Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1504: Suing the Sign Stealers

Episode Date: February 22, 2020

Will we see baseball’s sign stealers in court, or will attempts to take legal action be a suing and a miss? In a bonus episode of EW, Ben Lindbergh talks to sports-law expert Nathaniel Grow about the viability of and precedents for several lawsuits related to MLB’s ongoing sign-stealing scandal, as well as another case […]

So the next time, let's all feel good, don't forget the fact. There's a man in the room and he wants you too, he calls me out. And the judge is a good man, the judge is a good man, and that's a fact. And the judge is a good man, the judge is a good man, and that's a fact You're the judge's engagement Judge's engagement That's a fact Hope you don't ever get caught in the act Hello and welcome to episode 1504 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, and this is a bonus episode of Effectively Wild. A lot of people are angry about the Astros right now, angry about the sign stealing,

angry at Major League Baseball for how it has responded to the sign stealing, but a few people are so angry that they have decided to sue. And we are now up to, I believe, at least six lawsuits targeted at the Astros or MLB or some combination of the two, including some individuals involved in the science dealing cases. And I don't have any real sense of what kind of legal bar these claimants have to clear and what the next steps for these cases might be. So I thought we could do a little episode that's just devoted to rounding up all of these cases, getting some sense of how hard it is to convince people of these things that are being claimed here and whether we might actually

see some penalties assessed. And so to talk about this, I am joined now by Nathaniel Groh, who is an associate professor at the Kelly School of Business at Indiana University. And he has been on the podcast before. He used to write regularly for Fangraphs, and he has written pretty regularly about sports law. He wrote the book Baseball on Trial, The Origin of Baseball's Antitrust Exemption. And as I was reading about one of these recent lawsuits, I saw his name mentioned all over it, so I didn't even have to send him the article. He was quoted in it. Nathaniel, hello, and welcome back. Thanks for having me. It's always good to be here. Yeah, so let's start with what is probably the best known of these lawsuits.

This is the one that involves the former big league pitcher, Blue Jays reliever, Mike Bolsinger. So Mike Bolsinger is suing the Astros, and now he has also added Astros owner Jim Crane and Astros staffer Derek Vagoa, owner Jim Crane and Astros staffer Derek Vagoa, who is the guy who, according to the Wall Street Journal's reporting, was the intern who came up with Codebreaker and is now employed on a full-time basis with the Astros. And Bolsinger, he pitched against the Astros on August 4th, 2017. That was his last major league outing to date. The Astros scored four runs off him in a third of an inning. According to the Tony Adams sign stealing data, they were using the bang on 12 of the 29 pitches he threw. And that was that. He was designated for assignment. He's been pitching in Japan. And so he is suing the Astros for unfair business practices and negligence via a duplicitous and tortious scheme of sign stealing,

which we tend to call the banging scheme around here. But yes, duplicitous and tortious scheme of sign stealing, which we tend to call the banging scheme around here. But yes, duplicitous and tortious. So he is asking for the Astros to give him money to repay him for having cost him opportunities. And also, I think he is asking for them to donate maybe their playoff shares and revenue from that season. So what's the precedent for this? And what do you think of the case? Yeah, so I think that I think you actually everything you said is right. He seems to be asking for a lot in this case, some of which, you know, one might question

whether he's really the best one to be asking the court to seize all of the Astros playoff shares and all that stuff. How that ties into his harm is a little bit questionable. You know, it's an interesting case. It's one where he definitely, I think, pleads a plausible case. I think that personally, I think that there's probably some issues there, some technical legal issues, some more kind of substantive, you know, baseball related issues. But it's not, it's not, when I first heard it, I was a little skeptical. And then when I read it, I was like, oh, it's, you know, it's definitely plausible whether he'll win or not. I don't know.

But it's not – it passes the laugh test, I guess, in other words. So what makes it a questionable case and what makes it a compelling case? Sure. So there's like the basic like legal like technicalities. Like he filed this lawsuit in California, which there's reasons for that because California law is a little bit more favorable to him probably. But the problem is, you know, the case has nothing really to do with California, right? Like, yeah, the Astros beat the Dodgers, but his game was in Houston. He's from Texas. The team's from Texas. It seems a little bit questionable that that case

belongs out in California. And so that's one issue is I wouldn't, I would be surprised if it wasn't just kind of tossed out of court on that grounds. He's got a few arguments you might be able to make, but it seems to me that this is a case that if it's going to go forward, it belongs in Texas. You know, I mean, once you get into it, then, you know, kind of setting that aside, I mean, when you get into it, yeah, you know, what the Astros were doing was, like you said, duplicitous, you know, potentially tortious. So I think the big cause of action here is what they call intentional interference with contracts. And if I, you know, cause your employer to fire you and I do so in a wrongful manner, then, yeah, you can sue me for that because I've harmed you by persuading or causing your employer to can you, right?

Here are the questions. And, you know, he can kind of argue that, that the Astro, you know, had he not gotten batted around that game, maybe he wouldn't have been demoted and he'd still be in the majors and all that. To me, I guess it just comes down to, you know, a question of do we believe that, does the court believe, does a jury ultimately believe that this one game is why he was demoted and never came back? Or do we think that, you know, he has a longer track record than this, that, you know, he's serviceable, but, you know, in 2017, he wasn't

lights out or anything at the major league level. You know, there's just, I think that he's going to have to kind of deal with those types of arguments about, yeah, you know, yes, you had one bad outing, but are you suggesting that all 30 major league teams are too short-sighted or stupid to be able to see past that and kind of look deeper at what you bring to the table? So ultimately, him having to prove that he would still be in the majors or would have been in the majors longer had it not been for that incident, I think, is a little bit in the season and in previous seasons. And so I feel for him and I can see why if I were Mike Bolsinger and I'd be looking at the timing and this was my last outing and look, the Astros were cheating. Does he have to prove or convince people not only that this is why he is no longer in the big leagues, this is why he was designated for assignment because he struggled in this outing, big leagues this is why he was designated for assignment because he struggled in this outing but also that the banging the sign stealing was responsible for that because even if we know that the astros were stealing the signs do you then also have to prove or at least convince people that he got hit hard that day because of the sign stealing as opposed to just well he's not a great

pitcher and they're a good hitting team yeah Yeah, exactly. I think that that's a good point. You know, it's depending on how deep you want to press on it. Right. Like, or, you know, yes, I think to answer your question. Yes. I think that that, you know, the team and, you know, the defense would definitely, you know, make that case. I think you also just have to look at, you know, what kind of what we in the law would call like contributory negligence, you know, kind of your own fault here. Like maybe I'm not as, you know, compassionate about the, or as worked up about the sign stealing episode as some other people, but, you know, teams know that teams steal signs, right? You switch up your signs on purpose and all this stuff. And so you could also see a defense counsel or a jury saying, well, you know, you probably shouldered some of

the blame for that. Even if we don't, even if we want to say yes, the reason he got hit so hard is because he knew what was coming. You know, he wasn't like he was totally helpless in a position to try to change that himself and to try to change things up and prevent that those signs from being detected. Yeah, I guess that's a good point. I think Trevor Bauer in his Players Tribune piece, even as he was talking about how the Astros were cheating, and he thought they were cheating all along, I think he acknowledged that he could have been more vigilant about, you know, switching up signs, that there are things you can do, that you do have examples of, say, the Nationals in the World Series last year who said that they had this whole elaborate system to try

to put these countermeasures in place. And so if you were to switch signs on every pitch or something, let's say, then the Astros wouldn't be able to steal your signs. I don't know where the burden of normal baseball behavior is, because obviously that's not the typical thing to switch your signs constantly. So you're kind of going above and beyond, but I guess there is that option at least to defend yourself. Exactly. And, you know, it's just I guess it's just kind of a question of two, you know, there's and this kind of gets to some of the other cases that we're going to talk about in a minute.

But there's kind of this dual perspective going on here where Balsinger wants to argue that basically, oh, I had no idea that this was happening, could be happening. Right. But then some of the other cases we'll talk about a minute are like, oh, no, and we'll be new about this for a while, and this was no secret. And so some of this might even come down to, you know, how widely known was the Astros' history here? And, you know, how widely shared were those suspicions about what they were doing? Is that something that Ballsinger or someone else on the Blue Jays should have been aware of, you know, a lot earlier?

Yeah. And there were nine pitchers, I believe, who lost their roster spots shortly after they faced the Astros in 2017. And I think a lot of them have talked about that, but I believe Bolsinger is the only one who has sued thus far. So I wonder if they could band together, whether that would help their case in some way or whether the others are just waiting to see what happens with Bolsinger's case, or maybe they just want to move on and don't feel like this is going to work or that they want to relive it. I don't know. Yeah, I did see his attorney mentioned that they would been, I believe I'm getting this right. I've read a lot about it, so I might be misstating it, but I thought I saw his attorney say that they'd been talking to other players and there's definitely a possibility that the suit could expand to include other guys down the road. And I should say too, just that, you know, his attorney's good. Like, it's not like it's just some fly-by-night guy. I

mean, he has a good firm representing him. It's a legit complaint. And, you know, it's going to cause the Astros lawyers, you know, some time to try to get around it. The question is just ultimately, you know, do I think he persuades a jury? If it gets kicked back to Texas, does he persuade a Houston jury of all this stuff? At the end of the day, that's I guess where I'm a little bit skeptical on it. I see. And the complaint said that the Astros have member investors involved in the fraudulent scheme who reside in Los Angeles, California. And that is maybe an allusion to Crane, who has reportedly bought a house there. So when it comes to targeting individual people, how does that work? So Crane was the owner of the team. Fagoa was just an intern at the time who has reportedly been involved in the creation of Codebreaker. So is it more difficult to sue, say, the owner of a team or just an employee of a team than it is to sue the team as a whole? So I guess it kind of raises different issues. So, you know, the former intern, I'm guessing, doesn't probably have deep pockets, what we'd say, right?

There's probably not a ton of money, you know, especially I doubt he's got enough to compensate Balsinger for the loss of two years of MLB service time and salary, right? The team obviously does. Crane living in L.A. kind of, you know, I think that that's what they're hoping for, is that they can argue that there's enough of a investor connection to California to get it into that, to get it there and to be able to sustain the case there. I just it's possible. But I think that the odds are probably against them winning on that point. Yeah. And if it's I mean, the owner of a team, maybe he's responsible for anything the team does, even if he wasn't directly aware of it, which we're not sure that Crane was at the time. And then when it comes to an intern, I don't know, can you hold someone personally responsible, especially a lower ranked employee like that?

if he to some degree came up with the scheme and he didn't come up with the banging scheme but even if he came up with code breaker he was still doing it really with the knowledge of his superiors and maybe at their behest who knows certainly with their approval so could you even hold someone in that type of position personally responsible for this yeah that's interesting i you know it's funny because this is kind of a stepping aside that for a second, but it's it is I hadn't thought about until just now, but it's kind of interesting. He wasn't naming any Astros player. well-established doctrine that companies, you know, business entities are generally responsible for injuries that their employees afflict within the scope of employment while at work. So to me, that, you know, getting the team responsible here makes total sense. The intern is just kind of a question of did him just spitballing this idea and kind of putting the computer, the spreadsheet together or whatever it was, does that get him liability when it's really the players and the coaching staff that was implementing it? To me, it's more the coaches and the players if

you're going to be going after individuals. And it'd be interesting to know why they didn't name Alex Corr or Carlos Beltran. Or maybe it's because they don't know who exactly was hitting the trash cans on that day and whatnot. But it is interesting that they're going after a former intern, but not any of the actual players involved. Yeah. All right. Well, let me move on to one of these other cases here. This was one of the more recent ones was just announced this past week. So Adam Wallach, who is an Astros season ticket holder, has sued the Astros for what he alleges are violations of the state's deceptive Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Act. And the LA Times article about this goes on to say, the lawsuit alleges the Astros cheated not only the sport, but in particular their fans by, quote, deceptively overcharging them for season tickets while knowingly and surreptitiously engaged in a sign-stealing scheme in violation

of Major League Baseball rules. In so doing, the suit alleges the Astros secretly put a deficient product on the field. And I should also note that two other lawsuits like this one were filed on behalf of Astros season ticket holders Roger Contreras and Kenneth Young, and the law firm that filed those suits, HMG, had a long-standing relationship with the AA affiliate of the Astros, the Corpus Christi Hooks. And perhaps not coincidentally, the law firm's $45,000 a year partnership with that team, which included a lot of seats behind home plate and a suite, was not renewed. Potential payback could be a coincidence, I suppose. So what do you think of these three cases of which the Wallach

case appears to be the most prominent? Yeah, that one's a loser for a variety of different reasons. There's kind of a history of these types of cases where some fan gets aggrieved that whether there was a litigation involving the Patriots back in the NFL during the Spygate era where New York Jets fans tried to sue and say that, you know, the game that they paid money to attend was, you know, fraudulently affected. And the courts say, no, you just a ticket basically just entitles you to sit in a seat and watch a game. Right. And there's no guarantee that the rules are going to be applied correctly. That's coming up after the NFC championship game this last year when there was a blatant referee error and some Saints fans sued and the courts there are going to say, no, you don't get a right to sue over a rule not being enforced correctly. And I am 99.9% confident that the same outcome will be reached here in this fan lawsuit. And so when he says that the Astros put

a deficient product on the field, I guess that's debatable, right? Because if they were cheating to try to win, then you could argue that it was a superior product, at least in terms of results or success or even entertainment value. I mean, if the Astros were cheating and getting more hits and scoring more runs and sending fans home happy, then it wouldn't even have been a deficient product unless, you know, ethically deficient. And so now having found out about it, that you were rooting for these cheaters all along, that you were somehow complicit, you know, you were enriching this team that was cheating the sport, and now you feel bad about that, I guess that would be something. But you can't even argue that they were you know throwing the games like what if they were doing that if they were trying to lose would

would that be any more viable than trying to win or does it just not matter because all the ticket entitles you to is to go see these people play yeah i think the the argument would be stronger if this was the you know 1919 world series or something like that. Even then, I don't know if it would be a successful case or not. And I think you're exactly right. Like, if you're a season ticket holder of the Astros, you know, setting aside the ethics of it, I'd rather watch them, you know, beat the brains out of the Blue Jays one day than not, right? And it would be more compelling, I think, if he were a Toronto Blue Jays fan who'd bought tickets for that game and then was very disappointed that his team, you know, got destroyed because of this cheating episode.

It's kind of far-fetched to think that an Astros fan was injured in that respect. But, you know, others could see it differently, I guess. Are there any precedents or comps you can think of for the Bolsinger case, by the way? Just players suing another team for cheating or impacting their performance in some way, I feel? Yeah, there's cases where players, it's not exactly analogous, but there's cases where players are injured and they sue the opposition because, you know, that costs them their career or that sort of thing, especially like intentionally injured. So there's a case that I teach in this class where in the NFL, there's a player who's like lying down the field after a play and the opposition comes over and clubs him in the back of the head and breaks some vertebrae and the guy never plays again, that sort of thing.

There, yeah, that kind of makes sense, right? said about the sign stealing thing, but it does, in my mind, at least legally, the fact that sign stealing is okay in some circumstances, but not in others, I think makes it harder to win this legal case versus, you know, something else that's just clearly always outside, you know, the bounds of what is allowed in the sport. So, yeah, I mean, I guess there's a distinction between using just your eyes and using technology, whether it's a telescope or binoculars or video. But then I guess it's, well, is binoculars a technology? Is that the same as a video camera? And meanwhile, I guess you might have to explain all of this to a jury that is not necessarily that knowledgeable about baseball, which I don't know if that would be an issue.

that knowledgeable about baseball, which I don't know if that would be an issue, but just trying to tell them, well, see, it's okay to do this type of sign stealing, except that players don't really like it when you do that kind either. Like they think it's okay. It's not against the rules, but they will, you know, throw at you or say something if they catch you doing it. But then there's this other type of sign stealing that's even worse. And that is actually against the rules. So I guess you would have to explain all of that to an audience that maybe wouldn't know all of that. It's kind of like when players go to arbitration and the arbitrators are not necessarily baseball experts. And so often they rely on precedents and structures and very simple stats as opposed to more advanced ones, or at least they have traditionally. Yeah, I think that's right. You know, I mean, my intuition is probably, if anything, the jury is going to be more alarmed by this and not, you know, care as much about that nuance that,

you know, visual signs dealing, you know, just with your eyes is okay. But technologically, it's not. I realize I'm kind of in the minority of being not quite as worked up about it as most people are. But I do think that there are legal issues there in these cases that you have to be able to address of, you know, this does happen sometimes, not in other circumstances. Can we really argue legally that that distinction has a huge, you know, bearing on the ultimate, you know, on the ultimate determination of whether the defendant, Astros, or whoever it might be, MLB, should be liable in this case. And then the last couple of cases

are sort of similar maybe you can tell me if there's any notable distinction between them but the the plaintiffs are Christopher Clifford in one and he is suing MLB and the Astros and the Red Sox and then there is another sort of similar case and the plaintiff in that case is christopher olsen and both of these guys were people who played daily fantasy sports they played on draft kings etc and they are saying that the stats were skewed because of the sign stealing and therefore they are trying to hold mlp responsible for that for not policing it better and then also the teams that were involved and it seems like they are both hoping to build these into class actions potentially with lots of people who were playing those games at that time so i don't know if if there's any great distinction between these two

cases that you see or not but you can talk about uh viability of this angle yeah i think that these are the most interesting i mean mean, the Balsinger case is interesting in its own right. It's just different. I think that there's problems there. Here, I think that these are really interesting cases in a potential, like they might have long term legs perspective, just because, I mean, not just because, but in part because of MLB's relationship with DraftKings. And it's kind of creative that, you know, they found that hook and MLB, you know, knows found that hook and MLB, you know, knows about or was investigating what was going on. Major League Baseball has a huge

equity stake in DraftKings. So they're directly profiting from the daily fantasy sports market. And I think that those the combination of those two things that you're on the one hand, you're the investigator who possesses knowledge of what's happening potentially. And at the same time, you're profiting in this other sphere from these, not bets, but these contests makes it an interesting case. That having been said, you know, again, I think that it's not a slam dunk that those plaintiffs are going to win, but it definitely is something that I think, again, it has some legs to it probably. Yeah. And I think that's part of the reason why MLP wants to get the signs doing stuff under control. In addition to the massive backlash that we've seen, MLB also has gambling partnerships and partnerships with daily fantasy sites.

And those partners do want to make sure that the stats are on the level, or at least that this sort of lawsuit won't be launched after the fact. So that puts even more pressure on the league to clean up the game. Reading says that DraftKings users, including Olsen, selected pitchers for their lineup who were playing against Houston or Boston. Those pitchers performed poorly during those games, even though prior data suggested the players should have done well.

The lawsuit argued the complaint doesn't state if Olsen lost money on his Houston or Boston bets, which, again, I guess this does require that you demonstrate that the sign stealing

was responsible for those players' poor performance, which I think most people are convinced of. And, you know, it certainly sounds like it should be the case. And you could say, well, why were these teams doing it if it didn't help them? On the other hand, there's sophisticated analysis out there that shows that even though they were cheating, they weren't always relaying the signals correctly and decoding the signals correctly. And so sometimes they got the pitch wrong and that may have even hurt more than it helped when they got it right. And so on the whole, it's not totally clear that there was a great benefit. There certainly may have been. There's no way to prove that there wasn't. And in individual cases and games, surely there was. But would you have to prove, I guess, that on the whole, there was some dramatic difference?

And how can you do that? Even the commissioner's report didn't try to wade into those waters because it essentially said it's impossible to show how much of a difference this made. And so even if it certainly seems intuitive that it would, I wonder just how far you have to go to prove that it did as opposed to just, well, these guys had off days. Yeah, I think it would be – it's a good question. I think it's, you know, if a jury had to hear it, you know, I think that there would be, you could use some of that circumstantial evidence that they try to use in the, you know, the Clifford complaint, for instance, where it wasn't Alex Woods that he'd rather have, you know, somebody doping than knowing what pitch was coming. You could get enough of that sort of stuff in and you could, you know, I think in that sort of case, you could also call guys like, you know, Balsinger in and talk to them and, you know, have them on

the stands. And I think you could probably build that case, even if statistically it might not, you know, pass, you know, and convince everyone out there that statistically it was meaningful. But I think at the same time, this case also kind of raises the same issue I raised a minute ago, but just from a different perspective of at what point should these supposedly sophisticated bettors and gamblers in effect have detected that the Astros were killing it at home? Right. And, you know, it's one of those things where, yeah, sure. Earl, when the scheme first started, you know, and it kind of to the point you said about like, oh, you know, these data analyses suggested that these pitchers should be doing better. I

guess it's just a question of, you know, what timeframe is that based on? Are we talking about 2017 data? Or are we talking about, you know, over the last five years? And just kind of at what point should the fact that this scheme is going on and that pitchers are struggling even maybe more than one might expect, you know, in Houston, at what point should that kind of be baked into your analysis when you're making decisions on who to select for your daily fantasy sports team? into your analysis when you're making decisions on who to select for your daily fantasy sports team. Yeah, and I don't even know that that was the case because in some of those years, the Astros hit better on the road than they did at home. Granted, they were cheating in some ways on the road too, it seems, but the banging scheme specifically was in Houston as far as we know, and they weren't actually doing better there. So I don't know that it's something you could have detected just based on home road splits from that regular season, let's say. That's a good point. Yeah. Do you know if there was anything along these lines with steroids, with PEDs?

Obviously, there was an equivalent outrage about that, and a lot of fans felt like they had been deceived. And it was sort of similar in the sense that MLB was slow to respond and probably knew that that stuff was going on before it became a big story and before they really tried to stop it. So is there anything that you've come across that's from that era that might have some bearing here? That's a good question. I'm trying to think I don't not that I got the jumps to mind. Yeah, you know, I think that there you would probably most likely have had a like a fan type lawsuit again, where lawsuit again, where my ticket was devalued because I wasn't watching clean athletes perform and all that stuff. And again, those aren't likely to be successful. And to the extent you had a player trying to sue over that, then you're

talking about like a CBA negotiated term. And that's probably getting out of the courts anyway, not that I'm aware of anything like that happening. But yeah, I haven't looked at it. I'm guessing that there, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lawsuit or two filed by some random fan, but not successfully as far as I know. Is there any other opening you see if you were some opportunistic lawyer just hanging your shingle out there and you're watching all the signs doing stuff go down and you're thinking, hey, maybe I can make a quick buck here. Is there any other vulnerability that you see, whether it's with these teams or MLB or the individual players, or is there just really no legal recourse for this, no matter how you slice it? That's my feeling on it is that this is, you know, as problematic as it may be, it's just kind

of not a one that the law is really well set up to address. I will say, like, you know, the thing with the DraftKings cases, my gut was kind of like, I don't know, like, I'm a little skeptical of the claim. But like, the more I press on, I can't figure out why I'm skeptical of it. So that tells me something that maybe there, you know, that there is really something there, right? You know, I do think that one question there that MLB has to, was going to have to deal with is when, how much did they know and when? Right. Right. Because, you know, that case is very much based on MLB knew in 2017 that this was happening. They ignored it and they

continued to allow it to happen. And therefore, but at the same time, they were encouraging fans to play these contests without telling the fans that some of these decisions you're making may be impacted by fraudulent activity that we are concealing from you. And yeah, that's definitely a plausible legal claim. Whether, you know, how much what MLB knew and whether it rose to the level of something that they ought to have disclosed in that context. Those are, you know, interesting questions. I don't know if we necessarily, I might, maybe I'm wrong. I don't know if we have the full answer on that yet. Yeah, not entirely. We know that at least the Oakland A's lodged some kind of complaint with MLB in 2018, and it wasn't really pursued. And we know that MLB tightened the restrictions and

the monitoring when it came to the video feeds and the video rooms in 2018 and 2019. I don't know that we have definitive evidence that they knew in most of the 2017 season. Of course, they knew once the Red Sox were caught doing their Apple Watch thing that that was going on, and there were suspicions about the Astros. But yes, I don't know if there's a paper trail there where Rob Manfred's saying, let's sweep this under the rug and please delete this email. I don't know if there's a paper trail there where Rob Manfred's saying, let's sweep this under the rug and please delete this email. I don't know. But if you get past that and you get into the discovery phase where, you know, the daily fantasy sports lawyers, plaintiff's lawyers or ball singers, lawyers or whomever's lawyers can start demanding document evidence. I definitely think that the perception is, is that MLB is trying to sweep something under the rug here a little bit. Right. And that those are the types of things that are going to come out through discovery. And just even if MLB says, you know what, we're at 100%

in the clear here legally, there's still all sorts of incentives for the league to settle these cases if they can't get them tossed out immediately. Because I don't know if they really want these plaintiff's attorneys digging through the paper trail on what was going on at the league in all these investigations. Okay. So the last thing I want to ask you about is not sign stealing related. There has been a development with the age-old foul ball rule, the tradition in baseball that teams are not liable when fans get hit by foul balls because they put a warning on the seats or the tickets or everyone knows that they're foul balls at baseball games. And it seems like there may be some crack in that traditional

defense. So what's the case in question and what has happened? Yeah. So there's a case in California that came out this week. It was at the appellate court, the state appellate court level. So I guess the big caveat is it only applies in California, at least immediately. Basically, the general fact pattern was that there was a USA baseball event that was being hosted at, if I remember correctly, UC Long Beach or one of the California colleges baseball stadiums. But it was being hosted by USA baseball. And there's a fan there, a female teenager, I remember right, who gets hit by a foul ball and suffers major, you know, orbital injuries. And she sues. major, you know, orbital injuries, and she sues. And the trial court immediately is like, no,

this is covered by the baseball rule, as long as the team, the stadium owner provides, you know, minimal netting, covering the most dangerous parts of the stadium right behind home plate, that by virtue of sitting in the stands, you assume the risk of any injury because getting hit by a foul ball is or should be an obvious danger associated with attending a professional or collegiate or major league baseball game. The appellate court then reversed that in this decision this week. And they basically said that we don't know if we agree with that analysis. And on the one hand, it's somewhat of a narrow case because they didn't say that the fan necessarily wins. They just said you at least have to give her a day in court, let her prove that USA Baseball and the baseball facility should have had more extensive netting, that it was something that they ought to have done, even under our kind of limited liability rules.

But on the other hand, it's also fairly broad in that if that sticks, and the court definitely seemed to suggest that there was a real possibility that she could win that case. If that sticks, then it affects not just major league baseball stadiums, minor league baseball stadiums, but you're also talking college, theoretically high school, amateur, all the way down to little league, potentially stadiums in the state of California would have to start reevaluating the level of protection they're providing their fans. So it wouldn't just automatically apply to all of those other settings and states, but you're saying that potentially it could be used as precedent to launch other lawsuits elsewhere? Exactly. Yeah. So I mean, in California, assuming that, you know,

that that, I mean, it's always possible possible that gets appealed up to the California Supreme Court and gets reversed. So, you know, it's still an intermediate kind of stage here. But if that holds and the courts are saying, no, we are going to be more open to these fan lawsuits, then, yeah, I mean, anyone who gets hurt at a little league game all the way up to Dodgers, you know, Padres, Giants, A's game could potentially sue under California law where previously before this week that was going to be a much more difficult legal battle to win. Whether that carries forward to other states is kind of an open question. Some states have been a little bit more skeptical of this protection in recent years, but as far as I know, no state has really reconsidered things quite to the extent that this California court seemed prepared to do. And the interesting thing is since that incident in 2012, many teams and just about all major league teams now are extending their netting to the foul lines. And so that is good. It's overdue. It's nice that that's happening. And you could argue that that is evidence that maybe teams should be liable because they're acknowledging that they do have this responsibility to protect

fans in those other areas of park and so someone who was hit back then could say see they were negligent and not protecting us at the time then again you could also say well that's the standard now but it wasn't the standard then. And so we can't hold a team responsible for not extending the netting in 2012 when most teams hadn't done so here then. So I don't know how that impacts this claim at all. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I think that that's all right. You know, my kind of it's a little bit nuanced in the California previous rulings they were operating in were like a little bit kind of unusual and unique in that basically the California Supreme Court had effectively said that the team doesn't know if it said this literally, but the idea was, oh, if you put up extra netting, then the catcher can't run over and stick his glove into the first

row of seats and catch a pop foul. And so that netting could affect the game on the field. And here the court was basically saying, well, because Major League Baseball is doing it, then that suggests that it doesn't actually impact the game on the field. Which long-winded way of me saying, basically, it is interesting that when MLB starts to extend the netting, I think everybody had been kind of focused on, oh, well, that protects more fans of Major League Baseball games. Maybe that has some bearing on MLB's liability. But I don't think people, myself included, were necessarily thinking enough about does MLB's high-profile extension of of netting that probably does have ripple effects for collegiate baseball, for amateur baseball that maybe people weren't fully appreciating.

All right. Well, we have covered all the cases I wanted to guess to, and unless there are any other interesting baseball cases making their way through the courts right now that are on your mind while we're doing our legal roundup, is there anything else you're following that could lead to some development in the near future? Nothing real. I mean, just the CBA negotiations down the road, but that's a different matter for a different day. All right. Well, maybe we will talk to you on that day, but until then, you can find Nathaniel on Twitter at NathanielGro. Go check out his archive of writings at Fangraphs and elsewhere. Thanks, Nathaniel.

Always a pleasure. Appreciate you having me. It was fun. Well, sure enough, after I finished speaking to Nathaniel, I googled fans suing about steroids, and I came up with an example from early 2008. A then 30-year-old man named Matthew Mitchell sued the Yankees for repayment of the $221 in tickets that he spent on five games between 2002 and 2007 that he still had the stubs for. Filed this in small claims court. That is a small claim. And he said he

filed the lawsuit chiefly because he wanted team representatives to be forced to come down and answer my claim. He filed this just about a month after the Mitchell report came out, which included evidence that a number of New York Yankees had used PEDs. And so he said, quoting an article here, on June 8th, 2002, Mitchell watched San Francisco Giants star Barry Bonds hit one of the longest home runs he had ever seen in Yankee Stadium. I remember that one. He said, I can't even explain to you how far it was. People were standing around just looking at each other.

Upper deck shot, as I recall. Now to Mitchell, this feat doesn't seem legitimate, since drugs may have helped Bonds accomplish the task, despite the slugger's denial. You told me I was seeing a baseball game with real baseball players, when in fact, there were players that were artificially enhanced, claimed Mitchell. He likens the use of these drugs to consumer fraud. On those grounds, maybe you could sue Major League Baseball for not controlling how far the baseball flies when anyone hits it. Baseball is artificially enhanced. Anyway, don't know what happened to Matthew Mitchell's case, but I'm guessing it didn't go far. Perhaps he got his $221 and his day in court.

You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up to pledge some small monthly amount and help keep the podcast going while getting themselves access to some perks ethan daniel gong norton timothy otul ryan brown andrew bellizzi and sean hatch thanks to all of you you can join our facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild you can rate review and subscribe to effectively wild on itunes and other podcast platforms keep your questions and comments for me and Sam and Meg coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance.

We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we'll be back with another season preview podcast first thing next week. Talk to you then. I love you Sue me, sue me What can you do me I love you