Alex and Bobby discuss former Brave GM John Coppolella’s reinstatement after a “lifetime ban” for breaking international signing rules, MLB hiring a blackouts czar and what it means for the future of streaming, robot umpires coming to Triple A, thoughts on expansion, and the implications of facial recognition technology in MLB ballparks.
Links:
John Coppolella on life before and after MLB’s banned list
MLB seeks to end local market blackouts
AAA parks to use electronic strike zone in 2023
Andy McCullough on expansion to Las Vegas
Facial software used to remove lawyer from Radio City Music Hall
Facial recognition enters the sports arena
Join the Tipping Pitches Patreon
Tipping Pitches merchandise
Songs featured in this episode:
James Blood Ulmer — “Are You Glad to Be In America?” • 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, today is a very important day for me. You know why?
ALEX: Why is that, Bobby?
BOBBY: Today is the day that I buy my first Mets tickets of 2023.
ALEX: How’s it feel?
BOBBY: Well, I should ask you the same thing, because you’re basically buying them too.
ALEX: [0:43]
BOBBY: Because you’re gonna be, you’re gonna be Venmo-wing us after, afterwards. So how does it feel for you?
ALEX: It feels great. This offseason, I don’t know why I feel like has kind of gone weirdly fast for me. Like, I feel like the World Series just kind of ended. Maybe it’s just a larger symptom of kind of how, how we exist in society right now. Where you blink, and you’re like, I’ve, I’ve aged five years. But, I don’t know, I’m like, I’m like, I think I’m ready for baseball to be back. I haven’t given a lot of thought, you know, all of a sudden, it’s there. I’m ready. I’m excited. I’m jumping in, feet first.
BOBBY: So the reason I wanted to talk about his at the top of the podcast is because, you know, it actually is an important day when you buy your first baseball tickets of the year. You start to conceive of what could be the possibility of a zero and zero record, feels good for everybody. You know, it feels good that pitchers and catchers are less than a month away. But for the purposes of the Tipping Pitches Podcast, I think listeners will remember when the Mets got eliminated in their three game series against the San Diego Padres. Their three game wildcard series after winning 101 games. I had a real crisis of faith, you know.
ALEX: Right, yeah.
BOBBY: Where I was like, it’s not that I don’t think that I’ll be watching the Mets next year or rooting for the Mets next year, the same way that I always will. But I just don’t know if I can be as invested emotionally. Like in my personal, my per- I can’t tie my personal worth to this as much as I have the last couple years. I just gotta say, all that’s out the door, baby. I’m back in. The Mets–
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: –are real–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –be back in–
ALEX: Just wait–
BOBBY: –and got me.
ALEX: –just when you thought you were out, they, they pull you back in. That’s, I mean, that’s what they do, right? This is the folly of being a sports fan, is no matter how the team treats you. Or, or, or no matter how you kind of emotionally reckon with your fandom, right? Good or bad. At the end of the day, Phil Castellini said it best, right? Where are you gonna go?
BOBBY: Nostalgia is a powerful mistress, you know.
ALEX: It’s really is.
BOBBY: Just pulled back in. Last year was–
ALEX: Phil–
BOBBY: –fun! It was good.
ALEX: Yeah, it was good.
BOBBY: I’m ready to have it again, you know?
ALEX: Yeah, I, I am, too. I, so, so what I’ll say is I too am preparing for the, for the baseball season–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –right now, right?
BOBBY: Probably a little bit differently than me, yeah.
ALEX: A little bit differently. But I, but I was at a bar this weekend in, I’m in Chicago at the moment. And I was out there–
BOBBY: Were you helping the Ricketts build the–
ALEX: The sports–
BOBBY: –the sports [3:25].
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: Right, yeah, exactly. That was–
ALEX: They needed an outside contact–
BOBBY: I mean you drew like blueprints. and so you wanted to see–
ALEX: [3:30]
BOBBY: Right, exactly.
ALEX: Kind of have like this. There was a young man out of the bar, wearing an A’s hat. And an–
BOBBY: Always there’s.
ALEX: –A’s, and an A’s like holiday sweater. What–
BOBBY: Do you ever- hold on, before you finish the story. Do you ever wonder if you are like living in The Truman Show? You know, and you’re Truman? Because everywhere you go–
ALEX: All the time.
BOBBY: –there’s a first [3:53]–
ALEX: Ever since I saw that movie. Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s everywhere you go. There’s a person wearing an A’s hat.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: [3:58]
ALEX: And, and if there isn’t–
BOBBY: –is a person wears an A’s jersey. Yeah.
ALEX: If there isn’t a person, I’m the person..
BOBBY: And I, I sometimes I feel like those are industry plants.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: As we say.
ALEX: Right. There’s just–
BOBBY: It’s convenient.
ALEX: –they’re, they’re to throw me off the, the, the center of the trail–
BOBBY: A’s holiday sweater–
ALEX: –you know.
BOBBY: –come on screenwriters, do a little better.
ALEX: I know. Yeah, I was like you just pulled that out of the, out of the fanatics closet, didn’t you? Also, I, it’s such a power move to wear not one but two items of a team’s clothing. Like–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –out to a, a bar or just going out. You know, he was like, the hat is really not enough to set me apart as far as an A’s fan. Like I want people to know how beholden I am to this God forsaken team. It was a good sweater though, no shade. Anyway, I walked up to him and I said, What’s up man? Are you actually an A’s fan? Or I have to assume so, this would be an incredible style choice if you were justdoing this–
BOBBY: Green and yellow together the color scheme?
ALEX: Right. Yeah, exactly. Color way–
BOBBY: Has as sneaker head say.
ALEX: He, he said, Yes I am, I’m, I’m from Oakland. They said, that’s awesome. I, I am too, I’m huge A’s fan and he said, Hell yeah, dude, fuck Jeff Fitch- Fisher!
BOBBY: Jeff Fisher.
ALEX: And gave me a high five and walked away. I felt so good about that interaction because I think it’s, there’s something to be sad about not even giving your billion or overlord, like the time of day when it comes to his name. You know, like, like–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –heclearly did, you know has not read John Fisher’s Wikipedia page like some of us sickos over here have, right? But he knows enough about him to know that he’s the reason that the team is doing whatever they’re doing right now, right? And it felt like a really interesting kind of litmus test where even the fans who aren’t, you know, yelling about selling the team on a week to week basis. Still have an awareness of like the, the levers of power. And it’s good, this is my, my one person survey of A’s fandom and it’s in a good place right now.
BOBBY: I give this man a 10 out of 10 on intent. The 7 out of 10 on execution. Would give them a lower score and execution. However, Jeff Fisher is a person in sports, sports world, you know, Jeff Fisher was–
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: –the coach of the Rams for a long time. You know, you just get conflated, those files–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –in your brain just get a little bit mismatched.
ALEX: Yeah. So, so anyway, we’re all preparing for the season in our own ways.
BOBBY: We should just start calling him Jeff Fisher on the pod now.
ALEX: We should.
BOBBY: That should be a thing. How many people a week do you think would tweet at us being like, you know, his name’s John Fisher, right? You be like, no, I actually didn’t know that. Thank you, for letting us know.
ALEX: I mean, I mean, that’s the joke, right? Is whenever, whenever a tweet goes outside our circle.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: People can’t read, sarcasm.
BOBBY: Did you feel the urge to tell this person that you know John Fisher personally? You show him the photo of you two together looking happiest clams?
ALEX: You know, he was on his way out the door. He seemed in a rush. So I did, I didn’t want to hold him. And also, you know, that’s, like, I don’t, I don’t need to humble brag like that, you know. My friendship with, with John will come out in due time. If I know you–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –you know–
BOBBY: The phone contacts book.
ALEX: Exactly. You’ll–
BOBBY: Show him–
ALEX: –I don’t need to, I don’t need to be a show off. Like if you know me, if you hang around me, you’ll understand soon enough my relationship with John.
BOBBY: Right. You prefer to work in the shadows.
ALEX: Right, exactly. But I, but I wear it on my–
BOBBY: John’s righthand man.
ALEX: –you know, I’m not, I’m not shy about it. I, you know, I’m pro- I’m a proud Fisher head.
BOBBY: While we’re here talking about your personal obsessions. Before we get into the actual show, which we have a good show coming up for everybody. You’re gonna round up some topics from the last couple of weeks that are particularly Tipping Pitches even we haven’t had time to discuss or occasion to discuss. So while we’re here talking about your personal passions, I wanted to let the listeners know about a little, a little notification I got on my phone two days ago. And then notification was from the Instagram app, and it was Alex Bazeley has tagged you in a comment. And the comment was on a post by none other than Alex Rodriguez, friend of the show. And it was Alex Rodriguez giving away 52 weeks of vitamins, a gym membership, that’s worth I think about $100 a month or something like that. And the chance for a 10-minute, one on one motivational–
ALEX: Motivational.
BOBBY: –phone call, video call, I believe it was described as.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: So my questions for you are as follows. Have you heard back from him, number one?
ALEX: No, I haven’t. I think the contest is still open. So–
BOBBY: Ohh.
ALEX: –I’m holding out hope–
BOBBY: Void where–
ALEX: –in the last few days.
BOBBY: –prohibited. not–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –prohibited yet. And number two, did you you really did all of the things that he told you to do?
ALEX: Yup!
BOBBY: You followed all the different, there’s like four different account–
ALEX: It really, really came–
BOBBY: –to follow–
ALEX: –to follow–
BOBBY: –post it your story.
ALEX: –UFC gym and Goli- like whatever.
BOBBY: Yeah. How long do you have to keep those follow? Like, are you still following those counts, just in case?
ALEX: Well, I’m, I’m doing it until the contest is over, right? Like I–
BOBBY: Just to show that you’re committed.
ALEX: –I need to have all my bases covered.
BOBBY: Well, we know that he, he didn’t even know that he listens. And so maybe talking about it will increase your chances of winning.
ALEX: That’s true, yeah.
BOBBY: Not to suggest, the contest–
ALEX: Although, I–
BOBBY: –is rig anyway since [9:23].
ALEX: Right. I was gonna say we don’t want to put our thumbs on the scale. We want it to be a fair fight. It was just 10-minute motivational call.
BOBBY: You wanna, you wanna leverage our power and connections. We would never want to do that. My, my final question, do you think he would let us record the 10-minute video call for the podcast? I didn’t see anything in the fine print that said we couldn’t, you know–
ALEX: Maybe, maybe it depends–
BOBBY: –for a one way state.
ALEX: Right–
BOBBY: [9:44]–
ALEX: –I was gonna say, probably the [9:45]–
BOBBY: –one way recording.
ALEX: –where calling from. Don’t, don’t need to let them know.
BOBBY: Yah.
ALEX: If you had the chance for a 10-minute motivational call with Alex Rodriguez, what do you think you’d like talk about?
BOBBY: I know exactly what–
ALEX: 10, 10 minutes–
BOBBY: –I know exactlly what to talk about.
ALEX: –is not a very long time? I feel like unless he’s just gonna give a motivational speech. Like it’s not really a conversation, you can like ask a question. And then they’ll turn around and answer. So when, so when it sounds like you have something ready?
BOBBY: Well, what I would do is I would say, listen, Mr. Rod, we’re huge fans of you. That’s why we signed up for the contest. You are the primary motivating factor. We’re not going to be going to the UFC gym as much as we, we like and respect the UFC.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Let’s say Mr. Rod, we, we do our own little podcast, it’s small, you know, you probably haven’t heard of it. Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t. And, and within that little community, we have a subsect of passionate Alex Rodriguez fans. Who not only love you as a player, you know, Hall of Fame career, even though you might never make it in, I wouldn’t say that. But, Hall of Fame career, Hall of Fame worthy career. One of the best to ever do it. But we love you as a businessman.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: And we love you as a person and authentic personality. And so what I want you to do for the next 5 to 10 minutes or however long you feel is necessary. Is I want you to speak to those people, and I want you to tell them to keep going, keep doing exactly what they’re doing. Which is great!
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s what I would ask for.
ALEX: That’s good, because, because you’re giving to him there too, you know, you are–
BOBBY: It’s fucking circle of–
ALEX: –giving support.
BOBBY: –life right there, baby. He gives to us, we give to him.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: He gives to the–
ALEX: I mean–
BOBBY: –pod, we do the pod, pod gives to hi- pod gives to the community, community gives back to A. Rod. That’s what we’re, that’s what life’s all about!
ALEX: Exactly! Yeah. I, I think I’d probably go a different approach and say, you know, what really motivates me is seed money. And I actually have the papers for a SPAC drawn up right now, if you’re interested in taking Tipping Pitches public.
BOBBY: Well, the truth of it is that he would respect the shit out of that.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: He would be like, listen, I like you. gosto, you remind me of a young Derek Jeter. That’s the only person he can compare anything to. It’d be like something that Derek Jeter told me when I was, when I got to the Yankees is this. I think that that would go really well for you. So now, so now, we both have to enter the contest.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: Because it’s, it’s two, it’s two roads diverging in the forest. Robert Frost which way we gonna go?
ALEX: Yeah, I mean, that’s true. Right.
BOBBY: I think in a scenario you’re probably the roadless traveled, pitching A. Rod. to take our podcast public.
ALEX: Right, exactly. Which is why it’ll stand out, you know. Everyone wants him to just like, say, what’s up? and I don’t know, record a voicemail message for him. No! I’m here for his business acumen only. I didn’t even know he played baseball. I know him solely through Goli gummies and the UFC gym.
BOBBY: And the Minnesota Timberwolves.
ALEX: Yeah, exactly.
BOBBY: That reminds me of how you were supposed to try to become his protege you know you’re supposed to apply to A-Rod Corp, how’s that going?
ALEX: You know, you check in with me on this every few weeks and–
BOBBY: Just doing my part.
ALEX: it’s slow going right now.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: I don’t know if they’ve got a hiring freeze.
BOBBY: Rome wasn’t built in a day. If–
ALEX: Right, yeah.
BOBBY: Hiring freeze?! What for?!
ALEX: I know they’re growing, right? They should be. I think–
BOBBY: Although, you know–
ALEX: –A. Rod cast more, hey, he has more nephews to hire first.
BOBBY: You know why they might have a hiring freeze? Because they actually paid back that PPP loan.
ALEX: If right, yes. They did!
BOBBY: Unike, unlike Touchdown Tom, you know, more like Taxpayer Tom, if you ask me. I love, I love, I love what I make you question why you do this podcast? That’s my favorite thing to do before the cold open, come on. I’m, I’m batting–
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: –1000 today. I feel good!
ALEX: Yeah, well, this is the, this is the time of year where the content is most off the rails. I have, I have weekly existential crises about, about what the podcast is, you know. After we talked for like a half hour about consumer streamer rights. I’m like, hmm, we could expand.
BOBBY: Yeah, what would be the vision for A. Rod? You know, like, what would be the bullet points, elevate or pitch?
ALEX: Right, ’cause he, ’cause he, ’cause he want to see growth, right?
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: He would want to see an actual five year strategic plan.
BOBBY: Right. what he wouldn’t want to see is we’ve plateaued with this exact collection of weirdos whom we love.
ALEX: Right. Yes.
BOBBY: And I think one demonstrated area of growth is unionizing the fans, which we’ve already started to do.
ALEX: Right, A. Rod. famously write pro labor. I think that, I feel like he would support a fans union before he would support a players union.
BOBBY: He did all the work he needed to do, he got the biggest contract in baseball history.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s pretty pro labor if he asked me. He’s the labor.
ALEX: That is, that is true, he did take millions of dollars from the Steinbrenners and I can’t exactly fault him for that.
BOBBY: That’s just money that was going straight to the Republican Party. So, yep, one way or another. That’s not true, it’s Steinbrenners buy off both parties so that they canti- continue to do whatever they want. Okay, I think that it’s time to actually get into the real podcast, we’re going to talk about some robot umps. We’re going to talk about a formerly disgraced former executive. We’re gonna talk about blackouts, as per usual. Maybe even a couple extra stories, some juicy tidbits from the last couple of weeks. But before we do all of that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I am Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[15:42]
[Music Theme]
BOBBY: Thank you this week to our new patrons. As a reminder, you can sign up for the Tipping Pitches Patreon at patreon.com/tippingpitches. Three different tiers, $5, $7, $12, good stuff for you and every single tier. Not going to do the whole spiel today. Just gonna say thank you to the many new patrons this week, a good handful of you. Joel, Cole, Ken, Tom, and Jack. Thank you to those five. Dream Team right there. Joe, Cole, Ken, Tom, Jack, Dream Team. Okay, Alex, quick hits from the last couple of weeks. Some stories that we haven’t discussed on the pod, though I have some thoughts about as to you, I hope. First up, we’re just gonna go in chronological order, how’s that sound?
ALEX: Sounds great.
BOBBY: First up, ex Braves general manager, John Coppolella has his lifetime ban lifted by Major League Baseball. Alex, your thoughts? John Coppolella, full career already, he’s only 44. Disgraced former executive, fired five full years ago, five and a half years ago. And he’s still only 44, whole life ahead of him, whole career ahead of him. What do you think?
ALEX: Kind of contradictory to a lifetime ban, I think.
BOBBY: The lifetime of who, you know? Lifetime of a goldfish, lifetime of a house fly.
ALEX: You know, so there’s a very long piece in The Athletic, where he gave an exclusive sort of interview about the process of his being banned from Major League Baseball, how it affected him? You know, and kind of what that journey back has been–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: — has been like. And you know, expressed in a, in a certain amount of remorse and regret over what he did. And seemingly took accountability for his actions. Sure.
BOBBY: His actions by the way, we didn’t even say. I assume most people know about John Coppolella at this point.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: This has been going on since before we had a podcast, former general manager of the Atlanta Braves who was fired and then subsequently banned for life by Major League Baseball, for illegal practices in the international market. Namely, he was pairing multiple prospects together to subvert the bonus pool rules. Which there’s a maximum amount of money that you can give to one individual player to come play for your team. And you are not allowed to offer that before a certain age, I think the ages 16 officially where you’re allowed to offer them a contract to comply. And so he was, you know, as have many executives been rumored to do or confirm to do, Coppolella and the Braves were approaching international free agents before they turn 16. and offering these sort of package deals with other international free agents. Where one player would get, you know, less money and another player would get above what you’re actually allowed to give one player. So it was a subversion of these international rules. Now, this is obviously situated within a messier international market that exploits these players. And this was all kind of part of that soup of misbehavior, just for context–
ALEX: RIght.
BOBBY: –for people who don’t know about it.
ALEX: Yeah, exactly. And they were penalized pretty hard, right? They had to release like 12 of their top prospects because they shouldn’t have been able to sign most of them, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I mean, they were, they were fined a certain amount of money, you know. Like kind of all the, the standard stuff, but the big kind of meat of it was Coppolella being at the center of this system of corruption within the Braves, and his fall from grace. I, I think that the, the biggest thing that irks me about the story is that while Coppolella in, in this specific scenario, clearly deserves to shoulder a lot of the blame. There’s no way that he was a, a lone actor in this, right? Either either within the Braves, or more broadly in baseball, right? As you mentioned, it’s not like this was an outlier, in fact, just days before Coppolella’s ban was handed down, Manfred felt the need to go to the GM meetings and basically say, You guys are running afoul of the rules, there are going to be hard consequences. We are going to draw a hard line in the sand. And, and so that suggests to me that maybe it was not just John Coppolella and the Braves otherwise he would have had a sit down meeting with them individually, right? If it was something that needed to be disclosed to every single baseball team, elements of this were probably relatively were widespread. And in fact, we know a lot of this was relatively widespread. This has been an ongoing issue for years. So I actually don’t necessarily have a problem with Coppolella coming back into baseball. But it does feel like this sort of undid the, the one slap on the wrist that resulted from this whole debacle. And now what do, what do you have to show for it, right?
BOBBY: Yeah. I, I think I do have a problem with him coming back into baseball. Because I don’t, I don’t know what that signals. You know, like every–
ALEX: Right. [21:14] is okay.
BOBBY: –action, every- yeah. Every, you know, judicial action, every bureaucratic action that MLB takes within its own little collusive, you know, market. Like whatever, whatever we’re calling Major League Baseball, as a business, everything that they do, that we find out about, it says something to the fans, you know. Like it says this is what we value, or this is what we don’t value. And by suspending Coppolella for life, in theory, what they were trying to say was is that we value you following these international rules. And now we’ve, we’ve known for the last few years that that’s proven to basically be a sham, and that the international market is being manipulated, left and right. Largely because MLB doesn’t care enough to actually put oversight into this system or overhaul the system entirely or get rid of the system entirely. And replace it with something approaching real free agency. Because then these players would become a lot more expensive. And then teams would lose more money on them. And they couldn’t continue to use these shady practices which in the aggregate, the ends justify the means to these teams. And the means, as we saw when we talked to Sami Khan and Michael Gassert for The Last Out. These means are unsavory, unsavory means that MLB teams are okay with or prop, prop up. But if you’re going to take the approach, as a corporation, as a, as a business, as a public institution, that you’re going to basically make an example out of a guy. Like that’s what MLB is saying, by only suspending–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –Coppolella not for life, and not everybody else who was involved in this across the entire league. They’re saying we’re making an example of him. and it’s going to send ripples down to the rest of the league, and they’re going to fall in line. And if the example, if you then undo the example, well then that also has to come along with saying we’re going to overhaul the system so that no one can or is incentivized to do this ever again. Otherwise, we’re just gonna need to make an example out of the next person that egregiously breaks these rules, the way that Coppolella and the Braves did. And I’m, I’m looking at what’s gone on in Atlanta for the last 10 years. And I’m starting to wonder what is going to disincentivize another team from doing this?
ALEX: Oh, nothing!
BOBBY: Coppolella had a great tenure as the Braves GM. And you know what? Then they replaced him with Alex Anthopoulos. Another up and coming very smart GM who is leveraging his own market inefficiencies to build a perennial contender. And it’s all part of the same organizational strategy. Get ahead at any cost, you know, whether that’s targeting players who are more likely to sign slightly below market extensions. Which is I would say above board or whether it’s what Coppolella has done, which was extremely below board. It, I don’t look at, in hindsight, the entire situation and think teams are less likely to do this. If anything, I think teams are more likely to behave like this and just cover their tracks better.
ALEX: I totally agree with you, I mean, I think it’s very reflective of sort of Rob Manfred’s tenure as commissioner, right? This sort of reevaluate everything as you go. And if you, just need to change it, you can just like change it, right? If the rule that you just implemented doesn’t work, we’ll just change it and like, do it again next year, right? And it sort of underscores, I think, the lack of conviction on the part of the commissioner’s office.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: The, the sort of moral backbone to stand behind their decisions. And again, I, I, I mean, I think it’s, as you said, choosing to undo the example of Coppolella just show seems that they can get away with this if they, if they want to. But I think they already are, anyways, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And, and I think you’re completely right that This has to come with a conversation around how to fix international signing system. And that was obviously, the elements of that were discussed in the most recent CBA, that never really came to fruition. But it’s going to be a huge bargaining point I would have to imagine, in the next CBA. And, and possibly, you know, with regards to the minor league bargaining processes, as well, kind of looking at these sort of entry points, so.
BOBBY: Yeah. I just think like I, I fully embrace the idea that we can try to be more restorative in our justice in multiple in, in, in, in society at large, not just in the notion of like the United States judicial courts. Like we can apply the concept of restorative justice to more things than just that. And this could be an example of that, like they cite his contrition. They cite how long he spent, the other steps he took in response to this, taking ownership over his own mistakes. And why he went above and beyond what other teams were doing and violating these, these systems. But when Rob is the judge, jury, and executioner for these sorts of things, and he decides on a whim, more or less how long the person is suspended for and when he decides to change his mind. And at the same time, if we’re restoring John Coppolella, as an individual, what are we doing to, like, reduce the harm of the system that he was exploiting? You know, like, he’s not a guy who committed one individual violation. He’s the guy who committed a litany of violations at the behest of an organization who, whether knowingly or ignorantly wanted him to do this. Allowed him to do this, incentivizes him to do this. And so, I don’t know, I, I think it’s, it’s a really serious thing that just was kind of thrown at us. And then, like, randomly in the new year–
ALEX: Right. [27:17]
BOBBY: –nobody really knew this was gonna happen. No one who was on the table–
ALEX: I have no idea it’s coming down the pipeline.
BOBBY: That’s the alarming part of it to me is that like Rob just decides one day. Like, alright, John Coppolella, back in. No one, no one got to vote on that. No one got to have a discourse about that. No one got to have reasonable disagreement about that. It’s just, that doesn’t seem right to me. That doesn’t, that’s, that’s unsavory to me.
ALEX: I completely agree. Yeah, I also think it’s, you know, par for the course, when it comes to these massive, you know, effectively international business conglomerates. There’s certainly no transparency, right? As, as much as Rob would like to pretend that these are open and honest and candid discussions that they’re having with media or fans or owners or whoever. Ultimately, we don’t know how the, how the sausage gets made, right? We just get, we knows what comes in one end and what, and what goes out the other.
BOBBY: it’s a failure, though of aside from Rob and, and MLB’s decisions and however contrite Coppolella is or however much the Braves have reformed themselves. It’s like, it’s like a failure of the wider baseball world fans and media included. Especially media that this will get 1% of the airtime that the Astros cheating scandal would get. You know, that the answer- Astros cheating scandal did get. John Coppolella was suspended for life. And Jeff Luna was suspended for a year. Now he hasn’t been rehired, but like, think proportionally, how much more time did, did we and the wider baseball world spend talking about Jeff Luhnow. For a much less serious violation when it comes to any kind of moral scale that you could possibly plot this on? And so, this just came and went, nobody gives a shit about this. And maybe that’s because he hasn’t been rehired. Or maybe that’s just because it’s really hard to talk about. And it’s easier to–
ALEX: I think it’s–
BOBBY: –sensationalize the idea of sign stealing. If Jeff, Jeff Luhnow got rehired tomorrow, more people will be talking about that, that then if John Coppolella got rehired tomorrow.
ALEX: Right, well because–
BOBBY: Not just the reality that we live in.
ALEX: –because they think that people see it as numbers, as the numbers on the Spreadsheet game, right? It’s like, oh, okay, you were, you were doing the math a little bit wrong, right, when signing these guys. I think if you’re not explicitly in tune with kind of the failures of the International signing system, it’s easy to kind of let your eyes glaze over and say, Well, you, you paid some guys a little more than you should have and some guys less than you should have. And you, and you bucketed them together so that you’d be able to spend more money next year. It’s like did it help us win or lose?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Oh, no, they did pretty well, right? So, all right.
BOBBY: Not, not to put to a caddy, or, or like, conspiratorial of a point on this conversation. But like, this is how something like the Panama Papers just comes and goes. You know, it’s like, it’s all happening in the Spreadsheet and rich people get richer. And this is what–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –how people behave. And I don’t really understand it, and I’m never going to really know all of the details. Because corporations are very powerful at shielding individuals from pers- from personal responsibility. And so John Coppolella gets sacrificed as the sacrificial lamb and everybody else gets to get off scot free. Like, this is how things like that happen.
ALEX: Right. Well, and, and usually the safeguard is, even if the public doesn’t care about it, there are institutions that might be interested in following up on this sort of thing, right? Yeah, most people kind of the Panama Papers went and go, but you know, at least we can trust that, like, the good guys are looking into it, right?
BOBBY: The bank, the banks are gonna figure this out.
ALEX: Right, the banks are gonna figure this out, you know.
BOBBY: They’re being subverted, you know. Like, they want it, they want, they don’t want this. You know, like all of the executives are cited in the Panama Papers.
ALEX: Right, yeah, exactly. I’m like, I’m, I’m glad the adults in the room are in charge again.
BOBBY: If there’s one thing about life that I’ve learned, as I approach 30, not really that close to 30. But you know, I’m closer to 30 than 20. There are no adults in any rooms.
ALEX: Nope.
BOBBY: Not that I’ve seen or found. There’s a lot of overgrown children in those rooms, making a lot of very important decisions that affect all of our lives. Okay, next up, check this off your bingo card, baby, it’s time to talk about blackouts. It appears that MLB is hiring Billy Chambers, a longtime regional sports network executive to with the express purpose of figuring out a strategy to work around local blackout issues when streaming baseball games or showing them over cable. So this is we’ve been talking about this forever. And there’s not really like a big breakthrough on the story. Other than that, there is now a person at the helm of what has seemed to be MLBs intention of getting around blackouts of undoing blackouts of making some sort of over the top streaming platform that they, that you either pay an extra fee a month or whatever, to be able to see your team in your local market. Does this moving the needle for you? Are you like expecting this to happen faster now because they hired a regional network executive?
ALEX: Well, I they, I mean, they hired an adult to be in the room, right? So disappointing–
BOBBY: We got it, we did it!
ALEX: No, I, this doesn’t move the needle. You know, as a fan, whenever you hear these things, there’s like a glimmer of hope, right? Of our long national nightmare maybe over it.
BOBBY: We got a blackout ZAR.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: He’s gonna do he’s gonna wave that one, he’s gonna fix it.
ALEX: Yeah, but that there’s so much work that has to be done with this. Local TV networks are, are not anxious to give up the rights to these, because they’re pretty, pretty lucrative. And they bring a lot of eyeballs to your, to your TV. And frankly, there’s not a lot else that these local networks have, that they can offer that obviously streaming doesn’t already. The one thing I’m sort of interested in is what form this will take, right? If it’ll literally just be turning off blackouts you can now watch, you know, you as a, as a New Yorker can watch Mets fan- Mets games through MLB TV, right? Or will it, will it be kind of in partnership with an already existing sort of live streaming platform, right? Like YouTube TV, right? Like, like NFL has sort of set up these, these partnerships and it feels likely that, that MLB will look to mimic that sort of thing. Personally, I’m pulling for an Amazon partnership, I think they do really well with, with streaming. Or you, or, or like the YouTube branded, like youtube.com streams, those games usually look really good too, so.
BOBBY: Uhm, I, it’s funny how anytime there’s a problem that is sort of a hydra like every you cut its head off and like two more problems arise. Which I would describe blackouts as a problem like that. You know, you the layman, the layperson might say just make them available on MLBTV. And then, and then MLB would say, Oh, well, there’s actually all this language in these contracts that we have with the RSN that says that we can’t do that. Because they need to have exclusive rights. and otherwise, the price that we’ve negotiated, which is set in stone, which seems to rely on for revenue, as we’ve talked about a million times on this podcast, as their primary form of revenue is these RSN deals, more or less. Although that is changing a little bit with things like sports betting, and opening sports books and that sort of thing. But that, that as a huge chunk of their revenue, they can’t renegotiate those deals. Because then you start talking about like, if the, if 10 years from now, it’s not guaranteed, and what is our franchise value start to do? And that’s a really dangerous and scary proposition for owners that they’re never going to get into. So I, I just think it’s funny how every time that there’s a problem like this, where, where it’s kind of convoluted, and the, the obvious solution is not achievable for XYZ reason, the thing that they do is like form a committee.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Right, [35:51]
BOBBY: Hire guys. Yeah, they got, they’re, they’re putting together a squad. You know, they’re staffing around–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –this problem. Now what? Well, you can’t expect them to solve it fast. You just got here!
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: How’s, how’s–
ALEX: Well they got to talk about it.
BOBBY: –he gonna figure it out? Yeah.
ALEX: He’s got to, he’s got to go through read the, read the manual, you know. Figure out how the whole thing works.
BOBBY: He’s got to do some fact finding missions. You know, he’s got to figure out where the cafeteria is–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –at MLB headquarters.
ALEX: He has [36:15], I hear he’s going to do a sort of experiential learning where he goes and lives in Iowa, as a Cubs fan.
BOBBY: Oh, yeah, uh-hmm.
ALEX: Uhm, and for, for six months, and then we’ll come back and report his findings that you actually can’t watch Cubs games out there.
BOBBY: Right, right. He’s, he’s like Kendall Roy, you know, doing his six months in parks.
ALEX: Exactly. Yeah. [36:39]
BOBBY: You can get, you got to see how, how stuff to work at the, at the headquarters, you know. It’s having a tough time that–
ALEX: You got to see how it’s going on the ground floor, man.
BOBBY: That, that is definitely how this is gonna go. I still think, I don’t know, I like I’m, I’m not a cable executive. I’m not the person that negotiated this on Major League Baseball side. I don’t totally understand why there isn’t a way in which people can pay additional money to revoke that exclusivity and streaming, you know what I mean? Like, how does that hurt the RSN for a person to pay extra money that is then directly funneled to SNY or, you know, Marquee Sports Network or Fox Sports Florida. Like whatever it is, I don’t, I don’t really understand why that obvious solution is not achievable, I’m sure that there’s some reason that I don’t know about. But yeah, I mean, I guess it’s not bad that they hired a person to try to solve this problem.
ALEX: Yeah, I, I do still love but, but yeah, we’ll just hire someone to figure it out, you know. Guys, we’re having a bit of a diversity crisis. Should we hire someone to figure out what’s going on to get to the bottom of this?
BOBBY: They should have hired an independent counsel, you know. Like the same sort of guy who’s like finding documents at Biden’s house in Delaware.
ALEX: Right, exactly. What’s Robert Mueller up to right now?
BOBBY: I don’t, I don’t want to know the answer to that. That’s a person that I tried to never think about.
ALEX: You kidding me an American hero like him?
BOBBY: Dawg–
ALEX: He can wept this league into shape.
BOBBY: Let me tell you a little Robert Mueller. personal anecdote–
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: –of mine.
ALEX: Sure.
BOBBY: I, I don’t know Robert Mueller personally, I don’t know if you’d be a fun guy to hang out with, seems like no. But when I think of Robert Muller, I think of this time in my life, 20- late 2017, early 2018, when the Mueller report was like in full effect. And I had just recently graduated a semester early, and so I was trying to find full time employment. It’s, it’s kind of really hard to do. In case people haven’t figured that out. So I was working part time for a journalism professor that I had had right before I graduated. And I was helping him with this blog that he works on, that was essentially like a political analysis blog, founded on the intrigue around counties that flipped from George Bush to Obama. And then extended throughout the Trump presidency from Obama back to Trump. So they swing counties and went back and forth between, between candidates that were like, on paper, very, very different and why people would want to change their vote for those people. Or why people would want to change their vote for such starkly different candidates. So I was doing basically like phone research, phone interviews of people who voted in the voter rolls of those counties. And when the Mueller report came around, I had to cold call like hundreds of people who lived in like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. You know, these swings districts Ohio, Maryland, Virginia. And like the white flight suburban voters and ask them whether or not the Mueller report changed their mind about who they would vote for, for President. So hours and hours and hours of my life was spent in an auxiliary office with no windows at night, calling people, cold calling people–
ALEX: Asking people–
BOBBY: –asking them–
ALEX: –how’s the Mueller report.
BOBBY: –how they felt about the Mueller report. And trying to get quotes and data about that. So when you say, what’s Robert Mueller up to? I just gotta say, I’m gonna give a damn! Don’t want to know! Don’t want them involved. I don’t want him [40:36] about him.
ALEX: Yeah, that’s two straight weeks of, of hypotheticals about politicians or, or politics and adjacent figures coming in and, and shaking things up, you know? I’ll take, I’ll take Mueller running, running the league over Nixon as–
BOBBY: President of the [40:58]?
ALEX: –the President of the MLBPA, yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah. In a sort of lesser of two evils scenario.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: What do you think Dick Cheney is up to?
ALEX: What’s your, your role for him that you have?
BOBBY: It could be like sort of like the fixer and intimidator of the regional sports networks. Get those two in a room together.
ALEX: So he’s, he’s like the muscle?
BOBBY: He could have it locked and loaded, you know, you know what I’m saying?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You put the head of Valley Sports in there with Dick Cheney. Across the table, how’s he gonna say no?
ALEX: Real, real let them fight moment, you know, put them in there and lock the door, frankly.
BOBBY: Should we send A. Rod, too? Just to sort of consigliere airy, for either side, I don’t know which side.
ALEX: I, I know, that’s the thing is, I feel like you could send him in there on one side, and he would come out, you know, with talking points for the other side. Like–
BOBBY: Maybe–
ALEX: –he just kind of whichever way the wind is blowing.
BOBBY: Right. Maybe his true calling is, is to be a neutral arbiter. A man who just does not have the courage of any convictions.
ALEX: Right. Yeah. I mean, I mean, very few thoughts to get in the way, right? Of making those decisions. Very few conflicts of interest.
BOBBY: Plus, he’s got to get that thing wrapped up, too. You know, he’s got to get back home shovel the driveway. It’s got stuff to do.
ALEX: He has stuff to do. He’s a, he’s a working man, his family to provide for.
BOBBY: Okay, can we move on? No more–
ALEX: Yeah, please.
BOBBY: –no more talking about blackouts. Let’s talk about robot umps.
ALEX: Oh, God, a lot better!
BOBBY: Another our favorite topics. Robot umpires at home plate, moving up to Triple-A for the 2023 baseball season. Now, now, last year, the ABS system was used as high as Double-A. And it was sort of a blended system. Some games were called entirely by the ABS. Other games are called by a home plate umpire with the option to challenge using the Automated Balls and Strike System. And so if there’s a borderline call that you don’t agree with, you can tap on your head or turn, if you’re the catcher, you can turn to the umpire and say, Oh, we want to challenge that. And then they will get instant feedback from the person who’s operating the ABS system. Hey, that was a strike, hey, that was a ball, overturn the call or keep it the same. So it’s going to be functioning similarly in Triple-A this year. Where half of the games will be called entirely with ABS system, the other half will be called by home plate umpire with the challenge system as an option, utilizing the ABS. And, and the ABS system is basically going to be in every ballpark in the minor leagues this year. So this has progressed relatively rapidly, not as quickly as some of the other wholesale rule changes that Manfred has put into place in the last couple of years. But it’s clearly coming to Major League Baseball, the kinks are being ironed out in the minors. And I gotta say, my reaction to this news is that it doesn’t really feel like this conversation is in a different place than it was three years ago, when we started having it. Still feels like the ABS system can’t call breaking balls. It still feels like some people really like it, some people don’t. It’ll probably speed up games, because there’ll be less arguing over calls. But I still don’t really trust it. And not just because it’s like automated and computerized, but because at the beginning, before it ever even makes it to the field. It has to have an input on what a strike is and what a ball is. And I don’t think that we’ve really agreed on that yet.
ALEX: No, we haven’t agreed. And I know that they’ve been kind of making tweaks as the, the sort of season progressed last year. You know, they would adjust kind of what is, you know, what does the high strike or what is, you know, how low does the zone go? Whatever. So, that’s not to say I don’t think it can get betterm but I, I think we’re going to see that is at the major league level far sooner than we maybe initially anticipated, right? The kind of common messaging around it from Manfred himself, as recently as like last year was, robot umps are still a ways off. We still got testing to do, you know, it’s going to be a while before we, we really see them in action. And at this rate, right, we, we kind of are seeing them take one step per year, right? Trying it out in the league, seeing how it goes and expanding it a bit the following year. If things go well, at the minors this year, I, I don’t think that it’s out of the question that this is something that Manfred discusses implementing for 2024.That may or may not actually happen, depending on pushback from players or, or the umpires union. Who I’m, I’m, has been suspiciously silent on this. Does anyone know how, how the, the umpires union feels about this? Have they tweets- I know they, I know they tweet, they love to tweet.
BOBBY: I’m not seeing anything other than just that they’ve basically collectively bargained over the institution of this. And it being rolled out in the way that it’s being rolled out. I mean, from their perspective, it takes away sort of their prestige and control over the game. But it’s not taking away a job.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Because the home plate umpire still needs to be behind the plate to call safe and out, fair and foul. To relay what the ABS system is saying. And so if anything, it’s like adding a job? Because there needs to be someone to operate the Automated Ball and Strike System. So it’s like it’s a downgrade in their prestige in the game. But it’s not really a downgrade in their staffing. And so, I don’t know, my honest opinion, is that I think that they are going to not use full Automated Balls and Strikes in Major League Baseball ever.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: I think that maybe not ever, ever is too strong, but, but within the first version of ABS in Major League Baseball with Major League Baseball players will be the challenge system.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: And I’m okay with that, I think. Because any pitch that is being challenged, is close enough to a strike based on the rules of engagement that we’ve been playing with for 100 years. That at that point, it’s kind of a toss up to me their way, you know? And if we can use this technology, to add a layer of strategy, to add a layer of gamesmanship around the strike zone, I’m okay with that. I don’t think it’s like a make or break deal for me, the way that some people like to complain about the strike zone. But you know, I was listening to, I was listening to Baseball BBQ’s interview with Henry Davis, who’s who was the number one overall pick in the 2021 MLB draft, and he’s a catcher was with the Pirates. Reason the Pirates system, rather. And he was talking about how well this works. And so if you have like, if you have a young catcher, who’s talking about the challenge system and saying that he is in support of it, and that, you know, he feels like the idea of framing is still going to matter, the idea of catcher defense still gonna matter. The idea of a pitcher who knows how to manipulate the strike zone, in and out is still going to matter, then I’m okay with that. Because I think at the same time, on the flip side, you’ve batters have become so judicious with what they swing at. That that’s just as much of an art and just as much of a skill as pitch framing. And I think that more often than not, batters are more hurt by an MLB strike by an umpire strike zone than pitchers are. Because they’re, there’s this level of prestige given to pitchers that you give them a close call if they’re a guy. And for whatever reason that hasn’t always carried over with hitters. Like Shohei Ohtani got hosed more than anyone in the world the last couple of years with his strike zone. And same with Aaron Judge with low strikes. And Ohtani with outside strikes. And Juan Soto because of the way he is so selective. And these are like the best hitters in the world and they’re still not getting the same level of leeway that a guy like Justin Verlander is. And so if the presence of ABS can take some of that out of the game naturally, and then challenges can actually hammer it out of the game, I think I’m okay with that.
ALEX: The PR rollout for this was, was really great. Because doing it over a few years means they’ve kind of just beaten me down–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –at this point. Like, I’m like, it’s inevitable, man. Like, I mean, my, my biggest beef with it, frankly, is it’s not addressing the most fundamental question in the batter’s box. Which is not, what is the ball? Or what is the strike? It’s what is the swing? We still got, we still got to fucking figure this out, man. I swear to God, if I see one more, like, check swing, if I see one more like half swing that is or isn’t called the check swing because of some unknown reason, I’m going to lose it. Like, can we, can we just define it a little a little more clearly?
BOBBY: The problem is–
ALEX: Makes, like just make, make an attempt to swing. Like, like, make an offer at the ball isn’t good enough for me, man.
BOBBY: Yeah. It’s like it is an unanswerable question.
ALEX: Yeah, also–
BOBBY: Did you buffer at it? You can not go around, you can go around like a third of the way and still make contact. So–
ALEX: Yeah. Also, I don’t know why the first base ump is the one who makes that call. Who’s standing at like a 45 degree angle to the plate.
BOBBY: Well, how would the, how would the home plate umpire make the call? In theory, he’s supposed to be watching the ball.
ALEX: I, I know!
BOBBY: Well, sometimes the home plate umpire does make the call. Just overrides the base coach or the base–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –the, the third or first base umpires call.
ALEX: This feels like a thing you could easily automate, you know. Little sensor at the front of the plate. Does the bat cross it? Strike.
BOBBY: Baseball is full of cavemen. You watch a tennis match, and you tell me that baseball has progressed at all–
ALEX: Oh, my God.
BOBBY: –in the last 30 years.
ALEX: The technology in, in tennis matches is unmatched.
BOBBY: Like within seven seconds, they’re like, yes, that ball was in, no, the ball was out. And honestly, I don’t know if they’re lying. I don’t know if that technology is good. I’m sure it is, I’m sure it is. But if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t care. Because it provides–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –me a peace of mind watching a tennis match that I for sure do not have when I’m watching a baseball game.
ALEX: Right. Well, and you know, what gives you that confidence, again, is how quickly it comes about, right? If baseball reviews lasted 10 seconds, fans wouldn’t have enough time to sit there and watch the replay seven times and try and determine for themselves whether or not. They were like, Oh, someone an official made the call. I trust them, they’re right, the game is moving on.
BOBBY: The thing that they have in tennis is a level of reasonability about the call. Like you know what, even if that I felt that that point was out, it’s not going to make or break my entire match. Because I’m, I’m in control of what happens next. And that’s something that baseball fans cannot accept. And the fucking Twitter account for MLB Ump Scorecards is not helping with this. Because as soon as there’s one strike that goes the other way, they’re like, well, that would have been a 2-1 count, instead of a 1-2 count. And for that reason, the next batter would have hit a three run home run to win the game. And so now my whole season is ruined. Because this umpire missed this one call. I’m like, please, for the love of God, stop, stop.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You have to stop.
ALEX: I mean, it’s the same kind of people who like, add up a team’s like individual player WAR to be like, well, the, the wins don’t, don’t match up to the player WAR. And it’s like, that’s because this that’s not how this stuff works.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Like there’s a value that might be assigned to a ball or a strike. But you can’t just intrinsically predict a score or predict what would have happened to based on that or based if, or if the call had gone the other way. Like–
BOBBY: It just, it, it just needs to be, if we’re gonna have Automated Balls and Strikes, it needs to be like binary code, zeros and ones. It needs to tell, there needs to not be like a full conversation about every replay review. Because that’s the final element of this, by the way, now that we’ve spent 20 minutes talking about robot umps, which we said we wouldn’t do. The final element of this is that I have like 10% faith in MLB to roll this out with no, with no major snafus.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Maybe 10%? 7%? Like, they can’t even figure out the PitchCom, a much simpler, maybe not a much simpler technology, but a much less, a much less consequential one. Because if you can’t figure out the PitchCom, then they can just give signs steal away. If you can’t figure out ABS, if it’s given the wrong inputs, or if it’s not working at all, that, then the game is not happening. The game is not continuing. Because now the rules say that there has to be ABS. So if the ABS system is broken for an hour, guess what we’re doing? We’re gonna go buy hot dogs and beer for an hour. We’re not–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –watching a baseball game, and I feel 93, 90 to 93% certain that that will happen at multiple games, whenever this system gets put into place.
ALEX: Absolutely. I, I think there is a long conversation to be had about how the introduction of the K-zone shifted our perceptions as fans of like, what is and isn’t a strike and what is feasible within the game of baseball? Like that broke people’s brains. We were better not knowing what was a ball and the strike. [55:16]
BOBBY: Get the K-zone out of the paint. Get out of here.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay, Alex, two more items on our agenda that I wanted to bring to this forum, you know, to this public square. Andy McCullough at The Athletics did a, did a series about MLB expansion. Focusing one article on each sort of city. Group of people trying to bring a team to that city, the cities are Nashville, Portland, Las Vegas, and Montreal. No big surprises here. Those are all places that we’ve talked about that have been cited by Rob or by unnamed sources or whatever. As cities that are intriguing for the proposition of baseball. Nashville, in particular, has had multiple bites at the apple for trying to get a team there and expansion and as assembled the an Avengers basically of like former baseball players and executives who are trying to bring a team there. I think it’s, I think it’s worth tracking how out in the open all of this stuff is. Because expansion is a really interesting idea to me at this time, when, you know, I think this came up in our State of Labor in Baseball conversation, or maybe in our Baseball Butterfly Effects conversations. Expansion is a really interesting idea at this moment where two teams are kind of in limbo about what their future stadium situation looks like. And I think the Rays are probably a little bit more solidified than the A’s are, at least on the surface level. I just think that, one, I think one can’t happen without the other one being solved first. So they can’t expand to two more markets, without knowing what’s going to go on with the A’s, more or less. Because that kind of, the order of operations there takes away their leverage and takes away their potential bargaining chips. And two, I think expansion of the game is a tacit admission to fans and the players that the financials of the game are way healthier than they’ve been pretending like they are for the last 20 years. And so I think that they are going to need to get their ducks in a row. When it comes to the marketing of expanding the game. And what that means for the health of the league as a whole. I think that they are going to need to admit that, oh, yeah, this is actually ridiculously desirable to own a baseball team. And to utilize the advantages that various markets and fans provide us.
ALEX: Totally, I mean, I think I’m excited for expansion, man. Like, I think it’s gonna be cool. And now I can say that as an A’s fan with very little to lose from expansion. Come, come take our top guys, but I don’t even know who we’re protecting right now. We’re protecting like our coaching staff from being taken.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: We’re protecting our like, how the hot dog guy.
BOBBY: I’m burning this whole place down if they take Starling Marte, I tell you one thing.
ALEX: Yeah, legend.
BOBBY: I shouldn’t say quickly that it was Andy McCullough and Steven Nesbitt in The Athletic not just Andy McCullough. Quick little fact pickup for you there.
ALEX: I think this is kind of an interesting series to certainly come right now as conversations about moving and expansion are already taking place around the league. And we saw Don Mattingly join the, the National Stars team just a couple of weeks ago. I also think it’s a bit ironic, amid some hand wringing over Raiders attendance in Las Vegas. Because turns out if your team is not really, really good, a lot of people don’t really need to come and see them play.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I’m not, just, I’m not sure we’re taking the lessons that we should be taking from the Raiders, and the Golden Knights in Las Vegas.
BOBBY: I think the Golden Knights being so good right away help them.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And obviously they took pretty drastic measures to ensure that there would be a level of like, community and support around the team from the jump. You know, they were very smart with how they leveraged celebrities who are from Las Vegas.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Bryce Harper, fav of the pod included. Getting him at as many games as possible. Getting him in that arena, building a small arena that was easy to sell out and easy to make really loud. And I think the Raiders took the exact opposite approach that they tried to build this huge spectacle. This, this like Cowboys, Jerry World 2.0 in Las Vegas. Which is like really cool for rich people who can afford to go there and happen to be in town that weekend. But it’s like not really that cool for everybody else who would rather watch the NFL on TV. I think the NFL it’s a shitty inperson product to begin with. and so selling out 100,000 seat stadium has never really made any sense to me for the NFL. Like you can buy NFL tickets for the day of any game, pretty much. Because there are just too many people to try to sell out. Those stadiums are so huge. But I think that it’s an interesting lesson to try and take forward when we talk about putting a team and a community and what does that actually mean, you actually have to appeal to that community on one front or another. So that you either need to put a really good baseball team on the field, or you need to make it fun to be there at the park. Affordable to be there at the park or you need to do all of those things, you know. And–
ALEX: Or just build a sportsbook next to it.
BOBBY: Well, or track their faces–
ALEX: You build it–
BOBBY: –walking in, they will come.
ALEX: Yeah, exactly.
BOBBY: And blackmail them if they don’t come to the games. I, I just think that some of these markets feel better suited to that than others, I’ll say. Like, I don’t know why Las Vegas needs a baseball team? I’m just gonna say it. They have a bunch of new sports teams, many of whom are fun to watch. The Las Vegas Aces, the WNBA team, very successful.
ALEX: Yeah, they have Minor League Baseball, as well. They as we just mentioned, they have new franchises in the NFL, and they [1:01:28] like they’re doing alright.
BOBBY: I’m looking forward to expansion for a lot of the same like fan reasons that, that you are. Having two new teams will be cool to see how that unfolds. Inserting them into a league, creating new rivalries, creating new dynamics, shifting divisions, that sort of thing. I am a little more skeptical from the, the way that we approach the economic side of the game. How that’s actually going to work out? And because that’s a, that’s a huge, that’s like, that’s a watershed moment for league, is expanding. The last time Major League Baseball expanded, like within 10 years they were trying to contract. So I kind of hope that doesn’t happen this time around, you know?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Alright, let’s go to our final topic this week, which is, as I, as I mentioned, facial recognition technology in stadiums.
ALEX: Sick. This is good.
BOBBY: I think it’s great, actually. It’s really, nothing can go wrong. It’s pretty foolproof. It’s the world that I would have wanted to build.
ALEX: I mean, I personally would, would like my DNA to go straight to John Fisher, if, if at–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –all possible, like all my biometrics, please just send them via email to, to straight to Jeff.
BOBBY: Like, if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: You know, if you don’t happen to just work for a law firm that sued MSG, and you are unrelated to the case. Like you’re good., you’re good to go.
ALEX: Right. I mean, that’s a, I don’t know, it feels like pretty easy to avoid. I’ve never done that.
BOBBY: I’ve never been a lawyer who’s worked for a company that sued James Dolan, so I’m good. I’m getting an MSG, we’re straight. I’ve never personally told him to sell the team, I never commented on his band’s Facebook page, sell the team. Jokes, jokes, jokes, we love to joke about the panopticon. So, there’s a story in The New York Times a month ago, about Madison Square Garden, using facial recognition to basically create a blacklist of people who cannot enter for events at MSG, or Radio City Music Hall. Anywhere that’s owned by the conglomerate of James Dolan’s, you know, media and entertainment empire. I would, I would like to do it like a full episode about this, honestly. Because it’s obviously pertinent to our interests as sports teams become not just sports teams, as they become local governments, as they become tech companies. They become data hoarders as they become mafia, adjacent, as, you know, as they become futuristic, dystopian actors. And it’s not just James Dolan, either. It’s only a matter of time before this becomes regular. Like we’ve seen how Dolan has used it. And I’m yet to understand why an owner would not want to do this. I think that the Warriors have used this to in their new stadium. And now, some owners will say James Dolan is an idiot for using this to create a blacklist. And, and this puts a bad reputation on this sort of technology. But the existence of this technology requires that it will be used for evil. Do you know what I mean? Like gathering this much information, gathering this much facial recognition of all of the 10s of 1000s, hundreds of 1000s, millions of people who are coming into your stadiums, just means that at the bare minimum, you’re selling that facial recognition data to people that you have no control over. Or to people who do not feel the same level of moral obligation that maybe you claim to as a sports owner. And otherwise, it wouldn’t justify the investment in this technology. It’s not just being used for security. Because it’s not a net profit, if it’s only being used for security. And I think that this is a weird convergence of sports and all of the other things that we kind of care about in the world. Like the, the power, the blurred lines between the security state and private companies. The, the blurred lines between personal liberties and technology, and ease of use. And the choices that we actually have as consumers and fans. And so, I don’t know, I, I would like to do an episode about this. I know that you are interested in this as well, from a personal end podcast perspective. But at the same time, like I don’t know, I don’t know enough about it to really have like an extended conversation. But it felt like something that like, we can’t let this just come and go without talking about it. They’re literally harvesting people’s facial, facial recognition.
ALEX: I’m sitting here in–
BOBBY: [1:06:22] a blacklist.
ALEX: I, I found a Wall Street Journal article from a few years ago about this. Kind of emerging technology and there’s a, it’s the hook of the article kind of focuses on the Los Angeles football club in there, which is a Major League Soccer Club.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: Who is, is using clear, and for the, the kind of facial and fingerprint recognition. And there’s a quote from the chief technology officer who, who said, “Our plan is to move everything to face”. And, and then there’s a little, a little diagram, on the left side of the article of what these, these facial recognition systems look like. “And, and rest assured, there is a barcode or QR code reader for fans who have not linked to their ticket to their face”. Which is just kind of an insane sentence for me to read. Because I never really thought about, oh, shit, did I forget to link my ticket to my face today? God dammit! Like this is really ominous on multiple levels, right? As you laid out, there is the privacy aspect of it. Of, of handing over your biometric data to- no it’s not you’re not handing it directly to the team necessarily, or even MLB. It’s being facilitated by, by another operator. But the lines do start to get really blurred there, right? Especially if they’re harvesting all your data from everywhere else anyway, right? They’re already seeing when you’ve checked in to the ballpark. Or when you’ve spent money at the team store, right? And this is not to say that I think Major League Baseball wants to act as a surveillance state. But I think they will.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: If an options there for them, right? And what really concerns me I think, is how much power it puts in the hands of teams to really act as the judge and jury. And, and, you know, take matters of security, quote, unquote, “into their own hands”, right? If they want to make these decisions, right, that you or anyone who works at your law firm can’t come here because we’ve determined that, I don’t even know. Like, what was the reason, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah. So, so James Dolan’s restaurant company is the, the comp- the restaurants that are inside MSG, are being sued for a separate thing. And the lawyers who were denied entry into MSG for a concert, work at the law firm, but are not part of the prosecution for this case. That seems–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –pretty fucking arbitrary to me. And I gotta be honest, James Dolan sucks, but he’s not the most evil owner–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –you know. Like there are worse people out there who will put this to worse ends, for worse reasons. And, and I just like, I, I am left wondering, what is this all for? Like, what are we doing any of this for? When I, when I walk through the gate and it recognizes my face, and then it gives me an ad because people’s who, whose faces look similar to mine age profile, demographic race profile, you know, weight, height all that sort of thing might want to buy X? I’m like, fucking why? Why, I’m already here. I’m already, you’re already picking my pocket.
ALEX: Yeah, that ad again.
BOBBY: You already every step of the stadium. I’ve paid you fees for the ticket. I paid you for the merch that I’m wearing. I’m paying you for the food that I’m eating. I’m, you’re probably taking a cut of the, you know, I paid you for the parking, if I had to drive here. Like all of this stuff, like you’re already making money at every single second. So like, we’ve, they, they’ve already won, you know. Like they, they already won this battle against consumers. And this feels like running up the score a little bit.
ALEX: Yeah. Well, it also just feels very reactionary to sort of the latest wave of interest in biometric data and artificial intelligence. Like just because Apple introduced a fingerprint sensor on your iPhone doesn’t mean that’s how every fan needs to enter a baseball stadium.
BOBBY: Right. What’s wrong–
ALEX: Right?
BOBBY: –with the barcode? What’s–
ALEX: Like the barcode is actually a–
BOBBY: –wrong with a phone–
ALEX: –what’s wrong with tickets?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I mean, yeah, exactly.
BOBBY: Like you know, it was better for, for me personally? Was having a printed out ticket to remind me that I went to this, this game. That was fun.
ALEX: Yup!
BOBBY: That was nice. Better, better fan experience.
ALEX: [1:10:48] momento. How about you just take a selfie of yourself at the gate each time to remember what your face looked like as you enter the stadium on that given day?
BOBBY: Well, maybe they can just print us out like a you know, Spotify Rabbit for our–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –fucking–
ALEX: Just, just-
BOBBY: –face walking through the gates, you know, they give–
ALEX: Request to an archive of your data.
BOBBY: Make it, they can make it look like FBI is most wanted getting the Citi Field, you know. Here’s my candid of me walking through the field and being stressed that Max Scherzer might give up seven runs. Might give up an opposite field home run to Josh Bell. Your face was indicating anxiety. According to our facial recognition technology, you were stressed 73%–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –stress. Like the- art can’t even keep up with life, with the way that this stuff is working. You know, like biometric data, I get iti it’s an advancement in technology. I understand. I, no free ads, but I wear an Oura Ring. And I compared to some of the other stuff that I would not sign up to do. Some people might think that that’s crazy. I, I like what it provides me in exchange for me forking over some of my biometric data. I just don’t understand what this is providing me an exchange. And I’m not opting into this. Like what am I, if, if James Dolan was here, and I asked him, what am I getting out of this? What would he say? You’re safer at MSG?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Really?
ALEX: Ease of, ease of acce- hey, man, you don’t have to touch any surfaces. Like I feel, I’m part of the reason this also–
BOBBY: Am I safer in MSG?
ALEX: –really came to fruition. No.
BOBBY: Do I not have to touch more surfaces? Like, do we not live in the most dangerous times we’ve ever lived in in public life? Like, I, I don’t know, this stuff is not working, man. It’s not.
ALEX: No, the the next pandemic is going to be prevented by–
BOBBY: Facial recognition?
ALEX: –facial ticketing.
BOBBY: Imagine if the facial recognition technology like takes your temperature at the same time, like heartbeat.
ALEX: Well, okay, so, no, o, but that’s what it, that’s what it did, when this was first kind of coming to fruition, it was in kind of 2020-2021.
BOBBY: Oh, my God.
ALEX: And–
BOBBY: I just–
ALEX: –with that–
BOBBY: –I just [1:12:52]–
ALEX: –[1:12:52], yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah, I just had a vivid recollection of going to LACMA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. And having the facial recognition thing look at me and tell me that my temperature was okay to get in, in 2021.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Wow, I had memory hold that entirely.
ALEX: Yeah. Like it’s real, man. It’s coming.
BOBBY: Man, we’re cooked, dawg.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: We’re fucking beat. We’re living in the death rattle of a failed society. And we’re doing a podcast.
ALEX: That’s right. I can’t wait for expansion though, bro.
BOBBY: Oh, okay. If you enjoy living in the death rattle of a failed society while listening to a podcast and you want to support that podcast, it’s patreon.com/tippingpitches. We won’t ask for a picture of your face. We won’t sell your face. We’ll just ask you to join the Slack and make jokes. That’s our simple business proposition. You know what you get out of it?
ALEX: I promise to you.
BOBBY: You get to make jokes and see more jokes and hang out with like-minded people. That does it for another existential episode of the Tippin Pitches Podcast. I’ve had a great time. How about you, Alex?
ALEX: You know I [1:13:56] games, man.
BOBBY: Yeah. Thank you, we’re talking, we’re talking about the, the tech dystopia on our baseball podcast. Thank you, everybody for listening, tippingpitchespod@gmail.com, if you have questions or thoughts on anything that we’ve talked about today, 785-422-5881, if you want to verbalize those thoughts in the form of a voicemail that we will respond to on the podcast. Anything else? Anything else that people need to know about?
ALEX: No, that’s everything. If you’ve recently bought tickets to your first baseball game, let us know. What is it? I want to hear. Are you excited? Have you linked your ticket to your face yet? If not, get on top of it. QR codes are a thing of the past.
BOBBY: Now’s the time, not- nothing but free time to link our ticket to our face. What else can we link our face to? Link your face to this podcast player app that you’re using right now. So that it knows when you open up your phone to start playing the Tipping Pitches Podcast.
ALEX: Oooh, interesting.
BOBBY: Link my face to my refrigerator, so then my open my fridge. It makes the oat milk just fall out. You know, and make myself an oatmeal latte faster.
ALEX: Oh, okay, yeah. Or–
BOBBY: Start shooting things that I want out at me.
ALEX: How about this, okay, if we’re, if we’re recognizing every fans face, how about we take stadium polls on [1:15:20] strikes?
BOBBY: Ohh.
ALEX: Okay. So–
BOBBY: If we actually just put a chip in everyone’s brain and we say, what did every fan think it was?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Immediately harvest that data, we crowdsource balls and strikes.
ALEX: Well, this is what he wants doing–
BOBBY: Based on fan reactions.
ALEX: –with this, with this brain chip or whatever, right?
BOBBY: Does Elon have a brain chip?
ALEX: Well, I don’t know that he personally has one. But he’s certainly trying to make one.
BOBBY: Isn’t that fucking ironic?
ALEX: Right. Yeah.
BOBBY: We’ll take a vaccine because he got a little fever afterwards. Will they’ll put a brain chip in his brain? What?
ALEX: Well, make it make sense.
BOBBY: Isn’t there a ban on Elon? Like we can’t be fucking talking about Elon podcast? Elon in the outro of the podcast like what do we do? I know we haven’t done band topics of 2023, yet. But–
ALEX: I know, but he’s–
BOBBY: –[1:16:07]
ALEX: –he should be grant [1:16:07] in.
BOBBY: Yeah, you should be grant [1:16:10]. Okay, thank you, everybody, for listening. We will be back next week.
[1:16:16]
[Music]
[1:16:29]
[Outro]
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: Hello everybody, I’m Alex Rodriguez, Tipping Pitches, Tipping Pitches. This is the one that I love the most, Tipping Pitches. So we’ll see you next week. See ya!
Transcriptionist: Vernon Bryann Casil
Editor: Krizia Marrie Casil
Tipping Pitches 
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