Bobby and Alex take a moment to appreciate the human toil of maintaining MLB Gameday feeds, then try and see if they can become a ghost kitchen for MLB’s new food delivery venture, throw out some other ideas for venture capitalists wanting to squeeze more juice out of the sport, and reflect on one year since the A’s announced their move to Las Vegas. Then they answer some listener questions about an employee-owned team, the MLBPA, and what they’d do if there were no copyright restrictions on broadcasts.
Links:
Alec Bohm breaks play-by-play
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Songs featured in this episode:
Equipment — “Talk to Strangers” • 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, since you’re a Phillies fan, you already know what I’m about to say here in the cold open, but I’ll tell everybody else so that they can get up to the same speed that you are as a Phillies fan.
ALEX: Okay. Great.
BOBBY: This is a tweet from Corey Seidman, who does Phillies pre and post-game for NBC Sports Philadelphia.
ALEX: You know, I actually do know what you’re about to say.
BOBBY: If you’re wondering why the mlb.com play by play data for this game is frozen, this was Friday afternoon’s— Friday evening’s game, it’s because Alec Bohm just broke the dude’s computer with a foul ball. I love this so much, because it just shows how— no matter how far we’ve come, it really just does come down to a guy watching the game and logging that data for the rest of the world to find out about what happened. We may think we’ve moved beyond reading the box scores in the newspaper the next day, but really, we’re one— we’re one foul ball away from needing that. Have you ever been in a circumstance where, like, the thing that you needed to do your job just broke? In the course of doing your job, and you just couldn’t— you just had to sit there?
ALEX: Yeah, it feels great. Anytime the internet goes out during the workday, it’s like, I’m free. Oh, my God. There’s light outside. Well, it’s like this, like— the, like, famous XKCD comic, which is, like, just the entire infrastructure of the internet largely rests on, like, one underappreciated coder in, like, Nebraska, just like upholding— like thanklessly upholding the code and, like, cleaning it every day. That’s what this is. Just one person on the computer, just inputting balls and strikes. That— when their computers gone, what do they do?
BOBBY: I don’t know what I thought was happening when I opened the MLB At Bat app, and I know that there’s like a person who’s pressing those inputs.
ALEX: See?
BOBBY: Because—
ALEX: I— I kind of thought there wasn’t. I thought it was mostly automatic these days.
BOBBY: AI is so over. If they— if they haven’t artificially intelligence this one away—
ALEX: Well, just like they have been talking for years at this point about all the tracking technology that’s in ballparks. They can like—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: You know, like, you can watch the game if you want in, like, a 3D rendering form.
BOBBY: Who is that for?
ALEX: Me when I’m bored.
BOBBY: Does it look good?
ALEX: I mean, it looks about what you would expect it to look like.
BOBBY: It looks fine.
ALEX: Like—
BOBBY: Like the Sims.
ALEX: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it’s like stick figures.
BOBBY: Okay. That’s pretty cool.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Maybe I’ll check that one out. No, I feel— I— I kind of knew that it was by a person because it’s always so specific. It’s not— it’s never just, you know, Michael Conforto line— Michael Conforto out, or Michael Conforto make second out. Next up, another guy in the San Francisco Giants. Name another player on the San Francisco Giants. It’s always like Michael Conforto lines out sharply to shortstop Francisco Lindor.
ALEX: I know, but—
BOBBY: Runners stay, or something like that. So I— in my head, I was like, “That’s just a little bit too advanced for a computer to be getting right every time.”
ALEX: I don’t think it is. Have you seen all the like— I mean, if you go into—
BOBBY: Put it this way, maybe— maybe it’s not too specific for a computer to be getting right every time, but it is too specific for the MLB app to be getting right every time.
ALEX: Yeah. Well, I think that where you really need the, like, human inputs is on, like, run scoring plays and that sort of thing. Like, you know, like, they— in-play runs is like the whole thing with MLB, and so I do feel like there needs—
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: —to be some human input there to be like, “There’s a play that’s unfolding. Don’t say anything yet. Like, don’t start putting out fly ball to left field out. Oh, never mind. Actually, the runner tagged up.” Right?
Like you need to—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: —suggests that something is happening without telegraphing it quite yet. I don’t know, man. The future we were promised has not materialized, I’m just saying.
BOBBY: I like this— I think I— I like this present— you know, we’re in the— we’re in— we’re halfway in the middle. You know, we have an app that tells us everything we need to know about how the game went. We don’t need to wait for the newspaper the next day. But there at least still gets to be a person who presses the buttons for that app.
ALEX: Yeah. Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: That feels good.
ALEX: It does.
BOBBY: And every once in a while, divine intervention, Alec Bohm hits a foul ball and he— this guy can’t do his job and the whole— the whole process just grinds to a screeching halt.
ALEX: I think it’s good. [4:52] creation.
BOBBY: MLB is doing its best to keep the unemployment rate low.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: So that Joe Biden can stay in office. Thank you, MLB. Thank you, Rob.
ALEX: So how closely does this person work in concert with the official scorer? Like, do they sit next to each other?
BOBBY: I—
ALEX: So the official scorer can be like, “Yes, that was an error.” And then the person can press the error button?
BOBBY: I don’t think they need to sit next to each other, because the official scorer puts the official score results on the board of the game.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: So anybody can see that. The announcers refer to what the official scorer said over— in the course of a broadcast, a home or away announcer. So I don’t think they all need to be sitting there next to each other to collaborate.
ALEX: I like the— the official scorer also, like, usually has a little bit of time to figure it out. You know, like, once the play is over, you can be like, “Actually, upon further reflection, the last play was an error.”
BOBBY: Was an error, yeah. There’s been a lot of— I— I’ve seen a little bit of official score discourse.
ALEX: Really?
BOBBY: Yes. Have you— ha— has this come across your X-everything app timeline? With people theorizing that Rob Manfred told official scorers to loosen up their definition of what a stolen base is.
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: To make it seem like there’s more exciting plays happening in baseball. There’s more stolen bases, and that the rule changes are working more.
ALEX: Interesting.
BOBBY: So I saw someone saying that in previous versions of baseball, any ball that was in the dirt, even if the catcher fielded it cleanly and threw it second, that would be considered not a pass ball, but— but a dirt ball. It wouldn’t be considered a stolen base, because—
ALEX: Right. Because it is, quote-unquote, an “error” on either the pitcher—
BOBBY: Yes, much like a wild pitch or yes, a pass ball. And you can’t consider that a stolen base because then that is being attributed to— against the catcher, but it’s not really the catcher’s fault. But now, those are all almost— in— in almost all cases being considered stolen bases, if it garners a throw, whatsoever. And I thought that was interesting, for about five minutes, and now, I don’t really care.
ALEX: Cared enough to talk about it on the illustrious podcast, Tipping Pitches.
BOBBY: Well, I love to share a theory about Rob, and this sounds like the sort of thing that Rob would be like, “Yes, I would like to see more stolen bases as a result of my rule changes.”
ALEX: We love to just ask questions here on this podcast.
BOBBY: We don’t love to find the answers.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: Finding answers is the hard part.
ALEX: Exactly. We let the wisdom of the masses do that work.
BOBBY: Okay. We have a fun podcast coming up. We’re going to talk about— we’re gonna talk about MLB getting a little bit further into the gig economy, which is very fun. We’re gonna do— it’s been one year since the Oakland Athletics announced that they intended to move to Las Vegas, prompting one of four Tipping Pitches emergency podcast in history. We’re going to do a little bit of a one-year look back on that moment, and then we’re going to answer a handful of listener questions that were left over from last week when we did a big mailbag segment. But before we do that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I’m Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches. Thank you to this week’s new patron, that patron is Soren. [8:15] Alex, we got a story this week that MLB was launching ghost kitchens. Gotta say, and I can say this literally, didn’t have this on my 2024 Bingo Card.
ALEX: They’re always one step ahead of us.
BOBBY: Speaking of the Bingo Card, while we’re here, I do think we’re getting close to being able to cross off the juiced ball controversy—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —square on our Bingo Card. And in fact, it is de-juiced this year, almost certainly. A lot of people passing around videos of 2019 baseball, saying, “What did they do to my beautiful game?” Just like ended the bat pop-up contact to the opposite field home runs. Tho— that was— those were the days. That was cool. That was fun. But we haven’t gotten like a wider discourse about it yet. There’s been—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —some tweet threads, there’s been some theorizing. There’s been no Bradford William Davis investigative article. There has been no Meredith Wills research and— and study conducted, or finalized, or publicized yet. I don’t know if Meredith Wills has been working in the lab herself.
ALEX: I know she’s— she’s asking for baseballs again.
BOBBY: Is she?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Okay. So it’s coming.
ALEX: It is coming.
BOBBY: So we know that we’re gonna getting ready to— to check that one off. So at home— or maybe uncork your— your— your markers.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Get ready to cross that square off.
ALEX: Click your [9:32] Let’s go. You know, there’s actually— there’s another story that we may touch on in this episode that I thought might garner us an umpires union statement.
BOBBY: Are you referring to the— the— the greatest objection in MLB history— actually, sorry, the second greatest objection in MLB history behind—
ALEX: Asses in the jackpot.
BOBBY: —asses in the jackpot. Yeah.
ALEX: Yes. Yeah.
BOBBY: The Aaron Boone ejection, non-ejection. He didn’t actually do anything, but the umpire ejected them anyway.
ALEX: I— I was referring to that, yes. It looks for a minute there, like, it might spiral into something bigger.
BOBBY: I think it was the kind of thing where they didn’t want to pour gasoline on that fire, because they knew they were in the wrong.
ALEX: Well, I—
BOBBY: The umpires union only stands up for itself when they know that they have something to stand behind.
ALEX: Well, I agree, but— okay. So we should back up a little bit, right?
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: For those who missed this [10:17]
BOBBY: All right. In 2017, we started a baseball podcast to talk with each other about topics that we cared about.
ALEX: All right.
BOBBY: Is that far back?
ALEX: On— on August 5th,1996, I was born.
BOBBY: You were, but I was already three months old.
ALEX: You were— you were three months in.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: Yep. You’d already been doing some vigorous planning.
BOBBY: I’ve been putting together a business plan for our podcast.
ALEX: You’re right. Exactly.
BOBBY: I had to wait— wait 28 years to put it into—
ALEX: Like, 24 steps plan of how I need to meet Alex Bazeley at NYU. Know—
BOBBY: Manifest destiny, that plan.
ALEX: The Yankees were playing some baseball this past week.
BOBBY: Against A’s.
ALEX: Against A’s. I don’t even know how to— how to describe this. There was some chirping that was maybe coming on from the dugout.
BOBBY: About the strike zone.
ALEX: About the strike zone.
BOBBY: Aaron Boone’s favorite thing to chirp about.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Lasting legacy as the Yankees manager is arguing about balls and strikes.
ALEX: It’s kind of a good legacy, though.
BOBBY: I mean, it’s—
ALEX: You’re never gonna for— gonna forget his name.
BOBBY: It’s very distracting from the fact that the team hasn’t been very good.
ALEX: Yeah. It’s a good bit.
BOBBY: True.
ALEX: There was some chirping happening and the umpire turned and said, “Hey, look, you keep that up, you’re gonna be gone. You’re gonna be out of here.”
BOBBY: Which umpire was this again?
ALEX: Hunter Wendelstedt.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: Are you familiar with his body of work?
BOBBY: I am familiar with his body of work. He— as I— as I look him up and— and recall some memories of Mets games where he was behind the plate. He’s kind of like— he’s taken over the red ass belt [11:43] a little bit.
ALEX: Right. The void left by Joe?
BOBBY: Exactly.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And Cowboy Joe, we gotta keep his legacy alive.
ALEX: We do.
BOBBY: Is his podcast still publishing? As— as the— the designated listener of—
ALEX: No, I have not seen any— any new episodes in my feed, right. As the designated maybe only listener.
BOBBY: Is designated listener like the Designated Survivor? Like, if the whole world collapses, like you’re the one guy left—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —to hear what Cowboy Joe is saying.
ALEX: If there are no listeners to the Cowboy Joe Podcast [12:12]
BOBBY: Without looking— right. We lost Alex. Without looking, what is that podcast called? What are the numbers? Come on, you’re the designated listener.
ALEX: I want to say 51-60.
BOBBY: 50— I thought it was like 54-60. Just given them 300 extra games for free.
ALEX: Wow, look at you.
BOBBY: Is it 54-60?
ALEX: That’s right. It is.
BOBBY: That is alarming. I remember that.
ALEX: It is, it is.
BOBBY: That came from somewhere deep inside my brain.
ALEX: Nothing is—
BOBBY: These are the kind of facts that I would like to purge out of my brain and be able to operate at a higher function, but I can’t, I can’t. Baseball is the reason that I can’t remember things.
ALEX: It’s been a year and a half—
BOBBY: Since they published?
ALEX: —since they published. There was no note. There was nothing mentioned on the last episode, A Conversation with one— one Reggie Jackson.
BOBBY: That’s so funny that that was the last episode.
ALEX: I don’t know. I’ve—
BOBBY: That’s disrespectful, honestly.
ALEX: [13:08] Cowboy Joe shaped hole in my life these days.
BOBBY: We should send them a business plan to return to the feed, a little Patreon action.
ALEX: Maybe fold them into Tipping Pitches media.
BOBBY: We should acquire them. We should send them an acquisition offer. That’s really—
ALEX: The bear hug.
BOBBY: Bear— we know where to find him. Just in the Wikipedia comments.
ALEX: Aaron Boone.
BOBBY: I’m determined to derail this podcast.
ALEX: [13:36]
BOBBY: This is one of those podcasts where there’s not like one big main topic that we need to hit, so—
ALEX: Right. So you’re able— you just vamp every moment you get.
BOBBY: Exactly, that’s what I’m here for.
ALEX: Wendelstedt warned Boone, said, “Look, I don’t want to hear any more from you.”
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: And—
BOBBY: This was in the first inning.
ALEX: This was in the first inning. And Boone to his credit is like, “Okay. Look, you”— like, you know, seals his lips and is like, “All right, I got it. I won’t— I won’t say anything anymore.” You have to watch the video. We’ll put the video in the description. It includes audio. Very visible. Very audible audio.
BOBBY: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yes.
ALEX: Of— of a fan.
BOBBY: Visible audio, too.
ALEX: Visible audio, too. You can see the wavelengths. A fan then chirps.
BOBBY: A fan notably is sitting right behind Aaron Boone.
ALEX: Directly behind Aaron Boone.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: Right? And you can see all of this taking place in the video. You can see Aaron Boone looking out kind of into right field and saying a word.
BOBBY: This was a Thursday afternoon day game against A’s.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: So there’s not a lot of fans in the stands.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: So you can— that— that— those wavelengths are carrying.
ALEX: Yes. You can see them, you can hear them. And the umpire thinks that this is Aaron Boone, who has come back again.
BOBBY: I feel like not enough reporting has been done on whether the fact that the fan sounds like Aaron Boone or not.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Because Aaron Boone has a pretty recognizable voice.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And presumably Aaron Boone has yelled at every umpire in Major League Baseball at least once or twice, so they know what it sounds like to be yelled at by Aaron Boone. So—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Hunter Wendelstedt really think the guy behind him sounded like Aaron Boone. And if they sound nothing like each other, that’s alarming, because as an umpire, you have to be able to see and hear things to call stuff. Because most of the time when you— when it’s like a foul tip, you can’t see that it’s a foul tip. You go off whether you hear that it was a foul tip. You hear multiple sounds of the ball hitting the bat and then the glove. So not to put Hunter Wendelstedt on full blast right now, but are we sure that he’s up to the task?
ALEX: I— now, it’s worth mentioning, look, he— he doubled down after the game, right? He was asked about this. And he basically said, “I heard a sound that came from the dugout area. It was not necessarily by Boone.” So he was not necessarily saying, “I think Aaron Boone has continued to do this.”
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: At least after he had had a couple— the rest of the game to think about what his excuse was, right? He said, “There was someone in the dugout area who was barking—”
BOBBY: To Ben [16:03].
ALEX: To Ben [16:04]. It’s Aaron Boone’s job as the manager of the New York Yankees to keep an eye on all—
BOBBY: To keep everyone in quiet.
ALEX: Keep everyone in line, therefore, he had to go.
BOBBY: I could get behind that. Aaron Boone is responsible for everything that the Yankees do.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And the Yankees fan.
ALEX: And Yankees fans.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: That’s kind of a tough hang.
BOBBY: If you think about it, this is kind of how we treat Major League Baseball. Anything that happens, we’re like, “This is Rob’s fault.”
ALEX: Pretty much, yeah.
BOBBY: So who are we to throw stones in our glass house over here?
ALEX: All I’ll say is, you know, I— I thought that after the game, we might get a little—
BOBBY: Mea culpa?
ALEX: Right, exactly. A little remorse from— from hunter, who basically saying, “Yeah, you know what? Fine.”
BOBBY: For what, giving Aaron Boone the day-off?
ALEX: Right, exactly. No, I— I thought that maybe— you know, you see umpires—
BOBBY: That one’s on me.
ALEX: Just— right, exactly. “Yeah, you know, like heat of the moment, things happen. It’s loud out there.” Whatever [16:55]
BOBBY: Not when you were raised in the Cowboy Joe school.
ALEX: Yeah, so true.
BOBBY: Don’t get to 54-60 by being soft like that.
ALEX: And, yeah, when he doubled down and said, “Look, that’s Boone’s job is to control his folks.” There was a glimmer of hope that maybe the Umpires Union would come out and say, “We stand with Hunter.”
BOBBY: Great name.
ALEX: Great name. I only know good hunters.
BOBBY: Hunter Strickland?
ALEX: I mean, I stand with Hunter Biden.
BOBBY: I like how my mind went to Hunter Strickland.
ALEX: Hunter Strickland.
BOBBY: No, I’m coming out anti-Hunter— Hunter Biden.
ALEX: Okay. You don’t think he parties hard enough?
BOBBY: I just have never really heard him come out and talk about it openly and candidly. I’m a man who believes in transparency.
ALEX: It being— it—
BOBBY: The laptop. It does raise the question, whether we’re going to need to have to get a statement from the Umpires Union.
ALEX: Well, I think as I mentioned, when we put this on the Bingo Card, they have not tweeted in a few years, so it really needs to be something—
BOBBY: It’s gonna hit so hard, though.
ALEX: It is gonna hit so hard.
BOBBY: Did you set up tweet notifications for them?
ALEX: No, I should, though.
BOBBY: Yeah, you probably should. You should do that now. As well as you should complete the purchase of the Robinhood— on Robinhood of Slam Corp.
ALEX: Slam Corp.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Should we start manufacturing scenarios in which the Umpires Union may be forced to put out a statement?
BOBBY: Yes. We, like, create bot farms tweeting at the MLB Umpires Union be like, “I can’t believe you guys are getting pushed over—”
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: “—by a bunch of woke Yankees fans. Stand up for yourselves.”
ALEX: I’m just saying—
BOBBY: Stand up for your own, stand up for your kind.
ALEX: —they respond to criticism.
BOBBY: I mean, yeah.
ALEX: Not well, but you know, they respond.
BOBBY: They’re probably gonna put out a statement about like campus protests.
ALEX: All right. The [18:34] are on.
BOBBY: The [18:37] are on.
ALEX: The last tweet is about a panel moderated by Bob Nightengale.
BOBBY: What do we think happened there? They haven’t tweeted in a year and a half. Have they tweeted since Cowboy Joe retired?
ALEX: Well, so the— what I was thinking is, was Cowboy Joe running the MLB Umpires—
BOBBY: That’s exactly—
ALEX: —Association account.
BOBBY: And now, that he retired, they have nobody to run it.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Sounds like a job opportunity for—
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: —Alex Bazeley. A a long story tradition of me trying to get you to apply for another job other than the one that you do full-time. Okay. Can we talk about ghost kitchens?
ALEX: Yeah, let’s do it. Major League Baseball announced this past week that in collaboration with Virtual Dining Concepts. You’re familiar with them.
BOBBY: Of course.
ALEX: You actually are, you don’t know it. I’m— I’m serious. I’ll tell you in a second.
BOBBY: Okay. Aramark?
ALEX: No. Today, officially launched Ballpark Bites presented by MasterCard, a new ballpark-inspired menu available on food delivery apps across the United States. So—
BOBBY: We’re— we’re getting really loose with the— with the term presented by. MasterCard is not presenting anything here. They just gave them some money.
ALEX: Some money, so that they would be in the name.
BOBBY: Yes. Tipping Pitches presented by— insert your company here.
ALEX: CarMax.
BOBBY: No. No, no. Not CarMax. Tipping Pitches presented by Chevrolet.
ALEX: Yeah. Hmm.
BOBBY: I don’t drive a Chevy, by the way. Just like to make that clear. I just believe in Chevrolet. I don’t drive one. I believe in them.
ALEX: Essent—
BOBBY: I drive a Nissan, an import.
ALEX: Okay. Oh.
BOBBY: Yeah, tough.
ALEX: Essentially, you will be able to order your favorite ballpark food items—
BOBBY: This is such a dumb idea.
ALEX: —to your home, as if it was, you know, normal delivery, right? So— so these are— this is a part of the growth of that idea of the virtual kitchen, right? Kitchens that don’t have actual brick and mortar locations that you can order food delivery from.
BOBBY: Now, to be clear, this is not— this is not the virtual ballpark. We’re not violating any rules here.
ALEX: That’s correct.
BOBBY: But it’s like kind of the virtual ballpark, because the food is at the ballpark.
ALEX: Well, like, this is—
BOBBY: This is a virtual kitchen.
ALEX: I do hear that the kitchens are actually within the virtual ballpark, so—
BOBBY: The kitchens— but the kitchens are real, even though they’re virtual.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: They’re real and virtual at the same time. Sort of a— sort of a dual characteristics of light problem for food. Are you aware of this, that light moves both as a wave—
ALEX: What?
BOBBY: —and a photon?
ALEX: Remarkable connection you just made there.
BOBBY: My mind.
ALEX: Your mind.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: These will be available to you on all your favorite food delivery apps, Bobby.
BOBBY: All of them?
ALEX: On DoorDash.
BOBBY: Okay, Seamless.
ALEX: Uber EATS, Postmates. I don’t know about Seamless, actually. But Seamless is— is DoorDash— or no, is Grubhub?
BOBBY: Yeah, they’re the same. Seamless and Grubhub are the same.
ALEX: There we go. And it features a bunch of items that are literally all topped with a soft pretzel roll. It’s all sandwiches or— or— not even sandwiches. Your LA street dog, your hotdog, soft pretzel roll.
BOBBY: Why? Why?
ALEX: Your ballpark chicken sandwich, soft pretzel roll. Your Philly cheesesteak, guess what it’s on?
BOBBY: No. No, no, no.
ALEX: Your steakhouse sandwich.
BOBBY: This seems like an error. That seems like a mistake that they’ve made that.
ALEX: Like they accidentally—
BOBBY: That they were like— they were like, “Woops. We forgot to change what kind of bread we ordered.”
ALEX: Right. There’s like [22:09]
BOBBY: “We ordered 700 million soft pretzel rolls and we were like, ‘Well, we can’t come back from this because this— this venture is already $50 million in the red by the nature of being venture capital funded.’”
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah.
BOBBY: “And so now we just have to stick with this and make it seem like this is how we wanted it to be.” That’s what this feels like to me. So how am I familiar with virtual whatever kitchen? We’ve never circled back to that.
ALEX: You’re right. I didn’t forget about it, though. Virtual Dining Concepts.
BOBBY: Virtual Dining Concepts.
ALEX: Now, they offer their services to a variety of brands.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: To allow you to increase your brand’s visibility, and— and also nourish the public.
BOBBY: Is this just for— this is just for food, though?
ALEX: It’s— this is just for food.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: Yes. However, are you familiar with the brand, MrBeast Burger?
BOBBY: They do that?
ALEX: They are the ones who brought you, MrBeast Burger.
BOBBY: MrBeast Burger.
ALEX: They are the reasons. Now—
BOBBY: Have we told this story on the podcast?
ALEX: I think— I think we have talked about it.
BOBBY: Okay. But I— what I haven’t told on the podcast yet, because this just happened earlier this week, was that there was a job posting on— that I saw on LinkedIn because I work in the media world and I have producer in my title, where I could be— go be a producer for MrBeast Productions.
ALEX: That’s right, brother.
BOBBY: And I sent it to you, and I was like, “Should I do this?” And you were like, “Yeah.” And I was like, “But I’m not really interested in doing the whole video aspect. I really am more interested in getting into the burger business, the burger side of the business.”
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: The burger wing, as we say at MrBeast Studios.
ALEX: Well, it’s a little contentious because Mr. Beast actually sued—
BOBBY: Sued them.
ALEX: —Virtual Dining Concepts—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: —because the quality of the burger, he was like, “This is not up to par. This is not what the Beast Heads demand.”
BOBBY: And— because the people who watch Mr. Beast videos are, like, really quality above quantity.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: I’m like, “Is this 100% USDA—”
BOBBY: Grass-fed.
ALEX: “—grass-fed beef?”
BOBBY: Grass-fed beef. That’s what Mr. Beast was interviewed for.
ALEX: Better be.
BOBBY: I remember eating that food from Beast Burger or whatever the fuck that was called.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And being like, “This is really bad. This is bad food.”
ALEX: Well, now we know who to blame. VDC, baby.
BOBBY: I’m envisioning a world where we order from one of these places and we review it as content.
ALEX: I think we should.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I simultaneously don’t want to give them money, but also do want to make fun of them.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: So it’s sort of a catch-22.
ALEX: Well, so—
BOBBY: So the modern world.
ALEX: So I’ll send you the menu, we can start looking through what exactly—
BOBBY: Can I buy this, like, today?
ALEX: I believe you can.
BOBBY: It’s live. This is not like— this is not like a sports betting thing where it has to come to you state by state. It has to be approved legally through the legislature. I can just get this.
ALEX: I mean, I don’t know if it exists in every location, but it is live right now.
BOBBY: Here in Brooklyn, can I get something from Citi Field? This is scintillating content.
ALEX: Well, no. See, this is the thing, right? It’s like—
BOBBY: We— we live in a VDC desert.
ALEX: Right, exactly. No, they’re not from the specific—
BOBBY: Well, I know.
ALEX: They are your [25:08] called ballpark favorites.
BOBBY: They’re coming from the ghost kitchen, I know. Of course, they’re not from the place, because the— the place, you don’t get everything on a pretzel roll. I’ve never seen a pretzel roll at Citi Field. I don’t understand this whole pretzel roll thing.
ALEX: Look at that, MLB Ballpark Bites on my DoorDash app.
BOBBY: I— I— I actually— don’t— don’t let me get hot. I want you to buy it. I kind of want you to do it. How long does it say?
ALEX: Look at— see, look at this, all pretzel rolls. All the exact same.
BOBBY: Truly, what the fuck, man? This is one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard. I give this three months, three months. This was something that Dodger Stadium was doing during the pandemic because they were like, “We want to keep some people in work.”
ALEX: Right. Right, exactly.
BOBBY: You know? We were trying to— we’re trying to keep some things open.
ALEX: You know what I’ll say? It’s not the worst prices I’ve see— it would be cheaper to order this with all the added fees on top that you get from, like, food delivery than just, like, getting a normal hotdog at the ballpark.
BOBBY: But you’d have to eat it on a pretzel roll. This could finally solve the— the father of the bride, why do hot dogs come in packs of eight and buns come in packs of 12?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: I think it’s the other way around, actually.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: We could finally solve that, because now you’d have to buy two bags of buns, because anytime you get something delivered on this, you need to replace the bun with the normal bun. That’s where your extra buns go to.
ALEX: Fries are only four bucks.
BOBBY: You’re really gonna do it. I— like, I know you are for dinner tonight. I don’t want you to do that, because I want you to wait.
ALEX: I know, I really shouldn’t.
BOBBY: Because we should do it for next week’s recording.
ALEX: See, interestingly, Ballpark Bites is not the— what— I know we’d like to have a segment that we were go— we’re gonna do around this, but also now, like if you go to Red Sox Ballpark Bites, they have their own Ballpark Bites. And they have teamed up with Goya to provide you—
BOBBY: Goya?
ALEX: —with recipes for things you can make at home. So if you want the Boston Red Sox recipe for corn and quinoa mini burgers—
BOBBY: Which I do.
ALEX: All right. Well, I can send you the PDF right now.
BOBBY: Don’t send me the PDF.
ALEX: It’s a 20-minute prep time.
BOBBY: Please read it to me right now.
ALEX: Three and a half— three-quarters of a cup of Goya organic bread, quinoa, rinsed.
BOBBY: Okay. Is it pre-rinsed or do I have to rinse it?
ALEX: I— I— I assume that if they put rinsed in there, you may have to— I don’t— depends on, I guess, how you get your quinoa.
BOBBY: Well if it’s coming from Goya, it should come rinsed if it says rinse there. Is there a combo before the rinsed or is rinsed capitalized like TM?
ALEX: It is not— it is not capitalized, but there also is not a comma.
BOBBY: Well, now, I’m just very confused.
ALEX: [27:46] quinoa rinsed.
BOBBY: Gonna have to get to the bottom of that. Okay, keep going. Is there like a personal essay at the beginning of this? Like, every other recipe that I find on the internet?
ALEX: Unfortunately, no.
BOBBY: A 1,000-word long personal essay about why I need to make this mac and cheese.
ALEX: [27:59] and being like— being like, “So these Chipotle-glazed ribs really got me through some hard times.”
BOBBY: Triston Casas being like, “This really centers me.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: “Much like when I go out barefoot into the outfield before the game starts. This is what I eat before games.
ALEX: You can also get Ballpark Bites at IHOP.
BOBBY: Okay. That sounds like a diversified strategy they have here. It also makes it seem like I don’t know what the hell it is.
ALEX: I’ve— I’m really confused by all of this. However, what I will say is that we can go to join vdc.com—
BOBBY: And apply to become a ghost kitchen?
ALEX: —and apply to have our own ghost— we could have a Tipping Pitches ghost kitchen.
BOBBY: Are you serious?
ALEX: Yeah, we— yeah.
BOBBY: We should apply to do that. So next week on the show, we will both order Ballpark Bites to eat live on the air and we will let people know how our application to become a ghost kitchen for Ballpark Bites is going.
ALEX: In fact, if you complete this quiz that asks you about, you know, say what kitchen you have available to you right now, what food services are you already offering.
BOBBY: Are they going to be like down with the fact that I just have a small apartment with an electric stove? Are they gonna be like, “You can turn out the pretzel rolls.”?
ALEX: I think so. Well—
BOBBY: Are they gonna ship me like a 12 foot by 12 foot box of pretzel rolls? Because our package was not that big.
ALEX: It’s not very big. What I will say is I— I completed this quiz—
BOBBY: You—
ALEX: —and they paired me with some brands. And you know who they paired me with? Was Major League Baseball Ballpark Bites and MrBeast Burger.
BOBBY: So you—
ALEX: And NAS— sorry. And NASCAR Refuel, Tenders & Burgers.
BOBBY: Okay. Paired you how? Like, they said that this is what— this is the ghost kitchen that you should work for? I’m so confused. The quiz is for what? Is— it’s like a job application?
ALEX: Well, you say—
BOBBY: Are you applying to prep this meal for people?
ALEX: It’s— I don’t know, to be really honest.
BOBBY: What kind of questions did you answer? Like, do you like chicken tenders or burgers more?
ALEX: Which brands work for me? Select the existing equipment that can be found in your kitchen. So I said an oven, a freezer, and a flat top stove.
BOBBY: Okay. Sure.
ALEX: Oh, and refrigeration.
BOBBY: I really thought ghost kitchens had to be like a little bit more of a professional operation than just your fucking apartment.
ALEX: I don’t really know what— well, I think they do. Well, I don’t think they— I think if we told them it was an apartment, they’d be like, “Hang on.” But like, it’s unclear to me—
BOBBY: So we don’t tell them, then?
ALEX: Like— it’s like now select the kind of food your kitchen typically makes. That’s the whole point. I don’t have a kitchen that makes food. That’s why I want a ghost kitchen.
BOBBY: I think the—
ALEX: I thought you were making the food.
BOBBY: I think the ghost kitchen concept is that you, like, have a restaurant and you also just want to make some money on the side, preparing this stuff as it goes to kitchen.
ALEX: Got it.
BOBBY: So you are kind of like— you’re like a— like a ghost writer. Like, you write for Spin Magazine and some like— Billy Joe Armstrong wants to write a book and you just ghost write it for him.
ALEX: Got it. So we would be making the Ballpark Bites ourselves and—
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: —delivering them to folks?
BOBBY: Yes. Yes.
ALEX: Or— or partnering with DoorDash?
BOBBY: Yes, that one. Yes. They don’t let you deliver it on your own, because then there’s fewer people that they can exploit in that chain.
ALEX: That’s right.
BOBBY: And you could make more money.
ALEX: So what kind of food does your kitchen typically make?
BOBBY: Well, what I was gonna say is we’ve been talking a lot about, should we rent some studio space for Tipping Pitches? Should we get our own little office? The answer so far, there’s no way to justify that expenditure, but I would like to. So maybe we roll this into one big operation, just Tipping Pitches Industries.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: So we do ghost kitchen work, we do studio work, we sell our merch. And maybe we could do like a cat cafe or something, you know the— do you remember, like, five years ago, we spent, like, an hour on the podcast talking about the video game cafe that— what’s his name? The— the Giants outfielder. The—
ALEX: Hunter Pence.
BOBBY: Hunter Pence. Another hunter.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: That he had opened and he was like, “I just like to play video games.” Do you remember this?
ALEX: I do remember that, yeah.
BOBBY: We could do one of those.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: We’re like Entertainment 720 from Parks and Recreation, but for baseball. Instead of Roy Hibbert coming in, working for us and making a million dollars a year, we could just pay Hunter Pence or Xavier Nady.
ALEX: Hunter Biden.
BOBBY: Or Hunter Biden, exactly. We could poach Rob to run our operation. I hear that he’s not going to be in this commissioner role forever.
ALEX: You know, I think he would appreciate a pivot.
BOBBY: Investment from A-Rod. I mean, obviously.
ALEX: That’s easy.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: It’s on lock. We got him on speed dial.
BOBBY: Exactly. There’s something here.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: So— so, again, next week on the show. So funny that you fill out this quiz already. Of course, you did. Next week on the show, we will order Ballpark Bites and we will let everybody know how good or bad they are.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Okay, sounds good.
ALEX: And we will let you know how negotiations are going to start—
BOBBY: Our own ghost kitchen.
ALEX: —our own ghost kitchen.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Should I fill out this form, telling us about their kit— our kit— our kitchen?
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: You should. I’m still laughing at you saying, what kind of food do we prepare? I thought you were supposed to tell me what [33:04] why are they all on pretzel rolls?
ALEX: I don’t know.
BOBBY: Like, was it just— it’s just good value or something? Like, they’re on sale. Okay. So clearly, this is like a VC idea. Clearly, they were like, “We got some form of investment. We want to do this thing that all these other tech companies are doing. Ghost kitchens are very in vogue right now.” Because DoorDash was like, “We have so many— we have so much consumer demand and not enough restaurants, that we just want to create ghost kitchens to deliver food from them— for them.” By the way, you open DoorDash these days, like 50% of the things on there are just ghost kitchens probably. Places that you could not just walk into.
ALEX: 100%.
BOBBY: And so we thought, “Maybe this would be a good opportunity to come up with some other VC ideas that we can apply to the baseball world.”
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: All right. What do you got?
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: I could kick us off if you want.
ALEX: All right, do it, then.
BOBBY: My first idea is— is a software as a service, of course.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: Say more.
BOBBY: It’s championship rings that live on the cloud, so you don’t actually ever get it. But you can locate it from all your different devices, like a photo of it.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: So if someone’s like, “When did you win the World Series?” You log in to your MLB Ringz with a Z app, and you do your little face ID.
ALEX: rings.[34:26]
BOBBY: Right. That’s great. That’s good. I’m gonna bleep that out, so people don’t steal that idea.
ALEX: Sorry, I’ll get the domain right now.
BOBBY: Okay, great. Domain acquisition is like a whole crazy thing. I don’t need to be trying to acquire a different domain right now. You log in—
ALEX: So it’s like a NFT.
BOBBY: Yeah, you pull it up. It’s a photo of your ring, but you don’t have to worry about it. You don’t have to worry about losing it, stealing it, damaging it, whatever. You don’t have to worry about it weighing down your finger.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And you show it to someone, maybe we like— we should it up a little bit, so the ring like rotates 360 and looks really cool. You can zoom—
ALEX: You can zoom. Yup. Yeah.
BOBBY: —pinch— pinch to zoom, pinch to zoom. That’ll be great.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Okay? And then it lives on all your devices. You can show anyone at any time.
ALEX: I love this idea.
BOBBY: Great. Sold.
ALEX: I— frankly, I’m a little surprised that it hasn’t happened— so this was a thing as like— as I was trying to brainstorm or what are the VC— like, ventures that Major League Baseball would be interested in getting involved in? Or— or—or—
BOBBY: Yeah, they’ve already those [35:28]
ALEX: —Major League Baseball, like adjacent properties?
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: And, like, it’s hard. Do you want to buy stock in players?
BOBBY: You can.
ALEX: You can do that. Would you like to pay with your face? They’re working on it.
BOBBY: Monfort already got that rollin’.
ALEX: Do you need your sport to be powered by AI? I have good news for you.
BOBBY: Statcast by Google Cloud featuring—
ALEX: That’s right.
BOBBY: —AI.
ALEX: So it’s like a little hard, but I— so I— I appreciate— this almost feels like a— like a layup for them.
BOBBY: I got two more, and they’re better.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Do you have any of do you want me to keep going?
ALEX: I can get one.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: MLB has partnered with Robinhood to present the— the Major League Baseball ETF.
BOBBY: Naturally.
ALEX: A fund that you can buy into made up of the respective companies of Major League Baseball owners.
BOBBY: Are you serious?
ALEX: What do you mean am I serious?
BOBBY: I thought you were saying this is something that already existed.
ALEX: Wait, no. Wai— no, this is my idea.
BOBBY: This is a good idea.
ALEX: Alternately, you buy into the ETF, which is a portfolio of stocks chosen by our good friend, Ross Stripling.
BOBBY: Okay. I like that. Can I acquire Brave stock? Can I acquire Slam Corp stock through all of this?
ALEX: Like, is— is that rolled into the fund?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I— I’d say no.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: I think they’re separate.
BOBBY: I agree.
ALEX: Because you’re buying into the— the owner’s vision, right? Like— like—
BOBBY: The collective vision.
ALEX: Like, re— regardless of baseball, baseball is almost secondary to this, like pretzel rolls.
BOBBY: What is the ETF? What do those letters stand for?
ALEX: Electronic trade fund.
BOBBY: Fund.
ALEX: Exchange-Traded Fund.
BOBBY: Close enough.
ALEX: Clo— close enough.
BOBBY: It probably happens electronically.
ALEX: It is— it is electronic.
BOBBY: So you’re basically doing an EETF.
ALEX: Right. All right, so you’re in? I’m buying.
BOBBY: Yeah. That’s essentially like— like buying NASDAQ, you know?
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: There’s so many of them in so many different industries, and they’re all so profitable that you basically just— that’s just like [37:39]
ALEX: Right, exactly. The stocks always gonna go up, you know.
BOBBY: Stock go up.
ALEX: That’s right, it does.
BOBBY: Okay. My next one is we do the gig economy but for relievers. So relievers don’t work for any one team. They’re just like— they’re out there waiting to be called on. So they’re out there in a different jersey, a se— a third jersey and you can request a reliever whenever you need it, but you don’t know who you’re gonna get. It’s algorithmic, based on who is most readily available—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —for you in that moment, who’s rested, who’s not— who’s not as tired, who’s better, who has a higher rating.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You know, maybe we use war, or whatever they agreed on in the CBA.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And so instead of relievers being paid so little by teams, they make even less to work for no one.
ALEX: That’s really good.
BOBBY: Thank you. I’ve worked on that one really hard.
ALEX: Maybe they come to you in a little like Nats like Bullpen Cart, you know?
BOBBY: Right, exactly. Yeah. And they have to ask you to rate them well when they— when they exit— when you take them out of the game. You’re like, “Please, Mr. Manager, please, Aaron Boone, rate me well so that I will be requested again tomorrow by”— who’s the A’s manager? Mark, what’s his name?
ALEX: Mark Kotsay.
BOBBY: Mark Kotsay?
ALEX: Yeah. Yep. I’m such a fan of this.
BOBBY: Thank you. Thank you. I got one more.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: But you go, you go.
ALEX: Major League Baseball is partnering with Lyra Health to offer discounted mental health services to fans whose teams are under .500. Mets just lost five straight. Looks like you have some pre-consults available to you, Bobby.
BOBBY: Is Lyra Health the one that does BetterHelp?
ALEX: I don’t know.
BOBBY: I gotta say if you are a, like, One-Stop Shop app for therapy, to me, personally, that’s a red flag.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Doesn’t seem good.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Especially if you exist only online—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —and you’re venture— venture capital funded—
ALEX: Yep.
BOBBY: Seems sad.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: I’m just saying. I’m not gonna name any one company in particular. Do you know how I, like, insert company name here so I don’t get myself in trouble in the last few pods?
ALEX: Yeah. In fact, our lawyer actually made us change the name of this episode, so we wouldn’t get sued.
BOBBY: Does that give me enough of a legal reason to play that song in this episode, do you think? Without getting sued?
ALEX: I think— I think it does.
BOBBY: I think so, too. Love that, love that idea.
ALEX: Maybe it’s— maybe it’s like a 15-minute session and you can like—
BOBBY: You can choose to do group or individual, too.
ALEX: Group or individual.
BOBBY: If you want to be around other fans.
ALEX: Yeah. You can unlock. You can pay more to unlock more sessions.
BOBBY: Right. You get gifted a few free— free sessions at the beginning to get you hooked.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And a couple years, they have a huge data scandal, all the information about all of the— the worst losses that you ever experienced as a fan, it’s just out there.
ALEX: It’s out there in the world. Okay. That’s all right. It kind of already is.
BOBBY: My third and final idea for some VC— for the VCification of Major League Baseball, We— it’s called WePlay. It’s like WeWork, but it’s for MLB teams who have threatened their local government and no longer have a stadium to play in. Just some vacant stadiums around the country—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —that they can rotate through, ready to be played in. They don’t have a contract with any one city or one stadium. They’re just like, “I’ll buy a day pass to play at this community college. Okay, A’s vs. Astros in Minnesota. Great.
ALEX: This is like too likely to happen, I think.
BOBBY: Probably a lot of others likely to happen. It’s almost like this is how I view the game. Through dumb hypotheticals like this. They’re like a traveling roadshow.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: The Harlem Globetrotters. Now, we could techify it, too. You know, we could be like, “And there’s yoga rooms in the stadiums. And it’s a place to network.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: “It’s a place to do— it’s not just a place to play baseball. There’s— there’s rooms in there where they have kombucha on tap.”
ALEX: Uh-hmm. And flat screen TVs.
BOBBY: Pretzel roll hotdogs, flat screen TVs, marble floors.
ALEX: That’s right.
BOBBY: Deep cuts only
ALEX: Extends to basketball, you know?
BOBBY: There’s something here.
ALEX: I think so, too.
BOBBY: We could allow other sports to purchase subscriptions to this model as well.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: So we just have a steady income stream. It’s like— it’s like with WeWork or like with gyms, you can get the membership that gives you access to just one location or every location, you pay a little more. You’re like a super member. You have the right to bounce any community college baseball team anytime you want to play your own game all across this great— this great nation.
ALEX: Now, what if we open up all the stadiums almost as like an Airbnb-esque situation, you know?
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: So, like, you start setting prices. The Red Sox want to play in Fenway Park, you’re gonna have to bid on it—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —against the Yankees.
BOBBY: Do you find yourself bidding against people on Aribnb [42:50]
ALEX: Yes, I do.
BOBBY: These grounds crew fees are getting insane. I can’t— it’s like after every game they charge us $50,000 to just spray some water on the field. I like that. Airbnb but for baseball stadium. Someone out there listening right now is like ding, ding, ding, light bulb.
ALEX: Yeah. I mean, I guess it, like, does kind of already happen. They do just rent out their stadiums when baseball is not being played there.
BOBBY: Yes, they do. To, like, Pitbull or whatever.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: I— I wish I would have got Pitbull more involved in my [43:22]
ALEX: Like, motocross events.
BOBBY: Have you watched motocross yet?
ALEX: No, I haven’t.
BOBBY: You’re really letting me down.
ALEX: [43:29] maybe I’ll do that tonight.
BOBBY: Should I keep naming more Disney Channel original?
ALEX: It’s a good— is the bit that keeps on giving.
BOBBY: Do you have any others or was that— was that all of yours?
ALEX: Honestly, the rest of mine are mostly like AI-related. You know, like— like AI-powered betting.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: Maybe like— it like looks at your text messages, and your emails, and, like, past games you’ve attended—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —and they’re like, “Look, we”— maybe it’s even like—
BOBBY: Your bank account.
ALEX: Your bank account.
BOBBY: It’s like Mint, but instead of putting into a savings account, it bets it on sports for you.
ALEX: Right, exactly. We’ve— we’ve found three—
BOBBY: That’s a good fucking idea.
ALEX: We found three bets that we’ve—
BOBBY: Put some vulture [44:06] out there. That’s a great idea.
ALEX: —automatically placed for you.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: Text why to confirm. Text a number to bet that amount. We think you’d love this Jose Butto over 4.5 strikeouts.
BOBBY: You should love that because Jose Butto is good. Butto Boys unite.
ALEX: That’s right.
BOBBY: I’m trying to make this Butto Boys thing happen. I’ve said it on multiple episodes of this podcast and—
ALEX: I think it hasn’t registered for me.
BOBBY: Exactly, because I just slide it in there. It’s all subliminal. You’re like sleeping and I’m leaning over you—
ALEX: Like, Butto Boys.
BOBBY: —leaning over you while you’re asleep, whispering Butto Boys in your ear. I’ve asked your co-host for life to play an audio file play it lowly next to your ear while you sleep.
ALEX: Right. You’ve replaced my sound machine. It’s not actually white noise. It’s just Butto Boys.
BOBBY: Butto, Butto, Butto. He’s good. Unfortunately, he did take the loss last night.
ALEX: He did.
BOBBY: Against the Cardinals.
ALEX: That’s because [45:02] masterclass
BOBBY: [45:05] guy is like 80 ERA this year.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: Okay. This was fun. I look forward to our future as it goes to kitchen.
ALEX: I do, too. It looks lucrative.
BOBBY: It’s got to be more lucrative than what we’re doing now.
ALEX: Right. You know, we weren’t joking before we started this podcast, should we go into food?
BOBBY: Was that a joke to you?
ALEX: Dammit. I’m sorry.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: All right.
BOBBY: You need to take a couple of minutes to recover from that one. Just kidding. We’re going to talk about the A’s moving to Las Vegas, except they’re not really moving to Las Vegas.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: One year ago today, the Oakland Athletics announced or it was reported on— in the Las Vegas newspapers, that the A’s were intending to move to Vegas. Dave Kaval shockingly caught a little flat footed by this news leaking. We’ve never seen that coming. And I believe that— this was on April 21st last year. We did a— an emergency reaction podcast where we discussed this news. We discussed the culmination of these rumors that had been— been— that had been mounting for the better part of a year at that point. I wanted to reflect back on that a year later, to talk about your expectations in that moment about how things would go versus the reality of today, but also to hear from you how much your relationship to this story in this process has changed. I think even then, we spent a lot of time talking about how amateur hour, the whole process felt. But with a year of hindsight, it feels even worse, because they still don’t have a stadium in Las Vegas. And it doesn’t really seem like they’re gonna get one at this point, anytime soon. So I went back and listened to that episode, but before, you know, I’ll share a couple observations or a couple salient points that we made and how we relate to them now. But before we do that, I— I wanted to hear from you. It was bummer town to listen to.
ALEX: I’m sure.
BOBBY: There was one moment on it where you were like, “It sank in for me earlier today. I’ll never see the Oakland A’s win a World Series.”
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: I was like, “Damn.”
ALEX: Wow.
BOBBY: Damn.
ALEX: I forgot about that.
BOBBY: Yeah. Well, you’re gonna have to remember it at some point. How are you feeling about this one year removed, I think, from A’s?
ALEX: From A’s? I think I still have not really processed a lot of my emotions fully. Like, I think it— like, it obviously has slowly sunk in, especially in the last, like, month or so, that, like, this is maybe their last year in Oakland. But I think it really isn’t—
BOBBY: Still adding the maybe.
ALEX: Maybe.
BOBBY: Just— you just never know.
ALEX: Door’s always open. I think it won’t really hit until they’re like playing in a different uniform, you know, and I literally cannot watch the Oakland A’s anymore. If I had to guess, I think I probably won’t be a fan of another team like I have been of the A’s. At least until like—
BOBBY: Listen to the Phillies randomly make the World Series again and you tell everyone you’re back with them.
ALEX: And I’m back in. That’s right, son. No, it feels like the kind of thing where it’s like, “Okay, I’ve been cultivating this fandom for this team over the course of my 27 years on this Earth.” So now, I gotta put in another 27 years. I’m not necessarily saying that I think that, like, I won’t be able to root for a team the same way again, but you know, it’s like that fandom is cultivated through a long process of, like, sharing it with your family and your friends, and figuring out the— the unique characteristics of the team that draws you to them. And— and I find it really hard to just, like, click into that automatically, to just be like, “Okay, I’m just— I’ll just throw my emotion behind a different team.”
BOBBY: Yes. I feel like so much of the discourse on this show and online about fandom has evolved, and how fandom can be many things. You can be a fan of players. You can follow them around to where they go. You can be a fan of vibes. You can be a bandwagoner. You can be all these different things. I do feel like that doesn’t quite capture our version of fandom fully, which is like fandom as identity, fandom as a— like a core piece of identity, and fandom as feeling locked in like part of a community of shared experience. Because jumping in to be a fan of another team, to me— and this is not to say that everybody— I don’t think of this about everybody who does this, but this is what I think when I try to root for a different team maybe in a playoff series, or try to root for a different team and a different sport that I maybe didn’t follow as closely when I was younger, but now, I’m try— trying to kind of trying to, like, get into. It feels somewhat like a performance for a while. And you really have to, like, put in the time and commit to it, until it stops feeling like a performance and starts feeling again, like the same second nature as it would be for you to be a fan of— of the A’s. Or for me, the Mets. There is no— even with— even with the Rangers, the New York Rangers, the hockey team, which— who I am a fan of and have been a fan of my whole life, but don’t really follow the way that I follow the Mets or the way that I used to follow the Giants in football. I feel performative about wa— tapping into them from time to time and watching them. And maybe that is like a personal failure of mine, maybe that is like a self-consciousness about what fandom means. And if you can’t name everybody on the team, you don’t know about everything about where they came from, then you’re— then you’re not truly tapped in the way that you should be. You’re not locked in the way that you have been at other points with different sports. But, like, that is real still. That is— that is a real thing that as— as fans who are as fervent as we are about our respective teams, it could— it could feel less than, or it can just feel like a different experience, a different orientation to the game. And baseball, in particular, is a tough one, because so much— there’s so many games, that so much of the way most fans orient is they just watch their team every day. And then you get to see all of the other teams in the league based on them playing your team. And you have to be a real sort of— first of all, you have to have, like, not have kids to be able to, like, watch a bunch of other teams at the same time as watching your team. You have to have a lot of free time on your hand, or just not sleep at all. You have to be kind of like a real true blue, like dyed in the wool baseball fan to watch that many teams all at once. And if you just like— for you just losing your team as that gravitational force at the center of that, it just doesn’t hit the same to, like, fire up a good game and try to choose a side.
ALEX: Right. It doesn’t feel easily transferable. Because it’s like most— most of the time, it’s like, why do you care so much about this team? Why do you watch them? Why do you feel emotion for them? It’s like, because I always have.
BOBBY: Exactly.
ALEX: Because— I don’t know, because I don’t know anything different, right? So it’s like trying to tap into that without the historical baggage that you’re bringing to it yourself. And— and honestly, like having a— a family, having kids I think is a great way to sort of recreate that relationship to a team or, you know, going to Mets games with your friends, or like Staten Island— you know, like, creating those [53:11]
BOBBY: [53:11] Staten Island Yankees.
ALEX: Yeah, I know. Seriously, just another team that left me, because we know everyone leaves. But , yeah, it’s like one of those things you can’t just, like, flip a switch and say, “Okay, I’m all in.” And I assume people can. And I kind of respect that. More power to them.
BOBBY: Yeah, I don’t think I could do that.
ALEX: I just— it feels like what’s the— what’s the payoff for me?
BOBBY: Even when I have flirted with being a, quote unquote, “soft fan” of other teams, I would say that the only time that that’s ever happened was for A’s, for you—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —watching— because it’s nice to sometimes be able to watch prior to interleague play being so dominant. It was nice to be able to have a reason to watch every other AL teams like they were playing the A’s.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Plus, it’s on different coasts, the game start at different times. But the only other time was when I was living in LA and I was just— because I was going to Dodgers game since like it’s way more fun to go to Dodgers games when they win, might as well root for them to win.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Christmas on Earth.
ALEX: That’s right.
BOBBY: At Dodger Stadium. Take your Chevy, fire it up, drive through Echo Park, roll into Chavez Ravine, and you’re like, “This is what it means to be an American.” So even still, it’s like— I don’t know how you pick a random team, and I don’t know why you picked Phillies, because you could’ve just picked the Mets. You could’ve just picked the Mets. Okay. A couple observations from that podcast. I thought it was funny you said that you were a free agent and it felt a little good about your fandom.
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: Because this was before we had done the whole, like, Alex sells his wares to a different team.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: You also said you had always thought that the move was just going to be leverage over Oakland the whole time. And now a year later, it doesn’t really feel like that was wrong, still. It just was leverage over Oakland and they lost the leverage. And so, now they’re not even going to Las Vegas.
ALEX: Right. Well, it was like they were trying to get leverage over Oakland to get them to give a better deal.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: And then Oakland didn’t do it, and so the leverage didn’t pan out. One of the funny, contextual things that I had forgotten about listening back to it, was that this announcement came one day after Buzzfeed News had also shut down. Jonah Peretti got, like, $20 million, and you mentioned that on the episode.
ALEX: Wow.
BOBBY: BuzzFeed Jonah conversation.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: And then the final thing, which is maybe worthy of reflection, in retrospect now, was that I kind of lost my mind that this wasn’t the biggest story in baseball media that day.
ALEX: Oh, yeah.
BOBBY: And that there was not— Jeff Passan didn’t tweet about it for, like, two weeks.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: But he did a hit on SportsCenter about Ohtani potentially getting traded four months from them.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And I was like, what is happening? But I know that obviously, every— everybody now at this point has covered the story. Even all of the mainstream baseball people that may not— they might not have all have written investigative stories about it, or a column decrying John Fisher’s behavior, but pretty much everybody in baseball media has acknowledged that this is happening and acknowledged that it’s like kind of bad.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: For the most part. I find it curious that no one has taken up the mantle of really exposing much of what’s gone on. We haven’t really gotten great journalism about why the A’s are leaving Oakland. We’ve gotten good writing. We’ve gotten decent beat coverage. We’ve gotten in the perspective of fans, we’ve gotten the perspective of the Oakland Community. We’ve gotten the chronicling of the city council. We’ve got like that minute by minute coverage of sort of what has resulted from this, we have gotten. But we haven’t gotten— no one has dug up dirt on what has really— what really happened here, who really wanted this, what were the motivations? What is the financial boon? Who is benefiting from this? Who made this happened? Who are the power brokers in the room? Nobody has done that. And I’m— I’m not saying that that’s an easy thing to do, and I’m not saying that there’s even an obvious person who’s dropping the ball in this case, because media has been completely decimated. But now thinking back a year— thinking a year back on that conversation that we had, I was frustrated that people weren’t calling it out in real time. But now, I’m frustrated that nobody is— I’m frustrated that nobody has dug up, frankly, like the embarrassing financial motivations of someone like John Fisher for why he’s doing this. Now, yes, does it seem obvious, that it’s just a cash grab or whatever. Sure, but I gotta be honest, I don’t really trust that this is all aboveboard. I don’t really trust what they’ve told us. I don’t trust their— what they’ve said about their attempts to stay in Oakland, these conversations that they’ve had, the efforts that they’ve made as an organization. It’s like, they’re just lying, right? And no one has exposed those lies yet. I’m a little disappointed by that year, in retrospect.
ALEX: Yeah. This has been such an embarrassing moment for the league, that I do think we’re due for a long read on how this whole thing came to be and why it came to be this way. Especially because you get these quotes, right? These anonymous quotes from executives who were like, “Yeah, you know, we don’t like what they’re doing here. We don’t think it’s on the up and up. It’s making us all look bad.” Yes. And I’m like, “I— sure. Okay. Say it with your chest.”
BOBBY: Someone write the real story about that, you know? Like—
ALEX: Right, exactly. Talk about what’s going on in these rooms. We— I mean, we’ve had some interesting pieces come out from like The Athletic and SFGATE that have sort of shed a little bit of light on, like, what the motivations are, and the story is not done being written, man. They still gotta move to happen.
BOBBY: Like Natasha Bedingfield.
ALEX: That’s right.
BOBBY: The rest is still unwritten.
ALEX: Quite literally.
BOBBY: Okay. Shall we move on to do some listener questions and then wrap it up here?
ALEX: Let’s do it.
BRIAN: Hey, Bobby. Hey, Alex. It’s Brian. So listening something to your last episode, when you guys talk about the Minor League teams being brought up made me think, is there any possibility that maybe there’s a— some sort of like employee-owned prospect that could be set up by a really virtuous person, if that exists? Yeah, that’s just like a foil to that. Is that possible? Probably not. Like a Bob’s Red Mill, but baseball. Yeah.
BOBBY: “A really virtuous person, if that exists.”
ALEX: Right, if that exists. Probably not, but—
BOBBY: “A Bob’s Red Mill, but baseball.” That’s a good pitch. How— how come that didn’t make it into our VC ideas?
ALEX: ‘Cause that’s to pro labor.
BOBBY: Well, obviously. Okay. Thank you for calling, Brian. Good to hear from you.
ALEX: Yeah. I feel that— I mean, it’s— it’s tough because like, employees, like, could not own—right, like you couldn’t— I mean, I don’t know what the— can like a Major League player own a Minor League team? Probably not.
BOBBY: I would say no. Yeah, I— I would say no, be— because you could get sent down to the Minors—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —and then you’re a—
ALEX: You’d be sent down to your own team.
BOBBY: Under the current structure, I don’t think that it’s possible, just because players are part of the bargaining unit against the management group. And so then if you became an owner, you would be out of your own bargaining unit, but you want to be a player. So we talked about, like, employee owned in that way, for the players, no. But for a Minor League team, I mean, you could have, like, the people who run the operations of the Minor League team, or the concessions, or whatever, or more of like a Green Bay Packers situation where, like, the fans own parts of the team. You could probably have that. I don’t know how successful it would be, primarily because like, on— on a single team basis, these Minor League teams don’t make a ton of money, and so how much could they afford to— and presumably, like, they wouldn’t be getting the help of Major League Baseball if they did something like this, you know? How much could they really afford to pay— continue to pay all of those employees and also keep up operations for the team is an open question. But, like, someone could definitely set it up. I don’t think there’s anything legally preventing them from doing that for the employees of the team itself.
ALEX: Yeah. I mean, I think it would be fee— I don’t think it would be— it would cost more money, right? I mean, in theory, you’re just redistributing whatever money is currently going to the ownership group back to the employees themselves, right? So—
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: —it seems easy. We could do that. Alternatively, you do have one virtuous person who comes in, buys the team.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: And then just like Venmos the profit shares to the players.
BOBBY: Goes away. They come in, they buy the team, and they’re just like, “You guys do it. You need to do it.”
ALEX: Right. Yeah. Right, exactly.
BOBBY: That’s about the best you can [1:02:20]
ALEX: Let me know when you need money.
BOBBY: Should we be trying to nationalize the Minor Leagues?
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: Is that— should that be our goal? Instead of worrying about trying to let the city of San Diego allow Joan Kroc to give away the Padres and forced her to sell it to somebody else, should we just be going straight to the source? Should we go toe to toe with Diamond Baseball Holdings—
ALEX: Diamond Baseball Holdings, yeah.
BOBBY: —by sweeping the nation with an active employee-owned Minor League teams.
ALEX: Well, we better fucking hurry up.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: They’re almost all gone.
BOBBY: In the last week, Diamond Baseball Holdings already bought another team since we had that conversation last week.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I— if someone is listening and they work for a Minor League team, and they’d like to talk to us about how to win the fight, and get their— get that team employee-owned, 785-422-5881.
ALEX: Yeah. Or—
BOBBY: tippingpitchespod@gmail.com.
ALEX: Or if your baseball team was recently bought by Diamond Baseball Holdings—
BOBBY: Baseball Holdings.
ALEX: God. Diamond Sports Group. Diamond Baseball Holdings.
BOBBY: Yes. And do you want to just talk about it?
ALEX: You want to— you want to pass our way, the internal communications that they’re sending out.
BOBBY: That would be helpful. That would be informative, I think. Okay. We have two more questions. This comes from A.M. “My question is about the MLB’s voluntary recognition of the MLBPA in 2022. Morse— most sources claim they were forced to do so out of shame for working conditions and overwhelming signups from players. But the recent unrest in the MLBPA, which included rumors that largely Minor League Marino Heights [1:03:58] were pushing for a salary/cap has me wondering if they thought the unionization would divide players in a way that helps them in negotiations.” First of all, I don’t know that the Marino Heights [1:04:10] were pushing for a salary cap. I didn’t hear that rumor.
ALEX: I didn’t, either.
BOBBY: I think that maybe some people were speculating that they wanted to change to the structure of baseball that might distribute the money more evenly. And in order to do that, you might have to have a salary cap, because that would involve a max contract for individual players, which would bring up the floor for the other players. Now, if you’re taking that logical leap, then maybe, but I don’t know that anybody who is, quote unquote, “pro labor” would come into baseball and be like, “Salary cap.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: “That’s good.” I don’t know that— I did not see that or hear that. Aside from that, though, the core of this question still remains intact, Alex, which is, do you think that MLB allowed the Minor Leagues to unionize because it would divide the MLBPA into two distinct groups that will have different interests?
ALEX: I think that’s maybe giving Major League Baseball a little too much credit.
BOBBY: It’s a little four-dimensional chess.
ALEX: It’s a little four-dimensional chess that I don’t trust them to do. And also, like, that’s a really big bet to, like, let an entire portion of your industry unionize in the hopes that like it will divide.
BOBBY: They don’t get along.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Yes. Yeah, that would be a bad bet. And also, they were doing fine before the union, you know?
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Like, they didn’t really need it. They’re doing fine.
ALEX: Some would say the Minor Leagues were hit— were just composed of folks pitting themselves against each other for most of its existence.
BOBBY: Yes. And also, so the Major Leagues.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: Like, they don’t have to worry about that necessarily. I don’t think that a business would ever allow a union to happen in the hopes that it will split their workforce more.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I am a believer in the fact that they just had no choice because the over— the organization was— it was overwhelming what they were able to— the percentage of people that they were able to get to sign cards and sign up— they just knew that they were going to lose that vote.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: So they chose to save face and speed up the process. Now, did they speed up the process? Did they allow for the process to be sped up and voluntarily recognize the Minor League union, because they just wanted to get it out of the way and avoid any more solidarity being built and rush the CBA into place, so that they could avoid having any more existential conversations than they absolutely needed to about what that CBA might look like? I think maybe. That, to me, felt more like what happened, where MLB was like, “Fine. You guys really want to do this. We get it. Things are bad. We understand that they’re bad.” And now the public knows about them because of X the everything app.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And because of these pesky little advocates for Minor Leaguers. And if we have to do this, we might as well do it on our own terms.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: We might as well rush this through and negotiate the CBA as fast as possible.
ALEX: Right. Rather than opening up a protracted negotiation that just makes us look far worse.
BOBBY: In which we piss off even more people and continue to tell you that you guys are not worth anything.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: And continue to motivate you guys. I think maybe MLB thought that from that side. I also think, for the record, from the union side, they were like, “We should get this into place as fast as possible—”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: “—because it’ll help people faster. And we know that people are not gonna want to drag this out for two, three years, in the hopes of getting a contract that is 15% better. We’ll just work on building solidarity for the next contract at that point.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I think both things are true.
ALEX: Also, like, the risk you run with, like, opening up the option for your employees to unionize, the idea of hopefully they turn against each other, you run the risk of, like, the more militant side winning, and things turning out way worse than you anticipated.
BOBBY: Well, I think that the more militant side was trying—
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: —a couple months ago. Unfortunately, I don’t think they won.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: Should we be like become sleeper cells for the MLBPA? Like, should we start inseminating ideas into the— into the union about how we need to just take owners down?
ALEX: Like you do with me with Butto Boys?
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: [1:08:21] some ideas into the MLBPA.
ALEX: No, I think what— I think it’d probably be easier. I think we could just send them like a box of Beats by Dre, but inside is just like a copy of the Communist Manifesto.
BOBBY: Right. Some cowboy boots, maybe.
ALEX: Some cowboy boots.
BOBBY: Which by the way, we fuckin broke that news on this podcast, and then like a month later, people were like, “Oh, my God. Trevor May went on another podcast and talks about how John Fisher gave him cowboy boots for their end of year gift.” Yeah, he told us that months earlier. People are sleeping on Tipping Pitches.
ALEX: Weren’t even listening.
BOBBY: Literally. I think we should end every episode of the show by calling for a wildcat strike.
ALEX: You’re right.
BOBBY: Okay, one final question. This comes from Anton, “Hypothetically, you’re watching an average normal MLB game, let’s say a day game between the Guardians and Braves, when you realize the”— I would never be watching that game. “When you realize the broadcaster forgot to read their normal disclaimer, ‘Any accounts and descriptions of this game may not be disseminated without express written consent.’ Now, that you disse— now, that you can disseminate this one game as hard as you want, what do you do?” Is that how the law works? Like, they have to say that? That if they don’t say that, I’m allowed to do whatever [1:09:34]
ALEX: [1:09:34] it’s free reign.
BOBBY: I don’t think that’s how copyright really works. I also never really understood that disclaimer, “Any accounts and descriptions of this game may not be disseminated without express written consent.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: So—
ALEX: We can’t talk about it, to be clear.
BOBBY: That’s not— that’s just not true. It’s just not true. I never understood what that meant, but anyway, what do you do if you’re allowed to disseminate without express written consent?
ALEX: Really— there isn’t much I don’t think you can do.
BOBBY: Could you rebroadcast the game?
ALEX: Right. I mean, that’s sort of like you could put it on YouTube and monetize it.
BOBBY: Commentary track.
ALEX: Upload it to—
BOBBY: LimeWire? Burn it onto a CD.
ALEX: Upload it to podcast platforms, release it as a podcast.
BOBBY: That wouldn’t be entertaining at all. Here’s what I would do. I would use the audio and— as like a— as like a drop in a mixtape.
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: A rap song, because they didn’t say that I couldn’t.
ALEX: You’re right.
BOBBY: I’m read— I’m disseminating it without their express written consent. In— in—
ALEX: And pro—
BOBBY: —mixed media format. Probably Beastie Boys.
ALEX: Probably— probably make it into like some art installation, you know? Like projected on the side of—
BOBBY: The Empire State building.
ALEX: David Heim.
BOBBY: Now it’d be really entertaining if it was a— an important game that like had hurt you in the past.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Then it could be a wonderful art installation. It’s just like man stands next to game that ruined his life. It’s just you watching the 2014 AL Wild Card game on repeat. Putting up a brave face. It’s like when Shia LaBeouf watch all the—
ALEX: I know, yeah.
BOBBY: —all of his movies and cons— in— in a row. And he, like, cried, he laughed, did all those things. That’d be you. Watching the 2014 AL Wild Card game on [1:11:27]
ALEX: Yeah. I think I’d rather not be compared to him given the opportunity, but— all right, let’s do it, then.
BOBBY: Okay. I don’t think we can.
ALEX: See, what [1:11:39]
BOBBY: But that’s what art is. It’s— it’s avant-garde.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: You know? We don’t have to get their permission.
ALEX: Like if we’ve opened up a laptop and just started playing the current Cardinals-Mets game and, like, put it on the street corner, would they— would Rob come down from his offices and be like, “Sorry, you can’t play that.”?
BOBBY: I mean, I think if we sold tickets and it, like, made noise, yeah.
ALEX: Okay. But if we didn’t sell— let’s say it just was, like, open.
BOBBY: I mean, it—
ALEX: Just come and swing by.
BOBBY: It— it— it makes me ask an interesting question, what— like a bar plays a game in real time?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: They don’t have expressed written consent from fucking Rob Manfred to do that and sell $13 G & T’s.
ALEX: Do you know that?
BOBBY: I guess not, but I’m feeling pretty certain that most bars that I’ve been in— been in did not request express written consent to play that game.
ALEX: Right. I mean, I guess like it is being disseminated on the channel that Major League Baseball has delineated as the channel on which it can be distributed.
BOBBY: But you’re distributing it to people who don’t have access to that channel, though. That’s like password sharing. Clearly, we don’t know the law.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Like, very clearly, we don’t know the law.
ALEX: I’ve learned how to crack down on it, even more, you know?
BOBBY: They’re basically—
ALEX: Like they’re [1:12:55]
BOBBY: They send, like, goons into bars and they just clear them out
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: —during October.
ALEX: “Excuse me, can you show me your receipt for your cable provider? I need to make sure you’re paying to watch this.”
BOBBY: I liked that idea. Talking about death of the third space.
ALEX: For real. Sports bar.
BOBBY: We could create— the— your idea is creating a third space.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Where we just project baseball games onto the sides of buildings and sit there—
ALEX: That’s
BOBBY: —with folding chairs.
ALEX: That’s what we’re— we’re doing with our café, recording studio that functions as a ghost kitchen.
BOBBY: Cat café.
ALEX: Cat café.
BOBBY: Ghost Kitchen, cat café, live broadcast projector. Unfortunately, we can’t broadcast Yankees or Mets games, because they’re blackout.
ALEX: They’re blackout, yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah, we wouldn’t want to violate the sanctity of the blackout. Just keep adding stuff onto the docket, but just keep making that business more interesting.
ALEX: One of these is going to hit one day. One day, some— some intrepid, young investors gonna be like, “These guys are onto something, they don’t know it yet.”
BOBBY: Intrepid, old investor, Alex Rodriguez, is gonna hear that. Is he 50 yet? Probably not, right?
ALEX: Probably not. Oh, that’s a great question.
BOBBY: I’m a little disappointed that you don’t know his age.
ALEX: Next year.
BOBBY: What are we going to do for his 50th? We have to do a huge blowout pod. What day of the year is it?
ALEX: July 27th.
BOBBY: That’s very close to our anniversary. That’d be our eighth anniversary, Tipping Pitches eighth anniversary.
ALEX: We’ll have to brainstorm it a little bit. I know we did just recently make an appearance on another podcast to discuss the man, the myth, the legend himself.
BOBBY: The Corp. We were on The Corp.
ALEX: We were on The Corp. Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. The— the deal, the— right? Isn’t that— his one that he has, with Bloomberg?
BOBBY: Oh, yeah. I don’t think that’s a podcast, though. I think it’s like a video series.
ALEX: So you called— I said young investor, you said old investor. You know what Alex Rodriguez says? It doesn’t matter.
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: A 50-year-old is 2x more likely to succeed as someone that’s 30. Here’s the bottom line is—
BOBBY: Naturally.
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: —age is not your barrier, your mindset is. Okay? Right?
BOBBY: Thunderous applause.
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: And it’s never too late, and it’s never too late. I’ll give you a few examples. Okay?
ALEX: [1:15:18]
BOBBY: He loves to give a list.
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: Michael Bloomberg got fired a 39. He started Bloomberg Business shortly after. 15 years later, he was a billionaire. Today, he’s 82 and worth a $106 billion. He started at the age of 40. Okay? You look at Henry Ford.
ALEX: Henry Ford.
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: He launched the AT model. Ford affordable car, Henry Ford at age 45.
BOBBY: What else was he doing before that?
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: You look at Warren Buffett, who’s 93 years old [1:15:46] 93 years old, worth a $130 billion, a $130 billion. He made 99% of his net worth after his 50th birthday. Okay? And this is my favorite one, last one.
BOBBY: Best for last.
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: Kentucky Fried Chicken [1:16:07] right? Colonel Sanders opened his first Kentucky Fried Chicken at the age of 65.
BOBBY: Whoa.
Alex Rodriguez: And failed. And then he collected his Social Security money and then started franchising. And the rest is history. So here’s my message—
BOBBY: So Alex Rodriguez supports the welfare state.
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: Never give up and it’s never too late.
ALEX: Get up, get going. Never give up. It’s never too late.
BOBBY: This is— he needs—
ALEX: That’s why we’re waiting until his 50th birthday—
BOBBY: Dude—
ALEX: —to ask for investment from him.
BOBBY: Like, Taylor Swift, he needs an editor. Like, here’s my message to you, four clause sentence.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: That’s not a message. That— that’s a stream of consciousness thought, get up, get moving or something. It’s never— I can’t even remember it.
ALEX: I know. I know. And we just listened to it.
BOBBY: This is my whole fucking job, is to remember stuff that A-Rod says. I can’t even— here’s my message to you, I can’t remember it.
ALEX: Get up, get going. Never give up.
BOBBY: Never give up.
ALEX: It’s never Too Late.
BOBBY: Well, see, that’s what I— I— that— that was my problem. I forgotten never give up.
ALEX: Right. You gave up halfway through.
BOBBY: [1:17:06] my self-esteem. To borrow a line from Christopher Moltisanti, I don’t see it that way, A-Rod.
ALEX: The problem is your mindset, Bobby.
BOBBY: The problem is my grind set, and it doesn’t exist.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: Which is why I want to end this podcast. Thanks everybody for listening. We’ll be back in a— in a week later. Later— later this week, we’ll have a Patreon episode for you. So if you want to— if you want more, with 3UP, 3DOWN, that segment is on Patreon this season, patreon.com/tippingpitches. Three different tiers, the top tier gets you access to those bonus episodes. And you can access those episodes on Spotify or you can access those episodes in your podcasts of choice. You just get the manual link to an RSS feed, you pop it in there. More episodes of Tipping Pitches available for your listening. It’s a wonderful— it’s a wonderful opportunity for everyone involved as an asset, not a liability. You want to call into the voicemail, the number is 785-422-5881. As promised, I like to call for the MLBPA to go on a wildcat strike. Thanks for listening. We’ll be back next week.
SPEAKER 5: I guess I talk to strangers because I texted you again. In the event of an emergency, I need you as my friend.
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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