The 2023 Tipping Pitches Banned Topics

Bobby and Alex theorize who in the baseball world might’ve been sweating the SVB bank run, before each ceremoniously banning three topics from the podcast for 2023. Then, they answer a handful of listeners questions about the World Baseball Classic, a parody movie of the Houston Astros, John Smoltz, and more.

Links:
Join the Tipping Pitches Patreon
Tipping Pitches merchandise
Songs featured in this episode:
Paul McCartney and the Wings — “Band on the Run” • John Denver — “Take Me Home, Country Roads” • Booker T & the M.G.’s — “Green Onions”

Episode Transcript

[INTRO MUSIC]

Tell us a little bit about what you saw and, and, and being able to relay that message to Cora when you watch Kimbrel pitching and kind of help out so he wasn’t Tipping his Pitches. So Tipping Pitches, we hear about it all the time. People are home on the stand, what Tipping Pitches it’s all about? That’s amazing! That’s remarkable.

BOBBY:  Alex, I have an important question for you start the podcast of the week.

ALEX:  Always do, Bobby.

BOBBY:  Always do. You know what, some, some are calling me the greatest interviewer of our times. I’d only interview you and sometimes baseball writers.

ALEX:  Yeah. You know, I’ve always said you’re the Howard Stern of baseball media.

BOBBY:  Why are you trying to derail the podcast this early on? I’m more of a Barbara Walters, I feel like. I’m the Barbara Walters–

ALEX:  Yup! Uh-huh.

BOBBY:  –of niche leftist baseball media, just asking the hard hitting questions that nobody wants to answer, but we know the world needs to hear. That hard hitting question that nobody wants to answer that the world needs to hear this week is, did we screw up last week, by leaving off Clayton Kershaw? Slack conversation going on, in Slack, in text messages from unnamed family members who are related to you.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  About leaving off Clayton Kershaw. So my question is, did we screw up by leaving off Clayton Kershaw?

ALEX:  No, seriously, you’re gonna cower to the masses?

BOBBY:  Yes. This is what I was hoping you would say. They weren’t in the room with us.

ALEX:  Exactly. They didn’t–

BOBBY:  Grinding out the list.

ALEX:  –understand creative process.

BOBBY:  Yeah.

ALEX:  You know, we thought long and hard. Whether or not Kershaw’s name came up at all, whether or not we thought about him or forgot about him is irrelevant to the entire argument.

BOBBY:  Did you, let me ask you this, did you think about him at all until he came up in conversation on the episode?

ALEX:  I’m a little worried to say my actual answer.

BOBBY:  Because you did think about him and you chose not to or because he didn’t even cross–

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  –your mind.

ALEX:  That’s for the listener to divine.

BOBBY:  Okay. Just, I gotta be honest, he’s not famous! All Right? He was on New Girl, I get it. We get it, he was on New Girl, okay? That’s the only point in fame. He doesn’t want to be famous. Where does he go every offseason? If you wanted to be famous, you would go somewhere where he’s seen, not to Texas.

ALEX:  Yeah. I mean–

BOBBY:  To never be heard from.

ALEX:  –like, he’s objectively really well-known by baseball fans. But he doesn’t strike me as like a baseball celebrity?

BOBBY:  No.

ALEX:  If, if that makes sense, like he doesn’t have that, he doesn’t Have that like red carpet aura that I think some of the other people who we named–

BOBBY:  Yeah.

ALEX:  –do. And that’s no fault of his own. I think as you mentioned, he has no interest in cultivating that side of his personality, and good for him.

BOBBY:  I think, I think he’s like Jesse Plemons, well-respected as one of the great actors/players of our time. Definitely, probably a good hang. Definitely probably that’s a podcast. Definitely probably a good hang, liked by everybody within their field. But if he steps on the red carpet, no one’s gonna be like there’s the most famous person in the world. It’s just not, it’s not there.

ALEX:  Incredible to compare Jesse Plemons to an NL West pitcher, and have it not be Logan Webb. That was good, that was good.

BOBBY:  I am at the top of my game right now, you know. I got a, I got a latte in me, I got a Negroni in hand. We’re going to do a fun podcast today, that is hopefully going to infuriate fewer people than last week’s did. And I’m excited to do that. So without further ado, we’re going to do the 2023 Tipping Pitches Banned Topics. We’re not allowed to talk about them, the banned topics, not allowed. But before we do that, I am Bobby Wagner.

ALEX:  I’m Alex Bazeley.

BOBBY:  The man who forgot about Clayton Kershaw, and you are listening to Tipping Pitches.

[3:52]

[Music Theme]

BOBBY:  Okay, thank you to this week’s new patrons, who have not cancelled their Patreon membership, simply because we left Clayton Kershaw off of the 30 A-Listers list. Those new patrons this week are, Michael, Gilbert, Keith, Mike. and Kyle. A Michael and a Mike, all in one week. We’re really diversifying. No, Alex’ this week. What’s up dude?

ALEX:  I know, I got to–

BOBBY:  Check the group chat.

ALEX:  –I got to go shake the tree again.

BOBBY:  Exactly.

ALEX:  I know there are a few more out there.

BOBBY:  We get a new Alex like every three days.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  It’s really unbelievable. I don’t know what’s going on there, something supernatural.

ALEX:  No, the rate of production over there in the factory is just really–

BOBBY:  Factory? Are you insinuating that you’re like the foreman of a factory of Alex’s signing up for the Tipping Pitches patron I carry on?

ALEX:  Well, that sounds pretty good the way, you know, putting it like that.

BOBBY:  Yeah.

ALEX:  I was, I was suggesting that I am, I am a product–

BOBBY:  Oh.

ALEX:  –of, of said factory. You know, just like we’re all products of the factory of life.

BOBBY:  The extent to which I am losing this metaphor I cannot even express, so we’re just gonna keep that one through.

ALEX:  The more we lose it, the better it gets, I think. To those of you who want to be like Mike and Michael and the rest of our lovely patrons, you can go to patreon.com\tippingpitches.

BOBBY:  That’s a forward slash.

ALEX:  That is a forward slash.

BOBBY:  Do not put in a backslash, it’ll still take you to the same place but it’ll be the wrong link.

ALEX:  And it’s gonna look weird.

BOBBY:  Yeah. It’ll just actually redirect you to the, the Fort Knox.

ALEX:  Right, yeah. Lots of fun stuff there. As noted, access to the Tipping Pitches Slack where you can come in and tell us how disappointed in us you are.

BOBBY:  Chastised us.

ALEX:  That, that we forgot.

BOBBY:  Lamb-base us.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  Critique us productively, unproductively? Inbox us, as some might say.

ALEX:  Yep. Regrettably, actually, all of the, all of the Patreon money we invested in Silicon Valley Bank.

BOBBY:  Yes!

ALEX:  Which is kind of a weird time to bring this up, but uhm–

BOBBY:  Okay, I’ve been waiting, like 10 days to talk about this with you.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  Yeah, SVB, lay it all out there for me, what happens? You know, because, okay, the SVB thing broke, it was like, a couple of days before the Oscars. I was like, ooh, it’s Jimmy Kimmel gonna touch on this and his Oscar speech, but no–

ALEX:  No!

BOBBY:  –it was too much of a coward.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  You know, I thought he kind of shied away from the SVB jokes, because he probably had some money in there.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  I thought he wasn’t as honest as he could have been. And as the next best thing from a cultural perspective to the Oscars, the Tipping Pitches podcast, I feel like we need to comment on it. So, SVB, our Lehman Brothers? Question mark?

ALEX:  Odds that Alex Rodriguez had some sort of financial tie

BOBBY:  Dude, they didn’t, they’re not even putting that on the books. That’s a way too guaranteed.

ALEX:  I know.

BOBBY:  Like, like, they’re, they’re, they’re not taking those bets.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  But it’s backed by big Biden, he saved them. Biden swept in and saved A-Rod.

ALEX:  Yup.

BOBBY:  Did you have any money in SVB? I guess, did we have any money in SVB?

ALEX:  I don’t actually know.

BOBBY:  We didn’t get an email.

ALEX:  That’s right.

BOBBY:  We got an email from our banking app that we use for the Tipping Pitches podcast. They were like, so you’ve heard about–

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  –SVB?

ALEX:  Here’s what you need to know.

BOBBY:  Here’s what you need to know from our small banking community, and that’s–

ALEX:  Right. And they were like, like they were like, nothing will change.

BOBBY:  It reminded me of like early days of COVID, where everyone in their, every single company and their brother needed to email you to be like, here’s what we’re doing to take COVID Seriously, and then like three months later, after George Floyd was murdered, and every single company had to email you to be like, here’s why we stand against murdering people. You know, it’d be like, thank you Meineke Car Care, I really appreciate your bold and brave stance–

ALEX:  Stance.

BOBBY:  –against police brutality.

ALEX:  Lots of discourse around how Silicon Valley Bank went bankrupt, because it was too woke.

BOBBY:  Oh, yeah.

ALEX:  And I’m here to say that it’s because it wasn’t woke enough.

BOBBY:  Woke enough, yeah.

ALEX:  There were people complaining that there were women on the board, right?

BOBBY:  The Wall Street Journal–

ALEX:  Yes, The Wall Street Journal list–

BOBBY:  –editorial page was like–

ALEX:  –was upset about that.

BOBBY:  –they were too concerned with diversity to were they’re sharing the funds. Well, that is a, a heinous bad faith take. It is also objectively amazing take artistry by them. To see what happened and be like this is because of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

ALEX:  Right. Famously, white men have never caused a financial meltdown before.

BOBBY:  Bank run.

ALEX:  Certainly not in this century.

BOBBY:  There are no documentaries that you can watch about white people causing problems in the global economy.

ALEX:  No.

BOBBY:  Those don’t exist. They literally don’t.

ALEX:  Anyway, I just wanted to pour one out real quick. I’m pouring my Negroni on the ground here.

BOBBY:  Oh, no. It’s always on the ground–

ALEX:  Steve’s got me.

BOBBY:  [9:03] looking he is, come on. For SVB.

ALEX:  Exactly.

BOBBY:  We got to stop with the, with, with three letter acronyms for things. Because SVB, S- SPF, there’s too many things going on to keep track of that are all like–

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  –vaguely made up financial–

ALEX:  SVB and SBF.

BOBBY:  You know, when, when I heard about this bank, which I had never heard of before–

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  –until there was a bank ru- bank runs are hilarious, by the way.

ALEX:  What do you mean, everyone just asked for their money back? Don’t, don’t you have it?

BOBBY:  Exactly. Exactly, it’s like you had one job, have the money.

ALEX:  Yup.

BOBBY:  People asked for it and you just didn’t have it. It’d be like a baseball team going out there and being like, alright, time to play- time to play baseball, can we Have the bucket of balls? And [9:48] be like, sorry.

ALEX:  Actually, we sold all of the balls as long–

BOBBY:  To other teams.

ALEX:  –[9:52] investments.

BOBBY:  So that we can have more baseballs in the future.

ALEX:  Right, exactly. And then the interest rate on baseball, Rob Manfred takes a baseball for–

BOBBY:  Yes.

ALEX:  –every 10 that we have.

BOBBY:  Right.

ALEX:  Now that longtime investment doesn’t look so good.

BOBBY:  And he keeps them on his person at all times because he’s very financially secured.

ALEX:  Yes.

BOBBY:  Tracking [10:10], bags of baseball [10:13]. SVB the name of it, Silicon Valley Bank, it almost makes it seem like it was like some sort of public bank, you know. When you name it after, like an area, because it’s not like Wells Fargo, you know. Or–

ALEX:  That it is not.

BOBBY:  TD Bank or any of these other banks where it’s like, okay, you kind of understand that this is a private endeavor. Chase Bank, JP Morgan, those are the same company, by the way. Sure. SVB. I was like, oh, this is just like, you know, the, the government associated bank, that all of these companies who get government funding and stuff use and it’s like, oh, what’s going on this news story, then it just turns out, it’s like a slush fund? Everything turns out to be a slush fund.

ALEX:  I’m sorry, I could have, I could have told you. Sorry, it’s your bank, literally for venture capitalists called Silicon Valley Bank?

BOBBY:  Never has money been more fake, never. And we’ve had some low periods for the reality of money–

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  –in this country’s history. But this is, this is rock bottom.

ALEX:  We will cover your billions of dollars in deposits at no cost to the taxpayers. So where, where’s that coming from? He’s just printing more?

BOBBY:  No, dude, it’s coming from, it’s coming from Fort Knox. They just have a couple stacks in there, you know, show hands him the lock and key and he’s like, you just get in there. Who other than Alex Rodriguez in the baseball world, here are you briefly concerned about financially when you heard that SVB was going under, other than the owners who, you know. Although, baseball owners are not like VC guys, they don’t–

ALEX:  No. Except for one, Steve Cohen, who–

BOBBY:  Take it down a notch.

ALEX:  –absolutely add money in SVB.

BOBBY:  You think?

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  I just feel like he, at this point just has his own SVB, SCB.

ALEX:  Right, called the US taxpayers. I mean, certainly I was worried about Ross Stripling state of mind, right? Like, obviously, from the outset.

BOBBY:  See, but, okay, why, though? Because you’re now, you’re just talking about investment banking.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  Investment banking and venture capital are two different things. I know that they’re not, but they are.

ALEX:  I mean, I mean, yes. but you know, we’ve getting real finance hours here.

BOBBY:  Yes.

ALEX:  You know, we’ve seen the ripples that these sort of major financial events can have on the–

BOBBY:  Oh, I see.

ALEX:  –economy.

BOBBY:  Right. So, so a VC firm goes under, for billions and billions of dollars. And then all of the investment banks start to get a little bit scared.

ALEX:  Well, I mean–

BOBBY:  And they start to pull money out of it.

ALEX:  Did, did Ross have investments in SVB, right? Did he own any stock there?

BOBBY:  See, this is the point in time in which it would be beneficial for me to actually have known anything about what Ross Stripling does on Wall Street. You know, like previously, I’ve just made jokes that he’s just really diversified in the FinTech space. I don’t know what that means, though. But my understanding is that he was getting down with publicly traded companies. He wasn’t like getting into a VC firm zone. He wasn’t like an early investor in Uber. I could be wrong about that, though. Maybe he is, which went, in which case, I don’t know why he’s still playing. Retire big, dawg.

ALEX:  I will note, he’s been frighteningly silent on the issue on his social accounts. I, Ross Stripling as the voice of–

BOBBY:  FinTech.

ALEX:  –FinTech in baseball. You kind of have a responsibility here.

BOBBY:  When I say FinTech, you say what? Ross Stripling.

ALEX:  Right. The technology based on like fin, right? Like dolphin fins. And–

BOBBY:  Booo.

ALEX:  –I won’t lie, it’s kind of what my mind goes to.

BOBBY:  It just makes her Ross Stripling in a board meeting, and they’re presenting him like, dolphin-based technologies.

ALEX:  Right, exactly. And he’s like, yes, that one.

BOBBY:  That one, here’s 20,000.

ALEX:  That, that fins goes crazy.

BOBBY:  I have no idea what’s going on, honestly, I don’t know what we’re even talking about. I think we should do the banned topics.

ALEX:  So you’re saying we’re banning SVB from discussion on the podcast?

BOBBY:  Absolutely not. No, ’cause there is a lot of potential, growth potential for the SVB storyline–

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  –heading into this season. The only thing that I regret is that the bank didn’t go under and there’s no legal cases about it now. Because now we will not have that information revealed to us in a court of law. It’s all just going to be swept under the Joe Biden rug.

ALEX:  That’s, I mean, okay, so you don’t believe in forgiveness, or restorative justice? You don’t think everyone deserves a second chance?

BOBBY:  Get out of here! Get out. Get out, leave the studio, restorative justice, revenge on venture capitals. I got some restorative justice in my [15:03]–

ALEX:  [15:03]

BOBBY:  –okay, now we really need to move on before we get ourselves in trouble. It’s the Banned Topics of 2023. God, I’m excited for this. I love this. This was fun last year. I would like to do an audit of our Banned Topics from last year. Here they were, you banned three topics, I banned four, once again, one up on you. No runner on second talk. that was my first banned topic. The ghost runner, as it is incorrectly referred to, more accurately the zombie runner or the Manfred’s. Man. I banned us from talking about that because there’s nothing new to say. Discourse around Tony La Russa being a red ass, specifically. You know, we were allowed to talk about managerial decisions that he made. But we weren’t allowed to talk about his cultural clash with the White Sox clubhouse. I banned us from talking about the NFT Griffes of individual baseball players. I left it open for us to talk about the league as a whole and their NFT grifting. But I didn’t want to talk about deals that specific players signed.

ALEX:  Right. Luckily, we didn’t have to because they all fell apart.

BOBBY:  Pretty quickly. And then I also banned to the topic, is baseball dying in the culture? Because I feel as though that one has been slowly unfolding over the course of 10 years. Is baseball dying? Is it the next sport to go the way of boxing? All of that. And I feel like we did a good job of not talking about that.

ALEX:  I agree, because I still like I don’t care, right? Like, it kind of doesn’t make a difference to me.

BOBBY:  Yeah.

ALEX:  You know, like–

BOBBY:  The people listening to this pod are not going to stop watching baseball.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  So I think we’re good.

ALEX:  I’m like, I’m like, when you say dying, do you mean is Rob Manfred trying to dismantle the sport? Worth discussing. When you say it got lower ratings on Fox this, this year than last year?

BOBBY:  Sure, yeah.

ALEX:  Right, that’s numbers on a Spreadsheet to–

BOBBY:  Exactly.

ALEX:  –man, I could still watch the game, and I did, so.

BOBBY:  My friend and colleague Bryan Curtis at The Ringer tweets after every single sporting event. Or just really anytime, so there’s discourse around TV ratings. TV ratings will not affect your life.

ALEX:  Yup.

BOBBY:  And it’s just remains true, incredibly true statement. And he just never gets tired of sharing that sentiment. Your banned topics last year were, the universal DH, which I do feel like I remember us talking about that once.

ALEX:  I think we did, yeah.

BOBBY:  So we violated one of yours. You banned, in retrospect, this was a sort of prisoner of the moment banning by you, but you banned the discourse over hats. Like new hat designs that were being dropped by New Era. Like seemingly every eight hours.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  Which those that sort of felt like a PSYOP, the way that they were dropping those hats on to Twitter.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  Trying to get reactions out of people.

ALEX:  But for like six months, it was all they did.

BOBBY:  Yeah.

ALEX:  And all everyone was in baseball was talking about.

BOBBY:  Right.

ALEX:  And then they just stopped, they were just like, no, we’re out of ideas.

BOBBY:  I was like, oh, anytime there’s a new musicians like this person, X person is an industry plant.

ALEX:  Yup.

BOBBY:  It’s like that’s how I felt about the hats. These are hat industry plants. Our third topic, I regret to tell you, we just did a God awful job of not talking about. Our third topic that you banned, was Bob Nightengale.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  This one was in one ear out the other.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  We banned it, and I just forgot probably the next week.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  We just kept on talking about him. So it’s, it’s, it’s time for mea culpa, what do we do to apologize for that failure?

ALEX:  Only talk about–

BOBBY:  Right.

ALEX:  –Bob Nightengale–

BOBBY:  Exactly.

ALEX:  –for the rest of the podcast.

BOBBY:  First, we unban him in fact, we promote him–

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  –with a segment every week. What’s Bob talking about?

ALEX:  Well, so this is a great way–

BOBBY:  What’s Bob got to do with it?

ALEX:  –to introduce our guests that we have with us right here, right now.

BOBBY:  To talk about Silicon Valley Bank, please welcome in Bob Nightengale. He calls it like Sonoma County Bank. Okay, so, in honor of the baseball is dying, one being the longest standing topic that we had banned. And also in honor of I, I asked people in the Slack, what would they like to see us banned this year? And that came up again. So there is some popular sentiment among Tipping Pitches fans and listeners to continue that ban. So I’m just gonna go ahead and use my executive power here to say that that is still banned. It is remaining banned. Is there anything else on this list that you would say, you would like to say, let’s roll that band over? Let’s re up that banned. Let’s exercise the Tipping Pitches option on that banned.

ALEX:  I think Tony La Russa Red ass discourse still applies. Like we’ve kind of exhausted that well.

BOBBY:  Yeah, he’s also, he’s not the manager the White Sox anymore.

ALEX:  Exactly why we should retire it, you know. Exactly why we’re not going to talk about it.

BOBBY:  I can tell in your eyes that you just did not remember that. [19:58]. Woohoo! Love to do a baseball podcast.

ALEX:  Yup.

BOBBY:  Yeah. I mean, I’m fine With keeping that band going. Although I don’t know if we need to waste the option on it. Because I don’t anticipate that’s talking about that. But yeah, I’m good with that. What else? You want to bring hats back into the fold? You know–

ALEX:  You know, I–

BOBBY:  –you start talking about him again?

ALEX:  –I do want to start talking about the universal DH again.

BOBBY:  Okay.

ALEX:  I want to–

BOBBY:  Break!

ALEX:  –I want to bring that back.

BOBBY:  Let’s do it right now.

ALEX:  Okay.

BOBBY:  A fun way to do this would have been we ceremoniously unbanned these things, and we have to talk about them each for five.

ALEX:  Right. Find something to say about the runner on second.

BOBBY:  Do you feel like Tony La Russa was a culture clash with the White Sox young talent last year?

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  Go, 30 seconds, go.

ALEX:  No. No, he was exactly what the team needed at the time.

BOBBY:  He’s a Hall of Famer. Put some respect on his name. Okay, so then let’s do it, let’s go to the 2023 Banned Topics.

ALEX:  Hell, yeah.

BOBBY:  We have being prepared three banned topics. I do have some honorable mentions here. I’m curious if any of my honorable mentions will be included in your list. So I started off last year, while you started off this year? What is your first Banned Topic from the Tipping Pitches podcast in 2023? As a reminder, for people who did not listen to this segment last year, we banned this topic, one of us banned this topic, the other person has not heard the others list. And we are not allowed to talk about it on the podcast until next year, at this time, when you do the 2024- yeah, sometimes we might make a mistake, you know, we’re not perfect. Sometimes we over insure our bank deposits.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  You know, under insure our bank deposits? I don’t really know.

ALEX:  Yeah, sometimes the, the long term extension we signed the unclarity, doesn’t work out, right?

BOBBY:  Okay, no spoilers. We banned it from the podcast. It’s sort of a gray area as to whether we’re allowed to talk about it on Twitter. I think that where we landed last year was that we are allowed, but it’s sort of against the spirit of this. If it comes up and we can make an easy quick joke for some, for some–

ALEX:  Cloud.

BOBBY:  –low calorie retweets, you know.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  Then that’s fine. Empty calorie retweets, that’s all we’re all about–

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  –in the Tipping Pitches podcast. But it is banned from the podcast as soon as it is uttered, and agreed upon on this show. So the stakes, some might say they’ve never been higher.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  Okay? First topic, your up.

ALEX:  First topic, maybe the toughest one on here. This might be this year’s Bob Nightengale.

BOBBY:  In the sense that we just don’t follow this.

ALEX:  Correct, yeah.

BOBBY:  Just ignore it.

ALEX:  I’d like to man discussion of owners who are shocked at other owners spending money.

BOBBY:  Okay. Can you give an example.

ALEX:  I could give dozens. I just, I, I every four or six weeks, there’s an article.

BOBBY:  Yeah.

ALEX:  And it’s like an anonymous executive says, I don’t understand how what Steve Cohen is doing is sustainable.

BOBBY:  Sure.

ALEX:  And then we spend the next week saying, this is really representative of what’s wrong with the sport today. and then we go on the podcast, and we talk about how–

BOBBY:  You’re banning just one of our core topics.

ALEX:  Exactly. Because–

BOBBY:  This was kind of hard this year for me to think of stuff that we could ban that would not drastically hinder the content of the show. You know, like, should we ban payroll discourse?

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  That crossed my mind, and then I was like, gotta be honest, I think the people want us to talk about payroll.

ALEX:  Or our episodes would be a lot shorter. Uh-hmm.

BOBBY:  I’m hearing from the, the, the heads out there, the TP heads.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  They want the long pods. They want long pods. And I’m here to say, I’m trying. I’m doing my part, I’m doing my best. Sometimes we record for over two hours and 35 minutes of it is unusable. Surely you would not want to hear it.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  So I just want to say to those people, the two hour pod will come one day. I just don’t think today is that day. So let’s keep on moving. Owners talking about other owners payroll, or rather, owners being surprised, but what was it again?

ALEX:  I just, I, yes, it’s, it’s owners feigned shock at other owners business dealings. And I just don’t think it serves us–

BOBBY:  Yeah.

ALEX:  –to say, well, let’s talk about this–

BOBBY:  Yeah.

ALEX:  –you know. Like to except the argument, right? Say, well, there is, there is a right and wrong here, right? In what Peter Seidler is doing. So let’s break it down, and let’s argue the other side. 50 years ago, if an owner said, yes, so I’m gonna spend money and invest in my team, we would have taken it in stride, right? And then if an owner said, I’m going to sell the team for parts, we’d be calling him Charlie Finley, right? Like, I mean, but–

BOBBY:  You just have so much drama, so much A’s fans drama. Like it just on discourse, everything we do here, you know, and that’s why, that’s why we work together. Because you are hurt by the A’s and I am hurt by the Mets for different reasons.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  And we supplement each other’s pain.

ALEX:  Exactly.

BOBBY:  I like this one, this is good. Because I am kind of tired of being like, it sort of reminds me of when, like 94% of political coverage is like journalists covering Republicans saying that they don’t understand how Democrats, Democrats could try to get this bill through. And then the Democrats responding and being like, we just can’t understand how Republicans are against these common sense reforms. And then the journalist just covers the back and forth like it’s like a tennis match. Like they have to cover every single swing between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. And then by the end of it, it’s just like, this ended up nowhere.

ALEX:  Right, exact- right, there’s like a news item. Democrats pass X bill, and the New York Times is like, so we went and asked 10 people who we know are against this, how they thought about it? We went to the heartland to find out what the real people are thinking.

BOBBY:  A lot of people think that the Tipping Pitches podcast is the heartland of baseball discourse. I’ve heard that.

ALEX:  I’ve always said that.

BOBBY:  When I see people on the street and they recognize me. You look like you host the Tipping Pitches podcasts. They’re like the heartland of baseball discourse.

ALEX:  Yeah. They were like, where’s that Topeka, Kansas radio show?

BOBBY:  Yeah.

ALEX:  Like, that’s where I first heard you. like–

BOBBY:  How do you, they don’t just give these phone numbers away to anybody who signs up for a Google Voice account and chooses the phone number that they want their voicemail to be. They don’t do that.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  You can’t do that. If you try right now, they will deny you.

ALEX:  I’m not gonna lie, I’ve kind of forgot that we chose the phone number based off of–

BOBBY:  Topeka.

ALEX:  –Topeka, Kansas area code. Yeah.

BOBBY:  That was a good bid. We should bring that one back. Don’t banned that, I hope that one not you’re next to.

ALEX:  No, it’s not, but–

BOBBY:  The Topeka bit.

ALEX:  –I would like to hear your, your first banned topic.

BOBBY:  Okay, you would like to hear my first bannedd topic, that’s great. Because I have it right here in front of me. My first banned topic is discussing whether Clayton Kershaw should have been on our 30 A-Lister, just kidding. My first banned topic is, you know what we’re not going to do, we’re not going to talk about the performance of baseball players who are on long contracts. The performance of those players in the early years of their contracts, we’re not going to do it. We’re not going to talk about whether or not Trea Turner is worth the money. We’re not going to talk about whether or not the Padres needed to extend Manny Machado. We’re not going to talk about whether the Tatís investment is a bad idea. We’re not going to talk about it in a positive or a negative light, we’re just not going to engage with it. It just doesn’t exist. There are no questions about the length of the contract and whether it will be a good investment on the back end.

ALEX:  Yeah, Corbin Carroll, I have never heard of him. And he, as far as I know, has never signed an extension.

BOBBY:  The Miguel Cabrera contract doesn’t exist, not a thing.

ALEX:  So I’m, I’m intrigued by this, then–

BOBBY:  Yeah.

ALEX:  –I’m on board, but I’m wondering, when you define long, long contract, what does that mean? Is that like five years or more? Is it, is it–

BOBBY:  Essentially–

ALEX:  broadly like talking about a player’s performance as juxtaposed to what–

BOBBY:  Yes.

ALEX:  –we think the value of their contract is.

BOBBY:  Yes, we are just not going to talk about basically like the question of whether this contract will age well.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  It just is never going to come up on the show this year, because I just don’t care.

ALEX:  And luckily, and also never had to.

BOBBY:  No, but it has though, because I’m also banning it, like we can’t even make fun of a person who is asking this question. I don’t even want to do that.

ALEX:  Okay.

BOBBY:  I think it is too low hanging fruit for us. And honestly, I think we’re better than that. I think we’ve evolved as broadcasters, as podcasters, as people, okay? And I think that we can make better jokes than making fun of some MLB Network talking head, who immediately wonders whether Francisco Lindor is worth the money in year nine. Honestly, I don’t think it’s fun anymore, and I don’t want to talk about it.

ALEX:  That’s fair, but if Greg Amsinger goes on TV–

BOBBY:  I don’t know who that is.

ALEX:  Bobby’s like we’re not going to talk about anything that happens on MLB Network because I’ve never seen MLB Network.

BOBBY:  I honestly wrote down MLB Network. Well, I crossed it off because I was like, that’s severely limited. Like something might happen on there that’s genuinely funny. I just don’t watch that channel, I don’t know.

ALEX:  I know, I mean, I don’t either.

BOBBY:  The World Baseball Classic is like in Spring Training is the first time I’ve turned in, tuned into that channel. I know the World Baseball Classic is being broadcast on Fox but like they talk about it and they do coverage of it on MLB Network, not on ESPN. So I’ve been tuning into there for the first time in a little while. But gen- generally speaking, it’s not on my, it’s not on my media diet.

ALEX:  That’s fair. I’m like the, the people who, you know, like watch Fox for a living.

BOBBY:  Yeah.

ALEX:  You know, like the Media Matters people whatever.

BOBBY:  Yes.

ALEX:  Like I watch MLB Network so you don’t have to.

BOBBY:  Right.

ALEX:  You know, I get all the Harold Reynolds takes and I just like compartmentalize, you know, I’m–

BOBBY:  You’re doing a bad job of branding yourself is that, ’cause I think that that is a good brand. I think that’s funny. That’s definitely a guy that needs to exist, you know. You’re like Adam Johnson, but for baseball media?

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  You’re doing the leftist cultural critique of MLB Network. I’m laughing and joking, but that’s basically why this podcast exists.

ALEX:  Right. Yeah.

BOBBY:  Okay, your next topic.

ALEX:  My next–

BOBBY:  Wait, wait, I was supposed to be, I was supposed to be dramatically saying banned at the end of all in this conversation. So whether contracts will age well, banned!

ALEX:  Hell, yeah.

BOBBY:  What was your first one again? Oh, owners, owners feigning surprise at how other owners spend their money, banned!

ALEX:  Banned.

BOBBY:  Should we have a gavel, banned! Okay,.

ALEX:  We got a bark.

BOBBY:  Wow, we got a bark. We’re just gonna keep that in. Let’s go!

ALEX:  Banned!

BOBBY:  Banned, banneds.

ALEX:  Well, this one is a good follow up, I think to yours, because it’s a little more specific. It’s player specific. I am largely uninterested in Fernando Tatis Jr. discourse, like period. Which is not to say, I don’t want to talk about Fernando Tatis Jr.

BOBBY:  Okay.

ALEX:  But he’s coming back from a suspension, right? He’s–

BOBBY:  What? What?!

ALEX:  I don’t know if you heard.

BOBBY:  Suspended?

ALEX:  I know.

BOBBY:  By the commissioner? No.

ALEX:  This is, I’m sorry to have rocked your world like this.

BOBBY:  Bro. he’s living my dream, taking steroids, riding motorcycles and the DR, what?

ALEX:  Got it, the Commissioner of baseball said you can’t engage with the sport anymore, I’d be like I’m free. No, I just know that between the suspension and the myriad injuries, and the long contract, combined with the fact that he’s on the Padres, which are kind of at the center of baseball’s cultural zeitgeist right now. We’re–

BOBBY:  Who would have thought?

ALEX:  –right?

BOBBY:  So weird.

ALEX:  We’re going to get the, the moral grandstanding right of, well, you know, he’s not a star because he used performance enhancing drugs, right?

BOBBY:  Yeah.

ALEX:  Or that he can’t stay healthy, and this contract is going to age poorly, right? Again, follows nicely on the heels of your blanket ban of contract discussion. But I just, I think that the Tatis narrative has been really interesting to me. Because he was like, the center of the baseball world–

BOBBY:  Yes.

ALEX:  –for like, a couple years, right? And a lot of it is like, the, The Once and Future King of the sport, right?

BOBBY:  Yeah.

ALEX:  And they all kind–

BOBBY:  Very high approval rating.

ALEX:  Absolutely. And it steamingly overnight, like did a 180, and people are like, he’s not a star anymore, right? I just, it’s not in good faith, and does a disservice to the fact that he’s a 23-year old superstar. I mean, it’s gonna be especially unbearable when the Padres win the World Series, right? Like that’s gonna be even worse, but, I don’t know, man, I there’s such a tendency to sort of latch on to a player like him for a lot of obvious reasons, right? Regarding his style of play, and his Latin background, and the sort of effervescence, right? And joy that he brings to the sport. He’s got the, the shirt that he wears open, right? Like he’s–

BOBBY:  And because he’s a neop baby.

ALEX:  –and because he’s a nepo baby. All of these things, you know, the sores are pointed towards him. And they just, they’re better, they’re better fights to fight. And–

BOBBY:  Yeah, there are better fights to fight. That’s the tagline of this podcast, better fights to fight. Okay, so discourse around Fernando Tatis Jr. as a star.

ALEX:  As it relates to his–

BOBBY:  Suspension.

ALEX:  –suspension and or injuries and or contract length.

BOBBY:  This is like one of those clauses.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  And a, when you’re reading the terms of service, it’s like Silicon Valley Bank has the right to, not ensure any of your deposits or.

ALEX:  Right, you’re like, I’m like Kamala tweeting like student loan cancellation for those who provide, who make less than $100,000 a year and have received a Pell Grant and who started a business in their community for the last 10 years.

BOBBY:  And to put the right foot in and put the right foot out.

ALEX:  And you shake it all about.

BOBBY:  And put your left foot in–

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  –put the left foot out and then do the hokey pokey and then turn this around.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  That’s what it’s all about. Good thing, we did all those things though. Because then we’re gonna get our student [34:47]. Just kidding, Supreme Court said no, who was surprised me definitely. Okay, Fernando tatis Jr. with all of those stipulations discourse, banned! Banned! Problem see if Stevie was gonna bark again and she did not. But that is effectively banned. I’m just like imagining the person, in my head when you said this I, I picture the person who like goes on Twitter and quote tweets a Fernando Tatís Jr. highlight is like imagine rooting for this guy after his suspension this year.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  That person is just not existent to this podcast this year.

ALEX:  No, I’m–

BOBBY:  Imagine thinking this guy was a good face for baseball.

ALEX:  You know this person is going to have like a, like a Derek Jeter profile pic and like that–

BOBBY:  Yeah.

ALEX:  –hashtag 62–

BOBBY:  The jumping up and down–

ALEX:  –you know.

BOBBY:  –celebration photo–

ALEX:  Yeah, uh-huh.

BOBBY:  –after his final hit. Yeah.

ALEX:  Bio is like–

BOBBY:  Did it the right way.

ALEX:  –Yankees.

BOBBY:  Jeats.

ALEX:  Islanders, jets.

BOBBY:  They just retweeted the most recent breakout video from Aaron Rodgers appearance on The Pat McAfee Show.

ALEX:  Right, exactly.

BOBBY:  The darkness does bring out the light, you know, it does bring out the truth. Okay, three topics down, three to go. My second bannedd topic, and this is the honorary banned topic from a, from the Tipping Pitches Slack. This topic was suggested by Owen who listeners will remember put together the Tipping Pitches fan survey, the state of the Tipping Pitches union a couple of weeks ago. I was, I was fishing for ideas with the Tipping Pitches listeners. And there was a lot of good ones, I’m going to read a couple from people. Cory suggested that we are banned from saying anything negative about the Red Sox. I thought that that was a valiant effort but that will not happen. Ben suggested that we banned the discussion of league wide batting average as it relates to the shift. Like woah, woah, woah, league wide batting averages up.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  Shift is working, I like that. That’s pretty funny. Simon suggested that we just banned the Orioles altogether. We just don’t talk about the Orioles. That’s pretty good, too. Although I do feel like that sort of cuts off too big of a content pipeline in John Angelos.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  Which we need access to.

ALEX:  I mean, like he–

BOBBY:  Dog days of summer, we need to be talking about whatever John Angelos is doing.

ALEX:  He’s working overtime to give us the content. And we have to hold up our end of the bargain.

BOBBY:  Sometimes just let yourself have a wind.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  We can’t banned Orioles talk. But what we will banned find my selection so long as this is okay with you, Alex. Let’s just go ahead and ban all discussion of the Tampa Bay Rays front office. Good, bad, ugly. The, the Rays current front office, Rhe Rays-ification of the baseball front office. The Rays diaspora, you know. The Andrew Friedman used to be. Andrew Friedman used to run the Rays.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  Did you know that? Did you know that? Have you heard about that?

ALEX:  No.

BOBBY:  Chaim Bloom used to run the Rays, and now he’s trying to run the Red Sox [37:44]. Have you heard of that? Did you know that?

ALEX:  No.

BOBBY:  I thought that this was a good suggestion. Because I feel like we have effectively debunked the Rays-ification of baseball plenty of times on this podcast, arguably too many times on this podcast. And I don’t feel like there’s anything productive to be gained from saying, yes, what the Rays do is bad for baseball, even though they are good at putting together baseball teams.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  Period.

ALEX:  I mean, I feel like the last few years we’ve seen a lot of the same breathless discourse around the Rays that we saw around when Houston Astros, right? That lionized that front office and enabled a lot of their bad behavior, right? And if they win the World Series, not this year, but at any year in the near to medium term future.

BOBBY:  Really hope that doesn’t.

ALEX:  I do too, but like it’s going to be unbearable, right? And so frankly, I’m, I’m okay, within an indefinite ban, you know.

BOBBY:  Indefinite ban.

ALEX:  Like an indefinite hiatus from the Rays period.

BOBBY:  Just the team, too? Whenever another team plays them, it’s just like a schedule forfeit.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  Uhm, I appreciate your fervor.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  But to the extent that the Rays are interesting at all, it’s just not because of what the front office does. And I feel like that we had this massive overcorrection about the Rays, because of Moneyball, because of the Rays, sort of leveling up Moneyball and doing it even better than the A’s ever did. And having the largest front office in the league, and it just felt like so many people thought that that was so novel and interesting for so long that it has become arguably the least interesting thing in baseball to me that the Rays are the smartest front office and that they know how to turn JP Feyereisen and into the best reliever in baseball.  just I, to the extent that it’s even interesting that JP Feyereisen turned into the most interesting player in baseball. I’d rather just talk about JP Feyereisen, like, I don’t really want to talk about Erik Neander his relationship to JP Feyereisen. It’s not really adding anything to my experience as a fan. And for the purposes of this segment, it’s, it’s not really adding anything to the show. So Tampa Bay Rays front office, banned!

ALEX:  Banned.

BOBBY:  Banned.

ALEX:  I also just want to say–

BOBBY:  Sorry to Jeff Sullivan, banned!

ALEX:  Discourse around them. The Rays improved upon Moneyball, you know, they took that and they ran with it. Did they? That’s crazy, how many rings they have now as a result.

BOBBY:  Yes. How you said scoreboard.

ALEX:  Like, look my scoreboard 02, but–

BOBBY:  Hey, at least they got to the World Series twice.

ALEX:  That’s, you know what?

BOBBY:  They lost and it’s just as painful. Arguably more painful, but at least they got there twice, you know.

ALEX:  AL pennant flags fly for [40:44], I always say.

BOBBY:  Get their asses. Okay, you’re up next, your third and final bannedd topic.

ALEX:  My third and final banned topic is one that we have evenm even discussed, not having anything to say about on this very podcast. And so I just like to make an official, I want to banned rules discourse.

BOBBY:  Wow.

ALEX:  Except for–

BOBBY:  Okay.

ALEX:  –bigger bases. If there’s a bigger bases, take out there? We’re going in on it. That’s the only if Bob Nightengale.

BOBBY:  Who is decidedly unbanned.

ALEX:  Who’s decidedly unbanned, has a long form piece about the oral history of the bigger bases. We’re reading the whole thing right here.

BOBBY:  Okay, this one is, okay, this one is kind of controversial.

ALEX:  Yeah, it maybe.

BOBBY:  Because I thought about banning this too. and then I thought, is it like editorial malpractice for us to not talk about some of these rule changes how they implemented and how they actually play out throughout the year? Because I considered banning, I considered banning the shift and or–

ALEX:  Wow, you considered banning the shift? You and Rob Manfred, huh?

BOBBY:  Banning discussion about banning the shift, okay? I considered banning discussion about the pitch clock. But it’s not, it’s not even a little bit interesting to you like how it unfolds throughout the course of the year.

ALEX:  Okay.

BOBBY:  It’s gonna be hard not to talk about.

ALEX:  I know, so maybe let me clarify. I–

BOBBY:  Because I hate the pitch clock.

ALEX:  I know you do, which is fascinating to me.

BOBBY:  I know.

ALEX:  I–

BOBBY:  I’m just 90 years old.

ALEX:  I know.

BOBBY:  First, I was like, you know what’s a good stat? Pitcher wins. And I texted you, I was like, you know what I hate? The pitch clock. Just too rush, these kids these days.

ALEX:  I just am not interested in the [42:37]–

BOBBY:  Just won everything too fast, too immediate.

ALEX:  In like the state of baseball–

BOBBY:  No one has patience anymore.

ALEX:  You keep [42:43], I think you hold half these opinions anyway, so.

BOBBY:  I do. Not everything needs to be the length of a tick tock, you know, couldn’t even get that one out. All right, continue.

ALEX:  All I’m saying is, I don’t find the, the conversation around. How does it change the fabric of the game? What does it mean for the future of baseball? No, I don’t find that interesting. The rule changes are here. They are not going anywhere, and we’re going to be used to them by like, May.

BOBBY:  Yeah, see that I agree with. That’s why I’m like, really, with all my power trying to withhold my, I don’t like the pitch clock take.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  Even though I’m saying and I’m on our podcast, the 1000s of people listen to. I’m like, it doesn’t really have the ability to really screw up my day by saying it on the podcast, you know.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  People are going to understand what I mean, in that, it just went from being nothing to something very apparent and hard to ignore in spring training. But I am trying to wait until it kind of dies down a little bit and re acclimates my expectations of watching baseball. But I mean, there will inevitably be plays, games, innings, outs decided by the pitch clock. And it’s–

ALEX:  Totally.

BOBBY:  –hard not to talk about it in those instances, right?

ALEX:  Nope. Couldn’t be me. Just didn’t happened.

BOBBY:  So it’s like, I almost brought up, I almost said something happens to the A’s, but it’s like that’s gonna happen.

ALEX:  It’s just right, yeah.

BOBBY:  So it’s like the wild card, Game 3 of the wild card. And the Cardinals beat the Phillies, because J. T. Realmuto doesn’t get in the box in time against Ryan Helsley. And you’re like, this is fine. I’m just no- he J. T. Realmuto was wrong?

ALEX:  I mean, he was, right? Like–

BOBBY:  So stupid.

ALEX:  But it’s been six months for him to learn how to get in the bo- again, get it out of our system now, bud.

BOBBY:  I just think that I find it interesting, sometimes–

ALEX:  Just asking questions.

BOBBY:  –how willing you are to critique Rob Manfred for being the technocrat, technocratic solution guy to problems that you could have easily solved in a more seamless way. Because some rule changes you hate, like some rule changes, you’re like, why, why are we trying to litigate our way out of this problem that we could, that we could develop our way out of, you know. Like if we just teach players not to do this. And I, I guess I’m not totally convinced that the pace of play was the thing that we needed to change a rule to change.

ALEX:  Look–

BOBBY:  Like, we’ve allowed front offices to basically ether the pace of play, and then we gave them an out by changing a rule to fix it.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  You know, like the pace of play thing didn’t happen, because players were just like, I want to wait a minute between pitches. It happened because front office’s at the major league level told players to go max effort on every single pitch, because they were going to take their players out after an inning or an out of work. And that had a trickle down effect of that being taught at the youth level. And now 15, 20 years later, since that has started to be taught, the pace of play has slowed down, because of the max effort of pitchers. And because players are more okay than ever with walking and or striking out. And so that is a philosophical decision that teams made. And very similar to the DH, we’ve just given teams an out for kind of breaking the game of baseball. And I don’t, I don’t necessarily know that that’s what rule changes are supposed to be for. I think that rule changes are fine when you’re solving for a problem that you can’t solve any other way. That is my honest opinion as a, as a self-admitted, sometimes problematically, so baseball purist.

ALEX:  I agree, I agree with everything you just said. I just don’t want to talk about that. I just don’t care enough to be like, okay, but like, let’s talk about how this is fundamentally changing the game we grew up with. I’m like, it’s changed, man. And if this makes me a hypocrite, flies in the face of [47:12]–

BOBBY:  No, dawg, it makes you a reactionary, bro.

ALEX:  I’m just saying, like not to be defeatist, but I’m kind of like, well, it’s what it is.

BOBBY:  Yeah. I get it, I mean, I get it. Like, it probably is not a problem that teams were going to take it upon themselves to solve.

ALEX:  Well–

BOBBY:  Like no one team is going to be like, we’re going to tell our players not to throw max effort so that they can speed up the pace of play. Like that’s just not going to happen.

ALEX:  Yeah

BOBBY:  I, I have another sneaky take floating around that pace of play is a batter problem and not a pitcher problem. But maybe that’s going to derail this conversation too much, really get too far in the weeds of the whole, like pitch clock pace of play thing.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  The pitch clock being a, being largely targeted at pitchers. When the real problem basically like, since Derek Jeter and Omar era has really been batters is like an interesting conversation, I think. But–

ALEX:  Yeah, although–

BOBBY:  Not one that we’re gonna have on this podcast.

ALEX:  No, it’s not, although batters are penalized, too. Like it’s not–

BOBBY:  Yes.

ALEX:  –that doesn’t apply that.

BOBBY:  I think that the, yes, I just think that the language and the discourse around it has been more focused on the pitchers. But I think when it starts to play out over the course of the season, I think it’s going to be just as not detrimental. But I think it’ll be just as interrupting to batters as it is to pitchers.

ALEX:  Look–

BOBBY:  I think we’re having a productive conversation. Maybe we shouldn’t ban it, maybe we should make it a regular topic.

ALEX:  Anything to say about the bigger bases? Because that’s all I’m interested in hearing.

BOBBY:  I don’t have anything to say that every national baseball writer has not already said.

ALEX:  Sick. Amazing.

BOBBY:  Because every national baseball writer was like, this is my chance, they’re doing a presentation of the bigger bases, I need to talk about them. I need to take a photo of the bigger bases, and take a photo of the base next to another base. If I’m Bob Nightengale, I need to take a photo of the base with no reference to the previous size of the base so that it’s not useful at all to the 100s of 1000s of people follow me on Twitter, when I tweet this picture out. Bigger bases are good, they’re fine, whatever, doesn’t change anything at all. I have yet to see the person who’s like bigger bases is going to disrupt the game.

ALEX:  We could be those people, that’s what I’m saying.

BOBBY:  Can I banned just like disrupting, disruption culture? Like the word disrupt, like things need to be disrupted all the time. When did we go from calling changing things to disrupting them? Is this really just like an Uber thing? It’s like a real silicon not to go full circle on everybody’s real Silicon Valley-ification of the way that we talk about things.

ALEX:  I mean, they are, Rob Manfred is certainly disrupting me and my watching experience.

BOBBY:  Can someone listening to this put a quote card of Alex’s face with the caption, Rob Manfred is certainly disrupting me, Alex Bazeley, the Tipping Pitches podcast. Okay, I guess we’re not talking about the pitch clock then.

ALEX:  If this seems like maybe, ’cause, ’cause a few weeks ago when you talked about, uh, you were like, I have no thoughts.

BOBBY:  I know.

ALEX:  I think you’ve said it on the podcast, you’re like, I don’t have a single opinion. You know, week later you–

BOBBY:  I said that because I had opinions, but I was just so tired of hearing people just like triumphantly voiced their opinion on the pitch clock.

ALEX:  And then you’re like, actually–

BOBBY:  Time to [50:16]–

ALEX:  –voice my opinion

BOBBY:  –on the pitch clock. Now that people are talking about other things. Now that everybody is triumphantly voicing their opinion on the World Baseball Classic.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  And whether or not Edwin Diaz is participation, it is an international crime against Mets fans. A lot of people are calling for us to banned World Baseball Classic discourse throughout the rest of the year. Like whether we should get rid of the World Baseball Classic. I just, that conversation is just gonna go away–

ALEX:  I know.

BOBBY:  –like in series.

ALEX:  I mean, I, I did. I wrote it down, right? I don’t want to talk about the World Baseball Classic in those terms, because it’s just a bad faith argument. And again, like in two weeks, we won’t really have to anyway.

BOBBY:  And also, I mean, some people asked whether or not we were going to talk about the World Baseball Classic, they asked why we didn’t talk about it on our last episode. Why we didn’t talk about it on our last episode is because we had recorded so early, we recorded five days in advance that only like one or two games had happened at that point. At this point, we are now in the quarterfinal stage. We are recording this episode on Saturday, March 18, so the United States has not yet had a result against Venezuela in the quarterfinal stage. I’m gonna be honest, I’ve watched like five or six World Baseball Classic games, and I’ve greatly enjoyed all of them. I really love the passion, I really love the different, like distinctly different feel of each of the teams. Like they have such a stronger personality than most Major League Baseball teams, because there’s a sort of homage- homogenization of Major League Baseball in the way that they play, the things that they value, the way that the teams conduct themselves. That just kind of gets leveled and democratize when it comes to World Baseball Classic. And so I’ve, I’ve really enjoyed it, but honestly, I haven’t been able to watch enough of it, because I’ve been traveling so much for work and doing so many other things in the game is thrown at weird times. Haven’t watched enough of it to do the type of coverage that you know, like our friends at Céspedes Family BBQ are doing a really good job on their podcast feed. So, I’m into it, I like it, I like the World Baseball Classic. I think it’s good for baseball, it’s good for the internationalization of the game. And I don’t have any qualms with it. I’m personally very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very sad and upset about Edwin Diaz getting hurt in the manner in which he did. But it has nothing to do with the tournament, it’s a freak accident. And I mainly feel really bad for Edwin, like not for myself and for Mets fans. Like this is a guy who overcame so much as being the best reliever in baseball, having a really terrible, honestly in retrospect, kind of fluky year and getting crushed in New York media for it. Coming back and becoming one of the most likable lovable players that the game has. And looking about as dominant and as cool as ever in doing it with the whole Timmy Trumpet situation and just the way that his stuff was overpowering. It’s just like a terribly timed thing for a guy who uncomplicatedly is really fun to root for. And it just, it just bums me out. And I don’t have another take beyond that. Besides the fact that it just feels like a fucking gut punch. You know, Brandon Nimmo sprained his knee and ankle and I sprained my heart when I saw Edwin go down. But that, I mean, that’s to answer people’s questions who are wondering whether or not we’re gonna like talk about or cover the WBC. I think we’re following it as casual fans not as like super, super hardcore analysts of the WBC like some other places have been.

ALEX:  How does the Edwin injury impact your evaluation of Brodie Van Wagenen’s legacy, right? Centerpiece of, of a really his, his career as the Mets GM.

BOBBY:  I’m just gonna say Brodie was right, bro. Except Kelenic look really good this spring. Maybe Broie was wrong. This is why, this is why analyzing trades and like doing legitimate baseball analysis, it’s just not our bag.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  I was like, this is bad trade, and now I’m like, I love Edwin, this is a good trade. And I would hate to have to feel beholden to justifying my opinion that Jarred Kelenic was the wrong person to trade at the time. It’s just, that’s so joyless, I just don’t know how people do it. Okay, I think I got it all out of my system. The pitch clock, the shift discourse. I think we’re good. I accepted this ban, banned!

ALEX:  Hey.

BOBBY:  Banned! It’s just really fun to yell, banned! Before I banned my final thing I want to tell you my honorable mentions.

ALEX:  Okay.

BOBBY:  I thought about just banning Josh Donaldson.

ALEX:  Okay.

BOBBY:  Just like we’re not allowed to mention him. Just ’cause I’ve, talked about joyless, just there’s no fun way to talk about Josh Donaldson.

ALEX:  No.

BOBBY:  So we would just pretend like if he came up in the Yankees scenario, we would just pretend like a different person played third.

ALEX:  Okay.

BOBBY:  Like we just pretend like Gio Urshela is still on the team.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  Like wow, that was an amazing play by Gio Urshela to end the game, you know. We’re like, wow, [54:55]–

ALEX:  Gio Urshela’s range is great!

BOBBY:  Gio Urshela building is way down, you know. But I’m not going to ban Josh Donaldson, alright? He didn’t rise up to that level. I thought about banning the A’s moving to Las Vegas. But what if they announced that they’re moving to–

ALEX:  Would they do.

BOBBY:  –Las Vegas, you know. Like we’ve basically functionally banned any serious engagement with this conversation until there is something definitive. And so I didn’t think that we needed to banned it.

ALEX:  Yeah, I mean, like you said, it’s kind of implicit, right? Like, you won’t hear us covering every–

BOBBY:  City Council meeting?

ALEX:  Right. Every time Rob Manfred says, this is our last shot with Oakland. Okay!

BOBBY:  Every, every artistic rendering of the A’s new stadium.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  Just covering it like it’s just breaking news. So those are my, those are my honorable mentions. Did you have any honorable mentions before I do my final one?

ALEX:  As noted, World Baseball Classic discourse. My other honorable mention, which I’d like to hold myself too as much as possible, but maybe hard is Keith Olbermann dunks.

BOBBY:  Oh, yeah.

ALEX:  I just in the words of the great Lauren Walker, I’m not falling for that hot take. That’s clearly someone with a fetish for getting yelled at. And I refuse to participate in that kind of perversion. That’s it, that’s my one response to everything that Keith Olbermann says,

BOBBY:  You reading a Lauren tweet on this pod just makes some time. Like, I almost want to ban you from reading Lauren tweets on the pod, because when you do, it just makes me realize that like, we just shouldn’t be doing a pod, people should be reading Lauren’s tweets instead. It’s like way funnier than anything that we’re doing here. Okay, Keith Olbermann, banned! Soft banned! My final banned topic, I would like to banned the word analytics, without any further specification.

ALEX:  Okay.

BOBBY:  So like, neither of us are allowed to say, analytics, period. You have to say something else after–

ALEX:  That’s great.

BOBBY:  –that.

ALEX:  Because I’m always saying that, too. I’m always–

BOBBY:  Just to specify–

ALEX:  –just like, bro analytics, right?

BOBBY:  No, no, no, because we don’t do this a lot, but other people do it a lot. Where they’re like, this team uses analytics too much, that doesn’t mean anything. That’s not, that’s not a statement. There’s nothing therem what to what you just said, This team uses analy- like saying, this guy breathes a lot.

ALEX:  Yeah, this team uses bats too much.

BOBBY:  Bats are an analytic, okay? If we’re going to engage with someone who is talking about the word analytics, they’re going to need to be more specific than that. I’m sorry, specificity is important in journalism. And as everybody listening knows, this podcast is a journalistic endeavor. A very serious, rigid, journalistic endeavor, that could be taught in a journalism course. So I’m just not going to, I’m not going to engage with the vagaries of the word analytics. I’m done, I’m done. Because people just, people use it as a blanket term for something I don’t understand. And no longer interested in one- explaining that thing to some, explaining the thing that that person does not understand to them, even though they will never hear my explanation of it. And two- pretending like that person needs to understand the input data of a Major League Baseball team that they don’t work for.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  I’m just, I’m over it. Banned! Banned! Say it, try saying it, it’s really fun.

ALEX:  Banned!

BOBBY:  Banned!

ALEX:  Banned!

BOBBY:  Does feel good.

ALEX:  But I’m saying the word like [58:39]–

BOBBY:  [58:39]

ALEX:  Right, yeah.

BOBBY:  –like Fall Out Boy?

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  Yeah, good banned.

ALEX:  Right. Analytics, banned!

BOBBY:  Let’s start a pop punk band and call ourselves, analytics. Hello, Brooklyn, we are Sabermetrics!

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  Get pumped up!

ALEX:  For batting average on balls in play. I’m on board, I, I also want to say I think the appropriate response to someone using that word in conversation is to simply respond, what do you mean by that?

BOBBY:  Yep.

ALEX:  Define that for me.

BOBBY:  The Inigo Montoya corollary. I don’t think you know what that word means.

ALEX:  Exactly.

BOBBY:  He keep using that word, I don’t think you know what it means.

ALEX:  Just like how, as, as we’ve seen in recent days, that we should be asking more people what they mean when they say woke, you know. This is my, this is my wokeness of baseball, is analytics.

BOBBY:  I agree.

ALEX:  You know.

BOBBY:  I completely agree.

ALEX:  I know.

BOBBY:  I, like analytics is basically woke-ism for baseball.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  People who denow- decry it, don’t know what they’re really mad at.

ALEX:  There’s–

BOBBY:  They’re mad at some–

ALEX:  –but are too afraid to say what they really [59:55].

BOBBY:  Exactly. Exactly, right. Uhm, so I’m mad at the term analytics, or the people who use it. That I’m even mad at the people who have like, come around on it, you know. The people who were like, I wasn’t sure at first, but now I understand why analytics are useful. I’m like, you still don’t understand! You’re just saying analytics! Like you need to do a little bit of both, you know. That’s, that’s like the end Vogue take.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  You need to have a little bit both–

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  –you know. A little bit of the analytics, the analytics, you need to have a little bit of that.

ALEX:  A little analytics, yeah.

BOBBY:  Will sprinkle analytics, and a little bit of just good old fashion, from the gut, scouting. Like, what are you saying? First of all, analytics, Scouting is analytics. And second of all, that’s like saying, I’m a, I’m socially liberal and fiscally conservative. That’s what you’re saying to me, in baseball terms. You need to have a little bit of analytics and a little bit old school. No, no you don’t, no you don’t.

ALEX:  That was like–

BOBBY:  Yes. That’s like saying it’s about as valuable as saying to me, I’m a Rockefeller Republican. I don’t know what you mean. When was that ever a thing that people actually worried?

ALEX:  Right, yeah. I like this, this is good thing.

BOBBY:  Thank you.

ALEX:  And this is a good one to end on–

BOBBY:  Thank you.

ALEX:  –I think. I a little tough because I feel like a lot of our content revolves around us dunking on people who don’t understand what they’re saying. So, you know, we’re just going to be really careful, that’s all. Or again, just ask them for a definition.

BOBBY:  Yes. We have set up some selective landmines for ourselves, but that’s okay.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  We’re gonna tiptoe around them. What we’re also going to do is take a quick break and come back and answer a few listener questions.

[1:01:40]

[Music Transition]

BOBBY:  Okay, Alex, four listener questions to close it out this week. Two from the Slack, two from the voicemail.

ALEX:  And they’re all, why did you leave Clayton Kershaw off you’re A-Listers list?

BOBBY:  We just got hundreds of writings about that, you know, hundreds, people were talking. Okay, the first question comes from Dante, Dante shared tweet of a screenshot of one of those MLB surveys that they send out to fans. Where they’re like, please take the survey about how you engage with the game. And the question was, if you could change one thing about the onfield game, what would it be? And this person, who Dante shared the tweet from, wrote, if baseball really wanted to get exciting, they’d let a celebrity throw the last pitch, instead of the first pitch. Bases loaded, here’s Danny DeVito. And Dante share this and said, who would be the best celebrity for this idea? So the question is, if you could have a celebrity, throw out the last pitch, meaning that any celebrity in the world had to get the final out of a baseball game for it to- for it to end, who would you select? Dante said that he would select 50 Cent. A chance for redemption.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  I like that answer, Dante. Who do you think?

ALEX:  I mean–

BOBBY:  Clayton Kershaw? because he’s a celebrity–

ALEX:  [1:03:06]

BOBBY:  –he’s a celebrity.

ALEX:  I mean, it depends on your goal, right? Like, is the goal to get the final out?

BOBBY:  That’s part of the answer. I mean, that’s what–

ALEX:  Is it–

BOBBY:  –the people listening aren’t hosting, you’re hosting, you have to decide how to answer the question, though, I would tell you this is podcasting. I’ll just say the way that I’m interpreting it is that it’s just for entertainment value. I’m not choosing the celebrity who is going to lock it down for the rest.

ALEX:  Right. You’re not like–

BOBBY:  Although–

ALEX:  Like, like, who played baseball in high school, and who still has a cutter that works?

BOBBY:  With Edwin out maybe that would be useful information for my man, Billy Eppler. You know, he seems like he’s spinning his wheels a little bit.

ALEX:  I’d like to see movie stars who have played seminal roles in famous baseball movies.

BOBBY:  Okay.

ALEX:  Like–

BOBBY:  Charlie Sheen.

ALEX:  Yeah, throw Charlie Sheen. Oh, Kevin Costner, you want to be in every single meaningful baseball movie of the ’80s and ’90s, okay, so retire–

BOBBY:  Costner is good, actually. He actually is good at baseball. I mean–

ALEX:  Okay, then throw him out there.

BOBBY:  –it would definitely expose how much better major leaguers are than, than what it just looks like to be good at baseball. Like what it actually takes to be out there on a major league man. Like he would get his shit smacked around.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  No doubt about it.

ALEX:  But would actually not have to bounce it to get to the plate.

BOBBY:  Yeah, no, he could definitely, I mean, maybe not now that he’s like, 70. But–

ALEX:  That was [1:04:24] fucking.

BOBBY:  Jamie Moyer did it.

ALEX:  Yeah, right?

BOBBY:  One of my favorite moments of Bills Pod was he had Costner on, this was like, 2018. And they were talking about how he’s in every baseball movie and how he’s like, legitimately one of the best athletes to ever play in a sport. Like the best at the sport that they were portraying on screen.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  And, you know, Costner has been like five or six baseball movies at this point.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  And he said that for, I think it was for, For Love of the Game, the one where he’s portraying a Major League Baseball player. And, and a pitcher, and he’s throwing a lot for like the final scenes or whatever. He said that he got like a bum shoulder or something or like tore his rotator cuff. And he basically intimated or like full on revealed on Bills Pod that they gave him HGH to recover from that. Like, damn, keep them out of the hall.

ALEX:  Yeah, what?

BOBBY:  Get him out of the hall.

ALEX:  I believe you admit that.

BOBBY:  I’m banned from making the joke that I want to make.

ALEX:  Actually, I’d like to amend my answer to an idea that I think I floated on her Twitter account a few weeks ago, okay. And your, your definition of celebrity may come into play here.

BOBBY:  Okay.

ALEX:  Because the, the people I want out there throwing the final pitch are not celebrities. Although they may want to be. And that’s the owners.

BOBBY:  Yes.

ALEX:  I, oh, you want to raise the trophy? Close the fucking game.

BOBBY:  Yep.

ALEX:  Log a save.

BOBBY:  Which owner’s–

ALEX:  You want to say that we did this?

BOBBY:  Which owner do you think would look worse? I feel like nothing get in the mix, bro.

ALEX:  Of like, actually–

BOBBY:  Yeah, he looks pretty spry.

ALEX:  He does look pretty spry. Yeah.

BOBBY:  He looks, he looks healthy. Good skin, nice hair. Is Bob Nutting hot?

ALEX:  [1:06:18] gonna let you keep going.

BOBBY:  Sneaky handsome, Bob nutting?

ALEX:  Talking about his toned arms, you know?

BOBBY:  No.

ALEX:  No, I just want to see Tom Ricketts embarrassed the fuck out of himself–

BOBBY:  Yeah.

ALEX:  –you know.

BOBBY:  Yeah.

ALEX:  Like, I think, I recognize the billionaires aren’t capable of fame.

BOBBY:  Let’s get Charles [1:06:35], dawg.

ALEX:  But like, let’s try, you know.

BOBBY:  Let’s get, let’s get all CJ up there.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  I think–

ALEX:  And lobby your way out of that one, bro.

BOBBY:  After having made physical contact With JJF–

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  –what’s your take on his athleticism, out of 10? 10 being, 10 is like Mike Trout. Zero is like a dead person.

ALEX:  Honestly, he’s pretty trim.

BOBBY:  Okay. He got that Bezos treatment, you know.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  Like the rich guy pay someone to train me and give me [1:07:03], so I look swole when I’m on my forest vacation–

ALEX:  RIght.

BOBBY:  –with my new–

ALEX:  Like facelift incoming?

BOBBY:  –girlfriend after I divorced my wife from pre Amazon and made her the richest woman in human history. Thank you, I’m here all week.

ALEX:  Just reading Jeff Bezos’ Wikipedia.

BOBBY:  You don’t know that I don’t Have Jeff Bezos’ Wikipedia page every time we record this podcast.

ALEX:  That’s true.

BOBBY:  You don’t know that. I haven’t even answered this question yet. You’re answer, so your answer is Costner and or the baseball owners.

ALEX:  Exactly.

BOBBY:  That’s pretty good. Dante’s answer is 50 Cent. I think my answer, my answer is Snoop Dogg. Because if it goes good or bad, you know, he’s gonna have a great reaction.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  You know, I’d like to see his response to like the pitch calm. Like, why does this thing talking to me? You know, or like–

ALEX:  He got a strike call them in for the pitch calm.

BOBBY:  Yeah, he’s like, what the fuck, he’s like cursing out the umpire. I think that that would be fun, Snoop Dogg.

ALEX:  I like that.

BOBBY:  Thank you. And you know, he’s like, he’s having a good time either way.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  The, the clip of him doing the announcing for the dressage the horse, dressage. It’s one of the all time sports moments. Okay, second question is a voicemail.

VOICEMAIL 1:  Hey, Bobby and Alex. Dan here. I just finished listening to your interview With Evan Drellich about Winning Fixes Everything, and I really enjoyed it. But I did want to take issue with one thing that came up a couple times, which is the notion that would happen in the Astros front office defies parody. The idea that the crazy personalities and behavior there are beyond satire. And that may be true, but I think the low grade wannabe CIA stuff actually suggests a great way to satirize it. You take the Moneyball formula, and then you apply the Burn After Reading treatment. That movie does a great job showing how like even intelligence boils down to board white collar workers trying to get hyped about data sets, raw intelligence and then they end up tripping over office politics. And their ridiculous delusional ideas about themselves and the business they’re in. I think any Moneyball Burn After Reading movie has to be directed by Adam McKay. You can ditch Brad Pitt or keep him. But other than that, I’d like your guys’s thoughts on who we should cast as Jeff Luhnow,Taubman Hinch, Jim Crane, etcetera. And any other ideas are welcome. Thanks.

BOBBY:  I am, I don’t know what Brandon Taubman looks like. So I don’t know how I’m gonna cast him.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  I do know that I would want Jason Bateman to play Jeff Luhnow.

ALEX:  Oooh, that’s a good one.

BOBBY:  Thank you. Thanks. I like to think of myself as a movie guy. Anytime you compliment me, I’m, I’m just dead set–

ALEX:  Ohhh!

BOBBY:  –on making you regret it, you know? Do we have a role for Brad Pitt? It doesn’t make them Jim Crane. I mean, if it’s going to be directed by Adam McKay, which Dan has said it needs to be. I do think that we can just get Christian Bale to just as he did when he portrayed Dick Cheney in vice would just get him in like an old suit, and he can be Jim Crane. I think he would crush that role, honestly.

ALEX:  Although Jim Crane is not that fit.

BOBBY:  Yeah, but like I mean–

ALEX:  Christian Bale, Bale is known for–

BOBBY:  So what you’re saying is that–

ALEX:  –get in to character.

BOBBY:  –you think Tricky Dicky is fit? Like he put on weight for that.

ALEX:  I know.

BOBBY:  Like you put it for Jim Crane.

ALEX:  You’re right, you’re right.

BOBBY:  The other thing, okay, actually, you’re right, I like where your head is at. You know why? Because I hate this whole thing where we’re like, okay, actor for role. They did a good job because they gained weight.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  Slash they did a good job because–

ALEX:  Ohh, here we go.

BOBBY:  –they [1:10:48]. This is such a dumb thing that we have actors do where the academy is just like–

ALEX:  Hey, Oscars discourse. Wow!

BOBBY:  He, he gained weight.

ALEX:  70 minutes into the pod.

BOBBY:  He gained weight. Of course, it’s a great performance. Or, or man in the case of Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club. Well, he lost weight.

ALEX:  I’m like I gained weight too.

BOBBY:  Is the movie good? No. Is it fun? Definitely not. Is the performance good? It’s fine, but he lost weight.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  Like what are we doing? No, but I think that kind of just I love Christian Bale, man.

ALEX:  Yeah, yeah, I’ve been watching the, rewatching the Dark Knight, Dark Knight Rises lately.

BOBBY:  You’ve been rewatching the Dark Knight Rises lately?

ALEX:  Yeah, I guess the way I say that makes it sound like I’ve been doing it repeatedly.

BOBBY:  I mean, yeah, Dark Knight Rises, we did a, we did a watch along on, watch along on big picture. Where we just did a director’s commentary track for the entirety of Dark Knight Rises.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  That was a lot of fun. Here’s a, I’m showing you a photo of Brandon Taubman. He kind of looks like a fish?

ALEX:  I don’t know that I see what you’re going for there but I admire the inspiration.

BOBBY:  I just need you to support me. Adam Scott.

ALEX:  Hmm. Wow, now we’re cooking with gas.

BOBBY:  We got Bateman, we got Scott, what else do you need? Come on!

ALEX:  Powerhouses is right there.

BOBBY:  Sold, sold.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  Sold. Sony Pictures Classics, sold. Paramount Pictures, sold. Come on. Anything to contribute to this? I feel like I just–

ALEX:  Frankly, no.

BOBBY:  –been telling a lot about the Burn After Reading recasting of, Evan Drellich– 

ALEX:  Well, the thing is- we, this is what we’ve talked about, right? Is like–

BOBBY:  We need this.

ALEX:  –the front office is a perfect setting–

BOBBY:  Yes. Yes.

ALEX:  –for that sort of workplace drama.

BOBBY:  Totally send up how self serious these guys are. I, when I said it’s like too stupid to parodyy, what I meant is that someone should parody it. That’s like what our culture is right now.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  We just like parody the most obvious things in the world. And depending on the writer, it could be good or it could be don’t look up.

ALEX:  Shots fired, deservedly so.

BOBBY:  This has been shots fired, if the thing is, like dead and buried by culture. I, I would like it to be directed by Fincher, I’m not gonna lie. Okay, next question, this comes from Kate in the Slack. Are either of you eligible in any way to play for a World Baseball Classic team other than Team USA? Extreme reaches are allowed. If so, which one? And if given the option, would you play for Team USA or team other country? Nick in the Slack followed up and said the official rules for eligibility are, you’ve played for the team before. Now the rest of played for World Baseball Classic team before? You are a citizen of the country or territory, I believe both of us are only citizens of the United States. Is that correct?

ALEX:  That’s correct.

BOBBY:  You have a secret dual citizenship that I know about? Or are you in like am I six? You’re actually a foreign agent? I’m cooked, if that’s the case.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  You’re a permanent legal resident of the country, you’re born in the country, you are at least, you have at least one parent who is or was a citizen of the country. At least one parent who is or was born in the country. Or you can successfully apply for citizenship in that country. So do you meet any of those qualifications for another country?

ALEX:  Not yet!

BOBBY:  Not yet? What’s that mean?

ALEX:  Well, until my mom gets her Nicaraguan citizenship.

BOBBY:  I see. So in order to become a citizen of Nicaragua, your parent needs to become a citizen first?

ALEX:  Well, to be clear, do I need citizenship for Nicaragua? Or is it okay, if my parent is a citizen?

BOBBY:  Well, it depends because you, well, you could achieve it through your mom becoming a citizen of Nicaragua, Nicaragua. Or you could be able to successfully apply for the citizenship, citizenship yourself.

ALEX:  Right. That would be harder, I think.

BOBBY:  I see. Okay.

ALEX:  I could just go and live there for four years. I did like 20 minutes of research on Nicaragua. Nicaragua is like citizenship regulation before this. I was like, how could I?

BOBBY:  We’ve had two Negronis, you know, a bunch of coffee.

ALEX:  Right. I’ve already applied to be a citizen already and beyond the World Baseball Classic team.

BOBBY:  Somehow you’ve renounce your citizenship to the United States just because of this podcast. Italy’s a little more lacks, I think I could successfully apply for citizenship in Italy. If you are descended from a citizen of Italy, who emigrated to a different country, and you can prove that that person was a citizen, when they gave birth to your relative that you are descended from, you can apply. It’s harder when your parent is not a citizen, is not a citizen, which my mom is not an Italian citizen. But my great grandparents came from Italy. So as long as I can find–

ALEX:  Wow, so you can cash in on that.

BOBBY:  I, listen, I have been, this is just enter familiar–

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  –drama now, I have been pressuring my mom to apply for her Italian citizenship for a long time, because it’d be easier for me to get it than to because then that would have meant that she did all of the legwork to get all the documents together. But honestly, you know, like she she was here first. So in that way, I can be a dual citizen, and we can open up our–

ALEX:  Milan offices?

BOBBY:  –the Milan offices, right.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  I’m like, I’m open to a different city in Italy. It doesn’t have to be Milan.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  Could be Rome, Rome school, or it could be Amalfi Coast–

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  –offices.

ALEX:  I would be open to any of these, frankly.

BOBBY:  We fly in talent to the single, the single strip airport in the Amalfi Coast. You know, you have to get on a prop plane to come record a pod with the Tipping Pitches guys.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  Lake Como office. Why don’t we need to limit ourselves? We don’t, no. Good question, Kate.

ALEX:  Great question. And–

BOBBY:  We can both technically probably at play for a different team. And it seems like Italy was just like, sure you have an Italian last name? Come on in.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  Like, what do you think the paperwork that Matt Harvey did was to prove that he can play for team Italy?

ALEX:  Saw him was verified check on Twitter, like.

BOBBY:  I, and oh, to answer the second part of the question, yes, I would definitely play for team Italy over the US.

ALEX:  Oh, yeah.

BOBBY:  Too much pressure to play for Team US. And also they have an espresso machine.

ALEX:  Yeah, so true.

BOBBY:  [1:17:18] clubhouse.

ALEX:  Yeah, I played for Nic–

BOBBY:  In the dugout, actually.

ALEX:  –I play for Nicaragua for sure. I have some things to stick to Ollie North and fucking Ronald Reagan, Richard Nix. You know, like–

BOBBY:  Okay.

ALEX:  Iran-Contra, bro?!

BOBBY:  Oh, man, I’m all in on Iran-Contra.

ALEX:  I know.

BOBBY:  We don’t talk about that. We, we literally don’t. Okay, final question. And I’m just gonna say ahead of time, calling this one a question is a, a stretch.

VOICEMAIL 2:  John Smoltz is the James Corden of baseball.

BOBBY:  That’s it!

ALEX:  I just want to say, because–

BOBBY:  Yeah.

ALEX:  –I don’t know who this came from.

BOBBY:  They didn’t say, and that’s their right.

ALEX:  It is the right. And I appreciate that it was said with the inflection that may, they maybe were mid realization when they made the call, right? It was kind of like John Smoltz is, wait a second, hang on, dial tone, he’s the James Corden!

BOBBY:  It’s like Zach Galifianakis, with the numbers floating around.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  Says like this person figuring out that John Smoltz is the James Corden of baseball.

ALEX:  Which–

BOBBY:  Is, is–

ALEX:  –the right about.

BOBBY:  Yeah.

ALEX:  I just wanted–

BOBBY:  They are right about that.

ALEX:  –to point that out.

BOBBY:  Also, a lot of people saying, a lot of people saying. Like people tweeting at us. people tweeting this at us. People saying in the Slack, a lot of people saying that John Smoltz is the Chris Pratt of baseball. I think, because I framed it as this is a guy who nobody likes is not good at his job and continues to get opportunities. Who is the corollary and celebrity.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  And I think a lot of people were like, immediately Chris Pratt. Which I honestly regret not thinking of myself.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  I don’t know if people dislike James Corden, that’s the word on the street. Like, everybody doesn’t like him. But you know, I don’t want to slander this man. I’m fine–

ALEX:  No, I’ll, I’ll slander James Corden all day long.

BOBBY:  Alright, that is your role here, and my role is to slander Chris Pratt, who is not a good actor, not a compelling screen presence. And I don’t understand why his milquetoast ass keeps getting these roles in these very important franchises where it would behoove the casting directors to put someone way more interesting on screen.

ALEX:  Very important franchises like Guardians of the Galaxy or?

BOBBY:  No, dawg, like Jurassic Park. You know it was cool? Jurassic Park, then Chris Pratt came aboard and I was like, I guess I hate Jurassic Park now. I’m like fuck! I really liked Jurassic Park. He made me hate Jurassic Park, dawg, come on. Equally, equally as apse a comparison to the James, John Smoltz versus James Corden, is like John Smoltz is Ellen.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  Who everybody really hates, and they came out. And I was telling you before we started this pod that I went on an internet rabbit hole the other night, because I was watching, I don’t have TikTok so I just watch Instagram Reels, which is like again–

ALEX:  Brutal, right. Will TikTok like four weeks late.

BOBBY:  Exactly. It’s like huge boomer energy to basically my entire existence for–

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  –the last few weeks.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  That’s okay, we’re working through it. I, and I came across this Instagram Reel that was like three times that celebrities were really uncomfortable in interviews. And it was Taylor Swift’s interview with Ellen DeGeneres, where Ellen DeGeneres is just like saying that she dated, they’re doing a segment Taylor Swift is on there to like, promote a new album or whatever, I think it was Fred. And Ellen is like repeatedly saying, like, you date all these people and like putting photos up behind them of like, pictures of Taylor Swift with all of these different guys, that half of them she didn’t actually date. She keeps insinuating that Zac Efron that they dated because they were like they’re on the Ellen show together last time.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  And it’s basically just like playing into all these stereotypes about Taylor Swift dates everybody bla bla bla. That was like, a huge thing in culture–

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  –in the 2000s and 2010s. And she literally just like, almost starts crying, and she like yells at her to like, stop this segment. And it’s very uncomfortable, and so then I went on like a YouTube rabbit hole of all of the celebrities who basically are just like, the interview equivalent of giving the middle finger to Ellen while on the show.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  Of course, Dakota Johnson being the most famous–

ALEX:  Naturally, yeah.

BOBBY:  –one where she basically brought Ellen down.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  Amazing moment by nepo baby, Dakota Johnson. And so, having spent a lot of time with Ellen in the last, in the last few days on the internet, I can say that that it is a John Smoltz entered energy to her presence.

ALEX:  Yeah. Both would gladly hang out with George Bush on their day off?

BOBBY:  And both seemingly for some reason hate the very plush job that they have.

ALEX:  Right.

BOBBY:  With the very plum job that they have, they just like, are not interested in having fun with it. So–

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  –Ellen, James Corden, Chris Pratt, any of these work. Piers Morgan?

ALEX:  No, Piers Morgan’s too entertaining to be John Smoltz.

BOBBY:  Wow we have pro [1:22:20] Piers Morgan take on the pod. I think that means it’s probably time to end huh?

ALEX:  Probably, although, I’d like to see John Smoltz on carpool karaoke, you know. Like isn’t that, that something you’re pining for?

BOBBY:  Do you think like when the Corden Show stops, because you know he’s done, right? He’s done though.

ALEX:  Sure. I, okay.

BOBBY:  Will he, yeah, his, his late show or whatever the fuck it’s called Late Late Night With James Corden, it’, it’s over, it’s ending. And he’s him.

ALEX:  Wow, it’s ending? Your, I’m just hearing about this, for the first time. That’s crazy!

BOBBY:  It was, it was a great show.

ALEX:  It’s a really great, you know–

BOBBY:  That actually makes me sad, I’m gonna put some jet engine noise in the back of this. Do you think like when his show is over that that just reverts to the Creative Commons and we can just steal that idea? Like carpool karaoke and we just do with James Smoltz on the pod.

ALEX:  James Smoltz, [1:23:12], I think.

BOBBY:  Oh, man, what song will he sing? America the Beautiful?

ALEX:  Right, like Country Roads, Take Me Home.

BOBBY:  Oh, don’t, don’t shade John Denver here.

ALEX:  Oh, no, no shade, but it feels like–

BOBBY:  The producers would have to throw their bodies in front of that. Good Lord, we can’t let John Smoltz ruin John Denver.

ALEX:  Big, big Denver head?

BOBBY:  Just that song.

ALEX:  No Fake fan.

BOBBY:  Big Denver head, yeah. I love Nikola Jokic, I love skiing, I love Charlie Blackmon.

ALEX:  I don’t even know where we are at this point. I’m just, I’ve just pictures of Chris Corea up on my screen right now, I don’t really know why.

BOBBY:  I wouldn’t blame this on negronis, but this podcast started out more chaotic than it even is now.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  We’re talking about SVB, we like lost the thread of several analogies–

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  –within the first 10 minutes of the show. Still haven’t hit the two hour mark though. Can you imagine 30 more minutes of this chaos? Just picture that while I do the outro.

ALEX:  Okay.

BOBBY:  Thank you to everybody for listening to another episode of Tipping Pitches, Banned Topics 2023. Please let us know what topics you would like for us not to talk about–

ALEX:  Not to talk about.

BOBBY:  –to avoid talking about them.

ALEX:  Want to hear us not mentioned something? Let us know in the comments below.

BOBBY:  We appreciate everybody listening. As Alex said at the beginning, patreon.com/tippingpitches, tippingpitchespod@gmail.com, if you would like to write in, 785-422-5881. I always surprise myself and I remember that number.

ALEX:  Me too.

BOBBY:  But it’s just, these are, these are like subliminal things. Like it’s like my home phone number now at this point. The [1:24:54] Kansas–

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  –hotline. If you would like to call in leave a voicemail that is the number, 785-422-5881. Someone has to read like a Raymour and Flanigan jingle for that, that number. And then of course–

ALEX:  785–

BOBBY:  You’re just doing the cars–

ALEX:  –422–

BOBBY:  –God, get this man out of the studio.

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  tipping_pitches on Twitter. Baseball season’s coming in hot, the Tipping Pitches podcast is just trying to keep up. Please share this episode or an episode that you thought was better than this one with someone who you think might be interested in the show. That’s all I got this week. Alex any parting words of wisdom? Would you just like to sing Country Roads, Take Me Home as we [1:25:36]–

ALEX:  Yeah, our outro? Yeah, you don’t even need to pick music for this week.

BOBBY:  I would love if you sang the outro. First of all, would prevent us from getting sued. Second of all–

ALEX:  Yeah.

BOBBY:  Do it!

ALEX:  Three roads!

BOBBY:  Yeah!

ALEX:  No! Just want to thank everyone for listening.

BOBBY:  All right, we’ll be back next week.

[1:25:59]

[Music]

[1:26:14]

[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!

ALEX:  Uhm, as noted, World Baseball Classic discourse.

[dog barking sound]

BOBBY:  Ban her from being [1:26:38]. I just reached my activity goal according to my aura ring.

ALEX:  Oh wow!

BOBBY:  Sitting here, got the heart rate up, sharing my takes, you know.

ALEX:  Getting of  walking to the kitchen to make me [1:26:48] just walking back.

BOBBY:  It was the analytics take, they got me.

Transcriptionist: Vernon Bryann Casil

Editor: Krizia Marrie Casil