hold out from the NBA and be like, no, fuck you, I’m going to go play for this other upstart League.
MICHAEL: So who’s our Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, I gue–guess is the–
ALEX: Julius Erving,
MICHAEL: Or Julius Erving. Yeah. Oh, yeah, he didn’t. I got I got the the story mixed up with with his meeting with I think it was the Abdul-Jabbar’s meeting with, I think it was the Nets when–
BOBBY: Yeah.
MICHAEL: –they drafted him. But–
BOBBY: Yeah, we could find I mean, there’s probably someone out there, there’s probably someone out there but then most likely, we’re just gonna end up looking like the big three.–
MICHAEL: If you’re unfamiliar with that–
BOBBY: We can start the bigger three of Baseball–
MICHAEL: If you’re a billionaire and you’re a sucker and you want to give us lots of money to try to take down MLB–
BOBBY: Famously, a lot of billionaires listen to this podcast, ahh–
MICHAEL: A lot of them are suckers out, and you know–
ALEX: Yeah, that’s true they’re–
BOBBY: They’re [1:06:01]–
ALEX: –they’re less fun ventures that you could take, right? At least this one would would get you a baseball game or two.
MICHAEL: You tell me if MLB continued to free Steve Cohen out you’re telling me he couldn’t have been talking to this.
BOBBY: I’m telling you that he could have been which is why we should stop talking about this and start writing it down. He is Michael Baumann, he is a staff, writer at The Ringer. Baumann, is there anything you want to plug or is there any other rabbit holes of rants that you want to go down similar to last year when you said that cord cutting is a scam?
MICHAEL: Am I wrong?
BOBBY: No you’re not wrong. So I’m just saying Is there anything you’d like to put on wax now as something that you’re going to be read about a year from now? Any other
MICHAEL: Electric cars are a scam.
BOBBY: Ohh, okay. Yeah.
MICHAEL: I don’t have, but you told me you have a heart out in seven minutes. So–
ALEX: That feels like that might take a little time to unpack.
BOBBY: I like to try but, yeah.
MICHAEL: You get this take on the I’m going to try to get this take on the site in 2022. So oh, it by the way, like if you did want like a how lockouts work podcast. We did one before we went on hiatus on the MLB Show.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
MICHAEL: So Zach and I went through like everything you need to know about a lockout. So I think that would make a good companion podcast to to this one on the state of labor, but a specific aspect of the state.
ALEX: Michael, thank you so much.
MICHAEL: Thank you.
[1:07:20]
[Transition Music]
BOBBY: Okay, thank you to Michael Baumann. Of course, for his contributions here to Tipping Pitches. His once a year contribution to Tipping Pitches which is always full of rants and raves. We love having Baumann on the show. Before we get out of here, I want to remind people that you can buy Tipping Pitches merch with the promo code STRIKE, that is all of our T shirts. That is our, no billionaires and baseball hat which is currently discounted as well. That is our sticker packet. It’s a lot of good merch go check it out. tiny.cc\nationalize. If you want to call into the show or write into the show, it’s tippingpitchespod@gmail.com or 785-422-5881, to have your voicemail played on the show. Alex, is there anything else that I’m forgetting that people need to know about the podcast?
ALEX: About the podcast? I’m not sure, I’m currently dumping my my stocks in Tesla and and Lucid and GM and stuff because–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –because of Michael’s insider trading advice.
BOBBY: Don’t accuse Michael of insider trading, he works for a publicly traded company. Thanks to everybody for listening. We will be back next week.
[1:08:45]
[Music]
[1:08:48]
[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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