In their second installation of “Main Character Month,” Bobby and Alex zero in on longtime podcast frenemy Rob Manfred, plotting a 40 year timeline of his career — past, present, and future — to tell the story of how this Harvard lawyer turned MLB “fixer” became the de facto face of Major League Baseball and changed the sport forever in the process.
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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, get out your pen, get out your paper. Get ready to add to the list of things that have demanded that you and I convene to record an emergency reaction on our baseball podcast that doesn’t really talk about baseball. The first few things were, “Whoa, game five of the World Series was cool in 2017,” that was the first one.
ALEX: Yep. We were really kind of itching for an emergency pod then, I think.
BOBBY: The second one, I believe, was, “Whoa. What’s going on with this virus that seems to be shutting the world down?”
ALEX: Right. Us and everyone else.
BOBBY: Uh-huh. Yeah.
ALEX: It’s like, “This is in our wheelhouse.”
BOBBY: Number three, I believe, was, “Damn. MLB lockout.” And number four—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —was, “Damn. MLB lockout is over.” And now, here we are.
ALEX: Well— well, you’re forget— we also did an emergency “A’s leaving Oakland” pod.
BOBBY: Oh. Good one. Wow. Bleak for you that your team got the emergency. My team is leaving and going to Las Vegas.
ALEX: Is leaving.
BOBBY: And my team got the emergency, “Holy shit. Juan Soto just signed for 15 years.” Count them, 15, one and one-half decade years.
ALEX: That is correct.
BOBBY: $765 million with some escalators that could push it to $805 million. That’s right. You heard it here last, Juan Soto is a New York Met. We recorded a whole podcast that is about, like, the history of Rob Manfred that you’re about to hear, but—
ALEX: Uh-hmm. At one point— at one point in the middle of the recording, you were like, “Is there anything else you want to get to? Like, you know, that you want to talk about? Any baseball news?” And I think—
BOBBY: Give me some credit. I said that at the beginning of the episode.
ALEX: Yeah, yeah. You said at the beginning, yes, before we dove in. And I was like, “No, honestly, nothing has—”
BOBBY: Yeah, you’re gonna hear it. I’m gonna make a Juan Soto joke from the past.
ALEX: “—nothing has happened.”
BOBBY: I was like, “We’re not talking about anything baseball related unless Juan Soto signs during recording.” Well, he signed.
ALEX: Well, there you go.
BOBBY: And so we had to do it, but I think that’s a fair trade. I’d make that trade. As— as Brad Pitt once said in Inglourious Basterds, “You make that trade. I’d make that trade.” Juan Soto signs with the Mets. We gotta record something else on a Monday night. Man.
ALEX: Man. Largest contract in— forget, baseball history, sports history.
BOBBY: Who— who fact checks that?
ALEX: I don’t know. Sounds— I feel like it is probably true, given what I know about how money works over time, which is admittedly very little.
BOBBY: It’s different in soccer. Like they don’t get paid that much, but the clubs have, like, a transfer fee that have to be paid. So if you combine that with the contract, they’re worth that much, but they don’t get paid that. It’s just different. You know, America’s doing capitalism different. I’m willing to— to tip my cap to Jeff Passen in this instance and say, “Yeah, sure. He’s probably right.” Probably had somebody check that beforehand.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: How many— do you think he had different versions of the breaking tweet, like in the drafts breaking—
ALEX: Absolutely.
BOBBY: —signs with X for TK, TK years, TK, TK dollars.
ALEX: Well, and especially given that in the sort of final days of the running, there were rumors floating that it was kind of down to the Yankees and the Mets. We ultimately sort of learned that the—
BOBBY: Well, don’t— don’t rule out the A’s. I mean, after getting Severino.
ALEX: And the A’s, after getting Severino, anything’s possible.
BOBBY: Sorry, A’s— don’t rule out A’s.
ALEX: I think Juan Soto— I think the $75 million signing bonus that he received for this may be higher than their guaranteed money for next year.
BOBBY: It is higher than any contract they’ve ever given out. 67 million was the biggest guarantee, right?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s actually— we’re not here to talk about the A’s. we’re here to talk about Juan Soto—
ALEX: We’re not— we’re not.
BOBBY: —signing with New York Mets. Okay. Here’s where I want to start. I— I gotta say, not to, like, toot my own horn, but I was confident about this, this whole offseason. From the moment the World Series ended, I was like, “He’s a Met.” Internally, in my mind, I was like, “I’m gonna remain calm about this, because this is a belief that I hold. And if he signs with somewhere else, fine, he was never a Met.” But I— I really do think this. I’m just not gonna say it out loud, because there’s no benefit to it.
ALEX: Right. You were doing— you were doing a lot of manifesting and wish casting this fall.
BOBBY: I was doing wish casting? I was doing manifesting. I was doing box breathing.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: And for the past year, I was doing tweets about how Juan Soto was gonna be a Met. You could— you could see my tweets dating back, years. And in August, I started doing threats to Steve Cohen.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: I started threatening his beloved Jack Medis [5:06] at various museums around this great planet of ours. And it seems that I did it, I did it.
ALEX: You got through.
BOBBY: I think he saw the tweets. 15 years, $765 million, you say what? Overpaid? Overrated?
ALEX: I— I can’t even say overpaid, underpaid.
BOBBY: He’s a DH.
ALEX: He’s just— he’s just paid, period.
BOBBY: Well, that’s true.
ALEX: That’s, like, the only thing I’m sure about coming out of this. No deferred— no deferred money either, which I think is something that a lot of people called out and was a little bit surprising, which weirdly offers them flexibility down the road.
BOBBY: Every— well, I saw— as soon as I saw the no deferred money thing get reported, I went outside, like many of my other fellow patriots, and I saluted the sky. And I said, “Thank God, there’s no deferred money. This is the way true patriots do it. This is the right way to compete.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: No deferred money, Mr. Cohen, sir, thank you for your service. Who cares about the deferred money?
ALEX: Yeah. Oh, my God. I— I hate— I hate teams spending money, but I hate that even less when they do it down the road.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: That matters far more to me, for some reason.
BOBBY: Did you think it was gonna go this high?
ALEX: I mean, kind of. We knew it was gonna blow through 500 million. I think in my head it was probably gonna end up somewhere around 700?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: This doesn’t feel like a far cry from that. I think if Steve Cohen had said, “Hey, let’s— let’s round up. Let’s bring you into my— my billionaire boys club.” I probably would not have been all that shocked about that, either.
BOBBY: Wow. A Billionaire Boys Club reference. I didn’t know you were such a hype beast.
ALEX: You know, obviously, Ohtani’s $700 million deal, when you adjust it for the time value of money, I don’t know. It’s like 450 million. But even still, you had that, like, 700 figure, right? You had to assume that Soto was gonna try and beat that.
BOBBY: I do think that that was— I do think that that was in Scott Boris and Juan Soto’s minds. I think a lot of people are confused by that. I think a lot of people are a little bit baffled when you look at Juan Soto and the value that he provides to a team. And you look at Shohei Ohtani, and you think, “Oh, he’s a pitcher as well, and he’s just as good as— of a hitter. Why did Juan Soto get $65 million more?” Well, number one, if we’re going to be pedantic about it, he got $65 million more, but over five extra seasons of work. Now, Ohtani gave the Dodgers the sweetheart deal of all sweetheart deals by deferring $68 million, but that’s an incredibly unique situation. I think not even actually really informative. I think even if you take 10 for 70— 10 for 700, 70 average— average annual value for Ohtani, I think it’s like probably still underpaying him for what he is and what he provides—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —to your team and your organization. So when you factor in the fact that He basically took, like, a team-friendly contract because he wanted to go to the Dodgers, and there’s, like, no real way that any team was really going to value him based on what he’s actually worth, because he just blows through so many different models that anybody might have.
ALEX: Right. There’s no comp for him.
BOBBY: Like, would a team have signed him for a billion dollars? I— I actually don’t know. If he was like Soto, or if he was like many other free agents, where it’s just like, show me the highest offer that you can possibly get to, would a team have gone towards a billion? Probably not just because, like, that number seems so horrifying, but they might have gotten to 900 million.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Or something like that.
ALEX: Especially— especially if you have a guy like Cohen who’s pushing the bid up right now. Ultimately, the Dodgers just ended up being the highest suitor and everyone else dropped out. But if Cohen—
BOBBY: And he just told everyone like, “I want to go there.” So it doesn’t really matter.
ALEX: Exactly. Exactly.
BOBBY: I— I undercut my leverage, because at some point, “This is— this is all money that I— and my children’s children’s children will never be able to spend in their lifetimes, so it doesn’t really matter.” But— but for Soto, it clearly— it clearly did matter. And he comes into the— his free agency five years earlier than Ohtani does, and so that also kind of throws a wrench in the whole calculus of how much is he actually worth in comparison to Ohtani. The only reason I say that is because I— I did see a lot of people with that immediate reaction. Now, what I was just doing, I was— I— I pulled up the old inflation calculator, you know, to check to see how Bidenomics is doing.
ALEX: Right. You consistently do that, right? Because you’re curious about how your— your ETFs are going to do down the road.
BOBBY: Actually, I have the— I wear the Google glasses, and they tell me the price of things with what they would have been at the beginning of Biden’s term versus now.
ALEX: Wow. You only have the Google Glasses? Okay, Broke Boy.
BOBBY: No. So what— what is the Apple thing called? The headset that they have?
ALEX: Vision Pro?
BOBBY: Yeah. When are you gonna get a Vision Pro, dude?
ALEX: I— we were just talking about end of year purchases.
BOBBY: I think— I think I just want a MacBook. I don’t think I need the Vision Pro. And— and I wanted to compare it to A-Rod’s contract, because—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —his contract, I think, is the comp to Soto’s. His free agency is the closest comp to Soto’s that we’ve had in the— we’ll call it like the post-TV boom, post-RSN influx of cash world that we— that we see now. And he signed for 10 years for 252 million with the Texas Rangers, which average annual value of 25 million. That doesn’t really look like very much compared to what guys signed for now. You adjust that for inflation. That’s $44 million per year adjusted for inflation. Now, Soto got 51, so he did better. But also, there’s— there’s reason to believe that he will age more gracefully. There’s an owner in Steve Cohen, who is willing to pay a premium that no one else was willing to pay, in comparison to what the Rangers would have paid, or whoever was going to try to sign Alex Rodriguez away. What A-Rod was competing against with his contract with the Rangers, 10 for 252, was like the— the— the Mariners, the team that he was on before that were offering, like, less than 100. So we’re just in a different landscape, and I think, ultimately, the— the dynamic that we’re seeing play out is one in which the— the union and the superstars in baseball have doubled down on the types of contracts that are unique to baseball, incredibly long in length for huge, massive sums of money, but maybe not necessarily per year, what you might be able to make in other sports with salary caps, but who are— who are dictating what a max contract is and what the percentage of that salary cap that contract can be like basketball. Every superstar in the NBA will be paid more than Juan Soto year over year, but none of them will get 15 years of guaranteed contracts. None of them will sign $765 million of guaranteed money. We are seeing this dynamic played out to its ultimate conclusion. So now Soto does better than someone like A-Rod. We finally have a superstar at the top of the market push that ceiling back up, the way that Mike Trout chose not to do. The way that— with the way that Shohei Ohtani could have done and seemingly chose not to do. So— and the way that Machado and Bryce Harper were not offered the opportunity to— opportunity to do because we were in the middle of a capital strike. So that— that I— that’s why I find this free agency so fascinating. Three teams over $700 million offered to Soto, the Red Sox, the Yankees at 760, and the Mets at 765. And ultimately, through a combination, and I can’t even believe I’m saying this, through a combination of it being most money and also a team that he felt better about the future of, he chooses the New York Mets, and that’s how we get this outcome. It’s honestly like none of it is really all that surprising. It’s a weird feeling to have, but it’s a data point on a long line of things that we kind of have been talking about and have seen coming for a long time. The perfect storm of owner who is willing to put his money where his mouth is, and then some free agent who is willing to test the waters and bet on himself time over time over time and beat the offer that— the extension offer that he had from his original team by $325 million. And a— a baseball economy that rewards at the top end as well as it ever has, and maybe like— we’re talking about the middle class and the lower class not doing quite as well as we might have hoped in 2024.
ALEX: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s only surprising, frankly, because it’s the Mets, right? And their relatively recent history weighs so heavily, not just in Mets fans vines, but sort of in— in fans across the league vines, right? The Mets are the little brother to the Yankees. They’re never going to outspend the Yankees, God forbid, right? Or a team like the Dodgers. That’s just not what they do. That’s not the role that they fill in the league. And it seems like a real narrative shift, honestly, where the Mets are saying, “Hey, we’re here to stay. We came real close this past year, and we’re not just going to run it back and hope for the best. We want to build on that, right? We, actually, are trying to build something for the long term.” And it— I mean, Steve Cohen came in and said, “Hey, give me five years, right? We’re turning this thing into a— into a powerhouse, into a dynasty.” And, like, obviously, history will— will judge how that sort of goal plays out, but he is executing on every single thing you want to see him execute on if you’re actually trying to do that. We’re all so familiar with owners paying lip service to the idea of, “Yes, we’re— you know, we’re building something big here, right? And we want everyone to be a part of it.” And not really following through on that. Especially the Mets, right? I think there have been so many disappointments over the years, throughout the Wilpon era and even before, that if a team like the Rangers came out of the woodworks or the— or the Red Sox or whatever, and they make this signing, you say, “That’s crazy. That’s a lot of money.” But someone was going to pay it to him, right? And I do think specifically, the fact that it was the Mets and that he’s coming from the Yankees, totally changes the dynamic of this conversation, because it’s not just a sort of competitive win in the landscape of, like, a 162-game season, but it’s sort of an emotional win for Mets fans. And you can— you can tell me if I’m wrong, if I’m speaking out of turn, but there’s been a lot of cope on the timeline today—
BOBBY: Yeah, man.
ALEX: —from— from the Bronx. And it really does sort of feel like—
BOBBY: I think from Connecticut as well.
ALEX: From— from Connecticut as well.
BOBBY: And the wealthy suburbs of North Jersey.
ALEX: But it— it— it feels like the culmination of what Cohen has been trying to do these past few years, which is reshape the narrative and ultimately kickstart a new era for the— the boys in Queens.
BOBBY: I mean, I— I completely agree. I do think that is a pretty big cultural shift. Like, I do think that this—
ALEX: Absolutely.
BOBBY: It’s— it’s different than Francisco Lindor in a lot of ways. They traded for him, he didn’t have a choice, you know? And— and Lindor was choosing between committing to the city of New York for the team that he just got traded to versus testing the waters and free agency and probably getting a contract that was, like, close to maybe even a little bit less than the one that he got with the Mets. Because, for whatever reason, he was— he was and still somehow remains an incredibly underrated player. Now, there were other teams that were interested in him, and it just didn’t quite really pan out at the time. But signing the greatest free agent in MLB history, many are calling Soto, or one of the greatest free agents in MLB history, non-Ohtani division, if you ask me. It’s just— it’s a completely different stratosphere that they put themselves in. And— and honestly, like, the takeaway for Cohen, to me, is that this is the type of thing that you can do when you’re in a big market and you make a lot of money. Like, I’m not trying to be absurd about the fact that the Mets make more money than the Twins, you know? Or the Pirates, or whatever. I’m not saying that every team would have shouldered this financial burden as easily as the Mets will over the next 15 years. That’s not what I’m trying to imply, but what it shows is what you can do when you’re not really that worried about baseball being a margin business for you, a margin financial business for you, that you have to turn a profit year over year. This is the type of thing that if you just don’t care about that, you can just do this. Like you can just— you can just take the shackles off. Like, you can just turn the sliders all the way up and— and there is no ceiling on what you can do when you have this much money. And I would venture to guess, he is probably personally covering or insuring some of the overages that they are charging with this luxury tax. But I don’t think—
ALEX: You don’t think they just put it on the credit card?
BOBBY: Well, I— I actually kind of do think that they put it on a credit card. Like, I don’t think he’s personally, like, selling a house to pay the Juan Soto contract. I think he’s saying like, “I am worth this. I would like a loan from you, Mr. Officer at this bank. You give me this loan, I will pay it back over time at a low interest rate, because you know that I have $20 billion just in case the Mets don’t continue to make more and more and more and more money.” And they will now, because—
ALEX: Right. Yes.
BOBBY: —look at the fan base. The fan base is incredibly motivated. And now, they have stars up and down the roster, and they will just continue to add. And so— and— and there’s a whole— a lot of other business ventures, some of which I think are kind of deplorable, that— that Cohen is willing to go down those paths, and we can talk about that as they unfold. We will probably continue to talk about things like the casino and the soccer team and all of these other things. But we’ve always kind of had, you and I here on the show, have always kind of had, like, a sneaking suspicion that this money was there for everybody, and it just took one person to come in and say, “Yes, it is there, and you can actually operate this way.” And now, there’s, like, a handful of other teams that do it too, you know? There’s— this is how Seidler was operating. This is how John Middleton is operating. This is how the Yankees, like, selectively, sometimes operate. But all that being said, as we get out of here and— and head to the actual full episode that we already had recorded yesterday, I just want to say like it should be noted in moments like this, just how cool this is, like to be a fan of a team that chooses to do something like this. And it’s not like saving the world, you know, and— and it’s not like, you know, when Cohen gave his interview, when he first bought the team, like he talked about it as, like, a philanthropic thing that he could make millions of people happy. Like, I don’t know if I would go quite that far, but it is pretty cool that there is a team that is like, “I want to have Francisco Lindor. I want to have Juan Soto. I want to have Yoshinobu Yamamoto. I want to have Shohei Ohtani. I want to have anybody who is— who is that good. I’m interested in employing them to play baseball, because if I— if I’m not, if I’m not willing to go down that path, why do I even own this team? What’s the point?” As a fan, I mean, I think back to five years ago, like the Mets were purchasing Hector Santiago’s contract, you know? The Mets were trying to win on the margins by hoping they squeeze 350 at-bats out of Kevin Pilar. You know, like these, it’s just so different to know—
ALEX: We— we were Brody pilled at that point.
BOBBY: Don’t say “we.” I was never Brody pilled. He stabbed me right in the back with Zack Wheeler, and I’m never gonna forgive him for that. But it’s— it’s just so— it really— it does feel kind of like a calming, warm blanket to have these two guys in my life for the next decade as a baseball fan, in particular, these two guys. Like not just that we have two superstars or whatever, but the types of players who— who reward you by watching them every day. The types of things that you just— yes, you can see that they are superstars when you watch them. Yes, Soto has the charisma. He has the Soto shuffle. He has the light tower power. Yes, Francisco Lindor makes highlight plays. He has a distinct visual style. He has a lot of pop in his bat. He’s a switch hitter. He’s a leadoff hitter now. Like, all of these things that make it obvious to the common baseball fan, like how good this person is when you tune in and you watch them in a three-game series when your team is playing against them. But when you watch them every day, these are the types of players who reward you more, when you watch him every day. When you see how good Soto’s eye is, when you see how intelligent he is about the game, when he picks up off pitchers over time, so that in his second and third and fourth and fifth at-bat, he’s better than he was in his first one. And when you see Lindor, his day in and day out leadership, when you see him giving tips to the younger players, when you see him rubbing off on Mark Vientos and making him a better defender. Like, it just strikes me as, like, that is what we’re here for. You know what I mean? And I just like— I don’t even— I almost, like, don’t even know what to do with myself. Like, I— I— I’m still searching within to find the feelings to feel about Soto being on the team, and I hope that just like by opening day, I don’t pinch myself and wake up.
ALEX: We’ll— we’ll— we’ll keep you dreaming over here, Bob. I— I promise. Can I just say? Before we get out of here, Soto is, like, one of the only guys who, I think, like, for whom you can actually make reasonable historical comps that, like, actually stack up to—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —to who he actually is. You know, you see guys get drafted or you see guys come up, and it’s like, “Yeah, you know, he’s kind of a blend of, like, Mel Ott and Tony Gwynn or whatever. And it’s like, “No, he’s not.” Like, that’s—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —that’s obviously not true. But I saw someone today, you know, who like— who’s like, “Yeah, he’s like a mix of Ted Williams and Barry Bonds.” And I’m like, “Yeah, no, that’s— that’s what I see as well.” What a time to be alive.
BOBBY: I’m kind of in the camp that you should never compare anyone to Barry Bonds, but he is kind of like Ted Williams.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Which I’m cool with. I’m cool with that. Yeah. And I mean, he’s, for me personally, in a long lineage of players, as— as I’ve sort of, like, sanded down the edges of, like, the anchor of my fandom, as we’ve been doing this podcast, and I’ve been trying to grow my appreciation for all of the teams, and all of the star players, and all of these different things. Obviously, with some exceptions, like for guys that I don’t like or whatever. And— and true rivals and true moments. But he’s, like, in a long lineage of players that the Mets played against a lot, and I just have, like, an incredible amount of respect for, so it’s like— it’s so weird that he just is now decamping to come to play for my team. I just— it’s hard to process.
ALEX: Yankees are stale. Mets, unburdened.
BOBBY: All right. Speaking of someone who’s unburdened, Robert Dean Manfred, Jr., that is who this episode is about. You are about to hear the Rob Manfred years as I think what we called it in this episode. I’d like— can I pitch something to you real quick?
ALEX: Please.
BOBBY: For the title, maybe?
ALEX: Please.
BOBBY: Now, that we’ve had an extra 24 hours to think about this.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: What do you think about the— the Rob Manfred Eras Tour?
ALEX: That’s actually pretty good.
BOBBY: Thank you.
ALEX: Do it. Send it.
BOBBY: All right. Sounds good. Everybody, you are about to hear the Rob Manfred Eras Tour, in which we plot a chronology of Rob Manfred’s career and how he got to this point, and just— just where we think it’s gonna go. Thank you for listening to this Juan Soto breaking news update. Thank you if you reached out to me to say congratulations, especially if you’re a fan of the New York Yankees, which I got a couple people. And I was like, “How do you really feel about this underneath it all?” I hope you enjoy what you’re about to hear. We put a lot of hard work into it.
[theme]
BOBBY: Alex, it’s main character month. Still—
ALEX: Still.
BOBBY: —it feels like for us, it’s been main character month for four months, because we’ve been planning this and we banked the first episode of main character month, like, almost a month ago.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: But it still is somehow only December 8th.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Which means it’s only the second episode of main character month, but who are we talking about today?
ALEX: We are— sorry. I just— let me pull up my notes real quick. I don’t quite remember. Oh, yes, Robert D. Manfred, Jr.? Is he— he’s a junior, right?
BOBBY: He is a junior. Yeah. Do you know what the D stands for?
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: I thought you were gonna make like a joke.
ALEX: I was—
BOBBY: You just kind of stared at me blankly. I thought you were gonna be like, “D stands for defense, you know?” Defend— defense wins championships.
ALEX: Do you know what the D stands for?
BOBBY: Yeah, dude, Dean.
ALEX: Dean.
BOBBY: Dean. Robert Dean Manfred, Jr.
ALEX: Robert Dean Manfred.
BOBBY: That’s a good, strong name.
ALEX: It’s a— it’s a solid name.
BOBBY: An argument in the favor of nominative determinism. You know, you come in with a strong name, you come out with a strong career. For those of you listening to this who did not listen to last week’s episode, we kicked off main character month with Alex Rodriguez’s rules to life. And I would just like to implore you, to encourage you, to strongly suggest to you, dear listener, that if you didn’t listen to that yet, you just go back and check that episode out, because it’s— I— I think many— many folks are saying, and I’m not saying it, but many people are saying it, the people, they come to us in the streets—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —and they say, “Sir, sir, thank you for creating the greatest episode of Tipping Pitches that’s ever been created.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: “Alex Rodriguez’s rules to life.”
ALEX: Uh-hmm. I— I don’t know about you. I feel changed after having not only done the work to— to put that episode together, but really go through that experience—
BOBBY: Right, to live in it.
ALEX: —with you, to really bask in the lessons that— that this— that this man can bring to us.
BOBBY: Liquor, ladies, and leverage.
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: The three things that could take a man down or people down in— in the world of business are the 3Ls, liquor, ladies, and leverage.
BOBBY: He’s just one of one.
ALEX: He’s one of one.
BOBBY: That episode, we— we talked about all the lessons that you can learn from Alex Rodriguez’s various media platforms, his YouTube channel, his Instagram account, his podcasts on various platforms. The— basically, the business lessons that he has been trying to instill upon his fans for years. It has— next to nothing to do with baseball. We didn’t bring up his baseball career until, like, minute 58 of the podcast.
ALEX: Yep. Correct.
BOBBY: But we assume that you know all of that stuff, 13th in WAR. 13th all-time in WAR, Alex Rodriguez. And yet—
ALEX: And— but—
BOBBY: —he cares more about becoming the next Warren Buffett.
ALEX: —fifth all-time in strikeouts. I don’t know if you remember this. Means there’s only four guys in the history of the game, Bobby.
BOBBY: There’s masters in failing.
ALEX: PhD in getting back up.
BOBBY: That’s exactly right.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Is this our PhD in getting back up?
ALEX: I think so.
BOBBY: The Rob Manfred— what are we calling this? We had a quippy little name for last week’s episode, Alex Rodriguez’s rules to life. What are we calling this?
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: In my head, I’ve been calling it Rob Manfred’s Next Five Years, but it has evolved since then, and it is more so like the Rob Manfred Chronology, Rob Manfred’s Timeline.
ALEX: Yeah, the— yeah, the— it’s the— it’s the Manfred years. I mean— I mean, what we’re doing is like—
BOBBY: The Manfred years is good.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: That sounds— that sounds really important. That sounds like a hagiography, you know? It sounds like the, you know, the Bob Dylan documentary.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: The Bob Dylan— not documentary. The— the Bob Dylan biopic that Timothy Chalamet is doing a really great Bob Dylan impression in.
ALEX: Yeah. Which Bob Dylan himself appreciates that Chalamet has— has done. I don’t think he’s actually seen the movie yet.
BOBBY: Why is Bob Dylan tweeting now?
ALEX: I think, frankly, he’s—
BOBBY: Sorry, posting now on—
ALEX: He is the only person who should be posting, I want to be very clear. He’s using the site exactly in the way that it was intended to be used.
BOBBY: Yeah. He’s bringing it back to its early days.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: How old is Bob Dylan?
ALEX: I’m like— I’m gonna go 78.
BOBBY: 83.
ALEX: 83? Okay.
BOBBY: Yeah, 83. But the joie de vivre, you know?
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Once a poster, always a poster.
BOBBY: That’s true.
ALEX: Some say many of his songs were the original posts.
BOBBY: Are you a big Bob Dylan guy?
ALEX: I— what I have— the line I’ve always said is I’m like, “I have never really, like, actively liked Bob Dylan, but like, I—”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: “—I can appreciate his— his role in history.” But frankly, I do like— I like Bob Dylan. I’m— I think I’ve— I think I’ve done my heel turn. I’ve— I’ve gotten over the sort of, like, surface—
BOBBY: Heel turn? Is it a heel turn to say you like one of the—
ALEX: I don’t really know. I’m just saying as [31:17]
BOBBY: —most beloved artists in human history?
ALEX: Well, you know, everyone has a— everyone’s like, “I can’t listen to him sing,” or whatever.
BOBBY: Oh, yeah.
ALEX: And I’m like, “I mean, you should hear some of the other—”
BOBBY: Can’t you?
ALEX: “—you should hear some of the other music I listened to.” Like—
BOBBY: Yeah. Singing talent was never a prerequisite for me.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Alex has covers of Taking Back Sunday songs out there, you know?
ALEX: That’s true. Yeah.
BOBBY: Come on. Okay. Well, now, that I have you on the record about one Bob, we could talk about another Bob.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: But before we do, I’m Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I’m Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[theme]
BOBBY: You know, we’ve never really acknowledged the fact that Robert D. Manfred and I share a name.
ALEX: Yes. I—
BOBBY: Because it comes up really often for you and Alex Rodriguez and all the other 5,000 Alexes that are part of the Tipping Pitches community. But I— is it just because he goes by Rob and I go by Bob?
ALEX: I think so. Yeah.
BOBBY: Should I start going by Rob to— in honor of him?
ALEX: I mean, how does it—
BOBBY: But he’s not dead.
ALEX: How does it make you feel to kind of have this kindred spirit here? It’s like— I mean, in— between the two of us, it’s like we are covering kind of all bases of the baseball world.
BOBBY: Between the two of our names?
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Exactly. In Alex Rodriguez and then Rob Manfred.
ALEX: Rob Manfred.
BOBBY: I— one thing that I’ve always felt about my name is that it’s a little bit out of time, you know? You don’t see as many bobbies as you might have during the Baby Boomer era in which Robert D. Manfred was born into.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: I don’t know. That just occurred to me. I meant to say to talk about the patrons before we really got into it, so I want to do that real quick. I thought we could get into Rob Manfred’s biography. Thank you to this week’s and the last couple weeks, new patrons, since we banked those episodes, those last two episodes. Those new patrons are Faux Macho, Zachary, Jonah, Dent, Robert, Lars, Allison Rose, Jack, Jeff, Liam, and Diana. [33:28] All right. Are you ready to talk about Rob? Would you— would you like to do anything before we talk about Rob Manfred?
ALEX: What? Some stretches?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Some—
BOBBY: I did 30 minutes of yoga this morning.
ALEX: Oh, my God.
BOBBY: I’ve decided that I want to do 30 minutes of yoga to start every day.
ALEX: That’s ambitious.
BOBBY: But I don’t commute, so—
ALEX: That’s true.
BOBBY: —it’s not as ambitious as I could be at 11:00 AM, for me.
ALEX: Right. Fair.
BOBBY: It’s not as ambitious as if you were like, “I want to do 30 minutes of yoga before work every day.”
ALEX: I’m going to start—
BOBBY: Someone who’s never done 30 minutes of yoga.
ALEX: Right. Exactly. I have done 30 minutes of yoga once for work. I went on a work retreat.
BOBBY: Hang on.
ALEX: I was like—
BOBBY: Wait.
ALEX: I was struggling. I’ll tell you that much.
BOBBY: What kind of poses were you doing?
ALEX: I— I— all the—
BOBBY: [34:13] the downward dog?
ALEX: All the normal ones, I don’t know. It was like one leg up, one leg down.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: And then switch.
BOBBY: Did you do some warrior poses?
ALEX: Yeah. Bro, I was warrioring the shit out of that yoga.
BOBBY: What was, like, your disposition during it? Were you kind of, like, grunting? Were you— afterwards, as you were talking to your co-workers, like, what was— give me an example of how those conversations went like. “Wow, that was really nice,” or— or what?
ALEX: Well, I was kind of— I was sweating out a lot of, say, toxins that were—
BOBBY: Oh.
ALEX: —in my body, not for any particular reason.
BOBBY: This is for your current job, you did this?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: So this is recent?
ALEX: Yeah. This was over the summer.
BOBBY: All right, cool. Oh, I think we— I— honestly, now that I’m talking it through with you, I think this has come up on the podcast before.
ALEX: I think so.
BOBBY: And I think I said something to the effect of, “It’s fucking bullshit that you’ll do yoga with your real co-workers and not with me.”
ALEX: I think so. Yeah.
BOBBY: Guess what? I stand by that.
ALEX: I— it was not hot yoga, but for me, it was hot yoga. I was drenched.
BOBBY: I think one of the nice things about yoga is that you break a sweat without really even moving that much. It just shows all the different capabilities of the human body.
ALEX: Yeah, that sucks. Are you for real?
BOBBY: Why, dude? Why? Why are you so afraid of sweating?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Bring the toxins out is good.
ALEX: Well, you know, if you don’t sweat, then it’s like— you know, did you put in any work?
BOBBY: Think about how close we felt right after we went in the sauna together.
ALEX: Yeah. I felt something.
BOBBY: Yeah, you were struggling.
ALEX: I felt like I was transcending.
BOBBY: Exactly.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s nice. That— you could feel that every morning with me for 30 minutes.
ALEX: Should we do— what if we do like—
BOBBY: There’s not enough space in this apartment for us to do yoga together.
ALEX: —like astral projection or something like that?
BOBBY: I don’t know what that really is, if I’m being honest.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Can you explain it to me?
ALEX: No, I’d rather not.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: All right.
BOBBY: This podcast has sort of a weird energy to it.
ALEX: It kind of does.
BOBBY: I can’t wait to see where it goes. I kind of meant, like, did you want to talk about anything else in the baseball world? But you took it a different direction, so I respect it. And I want to take that as a no. So, unless Juan Soto signs during the course of us recording this podcast, we’re not going to spend any time talking about Tyler O’Neill, Luis Severino, Willie Adames, any of these signings, it’s kind of like, not really relevant to the project.
ALEX: Right. So we probably wouldn’t talk about them anyway, honestly. I mean, maybe we’d talk Severino, but—
BOBBY: I think we might talk about Adames. That’s a pretty big signing. It’s relevant in— well, now we’re talking about it.
ALEX: Goddamn it.
BOBBY: Okay. Robert Dean Manfred Jr. born September 28th, 1958, in a little town called Rome, New York, which you might know, Alex, from Woodstock ’99.
ALEX: I just— I— I love that that is— we immediately draw a line between Manfred and Woodstock ’99 every time.
BOBBY: There’s no way that he doesn’t have strong opinions about it. This is his hometown, which comes up all of the time. The Rome Free Press still covering Rob Manfred’s career updates as he moves through this wonderful baseball career. Okay? So this is a boy who cares deeply about his hometown. All right?
ALEX: It is, yes.
BOBBY: So he knows something— he— so he has thoughts about Woodstock ’99 and frankly, no one has ever asked him about it. And now that Lindsay Adler’s not covering baseball, no one ever fucking will. So it’s a shame, truthfully, to not know his thoughts on Woodstock ’99 and white male rage.
ALEX: I— I agree.
BOBBY: Yeah. Born 1958, smack into the heart of the Baby Boom. Dwight D. Eisenhower was still the president, which I— this seems like a lot of biographical details, but I actually think it’s kind of relevant, because—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —Manfred has a sort of, like, ageless energy to him, but I think we forget that he’s, like, pretty old. He’s 66, I think going to be 67 pretty soon, and— and I know that that’s like— it’s not as old as Bob Dylan. It’s not 83. It’s not as old as Francis Ford Coppola, or Martin Scorsese, or Ridley Scott, who wants to make another Gladiator movie. The man is 87. He’s worked on five projects at the moment. Obligatory movie take, check. But when we talk about things like sports betting apps, when we talk about things like RSNs, which are gonna come up later in the podcast, cable TV, cord cutting, all these things, it’s important to remember that this man is like a firm baby boomer.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like, firm smack in the middle of the baby boomers. I think is relevant. Before baseball, he played tennis, golf, and baseball growing up. Two seasons of tennis at Le Moyne college, after which he transferred to Cornell. Got his doctorate at Harvard Law where he edited the Harvard Law Review. I know that you went deep in the minds trying to find anything that he wrote for the Harvard Law Review, but it appears he was just on the editing side.
ALEX: Yep.
BOBBY: Which is so unfortunate. After Harvard, he clerked for Joseph L. Tauro of the US District Court in Massachusetts. Tauro was the longest serving appointee of Richard M. Nixon. After his time clerking there, he went to more Morgan, Lewis, and Bockius. Bockius, Bockius?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Morgan, Lewis, Lewis?
ALEX: Yep. You’re doing great.
BOBBY: And Bockius. Can you tell I’m really out of my comfort zone talking about law firms?
ALEX: Well, we can use the shorthand and just say he went to go work at MLB?
BOBBY: Clever. When did they add the Bockius? Because for a while, it was just Morgan and Lewis.
ALEX: No, I think they dropped the Bockius.
BOBBY: Oh, wow.
ALEX: It’s like—
BOBBY: That’s—
ALEX: It’s like colloquially known as Morgan Lewis.
BOBBY: That’s controversial.
ALEX: It is controversial.
BOBBY: That’s—
ALEX: Has anyone talked to Bockius about how they feel about this?
BOBBY: Are they alive? He worked in labor and employment law at Morgan Lewis, which we have talked about in reference, that this was his career path. That he was a labor— that he was a employment side lawyer— an employment side labor lawyer, and that that has informed kind of, like, the person that he is, the thing that brought him to Major League Baseball. Real quickly on Morgan Lewis, one of the biggest law firms in the United States, 2.9 billion in revenue last year, based in Philadelphia. Let’s go.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Market Street. What’s up? But this law firm has a real like, “We’re one of the good ones,” vibe. Like, if you go to their Wikipedia page, it’s all about how, like, they do the most pro bono work. They worked on the cases that got same sex marriage into the courts, all these different things. I’m like, “Well, we also represented Donald Trump from 2005 to 2021, so pump the brakes a little bit.” I’m gonna read you just— just a smattering. I’m gonna try to not do too much Wikipedia rating on this episode—
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Because everybody has access to Wikipedia. But I’m gonna read you a smattering from the personal life section on his Wikipedia page.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Grew up in Central— growing up in Central New York, Manfred is a fan of the New York Yankees. That’s curious. You don’t hear that brought up very often.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: That makes you wonder why that sign stealing letter was sealed for so long. “His father Rob Manfred, Sr. led the Rome, New York division of Revere Copper and Brass, which is a copper rolling mill. While his mother Phyllis was a school teacher. He has an older sister and a younger brother. Manfred and his wife, Colleen”— well, I— I read— I’ll tell you that stuff because it seems like both of his parents come from industries in which organized labor is an incredibly important thing, and I think that is not irrelevant.
ALEX: No, it’s not irrelevant. He, actually— he was quoted later on as saying, “When you live in a town of 50,000 people and you have an employer [41:42]”
BOBBY: Well, think about how many thousands of people were there during Woodstock ’99, too.
ALEX: Right. And you have an employer that employs 5,000, everyone feels it when there’s a strike.
BOBBY: Exactly.
ALEX: Right? So it’s certainly something that, like, he was aware of growing up.
BOBBY: We— we need to call in like— like the— like, the forced ghost version of Sigmund Freud to be part of this episode with us, I think. That would be really helpful. “Manfred and his wife Colleen have four children, Megan, Michael, Jane and Mary Clare. Megan married Timothy Petrella of Minnetonka, Minnesota, son of the President of UnitedHealthcare group at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Sleepy Hollow, New York.” Anything to say about that?
ALEX: I don’t think there’s anything to touch on there.
BOBBY: All right, let’s move on.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Okay. So how this is going to work, the Rob Manfred chronology, is that we’re— Rob Manfred years.
ALEX: Right. The Manfred years. Rob Manfred years.
BOBBY: The Manfred years.
ALEX: Yes. Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s really good. I gotta— gotta remember— I gotta write that down. We are going to move through Rob’s career. We’re gonna start 20 years ago. We’re going to talk about where he was and what he was doing 20 years ago. And then we’re going to flash forward to 10 years ago. We’re going to talk about that time period around when he became— when he was in the process of becoming commissioner. We’re going to talk about Rob Manfred in the present, the things that are still important to him, the things he would still like to accomplish, the sentiment towards Rob Manfred in this current moment. We’ve been basically covering this man for seven years, which is crazy to think about. And then we’re going to talk about Rob Manfred five years in the future, which will be right around the time that his successor is in the middle of their first year. His legacy will be fresh, but not quite— we won’t have quite as much of a perspective on it. And then we are going to talk about Rob Manfred 20 years in the future. So we’re going to opine, as you might imagine, but we wanted to do 20 years in the future, because anything, like, 10 years from now probably still be a little bit hazy. But 20 years from now, it’ll really boil down to the essentials of Rob Manfred’s term.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And we’re going to try to make a guess at what those things really will be in terms of his lasting legacy. I think you, at home listening, might have a little bit of an idea of what some of those things might be, but hang on to those now, because we’re going to go backwards first. Because I think in order to really understand his path, we have to start with where he started, which was 20 years ago. Rob was the executive vice-president for labor relations and human resources. This is the role that he was hired into after Morgan Lewis, after he was doing labor and employment law at Morgan Lewis. He was hired into this role in 1998 and he held this role until 2012. He was in charge of all issues related to collective bargaining, so he has this big, long, fancy title. But essentially, as we’ve talked about on the show, Rob was in charge of collective bargaining. That was his role.
ALEX: I think that as we go through this, like, I— you know, I want to sort of say, “Okay. Like, what was his reputation at that time, right? Like, what was he known for, right?” And— and to your point, at this point, 20 years ago that puts us, you know, in the early 2000s, he was this sort of noted labor law expert. As— as we mentioned, he had been working for Morgan Lewis for— for years, which has a long, sort of storied relationship with Major League Baseball, representing it in various labor-related
issues. They were famously on the losing side of the lawsuit that would end the ’94-’95 strike. And so he’s, like, been in the room for these discussions. Manfred was consulting for the owners among the strike. They eventually bring him in house to basically lead these negotiations.
BOBBY: And this is like young upstart Rob Manfred, by the way.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: This is like— he’s— he’s gotten his Harvard Law Degree. He’s clerked for an important judge. He’s moved on to a private law firm, presumably in a high-powered, high-paying role. He— in 1987, he, you know, begins working with MLB as sort of like a contractor, like outside counsel during—
ALEX: That is Major League Baseball, not Morgan, Lewis, Bockius.
BOBBY: Yes. Yes. He’s— he’s full-time at Morgan Lewis.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: He’s part-time— well, part of his role at Morgan Lewis is that he’s assigned as outside counsel for collective bargaining negotiations, just on the legal team that’s doing collective bargaining. He is not the negotiator. Some— there are other people within MLB who are doing that job, but he is, like, on the legal team helping out. This is— this is 29-year-old Rob Manfred when he gets started, so it’s— it’s like young, hungry, “I want to be the one to get in the room and shake these hands, and make these connections.” And then by the time the strike rolls around, seven years later, he’s, like, counseling them on what to do.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And how to end this. And he’s involved, like you said, Morgan Lewis is representing MLB in the federal lawsuit, which eventually, Sonia Sotomayor sides on the players, ends the strike, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, this is further than 20 years in the past, but it’s important to understand how we got to Rob Manfred In 2004.
ALEX: Right. Well, and I think it’s like this is who he was known for, right? Is like this sort of savvy, pragmatic labor expert who was prioritizing, you know, reasonable, like incremental progress and compromise over sort of a brash, confrontational approach to his work, right? And that’s—
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: —why Selig decides to bring him in, right? Is like, here is this sort of savvy, young legal— legal mind who can sort of help us navigate out of a really tumultuous labor landscape following the strike, right? And so Manfred in 2002 is instrumental in negotiating the collective bargaining agreement, right? This is one that would implement revenue sharing, that would implement a luxury tax, right? A lot of these sort of Hallmark things that Bud Selig is— that his tenure, his commissionership is known for, Manfred is sort of the legal architect behind a lot of them.
BOBBY: I think one thing that’s important to think about when we think about early Manfred being part of Major League Baseball is that this role that he filled, it’s not like no one was negotiating CBAs before, and it’s not like that wasn’t people’s full-time job. This has been people’s full-time job since they had a union.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: But the professionalization of this, the long-term thinking, the— this being our purpose for existing is to negotiate these collective bargaining agreements and win, and beat back the union, and continue to solidify our position as these financial heavyweights year over year over year, and make sure that the union is not cutting into that. That’s like kind of a new style of thinking, because post ’94, post the strike, I mean, of course, there’s always been bitter animus between the union and the league. But I think that ’94, after the players strike, kind of like works, you know? Like from a purely economical perspective, the player strike works for the union, but it does erode kind of like public confidence in the union side for a number of reasons that we’ve talked about many times on this podcast. And so MLB sees an opportunity and they choose Rob Manfred to fill it. MLB sees an opportunity to claw back some of these things that they’ve lost over the years of the union incrementally progressing, incrementally getting more things that they wanted, getting things out of this ’94 strike settlement that the league did not want them to have. And MLB says, “Okay. Now, we need someone whose whole role is to negotiate these collective bargaining agreements to win at all costs.” And that’s what Manfred is doing in 2002, which is the first CBA that he negotiates in 2006 and 2011. leading up to, ultimately, when we’re going to get to later, you know, him becoming important enough that he eventually becomes commissioner, spoiler alert. But in 2004, he’s just nego— negotiated this first landmark CBA that is, like— when we look back on it with 20 years of hindsight, like kind of the beginning of a really bad period for the union side.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Yeah. And— and very defined by— and very defined by Selig to a certain extent. I mean, Selig gets— because he was the commissioner at the time, gets the sort of headline credit for a lot of these things, right? He was trying to create a more balanced baseball landscape. He was trying to make things easier on the so-called, you know, small market teams. But Manfred is the one who really, actually, executes on a lot of these and creates the— the framework for what baseball’s economic system would look like going forward, right? So he has a really heavy hand in the— the way things are as we know them today.
BOBBY: Absolutely. But I think one thing that I’m interested to talk about, and maybe this is the— maybe this is the section that we should be talking about this, is kind of like from your perspective, why— why does Bud Selig like Rob Manfred? Like, why does he choose him? Because— because, as a person, their charismas are polar opposites. Their energies are not similar. They don’t come from the same world. Selig was an owner. Manfred has never been anywhere close to being an owner.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: He’s never been involved in ownership of a team. Seemingly like doesn’t really— I mean, we can debate about this, but doesn’t really care about baseball in— in the way that Selig does—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —in any way, shape or form. And Selig is this very kind of, like, bombastic, big personality, you know, controversial figure, and Manfred is like the exact opposite. So in your mind, is it just that, like, “Okay, here’s the guy behind the scenes to do all of, like, the technocratic things to enact my envision— to enact my vision, or is it something, I don’t know, more cosmic? Is there something that I’m underrating about Rob’s style—”
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: “—that appeals to Selig.”
ALEX: I mean, I do think they are sort of two sides of the same coin, right? Selig is very good at putting on a show, right? He is this former, like, car salesman, right? Who really knows how to sell an idea, right? And at this time, that was baseball, right? He knew sort of how to talk about the game—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —with a love, with a reverence. Like you mentioned being an owner, that gave him a sort of unique perspective and ability to maybe, say, “Yeah, but like, I get things from, you know, a different pers— I’ve been in the trenches.”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: “I know what it’s like to run a team.” And—
BOBBY: And I need to protect my small market teams, too.
ALEX: Right. Right. Exactly. And that’s something that, you know, characterizes a lot of Selig’s legacy. He’s— you know, at the— at the very least, here was a guy who loved the game. And—
BOBBY: For better, for worse.
ALEX: For better, for worse. And Manfred, obviously, does not have that reputation, but I think it’s because Selig is simply a better showman. I still think they were very likeminded in the way they kind of looked at the game. And I think that Selig placed a lot of trust in in Manfred and— and Manfred gave it back to him, right? And— and we’ll get to this maybe in a— in a little bit. But, you know, but— by the time he is up for being commissioner, he has successfully navigated his way through the Biogenesis scandal as well, right?
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: So he’s sort of seen as this competent, results-oriented, like I keep saying the word, like, pragmatic, right? It’s like— it’s like, you know, here’s this— he’s very lawyerly. He’s— you know, he is willing to maybe take the heat as long as it keeps the heat off of, you know, the game itself. And so I think Selig, to a certain degree, admired that about him. And I think there was a lot of continuity with Manfred as well, right? From Selig’s tenure, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: It was like— it was like, here is a guy who I know will continue these sort of reforms that we have spent years implementing.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: Like, I can trust him to sort of carry baseball into the next era.
BOBBY: This is part of his DNA.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And not only that, he came aboard, and it’s not that only that he knows where the bodies are buried. He was actively part of burying some of the bodies.
ALEX: Exactly, yes.
BOBBY: You know? I think that’s interesting, and I— I find it fascinating, Man— Manfred’s career being looked at through the prism of trying to get buy-in from the owners, because it’s— it’s obvious that he always had buy-in from Selig. Like— and from— the from the commissioner’s office and from the bureaucrats involved in MLB.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like, he earned their respect early on, before he was ever even in this role as executive vice-president of labor relations. He earned their respect in ’94 for the strike and even before that, when he was— when he was the council for CBAs dating back into the ’80s and early ’90s. And everybody always kind of, like, respected his talents and how he applied them. But it’s fascinating when we— when we fast forward, and maybe now we should get into it, 10 years ago, we go to 2014, this is the year before Rob Manfred becomes commissioner of Major League Baseball. The election which he wins and becomes MLB commissioner, and is in August of 2014. So kind of like we’re— we’re perfectly 10 years out from that, basically.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: He takes over in 2015. But at this time, prior to the election, technically, he’s the chief operating officer, but we kind of knew that he was the commissioner in waiting at the time. They promoted him to chief operating officer after he had successfully navigated the Biogenesis scandal, and he had just served in— his role as executive vice— executive vice-president for labor relations for almost 15 years. And this was kind of, like, a nominal promotion. Like, we know you’re doing a good job, but they promoted him into COO, which is a role that had been vacant at MLB for three years. Like, no one had filled that role since 2010. So—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —it was like kind of just a— a title bump, more or less, but I think he was kind of doing the same thing still. And also kind of following Selig around, getting the training that he needed to potentially get the buy-in to become the next commissioner. He’s elected. Like I said, in August of 2014. It takes six ballots to get him elected. He was running against Tom Werner, who was the chairperson of the Red Sox at the time, as well as Tim Brosnan, who was the executive vice-president of business for MLB. Brosnan dropped out before balloting started to kind of coalesce the MLB commissioner’s office executive side, behind just one figure and not split the votes between an owner and someone from the commissioner’s office. Manfred had Selig’s approval and recommendation, and he seemingly had the— the approval of most of the owners at the time. He— you need a three-quarters majority to be elected commissioner according to their charter. And the first vote, he— the first vote was 20 to 10 for Manfred, so he needed, I think, three more votes. This is really fascinating. It’s gonna seem like I’m going through this a little bit too detailed, but it’s just like— it’s too interesting for me not to talk about this, because I do think—
ALEX: Absolutely.
BOBBY: —it sets up basically the next five years of his commissionership.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: How he operates. So he goes from having from— from 20 to 10 in the election. He increased to 21 on the second ballot, 22 on the third. The— the votes are kept secret, but from team official speeches, it was evidence that the Tampa Bay Rays Stu Sternberg and Milwaukee Brewers Mark Attanasio likely switched their vote. His— his vote then dropped down to 20, increased to 22 before a dinner break, and then they came back and he got the 23rd vote that he needed, apparently, from the Washington Nationals. Owners then made the final vote unanimous, just to save face.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: But— so he basically got 23 out of the 30 votes, the source said that— the source said that it appeared that the Arizona Diamondbacks, Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, Cincinnati Reds, Los Angeles Angels, Oakland Athletics, and Toronto Blue Jays had been the final holdouts.
ALEX: Yeah. So— and that’s kind of Reinsdorf’s coalition at that point in time. He is the one who is sort of leading the campaign against Manfred, so to speak. There is quite a bit of drama that happens behind the scenes at this point in time.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Reinsdorf is pulling for Tom Werner, right? This— this cable executive who sort of, again, not entirely dissimilar from Manfred, talks about wanting to engage the youth more, wanting to modernize the game, right? But Reinsdorf, I think, sees Werner as someone who’s maybe a little more savvy in the cultural language around baseball. And there are some pretty funny quotes from Reinsdorf, just from around this period.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: Right? Where he’s calling journalists and saying like, you know, “What I’ve said about Manfred in private is none of your expletive business.” You know? At one point, Reinsdorf confronts Manfred and accuses him of like— Manfred has, like provided these letters of support from folks in the commissioner’s office, including one Bob Bowman, who’s leading MLBA— MLB Advanced Media at the time. And Reinsford—
BOBBY: Relevant.
ALEX: Was relevant. And Reinsford confronts Manfred and says, “That was unfair. You put them in an unfair spot to ask for these letters of support.” And Manfred says, “I didn’t ask for them.” You know, it’s like— and— and so it’s not just this handpicked successor who waltzes into the role. It— there was not unanimity at the time that Manfred came in. Is that a word?
BOBBY: Yeah. It’s a word now. Add it to the Tipping Pitches dictionary. No, I think it’s a word.
ALEX: And so it shows that even— even we—
BOBBY: We have unanimity in this room over whether it’s word.
ALEX: That’s so true. And so it shows that even though Selig was sort of trying to level the playing field a little bit and bring the smaller market teams into the fold a little bit more, there was still work to be done to coalesce behind Manfred—
BOBBY: Well—
ALEX: —as— as Selig’s guy.
BOBBY: And it was fascinating that two small market owners were on the other side at first and then flipped.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Because like— so here’s what I think about that. I think that when I look at that election, I think, “Here’s Rob Manfred, who came from the school of Bud Selig from Major League Baseball at a time when there was an effort to protect the behavior and financial interests of smaller owners, enacted over the course of a 15-year period in which Rob Manfred was the tool doing the enacting. And I see Tom Werner on the other side, a big market owner who has won three World Series in the last 15 years, who wants to protect the big business interests of the big markets. I find it interesting that Reinsdorf finds himself on that side.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: However, I mean, this is a period of time where Reinsdorf is not quite as interested in packing it up. You know, like never— he has never been a good owner. He has never been a financially loose owner, but he was still a competitive owner during periods of the 2000s. They did win a World Series in the 2000s, the White Sox. And it’s like, would you rather trust— would you rather trust a lawyer or a business person? Is, I think, the an— is, I think, the question that these owners during this specific election, in the 2014 election, found themselves being asked. And it’s interesting that Sternberg and Attanasio, at first— these are two people who made their money on Wall Street. At first, found themselves on the interests of the Reinsdorf and the Werner side, and then were convinced to flip over to Manfred side. And it’s even more interesting to me— well, Attanasio, being the person that owns the Brewers, the team that Selig used to own, is— is funny to me, that he was like, “Ah, I don’t like that guy. I don’t like this team.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Or, “I don’t like this, you know, this group of people. I don’t like Selig.” But it’s interesting to me that after that, Manfred goes so far out of his way to continue to protect the interests of, specifically, the Rays. And even now, to this day, he is still getting egg on his face constantly to protect the interest of teams like the Rays and the A’s. And— and to protect the financial model of owners like Attanasio, “Don’t spend money, trade away your best players.” Like, it’s so interesting that that’s how he gets elected, and then that’s how his commissionership plays out.
ALEX: Yeah. And— and again, I mean, I think that this is where sort of the— the continuity of the Selig legacy comes into play, right?
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: It’s like— I think there’s one article that puts it like it’s— it’s sort of seen in the— as an endorsement of Selig’s penchant for, quote-unquote, “political arm twisting.”
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: You know? Of like, “Getting things done no matter what.” And this was evidenced in the Biogenesis sort of case and fallout around it, right? Manfred was accused at times of maybe employing less than savory tactics to get done, what needed to get done, whether that’s paying for stolen documents or talking with unsavory sources to get the answers that you need, right? But he’s seen as this, like, doer, right? He will get the things done that need to be done, and he will sort of maintain the integrity of the sport, right? He’s not afraid to bring the hammer down and make an example out of, say, last week’s main character.
BOBBY: Well, I think that’s really— it’s— it’s especially interesting because I think in, like, 2002 when he was in the middle of becoming this— for lack of a better term, we’ll call him MLB— MLB’s fixer, Bud Selig’s fixer.
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
BOBBY: He fixes the CBAs. He fixes the Biogenesis Scandal, the fallout from steroids. It is his responsibility to figure out what the fuck to do about some of these things. And then he’s returned in kind by becoming commissioner. The fixer never becomes the president.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Right?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: The fixer— intentionally, the whole point of the fixer is that they don’t have to then become something that is the face of something. But MLB is so masked off by 2014 that they’re like, “Whatever. He’s the commission— he’s the commissioner now.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: “We want to make him the commissioner.” As opposed to putting some pretty face on it. I imagine that Tom Werner’s commissionership would have went exactly the same as Rob Manfred’s commissionership.
ALEX: Oh, of course. Yeah.
BOBBY: Maybe fewer bumbling mistakes, but maybe fewer moments where he’s willing to, again, have the egg on his face on behalf of the owners who don’t want to have the egg on their face. But functionally, they probably would have operated very similar, because they are running MLB as a junta right now. Like they’re—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —running it as like a— a collective of owners under owners’ interests. This role itself, functionally, doesn’t really have that much power. And so, ultimately, the actions that they would have taken, the decisions that they would have made. You know, it’s not like Rob has been negotiating every single CBA personally since he became commissioner. Yes, he did do some of that, but you know, the last few with the lockouts, they’ve been navigated by deputies of him. Dan Halem, who could have been a deputy of Tom Werner, just the same. And— and so I— I find it fascinating that he even became commissioner because he’s— he’s an unlikely person to do that. Throughout baseball history, they never make the labor lawyer guy the actual commissioner.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: They usually make some sort of good or bad faith effort, however, you want to look through that prism of appointing somebody who’s going to be like this, oh, face of the game, the steward of the game. I do really think that, like, Fay Vincent kind of killed that idea.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You know? They’re just like, “Uh, we don’t need this anymore. No— no more stewards of the game. You know?”
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: “We just— we just need, like, a person, like, who’s just gonna be a lawyer.” You know what I mean?
ALEX: Yeah. Absolutely.
BOBBY: And I also think that, like, if we look at this through Bud Selig’s self-absorption, I honestly think— and partially in Bud Selig’s brain, he was like, “I want someone to succeed me who is not like me at all, so that people remember me.”
ALEX: Yeah, interesting.
BOBBY: Like that, “I’m the bombastic, charismatic leader who talks about the importance of the game, and I’m going to give you guys someone who, for 20 years, is going to be incredibly boring, so that you still remember me, and you still think about me and all the things that I did to protect Major League Baseball. And now you have the technocrat commission or whatever, just forget about him.”
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: “And talk about me.”
ALEX: He— what he is, is a continuation of my legacy, right?
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: He is not someone who is going to forge a new path for the game. He’s going to continue in motion the— the things that I have set.
BOBBY: But to Rob’s credit, he has ideas on his mind about what he wants his legacy to be, primarily, namely, that is pace of play.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: Because on his— on day one as commissioner, what does he do?
ALEX: What does he do?
BOBBY: He gives a quote stating that his primary goals as commissioner on January 25th, 2015, “Where youth outreach, embracing technology, quickening the pace of play, strengthening player relations, and creating a more unified business operation.” Now, some of those things are Selig goals. You know, like youth outreach, strengthening the position of baseball in the culture, whatever. But embracing technology is not a Selig thing, really.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Pace of play is Rob Manfred’s objective from day one, and he institutes the rules that batters have to remain in the batter’s box for the 2015 season.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Which is, I— I think, the, like, prototype of the real pace of play, which is the pitch clock, which we got in the last few years, which we’re going to talk about, of course. But he clearly, like— he, at least, comes into it with, “I have to separate myself from Selig a little bit.”
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so that’s where we are, sort of 10 years ago, right? It’s like the enforcer— Selig’s enforcer is now commissioner in waiting, right? And— and I do think that looking at how Manfred got to that point, in— in hindsight, it tells you a lot about how his commissionership may run, right? As someone who’s not afraid to take the bold actions, as someone who is not afraid to put himself out there and say, “Yes, I’m bringing the hammer down. I’m doing this. This is my decision.” And who is prioritizing, supposedly, you know, integrity of the game over his personal brand, right?
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: He’s saying, “I will go and— I will do the dirty work. I’ll make the hard decisions—”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: “—as long as it insulates baseball.”
BOBBY: His personal brand is not a good one.
ALEX: That’s not a good one.
BOBBY: People don’t like him.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: I mean, people never like the commissioner. People didn’t like Selig—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —when he was the commissioner, and they don’t like him now. I wonder— we don’t have, like, presidential approval ratings for commissioners, but I— I genuinely— I’m curious as to what those approval ratings would be for Manfred and Selig then versus now. Maybe we should— maybe we should talk about now. What do you think? Anything else from 10 years ago that you want to hit on before we move forward?
ALEX: No, I don’t think so.
BOBBY: Rob Manfred now.
ALEX: He’s commissioner.
BOBBY: He— he is commissioner. He is commissioner at least for the next few years, next four years or so. He’s announced that he will be stepping down in 2028?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Right?
ALEX: Think so, yeah.
BOBBY: Which means someone will take over in 2029. We don’t know who that person is yet. We’ll be talking about that shortly. I think the four things that Rob Manfred is known for now, if you— if you allow me to say that, like, the— the umbrella of his personality that we’ve been talking about, which is like this— this kind of bumbling lawyerly, not that closely related to the actual baseball product personality stretches over all of these things and I think is the reason that people have so much animosity towards him.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: The four things are rule changes, sports betting, RSNs, and collective bargaining agreements. Those are the four faces of the Rob Manfred commissionership as they stand right now.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Which one of those things do you want to talk about first? Because these are, like, the four big challenges. These are like— these are the four things that take up most of Rob Manfred’s time. And for— for a number of reasons, they’re all financial interests— they’re all of financial interest to the owners that employ him. But these are, like— in 2014, if you would have told him, “Okay, these are the four things that you’re gonna have to focus most on.” These are the things we would’ve went back in time and told him about.
ALEX: I mean, it— it’s interesting, because I think that as we talk about this right now, those things are so present in— in all of our discussions.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And I’m in— I’m interested to see, when we fast forward a little bit, how much those kind of stay the same, right? Because there are sort of— there’s sort of, I think, two prongs to his legacy as we see it now, right? And— and the first one is kind of these, like, economic landscape changes, right? And then there’s kind of— a lot of the material realities of the game, or sort of the individual maneuvers that have really broken through, right? Like, I mean, you mentioned the Astros sign stealing scandal being like the first thing on his Wikipedia page, you know? And it’s like that— that really resonated for a lot of people. That is like a defining part of the 2020s, right? Or the late 2010s.
BOBBY: I mean— okay. I don’t want to get too much into the Astros sign ceiling scandal, because I actually would like to talk about that in the 20 years from now—
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: —section.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But in the interest of talking about the past a little bit, which we’ve just wrapped up, the Astros are a perfect example of why you don’t make the fixer, the commissioner. How he handled that, where he was just, like, making backroom deals.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Twisting arms, sealing letters, covering things up. That’s— and then he had to come out and actually write a report and talk about it.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Had he been Bud Selig, he would have talked his way through it, or he would have tried.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: You know, it’s yet to be— it’s impossible to know whether that would have worked in the social media era, because the steroid scandal is obviously, like, 100 times the size of the sign stealing scandal. I guess you can kind of quibble with that, but like, in terms of actually how long it was going on, how many people were involved.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: How many people knew the cover up, the illegality, all of these things, the steroid scandal is a way bigger scandal than the Astros—
ALEX: It was institutional.
BOBBY: Yes, it was institutional, and it was known for a long time. And— and— and honestly, encouraged—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —for a really long time. But we just didn’t have social media, so like, I don’t really know how he would— how Selig would have handled it at the time, but I know for sure that he would have handled it better than Manfred in— in public. How he would have handled it, getting it to stop, or suspending, whatever he might have been— the exact same thing. But it would have been internalized— or it would have been externalized a little bit better.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: I think.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And I think that is the glaring— to borrow a political term, like that’s the glaring gaffe of his commissionership. I think that’s the one thing if he could do over, he would do it over.
ALEX: Yeah. And he has admitted it as much.
BOBBY: I mean, it— it also leads us to the worst quote of his whole tenure, right?
ALEX: I was fascinated by which one you’re gonna choose.
BOBBY: I’m going to choose the idea of an asterisk or asking for a piece—
ALEX: Oh.
BOBBY: —of metal back seems like a futile act.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: That’s pretty bad.
ALEX: That’s pretty bad.
BOBBY: That’s pretty bad.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And that has really stuck with him. If you go in the replies of a reporter who’s tweeting about something that Rob Manfred said, you will find someone saying he thinks the World Series trophy is a hunk of metal.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And— and I don’t necessarily think that that means that that makes him a bad commissioner. He is just a commissioner. There’s no such thing as a good or bad commissioner. It’s hard to apply moral value to a immoral thing. But, like, it does— that is, like, the one aspect of his commissionership that makes me question whether or not he was, like, the right person to make a commissioner. You know what I mean?
ALEX: Yeah. I think that he has repeatedly shown that actually he’s not very good at crisis management.
BOBBY: Yeah. Yeah.
ALEX: From—
BOBBY: He’s a lawyer, not a crisis PR person.
ALEX: Right, exactly. And I mean, you can apply that to sort of the COVID season and the fallout around that as well, right?
BOBBY: True.
ALEX: And this goes to labor— you know, deteriorating labor conditions as well, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Which I think really is one of the defining pieces of his legacy. But just—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: —when the spotlight is on him and folks are asking him hard-hitting questions, I don’t think he’s very savvy at threading the needle, you know? I think he pulls back the curtain a little bit too much, which is, hey, to our benefit, I’d rather he say what’s really on his mind, but it certainly draws the ire of a lot of fans and players alike.
BOBBY: I mean, it’s really interesting, because as somebody who has been in rooms with labor lawyers, with business side labor lawyers for hundreds of hours of my life, this is how they talk. This is how they think.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: They do pull the curtain back. They are honest about the interests of the business side, and they say as much to your face and it is infuriating. And honestly, if more people could see that this is how the people who businesses employ to do their dirty work think, more people would be radicalized by that fact. It’s just not so often that that lawyer has to talk to millions of people all the time, like Rob Manfred does. And so I think if you ask, like— if you were strictly grading his paper, like his test results, it’s a resounding win for MLB. Like it’s a resounding win for Bud Selig’s legacy. He fucking ate their lunch at the collective bargaining table for a decade and a half.
ALEX: Yeah. Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: For two decades, basically. And— and yet, we come out of it thinking, like, “Was this guy a good commissioner? Like, was— did he do a good job? Like, was he— did he do enough of like the cultural— did— did he pay enough attention to, like the cultural side of the game and— and talking up the importance of baseball and all these different things?” I don’t know. It’s just— we’re in an interesting period for that, because, like you’re talking about labor relations soured, but in the way that he wanted them to. I think he just didn’t— maybe didn’t bargain for how hard it would be to make it seem like he wanted things to feel better.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Does that make sense?
ALEX: Yes, yeah.
BOBBY: Because after this last lockout, he came out and was just like, “Oh, I haven’t done a good enough job of talking to Tony and— and caring about player relations—”
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: “—and all these things.” And— and not much has changed since that quote, you know?
ALEX: No. No.
BOBBY: Honestly.
ALEX: No. And— and as we noted earlier, like this, was one of the key priorities for him in his tenure, was improved player relations.
BOBBY: Sure.
ALEX: And— sure, whatever.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: You know, nominal— nominally, whatever that means.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And we’ll— maybe we’ll—
BOBBY: Get more people to whistle while they work.
ALEX: Exactly. All right, Rob now. What— what haven’t we covered? What do you want to touch on?
BOBBY: I mean, it’s rule changes, dude.
ALEX: Rule changes, yeah.
BOBBY: I don’t know if you want to talk about the Golden At-Bat thing right here, right now. It feels relevant. It feels timely based on what we’re doing here. But he is the tinkerer in chief. He can’t help himself. This is what he does. He just wants to slightly change things to get it closer to perfect.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: He wants to add one more word into the legalese to close this loophole. He— and he’s been rewarded for this. People love the pitch clock. People love the things that he’s changed.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And I— I mean, right now, that takes up a lot of airspace in his role as commissioner, I think.
ALEX: I agree. I mean, like his— he has been aggressive about sort of modernizing the game, and he hasn’t been shy about talking about that, right? And that goes from technological, quote- unquote, “advancements.” Can I interest anyone in Google AI?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Two, rule changes, right? He’s trying to bring the game into the 21st century as a means of creating a new generation of fans, breaking from some of the stuffy traditions of the game while— while also at the same time, like sort of bringing it back to a golden era, right? When the— when the game was fast and—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —and— and it was flashy and stuff. And I do think that, like, evaluating his legacy, like, in the moment is really hard, right? Because you and I, in the trenches of a lot of this, think about the, you know, the little sort of maneuvers that he’s done here and there, right? And it’s like—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —for every successful rule change, there have been a dozen things that he’s tried that have just not stuck, right? Or things that have floated, that have never actually left meeting rooms in years to come, say, 20 years down the road, when we talk about this. I’m interested to see what you think, like, will actually break through, right? Because, ultimately, the stuff that doesn’t stick that, whether it’s a Golden At-Bat or something like that, like, means a lot to us right now, right? You’re gonna change the game forever.
BOBBY: Sometimes I think he just tosses that shit out to pass— to— to normalize the lesser things.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: To— to move the over [1:21:09]
ALEX: To move [1:21:09] exactly.
BOBBY: I— I— I mean, I honestly don’t think he thinks Golden At-Bat is a good idea.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: But maybe I’m naive.
ALEX: Well, you— everyone was servicing the quotes where he was like, “Yeah, we’re not gonna do that.”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And then he was like, “We’ve been talking about doing it.”
BOBBY: It is exponentially harder to try to guess how the resolve— the resolution for some of the bigger financial challenges that face Major League Baseball in the moment, and Rod Manfred’s big ideas for how to fix them. I’m going to leave aside sports betting, because maybe we can talk about that in the five years from now, in the 10 years from now, or 20 years from now conversation. But like right now, they took the money.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: They— they don’t care. They— they—
ALEX: Well, and it’s also not unique to baseball, right?
BOBBY: No.
ALEX: It’s like— if this is in every corner of our lives.
BOBBY: Yes, this is an economic headwind, as the democratic party would say, a headwind. But RSNs, I think how it’s played out actually is kind of unique to baseball.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Because baseball—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —needed RSNs and capitalized on RSNs more than any sport, because they have innings, they have games, they fill RSNs. RSNs needed baseball, and baseball cashed in on RSNs. And now, it’s coming crashing down, and he’s procrastinated this problem a little bit too long for my liking. He didn’t do his strong arming.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: He didn’t do the dirty work. He didn’t take the low, dirty road to try to solve this problem earlier, but he has talked about how much of a priority it is to him to— to get rid of blackouts. You know? He’s been talking about this for the last two, three, four years, and yet it’s all kind of still a mess.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And that one I find hard to parse, because that matters a lot for, like, the 20, 30, 40-year future of Major League Baseball.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Is, like, how do people pay for it? How do people consume it? That you could argue— could overshadow, like, the entirety of his legacy, all of the CBA stuff, all of the pitch clock stuff, if in, like, 15 years, you just can’t watch baseball. Like, what was it all for?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You know what I mean? And so, I don’t know, I’m interested to see what you think about that. Let’s move forward five years.
ALEX: All right, let’s do it.
BOBBY: I’d like to throw an idea at you. What if we spend this section of the podcast talking about who we think is going to be the next commissioner and what that means for Rob Manfred’s legacy.
ALEX: Okay. All right.
BOBBY: Because five years from now, I honestly don’t think any of the things that we just talked about are going to be clarified. Like, I don’t know that the RSNs are going to be figured out. I don’t think sports betting is going to, like, totally collapse or totally take over the entire world. I think it’s honestly going to look very similar to now. Again, could be naive. It’ll just be like now but 25% worse, like everything in society. They’ll still be negotiating CBAs. Presumably, there will be— have been another lockout between now and then. But who he sets up to be the next commissioner between now and then is the most important part of the next five years for Rob Manfred, I think, because I— I actually don’t think he’s going to solve the RSN thing between now and then. Like Selig had to do, he’s going to have to choose someone to extend his legacy. I think we have a united front on who we think that person is going to be, but things can change. You know? We talked in The Power Brokers episode that we did with Michael Baumann. I think most people who think about these things, as often as we do, think that Morgan Sword will be the next commissioner. He is the executive vice-president of baseball operations, and he is thought of as right— as Rob Manfred’s right hand man right now. The— the literal deputy commissioner who was named Rob Manfred’s right hand man is Dan Halem. Now, this is the person who has been negotiating the last few CBAs in the role that Manfred was— was in, in the 2000s for Selig. There’s honestly a third path. I mean, a third path could be a different executive that we don’t know, who rises the ranks between now and then. But I think a more likely third path is, like, does an owner want to do this? Is there an owner out there who wants to take the Bud Selig route, who wants to be the Tom Werner in this next election cycle and try to wrestle back the— the public pedestal that is the MLB commissioner’s job, or is it just going to be a fucking suit forever? I think is a serious question that this next election cycle, the end of Rob Manfred’s tenure, will in large part start to answer.
ALEX: Yeah. I mean— and I hate to be, like, it suits all the way down, but like, I do think we’re in an era where it is less and less rewarding for an owner type to have such a public profile. Now, it’s different when you’re an owner versus the commissioner. Think owners, especially, have no real reason to put themselves out there right now, because they are largely reviled. I think— you know, and your mileage may vary, depending on who you’re—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —a fan of.
BOBBY: The more known you are, the more likely you are to have happened to you in the middle of New York City.
ALEX: Leaving that one in?
BOBBY: Yeah. Sure. Someone might come up and ask for an autograph.
ALEX: Exactly. That’s what you were referring to.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah. I don’t know— I don’t know how you can— I mean, on the one hand, I think you can look at Manfred’s legacy and be like, “I could have done a way better job.” But also like—
BOBBY: Like you or like an owner?
ALEX: Well, an— an owner and me, either one.
BOBBY: I don’t think— I’m just gonna— here’s a hot take for you. I think that you would not have done a good job as commissioner, and I think Rob Manfred is better at that job than you.
ALEX: The sport would have collapsed under my tenure, I want to be very clear about that.
BOBBY: Yeah. And maybe that’s for the better for society, but not better for baseball.
ALEX: Right. I’m going to the bargaining table being like, “I don’t know, guys. The guys on the other side make a really good point.”
BOBBY: Exactly, exactly. This is why I’m like, “Are you sure you want to promote me into middle management?”
ALEX: I think that they have probably seen that having a suit who can basically act as your human shield for everything that you do—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —actually serves yourself pretty well, right? Because people don’t talk about Major League Baseball is incompetent as a league. I mean, maybe they do, or whatever.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: But I feel like when you’re talking about Major League Baseball as an institution, you’re talking about Manfred. What is— what did Manfred say? What did Manfred do? What were the— you know, the Manfred man, right? Like all of these changes are so inextricably—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —tied to him, both good and bad.
BOBBY: Yeah, that’s a dumb-ass fucking rule. I wasn’t even thinking about that. I can’t believe you did that, dawg.
ALEX: I know, I know.
BOBBY: What the hell?
ALEX: Well, and that’s why I’m like, “I’m not totally sold on the idea that the Golden At-Bat won’t happen, because I’m like, “It’s exactly in the same vein.” Where I’m just—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: —like, “You’re just changing fundamentally a part of the game.”
BOBBY: Yeah. I— I sort of agree. Golden At-Bat but only in extra innings, and get rid of the Manfred Man. You say what?
ALEX: I say, is there a basketball game on tonight?
BOBBY: No, you don’t, because no one watches basketball, either. I hate to break it to you.
ALEX: That’s true.
BOBBY: Adam Silver just negotiated the biggest racketeering deal for TV money I’ve ever seen in my life, $12 billion. Nobody watches the games.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: For what? All these Honda ads just being watched by no one.
ALEX: Sounds like a pretty good commission to me. I don’t know.
BOBBY: I mean, yes.
ALEX: The amount of times that Silver/Stern come up in these conversations around commissionership is cra— like that is who they— that is the standard to which they hold themselves.
BOBBY: So it’s actually really interesting, because they— these two leagues have followed the exact same path, David Stern, much like Bud Selig, in slightly different ways, but they were the bombastic, bigger than life. They will show a personality, and then they were succeeded by boring lawyers who don’t have good communication skills, who stumble over their words and get themselves in trouble, who are willing to try new things from a technocrat’s perspective, not— seemingly not rooted in a love for the game and for whatever the fuck that is actually worth. Like, whatever. But you know what I mean. And who have, like, protected the business interests of their owners arguably better than their predecessors had. You know what I mean? Like, it’s actually shocking. And Silver was elected commissioner of the NBA six months before Manfred was elected commissioner of Major League Baseball.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And that’s why I’m totally with you when you say, like it suits all the way down, like we’re just in an era of society where business owners just don’t do the work themselves anymore, that they hire McKinsey to do it. Rob Manfred is a basically like in-house McKinsey for Major League Baseball.
ALEX: Well, Morgan Sword used to work for Oliver Wyman, which is just a management consulting company. Like, that is the only other thing that’s on his resume. Like, that’s it.
BOBBY: Do you want to reveal that you’re one degree removed from Morgan Sword now?
ALEX: No, I don’t.
BOBBY: You don’t?
ALEX: I don’t want to compromise our— our chances of getting him on.
BOBBY: Okay. I want him to come on. I think it’d be an interesting conversation.
ALEX: I— I really do, too. Genuinely open invite.
BOBBY: I— I’m open to hearing ideas. He— he would never come on and talk about what he would do as commissioner until he was actually commissioner, though, you know?
ALEX: Correct.
BOBBY: But I’m interested to hear about his work as executive vice-president of baseball ops, executive vice-president of baseball ops, whatever the fuck that means.
ALEX: Well, I don’t— maybe this is the time to reveal that we’re actually going to be hosting the debates for commissionership.
BOBBY: Uh-huh.
ALEX: And the lead up to the election.
BOBBY: On what channel?
ALEX: Right. On—
BOBBY: On A-Rod’s YouTube channel.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: Going live for the people.
ALEX: So, I mean, Morgan, this is the place to— to plead your case.
BOBBY: It doesn’t seem like Dan Halem really wants to be commissioner.
ALEX: No, I don’t think so.
BOBBY: No, he just doesn’t— he hasn’t really like— there’s been no, like, reading between the lines of that desire.
ALEX: Nope.
BOBBY: In the way that there has with Morgan Sword. Like, if you’re— even if you’re not one of these people who, like, follows this, this closely. If you’re an astute reader of the way that writers talk about these people, you realize that Dan Halem is just like a bureaucrat, and— and Sword is like more interested in amassing more power within the league office.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Can I throw a curveball at you?
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Please.
BOBBY: What about Theo Epstein as the next commissioner? I’m not the first person to bring this up.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: But in the interest of the conversation that we’ve been having, he’s both of these things. He is a suit.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: He went to Harvard, except he also won World Series with two baseball teams, and clearly loves baseball.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And he is so fucking handsome and so charismatic. And when he says stuff, people care.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: People listen. So he’s, like, kind of in a sort of, like, way that scares me, honestly. Like, he’s kind of both of these things.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: He’s, like, as smart and savvy as Manfred, more charismatic and interesting than Selig. What say you?
ALEX: So you’re saying he’s Pete Buttigieg?
BOBBY: I’d like Pete Buttigieg to win an election that is more than just South Bend mayor before we start talking about him, like, the next FDR. How about that?
ALEX: I think if you took a poll of baseball fans, who do you want as next commissioner, Morgan Sword or Theo Epstein? Epstein—
BOBBY: It’d be like 80 to 20.
ALEX: Yeah. It— that almost seems low.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: You know? Because like baseball, you—
BOBBY: I think if you just put out a Google form and said, “Who do you want to be the next commissioner?” I think Theo Epstein would still get, like, two-thirds of votes.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Even without suggesting his name at all.
ALEX: Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: I think people want that.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: For that reason alone, I don’t think they would make him commissioner. I think he’s like too much of a wild card.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But is he, like, kind of the only solution that satisfies both sides of this coin? Both constituencies, fans and ownership. I don’t know. I’m leaving out the players as a constituency here. I imagine that they would probably be okay with Theo versus Morgan Sword.
ALEX: Right. I mean, Theo is at least— I mean, he’s management still, but he’s been one step closer to the field than a lot of these guys, which is, you know—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —counts for something I would imagine.
BOBBY: Yeah. What’s Theo’s arbitration record like?
ALEX: That’s a good question.
BOBBY: I like how you looked around before answering that. Like, the answer was gonna come to you.
ALEX: Like, it was in my— like, I was like, “Have I ever thought about his arbitration record before?”
BOBBY: Have I ever put together a spreadsheet?
ALEX: Like, do I have a spreadsheet of this? I don’t remember.
BOBBY: I don’t know. It’s just a thought. Like, that’s— to me, he’s the only wild card. Like, he’s the only thing that— that essentially is standing between Morgan Sword in being the next commissioner.
ALEX: Yeah. Well, I mean, I— so again, we’re at this five years out from now in 2029, we are exiting the Manfred era, right? Who’s— who I think will be—
BOBBY: 2029. All right, man.
ALEX: Who I—
BOBBY: Sure.
ALEX: Who— he’ll be seen as this sort of modernizer, right? Who ferried baseball through a relatively prosperous financial time.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: But didn’t inspire fans, or players.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: And can Theo— Theo, again, is reputed as this forward thinking, analytical, you know, kind of modernizing figure, but who can actually talk the talk a little bit more.
BOBBY: For what it’s worth, I’ve heard that Morgan Sword can talk the talk.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: I’ve heard that he’s like a compelling, more human Manfred.
ALEX: Well, there is only one way to find out.
BOBBY: Come on here and use this as your megaphone, Mr. Sword. Make the case. Tipping Pitches year 12, by the way. 2029, Tipping Pitches year 12.
ALEX: He’s gonna be old enough to be— to get a handshake agreement with an MLB team by then.
[laughter]
BOBBY: That’s something that’s been sort of absent from this conversation.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Is Manfred just, like— just totally punting on the, you know, international human trafficking that’s going on with Major League Baseball?
ALEX: Yep.
BOBBY: Yeah, we’ll see if he figures that out in the next five years.
ALEX: I’m sure he will.
BOBBY: I’m sure he will. Okay. 20 years from now— oh, wait, actually, really quickly, I wanted to say, I think maybe there’s actually not an owner who even could do this right now, because they’re all so old. Like the—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —first owner that came to my mind, Dick Monfort, he’s 70, so there’d be no reason for him to become commissioner at 75.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Stu Sternberg and Mark Attanasio, the two people that came over to Rob’s team, and Rob has rewarded them in kind by advocating and fighting for policies that protect them at all costs. Sternberg is 65, Attanasio is 67. The only owners who I could think of under 70— sorry, rather under 60, who I don’t really see the benefit for either of them, one more than the other. Steinbrenner is 55 and I think Ilitch, Chris Ilitch, the owner of the Tigers is 57.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: I honestly don’t think either of them could get enough support from the small market teams to— to become commissioner, and Steinbrenner would never do it because he’s a lazy piece of shit. He doesn’t even want to run the Yankees.
ALEX: Right. I mean, here’s the thing too, is that owning the baseball team is a pretty good business.
BOBBY: What? Like, I do not know why you would want to leave your role as the chairperson of a cash cow to go and play the role of, like, organizer of all the individual cash cows. Like—
BOBBY: Right, right.
ALEX: When— I’m just gonna cash my checks.
BOBBY: Right. Good point.
ALEX: Maybe it’s true, but like, I think of a guy like—
BOBBY: Why does anyone want to become president, then?
ALEX: I— right. Yeah. Power.
BOBBY: I guess.
ALEX: I don’t know.
BOBBY: I don’t know.
ALEX: I— I— Tom Ricketts actually might be— I— I don’t know how old he is.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: He might be the youngest, like, you know, control person.
BOBBY: He’s not gonna become commissioner.
ALEX: But why would he become commissioner?
BOBBY: No. He’s too focused on real estate.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: What about— what about John Henry? He’s pretty old, right?
ALEX: Yeah, I think he’s like 75.
BOBBY: How old is Tom Werner now? Run it back.
ALEX: Why not?
BOBBY: It’s like when Biden ran for president the ’80s, and then he actually got elected 40 years later.
[laughter]
BOBBY: The one person— this is the last thing on this and then we’ll go to Rob Manfred 20 years from now.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: The one person— who, in your mind, is the one person who, if they became commissioner, it would burn baseball down fastest? Just like the total anarchist approach.
ALEX: The— like— like, would burn it down in a good— like, they would come in and be like slash and burn, scorched Earth, like—
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: Elon Musk.
BOBBY: I would say Jeff Luhnow now.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Can you imagine if Manfred was like, “This is my mea culpa to the Astros. I’m nominating Jeff Luhnow to succeed me as commissioner.” Okay, let’s move on.
ALEX: I love clicking on John Stanton’s Wikipedia page, and it’s just a photo of him and Hillary Clinton.
BOBBY: Just another—
ALEX: Anyway—
BOBBY: Just another example of John Stanton losing.
ALEX: Just saying some words.
BOBBY: 20 years from now, the year is 2044.
ALEX: Jesus Christ.
BOBBY: 2044, Blake Snell is still getting paid by the Dodgers for three more years. Shohei Ohtani does not live in California so that he can dodge California state income tax.
ALEX: And Trevor Bauer is still in mentions, begging for a job.
BOBBY: Hopefully Trevor Bauer is—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Exactly. The year is 2044, Major League Baseball, let’s just say, for the sake of this conversation, still exists. It still operates the same way that it does now. There’s probably two more teams, but there is a commissioner role, and future Alex and future Bobby, which is to say, two people that aren’t born yet.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Who meet at NYU, one of five colleges left in the United States of America, are doing a podcast about the legacy of Rob Manfred.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And how it relates to their current commissioner, the Rizzler.
ALEX: Goddamn it.
BOBBY: I’m sorry. What do you think is left, basically? Well, the way that I think about this is that things will just fall by the wayside. Details that we know about Rob Manfred now, we will not remember them, then, culturally. We, the royal we, not you and I, we’ll remember everything, every single thing about Rob Manfred’s life.
ALEX: Of course.
BOBBY: And we still won’t know what he thinks about Woodstock ’99.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: Damn it. Maybe he’ll put it in a book or something. That’d be the greatest day of my life. What do you think sticks? What do you think stands the test of time? How do you think we think about Rob Manfred in 20 years? And when answering this question, I want you to think, how do I think about the beginning of Bud Selig’s tenure? How do I think about Fay Vincent? How do I think about Kenesaw Mountain Landis? What are the four things that actually stick in my head about those things? Because this is really actually going to be like, by then, just bare bones. Like, there’ll probably—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —be two commissioners removed by then.
ALEX: Right. I— I hate to be like, Manfred won, but like, he sped up the game.
BOBBY: I think you’re right.
ALEX: Attendance went up, and folks mostly got used to a lot of the rule changes that led to these things. The pitch clock, hate to say it, worked, worked real well.
BOBBY: I think we will remember the pitch clock.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: I think we will remember the universal DH.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Which is something that hasn’t come up in this conversation yet, but—
ALEX: Right. Well, I think we—
BOBBY: —it’s a huge historical moment for baseball that they got— that they instituted the DH in the National League, something that the nine commissioners before Manfred never even talked about doing.
ALEX: Yeah. But I also think it will be just accepted by then. I—
BOBBY: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ALEX: Like, we’ll be far removed too many debates over the DH or anything like that.
BOBBY: Speak for yourself.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: I think we will remember the fact that baseball now streams on the internet because of Rob Manfred. The At-Bat app, it might not exist in that form yet, but he was the person under which MLB Advanced Media developed streaming technology that sold for $6 billion—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —to Disney. You know? The people who care about finance and business will care about that still in 20 years. And that is a technological advancement of the game. I think we will remember whatever the resolution is to RSNs, which I don’t know what that is yet.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And I think pretty much everything else we’ll— we’ll forget by then.
ALEX: Yeah. I mean, I think it—
BOBBY: Actually, sorry, I apologize. The Astros sign sealing scandal, I think—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —will be in the first line of his commissionership obituary.
ALEX: Yes. Yeah. I completely agree.
BOBBY: So he— I— I think he will be remembered as a good commissioner.
ALEX: I— I think— I, unfortunately, think so. I— he— we also—
BOBBY: Because all this stuff about how he talks and the quotes and stuff like, that’s— that’s gone. That’s just his [1:43:20]
ALEX: Well, this is what I’m— this is what I’m saying, right? It’s like, when we’re in the weeds of this stuff every day, like, it’s so easy to be like, “Look at the— look at this man.” You know? “Look at my commissioner, dawg.”
BOBBY: The fact— quote, the fact that, you know, “I don’t wear an I love baseball tattoo on my forehead doesn’t mean that I don’t love the game.” No one will remember that.
ALEX: No. No one will— I mean, you and I will.
BOBBY: Yeah, sure.
ALEX: I— I also think, you know, we have a few years for the automated strike zone, which is—
BOBBY: Oh, great call.
ALEX: —is maybe the other—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —sort of big piece that could fundamentally change the landscape of the game. But I do think, like, he will be remembered as the rule change guy.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And like that created a new era.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I mean, there have been all these other sort of mini scandals that have happened, you know? Again, I think that, like—
BOBBY: The A’s?
ALEX: I think for A’s fans, he’s going to be remembered as the commissioner who let the A’s leave Oakland.
BOBBY: Yeah. But I think a lot of that animus will go towards John Fisher.
ALEX: I do— I think so, too. We’ve had myriad ball juicing scandals, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —but I think that’ll be kind of for the real heads.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: “Hey, remember when the baseball was inconsistent in, like, the mid-2010s?”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Everything else kind of comes out in the wash.
BOBBY: Is that— is that bleak to you, or does it kind of not matter?
ALEX: I mean, the— the other element of it is like labor relations too, right? And, like, what happens at the next CBA.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: But barring a huge strike, right? Barring something like 1994, I don’t— I— I find it hard to believe that anything so dire would happen that it would, you know, completely tarnish his legacy. Even those folks like you and I think about it— think about him as, like, not being the— the labor commissioner.
BOBBY: So— okay. Here’s what I think about that, I don’t think— I don’t think anything that’s been done when it comes to labor relations. And this is the— this is the true irony of Manfred’s commissionership, is that he is the labor guy, and everybody thinks of him as the rule change guy.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But his— 98% of his personality is labor relations and 2% is like, “I want to change the pace of play.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And then the pace of play is the thing that people care about. I don’t think anything that he has done for labor relations pierces the bubble that we are in. I think when people think about labor relations, they’re just, “Eh, both sides, millionaires versus billionaires.”
ALEX: Yep.
BOBBY: And I think that that will be the legacy. I don’t think that people are going to be like, “He didn’t solve labor relations.”
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: I don’t think nobody’s going to care—
ALEX: No one cares.
BOBBY: —about that stuff. Unless, like, I am— am operating under the assumption that there will be another lockout when the next CBA expires, and I think it will follow a very similar path to the one that this did. Prior to, like, the MLBPA mutiny that then was resolved in keeping leadership intact, the exact same way that it has been run for the last 10 years or whatever. I might have said, “Okay, maybe there is a radical wing of the MLBPA that’s like, “If they lock us out next time, fuck it. Like, we’ll miss a whole season. We’re not afraid.” I actually don’t think that that is the tone and tenor right now of the— of labor relations. And so, I mean, I’d love to be proven wrong if— if someone at MLBPA is listening to this and feels differently, please send someone over to us to talk about why that might be the case. But I don’t— I just don’t think that there’s, like, total rank and file buy-in on the idea of missing, like, 80 games in order to break the lockout next time around.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And so I think they’re just kind of— the lesson that MLB learned from this last time is lock them out and follow the exact same playbook. And unless they miss, like, a lot of games, that will not be part of his legacy 20 years from now.
ALEX: Yep.
BOBBY: Nobody will remember and nobody will care. The only reason that it’s part of Selig’s legacy is because they didn’t have playoffs.
ALEX: Right, because we missed the World Series.
BOBBY: Yes, that’s it. It’s the only reason. And even if we hadn’t— if we hadn’t missed the World Series and we just missed 30 games, I think people wouldn’t even care.
ALEX: I— yes.
BOBBY: So—
ALEX: I completely agree.
BOBBY: Like, I mean, it’s— it’s funny to think about it that way, because our podcast is so oriented around labor relations in baseball. But, like, guess what? Like, America doesn’t care about labor history. And maybe that’s a good time to talk about what next week’s episode is about.
ALEX: Yeah. That’s great.
BOBBY: Do you want to talk about Manfred anymore? Is there anything else that you want to— you want to get into, Rob the person? What— what is like post-commissioner Rob’s career like? What do you think?
ALEX: Right. A lot of, like, speaking gigs and like—
BOBBY: Do you think he’s gonna come on Tipping Pitches after he retires?
ALEX: I mean—
BOBBY: To promote a book or something?
ALEX: He should. I think you’ll see him at a lot of like, you know, Cornell— Harvard Law Review—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —talks.
BOBBY: Yeah, yeah. Do you think he’ll have a pod?
ALEX: He doesn’t strike me as a— as a— as a real podcaster.
BOBBY: It’s not so easy to retire and become a podcaster as Joe West has proven.
ALEX: It’s true.
BOBBY: It’s harder than you think.
ALEX: It’s harder than you think.
BOBBY: I’ll give him a pod on our future podcast network.
ALEX: Of course.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah. The— the—
BOBBY: The Rob Manfred years.
ALEX: The Manfred years.
BOBBY: From his— straight from the horse’s—
ALEX: From the horse’s mouth. This was good. I think that I—
BOBBY: Sponsored by Slam Corp.
ALEX: I mean, I hope that this was a fruitful exercise for— for you. I think it wa— was for— for me, and I hope it was meaningful for the listeners, and sort of documenting how we got to the point of this sort of technocratic, like, maneuver—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —in chief.
BOBBY: The tinkerer in chief.
ALEX: Exactly. Because I— I really— I do think that, like, Manfred has become such a meme and— of himself that we forget to sort of look at where he came from and how that influenced the decision that he’s made today, and how those—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: —influenced those decisions today.
BOBBY: And how Woodstock ’99 might have impacted his commissioner tenure. Yeah.
ALEX: Exactly. There’s one glaring question—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —out of this episode, so if you, the listener, know the answer—
BOBBY: Did he like the corn set? What does he think about nu metal?
ALEX: Rob Manfred dropped the Spotify wrapped.
BOBBY: Is Fred Durst a good rapper?
ALEX: Yes. Well, we know the answer to that one.
BOBBY: Yeah, a good director as well.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: All right. Next week on the show, we’re gonna kind of look at Rob Manfred’s polar opposite.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And talk about somebody who, you know, like we just referenced, labor history is often lost to time. And I don’t think his legacy is lost on this show, by any means, and in certain circles of the baseball, internet, and media, but I think in the larger baseball and social conversation, his legacy is— is vastly underrated and that— that man is named Marvin Miller. The— the leader and founder of the Major League Baseball Players Association, a extremely relevant— historical labor figure in his own right, even if you set aside the existence of the Major League Baseball Players Association. We’re gonna have a conversation about his— I mean, yes, how he got into baseball and how— and the forming of the MLBPA. But also, just like— I’m— I’m hoping that the conversation that we have— and we’re gonna bring a guest on for this. I’m hoping that the conversation that we have also just widens the— widens the scope, widen— widens the lens and talks about what that labor win, the formation of the MLBPA, free agency, Curt Flood, all of these things that happened in the early days of organized labor in the baseball world. Like, what that meant to labor at the time in the 1960s in America. A decade and a time period in which organized labor was much part— a much bigger part of the conversation in the national consciousness, but also they probably didn’t know it at the time, was kind of like the beginning of the end for unions, honestly. And so I want to talk about just Marvin Miller’s legacy on baseball and labor.
ALEX: Yeah. I’m really excited for this. It feels like long overdue, I think. We—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —talked about him and talked around him, but he’s so foundational to a lot of the things that come up on the show and a lot of the issues that we think about day in and day out around the game. So it’s time for the Marvin Miller hour.
BOBBY: Marvin Miller has a— a book called A Whole Different Ball Game, which is kind of like a autobiography of his life and career, and obviously, pulls heavily from his experience in baseball and the formation of the Major League Baseball Players Association. So— so if you’re interested in that, you know, maybe check that some of that book out before—
ALEX: Unofficial Tipping Pitches book club.
BOBBY: Right. Maybe check some of that book out before our conversation or before you check out our conversation next week. Speaking of Tipping Pitches book club, in just two days’ time, we will be doing a Patreon episode, a book club episode about Stealing Home by Eric Nusbaum. The book about how the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and the displacement of the people who were living in Chavez Ravine at the time, and how, you know, how the Dodgers went about building their stadium, basically. Eric is going to join us on the pod, which we’re really excited about. So that conversation will be, you know, about 20 minutes of me and Alex talking about our feelings about the book, the things that stuck with us, the things that we didn’t know, the things that we did know but maybe didn’t know the— the super deep details about. And then we’re going to bring Eric on and we’re going to ask some questions to him about why this story, what was it like to report this? What were the hardest things? Et cetera, et cetera. So if you have questions for Eric, you know, you can drop them to us in Slack, or email us tippingpitchespod@gmail.com, or message us on Patreon, or whatever. Like I said, that’s going to be a Patreon episode later this week. So if you’re not a patron and you’re interested in that, go check out the options, patreon.com/tippingpitches, three different tiers. The top tier gets you access to those bonus episodes. The other two tiers gets you access to some other things. Speaking of the top tier, holiday cards.
ALEX: They’re coming.
BOBBY: The gears are turning.
ALEX: The— the gears are turning.
BOBBY: We have a design, and we’re going to place an order for those, and then we’re going to write them. I just say that now just for a level of personal accountability. So if you’re a— a patron at the top tier, you also get a handwritten holiday card from us. So go ahead and go into Patreon and just make sure that the address you have listed there— well, first of all that there is an address, and second of all, that that’s the one that you’d like us to send that holiday card to. I think that’s all I got.
ALEX: That’s all I got, too. I— I enjoyed doing this with you.
BOBBY: Manfred years.
ALEX: The Manfred years.
BOBBY: Not quite as fun as Alex Rodriguez’s rules to life, but maybe just as academic.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Thank you everybody for listening. We’ll be back later this week on Patreon and next week with the conversation about Marvin Miller’s legacy.
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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