Reprising their roles as the arbiters of all things Dumb in the baseball world, Stephen, Lauren, and Jane from Batting Around join Alex and Bobby to do their incredibly on-brand yearly drafting duties.
Links:
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Tipping Pitches merchandise
Songs featured in this episode:
Smut — “After Silver Leaves” • Booker T & the M.G.’s — “Green Onions”
Transcript
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 on the stand, what Tipping Pitches it’s all about? That’s amazing! That’s remarkable.
BOBBY: Alex, welcome to the offseason. This is where we get to have the real fun.
ALEX: I know. No games that we have to feel compelled to talk about. We can get really in our bag here.
BOBBY: Do you think that the last month— the last six weeks of talking about baseb1all is like Serious Analyst, capital S, capital A? How do you think that went on the scale of 1 to 10?
ALEX: Like— like doing actual predictions? Who’s going to win this game versus— versus that game?
BOBBY: Yeah, just like analyzing how teams are performing, why are teams doing well, and why are teams not doing well. What would you give yourself— I guess both of us, on a scale of 1 to 10? Together, please, I don’t want to be graded.
ALEX: Right. Okay. I— well, I think— I think you— you—
BOBBY: You were kind of like a 3 and now it’s like a 9, you know? So we average out in the middle, or like a six.
ALEX: I was— I was gonna say the other way around, to— to be honest. I think you elevated so far— I think, actually, at one point during the playoffs, you texted me, you said, “Hey, remember when I said this thing was going to happen, that just exactly happened on the field?” So I think you brought—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —some very cutting—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —perspectives.
BOBBY: Tipping Pitches knows ball, I think. The streets are saying—
ALEX: [1:38]
BOBBY: You walk outside right now and you ask the first person you see, “Does Tipping Pitches know ball?”
ALEX: Absolutely.
BOBBY: They’re gonna be like, “Get away from me, you weirdo.” Unless you happen to find someone who’s wearing a Unionize the Minors in the wild, which I still have never done. But everyone else I know has.
ALEX: I’ll— I’ll give us— I’ll give us like a— like a six and a half, you know? Room— room for improvement, I think.
BOBBY: Six and a half? Dang.
ALEX: I don’t know if that’s high or low, but—
BOBBY: I think that’s low.
[laughter]
BOBBY: I always like— I always love when you— you ask someone, like, on a scale of 1 to 10, everyone’s answer is always 7. So I appreciate—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —that you went below that.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: They’re always like seven, you know?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: 7 seems like the safe answer.
ALEX: It’s the safe— it’s the safe answer.
BOBBY: If you’re like, “An 8.” They’re like, “Oh, okay. Wow, you must really like yourself.”
ALEX: Yeah. I’ll give us the— the pitchfork like 7.1, you know, for an emo album.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: Like it’s not good enough to be best new music, but like you should give it a listen.
BOBBY: It’s not for me, but it’s filling a niche.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: We’re like the 7.1 of podcasts. You know, the people who like it— like it—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: We’re never gonna attract new people.
ALEX: Exactly. We’ve found our target audience.
BOBBY: No one ever listens to this and is like, “Another 10. They did it.”
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: That’s not true. Sometimes we— we get up in the 8 range.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I think today is one of those episodes.
ALEX: I— I would say that this— this episode consistently is one of those ones that— that scratches the top for us.
BOBBY: It’s the Dumbest Things of 2023, Dumbest Things of the Baseball World in 2023 with our friends at Batting Around, Lauren, Jane, and Stephen. And we’ve been doing this for— this is our third year doing this now. It’s very exciting. Before we get to that, we have quite a bit of housekeeping to do. So it’s our first episode of the offseason, and we’ve hinted in the past about revamping Patreon a little bit. So we’re just going to spend a couple minutes talking about that before we get into the— the episode with— with Jane, Lauren, and Stephen. First things first,
Tipping Pitches has a Patreon. If you’re listening to this right now, and you’re not aware of that, maybe this is your first time listening to the podcast. Hello. Welcome. Thank you for listening. If you’ve never checked it out or paid much attention to it, that’s okay. We launched it at the beginning of the season in 2022, so it’s been going for a little bit over a year at this point, or I guess well over a year at this point. First things first, I want to say, I truly, truly, truly appreciate the support that we’ve received on Patreon. A lot of that support has just been as a way of saying thank you for doing the show over the years and— and providing it to people for free. We are always going to continue to do that. There will always be your Monday morning, or thereabouts, depending on the schedule, episode of Tipping Pitches free, available wide in all of your feeds, in all of your apps no matter where you listen. The— the community that’s been built around the show has— has honestly been the reason that we’re still doing it. The reason that we’ve kept going, the reason that we’ve done however many hundreds of episodes, Power Hours, Mailbags, AMA’s, Alex choosing a new team, all of these things, it’s because the community has made it so fun to put this— put this content out into the world for people. So thank you to everybody, even if you’re not a patron. If you are a patron or if you’re considering becoming a patron this next couple of minutes, we’ll sort of delineate how we’re changing the Patreon going forward. We did watch-alongs during the season this year, we were a little bit delinquent on them. So instead of doing them every other month, like we said we would do it, we did it once per round with the postseason. And it was really fun to see everybody out there to join and to watch baseball games together. We are going to plan on continuing to do that. Previously, this was a— a perk for the top tier of our Patreon, it will now just become a perk for all three tiers of the Patreon. So if you’re a patron at all, if you’re in our Slack, you will have access to those throughout all of next year. I guess that is a good transition to say that we also have a Slack for the Patreon, which is just a place where everybody can come together and— and chat. It’s a— it’s a vibrant and bustling community, and honestly, one of the biggest reasons to join the Patreon is because of all of the other people who have done the work into making that Slack such a fun place to be in to talk about baseball, to digest the game serious or silly, or whatever you want it to be. There’s hundreds of channels, team-specific channels. There’s channels for other sports. There’s channels for talking about who you think are the hottest players in baseball. There’s— it’s— really runs the gamut. So you can join our Slack at any level of support for the Patreon. There are three different tiers for our Patreon, there’s the $5 tier, there’s a $7 tier, and there’s $12 dollar tier. At the $5 tier, you get, like I said, access to that Slack. You’ll now get access to all of those watch-alongs. You’ll get a shout-out when you join— a one-time shout-out when you join. At that $7 tier, you’ll get access to— you’ll get all those same perks from the $5 tier, you’ll also get a one-time free sticker packet. We are now moving our occasional newsletter into the middle tier and that newsletter will now be available on— in the Patreon app as a— as a text post. If you’re— if you’ve been a supporter at the top level, you know that the newsletter is something that we’ve sent out periodically over the last year and a half or so. It’s usually just an expansion of our thoughts on a topic that maybe didn’t quite make sense to talk about in podcast form, or maybe we brought it up in podcast form and wanted to just dive in deeper via written word about a topic. I think some of our more, like, intellectual, like, thought-provoking stuff has gone into that newsletter because the podcasts, for better or for worse, has become, you know, very jokey, a very eccentric and all about like kind of fun things that we’re enjoying about baseball and some of the things were like working through our thoughts on things have been expressed through the newsletter. I’ve greatly enjoyed reading your newsletters. Writing my newsletter has helped me organize thoughts, so that we’ll be going into the $7 tier. Do you commit to writing a newsletter everyday next year, or what do
you think? [7:42] a blog or—
ALEX: Yeah, I think that’s— I think that’s doable given— given the track record. Yeah, we’re actually going to do— set benchmarks, so like six to eight blogs per day and we’re going to compensate ourselves based on the viewership on each of those blogs.
BOBBY: We’re just recreating 2010 Huffington Post.
ALEX: Right, exactly. With Jezebel going down the drain, someone else has to— has to [8:04] them. Yeah.
BOBBY: Damn. Are— what are they doing? What are they doing?
ALEX: I know, I know. Right?
BOBBY: Actually, no, I mean, the newsletter will be— we’re conceiving of it as monthly, and they’re usually pretty lengthy, you know, like a— like a thousand words, like— it’s like a real full column. They are— we— we do read them and edit them, and we don’t like do a full fact check of them or anything, but it— it’s— working some of those journalistic muscles that Alex and I have and— and studied, and started the show with, but don’t— don’t always show up on the podcast themselves. So we’re— we’re conceiving of them as monthly, who knows? Maybe there’ll be slightly more frequent. It’ll just kind of be as often as we are able to do them. You know, we do still have 9:00 to 5:00 jobs that are not related to this podcast. So that’s the middle tier, and then there’s the top tier, which is the Alex Rodriguez VIP Club. Do you think A-Rod will ever be like, “Why are you using my name and likeness for— for your [8:54] job?”
ALEX: I think— like— like there have been— there have been points over the last year where I’ve conceived of various A-Rod-related merch items, right? We haven’t released new merch in a little bit. But— but something tells me if we started profiting off of his name, image, and likeness, we— we might get a cease and desist.
BOBBY: Okay, so we won’t do that.
ALEX: It’s like— what’s— what’s the— what’s the better cease and desist to get? Is it the MLB one or the A-Rod one?
BOBBY: Definitely— I think definitely MLB.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: So the top tier right now includes everything from those first two tiers. It also includes a handwritten Tipping Pitches holiday card, which we’ve only done one round of because the holidays have only come through once. They’re coming up soon. We got to get started on those designs and getting those shipped out. If you are in that tier, or you have been in that tier at any point throughout this year, you will get your handwritten holiday card from either me or Alex. We will not both write on all of those cards, because it is— it’s quite a few people and [9:47]
ALEX: Right. We— we trade each word back and forth.
BOBBY: Right, exactly. It’s like Mad Libs. I think people would pay more if it was actually like that. And then the big change— so far all of the changes that we’ve mentioned so far, I’ve kind of been reshuffling and restructuring of the Patreon. The biggest change is that we are going to be doing bonus episodes. So there are a few different ways you’ll be able to receive these bonus episodes. We’ll— we’ll release a Q&A as a text post on the Patreon. We’ll also re-share that stuff in the Slack and whatnot about how to acquire that bonus content if you’re at that top level, that’s— which is $12 a month. These bonus episodes will be starting almost right away, almost right from when you listen to this episode. Later this week, we will have bonus— two bonus rounds of The Dumbest Things Of 2023 Draft with Batting Around, and that will be our first full bonus episode for the Patreon feed. But going forward, during this offseason, we will have kind of additional content like this. When we do episodes that are kind of themed around one thing like Dumbest Things Of 2023. We have a fun episode coming up with Cespedes Family BBQ guys, which I’m really looking forward to, which lends itself great to bonus Patreon content. We’ll be doing movie watch-alongs with people in the baseball world or in the media world where it’s kind of like a movie commentary track for— for baseball movies. Those will be in the Patreon bonus feed. And in terms of frequency, these will be every other week. So it’ll basically be like two extra episodes per month, thereabouts. They will fall on Thursdays whereas our normal episode falls on Mondays. When the regular season rolls around next year, it will largely switch to just being a Three Up, Three Down full episode, which if you’ve been listening for a long time. You know, it’s an epi— is a— is a segment that we used to do during the regular season, where we would talk about three things that gave us joy in the baseball world, and three things that took away from our joy in the baseball world. And that would end up being like about, like, 45 minutes in the second half of an episode, and we usually make our episodes very long. We stopped doing that as a segment every week this past year. We would sometimes do it as a full episode just to play catch up on— on some of the things that we hadn’t had a chance to talk about over the last couple of weeks or so. Now, it will be going as Patreon bonus episodes every other Thursday during the regular season. So to recap, bonus Patreon episodes, it will be bonus interview content or bonus guests content from when we have episodes like the one you’re about to listen to. It will be movie commentary episodes where we’ll provide an audio track. And if you start the movie at the same time, you will hear us talk about the things as they’re happening in front of you on the screen. We have some fun guests that we’re lining up for those ones that I’m really excited. I’m really excited for everybody to hear. And then during the regular season, it will be Three Up, Three Down, and these will be every other week, thereabout. Am I missing anything? Is anything confusing? Do I need to explain anything more, Alex? I feel like I’m doing a lot of salesmanship.
ALEX: No, I think you— I think you explained it perfectly. Again, we have— we have hinted at the possibility of bonus content since sort of starting the Patreon. And— and it turns out, you actually have to make that content. You actually— it takes work to— to make that content. So we’re actually going to start putting in the work, and offering these additional episodes, which we hope are a little— little looser, a little more fun, the cutting room floor sort of stuff that we aren’t able to get into, in the meat of the episodes. And— and those will exist on a separate feed that you’ll be able to— to gain access through— that you’ll be able to gain access to— through the Patreon so, obviously, keep an eye out for that. And we’ll delineate sort of the benefits that come along with each Patreon tier as well on that actual Patreon, patreon.com/tippingpitches, I’ve said the word Patreon so many times in the last 60 seconds. So I hope you
all don’t forget it.
BOBBY: patreon.com/tippingpitches.
ALEX: Right, forward pitches— tippingpitches.
BOBBY: /tippingpitches. Last thing I want to say on this, so when we launched the Patreon— we were— and we’ve said this a bunch of times, but truly overwhelmed with the support that people showed us just for having created the show, and having been doing it for a while, and people just saying such nice things about wanting to support us and— and wanting to support the kind of way that we talk about the sport. You know, I— I mentioned this is not either of our full-time jobs. Both of our jobs have come up on the show in various degrees in the past. This is a— truly a passion project, but as you know probably from listening to the show for however long you’ve been listening to it, we’re also really passionate about the— the media, world and work, and practicing sustainable ways to create things and for people to be compensated for that. And to us, in our minds, like that— that is what the Patreon is. And we want to continue to create more good stuff for people who are signing up at that top tier, and really, like, making it possible to devote the amount of time that we devote to this show every week. And as we devote more time to it, I’m really hoping that, like, people get a lot out of that, those extra episodes, the extra creativity that we’re putting into trying out new formats, new episode formats, more episodes. And I don’t know, like in the long run, it would be great to just do this all the time. You know, just do this full time.
ALEX: Right. I mean—
BOBBY: Like, truly, I mean—
ALEX: It’s gonna— it’s gonna reach a tipping point, I just— I just want to say, right? When the Patreon becomes fully self-sustaining, you’re going to be getting newsletters every day. We’re gonna— we’re gonna not know what to do with ourselves.
BOBBY: If the Patreon was big enough, and both of us quit our jobs, I would just write a newsletter just— just to hang, you know? Just to get—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —people get in the comments, just chatting. I had to put all this creative energy somewhere, and I’ll be writing newsletters about movies. Okay. I watched another three movies last night for the newsletter. But this is all part of a larger thing. This is all part of a larger evolving relationship that we have to creating the show, to creating podcasts in general, whether that’d be the Tipping Pitches normal episodes, the Tipping Pitches Patreon episodes, or whether that’d be future podcast ideas of which Alex and I come up with on a near weekly basis, you know? So the more support that we feel, the— the more able we are to commit this much time to this sort of thing, and the more it makes sense to do so. And, yeah, that’s my— that’s my stump speech for why you should check out the Patreon and why you should try it out. And if you can’t listen, truly, I— I do not begrudge anyone who does not sign up for the Patreon, and just wants to keep hanging out, and listening to the normal episode, because that is really the core foundational form of support that we— that we need, is you to keep hanging out, listening to the— the original Tipping Pitches.
ALEX: The last thing I’ll say, and then we’ll get to this week’s actual episode is that we really encourage feedback from all of you, right? We want this to be a dialogue of sorts, so if you have thoughts about content you’re interested in seeing, whether it’s something that has been discussed on the podcast or— or not, whether you’re a part of the Patreon or not, we— we want you all to feel emboldened to— to write in, call in, let us know how we’re doing. Give us that five star iTunes rating or give us that one star iTunes rating, you know? Be— be true to yourself, honestly. We— I like the haters, you know? They— they keep us honest.
BOBBY: You thrive off the haters?
ALEX: I— I really, really do, yeah.
BOBBY: I like— I want you to take on— on the Patreon episodes like a different persona.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: You know, like a battle— like— like treat life like a battle rapper. Like, everything is a slight to you. You’re just— you’re from the mud. Bball Paul Reed.
ALEX: I think I can do that.
BOBBY: I— have I told you that I’ve committed myself to the Philadelphia 76ers this year?
ALEX: You have not told me that.
BOBBY: I’m just looking for pain, you know? I’m looking for like that Mets level of pain—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —365. And I gotta say—
ALEX: It’s a— it’s a good pick.
BOBBY: —so far, 7-1, great James Harden trade, good vibes all around.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: With the very strange exception that Kelly Oubre, Jr. was— was struck by a car—
ALEX: Hit by a car.
BOBBY: —which is very terrifying, and I hope he’s doing well. Tyrese Maxey, incredible guy to root for. He’s like my Fran— like my basketball Francisco Lindor. I just— great choices all around. They’re making great choices. This is the kind of stuff you’re gonna hear about more on the Patreon.
ALEX: That’s right.
BOBBY: And the Patreon just becomes our diary. It’s just like, confessional about, like, how we’re feeling.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: You know, Sixers chat. Movie talk.
ALEX: Yeah. Last night, Dave Kaval was in my dreams.
BOBBY: He’s your sleep paralysis demon.
ALEX: He really is. He looms over my bed.
BOBBY: Okay. Oh, there’s a lot of Dave Kaval content coming, so let’s not put it off any longer. We are going to do Dumbest Things of 2023 with Batting Around. But before we do, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I am Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[theme]
BOBBY: Okay. Dumbest Things of 2023 in the wider baseball world. As always, we are joined by our friends at Batting Around, Stephen, Jane, and Lauren. Hi, everyone. How— how’s it going? How’s it going? How are you guys?
JANE: Good. Good.
LAUREN: Yeah, we’re recovering from the regular— from the postseason as you— you two probably are as well. Kind of in that— those first couple of weeks after, a little bit like a— a detox.
BOBBY: Yes.
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
JANE: It is kind of It’s like a hangover, but in the way that, like, you know, you can drink alcohol to put the hangover at bay. I’m like, “How— if I just had like one more baseball game to really feel like this.”
BOBBY: See, we’re recovering— you know, we’re— we’re like restoring all of our energy from having to actually talk about baseball for the last month.
JANE: Uh-hmm. Yeah.
BOBBY: I really feel like, though, you— you, on your podcast, have gone deeper, like down the rabbit hole on non-baseball topics. You do talk about baseball more often than us somehow, like it’s almost—
JANE: It’s true.
BOBBY: —boomeranged all the way around.
JANE: It is— it is funny how, like, yeah, we ended up being like one of the less horny podcasts over the last two months than most of the other kinds of podcasts in our sort of sphere of influencers or of—
BOBBY: They’re just trying to steal— you know, they’re just trying to steal your flow, you know?
JANE: Yeah, but we’ve kind of moved on, you know? It’s a—
LAUREN: I don’t— I don’t [20:46]
JANE: We’re ahead of the game. Yeah, we’re ahead of the game there. Yeah.
LAUREN: Yeah. In two— two years, you guys are also going to be talking about old James Clavell book from the ’70s for an hour and a half every week.
[laughter]
BOBBY: And just like the particular strain of Arizona dirtbag culture that you’ve observed in your life, yeah. Exactly.
JANE: Yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly.
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
STEPHEN: There are important ethnographies to interrogate.
BOBBY: Yes. Has this been a particularly dumb year, or is this on par with the years that we’ve done this in the past? This is now our third year of doing this.
LAUREN: Do you feel less dumb? I— I— I always feel very dumb. I feel the season was less dumb—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: —a little bit. I just— I was going through the stories and, like, maybe it was just me, maybe I was just really enthusiastic by how dumb last year was.
JANE: Uh-hmm. Oh, yeah.
LAUREN: But we didn’t have anything that I found. Maybe, you know, this will probably jog my memory and more so will come up. Going into this, the— the research I did feels less done than previous years, because there were fewer, like, slide-related injury incidents. And that’s like my— that’s— that’s the high bar to clear for me.
JANE: I feel like it was still pretty dumb, maybe on the aggregate less dumb. But the stuff that was done within this season was less funny in a lot of places.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: And more extremely— extremely sad, extremely a huge bummer as a Philadelphia fan. Like Bazeley here can attest, yeah.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Right. I— the dumbest thing I think I— I think I did was believing that I could get away from the misery that follows the A’s around. I think that one—
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: —that one was maybe on me, if we’re being honest.
BOBBY: I’m gonna just go ahead and say that that was karma. Like that’s—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —just karmic justice for what you did to me.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: Right. I had it coming.
BOBBY: I’m still not over it. I’m just working through it on different pods, various pods. Works through it on Batting Around a couple of months ago, we were working through on this pod.
JANE: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Maybe we’ll work through on dumbest things. I’m excited to do this if— for people who are listening to this for the first time, this is now the third time we’ve done this. Basically, how it works is we go around, and we each select an incredibly dumb kind of like in the online baseball world is the genre of these things, but it could— it could— it could be just something that dumb that happened in the baseball world. But really, things that inspired hilarious moments discourse on the internet, was the original idea for this, and it’s— it’s— it’s grown into its own little beast here. But Stephen is gonna pick, Lauren’s gonna pick, Jane’s gonna pick, and then Alex and I will pick together. So I think without further ado, we should just get started, because the— the look on— the look of terror on Stephen’s faces, he finds out that he has to pick first overall. You can— you can forego your pick if you want to go last.
STEPHEN: I will forego my pick. I will forego my pick.
LAUREN: I’ll— I’ll take first. Yeah, I— I’ve got one on here.
STEPHEN: Yeah, give Lauren first.
LAUREN: I feel like it’s also like the most fitting for my brand I have to do this one, Dollar Dog Night.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: Not just to the Phillies, not just to the— for the people who don’t know, it was April 12, I believe. Phillies had their first Dollar Dog Night since the pandemic. They’re not the only team to do this, but they were the one to take it to the most extreme. Great little viral clip. I think it was maybe my favorite single visual of the year, def— you know, an iconic moment, of Phillies fans just throwing hot dogs to each other through the course of the game. Again, they lost. It’s al— always worth remembering.
JANE: They’re not throwing it on the field. They’re throwing them at each other.
STEPHEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
LAUREN: Yeah. Yeah, that’s fine.
STEPHEN: There’s even an incredible detail to that whole story.
JANE: It’s a great twist— it’s a great twist because you would think like, “Oh, they’re throwing it on the fan— on the field.” They’re being typical Phillies fans, you know, that old, stupid narrative. But, like, no, they’re just throwing them at each other, which is just a— a perfect inversion of it, I think. I love it.
LAUREN: Absolutely, yeah. And I think it’s worth contextualizing how the Phillies handled it versus how similar incidents that happened for the Blue Jays in August, where they have Loonie Dog Night, because they have to be different and special, as Canadians. One Jays fan in particular, this was August 2nd, I don’t think anybody outside of, like, Blue Jays Twitter heard about this one, but it’s great. A fan brought back like a two dozen hot dogs to a seat in the outfield and just started throwing them at other fans who wanted a hot dog. They’re just getting them out.
BOBBY: Oh, wow.
LAUREN: Including to the people on the second level. Yeah,
BOBBY: That’s nice. I like that. 24 hot dogs on Dollar Dog Night, that’s like the price of one beer.
LAUREN: Yeah, yeah, that’s— that’s the funny thing about the Canadian Hot Dog Night. It’s actually like a 75 cents night for us. It’s— it’s cheaper to run the border than it is to get a regular hot dog in the US.
BOBBY: Just do an exchange rate chat. 5 minutes into the pod, I love it. I love it. I just—
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: You just— have you ever just wanted to just chuck an encased piece of meat and preservatives at your friend, you know?
LAUREN: Every day of my life.
STEPHEN: Every day. Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Just like in the Citizens Bank Park, who doesn’t want to do that?
LAUREN: The— the— the dumb part though— I— I’m not going to say everything else for the [25:43] that was dumb. Yeah, I think it’s actually brilliant. The dumb thing is that the security at the Rogers Center ejected the guy.
BOBBY: Oh, boo.
STEPHEN: Oh, boo. Come on. What kind of—
LAUREN: Yeah.
ALEX: For doing what amounts to mutual aid like—
STEPHEN: Yeah.
BOBBY: Well— well, mutual aid is terrorism now, Alex. You know this.
ALEX: Okay.
[laughter]
BOBBY: Okay. Great selection, Lauren. Jane, you’re up.
JANE: Okay. I’m just gonna get it out of the way here. We’re gonna have to talk about it eventually. This goes back to what I was saying where it was more just like sad than dumb. I’m not going to take Alex’s, though. I’m going to do the Dodgers versus the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
LAUREN: Ugh.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: And all of the fallout surrounding it, like we got so many amazing, dumb things happening because of that. My personal favorite of them was when just, you know, some idiot with blue check on Twitter with, you know, a couple 100,000 followers was like, “The top Catholic MLB player broke his silence. They’re talking about Nationals pitcher, Trevor Williams.” Like, I don’t think that that is the top Catholic in Major League Baseball, in a sport where there are tons of players from Latin America.
LAUREN: Yeah. He’s maybe the top Catholic most likely to— to, like, leave the church and an excommunication to follow that guy in Texas who just got kicked out.
JANE: Yeah, he’s— he’s bankrolling the— who’s like the coalition of canceled priests.
LAUREN: Yeah, yeah.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: I love the phrase—
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —”breaks his silence” as if like the whole baseball world—
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —was on pins and needles waiting to see what Trevor Williams thought about the Dodgers.
LAUREN: Yeah. Yeah.
BOBBY: Like, he doesn’t play for that team. Why did he feel the need to release a seven-page Notes app discourse of take on what happened in LA?
STEPHEN: The Dodgers were oppressing him for his religion. That’s— I mean, you can’t speak out.
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
STEPHEN: You— you have to speak out. You can’t stay silent when—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
JANE: Well, the whole panic started because of a group in Florida, you know, making a big deal out of it.
STEPHEN: Freaking Marco Rubio.
JANE: Yeah. Marco Rubio—
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: —making a huge deal out of it. So, like, it was just stupid, like, stuff from across the country anyway.
BOBBY: So Marco Rubio reignited one of my favorite dumbest things from the past years, which was senators trying to capitalize for political clout by repealing the antitrust exemption, because of Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence thing.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
JANE: Oh, yeah.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
BOBBY: It was like, “Let’s run that back. You know, fuck it. We’ll just get some more mileage out of that one. We’ll repeal the antitrust exemption—”
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: “—because they don’t believe in religion anymore.”
JANE: Oh, no, I did so [28:18]
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: —if you did that, Marco.
ALEX: I just— Clayton Kershaw’s response by saying, you know, “If you’re gonna have this night, then we get to have Christian faith and family night, you know, next month or whatever”. I was like, “Clayton, buddy, like, you really— you don’t— you don’t have to do anything. You can keep your mouth shut. It’s okay.” Right? Because Christians are folks who’ve— who historically have been rejected from the ballpark—
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: —made to feel unsafe, uninvited, un-included.
JANE: I mean, I did my best.
ALEX: Save it for the little guy.
[laughter]
JANE: Yeah, I’m try— I’m trying. Trust me. Every time I go there, I’m trying. Yeah, it was—
there’s so much that was so stupid around it. Like, yeah, it really made me lose a lot of respect for Clayton Kershaw. I know it’s a funny—
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: —phrase to say, but like [29:09]
BOBBY: No, it’s true.
LAUREN: Yeah.
JANE: Yeah. And for the Dodgers, really. And, like, the way that they flip flop back and forth on it so many times was just like, “This is a spineless organization.” And then they typically don’t let anybody like, you know, organize or set things up in their parking lots, but they let all these, like, far-right protesters and, like, Proud Boys set up in their parking lot—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: It—
JANE: —during that— like during their Pride Night. It was so awful.
LAUREN: My favorite detail of all, it was— it was like the ancillary parking lot, that— that’s like the smallest one they had.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: Because Dodgers Stadium, you know, they have, like, various sizes of— of parking lot. And they— they were like, “Oh, we’re— we’re filling this thing up. We’re— there’s so many of us.” And it’s like, “Dude, you’re literally on, like, the lot reserve for, like— like the— like [29:50] they bring in.”
BOBBY: Overflow.
ALEX: To the overflow.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah. If you’ve ever been put in that parking lot, you realize that you are basically in Angels Stadium’s parking lot, like it is way [29:58] out there.
ALEX: Practically you’re in between different ZIP codes.
JANE: Yeah, yeah, you might be. I think, like, the Anthony Bass stuff gets wrapped into there too, because that’s what he was making his big fuss over, and then there’s the whole dumb stuff about how, like— he— he was actually a good relief pitcher. He— but it’s like— no, he was— he got, you know, DFA’d, because he was—
ALEX: Right.
JANE: —the worst guy and the good guy was coming up. Like, it was just awful.
BOBBY: The Dodgers are kind of a perfect vessel for, like, California politics.
JANE: Oh, yeah. Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: You know just an empty, open blank slate for businesses to paste their needs onto. It’s like—
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —Bank of America, you do own Dodger Stadium, just put as many ads up as you want. And we’ll just like kind of ambiently support progressive causes, because we’re in California, but not really care about any of them. And this was like the— the kind of perfect sliver that just exposed all of that, just all of it so nakedly. And then the fallout from it, of course, was led to a lot of dumb moments that you delineated—
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —Jane. But it was, like, a defining story for multiple months, in the middle of the season.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: We had to—
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: —just keep talking about it. Like every week, we wanted to get away from it, but stuff just kept happening that we couldn’t not talk about it.
ALEX: Well, especially because the Dodgers were so spineless in it, right? They were like—
JANE: Yeah. Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —”We’re sitting here, turning a big dial that says homophobia, and just reacting to the crowd, you know, week after week.”
JANE: Uh-hmm.
STEPHEN: It is it is remarkable how their— their North Star reaction, like the guiding principle of all of their actions with the story is fold like a lawn— lawn chair.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: Yeah, and there’s no [31:34] yeah.
STEPHEN: Fold to people who are not from your state who are acting in clear bad faith about this. And then the like— I mean, we’re glad that they re-invited them and— and reacted to the fans, but, like, that was clearly just kind of like, “Oh, yeah. Oops. Here we go.”
BOBBY: It’s like—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s like Oprah, “You get an apology. You get an apology. You get an apology.”
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: “We don’t even care. Everybody gets an apology. Everybody’s right.”
JANE: And it just sucks because it was right— you know, it’s right there in the middle of this larger moral panic about queer and trans people. And, you know, we saw like with the— with the Bud Light stuff, and with Target, and it just really, really conditioned the— all of these fucking awful moral crusaders to just go, “Okay, we can— like, we can shut them down if we want. Or we can, like, make them— make them look bad. We can affect them.” And, like, they just buckled. And if they had just said, “No, fuck you. We’re not listening to you from the start.” It wouldn’t have been nearly as big of a deal, and they could have weathered it. Whether they not— they think that, like, the Dodgers aren’t going to weather this.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: That they’re gonna all of a sudden lose all of their money because of, like, one Pride Night?
BOBBY: They’re gonna go out in seconds.
JANE: Yeah, because of a bunch of people in Florida who say that they’ll never go to another Dodgers game. It’s ridiculous.
BOBBY: It is ridiculous.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: It definitely fits the definition of Dumbest Things of 2023.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: In a lot of ways.
JANE: Yeah. But, hey, at least we’re not hockey.
BOBBY: That’s— at least as a league, we haven’t actively decided to ban all expressions of politics. Whatever the fuck that means. Okay. Alex, do you want to do the honors of making our first selection for The Dumbest Things of 2023?
STEPHEN: Do I go before you or after you?
ALEX: I think— I think— I think Stephen still should— should pop in.
BOBBY: Oh. Okay, Stephen, go. Go for it.
STEPHEN: Okay. Okay. Well, I can’t let— I have to pick this one as it— since it’s still on the board. Do you guys want to talk about the Atlanta Braves in the National League Division Series?
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: Sure.
BOBBY: I have this on my long list, but I figured it would give— get brought up by somebody, so [33:36]
JANE: There’s a lot of stuff to mine there, yeah.
STEPHEN: This is— like this is kind— this is a few dumb things folded into one. My favorite and the most fun, of course, is Blooper deciding to pick a fight with the city of Philadelphia, which— when you—
JANE: Ill-advised.
STEPHEN: Yes. Ill-advised, in general, but specifically when you are a, what, four-year-old boring, shitty mascot that people don’t really like, and you’re throwing hands at literally the Philly Phanatic. That whole thing was so fun for me as a Phillies fan who hates the Braves, because the Braves are a really good baseball team with a lot of really fun players. And it was really nice to let out all that evil, and hatred, and malice, and violence in my heart on an inanimate object that— that fucked up an intern that tweeted something that they shouldn’t have. So—
JANE: So flesh-toned hate golem or whatever—
STEPHEN: Yes, yes.
JANE: —that you just described as, yeah.
BOBBY: This is like the amount of people who are just tweeting like, “Blooper, I will rip you limb from limb in front of all of your loved ones.” Like it’s really just—
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: It was so great. I loved it.
JANE: Just like posting a picture of a can of gasoline and the like— and a picture of, like, the door of the closet where they keep the [35:05]
BOBBY: Right.
JANE: Like— yeah.
STEPHEN: And— and it was— there was an effigy of it at some point that made an appearance at an Eagles Tailgate because everybody kept threatening to eat— eat it. I— I don’t— I don’t know that I would eat Blooper personally.
JANE: No.
ALEX: No.
LAUREN: He looks like a big chicken finger, I don’t know.
BOBBY: Lauren is considering it.
LAUREN: No, I think— yeah.
[laughter]
LAUREN: Just like if you ate the Philly Phanatic, you’d gain its power. But if you ate Blooper, like horrible things would happen to you, I think.
STEPHEN: It’d be like— it’d be like Jason Voorhees’ heart from Friday 9— you know what? Just—
LAUREN: You’re the only one that knows what you’re talking about at all. Let’s move on.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
BOBBY: Just— just deep [35:48]
STEPHEN: So— so I think— actually, you know what? I’m gonna leave it at that.
BOBBY: Okay.
STEPHEN: I’m just gonna do the Blooper thing for— for my first pick. There are other things to talk about, but we can get to them later.
BOBBY: Great. Great selection. Alex, I know you’ve just been itching to choose this, to bring this one back up, so please, do the honors.
ALEX: I have— we— we— this is the one that we’ve kicked around for months, saying—
BOBBY: It came up on our live stream. Yeah.
ALEX: We know— we know it’s on the list. And— and it continues a long standing tradition here on this annual episode of the Dumbest Baseball Things of teams invoking 9/11.
LAUREN: Oh, yeah. That’s [36:33]
ALEX: DraftKings on—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —on September 11th of— of this year said, “You know what? We should do to really get people engaged in— in sports betting, why don’t we put together a nice little parlay, you know? You know, Mets win, Yankees win, Jets win, and we call it the never forget parlay. You know?”
LAUREN: “Look, I got a 9/11 parlay. Look, we need a plane to crash at a field in Pennsylvania. We need— we need the tow— we need second tower to crash at exactly 1 hour and 14 minutes after the first.”
BOBBY: Can I read you guys the apology that DraftKings sent—
LAUREN: Please.
BOBBY: —like two hours after they sent out the original tweet? “We sincerely apologize for the featured parlay that was shared briefly in commemoration of 9/11. We respect the significance of this day for our country, and especially for the families of those who were directly affected.” And then it was just a bunch of people replying with the screenshot of the bet, 367 people post this bet plus— plus 651. It was up for, like, less than an hour.
LAUREN: Oh, did they win? Did they—
BOBBY: I assumed— I assumed that it just— I—
LAUREN: How did they do?
BOBBY: I assumed they had to push, you know? I— they had to take it down.
LAUREN: Yeah.
ALEX: Well, so what— what happened was the Jets won. The— the Yankees game—
BOBBY: Yeah, they did.
ALEX: —got rained out, and the Mets lost. So if the Mets had won, it would have been a push. Unfortunately, there are people who lost money on the 9/11 parlay.
JANE: Wasn’t that the Jets game where Aaron Rodgers destroyed his Achilles?
BOBBY: I think so.
JANE: [38:10]
LAUREN: Oh, yeah.
JANE: So that was just— that was just an awesome day. Yeah.
LAUREN: Oh.
BOBBY: Oh, my gosh. Sports betting continues to be—
JANE: God, I hate it so much.
BOBBY: —a well that we come back to.
ALEX: [38:25]
JANE: One of the worst blights on this sport, for sure. Yeah.
LAUREN: Maybe the actual, overall stupidest thing to happen to baseball, like, for multiple years running now.
ALEX: Yeah, without a doubt.
STEPHEN: It’s gonna be hard to dethrone that.
BOBBY: The A’s are trying. I believe that kicks it back to you, Lauren.
LAUREN: Okay, I’ve got a good one here. It’s technically preseason, I think that we’ll— we’ll— we should let it slide and do it, because it’s such— such a good— such a— a rich and juicy one.
BOBBY: I think that counts, anything in 2023.
ALEX: [38:55] calendar year.
LAUREN: Yeah, it was— it was back— for sure.
BOBBY: Yeah, because we did— we did this last year and it was November, so—
LAUREN: Exactly. We’re— we’re covered. Yeah, it was January 31st. I know we talked about this when it happened. I think you guys might have also. I might— I— I vaguely recall this. Reddit did the only thing Reddit is really good for, and did a deep dive to prove that Joe West was editing his own Wikipedia page.
STEPHEN: Yes.
JANE: [39:15]
BOBBY: Yeah. Good one. Really good one.
LAUREN: You guys remember this. This was so good.
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: It was like— the— you could still find the old thread of it, where they go down— it’s like multiple changes, multiple edits. They did— they— you know, they— eventually, it was— the— the FanGraphs podcast, I think— or Effectively Wild, where they got him on the air to admit to it. And basically, he was just so pissed that people were saying mean things about him, but he registered— figured out how to edit Wikipedia. He’s like a 70-year-old man. That’s hard to do. And just wanted to correct the record. He said he wanted to correct the lies and sign everything off. crewchieff22, whoever he is.
ALEX: I—
STEPHEN: crewchief22.
ALEX: I— I— I like to think that he actually, really ardently believes in the cause of the Wikimedia foundation, right? But is maybe a little unsure.
LAUREN: Donates every month, yeah.
ALEX: And so he’s like, “I’m just gonna write what I know, you know?”
STEPHEN: Yeah.
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: “And that’s my own personal history.”
LAUREN: Absolutely, yeah. This is— this is why— I was getting afraid when Elon Musk was talking about buying Wikipedia a couple of months back was [40:17] Wikipedia precisely for this kind of thing.
STEPHEN: Yeah. What else is Joe West gonna do in his retirement?
LAUREN: He’s busy.
BOBBY: Yeah. What’s going with pod, bro?
ALEX: I know, he hasn’t been podcasting in like a year [40:30]
STEPHEN: He couldn’t— he couldn’t take the heat.
BOBBY: So, yeah, just another example—
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —of someone who wasn’t ready for the fucking content game.
ALEX: He doesn’t have a [40:36] absolutely not.
BOBBY: If you’re not ready for the fucking heat, get out of the kitchen, Joe West.
JANE: People think that they can just jump into the podcast game—
BOBBY: Nope.
JANE: —and take off just because, you know, they work in the field that they talk about for— or that they’re talking about for so long, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah [40:48] in this industry
JANE: Joe West [40:48] do a little— yeah.
BOBBY: Don’t come around here [40:52]
JANE: You’re not gonna make it.
BOBBY: You’re not invited anymore.
JANE: I told him not to do that, and he did it.
[laughter]
BOBBY: Dumbest Things of 2023, calling that pod Staffcast.
JANE: Staffcast.
BOBBY: Calling it Staffcast, how does Richard get the fucking title? Nobody even knows what he looks like. He’s like 21 years old. What’s going on with that?
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: crewchief22, I love that. It’s almost better than if he had just put it like IamJoeWest22. Like, that— it’s so good. It’s so good.
JANE: He— he should have been like bluecowboy22.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: I think that would have been so much better. It would’ve been awesome. [41:31]
LAUREN: I do think like— if you were like a— like identity thief or identity scammer, it’d be really interesting to see what are the sites he’s registered with that username on.
BOBBY: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Ooh.
ALEX: [41:43]
LAUREN: That— I don’t think he’s— he’s not— he’s a shared password guy. He’s not generating—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: —a new password for every website he visits.
JANE: No way. No way.
BOBBY: Can you imagine if he had like one pass or like one of those other services that just— like deep security for his— he’s actually sneaky with it, in the tech world.
JANE: Hmm.
ALEX: Big [41:59] guy, Joe West.
LAUREN: Yeah. Every single website and his password is just ball four [42:02] every single one.
JANE: Joe West is one of those guys who insist that you message him on Signal even if you’re just like, “Hey, do you wanna go get coffee?” Like—
[laughter]
JANE: My friend that cuts my hair makes me do that and I’m like, “Okay, fine.” I’m just being like, “Hey, can we cut my hair?”
BOBBY: Yeah, well, Joe West is— he’s been burned by Alex stealing his music and putting it online for us to do a podcast about it.
ALEX: That is— that is true.
BOBBY: He’s trying to do [42:31]
ALEX: He’s like he’s seen what the dark web can do.
LAUREN: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Okay. Jane, you’re up.
JANE: Okay. Like— all right. I’ll— I’ll admit that sometimes I can be a bit of a hater. That may be a shock to some of you, but—
ALEX: Not at all.
JANE: —this season, I was bugged real early on by this every fucking team having their own bespoke celebrations—
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: Hmm.
JANE: —for home runs, for whatever.
BOBBY: Oh, I love this.
JANE: That it got stupid so fast and, like, really undeserved in a lot of cases, I think. Like, did the Pirates really deserve to have a home run celebration? Now—okay. Like, they were— they were they were up to— they were in, like, first place in, like, May, which is in itself a extremely stupid thing that happened this season. But, like, of all these teams just started stretching more and more and more for their home run celebrations, and it got just stupid. Just stupid.
LAUREN: Yeah. There were only, like, four that were any good.
JANE: Yeah. Like, the— the Orioles one, fine, great.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
JANE: Like it was organic, it was weird, it was funny. But, like, even the Angels samurai helmet, I thought was trying a little too hard. Like, you went out and bought—
BOBBY: That was trying way too hard.
ALEX: Yeah.
JANE: —this extremely expensive helmet, and it’s like, “Yeah, that’s— that’s a cool ass helmet. Like, that— that does rule.” But like the fucking Kansas City Chiefs had the helmet from Gladiator, that’s like— that’s just dumb.
ALEX: Yeah, you’re kind of pushing it.
JANE: Yeah. And it wasn’t a home run—
LAUREN: Or the inflatable dumbbells the— the—
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Hmm.
LAUREN: —Red Sox have.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: Yeah, and it wasn’t a homerun celebration, but like a weird, little, you know, bullpen ritual or dugout ritual that the Cardinals had. Where if you wanted to predict the Cardinals hitter was going to hit a home run, you pick up a burger phone and dialed in, like—
STEPHEN: Oh, that’s right.
JANE: —what inning it was, and the player’s number, and it was—
STEPHEN: That’s so complicated.
ALEX: No. What?
JANE: —it was way too complicated. It was so stupid. It was incredibly stupid. I just— I hated these celebrations and stuff the entire season. Like, they just went way too overboard, way too fast. Even like the Twins one, I didn’t like because, like they literally had a committee, like of players and other people around the team come up with their thing, like Pablo Lopez, like, came up with it.
ALEX: Focus grouping [44:50] celebration.
JANE: Yeah. Yeah, they were. They were focus grouping it and they came up with Land of 10,000 Rakes and it was a fishing fest.
LAUREN: Ooh.
JANE: Ugh. Yeah, it wasn’t— it wasn’t good. It wasn’t good. Sorry, Twins, but it— like it wasn’t good.
BOBBY: We need to raise the bar, like you have to be 10 games over .500 to do one of those. I think that we need—
JANE: Uh-hmm. So—
BOBBY: —to introduce some more stipulations, like how—
JANE: Like have— yeah, have something to celebrate like, “Oh, we’re on like a huge heater and we’re turning it around. We might be— pretty might be, you know, contending for a wildcard spot.” Like, “Yeah. Okay, cool.” Something naturally comes up.
BOBBY: We, as the baseball podcasters of the world, need to be more like the democrats. And we’re like, “If you want food stamps, you have to prove you’re looking for a job. If you want to do your little home run celebrations, please prove to me that you’re a good baseball team.”
JANE: Yeah, the fucking Brewers were putting on, like, the Green Bay Packers cheese hats. It’s just sucks. Everything just sucks.
BOBBY: How long before a company is sponsoring one of these? Like, do you think next year?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
STEPHEN: Oh, God, don’t, don’t, don’t speak—
BOBBY: Two years?
JANE: That’s some amazing evil you’re bringing into the world. I love that.
STEPHEN: Don’t speak that evil.
JANE: I want it— I want it to just— all— all of it to be laid bare and so stupid—
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: —if It’s going to happen. So please—
LAUREN: If it does happen, I want it to be like the Nationals and Raytheon. I want it to be like a— like a—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: —like a little rocket they, like, pull around the dugout or something.
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: I want it to be as evil and banal as possible, as fast as possible.
JANE: The— the Braves have a pool of Quikrete you can jump into. It’s still wet. Yeah.
STEPHEN: The— the— the Astros do a quick draw motion sponsored by Halliburton.
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
JANE: There we go. There we go.
ALEX: This is great.
BOBBY: See, this little hand motion at second base brought to buy Smith & Wesson.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: It’s like— okay. All right, Stephen. You’re up.
STEPHEN: All right. Let’s see. There are a few good options here, but I’m going to go with Orioles— Orioles owners removing announcer Kevin Brown from the booth—
JANE: Ugh.
STEPHEN: —because of comments he made about the Orioles record in the past against the Rays.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: This shit— this is— it’s so fucking dumb. Why? What—
JANE: It’s institutionally dumb, yeah.
STEPHEN: It’s— it’s— yeah. It’s— it’s like— first of all, he wasn’t saying anything bad about the team. He was, in fact, saying good things, because you want to show the progress, right? They were bad, and now they’re good. That’s not talking shit on the team.
ALEX: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Second of all, there was a graphic for it, which meant that this was not just like some guy going off. Like, the fucking network had this bit prepared.
JANE: [47:38] decide to say, “By the way, we sucked really bad against this team in the past.” Like, it was— it was a talking point. It was the thing to talk about.
STEPHEN: No, the— the fucking— the fucking shitty ownership group was just like, “Oh, this— this makes us look cheap. We don’t like this. Put this man on probation.” And you know what that did? That [48:02] affected. That just— that just made you look more like an asshole, and it made like the entire, like, broadcaster community—
BOBBY: Yes.
STEPHEN: —of baseball to, like— like—
JANE: Yeah. Yeah, the first time they’ve ever showing solidarity with each other, yeah.
STEPHEN: [48:15]
BOBBY: Yeah, exactly.
JANE: [48:17] order of baseball broadcasters, yeah.
BOBBY: Just absolutely coming out, just ethering the Orioles ownership at every opportunity. Just Gary Cohen being like, “Don’t ever let me see you in the fucking street, John Angelos. I’ll fuck your shit up.”
[laughter]
JANE: That was what’s great about it, is they’re very specific about their demands.
BOBBY: Yeah. Yeah. And then so an— an offshoot of this was that Kevin Brown then also came out and, like, tried to pour cold water on the whole situation and being like, “No, I’m fine. Everything’s fine. I’m good with this. I’m— I’m happy here. I like it here.” And so then that led us to be— led other people to be like, “How are we supposed to feel about this, after all of this when he went back into the booth?” It was really dumb. Really exceptionally dumb. We have more Orioles stuff coming up later. I’m gonna actually just say right now that we’re gonna save that for the bonus part of this episode, which will be—
STEPHEN: Right.
BOBBY: —featured on our Patreon. There’s really just a lot of Orioles stuff that I would love to delve further into, but it will take us down a rabbit hole that will make this a three-hour podcast and I don’t think any of us want to do that.
ALEX: Yeah, I think— I think Bobby and I each came to the table with two or three distinct John Angelos storylines.
JANE: Uh-hmm. Maybe like the dumbest 100-win team of all— season of all time.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: Possibly.
ALEX: Absolutely. Yeah.
JANE: Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: Absolutely. Okay, we’re up next. I’m gonna go all the way back to opening day, April 3rd, this tweet from Tim Britton of The Athletic. “The Brewers home opener included a flyover of the stadium, the roof was closed.”
JANE: Yeah. Hell yeah.
BOBBY: This is a personal favorite of mine, because like flyovers are dumb as they are. But to do—
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —a flyover of the stadium with the roof closed where nobody can actually see it and you can only kind of hear the planes flying over it, is just, to me, fits the definition of this exercise so perfectly—
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —that a team would pay millions of dollars to the Department of Defense to have planes fly over their stadium for opening day, but then have the roof closed still. What is it for, then?
JANE: It’s pure love of the game.
BOBBY: Is it—
JANE: It’s pure love of the game.
BOBBY: Is it for TV? Is it for tax write-off purposes? Is it just to satisfy the lobbyists? Like, what is happening?
STEPHEN: Oh, it’s probably for a tax write-off.
BOBBY: Why did they do this? It’s— it’s amazing.
JANE: It’s just for the— it’s just for the noise complaint. Yeah. They just really love pissing off, like, all the people who live in the city.
BOBBY: And I— I— like, it’s just for the climate change? Like, I really don’t understand it. Like, I don’t get it.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: It’s really incredible.
ALEX: Or, like, if there’s fuel, we got to burn. Like, it’s not gonna burn itself.
[laughter]
BOBBY: Keep the stock price of the oil barrels, like, right in line. I— I love this so much. It’s just— it’s such baseball ownership brain. “Well, we scheduled a flyover and we have to do it, even though no one in the stadium is going to be able to see it.” Tremendous stuff. Great work, Matt— Mark Attanasio. You really have acquitted yourself well this year. Everybody’s really happy with how you behaved. Definitely not mad you lost Craig Counsell. Definitely not mad you’re gonna trade all your best players. Definitely not mad you got bounced in the first round again. Yeah, it’s just really good vibes over there. They just loving Milwaukee, and they want a new stadium, too. So maybe the next stadium won’t have a roof so that they can see all the flyovers.
STEPHEN: Hmm. Well said.
BOBBY: Okay. Lauren, you’re up again.
LAUREN: Okay, I’m gonna take an easy one. This one, I think, was probably gonna come up. If— if it wasn’t coming up, it was such a defining moment of the— of the— of the Angels for me, of their season. Anthony Rendon getting called a bitch and tried to slap a fan. Great day.
STEPHEN: Oh.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: Great day.
STEPHEN: That was an early one. Yeah
LAUREN: That was early in the season, yeah, and they were— that— like they were already looking rough. They had a— they have— all season long. But just from every angle, a stupid thing— a stupid thing for the fan to do. I— I think [51:55] down on this one as it— you— you should be allowed to be rude to fans sometimes.
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: You probably shouldn’t try to physically hurt them, but I— I’m— I’m not particularly on this side of the fan in this case, none— nonetheless. Not a— not a good look for Anthony Rendon or whatever. But all around, very stupid.
ALEX: Yeah. I— I— I found this the other day, again, doing the— doing the research and had to watch it like a dozen times because it’s such a— there’s so many different characters in that video. There’s like the man who’s pushing the— the fan in question, like, towards Anthony— you know, almost doing like a citizen’s arrest sort of thing, like you have to answer for your crimes to Anthony Rendon’s face. Hunter Renfroe is just standing there like mouth agape at everything that’s going on, unsure how to intervene.
[laughter]
ALEX: It’s too good.
JANE: Awesome.
BOBBY: Rendon has like the— has the guy’s shirt just like—
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —gripped in—
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —his fist. I’m like trying to see what the guy’s shirt says, it low-key looks like one of our shirts, Alex, but it was not [52:59]
STEPHEN: Oh, God.
JANE: That’d be some of the best marketing ever if it just like, “Yeah, he was wearing a Tipping Pitches shirt.” Well— yeah, well, he’s assaulted a guy with a $300 million contract.
LAUREN: If we ever get around to making merch, I— I want every Batting Around fan to go to the stadium and try to pick a fight with the biggest, burliest guy on the team, so that we can get clout.
BOBBY: Yeah. Yeah, that’s—
JANE: Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: —great free advertising. Tremendous free advertising. I— interesting that we went here for the Angels first. There’s quite a bit of Angels content to mine.
STEPHEN: Oh, yes.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —quite a bit, quite a bit, but great choice. Okay, Jane. What’s next?
JANE: Okay. I’m gonna go with the shooting at Guaranteed Rate.
BOBBY: Oh, Jesus.
JANE: But specifically, the White Sox putting out a thing, trying to explain how like, “No, it— we think it might have happened outside the stadium and, like, the bullet went into the park. And they like—”
BOBBY: Oh, yeah, the magic bullet— the White Sox magic bullet.
JANE: Yeah. They had a— they had a magic bullet where it went, like, five city blocks and fell into the park, and that’s where it actually came from. Because— because, like, there’s— you know, Chicago is so crime-ridden and scary, it’s like, yeah, that’s a smart thing to be saying about your own park. But, like, yeah, they’re just shootings outside of it all the time. Like, really, really great. But, yeah, just trying to say that, like, it came from outside when it like— I don’t know. Like, it was— it was— you know, nobody knew what happened initially, but like—
ALEX: Yeah.
JANE: —that clearly was not what happened. And it turned out—
ALEX: Yeah, that’s— that’s—
JANE: —it’s just someone snuck a gun in and it went off like—
LAUREN: That— that—
ALEX: That’s a page out of the IDF playbook.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Someone snuck a gun in in the folds of their body fat.
JANE: Yeah, yeah.
LAUREN: Yes, the most American way to do a shooting. I do respect that.
JANE: Yeah. At the ballpark. Like— and then—
LAUREN: I mean, you don’t want to leave your gun in the— in the— like under a trash can outside. You— you’ve— you did remember you had it on you. You got to, you know—
JANE: Yeah
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: Yeah, you gotta— gotta carry it all the time. Yeah.
STEPHEN: And then we didn’t stop the game.
JANE: Yeah, that was—
STEPHEN: They just kept playing.
JANE: —crazy. Like, at first, they weren’t, you know, sure what happened, but like there was still like a couple innings left in that game. It’s like, “Excuse me. There’s been a shooting.”
BOBBY: Yeah, we gotta get this one in, guys.
JANE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: Let’s— let’s keep it going.
LAUREN: We don’t want to interrupt the sanctity of the season the White Sox are having.
JANE: Yeah.
[laughter]
JANE: Like, he went over, you know, the— the minimum innings for a game to be. It’s like getting rained out. Like they’re just shooting—
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: —games over— “Okay, who’s up right now?” That’s it.
LAUREN: Just out of curiosity, I’m trying to find the record here. They were— I believe this is accurate, 20 games below .500 on August 29th when this happened.
BOBBY: Brutal, very brutal.
ALEX: Incredible.
BOBBY: God, they were so bad this year.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Just like could not have gotten worse. Could not have gotten worse.
JANE: And it’s looking extremely bad in the future, too.
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
JANE: And they lost their best broadcaster to the Tigers now, too.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah. And we had that—
ALEX: That’s—
BOBBY: —on the long list— I also— because I don’t think this one’s gonna get brought up because so much has been discussed about this man in the past on these episodes and just in our— on our podcast, in general. I also wrote down the fact that the White Sox quietly brought back Tony La Russa as a consultant after firing their GM. So he’s— he’s an advisor to the front office now.
STEPHEN: Did they really?
LAUREN: That’s so awesome.
JANE: Unbeatable.
LAUREN: That’s so awesome.
JANE: Yeah. .
BOBBY: It just— nobody’s doing it like Reinsdorf, you know? He’s just in his own fucking league. Love that guy.
JANE: A while back on the show, on our show, we were talking about, like, realignment or if it was more expansion teams or whatever, or like if we ever got flipped up and I was like, “Yeah, put the Twins into the NL Central.” And Stephen was like, “Well, you want to play in the one with the Cubs and the Cardinals.” I was like, “I want out of this one with this just joke division.”
BOBBY: Yeah. With, like, the White Sox and all the shit they’re doing. Like all of these other just failures of organizations. Like, no, I just— I just want to play in a shit of a division.
ALEX: I know. I— what does it say about the state of that division that over the last couple of weeks have been like Tigers are going to be sneaky good this year. Gonna be sneaky watchable. Like I—
JANE: That’s the second-place Detroit Tigers.
[laughter]
JANE: Yeah. Incredible.
BOBBY: At least they tried, you know?
ALEX: They did.
JANE: They did.
BOBBY: They’re like, “Fuck it. We’ll give Javy Baez 150 million.”
JANE: They did.
BOBBY: Let it rip. Okay, Stephen, you are up.
STEPHEN: I’ve got— there— there’s still— there’s still so many that I really, really want to feature in this main portion, but there’s just two— two picks left. I will leave the one that I’m looking at for the two of you, because I assume you can’t let this go without being mentioned upon. So I think— I think I’m gonna loop back around to the ethics and sports journalism discourse that broke out. Just because I want to talk about the Braves being—
JANE: You want to shit on the Braves?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
STEPHEN: I just want to shit on the Braves.
[laughter]
STEPHEN: You know, I— I—
JANE: That’s a good sync. You should lean into that, yeah. And we can’t— we won’t serve you wrong.
STEPHEN: I— I— It feels a little cheap to use two of my three picks to shit on the Braves, specifically for things that happened during the NLDS. But I’m gonna do it, because it’s a lot of fun. Yeah. So Orlando Arcia said a thing he shouldn’t have in front of a reporter, and the reporter did his job, Jake Mintz, friend of ours, and Bryce Harper happens.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: The over— so I think overall, the— the way that Braves fans conducted themselves—
BOBBY: Yeah.
STEPHEN: —was—
JANE: Not [58:51] themselves in glory.
STEPHEN: Yeah, it was really remarkable in— in a way that I like— I have a low opinion of the Braves collective fan base. Obviously, there are a few that are really cool and are— that are my friends, and I like, and are smart and good. But as a collective, I have a low opinion of them. And they astounded me with how poorly they conducted themselves throughout the playoffs, bitching about the playoff format, bitching about days off, bitching about, you know, this, that and the other— like looking for excuses as to why their team was underperforming. And they arrived at— Jake Mintz doing his job reporting on Orlando Arcia talking shit in the clubhouse. And Bryce Harper proceeding to own his ass on the field of play, in a way that is, like, completely incredible. We got an amazing photo out of it. It was just— it— it was unreal the level that he just went Super Saiyan on them. And for some reason, that was Jake Mintz’s fault.
BOBBY: Yeah.
STEPHEN: And the— I think the— the— this is— this is a fun thing, this is a fun, dumb thing. It’s also not a fun, dumb thing, because then you had— Atlanta beats playing into this attack on Jake’s character.
BOBBY: Right.
STEPHEN: Which was really disgusting.
BOBBY: On my long list, I wrote down, “Braves media whining and crying and being tiny, little babies because of the team having to rest for five days,” which is kind of like an offshoot of basically—
JANE: Yup.
BOBBY: —what you just talked about.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Truly one of the dumbest collective actions by a group of people who, otherwise, seem like they need to have, like, functional intelligence to be able to do the job that they say that they do. Like, I—
STEPHEN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —just— it blows my fucking mind that that many people could be like, “Well, yeah, obviously, the playoff format is broken, because they had to rest for five days.”
JANE: It happened with the Dodgers, too, and— yeah.
BOBBY: It’s like— well, then— well, then, why didn’t they play worse and not get the buy? Why— why would every—
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —team choose to have it this way? Like, why would— if you ask any of these teams, would they rather have this or would they rather have the chance of being eliminated by the fucking Marlins because they lost two games? Every team would chose the buy.
JANE: No, all the handling in the— about the playoff format was one of mine, for sure. Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah. It’s just so, so dumb, and the— the collective psychosis that is Braves fandom or being around the Braves organization is mind-blowing to me. I don’t understand what’s going on down there, the— the whole organization. There’s going to be some— I’m gonna go on some rant at some point in the future that’s gonna get me sued because I’m gonna accuse the Braves Foundation of, like, doing illegal shit, but this version of this, I agree with you, Stephen. It was so unbelievably dumb and inexplicable.
STEPHEN: Inexplicable, I think, is a— is a great word for it.
LAUREN: Before we move on totally from this [1:01:54] can I kind of just do a quick, little— like a little— little quickies I’ve noticed the season? Because I— I did— in— in my research. I found Bryce Harper was just kind of studying on people all season long.
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: In a way that’s like kind of a himbo fun dumb guy thing. There was this— there was like teeing off on the Braves in the— in the postseason. It was fantastic. There’s also throwing the helmet at a Pirates game, which is a great moment.
STEPHEN: I was at that game. Great moment.
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: He was at that game.
JANE: That was [1:02:16]
LAUREN: Way early in the season, I don’t think a lot of people will remember this one as well. In a game against the Rockies, he got caught lip reading, “You’re a loser fucking organization, every single one of you.” Just [1:02:29]
BOBBY: Where’s the [1:02:29]
[laughter]
LAUREN: That— oh.
BOBBY: Oh, he’s great. He’s great. He’s really—
ALEX: He’s just like legendary.
LAUREN: [1:02:38] people, yeah.
BOBBY: He’s really good for the baseball world, honestly, I think.
STEPHEN: I’ve got— I’ve got— I got a Harper thing or two for the long list.
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: I just— the whole thing with the— with the Braves was like, why are you setting yourself up to be owned like this? Like, they backed themselves into—
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —these corners, where obviously—
JANE: They had very little to gain.
ALEX: —there’s going to be karmic justice on the field. Like, no shit. It’s Harper and the Phillies. What do you realize you’re asking for?
JANE: They had nothing to gain.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: Oh, boy. I’m so glad that they got what was coming to them, honestly. A really great developing storyline from this year. Okay, I believe that makes it our turn. And— and Alex, speaking of the Braves.
ALEX: Speaking of the Braves, I know that like a quarter of our picks at this point are gonna be on the Braves, but that one’s kind of on them. You know, there was a lot of dumb stuff that happened on Twitter this baseball season. Stephen, you already mentioned just Blooper—
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —and— and that entity as a presence. But I want to take you guys back to July 4th 2023, which procured, I think, my favorite piece of literature from this baseball season. And there was a tweet from— from Blooper’s official Twitter account and I’ll just read the tweet—
STEPHEN: Uh-huh.
ALEX: —in full to you all, okay?
BOBBY: Everybody strap in, it’s a long one. It—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: It does have Twitter blues [1:04:01] so it’s a lot more than 200 [1:04:02] characters.
ALEX: [1:04:03]
JANE: Oh, of course.
STEPHEN: I— I forget what this is, so I’m really excited.
ALEX: “Own a T-shirt gun for home defense, since that’s what the Founding Fathers intended. Four ruffians break into my house. ‘What the Billy?’ As I grab my powdered wig and Bleacher Reacher Pro. Blow a golf ball-sized hole through the first man, he’s blooped on the spot. Draw my Micro Mini on the second man, miss him entirely because it’s smoothbore and hits my neighbor Freddie Falcon. I have to resort to the T-shirt cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with shirts and bobbleheads, ‘Tally ho lads.’ The t-shirts bloop two men in the blast, the sound and extra shirts set off the car alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion. Just as the founding fathers intended.”
STEPHEN: What?
ALEX: The— the—
JANE: Some— someone was employed to write that.
STEPHEN: I— I missed this.
ALEX: This tweet is still up. I just want to say at—
BOBBY: It is—
ALEX: —at one point in the season, I believe it was pinned to the top of the profile. Like, I think there was a— there was almost a feeling of pride behind this, “Look at how we’ve married our— our game and our— our strong national history.”
BOBBY: This tweet was sent at 8:02 a.m. Eastern time, July 4th. That’s 5:00 a.m. Pacific.
LAUREN: I—
BOBBY: That’s way too early to be using the word rapscallion as a fucking baseball mascot.
LAUREN: I don’t know. That’s— that’s what I get [1:05:27] to follow my bangers on Twitter, so I— I can’t really judge.
STEPHEN: I—
LAUREN: It’s not that— 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. is where all the real creative juices are flowing, so—
STEPHEN: I have long discussed that this Blooper Twitter account is the worst team-sanctioned social media entity since the first couple seasons of the Vegas Golden Knights Twitter account.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
STEPHEN: But I think— I— I think even— even that comparison does a disservice— this— that is—
JANE: Insane.
STEPHEN: That is insane.
JANE: It’s a— it’s a home invasion-murder fantasy.
BOBBY: [1:06:09]
ALEX: Yes. That is exactly what it is.
JANE: Like— like— and the— even though he’s like, “Yeah, I’m using—”
BOBBY: Blow a golf ball-sized hole through the first man—
JANE: Yeah, it’s like—
BOBBY: —is so fucking crazy.
JANE: [1:06:16] like, “Oh, no, it’s— it’s funny. I’m— I’m like talking about a T-shirt canon.” It’s like, “Yeah, but you’re like blowing holes through a guy. Yeah, you’re like—”
ALEX: Right. Blooper said stand your ground.
JANE: Yeah. You’re like, “Oh, but one of them nicked his carotid arteries. Like, I shot— yeah, I shot a hot dog and the foil wrapper, like, still nick his femoral. He’ll be dead in two minutes.” Like, it’s crazy. And who are the people that he’s using them against? Do— do you see like— we— I mean, we know who he’s talking about.
[laughter]
JANE: But like—
BOBBY: Jesus Christ.
JANE: It’s— it’s crazy. It’s crazy.
LAUREN: Yeah, you— you don’t want your mascot do— have the same— like posting persona as like Travis Bickle. It’s [1:07:00]
JANE: Yeah. Fucking Charles Bronson character—
ALEX: Well, I think— I think I said this—
JANE: —for a mascot. I
ALEX: I— I said this around the— the time that, you know, Blooper was needling Philadelphia fans, but I— just— I don’t necessarily get the added value of having a team, like, mascot account, like, giving them a personality, giving them more.
JANE: Absolutely not. No, none.
ALEX: Like, there’s no way any of that ends well, because the logical conclusion is cosplaying as a fucking second amendment advocate on your Twitter account. Like, I just— I don’t— I don’t get it. I don’t get it.
BOBBY: I regret to inform you guys that every single quote tweet for this is like, “This is epic.”
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: This is so [1:07:42]. Blooper is the best.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: This is cinema. A lot of Martin Scorsese screenshots in the quote tweets.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I’m like, what is— what is happening? What— this is what I’m talking about. Collective psychosis, anyone who has touched the Atlanta Braves organization in any way, you are entitled to compensation for what it has done to your brain.
JANE: Yeah, it’s like— it’s like, “Yo, are you stationed at Camp [1:08:00] like—”
[laughter]
JANE: Have you ever been [1:08:04] Park? You probably have brain cancer right now. Like, it’s crazy.
STEPHEN: I’m calling on the complete and total shutdown on the battery until we can
figure out what the hell is going on here.
BOBBY: Absolutely.
JANE: And we— we got to just sanctioned it off like Chernobyl. Like—
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Right.
LAUREN: The 10,000— yeah, all the— all the sand in Russia, just dump it right on top.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah.
JANE: Oh, good Lord.
BOBBY: Just unbelievable shit. Unbelievable shit [1:08:36]. Okay. Let’s do one more round, and then we’ll— we’ll save the rest of the bonus in the Patreon. So, Lauren, you’re up again.
LAUREN: Perfect. Okay. I think you can’t really look at 2023 as a whole year of baseball and not mention how great the World Baseball Classic was. It was a core part of the season for me, a core part of, like, the baseball experience as a fan. Just an incredible month of playoff worthy baseball in February. It was fantastic. I do want to commemorate that in the dumb moments just a little bit, because one of the dumbest things happened. It was not necessarily a thing on the field it was done, but like the immediate reaction, I think, around it, was Edwin Diaz tearing his patellar tendon on a mound celebration in the game, after the game.
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: Just it— you know, I was stunned that it happened. It was very unfortunate. It was very, you know, bad luck. But the media reaction of being like, “Well, this is why we shouldn’t be doing this, is we risk—”
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: “—all these teams, you know, sending their best guys and getting hurt.” That is, like, so not the point of the world— the— the experience. And, like, no one can really look at the season the Mets ended up having and being like, “Well, if they had, you know, one reliever, everything turns— turns the other way.” No.
BOBBY: No one can do that in good faith, but plenty of people did do that.
[laughter]
LAUREN: Exactly, yeah. That’s— that was the dumb part, was everyone freaking out like it was— like, single-handedly gonna tank the season to lose a reliever. There were other injuries in the World Baseball Classic. There were other, like, unfortunate things that happened, but that was— that was— didn’t take anything away from, like, the joy of the experience, and it should— it shouldn’t have. It shouldn’t really matter if— if, like, someone gets banged up, because they’re gonna get banged up in the offseason in some other dumb way, too. Like a certain biking incident, some of us may recall from a few years ago. There’s plenty of, like, ways for guys to fuck themselves up that aren’t as cool as the World Baseball Classic.
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: Well— and plenty of them are gonna do it during the regular season, too, during a meaningless game— like all right.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Maybe we shouldn’t have any Angels games [1:10:30] you know?
[laughter]
LAUREN: Lots of Angels fans would’ve agreed with that, I think, yeah.
ALEX: Probably.
JANE: I think you could— you could try that successfully and, like, nobody really notice—
ALEX: [1:10:41]
JANE: No one would notice if there’s like— if there just weren’t any Angels games for a while. Like [1:10:45]
LAUREN: Yeah, but they still like posting the box scores in the newspaper, yeah.
ALEX: Right.
LAUREN: They’re just making them up.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: They’re just simulating them like MLB The show.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: [1:10:53]
JANE: Yeah, you plug Mike Trout in for, like, 40 of ’em and—
BOBBY: Ooh.
JANE: —move on.
STEPHEN: Ooh.
BOBBY: Damn.
LAUREN: It’s sad, it’s sad.
ALEX: Yeah.
LAUREN: I wish— I love him. I wish he was— I wish he was healthy all the time.
BOBBY: Yeah, you don’t even— the whole— my relationship with the Angels has nothing to do with the game. It’s nothing to do with the results—
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: — the box scores, nothing.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: It all has to do with Arte Moreno bribery, parking lots—
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: You know, getting under the luxury tax, which I can’t wait to talk about. Yeah, I mean, the Edwin Diaz thing, like it could’ve happened when he was, you know, walking down the stairs based on how it—
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —actually happened in the game. Like, if he just stepped on a, like, crack or something and twisted his ankle, like the same exact thing could have happened. It was a freak accent. It had nothing to do with the actual World Baseball Classic.
LAUREN: If he hadn’t hurt himself, the Mets might’ve traded him away at the deadline, so—
BOBBY: Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.
LAUREN: So maybe it’s a good thing.
BOBBY: No, Epp dog would—
LAUREN: Yeah, he—
BOBBY: Epp dog would never do that to me, bro. He was too—
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —busy violating the league rules and getting investigated.
LAUREN: He’s [1:11:55]
JANE: Maybe he’s covering, like, drunk driving accidents and stuff, yeah.
LAUREN: Maybe the only [1:11:59] as the Diamondbacks because then maybe they get Edwin Diaz and [1:12:02] yeah.
STEPHEN: Oh.
BOBBY: Damn.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: Damn. Damn. The Diamondbacks, by the way, are one of the dumbest things of the 2023 baseball season. Just the whole organization—
STEPHEN: I do—
BOBBY: —them going into the World Series, like them having a negative run differential that was on the long list, too.
LAUREN: That was on the long list. That’s like dumb fun, though, dumb—
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: —you know—
BOBBY: Exactly.
LAUREN: —sub— subcategory fun— dumb fun.
STEPHEN: I have a question once we’re— once we’re through these—
BOBBY: Okay.
STEPHEN: —for the group on that note.
BOBBY: We should— maybe next year, we should plot this on like— like one of the, like, political orientation charts like dumb fun, dumb sad.
JANE: Oh, yeah.
ALEX: Right.
STEPHEN: Yeah, right.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Okay. Jane, you’re up.
JANE: Let’s see. Stephen, can I steal one of yours?
STEPHEN: Go for it.
JANE: Okay.
BOBBY: Stephen’s got like five more Braves things—
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: —that he wants to get off his chest, so he’s good.
STEPHEN: I’m— I’m glad we’re doing— I’m glad we’re doing another one—
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: —so that I could like—
JANE: I—
STEPHEN: —diversify a little bit.
JANE: I don’t wanna end on a sad one, so I wanna— I wanna end my last one to be a silly one. Mrs. Met getting a BBL was fucking out of this world. Just— and everyone just suddenly being like, “Holy shit. I am, like, horny as fuck for Mrs. Met.” It was— I mean, we— it’s a beat that we’ve been on for a while, like both of our shows—
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
JANE: —have— have—
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: —been talking about this for a while, but I feel like it broke containment and got into, like, normie Twitter and stuff, too.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: Like people are just being like, “I’m— I’m about to act over this Instagram post of— of Mrs. Met here.”
LAUREN: I enjoyed this one because there was, like, multiple people that were— I was talking to. They were, like, trying to deconstruct based on previous Mrs. Met costumes about like exactly when they added the extra padding, whether they did add extra padding. It was like getting into like— like real, like, JFK conspiracy territory, where it was— it was try— trying to break down exactly what happened. And I think the conclusion was, yeah, they definitely added padding to the costume. It wasn’t just like—
JANE: Oh, for sure.
LAUREN: —a different [1:13:56] one.
ALEX: Right. Yeah.
LAUREN: They— they— they— they added like an inch— an inch or two. She’s— Mrs. Met has been doing her squats.
BOBBY: We should be able to FOIA that.
JANE: No, she— she—
BOBBY: Like, we should be able to FOIA that information.
JANE: No, she flew to a clinic and made a [1:14:07] and almost died on the table but— yeah.
STEPHEN: My favorite manifestation of that was not the, you know, the— the quote tweets or the— or— or any of that. Pretty much like the— one of the only, like, funny things that Elon has done with Twitter, like objectively funny things, is making bookmarks visible.
JANE: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
STEPHEN: [1:14:40] 1,000 people, yeah.
JANE: That’s so funny.
STEPHEN: Just like every full body picture of Mrs. Met tweeted by the official Mets account just like—
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: —thousands of bookmarks.
JANE: Now, like a friend of mine did a voice recording tweet of her reading off the Rudy Giuliani sex, you know, but like just to— kind of just matter-of-factly reading it off, and it got bookmarked so many times. It’s like, “You guys are perverts.” Like she was—
ALEX: This is— this is— this is dark.
BOBBY: Oh, you guys are sick, like sick, sick.
JANE: Just a woman reading the worst sex in the world like—
STEPHEN: Oh.
JANE: Yeah. Yeah, no, the bookmark thing is very funny. I love it.
BOBBY: Alex, what are your feelings on Mrs. Met?
ALEX: Feelings on— on Mrs. Met?
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: I’m— I’m probably not as overtly horny for Mrs. Met as the rest of the— I— I would like her and Mr. Met to have a happy marriage. You know, I think they’ve had a rough patch over the last few years.
JANE: No, they do. They just have their own dynamic where—
ALEX: Is it that Mr. Met has like a cock fetish?
JANE: Yeah, exactly.
ALEX: Is— is that what it is? Okay.
JANE: Exactly, exactly.
STEPHEN: They absolutely—
ALEX: Okay.
STEPHEN: —practice ethical non-monogamy.
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: Well, I don’t— we don’t— we don’t kink shame, so I’m— I’m for it.
JANE: He— he sits in the cock chair and watches— yeah.
ALEX: Right. He’s the one actually taking all the pictures of the Mrs. Met.
STEPHEN: Yeah, yeah.
JANE: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Oh, for sure.
STEPHEN: He gets to participate if he’s good.
[laughter]
BOBBY: The decision to give Mrs. met more padding on her ass was probably collectively made by eight people, all of whom make more than all of us on this podcast. It’s—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
JANE: Oh, yeah, yeah.
LAUREN: [1:16:16] yeah.
BOBBY: Like they all— it’s like— it’s all about marketing. You know, it’s all about how many people are we expanding our reach to and—
JANE: Yeah. Just hitting—
BOBBY: —everyone [1:16:24] remember shit like that.
JANE: Just hitting a big red button that says, “Bigger assess,” and like— and then watching the bank account just go up, and up, and up. Like—
LAUREN: It was definitely like the— the whiteboard scene of James Cameron pitching Aliens, like— like writing Alien on a whiteboard and adding a money sign at the end.
STEPHEN: Hmm. Right.
LAUREN: Just drawing— just drawing the hips out, just drawing the ass.
JANE: Ass, yeah.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
LAUREN: One— one rogue maverick genius in a room of 15 people.
JANE: Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: “Billy, this is Mrs. Met. Her one deficiency is that her ass is not big enough.”
[laughter]
JANE: “Yeah, I’m giving you a $150,000 bonus this year.”
BOBBY: Yeah. We did it, we cracked the code.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay. Stephen, you’re up for your last election on the— on the main feed.
STEPHEN: I’m gonna have to go with just the A’s. I was leaving it for you to pick, but—
JANE: Okay, yeah.
STEPHEN: —I gotta— I gotta take— I think all of it.
BOBBY: Yeah. Yeah.
STEPHEN: All of it is dumb.
BOBBY: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Leaving one of the top media markets in the country for one of the four— like, what the— I don’t even know.
ALEX: Right.
STEPHEN: A significantly tinier one.
ALEX: Right. I think it’s like the 38th [1:17:41] or something like that.
JANE: Yeah, something like that. Yeah.
BOBBY: And they also have to try to include like Reno and like the surrounding parts of—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —Las Vegas to make it seem like it was bigger, too.
STEPHEN: A place that— a place that probably won’t exist in 30 years.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
STEPHEN: Just like the—
BOBBY: That’s generous.
STEPHEN: — the absolute just like complete contempt for Oakland and— and baseball fans in general being— being shown by fucking Fisher and Kaval and all those fucking freaks. I think if we were to like— can synthesize this— this very large selection into a moment, it would be when MLB Network cropped out—
ALEX: Yes.
STEPHEN: — a home run ball—
JANE: Uh-hmm. Yeah, so funny.
STEPHEN: —because it— it hit— it— it went into a section that had “Sell the team” signs like— and just how blatant that shit was on behalf of, like, all of it. They— all of everything has been just so blatant and rammed through with no concern about people at all that it— it— it illustrates how little they care and how little— like, they can get away with it. They are getting away with it.
JANE: It’s so transparent.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah.
STEPHEN: So it’s just like, “Why don’t— like, who cares? We’re gonna— we’re gonna have, like, shitty corporate speak to— to— to not lie to your face, but— or— or to not just like be overt to your face. But everybody knows it’s a lie, and we don’t care, because what— what are you going to do? Fuck you. What are you going to do?” I’m— I’m— as I’m talking about this, I’m getting heated.
BOBBY: Yeah.
STEPHEN: And—
BOBBY: The— the propaganda machine that they put into effect for this was just— it just shows that they don’t even have to bother because they just did not do a good job with it. Like the—
JANE: No.
BOBBY: —the cutting— the editing out the home run— where the home run ball landed was one thing. There was also during the reverse boycott when they were, like, rebroadcasting it on MLB Network or, like, on— I think— I actually think it was on NBC Sports Bay Area.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And they just skipped over the entire fifth inning when the “Sell the team” chants went. They were just like—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: “—To conserve time for this broadcast, we’ve cut forward to the seventh thing.” And it’s like, “Oh.”
ALEX: Convenient.
BOBBY: “Interesting. Interesting choice. Nice. I wonder why that is.” Yeah. So, actually, this is gonna be our— one of our last selections too, so we’ll just roll into the same pick as you, Stephen. So you brought up the— the home run ball. There was the— the skipping over the “Sell the team” chants. We also have two— two of our pet favorites of Alex and I. One of them was when they announced that they were moving to Las Vegas, “The— the Oakland A’s, on April 24 2023, they said that they are working with The Boring Company and expects to have an underground tunnel stop built for their new $1.5 billion stadium in— in Las Vegas.”
JANE: Oh, yeah. That’s a great idea. That’s exactly what they need, yeah.
BOBBY: If they get an underground tunnel stop— I’m gonna say it’s on the pond right now, if they get an underground tunnel stop, I will buy Las Vegas A’s season tickets and move to Las Vegas. That’s not happening. That’s not fucking real. That’s not— The Boring Company is not real.
JANE: No. It’s not.
BOBBY: It’s not a thing.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: [1:21:15] a tunnel—
STEPHEN: It’s real— it’s— it is real to those freaks.
BOBBY: Exactly.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
LAUREN: I think he actually [1:21:20] has like 30 new stops or something. I mean, he had some crazy like number of new stops that were approved. “They’re— oh, they’re totally gonna happen in the next couple of years.” Like no, none of them are ever gonna happen.
ALEX: Well— well, like in— in January, I think, too, Elon tweeted out a— a picture of himself at, like, one of California’s, like, factories or whatever, you know? Being like, “Great— like great job, Tesla California,” or whatever, wearing an A’s Jersey which just—
JANE: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —you know, spun all the, like, sicko A’s fans into a frenzy, being like, “Elon, please, sir, buy my baseball team.” We had to suffer through like two months of that. I remember people just like texting me screenshots and being like, “I’m so, so sorry for what’s about to come your way.” I— it was miserable.
BOBBY: Elon is never gonna buy a sports team. They already have unions. Like they— we already have the unions here. He’s never gonna want to get into this industry.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Although, the— the public grants are compelling. Okay. And the other A’s thing that Alex and I just were obsessed with this year. This one’s kind of a— this one’s kind of a deep cut. So, Ken Korach, Korach or Korach?
ALEX: Korach.
BOBBY: Korach? Ken Korach, who is a A’s announcer, broadcaster, commentator for a long time, he— he wrote a book, and he was putting it out earlier this year. And someone on Reddit discovered a book in a local bookstore that was signed— it was— it was Ken Korach’s book and it was signed—
JANE: Oh, yeah.
BOBBY: —by Dave Kaval.
JANE: Dave Kaval, yeah.
BOBBY: He had given away his own signed copy of Ken Korach’s book to a local bookstore, and somebody bought it, and— and found it.
ALEX: I— I think it was signed by Ken, right? It was signed by—
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: —Ken addressed—
JANE: To.
ALEX: —to Dave.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
BOBBY: Right, right. Yes.
ALEX: Being like, “Dave, good luck.” Like, you know, “I’m rootin for y’all. Let’s get it this year.”
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Incredible. I—
JANE: But yeah— and the— I remember it too, because the way that— like that dedication was written or whatever, that— that message is written to Dave Kaval. It was a thing— it was like— it made it sound like him and Dave Kaval had a conversation and Kaval just totally sold them like, “We’re gonna be great for Oakland. We’re gonna build this team and do something great.”
STEPHEN: Yeah. Uh-hmm.
JANE: Like, “No, we’re here for the long haul, man.”
BOBBY: Here’s— here’s the inscription, “I can’t— Dave, I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to working with you as the A’s enter this new chapter.”
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: “Your enthusiasm and vision are contagious. I hope you enjoyed the book.”
STEPHEN: Oh. Oh.
JANE: Yeah. And now, then what happened? Yeah. Like, it’s so rough. It’s so rough.
BOBBY: It is, it’s brutal. It’s— they— I think that they take the cake for the Dumbest Team of 2023.
JANE: Yeah. That— yeah.
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah, I think so.
JANE: They win, like, the— the platinum, like dunce cap, you know?
ALEX: Right.
[laughter]
STEPHEN: That— that was going to be my question, and the question was going to be phrased, are there contenders for dumbest team of 2023 that aren’t the A’s?
BOBBY: Well, why don’t we answer that question in the Patreon bonus content?
JANE: Yeah, that sounds good.
BOBBY: We’re gonna wrap that up here. For a couple more pics, and the answer to who else was contending for dumbest team of 2023, head over to our Patreon where you can find the bonus version of this episode. Stephen, Lauren, Jane, thank you so much. This is— this was just the best. This is the best thing that we do every year. I really appreciate it.
JANE: It’s so fun, yeah.
STEPHEN: It’s so good.
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: Yeah.
ALEX: It makes the baseball season worth it if we’re being quite honest.
JANE: Absolutely. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 6: Wanting to be closer than logic allows. I look up to you. You put me down.
BOBBY: Okay. Thank you to Batting Around. Thank you to you, Alex. Thank you to everybody who listened through our very long, lengthy, notes-based introduction to this episode, which was delineating all of the differences in our Patreon. I promise we’re only going to do that, full version of that once this offseason for everybody who’s like, “All right, guys. We get it, like, you know, we’re— we get it, the Patreon. But I will be plugging it in, and reminding people, and talking about what kind of episodes we’re doing and what is available, so just prepare yourself, you know? Thank you to everybody who’s been calling in for the last couple of weeks to keep our voicemail—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —box alive. I think you’ve done great work. We are going to round up all of those questions and answer them at some point on an episode in the near future. We just didn’t have time, because the content is just churning. Now, that the— now that the baseball season is over, this is when the real content starts.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That number is 785-422-5881. I think that’s it. That’s all we got.
ALEX: Yes. That’s it for this week. As you mentioned, we’ve got some really fun stuff coming down the pipeline, so be sure to stick around. Don’t leave just because the baseball season’s over. We’re— we’re still having fun here.
BOBBY: Someone told me that they really appreciated my joke about how everybody went out to Effectively Wild to hear about the playoffs and the real stuff, and now they’re gonna come crawling back to us.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: And I was like, “You know what? You see me. Thank you. We’ll be back next week.
SPEAKER 6: You call me by her name, but I was here first. And I was your girl
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: Hello, everybody. I’m Alex Rodriguez. Tipping Pitches. Tipping Pitches. This is the one that I love the most. Tipping Pitches. So, we’ll see you next week. See ya!
Tipping Pitches 
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