This week on the show, Bobby and Alex are joined by friends of the show Jane, Lauren, and Stephen from Batting Around to draft the silliest, most ridiculous, most Online, and just generally dumbest things that happened in the 2024 baseball season. From false ejections to panicked statements and everything in between, this episode runs the gamut (as it always has!).
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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.
ALEX: Bobby.
BOBBY: How’s it going?
ALEX: We’re here.
BOBBY: We are. I’m barely holding myself up here. Yesterday, I got my flu shot and my COVID Booster. And I gotta tell you, historically speaking, I do not handle the flu shot well.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: It’s crazy. It just— I’m— from my understanding, I just get the flu for three days.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: That’s what happens. Tough, tough. But I encourage everybody to go get their flu shot and their COVID Booster, because it helps protect everybody around you, and that’s an important thing to do in the world.
ALEX: Nice. I love a little PSA to— to start the pod. You know, you and John Legend out here advocating for Pfizer.
BOBBY: Many have said that I’m exactly like John Legend.
ALEX: Yeah. Exactly.
BOBBY: We’re just assholes who the people can’t quit. More celebrity endorsements. That’s what we needed.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You know, we needed more John Legends in the world out there. Actually, what we needed, apparently, is more leftist pods, more lib pods.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Do you want to weigh in on that? Has the DNC contacted you?
ALEX: Right. And said, “You’re our new Joe Rogan. Let’s go.”
BOBBY: I think, sort of like, you could do it, honestly.
ALEX: Well, I mean, it’s not that hard, right? It’s just like— you just have to be relatively incurious and just be like, “Wow, man, that’s really— that’s crazy. That’s— yeah. That’s really interesting, man. I never really thought about it like that.”
BOBBY: Do you relate to Joe Rogan and that the last thing you heard is the thing that you think?
ALEX: Kind of, yes. Everything beyond that, goes— goes out of my brain.
BOBBY: Well, we didn’t really plan it this way, but we have our favorite and, I think, best episode of each year, our most consistent, most reliable, the Dumbest Things of 2024 with our friends at Batting Around, that is Jane, Lauren, and Stephen. Many of you probably are already listening to Batting Around, but if you’re not, it’s a wonderful baseball-ish podcast, and we’ve been doing this— I think this is the third annual Dumbest Things of the year. We go around and draft the things that we think were just the silliest, most ridiculous things with a particular flavor for, like, the online reaction to them, honestly, because that’s the way that we view the world, and that’s the way that we consume a lot of stuff that happens in and around baseball. And I would say that if you have never listened to this episode, go back and check the last couple out. They happen in November of every year, and they’re timeless.
ALEX: Yeah, they hold up.
BOBBY: They’re fun. Yeah, they hold up. And it’ll be an incredible time capsule.
ALEX: Well, I— this is, like, as you mentioned, like, a lot of this stuff happens online, or the reaction sort of unfolds online, and then it moves on so quickly. And this is, like, so important for me and my Joe Rogan brain, which forgets everything, right? That we can use this to go back and review.
BOBBY: You as like lib Joe Rogan might have to be something we continue to explore.
ALEX: Okay, great. Yeah, new Jordan Peterson impression just dropped.
BOBBY: You just start talking to a producer who’s not there.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And I can talk back to you. It’s just like, “Look— look that up. Look that up.”
ALEX: Yeah. Hey, pull up the tweet real quick. Pull up the tweet— sorry, the post.
BOBBY: I think that I might be retiring X the everything app jokes.
ALEX: Yeah? Not fun anymore?
BOBBY: It’s not—
ALEX: Not really?
BOBBY: Not really. Although I did get some positive feedback on the joke from people, saying that they laughed at it every time, so it’s not just me, bro. It’s not just me. I love doing this episode, Jane, Lauren, and Stephen always bring the heat.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But it’s a long one, and so I don’t think we need to do much other discussion. There was just a couple small news items in the baseball in the past week, but we have all offseason to talk about these things. Juan Soto is a Met. My name is Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I’m Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[theme]
BOBBY: All right. You know what it is. It’s the Dumbest Things of 2024. Our friends from Batting Around are here, Jane, Stephen, Lauren. Hello, thank you for joining us. Incredibly normal week to be doing this. Never really thought about what this would mean doing it in November, because we haven’t done this in an election cycle before, but hello. It’s nice to talk to you three.
STEPHEN: Hi.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: What’s an election? I don’t know what that is.
JANE: Hey, speaking of the election, I want to just apologize to the American people, everybody that donated through ActBlue. The Batting Around podcast received $250,000 from the Harris campaign to recreate the newsroom set from the newsroom for an interview with her that didn’t happen. We’re sorry, but we are going to take that money that we have left over, put it into a new subscription box for gold safety pins. We’re bringing that back, too. 2016 is back, it never ended. So a lot to look forward to watch this space.
BOBBY: I’m just really happy that you were able to do that for just $250,000, you know, because those things run—
JANE: We have to cut some corners.
BOBBY: Yeah. Right. Yeah.
JANE: That’s post tax.
BOBBY: Okay.
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: Yeah. The actual raw numbers, we’re not prepared in that [5:41]
ALEX: Yeah.
JANE: Right, right, right.
BOBBY: Not until you’re audited, at least, because you’re— you’re woke— too woke now. Everybody’s gonna— all the podcast companies—
JANE: No. We’re in the income class now where we don’t get audited anymore. That’s not for—
LAUREN: Yeah.
JANE: That’s not for us anymore.
STEPHEN: Hmm, yeah.
BOBBY: You just leave that to the small pods like Tipping Pitches over here, where we’re gonna get audited for all the shit that we have said over the last four years in defense of Joseph Robinette Biden, you know? Going to his—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Going to his rest stop on I-95, we’re—
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: —we’re cooked. Posting photos from there, it’s over. It’s over, Alex.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Dumbest Things of 2024, Alex, would you say this was an exceptionally dumb year, or par for the course?
ALEX: I— I— in the words of Matt Christman, I— this is— each year is the dumbest year, you know, we ever have, topped only by the next year, right? Like, I— I’m paraphrasing there, but, like, it was— it was exceptionally a—
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: —dumb— dumb year, right? Like—
STEPHEN: True [6:32]
ALEX: But I don’t really know. How do you— how do you compare? Do we— is there like— is there, like, dumbest stuff plus, you know? That’s like adjusted to the environment that we can compare?
JANE: Uh-hmm. Let’s get Bailey on this.
ALEX: Yeah.
JANE: He’s gonna make enough stats. He can— he can quantify it, I’m sure.
BOBBY: We gotta get Mike Petriello’s saz on this. He’s too busy focusing—
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —on real baseball. We gotta get him talking about some important stuff.
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Well, we were just talking before we got on about our long lists, and— and I think Lauren won that long list contest with 25 things.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: On the long list.
LAUREN: That being the older sister allegations, yeah.
[laughter]
BOBBY: If you’ve never listened to this segment before, I suggest you just, frankly, go back the last few years and listen to it, because it’s your favorite episode to do every year.
LAUREN: Timeless.
BOBBY: It’s always fun and it is super, super timeless, because these owners, these teams, these media folks, these players, they’re just doing the stupidest things you could possibly imagine. What we’re going to do is we’re going to go around in a draft fashion, and we are going to select the things that are just dumb and silly things that happened in the past year, but— but with, like, a particular, like, online flavor to them, you know? Like things that really sent our corners of the Internet—
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —into a tizzy. And I’m just— I’m really excited for it, so we shouldn’t— I don’t think we should do any more throat clearing. Why don’t we just get right into it? Jane, do you want to kick us off?
JANE: Yeah, I’ll start off here. This was one of my favorite ones that happened, and it didn’t get very much spotlight. It was— it was in and out pretty quick, but it’s— but it’s so awesome. And— and the America coming up that we have when regulations are gonna get totally thrown out the window.
LAUREN: Fuck you, Jane. Fuck you.
JANE: We’re— we’re destroyed here, but it’s Rockies hitting coach, Hensley Mullen being photographed in the cockpit of a team plane mid-flight.
BOBBY: Goddamn it.
JANE: In the left seat, in the pilot seat, not even the co-pilot seat. That was back in April. It was so awesome. It was so awesome.
STEPHEN: This was my— this was my number one with a bullet.
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Just like— like I literally— I literally have the article up. I’m like, “As soon as they call my name, I’m ready to go.”
JANE: Uh-hmm. But it’s gonna be legal to do that on airplanes again. All you’re gonna need to do is, like, say it’s your birthday, and they legally can’t check your ID to make sure that that’s even true. Like, it’s— it’s all happening.
LAUREN: The one thing they don’t make you check ID for.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: Yeah, exactly.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: Exactly. You will need to show your birth certificate to make sure it matches the gender marker on your ID, though. That’s gonna—
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: That’s gonna be required.
BOBBY: I feel honestly silly that we thought we would be able to get this, Alex.
ALEX: I know, I know.
LAUREN: It’s just such a perfect encapsulation of like the— the jock mental— it’s also like the inverse of, like, the— that tweet you would always see it, like, I think I could probably catch a— a touchdown pass even I’m just a regular shlub because this is someone who’s presumably pretty damn good at baseball or was at one point.
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: Who just naturally extends that confidence into every single aspect of their life, including flying a jet plane.
JANE: I think I could do it. I think I could land a plane.
BOBBY: Hey, whatever came of that? Did we ever get, like, a resolution to that story?
STEPHEN: I— I was actually— I was looking today and I couldn’t find anything.
JANE: Of course, nothing happened.
BOBBY: You were doing some independent research into that, so you’re just trying to check into the FAA.
STEPHEN: Yeah. I was like— I was like, “Where’s follow up on this? How did the investigation go?”
BOBBY: The FAA has had a really normal year, though, as far as I’m concerned, right? Like nothing else weird going on in that—
STEPHEN: So true.
BOBBY: —in aeronautical space.
STEPHEN: So true.
BOBBY: That they’ve had to look into.
JANE: Right, right.
LAUREN: No, they’ve got 99 guys on the Boeing case and one guy who’s just kind of kicking his feet up on a Rockies hitting— hitting coach scandal.
JANE: Yeah. The person that took this photo was found shot to death in a truck.
LAUREN: Right.
JANE: It was ruled a homicide.
BOBBY: A full Chick-fil-A meal on his lap, untouched.
LAUREN: Yep. Yeah.
STEPHEN: Oh, yeah, yeah.
ALEX: My thing is, like, this is a chartered flight, right? So there is no—
LAUREN: Yeah.
ALEX: —way that this hitting coach was the first guy in history to walk to the cockpit and be like, “Hey, man, can I, like— can I sit behind the wheel and press all the buttons and stuff?” But maybe— maybe the first guy to post about it.
JANE: He— he can’t—
STEPHEN: Yeah, yeah.
JANE: Right.
STEPHEN: Never post.
JANE: Yeah. You can’t just say no to [10:35] Hensley Mullen, right?
LAUREN: I would suspect chartered planes, a lot of them probably do have, like, an Elon setting where you can just, like, press a button that’s kind of hidden, and then, like, any dumb— dumbass CEO could sit down and do anything he wants?
BOBBY: Right.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: And it’ll just autopilot through it.
STEPHEN: I— I feel— I feel like I have to have a brief tangent. I watched Airplane! the other day when I was not paying attention to the election results. That shit still fucking hits, dude. [11:01]
JANE: Great— great film, yeah.
ALEX: It’s so good.
LAUREN: [11:05] so good.
STEPHEN: And it’s— and he’s a hitting coach, that’s the funny— that’s what makes it funnier. Like, if it were a player or, like, you know, hitting coach—
BOBBY: Right.
STEPHEN: —it’s just mwa.
BOBBY: You know, he was just in there being like, “This is just like when you have to stay inside the ball. You know, this is like when you stay inside the wings.” [11:19]
STEPHEN: It’s a teachable moment.
BOBBY: Right, exactly.
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: “Keep your hand, move your hands through, roll them over. You know, this is just like that.” All right, Stephen, take it away.
STEPHEN: Oh, God. All right. Well, my number one got picked, so I gotta go to my number two, and it was when Aaron Boone got ejected for not doing a thing.
JANE: Yeah. This was on mine, too. Yeah. This was such a good one.
BOBBY: I forgot about this.
STEPHEN: Yeah. It’s— also in April, Aaron Boone gets ejected be— by Hunter Wendelstedt because he had been given a warning earlier in the game. Later on, some fan directly behind him yelled something, and then Wendelstedt immediately just throws Boone out.
JANE: That was awesome.
STEPHEN: [12:08]
JANE: Because like Boone gets— Boone gets thrown out all the time.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: Which is like something that’s like very—
BOBBY: More than any other manager.
JANE: Yeah, something that’s, like, very endearing. Like, you know, I— you know, I spent a lot of years watching Ron Gardenhire get thrown out, like, every other game. It was awesome. And like, that is something that I— that I do like about Boone, and then I think, like, Yankees fans can’t criticize him for, like— the guy, the guy cares. Like he clearly— he cares somewhat at least about— least about that. Like, he’ll kick some dirt.
BOBBY: Yeah, Savages in the Box—
STEPHEN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —was fun for, like, 48 seconds until Jomboy got a hold of it, you know?
JANE: Exactly, exactly.
BOBBY: But that’s not [12:39]
JANE: No.
LAUREN: No, not at all.
JANE: And you know what? Speaking of Savages in the Box thing, Jomboy just ultimate coward for not making the eating pussy joke that we did when that happened.
BOBBY: That’s what you wanted to hear from Jomboy? That’s what you’re craving more of in baseball media?
STEPHEN: No.
JANE: No. No, no, no, but— but he is a coward and I will— I will say that, yeah.
STEPHEN: Boone’s entire body language during this— this moment is perfect. He looks like a theater kid really going for it. Like—
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
STEPHEN: I need to express—
BOBBY: Yeah.
STEPHEN: —everything with my body.
LAUREN: It’s perfect— it’s perfect, “Fuck did I do [13:18]
STEPHEN: Yeah.
BOBBY: Right. Like the—
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Is— is it the meme of— is it 50 Cent? It was like, “What— why’d he say fuck me for?” Right?
STEPHEN: Yeah, exactly.
[laughter]
LAUREN: Yeah. I— I still think there’s a tactical advantage to this that teams aren’t taking— aren’t— aren’t using fully.
BOBBY: Hmm.
LAUREN: Because, like, those seats behind the— behind the dugout, clubs could be stacking those with burly look— burly 30, 40-year-old-looking guys with very similar voices to whoever the opposing team’s coaching staff is. If you—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: If you do this strategically properly, you could, like— I— I don’t even just— you didn’t have to go for the manager. If you can get, like, the third base coach tossed, that’s like— there’s, like, some running errors later in the game, it’s— it’s unrealized free WAR.
JANE: And this is a thing that— yeah, I really like that, Lauren. It’s like the equivalent of the guy in the outfield— like when there’s a pop fly, the guy sitting in the outfield bleachers, that goes, “I got it!”
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
JANE: And, like, makes—
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: —both of the players drop it. Like, yeah, we— we need— we need more of that. And this was, like, one of the most successful examples of that, I— I think that’s ever happened.
LAUREN: You don’t really need a guy. Just like an audio system that’s, like, wired very carefully so their team doesn’t find it.
ALEX: Right.
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: The new market inefficiency is ventriloquists.
STEPHEN: Yes.
JANE: The Colorado Rockies, speaking of, they’re already set up to do this with the way that they— they pump the— the crowd noise for Charlie Blackmon’s intros.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: Like, they— yeah. They already got it. They should try those. They could— they could be cutting edge leaders in this, in aviation—
BOBBY: The— the next Astros— the next Astros cheating scandal is that they’re requiring opposing fans to wear a muzzle when they come into Minute Maid Park. It’s going to be weird.
It’s like [14:56] fine print here.
JANE: No, they’re already— they’re getting rid of Pride Night. They’re definitely not going to have anything like that, either.
BOBBY: Okay. Lauren, you want to make a pick?
LAUREN: Sure. Yeah. I— I intentionally look for little scandals, jokes, funny things that were not on, like, postseason teams to see what I could find, just because, what I love about this episode we do every year is that it’s really a chance to highlight that 30 teams played a 162 games.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: And a dumb shit happened in every single one of them.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: And I think that’s like the most beautiful thing about baseball. This was my personal favorite. I— I threatened Jane and Stephen if they tried to snipe this from me, there would be a reprisal. And it’s going also in early season one, back to April 30th in Phoenix, Arizona.
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: Where we got to see an all-timer classic of a game that started with a two-hour bee delay.
JANE: This is awesome.
STEPHEN: It ruled.
LAUREN: This was incredible. There was— first off, shout out to all of, like, the pest control services that wrote, like long— long form, like, marketing exercises about this for their websites, because it’s, like, the— one of the best preserved baseball stories from early in the season that I’ve ever seen, because all these different companies just wrote up, like, in detail, like why the swarm would have formed behind— on the net, behind home plate. Like what— what’s happening when they’re doing that is they’re splitting the hive after it’s grown too full. Right?
Like all the techniques he uses.
BOBBY: Fuck, who says blogging is dead? The blogging is back, you know?
JANE: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: Once again the marketers are going to save the world.
JANE: But it’s only for— it’s only for pest control small— like, it’s only for small businesses, pest control companies, divorce lawyers, like they all have blogs.
[laughter]
LAUREN: But, yeah, this is— the— the bee swarm forms on— behind home plate, on the netting behind home plate. It’s a huge, massive bees. You go back and look at the clip.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: And it takes two hours for them to drive in the Matt Hilton, aka bee guy, from Surprise, Arizona, where he’s watching his kid play Tee-ball. To get them into the end of the park, get him out on a scissor lift, and then suck up the bees. First, you— you know, you have to, like, smoke the bees to calm them down.
BOBBY: Right, of course.
LAUREN: Then you can bring in your bee vacuum and—
BOBBY: Naturally.
LAUREN: —be— sucked them into the bee chamber for safety.
JANE: Smoke out the bees, hot box the bees.
LAUREN: And then really the— the— the coup de grace on— de grace on the whole thing was, first off, the team is really taking advantage of it, playing Black and Yellow, Let It Be, all the— all the bee theme songs that [17:23] to kill.
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: And then christening, “Thank you, Bee Guy,” on the— on the board, and then letting him throw out the first pitch in the bee suit was, I think, my personal favorite thing in 2024. Also the—
JANE: Didn’t get a Topps card?
LAUREN: Yeah. And he got a Topps card. A limited edition Topps card.
STEPHEN: He really owned the moment. Like, he— he— he worked the crowd. He— he was doing good.
LAUREN: Oh, yeah.
STEPHEN: You know when he got that call, it was like Batman.
JANE: Gotta go.
STEPHEN: He’s like, “I must go.”
ALEX: Right.
LAUREN: I— I think pest control, you have to have, like, a little bit of showmanship if you’re in pest control, I think, just be your day-to-day.
JANE: I hope that his son— yeah, I hope that his son writes like a Harry Chapin Cat’s in the Cradle song about that, like, “My dad left my Tee-Ball game to deal with some bees. Like he wasn’t there.”
BOBBY: I like that the bee guy looks sort of like an MLB GM. Like, he kind of looks—
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —like Theo Epstein, you know?
LAUREN: A little bit. Yeah. He’s like a— yeah. I— I also do love that this ended up— it was a game against the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks and— and then, like a walk-off with Chris— Christian Walker to run homer. Great ending to a game— to the game.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: Yeah.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Man, it just really reminds you that, you know, we’re powerless against nature, as we continue to ruin our planet.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: What other bizarre occurrences will prevent a baseball game from being played?
LAUREN: No one in Phoenix is ever reminded of that, ever. Yeah.
[laughter]
BOBBY: Great choice. Great choice. Alex, I’d like you to do the honors of our first pick, because you brought this to my attention and I had no idea that it happened. And it’s my, in a dark way, kind of favorite thing that happened this baseball season. The first thing that I thought of when I wrote down my long list for this exercise.
ALEX: Yeah. This is— when I came across it, I almost did not believe that this was real. It felt AI-generated to me. Macklemore, you— you— the rapper.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
ALEX: Was— was performing at a— a free concert in the— in a park in the Seattle area over the summer. And he has become one of pop culture’s foremost experts on the “offensive operation,” with scare quotes, happening in Gaza right now. And he has made that very clear, how he feels about that. And so he— on the stage, the— the crowd started chanting, “Fuck America.” And he said, “Yeah. Go ahead. I’m not gonna stop you. That’s right. Fuck America.” And all of the Seattle sports teams then had to release statements condemning Macklemore. The Seattle Mariners said, “We are aware of the incident and agree with the other teams in town. Sports and music should connect, not divide us. We continue to monitor and research latest developments.”
BOBBY: Now, an important detail of this is that if you don’t know at home, Macklemore is, like, the number one Mariners fan in the world.
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: If you’re not a Mariners fan, he’s like the guy. You know, he’s like—
STEPHEN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —the most famous current Mariners fan. They play Can’t Hold Us in— is that the name of the song? I never know the name of that Macklemore songs. I could like sing a couple bars.
ALEX: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Yes.
LAUREN: I don’t think you need to.
BOBBY: Yeah, I don’t think so, either. Alex is a— is a big Same Love fan. That’s his favorite song of from [20:39]
JANE: Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah. And they play Macklemore music after Take Me Out to the Ball game. So he is, like, ingrained in Mariners culture and—
ALEX: He’s written songs about the Mariners. Like—
STEPHEN: Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And they felt the need to— to, quote, “continue to monitor and research latest developments on the crowd chanting, “Fuck America” at a Macklemore concert.” Like this is—
LAUREN: I like—
BOBBY: —what Jerry Dipoto was thinking about, instead of the fucking stretch front. Like this— this is maybe why the Mariners are not in the playoffs.
ALEX: I need to talk to the staffer who was tasked with, like, following up on this in six months. Like, “Hey, can you circle back with Macklemore?”
STEPHEN: Yes.
ALEX: “And see— does he still stand behind, ‘Fuck America’ or not?
STEPHEN: God, yes.
BOBBY: Maybe [21:17] any of his stances. You know, can we Tim Walz him maybe a little bit?
LAUREN: He’s got [21:21] open on his computer, and it’s different hashtags, Macklemore hashtag, Gaza hashtag inc— like incident. And then, like, off-screen in a tab you can’t see is, like, the DMs with, like, the Angels GM offering him like a— like a late arm— late-inning arm for, like, peanuts.
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Right, exactly.
JANE: They— they had to pivot last minute to have Ben Gibbard sing the— the— sing the anthem at their opener instead.
BOBBY: There’s only two goated white dudes who can sing at baseball games.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s Ben Gibbard and Macklemore. We just lost one.
JANE: Yeah. Yeah.
BOBBY: So Ben Gibbard, clear your schedule for 2025, brother.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: All right, that’s our first pick. Let’s go into round two. Jane, you’re up.
JANE: I also want to stick with non-playoff teams, and specifically, I want to talk about the White Sox. And there were so many—
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: —dumb things with the White Sox this season.
BOBBY: I can’t wait to see what you actually go with.
STEPHEN: I was not— I knew— as soon as you started talking about regulations, I knew— I knew what you’re going to pick. You said, “This is the White Sox.” I’m like, “No idea where this is going.”
JANE: No idea— yeah.
BOBBY: It could be anything.
JANE: But my standout moment for the White Sox— I have several, but my standout moment is Pedro Grifol insisting that baseball was more important than—
BOBBY: Yes.
JANE: —witnessing a once in a generation eclipse.
LAUREN: Yep.
BOBBY: Yes.
JANE: Like— it’s like, “No, you— don’t you dare take six minutes off from batting practice in the worst season of all time watch an eclipse. Like, don’t you dare do that.” That was crazy.
LAUREN: They were in Cleveland. It was total blackout where they were. It was like—
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: —the perfect—
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: —like very rare, not once in a lifetime, but close to an opportunity.
JANE: I think it’s okay to go step away from baseball for a couple minutes when the highlight of the White Sox season was a milkshake. I think you can— I think you can, you know, check out an eclipse [23:11]
BOBBY: Here’s the exact quote— here’s the exact quote, folks.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: Quote, “I’ll see videos of it. See what it looks like, but there’s baseball. I probably shouldn’t say that, but family and baseball. People don’t believe it, but I live it.”
JANE: I think he put that family part in there when he— like, I think that was an audible. I don’t— I think he realized what he’s saying was insane and he was like, “You know, there’s only baseball. Wait a minute. Also— also, family. Wait a minute, also, but the— the troops.” And, like, I— yeah, that was definitely an audible. Terrible.
BOBBY: I kind of like— I kind of, like, don’t even really know what he means by that.
ALEX: No, not— no, it’s incoherent.
STEPHEN: Yeah, no.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: Does he— does he, like, eat food? Does he like, you know, music, either? Like— so what— how— where should we draw this line? Like, it’s not— they delayed the baseball game. The thing that you’re saying that you can’t watch it because of this.
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: They delayed it—
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: —because of the eclipse, and he still wouldn’t watch it.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: I just don’t get it. I just don’t get it.
STEPHEN: Well, they have— they have that extra time to grind now.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: That’s right.
BOBBY: Yeah, there was—
STEPHEN: They should focus on the grind.
BOBBY: Was he throwing BP in the tunnel during all this? Sure. Like, what— what was he doing? He was probably playing fucking Candy Crush like the cops in the subway, you know?
JANE: Yeah. Yeah.
BOBBY: Like, what are we talking about here? Amazing, amazing choice. I— well, I guess other White— White Sox stuff could be taken, so I don’t want to spoil anything else, but—
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —I’ll leave— I’ll leave that ’till the end and we can talk about—
JANE: Or we could just get all the White Sox out of the way here.
LAUREN: Yeah. I mean—
JANE: We got enough—
LAUREN: We were talking— we were talking earlier about, like, how do you judge the dumbness of a season comparative to other seasons?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: This is kind of, like, dropping, like, a Babe Ruth season and— and—
ALEX: Yeah.
LAUREN: —throwing off the WAR for everyone else.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s like an 18.4 WAR season and you’re like, “What?”
LAUREN: Like, I said every season, you see someone, like, actually break, like, incredibly historical records for, like, being dog shit.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: The way that I was going to try to summarize all of it was that every individual thing is great and we could probably just do a draft of just things that happened to the White Sox this year. But I was going to say the fact that Reinsdorf was like, “I might want to sell the team at the end of the season.” After the season that they just had, to me, was the dumbest thing of the White Sox 2024 season.
JANE: No, I’m gonna push back on that. I actually think that that was genius. I think that he knew that Trump was going to win and the estate tax is going away forever. So now is the perfect time to sell it, get that money to his kids when he dies without the government taking one red cent of it.
BOBBY: Goddamn it.
JANE: Perfect timing.
BOBBY: What did he know? I— if only the—
ALEX: I— I—
BOBBY: —Angelos had that on that side.
JANE: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
ALEX: I appreciated Chris Getz who, like, midway through— or, like, near the end of the season, was like, “Yeah, if you told me at the beginning of the season, we were gonna lose 105, 110 games, I would have believed you. If you told me we were gonna lose 120, I would have been a little shocked.” I’m like, “That’s your— that’s your line?” You were like, “105, 110. That sounds about right. That sounds like us.”
BOBBY: Yeah. We— we’re feeling more like the third worst team of all time, but the worst team of all time. Jesus Christ. Yeah, I was like, “I can’t really stomach that, no.” Okay, Stephen, your pick.
STEPHEN: All right. I’m actually going to stay with the Rockies because we’re— we have our first callback.
BOBBY: This is what this episode exists for, man. Like, no one talks about the Rockies all year.
LAUREN: They don’t get any attention otherwise.
JANE: Yeah, they don’t get any attention otherwise.
STEPHEN: We have not— we— none of us have mentioned the World Series winners yet.
ALEX: No.
STEPHEN: Like that team has not been mentioned yet, but we’ve— we’ve talked— well, this is the third— what? Third time we’re talking about the Rockies. So we’re get— we’ve done this— this is a legacy episode. We’ve done this— this is our third time now?
ALEX: I believe so. I don’t think so, yeah.
STEPHEN: Which is exciting, because we get to do callbacks to previous years. How about Cal Quantrill telling Reese McGuire to go—
BOBBY: Hmm.
STEPHEN: —jack off in a fucking parking lot.
JANE: God, that was awesome.
STEPHEN: Because—
JANE: That— no. See, this is not— this is— this is the dumbest thing episodes, not the most awesome thing to ever happen episode.
STEPHEN: I think the— the dumbest thing here is relitigating a guy jacking off in a parking lot. But man, as a hater, a person whose primary animating force behind baseball and sports fandom is being a hater—
ALEX: Hmm.
STEPHEN: —I— I— you know— you know he had this in the chamber, ready to go.
JANE: Oh, yeah.
STEPHEN: Ready to fucking go.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Oh, yeah.
LAUREN: Oh, yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah. Yeah. When he was lying awake at night, the night before this game, he was like, “This is exactly how I’m gonna say it. This is what my face is gonna look like.”
JANE: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: I don’t even know how to write this one down. Like I’m writing what everybody picks. I just wrote Cal Quantrill, quote, “You jerked off. TK, TK…”
STEPHEN: Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah. I kind of— I kind of want him to drop the, like, Oppo research folder now. You know, I want to know what else he has.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: Because, like, this one, obviously, you know, I mean, that happened a couple years ago. So I mean clearly—
JANE: 2020, yeah.
ALEX: —he’s been spending some time putting together this dossier of—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —of info on other players. I need to know what’s in there.
JANE: Was I, like, the only one that remembered that happening? Because when he said that, I— I— or when I first heard this, like, you know, come across the transom, I— I was like, “Oh, fuck yeah.” Like, I— I totally remember this happened, because it happened in 2020—
ALEX: Yeah.
JANE: —when there was not a ton of baseball news going on, except, like—
STEPHEN: Oh.
JANE: —is the season gonna happen? So, like, I don’t know. I was super aware of this one. I was so happy to see it come back.
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
STEPHEN: Our first— Jane, our first episode was whether or not the 2020 season counted.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: Wow, that’s an incredible time capsule.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Yeah, which it doesn’t.
JANE: Yeah. Shut up. Boo.
BOBBY: Shots fired.
JANE: Boo.
[laughter]
LAUREN: What I like about this is it implies to me that he probably hears this all the time and just never gets caught on the mic.
BOBBY: Yes.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
ALEX: Right.
JANE: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
LAUREN: Like, there’s 2019 [29:03]
STEPHEN: I— I would simply—
LAUREN: —about it every time he— he travels there, probably.
STEPHEN: If I got caught jacking off in a parking lot in Florida, in Florida, I would—
JANE: Hmm.
STEPHEN: —I would, like, go into witness protection. I’d change my name. There’s actually no way I’d be—
LAUREN: I think it’s more acceptable in Florida.
JANE: Yeah, that’s [29:18] thing. That’s another thing that’s going to be legal very soon. Like, outright legal, if not encouraged.
BOBBY: This is a great pick. Thank you, Stephen. Lauren, that turns it over to you.
LAUREN: Excellent. I’m gonna take us a little further north. I’m kind of surprised this felt around, too. Like, if we were, like, breaking this— if we were— like, this is more like a tier system, like in a fantasy draft, I think this would be like—
STEPHEN: Hmm.
LAUREN: —like pick one, turn one, and it’s something that didn’t even really happen. It’s the flight to Toronto that— that—
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: —that never actually happened. When—
STEPHEN: Ooh.
LAUREN: For a brief two or three-hour period at most, the entire internet north of the border went completely nuts after— I don’t remember where— when it started. The first tweet I remember seeing was Jon Morosi, saying, “Shohei Ohtani is en route to Toronto today with the representatives of— of his agency.” And this went back and forth. People were doing like— it immediately became, like, the most tracked flight anywhere by a huge margin. People were, like, speculating about, like, what airport it’s going to land at, when we can exact— when we can expect touchdown. Has anyone seen him get on the plane? Has anyone seen— on and on and on.
BOBBY: Right.
LAUREN: And then it turns out—
BOBBY: Did he get an exit row? He has long legs.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: You know, like, we’re really worried about his comfort.
LAUREN: Is he getting the little— like, the little bag of pretzels or, like, the little bag of, like, mixed—
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: —crunchy stuff?
BOBBY: Does he agree that—
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —a ginger ale at 30,000 feet is better than a ginger ale at sea level somehow?
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Like, yes.
JANE: I love—
LAUREN: It was a tomato— it was a tomato juice guy, I don’t know.
BOBBY: Maybe.
JANE: I love— the thing that makes it really stupid too, is that it turned out that the airplane was the one— was, like, belonged to the guy from Shark Tank.
LAUREN: Yes.
STEPHEN: Crucial detail.
LAUREN: Dragon Is Dead. Dragon Is Dead.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: Even— not even Shark Tank. I think like—
JANE: Oh, okay. Wow.
LAUREN: —the cheaper version of— of— of Shark Tank, Dragon Is Dead.
JANE: No. In my— in my mind, in my mind, I’m— I’m headcanoning it. It was Mr. Wonderful’s plane.
ALEX: I love that just—
JANE: But you know what is also awesome about this? Is that Jays fans booed Ohtani when— when he went to— to Toronto. It was incredible.
LAUREN: As far as we know, he never even knew about this, yeah.
ALEX: I love that we got our own Balloon Boy. You know, it’s like, “Oh, where’s Shohei Ohtani?” Oh, he’s actually been in the attic this whole time.
JANE: Yeah, the nation holds its breath. Yeah.
LAUREN: Yeah, they finally figured out that he wasn’t—
BOBBY: When he was—
LAUREN: —on the plane when that— he just went for a walk or something. He was like [31:39] supposed to be.
JANE: Yeah. When this happened, we were like, “Okay. Well, we should—” I think it happened on, like, a Friday, with, like— we should get— we should record tomorrow if this is— if this is real. Let’s just be proactive. Let’s see if we can find some Toronto sports guests on short notice.”
STEPHEN: Oh, that’s right.
JANE: And— and I sent out two DMs. I sent one out to Andrew Stoughton.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
JANE: And then, of course, to our, you know, friend of the pods, Steve Sladkowski.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: And was like, “Okay, well, I hope they could do this on short notice. I hope that, you know, they’ll see this in time.” Both of them responded within, like, 90 seconds. Like— like, “Yes. Yes, we’re all in.” Like, yeah, of course. Of course, I want to talk about this.” And then about, you know, an hour and a half later, we’re like, “Never mind.”
ALEX: “Never mind.”
JANE: He [32:36] what a roller coaster.
BOBBY: Honestly—
JANE: What a roller coaster. It was so good.
STEPHEN: I was in Toronto at the time and, like, my friends there who aren’t big baseball people, all were texting me, and they’re like, “Oh, my God, we’re getting Ohtani.” I’m like, “Yeah. Yeah.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You guys are leaving out the part where J.P. Hoornstra, who is a writer for— I don’t know. Like, he— he probably changed jobs, like, three times since then, but he— he was, like, a credentialed LA, like, a Dodgers writer for a long time and he tweeted out, “Ohtani has signed with the Blue Jays.” Like, he was like—
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: —”I confirm.”
STEPHEN: Yes. Yeah.
BOBBY: You know, so then the flight just became, like, lore in that. And then there was a, like, a lot of other bigger reporters being like, “I haven’t been able to confirm this.” And so people were like, “How much do I believe this? How much do I not believe this?” Like, this was a real— this was a real 72 hours on the internet.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: Absolutely. And I don’t think it was that much longer after this happened that he did an effect sign with the Dodgers.
STEPHEN: Yeah, it was like—
ALEX: Yeah.
STEPHEN: —it was, like, the next day.
JANE: It was a couple— a couple days later, yeah. It was not long, yeah.
BOBBY: And he broke it himself on his fucking Instagram.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
LAUREN: Oh, yeah.
JANE: It was awesome.
LAUREN: I forgot about that.
ALEX: His power, his power.
JANE: Good for him. That was awesome.
STEPHEN: This— this is one of the—
JANE: That was—
STEPHEN: This is one of the things that didn’t make my list because I forgot that that was still this year.
LAUREN: Yeah.
JANE: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: No, I would say this is maybe the last truly great day of Twitter we might ever see.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah. I think— did this happen in December of last year or was this in January?
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: December of last year?
ALEX: I think it was like—
LAUREN: I think, you know, probably like the last episode.
ALEX: Calendar year, yeah.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: [34:11] we were talking that there’s a sort of, like, limbo period where after we record this episode to the end of the year, people are free to do shit as dumb as they want, but Lauren sees them. Lauren sees them.
LAUREN: All seeing eye—
BOBBY: You think they could get away with that shit?
LAUREN: —monitoring the— the Reddit for— the baseball Reddit for anything that gets [34:25]
BOBBY: Exactly. You’re like the Sauron of leftist baseball podcasting. Okay. Our second pick. Not sure if this really broke through to your guys’ world as much as it did to ours, but this is probably, like, the most excited I had ever been to do a podcast, was when we found out that Brewers owner Mark Attanasio was embroiled in a legal battle in Malibu because he had been digging up and stealing the sand of his neighboring—
STEPHEN: I—
BOBBY: —of his neighbors houses.
JANE: Awesome.
BOBBY: To rebuild his property that he had just bought for millions of dollars. This was broken by the Los Angeles Times. The California Coastal Commission is investigating Mark Attanasio. Still no result from this, by the way, because he had just been stealing sand to do construction and his rich neighbors were really mad at him. And it just— this is just the Brewers owner. Like, what— why is he there? Why is he doing this? Why is he out there in Malibu stealing his neighbor’s sand?
JANE: Yeah. He—
BOBBY: And then he gets sued for it.
JANE: He should be stealing sand on the shores of Lake Michigan, not— not on the ocean.
STEPHEN: This is— yeah. This is— this is extremely your beat and—
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: —I loved hearing you talk about it, but you’re the only people that I know who talked about this.
BOBBY: It’s not the first time that Attanasio was cited—
ALEX: It’s not the first time.
BOBBY: —by the Coastal Commission for stealing sand. They had— they attached an additional notice from 2008 accusing the Brewers owner of scooping sand from the beach for a different house he owned half a mile away. This is his fucking thing. He just steals his name for sand.
JANE: And, like, this is—
BOBBY: To remodel his homes.
JANE: Yeah, this is, like, one of the only things that you can get away with as a rich guy in America, is fucking—
BOBBY: Yes.
JANE: —with, like, shorelines and—
ALEX: Yeah.
JANE: —waterways and stuff.
LAUREN: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like water—
JANE: Like—
LAUREN: —law, tree law, sand law are, like—
JANE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
LAUREN: —the tree unbreakable bus law. Those are the only things that, like any regulatory—
ALEX: Bus law.
LAUREN: —agency will actually crack down and come down on you hard for.
BOBBY: What you really can’t—
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —do is you can’t be nouveau riche around other billionaires.
JANE: Right.
STEPHEN: Yeah, no. Absolutely not.
BOBBY: You know, you can’t be buying two neighboring Malibu properties for a combined $23 million.
JANE: Ooh.
BOBBY: And stealing sand to remodel them. Like that’s just— and he is a— a newly rich, new money finance guy, you know? And he’s actually kind of broke by baseball standards, but this is where it was going. To pay for the fucking construction crews to steal the sand of his neighbors. I— I know that, like, literally no one else in the world cares this— cares about this as much as I, but the fact that, again, similar to how we were talking about how Jerry Dipoto was not focusing on the Mariners because he was too busy, like, copy editing a statement about Palestine and Macklemore. Like—
JANE: He was digging up photos from Macklemore when he wore that prosthetic nose.
[laughter]
BOBBY: Exactly. The notion that Attanasio was, like, not signing off on trades to make the Brewers better at the deadline because he was worried about the California Coastal Commission is just really, really funny to me.
JANE: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: He’s about to find himself in a much more regulatory compliance free era, so he’ll— he’ll be fine.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
STEPHEN: So I— I do have to push back on you a little bit. You did say that you’re the only person in the world that cares about this as much as you do, but I think— I think the neighbors care a lot.
ALEX: The neighbors.
STEPHEN: And I think— I think you should get them on the pod.
BOBBY: That’s probably a good idea.
LAUREN: That’s a good idea.
ALEX: That’s really good, yeah.
BOBBY: At least we should get their lawyers on the pod.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
BOBBY: Tipping Pitches is an outlet for lawyers to come on and talk about lawsuits. That has always been true and always will.
STEPHEN: You’re— you’re a baseball podcast.
BOBBY: Right, exactly.
STEPHEN: Say— say less.
LAUREN: Yeah, we know our audience. Yeah.
BOBBY: Fucking Mark Attanasio.
JANE: What a bum.
ALEX: I’ll say.
BOBBY: What a bum. What a bum. All right, Jane. Let’s go to the third round.
JANE: All right. So we have two more?
BOBBY: Let’s do— yeah, we could do two more. We’re— we’re moving through these pretty quick.
LAUREN: Yeah.
JANE: Okay. I’ll also stick with one about an owner then, and something that happens, you know, after the, you know, the 2023 World Series, because this just had so many knock on effects that were really horrible, and it’s Peter Seidler dying.
STEPHEN: Hmm.
BOBBY: Hmm.
JANE: I think that that really, really had a lot of dumb effects. You know, there’s talk that he was leading a group of owners to try to get the— you know, keep the A’s in Oakland, to— to— to stop that vote from going through unanimously. And also, just like the Padres cheapening out and going downhill, and trading Juan Soto in— this year. Like, that was crazy. Like, the— like— like, really— really, really terrible. All that, you know, back-to-back, I built that— that franchise back up, and, yeah, him dying really, really suck.
STEPHEN: Not— not the owner I wanted.
ALEX: No.
LAUREN: Well, didn’t it come out, like, last week that he was super close to— at least according to— what’s his name? The asshole agent everyone loves because he’s hilarious.
ALEX: [39:26]
JANE: [39:26]
LAUREN: He came out and said like— yeah, yeah. He came out and said that Soto was super close to signing with the Padres long-term.
STEPHEN: Oh.
LAUREN: Right before he died. Like he was trying to get it done.
STEPHEN: Oh, that’s heartbreaking.
ALEX: Oh, I didn’t see that.
JANE: Oh, my God.
LAUREN: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Oh.
BOBBY: That’s really interesting. I— I hadn’t seen that.
ALEX: Yeah.
JANE: I haven’t heard that, either.
LAUREN: It came up on Effectively Wild, I think, last week— last week. And it just, like, a total, like, time— like, how much that would have changed West Coast baseball.
ALEX: Yeah.
LAUREN: —for the next—
JANE: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: —like, the landscape of— of that team for the next 10 years. And, yeah—
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: —he’s gonna end up probably with the Yankees. Great.
JANE: If— if they had had Juan Soto for that playoff run, like—
LAUREN: Hmm.
JANE: —oh, my God, yeah.
BOBBY: He was, like, a really interesting figure in baseball in the last five years, because he was, like, the number one guy drawing contradictions into focus. Because it would be like—
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —here’s all these small market owners falling in line. Here’s the big market owners doing their part of playing the big bad wolf and saying like, “Oh, we have all this money. We’re trying to, you know, compete smartly and— and sign good contracts or whatever.” And all the owner— other small market or medium market— mid-market, whatever they call it, owners being like, “Oh, no, we can’t possibly afford this.” And Seidler was just like, “Fuck you, $300 million payroll, you know? Yeah, we’re—”
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: “—gonna trade every single prospect that we have ever developed for a sick player, and then we’re gonna sign them to a 10-year contract.” And then there would be, like, anonymous executives running to The Athletic to be like, “Can we please give you a quote about how we don’t know how the Padres are affording this?” You know? Like— like, nothing I’ve ever seen before. So, yeah, it was— it was a— it was a bummer and also, like, it did sort of, I think, inspire a lot of owners to be back on their bullshit afterwards. Okay, Stephen, you’re up.
STEPHEN: Oof. Okay. I— I still haven’t touched any of my obvious ones. I— I figured— I’m surprised that no one’s going for the big ones yet, but I’ll leave them. I’ll instead go— I gotta— and I’m—I— I was leaving this up for Alex to grab if he wanted it, but it’s time.
ALEX: Do it, do it.
STEPHEN: The fucking— the fucking ass hat. It’s so good.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: It’s so good.
JANE: Oh, my God. Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: Then it got as far as it did, from like the concept to marketing, to production, to appearing at the stadium.
ALEX: Yeah.
STEPHEN: That— yeah. That— that— it— they had to shut it down when people were buying it in droves.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
STEPHEN: Was just priceless.
LAUREN: We should say for the people who are listening to this—
STEPHEN: Yeah.
LAUREN: —3,000 years in the future, trying to piece together what happened this year that made everything go wrong.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: You should google this hat. This is that that— an A’s hat. Ostensibly, it’s supposed to be broadcasting the A’s [42:22] date effect.
BOBBY: Okay. I don’t want to think about what Google is going to be like in 3,000 years.
[laughter]
LAUREN: Of the— of the repeating [42:31] it’s worth looking up this hat and taking a moment to— as a— as a professional marketer—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
LAUREN: —appreciate a true flop.
STEPHEN: It— well, is it a flop or is it— is it—
ALEX: Hey, it got— it got everyone talking.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
ALEX: Right?
LAUREN: Yeah.
ALEX: All of a sudden—
STEPHEN: It’s— it’s—
ALEX: —everyone’s talking about your product.
STEPHEN: It’s— it’s—
LAUREN: No one else is talking about the A’s this year.
ALEX: Exactly.
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: They really need something to break through.
STEPHEN: It’s— it’s the Tommy Wiseau’s the Room of Hats.
LAUREN: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
BOBBY: They were reselling for $5,000, bro. That’s like three rent payments, man.
ALEX: Yeah, I’m so mad.
BOBBY: For a fucking hat.
ALEX: I’m so mad.
JANE: Look, you— you need people to talk about you on social media if you want to keep your profile up and you can’t do that when you have the comments turned off on every single one of your posts. So you need to do something, like, release a hat that says ass on it.
LAUREN: You know, like, recently, they officially changed, like, their three-letter name, shortened from, like, O-A-K. They just made it A-S-S.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Yes.
JANE: And what is it now? Is it A-T-H?
ALEX: Yeah, A-T-H.
STEPHEN: Yeah, yeah.
JANE: Yeah. So it’s— so it’s like you’re saying ass with a lisp.
ALEX: Ath, ath.
STEPHEN: Daffy Duck.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: Great choice. Lauren, that turns it to you for your third pick.
LAUREN: Excellent. I also have an A’s-related one. There’s plenty we could do about the A’s.
ALEX: There was, yeah.
LAUREN: I want to highlight an actual on-field hilariously dumb thing.
STEPHEN: Yes. This is also on my list.
LAUREN: It’s the top of the— it’s the top of the 12th inning, you know, late game between the Houston Astros and the Oakland A’s. There’s a runner on third. Daz Cameron is at the plate against Hector Neris. Great pitcher, solid hitter, good base runner, and he decides he’s gonna bunt. Lays out a perfect bunt, right— hit right side of the field, flawless, makes it to first, no problem. Max Schuemann is up, runner on— runners on third and first. Max Schuemann not a great hitter, does a smart play. He also bunt. Tied game. It’s now Hector Neris has to field the ball. He’s running in, makes the scoop, and throws the ball directly down into the ground, letting the runner score at home, 3-2 game. I’m not going to do the full play-by-play. It’s the most incredible, also incredibly clutch ending to a game I think I’ve ever seen of the three-bunt, three-run— two-run inning in the top of the 12th.
JANE: Just surely they’re not gonna bunt again. Like, this is— this is like what happens on MLB The Show when you’re playing online and, like, the— the other opponent realizes that, like, there—
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
JANE: You don’t know how to play very well.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Right.
STEPHEN: Uh-huh.
JANE: Like, I’m gonna just keep stealing on you because you don’t know how to, like, keep the runners [45:28]
BOBBY: Yeah. This is, like, the equivalent of, like, when you’re with your friend and you know that they just swing at everything, and you’re just spiking sliders.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And they just like swing [45:34]
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —on their shoes every time.
LAUREN: Yeah, they do. Yeah.
BOBBY: There’s nothing you can do. It’s just human nature.
JANE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s awesome.
BOBBY: This is why I was so fucking pissed when more teams were not just bunting down the first baseline to see if Freddie Freeman’s broken ankle could get his ass down the line and field.
ALEX: Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: Like, why don’t more teams do stuff like this? Where they’re just—
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —like, cutting against the grain.
LAUREN: Absolutely.
BOBBY: I think it’s because most people, within baseball, have a really small-minded approach and think that’s— that’s, like, a bush league thing to do, you know? It’s like— it’s like the same reason that pitchers won’t throw an off-speed pitch for the first pitch of the game. Like most pitchers, if you talk to them or if you watch them, every first pitch of the game is a fastball, just because—
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —they’re like, “I’m not too scared to throw you my fastball,” for the first pitch of the game. And this was very similar to me. And they’re like, “Well, they won’t bunt a third time. That’s embarrassing. That’s like what a Little League team would do.” And then they did it.
JANE: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: And it was [46:23] yeah.
BOBBY: That was sick. Yeah, it was sick.
LAUREN: You’re absolutely right that teams don’t do this, but they should consider, like, the— Dodgers basically won the World Series on this strategy.
BOBBY: Right.
LAUREN: Like, just let the other team screw up and— and— and give you free runs.
ALEX: Right.
LAUREN: Like Hector Neris was sitting at home on the Gerrit Cole game, screaming at the TV, “Not so easy as it looks, is it, fellas?”
[laughter]
BOBBY: Okay. Wonderful choice. Alex, that turns it over to us. We’re gonna stay in the Bay Area.
ALEX: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Okay.
ALEX: Are you guys familiar with— with one McCovey Cove Dave? He is— he is the— the Giants super fan who hangs out in the McCovey Cove in his little kayak.
LAUREN: Oh, yeah. Every team has a guy like this. I don’t get it.
ALEX: Every team has a guy like this. He has been out there for— for years. He’s very well-known. He’s gotten to know former players. Like— like, he’s acknowledged by the organization. This summer I think it was, Heliot Ramos became the first right-handed hitter to—
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: —hit a splash hit, right? Am I saying that correctly?
JANE: Yes.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: And McCovey Cove Dave, being the— the wonder kid that he is, got the ball and then proceeded to give a bunch of interviews after the game, talking about how Heliot Ramos has to earn this ball if he wants to— to give it to him. He talks about how, like, these— Sandoval, Belt, and Pence went out of their way to interact and give love to Giants fans. So they’ve earned those balls. Heliot, this is the beginning of his season, I hope he has a fantastic career. He could get this ball, but he has to earn it. He has to play 10 years for the Giants and then become deeply loved, and when I pass away, then yeah.
BOBBY: What?
JANE: Man.
LAUREN: [48:21] like—
STEPHEN: This is— yeah.
BOBBY: He’s doing, like, civil asset forfeiture for, like, [48:25] balls. You know, he’s like, “Actually, I’m legally entitled to this ball, and here’s the statute that tells you that I can keep it until I die.”
JANE: Look— look, it’s— it happened in the water, it’s admiralty laws.
BOBBY: So true. This is like—
LAUREN: Honestly—
BOBBY: He’s trying to put in international waters law like I’ve been saying for years that MLB teams, what would happen if they just went—
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —out on a big fucking ship in the middle of the ocean? Would they have to follow United States laws? Would they have to follow the CBA? There’s no legal precedent for it. We could find out.
JANE: Uh-hmm. Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s what McCovey Cove Dave is trying to institute.
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: It’s just so like, “All right, dude, way to make yourself a part of the story.”
STEPHEN: Yeah.
ALEX: You know?
BOBBY: Yeah, exactly.
ALEX: Like, I mean, I— I— frankly, I blame this on—
JANE: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —on the reporters who put a microphone in front of us.
STEPHEN: Absolutely. Absolutely.
JANE: Absolutely.
LAUREN: It’s usually the case— where this goes wrong, yeah. I—
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: —I do feel a little bit of not sympathy or empathy, but like he’s out there most games in the Bay Area, on the water.
ALEX: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: Like, at— like, late at night. That’s— that’s a lot of, like, cold, rainy evenings to not even really watch the game.
ALEX: Right. Right. You’re just sitting there crossing your fingers, hoping that—
STEPHEN: Yeah.
ALEX: —you get some action.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: In a little— like a little dingy boat that could flip over at any time.
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: And he just does it for years. It’s kind of like— like, a fisherman, like— just, like, after 40 years on the job, trawls up like a bar of gold or whatever. I’m okay with letting him have it.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: This guy, this guy. The photo of him with the ball and he’s just, like, holding his ore above his head, like he just—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —won a gold medal in crew. Like, it’s just— his shirt just says Dave across the front. Like—
STEPHEN: Oh, God.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: What—
STEPHEN: He looks exactly like I would expect him to look.
BOBBY: I just—
LAUREN: Every— yeah. Every team’s, like, guy like this, where they’re— the one, like the wacky team character, they’ll have their own merch.
BOBBY: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
LAUREN: That— I—I don’t know if they try to sell it like on a website or something, but he’s got his McCovey Cove Dave hat and shirt and, like, a little laminated card that’s, like, ready to go.
JANE: Who buys that?
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: It’s a lot of— it’s a lot of merch.
BOBBY: I’m— I’m just really happy that no one has ever taught Zach Campbell how to kayak, because otherwise, this would have been a bloodbath [50:39]
JANE: Maybe we need to teach him [50:42]
ALEX: I actually was just about to say.
LAUREN: I don’t think he’d settle for a kayak.
STEPHEN: We—
LAUREN: He’d be on like a— like a swamp air boat, like blasting around.
BOBBY: Right. That’s—
JANE: Yeah. It— it looked like a fucking Mad Max, like— but on the water.
STEPHEN: It’s— it’s— it’s a let them fight situation.
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: Yeah.
STEPHEN: We gotta— we gotta get the big lizard to fight the big monkey.
JANE: It’ll be, like, the kayaking polo game that we— that we watched on an episode.
STEPHEN: Yeah. Oh, the— oh, the canoe polo.
JANE: Canoe polo, where they’re just—
STEPHEN: Yeah.
LAUREN: We could follow up on that. That’s a fucking amazing sport.
JANE: —smashing into each other. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
LAUREN: Yeah.
JANE: We really should. Lauren, I’m glad that you got to meet our guy like this when we— when you were here, the guy that—
LAUREN: Oh, God. Yeah.
JANE: The— the guy extremely, like, looks like he’s had 12 DUIs guy that stands out by left field on the plaza, Target Field, and holds up a sign, informing people how many days it’s been since Byron Buxton played center field.
BOBBY: Oh, my God.
JANE: And, like, didn’t play center field at all in 2023, because he was hurt and he only DH, even then he was still all fucked up. But, like, he played like 90 or 100 games center field this year. Like in— in August, he was, like, injured for a couple weeks, and this guy was out there, like, “Byron Buxton hasn’t played center field in 19 days or something.”
BOBBY: No. See—
JANE: It’s fucking stupid. Like—
BOBBY: —the key to being—
JANE: —we gotta stop these fans, we gotta stop them.
BOBBY: I agree. The key to being like a normal version of one of these fans is you just need to do, like, incredibly eBay shit. Like the Mets—
JANE: Hmm.
BOBBY: —they have cowbell man and they have pin man. These are the two people that go around. Cowbell man just shakes a cowbell and gets everybody to cheer and pin man literally has, like, 200 pins pinned to his outfit at all times.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: And just walks around the stadium taking selfies with people. That is, like the extent of the super fandom that we should have.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Nothing more, nothing less. You don’t need to be in a kayak. You don’t need to have signs shaming players for not playing. Like just be—
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: — a normal 63-year-old guy who spends too much time and money on eBay and will [52:33]
LAUREN: Absolutely.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Exactly. Just don’t— and—
LAUREN: [52:35] limit.
BOBBY: And don’t give interviews. Just don’t— and don’t put a microphone in front of anybody’s face.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay.
LAUREN: Absolutely.
BOBBY: Let’s do one final round here on the main feed and then we’ll do more— more Patreon stuff later, but let’s do last round here, Jane.
JANE: Okay. All right. I’m gonna do one from just the other day, and it was a very, very small thing, but I did get a very— I did get a good laugh out of it, a much needed laugh. And it’s in that genre of people not understanding— specifically conservatives not understanding Rage Against the Machine at all. And it was Nolan Arenado after Trump won, posting a screenshot—
LAUREN: Oh, yeah.
JANE: —of his Spotify, playing Rage Against the Machine’s Take the Power Back.
ALEX: Jesus.
BOBBY: I didn’t even know this happened. [53:16]
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: I didn’t, neither.
LAUREN: I didn’t see it.
ALEX: Oh, my God.
JANE: Yeah, it was— he put on his— I think his Instagram stories, like, just gloating over the election win. Yeah, doing Take the Power Back. Like, yeah, that’s— that’s what Rage the—
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
JANE: —Machine was talking about. And Tom Morello, like, spent— like, the days leading up to the election, calling people fucking idiots—
ALEX: Yeah.
JANE: —on there and, like, having to defend the— like their lyrics. It was— it was pretty great.
LAUREN: Not— not to be a contrarian, but I don’t want a third base— my third baseman to be smarter than that. That’s the exact— that position—
JANE: Yeah.
LAUREN: —that’s the exact level I want him to be on.
JANE: Yeah. It’s just— yeah. Like they— they only spend their mental energy on baseball.
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
JANE: Like nothing else but baseball. They can’t do it into, you know, interpreting art, or have— you know—
LAUREN: No.
JANE: —being a well-rounded person.
BOBBY: No.
JANE: You can’t do that at all.
LAUREN: I don’t want a third baseman who, like, goes and sees like in— art house movies—
JANE: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: And is spending all of his time thinking about like— like his favorite A24 pictures. I want like a guy who’s like, “Well, I’m [54:21] anything more complicated than Iron Man 2.”
STEPHEN: Yeah. Yeah, that’s our beat. They— like, we— we’re— we’re the freaks. They can have their— yeah.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: This is why Spencer Strider is so baffling to me because—
STEPHEN: Yes.
ALEX: Right.
LAUREN: Absolutely.
BOBBY: —he’s just like, “I like all the same stuff as you guys.” I’m like, “Yeah, but you throw 99, dude. What the fuck?”
ALEX: Right. You don’t have to like all this same stuff.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: You can go throughout your life blissfully unaware of everything else.
JANE: Yeah. He’s like, “Yo, dawg, check out my Spotify playlist of Giorgio Moroder’s best fucking songs.” Like—
BOBBY: You— you don’t have to be disappointed that The Strokes never followed up with a better album than the first one. Like you just don’t. You just don’t. Like your slider moves a lot. Great— great pick. Nolan Arenado, the fucking Cardinals—
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: God.
BOBBY: —just—
LAUREN: Another team that could— you can do a whole episode just on— all the— the dumb stuff that happened to them this season.
BOBBY: Yeah. Well, that’s— they were one of the teams that checked off one of our bingo cards this year, when there was, like, a— a cultural controversy when they did the fist up celebration at second base and they were like—
LAUREN: Oh, God.
BOBBY: —”We don’t know what that is.”
STEPHEN: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
BOBBY: “Like, this is just”— all right. Stephen, what’s your next pick?
STEPHEN: So I gotta go with the last one on— in this round. You guys got your beat covered. You did the owner thing. We got to cover our beat, too.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: Of course.
STEPHEN: It’s time to talk about Jarren Duran saying the F slur.
JANE: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: Fuck, I forgot about this.
STEPHEN: Not all— not like— it is time to talk about Jarren Duran using the F slur during a game at a fan.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
STEPHEN: Getting suspended, offering the least sincere apology I’ve ever heard.
JANE: That clearly was not written by him, either.
STEPHEN: It was written— no, no. It was— like that was handed to him by a PR person who threatened him.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: And then having his jersey become the top selling jersey the following week.
JANE: Yes. Yes.
STEPHEN: Really just extremely 2024 thing to happen.
ALEX: Yeah. Didn’t he— what— didn’t he come out and he was, like, wearing some shirt afterwards when he was giving interviews that said, like— it’s like, “I don’t even fucking care,” or whatever?
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: But that’s like his— that’s apparently, like, his thing.
ALEX: That’s like his— his thing, right? Yeah.
STEPHEN: But, yeah, it’s— it’s— it’s— we can— we can extrapolate pretty easily that he was using his established thing to comment on this new thing.
ALEX: Right.
STEPHEN: Yeah. Good stuff.
BOBBY: Wasn’t the fan saying something, like, incredibly silly to him, too?
STEPHEN: Tennis racket.
BOBBY: Oh, yeah.
ALEX: Tennis racket.
STEPHEN: You need a tennis racket. And I will not say the F slur on your podcast, even though we say it on ours all the time.
BOBBY: Honestly, fucking owned. That fan owned him so hard.
JANE: Yeah. Yeah.
ALEX: So good. Effective, right? Not trying to reinvent the wheel there.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: With— with the razzing.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: You say two— you said two words and then the Boston missed their best player for two whole games because of the [57:29]
BOBBY: Yeah. And he was, like— he had a goal to play all 162 and he had done that up until that point, and then he ended up only playing 160.
STEPHEN: Oh, I didn’t— oh, I didn’t know about the goal. That’s beautiful.
BOBBY: That— that rocks.
ALEX: That’s really funny.
JANE: And the—
LAUREN: That’s [57:39] master class, yeah.
JANE: And then like it’s in hindsight, it’s really especially bad that he got off so light and really shines poorly at MLB when, like, we watch throughout this world series, the constant ads of, you know, illegal immigrants are getting transgender surgeries in prison.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: [58:01] them and stuff. And like, I know that the networks can’t prevent anyone from— from running that, but like, some of them did say—
BOBBY: Can’t they, though? Like, can’t— Like, why not?
ALEX: Right. I’m like, “That’s— those are your airwaves.
JANE: No. Right. No, no, no. Like, by— by law, like, they have to run campaign ads—
ALEX: Yeah.
JANE: —and give equal time and stuff and like— but still some of them put little disclaimers ahead of it that are like, “Yeah, this is— this is— this is bad. This is, like, really— really evil stuff.” And, like, Lauren Theisen at Defector pointed out like, “You know, MLB could have said something.”
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: Like, they could have come back from commercial break and been like, “We don’t stand by any of this.” But they didn’t.
STEPHEN: They do. They did say that.
ALEX: Right. They did say it, yeah.
JANE: They stand b, it, just like, you know, they only gave— gave him a tiny, little slap on the wrist—
BOBBY: Yes.
JANE: —for saying, you know, slurs at— at a fan. Like it wasn’t even like he said it at another player or something, he said it at a fan. Like, really, really terrible.
STEPHEN: Yeah. That is what— that is what deserves the harder punishment. It’s like, yeah, you said a— you said a slur that harms a community. That’s— you need to be punished for that. But also, don’t fucking talk to a fan like that.
ALEX: Yeah.
JANE: Uh-hmm
ALEX: You’re a player.
BOBBY: MLB has, like, very clearly, decided to like, states’ rights this issue. Like, they’ve decided to—
STEPHEN: Oh, yeah.
BOBBY: —be like, “Whatever you guys think is good, you know?
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like, if 27 to 30 teams love pride and want to talk about it like, we’ll support that. But if the Rangers are just like, “Actually, we’d rather talk about, like, the military industrial complex,” then fine, you know? Like— and Manfred is like, “And what am I to do, Rob Manfred as the commissioner of baseball? Like, how could I possibly ever say anything bad about this? Like, what is Ray Davis gonna do if you say that the Rangers should have a Pride Night? He’s probably just gonna die. He’ll get so mad. Like— and that would be a net win for everybody. The guy’s like 98. He barely even made it onto the podium last year for the World Series trophy.
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: He looked reanimated.
LAUREN: Yeah. Shout out Manfred for having a very cowardly answer on— exactly the subject when he was asked about this directly.
BOBBY: Yes.
LAUREN: With the Rangers hosting the all-star game, yeah.
ALEX: Yeah.
LAUREN: Total coward.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm. Yeah. He didn’t see it as a make or break issue or something like that, that was the quote that he gave, which is just like, “All right, man.”
JANE: No, we’re definitely gonna see less— yeah, we’re definitely gonna see less Pride Nights this coming season.
STEPHEN: Yeah, the number— the number is currently 29. It is going down.
ALEX: Yeah.
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: Well, I— they— their response to the, like, Georgia voting law, and like, moving the all-star game out of Atlanta, and then, just, like, moving it back was, like—
STEPHEN: Yeah.
ALEX: —so encapsulated, how they respond to these things.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: Which is just like— we just look around see what way the political winds are blowing and then— and then go from there, whatever is the path of least resistance.
STEPHEN: They’re— they’re embodying Veep.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: Yeah. We— we live in a world where, like, the— the loudest, and sometimes only voices in the room are just crisis PR people. Like, they’re just like, “This is what— we have to— we don’t actually stand for anything. We’re just following what we think people are going to be least mad at to maximize the profit.”
JANE: Yeah. Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Like it’s just—
JANE: They’re going to hold the next amateur draft in Cop City.
ALEX: Oh, God.
[laughter]
BOBBY: Fuck. And then in— and then in four years, when we run Newsom, and he finally wins and he murders Trump on live television, they’re gonna do it in the Portland commune or whatever the fuck that they say is happening over there.
LAUREN: [1:01:13] the free zone. Yeah, the free [1:01:14]
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay. Great— great pick, Stephen. Lauren, that kicks it over to you.
LAUREN: Okay. I have a pick here, but I kind of need, like, a heat check from the room on whether this is too—
BOBBY: Hmm.
LAUREN: —obvious to— to pick. It is— but it’s incredibly dumb. I feel like we have to at least acknowledge it, and we don’t really want to get into it.
JANE: Look, we’ve been avoiding all the obvious things, right?
STEPHEN: Yeah. No, there are— there—
JANE: I have like— yeah.
STEPHEN: I have— I have a— I have a thing where there’s five obvious ones that I’m shocked no one has touched.
BOBBY: Yeah, this is the most like—
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —we’re hipster up our own asses, like maybe that is too much.
JANE: Oh, we’re awful. We’re awful.
ALEX: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
LAUREN: [1:01:48] we’re— you know— no, I think it’s good we’re trying to bring attention to the smaller stuff. This was, like, an actual huge story that dominated baseball for weeks.
BOBBY: Uh-huh.
LAUREN: Ippei Mizuhara cheating scandal.
STEPHEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There it goes.
JANE: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: I have, like, I think, like, three of the things I have on my list of the 19 things I wrote down are related to this.
BOBBY: Well, let me ask you this. Like, what part of this do you think is, like, in— in our specific language that we’re speaking here was the dumbest thing? Because I have something in my mind, but I’m curious if it’s the same for you.
LAUREN: For me, it’s the fact that the— the sheer amount of money he gambled away.
BOBBY: Hmm.
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: Of more—
JANE: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: —than $40 million across 19,000— the sheer size of it—
BOBBY: Yeah.
LAUREN: —is what really gets my goat the most. Although I acknowledge that’s probably not yours. It’s probably not like the— because there’s so many aspects of this, so many sides of it, that are all fascinating.
BOBBY: For me, the dumbest thing is all of the conspiracy theories about like—
JANE: Yes.
BOBBY: —people saying that the FBI wrote a fake report to protect Ohtani.
LAUREN: Oh, yeah.
BOBBY: I’m like, “This guy is not that important to the world.”
JANE: No. No.
BOBBY: Like, he’s more into baseball, but I— no, Rob Manfred is not, like, twisting the arm of the FBI director to be like, “Cover up Ohtani’s betting scandal.” Like, that’s not happening.
LAUREN: Yeah, he’s— that is real. He’s Japanese, yeah.
JANE: Yeah. And I read that whole report, like I read— I read that entire report, and it was extremely thorough.
ALEX: Yeah.
JANE: And like there’s— yeah, there’s no way that they were, like, keeping Ohtani protected here. They don’t give a shit—
LAUREN: No.
JANE: —about a huge contract.
ALEX: No.
JANE: No fucking way. And—
ALEX: Dude, the— the text he was sending his bookie to, when he’s just like, “FBI might be coming to arrest me. Lmao.” You know?
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: Just like—
STEPHEN: Good god.
LAUREN: Can I please have another $400,000? Sorry. Yeah.
ALEX: Right.
JANE: Uh-hmm. Yeah, I need to bet on UCLA women’s soccer, please.
ALEX: Right.
JANE: Please front me another $2 million.
BOBBY: Man—
LAUREN: And there’s—
JANE: And what’s really awesome is that, like, this just immediately happened when, you know, the— like, they— MLB embraced gambling so hard. Like—
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
JANE: —they had been doing it for years, but like, they really put the pedal down during last offseason.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JANE: And we just had this and just a litany of other gambling scam— scandals right away.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And—
JANE: Like, right away.
BOBBY: —last offseason, Alex and I met to do like a brainstorm of, okay, what are some episodes, aside from, like our normal weekly— we talk about whatever happened in, like, our corner of the world, what are some episodes that we can try to do? And one of the things that Alex came up with was, what if we did like a betting scandal pod? Like, what if we— like a fictional thing where we write what might happen. And they fucking preempted us. Like, three days—
STEPHEN: Yeah.
JANE: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —into the season, and we ended up doing it, like slightly differently.
LAUREN: They just tweeted it out, yeah.
BOBBY: Exactly. They just tweeted it out because reality— as has been the case for years and years now, for our pods— for our pod and your pod as well, I assume reality is like too hard to parody at this point. Like they are—
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: —just doing it already.
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
JANE: It’s like that James Bond movie where, like— from about 15 years ago, where the enemy was— or the bad guy was, like, stealing water and like—it was like— no, this is actually a thing that Nestle’s doing right now, but we had to tone down the numbers of, like, how much water they were stealing and, like, how much it’s [1:05:00]
BOBBY: To make it realistic.
JANE: —to make it— to make it believable. Yeah.
BOBBY: Man, Nest— Nest— Nestle’s really cooking up something special unlike like those guys.
JANE: Yeah. I mean, I think— how are you gonna tell them no? Like you’re gonna— you’re just not gonna have crunch bars. Like— yeah.
LAUREN: I think the cap around the story for me is that, apparently, for years, there’s, like, a Cohen-esque— Cohen brothers-esque situation, where Ippei and Ohtani were the only guys in the room that spoke Japanese.
BOBBY: Yes.
LAUREN: And he was just telling people, “What the fuck ever.”
ALEX: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: Based on what Ohtani was saying.
BOBBY: And also, like, there were Japanese fans who were pointing out the fact that the translations were dog shit for, like, a year.
STEPHEN: Ooh, yeah.
BOBBY: You know? And there’s— nobody paid attention.
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Like, no— nobody at Ohtani’s agency, nobody on the Dodger side, like, nobody at MLB was like, “Hey, this is weird.” You know, it just goes to show that, like— whatever, like, safety nets we think that we have in— in society really depend on, like, at least one, like one, O-N-E, one person caring and they— they just didn’t.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: There usually isn’t that person there, yeah.
BOBBY: Exactly, exactly.
LAUREN: They’re just alone in the room with the guy who handles all of his bank accounts.
BOBBY: Right. Exactly.
STEPHEN: Yep.
JANE: That’s so insane that, like, “I’m just gonna let my translator do everything for me and be— and, like, be in charge of my bank accounts.”
ALEX: Yeah.
JANE: Like— like, I don’t know. If I had anywhere close— like, not— you know, if I had a fraction of the amount of money that Shohei has, I would have accountants watching accountants, watching accountants. Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah.
JANE: And you’re just like—
LAUREN: I’m already doing that to you, and you sent us the money for the monthly Patreon on— on— on Venmo.
JANE: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Most of our Patreon money goes towards two accountants that— that are logged into our bank account, yeah.
BOBBY: Actually, you’re joking, but same like—
JANE: Yeah.
ALEX: Yes, actually.
[laughter]
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like, I think, honestly, we should just sort of have a handshake deal right here— right here live on the air where, like, we’re the Batting Around watchdog and you guys are the Tipping Pitches watchdog.
LAUREN: Yeah. Let’s do it.
BOBBY: Like we’re just like, “Let’s keep each other transparent.”
LAUREN: Yeah, let’s do it. Yeah.
BOBBY: We can have sort of like a Republican and Democratic Party relationship where we both just want the exact same things for each other.
JANE: Give the Republicans the power dynamic [1:07:16] gonna have going.
[laughter]
BOBBY: We can be the public fucking losers, you know?
JANE: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: Okay. Excellent— excellent choice. Ippei Mizuhara stealing $40 million from the most important and best baseball player alive, that definitely happened. Okay. Let’s close it out. You guys remember when the MLBPA had a mutiny in February? Like, do you remember what happened?
STEPHEN: Oh, my God, yes.
JANE: Oh, yeah.
LAUREN: Oh. God.
BOBBY: That is—
LAUREN: Damn.
BOBBY: —incredibly dumb and just super memory hold in the— in the culture.
JANE: And it last— because it lasted about 17 hours.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Right. And as far as I can tell, so for— for folks who don’t remember or maybe folks who are just tuning in to this episode and didn’t listen to our coverage of this back and— when this actually happened, which actually this was not February. This was April 1st that this story came out from Evan Drellich. The MLBPA, run by Tony Clark. He’s the head of the Major League Baseball Players Association. There— started all these stories coming out where a bunch of players, like some Minor Leaguer— for some former Minor Leaguers and— and who had been involved in unionizing the Minors, that there was some interest in Harry Marino, who had been prominently involved in advocates for Minor Leaguers, which was then folded into the Major League Baseball Players Association when they decided to unionize with that union. Over like the power that Bruce Meyer, who had been the negotiator in the last CBA, was seemingly amassing. And as far as I can tell, what happened was a couple guys have texted a couple other guys, mainly Jack Flaherty, and they were like, “Who’s this Bruce Meyer guy? Why does he have so much power?” And then that, just like, spread like a middle school rumor to the point where we had a referendum vote on Tony Clark running the union. Like that really happened. Like that— that is the level of we are one step away from this union, like, collapsing in on itself that we’re working with here. And it turned out that— that Tony made his case, and people got back behind him, and they kind of, like, apologized and the folks who, I don’t know, were involved in. I really don’t know what the resolution to this was. It ended up bringing people together more but, like, the word was mutiny. We had a mutiny in the union—
STEPHEN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —on opening day, basically. And that is so dumb.
LAUREN: Crazy.
BOBBY: Like, why—
LAUREN: Crazy.
BOBBY: Like, deal with this in November. Deal with this in December.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: Do not do this when players are ramping up to play this season. It was unbelievable. I can’t believe that happened. And Harry Marino, a former guest of this pod, was going to be the person who was going to run the Major League Baseball Players Association.
LAUREN: But it is odd that, like, we never— to your— you’re right. We never really saw any, like, follow up on this or— or what happened. It really was just like Tony Clark stopped the steal and then dropped all charges.
BOBBY: Right, exactly.
ALEX: Right. Right. Yeah. Does— I mean, has anyone heard from Harry Marino since? I— I— did they disappear him? Like—
BOBBY: I hope not. Harry, if you’re listening, you can still come on the pod if you want.
ALEX: Send proof of life.
BOBBY: None of them gave interviews about what was going on at this time. There were just whispers about the fact that this was just like a— text messages were being sent around to the people who are running their individual team as their representatives. And, yeah, I can’t believe that happened, a— a full-fledged mutiny in the most powerful sports union. And—
STEPHEN: I can’t believe that slipped my mind.
BOBBY: I know. I mean, it was like a story that’s designed to be memory hold.
ALEX: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s like so few people care about the internal politics of the Players Association, even when there’s, like, a CBA going— a CBA being negotiated. And when there’s not—
STEPHEN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —when there’s like, quote- unquote, “labor peace.” Like, why would anybody care about that? But I think that if Tony Clark had been replaced, this would have been, like, a huge story, and would have had huge knock on effect in the next couple years.
STEPHEN: Absolutely.
JANE: Look, that— that all sounds important and everything, but I only have so much space in my brain, and most of it right now is taken up by The Rizzler. So, like, we— who cares about this nerd shit? All right.
BOBBY: Would you like to decide if this podcast episode was Boomer Doom, Jane? What do you think?
JANE: Yeah, I’m gonna— I’m gonna give this one five booms, for sure. Yeah. Oh, God.
BOBBY: Okay. Well—
LAUREN: That’s what those jokes for. Like, a year from now, we might be recapping on the next year’s dumbest podcast, like we— we talked too much about— we mentioned The Rizzler, which has since become like an incredibly tragic story.
JANE: Right. That’s true.
BOBBY: That’s true. That’s true.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: Set your watch. That concludes the main feed portion of this. If you would like to listen to two extra rounds, which we’re going to two momentarily, in speed round version, you can find that over on Patreon, patreon.com/tippingpitches, where it will be available if you are a top tier subscriber, and we’ll also just make it available for individual purchase as well. So go check that out. Jane, Stephen, Lauren, here on the public feed. Thank you very much for doing the Dumbest Things of 2024.
JANE: Yeah.
STEPHEN: Always a pleasure.
BOBBY: It’s my absolute favorite.
JANE: Yeah. And I’m gonna talk about the obvious ones on the Patreon.
STEPHEN: Yeah, yeah, we’re going— yeah, the [1:12:18]
ALEX: Yes, yeah.
JANE: So you have to go for the good stuff.
STEPHEN: That’s where— that’s where all the things—
BOBBY: You want the red meat piggies? Come over here.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: The Patreon side is where all the things you thought we were gonna talk about— we’re gonna talk about.
ALEX: Right, right.
JANE: Exactly, exactly.
BOBBY: Eat your vegetables over here on the public feed, where thousands of thousands pf people listen, but we’re gonna talk about the normal shit. We’re just a small subsection of our audiences.
LAUREN: Yeah.
BOBBY: Thank you very much. Everybody listening, you’re probably already listening to Batting Around, but please go check out Batting Around. It’s— it’s one of my absolute favorite pods.
JANE: Yeah, not enough of you are, though. You motherfuckers.
BOBBY: Neg their ass.
JANE: Yeah.
BOBBY: We need to bring back negativity back into society.
JANE: Exactly.
BOBBY: Batting Around, it’s a— it’s a baseball podcast, I guess. Thank you so much for joining us.
JANE: Yeah, thank you.
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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