This week, Bobby and Alex are once again joined by Grant Brisbee (this time for the original reason they invited him!) to talk about some of their favorite “what ifs” in baseball history — hypothetical alternate timelines where things go differently, broadly speaking. Grant shares a different path for one of the greatest pitchers of all time, while Bobby does what he does best: imagines a world where baseball is publicly owned. Follow Grant on Twitter @GrantBrisbee.
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Songs featured in this episode:
Camp Trash — “Let It Ride” • LCD Soundsystem — “new body rhuma” • Booker T & the M.G.’s — “Green Onions”
Episode Transcript
[Theme]
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, the holiday season, this episode that people are listening to its just one day after Christmas, we celebrate that. So we thought as a special gift to the listeners to do a little concept episode. Little mini-series, you could say, it’s two episodes a miniseries?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: I don’t really know.
ALEX: [0:50] to say.
BOBBY: We turn this into like eight episodes, you know, an eight-episode groundbreaking season. Limited TV, everything’s a limited series now.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: This, this is my, this is my bugaboo. This is my personal thing that I can’t let go. Stop—
ALEX: Well—
BOBBY: —making limited series, make movies.
ALEX: Well, so I think what you’re saying is we should have just made this one episode.
BOBBY: One, one long, 2 hours and 40-minute episode.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: No, no, it’s—it’s two parts now. But who’s to say that we can continue this idea in the future if people really like it? We’re doing a special episode about “what ifs”. Some of the biggest “what ifs” in baseball history. Now that could mean anything, what if XYZ didn’t happen? What if XYZ did happen? What if Alex’s close personal friend John Fisher sold the Oakland Athletics to the Tipping Pitches Podcast? Many what-ifs exist in the baseball world. Now we invited Grant Brisbee who you heard on our reaction pod a few days ago to, to come on and share what is compelling what if to him. And—and then I shared what is a very compelling what-if to me in this episode. Next week, we will bring on another guest who will share their what if, and Alex will share his. I’m really excited to hear what you come up with.
ALEX: Me too, honestly.
BOBBY: Love to hear it. Grant, Grant was, Grant was great to talk to. He’s someone that we’ve been struggling and wanted to have on for a really long time and someone who obviously this concept fits really well with.
ALEX: Yeah, and it’s even a concept that I think he’s explored kind of on his own. He had a—he had a great article exploring Buster Posey as a, as a Tampa Bay Ray. And it gets pretty bleak down at the bottom. So this one has a slightly lighter, lighter tone. It’s uh—it’s also far weirder. So that’s I think what excited me most about this.
BOBBY: I’ll say, you know, I pitched this as what-ifs in baseball history. But hypotheticals in baseball are kind of like what makes the world go round, you know, like I think of the Sam Miller article from ESPN, like five or six years ago, what if a game went 30 innings or—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —however many innings? He said what if the game went 50? I don’t remember the actual number. But that—that article was so formative for us because it was happening like early on, like while we were in college, maybe even before we were doing the podcast, or actually I think we talked about it on the pod. So it must have been when we were doing the podcast. But that kind of thinking, that kind of writing, that kind of talking about the game or it’s not just what happens inside of the lines, we can tell—we can call her outside the lines. And we can talk about hypotheticals and be creative with it. Now Grant chose something that is player related that is on the field related. But as you’ll see in our segment, we—we took it too far and wide places, I would say.
ALEX: Yeah, yeah. As far as the Middle East, you could say.
BOBBY: And of course, I chose something with baseball ownership. So we don’t need to belabor the point anymore. Why don’t we just go and bring in Grant Brisbee to talk about his biggest “what if” or one of his favorite “what ifs” in baseball history? But before we do that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I’m Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[theme]
BOBBY: Okay, Grant Brisbee is back. Um, am I, am I dreaming that we just recorded in a—a segment about—
ALEX: It does feel like we just talk to him.
BOBBY: —Carlos Correa being on the New York Mets five minutes ago? Did that just happen?
GRANT: Well, we did and now it’s outdated because, by the time this airs, he will have resigned with the Twins.
BOBBY: Oh, please don’t put that energy in the universe. Sheesh, already tweeted about buying a, a black Mets jersey with Carlos Correa’s name on the back. We can’t—we can’t be doing that, come on. Only one fan base is allowed to be hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray, run amok.
GRANT: Proud to be—proud to be covering that franchise.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Grant you’re here to do a sort of concept pod that we’re working out here. So we wanted to talk to a couple people around the baseball world and talk about just huge “what ifs” in baseball history. And I’m leaving it general by design because I—I wanted you to take it, any direction that you could think of when you think of—at The Ringer, we love to call these sliding doors moments. These what-if questions like, what if something else happened? How different would the baseball timeline really be? And of course, when we thought about extreme hypotheticals and creative thinking on the baseball internet, you are someone who came to mind and someone who was suggested by our listeners in the Slack. And so I—I turned the question over to you, and I think that you came up with what is uh, what is the very juicy “what if”. So, would you like to share your what-if with listeners?
GRANT: Absolutely. We have to take the way back machine all the way back to 1982. The Atlanta Braves, they actually—I went through every single draft. This was a few years ago. So it’s not quite current, but I still think it is. Every single draft in baseball, there’s only one draft in which none of the players made the Major Leagues, one draft. And that’s the 1981 Braves. When they drafted, they drafted 30 someone people. Not one of them made the Major Leagues. So they needed a little win, and it came to their draft. And so in 1982, with their fourth-round pick, they selected a 6’10 left-handed pitcher, out of Livermore High School in Livermore, California, Randy Johnson. And he didn’t sign, he went to USC. But my what if is, what if he signed with the Braves? Got to work Leo Mazzone, got to be a part of that Braves rotation. I just want to peek, a little peek at that alt—alternate universe.
ALEX: This hypothetical was so fascinating to me. And like single player hypotheticals are really interesting because it’s easy to be like, okay—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —what if Randy Johnson was just on the Braves, right? But it’s much deeper than that, right? Because there are, this has so many ripple effects, right? Randy Johnson doesn’t end up going to the Mariners which means their roster kind of construct looks completely different, you know. Do the Braves end up signing Greg Maddux, you know, in the 92 offseason, or do they say, hey, our rotation set, we have our—we have our big three in Johnson and Glavine and—and Smoltz, right? I—the more I dug into this rabbit hole, the—the deeper it just opened up, you know. I—I’m curious—
GRANT: Right.
ALEX: —kind of—kind of what you—what you found as you started to explore the ripples.
GRANT: Well, first of all, Johnson already had one of the weirdest career arcs in baseball history. He was lost in his 20s, he was walking, let’s see, what, the 128 batters and 140 innings in Double-A and he’s 23. Like he’s not a puppy at that point, a 23-year-old Double-A shouldn’t be walking 128 batters and 140 innings. And he didn’t really establish himself as someone who could be like that guy you trusted, that ace until he’s in his 30s. And you know, before that, he was always just this material guy could strike him out. Could walk out [8:12] walked 152 batters in 1991 for the Mariners, in 200 innings. That’s wild! That is a wild season to watch. It’s a wild player to watch. And what this idea presupposes is what if the Braves could have fixed him earlier? What if the Braves could have Leo Mazzone because this is before he was a pitching coach? We would have had Randy Johnson in the minor leagues with Tom Glavine, perhaps. And Leo Mazzone, as in instructionals, just saying, okay, try this, do this. What about this? Can we get your muscle memory work in here? Can we apply this knowledge here? And what if, in addition to having one of the greatest 30 to 45-year-old careers in baseball history, what if you can tack on another 10 years before that? And you have just this incredible Hall of Fame career. Just it’s already inner circle of the inner circle. You could tack on another 10 years of brilliance and maybe he’s like the best pitcher of all time. Like is it possible? I don’t know how magical Leo Mazzone is, but that’s at least on the table.
BOBBY: So Randy Johnson made his MLB debut in 1988, I believe was his first season that he made the majors for the expos. Let me tell you a little bit about the 1988 Atlanta Braves. Final records 54 and 106, finished sixth in the NL West. Now, I will note that Tom Glavine and John Smoltz did debut that year, or they were on the team that year. I don’t—they weren’t—they weren’t quite obviously, they were 20 both, 21 years old. So I don’t think that they were quite, they’re fully formed selves. So you think okay, maybe they’re a team on the rise. I got these young pitchers coming up, following year 63 and 97, year after that 65 and 97. Not until 1991, do the Braves win 94 games and win the NL West and become the 1990s Braves that we know them to be. But my question to you Grant is, knowing what we know about early career Randy Johnson, and knowing what we know about how much he struggled, how terrible his command was on these shitty teams, the shitty late 80s Braves teams, do you think he sticks in the rotation? Or do you think he’s bad enough, he’s getting enough chances but he’s still really bad at the major league level that they just move on from him.
GRANT: Yeah, it’s—it is interesting because the Braves, their problem that year wasn’t necessarily a god-awful rotation. You’ve had small to had Glavine. I’m looking at now you’ve had Pete Smith is 23. And he’s, you know, you have some hope for him in the future. And Derek little Quist, he’s 23 and he’s about a league average pitcher. So maybe if he comes up and he just stinks, he isn’t given the fair shot. But I think when you’re talking about Randy Johnson, it was very clear from the very beginning, that he was a baseball unicorn that this is if you’re going to take a shot and you are a bad team. This is the shot to take, the wild half-court shot. This is a 610 left-hander who has an arm from the gods, and the mechanics from you know, Hades like it’s just the combination of if this one weird trick works, you have what you saw, you have an inner circle Hall of Famer, that’s how talented he was. So I don’t think one bad season would have been enough to give up on him. The dream was that real and that’s tangible. And the Mariners and when—when he’s walking in, the funny thing about this is that, when he’s walking 150 guys and 200 innings, you know, he’s throwing 300 pitches a game. I mean, that might be hyperbolic.
BOBBY: Yeah.
GRANT: But you know, we don’t have the official pitch comps from back then. But you know, he’s not just cruising the 90 pitches into the seven things that they were just grinding him. And he still somehow made it out of that. So I think the Brave would have given him a very long leash just like the Mariners did. But could they have improved that command better? I don’t, you know, I don’t know who the pitching coach was for the 1989 mariners or if he was a secret genius, too. But you have to wonder like could Leo Mazzone have, you know, XYZ and poof in specs?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Are you—you mean to tell me that you did not go back and watch every single Randy Johnson start and keep—keep pitch counts just for this exercise? That—that’s not something that you came with, that research.
GRANT: That sounds like something that you totally would have done, or anyone totally wouldn’t have done like April 29, 2020. [12:34]
BOBBY: Like exactly what we were doing, actually—
GRANT: Yeah.
BOBBY: —that exact moment.
GRANT: Just going back and going, Oh, I’m just mainline in 1989. Randy Johnson starts, let’s go.
BOBBY: Alex, what do you think that Randy Johnson means to the baseball culture? Let’s not—not just as baseball-reference page, not just to Cy Young’s, not just a strikeout total. But how is he culturally different? And how is he—what is the—his cultural significance if he’s part of the 1990s Braves instead of the one of the more likable teams of the 1990s, the mariners?
ALEX: It’s so hard to say right, as being kind of in that environment sand down his edges a little bit, right? Does it kind of give him that cleaner delivery? You know, does he— does he never ended up hitting a bird with a pitch, right? which was—which was a very pivotal moment for his career. It’s, uh—it’s, it spawned the—the kind of graphic design for his—for his photography career that he—that he has now, right?
BOBBY: Sure.
ALEX: So like a lot kind of changes, if he’s out of the environment that we—that we know him in, but I still think he’s kind of, I mean, again, like, like Grant said, he is this sort of a unicorn that stands out I think, even if he was trying to blend in. It’s hard to see him as being anything else then still kind of being that—that weirdo out there. That 6’10 weirdo out there on the mound.
GRANT: I would say, you know, once I wrote an article about Greg Maddux versus Randy Johnson insofar as if you could go back in time and put one of these players on your team, which one is it? And I loved it because it was—I loved the idea because it was— they’re very similar pitchers when it comes to career stats. If you are going based on [14:23] games pitch that all that stuff, really kind of creepily similar war is right up there. But they did it so differently. You have Maddix is the command guy. He’s the artist and he’s the guy in his 20s who’s doing this stuff. And he’s having the—the two-hour games. He’s—he’s just being brilliant. So the Braves had a game that started at 705 local time, and he had a complete game before sundown. That is hilarious. That is a different kind of pitcher. And then you have Johnson who’s just driving you nuts for a decade like gosh, this guy is hard to watch. He looks like he could be something but get him off of my TV. And then poof he is dominance. He’s power. He’s coming from the left side. He’s scaring hitters. They’re making fools out of themselves on purpose in national all-star games like he is just another just type of pitcher entirely, but they came to the same conclusion at least when it comes to overall stats. So which one would you have? And I think the right answer is, how about both on the same team, you have Maddix and Randy Johnson, and then oh, for good measure, Glavine and Smoltz that would have been so cool for anyone. Even if you’re not a Braves fan, you just gotta be psyched. You gotta be impressed with how cool that would have been.
BOBBY: It says a lot about the like, you as a fan, which—which type of pitcher specifically you prefer, like hitters, you know, like, there’s not really this, like, cultural debate between, I don’t know, like Adam Dunn and Derek Jeter, like no one is like, I aesthetically prefer the guy who strikes out 400 times then the guy who gets singles the other way, right? But there is sort of like that—that difference that cultural difference that you’re alluding to between the type of pitcher who is like command soft contact, versus just stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff. And obviously, Randy Johnson is the—the tip-top example of a guy who just gets by on overwhelming stuff. I mean, for me personally, this what if, juicy as it may be, I—I hate it. I hate it, Grant. I hate the idea of Randy Johnson being on the Atlanta Braves whom a franchise who I think is despicable and I hate a lot.
GRANT: Fair enough. Fair enough. I was a Mets fan, yeah, you’re not going to be vibing with this [16:36] Well, this would have been back when the Giants were NLS rivals with the Braves. We’re talking the Giants winning 103 games, 1993, well, all of a sudden with Randy Johnson at his peak, the Braves just blow past the Giants and they win 113. It’s not even like a good pennant race. So yeah, it would scare me too. But it’s— I just can’t get it out of my head. There are a lot of other ones. There’s a Mark McGwire got drafted by the expos. Bo Jackson getting drafted out of high school by the Yankees always fascinated me. But it’s just the combination of a pitcher who needed the best possible coaching, getting drafted by the team that ended up with the best possible coaching. That combination is just magic to me.
BOBBY: Okay, here’s the final hypothetical with this, with this what if. Do you think they move Randy Johnson to the closer role instead of John Smoltz? And then we take away that sort of dual part of John Smoltz’s career where he pivoted to become one of the best closers in baseball history halfway through.
GRANT: That is a good question. I think if I’m remembering correctly, I’m going to look up baseball references and just vamp a little bit while this is going on. And yeah, they were doing that when Smoltz was coming back from I think, Tommy John.
BOBBY: Okay.
GRANT: So this was like an injury. So he made 29 starts 1999 and then 2000, he’s gone. And then he comes reinvented out of the mists as a great closer, and that part is cool, but I don’t know if Johnson would have had the injury that would have precipitated that. I think the Braves were content to just let do Smoltz his thing.
BOBBY: [18:07]
GRANT: Yes, I think the injury affected that. But who knows? I mean, maybe they would have done it with Randy Johnson early, maybe they would have just had this brain flash, like, maybe he’s gonna be that goose Gossage kind of fireman, we’re gonna throw him in there for two innings, three innings, and maybe that would have put his career in a totally different way, where we would have got to see less Randy Johnson, which is not ideal.
ALEX: For better for worse. The first thing I—I thought about when thinking about this hypothetical, was how does this impact, how I interface with John Smoltz, right, which I think about probably, probably more than I should. And what my—what my head actually went to was, right, that the Tigers trade John Smoltz to the Braves in, in 87, right? As they are, I think trying to catch the Blue Jays in the—in the East. And I wondered what if the Braves said, you know, we actually don’t need another young arm. We have this Glavine guy, we have this Johnson guy. You can hold on to Smoltz if that’s who you’re shopping around. Smoltz stays with the Tigers, obviously does not have that development system. What is he a four or five [9:15] guy and he’s—he never sniffs a Fox Sports booth, like I don’t know.
GRANT: Well, actually, that’s not so.
BOBBY: I don’t know though, just John Smoltz spending the rest of his career in closer proximity to Jack Morris just makes him worse in the culture.
ALEX: Very true.
GRANT: So when—when he’s traded, let’s see if there are any teammates that we know on the—his Glens Falls Eastern league team, there is a Doug strange, there’s Jeff Jones, and it’s one of these guys, Kevin Ritz. Oh, yeah. Kevin Ritz. The Kevin Ritz would have been a Hall of Famer, would be Kevin Ritz in the book. Rockies legend Kevin Ritz.
ALEX: Sheesh. Oh my gosh.
BOBBY: Anything else to say on your hypothetical, Grant before we pivot over to mine?
GRANT: Uh, you know, I’m not an especially religious man, but I—I hope that the afterlife is a peek into these universes. Just like it would be, just a—just a peek, man. Just let me read a few sporting news and then I’ll be on my way.
BOBBY: I love it. Okay. My what if, maybe not surprisingly, to the Tipping Pitches listeners, is ownership related. It is something that has come up in brief on the show, I believe, right, Alex? My what if is, what if, in 1990, when Joan Kroc, the then owner of the San Diego Padres, who took over ownership of the team after her husband Ray Kroc, famously the really nice, really cool guy who was the CEO of McDonald’s. We love that guy. He was great, just did a lot of good stuff for the society, and for the country at large, really good guy.
GRANT: Net positive. Net positive.
BOBBY: But what if—what if Joan Kroc his widow, who then became the owner of the Padres, what if she was allowed to give the team to the city of San Diego, which she did try to do? Joan Kroc proposed giving it to San Diego for—for free basically, along with $100 million dollars in what amounts to I would call it seed funding to operate the franchise. It was blocked by the baseball—the baseball owners committee, which was chaired, I think, rather interestingly, by Peter O’Malley, who was the son of Walter O’Malley, famously the uh—the Dodgers owner who moved the Dodgers out of Brooklyn and sort of instituted the idea of a—an image of a modern baseball team in the mid—the mid 20th century. San Diego Mayor, Maureen O’Connor, I think put it—put it quite wisely. And I’m pulling from uh—from an LA Times article in 1990, and archived LA Times article. She said it would have been the coup of the century for San Diego. So my what if is, what if this actually happened, and what if we had a team in Major League Baseball, a sport that is—that has a monopoly exemption, and the United States has long been an old boys club of billionaire owners who dictate many of the things about the fan experience of the game. What if one of those teams was just owned by a municipality? Now, we’ve talked a lot about municipal ownership on the show in the past, and the hypothetical, we’ve talked about what it might look like. We’ve compared it to the Green Bay Packers, we’ve compared it to European soccer clubs. And I think there’s always a question of how would this function under American capitalism, versus how it functions under sort of the European style of business. And I don’t really know how it would have gone of course, it never got close, like it—it got shut down so fast. But I wonder—I wonder from you guys, do you think that having one of the 30 teams owned by a city might have laid a groundwork for this sort of thing to happen with any of the other teams? Or do you think it would have just been an aberration like the Packers?
GRANT: I’m gonna go with aberration, I’m just gonna think because, at some point, the—the teams got so valuable, you are going to have fewer and fewer people in the world. I’m not just talking about fewer and fewer people with the position to own a team, but who would consider giving up an asset that valuable to municipality or maybe would have led to the nationalization of sports? Which would be rad. That would be—I don’t know, I think it would have been a one off though. I—that’s my guess.
ALEX: Yeah. I mean I—I think so too. O’Malley has this really great quote and that LA Times article because he’s asked about the potential sale, and O’Malley, who is the chair of the committee, making this decision says it sounds impractical, impractical, but I haven’t really thought it through. Like, oh, okay, that’s good to—good to know that you’re giving this [23:53]
BOBBY: This article is a real goldmine. Like, we don’t do journalism like this anymore.
ALEX: Really don’t.
BOBBY: They really tried to reach out to the city manager John Lockwood, who I guess, would be the person sort of putting one of a plan like this to effect, and it says Lockwood is on vacation and unavailable for comment. But O’Connor said he told her that there was a president for community on franchise in the Green Bay Packers, like dudes just in Hawaii, just chillin’. They don’t have—we don’t have cell phones. We can’t get a hold of him, we don’t even know where he is. He can be anywhere.
GRANT: Yeah, get me on the teletype quick. Yeah, that is it—it ha—it would have been a disaster, right? What year is this, you said 1990.
BOBBY: 1990, yeah.
GRANT: 1990, so this is before baseball teams are really wildly valuable. This is when there was still some financial risk in owning a team. If you’re looking at highlights from 1998, like Yankee Stadium. The stands are kind of empty, you know the 80s is fine, especially the 70s like baseball was not a hot ticket. People have these rose-colored glasses about oh, the old days when people really cared about baseball, and oh man attendance is through the roof now compared to them, and I just—I could see a city like this bureaucratic machinery, just really nickel and diming the Padres, not being interested in the fan experience. I could see it being a total disaster. Not for— in the least because you have someone like uh, what was the same, Greg? The city manager?
BOBBY: John, John?
GRANT: John—
BOBBY: Lockwood?
GRANT: You know John, John could just keep another [25:26]
BOBBY: [25:26] John Lockwood.
GRANT: Bingo.
BOBBY: He does kind of sound like a creative character, you know?
GRANT: Yeah. So John got a lot of stuff on his—
BOBBY: John Lockwood.
GRANT: Yeah, John’s got other stuff on his plate, so he can’t worry about you know, who’s gonna play third? You know, he can’t—he can’t worry about trading Fred McGriff right now, you gotta—you kind of like a parks budget to work on. I think it would have been a disaster. It sounds cool, but it would have been a disaster.
BOBBY: Exactly. See, it’s rather interesting to me that it happens in San Diego, right, because San Diego, I don’t— It’s not—San Diego is like not one of the more radical cities in the United States is how I would put it, you know, Southern California is a pretty conservative place. In most areas in San Diego, though, I would describe it as like democratic now, because most major cities are. San Diego is much less politically left in a city like Los Angeles or a city like New York. And so it’s really interesting that Joan Kroc just kind of wanted to do this for the vibes, you know, like Joan Kroc, the widow of one of the richest man’s, one of the most capitalist men in American history was just like, I like the Padres. I like the city of San Diego. I think that maybe the city of San Diego should just have it in like a charitable donation. And I think that it—
GRANT: It’s good.
BOBBY: —It really speaks to like, how important baseball is to the like texture of America, that this woman who amassed a fortune of billions alongside of her husband, wants to do something that is like Viva la Revolucion basically, like let’s nationalize this team. Something that, you know, three decades later, Alex and I talk about all the time as the only thing that can save baseball in the long term is nationalizing it. And I don’t know, it’s—it’s super fascinating to me, especially in comparison to the person who shut it down, being the son of Walter O’Malley, who I think set the foundation for what baseball finance is now. And without him, you don’t have these teams that you’re talking about Grant, having this massive value, like the Dodgers relocating and seeing that they could dominate Los Angeles is the path for modern baseball teams being billion dollar entities. And I don’t think—I think that these are just two incredibly divergent paths. Of course, it’s not a surprise that it didn’t go to public ownership for sure. But I don’t know. It’s—it’s eminently fascinating to me.
GRANT: Na— I— just want to talk about Arkansas Razor here, and maybe I’m speaking out of school. But to me, the Arkansas Razor for this is that one night, Jim Kroc was Joan Kroc.
BOBBY: Joan Kroc, yeah.
GRANT: Joan Kroc was visited by the ghosts of every cow slaughtered to make her fortune. And they told her, listen, you have to donate this team to the city of San Diego. And that’s all Arkansas Razor. So did it happen? I don’t know. That’s for the historians to decide. But I say yes.
BOBBY: It tracks for certain.
GRANT: Yeah. It tracks. I mean, the—the thing that kind of came up when I was thinking about this right, is that you know, we talk a lot about sort of how—how pulled tight the curtain is when it comes to baseball’s finances right. And with this sort of it has changed the public’s, I don’t know insight into how a baseball team is run. Obviously, it’s not literally owned by every single person in the city of San Diego. They’re not getting the budget reports at the end of the year or anything like that, but—
BOBBY: I don’t know man, I get the budget reports for my public school.
ALEX: Well, yeah, right. So—so maybe. And—and all of a sudden, you know, the—the Padres have a—a real sort of vested interest in, in actually making this team, like viable and getting people to—to come to the games. Notably, there is a major league baseball strike that takes place just four years later—
BOBBY: Wait.
ALEX: —due to—
BOBBY: Really?
ALEX: —Yeah, this is crazy. Due to obviously I—I whole host of issues, but the owners wanted to institute a salary cap, and I wondered sort of if the players even had the sort of insight into the sort of revenue that’s coming into baseball teams. If maybe that turns out a little bit differently because the owners feel like they have less ammo to work with, so to speak, right? There’s—it’s now all of a sudden 29 of them, and one sort of rogue team over here who we don’t really—who’s a bit of a wild card. I—and my mind just kind of— the wheels started turning a little bit. And yeah, we went some weird places.
GRANT: In addition to that, you would have one team whose books would be open. There wouldn’t be, you know, the opaque books where it’s like—
BOBBY: There you go.
GRANT: To trust us with your salary cap. We’re bleeding money here, can I see your books? Nope. You know, you would have one team that would just, here’s our money, we have to put this out there by law.
BOBBY: Yeah.
GRANT: And then does that give the Players Association more leverage? I think it would have to. I think it would have to give them just tremendous leverage. So maybe there’s not even a strike. Maybe the World series happens. And maybe it’s the Mariners in seven.
BOBBY: The baseball strike is unfolding on the C span, you know, it’s just like senators being like, give me the books, we must see the books. This is for the public good, like San Diego city council people. An interesting question is, so if it does go the way of public ownership, and a couple other teams go the same way, you know, say we—say we, we cloned Joan Kroc, you know, she gets in the year of all of the—the owners, and she’s like, here’s why this is good. Here’s why giving this, these incredibly valuable assets away for free, it’s really good. I am fascinated to see like what the role of baseball commissioner becomes in the past 30 years if that’s the case because you know what—we used to think of baseball commissioner as like the steward of baseball, the steward impartial, right? The steward of Major League Baseball, who is here to make the tough decisions that keep our game strong, and keep our game going. And now we know everybody hates Rob Manfred. Everybody hated Bud Selig, like, we know that it’s just this person is a for-hire lawyer, for the owners to make them the most money possible and represent their best interests. Now, if like five teams are publicly owned, or say the—the public ownership is sweeping the nation, and all the teams are publicly owned, I feel like the—the commissioner is like, a democratically elected position by fans probably. Which has fascinating consequences, right? Because what is—what—can the role of that job actually be what the PR told us the role of that job was for? And how does that free up space for that person to make better decisions for the game, to make the game more accessible, to do more good in the wider baseball world, that Major League Baseball has not done because they’ve been so distracted by making the owners’ money hand over fist? I think that’s really fascinating outcome. All of that is basically just to say, we just don’t have to deal with Rob Manfred. In this hypothetical world [32:27]
ALEX: You were looking for a way to get there, I think.
GRANT: Yeah, I’m trying to think about who would be— it would be—like who would be quasi-likable, who could do this role? I mean, like, if you want to go back there, remember, they were talking about George W. Bush being Commissioner—
BOBBY: Jesus Christ.
GRANT: —which you now, like, at least as a public face said, maybe he’s not as dangerous or is harmful? Not to—but while I’m on the tracks—
BOBBY: Wait, wait, hold on, what you’re saying is, George W. Bush becomes baseball commissioner instead of becoming president. So if Joan Kroc is allowed to give the Padres to the city of San Diego, there’s no Iraq war. That’s what you’re saying, Grant?
GRANT: That’s what I’m saying that carbon emissions are way down. I think we—the money that would have gone into the Iraq war infrastructure is now education is better, and people aren’t falling for wackadoodle conspiracy theories. And while we’re on this subject, which is I—I just remembered your hypothetical, your “what if” reminded me of the “what if”, and I’m glad I didn’t do it because it kind of would have stepped on yours. I’ll read the quote. In February 11, 1985, UPI sports editor Milton Richmond had a story headlined with Flutie in tow, Trump looks to get into baseball. And Trump’s bid to buy the Twins had fallen through. So the team that interests him now is the San Francisco Giants.
BOBBY: Oohh.
GRANT: So this is 1985, Trump wants to buy the Twins, he’s shot down, now he’s wanting to buy the Giants. What happens then? Like you know, do the Giants or the Giants moved to New York because that’s a possibility. He promised that he wouldn’t be you know, when would he break a promise or lie to us? That seems—that seems weird. But yeah, like what happens is he precedent probably not, like you know, that’s the sliding doors thing. It’s—it takes a million dominoes to get someone in the Global Office, that fascinates me, but I digress back to, back to McDonald’s.
ALEX: Not at all this—this whole podcast is a digression. I think that’s the point.
BOBBY: I just gotta say, it’s big-time loser energy that he failed to buy the Twins, and so he pivoted to a much more historic franchise, and the Giants like why didn’t you just want to buy the Giants, to begin with?
GRANT: Yeah, well, the Giants at that point, were a joke. They were the candlestick era Giants, they [34:59]
BOBBY: Restoring glory, come on, like, why couldn’t he bring that to the Giants?
ALEX: I mean, my—my honest reaction to I think this hypothetical, is the Padres don’t exist by the turn of the century—
BOBBY: Yes. That’s, the final—
ALEX: —I think that’s— that’s actually what happens right, is the league does whatever they can to torpedo that, you know, it’s really—it’s like anytime a left-wing leader is the overall remotely left-wing leader is elected, in any other country, the US like drops in and is like, I’m sorry like we’ll get—we’re gonna get one of our buddies in here. Like they would have done that, too.
BOBBY: That’s not true. Alex, the CIA Twitter account told me that that has never happened.
ALEX: Shit. Okay. Alright.
GRANT: Yeah, Indonesia just did it all that on their own. Like, [35:45]
BOBBY: Also wait, I forgot my—my other job as the co-host of the CIA Podcast. I’m supposed to tell you that that’s never happened.
GRANT: Yeah, I—I think you’re right. I think it’s the Padres wouldn’t exist. It would be a how to get them not to exist. I don’t know, ask the expos. You know what I mean like—
BOBBY: Yeah, yeah.
GRANT: It would have been away.
BOBBY: I mean, I think that there’s no role in Major League Baseball is like governing charter that says that they can’t just get rid of teams if the rest of the owners vote to get rid of the teams. So even if the Padres are owned by the city of San Diego, if all 29 other owners are like, alright, we’re gonna have a 29-team league, you know, like that—that’s what they would do, scheduling concerns be damned, or they would just add an expansion team and get rid of the Padres. And then you have a major league baseball team in San Diego that has nobody to play, you know, so they’re just in it—they go from Major League team to Indy team overnight. I think Alex, you’re probably—you’re probably exactly right. I don’t even think it takes that long. Like it was probably didn’t even take till 2000.
ALEX: Yeah.
GRANT: Maybe right away, like donate it and then it’s like—
BOBBY: Right.
GRANT: —emergency— emergency vote. We’re dissolving you, sorry about that. What are you gonna do about it, sue?
BOBBY: And then Fernando Tatis never falls off a motorbike? I don’t really know.
ALEX: Right. And—and yeah, and then the—the Mets are signing Fernando Tatis Jr. to an extension at this point in time, right?
GRANT: Well, this is like where the sliding doors I mean, you want to go deep into the butterfly effect. Fernando Tatis Sr. doesn’t meet Mrs. Fernando Tatis Sr, you meet someone else because these traded, because the Padres weren’t in existence and now he’s on a different team other than the Cardinals because of XY and Z, and we don’t have a Fernando Tatis Jr. We have like Sparky Tatis—
ALEX: Yeah.
GRANT: —and he’s a terrible baseball player, but he’s definitely—
ALEX: He’s a dog.
GRANT: —he’s a terrible baseball player, but uh, you know, he doesn’t do any of that funny stuff.
BOBBY: Oh, he definitely don’t get the two grand slams in the same inning, right like that.
GRANT: Right?
BOBBY: That definitely doesn’t happen because that pitching matchup, and that—those weather conditions are not set—set up for Fernando Tatis Sr. to do that. What else—what else should we say, Alex? What else should we say about Joan Kroc and national ownership and McDonald’s? I like their French fries, you know?
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah right.
BOBBY: Thanks Joan Kroc, for trying, I guess?
ALEX: Yes, cause it would have been win number two.
GRANT: The McDonald’s fries like three bucks now.
BOBBY: For a medium fries, like they figured out, like that is the thing you know.
GRANT: Even if I have for most of the food on the menu, it’s like, well, I gotta have some of those fries. So [38:17]
GRANT: [38:17], okay, you know.
BOBBY: This is the thing, you’re not supposed to tell me how expensive they are while I’m sober. Because the only ever time I had— another time I ever have McDonald’s fries, when I’m not looking at the price, Grant.
GRANT: It’s like three bucks before you know it’s worth it. [38:32]
ALEX: Right. No free ads for literally McDonald’s.
BOBBY: Why do you—okay, my final question, why do you think she tried to do this? Do you think it’s just that she couldn’t think of a more tasteful way to pass along the Padres, and she didn’t want to run them anymore? Because he—she eventually—so, what actually happened, I should say is that she eventually sold the team for $75 million to a 15-member group that included 11 different San Diego investors. So instead of giving the team to the city, she gave them to the 11 richest people in San Diego, which is of course as these things go.
GRANT: Which included future Red Sox owner Tom Werner.
BOBBY: Yes, exactly. Good—another good guy, done a lot for the sport. So I mean, it’s hilarious that it went from being given to the city for free, to being given to this huge ownership group that is like a pox on the sport that we see league-wide now, where you have all of these small stakes owners who all think that they should have a say in the team, and none of them actually want to spend. And so you can’t actually ever compel ownership to go above and beyond the luxury tax because there are all these people in the room saying, why would we do that, with this is just an investment for us, right? So I—I don’t know. I mean, of course, unless the spirit of Joan Kroc compels you, and you can actually see her thoughts. We don’t know why she would try to do this, but it just seems like such an aberration in baseball history. Like I don’t think I know of any other teams that were just trying to be given away to the city.
ALEX: I mean, it was an aberration in baseball, but not for Joan Kroc, right? Who at this point had inherited her late husband’s fortune, which to the tune of billions of dollars, right? And when she passed away, she basically gave it all away, right? She gave, you know, 1.5 billion to the Salvation Army, right? And then 10s of millions to like hospitals and Universities.
BOBBY: [40:31] are not that efficient with their—with their charity funds.
ALEX: Yeah right.
BOBBY: [40:35] read those think pieces yet.
GRANT: [40:38] lawyer actually put like one quarter at a time into like the ringing bin, and it took forever. But you know, that’s a lesser-known story.
ALEX: But like she was—she was getting rid of all of it, right? So it kind of actually makes perfect sense. If she was someone who was kind of in that headspace of like, this city means a lot to me. We should use our position as rich people to kind of give back to the city that—that you know, gave us this. Why—why not?
BOBBY: Yeah, I guess it just takes a perfect storm. Okay, my final question. How do both of our what-ifs merge, if Randy Johnson is drafted by the Braves and Joan Kroc, Tony, the Padres? What is different in the world?
GRANT: Let me—let me levitate for a second. I’ve got Randy Johnson as the Mayor of San Diego at one point, who springboards to the governorship in an election, and Schwarzenegger.
BOBBY: Right. He’s very [41:39] people like tall politicians.
GRANT: Yeah, you know, suck it DeSantis. Like it’s going to be tall top politicians who are gonna get all the votes. Yeah, no, I don’t know. I don’t know how would you guys merge that because I—I’m at a loss.
ALEX: It’s a—it’s a— I mean, it’s a really tough [41:55] It’s already hard enough coming up with one the hypothetical alternate universe, you know, I mean, we were talking about the strike, right? I mean, there’s no—
GRANT: Yeah.
ALEX: —let’s say there’s no strike because the owners don’t necessarily have the leverage that they, they might have otherwise, right? And Randy Johnson is a Brave, so the Expos are not making that—actually, he was off the expos at that time. So I don’t even [42:19]
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: But, you know, you don’t have the dip in sort of interest. You know, that—that occurs as a result of the strike, which leads to, you know, leads into this sort of steroid era of baseball right? Maybe if Randy Johnson never joined the Mariners, Alex Rodriguez, they—they pick a pitcher instead of a— instead of a young upstart shortstop at a—at a high school, right. And all of a sudden—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —Alex Rodriguez is a New York Tiger—
BOBBY: No, New York Met.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Come on, we don’t know where he’s gonna go, he’s going to the Mets. Haven’t we learned that lesson today?
ALEX: Well in the commissioner feels compelled to crack down on steroids, because interest in baseball isn’t going anywhere. There’s nothing threatening it. And all of a sudden, Alex Rodriguez is a utility player. That’s the best I can come up with.
BOBBY: See, I think what happens is that the Padres are stricken from the league, you know, as we discussed like the owners wouldn’t stand for this. They send the Padres to the Hague or whatever. And because of that, because there’s one fewer team and the scheduling is all a total mess, or they had to add an expansion team. And they pick off these players from all these other teams, we get to call the Braves World Series in the 1990s Mickey Mouse championships, because of some—because there was some shenanigans happening beforehand in 1990 before the Braves got to win. It’s all Mickey Mouse. And I liked that. I liked that hypothetically.
GRANT: That’s good. That’s good.
BOBBY: Grant Brisbee, where can people find your wonderful work?
GRANT: They can find it at the athletic. I’m on Twitter less these days. So just go to the Athletic, subscribe, promo code Grant—no I don’t have a promo code. So yeah, please do that. Before I go, I just have one more “what if” and um, we don’t need to do an entire segment on it. I need to get it off my brain.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: Do it.
GRANT: In 1963 or so, there is a producer by the name of Lee Mendelson, who produces a documentary on Willie Mays. And this Giants fan, this big-time Giants fan was really impressed with this Willie Mays documentary. So he reached out to the producer and says, you know, I’ve been thinking about a TV show. That man was Charles Schultz and the production that they did together was a Charlie Brown Christmas. So what if Charles Schultz isn’t paying attention to Willie Mays or the Giants, we don’t get a Charlie Brown Christmas which might be the finest thing this country has ever produced other than Willie Mays.
BOBBY: [44:47] we don’t have a line that says dancing. We don’t have—
ALEX: This is the most terrifying hypothetical [44:50]
BOBBY: [44:50] little tree that’s so beautiful and wonderful and speaks to the soul of this wonderful, wonderful world. Wow.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: Okay. This is why we have you, this is why we invited you Grant like you gave us some—some bonus content just for free.
GRANT: Bonus contents.
BOBBY: In the outro, right?
GRANT: No, it’s not for free, I’ll send you the bill. The invoice is coming. No, but thanks for having me on Athletic on the Giants page just to find it pay well.
ALEX: Thanks so much Grant.
GRANT: Uh you gotta. Thanks so much for having me.
[theme]
BOBBY: Okay, thank you to Grant. What a delight.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: What a delight. Bringing on Grant Brisbee, you know, we’ve been reading Grant Brisbee for a minute. How far the podcast has come?
ALEX: It feels like a long time coming. That’s for sure. Long overdue. I felt like we were just getting started to you know, he—he dropped that little Charlie Brown tidbit and at the end, and I was like, now there’s a thread I really want to pull that.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: This is—you’re—we’re talking about impacts on the broader culture writ large.
BOBBY: Right. Yeah. Like here’s what I have for you movie related, what if Field of Dreams was a good script? I mean, it’s— it’s from the movie.
ALEX: [46:15]
BOBBY: Like it’s important. It’s important to the baseball culture, understand it. I like it, you know like it was important to me as a kid. I was shown it at a young age. But like what if the writing was not total garbage?
ALEX: I think honestly, it probably doesn’t get the love it deserves—
BOBBY: I think you’re right.
ALEX: —There are some people who are like, there’s too much going on here. It’s too high concept.
BOBBY: The corniness is a feature, not a bug.
ALEX: Exactly. Exactly. The corniness.
BOBBY: Oh man, accidental punning time, that means it’s time to wrap this thing up. Thank you again to Grant. Thank you to everybody for listening. We are recording this ahead of time. So we don’t know who is a new patron at this point. But we think you’ve met—
ALEX: [46:58] either.
BOBBY: Or who else has signed already that could actually be on the Mets? I mean, Aaron Judge already did his introductory press conference, and he has the captain— the captain see now, so it would seem unlikely that they could bring him in, but I guess never say never.
ALEX: Right. Never say never. I would have said Carlos Correa’s never leaving the Giants, but—
BOBBY: Alex, is there anything else that you want to leave the listeners with, as we approach the end of the year? We have a—we have a—we have a pod scheduled for next week too. We’re not going to take any time off. We have the—we have the part two of this “what ifs” series, but is there anything that you want to get off your chest as we—as we close out 2022. An important year for the baseball world and important year for the Tipping Pitches podcast.
ALEX: Honestly, no, I—if—if anyone has John Heyman’s number, he’s not responding to us. So please let us know about that because we’re still doing our best to get him on, it probably at this point happening in the new year.
BOBBY: Well, you know, who has John Heyman’s numbers, Scott Boras
ALEX: [47:57]
BOBBY: Know who got Boras’s number, fucking Steve Cohen. That’s [48:03]
ALEX: Yeah. No, I want to say thank you to all you guys listening. I’m sure we’ll say it again next week, and probably in most of the episodes coming down the road because that’s just kind of how we roll. But as the year comes to an end, we do want to thank you guys for making it so successful. Because this is one of the more fun years I’ve had watching baseball in a while, and a lot of it is. is thanks to the little community that y’all have—that y’all have created.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: So—
BOBBY: And because the Astros won the World Series [48:37]
ALEX: [48:37] the Astros won the World Series that was big. Yeah, really fun.
BOBBY: Sorry for being a dick while you’re trying to [48:45] You’re right, we had so much fun. And we hope to make 2023 even better from a podcast perspective, from a community perspective, from rooting for the New York Mets perspective, from sending out the newsletter on time perspective. Aye. Wow, it’s real roasting hours. I see. We did good for a while on that front. But you know—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —it gets to the end of the year like other responsibilities, life gets in the way.
ALEX: [49:13] [49:14] like I get it. We get it.
BOBBY: So now it’s because I went to Italy. The truth comes out. What was your excuse? Thanks, everybody for listening. We will be back next week.
[Music]
ALEX R.: 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!
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