Alex and Bobby report back from the set of Alex Rodriguez’s documentary, then discuss MLB’s embrace of cryptocurrency products and how the failure of these entities is a blip on the league’s bottom line, how John Fisher and Dave Kaval’s gambit in Las Vegas backfired, and what baseball can learn from the Phoenix Suns and Phoenix Mercury’s game-changing new television rights deal.
Links:
Alex Rodriguez is shopping a documentary about his life
Terra is still all over Nationals Park
Terra co-founder is currently being sought for extradition
A’s stadium math doesn’t add up
A’s don’t deserve public funding from Las Vegas
Suns & Mercury strike game-changing TV deal
Join the Tipping Pitches Patreon
Tipping Pitches merchandise
Songs featured in this episode:
HAIM (feat. Taylor Swift) — “Gasoline” • 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 then kind of help out, so he wasn’t Tipping his Pitches. So Tipping Pitches, we hear about it all the time. People are home understand, what Tipping Pitches it’s all about? That’s amazing! That’s remarkable.
BOBBY: Alex, because of confidentiality, I’m not sure how much we can say, but the cold open topic here on today’s podcast. Confidentiality, because, uh, um, I want to say we’ve been asked to participate in this project.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: That project is Alex Rodriguez’s life documentary being shopped to various suitors. I’m so glad this news is finally out. You know, we’ve known about this for, what, like seven months now. Is that when we did our first, like, background interview for it?
ALEX: Right
BOBBY: As the historians of Alex Rodriguez’s life. And also you being someone who’s worked so closely with him—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —at A-Rod Corp over the years.
ALEX: Right, as an executive assistant.
BOBBY: How’s that going—
ALEX: I’m actually the guy who posts all of his Instagram stories, so please stop roasting me for them guys. I’m doing my best.
BOBBY: I actually thought that you weren’t the guy who posted the stories. I thought that you were the guy who picks the thumbnails for all of his Instagram reels. I’m actually designing his face—
ALEX: [1:22]
BOBBY: —a thousand yards—you’re the guy—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —who finds the right thousand-yard stare for the thumbnail of his Instagram reels.
ALEX: I’m the guy who designs his—the—the YouTube video thumbnails, you know, where I took a picture of him in aviators and it’s like, “A-Rod’s five keys to success in life.”
BOBBY: Like, bright—bright green bubble letters.
ALEX: Right. Exactly.
BOBBY: Like underlined like seven times with a bunch of exclamation points. Um, yeah, Alex is—Alex is doing his own Man in the Arena.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: He even got the guy who directed Man in the Arena, Gotham Chopra.
ALEX: Yeah.
bobby: To come along with it. He’s trying to do his own Man in that Arena. He’s trying to do his own—The Captain Alex Rodriguez wants to do. According to Andrew Martin of the New York Post, Alex Rodriguez is shopping a documentary to networks and streamers about his life. Um, could be very interesting if it’s done right. If A-Rod were willing to delve deep into the specifics of the highs and lows. Marchand wonders if Rodriguez will shed new light on the truth of what happened around his year-long suspension from baseball for PED usage. Rodriguez’s story is a tremendous story, worthy of a documentary if told correctly. Gotta say I agree.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I agree. Do you think it’s going to be honest and forthcoming? I guess before you answer that, should we clear out, like, a month on the pod, just to talk about the documentary? ALEX: Yeah, I mean yes.
BOBBY: And nothing else.
ALEX: All right. this is—so this feels like—
BOBBY: The culmination of our work?
ALEX: The culmination of our work, like maybe the—the best opportunity we have to invite him on, right? Again, being a part of this project—
BOBBY: Oh, oh, you’re going that way?
ALEX: Think—yeah.
BOBBY: See, I’m over here worried about us trying to get us in his project, and you’re trying to get him in our project?
ALEX: Yeah. Well, we’re already involved in the project. Right now, we—we already have the open line to him.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Um, we should say we’re the narrators. We are kind of—we’re the ones who frame the whole story.
BOBBY: Right. We’re like the Rosencrantz and Guildensteen—Guildenstern of the Alex Rodriguez—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —documentary.
ALEX: We’re—for all you, uh, Drive to Survive fans, we’re like the—the Will Buxtons. You know, the journalist they bring—
BOBBY: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
ALEX: —in to, like, kind of narrate the—the whole story.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: Um, they were generous enough to [3:30]
BOBBY: We’re like the Jon Hamm of Trea Turner’s highlight package.
ALEX: Yes. Can we keep going? Are there any others we can come up with? I’m excited for this. More like A-Rod, but video content, yeah.
BOBBY: I’m just excited for people to see the vision. You know—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —like what we’ve seen so far, it looks really good.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: They got a vault, an archive, you know?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: A vault—vault of footage.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You always hear that. There’s always vaults of footage. Where are all these vaults?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Uh, just in PO boxes scattered around the United States.
ALEX: It’s a—uh-hmm. It’s just a computer.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Right. Like—
BOBBY: Exactly.
ALEX: It’s a hard drive.
BOBBY: Just like—just like the cloud. It’s just another computer.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Where are these vaults of footage? It’s just a USB. Sound—sounds less sexy when you put it that way.
ALEX: I guess the question I kind of come to you with this is, like, I mean, A, where is he finding the time for this, right? Like, he has got so much going on right now.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: Between the original content he’s already producing for his various social media channels, owning, um, an NBA team.
BOBBY: Yeah, he spent a lot of time on that one.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Unfortunately, they got eliminated in the first round.
ALEX: Well, so he’s got a little more time on his hands now, is what you’re saying?
BOBBY: Well—well, now—now the real work starts—
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: —improving the team for next year, you know?
ALEX: So true.
BOBBY: There’s not a Rudy Gobert trade out there again, so they gotta figure something else out. We gotta figure out a worse player to give up more first-round picks for.
ALEX: Like, do you think that the genesis of this idea was when he was approached to be in Derek Jeter’s documentary?
BOBBY: Yeah, duh. Obviously.
ALEX: Like without a doubt, right? At the time, he’s like, that’s a really good idea.
BOBBY: You mean—I mean, no, uh, like do I think that he never thought about doing a documentary about his life before this? No.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: But of course, this is a trend now and—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —and Gotham Chopra, the filmmaker, attached to it who—interesting career for that guy. Has directed a ton of—ton of sports documentaries, and also just is—is in the film, The Love Guru. He just—he has various interests, you know.
ALEX: Sure.
BOBBY: Um, uh, this is such a trend for, like, athletes to—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —not only do a documentary about their lives, but make it this all-encompassing, like birth to death, I’m gonna govern the story, I’m gonna give access. And, uh, obviously, it was like, you know, gasoline was poured onto this fire, maybe that’s a really negative metaphor for this. It’s like not really that insidious of a thing. But, like, the, uh, Michael Jordan documentary, The Last Dance, was really the thing that, like, made it the financially invoke thing to do both for the athlete side, and also for, like, the company, the streamer side or the, you know, production company side. So, I don’t think it was, like, the first time it crossed his mind, but I do think that it was the thing that kind of got the ball rolling for him, is sitting down for these interviews and seeing the—the buzz and the excitement, um, and the engagement over The Captain.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: The—the documentary series about Derek Jeter. Now, I think that that documentary series was well-made—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —you know? Like Randy, who we had on, his friend of the pod, and we have on to talk about it. And as a wonderful filmmaker in his own right, had like a more creative control over it than some other projects in this vein. And I am curious as to whether or not Alex Rodriguez would give away that kind of control over something like this to actually make this documentary as worthwhile as something like The Captain or as interesting and intriguing as something like The Captain. Of course, I’m not trying to imply that, like, Jeter didn’t have final sign-off on—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —on his documentary series or anything like that, but how willing you are to, like, let the other people involved in the process, does determine whether or not this actually turns into something, like, worth watching for people like you and me? Despite the fact that we’ve participated in it, so we’ll watch it either way.
ALEX: Right. I—I do you think that A-Rod’s mentality is probably a little bit—because, yeah, I mean, when we had Randy on, he noted that there was a bit of acrimony. There weren’t the most straightforward, um, discussions. There was, you know, light confrontation, just recognizing his dynamic that he had over the years with Derek Jeter and that sort of thing. And so part of me does wonder if this is his—
BOBBY: You mean the dynamic that he was a better baseball player for their entire careers and—
ALEX: Between—yes.
BOBBY: —yet somehow people love Jeter more?
ALEX: Yeah, exactly. I think he probably sees this as a way to center himself in the story a little bit more, like—of course, Jeter had creative control over The Captain, which I think meant that his perspective, his firsthand perspectives were not always the ones that were the most engaging. That’s why I think that, like, the A-Rod conversations were really fascinating because he had to—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —talk about someone else, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: As opposed to simply saying, “Okay, tell me your press release life story.” You know? Now what I’d love to see is Derek Jeter turn down the interview for this—
BOBBY: Ooh.
ALEX: Say, “Sorry, dude, I’m too busy. I’m—haven’t you heard? I’m on Fox these days.”
BOBBY: I think it’s interesting to hear A-Rod talk about other people like you said.
ALEX: Yes, exactly.
BOBBY: It’s interesting to hear other people talk about A-Rod, but it’s not interesting to hear A-Rod talk about A-Rod.
ALEX: No, no.
BOBBY: Because then it just turns into his YouTube channel. It’s always like—he always—the version of A-Rod in A-Rod’s head is so divorced from reality. That’s why like—so I Googled to find this article to—the Andrew Marchand article in The New York Post. I Googled A-Rod documentary and, of course, when you do that, the first thing that comes up is 2018’s Screwball, which is a documentary about biogenesis and A-Rod’s involvement in that, which is an amazing documentary. And I think kind of, like, poisons the well of an A-Rod documentary. Like, is it going to be better than that?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Is it going to be more interesting than that? And, like you said, I think the key phrase that you used was take back control of his own narrative and image, which in many ways, his entire postplaying career has been about doing that exact thing.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Doing on TV, doing the KayRod Cast, going in the booth, Sunday Night baseball. You know, the Fox News—or the—the Fox Sports set, his YouTube channel, his book, he—all these other things, his stock market where you trade athletes, has all been about, like, resetting the image of what is A-Rod, and he’s bigger than he’s ever been now at this point, which is crazy.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: In terms of just blanket reach. But I still don’t think he’s in his mind, like corrected the record on those—that time period of his life, like his playing career, and how he became this way.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: This way being the way that we talked about him all the time, like the super weird figure in baseball and pop culture.
ALEX: I mean, I think that speaks to, like, rich person syndrome, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Where, like, if you receive any amount of criticism, you feel that it’s your responsibility to correct the record, right? It’s what we’re seeing with, like, Elon Musk over the last, like, year, right? It’s that any form of criticism can get under his skin and he feels like he has to come out and say something about that, right? So, I do think that, like, you’re right that A-Rod will probably never be completely satisfied with the public narrative around him, because there will always be something that he’s like, “No, you guys don’t get it. You deserve to hear my side of the story.” And it’s like, “I actually don’t care. I’m good with the gossip. The gossip is fun.”
BOBBY: I’m—I’m pretty certain that nothing in here will be new.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: I’m still gonna watch it.
ALEX: Um, of course.
BOBBY: There’ll be new stuff in there if they actually did talk to us, though. As the unbiased third-party record keepers of—
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: —Alex Rodriguez’s cultural footprint.
ALEX: The unauthorized biographers.
BOBBY: The title gets longer every time we name it. Okay. We have some fun stuff to talk about today. Fun maybe wasn’t the right word. We have some stuff to talk about today.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Uh, the blockchain, things of that nature, the Oakland Athletics. Um, but before we do that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I’m Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[theme]
[11:30 – 12:80] Ads
BOBBY: Thank you to this week’s new patrons. Andrew, Robert and Rachel. Um, Alex, you know, before you came over here, before we decided what we’re gonna talk about today, I was at the gym, thinking.
ALEX: Right. Getting gains.
BOBBY: Getting gains, thinking about the state of the world.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Thinking about the state of the digital universe, Major League Baseball.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: How these two things interact.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. As one does at the gym.
BOBBY: And I was like—and I was like—well, here’s what actually happened. Here’s what actually happened. My phone died at the gym, so I was alone with my own thoughts.
ALEX: So, you’re like, “Now, I just gotta think.”
BOBBY: And this is what came to me.
ALEX: That’s great.
BOBBY: This is really pulling the curtain all the way back. This is how my brain works. Can we talk about non-fungible tokens?
ALEX: sure.
BOBBY: Can we talk about the blockchain? Because there’s two reasons I want to talk about this and they’re both companies.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Number one is Terra. Number two is—I don’t know how to pronounce it, Sorare, Sorare.
ALEX: Soronan.
BOBBY: Sorare. Sorare. Sorare. I just feel like such a prick saying Sorare.
ALEX: Sorare. Right. No.
BOBBY: That just sounds like—that sounds like a Hypebeast.
ALEX: Bro, are you on Sorare?
BOBBY: The first one is Terra. Um, Terra is the official crypto sponsor of the Washington Nationals, supposedly. Some of you might remember Terra from last year when I wrote a newsletter about Terra and the Nationals relationship on June 16th, 2022, because Terra had just gone out of business. Not really out of business. They lost $45 billion in market cap in a week.
ALEX: They hadn’t gone out of business. They had just lost $45 billion in market cap.
BOBBY: Just a—yeah, just a cool $45 billion in market cap because their coin decoupled—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —and the value went to zero.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Since then, they have launched, um, Terra 2.0. I read. Terra 2.0. Uh, let me remind you, we’re talking about this because they are the official crypto sponsor of the Washington Nationals. So according to the Washington Nationals and the Lerner family, you should be using this coin—
ALEX: UH-hmm.
BOBBY: —according to them.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Because they are advertising to you, that means they think that you should use it. They endorse it.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: They have been accepting money to tell you to use this coin.
ALEX: Yeah, that’s the Lerner guarantee right there.
BOBBY: Exactly. You will make money using Terra. I don’t think they actually said that. They said that you could make money using Terra.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Um, Terra, whose founder was arrested on—one of their founders was arrested on March 23rd because he attempted to travel to Dubai using false—falsified Costa Rican documents while also carrying falsified Belgian travel documents, but was intercepted and arrested at the airport in Montenegro. A federal grand jury in Manhattan subsequently laid eight charges against Kwon including securities fraud, commodities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy. The following month, KBS News in Korea reported that Kwon had sent ₩9 billion equaling US dollars 7 million, to law firm Kim & Chang prior to the collapse of Terra USD. Everything’s fine here. The Washington Nationals are still advertising this behind home plate on television during Major League Baseball games.
ALEX: Right. So, he’s being extradited right now by both the US and South Korea, is that correct? There are two countries who currently would like to arrest him?
BOBBY: Yeah. Well, if there’s a third country out there, maybe he can get the triple crown, triple crown of extradition, you know?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: He’s going for the Miguel Cabrera 2012—
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: —of—of Bitcoin—or crypto or whatever. Look, I know we’ve talked about this a lot, honestly, and—but it just—it still feels just as present in MLB, but nowhere else in culture. Like, I—I feel like we closed the book on cryptocurrency, like being a thing that normal people have to care about. Right? Like, remember—remember last year—no, I know—I know that cryptocurrency is still a thing and I know that, like, the Bitcoin weirdos are still out there.
ALEX: Yeah, they’re at the top of all the Twitter replies right now.
BOBBY: And I know that, like, Ethereum, which is attached to Sorare, they built the platform or whatever that Sorare uses, Sorare, whatever the fuck. And I know that, like, it’s still an insidious thing that we should care about if we are talking about finance. But as—in—in terms of, like, I walk out my door and go to the bodega and come back, I should not have to think about crypto. Or, like—not nothing in my daily life should still be getting affected by crypto. It’s like a weird thing that we can put in the corner now, in most of society.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And yet because these Major League Baseball teams just put their grift above all else and wanted to accept this money, they’re still advertising, they still have these multi-year deals with these places. The—the Sorare partnership with MLB is, like, really just getting off the ground. Now, I’m starting to see ads every time I open—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —up MLB.TV, Twitter, Instagram. It’s all these, like, partnership posts and whatnot. And it’s all about how—and for—for those who don’t know, like this—this platform Sorare is like—it’s like fantasy sports, but with NFTs. So, like, instead of drafting a player in fantasy sports, you get their non-fungible token card version and how they perform is based on how much—how much it’s worth is based on how they perform. And so, it’s like you’re building your fantasy team, but also at the same time you’re investing in these players. And, you know, from the player side, it’s like a way to continue to make money off your name, image, and likeness. But from the league side, it’s like a way to further divorce the real-world product from the financial success of the league, which I think is a problem. I think is part of the reason that baseball feels so far away for so many people is because they’ve stopped prioritizing anything approaching reality. And I realize how much we’ve talked about, like, crypto and the blockchain and all these different places that MLB is willing to take money from, but—but something about, like, this past week and thinking about all these ads that I’m seeing, the Terra ads circulating on Twitter, the Sorare ads filling up my feeds everywhere. And thinking about this funny—like this blockchain funny money, it’s like all fake. You know, as far as I’m concerned. Like, yes, the MLB teams are getting real money for this, but the deregulated whatever the hell doesn’t actually exist for, like, the real—most real people who are fans of Major League Baseball or baseball the sport in general. Something about that being so immaterial and then reading your newsletter this week, and seeing all of, like, the real money that the MLB owners are pulling in from these different ventures and from their Major League Baseball teams, being redistributed to, like, far right political candidates.
ALEX: Fucking Madison Cawthorn and shit. [19:45]
BOBBY: Yeah. It’s like sending me in a spiral—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —honestly and how, like, they’re turning baseball arguably, like, the most, like, physically real thing that you can imagine. Like, you go to the ballpark and you watch them throw a ball and hit it with a stick. And there’s grass and you’re outside, and there’s the sun, and there’s open air, and there’s beer, and there’s all these real things that are great. Turning it into, like, the fakest, most digital noncorporeal non-tangible thing in the world is really just, like, sending me in a spiral—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —this week.
ALEX: I—I think that they—I mean, the last 20 years, I would say or so, have seen a lot of developments and technology that Major League Baseball relies on, the ways that fans engage with the game, and what their streams of income are, right? Um, part of that is cable TV, which I know, you know, we might touch on later. But, um, as we talked about before MLB, uh, and more broadly sports leagues in general, I think are looking at the rapidly changing media and technology landscape and saying, you know, “Things are changing so fast. We don’t need something that’s gonna be run you know, remain secure for 3050 or whatever years. If this business exists for a few years and we can squeeze $20 million out of it, great. That’s $20 million we didn’t have before. And then when that goes kaput, we’ll move on to the next venture, right? Um, I think they’re looking at things like, say, tangible trading cards, right, which were a huge part of the baseball sort of fan economy—
BOBBY: I love the episode on Spotify. They’re talking about real trading cards [21:24] holding in your hands.
ALEX: No. Physical, I’m talking about holdable baseball trading cards, yes.
That was a huge part of, like, baseball fandom as well as this—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —you know, vehicle for—honestly, like investment, right, for fans who want to bet on the value of a card, appreciating over time—or depreciating. And as that sort of ecosystem—that— economy has disappeared in the last couple of decades, I feel like Major League Baseball is like, “Look, we need a way to still feel like fans can purchase a piece of the game, right, and— and own it, right? To the extent that you can own fucking anything on, uh, a computer server somewhere, right? The computer says you own it, but I—I do think this is their reaction to that.
BOBBY: Thank you, computer, for giving me this certification—
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: —that says that I own this collection of pixels.
ALEX: This is a reaction and saying—and saying, well, if that—if that industry doesn’t exist anymore, we need to replace it with something, right?
BOBBY: Right, yeah.
ALEX: Or five other streams of income, which is not defending it, right, as a—as a means of making money, but—
BOBBY: I mean, I think the problem is that that industry does exist still, it’s just—well, number one priced out like normal baseball fans. And number two, is mostly dominated by people who actually don’t care about real-life baseball, you know? It’s like professional card collectors—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —own the—the card industry. It’s not people who—I mean, you know, for the most part, it’s not people who are like, “I’m gonna go to the ballpark on Saturday and then on Sunday, I’m gonna go to a baseball card convention.” It’s like, “I’m gonna spend $28 million on baseball cards on Saturday, and then resell it for $31 million on Sunday.” It’s like everything in baseball, and sports, and life, and arts, and entertainment is just becoming fake. It’s just becoming not real. And, uh, do you remember last year we had this whole thing—this whole digression about physical media, and about how it exists on Netflix one day, and it’s not there the next day, then you’re screwed. And that piece of art is—has just been removed from history or whatever.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like, baseball looks at that and they’re like, “Cool, that’s an opportunity to make more money.” Like, that’s an opportunity to get people to pay for the servers, so that, you know, we can squeeze a little bit of profit out on the back end of that. And I’m looking at that and I’m like, “What happened to sports being the respite from that? Like, what happened to the core interest value, the core entertainment value of sports being a thing that you actually go and watch in person?” Or if you can’t go and watch it in person, at the very least you just watch it on TV, but you’re actually watching the sport, you know? You’re not using the sport being pumped through the Ethereum blockchain via an algorithm that gives players a score from zero to 100, how well they perform, that raises the value of your non-fungible token related to how the player played this past week. Like that is just not—that’s garbage. I’m—like, I’m sorry, I—like if—if that is entertaining to people that—that—that’s fine as a niche interest for a few people who are interested in it, but I don’t need it to be platformed. Like, I don’t. You know what I want to be platformed is the sport that I actually want to watch. Maybe you might say, like, “Oh, why not have it all? Why not—if this makes it more interesting for baseball fans in some communities, great. If this makes it, you know—if this raises excitement about the NBA or about a certain player, because you got their card on Sorare or whatever it’s actually called, then how is that a bad thing? It’s a bad thing because they’re spending all their time doing this fucking bullshit. Like—and they’re not spending their time actually making it possible for people to access the real game.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: You know, it’s not getting cheaper to go to a game in person because they’re making so much money from this other thing. It’s actually getting more expensive to go to a game in person and they’re still making money from this other thing. So, I just—show me how it makes market sense, let alone practical sense for, like, the health of your sport or, like, the future of your sport. It doesn’t. It just doesn’t make sense.
ALEX: I—I know I have—I’ve brought this up before, right, but in the early 2000’s, the Astros decided to—to name their field after Enron, right? I’m wearing my—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: —beloved Enron cap—Enron field cap right now. Prized collection of mine. And, like,
once I’m—
BOBBY: Damn, dude, my Sorare field cap in 2051 is going to be so sick, dude.
ALEX: Dude, it’s Sorare.
BOBBY: I’m gonna know how to pronounce it right.
ALEX: But, like, once upon a time, Enron was seen as like a cautionary tale for companies of like, “Hey, make sure to, like, read the books, make sure to, like, look through and do your due diligence before just, like, blindly diving in, you know, when—
BOBBY: Oh, you’re saying like for other companies—
ALEX: I’m—
BOBBY: —who were doing business with them?
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Or just, like, you know, like the government who [26:32] what it is.
BOBBY: Like, the general—general business community?
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Everyone else who’s, like, looking at, uh, a company that says, “Hey, we’re doing really well, you should want to get into business with us.” I feel like what most people reasonably took away from that is, “Hey, maybe not everything that meets—maybe not everything is as meets the eye.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: You know, especially given, you know, around the time of the financial—like you think we would have taken some lessons away from that and in the last year, both Terra and—let’s not forget FTX went—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —belly up, right? FTX.
BOBBY: And their founders are on the run.
ALEX: Right, exactly. And I—I do feel like the—
BOBBY: Google search non-extradition countries.
ALEX: I feel like developments like these are really telling about how well MLB is actually doing, because if you can weather multiple crypto scams in a year and, like, it’s still fine, like, uh, maybe your sport is doing okay. Maybe that whole thing about how you’re actually losing money every single year—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —starts to ring less true.
BOBBY: Bro, they’re not getting paid by Diamond Sports Group. The Bally streamers, they’re just not getting their payments, and guess what didn’t happen? They didn’t go out of business. They’re just not getting their main source of revenue and everything seems to be fine.
ALEX: Right. Every six months, they have a situation that puts them in, like, dire financial straits and they’re like, “If we don’t get this money, we may not survive as a sport.”
BOBBY: Right. It’s been nice having baseball.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And so sorry for the promising young career of Shohei Ohtani, but it’s been cut short. He’s gonna go play indie ball now—
ALEX: Yeah, and then—
BOBBY: —because the Angels are going under.
ALEX: And then they’re like, “We’ve announced a $100 billion sponsorship with, you know, Bored Ape Yacht Club or whatever.” Like—
[laughter]
BOBBY: Did you see that, um, Elon—the—the reporting around the A’s moving to the Vegas was that—the boring—whatever the fuck that’s called.
ALEX: Yeah, like the boring company, yeah.
BOBBY: the boring company was gonna build them little tubes to get fans to the stadium. “Here’s your little tube. Now come watch the A’s.” What’s the worst experience, getting one of those tubes or having to watch the A’s in Vegas?
ALEX: Jesus fucking Christ, man. I mean, I respect it, at least the fans won’t have to, like, be outside on the way to the game, right? Like—
BOBBY: I feel like it might get hot in those tubes, though.
ALEX: Well—
BOBBY: There’s not a lot of coolant happening in Vegas. Not a lot of water to kind of cool the whole system down.
ALEX: Oh, my God, man. This isn’t even a fucking joke.
BOBBY: Never mind the fact that, like, this is a risk, like the—using this platform, Sorare, Sorare, Sorare, Sorare. Never mind that people can lose money on that, you know? Like, there’s not, like, a deep understanding of what you’re actually investing in and whether or not it could completely just—the floor could fall out from underneath it. Like—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —the financial volatility of this is much higher than the financial volatility of a physical baseball card, because this thing is like a year old. It was literally launched last June, and now MLB is—MLB is, like, “Sign up. Don’t come to us if something goes wrong, but sign up.” You know? Because we need them to make money so that they can continue to pay us money. Uh, it’s not enough that you’re paying us directly for 17 different things. You have to pay another company to then give the money to us. Also, everything just cycles back to us. It’s all—uh, that’s the circle of life here. I just—when—when taken into account along with, like, the sports betting and all of the ads that are going on there, I’m just looking at all of the things—I’m just looking at all of the things that MLB is telling me that I should use and I’m like, “No. I’m not gonna use any of these things.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And I don’t really think anyone else should use any of these things, either. It’s not just that I’m just like a weird, quirky guy who doesn’t want to use all the consumerist products that you are selling me. It’s like the products are actually not usable—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY:” —for, like, 99% of people. And I don’t know, I don’t mean to do the—like, concern troll, uh, baseball’s role in this country, but like, isn’t this supposed to be, like, important to the United States? Like, isn’t this “America’s pastime?” Like, have some—honestly—honestly, this is gonna sound like a Fox News segment. Have some fucking dignity. This is embarrassing. This is my audition for Tucker Carlson’s feed. [31:11]
ALEX: This—this is good. Yeah.
BOBBY: Have some dignity, dude. You take these ads back to the Lords of the Realm and you say, “This is what we built on what you gave us.” And you see what they say to you. It’s just ridiculous.
ALEX: Counterpoint, there is no sport that better represents the death spiral that we’re in right now as a country. Selling for parts, fucking grifts left and right. I think it’s great, frankly [31:39]
BOBBY: Yeah. And the original thing that was like supposed to be worthwhile, the reason you came here is being kneecapped at every opportunity. I mean, I know we wrote down—I know we said we were not gonna talk about the A’s anymore, but that was just a joke. Like, we have to talk about the A’s. You know, like, all the while, we’re—we’re— we’re lightspeed, all engines are go on the digitization of baseball. Meanwhile, the actual real thing, we’re just gonna be fucking with that the whole time.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: We’re gonna take the A’s out of Las—or we’re gonna take the A’s out of Oakland and move them to Las Vegas. So, the real product is as flimsy as ever, but the digital product, that’s the thing that we want you guys to focus on and care about.
ALEX: Yeah. I mean, I—it—I think that—
BOBBY: I think that those two things are not divorced, you know?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: I think—I think those two things are linked.
ALEX: I think what Rob Manfred’s sees a lot of his role being right now is a marketing exercise. Like that’s all it—it’s not actually about—
BOBBY: Uh, it’s just—
ALEX: —improving the product of the sport.
BOBBY: Go to college. Just, like, take a fucking class at NYU Stern instead.
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah.
BOBBY: If that’s really what you want to do with your life.
ALEX: Instagram business account.
BOBBY: Like—exactly, you know? Just join a multi-level marketing scheme.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Some people actually care about this, Rob. Like, some people actually care about baseball. I’m like—and the fact that you’re, like, pumping it full of fucking first year business student ideas just to make John Fisher more money. Like—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Give me a break.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: Seriously.
ALEX: I don’t know, bro. I—
BOBBY: I warned you, you know. I warned you that I was gonna do this.
ALEX: [33:11] the end of this.
BOBBY: I was like, “This is gonna take—”
ALEX: You’re like, “I have one topic and it’s gonna be 45 minutes.”
BOBBY: And guess what? It was. Um, okay. Shall we move on? Should we talk about the A’s, updates—
ALEX: [33:23]
BOBBY: —on the Oakland Athletics.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s just a hilarious week in the A’s.
ALEX: It’s just a—what a—what a week. What a week!
BOBBY: Should we start with the fact that not a single Las Vegas politician agrees with anything that came from Dave Kaval or John J. Fisher’s camp? Or should we start with the fact that they’re doing, um, just full-on propaganda?
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Uh, I want to—I want to touch on just the kind of bungling of this rollout real quick.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Because it is incredibly funny—
BOBBY: So funny.
ALEX: —that the A’s made this announcement, not only amidst negotiations with the city of Oakland, but also while Las Vegas lawmakers were—were meeting to discuss this very thing. The A’s are currently asking for about $500 million in taxpayer money from Clark County in Las Vegas.
BOBBY: I have an idea.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: They could invest it in Ethereum and then, once this Sorare idea takes off—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —this stable coin, Ethereum—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Terra [34:38]
ALEX: Once—once they repeg it to the dollar.
BOBBY: Right. Once Terra 2.0 repegs—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —it’ll be worth at least a million.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And that way, they have $500 million extra. Do you think they thought of that? Like, if MLB is so certain that this is a good idea, why not just get the money that way?
ALEX: Right. Like, they’re very confident in these products that they are marketing, right?
BOBBY: Like decentralized stable coins?
ALEX: Yeah. This is an opportunity for the common man like you and I to—
BOBBY: Get it on the ground floor.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Make our own—
ALEX: Why not JJF?
BOBBY: Yeah. Once upon a time there was a gold rush in this country, why not again?
ALEX: Yeah. You’re such a good business person.
BOBBY: Exactly. Take some of those GapCash. Tokens. GapCash by the way, that’s the original non-fungible token. It’s like when—when—thank you, John J. Fisher. You know, when you do like a $60 purchase and they’re—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —like, “You got $150 in GapCash, you have to spend $300 to exercise it.”
ALEX: Yeah [35:40]
BOBBY: Hang on. Hang on.
ALEX: The—the tentative deadline for this, uh, request of the money is the legislative session that ends on June 5th.
BOBBY: I’m so sick—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —of tentative deadlines.
ALEX: I know. Though, negotiations could be extended again, like always. Deadlines don’t mean anything.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Like if two people just get together and decide, “Can we decide tomorrow?”
BOBBY: Exactly.
ALEX: They just get to do that.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Uh, they could—if a deal is not reached with Clark County, they could withdraw the, uh, land purchase agreement. Because, again, they’ve only purchased the—the—the land, they haven’t actually secured the funding for the ballpark.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: Like—but, like, the sense that I’m getting is that maybe they overplayed their hand, just a touch and—and—
BOBBY: That doesn’t sound like [36:30]
ALEX: No, not at all. It doesn’t—it doesn’t—uh, I think they probably thought they had a little more leverage than they actually do when it comes to the city of Oakland, who promptly, again, turned around and said, “Oh, you’re moving to Las Vegas?”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: “Have fun.”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: “We’ll send you a card.”
BOBBY: Um, in last week’s episode of Succession, and then on the mountaintop, and they’re trying to tank the deal, and Alexander Skarsgard’s character says, “Are you Scooby-Doing me here?” Hanna Barbera fucking business school. It wasn’t about MLB, but it kind of felt—
ALEX: Okay. I mean, I had—so I’ve been—the last—this past week, I’ve been like, you know, reading John Fisher’s Wikipedia page, right? And, like, reading all the, like, footnotes and shit, right?
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: And—
BOBBY: You know, just normal guy stuff.
ALEX: That’s just—that’s just what I do on a Thursday evening. And again, lots of really interesting nuggets in there. Some of which I do want to save for future projects.
BOBBY: I’m sorry, I’m just laughing so hard because I know the context of the fact that your significant other was out of town.
[laughter]
BOBBY: But the listeners didn’t know that. And so now—now I’m going to tell them is that Alex was alone, his significant was out of town.
ALEX: Two, three weeks.
BOBBY: And instead of partying, you know, instead of just being a guy laying back, cracking some brews, ordering pizza—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —you know? And having—having the dudes over to watch some ball. He was reading John Fisher’s Wikipedia pages footnotes.
ALEX: I was finding his dad’s unauthorized biography [38:00]
BOBBY: Right. So, the—yeah, the biography, so tell everybody about the biography.
ALEX: Right. Uh, yeah. So, I mean, I—
BOBBY: [38:03] the next six months of Tipping Pitches.
ALEX: Right. So, I did come across this 700-page autobiography from Donald Fisher. That’s, uh, John’s father.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: And, uh—
BOBBY: You would have thought that Alex found the Rosetta Stone when—the way he texted me about this.
ALEX: Oh, my God. I was like, “You will not believe this.” Um, it was only distributed to close friends and family, um, but a copy does exist on the Internet Archive—Internet Archive, which is just, like, the Holy Grail of the web. Um—
BOBBY: Do you think that like—so, did you think, like, a friend uploaded it? Do you think that a kid uploaded it because they were spurned like—you know, not John—not JJF, because JJF got no control of The Gap.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And was able to weaponize that into ruining your entire baseball fandom, but—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Like another kid who didn’t get controlling shares of—of The Gap?
ALEX: Right. Right. Like—or like a—like a cousin who wanted in—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: And—
BOBBY: They wouldn’t let him in?
ALEX: Yeah. I—I do like that theory.
BOBBY: Just working on it.
ALEX: I did download all 700 pages. They’re sitting in a PDF on my desktop right now, so I have my work cut out for me. The reason I brought this—
BOBBY: This is like the Twitter files.
[laughter]
ALEX: I will [39:13]
BOBBY: John J. Fisher close family has given me—
ALEX: Source is closed. The reason I bring it up is because you mentioned succession.
BOBBY: The reason you bring it up is because it’s the funniest thing ever.
ALEX: I swear. It’s just fucking mean, right? Um, you mentioned succession and the more I read about the Fisher family and—and John Fisher specifically, I realized just how much—again, like we’ve—we’ve said this before, but like just how much these dynamics mirror the ones that play out in succession. Like, John Fisher’s business history is following in the footsteps of his two older brothers, going to the same, like, high school and college and studying all the exact same things. They all studied the same stuff. And working on a congressional campaign that lost. Um, from there, he went to, uh, like a real estate business that did company with The Gap that failed. Uh, at which point he was then just hired by his family to come work in the house at the investment company, which turned around and bought the Oakland Athletics. So, like—
BOBBY: This was the separate investment company that the family also had?
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Like, manage the family’s wealth.
ALEX: This—it wasn’t even something that his dad was interested in. His—he was like, “John, if you want to do this, go do it.”
BOBBY: Right. I can’t wait until my family has so many businesses that I have one of them that I’m not interested in.
ALEX: Right. Or like you want to spend how much, like $200 million on the baseball team? BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: As long as you run it.
BOBBY: I’m gonna get into, um—um, wholesale groceries, you know?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Fruits, vegetables.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: I’m gonna fall into Castellini system.
ALEX: So—
BOBBY: My—I mean, like my favorite Italian Americans before me, Bob Castellini and his whole family. I’m just gonna get into the wholesale vegetables situation.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You know?
SPEAKER 3: He’s got carrots and lettuce, and mushrooms porcini, the vegetable King, Bob Castellini.
ALEX: Uh, do you have, like, a supplier?
BOBBY: I think—that’s a good question. I’m gonna have to figure those out at the shareholder meetings.
ALEX: Yeah. I mean, I know there’s a grocery store right on your corner that’s really good.
BOBBY: Gonna make enough money to buy the A’s.
ALEX: Uh, the—the only other thing I wanna mention with regards to the A’s is I do have to appreciate the last week of Las Vegas media—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —kind of coming to terms of the fact that not very much of this actually adds up. Both the—the Nevada Independent and the Las Vegas Review-Journal each had columns saying, “Are we really sure that this guy is on the up and up?”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: “Is this really the guy we wanna be tying our future to?” The Nevada Independent pointed out what the A’s are asking for is the equivalent of what the Las Vegas Strip has to pay in, uh, casino and gambling taxes in a year. They make around $8 billion, they have to pay around $500 million. And the A’s are like, “Yes, we’ll take that.” That’s ours.
BOBBY: Just the entire driving force of the Las Vegas economy. We’ll have that for a year. Thank you very much. That’s a—that’s cool. Seems like they got that out—situation all figured out.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: No loose ends.
ALEX: Nope.
BOBBY: Um, should we talk about the propaganda?
ALEX: Oh, right. Fuck. Fuck!
BOBBY: So, who was it that hit the home run? Goddamn it, I can’t name A’ players. Shea Langeliers is having a good year.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Who’s the other guy, it was, like, 10 home runs?
ALEX: Uh, yeah. Brent Rooker.
BOBBY: Yeah. Which team is he gonna be on by June?
ALEX: Las Vegas A’s.
BOBBY: Um, so, wait, so who was it that hit the homerun, the propaganda homerun?
ALEX: So it’s—so it’s—right. So, it’s first baseman Ryan Nolan.
BOBBY: Sure. Um—
ALEX: Do you know a two-hitter?
BOBBY: Right. He hits a home run to right field where—which is where the diehards sit—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —as the Coliseum.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And, of course, the diehards, this is the A’s first home game, after you talked about, they were out of town for two weeks when they made this announcement. It’s their first home game and all the signs over there say, “Sell the team,” you know, vary—varying degrees of John Fisher eat shit kind of situation.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And on the broadcast, you can see all of those because it’s just the broadcast. You see the whole outfield when—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —they hit a home run.
ALEX: Beautifully placed home run by Ryan Nolan.
BOBBY: Honestly—
ALEX: I just wanna say thank you so much. You’re doing God’s work.
BOBBY: That was—that was praxis.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Thank you, Ryan Nolan. Um, and then when MLB reshared that little highlight, they cropped the video into like—into like a square, you know? Like, they—they cropped it so that it was, like, super-zoomed on the ball, so that you can’t see the signs. And it’s just—if that’s not everything you need to know about Major League Baseball’s priorities, I don’t know what is.
ALEX: No, it’s incredibly instructive on this worldview, that they think they can edit out the—the anger of—that fans feel right now. The passion that fans feel for their team, right? Like, these people would not be sitting here with these signs if they did not care about the Oakland A’s, right? The fact that they’re there and showing up to watch this historically awful team—
BOBBY: They’re the worst team ever.
ALEX: They are maybe the worst team to literally ever play the sport of baseball and yet the fans who were there, who were saying, “We still have love for this organization and we could, again, if the right person was in charge,” right? And they’re not interested in hearing that.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: That’s just not—the fact that there are thousands and thousands of fans who were saying, “We’ll come back, we’ll be here when you’re ready to show up for us.” And the league is like crop, save as new video.
BOBBY: The A’s are 5-23.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: That is a .179 winning percentage.
ALEX: Yup. No pitcher wins yet.
BOBBY: Um—
ALEX: You’re—their stat—
BOBBY: Yeah, that’s a new—that’s a new record.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: No—no pitcher wins. The first 28 games of the year, not a single starting pitcher win.
ALEX: Single starting pitcher win.
BOBBY: Yeah. Right.
ALEX: Yes. Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: Um, that is a 29-win pace for the year. They’re gonna wrap this campaign up at 29-133, if they stayed on this pace.
ALEX: That is—
BOBBY: They, uh, have a -118 run differential, which is good for—that means on average, they are losing every game by at least four runs. And that’s not even including the games that they win.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: So that means in their losses, they’re losing by, like, six runs on average.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Um, the—they are on pace to absolutely shatter the run differential record. Um, not only just the run differential record for the live-ball era, but including the Cleveland Spiders is the worst team of all-time.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Uh, it’s gonna regress like they are going to improve most likely, but if they don’t, this is, like, all-time tank the franchise value level bad season.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: And so, you know, I’ve seen a lot of people—including us, like, you know, sell the team. Um, the only way out of this now with Las Vegas kind of pumping the brakes and Oakland saying, “We’re not going to talk to this ownership group anymore. We would—we would resume negotiations if the franchise were to change hands. We could restart negotiations. We’re just—we’re done with these people.” Which is actually really funny.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Does someone want to buy this team? I mean, someone does want to buy this team, because someone—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —wants to buy every team like no matter how dysfunctional or barren they happen to be at the moment of sale. You know, someone bought the—the 2011 Astros. It just turned out to be Jim crane.
ALEX: Yeah
BOBBY: Which was unfortunate for our society.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Never—you know, he was—he had finished in his war-profiteering era, and he wanted to get into baseball.
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: So, we just need to find someone who’s done with their war-profiteering era.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You know, maybe like an oil guy.
ALEX: Right. What’s Rex Tillerson up to these days?
BOBBY: I don’t think he has the cash for that, dude.
ALEX: No, probably not.
BOBBY: Yeah. He took a financial hit, took a pay cut when he decided to be Secretary of State. ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Was—he’s—he was Secretary of State, right?
ALEX: I think so, yeah.
BOBBY: Wasn’t he one of those guys who took, like, a principled stance against Trump?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: He was like—
ALEX: Which means that—
BOBBY: “—I will no longer provoke North Korea because I don’t believe in nuclear armaments or nuclear warfare.”
ALEX: I thought he was one of those guys who were like after he left the position, all the stories came out of, like—actually, when he was in the role, Rex Tillerson stood up to Trump all the time, you know?
BOBBY: Um, oh, so he was the voice of reason guy?
ALEX: Right. Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: I just—
BOBBY: Thanks, Rex.
ALEX: Thanks, Rex [47:56] for him.
BOBBY: [47:56] there were so many of those guys.
ALEX: That, there were.
BOBBY: Do you think anyone’s ever gonna come out and be like, “I was pumping him up.”? I was telling them he wasn’t going far enough.
ALEX: I mean, we’ve already had a few of those guys and they’re the ones running his campaign right now.
BOBBY: Well, that’s true.
ALEX: Just politics talk here. You know, you want to talk electoral college?
BOBBY: Can he get elected from jail?
ALEX: We’re not taking Marianne Williamson seriously enough.
BOBBY: What do you think about the DeSantis prison thing?
ALEX: Like for prison?
BOBBY: No, dude. Did you not see this?
ALEX: Or the thing where he wants to build a prison near Disney?
BOBBY: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that one.
ALEX: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Sick. Uh, just—once again, so—so good that he was like, “I want to—I’d like to be president.” And you know what Americans hate.
BOBBY & ALEX: Disney World.
BOBBY: The most successful business in history.
[laughter]
ALEX: So, bringing back to the A’s—
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: —again, just to bring it home. If—if they are such, um, unprofitable team.
BOBBY: Yeah, right.
ALEX: If they are such a—such a bad business to run, you’d think that John Fisher would be interested in getting it, right? You’d think that he would be saying, “Look, I’m losing money on this. It’s not viable in the long term. I’d like to offload this asset.” Right? And it just seems funny to me that while the organization talks about this really tough financial situation they’re in, John Fisher refuses to entertain offers.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: He’s, like, steadfast and saying, “I’m not interested in selling.” Which just makes me wonder on what the value is there then.
BOBBY: Business school 101, bro, you don’t tell people that you’re ready to sell. Come on. JJF, he went to the foolproof business school of growing up as a billionaire. Never—never steer anyone in the wrong direction. Uh, so we were out to dinner like a month ago for my birthday, and we were maybe morbid—morbidly joking about the A’s.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Uh, it was right at the beginning of the baseball season, and how bad they are. And this was before Las Vegas rumors really—I mean, of course, Las Vegas rumors have been swirling for about two years. But this was before it seemed like the most viable path like it does now and like it has over the last two weeks. So, the—you know, your mileage may vary on that.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But we were—we were talking and we were saying like, “I can’t tell you how much my life has improved since Steve Cohen bought from the Wilpons. And we need to find you a Steve Cohen. You know, we need to find your financial crimes guy.” Everybody needs a financial crimes guy in their life. And we were joking about how going through the entire Forbes 400 richest people in the world or 500 richest people—I don’t know.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I don’t often read that article. The one that they update in real-time. Just—just going through that whole list and just—you know, like your immediate reaction 1 to 10—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: How much would you want this guy to own your team would be a good pod? I think we just need to make that pod happen.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Because now it’s like there’s serious talk about how someone will need to swoop in and buy this team.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And—
ALEX: In order to keep them in Oakland.
BOBBY: —maybe some hand—yeah, in order to keep them in Oakland. And maybe some hands will need to be greased along the way. like maybe, you know, Rob will need to—Rob will need to step in and be like, “Mr. Fisher, the other 29 owners would really like you to sell the team so that we can keep dangling in Las Vegas over the other cities’ heads.”
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Um, and, you know, maybe that’s not the case. But in that fantasy world, I do think that that’s the fun pad for us, so maybe we—maybe we bank that one on a week where we’re busy and—
ALEX: Yeah
BOBBY: —just, like, roll this one onto the world.
ALEX: Well, so we’re thinking about guys who are past their financial crimes era, right?
BOBBY: I mean, hopefully, um, Steve Cohen would not be—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —a good—uh, we need Steve Cohen around—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —Citi Field, you know. So—so if Steve Cohen got arrested for financial crimes, hypothetically speaking, hypothetically speaking—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —had he done anything—I—I believe he has not admitted any wrongdoing, you know. Do you think they would make him sell? I don’t think they would. Like if Steve Cohen was in prison, do you think he would still own the Mets? Because they’d have a hell of a fucking time trying to get him to sell the team?
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: There’s no rule in the MLB owners charter that says you can’t break the law. Is there?
ALEX: I mean—I mean, I have to—I have to assume that it’s not a rule given everything we see
on a weekly basis.
BOBBY: Because, like—okay,
ALEX: They could force him, right? If—if all 29 and Manfred came and said, “You need to sell like—”
BOBBY: How—wasn’t this the thing with, like, the Clippers and Donald Sterling and, you know, Robert Sarver and the Suns who we’re going to talk about in, like, five minutes?
ALEX: Sure.
BOBBY: Wasn’t—like, they were pressuring him to sell the team, but wasn’t there nothing that could legally force him to sell the team? They were just kind of making his life miserable and he’s like—it was like an old racist man with very little backbone, and so he just decided to cash out and sell the team?
ALEX: But what—what good is an antitrust protection for if you can’t do shit unilaterally like this? Like use your monopoly powers for good.
BOBBY: That’s true. Maybe that’s different between the NBA and MLB. How bad would the financial crime have to be where other owners would be like, “Let’s force them to sell the team.”? I guess they don’t like Cohen already, so this would be, like, their golden goose.
ALEX: Well, the—so the mind—the—the name that first came to my mind is someone again who’s already through their financial crimes era and that’s Terra founder Do Kwon.
BOBBY: I should’ve seen that one coming.
ALEX: He’s got the cash.
BOBBY: Does he?
ALEX: I don’t know.
BOBBY: I mean, he’s trying to, like, steal 7 million bucks at that time. That’s, like, fucking pennies. That’s, like, a mental reliever.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s like a mop-up guy. That’s Tommy Hunter. Come on, those are fucking rookie numbers. Dude, Taylor Swift gotta be approaching a couple of billion. She could buy a team.
ALEX: I mean—
BOBBY: She could be—
ALEX: Would she—would she be a part of the Nashville extension?
BOBBY: Probably.
ALEX: Like, it feels like—
BOBBY: She’s gonna help us with A’s.
ALEX: I mean, no.
BOBBY: So, this is the problem with sports ownership is that these—these teams have become so valuable that kind of the only people who can come in and buy them are, like, in the 50 richest people in the world already.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And they already have so much money that they either have to be sports fans or they either have to—they either have to be sports fans or they need this other thing to, like, hide profits somewhere.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You know? And so that really narrows the window of people who can come in and buy a team to a gaggle of crooks who made—who made their money and, like, taking people’s life insurance away, you know. Like—
ALEX: Well, I mean, did you—
BOBBY: Or, you know, mortgages. Like ripping up mortgages and evicting people. Like those are the people who buy teams now.
ALEX: I know. Well, I don’t know if you saw a couple of weeks ago, there was the—the article that came out about FTX and how they were approaching different, like, artists, right? And I think they approached Taylor and had a meeting.
BOBBY: Oh, yeah.
ALEX: And in the meeting—
BOBBY: This is huge for the Swifties.
ALEX: Right. Supposedly, in the meeting, either she asked or her legal representation asked, “So, uh, can you tell me that these are not unregistered securities?” Which I would like to be very clear, I don’t know what that means. I don’t—whether they’re registered or not, doesn’t make a difference to me.
BOBBY: I learned about what that means when I was doing my research on Sorare.
ALEX: Fuck, yeah, dude.
BOBBY: And, um—
ALEX: All right. Would you like to explain?
BOBBY: So—okay. This is a thing right now, they’re trying to pass a bill in Congress—
ALEX: Ooh.
BOBBY: —that classifies, uh, cryptocurrency as commodities or securities, or something to that effect.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: But those are legally different things or whatever. But then they would be under the jurisdiction of the regulatory body that controls, you know, trade in America. Meaning, you can’t just trade stocks, and securities, and bonds, and stuff without any kind of oversight into them.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And money can’t change hands without, like, a paper trail between those two things, otherwise, it’s obviously, you know, ripe for exploitation. And so, basically what that—her representation was asking is, “Are these functionally—”
ALEX: Right. Is there oversight on these?
BOBBY: Yeah. Are these functioning in the economy as securities and exchanges do?
ALEX: Right. Basically, is this legal?
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: And they were like, “Well”—and she was like, “Goodbye.”
BOBBY: It’s a gray area. Huge win for Swifties.
ALEX: Huge win for Swifties.
BOBBY: They offered her—I think the report was a hundred million dollars.
ALEX: A hundred million dollars—
BOBBY: Yeah [56:52]
ALEX: —to sponsor her tour. Can you imagine the [56:54] tour sponsored by FTX? Can you imagine having to buy tickets to that?
BOBBY: You know, there’s plenty of things to criticize Taylor Swift over. Plenty of things.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But if the bar is MLB, she is clearing them. Like, why does Taylor Swift individually have way more backbone than Major League Baseball? And the answer is because she actually has to get people to like her. You know, like—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —MLB does not give a—a fuck about that.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: They don’t care about whether or not you think that they’re doing the right thing. And Taylor Swift, who actually has to make music that people listen to and like, is invested in that.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: It’d be more so than anyone on Earth.
ALEX: Right. I mean, it sounds like they had a very real conversation about this potential partnership—partnership and it’s worth pointing out that, like, Taylor’s dad, I think comes from the finance world. So, like, she, like, has—
BOBBY: [57:49]
ALEX: Uh, yeah, I know, right? She, like, has an understanding of what this is, but it also feels very telling that it was like, “Oh, she asked this question, because you know, her dad’s in finance, and Major League Baseball was like, “Oh, it’s pegged to the US dollar. I don’t know what it means, but US dollars is pretty good. Big fan of that. Let’s get some more in here.”
BOBBY: Yeah, they have no—they have no excuse.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: I mean, like, there are examples of other people realizing this is a fucking scam. Uh, it’s—it’s really funny. Okay. Can we talk about the Suns real quick?
ALEX: Sure.
BOBBY: The Suns—the Suns and the Phoenix Mercury, um, who were both recently purchased in one acquisition from Robert Sarver by Mat Ishbia, who is the CEO and chairman of the mortgage lender, United Wholesale Mortgage. Ishbia is very wealthy. Uh, his net worth today, according to Forbes is $7.2 billion. I believe that makes him the second richest owner in the NBA. And the—he would be the—I think, like, second or third richest owner in baseball too if he had bought a baseball team. Um, he acquired the Suns like—the Suns and the Mercury in, like, February or, like, late January, right before the NBA trade deadline. Um, and immediately decided to trade for Kevin Durant, which was a cool move.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But he’s like—um, he was rumored to be interested in buying an NBA team for a really long time. And he has a—a level of wealth that maybe some—more legacy sports owners and NBA owners don’t have. And so, he came in, wanted to make a big impact or whatever, they trade for Kevin Durant, all-in move. It came out this past week that while Bally Sports, Diamond Sports Group is missing payments to some major league baseball teams. Um, Bally Sports is also the regional cable network for a lot of NBA teams as well. It came out that because of these missed payments, it resulted in—you know, from Ishbia, and the Suns, and Mercury— Mercury’s perspective, a breach of contract, and so they decided that they were not going to renew their contract or not offer Bally Sports the opportunity to renew the contract to broadcast, um, Suns and Mercury games. And so instead, they won’t—their games won’t be—will no longer be available on cable television. There’ll be broadcast on, you know, like a, like, uh, an additional cable package. It’ll be—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —like basic cable, like there’ll be a local TV on your channel like—
ALEX: Yeah, on, like, Channel 2.
BOBBY: Yeah, exactly. Or, like, you know, CBS or whatever. Like, how you get—you can get those channels for free if you just plug your TV into the wall.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Um, you don’t have to pay anything extra. And then, uh, for people who don’t have TV or don’t have, you know, um, like a coaxial cable to plug their TV into the wall or whatever. There is a streaming platform too. And so basically, if you live in this area, you can watch all of their games for free. They’re giving up however many tens of millions of dollars per year that they were making before from cable and they—and when—when asked about this, Ishbia basically said, like, “We’re now reaching almost three million people and before, we were reaching like a few hundred thousand people.” And we think in the long run that’s a good business bet to create more fans.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And then spend their money and feel more invested in the team for a lot longer because they can actually see them now. Fascinating timing.
ALEX: Yeah. He said, “We’re not focusing on money. We’re focusing on winning, success, and taking care of fans, taking care of the community. What happens is you always end up making money. It always works out.” Like not—not the way I understand it, actually. I think it’s very hard.
BOBBY: Let me just say off the bat, they are thinking about money.
ALEX: Of course, they—of course, they are.
BOBBY: They’re think—he just bought the team and they’re thinking about money in the long term.
ALEX: Right. And they already like—
BOBBY: What he’s saying—
ALEX: They will make money off this.
BOBBY: Exactly. What he’s saying is we’re not only thinking about this year’s bottom line, like so many sports owners and leagues do.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: What a revolutionary concept.
ALEX: We’re recognizing that if we create more basketball fans, that is better for the overall health of the sport, and we’ll probably be able to make money off that.
BOBBY: So, it presents an interesting question, is MLB gonna do something like this?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Like, would an MLB team follow in Ishbia in the Suns and Mercury’s footsteps? Or would like the Central MLB streaming platform do something like this? I mean, it’s definitely not going to be free, if MLB does something like this.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: But would they recede entirely from the cable model and have a more wide-reach approach to this? Because on one hand, like, if you read the tea leaves of Rob’s quotes about how interested he is in an all-30 teams streaming service, blah, blah, blah, these things he said so many times, then, yeah, you might think that this is, like, the first domino and, like, the—completely cutting the cord from the business side as well, not just from the consumer side. But on the other hand, like, everything we’ve talked about on this episode has all been about what’s going to make these team—these teams the most money in the short term and that’s not the philosophy of Ishbia here.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And so—I don’t know. I just thought it was an intriguing data point in terms of how we think about, like, business, and finance, and sports.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And I’m not going to tip my cap to the guy who made his money in mortgages, but like, it’s like—
ALEX: Like, if you are gonna buy a basketball team, like—
BOBBY: You might as well just let people watch it.
ALEX: Right. Yeah.
BOBBY: If this is gonna be a vanity passion project, like, why not bring as many people along for the ride as possible?
ALEX: I know. I mean, baseball is also in a really sort of unique broadcast situation where so much of it has kind of been this piecemeal thing that’s been put together team by team over the course of the years, right? And so, obviously, Bally holds the rights to a handful of baseball teams that—you know, some of them are with—are with NBC, um, some of them have their own local broadcast right, like—
BOBBY: I guess I’m [64:02] yes.
ALEX: Right. Exactly. Meanwhile, the Orioles and the Nationals are—have been in this decade-long dispute over MASN right and it was—
BOBBY: Nationals got that dub.
ALEX: And the Nationals got the dub in the court, this—you know, in the last—
BOBBY: First big win since 2019.
ALEX: There it—there it is. Um, meanwhile, like Bally—it came out this week that a court is ordering Bally to pay for MLB teams, like, 50% of the fees. And there’s a fifth team, the Reds that, like, need to figure out their [64:30] right? And so, I think that, like—this is one of the biggest obstacles is that they spent the last two decades sort of cobbling together these ecosystems that would be ready for, like, you know, the next generation of TV watching, and now that era is coming to an end.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And so, they have to kind of deconstruct it piece by piece, right? And I—and I do think that Rob’s inclination is to not follow that trend again, right? And say, “We’re going to offer a team-by-team streaming service.” As you mentioned, I think what he wants to do is in one fell swoop, say, “All 30 teams, you can access blackout free,” as opposed to saying, “Well, we’ll do the Rangers on cable TV and the Reds on streaming”—you know, like, I think that’s probably more work for them than it’s worth it.
BOBBY: I guess my question has always been though—here’s the problem, even if you took away the regional cable money, that the 25 lowest-earning teams made, you just took it away, doesn’t exist. You said they’re not on cable at all. MLB would still be financially solvent just from the New York teams and LA. And I don’t know who the other two biggest markets are on television. Like—it’s like Philadelphia and Houston we’ll say, just because those are, you know, two of the five biggest cities in America. Boston, probably, because it’s a big—Chicago. Yeah, whatever. You take away everybody, but their, you know, regional cable money, the revenue sharing that would come from just the money that the Yankees, and the Mets, and the Cubs, and the—whatever, Dodgers—
ALEX: Dodgers, yeah.
BOBBY: —make would be enough to keep these teams afloat. And so, they can’t—they’re not going to give up on that money. Like, they’re not gonna say, “All 30 teams are here.”
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And it’s the only place that you can watch them. And so, now it becomes this delicate balance and argument, and debate between MLB and the regional cable networks, how much are you devaluing the—our product of putting baseball on our television channel, on cable, by also having an available to stream in another place.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: So, people don’t have to sign up for our cable package anymore. It’s just the people that want to get it can get it there, and the people that want to get it on streaming can get it there also. And this is all, to me, legalese bullshit, like I don’t really care. Figure it out. Like, that’s what you get paid $50 million a year for, Rob Manfred, or however much you get paid, is to figure out a way to get baseball in front of as many people as possible. And I’m just not—I’m not as sold on the idea that there is a simple solution to that.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Or even a solution at all. That doesn’t involve some form of, like, passing the responsibility onto the consumer. And so, like, instead of saying, “Now we have a streaming service, we have MLB.TV with blackouts turned off. What we are gonna have is MLB.TV with blackouts, and an SNY, and YES network integration into MLB.TV where you can also add their month—you can also add their OTT, over-the-top, streaming service on top A La Carte and MLB.TV.” And so, it’s like you’re gonna be paying 149.99 a year for MLB.TV, and $8 a month for SNY, all-in MLB.TV. And that’s just not what Rob is alluding to when he’s saying, “We want the blackout free streaming service.”
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: I mean, that’s what—that’s what he is thinking of.
ALEX: Right. Yes.
BOBBY: But it’s not what he’s trying to make you think is gonna happen.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: So, I just am prepared to be hoodwinked by this whole situation.
ALEX: Yeah. I mean, I do think they have—I mean, I wrote this on the newsletter a couple of months ago, like there’s a real opportunity for them to actually be a leader on this if they want to, right? The Bally Sports bankruptcy, again, they can follow now in the footsteps of the Suns and the Mercury if they want, but as you say—I mean, they just approach their business differently. It’s not about getting the product in front of as many eyeballs as possible. It’s about what can we squeeze out of the people who are already watching the game. They’re already here. We don’t have to do the work.
BOBBY: It’s like what—what Mike Duncan said last week when he was talking about how the president of the Angels a few years ago let slip that they don’t really care how many people come to the games [68:59] get richer.
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah.
BOBBY: Or spending more money [69:02]
ALEX: Right. Right. Yeah.
BOBBY: —functionally equivalent. So, yeah, they don’t care how many people watch baseball as long as people are spending enough money to make them solvent. More than solvent.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You know, make them boatloads of cash. This is a real in the weeds episode, huh? ALEX: Yeah, man. RSNs, NFTs.
BOBBY: So, does that mean that we have to, uh, wash it down in the near future with, like, the Forbes idea?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: With the—we found the next A’s owner. You’re not gonna believe who it is. That would crush on YouTube.
ALEX: That would, yeah. One weird trick to make a Major League Baseball team profitable. BOBBY: Okay. Thank you everybody for listening. Um, you know, we made mention of the newsletter, newsletter as a perk of our highest tier on Patreon. That’s patreon.com/tippingpitches. $5, $7. $12 a month as your option. Um, you know, one of the listed perks on the $12 option is to join us for live streams, uh, every other month of baseball games. Those take place on a sports streaming service, web streaming service called Playback. Uh, we haven’t done one of those yet this season, um, but we are making plans to do those. We’re making plans to do the first one of those, uh, shortly and we will obviously communicate that through the necessary channels to get the folks who are signed up for that level of the Patreon access to it. Um, you know, I—I wanna apologize to people for not doing one of those yet, just because we are now, you know, over a month into the season. It’s just been frankly a lot of travel for me and Alex recently. And looking ahead to the rest of this year, it’s gonna be a lot of that, too. This—this podcast that we’re recording right now is the last podcast we’re gonna record in person together, in New York until, like, July. So just know that we’re not, like, totally blowing this concept off, even though it—functionally, is basically [71:06] but Alex’s newsletter was really good and well-researched, and so the fact that it was late, um, he made up for it by putting some fun—some fun graphics.
ALEX: Thanks, Bobby.
BOBBY: Uh, if you’d like to reach out and ask questions or share thoughts, tippingpitchespod@gmail.com, 785-422-5881 is our voicemail. Um, a couple of people called and a couple of people emailed, making pitches to you about who you should root for if the A’s leave for Las Vegas. So maybe we can fold that into the—we’re finding a new A’s owner.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Just—we’re just making it the, um, breaking case of emergency for the Oakland Athletics pod.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Anything else to add before we go?
ALEX: I just want to add that, uh, we’ve got merch, we’ve got merch.
BOBBY: Oh, yeah.
ALEX: We have a website at tippingpitches.myshopify.com.
BOBBY: That’s right. I’m wearing the sweatshirt right now. I gotta say, pretty cozy.
ALEX: I—it’s not—this is—this is not Spawn Con. I’m not getting—so close.
BOBBY: [72:12]
ALEX: I know. This is not Spawn Con. I’m not—I’m not—I don’t have a script in front of me. I’m not getting paid to do this. I just—
BOBBY: Well, well. What—what—what really happened is that you were supposed to order our sweatshirts for us.
ALEX: It’s like six months ago.
BOBBY: Like six months ago, and you finally remember to do it. And they came, and we saw them.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And they look great. And honestly, we weren’t sure how they would look—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But they—they do look good. And the stitching on them is lovely, and so you can still get yourself a Tipping Pitches crewneck. Uh, get yourself some shirts. Might even be able to get yourself some newly designed shirts—
ALEX: Might or might—
BOBBY: —in the near future.
ALEX: I don’t know maybe.
BOBBY: Uh, when those hypothetical newly designed shirts, uh, hit the internet. We’ll be giving out promo code on the podcast for listeners of the show. So, keep that in mind when you’re deciding whether or not to go to tippingpitches.myshopify.com.
ALEX: Within the next week.
BOBBY: Thanks everybody for listening. We’ll be back next week.
SPEAKER 3: Throw the keys back to me. Go on and kick off your boots in the passenger seat. I get sad! You know I get sad.
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: Hello, everybody. Uh, 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: You took me back, but you shouldn’t have.
BOBBY: You just have that in—stuck in your head since last night?
ALEX: Yup. Actually, last week.
BOBBY: I’ll tell you what. That’s a hit.
ALEX: That’s just an amazing song.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: It’s like a perfect song.
BOBBY: That’s Two Chords & the Truth.
ALEX: That it literally is.
BOBBY: And—what was the third thing? And—like it’s just Cowboy Joe.
ALEX: Well—yeah. Well, his thing was Three Chords & the Truth.
BOBBY: Three Chords?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Sorry. I cut a cord out of it.
ALEX: I don’t know if you ever watched them do their performance live on [74:26] Jimmy Kimmel. They did it in—in the parking lot of The Forum in Los Angeles.
BOBBY: Oh. Oh, I did see this. Yeah.
ALEX: It’s fucking unreal.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I was just like, “Oh, you guys are all just fucking brilliant musicians.”
BOBBY: Yeah, they are great musicians.
ALEX: That’s sick. Oh, Danielle, you can just sing and play the drums. Oh.
BOBBY: Is singing and playing the drums the most underrated skill in the world?
ALEX: It’s crazy.
BOBBY: It’s like—no one should be able to do that.
ALEX: No, no.
BOBBY: They’re like—if they came—if HAIM came out in 1972, they would have been like the biggest band in the world.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: And now they’re just like for hipsters.
ALEX: Freaking [74:58]
BOBBY: Yeah, exactly. People who live in Los Angeles? I don’t know. The greater Phoebe Bridgers, Taylor Swift extended universe?
ALEX: Okay. Here we go.
[1:15:12]
Tipping Pitches 
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