The Press Box - Pandemic Sports TV and the Lincoln Project. Plus: Joe Sheehan on Baseball and Writing Newsletters.

Episode Date: August 10, 2020

With many major sports making their return, Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss what they’re seeing on television and what's catching their attention (2:15). Then they break down the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump PAC, and its recent ads (22:35). Then, baseball writer Joe Sheehan joins to discuss his career and the current baseball climate (31:00). Plus: the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, we've been talking about the challenges of parenting if the kids don't go back to school. What I want to know is what's it like to record this podcast while holding your one and a half year old son? Wait, he was just crying. He was just crying. Aubrey, it's okay, baby. He just woke up from a nap. That's okay. Folks, you usually don't see this part of the press box. This is the joys. These are the joys of parent or the joys of everyday life.

I wouldn't trade it for anything. You would. Would you, Aubrey? Do you like Daddy's podcast? All right, don't leave a review on Apple. iTunes. That's usually what the Twitter mentions look like. It's okay, baby.

All right, let me go put this baby down. All right, we're going to let David put the baby down. And then we'll start the podcast. This is the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here with a lot of great stuff for you today. We're going to talk about the Lincoln Project. What is it and will its viral ads help take down Donald Trump?

Plus, the baseball writer Joe Sheen joins us to talk about baseball on the brink. It's always on the brink. The media and 10 years of turning his journalism into newsletters. All that plus David guesses a strain pun headline and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, let's start here. I got up Saturday morning. I grabbed my LA Times Sports page and I took a look at the what's on TV box.

Let me tell you, of all the analog things in the world, the what's on TV box may be the single most valuable. You can take away all physical books from the universe, but don't take away my what's on TV box, especially this weekend because there was so much sports on this weekend from the NBA to lacrosse to everything in between. So I thought we'd just do a little

pandemic sports TV check-in to sort of see the state of the art. I'm number one, David. I think we can declare this the player cussing era of American television. And not a moment too soon. We've been waiting for this.

Yeah, it's not like players started cussing over the last couple of weeks. But once the fans went away, because of coronavirus. We can now hear the cussing. Let's take golfer Justin Thomas after he missed a 10-footer at the PGA championship on Sunday.

Justin Thomas after his excellent approach shot ran all the way toward the back of the green for Bertie. You've got to be fucking hitting with it. Whoopsy. I was disappointed CBS didn't do the thing that ESPN has been doing with the NBA where somebody has like an amazing dunk and then you just hear like the six seconds of silence

because somebody back in Bristol just put the dump button and they were even doing that for cornhole. Did you notice that? I don't know if you caught any cornhole over the weekend or at all, but somebody would sink an amazing cornhole shot and then there'd just be this huge, huge like river of silence and then they'd come back and the color analyst would be like in midstream

like, it's an amazing shot. I think if you're not, if you don't have either as a broadcaster or an organization, if you don't have the fortitude, the gumption to go to your players and say don't cuss or you'll be penalized, then I'm not sure what the problem with putting it on television is. That's just sort of the state of the state of play right now, right? I mean, listen, we grew up in an age where, you know, I mean, I remember interviews with like, I remember a Guns and Roses interview where they jokingly omitted cuss words. Like they, like they walked up to the age. edge and didn't say the word shit and giggled about it on MTV, right? Like, the hardest of hard rockers knew that was a no-no. And of course, an athlete wouldn't have even thought of cussing during a game if there was a microphone within a thousand yards of him. But now if they're going to cuss, let's put it on TV.

Who's offended by there? So that's the thing, right? I think this gets fun as we're protecting the sensitive ears of the audience. But it's actually, we're making it so that the athlete isn't going to screw up their endorsement deal or make fans mad at them that's actually a much bigger consideration I think it is it is because as much as I want to make light

about a player you know dropping the GD bomb it's I guess there is a much graver concern which is a player you know saying something really untowards that would make them lose money do you favor the old fashioned bleep over the dump button which just produces silence

yes absolutely I mean I think the more bleeps the better. When you nice to live together, whenever we saw something bleeped on television, it was just incredibly funny for some reason. Yeah. I'm not sure the game could quite work with like 10 bleeps in it, but

I want the networks to at least consider that. Jay Brady McCullough had a really good piece about this in the LA Times. This was from that Astros Dodgers series. It got really feisty a while back. Bottom of the sixth inning of the first game, McCullough writes, a microphone picked up a gruff

voice from the Astros dugout yelling to Dodgers pitcher Joe Kelly, get on the mound, motherfucker. Joe Davis, that's the Dodgers broadcaster who had no delay in his audio feed at Chavez Ravine, immediately responded, ooh, okay. So in empty stadiums, we pick up some things that we normally don't pick up. Apologies for whoever the potty mouth is. Nice segue there. Steve Helmut is quoted in the article.

he's the NBA's executive vice president for media operations and technology. I always say to people, imagine if you had to wear a microphone for your entire day of work, how would that change your day in the office, right? We are protecting the players, no question. So essentially the NBA's argument is

nobody should be recorded every moment they're working. So why should we expect LeBron James and company to be recorded every moment they're working? You know, this is not, let's stipulate. This is not NBA stance that is unique or new to the coronavirus era.

This has been a longstanding tenant of theirs. But it does make a certain amount of sense, right? I mean, if you don't want to get, and if you don't want to make micing players a make or break part of the CBA negotiations, I think you have to come to some sort of agreement, which is like, we won't make you look bad if you let us microphone you. Yeah. Yeah.

And there's also a sense that, like, we're talking about cuss words. there is a chance that something much worse than that could come through in the heat of the moment. And there probably is a good reason to keep that off TV. Yes, absolutely. I mean, and, you know, some things that there are, I mean, there are kids watching. You know, there are people who are going to be offended by this. Although I do kind of like the idea of whatever, you know, pitching coach was caught on that live mic saying, get on the mound, motherfucker. I do like the idea of some like grizzled old baseball pitching coach, like releasing a PSA.

after every game in which they're caught cussing and just like telling the kids the children of the world that's like just like chewing tobacco cussing is not going to make them any cooler or make their lives any better G.I. Joe style announcement at the end a public service message. My other idea and somebody certainly has had this

is to do the old style TV edit that we used to get for the R-rated movie of the NBA game. I'm going like die hard would be on TV and it would be Yupikai, Mr. Fowler. Falcon or something like that. Time out. I had to explain Yipikai, Mr.

I chose to explain Yipaekeye and Mr. Falcon to my 11 year old recently. And there were so many degrees of, like, like there were so many obstacles before I even got to the punchline of this thing. It's like, okay, once upon a time, you only got to see, we would have never been allowed in the theater to see a movie like this. We only, we could never rent it because our parents went to let us. We had to wait for it to come on the USA Network at like a reasonable time on a Saturday afternoon

or something. And then there were no cuss words. And of course, my 11th world's like, what's a cuss word? Like, he doesn't know the difference, you know?

And everything got edited to not only, yeah, like, dang, you know, the obvious ones, dang darn, G's, whatever.

But yes, Yippie Kaya, Mr. Falcon is obviously the pantheon of redubs. It's, there's nothing like it in the world. I think the other comic highlight was

the USA Today or whatever. edit of JFK movie that's incredibly hard to edit and the Kevin Bacon character said Mother Fletcher kept saying Mother Fletcher. That was what they'd come up with to fill the space. All right. Item number two from Pandemic TV. And it's kind of a negative item. College football seems like it ain't going to happen.

There have been strong vibes of this for weeks now. There were very strong vibes Sunday night where it looks like a couple of conferences are on the brink of out. And then we got this kind of weird media story. Trevor Lawrence, star quarterback at Clemson, probably going to be the first pick in next year's NFL draft unless something goes really haywire. He started tweeting Sunday night that he wants to play college football. Like, I don't want this to be canceled. I'm in. And please don't cancel it on my behalf. Then something really funny happened, you had these media people who are pro college football come out of the woodwork. It's like, why aren't we listening to Trevor Lawrence? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

then Lawrence, Ohio states Justin Fields, Oklahoma State's Chuba Hubbard, these are some of the best players in college football, tweeted this message under the hashtag we want to play that had those basic principles, but also included this phrase, ultimately created college football players association. Yeah. A semi-union. So a lot of people were saying, aha, you were on the let them play train and then you wound up accidentally endorsing a cup. college football players union in the process. That was fascinating. It is just incredibly fascinating to me about how much college football decision making is happening just as like a just war of tweets. Yeah.

I know that's ultimately not going to pull the plug. That's kind of the fantasy that the media is making this decision. But it is really weird, isn't it, to watch this play out in Twitter in a way it has not played out quite in any other sport? Well, it is. I mean, and for the, you know, for the athletes that you mentioned, despite the lack of any sort of bargaining power or, you know, or payment or, you know, anything, any rational compensation that you would receive in any other walk of life,

they do have an incredible amount of power, right? I mean, they picked the schools they were going to. It wasn't just who offered them a scholarship. They got their pick. They get to go anywhere in the world. They wanted full ride, red carpets rolled out, everything else. All except the money. All except the money.

And they get to pick their agents. You know, they will, they will be, you know, almost inevitably, like you said, be playing in the pros. So it's got to be, like, incredibly frustrating for them whether or not they, like, you know, you mentioned Trevor Lawrence is going to be the number one pick barring some catastrophe. Well, I mean, all he's doing by saying he wants to play is inviting catastrophe in a certain sense, right? I mean, if they don't play, he's the number one pick. But it must be really frustrating for someone like him to see these conversations, these, you know, news reports trickling out on Twitter and not have not be consulted in any of this, right?

I mean, not have a voice in this conversation. So it makes a certain sort of sense. It makes a lot of sense. You're right. And the NBA players, we saw like LeBron and those guys, right, have a voice in the conversation. So we want to, we want to go to the NBA bubble, right? I'm in on this. On Twitter. Yeah, exactly. So you're right. It's like, why isn't Trevor Lawrence, Trevor Lawrence's mind is why don't I get a vote? The part about sort of side door in the union is hilarious. And by the way, Donald Trump has already retweeted the Trevor Lawrence message today saying the student athletes have been working too hard for their season to be canceled. Hashtag we want to play.

Donald Trump is in on the hashtag as well as being in on the college football union. Other thing is we've seen the once again the airing out of the media wants this to be canceled or the media is rooting against the college football season. Joel Clatt analyst at Fox, as many in the college football media have worked hard to push panic and fear. Danny Cannell, who's now with Sirius and CBS, has no. A lot of college football writers have been accused of rooting against the season. I don't think that's necessarily the case, but some absolutely want to be able to say, I told you so, because they've been peddling only the absolute worst headlines. I feel you and I've had one whack at this already.

So I almost want to be devil's advocate and argue that, not argue, on the favor of that because I don't think we could find any sports writer who actually wants to cancel sports. Those people do not exist. I think trying to understand how people think that is interesting to me, though, and is interesting to me, I should say. And I think what's happening is like sports writers are incredibly cynical creatures. Sure. What I think people confuse is they are not cynical about wanting to play sports. They are cynical about Mark Emmer, Roger Goodell, Rob Manfred,

coming up with a workable safe way to play sports when it doesn't seem like that is possible in the United States at this moment. Like, we haven't figured that out as a country yet, or our leaders haven't figured that as a country. Why is the NCAA going to figure that out? Well, I think for college football, I mean, just going back to the we want to play movement, you got to have your motivation. You've got to start with your motivation

sort of coming from the right place, right? And if you're not consulting your players, then it leads one very naturally to assume that you're deciding this based, what, entirely on financial considerations? And when you take that for granted, I mean, you take that as your assumption, then, yeah, I mean, you should be skeptical, right?

Why would you think that someone's going to perfect the coronavirus era safety scheme? safety scheme when your number one consideration is cashing checks. For sure, for sure. And I just often think cynicism, I like cynical sportswriters. Those are my people. Those are the people I want to call up and get good cynical acid-laced quotes from. But I think sometimes on Twitter people just interpret that in just very weird ways and to think like they don't want college football to happen.

They absolutely want college football to happen. They don't trust that the entity. he's making that decision are going to do it in such a way that it can work. Right? That is part of being said. It's cynical to think that the SEC is going to pull this off. A veteran of sports talk radio like Danny Cannell. I mean, he's right in a lot of ways, but it should not be a novel thing that a bunch of

sports writers or sports commentators out there want to be able to say, I told you so. That's the bread and butter of his job. Like, oh, what he, like, he does takes every day for the sole purpose of being able to roll, like, walk in with and I told you so two months from now. Imagine sports radio host saying I told you so. Exactly. Item number three on the pandemic sports TV check in. It's kind of a silly one.

Phil Mickelson as color commentator over the weekend. I don't know if you caught this. And we've seen experiments over the years, right, where you have a player who's playing. Like I remember Dwayne Wade sitting in on a bunch of NBA pregame shows while he was still in the league. Usually that happens after they're like eliminated from the playoffs or they're free to play. Well, Phil Nicholson is not only still playing.

He played his round at the PGA Championship on Saturday morning. And then he went to the CBS booth to commentate on the action. This is how his stint began. The other voices you're going to hear here are CBS's Jim Nance and Nick Feldo. Phil, great, great to have you. Thank you. It's nice to be here. There's three things I do well.

Play golf and talk golf. What's the third then? you said three things yeah yeah you were setting you up anyway leave that to your imagination dear boy

he just drinks well he did the Englishman you know he drinks well that went right over my head that went up yeah I saw that what an incredible start that broadcast

just bringing everything to a halt by luring Nick Faldo into a trap and and we can't see the other video there I encourage you to look it up because Phil Mickelson just has this huge shit-eating grin on his face.

Like, I made a funny. I do. I mean, I am obligated to say that as great as it was to hear Phil Mickelson and play by play and as novel as this seems, the whole sports world, uh, former AEW wrestling champion and WWE legend Chris Jericho did sit in on the commentary booth for the first couple of weeks of pandemic era AEW wrestling and, and did it to similar. acclaim. It was just like he carried the entire show on his back because he just showed up to work and he was like, yeah, I'm probably better at this than the people around me. And that's all everybody talked about for a few weeks. Okay. And that's exactly the principle here because

I think TV networks think if we can get Phil Mickelson to be the next color commentator of golf, this is going to be awesome. He's funny. He knows everything. He's fresh off the course. This is incredible. The problem is, usually when these things happen is Phil Mickelson is too big and too rich to want to actually apply yourself to be a color commentator. That's not a job that somebody who has been as successful as he is often wants to do because they're like, why would I just not keep playing golf and keep sponsoring things and just keep making a ton of money? All that said, just like your wrestling example, he was awesome. And not only was he like incredibly, like, incredibly, like, like interesting because he had literally just walked off the course and could talk about like,

oh, I know that how that fairway plays. Yeah. He also was just finishing up his anecdotes, I noted, like two seconds before another player was about to hit a shot, which is like the hardest thing to teach an analyst is how to talk in a very specific amount of time. But if you're used to talking to other golfers on the golf course, you have that down pad, right? If you're used to telling stories right until the, right until the tea time, then you know what to do.

That's true. Or in your twosome, right? I'm going to tell you a story. And then I'm going to stop like two seconds before you hit. It really did feel like almost there was a replacement going on. I remember one time Peyton Manning showed up on Sunday night football. And there was a shot of the booth there with Al Michaels, Chris Collinsworth and Manning. Manning, of course, have been rumored to have like 100 announcing jobs.

We're like, oh my gosh, is he just moving in right now? He was just doing a guest shot. And that's really what that felt like. I do want to play one more Mickelson piece of sound here for you. He was on there for about an hour. And then again, this really weird dismount from the whole segment. Here's what happens when Jim Nance tries to say goodbye. It's a fun fireside chat.

Thanks for having me both of you. It was fun to be up here in a nice, warm climate and talking golf. It's hard work. Right? Yeah. Yeah, you too. Just come in for now tomorrow. I can go for lunch.

That'll be perfect. I'm going to leave you film as you make an exit. once again mickleson just has this incredibly frozen smile on his face because it's like that was that was hard huh yeah yeah yeah yeah not hard for me all right david let's do the overworked twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media twitter made it at exactly the same time send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received david i want to read you a cnn tweet you're going to have to follow along closely here the calcium in our bones and and teeth likely came from stars exploding in supernovas and scattering this mineral across the universe in massive quantities according to a new study. Okay? Get all that? Got it?

It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, is CNN okay? They're tweeting Death Cab for Cutie lyrics. Thanks to our friend Tyler Tourville. That was actually an overworked Twitter joke. I saw at least three examples. David, did you see the photo of all the members of Donald Trump's Bedminster Country Club

crowded into a room in country club clothing but not protective masks the other day. God, no. How did they miss that? Trump was giving a press conference in front of the crowd because why not? He called their lack of protective masks a peaceful protest.

Okay, a peaceful protest. So someone took a picture of all the country club people, put it on Twitter and said, name this protest. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, wait for it, back nines matter. Back nines matter, thanks to Andrew M. Shields for that extremely clever pun. Wow, that's fantastic. And finally noted Jerry Falwell Jr. is taking a leave of absence from his Liberty University.

After posting a pick on Instagram of himself and another woman with their stomachs exposed and their pants undone, I truly encourage everyone to seek out this photo if you've not seen it. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, Falwell that ends well. Thanks to Jonathan Henthorn. If you think an indefinite leave of absence means a permanent leave of absence for Jerry Falwell, Jr. You're wrong,

but congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, time for the notebook dump. We got in a lot of requests, David, to talk about the Lincoln Project. source of some of the most viral Trump attack ads of 2020, certainly more than the Biden campaign itself. So let's spend a minute on him. Lincoln Project is an anti-Trump PAC led by a group of moderate Republican never-trumpers,

including George Conway, political consultant John Weaver, political consultant and Twitter guy Rick Wilson. The PAC's stated goal is to prevent Trump from being reelected and then to try to get Trumpian Republicans out of Congress. They've made an ad for Steve Bullock, who's running against Steve. Steve Danes for that Senate seat up there in Montana. But what they are most famous for doing is making videos that piss off Trump. It's sort of like John Oliver's sketch in political action committee form, I think, is really the one way to describe it.

From the Washington Post, what that means in practical terms is the Lincoln Project ads are specifically designed to trigger the president. Whenever Trump is reacting to a Lincoln Project ad, he's talking about things he shouldn't be talking about. He's explaining why he inch down the ramp at the U.S. Military Academy or drank water with two hands. He's shooting off a tweet about the morning in America ad thereby raising millions of dollars for dot, dot, dot, dot, the Lincoln Project. Okay, so here is, let's listen to that morning in America ad. We'll just set it up saying, remember the infamous tweet in May where Trump referred to George Conway as Moonface? Well, that was part of a thread where Trump lashed out and many of the Lincoln Project founders after seeing this ad, which is, of course, a play on Reagan's 19. 1884 ad roll morning in America

There's morning in America Today more than 60,000 Americans have died from a deadly virus Donald Trump ignored With the economy in shambles, more than 26 million Americans are out of work The worst economy in decades Trump bailed out Wall Street But not Main Street This afternoon millions of Americans will apply for unemployment

and with their savings run out, many are giving up hope. Millions worry that a loved one won't survive COVID-19. There's mourning in America. And under the leadership of Donald Trump, our country is weaker and sicker and poorer. And now Americans are asking, if we have another four years like this, will there even be an America?

Yeah. I mean, I think that, all the people you mentioned who were involved with this, I guess with the exception of George Conway, who is certainly more of a part of our lives on Twitter than anything else. Or like blind quotes. I mean, those other names you mentioned are, you know, in heavy rotation on the cable news networks.

And I think what the last election proved more than anything else, and maybe it's specific to Trump and maybe it's just a, you know, speaks more to the media era that we live in, is that popping up on MSNBC or CNN and saying, yeah, I'm a Reagan Republican and I'm not going to vote for Donald Trump is pretty meaningless, right? Or it doesn't make much of a, doesn't make much noise. And I mean, Steve Schmidt was, you know, popping on MSNBC every day to try to make the case. Nobody cared, right? I mean, it certainly didn't have that much of an effect. But, and there's a lot of reasons for that. One of those reasons is you pop up on TV and it disappears

is the second you say it, right? I mean, it's not like people are circulating MSNBC clips around the internet in large volume. But there is a real sort of, if not permanence, then lasting quality to a really well done, a really kind of acidic political ad. And if you can make the same point in the sort of, you know,

traditional voice of God style, but with a little bit of a, you know, olivarian wink, then those things get passed around. and they can have much more effect. They're much more likely, frankly, to get in front of the president because people used to go on CNN and to try to get his attention. So he changed the channel to Fox.

And when people tried to go on to Fox to get his attention and said things he didn't like, he turned O-A-N. You know what I mean? And you're not necessarily getting in front of him on TV at all. But these videos, they circulate around, and eventually they'll pop up on his Twitter feed or someone will mention them. And that's a, if your goal is to get in front of them, that's a good way to, you know, these sorts of videos or commercials are a good way to do it.

Also, it should be said, they're buying ad time in very limited quantity, just in like DC and Bedminster. So when he flips on anything on the television, he's forced to watch with, he has a little bit more likelihood than the average person that's seeing this on broadcast anyway.

Yeah, I think they had a fairly good second quarter fundraisings, but it remains to be seen. I mean, essentially what you're saying is there. They're trying to convert a very specific kind of Republican is mad at Trump cable news sound bite

into, a commercial that will convert actual Trump voters into Joe Biden voters in November. That's what they're trying to do. And you're right. The best case scenario here is this goes from Twitter to people's Facebook pages and the ads are quite good, right, in a lot of cases.

So that like has some value on the election. Question number one is, as you say, one, is anybody actually really seeing these besides like, people in Washington. And two is, are never Trumpers actually good at changing people's minds about Donald Trump? There's been not a ton of evidence, right? Of the latter since Donald Trump got elected or even before Donald Trump got elected.

Yeah. So I guess that is the question. It does, this all feels like very much like a message from Washington for Washington. Or did Donald Trump? I mean, they talked about trying to like just get Trump off message. You know, I mean, if this is what he's thinking about. So you're just like distracting him essentially?

Yeah, to make him think this is what the conversation is going on regardless of whether or not it actually is. And oftentimes it is, at least temporarily, the conversation that people are having. I don't know how much it's going to permeate sort of the real world, although, you know, they're kind of flooding the zone with them, right? I mean, they have new commercials up every day and to meet quick reactions. And like I said, they all seem sort of traditional, at least to, in tone. And I think that if they're going to, you know, I mean, they probably are wooing some voters,

you know, just with that sort of, you know, with kind of appealing to their traditional, you know, news observing or commercial intake instincts. And then, and then also just appealing to the thing that's actually on everybody's mind, it could be effective. That one we played had an incredible concerned guy voice narrating it more in sorrow than in anger, right? Like I, I hate to be moved to this in conclusion about Donald Trump, but I've been moved to this conclusion. I think also part of this, by the way, there's a very, very heavy right side of history component to this too where these people who have been, and this is of course where the criticism from the left comes in, is these people who are very much trying to position themselves as I tried to do something about

the problem. And I think the one part of this beyond Trump bad, which they've essentially been saying, as you say, whenever, whenever somebody calls them up, is trying to defeat GOP senators. Like, defeating Steve Danes in Montana would be a big deal for the country beyond just getting rid of Donald Trump or denying Trump a second term. Beating Susan Collins in Maine, right? Like, those are, those are fairly big substantial steps. So I guess, I guess when it extends out to that, you get beyond the whole idea of Donald Trump is this, you know, strange figure that has nothing to do with the GOP. You're trying to get rid of pretty regular GOP senators who have supported Trump.

So, yeah, I guess that's a redeeming feature. David, it's going to surprise you that baseball is once again facing another crisis. I've sort of lost count of how many games we've canceled at this point and how many games we have to squeeze in to finish the regular season. Joe Sheehan has been all over this on his newsletter. He talked to us about that and about what happens when a journalist decides to go full newsletter or mostly newsletter with his career. Here's Joe Sheehan. If we're going to divide baseball history into distinct eras, we ought to do the same for baseball newsletters. Right now,

we're in the substack era. And 2010 is when the Joe Sheehan era began. That's when Shee and a veteran of baseball prospectus restarted a newsletter that runs some 200,000 words a year and includes everything from normalish sports columns to book reviews. Sheehan is now celebrating the newsletters, the anniversary if it's possible to celebrate anything these days. How are you, Joe? Good, Brian. I actually was writing something up when you checked in today. Oh, well, see, this is, this is good. We're going to go right into your process here. A bunch of sports writers started writing newsletters recently, and the reason is because sports writing is disintegrating. Ten years ago, what made you want to write a newsletter? I'd left BP after 2009, just my time to go, and I didn't necessarily

have a plan. I was four months into 2010. I just had a daughter, and I was really at loose ends. And one of the things that I found in the few times that I haven't been writing since 1996 is that it really builds up. I want to write. I need to write. So, yeah, I hadn't really had an outlet for the preseason in 2010. I did my usual work for Sports Illustrated that year. And finally got to May, and it was like, I need to do something. So I basically just emailed everybody whose email address I had and I said, I'm starting this newsletter, restarting. I done it for four months back in 2002 and said, you know, send me, I think it was 20 bucks. Send me 20 bucks and I'm going to

write for the next, you know, eight, nine months doing what I do. And I had pretty good response. I think I was like 700 some odd people that first year. And it just grew from there. You know, for a couple of years, Brian, it was, I'm going to do this until, you know, a better offer comes along. And offers came along, but never anything that made me kind of want to change my mix or dedicate myself to one outlet. And eventually the newsletter went from kind of a small side piece of what I do to 200,000 words a year and being most of my writing and most of my income. I mean, that's been parallel to things like, you know, SI.com not running as much freelance work. Sports Illustrated itself going from 53 to 13 issues a year. Obviously a lot of issues there. So it's interesting that the

parallel that I felt as a freelancer over the last decade really does parallel what the industry's gone through in the last decade. When you don't have a boss sending you emails that start just checking in, how do you organize your writing life? Well, what I do is I take the Joe Sheehan BP account and I email those to the Sheehan newsletter account just to keep myself honest. No, it's as far as a process. I mean, in a normal season, no, I'll watch all the games at night and then, you know, figure out what I'm right in the next day, try to put something together overnight. Um, and then then, you know, in the next morning, I'll be writing it. But, you know, some days I'm not writing about the game. Sometimes I'm writing about an issue in the game. Some days I go to a game. Some days

I just riff on something. It's hard to say necessarily that I have a process. The other thing, Brian, the biggest thing about, in terms of a benefit for what I do is I don't have to chime in on everything. There are stories that I'm just not interested in or I don't feel like I have anything to contribute to. And I can be quiet. I don't have an editor saying, well, you have to write about, and I'll just use this an example. Zach, please, at getting suspended. I don't really have anything to add to that story. So I'm not going to write about it today. And that's really, I think the biggest benefit for me as a writer is I get to pick and choose the topics I want to write about, which means 17 times a year, I'll write about

the strikeout rate. But I'll never write about the chemistry in a clubhouse. That's just not what I do. I'm not a reporter. I've never been a reporter. I have tremendous respect, not just for the reporters, the veteran reporters, but for some of the younger guys who've been able to kind of come out of the Stadhead world, gain access, and leverage that into great work. I think a lot about stuff Enosaurus does at the athletic. I love him as a writer. I love the way he's able to blend the two sides of it. But for me, what I do, you know, the way I describe it is I write about baseball.

And what that is from one day to the next can be anything. Now, is there a downside to that at all? Because I do find sometimes I'll say, I don't have anything to add to that. I don't like that story. I don't want to touch it. And somebody at the ringer makes me right about it. And then I'm like, I'm glad I did that. Do you ever have those regrets?

1800-odd people have my email address, and they say, hey, what about this? I can send them an email. Also, what I found about two years ago, I opened up a Slack workspace for newsletter subscribers. About a third of the user base is on there. And a lot of things that aren't covered in the newsletter, I find that I can do more easily in a Slack workspace where I can get it out in a hundred-word opinion or in a conversation as opposed to forcing myself to write 800 to 1,000 words on something. So I have other smaller outlets for stuff like that.

I'll sometimes even use Twitter for something like that where I just want to blast out a 50 word opinion. And then, of course, that works so beautifully because nobody argues with you. Nobody disagrees. Nobody fights with you. It's a perfect space for that. And your Twitter account, Joe, you would never argue with anybody on Twitter. I would never. But would you call me once the communist, some kind of communist?

Me? Did I say that? I wouldn't have said that. I think I didn't return your call for any of you doing something on political view. was on Twitter from sports writers. And because I didn't call you back, you called me a communist in the piece. Oh, my God.

Well, you know, I didn't hear a lot of pushback from you. I don't remember on that particular characterization. So let me tell you, let me ask about this about your process. If you've written a column, let's say, about show hi Otani and why he should no longer be a two-way player.

That's an actual Joshean column that landed in my inbox a while back. Do you show that piece to somebody before you blasted out to everybody? For a while, I didn't have an editor. And what I found is that I was a really bad editor. And I'd learn this at that perspective.

I was a better writer than editor. So I don't say maybe six or seven years ago, or somebody who reads an attorney up here in Westchester who'd been reading me at Perspectus said, hey, look, if you want a volunteer editor, somebody to copy edit the stuff, I'd be happy to do that. And he's been with me now for about seven years.

And what's happened is that relationship has broadened and deepened over time, whereas the original purpose was, look, I need somebody to control my use of M-Dashes. And now he's somebody who can come to me and say, hey, look, this doesn't work, or you need to add this in. He's not responsible. In other words, if I make a mistake, it's on me, but it's actually been really great having Scott there to kind of bounce things off of. And it's a much more collaborative relationship than I ever would have expected to have, you know, seven years ago.

And I value that relationship a lot. I'm not somebody who works with other people very easily. And you can probably find a laundry list of people who will back that statement up. But working with Scott's been very rewarding. And it's made the, he makes the newsletter better, not just from cleaning up typos and things like that. But just saying, hey, look, did you think about this angle or this statement you've made need some kind of factual backup, which is something I always want, you know, to have in the newsletter? Yeah, I would think that if I were doing that, and it really is the same with what I do. There are times when I want somebody to make a structural suggestion, right, or add something, maybe suggest something. And then there are times I just want a pair of human eyes to look at something so they can say, you are not saying something really dumb or offensive in this piece before it goes to subscribers. there are one to three times a year

where I'll send something specifically say, hey, look, I need a sanity check. And I've got the people I've known for 20 years who I can trust, who will, not just that I trust their judgment, but I trust that they're willing to say to me, you're an idiot, you're missing this, don't run this. So I don't know that I throw as many bombs as I used to. And I probably care more about,

I care more about the reaction than I used to. But yeah, I've got people beyond Scott even who I'll say, let's take a look at this. I wrote a piece about Jose Reyes when he was suspended for the incident with his wife in Hawaii. And I was concerned that as a male, I wasn't necessarily finding the angle. So I reached out to one of my old editors who was a woman and reached out to a couple of other people saying, hey, can you take a look at this? So that was something that, you know, that was a moment where I really wanted additional eyes and additional voices. But I think for me that, particularly

in this moment, it's difficult because I'm only doing the newsletter. I read a column for Baseball America, but in the current environment, they haven't been using their freelancers. S.I, of course, down to a monthly. There hasn't been any baseball to cover. I haven't done anything with them since the baseball preview issue. Normally, my mix is me coming up with stuff with a newsletter and writing it myself, but also having that collaboration with, you know, Matt Eddie at Baseball America, or Connor Grossman, Albert Chen, and Stephen Canella at SI. So I was kind of getting the best of both worlds. I could collaborate on some pieces, and I was writing some myself.

And one of the things I found working on S-I-N-V-A is that I do like having the mix of it. And I do, in this moment, miss getting to work with really great editors like that. You have about 1,800 subscribers. And one thing I was thinking about is you've almost been able to do this experiment for 10 years, right? Which is you like to write about labor.

You like to write about stuff about, you know, teams manipulating service time. And then on the next day, you can write a completely fun baseball column that's just about baseball on the field full stop. Have you found that there's a certain amount of column A that your audience wants versus column B? How does that break down? I occasionally, I get pushed back on the business side stuff, the labor stuff, but it's not

enough to change the mix of what I do. One of the things, Brian, is that if you've subscribed to me, you probably have an idea of what I do. Now, there are people who get it as a gift and they're unhappy, and they just eventually drop off the list, but, you know, I, I like the fact that I can write about a lot of different things. If anything, I have a reputation as a Sabermetric writer coming out of prospectus and being in, you know, state, whatever, Generation 2.0 stathead. But when you look at the actual work being done by the, by the hardcore statheads now, I'm no more, I'm an idiot in that group. Maybe I was

always an idiot in that group. But, you know, I look at the work being done. I'm like, I don't do that kind of work anymore. So, you know, really, it is a lot of opinion backed up by fact. There is a lot a commentary and, you know, the analysis that I do that I'm able to do. And I feel like I'm probably stronger working on the off-field stuff. We just went through the four months of the baseball, you know, baseball trying to figure out how I was going to come back and what the money was there. I've obviously covered, you know, a number of CBA negotiations now. We're coming into one. I, one of the reasons I wanted to continue doing the newsletter was so that I could be writing about that stuff come 2021, 2021, 2022, which is when the next negotiation comes up, which I think is going to

is massive negotiation for baseball. So as far as a balance, a lot of that is just feeling it. You know, I doubt I'd ever do like, you know, a whole week of labor type stuff without breaking it up with something else. Let me ask you about that period during the summer. Because essentially, if we can just summarize really shortly, the players, baseball players said you owners promised us pro-rated pay in March, and we expect you to deliver that.

The owners tried to change the deal in various ways. What was striking to you about how the baseball media covered that period? It was frustrating. I think we're in a moment now where most sports media, not just baseball, is either directly employed by the leagues or maybe a half degree removed. You're working for an entity that has a very symbiotic relationship with the league. And a lot of the coverage reflects that where you're either getting the direct line from the league without a whole lot of balance, which has largely been the way sports labor has been covered for 50 years. Or you're getting this faux both sides. I'm going to take the fans position when there's a right and there's a wrong. Or if you want to use those words, there's the facts of the case and there's the nonsense. And if you just report the facts down the line, the players had an agreement. They want prorated pay.

They're looking to continue to work for prorated play. Pro rated pay. And the owners want to change that deal. If you look at the larger history, the owners have made money for at least. 17 consecutive years. They've banked enormous amounts of profit. You know, look at the deal that they made to sell advanced, excuse me, to sell Ban Tech. The players didn't get any of that money. So let's, let's look at all of the facts and decide who's got the better argument. That's all, it's not about having a political position and mapping the facts to it. It's saying, these are the facts of the case.

And I do think it helps to have a grounding in the history of sports labor relations. It helps to have a grounding in sports economics to do this. So my reporting kind of tried to reflect the facts. And when I wrote it, I tried to put the facts up front and they do a conclusion at the bottom. And I think a lot of the reporting was just, let's pretend there's a middle ground and try to get there. We're generalizing here. But do you think the way sports writers have covered issues like that has changed in 20 years since like the 90s when newspapers ruled the world? I think it's gotten better.

This was a frustrating cycle. But I think one of the things we haven't had a conflict like this going back to probably 2002. The 16 and the 12 CBAs were agreed to very quickly without a lot of it, without a big fight. I want to say the 0708 one was really more about, that came in the middle of the steroid panic. So that was really kind of dominated the conversation. It's really been since 94 since baseball's had a labor war. And I think the coverage has gotten better certainly since then. That's the influence, I think, of writers who didn't come up in the game.

the outside influence, the influence of people who have expertise in law or economics turning then to baseball writing. I think about Craig Calcutera, who just left NBC sports. I think about Eugene Friedman, who I've been following on Twitter a lot, he's a labor lawyer who has a lot of interest in these issues. We get more outside expertise in these conversations than we ever did before. But that's counterbalanced, as you say, on the bad side, by the fact that lots more sportswriters now work for MLB or work

for a team than they did 20, 30 years ago, which would have been unimaginable in the old world. The, when I ask you about one of your columns, July 28th, first weekend of baseballs in the books, we're all excited for like 10 minutes. And then there's an outbreak of COVID-19 on the Miami Marlins. She and column lands in my inbox and says, it's time for the league to cut its losses and call off the season.

Do you pause it all over that column before you hits in? Oh, sure. I mean, I don't have an elaborate editorial process, as I mentioned before, but a lot of times the column that shows up in your inbox on Monday, I've been thinking about for 12, 24, 36 months. It's hard. It's hard to kind of know that you're sending out something

that's going to tick people off. And I think I said this to a friend recently. I didn't used to care. When I was 26, 27, 28 years old, I really just didn't care about people getting mad. And I don't know if it's just I'm older, I don't want the hassle, but I think about that now. I don't know if I pull punches, but I just don't revel in.

in it the way I once did. So when I'm sending something like that, that's like, do I really want this smoke? And yeah, I mean, if I sent it, obviously I did. We're two weeks past that as we speak today. And I'm still reasonably sure that's the right answer. Baseball seems determined to plow through no matter what, even it has to leave the St. Louis Cardinals behind. But it's a complicated situation. I think on a net basis, we'd all be better off if this wasn't happening. But at the same time, I sat there yesterday afternoon

and I watched Spencer Turnbull and I watched Ronald Acuna. It's hard to still not be a fan and still have that conflict should this even be happening. I was going to ask you about that. Is it weird to say, okay, I think the baseball season should be called off right now.

Okay, plant my pivot foot. Now I've got to go write a normal baseball column and be a normal baseball thing. I'd imagine it's like what writing about college football is all the time. You and I both went to football factories. U.T. I went to the USC. And I love the game. I love going to a game. I love the sport. But when I'm watching it, I have to turn the part of my brain off that says, this is all wrong.

And a lot of that is baseball this week this year too. It's like, I'm going back and forth between, man, I'm really excited about Nate Pearson. Or I got to figure, I got to write about Shohay Otani and the injury and is this finally what makes them a one-way player and a superstar at that. But again, the card holds hard playing. The Marlins didn't play for a week. And every, single, the worst part of my day now, Brian, is when I wake up and I reach through the phone and I go, what's happened? Because you just don't know who's been tested. What team's been shut down? What news we're going to get? So, yeah, it's definitely a weird moment to be a baseball writer. Have you heard from media people or baseball people after that column came out?

I did not. And I have, you know, a lot of media and FOTs, front office types who read the newsletter, but nobody has come out and don't on me. Remember, that, I'm small. I mean, I write for 1,800 people, you know, maybe a distribution list in 2000. If I was writing that in Sports Illustrated, if I was writing that in New York Times, would it be a different? If I was writing at the ringer, would it be a different conversation? I don't know. Yeah, and maybe someone would come back and say, this is going to, this in itself is going to tilt the balance, at least in the media or something like that. But you think, you think because it's for 1,800 people, it just plays differently? I think I made a decision 10 years ago to choose kind of a revenue source and control over the product as opposed to taking a job with a law.

I made that choice of breadth versus filthy lucre, I guess. And I constantly deal with. I write things and I'm like, and I have the option to post things free. I mean, it's something I can do if I want to. But I've made the decision to make sure that the people who buy the product get the best of me. And that's one of the reasons I do miss having SI.com as a business. outlet. I miss having SI as an outlet. I miss the BA spot. And I'm really looking forward to to hopefully 2021 getting those back because it is nice to be able to write for those larger audiences

and to make arguments for those larger audience. So obviously, you know, we're all in a bit of flux right now. But normally my mix allows me to do both. You can send your filthy lucre to Joe Sheehan at joehan.com and find him being nice, the new Joe Sheehan, not riling anybody up, but Joe underscore Sheen at Twitter. Joe, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks, Brian. Thanks for having me. All right. It's time for David Shoemaker. Guess is a strain pun headline. Yeah.

Thursday's headline about a Scottish ne'er-do-well was when a bam loves a woman. We had to vote for Bam, I wish I was your lover. Which I guess is punctuated bam colon. I wish I was your lover. Today's headline is from James Denison. It's from the Pacific Historical Review, David. And I'm going to read you a lead of the paper that was published in that publication.

Quote, on a clear day, skiers may see blue sky above and green trees below or flashes of brightly clad people whizzing by, but mostly they see white. Even in the American West, a region noted for its racial and ethnic diversity,

ski resorts have remained as white as snow. Okay? So the point of this paper is ski resorts so white. What was the Pacific Historical Review's strained pun headline? Ski resorts are white.

That's what I have to work with. That's what you got. That should be planning. White, snow white, snow white, black diamond, white white, white. Let me give you a couple hints. Not the first time this pun construction has been used in human history. Also, you're going to look for the title of a novel is what we're going off here. White Fang?

White Smilla's sense of snow. We're going through the bookshelf here. We'll eventually get this. Ice, the ice storm. God, what, it's no, I have no idea. I'll give you a little head. The unbearable? The unbearable whiteness of skiing.

terrible whiteness of skiing is the answer. Yes, yes. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chrisaw made a production magic by Erica Servantes. Back Thursday with listener mail, send any questions you have about David Shoemaker. We'll be sure to answer them. Plus more lukewarm takes about the media.

See you then, David. See you later, Brian.