The 2026 Banned Topics. Plus: The People’s Team (feat. A.M. Gittlitz)

(upbeat music) Tell us a little bit about what you saw and being able to relay that message to Korra when you watch Kimberl pitch and kind of help out so he wasn't tipping his pitches. - So tipping pitches, we hear about it all the time. - People at home understand what tipping pitches all about. - It's amazing. - Yeah, that's remarkable. (upbeat music) - Alex, have you ever won an online auction? What a way to be back. What a way to be back after a couple of weeks of banked episodes. Like just something on eBay count? Yes, yeah. - I would argue that's the only way. - I'm very example. - What other online forums are you bidding on things? - No, this is derailed. - You will, you know, like government surplus auctions, estate auctions. - Right. - I'm in the auction world. Yes, I have, but very, very minor items. Okay. The reason I ask this is because currently, there is an item that I would like to acquire. And it is being bid on on the internet. As we speak, it has one day, seven hours, 53 minutes and 12 seconds, 11 seconds, 10 seconds, nine seconds. - This is gonna be the longest episode we've ever done. - Maybe not though. On the auction, that's how much time is left on the auction. The item has been viewed 20,736 times. The current bid is $3,760. Now, you might be sitting there saying, that sounds like a lot, but we're a business. You know, this is an investment. - Yep. - And so I ask you, how much money are you willing to allow me to bid for the team Italy espresso machine from the world-based ball classic in which they wrote their numbers on the side after players hit home runs to celebrate. - I, you have a blank check for me on that one. - A blank check. - Well, 'cause here's the thing, right, is it's actually functional. Like it's not like you are spending thousands of dollars on a piece of memorabilia that's gonna sit on a shelf somewhere. Like we're putting this espresso machine to work. You plan to use it in the studio. - Oh, yeah. - Okay, great. - What else are you gonna do? Just look at it. - It's an espresso, so I'm like, I'm not excited about it. - $5,000 for an espresso, but like, I think it's kind of a legendary move if we get this. - It is a legendary move. - Is it a good idea to spend $5,000 of the businesses money on this? I mean, if not this, what? Right, if we're not spending all of the money that we make on the podcast in a year, on an espresso, then what's going on? Well, say, oh my gosh. So what's the number? What's the number that I can play? 'Cause I could place this bid right now, live on the podcast. All I have to do is log into my M.O.B account. Did you even know there was an auctions.mlb.com? Were you even aware of this? Am I raising the price of this, by the way, as you could tell, the caffeine is kicking in for me right now, so I probably don't need this item, but am I raising the price for this item by even talking about it on our podcast? - It's quite possible. - Yes. - You think there's a big way. - But that's why, - But that's why, - I think that's why, - The audience of this podcast, that's like, we're gonna throw it, we're gonna throw down a $100,000. - Yeah, but that's why I'm shorting the, (laughs) - The value of it. - On Polymarket? - Yeah, exactly. - By the way, this is gonna be a four hour episode of this podcast. - Oh my God. - We have so much to talk about. - Polymarket. - We got the entire WBC. We have My Trip to Japan and going to a WBC game. We have a lot of Otaniads for me to recap to you. - That's a great, great, great, great, great. - I can't wait. We have an interview with our friend, Andy Gitlitz, who wrote a book about the Metz and Class Struggle. And we have the band topics all coming up later on this show, but we had to start with spending thousands of dollars on auctions.mob.com. - Right, of course. I think I actually have flipped the rue there before because you can like, - Of course, of course. - Because of course. Because you can just like buy stuff from teams that like they don't need anymore. - Right. - Like relievers from the A's or something. (laughs) - Just for your local men's league, you can acquire Lutra Vino for the low, low price of $7500. - Lutra Vino. - You like that one, don't you? - I did like that one. Lutra Vino always sticks in my head because he looks exactly like Kevin O'Connor. He looks kind of like Chad Kevin O'Connor. So whenever I would see him, I'd be like, "There's Kevin O'Connor, my colleague." - Roughly the same politics too. - Yeah, you weren't expecting Lutra Vino and Kevin O'Connor in the intro of the pod, but that's how I keep things fresh between them. - That is, we've been off for two and a half weeks. I mean, the pod hasn't been off. I think we kept us satiated, but some of our best stuff ever. - Some of our books. - Some of our books. - I could really, honestly. But this is what I've come to expect. This is what I know and love about you and why I sit down here every week 'cause I know you're gonna hit me with something that I just had not thought about. All that to say, I think five is my number. $5,000. - Yeah. - By the way, this is just, this is not $5,000 that's just going to team Italy. Vinnie Pasquantino confirmed on X, the everything app, reliable source for information. Just so everyone knows, the proceeds from this will be going to SAARC, Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center. They provide service for children, teens, and adults with autism. This was a group decision because the center has helped some people that are a part of our team. Thank you for the support. - It's for good cause. It's for good cause for us to acquire the team Italy espresso. - You know what? I was gonna do it without it being for a good cause, but you know. - It's $5,000 too high. Do we even need to put in the pit in that high? How does this even work? Is what I'm curious to learn. This is not good information. - The espresso machine or the process of placing a bit, the process of placing a bit. - Okay. All right, I'm gonna figure this out after we get off there. 5,000, all right. You heard it your first. We're placing the win bid for $5,000 for the team Italy espresso machine. People aren't gonna know. By the time this podcast publishes, people aren't gonna know if we get it or not. - That's true. I am really hoping that I'm hopping on a plane in a few hours and I really hope I get a fraud alert once I touched out. That's the goal. - Fraud alert. - I want our bank account to be like, whoa, you guys never spend this much money. What's going on here? That's how I'm gonna learn, I think. You're right that we don't spend that much money on the bank account. We spend like $40 at a time for like when we eat dinner and talk about what we're gonna talk about on the show next week. Oh wow. Okay. You wanna do the rest of the podcast? - I do. How do we do the intro to the show again? Do you wanna do the intro? Just 'cause we've been on the way for a while. - So hi, hello everyone. Thanks, thank you all for being here. And this is what we do, right? We do an appeal to folks. - Yes. - So boy, we've got a great show for you today, everyone and live from New York. It's Saturday night. - I'm just waiting for the part where I'm supposed to say my name. - Hello. - I'm waiting. - I'm waiting. - I'm waiting. - I'm waiting. - I am Alex Bezley. I'm Bobby Wack. And you are listening to Tipping Pitches. (upbeat music) It's funny because we haven't done the podcast in a month. So we're shaking off the rest a little bit. The energy was shaking off the rest. But the podcast has just been coming out like normal. So this is just like, this sounds particularly crazy to people, but for no reason. We got a lot of new patrons. I'm gonna have to read all of those names because it's been several weeks since we did the podcast. - Yeah. - And also we put a big episode out on Patreon. The extended version and put it out a week early by the way, which doesn't really help much now in the present. But it would have helped you a couple of weeks ago if you signed up. The extended version of the stadium sponsors draft featuring your friend and mine, Michael Bauman. And a great friend to the Tipping Pitches community, Matthew Roberson. What does it say about our listenership that they've just flocked to him so deeply? - A lot of pro Roberson comments in the Slack these days. I think we're gonna have to start tempering his appearances. I'd like, you know, he comes on like once a year. (laughing) Twice a year. We are gonna do, by the way, we are gonna do Taste Test part two and he is gonna be a part of it. - Oh yes. - I'm just telling people now. Okay, new patrons. Thank you to Nathaniel Ben, mob closet, you know, mob closet. The name you might have when you're signing up for the tipping pitches, Patreon, Zach, Nat, C, Frank, Jacob, Shwintowen, Zachary, Kevin, Jonathan, Marissa, Steven, JB, Morrisonic podcast, Joe, Ian, Kevin, Brandon, Alexis, Samuel, Adam, JP, Martin, Joseph, Hannah, Steven, Matthew, and Ennerhood. - A squad. - It's quite a squad. Sorry if I missed anyone. Sometimes the Patreon audience manager gets a little finicky. We're working on it over a Patreon enterprise. - No, I don't care. - I don't careful, careful what you say. - No, I can be, I can be forced coming. I can be transparent. I could be me. Speaking as a creator right now, not as a Patreon employee. What do we need to talk about before we go to the band topics and to our interview with Andy? - Well, I think that you're like, "We gotta do this." - Well, I need to hear about Japan obviously. And I say this because-- - So you don't want to spend 20 minutes talking about the players' new heights, is what you're saying. Like that everyone is three inches shorter now because of A.D. - Oh my god. - We really do have three. It really is so much. - Do we just do a second episode this week? - I mean, yeah. - Sure. - We probably owe a Patreon episode this week. So maybe we could just-- - The overflow episode. - Yeah, we have players new heights. We have, you, I want you to regale me about regale. We love to regale here on this podcast. As we know, I can even think to do. - I wouldn't know how to do anything but regale. - What I was like watching a world baseball classic in person, in Japan. - Polly market, I guess. I don't know. - What's there to say about that? It's not good. - A.R.D. put out a list of his dream lineup of current M.O.B. players today. - Yeah, he did. - That feels like something that's worth discussion. All right, I'll start by talking about being in the last baseball loving country in Japan. They love baseball. - Yeah. - It is foreign away the biggest sport in Japan. And Otani is foreign away the most famous person in that country. I'm far from the first person to share this observation on the podcast. I am obviously far from the first nearly 30-year-old white dude to go over to Japan and be like, they got some stuff figured out over there. But they got some stuff figured out. - We got Ben Verlander at home here on Tipping Pitches. - How dare you. - They got some stuff figured out over there. Particularly when it comes to baseball, I had a great trip. I had a lot of fun taking photos of Otani holding up green tea of Otani holding up on a giri to his mouth of Otani holding up his watch of Otani wearing his Hugo boss curated collection. - Yeah. - But aside from that, they have a great hall of fame. It's actually really funny that I went to the Japanese baseball hall of fame before I went to the American baseball hall of fame. The fact that neither of us have been to the hall of fame is quite funny. We've been doing a baseball podcast for almost a decade. Just an awesome time. I had a great time. From the game, I went to South Korea versus Australia. South Korea won that game to advance to the quarterfinals in eliminate Australia, which I think was honestly a little bit of an upside. Australia had been playing better to that point and South Korea had not been so great. This is obviously well in the past. We don't really need to recap the tournament. Everyone has had their take cycles about the WBC and I don't feel the need to enter myself into those take cycles, but from an observational perspective, my time at the Tokyo Dome. My first observation that I wanna share with you is as you might imagine at a world-based well-classic event, there are a lot of MLB hats. However, it became apparent pretty quickly that I was not gonna see every team's MLB hat. Like you start to see the big ones. Obviously Dodgers, Yankees. I saw those hats everywhere, all over Tokyo. Of course. And then of course there are the other teams where there are active Japanese players on the roster where you expect to see some of those hats, you know, Red Sox. Giants? Well, Red Sox, I don't think the Giants have an active Japanese player today. However, I was at a South Korea game. So Giants was obviously in play here. Okay, yeah. The Mets, just to quote I sang, like you expect to see all of those. And I saw a number of those hats. Though I only think only like one or two Mets hats, which is surprising to me. They hate the Mets in Tokyo. (laughs) The Mets are canceled in Tokyo. And also, by the way, the Tokyo Dome is where the Yomayuri Giants play. And so the Giants, the Giants think they share a logo, like they share a, not really, but like it's a very similar aesthetic. So like Giants, American Giants, Japanese, like there's a sort of handshake situation going on there. So there's a lot of Giants hats. Right. And sometimes it was hard to even tell from afar whether it was like a Tokyo Giants hat or like a San Francisco Giants hat. It's a very road Giants environment. (laughs) Here are all the other hats that we sell. Yes. Oh my God. The reporting you tune in for folks. Blue Jays, they have an active Japanese player. Love it. Cubs. Say I says, "Ouki." Reds. How about that? Have had some Japanese players over the years, but I got a sad didn't expect to see a reds hat. And these are in order that we saw that, by the way. So reds within the first three, braves, that hat was being worn by a white guy, Yankees. Reds socks. Obviously. Tigers. Tigers. The obligatory one man wearing an A's hat. He was there. Obviously. He's everywhere. I see him everywhere. It's the same guy every time. It is the same guy. Obviously simulation theory, bro. Dodgers. It took us till the ninth hat to see a Dodgers hat. That's honestly downright shocking to me. But then we proceeded to see about 55 other ones. So I think it was a fluke. The 10th M.O.B logo hat that I saw. Expose. Wow. Uh-huh. Real ball-nowers over there. Expose. Then I saw the Giants. Then Mariners. I hissly. Yeah. Padres. You Darvish still active. Who knows? Not shorts. That was the last team he played for. (laughs) Villies. Wow. Angels. And then finally pulling in the end of the list was the Mets. 15 teams I did not see in my time at the Tokyo. I don't. Didn't make it through. And then I have to assume there were also folks wearing like hats of the teams. They're of teams in NPB or maybe like Tau Kriya hats or whatever. Right, exactly. So there was a lot of people. I would say Merch as well. 15 Major League Baseball teams represented at an Australia South Korea game. Not bad. Yeah. I was like, "What's the most confident that I will not see?" Like if I had to, if I was in a sort of one of those kind of fantasy leagues where you have to choose the loser every week, you know? Like you have to choose a team that loses every week. If I was in one of those leagues, which team would I, and what order would I go in that I would feel confident? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. and that I would feel confident. You know, the team that came to mind, I mean, I was like, "There's no way I'm seeing this hat." And this. - What? - I have my thoughts, but Cleveland guardians. - Zero percent chance to see the Cleveland guardians hat! In my head at least. I don't know why, but I was like, "If anything, we're going to see some random white dude wearing "chef Wahoo hat, but I'm not, we don't count this." - In a way, that's not canon anymore. I was gonna say I thought the pirates might be up there as well. - Yeah, I know they have had some Japanese representation over the years, but raise, I didn't expect to see a raise hat. - Yeah. - It remains shocking to me that the A's have such a cultural footprint across the globe. Like you can't go to any baseball game, no matter the country without seeing someone wearing an A's hat. - No, I know. Well, I see A's hats out, and partially I'm like looking for them. You know, I said, my brain is just wired to see any A's hat in like a hundred foot radius. - Like a Conor O'Malley video, like running through the streets, looking for A's hats. - A selfie camera being like, "Where are you John Fisher?" - Just don't use AI in the video dude. - That's fucked, dude. - We just ruined the whole segment. Now I need to do an hour on this. Do you know how many takes I have about this? - I would love to hear any and all of them. Please off air. It's where I would like to discuss the Conor O'Malley AI usage. - Pyproc theory, but for John Fisher, it's funny. We should make that video. - We should make that video. Maybe a little crossover episode. - So. - With Conor O'Malley's Twitter feed. One other teams are lowest on your list. I probably would have included reds on that list. Now I'm just struggling to think of what other teams there are. The other thing about the reds. The other thing about the reds, Marlins is another one that would be kind of out of left field. Yeah. I felt confident about not seeing on Marlins. The other thing about the reds though is that similar to the Tokyo Yomayuri Giants and the San Francisco Giants, the reds share a logo and color scheme with the reds. The Hiroshima Carp. Oh. So it was a reds hat. Like it did say reds, but it also is sort of an interconnected piece of some brand sharing. By the way, I'd like to announce to you and the listeners here on the podcast that I've adopted the Hiroshima Carp as my team. Oh. And PB team. That's big. I will say I went in with no previously held opinions on who I would be a fan of. And then PB and I came away feeling strongly about the Hiroshima Carp. Let's go. Had. Why? A lot of reasons. Okay. All right. Number one. They have a long story history of being sort of like pro community. Like one of the sort of anti business teams. They were the, I think the last or one of the last teams to adopt the, you know, corporate sponsored ownership model in NPB. They held out for a long time as a community based team. Their stadium was like sort of a woke municipal project through which it helped to also fund like, I think like access to baseball for members and like green space for members of the city. I was just really one over. I was one over by the vibe, the aesthetic, the history of the team in my time visiting the Japanese baseball Hall of Fame. But also I, you know, I saw the stadium. I didn't get to go in, but I saw the stadium when I was in Hiroshima. And I'm just saying, I'm in. That's my squad. Let's go. Carp is a great team name. Carp. I mean, Carp is a great team name. I love fish. Like this. We love fish. And also I love a plural that doesn't actually end in S, you know, beautiful. I actually hate that one. It's an American team. But for the carp, for the carp, it works. It just works. Just us. Let's go. What are they? The carp. Let's go. Carp rolls off the tongue. It does roll off the tongue. You want me to dump the rest of the notebook? Yeah. Yeah. Let's hit the highlights. Okay. Obviously music in the stadium. I did take down notes about all. All of the songs, all the notable songs that I heard here are the songs. Lincoln Park. Sundress struck by ACDC. Our favorite song, Bang Bang Bang. I don't know who that song is by, but you and I have a deep story to history with that song. It's true. Are you going to be my girl by jet? Wow. And that that song. Cherry tree. You know that one? The big black horse and the cherry tree. Can you home a few bars for me? You know, it's called black horse and the cherry tree by KT Tunstall. You know it. I believe you. You know it if you heard it. Come on. The listeners are like, come on. I know. If it's a song that's being played at a baseball stadium, I have to assume I've heard it before. Okay. Here's what else about the experience of being in the stadium at the Tokyo Dome. Yeah. They play a whistle when a foul ball is coming towards your section. So like if someone hits a foul ball into the right field stands. Through the speakers, a whistle will play from the right field speakers to a little piece of the ball is coming. You're like, Hey, heads up. Yeah. And it's localized. It's like, Oh, that's our whistle that's playing right now. I mean, it's all the same whistle, but like I think someone is up there pressing a button being like, that's the right field foul ball. Yeah. Like somebody's in charge of safety to that. I love that. I thought that was neat. That was a clever idea. They don't have high nets all around the outfield. So I think it's a whilst part of that choice. It's being a real place. The exact. Zach Campbell doesn't doesn't need that. I need I need a whistle if Zach Campbell ever enters my section personally. That's good. They were playing. Walk it like I talk it when someone would walk. They hit the soundboard playing jump in the Drake song when there was a jumping catch by the South Korea third baseman. Like he jumped up and he caught a line drive and they played jump man almost immediately. They were really really impressive. On the scoreboard, they have rather than it being one big LED screen, they still have the individual lights that light up. So like for ball strikes and outs, the light is like a collection of LED bulbs and it lights up. That's so cool. That's really cool. That's so cool. Moreover, I think just in general, it's the best acoustics of any stadium I've ever been to. It's all indoors. So that's part of it. But it makes you feel like you're much closer to the game because of the way that it sounds. I don't know how or why that's the case necessarily. I know I teased to see you overtax that I had a hot take. You did. That I had to be salivating in my time sitting at the top. I believe that we should bring turf back. And I believe that all indoor stadiums, if you have any indoor component to your stadium, like if the roof closes at all, I think you should have turf instead of real grass. Why? Because it looks better aesthetically when you're inside looks better. Yeah. Okay. Here's my take. So real grass feels better. And in a perfect world like we'd have real grass everywhere. We'd play outside baseball's an outdoor game. Let me just get that out of the way ahead of time before people are mad in my mentions. Okay. Before people are commenting on this podcast getting frustrated. When you're inside, you have a roof. So the lighting is kind of kind of different. It feels like exceptionally bright. There's no night sky that you're looking out to. You're just looking up at a roof. One thing about that and maybe it's just 80s and 90s nostalgia from you. Something about that, my brain wants the grass and was really satisfied by the grass being that bright green turf color that you can't get from real grass. Nor you wouldn't want to have that from real grass because it would be unearthing. I really feel like it looks better to have an indoor stadium have fake grass. Because then you're not like trying to hide or trick the viewer or anything. You're like, we're indoors. We're playing indoors. This is turf. This is my actual take. I think turf books better. We don't have color in society anymore. We don't have bright colors. So I get them had a ton of bright colors. The grass is bright and it's all grass. There is dirt on the infield, but it's like very little. It's used to spread. Is it the one where it's like there's just dirt around the bases? Yes. Yes. I see the aesthetic. I'm sorry. I don't know what to tell you. Real grass is for losers. Let's bring back dirt. I think the environmental impact we can have Alex, you're an environmental. That's the one thing that I think is holding me back from a full, throated defense of grass. I do think obviously it, the turf doesn't really work in outdoor stadiums. I think those aesthetics are weird and also like from a player's safety perspective. It just gets super hot sometimes. You know, you know that you know the temperature of turf and how it changes. A classic thing that I'm deeply familiar with. Yes. Go ahead and refute it. It's futurist. The turf is futurist. Don't be against progress. All right. You must do your pro DH then, right? Of course, if we're talking about evolutions of the game, this is a classic, classic thing to do when you know you're going to lose an argument is just start arguing about something else. It says nothing to do with the DH. And by the way, I think the MPB doesn't need in one of the leagues, they still don't even have a DH. So they're still keeping baseball pure over there. But the reason I bring it up is because I think that playing baseball on grass is the purest distillation of the game. Well, I like, I think aesthetically turf doesn't look good. I think it looks fake to be clear. It only looks good inside. That's the take. The take is that it only looks good when you're inside. If we're already going to be playing like, we're not fooling anyone in Marlon Stadium. Like, it's not a real place that looks like a pool. It looks like a pool. We have real sod out there. Like, stop. Stop. It's absurd. It's absurd. Either open the roof or put turf. That's my take. You want something that is easy and cheap to maintain from an ownership perspective, right? I want to keep operating costs low. Yes. You right. You want to fire all the grounds, keepers. Yes. I get it. I see the vision and I don't hate it. Thank you. I appreciate you supporting my vision. Look, if MLB is dead set on moving teams to places where you shouldn't be outside in the summer, the operative season for their sport. I think this should just consider what I'm saying. Should consider learning a little bit. The Tokyo Doe was beautiful in general, even from the outside, the building, the construction of the building, it looks like a big cloud. It looks like a cloud. - Interesting. - I love a big cloud. - Yeah. (laughs) - Don't know what else to say to that. That's cool. Haven't been there, haven't seen it myself. Okay. Do you feel like we need to talk about Polymarket or do we have time in the future to talk about Polymarket? I think we have time in the future to talk about Polymarket. Here's the thing, it's not good. Well, we also already talked about it because when Rand for example did it, it was like that just means that you're doing it, that it's gonna happen. Yes, yeah. So I think people probably know where we stand on that, and we will continue to talk about it through the baseball season. Maybe we'll ask unnamed large reporter next weekend on the podcast if he still comes on. What do you think is about Polymarket? All right, are you ready to ban some topics? - I am. I'm simply frothing at the mouth. You're frothing. You love to not talk about stuff. That I do. - So you're number one. - It's my favorite thing in the world. - Yeah. - Is ban topics a good segment still? - I don't know if it was ever a good segment to begin with, but this is sort of our lot in life now. It's spring rolls around and all of a sudden I gotta find three new things to not talk about for the rest of the year. - Are we just still doing this because it went really well the first time? - I think so, but we've gotten good feedback on it over the years. - It's spring rolls around. It's ban topics, bingo card, and (beep) and I'm gonna believe that name. So the stairs don't know that I'm talking about unnamed large media, large baseball reporter, large national baseball reporter. - I don't know. - Even that suit to give them too much. - This you mean, Reducci getting into it? There was some season preview content. - I mean, I think that are gonna be a lot of people that are disappointed that it's not nine-year. - Well, what I was gonna say is, if we're in the interest, which is like spoiling it right here, it is sort of fitting, it is fitting that we would have Ben Verlander onto the pod a week after doing ban topics, he famously was a subject of the banned topics a couple of years ago, and frankly, it's time to bear the hatchet. - You booked a Verlander? I have a conflict, dude. I booked Talkin' Jake at the same time. I'm not gonna be able to be part of the part. All right, off to a relicking start here. Okay, banned topics. If you're listening to this for the first time, I'm sorry that it's gonna be a little bit confusing, but I think that you'll catch up. You'll get up to speed with us. It's pretty straightforward. I'm just mean that it's gonna be confusing when I run through the historical context here. It's gonna be hard to follow. But in 2023 was the first year we did this. Alex and I, you're going all the way back. Alex and I each banned three topics, and then we have subsequently banned three topics every year, where we just, this is the last time that we can talk about that thing. For the calendar year. For the calendar. Or the same. For like till the next time we do this extra time. In 2023, Alex banned owner's fanning surprise over payroll. Fernando Tati, I think it's funny to hear it see this historical context like what did we, what was even worth abandoning at the time. Discourse over Fernando Tati's juniors contract. And famously, the thing that made the segment, you banned rule changes. Yes. Which I just want to say completely vindicated. 100% on that one. Like more than vindicated. I think that like you should be lauded for it. (laughing) Not even on trial, we're like giving you a medal of freedom over it. I banned discussion of the raised front office. A theme throughout the history of this exercise is that I banned things that only I want to talk about to prevent myself from talking about them. Discourse about how a contract would age. And the word analytics without specifying what you mean. In 2024, Alex banned discussion of virtual ball parks. A topic that only we were discussing. City connects and the sport of football. And I banned the aforementioned Ben Verlander, whom we're bearing with next week. Discussion of teams wanting new stadiums and the toxic wing of Braves fandom. In 2025, we introduced the concept of a Reban where each of us got to choose one topic from the previous year where we continued the ban. And what we chose was teams wanting new stadiums and analytics without specifying what it means. Your ban topics from that year were salary cap discourse. We did not do a good job of sticking to that. No topic ban. What baseball can learn from other sports? I actually don't know if we did a good job of sticking to that since last year, probably not. One thing that we did do a good job of sticking to the ban on is discussion of Billy Joel. Do you want a line of bass singer? That was your final topic. I can tell you don't remember that based on how hard you're laughing. I did, once again, did very well on that one. And my ban topics from last year were deferred money. Good job by me. Nice work by me. That's a useless topic that no one just discussed. Special tax districts. We did not stick to that. And of course, my greatest ban, parlay's. I went back to listen to this discussion to make sure that I had the context for it. And for the context around parlay's, do you know what we talked about the whole time? We talked about the etymology of the word parlay and it's in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Frankly, where do we get off? I don't know. What were we cooking? Nothing. Nothing. That was a great, that was a, I just want to say that that really wasn't an incredible ban. And it was so hard for me to stick to that. But I do think it was probably the most police ban we've ever had on this podcast. Well, it's probably the first instance of banning something that is like kind of a joke format for either of us. Like you go to that as a joke format. Or yes. So I don't think I realized that at the time, but it functioned that way and it was funny. It was just for just to clarify the arbitrary rules that we've created here. I am allowed to tweet about these topics. You are, yes. We are allowed to talk about them on Patreon. But we can't talk about them here. So for the next, however many minutes, we're going to discuss the 20s, 26th band topics. Just know that if something big happens with any of these things, unfortunately, you are going to have to subscribe at patreon.com/tippingpigesty here. Let's talk about it. That's just the way this works. I mean, these are the T's and C's, the terms and conditions of this podcast. So I don't make the rules. I just enforce them. Previous me made them. Current me is the enforcer. How are you feeling about your list? I feel good about my list. It's a good mix of, I think, things that will be extremely hard for us to adhere to and things that are meaningless. So, you know, full ends of the spectrum. All right. Let's read band. Let's each read band one topic from the past. I'm not going to lie. I forgot about this rule. So it's really helpful that I just read every band's topics. That would be, I mean, I forgot all the ones that you just read. So, all right. All right. Okay. Listener, I'm texting the list to Alex. No. My rebanded topic is going to be discussion of deferred money. I actually think it's one of, despite the fact that Parley's was way funnier and we got way more content out of it, I actually think deferred money is the thing that is meaningless to talk about. Though I'm willing to hear an argument that we should reband Parley's instead of deferred money because deferred money is going to be a discussion of the collective bargaining agreement, which we are the primary podcast that covers that subject. So maybe Parley's instead, I don't know. What do you think? Well, if I could be honest with you, if you were not going to reband Parley's, I was going to reband it because I think it's fun. But what if there's a 9/11 Parley again this year? And what? We can't talk about it. That's the rules. I don't know. It's tell you. All right. Fine. I'll reband Parley's. We actually do kind of need to discuss deferred money. I guess this year. All right. So now I have to find something else to ban. Yeah. You got so many great choices here. And just know that if you do not continue your band of Billy Joel, we will spend the next 30 minutes debating the merits of his music catalog. Can you only reband from like last year? No, you can reband from the whole. Like I can reband Tati's contract discourse. If you would, yes. Yes. I'm not sure why you would, but maybe you don't want to use your power here. I'm going to reband Billy Joel. Sorry. No interest. This is a disappointing choice from you. Is it? Are you surprised? Um, surprise? No, nothing surprises me anymore, you know, a world weary. Just disappointed. This opens up my chance to have a weekly Ben Verlin or segment. So, you know, there's silver linings here for all of us. Yeah, let's go. All right. Take it away. What's your first band topic for 2026? Okay. 2026 band topics. We're going to kick it off with usage of the phrase small market. Hmm. As we have talked about on this show before, a phrase small market is virtually meaningless. It is not a real representation of a team's capacity to perform, to spend, to put a good franchise together. Really all it is is frankly referencing a table in the collective bargaining agreement that assigns market scores to each of the teams. And some of them have high scores because they're big markets. And other ones have small scores because they're small markets. We, I think we've seen how meaningless this is and frankly, I think it's lazy analysis from us. Wow. Look at you. I think leaning in. I think we can be better. Step it up. I think we can be better than this. We've done the work. We have the Oppo research. Uh-huh. We don't need to do a ratio of PR for that. That is true. I forgot about that. If you want to talk payroll, if you want to talk revenue, we can do that. We have the tools to do that. We have the language to talk about these things. I'm sorry. Small market. I don't want to hear from you this year. Hallelujah. This is a great ban. It gets back to the origins of the ban topics, which is we don't need to be doing the work of facilitating narratives, facilitating major media biases. We don't hear on tipping pitches. We're sort of a third way. And alternative form of myself as a, as the Lincoln project of podcast exactly exactly the woke Lincoln project of baseball podcasting. Thank you for banning the phrase small market. It will not be, it will be set on this podcast, but hopefully not by either of us and hopefully I'll remember to believe it while editing it. Nice work. Uh, I want to ban. See what order do I want to go in here? I'm going to ban discussion of what I'm calling engagement bait concessions, stadium concessions, meaning like there's always like a fucking hot dog that's like 15 inches long with like cotton candy on it's, you know, or there's like a bowl that's like here's the, here's the, you know, tigers, super mega slop central bowl. And it's like every, they actually have a super mega slop central bowl. Yeah, dude, they do. Shit looks awesome. Catch me a Camerick of baby. That's the thing that's going to get you to go to the midway. I need my slot bowl to go to the Midwest. There's this always happens and it usually happens every spring or right around the all star break or something where it's like this team just launched this new concession and like bleacher report posted a picture of it on Instagram and everyone's like everyone post either got to have this or this isn't a front to God and I'm like it's just engagement bait. We're not going to eat any of these things probably. So we're not going to review them on the podcast. Although eating things and reviewing them on the podcast has a long story of history that it's done long term damage to Alex's small intestine. True. If we do order things from, you know, ballpark bites 2.0 or whatever, the ghost kitchen running this country. Then we'll talk about them, but I'm not just going to I'm not going to get on a podcast and talk about like the hamburger that has feet or something that, you know, the mariners are serving like so stupid. It's just and you know, there are bad there are podcasts that are better suited to discussing these topics such as batting around. Like I want to hear batting rounds take on, you know, the sausage that is this the size of a small city. Like great. Would love to hear them discuss that. I don't want to talk about it. First, I want to I want to I just want you to keep coming up with fictional food creations. First, we have a we have a super mega crazy slot bowl or whatever. We have a feet burger and a sausage the size of a small city. Sounds good to me, honestly. You forgot the 15 inch hot dog with cotton candy. Oh, yes. I forgot. I did forget. Yeah. Yeah. To be clear, I think that they the while I'm watching, I'm watching Florida potentially blow it to Iowa in March madness, which is exciting for me because I hate Florida. And you say blow it to you mean lose to Iowa, right? Well, yes, they were losing to Iowa by a lot. And then they came storing back. They were winning and now Iowa just hit a three point shot to go ahead. Let's go baby with let's four seconds left. Again, I really cannot stress how much I despise the University of Florida and their head basketball coach. So I'm on the record about that during the middle of band topics. Otteray ban Florida's head coach. He's a half loser weirdo creep. And he never said his name before and we never will. Anyway, anyway, Alex. Yeah, I'm not against teams doing stuff like this. Like I like innovation in the food space at Paul parks. I just don't want to hear about it on Instagram. I want to display you want to engage with it on your on your own terms. Exactly. Yeah. Yes. And some of them are a fronts to God, but that those are fronts to God. Lot often are likely to come from the teams that we would expect to create a fronts to God such as the Texas Rangers. That's sort of an organization built around fronts to God, despite allegedly being from God's country or whatever. So what's your next man topics? This one. You look, you can tell you can tell him we're garrin up for a for a CBA year because that's where my head is at with all these, you know, I'm sort of like, we need to get our talking points in line to make sure that we're a united front. I love to be a united front. You and me. What other kind of fronts are there? You know, there's the United front. Of course, there's a divided front as well. I mean, you can't have one without the other. Some might say, yeah, there's the Western front where you're supposed to remain all quiet. That's true. Yeah, there's the Eastern front, which seemed way cooler. Is there an Eastern front? I mean, there was. You saying that like the side where Russia was fighting. Never really considered that there might be a front on the other side. I can't believe you didn't consider Russia's role in World War II. You loved to buy into Western propaganda, dude. We need to call Boundman back on the pod. He'll talk to you about this. He'll teach you. I started thinking about fronts. That's sorry. A cold front. Wow. That's a good one. I was going to say like popular front. Is that a phrase? Oh my God, Florida lost it. Let's go. Is the Florida losing in the second round tournament front? My favorite of the front. My second band topic is using the word lockout. Oh, without without specifying that it's a management decision. Okay. We know the CBA expires. Can I first can I create a suggestion? Okay. And I'm suggesting amendments to this. Sure. Sure. What if we ban the phrase work stoppage? Because lockout means like that's the right term for it. That's what it is. You so you want even more specification? Well, that's fine. If you want to if you want to do broadly work stoppage. I I guess I say this in reaction. I know that I'm guilty of this of saying, well, there's going to be a lockout yet the end of the year. Despite the fact that lockouts are not naturally occurring phenomena. That's up for the. The scientists don't agree on that. All right. Do you want to do work stoppage instead? Is that is that a little easier? I mean, I think it's fine. I'm happy to be like. And of course the lockout instituted by Dick Montfort and his cronies. Yeah. I'm happy to do that. Exactly. That's what I want you to do. Frankly, spell it out for the people. Well, the worst offender when it comes to this is when people are like, oh, there's going to be a strike. I'm like, no, actually, yeah, that's not a strike. That's a different thing. Yeah. And people do that like media figures do that. Like the upcoming strike. What happened in 1994, bro? We're still feeling I know we talk about this a lot, but like that. What that did to guys brains, Gen X guys brains. should have been studied by like Harvard, if Harvard was a real university rather than just a, you know, asset wealth management hoarding endeavor, they would study things like this. Should we see, do you think we could like successfully get a grant to conduct some of this research? We said we have this idea. I want to study 10 baseball, 1994 baseball fans. And 10, I'd like to do more. I'll go, we need more than that. We're starting small, but it's the problem with you. You got a dream bigger? You picked Iowa to upset Florida, and yet you don't dream big enough. That's true. Yeah. It's funny, because I didn't even do a bracket this year. It's like the first year of my life that I haven't done a bracket. And you're just as locked in as ever. Just as locked in. Maybe even more. That's right. But from a real level of the game, it's like, it's freed me to be able to just live my truth about who I actually want to lose, because I don't have a bracket that I need to be faithful to. Yeah. In my rooting interests. OK. My next band topic, Alex, how to bring the mood down slightly before talking about this one? I'd like to ban discussion of the inevitable Dodgers visit to the White House. They just did it last year. We've talked about it then. They did it. Do it again, five years ago. Many teams have gone to the White House during Trump's various administrations. It almost always goes exactly the same where he gives them McDonald's fries or whatever. And he talks about the big, beautiful, usually white players on the team who drove the narrative. And then there's a couple defectors, maybe, or a couple people who don't seem that comfortable there. And we express some form of sympathy for those people. And then we move on. And it's pretty bleak and uninteresting to discuss the ways in which sports are a political tool to quell the masses around things that are unpopular and harmful. I just don't foresee something happening at this year's White House visit that is not just like a 30% bleaker version of last year's White House visit. So I'm just going to get ahead of it. And I'm going to ban the topic because last year it became a topic for weeks on end. Yeah. And in part because there were a few players who were pretty vocal about not wanting to go and not going in some cases. But then there was also a pendulum swing back where it was like, why didn't some of the players speak out more aggressively about it? And it's just like, I don't think it will be a fruitful conversation if there seems like something that happens where it will be. We'll discuss it on Patreon, where I feel slightly more comfortable to share my true feelings about people going to the White House. Wouldn't it be crazy if like it happened while the Dodgers were there though? Well, now we're talking about ban exemptions. Right. Democratically elected viralistnership ban exemptions. Right. We can we can do emergency unbans if needed. All right. What's the next topic? Your third and final ban. My third and final ban. Look, Bobby, I'm sorry to you and your former colleagues. Oh, I just can't do it anymore. I do not want to hear the word abundance on this podcast one more time. Yeah, wait. Can I tell you when you said my former colleagues, I was like, this could go so many times. I was like, is he about to ban fandal? Let's go. No fandal. We're coming out as a draft Kingspot. Always have been brother. No, no more abundance. Look, I, and I'm sorry to Derek Thompson, and as required. We are big admirers of your work here, which one are you more sorry to? DT big DT. No, probably Ezra, because DT is far more annoying on Twitter. I don't really see Ezra Klein on there. So when you're not subscribed to his podcast, like I am. You're missing some good stuff. He's figuring out what the Democratic Party should do going forward. He's got it down. I think he does. Appeal to the median voter. They hadn't thought of that before. Right. Would you say it like finding a third way? Maybe. Yeah. There are two options before you, but isn't there like a third one that we could use? I think he's more advocating for touching the third rail. Okay, no abundance. No abundance. No abundance, chat. Interesting. How you don't believe in building more housing, I guess, and cutting red tape. Correct. So he should remain what they are and naturally deteriorate over time. Right. And then we call it in this city where we're furthest ahead. So as with society deteriorates, we're going to be the last one sticking around. Exactly. And then we're going to be making concrete and metal isn't going anywhere. And he was from a place of power, not a place of loathing. You know, let's go. I'm bringing back New York exceptionalism on the podcast. They never left, but I'll bring it back. Hey, you know what? We got some New York exceptionalism coming up on this podcast. We got some talk of our goat robber Moses. That's true. Well, speaking of New York exceptionalism, you banning abundance, right when Zoran is embracing it. I mean, beef is their beef there? How mad are you that he did? We get mud. Let's talk off air. I don't know. I'll probably get a little emotional. OK. This is like, this is one of our funniest jokes, but maybe it should be confined to 2025. We don't want to keep running with the save jokes. I think we can do better. I think we need to keep raising the bar for ourselves. There's almost a sort of like, we should cut the red tape on coming up with new jokes. Situation happening here. I will tell you because I was looking for a topic to ban that was not sort of explicitly tied to the things we talked about. I came really close to picking Catholicism. And I just, I couldn't do it. I couldn't get myself to do it. It's a core part of what we talk about here. It's woven into everything. Is an awesome sound, but it's like you, like JD Vance, 10 years ago. Although he came so close that he actually picked it. I'm sitting in front of a table in like a media pen with like the Bible, the Quran, the crowd goes wild. Sun's fly streamed on Sports Center. You know, they had a lot to offer, but I couldn't get past the whole guilt thing, you know, that's a surprisingly better appealing package from Islam. Okay, my third and final ban to topic. Yes. And don't even think about violating this one. Don't even let it cross your mind. If you're listening to this right now, I want to ban this topic so totally that I don't even want you to discuss this with your friends. I want this topic. Wow. This is banned for the listeners too. I out from baseball discourse entirely. I do not want to hear one single person talk about like an umpires strike zone, like the accuracy level of an umpires strike zone, a mist strike. I don't want to hear it. You know why? Because now we have ABS and we have the challenge system. So we have recourse. So no longer do I need to hear about XYZ umpire calls a bad zone. There's a way around it now. And if the player is the allegedly better at seeing the zone than the umpire, then he can just tap his head. And if not, tough shit. Don't want to hear it discussed anymore. Don't talk about it to me. Don't talk about it to your friends. Don't talk about it in the slack. I'm banning it from the slack. If I you could try, you probably will sneak past me many times if you want to. But if I see one of those screenshots from umscore card or an MLB at bat, the app screenshot of a pitch that missed the zone that changed the win percentage probability of the game, I'm going to yell at you in the slack. I am going to yell at you in the slack. Maybe you want that. Like, maybe you're trying to pull me into this discourse, whatever. It's been. Don't do it. It's over. It's done. The robots won. This is what you guys all wanted. All right. No more umpire talk. Can we talk about the robots strike zone? No. Yes. Okay. All right. Yeah. I'm looking forward to seeing how we enforce and determine what is the robots zone versus the umpire. So this is great. Frankly. Thank you. We should ban the word frankly. We say that a lot. Umscore card. I'm going to sample with you. Yeah. It's over, dude. It's over. Technology has moved past you. You're not even worthy of having your name cross our lips. I don't even want to know who the umpires are this year. Exactly. Don't even tell me the beginning of the game. I never wanted to know that last DS was going to be calling my team to the nameless face. little blobs out there. Shut up and call, boys. Play for the name on the front of the the color on the front of the shirt, not the color on the back or whatever. Exactly. That's where it doesn't work. Exactly. But you know what I'm saying? Yeah. I don't want to hear this shit anymore. I mean, to get serious about this half serious for half a second, I do think it's interesting. Like baseball, umpires, really, I feel like, especially in the last couple of decades, it becomes such a big part of the game itself in a way that, I guess, since you're allowed to compare to other sports now, you can, I guess this does happen in other sports, but like because the umpires so integral to like every bounce of every second and everything that happens, they really are like another player on the field. And they haven't earned that. They have not earned my respect. They haven't earned dignity. They certainly haven't earned a place on this podcast. You know, they have earned to pair their CBA though, but the healthy, comfortable retirement. Nice. Pension. Well, you know what? Good for them. They all reach it soon. NBA has been comparable to MLB in the referee or umpires becoming the main character. Yeah. Part of that, especially in the last five or 10 years, has been the replay reviews and you have that camera of the ref staring straight into them. Well, if this was a basketball podcast, I don't know what it has been to discussion about that years ago. I know. I don't care. Although I do think it's funny that there's the one guy who kind of like mean mugs while he's giving the recap of the play. Mm hmm. But there, but there was the whole like game fixing scandal and Tim Gettonigy thing like that was actually a real storyline. I think, um, well, you know, we had Pat Hoburg. I don't know that he was betting on games necessarily that he had a lot of fun. I think that's the only thing that I think was going to be going to be a real storyline. I think that's the only thing that I think is going to be a real storyline. I don't even care if they're heard, although ESPN loves to bike up that on the broadcast. It's fine if they're, if they're heard a little bit, they should just be not discussed. How about that? We have better things to talk about. Well said. All right, that's the band topics. You feel good about keeping the enforcement of them going? Because we haven't really done a great job of that the last few years. I think what I'm going to do is like put a sticky note on my laptop. I like need it in front of me at all times. Otherwise, it's just going to leave my brain. It's like in the bear when they have the every second counts underneath the clock. Like just to remind you of abundance. Allow. I need that. I need that. Okay, we're going to go to our conversation with our pal friend of the pod. Andy Gillitz. Andy wrote a book called Metropolitan's, which is about the history of the New York Mets and baseball. And urban development, I guess, is the broadest term that I can use in the New York area. It's quite a good book. It is also, as I say, in the intro to our discussion with Andy. So uniquely targeted at us. And you listening to this podcast that I highly recommend that you check it out. Andy mentions at the end of this interview, like some events that are happening in the New York City area. If you're not in New York. You can obviously buy this book online. I don't know if there's an active preorder link available right now, but if there is, it will be in the description. And if not, you're all adults, you know, how to find books. Yeah, they get books these days, right? There's the thing on the device, right? Do you have a Kindle? No, me either. I can only read a physical book. I love a physical book. Although I have to say I like paperback by the hardcover. Maybe that's an unpopular opinion. Easier to hold. So much easier to hold. So much easier to carry. Yeah. Transport. Yeah. You can't put a hardcover book in your back pocket or a farm on the subway. So fake on it. Although when you're traveling, like traveling on a plane, a hardcover book is better because it doesn't get destroyed in your bag. I guess, but I still generally speak. There's like twice as heavy. No reason. So that you could bulk up to add some, add some muscle carrying that backpack through those three hour TSA lines. Yeah, real honestly. We talked to Andy about the book about the reasoning behind wanting to write it about the process. We are going to be doing some events with Andy over the course of April that he mentions at the end that we will also obviously publicize. And we have more information to share about them. This is an exciting thing. That's dropping into our world here. I think that people who listen to the show will get a lot of reading the book and encourage them to do so. So let's go to our conversation with Andy. Okay, we are delighted to be joined by a man who has written a book that is so, so targeted at particularly me, but also just us in this podcast and this podcast listeners. Andy Gitlett's author of Master of Politics, the York baseball class struggle and the people's team. Hello, sir. It's good to have you here on the podcast. Hey, boys, glad to be here. Very excited. We have podcasted together on your podcast, this wreckage, but I don't believe you have appeared on the tipping pitches podcast though. I have to imagine that you're kindred enough spirit that you've sort of been here with us in spirit over the years. This has all been a very long plan on my part to break out of the Marxist dirt bag left and into sports talk radio. My original love. How's that going for you? Is the plan proceeding accordingly or well, I haven't been invited on Rico Bronia yet or the BFAN, but I feel like I'm on my way. This is this many people considered appearing on tipping pitches to be the first step in the process. This tends to open up many more opportunities for you. It's sort of like how when you put out an indie feature on at Sundance, you know, like you're pretty fast tracked to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, like you're going to be on Francesco within a couple of weeks. I know it. I'm just waiting because a lot of people are reading the book right now and they seem to be enjoying it, but there's a certain. You know, a lot of people who read the book are like leftist meds fans and this is like like you said perfectly for them. Some people reading the book are very normy or conservative meds fans and I'm getting some good feedback from them too, but I know they haven't come to the end yet where it gets very woke. So I'm unsure if that good will will continue or if I will be banned from city field one day via facial recognition technology. Well, well that's coming from all of us. Let's just be real here like we're all going to be banned from city field via facial recognition technology if James Dolan has taught us anything about the modern sports attending experience. I actually that's a great place to start because I think one of the big questions about this book and knowing that most of the people listening to this will have not had a chance to read it yet. Most if not all of the people listen to this will not have had a chance to read it yet. I want to start more broadly and then we can get a little bit more specific as we go on, you know, like you've been podcasting as part of the dirt bag left for a while, you're a sportsman. We've been talking about this for years now. I think the conception of baseball and sports in America in general is that it's a very conservative place. It's a very conservative environment. I wanted to ask you like going back to when you were ideating on this project, writing a book about leftism about being progressive about sports fandom about your relationship to sports as a leftist. Were you worried about that like were you worried about launching this book out into a broader universe where it was kind of like out of your control and could be taken and run with in the way that so many narratives are in the sports world. Because we think about that a lot here. I'm the way that we're not pissing off conservative sports fans enough. There are parts of the book that I specifically wrote to go viral amongst, you know Yankees fans or Phillies fans or conservative met fans already the title is doing a bit of a good job. So I can't wait until some some of the woker passages get passed around. But yeah, you know, for me, you know, I talk about this in the intro like when I first encountered the mats. It was like, oh, this is like some cartoon baseball team because I was very young. They had like a Nickelodeon amusement park and the Shae Stadium parking lot. you know, Mr. Met was there. I thought he was one of the players on the team, you know, and then like my dad was like, oh yeah, this is this team, they suck. They're gonna lose everybody in the stadium seemed like kind of bored and upset except for the kids, you know. So it kind of, it seemed like a cartoon to me. And then as I got a little older, I started connecting the Met's being kind of, you know, underdogs, you know, like in the late 90s, taking on the Yankees and the Braves who were, you know, extremely conservative coated with John Rocker and Giuliani, the, you know, 98, 99, 2000 teams. - That's true. - Two of Alex's favorite guys right there. - Jesus. - They're still at it, you know. Still proud, caring on that proud legacy. But yeah, I connected the Met's with, you know, my first understanding of like radical politics or leftist politics or oppositional politics, whatever. Like we're talking about a time when Hugo Chavez throughout a first pitch before a game, the same game where Bobby Valentine came back wearing this costume, you know, rubber to Valentino. And they're wearing black uniforms, which I thought like, maybe they had something to do with the black block and Seattle and 99, you know. I was a kid. I was like, I love the Met's. I hate the police. So it was like a natural connection to me. And then of course, it helped that like all of the biggest assholes in my school were Yankees fans. That was one of very few Met's fans. So the Met's were just like this counter cultural thing to me. And, you know, I kind of like got over that a bit as I grew up. But I noticed as time went on, there were still these like Met'sian things happening. And it wasn't all just like them being leftist, of course. It became very patriotic after 9/11. They tried this low-smetz rebranding thing that was kind of like transparently a farce. And then in the 2010s, they had this whole superhero thing that I thought was kind of lame. But then in 2020, Dom Smith leads this walk out after the Kenosha shootings. And I thought that was the day I was the proudest to be a Met's fan more than any like NLCS clincher or whatever. And the next year they recognized his that walk out in the Met's museum at City Fields. And I thought like, okay, the team itself recognizes that there's like this kind of this proud, kind of progressive legacy. And then a couple years after that, it was gone. I don't know, because maybe Dom Smith wasn't on the team anymore. They took it out. And I thought maybe I have this unique, or not unique, but like I'm a certain kind of Met's fan who cares about these political intersections or at least like the aesthetics that have always drawn leftist or progressive people towards the Met's since the '60s when they were like the new left's favorite team. And maybe there should be a book for those people. And I, you know, from the reaction I've gotten pretty much everyone's like, I'm excited about it or like I know like three people who are excited about it. So yeah, I think it was a book that needed to be written. Where do you even begin with something like this? Because the book is essentially tracing the arc of the Met's franchise as a lens for examining New York's like political economy and urban development and labor history and racial politics. I mean, the scope of it is really this kind of herculean effort. So like did you have a sense of what you wanted it to be when you sat down writing it? Was it a clear vision or was it something that maybe evolved as you started writing and like digging through the archives around the Met's and that sort of thing? Yeah, it evolved. It started out as a project. I was just writing something about the '60s counterculture and radical politics in downtown New York. And I noticed a lot of connections with the Met's. Like Jerry Rubin saying when people ask us for our program, he's the founder of the Yippies. I give them the Met's scorecard where he says, "I want our politics to be exciting as exciting as the Met's." Or Ellen Willis, one of the founders of the Red Stockings, one of the first revolutionary feminist groups, writing about, writing rock criticism in the village voice and referencing the Met's in '69. I just found a lot of references like this. And so I thought maybe there'd be a book there about like the new left and the new Met's. And so as I got to writing this thing, I, you know, the connection to Robert Moses becomes really clear very quick as Moses is basically a founder of the Met's along with Branch Rikki. And so then you're talking about like the new deal and the integration of baseball. And so it just expanded on both directions where like you can see the midnight massacre of the '70s being a part of neoliberal restructuring in New York and that's like not even a leap. It's just like kind of the same process happening. And so it just, yeah, it widened until it was, you know, something that maybe could have been about the '60s ends up starting in 1776 and ending in 2025. And I was fortunate enough that, you know, when I wrote a book that was longer than I said it was going to be, my editor said, you know, maybe a long book is good. And so, yeah, there are, I think, I'm hoping that with this, the first part of the book that's more about the history of baseball, including sections on the Dodgers, the Giants and the Yankees, it'll be a book for more than Jess Met's fans, but, yeah, we'll see. Not to ask you too, too much about your process of writing, but it's something that we're fascinated about because, you know, I think there's a world in which like this starts as like an idea where you're like, oh, I'm about writing essay about this. And then you just, you start and you realize there's so much there and like so much history and so much connection and it expands and expands and expands. But like, when did you decide that there's too much here for me to just like write an essay about this in a magazine article? Well, there's a book by CLR James, who's a really inspirational Marxist theorist to me called Beyond a Boundary. So he grew up in Trinidad and he was a professional, he was a professional cricket player. And so he wrote this book that sort of a memoir, but it's also about the being a colonial subject of the British Empire in Trinidad. And it was about the way Trinidadians sort of embraced this colonial game of cricket as a sort of national pride or as a sort of resistance in certain ways. And it gets into, there's a theory of like sport and capital society in the book. And there's a theory about like what cricket is, like what it means structurally. And I always thought it, there should be a book like this for every sport. And there's a few books like that for soccer. And I think there are books like that for football and basketball, but there really wasn't anything quite like that for baseball. There's been a lot of theory about baseball written, but there's no like popular history of baseball. A lot of Marxists have written books about baseball, but I don't know if there's a Marxist book about baseball. So I thought really part of what I'm trying to do here is to understand the structure of baseball and its class origins. And I had this initial theory that's like, oh, the working class invented baseball. And then it was taken over by the capitalist and sold as a commodity. But I found out pretty quickly that was not true. It was invented by the professional class in New York in the 1830s and '40s. And then it all started making sense. That's why this baseball is so weird and unique and like technical and boring. And then there's just like these-- one, there's like a minute and a half of the game where anything actually happens. It's because that's what life is like if you're an office worker. You're sitting there and you're working on technical designs and like stats and accounting all day. And you're just dreaming of like, I'd be nice to go outside for once. Or like, it'd be nice to go run around in a field with my friends. But that's not what your life is. Your life is work and your life is building the technical apparatus for the capitalist society. And so that's what baseball looks like. It's like the diamond is like this factory where everybody's positioned around like perfectly-- the perfect dimensions of the base paths. And then there's like a few people out there and like the rural expanse out there. And then they have this job of just like throwing this ball in this direction back and forth. And everything's perfect. But then some guy comes in with a bat, like a big stick. And he starts smashing things and running around. And everyone has to scramble to try to fix it. It seems to me to me this tension between the rational striving for perfection of the capitalist production process and the desire of the people who actually have to do this work wanting to be free in some way. And so I developed this overarching theory about class society that baseball is trying to tell us. The Mets in particular, as a character in the baseball world, are really fascinating. And I think they are framed as almost an. anti team, especially in their early days, right? A lot of their existence and the way they carry themselves and the things that the players did sort of flew in the face of what traditional baseball had sort of been up to this point. You have Joan Pason, the original owner or co-owner of the team who sort of tries to brand the mets in a radically different way from how they ended up and wanted them to almost had this sort of like pastoral vision for the team that ultimately sort of gets overruled. I mean, how do you sort of see that tension playing out? Do you think that still exists today or has the team slowly over time been had the edges sanded down? I know we talk a lot about like lull mets, but like how do you think that tension exists today? Yeah, that's one of the things I want to trace in the book too is like what does it mean for a team to have a character? Is it just the uniform or is there something more genetic or like do a team have a soul, you know? And I think some teams do. I think they earn it and some teams maybe they don't, but like it's interesting to compare the mets to the jets, for example, because they both begin at the same time of the late 50s, early 60s of this need for sports to expand and not only expand in terms of the number of franchises, but also the sport used to change because it was getting kind of boring, you know, it wasn't as telegenic as football. And so Branch Ricky really has the vision for, you know, reasserting baseballs, baseball as like America's pastime. He has this vision of it being part of like, you know, the post-war American propaganda project internationally. And the rest of the baseball owners are just like, okay, Branch Ricky is crazy. We could, we should just humor him and like accept a couple of the teams that he wants to build. And so one of them was the mets and Joan Pace and takes a lot of his ideas and adds some of her own spin to it. She was an art collector and I don't know too much about her art collection, but I like to think that she was aware of the pop art phenomenon, which is the big thing in the late 50s. And I think the mets are kind of aesthetically a work of pop art, you know, they've got the, they were very comic book inspired and they're logo and their colors and in the marketing for the team. And so pop art blended high and low culture in that way. So it's appealing to kids, but there's also like a kind of mid-century modern concept to it. And of course, Shay Stadium was also a mid-century modern work of municipal brutalism. And I think fucking RIP, I don't mean sit to rip to you, but RIP, I miss that place. Yeah. Maybe Zorong can bring back municipal brutalism. But yeah, so like when, it's another question, it's like, what's the national league mean? And I think the national league teams represent into people, this like municipal civic work. Like, they, you know, there was some kind, it goes back to the city, beautiful movement in the gilded age and like, Tamini Hall funding these teams originally. And so Moses can come back and like, say, he doesn't, Moses doesn't care about baseball, you know, he doesn't like team sports. But he understood how important baseball was to New Yorkers and how he could use baseball to complete his project of like restructuring New York City between city and suburb between the cosmopolists and the metropolis. And so I think that's why he was so enthusiastic about teaming up with Brandt Ricky and Shay and building the metropolitans, the Mets. And so the marketing of this team, like you said, was heavily in contract. There was nostalgia to it, but there was, it was also in contrast to the Yankees. So I found that in their first spring training, before anyone really knew what this team was going to be aside from the colorful branding, the traditional sports writers didn't really know how to cover the team. They're like, well, this is a team of has bends like nostalgia, like giants and Dodgers players who probably shouldn't be playing anymore. And then the worst like rejects of all the other teams that probably should never be major leagueers. And it was just too pathetic for them to really cover. And so the marketers made a, you know, spun it around the upcoming yet Mets Yankees exhibition game and brought down feature writers who were like really into the narrative of like this, you know, this new team facing the glorious Yankees and the the grudge match between Stengel and Weiss, who had just been fired by the Yankees after running them for so many years, like really building what the Yankees were. And so people like Roger Engel, who had never wrote about sports before, cared about sports before, goes down to Florida to watch this game. And he's transformed into the poet laureate of baseball, right? And there's a lot of stories like that of like fiction writer, like people from the New Yorker and people from the the not sports section of the New York Times, becoming sports writers because of the Mets. And then other sports writers who cover the Yankees wanting to switch to the Mets beat because there is an actually a fun story there. And this was like the first part of the new breed phenomenon, which includes the players and then the fans of this, basically this DIY infusiasm. It responded to the marketing, but it goes beyond the bounds of what the marketing was trying to do. And so just only try to wrap bringing that back to the jet truly fast because the jets were also this kind of like progressive split from the AFL, right? And I think it was like a guy who ran who worked for the redskins and the redskins wouldn't integrate. So he started the Titans who played in the Polo Grounds in '62 as a progressive football team that became the jets in the '64, '65. And so the jets in the Mets were like sibling teams. They both they they both had like similar aesthetics, you know, space age, futuristic, aesthetics sort of progressive, you know, in '69, you know, name it and seaver kind of like have similar arcs, right? But what happened in the jets? Like they totally went astray of that thing and that character is totally gone. But the Mets still have it. So I think that that's kind of something I try to trace is that you it's still possible to read the Mets politically to remember that narrative of them as a spike team or something where you don't really have that with the jets anymore. I think it's interesting because I mean the jets exist in contrast to the giants, right? Like the giants are sort of the more traditional originalists NFL franchise that you know signals prestige just by the nature of their uniforms and their history. And the Yankees are that to the Mets, but like I don't really think that you could I'm talking about the football giants by the way for for anybody who's confused by the fact that they share a name. I don't really think that you can make that case for the giants as effectively as you can for the Yankees. And so so like furthermore in contrast, the teams themselves don't seem quite as on the opposite of a pole as the Mets and the Yankees do when you look at the jets and the giants. And I think it's so interesting and so interesting to watch you trace the the foundation of the Mets in contrast to the Yankees because without how fully formed the energy around the Yankees is and we could sit here and probably talk for hours about you know the validity of that energy or how much of it is a construct or like whether or not it's good for the world. I think a lot of us sitting here on this zoom would probably say no. We don't appreciate the Yankees energy, but because of the way that it is so chronicled that that franchise and so baked in even to the experience of being a Yankees fan to this day, it allows for an alternative space like it almost creates an alternative space for the Mets to slot into. I think that that is like definitely true of the first three four decades of the Mets, but you could make a case that basically since 2010 and certainly since Cohen bought the team that he's trying to move away from that space that the Mets have been in historically. And so I wonder for you writing this book now, particularly in this era of being owned by the ultimate quote-unquote societal winner like Steve Cohen just wins and wins and wins and wins despite being one of the most evil people in our country in a country full of very evil people like I wonder if you found it hard to enter into that headspace to tell the history of the foundation of the team knowing where we're at now and knowing for you like you're sitting in city field working on this manuscript for a lot of for a lot of it as you've written in the book. So like I wonder how you got there. I mean is it just is it just immersing yourself in the history and trying to you know block off what you know about the team and it's present with the extremely high payrolls and the finance money backing them or is it that you really think that there is still an unbroken thread between them and now. Yeah it's an unbroken thread on the corporate side too. I mean Joan Payson was one of the richest women in the world. Her family you know they made their money on the arms industry on a beginning venture capital. You know it was a we're talking about the Whitney pains right like the Vanderbilt you know these are these are blue blooded elites and you know know, will pond and double day. It's the same story will pond was like an architect of the greed is good 80s in New York, you know, he built the lipstick building in midtown Manhattan, where a lot of the really important cybernetic and telecom and finance companies had their base throughout the 80s, including made off, which became a big part in the story of the Matt Sands, you know, the world. And so not if you asked the will pond, though, they didn't lose any money in the man off situation according to them. Yeah, they were very fortunate with the way that a lawsuit turned out. And yeah, so getting into the 2010s, you know, I don't think no one had an illusion that the Mets are like the people's team run by some benevolent philanthropist, a millionaire or whatever. People were ashamed that the Mets were associated with made off and with the financial crisis that was like really devastating people's everyday lives. And it wasn't it was really until will pond, you know, shuffles off the stage of Mets history that there is any chance of even correcting that. Now Cohen did two really interesting things initially. One was he branded himself as a lifelong Mets fan who loves the team and he wants nothing more than to see them win a world series within five years. I have my doubts that he is a lifelong Mets fan, you know, there's actually not a lot of evidence for that. It could be true, but there's, you know, he previously tried to buy the Yankees and the Dodgers. So, you know, I wonder why he did that. The other thing though is he wanted he was very explicit that he wanted to make the team into the Dodgers, like Perennial, Pennant Winners and Champion Winners. And it's so interesting that he really did try to, you know, he made them the highest payroll in baseball. He spent he made a bunch of ridiculous signings, you know, he spent so much money. But he was clearly trying to make them into something like the Dodgers and maybe he's learning as he goes. But it's so interesting that he hasn't been able to do it, right? And the seasons were like the 2022 season, 2023 season last year, you know, these were the years who were really thought, oh, this will be our year, you know, we could really take it all this year. Look at how great this lineup is. Those are the years they fell apart and it was humiliating, you know. 2024 was the fun season. That was the rebuilding year. So that's why I think like from the new breed side, from the cultural or aesthetic side, that's still the Mets. The Mets have always been this team. That's kind of this part of this broader corporate, you know, city government ploy for whatever, you know, building a casino or but then the team itself and the fans have this connection that's trying to do something a little bit different. And that's what makes the Mets so unique is that when they win, usually they don't, when they do, there's usually some weird thing behind it, like a black cat, you know, crossing the Cubs dug out or their manic depressive closer coming up with like a satirical slogan, you gotta believe, or 86 when another year when like, oh, they were supposed to win it all, but they had to be on the verge of a humiliating defeat to the Red Sox. And there had to be like a chain of very bizarre events over the course of one half inning for them to actually win the World Series. I think there has to be this kind of overcoming narrative to the team for them to win. And I say it in the conclusion of the book, like, okay, if the Mets do just, you know, Trump through the season and win a World Series without any of this drama. And there's like no politics behind it at all. It's just like as Stair Isle as a Dodger or a Yankee's World Championship. Then I'm wrong. This was all Marxist Sabre Metroid. Don't let me cook anymore. But, you know, I may, I finished the book, Spring of last year. And I was like, well, the Mets are like pretty close to first place. Juan Sotas turning it around. Like, things are looking pretty good for them. But based on all of my predictions previously, I don't think that they're going to go very far this year. I don't think they're going to do better than they did last year. And, you know, that's kind of a coin flip prediction. But I think it bared out. I did not have to rewrite that part. You, you obviously write very specifically about the 2024 season in a sort of diary style. I mean, can you talk a little bit about just the difference and maybe the challenges of trying to write about something that's unfolding before you in real time, sitting in the stands, watching it and trying to draw links versus, you know, having the benefit of hindsight and going back to 86 or 69 or even before that, right? You have decades of sort of being able to fold in other pieces of history. I mean, was it was it challenging at all to sort of ascribe I guess meaning or try and pull at different threads of like a baseball game that's literally happening right in front of you? I think it's actually the opposite. I think it's much easier to grasp the meaning in the moment or day by day. You know, I think this is true for sports and just politics in general. Like, you know, if we just read the news or like see what crazy thing Trump said today, we'll forget about that in a week or two. But if you look back at like what Trump was saying this time in his first administration, everything was kind of like just as scary and just as crazy and just as funny, you know, like and that's kind of how to 2024 season was too. Like, there was ridiculous wacky things happening every day with the Mets and then just like kind of horrifying things happening politically as it became like clear and clear that Trump was going to come back and that like, you know, the nobody nobody in the on the political level was going to take seriously that there was a genocide going on in Gaza, let alone climate change and all these other bigger things. So the absurdity of all that stuff, like cataloging it day by day, I think was a lot easier than being like, okay, what happened? What was going on? What else is going on in October of 1969? Because you have to like, oh, read the paper to like, all that stuff together. But when you're doing it day by day, you can be like, okay, there is this massive there's these two massive hurricanes that like collided in Florida. The Mets had to cancel their road trip. So now they're they're going to have to do a double header on the last day of the season. Assuming that stadium is playable, it's unclear if it will be. It actually looks like they might not be able to get out of Georgia in time, you know, like the convergence of these things in the moment was was very fun to write. And I think that was kind of like how I structured the book was that, you know, I began sort of abstract and historical and theoretical. And then zoom into the point where it's like, hey, actually, I am just a Mets fan. And this is what it looks like to go to city field and to talk to people and to watch the game at a bar and who's who here's who I'm meeting and here's what they're saying. I want to ask you about what it was like to write about players then and their relationship to what you're talking about in this book, which is class struggle, people municipal areas versus players now. Because I think I mean, and maybe we can use Tom Seever as like the next point of this conversation because I think you know, we've talked about Seever a decent amount on this podcast. I mean, we were podcasting when Seever passed away. And so I think we talked about his relationship to the foundation of like the Mets myth and and like the the modern conception of the ace and like all of these different things that we talked about from a baseball concept. But like, I don't think we've spent a ton of time talking about like his role within the union, his role within the political environment that he was a part of in the 60s and early 70s. But like, I'm so struck by you know, in how you're writing about Seever and how you're just talking about the mess of that time. Just like how dead that idea feels now, you know, like there is no guy like that. It's certainly if there was a guy like that, he wouldn't be as important in a baseball context as Seever was. Like you that would be trained out of you so much earlier than that it would ever be allowed to flourish at the major league level if you were that important of a player. We see much more political activity in the modern context from players and the fringes from relievers from, you know, guys who are journey men from guys who have been up and down between the miners from guys who are part of that minor league struggle that we have chronicled on this podcast. So for you talking about these players and trying to situate yourself in the context of the politics of this time period, what was that? What was that like and and do you agree? Do you agree that that kind of archetype like that politically engaged superstar just feels like it's so we're so beyond that like we're so past that it'll be within baseball. Now I think it will come back. But so just I want to say a couple quick things about Seever. You know first of all yeah it was it it's it's hard to overemphasize. how remarkable it was that Tom Seever came out with a statement against the Vietnam War when the Metzer on the verge of entering the World Series in 1969. There really has been no white player to do that before or sense really, which is really a testament to how much heat black athletes took, like Muhammad Ali and Kreme Abul Jibar and the Olympic runners in '68. That was really considered, that was incredibly scandalous for athletes to criticize the war at the time. There were a lot of black athletes in baseball who felt the same way but didn't really speak publicly like that because they actually, they did meet with black nationalist groups and they considered doing it but they decided it's actually will be better for our emerging union struggle if we don't set ourselves apart that way which I think turned out to be very true because the MLBPA became so strong largely because of the initiatives taken by black and brown players in '68. And so for Seever to speak out like that really among the first players to speak out against the war, at first of all he was able to do it because he was at the height of his stardom. It seemed like, they were facing the Orioles who was still a big mountain to climb but they, it seemed like the cosmic energy was on their side. There was a supernatural confidence in the Metzer that year but also it was an organized statement because his brother, Charles Seever, was part of the Civil Rights Movement. He had moved to Greenwich Village a few years before Tom. He was a beatnik and a sculptor and a social worker and an anti-racist activist and he was part of this group that was organizing these large protests against the war called moratorium day and what this was following the election of Nixon. A lot of the left was was trying to clean up their act and like make themselves look more appealing because the movement had become so connected with the hippie counter culture, with the hippies, with the militancy of the black panthers and that kind of thing. So they want to have a nice like normy day of mass protest around the country including churches and heartland institutions and obviously getting a star athlete to support it would be a really big thing too. So Seever said I think like between clenching the pen and when the world series started he said if the Metzer can win the world series and we can stop this war and that was reported like on the front page of the New York or somewhere in the New York Times, it was like widely reported that Seever said this and amazingly there just wasn't a huge backlash to it. People were not, he wasn't cut from the team, they weren't pro-touching. You're so good at pitching that you can actually speak against the military in the United States. And I think there are times when athletes can get away with it and times when they can't. And so for example, Carlos Delgado was very vocally against the Iraq war and he was just booed and attacked everywhere he went when he finally got onto the mats. He was told by Jeff Wilpon not to, he has to stand for God Bless America during the seventh inning even though he had refused to do that previously. And of course he's cappernick, gets kicked out of the NFL but then a few, just a few years later you see all these baseball players kneeling after the George Floyd uprising when baseball returns, right? I think I was so interesting that Dominic's, like the match did not kneel after that. And Dominic Smith explained that he didn't do it because he thought like, oh, kneeling is not appropriate. You know, they, so this is me interpreting it. This isn't exactly what he said but a lot of other activists were saying kneeling is not the right thing right now because we should be fighting. Like the police want us to kneel to like deescalate things because things are so hot right now. And so it's, it was interesting to me that the Yankees were the ones kneeling when baseball was zoomed in 2020 but the mats didn't. And then the mats were one of the teams that had this walk out after the Kenosha shooting. But even that, that was led by another star athlete, LeBron James who had become like the figure head of this wildcat strike in basketball after Kenosha. That was spreading throughout other sports. And so in terms of like what does it even mean if an athlete speaks out like this? Well, imagine if when Obama calls LeBron James in the midst of that strike and says, hey, you know, there's an election coming up. Maybe you can just like tell people to vote, like go back to play and like use your platform to tell people to vote for Biden. What if a bronjeeb says, no, actually I'm going to go tell everyone to go on strike with me until we, you know, we get whatever we want. Like we issue our own demands. In my mind, that's probably the only way or the easiest way to have a general strike in the United States is if sports stops and the star athletes tell everyone else to go on strike too. And we are on the verge of that. Like LeBron James could have done it. So that's why I think sports is so important. It's because people really respect these athletes on some level or at least want them to continue playing because they love sports so much and they love the team so much. And athletes, if they knew their power, I think could do a lot more with that position. But it's very dangerous to do so because if you do it the right moment, you'll get kicked out of the sport. Yeah, I mean, I don't know the thing about Sebra, I forgot to say is that after the World Series, he stops talking about politics because I think he was embarrassed to be associated with the Yippies. And that's kind of the story of the 70s too. It's like the movement falls apart. And a lot of people who add those politics like kind of disavow it. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting as you're like chronicling that like now nowadays it is so much more like putting yourself fully out on a limb and in service of what? Like in service of what? countercultural political movement, the neoliberal dissolution of any sort of anti-any any like imperial state is just doesn't really exist to the extent that it did in the 60s and the 70s. So like for an athlete, I mean, you could argue that yes, if LeBron had done that, you know, maybe we see some some real change to things. But athletes now conceive of themselves and speak about themselves in the way that they are businesses more than they are citizens oftentimes. And so I just feel like I look around MLB in particular and I see a lot of that behavior. I see a lot of that like, you know, pulling away from any sort of like collectivist idea of existing. They're like, I'm just a guy who's trying to play baseball. I'm just a guy. That's yeah, that's that's American society. That's why I emphasize the middle class origins of baseball so much is because no matter actually, no matter if you're middle class or not, like obviously a lot of not so much in baseball these days, but in other sports, a lot of people don't are actually from the working class. But the whole political spectrum of the United States is kind of trapped in this middle class mindset. Ron, one hand you resent the bourgeoisie above you, the big bourgeoisie. And on the other hand, you're afraid of the lower class below you because you don't want to be sent down there or you're worried they're going to take what little you have. But then you envy both of them too, like you envy the freedom of the proletariat. You envy their strength, you know, they know how to do things where you're just doing an email job or whatever. And of course you envy the rich, you know, you want to be on the PJ and like have a private island and do evil things there too, you know. So that's what's so neurotic about being middle class. And I think just everyone in the United States, like, like the vast majority of people identify as middle class in the United States. And so they have this neurosis of like resentment and envy for the above and the below. And at certain times people like kind of in masks sort of identify with capitalism and become materialist and identify with getting more for themselves. And at other times they identify with the proletariat. And the George Floyd uprising is one example of that where, you know, people who knew George Floyd got mad and burnt down the place where the guys who killed him worked. And by and large, American society supported it and liked it. And it was like the largest protest movement in US history. And so in those moments people like change their alliances and people change really quickly. Yeah, it's also so interesting to think about as you outline it like the middle class mindset in the context of baseball fandom too, like in the context of and in the context of labor struggles in the world of baseball as well. Because this is something that we find ourselves. engaging with frequently like Alex and I on the podcast talking about it's really hard to predict what fans are going to think about a CBA fight for example like that various times over the last 10 years there's been an incredibly anti league sentiment anti you know in the the analogy here would be anti visual sentiment like anti man Fred anti the owners but then when it comes to like the base baseball's middle class like baseball's working class which is the players. Actually trying to advocate for themselves like then that strays a little bit too far outside of this you know as we talked about it narrow political environment that we have in the United States right now. And that's been true of sports unions throughout history like it's always been that has always kind of been outside of the acceptable dialogue for for fans whereas like you guys are playing a kids game you know you're asking for too much your spoiled. But nowadays the millionaires versus billionaires argument is so set in stone that it's almost impossible and we try to do it seemingly weekly on this podcast it's almost impossible to generate any sort of like sympathy or empathy for the players in their struggle against these people. Because class solidarity is as you know Andy dead class solidarity is pretty dead society not actually but it feels that way sometimes especially. He comes and goes you know yes yes and so yeah that's going to be a big challenge first of all for the NLP PA to get on the same page and you know figure out how they're going to fight I'm just not clear to me that they know at this moment what their strategy is. And then to convince fans that they you should actually side with the players because yeah we're trying to continue to make sure we are salaries increase because I think. Because that's fair you know believe it or not it's fair for us to make what we're making and we should be making more but then also the players need to I think offer a vision of baseball that would be better for fans and to have them have some buy in to and to understand that everything that sucks about baseball is from the owners and the owners are certainly doing this from the other side like convincing fans that everything is so expensive and. But you know TV deals have to be so annoying because of the union or because of the players or the unions corrupt or whatever they're playing that card so. You know I think we need some more Bryce Harper energy some more class for that meant brought to the table I completely agree I mean I love seeing Bryce like. In sort of wake of the we're you know we're coming off of the world baseball classic and there's been a lot of consternation you know about. To have team USA carried themselves and they you know I think they were generally agreed to be the villains of that and I think almost entirely white team almost entirely white team yes and you have players like I'm not it's not funny it's disturbing for team USA to be like 98% white. Yeah it's it's it was it was very strange to watch play out but you have guys like Bryce Harper coming out. After it and and saying I think it was so cool like the way that each team was able to sort of be themselves and represent themselves and like. It is crazy to me that in 2026 I am I'm like Bryce Harper the man that you are like I will I will follow you into the flames. Just because I think he understands that the purpose of baseball and what it means for the players and what it means for the fans. He clocks the soul of it in a way that I think most players don't aren't able to do. It's like his hat says make baseball fun again. You know he is an interesting lens through which you could track like the median Americans opinion of baseball or like the median American yeah so to speak of the baseball world because. He's had so many distinct errors and fluctuations within them and how he you know presents himself to the baseball world there's like the loud boisterous young Bryce there's like the the later period of the nationals Bryce where he's like sort of. All business winning MVP's there's like the Philadelphia suck up era there's now the anti manfred the era grow the game there's and there's the grow the game umbrella underneath all of that which grow the game has been kind of. Co-opted by like bad actors in the baseball world so so Bryce's spot within all of these different planes of existence has always been quite fascinating to us and why we've always. Been interested in talking about him and then even if you separate like Bryce the idea from bright right or like even trying to separate Bryce the idea from Bryce the person is interesting to because he's like. A probably very ultra conservative like Mormon guy from Las Vegas you know which is a weird part of all of this to so. But has has expressed more class solidarity than a lot of the other players in the in the PA so. It's interesting I don't think we're going to solve all of that here on this podcast Andy but. Well i'm just hoping blood transfusions in the raw mill happened aren't fucking up that. That part of his brain what if they're what if they're stoking like what if they're bringing more of that out of him will you become will you commit to becoming pro. Optional dialysis and raw milk on the pot voluntary dialysis. Yeah if you can only get raw milk at at stadiums after the CBA i guess i'd have to support that. Okay do you want to tell people where they can find the book alright so. We're having a release with Bradford William Davis at powerhouse arena April first. You can get tickets from the powerhouse website and then April 3rd we're doing an event together hopefully either at lose athletic club in bushwick. At both of those places there will be books for sale. There's also going to be a Barnes and Noble date April 16th with no a call win and then we're setting up a mess versus Yankees debate April 3rd at lapar and i'm also going on for the book i'll be. Yeah April 30th in the lower side i'll be on tour the book i'm going along islands i'm going to Jersey i'm going to the capital area so follow astra house or follow me. And get lits on twitter and instagram for all the information about that otherwise. Book should be everywhere hope you pick it up hope you like it i believe the listeners of this podcast will stumble across this one way or another that's a belief that i have. And you get let's thank you so much this is this is really awesome. Thank you love the show. Thanks to Andy. Thanks to Billy Joel for his decades and decades of great. Musicianship thank you to. I did that what you can't do this this is our last chance to do it it's banned the episode's not after this episode the band hasn't the band hasn't gone. It's not an effect. This is a legal loophole as long as i don't press stop on this is like i can continue to talk to you about Billy Joel for as long as i watch for Billy Joel it's like for the next 24 hours. Thanks to the are wonderful listeners at home who are going to. curb the discussion of umpire accuracy. In their own lives. As we're listening be the change you want to see in the world next to you Alex. It's nice to be podcasting again even though we didn't miss any episodes over the last couple weeks but shaking the rest off getting back into the season. You feeling good about next week's thing go card the thing that that's the segment that we're doing. A week from today mm right which i which i knew about like off the top of my head i was sort of like i've been thinking i'm like. Just make sure you don't forget bingo card is coming up next week should we have should we ask for a bingo card entry. Gonna leap that out yep. I don't think Ben's picks are going to be very interesting anyway so. Alright we will talk to you next week bye. 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.