Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1736: The Wildest Week in Sports Card History

Episode Date: August 21, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley follow up on a conversation about protective headgear for pitchers by discussing softball face masks, then banter about whether MLB necessarily needs a legalized sticky substance or a pre-tacked ball, and attempt to unpack a distressing message from “Tom” to “Caitlyn” on the video board at a Reds game. Then […]

Tom Tom returns, but only to learn There was truth in the words he'd ignored Sweet young wife, and a new kind of life And a strong man's heart was torn We always hear that call Tom Tom, turn around, don't ever let me down don't ever leave my life chong chong turn around don't ever let me down you can't leave your wife no you can't leave your wife hello and welcome to episode 1736 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I am just swell. How are you? I'm about to be on vacation, so I'm doing... You're better than swell. I don't know, great. Sounds nice. Well, we have a few banter topics today, and then we will have an interview with Dan Hayducky, who's a reporter for ESPN, and he'll be joining us to fill us in on a wild week in the sports

card collecting space, as they say. Tops lost the license from MLB and the MLB Players Association, or soon will in the coming years. This news broke on Thursday. Fanatics is taking over trading cards, essentially striking deals with multiple leagues and players unions. And so Topps, which is just an absolute institution when it comes to baseball cards dating back to the early 50s, its days as a baseball card manufacturer, at least a licensed baseball

card manufacturer, appeared to be numbered. And that came as something of a shock, not just to people like us who are not monitoring developments in the trading card industry closely, but also to those who are. So Dan is going to explain to us why that happened and what the implications are, and also give us some background on the recent boom in trading card collecting, which is something we have talked about before. They'll also fill us in on a record sale earlier this week of yet another T206 Honest Wagner card. But a few things before we bring Dan on here. Yesterday, we talked about protective headgear for pitchers and some possible solutions there

prompted by Rays pitcher Tower Zombrow being struck by a line drive and then A's pitcher Chris Bassett suffering the same fate. And he includes a picture. And I will send pictures of softball players wearing these masks and the masks just on their own. And they kind of look like catcher's masks more or less, but maybe a little less heavy duty for someone who has to be a bit more mobile than catchers are, but offering, I suppose, similar protection, you know, fewer bars, but there appears to be coverage of really your whole head, not your neck. But if Chris Bassett had been wearing one of these, for instance, it looks like it probably would have prevented his cheekbone from being broken and would probably prevent more serious injuries. I mean, you could still get a concussion or something, but it looks like it would be less likely to result in a skull fracture or something super serious. So there have been

some pretty prominent softball pitchers who have worn these. They're often worn at lower levels, sometimes by infielders too. But for upper level players, pros even, it's often a pitcher thing. And there was a pitcher named Paige Lowryry who several years ago was pitching for Missouri and she got hit by a line drive and when she came back from that injury she started wearing the mask and there's also a pitcher named Kelly Barnhill who just started wearing one proactively and she's a pro pitcher for the Chicago Bandits formerly of the University of Florida softball team and the USA women's national team and I'll link to this tweet as well as a number of articles about both of these pitchers. But back in May 2019, she tweeted, growing up, I was told that I wasn't going to get recruited by colleges because I wore a face mask. Ended up being number

one pitching recruit in my class and committed to UF. And I played four years wearing a mask every game and went number one in the NPF draft. Bats in college, pro, and especially international ball are hot as hell. And the faster the ball comes in, the harder it goes Bats in college, pro, and especially international ball are hot as hell, and the faster the ball comes in, the harder it goes out. And yes, us pitchers are not perfect. Sometimes we make mistakes and the ball gets hit hard. I like my face, plus my parents paid a lot of money for braces, so I like to keep them nice and pretty. And finally, no, I have never been hit in the face, but I've seen it enough to know I don't ever want it to happen to me. Wearing a face mask is a personal choice, but there are legitimate reasons for wearing one and people shouldn't look down on anyone who is making that choice to wear it. Patrick wanted to know what we thought of the viability of these masks in baseball. Do you think this would work? I mean, I guess it's two different questions. Would it work and would pitchers wear them with maybe two different answers. I think that they would certainly prevent some things, right?

I think that some of the more serious head injuries that we've seen sustained over the last little bit, this might not prove to be enough cushion. Because like the whole, you know, like it's really the face that it's most concerned with protecting. So if it's something that comes back and like hits you know the top of your head or the side of your head i think you're probably still going to take a fair amount of impact there but it's something can i ask a question and i know that this is not going to happen i'll preface this by saying that but like is there a reason that they can't just wear football helmets is and here's here's the potential here's one put one the potential here's the potential. Here's one potential. Here's the only problem with that plan.

It's really the only thing that's holding us back. No, here's one thing that I anticipate might be an issue. I wonder if your peripheral vision is limited such that from a pickoff perspective, you might find it cumbersome. But other than that and the fact that it won't happen because they'd be deemed to be irritating, they not just wear football helmets yeah i mean there's no reason why you can't like obviously there's a level of comfort that pictures prefer i mean we'd all prefer not to be wearing helmets i assume most of the time if if all else were equal but yeah in football you make the calculation that hey i'm gonna be butting heads with some beef boys here, so I better wear this helmet. And with a pitcher, obviously, you're not necessarily blocking at the line of scrimmage or anything, but you may have balls coming back at you. And yeah, you would think there's no reason why you can't. I mean, I feel like every time there is some advance in safety and with protective equipment, like the trend over time has certainly been toward more padding and more helmets and more

protection. And each time I think you kind of have to drag some percentage of the players kicking and screaming to their own safety. It's like, you know, players who can personally testify to the danger. Like, if you've been hit, if you're John Carlos Stanton, then yeah, you're going to go with the helmet, with the ear flap. Like, if you have suffered the consequences, maybe not in all cases, but in a lot of cases, you're going to say, yeah, I want to avoid suffering that same fate again. Give me all the protective gear that is available. But with a lot of players, they're young men. They have an air of invincibility about them. And maybe they think, I'll be fine. This will impair my performance. It's a risk I'm willing to take. is for batting helmets, for instance, or like hockey helmets, which was another thing that was resisted by players for a long time. Like in the NHL, right, you had rules where like if you weren't wearing a helmet when

you came up, you could continue not to wear a helmet for the rest of your career. And so there were players who were not wearing helmets until like what seems like fairly recent times just because they weren't accustomed to that and they weren't comfortable with it. So of course you would definitely have players say, no, I don't want to wear football helmets. But like if the previous generation of players had had to wear football helmets and you had grown up in little league wearing a football helmet or this sort of softball kind of catcher's mask, like it would probably just be normal, right? And you would probably just do it. So the solution to this is just to get folks when they're young, right? To set a safety expectation when kids are little and then it won't feel like an intervention that is cumbersome. It'll just be part of what you do, right? And I imagine that football

helmets are probably still not the solution that will be arrived at here. But I think that you're onto something. And I think that it's a pretty easy argument to make to parents that you want kids to be safe. I mean, kids wear the double, you wear the double flaps for a long time when you're a youngster. So I think that we could probably make some progress here. And so the solution is to take the front of the softball helmet, right? The part that actually looks like a football helmet face guard, and then bolt it onto a double ear-flapped batting helmet. I think I just designed a less good football helmet.

But it is one that would look like a thing we're used to seeing within the context of baseball. And then the guys would be a lot safer. So get on it. There's always a trade-off between mobility and safety. And then you could have everyone on the baseball field be wrapped up like a hockey goalie all the time and they'd be safer. But they'd also be unable to perform basic baseball tasks, at least with the acumen that we are used to seeing. So there has to be some trade-off there. And I'm sure that pitchers would consider this cumbersome going from nothing to something on my head at all times, but I don't think that it would prevent them from

performing their duties. Like I don't think that you would have trouble really throwing a ball once you got used to it. And obviously, that works for plenty of softball pitchers. I don't think you would be unable to throw strikes or to throw hard anymore. There'd just be an adjustment period. So I don't know. I mean, I don't know who, like, imposes these things. Like, obviously, it's a negotiation. negotiation. The players are a stakeholder here. So I'm not saying just make them wear whatever. Sometimes, yeah, you do have to have a higher authority come in and say, hey, wear seatbelts, get vaccinated, whatever it may be. And maybe this doesn't rise to that level because, again, they've been playing Major League Baseball for centuries at this point. And no pitcher has been killed at that level by a line drive, fortunately.

So it is not like an ever-present acute risk. And so some people may say, you know, it's not worth it. And many pitchers, I'm sure, would say that. So if you polled the players, I assume that they would say, no, I don't really want to wear masks. I will assume the risk. So does it rise to the level of we must force them to do what is in their best interests or not? I don't know. And I don't know really who gets to decide that and maybe we're not there. But anyway, in our previous episode, we were just talking about kind of out there hypotheticals

about putting a screen in front of the pitcher's mound, like in batting practice, or every ball in front of the home plate is foul or whatever. Like, you know, we don't have to think of hypotheticals like that. We could think of the reality of softball pitchers wearing these masks, which appear to be pretty light, but also to offer ample protection or at least a lot more protection than just your naked face. So there is a solution out there for anyone who wants it. Yeah, it's definitely there. And we but need the will or the habit to use it.

Yeah. So a related issue here, sticky stuff is back in the news a little bit, or at least pitchers objecting to sticky stuff. And we saw a possible suspension or at least an ejection this week with pitcher Caleb Smith, who was ejected supposedly for some suspicious substance on his glove, which he denied. And then you had Lance Lynn getting ejected, not for having a suspicious substance, but for tossing his belt somewhat contemptuously, I suppose, in the umpire's eyes at the umpire when the umpire requested a late inspection after an inning and Lancelin was

already back in the dugout. And it's hard when Lancelin comes to rest to generate the momentum to get back into motion, I suppose. And so he tossed the belt, which seems like a reasonable thing to do, but I guess it was taken the wrong way. And also maybe there was some frustration there on his part. So he got ejected. Anyway, we had kind of forgotten about the inspections for a while Prospectus about sticky stuff and spin rates and performance. And this is a topic we've talked about before and some of the changes in the league-wide offense that we've seen since June 21st when the sticky stuff crackdown went into effect or even before that when pitchers actually stopped using the sticky stuff. And Rob was doing a little study here with the benefit of some hindsight, and he looked into pitchers who had lost some spin rates, some revolutions per minute, and what had happened to them since. And as we've discussed before, the effects across the league are significant, but not dramatic. It's not like a totally different game all of a sudden, but it does seem like there has been some boost in offense, some uptick, even after accounting for the warmer weather. And Rob finds that there is a moderately strong correlation between a drop in revolutions

per minute and a drop in strikeout rate, which makes some sense. And he then goes on to say a decline in spin rate does not necessarily equal a loss in effectiveness. But by and large, the pitchers who have lost the most spin have taken the biggest performance hit as well. Among hurlers who have lost RPM, two thirds have also lost strikeout rate. Among the pitchers who have lost at least 100 RPM, three quarters have lost strikeout rate. By comparison, in the much smaller group of throwers who gained RPM, only 30% had also lost strikeouts. And as we noted recently, it seems like the league wide spin rate has actually started to creep up again, perhaps as the inspections have grown a little lax or pitchers have grown more confident about avoiding them, or maybe they've found some other

way to compensate. But the point is, yeah, you lose a lot of spin. You lose at least some strikeouts. But this is what is most interesting to me about Rob's report here. Other statistics were much less correlated to growth drops in RPMs. Although sticky substances were initially justified as preventing struck batters, there was no correlation between loss in RPMs and change in hit by pitch rate walk rates also showed no discernible connection nor did home run rate or fly ball rate and this is interesting because one of the biggest questions coming into this was is it true that pitchers are just not going to be able to throw strikes did they actually need this legal stuff to command their pitches and to not hit batters. And it was pretty important

because the hit by pitch rate was already historically high. And so any further increase really would have been bad. And that has not happened. It just hasn't, fortunately. And, you know, you can set the cutoff at various points because it was not a night and day thing. Pitchers kind of gradually tapered off. But if you set the cutoff before June 1st and since June 1st, there's no change whatsoever really in the rate of hit by pitches per plate appearance. It's gone from 85.1 to 85.7. If you set the cutoff at June 21st, when the crackdown actually went into effect, it's like 86.8 to 83.6. I mean, these are pretty negligible changes in the rates. And that is sort of fascinating because you heard that as a constant refrain, at least from some pitchers prior to this, that no, you can't do this, not because it's a performance enhancer,

but because it's a performance enhancer, but because it's a safety issue. And there were certainly some pitchers like David Ardsma on this podcast who said, no, that's BS. That's just a justification. But at least publicly, I think most pitchers were sort of singing a different tune. And it doesn't seem at least that that has really been a byproduct of this. No. And we also haven't seen, at least not in any research I've seen that has really been a byproduct of this no and you know we also haven't seen at least not in any research i've seen that has has correlated specifically to the lack of psyche stuff we also haven't seen an uptick in in pitcher injury that seems attributable to foreign substances so i think that we raised objections at the time to sort of the timing

of this and the implementation and we wanted to make sure that players were not the only ones being held responsible for this sort of persisting in the culture of baseball for a long time, right? That this was part of a broader sort of lack of enforcement on the league's part, but it seems like we are seeing fewer strikeouts, even if the net effects that it's having on a league-wide level to offense isn't all that dramatic and guys aren't hitting more batters and they aren't getting hurt more often. So I think it's fine. I think our conclusion is that this is fine. It does seem to be fine.

And there's still time for bad things to happen. We always leave the door open for disaster on Effectively Wild. We're open to that. Emerging disaster, it's part of our game. So if there are cumulative fatigue effects that accrue over time, then it's possible that we could still see some injury spike. Not that injuries have not spiked already. Sure, yes. So they're already really high.

But yes, it doesn't seem like there's been any additional increase post sticky stuff, but not ruling out significant one that pitchers who lost spin also seem to have lost velocity, which is kind of confusing. Like if you lose velocity, you lose spin just because a spin is always correlated with velocity. You throw the ball harder, it spins faster too, but it doesn't necessarily follow that the other way around would work, that you lose spin, you lose velocity. And Rob speculates that one reason for that one potential explanation is that if pitchers think that they have better command when they're using sticky stuff, whether that is actually the case or not, they may not feel comfortable throwing as hard without it. And so they may, whether intentionally or sort of subconsciously, be taking a little off just in the interest of not hurting anyone. And if that's the case, that also seems to be a good thing, really, because if we're interested in trying to put some sort of limits on velocity in the interest of getting more balls in play, then that seems to be playing into things that we want. And I guess pitchers might gain confidence over time and that correlation might go away. But at least for now, that seems like a feature, not a bug. And Rob also notes that maybe there could be some kind of biomechanical connection between

the sticky stuff and enhanced fastball velocity. But really, if that's what it is, like if the net effect is that we haven't seen a demonstrable uptick in injuries, we haven't seen more hit by pitches, we haven't really seen a ton more walks. There were already kind of a lot of walks with the sticky stuff. And velocity maybe is a little bit down, regardless of the reasons, like that seems good. And the reason I'm wondering about this is because you still hear pretty often MLB needs to come up with a permanent solution. MLB needs to have a pre-tacked baseball that comes kind of sticky out of the box. Or MLB needs to approve some universal substance that pitchers can legally apply beyond rosin. You still hear that. And i wonder whether there is actually any need for that right if we're doing fine without that do we need to do that like i don't know what the impetus for that really is at least just looking at the stats purely and and the pitcher's comfort is another

matter i suppose but in terms of the results it seems to have provoked the ones we wanted without the ones we didn't want. So I don't know that there's a problem here, just at least from that perspective. Yeah. I mean, I think that if pitchers have a strong preference on how a ball feels and are more comfortable throwing it, provided we know what adopting that piece of equipment is going to do for things like spin yeah i'm fine with that like i'm fine with like i don't know if they decide they don't want to wear belts i don't know like lance lynn decided that we right exactly he's like this belt gets us out of here no they they probably do need belts because they're running around in in pajamas so you don't want their pants to fall down so that's probably we keep but i think that if if you're sitting there and you're like i have

i have thoughts about like what i use at work provided we know what the implications of particular surfaces and seam heights and all sorts of stuff have on the offensive environment like i think it's fine to say yeah i like the feel of this ball better than others so let's use it like i think that that's fine yeah you know then we don't have to have inconsistency ball to ball or game to game depending on how the mud is applied right so i think that having sort of standardized equipment which has been this very strange failing of baseball of late is like a worthy goal in and of itself if only because they should be able to sort of dictate within reason what the equipment feels like and having standardization is good just as a general rule but yeah it does seem that um some of the the

things that we thought would have really profound impacts have had more modest ones, but haven't resulted in anything all that gnarly either. So I'm fine with them having a preference. Sure. I have particular pens I like, you know, I buy specific pens. I don't buy the other pens. If I go to the store and I'm out of pens and they don't have the ones I like, then I'm like, I'm going somewhere else so I can get the ones I like. I think that we all have tools of our trade, as it were. So that's fine. I have to say, I have not used a pen in a while.

Really? I'm post-pen, I think. Wow. Yeah. I mean, every now and then, but rarely. But I know that you make to-do lists. I make to-do lists. Yeah. You need a pen for those, I guess. I need a pen i make to-do lists yeah yeah you need a pen for

those i need a pen for the when you're writing down yeah because it's so satisfying to cross stuff off the list yeah that's true yeah yeah i'm all for pitchers enjoying their jobs and being comfortable at work so there were a lot of pitchers who sang the praises of the ball that was being used in the olympics and, this feels great and it feels consistent. And so, yeah, like if there are no negative byproducts of that, like I do just wonder how much of the comfort does go hand in hand, no pun intended, with some sort of performance enhancing effect. Like, of course, pitchers preferred using the sticky stuff and it maybe helped them

be better at baseball in addition to feeling a little bit better in their hand like maybe it felt better in their hand because it was easier to throw really well so there is part of it where i wonder like are we talking about like a comfort that has no ramifications for like your performance or are we talking about a comfort that does is that why it's more comfortable so if you could demonstrate that the ball feels better but doesn't confer any advantage, then that's fine. I just I wonder how much you can separate those things. safety or performance perspective, just kind of a big picture league level look. And so, you know, unless that changes or unless you can demonstrate that, yes, there is a ball that just like feels like putty in your hands, but doesn't perform like putty in your hands and just performs like the ball is currently behaving, then that would be good. It seemed like prior to this change,

it was like, this is going to be a disaster. This is going to backfire. Like there was at least some subset of pitchers and people in general were thinking that that might happen. And it wasn't totally unrealistic to think that that might happen. No one knew exactly what would happen, but the worst case scenarios have not come true. And that is a good thing. Obviously, that's something to be happy about. So just something to keep in mind, because I imagine that that might keep coming up and

might be an offseason storyline and a CBA sort of storyline as people talk about playing conditions heading into next season. So last thing before we bring Dan in here, did you see the message on the scoreboard at Great American Ballpark on Thursday night? No. It circulated on Twitter because someone snapped a screenshot and tweeted this, and I will link you to it and all of the listeners to it via the show page. But this was the message with the most pathos I have ever seen on a big ballpark board. So this is like, I guess, one of those between inning sponsored messages where, you know, normally you see some innocuous happy birthday or whatever, you know, welcome to your first

ball game where you just pay to have the message on the big board. And there are some of these here. And then there's one that is not like the others. So half of the board says like group of the game happy 60th birthday grasshopper and then on the other side there are a bunch of other just very anodyne messages happy 70th birthday jerry happy 60th birthday scott we love you happy 40th birthday colin happy 13th birthday kelsey we love. And then there's a PSA about signs and symptoms of stroke. Which is its own thing to unpack in this particular moment.

But what is the headline here is the top line message that just says, Caitlin, I was wrong. Talk to me, Tom. Which is like the saddest collection of words that I've ever seen on a baseball scoreboard. Like this is sadder than, I don't know, a ballpark proposal gone wrong. Like just thinking like Craig Goldstein at Baseball Prospectus on Friday morning, he came up with a couple of possible backstories for this message. But as he noted, like whatever the actual backstory is, it's probably sadder than whatever like fun, wacky, zany one we could dream up here. But like just trying to think of like why Tom is resorting to this medium to get his message across to Caitlin. Like maybe he knows that she's going to the game somehow and that she will see this. that she's going to the game somehow and he figures that she will see this.

But even if he knows that she'll be at the game and it's not just some total shot in the dark, if this is what you're resorting to, all other lines of communication have failed at this point. And you have to wonder, I mean, there are all sorts of nefarious interpretations that we could come up with here where it's like, Tom, leave Caitlin alone.

Clearly, if you are resorting to ballpark sponsored messages, you've tried texting, you've tried G-chatting, you've tried Facebook messaging, whatever. If she's blocked you everywhere or not responded to your texts, maybe she doesn't want to hear from you. She doesn't want to talk to you right now, Tom. Leave her her alone don't hound her at the ballpark or who knows like maybe there's some more innocent explanation for tom here and he is trying to be contrite and he is admitting he was wrong for whatever it was he was wrong about and who knows uh maybe caitlin is the one who should accept his olive branch and his entreaty here. There's really no way to tell where the fault lies, although I'm guessing it's Tom probably. But just I normally do not expect to see this.

It's usually like some message that goes in and out of your eyes or your ears and is forgotten immediately. And this one, I feel like I'm never going to forget the saga of Caitlin and Tom. And I don't know whether we will ever hear what happened here or what the backstory was. And part of me doesn't want to. Yeah, don't want to know. Yeah. Because, oh boy, I'm going to just,

I'm going to say a lot about my own preferences as a human person. And I don't know if Caitlin shares them, so who knows? But I would really not talk to Tom after this, if it were me. If I were Caitlin, I'd be like, I am doubling down on my efforts to not talk to you anymore. Because litigating this in public seems counterproductive to your purpose, Tom. I think she sent you a message.

And granted, we don't know. Like you said, we don't know the real context of this. It seems as if there has just been a trend lately for the ballpark to be a place that broadcasts are keen to have us litigate publicly and sort of not in terms of the players on the field, but like the interactions between fans and the stands and look i'm a person who built part of my career on taking screenshots of people and being like let me try to ascribe motive to these human beings who i've never met so i'm i'm far from perfect in when it comes to this stuff but ballparks are just a really strange place because

they are public like you're sitting out there it's like you're at the park. Yeah. Like a city park, not like the ballpark park. It's like you're in a green space. But also, I think that we have a reasonable expectation that we're not going to be stared at for too terribly long because we're not the main event. We're spectators, right? We're spectators. But also with this, the punctuation is interesting to me. All periods.

No exclamation points. Now, if you said talk to me with an exclamation point. That'd be even worse, I guess. Right. You'd be like, I'm desperate. And then I might say, hey, Tom, you've already crossed the Rubicon. Yeah. Once you're paying to get your message on this big board at a Reds game, I think you

have definitely crossed the desperation line. Well, and it's like, imagine that Caitlyn is there. Like, does Caitlyn work there? Like, why does he know that she'll be there? I know, it's sort of stalkerish, potentially. Yeah, I would find it very disconcerting if I were Caitlyn to be like, am I being observed right now?

I would feel like i was under some sort of surveillance yeah like is there not a mutual friend you could reach out through i does that mean that all of the friends have sided with caitlin which again should be assigned to you tom you should take you know we we're given we're given feedback on our behavior, and it comes in a lot of different forms. And if you're in the midst of an interpersonal problem, we don't know what the nature of their relationship is, right? They might be romantic friends. They might be relatives.

They could just be pals. They could be coworkers. We don't know what the nature of their relationship is. We would only be speculating. But if there's no one in your circle of common folks who can say yeah i'll see what caitlin you know if caitlin's ready to talk to you yeah that's a sign tom i'm trying to come up with the most charitable interpretation for tom and it's tough but the best i can do is that maybe there was some bad breakup and he just wasn't ready to admit that he was at fault for a while. And maybe Caitlin just blocked him everywhere, just didn't want to see the bad

memories, didn't want to think about Tom, didn't want to talk to Tom because he was not owning up to his role in the wrongdoing. And now he has had an epiphany. He has recognized that he was at fault, at least to some extent, but he has no way to get back in touch with her. And so he has reached out via ballpark diamond vision. That is the best I can come up with, but it's a stretch. Well, then I would have recommended the following to Tom, which is rather than saying, I was wrong. Talk to me. I would have said, I was wrong. I'm sorry, Tom. And then let Caitlin make her choices about what she thinks of that. Maybe she thinks, all right, well, that acknowledgement of your fault in this

situation was lacking before and is meaningful and i will reach out yeah but doing a talk to me it just feels like it's motivated by a need on tom's part for some sort of reconciliation or forgiveness and um yeah i think that if your apology is sincere you should just make it and then let let the other person decide what they want to what they want to do with it you know right do they do they take you at your word do they want to what they want to do with it you know right do they do they take you at your word do they want to hear more let them say uh oh hey tom saw your ballpark message was a little weird and stalkery but appreciate the apology nonetheless what what else do you have to say about that you know yeah caitlin will contact you when she is ready to

if she is ready to yeah talk to me it's like It's an imperative. It's an order. You must talk to me. Yeah. It's maybe like, I hope someday you could find it in your heart to talk to me or something. But well, I guess he's paying to balance his expressing his heartfelt apology with the fact that the Reds could be charging him through the nose for this thing. So, you know, he's trying to be economical with his words, but even so. Well, and I have some questions about that piece of it, too. It's like, how many slides of greetings did they do? How did the person in the Reds business office who's responsible for this, like there's a person who screens these and makes sure that they don't,

I mean, if the Reds are known for anything, it's wanting to screen messages more carefully, right? Like they're quite keen on that lately. So who decided, you know, we had to put Tom, we want to put Tom above the stroke PSA so that there's like a, you know, a clean break between Tom and his message and the birthday messages.

Also, you don't just do the stroke PSA on its own thing. Like even if Tom's message had been excluded from this particular set of messages it's like are you having a stroke happy birthday yeah right exactly at least it's broken up so it's it's not like happy 13th kelsey caitlin i was wrong talk to me happy 40th birthday colin it's like in its own little section for uh apologies and entreaties but yeah there must be like what are the editorial standards of the scoreboard department when they decide, is this okay? Does this pass muster here?

I mean, it's not a threat. It's not profane. It's not unsavory or anything. I guess it could be kind of threatening depending on the context, but we don't know. Anyway, it's not your normal ballpark message. And I'm just just it's like the saddest eight word short story that i can imagine is caitlin i was wrong talk to me tom on a ballpark scoreboard so the reds have been playing pretty good baseball but i think if i had been at this game and if i had seen this message like no number of joey vato home runs could have made me forget the sad story of Caitlin and Tom. Reconciliation never used. Yeah.

Well, at least Nick Castellanos did not home during this message being on the big board. We need an investigation into that because it's definitely a coincidence. But boy, is it a weird one. Yeah. It was Tom, T-O-M, not T t-h-o-m just in case anyone was wondering all right well tom depending on the circumstances we wish you the best here caitlin we wish you the best here too or at least a good pair of running shoes yes one of the above so we will uh see if there are any further developments or whether this is just a couple sentences that will stick in my mind probably for the rest of my life.

And the story of Caitlin and Tom will haunt me forever. Not your normal ballpark fare. We will take a quick break and we'll be back in just a moment with Dan Hayducky to talk about Pops and the MLB license. All right. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, tops off of its longtime turf and has also struck deals with other leagues, with the NBA and also with the unions of the NFL and the NBA. Tops and baseball cards have gone together for 70 years, and that will soon cease to be the case. So we are joined now by Dan Hayducky, an ESPN reporter who wrote about this news when it broke on Thursday. Dan, welcome to the show. Thank you both so much for having me. I'm really excited about it. So I wanted to ask whether this came as a shock to you and to others who were kind of in the hobby more than we are, because we're sort of lapsed card collectors, I suppose, who have some nostalgia factor.

And just to read this, what, Tops might not be making baseball cards anymore. That's like, what if games were seven innings long and they started extra innings with a runner on second base? Could never happen, but it is happening. They would never tamper with tradition to that extent. But was this as much of a shock to someone like you, to people who are paying much closer attention to the industry? Or was there some sense that there could be a changing of the guard here? I was definitely shocked by this. I mean, I was still sort of doing radio appearances about the Honus Wagner news that broke on Monday.

Yeah, so let's keep at that too a little later. Right. So I got a phone call, I got a tip that this was happening. And a person I spoke to said, you have like three hours to get this out there, get this done and get it out there. But this is happening. And I was just sort of stunned. I mean, like you just said tops has been such an institution since you know 1951 they made their their first baseball cards and they've been making baseball cards ever since and they've had the exclusive license to make mlb and mlb pa backed trading cards since 2009 and they were getting ready to go public like they they were a public company for a very long time and then they went private in i think it was 2007 and they were getting ready to go public. They were a public company for a very long time. And then they went private in, I think it was 2007.

And they were getting ready to go public again, this huge merger. And they were valued at like, this merger was going to be valued at $1.3 billion. And that's the breaking news that came out today is that that's no longer happening because of the news yesterday. So it's just a seismic move in the trading card industry that's really going to rearrange the landscape of what we're looking at. Condolences to Michael Eisner, former Disney chairman, who is the owner of Tops now and

was going to get a big payday here. I'm sure his bank account will be fine. $600 million payday was on the table. Yeah, I don't think he's going broke or anything, but bad timing for him. So help us lay this out in terms of the timelines here. So when will the new deal take effect and how will this deal affect Topps? Because there's a bit of a disconnect, right, in terms of the timeline of when their PA license lapses and when their MLB license lapses, correct? That's exactly right.

And it's honestly a little confusing to me, too. I mean, Topps extended their deal in 2018 with MLB and it runs through 2025, but the MLB PA deal expires at the end of 2022. So Fanatics will have the new MLB PA deal in place in 2023. So I think we're still sort of figuring out what this is going to look like. And most of my reporting had to do with the mlb and the mlb pa but as ben mentioned that there was also nba nba pa and nfl pa deals that were struck as well so we're really looking at whatever this company is named we don't know what the name of the company is yet this fanatics company that's coming into this landscape they're going to be a tremendous player and there are i mean it seems like they're going to be a tremendous player. And there are, I mean, it seems like they're going to be the biggest card producer.

It looks like they've got the NBA fully from Panini. And that's sort of shocking too, because NBA cards absolutely skyrocketed over the last two, three years. It's really, it's hard to put into perspective just how big this news is. Can you explain what exactly Fanatics does for those who don't know and what positioned them to make this move, why this was appealing to them, and maybe also why they were an appealing partner for these leagues and unions? Which I guess we should mention, this isn't just a straight up licensing deal, right? These unions at least have equity in this company that we'll be forming. So they're part of this venture in a way.

That's exactly right. They do have a stake in this new venture. And previously, like it wasn't so long ago that Fanatics was just a place that you bought jerseys and shirts and hats and stuff. And it was licensed apparel, but they were an apparel company. And they've moved into memorabilia over the last, you know, over the recent memory. I did some reporting on Otani getting an exclusive memorabilia deal with Fanatics recently. So they've really become a big player in that memorabilia space. But now this whole starting a trading card company and getting some of the biggest licenses they could get, I mean, it makes them the most powerful people in this industry. And that's sort of shocking. I was talking to someone earlier today that

in no shade to Fanatics, there's nothing, you know, I don't have anything bad to say about, I don't know enough about them to say anything bad too. But it's sort of like a double A ball player getting called up mid-season and winning the MVP. It's really shocking. Well, speaking of double A ball players, I think one of the spaces in the collecting world that we've seen be really lucrative in the last couple of years has been cards of guys who have yet to debut, right? So like Jason Dominguez cards where he's, you know, he's in a Yankees uniform, but he's a minor leaguer. He's not yet a member of the union because he hasn't been added to a 40 man. What does this deal do for cards of players like that? you know is tops still going to be able to produce

the bowman series or is there do you think that they'll exit the market entirely no i'm not i'm not 100 sure about that but you're absolutely right that those are the those are the biggest the biggest cards most sought after cards in baseball i have people that have yet to debut for cards it's very much like buying in really low on a stock and you're hoping that that this player becomes the next mike trout or you know becomes the next aaron judge something like that i'm not really sure what it's going to look like you know uh i got in touch with someone at tops and they they couldn't be reached for an official comment on this so i haven't really gotten too in depth over what it looks like for them but they're still going to be producing cards for the next you know few years with the license, which hasn't

expired yet. But it definitely changes that whole prospecting sort of aspect of the industry. There's a whole set of people that try to predict who those next big baseball players are going to be, and it's undeniable that this is a huge effect on that. Yeah, I'd imagine that people at Topps are probably licking their wounds here and maybe just coming to terms with this themselves. I wonder how much warning or advance notice they had about this. And I was wondering just how they allowed this to happen, if it was within

their control, but maybe it wasn't. You't. I was reading in the Wall Street Journal report that Topps, which as you said, was going public, was valued at 1.16 billion, which is not a small amount. And I thought, okay, why couldn't they afford to renew these licenses or extend them? And then later in the report, I saw Fanatics is currently valued at 18 billion following a new funding round. So, okay, they have deep pockets, deeper pockets than the AA ballplayer in your analogy, I suppose. So is it just a matter of being outbid? I mean, I guess we don't know the terms of the arrangement yet, but do you think there were other aspects of this that made it more attractive to the league and the unions, you

know, fanatics instead of tops as a partner whether it was this equity piece of the deal or i don't know like is there some complacency on the part of tops because they've had the license forever like were there ways in which you're aware that the leagues or the unions were unhappy with that arrangement because i know that business was booming for all involved over the past year or two so So there's that. But I don't know whether the fact that Fanatics is this online retailer with a lot of reach there just makes it a more natural pairing for cards. Yeah. I think my guess, the conventional wisdom would be that it was more appealing to have equity involved in this venture. Topps paid the MLBPA $20.4 million for their license in 2020.

And that was up $1.6 million from 2019. And that was the most money of any license that the MLBPA received. So it's not as if they weren't making money. I mean, it's been a good deal for both sides for a long time. But I think as we see a lot in this industry and other industries like it, if it's possible to get more, people obviously want that. And if you have skin in the game, then it's more appealing. So I think that that was probably a big part of it. It's my guess. But I spoke to someone from TOPS earlier in the week about something completely unrelated, a story that we wanted to do together. And we didn't speak

about this at all. And it wasn't something that maybe because it was still happening, I'm not really sure. But it wasn't something that we actively talked about. And I think that that changes probably what we're going to do together now. I'm not really sure. But no, I don't know if they deals with Topps. So as you noted, that was not chump change in the past. So if this is 10 times bigger, I mean, maybe that just means it's longer term, but I guess it would also be more on a per year basis, probably. And I guess we don't know the exact details, but maybe for people who might not be aware of this, can you explain why there are multiple licenses, why you have a deal with the league and with the union and what the options are if you have a deal with only one of the two? Right, right. It's actually a pretty easy distinction. It seems more confusing than it is. If you have a deal with a league, it means that your cards can have the team's logos on the players' jerseys in the pictures and stuff like that.

logos on the players jerseys in the pictures and stuff like that if you only have a deal with the players union then you can show their like likenesses and and not show the logo if you have a deal with the league then you can show the logos so i mean panini is right now is well previously his that was the biggest name in the card industry because they had deals with the nfl they have deals with the nfl and m and n and the players' unions for both of those leagues. So they can show both players' uniforms, logos. They can show all of that. But Panini also makes baseball cards. They just don't have the blessing of the MLB to have the logos.

So right now, you can go buy Donruss and Panini cards that are baseball cards. If you wanted a Mike Trout Panini card or Donruss card, it just wouldn are baseball cards that you just, if you wanted a Mike Trout, you know, Panini card or Donruss card, it just wouldn't have the Angels logo on it. Yeah, right. It seems like it would be much more viable to have that one of the two if you were going to, unless anyone is getting excited about collecting team logos with players on them. So for collectors, apart from the logo on the card changing what are what are the practical implications of this and what are the things that you sense collectors might be worried about with the transition from tops to fanatics i think that this industry is a highly insular industry

and there there are there are factions within this industry there there are you know the the people that have been collectors for, you know, decades and decades, and they resent this new money coming into this industry. And then on the other side, you have this new money coming into the industry. There's almost like a Gatsby-esque quality to it. You know, there's divisions right down the middle. The reaction so far seems to be that people are very upset that Topps is being pushed out because of the history and nostalgia. I mean, Topps, I used to be a much more serious collector and Topps and Upper Deck were, you know, the cards that I collected when I was younger.

There's definitely a sentiment that, you know, it's hurtful seeing something like this happen. But, you know, we've seen a lot of innovation in this industry over the past two or three years. I mean, NFTs were definitely not talked about in every other sentence the way they are now. And that's a serious moneymaker that people are putting, the companies are putting investment and time into. So I think that there, it's really sort of, you know, six and one half dozen together. There are people that think that this is good for the industry's development and transition into something that's not going away. And then there are people that are decrying that this is sacrilege, basically. but we didn't. So no, it's okay. I was going to bring up that if you didn't, but there is a separate deal, right? With MLB NFT rights with this company called Candy Digital, which is backed by Fanatics. You noted in your report. So they kind of have their fingers in everything now, I suppose. They really do. And I wish I could say that I was an expert about NFTs, but I'm really

not. And I'm still trying to understand. You probably shouldn't say that. It's probably better that you not be able to say that. I don't really understand the allure. And when I talk to economists about this, pretty much across the board, everyone's like, I don't really see the long-term viability of them. But we have obviously seen that that's not the case. They've been around.

They've had a pretty serious lifespan just in the pandemic alone. So I don't know. I mean, anyone's guess is as good as mine. I'd like to point out to our listeners that we did not tee him up to express NFT skepticism in line with effectively wild official stance. I talked to an economist from the University of Chicago that said NFTs help us remember yesterday. I talked to an economist from the University of Chicago that said, NFTs help us remember yesterday, but do they really have any leg to stand on past the next five years? And he's like, I don't think so.

And I mean, his name's John List. He's at the University of Chicago. He's someone I talk to about cards pretty regularly. And he's usually pretty spot on. I mean, I guess maybe if I understood them more, maybe I would have a stronger opinion. I just don't really understand it. That's okay. We're struggling on that front too. I'm curious if you have a sense of what this might do for, I guess, what will be officially the last run of Topps cards as we know them. Next year, they'll still be able to produce cards with

the blessing of the PA and the league. But do you have a sense of what this might do to that market? I don't really know. I mean, I'm still trying to get in touch with them on the record about what the plans are moving forward now. But I mean, in reality, they've done such great work for such a long time. It's going to be really upsetting to see. But also going forward, it might have the allure of that 52 set where it's like the 52 set was their first annual set. And that's why it's, among other reasons, that's why it's so sought after. But maybe moving forward, it'll have some sort of the same sort of quality.

Like this is the last tops. These are the last tops releases that you'll be able to get for some time.'s there's a chance that that they're i mean they're going to be extremely collectible on their own but there's a chance that there's a real serious war to try to get try to get people's hands on them uh that would be my that would be my guess but i mean i mean they've it's not like they it's and that's the thing i think that gets lost here that might get lost here is that like tops hasn't done anything wrong. They've just been pushed out by someone that's made a lot more money and has serious plans. It's not like they've done anything wrong here.

Yeah, I guess I've seen people kind of lumping this in with the larger corporatization of MLB under Rob Manfred. of MLB under Rob Manfred, not that it wasn't a corporation before Rob Manfred, but just kind of the stripping away of certain traditions, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, some traditions are bad and should be stripped away, but just certain things like, you know, now we don't have the International League or the names of the old leagues that we used to have. Now it's just, you know, whatever, East or West, and that seems like probably a placeholder until they're sponsored by Doosan or whatever. So it doesn't seem like there's a lot of reverence for those hallmarks of baseball if there's a buck to be made or maybe millions or billions of bucks to be made, which it's a for-profit business. And so I understand that perspective, obviously,

but there is a certain romance to some things. It's just like the clash, I guess, between, hey, we have this field of dreams game and we're celebrating the history of baseball. And then the next week we are taking away the license from Tops, which is about as baseball a business deal as possibly could exist. It's sort of discordant, I guess. So if there are no other benefits to fans or collectors, aside from the fact that MLB and the union, of course, this is not just MLB, it's the union as well, the players too.

I guess if there are no other benefits other than those parties make more money, then it's kind of a bummer. And I guess it remains to be seen whether there will be other benefits, maybe a new hungry company that bought cards will revolutionize baseball cards in a really interesting way. Who knows? Or I guess they could just be similar to the quality that we're accustomed to and everyone will just get used to it. But it is a change that no one was really pushing for, I suppose. Yeah, I think that you hit it right on the head there.

I mean, there's such a dissonance right now within baseball and the fight between moving it further into the 21st century while retaining the lore and nostalgia of the past. I think that that's a really difficult thing to do. And the duality of having the Field of dreams game and then this this happened a week later it's really stark and i and i do think that you know i i i was thinking as i was writing this newser like you know i wonder if this is just going to be something that only card people care about but it really has played over into baseball fans too and and like it's as bad as the news was for them it was nice to see that people are really upset about this.

I was like, oh, okay, it's not just a niche industry thing. But the deal also, like I said, we're still talking about the 6.6 million dollar Honus Wagner earlier this week. And the story behind that card is so interesting because for the longest time, people thought that Wagner did not want kids smoking tobacco or using tobacco to get his card. And in reality, it seems to be the much more interesting theory behind the card being pulled from production was that he was an NIL rights pioneer and he didn't think that he would be fairly compensated for his image or he wasn't fairly compensated for his image. And it's like, OK, well, 100 hundred years later we're still talking about that and also it seems like that's a big aspect of this fanatics deal is that whether they've said so or not it seems like the mlbpa and the mlb wanted to have more of the pie they didn't think that they were getting enough and and i guess

with this move now they will yeah and it has caused a stir kind of crossing lines between mainstream people and people who are card collectors. Not that card collecting is not also mainstream, but in a sense, I guess it doesn't matter to them that I think, oh, no, not tops anymore because I haven't bought baseball cards in decades at this point. So I still have fond feelings associated with collecting those cards, and I still have giant binders and boxes full of cards sitting in my mom's apartment, but I'm not actually generating any revenue for them. So if it is mildly disturbing to me that Topps will not be making baseball cards anymore, there's no actual hit to the revenue. So I guess what really matters is, are the people who are generating that revenue going to be equally as upset about it? And as you said, you know, there seems to be some consternation there too.

So we will see. But just forgive my ignorance of the history. But, you know, when I was collecting cards in the 90s and in the 80s, of course, I mean, you had multiple companies making these cards in the previous baseball card boom and the market was flooded. And Topps, as you note in your report, has had the exclusive license since 2009. But prior to that, was it just sort of a free for all and everyone got whatever license they were willing to pay for? Was there exclusivity? I guess at at an earlier era at least you could have multiple parties making cards and striking deals at the same time right i mean yeah like that area that you're talking about i i was born in 89 so i i sort of started collecting a little bit after that but you know it was you're collecting donruss fleer leaf upper deck tops i mean all those companies there's been a lot of consolidation in the industry. Like, you know, Donruss is owned by Panini.

Leaf is still around in a different iteration, but they're still around. Upper Deck only makes hockey cards now, as well as has memorabilia agreements. Things have changed, certainly. But the biggest aspect of that era of collecting was that there was really no transparency over how many copies of the cards that these companies were producing. So there was the big thing with Upper Deck, the Upper Deck Riffey Rookie from 89 was that there were supposedly millions of those out there. This iteration, this modern iteration of the industry is much more transparent and most of the cards

are serial numbered and there's some trackability to how many exist. You know, I spoke to the CEO of Leaf when I talked about, you know, manufactured scarcity. And I said, you know, some cards are numbered to 5, 10, 25, 100, you know, 1000 sometimes now. And he's like, yeah, that's great for the industry. In the old days, it would be 4 million of each. So it's interesting to see where this industry has gone. And as of yesterday, where it seems to be going, I think that the likelihood that the bottom is going to fall out is low right now. The landscape might change. There might be a bubble that expands over time that eventually bursts. I mean, who knows really. But the issues that plagued the industry the last time it collapsed are not really as much of a factor right now. their aesthetic is right and so i'm curious if you have any sense or we have any indication of

what these cards might end up actually looking like if there's a preferred sort of design aesthetic that they might be keen to embrace because you know if you go to fanatics.com right now you're you're just as likely to buy merch from nike or herschel or what have you then you are to see something that's actually branded by them. So that's exactly right. I mean, I don't think anyone really knows what it's going to look like when these cards eventually come out. I know that it's very, very early days over at Fanatics. They know in the memo that we obtained, the company that they're going to eventually start was called Nuko. And that was just like a placeholder. And yeah, I mean,

they're still in the process of like, you know, pulling other people away. And I believe they announced that the stock ex-CEO Josh Luber is going to be overseeing this new venture. But Fanatics has also made a push into sports betting. They hired FanDuel CEO Matt King, and they got Tucker Kane, the business enterprise president for the Dodgers to, you know, lead that venture. So I mean, they're making a lot of moves right now. And I think that when the cards actually do come out, that's going to be a really big moment for them because that's kind of make or break whether people are going to collect them or not. They don't necessarily, I think it's still very early. They haven't talked about designs as far as I know

and or what the plan is or what the execution will be or price point, any of that. But they have a structure in place to really touch every part of the sports industry, this side of the sports industry moving forward. And this is probably a question I should have asked earlier, but can you kind of just give people a quick summary of the context behind this deal, which is just the booming industry here. Because back in January, we did an episode and an interview on episode 1646. We had Joe Lowry from Prospects Live on to talk about the baseball card boom and the larger trading card boom. But for anyone who missed that interview, it might be helpful to hear because I do still see sometimes people who haven't been plugged into this saying, baseball anyone cares about those still and it turns out yeah they care about them more than ever so why has this

become such a big thing again it's so interesting i'm so glad you asked that back in like september or august of 2019 i pitched this story on um the title then was mutiny on wall street but that's not what it ended up running as but it was basically like hey no one's been paying attention to this this sporting sports card industry and there's been a lot of money funneling in and there's been some serious you know big money sales and like basically everyone in the in the room at espn was like oh that's cool does anyone care about cards and it took a long time for that story to happen. It ended up not publishing until October of last year, when obviously we had a lot more to go on then. But yeah, what I found is that over the history of this country, sports cards have done pretty well

in times of economic turmoil. They've acted as stable assets in an otherwise unstable landscape. At the tail end of the 2000s with the Great Recession, sports cards outperformed the S&P 500 by like 100-something percent. I don't remember the exact number, but it was notable. seeing that happen again, where people are using this industry as a fine art, you know, stable asset class that they can invest in when they're not sure about what else to invest in. Sports cards right now, it's a multi-billion dollar industry. And that definitely was not true a few years ago. We've seen the record for the all-time most expensive card record broken a number of times just in the pandemic alone. In August of last year, Mike Trout's card sold for $3.9 million. And that really, I was shocked to everybody. I spoke to this writer, Dave Jamison. He's a labor reporter at the HuffPost, but he also wrote

this book called Mint Condition. I spoke to him about cards and what's happened. And he had this great quote where he's like, you know, it used to be that a card had to have this incredible story behind it to get any sort of sale like this. You know, the Wagner, the 52 Mantle, the Nap Lejoy Gaudi card from, I think it was like 33. And that just isn't happening with a Mike Trout card. Mike Trout, you're investing in the player's potential and or realized potential in Trout's case. And you're hoping that their career projects the way that it's been going and that card is worth more when you when you sell it than what you paid for that's not you know their cards being dumped into the hudson river or you know a card being pulled from production because the player doesn't think he's compensated

fairly and there's only 60 of them out there. We're seeing a very calculated, savvy, very, very wealthy class of people having moved into this industry over the last few years. And those are the people that are getting all the headlines. Well, and I guess that maybe brings us to my next question, which I think is going to sound sort of naive, but does this deal do anything to alter the sort of shift that that landscape has gone through? Because I think one of the things that's been frustrating for sort of regular collectors, right, folks who just like to have cards on hand who aren't necessarily expecting to realize like S&P like returns because of confrontations that they've had with customers. I suspect the answer to this question is no, because if it were going to alter it significantly and there was less money, then there wouldn't have been this deal. But does this change that landscape at all? You know, when I first started speaking to people for that first story, every card manufacturer that I spoke to acknowledged that there might be a bubble and it might burst and everything might go sideways. I think that's less likely now

because there's so much money and there's so much investment in this industry at large. I don't think everyone's going to lose their money overnight. I don't think that that's going to happen. I think that there's probably a good chance that some of these big players or some of these people that invest a lot of money might gradually start to, you know, recede from the landscape if they see that it's not really beneficial to them. I don't really know. I think that as someone that used to be a collector and I could afford to be a collector, I can't afford to be a collector now. I'm not even in the same category in terms of money that can be spent on this stuff. in the same category in terms of money that can be spent on this stuff. And the top of the line boxes of cards now are like $3,000 to $5,000.

Who in this country, in the world, has that sort of expendable income to spend on one box of like eight cards? You know, I think that that is really limited the type of person that could come into this market. And I think that's probably going to continue to be the case. There's going to be a lot of people that are interested in cards and like the idea of collecting, but they'll probably watch from afar, probably more so moving forward. And then there will be people that are investment savvy people that are, you know, they don't want to. I don't remember. I can't remember offhand who told me this, but it was someone who said, you know, these people that used to be investing in Picassos,

they don't really want to invest in Picassos anymore. They want to invest in someone that they grew up loving or that they grew up wanting to collect and couldn't afford when they were younger. Yeah, which is where Wagner comes in. So you are saying you are not the anonymous buyer of the T206 that sold this week? Yeah, that's not me. It's not me. Okay. So yeah, we don't know who bought it or sold it for that matter. We just know that it sold for 6.606 million, which is another record which breaks records that were recently

said. And there was the 1952 Topps Mantle card, and there was a LeBron James autographed rookie card. And so it just keeps going up and up. And it's not just baseball cards. It's Pokemon cards. And it's not just cards. It's old video games are selling for what seem like exorbitant amounts. of, well, you want to stick your money somewhere in some sort of material object that you think will appreciate. And it's not necessarily a Picasso now, maybe it's a baseball card. And it seems like the amounts just really have skyrocketed. So I mean, something like the T206, like that's a legendary card and there are only so many out there and this was one of the best graded ones. But is it going well beyond the T206 and the 52 tops mantle like these legendary Pantheon valuable baseball cards? Is it kind of across the board? Yeah. I mean, it's not just those vintage cards anymore that are getting those sums. As you said, there was the LeBron card that sold for $5.2 million in April.

As you said, there was a LeBron card that sold for $5.2 million in April, and there was a Luka Doncic card that supposedly sold for $4.6 million earlier than that. I mean, there are people that are seriously investing in the potential of these current athletes. But it just struck me that, you know, as you were talking about that, I was like, this whole week has to be the wildest week in sports card history, at least in recent memory. We had the $6.6 million Wagner on Monday. Following that, there was the PWCC eBay showbidding scandal that's going on. And then after that, there's this Topps fanatics deal. I mean, three of the biggest stories in a long time, just right like days after each other. It's really been a whirlwind last seven days. It's kind of hard to wrap your head around that. And one aspect of this that was interesting

to me is the way that it seems like the sports leagues and also the unions are kind of coordinating their efforts here where you have Fanatics, who's founder and executive chairman, Michael Rubin. He's involved in multiple sports because he's the co-owner of the Sixers and the Devils. But then you also have this entity that these leagues formed. I'm reading from the Wall Street Journal report here. Two years ago, the NFLPA and MLBPA teamed up in an unprecedented private equity deal that helped lay the groundwork for this upheaval. The journal first reported in 2019, the NFLPA and MLBPA's creation of one team So I guess they've made that often these parties' interests are aligned. And you certainly see that with, you know, leagues getting into gambling and sports books and that sort of sponsorship. And they're all kind of moving in lockstep there. And I guess one does something and it adds the veneer of respectability to it. And then the others kind of embrace it wholeheartedly, too. So it's interesting that this wasn't just a piecemeal sort of thing it's like they're all coordinating their efforts here yeah and i think as someone that you know

was raised middle class and it's still pretty solidly middle class it's sort of shocking how much these sports leagues from not just american sports league but global sports league how much they have and how much more they want you know it wasn't so long ago that i i played soccer at fordham and southern connecticut state and so i was i and i write for fc as well and um i think we we were all sort of shocked by the the super league thing that happened like not so long ago and and that was just a situation of you guys are the most wealthy people in the world and you want to isolate yourselves and make more money? I mean, I guess to each their own, but I think it is shocking how much money they have and how much more they want. It's never – too much is never enough, right?

Yeah. So are there any other trends or developments? Not that this was something foreseeable, so who knows what will break next week that we don't know about. But is there anything else we haven't touched on? Like in our previous interview, we talked about breaking and streaming. Oh, case breaking. That's a whole separate thing. Right. So I don't know if there's anything else going on when it comes to either collecting cards or speculating on cards or just the presentation of cards that we should be aware of as people who have not been paying close attention for the last 20 years or so i think

i think case breaking is the most fascinating thing because if you try to explain it i spend a lot of time talking to people that don't know anything about cards about and trying to make it interesting for them and every time i talk to someone about case breaking you're like what the heck i don't even understand you're you're paying money to get involved in a group break and you're going to watch someone else open your cards and then they're going to send them to you. It's just so strange. But I guess, you know, that's a way for people that have less money to still be competitive in this industry.

But it's still expensive. If you're buying into a case break, you're still paying probably a few hundred. I think for the top end cards break you're still paying probably a few hundred i think for the top end cards you're still paying like a few hundred dollars to get in and i think most of the time you get assigned to a random team so like i'm a i'm a mets fan if i bought into a i know that's terrible i'm a mets fan i apologize right now it's particularly hard but yes if i wanted to buy into a case break and i wanted to get mets cards there's there's a chance with some breakers that I could just be assigned to, you know, like the Tigers or something. And yeah, I don't know. It's just, it's a really strange thing to actually watch.

Like on YouTube, there are people that make good money doing that. It just doesn't really make any sense. It's all a game of luck. There's so much when it comes down to collecting in this industry, so much comes down to calculated risk. And then at the end of the day, just luck, blind luck. All right. Well, thank you for bringing us up to speed on all of this. Again, just seeing those reports on Thursday, it was like, wait, what? What happened here?

Tops not making baseball cards? What is the world coming to? What is happening here? And now I understand it a little bit better, although it seems that the future remains murky. But you can follow Dan on Twitter to keep track of future developments. Dan Hayducky, that is H-A-J-D-U-C-K-Y. And we will also link to his website and his archive. And he doesn't just cover card collecting, he covers many other aspects of sports so dan thank you very much for joining us and helping explain these latest developments hey i appreciate you guys having me so much it's such a weird time and uh it was really cool game to talk about i'd love to keep doing the future all right that will do it for today and for this

week thanks as always for listening one update for you on the ballad of Tom and Caitlin, or the tragedy of Tom and Caitlin. The message appeared for a second consecutive game. It was at the Reds game. It was on the video board at the Reds game on Friday as well. Same identical message. Caitlin, I was wrong. Talk to me, Tom. Which makes me wonder, did Tom know that Caitlin was attending back-to-back Reds-Marlins games?

Or was he not really trying to reach her at the Reds game at all? Is he banking on this going viral on social media and Caitlin somehow seeing it there? If she's not on Twitter, maybe friends of Caitlin would tell her that Tom is doing this. Or is this some sort of viral marketing campaign and we're all being played and there is no Tom and there is no Caitlin and this is going to end up being an ad for a rom-com or something. I don't know, but we will continue to monitor this developing situation as new levels of sadness and desperation are reached. And more importantly for Reds fans, the Reds are 2-0 while Tom has been messaging Caitlin.

And if you're superstitious and your team is almost neck-and-neck with the Padres in the NL Wildcard race, maybe you'd want the messages to keep coming, no matter how uncomfortable they make me. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount

to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Will Peckenhan, Rebecca Fleming, Matthew Hine, Randy Ackerman, and Rebecca Vaughn. 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 Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me 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, as always, for his editing assistance today and this week. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back with another episode early next week. Talk to you then. When I learn to read, I read my best long book. When I learn to read, I read my best long book. When I learn to read, I read my best long book.