In this episode, Alex and Bobby delve into the recent news surrounding the Oakland A’s move to Las Vegas, dissect Rob Manfred’s comments on the A’s relocation efforts and his stance on Pride Nights across the league, and drill down into the implications of the recent spate of layoffs at The Athletic.
Submit questions for a Tipping Pitches milestone episode.
Links:
Manfred on the A’s potential move
Manfred’s comments on Pride Nights
Bryce Harper’s comments on the A’s situation
A’s stadium deal wins final legislative approval in Nevada
MLB intends to curb team spending on tech
Join the Tipping Pitches Patreon
Songs featured in this episode:
TOPS — “Petals” • Jim Croce — “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim” • 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—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, I think we’ve done this before in the past, but I’d like to start the show this week with, uh, with one of my dream diaries where I tell you about a dream that I had.
ALEX: Yes, this is always a fascinating window into your mind, so I—
BOBBY: To—into my psyche.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: I think people have—I think people have come to expect these sorts of stories and these types of dreams from me, but, uh, this dream involves you and I, just you and I, and some other people, you know, like dream figure types that, you know, they’re like just a conglomeration of faces that your mind has created. There were strangers in the dream.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: We were trying to enter into Citi Field, however, we kept going in the wrong way. And they kept not letting us actually into the ballpark. So, we were just opening random doors and we were in the bowels of Citi Field. But we had tickets, but the—we couldn’t get in the right entrance and—and the ushers kept saying, “You’re in the wrong place. You’re in the wrong place.”
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: That’s kind of the whole dream.
ALEX: Right. So, are we—are we putting on our, like, dream analysis caps right here? Do you want to, like, break down a little bit what that means? Because what it sounded like to me is that you and I were trying to go watch a baseball game, the sport that we love and, uh, the institution surrounding the sport maybe said, “Nope. Not today, sir.”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: We said, we said, “We’ve paid—we’ve paid real physical money.”
BOBBY: American dollars.
ALEX: “Real good American Dollars to go and see the New York Metropolitans.” And the sport said, “Try again later.”
BOBBY: I would love you to do a whole episode of this pod as Sigmund Freud, like in character as Sigmund Freud. Do you think you could do that?
ALEX: Probably, I mean—
BOBBY: How’s your Psych 101?
ALEX: You only have, like, one or two beats, right? Like—
BOBBY: Yeah. Like, a couple takes. He was really coasting off of those takes. He’s like, “Everybody wants to sleep with their parents.”
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And also these three—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —personalities and your [2:21]
ALEX: When you—when you say everybody, Sigmund?
BOBBY: Uh, did you ever take Psych 101 in—in college?
ALEX: Not in college, I—
BOBBY: It feels like it would have been one of your like, “Oh, I’ll try this out. We’ll see what I want to major in.”
ALEX: Yeah, I did, uh, I did take a psychology class in—in high school, uh—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —which I was, uh, probably a little too young to understand the concept—the concepts being discussed there. We’re mostly talking about me and—and the—the people around me right now, right? I was like, “Okay. So this applies to everyone else, right? This is how you explain the world.
BOBBY: I took a psychology—I took psychology 101 in college, my freshman year, first semester. And it was at 8:00 A.M. Not exactly the most conducive to me doing well. It was the worst grade I—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —ever got in college. And the professor was tenured, so he would just get up there and he would just let his thoughts fly. He had takes. He had a lot of takes about gender and sexuality specifically.
ALEX: That is a good field to get into if you just have some takes you want to fire off, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Because it’s just all about like the—the mind and the brain, and all these thoughts. Guess where they’re coming from? Body, the mind and the brain.
BOBBY: Exactly. Um, well, uh, it’s for the listeners to decide what that says about my mind and my brain. I did—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —watch two excruciating losses to the St. Louis Cardinals by the New York Mets this weekend. So, it’s not hard to draw a direct line between these two things. Um, We have—uh, I don’t want to say fun podcast, because we have some interesting topics to talk about ahead of us, including, uh, Rob—one of—I guess like the—the pinnacle Rob Manfred press conference in the history of us doing this podcast, uh, and then a couple of other, uh, various topics, but before we do that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I am Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches. Okay, thank you to new patrons. Jeremy, Kyle, and Dominic this week. Alex, a little bit of housekeeping before we get into the meat of this episode. Uh, the first thing that we need to do housekeeping about kind of relates to what we’re going to talk about, Rob Manfred’s press conference and the Las—oh, I almost said Las Vegas A’s. Wow. Talk about a Freudian slip there, guys.
ALEX: Oh, hey.
BOBBY: And the Oakland Athletics. Um, we have teased multiple times that we’re going to do a find Alex a new team podcast. Uh, that is going to be recording on July 11th. So if you would like to pitch Alex Bazeley on why he should root for the team that you root for or any other team in Major League Baseball. Including the hypothetical Oakland A’s if they stay or Las Vegas A’s if they leave. You’re allowed to—to pitch him on those teams as well. Um, please call—
ALEX: I’m not—I’m not required to consider it, but you are more than welcome to—
BOBBY: I actually think you are required to consider it. You committed to considering all 30 teams on this podcast. That is going to be the structure of the show, Alex is going to create a rubric by which he would like to find a new team and we are going to fit all of the different—all 30 teams into that rubric and decide which team gets the highest mark. And thus, which team earns Alex’s affection and—just excellent fandom. Just a great—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You’re just—you’re just a great baseball fan. Committed, hard-working, understanding, you know?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Um—
ALEX: Yeah. I think the resume speaks for itself. Um—
BOBBY: Exactly, exactly. Hall of Fame resume. Uh, please call in, 785-422-5881 if you would like to make that pitch in your own voice. If you’d like to write in to us, you can email us, tippingpitchespod@gmail.com. You can DM us on Twitter, although I won’t guarantee that we will actually see that, because the direct messaging mechanism on Twitter is getting worse and worse by the hour. Uh, please get those in, just—uh, as soon as you think to do it, uh, because we will be recording that, like I said, July—around July 11th. I’m not sure if it’s exactly going to be that day and it’ll come out the following week. Uh, I’m really excited for that pod. Uh, do—over the next couple of weeks, do you want to kind of just share what your characteristics, what the qualities of that rubric are going to be? Should we—should we sort of trickle that out so people know how to make their case? Maybe—do you want to give people a tease of what—what—what you might be considering—the qualifications that you might be considering for a Major League Baseball team?
ALEX: Uh, I won’t lie, one of the first things that came to mind was, uh, was jerseys and—and aesthetics. Uh, I was at the—the Cubs game over the weekend and they were playing the Baltimore Orioles. And there were plenty of Orioles fans milling around and each jersey on an Orioles fan, I, uh, I thought to myself, “I could wear that. I could’ve bought that.” I—I appreciate their color scheme. It helps that the players on the back of the jersey are also really, uh, good and enjoyable to watch. So another, you know, point of consideration.
BOBBY: I feel as though you’re flirting with the Orioles these days.
ALEX: I just—
BOBBY: You’re just dropping a little line here and there.
ALEX: I know. Right.
BOBBY: Spin—spin game to Mike Elias.
ALEX: I don’t want to put my thumb on the scale too much, right? So I’ll—I’ll refrain from any other waxing poetic, but—
BOBBY: Yeah. You remind me of a Supreme Court judge who sees a case rushing through the ranks up to you. You don’t want to hedge either way. You know, you don’t want to affect the case.
ALEX: Right. Exactly. Like, I don’t want it to get to me necessarily, but I—but I kind of do, right?
BOBBY: Right. Exactly. Uh, okay. Sounds good. Once again, 785-422-5881 if you’d like to call in and make the case to our voicemail, and we will play that on the podcast, uh, or tippingpitchespod@gmail.com. Those are the preferred ways of reaching out. Or if you’re—you know, if you’re in the Slack, you can just—you just shoot Alex a cheeky little DM, and start lobbying. Put on your best lobbying cap. Uh, another piece of housekeeping, we have a fun milestone episode coming up, and, uh, for that milestone episode, we’re going to be fielding questions, uh, of the short—of the short answer variety. Now what I mean by that is it can either be answered in a yes, no, or a maybe, you know? Or like a one or two-sentence answer in a very short condensed window of time. That’s all I will say about the nature of this milestone episode, but because of that, we would like to field questions. Uh, we’re not going to be recording this for quite a while, um, you know, probably like, uh, within the next couple of months. But because we are going to need a lot of questions for this episode, like dozens and dozens of questions, uh, I’m mentioning it now as we’re doing some housekeeping about future episodes. We’ve dropped a Google form in the podcast description, uh, and you can submit your question in that Google Form. We’ll keep that form in the description between now and when we do this milestone episode. Uh, but again, short answer variety, yes or no, uh, or it can be answered in, well, you know, a couple of sentences. Um, and it can be about baseball, it can be about Tipping Pitches core topics, but it does not have to be by any means. If—if you think—if you’ve been listening for a while and you think back to when we did sort of, uh, the AMA style mailbag, and we asked people to ask questions about, uh, anything baseball or non-baseball related, anything that you’re curious about me and Alex. Obviously, uh, we are going to decide whether or not we want to answer these questions ahead of time. So if you’re gonna just, like, ask us something super personal, it probably won’t make it onto the air, but maybe it will. You never know. Shoot your shot. Um, that’ll be for, uh, an upcoming milestone episode. That’s all—that’s all I will say about that. More details to come in the future. Okay. Shall we move on to the—to the large top—to the largest topic, the most expected topic for the Tipping Pitches podcast today?
ALEX: I suppose. It does seem to be that time.
BOBBY: Do you want to do dispatches from Wrigley Field first? Do you have anything exciting to share for the—for the folks at home? Did you place any wagers that the casino built into the stadium?
ALEX: Uh, Wrigley Field, good—good place to see a, uh, baseball game. Big fan. They, uh, they took the loss of the Orioles, so once again—I mean, they were again not so subtly courting my fandom, I just want to say. Unfortunately, it didn’t actually make it into the sports book, which is maybe a dereliction of my duties—
BOBBY: Come on.
ALEX: —as—as the—the kind of boots-on-the-ground reporter for this podcast.
BOBBY: You should have gone in there with, like, your—your—your Voice Memos app open, just interviewing various people.
ALEX: Kind of, like—the little, like, TikTok, like, man on the—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —street interviews.
BOBBY: Yeah. So what do you do here? Oh, you’re interviewing the people going—I was having you interview the employees.
ALEX: What do you do here? Tell me about your job. No, I—I want to interview the—the Cubs fan who’s been drinking since 9:00 A.M. who came to put money on Marcus Stroman. I bet that guy has got some thoughts that—that we really are interested in hearing.
BOBBY: You—so you didn’t go into the sportsbook? You just—
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: You took a picture for clout?
ALEX: If that’s how it read to you, that’s—that’s—I understand. Um, I—I—my dignity would not allow me to set foot in there for—and—and, frankly, I—I think, you know, we’re may be on—on watch lists at various stadiums anyway, so I got to kind of tread carefully.
BOBBY: Yeah. They would have turned away your action. Uh, well, I know that you’re much more of a FanDuel guy. So the DraftKings sportsbook built into Wrigley Field. Your—your loyalties lie with the—with the FanDuel Corporation.
ALEX: Right. Uh, well, especially now being free—as we’re about to talk about, being freed from fandom linked to a specific team. Um, what I’ve been doing is testing out all the various betting, uh, platforms so that I can pick one to get behind. I’ve got a little rubric that I’m working off of FanDuel’s colors are—are much more, um, conducive to the sorts of outfits that I like to wear. You know, the blue and—the blue and the white?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: So it’s—it’s a work in progress. I’ll—I’ll say that much.
BOBBY: Have you ever placed a sports bet?
ALEX: I have, yeah.
BOBBY: Interesting. What—what for? Was it just to try—like—your—your curious nature, the, uh, the famed—the famed Alex Bazeley curiosity. You just had to—
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: —ride it through?
ALEX: Yeah. Um, you know, they do those things where they give you like, “Here’s 10 bucks to bet on the game—”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —or—or whatever.
BOBBY: Yeah. Right. Like how a drug dealer gives you a free first hit?
ALEX: Yup. Uh, exactly. Uh, I’m 0-1.
BOBBY: 0-1?
ALEX: I don’t even—I don’t even remember what the—what the bet was like—
BOBBY: I don’t know why I was like weird—I—I felt weird asking you what the bet was about. Like, it was like a personal medical—piece of medical information like that you’re not supposed—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —to tell people. It’s not like—it’s not incriminating to say what you bet on. It’d be like, “So what was the result? You know, how—how did that test come back?”
ALEX: Yeah, we went over the results, um, with my—with my doctors, with my advisors, and they said, “Don’t do this again.”
BOBBY: One of the funniest turn of events possible for this podcast would be if you were just like a huge sports bettor on the side.
ALEX: Like, I—
BOBBY: You separate the art from the artist.
ALEX: Well, uh, I mean, famously, these are just characters that we play on this show, right?
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: These are just characters that we—that we get into. I have a personal life outside of this show, right?
BOBBY: Right. President of MLB fans union, Nevada State senate lobbyist.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: A-Rod’s personal assistant. That one is real.
ALEX: Don’t you forget.
BOBBY: That’s not a character on the show.
ALEX: Correct.
BOBBY: And, uh, rampant sports better. Oh—oh, you’re the guy who designs all of the City Connect jerseys and the, uh, New Era hats.
ALEX: Yes, I do—do the New Era—Era hats, yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah. Yeah, that’s you. But what I’m—what I do on the show—
ALEX: Let’s just rotate to allow—and just moving the— turning the logos like 15 degrees.
BOBBY: I’m thinking it’s 207 degrees—degrees today. Uh, what you get from me is—is, uh, 100% true. All—it’s all honest on this pod.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Nothing—not hiding anything. Letting it all—
ALEX: We’re an open book.
BOBBY: Letting it all hang out, dream diaries.
ALEX: That you do.
[laughter]
BOBBY: Um, all right. it’s time to do our favorite thing, to talk about Rob Manfred press conferences. I don’t—where to begin—where to begin with this press conference, Alex? Um, I think I would like to begin by saying, “I can’t believe it’s real. I can’t believe”—and for those of you who don’t know, this is a press conference that Rob Manfred gave after a meeting that he had with the owners. It seemed to be some kind of—some kind of dinner, you know? Once again, where’s our invite?
ALEX: Always having luncheons and dinners.
BOBBY: Exactly.
ALEX: Well, I guess you need three meals a day.
BOBBY: Um, and this was in light of the Nevada State Assembly voting in favor of giving funding to the tune of $500 million to the Oakland Athletics to build a stadium in Las Vegas and relocate to Las Vegas. Uh, this is obviously much discussed on this podcast, much discussed in other places in media finally. Um, and so Rob Manfred came out and he gave a press conference after meeting with the owners, um, to talk about this result, to talk about any other questions that reporters have, um, with regards to the—what—what comes next in the process, essentially. And it went kind of, uh, how we might expect it to go. There were a lot of reporters asking questions about the transparency of this process, about how this actually helps the overall health of, um, of Major League Baseball, about John Fisher’s role in this, about why John Fisher doesn’t do press. Uh, Evan Drellich of The Athletic, he wrote up—uh, summarized the Q&A of every question that was asked not just by him and report—various reporters at The Athletic, but just everyone in that press conference, uh, which I thought was really useful to go through and read. And I’m going to be pulling from that a little bit, but I think before that, I would just like to play a couple of Rob’s responses here. The first one being a, um, a sort of shorter response to a question about whether Rob Manfred saw the turnout for the “reverse boycott” that happened last week where, uh, A’s fans decided they were going to do their best to pack the stadium, uh, and chant things like “sell the team” to show their support for the team, but not for the owner. Uh, and here’s Rob’s response.
SPEAKER 3: Did you watch the Rays and A’s game on Tuesday when the fans came out for the reverse boycott?
ROB: I was actually at a dinner with the owners.
SPEAKER 3: Did you—did you read the coverage stating the [17:07]
ROB: I did.
SPEAKER 3: What’s your impression of that?
ROB: I—I saw the—you know, I mean, it—it was great. Uh, it—it’s great to see what is—this year, you know, almost an average Major League Baseball crowd in the facility for one night. That’s a great thing.
BOBBY: And then the second thing that I’m gonna play is a response to—his response to a question that, uh, one of the reporters asked about what sense the other owners have had—or whether they want the A’s to relocate, what—what kind of vote they would give in favor or against, uh, in A’s relocation. Um, and somehow Rob Manfred got on to talking about how Oakland is giving, uh, nothing in this deal. So here—here’s the other response.
ROB: And I hear from—you know, uh, I—I feel sorry for the fans in Oakland. I do not like this outcome. I understand why they feel the way they do. I think that the real question is, what is it that Oakland was prepared to do? There is no Oakland offer. Okay? I mean, they—they never got to the point where they had a plan to build a stadium at any site. And it’s not just John Fisher. You don’t build a stadium based on the club activity alone. The community has to provide support. And, you know, at some point, you come to the realization, it’s just not going to happen.
BOBBY: So the reason I wanted to start by playing two clips for you from Rob’s response is because—well, those are the—those—those are the biggest clips that have been circulating around, number one. And number two, I think it’s really important to hear Rob’s tone in these responses and the exasperation that he is, for some reason, showing to reporters who are asking questions, kind of, like, in the only setting that they have, like—and the only opportunity that they have, because, you know, we’re going to read some of Rob’s other responses in this press conference and we’re going to talk about what they mean, and reading between the lines, and how damning this whole press conference was. But I think it’s really important to hear directly from the source first, just exactly how short-tempered he felt, how childish his responses truly were, uh, to set the stage for this conversation that we’re gonna have.
ALEX: Yeah. I mean, there was so much telling about this press conference and I—you know, I’m—if we can zoom out a little bit, like you mentioned the—the reverse boycott, right? I mean, again, there’s been a lot that’s happened this past week with regards to the A’s, right? The—the A’s fans packing the stadium to the tune of, you know, uh, 28,000 people, give or take. It was a—it was a beautiful, beautiful scene. Like the kind of thing that you don’t see in sports very often. Like a—like fans banding together and recognizing that the source of their ire is not the folks on the field, but the man signing the checks, right? And—I mean, I was just like misty-eyed, like, for three hours watching—watching a baseball game, right? Um, a few days later, as you mentioned, the Nevada State Legislature passed the bill, the bill that would bring the A’s to Las Vegas. Seemingly, as the sort of final nail in the coffin on this, right? It goes to the—the governor’s desk to sign it, but he’s—he was heavily involved with the planning on this bill, so it’s—so there’s nothing to indicate that he would, uh—uh, change his mind overnight, right? So, like, it’s all but done, the A’s departing from Oakland.
BOBBY: For what it’s worth, um, he already—he already signed it. He signed it three days ago.
ALEX: Even better.
BOBBY: These things happen really fast when some people want them to.
ALEX: So you’re telling me my faith is now put in guys like Mark Attanasio to say, “Hmm, I don’t think this Major League Baseball team should get hundreds of millions in public funds.”
BOBBY: I don’t know, bro.
ALEX: This could be an interesting guy to get—come from, given that he is maybe on his own track of trying to secure hundreds of millions in public funds.
BOBBY: Well, you have seen a couple—a couple of quotes from—or, like, maybe anonymous quotes or whatever, or quotes from, like, Yankees type—type ownership, kind of throwing shade a little bit at this process—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —and talking about how it doesn’t really make a ton of sense. But, uh, you know, I feel pretty confident in saying that the owners will get behind anything that serves one of them.
ALEX: Yeah. I completely agree. Right. So, like—so that’s where we are, that, uh, in the wake of this kind of show of disgust on the part of A’s fans and—and the ink drying on this move actually happening, right? And so you would expect the coming into this press conference that Manfred would be, A, expecting to answer questions about all of these things. This is the second time a team has—an MLB team has moved, has left their city in the last 50 years. And it’s, um, uh, a—a big story. There’s a lot—there’s a lot going on there. And his tone was one of I don’t really understand why I have to be the one up here answering these questions, right? I don’t understand why I—you know, why I should be letting you grill me over this. Which is ironic, because, again, as you mentioned, John Fisher is nowhere to be found. But I am struck by the fact that every time Manfred goes out and to—to kind of address something like this, that is at the—the sort of core root of the sport, the health of the sport, that he ends up with his foot in his mouth every single time. Like, it would have been monstrously easy to go out and say, “I feel really bad for the—for A’s fans and—and, you know, we—we regret this—this process.” And all these sorts of platitudes that no one would believe from him, but at least it might sound good coming from him. And instead, he went and blamed the city of Oakland, and he blamed the community, right? He said, “You know, it’s not just on the—on the politicians, it’s on the community to show support.” Which is such a middle finger to the thousands and thousands and thousands of A’s fans who have given that support for years, for decades, and not seeing the slightest bit of investment on the part of ownership. It was really jarring. I’ll just say that. Like, it was really, really jarring to hear him talk about—about stuff like this when he had the opportunity to sort of smooth things over, to try and put a Band-Aid on all of this. And instead, he went out and he was sarcastic, and flippant. And I just don’t know what to do with that.
BOBBY: I want to dig into the—the answer that he gave. So you—to your point about him being sarcastic and flippant, like the answer that he gave about—about the reverse boycott specifically, you know, from—I—I played it earlier, but just to reiterate, and he says, “It’s great to see what is, this year, almost an average Major League crowd in the facility for one night. That’s a—that’s a great thing.” Which is actually kind of unbelievable that he came out and said that.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But that’s like just Rob being like a shithead management-side lawyer, that—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: It’s almost like—we’ve almost come to expect that at this point.
ALEX: Right. The World Series trophy is a piece of metal, right?
BOBBY: Exactly.
ALEX: It’s just like the—the tone deaf inability to read the room. Yeah.
BOBBY: Exactly. And just the—the awful communicator that is Rob Manfred, which we’ve come to know and not quite love over the years. Um, but the—the quote that I want to dig in closer with is the one where he talks about how there was no—”no Oakland offer on the table.” He says, “Look, believe me, and I hear—and I hear from them. I feel sorry for the fans in Oakland. I do not like this outcome. I understand why they feel the way they do. I think that the real question is, what is it that Oakland was prepared to do? There is no Oakland offer, okay? They never got to a point where they had a plan to build a stadium at any site. And it’s not just John Fisher.” This is a very important part in my mind. “It’s not just John Fisher. You don’t build a stadium based on the club activity alone. The community has to provide support. and you know, at some point, you come to the realization, it’s not going to happen.” It’s just—that’s just a lie. That’s just a lie. That’s—the community does not have to provide support. There is nowhere in any document, in any state legislature, in any Major League Baseball collective bargaining agreement or any legislature—federal legislature that has passed on behalf of Major League baseball of which there has been plenty. There is nowhere in there that says, “Communities have to provide monetary support to Major League Baseball clubs that are privately owned.” In fact, I—I would go so far as to say there’s nowhere in any law anywhere that says that any public government has—has to provide money to private businesses, so that they can stay afloat. Like that is not—honestly, that’s not how this shit works, Rob. That’s not how capitalism works. Sorry. You want—you want a government handout? Let’s tear up capitalism and nationalized these teams then, because that—that’s what you’re talking about. What—what Rob is saying is that it’s incumbent upon communities to provide financial support for baseball teams. That is just—that’s bullshit. But that is also their philosophy, that they rely on handouts and handouts alone, and that these teams refuse to operate without strong-arming cities and local governments into giving them handouts, and that—that’s all they are. They’re not good enough businessmen to do this on their own, which we have said time and time again. John Fisher is not a good businessman. He inherited billions of dollars from his parents. And arguably, the number one thing that is on his resume as John Fisher, John J. Fisher alone is the Oakland A’s and how is that gone? I just thought that that quote was, like, so unintentionally, or intentionally revealing, but also like—but also completely maddening, because—because saying, “You don’t build a—you don’t build a stadium based on club activity alone.” It’s like, why not? I mean, other leagues do it all the time. Other teams within baseball have done it. Other countries do it all the time. I just—I fail to understand and I—I wish someone had said something about that. I wish someone had followed up and asked why not, because—I mean, we know what he would have said, but like, “Oh, l because the economic reality is not such that—that we can’t afford to make these large investments without some support from local communities or whatever.” I think that that’s garbage, and it also is a lie about what the Oakland City Council and mayor’s office had discussed. Like they—they were going to make improvements, they just were not going to make so many improvements that it would’ve been as profitable for John Fisher, and so he didn’t want to do it.
ALEX: It’s such a willful misreading of the situation, right? Say, “Well, A’s fans haven’t been showing up to games as of late. The city council has rebuffed our efforts to try and secure public funds in the construction of the stadium. It’s just a—an—a historical view of everything that’s going on here. And to be honest, Rob, I didn’t realize it was my job to build the baseball stadium. My job is to fill the baseball stadium, and I’ll do that. But the consistent thread throughout this whole conference that he gave was that, “Well, the city of Oakland and the A’s fans didn’t do enough. They didn’t do enough to keep the team.” And somewhere in this press conference, he says something like, “Well, I hope—I hope they remain fans of baseball, you know? Like, “I—”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: “—I hate—I hate to lose them—like, I really do hope they remain fans.” And I don’t know how you can listen to anything that was said in this press conference. Having experienced the last two decades of chaos around the A’s and say, “You know what? He does—he does want my business. This guy really does care about me and—and wants me to be happy, and—and so you’re right. I will—I will stick around.” You know, like I—I don’t get it.
BOBBY: He might as well have said—he might as well have said I hope they keep their credit card information saved on—so that they can auto-renew MLB.TV next year. Like he might as well—
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: —put it that plainly, to be honest.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: And I want to—I want to amend what I said earlier, when I said that I wish someone would have followed up specifically on this point, because somebody did. And somebody said, “Is it part of your job”—somebody asked and forgive me because I don’t have it, actually, who asked these individual questions. I just have the written-up summary. “Is it part of your job to support or help owners extract public funding the stadium subsidies? Is that part of being CEO of Major League Baseball?” And here’s Rob’s response, “I think it’s part of my job to make sure that we have 30 Major League quality facilities at all times. We’ve gone a really good long time in Oakland without one. I do think that because I view baseball stadiums, because of the number of games and the economic impact we produce as a public asset. I do think that it is part of my job and it is, in fact, good business to have a public-private partnership to get those facilities built.” Who—who is it good business for? I mean, actually, like who—who—he’s obscuring that part, obviously, intentionally. You know, someone else asked him in this press conference, like, “Have you seen the studies that several academics have—have conducted that prove that the economic impact of baseball is largely on the—on behalf of the Major League Baseball owners, and very infrequently on behalf of the actual public in the community that these stadiums landed?” And he was like, “Well, Academics can say whatever they want.”
ALEX: Academics schmacademics.
BOBBY: He’s like, “Well, look what they did in Truist Park.” I’m like, “Oh, you want to talk about Truist Park? So you want to talk about the white flight of Major League Baseball, Rob? You want to get into that at this press conference? That’s what you want to do? You want to talk about how they took that stadium straight out of downtown Atlanta where people could actually go to and plopped it in the richest zip code in the Greater Atlanta area intentionally and admitted as much? That’s—that’s the stadium that you want to cite as your number one example of how good baseball can be for a community? That’s intriguing. that’s fascinating, Rob.”
ALEX: So many mask-off moments in this interview, I—I appreciate that, uh, someone asked when his last visit was to the Coliseum and what for, right? And he said, “I—I was there last year for a players meeting down in the bowels of the stadium.” And it’s—bit him on the side, [31:40] but it does make me wonder how many baseball stadiums this man actually goes to, to watch baseball games in a given year, right? So you—so you’ve not seen a game at the Coliseum, at least in a—a year or two, right? As the Commissioner of the sport, it may not be incumbent upon you to go there every weekend, but you’d think, especially with the stadium that is central to one of the—the biggest sort of unresolved issues around the game that you might drop in and say, “I wonder what it’s like to see a game there.” It all felt a little too much, like, saying the quiet part out loud with—with all of this, that Manfred does not have to be a steward of the game who is building a foundation for—for baseball fans of the future and working to maintain the integrity and the health of the sport, it is to protect the business interests of 30 individuals and their business associates. And, like, that’s it, right? And—and those who take part in this sport should show, uh, a sense of fealty to them, right? Because they’re the benevolent ones who are building stadiums in these—in these communities. They’re the ones who are fielding teams, they—
BOBBY: But like—
ALEX: —held up their end of the bargain, right?
BOBBY: I guess, but, like, they actually haven’t, though.
ALEX: I—because—yeah. I—
BOBBY: I mean, this thing that you—okay. This thing that you hear and, you know, like once—once you started looking at all this stuff through like a labor versus management lens, it’s like the only way that you can hear it. It’s the only way that you can read it. It’s the only thing that you can see. This thing that you’ll hear—
ALEX: Fame—famously, we turn the whole podcast in—into that.
BOBBY: The—this thing that you’ll hear all the time is something called management’s rights. It’s like, “Okay, they are a capital. They provide the money in—in the context of capitalism, in the context of how we look at labor and labor law in the United States. The management is the side that brings the capital to the business, and because of that, they have a certain subset of rights that you’re not allowed to bargain away. You’re not allowed to take an—take away from them. One of those things is, for example, like hiring and firing power. You can’t—you can dictate the structures around which someone can be fired and what they can be fired for. But at the end of the day, you as the labor side, you’re not allowed to decide whether or not a person is fired, uh, as long as they follow these rules that don’t violate, you know, like discriminatory practices. Another one of those things is like office location. Like, if a business decides, “Hey, we want our office to be here and here’s our policy for whether or not you come into this office. And this is where our office is.” That is typically thought of as something that is management’s rights to choose. “Hey, we’re going to relocate our office, but we have”—so you say, “Okay. You have to give us 30 days advance notice and you have to, you know, make reasonable accommodations, to make it a similar office environment, or parking environment, or transportation environment, or whatever.” And, like, that’s kind of what Rob is saying, in that—this is the Oakland Athletics’ right to decide what is their market, what is their stadium, where are they going to play. But what he’s also saying is that it’s not their responsibility, it’s their right. But they don’t have to actually fulfill their end of that bargain if they don’t want to. If that is not financially advantageous for them. So what Rob is trying to say is that management’s rights is to make money. All right here is to always be profitable no matter what. Because if it was your right and responsibility to provide a “Major League facility,” which he is so hung up on. He’s like, “This is not a Major League facility. This is not a Major League facility.” Which is something that repeatedly appears in the collective bargaining agreement, what is—what fits the standards of a Major League facility, and Rob is insinuating that, “Hey, this—oh, the player should care about this, too, because this doesn’t meet the standards that we bargained over.” Well, who’s going to do something about that? And this dichotomy that we’ve created in this country, it’s—you can either only bargain for something that you get or management has the right to choose how things are. So, I’m not really sure why Rob thinks that it’s incumbent upon communities who are not part of this equation, who are not part of this economy, really, this closed loop economy that they have bargained for time and time, again, that they have lobbied—that they have lobbied to be excluded from the public consciousness. They—they have lobbied to be excluded from the public arena. They have literally thousands of lobbyists whose only job it is to say that, “We don’t have to file antitrust laws.” Yet, somehow the communities that they are a part of, who typically would enforce these antitrust laws, also have to contribute financially, but don’t get the usual rights that they have when they contribute financially to businesses. It just doesn’t—it doesn’t make any sense and I know that he knows that, which is one of the most frustrating part of all of this is because he’s a smart guy, he’s a savvy guy, he understands what is and is not within the purview of Major League Baseball, and requiring money from local governments is actually not legally enforceable. And as a smart lawyer—smart business side lawyer that he is, he knows that. But he knows that if he goes up there and he says it enough, and the 30 billionaires who are largely influential out—who have an outstanding and economic impact in the world, and in politics. They know that they can leverage the exact people that they need to leverage, to continue to propagate this exact system. And most of the time, those people are just, like, city council people who are eminently leverageable as we’ve seen time and time again in this country.
ALEX: There was really—
BOBBY: As we last week when it happened in Nevada, when there was a bunch of people being like, “I’m gonna vote no.” And then all of a sudden, they voted yes. Wow. I wonder how that happened.
ALEX: Yeah. There was a really—I mean, there was a thread going around, um, in the kind of amid all of this from Steve Yeager who’s the—who’s the Speaker of the Nevada State Legislature. And there were—there were a bunch of—of choice quotes in there, right? Where, again, he talks about, “No, you know, this—Vegas doesn’t tolerate losing and so we’re gonna—we’re gonna make sure there are measures in place so that they remain competitive. And, you know, there’s gonna be—there’s gonna be pressure to—to invest in a winning team. And so you can—you can bookmark this tweet if I’m wrong, but like, which—done. Uh, and—and then there was a lot in there, again, of just kind of, like, the disconnect between—
BOBBY: Wait, what was his name again? I have a bridge to sell him.
ALEX: But the—one of the pieces that stood out to me the—the most was—he says, “In the wake of this, the reactions from friends and constituents have been equally mixed, right?” He says, “Some have thanked me. Exciting Major League Baseball is coming to Las Vegas. Others have sent me profanity-laden emails expressing their disappointment or anger. I imagine I’ve lost a few friends along the way.” And it just—first of all, tough beat. Really tough beat to lose some friends over.
BOBBY: Many people have thanked me. They’re coming out in droves to thank me. I can’t—
ALEX: But also just—
BOBBY: —even handle all of the emails of people thanking me—
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: —for bringing the A’s to Las Vegas, there’s millions of them.
ALEX: But it felt so illuminating about what the divide really is, right? Is—there are folks who are saying, “I mean, I’ll—I go to see baseball every once in a while, so yeah, I’d love to have a baseball team here. Thanks for doing that.” Right? Like, how did—I—I don’t care where they’re coming from. I don’t—I don’t need the rest of the context. This is good enough news for me, right? And the other side of the aisle is people saying, “We are not properly funding our educational system right now. Uh, we aren’t spending nearly enough money for unhoused folks and low-income folks.” And it just felt like such a perfect distillation to me of, like, what’s at stake here, right? Is like either you have a stadium on the Las Vegas Strip, which is gonna do numbers for John Fisher’s wallet.
BOBBY: Quite literally nothing else.
ALEX: Quite literally nothing else, or you have these social services that are, like, desperately in need of funding that are gonna go into elected amid all of this. I—I just felt like every time the sort of spokespeople for these processes came out, I’ll—I’ll hand it to them. I did have a much better sense after they spoke about where their priorities lie. And it makes it very easy to be much clear-headed—to be a much more clear-headed, uh, consumer of baseball.
BOBBY: Uh, Rob was asked in the press conference, “Is there any worry about moving from the 10th largest TV market to the 40th and building a 30,000-seat ballpark that would be the smallest and turn a team into a perpetual receiver of revenue sharing?” Pointed question, good one.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Good question. Rob says, “I’m not going to talk today. I just think it’s unfair to the A’s about the—the proposition of what they would have to include in their application for relocation and”—whatever. About the previous market and their new market. There’s all that stuff in the CBA about that. “They deserve to file—they deserve to file their relocation application. When I have all the information in that application, if and when I see concerns in respect to it, I’ll talk about it publicly. Until that happens, I’m not going to do it. I’m just going to file that away.” He’s gonna talk about it publicly. He’s gonna talk about—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —whether it’s a bad idea to build a 30,000-seat stadium in a desert that is going to be uninhabitable by the time that—hold on. Let me see if I can say this in a way it’s not confusing. By the time the A’s will have spent as much time in Las Vegas as they spent in Oakland, that stadium will be uninhabitable by human beings.
ALEX: Correct.
BOBBY: Just a thought about whether this is short-sighted or not.
ALEX: Luckily, they’re even more short-sighted than that. They don’t expect to be there nearly that long, so they’re not really having to worry about that.
BOBBY: Well, I mean, John Fisher is not gonna live to see that day, so what the fuck does he care?
ALEX: That’s—
BOBBY: Neither is Rob. I mean, these people are in their ’60s, ’70s, whatever. I don’t know how old they are, but they’re not gonna live to see this shit. They don’t give a fuck.
ALEX: And also, where did you get that information about being uninhabitable? Academics probably?
BOBBY: That’s true. And academics can say whatever they want. We’ve learned that from Rob. Uh, let’s close on this, uh, a quote from—so you—you laid it out kind of like the type of Las Vegas person who would—like a Las Vegas voter, a Las Vegas civilian, citizen who would be on one side of the other about whether they should come. Of course, there’s also like the specific—the specific baseball person, um, who would—who would care one way or the other about—and I think that the large majority of those people who care about the history of baseball would say, “It makes way more sense for the A’s to stay in Oakland. They have so much history there. Um, bringing the team to Las Vegas seems like a—kind of just like a gold rush for a short-term profit. In terms of, like, the larger story, the qualitative story that we tell ourselves about baseball and sports in America, there doesn’t seem to be like a prestigious reason to bring a team to Las Vegas, to be honest. And that’s not to say that, like, Vegas shouldn’t have teams. I think that you look at a team like the Las Vegas Knights, an expansion team, um, in NHL, in the NHL who just won the Stanley Cup and you say, “That’s a pretty nice story. They built the stadium, they didn’t use public funds. It’s a—it’s a reasonably sized stadium for the market that it’s in. Uh, they’re committed to putting a winning product on the ice, almost on the field, but on the ice, and look what happened. Now they got a championship parade. Um, similar story happened in the WNBA, the Las Vegas Aces, um, a good team that people are really excited about in that community and actually show up and watch. Uh, with good players, I think it’s a really important part of this since the A’s are not gonna put good players on the field. We just know that about John Fisher. And so to close with this, they—Bryce Harper was asked about this because he is obviously a baseball person. He is from the Las Vegas area and he has been a huge cheerleader of sports in Las Vegas, specifically. And Harper had this to say, “I feel bad for the A’s and their fans. They’re so rooted in Oakland, those flan—those fans bleed green. Now, it’s, ‘Hey, we’re gonna pick up the A’s to come to Vegas.’ I don’t agree with that. Who cares what I think? It’s my own opinion. But when you see a team like the A’s, there’s so much history at the Coliseum with all the great players they’ve had. In the last couple of years, it hasn’t been the greatest, I get that. I totally understand. But do I believe they should leave Oakland because of that? No, they could be as good as anybody if they actually went and did it. Those fans deserve that.” So even the guy who is, like, almost a public relations cheerleader for Las Vegas—the Las Vegas professional sports teams, the Las Vegas professional sports scene, the guy that, like, the Knights essentially contract to come and be a superfan for them. Even he is like, “They shouldn’t bring the A’s to Vegas.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I mean, it’s not like Bryce Harper is over here with you, me, and Karl Marx on the political spectrum about whether we should profit off of things. and even he can see like, “This is not—this is a short-sighted move that is bad for the health of the game.” And I just—I mean, Bryce, come on the pod.
ALEX: Shout-out to Bryce for that. He’s a legend. He’s right about a lot in there, um, especially, uh, one part that I—that I know John Fisher heartily agrees with, which is that we do bleed green. I—I am certain that when John Fisher looks at A’s fans, he just sees green. Just green. Just green and—and gold. And—maybe—maybe gold in there, too.
BOBBY: What color is crypto?
ALEX: It has zeros and ones.
BOBBY: Did you see that this, uh, this news spawned, uh, a whole other wave of Republican senators saying that they want to repeal the anti-trust exemption?
ALEX: Yeah, we got—we got actually two anti-trust—we got two pieces of—of legislation being introduced in the House and the Senate.
BOBBY: I just—time is such a flat circle. It’s like, “Oh, we’re doing another round of anti-trust exemption conversation because they’re gonna move the A’s, and also because they’re having Pride nights.” It’s like, “Oh, my God.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: We’re so fucked.
ALEX: We’re so fucked. Actually, on—on that—
BOBBY: There’s no coalition here for us. We don’t have a coalition.
ALEX: On that note, I—I did want to mention the—the only—the only other aspect of Manfred’s press conference, uh, that caught folks’ eye that had nothing to do with the A’s. Um, but it was about those Pride nights, right?
BOBBY: Right. Yeah.
ALEX: Um, he—obviously, Pride nights around the league have been in the news as of late. The—the Dodgers, as we discussed, have faced protests from anti-LGBTQ groups. Uh, we’ve had multiple players on the Blue Jays, on the Red Sox coming out and just saying like wildly hateful things.
BOBBY: Don’t forget the Nationals.
ALEX: Right. We have Trevor Williams who I’ve heard is MLB’s top Christian baseball player. Uh—
BOBBY: Top Catholic, top Catholic.
ALEX: Top Catholic, sorry.
BOBBY: Top Catholic baseball player.
ALEX: I still don’t know the difference.
BOBBY: He went to Catholic school.
ALEX: He might as well have gone to Christian school.
BOBBY: Oh, man. This is great.
ALEX: But we have these, uh, we have these instances at—at—at a—at a time when, like, the tenor of hatred around this country towards queer folks is, like, reaching a fever pitch. And so Chelsea Janes from the Washington Post asked about kind of, uh, you know, MLB’s stance on leaving Pride nights up to teams versus standardizing them across the week.
BOBBY: Yeah, Chelsea Janes—
ALEX: And—
BOBBY: By the way, Chelsea, Janes is so real. One of the best—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —reporters out there.
ALEX: Without a doubt.
BOBBY: One of our favorites. Um, someone’s work who, if you’re not following already, it’s an incredibly enriching experience to follow Chelsea’s work while consuming Major League Baseball and consuming something like this podcast.
ALEX: Yes. Absolutely cosigned. Um, so his response to her question was, “We’ve told teams, in terms of actual uniforms, hats, bases, that we don’t think putting logos on them is a good idea just because of the desire to protect players. Not putting them in a position of doing something that may make them uncomfortable because of their personal views. Other than that, leave it to teams, they know their markets best.” Which players do we think he’s trying to protect here? Protect them from what? Oh, it’s a local decision to host Pride nights. So you just pick and choose which community to cater to. Like—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —say, if you’re the Texas Rangers and you think your fan base might be more aggrieved by that. You can say, “Well, that’s okay. We don’t need a Pride night.”
BOBBY: I mean, he’s the risk management Commissioner, right?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: He’s like—he’s the consulting Commissioner. He—they look at it, like, what is the cost-benefit analysis of all of this stuff? It’s absolutely valueless. It’s—I mean, it’s—it’s spineless. They don’t—they’re the most unprincipled group of soulless, craven greedy business people you could possibly dream up. Like, it doesn’t get more—it—he’s literally like a market by market, you can decide. He’s calling it a market.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: It’s not like community—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —by community. It’s not like we actually want to stand for something. Market by market, owners can decide.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Well, we’ll make them the most amount of money. I mean, it’s just—it’s shameless stuff, like it’s—it’s—and I—look, I know a lot of people have been talking about people like Trevor Williams quotes, like Trevor Williams’ quote. Um, we tweeted about a couple of these things. People have been talking about Anthony Bass. People have been talking about the Dodgers Pride night and the Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence and whatnot. I honestly have gotten to the point where, like, some of these stories I have made a concerted effort just to not acknowledge, because it’s just not—it’s not worth it. Like, Anthony Bass’ views on whether gay people should exist is, like, so far down the priority list of, like, anything that matters. Like, he is both irrelevant and misinformed, and intentionally bigoted. And, like, his half-assed apology is just, to—to be honest, like not worth distracting from this wonderful Pride month and, like, the many ballparks that actually host inclusive and uplifting Pride nights. And the people who attend those Pride nights and experience joy because of them. Like I don’t—I just think that it’s unfortunate that, like, the structure of Major League Baseball is such that like—the structure of Major League Baseball and, like, the conversations around, and the tenor around, like, LGBTQ inclusion in our culture is always such that like, “Well, somebody has to be personally offended in, uh, in order for us to even have these conversations to begin with.” And then it’s like, “Well, you spent all this time debunking the people that Anthony Basses and the Trevor Williams of the world.” And then by the end of this, you just have a bunch of people who are like, “Well, let’s agree to disagree.” It’s like, “No, we actually shouldn’t agree to disagree about this”. This is like people’s existence and like the context in which we talk about these things is so, so fucking dehumanizing, and for the Commissioner of baseball to, like, not—not only not care about that, but, like, come out and just chalk it up to like—
ALEX: Like market difference.
BOBBY: Yeah, like market differences, like almost as if this is, like, political polling. It’s like, come on, dude. Like, he is so, so grossly unequipped to ever speak in front of reporters and cameras.
And it’s just—I mean, it’s a shame. It’s like— it’s not like I wish there was like a woke commissioner who could come out and really, like, make everybody feel good. But at times like this, I’m like, “Wow.”
ALEX: I do.
BOBBY: “It would be nice if there was, like, a commissioner who would—who could not—who could go long enough without putting his foot in his mouth to distract from the fact that like, “Wow, like 29 teams actually do host a Pride night and it actually is helpful to a lot of people in those communities and actually do raise awareness and money. And a lot of people within those teams are trying to pull it in the right direction and do their fucking best.’” And yet, the commissioner has to come out and just completely just, like, take a shit all over that, like that—that sucks.
ALEX: Yeah. This is the kind of thing that completely undermines the significance of Pride nights around the league as they exist and the—the efforts of promoting inclusivity. And also sends a message that—that people who are harboring these discriminatory views, their comfort is just as important and valid as those of LGBTQ folks who just want to live, right? That—we need to make sure that everyone feels comfortable in this scenario, right? Yes, we care about—about our fans, uh, but also, we don’t want the players to, like, feel bad for being homophobic, right? We don’t want them to be put in a situation where all of a sudden they’re being criticized for their abhorrent views. God forbid, right? So it’s just a team-by-team thing. You guys handle it, right?
BOBBY: It’s states’ rights, man.
ALEX: It’s states’—
BOBBY: It’s like— because that’s his—
ALEX: This is—but, like, the whole, like, incongruence with, like, everything they do, right? Because, like, half the things that come out of his mouth are, like, states’ rights, right? Yeah, I can’t—I won’t influence them. I—teams are going to do what they’re going to do. They know their markets and businesses at best, yada, yada. But he’s also happy to give top-down directives if he feels like teams are spending too much money, right? Or they’re, uh, relying on analytics too much, right? These things where it’s like we—
BOBBY: That’s because he’s a political vessel, not a person who actually shares his thoughts.
ALEX: I mean—I mean, yes, you’re right, but that doesn’t make it any less fucking maddening.
BOBBY: Yes. I—I completely agree. Um, I don’t know, man. I hope everyone who has gone to an MLB Pride Night has been able to, um, enjoy it as much as possible. That’s all I have to say. All right. Let’s take a quick break.
SPEAKER 4: Last night, last night on Earth today. I’ll make it worthwhile.
ALEX: All right. Before we get out of here, there’s one last news item I wanted to touch on. Um, I wanted to note that we—uh, many of the stories that we discussed today on this podcast and in the past, uh, came from a journalistic outlet known as The Athletic which—which aims to disrupt the sports journalism industry, right? And create a—a safe harbor for fans of all stripes, of all ages, of all locales, right? To have a home base where they can follow their team. Uh, it turns out that’s not, uh, going so great. The whole disrupting the journalism industry thing. The Athletic announced layoffs this past week, and a slightly shifted approach to their sports coverage. They are cutting about 4% of their journalistic staff and this comes amid the fact that even though they have millions of subscribers, they’re still losing money, right? Because this was not, um, a—an enterprise built to be a long-lasting sustainable operation, right? But with a—basically, a venture capital project, right? So—so what they’re doing is they’re scaling back. They’re saying, “Yeah, that idea of creating the sports page for everyone, we realize it was maybe a bit ill—ill-advised, a bit short-sighted. We actually don’t have the money to do all of that. And as a result, we’re going to start focusing on the bigger stories and we’re going to start shifting away from some of the more local beats in places like the NHL and MLB, because these are local audiences. It’s hard to have—we can’t have a reporter in every city. I wanted to bring this up, because, uh, who could have seen this coming? You mean the—the—the organization that poured millions of dollars into decimating local newsrooms, just getting as many people on the payroll as you could at once to attract subscribers, and then did absolutely fucking nothing else isn’t sustainable in the long term?
BOBBY: Yeah. To quote our, um, to quote our friends from PUP, The Dream Is Over, uh, I just—I feel really bad for all of the people who lost their jobs because of this, because of like a slight shift in strategy to garner more profitability for a stock price. And I—it’s like this happens so frequently, that it’s—it’s hard to even keep track of where it’s happening, and why, and who was making these decisions. Like, I think what you said about the fact that there was no long-term strategy, no, like sustainability, and no reasonable, modest growth plan for this company. and the plan was always to just, like, suck up as much venture capital money as possible, and then sell, and then make a profit for a very small handful of people at the very top of the company. Like, of course, that was always the plan. They—they basically said it all of the time. They basically like said it as often as they were given a platform to say it. And people were criticizing them for that at the time. People were criticizing the founders of The Athletic for being too aggressive about showing their asses. And, uh, they didn’t see any repercussions for that, obviously, because the New York Times came in, and it was like, “We want some more subscribers for our media behemoth.” And they got them. You know, I’m—our friend Michael Bauman tweeted, “We could have a profitable, diverse, functional, sustainable media ecosystem, instead, we have this piece that’s run by people who neither know nor love the product, and periodically demand ritual sacrifice.” And I think that that sums it up about as well as anything that I could say—could possibly sum it up. I mean, I think more and more what you’ve seen is people realizing that demanding exponential growth does not fit every industry. Like, this is a square peg in a round hole. You could just do things well. You don’t have to do things, to be the center of a magazine profile. Like, you don’t have to do things to disrupt an industry. You don’t have to turn every industry into oil in the 1800s. And yet, as—as Bauman said, like the people who run this industry, they demand ritual sacrifice, because they want oil profits. They want Major League baseball profits. They want dot-com bubble profits, you know? They want—they want to get rich quick. They want to run schemes. They don’t want to do work.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: They don’t want to actually have to do the hard work of growth sustainably growing a media company. They don’t want to work as hard as fucking Defector. That shit is hard, man.
ALEX: No one wants to work anymore.
BOBBY: Nobody—nobody actually wants to work anymore. I mean, I know you’re being sarcastic, but, like, you know what? Uh, if you gave the founder of The Athletic truth serum, and you said, “Do you want to have to make the hard decisions that the people who have found a Defector or Hell Gate, or any other employee-run company have made? And you ask them that, honestly, even if you weren’t doing it in an employee-owned way. You were just doing it in, like, a reasonable, small staff, slow, sustainable growth kind of way, and you ask them if they wanted to do that, they would say, “Fuck, no. No.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: They didn’t—they don’t want to do that. They want to take as much money as possible, so that they have comfort while they’re building their company. And if it goes bankrupt, well, then, fuck it. They’ve structured the constitution of the company so that it never affects their money personally. They’re just rich kids grifting between different fucking ventures. That’s all this is. That’s all venture capitalists. And, I mean, we’re so far down the river of this completely swallowing media, but I—I think it’s unfortunate, because those people were doing great work, work that we cite all the time on this podcast, works that—works that is enriching the experience of being a fan of a sport. So I mean, it’s all garbage. It’s all coming from the same place, but it’s all garbage.
ALEX: Yeah, I have nothing more intelligent to say on that, but I think it’s just an absolute shame, because there are some really, really wonderful people both in—inside MLB and, uh, in other sports leagues who are—are losing their jobs because of some poor decision-making of some millionaires. Are they losing their jobs? The executives who created this, this ill- advised plan feeling the—feeling the pain at all?
BOBBY: I don’t know, man. I mean, the more I think about this and the more I think about the context of all these podcasting, layoffs and everything, I’m just like media is a margin business. Media is not designed to drive profits. Media is designed to, like, inform people.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Maybe it doesn’t have to, like, fucking make people rich. I watch like all these people from these podcast studios, that are also in the Writers Guild, that were also acquired by Spotify. I watch all these people lose their jobs for similar reasons, because they’re not driving enough upside profit or not using a stock price enough. They’re not ROI-ing, ROI-ing [60:39] returning on an investment. They’re just not—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I just—
ALEX: Right. To be clear, The Athletic has been wildly successful in terms of, like, subscribers and readership, so it is fulfilling the—the core function that it supposedly was designed to do.
BOBBY: I mean, but that was just a lie.
ALEX: But—right. That was to get you in the door.
BOBBY: Uh, okay. well, on that lovely note, if you work in the media worlds, and you know of someone who has lost their job, or someone who is hiring for another job, or whatever, like, I encourage you to use us to make a connection, you know? If you are like—if you’re in a position where you’re like, “Oh, I know about this job that could help the person who was laid off.” Like, feel free to absolutely email us, tippingpitchespod@gmail.com. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of people doing that legwork of like, “Oh, we have all these really talented people, like, that are laid off by this.” And, uh, that stuff is really important. So if you’re one of those people or organizing, like, a list of laid-off people and you’re listening to this podcast, like, I would be happy to share that to boost that, to send that around as much as possible with what, like, little exposure we have. But it’s not nothing, it can do something, hopefully. So that’s about as optimistic of a train as I can take at the end of this podcast. Uh, as a reminder, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, please call in, 785-422-5881 to make your pitch on why Alex should root for the team that you want him to root for, whether that is your team or someone else’s team. Should I call in the voicemail and tell you not to root for the Mets? Should I—
ALEX: I feel like it depends on the day of the week, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah, that’s true. We—again, you can email us that, too. Uh, and Google form in the description. It will be in the description for several weeks, uh, to submit your short answer questions, your yes or no questions for our special milestone episode. As a reminder, these can be baseball or non-baseball related. It can really be about anything. It just has to be something that we can answer in a very short amount of time. That’s all I will say. Uh, I think that’s—I think that’s all we got. Oh, one last piece of housekeeping. Brooklyn Cyclones, Tipping Pitches meet-up, confirmed, Saturday July 29 confirmed, 6:00 P.M. We will have a link to buy tickets to that shortly, ideally, by the next time we do a podcast episode. So, uh, keep your eyes peeled for that. For what it’s worth, you know, you won’t see us sharing that link wide. We’re not trying to, like, sell the most amount of tickets or anything like that. We’re just trying to keep it as community-focused as possible. So for people who listen to the pod, for people who are in Slack, you know, for people who have been active in the community for a while, like we want it to be an opportunity for—to be able to connect and, uh, do something that we all care about, which is go to my Minor League Baseball games and have a really good time. So, uh, if you know somebody who listens to the pod who maybe just like, skips the outro or, uh, is not active in Slack or anything like that, or it’s not a patron, feel free to send it to them. Uh, and, yeah, I’m really looking forward to that [63:40] starting to get close, bro. Summer’s going quick. Uh, okay. Thank you, everybody, for listening. And we will be back next week.
SPEAKER 5: And they say you don’t tug on Superman’s cape. You don’t spit into the wind. You don’t pull the mask off that old lone ranger and you don’t mess around with Jim.
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!
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Tipping Pitches 
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