Bobby and Alex bring on Rowan University professor Debbie Sharnak to discuss MLB’s international presence, including the ways their practices overseas reflect imperialist desires, the U.S.’s long history of baseball as an export, the complicated proposal of an international draft, the impact of talent drain on international communities, the role of baseball academies in the sport’s global influence, and more.
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Songs featured in this episode:
boygenius — “$20” • Sweet Pill — “Sucker Punch” • Green Day — “Longview” • 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: Hello, Alex.
ALEX: Hi, Bobby.
BOBBY: I have a question for you.
ALEX: Always do.
BOBBY: Always do. What is your redirecting coping mechanism this year now that baseball has let you down? Because, granted, you’re probably watching, I would venture to guess, way fewer A’s games, and so that’s freeing up two to three—two to three and a half hours of your day. So, what are you doing to fill that time?
ALEX: It’s a great question. I’m glad you asked. Uh, I have been, uh, I have been realizing that there are other things out there besides baseball, which has been a very—very freeing experience. Of course, I’ve been, uh, partaking in, uh, watching some Mets games. I’ve also sort of—it does feel a little nicer to be able to open up MLB.TV and not have a team that I’m drawn to, you know? I can just kind of—whatever the first one is—that I see, that’s playing. Oh, the— the Twins and the Marlins are playing. I don’t know if that’s a matchup that’s happened this year, but it could have been, and I probably would have watched it. I—I suppose it’s also been lucky for me that I’ve been traveling a lot this year.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: It’s like I’ve had this sort of built-in distraction.
BOBBY: So what you’re saying is you haven’t reckoned with the—with the situation that is the Oakland A’s?
ALEX: Right. What—what I will say is I’m still probably mostly in the state of denial at this point, right? Like, I haven’t really had the opportunity to sit with my feelings.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: And I think that wave is gonna hit me at some point.
BOBBY: What stage of grief is knowing that you’re at the denial stage? Because isn’t denial the first stage?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: So you’re like free grieving Roman Roy style?
ALEX: Roman Roy, exactly. Yes. Right. The—the first step to solving your—your—your grief is, uh, is acknowledging that it’s there.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: Right? And so, I am recognizing that that—that that grief is inside me and it’s—and it’s common. And when it comes, it’s—
BOBBY: The first step to the first step is the first step.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: But if you don’t ever take the first step, then you don’t need to take the first step.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: That’s basically what you’re saying?
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: Great. I—uh, the reason I asked you this is because particularly in the last, like, couple of weeks, I’ve just been ripping through movies.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And this is just—I just have—I can watch two movies at night if I need to, because I don’t have to watch basically a movie that isn’t New York Mets game. I mean, I still am watching the Mets on the side—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —here and there. Tuning in for a full game now and then. But, honestly, they have not—they have not earned the, like, “Oh, first pitch is—is starting.”
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: “Let me put them on my television.” They’ve not earned that this year.
ALEX: Yeah, they’re in a bit of a tough spot.
BOBBY: And you know what else they haven’t earned, they haven’t earned the, “Oh, this inning looks like it’s going in the wrong direction. I’m going to keep this game on just to see if they can wiggle their way out of it.” Because last year, they wiggle their way—their way out of it quite a bit. And this year, they’re, uh, not doing enough wiggling for my liking.
ALEX: I—it’s also been fun to just, like, explore other sports, you know?
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: Like, “Hey, tennis is cool. Wimbledon is coming up. I’m really excited for that.”
BOBBY: Is that true? I feel like that sneaks up on me every year.
ALEX: It does sneak up on me every year as well.
BOBBY: When—when is Wimbledon? Is it July?
ALEX: Yeah, I think it’s beginning of July.
BOBBY: Okay, great. I love Wimbledon.
ALEX: The NBA Finals are the other week, right? Like, it’s—it feels like a whole new world.
BOBBY: That feels like a month ago has—
ALEX: Uh, yes. It really does.
BOBBY: Did you watch the NBA Finals, even though your beloved Warriors were knocked out early?
ALEX: Here and there. I mean, we were—actually, we were together when the—the Finals ended, I believe.
BOBBY: No. Nope.
ALEX: No, no. We weren’t.
BOBBY: We weren’t. I watched it from the couch at my parents’ home. Although, I think it—
ALEX: It shows you how much how closely I was watching.
BOBBY: I think it was like the day after we were together. We were together for, like, games three and four, I think.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Not watching them.
ALEX: No, not watching them, but recognizing the—
BOBBY: Actually, I think we watched game three.
ALEX: Yes. Yeah.
BOBBY: What’s your take on Nikola Jokic, just like as a figure, as a personality?
ALEX: Uh, you mean an anti-work king?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah. Uh, a man who so clearly is uninterested in the job that he’s doing.
BOBBY: Yup.
ALEX: And just wants to go home.
BOBBY: But he’s also a genius at it. He’s kind of like how I consider you as a podcaster.
ALEX: I don’t, uh—
BOBBY: Uninterested in doing this show, but your talents are so immensely, you just have to give them to the world.
ALEX: Uh, a bit backhanded, but I appreciate it, nonetheless.
BOBBY: What if I just took on a villain persona? Like, what if we took on like Mike and the Mad Dog, like we started fighting over the course of two years progress—more progressively—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —every week?
ALEX: A little Shannon and Skip energy?
BOBBY: Ooh. Who’s who? I hope that—I mean, I guess in this—in this analogy, I’m more of a— more of a Skip, more of a—more of a media insider.
ALEX: Right. Yeah.
BOBBY: That hurts. Um, okay. We have a fun episode planned for everybody. We’re going to talk to, uh, Debbie Sharnak who’s a professor at, uh, Rowan University. Uh, some of you will remember that last year, Alex and I did a—somewhat of a live show at Rowan University. Um, we went and we spoke to a sports broadcasting class at [5:46] uh, held a—I don’t even know how to describe it. We held a panel, we talked to some professors and Debbie was one of those professors. And we really enjoyed, um, speaking with her and, uh, getting to know her after that panel, too. And one of her focuses just so happens to have a lot of crossover with our show, it’s—um, she specifically teaches Latin American history, but, um, with a special interest in human rights, in, um, United States and Latin American relations, specifically with regards to sports. And so, a lot of her—her research and her studies are centered in this idea of the way that U—United States sports present themselves in Latin countries. And, though, that’s something that we don’t talk about a ton on the show, because it’s like a really, really huge topic that, like, is not best served by talking about in 10-minute increments. Um, there are a lot of new stories that have happened within the last few years that we’ve brought up. Um, there’s, uh, there’s currently, uh, an outstanding lawsuit, um, against the Angels for reneging on, uh, verbal agreements with prospects. We’ve talked a little bit about the academies. We’ve talked about the International Draft when talking about the collective bargaining agreements. So, we thought it was finally time to bring on an expert in this field and have a full conversation about the state of some of these things. So, I’m really excited for people to get to listen to that. Um, and then at the end, we’re—we’re gonna do—we’re gonna close out with a couple of mailbag questions, but before we get to that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I’m Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[theme]
BOBBY: Alex, very quickly, before we bring in Debbie, a couple housekeeping things. We’re finding you a new team. It could be the same team. We could—we could Ring Around the Rosie and all fall down back with the Oakland Athletics.
ALEX: It’s possible. That’d be pretty, uh, that’d be a pretty bleak outcome. Although, I would appreciate—I—
BOBBY: It’d be like a really depressing romance movie where, like, someone finally gets free from their toxic relationship and then at the end, he goes back to them.
ALEX: I—I would admire the—the fan who can make the impassioned case for rooting for the Las Vegas A’s given that—that they don’t exist. The players on the team now will not be on that team, like, almost certainly. So—
BOBBY: Some might say that’s a pro as well.
ALEX: So you’re—you’re kind of relying on, like, the Las Vegas Strip to make your—to make your case.
BOBBY: Once we found out you’re an avid sports bettor.
ALEX: That is true.
BOBBY: We found that out last week. Um, speaking of impassioned cases, um, many of you have already made an impassioned case. Um, we appreciate those who have sent in their emails or their voicemails, um, trying to lobby Alex to become a fan of either their team or what team they think is the best team to be a fan of. Uh, it’s about two-ish weeks before we record that podcast still, um, so I encourage folks if they haven’t sent anything in yet to—to continue to pitch Alex because that is gonna be sort of the—we’re gonna layer those pitches in when it aligns with the team that we’re sort of putting through Alex’s rubric. So, I’m very much looking forward to that episode. I’m also looking forward to, uh, a huge milestone that we have coming up. Alluded to this last week on the show, we asked people to send in questions of a yes or no variety or of a very short answer variety. We need a bunch of questions, just a shit ton of questions for this podcast, just, uh, ungodly amount of questions for this podcast. So we’ve put a—uh, we’ve created a Google forum where you can submit these questions. We’ve put it as a link in the description of this episode. We have—uh, we have also tweeted it out, um, and we will continue to share it. That recording is not happening for quite a while, um, but because we need so many questions, and because there’s like slightly different style questions, yes or no, short answer, um, and because they don’t really need to be about baseball. It can kind of be about anything that you want to ask us about. Uh, we are signaling that well in the future so that we have ample supply for this milestone podcast.
ALEX: Yeah, I’m really excited for—for this one. Uh, I’m really excited to see the questions that we get. Uh, as you said they—they can run the gamut and they have already started to, so keep—keep them coming or—
BOBBY: More fun than answering questions is just seeing what questions people ask.
ALEX: Absolutely.
BOBBY: Like, I quite enjoy it. Our listeners are very smart and very funny.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: Some might be funnier than us.
ALEX: Well, I know. I kind of want to turn the tables a little bit. Like, uh, like for the next milestone, we get to ask the listeners all of these questions.
BOBBY: It’s just a live show where we interview every listener.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: That sounds fun. Uh, okay. Let’s, uh, let’s bring in Debbie Sharnak.
SPEAKER 3: It’s an all-night drive from your house to Reno, to the T-bird graveyard where we play with fire. In another life, we were arsonists.
BOBBY: Okay. We are so delighted to be joined by Debbie Sharnak, a professor at Rowan University. Hi, Debbie. How are you?
DEBBIE: Good. How are you guys doing today?
ALEX: Doing well.
BOBBY: Doing okay, hanging in there. Um, Debbie, you’re here to talk about a very weighty topic, a very large topic, a very unwieldy topic. Um, it’s Major League Baseball and also just kind of like professional sports impact, um, from an international perspective. Um, I—I wanted to start by—just for our listeners, um, and for us, like hearing about how this became something that you wanted to focus on. Um, there’s—you know, I was reading this, um, interview that you gave, um, on Rowan website about the news, sports and society minor that you just got, um, funding for—which congratulations. Um, and, you know, you talked about how sports are, uh, often, from a collegiate perspective, from an academic perspective studied from the business and finance and management side and how, um, you think it’s more—uh, it’s just as important to study them from a humanities perspective. So, Alex and I were wondering kind of how you came to this conclusion in your research and why this specific sort of topic appeals to you.
DEBBIE: Yeah. Wonderful. I’m thrilled to talk about it—of course, to talk about our new program as well, so I think you—
BOBBY: You got the plug in there early on in the first couple of minutes.
DEBBIE: I know. I love it. Um, that’s wonderful. Yes. So, yeah, I am a historian of—of human rights more broadly, specifically with a focus on Latin America and kind of international history. So, my research has not started from a sports perspective. Uh, my first book, which I will also kind of shamelessly plug because it was released just this month and—
BOBBY: Oh, wow. Another congratulations.
DEBBIE: Thank you. Um, but this book is really almost has nothing to do with sports, but it’s about Uruguay and thinking about its human rights history and its process of accountability after human rights. And as one might imagine, I’m kind of a sports [12:48] as one, I was a college athlete myself. Um, I was interested—and became very interested in Uruguay’s own record of—you know, and success really in international soccer, as one might imagine, right? They far punched above their weight, um, as a country of only three million people, the smallest country in South America. And they were—you know, have won multiple World Cups. Um, they still do his—do historically really well in the World Cup despite last year. But they did, you know, just win the World Cup for year 20 [13:22] as well, for the first time ever, just this past month as well. So, there’s still—you know, there’s future. There’s, uh, there’s hope for their future. But all of this got me thinking a lot about—because I study their period of dictatorship, which was during the late Cold War. Like, how do we think about both Uruguay’s own history of human rights and international soccer, but also other countries, right? So thinking about Argentina and Chile, and their records of understanding how the politics of the dictatorship interacted with soccer as well has become really important. And part of the reason, it’s like the most well-known case of what we now call sportwashing was in Argentina in 1978, when they hosted the World Cup and won the World Cup, um, meanwhile, one of the most brutal dictatorships in all of Latin America was taking place against this backdrop. So, my own research, in a future book that I’m writing, is exactly on that relationship, but it got me thinking much more broadly about how we understand the intersection and how we can better understand history by actually looking at it through the perspectives of sports, right? There’s—as you guys know, in your podcasts, this so well as you can separate baseball or sports in general from the larger politics, whether it’s economics, um, whether it’s unionization or whatever it ends up being. And that’s been my plug, right? We—I came up and I was writing my dissertation during the time when they were telling LeBron James, “Just shut up and dribble,” and Colin Kaepernick. And I started teaching classes, um, really back then, um, in the 2000 teens, about the intersection of politics and society. And that’s only become I think more and more important in our current landscape, especially in the last few years, post-2020. And I think it’s really important that students, especially that are going into this landscape, aren’t just studying it from a business or communications perspective. And actually are understanding how everyday societal issues cannot only impact their own jobs or potential future career paths in sports, but how broader conversations that are taking place in society are also reflective of some of the dynamics that are going on in the sports leagues. And we can’t really separate them. At least, that’s my—my major argument to my students.
ALEX: Yeah, definitely. I mean, we—you know, we’re having this conversation amid, um, a—you know, the—the big news about, uh, in golf, right? With the merging of the Saudi Arabian, uh, Gulf League and the—the PGA, and that has raised a lot of these, like, very distinct discussions, right? About sort of what the responsibility is for us as we look at our own sports and sports more globally, um, kind of how—you know, the interfacing of sports with the societal context that they’re—that they’re placed in, certainly. And—and baseball has a really, really long—I mean, just because of its really long history—
DEBBIE: Yeah.
ALEX: —long history with interfacing with these very things, right? The—that baseball is a sort of export to various countries. Baseball as a—a point of national pride. Um, uh, I mean, how do you kind of contextualize that history when you think of, I guess, where baseball is at today? Um, and when you look at sort of how baseball has grown in—especially these sort of Latin American countries, um, and more broadly speaking—I mean, when you think about that sort of what comes to—to mind?
DEBBIE: Yeah. That’s a great question. Right. I’m a historian, so, you know, my class, actually, often starts out—um, when I teach the history of sports, society and politics in Latin America, we don’t start just by talking about what’s going on right now. We start with the fact that baseball itself is a product of cultural imperialism, right? The reason that we see it, um, in certain places, in Latin America much more prominently, is because this is where the United States has had its greatest impact, right? And they brought it there, you know, in Cuba in the 1860s as the United States was establishing economic bases on the island prior to the actual revolution, which gained independence from Spain. You know, the United States was trying to establish an economic presence, and that’s why baseball was so prominent on that island, similar in the same way to the Dominican Republic, but just a little bit later, right? Um, Venezuela as well, right? It was bought by oil men that were there in the 19 teens [17:47] and were establishing US oil presences there. So, there’s a really deep history to even where we see it as most prominent in Latin America today as a product of US cultural imperialism. And while it’s not necessarily a direct product of, you know, the United States, um, government these days, right? Or—or—or, you know, economic interest as such from a trade perspective, it is very much, I think, a product of a different type of imperialism. One we might call like MLB imperialism, right? And—and, uh, as—as I think a lot of the issues that we see, and we can talk about later with the MLB are, uh, you know, a direct product of some of those uneven power relationships that we saw in the very beginning of the sports development.
BOBBY: Do you think that—I’m trying to figure out how to phrase this question, because I—I’m always, like, mindful of—I’m trying not to, like, um, discuss MLB as like something that has one mind and, like, thinks in one specific way, because, obviously, there have been differentiations to how teams have operated in the international market, because these are—in theory, like they’re 30 separate companies and they’re all banded together as like a trade organization under Major League Baseball. And they very much operate in different ways. Like, for a long time, the Orioles did not sign international free agents, because, um, uh, I don’t know, there’s—there’s, uh, some speculation as to why whether the owners were just didn’t like the way that that worked or whether they were just not as well connected and didn’t build that part of their organization out. Um, but that has changed in recent years, and now it seems like almost—almost every team is participating in this market in a similar way. Um, so, I guess from like a historical perspective, like, when did it start to become the type of thing where teams saw these countries not as just exports of a product of where they could create fans, um, and create a desire for baseball to be something that they were interested in, but as a place where they could actually recruit talent, develop value for their organization from a monetary perspective through players and prospects?
DEBBIE: Yeah. Um, well, I traced the moment, I think—uh, historians can look at, like, lots of different moments, but I think one of the key juncture points was actually in 1962, um, with the San Francisco Giants, right? It was at that moment, um, where they recruited four players for, um, $5,000 total. Um, at that point, right, American players were getting, like, 50-60K signing bonuses, even in the 1960s. And then the, uh, Giants went on that year to actually win the National League pennant, right? And it was at that moment where I think teams started saying, “Wait a second,” um, not only in the Dominican Republic, but in other places in Latin America. This is gonna be a key frontier for developing new—new talent. And, of course, with free agency, um, in the 1970s that also became, you know, I would say, a second key juncture moment where if there was already expansion of international talent in Latin America, that was another key moment where it began to explode. And now, I mean, it’s just—it’s out—it’s almost out of control, right? And I think that this is why we’re starting to, at least, begin to talk—and we’ve been doing it for over a decade now, but I think it’s getting serious again or—you know, in theory, it’s getting serious again, because the, um, violations that have been taking place, uh, not only by different organizations, but also against some of these—these kids, right? And—and what they’re subjected to and us learning a little bit more about what kids from Latin America are subjected to in these processes, is created another call for regulation, whether it actually happens or not. And—and when it does—I mean, you know, some people thought it was gonna happen in 2012. and we’re still talking about it. Um, but I think that I would—I would argue there’s a real need, uh, to have some further regulation of the international market to protect the Latino baseball players, if nothing else.
ALEX: Yeah. I mean, there’s definitely been, uh, ample discussion over the last decade or so. Uh, at the very least, just—just discussion, right? About the various, uh, infractions of—of baseball teams doing these backroom deals, reneging on deals. Um, Bobby, you alluded to the—the Angels lawsuit where there were—there are two minor leaguers, right, who got verbal contracts. Uh, they’re—they’re both under 16, uh, at the time of these—these verbal agreements. It was caught on video. The angels backed out, and now they are—uh, they’re suing the team. And this feels like—I mean, it’s all too common that we sort of see this sort of thing these days. And as you—as you mentioned, like there’s a huge power imbalance there, right? Where there’s—this—this multibillion dollar—this multibillion dollar industry that’s going in and saying, “You have—we think you have talent to—to play baseball and you may have very few other economic opportunities.” Right? “So, come in, come to our academy that we’ve established. You can come in and sort of play by our rules, and if you’re good enough, we’ll—we’ll send you up to the—to the big guys,” right, “Up north.” I mean, how—how do you—how does this sort of, I guess, relate to that broader recognition of exploitation and—and how has that sort of calcified, I guess, in the last 10-20 years as this sort of practice in the—in the Wild, Wild West where there’s very little regulation down there? There’s been discussion of an International Draft, but it hasn’t come to pass yet. I mean, what is the sort of state of, uh, of—of baseball in—in Latin America, I guess, right now?
DEBBIE: Yeah. Well, I—I want to put a few things on the table, right? One is that we’re talking about the Angels lawsuit and—and I think that for every lawsuit that actually comes to the, uh, court system, we have to think about how many cases aren’t, right? Whether it’s because there’s not that evidence, um, right? Because what makes this case specific is that it was caught on video, right? I mean, the evidence—there’s a real purpose to not documenting it and not letting people document because if it falls through—um, you know, again, thinking about this power imbalance, like these leagues have, you know, so much more cash than these, you know, kids from Latin America and these families to be able to fight them. So, this particular case has been brought forward, but we have to think about how many dozens, if not hundreds, you know, if not more than that, cases where these deals are reneged upon, but there’s no ability to seek any sort of reparations for—and/or damages for what occurred, right? So, I think there’s, like, that issue, just thinking about the scale at which these infractions occur. I think the other thing is, um, thinking about how to regulate potentially this—what you call the Wild West, which I think is potentially, a—a—a not bad, um, description of it. And I want to say, like, upfront that I don’t—I—I think if I had a solution for it, it would have been sitting in my office in Glassboro, New Jersey and, uh—uh, you know, be in a much better—you know, more prestigious conditions eventually influencing policy outcome. But what historians and scholars who are at large are really good at is, like, pointing out the problems, so I’ll at least do that, right?
ALEX: Yeah.
DEBBIE: Within that—um, you know, the International Draft, for example, is one semblance of regulation, um, but I think there’s a reason that the owners are the ones pushing it more than anyone else, right? And that’s because it will drive down signing bonuses. Um, and so they really wanna see it for that reason, I mean—but, of course, the Players Association, and especially, uh, Latino players, like many of them don’t want to. And, of course, the loudest voice, I think that we hear most often against the International Draft is actually David Ortiz. Um, but I also think that that’s problematic as well, right? Because, um, again, like, I’m a white woman that lives in South Jersey and have never been through this system, but the fact of the matter is, the people that are—a lot—some of the people that are arguing against it have succeeded based on this system, right? And that these people, like David Ortiz, were able to capitalize on that free market to then go on and make it really big in the Major Leagues. And that potential opportunity for huge bonuses and potential success, I understand very much why those people would want to see continue. There’s also, of course, like this whole ecosystem, right? Um, at every level in the Dominican Republic, that would be offended by an International Draft, and lots of people kind of skimming money off the [26:40] that don’t necessarily benefit the players. But there is that huge ecosystem that exists that they also don’t want to see, um, be subjected to the regulation of an International Draft. But, of course, like, conversely, the problem is that we’re talking about, as you said upfront, a lot of Latino baseball players that are entering—what we might call like a lottery system, right? Well, because that’s the chances of it actually—you know, becoming a David Ortiz, um, exists, right? There are so many kids are, like, leaving their school, and their homes, and their families to go train at some of these academies. Not even MLB academies that—you know, like these—again, thinking about the ecosystem is Dominican-run academies, um, set up by trainers, right? That are gonna sign these handshake deals that may or may not be reneg upon, um, at the age of 12,13, 14 years old, where these kids aren’t even fully developed. That’s why they’re take—you know, these trainers are pushing, um, steroids and peds to them. And it’s just—you know, again, like the white woman sitting in South Jersey can point out all of these issues, but the fact of the matter is, it’s incredibly exploitative to these kids that, um, that can be taken advantage of not only by these deals that aren’t necessarily followed through by the trainers that, um, you know, don’t have a lot of regulation, but have a percentage of the signing bonuses and, you know, do things like bundle [28:11] kids and, you know, potentially lie to them. And we just—again, if I’m gonna convince you guys or any of your listeners to go get a PhD, I think there’s a lot of research to be done, um, after a very thorough IRB process, about, um, to—to learn a little bit more about these systems. He’s—it’s gonna be that person that sits in a very illustrious position that’s able to change it.
BOBBY: When we’re talking about this, I’m reminded of a conversation that we had, um, with two filmmakers, two documentarians last year on the show. Um, the—uh, Sami Khan and Michael Gassert, who made a documentary called The Last Out, um, in 2020, which played at Tribeca, um, and—and got released wide, not that long ago. And so, we talked to them about their—their documentary, which is harrowing and fantastic, and, like, we encourage people to watch it at the time. But it’s about three Cuban baseball players who defect from Cuba, and go to Central America. And it’s about their path to try to make it—to be signed by Major League Baseball teams, um, so that they can—so—so that they can actually get to the United States, because the direct—um, you can’t emigrate from Cuba into the United States because of the trade embargo that is still active. And so, just being able to see how those sort of, like, macro-economic and—and international political, um, systems grind all the way down to the point where these three kids have to go on, like, migrant buses to try to sneak into the United States, because they’re signing fell through with the Angels or whatever, um, or the Astros. Like, that is just—it—it’s the type of thing where it—it’s rare that you actually see those—those direct lines, um, put on screen or like—or—or talked about, and I think that’s why, you know, this Angels lawsuit is getting the attention that it is, is because there are very few examples of—that you can point to. It’s like this happened to this person. It’s just like these things—
DEBBIE: Yeah.
BOBBY: —are happening to these people more often.
DEBBIE: Yeah.
BOBBY: And, I mean, I think a large part of that is because the way that baseball development happens in the United States and out of the United States is that at various levels, there are all of these people who are, you know, for lack of a better phrase, rent-seeking. And we’ve talked about this a lot on the show where it’s like, “Okay. My kid is—my kid is 10 now, now there’s a trainer, and they want to make money off my kid. And now, my kid is 13 and they’re actually good.”
DEBBIE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: “If they’re in the United States, they might have to go to perfect game, and perfect game, might wanna make money on these kids.” And then at—at the high school level, there’s private institutions that wanna say that they can train these kids and get them ready for Major League Baseball in the draft. “And they want to make tens of thousands of dollars off my kid.” And when you put that in an international context, there’s, like, much less opportunity for regulation and oversight, and it manifests in—all these ways that you’re talking about where, like, the trainer— trainers are setting up academies and some of them have better intentions than others. And MLB teams will say, “Well, we don’t know what to do about that. We—we’re not the governments of these various countries and we can only come in and try to sign these kids and give them an opportunity.” And if you want to do an International Draft, then that’s great. But I find it curious that the solution that they come up with always seems to be sort of a half-measure in their favor. Because if you institute an International Draft now and you don’t do anything else, well, everybody before the age of 16 is still going through the same exact process and still going through the same training to garner the attention of MLB teams in the International Draft. And so, I mean, much like you, Alex and I don’t have the—the silver bullet to solve this problem, and if we did, I think we would be, like, uh, knocking on the door of the White House, being like, “Hey, Mr. Biden, we’ve got the answer.” But, um, I don’t know, because it—it’s a compelling case in both directions. Like, I think players like David Ortiz and Fernando Tatis, Jr. and—and others have come out against the, um, International Draft. But a free market—in—in theory, not even practice, a free market never actually works, but that’s our—that’s our political opinion. But, like, a free market in theory only works if there are certain, like, laws that are being followed, and that international free market doesn’t have the same, you know, concept of access that we think a free market needs to have in order for it to function, like we have in the United States.
DEBBIE: That’s right. I think that’s—that’s huge and I also think, like, even just seeing the recent unionization of Minor League players, right? Um, there is—I don’t—there’s really no potential for unionization of international players in the same way that would even begin to think about giving them any sense of bargaining power. Um, so it—it’s—in addition to the lack of regulation, it’s, again, coming back to this really, um, gross power imbalance that has produced so many of the issues that, you know, we’ve been talking about.
ALEX: How does this sort of play out on the ground in these communities that—that MLB is going into, right? Because they’re coming in, they—they might be setting up an academy or a, um, uh, you know, an exhibition or something. Uh, they’re going in and kind of imposing these American cultural norms of playing baseball. Obviously, there’s a—you know, there’s a—somewhat of a culture clash between the way that baseball is played in America and the way that it’s played literally everywhere else, right? But—so there’s an imposition of—of cultural norms to a certain extent, and they’re also saying, you know, “And then if you’re good enough, we’re gonna pluck you out of your community and bring you to America. And then you’ll—you know, you can become a star here and whatnot.” And I—I—it feels like there’s very little regard for, like, the institutions of sport or baseball as they exist in the—the countries that they’re going into, right? They’re just gonna say, “If you’re good enough, we’ll—we’ll get you out of here.” Right? And so, how does that kind of, I guess, play out in these communities of baseball that, like, already exist, right? And might have a sort of national pride to them or a really important, like, community value? Uh, I guess I’m kind of curious, your perspective on that?
DEBBIE: Yeah. I mean, that’s a great question. I think really important—my—my mind is saying that—my—I’ve spent the most time in—you know, multiple years at this point in South America, um, in the Southern Cone, where as you might imagine, there’s a lot less baseball than in other parts, um, of Latin America. So, I—I would say, A, I have a little less expertise on that, but I also wanna say that, fundamentally, the alter—the corollary to what you’re saying is in addition to understanding the diversity of cultural sport norms in the United States versus Latin America is—also understanding how it exists differently in every Latin American country, right? Um, and also understanding how it has been impacted by the presence or lack of presence of the MLB in these—in these countries, right? So the Dominican Republic, as you might imagine, has been the most impacted by the MLB. Especially now that over the last 10 years, all of the academies in Venezuela, which I think used to be competitive in terms of creating different MLB’s spaces, has all been consolidated in the Dominican Republic ever since, you know, these academies started shutting down and—whether it was 2015 and 2016, that they really started shutting down in Venezuela, because I think there used to be, you know, options, especially for thinking about where the MLB recruited from, where now everybody from Venezuela is going to the Dominican Republic, right? And it’s just consolidated there. Um, you know, obviously, we—we can get into this too, thinking about like—things like the World Baseball Classic that have, I think, are expressions in so many ways of national pride, but now there’s, um, so many players that aren’t playing on their national teams because of their MLB contracts, uh, right? I think this was—uh—uh, the World Baseball Classic ended up being surprisingly, um, entertaining, but I remember reading a lot before, everybody has been worried because so many players were, um, not gonna play about its impact on—whether it would even be a good, um, you know, sporting event, for example. Um, but more broadly—and—and I—I—we can get into a lot of the very detailed specifics, is that the way that the, you know, MLB comes in and especially in the Dominican Republic which I know the most about, drives all of the activity towards gearing people up for potential academy, uh, you know, tryouts and before the big scouts. I mean, that’s—that’s the biggest problem. And what you see in—in other countries now as well, and scouts encourage players to do this, to send their kids to the Dominican Republic. So, it’s not even just Dominican kids that are in these academies at early ages now. There are people who are sending their players from other countries to the Dominican academies, because the MLB is trying to consolidate, right? It’s cheaper. It’s cheaper for them if everybody is in—in those academies. So, again, it’s really with—withdrawing and, uh, extracting major talent at every level and, like, you know, separating kids and—and young boys from their families. Um, especially when you think about, “Well, who’s gonna be most likely to send them to the Dominican Republic away from their families?” Oftentimes, it’s people that see an economic need. And that’s why, you know, I can sit here and talk about its exploitative nature, um, but I think there needs to be a lot of people that do—uh, you know, uh, this is like the problem of academia that you—you—you—you don’t know a lot about it. You wanna tell people to do the research, but people on the ground and doing those sorts of ethnographic, uh, interviews and finding out exactly how these systems work, and at what levels people are going in, and promising these kids major money, right? In order to send them to these academies. I mean, I only know from what I’ve been reading, but that’s—that’s where I see it as—as a major problem.
BOBBY: Yeah. It’s fascinating the proliferation of academies, especially in the Dominican Republic, and, of course, uh, in Puerto Rico, because, you know, Puerto—Puerto Rican players are part of the MLB Draft, because Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States. And so, there’s—that was sort of, like, codified as part of the similar to the United States development structure for—for longer. But how teams—um, how we talked about teams being on, like, the cutting edge of international development as like putting—pouring more resources into the Dominican Republic, and how the Yankees have like, I don’t know, like, three or four Dominican Republic teams down there, because they have such a huge academy. I mean, it’s—it’s fascinating because the way that you’re—you—the way that you’re describing about the scouts, um, in Venezuela and other South American and Central American countries, just encouraging kids to go to the Dominican—Dominican Republic and get this—this very specific tailored academy training to impress scouts so that they can, um, uh, hope to be, you know, tendered this contract, so that they can eventually get to the United States and go through this ringer of itself, that—that is the Minor Leagues. It’s like—it’s such a long shot and it strikes me as really resonant with the—with the question that we asked you at the beginning of this conversation. You know, what are the differences between looking at sports as a business and sports as a managerial practice versus interfacing with sports from a humanities perspective and inter— interfacing it with from a—with it from a societal perspective. Like, if you’re asking 12, 13, 14, 15, 16-year-old kids to—to—the best 12, 13, 14, 15, 16-year-old kids to—to leave their country’s baseball scene for what amounts to be like a very minimal chance that they actually make it in the United States and make any real money that is life-changing for them. Then what you’re effectively doing is, like, decimating how the sport exist in the original country before kids leave and go to Dominican Republic or leave and go to the United States, or wherever. You are—you’re imposing your will for the sake of Major League Baseball’s long-term economic viability on the sport. And so, that’s why it’s always—we’ve always been railing against Rob Manfred’s idea of, like, One Baseball, like bringing in all under this umbrella, is because his One Baseball is talking about like a—a One Baseball that facilitates the economic viability of Major League Baseball. Not a One Baseball where you’re pouring resources into these other countries, and building a burgeoning scene—
DEBBIE: Yes.
BOBBY: —in—in that country, so that they can have a healthy baseball ecosystem, and we can have a healthy baseball ecosystem, and they can interface. It’s more so like we are going to extract all of your baseball talent for the sake of our One Baseball. I mean—and—and that’s—
DEBBIE: Yes.
BOBBY: Like, I know that’s sort of, like, a long roundabout way of saying like, “MLB is not doing good things.” But I wonder from, you know, from your perspective, like who’s—who do you think is going to need to be the first group with power in this equation to, like, start undoing some of their practices? Like, is it Major League Baseball? Is it the United States government? Is it like these other countries, governments are going to need to say like, “No, we don’t want to interface with the MLB in this way.”? Like, I—uh, it’s such a challenging question, but I’m wondering, you know, through the history and through your research, like if you have sort of—if you’re leaning kind of in one way or another?
DEBBIE: I wish I could say yes, but—but actually trying to quibble with, like, one thing you said, which might impact my answer a little bit
BOBBY: Yeah, sure.
DEBBIE: Which is—it’s not even about the long-term MLB economic viability, right? Because, although, obviously, it’s great to have, like, exciting players from Latin America. It’s actually what you said earlier that is the main sticking point, which is—it’s about the competitive advantage of each team, right? And that’s actually what’s driving the competition in Latin America.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
DEBBIE: It’s each team hoping to get as much talent for as cheap as they possibly can in order to win more championships. And that’s what’s driving so much of what we see. It’s not even like the MLB writ large, um, and the MLB—like, they obviously see value in it, but it’s—it’s not the MLB driving, and it’s all these 30 individual teams that are trying to figure out how they can figure out what San Francisco did in 1962—
BOBBY: Right.
DEBBIE: —and find some way—that—right? That’s why, like, um, recruiting now is also not just at the main—like, it’s not—like, “Okay. Who’s gonna come to these main academies?” You see scouts going out to, like, these, you know, remote parts of the Dominican Republic, for example, in order to bring people to some of the more mainstream academies, because now that’s—you know, for some of the teams, like the Orioles now do this actually, which is thinking about how they’ve, you know, really changed their tune, is they’ll send scouts to—you know, because they just built like, um, last, like, year or two, um, a new training facility like triple the—double or triple the size of their last one. Um, and what they’re doing is they’re also sending scouts to remote parts of the island in order to say, “Well, okay, if we can find a kid that is playing in their neighborhood league that looks like they might have potential, we can bring them, you know, into the system earlier.” And that’s like a new thing, um, that’s happening as well. So, this is all to say that it’s not even just the MLB writ large, is that it’s each individual team that’s driving, I think, a lot of some of these practices, right? Um—
BOBBY: Which in a way, it makes it harder, because even if—
DEBBIE: Yes.
BOBBY: —someone at the MLB central office was like, “This absolutely has to change.” It’s like, well, then, how do you get all 30 teams on the same page when there is going to be this built-in competitive advantage to finding a—
DEBBIE: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: —kid in these—in these South and Central American countries and everywhere, across the—you know, across the world, because, you know, Alex, you were talking about how there’s—they’re now expanding academies—the academies structure to Africa and Europe as well—
DEBBIE: Yeah.
BOBBY: —and so that—these practices are just gonna be replicated. I mean, the—the financial incentive for—for, uh, one individual team to find a kid with this high upside is, like, exorbitant, which is maybe getting us on the path to, like, what the answer is, which is like change the— change the financial in—incentive for, like, player by player.
DEBBIE: That’s right. And—and—right. But that’s—I mean, that—that gets into the difficult issue, right? Which I would argue seems to me to be the best solution. Um, but the—it—it feels
anathema to me that—that then is, like, the owner argument, because for them, it’s dragging down signing bonuses and taking away opportunity from these Latin American players. But, again, at what expense, right? Are we take—and—and that’s kind of the question, right? Um, and that’s why if—I think, you know, with the collective bargaining agreement, where the International Draft fell through in large part was with this—uh, what—what those initials signing structure would be for the slots and, like, what the actual numbers would be, because the players association, they didn’t want it to be very high and lots of other benefits. Whereas, um, the MLB wanted it to be at a much lower level and this is, um, you know, what much smarter people that followed, uh, the agreements in real-time were saying was just like, you know, “Real bad faith efforts at negotiation,” because neither one was ever gonna meet in the middle with it. I mean, and—some argue that it was closer than it’s ever been before in this agreement, even though they’ve been talking about it for over a decade, but we’ll see. I mean, we’re now locked in without a draft, potentially, for another three, four years. Um, so I think the other thing that like—I’m just gonna throw it out there, which is a whole potentially other topic, um, but I’ll at least, like, put it on the table, which is, uh, John Coppolella’s, um, you know, 2017 lifetime ban, um, for all of the violations of international signing. What really struck me about that—um, and, like, why he’s now no longer, um, subject to this lifetime ban, is that what, uh—
BOBBY: That’s quite a short lifetime. I’m hoping my lifetime lasts a little bit longer than that.
DEBBIE: Exactly. Exactly. My big problem with this, um, and the overturn is, like, Rob Manfred basically said that it wasn’t even what he did in—with the international signing, which was why he received the lifetime ban that was then not upheld. It was, you know, in the most Nixonian sense, like the cover-up, right? Not the actual crime. And I think that if we actually start focusing in, at least at some level, on the actual crimes that are being committed, that’s gonna be a first step, too. Um, so, I’ll just, you know, put that on the table with my own anger at what happened.
ALEX: Yeah. No. It’s—every few years, Rob Manfred, like, reevaluates a decision that he—he made a few years ago and it’s like, “Oh”—like, last night, he was like, “Oh, maybe I should have punished the Astros players for cheating.” You know? And it’s like, “All right, sure. Whatever, dude.” Like—
BOBBY: I just like—I don’t need Rob Manfred’s internal monologue.
ALEX: No, I don’t. But, like, in, you know, in my—in my time in, uh, in college, you know, I spent some time, like, studying the US and its relation to, like, oil in the Global South, right? And, like, this idea—
BOBBY: That’s what your thesis is on, right?
ALEX: Uh, right, exactly. And this idea of, like, extractive—uh, extractive capitalism, you know? And I’m always struck when these conversations come up of the similarities, right? And, again—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —it like—like, it feels, um, inhumane to think about, like, you know, people and their talents as like a, you know, “product,” but it also is, like, exactly how the teams are thinking about it, right? Bobby, you mentioned that, like, the—the Dodgers just established this academy in Uganda, right? And they’re the first MLB team to have a presence in—in Europe or—or Africa. And—and it feels, again, like, um, like an—an organization that has realized, “Hey, there’s like—there’s more out there that we can extract from the world.”
DEBBIE: Yeah.
ALEX: Right? And I don’t know that I have a coherent question about that, but I’m—I’m sort of wondering how you do, I guess, characterize or contextualize this in the broader conversation about, like, US presence overseas and that idea of, like, extractive capitalism as a means of, like, bolstering our sort of, like, economic growth?
DEBBIE: Yeah. I—uh, you know, I think what we started this conversation with, it comes back to again here, right? Which is that if, historically, the United States had developed a larger economic presence in Uganda or Africa, for example, um, his—you know, there’s—I think if we look back to that, we would have seen baseball academies in Uganda and Africa much earlier. I think there is a direct correlation between the close economic relationships and—and extractive relationships that the United States had in certain parts of the Caribbean and Latin America, um, that produced the desire to have these now other sort of extractive sports relationships that mirror these larger economic relationships, right? And this is, again, like, all coming back to why we’re so excited to get this miner off the ground at Rowan, right? Because it’s understanding the current structures of the MLB that are deeply connected to a historical presence, right? And therefore, it’s—you know, for me, it’s—it’s, uh—uh, you know, so obvious, right? That the United States just like, “Oh, once we saw that there was, you know, potential closing of market opportunity,” or that they have, um, you know, completely extracted what they could, um, from Latin America, but wanted to expand, where did we start going? To Asia, and to Africa, and other parts of the globe. So now that that’s been replicated by the MLB is a historical continuity that feels, you know, all too relevant. Um, so—well, I mean, the difference, of course, being the deeper cultural connections that have—you know, this is also a problem of, like, larger US history, which is that the United States thinks that they can just go in and kind of say, “Oh, this system was really successful in one part of the world,” and without understanding the local realities, saying that, “Oh, we should just do this somewhere else and try to get the same economic benefit there.” Well, there isn’t the same baseball culture in these parts of the world, and whether the United States is going to be able to successfully go and create that, and with globalization and TV, and streaming and the internet, and—you know, maybe that will end up happening, but, um, there’s a reason that they’re, at least, several decades, if not hundreds of years behind, and that’s a direct, uh, correlation to the United States’ presence in different parts of the globe.
ALEX: There’s definitely a hubris with that—of them kind of just being like, “Hey, if we’re gonna come plant our flag here.” You know? Come one, come all. Come play the—the baseball, right? It’s like—
BOBBY: Maybe this is because we follow baseball so closely and because we are so critical of, like, MLB and institutions in general. But when I look at how baseball, like, talks about itself as a sport, I don’t see, like, the people with the most power in this sport, like, wanting to create healthy baseball environments around the world. Like, I see them wanting to talk about how it’s going to impact their prospect development, and how it’s going to impact their brand across the world. But, like, if you take soccer, for example, their—this academy structure has existed in soccer in Europe and in other parts of the world, like, for as long as baseball has been around, you know? Like, this is the way that soccer players are developed. We had a—a whole episode about soccer development versus youth development of baseball players in the United States with Ryan O’Hanlon.
DEBBIE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And I think that, though, it is like nakedly financial and economic, the way that those—uh, the way that those academies operate. I also think that people within the soccer world talk about soccer being the global sport and that meaning something to communities in a way that people within the baseball world don’t talk about baseball. And maybe that is qualitative and maybe that is hard to pin down, but, like, as someone who follows these things and tries to be mindful of these things and baseball’s impact, like, in the international world, I don’t hear a ton of people that seem like they really have the best intentions.
DEBBIE: It—you know, it—it—again, this is why I don’t have the solution and it’s a problem because I’m also a fan of sports, of the—
BOBBY: Yeah. Yeah.
DEBBIE: But, um, but I—I think that, uh—uh, what’s needed is a lot of people with the best intentions, um, and also regulations, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
DEBBIE: Um, and it’s hard when we’re talking about international markets, these are talking about two different legal systems, too. Um, and enforcement systems, right? Especially like even thinking about the Angels lawsuit, like there’s a reason that that case was filed in a Dominican courtroom and not a US courtroom. And, of course, part of it has to do with the jurisdiction and, like, where these deals took place. But it also has to do with legal implications, right? The Dominican legal system is much more likely to honor handshake deals based on precedent than in a, uh, a US legal system. And so, when—we even talk about potential regulation and different enforcement capacities, and different—um, you know, where people would bring lawsuits, we’re talking about very diverse legal systems as well. And so, that—that is another reason that it’s so much harder to regulate there than it is, for example, in the United States.
BOBBY: Uh, Debbie, unfortunately, I don’t think we solved imperialism on this podcast.
DEBBIE: Next time.
BOBBY: Though, uh, we try—we tried as best as we could. I think we had a thought-provoking conversation nonetheless. Um, Debbie Sharnak, professor at Rowan University, is there anything—so, uh, plug the book more directly. How can people find it? Where can they get it? What’s—what’s the deal?
DEBBIE: Oh, sure. So if you want to learn about something not at all, at least this [53:54] related to, um, human rights in Latin America and international systems to respond to it, it’s called Of Light and Struggle: Social Justice, Human Rights, and Accountability in Uruguay, and it’s available at, you know, all of the booksellers that you might wanna talk about, although I highly encourage book shops at Oregon or find in your local bookstore and buying it through there or, uh, Penn Press directly.
ALEX: I was seeing that on the—on your shelf as we were conducting this interview, and I couldn’t really make out everything on it. Um, and I was like, “Oh, wow. That book looks really interesting. I think I’m gonna go look it up after this.” And so—
DEBBIE: That’s good. Well, the cover—
ALEX: There you go.
DEBBIE: —is done by a local [54:35] artist out of [54:37] um, is like incredible social justice collective, so you should check them out as well.
BOBBY: Thanks, Debbie. You’re [54:42]
SPEAKER 5: I’ll hold on for just one more shot. Giving all he’s got, sucker punched. [55:04]
BOBBY: Thank you to Debbie. A conversation long overdue on the pod, but, uh, I’m sure many of you can see that, uh, the reason for—that we don’t always go into super great depth about this is because if we did every week, it would just completely swallow the podcast. Um, and there’s only so much that you can do when discussing these things on a podcast. So, uh, really appreciative of Debbie coming on and lending some of her expertise. And also just kind of, like, going with the—with the flow of the show, of us being like, “This is imperialism, right?”
ALEX: Exactly. Yeah. Hey, man, we can—we can do it each week. I’m ready. It—uh, as you said, it’ll swallow the podcast, but if you just want to talk about imperialism and—and colonialism in the Global South, like, let’s go.
BOBBY: You’re down? Do you—do you think that it’d be good or bad for our numbers? Or download numbers?
ALEX: It probably wouldn’t be great. Uh—
BOBBY: Coming up next, the 12-year-old who got manipulated by the Houston Astros and top five times Rob Manfred made Alex angry after the short break.
ALEX: You know, here’s the thing, there’s an audience for it.
BOBBY: I mean, of course, the audience is listening to the pod.
ALEX: And I think most of them are tuned in right now.
BOBBY: Yeah, exactly. Um, thank you again to Debbie. Okay. We have a few mailbag questions to get out of here. Uh, definitely of equal importance to the competition that we just had. First—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —question comes from Justin. “If Taylor Swift were dating a baseball player, how much would that boost that team’s popularity? Also, would any subsequent breakup song about that player be considered a baseball song?” This is just a phenomenal question.
ALEX: This is one of the best questions we’ve ever received.
BOBBY: Yeah, okay. Let’s take them one by one. If Taylor Swift were—actually, I’m gonna do the second one first. Would any subsequent breakout song about that player be considered a baseball song? Yes, we need more baseball songs.
ALEX: Absolutely.
BOBBY: I mean, it’s like subtextually a baseball song because it’s about a baseball player, so, yes, it’s a—it’s a baseball song.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I’m—I’m sort of a—a loose interpreter of qualifications for what is counted as a baseball song. We do have a joint baseball song playlist that was created in the Tipping Pitches Slack, which is lovely to listen. Okay, first question. If Taylor Swift were dating a baseball player, how much would that boost that team’s popularity? I gotta say, like, a lot.
ALEX: Like astronomically.
BOBBY: Maybe not like—uh, I don’t know if it would create long-term fans. Depending on—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —how long they were dating. Like, if she married a baseball player and that baseball player played their whole career for one team, it would create long-term fans. Like, I think there are probably some people who became fans of the Yankees because of JLo. But in the short-term, like during the relationship, that would be the most famous team in baseball.
ALEX: Without a doubt. Can you imagine the jerseys they would sell? I mean—I mean, that team would have to integrate Taylor into their marketing somehow, right? Like, I have to—
BOBBY: And the deal is if she’s willing to participate. She—she has the—the, uh, veto power there in that relationship.
ALEX: No, totally. But I mean, if—if said baseball team started selling Swift jerseys, like I’d—I’d buy one.
BOBBY: What if, hypothetically speaking, she dated a Las Vegas A, would you still buy that Jersey?
ALEX: Good God. You’re plumbing the depths of my nightmares right now.
BOBBY: Like, I don’t know, Taylor Swift is just like, “I’m really into Aledmys Diaz.” And they started dating. Do you—
ALEX: I mean—
BOBBY: —buy—do you buy both an Aledmys Diaz jersey and a Taylor Swift Las Vegas A’s jersey?
ALEX: No, I’d just buy the—the Swift one. Uh—
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: —I mean, I mean—okay. So—
BOBBY: Couples costume ideas, Aledmys Diaz and Taylor Swift?
ALEX: —here’s the thing, baseball is about to expand to Nashville, right?
BOBBY: That’s true. But she might be the owner of that team, though?
ALEX: So if there was a team of that capital—that’s true.
BOBBY: And then it’s sort of like an employee-boss relationship, which isn’t appropriate.
ALEX: Also, that would create some really—uh—uh, create a really sticky moral situation for us as consumers of Taylor Swift’s—
BOBBY: Oh.
ALEX: —music. Uh, I mean, she is about to become—I think I saw a report that she’s about to become a billionaire or close to it, uh, after this Eras tour.
BOBBY: I would hope so.
ALEX: There—there might—there might be a reckoning in the near future for us.
BOBBY: If you sell out every NFL stadium three nights a week for, like, a year and a half and you don’t become a billionaire, I’m like, “What’s the point?”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: What’s the point of all of this? Okay, next question. “If the Patreon ever reaches”—this is from Ben. “If the Patreon ever reaches enough members, would you guys start running ads on New York City subway cars or on, like, the Mets radio broadcast?” The answer?
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: Absolutely. I would love—
ALEX: I think we’ve talked about this before.
BOBBY: Yeah, we have.
ALEX: Like, I’ve—I think I have brought up to you—just like—I mean, I’m fascinated with, like, the—the New York City subway marketing, like, economy. First of all, it’s so fucking expensive to buy one of those ads.
BOBBY: Is it really?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Uh, I mean, it’s like guaranteed millions of people seeing it.
ALEX: So I—so I think—I think the key is that, you know, you can’t just buy one ad, like you have to buy a group of ads. And depending on the placement—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —you know, the ads could go anywhere from like, uh, like, a thousand to like, you know, 6,000, 10,000, right? And if you’re buying like say—
BOBBY: A thousand we could do. Come on.
ALEX: Yeah—yeah, but if you’re required to buy a hundred ads.
BOBBY: Oh. Oh, a thousand is not the group price. A thousand is, like, the per ad price?
ALEX: Yeah, per—per ad price, I believe. Again, I’m, uh—
BOBBY: Oh.
ALEX: This is—we’re—we’re looking at—I’m looking at such sources as reddit.com/r/asknyc, or in—in [60:57] outdoor.com., or nymetro, or—or bluelinemedia.com.
BOBBY: Oh. That sounds suspiciously close to—
ALEX: Blue Line—
BOBBY: [61:10] Media.
ALEX: Right. The Blue Line Media.
BOBBY: The cops don’t need an ad—the—the cops don’t need to advertise on the subway. They’re already there.
ALEX: Look—
BOBBY: The advertising is just the two police officers on every subway card on their phones texting. “Come be a cop. All you have to do is stand here and text.”
ALEX: I mean, the—the more realistic thing that we’ve talked about is sponsoring a little league team.
BOBBY: Oh, I thought you were gonna say is buying stadium naming rights for Las Vegas A’s. Uh, yeah. Sponsoring a little league team. I—I feel like I was just listening to a podcast where they were saying, like, they did that once and it was, like, worth their while. I don’t remember who or what. It could have been [61:53]
ALEX: I mean, I—I know you mentioned the Las Vegas A’s, but I would have to imagine it’s far cheaper to buy stadium naming rights for the current Oakland A’s. I can’t imagine there are many suitors.
BOBBY: It would be, like, 50 bucks, take it or leave it.
ALEX: Right. Exactly. Hey, we’ll give you a hundred bucks if you put your name up here.
BOBBY: John Fisher would probably take it.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You wave money in his face, he’s like, “Sure, sure. Sure.” Um, it’s like catnip. I would frankly love to buy an ad on a subway, but I have, like, option paralysis over what I would put on that ad. Like, what I’d make it just like a straightforward, like, worth my money, like an ad like, “Here’s our podcast, you should listen to it.” Or what I do, like, some deep covert, like viral marketing campaign with, like, some random slogan on it to try to get people to, like, drum up conversation over it, and then eventually that circles all the way back to our podcast, and become like a cult classic pod.
ALEX: Right. Yeah. I mean, there’s definitely a style to the subway ad, right? Like, you need—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —bright colors. It’s definitely got to be like a—like a bold, Helvetica, all lowercase font, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Like, if it was—if it was just right—
BOBBY: And it has to have like [63:02] heating patterns.
ALEX: Yes, yeah. Yeah, you can either do, like, little doodles or stuff. Or imagine if it was just like an ad that said, “Don’t listen to this podcast.” Imagine how many people would then be like, “Well, I—now I need to know what’s up.”
BOBBY: This is sort of a tangent, but oftentimes, when I’m on the—when I’m on the subway and I see people on their phones, I’m just like, “What if I just AirDrop them the link to our podcast right now?” Because, you know, some people just leave their AirDrop on and, like, anyone can AirDrop them anything. So if you, like, go on the subway, and you look at your AirDrop options, you’ll see, like, seven phones. You could send them the link to the Tipping Pitches podcast. I’m not saying that you should. I’m not saying that I want to or need you to do that, but you could. Uh, that’s—
ALEX: I suppose—
BOBBY: —that’s direct marketing.
ALEX: I suppose that’s one of the more, uh, innocent suggestions of things that you can AirDrop to unsuspecting people, uh, around you.
BOBBY: Well, the thing is like nobody would—nobody would click if—nobody would click except if it was a link, because that’s—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —that’s very dangerous territory, accepting a randomly—
ALEX: Only—
BOBBY: —AirDrop link from someone on the subway, but—
ALEX: And yet—
BOBBY: Yeah, and yet. But if you drop like a screen—like a screenshot of, like, our latest episode, for example, people would be like, “Oh, that sounds kind of interesting. Oh. United States imperialism via baseball in the [64:18] I like it.”
ALEX: Yeah. You think that’s gonna get a lot of people on the New York City subway commuting into their finance jobs in Manhattan?
BOBBY: What—which one of our episodes do you think would be the most likely to get people to click on and listen? Like, to hook them?
ALEX: Like—just like one episode broad scale?
BOBBY: Yeah. Like the gift draft. Maybe like the band topics. People love not being able to talk about things, apparently. It’s like our most listened-to episode ever.
ALEX: Maybe the dumbest baseball things with Batting Around.
BOBBY: Oh. True. That’s a good one.
ALEX: Because like—because like whether or not you like baseball, you’re gonna find all of these things really dumb and funny.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And, you know, now you’ve got me thinking is the thing, unfortunately.
BOBBY: I’m just saying it’s always dangerous when you’re thinking.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay. Final question, this comes from Josie. “Say a baseball team, perhaps the New York Mets, go on a team movie outing on July 21st. Who’s going to see Barbie and who is going to see Oppenheimer, and who is staying for both?” Tremendous question. I—I’m just gonna come right out and say it, no one is staying for both.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: Do you think baseball players have—they—they want the pitch clock so that they can go home earlier. They want the runner on second roll so that they can go home earlier. You think that—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —they’re staying for not just Barbie, but then also the three-hour Oppenheimer? That’s not happening?
ALEX: No. And if we’re being honest, most of them are seeing Barbie. Like, maybe all of them are seeing Barbie.
BOBBY: Because of Margot Robbie or because it’s shorter?
ALEX: No, it’s just shorter. It just feels like more of a good time. Like, I don’t—
BOBBY: Depends on your definition of a good time.
ALEX: Well, like I just, uh—
BOBBY: Have seen all these quotes from Christopher Nolan where he’s like, “People are vomiting when they leave the screening.
ALEX: Yeah. Right. It’s like a good—a good pitch.
BOBBY: People are leaving in tears. It kind of is lowkey a good pitch.
ALEX: I know. Well, now, I’m morbidly curious, right?
BOBBY: I wanna be moved to feel something, even if that thing is a terrible feeling.
ALEX: See—and I don’t know that baseball players are that interested in that, right? Like, I mean, if the—
BOBBY: If we’re talking about the New York Mets, I feel as though Mark Canha might see both.
ALEX: Yes. That’s—that’s true.
BOBBY: He might do my method where he might see Barbie during the day, go have dinner, since we know—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —he’s a foodie. And then come back and see an evening screening—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —of Oppenheimer. I call that the Bob. Trademark.
ALEX: Like, I feel like Alonso and McNeil and—sure—so, like, I can—I—for some reason, I can just visually see them getting really hyped to go see the—the Barbie movie. You know, because, like, dudes rock, right? And recognizing that baseball players, oftentimes in there, uh, extracurriculars, don’t take themselves too seriously. I think there’s a world in which they get all dressed up in their interpretations of Ken and just go rock the theater.
BOBBY: I think that the most fun person on planet Earth to see the Barbie movie with would be Francisco Lindor, and his wife and his two kids. Although—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —his second kid is probably a little too young for the movie theater. His first kid could probably come, have a good time. Uh, okay. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Thank you to Debbie Sharnak for coming on. Um, if you would like to share your pitch for why Alex should choose your team as his new team, it’s tippingpitchespod@gmail.com, 785-422-5881. If you want to call in the voicemail and make the pitch in your own voice, uh, once again, a reminder, short answer questions, yes or no questions, please submit them in the link below for our special milestone episode coming up. Brooklyn Cyclones meet-up July 29th, still no link for tickets. We’ll have that soon, I promise. Uh, and that’s pretty much everything I have this week. Alex, anything else? Any words of wisdom?
ALEX: Uh, No words of wisdom, per se, but, uh, I am placing my second ever bet—
BOBBY:
ALEX: —on—on the—on the Musk-Zuck cage match. So I encourage you all to fade Elon.
BOBBY: Fade Elon.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I actually agree. I agree with that.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I think Zuck would put that man in a fucking body bag.
ALEX: Have—have you seen—the dude is like—I don’t even know if he runs Facebook anymore, because he just posts pictures of himself in, like, army vests and, like, boxing. Like, I—I think that Zuck would smell blood and—
BOBBY: Oh, yeah.
ALEX: —and he finish things.
BOBBY: I—one of the funnier things about this story is that it started because Facebook is rumored to be launching, like, a Twitter alternative.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And so they’re gonna fistfight. Like, rather than just make Twitter better. Elon Musk is like, “I will—I will fight you.” Like, this is like fifth grade.
ALEX: Yeah. And I—I think—
BOBBY: And you’re like arguing over a girl on the playground.
ALEX: I’m pretty sure Elon said it as a joke. Like, “Yeah, I do a cage match. Lol.” And—
BOBBY: And Zuck has no human characteristics, so he couldn’t take it as a joke.
ALEX: Right. He couldn’t take it. He was like, “Drop—drop your location. Drop a pin. Meet me in Temecula.”
BOBBY: If there’s one tech CEO that I would want on the podcast, it’s Zuck. Let’s get them on. I think we got takes.
ALEX: Yeah, like we—
BOBBY: Like if—but, like, with the caveat that like they’d be—they’d be honest.
ALEX: Right. I think it might have—
BOBBY: I think he might have opinions like—like what barbecue sauce you should put on your food at the ballpark.
ALEX: We know he does. I think it might have to take place in the metaverse, so we just have to get acclimated with that. We could be the metaverse’s first podcast.
BOBBY: Or, like, participant.
ALEX: And probably last.
BOBBY: What does it take to produce a pod in the metaverse? Well, you go in, and you do a pod like you normally would, except everything looks way worse and sounds terrible. And it also is bankrupting Mark Zuckerberg.
ALEX: I don’t know. You’re kind of selling me on that.
BOBBY: Exactly. Um, I will—I would tune in to see who would win the fight between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. They—I love to see two guys fighting over who gets to be the person to sell the rope. That’s what I’ll leave everybody with. Thank you for listening to Tipping Pitches. We’ll be back next week.
SPEAKER 6: I’m sick of all the same old shit in a house with unlocked doors. And I’m fucking lazy. Bite my lip and close my eyes. Take me away to paradise. I’m so damn bored, I’m going blind. And I smell like shit.
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!
[01:11:20]
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