Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 662: Michael Schur on Metacommentary 10 Years After Fire Joe Morgan’s First Post

Episode Date: April 22, 2015

On the 10th anniversary of Fire Joe Morgan’s first post, Ben and Sam talk to Michael Schur about FJM, sports-media sins in the age of Twitter and, oddly enough, The O.C.

I'm attorney Trevor Nelson with the law firm Foire Dips Windshare's grip, Babette Picotta Vorpenechstein, legal counsel to the Newport family. Good morning and welcome to episode 662 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello, Sam. Howdy. Our guest today has probably created more content that I have consumed than any other one person over the past decade. I think we now have the perspective on his career to say that he probably peaked with his appearance as Paul on the fourth season of the OC. But if that was the peak, he has

had a productive decline phase. You know him from his work on The Office and as the co-creator of Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. You know him from The Pazcast, the show that he co-hosts or permanently guests on with Joe Posnanski. And of course, you know him as Ken Tremendous, both on Twitter and on the blog that many listeners of this podcast probably knew him from first, Fire Joe Morgan. His name is Michael Schur. Hey, Michael. Hello. Thank you for having me. I've waited a long time to hear that. I had to cut some of your jobs out of that introduction.

It's like, you know, when you update your resume every few years, you have to remove your oldest job so that you can fit your newest job in. And for most people, that means taking out the summer that you spent as a camp counselor. But for you, it's the six seasons you spent writing for Saturday Night Live. But basically the same concept. I like that you cut that out, but you left in that I played a character named Paul in one episode of the OC like 15 years ago. That was the most exciting thing in my entire OC watching experience, I think, because my girlfriend had watched the OC when it was airing and I hadn't. And so she had warned me that there was going to be an episode where Max Grinfeld was on the show

as young Sandy. So we were both looking forward to that. And then all of a sudden you appear in the fourth to last episode of the OC as a potential threat to Seth and Summer's relationship. Seth and Summer's relationship. That was not the purpose of my character on the show. I stopped acting a long time ago and my wife wrote for that show for many years and they, in the last season, asked me if I wanted

to do that cameo and I said, yeah, that sounds like fun. That would be a weird little thing to do. I still feel a sense of shame and embarrassment about it. I think it's one of the worst acting performances I have ever seen on television, and it's my own. And that's not a good feeling. So not that we need an excuse to have you on, but the nominal reason for your appearance is that today is the 10th anniversary of the first Fire Joe Morgan post. My 10-year

high school reunion was this weekend. You founded FJM 10 years ago. So we were both reflecting on great accomplishments in our lives. So to give everyone an idea of how long ago this was, the subject of the post was a Sean McAdam article about whether Ichiro or Albert Pujols was a better franchise player, which is not a debate that often arises today. And this was apparently before the internet had block quotes or boldface type. So quotes were just set after two greater than signs. That was the convention at that point in FJM history.

So were you aware that this milestone was coming up before I emailed you about it? Or was I the only person in the world who was keeping track of this? Yes, I was not aware. You made me aware of it. It made me feel old and sad. So thank you for that. And by the way, I'm sure that the internet, even that like really primitive blogger template had the ability to set off block quote search or we just literally didn't know how to do it i mean it's hard to remember the way alex rodriguez described his steroid use as like rinky dink or whatever whatever the word he used was that's how i feel about those early days of fgm is we literally didn't know how to use like computers like blogger

templates certainly so i'm sure there was a way, which we eventually figured out how to just like bold things or something. But in the early days, we were just hacking away and had no idea what we were doing. So we wanted to have you on because FJM sort of predated Twitter and predated baseball Twitter specifically or sports Twitter in general.

And we wanted to talk to you about the things that you did not have a chance to meta-commentate on because they didn't exist at the time. And I guess just generally speaking, you know, Rob Neier wrote an article this week that mentioned you and FJM. He was writing about the value of pointing out bad baseball posts, basically. writing about the value of pointing out bad baseball posts, basically. Do you think that FJM, I mean, I know that, you know, as a person who was just getting to college at the time, it was a very influential site for me.

Do you think that it made a difference? Are we better off today than we were then? And did FJM play any part in that? Well, it's several good questions. I would say, and I'll speak generally for on behalf of Alan Yang and Dave King and Matt Murray and some of the other guys who wrote on that site, I think they would say the same thing. We are very cautious about taking any credit for anything involving the sort of change in the national discourse on baseball and on sports writing and on statistical analysis, simply because we got there after Moneyball had been printed

and dissected and studied. We got there after guys like Rob Neier had already been writing about this stuff for a very long time. And I don't know. stuff for a very long time. And I don't know. I think it's possible that we sped up the current a little bit, but the river was already flowing. I think there was a general sense. I think that despite the fact that we were pre Twitter and pre a bunch of other things on the Internet, the Internet already was beginning to sort of create a system of checks and balances that hadn't existed before.

And I don't know that we did anything except sort of like add to the conversation. I certainly don't think that any of the guys or I would ever say that we're responsible for anything except pissing off a lot of sports writers. But I, you know, the the original goal of the site was to vent frustration that we had when we read stuff and to make dumb jokes and to kind of goof around and make each other laugh. And that continued to be our primary goal, in fact, really our only goal for the entire run of the site. It happened to sort of coincide with a larger movement, I think, of people who were beginning to say like, hey, before you write things like this,

you can look up the statistics really easily to see if your argument holds any water scientifically, and you should do that in order to make your writing better. And that's what we said. We just said it a lot less politely and with a lot more cursing. So I don't know, you know, in terms of like what the site would be now I have no idea I think that you know the world a absurd media criticism or sports writing criticism has advanced greatly

I think the people who do it now are very good at it and they're much more again a much more polite like the Craig Calcutta article that Nair mentioned I'm about that Scherzer comment um there was a comment about Max Scherzer not pitching as well as Bartolo Cologne even though Scherzer didn't give up any earned runs and he struck out eight guys and he pitched generally like Max Scherzer does that article that Calcaterra wrote was I think exceedingly polite like it wasn't at all like a harsh criticism he He just was basically saying like, hey, this is not exactly correct. And maybe we should all try to be a little better when we, you know, analyze what happened in baseball games.

So I think and I think, by the way, that's a that's better. That's a better world now that we live in where the people who are doing it are extremely smart. They're very polite. They're good writers, they write quickly and honestly. And I think that if we were still doing the site, we would just be an annoyance to the people who are trying to do it in a sort of better and more honest way. There's really nothing more unfair than asking a person about their own cultural impact. And it's only slightly more fair to talk about the person's cultural impact in front of them. But I will just very briefly say that I think that philosophically, Ben and I maybe have the idea that nobody ever wins an argument.

You never convince somebody by arguing with them and presenting well-reasoned facts in a rigorous way. People just block that stuff out and they shape evidence into their worldview and such. So the only way that any minds get changed, in my kind of opinion, is that you see people you like who have opinions and you just sort of slowly copy them. You start to think that that's the normal opinion, that's what normal people believe, and you start to think that those things are normal and you incorporate them. I feel like what you guys did was not really argumentative and was not really antagonistic.

It was clearly, it was, you know, the hook was that it was hysterical and enjoyable to read and you were likable people that people liked. And so, you know, it just made it really easy for, I think, people who wouldn't have been convinced by an argument to just sort of think, oh, this is normal behavior, this is how normal people think. So I think that's why it was probably significant. Don't respond to that because like I said, it'd be weird as you do. Well, here's the thing though.

Here's what I will say about the site is I think we had something going for us that some other people don't, which is we weren't trying to make money. And I think a lot of times if you're trying to convince someone of an argument, the chances are, like part of the sort of meta-argument that arose around that Calcutta piece was the fact that he writes for a website that's a company that's trying to make money that needs clicks on its site and needs traffic and advertising and blah, blah, blah. We didn't have that. So the thing that we had going for us the most, I would say, there was a sort of purity of the

cause, which was like, we weren't trying to convince anyone or we weren't trying to drive traffic to make money. At one point, we put Google ads on the site because we were losing money just because you had to pay whatever that blogger site was. We had to pay them like $1,000 a year or something just to host the blog. And so we were sort of apologetic about it. We were like, can we put some ads on our site just to pay for the emails, the hosting and all that stuff? But I think that we weren't compromised in any capitalistic way in terms of what we were saying which which landed

a little bit of authenticity and i would also say that you know there were people and i won't name names necessarily but there were people there were writers that we went after early on who would write us emails and say like you know this was really harsh and you guys were really tough, but I see your point. And I'm going to like, think about this when I write now. And that was awesome. Like that was really cool and very unexpected. And I think there was a way that we, that theoretically we actually added something to the discourse beyond just like jokes and, and goofiness. Um, and that's great. And if that is true, then I think part of the reason that happened is because we had no agenda other than to point out what we saw as shoddy writing. Yeah. So you say that, I think accurately, you say that sports writing today is a lot better.

The quality of writer has changed as sort of a, you know, new people have come in and some of the evidence that we like to use for sports opinions has become more mainstream. The, the format of sports writing is also very different, particularly in the format of writing that I consume and that probably all three of us consume. I might go months and months without reading a full article, but I get lots of tweets in my life. Does the format of the tweet and of the whatever the word is for what you do on Facebook, does it suit sports writing or is this, I don't know, is it the opposite? Basically, if you were just to meta-commentate on sports

journalism now focusing on the way that sports writers project themselves on social media, do you think it would be richer? Would this create a lot of easy targets for you? Or is this actually kind of suited because it keeps people from having to force one small take into 1,200 horrible drawn-out words? Well, I don't know. Like anything else, let's take Twitter, for example. Twitter, like every other kind of writing, has pros and cons. Twitter is not a place for nuance, obviously.

By definition, it limits literally the number of letters you can use to make an argument. And I don't I think that if if this site were happening now, I can't imagine that we would consider Twitter fair game. It's just so it's so basic and so, you know, so non nuanced, basically. I you know, it's very, very good for certain things. Like I am so happy that I get to watch Dan Jenkins tweet about golf. Like that's a, that's like a, a kind of joy that, that didn't exist obviously before, you know, like five years ago or whatever. And it's like a new kind of way to enjoy sports and sports writing. Like, it's great. It's truly great. But also, you know, it feeds into the kind of like hot take zone that we're all living in now where people try to be as big and explosive and kind of controversial as they can.

And it's only sort of magnifying that with its limited scope. And, you know, I don't know. limited scope and you know I don't know it's hard to imagine exactly how anyone could consider Twitter sort of fair game in terms of criticizing sports journalism because it's not journalism it's like individual sentences you know I don't people which again that's not to say that people can't tweet dumb things people tweet dumb things all the time. But I just don't, I consider that like a, that's not journalism to me. That's like, that's like, you know, look at me jumping up and down and waving your arms. And the only kind of, you know, journalism that I think we would still be going after is, is more long form stuff. It just would, it's

fish in a barrel. I mean, you, and I say this as someone who, you know, I tweet fairly often about a variety of different stuff and it's very hard not to tweet about like politics or sports or something like that when you think of a joke. But you invariably get people tweeting back at you that, and their point is, this isn't a very nuanced argument. And it's like, well, yeah, right. That's like this isn't the place to go for nuance or clarity or really anything. It's the place to go for jokes and links to longer pieces. So, you know, Twitter isn't journalism. There's no element of Twitter that's journalism.

Twitter is a radio station that you can tune to a frequency that interests you and then go read longer things somewhere else. Yeah, the other thing that makes Twitter hard to criticize people for is that we're all annoying on Twitter. You and me and Ben are all annoying. Super annoying, yeah. It's weird. What you guys were doing sort of like complaining about the people at the DMV who they have this position behind the counter that you don't have and that only a few people have and they kind of ruin your life.

And if you were complaining about Twitter, it'd be like complaining that somebody's breath was bad in the morning. That's just the human condition. You can't possibly tweet and not be like the worst person and annoying. So that's part of it. But I do think that maybe the criticism of Twitter or of people on Twitter is usually less about one tweet. It's more about the sort of package and how it creates a self-presentation. And so most of the criticisms tend not to be about tweets as about tics and about certain tics

that writers have as a group, certain ticks that some writers have individually. So I have a couple, and I want to get both of your guys' opinions to see whether you consider these to be small sins or large sins or not sins at all. But these are things that I think generally are acknowledged to be annoying things that writers do, and I wonder if they are unfair things or if they're super fair things. So sports writers complaining about the length of the game they're covering. Anytime a sports writer does this, they get 15 replies saying, well, I'll trade you jobs. I clean up poop. So what do you think about the complaining about length of a game complaint?

Well, if I'm going first, I think it's just an unavoidable part of any occupation. If I were a beat writer, I would not tweet that just because I've seen the reaction that other sports writers get when they tweet that. But it's a very human thing. No matter what job you have, no matter how glamorous your job is or seems to be to other people, eventually it becomes your normal. And then there are things that bother you about it. And no matter how wonderful your life is, the bad parts of your life start to seem as bad as someone whose life is actually worse, but also has terrible parts of it that seem worse than

other parts. So I think it's something that I would avoid just based on the reaction, but I understand it. I don't think it's necessarily them taking the job for granted or something. It's just kind of the way humans work. Yeah, I would echo that. I would say also that, you know, in terms of like sins, in terms of complaining about your job, like I think it's a far greater sin. There was a thing recently where some baseball players were talking about were complaining, I think, anonymously about their jobs. And one of them was saying, like, you know, we don't get any days off. You know, we work more consecutive days and then people who have normal jobs. And that is insane because they have a lot of time off and they're paid way,

way, way, way, way more than almost everybody else on earth. And I like a sports writer complaining about the length of the game. Like that's just, that's, that's why Twitter's bad to me. That's a bad version of Twitter because you're allowed to complain about your job, you know, no matter what your job is, you're allowed to complain about your job. But you should only complain about your job to people who have your same job. That's what I think, because it's Apple. Everything is apples and oranges. I mean, I complain about my job all the time.

I have like the greatest job in the world. I write jokes for a living and the and the complaints and I'm well paid for it, by the way, and the complaints that I have about my job are legitimate complaints because every job has legitimate complaints. But I limit my complaining about my job to people who have my job or understand my job because if I complain about my job to 99.99999% of human beings on earth, I would seem like a terrible human being.

So that's why Twitter is bad sometimes is because it gives you access and a means to sort of vent frustrations that are best kept inside your own head, or they're best said to the guy next to you or to the woman next to you who has the exact same job you have, and has exactly the same complaints about that job. So like, I don't think it's that big a sin. I just think that Twitter is like a megaphone that you're putting up next to your brain that is expressing things out loud. It's very tempting to do that on Twitter

and that it's probably best left. You're best logging off at that point before you make that kind of complaint. That's why I had to unfollow all those Chilean minors. It's just got to be too much. All right, so the one where a pitcher leaves the game in the second inning

and then 40 minutes later they make an announcement in the press box that he has a contusion on his knee, and you get all nine beat reporters in the span of, you know, four tenths of a second, all tweeting the news as though it's as it's breaking in, suddenly your Twitter feed is out of control because you have too much news on bone contusions. Small sin, big sin, no sin. I feel like it's the user's error more than the provider's error if this is a problem you're encountering. In that if you're a reporter, this at least ostensibly falls under the aegis of reporting

and news comes out and your boss probably says, hey, you have to tell the people who follow you that this is happening. And theoretically, there are some people who are not following every beat writer. They're just following their favorite beat writer. And therefore, they would miss this thing if this one writer didn't do it. But if you are following nine, I think games in general are just the worst time to follow beat writers because the value of a beat writer generally comes before or after the game. The during the game stuff I could do without. Yeah, I is I would say no sin on this one. I mean, look, Twitter is opt in, right? It's an opt in system. You don't have to follow anyone.

That's why the funniest kind of tweet that I ever get is a tweet complaining about what I'm tweeting in any direction. It's like you. Yeah, I'm just doing this. You don't have to listen. It's very easy to turn me off and to not you. You don't have to listen. It's very easy to turn me off. And you not only have to be following me, you have to be actively, like, essentially waiting for me to tweet something in order to then get annoyed at what I'm tweeting. Like, it's an opt-in system. If you're a beat writer for any team, you know,

from a Little League team all the way up to the majors, that's your job. Your job is to report that Corey Kluber has a contusion on his knee. If you don't do that, then you're not doing your job. And it's not anyone's fault that nine people do that because that's nine people's job. So I would say no sin on that one. Does that extend to tweeting play by play? Because that's an area where obviously the news comes out whether you tweet it or not technically it is the the most literal definition of reporting you are literally at the game reporting what is happening there and yet there are so many other ways that we can get that news now that it ends up adding very little value to me and yet many people

continue to do it so i assume someone's getting something out of it. But is that a sin for you? For me? No, not at all. Look, you know, it's hard to imagine a scenario where the only way that a fan of the Milwaukee Brewers could follow a game is by looking at a Twitter feed. It's very hard to imagine that scenario because you have internet access, right? So I don't know what the situation is, but like, it's not like there's a limited number of tweets. It's not like when we hit 30 trillion tweets, then Twitter gets shut down. Like there's, it's just a thing. It's a thing you, everybody can do

no matter how much they want to. You know, we had an actress on Parks and Recreation named Retta who played Donna and she used to love to live tweet TV shows, but she would also live tweet TV shows that like, she would watch like Buffy the vampire slayer season three, and then live tweet and say like, Hey, I'm going to watch season three, episode six of Buffy the vampire slayer and live tweet it. And then she's basically saying like, if you want to come on this crazy journey with me, come along. And what would happen is hundreds and hundreds of people would complain about her clogging up their feeds.

And she would respond to them and be like, then don't follow me. I don't know what to tell you. I told you what I was doing. This is on you now. If you can mute her, you can unfollow her. You can just walk away from your computer. So I don't see any problem. Again, it's an unlimited resource.

Everybody can tweet as much as they want. If it in any way contributes anything to anyone, then it's worthwhile. And obviously, like you said, if they're doing it, then someone's getting something out of it. So, go crazy. I basically agree with that. I would say though that Retta is a little bit different because I think people see their beat writers sort of as a public trust,

public utility, I should say, in a way. They're dependent on them and you don't want to be flooded by them. I mean, it would be like if the power company's like, what do you mean you're mad we're giving you more light than you paid for? We're going to give it to you in the middle of the night. It's free. Why are you complaining? You know, turn off your power if you don't like it. So I don't know. I mean, I don't actually have any issue with this play-by-play thing. But given the, I mean, if your only choices are to unfollow your favorite beat writer

or to quit complaining, I mean, quitting complaining is a very onerous thing to ask of a person. I don't think we should ever ask somebody to quit complaining. But don't you think, don't think we should ever ask somebody to quit complaining. But don't you think, don't you feel like, you know, it's a very Darwinian sort of capitalistic system, right?

Because if enough people get annoyed and complain or unfollow you or whatever, then you'll get that feedback and you'll stop doing it. If people are doing it, I feel like that must mean that some people like it. It must, right? No, they can't be doing something that everybody hates.

There must be people who enjoy it somehow. Maybe it's because people who are at work and are trying to follow the game, having your Twitter feed up is less conspicuous to your boss or something than having like the MLB, you know, play by play site up or something. I don't know, but I just feel like if, if it really is causing people to like, to get angry and to,

to unfollow you or whatever, then maybe they'll stop doing it. I just can't imagine how people would continue to do something like that. If, if it meant that it was really annoying everybody. It seems like these things should be meritocracies like that. And yet, Jason Marquis and Kevin Gregg are still pitching for the Reds. Somehow these things happen, even though you'd think that they would have been weeded out by now.

It's a strange analogy, but I like it. The spring training play-by-play is especially vexing because it is not information that is very easily accessible to people and yet it is also way less important to most people. So you probably have a better chance of hitting on somebody who actually wants that information and a much better chance of hitting a thousand people who are furious at you. But whatever, play by play, do it, don't do it. Your boss is making you do it anyway. You're not doing it for the clicks, you're't do it your boss is making you do it anyway you're not doing it for the clicks you doing is a positive to art so uh... not sticking to sports as we all know if you don't stick to sports

you immediately get replies uh... from people who suggest you stick to sports is there anybody in any job in uh... who should feel that day can't tweet about whatever political thing they feel strongly about and does the dynamic change if they're idiots with bad political opinions? I mean, the beat writers or writers that I tend to follow probably stick to sports less often,

or I enjoy it more when they don't stick to sports because so many other people are sticking to sports or just a high enough percentage of their tweets are sports related that I'm getting my fill of sports. But I kind of like to get a glimpse of the personality of these people and the other interests that they have. So I don't mind it that much. Then again, I don't really have Twitter open all the time.

I just kind of do these surgical strikes where I dive in and respond to people who said something to me and then leave again. So it doesn't necessarily bother me if that happens, but I kind of like it. I kind of like the fleshed out personality of someone who tweets about other things. Yeah. Stick to subject X is my least favorite response to get from people. Because it's like, sorry, that's not how this works. This is Twitter. You're talking about Twitter. You're talking about a device that was invented to let anybody say anything about anything

at any time without regard for anything. It's just what you want to say. And any time someone, I get, what I get, which makes me laugh, is when I tweet about baseball, I used to get people who would say, like, stick to comedy. And when I would tweet about, like, comedy or a TV show that I was working on, they would say, some people would say, stick to baseball. So, like, I never, I almost almost never responded because what's the point?

But if I did respond, I would basically say like, yeah, sorry, that's not how this works. I don't know what to tell you. Again, it's opt-in. You're choosing to follow me, but choosing to follow me, you're not paying me. You can't tell me to stick to something or another thing. And I would agree with that.

I would say with that I would say that you are if you're following a writer you like then you at some level you're following that writer because you're interested in that writer's viewpoint or that writer's writing on a variety theoretically a variety of subjects that's why I always enjoy it when I when a writer I follow um you know decides to branch out and say like, you know, like Alan Sepinwall, for example, as a writer, I've gotten to know a TV critic, I've gotten to know over the years.

And sometimes Alan Sepinwall will stop writing, won't write about TV, he'll go see a movie and he'll write an article about the movie. And just because it's not his specific area of professional expertise, I'm still like, ooh, I want to know what Alan Sepinwall thought of the Muppet movie or whatever. It's enjoyable to me and I'm happy to read my favorite writers writing on other subjects. So I don't think this is a sin either. It's an opt-in

system. I can't say that enough times. It's opt-in. Yeah. It does seem like the theme of this is that the problems of this day and age are not the writers. They are us. We are the problems. Our reactions, if we have problems, are almost certain. I mean, everything's amazing and nobody's happy thing going on here, right? Sure. If you were to write a meta-commentary blog in this day and age about sports journalism,

it might actually almost have to be about reactions to sports journalism. It would be a meta-meta-commentary, reactions to sports journalism, it might actually almost have to be about reactions to sports journalism. It would be a meta-meta commentary, reactions to sports journalism, because that's where you really see the illogic and the reactionaries and the over-fervency and the basically insane lunacy of the unhinged sports fan. They are no longer writing 1,200 word three dot columns. They are now replying to tweets with exceptionally disproportionate vigor. So maybe that's actually what we're talking about here. So with that as a lead in, I'm going to now talk about my pet peeve and you will both tell me how silly I am for having this be a pet peeve. But the thing that kills me more than anything at all, and you can tell me if it's a sin or not,

is when the beat writer says like, that's the sixth home run of the year for Nelson Cruz. And they at Nelson Cruz, like they're hoping to get like a fist bump back from Nelson. Hey, thanks for mentioning kind of a thing. It from Nelson. Hey, thanks for mentioning me, kind of a thing. It kills me. If there is a reason, like if you wrote a profile about the guy, and I can see doing it once in a while because your readers are fans of the team and might not be aware that Nelson Cruz is on Twitter, and it might help them to see that they can follow him too.

I mean, it just seems like it's so overdone, and I don't know what the motive is except that they want the player to like them and they want the player to give them a little bit of attention. That just seems so tacky and beyond the professionalism that you expect from the job. Am I just a jerk for noticing this? It seems like a little bit of a cry for attention. I don't know how many ballplayers are checking their mentions and how many ballplayers are just, you know, their Twitter

presence is some PR person who is pretending to be the player. But that seems like it could be the only motivation unless it's, you know, hey, this player is on Twitter now, which you get those tweets sometimes. And that's fine. That's a resource. But if it's just mentioning a guy so that he knows that you are saying something positive about him and maybe you get him to give you an extra 30 seconds of time the next day, I agree. It's a little tacky. I hadn't considered that, that if you were a beat reporter and you were sort of trying to get in good with the players, that that might be a motivation.

I feel like there are certain people who think that it's just sort of proper Twitter etiquette or style guide etiquette or something to always act the person if you mention that person or something. I've had a couple times I've mentioned people by name and then people have tweeted at me and said, like, why didn't you that person's on Twitter? Why didn't you write at, you know, whoever? And I would say, oh, I don't know, because I because why would I do that? But like I it hadn't occurred to me that there is a probably a small advantage if you're a beat writer and you're seeing these guys every day to like having that player theoretically notice that you shouted them out or celebrated their accomplishments on twitter

i don't know i i feel like maybe that could be a simply a a result of people saying like this is what you do on twitter is when there's a person who you're referencing and that person has a twitter handle you just use the twitter handle as, you know, in your tweet or something. I don't know. It doesn't seem annoying to me. It seems just like what happens on Twitter. But I don't know. I like the fervor with which you are annoyed by it.

That's exciting. What is your stance on rumors and, you know, breaking transaction news seven seconds before the next guy? We did a segment over the winter on this show where we just pointed out rumors that really revealed nothing. They were just content-free collections of words posing as rumors. And everyone does this. And I think Sam and I might just generally be happier if we found out about moves when they happened from the team and had no intimation that anything was happening before then. I wouldn't even mind if teams just showed up to spring training and that's when we found out what they did all winter. It's just this big surprise because some guy shows up that you didn't know was on the team. That would be fun.

Do you mind the constant onslaught of rumors or is that something that you like because there's no actual baseball going on? Well, your stance on this is extremely enlightened and probably shared by very few sports fans across the world. I think this is that what you're talking about now is a much larger problem in journalism as a whole, I would say, which is that no one cares about getting it right. They care about getting there first. And you see that with like, you know, you see that with reporting on major news networks about Supreme Court decisions. You see it with political stuff all the time. You see it with breaking slash non-breaking news about, you know, natural disasters like it's and my my real problem with it and obviously this means a lot less in the

context of like a off-season free agent transaction than it does with some actual news that has actual meaning in the world but my problem with it is there doesn't seem to be any punishment for getting it wrong and you know people no one remembers that you know um that you reported a rumor that didn't pan out i I'm a New England Patriots fan, and throughout the entire Deflategate thing, it's been hilarious to watch the people tweeting about what appears to be news, having that news then get reported as fact,

and then having this sort of echo chamber come back around and report it. Well, this other person reported it. It's like, you started this. You tweeted something, and then it got picked up. And now you're reporting it. You're, you're tweeting about the fact that it was reported on like it, and there's zero information and a thousand declarations of fact. And that is a, that is a journalistic wide problem of the modern day that people seem to think that the only thing that matters is the speed with which you report things and not the accuracy. And so I did that, I would say, is a legitimate pet peeve of

mine. I think that's very annoying. It also has this sort of bad secondary effect of making fan bases react to things that aren't actually real and get excited for things that don't pan out or get disappointed by things that end up happening or whatever. That's a huge problem. Until there's a real soul searching on the part of news gathering organizations in all disciplines about how in the world you punish people for getting things wrong, I don't see that problem getting any better. That's a legitimate pet peeve of mine, I would say. So in the time that you guys have been talking, I have increased the views of the video of

you on the OC from 831 to 838. And I think Rachel Bilson is actually a sleeper for worst TV acting in a scene here. But then I realized, I don't think it's her fault and I don't think it's your fault. They had her stay curled up in the fetal position on a sectional. And I just think it's hard to act either from a curled up position on a sectional or to a person in a curled up position on a sectional. I think that the postures of the actors in this scene are making it very hard for natural exchange to occur. I think if this were real life it would also be a strange stilted conversation. So ultimately I blame the sectional. Well, I tell you, I have to say not to get too inside baseball about this very

small scene that occurred in a TV show many, many years ago, but it was blocked kind of weirdly. We were standing probably 30 feet away from each other. It was very odd. I was sort of talking to no one and she was sort of looking over her shoulder and talking to no one. It's probably hard to do your best acting when you're talking to no one and also you're a terrible actor, in my case. Not in her case, she's a good actor but in my

case i was like i don't know i had it was like a weird nightmare you know the actor's nightmare where you're in a play and you don't know the lines that's how i felt the entire time we were doing that scene i was like i this is a nightmare i'm gonna ruin this show this is terrible it's like that's the problem with the star wars prequels right it's terrible actors talking to no one green screens a big green screen yep i've always been curious to know if you if you were looking That's the problem with the Star Wars prequels, right? It's terrible actors talking to no one. Green screens. A big green screen, yep. I've always been curious to know if you were looking at someone's eyes, would you be able to tell whether they were looking at something near or far?

You know what I mean? Like if you were looking at something a thousand feet away or two feet away, do your eyes look the same if you're focused on just the eyes? And I can now confirm that yes, you can tell. Because you really do look like you are staring off into the void and you have seen your future, rather than Rachel Bilson curled up on a sectional. I will also say, though, in the defense of the people who put the scene together, the maid kills it. All right, one actual baseball thing. How are you enjoying the current Red Sox construction of both allowing and scoring lots of runs? Is that a model for a baseball team that you think you're going to enjoy? games. I like a lot of the people on this team. I think that the general management of the team has been very smart. They have a specific thing they're doing and they've done it well.

I think Ben Charrington and his team looked around at the landscape and saw that runs are at more of a premium now than they've been in probably, I don't know, 40 years or something. And what they decided was we're going to get everybody who can hit and we're going to get guys who can pitch well enough, hopefully. I was looking this up the other day. Last year, not a single team in baseball scored 800 runs. And in 2004, I think almost half the league, I think 14 teams scored 800 runs or more. The Red Sox scored like nine hundred and forty or something. So it's a it's just a different world. And getting handy Ramirez and Sandoval and guys like that to to beef up the middle part of the

lineup, it seems like, you know, Rick Porcello, I think what they think is Rick Porcello isn't John Lester, but he might be, you know, 80% of John Lester. And they had to, they paid, they just started doing extension and they paid him half as much as the Cubs paid John Lester. And getting 80% of John Lester for half as much is a good idea. of sort of like B- to B-plus starters who, you know, if they have good years, will be more in the B-plus range and that their lineup compared to the lineups of the other teams in the American League is as good as anyone's, and that might be enough. So, I mean, I'm rooting for them not just because they're my team,

but because if they win the American League East, they'll go last to first to last to first, which is amazing. That can't have ever been done before. And I think they have a real shot at it. I mean, I think the Orioles aren't going to be as good as they were last year. I think the Yankees are in trouble. The Blue Jays and Rays have serious flaws. The Red Sox should be in contention, at least in their division, right to the end.

So all you ever want as a baseball fan is to feel like the people who are making decisions are smart and have a plan and know what they're doing. And I certainly feel that way. So I can't complain. All right. Well, I know that a decade ago, you guys didn't actually set out to get Joe Morgan fired. He seems like mostly a nice man. You just wanted to hear him a little less than you were hearing him at the time. And if that was your goal, I think that 10 years later, it may finally have been accomplished. I don't know if you're aware of this, but Joe Morgan has been hosting a radio show slash podcast for the last few years called Conversations with Joe Morgan, where he interviews luminaries like Tom Pachorek and Jesse Orozco. And surprisingly, not Dave Concepcion ever.

What? How is that possible? But it appears that the show has come to an end. I am on joemorganshow.com. It says all good things must come to an end. Friday, March 7th was the last Conversations with Joe Morgan show. And it says we are now considering the possibility of starting a daily short-form feature show with Joe Morgan, please let me know if you would be interested. Are you interested? I'm not sure.

Well, I was about to say I'm not sure Joe would want to talk to me. But the truth is he probably has no idea about the site or about anything that we ever did or said. So I'll say I'm not interested just because I feel like the potential for awkwardness is fairly high since we've tried actively to have him lose his job for many years. I don't think I'm the ideal guest. But, you know, honestly, we've said this a million times before. I wish the site hadn't been called that. It really wasn't the purpose of the site. It was a very ill-considered thing to call it. We thought about changing it a million times.

Honestly, if we were going to do fire person X, fire Tim McCarver would have been a better choice. I wish it hadn't been called that. To this day, I wish it that. So I harbor him no ill will. In fact, I would happily listen to Joe Morgan and Tom Pachorek and Jesse Orozco just talk about playing baseball, that sounds very interesting to me. That sounds great. That would be great. I would listen. I

would subscribe. I just didn't like that he was the main analyst on the main national broadcast of baseball every week. That was my beef. Do you think there's a way that the main national analyst on a national baseball broadcast could be someone that you like and enjoy or is that just a job that precludes someone that you would want to hear speak it doesn't necessarily i mean it doesn't it it seems unlikely because you know they they have a formula right and this is a formula in football and baseball and most sports i think is they've got a play-by-play guy and then the the color guy or the analyst is like a former player. Former players aren't always the best guys to go to for insightful analysis of what's going on.

John Kruk isn't a huge upgrade from Joe Morgan, frankly. So it's not impossible, but as long as they sort of stick to that formula, it's going to be hard. I don't really enjoy listening to Curt Schilling, frankly, talk about it. Like he has sometimes he has very interesting insights. And sometimes he doesn't. I don't so it doesn't it doesn't look good. I'll say for there to be a guy like because the guys I would want to hear are not guys that are going to be, you know, hired by ESPN. Except me, of course, you've been speaking. Yeah. You and Rob here, you guys, guys were to broadcast, I would enjoy that. Okay. You can find Michael on Twitter at Ken Tremendous. Brooklyn Nine-Nine's second season

is airing on Sundays on Fox. You must have tons of time on your hands with only one show on the air. How are you filling your days? Well, Brooklyn is done for the year which is good the last episodes are all edited and made to look all pretty and they're all ready to go so this is the time of year when I get to relax a little bit I'm going to my son's t-ball practice today

at four that's exciting although I will say that he was put randomly onto the Yankees which is causing a huge problem for me. Like there's there the other day there were two adorable young children walking around my house in Yankee uniforms. And it was a very it was very troubling.

And my son very sweetly keeps asking me, like he says, are you still happy that I'm playing even though I'm on the Yankees? And I say to him, of course I am, buddy. I'm just so happy that you're having fun and that you're trying hard and you're learning baseball. And it's so great. And inside, I'm saying, no, I'm not happy at all. I don't like this. I'm very, very troubled by this. I just can't say that out loud to him. So I'm saying it to you now on this podcast. Okay. Well, I hope your father-son relationship survives this test. Thank you for joining us. It's been fun.

Thank you so much for having me. From Yolong. Can you guys hear me okay? Yeah, we can. Sound good. Excellent. I'm going to cough real loud. Tell me if you can hear me okay.

Just I'm going to make the coughing help. How's that? Yeah, we got it. Looks good on my end. Yeah, very digitally clear. All right. I am recording this thing. I know that is not always a guarantee with your usual podcast partner.

Yeah, you sound more technologically advanced already than Poznanski. So you guys do this every day, huh? We do every weekday. I was going to ask at what point did you begin to rue the day you made that decision doing a daily podcast? Before we began, definitely. It was supposed to be 10 minutes. The original idea was it was going to be 10 minutes. And anybody could bang out 10 minutes of whatever without any planning or thought about this.

So that was it. And then the first one was like 18 minutes. And as soon as we hung up, it was like we looked at each other and were like, this is going to get bad. And within 30 episodes, they were 30 minutes each. And now they're usually 45. And they're awful. They're the worst part.

This is the equivalent of beat writers complaining about a game going into the 10th inning.