Bobby and Alex wonder if AI is coming for Alex Rodriguez’s pod spokesperson duties and discuss the potential perils of Amazon’s palm recognition technology in baseball stadiums, then respond to a grab bag of listener topics, including another Billy Eppler masterclass, a reasonable Chicago sports talk radio caller, baseball heists, Oppenheimer vs. Barbie, the new pitch sweeping the nation, and more.
Links:
Rockies bringing palm recognition tech to Coors Field
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Tipping Pitches merchandise
Songs featured in this episode:
Paramore — “Big Man, Little Dignity” • Booker T & the M.G.’s — “Green Onions”
Episode Transcript
Theme
Tell us a little bit about what you saw and—and—and being able to relay that message to Cora when you watch Kimbrel pitching and kind of help out so he wasn’t Tipping his Pitches. so Tipping Pitches, we hear about it all the time. People are home understand, what Tipping Pitches is all about? That’s amazing! That’s remarkable.
BOBBY: Alex, I have some bad news to start the show today.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: We are finally here at Tipping Pitches been hit by the ChatGPT bug. They got us.
ALEX: It was coming for us, eventually.
BOBBY: We held out—we held out long enough, but we like the Hollywood writers, like Hollywood directors, like I don’t really know what else AI has replaced—oh, I guess Google search. We’ve been replaced by ChatGPT.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Listener and friend of the show, Owen, asked ChatGPT to understand what the Tipping Pitches podcast is about and ChatGPT responded with this here, a statement. “Yes, I’m familiar with the—with the podcast Tipping Pitches. It is a baseball podcast that focuses on the intersection of sports and culture, offering insightful discussions on various topics related to the game of baseball. The host of the podcast, Bobby Wagner and Alex Bazeley, provide analysis commentary, and interviews with guests exploring both the on-field and off-field aspects of baseball. Tipping Pitches covers a wide range of subjects including player development, analytics, social issues within the sport, labor relations and the cultural impact of baseball. The podcast aims to provide a unique and nuanced perspective on the game while fostering a broader conversation about its place in society.”
ALEX: It sounds like ChatGPT is coming for A-Rod’s job, because that’s what Tipping Pitches is all about. Now, the folks know.
BOBBY: Oh, so what you’re—what you’re saying is that they can’t create this magic. They can only describe it.
ALEX: Maybe.
BOBBY: Well, it’s getting closer, though. You have to admit that. Should we turn society over to ChatGPT because it understands what the podcast is about?
ALEX: Uh, maybe. I’m always curious about what happens after the World Series is over, right? Like, can we start generating like, “Yes, what goes on after game seven?” You know, “What would a game eight look like? What might a game nine of the World Series look like?” These are always—these are all questions that have bugged me for years.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: And now we can finally do it. We can finally write fanfic about baseball.
BOBBY: Uh, that—that implies that there’s not a robust fan fiction community surrounding baseball. I guess my lingering question for you is, are you upset that ChatGPT is doing a significantly better job of describing our podcast than either of us ever do when asked?
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: Okay, great. Are you feeling a little heat, then? You’re feeling a little pressure?
ALEX: I’m feeling like we should add ChatGPT to the payroll, really is what I’m feeling. I think we should get rid of the unpaid interns.
BOBBY: Who’s on the payroll—yeah. Who’s on the payroll right now?
ALEX: Right? Can they do taxes yet?
BOBBY: Probably. I mean, can we do taxes yet?
ALEX: Right. Uh, let me just try up—let me just upload all our financial documents to ChatGPT real quick. I’ll see what it spits back out.
BOBBY: Um, if we get ChatGPT, we keep A-Rod on the payroll. We get rid of Manfred who’s commanding a high salary.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And we hire the guy who’s running Ron DeSantis’ campaign. I don’t see how we’re not the biggest podcast in the world in—within 365 days. I’ll give us that little buffer period.
ALEX: Well, I mean, you’re kind of scooping, uh, the fact that we were about to do a Twitter Space with Elon next week.
BOBBY: Why’d you say his name like that?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Elon.
ALEX: Elon.
BOBBY: How did that go? Did you try to tune into that? You would be the only person in my life who—who would—
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah.
BOBBY: —actually just try to see how it’s going.
ALEX: Actually, I—I had, like, something I was doing for work that night and I—
BOBBY: Uh-huh.
ALEX: —got back and was like, “Oh, my God, I missed so much.”
BOBBY: The only thing that could be funnier—a funnier meltdown on Twitter is if the Boston Celtics actually lose game seven tonight as we record this on a Monday, they come back from down 3-0 and then they just completely get blown out in game seven. Okay, Alex. We have, uh, an interesting podcast on the table for—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —everybody. We’re going to do what I would call a grab bag of topics suggested by the listeners of the show. But before we do that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I’m Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches. Alex, no new patrons this week. L, L. What—would you like to make a Tim Tebow-esque statement about how you will turn this thing around, that you will guarantee that we will do a better show for people going forward?
ALEX: I think we should start guaranteeing that we’ll offer some of the Patreon perks, uh, that we’ve been offering to folks.
BOBBY: Okay, great. On today’s show, um, you know, it’s kind of a—it’s kind of been a slow couple weeks in the baseball world, uh, in terms of Tipping Pitches topics. A couple of weeks ago, we had a full slate of things to talk about in just the three days between when we recorded last, but things have slowed down a little bit. We’re kind of, uh, in a lull here as we enter into the month of June. Results are starting to feel real on the baseball field, but as you know, we don’t—we don’t really talk about those things, quite yet. Um, and so what we did is we asked listeners to—on Twitter to just reply and tell us what we should talk about and we got a wide variety of topics.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: A wide variety of topics. All of which we are going to try to give some thoughts on. Pardon the interruption style. Uh, but before we do, you, uh, you said you did have one thing that you did have on the docket, and it’s a real topic. And that is the Colorado Rockies trying to use Amazon hand-scanning technology to verify people’s ages to sell them alcohol at Coors Field.
ALEX: Yeah. So this is from a piece in Ballpark Digest from a few days ago. Uh, the Rockies and Aramark announced that they—
BOBBY: Oh.
ALEX: Yeah, Aramark—
BOBBY: Our old friends.
ALEX: That’s right.
BOBBY: Aramark. Well, we go—we go way back with Aramark.
ALEX: They’re legends.
BOBBY: Yeah. Remember when they were doing, uh, for profit, prison contracts?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That was fun.
ALEX: Remember they—when they were like, “We’re doing shark meat tacos.”
BOBBY: Oh, yeah. Right. They also did—you—you’ll remember, they also did, uh, NYU’s Black History Month, uh, menu—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —where they served fried chicken and watermelon.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That was fun.
ALEX: Anyway, shout-out to Aramark. Uh—
BOBBY: Sterling record that they have.
ALEX: Sterling. And they’re back at it again with another banger. Um, they are incorporating Amazon One’s palm recognition technology into the ballpark as an age verification tool, right? so when you’re purchasing alcohol—
BOBBY: What is Amazon One? Such as Amazon with a—with another buzzword in there just to—to separate—
ALEX: I—
BOBBY: —it from the rest of the company?
ALEX: I think the first handle wasn’t available, so they just started putting numbers after it.
BOBBY: Amazon underscore.
ALEX: Right. It—it sounds like this technology has been kind of incorporated to some degree in—in various ballparks. But this is the first, like, palm print technology that—that you’ll be able to use to verify your age when you are purchasing alcohol. Which I know has been a very big sticking point for—for years where we haven’t really figured out, uh, a process that works seamlessly. Uh, certainly nothing I carry around on my person at all times, uh, for this exact purpose.
BOBBY: I just had my first experience with this technology the other day. I didn’t know that it existed. I was in a Whole Foods 365 Market.
ALEX: Wow. Wow.
BOBBY: 365 Market, all right? The affordable Whole Foods. It’s the only grocery store within walking distance of a hotel I was staying in, all right? I don’t shop at Whole Foods. Patreon is not doing that well. Uh, and the woman was like, um, “Would you like to pay with your hand?” The woman at the—the checkout register and I was like, “Um—”
ALEX: Well, prices have really gone up lately.
BOBBY: I was like—good joke. That was a good one. I was like, “Oh, no, I don’t think I have a payment method associated with my hand.”
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: “But I do have this credit card in my wallet—”
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: “—that I think I can pay. Am I allowed to pay with that still?”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And she was like, “Yeah, not a lot of people use it.” She was like, “But I—I don’t know. We have to ask.” And I was like, “Yeah, no. I—I, um, I don’t think I will be attaching anything to my hand to do that.”
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Yeah.
BOBBY: And she was like, “I know. It’s Amazon. What will they come up with next?” And I was like, “Right on, sister. Let’s go. Let’s do this.”
ALEX: I love the jaded service workers who were like—
BOBBY: I know. They’re like—
ALEX: —”I know. I just got to say the line.”
BOBBY: Yeah. “Can I scan your eyeball—”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: “—to acquire this tomato?”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I thought it was funny serendipity that you wanted to talk about this topic at the same time that I had just experienced this technology IRL.
ALEX: And you had just experienced this. Yeah, I know. It’s some on-the-ground reporting for us. I mean, I’m a little disappointed, um, because I know that if it was me, you know me, I would have immediately said, “I got to—I got to try this out” Right?
BOBBY: Sign up for this?
ALEX: Jeff Bezos does not have access to my biometric data, and that’s a glaring oversight.
BOBBY: Do you know that Jeff Bezos doesn’t have access to your biometric data? Because I don’t. I don’t know that he doesn’t.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Because—I mean, I guess you don’t really use any wearables, do you?
ALEX: Right. No.
BOBBY: No wearable technologies for you?
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: I do.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I have one wearable technology.
ALEX: That’s on you all the time?
BOBBY: Yeah, yeah. Pretty much. It’s not on me right now. Actually, it’s charging. But that’s okay. Jeff Bezos can hear what’s happening right now in this studio.
ALEX: Are you sure of that? Like—
BOBBY: No. Maybe Jeff Bezos made our sign, you know? And that’s why it provides weird hums from time to time when the recording hits that instead of—
ALEX: Right? It’s like—it’s like when you’re like—you know your phone’s being tapped when you can hear, like, the little click, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah, exactly. Mr. Bezos, sir, do you like the segment so far? How’s it going?
ALEX: I just—I just want to reiterate that we’ve been granted the gift of—of free will and so I encourage you to, uh, to use it. Uh, I would not use it to—
BOBBY: I don’t know where you’re going with this.
ALEX: If it were me—
BOBBY: Okay. Yeah.
ALEX: —I would not freely choose to give Amazon and Aramark and the Rockies—so—so again, like, the—the security questions around this, I think loom really large to the point where I just—you know, I wouldn’t be comfortable giving a—an e-commerce store access to that sort of thing. Right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: With like—like, no strings attached, Right? Are they—are you gonna stand there and read the fine print while you are purchasing your $17, like, Bud Light? Like, no.
BOBBY: Yeah. I mean, I think—so the average person, I guess—maybe not the app, the average person, but a lot of people would say like, “What does it matter—”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: “—if they have your handprint? Like, what are they gonna—how are they going to use that in a nefarious way against you? How is Dick Monfort gonna use your handprint against you?” I think the more alarming thing for me is the different varied places that, like, Amazon wants to control your life—
ALEX: Yeah, exactly.
BOBBY: —so they will—they will obviously want to ask you, “What is your email address?” And then they’re gonna associate that with you at—um, they’re gonna associate that with your handprint as well as the types of things that you purchase and the times that you purchase them.
ALEX: Right. They’re gonna say, “Oh, you—okay. So you purchased a beer at 4:17 at Coors Field and then at 4:59, and then—
BOBBY: Yeah. Which, again, they probably have a lot of that information already associated, like through your bank or whatever. Um, but—
ALEX: Sure.
BOBBY: I mean, they—they probably do, right? But the consolidation of it with one tech company, and then the—the slippery slope that you start to find yourself in when that blends over with, like, biometric data that can then be fed back into other—for other security purposes. Like, I’m reminded of when we were talking about the facial recognition technology at Madison Square Garden, a place that you and I are going to tomorrow night, which I think that we will have to probably experience this facial recognition technology where [12:13]
ALEX: Um, like, I didn’t—that didn’t even occur to me.
BOBBY: I mean, yeah, they—they use it the same way for basketball games as they do for hockey games, as they do for concerts. I mean, I don’t think that we’re on any kind of list, but I guess we’ll find out in 24 hours.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: We did talk about this on the show. But, um, it’s the amount of things that you—that as—are valuable to these tech companies, that you’re being asked—asked to give away for not really any upside—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —for you. Like, it’s not—it’s not really faster to take your hand and have it scanned than it is to just, like, show your ID—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —right? And it’s upsetting conceptually to me to think that a tech company that’s seemingly trying to dominate every aspect of my life and the world is using a sport that I like as a vehicle for assembling a biometric profile about me, the consumer. I—I have a hard time, like, really articulating what I think they’re gonna do with that that’s gonna, like, hurt me in my day-to-day life, but it doesn’t feel good.
ALEX: Right. I just rather not know. I’d rather not have to worry about that.
BOBBY: Uh, yeah, I’d rather not have to stop them from doing that once they do have all of that data.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Do you think people are really signing up for this? I think they probably are.
ALEX: I’m sure there are some people. Yeah, I mean, it’s unclear if this is already implemented, or if this is something that they’re rolling out. And any intrepid fan who’s been to Coors Field lately is welcome to, uh, correct the record here. I just—they—they talk about it as being—
you know, we’re creating this really seamless experience, right? That’s gonna—
BOBBY: They love a seamless experience.
ALEX: —that’s gonna, you know, uh, decrease wait times and help fans get back to their seat. And it’s like—
BOBBY: Yeah, the reason for wait times is definitely because I have to take my ID out and show it.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Not because you don’t want to open more beer stands because you don’t want to actually pay the employees who have to be there to run those beer stands. That’s definitely the reason that I’m waiting in long lines.
ALEX: Also, objectively, kind of funny that I’m gonna scan my hand to show that I’m 21 and then immediately pull out my wallet so that I can pay. Like, I still have to do the movement.
BOBBY: Well, now, you can do it on your phone. You can scan your hand to pay also, remember? That was what the whole thing at Whole Foods was.
ALEX: I guess. Yeah. I mean—
BOBBY: They scan your hand and it just debits your—your account.
ALEX: It’s—it doesn’t—
BOBBY: We’re—we’re trending towards a world where baseball teams are just like no different than TSA. Like, the experience that you have at your leisure events is the same experience that you have at the airport.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s just like there’s one—there’s a computer system that has every piece of information about everything that you’ve ever done that—it’s just—they’re trying to create the singularity—
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: —by accessing you at the point—at the—in the places that you don’t want to give up, like entertainment, concerts, baseball games, football games, you know? Whatever. Basketball games.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Um, and it’s weird.
ALEX: How long until we have—like, you know how we have fake IDs. We have, like, fake, like—like handprints—
BOBBY: Handprints. Yeah, like, that looks—that looks like a hand?
ALEX: —you know? Like, a glove on you can buy online. Exactly. Because that’s what I’m thinking about, right?
BOBBY: Right. Although baseball stadiums, notoriously tough carders. [15:32]
ALEX: It’s extremely difficult.
BOBBY: Yeah, not—not an easy place to get—to get a fake ID off.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: So I don’t know if the fake hand is gonna work for you.
ALEX: Hey, man, I’m just—I’m thinking about the—the baseball fan of tomorrow.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: You know? I want them to have a good time at the—at the game, too.
BOBBY: Well, TBD if they’ll even be allowed to go to the game or if they’ll just have to go to some warehouse somewhere and put a video—VR headset on. Watch the game by, like, being inside the ball as it’s being pitched, You know? Like, get a whole new access to your sport. You’re the ball.
ALEX: That’d be kind of wild, actually. I would—I would experience it once.
BOBBY: There’s gonna be some TecPro somewhere who’s gonna think of that idea, and I just want that TecPro to know I thought of it first.
ALEX: Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, we are, what, weeks away from people being like, “What if—what if Jeremy Giambi was actually called safe at the plate? Like, here’s—we generated the rest of the baseball game.”
BOBBY: If by people you mean you.
ALEX: Right. Right. Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: You’re already writing that novella.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Um, I mean, there are other things that Amazon does that I’m sure MLB owners are interested in trying out, too. Like—and, like, get rid of all of your employees and have those little robots drives—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —beer to your seat, or something like that. Or we’ll have drones fly your hotdog to your seat for you. Like, they—I guarantee you if they could do that without decapitating a human being, they would do it tomorrow.
ALEX: And I guarantee you even if that chance was on the table—
BOBBY: Yeah. They’re like, “What’s the odds?”
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: “What is the cost-benefit analysis?”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: “How many people do we have to kill in broad daylight to make it not worth our while?”
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Um, I welcome them to try those little robots that drive packages around at baseball stadiums, because I’ll buy season tickets just to kick those things off the edge.
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah.
BOBBY: That would be almost more fun than watching the New York Mets.
ALEX: I know that they’re disgruntled, like, Mets fan dads who would—who would—like who would be on their fourth beer being like, “Get this shit out of my way.”
BOBBY: Yeah, exactly. Um, vandalization is good.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: It’s a tech company. It’s a good idea.
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: We’re all about sabotage here. Okay. It’s time for our conveyor belt of grab bag topics via our Twitter replies. Are you ready for this? This is really gonna be, um, miscellaneous.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: It’s going to be potpourri. There’s no one theme to these topics. Uh, I tweeted earlier today, “What should the Tipping Pitches podcast talk about today? Please help.” And the listeners of this show and the followers of the show on Twitter obliged us—are you ready?
ALEX: Yeah. I mean, I think the goal of this conversation is to throw ChatGPT off the scent, right?
BOBBY: Oh, okay.
ALEX: Like, we’re trying to confuse it as much as possible. So the next time someone asks—
BOBBY: Right. Like, they think they know what we’re gonna talk about—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —and they don’t. Um, first topic, very rude, actually. James replied with a graphic from last year of a trade between the New York Mets and the San Francisco Giants. The Mets get Darin Ruf and the San Francisco Giants get J.D. Davis, Thomas Szapucki, Carson Seymour, and Nick Zwack. James would like us to talk about this trade.
ALEX: The floor is yours, my friend.
BOBBY: Um, I think that it was the most predictable trade outcome of all-time, which is that the Giants take—had underachieving right-handed hitter on a different team who is desperate to get rid of that person and turn him into a very good hitter. J.D. Davis this season, 126 wRC+, 1.2 WAR. Darin Ruf this season been DFA’d by two separate teams. That’s not even including all the other stuff that the Mets gave away, which maybe those guys will turn into something, maybe they won’t. All this to say, it’s just another— just another Billy Eppler masterclass. Thanks. Thanks, EP dawg. You really got this one under control. 27-27, that is the New York Mets record. 27-27.
ALEX: I don’t know. It’s been less than a year since that trade happened. I’d give it a little more time, Bob.
BOBBY: The only way that the Mets could win this trade is if J.D. Davis’ worth, like, -6 WAR.
ALEX: Like, he single-handedly ends the Giants season.
BOBBY: Yeah, exactly. It’s not like the Giants are exactly crushing it right now.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: By the way, uh, Dodgers still the best team in baseball.
ALEX: Somehow. Somehow.
BOBBY: I don’t know why—from this moment forward, I promise to never pick against the Dodgers to an NLS team.
ALEX: Yeah, I know.
BOBBY: They could be coming off a 110 win—they’re a 110 last season, and I will still, for some reason, pick them to, uh, win the division.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I pick one of their players to win the rookie of the year and I pick another one of their players to win Cy Young. I don’t know why I was like, “That won’t equate to them winning.”
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: This isn’t—this just—it’s just not intelligent stuff by me. Uh, okay. Next question. Uh, next topic. Ronald would like us to talk about the White Sox radio rant guy. Ronald is referring to the ESPN Chicago caller who called in and had one of the most coherent—one of the most coherent angry sports radio calls about the Chicago White Sox that I’ve heard in quite some time. I’m going to play a little bit of—I’m gonna play a little snippet of that for the listeners right here.
SPEAKER 3: I’ve been a diehard Chicago White Sox fan for nearly 40 years. I say that with the very expressed intent of sharing my deep and undying love for this team. And my call is rooted in heartbreak, not anger. Don’t—don’t get me wrong, I’m angry. But it is a byproduct of a dysfunctional, abusive relationship with the front office and the ownership of the Chicago White Sox. I also want to say I have defended this rebuilt. I liked what the team did with the trades. I defended Yasmani in Dallas. I didn’t understand the La Russa hire, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt. I forgave the free agents they let go. I was befuddled by the Benintendi and Clevinger signings. But you know what I said? I’m gonna give them one last shot. And when they cancelled SoxFest, like the cowards they are, I knew something was up.
BOBBY: I don’t know how, uh, much there is to say about this other than that this guy seems to know what he’s talking about.
ALEX: He—he—he kind of just like—
BOBBY: Maybe—maybe they should make this guy the third co-host of this radio show.
ALEX: Like, I was waffling on—on kind of how to talk about this, because I’m kind of like, “Uh, points were made.” Like—and not a very—and not an—and not an abnormally aggressive manner.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: Like, I would say, given the—the anger or sadness that—that he was feeling, I think he alluded to both. It was a pretty—pretty even-keeled. I know—I know many fans of—of better teams who would sound a lot more deranged, if they called in to a sports talk radio like the right—like the person sitting six feet away from me right now.
BOBBY: That’s exactly right. Next topic, Oppenheimer.
ALEX: Fuck yeah, dude.
BOBBY: I don’t—have we talked at all about Oppenheimer? I have certainly had—
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: —quite a few conversations about Oppenheimer in my day.
ALEX: Uh-huh. Yeah.
BOBBY: Uh, maybe we have. Um, have we talked about it on the pod at all? I don’t really know. What—um, are you looking forward to Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer?
ALEX: Yeah, man, it’s the summer movies. You know?
BOBBY: Are you—okay. Rank these in order of desire to watch, Barbie by Greta Gerwig, Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan. Which film will you be in first? They come out on the same day.
ALEX: They do. Yeah. So it’s a question of which one is the morning showing and which one is afternoon showing?
BOBBY: Yeah. Although, maybe you wouldn’t watch them in order of how badly you want to watch them. Maybe you’d want to save the one that you want to see more—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —for later.
ALEX: It’s kind of like—
BOBBY: Building up to it.
ALEX: Right. It’s kind of like how I saved the best, like, bite of the meal for last, you know?
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: I’m like, “What’s the one that I can, like, go out on?
BOBBY: Right. Or how the best band should play last on a set.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: You know, like, the—what’s the headliner, Alex? It took us a long time to get to that, to that very distilled way of saying it that we would all understand. Just two music guys doing a pod.
ALEX: How, uh, how do you even, like, reasonably talk about this? Like—
BOBBY: No one is asking you to be reasonable.
ALEX: No, no.
BOBBY: Go with your heart. What do you want to see more? A female author’s vision of capitalism in the 21st century are bombs going off. These are hard things to discern.
ALEX: Look, I just want to see the AI folks put Ken into Oppenheimer, you know? I would like to see the worlds cross over. Like, why are we—I don’t know. Why are we making it so exclusive?
BOBBY: Oh, put Ken into Oppenheimer?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s like Ken is gonna—okay [24:03] I was like, “Wait, what?” Um, you don’t know that he’s not—you haven’t seen the movie?
ALEX: That is true.
BOBBY: You don’t know that the last scene of Barbie is not them—J. Robert Oppenheimer setting off the bomb?
ALEX: Right. Yeah. It’s like—like a—
BOBBY: There could be—there could be—
ALEX: Like a little Titanic inception thing—
BOBBY: Exactly.
ALEX: —where, like, he wakes up on the beach. Yeah.
BOBBY: Right. Exactly. Um, Is that—is that how Titanic ends? Have you ever seen that movie?
ALEX: No, it’s how, uh, Inception ends, isn’t it?
BOBBY: It ends with—oh, I see what you’re saying. A theory about how the—
ALEX: Isn’t there—there’s the whole conspiracy theory about how Jack is—I haven’t seen—seen Titanic, so I can’t—I don’t even know—
BOBBY: Hang on.
ALEX: —if I should say that on the pod.
BOBBY: You haven’t seen Titanic?
ALEX: I know what happens.
BOBBY: So then are you not gonna see Oppenheimer? You know what happens. You know what happens not—everybody knows what happens in that.
ALEX: That’s true.
BOBBY: so then you’re not gonna—you don’t—I think that you should watch Titanic. I’m just gonna come right out and say it.
ALEX: And, uh—
BOBBY: I think you should watch it.
ALEX: Well take.
BOBBY: Um, I think you might like it.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: You know? You love epic failures.
ALEX: I do.
BOBBY: Systematic shortcomings.
ALEX: All right. If—
BOBBY: The hubris of capitalists.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You love all these things.
ALEX: I do.
BOBBY: Rich people dying—
ALEX: I—
BOBBY: —cold, freezing, painful deaths.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Unfortunately, it’s mostly the poor people who died in this one.
ALEX: Right. Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: But—
ALEX: I think so.
BOBBY: —I think the rich people got away with one. They pulled one over on us.
ALEX: Look, I’m stoked—
BOBBY: The Titanic was a sci-op.
ALEX: Jesus. I’m stoked for both movies and I—
BOBBY: Uh, are you running for president? Just answer the question.
ALEX: I know. I really—I’m here to bridge the division—um, no, I’m really excited for Oppenheimer. Sorry.
BOBBY: Oh, wow.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I think I’m more excited for Barbie.
ALEX: Oh, yeah?
BOBBY: Yeah. I am most excited for Killers of the Flower Moon.
ALEX: I know. Yeah.
BOBBY: I will—uh, I’ll—I will defer Marty [25:52] to God.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: But of those two movies, I’m a big Gerwig fan. I would describe myself as a bigger Gerwig fan than a Christopher Nolan fan. Though—
ALEX: Yeah, absolutely.
BOBBY: —I think Christopher Nolan’s—I think he has the best theater-going experiences, though I think I prefer Gerwig movies and, like—if everything were equal.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Um, so we’ll see. Future Oppenheimer versus Barbie debate coming on the show, I guess.
ALEX: Oh, good God.
BOBBY: It’s Patreon content.
ALEX: I hope AI replaces—
BOBBY: Next topic.
ALEX: —us before that.
BOBBY: Next topic. Our friend Tony Adams, sweepers. Go. I’m talking about sweepers. The new pitch sweeping the nation. For some reason, Tony decided to put this one in a response to the Oppenheimer tweet.
ALEX: That was like spoilers.
BOBBY: The way that they cracked the code on how to split the atom was the same way that they cracked the code on how to throw a sweeper.
ALEX: Exactly. Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s like the same technology, so—
ALEX: Uh, big fan, we haven’t had a new pitch in a while.
BOBBY: Can I—I think I have maybe what is—what could be considered a hot take about a sweeper.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: It’s just a curveball.
ALEX: It is—oh, I—isn’t it—is it more curveball or more slider?
BOBBY: Uh, it’s both.
ALEX: It’s—
BOBBY: Like, those are the same pitch. Like—
ALEX: Which—we have—like a swerve?
BOBBY: A curveball? Yeah, exactly. So what’s the difference between a sweeper and a swerve? That it moves more horizontally to be a sweeper, sweeps all the way across the pitch—the plate? I’m sure someone has—
ALEX: That’s like—
BOBBY:—had a very smart conversation about this and we’re just kind of spit-balling here. I don’t—a sweeper is not a new pitch. I’m sorry. People have been throwing them, you know? What would you call Chris Sale’s slider? That’s not a sweeper? He’s been throwing that for, like, 10 years.
ALEX: I mean, we are in this really interesting space where because we know so much about every single pitch, it’s like—like before, you would just look at a pitch that a pitcher threw and you say, “It kind of looks like the one he threw yesterday, so let’s call it the same thing.”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And now we can, like, classify down to the degree, like how many inches did it move? You know, what was the kind of plane that it fell in?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And so—
BOBBY: That’s why I come to the game for [27:53]
ALEX: I do think it, like, kind of perversely incentivizes us to create these sorts of classifications that, like, maybe are not super meaningful to the average fan.
BOBBY: Yeah. Well, I think that—what’s interesting about the sweeper is that all of a sudden, everyone’s throwing it.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s like, uh, overnight, they just decided that we’re just going to call it a new thing.
ALEX: Right. It’s not like everyone has to learn how to do that over the last—
BOBBY: And now half the league’s sliders were just considered a sweeper, because we’ve decided that sweeper is in vogue. I prefer the situation—I prefer the situation to go more, like, Kodai Senga’s ghost fork has gone.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Where he’s just throwing a splitter, but he calls it a ghost fork.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And only he throws the ghost fork. Like, the Satchel Paige-fication—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —of baseball, where he’s just like, “I have 40 different kinds of pitches, and I’m going to call them this, and this, and this. And here’s why they’re different because I hold them different.” And you can’t tell them that—You can’t tell Satchel Paige he’s wrong.
ALEX: Yeah. I’d love everyone to have a different arsenal.
BOBBY: Yeah, yeah. Everybody should have to submit the names for their pitches before the season starts. And they should be officially catalogued as such. Like, what were you trying to throw there? It is kind of amazing how well the pitch classification technology works. Like, there are very few pitchers who—who get their pitches misclassified—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —by baseball savant. Um, like Emmanuel Clase, sometimes his cutter gets misclassified as a four-seam because no one else starts a 102-mile—
ALEX: Right. Yeah.
BOBBY: —cutter. But it’s definitely a cutter.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You know, like he holds it like a cutter. It does move a little bit like a cutter. Um, I don’t know. I think that pitch should have a different name, personally. Like if we’re gonna be calling a sweeper, a sweeper, then why are we not coming up with a new name for Emmanuel Clase’s cutter?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Like that’s not Mariano Rivera’s cutter. Those are not the—you can’t look at those two pitches and tell me that those are the same thing.
ALEX: Yeah. Like, is it time to reevaluate what a fastball is?
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: Like, that was kind of a mid-ball. Um, I don’t know. 93, that’s all you got in the tank?
BOBBY: Wow, throwing shade—throwing shade at guys who throw 93. Uh, speaking of guys who throw 93, we got another question. I keep calling them questions. They’re not really questions. They’re just topics.
ALEX: They’re statements.
BOBBY: We have another topic here, which is our friend, Sean Doolittle, making his return to the mound in Triple-A touching low 90s, two strikeouts, no runs. Could be back up at the Nationals soon. Do you have a statement on the fact that you just called him mid?
ALEX: Yeah, really unfortunate that he throws a mid-ball now. Um—
BOBBY: I think he would be—um, I think he—if he were here, he’d be like, “It is kind of a mid-ball.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You know?
ALEX: No, I’m so happy for him. I—he’s one of those guys who has been—his career has been marred by injuries over the last couple of years and I’m like—whenever you see guys go down like that for a prolonged period of time, especially ones you like, you know, you’re kind of waiting with bated breath. It’s like, “Is he gonna make a”—so, like, I— he seems like a guy who I think would probably be—perfectly happy to retire and open up—open a bookstore and just kind of live out his life. Um, but for our sake, I’m really happy. He’s—he’s making a push to come back. And I don’t know, I wouldn’t count the Nationals out just yet, as a result.
BOBBY: Hang on, I’m checking the Nationals’ place in the standings. The Washington Nationals, 23-30, just four games behind the New York Mets.
ALEX: That’s right.
BOBBY: Three and a half, actually. Three behind in the last column, they still got a shot. Uh, yes. I’m—I’m wishing Sean the best. You know what? No matter how mid Alex would call Sean’s fastball, you can’t take away that World Series ring.
ALEX: That’s so true.
BOBBY: World Series rings, they don’t fly forever. What do they do?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: They don your finger forever? I don’t know.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Come up with something better than—
ALEX: We’ll workshop it.
BOBBY: Okay, next topic. And I say this—I don’t mean to play favorites here, but this might be my favorite one that we got. Tampa Bay Rays cheating industrial complex that I just made up. This comes from Boys in blue.
ALEX: Sounds real to me.
BOBBY: I do think that the Tampa Bay Rays are cheating. I do think that.
ALEX: Okay. Say more.
BOBBY: I don’t know how.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: I don’t know why, but something doesn’t smell right. How are all of your hitters good? How are all of your pitchers good? How are all of your managers’ decisions the right ones? How are all of your games gonna win? Even when you fall behind, how do you come back? How are you good—how are you a team that’s good at holding leads and good at coming back from deficits?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Huh? How about that?
ALEX: Right. Just asking questions here.
BOBBY: All while Rob Manfred is trying to get them a new stadium—
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: —on the cheap—
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: —via the Florida taxpayers’ money. All while we’re threatening weird plans for them to move half to Montreal, half to Florida. All while they have one of the lowest payrolls in baseball. It just doesn’t stand up. It just doesn’t stand up.
ALEX: I have to say if they are cheating, I’m kind of excited—
BOBBY: Hmm.
ALEX: —to see how—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —because I do feel like they’re a little more innovative, um—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: —than some of the other teams around the league, right? I know—
BOBBY: All—all the ways of cheating are taken.
ALEX: All the—exactly.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: I don’t—
BOBBY: By the Yankees.
ALEX: Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: Obvious cheaters.
ALEX: Super, like—come on.
BOBBY: Like highly better.
ALEX: Low—low-hanging fruit.
BOBBY: Come on, low effort.
ALEX: Yeah. No, the Rays being the small market innovators that they are, I know they’ve got something good up their sleeves.
BOBBY: I got—I got a thought. Here’s how they did it. They are using blood magic.
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: They took the devil out of their name to throw us off the scent. And now, they are using, you know, Ouija boards, evil spells, ancient rituals—
ALEX: Wow.
BOBBY: —that you would not want to get close to, but they’re not afraid of. That Kevin Cash is not afraid of. Okay. The—the taking the devil out of the name to make it seem more Christian—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —that was an op.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: So it was a cover.
ALEX: So then how does the Rays’ bullpen feel about this?
BOBBY: Listen, they’re not happy, but they’re making a living.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: It’s good, honest work. It’s good, honest work doing a seance before you come into the—into a one-run game and—and strike out the side, okay?
ALEX: This is—I mean, what you’re describing, it’s just the Joe Maddon Rays.
BOBBY: That’s true. And also the entire Cardinals—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —organization. Okay. Next topic. Plan your baseball heist. I don’t—I don’t know what this means, but I—I would love to hear where you take it.
ALEX: I mean, the current heist that we have planned is—I believe we’re—we’re planning on going to an Oakland A’s baseball game, uh, on my birthday later this summer.
BOBBY: Oh, yeah.
ALEX: And, uh, I’ll ask you to redact the list of things that—that I’m gonna take.
BOBBY: That you’re gonna steal from stadium.
ALEX: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
BOBBY: This is parody. I’m not going to redact it, but it is parody.
ALEX: It is parody, yeah.
BOBBY: A seat.
ALEX: A seat? Right, right. Do you think they’ll let me bring, like, a toolbox in?
BOBBY: Uh, as long as you scan your hand, so they know—they know who you are, so they can find you later.
ALEX: Um, I mean, speaking of heists, over the last couple years, the—the Brewers stadium has, like, been broken into multiple times.
BOBBY: Really?
ALEX: Like, there was one—it was a couple years ago, there was a guy who broke in and, like, trashed the field, like hopped on a tractor and just, like, did a little joyride. And then over—
BOBBY: That dude rock.
ALEX: And then over this offseason, there was a story that came out that someone just, like, broke into the clubhouse after a game once—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —and, like, stole a bunch of memorabilia. So I don’t know, I feel like—I feel like we got to get a little more creative than something like that. I don’t know, joy ride? Come on.
BOBBY: Do you remember when those guys stole the Red Sox’s World Series banner?
ALEX: See, now that is something to live up to.
BOBBY: Imagine if we just had a World Series banner in the studio, like that would be sweet.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: Like, it doesn’t even have to be, like, the Mets ’86 World Series banner or like the A’s ’73?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: When was the last they won?
ALEX: ’89.
BOBBY: ’89. Right. I don’t know why I thought it was—well, I guess—
ALEX: And they did—
BOBBY: I just have ’73 in my head because that’s when the Mets lost to them.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Um, it’s a good thing we weren’t into the pod back then. It would tore us apart. I have no—I have—I have absolutely zero faith that I would have been able to act normal about that. Thankfully, that will never happen in our lifetime.
ALEX: Yeah, no. I—I mean, honestly, the heist that we would probably end up doing would be like an Ocean’s 11 to get, like, the original collective bargaining agreement, you know? Wherever that is in the commissioner’s office, in some file cabinet tucked away.
BOBBY: Commissioner’s version? You want the commissioner’s edition? I want the Marvin Miller edition.
ALEX: Yeah, true. The one, like, marked up with all his notes?
BOBBY: Yeah, exactly.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: What would we do with that?
ALEX: What do we do with any of the shit that we get?
BOBBY: I got an idea for baseball heist. Ready?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: You inherit a large fortune made by your dad, who founded a clothing company. You then decide to take over the family’s investment fund. Uh, and with that fund, you purchase a team perhaps in the state of California, perhaps even in the—the city that you, um, resided in for the first 18 years of your life.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Um, and then you take that team, and you run it into the ground, and you decide to move it to a new locale, um, for the purposes of getting a sweetheart deal on the new stadium, and raking in more money in perpetuity via sports betting. There’s your heist.
ALEX: Oh, Bobby.
BOBBY: Next topic, Mark Cuban tweet—
ALEX: Jesus.
BOBBY: “—People always ask me why owners of certain MLB teams won’t sell. The answer is easy. The answer is easy.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: If someone offered to pay you 25 million or—or so a year, and all you have to do is let everyone in the city, in the industry yell at you every day. would you take the job? First of all, 25 million, we really are going to pretend like MLB owners only make 25 million a year?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Let’s be honest, because we should be counting like the tax amortization benefits of owning these teams too, which like at least $100 million.
ALEX: Well, but I think he’s just talking about the passive income. Like, they have to work for that, right? They work with—
BOBBY: Oh, yeah.
ALEX: —their accountants to figure out—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: —what they’re going to—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: —amortize and depreciate.
BOBBY: Right. I’ve heard a lot about passive income over the last few years—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —on the internet.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: The—they want us to talk about this tweet. What do you—what do you have to say?
ALEX: Like, uh—
BOBBY: Mark Cuban, come on the pod.
ALEX: Right. Like, worst person you know. Makes a great point like—
BOBBY: Uh, I have a question.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: We get breaking news, push notification, ESPN, Yahoo!, The Athletic, whatever your preferred push notification sources.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Mark Cuban is in an agreement to buy the Oakland Athletics. You on a scale of one to 10 in terms of relief or happiness. Mark Cuban is the new owner of your team.
ALEX: You can’t put me in this position, man. I’m sitting here already—
BOBBY: Oh, I can’t you put in the position? We’ve doing the pod for six years. I can put you in whatever position I want to put you in.
ALEX: Because I’m sitting here being like, you know—I mean, like—
BOBBY: I didn’t ask you to, like, kiss him on the lips. I asked you to tell me one to 10 compared to John Fisher.
ALEX: Okay. I don’t have—uh, I don’t have to do that.
BOBBY: You can if you want to. I mean—
ALEX: Okay. Um, I mean, that—
BOBBY: And make sure you videotape it for the patrons.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Will send you a zip drive with a video of Alex and Mark Cuban kissing on it. We’ll tape it to the holiday card at the end of the year.
ALEX: Make like a little flip book out of it.
[laughter]
BOBBY: If someone wants to illustrate—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —a picture of Alex and Mark Cuban kissing and make a flip—
ALEX: Like, no.
BOBBY: —book out of it, we will—yes, we will put that on the holiday card this year. We will. AI could do it.
ALEX: AI could do it.
BOBBY: AI could do it.
ALEX: Do we know it hasn’t?
BOBBY: I guess not. I don’t know.
ALEX: He—I mean, he would not be the worst person in the world. That’s—I think that’s—that’s what I’m gonna say about that.
BOBBY: Okay. Are you still interested in doing the Forbes 100, go through every one of them and decide whether or not you would want them by the A’s pod that I came up with on my birthday, while drunk at a karaoke bar?
ALEX: I mean, yes. I think what I realized going through the Forbes 100 list as, you know, we do every so often.
BOBBY: Right. So you don’t know any of the—
ALEX: I don’t know who any of these fuckers are.
BOBBY: Yeah. They all look—they all look the same to me.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Um, okay. Next topic. Uh, the Alex picks his new allegiance episode. Nice timing there from the replies.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Um, so we’re not going to do that on this pod. Alex is not going to pick his new allegiance. We are going to make a whole episode out of that. Um, so if you have called in to make your pitch as to why Alex would be a fan of your team, or if you’ve emailed or whatever, um, we—we have seen those, we do appreciate that. And we, uh, hope that more people continue to do that, so that, u h, we can have a full slate of content on that episode of the pod. But I think that what we’re going to do is we’re just gonna—I’m going to have Alex make a rubric—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —and we’re gonna go through all 29 teams in—in that very scientific method that we always pursue here on Tipping Pitches. We’re gonna—
ALEX: Well, you know, I—I would just like to point out.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: We’re gonna do all 30. We’re gonna include the Las Vegas A’s in that.
BOBBY: Okay. Great.
ALEX: As a sort of, you know, um, kind of like a palate cleanser.
BOBBY: Uh-huh.
ALEX: You need to know where the—where— where rock bottom is, right?
BOBBY: Well, I’m—I’m intrigued to find out if they’re dead last, or if there’s another team that can race to that bottom. Uh, and then we’re gonna make a whole pod out of it, so, uh, I appreciate you sharing that topic, PJ, but, uh, not today. Not today. Uh, Jesse wants us to talk about Mike Yastrzemski. You got any thoughts?
ALEX: Yeah. Uh, he’s back from IL. I think he’s raking—he’s getting it done for the Fantasy team.
BOBBY: Oh, he’s on your Fantasy team?
ALEX: Yeah, he is. Yeah.
BOBBY: Uh, was he—was he Waiver Wire pick up or did you draft him? Can we—can you tell people about your Fantasy—your—all your Fantasy teams? Because this is one of my favorite—this is one of my favorite little fun facts about you that you’re—that you’re in a Fantasy League for, like, 10 years with people—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —that you just don’t know.
ALEX: Don’t know. Yeah. Yeah, just joined it. And now, I’m like—I’m too—I’m in too deep.
BOBBY: So, like—
ALEX: It felt like I invested far too much time into this.
BOBBY: So did you get randomly assigned to this Fantasy League? Like, is—is it on Yahoo!?
ALEX: It’s on Yahoo!. Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay. And you did like a enter me into, like, a league where they’re looking for an extra participant?
ALEX: It was—um, I think I used, at the start of every season, uh, the—the—the fine folks over at FanGraphs put—post like—uh, post your league openings, blog posts, you know?
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: Where people can go in and comment and be like, “Okay.”
BOBBY: So there’s at least—there’s like—
ALEX: Just like a little—
BOBBY: There’s like some degrees of separation that you could trace?
ALEX: Right. Yeah. And—
BOBBY: It wasn’t—you—so you’re not in like a—you didn’t accidentally make your way into, like, some league of German baseball fans who—
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: Okay, great.
ALEX: Um, yeah, I mean, there—there are a couple of leagues that I’m in that just—just kind of bizarre setups. One counts outfield assists. What—what—
BOBBY: Sure. Sure. Do they all count pitcher winds?
ALEX: Only one.
BOBBY: Only one can throw in that league?
ALEX: The others probably starts—
BOBBY: Can I join them? Are they looking for more participants?
ALEX: Yeah. That’s the one with, like, 20 people in it.
BOBBY: Oh, my God.
ALEX: So I’m—
BOBBY: Never forget when I was in a—never forget when I was in a 12-team Keeper League that you had to keep two catchers on.
ALEX: Jesus.
BOBBY: AL only. There aren’t even that many catches on the rosters, okay? I had dudes on Minor League contracts.
[laughter]
BOBBY: I was like, “Uh, I—I really hope this”—um, I was like, “I really hope Matt Wieters comes back from this injury and makes it back to the bigs, you know?
ALEX: That’s bleak.
BOBBY: It’s the name of a guy that I know.
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: Yeah. The original Adley.
ALEX: Some say.
BOBBY: So you got put into this random league—or you joined this random league? How many base—fantasy baseball teams do you have?
ALEX: Two. Just two.
BOBBY: Okay. Just two.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay, great.
ALEX: They’ve—they’ve fluctuated over the years, but these are the two—the two solid ones.
BOBBY: How do they communicate with you?
ALEX: Uh, most of the—just like—
BOBBY: No, this—and the listeners will appreciate this. I know they will—
ALEX: Um—
BOBBY: —because I find this so funny.
ALEX: —much—much of it is through the, um, the—the chat function, um—
BOBBY: The Yahoo! Sports app?
ALEX: —on the Yahoo! Sports app. There’s also like an email feature where you can send, um, direct emails. Uh—
BOBBY: You—you’re famously someone who checks your email all the time?
ALEX: Uh, right. Yes, exactly. Um, there was like drama a couple years ago, we had to kick someone out because they were being, like, problematic. It was like—
BOBBY: What? What?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: What did they do?
ALEX: I don’t even—they were just, like, talk—honestly, they were talking mad shit and like—
BOBBY: Oh, okay.
ALEX: —they, like, veered into, like—
BOBBY: Bad—natured?
ALEX: Uh—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Bad vibes here. And the commish was like, “All right. You gotta go. “
BOBBY: Have you ever been threatened to get kicked out of any of these teams, these leagues?
ALEX: Only for, like, not responding for, like, four weeks. They were like, “We’re looking to replace him.” And I was like, “Wait.”
[laughter]
BOBBY: Do you think that there’s even the most remote chance that any of these people in this league listen to this podcast? Because, like, Effectively Wild—
ALEX: I—
BOBBY: —is not that far away from us.
ALEX: I think there’s a nonzero chance, yeah.
BOBBY: Do you think that they know that you’re you?
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: Okay. So—so your fantasy baseball profile does not tie you in any way to the Tipping Pitches podcast?
ALEX: Yeah. It just says my first name, yeah.
BOBBY: Just your first name?
ALEX: Just my first name.
BOBBY: No—no identifying information?
ALEX: No identifying information.
BOBBY: So—okay. So—so if you’re in this league and you’re listening to this podcast—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —and you think this might be you, I want you to go back in the history of this league and I want you to see if this Alex that you think might be our Alex has repeatedly against his better judgment picked up Jurickson Profar and [45:59] possible.
[laughter]
BOBBY: And who has also talked cash shit about having Pablo Lopez on his team.
ALEX: That’s right, yeah.
BOBBY: Then in that case, please email tippingpitchespod@gmail.com and we can confirm or deny whether this is our Alex.
ALEX: Or just shoot me a message via the Yahoo! Sports, uh, fantasy app.
BOBBY: No, but then it won’t be content on the pod. Please email, because if they shoot you a message, we’ll be talking about it in August. That’s when you’ll see it. 785-422-5881, please call if you think that you might be in Alex’s Fantasy Baseball league. This is just great content. Oh, I love to think about this league with just you in it, just—just 19 strangers.
ALEX: Actually—
BOBBY: Have you won?
ALEX: Uh, I—I—not the 20-team one.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: Good God. I’ve only—I’ve been in that for a couple years. I have won, uh, the other—the other league which is—
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: —which is 14 teams.
BOBBY: When did you join, like 20—2015?
ALEX: I think, like, 2014, I want to say.
BOBBY: Ah, so you’ve been with these guys longer than me.
ALEX: I really have. I’ve got, like, a team I’ve cultivated. You know, I—I inherited.
BOBBY: Wow. I’m second—I’m second banana to these dudes. I want you guys to, like, meet in person.
ALEX: I—I will say I’m fascinated about the lives of these people.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: You know, some of them go, like, MIA for six months. Some of them are up at, like, 3:00 A.M. because I think they have, like, jobs in trucking or something like—
BOBBY: What?
ALEX: Like, this is real, like, salt of the Earth, you know, like—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Like, real America. That’s who I’m in a Fantasy Baseball league with.
BOBBY: Do you think that they would kick you out—
ALEX: If they knew?
BOBBY: —if they knew?
ALEX: You know, there used to be a team name called Situational Leftists—
BOBBY: Oh.
ALEX: —which I, uh, really appreciated. They’re not in it anymore, so—
BOBBY: Well, maybe they got exposed.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: They had their McCarthy moment. Uh, okay. Next topic. As much as I hate to move on from my—one of my favorite topics of the conversation.
ALEX: I can tell, yeah.
BOBBY: Next topic, um, Victoria would like us to listen to—live listen to You’re Losing Me on air. Um, unfortunately, I think that that would get us banned for copyright, if we listen to the whole song, um, on air. But do you have any, uh, brief thoughts that you’d like to share about the new Taylor Swift single released only via CD? That’s being sold at Target. Actually, was this—weren’t the CDs only being sold at the merch store—
ALEX: The store, yeah.
BOBBY: —in New Jersey. Do you have any thoughts on—on the song?
ALEX: I haven’t—I haven’t listened—
BOBBY: Me either.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Me either.
ALEX: I think it’s on streaming now, is it not?
BOBBY: I don’t think so.
ALEX: Yeah, I haven’t had the chance to listen, but if—but if, uh, anyone who was at that singular show?
BOBBY: No, I think there were at all three shows.
ALEX: All three shows. Was it the MetLife show?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Wow. So it was right here. It was right across the water from us.
BOBBY: You could have gone. No one was stopping you, except Ticketmaster.
ALEX: Uh, yeah.
BOBBY: And Live Nation.
ALEX: And, uh, like the various public service announcements saying, “Do not come to the show if you don’t have a ticket,” or anything—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —like that.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: So it’s getting wild out here.
BOBBY: I know. We could have been there, except I was out of the state, so I couldn’t have been there. But conceptually speaking, like, we live closest to these shows—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —but schedule-wise, we couldn’t make it to these ones. So instead, we got rained on for eight straight hours and got sick. You can probably still hear that I’m still a little bit congested.
ALEX: Well, if anyone wants to send us the—the DRM protected—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —song ripped from the CD.
BOBBY: Can I just say something? I feel as though the secret songs that we got, not good. Especially—especially—
ALEX: All I—all I—
BOBBY: —in comparison to the ones at MetLife on night one.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: Really, she’s gonna bring Jack Antonoff out and do Getaway Car and then do Maroon, my favorite time off Midnights on night one? I felt a little targeted, just saying. I felt little targeted. I felt a little hit.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That cut deep, as they say.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Oh, okay, glad I got that off my chest. Um, uh, I vow to listen to You’re Losing Me and talk about it on a future podcast.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: Next topic, please dunk on the Orioles’ City Connects. Do you have a thought about these? People are like—feel really strongly about these in both directions.
ALEX: Yeah, I know. I mean, I—I mostly just think they’re, like boring. Like, it’s not even like they are exceptionally bad or really ugly. I’m just kind of like, “Huh.” As with most of the jerseys, it just kind of felt like a missed opportunity. Like, they’re trying to be—do a lot of really subtle nods, right? It’s like—let’s bring the jersey back to basics, and then build it up again. I don’t know. It just—it just came out kind of bland. I don’t have a sophisticated take about it. But I—I mean, these are all just, like, corporate exercises, right? Like, if they really—like I think there probably is a right-ish way to do this sort of thing by partnering with artists from the community, but, like, I think there’s also just limitations to what you’re gonna get when it comes to a—a multibillion-dollar corporation—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: —trying to, like, meaningfully connect with the city it’s based in. Like, I think it just goes to show kind of the—
BOBBY: The product that you get when this many people to sign off on.
ALEX: Yeah. That being like, “rooted” in a city, I think only goes so far.
BOBBY: I think that they look good.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But, like, not good enough for me to, like, fight people in the street over.
ALEX: Right. They’re not—
BOBBY: There’s some people who are acting.
ALEX: —they’re not actively ugly.
BOBBY: No. I think that—I think they’re pretty good.
ALEX: I’m like, “They’re like fine.”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: But I think as—as a statement piece that is supposed to represent the connection of the team to the city it’s based in—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —I wasn’t, like, getting that from the—I was like—I was like, “Oh, you guys did, like, a cool, minimalist jersey?”
BOBBY: Do you think—do you think the Yankees are ever gonna do this? Or they’re gonna be—
ALEX: I—
BOBBY: —like, “We’re the Yankees. We don’t need to do this.” Is it—I think as—every team is supposed to do it, right?
ALEX: I think every team is supposed to do it, yeah.
BOBBY: I have to say, I have been weirdly encouraged by how strongly people feel about these jerseys, not just the Orioles ones, But the existence of them. Like, that—the fact that this stuff actually matters to people, I think is—is not a bad thing and I think that it goes to show how—how much people are craving to be, like, seen—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —by their teams and to be—you know, like, if this—if this social contract that we’re going to agree—that we’re going to enter into with baseball teams is going to be as lopsided as it is. The few things that you’re creating that are like—that we think are cool or—or worthwhile, better actually be cool and worthwhile.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And—and in this case, it’s like something that they’re just making more money off of too, so especially it better be, like, worth our time, and effort, and appreciation. And not all of them have been and some of them have been really cool, but, um, it’s a really, like, fascinating response—like, uh, a really fascinating just kind of league-wide response from different fan bases over the City Connect jerseys and the existence of them. Completely unrelated to that, when I searched Orioles City Connect jersey on Twitter, um, the promoted tweet for me is—uh, you let me know if you want me to go through all of these.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: The most dangerous gangs from each state. Twitter’s in a really good place right now.
ALEX: You’re not gonna go through all of them? So I assume that the Orioles are number one and that’s why they popped up on—
BOBBY: The most dangerous—the most dangerous gang in each—each state is, um, the MLB team in that locale.
ALEX: What are the A’s gonna do?
BOBBY: Uh , I don’t know. Are they supposed to release a jersey this year?
ALEX: I don’t think so. I haven’t looked at the schedule in a hot sec.
BOBBY: They’re just gonna release a jersey that looks like the MGM Grand Casino.
ALEX: Uh-huh. Yeah, like black and gold. I mean—
BOBBY: All right. All right.
ALEX: All right.
BOBBY: Save it. All right, last few topics here. Cubs. Zach just said Cubs.
ALEX: Small bears.
BOBBY: Okay. Uh, they’re bad. The team is bad. They are not going to make the playoffs. They are realizing that it’s harder than they thought to rebuild on the fly, and that sucks for their fans. That’s my thoughts on the team this year.
ALEX: Marcus Stroman, one hitting the MLB’s best raise today.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: Uh—uh, your thoughts? Does he know something that we don’t?
BOBBY: He thinks that he knows a lot of things that we don’t know.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: He’s just waiting for the rest of society to get up to his speed.
ALEX: Yeah. That’s a real let them fight moment.
BOBBY: Um, maybe he figured out how they’re cheating, but the media is trying to cover it up.
ALEX: Right. There you go.
BOBBY: Uh, okay. I—honestly, my take on the Cubs is that like this year, last year, and the next couple of years are just the bill coming due on them tearing down. And selling it like that was something that they could quickly turn around, because it’s not. And—and it wasn’t quick the first time that they did a teardown, and rebuild, and—and build back up, and actually win the World Series. And it’s not going to be quick this time. And if this is the type of boom-bust cycle that you are intending to have, these are going to be the—the lean years that your fan base is gonna experience and that’s the extent of my thoughts. Um—
ALEX: Baby bears.
BOBBY: —flipside, Yankees.
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: It’s really funny that people just responded. We got three different replies here. Cubs, Yankees, and baseball. It’s like—do you have thoughts on the Yankees? This might be the least thoughts I’ve ever had on the Yankees—
ALEX: I—it’s kind of remarkable.
BOBBY: —at any point in my life.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I don’t have any thoughts on them. They’re just a very similar team to last year. The Rays are better. They play in a tough division. They’ve had a lot of injuries. That’s it.
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: Okay. Next topic. Billy Williams bobblehead mistake back to the Cubs. Did you see this?
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: So the Cubs, uh, gave out a bobblehead of Billy Williams to their fan base, uh, I think just a couple of days ago. Billy—Billy Williams’ number is retired with the Cubs. Um, yeah, Billy Williams wore number 26 in his time playing with the Chicago Cubs. Fortunately, the bobblehead that they passed out had number one on the back. Uh, I—there’s not—I don’t have, like, a ton of things to say about this. They were getting absolutely flambeed on Twitter for making bobbleheads—
ALEX: Flambeed? Oh. I see you.
BOBBY: Exactly.
ALEX: They were getting, they were getting sauteed—
BOBBY: On Twitter for passing out bobbleheads that had the wrong number of a guy from their organization who has his number retired at Wrigley Field. I mean, it’s a really bad mistake. It’s—it’s really bad. It’s really embarrassing, but it’s not like malicious, clearly just a mistake.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: The number one being on the back, that’s clearly the—the generic number that comes on the back of any bobblehead—
ALEX: Just a placeholder [57:28]
BOBBY: —and they just forgot to update it. Or, you know, they sent a previous version of the file or whatever that just had that placeholder in there still. I just think it’s funny.
ALEX: This really resonates with me as someone who has, like—who has, like, copy-pasted email or, like, forwarded emails and forgot to change the—
BOBBY: The name—
ALEX: —subject line, you know? And I’m like—
BOBBY: The name of the person.
ALEX: Or the name of the person, yeah. Exactly.
BOBBY: Or, um, who has misspelled a word on a T-shirt sign that we, uh—
ALEX: Actually, it was a hat design.
BOBBY: Oh, yeah, that we signed off on. Uh, fortunately, we were able to get that updated before they were actually made.
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: Um, all right, Alex. How do you think that went, that—that segment? Do you think we sufficiently shared thoughts on everything that people wanted us to share thoughts on?
ALEX: I think we did our best.
BOBBY: Okay, great.
ALEX: You know, I did—I—I have to thank the—the listeners, those who responded, um, for not asking that much about baseball.
BOBBY: Well—okay, wait. Before we actually finish—
ALEX: Uh-oh.
BOBBY: —someone did say just baseball.
ALEX: Shit. Oh, hmm.
BOBBY: So your thoughts on baseball? I had a funny conversation this weekend, um, at a wedding that I was attending, where somebody asked me, “Do you think that baseball is going to make it?” Hmm. And I was like, “Can you elaborate because like—do I think that there will be baseball—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —in, like, 20 years? Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But make it in what sense? Like, make it all the way back to how big it used to be?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Make it financially, make it through the inevitable climate apocalypse?
ALEX: Right. Like, do I—do I think any of us are really gonna make it?
BOBBY: And I was asked that question and I was like, “I don’t think I have a good answer for that, but I feel like I probably should. So my question for you is, do you think baseball is gonna make it?”
ALEX: Baseball is gonna make it?
BOBBY: Uh, no, you can just—you can just share your thoughts on baseball. That’s what somebody wanted us to do, baseball. What should we talk about, baseball.
ALEX: Um, generally made with stitches—
BOBBY: Hmm.
ALEX: —red stitching.
BOBBY: Leather.
ALEX: Leather. I believe there’s a—there’s a cork at the center of the ball.
BOBBY: Rubber cork.
ALEX: Rubber cork wrapped in twine.
BOBBY: That’s right.
ALEX: And then there’s something else in there, too.
BOBBY: You’re talking about the—the mud that they rub on it?
ALEX: Oh, the mud? I—well, unless we forget the mud.
BOBBY: The—the Delaware River mud.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Um, I think baseball is in an interesting spot. Uh, we were talking at the show last week, at the PUP show, which was phenomenal, by the way. I guess I forgot to review that here on the pod.
ALEX: It’s true. It’s true.
BOBBY: Uh, great show. What Fun. Thank you to Steve Sladkowski, former guest of the show, Recent guest of the show, uh, guitarist for the band PUP and supporter of the Writers Guild of America. Uh, we were talking at the show last week about how anecdotally it feels like there’s more people, kind of, like, former baseball fans being like, “I’m getting back into baseball this year.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Uh, do you think that that is just—that you’re being more exposed to that or do you think that there are actually more people coming back to baseball? And do you think it’s because of the rule changes?
ALEX: Wow. That’s a lot of—a lot of questions and none of which I—I know, uh, empirically the answer to.
BOBBY: Just so you know because we’re famously so empirical on the show.
ALEX: Yeah. Uh, No. Yeah. Uh, no, I don’t think it is because of the rule changes. I don’t think we’ve shaved 10 minutes off of baseball games, 20 minutes off of baseball games, and magically roped in a bunch of potential fans. I mean, I do think the quality of the product on the field right now is, like, as good as it’s ever been, right? Like, with the exception of one unnamable team. Like, it’s pretty easy to tune in and, like—
BOBBY: -199 run differential for them so far this year.
ALEX: That feels fake.
BOBBY: Yeah, it does feel fake.
ALEX: -199.
BOBBY: Yup. See, I think it does have to do with the rule changes.
ALEX: You think?
BOBBY: I don’t think that the reason that people are sticking around and enjoying it more is because of the rule changes, but I do think that there was a—they made enough of a stink about it when they changed the rules, that things were gonna be different. That people who had been out on baseball for, like, five year, or, like, even more, 10 years, just decided to fire it up and give it another shot. And they realized that baseball is actually good,
ALEX: Right. So it’s kind of, like, the rule changes were the catalyst, like—like the idea of them existing—
BOBBY: Trojan horse.
ALEX: —was enough to get people back in.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And I think that all of the things that we have been enjoying about baseball and the entire time that we’ve been doing this podcast, are the things that are hooking people back in. Because if it was a dogshit game every night for two hours and 48 minutes, nobody would enjoy that, more than if it was a dogshit game for three hours and 12 minutes. It’s just that—I find it hard to believe that that is the reason that people are back in on baseball.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: I think—honestly, I think it’s like our—our bet has finally come home on baseball being the perfect second screen experience. And people who had given up on it years and years ago, because they were looking for something that was, like, more of a dopamine hit while they were watching sports are now finally realizing that their entire lives are addled with screens in front of their faces, and they need a second screen with them, so that they can look away from their TikToks every five minutes, and they can look at the game for five minutes, and then look back to their TikToks. I—genuinely, I do believe that.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And I do—I think that that has always kind of been the appeal of baseball, not because of TikTok, but because of, like, the way that it weaves itself in with the rest of your life, whether that’s on a night-to-night basis, or whether that’s on a year-to-year basis, or a month-to-month basis. It just kind of tells time with you. And I think the league chose the rule changes to be the thing to put—to be the bait that they put on the fishhook this year, for whatever reason. But it could have very easily just have been something else that they put this much effort behind. Like, they don’t do this that often. They’ve—they—I can’t think of another thing that they have put this much manpower and money behind telling people with a reason to watch the game ever, you know? I guess Ohtani is—is up there in terms of things that they have put that much marketing force behind, but the rule change is being, like, come actually watch the game. Like, they’re certainly not putting that much effort into getting people, like, come out to the ballpark, for example, or affordably be able to come out to the ballpark or whatever. So I kind of think that they’ve manufactured that reality, they’ve manufactured the fact that the real chances are the reason people are coming back, and I don’t buy it, but also I can’t really prove it either way. And I don’t think anyone can.
ALEX: Yeah, well, it certainly comes at a really pivotal time for them as well amid all this back and forth about streaming and, like, access to the actual game. Like, I think the next couple of years are really going to be big in terms of how MLB orient itself for the future, right? Because you do have, I think, folks who maybe are interested in engaging with the sport in a way they haven’t in—in years and, like, those folks need a way to watch the game. Like, you got to—I know that, like, Valley Sports, for example and—and the Padres are on the verge of, like, a potential breakup, right? So it feels like every team is simultaneously dealing with this, like, existential crisis of, like, how do people actually watch the game? Which feels all the more pressing when like, “Hey, there’s a fuck ton of people who, like, actually really want to watch.”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Like—
BOBBY: I have an idea. You—they create a technology where you walk up to your TV, and you put your hand on it, and it scans your hand.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: And then it charges you per game that you want to watch on television. All 30 streaming service via handprint technology created by Amazon and you’re charged for the amount of seconds of the game that you watch.
ALEX: Right. You can—you can, uh, watch on Amazon Prime if you want to watch it with no latency, or you can just watch it on Amazon if you want to watch it 30 seconds behind.
BOBBY: Yeah. That’s a good idea. Uh, free content for Rob right here and Jeff.
ALEX: And—and Jeff.
BOBBY: And Jeff, true, true. Do you see that Bezos is getting remarried again? Mazel Tov.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: Fixing for an invite to the wedding. Tipping Pitches goes to the Bezos wedding. We can make a great mini-documentary about it.
ALEX: You know, we really could. If we—I think it would be better, obviously, if we—if we were not invited, you know?
BOBBY: Do you think you have to scan your hand to get into Jeff Bezos’ wedding? Put your money where your mouth is. You want to do it for your consumers, you gotta do it for your friends, too.
ALEX: I mean, he probably does require that. I’m sure there’s biometric data that’s—you’re required to hand over to interact with him on any level.
BOBBY: Well, we do that, too. If you want to come and record in the studio, you have to scan your eyeball.
ALEX: That’s true.
BOBBY: Like, spike in style. Uh, okay. Thank you for listening to another episode of Tipping Pitches. We appreciate it. If you’d like to sign up for the Tipping Pitches Patreon, it’s patreon.com/tippingpitches. There is a newsletter coming later this week for our members of the Alex Rodriguez VIP club here. There is all kinds of stuff for the other tiers as well, $5, $7, $12. Uh, we appreciate any and all support, including if you are a former supporter, or if you can only support for a little while, we appreciate that, too. Um, Alex, is there anything else that you would like to leave the fine listeners of the Tipping Pitches podcast with?
ALEX: No, I don’t think so. Although, the—the listeners—do you have a—a review of the Paramore show that we’re going to tomorrow?
BOBBY: Oh, you’re coming to that?
ALEX: Uh, to look—to look forward to next week?
BOBBY: You’re gonna come through?
ALEX: Oh.
BOBBY: Are you gonna walk up to anybody who’s wearing a pair of Paramore shirt and be like, “Sick Paramore shirt, dude.”?
ALEX: Jesus Christ. I’m out. I’m done.
BOBBY: Oh, yeah. Yeah, we’ll review it. We’ll review it. I’m excited. Trying to keep my expectations reasonable so that I can get through the day tomorrow.
ALEX: Have you ever—have you seen them before?
BOBBY: Yeah, like five times.
ALEX: All right. Sick, sick.
BOBBY: But, you know, it’s been a while. It’s been a while.
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah. Of course.
BOBBY: The last time I saw them it was 2014—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —so it’s been almost 10 years. Uh, I did not see them on their—their most recent tour, uh, and I did not go to any of these, like, festivals that they’ve been playing over the last year or so. Unfortunately, did not go to the first night of The Eras tour either, which Paramore opened for. Did consider flying to Arizona for that.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Did consider that. Did have a friend there, two friends there, actually.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: But I didn’t do it, so it’s a bummer. It was, like, the day after the new Paramore album came out. I—actually, I’m—I’m happy that I’ve had more time to listen to the album—
ALEX: Yeah, because you can actually engage with the songs.
BOBBY: —and, like, know the words and I like to sing along.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Were—uh, we haven’t talked about the new Paramore album. Do you—have you listened to it a lot? Do you like it? Any thoughts?
ALEX: I listened to it a bit. It’s fun. Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s fun?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay, great.
ALEX: And they’re—they are good at making just like easy pop bangers, like, um, they’re—
BOBBY: Easy pop bangers?
ALEX: They’re—I mean, they’re like—like, Hayley Williams knows how to write a good hook I think is what I’m trying to say. It’s just like—it’s just—it’s all—it’s all vibes. It’s—it’s good vibes.
BOBBY: Yeah. I agree. Uh, okay. I’m putting the Paramore poster back up in the studio then, it’s—uh, after we go to the show, it’s official, I can finally put the—
ALEX: The sign is coming down.
BOBBY: And the Paramore poster is going up. Thanks, everybody, for listening. We’ll be back next week.
SPEAKER 4: Big man, ooh, little dignity. No offense, but you, you got no integrity. Big man, ooh, li-li-li-li-little dignity.
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!
BOBBY: Speaking of inception, are you willing to watch every Christopher Nolan with me in the lead up—uh, Christopher Nolan movie with me in the lead up to Oppenheimer, in the same day? Not actually in the same day, I’m just kidding. He only has, like, 10 movies, so—
ALEX: Yeah, well, I’m not—I’m not gonna say, like, yeah.
BOBBY: What? You don’t like Christopher Nolan’s other movies?
ALEX: I mean—
BOBBY: You chose Oppenheimer over Barbie and yet you hate Christopher Nolan?
ALEX: Art—artist, man.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: Do you wanna watch Tenet?
BOBBY: I like that one. It’s all about the vibe.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: You don’t have to understand it.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s not the point. We’re—we’re watching Robert Pattinson going in reverse, what more do you want?
ALEX: That’s so true. I didn’t even think about that.
BOBBY: He flips a car, climbs a wall, I don’t know. I couldn’t feel it. Will you watch Inception with me at least?
ALEX: Yeah. I can watch Inception.
BOBBY: I—so I was on the plane on the way back from LA—well, to and from LA, same movies. Um, deciding what to watch. First one was easy Ford—Ford versus Ferrari.
ALEX: Banger.
BOBBY: Banger. One of my favorite movies. Um, on the way back, I was very tempted to watch Mission: Impossible – Fallout, one—also one of my favorite movies, like, of the last 10 years. But I decided before Mission: Impossible 7 comes out that I was probably gonna want to watch the first six in chronological order with, you know, our friend group, so I decided not to watch it.
Um, all that being said, will you commit to watching all six Mission: Impossibles with me in the week up to—leading up to—
ALEX: That’s easy.
BOBBY: —Mission: Impossible 7?
ALEX: Easy.
BOBBY: Okay, great.
ALEX: Blank check sign right here.
BOBBY: Great. That’s—that’s real cinema right there.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Mission: Impossible. Okay, where were we?
[1:11:09]
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