Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1604: The Plans for Fans in Stands

Episode Date: October 17, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a podcast interview that may hinge on the Rays winning the World Series, John Smoltz’s on-air app suggestion, the latest developments in the Dave Roberts and Clayton Kershaw playoff narratives, the Dodgers and Astros on the brink, the long-term outlook for Randy Arozarena, encouraging catcher glove gestures, the […]

🎵 Beware, beware, beware of the neighborhood name Hello and welcome to episode 1604 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing okay, how are you? Doing okay. All right. So we have a guest today. We will be talking to Bradford William Davis of the New York Daily News about the fact that there are fans in the stands. Don't know if you've noticed, but there are lots of fans at some of these baseball games, the NLCS one specifically, and the World Series ones next week.

And there have been 11,500 tickets sold to each of the games at Globe Life Field. That's 28% capacity. Bradford has done a lot of reporting about MLB and public health all season. And so we're going to talk to him about how that's being handled and the outlook for next season and what it will be like to cover the World Series because he is hoping to do that. So we'll get into all of that in a little while. We are recording on Friday afternoon before the baseball games. So by the time some of you hear this, someone may have won a pennant. Perhaps someone's may have won a pennant. Right now, we don't know, but there's a lot at stake, not just in general sense, but for this podcast specifically. I want to draw your attention to a tweet from about a month ago. So on September 18th, a tweeter named Brian Height tweeted at one Jeff Sullivan, former co-host of this podcast and current Tampa Bay Rays employee. And Brian said, will you go on Effectively Wild if the Rays win the World Series?

And Jeff said, I'd probably record it naked. world series and jeff said i'd probably record it naked so there's a lot riding on the outcome of this alcs and also the world series i know many of you are mad about the banging scheme and are probably rooting for the rays for other reasons but we've also got a jeff sullivan naked podcast appearance hanging in the balance here, hanging, so to speak. I don't know if this is something that we should hold him to. I don't know. First of all, you know, either of us could be naked right now, for all anyone knows.

I'm not, but I could be. I'm fully clothed, I promise. Okay, me too. But I'm just saying for an audio medium, it may not make a difference, although just the awareness that someone was naked might just change the atmosphere in some ways, so

I don't know if this could be like a Patreon perk, possibly, where I don't know if that's allowed or if Jeff would even consent to that, but this is just something I've been thinking about since this tweet was sent, as it has become more and more likely that the Rays will win the World Series and that Jeff will have to decide whether to follow through on this or not. I don't know even where to begin with such a thing. I know that times are tough at Fangraphs, but we are not tying any sort of monetary incentives toward nudity,

at least as far as I know. Although there was a satirical article published about that very idea this week, about only Fangraphs. Oh, boy. about that very idea this week, about only fan graphs. Oh, boy. Look, I think that how one pods is between oneself and one's God and whatever one wants to put between oneself and one's chair. And I don't know what to say other than I would imagine, I would imagine if we want to apply some scientific rigor to this question, that the average human person is and has been over the last six or seven months probably more nude in terms of minutes in the day than in the six or seven months prior.

Definitely dressed down. Maybe still dressed mostly, but maybe not. Yeah, I mean, I think that in the first couple of weeks of quarantine, there were all of those articles about the best way to work from home is to act as if one is in the office and dress up. And all of the folks who had worked from home under normal circumstances were like, that's garbage. Don't listen to that. I mean, do whatever gets you through the day, but don't feel the pressure to like put on

a suit jacket to sit on your couch next to your cat. So I think that in the beginning, people were probably like, I'm going to be, you know, professional and pulled together. Let us lean on that as a way to have a semblance of normalcy and now i think most people are just like look i did not eat any of my own hair today and so i am doing great and i imagine that with the benchmark that one is using to judge one's own wellness shifting from did i get dressed for work today to did i eat my own hair that the nudity has probably gone up but all of that is to say how would we ever know we're not going to demand evidence i just think it's like

when a celebrity does an ama or something and they take a picture of themselves saying that they're doing it like would we need to no to send a censored photo to show him recording the podcast? Probably not. Probably not. No. I'm going to respect my friend's privacy and, you know, good friendly boundaries and say that, you know, if that is the mode in which Jeff would prefer to podcast, that is his prerogative. And I trust him to tell the truth. Having volunteered it, I don't know why you lie to be clear he said he'd probably record it naked so that's right that's an important

qualification he left himself a little leeway there he did not promise to record it naked anyway just uh something to keep in mind or not over the next week you know that i try to spend as little time as is possible thinking about my friends in the nude. That just seems like a good mental boundary to have with one's familiars, for we are not that familiar. Anyway. Boy. Yeah. Now I really have no good segue to John Smoltz because they're all bad now.

No. Someone who is not recording naked this week is John Smoltz. Yeah, we verified because of television. So I don't want to turn this into a broader conversation about media criticism because I think we've had a good one so far this postseason and we don't need to belabor the point, but I would like to say the following thing. So for those who watched the NLCS broadcast last night, and this was pointed out by several people in our Facebook group, that Smoltz basically like invented Twitter on air. Yes.

You know, a place where one can assert one's opinions in real time and then receive feedback on them. And so setting that aside, that part is like him being kind of grumpy and a baseball grump, and that proclivity is well documented. But the thing that I found interesting about that whole conversation was this. They came back from commercial and Smoltz offered a number of names for this app that already exists. And then he admitted that he is not on Twitter. And so I ask you this, Ben. Yeah.

Why is he so grumpy? He is free. He is free from Twitter. And so I ask you this, Ben. Yeah. Why is he so grumpy? He is free. He is free from Twitter. Are people walking down the road yelling at John Smoltz about his broadcast proclivities and habits? Yeah, I don't know. How is he aware of the bad feedback that is out there in the world if he is not on Twitter? is free maybe he has a burner and he's name searching which would be very advised if he's doing that never name search so i worry that based on the fact that he does not have twitter but seems to be as grumpy as he is that getting offline would not be as significant a boon to my own mood and mental health as I had assumed it to be. And so I find that realization much more disappointing than whatever's going on in the

NLCS broadcast booth. So that was just my John Smoltz thought. He just seems to continue to be grumpy. Indeed, he is getting grumpier, perhaps. The app he proposed was like a second-guessing app, right? It's like a first-guessing app, I guess. He wants to make the second-guessers first guess. So if you're questioning something a manager does, then you would have to input your call into the app. And then it would preserve that and publicize and keep track of whether you were right or wrong, basically. keep track of whether you were right or wrong. Basically, I guess he just doesn't want people to come out of the woodwork and say, I said that he should do the thing that would have worked out well or would not have worked out poorly. But yes, Twitter is sort of that. If you have tweeted

your thoughts and they're timestamped, it's out there. If you've tweeted that you might record a podcast naked, it exists on the internet. I guess it could be deleted, but I have screenshotted it just in case it comes in handy for any particular reason. But yeah, I'm sympathetic to what he's saying in that I think that second-guessing managers is a little too rampant and that probably if we were in the manager's position, we would all make many mistakes and also a lot of things that are derided as mistakes are not really mistakes. They're just things that didn't work out well or maybe where we don't know what the rationale was and we're missing some crucial part of the information.

So I get what he's saying, but a lot of the time I am not totally on board with what he's saying about other things about baseball like Grand Slams being rally killers or whatever. Yeah, it's really just a good idea to head home on is what we've learned. Yes. So we haven't talked that much about the series and we will probably do a World Series preview soon once we know the matchups, but I don't know if there's been anything on your mind this week. I guess one thing that has been hard to avoid is the latest incarnation of the Kershaw playoff narrative, because we had kind of a quintessential playoff Kershaw start in every respect, both in terms of Kershaw's performance and in terms of the

position he was put in and in terms of the relievers who followed him. And I'm sort of sick of the Kershaw narrative in both directions, really. Like I'm sort of sick of the piling on Kershaw and I'm also sort of sick of defending Kershaw because like at this point, it's clear that he has been far less successful in the postseason. It's clear that he has been far less successful in the postseason. And I think that there are ways in which the Dodgers have exacerbated that, whether it is with Dave Roberts putting him in positions that he probably should not be in and maybe treating him as Pete Kershaw when he is no longer quite that, although he is still quite effective. But you see Roberts leave him out there too long seemingly sometimes and did it again probably this week and let him face Ozuna and Ozuna made him pay, although Ozuna has made everyone pay. But it was kind of that classic situation where Kershaw's cruising early on and

then he runs into trouble in an inning that maybe he shouldn't be pitching or he's left in a little too long. And then someone makes him pay and then the relievers come in and inevitably allow every runner that he has bequeathed to them to score. It was Broussard-Graderol this time. It has been Pedro Baez in the past. It has been many others. And so I think both things can be true and are true that Kershaw's stats and performance look a little worse because of managerial decisions, because of a lack of bullpen support. But also, he has been worse, too. And even if you adjust for the fact that he is not prime Kershaw quite anymore, even when he was prime Kershaw, these things would happen sometimes. And based on the fact that he is a future Hall

Famer and the best pitcher of his era and has been an incredible regular season pitcher during some of the postseasons that he has appeared in, you would expect him not necessarily the type of pitcher that based on his regular season performance you would think you would have to finesse him through and get him out after the second time through the order like he's not a borderline guy who could not theoretically go deep into games so the fact that he has gotten himself into trouble fairly consistently in the sixth or the seventh or whenever it is like he has gotten himself into that situation and yes he didn't have to be placed in that situation but also if he were more effective he just would have survived that i think more often than he has so i don't think it's fair to say that he is a choker or terrible or unclutch or whatever but i also don't think it's fair to say

that he's perfectly fine and we're all making too much of this because he really does have a pretty a choker or terrible or unclutch or whatever, but I also don't think it's fair to say that he's perfectly fine and we're all making too much of this because he really does have a pretty gigantic gap between his regular season and postseason performance for someone who has amassed the sample size in the postseason that he has. Do you think that, like, let's imagine for a moment that all of the underlying statistics of Kershaw's postseason career were exactly the same. But let's change a couple of the outcomes. And suddenly we're looking back on a Dodgers team that has had dominant Kershaw during the regular season and variable Kershaw during the postseason. So ups and downs, except they also have won at least one World Series during his tenure.

Do you think that that changes the narrative, the sort of persistence of this narrative in a meaningful way, even if, so there's that question. So we'll answer that one. And then as a, as a follow-up to it, do you think that it changes the narrative, even if it is reliant on the good performance of others in a way that is perhaps more obvious to folks than the role others have played in his lack of postseason success right because like on the one hand that inning last night was disastrous and the rest of the bullpen's performance certainly didn't help but also the the dodgers couldn't manage to score many runs and that's the other big problem here is that you know the braves did

they scored a bunch of runs the dodgers did not So do you think that it would change how often we talk about this if they had managed even one World Series win in his tenure in Los Angeles? Yes, I think it probably would pretty significantly. I think just so much of how teams are judged today is based on whether they go all the way at least once. Like the Dods have had this incredibly successful run the fact that they've won all these division championships in a row and keep making it back here and keep having these incredible regular season performances and keep developing talent it's i think the most impressive thing in baseball right now on a team level and yet they get dismissed because they lose in the playoffs

and they're on the verge of losing again in the playoffs as we speak and so yeah I think Kershaw is to some degree scapegoated for that or at least that people focus on it more than they would even if he had the same stats you know if they had won it just wouldn't be as frequent a topic of conversation, I think. Yeah. Well, and then that just really bums me out because it suggests that perhaps especially for players of his caliber, that at a certain point we come to take for granted their greatness in all of the many games that they play outside of October and have a very narrow understanding of what an accomplished resume looks like. So that bums me out. The Kershaw narrative, it continues to make me sad, just in a new way. Yeah. And it's very tightly tied to the Dave Rappert's narrative, which also seems fair in some ways. Clearly, he's a good manager in a lot of respects, and he keeps getting this team to this point, and that's most of a manager's job, I think. It certainly seems as if the Dodgers front office is happy with him or content with him because he's come under fire for a lot of his postseason moves in the past, and they've extended him or they've brought him back. And, of course, you would think that everything he does in games is a product of some collaborative dialogue with the front office and that he is working with the numbers and that to some degree he is on the same page with everyoneing things in the playoffs, whether it's just sort of treating Kershaw as his, I don't know, 2014 self perpetually or something, or whether it's just some of the bullpen decisions

that he makes and using Brustar Graterol as a high leverage reliever right now. I get that his hands are tied to an extent because Kenley Jansen is not that dependable. And so who do you go to? Who's your first line of defense? Who's your last line of defense in that bullpen? I don't really know. And Gradroll had the respectable ERA and he throws 100. And so you would think that that inspires confidence, but he just does not miss bats and he does get grounders but he just allows a lot of contact and hard contact and so you can't really feel that secure with him on the mound but then who does make you feel secure is it victor gonzalez is it cleric is it someone else that's sort of the vulnerability of the dodgers the one weakness that we identified coming into the postseason or this series was that it didn't look like they really had a lockdown option. Like they have Jake McGee. They have a lot of guys who are pretty good,

but maybe not the ultra elite late inning arms that some other teams do. Like, you know, and I'm going to sound silly bringing up this example given what transpired in the Tampa-Houston game, but like there isn't a Nick Anderson on that staff. And so you're trying to piece together the best of not bad options. That bullpen is still good despite its recent struggles and despite the fact that Kenley is not in a position to be as readily dependent upon as he has been in the past.

But I imagine as a manager, you don't have the same amount of confidence. And so I can see how it would be easy to sort of talk yourself into, here's the best of my suboptimal options and just have that not hit the way that it's supposed to a couple of times in a row. And because it's a five game series or seven game series, those issues compound in a way that they because it's a five game series or seven game series, those issues

compound in a way that they just don't in the regular season. You know, if you drop a game, what does it matter? If they drop a game tonight, they're going home. So I have sympathy for that. I do think that I would like to be a fly on the wall in the sort of end of season conversation that the organization has with Roberts about what is the process behind the decision making here, because it does seem to be a consistent issue at this time of year where, you know, he's either not pulling the right lever or he's pulling the right lever too late. And some of that is likely noise, right, where other managers do the same thing and it just kind of works out because that's how baseball goes and so we're less aware of those process failures but it does seem to kind of rear its head this time of year in particular in a way that is not solely responsible for the lack of a world series

championship in la the last you know 10 years but is a contributing factor to their some of their early exits so it's just a bummer yeah and as for the state of the series the Dodgers are on the verge of elimination here and I think there was a lot of optimism about a Dodgers comeback and it's certainly not far-fetched that that could still happen but after those first two games where the Braves have just been really riding Anderson and Freed all postseason and it was clear that they were much more vulnerable beyond that. And Kyle Wright had the successful start to the playoffs, but it seemed like it would be tough to get Kyle Wright and the other Braves starters past the

Dodgers bats. And so in game three, when Wright got knocked around and the Dodgers break out and score 11 runs in the first inning, and you wrote about the Braves and their brief temporary embarrassment in that game. And as you said in your piece, you wake up the next day and maybe everything is different. And it doesn't have to be a lasting embarrassment. And so anyone who thought that, oh, the momentum had shifted in the series and now the Dodgers are ascendant, well, that didn't last long either because Bryce Wilson comes out and shuts the Dodgers down and has good stats. They hit about three balls that looked like they would have or should have been homers, but just got knocked down by the wind, maybe. And so they ended up getting shut down by Bryce Wilson, which is not what you would have expected for a team as good at the plate as the Dodgers. And these things just sort of happen. So it can swing wildly from one game to the next, and it could still swing back in the other direction

and it's sort of like in the the Rays Astros series like the Rays go up 3-0 but the Astros had out hit them pretty significantly to that point and had also hit a lot of balls hard that were caught which was partly great Rays defense and partly maybe good fortune for the Rays. And as I said on the Ringer and Bobisho at that point, like if you're the Astros, yeah, the odds are really stacked against you. But you could at least take some solace in the fact that, well, if we keep out hitting this team, eventually that will work out for us. It might not in the course of one best of seven series, but keep doing what you're doing, putting guys on base, and eventually they'll start scoring. And I guess they have for the last couple of games. Not that they've been blowouts or anything, but they have managed to stave off elimination there.

But they have not managed to stave off Randy Orozarena. No, no one can. No one can. Yeah, I'll be curious to see what the outlook for Orozarena coming into next season is like are people going to be drafting him way high in their fantasy leagues are people going to be predicting some sort of mvp season or is everyone going to say this was just one of those uh small sample stories where someone just goes off in the playoffs i don't think it's that it's not like one of these

you know random guy has a good couple weeks or something like he had a good season and the Rays I think believed in him coming into the playoffs and Ben Clemens wrote about him before everyone else was writing about him and the Rays were like hitting him second or third in the lineup at that point so clearly they like his underlying talent but no one would have expected this so it'll'll be interesting to see what the carryover is because, you know, sometimes you get like the Daniel Murphy type offseason and it's like, okay, did this person change? Did he learn something? Is he just going to be that good going forward? Or was this one wild month? Yeah, it's interesting.

Like we had Rosarania 107th on our top 100, i know you're thinking meg 107 that's more than 100 but we we rank all the 50s so yes eric had him at 107 coming into the season and sort of creeping up the 100 as the season went on i think that he's gonna like you said it'd be an interesting one because on the one hand i don't think that, even the people who are high on Rosarania, like Eric was or like Ben was when the trade happened and has been as the season has gone on, expects that he is going to put up his postseason line in the regular season. That would be, he'd be the MVP.

If he did that over the course of his season, he'd very easily be the MVP, Ben. I don't know if you know that, but he would be having a heck of a year. But there has been sort of a noticeable physical change. They have talked on the broadcast about how he spent his quarantine after a COVID diagnosis basically eating chicken, beans, and rice and doing push-ups, and he put on 15 pounds of muscle. So there is a physical change here.

And if you look at his exit velocity. As we all did velocity that's how we all spent our quarantines yeah well we put on some form but you know there's there is a relevant and sort of significant exit velocity shifts that has occurred also and so i will be curious to see sort of what people make of his year because on the one hand, he likely isn't this. This would be like the best baseball player in baseball, but he is appreciably different in a way that I think is meaningful. And, you know, the Rays have had nothing but good things to say about him sort of since the trade happened and even before it.

So he's going to be a really fun one to watch in 2021 to see how it kind of settles in because uh he's he's not godlike i don't think but he is very good and was perhaps i'm going to use the dreaded word underappreciated by a lot of the sort of baseball analytics community going into the season he's he's good good player yeah and you know randy or rosarania is just a fun that's a good name yeah it's a fun name to say randy rosarania it's got good as i said on twitter got good mouth feel that name yeah it definitely does one little random thing i noticed that i feel like you would appreciate i really like the thing that catchers do when maybe a pitcher's struggling a little or not always when a pitcher's struggling, but often when it is and they want to sort of buck up his spirits. You know how when often there's a swinging strike or something and the pitcher makes his pitch and hits his spot and then the catcher does that little thing where he just like gestures his glove out at the pitcher?

I love that little thing. just like gestures his glove out at the pitcher. I love that little thing. It's like, I mean, he already got the good result. He got the strike. But then there's that like point with the glove. It's like, yes, that's it. Like that's the pitch I called for. That's what you're trying to do.

It's like this nice little moral support, like raising his spirit sort of thing that you get to see because they're too far away to say something. So they have to make a gesture and you can kind of see that pitcher catcher relationship which is very important so we're always told and yet you can't always see it because we don't get to hear what happens in a mound visit and we don't know what they're talking about between innings and we can't necessarily read the signs or or know what they're shaking off or why but that little glove point that little like salute with a glove i really i like that moment i like it very much

too and it is i was about to say i like it almost as much as but your moment is so much it has a lot less impact i also like when um you know an umpire gets hit with the ball i don't like that part to be clear but when an umpire gets hit by the ball and the catcher does his like hey hey you know, an umpire gets hit with the ball. I don't like that part, to be clear. But when an umpire gets hit by the ball and the catcher does his like, hey, hey, you okay, man? And they have a nice exchange because, you know, if any two people on the field are going to appreciate both the risk and the feeling of that, it's going to be a catcher and an umpire. So, yeah, there are these little moments where you,

they show each other humanity in a way that's very nice. And I wish that Baseball Info Solutions would track the glove. Hey, man, you did it. Yeah, a couple more like that. Because I wonder if it could be the start of a game-calling metric. Yeah, maybe so. I wonder. I've been noticing it as it's been happening this postseason.

I wonder if there are certain catchers who tend to do that more often than others and whether that correlates with anything else that you would want to happen or to track or whether it happens most often with like batteries who work together often or whether it's the opposite. Maybe it's guys who don't work together that often. Is it relievers? Is it starters? I want some stats on the encouraging catcher glove point so yeah someone get on that please yeah they need to track glove points and also sky points from pitchers those are not i imagine um correlated skills i don't think that they indicate anything but i want both yeah and last thing i guess before we get to our guests

there were two notable either transactions or possible future transactions that were reported this week concerning recently eliminated playoff teams. And we haven't discussed them on the show. Bean possibly reportedly leaving baseball if the private equity company that he is involved in is able to purchase the conglomerate that owns the Red Sox in Liverpool. And if that happens, Bean would essentially be forced to leave the A's because he has an ownership stake in that team, and there would be a possible conflict there. But according to the reporting, at least he might just move away from baseball or being a baseball executive altogether and pursue soccer or other interests or just being a mogul. So that would be theom sure sure i find it kind of shocking candidly i mean i appreciate that there's probably a good deal of money at stake here and so i imagine that is some of the motivation and i don't know how it feels to have been at this as long as bean has without winning a world series but i would i think if I made that jump to the team side,

I'd really want to win one. So I found it to be kind of shocking. I think that I probably have more thoughts on Bean as sort of a key figure in analytics and the shift to teams spending less money. But I don't know that they're fully constituted right this moment so i will wait on those in terms of rentaria i think that it is perhaps unsurprising given some of the reporting that's come out after that they were wanting someone who could help the team kind of make

the next step in the contention window i mean mean, talk about strange postseason decision-making around pitching. I'm sure that didn't help, although given the way that that whole debacle was made worse by an anticipated injury, I don't know how fair it is to hold Renteria totally responsible for that either. But I think more surprising is some of the names that have circulated as possible replacements for him.

Yes. Do we really want to do Tony La Russa again? That surprised me. And I wonder if that's just some kind of cover for like eventually hiring AJ Hinch or Cora, you know, it just, it seems like La Russa has been out of the managing game for quite some time now, and he's been in baseball working as an executive for various teams, but he's old for a manager.

And beyond that, he has not managed in a while. And also he has made some comments about Colin Kaepernick and Yelling a few years ago now, but don't know how much his thinking on that has changed. And you would think that putting him back into the situation now and with a younger team, it's just sort of hard to imagine that being an ideal fit. So it seems like the odds are against that actually happening, but reportedly they are at least talking to him about it yeah he does not seem the perhaps neutral way for me to describe this is that in any number of ways he does not seem to be a man of the moment let's put it that way uh people were like i can't believe the angels are granting permission for the white socks to talk to him i'm like yes you can sure yeah i think that i can see that i'm sure they're like tony be well i'll be very curious to follow that managerial search i just i know that the hinge

versus lu now i think there are some important appreciable differences between those two figures in the the astro scandal and i do not say that to let Hinch off the hook for his role, but I do think that there's some, some differences to be had there. But I think that we as a baseball collective should agree that, um, that, you know, this season counted and I don't want to discount the good work and hard work that people put into this season but if we are looking at sort of some component of the punishment for those guys being you know being like the the subject of some ridicule there being an element of of shame involved this does not count as that and so we should have they should have to do another year and i'm not saying that baseball has to mandate that in any kind of firm way, although they probably do because as we have seen,

when baseball elects to just leave everyone to their own devices and hope that incentives and public shame work the way they ought to, they often do not. We should just have another year. You need a full 162 before you even talk about it. That's my thought about this. And I know that it's not going to matter to teams. And I know that there will be people listening to this saying,

that isn't long enough. And you know what? Maybe it is not long enough. But it needs to be at least that long is my point. Yeah, you have to sort of feel for Renteria, I guess, to be let go by another team, whatever, six years or so after the Cubs let him go. And in that case, it was very transparently because Joe Maddon was available and they wanted Joe Maddon and well, they won a World Series. I guess you can't criticize them too much for that.

This time, I don't know if they have a specific candidate in mind, but it sounds like there was ongoing friction between Renteria and the front office when it came to the use of analytics, perhaps, and pitching coach Don Cooper, longtime pitching coach Don Cooper, was also let go. And he is someone who was revered for his pitching coach work and was praised for helping pitchers and keeping pitchers healthy at various points, but maybe not as much lately. And I guess that's just, we've talked before about how gurus kind of come in and out of Vogue as, I guess, preferences for coaching change. You know, Ray Searidge is a genius. Oh, Ray Searidge is gone. And these philosophies can change very quickly and new information and new technology comes in

and some coaches do or don't adjust to that and fall out of favor. And so apparently the White Sox front office, which has modernized, was maybe not as happy with how that information was being applied in games and maybe was not pleased with some of the in-game managerial moves.

I know that Renteria's reputation as a tactician among White Sox fans, at least my sense is, it's not a great reputation. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, and yet he got the White Sox to this point and got them back to the playoffs, and they went 35-25, and a lot of young players broke in or made strides while he was at the helm there. So it's tough, I guess, for him to be labeled as the guy who can get you there, but not the guy who can get you over the hump, right? Because he's gotten them to the precipice. He got

them to the playoffs and made them a good team again. And so if the rap on him is, well, he's a rebuilding manager and then you jettison him and you bring in someone else to take you all the way, it's tough to stomach, I'm sure, for him. But who knows? Maybe he wasn't working well with them. I think it was also reported that he wanted there to be pitching added at the deadline and that didn't happen. And so maybe he wasn't pleased either so maybe it was just disharmony there and personalities clashing and when it comes to front office or the manager these days i think it's pretty clear you know who holds most of the power there or yeah i mean they've always had the the hiring and firing power but i think

these days if you're a manager, you have to be part of that conversation and you don't get to make unilateral decisions anymore. And so if you don't go along, if you aren't thinking along the same lines, then you probably will get replaced. And maybe that's for the best ultimately. I don't know. Probably varies by situation, but seems like that was what was going on here. What they should do is they should have La Russa and Renteria switch places. And then it'll be Renteria and Madden in L.A. And everyone will go weird.

Yeah, right. That's what they'll say. They'll go weird. And Dallas Keuchel, who of course won a World Series under Hinch, tweeted, Big things ahead for the White Sox! Oh boy. Three exclamation points like right after this news so I guess we know where he stands and uh Keichel was critical of the team's

clubhouse earlier this year right or he made some comments about how he felt like the team wasn't playing hard enough or gave up or something at some point so uh maybe he was not enamored of Renteria either Renteria if enamored of Renteria either. Renteria. If I recall correctly, Renteria has been one of the most frequently ejected managers in baseball. I don't know if that says anything about his demeanor away from umpires, but yeah, that's just a fun little fact that I have squirreled away in my brain from doing a piece that took too long to write.

And as for Bean, I don't have a ton of thoughts right now either. But yeah, it's, you know, some people said sort of the opposite of what you said, which is they can't believe it took this long or that he was always kind of angling for this sort of thing. I mean, he's been there for what more than 30 years, whether as a player or as as an executive and maybe it's just time for a change or you know clearly he's had his sights set on soccer and other interests so maybe at a certain point you just move on you get this opportunity maybe it's partly about money and about being a big business honcho or maybe he just wanted a new challenge or something but you know clearly forced has been running that team on a day-to-day level for a while now,

and they have so many people who've been entrenched there for decades at this point that probably it wouldn't change a ton about how the A's operate in the short term. And maybe it was also because of how the A's have cheaped out even by A standards this year, at least when it came to treating minor leaguers and scouts, etc., a certain way. And it seemed like Bean was displeased by that, too. So, yeah, I guess Bean has managed to kind of graduate beyond baseball in a way that a lot of baseball executives don't do, you know, because of being a visionary and an early adopter to a certain extent, not that he was necessarily the first person in baseball to start applying sabermetric principles, but he was the most visible because Michael Lewis came along and because he made a good sort of public face for that and character for Moneyball and that catapulted him into

sort of household name status and, of course course being played by Brad Pitt in an Oscar nominated movie which is now on Netflix did not hurt either so yeah that opened a lot of doors I think for for Bean and he just had a compelling story and he was a charismatic figure to be the face of sabermetrics the fact that he was a former player which tells you that he came from an earlier era because you don't get a lot of former players who are running baseball teams these days. And inadvertently, he helped usher in this era where it's all Ivy Leaguers who read Moneyball. But I think that helped make him a good linchpin to Lewis's story because he wasn't just some nerd from the internet, right? He wasn't us. He was this former top prospect who had experienced the perils of scouting firsthand because he never panned out the way the scouts expected him to.

And he became a convert to this new way of thinking. And he was handsome and personable and quotable. So he just became so associated with this philosophy, like Daryl Morey in basketball who walked away from the Rockets this week and also worked around payroll constraints and didn't win a championship. My colleague at The Ringer, Brian Phillips, just wrote a piece about those too. Bean just became baseball's best known innovator and he's maybe had one foot in kind of the corporate world for a while now. So maybe it was inevitable. Yeah, I think that that's true.

Might be time for Moneyball 2. Electric boogaloo! Yeah. But yeah, you'd think like some part of him must really just want to get that monkey off his back and win a World Series. Yeah. And if he does walk away now, then that will never happen. And that will be sort of the permanent stain on his record, at least as he is publicly perceived. But I guess you just get sick of it at a certain point, you know, rebuilding that roster over and over again, which he has continued to do successfully.

But maybe this latest time to just stare at that prospect of building that team back up again and getting back to that point and then having the heartbreak again. Maybe it just wasn't worth it. You could spend your whole life waiting to win a World Series and it won't happen. So maybe you just, you know, can't put your other aspirations on hold for that. Maybe not. But I mean, in some ways that suggests a sort of healthy relationship with the game where you're able to say, OK, I've I've done enough. I've done enough stuff.

Here I am saying that we shouldn't hold Kershaw's postseason record against him. And I'm fascinated that Billy Bean would walk away. But, you know, things run their course. That part is fair. And I'm sure that as we come to know more about what his role might be with this new venture, that it might make more sense. But I don't know. I think I would just, I would need to, I'd need to try to win one.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, he didn't vow to record any podcasts naked if they won as far as I know. I want it to be very clear to the people listening that we are not requiring that of our guests. We don't ask anything about what they're wearing. No, it's not a normal request. It's not part of our standard screening process for interviews.

I mean, and not one way or the other. Perhaps it should be. But yeah, I don't know. I delightfully don't know what anyone wears when they record our show, thankfully. All right. So let us take a quick break, and we will be back with a guest who was probably clothed.

We don't know. We didn't ask. And we'll talk to Bradford about Fins in the Stands in just a moment. We're going to regret this bit. We're going to regret it, Ben. Probably. Help me see through yesterday. I need a barricade. I need extra light. band So this week there have been fans in the stands at the NLCS in Arlington,

and next week there will be fans in the stands at the NLCS in Arlington, and next week there will be fans in the stands at the World Series. To discuss why that's happening and how MLB has handled public health this season and the future of attendance at MLB games, we are joined now by Bradford William Davis of the New York Daily News, who has done a lot of legwork this year to report on MLB's public health commitments and whether the league has followed through on them. Spoiler, not so much. Bradford, welcome back. Yeah, good to be here. So why do you think MLB is selling tickets to these games? I guess there are a few possible motivations, and maybe it's a combination of multiple reasons, but what's your read on why this has happened?

I think that the Major League Baseball is committed to the American spirit more than any institution I've ever encountered. Yeah. So much so that they will sacrifice potentially the entire American body, mind, and soul with which to activate that. No, really, it's, you know, they want money, man. Like, it really, it's like that part isn't you know any that deep because there's certainly risk involved in this it's very unclear what the trade-off is or you know like like why the rewards beat the risk unless you look at the dollars and cents of it yeah i guess what so when you say money do you mean mostly like the actual money

that they are getting from these tickets directly which which should be a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things? Not that that has stopped MLB before, but it wouldn't amount to a ton of money, just the tickets for these games. But I guess there's also the incentive to sort of send the signal that we could go back to games now because teams are going to be selling season tickets and everything. Right. And so maybe they just want to say this is doable. It's okay to come back. Yeah. I see it as something of an experiment with which to make more money. And of course, you know, it's not even necessarily wrong to want to, of course, you know, make sure that the business model, which, you know, is partially based on, you know, concessions and tickets and all that is viable, but like, but the, you know make sure that the business model which you know is partially based on you know uh

concessions and and tickets and all that is viable but like but the you know the the concern at hand is of course like that that major league baseball bears none of the you know the consequences for it besides like bad pr which they've had plenty of already and they still exist so like you know but like as far as like legal it's unclear whether or not they they suffer from it but who does suffer from it you know could suffer from it are like the people who get sick there or not even people who get sick there but the people who spread that sickness into the you know into their communities given that many people are flying from outside of the dallas fort worth area to participate in this and i guess guess, you know, baseball, when they made the announcement that

they were going to sell these tickets, they went through the list of safety protocols that they were going to require ticket holders to theoretically adhere to. And that's not so surprising, right? That they wouldn't, they at least want to appear to care about the safety of this endeavor, even if, you know, undertaking this risk, as you said, doesn't have a really obvious good trade-off. But I'm curious what your sense is of how effective those measures were, both theoretically going in and how well some of them have been enforced during the games themselves, and how much of it we can just sort of attribute to, you know, sanitary theater. Because, you know, it does seem like folks are somewhat spaced out in the seats when the games start, but we've all seen the pictures of fans

pressed up against the railing during batting practice, which seems like an eventuality that was easy to anticipate for anyone who has seen fans behave during batting practice. And when some of these balls have flown out of the park, you know, there's like police tape up to try to prevent fans from going down into the first couple of rows. So what's your what's your sense of how well their plan was constructed going in and how well it's working now? that has you know open air even though you'll never be able to see it from a telecast or probably even inside the stadium i haven't been there yet given how dark and depressing global life is uh it's really windy though there's that it's it's very much you know um mr burns blocking out the sun but baseball baseball you know like for those who follow the simpsons golden era you know the issue to me is that uh like you know it's outdoors which is good right

but like you know we don't know we don't know if these people are buying these tickets together in fact many of them probably aren't you know like like this they were supposed to be in pods of four but like i think it's very you know given how expensive they are i think it's very possible that you have like two and two people who are from you know who don't you know like share a household together you know being together I mean and then fans interact with each other all the time anyway you know it just kind of thing that happens and then I also wonder about like the suites like you know is is there a security like out there making sure that you don't share popcorn with someone else you know that no one is doing anything that could theoretically lead to transmission.

That doesn't seem to be especially clear, you know, or at least detailed in Major League Baseball's public correspondence about how they are managing everything. And yeah, the word you used, right, Meg, was a phrase was sanitation theater, right? You know, it may very well just be that, you know. And we've seen, you know, even though well just be that you know and and we and we've seen you know even though again it's outdoors so it's probably not as dangerous as again as having a little house party to watch a game which people are doing apparently in san diego across the street if

you look at the aocs you see like people hanging out you know uh clinking beers whenever the rays do something whatever you know so that's probably that's probably probably worse honestly but uh but at the same time like you know there are a lot there are ways things can go wrong you know we saw in arrowhead stadium for uh the nfl's opening kickoff that someone like got coronavirus you know or was tested positive very shortly after being at the uh at the stadium and so that led to like a whole bunch of people like about 70 people or something like having to quarantine or something you know uh if i recall the number correctly, because of potential exposure to COVID-19. So, like, this is not foolproof, but most importantly, nothing is foolproof in your life, I guess, right?

But who bears the cost of it not working out? You know, it's the people and it's the people in their neighborhoods or towns or schools or churches or whatever. Those are the people who have to suffer for this. Yeah. We want to talk about that community impact in a second, but you brought up something that I meant to ask you about later, which is what has your impression been of the way that fans and the discussion of fans has progressed on these broadcasts? Because I felt like at the beginning of the season, teams were doing a reasonable job of sort of panning away from people who were obviously not appropriately socially distanced when they were visible on a broadcast or were only showing fans if they were in those seats above Wrigleyville, for instance, if they were masked.

But now we're seeing fans on the broadcast, some of whom are masked, some of whom aren't. And then there's this like delight in the presence of fans beyond the gates of Petco. And some of those folks probably live in those apartments. So maybe they're doing everything the right way. But what do you think the broadcast obligations are in terms of how they talk about this stuff and what they show? Because, you know, we don't show streakers on the field. And the impact of fans not being socially distanced properly or properly masked is way bigger than some kid accidentally seeing a naked person on TV. So what is your what is your take on that part? Yeah, I'd rather see a 40 year old man's behind any day over the start of the

apocalypse. So I think I agree with where you're going and suggesting Meg, you know, in that it seems like very leery, but in this way, it's like a return to normalcy, which I think I understand the natural impulse because it is, you know, it means something to be at a ballpark, you know, any sort of sporting event

or entertainment event. It's going to be so dope in 2027 when I go to my first concert. Like, like you know like i can't wait for that however like there's probably very little way for camera crew and the broadcast crew to to discern you know in these like gray areas whether or not people are are doing something that is within the boundaries of responsibility as we understand it for preventing the virus and so And so maybe stop serving those pictures up. Unless, of course, you want to associate the idea that baseball has ushered in normalcy. And again, that's my skeptical view of it,

but I see no reason to not have a skeptical view of how major league baseball would present itself given you know the many many failures they've had with covid19 protection of their players of their you know and staff of uh you know like coaching staff and stuff like that on field i think it's ironic that that's even happening in global life given that like their like stadium staff you know apparently like you know had a covid outbreak back in June that led to people being concerned. So of course the stadium, the one place where there's a known outbreak of non-on-field personnel, would be the first to have 11,000 people or however many people are present there. So yeah, I think less charitably. These images are being served and it's not innocuous or benign, you know, but it's for a reason to show to associate baseball with healing, even if it is in a very literal sense the opposite. Yeah, it's sort of impossible to separate all these concerns we're raising here from just the spectator experience of the game.

I think it kind of increases the anxiety just to know all these people are there doing these things that maybe they shouldn't be doing. But even if you could separate those things, have you enjoyed having fans back? I mean, just from a watching baseball and TV perspective, because, you know, like we lost something clearly, I think not having fans in the stands and having the fake crowd noise and everything. It's not quite the same. It's been necessary, obviously, and responsible to play that way. But you could see how people would think, oh, it won't have the same playoff atmosphere without fans.

And I wonder whether you have found that atmosphere to be enhanced in any way by this number of fans. to be enhanced in any way by this number of fans you know or is it just too few and too scattered and too anxiety inducing to even enhance the broadcast at all that's a great question and the answer is as long as i don't think about it for more than four seconds it's cool that's actually what happened to me when i was watching the ale like bs is the only thing i saw you know people in high rises you know overlooking petco Petco Park, like, clinking mirrors. Like, oh, wow. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Do they know each other?

Do they live together? You know, do they have the antibodies? Now, you know, like, I will say that, like, when I was watching games on television, right, on TV, the nature of baseball broadcasts being so batter or be pitcher focused and depending on even the stadium like that that's showing it like for example yankee stadium you know a lot there's often just not people sitting behind home plate because the tickets are so freaking expensive and the people who even have them like are like executives and stuff who just may have something else to do they don't go to the game so like i'm watching yankees game it's very common and not to not see a lot of people in the line of sight you know despite it being a game with a lot of people present you know like and or high profile or something so just I don't know just just a

natural rhythm and will be camera angles uh yeah it wasn't too big a deal for me uh just throughout the season it became it was it was just it was a lot more felt when I went to games that is when you know when I was sitting in a press box, it's either Citi Field or Yankee Stadium, and I actually expect to be covering the World Series on site, although, you know, not entirely sure yet, but that is when I noticed, man, it really does stink that people can't be present here, you know? Like, I was at a Yankee, it was a very exciting Yankees bedside game from earlier this year, you know, and I was like, man, like, this would have been, like, really tight if there were people here you know i felt sad today because i saw that the initially we saw that cpbl highlight out of taiwan

where the guy like stole a home run and didn't tell anyone basically for like the first like 30 seconds after catching the home run and and the whole crowd was going wild because they thought someone had a big home run but he had you know but this interviewer had caught it and just like you know and beat everyone out and uh and but you know because with this interview with her head, caught it and just like, you know, and beat everyone out. And but, you know, because Taiwan took the virus more seriously on a personal and societal level, you know, like government and all that. Like they don't have huge COVID outbreaks and thus they can have fans yelling and cheering. And that makes it wistful for like, you know, my past life. Yeah. Well, that might be a good opportunity to talk about some of the

social impact that MLB, you know, embarking on a season at all has entailed and, you know, having fans in the stands has entailed. So you've done a lot of really excellent reporting on some of the promises that were made by the league to communities that are home to major league franchises around testing for essential workers and first responders. For the folks who haven't had a chance to read your piece yet, what was promised to those cities and what has actually been delivered both at the time of your reporting and then if there are any updates since then? Right. So at the very earliest sort of like leaks of Major League Baseball's health and safety protocol, there was always this small apparent instruction, you know, no other really no other way to read it, but instruction,

but that said that Major League Baseball would offer free tests to every community that hosts a baseball, you know, a Major League Baseball franchise, and that those tests were going to be geared towards frontline workers and first responders. I think those are the exact phrasing, first responders and or frontline workers, something like that. But the implication being clear, right? One is to, by providing these tests to a certain classification of worker that is most at risk for COVID, but also most essential for us, you know, for communities getting back

on their feet. Like, you know, there's a vested public interest in making sure these people are of anyone the safest, right? Of anyone going to work the safest, you know? So that means, you know, nurses and doctors and health workers, you think, or, you know, or firemen or EMTs or whatever, right? And again, that was in June. And then, you know, that language was included. It was in the original draft, but, you know, back in May and then June. And it was in the final version, you know, that allowed baseball to return to work.

You know, this quote-unquote summer camp was following those protocols, which included, you know, that language in there. However, you know, I heard of some free testing sites available like on location, like, you know, like the in there however you know i heard of some some free testing sites available like on location like you know like the astros did something the dodgers you know had that but like but as far as like the specific priority of like reaching a certain kind of worker you know first rather than just being a free-for-all which is not a bad thing by the way it is a good thing of course they have it for available for everyone you know but like you know

but but again something something following the spirit of the protocol, right? Like that, I had not heard anything about that. So I just started asking questions and a lot of people chose not to answer. A lot, you know, a few others did not have answers. And Major League Baseball said that that testing was apparently optional. You know, that this part of the protocol

that, you know, for that has a community benefit, you know, it's part of the protocol that, you know, for that had some sort of community benefit, you know, was not something that every team really had to adhere to. That kind of explains why by the time I, you know, gone to print, which is like, you know, late September, though I'd done a lot of the research throughout the summer, basically, but especially in the late August and early September, like there was only one team that had launched an initiative consistent with the aim stated in the protocol and that was the red socks who had done this thing you know who had started donating tests for teachers you know towards the end of the season you know that's uh that's a choice that they made you know um i think it's pretty striking when you know given given how many tests

were consumed by players and coaching personnel you know when you when someone tests had a false positive you know what was believed to possibly a false positive they would receive like five six seven tests just to confirm that it was a false false positive you know the kind of thing that you would not do do if you were a nurse you know you just you just have to go home for 14 days or whatever right 10 days or however you know however long again you know based on your symptoms and, you know, whatever the science is indicating the time you need to do it to make sure that no one else would be infected. And, you know, that's not how baseball did it because, you know, your fourth outfielder getting back to work is more important than, you know, the EMT or the person in the er room and yeah that's the that's essentially what what i was able to research and find was just that you know major league baseball had not followed through on that they had claimed that it was never something that they even had to follow through on

there was no indication that that it was optional but you know but something they said after the fact and you know and i certainly feel a type of way about it and i hope that people especially the people that you know might be might that could really benefit from being able to freely access those tests could would know about that so that they could you know just kind of know what their local team thinks of them yeah and you had done some reporting even before the season started about whether mlb was coordinating with local officials, right? And a lot of them, it seemed like, just weren't really aware of what MLB was planning. And I don't know how much that came back to bite either baseball or those communities or how much it ended up mattering, but it seemed like it was just sort of full speed ahead, at least at the time. I guess big picture, you know,

MLB sort of avoided some of the worst case scenarios, I suppose, you know, when it comes to, say, a player or some team member, you know, getting seriously ill or even dying. I mean, you know, the nightmare scenarios that we were worried about, but you never know really if there were other issues or other people who contracted COVID because of baseball. You're sort of reporting on the less visible aspects of this that are easy to sweep under the rug, I guess. So at the end of the season, we talked about how it went briefly, and it went, I guess, a little bit better than expected in some ways, or at least

then you might have thought three days into the season when everyone in the Marlins got it, then it looked like, you know, it was done possibly at that point. But in the larger sense, and, you know, everyone who's kind of in MLB's orbit and affected by it, do you think there were a lot of hidden costs to that? Or do you think it went about as well as could have been expected if you were going to go ahead with it yeah i mean like you know i think after the marlins the carnells things certainly got better as they tightened the protocol which um like i said like the player conduct and everything which i think should also be a in some sense of demerit to the league and that it was not especially clear as like what you should do in the event of an outbreak

which is why like teams like the Marlins are like, well, I guess we should play. Right. And then, and, and not only that, but, but the league knew about the multiple positive cases and was like, yeah, you could play, you know, like that's, you know, that, that, that is not in my opinion, Don Manley's fault, you know, purely though, you know, perhaps he should know better, but like, you know, but if he, if the manager should know better, how much more should the doctors and scientists ostensibly on mlb payroll yeah who

are supposed to make those decisions you know and like that's you know that's what happened you know and so like i don't you know like like from my understanding is that the cardinals may have behaved improperly you know like like in ways that we would all like clock as like clearly irresponsible you know those are again you know rumors and discussions and things being hinted at but like you know but though nothing i can publicly confirm yet but like but the marlins like from what from what i've heard and understood like we're not doing egregious things they were like you know as derrick jeter said during his like you know back to work conference basically was like you know they went out for coffee you know like they you know they hung out with each other in the hotel room you know teammates which is just

like a normal human sort of thing and the kind of thing that frankly fans will be doing when they go to these games you know players are not are hold to a much higher standard and might force to make much bigger sacrifices for their safety which shows that you know again is fan safety really the priority if they're not being asked to bubble up themselves you know but i digress like so to answer your question man i mean things did get better on the field and everything and you know in the in these tests that tens of thousands used to cover you know baseball personnel like is you know not in of itself something that would turn the course of you know of the country around right but you know but it in and of itself something that would turn the course of, you know, of the country around, right? But, you know, but it's more of like in the individual, like, situations.

I think Zach Vinney made this point. Like, you know, it stinks when it's, you know, your grandmother waiting online, you know, for four hours to get a COVID test only to find out the results 13 days after you take a test. And then you realize, oh, but, you know know like clayton kershaw whatever got it you know four times last week again no no specific people click and kershaw but just but just to you know and i say that actually because someone at dodges pr got mad at me because i sighed i sighed to clayton kershaw in a rhetorical sense you know uh to use like you know celebrities get this and you don't you know like and he's like well

right it's kershaw so whatever like it's like faster guys it's funny but um next time i'll use muncie or something so that it's like less less of a household name you know kike baby yeah yeah is it any passionate bruce bruce and our uh gravel fans like you know yeah so like you know that it's it got better right but like you know you have to zoom out right because the there was never a place where in this country you know where we had really particularly safe like return for the sport hence the outbreaks early on and like where all sorts of resources could have been directed towards you know the public good including you know major league baseball is considered considerable resources in the efforts of creating a completely safe place where you could you know reach and start introducing tens of

thousands of fans without like some concern you know and like like shooting texas you know where like every where like things are like very bad and getting worse um again like that you know that we never reached that place you know as a nation you know in in both cities if not all of the cities you know like new york is on a on the better side but even you know but it was after tremendous cost of tens of thousands of people dying here like where i live you know like and so um we never you know we never got there but we let baseball cut the line as a society our government you know and so like and so just because baseball had has had you know let's say like five six good weeks now of like

not having like serious covid outbreaks the the fact that baseball was allowed to exist in the first place is the indictment you know that so many resources that that people need right now were allowed to be deposited that that government health officials were constantly rebuffed or left out of the planning decision making. Something that was true even in the first piece I wrote about this, you know, about the government side of this, like, you know, showed a lack of, you know, involvement. And the second one did as well, too, where, you know, where there were government officials openly disputing team testimonies of, like, how involved, you know, of even correspondence, you know, teammates saying, oh, yeah, we talked to them. And government official B saying, no, that's never happened.

Like that's, you know, like that is where that is what I hope people reading some of the some of some of these some of the stories that I and others have been reporting on. some of the some of some of these some of these stories that i and others have been reporting on you know i think i think both evan drelich at the athletic and stephanie afstein at sports illustrated both like released very good pieces actually about the fan situation hannah kaiser as well of yahoo like you know all three of them did did i think very good work on on that fan situation but like i hope that looking all this reporting that you zoom out and you and you ask yourself like why was this allowed to exist when we know that there are so many other problems, so many places that needed this first? You know, why was baseball made? Why was baseball made the priority when we could have just when baseball's resources, you know,

that they were able to procure could have been used towards a safe return for baseball? Why do we do this backwards? Why are we still doing this backwards? And why and why the hell are 11,000 people being guinea pig for more money to be made in 2021? Well, I guess that's a good transition to 2021 because I think that we're all of the opinion that given the relative success of the season, and by that, I will sort of adhere to the same one that Ben did where the very worst case scenario did not come to pass. No one we know died. No one we know died. Gosh. And so that, I imagine, ends the fan experience this postseason, is going to be used as justification for a fan experience in 2021. Craig Calcaterra in his newsletter sort of detailed a survey that was sent to fans trying to assess what they would need to see in the ballpark in order to feel comfortable attending

games in person in 2021. So it seems like there is sort of an inevitability that we are moving toward here that there will be, you know, absent a legal mandate to the contrary, some sort of fan experience next season. And so I guess to the extent, some sort of fan experience next season. And so I guess to the extent that you've started reporting on this, do you have a sense of whether any of the cities that host MLB teams are starting to help those teams plan for the eventuality of fans next year? And if not, what do you think would actually need to happen, either from a government mandate perspective or in terms of PR for baseball to consider a fan list 2021? Yeah, I mean, as far as your first question about, like, you know, our government's playing with this stuff, I am personally not privy to the details of that. You know, me right now, like perhaps something I should work on.

Maybe for an offseason idea. But like, you know, I'm not, you know, I'm not, you know me right now like perhaps something i should work on maybe for an off-season idea um but like you know i'm not you know i'm not you know but i'm not personally privy to that i can i can recall like in in new york state which of course most familiar with us since i live here but like you know uh governor cuomo expressing in july that you know or summer earlier you know maybe may even i don't know but like you know the whole fourth man's back in seats you know, maybe May, I don't know. But, like, you know, the whole, for fans back in seats, you know, he's close friends with the soon-to-be former Mets owners, Wilpons, you know. Like, he's, you know, he's got Randy Levine on his, like, state-level coronavirus task force, you know, like sports entertainment,

kind of like, or business, whatever. Randy Levine being the team president of the New York Yankees, just for those who are, I don't know, aware. So, like, you know, he expressed an interest in that. Of course, there are significant financial benefits towards that for the state but not primarily the state honestly probably just for mostly for the team but uh the teams involved but yeah so i know you know i'm sure there's an interest and it's a natural interest because again it's good to be able to go to baseball games it's good to be able to go to concerts it's good to be able to go to

restaurants inside you know that stuff is dope. And school, you know, shoot, right? Church, whatever, like, or whatever. We're just, you know, sort of gathering. You do don't just, you know, the gym. Like, it's all good, right? But like, but it just has to be done in a way that is safe and appropriate and follows smart scientific mandates so that we don't create more problems and that people aren't, people's lives are not sacrificed on the altar of you know making

money for someone else that is you know that that's the thing right and so um you know i'm sure these conversations i would like to think these conversations are happening was you know somewhere but what i would doubt is that local government of government health officials that express dissent or concern are being en masse really included in the planning of this kind of thing but that is speculatory but it's based on you know this entire year of hearing constantly from government officials that they were unaware you know and expressing their disappointment about that publicly or privately you know about like not being clued in on what Major League Baseball plans to do in their city you know whether whether like not being clued in on what Major League Baseball plans to do in their city, you know, whether or not they are dropping a COVID bomb on the people that are supposed to

be taken care of. That's my answer is that I do not know the details here, but based off of the year I've seen, you know, like I'm sure it's happening on some level, but I doubt, you know, but I doubt that every party that should be involved, you know, has every stakeholder has equal participation in making sure 2021 makes sense for a return to fans or travel or whatever. And lastly, because you said that you're hoping to tell or or what is uh in it for you i guess to go and and do that in person as opposed to doing it from home or how would that differ from covering a series uh under normal circumstances yeah so you know this this would be actually the first world series i cover in person if i you know if i do in fact go perhaps i'm no better than the fan uh flying out from, you know, there

from wherever to where I'm going. I think that there are, again, for people who are, again, who are unaware of exactly how reporting works right now, like, you know, back in the day, you'd be able to go to locker rooms pretty regularly, you know, for regular season before and after games, and then even during the playoffs, after

a game, you'd, like, chop it up with players, you know, about their lives or the game or whatever you know that doesn't happen now it's a very curated zoom where the pr people for every team get you know decide who uh who gets to talk you know and so that's you know so that's limited but i think the opportunities are to talk to you know the communities involved you know with this and to get an idea of like, how do you feel that, you know, does it, does it lift your spirits or does it, you know, depress them, you know, to know this is happening? What do you, you know, what do you hope for next year? You know, even maintain, you know, your social connection to baseball with people that

you, you know, that it may not be wise to see in the same, you know, in the same ways that you used to. You know what I mean? Like, have you created a little backyard garage and thing where everyone's, you know,

can wear a mask and have air, you know, I don't know, but circulating so that no one gets sick or, you know, or do you do something

a little more riskier or less riskier? I don't know. You know, like, I think those are, I think those are interesting opportunities

with what, you know, given that, you know, this is a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing of a World Series that everyone knew was going to be in one place and how a city and its people deal with that. And I think Arlington is also especially interesting given that there was very mixed reviews

even before the stadium was built about the stadium existing there in the first place. That was a real issue. How much money and tax dollars are being spent towards that. I'm hoping to have those kind of stories. No one listening to effectively while I steal my ideas.

Thank you. That's what I hope to do. We're glad you're on that beat as well as all the other baseball beats. People can and should read Bradford at the Daily News. You can find him on Twitter at underscore B Willie. Thank you very much for making time to talk to us today.

Thank you guys for having me. Okay, that'll do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening. If there is baseball over the weekend, we will try to do one of our Patreon live streams, so stay tuned to your Patreon inboxes if you are a supporter at the $10 level and up. If you're not yet, you can become one. Just go to patreon.com

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Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back with another episode to preview the World Series early next week. Talk to you then. I've been taken for my younger brother Life's a basket but I have no lover I keep waking up when I'm trying to sleep. I've been naked for so long.

I've been naked for so long. So long, so long now.