Bobby and Alex preview the 2024 season (three days into the season) by putting together a bingo card of some off-field events they’ll be watching for this year, including billionaire shopping sprees, the encroachment of sports betting, political donations, Twitter settings tweaks, and more. Play along with your own card at the link below!
Links:
A-Rod, Marc Lore and Glen Taylor clash publicly over Wolves, Lynx ownership
Play Tipping Pitches Bingo: https://bingobaker.com/#660a190e3bb4104e
Songs featured in this episode:
Smirk — “Violent Game” • Booker T & the M.G.’s — “Green Onions”
Transcript
Tell us a little bit about what you saw and be able to relay that message to Cora when you watch Kimbrel pitch and kind of help out so he wasn’t typical pitches. So tipping pitches we hear about it all the time. People are home on the stand what tipping pitches all about? That’s amazing. That’s remarkable.
BOBBY: Alex, we’re starting this week off with a first. I think this is the first in the history of Tipping Pitches. It’s a dramatic reading, but it’s not a bad take.
ALEX: Whoa.
BOBBY: Are you ready?
ALEX: I think so. I’m in my feels.
BOBBY: Headline, A-Rod, Marc Lore, and Glen Taylor clash publicly over Wolves— over Wolves-Lynx ownership spat, quote, “It is now personal.” If it’s personal, and the public has to take sides, that’s the Tipping Pitches bat signal for A-Rod.
ALEX: Absolutely. We have thousands of listeners who will go to the mat for him, and Marc Lore.
BOBBY: The Tipping Pitches listeners show up outside the arena with signs. “The back alleys of Target Center underwent a renovation last fall. At the behest of majority owners in waiting Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez, an opulent private owners’ suite was added just down the hall from the Minnesota Timberwolves locker room. The suite features marble flooring, a private bathroom, a bar, a dining area, plush furniture and flat-screen televisions. It was designed as a gathering place for Timberwolves leadership with Rodriguez and Lore wanting it to entertain guests, conduct business on game nights, and add some pizzazz to the second-oldest arena in the NBA.” When I tell you I was hooting and hollering while reading this article because I know for a fact— I don’t know this for a fact, actually, but I know it for a fact. You know what I mean?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: That this was all A-Rod’s idea.
ALEX: Yeah. Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Marble floors, a place to entertain guests, a place to do business.
ALEX: Add some pizazz during games.
BOBBY: During games.
ALEX: Man— the man can’t stop wheeling and dealing.
BOBBY: They have to do business during games?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Why don’t just watch the games and do business somewhere else? Okay, here we go. We’re continuing on. “In some ways”— by the way, this article is from Jon Krawczynski and Shams Charania. Timberwolves beat writer for The Athletic named Jon Krawczynski. Just let that sink in.
ALEX: [2:32]
BOBBY: Okay. “In some ways, the room encapsulates the battle between the Lore/Rodriguez group and current owner Glen Taylor for control of the Timberwolves and WNBA’s Lynx that exploded into public view on Thursday. It is a symbol of the differences that developed between the two sides over the last three years of a partnership— of a partnership that has collapsed in recent days. Taylor and his wife, Becky, viewed the expensive renovation to be an unnecessary flex that goes against their pragmatic and practical sensibilities. They rarely visited it this season, preferring to eat their pregame meal in a common area where the media and other game day staffers are served, as they have done for years. Lore and Rodriguez, limited partners who were under contract with Taylor succeed him as the controlling owners if they could complete a three-step process to purchase a majority share of the Wolves and Lynx, saw it as a way to project a more modern image for the franchise with clients and business partners.” Here’s where the money is, quote, “They wanted that private room for themselves down there,” Taylor told The Athletic. “I didn’t think that was a very good idea. But I okayed it and paid for it and stuff like this. So I bent the corners a little bit and stuff like this here. But, I mean, that was more of their priority that they had that room than, quote, ‘Who are we trading for?’” Follow-up quote, “I would expect to hear that from, like, a teenager, not from someone who’s so mature and so astute and who has been so successful,” Rodriguez said in a video call Friday. “Not only is that a cheap shot, but it is disingenuous and disappointing.”
ALEX: I—
BOBBY: The knives are out.
ALEX: I—
BOBBY: The knives are out.
ALEX: I thought that was that— was Taylor who was still being quoted there at the end of like, “It feels like I’m dealing with— with the workings of a child,” which—
BOBBY: No.
ALEX: —would have made a lot more sense because this is absolutely— like, you buy a basketball team or you’re on the precipice of buying a basketball team, first thing you do, a room for me and my friends to hang out in. Man cave.
BOBBY: Flat-screen TVs.
ALEX: Flat-screen TV. I have to know—
BOBBY: I like how flat-screen TVs are still like a— a mark of luxury as if there are other kinds that you can buy now.
ALEX: Right. I think they— I think they’re all flats.
BOBBY: I don’t think that you can buy the old school TV set, you know?
ALEX: Did— the part about Taylor being frustrated by this, wha— was the word flex in quotes? Like was that— was he being directly quoted on that? Like he was like, “I just think A-Rod and Marc Lore are exercising too much of a flex right now.”
BOBBY: No, that was a paraphrase.
ALEX: Okay. Right.
BOBBY: From the writers. The quote was the really confusing part that I read.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: That was— that was the Taylor quote.
ALEX: Where he’s like, “That sort of thing. You know, this sort of thing.”
BOBBY: “And— and the stuff like this in the corners—”
ALEX: The stuff like this—
BOBBY: “—and stuff like this here.” He’s a very old man. You know, there was a reason he was selling the Timberwolves.
ALEX: Okay. Right.
BOBBY: This is just the best story in sports right now, in my opinion.
ALEX: It really is. Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s like ignore the Ohtani betting scandal. You know, ignore the—
ALEX: Don’t care.
BOBBY: —MLBPA mutiny. Ignore whatever else is happening in other leagues. This is it. This is the A— this is the A story.
ALEX: So a couple things here, I mean, the rumor is that the— the current owner would be happy to pull out of the deal, because the valuation of the team has, like, skyrocketed in the last couple years, right?
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: Like, it has, like, tripled in value maybe, and all of a sudden— or doubled in value.
BOBBY: Sold the team for one and a half billion in— in agreement to Lore and Rodriguez that will be paid over three installments that were, like, kind of a long time in between those installments. I feel like this saga has been going on— or at least we’ve been talking about it for over a year on the podcast. And in that time period for them to make those three payments, the valuation of NBA teams has continued to rise, as it always does. But there’s also this new media deal that’s coming up for the NBA, which once you solidify that, it can increase the valuation of teams, because those media deals are very long, and so that it’s— so that’s guaranteed money coming in for the— a period of, like, 10 years. And also the Timberwolves have gotten good, you know? And that helps the valuation of the team. They drafted a— a superstar in that time period— or they didn’t draft a superstar in that time period, but he’s blossomed into a superstar in that time period, Anthony Edwards. And they got a new GM who was very highly touted, I guess. I don’t know. We don’t need to get into the— the inner workings of the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Minnesota Lynx if you don’t want to, but we can.
ALEX: We certainly can.
BOBBY: And the rumor is that— if you believe the Rodriguez and Lore side, that Glen Taylor wanted to pull out of the deal the whole time, because it was a bad deal as soon as it was signed, and now it looks even worse. Because—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —yes, as you said, the team has doubled in value. But the rumor on the flip side, if you believe the Glen Taylor side, is that Rodriguez and Lore never really had enough money to pull off this deal and they were trying to scrape together cash at each of these payment installments, which is hilarious, for our purposes.
ALEX: And here’s the thing is that both of those things are true.
BOBBY: I think— yeah. Yeah.
ALEX: I— I think like bo— like it was just a confluence of the situations that no one was exactly prepared for, but— but I do think that, though, it had long been rumored that the Lore/A-Rod group had been struggling to come up with the financing.
BOBBY: It’s always like they have 200 million of a $450 million payment.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And they’re searching for the other.
ALEX: Right. Uh-huh.
BOBBY: There’s— Warren Buffett just has like 48 missed calls every couple of months because A-Rod is like, “Please, please, sir, I want to own a team so bad, please.”
ALEX: Meanwhile, A-Rod’s out there, like, shoveling the driveway of the Minnesota Timberwolves, like, practice facility just to be like, “Look, I’ll do anything, I swear.”
BOBBY: It’s like when you rack up a bill when you forget your credit—
ALEX: Do you need your car washed?
BOBBY: —you forget your credit card, so you have to wash dishes.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: That’s what he’s been doing for the last year.
ALEX: And it didn’t even work, didn’t even work. All this— all this time, resources spent, and for not—
BOBBY: Taylor— Taylor said— record— if you read the rest of this article and the link is in the description, Taylor said that they missed the payment date on the 27th of March and that gave him the right to terminate the whole deal. I don’t— I can’t speak as to the veracity of that statement, but if they— they’ve already made two of three payments. If they were, like, one day late on the third payment that blows up the whole one-and-a half billion dollar deal? Like. I don’t think that’s really how this works. Everybody seems hilariously petty. And if it’s going to be a personal knockdown, a drag out fight, I just love that for content. I’m sad for our country, but I love it for content.
ALEX: It sounds like A-Rod needed a room in which he could do deals, so that he can [9:15] the other financing.
BOBBY: Well, Glen Taylor would never come down there. There’s the—
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: There’s the culprit right there. He said he never came down to hammer out the— the finer points of the deal, to the marble floor room.
ALEX: Ships in the night, these guys, you know?
BOBBY: How much— how much do you think the room costs?
ALEX: Like, to build?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I have no concept of how much it costs to build a room.
$40,000?
BOBBY: That seems low.
ALEX: That seems pretty low. It is the first number that came to my mind.
BOBBY: I think— I was gonna say like 10 million. Somewhere in between 40,000 and 10 million.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Okay. There’s an actual reason as to why I wanted to start with this story beyond the fact that it’s hilarious and right up our alley. It’s because it relates to the first event on the Tipping Pitches 2024 Bingo Card, which is how we are going to preview the 2024 season, which by the way started two days ago. This is our— this is our All-GIF Draft replacement. I’m really excited about this idea. I’m going to— we’re going to explain it in further depth. But before we do, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I’m Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[theme]
BOBBY: Thank you to this week’s new patrons. Exciting stuff, Alex. New patrons again, Patreon back activated. Shane, Gabe, McCoy, and Ben. All right. Tipping Pitches 2024 Bingo Card. What is this? How do we explain this? In order to preview the rest of the 2024 season, we have decided we are going to create a Bingo card of sorts. We’re going to list off 24 possible events and then we have randomized them in order here. We’re going to give you at home a chance to play along. So a link in the description to a web page where you can go and randomly generate a bingo card of these events that we are about to talk through. There’s, like I said, 24 events, 2024, and also one free space in the middle. Anything else that we need to explain about the idea? I think it’s relatively self-explanatory. Y’all know what— you— you know what Bingo is, right? Folks at home listening, you aware of the game Bingo?
ALEX: The— the folks at home listening do know what Bingo is all about. I will just— I’ll throw that out there.
BOBBY: Okay. Are you a Bingo guy? Do you like playing Bingo? You go down to your local community center, the seniors? Just like B4.
ALEX: No. There’s no more third space anymore, bro. I don’t have a place to play Bingo.
BOBBY: Well, that was a good joke.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: I’m going to insert it and post a round of applause. That was very good.
ALEX: I can’t remember the last time I played Bingo, so I’m— the selections here really run the gamut. There’s some— some things that speak to events that have happened in the past, and then— and then some occurrences that— that just feel too ripe for us to leave on the table. So yeah, I don’t know. I— we encourage you to play along at home. We’ll be checking back in on this throughout the season, in a more regular fashion than we did with— just for example, of the All-GIF Draft. So—
BOBBY: Oh, the other thing that we should note is that if you create your own Bingo card at home and you check off the events as they happen through the season, the first person to hit Bingo will get a free Tipping Pitches piece of merch of their choice, right? We said that would be fine, right? We— we—
ALEX: We did, we did.
BOBBY: —we approved that in the expense reports.
ALEX: We approved that in the— in the last business meeting.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: The business meeting that took place in— in Minnesota at the Timberwolves arena.
ALEX: Right. In the— in the shoveled parking lot. This is almost like a— a precursor to the Dumbest Things of 2024 in a way.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: You know? Like we’re shooting our shot a little bit on a few of these things. With that being said, like I mentioned the reason that I wanted to start with A-Rod Timberwolves story was because the first event that I would like to discuss here on the Tipping Pitches 2024 Bingo Card, is Alex Rodriguez trying to buy a Major League Baseball team? Because he doesn’t have an NBA team anymore, so he’s—
ALEX: That’s true.
BOBBY: —like, “I gotta get in somewhere.” If you remember, he did try to buy the New York Mets.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Not sure if you’re aware.
ALEX: I do— I do recall that.
BOBBY: What a fucking alternate reality that is. No Steve Cohen, instead we have Alex Rodriguez and Marc— no, no. Not even Marc Lore. Alex Rodriguez and JLo.
ALEX: And JLo, yes.
BOBBY: And like some shady financial backers who probably have a lot of oil money or something.
ALEX: Right. Whom among us.
BOBBY: I was thinking about this this morning, over breakfast as I was trying to come up with more ideas for the 2024 Bingo Card. There’s one team that’s right there for the taking, Alex. Who is that team?
ALEX: Would that be the— the Oakland Athletics?
BOBBY: It sure would. It sure would. A-Rod trying to buy the Athletics is Tipping Pitches madlibs.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: Sorry, wait, A-Rod failing to buy the NBA team that he was two-thirds of the way to buying with another billionaire and— but failed at the 11th hour. And then subsequently buying the Athletics to save them to keep them in Oakland. Let’s go one step further. And then moving them anyway.
ALEX: Probably— probably, yeah. I— I’d love to see him showing up to the stadium— stadium and being like, “Do you think we can build an owners’ suite, like outside of the stadium? Like, can we like do something that’s a little removed from everything else that’s going on here?” What do you— do you think— when was the last time you think he was at the Oakland Coliseum?
BOBBY: When was the last time he played there?
ALEX: That’s a great question.
BOBBY: 2015, I would say.
ALEX: So it’s been more than like a decade. Yeah.
BOBBY: Probably 2014 or 2015, whenever the— the Yankees played there most recently, that he— when he was on the team.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: It would be really funny if he bought the team and then still move them.
ALEX: It would. I’d have to hand it to him.
BOBBY: Would he come on the pod for that?
ALEX: I think so.
BOBBY: He comes on, he’s like, “Here’s the reason why we still had to move the team,” and we’re like, “Okay.”
ALEX: Right. We’re like, “This is the place where you can talk to the common folk, you know? These are the— reach across the aisle.”
BOBBY: We would definitely get a story that was like, “I always wanted to play for the A’s. I’ve always loved this franchise. The Bash Brothers, I modeled my career after that.” We’d get a whole— a whole, a whole woven story about it. It’d be amazing.
ALEX: Yes, it would.
BOBBY: Because, you know, we got the whole like, “I was a child— was a Mets fan growing up.” We got that whole story when he was trying to buy the Mets. And then of course, there’s, like, when he wanted to go to the Red Sox so bad. We’ve gotten that, because he loved the Red Sox and he loved Big Papi. All these things. We’ve done so many different versions of Alex Rodriguez’s baseball fandom. It just— would love to add one more. Okay, next up, Tony Clark or Harry Marino comes on the podcast. I’m just gonna leave that one there. Just— somebody comes on the podcast who may or may not represent the MLB—
ALEX: Lead [16:20]
BOBBY: —in an executive manner.
ALEX: I could see it happening.
BOBBY: We’re trying. I mean, Harry’s already been on podcast.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And we’ve revealed, I think, on a Patreon episode that we tried to get Tony on the pod. Rather, Tony was offered to come on the podcast and then did not.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Now is a great time. You know, nothing is going on. Really a small— really— I would call it a lull for the MLBPA in the news cycle.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Perfect time to just slide an appearance right on the most radical baseball podcast out there.
ALEX: Of course. I mean, hey, look, if you’re— if you’re trying to appeal to that— to that other side, to the younger—
BOBBY: [16:58]
ALEX: —generation of players—
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: —who have their fists up, I’m just saying.
BOBBY: It’s not the worst place to do it. Nope. Okay, number three. David Rubenstein purchases another historic document. A lot of people are—
ALEX: Do—
BOBBY: —asking us to talk about the David Rubenstein interview on the Orioles opening day broadcast, where—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —they did, in fact, discuss the Magna Carta [17:20]
ALEX: The Magna Carta.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Couldn’t make this stuff up. Did you have a historical document in mind? Like—
BOBBY: Let me— let me pull up Google real quick. Historical documents for sale. Okay, here we go. I’m looking at something called The Raab collection. It appears we have documents from Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln. Nope.
ALEX: Nah.
BOBBY: They’re asking me to join their mailing lists. Nope. I don’t want to join their mailing list. Oh, we got Einstein’s diary when he was fleeing the Nazis after Hitler’s rise. That’s not bad. Maybe something from Oppenheimer, like Oppenheimer’s notebook.
ALEX: Oh.
BOBBY: What do you think about that?
ALEX: I think that’s great.
BOBBY: Maybe— he loves like— he loves like governmental documents [18:16] so maybe like—
ALEX: I know. It’s a lot of like— it’s a lot of [18:18] about like the— the construction of our great nation. What— what— what does he have so far? What did we determine? He has the Magna Carta. He has the Bill of Rights.
BOBBY: I thought it was the— I thought it was the 13th Amendment. A copy of the amendment.
ALEX: The 13th Amendment. He has like—
BOBBY: Bill of Rights, he said.
ALEX: He has like—
BOBBY: The whole— the Bill of Rights.
ALEX: The whole Bill of Rights. The Emancipation Proclamation. Doesn’t he have— I think he has that.
Bobby” I do think so. David Rubenstein documents. There’s a davidrubenstein.com. and there’s a category, historic documents.
ALEX: Yep. He’s making it easy for us.
BOBBY: He appears to have a very early map of the United States from 1784. He has the Bay Psalm Book, the Magna Carta, the 1297 edition, of course.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Stone engravings of the Declaration of Independence from 1823.
ALEX: They just didn’t need to be doing all that at that time.
BOBBY: 13th Amend— no, I disagree. We should engrave more things in stone.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Like, we should engrave the 2024 Tipping Pitches Bingo Card in stone. 13th Amendment, like we talked about, Eman— and Emancipation Proclamation. That’s it. So he’s like— he’s light, you know?
ALEX: He is light.
BOBBY: It’s all— it’s all too, if I’m being honest, a little ethnocentric. Can we go outside of the lines of America?
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Yeah. You need a little Treaty of Versailles in there.
BOBBY: Yeah, that’s not bad.
ALEX: You know what— you know what he could use? His little Communist Manifesto action. It just feels like there’s a glaring space that’s missing.
BOBBY: I promise you and everybody listening to this podcast, that if David Rubenstein acquires an original copy of the Communist Manifesto, the billionaire owner of the Baltimore Orioles acquires a copy of the Communist Manifesto, we will do an emergency podcast.
ALEX: Absolutely.
BOBBY: I promise you that. Okay. We’re— we’re spending too much time talking about documents.
ALEX: As we— as we knew we would.
BOBBY: Number four, a team gets wrapped up in a culture war.
ALEX: Yeah, I don’t know, man. Some team is going to do something that upsets conservatives, and conservatives are going to be really upset about it, because they’re thin-skinned babies who can’t accept anything except fealty towards their, like, 18th century view of life. Which means— which means it’s going to happen and then an MLB team is going to get wrapped up in this, and come out looking—
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: —extremely stupid on the other side of it, and I for one can’t wait.
BOBBY: Notable examples of this in the past— which by the way, don’t count for this. It has to be a new culture war item. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers in Cincinnati Reds and Cleveland Guardians, who shall remain unnamed. Any others? Oh, the— how could I forget? How could I forget? The $50 million lawsuit for the businesses of the Greater Atlanta—
ALEX: yes.
BOBBY: —Georgia area.
ALEX: Yeah. Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: For the voting rights bill.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: Oh, my goodness. This is why we do stuff like this. Okay, number five, the A’s turned their replies on. Can you— can you explain what this means?
ALEX: I— I can’t—
BOBBY: I think some people don’t know that the A’s replies are not on.
ALEX: Right. On the platform X, formerly known as Twitter—
BOBBY: The everything platform.
ALEX: The everything platform. It’s where I do my banking.
BOBBY: That’s what Alex Rodriguez was trying to create in the Minnesota Timberwolves stadium. He’s trying to create the everything room.
ALEX: The everything suite.
BOBBY: The everything suite. That’s better. That’s better. Workshop it.
ALEX: Famously, Twitter is a social media platform where you can say things and then folks respond to you.
BOBBY: True.
ALEX: And— and there is an option if you’d like, that you can turn your replies off. And so what the Oakland A’s have done, one of— I don’t know if you’re familiar. They’re one of the 30 Major League Baseball teams, you know, the— the billion dollar industry that—
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: —has millions of fans across the country and around the world.
BOBBY: $12 billion in revenue last year for the— for Major League Baseball.
ALEX: Fascinating. That seems high. I heard they were still dealing with COVID issues, but—
BOBBY: It’s a little boomerang effect, you know?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: They’re making up for it.
ALEX: The A’s replies are off—
BOBBY: It’s so funny.
ALEX: —because— because they just got ratioed on everything. They were getting ratioed on everything they tweeted, and so they said, “We can’t allow this to happen, I guess. It would look better for us if we didn’t allow anyone to talk.” What— what happens when Elon Musk comes in and is like, “Actually, this is a free speech violation. I don’t allow this on my platform. You need to allow your consumers to engage with you.”
BOBBY: Well, he’s not going to do that because he needs to reserve the right to be able to shut off the replies for tweets underneath his tweets, where people are dunking on him.
ALEX: Right. There— there you go.
BOBBY: You see this?
ALEX: Yeah, I did.
BOBBY: Okay, great. I— I don’t think this is gonna happen. I think this is like weirdly one of the more unlikely things to happen.
ALEX: I know. I know.
BOBBY: Because it’s not like the stuff that people would be replying is gonna go away over the course—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —of the season.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: So if— for the reason that they’ve turned it on, they— they now can’t turn them off.
ALEX: Right. But that’s the thing, it’s like, now, can they ever turn it back on? You know, like, it’s just every day that goes by, it gets worse.
BOBBY: It’s gonna be a breaking news story the second that they turn it back on and—
ALEX: They’re gonna have, like, millions of replies on that tweet. I mean, I don’t know if you said that they did accidentally send out a tweet from spring training, tweeted a highlight, and forgot to turn the replies off, which— and—
BOBBY: Can you imagine the admin who tweeted that forgot to keep the replies off? Their stomach was just in their throat immediately.
ALEX: Absolutely.
BOBBY: “Fuck!”
ALEX: My— my heart goes out to them. They swiftly deleted the tweet.
BOBBY: Everyone’s replying and be like, “Oh, shit. The A’s replies are back. Sound the alarms.” It’s really funny. They’re not going to turn their replies back on. Next up, number six, juiced ball controversy. This is pretty self-explanatory. We’ve had one every single year, basically, since we discovered that the ball could be different.
ALEX: Will it be— will it be do— juiced? Will it be de-juiced? I don’t know, but we’re going to talk about the baseball [24:22] here.
BOBBY: Will it be inconsistent? There will be like an investigative story that will drop. It’ll be a whole thing. Number seven, MLB releases a new way to engage with the game. This one— so this one’s a little more broad, but like if you listen to— if you listen to this podcast, you kind of know what we’re going for here.
ALEX: Right. We— there’s a certain venue that Major League Baseball released, that we’re not allowed to discuss on this here podcast, but it’s not limited, right?
BOBBY: It’s like— it’s like a stadium, but it’s not physical.
ALEX: Uh-huh. You’re really toeing the line here.
BOBBY: I’m walking right up to the line. You know, that’s what— that’s what—
ALEX: I have my— my finger is on the buzzer right now.
BOBBY: That’s what [25:02] is all about. You know, you gotta walk out to the line and provoke. Do you consider—
ALEX: My money—
BOBBY: Wait, wait, hold on, hold on. Hold on.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: I’m just gonna bring the podcast to a grinding halt for a second here. Do you consider yourself a provocateur?
ALEX: No— I mean, like, I guess it depends on whether or not Rob is listening right now. Like, if Rob is listening, absolutely.
BOBBY: So you’re trying to provoke— the— the stated goal of this podcast is to provoke Rob Manfred?
ALEX: Well, a little bit. Punch up, right?
BOBBY: Yes. Did we actually discuss that in our 2024 brainstorming meeting? Where we talked about how the original— one of the original ethos of this podcast was to punch up, both on Twitter and on the podcast itself, and we’d like to get back to that. As if—
ALEX: Uh-hmm. We’re going back to our roots.
BOBBY: As if we’ve been punching down for the last two years. I don’t really know what I meant by that. Okay. Sorry, I— sorry to interrupt, but we were discussing new— new ways to engage with the game, for Major League Baseball.
ALEX: My money is they get back into NFTs this year. Like—
BOBBY: Well, like we talked about last week, Bitcoin back.
ALEX: Bitcoin is back. I— I feel like they’re just gonna ride the wave.
BOBBY: There was that diaristic post from that guy whose ape lost all its value.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And he finally had to sell it. We’re like—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Actually, we’re doing this pod in honor of that guy.
ALEX: We are.
BOBBY: Sorry to that guy.
ALEX: I mean, I don’t know if you heard, he was an ape when he met his wife. Like, his kids know him as this ape. This— this makes sense to, I think, maybe four or five people listening right now. So it’s okay, we can move on, but
BOBBY: Sneaky favorite part of that was when he was like, “Before this— this company came in and disrupted the apes, apes were going for 85 E and now they’re only going for 12 E.” I’m like, “What are you saying?”
ALEX: What are you actually [:26:40]
BOBBY: Is that a theorem [26:41] when they say E? Is that what they’re talking about?
ALEX: I genuinely don’t know and I have no interest in finding out.
BOBBY: Okay, great. Again, this is another one of those moments where, like, to— 80% of our listeners sounds like we both just contracted the same brain disease and so the other 20%, they’re like, “Thank you. Thank you so much.” Okay. Number eight, a player, a baseball player, this means not— doesn’t have to be a professional player, though it could be. A player is suspended for gambling, this could be college, could be in D-Ball, could be Minor League Baseball, could be Major League Baseball. Honestly, I would accept international baseball. Somebody will be suspended for betting this year. It has already happened in the NFL, the National Football League, the most popular sport in America. A good player, a good receiver was suspended for a whole year for betting on football.
ALEX: Yeah. In—
BOBBY: Okay, this is coming.
ALEX: In the— in the days following the Ohtani story, we found out that this was happening in the NBA as well, that you had a player who was basically betting the under on all this props, which is such a good grift.
BOBBY: I— well, just to be clear, this is— you’re referring to Jontay Porter.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I don’t know that he was betting the under. I do think that there were rumors that he was telling other people to bet the under.
ALEX: Okay. What’s— what’s the difference?
BOBBY: Perhaps in a Discord channel, by the way. He was just—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —using Discord to tell people—
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: —to bet the under.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah. Intriguing. It’s intriguing.
ALEX: I mean, we— we have had players implicated in this before, largely like Minor League players, but like— yeah. Like you said, it’s coming.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: We’re here.
BOBBY: Number nine, Jerry Dipoto news cycle. This one feels obvious. He’s found ways, just increasingly creative ways to make himself the center of the news cycle for seemingly no reason. Like, he comes out to the press and he’s like, “We’re trying to win 54% of games, no more, no less.” Awesome, awesome move. I would count the whole rotary club situation from a couple of years ago, even though he wasn’t directly implicated by that. It was like a Mariners— it was the Mariners ownership group that was—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —discussing the ways that the team is run, and then he had to kind of come out and, like, clean that up a little bit. You know, just some sort of news cycle, where it’s like, “Jerry Dipoto is tiptoeing around these mines that he put down for himself.”
ALEX: Yes. Jerry Dipoto, come on the podcast. Have this be the place where you create your discourse cycle.
BOBBY: Number 10, the Braves acquire and/or extend a young player.
ALEX: Yeah. Should we—
BOBBY: As— as a caveat that like— and they also break the news from their own Twitter account.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Because no one ever gets these scoops.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: It’s always @Braves.
ALEX: As you pointed out, when I— when I put this idea down, I was like, “Braves acquire and extend a young player,” and— and you astutely pointed out, “I— I don’t know if they actually have room on the roster anymore to acquire said players—”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: “—and extend them.” So— but we’ll [29:38] they are.
BOBBY: Like, in terms of the actual positions on the Major League roster that they could acquire a young player and then extend them, I think pitchers, of course. There’s always room for more pitching. Left field, because that’s where the O— that’s— where kind of like Ozuna, Duvall, [29:55]
ALEX: [29:55] yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah. The corner outfield positions. But that— that’s kind of it. Everywhere else on the entire starting roster, everywhere else in the lineup, there is already a young player who has been acquired or developed within the Braves and is on a long-term extension, every other position.
ALEX: Yep.
BOBBY: All of them. It’s unbelievable. And it’s all aboveboard. Everything that’s going on with the Braves is all completely aboveboard and—
ALEX: 100%.
BOBBY: Nothing to see here. Number 11, LeBron James does a tweet about Shohei Ohtani, or post an Instagram photo with Shohei Ohtani. This is LeBron’s move, you’ve— you know? Like, you— where he’s like, “I #appreciategreatness. I love— I love greatness. I’m all about athletic competitiveness. I’m all”— you know, he does like this stri— #striveforgreatness.
ALEX: All right.
BOBBY: And now that Ohtani plays for the Dodgers, which is actually a Los Angeles team, which— if you don’t know LeBron James plays for the Los Angeles Lakers. LeBron is gonna be like, “I’ve been a fan of Ohtani’s since he was— since he was playing in [31:03]|
ALEX: I— I— yeah.
BOBBY: —high school baseball tournament.”
ALEX: [31:06]
BOBBY: He’s like, “I love his game.” Like, “I love his game. I love what he’s about. I love how he moves through the world.” Like, it’s gonna be something like that. And it’s— it’s definitely gonna happen. LeBron James, Shohei Ohtani, tweet or Instagram photo.
ALEX: A little shocked that it hasn’t happened yet, honestly.
BOBBY: It’s gonna be like an Ohtani walk-off home run and LeBron is gonna, like, quote tweet the highlight and be like, “I’ve been telling people for years that this is coming.” “
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: “It was a matter of time.” There’s gonna be like the clock emoji. “It’s only a matter of time before a tiny hit a walk-off in Dodger Stadium.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: Funniest athlete on planet Earth right now.
BOBBY: Oh, my God, he’s so great. You should try to check out his podcast with JJ Reddick, where they just break down basketball plays. You would love that one.
ALEX: Oh, fuck yeah.
BOBBY: They literally just break down basketball plays and the— it— the whole podcast has to start with like an eight-minute disclaimer from JJ explain— explaining everything that they’re going to talk about because they know that no one listening will understand. It’s amazing. It’s just a fascinating document of media. Okay. Number 12, this is also a Dodgers one. Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman go back-to-back-to-back home runs.
ALEX: Actual baseball content on this Bingo card.
BOBBY: It almost happened the other day. It almost happened in an opening day game.
ALEX: Yeah, I know. Yeah.
BOBBY: There— it was Betts homer, Ohtani walk, Freeman homer. I mean, it’s just like, they have to do it, right?
ALEX: It’s a matter of time.
BOBBY: Although, statistically improbable, right? How many teams really go back-to-back-to-back every year?
ALEX: A few, right? Like, I feel like—
BOBBY: Maybe like three or four.
ALEX: So like I— if you’re gonna pick a team to be one of those three or four, the Dodgers are the most likely candidate, right?
BOBBY: Yeah. The— the team with three MVPs that start up their lineup.
ALEX: Yeah, exactly.
BOBBY: Yo, the Dodgers lineup, I think there’s, like, actually, legitimately not a single guy that you’d be like, “All right, I’m happy to face them.” They have Gavin Lux batting ninth.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Gavin Lux would hit cleanup for the Mets.
ALEX: Do you know where I can place bets on all these lines, by the way?
BOBBY: Tipping Pitches Sports Book? Should we get into that?
ALEX: I hear there’s money in it. I hear it’s a bit of a cash cow.
BOBBY: Number 13— ooh, this is a favorite of mine. Number 13 is we get a prestige magazine profile of an owner or Rob Manfred. This came because I was like, “Don’t you think it’s like about time for The New Yorker to do another profile of Steve Cohen?”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: He’s got the casino cooking. He’s different than he was the last time they profiled him.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Just like, “We’re coming back. Five years later, hedge fund king. What else is he doing now? He’s disrupting Major League Baseball. That’s what he’s doing.”
ALEX: Right. Well, it’s also like the shine has worn off a little bit, right, from the purchase, where it was like, “Oh, he’s the richest owner in baseball now. Mets to the moon. Like, let’s go. A hundred emojis.” And now, obviously, they haven’t necessarily fulfilled that destiny that everyone foretold for them yet.
BOBBY: Whoa, whoa, whoa. We got time. It’s okay.
ALEX: We do have time, which is going to be the gist of the story is like, you know, now that everything’s settled, he’s really trying to take it day by day. You know, the—
BOBBY: Yeah. Overcome adversity.
ALEX: —the roller coaster of emotions was very— was really high—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: —in those first couple years. And now he’s trying to figure out, how can— how can he responsibly build this team into a contender?
BOBBY: I— I’m rooting for this to be Rob, though, if we’re being honest.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like I don’t— you don’t really get magazine profiles of people who are billionaires. You get write-arounds [34:41] a lot.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Yeah.
BOBBY: Unless they’re like a VC person. Then you get a profile of, like, basically of the company that they founded. But none of the—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I don’t really think that there— there’s a candidate right now to get that sort of treatment for Major League Baseball, unless one of the VC bros. that we talked about are one of the startup— startup founders that we talked about on the Forbes pod, buys the A’s, you know?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Then we might get that. But I think it’d be better if like The Atlantic sent a profile writer to Sixth Avenue, to spend a week with Rob Manfred, and it’s like, “Let’s get into the soul of Rob Manfred.” His commissionership is officially ending in five years. Let’s get into the— let’s dig deep, you know? What— what motivates Rob Manfred when he gets out of bed in the morning? I want that, I need that. I need that so bad.
ALEX: I mean— I mean, The Atlantic is officially profitable as of the other day, so they have money to burn, because you would get nothing out of that either. I would— I would love to read that profile and I just— my heart goes out to the 19-year-old Nepo baby journalist who’s assigned to— to go and do that piece.
BOBBY: Oh, my God. Let’s move on from that. 14, Major League Baseball Players Association files a grievance of any kind. This could be the salary arbitration grievance. This could be a grievance against teams for not spending revenue-sharing money. This could be a grievance for something entirely new. This could be a grievance around betting. You know, about the encroachment of betting. We know that that is a sort of new concept in the CBA that has not been explored legally all that much. I just feel like the— the discontent right now, the labor discontent, that didn’t feel like it was as vigorous last offseason, is now cresting a bit. And if we think back to five, six, seven years ago, how did that— how did that pay off? It was like three or four grievances going all at the same time. And I’m just like, “Why not? You know, why not file a grievance? There’s nothing to lose. You know, you got the people on staff.”
ALEX: Yeah. Right.
BOBBY: Let’s send some documents, you know? Get some letterhead going.
ALEX: Yeah. As you’ll see, like a lot of the items on these lists are, like, kind of very closely linked. Like if— like, it’s almost like a domino effect. If one of these things happens, we will likely see one or two more. But I like this one. It— it really covers our bases and— and, you know, and then we would get to talk with the executive director about said grievance when they come on the podcast.
BOBBY: Exactly. Great point. Maybe they might come on to announce the grievance.
ALEX: Maybe.
BOBBY: We have filed a grievance. We’re announcing it to the few thousand listeners of the Tipping Pitches Podcast. Go spread the word from on high. Go be the town crier at your local baseball stadium.
ALEX: Hear ye, hear ye.
BOBBY: MLBPA has filed a grievance. Number 15, a sitting politician gets booed at a baseball game.
ALEX: Yeah. This feels likely. It’s a— it’s a time-honored tradition.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: You know?
BOBBY: Will this sitting politician be Ted Cruz? Probably.
ALEX: Probably will. But like, I’m— my hope is that it’s not, you know, because it’s already happened. It’s too easy. Like, Cruz has been booed. Our— our boy, Chris Christie, has been booed.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Rudy— Rudy Giuliani has been booed. Donald Trump famously was booed at the World Series, which I don’t think we give the fans there enough credit for.
BOBBY: Yeah. I’m proud of us for not putting any Trump things in this, honestly.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Low-hanging fruit,
ALEX: Low-hanging fruit. To just talk about the next president, okay. Sure. I know he’s gonna be in our lives.
BOBBY: Trump tweet about Spencer Strider’s mustache. I think that there are plenty of candidates for this, a sitting politician gets booed at a game. I think one candidate, perhaps, is number 16 on this list. Pete Ricketts, if he dare show up to a Chicago Cubs game this year. Number 16, on the Tipping Pitches 2024 Bingo Card, Pete Ricketts campaign finance scandal. I don’t know if you know this, not sure if you’re aware of this, dear listener, but Pete Jonathan— no, no, I’m sorry, not Jonathan. John. John Peter Ricketts is an American businessman and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Nebraska. He used to be the governor up until last year. He’s now the senator. The Ricketts, they just get more powerful by the day, you know? They give them [39:26] They got PCA coming up soon and they got fucking Pete Ricketts as the senator of Nebraska. If I know anything about the Ricketts family is that they handle money in suspect ways. Okay, maybe that’s sportsbook, outside Wrigley Field, maybe they were washing a little bit of money for Pete’s campaign. What do you think about that?
ALEX: Yeah. Break— break the story. Let’s do it, right here, right now.
BOBBY: This is— this is all parody. This is all hypothetical parody. I’m not accusing campaign finance scandal of Pete Ricketts. I’m just saying, it’s on the Bingo card.
ALEX: Yeah. More representation from baseball ownership groups in our legislative bodies, you know? Yeah, we got Ricketts. We have Matt Dolan over in Ohio, you know? Come on, give me something fun. Let’s— does Arte Moreno have kids? What are they up to?
BOBBY: Almost certainly yes.
ALEX: Like they would give us a scandal. You know they would. We’ve covered his— his own dabbles and, what, fraud, racketeering.
BOBBY: His kids are probably on like the Heritage Foundation Board.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I don’t know. It doesn’t say anything about his family on his Wikipedia page. Kind of rare.
ALEX: [40:42]
BOBBY: Oh, wait, here we go. He’s been married twice. He has three children. Aside from this, Moreno is vigilant about maintaining his privacy. He refuses most interview requests and does not discuss his personal life publicly. His family and friends also avoid commenting on his personal life publicly. Though off the record, those who know him describe him as, quote, “unabashed in his support of Republican politics.” And then, of course, you never— you can never forget that in September 2020, he endorsed Donald Trump for president, saying, quote, “It’s very necessary to vote for President Trump.” You remember this?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Very necessary.
ALEX: I— I do remember this. Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay. Number 17, sitting MLB owner— now, can this be— does this have to be the control person? Does this have to be the majority owner? You let me know. Donates to RFK.
ALEX: I think involvement in an ownership group.
BOBBY: Okay. I agree. It’s gonna be really funny when it’s like Patrick Mahomes.
ALEX: Wow. Forgot he was a part of the Royals.
BOBBY: Insane— insane Travis Kelce subtweet—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —Patrick Mahomes donating to the RFK Jr. campaign.
ALEX: Yeah. I don’t know who I’d put my money on for this necessarily. I think Reinsdorf is an interesting sneaky choice.
BOBBY: Yeah. But like, see— see, the owners at that level, the majority owners and the long established owners, they always just like donate to the democratic candidate and to the republican candidate.
ALEX: And the republican, yeah.
BOBBY: Unless they’re like a crazy right wing, Moreno, Ken Kendrick type.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Charles Johnson type.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Just donating— like, singlehandedly funding— funding QAnon, as far as I understand—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: My understanding tells me that he’s singlehandedly funding QAnon. I don’t— it has to be somebody who’s like a free thinker. It has to be somebody—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —who believes in the— the RFK mission because he has no chance of winning, so there’s no political upside of donating to RFK. He commands—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —no power, whatsoever.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: So I don’t know. It’s tough.
ALEX: Phil Castellini? He seems a little free thinker adjacent to me.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: But I don’t know that he’s technically a part of the ownership group, or he’s just the fail son, right? Or— or is he?
BOBBY: I— I think that he is the control person now, because I think Bob is really old.
ALEX: Well, I know that Bob is really old.
BOBBY: It’s just a wonderful opportunity for us to play our beloved song.
SPEAKER 3: He’s got carrots, and lettuce, and mushrooms porcini. The vegetable king, Bob Castellini.
BOBBY: Yeah, Castellini is not bad. You know, maybe the— maybe the— someone from the Mariners ownership group might do it.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: This is sort of alternative medicine feels, [43:39] the Pacific Northwest sometimes.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: There’s a lot of very rich people in the Dodgers ownership group. I don’t know how many of them would really count, because Guggenheim has like 40 people.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: This is tricky, you know?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Well—
ALEX: Did we—
BOBBY: —have we documented any friendships between RFK and any of the ownership side in baseball?
ALEX: That’s a good question. We di— it seems like we have a little bit of due diligence to do for this. But I will say the Bingo Card does not say— does not specify an owner. We just need one member of an ownership group to donate to RFK for this bet to cash, so lock it in [44:19]
BOBBY: What’s the [44:18] with RFK these days? Is he running as an independent now? Because he— his whole thing—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —was like he was primarying Biden.
ALEX: Sure. I don’t know. He was saying a lot of things and I would— did not really listen to any of them.
BOBBY: You don’t have to lie. It’s okay. You did listen to his appearance on the Joe Rogan Podcast. I know you did.
ALEX: That’s— all right. All right. You got me.
BOBBY: What are you gonna do with the extra three hours in your week now that you have to stop listening to the Huberman Podcast?
ALEX: I— sorry, I missed that, the whole new cycle. I gleefully missed the whole thing. Profile of a guy I’ve never heard of, have fun.
BOBBY: It’s like 8,000 words. I read the whole thing. I have never listened to that man’s podcast. I’ve only heard of him through— like, I see social media clips of his videos coming out all the time, and he’s always just talking about dopamine. And I’m like, “I’m kind of interested in this and— but I’ll make it halfway through this and move on.” Like, I know that I’m poisoning my brain with dopamine. I don’t need this guy to help me. I have a fucking podcast. All right. I know this is all about the dopamine hit.
ALEX: What’s next on our list? We gotta— I gotta pull us back in.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: We’re talking about Andrew Huberman right now.
BOBBY: I don’t know why I wanted to call him Dan Huberman. He kind of has Dan energy. Number 18— this one’s bleak. Number 18, climate event disrupts games.
ALEX: It is bleak, but I had to include it on here.
BOBBY: Are we— we’re going on, like, three straight years that this has happened, right?
ALEX: Yeah, it’s been a lot of fires.
BOBBY: Yeah. And, like, subsequent smoke from forest fires mostly.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: What— what qualifies as this? It’s like excessive heat? Would that count as climate and a climate event?
ALEX: I think that counts. Maybe we get— maybe we need a meteorologist on here to help us create some— some definitions.
BOBBY: I’ve always said we need— we need a staff meteorologist [46:10]
ALEX: We need a staff [46:10]
BOBBY: Okay. Like a tornado? Would that qualify?
ALEX: I think— I think a tornado would— would qualify. That’s an extreme weather event. Extreme heat, I think, qualifies as well.
BOBBY: Oh, tornado like in a place where there’s not usually tornadoes, you know?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Like, if there’s like a Kansas City tornado warning, and they have to move the games, it’s like, “Okay, we’ve had tornadoes here for a while, for a minute.” But if there’s like a tornado—
ALEX: You’re like, “All right, we get it. It’s a little tornado.”
BOBBY: If there’s like a warning at Fenway and they’re like, “Okay, we got to push the Yankees-Red Sox series a couple days.” That would qualify.
ALEX: It’s been a while since we’ve had an earthquake, you know? Maybe an earth— maybe like an— an earthquake in the Gulf Coast, you know, like due to fracking or something like that. Like, really just—
BOBBY: It’s been a while since we’ve had an earthquake.
ALEX: Like, a big guy.
BOBBY: Yes, that’s true. We’re bordering on like, rooting for a climate event right now at the tone of this segment, but—
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: —it’s coming. It’s definitely coming. Most likely going to be forest fires. Number 19, this one is huge. Dave Kaval resigns. How long, how long I asked, dear listener, can this man absorb this nonsense? How long can he be the human shield in front of John Fisher before he says, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve turned in my resignation to Mr. Fisher. I’ve served this organization proudly. I stand by the mission to move this team to Las Vegas, but I no longer can— I— I just need to move on to new opportunities in my life.”? How long can he do it? It’s been years, years of just getting fucking yammed on by everybody in public and probably in private. Okay? Nobody likes what he’s doing. Nobody likes him. He, like, dubbed himself as the like smart guy who’s going to come in and be the guy who’s, like, handling the new stadium development. He’s going to be a project manager type, you know? The— he’s—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —the president— he’s the president of the A’s.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Notably, prestigious job that I’m sure has always been handled well throughout the years. Class A organization that the Oakland Athletics are. How long can he deal with this? Not much longer is my take.
ALEX: See, I almost wonder if— if the years of ridicule that he has endured, has thickened his skin to the point where it’s water off his back now. In— in fact, the A’s replies are off. You know, who turned his replies back on. One Dave Kaval. He’s like— he’s like, “Let me hear it. I bask in your gears.”
BOBBY: You know the Marine commercials where they’re like, “They run towards the sound of danger.”?
ALEX: Uh-huh. That’s— that’s Dave Kaval.
BOBBY: Exactly. Exactly right. Number 20, a team gets sold. So this kind of relates very closely to the A-Rod tries to buy a team, but there are a few teams, I think, that are— if you’ve been paying attention, are in the mix to be sold. I think the Nationals are probably the most obvious team. The Orioles previously, but they obviously got sold this offseason. I don’t know. Who— I mean, who else? I mean, the Marlins are kind of like always rumored to be getting sold because they’re not— quote-unquote, “not profitable.” I don’t know if anyone else is really on the block right now since Arte Moreno changed his mind and decided not to sell the Angels.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And a lot of teams have changed hands recently enough that it’d be weird if they got sold again. Honestly— here’s a sneaky one for you, how long does Liberty Media want to own the Braves?
ALEX: I think a while.
BOBBY: Really?
ALEX: I mean, a part of me feels like it’s no skin off their back, right? Like it’s a— it’s a sliver of their portfolio and also rakes in cash. So—
BOBBY: Yeah. But they’ve already done everything that they wanted to do, you know? They’ve already, like, juiced that orange. So, like, in the next three to five years would be a good time to sell that team.
ALEX: Right.
Bobbby: Because they’ve already, like, fleeced the taxpayers for a new stadium multiple times. They’ve already built up the real estate around it, so— and they— they are, like, diversified in other places. They own SiriusXM, and they own F1. They’re already kind of in the sports game. Of course, like owning a baseball team is a wonderful anchor. It also opens you up to a lot of criticism and a lot of attention.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: So— I don’t know. That’s just kind of a shot in the dark one that comes to mind, selling— because the— the fiscal interests of corporations fluctuate more often than the fiscal interests of individuals, I would say.
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah.
BOBBY: So if they like have a bad year, or two quarters, and they need an injection of cash, what is the place that they could get $5 million real quick? Is selling the— the Braves, so—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —that’s— that’s what—
ALEX: They also have to— have to publicly disclose their finances on a regular basis, right? And they’re one of the only baseball teams that has to actually do that. So if there’s anything in there that looks shady, or all of a sudden, you don’t really feel like sharing all this with the world. Yeah, I could— I could see them making— making an exit move. I think the Giants are actually another kind of sneaky one who I know have, like, Charles Johnson is—
BOBBY: The [51:33]
ALEX: —not really the— right. And not really the control person anymore, but I wonder if there’s an Angelos type situation there.
BOBBY: Yeah, I could see that. What— what are the Giants doing organizationally?
ALEX: I— I don’t know.
BOBBY: What are they— what are they doing? It would be a— a particular strain of hell if the Giants got like a new owner with a ton of money and spent so much, like after the— after you have been trying to campaign for the A’s to get sold to someone—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —with real money for a long time.
ALEX: Yep. Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: That’d be your particular string of hell. Okay. [52:08] a team gets— 21, Joe Biden messes up the name of a Rangers player while they are at the White House for the trophy ceremony.
ALEX: It’s like 50/50, right?
BOBBY: I—
ALEX: Texas Rangers who won the World Series last year—
BOBBY: Does—
ALEX: —will eventually go to the White House at some point.
BOBBY: Yeah, I don’t know when. I— I’m not their traveling secretary, but I assume I guess when they play the Mets or when they play the Orioles the first time. I think that it counts if he calls the player Jack, you know? Like he called everybody Jack—
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Right.
BOBBY: —for some reason. I think that counts. He calls him— he calls, like, Charlie Seeger or something.
ALEX: Right. And now we have Matt Scherzer.
BOBBY: No. He’ll get Max Scherzer’s name right. Max Scherzer got him elected.
ALEX: That’s true.
BOBBY: You know, big DNC guy, Max Scherzer.
ALEX: True, true.
BOBBY: Holding it down.
ALEX: This doesn’t need— it doesn’t need more explanation.
BOBBY: No, it doesn’t.
ALEX: You know— you know why we pick this.
BOBBY: Number 22, the @MLB Twitter account tweets out betting lines. Now, to the best of my knowledge, I don’t think that they’ve done this before. There’s a chance that they could have last year, for things like the All-Star game or something, or the Home Run Derby. I didn’t go that far back. But historically speaking, they do not tweet out betting lines the way that, say, maybe the @Yankees account has been doing recently. I think that that firewall might be coming down this season, you know? The encroachment of betting has gotten so absurd. And despite the fact that they are embroiled in a scandal at the moment along the lines of betting, I— I still think that, you know, that cash feels good in their hands.
ALEX: Yeah. Well, they have these partnerships in place already, right? Like—
BOBBY: The thing is that they’ll like— every individual team has their own partnership with a different sports book, or gambling company, or whatever. So what would MLB be so— I don’t know. Maybe it’s like in the partnership with Apple TV, they’re also partnered with other— like DraftKings or something like that. And then they have to tweet out the lines in a graphic or something like that. So this one’s actually like—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —weirdly hard to follow, but I’m hoping that the Tipping Pitches listeners can alert us to these events if they occur.
ALEX: Well— and I wonder how much of it will be retrospective, right, of like, say, the Reds make the playoffs, right? And you get to say, “Look at the reds, you know— this was the Reds line at the beginning of the season to— you know, their— their odds of making the playoffs or making the World Series, or whatever. Like, mind-blowing emoji, can you believe that they overcame— you know, like, if you cashed in on this, like you would have been—
BOBBY: You would have been a minority owner in the—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —Washington Nationals by now.
ALEX: I don’t know. You’re right. It is a little, like, hard to Put your finger on because they surprise us. That’s what they’re best at.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Is giving us what we didn’t know we needed.
BOBBY: Okay, number 23, an attempt to repeal the antitrust exemption by a sitting congress person. That’s like eight years in a row now.
ALEX: You’re gonna, like, set your watch to this.
BOBBY: It’s so great. It’s every single time. It’s always for a dumb reason. We might kill two birds with one stone. This might be the culture war thing—
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: —and then the subsequent repeal by the congress person on the antitrust exemption.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: It’d be Like MLB is being too woke and so we must repeal the antitrust exemption because they don’t deserve it anymore. They’re not living American values.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: I think that’s kind of exactly what happened last year, actually, by the way.
ALEX: That is exactly what happened around the move [55:43] at the All-Star game, and I think we run it back.
BOBBY: Number 24, the good ol’ boys in blue. The umpires union has to release a statement on something. Just like they got to put it out on the MLB— MLBUA, I believe is their union. MLB Umpires Association on that letterhead, and they have to put out— many people will remember a few years ago when they put out like a weirdly aggressive statement and then they wore armbands in support of each other. So we’re— we’re placing a little bit of stock in the fact that there’s some unresolved angst going on in that union about their, I guess, incoming demise as a position, you know? Their— their lessening of importance in the baseball world.
ALEX: Yeah, I— I will say they’ve not tweeted in three years. It has been—
BOBBY: Oh, my God, but it’s gonna hit so hard when they do.
ALEX: When they actually do, when they come out. And they’re like, “We’re going on strike over robo umps.”
BOBBY: Can you turn Twitter notifications on to the Tipping Pitches [56:47]
ALEX: I probably—we probably should. Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: It’s a great idea. Yeah.
BOBBY: All right. So you think it’s gonna be about robo umps? I— okay. I’m gonna shoot my shot in the dark. I think it’s gonna be about— like, I think— do you remember Kyle Schwarber lost his shit on Angel Hernandez?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Hilarious moment, totally deserved. Interesting. Angel Hernandez is a clown. By the way, I think he retired. I think there is no more Angel Hernandez, we just let that go. You know, he didn’t get half the send-off that fucking Cowboy Joe got.
ALEX: That’s because he hasn’t released an album. Sorry.
BOBBY: I briefly thought about putting new Cowboy Joe album as one of the events in the Bingo Card, but he hasn’t released an album since 1986. I might be wrong about Angel Hernandez, though.
ALEX: I do think he’s still around.
BOBBY: Okay, fine.
ALEX: Careful, he is litigious, I will say.
BOBBY: How could saying he retired be slanderous?
ALEX: I don’t know. They’d find a way.
BOBBY: I know. I think that it’s going to be like a player blows up on an umpire and the umpires’ union feels like they need to come out and be like, “This has gone too far. This is just too disrespectful to the boys in blue.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: “We need to stand behind each other. We need to bring decorum back to the fields. What happened to the days of— that Cowboy Joe was speaking about when he said, ‘A part of history every day.’? Where is that mindset? We need to bring that back.”
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: “Players have become too disrespectful. Some might even say they become spoiled by their millionaire contracts.”
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: That would be so funny if the umpires’ union—
ALEX: It would be really good.
BOBBY: —came out and is like, “Players are overpaid babies now.” I would actually support them for that.
ALEX: I would, I would. I’d wear an armband for that.
BOBBY: We’re podcasting in armbands in support of the umpires association.
ALEX: And this is like another one of these things that, like, could easily be carried out alongside a culture war or something like that.
BOBBY: Sure. Yeah.
ALEX: But— but like you said, they— they love to surprise us. I— it’s— it’s almost a fool’s errand to try and predict what meltdown an empire is going to have this year.
BOBBY: How many umpires do you think donated to RFK? More or less than five?
ALEX: I feel like less, I don’t know. I— they’re— they’re rule of law guys, right?
BOBBY: True. Yeah.
ALEX: And I just— I don’t know. I feel like RFK may be a little too like woo-woo for them. Like, you know, just kind of like on his—
BOBBY: One day, one day, we should do a political alignment chart for all the different, like, major figures and types of figures in the baseball world, you know? Like are umpires, like, more on the fascist side? Like, I guess they are. So which players land in sort of like the RFK woo-woo zone is an—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —interesting question, which kinds of players, which archetypes of players? Because I feel like most guys kind of land in, like, the blanket standard center right republican zone. So we need to—
ALEX: Right. Don’t— don’t tax me.
BOBBY: Exactly. But I don’t know. Like, I really feel like not very many baseball players are into Jordan Peterson.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: I feel like he’s not—
ALEX: Not— Noah— no, I mean, what’s Noah Syndergaard up to these days?
BOBBY: I think he’s like on a Minor League contract.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: I actually don’t know what he’s up to. But, like, for the same reason that you’re saying that the umpires wouldn’t be into RFK, I feel like players would not be into Jordan Peterson because he’s a little—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like, why is he crying all of the time? Baseball players were like, “I don’t want this guy to cry near me.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like, I feel like they might see a video of his every once in a while and be like, “That guy is making sense.” But I feel like they’re much more likely to be into Rogan or to be into—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —honestly, Huberman than they are to be into Jordan Peterson, who’s like wearing a tweed vest.
ALEX: Right. That’s like multicolored.
BOBBY: Right. And he’s sitting— again, I know I’ve said— I made this joke in several places, but why is he always sitting in one wooden chair in the middle of an empty room doing his show? I don’t understand.
ALEX: I think— I think it’s more likely that Minor Leaguers would tap into that, you know, because it’s like, “Look, he’s speaking to me, the common man.” He is talking about—
BOBBY: Is that what he’s going for?
ALEX: —the downtrodden— yeah, the— the— you know, the man who has— who has been beaten down by life, who’s had his dignity removed from him, taken away from them forcefully by the woke Marxist culture.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: Who needs to hear that more than Minor League Baseball players just trying to live the dream?
BOBBY: Mike Elias. Is one man brave enough to say what no one else will say? “We should not have any players making more than $397,000 on a roster.” No one else was brave enough to say that, until Mike Elias came along.
ALEX: It’s true. He’s a trailblazer.
BOBBY: Corbin Burnes, six innings, 11 Ks, one hit, no walks in his Orioles debut. I just got— my Orioles hater stock is so far down, it’s in the toilet. But we hold, just like GameStop, we hold.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: The 25th spot is obviously the free space. I think that the free space was one that we came up, A-Rod gym selfie [1:02:01] is our free space—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —this year, because that’s like a—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —a daily occurrence, so—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —we’ll put that they’re in our little graphic. And that completes the Tipping Pitches 2024 Bingo Card. Anything else that you want to add for our listeners playing along at home?
ALEX: No. As mentioned up top, we will throw a link in the description where you can generate your own version of these and play along with us. And we encourage you to— to do so and let us know how you’re doing. If there— if there are spots that you think we missed, don’t let me know. I don’t really want to— I— I feel— I feel good about this. But if you have an idea of what the culture war will be, or what— what the innovative new way of watching the game will be, that I’d like to hear.
BOBBY: Yes, if you want to make any predictions for which things will trigger this, feel free to write us tippingpitchespod@gmail.com, tipping_pitches on Twitter. You can call our voicemail 785-422-5881. I think we still have a voicemail. I don’t— I don’t think it’s expired.
ALEX: No, it’s not. I made sure it didn’t expire.
BOBBY: Oh, did you call it to keep it going?
ALEX: I had to— yes I did. I had to call. If you go in, you’ll see calls and texts from me, just being like, “Hello, hello.”
BOBBY: During our break, that’s wonderful— wonderful stuff by you. You just keep the wheels moving over here at Tipping Pitches incorporated.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Uh-huh.
BOBBY: If you like what we’re doing and you want more of it, our Patreon episodes for the season are kicking off later this week, Alex. On Thursday, we will have a Patreon, exclusive episode for patrons that are top tier. You can find more information about that at patreon.com/tippingpitches. I think that’s everything for the week. I hope you all enjoyed our 2024 Bingo Card. Hopefully. we can do— we can audit this throughout the season, as well as next year when we do a 2025 Bingo Card. I’m looking forward to the 2024 season. This was a fun way to preview it, and I hope that everybody is satisfied with the way that opening weekend went. I know for— for myself, I’m feeling really good about the Mets lineup. I’m feeling great.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: One hit on opening day, that was what I was looking for. I was like—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Can we not— can we not get no hit? And they were like, “Sure. We got you. One hit.”
ALEX: We got you covered. Cover that line. I don’t know how I’m talking myself into the A’s this year. I don’t know how I’m looking to—
BOBBY: Wait, no.
[laughter]
ALEX: I’m like, “Ryan Noda.”
BOBBY: Ryan Noda is kinda good.
ALEX: “Breakout year.” He’s kinda good.
BOBBY: Do you remember Ryan Noda is one of my birthday twins?
ALEX: Yes, that’s true. Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s exactly right. Ryan Noda season. You know us Aries, we stick together. And we must band together to defeat the evil Leo alliance that you are a part of.
ALEX: Yes, that’s true. Yeah, me and Mike Trout.
BOBBY: You, Mike Trout, my sister, the [1:04:51]
ALEX: Barack Obama. Right.
BOBBY: Barack Obama. That’s the Mount Rushmore of Leo culture. Okay. Thanks everybody for listening. We will be back next week.
SPEAKER 4: I heard this, you were [1:05:06] yeah. And I’ll do something else—
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!
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