Bobby and Alex banter about a dearth of fireworks in Pittsburgh and a plethora of cliches from A-Rod and David Rubenstein. Then, they dig into the perplexing case of the Rangers (and a handful of other teams) underperforming expectations with similarly constructed rosters. Finally, they close by tying up some loose ends from last week’s mailbag and a Lineup Construction (maybe this is the name now??) about between-inning entertainment.
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Songs featured in this episode:
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 tipping his 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, as we sit down to record here, I have the rubber match of the New York Mets-Pittsburgh Pirates series off to my left. The series started on Friday evening, when the Pirates absolutely hammered the Mets, 14-2. Did you see this?
ALEX: I did not. I missed this.
BOBBY: It was Skene’s day too, so a lot going right in Pittsburgh in the beginning of their series against my New York Mets. However, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about— I don’t want to talk about Paul Skenes. I want to talk about New York Mets pitching.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: The Mets gave up— the Mets gave up a franchise record seven home runs to the Pirates, including multiple grand slams, which is cool, which is good. I don’t really care, it’s fine. Doesn’t matter if you lose 14-2 or 4-2, honestly, accounts all the same in the standings, except for the almighty run differential, which I love to refer back to about halfway through the season, and then never talk about again. But the reason this is relevant is because the Pirates hit so many home runs. And you’ll remember Friday evening was July 5th. The Pirates hit so many home runs that when they went to go launch more fireworks, which is something they do after each home run, they had none left. The night before was Fourth of July fireworks night and then they hit seven home runs the next day. They ran out of fireworks halfway through the game.
ALEX: Where— where— where were they playing? Were they playing in Queens?
BOBBY: No, they were playing in Pittsburgh. Why would the Mets set off fireworks for Pirates home runs? And I’m the one with COVID, not you.
ALEX: It’s early. I, like, started walking over. It’s early.
BOBBY: It’s early?
ALEX: It’s like 2:00— 2:00 PM.
BOBBY: It’s 2:00 PM.
ALEX: I started walking over to your place to go record, and then I was like, “Wait a second. I think Bobby did tell me that he does have the COVID-19 virus. I probably can’t go over there.”
BOBBY: You can still get it, five years later.
ALEX: Yeah. Uh-hmm. Still a thing.
BOBBY: I can still mess up your whole week. I can mess up your Fourth of July plans. I can mess up your third of July pa— plans.
ALEX: True, if you were planning to go to a Cyclones game.
BOBBY: See the Kodai Senga rehab start. How was that? Did you have fun?
ALEX: It was fun. It was good.
BOBBY: That’s great.
ALEX: It was cool seeing everyone give him a standing ovation after, like, two innings of work. And the people I was there with were like, “What’s happening? What is going on? What did we witness?”
BOBBY: You could have just like strung them along. You should have been like, “That was the greatest pitching performance in baseball history.”
ALEX: Right. This has never been done before.
BOBBY: And they were like, “Why?” Right, exactly. No one’s ever made it through two innings.
ALEX: It was fun.
BOBBY: See how [3:00] are paying attention. Like, the other pitcher is going into the fifth, you know?
ALEX: Right. Yeah. You know where they didn’t run out of fireworks? Is the Brooklyn Cyclones game afterwards. Oh, my goodness. I could not breathe from all this smoke.
BOBBY: I have several Fourth of July related questions for you.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Number one, what’s your take on fireworks?
ALEX: I think they’re pretty hit or mi— I don’t know. They’re— the first one is always cool, right? It’s like, “Wow.” And then especially as someone who lives in New York, for whom fireworks are a regular occurrence, whether it’s the fourth of July or not.
BOBBY: Yeah. Or like the fourth of October.
ALEX: Yeah, exactly. I think— I think you— you— you grow tired of them relatively quickly. I don’t know. They don’t— they— they don’t do very much. Diminishing returns, I think.
BOBBY: Okay. I agree. I completely agree. Number two, what’s your take on—
ALEX: I mean, fuck— fuck what it does to the ozone layer. Like that, I don’t care about, obviously.
BOBBY: We have bigger fish to fry on that— in that respect. What about the whole trend of drones replacing fireworks? Have you seen this? Are you aware of this?
ALEX: I am.
BOBBY: They put drones up in the sky and then drones make the shape. Do you think that’s better or worse, or the same?
ALEX: Somehow it made the fireworks worse.
BOBBY: Worse? Okay.
ALEX: At least fireworks are like natural, you know? At least I—
BOBBY: Naturally how?
ALEX: Well— I don’t know. I— this is where I realized I don’t actually know how fireworks work or what they’re made of. I feel like they’re somewhat naturally derived, right? Gunpowder? You’re looking up fireworks in— ingredients right now?
BOBBY: You think that they’re just— I just searched fireworks. I have to scroll through a lot of ABC news stories, and now, I’m finally at the Wikipedia. “Low explosive pyrotechnic devices. Fireworks take many forms to produce four primary effects, noise, light, smoke, and floating material.”
ALEX: That’s my favorite part.
BOBBY: Confetti, most notably. “Aerial fireworks may have their own propulsion or be shot into the air by a mortar.” This is getting really intense.
ALEX: I like how— I like how smoke is like one of the things that brings to the table, you know? It’s like yeah, the lights are cool and the sound is cool, but what I’m there for—
BOBBY: Is the smoke.
ALEX: —is the haze it sets over the city.
BOBBY: “Fireworks were originally—” the haze makes the— like makes the actual rest of the fireworks look worse, too.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like, it puts a little film on the screen. You know, it’s like motion smoothing but for fireworks.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: “Fireworks were originally invented in China. Silent fireworks displays are becoming popular due to concerns that noise affects— noise affects traumatized pets, wildlife, and some humans.” I like how some humans comes last in that.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: “Silent firework displays refers to displays which simply exclude large spectacular noisy fireworks and make greater use of smaller, quieter devices. The”— I don’t know how this made it into the top of the Wikipedia page. The Italian town of Collechio switch to silent fireworks in 2015 in case you were wondering.
ALEX: Oh.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Trendsetters.
BOBBY: They’re doing it right in Italy, you know? They did elect a fascist, but silent fireworks.
ALEX: Right. Who among us, right?
BOBBY: Who among us is not currently electing fascists? Seemingly, only the British. And even then—
ALEX: Yeah, but they’re still electing Brits, so it’s like— you know?
BOBBY: I’m going to do a command F for ingredients.
ALEX: Okay. Bon appetit recipe?
BOBBY: They do have— they do have arsenic.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Barium, black powder, various forms of salts.
ALEX: Salts?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: New way to get your sodium?
BOBBY: I’m just not interested in fireworks.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: I never have been, I’ve never been impressed by them. I never had the urge, the seemingly Native American urge to go to the store, and buy a shitload of fireworks, and set them off in your yard, and potentially catch things on fire. That’s never been appealing to me.
ALEX: Were you ever like the— the— the kid who would get, like, the little like— you know, like ba— like— I don’t even know what you call them. The little explosives that you, like, throw on the ground?
BOBBY: You mean like the poppers? Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah, exactly.
BOBBY: Yeah, no. Were you ?
ALEX: I— I can’t say that I wasn’t. I was a— I was a kid, like everyone else, you know?
BOBBY: You are like Trump. You never just say yes.
ALEX: You are like Trump. Wow. Nine minutes in.
BOBBY: Coming in hot. Did you stay for the fireworks display after Cyclones game, the whole thing?
ALEX: I— I did. Yeah. It was a— oh, it was— if that’s your kind of thing. It was a good show. They had a lot of fireworks. That’s why I asked what— if they were in Queens because they could have gone down to Coney Island and picked up some of the excess there. It seemed like they were just trying to burn through all— everything they had.
BOBBY: Speaking of the Brooklyn Cyclones, as a reminder, Tipping Pitches meetup. Link now available in live in the description. It is going to be still July 27th, Saturday 6:00 PM against Rome. Do you remember what the team name of Rome is?
ALEX: Are they the Yankees?
BOBBY: Nope. The Emperors.
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: The Rome Yankees.
ALEX: Rome Emp— well, are— aren’t they the Yankees team?
BOBBY: No. No.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: I believe they are the Braves team.
ALEX: So I— I’m 0-2.
BOBBY: Does anyone here [8:33] the other for you? Saturday, July 27th in Brooklyn, New York 6:00 PM. Link in the description. It is a special link that will get you tickets in the same section as us and the rest of the people coming for the Tipping Pitches Meetup. If you would like to bring a friend, bring a friend. If you’d like to bring several friends, bring several friends. It is an open invite, anybody and everybody who listens or is part of the Tipping Pitches Community. I’m very much looking forward to it. How about you, Alex?
ALEX: Yeah. I think we’ll get there.
BOBBY: You’ll get there, may be like by the third inning.
ALEX: If they have fireworks.
BOBBY: I actually don’t know if— I— I don’t think they’re doing fireworks that night.
ALEX: That’s probably good. That would be [9:15] a good bit.
BOBBY: I’m gonna— I’m gonna ride the roller coaster afterwards. Are you gonna ride the roller coaster afterwards?
ALEX: The— the Cyclone?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Have you ever been on it?
BOBBY: We— I went on it last year after the meetup. You were there.
ALEX: I don’t— this is what happens when you destroy your brain with, like—
BOBBY: Memes?
ALEX: Yeah. Just memes, nothing else.
BOBBY: Just all memes. Yeah, I’m gonna ride it again this year, so are you—
ALEX: Oh, you’re right. We did. It’s coming back to me. See, it just—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —takes me a couple seconds.
BOBBY: Piece by piece, step by step.
ALEX: There’s a latency issue with me, you know? It just takes me a few seconds.
BOBBY: I’m gonna ride all the crazy rides. I’m gonna ride that crazy slingshot one that cost me 28 bucks.
ALEX: No, fuck that.
BOBBY: I think you should do it, and I think that we should have a voice memo going for the whole time, and then we should put it on the Patreon feed.
ALEX: Okay. That’d be good.
BOBBY: I think so, too.
ALEX: 90 seconds of screams.
BOBBY: Speaking of meetups, I mentioned last week, a second meetup in an unnamed Midwestern town. It turns out that unnamed Midwestern town is Chicago. We joked about it last week that we’re going for the Democratic National Convention. Actually, we’re going the weekend before. I hope nothing— I hope nothing controversial happens. Hoping [10:32]
ALEX: Right. We’re just doing some recon, casing the convention center.
BOBBY: Boots on the ground. August, Saturday, August 17th, the Chicago Cubs will be hosting the Toronto Blue Jays. We will be doing another meetup, meetup part two. This time at a Major League Baseball game, this time in the Midwest. We know many people traveled last year for the meetup to Brooklyn, and maybe can’t travel this year. And we know we have a decent amount of listeners who live in the Greater Chicago area, and also you are going to be in that area anyway. And I’ve never been to Wrigley Field.
ALEX: Crazy.
BOBBY: I know. Somehow I never have made it to any of the Midwestern ballparks. Bobby can’t be the coastal elite allegations. That’s not sure. I’ve been to Kansas City.
ALEX: You like Kansas City, too.
BOBBY: Oh, I love that ballpark. Great ballpark. I love the freeway in the background. You know, all the cars, Chevy— all the Chevies going by.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about Wrigley here. One of the greatest American ballparks that we’ve ever had. As a reminder, once again, Saturday, August 17th. It will be at 1:20 PM Central Time against the Toronto Blue Jays, in Chicago, Wrigley Field, Tipping Pitches Meetup part two. So put it on your calendars if you’re interested in coming to that. And we hope to see many of you there. More information to come about how to actually acquire tickets, whether or not there will be some sort of affiliate link, similar to the way that we do it with the Cyclones game. We’re just not quite sure about that yet, but there’s a little bit more time on that. But we wanted to give people the chance to put that on the calendars. You know, your market, maybe some people already have tickets to that game, maybe not. I don’t know. But we’ll figure it out. At the very least, we will tell you what section we’re sitting in. How’s that?
ALEX: We will be there. You’ll find us. I’m excited. We had a lot of fun at the meetup last year at the Cyclones game. It was a wonderful meeting, so many friendly faces, whom I’m aware of, you know? The— the Pocket Friends, as the— as the Slack affectionately refers to them. It’s a good crew. So let’s run it back.
BOBBY: All right. I know that was a lot of housekeeping, but we actually do have a real podcast to get to this week. We’re going to clean up some of those mailbag questions that we didn’t get to last week. I want to talk to you about the Texas Rangers. You familiar with their work?
ALEX: I am.
BOBBY: The reigning World Series Champion, Texas Rangers.
ALEX: Oh, not an offshore drilling. Okay.
BOBBY: You have some scintillating insights to share with the— with me and the Tipping Pitches listeners about a conversation between A-Rod and David Rubenstein.
ALEX: Two of our faves.
BOBBY: And then of course, we have our ranking segment, which I hope that you’ve had some— some things from me to rank.
ALEX: Yup. Yes, I did.
BOBBY: That sounded convincing.
ALEX: I did. I have them, locked and loaded. Rank five things—
BOBBY: You did great.
ALEX: —on my desk right now.
BOBBY: All of that coming up, but before we do—
ALEX: Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Cream.
BOBBY: Number one, right there.
ALEX: That’s right.
BOBBY: No free ads. But before we get to all that fun stuff, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I’m Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[theme]
BOBBY: Thank you to our new patrons this week. By patrons, I mean patron, singular. Alex, that’s Dan. Thank you, Dan. And another healthy hearty shout out to all the people who have upgraded their Patreon subscription in the past couple of weeks, up to that top tier to get access to our bonus episodes. As a reminder, you’re listening at home, every other week, 3UP 3DOWN on the Patreon feed, where we share three things that bring us baseball joy and three things to take away from that baseball joy and then we’ll drop in your feeds, usually like Wednesday night or Thursday morning. I love doing those episodes. Bangers. Bangers only.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. It’s the—
BOBBY: The B sides.
ALEX: Right. I was gonna say it’s the cutting room floor, but— but I really don’t think it is. It’s the— it’s the wild and wacky. The— the stuff that’s—
BOBBY: Cutting— cutting room floor has such a negative connotation [14:39]
ALEX: I— well, no. No. Exactly. I was saying these are all the things that— that grabbed our attention that—
BOBBY: We’re gonna sign up for the cutting room floor, come on.
ALEX: You call them B-sides.
BOBBY: B-sides are sometimes better than A-sides.
ALEX: So it’s— all right.
BOBBY: It’s deeper cuts. I— yeah. I think of those as generally the same thing, right? B-sides are usually— cutting room floor didn’t make to the album. You know, the would have, could have, should haves of the world.
BOBBY: Once again, I returned to the analogy of God only knows. And wouldn’t it be nice? I mean, come on. The gift that keeps on giving. This is where our movie guy and music guy thinks differ, because like cutting room floor means it didn’t make it anywhere in movies.
ALEX: Right. Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: If it’s on the cutting room floor— if it’s on the— the floor of the edit room in a movie, it legitimately just wasn’t good to make it anywhere. They don’t make B-sides of movies, really. Deleted scenes, I guess.
ALEX: Cutting— cutting room floor of the album, that means you have 18 months to put it on a deluxe edition or something like that.
BOBBY: Or until our show’s case, you have 30 minutes to rerelease it on Spotify.
ALEX: Right. Yeah.
BOBBY: Sorry. Unnamed audio company.
ALEX: No, they’re not cutting room floor. That’s when we’re in our bag, Patreon episodes. That’s— that’s like the real uncut shit.
BOBBY: I agree. That’s when I find you to be at your best.
ALEX: Well, those are usually our night recordings too, which as listeners may know.
BOBBY: I— exactly. That’s when the good stuff comes out.
ALEX: Or our different flavor, for sure.
BOBBY: I’ve been thinking recently, because I was doing our schedule for the next, like, year.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Because it’s been a couple episodes in a row now where we were like, “What are we going to talk about?” So I was like, “I need to probably do the schedule for the next year so this doesn’t happen again.” I’ve been thinking about what we could do for our 400th episode that would top 300th Episode Power Hour, but thankfully, we have a ways to go. It’s like a year from now—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —is when we’ll have to cross that bridge. But I have been thinking about it, listener, this grander project. [16:35] striving towards—
ALEX: Okay. You’re not— you’re not even gonna me in.
BOBBY: Well, I don’t have anything.
ALEX: Okay. You’ve been thinking about it, you just haven’t gotten anywhere with it.
BOBBY: Ruminating, you know?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Some might even say germinating.
ALEX: Some might.
BOBBY: I don’t think I want to do another power hour like we did last time.
ALEX: No, I—
BOBBY: Unless I do, but with like more stakes. Shot of espresso each time.
ALEX: I— I will say you— you really opened up a cultural window for me. That— the the idea of a power hour has come up in conversations since then. And I now get to say, I know exactly what that is. I’ve done one. You can listen to it.
BOBBY: Yeah. But you probably shouldn’t, but you could.
ALEX: Exactly. Yeah. A little weird when it comes up with coworkers and I’m like, “Well, technically, technically, it’s out there.”
BOBBY: It’s in a cloud somewhere.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Do you want to talk about the A-Rod thing?
ALEX: Sure, yeah.
BOBBY: I’m just waiting for you, you know, to seize the reins. I have my B-game today. You know, I need you to— I need you to bring the A-game.
ALEX: Well, so I just wanted to spend a couple minutes checking in on our two good friends, Alex Rodriguez and David Rubenstein, who— whose paths crossed a couple weeks ago at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Now, I know you’re familiar with this. You usually try and go every year.
BOBBY: I’m the founder.
ALEX: Right. You’re a big thought leader guy, and who better to lead those thoughts than Alex and David? And this was a discussion that was loosely about this idea of investing in sports, right? Their— their session was called A League of Your Own, which is how I like to think of the billionaires who— who run our economy. They’re certainly in a league of their own.
BOBBY: Well, that’s true. While you talk about this, I will be just randomly listing off names of people who were also speakers at this convention, so just prepare.
ALEX: Okay, great. Okay. You—
BOBBY: Sam Altman, he was there.
ALEX: Oh, my God. Do you think— see, now I like start thinking about—
BOBBY: This is a 22-page alphabetically organized speakers list. We got to cut trim. Talk about cutting room floor, we need to put some of these people on the cutting room floor.
ALEX: Okay. Well, can you let them know next time you’re there, Mr. Founder?
BOBBY: Some of these names I feel like I know them, and then I click on them, and I’m like, “That’s not the guy who I thought it was.”
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: Do you know Auriemma? How—
ALEX: I don’t know who that is.
BOBBY: He’s the longtime coach of UConn Women’s Basketball Team.
ALEX: Is that—
BOBBY: That doesn’t ring a bell for you seriously? You— you don’t have the same— again, you don’t have the same internet as me.
ALEX: Why—
BOBBY: You never watch— like, did you never even watch SportsCenter or something when you were like 14 and see that they—
ALEX: But why—
BOBBY: —once again completed, like, three straight undefeated seasons? That didn’t pierce your bubble?
ALEX: I— I mean, to be honest, no. Not—not, whatsoever. But why would the coach— why would the coach pierce there? I don’t even know the coach of the college basketball teams I did follow.
BOBBY: Because in college— in college basketball, the coach is like the— the one Almighty God. And you know— you know who Coach K is. He’s basically like Coach K for women’s basketball.
ALEX: Well, I appreciate you putting it in terms that me, a man, can understand.
BOBBY: Well, you didn’t know who he was. I don’t know what to tell you. Dean Baquet was there. Thank God. You know who that is?
ALEX: Yeah. Let’s— we’re bringing back normalcy, baby.
BOBBY: And I’m only at the B’s, dude.
ALEX: Jesus.
BOBBY: [20:06]
ALEX: And now I’m waiting— now I’m waiting with bated breath.
BOBBY: Keep going, Tina Brown.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Anyway, A-Rod and David Rubenstein.
ALEX: Right. Yeah. Keep going, though, if there are other names, shout them out.
BOBBY: Oh. You don’t have to tell me twice.
ALEX: Look, if you get the chance to watch this interview, it’s—
BOBBY: George Conway.
ALEX: If you get a chance— the chance to watch this interview, it’s an hour long. It’s Rubenstein and Rodriguez in conversation with a moderator. I don’t encourage that you watch it.
BOBBY: Well, that’s what we have you for. Dan Crenshaw was there, by the way.
ALEX: See, every time you say one of these names, I just imagine them crossing paths with A-Rod. Like, what would they talk about?
BOBBY: I’m— I’m sure many of them did.
ALEX: Yeah. So I just want to— I want to call out a couple choice moments from this conversation that I think— you know, you and I are always looking for ways to get inside the head of Alex Rodriguez. And I think conversations like this, where he’s in his element a little more, he’s surrounded by his people, investors, you know, people with that growth mindset, I think the curtains peeled back a little bit. I will note that he’s the only one who’s introduced with a video montage. He has like a video montage about like him growing up and playing Little League as a kid. And in it, he— he says, “Since I was 10 years old, I’ve had two dreams, be a baseball player and be the CEO of a public company.”
BOBBY: Well, what’s left to do? Time to retire.”
ALEX: Yeah, exactly. It’s clear that they didn’t play the video, actually, in the event center. Like, they must have just, like, pasted it in after— you know, edited it in, because the first thing out of his mouth is he’s like, “Look, when I was a kid, I’ve— since I was 10 years old, I’ve had two dreams, be a baseball player and be the CEO of a public company.” I’m like, “Okay, I get— like leads— you have your canned lines. Your things that sound nice that are gonna get you quoted in your Warren Buffett book, like I get it.”
BOBBY: CEO of a public company, there’s a wide range of outcomes for that. Like, he’s not the CEO of Nike, you know?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Or of like Walmart. He’s the CEO of whatever that company does. Like telecom, I guess, they make phones.
ALEX: Link? Yeah, bro.
BOBBY: I still don’t really know. John Kerry was at the Aspen Ideas Summit Festival. What is it called?
ALEX: The— the Aspen Ideas Festival, yeah, by the Aspen Institute.
BOBBY: He’s listed as the former Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. Come on, dude, put some respect on John Kerry’s name. He was a—
ALEX: Yeah, you can do better.
BOBBY: —fucking candidate for president.
ALEX: Well, sure.
BOBBY: He lost to George Bush.
ALEX: Andrew Yang was a candidate for president, too.
BOBBY: But he didn’t get the candidacy. He wasn’t like on— in the general election.
ALEX: I guess. I don’t know. It sounds like a loser to me.
BOBBY: If you ain’t first, you’re last, is what you’re saying?
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: John Legend was there, of course. John Legend is everywhere.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. A-Rod goes on to talk about growing up as a kid and feeling like, you know, housing instability, and that sort of thing. And— and his family having to grind by, and he remembers like, “One night when, like, things were really tough,” and, you know, maybe they were— they were gonna have trouble paying rent, or whatever.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm. Bill Maher, Joe Manchin.
ALEX: Legends. He gets down on— on— on his knees and he says, “Dear Lord, if I can ever trade places with the landlord, I will do that.” And then he did. And then he went and became a landlord, and started A-Rod Corp, which is just a real estate investment company now. And—
BOBBY: It’s actually really funny that the lesson he took from growing up in tough circumstances was, “I should be the person who inflicts these tough circumstances on other people.”
ALEX: Exactly. Yes. It’s like, “Well, if it’s got to be someone, I’d rather it not be me.”
BOBBY: It’s a doggy dog world out here, bro. Where’s David Rubenstein in all of this?
ALEX: So the thing that I started to realize, the more that I listen to David Rubenstein talk, is that I actually don’t think he’s very interesting. And this probably—
BOBBY: He’s not interesting at all.
ALEX: —applies to most other owners, frankly, that actually when you listen to what they have to say, it doesn’t really move the needle all that much. Now, he does say— and I appreciated this.
BOBBY: Petraeus, the former CIA director. He was there.
ALEX: Okay. He does say, “It’s hard to lose money on sports teams, to be honest.” And he talks about how the value— the valuation of NFL teams, and NBA teams, MLB teams have skyrocketed in the last couple of decades. And basically was just like, “You just have to be competent in order to make money off of sports teams.” Which, again, another feather in the cap of like the actual owners being like, “No, actually, this is pretty lucrative for us. Like, actually, this is pretty good.” We had Mark Attanasio a couple of weeks ago, saying, “Look, this is a profitable endeavor.”
BOBBY: Yeah. If you’re the type of person who’s paying attention to these things, they say stuff like this all of the time. It’s just that most people don’t know or care about what the Aspen Ideas Festival is, but you and I have brain worms. [25:19]
ALEX: Yes. Yeah, exactly. Well, and I think— like I said, I think— I do think it’s instructive to see what they say in a press conference to fans versus in these rooms with their ilk, right? It’s the reason that we check into rotary clubs every so often, you know? I just—
BOBBY: You’re streaming Rotary Clubs Zooms?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I ha— actually, I have an important question.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Kara Swisher was the person that I made that face for, by the way.
ALEX: I was wondering, I was wondering.
BOBBY: Who’s— she’s my favorite podcaster. What time of the day— what day was it and what time of the day did you watch this video? I think this is an important context for our listeners.
ALEX: Oh, what— did I watch it? It was roughly 36 hours ago, so I would say it was about 2:00 AM on Friday night. As one does on a holiday weekend.
BOBBY: I’m just saying, nobody can ever accuse you of not doing the work.
ALEX: It’s true.
BOBBY: I mean, actually, people probably could but no one can ever accuse you of occasionally not really doing the work.
ALEX: Not really going in deep. I just want to call it a couple other things before we move on from this. Ruben—
BOBBY: Gretchen Whitmer, future president, she was there.
ALEX: Goated. Rubenstein mostly came through with, like, jokes. Like he introduced himself— he’s like, “I’m— I’m 74 years old. I’m not quite old enough to be President of the United States, but I’m getting there.”
BOBBY: Yeah, probably brought the house down.
ALEX: Yeah, they fucking— they loved that one. Later on, he’s talking about Zion Williamson.
BOBBY: He was talking about, like, the fascinating— how’d they get there, a little bit off track. I mean, I’m not one to throw stones in this glass house, but—
ALEX: They were talking about like the— like financial acumen of athletes and kind of career longevity. And, you know, players aren’t in the league for so long and they need this sort of— the way he— he brought up Zion because he was talking about how like he’s gonna be out of the league if he doesn’t lose weight, is like basically verbatim what he said. But— but he goes on—
BOBBY: This guy watches too much First Take.
ALEX: Yeah, I know. He goes, “Zion Williamson, he made me into a Zionist.”
BOBBY: Ooh.
ALEX: That’s— that’s the joke. That one did not bring the house down as much.
BOBBY: It probably did.
ALEX: And that’s about all Rubenstein brings to the table. A-Rod is coming through with his little— with his quips, you know? He— he brings up that Warren Buffett made 99% of his net worth after his 50th birthday. So I think we knew. I think— I think he’s mentioned that before, but I think it’s important to grasp on to these things, right? Play the long game. For those of who taking notes for A-Rod’s rules of life.
BOBBY: Just to be clear, we should be like A-Rod [28:04]
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: We absolutely should. Rubenstein— this is recorded a few days after Willie Mays died, and someone inexplicably— Rubenstein starts using Willie Mays an— as an example of like guys who didn’t capitalize on their star power. He’s like, “Not everyone can have a Willie Mays type career, where you play until 40. And then even after Mays retired, what did he do? He spent the rest of his life signing autographs. Not a terrible thing to do, but you’d wish they would somehow be more involved in business or something else more useful to society.” Rubenstein said, “Willie Mays, I am not impressed.”
BOBBY: Wow. That’s actually really upsetting.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And revealing.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: I wish we could have used Willie Mays more in the business world. We could have exploited that career a little bit better.
ALEX: Something else more useful to society. Oh, yeah. David? What are you doing?
BOBBY: Maybe he was coming out and being like, “I wish Willie Mays was more political.” You know? “I wish he was pushing the ball further.”
ALEX: Right. Be— he could have been an activist investor, you know? Really put that money to good work.
BOBBY: He’s just not the person that I want to hear bring that message forth. Nope.
ALEX: It’s around this point that I realized Rubenstein doesn’t have anything important to say. He says the two most important stats in baseball are OPS and games above replacement.
BOBBY: Games above replacement?
ALEX: That’— that’s what he said.
BOBBY: Like, I don’t— it’s not worth it.
ALEX: Yeah. Uh-huh.
BOBBY: Actually, it’s not worth trying to understand what he means by that.
ALEX: But the point he keeps coming back to is not understanding why people watch sports. He’s kind of like, “You know, like I think— I— we still don’t really quite understand them and why people feel so connected to their team.” He’s like, “I— I haven’t quite figured it out yet, but like, I’m learning. You know, it’s this egg we’re trying to un— to crack. Like, why— why do people watch sports? Why do people feel connections to the baseball teams they watch? To the sports teams they watch?” I don’t know, but maybe you shouldn’t be owning a team then.
BOBBY: But he’s supposed to be like the fan owner, you know?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Him and Steve Cohen are supposed to be like the, “I understand the fan, I grew up a fan.” It almost— now, stop me if I’m getting a little out of line here. It almost sounds like that was a little bit of PR spin when he bought the team. It almost sounds like—
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: —they leaned into that a little bit further than was real.
ALEX: Really?
BOBBY: I don’t know. Just a thought.
ALEX: But— but he throws out caps at the games.
BOBBY: I think, ultimately, he’s like, still the third best owner.
ALEX: Oh. Oh. Absolutely.
BOBBY: Like, it goes probably Cohen, Middleton—
ALEX: Steinbrenners— oh.
BOBBY: It’d be an interesting thing if we rated the least terrible owners draft.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: How would it go? Well, I don’t know if enough has changed—
ALEX: I don’t know. I hear— I hear our schedule is— is slotted out for the ne— for the next year, so—
BOBBY: You don’t know that I didn’t put that in there, though. Because you definitely didn’t look at the— at the spreadsheet. The Steinbrenners have fallen off. They would not be my first overall selection.
ALEX: No. That’s all I got from the Aspen Ideas Festival, hosted by the Aspen Institute. I’ll put the link in the description if you do want to go and watch the rest of that. A-Rod—
BOBBY: We gotta get those clicks.
ALEX: —A— A-Rod is clicking on— firing on all cylinders, I will say.
BOBBY: Is it on YouTube? Is that where you watched it?
ALEX: He’s— he’s in his bag. Yes, it’s on YouTube. Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: How many hours would you say per week you’re putting it on YouTube?
ALEX: More than most other social media channels at this point.
BOBBY: Do you think you watch more hours of YouTube than I listen to hours of podcasts?
ALEX: Well, I would say no, but you’ve told me that you’re toning down the podcasts as of late.
BOBBY: Right. It’s just Kara Swisher.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Just the Kara Swisher pod. And— and Talkin’ Baseball, of course.
ALEX: See how the other half lives.
BOBBY: Do— do you think that— that’s actually really funny, the Venn Diagram of people who listen to just those two pods, what is that like? What are those people like? Or even more interesting, you throw us in there to, the Venn diagram of people who right now are really mad that we’re making fun of Talkin’ Baseball and Kara Swisher.
ALEX: Kara Swisher. I feel like these are just discreet circles, right?
BOBBY: I think so, too. Do you think that Ray Davis would crack the least terrible owners draft?
ALEX: Hmm. Hmm.
BOBBY: Rings talk, you know?
ALEX: They kind of do. Means to an end, baby.
BOBBY: Of course, he wouldn’t— no, he would not crack it. He would not crack it.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: We kind of morally disqualified a lot of people.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: Steve Cohen, the investment banker who has multiple gender discrimination lawsuits against him, wasn’t one of those people, though. That we morally disqualified. That was my way of pivoting to talking about the Texas Rangers.
ALEX: I figured.
BOBBY: Who appear that they will be sellers at the deadline, according to a couple of reports. If a few pieces— contending teams might be interested in, the Rangers are 41-48. They have a negative run differential for the year. They’re seven and a half games back in the division. And they are currently in that same amount of games back from a wildcard spot. So they’re in a tough spot as we approach the midway point of July here. And they haven’t been playing well enough really to justify being buyers at the deadline and they probably will be content to just enjoy their World Series ring from last year, I would guess. Not trade away their core pieces or anything like that, but, you know, guys from the bullpen, guys like Scherzer are maybe rumored to be on the trading block this season. The reason that I wanted to talk about this was not because I suddenly am really interested in talking about playoff odds necessarily, even though like before this— before this episode, I went to Fangraphs playoff odds. The Rangers have 8.2% chance to make the playoffs and a 0.4% chance to win the World Series according to FanGraphs. That’s— that’s— those are long odds, if you were to place a wager on it, you know? Which I know you’re— want to do.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: I just feel like it’s weird that that— that that’s the team that won the World Series last year, and the story is always like when a team wins, for the most part, with this new core that they— that they built, that they secured as well as this younger piece of that core in guys like Evan Carter and guys like Wyatt Langford. And, of course, the Rangers were not a perfect team. You know, they got a decent amount of overperformance from some guys who are solid to good, but certainly not as good as they were in the playoffs last year. Like, Adolis Garcia and even like Nathan Eovaldi, who is a storied playoff performer, but maybe like during the regular season, after all of his injuries and surgeries and stuff, not quite as reliable. I just think that we’re kind of in a weird— maybe we’ve always been in the spot, but it seems particularly of note to me right now that with both of the World Series participants from last season kind of stumbling, and not really being able to build off of that success. The Diamondbacks are also well under .500 and not really looking like they’re going to be able to make the playoffs. They’re looking to be sellers at the deadline, most likely. It’s weird that as we continue to know more and more about baseball, and how to evaluate it, and how to understand who is good and why they’re good, we have more inputs than ever, we have more data to analyze than ever, and it’s made for a richer understanding of the competition, I suppose, that it seems like teams that are good still can’t always really figure out why they’re good, or how they’re good, or how to sustain their level of goodness. Or how to slightly build on it, or change things just ever so slightly to stay in contention. There’s only, like, three teams that have been good for most of the time that we’ve been doing this podcast. I’m not even talking like— and I know that that’s— that’s rare in a lot of sports, but I’m— I’m not talking like good as in there’s only three teams that, like, ever have had a shot. I mean, like that consistently can say, “We will definitely make the playoffs this year.” Or, “We will most likely make the playoffs this year.” It’s basically just the Astros, the Dodgers, and the Yankees.
ALEX: And the Astros are—
BOBBY: I just left the Braves out of that, but—
ALEX: Right. Okay.
BOBBY: —four teams.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Goddammit. And the Astros are not very good this year.
ALEX: Right. They’re moving into a new era of sorts.
BOBBY: Although I think they probably will make the playoffs.
ALEX: I mean, I think some of that sort of lack of year to year dominance can be attributed to just the— the way that roster construction has changed, right? And— and part due to the way that teams are looking at their finances and the economics, and— and— and how they’re evaluating players over the long term, right? I mean, it’s no secret that, like, teams are shying away from the kind of marquee like, you know, massive like 10-year, 12-year deals. I mean, I think they— they still [37:36]
BOBBY: That doesn’t really apply to the Rangers, though, because they gave those deals, and they still have those players, and they’re just not good anymore. Not that those players are not good, but the team is not good.
ALEX: I guess, but I— I feel like teams are less interested in, like, looking at their window, like it’s like five to seven years, right? It’s not like, “We’re gonna—”
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: “—build our core right now and then let it rock.” Right? We know they’re good. We’re gonna let them do their thing. Some of them might get older, get a little worse, whatever. There’s still the guys. And I feel like teams aren’t interested in doing that anymore, right? It’s like, how can we create the most well-oiled, efficient machine? And if it doesn’t look like we’re gonna win this year, well, let’s, you know, let’s shake things up a little bit, right? Retool a little bit. And I think that the Rangers actually are really well suited for that, right? They— if you want to talk, like, allocation of resources, are probably among the better teams in that regard, in that they have this young core of players, right? Who they’ve got locked up for a few years. They have the kind of high-end veterans, the guys like Scherzer and deGrom, and Semien and Seager who— some of whom at least you can rely on and some of whom you can use as— as trade ships. And then you fill in the gaps with, like, veterans, right? It’s just, like, role players. And I feel like that’s a good position to be in at the deadline, because you’ve got so much to work with. But I— but I do feel like teams are looking at the window. I had— or maybe not. I don’t know. Now, I go back to Jerry Dipoto saying, “Look, we’re trying to win— you know, we’re— we’re really looking at winning percentage over a period of 10 years or whatever.” Right?
BOBBY: Yeah, that— I think that’s different. That’s a scam. Like, I don’t they’re actually—
ALEX: I don’t— yes. I don’t think they’re— yeah.
BOBBY: I wouldn’t count the Mariners in the, “We are contenders.”
ALEX: Wow. Shots fired.
BOBBY: No, I mean, I wouldn’t count their organizational philosophy as being, like, all in on competition.
ALEX: Right. Right.
BOBBY: Like if you don’t spend above 150 million, like you can’t consider yourself that. That— that’s not to say anything of this specific team’s capability. I know they are in first. I know they will likely make the playoffs and anything’s possible, especially with that rotation. And that’s not to discount what the players have done, or certainly what the organization has done when it comes to— specifically, pitcher development. I don’t want to say player development, because frankly, the— the hitting has been abominable for, like, 10 years now.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I just— I think that what you’re talking about is true. I think the windows are shorter. Because if you just look at the— if you look at the World Series teams, the World Series winners, or even participants, honestly, since— let’s just draw the line at the Mets and Royals in 2015. That— the Royals team stuck around for like three more years. And granted, that was kind of the end of their window. They had pushed for the three years before that, too. They made the World Series the year before. The Cubs team, which was supposed to be like this young youth movement where they tanked for so long to get all these players to be good for a long time. Two years later, that team was gone.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: The Astros and the Dodgers in 2017. Well, Cleveland in 2016, they lost. I mean, they blew that team up pretty quickly. The Astros and the Dodgers, I think, cut against this. Their windows are— are eternal. The Red Sox in 2018, they, for some reason, like dismantled that team. It was like one of the best teams of our lifetimes and one of the best baseball teams ever, basically. And like a— a year later, two years later, it was over, and Mookie Betts was on the Dodgers. That’s weird. The Nationals in 20—
ALEX: If you know, you know.
BOBBY: I guess. The Nationals in 2019, now that was an older team, and I think more akin to what happened with the Rangers last year, where it was a lot of, I think, ancillary pieces performing exactly like they needed to for that team to be able to do what they did. And— but still, that team was, for some reason, the core of that team, which most— a lot of those players are still successful in other places.
ALEX: Name them.
BOBBY: Well, I don’t say a lot, but the two main ones. I guess that doesn’t even account for the fact that they traded— or like they did not retain Bryce Harper a year earlier.
ALEX: Right. Yeah.
BOBBY: So they already weirdly started the dismantling process. I don’t know.
ALEX: Yeah, I ju—
BOBBY: Do you know what I’m saying, though? Like— like, it seems like teams who are good, are content to be good for their one or two-year window. And hopefully they win, and maybe they don’t. And then it’s like, “All right. Time to start going in the opposite direction.”
ALEX: Yeah. Well, I do think there’s this anxiety, right, of like, “Are we allocating our resources in the best possible way? Should we be spending the last two months of the season just playing through it? Because this star is on our team, and we have him locked up, whatever. Maybe he’s not playing too great this year. We’re not playing too great this year.” You know, what are teams valuing? Are they valuing longevity, and building fan goodwill, and building a— a roster of guys you can count on year in and year out? Or are you interested in running the most efficient team possible? Where— when a guy like Kris Bryant isn’t hitting 300 with 30 home runs anymore, you say, “Well, he’s no use to us.” Right? “We’ll get— we’ll get rid of him. Who cares if he’ll have a good year the next year?” I mean, he didn’t really, but like— maybe a bad example. But I— I do feel like that’s how teams are approaching this. And I— I also don’t want to just count— I mean, I— it’s impossible to say the role that this plays, but we’re also like this is— there’s no control sample here, because just the rules kind of change year to year. And I’m not saying that changes teams ability to be good or bad drastically, or anything like that. But I do think it’s an interesting sort of wrinkle, where there’s like— there’s not a level of consistency on how the game is actually structured year in and year out. So—
BOBBY: So, like, who will be good, basically.
ALEX: So who will be good. You might structure your team one way, and then all of a sudden, the bases are a little bit bigger, and it’s like, “Well, we really probably should have gotten more guys who can steal bases or something like that.” You know? I— I— again, I think—
BOBBY: Or you might structure your team around having fly ball hitters, whose homerun rates are higher than ever for a three-year period, and then the ball gets dead again.
ALEX: I mean, right. Exactly. So I think it’s— you can’t entirely discount that there are actual fundamental forces in the game that maybe are changing how teams are approaching this, or at least changing what the outcomes are on the [44:27]
BOBBY: I think, honestly, the biggest flip side to what I’m talking about— like if you look at two teams, the two teams that most obviously counteract the trend that I’m talking about, aside from probably the— the Dodgers and the Astros, or the Yankees and Braves, teams that have kept their cores around for probably longer than efficiency would tell them to. Or I guess that more so applies to the Yankees. The Braves have done everything right, more or less They have this core of great young players, they’re all on extensions. It seems like no one is ever going to be able to beat them. And then this year, they slightly underperform. And so then what do you do— in my scenario, what— what do you do if you’re that team? How do you improve that? Because now every player is on like an eight-year deal. And it becomes very hard to move off of those players, both because the rest of the league is doing what we’re talking about, like focusing on— to your windows. But also, because you don’t want to move off of those players, because they’re on team-friendly deals. You’ve almost, like, sealed your fate, and that is the team that you have. And that’s been a discussion point with the Braves. Like, there’s not a lot of obvious things for them to improve. It’s just that the players have to play better, or they have to play like they used to. And I don’t think that goes all the way back kind of neatly to my original point about the Rangers. It’s like, why are they not as good as they were last year? And this is like one of the best offenses— this is probably the best offense in baseball last year, and a pitching staff that could kind of patch things together well enough to allow the offense to cook. And now this year, it’s just not. I don’t— I don’t get it, really. And I— my point is that— not that I don’t get it because I’m dumb. I’m an idiot. I can— I— I can’t tell you why a team is going to be good or whether or not they’re going to be good before the season starts. But I think my point is like, I think, sometimes the GMs don’t really get it. And I think— they’re all just kind of like shrugging, and not really certain why a team doesn’t click in the way that maybe it should have. Like, I think if you gave Chris Young, or Alex Anthopoulos truth serum, they’d be like, “Honestly, I thought we would be way better and I don’t understand why we’re not.”
ALEX: Yeah. Well— and I think that years ago, a team in that predicament would say, “Well, we put this team together for a reason. Do we blow it up this year?” Right? “Do we just get rid of the guys who weren’t performing? Or do we just, like, trust the process and ride it out?” And I feel like more teams are interested in just saying, “We’re not getting the total value of our dollar on this player.”
BOBBY: Yeah, well, now it seems like there is received wisdom about what you could be doing instead of what you’re doing.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: Which is like, try to— try to win on the margins, go on the cheap, focus on bolstering the bullpen because, you know, that is where a majority of earnings are coming from now. You know, get guys who throw— like, like do what the Yankees do, basically.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Get yourself a Matt Blake, a pitching lab, put them in the cheating lab, and then you win. You win games. I don’t know. It’s all just— it’s all just really weird. I mean, I know that this— probably a lot of this sounds like the insane ramblings of a person who actually has COVID and is trying to make cogent points on a baseball podcast, but I hope that at least people at home kind of understand what I mean when— because when I look season to season, I find it weird. And this is unlike any other sport, basically, too. I know that there’s always been more, quote-unquote, “parity” or more ability for teams to make a run in October and get hot. And that’s been always a discussion point in the world of baseball. But there’s basically no other professional sport in America in which we’re in— I mean, a lot— in a lot of places in the world, too. Like, this doesn’t really happen in soccer either, where year over year, the two best teams could very easily be, like, two of the 10 worst teams the next year.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That just— that just doesn’t happen with any regularity in other sports. And so it makes it kind of really weird to talk about and think about, and I think that that’s good in some ways. That is not so predictable as basketball, but I think we could use a little bit more— a little bit more of like an anchor.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I feel— this seems like a— this season in particular feels a little bit— I know I’ve described it this way many times, but a little bit listless.
ALEX: But this is what happened when the Yankees are no longer the Death Star, evil empire, like they have been.
BOBBY: But the Yankees were all so good.
ALEX: Yeah, I guess.
BOBBY: I don’t like— wow. You’re pouring cold water on the Yankees 2024 season?
ALEX: Yeah, I’m out on them.
BOBBY: Do you remember when people were like Anthony Volpe? We did it?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Turns out we didn’t do it. Just saying. I’m an Anthony Volpe, skeptic. I’d like to see him hit for, like, longer than three weeks.
ALEX: Wha— is he actually good? I kind of thought it was a bit the Yankees fans were doing.
BOBBY: No, he was really good at the beginning of the season. He was like—
ALEX: Oh, yeah. Sure. Okay. Everyone is really good or really bad at the beginning of the season.
BOBBY: Well, he was really good. I mean, you can get excited when a young player starts to show growth season to season, and now he has a .687 OPS. So he’s only 23.
ALEX: So he’s not Jazz Chisholm yet to you?
BOBBY: No.
ALEX: There’s still time?
BOBBY: There’s like seven or eight of these, like, weirdly hot takes that I have floating out in the world and I lose track with them sometimes. And every once a while, I’ll get a text message from—from somebody who I’ve shared one of those takes with being like, “How’s that take holding up?” You know?
ALEX: Yeah. David Peterson better than John Means, really? That one is a [50:08] just to be very clear.
BOBBY: I— I double— I double down on that one the other day because unfortunately, John Means just doesn’t pitch anymore and can’t pitch anymore.
ALEX: Right. Yeah. So I was like, “I think I might won— I think I might’ve won that.” And then I went to their FanGraphs pages and— and John Means still has, like, triple the WAR of David Peterson. So it’s like, “Yeah, I didn’t really win that one yet.” But every time David Peterson looks—
ALEX: Jury is still out.
BOBBY: Every time David Peterson looks decent, I’m like, “Another win for me.”
ALEX: We’re back. We’re back. Book it.
BOBBY: I mean, the man has never had like more than four strikeouts in the game, so—
ALEX: Ouch.
BOBBY: It’s tough. It’s tough. I saw a stat the other day, it was like, “David Peterson ties career high in strikeouts with five.” And I was like—
ALEX: Oh, man.
BOBBY: Wow. [50:51] new John knee’s just dropped.
ALEX: Yeah, for real. Time to trade him.
BOBBY: I know— I know we just spent like 35 minutes talking about how teams cut their windows too short. But then I also get really excited sometimes when the teams that have done that, their rebuild starts to like kick back into action. You know, the pendulum—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —swings again, that happened this past week. Did you watch James Wood’s debut?
ALEX: I didn’t watch it, but I— I was familiarized with it.
BOBBY: It was against the Mets, I caught it. I— I think the Nationals did really well. This goes back to my point about how Mike Rizzo just might be one of the most— the best and most underrated GMs in the sport.
ALEX: Right. Like, you were just saying a few minutes ago, if they were right to let Bryce walk and trade Soto—
BOBBY: No, that was the one move— that was the one move out of all of them that makes the least sense to me. All it took was [51:43]
ALEX: The Soto one [51:43]
BOBBY: —you keep them around. I mean, at least the Soto one, they got stuff back, and the team was already bad. But the Bryce one caused the Sot one.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Like, letting Bryce walk and not continuing to try to be a contender, even though they win the World Series next year. But signaling that you are not long for contendership—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —by doing that, and that your window was going to be less than the time that Bryce wanted to be there. And that it would it make sense to pay him all of this money, even though he’s arguably the— he wa— at the time, was probably the biggest star in baseball. Now, Ohtani is, but that’s different. That set off this daisy chain of events that made you forced— that forced you to trade Soto. Because once you were like, “I don’t want Bryce around,” them he’s not going to stick around to— to continue to recruit Trea Turner to want to stay there, to continue to recruit Juan Soto to want to stay there, to continue to recruit new pitchers to replace guys like Scherzer or guys like Patrick Corbin, who sucks now, you know? Like, all these things went wrong because of that. That’s one that makes the least sense. But once they did that, I actually think it made sense to trade Soto and get guys like James Wood back, guys like CJ Abrams back. Because now, at least, there is a— a vision and Nationals fans, I think, do feel this way. There’s a vision of the next contending Washington— Washington Nationals team and who’s on that team.
ALEX: Patrick Corbin?
BOBBY: Hopefully. Resign him five more years.
ALEX: Nationals fly in the face of everything we just talked about, because they are content to just let Patrick Corbin go out there throw 180 innings of a six ERA every single year, and call it a day.
BOBBY: I mean, it’s like as soon as the sun will rise, Patrick Corbin will give up four runs over five innings.
ALEX: I don’t really remember what we were just talking about. Bryce Harper, Nat— Nationals— Nationals—
BOBBY: We were talking about James Wood. No, we were talking about James Wood.
ALEX: Oh, James Wood. That’s right.
BOBBY: Yeah. He’s— he’s good. He’s good.
ALEX: Yes. I— I love a rebuild that works out. I mean, a little early, but—
BOBBY: It’s unfortunate when it happens in my division, but I’ve— I’ve never really had as much animosity towards the Nationals as the other three teams.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: The Marlins—
ALEX: I’m gonna— for this week’s ranking segment, I’m just gonna have you power rank the NL East.
BOBBY: Please do. I would love to do that. Please do. Is there any— should we do some listener questions and then do the ranking segment, and get out of here?
ALEX: Yeah, let’s do it.
BOBBY: All right, first question. This comes from Harrison. “Who are your favorite baseball players or just people in general, with your same first name? Thanks, guys. Love the pod. Go Phillies.” Favorite people in general. Well, that really opens it up, because I’m— now I can— I can thankfully say it, RFK.
ALEX: I mean, you already know my answer, right?
BOBBY: Do I?
ALEX: Isn’t it obvious?
BOBBY: Oh, well, yeah. Besides him.
ALEX: Does that— that doesn’t count though?
BOBBY: No, no. I mean, for the interest— for the sake of having an interesting podcast segment, Alex, you come up with a different answer than the guy we spent 25 minutes talking about in this episode already. Alex Dickerson, Alex Avila.
BOBBY: There’s a good one.
ALEX: Can I claim Alexei Ramirez?
BOBBY: Sure. I’m sure some people call him Alex. I— I just don’t— there’s not a lot of Bobbies in Major League Baseball. I mean, there’s the obvious ones like Bobby Witt, Jr. He’s really holding it down for the Bobby hive, by the way.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You got a lot of Alexes out there. Alex is a very popular name, Robert less so.
ALEX: So— but we’re counting Roberts and Bobs, right?
BOBBY: Uh-hmm. Am I missing a big Robert who’s active at the moment?
ALEX: Well— oh, active. Robert Stephenson. Robert stock. Like, I feel like historically, you have a little more to choose from.
BOBBY: Robert Stock.
ALEX: Historically, you know, you’ve got like Bob Gibson, Bob Feller.
BOBBY: I mean, Gibson is— is a great answer.
ALEX: Yeah. Robert—
BOBBY: Feller, too.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Bobby Thomson, shot heard ’round the world.
ALEX: Robert— Robert Redford basically counts.
BOBBY: I mean, I agree. He said people in general.
ALEX: I know. I’m saying he counts even under baseball, I think.
BOBBY: Ro— yeah, that’s true. Robert Redford, not one of my favorite actors, honestly. I love him. I have liked many movies that he’s in, but he’s not like a personal favorite of mine the way that he is for some people. I’m more of a— like if we’re going— if we’re going as the All the President’s Men dichotomy.
ALEX: More of a— a Hoffman head?
BOBBY: I’m definitely more of a Hoffman head. I much more identify with Hoffman in that movie—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —than Redford.
ALEX: Alexander Hamilton. That’s my guy.
BOBBY: That’s your guy?
ALEX: Uh-huh. Actually, a real answer is Alex Trebek.
BOBBY: Great one. oh, I guess I have Bob Melvin right now holding it down in the managers [56:31]
ALEX: That’s true.
BOBBY: —old people, though. Maybe me and Bobby Witt, Jr. can talk about this. Maybe we can get them on the pod and be like, “There’s not a lot of Bobbies left.”
ALEX: Right. You’re gonna become a return guy, but for naming your kids Bobby.
BOBBY: It’s not that I want everybody to have the same name as me, because I would find that disorienting. Kind of like you, like everybody has a name Alex. Everyone who’s named Alex.
ALEX: Yeah. Yes.
BOBBY: But— but it would be nice to have more like active successes to point to for the Bobby hive. There’s Bobby Wagner, the NFL linebacker, of course. How could we forget? I think someone emailed us trying to get him on their podcast recently. Like ,wrong guy. You got the wrong guy. He’s not hosting a niche leftist baseball podcast.
ALEX: Well— well, you’ve got you’ve got the big one, Bobby O. Robert Oppenheimer.
BOBBY: That’s true. Again, he’s dead.
ALEX: Robert Downey, Jr. Decent?
BOBBY: Still no Roberts who have held the elected office of President of the United States. Not until this November, at least. Good question.
ALEX: No. Well, you— you almost had luck with the— with the original RFK.
BOBBY: Well, someone got away.
ALEX: Almost.
BOBBY: Okay. That was— let’s go to a couple of voicemails.
JOSEPH: Hey, Bobby and Alex. Joseph here. First time listener, longtime caller. I was wondering just, you know, as a former student journalist myself. There’s something— and a recent college grad. There’s something that’s kind of informed the way I think about sports and the way sports are talked about in the media, and things of that nature. So I wanted to ask you guys as two people that, you know, did— did journalism in college, how does that kind of informed the way you guys talk about baseball, think about baseball? You know, what kind of— how that kind of maybe led to, you know, Tipping Pitches becoming what it is today? I’m interested in— in your guys’ experience with those things. Thanks. Love the show. Keep it up. Appreciate your time.
BOBBY: How does student journalism impact how you host this pod? Well, first of all, research, as we saw with your deep dive into the— the era of the Aspen Ideas—
ALEX: Festival, yeah.
BOBBY: —Festival.
ALEX: Hosted by the Aspen Institute.
BOBBY: Almost—
ALEX: Yeah, I love a deep dive. I’ve— I honed those skills in college. I mean, I was putting in— we were putting in hours on YouTube in college.
BOBBY: That is definitely true. We were also putting hours on MLB.TV and NBA TV.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: We used to watch a lot of Warriors games at our student newspaper.
ALEX: Oh, yeah. Sometimes I look back and I’m like, “What— what did everyone think of us?”
BOBBY: I think we did fine.
ALEX: Probably thought it was weird. Okay. Yup.
BOBBY: You thought that was— you thought that people thought it was weird that we watched the Warriors games? I mean, at NYU like—
ALEX: In retrospect, yes.
BOBBY: Well, at NYU, people are not really crushing tape like that, but I think that, broadly, people thought we were trying our best.
ALEX: Okay. All right. That’s good. Diplomatic.
BOBBY: In extenuating circumstances at times. It’s an uphill battle to run a student newspaper.
ALEX: Yeah. I think that—
BOBBY: I don’t know if anybody who hated us.
ALEX: No— well, let’s get to an offline—
BOBBY: It does feel we were [59:59] actually alienated.
ALEX: Right. Or fired.
BOBBY: Oh, true. That’s true.
ALEX: I— I— I feel like being a student journalist, at least, taught me a lot about sort of just— I mean, we joke about like deep dives, but like how many different archives are out there and how many different databases are that you can go into and how much shit is public? Whether it’s campaign donations, or like real estate acquisitions, or— or something else, like—
BOBBY: We should do a FOIA of the week on the show. Like Alex act— actively—
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: —files a FOIA at the end of every episode.
ALEX: Oh, I’m— you’re gonna listen to me actively filing it, not— not getting the— the return?
BOBBY: Well, eventually—
ALEX: Because that’s not gonna on a monthly basis.
BOBBY: Right. That’s what I was gonna say. Eventually, it will start to pay dividends and certainly not for a little while.
ALEX: Right. Yes. In— in six months, this is gonna be a great bit. Yeah, stuff like that. Things like how to use Tableau to look at data. You know, I think it was—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: Those were the hard skills, I think, I came away with. A lot of the soft skills of, like, just curiosity and looking at things from a different perspective were not necessarily learned in the classroom, or learned in conversations with other students, or out in the field, or whatnot. I don’t know. It was— it was solid.
BOBBY: Honestly, I think that more of my educational experience, and my other major gets put into practice on this show. My other major being American Studies. And honestly, it’s not like I’m taking a lot of the texts that I read in that major, but I am— I do think that what we do here is more akin to the contemporary critical thinking lens that I— that I developed on that side of my college education. But in terms of student journalism, a lot of what— a lot of what you said is still relevant for us here. I think that decision-making, you know, like a sense of editorial mindfulness is something that I put into this— that we put into the show, and that I— I use often in my professional life as a podcast producer, just like a way of thinking about the, like, creator- consumer dynamic that journalism forces you to think about. Like, you have to— you have to be providing something to the person who is reading you when you’re a journalist. And oftentimes, that is information, or insight, or analysis, or whatever. But— and— and on the show like— as much as we joke around, like, we do think of it as, like, trying to provide something that not other places are really providing. And whether that be like the particular kind of sense of humor that we have or like the particular critical financial lens that we take to the baseball game, which often manifests itself in talking about labor. You know, those are skills that were certainly stoked, if not totally, like learned or introduced in— in the student journalism world, but certainly stoked. And much like you said, a lot of that stuff happened outside the classroom. Honestly, like, just reading documents, sifting through shit is something that I had to do a lot, we had to do a lot in the— in— in the student journalism world, and learning how to, like, apply some of that stuff or find the thing that matters from that. I think has been relevant, particularly for like our CBA coverage, for example. But also at the same time, like, I have my own experience with forming a CBA so, like, I have the legalese that comes with it. I had to learn some of that stuff in the student journalism world, but definitely learned, I would say, more of it in my professional life. The final thing is like being around other smart people who have that editorial sensibility, and like seeing what excites them, and seeing how they do stuff, swayed me like a better reader and consumer of things, to— to think about that more actively.
ALEX: I think if there’s one thing college journalism professors would have wanted us to take away from their classes, it’s that Twitter is the future of journalism, bro. I don’t know if you heard. It’s the place where the journalism is going down.
BOBBY: Do you think that our college journalism professors wouldn’t be disappointed or proud?
ALEX: I think they’d just be confused. “You— you’re doing what now? Sorry, say the pitch for your podcast again.”
BOBBY: None of them have asked us to come back and talk about our podcast, so maybe that’s an answer in and of itself.
ALEX: Exactly.
JESSIE: Hey, Bobby. Hey, Alex. It’s Jessie. I’ve asked you about dynamic duos in baseball vis-a-vis movie marketing before, but this time I’d like to ask, which third player we could add to a dynamic duo that would produce the funniest possible challenger situation?
BOBBY: I got one.
ALEX: Hit me with it.
BOBBY: So Jessie’s question makes it seem like it has to be three players, like we have dynamic duos and then we add a third player to make a challenger situation.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: But if we’re taking the format of challengers, it’s that we have two players who are friends and around the same age and peers, and then there is a woman whom they have affection for.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And challenger is Zendaya. [1:05:34] In my scenario, I don’t know who the woman is, perhaps Mrs. Met. Brett Baty and Mark Vientos who are like best friends, but also competing for the same position on the roster—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —third base. And they keep oscillating back and forth between who is better. I think Vientos actually finally has won it out this year. But I haven’t lost hope on Brett Bate— Brett Baty, turning himself into a corner outfielder. I don’t know whose affection they’re competing for. Maybe Francisco Alvarez, who is also kind of sort of their peer and coming up through the Mets system as the three top prospects.
ALEX: True. Okay. I’ll— I— I thought—
BOBBY: Forget Ronny Mauricio. Ronny Mauricio, he’s— who— he’s out of sight, out of mind with his ACL surgery.
ALEX: I thought— I thought you were gonna say Lindor is the third there, because he’s kind of the captain of the infield. He’s the one who’s gonna like—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: —be interfaced with them the most.
BOBBY: That’s ’cause— yeah. Yeah, that’s true. I like both of those options.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Listener at home, you create your own challengers out of the ingredients we’ve given you here. What about you? Do you have any suggestions?
ALEX: It’s fun to do it for, like, the A’s. Like, I’m like, “Wow. Okay.” Zack Gelof—
BOBBY: I have a challenger situation for the A’s.
ALEX: —and Tyler Soderstrom.
BOBBY: Okay. Are you ready? It’s a— it’s a love triangle.
ALEX: And Shea Langeliers comes in. Okay.
BOBBY: It’s— it’s Oakland-Las Vegas in Sacramento.
ALEX: That’s it. I’m done. Thanks for listening, everyone.
BOBBY: Had to be done. I had to make the joke. It was right there. Couldn’t leave it on the cutting room floor as we would say.
ALEX: There you go.
BOBBY: You could do— you could do David Forst, John Fisher, and Dave Kaval. One man trying to compete for the affections of the owner to let him spend $2 million on a baseball player and another man trying to compete for the affections of the owner to let him spend 2 million more dollars on stadium renderings.
ALEX: Jesus.
BOBBY: That’s a film. Come on, that’s funny.
ALEX: That is funny.
BOBBY: That’s a funny joke.
ALEX: That is— yeah, so it’s a funny joke. Courtesy laugh.
BOBBY: Thanks.
ALEX: I’m trying to think of who are the dynamic duos in baseball even are right now.
BOBBY: Well, this was the original question that Jessie asked that we answered—
ALEX: Right, right.
BOBBY: —months ago.
ALEX: Yes. Yeah.
BOBBY: So you’re just basically trying to remember who we said is what you mean?
ALEX: Yes. Sounds like you’re stalling to remember as well.
BOBBY: Why? I’m just not even gonna bother trying. I don’t remember. But I feel as though I’ve provided some good answers here, so you are the one that’s on the hot seat now. I mean, Bohm- Harper-Turner is like obvious— an obvious one.
ALEX: Yeah. So—
BOBBY: There’s so many Phillies options.
ALEX: There’s so many Phillies options, but I feel like the third in the option has to be kind of like an outlier, right? It can’t just be three people who enjoy each other’s company, I guess. There has to be one that’s kind of set apart, right?
BOBBY: Well, I think that in that— in that analogy, Harper is clearly the outlier because he’s clearly the best player.
ALEX: Yes. But so you’re saying, what, Bohm and Turner—
BOBBY: Are competing for Bryce’s affection.
ALEX: What’s— what’s their— what’s their relationship like?
BOBBY: They play next to each other.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: I’m just trying to help you out here, Phillies fan.
ALEX: See, I really keep trying—
BOBBY: Mark, Stubbs, and Harper, is that better for you?
ALEX: Yes, that is better, actually.
BOBBY: Thank you. Yeah, thanks.
ALEX: There’s literally nothing I can do on the A’s that’s remotely interesting.
BOBBY: You’re still hung up on them.
ALEX: I’m still racking my brain.
BOBBY: What if you like go back in time to older A’s teams?
ALEX: Okay. All right. Now, we’re— now we’re [1:09:08] with it. So, like, Barry Zito, Tim Hudson, and Mark Mulder, and the fourth is Michael Lewis.
BOBBY: Exactly.
ALEX: But the trick is they’re not going to win any of— none of them are going to win his love.
BOBBY: Exactly. Great. Nicely done.
ALEX: Thanks.
BOBBY: You could throw Miguel Tejada in there, there’s— there’s four of them.
ALEX: We can’t do this. We can’t go down memory lane like this.
BOBBY: It’s really—
ALEX: If you say— if you say Eric Chavez’s name, I’m going to break down.
BOBBY: I was gonna say Nick Swisher was gonna be the next name out of my mouth.
ALEX: Oh, my God. Yeah.
BOBBY: Goat.
ALEX: Jermaine Dye, Terrence. Long. I’ll keep going.
BOBBY: I hope you do.
ALEX: I won’t. Are there any other questions?
BOBBY: Yeah, there’s one more voicemail.
ALEX: Okay.
SPEAKER 5: Hi, guys, first time, longtime yada yada. Bobby, as an avowed fan of General Motors and the Chevrolet auto manufacturing company, what is your favorite bridge and/or tunnel in New York City? Love the show. Thanks.
BOBBY: Kind of hurts when I’m put on blast like this. You know, it’s like name your favorite tunnel. I don’t like tunnels. I can go bridge, though. Are you a bridge guy?
ALEX: To the extent that you can be— well, yeah, they get you where you need to go. They are a feat of engineering. I mean, they’re pretty crazy.
BOBBY: Are you—
ALEX: How did those things get built?
BOBBY: Are you afraid of bridges?
ALEX: Not—
BOBBY: Do you have a fear of bridges?
ALEX: —abstractly. No. I’m fine driving on them.
BOBBY: So discreetly?
ALEX: I— bridges are— are fine.
BOBBY: Okay. I kind of am afraid of bridges. Mostly as a—
ALEX: I walked on the Golden Bridge— Gate Bridge once, and that terrified me.
BOBBY: That is pretty scary, because you don’t walk down the middle, you walk on the sides, right?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: So I— mostly as an extension of my fear of heights, I’m a little bit of afraid— a little bit afraid of bridges. I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time last month. It was nice.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I like how you walk in the middle. I don’t—
ALEX: You feel nice and protected on the Brooklyn Bridge.
BOBBY: I don’t think I would have liked to walk on the Manhattan Bridge, which you walk on the sides. And it’s like not really pretty anyway. So it’s more of a utilitarian bridge.
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah, Brooklyn Bridge is like gothic.
BOBBY: Right. The Brooklyn Bridge is like the one they put on the pamphlets and the Manhattan Bridge is the one that really gets you around.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: What’s my favorite New York City bridge? Probably the Verrazano.
ALEX: Say more.
BOBBY: When I was a kid, and I was driving from— well, I wasn’t driving because I was a kid. When I was a kid and my parents were driving us to go visit my grandparents who lived on Long Island, crossing over the Verrazano Bridge was sort of like, “Okay, now, I’m almost there. There’s only one leg of this trip left.” Kind of like somewhat of a halfway point for that trip. A little bit more than halfway but— and I also always kind of had that, like, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed optimism about crossing over the Verrazano Bridge and being a passenger, and being able to look over, and see New York City and the Statue of Liberty and everything. And the Verrazano is a cool-looking bridge. I think it’s a— it’s a— that it’s a suspension bridge, is that what that’s called?
ALEX: Yeah. You know what bridge I hate, or what type of bridge I hate? Is the one that like doesn’t have, like, the arches or suspensions. The ones that just like—
BOBBY: Uh-huh.
ALEX: —a little flat piece of road that, like, goes out into the middle of the water. No thanks.
BOBBY: Yeah, that’s— that’s a fucking— that’s a fucking [1:12:37] bridge.
ALEX: And then there’s— and then there’s any wind, whatsoever, and you have to, like, sit there fighting it with the car. Right?
BOBBY: [1:12:46]
ALEX: This is not natural. We— this is a testament to the fact that we were not meant to cross this waterway.
BOBBY: Unfortunately, I know a lot of people don’t— or not going to like that answer with the Verrazano Bridge, because the vibes on both sides of the Verrazano Bridge are kind of tough, not gonna lie.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like, you’re either going in Staten Island, or you’re about to have to drive through Long Island or get on the Brooklyn Queens expressway. It’s just like a lot of really—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: But for that— for that brief, you know, five to 25-minute period, depending on the traffic that you’re on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, it’s nice. That’s my take.
ALEX: Yeah, it is a great seeing the city come into view bridge.
BOBBY: Yeah. I mean, if you really want to get into it, you know, you can look over— you can see New York Harbor, Ellis Island, like what made this country this country. Come on.
ALEX: Yeah. Oh, my God.
BOBBY: I have a lot of really vivid memories of, like, putting a Linkin Park cd into my Discman and putting on headphones while driving over the Verrazano Bridge.
ALEX: One thing, I don’t know why—
BOBBY: If we—
ALEX: I become so dumb.
BOBBY: Right, exactly. If we formed a Linkin Park cover band, which one of us would be Chester and which one of us would be Mike Shinoda?
ALEX: Like, I want to say that like our energies are— you’re a little more Mike Shinoda and I—
BOBBY: Your total— your demeanor— your demeanor just changed. Like, you’re so excited to answer this question.
ALEX: Like, I feel like I probably have a little bit more of a Chester energy, but somehow I feel like you may be fit that mold better. I— I mean, you’re the— you’re the front man, you’re the— you’re the Linkin Park guy.
BOBBY: Right. But I feel like—
ALEX: That’s how I think— that’s how I think of you, Bobby Wagner.
BOBBY: You have more experience with creating screamo music, though.
ALEX: Okay, you’re right.
BOBBY: Like, I could have it in me, but I just don’t know, you know? It’s an unknown. I know I could do the Mike Shinoda parts. I know that for a fact.
ALEX: All right, let’s hear it.
BOBBY: I’m not going to do it for free. I’ll do it on the Patreon episode this week.
ALEX: I’m gonna remember that, I want you to know.
BOBBY: I hope you do. I hope you do, because if I’m doing that, you’re doing the Chester part. I saw this video of this guy— I saw like an Instagram reel one time of a guy who was like, “Here’s how Chester makes his particular vocal tone,” and he like showed you what shape you need to put your mouth in. So I’ll go try to track that down for you, basically.
ALEX: I’m ready. I did my vocal warmups. I got the growls [1:15:15]
BOBBY: [1:15:16]
ALEX: There’s some— there’s some dark recordings out there.
BOBBY: Dark recordings of you doing screamo music?
ALEX: Yeah, I was like, “Yo, you know, I’m on a boat by the Lonely Island.” Not loud— not loud enough.
BOBBY: Wow. Bold to even say this on the public feed. Okay, let’s do the ranking segment and get out of here.
ALEX: All right, ranking segment. I’m not gonna have you rank the NL East.
BOBBY: You know, what—
ALEX: What?
BOBBY: Wha— what are we— what are we calling it this week?
ALEX: Rank and file.
BOBBY: Nice. Is this a blind one— is it a blind one or do I get all of them?
ALEX: Sorry, I thought you were coming up with— you— I thought you were pulling up the other options, name options.
BOBBY: Oh, I have the other options. Let’s call it lineup construction this week.
ALEX: Okay. Lineup construction this week. You’re gonna get the all five, you’ll get all five.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: Up top.
BOBBY: All right. Okay. Thank you for sparing me, because I have COVID.
ALEX: What— what— but like if you had just needed to do one by one, like that would be too much for you?
BOBBY: That would have been challenging. Yeah, that would have been challenging. I’m just finding every opportunity I can to remind people that I have COVID, so that if they were like, “This episode sucked.” They have no way to blame me for it.
ALEX: Right. I don’t have COVID, so it can be— it can be on me.
BOBBY: I think your performance has been stellar. No, I think your performance has been great.
ALEX: This week, Bobby, I want you to rank these five between inning entertainment events.
BOBBY: Okay. So this is between in— okay, between innings at a baseball—
ALEX: Right. So the little things that happen at a baseball game, I— I’m— I’m going to be pulling heavily from my experiences at Citi Field and this—
BOBBY: Interesting how you’re not pulling from your experiences at Citizens Bank Park.
ALEX: I don’t— what— what in between— the between inning experiences were like me getting razzed. And we know that goes number one.
BOBBY: True.
ALEX: So rank these little— I— I don’t know what to— I don’t really know what to call them. They’re like— they’re not games. They’re just like little activities.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. Fillers.
ALEX: Fill— yeah. Filler. The Dot Race. Okay. The Dot Race, it happens [1:17:30]
BOBBY: I— I don’t know what— I don’t know what that is.
ALEX: Are you serious?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: What?
BOBBY: I don’t know what that is.
ALEX: I guess it’s fifth, then. You— you never seen the little wit— like on the video board? When they’re like, “It’s time for the Dot Race.” And there are— or other places do a diff— some place do like this Subway Race.
BOBBY: No, I know— I— I know— yeah, yeah, yeah. I know the Subway Race, that’s Yankee Stadium. And I know the— obviously the President Race, that— in Washington, but—
ALEX: Well, I— so— so I—
BOBBY: —I’ve seen—I’m— I’m familiar with the concept. So the Mets do one? I don’t pay attention to that. I’m sorry.
ALEX: I— I— I don’t know, actually. The— the Dot Race is what they did at the Oakland Coliseum growing up.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: I— so— so in—
BOBBY: All right. So like an automated video board race between the three things.
ALEX: Yes. Yes.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: Exactly. Okay.
BOBBY: I just didn’t know it by the name Dot Race. I was like—
ALEX: Okay, that’s fair. That’s fair. Maybe a little regional lingo there.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: I think these days, it’s like a BART train at the Coliseum. Sure.
BOBBY: And wokeness. [1:18:29] public transportation.
ALEX: Next thing I want you to rank is—
BOBBY: It’s basically communism.
ALEX: —the Mascot Race.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: Which is— which is different, right? That is an in-person—
BOBBY: So that is like the Presidential Race.
ALEX: —live race.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: like the Presidents at the Brewers game. They have like the— like hotdogs, right?
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: The home run content— like the wiffle ball, Home Run Contest. Hit as many home runs in this little wiffle ball park as you can. This one is a Citi Field special.
BOBBY: Yes, because they’ve been struggling on that recently.
ALEX: They have been struggling on that. Another Citi Field special. shoot the— the T-shirt cannon, or baseball, or whatever into the home run apple.
BOBBY: I lo— I love this one. No spoilers, but I love that one.
ALEX: You love this one? Okay.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And then the last one is the— the steal a base, right? They time the kid. You have, like, 20 seconds to run from left field down to third base, grab the base, bring it back, cross the finish line. Those are your five options. The Dot Race or whatever it’s called, at your local stadium, the Mascot Race, the wiffle ball home run contest, the apple target hit thing.
BOBBY: For people who are listening at home, who don’t know what that is, they wheel out a T-shirt gun and they have the person, and— and that person is like on the warning track in right center field. They have the person aim that T-shirt gun and try to shoot a T-shirt in To the well, where the Home Run Apple comes out of at Citi Field.
ALEX: Yes. Well said.
BOBBY: And they— this is about, what, like the fifth inning that they do this? And you only get one shot. You don’t get the— the chance to shoot it and then adjust your aim based on where it lands. You just get one chance.
ALEX: Yeah. Crazy stuff.
BOBBY: Okay. I’m ready. I’m ready.
ALEX: All right. You’re ready to do it.
BOBBY: Fifth will be the— as you call it, the Dot Race.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: I hate, I hate when people are, like, getting so animated as if they didn’t choose, like, press a button and then it’s just pretty determined. I need some real competition in it. I need some stakes. This is just— this is basically like AI, you know? I’m just rooting for a computer game.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: I think— I don’t enjoy that.
ALEX: I agree.
BOBBY: Number four, I think I’m gonna go with the wiffle ball home run contest, because most of the time— what we’ve been talking recently about how the kids have not been doing very well, but I can never tell, like, how impressed I’m supposed to be by the kid, ’cause sometimes the kid is, like, a little too old. And sometimes the kid is like a little too young. I’m like, “Well, this kid—”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: “—this kid stands no chance. They’re just gonna sit there and hit the”— they said the—
ALEX: Right. The ball is at they’re, like, eye level.
BOBBY: Right. Exactly. There’s no— there’s no geometrical way for them to even hit a home run there. And then I feel really bad when the kid doesn’t get it, you know?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And they always look so, like, weirdly confused. Like, they just got woken up. And that’s kind of upsetting to me. Okay, number three, number three, I’m gonna go with shoot the— shoot the T-shirt cannon into the apple.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: I’ve never seen someone do it.
ALEX: Me, either.
BOBBY: It’s exhilarating. I would lo— I really want to see it. I saw someone got really close at the last Mets game that I was at.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Last Sunday. And it almost like bounced and went in. So I would have— I was really curious to see what they would have ruled about whether that counted or not.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You didn’t have to cross that bridge, though. [1:22:00]
ALEX: Do they— do they— I’m— I know I’m asking you this and you don’t have the answer, because you haven’t seen it. But, like, do they lift the apple if you get it in? Like, I feel like that’s the least they can do for you.
BOBBY: I don’t know. I don’t know. I feel like they should give you, like, a million dollars if you get it in based on how I’ve never seen anyone get it.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: I think that’s a nice— a nifty little innovation that Citi Field has come up with. You know, they have this home run apple that everybody loves.
ALEX: Yeah. They’re like, “let’s use the architecture of this park.”
BOBBY: That’s the platonic ideal of like an in-stadium feature, you know? And in-stadium execution.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s better than the home run train in Houston. It’s better than the Slide in Milwaukee, because it doesn’t maim people. I’m gonna go— I’m gonna go— hmm. I’m gonna go with the mascot race second, which makes stealing— the steal a base game first.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I’ll talk about the mascot race first. The mascot race is, I think, largely good. Especially when you think about baseball games as being entertainment for the whole family, for children. I think the kids— the kids get really into the Mascot Race, and adults too, but kids especially. I think that the Presidents one is the best and they’ve really innovated on it over the years. Like, they’ve— they’ve had presidents get, like, clotheslined. I think that’s really funny.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: You know, anytime you can see a president get potentially injured, I think that’s hilarious stuff. I just like the way that their bodies move, like from a physical standpoint, because they’re so top heavy with a huge head. I think it’s really good.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I think it’s good entertainment. I’m a fan of physical comedy, which is something that I’ve really rediscovered about myself over the years, over the last couple years. You know, watching like Buster Keaton shorts or stuff like that. Like that shit is so funny.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: So that’s number two. Number one, I think the steal a base thing is— is great. It’s great entertainment.
ALEX: It’s amazing.
BOBBY: It’s the perfect— so I don’t know if every ballpark does this, but a lot of places do a similar version of this. The Mets game, they put someone out on the left field line, a kid out on the left field line, they have to run to, basically, the third base, grab a portable base, pick it up, run all the way back to where they started, and they have to cross the finish line in under 15 seconds. And if they do, they— I don’t know— I don’t know what they win. But they put the— they put it up on the screen, they put the timer up there, and it’s always like really close. Like, they’ve gotten the number down to a science where it’s like, “We know that the kid is gonna, like, just barely get this, probably.” I saw a kid get— we— we— saw a kid, right? Missed it by 0.2 seconds.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Yeah.
BOBBY: Last time we went. That’s brutal.
ALEX: Yeah, that is—
BOBBY: That’s like Olympics level.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Close calls.
ALEX: Right. He didn’t get the lean in at the end. That’s why he— that’s why he lost.
BOBBY: Right, exactly. He didn’t practice the Usain Bolt catch it on the perfect stride. I think that it is extremely entertaining because it is a kid getting to do something and so everybody is really invested in wanting the kid to win. And also, it’s like the perfect amount of time, 15 seconds is all I want it to be for in between entertainment— in between inning entertainment. Anything longer than— the Presidential race just runs a little bit long, you know? Anything longer than that, I’m just—
ALEX: They’re not that fast.
BOBBY: —I’m sort of like, “Can we get the game back on?” But for this, it’s like just exactly the right amount of time. The kid win something, they always look so happy when they do it. So that’s going to be number one for me.
ALEX: Yeah. I love the— the steal a base competition. I placed a few bets on it and, like—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —I haven’t— I haven’t done great, but I think I just need to do more scouting of the kids ahead of time.
BOBBY: Do you have like a prospect list?
ALEX: Yes, I do. I have a— I have a binder full of kids.
BOBBY: Okay. That’s as good a place as any— to end this podcast.
ALEX: It— it is. Although I— as we— as you were going through that, I realized I’m— massive oversight on my part and I know I’m breaking the rule—
BOBBY: The cap shuffle. Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. And I know I’m breaking the rules a little bit, but if you had to pick, like do you have a general sense of where that would go? Are you pro cap shuffle, anti-cap shuffle?
BOBBY: I love the cap shuffle. I know that’s sort of—
ALEX: Hey.
BOBBY: I know that’s sort of hypocritical for me to say.
ALEX: Like fucking AI, bro.
BOBBY: Right. But there’s a skill element to it with the fucking—
ALEX: Right. Yes.
BOBBY: —Dot Race or whatever, there is nothing to do with what you pick. It’s just random.
ALEX: Correct. Yeah.
BOBBY: With the cap shuffle, there’s this— you have to actually watch it, and you can know the answer.
ALEX: I agree, but this whole thing where teams are like now putting like a fourth hat in there, or like a fifth hat in there, I’m like—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: —”Cut it out. Cut it out. Stop putting [1:26:38]”
BOBBY: Cutting back to simplicity of the cap shuffle.
ALEX: Yeah, exactly. That was a little more egalitarian.
BOBBY: I don’t like how now they do it where it’s like you can, like, vote in real time on the cap shuffle and then it shows you the percentage of people who are voting on which cap, so you don’t even have to watch it. You can just—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —know which cap it’s under. Basically, if you look up there, 80% of people, they’re—”Oh, it’s under cap one.” That pisses me off.
ALEX: Yeah. You know how we voted in the old days? Just put our hands right up.
BOBBY: Right. Exactly.
ALEX: “One. It’s a one.”
BOBBY: And then you could tell who didn’t know based on who was looking around like, “Yeah, yeah.”
ALEX: I love— I just— I do love that moment at a baseball game when everyone in the crowd is like, “One. No, it’s two. No, it’s three.”
BOBBY: I know. Yeah, that’s— yeah, it’s really fun. I do think it’s fun.
ALEX: Moment of unity.
BOBBY: Okay. Thank you everybody for listening. This was a fun episode. The Mets are tied 0-0 in the top of the eighth, with the Pittsburgh Pirates still. Former Met Colin Holderman is on the mound. Colin Holderman who left the Mets and immediately became good. Classic, classic.
ALEX: Meanwhile, Corey Seager three-run homer. Rangers up 7-2. Buy now, folks.
BOBBY: It’d be really funny if the Rangers went on like a 15-game winning streak and the entire segment [1:27:51]
ALEX: That’s sick.
BOBBY: Yeah, it’s really funny. As a reminder, link in the description to buy tickets to the Brooklyn Cyclones meetup. And August 17th is when the Chicago Cubs meetup will be. We will have more information about, you know, where to buy tickets and how to get in the same section as us in the near future, hopefully. But there are— the— the link is active for the Cyclones meetup on July 27th. Saturday, July 27th at 6:00 PM. I think that’s all I got this week, Alex. Thank you everybody for listening. If you want more Tipping Pitches, we’ll be back here on the main feed in a week from now. And we’ll be on the Patreon feed in just a couple days, which you can get at patreon.com/tippingpitches. Bye.
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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