Well, it’s happening. Alex and Bobby react to the late-breaking news that the Oakland A’s are purchasing 49 acres of land on the Las Vegas strip to build a stadium. They break down the ways in which the team failed their fans over the past few years, contextualize how the media has been covering this, try and determine what it means to be a free agent fan, and just generally work through a lot of emotions.
Links:
A’s enter agreement for Las Vegas ballpark site
Nevada lawmakers on board with Vegas baseball stadium
Marc Carig on where the blame falls in Oakland
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Songs featured in this episode:
The Coup — “The Guillotine” • Booker T & the M.G.’s — “Green Onions”
Episode Transcript
Theme: Tell us a little bit about what you saw and, and, and being able to relay that message to Cora when you watch Kimbrel pitching and kind of help out so he wasn’t Tipping his Pitches. So Tipping Pitches, we hear about it all the time. People are home on the stand, what Tipping Pitches it’s all about? That’s amazing! That’s remarkable.
BOBBY: Alex, today’s a very special day. It marks the completion of the Mount Rushmore of the tipping pitches emergency podcast episodes. The first one was for game five of the 2017 World Series, which was an unbelievable back-and-forth game back in the days where we still talked about baseball. The second one was for the Major League Baseball Players Association agreeing to end the lockout with Major League Baseball’s owners, just one year ago, just a year and change ago. The third was when we found out the news that Minor League baseball players were about to have a union and they were voting on that. And now the fourth, Alex, the fourth emergency tipping pitches episode is because they took the blue checkmarks away on Twitter, and we found out that Taylor Swift is still paying for hers.
ALEX: Nice.
BOBBY: Thursday night—
ALEX: Sick.
BOBBY: —and we’re gathered here to talk about Taylor Swift. I know everybody knows—
ALEX: Do you know—
BOBBY: Everybody loves it when we talk about Taylor.
ALEX: Everyone does. And if we’re being quite honest, I’d much prefer that conversation to the one that we’re about to have.
BOBBY: Which conversation is that, Alex? Is this—let’s just—right off the bat. I’m gonna ask you a tough question right off the bat.
ALEX: Yeah, you always do.
BOBBY: As I— as I’m wanting to do what to do.
ALEX: You want to.
BOBBY: Is this the most you’ve been going through it online in, like, years? Because you’ve been good for the last couple of years.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: I would say. You just—you haven’t really been posting, you haven’t been tweeting through—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —your motions. But last night, I saw that a flicker—a faint flicker of the old Alex from the beginning of our friendship—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —where you would just be like reply guiding reporters.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. right. Yeah, exactly. That’s about where I’m at right now, right? It’s like saying thank you for your service to journalists, um, so we should, I say, perhaps what happened, the reason that we’re gathered here tonight.
BOBBY: That’s right.
ALEX: It’s, um, the A’s are out.
BOBBY: The A’s are out.
ALEX: They’re gone.
BOBBY: The longest-running, will they, won’t they, in the history of the tipping pitches podcast. And maybe in the history of baseball?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: I don’t really know. No, I wasn’t there for the Montreal moved to Washington.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But this feels like it has gone on for an eternity, and it’s something that you and I have been talking about literally for years. Like, we have gotten—that we are in a different stage of life than we were the first time we talked about this. We were still in college when we first talked about this on a podcast, and now we are approaching our 30s. We’re like we’re still far from our 30s, but we’re approaching.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: It’s on the horizon.
ALEX: We’re on—we’re on the other side.
BOBBY: And we are finally getting, what, I guess is resolution. I don’t know. I’m gonna give, like, the full background for this, um, of course, but it was revealed to us late last night at almost 2:00 AM Eastern Time. I guess, like, around one 1:00, 1:30 Eastern Time that the Oakland Athletics have entered into a contract to build a stadium in Las Vegas near the strip, on land that is currently owned by Red Rock Casino. Red Rock Casino, Las Vegas, that is where the Oakland Athletics are moving to. We’re gonna get into all of it. I’m gonna let you really publicly destroy your friendship with Athletics owner, John J. Fisher. But before we do, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: And I’m sad.
BOBBY: You are listening to Tipping Pitches where we laugh, because if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry. Alex, Evan Drellich in The Athletic, “The Oakland A’s and owner John Fisher have taken a major step toward moving the franchise to Las Vegas. Agreeing to purchase 49 acres in the city with the hopes of having a new stadium ready to start the 2027 season. If the move pushes forward as expected, the A’s will be MLB’s first team to fully relocate since the Expos left for Washington DC in 2005. A’s president, David Kaval, stopped short of calling it a done deal on Thursday morning.” However, “We’re not all the way there in Nevada.” Kaval told The Athletic. We are in serious discussions with the elected leaders and public policymakers at the state level and at the county level for an incentive package for a public-private partnership, incentive package for a public-private partnership.” That’s what I say before—to warm up for every episode of Tipping Pitches, for their contribution. “That’s basically the way the Allegiant Stadium deal for the Raiders went and so that part isn’t done yet. We’re working with them. and we’re having very good conversations.” I gotta be honest, right off the top, this feels pretty surreal.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: You know, like, we’ve joked about it so many times and we’ve talked about it so many times that I kind of just thought it was one of those things that was never going to materialize. And yet here we are doing the—the A—the Oakland Athletics are moving to Las Vegas podcast.
ALEX: Yeah, I think that I had really convinced myself that it wasn’t going to happen, that they had spent too much time and money, and energy into—
BOBBY: A hundred million dollars according to everyone that works for the Athletics.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: That’s how much they spent.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. I just didn’t even—like I recognized—I think I probably saw it more as—as, like, leverage, you know, than, like, an actual kind of possibility. Um, and I am—I am sure that, uh, a big part of that is me not really wanting to—wanting them to move, right? I don’t—I will happily deny it until the—the—the day they leave, but it was really jarring, because I—because we had heard no whispers about this, kind of in the preceding days, for the most part. I mean, I think that there was maybe some movement here or there, but by and large, I mean, they dropped this on a Wednesday night, right? The—the—the day before—um, like two NBA playoff games, the day before the A’s go on, like, a two-week road trip right after the big market teams, and the Mets and the Cubs leave town. Um, I mean, it was—
BOBBY: how did that road—or how did that homestand go? That was a good one.
ALEX: Um, it’s—
BOBBY: Obviously, we’re going to talk about, like, the financial ramifications of this. Obviously, we’re going to do the full Tipping Pitches thing where we talk about how the owners and Major League Baseball and Rob Manfred, of course, don’t have the fans in mind, literally at all, when they make their decisions about how these things happen. But before that, like I want to do—I want to ask Alex Bazeley like the childhood fan. I—and I don’t mean to, like, really pry too hard, like—
ALEX: right, yeah.
BOBBY: —into your emotions about this, because how do you honestly speak, like, intelligently about what is happening? Like, there’s no gray area to this situation at all? It is just fully black and white. Like they’re fucking every A’s fan, and it’s ridiculous.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But when you saw this news, was it like, “I’m done with this team?” Or is that something that you’re still trying to determine for yourself over, like, the next, I guess, three years before they —
ALEX: Three years, right. I got a little time.
BOBBY: —go to Las Vegas?
ALEX: I mean, I, uh, I don’t really know. I still have not processed, I think, a lot of the emotions. Last night was—was really rough. Again, like—like you said, it broke super late. I was just doing—scrolling for hours, like the vibes were down. Horrendous on A’s Twitter, you know? Like it was a really, really bleak place to be. Um, and—and—and weirdly at the same time, it was also a sort of testament to the—that community that has grown so much. Um, I think it really represented sort of what I’m gonna miss the most about the A’s is—is the community people around it, right? I can—can take or leave rooting for a—a, um, given team of players and, uh, with a given billionaire owner, right?
ALEX: You’ve had to learn that skill.
BOBBY: I have had to learn that skill. But—but it’s the—you know, two decades of watching this team and—with my friends and making friends over this team and using it as an opportunity to, like, get closer with people and connect with them really. Like, right off the bat, I was like, “So what’s my”—like, “What’s my Twitter community? You know, like, I’m on A’s Twitter.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And now we’re at—like, I mean, I know that like I’m—I’m vaguely on Mets Twitter, right? Like, follow other—other team accounts, but like, there isn’t one that I’ve been in, like ensconced in, right?
BOBBY: right.
ALEX: Now, I’m a free agent. Feels so good.
BOBBY: Does it feel good? I mean, it—it—I guess, like, I get where you’re coming from in the sense that, like, at least now you’ve ripped the band-aid off? Where, like, for the last few years, it was just every time you talked about the A’s, it was like, “Are they gonna stay?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: “Are they gonna stay? They—they had this, like, cadence where they would just walk up to the cliff’s edge every few months and they would just take their bullhorn out, and they’d be like, “Hey, we’re on the cliff’s edge.”
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: “What if we jumped?
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: “What if we jumped?”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And then they would get a phone call from the city council who was like, “We reviewed your documents, and we looked over the plans, and we have some questions, but we’re still interested in negotiating.” And I guess they just got to the point where, like, they were no longer interested in keeping up the façade, but—I mean, even back to last night, like it was really weird how this news broke. Like the first thing that—that came through the timeline, the first thing that you sent me was, like, a story from the Nevada Independent breaking the news of the sale and the agreement with Red Rock resort. And it was like so—so disorienting, but at the same time, like so consistent with how this whole process has gone, which is, like, a complete vacuum of leadership, a complete vacuum of relationship with the community, and like a downright disgraceful way of handling this entire situation from the A’s organization. How you do this, how this breaks, and you don’t have a statement to get out ahead of it before it breaks in local newspapers, when you basically appointed Dave Kaval, the czar of the A’s new stadium and relocation president of the Oakland Athletics, David Kaval, who we’ve talked about ad nauseam in this podcast. Like, to me that is a level of dysfunction and saying the quiet part out loud, that at this point in Major League Baseball’s history, like, they should have sanded these just down by now.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I just—I—how—how does this happen?
ALEX: I mean, I think it doesn’t matter to them anymore, right? Like, I mean, I—
BOBBY: I mean, I guess not, but like, this is such—this is amateur hour.
ALEX: I mean, yeah. I saw something on Twitter that Dave Kaval called Oakland Sheng Thao, um, last night just to, like, give her a heads-up, right? And it’d be like, “Hey, this story is coming.” right? So clearly, there was some semblance of—of intent there, right, that Dave had an idea of what was coming down the pipeline, and—and roughly when it was gonna break, right? And I think—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —they just kind of didn’t care what sort of bridges they burned in the process. I mean,
again, there’s a reason that, like, the Friday news dump exists, right? And it’s because it’s a great time to bury stuff, right? The A’s looked around and said, “All eyes are gonna be away from the Oakland Coliseum for, like, two straight weeks.” So, I mean, I will say on—on the point about, you know, how I’m sort of taking it and reckoning with it, I do think, like, I’m not really gonna know for, like, months, right? The A’s obviously still playing in Oakland. Um—
BOBBY: And will for two more years.
ALEX: And will for two more years.
BOBBY: Three—three more years.
ALEX: Yeah. Uh, yeah, yeah. I—I think I probably underestimate a little bit the degree to which this is, like, tied up in my identity.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: You know? Um—
BOBBY: No, I—I—I totally understand what you’re saying.
ALEX: Like where I’m like, “Hey, there’s like one of three things that I’m known for, right?” I really like music, now baseball podcast, now a big, old A’s fan.
BOBBY: Those—
ALEX: That’s—
BOBBY: Those three things are intimately intertwined very frequently, you know? Um—
ALEX: But they are, right now,
BOBBY: Yeah. Um, is that your way of saying that you’d rather be talking to me about music right now?
ALEX: Well—
BOBBY: Cease the A’s chat. Stop the A’s chat. We’re just gonna—we’re done with this.
ALEX: Chill. I mean, I will say—
BOBBY: Do you know what doesn’t let you down? Already recorded music albums.
ALEX: That’s so true.
BOBBY: You hit play, and they play.
ALEX: I know exactly what you mean.
BOBBY: They can’t let you down.
ALEX: I am so relieved to never have to hear the phrase again “Special tax district” or like—again, you mentioned it earlier, public-private partnership.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Right? All these buzzwords that get thrown around that mean the—the taxpayers are gonna give the team money. Um—
BOBBY: Toxic waste remediation of Howard terminal.
ALEX: Yeah, exactly. It’s like, “What are—what are we talking about here?” We’re playing baseball. BOBBY: Remember—now, we’re just doing like a greatest hits of David Kaval.
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: Remember when he was like, “It’s gonna cost $12 billion and we only have 1 billion of our own dollars.”
ALEX: So like that sounds like you’re not buying that stadium, then.
BOBBY: So there was, u h, an article in The Athletic and I—I have the whole thing later about, like, how the media has responded to this because I honestly find it incredibly weird. Like, this is—this is the biggest story, maybe in sports right now, like—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —at least in baseball, by far. Like way bigger than whatever is going on with Max Scherzer’s 10-game suspension, which normally I would have a whole rant queued up for, but that just feels incredibly tone-deaf at this moment. But, like, there was a part in, um, in—I think it was in The Athletic like roundup piece about this. Or maybe it was in Craig’s article about it. I—I read all that stuff like before coming over here. And they were saying how though the A’s can, like, credibly say that they’ve tried for a long time, and a lot of fans will believe that, including fans who are, like, weirdly in our Twitter mentions about, like, my mini thread about how this is what owners want, above all else. None of the A’s individual efforts on their own ever had, like, better than a 20% chance of cashing in. So you wouldn’t say like a person who was going around making 5% bets, 5% likely to hit bets, has a sound financial plan for their future. Like if you cashed out your 401 K right now and bet it on the basketball game that we’re watching right now, two basketball teams that you have not watched this whole year, I feel confident in saying that wouldn’t be a good idea. No one would say you’re trying to secure your financial future, but that’s what the A’s have been doing for the last 20 years. And so, the disingenuity of Kaval to say—I know this is a tough day for Oakland and I know this is a tough day for A’s fans to hear this, but we’re just at our wits’ end here. And then knowing that he’s just gonna get smashed by the mayor and by the city council, and by basically anyone with half a brain. And that, that just doesn’t matter. Like, to me, it’s just we’ve reached the crescendo, we’ve reached the absolute culmination point of not just Rob Manfred’s Major League Baseball, but Bud Selig’s Major League Baseball. And Rob taking the blueprint that Selig was—was more than happy to allow several owners to enact, whether that was actually in the case of stealing the Expos or whether it’s just dangling this vague threat out there to pressure local governments and to giving more public funds to build stadiums. Or you’ll contract the team, or the team will leave for Las Vegas, or the team will leave for Portland, or the team will leave for Nashville, or whatever it actually is. We couldn’t have had any of that without every successive step along the way and without the intentionality of the commissioners of baseball for the last three decades, and creating both a political and financial landscape for an owner to actually pull this off and do what they’ve done. Other owners in other sports have done this, too. Like this has happened in the NBA, they—they took the Sonics away from Seattle. This happened most recently in football where they took the Raiders away from the Bay Area and move them to Las Vegas just like they’re doing with the A’s. It doesn’t take the blame at all away from Rob or from Bud Selig, or from the rest of the group of owners who, at multiple points, had to throw their political way and capital behind this exact move for it to actually be possible. And they did that at every opportunity.
ALEX: Yeah, I mean, it’s just rewarding all the wrong behavior, right? All the bad faith—all the bad faith conversations that he’s had with the community. Um, everything that David Kaval has gone out and said the—the—the lack of interest in financially committing to, like, a viable product on the field, like all of This. I mean, it—it makes me think—today, we’re recording this on—on Thursday, April 20th, um, there was also news broke—that broke today, um, about BuzzFeed News, the organization, right? And Jonah Peretti went—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: —and told his companies and his employees and said, “You know, I—I really fucked up. Um, you know, I’ve really failed you guys.” And, uh, but, unfortunately, you know, BuzzFeed News is gonna shut down, right? And so I think it’s fascinating that, uh, all the lovely people who made up that community, all the lovely journalists, um, and editors and photographers, and everyone lose their jobs, and Jonah Peretti, I’m—correct me if I’m wrong, I think he’s still in charge of things over there.
BOBBY: I think he still gets millions of dollars.
ALEX: I think he still gets millions of dollars, right? And so it’s just like it feels right in that same vein of like—if you can torpedo your company just enough to make it worth it for the shareholders, you’re golden. But that just—especially at a time where baseball is doing all of this kind of moral hand-wringing about the future of its sport, and—
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: —accessibility to fans, um, breaking into, like, young diverse markets. This whole just flies in the face of that. This is just a big middle finger. “Hey, we’re gonna go to Las Vegas, the home of gambling, and retirees.” It’s like—well, here—we’re here to distract you with all this other stuff that we’re doing, okay? We’re gonna change all these rules, we’re gonna create all these campaigns about how the players are more young and more fun than ever, and we want to put their athleticism out there. And we’re waking Theo Epstein up in the middle of the night by pouring ice water on his face and making him go on every radio show in the country so that he can talk about how they’ve put in the work to improve the game and they want to highlight all the beautiful things about baseball. And then at the same time, what are we actually doing in the dark smoke-filled rooms? Who are we actually—whose hands are we actually greasing? Who—who is actually financially reaping the rewards of this game? Are games getting cheaper and more accessible and fair to fans because of these rule changes? Or is the sport actually headed in a direction where more people can watch it and more people can feel good about watching it, and want to develop the type of lifelong relationship to the game that you will pass down through generations the way that you were passed the A’s? Because the answer is no. Like, no matter how much you want to say about, “Okay, the league is in an okay place financially. Uh, okay, the league is in a—is in a decent place in terms of its most up-and-coming demographics being younger, being less male-dominated, being less white, even though there’s still a lot of improvement to be made on those fronts. But still, the most consequential decisions that are being made in the sport are to benefit casino owners, and the actual singular billionaire who owns the team in John Fisher. Yeah, I mean, it is crazy that they are abandoning a place like Oakland, which is a huge market with, frankly, a lot of money if that’s what he fucking looking for, right?
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: But like also with a really incredible cultural scene, um, and a really rich sports history. And—I mean, I’ll note that the A’s at this point right now and for years really have been the most affordable, like, major professional sports option in the Bay Area, right? You’re certainly not getting that with the Warriors or the Giants—
BOBBY: Noy anymore.
ALEX: —right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Like—um, and now there’s nothing, right? I mean, now—now, the people of—of the East Bay have—
BOBBY: I actually think that’s an important distinction to draw and—and I’d love for you to expand upon that, because I think when people think about the Bay Area, they just think it’s like one city, you know? And they think that it is like, “Well, they still have the Giants, and why did the A’s ever come there when the Giants were already there?” Like, that’s the thing that I’ve been seeing get tossed around and that maybe the Bay Area wasn’t big enough to support two baseball teams and a basketball team, and a hockey team.
ALEX: [21:45] no other market has never been able to do that.
BOBBY: And a hockey team. You know, like, maybe—maybe that’s just not the sports market that this place is. But like—like that—that is not the same market, really. That is like—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: In terms of the practicality of being able to go and support a team, going to an A’s game is not the same as going into San Francisco, which has honestly priced out, like, 95% of people who live in what you can call the Bay Area. The A’s fans aren’t just going to Giants games instead now. That’s not how the Bay Area works and—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: I mean, you know that better than I do. I mean, if the Mets dipped, would you be like, “All right, Yankees, I’m in. Here we go.”? But even if I wasn’t a Mets fan, I would still be able to go to Yankees Stadium.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Not—that—that’s not what it’s like in San Francisco and Oakland. Like people—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —who live where you live growing up, do not just routinely go to Giants games all of the time.
ALEX: Yeah, well, my, uh, my buddy Austin might, uh, beg to differ with that one.
BOBBY: Well, how many times did he gets stuck in traffic and miss the first three innings of a boring game, you know?
ALEX: But it is like—it is a—a—I mean, a different city. It’s—it’s literally on—
BOBBY: It’s like a full on just a different—
ALEX: —on—on—on the other side of the water, um, with a—its whole own kind of host of what would be considered like suburbs, right? Like—and, you know, historically, predominantly working-class people who—working-class or middle-class people who—for whom the A’s were kind of that counterweight, right, to, uh, the Giants across The Bay. I think that the broader narrative around this has gotten really muddied, um, because people just kind of repeat the things that they sort of hear, right? It’s like, “Oh, there was like sewage at the coliseum,” right? Or, like, there’s a possum at the coliseum,” right? Or like, “Oh, attendance is too below,” right? And so people like, “Oh, well, like, there must be some real issues there. Some real issues that have to be sorted out. Clearly, that’s not a viable stadium, it’s not a viable market if this is everything that’s happening. It’s like—all right, but go to an A’s game and tell me you don’t have a fucking blast. And tell me it’s not one of the best experiences of your life.
BOBBY: Like, also, everything that you just said, it would still be cheaper to fix that type than anything that they’re doing. In terms of, like, raw dollars, maybe not dollars that have to come out of John J. Fisher’s pocket, which is why we are in the situation recording this podcast that we’re in right now. But, like, the most economical and sustainable option would have been rebuilt on the coliseum site. There’s already public transit there, it’s right next to a highway. it’s what the previous owner wanted to do, but he was stonewalled at every opportunity. You know, say what you want about Lew Wolff. I know that you have your—a lot of issues with Lew Wolff and you accosted his grandson on the streets of New York City, outside of a freshman dorm at NYU.
ALEX: That’s—that is true, yes.
BOBBY: But he was the one that was pushing to rebuild at the coliseum site, which would have nipped this whole situation in the bud 10 years ago. And that’s supposedly, reportedly that was the disagreement between Wolff and John Fisher, that led to Wolff saying, “I don’t see This situation being resolved. I’m just going to sell my share of the team.” And now John Fisher is completely calling the shots. And very clearly, though, John Fisher is a very private person and doesn’t—has not had a lot to say on the record about the situation. It’s now more clear than ever that he never had any interest in staying in Oakland. And whether that’s because I don’t even—like I don’t even want to speculate as to why, like—because there can be a million reasons, all of them are probably like unbelievably nefarious and heinous.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But like, anything that the A’s have done for the last, like, six years, it just looks like downright lies now.
ALEX: Yeah. And, like, you know, we all kind of knew it at the time, right? It was like all a little bit of an, “Okay, Dave. Oh, whatever you say, Dave.” Yeah. I suppose I appreciate that it’s now out in the open, at least again. Like I—my therapist wasn’t very much help today with all this, by the way, which—which is why I’m kind of working through some of this stuff. Um, which is why I think anyway—
BOBBY: Wait, wait. Wait, can I be your therapist for a sec right now?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Do you feel like—do you—
ALEX: Well, it’s actually free. I’m free.
BOBBY: Do you feel like this finally closes the book on your childhood?
ALEX: Jesus.
[laughter]
BOBBY: You don’t live in Oakland anymore. The A’s are no longer in Oakland anymore. Are you firmly into adulthood?
ALEX: You said that as a joke, but, yeah, hmm.
BOBBY: Should we talk about John Fisher?
ALEX: Why not?
BOBBY: I don’t understand this. I will never understand this. Like, uh, there’s nothing that—no amount of, like, spreadsheeting, financial reporting money from casinos that can make this makes sense to me personally. Why you would take a franchise that has, like, 50 years of—more than that, like 55 years of baseball history like built up in a city. You’ve already done all the hardest parts, you know. Like you’ve already—you already have a fanbase. You alienated them from coming to your baseball games intentionally so that you could do this. It just goes back to my whole thing about, like, Major League Baseball is clearly not interested in sustainability. They’re interested in like, immediate cash flow in the present. And this move is just like another shining example in that, where like John Fisher does not want to do the work to rebuild the physical infrastructure of the—of the Oakland Athletics, the community infrastructure of the Oakland Athletics. He’d much rather just take, like, the first $500 million that he could find from any casino and/or city council. And take the easy way out. And I just—I don’t understand how, like, these guys burnish these reputations where like these—they’re—they’re hard—more hard-working than anyone and that’s how they became billionaires. Like John Fisher inherited money from his parents because they founded the Gap. And then he refused to actually do the work of running the A’s that he decided to buy with that money from the Gap. And this is who we allowed to own baseball teams? This is who we allowed to, like, make the decisions that affect millions of people, far and wide, much further than just the Bay Area, clearly, as we sit in your Brooklyn apartment recording this podcast? I just like—this is a crisis to me and I feel like nobody is, like, sounding the alarms about this. People are just like, “Well, this was finally resolved and we kind of saw this one coming.” Like, this is fucking gigantic story. This is like a gigantic story to me and I—like I don’t understand how it’s not—maybe I’m naive because of, like, corporate media and—and MLB rights partners and whatnot. But, like, I don’t understand how this isn’t leading SportsCenter. I don’t understand how Jeff Patton has not said anything about this.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I don’t understand that Ken Rosenthal has written and updated a column about Max Scherzer today. But all he has done on the front of the literal Oakland Athletics, leaving the city of Oakland is retweet Evan Drellich’s article and retweet Mark Craig’s article. Am I losing my mind here? Like, is this not the biggest story in baseball, like, by a landslide that so much so that, like, no other story is even worth talking about right now?
ALEX: You know, you’re very, you’re very—
BOBBY: Okay. You’re very correct about that.
ALEX: Thank—thank you.
BOBBY: You’re not losing your mind.
ALEX: Okay. Good. No, I do think you’re right about that. Uh—
BOBBY: Like, Jeff Passan did a hit on First Take today about how Ohtani could get traded this year.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: If the Angels are under .500.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s four months away. This happened last night.
ALEX: And I think it probably has something to do with the fact that like, you know—as everyone is saying, “Nothing is set in stone yet,” right? You know, the ink hasn’t dried or whatever. Um, things could still come fall apart at the 11th hour, right? What if Joe Lacob swoops in and says, “Here’s $50 billion for the A’s,” right? Like—
BOBBY: Yeah. What if.
ALEX: Um, what if Elon Musk swoops in and says, “Hey, here’s—here’s $69 million—billion dollars for the A’s.
BOBBY: Did you see—did you see Jane tweeted to you about that today?
ALEX: Not really. Shit. [29:42]
BOBBY: Jane—Jane tweeted you and said—shared, like, a screenshot of someone suggesting that someone like a Bay Area billionaire could swoop in, and buy the team, and choose to save them. And it was a picture of Elon Musk wearing an A’s jersey. And Jane is like, “Is that a bet that you make?” You could get your blue check back. Blue checks for all A’s fans. Do you wanna—
ALEX: You say—you say back like I ever had one, bro.
BOBBY: Oh, that’s true.
ALEX: Nah, nah, couldn’t—
BOBBY: Yeah, you were never a member of the blue check brigade.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: What does it feel like, plebe? I’m coping.
ALEX: I know, yeah.
BOBBY: I’m cope—
ALEX: I know. But, like, it—that also didn’t stop them from reporting every other step of the way.
BOBBY: I know.
ALEX: Right? Like, when nothing else was set in stone, when it was like—they’ve entered into a non-binding agreement to do a meeting regarding the environmental impact report three years from now, and it’d be like breaking news. Oakland City Council.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I don’t get it. I mean, I really—I like I don’t have a good answer for you.
BOBBY: I mean, I—I—that kind of tracks, like, the fact that it’s technically not official yet, like the team has not said, “We’re definitely moving.” The team has just said, “We’re no longer—”
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: “—looking to build a new stadium in Oakland and we’re only looking to build a new stadium in Las Vegas.” And I suppose that, that doesn’t preclude someone from buying the team and keeping it there or something extenuating circumstances to happening where, like, another bid gets accepted for a Las Vegas baseball team between—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —now and then or whatever. But, like—so—so that speculation would force the Jeff Passans of the world to actually have to share an opinion on the situation, which would mean that they would actually have to call out ownership, which is anathema to them except for when it’s gonna give them clout during the lockout.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And where all—where all of my—where are all of my pro fan, pro player reporters now?
ALEX: Honestly, though, right? Like—
BOBBY: I’m putting up the bat signal.
ALEX: Well—and—and this is another thing that I think has really kind of just been a little sad over the—over the last day or so, right? It’s sort of seeing the—the, like, sort of news communities, you know, that pop up around sort of teams, and create a following where people, you know, um, start projects where they want to do a podcast about all the teams or maybe just one specific team. And, uh, I’m seeing a lot of people on Twitter whose work I’m going to really miss, um, because there are a lot of really talented and wonderful people in that sort of media scene, uh, around the Oakland days. And—and ones who, I think, oftentimes gave a much more sort of nuanced down-to-earth perspective when it came to—something like the A’s pretending to rebuild or the A’s going for a new stadium or something like that. It always felt much more level-headed, right? Even—and you can even see the difference between, like, the East Bay publications and, like, say, the San Francisco Chronicle or something like that, which has drawn the ire of many and A’s fan. Um, It such—such a shame, man. It’s like—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —there are a lot of really wonderful people, um, around the team, the stadium workers, right? The—the grounds crew, um, all of whom are potentially out of a job in a few years.
BOBBY: Unless they want to move to Las Vegas.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: I just—
ALEX: Where—which is not going to be, uh, habitable in, like, 20 years, so
BOBBY: Exactly. Um, if only a certain podcast had a climate change, many series about that fact.
ALEX: That’d be wild. Um, so, uh—
BOBBY: I would listen.
ALEX: Um, yeah, because those people had to bear the brunt of the lack of investment, emotional and financial in this team from management for the last five years. And they had to—they had to bear the extra added work that a normal grounds through—crew doesn’t have to go through because John Fisher won’t kick in the extra $5 million a year to make the repairs that the coliseum needs. John Fisher won’t hire animal control to come and take the possum out of—possum?
ALEX: Yeah. Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Yeah, the possum out of the visiting radio booth.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like, this is a grounds crew team that had to fucking turn it into a football field and back into a baseball field every weekend for years.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And instead of actually—now that the football team has gone and there’s more clarity about who actually is the tenant in the stadium, instead of actually making the investments to turn this into a world-class baseball stadium that can continue to attract fans and continue to be, like, a safe and normal working environment for the people who work there. John Fisher just runs away from the problem and gets support from Rob Manfred immediately and the league for doing so. I know it’s like, “Okay, we can all check off our leftist bingo cards. Now, if I say this, but, like, it truly is, like, systematic, the way that this whole thing played out. The levers of power that needed to be pulled by the exact people to enact something like this. It’s not just one person making this choice. It is a collection of people who are putting their financial interests above what makes logical sense and what makes community and baseball sustainability sense for the Future near and long-term. And it’s just a shame like—and I—I want to—to close this conversation out, you know, your point about how these small, little industries, media industries, fan community industries build up around these teams and those things just get completely severed without so much as, like, a dignified goodbye when decisions like this get made. I wanted to point out, you know, Mark Craig wrote a column in The Athletic, which I’m sure you read, which, uh, the thesis of the column was about how ownership tried to make it seem like it was not viable to have a fan—to have a fanbase in Oakland because of the attendance over the last few years. And they intentionally tanked the team and at the same time, in some cases, doubled ticket prices, so that it would be more expensive than ever to see a team that was intentionally worse than ever. And this year’s team is even worse than last year’s team, which Mark was using as the example in his column because that was—that coincided with when they raised the ticket prices, when the team lost 102 games last year, and they’re going to lose, like, 120 this year. And I thought that he made a lot of really good points about how, like, “We need to remain clear-eyed about what really happened here,” which was—that fans revolted because they were being disrespected and not because they didn’t want to see baseball, but because that they weren’t being given the same level of investment that they felt like they had showed for so long, especially because the A’s have had such periods of high highs, and some of the most impactful and culturally significant baseball stars that the league has ever seen. Um, he—he—the one thing that I wanted to quibble with, though, is that in this column, he was sort of resigned to the fact that this is inevitable, because of the drastic improvements that would have needed to be made to the coliseum, because it seems like this is what ownership wanted the whole time, because this is understandable from a business perspective. Like if you have a new mark that is so desperate to attract sports teams, because, you know, legalized sports betting is taking off like no market in this country ever has since crude oil like—and Las Vegas is gonna throw $500 million at you or whatever, and Oakland is never going to do that because it’s a much more progressive city council that has been waging these battles for a lot longer. And it’s proven that they’re not interested in doing that. I just like—I don’t really care if people think it’s understandable from a business perspective. I don’t care if people think that it was inevitable and I’m not, like, really willing to concede those points, because if the league had said, “No, you actually have to stop bullshitting. No, you actually have to try to stay in Oakland.” This would have been wrapped up, like, five years ago. They would have rebuilt on the coliseum site. They would have made the necessary improvements to build on Howard Terminal, even though it’s like not—probably like not the right choice for the community of Oakland. It would have gotten figured out if the league was actively invested in keeping them there. And the fact that it wasn’t, just goes to show that like—like, I don’t know how you look at this and think anything other than Rob Manfred would stab any fanbase in the back if it meant that it was better for the league financially, in the short-term. Like not even in the long-term.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Like, I—I don’t even know if this is better for them in the long-term. Like, I don’t know who’s gonna go watch that team in Las Vegas.
ALEX: I genuinely don’t—I—I—
BOBBY: Not now, not 20 years from now, like I don’t—I don’t understand.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And so—well, I think that Mark’s column was good and I think that a lot of the things that he was saying sort of are harmonious with your points about the fan communities and everything that has been built up in—in Oakland. And with that fanbase and the, like, legions, legions of loyal fans who have really stuck it out over, honestly, the last, like, 25 years of them jerking [38:33] fans around, even through Moneyball, even when that was, like, the invoke thing to do. I just—it—it really bums me out that we, like, are in a world where, like, “understandable” from a business perspective is the default.
ALEX: Yeah, I, uh, don’t care about your business.
BOBBY: Neither.
ALEX: I really don’t. Especially if you’re worth more than a billion dollars, I really especially don’t care about your business. Um, I—I also just don’t understand why we’ve sort of conditioned ourselves to—to think this way. I mean, I, I do, we’ve talked ad nauseam about how sort of ownership talking points have merged with, like fan perspectives, but, like, I’d—I’d love to explain, like, the rules of baseball to, like, a six-year-old, you know, and get them really excited about the A’s, and then tell them that they’re leaving and watch them like, you know, start crying and be like, “No, no, don’t worry. It was a business decision.” So, like, you don’t really have to, like, worry about it. There was rationale, they thought it through. It’s like—that means nothing to the millions of fans you’re abandoning, like it really—it doesn’t mean anything.
BOBBY: Yeah. I mean, it’s—it’s—it goes hand in hand with, like, how we treat everything in this country like a business and, like, everything in our lives like it’s a business. The sport of baseball isn’t a business. It’s a sport. And, like, we’ve only allowed the business entity that is Major League Baseball. We being in the United States, we being like the larger society have only allowed the business entity that is Major League Baseball to completely unilaterally own that sport over the last 100 years. Like, the founders of baseball, if you put John Fisher in front of them and you put childhood fan that you just named who wants the A’s to stay in Oakland in front of them, and you ask them, “Who is baseball actually for?” They’re not choosing John Fisher, yet John Fisher is the only person—John Fisher and his legion of owners are the only people who actually have the power to change the direction of the game and they’re changing it for the wrong reasons, in the wrong direction. And I just—it’s more acute than ever that our passions, our entertainment, the ways that we distract ourselves from, like, the crippling realities of existence are no longer out of bounds, like for billionaires to crush for profit. And, obviously, we know that, like, obviously, we’ve been doing this podcast that way for the last five years. But I don’t think that we have gotten a more stark example and I can’t think of a more stark example that we could get than just the entire way that this situation has unfolded. It’s completely illogical. It doesn’t serve anybody except people who’s—to stand to profit financially from it. And I think that Rob Manfred, I think that David Kaval, I think that John Fisher, like, should not ever be allowed to show their faces in Oakland. What little power we have left exists in, like, public shaming, and alienating these behaviors. And I—like, honestly, beyond that, I don’t really know what else to do or say.
ALEX: Yeah, I don’t either. I mean, I think that the A’s are about to find out what it means to not have people attend your games, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: They thought they knew. Dave, you thought you knew, but you fucked around and you’re about to find out.
BOBBY: Um, you want to give me like your—your, uh, mini instructions for fans to, like, take actions of practice in the coliseum this year? Like, top five—
ALEX: Right. I’ll be attending with the screwdriver.
[laughter]
BOBBY: Top five things that you can do to get your money back from John Fisher this year.
ALEX: Yup. I’m taking a, uh, a seat.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I’m gonna take a plastic seat.
BOBBY: That’d be great.
ALEX: Um—
BOBBY: Sneaking into the game?
ALEX: Honestly? Yeah.
BOBBY: Just like cutting a hole in one of the chain-link fences in the outfield and just, like, letting all your friends in.
ALEX: I mean—
BOBBY: How to blow up an MLB franchise with Alex and Bobby.
ALEX: A’s Twitter is in, like, a really weird space right now, because just a couple of weeks ago, there was a whole movement that was getting started of, like, this sort of reverse boycott, where they were like, “We’re gonna fill the stadium—”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: “—on June, whatever.” Um, and it was gonna be his whole thing—you know, like, “Let’s show ownership that we really that like—the fans are here, right? You’re not reaching out to us, but we are here and we can come.” Um, and, like, last night, there were also people on my timeline who were like, “We should go to the stadium on that day and bar fans from entering.” You know, like, it’s both ends of the spectrum right now. So you know what? Whatever brings you peace, I think, um—
BOBBY: It’s like the community defenders who, like, go and prevent, uh, an eviction.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Or praise [43:26] fandom.
ALEX: Right. I’m—I’m chaining myself to the—to the lead gates of the Coliseum.
BOBBY: I thought you were gonna say like, “People still were going in and they were just planning on, like, setting the place on fire.” Like, maybe we should save that if we’re off the pod, I guess.
ALEX: Yeah, right. Um, if you have any thoughts on us—on that, you can DM us, though.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Um—
BOBBY: Anything else add? Do you feel better or worse?
ALEX: Um—
BOBBY: About the same?
ALEX: I just feel tired, man. I realized this afternoon, I was like, “Oh, I’m never gonna see the A—the Oakland A’s win a World Series.” I just—in my lifetime, I personally am never going to witness the Oakland A’s win the World Series.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I just, like, have the realization—
BOBBY: Really sped up that anxiety that I have. And it’ll die—that I’ll die before the Mets won the World Series and you’re like, “Well, I’ve seen the future.”
ALEX: It’s like, “All right. Well, at least I know. You know, there’s no uncertainty anymore.
BOBBY: That’s true. That’s true. Is that the more enlightened existence, right? I guess we have years for you to figure that out.
ALEX: Yeah, check back with me in 2027.
BOBBY: So you’re a free agent now. Are you like a free agent or are you a Mets fan now?
ALEX: I—
BOBBY: ‘Cause you just, like, don’t have the Mets fan disposition?
ALEX: Oh, yeah?
BOBBY: Yeah, you don’t. Like we’re kindred spirits in a lot of ways when it comes to our fandoms in terms of expecting everything to go wrong and, like, understanding that we’re never going to have the most functional franchises no matter how hard we try or, like, no matter how much of the, like, media darling spotlight we have on our franchise, like whether that’s you with Billy Beane or, like, me with Steve Cohen. Like, something is always gonna go wrong, like, uh, that’s always been a touchstone for the two of us, but, like, the fervor in your chest, like the anger that I experienced when I watch things go wrong for the Mets, like I’ve just never seen you like that.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: And so I don’t—is that in there? Can you really—can you tap into that and become near and dear to—to the New York Mets?
ALEX: I mean—but this is the thing that, like, I don’t know about, right? It’s like, how do I just become a fan of another team? Like, I can’t—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Like I—you know, how do you—how do you just train yourself to do that? I learned how to do this over 26 years.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: And now I just have to pick another?
BOBBY: You’re like—you’re like, um, someone who grew up in, like, a really religious community and got married and—at 18. And now you’re divorced, and now you’re, like, on the town in the dating scene, on the apps.
ALEX: That’s—
BOBBY: Exactly.
ALEX: No, that’s exactly what I’m like. Checking it out. Uh-huh.
BOBBY: And you’re just like, “I could—fuck it. I’m a Twins fan now.
ALEX: Right. Hey.
BOBBY: I’m gonna check out Royals fandom for a little bit. Well, I’ve also loved [45:57]
ALEX: You know, I’ve always loved the Mariners like—I’m gonna—you know, I’ll do a little pup u platter, a little tasting of each—of each team. You know, you came over, I was watching Pirates, Reds.
BOBBY: Yeah, you were—you said to me—
ALEX: I’m working my way up.
BOBBY: —two new candidates for Alex’s fandom and I was like, “Yeah, Pirates, Reds?
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: I’m not sure which one is the worst bet. My honest advice to you—and you don’t need my advice, you know these things. But my honest advice to you would be just—
ALEX: Become a Yankees fan?
BOBBY: Well, we’re already a Yankees podcast.
ALEX: We could make this—it would be official.
BOBBY: I—uh, the subway energy to the podcasts would just be—
ALEX: It would be so awful.
BOBBY: I can feel us bleeding subscribers right now—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —as people picture this.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: No, my honest advice to you would be just pick a team where the stakes are just not as high in either direction, good or bad. Intentionally signing up for Yankees mandem sounds terrible, to be honest. You have to pretend, like, you’re not satisfied that the team has made the playoffs every year for the last 30 years. What the—that’s weird.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like, come on. That’s—that’s not normal. Like, just pick a team where it’s like, “We made the playoffs, that was fun. Hey, we, uh, we came pretty close. We’ll get them next year.”
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And of course, like different fans and different fanbases, like your mileage may vary on that sort of attitude towards—towards the team, but like—I have a friend who’s a Marlins fan, and the Marlins suck their ass.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: They’re, like, actually .500 this year or whatever and they have, like, some promising players and, uh, obviously, can develop pitchers weirdly, like better than most franchises in baseball.
ALEX: Right. Yeah.
BOBBY: We’re talking about the Marlins now. But, like, they won two World Series, and he is just unbelievably Zen about that.
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: He just gives me shit all the time. He’s like, “Come talk to me when you hang a banner in your lifetime.” He’s like, “We got two.” I’m like, “You haven’t had a winning season other than the pandemic season in, like, 25 years,” but I guess more like 15 years. But, like, he’s right.
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah, he’s right.
BOBBY: Stakes are so low. There’s a lot of stuff to do in Miami.
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: You don’t have to—you don’t have to stake your whole existence on the Marlins. So my advice to you would be like try to get something like that.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Because you’ll enjoy it if the Mets win either way, because, of course, I’ll have enough love to cover.
ALEX: The only—the only thing I think about is like—I feel like it’s hard to really engage like full-time with a team that’s not like somewhat close to you, you know? I feel like if we were to be like, “Hey, I’m a Royals fan.” Now, I’ve also never been to a Royals game and don’t know anyone on the team.
BOBBY: Well, not knowing anyone on the team, you could turn that around pretty easily.
ALEX: That’s—that’s—
BOBBY: And we could go to Kansas City. Kansas City is a cool spot.
ALEX: I mean, I’m down. I would love to go.
BOBBY: I’ve been meaning to go to Kansas City again anyway to see the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. What if you just became a fan of, like, a team that doesn’t exist anymore?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Like—
ALEX: Cleveland Spiders and—
BOBBY: Yeah, exactly.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah. I just don’t want to lose. They’ve already lost all of the games that they’re gonna lose.
ALEX: Well, that’s why I was almost thinking like, “What if I became a fan of, like, a minor league team?”
BOBBY: Ooh.
ALEX: You know?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Stakes are even lower. I know that the players are gonna disappear. They can turn on them by not picking them [48:52]
BOBBY: Or—or—or if the players go on to succeed, whether they go on to succeed for that franchise, or they get traded.
ALEX: Yeah
BOBBY: You could just root for them wherever they go.
ALEX: Exactly. They’re still a success for the Minor League team.
BOBBY: That’s promising. That’s not bad.
ALEX: Too bad they just moved to the Minor League team—one of the Minor League teams out of the city. I can be a Cyclones fan.
BOBBY: Yeah, but then you’re just a Mets fan.
[laughter]
ALEX: Damn it. We’ll workshop it.
BOBBY: We’re—we’re really hoping Alex Ramirez can get back to ball a little more this year. It’s like you don’t want that life, trust me. Me at—me at 2:15 in the morning, reading Alex Ramirez’s whiff rates on fan graphs. You don’t want to be that.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: You don’t want to be that if you don’t have to.
ALEX: No, you really don’t. Well, if—if anyone listening to this, how’s the enticing offers?
BOBBY: I mean, like the most obvious team would be the Padres, right? Because they’re set for, like, the next 10 years in terms of, like, intentional competition [49:41]
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But they play in the West Coast.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: So, like, you really gonna stay up until 1:30 AM—
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: —every night? I mean, you kind of do that every night and even like—
ALEX: Right, right. Yeah.
BOBBY: Are you going to commit to watching them often enough that it feels like they’re giving you something back?
ALEX: Right. That might be Bob Melvin.
BOBBY: Bob Melvin? Tatis is coming back today?
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Which we—I don’t think we can talk about it. I think that’s banned technically—well, actually, no, it’s—it’s Tatis discourse. We can talk about Tatis.
BOBBY: Right, right. We’re not allowed to talk about why he was gone.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: This is turning into a normal pod episode.
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: See, like we talked through it long enough? Now, we’re cracking—
ALEX: Okay. What—what are we at right now?
BOBBY: We’re cracking jokes again. We’re at 68 minutes.
ALEX: TBD on how now much I cut out of this. TBD.
BOBBY: Including this part right here?
ALEX: Um, yes, please.
BOBBY: Alex is a free agent. He just came out of college with a 4.0 GPA. He’s a great fan. He has the resume, the fan resume that can only be built up through having to put up with Billy Beane’s bullshit for decades.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You want him—you want him in that fanbase. You need him in that fanbase. Come make your pitches.
ALEX: Yeah, make your pitches, I will say I, you know—uh, having just got out of a really long relationship. I’m just a little—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: —emotionally fragile right now. Um—
BOBBY: He seems unavailable—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —to root for—to root as hard for Bobby Witt Jr. as you might want to. Just know that he’ll get there.
ALEX: I will get there. I’m doing my best. I promise.
BOBBY: Okay. Thank you everybody for listening to this emergency episode of Tipping Pitches. Thank you, Alex, for just mining trauma as always. It’s what we do, baby. Uh, to make your pitches to Alex for why he should root for the team that you root for, it’s tippingpitchespod@gmail.com, tipping_pitches on Twitter. 785-422-5881, if you would like to make the pitch in your own voice. We have some exciting pods coming up for the next couple of weeks. Some cool guests.
ALEX: Yeah, I’m stoked.
BOBBY: I’m just gonna leave that teaser out there. I’m not going to tell people who, because the one that we already did is the one that I want to tease. And the one that we haven’t done yet could always get rescheduled. And so that’s how these things work.
ALEX: But you and I will be here, as we are every Monday [51:56]
BOBBY: Every—every Monday. Um, thanks everybody for listening and we’ll be back in just a couple of days.
SPEAKER 8: We got the guillotine. We got the guillotine, you better run. We got the guillotine. We got the guillotine, you better run. We got the guillotine. We got the guillotine, you better run.
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!
[52:31]
Transcriptionist: DH
Editor: KM
Tipping Pitches 
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