Alex and Bobby discuss the role of the audiologist in society and reflect briefly on the ongoing WGA strike, then dive into a CBS Sports article about the potential for a front office union, Jerry Reinsdorf’s comments about the White Sox level of play, and the Angels concern over negative energy from the media. Then they bring on minor league pitcher and friend of the pod Trevor Hildenberger to discuss what it was like forming a whole dang minor league union, how the fight for a housing policy introduced many young players to the idea of organizing, how members went about deciding which issues to prioritize for their first CBA, and much more. Follow Trevor on Twitter at @t_hildy.
Links:
Baseball’s next unionization effort could be in front offices
Jerry Reinsdorf talks the business of sports
The Angels don’t appreciate negative energy from reporters
Join the Tipping Pitches Patreon
Tipping Pitches merchandise
Songs featured in this episode:
Parquet Courts — “Dust” • Thundercat — “Friend Zone” • 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, uh, Tipping his Pitches. So Tipping Pitches, we hear about it all the time. People are home understand what Tipping Pitches is all about? That’s amazing! That’s remarkable.
BOBBY: Alex, can we start by me telling you a story about my day?
ALEX: It’s my favorite way of starting the podcast, of course. Please, regale me and the listeners.
BOBBY: This has genuinely nothing to do with baseball. But this is just me catching up with you, my friend. Yeah. Um, I had a hearing test earlier today. Long story short, I—my—I’m having all this—this popping—this popping in my ears that’s causing all this trouble and so they were giving me a hearing test just to make sure everything is, like, structurally normal in there. It’s nothing serious. But it’s the first time I’ve had a hearing test since, like, I don’t know, middle school. Uh, like, when—when was the last time you had a hearing test?
ALEX: I don’t know. If—if I—if I did, I’m not sure I could even really tell you what would go into a hearing test. Is it just kind of, like, they stand further and further distances away from your ear while yelling and be like, “Can you still hear?”
BOBBY: No, they put headphones on you and they play you sounds, and they’re like—you have to press a button when you hear a sound or they play you a person saying words and you have to repeat the words.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Got you.
BOBBY: So, like, if you say the correct words, you get it right. Never mind the fact that I’m sitting in there the whole time and I had told the person who’s doing the tests that I work in audio. And so, I was, like, feeling some pressure to get all the questions right more or less, you know? Like—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —”Oh, he works in audio and he couldn’t hear that? Wow.” You’re gonna tell my employer. Um, but I was sitting in there and they do it. It was in—it was at the doctor’s office, and they do it in this room that is, like, professionally soundproofed, you know? Like a studio, like a real studio. And it was this, like, tiny room, maybe like five by five, and the walls were just totally completely white. But you want to know how messed up my brain is when I was sitting in there? I was like, “Dang. There’s two chairs in here, Alex and I could do a—”
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: “—clear pod in here.”
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: There’s even like a little look through glass window for a producer to sit over there.
ALEX: Oh, my God.
BOBBY: Put—we could put Stevie on that side, you know?
ALEX: Conversely, if this whole podcasting thing doesn’t work out, you can now run an ear doctor clinic out of your apartment.
BOBBY: Yeah, they’re called audiologists—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —which I thought was a nifty little name for—for someone who just studies ears.
ALEX: That’s
BOBBY: Audiologists.
ALEX: Yeah, that’s I think what I would have guessed if I had to come up with a—with a name. BOBBY: Instead of Co-CEO of our LLC, can I be the audiologist—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —of our LLC?
ALEX: Chief—chief audiologist.
BOBBY: Chief audiologist. Right, exactly.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Chief content and audiologist.
ALEX: Yes. Well, as we—as we’ll get to later in this episode, the title that you come up with actually, uh, doesn’t matter. It’s—it’s more of a leverage play than anything else.
BOBBY: Um, we’re gonna talk about title inflation, title falsification. We’re gonna talk about, um, two of the worst owners in baseball and the ways in which they are currently dropping the ball. And then we’re gonna have a conversation with friend of the podcast, Trevor Hildenberger, about the minor league CBA, what it was like actually bargaining it. Being in those rooms, who was sitting across from them, what met expectations, what different from his expectations. Um, some of you will remember that Trevor came on when it was announced at the minor league, the minor leaguers were unionizing. Um, he was involved in the organizing effort. He was also part of the bargaining committee of negotiating the minor league union, the minor league collective bargaining agreement. So, um, it was a really cool perspective to hear Trevor talk about being in those rooms and how they figured out what things they were going to prioritize. Uh, but before we do all of that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I am Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[theme]
BOBBY: Do you want to make a podcast? Spotify’s got a platform that lets you make one super easily and distribute it everywhere and even earn money all in one place for free. It’s called Spotify for Podcasters. And, Alex, how does it work?
ALEX: I’m so glad you asked, Bobby. Um, Spotify for Podcasters lets you record and edit podcasts right from your phone or computer. So no matter what your setup is like, you can start creating today.
BOBBY: And then you can distribute your podcast to Spotify and—
ALEX: Everywhere else podcasts are heard.
BOBBY: With Spotify for Podcasters, you can earn money in a variety of ways, including ads and podcast subscriptions. And best of all, it’s totally free with no catch. Spotify for Podcasters is where we host our podcasts and it is super easy to use. Download the Spotify for Podcasters app or go to http://www.spotify.com/podcasters to get started. Alex, we’re recording this on a Wednesday night, May 3rd, four days in advance—five— five day—five days in advance? Five days in advance. You’re traveling this weekend.
ALEX: Uh-mm.
BOBBY: We already had the conversation with Trevor from last week, so we were like, “You know what? Let’s just—let’s bank this one.” Nothing’s gonna—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Nothing’s gonna happen. Nothing’s gonna happen, right? So, everyone listening to this when—I don’t know. The Mets have traded for Shohei Othani.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Just know that—we don’t know about it yet. Do I kind of went positive on that hypothetical—
ALEX: That was—that was good. I mean, it’s a contrast to the discussion we were having immediately prior to hitting the record button, but it’s—you know, we contain multitudes,
BOBBY: Keep the faith.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. That’s right.
BOBBY: Keep the faith. Um, the other thing that could materialize over the next couple of days is that, apparently, there’s a—there’s an MLB CBA coming. Not a minor league CBA. There’s finally a major league CBA coming 15 months late. Uh, Evan Drellich was tweeting about that today, saying that he is badgering anyone and everyone who will listen, trying to get a copy of that CBA, but that—that will be available in PDF form at some point—um, at which point, you and I will read it. And we will talk about it. I just don’t know when that is
ALEX: They’re close. Would you—would you say that they are—are moving at the moment, um, or not? And are the two sides growing closer together?
BOBBY: Have you—um, do you sign off on me, like, going to Etsy or Pinterest and having someone, like, stitch that onto a piece of fabric or something for the—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —studio?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Pay like $300 for, like, a bespoke boutique embroidery of the Bob Nightingale quote from the—the night before we got the actual CBA, no one is moving as the two sides are moving ever so closer?
ALEX: That would be a work of art, honestly.
BOBBY: Well, yeah.
ALEX: Uh—
BOBBY: So, you sign off on the creation of that, then?
ALEX: Oh, absolutely. Yes.
BOBBY: Okay. Great. Great. It’s fun to have a company. Um—
ALEX: Did—did they ever tell you how much of a company is just bits? You know? Just—
BOBBY: Well, I don’t think most companies are like this. Well, although—actually, kind of a lot of companies are just doing bits, but they’re a lot more evil than our bits, you know?
ALEX: Right. Yeah.
BOBBY: Um, you know, we’re—we are recording this in advance, like I said, so we don’t—so apologies to the new patrons of this week. We don’t have those names. Um, we wanted to talk about just a few topics that have come up in the last couple days. Thankfully, we’ve been given a little bit of news in the Tipping Pitches universe. Um, Jerry Reinsdorf had a whole thing where he was speaking at a global conference for the business of sports. Um, it came out earlier today via Sam Blum of The Athletic that there’s a whole situation with the Angels media this year and how the organization is not letting, um, reporters speak to coaches without prior approval, without sharing their questions. They can talk to the manager without sharing their questions. but the different coaches throughout the organization have been, um, advised not to talk to the media, which is a whole thing. Uh, and then, uh, there was a big article from R. J. Anderson this past week about, um, front office unionization and the potential for that and how there’s been growing interest, given the increasing demand and working conditions—well, actually, really the working conditions that have always been kind of terrible in baseball front offices, but, um, the increasing wave of interest in unionization in this country and also the elimination of a lot of those jobs, um, and how much harder they are to get and hold, and how poor that pay is in comparison to some of the other places, um, in the baseball industry. But, Alex, before we talk about any of that stuff, I wanted to quickly, uh, talk about the Writers Guild of America strike. Uh, nothing like super in detail, but we talked about labor on the show, we talked about unions all the time. We’re talking about the ML—we’re talking about the MLB CBA. We’re gonna be talking about the minor league CBA. But, you know, if my—my union is currently on strike, I—I am not one of those members who is on strike, because I’m covered by a collective bargaining agreement with my employer, The Ringer. Um, and the—the folks who are striking right now are the television and film writers who are covered by what’s called a minimum basic agreement, which is a different kind of—um, a—a different kind of contract that governs their employment, whereas in my contract, it says I’m not allowed to strike for the duration of this. So, I was out there today with a lot of those people. Um, in New York City, you’d walk in the picket line, uh, and, you know, I’m sure a lot of people have seen this news and have read a little bit about why the strike is happening, and just how much the changing landscape of entertainment, and media, and television, and the Internet has drastically changed the employment conditions and turned a lot of these writing jobs into gig jobs, um, or that’s what the studios want to—want to do at least. And the union is fighting to make the contract more representative of a job that can actually pay all your bills and be steady employment for these folks who are creating all this entertainment, that these media, you know, behemoths, all conglomerates are turning over for billions and billions of dollars of profit every year. You know, every time something like this comes up, and especially when it hits so close to home like this, I have a lot of friends who are covered by the minimum basic agreement. I’m—when you boil everything away, it—I’m always just, like, shaking my head at how similar all of these stories feel and sound. Like, how—how different is if we were to really get into the weeds of this and then talk about, you know, Netflix, and Warner Bros., and then basically creating a media and entertainment monopoly for scripted television? How different scripted and late-night television like—how different is any of this than any of the, you know, economic and societal factors that we talk about on the podcast every week? It’s, like, remarkable how many of the problems that we’re fighting in different sectors of this country and really the world just are all rooted in the exact same problems.
ALEX: Yeah, it’s pursuit of profit under the guise of efficiency’s sake, right? It is the same thing that we see play out in Major League—I mean, there—there may not be a ChatGPT Bogeyman that the owners can use to threaten players. But they have very similar means of saying, “Look, you’re replaceable,” or at least that has been the narrative for decades at this point, right? Until we kind of saw this—this sea change. So, it’s all exactly the same. The last couple years have been, like, Christmas day over and over if you appreciate and—and root for, like, workers’ solidarity and collective action. Um, it—this is spanning industries. It’s spanning demographics and age groups. It’s growing, uh, real close to a general strike. I don’t know, guys. I think we could get it all out of the way in, uh, in like a week.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And reset.
BOBBY: Yeah. Oh.
ALEX: Like, kind of reset the narrative, yeah.
BOBBY: In a week? That’s a good idea. We should just all get it out of the way in a week. Whenever—I just—
ALEX: When—when every single worker stops working, uh, it actually doesn’t take too long to bring the people accountable to the table. A week is long.
BOBBY: If everybody actually stop working, it’d be, like, 12 hours maybe. Um, listen, I’m down. I’m down. Name the time and place, bro. I’m there. General strike, we’re in. Uh, the Tipping— Tipping Pitches podcast is pro-general strike. Um, what you said and kind of just what we’re talking about reminded me of a tweet that I retweeted and saw a couple days ago, um, from Nate Stevenson, um, @Gingerhazing on Twitter. Um, they said, “A precedent is being set right now that says that all creatives deserve a viable long-term career. Companies have been exploiting the idea of the “dream job” to their own benefit, and we don’t have to accept that. The WGA’s success is everyone’s success.” And you could plug in W—you could plug—you could swap out WGA for any union whether that’s Minor League Baseball, whether that’s the prospective front office union that we’re about to talk about, from, from R.J. Anderson’s reporting, whether that’s Starbucks, Amazon. Honestly, one of the coolest things about being on the picket line today, aside from the fact that there was, like, hundreds and hundreds of writers, um, out there walking like for their livelihoods was—I saw a bunch of people from Amazon Labor Union, saw a bunch people from Starbucks, saw a bunch of people from the Teamsters, UAW, um, a bunch of, like, taxi drivers as they were driving by were, like, honking and rolling their windows down and, like, yelling messages of solidarity. So, it’s just a—a—a cool and present reminder for me, for us, for the podcast, for anybody who cares about this, who watches scripted television that is created by the Writers Guild of America East or West. Um, that these problems, though, they have their own specifics in different industries are all kind of rooted in the same thing. And we are all kind of, like, pulling ourselves and each other in the same direction and we should be united in that direction.
ALEX: Hell yeah, dude. Workers in the world. You know what to do.
BOBBY: Okay. Um, should we talk about R.J.’s piece? CBSSports.com R.J. Anderson, longtime baseball reporter, uh, “Why baseball’s next unionization effort could come from MLB front offices?” And then there’s a quote in there from an anonymous front office executive, “We’re not protected at all.” So, this is a very well-written, a very well-reported piece, a long piece with a lot of context and a lot of information about baseball front offices. And I’m really glad that somebody wrote this article, because it asks a lot of really tough questions, um, that I think that at some point in the—the seeming—seemingly near future are going to need to be answered by baseball. And then kind of these questions that have been formed a lot of the conversations that we’ve had on the show over the last few years which is, if we are going to pursue “efficiency at all costs” what is that going to—what kind of havoc is that going to wreak across the people who actually make up the baseball industry, whether that’s players being, you know, winnowing down the minors, so that we can just get the top prospects in front of high-speed cameras and learning their spin rates, or whether that scouts, because we just have those same cameras actually replacing the eyeballs of amateur scouts in a lot of, um, occasions. You know, I remember talking about that a lot with Evan Drellich, when we were talking about winning fixes everything, um, because that was, I think, accelerated by the Houston Astros and their front office. Um, and then, to me, like, the most interesting question is, what can the people who are actually affected by these things do about it? And in the case of, like, Minor League Baseball, for example, it was to create a union with what felt like—what felt like to us overnight, from the outside, but obviously, there was a lot of legwork that went into that. And in this article, you see kind of some of the challenges that face Major League Baseball front offices. Um, and that—and when I say front offices, I mean, basically everybody who does not work on the baseball field, right? Like, everyone who—who might be a scout, everyone who might be a data analyst, any of these myriad positions that you could have, trainers, all these things. Um, what kind of protections should those people be looking at acquiring for themselves since we know that baseball can undergo dramatic and radical changes very quickly? I find it curious, the timing of this, curious not in a bad way, compelling the timing of this in relation to Minor League Baseball unionizing last year. When you see the exploitation of workers no longer being accepted and some of those workers take a leap, and are received positively, and things go well for them, because they actually—when their—their union, and they’re actually able to go to the table. Uh, that is a really powerful thing for people to observe. And so, reading an article like this, seeing—seeing an article like this, it just reminds you how far away some of those things felt as recently as five years ago and how achievable they feel right now.
ALEX: I think that’s a really good way of putting it and—you know, while the conditions that these front office workers work in are maybe not the same level of—od squalor, that a lot of minor leaguers were forced to kind of live in. There’s still enough to put a deep amount of—of stress on your work life, your—your personal life. You’re working long hours, oftentimes well over 40 hours a week, right? You’re working mornings, you’re working nights. You are getting paid a relative pittance, especially if you live in a major metropolitan city, which most Major League Baseball teams are in. And there’s also very little structure or guarantee when it comes to job growth, which is one of the biggest issues in the—in the industry, right, is that sort of low attrition rate, the lack of turnover that leads, you know, people to really cling on to jobs and makes all of this really, really covetable, right? So, it’s this really interesting dynamic where that I think plays out very similarly too—too in the minor leagues. Where you have people saying, “This is—my lifelong dream is to run a baseball team. And here I am, right? I’ll take the shit wages. I’ll take the—the long hours, because I get to say that, you know, I’m a programmer with the New York Yankees.” And I think it would be really interesting to see how this sort of thing unfolds, because front offices are so unwieldy. It’s mentioned in the article, kind of there’s little uncertainty over whether it would be one overarching unit or whether it would be done on more of a team-by-team basis. Again, there’s questions about who does this cover, who is management versus who is a worker. Uh—
BOBBY: Tricky question.
ALEX: It’s really, really a tricky question. Especially again, in this age, where you have these sort of really made-up titles, right, which are not only a tool to keep other teams from prying, say, a—a talented analyst away from you, but also to really obscure what the role of the person actually is, and make it really, really harder to draw that clear line.
BOBBY: And, like, right—that right there what you mentioned is—is really one of the, like, primary driving factors in this from my perspective. Because if you just—if everyone’s title is slightly different, and every organization is doing it slightly different, and handing out these kind of phantom promotions to prevent other teams from being able to hire them away, basically, what you have is a—an industry and a workforce in which it becomes impossible to, like, ask questions about your compensation, like—and about your role in the organization in comparison to someone in another organization who might be making more or less than you, and what are the factors that are contributing to why that is. Because if I’m doing the exact same work as you—like—like say—say this podcast, and I call myself—uh, I call myself a host and you call yourself a content facilitator.
ALEX: Right. Chief—chief audiotrition, is that—
BOBBY: Audiologist.
ALEX: Audiologist.
BOBBY: Audiologist. So, well, uh, I’m actually host and audiologist. You’re the content facilitator.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: So—because I was only host and I was making less than you, I added audiologist. So, you better add another title if you want to actually make more than me. It’s not like—there’s no just, like, basic raises and promotion—raises and promotions structure, really. I mean, of course there is, right? Like, you could become an assistant GM, and then you can become GM, but that—those jobs are reserved for 30 people. And for a long time, those 30 people were just part of an old boys’ network of former players or former coaches. And now they’re maybe even more exclusively, like, a part of a network of people who have MBAs from Harvard, or other Ivy League schools. And so never mind all of the access issues to even get in—get a foot in the door in baseball in the first place. But once you’re there, you also have to kind of tread water at these lower-level positions making in major cities like—around a ballpark area like $50,000, which is like, “No, you’re not making what minor leaguers are making.” But also, you are not potentially gonna make millions of dollars down the line as a Major League Baseball player. Now, I know that that is like a dream that they sell minor leaguers to keep their wages down, and to keep them—them happy and in line and stuff. But in a smaller version of that, that’s what they’re doing to front office workers, too. That’s what every—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —every office is doing to every kind of worker. And in baseball, the central tension is that this is billions—billions and billions and billions of dollar industry with a very select few of people actually profiting the most off of it. Which is similar to, you know, what we were talking about with the Writers Guild, but it’s just even more concentrated when you have a monopoly exempt—exemption. And there’s literally only 30 companies that are allowed, 30 franchises in baseball, and the—the owners are so public. And more and more, you’re seeing the people who are actually creating those profits saying, ‘Well, it doesn’t really seem like you could do this without me. It doesn’t really seem like, you know, Arte Moreno, Jerry Reinsdorf, Steve Cohen, John Fisher, like—it doesn’t really seem like you guys are actually doing anything, so like it would function in the same with or without you here. So, why am I, like, busting my ass all of the time to just continue to drive the franchise valuation of—of this team up? Like, shouldn’t I actually have a formal place where I can talk about that?
ALEX: Yeah. It—I mean—and that’s why I am curious to see how this sort of dichotomy plays out between, again, that internal voice that says, “I’m a worker and I deserve rights in my workplace.” And the other internal voice that I think a lot of people who work in these front offices have, which is, “If I work hard enough, I can be the GM one day, right? That we’re describing.
BOBBY: Don’t rock the boat.
ALEX: Right. Exactly. That very same mentality that was used to keep minor leaguers down for so long. Uh, I think the fact that baseball front offices are, you know, very traditionally white-collar environments means it’s gonna be sort of the—the public reception of this, I think might be slightly different from, say, the minor leagues, um, where it’s very easy to point to that picture of that sandwich, you know the one I’m talking about, and say, “This is what they’re getting into [24:50]
BOBBY: Burned into my brain.
ALEX: Burned into my brain. Exactly. And if you thought the discourse around AI replacing writers was bad, like, just wait until—you know, it’s like, programmers in front offices, right? And—and business directors and HR people, you know?
BOBBY: Uh, we could leave the HR people out of this.
ALEX: Well, okay.
BOBBY: Um, no, you’re right. I mean, God, I’m trying to—I’m trying to thread the needle between going a full rant about, like, unionization and—
ALEX: Right. Also recognizing the other guest
BOBBY: —main—staying on—on topic, so that we can get to our conversation with Trevor and we can talk about these other things that I mentioned. But, like, first of all, sometimes the boat needs to be rocked, you know? Sometimes the boat is just in stasis and it’s gonna sink. Sometimes you need to rock it a little bit to remind people that you’re there, and that you’re a person in the boat. And if it starts to take on water, you’re probably going to be the first person who drowns. I’m losing the metaphor a little bit, but I think the listeners kind of know what I mean. The other thing is, I think we just need to stop competing over exploitation in discourse. We need to stop saying minor leaguers are the number one problem that we need to address in baseball and so we can’t talk about the Major League CBA. We can’t talk about front office unionization. We can’t talk about any of these other things until we get this problem fixed, because it’s just not either/or. It doesn’t have to be either/or just because I work in media and—and my company unionized doesn’t mean that we can also have Starbucks and Amazon workers unionizing at the same time. It’s all—it’s all possible at the same time. That is the beauty of unions, that is the beauty of organized labor, is that within your workplace, you are the thing that creates value. And, unfortunately, in the way that it’s structured, in capitalism, I agree that we should change this. However, currently, as it’s constituted that value is either going to you or the person who owns the company. And in most cases, it’s—most of it is going to the person who owns the company. And so, taking a little bit of that back is the—the righteous and moral thing to do, obviously. But if you don’t take it back, it doesn’t mean that it goes to minor leaguers, or Starbucks workers, or Amazon workers. If you don’t act, there’s only one group of people that it’s going to, and that is management and capital. And so, it’s like, we need—a little bit need to—I know that I’m getting out ahead of the discourse that you’re mentioning with the front offices, but, like, we just kind of need to maybe not entertain some of that bad faith conversation, because it’s very clear and easy to say. If the front office workers actually organize and get paid more money that doesn’t mean that minor leaguers get zero dollars, no. It means that Arte Moreno gets slightly less money, and I think he’s gonna be okay.
ALEX: Right. It’s not the front offices unionizing or them signing your favorite star, right? Although that is what it’s going to be framed as, right—
BOBBY: Yup.
ALEX: —is, is that, “Well, which workers do you want us to pay?” Because there’s only so much cash to go around. Yeah, labor solidarity isn’t a zero-sum game. You are not taken away from— from your own agency or another organization’s agency to support front office workers, for example, right? Like they deserve it, just like the rest of us.
BOBBY: Bro, this is like—yeah, because people—people will say like—well, the—
ALEX: Even—even the people in the Astros front office.
BOBBY: They make $50,000, that’s more than, you know, name job here.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: it’s like, “Okay.” Well, if they make $60,000, that doesn’t change what that other group of people that you said makes.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But if they don’t make that extra $10,000, then Arte Moreno makes $3 billion and $10,000 that year. It’s like, “Okay. Great. What have we won here?”
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Like, what—and then the people who say, “Well, he owns the business and that’s his right.” Those people are lost, we can leave those people.
ALEX: [28:54]
BOBBY: Like, we don’t need to—we need to win those people over. Um, I recommend people go read Arte’s article, because it outlines the stuff, um, in a lot greater detail. And I think really also starkly like—starkly defines kind of that thing that we were talking about earlier when I was talking about the WGA, which is that just because these are dream jobs, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be viable careers that people can live comfortably in. Uh, okay. What do you think Jerry Reinsdorf thinks about dream jobs? Do you think that Jerry Reinsdorf has his dream job? Do you think this is Jerry Reinsdorf’s dream job?
ALEX: Just going around to sports business conferences and saying, “I don’t try too hard.”
BOBBY: Well, no, I was referring more to creating bad baseball teams.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Right. It sort of seems to be his dream job.
BOBBY: If so, he’s doing very well at it.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. His year-end review is going swimmingly if that’s the goal. Jerry Reinsdorf—this is a tweet from Blake Schuster who is the managing editor—assistant managing editor of Bet For The Win, which is part of USA Today. Uh, Jerry Reinsdorf was in LA Monday speaking at a Milken Institute Global Conference panel. Milken Institute Global Conference panel. For everyone keeping track at home called Game Changers: The New Business of Sports. Um, and then Blake goes on to summarize kind of some of the highlights or lowlights depending on your perspective of Jerry’s chat. Once again, so many conferences, so many journals, so many institutes, so many of these and yet no one will invite us to give our own speech—
ALEX: I—
BOBBY: —at one of these conference panels luncheons institute’s global festivities of baseball.
ALEX: I don’t even need to give the speech. I just want someone to come up with, like, class pass for all the conferences that baseball owners go to, you know? Like, I just want to know they’re happening, right?
BOBBY: Class pass?
ALEX: I want someone—class pass?
BOBBY: I thought you were talking about MasterClass because, bro, I got news for you, MasterClass probably already has a fucking hour with Jerry Reinsdorf.
ALEX: Yeah. Uh-huh.
BOBBY: They got everybody in there. I don’t know how. MasterClass is such a Ponzi scheme.
ALEX: It’s crazy. No, I just—I just want someone to send around a little calendar, you know? Little six-month look at, uh, what—uh, what’s on the docket, you know? Where’s—where’s Bob Simpson gonna be next month, you know? Who does he own, the Rangers?
BOBBY: No, that’s not the name of the guy who owns the Rangers. The Rangers is Ray Davis.
ALEX: It’s two—it’s two guys, technically,
BOBBY: Oh, Bob Simpson is a no one. It’s Ray Davis for me. Ray—Ray Davis or GTFO. Bob Simpson, I thought that was made up. Um, so—okay. Reinsdorf’s speech, how do I even summarize it? Because these speeches are so hard to summarize, because it’s literally just like here’s every thought that this owner has about the state of baseball. And he has this whole thing about how, um, some owners are bad at their jobs, and so they’re coming in, and they’re ruining the—ruining the value of players. And he cites an example, where it’s like, “If you spent $42 million on a second baseman who hits .202, well, then that makes it irrational and it makes it hard for me as an owner, because then I have to spend $40 million on a second baseman who hits .202.” That’s not even true. No one is spending $40 million on a second baseman who hits .202. Also, when was last time you signed a player for that much money, Jerry Reinsdorf? And then he has—he goes down on this thing about how he’s not even sure how, you know, other owners made their money because they’re so bad at running baseball teams. Um, but—but to me, like, one of the most intriguing things in here was about how he kind of let the cat out—not that the cat is not out of the bag, but he repeatedly is letting many cats out of many bags about how it’s more beneficial to not be all in and actually try to win. You know, he cashes it in this language of like, you know, “What your fans want is to be playing meaningful games towards the end of the season.” Just this vague like, “If you’re in the hunt, then that’s what fans want.” Which, of course, obscures the fact that, like, the White Sox are not in the hunt and he’s not investing in the teams, actually, give them repeated chances to win. And I’m like, not even really sure if I agree with what he’s saying. I think fans don’t want you to maybe accidentally be playing meaningful games in August, because you play in the worst division in baseball. I think fans want to feel like you’re actively trying to win the championship, the championship. Fans—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —want to win titles, you know? And they—they settle if they had a good, fun season with good players, then it felt like the team was invested in you the same way that you are invested in them, that’s okay. Like me with the Mets last year, torture as—torture though I maybe. That was a good season, a great season. The best season of my life probably if you leave out, like, three months in 2015. But that’s not what the White Sox are doing, not even kind of.
ALEX: Well, I also just don’t want an owner who has their bar set there, right? I mean, I think it’s worth reading the whole quote, because it—it—I mean, because if I had to be enraged by it, then the rest of you guys do as well. Um, he says—
BOBBY: You do a better Jerry impersonation than me, so I’m gonna leave it for you.
ALEX: [34:22]
BOBBY: I don’t think I’ve ever heard him talk maybe—I don’t know.
ALEX: He said sports is a business of failure. Only one team is gonna win every year. But the fact that you finish second, or third, or fourth doesn’t mean you had a bad year. Uh, okay. I’m—I’m like—I’m with him so far, you know?
BOBBY: everybody gets a trophy.
ALEX: Uh-huh. Right. Participation culture at its finest. I think the important thing for fans is, while they want you to win championships, they want to know that when you get to the last month of the season, you still have a shot. You’re still playing meaningful fans. If you can do—
BOBBY: Meaningful—
ALEX: —you’re still playing meaningful games. If you can do that consistently, you’ll make your fans happy. How’s that working out, Jerry? How are those fans? Are they happy right now? Because you put a product on the field that, like, isn’t dogshit? Is that where the line is right now?
BOBBY: Dude, this is the thing. We’re in this awkward time where there are these basically dinosaur owners like Reinsdorf who have been around for so long, and they’re like, “Hey, we would really like to run our teams like we did in the ’80s and ’90s, and early 2000s back before fans started having the ability to complain—the ability to actually call us on our bullshit. Back before the media had shifted slightly, back before you got a few new owners in actually spending money and being like, “Wait, isn’t making a good team and sending good players a good decision from, like, the business of my team in the long run? Even if it doesn’t turn me in profit in this fiscal year?” The—and then there’s guys like Reinsdorf who are—who are not interested in doing that and never will be, and will never, ever, never, never entertain the idea of losing money in one season. Never. They would never do that. They would rather let any star walk for nothing to not have to do that. And that is where—obviously, Jerry Reinsdorf never had me, but that’s where he loses me on a point like this. Where it’s like—really most fans are simple, they wanna come to the ballpark, they wanna be able to watch their team on TV. They wanna have players that they feel connected to, because that is a joyful fan experience. Doesn’t have to be that your team wins the title every year, even though it’d be nice. It’s just—like I said, they want to feel like the time and monetary investment is actually worthwhile. And I personally think that’s a low bar to clear, but Jerry would like the bar to be even lower than that. Potentially finishing in second, third, or fourth.
ALEX: Yeah [37:01]
BOBBY: And not being the worst product we possibly can be. So basically, what the bar is the 2023 A’s.
ALEX: Right. Yes.
BOBBY: Like—
ALEX: Yes. Hey, Jerry, as a fan of a team, who has spent the last two decades committed to—
BOBBY: Being not the worst.
ALEX: —doing—doing the average amount like—come on. But I—
BOBBY: But, like, working really hard to do the average amount, you know? It’s like—
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: It’s like you’re at the gym, and you’re bench pressing your bench in, like, 135, but you’re doing it behind your back—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —with one hand, with one—the opposite foot up in the air while someone is blasting music three feet from—three inches from your face.
ALEX: Exactly. While you’re eating like a protein bar, so you can put the calories back in that you’re losing as you work out?
BOBBY: Exactly.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And it’s raining.
ALEX: Just a continuous cycle, yeah. Um, uh, first of all, I just want to say the whole meaningful games thing, again, bullshit, fucking hate that phrase. I hate that phrase.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: I am not interested in a game that I lost in the ninth inning, and it was 7-5, but we were hanging in there ’till the end. But more importantly—
BOBBY: Alex said W’s only [38:10] good losses are—that’s not a phrase in my vocabulary. I don’t have that phrase.
ALEX: I might have to start adding it, just so that I can start delineating by the only ones that are piling up over here.
BOBBY: You sound like Joe Torre. You sound like George Steinbrenner.
ALEX: Well—okay. So—
BOBBY: There’s no such thing as a good loss.
ALEX: No, but, uh, it made—
BOBBY: I know what you mean.
ALEX: —me—it made me think of, uh, of Giannis’ quotes to the media, um, in the—
BOBBY: Oh, yeah.
ALEX: —in last week, right? Where he was asked basically, you know, um, “If—if you don’t win the championship, like is this season a failure?” Right? In—in not so—in—in not so many words. Or probably in more words, I don’t know. And he get—
BOBBY: That phrase has always tripped me up. Like, is it not something—is that saying—that I said—less words are more—
ALEX: Right. Yeah.
BOBBY: —more words in so many—I don’t know.
ALEX: In—in—in some different words.
BOBBY: In words that were not the same, but similar.
ALEX: But he basically said, you know, like, you can’t view it in those binary terms, right? We’re trying to go out there and win every year, but, like, there’s also success in failure, right? We’re still growing, we’re still learning. And—and, you know, he was—that drew the ire of some, you know, national columnists who had—
BOBBY: Like, he kind of lost me with that a little bit, yeah. I—I kind of got what he was saying at the beginning, but also the season was a failure. Like, so—but not to litigate Giannis here. I love Giannis. He’s like maybe my favorite athlete right now, besides Francisco Lindor, but—
ALEX: Right. But—but the sense that I got that he was saying is—he’s basically saying, you know, shoot for the moon, you’ll land among the stars, right? All right. We’re going for the whole—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: —damn thing. But, like, if not, we still got a good team that’s worked together and can come back stronger next year, right? Jerry is like, ‘Shoot for the stars to minimize risk to your investment portfolio.”
BOBBY: Right, exactly.
ALEX: That’s it.
BOBBY: Jerry is like—he—he feels that question and he’s like, “Well, I can’t show you the sheet,” the fine, the term sheet. “I can’t show you the books. But if I could, you would not be calling this season a failure.
ALEX: Yeah, yeah. Nope—nope. You would not like it one bit.
BOBBY: Um, well, I think Reinsdorf would think that the Bucks’ season was a failure because they had to pay the luxury tax.
ALEX: That’s true.
BOBBY: Failure before they even lost in the playoffs. It’s a failure when they didn’t get under the luxury tax at the trade deadline.
ALEX: It’s the whole—I—his—his brain has just got to be ping-ponging back and forth, right? Because—because he appreciates teams who spend, but not teams who try and win it all, right? Like, how do you judge any team? Once they’re over the luxury tax, are they out of your good graces? If they salary dump, are they back in? How does it work?
BOBBY: Um, I would like to redo one other quote that really made my, um, my eyeballs rolled back in my head on this one.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Jerry Reinsdorf—
ALEX: Uh-huh. I hope—I hope it’s the one your—I’m thinking of right now.
BOBBY: Jerry Reinsdorf, “In 1981, we were getting $6,000 per game for White Sox games. Now, our rights fees are about 700,000 per game. We were getting away with murder with the cable bundle. People were paying for sports who really didn’t want the sports. Streaming is coming along, but it doesn’t produce the money that the cable bundle produced. And there’s basically near-panic, because where are we going to replace the money in the short term?”
ALEX: Can you say—
BOBBY: Well, the—
ALEX: —the number again that you said at the beginning real quick? Sorry. Of how much they’re getting in rights fees again?
BOBBY: $700,000 per game.
ALEX: So you’re telling me that’s over a hundred million dollars over the course of the season? Because that does not sound right.
BOBBY: Wait. Wait. Wait. This must be how much money they’re losing per game, Alex.
ALEX: Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: They’re losing $700,000 per game, but Jerry does that out of the goodness of his own heart for the people of Southside of Chicago. Because he cares so much about them.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Thank you, Jerry. This—you know what? This pod, this—the rest of this pod and everything we’ve talked about up to this point, this one goes out to Jerry. Thank you, Jerry.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Trailblazer.
BOBBY: You’re gonna—you’re gonna figure it out, you know? You’re gonna figure out where to replace that money in the short term. I love that he used the phrase short term, because—
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: —sometimes I feel like I—you know, I’m just bashing my head against the wall repeatedly when I’m talking about these guys who only care about short-term profit. And then a guy comes out and says, We only care about short-term profit.” And I’m like, “So, we were right the whole time?”
ALEX: Uh—
BOBBY: So Alex and I were right. The two guys who have basically no credentials who just come on here and yell all the time. We were right.
ALEX: Also, respectfully, what—what long term are you looking at, Jerry? Like, I just don’t like—
BOBBY: Jerry Reinsdorf—
ALEX: You might want to start getting your house in order, that’s all.
BOBBY: —age, damn, 87.
ALEX: This man was born in the ’30s.
BOBBY: Yeah, bro. He was hitting grade school right around the time that they dropped the A-bomb. He was like, “That was a cost-effective move.” He’s like, “We were gonna”—the war was gonna really draw out for a long time.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Little Jerry was like, “This is how I’m going to run my sports teams.” Okay, let’s talk about Arte Moreno now. Arte Moreno is a self-made man. You know?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: You and I should have thought of selling a billboard company for, like $95 million in 1988 or whatever the fuck—
ALEX: It only takes one good idea, right?
BOBBY: We’re still churning through them, you know? We got a few in there. A couple good ones. Uh, the Los Angeles Angels, they don’t think that media should ask questions. And if they do, they’re only allowed to ask them to one man, because only one man is equipped to handle such questions. Um, this is from Sam Blum’s article in The Athletic about this very thing. The Athletic requested to speak with Angels’ coach, Angels’ hitting coach Marcus Thames. However, under recently revised policy, the Angels allow coaches to speak to the media on a case-by-case basis. They did not permit Thames—Thames to speak to The Athletic about Rendon because the potential line of questioning was deemed too negative. I hate it when the potential line of questioning is deemed too negative.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: The team said it prefers manager Phil Nevin to handle such questions. There’s only one man in this building who is ready to answer a question about why Anthony Rendon is not slugging very well, and that’s manager Phil Nevin. The hitting coach—the hitting coach couldn’t possibly be ready for a question that negative.
ALEX: He may as well know nothing.
BOBBY: He may as well not even be employed. If he’s gonna have to answer questions about how the hitters are hitting, what are we gonna do? We’re gonna have to pay for classes for him to learn how to answer questions about how hitters hit, the hitting coach. This is maybe even stupider than the Reinsdorf stuff.
ALEX: I—I think it’s way stupider than the—the Reinsdorf stuff because the Reinsdorf—because the Reinsdorf stuff is, like, calcified like 20th-century capitalism brain, right? Like—like if I got paid handsomely at 87 years old to go around the world and just say, “Winning is good for your bottom line,” like I’d do it—and, you know, he’s just cashing in on institutional knowledge. But the—the Moreno stuff feels like this—
BOBBY: I just thought it was a great pivot for us.
ALEX: Okay, I look forward to hearing it.
BOBBY: Oh, yeah, yeah. Finish your thought, though, like, uh, I’m—it’s all stored back here. I got it.
ALEX: The Moreno stuff is like this—is—is the—the thin-skinned 21st Century capitalist who acts—who has to exist where people can criticize you, like online, right? Where you don’t control the access to information entirely, right? And—and that’s—I mean, it reminds me of his good buddy and the former president of the United States, right, who would react similarly to perceived spites from the media or whoever. Um, and I—it wouldn’t surprise me if he and Elon ere buddy buddy, too, right? Like, this is just the worst people you know who are cavorting around and pulling access to journalistic outlets. you know, it’s just like they’re just soft. That’s all it—like, you seriously can’t handle someone asking about why Anthony Rendon hasn’t been hitting more—for more power. That’s your—that’s the negative. You think that’s negative, buddy. Come on.
BOBBY: Yeah. Arte—Arte, come on the pod.
ALEX: Got another thing.
BOBBY: Arte, come on the pod. Um, I was reading Arte Moreno’s Wikipedia page earlier today when I saw this. Um, just to see like what his—what his deal is, you know?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: What’s—what’s he up to in his free time.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Uh, because it had been a minute since I’d really read cover to cover on the Arte—on the Arte Wiki.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And I saw this quote—speaking of president, President Donald Trump. Uh, in September 2020, he endorsed Donald Trump for president saying, “It’s very necessary to vote for President Trump.” Weird phrasing. “It’s very necessary.”
ALEX: Or what, Arte?
BOBBY: That’s, like, not really how people talk about presidential candidates. They’re—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —they’re usually not—they’re usually, like, “I’m so thrilled to vote for President Trump,” or, “President Trump is gonna lead us to whatever. Um, it’s very—
ALEX: That’s like—it’s very necessary.
BOBBY: —very necessary—
ALEX: You get me this deliverable by Friday.
BOBBY: Yeah. What? It’s so weird. Uh, hear—you wanna hear my idea?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: We become leadership coaches.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: That’s a really good grift for us.
ALEX: Yeah, it’s a good—
BOBBY: I feel like we’re both, like, really—you know, we got like a good vibe, like we’re positive, when we need to be negative inflammatory, when we need to be—like we—we could press the right buttons for some of these leaders in the baseball world.
ALEX: So—so—so you’re thinking specifically baseball-oriented leadership? So, like, one of us goes in and—
BOBBY: Yeah
ALEX: —and meets with Steve Cohen on a weekly basis to say, “Hey, bud.”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: “How are you holding up?”
BOBBY: Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m thinking.
ALEX: Great.
BOBBY: You know—so have you ever seen Billions? Which is—
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: —supposedly based on Steve Cohen. The main character—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —of Billions.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Um, one of the main characters in that show is a leadership coach at the investment firm of the main character who was based around Steve Cohen. So, I—you know, we—Steve’s open to the idea based on the fictional show, Billions.
ALEX: Right. Well, maybe that’s our way in right there.
BOBBY: So, I’m—I’m fine with starting [48:14] baseball. I’d like to expand outside of baseball, though. The general luncheon community is really where I’d like to expand to. Like, when—when there’s a luncheon, they—like, they do the luncheon and then after everybody’s had their kind of there’s—their finger sandwiches, then they come to us.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And we really hype him up, you know? We’re like, “You hear what they—”
ALEX: You—you know, the most powerful weapon you have is your voice or something like that.
BOBBY: Yeah. We’re—we’re like, “You hear what they said in there? Fuck that. You could be way better than that. Fuck that.”
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Don’t listen to anything they’re saying.
ALEX: Oh, so we’re like straight hype men, honestly?
BOBBY: Well, if that’s what the client needs.
ALEX: Okay. All right.
BOBBY: We’re B2B. We’re—
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: —D—DTC, B2B. Direct to client, business to business.
ALEX: Right. Yup. It’s all the same.
BOBBY: Come on. Like, you said a couple of weeks ago, we’re OTT also. We’re—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —OTT of the luncheons. We’re going over the top of the luncheons. That’s where our clientele is. Man, I [49:11] one day. David Zaslav, dude, call me up. I got advice for you.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: I got advice. Striking workers. Call me up. Business leadership coach. Tipping Pitches Media. 785-422-5881. Zas, call me.
ALEX: Leadership—leadership coach for, like, union—striking union members feels like an op. Like, designed to turn people against the union.
BOBBY: Um, back to Arte. What is Rob Manfred doing? Isn’t there, like, a league-wide policies that this violates? Isn’t there any kind of, like, thing that he can—I mean, I know the answer is no, because he worked for these people. But it’s like—so you’re just—the increasing level of things that Rob is just fine with, I’m just taking note of that.
ALEX: Yeah, I mean, this isn’t even the first instance in which this has happened with the Angels, um, with this very same reporter. In fact, last month, um, the—the very same Sam Blum tweeted and said that he had been barred from, uh, the Angels-owned AM-830—
BOBBY: Oh, yeah.
ALEX: —because he was—he was too negative. And so—
BOBBY: I love that. I love that word, negative.
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: What do you think we’re considered? I feel like we’re pretty positive guys.
ALEX: I think so, too. I just think we’re positive about all the wrong things in their eyes.
BOBBY: That’s not what negative means.
ALEX: I mean, this sort of action has consequences when it comes to the relationship between media—
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: —outlets and teams. And—and when it comes to the fans who are consumers of this as well, right? You know, I—there have been—there have been times in the past where you’ve seen specific players maybe come out and say, “I’m not doing media today or for the foreseeable future or whatever.” And, you know, you can have reasonable disagreements about that, but these are individual—
BOBBY: Of which you and I have.
ALEX: Of which you and I have. But—but at the end of the day, they’re individuals making choices for themselves. This is a top-down directive that is basically saying, “Here’s who you can talk to you, here’s what you can’t. And we have to pre-screen the questions.” Like, that’s not exercising, you know, your—your right as a star to say, “I’m not feeling it today.” That’s trying to dictate the narrative that surrounds your team. And when you start doing that, that tells me you’re starting to get a little scared of what that narrative is starting to imply.
BOBBY: Well, not to mention the fact that like, do I think The Athletic is the reason the Angels are worth whatever they’re worth as a franchise? Not directly. But media, which is a conduit between teams and fans, is a huge part in the baseball economy. Media makes these things bigger. Media gets more eyeballs on your team, which directs you more money. So you don’t need to say thank you all the time to the media, but you certainly don’t need to act like they’re not—like, the existence of media in general. Not any one reporter necessarily is not helping you to become billions and billions of dollars richer, because you happen to employ people who are the best in the world at a sport, you know? So, I’ve never understood, like, the strictly oppositional stance that some teams take on media. Like, this was a huge thing with the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA. Um, particularly around their, like, young core, around the turn of the 2010s, um, where they—they were very insular. They would stonewall a lot of reporters all the time. They would try to protect Kevin Durant, James Harden, and Russell Westbrook from ever speaking to the media if it was not in an extremely controlled environment. Very similar to what Sam Blum was describing with the Angels. And honestly, from my perspective, you know what that did? That just created a really toxic environment around the Oklahoma City Thunder. A really fun, young, interesting team with guys who had interesting things to say about basketball. And the team, for some reason decided to make it harder for everybody. And—
ALEX: Yeah,
BOBBY: —I
ALEX: And there were some of the most talented young stars in the sport at that time, right? Of—of which the Angels are—have their own variety, right? Like, that you would restrict access to that is wild.
BOBBY: And also, like, back to the point of the negative question. The question is too negative. I just think—and—and I thought a lot about this when Giannis was asked that question, because then Mark Cuban weighed in the next day, and was talking about how maybe we need to not have press conferences or—I don’t know what the fuck he was talking about. But here’s the thing about media and journalism, and covering sports is that sometimes you don’t have to ask a nice question. Like, sometimes, though it is uncomfortable and unfortunate, sometimes a player sucks now, and you have to ask about that, because that player is still playing and on the team. Like, I don’t think that Angels reporters were really psyched about having to ask about when they were gonna cut Albert Pujols, an icon of the sport, one of the greatest players to ever suit up. But they had to do it. They ended up doing it, but is that too negative? Like, where—where is the line? Anthony Rendon is having, like, a fine season, but this is a guy who you went out and signed because you thought he was going to be kind of the Robin to Mike Trout’s Batman, and it hasn’t worked out that way. And so I don’t think it’s beyond the pale just to ask a question about why he’s not hitting for power the second he left Washington and came to your team. Like, that’s not too negative. Too negative would be like, hypothetically speaking, Anthony Rendon got divorced and you came into the press conference. You were like, “Did your divorce take away your power?” Like that—maybe you don’t ask that question. But—
ALEX: Well, now, I want to know the answer.
BOBBY: Exactly. Maybe that’s not—maybe that’s not the line. Did your childhood trauma affect your ability to hit for power in Los Angeles?
ALEX: Affected mine.
BOBBY: I—um, we just all need—we need to chill. It’s okay—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —to sometimes disagree. It’s okay when media and players disagree. It’s not—it doesn’t need to be a referendum on media’s access to the sport entirely.
ALEX: No. Again, this is one of the—another one of those fuck around and find out moments, where it’s like, “Hey, man, if you don’t want to give media access to your sport, go for it. Reap the rewards of that.”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Right? Like—
BOBBY: Yup. Arte Moreno would love if the Los Angeles Angels played in front of zero people with zero cameras and zero reporters asking any questions if he made the same amount of money. His life would not change at all, so, um, I don’t—I don’t think he really cares about playing that stupid game and winning that particular stupid prize, but I don’t know. Until it actually hurts his wallet, we’ll see. Uh, okay. Well, we have sufficiently made this podcast very long, uh, but that’s okay because these were all good topics and very Tipping Pitches topics really happening in such a short period of time since we talked last. Um, let’s—let’s kick it over to, um, a friend of the show, a minor league union, bargaining superstar Trevor Hildenberger.
SPEAKER 3: It comes through the window, it comes through the floor. It comes through the roof and it comes through the door. Dust is everywhere. Sweep.
BOBBY: Okay. We are once again, joined by a friend of the show, Trevor Hildenberger. Hello, Trevor. It’s so nice to see you.
TREVOR: It’s good to see you guys. Thanks for having me on again.
BOBBY: Yeah, of course. We’re—we’re excited to talk to you, um, about the minor league bargaining process, which is over. It was news to us that it was really progressing so fast, and then all of a sudden, it was over. So, I think that Alex and I wanted to start there, because we’d love to hear a little bit about what that bargaining process was like for you. First of all, were you involved in the bargaining itself or were you more of a liaison between the bargaining and the rank and file? Were you just like hearing communications? From your perspective, the last couple of months, what has it been like, as a minor—as a Minor League Baseball player hearing how this collective bargaining agreement was forming?
ALEX: Right. Sum up the last, like, six months, please, and maybe, like, a nice, little soundbite, um, that we can just, like, share, right? You know, like, it should be really easy.
TREVOR: Yeah, that’s no problem. Nothing’s—nothing major has happened in the past six months, so it should be a one-sentence, two-sentence thing. No, I think, uh, I think it’s been a whirlwind from the beginning of the offseason when we were—I mean, the beginning—end of last season when we were recognized and then we wouldn’t—we knew that the bargaining process would start, but none of us had been through it before. Um, so obviously, we look to—to union leadership to kind of tell us what to expect and how the process would go. And then we had a meeting at the end of November. Um, a lot of minor league players, about 55 or 60, um, met for, like, a conference in Scottsdale. And we all met for a weekend. And I went and it was—it made me feel so professional, so grown-up. I got like a lanyard and, you know, we had different speakers at different times. And I was telling my wife who works in the corporate world I was so proud of myself. Um, but we—we spent a lot of time there, figuring out what our priorities were, and basically what hills we’re willing to die on. And, um, as far as salary goes, we tried to come up with numbers that we were comfortable with—starting with. And so that was a nice—it was, uh, a lot about meeting people that—in different organizations, I had never met before, different draft classes, different positions, and so it was really nice to put some faces to names that I had heard and seen over Zoom, but never met in person and hear people’s—different guys’ perspective on—on what was important to them. So then moving throughout the offseason, um, bargaining was happening, but it was kind of sporadic, maybe once a week, maybe once every two weeks. And as spring training came closer, um, things ramped up in terms of intensity and, uh, frequency of the meetings. And then especially when minor league camp started in March, um, I was involved—I went to two meetings in person in New York, but I was on Zoom for almost every other meeting. And then, uh—
BOBBY: So you were part of the bargaining committee, then?
TREVOR: Yeah, I was—I was giving my input whenever I felt strongly enough to—to contribute. And then I was also trying to communicate that—the—what was happening to the rank and file players when the—with the Giants. So, I was kind of doing both. And then, um, like the last three weeks, we probably met three to four times a week. And—
BOBBY: Uh-huh.
TREVOR: —um, some—some meetings would be like a half hour and some meetings would be two and a half hours, depending on what topics we were exchanging, whether it’d be, uh, both—both sides had something to, um, make a counter proposal or just one side was making a short proposal on something. And it was just—um, I never realized how draining it would be.
BOBBY: Yeah.
TREVOR: Every single topic, everything was nitpicked and discussed nearly to death. And I felt—I—when we went to tentative agreements on stuff, I felt so relieved and accomplished. And by the time we reached the final agreement and we sent it out to guys to vote, I was very tired. Um, but—but proud of the work that we had done and I thought we reached a, um, a deal that improved a lot of different aspects of minor leaguers’ life. And so, I feel very proud about that. I don’t think it’s a perfect deal. Obviously, we have more things we wanna get done and we wanna push the ball forward in, um, you know, future CBAs, but I think this was a good first step.
ALEX: I think it’s really sort of remarkable to kind of look back on, like, the last six months, right? To, like, hold the document in your hand and be able to see, like, these are the fruits of these hours, and hours, and hours of—of work that we’ve put in. And I imagine—
TREVOR: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —that that’s especially kind of gratifying, again, as you mentioned, like, kind of never having been through this process before. I’m kind of curious what that was sort of like for you and some of the other guys in there who had never been in this position of, like, having their first bargaining meeting. Um, can you sort of walk through that of, like, how you were getting up to speed on—on what the negotiation process is like? I mean, were you taking the MLB CBA and saying, “Hey, let’s—let’s start from here, and then we’ll, like, mark it up, and go from there.” Like—
TREVOR: Yeah. There were a lot of aspects—there were a lot of aspects that we did, um, take language from the MLB CBA and just kind of—I think the joint drug agreement, um, was one of those aspects—
ALEX: Right. Yeah.
TREVOR: —like, this works for those players, why shouldn’t it work for us? This should be a no-brainer, and it was. Um, and, like, um, second opinion on medicals, and grievance policies, and discipline and stuff like that, where we did take a lot of the language from the MLB CBA, and maybe there were minor tweaks by either side, but I think for the most part, it’s pretty similar. Um, and we had lawyers who would do, like, read through it very carefully and say, “Oh, actually, this language is—um, we should strike this language or we should add this language. And I wasn’t educated enough in this aspect, in the bargaining to even understand what they were talking about some of the time. Um, but I think—I think those efforts are magnified and really appreciated by everyone who was in that room, where everyone who was on the Zoom calls, we knew how important it was to have an experience like Bruce Meyer, who was the, um, lead negotiator for us, uh, Matt Nussbaum. Um, there was just so many people that—that I don’t think we get to the deal that we got to without—I think if we had done it, you know, players only and weren’t absorbed into the MLBPA and, like, didn’t have those resources and those people, will reach a very different looking deal.
BOBBY: Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about what the vibe of both, like, the negotiated—negotiation portions of bargaining looked like versus, like, the caucuses when you guys kind of met afterward? Because I—I’ll speak for myself. When I first went through a bargaining process for CBA, I don’t think I was ready for, like, the silent feeling, like, anxiety of when, like, the first bargaining section goes, we’re like reading proposals back and forth, and no one is really supposed to talk except the negotiators. And then you just kind of stay silent and keep a straight face. So from your perspective, like what was that like for you being in those rooms with kind of, like, some super, high-powered people on the other side for Major League Baseball? And I guess who were those people in—in your case?
TREVOR: Sure. Yeah, I think, um, I was extremely nervous. My first—
BOBBY: Yeah.
TREVOR: The first time I flew to New York and we sat down across the table, you’re literally on either side of this long-ass table. And I just had a coffee and a notebook and printed handouts of—for the proposals we were making that day. And then when MLB would make proposals, they’d hand out, you know, pieces of paper and look through them. But you’d also want to—I didn’t know what—like—like you said, you sit there and be silent, and I was like, “Okay. Let me practice my nastiest looks. Let me practice my most stern, stoic faces.”
BOBBY: Yeah.
TREVOR: Have no reaction to these people. Or do I want to look permanently Tucker Carlson face and just, like, very confused and anger?
BOBBY: So proud. Yeah.
TREVOR: Yeah. Like, really [64:54]
BOBBY: Someone has—someone has to carry that [64:56] right?
TREVOR: What are you saying regarding—yeah. And it was very nerve—racking. I think if I had my Apple—Apple Watch on. I think my heart rate was, like, A hundred 100 or a hundred and ten—
ALEX: Yeah, man.
TREVOR: —at my first—very first meeting. And I didn’t—I wasn’t going to talk. I had—there was no chance that I was saying anything. Um, but just sitting there, taking notes, I was nervous. And then I think the post-meetings debrief was a lot more relaxed, a lot more loose. People always commented on how somebody spoke and/or the body language that they displayed when in the room, I think people paid attention a lot—a lot more to these things, um, than I ever anticipated. So, let’s see. On MLB’s side is Dan Halem, um, was the lead negotiator, a guy named Pat was a lawyer, um, and there were other people that I don’t remember their names off the top of my head. But it was the same group of six people, I think, every single meeting. And then Dick Monfort was the only owner that—that was really, um, present. I think he was mostly on Zoom and, um, he was—because he’s the head of the labor committee for the owners and I think that he—
ALEX: Right.
TREVOR: —um—
ALEX: That’s part of—
TREVOR: [66:09] interest in this.
ALEX: Yeah, the outline of that role. Right.
TREVOR: Yeah. No other owner—I don’t think any other owner, um, even Zoomed in.
BOBBY: I heard that they were scared of your Tucker Carlson face like once that spread around, nobody wants to join for there—for—after that.
TREVOR: They did not—they did not want to sit across from me. That’s for sure.
ALEX: How—when you were kind of in these rooms having these conversations, obviously, again, you’re having to make some really tough choices about, you know, what you are bargaining over and what really you want to sort of throw your weight behind? Um, and—
TREVOR: Yeah.
ALEX: —I’m just kind of curious what those conversations were like, because you and the other players had to really come to consensus on, “This is what we want to prioritize in the CBA. This is something that’s—you know, maybe we can, um, forego until the next round of bargaining.” How did you kind of make those decisions as a—as a group?
TREVOR: Um, yeah. It was a very interesting process, because I think there are different groups of minor leaguers, whether it’d be guys who just got drafted, guys who have played in the minor leagues and are close to the big leagues, and then guys like me who have played a long time, had big league time, were free agents at one point or another and are making more than the minor league minimum. And maybe our priorities differ a little bit about what’s important. I think guys who had just got drafted, salary was number one. Clearly, evidently, they voiced it, it’s obvious, we all knew that the salary is unacceptable and we need to raise that [67:43] um, other people with the reserved clause, like how many years were on the uniform player contract right out of the gate? Seven years was just too long. It was unacceptable. They really wanted to, to knock a year off that or knock two years off that. Other guys really wanted better benefits, um, better housing was really important to—to keep what we had—the progress we had made in 2021, I think—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
TREVOR: —that was the first year that they had housing and to keep that was very important. I think it was discussed briefly about whether we wanted to keep housing or just ask for a higher salary and have housing—us figure out the housing on our own, like we were, you know, before 2021. And what was interesting for me was how—say, we had a Zoom call of 65 minor leaguers and then I would go back to the guys that I was at the Spring Training Complex with—with the Giants, and then kind of portray the picture of that discussion or the last Zoom meeting. And I didn’t want it to just become an echo chamber for me, you know. I could definitely portray in a really positive light and then everyone would be really encouraged.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
TREVOR: Or I could portray in a very negative light and then they would all be discouraged, and upset, and angry. But I just wanted to paint it in a true picture and get people’s real reactions, like, say, “Listen, if you disagree with this, tell me. That’s fine. That’s great. Let’s talk about it right here, right now, and then have a uniform front moving forward. But if we didn’t have tough discussions about what your priorities are and if they differ from what we’re arguing for—or bargaining for, then you need to let us know, because your opinion matters just as much as mine or just as much as the next guy. And so if this isn’t working for you, speak up.”
ALEX: Yeah.
TREVOR: And—and that was—um, I felt very adult. I don’t know if I’d be able to do that when I was 23.
BOBBY: Yeah, I mean, that’s so challenging, because—like, the way that this usually works is that the people who are most involved go back and they relay it to the rank and file. And oftentimes—well, I—I—I don’t want to speak for everybody, but, like, oftentimes, the rank and file will say, “That sounds good. It sounds like you guys are doing good work. It sounds like you guys are working really hard. I trust you guys.” And, like, for the—
TREVOR: Yeah.
BOBBY: —people who are involved in the bargaining, it’s like, “I don’t know what to do with that. Like, then I have to look internally and think like, ‘What do I think is right?” And then
TREVOR: Right.
BOBBY: —as—you use this word consensus, like that’s so important. That that word is, like, so sacred in union bargaining and negotiation is consensus among, you know, your bargaining team about what you actually want to push for and what you’re willing—
TREVOR: Yes.
BOBBY: —to sort of, um, give a little bit on to get more in this other place. And so I just—uh, number one, I admire like that you guys had such a gigantic unit, and the fact that you guys had such an imbalanced, you know, industry to begin with. And number two, I’m just like, “I don’t even know how you would begin to prioritize those things.” So, like, what—what methods do you put in place like—whether that was like at the Arizona meeting or whatnot to sort of, like, get the ball rolling on where you want it to start? I mean, I know there were some things that were, like, super obvious like salary, and benefits, and that sort of thing. But what about some of the more, like, fringy are things? Were there like sort of player surveys, like was it—did it just come naturally from conversations or what?
TREVOR: No, exactly. It was player surveys. I think early—early in the process last year before we were even recognized as a union, um, we would ask guys, you know, “If you could change five things about the minor leagues, what would they be in order from most important to least important? Or give me your top three things that you would change.” And that kind of gave us, uh, an idea of where to start. And then that meeting—or that weekend in Arizona was, um, pretty crucial in terms of guys really expressing and spelling out, because we would go out into— what do they call them? Breakout groups, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah.
TREVOR: Uh, five or six guys, different ages, different teams, different experience levels, and say, “This is what’s important to me. This is the most important thing to me.” And if we disagreed, then it was just like you look each other in the eye and say, “I respect it, but I don’t agree. I don’t think that that’s a priority.” Um, you know, getting—getting all your supplements covered in the offseason is great, but I really don’t think we should, you know, hold up a deal over creatine. And I think—that’s just an example. I don’t think that really happened, but—um, yeah. It was, like you said, consensus over such a large group, over 5,000 people. Um, it was tough. And, yeah, I don’t—I mean, we still don’t know if we ever got to, like, a full consensus about how we did, but I think—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
TREVOR: —overwhelmingly positive, um, feedback from—from the guys especially now since they’ve gotten their first paycheck, um, that’s been affected by the CBA. Um, Double-A and Triple-A guys getting their own rooms on the road, huge W.
BOBBY: Yeah.
TREVOR: Everyone’s psyched about that, because that’s, like, real impact you can feel, whereas like, “Oh, now, we get dental.” People might not use that and/or think that that’s a big deal. But when you take a ground ball off the teeth on a high school field, in the offseason because that’s where you practice. And the rest of your face is insured, but not your teeth. Uh, it’s frustrating and it’s really upsetting. And you don’t—until you’re in that position, you don’t realize how important that stuff is.
ALEX: Yeah, absolutely. Um, you mentioned the—the housing policy, uh, which is—
TREVOR: Yeah.
ALEX: —something that I was—I kind of wanted to explore a bit more because this, obviously, you know, is something that had kind of been, uh, advocates for minor leaguers, had been, uh, working on, kind of trying to build—you know, work out this policy with Major League Baseball. Um, a little over a year ago, MLB came out and said, “Hey, we’re—you know, we have this plan, we’re gonna provide you with this form of housing.” And in—in my eye, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but it felt like a bit of a—an organizing kind of catalyst, um, because it was sort of the first real coalesced movement that said, “Hey, we have this demand from minor leaguers to Major League baseball and—and this is what we’re—what we’re looking for, right?” And—and maybe we want the opportunity to not just take what you’re giving us, but actually have a say in negotiating this. So, I’m wondering just kind of how important that experience was for sort of building the will to maybe make this fight, uh, a little bit bigger in the long run?
TREVOR: Oh, man. I mean, uh, it can’t be overstated. That point was massive, because it was the first time that players had used collective action, right? The team in Brooklyn wore those wristbands, um, those Fair Ball wristbands, and I think that that caught on to the major leagues, I think, at some point in September. I remember Andrew McCutchen and a couple other guys were wearing Fair Ball. And then there was that Athletic article from Britt Ghiroli and I want to say an ESPN article from Joon Lee. That public pressure applied with players showing their—I don’t know. I don’t want to say disdain, but their—their frustration with housing policies and conditions. And then, like, a concrete change happened. We asked for it. We—well, we didn’t ask for it, we demanded it. There was public pressure applied and then MLB changed their policy and housing was covered. And it was just kind of like, “Wow, you can see—did you see what happened?” That was organic. That came straight from us. And the role of advocates for minor leaguers played was massive, because they coordinated that and sent out the wristbands and made the wristbands. And people just felt like they had support from outside the clubhouse, that they had real support from fans. Um, and that was huge in the organizing effort moving forward, because I think like, “Look, that was just one thing. Imagine if we all came together—that was one team in one place. Imagine if we all came together and demanded better salaries. Don’t you guys think that that would be good moving forward?” Um, so, yeah, the housing policy was huge and the fact that that stayed, um, is big time. And, you know, we negotiated over how far away from the field it has to be, and transportation, and how many guys to a room, and air conditioning, and then wives policies. There’s kind of a lot of different topics go into that—that housing policy, but it was, um, it was important to us that we—we kept that in there.
BOBBY: Trevor, what do you think was the most contentious thing across the table? Like, there’s always something that once you boil everything down, and once you get the joint drug agreement, and you get the, you know, second opinion, stuff like this—stuff that you’re taking from the MLB CBA, that kind of seems reasonable to both sides. Like, after you kind of get tentative agreements on all of that stuff, you really get down to, like, the one or two things that the other side doesn’t want. and the one or two things that you do want. And what—so in—in this case, what do you think that was? Was it just salary numbers or was it like other things that you had been trying to get in there that were completely new to the idea of a baseball CBA? Or in your case, what—what was the most contentious?
TREVOR: Domestic reserve list.
BOBBY: Yeah.
TREVOR: Domestic Reserve List was the most, um, contentious and—um, yeah, most important and most contentious topic. Salary is tied to it, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
TREVOR: I think we all saw the economic package as a whole and, um, we knew the—the number of jobs was going to be tied to everything else.
ALEX: What is the—I mean, to the extent that you can really speak about it, what is the kind of framing, um, uh, from—from their end on why this is sort of an important part of this economic package? Is it really just, “Hey, salaries are going up. We have to—we got to cut jobs.” It—you know, is there kind of a—is it part of the grander sort of when baseball scheme of really reining in this unwieldy minor league system or—or was it really just like an—like an economic question for them?
TREVOR: Um, I think, obviously, economics played a part. I don’t—I can’t speak to, like, the exact reason that they, you know, came up with the figures that they came up with. But I know that, um, at one point they talked about how it was a competitive advantage for some teams to have so many players in, let’s say, the Complex League. Some teams had two teams in a Complex League that they can take, basically—they were basically, you know, gambling on these players. Have a ton of young, cheap players, and if one of them makes it big, then it—then it pays off. And if teams can’t afford to—or their argument was, you know, if some teams can’t afford to have the same number of players, that that’s a competitive advantage for teams with bigger, um, bigger markets, bigger payrolls. And they could have more players, and therefore, if some of those make it big, you know, that’s their advantage. I—uh, that’s all I gotta say.
BOBBY: That’s—um, I don’t—I don’t know—I don’t know—
ALEX: Very diplomatic.
BOBBY: —if the numbers are mapping for me personally there, whether or not some teams can or can’t afford to have another couple players on the Domestic Reserve List, but that’s just my thoughts. Um, I—so zooming out a little bit, like less specifically to the Domestic Reserve, less specifically to the housing policy, the salaries or anything like that, there were always these things, especially in the first collective bargaining agreement, where there’s just, like, philosophical differences, like a team thinks it should be allowed to limit the roster size, because that is just employers’ rights or whatever. That is just management rights. Um—
TREVOR: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —did you find yourselves, like, running into that argument quite often and how—what were like some of your strategies for—kind of making them see negotiation logic, in terms of why this is good for the game? Some of these things that you’re trying to push for. Why this is good for, like, the long-term health and sustainability of the game to have a reasonable Minor League CBA that people can actually afford to give the game a shot?
TREVOR: Yeah, I think that’s a great question, because, you know, we did try to appeal to the fact like—uh, what is good for player development, what is good for minor leaguers, what’s good for player development, which is good for the teams, which is good for the game, right? We want—everyone wants to see young, exciting, well-rounded players meet—reach the big leagues and have success. And if the minor leagues is—is, as a whole, a little bit better baseball, because people are eating better, sleeping better. In the offseason, they can afford to train and not work in offseason jobs. So, they actually make reasonable gains in the offseason and then come back as a better player the next—the following spring training. This is all positive. And I don’t—I don’t understand why there would be any arguments against some of the—the no-brainer stuff, but, yeah, we did have to appeal to—to that side of it quite often. Um, sorry, I forget the exact point of the question.
BOBBY: Yeah. Just about like—it can seem like from—from, like, labor’s perspective, like those things—
TREVOR: Right.
BOBBY: —in terms of make—like healthy workforce equals healthy company, right?
TREVOR: Yeah.
BOBBY: And how do we make the workforce healthy enough, while you guys are saying philosophically, you’re opposed to some of these things? So in the case of baseball, it’s like that plays out—just plays out differently than a lot of workplaces, so like the philosophical differences in terms of, like, being able to limit the roster size and that sort of thing. But you—you kind of hit on it. You answered on—kind of what I was talking about.
TREVOR: Yeah, I think—and I think that they agreed on a lot of aspects of like, “Okay. Yeah, like, we want players to do well. Obviously, that’s the goal.” Um, one aspect was—that was tough, um, uphill sledding was, um, termination pay. Why don’t we give the guys just a little bit of coverage, so that when they got released in the middle of season and then they got dropped off back home, you know, they were—their housing was provided by the team, obviously, their paychecks were provided by the team. And then when that’s done, they’re kind of out of everything immediately. And have to go home and find a place to stay. And, uh, maybe not every player has a place to stay when they get back home. So, we wanted to give them a little bit of runway so that they can find a comfortable place to stay and—and they would land on their feet, you know, going forward and—um, before they found either another team to play for or whatever came next in their lives. And I think that was a—we thought that that was what’s best for the players and that view wasn’t always shared.
ALEX: Obviously, this CBA is a starting point. This is really step one. I—uh, it feels like the—the real work is gonna come, uh, in the coming years, right, as this CBA really sort of gets them—
TREVOR: Yeah.
ALEX: —down and calcified. Um, I am curious what, from your perspective, are some of the biggest challenges that sort of still remain for—for minor leaguers, for the—for the union? Um, you know, obviously, without—without tipping your hands to the other—the other side too much, um, you know, are there—are there some topics whereas [83:03]
BOBBY: As we know, Rob Manfred is a dedicated listener to this podcast.
ALEX: A dedicated listener, yes.
BOBBY: So, don’t give him any free ideas.
TREVOR: I—I guarantee that he pays someone to listen to podcasts like this.
BOBBY: That’s a horrifying thought. Just a—just a genuinely horrifying thought.
ALEX: And anyway, what’s up—what’s up to that intern [83:18]
TREVOR: You should check your—check your one-star reviews, if you guys have any one-star reviews on Spotify and Apple podcasts.
BOBBY: Oh, Rob—Rob would at least respect us enough to give us two stars. Come on, there’s—there’s intellectual honesty going on in this podcast. Come on.
ALEX: He—he respects his business people, you know?
TREVOR: Yeah, that’s true. Um, yeah, I think you’re right. The important work is still ahead of us. Um, over the next five years, we’re gonna have to pay close attention to what is working in the CBA and what’s not working for players and their families. And then I think it’s also important to remember that we need to—because the turnover is so great in the minor leagues that a lot of the players that were around for this—this round of bargaining, are going to be former players when they—the next CBA comes around, or major leaguers. Or if they are still around, that they are going to be in a very different place in their career. So, I think they continue to educate new players that come in every new draft class, or a new free agent signings, um, kids that are coming in international signs, to educate them on what a union does, why it’s important to be an informed and engaged member of the union, what it offers you, and what it was like before, and what—why we’re continuing to fight for better circumstances. I think, you know, if guys are making 30 grand a year, and their housings covered, and they get paid for spring training now, and the podium is better, and the benefits are better. Some of them, you know, might— might not be as motivated as the guys who are desperate over the past two years to organize and fight for better conditions. So it’s about keeping guys engaged and motivated, and, you know, continuing to push the envelope forward. I think it’s, um, it’s something that I’m, I don’t want to say, excited for, but, like, I hope to be part of that continuing to educate the next player, because I’ve played at—I—I was drafted in a round that doesn’t exist anymore.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
TREVOR: And I played at every level of the minor leagues, even ones that don’t exist anymore. And I want to say that—I think that I can relate to a lot of different players, I don’t—obviously I’m not from Venezuela, or The Dominican, but I’ve played with a lot of young players who send money back home and I think, um, I think it’s important.
ALEX: What I’m hearing is that baseball is actually the perfect path to radicalizing the youth of America. That’s really—
TREVOR: Yeah.
ALEX: —the Little League to Union Grant pipeline.
TREVOR: You really read through the lines there. You read between the lines. That’s exactly what I was saying.
BOBBY: Um, I mean, it—it’s so true, because, like, you will always have the conditions the day before the CBA went into effect compared to the day after it went into effect. And you will always have that as an educational tool, not only for what a union can do in baseball, but for what a union can do in literally any workplace. Like, I—I have that too with, like, what the conditions were like before we started negotiating the union—or the collective bargaining agreement at The Ringer, and what it was like afterwards, and just how much different it is. And it’s really hard to keep people engaged once you have a CBA. But I know—
TREVOR: Yeah.
BOBBY: —that especially being part of MLBPA, like that is such an institutionalized form of, um, union power, honestly. Like, that is always—like the spotlight on it is renewed constantly. Like, the fact that we’re even able to do a show about labor issues in baseball, when there’s two CBAs and neither of those things are, like, actively being negotiated, is because these things play out all of the time, in small ways and big ways, in contracts, in cutting players, in grievances, in rule enforcement, in statements from owners and statements from commissioners.
TREVOR: Yeah.
BOBBY: And so, like, there’s always gonna be a new opportunity for players to learn about how this is gonna affect them. And maybe they’re not going to be as engaged as they were for, like, the last three months negotiating the CBA, because in many ways, this is—
TREVOR: Yeah.
BOBBY: —like the genesis of what is going to be the 10-20 years to come in—in Minor League baseball, CBA fights. But I think that, just observing from the outside, it seems like—the, like, practical realism of improving people’s lives in this—in this collective bargaining agreement and the policies that are going into effect are just going to have, like, unbelievable staying power. So, it’s—it’s—I—I commend you guys on getting it done so quickly and, like, getting a lot of stuff that was priorities for you guys and just being a part of it, the whole process, just because I—I can’t even fathom the different, you know, like—like powers that play and—and trying to stop something from—like this from going into effect.
TREVOR: Yeah, it is—it is crazy to kind of look back, not only the past three months, but when I was drafted in 2014 and, like, 2015, my first spring training, and just being petrified to kind of step out of line. Like, there—there could be real repercussions for someone turning the spotlight on our conditions. And then five years later, it was people Tweeting out the shittiest food you’ve ever seen and be like, “I’m not eating this, you know, piece of American cheese on—on toasted bread with a piece of Romaine lettuce and that’s it. That—that’s unacceptable. Let’s change this.” That whole attitude and culture shift is, like, kind of unfathomable for me. And the fact that we’re in this place now where guys are getting a better salary, guys are getting better benefits, and to say that I was part of that is, like, an extremely proud thing for me to say. And I hope that, um, if anybody remembers me at all for my playing career, it’s about—it’s about, um, the role that I played in this movement rather than, you know, my—my five-and-a-half era in the big leagues.
ALEX: Trevor, thank you so much for doing this. We have a blast talking with you always. Um, so thanks for coming on.
TREVOR: Yeah, happy to do it.
BOBBY: Any other baseball or pop culture-related thoughts that you want to get off your chest with the—with the, uh, megaphone that is Tipping Pitches?
TREVOR: Um, I’m really sad about the Oakland A’s. I grew up going to Giants and A’s games. Um, my brother-in-law is a huge A’s fan and his son has, uh, you know, has been going to A’s games. He’s five years old now. I remember going to A’s games with my dad and listening to, like, a little hand radio, so that we can, like, listen to the announcers and watch the game at the same time. Uh, and then I remember pitching in high school, we had a high school tournament at the Oakland Coliseum and that being the first ever big league field that I was on, and then obviously, got to pitch on. I remember taking a little piece of grass and a little piece of infield dirt, and, like, putting in a little sandwich baggie in case I never got back onto a big-league field. So, um, I have some special memories about that place. It’s embarrassing that they’re not gonna be in Oakland anymore. I really feel for Oakland sports fans with the Warriors, the Raiders, and the A’s leaving, um, that makes me sad. I did listen to The Ringer F1 podcast that I think you edited. BOBBY: Oh, yeah, I did. Yeah, I sound design that one. I scored it.
TREVOR: Yeah. About Logan Sargeant and that was nice. Um, I don’t think Taylor Swift and Fernando Alonso are actually dating, but it’s fun to [90:35]
BOBBY: This is the important part.
ALEX: [90:36] yeah.
BOBBY: We got all of the Minor League Baseball chat out of the way, now we can talk about Taylor Swift and—
TREVOR: Yeah, yeah. All that bullshit is done with. Can we please shift to F1? If Fernando Alonso is dating Taylor Swift, he’s winning the Drivers’ Championship this year.
ALEX: I saw—I saw ESPN tweet out some graphic where it’s like, you know, Fernando Alonso, like, number of championships, 22. Like, how he feels about his old teams. We are never getting back together. And I’m like you are ESPN, what is happening right now?
TREVOR: Stooping to new levels. Uh—
BOBBY: We’re living in a world where—
TREVOR: —we’re tweeting about Fernando Alonso.
BOBBY: —where TikTok content has just completely just leveled the conversation. It’s like if it’s popular on TikTok, it’s popular everywhere because everybody is on TikTok—
TREVOR: Yeah.
BOBBY: —consuming it. And so if people are talking about it on TikTok, guess what? ESPN is gonna be tweeting that shit out.
TREVOR: Right. Like, how can I—how can I digest this in 10 seconds? If it takes longer than 10 seconds to learn about, I don’t care.
BOBBY: Trevor, are you a Swifty or are you just a big F1 fan and so you can’t do it [91:37]
TREVOR: No, I’m just a—I’m just a big F1 fan, and my wife really likes Taylor Swift. So, like, I’ve listened to her music, obviously.
BOBBY: Yeah.
TREVOR: And then I like some of her songs. But the fact that that world is colliding with Fernando Alonso, his, like, reputation is just leave teams and teammates in shambles.
BOBBY: Yeah.
TREVOR: He has totally welcomed his villain persona, and he just stepped right into that, and accepts it a hundred percent. Um, so, he’s a really fun character, and he’s like, 45 years old, seriously [92:07]
BOBBY: Yeah, he doesn’t have the—
ALEX: He’s gonna, like, retire, like, six years ago and then he was like, “Uh, no. Never mind.”
TREVOR: He did. He retired for two years.
BOBBY: Right. Yeah. Right, exactly.
TREVOR: And then came back, he was like, “Nah, I’m fucking bored. Like, let’s race.”
ALEX: Yeah. That’s relatable.
BOBBY: I can’t wait for that era of our pod, Alex, where we’re just like, “I’m burned out. We’re retiring from the pod.” And then two years back—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —we come back like The Undertaker and then we’re just—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —like, “It’s time to talk about labor again.”
ALEX: Exactly. We’re in our Brady era.
TREVOR: When MLB expands to Nashville and Montreal or wherever it’s gonna be, I am really looking forward to that podcast.
BOBBY: Don’t worry, we’re prepared. We are—we are amply prepared for that.
TREVOR: I’m sure. The time is coming.
BOBBY: Uh, Trevor, thank you so much. It’s—it’s always great talking to you and we really appreciate the insight into all of this stuff, including, um, Taylor Swift and Fernando Alonso.
TREVOR: Yeah, of course. Thank you, guys, for having me on, giving me the platform to speak a little bit, and then you know, covering the—the in-depth stuff of negotiations that I think is important.
SPEAKER 5: I’m your biggest fan, but I guess that’s just not good enough.
BOBBY: Alex, you know, um, at the end of that conversation, you remember we did this a little while ago, so I don’t know if you actually remember this. The end of that conversation, Trevor said that he really—what he really wanted to talk about was the rumors that Taylor Swift was dating Fernando Alonso. Well—and the time that it took for us to publish this pod—
ALEX: No. Nuh-uh. Uh-uh. Uh-uh. Uh-uh.
BOBBY: —now, there’s—there’s bigger rumors know—
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: —about Taylor Swift dating a different—
ALEX: No, they aren’t. No, they aren’t.
BOBBY: —messy man, problematic man who’s successful in his own right.
ALEX: No, they aren’t.
BOBBY: And that’s Matty Healy. I’ve already had some—I’ve already had a friend text me and say he’s willing to come on this pod to talk about that exact story. So it’s—the rumors are swirling. Do you believe it? Do you believe it?
ALEX: This line of questioning is frankly far too negative for my taste and so I’m gonna have to defer on this one.
BOBBY: I could not agree more. If Taylor Swift wanted to date somebody who repeatedly has quasi-meltdowns in front of thousands of people, she should have just picked someone on the New York Mets. Like, that would have made my life way better, way easier. All my interest concentrated in one place.
ALEX: There it is.
BOBBY: I don’t want to learn about The 1975. I don’t. I don’t know any of their songs. Somehow, I don’t know the songs. I don’t want to have to learn the songs.
ALEX: Hell yeah.
BOBBY: Just don’t make me learn the songs. I’m sure they’re good. I’m sure they’re fine. It’s just completely and totally missed me. Sometimes you need stuff like that.
ALEX: I think this is a perfect opportunity to take advantage of that.
BOBBY: And never listened to any of their songs?
ALEX: Yeah, just let it pass you by.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: Man, it’s a glorious feeling. It’s a glorious feeling to, like, wake up and scroll through the timeline and be like, “Something’s trending that I’ve actually chosen not to care about.” Like, I feel—I feel a little lighter today.
BOBBY: Um, two things of housekeeping before we, uh, wrap this pod up. Number one, new T-shirts. They say, “Sell the team.” They don’t say what team, but you can probably guess, based on the color scheme of the shirts. They’re green, and they’re yellow, and they’re white, and they say, “Sell the team,” in cursive font. You know, use your head. Uh, the proceeds of those shirts support, uh, increasing access to baseball in the East Bay, Oakland. So, let’s see. Uh, that’s number one. Number two, I mentioned on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, Alex and I have been throwing around the idea of doing, like, a meetup community kind of event at a Minor League Baseball game, the Brooklyn Cyclones this summer. Um, we’ve settled on a date. That’s July 28th, 2023. The Cyclones are playing at home against the Wilmington Blue Rocks. They play in Brooklyn in Coney Island, in case you’re not familiar. Uh, that’s where we’re going to be doing the, uh, meetup. So, the ticket situation is interesting because we’re still trying to gauge interest on, uh, how many people are going to be coming and—and what will be the method for getting those tickets. And so, what we have done at this point, number one, don’t buy—go and buy your own ticket yet, because there’s gonna be, like, a situation where either we buy the tickets ahead of time or there’s like a special link so that you can be—we can all be in the same section. Um, what we have done right now is we’ve created a Google form, so if you’re interested in that, that link is in the description. It’s just a question of whether you would want to come and about how many tickets you would need, including yourself, so that we can ballpark it a little bit and then go back to the folks of the Brooklyn Cyclones and tell them, “Here’s how many tickets we think we’re gonna need.” Um, you don’t have to be, like, super firmly committed to that yet. If you think you’re gonna be able to make it and you want to fill that out and say how many tickets, and then you have to back out for whatever reason, that’s more than okay. You’re not actually buying a ticket by filling out this form. It’s just for our informational purposes only. So if this—if you’re in the New York City area and this is something that is interesting to you, there’s gonna be a bunch of people there who we’re really excited to meet in person because we know them from online. And this thing that we all care about is the thing that is primarily enjoyed in person in my personal opinion. So, I’m really excited about it. I love seeing Brooklyn Cyclones games. Um, it’s—it’s one of the coolest places to go see a baseball game, you know? Not just in New York City, but in the world. Uh, and—yeah. Alex, we’re not leaving anything out?
ALEX: No, I think that’s everything, Bobby. We’ve—we’ve taken enough of our lovely listeners’ time already.
BOBBY: Go buy a shirt, tell the team. Go fill out the Google Form. Come watch baseball with us. That’s pretty much it. Um, thanks everybody for listening and we’ll be back next week.
SPEAKER 5: I’m gonna play Diablo either way. You can come or you could go. Because I’d rather play Mortal Kombat anyway
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!
Tipping Pitches 
Leave a comment