Alex and Bobby talk about air quality and MLB’s discouraging response to hazardous climate events, the Royals stalling in contract talks with stadium workers, scouts suing the league over age discrimination, and the Orioles’ heartening Pride Night, then answer listener questions about a Castellini inheritance, Immaculate Grid strategy, Mets players who would risk it all for Mrs. Met, and more.
Buy tickets for the Tipping Pitches Brooklyn Cyclones Meetup
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Links:
Royals accused of stalling stadium worker deal
Stadium workers file federal labor charges against Royals
Scouts sue MLB over age discrimination
Scenes from the Orioles’ Pride Night
Pepsi Colachup is coming to stadiums for July 4th
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Songs featured in this episode:
Jimi Hendrix — “Purple Haze” • Booker T & the M.G.’s — “Green Onions”
Episode Transcript
Theme
Tell us a little bit about what you saw and—and—and being able to relay that message to Cora when you watch Kimbrel pitching and kind of help out so he wasn’t Tipping his Pitches. so Tipping Pitches, we hear about it all the time. People are home understand, what Tipping Pitches is all about? That’s amazing! That’s remarkable.
BOBBY: Alex, one thing that they don’t tell you when you start a podcast with your best friend, is that sometimes when things happen to you, and you want to tell your friend about them, you just can’t, because you have to save it for the pod.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: That is one of the—you know, it’s hard, honest work that we do here. We don’t always ask for thank yous, you know? But we’re out here, boots on the ground, doing the frontline work of podcasting.
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: For all you listeners back at home, we’re not calling each other—
ALEX: Responding to tweets. Yeah.
BOBBY: Exactly. Responding to tweets, asking people for topics via Twitter, getting rate limited on twitter.com. Uh, something funny happened to me a couple of weeks ago, that I wanted to tell you about, uh, however, I couldn’t because I needed to save it for the podcast. I was going through airport security where all of my best stories start.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And, you know, I was at one of those new machines, one of those highfalutin machines that automatically separates the bags that they need extra inspection for. And my suitcase, my carry-on suitcase, got selected, went over to the TSA agent. The guy was, like, looking at the X-ray.
ALEX: And I think I know where this is going.
BOBBY: Guy was, like, look at the X-ray machine. And he’s like looking at, and he’s like—kind of has a puzzled look on his face, and he’s like, “Is that a microphone stand in there?” I was like, “Yeah, yeah. It’s a microphone stand.” He’s like, “I’m gonna have to take it out and look at it real quick.” And I was like, “That’s totally fine.” So, we’re—we’re—he’s unzipping it. He’s having a really hard time unzipping the suitcase, which I thought was kind of weird, because, like, his— kind of his whole job is, like, to unzip suitcases and open them up, but that’s okay. He was like, “This zipper is weird.” And I’m like, “It’s actually just a zipper, but it’s”—okay. Anyway, so he’s looking at the microphone stand and I’m like, “Hey, you know, the podcast never stop.” Just trying to make small talk with the TSA agent.
ALEX: Of course. Right. As one does.
BOBBY: It was, like, a young guy, he seemed like he was having a fun time. And he just—you know, sold me, just didn’t say anything to me joking around about how the podcast never stop. Until he got the thing open, he saw that it was a mic stand. And he goes, “What’s the podcast about?” And I’m like, “It’s just about baseball.”
[laughter]
BOBBY: I felt like I didn’t need to give the full explanation, you know? The full elevator pitch of which we’ve never really narrowed down.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And he said, “Oh, cool.” And then like, maybe—maybe 10 more seconds passed by in silence, didn’t ask me for the name of the podcast or anything, so I doubt that he’s listening right now.
ALEX: Okay. I was gonna [2:52] right now, but—yeah.
BOBBY: But if—but if he was gonna find it, I hope—I hope he’s enjoying my retelling of the story. He puts all the stuff back together. You know, he zips the suitcase back up for me, he hands it back to me. And when he hands it back, in a very, like, fatherly tone, he just goes, “Don’t stop. Keep going.”
ALEX: Wow.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: You made—you made a friend that day, a mentor.
BOBBY: I made a friend, but also, I kind of felt, like, he thought that I had just started the podcast, you know? Not like we were coming up on our six-year anniversary of doing this show. I was—I was a little hurt that I—that it seemed like I was maybe putting off, like, amateur junior podcaster vibes.
ALEX: Right. What do you think, I was going to stop? Like I was—
BOBBY: I’m a guy—there’s a microphone, and XLR, a mic stand, and a Scarlett 2i2 in here.
ALEX: Yeah, I’m traveling—
BOBBY: Do you think I had just started yesterday?
ALEX: —I’m traveling with this. Which, uh, which, uh, which airport was it at?
BOBBY: Unfortunately, it was at Newark.
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: Newark Airport. I don’t often fly out of Newark, but when I do, I hate myself for choosing to do that.
ALEX: Well, I—I was gonna ask because when I was flying out of LaGuardia, uh, a few weeks ago, I was wearing my national—I—my Orioles nationalize baseball shirt and the TSA agent—
BOBBY: Oh, yeah.
ALEX: —just stopped—stopped me, right? And said—and said, “Hey, nice—you know, nice—go team, nice shirt.” It’s like that’s—you know, yeah.
BOBBY: Do you think he was just an Orioles fan? Like, do you think he just didn’t read your shirt that closely?
ALEX: I’m not even certain that he was really a baseball fan, because I—he read the text, and read it back to me, and said, “Nationalize baseball, what is that?” And I was like, “It’s just, uh, it’s just an idea.”
BOBBY: Right on.
ALEX: But the reason I asked, because I—I—
BOBBY: The revolution will not be televised, but it will start with TSA agents, like it’s—
ALEX: Right. It will be going through security. So, what you’re telling me is there are—
BOBBY: It will be X-rayed.
ALEX: —there are multiple TSA agents now who are tangentially aware—
BOBBY: In [4:37] New York. Yes.
ALEX: Right. Of Tipping Pitches who are a part of this cinematic universe.
BOBBY: I don’t know if they understand what it’s all about, but they could, they could.
ALEX: They could.
BOBBY: I have—I really can’t, like, self-promo in those situations. I can’t—I can’t get myself to, like, say the name of our podcast to a stranger. There’s just, like, something really mentally blocking me from doing it. I have to be directly asked what it’s called. And even then, I’m—I’ll be like, “I’ll pull it up on my phone and show someone.” It’s really bad. I’m not—just not born to be a content creator, I don’t think.
ALEX: Well, I mean, some people create the content, and some people market the content, right?
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: You create the content. That’s half the battle right there. Maybe we come up with, like, little business cards or something, you know? Just like, “My podcast is called Tipping Pitches, @tipping_pitches on Twitter.” Like, just blank, you know, like a—like a Patrick Bateman-style like, uh, like business card, you know?
BOBBY: Times New Roman size 12.
ALEX: Something that really stops people in their, in their tracks. Yeah.
BOBBY: So, in that equation, are you the person that promotes the content? Are you out there marketing the content?
ALEX: That might be, uh, saying a little much, but I can at least get the words out of my mouth, you know? So, it’s—we each play—we each play the role here, right? You—you give the elevator pitch, someone asks what it—what it’s called, and I say, “Tipping Pitches,” right? The— we’re like a marketing battery of sorts, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah. Like a good cop, bad cop.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: That doesn’t really work. Anyway, we have some fun topics on board today. Uh, this is the first podcast you and I have recorded together in quite a little while. Uh, we’ve banked a few episodes, so a lot of stuff has happened since we recorded last. Uh, we fielded some topics from our lovely listeners on—on Twitter, on the dying days of twitter.com. We’re gonna try to breeze through as many of those as possible. Um, I’m sitting in a room that is getting, like, one degree hotter per minute, so we’ll see if my brain actually lasts throughout this recording. Uh, but before we do all that fun stuff, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: And I’m Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches. All right, Alex. A couple of housekeeping things before we get started. First things first, thank you so much to everybody who has sent in voicemails, emails, pitching Alex on his new team. We are getting closer and closer to recording that podcast by the day. It’s just over a week away when we will tape that podcast. So—and a couple of weeks away from coming out. Um, so thank you to everybody who has already sent in. Alex, you—uh, you’re gonna have some decisions to make, even though as we’re going to talk about later in this podcast, you’re already leaning in a—you’re leaning in a direction.
ALEX: That might be true, although, I’m a little hesitant to—to put anything, like, that out into the world just yet, right?
BOBBY: Yeah. You don’t wanna—you don’t wanna seem biased—
ALEX: Again, I don’t wanna—I don’t wanna, like, float a little trial balloon and sway the masses.
BOBBY: Sway the masses?
ALEX: Uh, and—and—I will say that we, um, we—we did get a question, um, about whether you have to pick a team to—to—to root for or—or if you can argue for other versions of baseball fandom, for example, right? And I want to reiterate that you are more than welcome to make the case of us not watching baseball, of—of—of two teams.
BOBBY: Hang on. Hang on. I would like to put my foot down and say that you can’t make the case that Alex shouldn’t watch baseball. You’re not—you guys—you people calling in are not the ones who have to host a baseball podcast with this guy weekly, so you can’t tell him to just stop watching baseball.
ALEX: How much more fun would that podcast be, though?
BOBBY: More fun.
ALEX: You’d get to, like, explain everything to me. It’d be—it’d be fun for me. I wouldn’t have to do any work. You’d have to come and do all the prep work, right? Come up with topics.
BOBBY: So, you think, uh, of more fun version of experiencing the sport of baseball would be just hearing me explain to you Mets losses?
ALEX: Right. So—so, basically, I’m just becoming a Mets fan. It sounds like.
BOBBY: I could call Phoebe in here right now and she could tell you how un-fun that is. Just hearing me relay what happened in the Mets game.
ALEX: Yeah, it does sound like a tough scene. I rescind—
BOBBY: Exactly.
ALEX: I rescind that, uh, that option for folks.
BOBBY: You can call and make the case that Alex shouldn’t pick a team, you know? That he should just pick a player and just stick to that player for the rest of his life. That’s fine. But, you know, part of the fun is that we’re gonna go through team by team.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: We’re not gonna go through player by player. It’s not gonna be an eight-hour podcast.
ALEX: Speak for yourself.
BOBBY: It’s also not going to be a two-hour podcast. This is not the two-hour podcast that we’ve been referring to, trust me. Um, so thank you to everybody who has called. You can—you can continue to call for the next week plus. Uh, the number is 785-422-5881. The email is tippingpitchespod@gmail.com. Speaking of those ways of contacting us, we also are fielding questions for a separate recording. You may have heard me mentioned this before. It is short answer questions or yes or no questions. We need a whole lot of them, dozens of them for the podcast episode that we are planning on recording. That is still a ways away, a ways in the distance, however, we are fielding questions for that right now via Google form that we have been putting in the description of this podcast. We’ve also tweeted it out a couple of times. I’ll continue to tweet it out occasionally, um, because we need a bunch of those questions. And so we wanted to make sure we gave people enough time to think of them, to submit them, so that we can record that podcast for folks. Uh, final thing, final housekeeping thing, I feel like—I feel like an emcee, you know? Every time we start to do this podcast, I feel like—like, “Everybody, file in, please move into the middle of the row so that you can create more room for people as they come in. Please—”
ALEX: You’re very good at it. I will—I’ll just say.
BOBBY: “Please silence your cell phones. If you have to take an emergency call, we would appreciate if you step outside the theater to take the call.” Um—
ALEX: Right. “Can someone with the license plate 7QT3, come to the front, please.”
BOBBY: Just a four-letter license plate.” Can someone with the license plate A-Rod, please come forward. A-Rod.” Uh, the last thing before we actually get into this week’s episode, is we officially have tickets on sale for the Tipping Pitches Brooklyn Cyclones community meetup. It is July 29th, Saturday, July 29th 6:00 P.M. at Maimonides Park. Maimonides, is that how you say that? I never actually said that word out loud. You know, uh, the park where the Brooklyn—
ALEX: I think I usually just say the Cyclones park.
BOBBY: Yeah. At the—at the Cyclones park.
ALEX: M—MCU, right? Isn’t it MCU still or is that not the case?
BOBBY: I think they renamed it. I think it’s now Maimonides.
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: You made me say it again. I don’t know if that’s how you say it. Anyway, it’s in Coney Island, Saturday, July 29th 6:00 P.M. Tickets are $17 including fees. If you buy a ticket through our link, you will be part of the same section that everybody else is sitting in. You will also get a free Brooklyn Cyclones hat. And it’s gonna be a great time. I’m really looking forward to it. Uh, the link for that is in the podcast description. As well as if you are in the Slack, it is in the general Slack channel and it is pinned. So if you ever need to find it, it’s probably the easiest way to do it. Is there anything else that I’m forgetting that I need to tell people? Should I be giving out your Venmo so that people can bribe you to become fans of their team?
ALEX: That’s—I won’t turn it down. I think—
BOBBY: Well, team sports—these days around rich benefactors.
ALEX: Yes. Right. If someone take—wants to take me on a fishing trip in order to convince me to join their team, I will happily oblige.
BOBBY: Stuff his pockets full of cash to become a Rangers fan.
ALEX: That’s—that feels like, um, interesting use of—of money.
BOBBY: Yeah. Like, there’s not a lot of bang for your buck there. Not a lot of ROI.
ALEX: No, not really, but—but I won’t turn it down. Um, but, no, I think that’s—I think that’s everything, before we dive into the meat—the meat of the pod.
BOBBY: Yeah, the very fun meat of the pod, which is a—
ALEX: Uh-huh,
BOBBY: —AQI, air quality index. We’re gonna start this week by talking about how Major League Baseball does not know what they’re doing, and is not prepared for the incoming climate apocalypse. Incoming is maybe not even the description for it. It might just be here.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: We might be in the thick of it.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I’m sure many people are listening to this, no? Sure. Basically, everybody listening to this knows that, um, wildfire smoke across Northern America has been causing a decrease in air quality, um, in various instances over the last month plus. Uh, much of the East Coast has been affected by this. I actually have been out of the East Coast, away from the East Coast both times that this has really flared up in the last few weeks. So I fortunately have been—like, avoided this, but, you know, for—for our friends who were still in town the first time through sending us photos of it, just looking like Blade Runner 2049. It’s just like really—truly eerie stuff. And, obviously, there are Major League Baseball teams that play across the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and across the Midwest to where—where it has been affected. You know, Pittsburgh was another one of these towns that, um, bore the brunt of some of this terrible wildfire smoke. And I think it presented some interesting problems for teams and for the league in deciding about whether they wanna play through some of these condition—through some of these conditions, whether they wanna postpone these games, um, and how long they will have to postpone these games, because they don’t know when some of this—this wildfire smoke is going to clear whether—when the air quality index is going to return. You know, I think it can be kind of hard to predict some of these things in the way that you can predict rain nowadays a lot easier. I mean, I—I don’t know if there’s, like, a question in here. I don’t know if there’s, like, a large takeaway in here other than—other than it seems like a league that was totally caught flat-footed over something that has been happening for, basically, years now. You know, in 2020 and 2021, I believe, uh, some of this stuff was affecting the West Coast. You know, in Los Angeles and in San Francisco, there was an A’s game that I remember being played in basically, like, bright orange skies. Uh, a little bit in—in Seattle last year, I remember. And so this is something that has been happening frequently enough that you would think that there needs to be a more clear policy, but it doesn’t seem like it’s—it doesn’t seem like there’s any kind of policy that they’re following. It just seems to be sort of a, “Well, we feel like we can try to get one in still.” Have you seen anything about, like, what the actual air quality index cutoff should be for these teams?
ALEX: I don’t know about what it, uh, should be. I remember seeing a tweet from Stephanie Apstein of Sports Illustrated which sort of—which she sent out a month ago at this point when we were dealing with this very same thing, with regards to teams like the Twins, and the Yankees. And she basically said, you know, “According to the league, there is no cut-off. They don’t have a hard and fast number.” Right? They take a look at how the air quality is in a given situation, and they try and look at—what it might look like three hours from now, and then make the decision based on that, which is wholly irresponsible, right? Like the idea that the Pirates are playing in an environment where the AQI was in the, like, 230 range, which is unhealthy—actually—sorry, let me clarify, I believe that’s very unhealthy for everyone. All people, all groups of people should not be outside doing physical exertion, you know? And what was most baffling to me about—about the Pirates game in particular, was that the—the players had voiced concerns about playing. Andrew McCutchen was very vocal both before and after the game, that, you know, “Hey, maybe—maybe nature is trying to tell us something here, right?” He was wearing a mask while he was out on the field. And after the game, he even said, you know, like, “If we—all the players have banded together and said, ‘We’re not gonna play,’ like we wouldn’t have played the game.” Right? And I was baffled by the fact that they delayed the start of the game, right, to say, “Okay. Well, we’re not ready to play just yet. Let’s—let’s wait and see how this pans out.” And the air didn’t get much better. And so they said, “It doesn’t look like it’s gonna get worse. Let’s send it.” I think the—the reason, honestly, that they haven’t set a sort of bar, you know, a—a line over which games would be automatically canceled is—because this is going to happen more and more. And the more that this happens, the more baseball games get canceled, and the more revenue you lose. And the—you know, it—it made—make less of a difference on—you know, to MLB’s pocketbooks to be a midweek Pirates game. But if it’s a Los Angeles Dodgers game, right, you are taking a hit on—on revenue on that day. If you play whatever that game is, right? And—and they can’t do that. They don’t want to do that, right? They don’t wanna set up a system, which automatically triggers baseball game cancellations, because the environment is not getting any better. Wildfires are happening more and more. And if you acknowledge the fact that, “Yes, this is unhealthy for our players, and we need to do something about it,” then you’re acknowledging the slow degradation of our Earth and the responsibility of, like, major corporations to not necessarily fight it, but at least protect their workers and the people who consume their product. And that’s a pretty—a pretty weighty thing, uh, I think for a sports league to take on. I’m not really sure they’re interested in taking up that mantle.
BOBBY: This air quality index update brought to you by ExxonMobil. ExxonMobil cares about MLB players being out there and breathing healthy.
ALEX: Brutal, brutal. I mean, I think you’re dead-on that the reason that they won’t draw the line is because they’re afraid the fact that they draw the line in a spot where it is extremely disruptive to the regularity of their products. I mean, they—but what is so confounding to me is that this is a league that has games banked for rain all the time. And so, they have the infrastructure to reschedule these games. It’s not like it’s—it’s not like the air quality index is so high that they can’t play games, more often than it might just rain on a Wednesday night. Rain or thunder, or lightning, or whatever. So, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just treat that exactly the same as lightning in the outfield. It just—it doesn’t—it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, is it because it’s not as disruptive to the product as like rain on the camera or—or, uh, as immediately disruptive to the product as like rain or causing the field conditions to go down, but it doesn’t affect the—
ALEX: Right. [19:33] to drip or anything, yeah.
BOBBY: Exactly. But for, like, healthy people, you know, it—it can cause pretty immediate side effects, but not even—that’s not even mentioning people who have any kind of issues with breathing or air quality to begin with who are at—more at risk. So you’re basically telling fans, “Well, you can’t come today, but some fans can come today and we can still make some money today.” It’s really just—it’s honestly weird. Like, it’s weird that they haven’t gotten better at this faster. And I think that it’s, like, pretty—pretty damning and—uh, about the dysfunction of MLB and their policies, and their—their preparedness for more serious weather and climate events that are on the—the near to medium term horizon. I mean, we’ve talked about this ad nauseam with moving to a place like—like Las Vegas. I don’t know if that’s gonna be a city in 50 years. No one can—I don’t know who can confidently say, “This is going to be a thriving city with enough water to keep people alive in 50 years.” And yet, like, the A’s have been in Oakland for the last 50 years, so I—I would assume that they would at least wanna stay in Las Vegas for the next 50 years. But still, like, you set aside all that about how it’s weird that MLB won’t just reschedule these games and—and play doubleheaders on—on different weekends or whatever. You know, because they—they—they stuff their schedule so full of games, and have so few off days that, like, even rain delays can cause issues with the schedule. And so if you’re gonna add in these air quality index delays or whatever, then it’s gonna present interesting scheduling problems and potentially loss revenue. If you set all of that aside, it’s weird that there’s, like, nothing about this in the collective bargaining agreement. It’s weird that this doesn’t trigger some kind of additional emergency like reopening of player safety clauses or something like that—
ALEX: Absolutely.
BOBBY: —because it’s not just like people like Andrew McCutchen who are particularly attentive to this. I’m certain that there are players in Major League Baseball who, like, have asthma, and are able to—uh, able to manage that and moderate that with, like, an inhaler or something like that. But playing a game with—in an air quality that is so low, pitifully low, there’s only so much that your inhaler can do. And there’s only so much that you should be asked to—to shorten your life for, to play a baseball game like—I don’t know. It’s—we got a question about this. I don’t know if it was a question necessarily so much as someone responding to you, you know, voicing concern over this on Twitter. Someone responded and said, “It’s weird that the MLBPA isn’t, like, ready to be, you know, more militant about this.” And I—I think I agree. Like, this—if there are—if there are—you know, if there were only two tenants of—of union philosophy, it would be, “Let’s get our value monetarily, financially, and let’s keep our people safe.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And this is one of those things, so—I don’t know. I hope that this is the type of thing that, like, not just the MLBPA but, like, all unions are gonna start thinking about—all unions within the baseball world and outside of the baseball world, because it’s not just baseball players that have to come—or at this game, too. Its stadium workers—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —its grounds crew, its parking attendants. It’s—it’s everybody who is tangentially involved in a Major League Baseball game.
ALEX: It’s particularly baffling given that they spent three years crafting and refining health and safety protocols for what to do when the air that you’re breathing might be dangerous. Like, I—I think you remember, they actually canceled half a season, uh, as—as part of that, right? And—
BOBBY: Yeah. Much to their chagrin.
ALEX: Much to—much to their chagrin. Yeah. But given—
BOBBY: That was so wild. Remember when the owners were like, “Nah. We’re not gonna come back because we’re not gonna make that much money.” That was so cool.
ALEX: That—yeah, that was a fever dream, all of that. But, like, I think the desire to have real, like, guardrails and protocols around this sort of thing is probably hindered by the fact that, like, this has been unfolding over the past few years, right? It’s not like, say, a global pandemic that shuts everything down all at once, and you’re forced to respond, right? It’s kind of—MLB has the benefit of being able to say, “Well, let’s push it a little further, right? Let’s just see kind of how far we can go.” And you wait until the actual product is impacted on a very visible level, right? Or until, again, the workers come to the table and say, “We physically cannot play in this.” Right? And so, I think that that’s what we’ve seen, right, is kind of MLB is stringing everyone along and saying, you know—again, case-by-case basis. MLB loves its case-by-case basis these days. And—
BOBBY: What’s one thing that you think that MLB doesn’t think is a case-by-case basis?
Arbitration?
ALEX: I mean—yeah. Here’s your—here’s the dollar amount you get.
BOBBY: Yup.
ALEX: I don’t know. It’s such a—it’s such an indictment of the sport and, like, this coming a couple of weeks after Rob Manfred came out and said, “Yeah, Academics.” Not a huge fan. It’s just such—such a great one-two punch. But, uh, this is not ending anytime soon. And so it’s absolutely incumbent on, uh, on the leaders of the sport to get together and make a plan of action. And if not, again, like you said, I think the players—like the players have real leverage here, like their—if their safety is at stake, like that’s a—that’s a decent enough reason to come back to the bargaining table.
BOBBY: Yeah. And I mean, I think that stadium workers have leverage, too. Our next topic here is, um, the Kauffman Stadium, uh, which is where the Royals play. Their stadium workers are currently trying to renegotiate their collective bargaining agreement. They just filed a federal—federal labor charges against the Royals for not bargaining in good faith. They’re represented by SEIU, um, Local 1 in Kansas City. Uh, representative quote—this is from, uh, the KCUR— representatives say that during their more than six-month contract negotiation process, the Royals have withheld information, surveilled, interrogated, and threatened workers. Um, it’s worth noting that this is the first contract negotiation that has come up during, um, John Sherman’s ownership tenure of the Royals, and it seems like it’s not—not going swimmingly. John Sherman, he of—where did he make his money, Alex? Wasn’t he like a—uh, wasn’t he an oil guy?
ALEX: Was he? They’re always like—
BOBBY: He’s the propane guy.
ALEX: —weird—weird oils—oh, propane. There you go. Yeah.
BOBBY: Right. Energy LP, an American supplier of propane-based in Kansas City, Missouri. The fourth largest propane retail—retailer in the United States. Fourth largest? Come on, John. John, sell some more propane. Um—
ALEX: It’s also a major salt miner.
BOBBY: Oh.
ALEX: Uh, with salt caverns being used for natural gas storage, it all comes into focus.
BOBBY: This is all coming into context—the recent Royals context, so the fact that they want a new stadium in a—in a new, uh, entertainment district, uh, in downtown Kansas City or North Kansas City. Uh, a $2 billion project, uh, um, sort of like in the Braves model of remodeling an entire area—area and having it become a “entertainment district,” whatever that means. And these workers are the ones that are adding the value to this—this entertainment district. You can’t have the entertainment without the people serving the food, opening the gates, uh, showing people where to sit, uh, showing people where to park like—you know, I remember when we talked with the Unite Here folks about the Dodger Stadium—the Dodger Stadium potential strike—the strike vote. The—the negotiations for their contracts are on All-Star Weekend a couple of years ago, and it just sounds kind of, like, remarkably similar to how things are going in every stadium. So, I don’t know that there’s a direct link between this and, like, the air quality index or necessarily—or the, you know, workplace safety of—of being players going out there playing and poor quality air, and—and being workers who are not being met at the table to talk about some of the issues that are facing them. But, like, it does all kind of come from the same—the same place of, like, wanting to maximize revenue and not agree to or not enter into any kind of binding contract that prevents their long-term upside.
ALEX: Yeah. You know, there are a couple articles in KCUR, uh, about this, and thank you to Francesca for sending them over. Um, the other article talks about kind of a rally that—that various groups of unions, and elected officials, and community members kind of had to come together and basically pressure the Royals into guaranteeing worker benefits, right, amid this new stadium. And—and at one point, that was brought up was the community benefits agreement, which you always, always hear in the stadium negotiations, right, on—on both sides as, like, an avenue for actually securing tangible benefits for a city. And there are also ways that teams can put a nice, little ribbon on what might amount to a heist from taxpayers, right? The—the Royals are paying for half of this $2 billion stadium them—themselves which is very—very generous.
BOBBY: Really—so generous of them.
ALEX: Yeah. Um, but that—you know, this is what a lot of these workers are arguing is, like, before you choose a site, before you actually decide that you’re going to take money from the community and do all this hullabaloo, like we need to see in writing that the workers who are here now at Kauffman Stadium are, like, not just gonna lose their jobs out of nowhere. And the folks at this new stadium are going to have a pathway to unionization, right, and, uh—uh, living wage. And, you know, the Royals for their part pushed back and said, “You know, it’s premature to talk about that but, definitely, we want to take care of everyone.” Yada, yada. I—it’s always striking to me, because, I mean, I certainly don’t expect the Royals to say, “Yes. Actually, we will offer the path to unionization for, uh, for the workers.” We’re big fans of unions, of workers unionizing and, uh, we think that—that—that dialogue is important. But it would also be a pretty easy win to say, “Yeah. Actually, we do care about our stadium workers, and we do want to pay them, uh, minimum—or we do want to pay them a living wage so they can live comfortably. I don’t know. I—I—maybe I’m feeling very naive on these topics today, but I’m just kind of like—it’s not this hard. right? Like, it’s not that hard to work—look out for your work. Like, if there’s smoke in the air, it’s not that hard to say, “Hey, you don’t have to be in the smoke.” You know? If your workers are saying, “I don’t want to get fired and want to be able to live in a home.” It’s not that hard to say, “Yeah, that’s a reasonable request for us, a multibillion-dollar company.” Like I just—I just feel like I’m getting whiplash right now.
BOBBY: Yes, it feels like it shouldn’t be an easy win for these teams to, like, agree to these things and have fewer plates that they’re spinning. But also at the same time, like, one of the things with this negotiation that—that is part of the filing with the—the labor board is that it’s illegal to, like, intentionally stall these negotiations. Like, you can’t come to the table and just kind of go— be wishy-washy about things one day, and the next day, change your mind. And anything that you say in a legal setting, when negotiating with the union is like that—you’ve committed to that and there is, like—admittedly, like, very gray area laws about what is bad faith negotiation versus what is good faith negotiation. But if—if there’s, like, plausible cause that you might be stalling this negotiation, and that plausible cause being that you might be moving to a new stadium, and in theory, the workers at that new stadium won’t be union yet, and you—then you won’t have to have a contract at all. You won’t have to agree to anything. You won’t set any standards for what you might pay the next round of workers, then you can see a world in which the Royals are like, “Okay. Great. I’ll just put this off and put this on [32:22]”
ALEX: Yeah, hold out for that.
BOBBY: —until it’s not a problem at all anymore. And, you know, I love pushing decisions off as much as the next guy, but it’s not incumbent on me to make sure people have enough money to—to live in homes, you know? We’re not—the pod—the pod—the podcast is not doing that well yet. So, I think on one hand, it’s easy to say, “Yes, they could take care of this tomorrow.” But that is true of, like, every—every any—
ALEX: A tiny—yeah.
BOBBY: —negotiation. It’s like the management side has to pretend that it’s hard so that we don’t have to—all come to each other and frankly admit how easy this would be to fix all of these problems, because then you would have to admit how much more money than you’re actually raking in than us. And so, if you pretend like it’s hard, then it keeps this whole facade up. It keeps the entire façade. It’s like—it’s the same facade as, “Oh, we can’t lose more games, because then we won’t make enough revenue and we won’t make ends meet at the end of the year.” It’s all part of the same big lie. I mean, I know that’s—that’s a loaded phrase these days, the big lie. But it’s all part of the same big lie that these—these businesses put forward to make it seem like they can’t afford to pay stadium workers, can’t afford to lose out on gate revenue from three to five games—three to five games a year where players are gonna get black long. And also, you know, like, can’t afford to, like, keep their highest-earning scouts on the books. Like, there’s—also this, I guess, class action lawsuit from a group of recently laid off Major League scouts who, um, are suing Major League Baseball for age discrimination based on, um, them losing their jobs during the pandemic. And—and one of the claims in that lawsuit is that, because they were the—the longest-tenured members of—of their department, uh, as scouts. They were higher earners and that MLB just used the excuse of the pandemic, the excuse of advancing and analytics to lay off all these scouts all at once, and that this is an age discrimination case because it just so happens that all of these people are older and always were making more money, and had more benefits of being in this—in this industry for longer. And so, we find ourselves at this nexus point about 40-45 minutes into every single podcast where it’s like, “Okay. Here’s three topics where Major League Baseball—
ALEX: Which comprise—yeah.
BOBBY: —Major League Baseball systemically trying to keep costs down so that they can rake in more profits, and, uh, what—what are we to do about it, besides fight the individual fight on each—in each individual place? And we’ll see how it actually turns out in the long run, but, um, I don’t know. I believe in SEIU Local 1. It seems like they’re up for the fight. I love to see—uh, I love to see federal labor charges filed. Nothing gets me revved up like federal labor charges.
ALEX: Yeah. Right? Yeah, I believe them, too. I mean, I’m just so sick of this like, “Well, if you give a worker a living wage, then they’re gonna ask for health insurance. If you give a worker health insurance, then they’re gonna ask for PTO.” And he—and I understand that, like, this is just how management negotiates, right? You have to assume that—that workers are just gonna come and fucking clean you out, and so you pretend you don’t have anything to give them, right? So you can just give them the crumbs of the cookie. But it’s just so—I don’t know, maybe I’m tired. Maybe it’s just the—the long weekend. Man, I’m just so fucking over it, you know?
BOBBY: This just in. Alex is over management.
ALEX: Fed up with capitalism. You can quote me on it.
BOBBY: And have you heard about this, though? This is, like, crazy, man. Have you heard about this? This is nuts, like standing on the street corner, like approaching people. This is—this is wild. So fed up with this. Um—
ALEX: Just handing out Adam Smith pamphlets. You know, like, “Y’all have to hear about the latest craze.”
BOBBY: When you’re done reading that, come back. I got some marks and angles for you.
ALEX: Yeah, right. Exactly. We have some an annotated version.
BOBBY: Uh, an annotated version. Okay. Before we get out of here, let’s, uh, speed round. Everybody loves this—everybody loves a speed round. We could talk—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —about these—all—the rest of these topics for as long as we talked about this other topics. If we call it a speed round, people would be like, “Ooh. Ooh. Speed round?”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: They’re gonna do this speedy.
ALEX: I love it, too. It’s more of a mental trick for me, you know? I’m like I have to condense my thought, like what are the—what are the top line points I gotta hit [36:59]
BOBBY: Should I just tell you that every topic that we do is a speed round?
ALEX: Yes, exactly.
BOBBY: Okay. So we just finished our air quality speed round. Now, we have our Kauffman Stadium marker speed round. Next—next speed round, um, Shohei Ohtani is the greatest athlete of all time. Your thoughts.
ALEX: Just bar none. Bar none, those are my thoughts.
BOBBY: If Shohei Ohtani hits 63 home runs this year. I’m not even exaggerating when I say that that would be the funniest thing that has ever happened in my entire life.
ALEX: Yeah. Yup.
BOBBY: Like, all of the discourse over Roger Maris, Jr., all of the discourse over his little company, about how he is following Aaron Judge around, about how they weren’t throwing Aaron Judge enough strikes. They are afraid of Aaron judge, the real record versus the steroid record, versus the AL record, versus the Yankee record, versus the Maris family, versus Aaron Judge’s mom. And for Ohtani to break that in the very next year while also going, like, 13-5 with—with a 3.1 ERA would genuinely be the funniest thing that has ever happened.
ALEX: Especially given all the, like, MVP context, you know, how are we judging what—
Bobby Oh, right. I—I—left that out.
ALEX: —what—what an MVP guy is, right? You know, like—
BOBBY: Oh, that was so terrible, that discourse last year.
ALEX: And—and—and it was like, “Well, if you give—”
BOBBY: It was like, “You are the stupidest person in the world if you think that Aaron Judge is not MVP.”
ALEX: Yeah. It’s like if you give Shohei Ohtani the MVP, then you have to give it to him every year. I’m like, “That’s great. That was a very quick discussion. I’m glad we solved that.”
BOBBY: I’d like to see somebody be more valuable than—what is this? Everybody gets—oh, so Aaron Judge gets a trophy because he’s on the Yankees and he hits home runs?
ALEX: Should learn to pitch.
BOBBY: He should. If you want to be more valuable than the greatest athlete ever, I suggest that you try to do the things the greatest athlete ever does.
ALEX: Yes. Exactly. Although, this doesn’t bode well for my DH argument, so I might have to move us on from this.
BOBBY: Is that currently banned? Did we just beat a lifetime ban on that one?
ALEX: I think we did, because—I think you did, because you said, “Look, I’ve lost.” You know, I—
BOBBY: I didn’t—I would never say that. Frankly, I’m insulted that you—
ALEX: I had—
BOBBY: —would imply that I would tell you on recorded audio that I “lost.”
ALEX: Maybe that wasn’t the exact phrasing.
BOBBY: It’s like you don’t know me at all.
ALEX: Okay. Maybe you said, “It’s over. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
BOBBY: I think what I said is, “I’m right as always.”
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: “However, it’s clear that you would like to side with Rob Manfred and his cronies about the direction that the game is going.”
ALEX: I just—I can’t believe we [39:30] this right now.
BOBBY: And I no longer want—
ALEX: I shouldn’t have said anything.
BOBBY: —to argue with you and the man, the powers that be, because it’s a losing fight. So, I’m just gonna revert back into my corner with my DH lovers who know that they’re right. And I know that they’re listening to us right now.
ALEX: With your DH lovers?
BOBBY: With my DH haters.
ALEX: Uh-huh. A Freudian slip there?
BOBBY: With my pitcher-hating lovers, who know that they’re right. And they’re listening to this right now. And they’re saying, “We will be vindicated yet. Shohei Ohtani is the chosen one. He has come to make all of your DH arguments moot, irrelevant, and frankly, Manfred-loving. Thank you for listening.
ALEX: All I will say is that Shohei Ohtani is the perfect pro-DH argument.
BOBBY: I know, I know.
ALEX: And the fact that he is such an—
BOBBY: yes.
ALEX: —anomaly is—is—as the—you know, I think proof that—well, I don’t even want to do this. No, no.”
BOBBY: You just wanna [40:24]
ALEX: Strike that—strike that from the record.
BOBBY: He said it onto [40:27] court reporter, “Strike that.” We need a judge on this podcast. Not an Aaron Judge. We need like a, uh—uh—
ALEX: Like a lion judge or something?
BOBBY: Yeah, like an omnipotent sort of being who’s just here to rule when one of us has gone too far.
ALEX: So, we need a—like a producer?
BOBBY: Yeah. Sure. Anybody out there listening, uh, is anybody a podcast producer? Anyone at home, anyone know any podcast producers?
ALEX: Pregnant pause. I’m trying to imagine you handing over the duties of editing the Tipping Pitches podcast to anyone else. I don’t—I don’t foresee that in the near future.
BOBBY: You should be happy about that.
ALEX: I know. I don’t know if I trust anyone else to get their hands on this.
BOBBY: The editor—the editor texting me at, like, 1:48 A.M. being like, “So the seven-second pause, should it stay in or should it come out?”
ALEX: When he said strike that from the record, was that a bit or was that [41:23] actually cut that out?
BOBBY: Should I add that or should I keep that in? Just—there’s people out there that could do it, but, uh, but we—we don’t wanna negotiate them—with them, so we don’t wanna give them benefits or money or anything like that. Gonna hoard it all for ourselves. Um, what were we even talking about, Ohtani?
ALEX: Shohei Ohtani.
BOBBY: He hit one 493 feet.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: It’s so rare in life—I know many people have made this point, but it’s so rare in life that something gets so hyped and then goes beyond.
ALEX: Then—yeah.
BOBBY: Then delivers to infinity and beyond. You know, there’s like—there’s like 10 things in the world that have ever done that, and, like, LeBron and Shohei Ohtani are two of them.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Fall Out Boy’s From Under the Cork Tree is the third
ALEX: Yeah. The—their—their We Didn’t Start the Fire cover maybe, uh, knocked them down from that a little bit.
BOBBY: Heinous. Heinous. If there’s anything that can win you the Billy Joel argument, it’s the existence of We Didn’t Start the Fire song. That song is god-awful.
ALEX: Exactly. Oh, yes. But to his credit, I think he’s said so himself, so—
BOBBY: Billy?
ALEX: Billy, I think, has come—has said that it’s a gimmick.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: It’s a gimmick song.
BOBBY: We love a self-aware king.
ALEX: So we love a—yeah.
BOBBY: You know, I was listening to Thunder Road the other day, the—
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: —Bruce Springsteen song.
ALEX: Yeah, familiar.
BOBBY: Are you familiar with it? Your favorite song of all time? Actually—
ALEX: It’s the Jungleland.
BOBBY: Oh, yes, it was Jungleland when we were practicing—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —your roommate trivia, you told me Jungleland. So I was listening to Thunder Road, which is, like, a 11-minutes long. And—
ALEX: No, Jungleland is the 11-minute song. Thunder Road is, like, four minutes, bro.
BOBBY: Oh, you’re right. Okay. Strike that from the record, producer. Strike it. Just edit out the last eight minutes, please. Um, I was listening to Jungleland, and I was—I was vibing with it. I even had a thought crossed my mind, I was like, “Dang, am I gonna lose this argument over time? Like, am I—is this gonna be like a Conor Oberst’s Bright Eyes thing for me where I, like, finally get around to it, like, nine years late?
ALEX: Yeah. And you’re like, “Oh.”
BOBBY: And I’m like, “Alex was”—right. Or, like, a Taylor Swift Reputation, you know?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Where you’re like, “That’s her best album,” and I was like, “You’re high.” And then you were like, “You’ll see one day.”
ALEX: Listen again.
BOBBY: And then I listened again, and again, and again, and I was like, “I’m with it.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And I was listening—I was listening to Jungleland, almost said Thunder Road again. And I was like, “Fuck. This is so good. This is so good.” And then eight minutes and 48 seconds in, he just starts doing his little wails, the Bruce Springsteen’s wails.
ALEX: The wail—the wail.
BOBBY: And I was like, “Nope. Lost me again.” I was right still. I’m with it for the first eight minutes and 47 seconds, like if he just ended this—all I’m asking is that he end the song after eight minutes and 47 seconds.
ALEX: Sometimes you just got to do a little wail, you know? I think this pod could use more—more wails. You know, when we feel like we’ve made a really good point, like—
BOBBY: Uh, I think everyone listening agrees. If you feel like you’ve—
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: —made a good point, you have absolute carte blanche to wail as much as you would like.
ALEX: Okay. Great.
BOBBY: I have no idea what we’re talking about anymore. Somehow we started—we rehash the DH and the Billy Joel and the Bruce Springsteen argument all in a hot second.
ALEX: Yup. And Ohtani is pretty good, man.
BOBBY: It’s—it’s honestly absurd.
ALEX: I’m a fan of his—
BOBBY: It’s absurd. Almost makes me mad at how good he is.
ALEX: I know. Sometimes I get the alerts and I’m like, “Oh, that was—I already got this alert.” And it’s like, “Oh, no, that’s the—the second one he’s hit today.” It was like 470 feet. Say—all right. All right. Just make—just making sure we’re all on the same page.
BOBBY: He’s like one of the most universally beloved bid and appreciated people or things in sports and the world at the moment. It’s just—it’s unimpeachable. It’s completely bulletproof. There’s nobody out there who’s trying to zag and be like, “Actually, this isn’t that impressive. Actually, there’s probably a bunch of guys who could do this.” Like, it’s just a hundred percent approval rating.
ALEX: So, like, you’d say that on a list of baseball’s A-listers, he might come in at top two, and it’s not number two?
BOBBY: People were so mad at us before. Like, you guys were so wrong. Uh, okay. From universally beloved to universally dysfunctional. You asked me if I want to talk about how the Mets are a dumpster fire right now, and the answer is I don’t, so let’s move on. Let’s talk about the Orioles.
ALEX: Okay. That was great. You—I asked you before, you said game-time decision. Uh, Orioles hosted their Pride Night this past week. We started a discussion here. It’s not a—it’s not a take about it. They just did a—what—from my perspective looked like a pretty darn good job at celebrating inclusivity and diversity in the sport among fans. Of course, there were the decorations and the—the giveaway. You know, the rainbow in the centerfield and—and a pride hat giveaway, and banners, and—and all that sort of thing. You know, no one—no—no players were wearing any pride-themed merch because the commissioner of Major League Baseball a couple of weeks ago came out and said, “Yeah, we don’t really think team—that’s a good idea for teams.” You may remember that. Um, and so, the Orioles decided to make a statement on social media instead. And so the Orioles in lieu of just tweeting out simple game updates, sent out 25 consecutive tweets containing resources, facts, statistics about LGBTQ+ issues. And, like, real—like, real important information about—about the danger that LGBTQ+ folks face every day. They—they referenced, like, real legislation that’s happening, that’s threatening trans folks. They talked about, you know, sexual orientation and gender identity in youth sports. I just—it—it felt like they were not simply checking a box, but had clearly put some thought into this. And we don’t need to have a conversation about, like, corporatized pride necessarily, but I was—uh, with all the really—frat is one way of putting it. Conversations around pride in sports and in baseball right now, and especially with what happened in Los Angeles, with the—the understanding that the Rangers still don’t have a Pride Night, this felt like a real breath of fresh air to, like, see on my timeline of a team who was, like, not interested in—in backing down, was not interested in changing their logo then calling it a day. They really wanted to use their platform. And so, I do have to commend them for that. And for Brandon Hyde coming out and saying after the game, you know, “The ballpark is a space for everyone, for all of our fans. Doesn’t matter who you are.”
BOBBY: I think it’s just—when you see a team or an organization, or, um, even like—even like a politician or something like that have, like, well-researched thoughts and stances on things like anti-trans legislation or, um, the importance of inclusivity and of, like, creating welcoming spaces at the ballpark for everybody, like queer folks or basically anybody besides, like, 65-year-old, like, cis, uh, white men. It just draws such a distinction between, like—between, like, what the Orioles did and, like, what other teams do. And not even just the worst teams, you know? Not even just the Rangers not having it or the Dodgers backing down and becoming part of this, like, culture war thing. But just like every team that is sort of, like, quasi in it to sell a little bit of merch or, like, quasi in it to just make it seem like they are one of the good—one of the good guys, like one of the people who get it. It’s—it’s not that much work to, like, understand who people are, you know? It can—it can be hard, but it’s not nearly as hard as it is to be somebody who has historically not been welcomed in these spaces. So, the very least you can do is something like what the Orioles are doing. Like, sharing resources and information and—and directing people to, like, be smarter about these topics and—and not just talk about it in such a black and white religion versus queer identity way that it’s been shoehorned into our culture. And it’s not like the Orioles being well-researched on queer issues is gonna change things overnight, but earnestly engaging with what the problems are, like the problems facing queer communities and how grave and serious they are, and how the only way to combat those problems is to plainly understand them and talk about them. It feels like the right place for, like, a Major League Baseball team to be, you know? It’s not like—they’re not—they’re not dictating the policy. I don’t think that they should be—I don’t think that they should be in there, like, writing legislation, lobbying. Like, I don’t—I don’t trust Major League Baseball teams to, like, do stuff like that. But—but a place where—the place where Major League Baseball teams have power is, like, the attention on them as a community. And educating and informing people within that community about the differences between them and why that’s okay, and why baseball can be a thing that actually does unite people. And what the Orioles did feels a lot closer to that, and to what—to what I think, like, pride at MLB should be, then, you know, maybe like 18 other teams.
ALEX: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s also the kind of thing that, like, if you’re trying to broaden your fan base, if you’re trying to build a community of folks who can enjoy this game, that’s pretty darn good way to do it, saying, “This is for everyone. Baseball is for all or none.” That’s it. Period. End of sentence.
BOBBY: Unless you’re trying to watch it on TV in the Baltimore area. Slow your roll, slow your roll. Uh, okay, that has exhausted our own topics. We will now pivot to the litany of topics that were shared by the Tipping Pitches listeners, topics and questions. First question, this is very important. This comes from Nick. Nick wants to know if noted vegetable magnate, Bob Castellini.
SPEAKER 4: He’s got carrots, and lettuce, and mushrooms porcine. The vegetable king, Bob Castellini.
BOBBY: Passed away, and they held a press conference. And in his will, they decided to divide up his assets in a shocking turn of event. He was so moved by the previously played jingle, that he made a last-minute addendum to his will and left the Cincinnati Reds in its entirety to Bazeley-Wagner productions. Which role in running the baseball team would we each have?
ALEX: So, is—is Phil Castellini still in the picture or is— is like cokehead fail son on the table?
BOBBY: It appears as though we own the whole Reds, all of the Reds. We own the Reds.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: We are the Reds. It’s us, we’re the Reds. We’re gonna keep the Patreon going, though. We—
[laughter
BOBBY: The Reds asset is just one part of a bigger—bigger picture that the Patreon still is
included.
ALEX: Right. Exactly, exactly. Okay.
BOBBY: Now, we can write in holiday cards and I’m like, “Alex, who should we draft?” I mean, I have a great role for you.
ALEX: Okay. I want to hear it.
BOBBY: Starting pitcher.
ALEX: Yeah. Why—why is that?
BOBBY: And manager.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Player-coach.
ALEX: Player-coach?
BOBBY: I just think that people will follow you, you know? I think you’re an inspiring guy.
ALEX: I appreciate it.
BOBBY: I think you have a great changeup. I think your UCL—
ALEX: What’s allowed, like my fastball?
BOBBY: I think your UCL is in much better shape than mine. As of by the fact that—
ALEX: Fortunately, but—yeah.
BOBBY: —that three weeks ago, we were playing catch, and I could barely move my arm the next day. Uh, and you seemed to be okay.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: So, do you know who else is going to pitch for us? We can’t afford to pay anyone.
ALEX: That’s a good point. So, what do you—
BOBBY: I mean— I mean, we know that the Reds don’t—they don’t make money. I mean, baseball teams don’t make money.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: So, what am I—
ALEX: And we don’t have a vegetable empire to—for the passive income, so—
BOBBY: That’s true. Yeah, he gave us the bad asset. He gave the vegetable empire to Phil and he gave us the Reds.
ALEX: Oh, brutal.
BOBBY: Bad beat. I’d love to be a wholesale carrots guy for his—I felt like that was in my future.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Artichokes.
ALEX: Sell me this carrot, Bobby. Do it right now.
BOBBY: You look like you need some vitamin A, B, B12?
ALEX: Uh-huh. I do probably need all of the above, so—
BOBBY: How’s your eyesight? You want to keep that sharp? Eat this carrot.
ALEX: There you go.
BOBBY: When I was a kid—
ALEX: You can, like, see in the dark, right? Like—
BOBBY: Yeah. When I was a kid, I—I drank so much V8—
ALEX: Oh.
BOBBY: —that I started to turn orange.
ALEX: Oh, yeah?
BOBBY: I don’t know if that’s true. That’s just what I’ve been told by my parents.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Um, what would I be doing, play-by-play and color commentary?
ALEX: The—
BOBBY: Both, in two different voices, one as you and me.
ALEX: That’d be—that’d be good. That would be entertaining. I mean, the thing about all of this is this, uh, assumes that if I own a billion-dollar company that I would be interested in, like, working, you know? I think I very, very quickly would turn into, uh, a billionaire with his feet up on the desks—on the desk all day long.
BOBBY: Dude, no one wants to work anymore, you included.
ALEX: Well, here’s the thing, they shouldn’t. Right? Maybe billionaires got the right idea.
BOBBY: Wow. Wow. Wow. I’m gonna cut that one out and have it as a soundboard drop.
ALEX: Maybe billionaires got the right idea. Maybe billionaires got the right idea. Maybe billionaires got the right idea.
BOBBY: “Maybe billionaires got the right idea,” Alex Bazeley. I—somebody listening right now, please put a picture of Alex Bazeley’s face with the quote, “Maybe billionaires got the right idea.”
ALEX: Oh, don’t do this. Don’t do this.
BOBBY: And start circling that—circulating that in the communities.
ALEX: Yeah. From no billionaires in baseball to—
BOBBY: Maybe billionaires got the right idea.
ALEX: Uh—
BOBBY: Maybe they want—
ALEX: Uh, like Rob Manfred, all my quotes are taken out of context.
BOBBY: I—everything on this podcast is taken out of context. There’s no context that can be had for this show. Unless, you want to go back and listen to every single episode we’ve ever done. That’s the only sufficient context.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: I genuinely think that I—I have no business working for a baseball team.
ALEX: No. Likewise.
BOBBY: You interviewed with a baseball team to work for them.
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: Which is the funniest—
ALEX: And they probably—
BOBBY: —alternate universe ever for this show. You’re just, like, working for the Yankees.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And doing this ever Sunday.
ALEX: Chumming it up with Hal on Saturday.
BOBBY: Oh, I would love to chum it up with Hal. I bet he has really interesting opinions about the world. Um—
ALEX: That, he does.
BOBBY: —I guess, like, communications strategy—
ALEX: Right. Like social media.
BOBBY: Yeah. Like, those are the things that we—those are the only things we know how to do. I would love to run the, um, the finance team.
ALEX: Oh, okay.
BOBBY: I would just come in there and I would just be, like, top-level stuff. I’d just be like, “I’m only top-level. I’m just top-level.”
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: I would just say that a lot and then they’d be like, “He’s just top-level. Let’s not bother him with this.”
ALEX: Right. Let’s not bother him with the details. Just give—give the number.
BOBBY: I’d come in there and I’d be like, “Think bigger.” And they’d be like—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: “—Whoa. Whoa.”
ALEX: Go in and he’d be like, “How—so how much?” They’d be like, “How much what?” You’re just like—
BOBBY: Exactly.
ALEX: —”Wrong answer.”
BOBBY: That’s what I want to know. Just start saying vague business phrases like that. “Where’s the deliverables?”
ALEX: I think you’d be good at that.
BOBBY: I think so, too. We’ve been parroting it on the show for long enough that we could actually do it.
ALEX: We’ve watched enough A-Rod videos that it seeped into our brain. I think I’d—I’d be—I want to be, like, the person who designs the jerseys.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: Not that they design new jerseys every year, but I want to be, uh, part of the team.
BOBBY: Uh, I want the title risk management.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: I just feel like a lot of people have that title and I don’t know what they do, you know? Risk management. That could be a lot of things. Like, are you making it more risky? Are you making it less risky? Where—where’s the risk?
ALEX: Uh—uh—
BOBBY: Financial, cultural [58:48]
ALEX: You’re just managing the—the existence of risk, right? Not too much, not too little, just right.
BOBBY: So to people who do risk management, do they come in and they’re like, “There’s some risk here today. Tomorrow, let’s start to have less risk.”?
ALEX: I think you’ve—I think you’ve got it. I think you’ve got this one.
BOBBY: I want the whole risk management kick, because, like, companies just have, like, internal, like, investment banks. Like, every company over a certain size is, like, also an investment bank. Like, they’re—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —a tech company. Like, Facebook is a tech company. They have Facebook, and they have Instagram. And they have like—
ALEX: No, that’s Meta to you, bro.
BOBBY: —hordes of Russian bots, you know? They’re—they’re surveillance state also. But then also they have, like, one-quarter of Goldman Sachs just embedded into the company. And a bunch of those guys are just doing risk management. I know I’ve said risk management about a hundred times in the last—
ALEX: Yeah. I don’t know what it means anymore.
BOBBY: —last three minutes, but I feel like you and I could just both do risk management for the Reds.
ALEX: Can I be—okay. How about this? I will be, like—
BOBBY: Is it risky—risk management, should we put Thom Brennaman back in the booth?
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: See, I’m already managing the risk.
ALEX: Okay, counterpoint.
BOBBY: You have to take risks to—to win big. More risks.
ALEX: I want to be, like, the special assistant. You know, you always hear about special assistants in front offices.
BOBBY: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
ALEX: I want to be that guy.
BOBBY: To the GM? Who would you hire as the GM?
ALEX: Once again, these are decisions I’m delegating. I’m not making any of these decisions.
BOBBY: I’m top-level.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I’m top-level risk management.
ALEX: I don’t watch the games. You—
BOBBY: Um, they—um, they come to me with the deliverables.
ALEX: Just come to me when you’ve picked, um, a GM.
BOBBY: They come to you with, like, eight candidates and you’re like, “Not risky enough.”
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: They come back to you with, like, a bunch of guys in different fields and you’re like, “Too risky.”
ALEX: I—I have nothing more to add to my resume for the—for the Reds right now. But if Bob is listening, you know, there are some risks here, but there’s some reward as well.
BOBBY: My—my new thing is being as disrespectful to, like, white collar finance people, as, like, white collar finance people have been to, like, blue-collar union jobs for the last hundred years, basically. So I’m trying to, like—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —flip the paradigm a little bit. So, I’m just like risk management, but they don’t do anything. They don’t—they do nothing.
ALEX: I mean, that’s like consultants. Like, what are you consulting, on yours going in and saying, ‘Yup. Oh, it looks like you got some problems here.’”
BOBBY: Yeah. It’s always like they have one big question and they need some consultants to figure it out. It’s like, “I—I have some consultants for you, the people who work for your company already. If you just ask them—”
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: “—what they think, they’ll probably know the answer already.”
ALEX: You could consult the consultants.
BOBBY: Oh, that’s true.
ALEX: Special assistant to the consultants of the Cincinnati Reds Baseball Club, LLC.
BOBBY: Okay. I feel bad that we didn’t answer the next question in a serious way.
ALEX: I don’t know that I have a much more serious answer. I’m quite literally not qualified to do a single thing within a Major League Baseball club.
BOBBY: I would handle the union negotiations.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: I’ll just give him everything. Sounds good. Think bigger. Top line.
ALEX: Thank you for that serious answer.
BOBBY: Uh, okay. I’m glad we spent, like, 30 minutes answering that question, because now we have about 20 other topics to fit in in the next 10 minutes.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: So, let’s—let’s power through them. Uh, our—our friend—
ALEX: Uh, speed round, speed round.
BOBBY: All right. Speed round, speed round. Yeah, we’re back—oh, we’re back to the speed round. We forgot about it. Um, Our friend Russ, Russ Steinberg, former guest of the show. Ross wants to know, um, what is your strategy for Immaculate Grid? The crazed sweeping the baseball internet, Immaculate Grid. Are you playing at all?
ALEX: I am, yes. Thanks to you, I know—I know a few weeks ago, I like—
BOBBY: But you—you texted me like a freaking boomer last week, and you were like, “What is this?” And I tweeted about, um, about using, uh, um, Pat “the bat” Burrell.
ALEX: Pat Burrell. Right. Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah, Pat “the bat” Burrell in—in my Immaculate Grid and you were like, “Ha-ha. What is this?” I’m too—it’s—um, I’m too afraid to ask—
ALEX: It was just a picture of him with, like, 0.9% in the corner. I was like, “What is happening?”
BOBBY: It’s one of those things where you’re like, “Everybody’s tweeting this exact thing and I don’t know what it is. And I’m too—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: At this point, I’m too afraid to ask. Uh, interesting quest—question, Russ. What is, um, what is our immaculate grid strategy? My strategy is, uh, not being good at it. That’s my strategy.
ALEX: Right. My strategy is to try to get as many right as possible, and oftentimes fail. This—this game has really, uh, humbled me a lot about my historical baseball knowledge. I’m like, “Wow. I don’t know a single pre-2004 Milwaukee Brewer, I guess.” You know? I can’t think of a single one right now. Now, if you told me the names, I’d be like, “Oh, yeah.”
BOBBY: Oh, yeah. That’s—yeah. He’s a Hall of Famer, first ballot.
ALEX: Yeah. Exactly.
BOBBY: Um, I just—my brain doesn’t work like this. You know, I can remember very specific things that I’ve, like, experienced and talked about, and been at, and—you know? But I crumble when it—when it’s like you have to—have—think of this very specific thing, in this very specific way.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Uh, so I’m honestly not great at it. I can get it, like, a lot of the days if I take my time with it. I, like, put it down and come back to it. I’m like, “Oh, yeah. That guy played for the Phillies and Mariners.” Um, that’s an easy one, though. [64:06] is a jerk. Come on. Uh, but, you know, I’m not—I’m not—I’m not like some of y’all out there. Let’s just put it that way.
ALEX: Which, to be clear, some of y’all are also lying. Like, no way—
BOBBY: Lying.
ALEX: —you know all these fucking people.
BOBBY: Lying, lying. Not telling the truth. Lying. When over a half of your greatest people who don’t have photos, you’re lying.
ALEX: No, no.
BOBBY: You’re lying.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: Stop lying. You’re lying.
ALEX: I—I think—I mean, my strategy, honestly—uh, such as there is one, I think when I started, I would, like, try to get cute, you know? I’d, like, think of someone and be like, “No, that’s too obvious.” You know? I—like a Phillies player who’s hit 40 home runs. Okay, I could put Ryan Howard, but I want to do something more creative. And so I think on it—
BOBBY: Jim Thome.
ALEX: —for, like, an hour. Well, there—there you go. Yeah. I stopped trying to get cute. I was like, “Nope. First name that pops in my head. That’s the one that’s going in there.” I’m not looking for a rarity score. I don’t care.
BOBBY: Well, for me, it’s like the first player that pops in my head, I will often put, but I’ll just make sure that I can’t use him somewhere else—
ALEX: Somewhere else, yeah.
BOBBY: —someplace that’s harder for me to think of. So, that is my strategy. I will—I will think of a person who might fit multiple places and I’ll put that person in the place that I am struggling the most with. Um, I’m just gonna say one of my other strategies is just knowing who Greg Maddux is. He’s, like, the answer to a lot of the problems.
ALEX: Yeah. It’s like him and Edwin Jackson.
BOBBY: It’s like, oh, pitcher who’s had 800,000 wins—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —and 38 Gold Gloves for the Atlanta Braves. Who could that be? Um, yeah, I’ve used quite a bit of—quite a bit of Greg Maddux. Sprinkle a little Jeff Francoeur in there, and you’re good to go. Uh—
ALEX: There you go. I—I will say the last thing I’ll say on this is that sometimes—I—you can be the judge of whether or not this is cheating. But sometimes when I can’t think of a single baseball player, I’ll, like, go to enter a player if I was going to enter, and then just type a letter, and see who pops up, you know?
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: I’m like, “All right.” So Phillies, Mariners, I can’t think of anyone. Let me just put an L in there. Oh, that’s right. These are all baseball players. Just to jog the memory a little bit. Rarely—I mean, the first names that come up are never the ones that are, like, the answers, right? But sometimes I—I find myself struggling to remember, like, who has ever played baseball.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And that’s a really good way, I think, to remind myself of past lives of teams.
BOBBY: It’s like Billy on the Street. Name a baseball player.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Uh, okay. Next question. Which current Met is most likely to risk it all for Mrs. Met? This is hard-hitting.
ALEX: This is hard-hitting. I—also, like, I don’t want to slander anyone who’s in, like, a committed relationship with, like, a significant other right now.
BOBBY: Stop. We’re not capable of slander. Editor, strike that if it’s slander.
ALEX: That’s true. I mean, if we’ve made it this—this far. Uh, I don’t know. Who—who plays for the Mets.
BOBBY: Come on. My answer is Drew Smith. He just seems—
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: —like a—he seems like a interesting guy. He seems like, uh, he seems a little bit like a fuck boy. I don’t know what to tell you.
ALEX: I—I initially thought Nimmo and then I realized that, like, I don’t think he’d partake in adultery or, like, home-wrecking.
BOBBY: I think that he would think that it was ungodly to try to have relations with a woman not made in, you know, God’s image.
ALEX: Image of God. Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah. The image of a baseball. That’s not his God. That’s not this God. But it could be our God, you know? Frankly, it’s ungodly not to have relations with Mrs. Met. It’s Drew Smith. The answer is Drew Smith.
ALEX: Yeah, yup. Uh-huh.
BOBBY: I’ll tell you who it’s not. It’s not Francisco Lindor.
ALEX: Nope.
BOBBY: It’s not Pete Alonso.
ALEX: Nope.
BOBBY: It’s not Starling Marte. It’s not Max Scherzer.
ALEX: No. No.
BOBBY: It’s not just Justin Verlander.
ALEX: Justin Verlander.
BOBBY: Who’s a weird guy, who I’m finally happy he is pitching well. Uh, that’s about enough. It’s enough. It’s enough for the Mets for me. Drew Smith.
ALEX: How about Grant Hartwig? Just learned who he was.
BOBBY: You’re not part of the Hartwig [68:23] we meet on Thursdays.
ALEX: I’m a big—I’m a big more walks than strikeouts guy for a pitcher.
BOBBY: Are you trying to, like, talk shit about the Mets right now? Like, you’re not telling me anything I don’t know.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: Grant Hartwig—I mean, his MLB debut, like, a month ago when none other than Drew Smith got suspended for sticky stuff.
ALEX: Hmm. It all comes together.
BOBBY: I could tell you at least one thought about every player on the Mets 40-man roster. Do you want to do that right now?
ALEX: No. I—I really don’t.
BOBBY: Exactly. So, don’t get me started on Grant Hartwig. They—they DFA’d high-leverage Hunter. They DFA’d Tommy Hunter, high-leverage Hunter. I think Billy Eppler D—DFA’d him because Buck wouldn’t stop putting him in.
[laughter]
BOBBY: He’s just like, “He’s a vet. You know, I—I trust him.” They wanted him to throw—they wanted him to throw literally anyone else. They were like, “Please, we signed Brooks Raley. Billy Eppler was like, “Please put him in.” And Buck is just like, “Not gonna—not gonna be able to do it.” Can I go back to high-leverage Hunter?
ALEX: Hey, man, you do what you gotta do. You trust you guys, you trust your gut. Give them a chance, maybe they’ll shine.
BOBBY: Okay, next question. This might divide the podcast. Greta wants to know if you made a team entirely out of Bobbies and an entire team out of Alexes, which team would win?
ALEX: I mean, I initially was gonna say probably yours. But, again, with my UCL being more intact, like, would you be able to make it through a baseball game?
BOBBY: Here’s a question.
ALEX: A game of catch on the beach.
BOBBY: Here’s a question. Am I allowed to give the—a couple of the Bobbies Tommy John before we play?
ALEX: Good question.
BOBBY: Uh—
ALEX: I would have to think yes.
BOBBY: I think your team would win.
ALEX: Okay. That’s very kind. We’re very kind to each other.
BOBBY: I just think it’s been so—it’s been longer since I played baseball than you played baseball.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Like in an organized way. So, I think that—that’s why I asked, if I—If I could have like a year and a half, and I could give a couple of my guys TJ, get back in the biz, you know?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Uh—
ALEX: Can you set up a Minor League of Bobbies—
BOBBY: Could I—
ALEX: —to, like, go work on their skills?
BOBBY: A complex league?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I fly all my Bobbies down to DR [70:38] yeah, we’re in Omaha, Nebraska on a Minor League backfield. Um, no, but I think that—I think your guys—the Fundies would just be better.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: I’ll tell you one thing. One thing I don’t like to do is feel the ground balls or catch fly balls, so—I hear that you need to do that most of the time.
ALEX: You know, there is a position that allows you to say, “Hit,” while not having to feel ground balls or fly balls.
BOBBY: Yeah, it’s called pitcher.
ALEX: Pitcher by [71:09]
BOBBY: It’s called pitcher. It’s called pitcher where you pitch and then you hit—
ALEX: No, dude. You gotta work on your PFPs, bro.
BOBBY: I’m fine with PFPs. You know, you lay down a bunt. I’m getting that bad boy.
ALEX: Yeah, you got the wheel—wheel down?
BOBBY: One thing I always really struggled with, though, is that, like—like the weak grounder to, like, glove side. I’m right-handed, so glove side—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —towards the first baseline and you have to kind of toss it to first, but you can’t throw it too hard, because the—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —first baseman won’t be ready for that. But, like, when my arm—you know, when my arm was live back in the day, it was alive. I can’t stop it. Just—I’m max effort all the time.
ALEX: Fire when—let it loose.
BOBBY: Fire when you—look out in the front row.
ALEX: So what you’re saying is I just need to lay down bunts down the first base line the entire time and I’ll be good?
BOBBY: Pretty much.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Although, how’s your bunting these days? I can see a lot of your Alexes having broken fingers.
ALEX: Broken fingers? Yes.
BOBBY: Yeah. And you need those. You know, you need your fingers.
ALEX: I just got an alert from Apple Music that We Didn’t Start the Fire single by Fall Out Boy is available now.
BOBBY: Oh, God.
ALEX: What do they know?
BOBBY: All right. Wrap it up. It’s time to stop. I hope people can tell that I’m, like, literally sweating so much that I don’t know—
ALEX: Drenched.
BOBBY: —I don’t what we’re talking about. Like—by the energy of this podcast. We have one final question. I apologize to everybody whose topics we did not get to. Those topics included if baseball was different, how different it would be? Uh, Brayan Bello, top five rate limited teams. If each social media app was a baseball team, who would be Twitter, Facebook, Reddit or Mastodon? How do all new stadiums have retractable roofs, argue about baseball foods. These are all great—these are great topics. We just—
ALEX: These are great topics.
BOBBY: We just ran out of time. Uh, the final question comes in the form of a voicemail. This is from a listener named Marty. I will play that voicemail for you right now.
ALEX: Yes, Marty.
MARTY: Hi, my name is Marty. Um, I actually went to the Dodger game recently, in the nice seats. Never ever get to sit there. Um, and I’m looking around and I see this old guy that I swear I recognized. I’m, like, texting my friends, trying to figure out who it is. And then all of a sudden, I realized, “Holy shit. That’s Scott Boras.” I’m 15 feet away from Scott Boras. Nothing I can do besides to try to approach him. I go up to him. I say, “What’s up?” And he clearly never gets recognized. I sent a picture of us. I was starstrucked. I—I felt like you guys should know this. I—I didn’t wear any Tipping Pitches merch. I felt like I should have. But, you know, it was really cool for me.
ALEX: Marty, thank you so much. I could hear the joy in your voice as you were recounting that story.
BOBBY: So pure. I love how he’s like, “I felt like you guys should know this.” And he’s right. We should know.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: If you have met Scott Boras—because we had another listener who told us that they met Scott Boras, too. If you’ve met Scott Boras—
ALEX: Clearly, the dude is available.
BOBBY: I know. Also, he was just at Dodgers games.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: Just, like, in the seats? How does this guy find the time?
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: Scott Boras is a vampire theory. Dude does not—
ALEX: Scott Boras, team of unpaid interns theory.
BOBBY: Less fun, more true. Um, Scott Boras is gonna be a billionaire someday, and then there’s going to be years and years of recorded history of us praising a billionaire. Have you thought about that?
ALEX: I mean, I think I went on record on this very podcast and noted that maybe some billionaires have it right, so maybe billionaires got the right idea. Maybe billionaires got the right idea.
BOBBY: I know.
ALEX: l feel like [74:53]
BOBBY: You’re just getting out of—
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: Taylor Swift is gonna be a billionaire by the end of this year, so—
ALEX: That actually is true.
BOBBY: —the second billionaire that we’ve praised.
ALEX: Tough scene. Still reckoning with that one.
BOBBY: Marty, you did the right thing, going and getting a photo with Scott Boras. If you ever run into him again, my one piece of advice for you, aside from the fact that, you know, be wearing Tipping Pitches merch, my one piece of advice for you would be tell him to listen to our podcast. Ask him if he would like to come on.
ALEX: You know, this is our—our push into being tastemakers, right? Influencers in the baseball world.
BOBBY: I feel like we’re already there.
ALEX: Yeah, but if we have Boris’ ear, there’s no stopping us.
BOBBY: That’s true. People do kind of just grovel at the Scott Boras trough, all offseason.
ALEX: Whatever the fuck he says. Yeah.
BOBBY: And that’s—it—that’s, like, far and wide, too. Like, it—it’s everybody from us and our fellow—our friendly podcasters, you know, over at Batting Around or Effectively Wild, or wherever. Um, all the way to the—the—the news breakers, you know, the Pasins of the world, the Buster Olneys of the world, the Rosenthals of the world.
ALEX: Keep going.
BOBBY: The Bob Nightengales of the world.
ALEX: Right. The Verduccis of the world.
BOBBY: I just want to say—okay.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: To my good friend, Rohan—
ALEX: I always—I—I always love this—I always love this about you.
BOBBY: To my good friend, Rohan Nadkarni, he’s definitely not listening to this podcast. A basketball writer for Sports Illustrated, uh, a native of South Florida of the Miami area, a Heat fan, a Dolphins fan, a Marlins fan, who has been giving me constant shit all year about the Marlins being better than the—the Mets and us refusing to talk about the Marlins. And citing Tom Verducci articles as the reason we should be talking about the Marlins. I want to say to my dear friend, Rohan, I will never praise the Miami Marlins on this podcast. It just will not happen. It will not—I will not admit I was wrong. They are fraudulent. They’re not good. They’re not gonna finish the season over .500. You heard it here first.
ALEX: Wow.
BOBBY: You heard it here first.
ALEX: And the Mets?
BOBBY: No, no. They—they are god-awful. They are absolutely a lifeless dogshit baseball team that does not deserve to be playing baseball games out there every day.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Sell, sell, sell. Fire sale. Everybody out of town. Goodbye. Everybody not named Pete Alonso, Brandon Nimmo, Francisco Lindor, and Jeff McNeil, sayonara, and Francisco Alvarez and Bret Baty.
ALEX: Okay. Everyone but the starting lineup, get them out.
BOBBY: No, no, no. Members of the starting lineup can go, okay? Verlander, Scherzer, goodbye. Thanks for your couple months here of doing absolutely nothing. Appreciate it. Mark Canha, we can send you off to a playoff team. I love you.
ALEX: That’s nice of you.
BOBBY: I’ll send you anywhere except Atlanta.
ALEX: You’re too generous.
BOBBY: And I’m not sending you back to Oakland.
ALEX: Or—or Miami.
BOBBY: That’s true.
ALEX: Would you send him to Miami?
BOBBY: Uh, no, no, no, because they’re not gonna finish over .500 They’re not gonna—
ALEX: Uh, fair.
BOBBY: They’re not gonna make the playoffs. They’re fraudulent. They’re fugazi. Their run differential is still negative. Like, what am—am I talking about here? Like, 30 games over .500, the negative run differential. It’s, uh, it’s garbage. Okay. That’s everything I have. Buy tickets to the Cyclones game, if you live in New York or if you’re going to be in New York on the weekend of July 29th and 30th. That link is in the description. Please continue to pitch Alex on a new team, or no team, or not liking baseball, I guess, which is something that he said that you could do, uh, 785-4225-881. Please continue to submit in the Google Form yes or no questions or short answer questions. We’ve received quite a few of them. Many of them are tremendous. Uh, Alex, would you like to make one final plea for why billionaires are good this week?
ALEX: You know what? I will.
BOBBY: Okay, great.
ALEX: This comes courtesy of a billion—billion-dollar corporation. This little—this little news item I want to share with everyone. It is—of course, this is getting, uh, released on July 3rd. Tomorrow is July 4th. And in honor of this, I don’t know if you saw this, PepsiCo is introducing Pepsi Colachup. Yes, that is Pepsi ketchup—
BOBBY: Oh.
ALEX: —at Chase Field—
BOBBY: Hey.
ALEX: —big stadium, Target Field, and Comerica Park. It’s, uh, innovation, Bob.
BOBBY: It’s anti-American.
ALEX: They’re still coming up with—there’s, uh, there’s one comment on this article that I’d like to read in its entirety and then—and then we can get out of here. This is my last case of Mountain Dew I’m going—this is the—this is the comment. There’s no—there’s no, like, quoted parts or anything. This is how it starts. This is my last case of Mountain Dew I’m going through. No more Pepsi products. They promote income disparity, rich versus poor. On all the days in the USA, they do it on a holiday where everyone is supposed to celebrate as a country, not a select few at a baseball game. There’s plenty of ingredients to make this product available for all. And you know what? He’s right.
BOBBY: He said—
ALEX: Goddammit.
BOBBY: —Pepsi Colachup for the many, not the few. Oh, thank you, Alex. I much appreciate it. Thank you everybody for listening. We’ll be back next week.
SPEAKER 5: Lately things, they don’t seem the same. Actin’ funny, but I don’t know why. Excuse me while I kiss the sky.
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!
SPEAKER 5: Am I happy or in misery? Whatever it is, that girl put a spell on me.
[01:20:38]
Tipping Pitches 
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