For their classically on-brand roundup of the 2022 season, Bobby and Alex bring on Stephen Hesson, Lauren Walker, and Jane Ost to run down the dumbest things that happened in baseball this year, including the emergence of Roger Maris, Jr., Dave Kaval yelling at a seagull, The Tony La Russa Experience, an ill-conceived hologram, scoring at the Coliseum, the Great Sunflower Seed Incident That Wasn’t, Phil Castellini’s honesty, and much more.
Links:
Follow Batting Around on Twitter
Batting Around Patreon
Follow Jane
Follow Stephen
Follow Lauren
Watch “The Last Out”
Join the Tipping Pitches Patreon
Tipping Pitches merchandise
Songs featured in this episode:
Carly Rae Jepsen — “Talking to Myself” • FKA twigs feat. rema — “jealousy” • 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, there’s no need for a cold open this week. There’s no need for a question. There’s no need for a bad take dramatic reading. There is no need for an overworked joke from yours truly. You know why?
ALEX: Why is that?
BOBBY: Because this is a loaded podcast.
ALEX: Yeah, yeah it is!
BOBBY: A five person pod, featuring all three of the wonderful members of Batting Around. Alex, it’s The Dumbest Things of the 2022 Baseball Season. I have been looking forward to this podcast all year.
ALEX: It’s, it’s really why we slog through the previous six months–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –because of this moment.
BOBBY: It’s like, it’s not about how you perform in May.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: It’s about how you pod in November.
ALEX: It’s all about momentum, and, and we got it with this one.
BOBBY: I think everyone is going to really enjoy this podcast. If you didn’t listen to last year’s one. Last year’s episode, the 20- the Dumbest Things of the 2021 Baseball Season. I’d say it’s still funny and it’s still evergreen.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: It’ll, it’ll be a blast from the past for a lot of you. And it will also set the tone for, for what this podcast is about. But just in case you don’t have time to go listen to that or you did listen to it, but you’ve forgotten what it is. We’ve gathered Stephen Hesson, Lauren Walker, and Jane Ost from The Batting Around Podcast, which I imagine many of you already listened to. Just to, to talk about to go around in a circle and discuss and remember, just the silliest things that happened in the year. Just the most ridiculous, the most online. The most absurd things that happened in the Major League Baseball season.
ALEX: Of course, we had to tap the counterpart to our extremely online baseball podcast. We really couldn’t, couldn’t do this without those three. And, and it’s a great exercise to remember some of these moments because some of them I had, I had completely forgotten.
BOBBY: And they deserve to be remembered.
ALEX: They do.
BOBBY: Just as much–
ALEX: They deserve to be memorialized.
BOBBY: As the Houston Astros deserve to be remembered for winning the 2022 World Series.
ALEX: Absolutely.
BOBBY: Maybe more so, frankly.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Honestly, the baseball is not that important. It’s all about the content. So–
ALEX: Yeah, yeah, content flies forever, man.
BOBBY: Content is king, or queen, you know? Doesn’t really matter. Okay, without further ado, we are going to bring in our friends from Batting Around. But before we do all of that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I am Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you’re listening to Tipping Pitches.
[2:40]
[Music Theme]
BOBBY: Okay, we are once again, joined by our good friends at Batting Around, it’s, it’s Tipping Around. It’s a baseball podcast, left this baseball podcast. Stephen, I’m gonna start with you, man. What’s up? How are you feeling? We’re recording on the morning of Game Six of the World Series. How you doing?
STEPHEN: Pretty good.
ALEX: Pregnant pause.
STEPHEN: Yeah. Uhm, as, as I was saying earlier, I’ve achieved a level of Zen that I was completely not expecting at all. I am, I am the sort of fan that catastrophizes, that gets really up into his feelings. When there’s a really big gut punch loss to a team–
JANE: A Phillie fan–
STEPHEN: –hate in the past.
JANE: –like that?
STEPHEN: I would like, I would like soak myself in the like, in all the revelatory messages that the opposing fans were sending on like Twitter and Reddit and I would just like look at them and get angry. And yeah, I’m, I’m really emotionally well adjusted. But actually, that’s true right now. I’m, you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’m keeping the perspective. My lowest point, this entire postseason was the final out of Game 5. And then 10 minutes later, I was like, I don’t want to be sad anymore. Let’s look at the positives. And then I kind of like tricked myself into being optimistic. It’s very weird. It’s very out of character for me. I don’t know what’s going on. I think I might have been possessed by a ghost or something.
BOBBY: I love that for you. Although that is the last mention of the World Series that is currently going on. Because we are doing The Dumbest Things That Happened in Baseball 2022. Lauren, how are you doing?
LAUREN: I’m, I’m doing great. I had a lot of fun doing some research for this looking back at how wonderfully done this, this season has been.
ALEX: You really, like when I, when I look, when I think back on it. I’m like, okay, how dumb was it really, right? Like, I think I, I memory holds so many things. And then I start like looking through our, you know, fucking old tweets and old episodes and I’m like, wow, wow, there really was some dumb stuff here. There’s a lot of content to mine.
LAUREN: Yeah, it’s the majesty, the 162 game season is something’s dumb happens in every single one of them.
BOBBY: This is the thing that I love most about doing this. Because it’s like, it kind of is like a thesis statement for basically both of our podcasts, right? Like this is a highlight reel of the stuff that we talk about most frequently. Jane, how are, how are you doing? How are you feeling about the 2022 baseball season the dumb things that happened within it?
JANE: Great. I, I, I don’t, I still feel like last year was dumber in some ways. We’ll see how I feel at the end of this. But also Bobby, I want to congratulate you on doing a great intro there. You did the intro to our podcast better than Lauren or Stephen [5:33] recently. Really good job there. Crack, cracking good.
BOBBY: I’m just a pro, you know.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: I’ve been there for a while, I’ve been there for a while.
JANE: Yeah. You know, you, you and me were cut from the same cloth we can do an intro without fucking it up.
BOBBY: Some people have and some people don’t, you know.
JANE: And, and you know for this, for this episode. Also, I just want to say we’ll try to say come less than we did last time.
BOBBY: Well, you bring up last year, gives me an opportunity to do a quick, quick summary of the first round of last year’s draft. Just so–
JANE: Okay.
BOBBY: –the uninitiated the folks who maybe weren’t listening to Tipping Pitches this time last year. Maybe missed that episode for some reason you can still go back and listen to it. It’s very evergreen and very entertaining. I was listening to it this morning to put together this summary. The first round of selections was Stephen selecting the Will Craig and Javy Baez play that–
STEPHEN: Yeah.
BOBBY: –completely broke Will Craig’s career. Sorry to Will Craig. Lauren selected the Madison Bumgarner no-hitter, which was not actually no-hitter because it was seven innings. Jane, you selected the $100 million dollar All-Star Game lawsuit to, from Major League Baseball, to Major League Baseball from the collective businesses [6:36]. And Alex and I selected Pete Alonso bobbing his head while a kid tore his ACL and was carried off the field during the Home Run Derby.
JANE: That ruled. God I love him. That was so good.
STEPHEN: What a ridiculous year last year was.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: It was quite a ridiculous year. And of course, it was, you know, tinged with the energy that it was the first time that we were ever doing this, this segment. Before we start drafting, Alex, how are you feeling about The Dumbest Things That Happened in 2022? Do you think that the Tipping Pitches Podcast this year has been a, a nice testament to these things, so we kept a nice running diary?
ALEX: You know, I think we have and I mean, you can see I’m wearing my, I’m wearing my A’s gear, right? I’m, I, I figured for the, the podcast about The Dumbest Things That Happened in 2022. I had to represent the, the dumbest team that existed in this year baseball. So you know, but, but again, kind of like Stephen, I’m feeling at peace right now. You know, I mean, I’m on the other end of the spectrum, because we didn’t even sniff the postseason. But–
BOBBY: What was the date of the year where you were like, A’s not making the postseason? I can say with 100% certainty.
ALEX: Like May.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: It was like it was–
JANE: That late!
BOBBY: Yeah, [7:47]–
ALEX: Yeah, I know [7:48] look at their lineup.
JANE: I was thinking like this, like this–
BOBBY: [7:53]
JANE: –spring training started.
ALEX: [7:54]
JANE: Spring training started, yeah.
LAUREN: No, I think the- I want to meet the fan who like I don’t really believe in that team all the way up until the blowjob incident.
JANE: Come on, you can’t, you can’t talk about–
STEPHEN: [8:05] spoilers!
BOBBY: No picks before the picks. All right, I feel like we should just get into it, then. We’re just, we’re letting shit leak out. Jane, you want to kick us off this year?
JANE: Yeah. Because what I was gonna do, thanks, Lauren. I was gonna segue from Alex’s thing there to talk about the infestations in Oakland of cats and public sex in the Coliseum.
LAUREN: [8:28] the same, yeah.
JANE: Yeah, that’s the old was probably a lot of cat sex happening there, too. I know I said, I wouldn’t say come as much. But then I immediately started talking about cat sex on your podcast. But yeah, that, that was great. The Oakland Coliseum, just there’s no like fans there. So it just becomes like full of cats, too many cats. And then of course, a pub, a couple of having public sex up in the, the top row stands there.
BOBBY: Do we know, uhm, did the Oakland PD ever get to the bottom of that? I know that they were really training all–
LAUREN: No!
BOBBY: –their resources.
ALEX: They were, yeah, they were dedicating a lot of manpower.
LAUREN: No. Follow up and tried to research that a little bit. And they have not said they’re still investigating. But as of the last report, I think a couple weeks ago, they had not caught them.
BOBBY: They’re still investigating the video two 29-year olds having sex in the stands.
LAUREN: Yeah.
ALEX: They’re like, we need to watch this one more time just to make sure we’ve got all the details.
LAUREN: I did appreciate the fans going up to that segment with posters, it said, these seats suck. Keep your head in the game. Just blow it. Urgh! Felt good.
STEPHEN: Oh, God!
BOBBY: That’s respect to A’s fans, that’s respect to A’s fans.
LAUREN: Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah, I mean, I mean, the Oakland A’s remain defeated, but A’s fans remain undefeated, I’d like to point that out.
STEPHEN: it is, it is such a wild disparity in quality of organization versus fan base.
BOBBY: Okay, Lauren, what’s up for you?
LAUREN: Oh, God. There were so many good ones this year. I kind of want to, I don’t want to hit this one first. But there was this great little moment in I think was around like August, September, where we all kind of realized that the Bernie Brewster slide is kind of a death trap, is kind of like Adventure Land ask theme park like danger zone. First it was Raisa Porter, Tricia Whitaker of Bally Sports Sun, who went on the side too fast and cracked into, into the padding with her face. And then–
ALEX: I don’t even know that I heard about that one.
LAUREN: Yeah, that one was less on the radar than the big one which is–
BOBBY: Just ano- just another example of a woman being overshadowed by the actions of a man.
LAUREN: Yeah, well think is the guy doing it was a lot was a lot funnier. The two videos are both good, but his great. It’s seems that, David Vassegh- Vassegh? Vassegh? I think the Dodgers broadcast booth goes down the slide screaming, Holy crap! Holy crap! Holy crap, the whole time!
JANE: Like he’s, like he’s on the suicide roller coaster.
LAUREN: I mean, a little bit if, he could, he, he smacks into the wall hard enough that he cracked six ribs and breaks his wrist in two places.
ALEX: Unbelievable.
BOBBY: No, but the craziest part is that when they were telling everybody about this and showing the video, he was like on the broadcast, and they were–
LAUREN: Yeah!
BOBBY: –making it seem like he was fine and he wasn’t fine. he broke his arm–
LAUREN: No!
BOBBY: –his six ribs.
LAUREN: They were laughing at him.
ALEX: We are laughing so hard.
LAUREN: And he went back to the game after going- office to like do, do call the be there, be there for like the last four innings. But the best part isn’t even that the best part is the game itself is a two to one walk off victory with Austin Barnes saying his, his home run in the in the ninth was for David, the team rallied for. It doesn’t get better than that.
JANE: That rules is so good.
ALEX: We need more death traps at major league ballparks.
LAUREN: We do, yeah.
ALEX: That’s my take, you know.
LAUREN: Why do you think it’s like a Disneyland thing where like you don’t, we don’t hear about the injuries. Because you, you–
ALEX: Right.
LAUREN: –as a fan you can take a tour of the, the stadium and go down the side of the five times. Well, and there just gonna tell people.
JANE: There was the kid that got his head stuck in the weight bug statue at Tampa Bay. So like we’ve got at least two deaths traps.
LAUREN: I think, I think the Rays take is also probably like there’s probably–
JANE: The Rays take, yeah.
LAUREN: –[12:14]. Lots, lots a limb in there.
JANE: We should actually electrify this the touch [12:19].
BOBBY: Shea Bridge at Citi Field if you step on the wrong spot, it just breaks in half and fall through. You just got to be careful.
LAUREN: Gum thing apart with like the disgusting gum wall.
JANE: Well the gum, that’s, that’s just in Seattle.
LAUREN: Yeah.
JANE: In Seattle, it’s so gross. It’s one of the grossest things I’ve ever seen in my life.
LAUREN: That’s a biohazard, yeah, that can–
JANE: It is.
LAUREN: –trillion shit.
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: Yeah. Yeah. People touch it. People lick it, like, you know, on a dare. It’s found good, so gross.
BOBBY: Not good.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: Stephen, what is your first selection and The Dumbest Things That Happened in Baseball in 2022?
STEPHEN: So we’ve got public sex. We’ve got work injuries. I want to round out Batting Around’s first three picks with an accusation of murder. Specifically, Ben Verlander.
LAUREN: Yes, Ben Verlander. You’re gonna have a whole episode for this, this bit.
BOBBY: Yeah, you’re good.
STEPHEN: In, in, in defense of the events of Barry Bonds and the whole morality clause of the Hall of Fame. Ben Verlander decided to accuse Babe Ruth, of setting his poor wife Helen on fire.
BOBBY: His poor wife, Helen.
STEPHEN: Actually, I just need to read the whole tweet because it’s like, it is probably the funniest baseball tweet–
BOBBY: Yes.
STEPHEN: –of the year.
BOBBY: Yes, I agree.
STEPHEN: Woke up thinking about how Babe Ruth set his poor wife Helen on fire. Yet the moral gatekeepers are keeping Barry Bonds the greatest hitter of all time, out of the Hall of Fame.
BOBBY: You literally could not win the Nobel Prize for Literature writings of fiction better than that, like it’s so good.
ALEX: I, my favorite was, was Part II, his reply to it, which is just allegedly. Like [14:13] that one in there.
JANE: You just mean, to cover my ass here.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
JANE: On our show last week, when we were just like this is not actionable this is parody.
BOBBY: Yeah, that’s parody. That’s parody defense, under this brand is parody. And now, henceforth to the end of time, or any lawyers listening. What a tremendous selection, tremendously.
STEPHEN: It is.
BOBBY: I’ll never forget when we were on the tipping pitches, live stream and half the people didn’t know that that existed and we got the pleasure of showing people that tweet being able to share it and shit
STEPHEN: like that with people who haven’t gotten it yet. Yes, it’s a gift.
JANE: We got to do that on our show. Who is it that we got to tell about that? That was wonderful. I don’t remember right now, but we definitely got, yeah.
STEPHEN: Oh, oh, I had a friend over to watch Game 3 of the World Series which the Philadelphia Phillies are playing in. And she is not very online and did not know the Nick Castellanos’ meme. So I got to–
BOBBY: Wow.
STEPHEN: –do a dramatic retelling of it between commercial breaks.
JANE: I saw a picture–
STEPHEN: It was very good.
JANE: –that had been taken of you doing that.
STEPHEN: Oh, yeah.
JANE: Somebody had that, yeah, yeah, that probably took a picture of you.
LAUREN: That, that is like world’s baseball stories that just leaked into into normal world a bit. I’ve had multiple people like I taught.
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: I watch a lot of baseball, I watch baseball podcasts. And they’re always like, oh, yeah, what’s the Caste, Castellini, Castellano, what’s that?
STEPHEN: Castellini is a different thing.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: So then what? Stephen, what did your friend think that you went for as Halloween last year?
STEPHEN: I didn’t know her last year, she’s a new friend.
BOBBY: Oh, okay.
LAUREN: [15:40] baseball player, yeah.
JANE: He’s when, he was doing the commenta- he’s the commentator. He wasn’t the football players.
STEPHEN: Yeah, I went to Thom Brennaman last year. And a lot of the people who didn’t have no idea what the hell it was. I was just like, oh, yeah, he’s a baseball broadcaster that said the F slur and then got fired. And where like, and then they were like, why are you–
JANE: Why you do that?
ALEX: I’m just ,I’m just I’m curious what–
JANE: Yeah, this is like Michael Richards costume.
ALEX: I mean, like, how did that manifest itself? Because I, I just have an image of him wearing like, a white shirt and like a pink tie or something. Like–
BOBBY: Yeah, yeah, [16:26]–
ALEX: Yeah. [16:28]
LAUREN: Where you going around, yeah.
STEPHEN: So he was wearing a blue, a bluish tie with some sort of diagonal pattern, and I kind of had a blue tie with a diagonal pattern. It wasn’t exact, but it was like close enough. And I just wore a dress shirt. I sprayed my hair silver, and then I wore a headset.
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: Yeah, sure.
ALEX: That’s it, really?
STEPHEN: We’re both white guys. Oh, and I fucking shaved my face.
JANE: Yes, he did.
STEPHEN: Which–
BOBBY: Commitment.
STEPHEN: –I do not look good with a clean shaven face.
BOBBY: That’s where I am right now.
STEPHEN: So that was, that was a struggle.
BOBBY: I’m recovering from the, recovering goose from Top Gun mustache that I had this year. So I’m letting the rest of the beard out but the mustache still longer. I mean, look–
JANE: It looks good.
BOBBY: We dress up, we dressed up as Michael Myers. We dressed up as Freddie, you just dress up as Thom Brennaman. He’s like the the Freddie of baseball announcer.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay, it is up to us. I would like to, to do a pre lewd to our pick by saying that The Dumbest Thing That Happened to Tipping Pitches in 2022 was literally Alex Bazeley, right there on this call right now. Alex Bazeley taking a photo with A’s owner, John Fisher.
LAUREN: Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: Wearing a shirt that said Steal Bases, Not Wages. That was The Dumbest Thing That Happened to Tipping Pitches in 2022. And it started a whole, like semi little controversy on A’s Twitter, about how John Fisher’s tone deaf and doesn’t understand the man. Just because Alex decided to take a sarcastic photo. The precursor to the, the Pirates fan doing the same thing with Bob Nutting a couple of weeks later. But I’ll let Alex, I’ll let you do the honors for our first official pick in The Dumbest Thing That Happened in 2022.
ALEX: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, lots of Oakland A’s representation here early on in this draft. Because I would like to submit for consideration. Oakland A’s President Dave Kaval’s Twitter meltdown, over the, the A’s attendance woes in the middle of the season.
STEPHEN: Forgot about that.
ALEX: I, you know, I really did too, because he disappeared, or pretty much right after it. He kind of melt- melted down, he corncob his way offline. And it was, it was a remarkable saga like days long, kind of back and forth with Twitter users about how the Giants pull more attendance than, than the A’s do. He was like getting into an argument with like someone who’s like cosplaying as like a seagull online, you know, saying like, you’re literally a seagull and it’s like, you’re literally paid millions of dollars like you don’t you don’t have to be here.
JANE: It’s like when people get into fights Birds Rights Act. Just like look at yourself, man. Come on.
ALEX: It was simultaneously the low point of my season. And the high point of my season. I was like, it doesn’t get any better than this.
BOBBY: I mean, I would just like to shout out Dave Kaval for giving us an entire hours worth of content on the podcast. If you think about it, he really did it for the content creators.
ALEX: He really did.
BOBBY: He wasn’t thinking about himself. He was going out there and he was falling on the sword for us. Do you think, so you said that he disappeared off Twitter after this. Do you think that he disappeared or that they disappeared him? Do you think that they were like a condition of your employment going forward that you don’t tweet at seagulls?
ALEX: The thing is, i don’t- I don’t think they, they know or care, right? I think they, I think they let him off the leash and he just does his own thing.
BOBBY: Does Billy Beane have a Twitter?
ALEX: No.
LAUREN: They’re just like Euro soccer stuff if he did?
BOBBY: Do you think he has a burner?
ALEX: Probably, he feels like a relatively online guy to me.
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: Regrettably.
LAUREN: If he does, the avatar is 100% Brad Pitt.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: Oh my God.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: I mean, I would, I would if, if you know.
LAUREN: If Brad Pitt–
STEPHEN: Like not Brad Pitt from that movie. Brad Pitt from the regular Brad Pitt.
BOBBY: Brad Pitt once upon a time in Hollywood.
JANE: That from the part where he’s got the he’s holding the the spear gun.
BOBBY: Personally, he has the cam that he like throws at the intruder.
JANE: It’s a, it’s Brad Pitt in that movie where he’s doing the Jamaican Patois.
BOBBY: I would like to task the Tipping Pitches listeners with uncovering Billy Beane’s burner. That is my homework for everybody–
JANE: Yeah, you guys–
BOBBY: –listens to this podcast.
JANE: –do the Ashley Feinberg type–
BOBBY: Yes.
JANE: –detective work and figure out who it is.
LAUREN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: Exactly. Okay, it’s slingshots all the way back around to you, Jane. You’re up.
JANE: Okay. This is, this stuff I’ve so many I want to go through. But since we already talked about Ben, Ben Verlander at one do my other Ben Verlander. About how Ben Verlander is the most revered man in Jap- all of Japan.
LAUREN: Yes, yeah.
JANE: About how he, how he went to the went to Japan, and everyone was, was so in awe of him. They were like, oh, wow, you you’re, you’re totally a, a revered and important figure and not just nepotism higher. Wow, wow. So then they’re bowing for him and doing all of that with those Orientalist stereotypes? Just incredible. They’re like, you know, running away from the Shohei Ohtani, you know, shrine or whatever to go. bow at the feet of, of Ben Verlander son. Yes.
BOBBY: And the fact that that profile was written by none other than Bob Nightengale like that is a whole other–
LAUREN: Incredible.
BOBBY: –to this. Like, how is he involved in everything? I just, I don’t, I don’t.
LAUREN: I mean thing.
STEPHEN: [21:55]
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah. Ben Verlander saw last name Ryan. He was like, Hey, listen, they made some points. Okay, Lauren, you’re up.
LAUREN: Oh, God. I’m gonna go with one of my favorite little stories of when it was almost a non entity that like, no one really wanted to do it. No one really wanted to talk about it. But the thing that happened, so they had to talk about it. It’s a great example of how the baseball journalism industry is just like, built on a certain kind of churn. And you put in a little fuel in there in the interest, we’re gonna go. Ke’Bryan Hayes, ate Sunflower seeds. Do you guys remember this at all? This was just like–
BOBBY: Oh, yes.
ALEX: Yeah.
STEPHEN: I read your notes and I was like, Oh, shit. Yeah.
LAUREN: Yeah, it was a game against the Mets. Ball gets into right, right field. Runners coming around third, gone home. And the camera following the runner catches Ke’Bryan Hayes at third base, pulling a couple of Sunflower seeds out of his back pocket into his mouth. And immediately the team was just like, no, we don’t care. It doesn’t matter, he doesn’t care. We thought he was a little far off from the base where he should have been, we want to come over there. And like there was clearly like, if this was 10 years ago, if it wasn’t the Pirates, if it was like the Mets or the Yankees, this would have been a story for weeks about how like he doesn’t care, he’s not invested. Oh the $70 million man is, is getting paid all this money to play and he’s just–
JANE: I want to here that K fan calls so bad. I keep calling into Mike and yellin’ about that. Oh God, that would rule.
LAUREN: It’d be great. But this couldn’t be sustained. Like maybe it cost him a Gold Glove domination. Like that was like the only speculation I could see for anyone about this. But like, not even like Fox News got mad about this. I actually went looked at the comments on the Fox News article about this. And my favorite comment is from a guy named I Love America025. And all he says is while they do have some delicious flavors now.
JANE: They do, they do.
LAUREN: Yeah.
JANE: I mean, I remember when they, you know, when they first came out with the ranch ones and it was like, holy shit. This is, this is, this is incredible.
LAUREN: Changes the game, yeah.
JANE: This changes the game and now there’s everything. Yeah.
BOBBY: God that is such a guy, you found such a guy.
JANE: That’s great, Lauren.
ALEX: That’s actually that’s Billy Beane’s burner, right there.
BOBBY: No, it guys that’s actually me, that’s actually me. Barbecue flavor is not good. The Pickle flavor is delicious. The ranch flavor is underrated.
JANE: I, I, no, I think you’re, you’re wrong on all of that.
ALEX: I appreciate that SNY kind of like tried to turn it into a–
LAUREN: Yeah.
ALEX: –controversy. Like it wasn’t even their shit to like–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –deal with.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
LAUREN: It wasn’t made any effort. Yeah, they ask questions. They [24:34]
BOBBY: Not just SNY, it was like Todd’s deals pet project for like–
ALEX: Yeah, exactly.
BOBBY: –48 hours. He like cut together the story and he’s like, hey, guys, listen, check this out. Just throwing a little Sunflower seeds in and like, if you just pan right you’ll see that the ball is still in right field. It’s not a big deal.
ALEX: But he’s like Charlie, and it’s always sunny, you know, cigarette hanging out of his mouth trying to keep together how this happened?
LAUREN: It’s just, it’s just a balloon it’s like deflating like no one can sustain this or even be made to care.
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: It’s great.
BOBBY: Yeah. I do, I kind of want to hear the, the caller’s if that was Eduardo Escobar–
JANE: Oh, God.
BOBBY: –it would have been entirely different thing. Just an entire different thing.
JANE: Oh my God. Oh my God.
BOBBY: Unfortunately, Ke’Bryan Hayes didn’t get nominated for a Gold Glove because of this because they actually nominated Juan Soto at third and rightfield instead, so.
LAUREN: It was [25:18] he was like, incredible defensively, like, I think he’s led the league in DRS and Outs Above Average.
BOBBY: Yeah, he’s like, he’s like new Matt Chapman. He also can’t hit.
LAUREN: Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: You know? Sorry, Matt Chapman.
LAUREN: But at least he has some nice little snacks for it to keep his game going.
BOBBY: Exactly. It’s the Pirates like what else you’re gonna do? You got it?
LAUREN: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
ALEX: Ke’Bryan can have, can have a little sunflower seed as a treat.
JANE: It’s kind of, it’s kind of a throwback to, you know, the guys that would have like the little bottle of cocaine or their pockets fully greenies, you know.
LAUREN: Exactly, yeah.
JANE: [25:48] and stuff, yeah.
LAUREN: Atleast, atleast it’s not like draw like–
JANE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
LAUREN: –so it’s, so it’s so much nicer than another guy like the big water tobacco in his mouth.
JANE: This should smoke in the base pass.
BOBBY: The Phillies would be unbeatable if they love to smoke, smoke in the base pass.
LAUREN: That was, that was actually one of my favorite throwaway headlines that I came across for when I was going through the season, I was looking through some old defector articles. And it was right at the, the peak of the Judge, Maris home run, like, you know, who’s better? And headline was just like, I’m gonna give it to the smoker.
JANE: Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: Okay, Stephen, you’re up next.
STEPHEN: Oh, God, I, I am really torn between two that are both very important to Batting Around, specifically.
BOBBY: I love how, wait before you make a choice. I just love how all of us are like treating this like it’s some act of scholarship. Like you’re, before you make the picks, we’re all like–
STEPHEN: This is the most important thing that ever happened.
BOBBY: –and there’s 7 different things that were tied for first that I could be choosing right now. I just love it great work, by the way, I love it.
ALEX: You’re like doing, doing Z scores seeing how many standards [26:55]–
STEPHEN: I literally have a Spreadsheets.
ALEX: –like dumb.
STEPHEN: I quite literally have a Spreadsheet that I’m ordering these things in and I’m looking at it, I’m like, yes!
BOBBY: This is why you guys are here, this is why you guys are here.
STEPHEN: Oooh.
LAUREN: We’re, we’re pros, yeah.
STEPHEN: So–
LAUREN: Act like you’ve been here before, yeah.
STEPHEN: I know that if, I know that if I, I know that Jane and Lauren will both pick both of these, eventually. I do want to talk, alright, let’s, let’s keep on the A’s train because–
ALEX: Oh, yeah.
STEPHEN: –this is all A’s all day today. A very monumental thing in the history of Batting Around happened on April 11, 2022. And that is Sean Murphy got hit in the butt by a baseball.
BOBBY: Yes!
LAUREN: Good one.
STEPHEN: And–
JANE: That’s very important for us.
STEPHEN: I at that time was seeing a movie. There’s a, there’s a really cool venue in my neighborhood that does like weird, extremely low budget shitty movies every first Monday of the month. And it was a blast. The movie I watched was a catastrophe and all the best ways and I was like getting drunk it, it was amazing. And I just, I happened because the movie was bad. I was checking my phone during it. Because I was starting to get a little bored. And I checked my phone. And all of a sudden I had like, dozens of mentions, a few texts. And I’m like, did someone die? What happened? And then I checked and it was no, a baseball player with a gigantic dump truck ass got hit by a pitch in the exact perfect place to make that as jiggle. And then he threw it back a little bit.
BOBBY: He did throw it back.
STEPHEN: Like he was, like he was twerking.
BOBBY: Yeah, he twerk it, yup.
STEPHEN: And all of it was captured in glorious GIF form. And it took the internet ablaze. People who don’t watch baseball at all were sending me this. It took the internet by storm. It was beautiful. And then it eventually became our new logo–
JANE: Allegedly, maybe.
STEPHEN: –for our podcast. Allegedly.
JANE: Maybe.
BOBBY: It inspired the artist’s rendering of our future logo which was all made as our own intellectual property.
JANE: Yes, exactly, exactly.
BOBBY: Thank God for 10 ADP, right?
STEPHEN: Yes.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: Because that just made everything so much better. This is why we advanced technology for moments like this.
JANE: [29:23] caught your ass in 4K, yeah.
LAUREN: Imagine all the years where that happened. And it was we had like all the habits like–
BOBBY: We dish a little rip hole.
LAUREN: –podcast quality, yeah.
ALEX: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
LAUREN: Or like, like the old timey days when the, when the camera was always like behind home plate looking out. Like we, we could have missed like dozens of incredible bounces off of Babe Ruth ass.
BOBBY: Right, and we used to I mean, they used to wear pants so much tighter, too. So like we, that’s even more opportunity to see the ripple and we just missed them all. We just missed them all.
LAUREN: Incredible.
BOBBY: But this one made up for it. Sean Murphy, thank you for doing a service for all the asses that have been jiggled with pitches. Okay, that’s, I think it’s our turn Alex, someone, someone mentioned, briefly mentioned the pick that we’re going to take which is Aaron Judge’s home run chase. Just the whole fucking thing, the whole damn thing. All of the controversy about pitching around him, about how each pitcher was too cowardly to too afraid to throw him a strike. It’s like yeah you should–
JANE: [30:22] in a playoff race. Like still like also competing for a playoff spot. We’re supposed to just like throw some meatballs.
BOBBY: There walking him like 3-2, also.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: You know, like it wasn’t like they were just intentionally walking him every time they’re pitching around. Yeah, they’re pitching around the best hitter in the lineup who has no protection after him Welcome to Mike Trout entire career. Like–
JANE: Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: And everybody losing their mind over it. You know, we get the, the bonus choice in here. Like the bonus little throw inside dish of the Apple TV+ discourse about what who was going to get to broadcast the home run and how, how the YES Network how Michael Kay wasn’t going to get to memorialize as much shit as Michael Kay wasn’t gonna get to memorialize this call. All for nothing, because he still didn’t even hit the home run for another like 10 days after all of the discourse happened. In the most strict sense of the term, it was The Dumbest Thing That Happened in Baseball in 2022. Not even in a fun way, just the dumbest way.
JANE: Also, I’m so glad that, that it’s over. And Roger Maris’ kids got, Roger Maris’ kids got to see him again.
ALEX: That was, that was the worst possible outcome of that.
LAUREN: Yeah.
JANE: Yeah, yeah.
ALEX: We did not need to give him those 15 minutes of fame.
JANE: No, promoting is awful. Like a hunting, were brand new, or you know, yeah. Fishing hats and shit. Holy, holy shit givers, look at those.
ALEX: They’re awful.
JANE: Awful.
BOBBY: That was like 10 days where everyone felt the need to, quote tweet everything he said and be like, no, I, I still affirm that the real record is Barry Bonds like can we just not? Can we just not?
LAUREN: Yeah. That was really the roughest stretches that like 10-day period where he wasn’t hitting the homer, but it was like about to and every single at bat. And it’s like he was like the whole country was just like edging over this, it’s exhausting.
BOBBY: We tried to avoid talking about as much as possible, Alex, right?
ALEX: Yes, absolutely. I mean, because it’s amazing, amazing. Aaron Judge having such a good year, we can enjoy that on its own merits and not give a shit about the, the record or the, the discourse or the narrative around it. Like it can exist on its own terms without having to be like, you know, and again, As Jane mentioned, right, it happens amidst the, the Yankees kind of they’re, they’re in a freefall in like, you know, kind of August and early September, and then they’re vying for a playoff spot. And I’m like, there’s so many more important things that we can be talking about right now than what the actual record is. I don’t care, I don’t, I really don’t.
BOBBY: Be spending our emotional energy on making fun of Josh Donaldson. And yet we’re spending is are making fun of Roger Maris Jr. who never even played baseball. What are we doing?
LAUREN: No, I, I think really the part that I hated the most about whole discourse, is it also kind of spurred on the, the Shohei versus Judge MVP conversation was agonizing. And it just went on for ages.
JANE: It’s still am, and like, we still haven’t gotten resolution on it as of this recording anyway.
BOBBY: You, fuckin’ awful! You couldn’t pay me enough to share my opinion on who should actually win MVP. Like, you have to give me the Bob Nightengale salary made today. However much, however much they pay that guy.
JANE: What if I write an article about how everyone in southwest like Asia, like somewhere, you know, just some country. I’m not going to Japan, because that’s about Ben Verlander’s territory. But I’ll write an article about how you know everybody in Indonesia is just–
BOBBY: They come up to me, they shake my hand.
ALEX: Yeah. You’re the voice of the people–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –honestly.
BOBBY: Yeah. Okay, Jane, we’re back to you. So last time, we did three selections and then a speed round. So this will be our last final–
STEPHEN: Oh, fuck!
JANE: Okay.
BOBBY: –our last full pick and then–
ALEX: Yeah, no pressure.
BOBBY: –if anything else that doesn’t get taken, we can kind of speed round the end here, so–
JANE: Okay. Okay, no question. And I have to do Canada repealing its vaccine policy. Yeah, totally, totally cowardly. After a whole season of really stupid shit with players refusing to get vaccinated to go play in Canada, which we talked about at length on our show and our players to be shamed weather segments.
LAUREN: That;s really like our beat more than anybody else in the media–
ALEX: Yeah, absolutely.
LAUREN: –yeah. I think some–
ALEX: You guys did a great job of, of chronicling that.
LAUREN: That’s on Stephen, yeah.
JANE: Yes.
LAUREN: He’s the MVP of that.
JANE: But then the Canadian government just goes no, we’re right, right at the end of the season. September 30, you can come into the country now, no problem. Like, God, I don’t know how much it would have affected the playoffs think there would have been a couple people. But like how the they would have–
STEPHEN: Robbie Ray?
JANE: –Robbie Ray. Yeah.
LAUREN: So that would have been great for them.
JANE: That would have been [34:50]–
LAUREN: That would help them, that would have been, that would have been an amazing story. Yeah.
JANE: Yeah. Yeah. But now Now we get to see the, the harm that not having these facts, see mandates does. It lets Robbie Ray pitch in the postseason, that’s a huge problem, so.
LAUREN: That was Banana Republic shit. Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: Yeah. Really, really.
ALEX: Yeah. Trudeau had a chance to do something so paste and, and hold that up.
BOBBY: That’s the thing, they stumble into things that are funny. neoliberals, they stumble into things that are good and funny. And then they take them away from us. This is just the whole neoliberal brand, like Trudeau, he fucked us! He fucked us!
STEPHEN: I, I, I do want to, I do want to take like this is I think Jane made the correct choice with all of the, like of specifically Canada repealing this. But like, can we just talk about generally, this fucking experience of watching the Kansas City Royals?
JANE: That was so funny.
STEPHEN: Go to Toronto with 10–
JANE: 14 team guys down [35:48]
STEPHEN: –10, 10 people out or–
JANE: Incredible.
STEPHEN: –the Phillies going up there in the, in the heat of a wildcard race without like three of their best players.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: For fucking the Cardinals without like 2–
JANE: 16 WAR worth the guys.
STEPHEN: Yeah, like–
BOBBY: Two top 5 MVP finishers?
STEPHEN: Two guys who are both–
LAUREN: Yeah.
STEPHEN: –yeah, exactly.
ALEX: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Like it was so fucking dumb.
ALEX: [36:11] for, for Whit Merrifield, who steadfastly refused to get the vaccine until he’s traded to Toronto and then immediately gets bounced from the playoffs. Like dude is so mad.
LAUREN: Yeah, he’s, he’s like researching, he’s like, in the fringe right now like Googling, like, how to get the vaccine taken out their body.
JANE: I think you know what, you know what, I think he got a fake card. I think a lot of these guys got fake cards, honestly.
STEPHEN: I think a lot of the Yankees got free fake cards, because there was all that drama about like whether or not they’d be able to play in New York.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: And I know, I know that any, those guys could literally go to anybody in New York be like, hey, can get, can I get a fake card?
JANE: Nah!
STEPHEN: And they be like, Oh, Mr. Aaron Judge? Yes, sir!
JANE: Yeah. Yes.
STEPHEN: Here.
LAUREN: I feel like we need like a real sleuth to get like investigating the player girlfriends with Etsy accounts to track down like who got those and who circulated them through the league. Because that’s definitely how it would have been done, I think.
BOBBY: This is like when, when Peyton Manning’s wife was getting like HGH shipped to her for something and people were like Peyton Manning, he’s on HGH. You know, like, I like to, I like to picture Whit Merrifield trying to get the vaccine taken out of him like when you have to like downgrade your OS you know, like you accidentally upgraded to the wrong OS and it takes you like eight hours to figure out how to get back.
ALEX: It’s like when you have like a splinter and you’re like sitting in the warm water trying to like push it out. You know, you’re like the chips almost there, it’s almost there.
JANE: He’s, he’s like Googling like where the world’s largest electromagnet is, like trying to pull the vaccine out of them. Yeah.
BOBBY: He’s hiking north pole right now.
JANE: Yeah. He’s trying to get blasted with radiation like go into space, yeah.
BOBBY: I feel like, okay, we have this these investigative journalists, right? These quote unquote, “investigative journalists” in the baseball world. Where are they at when it comes to repealing, repealing the, the vaccine decision for Canada? Like, really? On September 30, the day before October, the day before the MLB playoffs supposed to start?
LAUREN: I think it’s so obvious, no one even bother.
ALEX: Oh, yeah.
BOBBY: It’s so obvious that the, the hands were greased but that’s a story, Evan Drellich, where you at, brother? You’ve been on this podcast, I’ll call you out by name. Come on! Let’s do it! All right, Lauren, it’s your turn.
LAUREN: Okay. Yeah, I think I’m gonna save this one of these for speed round, I want to go into Major League Baseball, admitting in court that Angel Hernandez is bad at his job.
JANE: That ruled. So good, so good.
LAUREN: This might be my personal favorite.
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: Yeah. For, for context, Angel Hernandez sued MLB saying that he had not been assigned to a World Series game over the last 7 years because he is Cuban. And because Joe Torre specifically hates him. MLB, he immediately lost the case, he was thrown out of the Southern District of New York, New York’s court because MLB simply pointed out with an extensive case file a document that is free to available to look up online, that he is incredibly bad at his job. He has, he is confrontational, unprofessional and in one case, actively deceptive and shows a complete lack of accountability and inability to move past his mistakes. Several funny things about this, first, it’s great to know that umpires get performance reviews.
BOBBY: Yup.
JANE: Yup.
LAUREN: From MLB, that–
STEPHEN: Yeah.
LAUREN: –that’s very funny.
BOBBY: Do we think those are 360? Like do you think he gets to review Joe Torre?
LAUREN: Oh God, I hope so.
JANE: As much as–
LAUREN: [39:29] what he thinks.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: As much as these guys think they’re cops they do not have qualified immunity like completely.
LAUREN: Not at all.
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: No. I, I, I think the, the funniest story from this incident was, that actually deceptive bit. I wrote this out my notes.
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: It was this weird double switch game in against the Rays. Does anybody remember this like weird double switch game that he got like the call wrong on regarding like, like Kevin captured like these weird double switch things like a couple of at once and then Hernandez goofed up the rules with it and they had to go to review and he was stubborn about like not breaking the rule. Anyway, after all of that, MLB was on a confidential phone call with one of the other umpi- umpires to get like what happened? And Angel Hernandez was eavesdropping on the conversation. And when the MLB representative caught him doing this he lied about it pretend he wasn’t doing that. Anyway, that’s, that’s why he doesn’t it’s called World Series games, ’cause he’s a doofus and they had to admit this in court.
JANE: And you know, as, as much as I like I’m getting I get kind of annoyed with like, you know, the umpire audits, and everyone complained about this all the time.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: And the stupid fucking strike zone overlay. This, this is, this one is awesome. Like this one is great.
BOBBY: Makes it all worth it.
JANE: Love it, love it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely fantastic.
LAUREN: And to that point, I do think it’s a postseason thing. But I do think it was really cool that Pat Hoberg like called the perfect game in, in the postseason.
JANE: That rules.
LAUREN: That was great, yeah.
BOBBY: Hoberg is the fucking G.O.A.T. He’s the best, best ever do it.
LAUREN: Yeah, that’s just like a call every game. Yeah.
ALEX: I mean, that’s the thing is like, we’ve now seen what’s possible, right? I’m like, if he can do it, there are others who can do it.
BOBBY: A better world without there, a better world.
LAUREN: There’s, there’s a great like Chad was virgin set up and Pat Hoberg and Angel Hernandez, just waiting to be done.
BOBBY: You guys remember when Angel Hernandez rung up Kyle Schwarber. And Kyle Schwarber absolutely lost his fucking shit? That was awesome.
JANE: That was awesome.
BOBBY: That was so awesome.
JANE: And that was, that was great too, because the people in Philadelphia yelled at him on his way out of the stadium. But it was like the most polite yelling in the world. I was like, I think that–
STEPHEN: Now we’re from, yeah, we were, that was in the before time, we’re back. We are back, baby.
JANE: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
STEPHEN: That happened, that happens next year. That man is not getting out the city alive.
JANE: He’s getting stubbed, yeah. Because at that time–
LAUREN: [41:48]
JANE: –at that time the city had been subdued by and, and you know–
LAUREN: By four consecutive September collapses, yes.
JANE: Well, by no, by Joe Girardi, Joe Girardi had some sort of psychic hole, pressing the city’s [42:01].
BOBBY: Right.
JANE: And so then when when Angel Hernandez is driving out in his SUV out of the parking lot, and then like the guy yelling at him, like, I think he must have been a Minnesota transplant or something. Because like that was the most polite like yelling at an ump that’s ever taken place. Like if you’re gonna go find the ump in the parking lot–
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: –like, you’re, you’re–
BOBBY: You’re got to break the windshield or something.
JANE: –just gonna be like, we don’t like you very much sir Hernandez, come on.
STEPHEN: That was one, that was one of the most embarrassing–
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: –parts of the things for me as a Phillies fan this year.
JANE: Yeah, awful.
BOBBY: You guys made up for it by maiming Maltress Mack though? No?
STEPHEN: Well, let’s see. I don’t know that might not have worked out for us.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay, Stephen, you’re up.
STEPHEN: All right. So we briefly mentioned my Spreadsheet on players to be shamed later, where I detailed, I detail listed every player who was not eligible to enter the nation of Canada due to their vaccination status. There was also a separate different players to be shamed later list a much smaller one, and with much little less fanfare, but–
JANE: I think funnier, though.
STEPHEN: It’s probably a lot funnier.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: And I’m spea- I’m specifically referencing, Jason Adam, Jalen Beeks, Brooks Raley, Jeffrey Springs, and Ryan Thompson.
BOBBY: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Those five were the Tampa Bay Rays, who, on Pride Night at Tropicana Field, refused to wear the Pride Night hats.
JANE: I won’t wear that hat.
STEPHEN: And instead, took the field in the normal Rays hats while everybody else on their team wore the rainbow ones.
JANE: So awesome.
STEPHEN: The, the Rays organization was like, we want to do better for Pride this year. We, you know, it’s not enough to just slap a rainbow on some hideous free giveaway. And, and let the piggies eat it up because they will and I can confirm that we do.
LAUREN: [44:01] yeah.
JANE: Yeah, we, we are [44:03]–
STEPHEN: It’s not enough to do that. We also need to show our support. Are we going to do that by having a queer person threw out the first pitch? Yeah, sure. But we need to go further. Are we going to do that by, you know, like, including queer com- like queer organizations giving them a spotlight of the game yes, sure, whatever. But we really want to do is we’re going to give our players hats to wear and we’re not going to force them to do it. So that when, so that when they decide they don’t want to out of religious reasons.
JANE: I won’t bake a gay cake and won’t wear gay hat.
LAUREN: [41:41]
JANE: [41:41] gone to the Supreme Court.
LAUREN: Yeah.
JANE: Like this is such an unforced error.
LAUREN: That’s [44:45] world where like, Amy, Amy Coney Barrett right now is saying that players have the right to not wear the gay hat–
JANE: God, I want to, I want to read that fucking Samuel Alito opinion about that. God that’s, that, that’d be awesome. Fucking God, I wish, I wish that, what’s his name is still fucking, Scalia? Yeah, Scalia, I would–
ALEX: Jesus.
JANE: –I would pay anything to read the Scalia gay hat decision.
STEPHEN: And they, and they did appoint one player to speak for all of the players that–
BOBBY: Right.
STEPHEN: –didn’t wear the hat.
BOBBY: Yeah, the ringleader.
STEPHEN: Jason Adam. And his statement is just like–
BOBBY: This motherfucker, has named Jason Adam, what do they expect was going to happen?
ALEX: Yeah, two first name motherfucker.
STEPHEN: Cookie cutter, like, dumb guy who doesn’t understand Christianity talking about Christianity as a way to validate his bigotry. It’s just like–
JANE: Two first name thing as a gay porn star thing, so.
STEPHEN: That’s true, that’s true. So look out.
BOBBY: Yeah.
STEPHEN: But yeah, I, I couldn’t–
BOBBY: That’s his career pivot.
STEPHEN: Who knows, that would have happened if they actually made him wear the hat.
BOBBY: Yeah.
STEPHEN: He’s safe now.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: Once the Rays cut him and hang them out to dry like they do to all relievers.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: The fun- I think the dumbest part about this is, I mean, it’s obviously these guys are all extremely dumb. But the dumbest part about this is that the, the Rays just constantly get fellatio by the entire media about how well run their organization is and how ge- how everybody in the front office is a genius and it’s not about the players on the field. It’s about they invest all of their money in analytics and R&D and getting the most out of every single thing. And they don’t have one person there who thought it’d be a good idea to actually mandate the hat and they didn’t see this coming. Like that, for all of the fucking brain geniuses in that room, they didn’t foresee that five guys would be homophobic on Friday.
LAUREN: Yeah, huge, huge marketing fail. As, as a professional Girlboss marketer, Digital Marketer myself, I can say that’s just an embarrassing.
ALEX: Yes, the, the statement itself is so incoherent as you mentioned, Stephen, right? He’s like, he’s like look, you know, let me be clear, I support and love people from all walks of life. But!
BOBBY: Stephen.
ALEX: But! It’s like unreal, you couldn’t script this.
BOBBY: Yeah, it’s so bad. It’s so bad. A great selection though, a great selection. Okay, Alex, it’s our, it’s it’s our time to make our final selection. The Dumbest Baseball Things of 2022.
ALEX: This was, was, was slightly dumb and, and mostly just incredibly terrifying. It gave me night terrors for, for days afterwards. This year, Major League Baseball hosted once again their Field of Dreams game, which I think at this point is maybe starting to get a little overplayed. But that’s, that’s fine, that’s a separate story. But–
JANE: I thought one was overplayed.
ALEX: Right, exactly. In their tradition of glomming on to kind of popular trends in, in culture years after the, the fact. They decided hey, seventh inning stretch, you know who we should get? The dead Harry Caray, a hologram of this man to sing–
JANE: Oh, I forgot about that.
BOBBY: –Take Me Out to the Ballgame.
JANE: It should have just gotten Will Ferrell to view his Harry Caray–
LAUREN: That’ll be incredible.
JANE: –impression. That would be great.
ALEX: It would have been amazing, yes. And everyone is it would be completely fine with that. And Will Ferrell is very lovable. And this was like–
JANE: He’s done, he’s done baseball stunts before, remember when he did–
ALEX: Yes.
JANE: –spring training where he played–
LAUREN: Yeah.
JANE: –all nine positions on nine different teams?
ALEX: Right. Like he’s, he’s been there. This was like, so like, absolutely no one saw this beforehand and was like, maybe this is actually going to give some young children trauma for the rest of their lives, you know.
BOBBY: What was like the, what was like the 99th percentile outcome for this? Like, what did they think people were going to like about it? They’re gonna be like, Oh, nostalgia, Harry Caray.
ALEX: Right. Oh, I, I didn’t realize he was still alive, you know.
JANE: They, they, their best outcome was that they were, they’re like, we’re gonna sell the Harry Caray hologram NFT for $2 billion. That’s what they thought was gonna happen.
LAUREN: No, I suspect MLB was probably paid for it. I think the company that does these holograms is like, using it as kind of a form of crypto advertising for their service.
JANE: I can see that.
BOBBY: That makes it even dumber.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s like marquee events, so to speak. Your marquee regular season game for some reason is the Field of Dreams game. Tom Trudeau dressing up in old timey clothes and pretending like it’s 1930. But, wow, just an incredibly stupid thing for them to do. The honorable, the honorable mention that is most closely tied to this I will, I will start and then I’ll kick it around to all of you for your speed round honorable mentions was Fox putting up the, the, the Twin Towers 911 crash. The exact same reaction when Alex brought this up. I can’t believe that was this year.
JANE: Oh my God.
ALEX: Someone, someone flying over be like, look at those two beautiful pools down there. That’s perfect, Yankees logo ,Red Sox logo.
JANE: And was awesome is that like it gave, it gave the people of Boston the association with 9/11 that they always wanted. That they always [50:18]. They tried to make the Boston bombing into it. They tried to make everything into their own 9/11 but they finally got it.
BOBBY: Jane!
LAUREN: You’re so right, though. You’re so right, though.
STEPHEN: Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave?
BOBBY: [50:43] come back in 2004.
JANE: Yeah. Yeah.
STEPHEN: Oh, fuck! So we’re not doing playoff stuff, right?
BOBBY: We can do what ever we want.
ALEX: Whatever you want, yeah.
BOBBY: There are clearly not very strict rules to this.
STEPHEN: I have, I, I have things that I’ve kept off the list specifically because I thought we’re talking about the season.
BOBBY: No, no, just the year.
STEPHEN: I have two, I have two very big playoff things.
BOBBY: Okay.
STEPHEN: Uhm, I’m sorry, Bobby, but I cannot let this episode go without talking about that your game.
BOBBY: Yeah, of course. Yeah.
STEPHEN: Because that, that might have been the, that was the dumbest thing that happened in the playoffs.
JANE: Would [51:27]–
STEPHEN: Until–
JANE: –on our episode and was just like, oh, the great. This is gonna be known as the year game, forever. That would be the funniest things I’ve ever heard, yeah.
STEPHEN: That was the dumbest thing to happen in the playoffs. Until Aaron Boone’s lifestyle coach or whatever the fuck he is, in the locker room showed the Yankees who were down 3-0, in the ALCS. A montage of, of the Red Sox coming back from that against the Yankees. That was, I think the dumbest thing that happened–
BOBBY: Yeah.
STEPHEN: –this playoffs.
BOBBY: You literally–
ALEX: So funny.
BOBBY: –could not cook up a story for Sports Radio better than that. Like if you planted it, like if you were the CIA, and you wanted to plant a story that was going to dominate New York Sports Radio, you could not come up with something better than that. And Aaron Boone–
LAUREN: And I thought really matter as a possible explanation.
BOBBY: Maybe. Is Aaron Boone [57:22]? Like maybe he is.
LAUREN: Why else would you still have the job? Yeah.
STEPHEN: I’m genuinely shocked [52:27] the job.
BOBBY: False flag.
STEPHEN: Like–
BOBBY: It’s a false flag. Okay, speed round, Jane, what’s up?
JANE: Three words, Joe West Podcast.
ALEX: Yeah!
STEPHEN: Our, our collective rival.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: He’s eating into our market share.
LAUREN: I know.
ALEX: I guarantee he probably has more listeners than both of our podcasts.
BOBBY: No fucking way! No way, dude. No way! No one is listening to that pod. Every single person–
JANE: [52:54] to begin with.
BOBBY: Yeah, every single person that I’ve talked to in the baseball world, just doesn’t know that it exists. So that leads me to believe that nobody’s listening to it.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
BOBBY: And as someone whose job it is to produce podcasts and see the numbers and see how they grow and try to grow them. There is no way that they’re growing this podcast. I have not seen that anywhere except our two podcast are.
ALEX: [53:15]
JANE: And we only talked about it on the Patreon side. [53:19] like really, nobody’s like I’m hearing it. Be like–
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: –you know, 200 people or whatever. Yeah, that’s it.
BOBBY: I haven’t ruled out, I haven’t ruled out that, that podcast is a false flag to catch the two of us doing something.
JANE: It might be, it might be, it might be like a, a trap to get us to–
LAUREN: To honeypot? Yeah.
JANE: Yeah. Just waiting for us to say something slanderous about Joe West [53:43]–
ALEX: Yeah, he is, he is, yeah.
LAUREN: There’s actually like a chapter in that book about the, the Indonesian takeover about that.
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: Yeah.
JANE: Yeah, yeah. Totally.
BOBBY: When we do our listen- live listen along are much T’s long T’s live listen along to Joe West’s spoken word country album for the Patreon, Alex. We have to make sure that we’re only fair use, only fair use. Otherwise Joe s will sue us out of existence. And that would be the dumbest way for this podcast.
ALEX: Yes, I know. No I’m–
BOBBY: He’s being sued out by Joe West.
JANE: Yo, how great would that be if Twitter ended like inm like a week because of Elon Musk, like firing everybody? And then also we like both of our podcast gets sued out of existence by Joe West. Just like yeah, just like well, fuck, I guess I gotta go to law school now.
ALEX: Yeah, it’s literally To- Tony, it’s like the, the domino’s meme, right?
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: Tony La Russa–
BOBBY: Sue Twitter.
ALEX: Someone else, someone else is impersonating him to Elon Musk absolutely destroying Twitter. That’s honestly kind of–
BOBBY: If that happens if, if Twitter dies, our podcasts get sued out of existence, I will just like move to Italy and just like prep pasta for a living. Like I will not, I’m, I’m done with the whole [54:53]–
ALEX: Oh, it’s a blessing. You’re finally, you’re free now, yeah.
JANE: It’s gonna be like, like when Michael Corleone killed that guy in the restaurant. Like can you have to fucking flee to Italy? Yeah, It’s gonna, there’s gonna two guys with shotguns following you around. It’s gonna be, it’s gonna be fucking tight. Yeah.
BOBBY: I thought you’re gonna say it’s like the Goodwill Hunting speech and he’s like every day I walk up the door and I hope that your podcast gets sued out of existence by Joe West.
JANE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: Every fucking day, I hope that for you.
JANE: Go, go live a normal life, normal successful happy life instead of whatever the fuck it is we’re doing here. Yeah
BOBBY: Okay, Lauren, set us free, what, what else you got for the speed round.
LAUREN: God! Alex, funny you brought him up because my answer for this is just Tony La Russa in its entirety.
ALEX: Yeah.
LAUREN: I actually you can’t see it off screen here but I got my big cork board with all the pictures in the red string connecting the dots here. I actually heard a full Tony La- TLR timeline, a [55:48] of events for what happened but I just want to focus on the one incident. It was in June, Trea Turner is at the plate in a one two count, and Tony La Russa walks him. Next month he comes up and immediately crushes a three run homer. And as he’s running around the plate, you can see Max Muncy saying, you fucking walk in with two strikes! Fuck you, bitch!
JANE: Max Muncy so cool.
LAUREN: Magnificent!
BOBBY: He did that for us. He did that for us, he did that for everybody who wanted to call Tony La Russa a bitch to his face.
JANE: Yeah. Can I also just bring up the incident where they renamed the like, cafeteria or whatever. It was that season?
LAUREN: That was the previous season, yeah.
JANE: [56:33] nevermind.
BOBBY: Showed that last year. Yeah.
JANE: I hope so.
LAUREN: Yeah. But, yeah, no, there was, the clip is so great for so many reasons. I really recommend having to watch the clip of this. It’s great for someone first off, Freddie Freeman on second base is like visibly confused about what’s going on. And also in the clip you can clearly hear on the broadcast a guy in the fans screaming, Tony, what are you doing?! That’s two strikes, Tony! Two strikes.
JANE: I love that this incident do because it made, it, it like really showed how much Max Muncy shit talking has become way more coherent. Remember when he put one in the water against Madison Bumgarner?
ALEX: Yeah, yeah.
JANE: And he’s like he should talk Madison Bumgarner on the way around the bases and like that was fucking cool as hell and he did his little backflip thing he does where he just kind of like goes up with his hand and it just like hits the dirt.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: But like what he actually said to Madison Bumgarner, I don’t remember the exact words but like it didn’t actually make sense.
BOBBY: Total nonsense. Totally [57:28].
JANE: Yeah, didn’t actually make any sense at all. But this one was like completely coherent and it was right there, perfect. Muah! Love him.
LAUREN: This incident in general is just my favorite from the season for TLR. Because like yeah, a bunch of weird fuck ups all year long.
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: Like you’ll have Michael Kopech like pitch when he was like visibly injured.
BOBBY: Yeah, yeah. He was like five miles an hour down.
LAUREN: Yeah, he’d always like–
ALEX: Yeah.
LAUREN: –dumb as shit all season long and this is the only one that–
ALEX: [57:49] hit it, Garcia hit third like multiple times.
LAUREN: Yeah. He was, he ruined like a really good team so awful sea- season. They were a .500 club all year long, get to injuries–
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: –because he’s just a fucking idiot.
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: And it’s the only thing it was like actually fun out of that, everything else about the White Sox this year, we’re just like a slog.
BOBBY: Do you remember, Lauren, do you remember, do you remember when he pinch ran because a fan told him to pinch run? Did you see that–
LAUREN: Oh, fuck!
BOBBY: –video?
ALEX: What?
LAUREN: God, so fucking dumb, it makes me so fucking mad! I need to move on, cuz I’m gonna get way too angry about TLR, about Tony La Russa, again.
BOBBY: Who was running, it was like the winning run was on second. Like one out and like the late innings and it was like the catcher. You know, like I don’t really remember who was running and who they decided to bring in fucking run.
JANE: I can’t wait for them to hire him again in like five years and he’s like in hospice.
LAUREN: He’s on the field in an iron lung, yeah.
BOBBY: No, no, no, they just keep him at home and one of his probably many homes and they just put his hologram in the dugout.
ALEX: There it is.
JANE: He’s, he’s gonna be in the fucking thing from Star Trek where it’s like the burnt up guy. The admiral pike box. Oh, that means that means walk ’em.
STEPHEN: Broke, robot arms.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Woke, robot manager.
JANE: General Grievous fucking–
ALEX: Jesus.
JANE: –Tony La Russa just panting, yeah. Christ.
BOBBY: Robot managers, that’s Aaron Boone, bro. The Aaron Boone just the analytics robot, bro.
JANE: He just, he just [59:27] up now Mike. I’ll let you get on within, yeah. Oh, Christ.
BOBBY: I’m gonna get another Diet Coke. Alright, Stephen, your last speed round.
STEPHEN: Two general ones that aren’t really a singular story but general- but like occurred throughout the season. There’s a, there’s positive and a negative. We have the chaos Oriels, that was fucking dumb.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: And we also have the entire AL Central.
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: Yeah, yeah.
JANE: Yeah. It’s right there like you’re good pointing at my like Twins thing over here. Yeah, it was awful. One of the, one of the most awful showings I’ve ever seen.
LAUREN: Yeah, yeah. The only people in the [1:00:13] had any fun at all were Zach Greinke’s teammates.
JANE: Yup.
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: They literally not had a good time this year.
ALEX: Yep. The whole Orioles narrative just broke my brain so much. How it was like wow, this team good? Question mark, has good players, could actually compete, what the fuck is going on? And ownerships like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hang on, hang on.
JANE: To be fair, to be fair, them trading Jorge Lopez to the Twins who’s actually good move. [1:00:33] closer if he saw he pitched to the Twins down the stretch, actually a good call. So, okay.
BOBBY: I mean, yeah, and then and now Trey Mancini being on the Astros and not being able to hit water if he fell out of a boat. But still actually making–
LAUREN: Oh, yeah.
BOBBY: –a beautiful play at first to save the game at the end of the day.
JANE: Orioles [1:00:54] 114, yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah, I do think, I do think that the dumbest part of the Oriole season is just Mike Elias trying its hardest to fucking lose. Like this is, this is the truly the culmination of like–
LAUREN: It’s a part of Major League.
BOBBY: Yeah. Like Astro ball tanking culture, like all of this, like disguising saving money. And there’s like analytics and these like reasonable rebuilds with the team control and all these players. Like your team is now good, you’re good, you’re good enough to fight for a wildcard spot. And all you have to do is make a couple of friends moves. And what you do is try to make your team worse that deadline. Like that, that is so brain poisoned, it is so, if you went back 30 years and told someone that someone was going to be doing this and it was going to be widely accepted in the baseball community as quote unquote, “the right move”. They’ll be like, just fucking fault the league then when the strike happens, just don’t bring the league back then. Like, because it’s so stupid. Mike Elias is dumb, he’s the dumbest thing of baseball in 2022.
ALEX: I mean, meanwhile, the owners of the Orioles are just suing each other.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: [1:01:53] each other on court.
BOBBY: It’s so good, I cannot wait for discovery on that, on that lawsuit. My God, that’s gonna be such a good pod.
JANE: No, I got, I got Westlaw booted up already, I’m lazy. It’s gonna be fucking awesome.
LAUREN: Yeah, [1:02:04] set up and ready to go, yeah.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like Google alerts set up for like Angelo’s lawsuit.
LAUREN: That, that’s it, I had, I had so much fucking fun and like going to like the last couple Orioles games this season and seeing like feel it’s but she used to come out against the Blue Jays and, and give, give up [1:02:23].
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: Oh, fuck.
BOBBY: Okay, our final speed rounds, we have a couple of things left, Alex. One of ours is, is another tanking team right now. And he kicked off this season right. He set, I would say he set the tone for the season. You want to do the honors?
ALEX: Sure. And you know, I actually think, I mean, it was dumb, it was also really instructive. And I’m really glad he, he did this. And that’s when Phil Castellini.
JANE: This was on my list, too, I’m glad you got this.
ALEX: Yes, the, the son of, of Reds owner Bob Castellini.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: Who, who came out and, and said in a radio interview, when asked about the state of the team. He, he said, addressing the Reds fans, well, well, where are you gonna go? Sell the team to who? That’s the other thing, you want to have this debate?
JANE: Yeah, yeah.
ALEX: What would you do with this team to have it more profitable, make more money compete in the current economic system that this game exists? It would be take it up and move it somewhere else.
JANE: We got you by the Nats everyone, yeah.
ALEX: Jesus, careful what you ask for.
BOBBY: Wait, you, you left something out, it wasn’t just Phil Castellini. It was Phil Castellini and his giant pile of cocaine that was next to him during the radio interview.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
JANE: What can, what, what did it happen? What did happen with the Reds attendance? Does anyone know?
BOBBY: I don’t know.
LAUREN: No.
BOBBY: I never, I never struggled back.
JANE: Was it good? Was it good, that help?
BOBBY: What, what happened with the whole economic system of baseball? Did anybody see Rob Manfred give a, give a revenue quote last week? Was it 11? 11–
JANE: Oh, yeah, I didn’t see that.
BOBBY: –million 11, oh $11 billion. Oh, right, okay. All right
JANE: Great. Great.
BOBBY: Phil Castellini, Thank you.
ALEX: Honestly, I, I just want to say we need more owners threatening fans.
BOBBY: Right.
STEPHEN: Yes.
ALEX: Because–
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: –because most owners are to PRed the fuck up.
STEPHEN: Yeah, gloves off.
ALEX: And they just like, they just like say they’re like milk toast. Like, you know, it’s like, well, we need to be competitive like now and in the future–
BOBBY: We love this community.
ALEX: –balancing financial alternative.
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: Yeah.
ALEX: Phil Castellini said fuck you. What are you gonna do?
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: Every single major league owner–
STEPHEN: Mass [1:04:24].
LAUREN: –maybe one or two exceptions, would it be acting exactly like Elon Musk on Twitter if they were, like, unfiltered access.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: I love it a couple of years ago and Dolan was like, hey, enjoy Francisco Lindor while we got him. He ain’t coming back. Just let me know. Like Yeah [1:04:41]
ALEX: Honestly.
STEPHEN: I don’t know, I liked when the reporter caught John Middleton telling Bryce Harper that he underpaid him.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: I mean, if nothing else, I mean, the Phil Castellini thing gave us so much. It set the tone for the entire year. It also gave the Tipping Pitches Podcast dozens of, of listeners submitted–
JANE: Yeah you guys have songs.
BOBBY: –songs about Phil Castellini and his carrot empire.
JANE: Fuck.
STEPHEN: That rocked!
His got carrots, and lettuce, and mushrooms, porcine, vegetable king Bob Castellini.
BOBBY: Well, that’s the power, that’s the power of community right there, baby. That’s the power, yeah.
STEPHEN: Lauren, why aren’t we mining our listener base for shit like that?
JANE: You know, we just got, we just got like an influx of like 150 more people into our Discord yesterday. I’m sure some of them would make us a song. We got to find someone to make us a song, shit.
BOBBY: Okay, my final speed round and then I’ll let anybody else if you have anything on your list that you’d love to share, but my final speed round is that the Colorado Rockies were the only team at the Major League Baseball trade deadline not to trade a player. Away from their team or to acquire a player. The one team that should be trading–
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: –a couple, a couple of that relievers, a couple of their good position players, a couple bats to get better in the future. No, Dick Monfort was like, no we’re a family here.
JANE: Yeah, here’s, here’s a dumb one–
BOBBY: Keeping the exact roster, exactly the same.
JANE: Here’s something dumb, Kris Bryant signing with the Rockies.
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: I mean he signing with it wasn’t dumb them giving him the contract was dumb.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: I liked that Kris Bryant is just doubling down. He’s like, you know what? I feel like I was happier than I would have been on some of these other teams that were coming after me.
LAUREN: Incredible, yeah.
BOBBY: Talk about baseball, honestly.
ALEX: [1:06:27]
STEPHEN: Colorado is gorgeous. Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah, I’m, I’m sure he loves it there.
STEPHEN: He was a part of one of the most like dramatic World Series’ of like the past century. So like, he can keep his feet up.
LAUREN: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
BOBBY: Nothing to prove. And he has nothing to–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –prove it with either, because he’s actually not into baseball anymore.
JANE: Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: Okay, anyone else–
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: –to wrap it up here?
JANE: Okay, just really quick here. Everyone complaining about how the playoffs didn’t just crown the Dodgers was really dumb. But also the Phillies making World Series is incredibly dumb.
STEPHEN: You fucked it, I was saving it for last! The Phillies, the Phillies making the playoffs solely because of the universal DH which started this year.
BOBBY: Yeah.
STEPHEN: On the–
LAUREN: And the extended playoffs.
STEPHEN: –final, in the final weekend of the season, the last team to qualify, the lowest seed. Are the team, the only team that have won a game against the Astros in the post season.
LAUREN: Yeah, no, I think that’s a good one to end on. Because it really highlights that the, the dumbness is part of the beauty. The dumbness is part of why you watch.
BOBBY: Exactly, right.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And, and–
STEPHEN: He broke the single game home run record by a team in the World Series.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: And then the next night failed to record a hit.
BOBBY: And the more dumbness you can get on your team, right? The, the better you are, the more–
LAUREN: Absolutely.
BOBBY: –insulated you are to whatever the pressures of the outside like they just have a bunch of Golden Retrievers on the squad. They made it [1:07:51]–
JANE: Like I don’t think about this at all. And Nick Castellanos is just like he, he thinks about everything but baseball [1:08:04].
ALEX: Right, exactly.
JANE: So like, yeah, it’s great.
ALEX: I don’t think therefore I am.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Yeah, the we’re gonna need to do an extensive deep dive in the offseason into the powerful homoeroticism emanating from that.
ALEX: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: We need to do that, that’s our beat. You guys–
STEPHEN: Yeah, that’s our beat, not yours.
BOBBY: No, no, it’s all you, were clearing out. We send a pick, we send a pick, you’re getting the openshot on that one.
JANE: Yeah. Yeah, the Tipping Pitches, the, the Gay Baseball Podcast.
LAUREN: Yeah, yeah, that’s them. Yeah.
BOBBY: Jane, Lauren, Stephen, it’s, t’s always our distinct pleasure to have you here. And this is one of our favorite episodes to do. You [1:08:49] twice, it’s our favorite of the year, every time. I look forward to doing it for years to come. Thank you so much for joining us.
LAUREN: Absolutely. This was awesome.
STEPHEN: Thank you very much.
JANE: Absolutely.
LAUREN: And wait, there’s so much that we didn’t even touch on.
BOBBY: I know.
ALEX: I know, I know.
LAUREN: We [1:09:00] for hours.
ALEX: We really, we really like that.
STEPHEN: Like, like, like the Queen Elizabeth tribu- tributes?
LAUREN: Like, like Freddie Freeman [1:09:07] fucking cried on TV!
ALEX: Yeah.
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: We even not talk about that!
BOBBY: Texting his teammates being like, sorry, I’d said that I didn’t want to be on the Dodgers.
STEPHEN: Yeah. Or the, the Padres trading Eric Hosmer to the Nationals without telling him and then having–
LAUREN: So many swapping!
STEPHEN: –with Luke Voigt.
JANE: Yeah, despite [1:09:24].
ALEX: It was like the whole like Tommy Pham–
LAUREN: Yup!
ALEX: –like Joc Pederson–
LAUREN: Yup! How did we not talk about that?
ALEX: That like just the, the, the shelf life of that story like aged just like fucking fine milk, man.
LAUREN: How did we not talk about the slap?!
JANE: It was [1:09:43] needs over fantasy football, I can’t.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: And Joc Pederson just been like, I don’t know what the fuck is his deal, like kind of fucking weird.
JANE: Oh God.
BOBBY: The perfect guy to be on the other end of that.
JANE: Mike Trout getting dragged into it.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Because he was the commissioner?
STEPHEN: I think this year definitely was dumber than last year now, that because we literally cannot stop talking.
JANE: Yeah, yeah. I think so, I think so.
LAUREN: An all timer.
BOBBY: Amazing, amazing. Thank you all so much for joining us. Everybody–
JANE: Thank you.
BOBBY: –go listen to Batting Around. If you’re, if you’re listening this late in the podcast and you’ve listened through all of these dumb things you probably know about Batting Around. If you’re not subscribe, if you haven’t checked out their Patreon, please go do. They’re wonderful, it’s a wonderful podcast.
JANE: Also, I think by the time this comes out, I’ll have been on an episode of Street Fight Radio.
ALEX: Hell, yeah!
JANE: Co host an episode of that, so look out, look out for that, too.
BOBBY: Check that out as well. Links in the description all of that good stuff. Thank you so much.
JANE: Thank you, guys.
LAUREN: Thank you, guys.
STEPHEN: Thanks, guys.
[1:10:38]
[Music Transition]
BOBBY: Okay, thank you to Lauren Walker, Jane Ost, and Stephen Hesson, of Batting Around. Sorry to our good friend Stephen for his Philadelphia Phillies not being able to pull it out in the end. But you know what, he’ll always have these pods every year, no matter where the Phillies finish, no matter how many wins. We’re just gonna keep doing this until, till we can’t do it no more. Until Joe West sues us out of existence.
ALEX: Yeah, so I hope he’s doing all right. He, he suggested that he was pretty Zen about it all, when we recorded. I’d love to check in with him now.
BOBBY: I mentioned this last week, Alex. But next week, we are going to have a an interview with the directors of the documentary The Last Out, the 2020 documentary The Last Out. Which is now finally widely available on streaming platforms. So we already did that great conversation with Michael Gassert, and Sami Khan, the two filmmakers behind that documentary. And we’re really excited for people to get to listen to it, but just wanted to mention at the end of this pod here, because it will be coming out in a week from now. So we wanted to give people time to go and watch the doc before the episode next week. You can find it wherever you get, wherever you stream movies. It’s really wonderful documentary about three Cuban baseball players trying to defect and makes the United States and sign with a major league team. Hopefully, we’ll be talking even more about the international free agent market and the inter- just the state of international signings and. But I think this is a good first step, because this documentary was really eye opening and really wonderful. So again, The Last Out, go check it out before you listen to next week’s episode.
ALEX: Yes cosign all of that. Also, in case you missed it, new merch, baby.
BOBBY: That’s right.
ALEX: The season is over but the merch season just beginning. So we got some dope new nationalised baseball swag that you can find in our store, tippingpitches.myshopify.com or tiny.cc\nationalize.
BOBBY: And not just, not just shirts, either. Sweatshirts, new stickers, really exciting stuff. So if you, if you have a leftist baseball fan in your life, and you’d like to get them something for the holiday season, tippingpitches.myshopify.com is the place to go.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: The special podcast listener promo code for this round of merch is ROB, R-O-B, ROB, you know why? Because we’re about to spend the next few months talking about stuff that he says most likely. And if you’re a patron, you will also get a message with a separate promo code for a little bit extra off. So I don’t think there’s anything else to add for people, is there?
ALEX: No, I don’t think so. But if you, if you did enjoy this episode, definitely go check out Batting Around.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: They’re wonderful. And, and similar minds.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: Similar, similar content. So if you, if you like Tipping Pitches, I know you’re gonna like Batting Around. So go check them out.
BOBBY: Yes, you can find Batting Around wherever you get your pods BattinAround, no G, on Twitter. patreon.com/battingaround with the G. You’ll be able to find all that stuff in the description of this pod, too. Thank you everybody for listening. And we’ll be back next week with our interview with the directors of The Last Out.
[1:14:09]
[Music]
[1:14:16]
[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 
Leave a comment