The Press Box - The End of Andrew Cuomo? Plus, The Athletic's Lindsey Adler

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss the recent call for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign. They touch on whether or not cancel culture is involved, discuss how Democrats are reacting, and when or if it's appropriate to label someone as disgraced (4:45). Later, The Athletic's Lindsey Adler joins to share her experience covering the New York Yankees and baseball during a pandemic (20:55). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Guest: Lindsey Adler Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The ringer's music critic Rob Harvilla curates and explores 60 iconic songs for the 90s that define the decade. Rob is joined by a variety of guests to break it all down as they turn back the clock. Check out 60 songs that explain the 90s exclusively on Spotify. David, during Joe Biden's primetime address on Thursday night, Fox News's Tucker Carlson appeared in a tiny box at the bottom of the screen. What I want to know is what should we make of mystery, Pundit Theater 3000.

I was about to say that it's rare that you see memes materialize and come into the national consciousness in real time in front of you, but it's not that rare anymore. I think we all have pretty well, I have a pretty good radar for that. It was that little, the Tucker box is now on like as many tweets as, you know, you could possibly imagine at this point. And each one is funnier than the last. I am almost more perplexed about the degree to which. Fox News is just leaning in to Tucker being their star.

Like they're like there is literally the face of the of the channel. Well, I mean, I can't. There would never have been a time where Bill O'Reilly's face would have been, it would have been in the lower corner awaiting comment. You know, I mean, it just would never have happened. Doing like a disgusted headshake in the corner while Barack Obama was speaking. Yeah, because it's, because it's, the weird thing is that Tucker and Fox, and I don't mean to say that they're self-aware

because they're not entirely, but they do seem to be sort of aware of his meaminess in a way that that is sort of unnerving. I don't know. I don't know. That whole thing is very, very strange. His meaminess is weird because as far as I can tell, the only thing Tucker really does with his face

during a broadcast is do frown face. Like he has a like-minded guest on who is saying what Tucker Carlson already believes and he insists on doing this big mad dog just frown. I'm very concerned and slightly upset by what you're telling me like-minded guest. Now, should we do a little intellectual honesty here? Let's say President Donald Trump was giving the state of the union

at the beginning of the second term. Would we have a problem if MSNBC had a little box at the bottom and Rachel Maddow was waiting to come on? and you know she was just like getting ready to go in or Lawrence O'Donnell and it was almost you know like in the hockey you know where the penalty box and you have like a minute left in the penalty and you can't wait to get out like would we really have a problem with that or are we just mad because this is Fox News and Joe Budd. I'm trying to think of who would actually for whom that would actually be an effective thing

like maybe Olberman at his peak you know just brow-furwing more and more or like you know like an Al Franken type in his heyday you know something who would just be who could be like a 50. physical comedian about the whole thing. I think the point is that you could imagine a box, you can imagine them cutting in a small picture and picture to like Maddo getting ready to go on. But the idea that the person's face and the reaction, the comic reactions are part of the show or is it, you know, we're like laying this over an important news item. I just don't think there's any journalists, like I said, I don't know if there's any that many people at Fox that would agree to

that. I mean, these people have certainly think of themselves, you know, in a much more serious minded way than that. I just can't, I don't, I wouldn't be mad if they did that with Matt. I just don't think they ever would. And the fact that they're doing it with Tucker is just, I think that's why I think that's, that's the joke, right? It's not just his smarmy face. It's the like just the weirdo presumption of the whole thing. It really reminded me of one of those Republican debates early in the 2016 presidential rates where Donald Trump, remember, was making all the funny faces that later became a meme. You know,

and just like expression changed like nine times. That, that to me was, I think what Fox was thinking of when they thought of this. Like Donald Trump showed us the possibilities of the reaction face form. Now we're going to see if our hosts can handle it. Coming up on today's show, David,

is New York Governor Andrew Cuomo going to resign? Plus the athletics, Lindsay Adler talks about what it's like to cover baseball spring training during a pandemic. All that more on the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis and David Schumaker here. David, on Friday, we got some news.

Everybody is calling for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to resign. The charges now include six women who have accused Cuomo of sexual harassment or related behaviors and a festering scandal about how his administration hid the number of nursing home deaths during the coronavirus. Now, when we say everybody wants Cuomo to resign, we mean both of New York's U.S. senators, 16 of the state's 19 U.S. House Democrats, including Alexandria O.C.C.O. Cortez, and Jerry Nadler, the majority leader of the New York State Senate, Andrea Stewart Cousins. And yet, David, Cuomo said Friday, he is not resigning and blamed cancel culture. Yeah, just as I was kind of reconciling myself to everything I thought about the Cuomo calls for resignation, he just kind of came in off the top rope with this cancel culture thing. I mean, it's not part. My instinct was like, he's so wrong about this being part of cancel culture that it seems like separate from the situation. But it's actually kind of of a piece of the whole thing. I mean, it's what he's expressing here. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's.

It's strange that in a world where the term cancel culture is spoken 99.9% of the time by conservatives. And more importantly, I mean, more specifically, like conservative sort of bomb throwers, you know, I mean, people who are out there just trying to like stir up opinion and stuff. But to hear it coming from a prominent Democrat governor is on the one hand kind of shocking. But I think it's just more of a piece of the bigger, the kind of the larger state of affairs in the world, which is to say that this is, you know, cancel culture broadly defined is a very, like, specific fear that's held by a certain class of white men of a certain age without any interest in, like, learning anything about it, right?

It's this sort of abstract fear of a very specific, with a very specific result. But, and that's, and that, as it pertains to Cuomo, is sort of symptomatic of the larger problem, which is like an unwillingness to think deeply, at all about the world around him, right? I mean, it's the idea that, that, I mean, it's not shocking that an Andrew Cuomo would be oblivious to how his actions are inappropriate and have been over the years and, and, and, and, it's not shocking that he, he would have never taken the time to think about it deeply enough to want to change.

But that doesn't excuse it even a little bit. And to talk about it as cancel culture, like I said, is just, you know, you know, maybe it's too on the nose. It was funny to me how after Seussgate, like 90% of Twitter thought the term cancel culture was now worthless. We had just, if it ever meant anything, it no longer meant something anymore. After Cuomo used that term on Friday, 100% of Twitter thought the term cancel culture was completely meaningless. That was it. And guess what, David?

That wasn't even the worst or weirdest thing he said on Friday. The weirdest thing he said was that he was not, quote, part of a political club. This is Andrew Cuomo, accent on the Cuomo, whose dad Mario was governor of New York for three terms. Andrew Cuomo, who was in Bill Clinton's cabinet. Andrew Cuomo. I think one of his first jobs was a HUD's as HUD secretary. I mean, yeah,

yeah, Andrew Cuomo, who somebody pointed out on Twitter, was married to one of Robert F. Kennedy's daughters. Andrew Cuomo has been part of all the political clubs. All of them. I mean,

it's that, that comment, this idea that, well, I'm an outsider, and that's why people are calling for a, no, no,

it's not. No, that is not the reason people are calling for your resignation. Well, I mean, totally agree, totally agree. But I guess it is worth pointing out, I mean, not from Cuomo's point of view, but there is a sort of broader point being made based in some fact that he's not endeared himself to a lot of other people in politics over the years, right? And that you can certainly make some sort of connection between politicians' willingness to call for him to resign and the fact that he has not, I mean, that they might dislike him. in a sort of separate way, or, you know, in a pre-existing condition sort of way. But, again, as with so many things in this story and in life, you have to be able to kind of hold two things in your mind at the same time, right? And it's the fact that, you know, he's not best friends with Chuck Schumer, and I'm not saying Chuck Schumer in particular,

I'm just saying as an example of a politician that they might not have been super buddy-buddy buddy leading up to this. The fact that their best friends doesn't mean that Chuck Schumer is calling for his resignation to spite him. It means Chuck Schumer is being given a lane to be honest and appropriate in his reaction to the situation, right? That he's not burdened by the, you know, disgusting structures of normal political interaction. This sentence stuck out to me in the New York Times. Quote, one reason for the unified calls from House members was to ensure that no one person drew too much ire from Mr. Cuomo, meaning that all the House members came out at the same time because they were afraid that if one or two came out, that Cuomo would try to redistrict

them out of a job when they redraw the U.S. congressional district. It just goes absolutely to the point you just made in this fear and this workplace. We should update a few things too here since we last talked about Cuomo. last Wednesday is a big story in the Albany Times Union from Brendan J. Lyons. It began like this. A female aide to Cuomo alleges he aggressively groped her in a sexually charged manner after she had been summoned to the executive mansion late last year, according to a person with direct knowledge of the woman's claims. Rebecca Traster had a big story in New York magazine about Cuomo's toxic workplace. There's also, David, been a number of stories about the way Democrats are thinking through the decision. of whether to call on Cuomo to resign right now

or to wait for an investigation into these charges and then decide whether or not to call on him to resign. And it is really interesting because on the one hand, you have a number of Democrats who are trying to be sensitive to charges of sexual harassment and worse in that Albany Times Union story

and at the same time be sensitive to an idea of due process. and as they sort of think this through, all kinds of incidents are sitting in their head from the last couple of years. There is most prominently Donald Trump who was accused of a whole bunch of things and of course never resigned.

There was Al Franken, who did resign. You made even throw Joe Biden into this list in some of the stories that came out about him early in his campaign. And the Democrats are not only thinking about the Cuomo situation on its own very gross and gruesome terms, but they're thinking about it sort of on this timeline and think, well, wait a second, what did we call for here? What was what happened here?

So how does that affect our thinking about what to do about Andrew Cuomo? Yeah, I mean, the call for resignation, I mean, I think that any, you know, fair minded person can say he should lose his job over that. you know, or he should be booted at office or whatever. But, but, I mean, to be real, I mean, a call for resignation is a political calculation, right? I mean, that's sort of separate from whether or not he, for them, usually it's separate from whether or not a person deserves to continue to have their job. And, and so, you know, that's part of this weird calculus too, right?

I mean, are they saying, are they, is it a question of due process or is it a question of, to what degree Cuomo is sort of an anchor around the neck of the, the party, you know, on a national level, it's, there, and I think as much as there is calculus, and I do see the sort of logic of the, the members of the house announcing all at once, but as much as there's sort of calculus involved in this, I feel like it's almost necessarily wrongheaded, right? I mean, this is a, this is a pretty obvious moral decision-making process here. I mean, this should be an easy moral decision. I'll say that. And once it, you, you, spend any time thinking more deeply about it than that, if you're as a politician, you're probably

you're apt to be headed in the wrong direction. And speaking of calculations, you know, Andrew Cuomo has, of course, come out and said, no, no, let's let this investigation go forward. And then we can talk about this at the end of the investigation. But what I don't hear him saying is any kind of binding statement about what if the investigation turns up X. So if we have this investigation, the investigation finds these charges to be credible, I don't. don't hear Andrew Cuomo saying, well, if that's the case, then I will resign then. He's leaving all his options open and he could just, he could just keep going and not resign. I think, and I think that's why you've seen the name Ralph Northam on Twitter 5,000 times over the past couple of weeks, right?

Ralph Northam, the embattled Virginia governor who just refused to leave office when they were calls for him to leave office. And, you know, there's a lot of obviously differences in the details. But he just basically said, no thanks. I'm not going to resign when there were calls for resignation. And now, like, you know, when people brought up his name on Twitter and referenced to the Cuomo case, they everyone had to remind their followers who Ralph Northam was, right? This is not a part of the national dialogue. And he has not stayed, you know, he's not remained a part of, of, you know, the national

vocabulary for the most part. So that's got to be Cuomo's plan, right? If I just stay here and wait it out, then people won't care in six months. And that's why he's leaving his options open. And I think the only thing that changes that calculation in his mind is the threat of impeachment. A lot of people pointed out Spitzer had had a strategy of hanging tough until it looked like, oh, wait, I might get impeached. And then if the decision doesn't become resign or hang tough and see what happens, the decision becomes resign or be impeached. And then maybe his political, Andrew Cuomo's political calculation changes.

but that is a very, that seems a little ways down the road from where we are right now. We got to tweet, David, from listener Maddie Wasserman. He writes, is there a certain criteria or threshold for when someone becomes labeled as disgraced? Like, what would need to happen for Andrew Cuomo to change from Governor Cuomo to disgraced Governor Cuomo? It's a really interesting case as it pertains to Cuomo. I think even in the age that we live in, sort of post-Me-2 era, a lot of the things that he's been accused of

while it might rise the level of, you know, something that would lose him, I mean, that would cost him his job. There seems to be a sort of reluctance or feeling it's of that it's not as necessary to prove beyond a reason of a doubt that these things are true, but even though they're largely accepted as being true,

you know, I mean, this is part of the investigation that Cuomo is is I guess encouraging at this point but I think that that it would be you know I mean if these things are proven beyond a reasonable doubt and he loses his job I think disgraced will be used widely I'm not talking about when it's appropriate to I'm talking about when it's actually going to be used but I just don't know to me I think I don't know that he's going to be called disgraced until he's until he leaves office, you know, either of his own, you know, being forced or through impeachment. Yeah, disgraced is usually a term for a former something.

Disgraced. In fact, we usually see it in the newspaper as disgraced former so-and-so. Yeah. And you know, and you don't have to talk about this pot all the time, how disgraced is a really handy word for journalists. Because if I say, you know, financial swindler David Shoemaker, and you are not. in fact running Ponzi schemes out of your house there in New Jersey, you could potentially sue me in court.

But if I say disgraced wrestling writer David Chewaker, I'm not sure that has any legal standing. So journalists like to throw that word in when they sort of, I think, don't have a legal case they can lean on, but they want to communicate something. Sometimes it's just a general all-purpose adjective. But I don't know. I mean, you can imagine a situation where somehow, some way Cuomo is able to stay in office, where he is disgraced Governor Andrew Cuomo.

And that would actually be the appropriate title in that case. Somehow the political remedy or the pressure or whatever it is failed to get Andrew Cuomo to resign. He's still the governor, but he has disgraced Governor Andrew Cuomo. I can see that happening. Yeah, I just think from the stay, I mean, from the stay in office and be considered disgraced, It would have to be like a volume of crimes committed beyond, you know, without any doubt. I mean, I said beyond a reasonable doubt, but this isn't a court proceeding that we're talking about. I just find it really hard to imagine.

I think that he would be, he would be out of office if it ever rose to that level. All right, David, let's do the Overward 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. Some nominees to at the press box pod where they're always gratefully received. a weird but typical note from the college basketball conference tournaments this weekend, David, go Longhorns. Insert there, everybody. Duke, Kansas, and Virginia all had to exit their conference tournaments because of positive COVID tests. It was an overword Twitter joke or maybe just a good joke to call them Vax Cinderella stories.

Vax Cinderella stories. Thanks to C.J. Thomas. And finally, David, NFL quarterback Drew Brees retired. retired Sunday after breaking numerous records. He is headed to television. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. The saint went marching out. Thanks to Cooper Cartel, Keith,

and Arsenal points for that one. If you served up my next sports media column, congrats, you made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. Time for the notebook dumping. You know what's sneaking up on us? What? Baseball season. David just looked at the art list for the ringer

and realize he has to do like a Padres illustration. Cutting out baseball bats and hat brims in Photoshop is no kickwalk. Let me tell you. So spring training is already happening. And spring training reporting is sort of happening at a distance on Zoom. And you know I'm fascinated by how the coronavirus changed the way sportswriters do their jobs in big and small ways. So Lindsay Adler, who covers the New York Yankees, the athletic was kind enough to stop by and tell us about her experience.

Here's Lindsay Adler. All right, Lindsay, I'm not sure it's possible to remember the before times before COVID-19. But if we can and you were down in Tampa covering Yankee spring training, what would you be doing today? I would probably be bumbling into the clubhouse looking for either someone who, someone who I'm working on a story about or just looking for someone who's standing around looking willing to talk to me, maybe just, you know, catching up, shooting the shit. I think the really valuable thing about Clubhouse Access is not always having to do sort of a formal interview. And so much of the work that I really enjoy writing is really built on a basis of just sort of

having conversations getting to know each other. And so that's definitely what I would be hoping to do today, I think. Shooting the shit with a ball player can be everything from like, what are you watching on Netflix to how's your family doing to anything like that? Yeah, it's a really wide range. I wrote a story about the Yankees Clubhouse Madden League last year. And that was because Glaver Torres had talked about playing, I think MLB the show against Louis Severino over the off season or something like that.

So I asked a couple of players, you know, like, oh, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of video game players in there, but I was sort of asking someone about it. And they were like, well, no, I've never played the show with Glaber and Sevee, but what you should really ask about is Tommy Canley's Madden League. And so it came up in that way. But yeah, it's also a lot of talking about family, talking about me complaining to anyone who will listen about the 49ers. Ultimately, there's when, when, when we're in a normal time, reporters and players and coaches wind up spending a lot of time around each other. They know things about me.

I know things about them. It's not as, it's not as stiff as I think a lot of people think that it is. Yeah, because I think a lot of us see the interactions between sports writers and players only when they're on television, when they're after a game or when they're in one of these podium settings. And so we think, okay, I understand everything because I saw the question you asked the reliever after the game.

But in fact, most of it, is it fair to say most of the time you spent with players is, or let's say a lot of the time you spend with players is relationship building as opposed to digging for specific pieces of information? Yeah, at its best, that's what it is. I mean, you know, players are busy, especially hitters. I think that's why you see a lot of pitching stories because pitchers just operate on a different schedule. But, you know, or if the Yankees are at home, they have basically a second area where they can go. So they're not as around as much. But, yeah, the real, I think, foundation for the job does come from relationship building,

whether it's in the clubhouse or on the field during batting practice or, you know, anything along those lines. It's really not just the post game, you know, did you put that slider where you want to, I'd put it in questions that I think everyone finds a little bit tedious. Aaron Boone is the manager of the Yankees. And in normal spring training, you would have some point during the day where all of you beat writers would gather around him and get to ask him questions? Yeah. So we would meet in his office for a few minutes before the game. And then we would meet in his office for a few minutes after it.

During the normal time in the season, the Yankees usually have it where there's a, press conference setting before batting practice and then after the game. I read too that you wrote a piece partly based on a joke you overheard the former Yankees pitcher Masahiro Tanaka Tell on a backfield at spring training. So there's also like an eyes and ears element where you're not even talking to somebody but you're just getting information, getting material. Yeah, that was that was really fun. It was I think early spring last year and personally I don't really know.

what I'm supposed to take from watching infield defense drills and whatnot. I'm not really, that's not really my area of expertise, but I enjoy watching pitcher fielding practice because it's always a little bit silly. And so, yeah, they were doing pitching fielding practice. And Masahiro Tanaka is a, you know, is known to be a very good fielder. And a fungo drill went through his legs. And Louis Severino from the back of the PFP line just throws his arms up and starts yelling, goal. And it was just a really funny, funny thing to see where it's like, you know, this isn't

always serious. We have cross-cultural friendships, you know, Sevi, I mean, Sevi got them pretty good. It was a goal. So I think the, there's a balance in making sure that you don't want to just sort of make it seem like you are constantly putting these guys and sort of a, I don't know, in an observation situation, even though it really much is. But, Something like that is really one of those things that I think fans really like to know that, you know, we've got some pitching staff friendships that they're having fun, that it's spring. Everyone's feeling great. So things like that are really something that I'm missing right now, I would say.

So that's happy before time spring training. Now, you've been down to Tampa this year. You're about to go back. What has the pandemic changed about that schedule? It's different. It's interesting. interesting because it's really not that different from last year. We're still doing Zoom access. I would say we're a little bit closer. You know, I can wave to guys from the concourse or whatever, or, you know, someone will ask me like, oh, are you wearing a new mask? And my voice isn't loud. So all I can do is give a thumbs up back. But it's, it's the same as last year, but it feels different. Because I think everyone's sort of gotten a little bit more used to it. I think last year, everyone was really trying to figure out how to handle Zomero.

Zoom access because for the most part, reporters, we don't want to be talking to players and coaches and managers in a group. We don't want all of our conversations that we're having with them to be things that can therefore then be broadcast on the Yes network. It, you know, I think you wrote about the NBA press conference as sort of like its own spectacle. And I think everyone involved kind of hates that element. It's just you can't really be that natural.

But I have noticed this year, like, I think as a beat, we're all getting a little bit better at using Zoom to really not just discuss sort of what's going on with the day. But, you know, some other things like Brett Gardner was asked today, like under COVID protocols, are you still able to be the clubhouse prankster? And so there is sort of, it's not the situation anyone wants, but I don't feel as bad about it as I did last year is what I'll say. That's interesting. Now, you talked about walking into a locker room in a normal setting and get you get to the looks, okay, who's going to talk to me? Who's actually at their locker? Now the Yankees pick the players that are going to be on Zoom on a particular day?

Yeah. So normally what I do, like I said, not everyone is at their locker all the time. You walk in, especially to the Yankees home clubhouse and you're going to get a few people. So I normally walk in with just five to seven things jotted down. in my notebook, like, I'd be curious about asking this, whereas, yeah, now in the mornings, the Yankees tell us, you know, we'll have so-and-so on Zoom at this time and whatnot. And it changes it. I think it definitely, to some extent, puts most people on the beat and sort of a similar

story pattern cycle in a sense. I think where it gets broken up is we all have different things to ask a Baron Boone, and then we can sort of splinter from there. So we'll ask Aaron Boone, you know, do you like the new spring training rules where you can just roll over an inning or take a pitcher out of a game and bring him in back later? And then if he gives an interesting response to that, then, you know, Garrett Cole will get on Zoom later that day and we'll be like, Garrett, you know, do you think that it would have been useful for you to be able to leave an inning and come back in? So it's, it's prescribed, but there's a bit of a fun. now, I would say. You mentioned this. I was talking to some beat writers about this last week in basketball, when you have to do everything collectively with all the other writers on a Zoom call. So privacy and one-on-one interactions have been very, very limited. They were telling me, you know, sometimes you're doing a feature story and you have to ask very specific questions that reveal immediately to anyone listening exactly what you're writing about. How do you handle that on the Yankees beat? I don't. I think that's something that we all really struggle with. At this point in spring,

some clubs are doing socially distance in person one-on-ones at spring training where you can stand six feet apart in the stands or whatever. The Yankees are not doing that for a number of different reasons. And so it really sort of is a cost-benefit analysis. And you can pretty quickly pick up on what people are working on, especially if they ask the same, ask questions about the same subject in Zooms for three consecutive days or whatever. Like pretty obvious. Yeah. Yes. And I mean, it really depends on what you're looking for because obviously if I ask Aaron Boone a question, his response is fair game for anyone to use. But different editors, different publications, different writers. We all have different priorities and different ways of doing things. And so there are times

where I thought to myself, okay, well, if I get answers on this subject and they show up in the New York Post or the New York Daily News tomorrow, I will still feel comfortable continuing to report out this story and fleshing it out further or something like that. I asked Aaron Boone yesterday, you know, why are you putting Aaron Hicks third in the batting order when he's a guy who walks a lot? and I would have thought that he would be leading off. And I'm sure plenty of people on my beat knew. Okay, great. We're going to get a Monday morning story from Lindsay, you know, overly examining the batting order or whatever.

So it's hard because I think you can do unique reporting and even feature reporting in a Zoom-like setting. You just, it's the sensitive type of questions, the things that you really don't want to tip your hand or things honestly that people, be uncomfortable answering questions on that setting, that it's, that's really what I find a little bit difficult because I think, I think, as you know, if you get, you know, five quotes from different people on a certain subject, everyone's going to put the story together differently,

and you can sort of roll with that. But if it's, you know, if I'm looking for an exclusive and Zoom access is all I'm getting to the manager that day, I'm probably not asking it over Zoom. it's first of all this is just my absolute nightmare for other people to know what i'm working on i don't want people at the ringer to know what i'm working on ideally just because i'm weird or whatever but the idea that everybody on my beat would have a hand in that and do you guys there are on the yankees beat i know this is on some beats and they all work differently and the yankee's beat is huge and ultra competitive but there are there are marquist of queensberry rules where like i know that's going to be a feature i know she's doing that

So I'm not going to use that quote in my story, even if it's really interesting. I don't think so. Every person for themselves, essentially. Yeah. And I mean, I think that's what's nice about, I mean, to an extent, I think that's what's nice about having a really large feat. We all do the job in different ways. There are a lot of things that the writers at newspapers do that I'm pretty envious of, that I would really like to do the job in ways that they do it. So I know that if I ask Aaron Boone about the batting order, it may make it into a notes column or whatever, and that's fine with me.

It is, it's almost just like awkward. I would say I'm almost less protective of the material than I am worried about the insecurity of everybody knowing sort of what it looks like when I am developing a story idea. And because I'm not operating with the same type of daily deadlines that a lot of writers are, I do ask sort of meandering open-ended questions, just being like, I don't really get it. Can you explain this to me? And then maybe something that's in the answer is where I take things. I think that's really something that I am impressed by is people who are good at asking questions on Zoom, because I think I'm figuring it out a little bit more.

but like it's a it's an art and yeah everyone is everyone is seeing you stammer through through an awkwardly worded question you're right there are twin nightmares here it's they know the topic you're working on and then they are actually watching you report it which i get bad it's bad on my end i can't decide which one of those i would actually uh hate more earlier this month you wrote a profile of clent fraser yankees left fielder so i assume in the before times you would have walked into a locker room and found Clint Frazier, hopefully, maybe it would have taken you a few days to find Clint Frazier, and then you would have said, hey, I want to start asking questions, ask, see if you can do a profile. How does that interaction happen now?

It doesn't. You know, maybe when I get back down to Tampa, I will run into Aaron Judge at Publix. That would be really cool. You know, there's a few, like, fast casual places everyone goes that I'll be honest. I've been hoping to run into organization people while picking up my dinner from places X, Y, Z or whatever, but it really doesn't. That story was, I didn't have any exclusive, you know, quotable material in that story.

That the quotes from Clint came from, from Zoom or from things that he said in the past. And then I built the framework and the other parts of it using conversations we've had the last few years. I've had a lot of conversations with Clint on the record, off the record, on good terms, on tense terms. He and I are both very, very chatty. In many ways, that story was me writing a story about me

because I've watched Clint do things that I have found baffling, but also a little bit too close to home. So in thinking about that story, it was, My takeaway from that story was that I'm really glad that I've had a few years of Clubhouse access to really build up the rapport. There's obviously been some roster turnover, but a lot of the same guys are there. So a lot of the guys who I'm writing about, even off of Zoom access or people who I would say I at least know from a reporter player standpoint. point and I really enjoyed being able to sort of go back into the well and use the base of knowledge to flesh out things that everyone else was hearing on Zoom. But it, one, made me really think about

how much longer I can sustain myself on, you know, three years, two and a half years, really, of clubhouse access. And it made me really feel for people who started on a beat last year or this year or transferred beats last year or this year because I just think the job would be completely different doing it over Zoom and by, you know, observation from afar if I didn't have that sort of library of player interactions already stored up from the past. Yeah. And I think it's so interesting because I read your pieces and I read other people's pieces that they've written over the last year. And even and even somebody who writes about the media, I read those. I'm like, this is really good. This isn't, this doesn't strike me as a, as a,

a product of, you know, little to no access. Like, it's like, this is a good story about baseball. It's a good story about basketball. But I also know, as you say, that that relies on the storehouse of knowledge you have built up from the pre-pandemic times. And at some point, that runs out, either because the Yankees get new players or lots of new things happen. And you haven't had that casual time to talk to the players about all these things. So there's a clock on this, right, where this at some point will become very notice. that a lot of people haven't been in a locker room in a long time.

Yeah, I think the one that kills me is, you know, the Yankee sign, Garrett Cole. He's extremely chatty. He's extremely curious. You know, we saw it early last spring. Someone would get in a conversation with Garrett and it would go on for 47 straight minutes while he's gesticulating wildly. And it's like, it's like a reporter's dream. You get this ace. He loves talking pitching. He loves talking other things.

He's really great at explaining things. And I'm like, yes, here we go. And then I get like three weeks of Garrett Cole access. And now I have this extremely quotable and, you know, extremely quotable ace who I could write about to an infinite degree if this were a normal time. And I've mostly had to spend a year getting to know him over Zoom. So it's a bummer. And spring training is a time.

If I'm right, where you get these guys in a little bit more of a relaxed, casual setting because they're not playing baseball games that count. So you get a little more time and maybe a little time that's a little out of the daily battles of baseball. Has the Zoom era forced you to do anything you might not have wanted to do but turned out to be better or interesting at least when you did it that way? It's definitely presented a different challenge. I went in spring with this or last spring with this big plan.

you know, I looked at my work from 2019, you know, sort of combed through it all, talked through it with my editors, talked through it with a lot of different reporters who cover sports, who cover politics. I had this whole plan. And then suddenly I had no idea how to do the job. And so I think it's hard to articulate how it's different, but I'm definitely writing stories in a way that I wouldn't have if we didn't have a pandemic, which sounds obvious to say, you know, in a situation like the, like the Garrett Cole thing, there's a little bit of not bitterness. It's not the worst thing to happen in America in the last year, but it's, it's frustrating. But it definitely makes me lean less, I think, on having, you know, three conversations

with someone before I develop an idea. It's made me, I think, focus in more narrowly and try to find larger contexts or outside sources to try to explain things like writing about the Yankees batting order, I used a couple of quotes from Aaron Boone and then went to literally called the book written about this and in 2006 to sort of flesh out the logic there, whereas I think in a normal year I probably would have been pulled Aaron Boone off to the side, tried to find an analyst, tried to find a scout, tried to grab a couple of players. but it's you with with Zoom access with the Yankees choosing who goes on with the exposed nature of reporting I just it takes longer to turn things around it's just it's a

little bit more fraught and so I think it's been an interesting exercise and sort of doing more with less doing more with already what I know doing more with what I can find elsewhere and sort of limiting the scope that I that I've the scope of report I think that I need to do what I consider to be a valuable story, I guess is how I would put it. Pandemic is maybe going to end someday. Are you confident that reporters will go back into the locker room when it does? I would really love to know that. I think Zoom is annoying for everyone.

I think it's tough for PR staffs. they probably hear reporters complain a lot, they probably hear players complain a lot. I think we will get some sort of access back. Do I think that we will be getting an hour before batting practice and then batting practice and then post-game clubhouse access afterwards? I don't know.

I'm glad it's not my job to negotiate for that. I hope whoever is negotiating, that is negotiating hard on my behalf. but I'm wondering if it will go to something closer to things like soccer mixed zones or whatnot. And so over the last year, I know, I know. I have a close friend who's a soccer writer, and we've talked about this a lot, and I've read a lot of soccer coverage just to see sort of how EPL writers do with limited access. I think, I mean, no access, let's be honest.

Sure. I don't think that's closer to know than some. I don't think baseball will get to no access. Like what I think would be really, a really valuable step forward would be, okay, maybe doing some sort of mixed zone or letting us do press conferences with Boone in person,

but then letting us on the field for batting practice or something where maybe you don't walk into the same sort of clubhouse, like what people think is sort of like a player access buffet, even though it's not, but even just being, round for batting practice and being able to wave at someone and be like, hey, could I get just a couple minutes either today or tomorrow? That would be really useful to me. I'm trying to keep my expectations low so that I don't get disappointed. I would just love to be able to have a conversation

that is off the record or only lives on my recorder where I can backtrack if I say something, if I phrase something in a way that doesn't really convey what I'm trying to say, where I can read their facial expressions and for now I'm telling myself that I will take what I can get. So I think I would be pretty crabby if we didn't get some access restored by the end of the year. Yeah, early in the pandemic, there was an NFL writer who talked to who'd been on the beat for more than a decade and said, I've never seen press access increase in my time in the NFL. It has always decreased. It has and it has very regularly decreased.

often a new coach comes and says, you know what, I don't like what the old coach did. But even when that coach is fired, that's the standard we start from. So, you know, this would have to be a situation where we take very small,

prescribed Zoom access and actually increase access. And I know lots of writers are going to fight for it. I will fight for it in whatever way I can. But I'm with you. I will be pleasantly surprised,

maybe even shocked if we go all the way back to the old way. And the thing is, there's this medical reason, you know, we go, oh, well, we're just not sure, right? We're not, you know, we want to be careful about the coronavirus that teams can lean on. I don't, I don't know, but I am, I'm with you. I'm hopeful, but I guess not terribly positive. Yeah. I mean, I'm glad that I'm starting from a position of baseball, which I think has the best access or had the best access to begin with. So, you know, losing something from baseball is not the same as losing something from college football.

Yeah. What I would say is that I would say is that I think it's, this is going to sound like it's a selfish argument, but I swear it's not, but you know, there's a collective bargaining negotiation coming up this winter. If writers don't have access to players where we can talk. to them sort of in a casual setting where we can talk to them off the record, where we can really get access to their perspective on these types of things, which I think the PA in general is holding sort of close to the best to begin with. But like, players should understand that we are going to be

covering a labor negotiation. And if we can't get access to them, then most of the perspective is going to be coming from management. You know, you can you can get a general manager or a team president or I guess team owner or league official to pick up the phone. Players, I think sometimes they're worried about doing wrong by the union. They're worried about putting themselves in a position where they are a distraction or the club gets upset with them. And so I think it's a little bit more vulnerable for them to pick up the phone. I think they also probably just don't see the utility of us in ways that executives might. But it's really important to me as I'm thinking about.

about how to cover a labor battle, making sure that the player's point of view is represented here. Because ultimately, without that, it's not just that, like, it's not just that the coverage is going to be one-sided. It's that fans are not going to know what is going on. And they're not going to know what the players are upset about fans. These are very complicated, complex issues that I think are hard for people throughout the industry, for reporters and for readers to understand to begin with. And Garrett Cole went on a long explanation about analytics, how they can be used to help him maximize his fastball, but also they can be used as a cudgel and arbitration and free agency. These are really nuanced thoughts. And when I sat down to write it,

it took me an entire day because you have to get into so much context here. And so what really worries me is we're heading into a labor battle. And I just don't know that everyone involved is going to really be understanding the full context on both sides here. And that's really one of the shames with the timing for me is I think players should at least help people understand what they are, what they are thinking, heading into what's supposed to be a really tense winter. You can read Lindsay Adler at The Athletic. She's at Lindsay Adler on Twitter. Lindsay, thanks so much for coming on the press box. Thank you for having me.

All right, it's time for David Shoemaker. Guess is the strained pun headline. Yeah. Thursday's headline about a bear that ate 76 pounds of cocaine was Pablo Escobair. We got a number of votes for Koki the bear. It's supposed to Smokey the Bear. Today's headline comes from Brad. It's from the Austin Chronicle, the venerable alt-wit-

weekly. The Chronicle, David, did a guide for this year's edition of South by Southwest, which starts on Tuesday. One catch, South by Southwest is all digital this year. You got to watch it from home. So I need a pun off the name of the festival. What was the Austin Chronicles strained pun headline? Like sloth by? South by South by South, South, West, South, West. couch is it a couch thing South by couch rest again

just give me a little more of that though just dial it up South by is it does it start with South by South no you were there you were halfway home South by couch West

even pun just a little bit more for me even there just one more couch couch by couch Couch by Couch West. Couch by Couch West. Oh, man.

It's funnier when they just insist upon it like that. That's great. It's kind of a blunt instrument of a headline, but we'll take it. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantas. We are back Thursday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David.

See you later, Brian.