Alex and Bobby ponder what it would take for Rob Manfred to put out a statement on the prevalence of UFOs in the skies right now, then talk at length about Cowboy Joe West’s showdown with Wikipedia, including his obsession with “grammer,” his revelations about Manfred’s dislike for Bob Nightengale, and why he didn’t use his own platform for this spring of content, before wrapping up with a listener question about what element of baseball other sports might envy à la the Super Bowl.
Links:
Joe West is spending his retirement editing his Wikipedia page
Joe west explains himself on Effectively Wild
Join the Tipping Pitches Patreon
Tipping Pitches merchandise
Songs featured in this episode:
Paramore — “Crave” • 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, I made a very unfortunate oversight while we were doing our podcast last week.
ALEX: You did! It took us a minute to to remember whether or not you did make that oversight. But we determined that it’s likely.
BOBBY: Wait this wasn’t even the oversight that I was talking about.
ALEX: Oh, okay.
BOBBY: You put that [0:47] these two oversights while recording our podcast last week. The first oversight being I forgot to do my rant about how Philadelphia sports fans are spoiled and weird and act like they’re the underdogs. But I, I we’re recording this on Sunday, so I don’t know whether the Eagles are going to win the Super Bowl tonight.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: So I’m not sure whether or not they’re really spoiled or just kind of spoiled.
ALEX: Right, this could age very poorly in 24 hours.
BOBBY: Honestly, it can’t though, because the Eagles won the Super Bowl four years ago. And the Phillies won the World Series in 2008. And the Flyers have won the Stanley Cup, I think in this century. So Philadelphia sports fans are like better than 95% of city’s sports fans in the country. And yet they act like they have a Napoleon Complex about their sports, that’s a whole different thing. But we don’t need to get into that right now, because we already talked about the Philadelphia Eagles last week and your deep, deep, deep knowledge of their roster. This week, the oversight that I wanted to talk to you about was that last week, when you came over to record the podcast, we spent 10 minutes? 15 minutes? 20 minutes? Talking about how I was going to do the cold open on the balloon.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Chinese spy balloon. The balloon–
ALEX: Nothing, nothing–
BOBBY: –heard around the world.
ALEX: –is not topical here at Tipping Pitches.
BOBBY: The balloon scene round the world.
ALEX: One of many it sounds like.
BOBBY: And we started, we started reading the print copy of The New York Times story about the spy balloon. And you started sharing your opinion because he walked in and I said, Alex, you have thoughts on the balloon? And you were like, honestly, no.
ALEX: Honestly, I actually have a significant lack of thoughts.
BOBBY: It’s one of those things where you just completely let it come in one ear out the other without creating a single critical thought about it.
ALEX: Well, and what I, what I noticed is that if this had happened for years ago, I would have been like tuned in. Like eyes, glued to my feeds, to my screen, you know, CNN running 24/7 with Don Lemon’s dulcet tones, letting me know what our, what our President has been tweeting about. And, and this just kind of came and went, you know.
BOBBY: Well, this is why I wondered because I know you to be intrigued by conspiracies.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: As a person, that’s in your personality type. But it seems like maybe that’s been beaten out of you a little bit. Well, now the conspiracy has gotten deeper. And I know you organized all those thoughts last week about the balloon in preparation for the segment that I forgot to do not 10 minutes later. So I come to you this week, Alex, now that the plot has thickened. Now that there are two unidentified flying objects that have also been shut down, since the Chinese spy balloon was shot down. What do you think is going on? Is there a way for you to relate this to the baseball world, so it can seem like we’re actually doing a baseball podcast?
ALEX: You know what? Yes.
BOBBY: Okay, great.
ALEX: Because here’s the thing is, I think, for a long time, I said this to you the other night, I was like, I kind of thought everyone did this sort of thing, right? Like I kind of thought we all had our own sort of things flying up around in the air. And it was just an unwritten rule, right?
BOBBY: Oh, okay.
ALEX: That’s okay. You know, okay, you see a balloon, maybe you turn the other cheek, right? Maybe it was the CIA officers birthday, or something, you know.
BOBBY: Right, when they go low airspace with the balloon we go higher airspace?
ALEX: Yep.
BOBBY: With a satellite that’s spying on China.
ALEX: Exactly, yeah.
BOBBY: Got there eventually.
ALEX: So and I think that this is the breaking of those unwritten rules, right?
BOBBY: I mean, China said as much.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: They said it violated international norms. You know what that sounds like don’t stare at a home run when you’re up seven runs.
ALEX: Right, it didn’t violate law, it violated norms. That’s the–
BOBBY: Norms.
ALEX: –key distinction.
BOBBY: Well, honestly, isn’t violating norms worse than violating law? Because the United States violates laws all the time, and no one doesn’t ring–
ALEX: RIght.
BOBBY: –about it.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Right, like the Geneva Conventions weren’t written for us, they were written by us for other people.
ALEX: I think it’s just disappointing that it had to come to this, you know, this sort of downfall. Like there was, I just there was a level of respect for spy balloons in the past that just simply doesn’t exist in today’s game. And it’s disappointing to see how far we’ve fallen like that balloon fell from the sky.
BOBBY: Okay, so balloon aside, what’s going on in Canada? Come to the Tipping Pitches podcast to find out what’s happening in Canada and Michigan.
ALEX: I don’t know. Do you know?
BOBBY: No! I feel like there’s a general lack of knowledge to like some people are saying it’s just some more balloons, and we got a whole fleet of balloons lost.
ALEX: Right. The low hanging fruit here is like a UFO conspiracy and I know that that’s kind of trite at this point. But it’s been a while since we’ve had a good UFO conspiracy. I just want to say that. So–
BOBBY: I feel like a couple of years ago, we had a referendum on UFO conspiracies when people were just like, you know, the the UFO conspiracies are only started because the government wants you to talk about that, and now what they’re actually doing right and it’s like, it was no longer fun to have a UFO conspiracy. Because now it’s like just another CIA thing, it’s like, alright, now we have to just fold this into the bigger CIA conspiracy chat.
ALEX: Right. And then they just kind of like released a lot of like documents about UFOs. And we’re like, oh, okay, well, it’s still unidentified.
BOBBY: So you think it’s boring to have the UFO conspiracy? So, so level it up for me then.
ALEX: No, I, I just, just the opposite. I think that it’s been too long since we had a really coherent UFO conspiracy. And I think we should bring that sort of thing back if, if you want to tie it to international politics as well. If you think the Martians are maybe trying to put their thumb on the scale, right? Last election cycle it was Russia. This cycle–
BOBBY: No last election cycle there was, there was the Dominion Voting Booths.
ALEX: All Right, right.
BOBBY: It’s a phrase that has never been spoken on this podcast.
ALEX: And will never be again. You look at me to say more but I this is kind of the extent of my, this is where my knowledge of this subject ends. But I do want to, I want to open the floor to you in case there’s anything that you think hasn’t been discussed yet. That’s, that’s been an oversight thus far.
BOBBY: Well, you know, this is what I come to you for.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Listen to the longtime listeners will remember that we did a baseball conspira- favorite baseball conspiracy segment where you did a Wikipedia deep dive. Speaking of Wikipedia deep dives, we will be talking about the Joe West Wikipedia controversy of the past week since 18 of you sent it to us and asked us to talk about it. Which is amazing. Thank you to everybody who sent that to us. But we decided that it was such a deep and rich story that we would save it for the actual podcast and not just the cold up in this very essential information is in the, in the cold open here. This is what I come to you for to be the artist of conspiratorialization. You don’t think that’s you anymore?
ALEX: I, I may have fallen off my game in the last few years. But nothing like a spy balloon to throw me right back into the fire.
BOBBY: I have a question. How many spy balloons would there need to be before Rob Manfred put a statement out? About how the spy balloons might affect this upcoming 2023 baseball season.
ALEX: A good amount, I would guess.
BOBBY: But there has to be like a spy balloon every day until opening day. And Rob–
ALEX: Well–
BOBBY: –would be like, we don’t want China’s spying on our the RPMs on Lance McCullers’ curveball.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Which kind have this happen.
ALEX: If, f the spy balloon is flying over Minute Maid Park. Like yeah–
BOBBY: Minute Maid Park, Minute Maid Park has a roof, we’re good there.
ALEX: So no, they can’t spy on Lance McCullers RPMs.
BOBBY: Yeah, exactly.
ALEX: They, they would stop the game. I mean, you will recall this past year that the–
BOBBY: Bold of you to assume I’m going to recall what you’re about to say?
ALEX: Yeah, yes, I know, I know. But you will call it a Washington Nationals game where there is a scheduled parachuter. The–
BOBBY: Oh, yeah.
ALEX: –what? Department of Defense? I don’t know who makes those calls. Considered shooting the, the man down. So clearly, there’s some lines of communication that are, that are not being connected here.
BOBBY: I just have to say, I’m happy that the DoD did not shoot that man down for that man and his family sake. And I’m also happy because if the Department of Defense shot down a man above a Washington Nationals baseball game, we would have to stop doing the podcast.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: The intersection of our interests there–
ALEX: Would just–
BOBBY: –require us to be like, but this is the peak. It’s never going to get better/worse than this. How are we going to ever do a podcast in the future about the Major League Baseball season? Like how am I gonna be talking about the Mets in front of a microphone when the–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –Washington Nationals and Department of Defense shot a man down in the skies above a Major League Baseball game?
ALEX: I’d like to say I think it’s funny that the list of, of things that would require us to stop doing the podcast kind of grows longer and longer by the week.
BOBBY: I’m just looking for something.
ALEX: Right, he’s looking for a way Bobby, actually we can talk.
BOBBY: It’s like an old baseball player, when they’re like they’re looking for the thing that is that makes it not fun anymore.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And you always hear baseball players and they’re like, when my routine, when my pregame routine became 90 minutes long before I could even put my cleats on.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s when I knew it was time to hang them up. When I’m searching Dominion ballot boxes in Google before we’re doing the podcast.
ALEX: That’s when you know.
BOBBY: That’s when I know it’s time to start doing a podcast about baseball and leftist politics. Unfortunately, it’s not time yet. Maybe fortunately, I don’t know depends how much you like that intro segment. We are going to talk about Joe West. We are going to answer a listener question. I am going to share my thoughts about the Paramore album which Alex who is a coward has not listened to yet. But before we do all of that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I am Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[10:42]
[Music Theme]
BOBBY: Alex, no new patrons this week. womp womp. Do we do something wrong with us?
ALEX: If anything, that’s an indication to me that we’re not going deep enough on some of this deep state conspiracy stuff, right? Yes, last–
BOBBY: Well, speaking–
ALEX: –last week was relatively light-hearted, there was no balloon talk. And hence, we got no new patrons, causation?
BOBBY: Do you feel like you’d have a good memory of what we talked about last week? Like on any given week, if so, what day do you think that you lose it by? Later that same day? Monday? Tuesday? At what point do you stop remembering what we talked about on the podcast last week?
ALEX: I lose much of it by the evening of recording. Just why it, it takes me some time to, to when I’m, when I’m writing the copy for episode that takes me a little bit. Because half of it is just remembering what we talked about. So I can–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –like I have to go through my notes, and like go through my history and see if there were any links that like, like offshoot discussions that we had. Like it’s, it’s, it’s not great.
BOBBY: So like some might say, that’s bad. Some might say it’s not memorable enough for you to remember what we talked about. However others, particularly in the baseball world, might say one pitch at a time.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: One pod at a time.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: Short memory, don’t even remember we talked about, ready to talk about the next pod.
ALEX: Right, this is, as my Little League coach will always say a flush it onto the next one, you know.
BOBBY: Flush it, my high school basketball coach said that all the time. He’s like he wanted to put it on shirts like, ehhh.
ALEX: It’s, I don’t know, people know the context.
BOBBY: Might take some explaining. I feel like a few weeks back one thing that I do remember saying talking about or joking about, but only kind of joking. Was that, we basically have very few investigative reporter left in baseball, who actually investigate things and break stories. That vacuum has been filled by Reddit user New York Mets all head who has done their own investigation into a cardinal figure of the podcast. One cowboy Joe West. We’re certainly not the first people to talk about this. We’re certainly not the first people to talk about it on the podcast. This already been expanded upon, by Effectively Wild. But for the uninitiated, huge story came across the timeline four days ago, when it was revealed that on January 31 an account called crewchief22, made a series of edits to Joe West’s Wikipedia page. Those edits include everything from deleting things, to updating stories that are told within the Wikipedia page to clarifying the nature of contact between Joe West and Joe Torre to ironing out–
ALEX: Threatening legal action?
BOBBY: Threatening legal action to ironing the details out on a federal mediation between the umpires union and Major League Baseball. It is a rich text, and it is linked in the description. I suggest that you read the whole thing because is it, because it is really hard to convey everything that happened within that Wikipedia edited post on a podcast. The TL;DR of this situation is that Joe West by his own accord, I guess reminded or taught that his Wikipedia page existed. And he decided to go to that Wikipedia page because he sensed that there were some inaccuracies from his perspective on it. And you know what he did? He made an account he edited it. Which is more than I can say for myself. You know, everybody used to joke about like, oh, Wikipedia, anybody can edit Wikipedia. And I used to be like, well, are you actually gonna make an account and go change things?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Joe West is, he’s a go getter.
ALEX: Yep. You visit every English teacher in high school right now. Is, is feeling vindicated for saying that–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –to use it as a source.
BOBBY: Even though it’s a good source.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Here is the comment that crewchief22 a.k.a. Joe West, left after he made his changes. Quote, “I constructively corrected the bullshit that was on this page. There was never a shoving match between Joe Torre and West, I should know I was there. And the federal court order MLB to reinstate the umpires just as I wrote, ‘If you aren’t going to leave my page alone, please remove it completely. I don’t need anyone knowing anything about me…’ And I certainly don’t need anyone reading things that are not true. Either reinstate what I wrote, or erase the entire page… I’m tired of correcting your lies”. This is a lot.
ALEX: I have to sympathize.
BOBBY: Say more.
ALEX: I don’t need anyone knowing anything about me.
BOBBY: He has a podcast, you have a podcast! People know plenty of things about both of you. Also, the post is signed Joe West, like dash Joe West. In the first paragraph–
ALEX: He’s proud of his work.
BOBBY: No, but in the first paragraph he says there was never a shoving match between Joe Torre and West. So it’s like, for the first couple sentences, he was like, I’m gonna try to remain anonymous here. And then by the next paragraph, he gave up on it.
ALEX: Mask off.
BOBBY: And he just used first person and then he signed it as himself. Bro, you cannot parody this if you tried.
ALEX: No, you really. One of my favorite details from this is if you go back and kind of look at the edit history on the page, you obviously see a lot of his edits. Like the ones you’re talking about some of the comments that he’s made on there. But one that pops up repeatedly, is he makes edits for grammar. And he writes a little note that says–
BOBBY: Just like me for pur pod.
ALEX: –just like edit for grammar, spelled g-r-a-m-m-r. And this happens like a dozen times, it’s spelled the same way every single time and I have to respect the, the level of commitment.
BOBBY: So these changes were undone by other Wikipedia editors. Because that violated Wikipedia Terms of Service, which is that you’re not allowed to make edits, about a page about you. Because this is supposed to be crowdsourced. Wikipedia is a crowdsourced Encyclopedia, not a blog about your life. Which Joe West doesn’t know? It’s unclear to me. He did an interview, like a phone interview with Ben Lindbergh that they ran on Effectively Wild after this. Because they had discussed when the story broke on an episode of Effectively Wild. And then Ben decided to send an email to the email account associated with Joe West’s website, the same web- same very same website that we have talked about in this podcast, where we have tried to go to make a legal transaction for Joe West’s country, spoken word country album. However, it is not possible to do that anymore. So we did go to eBay and purchase that album. We do own it on CD.
ALEX: Little, little teaser to everyone for what’s, for what’s coming.
BOBBY: Yes, with the funds that we have worked hard to acquire. And Ben send an email to the email address listed on Joe West’s website, and he responded. And he did a phone interview. And he talked through every single one of these edits.
ALEX: Yep.
BOBBY: And you know what? I kind of found it a little compelling.
ALEX: I did too. You know, I think calling in an interview is maybe a little heavy-handed because I’m pretty sure Ben put the phone down and walked away. While Joe West spoke uninterrupted for like 20 minutes.
BOBBY: Once again, a podcast host.
ALEX: But- exactly! The passion came through, you could tell the passion in his voice that he wanted to correct the record of what was going on there. And I really value the transparency, frankly. He didn’t deny it, you know. In, in this era of half truths, and falsehoods. Joe West came up with this chest and said, I need the people to know the real me. The real ‘Cowboy Joe”.
BOBBY: I’m wondering–
ALEX: And frankly, he did it because we’re all talking about it again.
BOBBY: Well, yeah. Do you think that this was just a–
ALEX: Yes, yes.
BOBBY: ==an app to get people talking about Joe West because he’s going to start releasing new albums?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: I mean, he goes on, Effectively Wild, one of the biggest baseball podcasts in the world to talk about this. My question, why isn’t he using his own pulpit?
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: He’s got his own platform.
ALEX: Yeah. Well, I actually–
BOBBY: He’s got his own megaphone, he’s got his own microphone, he’s got his own speaker, he’s got his own feet. Why is he wasting these stories? Everybody is talking about this. This was his chance.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s just bad podcasting.
ALEX: He could have cornered the, the market on this.
BOBBY: You know what he needs a producer, he needs me. Joe, Cowboy–
ALEX: Well, so I did–
BOBBY: PJW, if you’re listening, that’s my new thing, I just–
ALEX: Abbreviating?
BOBBY: –abbreviating everybody’s name. JJF is still my favorite one.
ALEX: Yeah, yeah. I, I did go back and see because I was curious. I was like, well, This does feel like something clearly he’s interested in talking about this. I wonder if he has discussed it.
BOBBY: No he hasn’t, no pod since October 24.
ALEX: No pod since October. It looks like–
BOBBY: When he had Reggie Jackson on his podcast.
ALEX: Uh-huh, yeah. I, again, I’m, I fallen behind on the episode. So I have some catching up to do this offseason. But it looks like they run in seasons, right? They roughly run over the course of the baseball season. So he’s just–
BOBBY: There’s no reason for that.
ALEX: He’s just twiddling his thumbs–
BOBBY: No, there’s no reason for that.
ALEX: –here February.
BOBBY: Joe West should understand content better.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: He’s a content creator. His whole career was content. His whole persona on the field was no different than First Take on ESPN. And so I don’t understand why he needs to put out conversational podcast episodes and seasons. [20:27] if we did seasons of Tipping Pitches, it’s like, alright, here’s eight episodes–
ALEX: Yep.
BOBBY: –of bullshit conversations. Like then you have to wait eight weeks, then you get eight more episodes. Can you imagine how bad they would be?
ALEX: You know what, you’re talking a lot of shit for someone who has never listened to the 5460?
BOBBY: Yup. Yeah, 5460.
ALEX: 5460, there we go!
BOBBY: 5460. 4650, 5890.
ALEX: All of these can be correct.
BOBBY: The fact that you got it right.
ALEX: I know, what does that say about me actually. The, the other tidbit I want to pull out from this and it’s actually not from–
BOBBY: Please.
ALEX: –the Reddit thread itself. But it’s from that conversation between Ben and Joe. And, and Joe is, is running down–
BOBBY: It’s like they’re old friends.
ALEX: Ben and Joe. Joe is running down, obviously, basically every single edit that he made. He said, this is where it started and then I did this, this is. He like, even calls out the sub headings on the page. He’s like, then, then we get down to 2002 to 22. And like, okay guy. He brings up an edit he made to align referencing a sort of back and forth that he had with Adrian Veltri back to–
BOBBY: Oh, yes.
ALEX: –a few years ago, right?
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: And it’s, he’s, he’s joking around, he says Adrian, you know, one of the funniest guys in the game. And, but they have little banter at the plate when at bat. He said, you’re a great hitter, you’d make a terrible umpire. And Joe thought the, the story was funny enough, the joke that he told us funny enough that he Ben retold the story to Bob Nightengale.
BOBBY: Yes. Indeed.
ALEX: He’s friendly with which, such a power move [22:13]–
BOBBY: [22:13] umpires–
ALEX: –more, more people need to–
BOBBY: –he’s gotten to an argument With Adrián Beltré on Friday.
ALEX: Right, exactly. Well, the, the line that, that really took me aback was he says, I, I, I should have known better. Because Rob Manfred hates Bob Nightengale.
BOBBY: Bombshell!
ALEX: Bombshell.
BOBBY: Bombshell!
ALEX: Once again, do not understand why he revealed this in someone else’s podcast.
BOBBY: To me, and through the Tipping Pitches podcast. Exactly, you’re exactly right about that number one. But more importantly, to me, the fact that he edited the Wikipedia page is like the fact that the Washington Post broke a story that there was a break in at the Watergate Hotel. And him revealing that Rob Manfred hates Bob Nightengale is like the Washington Post finding out that Richard Nixon had ordered the break. That is how much, that is how important is this to me, personally. And Joe West just burn this in a Phoner that I’m not even fully sure if he understood was going to be on Effectively Wild.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: He just called Ben, and because Ben lives in New York [23:14]–
ALEX: [23:14]
BOBBY: –I think he just recorded it, I think he just put it on the pod, you know.
ALEX: It’s too good, I mean, we really couldn’t script to any of this. I’m really happy for Joe that he’s back in the spotlight. It’s a bit of a convoluted rollout for his new album. But being a fan of Taylor Swift’s Easter Eggs, I have to appreciate this one. and I’m looking forward to more.
BOBBY: Do you think this means Joe Torre will feature? He’ll get a verse? He’ll get a song?
ALEX: That would be really good, but I’m looking forward to the reconciliation between Joe and Rob on Track 11.
BOBBY: Honestly, they don’t make a mic Joe anymore.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: You know, like nowadays, if this happened to an umpire, you’d be like, I was hacked. 100%, I was hacked. Joe thought about doing that, and immediately he was like, what do I have to lose?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: What would a cowboy do?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Ride and guns blazing, and that’s what I’m gonna do here.
ALEX: Because I don’t want to ask him about the balloon. Because I know he’s got takes on that.
BOBBY: He–
ALEX: I don’t know that wanted, what I want to hear him.
BOBBY: Yeah. Well, I do think I would want to hear them, actually. I’m not sure if I want to publish them.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Now, I feel like I have a little bit of a moral responsibility. Not quite as big of a moral responsibility–
ALEX: Deep, deep platform, Joe West.
BOBBY: Can we make sure it’s that’s a deep platform, Joe West? This guy is everywhere. He’s in the music industry. He’s on Reddit. Some Major League Baseball fields. He’s got his own pod. This guy is everywhere, he’s ubiquitous. I, that’s a good idea, actually. We, we have the Joe West interview series, like how Aaron Rodgers just goes on the Pat McAfee show once a week. We just bring Joe on. All Right, it’s Joe West. Joe West o’clock. We call this segment Go West Old Man.
ALEX: You know what? He, I know he has time for it in the offseason, I’ll just say that. Especially now that is Wikipedia account is banned. What’s he up to now?
BOBBY: How hard is it to make a Wikipedia account? Do you have a Wikipedia account? Could you edit Joe West page to be like, on Sunday, February 12, 2023. The esteemed podcast known as Tipping Pitches, award winning in many small corners of the internet. Theorized that’s Joe West would think that the spy balloon happening concurrently with his scandal, Wikipedia scandal is actually dropping bio weapons, geo targeted towards Justin Trudeau.
ALEX: Right. More like that–
BOBBY: Actually his theory would be like, Justin Trudeau is already an alien and they were coming back to get him.
ALEX: Right. And he would look at that and be like, finally some truth on my Wikipedia page. Thank you, everyone.
BOBBY: Have you ever edited a Wikipedia page?
ALEX: When I was like 13.
BOBBY: Oh my God, I love 13-year old Alex internet stories.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: When he’s like, oh, I can edit a Wikipedia page, I probably should do this for three hours this tonight.
ALEX: Yup, exactly.
BOBBY: You know?
ALEX: Yeah, I’m like, I’m like, hey, I like follow up. Wait what if I start a follow up with fan account? And then all of a sudden, I have a follow boy fan account.
BOBBY: Breaking news!
ALEX: Yeah, I had like 8,000 followers. I was doing–
BOBBY: What?!
ALEX: –like, t shirt giveaways.
BOBBY: What?! How is there still stuff that I don’t know about you?
ALEX: I know. It’s, I like to save a little bit, you know, so we can have these organic moments.
BOBBY: Oh, tell me about it. Where was it? What website?
ALEX: It’s on Twitter.
BOBBY: Tumblr?
ALEX: Of course.
BOBBY: Twitter?
ALEX: It was, I did have a Tumblr actually. Although it was, it was more sparsely used.
BOBBY: So you’re a cross platform, what was it called?
ALEX: Official FOB?
BOBBY: I can’t name it that anymore.
ALEX: You really? You actually can’t.
BOBBY: Wow! Wow! Wow. Did Fall Out Boy ever contact you? Like why do you have the official Fall Out Boy handle? That’s a bygone era, by the way. When you used to put like real in front of your actual name to tell people they were real before–
ALEX: Right, official, yeah.
BOBBY: Before Tony La Russa sued Twitter for the blue check that now has vanquished the need to put real or official or the actual Fall Out Boy.
ALEX: Right, yeah, I think at one point I tried to get like just @FallOutBoy just like the, the name. And like someone else was using it. And then I think follow up way contact them and got it and I was, shit! That could have been me, man.
BOBBY: Yeah, you could have got paid out.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s a good business model, just sitting on handles on social media.
ALEX: I mean, like, that’s, that exists, right? That’s like domains, you know, you just buy it–
BOBBY: No, I know.
ALEX: –and say here’s buy it for $3,000.
BOBBY: But I love when it happens accidentally. It’s like a real stroke of serendipity for the world when that happens to somebody. Like Phoebe, my partner has the name of a, of a jewelry company. And she just has the name, because she was on Instagram so early. She was like, you know, this and pictures, that seems fun. Let me get my name on Instagram. So that’s her real name. And this jewelry company is like, contacts her every couple of months and they like, hey, are you interested in selling this yet? Are you interested in selling this yet? And she hasn’t been, price going up, you know? She’s gonna have to buy a house someday.
ALEX: Well, that’s like–
BOBBY: Let’s see how good this story company really has. Let’s see how big they make it.
ALEX: I don’t know if you know the story about the, the Twins website, right? Which is when MLB in early 2000s, right, was snapping up all the domains for all their teams. They went to twins.com–
BOBBY: Don’t laid on that.
ALEX: I know, I know, yeah. They went to twins.com and found that it was owned by a pair of twins.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And it took years for them to get it. They, again, they had to just, I don’t know, get official twins.com.
BOBBY: Twinsbaseball.org.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: That is somewhat of a bygone era. I feel like it’s all been, it’s become its own little marketplace. Now there’s like bot farms that are running for to, to grab handles that might be desirable. You can’t get anything anymore these days.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like I just have my first and last name on Venmo, no spaces, nothing. And I was like, babe, we got this. We’re in there. Every time I saw someone in my Venmo I’m just like nothing else. Just the name.
ALEX: Yeah. Well–
BOBBY: Ohhhh, shit!
ALEX: Yeah, is that the response you usually get?
BOBBY: Everybody’s like, damn, did you invent Venmo? How did you get your name with no dash? Because it defaults to put a dash between your–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –first and last name. Nope, I deleted that. I’m like, I know this is gonna be social media someday. Everything turns into social media.
ALEX: Yeah, right. This is gonna be coveted.
BOBBY: Follow me on Merrill Lynch. Get at me on Airbnb.
ALEX: You know, I, I can’t be too mad about it given that you and I at one point in college when we ran–
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: –student paper.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: Heard about a new publication that was coming to campus. And we proceeded to make 10 variations of their Twitter handle.
BOBBY: Of, of what we thought they might–
ALEX: Of what we thought my Twitter–
BOBBY: [30:12] handle, right?
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: We really thought that a Twitter handle was the only way to like have a successful media outreach at the time. So we’re like–
ALEX: Right, we we’re like–
BOBBY: [30:20]
ALEX: –[30:20] they have just nothing.
BOBBY: Right, we just cut the head off the snake.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: It’s done, they’re done. As if like, they were gonna make a Twitter account and suddenly have a million followers and put us out of business.
ALEX: Right. Or had, or had one, like they had one idea. They were like, it’s gone. That kind of it, this is the end of the road for us.
BOBBY: We don’t know for sure that we did not take the Twitter handle that they wanted.
ALEX: We don’t know that.
BOBBY: They did go out of business–
ALEX: They did ultimately get a hand- oh, did they?
BOBBY: Yeah, I think so.
ALEX: Hmm! Hmm! False–
BOBBY: [30:52] We got them! Where were you the day when you found out that Alex and Bobby put the torch out of business on NYU campus? That chapter, whatever the fuck they were called. What was it called?
ALEX: Was it Black Sheep?
BOBBY: I don’t know. We took, we took every handle that we could think of. Then we took like the handle plus the year that NYU was founded.
ALEX: Right, yeah.
BOBBY: We took with underscores, we did the opposite. We were making fake emails.
ALEX: We’re very petty and it was also like 2 am.
BOBBY: We were the problem that Elon Musk was trying to solve. You know, fake accounts, fake Twitter handles. Not tweeting, sitting on stuff.
ALEX: You want to know, I, I just, I just want to say, since you mentioned Elon Musk, I think it’s very funny that–
BOBBY: Reddit violated a rule. When we gonna do band [31:35].
ALEX: I know, I know, I know we got to do it soon. I think it’s really funny that more and more Reddit kind of shows itself to be the place that like Elon Musk keeps saying that, like Twitter is going to be, you know. He’s gonna like, they’re gonna be like citizen journalists, and like, communities of people and hearing from both sides across. Like the amount of Reddit users who have broken stories like this very one, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Like the calendula burner account, right? We’ve had, we’ve had literal MLB transactions broken on reddit.com. This is the fucking future–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –man.
BOBBY: Wetbutt42.
ALEX: Yeah, never forget.
BOBBY: Honestly, with your past, you know, you got Fall Out Boy fan pages that I don’t know about. You might be wetbutt42. You just can’t tell me.
ALEX: Real quick, guys, don’t Google wetbutt42. Bad idea. That one’s not going in the show notes, just saying.
BOBBY: This definitely is up there for our most unhinged podcast ever.
ALEX: And it’s all thanks to Joe, I have him to thank for that.
BOBBY: Do you have any other fanpages successful media ventures that you’ve created that you haven’t told me about? You want to just tell me now, get it out of the way. We can cut this out of the podcast if you want.
ALEX: I mean, I, I did one of those things in like, again, like mid 2000s, where I was like, I was really into blogs, you know. Like me, and everyone, I was like, I was like a big Blogspot guy.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: So I just kind of like, I would lose, I would, I would lose interest really quickly. So I’d be like, I’m going to start an A’s blog. and I’d write a post that’s like, here’s why Sam Fuld is the prettiest guy on the A’s. And then I’d be like, what I really need is a music blog. And then I start a music- so there I have like a dozen, I mean, Blogspot is a, a bygone product at this point. But at one point, I had a, I had a chunk of the market, you know,
BOBBY: Do any of those still have good SEO? Like should we just transfer all of our stuff over tonight?
ALEX: I should go back and look, honestly.
BOBBY: I had a, I had a blog, like a creative writing blog that came as an offshoot of I was in like, the creative writing, like extracurricular at my high school. And it was like, you know, they were like, encouraging you to do writing on your own. And I was like, why don’t we just put something blog? It’s, it’s fucking 201, you know, people are still blogging. This will be fun. And I like recruited all my friends to write little essays for it too, will personal essays.
ALEX: Nice.
BOBBY: Lasted like a couple months. I thought that was pretty good for a, for, for just a, you know, homemade blog.
ALEX: That is.
BOBBY: It was on, it was on WordPress. I was an early WordPress adopter.
ALEX: Oh, yeah.
BOBBY: I was in there. I knew WordPress was the future. I knew that there was gonna be media conglomeration, you know, WordPress–
ALEX: Yeah, you knew we end that.
BOBBY: –is gonna absorb Atavist and then we were gonna have to transfer all of our stuff over to it and it’s gonna be really annoying, it’s gonna take months and our website was gonna be down for a little while. And it’s like, okay, then we have to change all of the fonts and the formatting of all of our stuff. Like, I knew that was gonna happen, for sure.
ALEX: Yeah. You also knew that we weren’t going to really use the website at all.
BOBBY: Listen, we got transcripts there.
ALEX: We do.
BOBBY: Incase anybody wants to read the podcast. Read alongside, that is available to you.
ALEX: We were, we were burgeoning media moguls at a very young age, I’ll just say that.
BOBBY: We’re still burgeoning, some might say. Some burgeoning to be done.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Okay, we got a good listener question. We’re gonna answer that. and then we’re gonna get out of here. We got a bit of a brief, we got a slightly more digestible pod for everybody today. Although your mileage may vary on what makes something digestible length or content. Because this is only digestible in terms of length. Question comes from Owen, in the podcast mailbag, Slack channel. Owen says, it’s the big one today, referring to the Super Bowl. And I think every sport would love to have its own Super Bowl size event. But what do you think other sports look to MLB for in a quote, “I wish we could have that kind of way”? This is a good question.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Because I feel like more often, we find ourselves answering this question in reverse. What does MLB look at other sports and think that a wish that they could have? What does MLB look to the NBA and say how can we crib that in terms of making our players more likeable? Having our players be more deeply ingrained in culture outside of just the sport that they play? How do they look to the NFL and and how can we dominate television? Once, twice, three days a week, the way that the NFL has. How can we single-handedly overcome the concept of cord cutting, which the NFL has cited the most watched television show like 75 out of 100 of the most watched television shows a year. So to ask this question in reverse, what are characteristics of Major League Baseball that other sports wish that they could emulate? There are a few that come to mind for me, I think the first one is total time spent with something. You know, like that companion feeling that baseball has to people’s lives. I don’t know how you quantify that. There’s obviously like the, the Netflix style here’s total hours watched of a television show or of a movie. And that’s a more desirable metric to tell advertisers or Wall Street investors than just plain viewers. Because it’s about the level of the engagement, the deepness of the engagement. And Major League Baseball, I think, cumulatively, the average baseball fan watches more hours of baseball than any other sport throughout the year than the average fan of any other sport throughout the year. Because there are so many more games and the games take longer, right? And they might have fewer viewers in total. But the deepness of that engagement is what makes it so valuable as a sport. There’s just frankly, a lot of people ourselves included that can’t imagine a summer without baseball on. In the background or in the foreground, or as a destination, or as a way to mark time. And that’s a hard thing to create. It is hard to become part of people’s lives in a routine, like ritualistic way. The way that Major League Baseball has become. And I think they’ve done a really good job of continuing that of like catering to that. It’s like we’re always gonna be here. Maybe a few of you, fewer of you like us than, than use than you used to. And we’re gonna work on fixing that. But the people who do still like our sport, the people who do still want to watch it, still think of us as like their best friend.
ALEX: Yeah, and I mean, it’s a very different way of consumption, right? Because if you watched every baseball game with the intensity that one might watch a Sunday Night Football game, you wear yourself out [38:29]. right? Like there’s just, because the games happen once a week, right, for your team, it’s a lot easier to like, tune in and check it, exhausts your emotional energy over the course of like 36 hours, right? And like Major League Baseball, you kind of have to start that easy. You got to pace yourself a little bit more. right? Don’t let the highs get too- too high, the low–
BOBBY: This is great advice.
ALEX: –get too low. Yeah.
BOBBY: I’m just kind of let it go straight over my head. I think part of the problem is that I was a big football fan and basketball fan.
ALEX: Well–
BOBBY: I mean, I was a baseball fan before a basketball fan. But I was a big football fan for basically my whole life. And I just did not learn how to watch a baseball game with any other level of intensity besides the one level. I only have one-
ALEX: Interesting.
BOBBY: –speed.
ALEX: Okay, so I’m, so I’m pulling back the curtain on you a little bit as well.
BOBBY: What is your fee for this hour? Do you take Cigna? We work out a payment plan.
ALEX: Right, and actually have you heard of Cobra? Because you can do that while you get everything figured out. I do accept that.
BOBBY: I have heard of Cobra. I’ll be honest I don’t really understand it and I hope to never have to.
ALEX: Yeah, the extent of my knowledge is mostly that. That, that you don’t really, you don’t really want to have to rely on it.
BOBBY: The extend of the knowledge is you’re basically if you have to figure this out, you’re fucked.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Good world we have, normal world.
ALEX: One thing that came to mind for, for me it’s something that, that I see is potentially envious to other sports is MLB sort of All-Star break. Which is–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –I don’t know if that’s obvious, right? There’s a lot talked about how, you know, the competition level into the NBA basketball game is, is really low. There’s no defense played, etcetera. Name, I don’t know if I can name a person who watches the Pro Bowl. But regardless, I think that that–
BOBBY: I’m watching the Pro Bowl right now, off to the side. The 3 runs, grinding tape.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: The all, the all 22 of the Pro Bowl.
ALEX: Yeah, getting ready for this year.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: I think that the MLB All-Star Game is probably the, the closest replication of like, what the sport looks like throughout the rest of the year, would be my assertion, and you may say otherwise. But, but it–
BOBBY: Feels like game itself.
ALEX: Right, like the ga- rare right, no.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Like the game itself, I’m like, oh, this is like a, you know, I’m not watching a watered down baseball game. I’m watching a lot of really good players, actually. I would watch this more.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I also think the Home Run Derby is probably the single best All-Star break event.
BOBBY: Yeah, the dunk contest has really fallen off.
ALEX: It really has fallen off, in viewership as well. Like more people watch the Home Run Derby than the dunk contest, or the NBA All-Star Game. So I do think there’s something there, there’s a uniqueness to the All-Star break that I think you just kind of don’t get with some of the other sports. There’s a certain display of skill and technicality that still feels very celebratory.
BOBBY: I mean, I think a huge part of that, honestly, is that MLB is the only sport going when they have their All-Star break. The only of the major four sports. Hockey just finished, hockey and basketball just finish in June. And the MLB All-Star break is usually at the end of July. NFL doesn’t start until September. Basketball season doesn’t start back up until October-ish. Used to start in November and now it starts in October. Because they started earlier than ever so that they can space the games out more. So I think it’s tremendously benefited by being, by feeling like a holiday for sports. It’s like okay, you guys have nothing else to really watch right now except baseball over the summer. And sometimes that’s interrupted by like international events, you know. Like, you know, FIBA events and basketball but larger than that FIFA events and soccer. Or the Olympics or whatever it might be, that specific summer. But it has like a festival quality to it that the other All-Star events don’t quite have. Like base- basketball’s All-Star event, I think it’s fun. I think it’s cool to see these huge superstars all in the same place interacting with each other. Which is true of baseball too, but not quite as true, because there’s no one that’s, there’s nobody like LeBron. Like–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –there’s nobody like Steph Curry. And you get to see these guys talking to each other and cracking jokes and fucking around. And, but it happens in February, when it’s like cold.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Sometimes it happens in like Milwaukee. You know, like it’s not really doesn’t have that same. It doesn’t have that same oomph that baseball has by happening in the summer. And so much is happening outdoors. and it’s like it has this it’s consistent with the feel of what most people’s lives are like, while it’s going on. You know, like–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –oh, we, we have like a summer outdoor kind of picnicking energy, we’re gonna like sit around and watch the Home Run Derby, it’s all silly. The other thing I’ll say, and I wrote about this in the newsletter, which is going to come out should, should be out right about the same time as this podcast you’re listening to right now. If you’re a, a member of the Patreon at the highest tier, you are subscribed to our newsletter. If you’d like to check that out and other perks, it’s patreon.com/tippingpitches. But I wrote about this in the newsletter, the revival of the, of the newsletter, which has been on a bit of a hiatus as our lives have been somewhat busy. More on that in the newsletter itself. And I wrote about how, you know, there are weird corners of every sports fandom. No, like there’s the NBA darkweb, the nerdy stat people who pick their favorite players that they like to just obsess over and talk about how this player should play more. And actually, this player is the best player in the league. And there’s a huge speaking of blogs, a huge blogging history to the NBA, sort of the underbelly of and NBA bloggers and content creators that have now become more famous and have gone to, gone on to redefine the way that basketball writing happens on the internet. And I guess that’s true of football too. I know it’s harder to sift through the noise with football because it’s like such a red meat product, it’s such like A block product for so many websites and, and sports media companies. That it’s like, harder for me personally to find like the weird subsets and I don’t watch football very often. So I’m not enmeshed in that on Twitter quite as much. But baseball, I find to be the most enriching and varied fan experience of any of the sports. Like there is literally something for every ready to like in baseball. If you’re a, if you’re the, if you’re already a baseball fan, you can pick and choose the thing that you want to like about baseball in a way that, I don’t know that that’s true for other sports. They are more obvious of an entertainment product, and so it’s less of a choose your own adventure experience to it than baseball. Like go to a baseball game, you can just, you can appreciate the pitching, you can watch the batter the whole time. You can follow the game from a traditional perspective. You can follow the game from a Statcast, advanced analytics perspective. It’s you can just pick a player that you think is hot and you can stare at him the whole time. You can, you can be like me and sort of blend all those things together. But also just choose individual personalities and, and reasons to root for a guy. Like you can yell “Fogo Power” every time you see Eduardo Escobar like these things. I know that they do exist in other sports, and I know that I’m using a little bit of bias here based on my experience of consuming way more baseball than in any other sport. But I just, I think we’re weirder, as fans. And I think that that is enviable, especially in like today’s world of fandom, where it’s like 10 years from now, 15 years from now. Everything needs to be customizable for the person who is consuming something. And you need to be able to choose your own experience for something otherwise people are not going to want to do it. So that like sectioning off of fandom is actually okay, when it comes to sports. As long as there’s like a thing for everybody within the sport. And I, I do think that that is true of baseball.
ALEX: I think that every sport wants its own lefty baseball Twitter, I’ll say that.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: Like it’s a very robust, thriving community. and I say that. Like partly tongue in cheek, but honestly, it’s a very vibrant sort of place for discussion. And I, you know, we’re biased because we occupy that space. But that exists far beyond that little community, Right? like you’re saying, it’s very easy, I think to find common ground With others around the sport, which again, is is not exclusive to Baseball, baseball is just weird as fuck about it, Right? like, and there’s like, kind of like, unspoken storylines, right? Or if baseball is played after midnight, it’s free baseball, right? It’s like, all these sort of weird little bit, basically, right? It’s baseball’s gotta like good bits. it’s a good, it’s a good bit sport.
BOBBY: The final piece of this is that it’s the best in person experience by far.
ALEX: Yep.
BOBBY: I mean, soccers is comparable, not really in America. Certain soccer environments are really exciting here. International soccer is completely different story. It’s just, you can’t even compare that to anything within the United States. It’s like–
ALEX: Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: –much, much deeper. But on a, on a game to game basis, on a park to park basis, it’s the best sport to go watch in person. You know what, it’s like, we don’t have that many things like that anymore in the world.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: The things that you go do in person, I don’t work in person anymore. A lot of people don’t like go to the movie theater. A lot of people don’t go out to eat all that often anymore, because of like meal delivery and stuff like that. And kind of feel like that is gonna make a comeback at some point. Like, we’re all gonna have a collective realization, and maybe that’s naive, maybe it’s just gonna be like, the digit- digitization of the human experience is just going to continue to advance until we’re basically living in the final scenes of Wally or are all in like a little pod roaming around, like being pumped with food and feeding tubes.
ALEX: The pod wasn’t nihilistic, and that’s, I’m glad you brought it here at the very end.
BOBBY: But like, it’s not that the experience of other sports in person sucks–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –compared to baseball. And I love basketball, and if you’re on the floor for a basketball game–
ALEX: Oh my God.
BOBBY: –it is sensational. But if you’re like in the, the mezzanine level or a God forbid, the upper deck, you can’t see anything going on it is far, far inferior to the television product of the sport. And that is definitely true of football as well. You can’t see, you can’t, you don’t know where the ball is.
ALEX: No, you don’t know what the ball is.
BOBBY: Hockey’s a really good in person experience. Not one that I experienced very often because it’s so expensive to go to Madison Square Garden for them to scan my face and send it to the CIA. But baseball is just, I mean, I don’t have to tell listeners of this podcast. It’s an immaculate in person experience, even if you’re being ripped off.
ALEX: That was one of the other things that I wrote down is the variation from ballpark to ballpark is a really kind of wonderful thing. Because every game that you see, like you said, is slightly different. You may just be watching your team, but it’s gonna be a completely different vibe around you. And again, I, I think we’re straying from, you know, what other sports would be envious of. I don’t Don’t think that basketball is interested in having different sized courts and, and arenas in which they play their games. But it is an experience it’s really unique to, to baseball, that I mean, they can’t be replicated by other sports, which I think is something that makes it so special.
BOBBY: Yeah, but like in the sense that baseball is more of like a mosaic experience, where like, every single thing looks slightly different and it’s so beautiful when you look at it all together. But you can spend individual time looking at one part of this piece of art. Like that’s how I feel about baseball. Basketball is like, you know, a Renoir like, it’s like the whole thing as part of it. Like it’s just what the whole league, like this league, you know, on, ironically, is like amazing to experience as a whole and all the stars and whatnot. But baseball is just like a weird island of misfit toys, and there’s a place for that in the culture.
ALEX: Yeah. Obviously.
BOBBY: That’s why we’ve been doing this podcast for six years. Alex, I have some breaking news for you, breaking news. Relevant to something we talked about on the podcast last week.
Unknown Speaker: The newest member of the Fox baseball team joins us right now. Welcome in, Derek Jeter. Longtime Yankee superstar. Good to see you again.
Unknown Speaker: El Capitan.
Unknown Speaker: You’re an Eagles fan, aren’t you?
Unknown Speaker: El Capitan.
BOBBY: Dabbing with A. Rod.
ALEX: Wow!
Unknown Speaker: Who told you that?
ALEX: My world is [51:21]
BOBBY: Derek Jeter! He answered our qu- do you think he listens to the pod? Because we asked him, he answered, within six days.
ALEX: That’s, right.
BOBBY: He said, we said, what’s coming next? Why all this media exposure? Why all these little things that he’s doing? Is he gonna go be an analyst? Doesn’t seem like his vibe. Turns out we were wrong. We’re the Alex Rodriguez tea, tea leaf tea leaf readers, not to Derek Jeter tea leaf readers.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Clearly.
ALEX: Exactly, exactly.
BOBBY: This is exciting to you? Are you excited to see Derek Jeter do like Fox baseball coverage?
ALEX: You know, I mean, what I’ll say is like, he at least like seems like a human, like has a sense of humor.
BOBBY: I agree.
ALEX: And like I kind of suaveness to it, where he feels like he sort of belongs there. Whereas Alex Rodriguez is kind of like, it’s like he’s in a play playing the role of someone who used to be a superstar and is now like a sports analyst, you know.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Like all the movements are little, are a little stiff. All the kinds of one liners have clearly been like workshopped to death. Derek Jeter can riff about rooting for the Eagles in Kansas City territory, right? Like he’s like, I feel like he might be a good hang.
BOBBY: I think he’s definitely a good hang. God, I’m obsessed with the idea of them doing games together.
ALEX: I know. Do you think, so like he’s probably just going to join that like panel, right? Like the, the dude does like the pre and post games, right? That would be my assumption.
BOBBY: That would be called games too. I don’t know, the way that it’s being phrased, but from the sports media reporters on my timeline, is that he’s joining the Fox broadcast team. I mean, that sounds like he’s gonna do both.
ALEX: Has he ever broadcast before?
BOBBY: I don’t think so. How hard can it be?!
ALEX: Right, you got to start simple. I mean, we do it every week, right? Joe West does it every week.
BOBBY: Remember that time that someone on the Tipping Pitches live stream asks us to try to do play by play like our version of play by play for a half inning, that didn’t go so well. Didn’t go so well.
ALEX: No, it didn’t.
BOBBY: Okay, we got breaking news, I think that means that we can end the podcast. That was my MO before we started, I was like, we’re gonna go until we get breaking news. That’s a really good bit.
ALEX: Well I, well I did, I did, I saw someone in the Slack write A. Rod. at the Super Bowl. And I figured that would be this piece of breaking news and you weren’t up to me, you went far beyond my wildest dream. So thank you for that, for giving me peace, for give me closure on this week.
BOBBY: I want the Minnesota Timberwolves to win the NBA Finals more than I want a lot of things in life. Like an embarrassing amount of things. So that we can see A. Rod. on the stage. Getting that trophy. Holding it up. I mean like I really loved when you hit the three-pointer, that was incredible.
ALEX: Where is–
BOBBY: It reminds me of, of a time when Derek Jeter taught me how to hit a three run home run. He’s like suddenly doing like a TED talk. Adam Silver was like, okay, let’s move on.
ALEX: Were in kind of the, the line of people down which is past the trophy. Where do you think he stands? Like he’s not the first guy, right? Because he’s not–
BOBBY: He’s second.
ALEX: –primary owner. You think he’s–
BOBBY: It’s like second. Yeah.
ALEX: –you think he’s gonna stand next right next to Marc Lore and say, hey buddy–
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: –it was you and me the who did this.
BOBBY: Yes, 100%. I think he will touch the Larry O’Brien trophy before Anthony Edwards would.
ALEX: This is the only bet I’m making ever in my lifetime
BOBBY: Do you think FanDuel will take that? They won’t take–
ALEX: [55:10]
BOBBY: –it from my [55:11] were, were sharps you know, when it comes to A. Rod. we’re sharps. Be like don’t take any action from those guys, those guys are in the crowd of him. They’re basically in a text message with him. We’ve all been put on it don’t take a bet from these guys. Okay, Alex, listen, I promised, not really promised, I told the, the listeners of the Tipping Pitches podcast who are also big, big, big Paramore fans, that I will be talking about the new Paramore album on this podcast. But I don’t know how to do that because you didn’t listen to it.
ALEX: Yeah, I haven’t listened yet, regrettably,
BOBBY: I’m taking away your cool music kid card.
ALEX: Ohhh.
BOBBY: You might have had a fob way blog but I lived the Paramore lifestyle.
ALEX: I’m working on it, this week.
BOBBY: I got the flu at a Paramore and No Doubt concert. I was out there singing Still with a 103 degree fever.
ALEX: Hey, you got that pop punk strain, I see you.
BOBBY: Unfortunately did, yeah. I also got dumped that night. Sick night. Sick night.
ALEX: Well, rest assured this time next week, I will be in the right headspace. I know that we, we might be having a guest on next week. Do you think, do you think one Evan Drellich has listened to the new Paramore album?
BOBBY: Yeah, I think yes. All Right, Evan seems like a cool guy.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: He seems like he has interests.
ALEX: That’s, yeah, that’s kind of my bar for cool guy too.
BOBBY: All Right, Evan, first question. I, I, I apologize for asking the hard one right off the bat, sir. Do you have interests? Do those interests include Paramore?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: The American rock band Paramore.
ALEX: Thoughts on Hayley Williams and Chad Gilbert. Let’s [56:55]–
BOBBY: Let me just, let me just quickly say who was Chad Gilbert? Is that the new found glory guy?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: They’ve been separated for like four years, what are you talking about? Haley, Haley’s together with the guy from Paramore now.
ALEX: Oh, I know, but for years this, this–
BOBBY: [57:08]
ALEX: –was weighed on your [57:10].
BOBBY: [57:10]
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: First things first.
ALEX: And you actually had a, had a come to God moment earlier this year where you finally listened to New Found Glory and said, fuck! Shit!
BOBBY: Every once in a while, you just have to make a decision. And that decision might go counter to your personality in the eyes of many. But in your head, it makes sense. It’s like how you made the decision to say to me, on the first day that we moved in together, when I put my Paramore poster–
ALEX: You literally already have this on the podcast before.
BOBBY: You had a decision, you made the decision to say, nice Paramore poster, bro. Just like thatm and I made the decision to bring it up at every opportunity that I possibly could after that. We all make decisions in life.
ALEX: This is, this is the reason why I just like don’t listen to Paramore anymore.
BOBBY: I’m just like–
ALEX: I can’t wait, I can’t wait into this.
BOBBY: I, will have oversights, and here is this Paramore, I guess. It’s been three days and you haven’t listened to the album yet. This is in Alex think Hay- Alex thinks Hayley Williams is not a good singer or songwriter.
ALEX: Jesus Christ. I didn’t, I didn’t go through three album cycles with them to be slandered like this.
BOBBY: It’s so good, dawg. It’s just like, you know how every once in a while you and I just look at each other, and we’re like, we like listening to a song, quite often. It’s like oh so, oh so, our pup, would just look at each other and we’re like, this is a great song.
ALEX: It’s a good song. Yeah.
BOBBY: Good song, great song. Good song to listen to. Good instruments, good beat, good rhythm, good singing.
ALEX: Yep.
BOBBY: Well-played, well-mix, well-mastered.
ALEX: Very well, well put together. Yeah.
BOBBY: Fun to sing along to, fun to listen to.
ALEX: Kind of checks all the boxes.
BOBBY: That’s how I feel about the new Paramore record. It checks all the boxes. There’s fun songs, there’s sad songs, there’s songs that you got to kind of mop yourself up off the floor after listening to. With their songs you can kind of shake the old hips, not too hard, though, because we’re getting old of us Paramore fans, not too hard. It’s a good driving album. I’ve listened to it in the car three times already.
ALEX: Wow.
BOBBY: It’s so good. I’d have to say really quickly.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: We’ve been proven tremendously right over the years. With our various fandoms.
ALEX: What people who- oh, I see.
BOBBY: You know, like the things that have endured.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Paramore, it’s 2023, dawg. That’s like 20 years after their first album. Which I wasn’t in on the ground floor with because I was like, six or whatever. But in middle school I pretty quickly it was like, these are the ones, these are the realest. The real is here. [59:43]–
ALEX: [59:43] foretold about.
BOBBY: Right. And you know what, 20 years later, they’re still making good interesting music that’s not just boring rehashes or everything else.
ALEX: Yep. Isn’t that such a great feeling, when like–
BOBBY: It’s the best feeling ever.
ALEX: –something you would, something you would enjoy as a kid. And then you look back and I’m like, damn, I was so right about that.
BOBBY: It’d be like people who had season tickets to like the Federal League. And then they like mesh the NL and AL together and they were like, fuck it! Yes! This sport I’ve been trying to tell you guys, my friend Abner and I. We were like, this is gonna be the next big thing! Not that I was first to Paramore by any means, someone showed them to me in my middle school English class, my sixth grade middle school English class.
ALEX: That’s where you found out about all the best music.
BOBBY: That’s the only place to find out about good music. Nowadays, an algorithm–
ALEX: That’s why, that’s why I regularly go to sixth grade classrooms and ask–
BOBBY: And ask them what they listen to?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You know like Jack Harlow. Like fuck! We’re cooked.
ALEX: Actually usually called it, they call the principal–
BOBBY: They’re all like, yeah I love that ABCDEFU song. That’s crazy.
ALEX: Stop. All Right, we’re done.
BOBBY: Listen to the album, 36 minutes.
ALEX: Cool.
BOBBY: Oh my God. Once again, they said fuck the streaming era. Fuck the algorithm. We’re gonna put out a good record with only songs that we think are good.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Who’s doing that? Nobody.
ALEX: [1:01:03] is back, baby.
BOBBY: Not even Taylor Swift is doing that.
ALEX: That, that’s–
BOBBY: How I’m gonna release an album with three songs that aren’t that good, and then I’m gonna release six more songs that are also not as good as those three songs that were not that good.
ALEX: Wow!
BOBBY: To give me streaming numbers.
ALEX: Wow!
BOBBY: That’s not true. The fewer the, the fewer the bonus tracks are good. But interesting, theoretically interesting to me to be like, I made an album and here is also half of an album at the same time.
ALEX: Yeah, I mean, she just can’t stop the output, right? I mean–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –when you’re, when the, when the songs are coming, when the writing is flowing, what you’re gonna do?
BOBBY: Like Rihanna said, please don’t stop the music.
ALEX: Exactly. Wow! Look at that, full circle.
BOBBY: My final thing about music this week on this podcast, which is now somehow 75 minutes, even though we said it was going to be short, and we barely talked about baseball at all. Our, our biggest baseball conversation was about an umpire who retired a year ago.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: My last thing about music, hey released an an previously unheard unreleased Linkin Park song for the 20th anniversary of their, of their seminal text, Meteora. And once again, I have to say, everything’s coming up bob, 2023. Could this be the year? Could this be the year?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Could for music–
ALEX: Careful, careful.
BOBBY: For me personally, for the Mets? Am I getting hope?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Are the external factors swirling together to make a stew of excitement in my life? The answer is yes.
ALEX: Yes, it is. And, and you know what, we will be here with you every step of the way, no matter how it goes.
BOBBY: Thank you. Fixed Goal is one of the best songs that I’ve heard of the last 10 years. Go listen to the Paramore album. Okay. Thank you, everybody, for listening to another very normal episode of The Tipping Pitches podcast. We appreciate your time. Next week, we are talking to Evan Drellich, about his book, Winning Fixes Everything. I actually don’t know, let me, let’s do some live producing on the podcast right now, Alex. Do you want to run that episode next week? Or do you want to hold it for a week after we talked to him to give people some time to listen?
ALEX: Let’s hold it. Let’s wait a week. Give people some time. I, I, I’m not going to say that it’s required reading ahead of the discussion. But a lot of it will be informed about this book. And, and hopefully if you haven’t read it by the time you’ve listened to the episode, it encourages you to go out and buy it because there are a lot of really interesting tidbits in there that that I know many listeners of this podcast will.
BOBBY: Lot of buzz about this book.
ALEX: Lot of buzz.
BOBBY: A lot of people saying in the streets on Twitter feeds, damn, this book is good.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Damn, this book is really revealing about how baseball teams are [1:03:42]. Which is obviously relevant to our interests and listeners interests. I know people are sick of the Astros sign stealing scandal but that’s really just like the vehicle for talking about this. It’s not really what the entire book is about.
ALEX: Although if you want to hear Alex Cora say they stole the 2017 World Series, you will get that too!
BOBBY: Man should have turn that phone call down Alex Cora. Okay, so Evan and a couple of weeks. A special surprise, cowboy Joe West album review next week? With a special guest to be named later. Get excited, baseball season’s coming back, review content in March. No more of these deranged episodes that don’t talk about baseball at all. We appreciate you listening to the deranged episodes anyway and we will be back.
[1:04:32]
[Music]
[1:04:56]
[Outro]
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: Hello everybody, I’m Alex Rodriguez, Tipping Pitches, Tipping Pitches. This is the one that I love the most, Tipping Pitches. So we’ll see you next week. See ya!
Transcriptionist: Vernon Bryann Casil
Editor: Krizia Marrie Casil
Tipping Pitches 
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