Bobby and Alex discuss Chris Christie’s wasted 80-grade corruption potential, plus MLB’s new economic reform committee designed to increase revenue parity and navigate the Bally Sports bankruptcy. Then, they bring on Lindsay Zoladz, pop music critic for the New York Times, to review Joe West’s seminal debut album “Blue Cowboy,” as well as his spoken word sophomore effort “Diamond Dreams,” before answering a listener question about banishing a baseball stat.
Follow Lindsay on Twitter @lindsayzoladz.
Links:
MLB creates an “economic reform committee”
The impact of the Blue Ribbon Panel on baseball’s economics
John Middleton on prioritizing winning over revenue
Join the Tipping Pitches Patreon
Tipping Pitches merchandise
Songs featured in this episode:
Cowboy Joe West — “Blue Cowboy” • Paramore — “Running Out of Time” • 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, it is our first podcast since pitchers and catchers. Officially reported for every Major League Baseball team. So we’ve been getting a trickle, steady trickle. That is not just a stream, steady flow, I don’t know.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: The trickle sort of implies that it’s light, it’s not light. We’ve been getting so many photos–
ALEX: A de louche–
BOBBY: –Major League–
ALEX: –could say.
BOBBY: –de louche. Sure, thank you. This is why you’re a great editor. A de louche of photos of players on baseball fields in the great states of Florida and Arizona. Not that great in some respects. Good and others, not the point. My question for you is, you know, I saw a picture from, from Mets Spring Training this morning. It was Steve Cohen who was standing with someone who’s I know very near and dear to your heart, Alex. And that is former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
ALEX: Oh, shit! I thought you were gonna go, go JJF but, but this is–
BOBBY: No. Well, Oakland doesn’t, doesn’t have Spring Training in Florida. Can you imagine if John Fisher was just in Florida, like a different team Spring Training?
ALEX: Yes, I absolutely can imagine that.
BOBBY: Anything to be get away from the A’s? No, he was with Chris Christie, bro. And my question for you, so we know Chris Christie is part of the Mets front office. He’s like a special advisor or whatever. He’s part of Steve Cohen’s fucking Leadership Council or whatever the hell he calls it. My question for you is this, No Mets shaping up to be pretty good this year, highest projected win total. Obviously something is going to go drastically wrong, as it always does. But if it doesn’t go drastically wrong if this is the year the Mets bring it home. Do you think that Chris Christie will get a World Series ring?
ALEX: Probably, I feel like even if he’s not on the shortlist, like he could throw his weight around and get one made for him, right? Like he’s, he’s clearly got the ear of the guy in charge. And the guy in charge is clearly willing to spend to, to make his people happy.
BOBBY: I mean, we know that he’s not above bribing someone to get what he wants–
ALEX: That–
BOBBY: –to the desired outcome. So if you didn’t get a ring, maybe he could just bribe the person who hands out the ring to lose one, forum. I lost one sorry, we have to have another one made. Sorry Mark Canha, you’re gonna have to wait to get your World Series ring, brother.
ALEX: I feel like Mark Canha is too good for that. You know, I feel like there’s another Patsy you could get involved.
BOBBY: Right. Well, I don’t think you’d be bribing Mark Canha, I think he would be bribing like Joe Smith for the person who hands out the World Series rings.
ALEX: Oh, I thought you were saying he would bribe Canha to lose the ring and get another one made. And then Chris Christie just takes–
BOBBY: No, no, no I think he’s gonna go–
ALEX: [3:04] the World Series rings
BOBBY: Straight to the source, you know? If I asked you to describe the Chris Christie bridge scandal, how would you do that? Say that like an alien landed on Earth and wanted to understand why Chris Christie is no longer the governor of New Jersey?
ALEX: I think I’d have to explain to them first why he was originally the governor of New Jersey before we got there.
BOBBY: Like do you remember any detail–
ALEX: Wait, wait, wait, hang on!
BOBBY: –any details from the Chris Christie bridge scandal?
ALEX: I mean, it was, I, I know that I’m probably dumbing it down a lot. But he, but he used, I don’t know, what he use in the Department of Transportation. Sure, whatever. He closed the bridge–
BOBBY: Public works?
ALEX: –he made the orders, right? Public Works, they, sure.
BOBBY: Sure.
ALEX: He. I don’t really remember why, you know.
BOBBY: Right [3:57]–
ALEX: [3:57] like I know, I know there some personal gain there. Like what–
BOBBY: Exactly, exactly. This is exactly my point. It was the, it was front page news all across the United States for weeks. And now we don’t even remember.
ALEX: I know he, he doesn’t do anything without a reason, right? Like he always is like how can I benefit from this? [4:19]–
BOBBY: So that he’s just down so that beach with Justice family.
ALEX: Exactly. But I, I have a feeling he didn’t like, shut the British down so he could just drive back and across the bridges. You know he’s like–
BOBBY: Honestly if he had–
ALEX: –look how much faith I have, I can change his lanes.
BOBBY: If he had I would respect it. There is–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –nothing more unsettling to me personally than being stuck in stand still traffic on a bridge. And especially a large bridge, you can feel the bridge kind of swaying with the wind. If I was the governor, I would shut the bridge down so that I didn’t have to be in that situation.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But I don’t, I don’t think that was it.
ALEX: I don’t think so. It was probably some dumb shit like, I don’t- there’s politics too, right? [4:57]
BOBBY: Definitely something [4:57]. Like he wanted, he wanted New Jersey to get more of the tolls or something.
ALEX: Yeah. Or just, I feel like he maybe was trying to get back at another politician, you know. Like in a sort of like retribution.
BOBBY: The Fort Lee lane closure, also known as the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal. Fort Bridge–
ALEX: I have, I have not known it as either of those first two, I just got say.
BOBBY: Was a, was a political scandal involving a staff member and political appointees of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie colluding to create traffic jams in Fort Lee, New Jersey by closing lanes at the main toll plaza for the upper level of the George Washington Bridge. I don’t see why he want, he wanted to create more traffic.
ALEX: He said car culture hasn’t gone far enough.
BOBBY: It was later suggested that the lanes had been closed intentionally to cause the massive traffic problem for political reasons. And especially theorized that they were a retributi- retributive? Retributive attack against Fort Lee’s Mayor–
ALEX: Here we go.
BOBBY: Mark Sokolich, a Democrat who had not supported Chris Christie as a candidate in the 2013. New Jersey gubernatorial election. So he literally just he was like, now you have traffic now. You didn’t support me, you have traffic.
ALEX: Yeah. I, to, to get back at the Democratic mayor of a town borough that has 40,000 people in it. Like you’re not even playing with big fish right now. You are the aides of the little, little dot on the map in New Jersey and he said you know what? I’ve got the power.
BOBBY: Thank you to the people who brought this, this just- this injustice to light. Do you think Chris Christie is, you know he like sort of charged with helping Steve Cohen bribe local business owners and officials in New York to help get things built, like a casino for example. Or a soccer stadium, perhaps for the Saudi government, you know. Any, any of those things perhaps, maybe?
ALEX: I do feel like, like if you’re trying to get further into corruption, right, If that’s kind of your bread and butter–
BOBBY: Well, I don’t think Steve needs any help with that, honestly. But–
ALEX: Well, and but I also think that like baseball isn’t necessarily the playing field. Like it’s almost–
BOBBY: Oh I see.
ALEX: –like the corruption and collusion is kind of baked in. Like it’s a little too easy, that’s kind of low hanging fruit. Chris Christie, if you really want to just show us your gumption.
BOBBY: So you think Chris Christie went the easy route?
ALEX: Yeah. I don’t know. I’m ju- I’m a little disappointed, that’s all. Like he clearly showed so much promise as governor.
BOBBY: By creating more traffic?
ALEX: And I think he could have done more.
BOBBY: God, I got, I feel like the story would just completely not register at all, if it happened in 2023. Nobody would care. Oh, you should have lain down, alright, on to the next. What–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –Joe Biden’s shooting UFOs out of the sky.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You got bigger fish to fry here. Speaking of by the way, following up on the unidentified flying objects of it all.
ALEX: Of course.
BOBBY: Did you see that the United States has given up on recovering one of the objects that they shot down. Seems suspicious to me. I don’t know about you.
ALEX: Really? Because I think that’s really relatable. You like, get really invested in a project at the outset. Oh, we’re gonna shoot this down. We’re gonna find it. Maybe it’s aliens. Maybe it’s China. Who cares? And then they like couldn’t find it on first pass. And they were like, honestly, it’s fine. Whatever!
BOBBY: I watched the 2016 film Arrival from the sensational filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. For the first time a couple of nights ago, totally knocked my doors off.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Totally just, unbeli- I don’t know how I had never seen it. I regret having never seen it for the last seven years. If you’re listening to this, and you’re a film fan, and you haven’t seen Arrival, I suggest that you go watch it. But I could not help but think as I was watching Arrival, damn Dark Brandon would have tried to shoot these bad boys out of the sky on site. It’s like this movie that’s like deeply about being alive and the human experience and how we communicate with each, with each other and how time doesn’t really mean anything. And all I was thinking the whole time was like the press conference that Joe Biden would give, which is how you know that my brain is completely broken. If you hadn’t known from just listening to this podcast–
ALEX: Right, right.
BOBBY: –last six years.
ALEX: Is that, is that Jeremy Renner? Is that he’s in that?
BOBBY: Yeah. Jeremy Renner and Amy Adams. Some fucking crazy looking aliens. Get in there, bro. You seen it?
ALEX: Yeah, I mean, I have, long time ago. Most of it’s left my brain right now except for the fact that Jeremy Renner was in it, I guess.
BOBBY: Anyway, Alex, that is enough about the 2016 film Arrival and actor Jeremy Renner. And Chris- and former New Jersey governor and Trump associate, Chris Christie. We have some real stuff to get to and that is of course, a very serious album review of Joe- Joe West’s 1987 Country record True Blue country, Blue Cowboy. Featuring first time guests with the podcast and friend of the show. Lindsay Zoladz, pop music critic at the New York Times. Of course, we also have some, some, some owner business to discuss as well. But before we do all of that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I am Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[10:14]
[Music Theme]
BOBBY: New patrons this week, Alex. It turns out when we said last week that no one had signed up for the Patreon and we had a little back and forth about whether we were not sure if it was something that we said, something that we did. That worked, because we got five new patrons this week. Thank you to Claire, William, Buda boo, Lorenzo, and Tyler. We much appreciate your support as we head into a new baseball season. Speaking of the Patreon, holiday cards are finally done.
ALEX: That’s right.
BOBBY: It’s going out this week.
ALEX: Did you finish yours?
BOBBY: Yes, no, not at time of recording. But at time of people listening to this, hopefully I will have finished them. Either way they will be sent during the week of this current week. I’m off from work for an entire week. So if I don’t send them now, I’m just gonna throw them in the trash.
ALEX: Jesus.
BOBBY: Stakes are high.
ALEX: Yes, the, the holiday being Spring Training. That’s what I started writing on my card, there are a few that say–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –Happy Holidays. And then most of them say Happy Spring Training.
BOBBY: Oh, a lot of mine say whatever holiday that might be.
ALEX: Yup, exactly.
BOBBY: Just kind of like unclear, you know, like, is it, is it gonna be pitchers and catchers? Is it gonna be the first Spring Training game? Opening Day? May Day? What are some later holidays that it could, July 4, you know? Remember when we tried to make that into, you know, International Baseball Day on an episode?
ALEX: We certainly tried.
BOBBY: Again, apologies that they’re so late. But at the same time, I think next year, we’re just going to make them you know, Spring Training, welcome to the new baseball season type holiday cards.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: TBD.
ALEX: Well, well, your, your partner Phoebe definitely pointed out that internally, we should still set a goal for sending them out around the end of the year.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: So that we can actually send them out in Spring Training.
BOBBY: Right, exactly. And, and we will do that. We commit to setting goals that we will miss by eight weeks. That’s the Tipping Pitches promise. Shall we talk a little bit about, friend of the podcast, near future guest of the podcast, Evan Drellich’s article in The Athletic.
ALEX: Of course.
BOBBY: About MLB’s decision to form and economic reform committee. Dawg, when when in doubt, form a committee, you know.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s what they always say. When you don’t know what to do. Just get a couple guys together in the room and, and say that you’re problem solving. Article in The Athletic that dropped I believe Friday or Saturday. A couple days before we, we record this for time of recording. Evan Drellich is reporting that I’m discussing with Rob Manfred, this new economic reform committee that is supposedly being formed because of two different things. The first thing is economic disparity in the game between large market and small market teams. We know that this has been a thread that has been running throughout baseball history for the entire time that it has existed. And the second thing is a more recent problem, which we have discussed on the show a few times. It’s the Valley Sports bankruptcy, which officially went through last week. The parent company Diamond Sports Group, did file for bankruptcy, which means that 19 channels which carry 14 of the regional cable deals for Major League Baseball, are going bankrupt. TBD about what that means for this upcoming season. I think a lot of it is still unanswered. My guess would be that while they are going through their bankruptcy process, they will still go on business as usual, supposedly, they will broadcast those games. And should it actually go through and they dissolve the company or someone acquires the company in the, because of the bankruptcy. That new company will fulfill these contractual obligations. Rob has now brought up on multiple occasions that Major League Baseball might be interested in becoming that new company, they might reabsorb the rights to their own games and create a digital streaming product that they can go direct to consumers with. That’s intriguing for a few reasons. I don’t really think I believe that they’re going to do that, right away. There’s like too many people to wrestle for it. And also something that Evan pointed out, pointed out in his article was that each individual MLB team owns the digital rights to their games. And so they would all have to agree to each other. This is not something that the MLB commissioner’s office, the central office could mandate these teams to be a part of. And so that’s very political. I don’t think that the, the the Yankees, for example, are going to be like broadcast our games in the same place that you broadcast the Pirates for the same amount of money.
ALEX: Right, because, because part of the rationale as he states behind this is we need more centrally shared revenue, right?
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: Teams and, and we can get into whether or not baseball teams are making money in a minute, right? I know it’s up for debate currently, right? But as Manfred says, some teams make a lot of money and other teams–
BOBBY: It would be a really, it would be a really boring debate, actually. It’d be like everybody’s saying, actually, they do make a lot of money and then Rod Manfred saying, actually, they don’t. And then–
ALEX: No they don’t.
BOBBY: –the debate would end. You be like, no, you just have to decide who you believe.
ALEX: But like, the, the point is to supposedly decrease the economic disparity between teams, right? So if you’re centrally broadcasting baseball games, right, and creating a national package, then again, there’s a little bit more of that revenue sharing. But as you point out, teams like the Yankees, and the Dodgers, and the Red Sox, who are in these big markets. Who are making a pretty penny off their broadcast rights, are not going to be interested in giving that up, unless there’s like, a lot in it for them. Like say, a salary cap, just like, like just spitballing, right? Unless it was something else that came along with it, that showed that they would then not have to spend as much money as they do right now.
BOBBY: Even then, I mean, we can get into this a little bit when we talk about Rob’s quotes about the salary cap. Even then, I’m not totally sure that the top top teams would be all that enticed by a salary cap. If it meant that their regional revenue stream took a hit in the near to medium future. Because, I mean, they will never admit this, but they’re still making way more money than what they’re spending. So a salary cap is not that like $30 million, that the salary cap brings their total payroll down, is not going to offset the fact that the Dodgers, for example, makes $300 million a year from their local cable deal. And in a national digital package, that number would definitely come down in the short term if they had to give away those rights. Now, I don’t, I don’t really think that what Rob is implying is that every team is going to cancel their or try to wiggle their way out of a regional cable subscription. Just that the 14 teams who no longer would have original cable deal, given Valley sports bankruptcy would then centralize their broadcast rights digitally, to be digitally distributed and not even be on cable at all anymore. Which would be weird, which would be really weird. Can you imagine if just like the Marlins weren’t on cable at all?
ALEX: I mean, as far as I’m concerned, right now they are. I haven’t seen them.
BOBBY: Well, okay, so, so then can you imagine if the A’s were on cable? Like, can you imagine if your mom went to go try to watch an A’s game?
ALEX: It’d be really bizarre.
BOBBY: And she went to the channel that the A’s are usually on and they were showing like, you know, Warriors finals games from 2017, that would be really weird. That’d be super weird for people who still use cable. Anyway–
ALEX: Right, so alienating to like part of your customer base. And, and arguably, the part of your customer base that might have for the longest time made up the core of your demographic, right? Which is maybe older folks who watch baseball and haven’t necessarily committed to cutting the cord yet are just like, I just watched my local sports team, and that’s all I need, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: So there is like, there’s a lot of competing interests in this, which is why I think you’re right that like, as much as he talks a big game about wanting this to happen, which I think is in large part of service to fans who have said they want this to happen. I think we’re still years away from anything actually coalescing around it.
BOBBY: And I think that like in, in Rob’s ideal world, what would happen would be MLB would like re take, they would take back the digital rights. And then the television rights would still be up for sale just at a lower price to somewhere else. So whatever company comes in and replaces Valley Sports. Or even if they leave the branding the same even if it’s Valley Sports, but it’s owned by CNN or whatever. Like, I don’t know, CNN doesn’t own themselves. They’re like part of some conglomerate. If it’s owned by Discovery, for example, and they want to get into the sports business game. So MLB would sell TV rights back to that company, and say, but we’re on we’re keeping our digital rights. I don’t know why Discovery would want that. They’re like a digital company now.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: It’s a whole mess, clearly. Let’s rewind a little bit. Let’s talk about the economic reform committee. I’m gonna get that right. I’m gonna get that, I’m gonna, I’m gonna remember that that’s what it’s called. Economic reform committee.
ALEX: I mean, how much do you think they had to workshop that because they were like, we can’t call it the collusion committee. Like right off the bat. We can’t call it that. So like, let’s come up with some buzzwords, to you know, masquerade a little bit what we’re actually trying to achieve here.
BOBBY: Yeah, better or worst, salary suppression committee or a solution committee?
ALEX: Right. What is, Rob Manfred refers to what is effectively a salary cap as, quote “absolute upward limitation”, on what people can spend?
BOBBY: Oh, man, it’s too stupid to parity.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Honestly, it is too stupid to parity.
ALEX: Not, not convinced that ChatGPT is not the commissioner of baseball. I’m just gonna say that, that’s all.
BOBBY: The lining our pockets committee, the extracting more money out of the game committee. Am I getting colder or warmer? What do you think?
ALEX: It depends on whether you actually want the fans to know what you’re doing about. I don’t know, because you’re achieving one of those goals.
BOBBY: The economic reform committee, which is made up of four owners, Mark Walter of the Dodgers. He is the control person for the Dodgers that is a large ownership group, made up of many people who have done many, many bad things in different industries, and wanted to get into baseball because they felt that that was an easier place to do bad things and get away with it. Chris Ilitch, the son of Mike Ilitch, the guy who actually wanted to buy the Tigers and run the Tigers and Chris Ilitch is just here for the, for the checks. John Henry–
ALEX: Heard of him.
BOBBY: –just him and his line of beam futures are in there to offer some perspective. And of course, you can’t have an economic reform committee without Dick Monfort. Dick Monfort–
ALEX: The voice of reason in the room.
BOBBY: –the guy who just really understands how to put the right baseball product on the field, Dick Monfort. He’s running a tight ship over there. And they, like I said, they’re gathering to talk about two things. The first thing economic disparity in the game. The second thing, the bankruptcy, obviously- bankruptcy of Valley Sports. Obviously, these, these things are related. And Rob talks to Evan about this in the article, article in the description, if you would like to read the whole thing. They talked about how this was sort of the Trojan Horse for this conversation, was Valley Sports going out of, out of business. Because who is this going to affect the most? It’s going to affect the 14 teams, which are broadcasting with Valley Sports currently. And none of those teams are the biggest market teams, not, it’s not the Mets, it’s not the Yankees, it’s not the Red Sox, it’s not the Dodgers. Is there anybody I’m forgetting who’s a big, big, big market team? I think that’s everybody. It’s not the Phillies, not the Cubs, all of them them sort of own, either own their whole, whole television channel. Or are broadcasting with a more, more regional sports network that is not a conglomerate of regional channels the way that Valley Sports is. But really what this is, this is, this was an entree into trying to get a salary cap in the next CBA. And Evan says as much basically, and even Rob kind of confirms as much, he’s talking about the next CBA, even though we’re only one year removed from the previous CBA. And so, I read this, and I was like, I was tempted to text Michael Baumann and be like, see, remember, when I was really pessimistic on the State of Labor in Baseball, and you’re like, actually, things are okay. I kind of, kind of feel like I was justified now.
ALEX: Well, things are always bad, right? Like the, the ownership, player dynamic is always going to be acrimonious, to a certain extent, right? And, and what’s interesting about this, is it adds a new dimension to that in owner versus owner versus player. Which is in no small part, what contributed to the strike of ’94, right? Because owners were not able to get on the same page about what they wanted from players. Which it plays a certain amount of leverage. And, as, as Evan points out in the article, I think Rob realizes this, and that when the next CBA comes up, he needs the owners in line, right? You don’t want back to back lockouts. You or, or another more costly, work stoppage, strikes are known. Right, the owners don’t are never going to let that sort of thing happen, right? And Rob Manfred is doing his best to make sure that when they come to the table in 2026, they’re on the same page. And I think it’s really interesting that we’re kind of at this period of time where owners are more publicly kind of like sniping at each other than we’ve seen in like, recent years, recent decades. It’s makes me, I mean, that’s kind of a let them fight thing for me, you know, like, like, go for it. And we’ll reap the benefits of that disarray over there.
BOBBY: I mean, to your point, obviously, the article centers much around Steve Cohen, who is, who, along with the Mets is blowing through the top Luxury Tax. Which, you know, the owners didn’t get a salary cap in 1994. But then they colluded for two decades in order to treat the top tax number like a salary cap. And so functionally speaking, they basically had what they were, they wanted for a while. And in the article, you know, Rob talks about how there’s a lot of new owners who have come in. And so there’s sort of less, I don’t know how else to say this besides collusion. There’s less coalition among [25:13]–
ALEX: Right, there’s like institutional like debt, basically–
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: –right?
BOBBY: There’s, there’s Steve Cohen coming in spending more than anybody else. There’s John Middleton, who had a quote, just a couple of days ago, talking about when he was asked about the Phillies payroll on his commitment to winning. He said, how much money did the 27 Yankees make? Or the 29 A’s, or the ’75-’76 Big Red Machine? Does anybody know? Does anybody care? Nobody knows, or cares whether any of them made any money or not. And nobody cares about whether I make money or not. If my legacy is that I didn’t lose any money owning a baseball team on an annual operating basis, that’s a pretty sad legacy. It’s about putting trophies in the cases. That–
ALEX: [25:50] fucking veins.
BOBBY: –kind of stuff, that kind of stuff- I mean, it clearly is freaking other owners out. On one hand, I’m like, yes, you know, I’m sure Jerry Reinsdorf is telling everybody who will listen, I told you so about these, these other owners, and what they’re saying, and how they’re acting, and what they’re spending. But kind of at the same time, I believe I’ve made this case before, but Steve Cohen, or John Middleton, are just providing these owners the cover to publicly, more publicly do stuff like this. Create an economic reform committee, where it’s obviously a trial balloon for something like a salary cap to see how it’s received. And the PA is not going to receive it well, and they know this. The PA is never going to agree to this without some sort of apocalyptic event. Like a year long, lockout or something like that. And they know they don’t have the political capital for that. But if they start to float these things, four or five years in advance, and Steve Cohen and John Middleton keep spending $100 million above the quote unquote, “Cohen tax”, I think that they probably feel like they can get people on board. I think they probably feel like, well, this actually has gotten so ridiculous. Steve Cohen is spending $300 million more than the Oakland A’s. But clearly, the problem is not what Steve Cohen and John Middleton are spending, because they have to spend. Clearly the problem is that the A’s are spending so little. And even Rob kind of admits this much while lying his way through this, right? Rob says, quote, “The reality is, you got to solve your revenue disparity problem before you can even think about a cap. We’re so desperate right now that it’s almost hard to make. And I mean, literally, the math of a salary cap work. You got to be at a certain level to get an agreement with the players. You start thinking about minimums and maximums, you know, all of a sudden, you’re talking about minimums. We have some clubs, where…” He said without finishing the thought. Really funny that Evan left that in there, that Rob couldn’t even get himself to say that we have some clubs that don’t make the minimum.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But a salary cap comes with the salary floor. A salary floor is going to be by the time they’re willing to talk about it five years from now, I don’t know 120?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: 140? 150? Like, they proposed a soft for soft cap at the beginning of the lockout last year. And the soft floor was 100, and the soft cap was 180. Obviously, those numbers are garbage. But if you use those as a very wide ballpark, that means that next time around that soft floor is going to need to be 50% higher than that because of inflation and because of the increased revenue into the game. That means 150, you know how many teams are under 150 right now? 12 teams?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s almost half the league. That would be under the theoretical cap that, the theoretical floor that they want, that owners are claiming to want. And so is, is it better to have a cap? Or is it better for them to just keep allowing the bottom teams to just be hilariously lower than what they could be spending. And just keep letting whoever the fuck owns the top three or four teams do whatever they want? The problem is they need to signal to the public like there is still parity. Because there is something important to the idea that fans feel like they could win.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Because otherwise then the animosity will start going towards John Fisher, the Dolan’s, the Nuttings. Like these, these teams who are not willing to be even close to competitive, not willing to pretend like they are.
ALEX: Well, I think it’s really interesting that Manfred’s point here isn’t even about competitive balance, it’s about economic balance, right? It’s that some teams are making less money than other teams. And that’s a problem. Maybe not to you, maybe not to me, but to a dozen billionaires, that makes a difference, right? And so like, so I think that’s a really important thing to, to kind of grab here too is that they’re not even couching it in this idea of that this will make the sport more equal on the baseball field. It’s those, those Capital One accounts are going to look a lot more similar at the end of the day, right? And, and Evan brings up the, the last time Major League Baseball did this sort of thing under Bud Selig, back in 2000. When he put together this Blue Ribbon Panel that came up with a report to basically address what he saw is competitive disparity, right? That was heavily linked to economic disparity. And that was a really influential group, it really influenced the outcome of the next few years collective bargaining agreements, right? Because the owners effectively got on the same page, right? And, and it wasn’t even just owners, right? These are people from the world of, of politics and journalism, I mean, it was really a hodgepodge of people. But the gist of it is that, like, they made pretty radical reforms to the league’s economic structure. And it’s hard not to see that as a sort of precursor for this sort of thing. There’s a really, there’s a really interesting piece in the SABR baseball research journal that came out in 2018. That looked at the effectiveness of this Blue Ribbon Panel, did it, did it bring more economic parity, and did it bring more competitive parity? And to a certain extent, the economic parity was, was there. Now maybe not all the way, right? But that, that gap between the, the big teams and the small teams started to close just a little bit. Did it change competitiveness? What do you think? Did it, did it, did it make more parity among, among teams? Like, like no, that’s not the point.
BOBBY: But the problem is that it didn’t make more parity, because it just, whenever they change the economics of baseball to like, lower the range between the top and bottom teams. What they do is they make the top teams worse. But they’re still better, they’re still better than the teams that are not spending any money and not trying. So like–
ALEX: Right. And you’re still not incentivizing those, those small teams to spend.
BOBBY: There is a certain threshold that you have to go above if you want to compete for a World Series, period. And for most teams, for most teams, there’s a certain threshold that you have to go above to even make the playoffs. The obviously there’s more variance in that is less reliable, the correlation between payroll and making the playoffs. But the correlation between payroll and winning the World Series is high, very high. If you plot it leaguewide, not just between the two teams that are playing each other in the World Series. Because by that point, you’ve made the World Series and so it’s like, you have more or less a coin flip chance of winning it, give or take 5%. But like, you’re not going to create more parity in the game by telling the better teams to be worse. You’re going to create more parity in the game by telling the worst teams to try harder. And that’s not like a fact that’s my opinion, right? But if, if every team at the bottom there was pushing all of the teams at the top, then it would push the teams in the middle to try to be better. Which would make the teams at the top have to fend off the middle teams who, who are bleeding talent because they’re not willing to pay a premium for the best players in the game. And so the best players in the game, we’ve seen have been concentrated, more and more to a handful of teams who are actually willing to extend them. And sometimes those teams aren’t even the top teams. Sometimes the Red Sox trade Mookie Betts to get onto the Luxury Tax. I, I look at this article on it, look at this idea of, of the economic reform committee. And obviously, it’s like too premature to really talk about what the impact of something like this might turn out to be. And I don’t think that the PA is just gonna like roll over and give them a salary cap four years from now. I don’t think that that will ever happen. But I understand more and more why the MLBPA Executive Committee voted unanimously to reject the last CBA. And of course, it went through because the, the 30 team representatives all voted for it. With the exception of the I think the Mets and Yankees. Team representatives not vote for it, but everybody else did vote for it. And so, but I look at that, and I say okay, the executive committee who was actually in the room negotiating this deal thinks that this is somewhat of an appeasement deal. So that both sides can come out of this with, with less responsibility on their hands, with less blame on their hands to the public, to the fans who are pissed about this lockout. And a certain subje- a certain percentage of fans believes that the lockout is both sides fault. Us not among that section of fans, of course. The listeners of Tipping Pitches, likely not among that section of fans. But when I see this, when I see them putting together a committee, basically to try to figure out how to get the owners more money. That is essentially what this is. It’s not trying to figure out how to get the players more money or to, to, to lower the disparity between players, right? Because the disparity between players comes from pre arbitration, and salary minimums, and, and arbitration, and the lack of being able to get the free agency earlier. Which, suspiciously it was not in this economic reform committee’s bullet list of things to talk about. So clearly, this is a way to get the owners making more money, without them actually admitting that. And I’m like, honestly, probably they, we did go a little light on them in this last CBA. There’s more money in it for certain types of players. We’ve seen more of the superstar deals, the longer deals. We’ve seen decent mid market deals for guys, because of the added economic security of no longer being in a lockout, or no longer having an expiring CBA coming up on the horizon. But in terms of long term, the battle between labor and management, it feels like management has been empowered now to try to go through this once every 30-year cycle, where they blow up the structure entirely. And win once and for all.
ALEX: There, there’s a lot of ire being directed towards Steve Cohen and the Mets right now. But I think the owners should be far more pissed at Peter Seidler and the Padres. I just want to say, because what they are doing, what Steve Cohen is doing is coming in saying, I’m gonna play by your rules, right? I’ll pay your tax, I’ll do whatever, I just happen to have more money, and I’m going to spend it, right? And the owners don’t like that, because it flies in the face of how most teams have operated over the course of baseball history, right? But what Seidler has done is effectively disprove a lot of the claims made by Manfred and ownership, right? That it’s, that it’s not profitable to run a baseball team. And that it’s really, really hard to take a small market team and turn it into a big market team, right? For the first five years of Seidler’s tenure as the owner. The Padres were, if you remember, not very good, and they did not spend a lot of money, right? And then Seidler’s woke up and said, actually, I want to sign every player. And, and I think a lot of fans rightly so are like, how, how did he, how did he do that?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: So, so if he can do that–
BOBBY: Not just fans, other executives in the industry.
ALEX: –and other executive too, right, yeah.
BOBBY: Anonymously sourced other executives in the industry to go that way.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah, I mean, I think you’re right. I also like, it just pokes a lot of holes, right? In the logic of what Rob would like you to believe, what owners would like you to believe. Because it’s a logical [37:59], so if Steve Cohen is spending $370 million, owners would have you believe that teams don’t actually make that much. That no team really makes that much money $370 million to be able to put towards payroll. Because otherwise all the big market teams would go up that high. And because teams are not making that much, quote, unquote, “we accept that”, then Steve Cohen must be spending his own personal money to be able to run a payroll of $370 million. Now, I don’t know if Steve Cohen is spending his own personal money. I have no idea because I have never seen the books of the New York Mets. My guess is if he is spending his own personal money, probably not that much of it, to be honest. But they can’t admit either way. Like they’re, they, they’re, the box that they have built for themselves, requires that nobody exposed the fact that there is this much money to be thrown around in the game. Because if they admit that Steve Cohen is spending more money because he has more money to spend, because he’s a billionaire 14 times over, when you start looking around and you like John Fisher is a billionaire seven times over, you know? Paul Dolan is a billionaire five times over, and these guys are spending so little. So I, I don’t know, it’s just logical inconsistency everywhere.
ALEX: Rob, once again, open invite, if you would like to come explain yourself, you can finish that sentence that you were unable to when talking to Evan. Please tell us, tell us why the, the salary floor would be tough right now.
BOBBY: I know he’s a friend of the show, Evan, not Rob. Rob might be a friend of the show in the future, but not right now. He’s currently, as far as we know, it doesn’t know the show exists.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: But I know Evan–
ALEX: What are the degrees of separation you think between us and Manfred?
BOBBY: Like one.
ALEX: Like one, right? Like–
BOBBY: Us to Evan, Evan to Rob. But I was gonna say, I know Evan is a friend of the show. I know he’s gonna come on in week and talk about his book, Winning Fixes Everything. But aside from that, I think he’s a tremendous reporter, and a tremendous writer. Because he does stuff like that where he’s like Rob did not finish his sentence. He trailed off in the middle of the thought, where he was trying to justify the fact that teams at the bottom can’t hit a salaried minimum. It’s like, well, without saying that he was lying, he’s kind of implying that that–
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: –logic doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny. And we don’t really have reporters like that anymore. We don’t have reporters that are willing to assemble the facts in a way that, that trust the reader to put them together and understand the economic picture that the reporter can see that it’s deeper and more detailed than the one that Rob Manfred is willing to put out publicly.
ALEX: Yeah, although I think we have more reporters now than doing that that we probably did 30, 40 years ago, right?
BOBBY: Definitely!
ALEX: When it was just kind of accept the wisdom, right? And so I really appreciate guys like Evan and, and the plethora of journalists out there who are happy to tell like it is, right? Who are far less dependent on Major League Baseball to for access, that they can actually speak what’s on their mind.
BOBBY: Alright, let’s take a quick break. And when we come back, one of the more absurd endeavors that we’ve done on the podcast in a while. We are going to give a full on album review of 1987 Blue Cowboy, by Cowboy Joe West.
[41:27]
[Music Transition]
BOBBY: Okay, we are now joined by friend of the show, serious music critic, Lindsay Zoladz. To talk about some serious music in the baseball world. Some serious figure in the baseball world, less in the baseball world than it used to be. Although made headlines last week. It’s Cowboy Joe West. First of all, Lindsay, hi. thanks for doing this.
LINDSAY: Hi!
BOBBY: How are you?
LINDSAY: I’m honored. My first Tipping Pitches appearance. I’ve been waiting my whole life.
ALEX: This is- well, we kind of have to, this is something that Bobby and I have talked about where you know, like, like, what is the right moment, right? What is the right kind of crossover?
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: And when we spent $50 on a Joe West album, from just [42:18]–
BOBBY: We, we, as in you did it and you text me and said I just bought this is that okay? It was like what am I supposed to have you send it back? Yeah, that’s fine.
LINDSAY: $50, wow.
ALEX: Right. They’re like, they’re like Chanel bags, you know, they just go up in price like in over time,
LINDSAY: Yeah, I was going to say, it’s going to appreciate in value. So it’s a smart investment, it’s, it’s fine.
BOBBY: This is an asset, not a liability, as Alex Rodriguez would put it, owning this, owning this album. You wait, you bought the CD, right? Not the record?
ALEX: Yes. Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay, okay. You should have bought–
ALEX: No, that would have been cooler, I would have bought the record, if I could, could have found it.
BOBBY: It would have been a lot harder to transfer to mp3 version to share with our guests here. Which we did do and we all I assume did listen to the entire Joe West album, Blue Cowboy.
LINDSAY: Yes, we did. Or I, I did and–
BOBBY: Yeah. Suffered through it.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Well, let me give some–
LINDSAY: I get the, the extra credit too and listen to his spoken word album, which we’ll get to, but, oh my God!
BOBBY: You’re quite the achiever. Alex and I have listened to that and discussed it on the podcast before. If, if listeners have been around for a long time. Before I get your take, let me just to remind the listeners, Joe West, longest tenured umpire in Major League Baseball history, I’m, I’m pretty sure. Also Moonlights, you know, much like, much like Knicks owner James Dolan, Moonlights in the music scene, outside of his sports on field career. And he wrote an album, wrote, performed, saying an album called Blue Cowboy. This was released in 1987 on Vinyl, it was part of Colonial Records, which is based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Colonial Records, also the record label of Andy Griffith, George Hamilton, John Loudermilk, and Crash Craddock. A controversial source Joe West Wikipedia page, lets us know that. Joe is described his music as and listeners will remember this two chords and the truth. It’s simple. It tells the story. He’s performed at the Grand Ole Opry. He’s performed with Merle Haggard, Mickey Gilley, Johnny Lee. Some, some real names and country music.
ALEX: Accolades, you know, like, this isn’t a cute little pet project. Like he was eight years into his umpiring career at this point, and then hooked up with Merle Haggard’s fiddle player. Like fucking sure, you know, like what?
BOBBY: Exactly. So we wanted to take this album, we wanted to give it the critical weight, the critical seriousness that it deserves because of this long, storied resume. And so we got a real, a real music critic from The New York Times. LZ, what, what did you think? What do you think of the album?
LINDSAY: Wow! Where to begin? I mean, so the first question that I had, you know, was, was how did the happen? How did this get made? What was going on? What was the context? You know, which is what I would ask myself in writing any album review. And as you said, Bobby, this record comes out in 1987. So the context there is that Joe West had just made his appearance in the Naked Gun in like, the funniest baseball scene in a movie ever. He makes a cameo, 1986 The Naked Gun comes out. Joe West, I imagine is feeling himself because he’s in a hit movie. Has like one speaking fine. He’s like, there’s nothing I can’t do. So he cuts [45:42]–
BOBBY: Are you saying that he was at his Apex Mountain, Lindsay?
LINDSAY: Uhm, you know, I don’t know if that’s the terminology that I’m allowed to use. But I think he was certainly, he was feeling himself. That’s, that’s what I’ll say. So, you know, there’s a certain like, invincibility to him at this moment. There are I think it’s, so it’s a mix of covers and songs that he wrote. And I tried to a few of the songs I was not familiar with, I think there are three that he wrote himself. I put it on, and was like, I’m gonna try to guess which ones Joe West wrote. And I’m pretty sure that I went three for three. It’s not that hard, because it’s two chords and the truth. But there’s just a lot going on here. I think I actually, my two favorite songs were the instrumentals because we’ve not singing on them. There’s a rousing instrumental rendition of Take Me Out to the Ballgame.
BOBBY: Yes.
LINDSAY: That he really has nothing to do–
BOBBY: Which–
LINDSAY: –with and I, you know–
ALEX: Actually, he kind of, he kind of snapped on that one, I’m not gonna lie.
LINDSAY: Yeah, like–
BOBBY: Honestly, when, when the beats are up on Take Me Out to the Ballgame, because it takes me out the plays like three times. It’s basically just, you know, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, like a 42nd song.
ALEX: Yeah, it’s like a he does like a Jam Band rendition.
BOBBY: Right. So he loops it back, right? Very traditional version to start out to Take Me Out to the Ballgame. And then the beat drops, and there’s like, the, the rock and country version. And I was like, I started levitating out of my body when that happened, and it was all downhill from there. And that’s the–
LINDSAY: You’re just waiting for his–
BOBBY: –fourth song?
LINDSAY: –voice to come in to in, and it doesn’t, and that’s the best part of it.
BOBBY: Right. Well, he presumes that we all know the words to Take Me Out to the Ballgame.
LINDSAY: Yeah, you’re just singing along at home. I’m trying to think like what the worst moments are, and it’s really it’s like everything it’s not that, it’s all of the ones where he’s singing. It’s, I found it harder, so like he there’s a couple like he does, he does a cover of Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys. I thought it was–
BOBBY: Sure does.
LINDSAY: –missed opportunity not to say Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Umpires. What a, that’s, that’s a free idea, Joe that’s out there.
BOBBY: Don’t encourage him.
ALEX: Yeah, for LP three.
LINDSAY: But I guess that also brings up this point that there is nothing about baseball on this particular record to. He, he is the Blue Cowboy of the title. And I think you sort of think like is that, is he can tie in baseball and umpiring to that somehow? Oh, no, he’s, he’s a sad cowboy. Because he misses his family and his lady. I think he uses the phrase making love in that–
BOBBY: Yes.
LINDSAY: –song and I got, that was a–
BOBBY: Okay, an important question I had written down that I was gonna wait a little while to warm the listener is up a little more. But because you’re bringing it up now, Lindsay. My question is why is he so horny? On this and spoken word.
ALEX: On both albums.
BOBBY: He’s so horny.
LINDSAY: He’s, he’s horny on main, he’s horny on spoken word. The first two songs are like weirdly horny, too.
BOBBY: Yes.
LINDSAY: There’s like a, there’s a duet with a female singer who wisely is not credited. She can just pretend like this never happened. And doesn’t have her name attached to this in any way. But yeah, there’s, there’s kind of a weird, horny ballad.
BOBBY: Yeah.
LINDSAY: You get a sense, he’s like, really? You know, I think part of him like, envisioning himself as this cowboy is he thinks. You know, he’s like, I spend my life on the road and I’m away from my family and stuff. And it’s like, yeah, but you’re an umpire. You’re not, you know, doing whatever. So yeah, there’s, there’s a weird, really disturbing element of, of horniness. There’s no other way to say it.
ALEX: Yeah, I’m even on, even on 2008’s Diamond Dreams, right? Are the spoken word classic Diamond Dreams.
LINDSAY: Yeah.
ALEX: There’s, there’s one song that has actually sung.
LINDSAY: Yes.
ALEX: And it’s, and it’s just about how he can’t stop checking out women at the ballpark.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: And reprimanded–
LINDSAY: If that’s the one, yeah.
ALEX: –by shorts.
BOBBY: Right, yeah.
ALEX: Exactly, yes.
LINDSAY: The tight shorts, yeah. I–
ALEX: He loves the curves, uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And that his wife is going to kick him out to the, to the curb, if he doesn’t stop.
LINDSAY: He’s gonna be out at home. That’s, I mean–
BOBBY: Exactly.
LINDSAY: –honestly, not the worst bit of writing.
BOBBY: Nice little turn, yeah, nice little turn a phrase there, by, by our man, Cowboy Joe.
LINDSAY: Yeah.
BOBBY: Alex, you and I were talking, there’s, there’s a song on this album called You Can’t Run With The Big Dogs.
LINDSAY: I, yes, same, let’s go there.
ALEX: Yeah, yeah. Let’s go there.
LINDSAY: Let’s go there.
BOBBY: The 7 track out of 11 tracks. Okay, I listen to the song. I gotta be honest, it’s maybe the worst song I’ve ever heard in my life, and, and I mean it. Easily the worst song I’ve heard in the last decade. I texted you, I said, I don’t know how you make a song that bad. I’m gonna play a little bit of it here for [50:46]–
LINDSAY: Please, please.
BOBBY: Why don’t hear your sad stories. Do you think that I’m crazy? Don’t tell me about your labor pains. Just show me the baby.
LINDSAY: That was the one where I was like, I was like doing something else had it on it within like 10 seconds. I was like, oh, he wrote this one.
ALEX: Yeah, yeah.
LINDSAY: He wrote it.
ALEX: I heard the line, don’t tell me about your labor pains. Just show me the baby. And I was, I stopped in my tracks. I stopped what I was doing.
LINDSAY: Bob Dylan could never.
BOBBY: Okay, so it’s bad, it was bad enough that he wrote his own songs and put them on here and they were that bad. But Alex, I know you are a, a big Willie Nelson fan and runs in your family. You’re given Willie Nelson as a kid. You chose Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys as one of your 10 favorite songs ever made. When we did this exercise a couple years ago and our friends.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: We all shared our 10 favorite songs made one big playlist out of it. It’s pure chaos. I don’t recommend doing it with your friends. It’s not a good listen. However, we did get to learn our 10 favorite songs over each other.
LINDSAY: Please.
BOBBY: And that was one of your songs. The Willie Nelson version, not not the Cowboy Joe West version, which you didn’t hear until a couple days ago. How personally offended for you but this cover of the song?
ALEX: Well, yeah, he he likes to really. He, he does a lot of shout outs across these albums, right? He’s shouting out country stars left and Right, right? Merle Haggard obviously, I mean, he gets a he gets a shout out multiple times. And, I mean, the surprising thing is that I was not more offended by the song. I think because I was kind of distracted by everything else going on around it. Like I was like, he didn’t, he didn’t write it. And, and the arrangements that he’s doing on this album are relatively straightforward, right? They’re just–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –regular kind of country songs. Like if, like if I didn’t know who this was by I’d be like, wow, this is a bad country album. Okay, let’s, let’s move along, right? I mean, and when I hear Blue Cowboy the title track, which opens the album, I was like, okay, you know what? I this is not the worst song I’ve ever heard. He’s got a bit of the Bakersfield sound in there, right? You can see, you can see the references. Okay, let’s, let’s give this a shot. And, and it really only gets worse from there. So it, it definitely hurt a little bit but I think I’m more hurt by the overall exercise than anything else.
LINDSAY: The, the Merle Haggard covered hurt me–
BOBBY: Yeah.
LINDSAY: –personally. I think that’s the worst vocal, maybe on the whole record, Sing me Back home is just like and we’re getting, I think it’s like track nine. So he’s like, kind of just running out of steam at that point. And I, I actually found the covers, is gonna say I found the covers to be more painful than the original material, but I’m gonna stop myself and not like they can both be–
ALEX: Right.
LINDSAY: –really painful in their own ways. But the, but also–
BOBBY: We can hold two ideas in our head, guys. We can–
LINDSAY: Exactly.
BOBBY: –we can.
LINDSAY: Yes, we contain multitudes just like Cowboy Joe West. Yeah, there’s he, he just goes out of tune at times. Like it’s really, he perhaps could have benefited from autotune which did not yet exist when–
ALEX: Right, yeah.
LINDSAY: –this record came out. So maybe we’ll cut him some slack there question mark? But–
BOBBY: Maybe he needed like the Glyn Johns’ mix, you know. Like the Get Back documentary.
LINDSAY: Yeah,
ALEX: Yeah,
BOBBY: Glyn Johns’–
LINDSAY: Honestly–
BOBBY: –studio, like set it up for him.
LINDSAY: –we need, we need to get that Blue Cowboy. Would watch the eight hour, just–
BOBBY: That would break us. I mean, we’d do like the Tipping Pitches live stream of that. Like we’d be doing director’s commentary criterion style, like we would do it all.
LINDSAY: I mean, just to say he’s not working on that in his retirement.
ALEX: Right.
LINDSAY: It would be a great use of his time.
BOBBY: Maybe that’s why he retired. The album does have a distinctly similar field to his umpiring. Like as the game goes on, he’s like, get him out of here, he’s out. Ball like a foot off the plays like, nope, we’re done. By the ninth song, he’s just like, we’re not going to do another take of this, this is just how it’s gonna sound.
LINDSAY: What are the three songs that he wrote? Just to confirm. It’s Blue Cowboy.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: You Can’t Run With The Big Dogs.
LINDSAY: Yeah.
ALEX: Take This Bike to Tommy, which is like it’s kind of–
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: –the, the ballot about his son?
BOBBY: However the sixth song on the album is called, Don’t It Make You Wanna Go Home. That is by someone called Joe South. Who is Joe South? Is that a real person?
ALEX: He, he, he’s a real person.
LINDSAY: Are you, are you umpiring? Joe East.
BOBBY: Is there a Joe East? Okay, I see, I see a real, there’s a real Joe South that we can, we can verify he is real.
LINDSAY: What I’ve just thought is like his, his alter ego, his Chris Gaines, which is already you know Cowboy Joe West is already the Chris Gaines of Joe West. But maybe Joe South is like–
BOBBY: Hard time keeping track of this.
LINDSAY: Where he’s gotten like real horny on main.
ALEX: Well, and then, and then there’s a, there’s a, there’s a song later that’s by like a Clayton West and I looked it up and I did a lot of digging. And this is also another artist. But I just got to know what’s going on here? Like he would have chose it.
BOBBY: He would only work with people who shared one of his two names.
ALEX: Right.
LINDSAY: Can we talk about the Tommy song for a second too? Because–
BOBBY: Yeah, uh-hmm.
LINDSAY: –that, like that’s him trying to do sort of like, like a Dolly Parton tear jerker ballad thing.
BOBBY: Yes. About a kid who loses his bike, but it’s really about, you know, he’s, he’s–
LINDSAY: Yeah, like–
BOBBY: –I don’t remember like he’s lost from home of something.
LINDSAY: I first I thought, I thought it was gonna be like about him missing his son on the road. About how there’s another song about him, missing his wife on the road, which we’ll just leave there. But he it’s like this guy, think he’s driving a truck. He’s away from his son, Tommy. He buys him a bicycle. And then he gets in like a deadly car. And, and his dying words are like telling the cop, like, get this bike to Tommy. So I can only assume this is a work of fiction. Because Joe West, thankfully still walks among us. But like, that really took a turn that I was not expecting. And definitely in, like you can really see, I think the particular like genre tropes that he’s trying to work in here. Again, like there’s a long history of sort of the country weepy ballad.
BOBBY: Yes.
LINDSAY: But this one, I don’t know if it belongs anywhere near the better practitioners of, of that lineage. It’s, it’s rough. But it is, it was probably the most like genuinely jaw dropping song for me on this record. It’s bonkers. It’s, he tried, he really–
BOBBY: Alex, what is are–
ALEX: Yeah, it’s a crazy jumpscare in that.
BOBBY: What is our bike that we need to take to Tommy? Like, what is our effort that we’re doing out in the world here? Metaphorically speaking.
LINDSAY: That’s deep.
ALEX: That’s a, I mean, I mean, we’re spreading the good word right now of Cowboy Joe West. I think that is, that is–
BOBBY: Joe–
ALEX: –the, the bike that we carry.
BOBBY: –Joe West is the bike. And the listener. sorry, the Tommy?
ALEX: Are the Tommy.
BOBBY: Yeah. Okay.
LINDSAY: And hopefully, we’re not the narrator of that song.
ALEX: Right.
LINDSAY: Because–
BOBBY: It sounds like we’re [58:09]–
LINDSAY: Atleast he lives to tell the cop, I mean, Joe West loves cops and the military–
ALEX: It sure does, I guess.
LINDSAY: –thing that we got from his recorded output.
BOBBY: Maybe that’s a good opportunity to start talking about time and dreams, the extra credit assignment that we gave you Lindsay.
LINDSAY: You know I wanted to.
BOBBY: Coming on here.
ALEX: Real, real, real quick, one last thing on Blue Cowboy, because there’s something in the liner notes that I just like–
LINDSAY: Oh, yeah, please, please tell us more about the liner notes, ’cause that–
ALEX: Right. I did, I did read them. I was very curious. He does have a, he has a couple of his, I don’t know, baseball writers who write a testimonial for him saying he’s an amazing musician. Which I if I wanted someone to tell me I was an amazing musician, I wouldn’t go to baseball writers, but that’s just me.
BOBBY: Why? Baseball writers have great taste, they all just love Bruce Springsteen.
ALEX: But there’s a note on here that says special backup vocal on Luckenbach, Texas, by Steve. So near the notes so many times trick. And then there’s an asterisk, and it says in the interest of quality control, you will note the song Luckenbach Texas was deleted from this album.
LINDSAY: Woahhh!
BOBBY: So–
ALEX: A transparent king, he said hey, we worked on this song, but it’s being left in the vault, you know. It’ll be, it’ll come out when he does his re records.
LINDSAY: Yeah.
BOBBY: Right.
LINDSAY: Taylor, Taylor’s word. Joe’s, Joe’s version of–
BOBBY: Joe’s version, yeah.
LINDSAY: Love it [59:29]
BOBBY: Cowboy- guys, CJW’s version. Wait, actually, that reminds me–
LINDSAY: That’s wild, that’s actually wild note to include in the [59:39].
ALEX: Like, you only put that in so he could get the Duncan on his friend.
LINDSAY: Yeah.
ALEX: Who like, who like to doesn’t hit the notes, which is really, really rich.
LINDSAY: I would, I would argue Joe West also so near the note so often. But [59:53]–
BOBBY: I am–
LINDSAY: –yeah, that’s a, that’s, again, I felt like he was on his high horse in 1987. Like he couldn’t feel no pain. And the reigning World Series champs were at the New York Mets at that time. So like, you know, just putting that out there, thought of that
BOBBY: So, so if the Mets won the World Series what you’re saying is we are going to get another Joe West album?
LINDSAY: That’s exactly what I’m saying, yes.
BOBBY: That’s the precipitating event for–
LINDSAY: So another reason to root for the New York Mets.
BOBBY: Another reason for me to have anxiety about the Mets not doing it. Because then I can’t call it my whole life without getting another Joe West album.
LINDSAY: I know.
ALEX: Once again this is, this is his Taylor Swift Giants relationship, right? The, the even your bullshit. Which, which I suppose was, was eventually–
BOBBY: Debunked, yeah.
LINDSAY: Yeah.
ALEX: –debunked. Although I think that I, I have to think that Taylor had, had a, had a hand in that but that’s a discussion for another time.
LINDSAY: Yeah.
BOBBY: She became too prolific, she was like the Giants are holding back this Gabe Kapler nonsense I can’t do it, I can’t, I just can’t.
LINDSAY: Fall comeback for that [1:00:49] some other time. But–
BOBBY: In the, in the liner notes it also says that this was recorded at Sound Masters Recording Studio in Houston and a quick Google search reveals that the top hit when you search Sound Masters Recording Studio in Houston is mapquest.com, which is a bad sign for our friends over at Sound Masters, I don’t know if they’re still working. I’m on their Yelp page. No reviews, that’s unfortunate. Maybe we can do an episode there. It’s unclaimed and closed, according to Yelp. But maybe we can revive it, Alex, maybe we can have our own little Sound Masters Studio.
ALEX: That be, if we like purchased the lot where this album was recorded and set up our recording studio there.
BOBBY: I don’t want the lot, I want the whole studio, bro.
ALEX: He will, exactly. Yes. Yeah.
BOBBY: It doesn’t sound that bad. We can get some good sound out of that.
ALEX: Yeah.
LINDSAY: You just got to, got to get like a plaque for where, where cowboy Joe is standing.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
LINDSAY: When in here complete [1:01:48].
BOBBY: [1:01:48] star on the ground.
ALEX: Seminole album.
LINDSAY: Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay, let’s talk about Diamond Dreams, Diamond Dreams comes out in 2008. It is a spoken word album. There is one recorded musical song on this album. The entire album is 36- 38 minutes and 24 seconds. I think 16 of that–
LINDSAY: Extra Innings, Extra Innings.
BOBBY: 18, 18 minutes and 10 seconds of that is it as in the spoken word song installation called Extra Inning.
ALEX: Discussion.
LINDSAY: Performance art [1:02:20].
BOBBY: Him–
ALEX: Podcast.
BOBBY: –what it sounds like him sitting at a table of his friends or fellow umpires. Tell him one-liner–
LINDSAY: There people who came to laugh at his jokes–
BOBBY: But telling one-liners, telling jokes, telling one- knock knock jokes at his time.
LINDSAY: Most of them not even about baseball, not even related to baseball. Just like telling like a joke about his brother or something. And he’s making fun of his brother’s wife, his–
BOBBY: RIght.
LINDSAY: –brother’s second wife. Former English teacher. It just be glad you don’t know what we’re talking about. [1:02:52]–
BOBBY: LZ, highlights and lowlights of Diamond Dreams?
LINDSAY: Uhm, well you brought up a really good question just from the jump of the cover art which you know is very, very graphic design is my passion vibes. There’s like a sleeping child overlay on the grou- it’s like overlay of a baseball field and like a little child sleeping. And you know, you brought up the point Bobby that Joe West a bit too old to have like a high res digital photo of himself as a child sleeping.
BOBBY: Yes.
LINDSAY: Because whose child is this? Is, is the first question and like I hope it’s a grandson. But could it be just a stock photo of a child? Like he seem–
BOBBY: It has Getty Images energy to–
ALEX: Yeah.
LINDSAY: It does.
BOBBY: –to me.
LINDSAY: It does. So that’s–
ALEX: I spent like 20 minutes searching for it. Like, like searching variations of a boy baseball sleeping on glove. No results.
BOBBY: Do you use Bing?
ALEX: I should have use Bing.
BOBBY: You should have used Bing, you should describe their problem to Bing. This segment sponsored by Microsoft and the impending singularity that will kill us all.
LINDSAY: Yeah, so–
BOBBY: But it’s overlaid, it’s overlaid of a picture of him standing with his hands on his hips.
LINDSAY: Yes. And his [1:04:12]–
BOBBY: Staring on an empty baseball field.
LINDSAY: –Joe West pose. Yeah, it’s so it, it begins, I was sort of live texting you guys like as I was listening to this earlier, and I you know the first few songs are him kind of, you know, waxing poetic about the game, and the beauty, and the poetry of the game. And sort of trying to be like a very poor man’s Roger Angell or something. I said to you guys, like how much does Joe West wish that he would had narrated Ken Burns baseball, like it’s got that kind of energy except he laughs at like all his jokes, too. That’s–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Right.
LINDSAY: –very, sounds like a pretty off putting part of this. And, you know, I was thinking too like, there are certain–
BOBBY: I think [1:04:55] personally, I liked the last. I think I’m going to cut together a compilation of all the last inplay here for everybody.
LINDSAY: Honestly, that, that might be the best Joe West track, is just, just the compilation of the last.
JOE: [laughing] I guess [1:05:16] run that horse like Clint Eastwood. Well, you can. Clint Eastwood is Clint Eastwood, you never gonna look like Clint Eastwood on that [1:05:24].
LINDSAY: Yeah, there’s that this was another one where the existential question of like, why does this exist? And who does it exist for? Was, was coming up a lot, because I think there, obviously are like, just like old guys in baseball that I would listen, I’d listened to a spoken album or spoken word album of like Dusty Baker talking about the game, you know. That would like be cool. But an umpire? Like nobody wants to hear that, let alone Joe West–
ALEX: Right.
LINDSAY: –that umpire. Like, it’s like two levels of just derangeness to me, that to think that like anyone would want to hear his reflections on the game. Like truly one of the most universally hated people like associated with Major League Baseball who is still alive. Like it’s, it’s wild to me. So the, the kind of like, jokey jovial I’m laughing at my jokes part of it, like really struck me as particularly deranged. Because, like, who wants that from, from a famous umpire? Like–
ALEX: Yeah.
LINDSAY: –no one who roots for any team does.
ALEX: I have to give it to him–
LINDSAY: Everyone has reason to be mad at Joe West.
ALEX: He knew he wanted a podcast, like–
LINDSAY: You know–
ALEX: –15 years ago, and he just didn’t know what that outlet was like, right? Seems like–
LINDSAY: Did Joe West invent the podcast on this record, is that what you’re [1:06:49]?
ALEX: The earth is, is shaking beneath my feet right now, I don’t know what’s up.
BOBBY: I, I think that there were other podcasts going by that time. I’m Googling first podcast. That’s crazy, what comes up is the first episode of Tipping Pitches the first podcast ever made, it’s the same.
LINDSAY: Wow.
BOBBY: This is basically a podcast though. I, I had that feeling the entire time that I was listening to this. It’s, it’s him talking over what can only be described as bad piano music, like really bad, like–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –restful piano music, that’s not really like any of his other music. It would be like if the whole Tipping Pitches podcast, we were just playing like a Fall Out Boy baseline underneath it. The entire hour long podcast.
LINDSAY: It’s really rough, there’s like a Casio preset vibe to it. And–
ALEX: Yeah.
LINDSAY: –I think one of the most baffling things about this record for me is I lo- the guy who is doing, I don’t know if it’s all of the piano stuff, because I think it’s specifically the long piano in like, in the very long 18-minute song. But this guy–
BOBBY: Unbelievable choice to play piano under that entire section, like unbelievable!
LINDSAY: The whole, the whole time. But it’s this guy Kent Goodson, who was actually like, played piano with George Jones and what is like a session guy. So Joe West like called in a favor. And that was, that was pretty dismayed because I do not, I don’t know much about Kent Goodson but I have to hope he’s not bringing his A game to this record. Because it’s, it really has a like, Casio preset vibe to it. But–
ALEX: Yeah, I was like, I think I’ve played around with these strings in GarageBand like 10 years–
LINDSAY: Yeah.
ALEX: –ago, you know?
LINDSAY: Yeah. But, you know, I guess you don’t want to take the emphasis away from, you know, the sonorous voice of Joe West. But–
BOBBY: Kent was interviewed after this album came out, he said quote, this is again, according to Joe West, Wikipedia page, which we now know this part of it is true, because Joe West has corrected every other part of that Wikipedia.
LINDSAY: Yeah, true, true.
BOBBY: So we know this factual, Kent said, “As I look back on how this CD came together, I realized that I am a musician, and Joe is an umpire. But his love for music and my love for baseball bonded us in this project”. And if you go to Kent Gibson’s- Kent Gibson, Kent Goodson, if you go to Kent Goodson’s website, you see that he owns a studio in Nashville called Digitracks Nashville, which we could rent for $40 per hour, including the engineer. That’s just downright [1:09:29] free!
LINDSAY: Wow!
BOBBY: Come on, let’s get in there, Alex.
ALEX: Can you imagine having something produced by the same guy who like produced a Joe West album?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Like what a resume builder.
LINDSAY: Wait who produced the Joe West album though? Was it this guy or he did he just play piano on it?
BOBBY: No, we beed to consult liner notes now.
LINDSAY: Joe West Singer-Songwriter Producer, could he be a triple threat? Quadruple threat, ’cause it’s primary threat.
BOBBY: Produced by Joe West and Jim Duncan.
LINDSAY: Okay.
BOBBY: Remix Engineers, Jeff Park and Jim Duncan, please put some–
LINDSAY: Wow.
BOBBY: –respect on their names.
LINDSAY: The Taylor Swift and Jack Antonov of their time and genre, dynamic duo.
ALEX: I, I have to say on a, on Extra Innings, right, on the 18-minute song, I, I appreciate that he brought other people in for it. So it’s not just him laughing at his own jokes all the time. Like there’s a little–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –bit of a, a room feel to it. They also provide just incredible ad libs throughout, right? Because they’re not talking at all. It’s just like smoker’s coughs and then like, and then like one off like repetitions. Like he’s telling one, one story about, about like one umpire like, like dumping a bill on, on another. Like, younger umpire who’s really taken aback by it. And one of Joe West friends just says heart failure. And I’m like, pfft! Uh-huh, that’s right! Can you come be our headman please?
BOBBY: Lindsay, can you be the, can you be that for Tipping Pitches? Can you just–
LINDSAY: Yeah.
BOBBY: –come to the studio when we record and you sit off in the corner and you just like yell random things or cough from time to time.
LINDSAY: I laugh and cough like I’m dying. Yeah, just yell heart failure. But yeah, I can do that.
BOBBY: If you could have one or two songs that you would want the Tipping Pitches listeners to hear a little snippet fromm not songs, I guess, installation, what are we calling these things? The, the spoken word episodes?
LINDSAY: Yeah, I think you have to play the one where he’s saluting the military.
BOBBY: Okay.
JOE: We are really lucky to live in a country where our entertainment is competing teams on a field or stadium grounds. Instead of a group of gladiators killing each other on the floor of a Coliseum.
LINDSAY: That kind of just speaks for itself.
BOBBY: Unbelievable moment when he’s talking about how there are only, he quotes, Tony Blair.
LINDSAY: Okay, so I told you guys, I watched right before the recording. I, I looked up if there’s any, like live performances on YouTube. And there’s a video of him doing the The Fightin’ Side of Me, the Merle Haggard song. Like in an empty Honky Tonk. And he does this same banter, like he reuses banter, I don’t know which came first. But he does like a very similar banter to what’s on the album. And it was that part about Tony Blair, and the GIs [1:12:36]–
BOBBY: And the American GI.
LINDSAY: –I was like, of all the things to reuse that maybe as the wildest moment on this record to me. But yeah, like, set us up here, maybe we just have to play it. Maybe there’s no way–
BOBBY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s no way we can do it.
LINDSAY: –I was like, it just–
ALEX: No way.
LINDSAY: –enjoy.
JOE: Tony Blair was asked by a member of his parliament, why he always took up for the Americans. And he responded by saying, you judge a country by how many people are trying to get into it. And how many people are trying to get out?
BOBBY: I have listened to this before, and I guess I just like blacked it out. Because when I heard the name, Tony Blair, and then I heard there’s only two people who’ve ever sacrifice for you.
JOE: Jesus Christ and the American GI.
BOBBY: I thought that like someone had slipped some shrooms into my lunch, and I was just hallucinating listening to this,
ALEX: it’s kind of a bar, you know? It’s not even his line.
BOBBY: oh, my God.
ALEX: He, he gets a, he gets a nice Ronald Reagan and [1:13:43] reference in.
BOBBY: Oh, yeah.
LINDSAY: Right, both, yeah, two different ones. So you know–
BOBBY: Which was the Ronald Reagan one remind me of that?
ALEX: I think it was just about how like, he used to be a baseball broadcaster and–
BOBBY: Oh, yes!
ALEX: And, you know–
BOBBY: He’s naming, he’s just naming, naming player announcers.
ALEX: He’s playing, naming. Yeah, exactly. Like Vin Scully, that knew really knew how to call again. And actually, I think my favorite part about that–
BOBBY: We talked about that song it’s like 10 episodes of this podcast.
ALEX: Yeah, I know.
BOBBY: We’re just naming shortstops and we’re like, man, you know, Francisco Lindor.
LINDSAY: Once again, this [1:14:14] is a podcast.
ALEX: But I love that there’s like, you know, there’s a little bit of like cheering in the background. And what is very clearly like a royalty-free broadcaster just like calling a baseball game. Because it’s not a distinguishable voice. And I have to assume that he did not get the clearance rights for Major League Baseball to use an actual broadcast.
LINDSAY: The cover art again screams did not get the rights for Major League Baseball to do this, so.
BOBBY: Unfor- he kind of was like going for like a paradise by the dashboard like kind of energy in there. Or he’s like trying to throw in the little baseball called like spruce up the song, and it just, he couldn’t clear it. I guess the way that Meatloaf could RIP. Unbelievable stuff, unbelievable stuff. Are you happy that we asked you to do this additional legwork to really understand the full aura of Cowboy Joe?
LINDSAY: I’m happy and I’m honored. And I’ll never be the same.
ALEX: Will you ever go back and listen again? Is, is what I want to know. Because I think Joe West like listens back to the end. And like I guess talks along in the car, you know.
LINDSAY: Ohhh.
ALEX: If, if these are songs are rehearsed, I have to assume he puts on, you know, we support our military and then just like–
LINDSAY: Yeah, that would be a good party trick to just memorize–
BOBBY: Yeah.
LINDSAY: –all of extra innings. Just do it karaoke or so- there is a there’s definitely a like, guy at a karaoke bar vibe to his music. Like that was especially on Blue Cowboy it was like, this just sounds like some guy getting up to do live band karaoke on like, kind of a slow night–
BOBBY: Right.
LINDSAY: –at a Honky Tonk in Nashville and, and then like, everyone else kind of starts filtering out politely. Not all at once, but like–
BOBBY: Lindsay, will you come do out at home, like karaoke with us?
LINDSAY: Yes.
BOBBY: Tipping Pitches outing to the local karaoke bar where they will definitely have the song out [1:16:12]–
LINDSAY: Monteros maybe, we’ll, we’ll bring it. Well, now that Alex has the CD.
BOBBY: Right, yeah.
LINDSAY: We can bring the CD with us and say–
BOBBY: Fuck this bad boy in, physical media, motherfuckers, let’s do it!
ALEX: Yup!
LINDSAY: Yeah, maybe we need to write to Joe West. Or to, to put it out there because he’s definitely listening right now and gonna edit his Wikipedia page according to this. But uhm, yeah, maybe we need like the instrumental track version–
ALEX: Right, do you, do you want the masters?
LINDSAY: [1:16:36] like for the remix. Yeah. Yeah, like–
BOBBY: Do you think he own masters? Do you think he got on that wave? And interesting thing about this album is that it was made in 2008, uploaded on Spotify, April 11, 2020.
ALEX: He was like, you know what the people read need right now?
BOBBY: He’s like, it’s dark times. No baseball, what they do need is my spoken word album.
ALEX: I can be their light.
LINDSAY: That’s an incredible detail. Yeah, I, I thought I didn’t realize it was from 2008, I thought it actually was a 2020 release. But this makes more sense. Yeah, we did need it, it’s, it’s what America needed, the troops needed, Tony Blair needed it.
BOBBY: Right. He made it right at the, right at the end of the Bush era, right before Obama came in and really ruined his America, you know.
LINDSAY: Yeah.
ALEX: Right, he was like, I gotta get all this out now, because under Obama, I won’t be able to say any of them.
BOBBY: Right.
LINDSAY: Yeah.
ALEX: They’ll take me away for this. Lindsay’s all ads. Thank you for indulging us. This was a lot of fun. We had fun, I hope the listeners had fun. I hope the listeners go and check out a couple of these songs, but not too many. 55 monthly listeners for Cowboy Joe West on Spotify. Hope that number doesn’t–
LINDSAY: Let’s get him up, let’s get him atleast a 100. Let’s crack the triple digits.
BOBBY: We’re doing ads now. Alex, anything to add before we, before we let Lindsay go on Diamond Dreams?
ALEX: I don’t think, I really appreciate you coming on this journey with us. And really, I, I hope he graces us with one more album–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –before he packs it in, right? He’s clearly got the time. And I want him to take it in a different direction. You know, can you do like, like an afro beat? Like, you know style album, right?
BOBBY: Jazz, reggae tone?
ALEX: Right, yeah, little house music. Like what are their tricks up his sleeve?
BOBBY: I will produce him.
ALEX: [1:18:23] clearly a musical [1:18:25].
BOBBY: I can do it, I can do it.
LINDSAY: Maybe some like trap country like we get kind–
ALEX: Ohh, country.
LINDSAY: –of like, hip hop crossover [1:18:31].
BOBBY: Even [1:18:33]
ALEX: Joe West [1:18:33] Lil Nas X?
BOBBY: I was gonna say, Joe West feature on Florida Georgia Line. Let’s do it!
LINDSAY: Like yeah, what the, the one, the conservative Florida Georgia Line guy. Didn’t they break up because they have different politics?
BOBBY: I don’t know.
LINDSAY: Which is like–
BOBBY: Is one of them–
LINDSAY: Said a lot–
BOBBY: –Florida, one of them is Georgia? Like I don’t–
LINDSAY: Yeah.
BOBBY: –really understand the dynamic of that dance.
LINDSAY: I think, I think it is. I just in closing, I want to read the headline of a review of the album that I found.
BOBBY: Oh, okay, yeah.
LINDSAY: Which is on cleveland.com And the headline just says, as a country singer, Joe West is a good umpire. Which often is like not true. But, yeah.
ALEX: But it’s a good roast.
LINDSAY: Honestly, the most generous thing I’ve ever heard someone say about Joe West.
BOBBY: It’s like it’s so if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all. He is Joe West.
LINDSAY: And Joe South, maybe.
BOBBY: We, we can’t confirm or deny that fact. Lindsay, where can people find your work?
LINDSAY: Uhm, in the New York Times. And on JoeWestFanpage.com, no. We need it, we need a name for his stand army.
ALEX: I know, yeah, guys, can we flood rate your music and get him–
LINDSAY: Blue Cowboy.
ALEX: –5 stars on all his albums?
LINDSAY: Yeah, yeah. I’ll work on it.
BOBBY: Well you, you have a lot of power in the, the audio, the music podcasting world now. These it’s drop the Joe West plug on podcasts challenge.
LINDSAY: It’s true, yeah. The next special episode of podcast is all this. No, we covered it, we really cover this. It was a true honor. This was unfortunately really fun.
BOBBY: You, do not under any circumstances have to hand it to Joe West, but it was fun. Thank you, Lindsay. This was so much fun. We appreciate you.
LINDSAY: Thank you, guys.
[1:20:21]
[Music Transition]
BOBBY: All right, thanks to LZ, thanks CJ dub. Thanks to you, Alex, for spending our hard earned cash to acquire the CD for burning it into an mp3 and sharing it with us. Really appreciate that. Has the added perspective of a couple days since we recorded that made you feel better, worse? About the same about the album? Has it grown on you at all? As you listen to it on the plane while you’re flying to the Bay Area?
ALEX: No, but it’s shame, I’m, I’m ashamed to admit that I had the song Blue Cowboy stuck in my head for like the next half day.
BOBBY: I, I, in your regular rotation, have you replaced Willie Nelson with Cowboy Joe West?
ALEX: Yeah, exactly. Willie, Sturgill Simpson, I mean, who, who needs any of them, right? I mean, Joe is the best of, of them all.
BOBBY: Countries making a little bit of a comeback, you know?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Got Zach Bryan said his name?
ALEX: Luke Bryan?
BOBBY: Luke Bryan. Zach Bryan is somebody, right? Isn’t he also a country album? Country artist?
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: Are there any other people with the last name Bryan?
ALEX: I, well, what we have learned is that there are four last names in country, right?
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: West, Bryan–
BOBBY: East, South, Bryan. All right. Before we get out of here, can we answer one listener question and good one that we got from the slack?
ALEX: Yep.
BOBBY: Nick T in the Slack asks, I know you guys aren’t stat heads to the degree that I am. But I’m sure you have some thoughts if you could completely remove a statistic from the baseball discourse, so that no one could ever talk about it again. What would you pick? Funny question.
ALEX: Such a good question.
BOBBY: Because it’s not just like, what stat is useless. It’s like, what stat is useless but also inspires the most annoying fucking people in the entire world talking about it.
ALEX: Yeah, is like remarkably influential.
BOBBY: I think I would get rid of, get rid of losses, team losses. Nobody ever loses, everybody gets a trophy. We’re all displaying for fun.
ALEX: That how it should be!
BOBBY: 162 and 0. No, I think my real answer, can I, can I like modify this? I don’t want to wipe this stat off the face of the earth. I want to make it, I want to go back to a time when it was not publicly available.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Expected Batting Average.
ALEX: All right
BOBBY: Like, listen, I respect all of the people who use Expected Batting- Expected Batting Average. I respect all of the people are like xwOBA, or whatever it might be. Like expected outcomes of Statcast related events. And I understand how it informs sort of like future prediction of how well a player is going to do. And I understand why that might be useful to a team, I understand why that might be useful to a Sabermetric minded writer. But I just think there’s a lot of people who just like go to Statcast, or like see a screenshot of Statcast going around Twitter, and they’re like, well, that should have been a hit 90% of the time. And I’m kind of like, qualitatively didn’t we know, know that that was true before? Like, if you smoke [1:23:40]–
ALEX: Right, I mean, that’s how, that’s how probabilities work, I’m pretty sure.
BOBBY: And I feel like this will be this is a controversial choice for like, for Sabermetric people, because I think Expected Batting Average, is extremely useful to those people. And adds to a lot of people’s experience. But I just think that there are so many people who are just like, well, we got hosed by Expected Batting Average in this game, and we should have won. Well, it’s not that simple, really. And I think that the oversimplificate- oversimplification of it leads to really frustrating discussions. And perhaps this is a bias of mine, because last year, there was like this whole thing between Braves fans and Mets fans about how every time they played, the Mets got all of these like weak low, low Expected Batting Average hits, and that they weren’t actually good this whole time, and that they just kept getting lucky against the Braves. Even Spencer Strider leaned into this where he was like, I felt like they got a lot of lucky hits today. And it was a whole talking point. And like, there’s just more ways to be good at baseball than hitting it hard where they aren’t, you know? Like there, there’s a lot of other things that you can be good at. And also, you know, Batting Average is not the only thing that makes a team score runs. There is like walks, there’s conversion of runners in scoring position. Like these are all things that while hard to predict, and while hard to rely on. Do end up mattering in a single season, which is still okay to care about.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: So Expected batting average is the thing that I would get rid of publicly. Allow teams to still use it privately, but publicly, I’m like, maybe we could just excise this from our memories.
ALEX: Well, I mean, the thing with a lot of these sort of Statcast analytics is that, again, statistical literacy among fans is middling at best, right? Like a lot of these stats are descriptive, not predictive, right? They say, here is what has usually happened on balls hit like the one that was just hit, right? And fans are–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –like, Oh, okay, well, so that means this should have been a home run.
BOBBY: Yes, exactly. There’s an entitlement that comes with Expected Batting Average, or, you know, like the Would it Dong sort of situation. Like this would have been a home run if it was hit in a different ballpark. That I think, undercuts the fucking point of baseball.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Which is that it’s a really hard game that sometimes–
ALEX: And it’s fucking random!
BOBBY: –it’s really unlucky and [1:25:57].
ALEX: Yeah!
BOBBY: And that’s why it’s fun, and that’s why we all like it. And I think we’re straying a little bit too far from that. We all are, like, expecting it to play out. Like it’s MLB: The Show and you squared went up, and you’re supposed to get a home run from it. That bothers me, it also, it’s like, it’s very similar to the straight of thing when we talked about, uhm, the ump scorecards thing. Or it’s like the expected increase in runs for this, because of this call would have been .08 runs and that would have caused, you know, the Mets to beat the Marlins or something. Like, that’s not how that works. It’s impossible to say for sure whether that would have led to anything. And I think that that is, uhm, it’s unfortunate, because like that, those are, these are additive things to be able to look at, look at the game and describe what could have happened with a statistic. And I think that it’s very valuable to a lot of people. But to the large majority of people, I think that they just like, get personally offended by it somehow. And I hate that it’s so negative, sort of negative way to experience the game.
ALEX: Yeah, I, I completely agree.
BOBBY: And admittedly, I find myself slipping into that negativity sometimes too. Like if a Pete Alonzo, you know, fly out has an .880 Expected Batting Average, I feel a little hard done. But if it was like 2009, I would have just been like, damn, it just missed that one.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Kind of missed that [1:27:12], you know.
ALEX: Yeah, my mind initially went to something like Launch Angle, right? Which has informed so much awful discourse over the last few years. But again, I also like I find value in them, right? I think they are informative to fans, to media, to teams, and, and clearly to players, right?
BOBBY: Not to retired players, though. Don’t even utter the phrase Launch Angle around them.
ALEX: Right. Well, because they’re because before the home runs didn’t have angles, right? Before we learned what Launch Angles were, they didn’t exist.
BOBBY: The Launch Angle was zero for every–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –home run that Alex Rodriguez ever hit.
ALEX: I’m cool with getting rid of saves.
BOBBY: Nice!
ALEX: Just, just don’t really serve a purpose.
BOBBY: I like mainly because then it, then it, it takes away from the lore of Yankees legend Mariano Rivera, I could get behind this.
ALEX: I mean, I initially thought–
BOBBY: Billy Wagner was a better player than Mariano Rivera then.
ALEX: I, I’m. I’m kind of, of the same mind about Pitcher Wins, right, which feels like a little little easier. But like these are two stats that not only aren’t really useful in, in describing how well a player is doing. But are also used so heavily, right? It’s not like they are being misused, it’s that they’re being used.
BOBBY: I’m going the other way on Pitcher Wins.
ALEX: You will, you want what is the other way more Pitcher Wins?
BOBBY: I think we’ve undervalued Pitcher Wins now. Listen, did you win?
ALEX: I am!
BOBBY: Did you win? Did you get the win? Did you put your team, obviously it’s not the only thing that we should be talking about. But also like, if there was a pitcher, theoretically speaking, who had a 2.00 ERA and went 0 and 12, there’s, that indicates to me that something else is going wrong. It is not nothing the way that people have. Obviously, that’s it’s an overcorrection because it’s been overvalued for so long, the concept of wins? Nevermore, never wasn’t more overvalued than when Rick Porcello won the AL Cy Young because, because he just won 20 games, but there was like 17 pitchers that were better than him that year.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I think from a qualitative perspective of baseball, which, in modern discourse, in modern baseball discourse is less important than quantitative perspectives. I think that it still tells you something about how the game went if a starting pitcher is the person who came in and got the win. I think that maybe we can get rid of Pitcher Wins for like relievers, you know? Like I don’t need to know whether they got the win or the loss because it says absolutely nothing about what they did in the game, pretty much. It’s like more circumstantial, much more circumstantial than for starters. But like, I don’t know, maybe this is because I was like, around CC for so long. And he clearly cared so much about wins and getting to 300 wins, and like staying in the game long enough to get a win. I kind of, I mean, I kind of think that that’s still something.
ALEX: Well, I mean, I don’t, I don’t doubt that, like it’s meaningful for players, but it’s meaningful, because that’s the way the game has been designed is for them to be meaningful, right? You have to get to five innings to get that win, right? whatever.
BOBBY: But don’t you want to get to five innings?
ALEX: I mean–
BOBBY: Because if you don’t–
ALEX: Yeah, but I–
BOBBY: –if you go four and two thirds, no runs 100 pitches though. By design, the rest of your team still has to do more for you than you did for them as a pitcher. And so I think that you still kind of like didn’t do your job. I know that sounds, sounds ridiculous. I feel like I, like feel like Chris Russo talking about this. Like, I feel like mad dog, I feel like my friend says it. But like, I don’t know, I, I, I just something about it, I still kind of liked the pitcher win.
ALEX: Okay, wow, this is our new DH.
BOBBY: You’re coming, you’re looking at me like I have 5 [1:31:25].
ALEX: I’m, I like, I’m stunned. I just, I mean–
BOBBY: You [1:31:30] you hung tough!
ALEX: Right, but, but also the other thing is like it goes the other way, right? Like you can have an awful game.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And get a fuck, and your team backs you up. And, so they get might be descriptive in saying you were a good pitcher that gotten lucky. But it also rewards you, it also rewards you even if you do poorly, right? Like you just pointed out with Rick Porcello who didn’t do poorly but was bailed out by his baseball team behind him.
BOBBY: Yes, it rewards you if you do poorly, but it can also hurtly- hurt you if you do well. I feel like it kind of balances itself out. It’s not, I’m not saying it’s the end all be all of analyzing pitchers.
ALEX: That is, that’s what you’re saying.
BOBBY: Look, look you’re talking to a fifth guy. I love FIP, okay? You can’t find as many people who feel as strongly about FIP and Pitcher Wins as me. I don’t think I’m walking contradiction. I just think that like there’s an aesthetic version of the game that I like that incentivizes pitchers to stay in longer than four innings, period. And, and there aren’t a whole lot of stats out there that still value that other than Pitcher Wins. And so I guess I am backed into a corner and saying that Pitcher Wins are still kind of important to me.
ALEX: That’s really unfortunate that you think Corbin Burnes should be paid less than arbitration because he didn’t get enough wins. That sucks! I’m just gonna say it.
BOBBY: This version of my world, we don’t have arbitration.
ALEX: Okay. Bending the rules a little bit but, but all allow.
BOBBY: But like, okay, that’s a great example though. Zack Wheeler should have won the Cy Young that year. Not because he had more wins necessarily, but because he was effective for more innings, way more innings, like 50 more innings. I think we overcorrected a little bit there. And I don’t really even remember what it amounted to whether Corbin Burnes won, or Zack Wheeler won more games that year like Pitcher Wins. But like, kind of objectively speaking, Zack Wheeler did more for his team that year. Because the Phillies bullpen fucking sucked. And so he stayed into the eighth inning repeatedly for a team that needed him to stay into the eighth inning. And the Brewers didn’t need Corbin Burnes to stay into the eighth inning, I guess. Or he just is not the type of pitcher who can do that. But like, I don’t know, I think that there were sort of like missing, I don’t know, you know, like that, of course WAR accounts for this, too. But we’re missing something that is like not quite on the page about starting pitchers going deeper into games.
ALEX: So more, I think what you’re saying is more teams should have bad bullpen so their starters are forced to go longer. Like if the Phillies can distribute their strategy to every baseball team, we’d be golden. The 300 inning pitcher would be back.
BOBBY: I would love that.
ALEX: That’d be great.
BOBBY: I don’t know, but I, I, I also feel like we’re kind of in a feedback loop right now where like because, like we’re, we’re, we’re never going to, pitchers are, it’s never going to back the trends now. Like we’re never going back to pitchers throwing more. It’s always going to be pitchers throwing less. Kind of think that’s bad. And I’m not afraid to say it.
ALEX: You’re getting, you’re getting the hot takes here.
BOBBY: I was the person that was like send Matt Harvey back out for the ninth inning.
ALEX: Yup!
BOBBY: I was! I believe that–
ALEX: I know!
BOBBY: –said that to you. In that–
ALEX: I know!
BOBBY: –I was like, you know what, he deserves it. He earned the right to lose this game.
ALEX: So do you think–
BOBBY: Sounds [1:35:09] great when I put it that way?
ALEX: –do you think, does he deserve the loss then there?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Because he did, he did everything she could have for his team. Maybe didn’t even make the call to go back out there. Maybe that’s his managers call.
BOBBY: Well it was his managers call to take him out. And then he had to talk him out of it.
ALEX: Well–
BOBBY: What a surreal thing, like something that only could have happened in 2015. Like because, because–
ALEX: [1:35:33]
BOBBY: –in an earlier era of baseball, it wouldn’t have even been a conversation, they would have sent the pitcher back out.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And in a later era of baseball, it wouldn’t have even been a conversation, he would have been out after the seventh inning. So that sweet spot, that like seven years there in the middle between 2009 and 2016 is the only time where an argument like that could have happened. And of course, it happened to Matt Harvey, with Terry Collins, with Mets fans lives depending on it, you know?
ALEX: Yeah, the scriptwriters have given up on this one.
BOBBY: Okay, so you’re getting rid of my beloved Pitcher Wins as well as saves. And I’m getting rid of Expected Batting Average. Nick, thank you. I hope that we sufficiently answered your question. Thank you, again to Lindsay Zoladz, thank you to everybody for listening. As a reminder next week on the show, our interview with Evan Drellich, about Winning Fixes Everything. Maybe we’ll ask him a little bit about this economic reform committee if we have time for it. But primarily going to be focused on Evans book about the Astros, not just the sign stealing scandal, really the entire corporate restructuring. It’s a really interesting book, by the way. I’m like 100 pages into it right now as we speak. And it has a lot to say about modern American corporate structure, and Jim Crane. And even war profiteering? So if you have the book, and you’re waiting to start read. If you have, if you have the book, and you’re looking for reasons to start reading it, this could be a reason. If you don’t have the book, you’re on the fence about buying it, this could be a reason for buying it. If you’re not in either of those two categories, that’s okay, too. We’re going to have the conversation in a way that will be accessible to people who kind of just know the story generally, which most people do by this point. I still think the book is very enriching in adding context and laying, just laying the facts out in a timeline. Laying the facts outs in a timeline that is like incredibly revealing by the nature–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –of the way that they’re laid out.
ALEX: Well, well and discusses why, why baseball was ripe for this sort of scandal, right?
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: The, the sequence of events that effectively enabled the Astros to do this sort of thing. And, and showed how they’re just, I mean, they’re bad actors in a bad system.
BOBBY: Do you think we need to bring in Jeff Luhnow type into the Tipping Pitches media empire. Just a disrupter, like a little–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –asshole, who just like wants to do things his own little way. He’s definitely not does not seem like a good thing.
ALEX: Yeah, one day I don’t feel like either of us really embody that the Luhnow ethos very well.
BOBBY: I was gonna say which one of us is Jeff Luhnow which one of us is [1:38:10]?
ALEX: I was gonna ask, which is Jim Crane?
BOBBY: A. Rod is Jim Crane.
ALEX: There you go.
BOBBY: He’s the, he’s the big business tycoon involved in this operation. Thank you, everybody for listening, we will be back in one week.
[1:38:26]
[Music]
[1:38:38]
[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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