The Press Box - The New York Times Endorsement, MLB Cheating Takes, and Trump’s Trial | The Press Box

Episode Date: January 20, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker look at the New York Times editorial board’s endorsement for president (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (22:15), content from the Major League Baseball cheating scandal (24:00), Donald Trump’s Senate trial (39:15), Drew Pearson getting snubbed from the NFL Hall of Fame (44:30), and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, guys, it's Liz Kelly, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. This week, to celebrate the 100th episode of The Rewatchables podcast, Quentin Tarrantino returns for the third and final movie in his three-part series with us. In the final episode, Bill Simmons and Sean Fennessey discussed with Quentin one of his favorite movies, the 1990 crime thriller King of New York. Make sure to check out this special episode and follow at the Rewatchables on Twitter for highlights of all 100 episodes. David, there wasn't really any

big media story out there last week. Do you have anything you'd like to talk about to start the show? Um, I mean, well, there is one big story out there. Um, that I feel like we should probably mention somehow. Um, do we dare touch it? I don't know. I was going to kind of leave that to you. Um, well, I mean, Jim, you can edit this out. If you don't think we should say it.

Do not drag me into this. Uh, the audience network, it's reported is, uh, is coming to an end. Oh, right. Right. The show is looking for a new home. Yeah, I don't know. Just seem kind of explosive.

I think we should edit this whole thing out and record a completely different intro to the podcast. We're the TKTK of Media Podcasts. This is the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here. Lots and lots to get to today. We'll talk about the content unleashed by the massive Major League Baseball cheating scandal will preview Donald Trump's Senate trial a few NFL playoff takes plus the overworked

Twitter joke of the week. But David, I don't know any other way to begin than what happened with the New York Times last night. I refer, of course, to extreme makeover presidential endorsement edition where an age old and slightly boring media process met a reality show. Times Wild and up endorsing Elizabeth Warren and

Amy Klobuchar, but let's start with the process that that came about. In the old days, according to a piece by the Washington Post, Paul Fari, the endorsement process was like a papal conclave, solemn, secretive, and far from public view. Candidates

troop to the Times' conference room, made their pitches off the record, and then voila. The Times named its preferred candidate in ink and pixels. Well, this year, the Times decided to record the interviews with the candidates that they did in the editorial board. They recorded the candidates even walking into the building.

On the FX show, the weekly last night, we saw Bernie Sanders emerging from snowy midtown and Corey Booker saying he had the flu, but probably wasn't contagious anymore. We got annotated transcripts with these interviews in a special section in Sunday's print paper. And then the big reveal, as they say on reality shows, on the FX episode Sunday night,

let's listen to a little bit of that. You've been on the front lines of corporate downsizing. You've been on the front lines of corporate price fixing. You've been on the front lines of our misadventures in foreign policy. You've had direct experience of many of the things that make a lot of young people very angry about the way that this country is operating right now. You don't seem to embody that anger. So the proposition that I've been on front lines of corporate price fixing is just to get that out of the way.

You worked for a company that was fixing bread prices. No. I worked for a consulting company that had a client that may have been involved in fixing, or was apparently in a scandal. I was not aware of the Canadian bread pricing scandal until last night. But do you feel the anger that many young people feel about the state of this? Yeah, of course, because it destroyed my city. I grew up surrounded by crumbling factories and empty houses. My city lost 30,000 of its 130,000 people, largely before I was born. So I'm under no illusions about the problems that are present in American capitalism generally, and were unleashed beginning with the Reagan era specifically.

And while I may not be as emotive sometimes about my sense of anger or frustration or injustice, I would not be doing any of this if I were not propelled by a level of passion. David, what did you make of this very old media process getting the reality show treatment? I mean, there's so much to get into here. Just watching the weekly. I mean, they released the transcripts. I guess they just came out in the paper, but they've been released online sort of all. all week.

There had been a slow release, I guess, as the various interviews took place. So some of this, a lot of this, a lot of the big beats from the show were things we were aware of. We obviously didn't see the video up until now. But I guess, given, I mean, you know, stipulating that they've released the lengthy transcripts, it was hard to watch the show all 50, whatever minutes of it and not feel like there was so much left out. Right? I mean, this is, this maybe just sounds obvious, maybe, you know, but, but they, at the New York Times, they had the opportunity to show us something really special and unique. And they said, I mean, and at its base, this is, you know, they, they started off in the right direction, I guess. But what would have been really special and unique would have just been, I mean, they had the opportunity to show. us if they just played it straight in the interviews and just release the entire video, or at least a more representative edit of the video, to have these candidates on video at length

in a different environment than we're used to seeing them, there was a chance to be an opportunity to really inform the voting public. And instead, what we're kind of left with on the show were, I mean, I don't want to be so dismissive as to say punchlines, but like, instead of, you know, instead of the I mean, they had kind of weird, you know, fascinations with Alexis and bread price fixing, like we just heard in that clip and heartbreak. And they sort of like, it was like, it was like if you went through a lengthy, it's like you're interviewing somebody for a job and you do all the basic questions. And then you have that one thing that's just you as the interviewer. You just want to, I'm just going to ask them something a little bit off beat to see what they say.

But all we got from this TV show or the bulk of what we got was that last kind of gimmicky question to kind of catch somebody off guard or whatever. and substantively, you know, I mean, it did feel like a reality show where it felt like really selectively edited. And when people compare it to The Bachelor, when you watch The Bachelor, the show is edited specifically to make you doubt what is about, you know, to make you assume anything but what's about to happen is about to happen, right? And that feels almost like, I don't think they were being that, I don't think they were being that duplicitous. But that was that the result was basically the same. we didn't get enough information to justify where this show ended. It just kind of seemed to come out of left field. I was watching on the NFL pregame, Aaron Andrews, interviewed Jimmy Garapolo.

And it was like one of those, you know, how you always see those pregame interviews on the pregame NFL show. And it lasts like, there's actually like 31 seconds of interview. It is a big buildup. But like the person doesn't even get a chance to say anything. That's what the time show felt like. I totally agree. And it felt like I heard. just enough to make me want to hear much, much more.

Yeah. And, you know, if we're squeezing this for content, shouldn't this have been like three or four episodes of the show? At least give everybody like a good 10 minutes of cut up interview time. I don't know. And I just, I don't about you, but the whole thing of we're doing this in the interest of transparency. Now, come on a second. And for a second here.

You know what that reminds me of when somebody has like a really big long form piece and then they start tweeting b-sides or tweeting about their reporting process. Yes. You know, and it's kind of like, oh, I just want to give you a peek behind the curtain. No, you don't. You just want to squeeze your thing for more content. That's what you want to do. And that's obviously what this was.

I have never wondered in my life. I'm really interested in newspapers. I'm really interested in the New York Times. I've never wondered why is the Times endorsing somebody. It's just never occurred to me to be a particularly interesting question about that process, especially when you find out that the process turns out to be not some, you know, really sort of like freighted meeting where everyone's yelling at each other and pounding on the table. No, no, I think it should be Andrew Gang. No, no, I think it should be Pete Buttigieg.

The process turns out to be this woman, Kathleen Kingsbury, Deputy Opinionaire, just gets to pick. So what did we reveal here about the thing that this one person gets to choose? Well, and the only thing that she, I mean, the only part of the deliberation that she really revealed on the air was her saying that she had it down to four candidates, which were Warren Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and Corey Booker, who had dropped out of the race by the time that they made their pick. So who knows if he would have taken the Klobuchar spot. We just don't know the answer to that. And it's also kind of instructive that they just said, those are the four that stood out without really, again, giving us reasons as to why, right? I mean, it's It is significant enough to merit discussion why Bernie and Biden were both just eliminated off the top, right? I mean, there was, they had discussion about both of them after their, you know, quick, they had the brief discussions after they were the brief snippets of their interviews. But that wasn't different than the discussions that followed the other candidates, the ones that were, you know, in poll position. And, you know, I mean, it's just, I said it before. but I mean, whether or not they were trying to make a TV spectacle,

whether or not they were trying to attract viewers to bring attention to this show, you know, I think it's sort of unnecessary to go down that path, but they certainly were making TV, right? I mean, they were making a television show. Yes, with cameras. With cameras. I mean, that was the point of this whole, what we saw was a show.

And I don't know. I mean, I just feel like they had the opportunity to do such a great service to the country, the voting public, to the candidates themselves, to the political process. And they opted to make it less helpful at the expense of making it sort of like vaguely interesting. And I'm not sure that they succeeded at that, right? I mean, except for the fact that we're talking about it right now. Yeah, no, I completely agree. And by the way, I don't think it's, I don't think it's a bad thing to say, if we just throw the transparency business out, I don't think it's a bad thing for somebody at the

New York Times to be like, hey, you know this thing we do every year? Shouldn't that be a TV show? Shouldn't that be a podcast? Shouldn't we just turn, like, we have all the presidential candidates in house here. We're asking questions. Shouldn't we do something with that other than just, like, record the interviews? I mean, again, I'm going over well-worn territory at this point, but if you're, when you present something in a new format that it's like it's dramatic. I mean, the newness is, it should be the drama in and of itself. We don't need everything to be a joke.

We don't need to see the, you know, the only show the funny questions. You want to hear about Andrew Yang and aliens? We don't, I mean, that's fine in the context of a wider ranging interview, but it's hard to say, I mean, I guess the point that I'm making is they should have, it should have been clear to them that putting this on TV in the first place is enough. And if you just read off the same list of 10 questions to each one, the results, because of the newness in format and in presentation, would have been instructive and breathtaking potentially on their own.

Yeah, I think that's right. To quote of David Shoemaker phrase, you and I have watched a lot of reality TV in our lives. We'll never quite get to Juliet Littman level, but we watched a lot. And I was amazed at how the language of the New York Times could so seamlessly do a sultry tango with the language of reality television.

For instance, they'd done all the interviews, and then Kingsbury looks at the table and says that line, which is always a part of the judging portion of reality show. Okay, guys, what did you think about Bernie Sanders? You could go to any baking show or any home show. What did you think about so-and-so? Right?

Nobody would actually say that, but you always say that on reality show to sort of tip off viewers that this is about to come. The other thing about it was the heart-tugging emotions, right? When Gordon Ramsey is fixing your restaurant, it's really about the emotional trauma that preceded you even founding the restaurant. That's what the show's about. That was the same thing here too. Kingsbury asks each of the candidates, name someone that broke your heart.

So we get Cory Booker talking about how one of his constituents was murdered. We get Joe Biden talking about losing his son and other members of his family. According to Paul Farie's piece in Washington Post, Bernie Sanders said, no, I won't respond. Even candidates for president of the United States have a limited amount of privacy.

So Bernie was not playing. that reality show game. That would have been great to see that. Yeah, right. That was going to be a good show. We should also talk about the endorsement that they actually came up with or that Kingsbury came up with.

James Bennett, by the way, is recused himself from this because his brother Michael Bennett is running for president. He's normally the guy who would be involved in that decision. So he's out of this. But the times wound up picking two people, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar.

Immediately, I was like, you can't do that, right? If we admit this is an artificial process that making a newspaper endorsement of one candidate amongst many talented candidates, if that is itself very stilted and staged, you do have to pick, right? You should at least go in the process.

If the ringer tells you and me make a list of the 10 best, you know, journalist memoirs ever written, we probably can't say, well, you know, we couldn't choose. news. You know, no, no, we just just pick one. They pick two people. And part of this editorial was essentially saying, well, there's this whole progressive part of the Democratic Party and then this kind of centrist part of the Democratic Party. We can't possibly pick, we can't solve this

problem for the Democrats. You can't? Yeah. Why not? Why isn't that part of your job? There's no good answer to that. I think there's a, there's, you know, the inkling of an argument that like that saying that picking one and then anointing the other one, one A, would not have gotten nearly the attention that having to receive, right? And so it does, in some ways, it gets, you know, if that's, even if they knew for sure that they were pro-Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren was the runner-up, this is a way to sort of make that point in a way that people actually pay attention to it. That said, I just think, I mean, and listen, there are a lot of people who I respect who are

defending the New York Times online. And to a certain extent, I'm sympathetic to that defense, but all of the defenses seem almost like, I feel like I'm sitting in like a freshman year philosophy class where like I just can't quite wrap my head around the meat of what we're arguing here. I mean, the basic part of this seems really straightforward, right? I mean, it's, you've got to pick somebody. That's the point of the endorsement. And I don't want to get too far in the weeds here. But the argument for Klobuchar is practicality, right? It's like sure X sounds good, but why can actually be achieved. And that's why you endorse Klobuchar.

That's what you're endorsing in a Klobuchar candidacy. The New York Times says that very plainly. But if you pick two candidates, your rationale basically being, sure, you know, if you look at our institutional history and legacy of picking presidential candidates, Klobuchar is our ideal candidate. Klobuchar is the sort of person in New York Times would traditionally pick. But even though Klobuchar sounds good, she's trailing in the polls. and Warren can actually get elected, right? I mean, Warren of the two is the one who actually is a chance at the nomination at this point. I mean, who knows what's going to happen.

But think about the irony there. The argument for Klobuchar is actually the argument for Warren. Warren actually has a chance of getting elected and getting this stuff done. And you're picking the practical candidate because you like their, they're like practical philosophy more. I mean, it's, it just seems really bizarre. And the way that they dismiss- Differing visions of the Democratic Party, too, right? You're not really picking a vision.

How can you pick both? If you picked Klobuchar and say Cory Booker or Joe Biden or whomever or even Buttigieg, you can understand like here are two candidates that really embody the vision we think is good for the Democrats, good for America, good for electability, whatever you want to pick. But they actually picked two sort of opposite visions are pretty differing visions. So how is that a pick? That's not a pick to me. No.

No, it's not. I mean, it's sort of, it's hard to look past the reality show spectacle of this to give it sort of the credence that I would like to give it. But it's really, it's hard to sort of break that down, you know? I mean, I don't know. It's weird. To make this kind of double selection for the first time ever when you're doing it on TV and throwing the doors open for everyone to see, it just seems, it's just suspect, you know? And it's, like I said, hard to give it any sort of credit. very funny tweet from New York Times TV critic James Pony Wazick.

Looks like I'm free to put 20 shows on my top 10 list this year. Pretty good. Politico's Dan Diamond tweets, imagine a season of The Bachelor where he tried to marry two women. By the way, I think that actually was a season of the bachelor. We need to get Juliet on the line to confirm. Elizabeth Warren tweets, so I guess Amy Klobuchar and I are now both undefeated in elections and

undefeated in New York Times endorsements. That's pretty good. A couple more notes. The Times tried to get Donald Trump. He didn't respond. So that would have been great content too. Deval Patrick and Tom Steyer did the interviews, but didn't make the TV show. Right.

So you know you're either a long shot or really boring when you didn't make the reality. So we went on the reality show, but these guys. just didn't make the television version. That's pretty funny. I also just thought this is the most attention and the editorial board of a newspaper will ever get. We will all go back to forgetting that the editorial board even exists after this,

which is probably for the best for everybody. But I also thought when they were having that discussion at the end about who was best and they had some of the people, I'm really not interested in the institutional decision making of the editorial board itself. But I would have loved to have read an endorsement from almost every member who was up there. My old co-worker Michelle Cottle, who's awesome, Brent Staples, Charlie Wurzel, we read everything he writes.

It's the thinking of the editorial board writ large that's boring. And I'm like, why don't we let every one of these people endorse somebody? That's actually what I want to hear in their comments, almost like the interview. it was just this little taste of, oh, there's a lot of really interesting, differing visions here of who would make the best candidate. Now, I want to read those pieces. Yeah. No, I mean, to have any kind of, I mean, the candidates were given a sort of platform for humanity here, or at least a different style than we normally see, right?

I mean, most viewers aren't privy to them seeing them out on the trail, you know, giving stump speeches and stuff. I mean, this is a new look at these people who are running to lead our country. The New York Times editorial board was humanized in a way. I mean, and so much as you could like keep up with, I don't even know if they had chiron for most of the people there. I think they were, I think most of them were just popped up on screen, but these were human faces and voices who were asking these questions, the people laughing along with the candidates and, you know,

trying to get good answers out of them. But you're right. The end result was sort of the most antiseptic, like least human solution possible to the point where they couldn't even flip a coin to pick a winner. By the way, how much nicer did all those people dress because of the TV cameras than they would normally dress in a newspaper office? I heard this rumor one time. I don't know if this is true, but that there was a prankster back in the old days of the New Republic who told the New Republic staff that C-SPAN cameras were going to be there to film their editorial meeting. Now, that actually happened on C-SPAN.

Apparently there was a joke version of this. And they put the can't like some kind of fake. camera there or something. And all the new Republic staff members came in with very spontaneous thoughts off the top of their head that they had obviously written the night before. It's like, oh, that reminds me of something Abe Lincoln once set and then it would just go off for like a minute and a half. So I really just love the idea of how a camera changes a journalist. In this case, no one felt like they were particularly sort of playing to the cameras. But I just thought I was like, I've never been in a journalism office where everybody's dressed

that in Iceland. That's never happened. And I blame FX. All right, David, time for 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. Please send your nominees to at the press box pod where they will be gratefully received. Let's begin with that Times endorsement. It was an overwork Twitter joke on Sunday night to compare the show to the decision. At the end of this Times endorsement, we'll finally learn where LeBron is taking his talents. The New York Times is taking its talents to Dover, in my opinion, etc.

Thanks to Matthew Zitland for that one. David, one of the consequences of the massive Houston Astros cheating scandal, which we'll talk about in a second, was the firing of a new New York Mets manager Carlos Beltran. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write weight. It's a punishment to not have to manage the Mets. Thanks to Blue Shirts' breakaway. And in NFL news, David,

I don't know if you noticed a celebrity cutaway during the San Francisco 49ers Green Bay Packers game on Sunday night but actor Rob Lowe was shown in the stands it was a pretty transparent native ad for this new Fox show he's in but what was notable was that Lowe was wearing

a baseball cap that just had the NFL logo on it not the Packers, not the 40s just said NFL a lot of good stuff like this imagined conversation a Lids employee one week ago. Are you sure, sir? No one's ever bought that one before. It's kind of just for display.

Roblo, Colin, in the picture. This is what cop Roblo thinks he should dress like if he wanted to blend in with NFL fans. And finally, this is how the New England Patriots are going to start dressing their video crew for that series they used to launder their cheating. Thanks to John Spalding with an assistant for the win. If you made fun of Rob Lo, but focused solely on his hat,

Congrats, you made the overword Twitter joke of the week. In the notebook dump, David, let us talk about cheating in Major League Baseball. Because you've been paying attention to minor stories like impeachment. Folks, we are in the midst of a giant cheating scandal involving the Houston Astros that has already led to the firing of one general manager and three managers on three different teams. In an article in The Athletic, former Astros pitcher Mike Fires revealed a sign stealing scheme. The Astros were filming their opponent's catcher and then apparently hitting a trash can a certain amount of times to signal the hitter about which pitch was coming.

Last week we had an incredible day on Twitter where we did a Zapruder-like search of Astros players jerseys to see if they were also wearing buzzers to tip them off. There's no evidence of that, MLB says, but it sure was fun. We had some Twitter takes. Mike Clevenger of the Indian says they shouldn't feel comfortable looking at any of us in the eye, let alone on the field, and any other MLB player that feels different, they can get it too. The Dodgers Alex Wood tweets, I would rather face a player that was taking steroids than face a player that knew every pitch that was coming. And here's Jessica Mendoza from ESPN.

She's talking about the fact that Mike Fires, who revealed the scheme to the athletic, did it after leaving the Astros and going to a new team, the Oakland A's, remember that Mendoza is both a commentator on Sunday night baseball and a special assistant to the Mets, the team that just fired their manager because of the scandal. Listen up. I mean, I get it. If you're with Oakland A's and you're on another team. I mean, heck yeah, you better be telling your teammates, look, hey, heads up.

If you hear some noises when you're pitching, like, this is what's going on for sure. But to go public, yeah, that it didn't sit so well with me. And honestly, it made me sad for the sport that that's how this all got. found out. I mean, this wasn't something that MLB naturally investigated or that even other teams complained about because they naturally heard about and then investigations happened, but it came from within. It was a player that was a part of it that benefited from it during the regular season when he was a part of that team. And that, when I first heard about it, it's just it hits you like any teammate would, right? It's it's something that you don't do.

I totally get telling your future teammates, helping them win, letting people know, but to go public with it and call them out and start all of this, it's hard to swallow. So that is a, that is quite a take. This was already just the most explosive story that baseball could have possibly had. I mean, I've never seen this amount of attention being given to a baseball story. Of course, it's cheating. Of course, it involves everything that would get people outside of the normal, you know, the normal readership interested in this sort of thing.

But this take somehow took everything to a whole new level. Jessica Mendoza is, of course, not just a TV commentator on Sunday night baseball, but also she works for the Mets. What's her title for the Mets? Special assistant. Right. So this is already, like, hugely problematic

that she's out there throwing around ideas from inside and outside the clubhouse on television. If that wasn't, you know, if that wasn't a legitimate source of complaint before, here is example one and, you know, the only one you need about why that's going to be problematic. And then she comes with this like really, really unexpected argument, which is what? Snitches get stitches?

Is that the official term? I mean, the official phrase? And not on the baseball. Yeah, like actual stitches. The, yeah, we talked about the Mendoza thing before. But it was always just dumb. And my take was always you just have to pick one or the other. You can either work in baseball or you can be, I'm not even just.

mad about the ethics of it. I just think like you should just pick one. If you want to be a commentator, go do that. Give up working for a front office. Or if you want to work for a front office, give up the other part. But now she steps into this, as you say, and just makes an explosive story more explosive. I do think Don't Snitch is a pretty basic analyst take. I looked this up.

I vaguely remember this. Charles Barkley in 2012 ripped a bunch of Saints players who revealed the Bounty Gate scandal. Remember Bountygate? He said, you have to be a punk to snitch that out. That's like giving a reporter an anonymous quote. That makes you a punk if you do it anonymous, but also you don't bring that out, excuse me,

X amount of years later. So I almost wonder, was Mendoza actually thinking about the Mets and the impact that this was having on them? Or was she just control plus ving her way through a question? I don't know. I think, I mean, I kind of had the reverse.

I mean, sort of a flip side take to which is that her role as an on-air commentator was kind of, was, I mean, that she was too worried about the perception of what she was going to say within her own organization, that she, that she defaulted towards more of a clubhouse view because, you know, this is in a situation where a lot of people are going to be thinking the thing that she ended up saying and whether or not she felt pressure because she didn't want to seem like such an outsider to the players that she interacts with on a regular basis. Maybe that was part of it. But regardless, it's a, it's, you know, this is at least at this point in this firestorms you know this huge story and in this

investigation it's not a story the word firestorm was invented for by the way it's not it's not a particularly helpful it's not a particularly helpful conversation to get into one way or the other i mean this is of all the stories that have like no need for for talking head you know just like takes with the exception of the only talking heads you need are like to ask players if they've seen this if they've done this before if this is a normal thing how outrage should we be about this actually happening. What she was talking about was like so, to be so like kind of inflammatory and so beside the point, I think is like a really special skill.

I don't really, I don't really know what else to say about it. The story itself, though, is, I mean, this is a story that that is just so wild that it lends itself to people having like uninformed or ill-informed decisions, right? I mean, because the correct decision is like burn it down or don't or close your or turn to blind eye to it. But that's not been neither of those are like acceptable answers, right? So, you know, it's a, it's I guess treacherous ground, but that was just unnecessary. To that point, am I, am I imagining this or have the takes about this been generally speaking way more level-headed than the takes about PEDs 20 years ago? Oh, yeah.

I mean, what's the explanation for that, do you think? Because PEDs were the great evil right and we all lost our minds and the baseball writer still won't let half these guys into the Hall of Fame. And yet when you get something like this that is cheating in the same, you know, it's the same kind of cheating, just different, you know, delivered in a different way. I feel everybody, I'd like to believe that everybody learned their lesson from the collective freak out and then we're all kind of in a different place mentally or that we've generationally changed and the kind of new baseball writers aren't quite as liable to get the vapors.

But do you have an explanation for that? Well, I mean, the perch of moral outrage that sort of monopolized the steroid discussion has, for better or worse, been largely disassembled by the new media age, right? I mean, your local baseball or sports columnist who is, you know, sitting in, sitting in his leather chair by the fire smoking a pipe and saying that like this is a thing that that, you know, the humanity cannot tolerate this sort of injustice. I mean, those people don't largely or don't largely exist or have the same platform that they once did, right? I mean, that post has mostly been relinquished to Twitter commentary, you know, I mean, and quick jokes.

And I think that that's part of it. I mean, I think that it's in general difficult for us to muster great moral outrage outside of the halls of you know, the Senate, I guess, great moral outrage over anything in sports. And I do think that there was a little bit of, I mean, maybe I'm too deep in here. I think there was a little bit of excitement that baseball was able to muster up this sort of intense discussion, this sort of, this sort of moment in modern pop culture at all. You know, I think that there was a lot of people who were just like, like, holy shit, baseball still got it. You know, like, that's an exciting thing. And, yeah, I mean, but you're right. I mean, it's, I don't think it was, yeah, I mean, I just don't,

We just don't have the same people guiding us with the same sort of moral outrage. And I think that the steroid issue is instructive because I think that I don't think there's a, you know, I don't think we all have a collective opinion on performance enhancing drugs. But I certainly think we've all, I think that the vast majority of people have come to a point to say that like whatever happened 20 years ago was just, you know, unhelpful and probably over the top. The reaction to it, I mean. I second everything you just said from the disappearance of the sports columnist in our lives,

that particular journalistic creature who set the tone so much in the old media world and doesn't anymore. But also to your point about there being this kind of glee that finally baseball seems like the NBA does in the offseason. It's a big story. It just took a cheat. We didn't really care about the baseball free agent signings so much, but we care about this. and people are now like writing baseball at the ringer right we're like we're more interested in baseball at least for a week and that is really a sad commentary on where baseball is in the media firmament right now but that's one way to solve a problem I guess yeah no it's true I mean listen to me like the bottom

fell out of that glee immediate like it took it took a couple of days I think but when like finally when like the whatever the first piece about you darvish popped up was that's when i started actually feeling the gravity and sadness of this we're like this is a real i mean listen he's he's a multi multi multi multi millionaire whatever but this is a pitcher who whose career was presumably like dramatically altered by the perception that people could like you people could just like pick him off in the playoffs right and and and and he like i mean i doubt he's going to like sue the Houston Astros. But, I mean, if anybody has cause, like, here's an example of someone who was, like,

materially hurt by this setup, right? This isn't just like, oh, your team lost, when, wham. This is like, oh, I made, I signed a $40 million contract instead of $100 million contract or whatever, you know? I mean, this is, you know, so those things I think are going to steadily build up to a, you know, to some sort of minor crescendo. But, I mean, again, it's really hard to see, I mean, a lot of people pointed out that when the first reports about the Astros, when the MLB report first came out, when their investigation

first came out, you know, there are people who said this feels more like a cover-up than, you know, the end of an investigation. And it sort of immediately was proven to be true. It's hard to imagine what the, what happens next. I mean, what, any kind of real punishment could come out of this. I mean, that is it an investigation that anybody actually even wants to have, you know, or is this going to be, are we better off with the sort of, I don't mean to drag them into this, but like a Patriots, you know, spy gate sort of situation where, yeah, it's fun to talk about. And it's irritating when it happens again because you're going to throw your hands up,

like, how is this still going on? But at the end of the day, there's sort of more value and just sort of like turning a blind eye, keeping it going. And if, you know, and painting the Patriots as this sort of like, you know, evil empire. You know, it's, but that's not like a, it's hard to imagine. And that's not a very proactive decision. I mean, that's just something, I don't know. It's hard to imagine where we go from it.

It's always fascinating where that line is, right? Between this story is going to be great content and perversely drive eyeballs to our sport versus this is going to hit a point where people are legitimately losing confidence in the sport. Or they just like they look at it and go, oh my God. I do believe there was a PED moment. I don't know if it really reflected itself in TV ratings or attendance. or anything, but there was a moment I feel collectively where people read enough those stories that certain people kind of

threw up their hands on baseball, which is like, I just can't trust what I'm watching in some way. And I think it's a really hard to get to that mountaintop. And you can, you can, you can do a lot of weeks of stories like this without getting there, but you're right.

Maybe there's a point if you just, if you start punishing players, which MLB has not done, that that gets you more into this territory because then there's more snitching and there's when we find out more things and people haven't been stealing signs in this way but they've been stealing signs in another way and I don't know I don't know that does seem a little bit far off from where we are now I think it's I think it's pretty contained to use the language of public relations and that certainly and baseball doesn't need a situation where it just becomes this sort of rolling series of accusations and all

of a sudden we start the next season with like the entire all-star teams suspended for a year you know I I mean, it's just, I think that's the real fear of where this might go. I mean, I don't, it does sort of get in the weeds really quickly, because I'm not an avid baseball viewer, but I'm sitting here asking, you know, Ben Gleckxman in our office just like to explain the story to me. And I'm just like, so it's okay to steal signs. That's been a part of baseball since its inception, but it's that they were doing it with a video camera and banging on trash. I actually was sympathetic to the banging on trash cans technique. But then if you're, if you are indeed wearing some sort of electronic sensor, okay, I can see the issue there. But I mean, it was like I was joking around the office, just like talking about old school columnists.

Like how like if I, if this was like 19, you know, 73 and I had a perch at the Brooklyn Eagle or whatever, I would easily like I can imagine writing like, like, why is it okay to steal bases but not steal signs or whatever? You know, I mean, it's just. That's a good take. Part of the problem is, thank you. Part of the problem is that like, you know, some of this underhandedness is just part of the game. and so you end up having to take any sort of I mean I get I get you suspending GMs and managers and whatever else but like and if you're the if you're the Mets and you want to fire your coach okay like that that makes sense I mean that's part of that's part of why you keep somebody employed I mean that's part of the pact of employment is trust but but yeah I mean to go further than that I mean this has the potential to get really messy right after like we just said it got really kind of exciting for the sport in a weird way I'm just looking forward to 60 years from now when an elderly Zach Cram

points a crooked finger at Jose Altuva and says, I'll never, I'll never vote that man into the Hall of Fame. He's not getting past me. That's the content I need. Let's spend one second, David, on Trump's Senate trial. It begins Tuesday, January 21st.

Senator Mitch McConnell has talked about that he has enough votes to not require witnesses, but now there's this tension that maybe there's enough, there's more out there. Republicans may not know by putting away witnesses and voting to not remove Trump may not know what's out there. There may be an interest in them finding out perversely what's out there. I'm interested in how the story is going to be covered. I think there's an argument you can make that what we've seen so far is largely procedural,

right? We kind of know, we think we know at least how this is going to end, almost certainly. so then it becomes this whole thing of, you know, is Nancy Pelosi right to hold back the articles of impeachment? You know, can we find four Republicans to vote with the Democrats, which would make John Bolton and other people testify that we require them to call witnesses? When do you call witnesses during the trial? Beyond that, do you see it going? Do you see the coverage going anywhere? Do you see it moving up, given how many stories there are? We're two weeks away from the Super Bowl. We're two weeks away from the Iowa caucuses. Do you see it?

Where do you see it sort of falling on the media coverage power rankings during that period? I mean, I think you said this in the last week, but it has, you know, I fully expect it to sort of swallow the primary. If not practically by news coverage, then by like every moment the Democratic candidates are going to have to speak on a live microphone. But who knows? I think that your point about procedure is exactly right. And I think that that's where I think it's almost inevitable. And that's where our news organizations are going to almost inevitably do us a great disservice, which is to focus in on these procedural aspects and not just list the facts of the matter repeatedly.

Right? I mean, to even if we go over ground that is considered well-worn, I think it's incumbent upon every on on on media to focus on the facts and the you know the the reasons behind the impeachment and let people make their own educated decisions about it because you know so if we talked about that last hour and all that we have to talk about now is you know some procedural tick-tac toe between Trump's attorneys which they probably deserve their own segment to talk about and and this you know senators it's it's it's not it's that's it's not meaningful, you know, unless it relates to something, unless it relates to the fact of the case.

And I fear that we're just going to get bogged down. And, you know, if this looks like a political ping pong match, then of course, I mean, there's no downside for the president, pretty much. Another media note, there is an absolute opening here for someone to be the moral conscience of the Senate. to give a big speech to, you know, sort of think about their vote and send their speechwriters in for a week and just craft this take. I'm nominating Democrat, any Democrat running for president, number one, because it's in their interest. Those guys like Brian Shats from Hawaii who's on Twitter and who's always just like tweeting jokes all the time, buddy, this is your moment. You know, if you, you're auditioning for that role every day on Twitter. here's your chance to go worldwide

step into it also if any Republican dares say anything about this that's not I'm voting to not remove Trump Lisa Murkowski Mitt Romney Susan Collins I mean Chuck Todd plus head exploding

GIF I mean we are we that will be the that is the wet dream of the DC Pentateocracy for a Republican to stand up and go I've had I can't I cannot in my good conscience, I must vote to remove Donald Trump, even if it doesn't lead to his removal, which it almost certainly won't. That opening is there for you to be a world historical DC

figure. It's right now. What do you think? Yeah. Hey, listen, I think that's right. I mean, it's going to be, it'll be definitely be interested to see who takes the stage. And, you know, we talked last time about how there some senators who have been called back to Washington, pulled out of Iowa and this could be a real opportunity for them to kind of make up for that that shift in presence. Although I don't, I mean, I think that for all of them and has a potential to be a real positive thing, I think even in Iowa where voting patterns are, you know, hard and hard to divine and, you know, I mean, this is all that we talk about, half of what's being talked about these days. I still think it's a really national election, even in the primary. And, you

know, being that moral voice, being that, you know, embracing that position could be a real positive thing for just about any candidate. I have one bit of NFL playoff content I'd love to talk to you about. Oh, let's do it. Because a week ago, Fox and CBS did that bit where they had David Baker, president and CEO of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, read Roger Sherman in any form for more on this guy. He's absolutely fascinating. They had David Baker come in and inform Bill Cower and Jimmy Johnson, former NFL coaches

turned TV guys that they had made the Hall of Fame. It was a genuine, like, surprise TV moments, speaking to reality shows. It was very emotional. We saw Troy Aikman well up a little bit. And everyone on Twitter said, oh, my God, whenever someone makes the Hall of Fame, we should absolutely surprise them on TV. This is great stuff. Let's replicate it.

Well, we got our wish the opposite way because former Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Drew Pearson, who, by the way, absolutely belongs in the Hall of Fame. was watching the TV announcement of the rest of the Hall of Fame class, he thought he had a great shot at making it, and he didn't make it. So instead of spontaneous joy, we got spontaneous pain. Listen to this.

They broke my heart. They broke my heart. And they did it like this. They strung it out like this. I'm sorry. Wow. Wow, indeed. So my only rule is if you want the incredibly inspiring heartwarming thing,

we got to do full reality here. We got to have cameras on the guys who didn't make the Hall of Fame. We've been waiting for like 20 years. Because guess what? I almost prefer, I don't like seeing that reaction. I don't want, of all people as a Cowboys fan, I don't want Drew Pearson to be in pain. But that's more revealing, folks, than somebody weeping because they're so happy they made it.

It's, I got screwed. And I didn't make it. And my, you talk about you, Darvish's life being different. My post career life is very different because I'm not a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. How about that? Yeah. So it's not just Steve Harvey showing up with giant checks and jackets at people's doors. This is, you want the, you want the sad stories too, I see.

Yeah. And I want it expanded to journalists because, you know, like it, right at the end of the year when the best American sports writing comes out, I want, I want, I want like, every ESPN magazine writer. I want a camera on them when they walk in Barnes & Noble and fight it on the front table and open the TOC and they're not in it. You know, you broke my heart. You broke my heart glanced out and you strung

it out. You didn't have the guts to tell me by email that I didn't make it. My feature that I wrote specifically to be in this book. Come on now. All right. It's time for David Schuemaker guess is a strain pun headline. Here is where David size. Thank you.

Thank you very much, David. Last Friday's headline attached to an academic paper about men wanting their hair back was willingness to pay. Willingness to pay. As usual, our readers are way funnier than we are. Lake Kelling says it should have been to pay or not to pay. A good one. I like that. That's even better. This week's headline, David, comes from Mark Lamster, who is the architecture critic of the Dallas Morning News. All around, good guy. Okay. Mark was writing a column about an architectural landmark. This will be near and dear to your heart on Interstate 35 just north of Waco, Texas. Okay. It's the American Bank.

If you look at our Google Doc, I put a picture in. I know the American Bank very well, yeah. You remember that big round bank that looks kind of like a big, almost looks like a sports coliseum? Yeah, it's one of the coolest buildings. I passed it every time I drove from Dallas, or from Fort Worth to Waco or Viseo. vice versa and it was uh i saw it most recently in uh what was the movie the old man in the gun he like robert redford robs this bank and like the opening scene of the movie well designed by a dallas based architect named derwood pickle that is the most texas name ever for an architect

durwood pickle sadly david this round landmark is going to be demolished this year no it is going to be demolished this year which is the subject of mark Lamster's column. Please tell me that like Chip and Joanna Gaines are not erecting a hotel on the premise. They're not. I think it's actually another bank, sadly. But what was the Dallas Morning News's strained pun headline? About the American Bank is being demolished.

That's the subject. That's what we're dealing with here. And think of the shape of the bank. I gave you a few little breadcrown. This is not breaking. Breaking the bank was the first thing that popped into my head. But you're right. Ooh.

That's very good. What makes it special It's not an American pun This is about a shape The shape of the bank It's either it's like it's a What is that called? A cylindrical prism

Is it A little more basic than that It's just a circle is Round Okay Oh yeah Yeah there you go I was also going with

I was also I was trying to figure out Tube right as you were saying that I don't know We get to go with two 2B or not 2B, I guess on that one too. But the round, round, round,

round, uh, don't come round here no more. Is that? Round. It's a message to all American bank customers. Yeah, that's pretty good. Round.

Round, round, round, round, round, round, round, round, round. Um, round, um, round, uh, spinning the world spins. Um, damn. Mm. round it it it won't be

round for long you know with an apostrophe before oh that's terrible it won't be round for long it's pretty good though isn't it yeah that's good that's okay

Mark Lamster he is you're only willing to go okay I just can't believe it's being demolished it's terrible I know next time next thing you know they're gonna tear down that place it had a ham sand which is that you always see on I-35 or, you know,

all of our childhood is being demolished. He is David Shoemaker on Brian Curtis, researched by Erica Servantes and Chris Almeida, production magic by Jim Cunningham. We're back Friday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian. David?

Okay. You make a lot of young people very angry. Oh, but you do. No. Why not? Why isn't that part of your job? There's no good answer to that. Are you sure, sir? I don't want to get too far in the weeds here.

That makes you a punk. No. You have to be a punk to snitch that out. No. I got screwed. How about that? When, when? You broke my heart. Mm-hmm.

And did it like this. Head exploding gift. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow, indeed. Ooh. That's very good. Hey, listen. I think that's right. Holy shit.

I'm just looking forward to 60 years from now. Sitting in his leather chair by the fire, smoking a pipe. Taking steroids, solemn, secretive, and far from public view. Multi, multi, multi, multi-millionaire. Whatever.