Alex and Bobby review Taylor Swift’s NYU commencement speech and reminisce on their own graduation memories, then frame Josh Donaldson’s comment towards Tim Anderson within the broader cultural divide facing MLB, as well as try and parse through the corruption charges casting a shadow over the Angels Stadium deal in Anaheim. Then they answer some listener questions about the stigma of the the starter-to-reliever pipeline, prime real estate when going to a ballpark, which umpires are best suited to throw a game, and more.
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Songs featured in this episode:
Pleasure — “Bouncy Lady” • Pavement — “Cut Your Hair” • 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? That’s amazing! That’s remarkable.
BOBBY: Alex, we’re starting this week with a quote. Are you ready for the quote?
ALEX: Yeah, hit me with it.
BOBBY: Quote, “We are led by our gut instincts, our intuition, our desires and fears, our scars and our dreams. You will screw it up sometimes, so will I. And when I do, you will most likely read about it on the internet. Hard things will happen to us. We will recover. We will learn from it. We will grow more resilient because of it.” Alex, that quote came from none other than Taylor Swift. At the New York University graduation at Yankee Stadium last week.
ALEX: Taylor Swift, NYU commencement, Yankee Stadium, concocted in a lab to get us to talk about this on Tipping Pitches.
BOBBY: Right, exactly. It has almost nothing to do with baseball. But the people wanting to know how we felt about it. So I’ll turn it to you, did you spend all of Wednesday watching Taylor Swift’s commencement speech streamed live over the Internet?
ALEX: I think I watched the first 10 minutes. I, I quickly realized that commencement speeches are oftentimes not actually very interesting. I mean, we had Justin Trudeau so I suppose I can’t really talk.
BOBBY: A great point. Do you remember a single thing that Justin Trudeau said?
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: [1:53]
ALEX: I remember, uhh, no, I don’t. But I remember, but I remember some parents were, were just blown away.
BOBBY: Yeah, they were really into Justin.
ALEX: Yep.
BOBBY: Justin Trudeau. I don’t remember anything he said either. Presumably, like whatever the most liberal hopes and dreams bullshit that you can concoct in your head right now. It’s like a 95% chance that he said that at our commencement speech, but nothing really stands out. Weird day, it was like raining. We were late to our own graduation because of the trains. Suffice to say not as nice as a beautiful, sunny day. And Taylor Swift being a commencement speaker. We got ripped off.
ALEX: We did, we got really ripped off. And I believe that graduates going back to 2020 were allowed to attend this commencement.
BOBBY: Right, we should have failed college for two more years so that we could have attended this commencement.
ALEX I, I, a quick Google search reveals that he talked a lot about, Trudeau talked a lot about fighting our tribal mindset.
BOBBY: Ooh, oooh!
ALEX: Quite a few uses of the, the word tribe in his speech, which, if you have any working knowledge over say indigenous peoples complex relationship with Justin Trudeau–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –and, and Canada. Maybe you might take, take issue with that. He told us to get out of our bubble.
BOBBY: Oh, I remember this now. It’s all coming back to me, right?
ALEX: Yup, yup!
BOBBY: Where he was kind of like, you guys are a bunch of snowflakes.
ALEX: Yeah, exactly.
BOBBY: He is playing to the parents, for sure–
ALEX: He was kind of like nagging us, right?
BOBBY: –in our commencement speech. But this was like the peak of of 2018 echo chamber discourse.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Where every politician was like, using whatever medium they were speaking in to kind of talk at Trump.
ALEX Yeah. Right. It was like we, we must reach across the divide, right? Like, put aside our, our own.
BOBBY: How did we get here?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Where we’re so mad at–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –each other?
ALEX: Exactly, exactly. Diversity to a, to a common cause, right? That’s what we should be bringing.
BOBBY: Yeah. Him being like, life’s not going to be handed to you to a bunch of NYU grads. It’s really fucking funny, actually.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s like, good bit, Justin.
ALEX: Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s–
BOBBY: It’s like 75% of the people in the, in the stands, life was handed to them. And the person who handed it to them was also in the stands for their commencement.
ALEX Exactly. I think you could also make the case that life may have been argued to the man standing on the stage delivering that speech.
BOBBY: No, no, don’t Google Justin Trudeau dad. He definitely doesn’t have a Wikipedia page.
ALEX: Well, if you, if you Google, Justin Trudeau dad, the half of the results will, will likely be about one Pierre Trudeau. The, the, the longtime politician in Canada. The, the other half of the results will be about his actual father, which is Fidel Castro. Google, Goo- please Google, I’m not, I’m not kidding–
BOBBY: I know, I know, I know.
ALEX: It’s a real, is a real–
BOBBY: It’s a real conspiracy theory. A good one too.
ALEX: It is a good one. There’s–
BOBBY: What, what would you rate [5:09] 1 out of 10?
ALEX I’m gonna give it like a, like a 7.8, Best New Music, pretty good, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah. That’s, that’s delightful. Anything from Taylor Swift speech that you, you think speaks to what we’re trying to do here, Alex? You know, Swifties are not well.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: They’re not okay in the head. They think every time Taylor Swift says something. It’s like coded language for some album drop.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Or some drama that happened in the past or something like that. So I’m asking you to apply that mindset to our podcasts. Was there anything that she said that was sort of tipping you off that she was interested in coming on our show? Or that she was gonna make us a new theme song or anything like that?
ALEX: I mean, she–
BOBBY: Because I didn’t watch any of this–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –about Taylor.
ALEX: She did, she did say that cringe is unavoidable. Which maybe that’s the coded language that she’s coming on the show?
BOBBY: No! Come on! We’re not that cringe. We can be cringe sometimes.
ALEX She says, embrace cringe. She said, she’s pretty sure the reason she’s here, giving a speech is because she wrote a song called 22.
BOBBY: Which is a good joke, I guess?
ALEX: Because you know–
BOBBY: Because it was 2022>
ALEX: –the year 2022.
BOBBY: I don’t, maybe it was better in the context.
ALEX: Never reach.
BOBBY: Well, if someone was reading our jokes out of context, they might not be very funny. They might not, they might not even be funny in context, I don’t know. Okay, we have a, an interesting podcast ahead of us here. Excited to see how it goes. We have a bunch of listener questions at the end that we’re gonna get to. Plus Alex and I went to our first Minor League Baseball game together, ever. I don’t think we’ve ever been to one. No, you went into a Trenton-Thunder game with me, right?
ALEX Nope, that’s a, a recurring memo- memory that you’ve concocted for yourself, yeah.
BOBBY: I’m gonna say it so many times that you’re just going to start to doubt your own reality. This is like a seven year long gaslighting that I’m doing of you were like you were there.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: No, you, you were there. It was great. We had sunflower seeds. We heckled some players.
ALEX Oh, right. And the one guy was pitching.
BOBBY: Tim Tebow.
ALEX: I mean, I mean, for a an extremely long period of time you were trying to convince me to go see the, the Binghamton Rumble Ponies where Tim Tebow was famously just carving out his place in New York Mets–
BOBBY: New [7:25] so far, though, [7:27] insanely far. It’s like six and a half hours. No, I was trying to get you to come see him in Trenton, which is much closer spend 10 minutes from my childhood home.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: But I guess you’re just a coward who came and then forgot that he came–
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: –to the game. Alex and I went to our first bite of the game. We’re going to talk about that briefly. And of course, we’re gonna shout out all the new patrons. But before we do all of that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I am Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[7:54]
[Music Theme]
BOBBY: Okay, new patrons this week. Thank you very much to Jack, Samuel, Jess, Shawn, Lizzy, Megan, Stephen, and Steven. A little Stephen, Steven, back to back for you at the end there, Alex. If you haven’t been listening last couple of weeks or you don’t follow us on Twitter. You can sign up for our Patreon, patreon.com\tippingpitches. Finally getting that link right. We’ve been doing this long enough that I am now getting that link correct.
ALEX: Yes sir!
BOBBY: So it’s not tippingpitches.com\patreon. It’s patreon.com\tippingpitches, three tiers, a thank you tier, a mid market teams here and then a rod VIP club tier. All the tiers get you great stuff, including access to our Slack.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: Which is so active that Alex and I, we just can’t keep up with it. It’s just–
ALEX: Y’ll, y’all going in.
BOBBY: –everybody going so hard in the Slack and we love it. We’re happy that we don’t even need to be there to spur, debate, and discussion. Especially in our episodes discussion channel. Where people have a lot of strong feelings about our thoughts on whether certain players are cool or uncool. Thanks all those people who signed up. Alex, fresh off the heels of a beautiful, beautiful Minor League Baseball game that we attended yesterday.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: How does it feel to attend your second Minor League Baseball game with me?
ALEX Did you really never come to see the Staten Island Yankees with me?
BOBBY: No. No, I’ve never seen the Staten Island Yankees and other unaffiliated.
ALEX: And now, you never will. Yeah.
BOBBY: I never will. I hate independent baseball. It’s terrible. Must that money funnels directly to Rob Manfred salary? I refuse to watch it.
ALEX Yeah, that’s fair. It was, it was great to be back. I mean, it was a great day for baseball that, that 85 degree heat really cooled down in the, in the evening.
BOBBY: Right on the water there.
ALEX: Yes, exactly.
BOBBY: The little Atlantic Ocean.
ALEX I love the Brooklyn Cyclones ballpark set against the, the backdrop of Coney Island and its, its amusement park festivities. The game was–
BOBBY: It was a, it was a stinker.
ALEX: –it was, yeah.
BOBBY: Not the Cyclones best performance.
ALEX But you know what you don’t, as, as I remarked last night, rarely are you really ever going to witness what we might refer to as good baseball?
BOBBY: Yeah, you remarked that after they gave up five runs in the first inning, including a grand slam.
ALEX Yes. Uh-hmm. And I, I think the starting pitcher didn’t make it out of the first.
BOBBY: No, he did not.
ALEX: That’s okay. We all have misses.
BOBBY: Yeah. I, I think the first thing I said to you when we walked in was, it sort of hard to overstate how much better of an experience Minor League Baseball is than Major League Baseball?
ALEX: Yeah, like it’s kind of not close.
BOBBY: So far superior.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And it’s been a while since I’ve been through a minor league game. I did not go to a lot of minor league games, while living in Los Angeles. Which I, which I actually regret, because there’s a lot of great Minor League Baseball in Southern California. But the feeling of walking into a minor league stadium where you feel like you can, you can actually walk around the whole stadium and get a feel for, like the ragtag group of people who put on a minor league game–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –you know. The attendants who are probably all, you know, grossly underpaid, and stuff like that–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –which is terrible. But it does feel a little bit, a lot, actually, a lot more personal than going into a major league game where you just feel targeted the whole time.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like the second you get in there, like trying to pick your pocket, essentially? And it’s not like stuff is necessarily cheap at minor league games, but it’s cheaper, relatively speaking.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And you just get so much closer to the fields, so much more family friendly environment, because it’s much more affordable for those families to attend. Like, there was a bunch of kids dancing around in the aisles during the game the entire time. It’s just a lot more fun. We should, we should go to a lot more cyclins games.
ALEX: We should. Yeah. I, I think there was a question in the Slack this week. And, and I don’t remember who asked it, so apologies. But it was regarding between eating entertainment. And if, if we have favorite, favorite activities, contests, little games that are put on between innings in minor league games, which this is obviously a very popular in the, in the minor leagues. It’s, it’s always, it’s always goofy. Rarely is that ever something you actually get, get super into.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: But uhm, but Cyclones do have some, some interesting ones. I think my favorite might be the, the toilet toss, I believe as it’s affectionately called, where they just they put out a plastic toilet. And they take two kids stand them about 25 feet away say. They each get a, get a plunger and they both get one toss to see who can get it closer and or into the toilet.
BOBBY: It’s not a science, it’s an art.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: There’s no actual rules like you don’t actually have to make it into the toilet. It’s just whoever ends up closer wins.
ALEX: Yeah, but can you imagine if, if a kid did?
BOBBY: I mean, crowd go wild.
ALEX: It, yeah.
BOBBY: This feels like a nice time to plug our Unionize the Minors merchandise at the Tipping Pitches merch store, tippingpitches.myshopify.com. Or if you don’t feel like typing in all of those characters. You can just type in tiny.cc\nationalize, where you can, you can acquire a, a blue and orange Unionize the Minors shirt. We saw a few blue and orange Unionize the Minors shirts yesterday.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: As well as our other color palettes, the red one, you know? The orders are coming through still for the, the purple one. You just go there and you see whatever strikes your fancy.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: And whenever you want to buy, it doesn’t even have to be Unionize the Minors merch. But the Unionize the Minors merch, the proceeds go towards More Than Baseball. Which helps get minor leaguers stipends for housing and equipment and support their families that sort of thing. It’s been a while since we’ve done the full plug of the merch store. So I figured I would write here while we’re talking about Minor League Baseball. Any, any other, any other observations that you want to share with our listeners from our first Major League Baseball outing of the season, and our second overall?
ALEX: Second all time.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: I respected the commitment to the bobblehead night, right? It was Francisco Alvarez–
BOBBY: Oh, true. Yeah.
ALEX: –bobblehead night. He’s not on the team–
BOBBY: No.
ALEX: –anymore. He was at one point.
BOBBY: He was last year.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Come on. I’ve gotten Derek Jeter bobbleheads from the Trenton Thunder.
ALEX: I know. I mean–
BOBBY: And like the late 2000.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Have you’ve already won like four World Series by then.
ALEX: I mean, there’s nothing more that minor league teams love than, than like celebrating players who have passed through.
BOBBY: Right, exactly.
ALEX: Right?
BOBBY: Yeah. Like taking credit and a roundabout way for their career. Which you know what? It’s an important step in the process–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –for major league stars. Their, their first stop through Minor League Baseball, the Cyclones are a high a team. You know a lot of young prospects come in they’re wayward looking for they’re, looking for their spot in the organization.
ALEX: Yeah, well, and it’s a rea–
BOBBY: That’s make a name for yourself.
ALEX: It is and it’s where a lot of fans see these players for the first time. So it’s no surprise that teams enjoy celebrating those moments, right? There’s a–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –there’s a kind of nostalgia element to it. There’s a very communal feel to that and you and I can, can say, right? When 10 years from now and Francisco Alvarez has just gotten this fourth Gold Glove.
BOBBY: Let’s talk about Silver Slugger, come on!
ALEX: Silver Slugger. Uh-huh.
BOBBY: It’s gotta get some hits. It’s been a while since the Mets had a catcher who could you know, put that on ball.
ALEX: As far as, as far as stadium giveaways go, where do, where do bobbleheads rank in your, in your power ranking? Because I think I noted there, they’re probably pretty low on my list.
BOBBY: They’re not very good. Bobbleheads never looked like the guy or gal. And they’re overused at the same time.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: It’s the most common thing that you can get. I, I guess I sort of like the recent trend to do bobbleheads that aren’t just the player in uniform.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like the Noah Syndergaard gnome or whatever they did for a couple years. Or the Noah Syndergaard Thor bobblehead. And I, I guess that’s pretty creative. That’s funny. So I guess that’s better than a normal bobblehead. But I still think that’s it’s behind like, you know, we got the Tom Seaver Statue.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s looking down on us as we, as we record this podcast, that was a Mets giveaway from our first Mets game this year at Citi Field. I, I think the statue, the mini statue is far superior to a bobblehead.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I think we’ve gone away from giving away many bats, like more real bats, for obvious reasons. You don’t want to give someone a weapon.
ALEX: Yeah. I remember I was, I attended Yankee Stadium one time to go to a game and there were free giveaways of these mini bats. And they tried to get one, I did.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And the guy size me up and was like, you’re not under 12.
BOBBY: Oh, it was under 12 only?
ALEX: Right. It was all it was for kids. I don’t, I don’t know if that was that, if that was the, that was the cut off. But–
BOBBY: He tried to convince him you were under 12?
ALEX: I–
BOBBY: You were like 24.
ALEX I tried to convince him that it was maybe in the spirit of the game.
BOBBY: Oh, right.
ALEX: Right, for I, mean, is, Is this what cancele culture is, right? Sorry, I’m, I’m over 15, I, I can only be me, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: He wasn’t buying it.
BOBBY: How many people do you think tried to pull that same shit on him? Is the real question.
ALEX: Probably at least a couple dozen. Lots of like–
BOBBY: I don’t understand why only kids can get a bat.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s one thing like, I remember when I went to Citi Field one time when I was younger. It was like everyone under 15 gets a Citi Field, Build-A-Bear, a Mets Build-A-Bear. And I was like, 14.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But I looked older because I was tall when I was younger. And like, I was like, nope. And my parents were with me, and they were like, he is 14. And they were like, nope, no, he’s not. And I was like, are you serious right now? It feels like in a borderline case, you should just give it to the kid.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: You know, you weren’t not a borderline case–
ALEX: I was, I was not.
BOBBY: I don’t think you’re pulling off 14 very well.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: Knowing you, you probably had some facial hair. You were probably on your way to buy an IPA.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Which is a sort of a dead giveaway.
ALEX: Yep.
BOBBY: Even if you were trying to underage drink. I don’t think you’d be headed straight for the IPA.
ALEX: Yeah, I don’t think so.
BOBBY: You get like a Coors Light or something. But yeah, so, so that’s my story of how I was robbed from getting the City field Build-A-Bear.
ALEX: Sham. I like, I like a good giveaway–
BOBBY: Steve Cohen is listening. He can make this right.
ALEX: He, he really can. I like a giveaway with, with a little bit of use value, you know? The Mets historically have done their, their free shirt Fridays, which I, which I love.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I love, I mean, that’s just my sleep shark collection.
BOBBY: Or Gabriella Sleeve Shirt collection [19:16].
ALEX: [19:16] yeah, exactly, exactly.
BOBBY: Yeah, the free shirts are good. And, and they’re, I mean, you know this because you lived with me during the 2015 World Series run. One of those free shirt giveaways became my lucky shirt that I’d wear underneath whatever Jersey I was wearing–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –for that run. So, you know, it reinforces the reason that you give the shirt away.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s great, great advertising for 1-800-Flowers on the back of those shirts like that, that–
ALEX: [19:42] we’ll never forget.
BOBBY: –he must have dropped a bag for that. Because 1-800 Flowers stuck with me.
ALEX Yeah, I see it on like a near nightly basis.
BOBBY: Since the ad that keeps on giving. We should, we should look into buying that on the back of a free shirt Friday shirt. What do you think?
ALEX: That’s–
BOBBY: It just says Tipping Pitches, nationalize baseball. On the back–
ALEX: [20:01] get through the review process?
BOBBY: Uhm, I don’t know a lot of stuff gets through the review process.
ALEX: It’s true.
BOBBY: Like Terra coin, you know? Like, we’re not the, we’re not the least reliable thing that could ever be put out on jersey.
ALEX: That’s true.
BOBBY: We’re maybe not the most reliable though. I feel like if I called 1-800 Flowers now they would come through.
ALEX: They would.
BOBBY: I’m like Tipping Pitches, me always let people down by talking for 30 minutes at the beginning of the podcast when we said we were gonna get straight into it. Do you want to get straight into it now?
ALEX: I do.
BOBBY: Okay, unfortunately, our first topic is shitty. It’s a shitty thing that happened yesterday that we sat down and we were not sure if we wanted to talk about. But, but felt it was kind of important to address and that’s Josh Donaldson, making a distasteful racist joke? Comment? Towards Tim Anderson that he thinks was a joke but wasn’t actually a joke because Tim Anderson was not in on the joke. This happened, Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening, when the Yankees were playing the White Sox. There’s been a little bit of bad blood between the Yankees and Red Sox for the last couple of weeks. There was a play at third base where Donaldson applied to an aggressive tag on Tim Anderson as he was getting back to the base. And he blocked the bag and kind of put his knee into Anderson’s head as he was headfirst sliding back into the base. And so when the, the benches cleared yesterday, in the White Sox-Yankees game. A lot of people thought, oh, this is you know, leftover animosity from this hard tag at third base. Josh Johnson is a little bit of a shit stirrer. You know, we’ve known him to sort of start brawls and get under people’s skin in the past, but then it came out after the game. In the postgame press conferences from Anderson and his teammates. Yasmani Grandal and Liam Hendriks, and their manager Tony La Russa. That apparently Josh Donaldson heads, head called Tim Anderson, Jackie, Jackie Robinson, referencing a quote that T.A. had in 2019, where Tim Anderson call himself he fee- he said he feels like the current games, Jackie Robinson. That he’s carrying on the legacy of what Jackie Robinson started, and that baseball needs another reset. And he feels like himself along with a collection of other players who are trying to play like him are resetting Major League Baseball right now. That was the full context of the 2019 quote that Josh Donaldson felt he was referencing in jest to Tim Anderson. And T.A. obviously he was offended by this. Because, well, I don’t want to pretend to know why, or what exactly bothered Tim Anderson about this. But I will share something that I thought was immediately very insightful from our friend of the podcast, Randy Wilkins, when he said, If you’ve played a sport, particularly a majority white sport, and you’ve been jokingly called the name of someone who shares your race, you know that exact feeling when someone says it to you. It’s lazy, it’s, it’s lazy, it’s racist. And it just reinforces the stereotype that you have to play a game a certain way, and fit into a certain type of mold in order to be accepted into the baseball culture that we have. And I think what’s so frustrating about this incident and how Josh Donaldson handled it, and has handled it, after the fact. For me, is that Donaldson doesn’t really seem to understand any of that. And he seems like the perfect archetype of a player who exists in that like semi-toxic baseball culture that we all kind of nebulously know, to be like, a crass locker room culture where people joke around with each other, and they say things that are not politically correct and are not maybe as advanced about certain societal issues. And Donaldson feels like, almost like a poster boy for that type of baseball guy. And that type of ideology about what is accepted on the field and in the clubhouse. When it starts to expand itself into things like racism and the historic segregation of Major League Baseball, as it did with Donaldson making a specific joke about Jackie Robinson. It creates stereotypes and just reinforces who should and shouldn’t be playing Major League Baseball. I have no idea why Josh Donaldson thought to say this quote unquote, “joke”, at the time that he did. But to me this is representative of a certain type of baseball culture, where if you grew up in it, you feel like you can say anything you want to anyone else on the field. Because you feel like this game is for you. And you can other certain types of people inside of it. Does that make sense?
ALEX: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I Donaldson is the symptom not the cause, right? He is a symptom of this environment that largely encourages this type of behavior, right? And for a long time, Major League Baseball the, the institution has grappled with and frankly failed at creating an environment that is openly welcoming of black and brown players. There was obviously the incident a couple of years ago, when Tim Anderson was suspended for saying the N word on the field.
BOBBY: This was, this was last year.
ALEX: Was this last year?
BOBBY: Yeah. And he served his suspension in the first three games of the season.
ALEX: Right. Which at the time was a very clear indication that MLB is is just out of touch, culturally with, you know, the, the state of the game right now and who is actually playing it. And Tim Anderson has been at the forefront of this conversation of how to make a more inclusive sport and how to bring people that look like him. That come from his background, into a sport that’s so often so exclusionary, to, to folks like him. And I think it’s disingenuous to pretend that Josh Donaldson is not aware of this, right? Is not aware of Tim Anderson’s place in the game. And like you said, I, we, we have really no idea why he said this. He, Donaldson himself tried to give a little bit of context following the game, right? By saying by, by referencing the, the said 2019 Sports Illustrated interview, where he, where Anderson can compare themselves to Jackie Robinson. And Donaldson said that he’s joked about, he’s joked about it with him in the past, and it hasn’t been an issue. He said, I don’t know what’s changed if something that is changed from that. My meaning of that is not by any turn trying to be racist by any fact of the matter. Obviously, he deemed it was disrespectful. And look, if you did, I apologize. Which that’s–
BOBBY: Sorry if your feelings were hurt.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Great apology. I, I don’t know, I think it when Tony La Russa is coming out and saying you made a racist comment, which is point blank what he said, he use–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: the word racist. Maybe it’s, maybe it’s time to look in the mirror a little bit.
BOBBY: Yeah, and this, this is sort of what I was trying to get at earlier, when I was saying, this type of thinking about the game is was designed to just make people feel other within the context of baseball. And there are a million, there are a million toxic traits and stereotypes that exist in baseball in America and at, at the major league level, that exclude, inherently exclude other types of people. And I think the inability to recognize that your comment might reinforce one of those things, shows a really unfortunate lack of emotional intelligence. That I feel like, is not prioritized enough in our game at, at all levels. Baseball lacks emotional intelligence, in the clubhouse, on the fields, in the front office, at the coach level, in the broadcast booth. Like there are among a lot of fans, like there are so many spaces that a level of emotional and societal intelligence could make it more welcoming for everybody. At almost no cost to the person who needs to learn that emotional intelligence. Or very little cost to the person who needs to learn that emotional intelligence. Particularly if you were taught it from a young age that I just feel like baseball doesn’t really care about. And it’s a crisis to the future of the game, that we don’t prioritize learning why your comment might be racist. Like that, that’s, that’s bad. That’s a really big red flag that Josh Donaldson thinks he can say that to a very prominent black man who’s spoken about what it feels like to be black in Major League Baseball at length. That he feels like he can look him in the eye and say, call him Jackie Robinson. It’s just, it’s absurd. It’s like completely beyond the pale. There is no other interpretation of this, other than this comment was racist. I don’t know why Josh Donaldson said it but we don’t need to tie ourselves in knots trying to figure out why it wasn’t racist. Because it was and I don’t know man like these, these types of things that keep cropping up every once in a while in Major League Baseball. It’s a huge problem because we’ve talked about the pitfalls of this on the show so many times. But for better or for worse, Major League Baseball is the leader when it comes to what is culturally acceptable in the world of baseball. People all the way down to the little league level. take cues from major leaguers about what is okay. And what are they learning if their favorite player or if their favorite team is the Yankees and they were excited that Josh Donaldson came to their team? They’re not learning the right lessons. So I don’t know. We, we just, I hate reducing it to we have to do better, but it just has to get better. Like they’re just, it can’t keep going on like this.
ALEX: Yeah, I think as we’ve said on this podcast before, Major League Baseball is kind of at a crossroads of where it would like to go culturally? What its position will be in the broader American psyche over the next 10, 20, 30 years? And I don’t know, it repeatedly shows itself as being pretty incapable of actually addressing these sorts of things in any competent manner. I, I shouldn’t be surprised, but it, it kind of catches me off guard every time. So–
BOBBY: I mean, where it stands right now is that there are just more guys like Josh Donaldson than like Tim Anderson.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Or even like Yasmani Grandal or Liam Hendriks. Like his teammates who came to his defense, there’s a lot of Josh Donaldson’s in Major League Baseball.
ALEX: Yeah, he is the archetype of kind of the red ass baseball player that has characterized the league for most of its existence.
BOBBY: Right. And it’s like unafraid to be problematic. Like unafraid to be barstoolly for lack of a better–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –shorthand.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You know what I mean?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I don’t know what we’re maybe losing the thread a little bit. And I don’t want to overstate this, any more than it needs to be. I just felt like it was a microcosm of this. Like emotionally stunted baseball culture–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –that we live in–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –right now. All right, let’s move on. Let’s move on to the lighthearted topic of the Los Angeles Angels being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Alex. You have the deets on this one.
ALEX: Yes, well, I should, I should clarify that it is, it is not the Angels themselves who are being investigated, but it is the, the Mayor of Anaheim, Harry Sidhu. Who is being investigated for a, a litany of things. Among them, I, I’ll read some words you can tell me a few, if any of them ring any bells you. Bribery–
BOBBY: Never heard of it.
ALEX: Wire, wire fraud.
BOBBY: I plead the fifth.
ALEX: False statements, obstruction of justice.
BOBBY: That was parody. Nope, false statements were just parody. Obstruction of justice, look, they just need to law enforcement needs to just try harder.
ALEX: We all obstruct justice sometimes, right? And, and witness tampering.
BOBBY: That one I did. I love to tamper with a witness.
ALEX: The, the Los Angeles Angels have been in protracted negotiations with the, the City of Anaheim, which is where the Los Angeles Angels play. For more than a decade at this point to try and essentially renegotiate the lease over the, the stadium and the property on which it sits. As of late that has turned into efforts to sell the land to a development team led by Arte Moreno. Who would then in turn, develop the, the site surrounding the stadium, right? In, in, in a move that is all too common in Major League Baseball, right? Turn it into a sort of mini city of sorts with, with shops and restaurants and affordable housing, I mean, stop me if you’ve heard this before, right? But this is a story that really, really stands out. I think because of the, it would be an understatement to call it incompetence on the part of the city, right? I mean, it’s, it’s literal corruption like, like good old fashioned corruption.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: That we’re talking about here.
BOBBY: Right, like putting an envelope of cash and shoots back pockets corruption.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Like the–
BOBBY: Allegedly.
ALEX: Self allegedly well. The, the FBI has literally had taps on the Mayor’s phone for like years at this point, right? And now anyone who has ever talked with him is kind of wondering like what they have said.
BOBBY: Do you think Arte Moreno has spoken to the Mayor? I’d like to know what Arte Moreno had to say to the Mayor over these past few years.
ALEX: Well, if if the wiretaps are any indication, Arte Moreno or someone close to him, indicated that they may just give the Mayor a million dollars if he fast track to this thing. That–
BOBBY: Sorry. That’s so funny.
ALEX: It’s, it is pretty funny.
BOBBY: That’s really good though.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like, okay, I’m gonna say something controversial.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Bribes are cool.
ALEX: Right, uh-huh.
BOBBY: We’re talking cool and uncool last week? Of all the crimes, you know, bribery is good, especially when it’s coming from one of the 30 Major League Baseball owners. Like it’s very healthy. Like definitely no damaging effects to society happening here.
ALEX: No. Well, I just, in, in a world that these days is so often–
BOBBY: Confusing.
ALEX: –confusing and, and–
BOBBY: Right!
ALEX: –really characterized by really just like next level scandals, right? And it confusing disregard for taxpayers. This feels like really, the Mayor has taken it back to the old days.
BOBBY: Yes, he’s making scandals great again. So you could say.
ALEX: Boooo! But just–
BOBBY: Just like doing it for the people, though, you know.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Bribery is something that everyone can understand.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: You don’t need to know. Like, anything about how non fungible tokens were stolen. You don’t need to know anything about like foreign markets.
ALEX Right. I think a couple a couple a year ago on this podcast or something, we had a prolonged discussion on, on the definition of embezzlement.
BOBBY: Yeah, exactly.
ALEX: Right, like–
BOBBY: Racketeering.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That can be so many things.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: You don’t need to know anything about offshore accounts. Like this is just straight up, here’s some cash.
ALEX: Like guys being dudes.
BOBBY: Spread on your doorstep.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Here’s what I want to happen handwritten note.
ALEX: Mayor’s to do has essentially staked his candidacy for Mayor, he’s up for, for reelection. And he’s, he’s really staked the, the bulk of his Mayorship on keeping the Angels in Anaheim, right? That’s kind of what this whole–
BOBBY: I’m going to run against him, and my whole Mayorship is going to be staked on moving the Angels out of Anaheim. For the love of God, can we get them somewhere else? It’s so hard to get there. There’s nothing else there, except fucking Disney with land.
ALEX Well, not yet. But if Arte Moreno has his way.
BOBBY: So, so he’s gonna get a new stadium then? That’s what this is all over?
ALEX: Well, not necessarily. So, let’s–
BOBBY: Oh, right. No, no, we’re keeping Angel Stadium. It’s not just going to be a freeway underpass around it.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Currently, it’s just a freeway underpass, and–
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: –and, in and out, it’s like within five minutes.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Which is good. That’s one thing–
ALEX: And then like, and then like, acres and acres of–
BOBBY: Parking lot.
ALEX: –parking lot, yes.
BOBBY: So much parking lot.
ALEX: It’s so much parking lot.
BOBBY: Like you can’t even access most of the parking lot.
ALEX Yeah. So the deal largely revolves around this. This land that is made up of parking lots right now, right? And–
BOBBY: You don’t pave paradise and put up a parking lot. You pave parking lots and put up [37:22].
ALEX: Yeah, yeah. That’s right!
BOBBY: Yeah, you actually liked that one. There you go, most of the time, you boo my puns and jokes.
ALEX A lot of this, this scandal has really been unfolding in the public eye over the last few years. Insofar as the fact that the deal has been negotiated completely outside of the public eye over the last few years, right? So, so news came out in late 2019, that the city had basically, the city council had decided to sell the land, to a company comprised of Arte Moreno and no one knows who else.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I believe at the time Arte Moreno said, well, that’s because that’s because it’s just me. And I will be getting partners, depending on what we decide to do with the land.
BOBBY: Nothing to see here.
ALEX: Nothing to see here. You’re just writing a blank check to–
BOBBY: So, I think it’s worth actually saying because I don’t, I don’t, I mean, I know we’ve talked a little bit about the Mayor’s role and all of this. But I think it’s, it’s worth saying that some warning flags started to go up when this, the sale of the land happened really quickly.
ALEX: Yes, yeah.
BOBBY: Like way faster than something that is usually this bureaucratic, over this much land. In a part of the world where real estate is as expensive as Southern California. There’s usually multiple people bidding for this land. It’s usually a protracted negotiation, where at each step of the process, the person selling land, in this case, the the city, right? The city was selling the land. Especially when it’s a public institution like the City of Anaheim. There’s usually, it doesn’t catch people off guard when this land gets sold. And then–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –all of a sudden, this was sold to Arte Moreno and his incorporated business partners.
ALEX: Right. As we [37:09]
BOBBY: As we don’t know anything about.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And so then people were like, wait, how did the sale happen? Why did it happen so fast? Why it’d be not hear anything about the process of the sale, and the development of this land? On this podcast, we’ve spent so much time talking about how long it took the A’s to get anything approved to even look at the land at Howard Terminal, you know.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: So, so I think people were surprised when it was just like, okay, Arte Morena owns the land now.
ALEX: Right. Right, exactly. Well, them the sale–
BOBBY: Hands have been shooked.
ALEX: Right. The sale was, was agreed to, all of the negotiations took place behind closed doors. When at the time there was, there was news that came out that in September, they had agreed to sell the land, despite the fact that they had actually not started negotiating with Arte Moreno’s team until November, just a couple of months.
BOBBY: Couple of months later? Oops, someone wrote the wrong month.
ALEX: It, yeah, and that–
BOBBY: I get those mixed up sometimes too though. Like, sometimes we’re like 10 Is that September? It’s not Octo- oh shit! Shit! Now they’re gonna know I bribe the Mayor.
ALEX: So the, the city effectively agreed to sell the 150 acres that make up the stadium site to Arte Moreno, his company for $320 million. They required him to build affordable housing, and effectively afforded him a rebate for $170 million. Which basically meant that the city would be receiving $150 million as in cash for the deal. Now, actually, late last year/early this year, the state of California saw this.
BOBBY: Oh, this very good [40:55]–
ALEX: This is where it gets good.
BOBBY: I love when the state is like, hold on, there’s some local shenanigans going on.
ALEX: Right. So they deemed that this deal was in violation of the state’s affordable housing law. And, and handed down a $96 million fine, which they said that the Angels would have to pay to the city, the city could then use that money to build affordable housing, basically, wherever they want. And that’s, that money that gets paid out relatively quickly, in, in a matter of a few years. So it’s a decent deal for, for the city. That however, not only lowered the price of the overall deal. Because that gets basically credited to the money that the city is receiving. But it also lowered the amount of affordable housing units that Arte Moreno would, would now have to build, right? So it bumped it from, you know, more than 400 units down to between 80 and 100 units. They reached settlement in May of this year.
ALEX: At the same time, there are concerned citizens who file a lawsuit saying all of this was done behind closed doors. We got absolutely zero input or knowledge about this ahead of time.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: This is mired in controversy. You could say.
BOBBY: I just have to say, America is the greatest country on Earth.
ALEX: It’s so, so good.
BOBBY: Although, okay, wait. This is as ridiculous and convoluted as this sounds. This is so par for the course for Southern California.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like you have California, we think of it as an extremely liberal state with a lot of laws that govern what you can and can’t do in the public sphere. And that, that means a lot of things like education, there’s a lot of rules about, you know, accreditation and, and becoming a teacher. And then in real estate, there’s a lot of rules about when you’re developing new projects, how much of that needs to be set aside to build affordable housing units as you’re discussing? Because California, as a state has such a gigantic homelessness problem in many of its largest cities, in Southern California, especially. And when you get down into the real estate world of Southern California, what you find is a, a ton of like insanely conservative, right wing. Concentrated real estate money that spends like more than two thirds of their time, just trying to get out of, just trying to find legal loopholes to statewide laws so that they can enact their real estate dominance on a local level. Because it’s incredibly lucrative, because there’s so much money to be made in real estate down there, that you find yourselves in situations like this. Like this is just, this is Arte doing Arte stuff. You know, like–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –this.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: This is just, this is not that weird, which is insane! This brings me back to my point from last week, why can’t baseball just be baseball? Why does baseball have to be real estate development? Big business, real estate development? It’s so convoluted. And it just, I don’t know how you are supposed to. Like, I don’t know how you’re supposed to take any of this information and be like, yeah, I like Mike Trout. It’s so weird.
ALEX: Yeah, I don’t know. Many fans who really care all that much about the ins and outs of a, of like the real estate deal that the Angels or the Braves or the Royals, or the A’s, or the Marli- I mean, the- goes on and on, right? Which is i which is why we spent so much time talking about it–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –here on this podcast.
BOBBY: No one cares about it. Here’s 30 minutes on it.
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah. But it’s, it’s certainly indicative of like where the sport is right now. In that, it has its tentacles wrapped up in so many different projects. That it’s virtually impossible to avoid controversy in some of them. What’s mostly impressive is that it manages to engage in controversy in almost all of them.
BOBBY: Yep. But this is why you buy a baseball team though.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: This is why. You don’t I mean, it’s nice that baseball is profitable on–
ALEX: Allegedly.
BOBBY: –on its base.
ALEX: Allegedly.
BOBBY: Okay. It’s nice that we think baseball is profitable from this, the insane local TV deals that it has. But all this stuff where you don’t know the exact numbers. And you don’t know who gets what. And you don’t know who develops what, and you don’t know what person gets an envelope at which stage of the process. And you don’t know why there’s suddenly a $96 million rebate off Arte Moreno’s real estate deal price coming from the state or the city. I, I don’t really know.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Yep.
BOBBY: I don’t even remember you just explained it to me, I don’t remember. All that stuff? That’s where you went on the margins. That’s where you get a truthful. $2 million here, a little $10 million there. And all of a sudden you made like 90 million bucks in like a year, you know? And that’s why, that’s why you invest in Major League Baseball.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s cool. It’s about do with my money, for sure. Tipping Pitches by a team fund is growing larger and larger by the day.
ALEX: Yeah, I we regret to inform you–
BOBBY: I Promise I will not bribe any Mayors. Mark my words. I will not bribe a Mayor.
ALEX I admire your, the resolute stance you’ve taken. I don’t know that I can say the same.
BOBBY: Okay. Well, then you’ll be the fall guy.
ALEX: Yes, exactly.
BOBBY: You’re the fixer of the Tipping Pitches by a team fund LLC.
ALEX Yeah, we regret to inform listeners that actually our Patreon money is going to redevelop land.
BOBBY: Right. We should just call, we should make it patreon.com\racketeering. You know, if Alex shows up on your doorstep, you got some shit to answer for. Okay, anything else on this? Or should we take a quick break and do some listener questions?
ALEX: Yeah. Let’s do it.
[47:10]
[Transition Music]
BOBBY: Okay, our first question is from a voicemail, we have four voicemails to play today. So exciting. Please call into our voicemail line. It’s fun to play them on the podcast. And it makes it, makes us feel like we’re doing a local radio show, which is how we, the headspace that we’re always trying to get into. Which is why we just spent 35 minutes talking about the convoluted nature of real estate deals. That always rates well in the major markets.
VOICEMAIL 1: Hey, this is Jay. I’m from Oregon, specifically went to Oregon State so a lot of fun stuff in baseball with those guys coming up. But my question is more about, like bullpen people. I keep hearing lots of stuff about like the kind of being insulting or something. Maybe a slight when a starting pitcher gets asked to be a bullpen guy. So there’s some kind of like stigma there. I don’t really know. Maybe some type of special teams type thing with kickers in football. But regardless, I love the pop ups you do and excited for my boy Steven Kwan, RIP and shit up. Have a good day! Bye!
BOBBY: Jay, thank you for calling. Congrats on Steven Kwan. RIP and shit up! As you put it. I don’t know, I feel like there’s less of a stigma about being in the bullpen than there used to be. The reason that there is a quote unquote, “stigma” or why you assume you’re not as good of a pitcher if you’re in the bullpen is because starters throw more innings. And so if you’re better, you would typically be a starter because then you could provide more innings of good pitching for your team. That’s less true than ever, it’s still true. And if you are the best pitcher on your team, you should be a starter. Because you can provide six or seven innings multiple times a week and your team is going to be better off for it. Now there are guys that are [49:08] max effort guys who can’t last as long. So they’re a one inning reliever and they might be just as good of a pitcher, if you talk about stuff. But the best pitchers ever the most valuable pitchers ever, those are starters. So that is why there is sort of that distinction that you’re picking up on. Even as we are in this, this world in which believers in the aggregate throw more innings than starters. If you’re looking one guy to another guy, a reliever is gonna throw max about 80 to 100 innings if they’re like, “the guy” that you go to for one two innings every time they come in. And most starters are still throwing, the top end starters are still throwing like 170 innings. So relievers can never really match that.
ALEX: Yeah, like you said, I think there’s maybe less stigma today than there was. I mean, for, for a while now, moving to the bullpen has been instrumental in reviving a lot of guys careers, right? Because you may not be able to make your stuff work through five or six innings, especially if you have a more limited pitch mix.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: But if you’re only going out there throwing 15, 20 pitches–
BOBBY: Let’s say you’re, I don’t know, Mariano Rivera.
ALEX: Right. Yeah.
BOBBY: Can only throw one–
ALEX: [50:22]
BOBBY: –[50:22] even that good [50:26]. Doesn’t strike anyone out–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –you know, just kidding. But that’s a perfect example, Mariano Rivera started his career as a starter and it just didn’t work. And then he became the greatest closure of all time.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And there’s nothing to be ashamed of about that. But listen, if I have, if I have the first overall draft pick, and there’s Mariano Rivera, and there’s Pedro Martinez, guess what? Sorry, Mo, I’m taking Pedro.
ALEX: Right. Well, and I think it’s, it’s a tough transition for a lot of guys. Because starters are creatures of habit, right? And if you have spent 5, 7, 10 years perfecting this craft. It can be a little jarring to suddenly be called upon to come out and just pitch the seventh, right? You don’t necessarily know have that guarantee that you’re going to pitch every fifth day. You don’t know when that call is going to come. And I got the it can be, I don’t know, demoralizing at times if you have trained your entire career to do one job. And maybe you can’t cut it there. And you’re, and you’re told to–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –go try your stuff out in the pen. But, but it’s becoming more and more common these days as relievers are becoming more valuable. Especially as teams realize they can take guys who haven’t succeeded as starters. And let them go multiple innings out of, out of the pen, right? That is, that is kind of like it’s like almost an overstated cliche. At this point, right? Of finding, finding the next–
BOBBY: Andrew Miller.
ALEX: –Andrew Miller.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Exactly. Yeah.
BOBBY: Newsflash, there’s not going to be another Andrew Miller.
ALEX: Nope.
BOBBY: I mean, there might be good long relief guys. But with what he was able to do and, and pioneer or re pioneer, I guess we had firemen–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –back in the day, but that kind of fell out of favor for the one and then guy. And then when he came back on the scene with Cleveland and Terry Francona, the way that he used him in those playoff runs, I think it’s there’s not going to be another version of that. Or you shouldn’t hold your breath waiting for the next Andrew Miller is what I’ll say. I think I’m glad you identified like the, the mental challenge of going from starter to reliever. Because I don’t know how so many guys do it. And particularly how you do it within one season. Like if you were developed as a starter, and then they maybe put you in the bullpen once you got to double A or triple A. Because they were worried about how your stuff would play. And you got a couple extra miles an hour and now all of a sudden your valuable went on to an end guy. Then, then I can see how you would be able to make that transition over the arc of your career. But for a guy like let’s say David Peterson right now, with the Mets where he’s coming in. He’s maybe piggybacking a guy who, a guy like Trevor Williams, where he’s thrown three innings out of the bullpen. Or every once in a while the Mets are asking him to stretch out and throw five or six innings because they have multiple pitchers on the injured list right now. I think that’s insanely hard. And I, I almost like admire guys like that. More than I ju- than, than mentally speaking. Than then a guy who knows that he’s going to start every fifth day. It just seems much easier to me.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: At all other four days, you have no stress in your life, man. No, you have to throw a bullpen and, and it’s insanely stressful on the days that you do pitch and it takes a ton out of you. But at least you know when that’s going to come. And you know when you’re going to be asked to throw 85 pitches. Not you might wake up one morning and in Syracuse, and they want you to throw 85 pitches that night in Queens that’s so hard. But I almost think back to we were doing an episode of RTC 2 and with Jazz Chisholm. And he was traded in the minors straight up for Zac Gallen from the Diamondbacks to the Marlins. And we asked him about that, and he was like, yeah, you know, like, I, I think about it, and I, I see how Zac Gallen is doing. And I want to, you know, prove a little bit of something and I was, you know, upset that Arizona was ready to give up on me that early before I ever made my major league debut. But at the same time, I had to think of it like Miami wanted me. Like one team wanted me enough to give up a guy who is as good as Zac Gallen to get me. And if you’re a reliever you almost have to have that kind of mindset where like, yeah, they didn’t want me to be a starter, but they do want me to pitch an important seventh inning. So I have to almost be like, forget the first half of that. And just be like, I’m gonna come into the game and high leverage situations where if I blow up, then I ruin what the starter just did. So that’s a really important role to be in.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And we know how frustrating bullpens are for fans. And so if you’re a reliever or you have been made a reliever. I almost feel like even though that organization is saying you might not be as good or as valuable of a pitcher as the starting rotation right now, they’re still putting a ton of trust in you. So, you know, it cuts both ways, I feel like.
ALEX: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s another data point in favor of the argument that relievers are routinely underrated by traditional metrics. They are underrated by the, by the market, oftentimes. They’re underrated–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –in, in arbitration, right? Because–
BOBBY: So volatile.
ALEX: –they’re so volatile. And it’s hard to quantify a lot of these things, right? But you look at a guy like Colin McHugh, right? Who was instrumental for the Braves last year, both starting and relieving.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I don’t know, this is a great question.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Give, give us a lot to think about it.
BOBBY: It did!
ALEX: The longer on it than we probably intended to.
BOBBY: No. I know. And I mean, it’s because we don’t ever actually talk about real baseball.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: So when someone asked me [55:51]
ALEX: [55:52]
BOBBY: Wait, it’s fun. It’s fun to talk about baseball. Okay, next question from Abby. It comes from the podcast mailbag Slack channel, Abby says, “Where in a ballpark is your ideal place to sit, when you go to a baseball game?” I don’t know if we’ve ever answered this before, we’ve it’s probably come up in conversation. I don’t, I don’t have a super specific answer for this. I’m not that particular about where I sit. If I’m gonna be up in the higher levels, in the cheaper seats, I’d like to be somewhat behind home plate, so that you can get a full view of all nine positions. Whereas like, if you’re in the upper decks in the outfield, your view might be obstructed of like the right or left field line. That’s my only real peculiarity when it comes to seats. I know that you’re a big bleachers guy, you love to sit in the bleachers.
ALEX I do really like sitting bleachers, even though sometimes the, the view of the actual gameplay is not always the most ideal. But say, for example, that the bleachers at the Oakland Coliseum are, I mean, just maybe my favorite place to watch a ballgame period.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Like you I think I’ve, since that Patreon money hasn’t hit yet. We’re often relegated to, to a cheap seats. I’m you’ll, you’ll rarely really find me sitting along the on the first or third base line. But it’s nice kind of sitting up there in the three hundreds, the four hundreds and to get that whole view of the whole park. I think oftentimes it’s the best way to tell what’s how a play is actually playing out.
BOBBY: Yeah, the building suspense of seeing a, you know, a line drive fall for a hit. And you can see–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –as the guy is rounding third, if he’s really going to try to take home or not. Like you have a great view of that–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –up in the higher seats. And I don’t think that’s a problem necessarily. It’s just a different experience to watch it. When you’re on the field level. You know, we’ve gone to maybe like one or two games wherever you’ve been sitting on field level together. And it’s always so, so shocking how big and fast the players are.
ALEX: Yeah,
BOBBY: Like we were at Yankee Stadium a few weeks ago, and we were, we were not sitting in the box seats on the right field line. But we had gone down there to say hello to someone. And we were there for maybe like half an inning while the Yankees were in the field and single got hit on the right field line and Aaron Judge came running over he was about 30 feet from us and I was like, holy shit. Holy shit! And the way the ball just like flies out of his hand after he feels it like that, that’s just this is not just another prime example of how you could not do anything on a major league. Nothing that they do is anything that you could do. I will say for the bleachers, if you’re gonna, if you’re only going to see one game in a ballpark. Like you only, you’re in a city, and the tickets are comparably priced. The bleachers is probably going to give you like the most honest representation of what the fan base is like. Like what it feels like to be sitting around like true hardcore fans, if you’re out there in the bleachers. Like there’s usually a lot of diehards out there.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I think of like the the Dodgers bleachers. Man, it’s a wild ride out there. I mean, people are gonna I, I got a lot of shit for wearing like, Mets stuff in the Dodgers bleachers when they, when they came into town. But I felt like I understood the Dodgers fan base really well.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: When I left that night. I’ll say that.
ALEX Yeah. Seeing a, a game in the Yankee Stadium bleachers is just, it’s a different world, man. I’ve similarly war. war is here when the A’s came to town and nothing it’s, it’s a mistake.
BOBBY: It just prepare yourself.
ALEX: But yeah.
BOBBY: Still yourself.
ALEX: Really do have to, have to build up a bit of a wall.
BOBBY: Okay, next question.
VOICEMAIL 2: Hey, guys, first time longtime, except not my first time. It’s Mike Schubert, your favorite Yankee fan. Here calling in to my favorite Yankees podcast to ask, what the NBA Playoffs going on, there’s lots of talk about Scott Foster being the referee that the NBA will send into games when they want to extend the series for the financial benefits of the NBA, the owners, etc. Is there an MLB umpire equivalent to that? Obviously, we have bad umpires like Joe West, Angel Hernandez, etcetera. But is there an MLB umpire that everyone would then say, ahh the fixes in. Anyway, thanks, love the pod, fuck the owners, etcera, etcetera.
BOBBY: Do you have an answer for this? I don’t, it’s hard because baseball is a game that can not be as influenced by the umpires as basketball can. There are way more borderline judgment calls that happen for an official in a basketball game, than there are four an umpire in a baseball game. And I know that sounds silly because every pitch is technically there’s a chance to be called by the home plate umpire. However, it would be very, I think it’d be pretty hard to influence the outcome of a game as a home plate umpire without one seeming incredibly obvious, or two or two even really getting that many opportunities to make high leverage calls like that. Because most of the time guys swing it strikes, and guys take pitches that are obvious balls. And so you don’t get that many borderline calls really swing a game. Like you would if you you know, you give, let’s say 30 free throws to Dwayne Wade in an NBA finals game. Like that’s gonna win them the game most likely. And in baseball, you don’t really get that many opportunities, especially now since every close player is just challenged. And it’s overturned.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: If it’s egregiously wrong.
ALEX: I feel like team favoritism is not something that has been studied properly when it comes to Major League umpires. And there probably is some data out there.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: On that I think more often you see umpires favoring either hitters of both teams or pitchers of both teams, right? This is a guy with a, with a big zone and both pitchers are going to benefit. And there are potentially situations where that can give a team a leg up right if you’re if you’re throwing out a, if you’re throwing out a guy who has subpar command, you’re essentially going to artificially increase his stuff, right? And give him a little bit more wiggle room on the edges. I mean, according to say, ED analytics, just looks this sort of thing, right? Ron Kulpa, big Ron Kulpa guy?
BOBBY: No, no.
ALEX: And, and Mike Estabrook, these are not real names. I have–
BOBBY: No Ron Kulpa was real. No, no word yet from my brain about whether Ron Estabrook is okay.
ALEX: They have the lowest ERAs as umpires or pitchers have the lowest ERAs when they are umping the baseball game.
BOBBY: I love that, big zone.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Let’s go!
ALEX: We love a big zone.
BOBBY: I–
ALEX: Jury, jury’s still out on, on whether A. Rod. enjoys that. Depends on if the zone is, is high, or if it’s wide. Because we know he wants a wide zone.
BOBBY: I just think more often, you don’t see a problem with an umpire being particularly tough on one team. I think what happens is you have an umpire who was inconsistent. And it just unfortunately happens to play out in a, in a, at a time when it affects one team more than the other. I don’t watch a lot of baseball games and think, man, my team is getting jogged right now. Like that doesn’t happen the way that it did in the 2000s with Tim Donaghy–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –in the NBA, where it was like, all right, guys or like Scott Foster, where what Mike is alluding to is like, he’s gotten a nickname as the extender. Where if it’s a game five, and we need one of these teams to win, so that we can get a game six and potentially a game seven, Scott Foster’s coming in, he’s making sure that team is gonna win. And I don’t even think that’s necessarily true, but like it’s at least more plausible in the NBA where it’s like in MLB, I don’t know like these pitches are coming in so fast. And they’re happening so often throughout the course of the game that honestly like it would be hard to fix a game as a home plate umpire just calling balls and strikes.
ALEX: Yeah, well, I think because in part it would be so obvious, right?
BOBBY: They fucking thing on the screen–
ALEX: Like, yeah.
BOBBY: –come on!
ALEX: Right as, as much–
BOBBY: These guys he named Joe West and Angel Hernandez they just suck at their job, necessarily like trying to hurt the Mets or Yankees or whoever.
ALEX: Right. I, I think every fan at one point or another has maybe thought to themselves like oh, the ump is–
BOBBY: [1:04:56] universal thing.
ALEX: The ump is screwing us, right? But like oftentimes that the fans of the opposing team are thinking the exact same, right? I mean, there’s, there’s maybe a scenario where there is a guy who is, there is a guy who likes to put on an ump show. And, and–
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: –that can potentially if, if he say, tosses your starting pitcher. That can potentially impact the outcome of a game, right? But I also don’t know that there may be–
BOBBY: Like when Noah Syndergaard got tossed on the first pitch of the game in 2016.
ALEX: Yes. Exactly.
BOBBY: Yeah. And Tom Hallion had to stop Terry Collins from ripping a man’s throat out on national television.
ALEX: Yes, yeah.
BOBBY: Oh, simpler times. Okay, next question. This comes from Dan in our Slack, Dan says, “What’s an obscure silly or random baseball event that you were in attendance for?” I’ll go first. I think I’ve talked about this on the podcast. I was at R. A. Dickey’s one hitter, and I jinxed it. I was like, haha, wouldn’t it be so funny if Cole Hamels broke up R. A. Dickey’s no hitter in the bottom of the third inning, and then he did. And then R. A. Dickey proceeded to give up, no hits for the rest of that game.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: So that was that R. A. Dickey’s no hitter and I jinxed it. That’s obscure. I was also at Max Scherzer’s no hitter against the Mets in 2015 the end of the season.
ALEX: Less obscure.
BOBBY: Yeah, he’s thrown a couple of those. And that was the most dominant pitching performance I think I’ve ever seen. And maybe had this ever happened on the Major League Baseball field.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: He, it was only not a perfect game because of an error by the third baseman, and he had 18 strikeouts. So, you know, it’s cool he’s on our team now. Unfortunately, his oblique didn’t get the memo. But it’s okay.
ALEX: Ouch.
BOBBY: It’s all right. We all heard our obliques from time to time. At the worst time for a team really need starting pitching depth right now.
ALEX: Are you talking from personal experience here?
BOBBY: No, of course not. How about you? Obscure, silly or random baseball event?
ALEX: Obscure? I mean–
BOBBY: I know you read a perfect game weren’t you?
ALEX: I wasn’t Matt Ca- Matt Cain’s perfect game.
BOBBY: Feels pretty obscure. So maybe like 25 of those in MLB history.
ALEX: Well, I guess it depends on your definition of obscure, right? Because I, I think of that as being, I mean, it’s certainly one of the best baseball games I’ve ever been to, right? But it’s also something that has been memorialized in MLB history, right? Many people have heard that he, he did that thing. I was at Gary Sanchez’s full season debut. He had, I think he’d had a couple pinch hit at bats the, the season prior. But–
BOBBY: Were we there together?
ALEX: Were we there toge- yeah, I think we were there together, he went over.
BOBBY: Just like we were at–
ALEX: A strikeout.
BOBBY: –with Tim Tebow.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: Trenton Thunder–
ALEX: This is, this is–
BOBBY: [1:07:53]
ALEX: This is the season in which he then goes on to be Babe Ruth for half a season, right?
BOBBY: Right. Yes.
ALEX: We didn’t get to witness any of that excellence.
BOBBY: Nope. I felt like he flew out to the warning track and one of those bats.
ALEX: Right. He, he made it close.
BOBBY: He, he doesn’t need to impress us. We know Gary’s good. Yes. What about like a really long extra innings game? Remember the game that went like 20 innings?
ALEX: Not 20, I think it was, I was I’ve been at one that went like 17 or 18.
BOBBY: Wow, that’s pretty good.
ALEX: It is.
BOBBY: I don’t think I’ve ever been at a game that went past like 11 or 12.
ALEX: Really?
BOBBY: Yeah. There, those are obscure.
ALEX: Those are, yeah.
BOBBY: 18 inning games are very obscure. And now they’ll never happen again.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Because of the, the runner on second roll.
ALEX: Yeah. Which is so it’s kind of a, kind of a nice feather in my cap.
BOBBY: Yeah, true. Yeah, you can, you can sit your grandkids on your knee and bouncing up and down and say back in my day.
ALEX: I saw, I saw Bobby Crosby go over seven.
BOBBY: Wow, they’ll be like, grandpa, let me play my Switch. Okay, next question. Time for two more questions. Bill on the Slack asks, “Let’s say Dick Durbin actually gets Congress to revoke the MLB Antitrust Exemption, what would the ideal potential competitor leak look like?” And then he lays out some, some other examples of competitor leagues in, in sports that don’t have antitrust exemptions. Like the USFL competing with the NFL, the XFL in the 2000s. The ABA in the 1960s, which eventually merged with the NBA. Do you have thoughts on what an ideal competitor league would look like? I mean, I sort of feel like this podcast is a testament to what an ideal competitor league would look like. Everything we talked about, that’s wrong with MLB. Just strip away all of that stuff. And then you have our ideal competitor league. But more specifically, do you have thoughts about like, what could be weird and, and more intriguing about a competitor league than Major League Baseball. Because it’s safe to say that you’re never going to get a league that has a better, better baseball players in it. It’s pretty entrenched that Major League Baseball has the best players in the world. And I don’t, I don’t really foresee that changing any time soon or ever.
ALEX: I mean, I think it’s possible that we see a league that is inclusive of women.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I just earlier this year, Kelsie Whitmore signed, signed a contract with the Staten Island Ferry Hawks of the Atlantic League. Which I believe marked the, the first time that a woman would appear in a league affiliated with Major League Baseball.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: But certainly we’re a, a long way off from that becoming a reality at the major league level. I think a league that is not so entrenched in its tradition, and culture would maybe be more open to that sort of thing. As evidenced by the fact that this has happened in independent league Baseball. It is now happening in the, in the Atlantic League, I think there’s a possibility that that opens up more opportunities.
BOBBY: I think you’re right. And I think that because of what Major League Baseball is, I think it would necessitate that a competitor league is like that. That, that a competitor league is trying to speak to everyone because MLB is trying to speak to so few people. If you just came out, and you said, we’re just MLB. But a different acronym, I’m not sure what the draw would be. Because MLB already has all the best players, they already have the entrenched marketing, they already have the decades and decades of fandom. And so a competitor league would be a place where you could say, hey, everything that we don’t like about MLB, we just don’t have to do that anymore. And we don’t have to work against 150 years of precedent. For all of these things, we can just blow through all of the, the bullshit. I don’t necessarily know that a competitor league would turn out that way. You could mean in these other examples, a lot of what the quote unquote, “competition” was, was, oh, we’re going to try to play with different rules, funky rules, funky, you know, field dimensions and make it a more visual product for television. And all of these make it more wacky, and or we’re going to financially challenged the model of the league versus, you know, culturally challenging the model of the league. And so, I think there are a million ways that it could go, I do hope, and I saw some people talking about this in the slack. I do hope that it goes somewhat towards the way of like the Players League, which we talked about with him about [1:12:28]. Where it’s like a more player driven. And they actually have an ownership stake and investing in the league and making it make more sense for the game rather than for the people who just happen to own the game at any one given time.
ALEX: Which doesn’t seem like it’s out of the question for me, given that a league–
BOBBY: No.
ALEX: –like a league like this would almost certainly not nearly be as profitable as something like Major League Baseball. Which somewhat lowers the stakes a little bit, right? There’s less of an incentive for something like tanking, right? There’s less of an incentive to take a guy to arbitration. Because you’re not hundreds of 1000s of dollars apart. You’re 1000s of dollars apart or hundreds of dollars apart, right?
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: So I think, certainly a lot of the things that we lament about the sport, right? That, that seems somewhat antithetical to its communal spirit. I would hope that that would be reflected in a competitor really.
BOBBY: Yeah. Final question here comes from our man, Chip. He says, I hope I haven’t missed this in a previous mailbag, or episode. But I would love a full technical breakdown of how you record software, hardware, struggles you’ve had or conquered with editing, and platforms. I don’t want to bore everyone with all of the details of Chip’s question, I’ll give a quick breakdown of how we record, if you’re interested in this sort of thing. We use a Scarlett 2i2, Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 to record it to pro tools. We use two Shure SM58s. And then I do a lot of editing and a lot of mixing on the back end of this podcast. That is why you don’t hear the 22nd pauses that we sometimes take to think our answers through and think our conversation through. It took a, a many years of practice for me to get this good at editing podcasts. And it is also my nine to five job, Monday through Friday, where I produce and edit podcasts for The Ringer. I’m happy to talk more about this but this feels like a perfect example of something to talk about Alex in our Patreon live Q&As, which you can get access to if you are signed up for the top tier of our Patreon the Alex Rodriguez VIP Club. Which is $12 a month and you get access to those live Q&As that happen every two months. So you can ask us anything in this Q&As. Anything that you’re curious about in the world of Tipping Pitches or in the world of Bobby and Alex, that is not related to baseball. And, or if you’re looking to start a podcast or something like that, you want to hear all of the mistakes that we’ve made along the way, or how it used to do the podcast when we first started out. Because it’s changed a lot through the different iterations where we started in a radio studio, and then we moved along to a voiceover booth in in NYU, and then we moved along to an a, to a professor’s auxilary office. And then we did it remotely. And then we changed microphones, and then we now we’re back in the same room again. So it’s, it’s changed a lot. And I think it’s a, a pretty good example of what like a DIY Podcast is for someone who doesn’t work for a company or have a huge budget to make their podcast, or to turn their apartment into a podcast studio. So I’d be happy to answer your, your question, Chip. I assume you will be able to attend that live Q&A.
ALEX: Which we should say now.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: There is one coming up. We have made the plan, which was really just you and I, opening up Google Calendars on our respective phones are sitting next to each other. Trying to figure out–
BOBBY: That’s how the fucking magic happens.
ALEX: It is. That’s how the magic happens. June 14, that’s a Tuesday, it’s Flag Day in case any of you celebrate.
BOBBY: Damn right, it’s Flag Day! And we’re going to spend the first 30 minutes of the 60-minute long live Q&A talking about how much Flag Day means to us.
ALEX: We will be playing the Pledge of Allegiance prior to the session.
BOBBY: And throughout, might just be dropped that Pledge of Allegiance whenever we feel it’s necessary.
ALEX: June 14, 8pm, join us on Zoom.
BOBBY: 8 pm Eastern, Alex.
ALEX: 8 pm Eastern, yeah.
BOBBY: Be specific, come on. You got people all–
ALEX: [1:16:48]
BOBBY: –over the league, dude. We have people all over the world listening to this podcast.
ALEX: 8 pm Eastern, should run for hour and a half. And it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be a blast. We hope to see many of you there. We’re trying to get to know some of you more and it’s been this feels like a natural extension of, of some of the conversations that have already been taken place in the Slack.
BOBBY: Yeah, that’s right.
ALEX: And, and it’s an open forum, man. We are, we’re, we’re open books, so this does not have to be remotely related to baseball, seriously.
BOBBY: It’s finally time to accost Alex face to face for his horrendous Olivia Rodrigo takes in surrenders takes about jerseys or the designated hitter, or the litany of things that he has been just so wrong about over the years of the show.
ALEX: [1:17:36] sure you weren’t wearing a jersey yesterday, and you didn’t want to do that?
BOBBY: It’s too hot.
ALEX: Oh, and so, so you’re saying this–
BOBBY: Were you wearing a shersey? I’m just only allowed to wear things to baseball games that fit into this argument. So you weren’t wearing a shersey, so you also lose the argument? No, no, what, what stop trying to derail us at the end of the show?
ALEX: Well [1:17:55]–
BOBBY: With a nice perfect outro all set up. You know, we’re plugging the Patreon, patreon.com\tippingpitches, and you just have to throw it into the jersey-shersey thing again?
ALEX: I, you, you brought it up, bro. Hey, I’m just saying you’re, my shersey. I don’t, I don’t have Cyclones shersey. Although I would purchase one and they think that it you know, assuming that it’s a, it’s a nice slight cotton. I think it’d be perfectly reasonable to wear wouldn’t, wouldn’t weigh me down too much. I just think it’s interesting.
BOBBY: But you do own a Cyclones jersey? Let the record state that Alex does own a Cyclones jersey–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –but not shersey.
ALEX: Right. I mean, it was handed to me going into a Mets game.
BOBBY: Right. But you kept it so, so it was really getting this.
ALEX: If you want to hear all the [1:18:43]–
BOBBY: [1:18:43] no one’s winning this. We’re all losing including the people listening, this laid the podcast. June 14th, 8pm Eastern, live Q&A, I guess we’re calling it this is not really a Q&A. It’s just kind of a hang sesh. More information on how to get into that will be provided to everyone via Patreon messaging. And via the newsletter, which also released for the first time last week. We have so many updates to tell people nowadays. It’s no longer just do the podcast and stop. It’s like Hey, it’s your newsletter. Hey, live Q&As. Hey, thanks for signing up.
ALEX: You know, here’s the thing, w,e we give Arte Moreno shit about not limiting his investments to the Los Angeles Angels. But, but are we not, are, are we not the podcasters version–
BOBBY: No.
ALEX: –of Arte Moreno? You know.
BOBBY: We’re not. Thanks for the [1:19:36]–
ALEX: Now we have so many, so many other projects, so many–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –other revenue stream.
BOBBY: Thank you to everybody who read the newsletter. Like I said, the more information on the Q&A, the live hangouts sesh on June 14th, 8 pm Eastern. More information will come in the next edition of the newsletter, as well as on Slack, as well as in Patreon DMs. It will not be hard to find, if you would like to join. I, I don’t know exactly how it will work in terms of If you’re not able to join at that time. We may make a, make a recording available to those people who cannot join. But it will not run on the podcast anywhere that is, that is for damn sure.
ALEX: I can tell you that, I can tell you that.
BOBBY: I think that’s it. Except we have to give a shout out to our A. Rod., 5 A. Rod. to your patrons at the end of this podcast here unless you have anything else to add?
ALEX: The last thing I’ll say before we shout these lovely patrons out is our episodes are now going to be available on YouTube.
BOBBY: Oh true.
ALEX: With closed captioning.
BOBBY: Update hour here.
ALEX: It’s, it’s the, it is the update hour, we should. This is when we eventually launch our second episode per week–
BOBBY: Just gonna be updates.
ALEX: –just updates.
BOBBY: Hey, welcome to the nuts and bolts episode. My name is Bobby.
ALEX: Anyway, if you prefer to, if you prefer to listen to your podcasts that way. If it has just been gratin, for you to open up Apple podcasts every week, and hit play. If you, if you prefer to just run that throughout the day on your computer, as you, as you get your work done or don’t get your work done. You can now do so, hit the link in our bio. You can check it out there. I’m sure if you, no, I actually if you Google Tipping Pitches it won’t come, it won’t come up. So scratch that. It’s in our bio–
BOBBY: If you search Tipping Pitches Podcast on YouTube, it will come up. I did that the other day.
ALEX: Wow.
BOBBY: No guarantee is whether that only was the case because I am also one of the owners of Tipping Pitches and it just knows me like the second matrix knows me and whatever.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But and the YouTube is cool if you can, the YouTube is cool if you’re interested in following along. Listening to the audio as well as following along with the transcript which the closed captions on the YouTube video are from our official transcripts which we make available. There are still some small errors and stuff in there. But it’s not the automated YouTube closed caption system. Which is I would describe it as hit or miss Alex I would describe it as hit or miss. So all of that being said, here are the 5 Alex Rodriguez VIP Club, Producer level members from this week, who we want to give a special thank you to it is Kieran, Eric, Sam, Ben, and Ally. Mercifully this podcast is over, my friend. Unless you want to extend it more by saying something to the wonderful listeners who have made it this far.
ALEX: See here’s the thing about sherseys, Bobby.
BOBBY: So the DH. Thank you for listening everyone. We will be back, nextweek.
[1:22:36]
[Music]
[1:22:56]
[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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