The Press Box - 'The Press Box' — 'Baseball Tonight,' Fox News, and Cubs Coverage (Ep. 309)

Episode Date: May 23, 2017

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis is joined by MLB Network's Brian Kenny to discuss the decline of 'Baseball Tonight' (5:00). Then, Ringer staff writer Claire McNear joins to give her thoughts on why Fox News refuses to cover Trump's ties to Russia (20:30). Finally, Jon Greenberg, lead columnist for The Athletic, chimes in to give his firsthand experience of covering the Chicago Cubs after the curse (33:10). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Larry Wilmore here, host of the podcast, Larry Wilmore, Black Um, the Air. Now, in my latest episode, I talked to Senator Bernie Sanders about the state of the Democratic Party and the polarization happening in America and Trump's rise to power. And Trump picked up and he said, you know what? I feel your pain. The establishment is ignoring you. I, Donald Trump, I, of all people, am going to take on the establishment. Well, he lied, of course. But that was his message. So you can hear this episode in full and subscribe to my show by Search. for Larry Wilmore, Black on the Air, on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, Mobile, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And welcome to Channel 33. This is the press box, and I'm Brian Curtis, editor at large of the Ringer. We have three guests on today's show. First up, Brian Kenny from MLB Network is going to talk about the downsizing of one of ESPN's signature shows baseball tonight. And then the ringer's Claire McNeear is going to discuss Fox News and how they've covered or haven't covered the revelations about Trump and Russia. And finally, my buddy John Greenberg from the Athletic Chicago is going to come on and talk about all the Chicago Cubs-related books that have come out since the magical world series run and this whole idea of instant nostalgia. We're still processing the carnage of the ESPN layoffs and one victim that I think remains underprocessed is baseball tonight, the venerable ESPN highlights show. A longtime face of that show, Jason Stark, got laid off.

And now baseball tonight has been relegated to just one permanent night on ESPN schedule. So joining me to appreciate baseball tonight is MLB Network host, author of the book Ahead of the Curve, and a former Baseball Tonight host himself. Brian, Kenny. Brian, how are you? Good, Brian. It's good to talk to you, always. I want to hear what baseball tonight looked like through your eyes.

You get to ESPN in 1997 after paying your dues and then some on local TV. As a young anchor, what was exciting about that show? Oh, it was, you know, it was the pinnacle. It was awesome. I, like everybody else, had watched baseball tonight through the years as it built up. And you're right, by the mid-90s that it really becomes something, because it was the one place you could go to to see games that were in progress, that were happening right then and there.

It felt live-ish, even if it wasn't live. And think of the competition at the time where it was basically your local news, you know, waiting for the sports guy to show up, or, you know, not just sports center, but a better baseball version of sports center. So I knew when I got there, I tried to make, you know, everyone there aware of my love of baseball history and the things I had written, which, you know, was pretty modest at the time, but just my knowledge of the game. And I tried to make the executives aware of it.

So, like, you know, I'd love to do it. And when I got the call to start doing it here and there and dribs and drabs, it was obviously a huge thrill. Was that the magic of it, the live aspect? I mean, ESPN had done that with the NCAA tournament in the 80s, right? With Bob Lee and Dick Vital kind of whirling between buzzer-beaters. And basically, you're now in the 90s doing that every night on baseball tonight? Yeah, I mean, again, think of the landscape.

And I know you've written stuff about this recently. The landscape has changed dramatically in 20 years, which I guess is probably always true. We're talking about 1997 and now. how different it is, but probably 1977 and 1997, also drastically different. But it was very different then in that, again, it was your local newscast waiting for your local sportscaster to come on with the highlights. And I was a local sportscaster. And you're always worried that, hey, is the game over? We're really technically not supposed to use the highlights until the game is over. And suddenly baseball tonight is on. And you can, you know, not only show

a highlight from the first inning of the game, you can go to something that just happened. And back then there's no MLB at Batap, you know, so you're not like that, hey, that happened eight minutes ago. That poolhole's home run. I saw that. No, you didn't see it. It happened, you know, two minutes prior,

and it was brand spank and new on national TV. So there's no question, the rules that they, that were put in place and the time. Again, you know, we're still talking about a time when having, you know, a full hour, you know, just to do baseball, and just to concentrate on it, was mind-blowing. You know, it was, again, think of the differences from Sports Center where you did a highlight, maybe you brought in a guest analyst for a quick pop, as opposed to baseball tonight, where you would come out of each, almost at each highlight, and have a full-fledged conversation.

So it was the rules, and it was the time allotted, and it was the competition at the time, which was very meager, you know, as far as national baseball that was up to date. I was going to ask you that as a host. What you can do on baseball tonight is actually break down something. And this is you turning to Peter Gammon's or Timmy Kurchin or one of these ex-players and saying, let's talk about what just happened rather than racing off to do the Edmonton Oilers highlight or something like that. Right. Also, I have to say, you know, when I think about, you know, when I was writing ahead of the curve, and I had to think about how I came to be so analytically inclined.

And like what made me into this Sabermetric zealot, like what made me into this was I try to explain to people. When you're doing highlights, you have to come up with something to fill. And even on Sports Center or Baseball Tonight, they give you a highlight. And for example, I'll just give you a quick example. You would get a Sports Center highlight, you know, Yankees Red Sox. And on Sports Center it would be 42 seconds long. Baseball tonight would be, I don't know, three minutes and three,

30 seconds. It's a drastic difference. You had a lot more to play with. Many more plays on your baseball tonight highlight as opposed to your sports center highlight. And when you're going through it, it will just give you a description of who the player was, what the inning was, who the pitcher was,

and that's it. All the other things, all the boo-ya, and you know, bring me your finest meat and cheeses, those are up to you. And for me, you know, say hello to my little friend. All that is up to you. But I would come up with you know, like in the old days, I would say, hey, you know, I don't know,

trying to think of a relevant guy. You know, Don Mattingly is hitting 343 and that leads the American League. Dave Winfield now has 22 home runs. You know, that's only three shy of a career high. You're always trying to come up with something to put some context into the play rather than saying, and Maddingly with a single, it drove in a run, it's 2 to 1, Winfield with a home run, now it's 2-2. you know, that's boring. You want to come up with something and information. I was always

trying to slam information into the highlight. And after a while, like as I'm, you know, I mean, through the years, obviously I've been reading total baseball and Bill James and all of that. And I was saying things like, hey, by the way, Bobby Abraeu, you know, has a 440 on base percentage. It's number two in the National League. Brian Giles is slugging 590. That's top five in the National League. I was throwing these things in because I was looking for relevant information. And because of that, because I had so much time to fill in all of these highlights, mostly on baseball tonight. And then someone would question me, hey, why were you bringing that up? I'm like, because it has a direct correlation to the run score. This is what's important.

That's where a lot of this came from. If I was just doing, you know, my sports cast in Kingston, New York, or Albany or Hartford or wherever else I would have gone, I would have just been doing my standard three-minute sports cast doing the scores, and I'd be done with it. Because I had to explore and go deeper and try to give people relevant information, that's where I was like, why am I giving, you know, batting average home runs and RBIs? It's time to move on to the new numbers. You wrote in your book that you actually started using those terms on baseball in 1999, which is pretty early in the Sabermetric Learning Curve of America. It's four years until Moneyball comes out.

What's the reaction from viewers and what's the reaction inside of ESPN when you start throwing that stuff out on the air? And that's really what drove the book was why. Like these are people who like baseball. It almost goes back to Dan O'Crent, who is writing the first Bill James piece in Sports Illustrated. And he had these things on Bill James,

and he had fact checkers at Sports Illustrated. You know, he told me this himself. They had fact checkers at Sports Illustrated, coming up with things and saying, hey, by the way, your man, Bill James was wrong on this guy's number of it bats or his hits or something, because at the time it was hard to get this information. There was a war about information in baseball and getting it from Elias Sports Bureau, and Bill James had to collect it themselves. So we had some of the numbers wrong, and they actually spiked the piece.

Do you ever hear this, Brian? Sure, famously. Yeah. They spiked the piece initially because they were fact-checking. But what was fascinating to me, and later they wrote, He kept pushing and pushing, maybe it was a year later. But what was fascinating to him and to me was, why were they hating on the idea of writing about Bill James?

You know, why the resistance? And I always thought, like, why is this resistance from players, managers, from my producers, and from analysts who really like baseball? Why? And that was part of it, was learning how we think, and just how much were herd animals. And there was resistance. The one thing I wrote, I don't want to get into, you know, all these producers, they didn't know anything.

I don't want to go down that road, but I did write that one, you know, my nickname on baseball tonight from one CP was sluggo. Because I always talked about slugging percentage. And I was like, no, slugging percentage is important, but I just, just to let it be known, yeah, 1999 you were made fun of because you brought up slugging percentage. Just like two years ago, it was war.

What is it good for? Absolutely nothing that that would be saying to me. And now it's, you know, exit velocity or launch angle that is the new thing that's too wonky. And then eventually it gets into the language and it changes. But there's no question. I mean, even in 1999, which is like eight years after I first read, you know, Sabermetrics and total baseball, it was still like not accepted and actively resisted, especially in the national media. Resisted on a baseball highlight show. That is, it's so fascinating to me. And no one wanted to hear it. Again, it's anger. And when you bring it up now, just watch the

reaction from people when you bring up something, I don't know, a little more cutting edge. I don't know. Is win probability added old at this point? Weighted runs, Graded Plus seems old to me. But the stack has catch probability is still something. There's now something that's brand spanking new. And people are like, what's this? Why can't I just enjoy the catch?

You know, that's the way we work as humans. How much when I think of watching baseball tonight and watching my friends watch baseball tonight, so much of it is fueled by fantasy baseball and all of us low stakes gamblers like sitting there, and again, back in this very innocent media age when you couldn't get that information easily. How much of fantasy baseball do you think floated baseball tonight? I don't know. It's funny. I didn't play fantasy baseball until like well into that.

So I was not one of those guys, oddly enough. And then, of course, I loved it, but I was late to it in playing it. And I don't know, probably a good bit, but I mean, part of it. But I think most of it was just the first time you could see of baseball for a full hour. You just didn't get that. I mean, it really didn't exist. No one was doing, you know, this week in baseball was only how many years before that? You know, was it, that's 90, let's say it's 99.

Like in the 8, 10 years before, this weekend baseball was still like on the, the air in big, right? You know, hey, fans, here are some, here are some folly, some wacky plays from the week before. That's 10 years before. How about that? Yes, exactly. You know, and it's Johnny Bench and the baseball bunch, and hey, look, it's the San Diego

chicken. That's only 10 years before that. So to have an hour of baseball highlights and then analysis and perspective is important, you know, to have it, you know, and have it, you know, be Peter Gammon's or whoever it would be, say, hey, this is what the. front office is thinking, that was brand new. So I think fantasy was part of it, but I think it was much, much bigger than that. ESPN hasn't said why they downsize baseball tonight, but I think there are probably two cross currents here. One is this idea that baseball as a sport is somehow shrinking in

American culture, which you have heard and I have heard a ton about. What do you make of that idea? A lot of ideas on that. It's, in a lot of ways, it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy within the media. when I was there at ESPN, we used to get these surveys and just to show us that, do you see how much football is king? And I used to do things on my radio show at ESPN and talk about how, hey, by the way, the revenue, I forgot what year this was exactly, but the revenue, overall revenue between baseball and the NFL was very close.

You used to have these arguments with Beano Cook. You're like, what are the pleasures of working at ESPN? I could have an argument with Beano Cook on this. because he loved baseball but hated on it. And there's a lot of that. It becomes a thing where you just got, oh, it's Sloan, it's old, and it's old, and blah, blah, blah. And I don't buy it. I know that there is that narrative that it's an older audience, and that has been true.

And yet if you look at the demographics of those who have, you know, the bat app, it is very different. And I think a lot of it is driven by the media. It sounds like an overly simplistic thing. It's the media's fault. But I felt that within the walls that, hey, if on Sports Center, you can feel it. And ESPN's power is not what it was. But when I was there, you could definitely feel it. Like when we were really big on hockey, it was big.

When we were big on NASCAR, it was big. Now, I think ESPN doesn't just drive that. It reacts to the audience, of course. But you can get caught up in this, you know, kind of the polling and what you think people are into or interested in. And then, you know, if everyone around you keep saying the NFL is king, well, the NFL might end up being king. And I think it was much closer in popularity than we, then they thought at the time. And I actively fought it at the time as well.

You know, when Sports Center leads with the NFL power rankings, I saw them do that. And to me, that's a mistake. It's like, do what is news. Don't keep trying to come up with NFL topics, let the news dictate it. Come up with interesting segments, but don't make it your news that it must be the NFL because people like the NFL. I think it's just a much too simplistic way of looking at it. Second factor, I think, here and the downsizing is what every sports anchor in America, present company included, is facing these days, which is how do you do highlights in the age of the iPhone? How do you think about that problem?

Yeah, I think it's shifting. There's no question about that. I think there's still going to be, there's still, what you'll want is a combination of the highlights, but then also analysis and instant analysis. And I think that's what's led to kind of this, you know, hot takes revolution that we're in now. Because, you know, you want something, you want to, you see something, and you instantly want to place context to it. You know, kind of like what I was explaining before with highlights. you see Aaron Judge make a great catch.

Well, okay, but what does that mean? And is he a good defender and how good? You know, he's currently tied with Jason Hayward in defensive runs saved for right-fielders and Major League Baseball. You know, it gives you a little more input. So I think there are things to add, but yeah, as far as straight highlight shows, I'm not saying they're dead. I'm not, you know, what Keith Oberman says, like these things are dead.

They're not dead, but they're certainly not the driving force that they once were. You know, the media is evolving. There's no question. And I think it comes down to as a broadcaster, it still comes down to the basics of your writing, your understanding, your ability to put it in the proper context, and do some decent analysis of it. That will be much more of a requirement than it was in the highlight age. 30 years from now, when we look back at the golden age of ESPN, I think the three great highlight shows are probably going to be Sports Center, NFL primetime, and baseball tonight.

I think that's the Troika. If you accept that hypothesis, Mr. Kenney, what do you think makes baseball tonight unique? Will we look back on and say, was unique about baseball tonight? Well, it was, you know, part of that era where it was new and it was bigger and it just blew everything else. out. You know, it blew out the local newscasts, you know, local sports cast. And it was fun.

It did have a higher level of analysis. It took it seriously. And, you know, there was a lot more, there was a lot more depth to it. You know, it's, it's, you know, and it just continues to go, you know, to another level, like here at MLB Network. Like, you go

from Sports Center, you know, you have a certain amount of the show that will have baseball. baseball tonight had a full hour and then frequently two hours a night where it'll be in two separate hours at mlb network now we do 24-7 like so to compete with us is difficult like we're going to do a better job on baseball and at that time baseball tonight was going to do a better job on baseball than anything else by the way i reject your hypothesis though the greatest shows were friday night fights uh the hot list and i'd have to come up with another one i'm not sure maybe it's pardon the interruption i i don't But that's my own personal bias coming through.

This seems to be the greatest shows where you could catch Brian Kinney wearing a groovy leather jacket and standing next to Max Kellerman. That was Max. That was Max in the leather. I never went to the leather jacket. I'm going to find photographic evidence. Okay. No, no. That was Max, man. Max and I joke about that. We sometimes say, like Max's brothers would say, you know, we'll look back on a time when it was, Max Kellerman, Brian Kenny, Teddy Atlas, and Bob Papa, and Joe Tessitore all in the same show.

And we're like, what, will we? And yet, you know, like you guys are sad about baseball tonight, we were very sad about Friday night fights. You know, and I never thought I'd see that show go away. I never thought I'd see baseball tonight go away. Yeah, I feel it. I lived through it. I've moved on, but there's no question you look back with a bit of nostalgia. Brian Kenny, thanks for doing this.

Really appreciate it. All right, guys. Good talking to you. Take care. Claire Maynir is one of the very best writers at the ringer, yet last week the editors punished her by forcing her to watch Fox News. She joins us today to talk about the experience. How are you, Claire?

June Wittle, how about you? Very good. So the news last week, like the news this week, was all about Trump and Russia. And the joke has been that at 5 p.m. Eastern every single day, there's this incredible bombshell on Twitter that would be the lead story in any other year. Yep, it's

very true. It's been a very exciting couple weeks. I was on vacation for the first of the two weeks and I was like, oh, I'm so glad to be coming back when I come back because I've missed it all. And then last week was even crazier. So you turn over to Fox News in the middle of all this and you see what?

Well, you know, watching all of these stories drop one by one every day, something new. It It seemed so unambiguously bad. You know, he fired his FBI director. He came out and said that he fired his FBI director to stop an investigation.

You know, he's under investigation by a special counsel. He's giving away an allies' intelligence to Russian diplomats. And it all seemed bad, right? Unambiguously bad. And I was sort of curious to see what the spin was. So I tuned into Hannity last week for a few shows. shows. And it turns out the spin is not even spin because they're not even talking about the same issues at all. It's been entirely kind of a twofold discussion, one of what Hannity has taken

to calling the Destroy Trump Alliance, which is a shadowy plot to bring down Trump. And also sort of delving into conspiracies like the Seth-Ritch conspiracy, which has kind of picked up since then. Yeah, the Seth Rich thing is just mind-blowing because he is for people that don't know a former DNC staffer who was murdered in Washington, D.C. What has been picked up by Fox is this kind of, hey, look over here, distraction. Let's not talk about what's actual news, but let's imagine or go down these conspiracy rabbit holes that the DNC or someone in the Democratic Party had Seth Rich murdered because he was. leaking secrets to WikiLeaks to Julian Assange or whatever. I mean, that is for a major news network, that is pretty incredible. Did you see that Kim.com of what was a mega video fame got involved today?

He had a whole exchange with Sean Hannity on her about how he's the one who can prove definitively that Beth Rich was talking to WikiLeaks. So, yeah, it's just been this incredible, bizarre. So out of left field distraction, that is also, like you said, profoundly not about the actual news of the last couple weeks. The point you made in your piece is that it's symptomatic of this age we're living it now, this media age. Whereas we're not even really having an argument about whether Trump, whether there's interesting evidence about collusion with Russia or Trump's sort of financial ties of the financial ties of people in the White House. We're just, we're having actual two sort of weirdly parallel discussions, one about a murder DNC staffer and one about the White House. Is there any end to that?

I mean, is that just, are we now fragmented in such a way, and we have proven, and Fox News has proven that there's such an audience for both things, that we're just going to be on two parallel tracks forever? You know, I wish I felt more optimistic about this. But the thing that is really worrying to me is even as these things that kind of become partisan obsessions, particularly on the right right now, and are then subsequently discredited, you know, whether it's stuff like the attendance at Trump's inauguration or something like PizzaGate, even when these things are sort of definitively established as untrue or silly or dangerous or a waste of time or not proof of what people said they were proof of,

it doesn't change the conversation. There's no sort of chastening. And if anything, it's sort of interpreted as proof that the conspiracy, against Trump or against his supporters is even bigger. So I have a really hard time seeing it getting better just because it's so deeply divisive on such a deep, deep level. And, you know, a lot of these moments were, like, I thought for sure that the appointment of a special counsel

was going to be a moment of not necessarily coming together, but at least having sort of the same conversation that seems like pretty unambiguously nonpartisan bad news for Trump, and it didn't happen. It just divided the conversation even more. I had the other day a smart sports media person suggested to me that Fox's sort of shadow is in some part responsible for this notion of liberal ESPN that we keep hearing about, that middle-aged guys who, you know, are watching Hannity or the Five or whatever it is,

and basically have Fox on all day, then turn over to ESPN and are shocked to see even an even-handed discussion about Colin Kaepernick or LGBT rights or whatever it is. And all of a sudden, because it's so different from their normal world, ESPN becomes this liberal bastion. I don't actually think that theory is completely nuts. Because I think it's part of what you talked about in your story. You get so indoctrinated that the rest of the world seems weird, right? The rest of the world seems like it's off on this island.

Right. And I think, you know, when we look at the legacy of Fox News, I think that, you know, is part of it. I think absolutely that's part of it. It's a kind of a new normal for a very small group of people. Yeah. And I mean, I think that I don't know that Fox News is doing something especially different this year in particular than they've done over the last five or 10 years necessarily, but I think what's different right now is that we know that Donald Trump thrives on cable news. We know that he watches literal hours of it every single morning has done so for years. And we also know that the narratives that are built there directly affect what he does.

Maggie Haberman at the New York Times has had some just incredible stories about the inner workings of the White House since Trump took office and has written a couple times about how, you know, when there's been a setback for the White House, like the failure of Trump's travel ban, and the White House has put out a pretty moderate, reasonable, statement the night of that news, and then the next morning Trump will sit down and watch this rhetoric on Fox as these very, very partisan people sort of go into this loop of hysteria about it, and then he will begin to echo that himself. And despite the kind of neutral response the night before, we'll go on a tweet storm and get worked up. And I could see how, you know, once you've built that ecosystem, and it really is an ecosystem.

But it's kind of hard to look at anything else. Yeah, and it's one thing when grandpa is trapped in the ecosystem. It's another thing when the actual president of the United States is a beautiful of it. Right, right. There was amazing news this last week. MSNBC finished first in the primetime cable news ratings for the first time in its history. And if you look at this 25 to 50-year-old, 54-year-old, excuse me, demographic that advertisers seek out. CNN actually finished second and Fox was third.

And what everyone has said is the problem is that, as you put it, the news is Russia. But Fox, because of their partisan inclination, doesn't want to cover the news. So what does, how do you think, what does Fox do now when you've cast your lot with Trump and all the news is bad news about Trump and you don't cover it and then your ratings go down because that's what America actually wants to know about? What's the solution? You know, I saw something today. I did not have my TV on this morning, but somebody was talking about how today CNN was devoted to just nonstop Trump coverage because he's on his trip right now, whereas Fox was nonstop coverage of the bombing in Manchester and kind of doubling down on certain veins of xenophobia that they and Trump have shown a possibility for.

But I don't know. They certainly don't seem worried at this stage, and they certainly don't seem to be trying to change their messaging, if anything, they're kind of going further down the rabbit hole. And it could be that, you know, if those ratings stay that way, and it really starts to hurt, maybe they do. Or, you know, just Bill O'Reilly is now gone. But he, I think, for a long time, served as a more neutral voice.

on the network, not neutral, but more neutral maybe than somebody like Sean Hannity. And maybe you try to bring in some of those voices. I don't know. But like I said, I don't think Fox is at all at the point where they're considering something like that. Yeah, it's funny because during the primary, Fox was considered to be early on sort of anti-Trump. This is when Trump and Megan Kelly were having this sort of very public battle. and then Rupert Murdoch sort of realizes that good business is being pro-Trump because he's going to win the nomination. And also because a huge chunk of Fox News viewers are Trump voters.

He's right in their demographic. So all of a sudden the network becomes incredibly pro-Trump. And I imagine that some of the fear, don't you think now, is that if you were to sort of come out against the president that you leave yourself, you leave your right flank open for Bill O'Reilly and Sinclair or whomever to sort of start a new news network. or something online. Right, absolutely. Or Breitbart, right, or whoever. Right. And I mean, you know, that was sort of the popular theory was if Trump had lost.

He probably would have gone on to start his own news network, right? And we're sort of prepping stars to do something like that. But obviously that has not happened. But you get into these weird moments where it's clear that the messaging kind of goes both ways between Fox and the White House. After Hannity had been sort of having these shows for days on end, last week, Mike Pence sent out, or Mike Pence's team, the White House team sent out an email from Mike Pence with the goal of fundraising

that just said, in all caps, sabotage and all about trying to protect Trump from the many people trying to sabotage him. So it's just, you know, it just goes in this loop that way. One of the biggest news bombshells last week was the death of Roger Ailes, who was, of course, the spiritual and actual godfather of Fox News. When you're watching last week, put aside if this is even possible, the ideology and what you're seeing on there, just in terms of theatrics, in terms of style, in terms of broadcasting,

how is Fox different? How is the network that ALs created different than CNN, MSNBC, and other stuff we watch on TV? I think it's different right now, at least, in the sense that the president obviously is sort of part of the machinery in a way that I don't think the president has ever been the part of cable news machinery to that degree anyway. I think that you see similar things on the left for sure. like I will go home and my mom is just, she is a diehard Mado fan, and I don't personally watch Mado, but it's always interesting to kind of go home and see how consistent the messaging is there as well. But at the same time, Mado is talking about the actual news of the day instead of sort of spinning a totally different narrative entirely. So I think that's kind of the big thing right now.

that Fox really has just split off entirely from the sort of news cycle. Claire McNair, thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Dwight Eisenhower once warned America about the military industrial complex, but who will sound the alarm for the Chicago Cubs literary industrial complex? I nominate John Greenberg, editor and lead columnist at the Athletic Chicago. John, thanks for joining me. Oh, thanks for having me.

Every sports writer in America has this problem right now, which is that we get all these galleys from the publishers, and right now all of us have like five or six Chicago Cubs Insta books on our desk. I can kind of like I can dip in and out, but this is your job. How many of these will you actually read? You know, I'll get through them all. I actually had my assistant editor, Lauren Commitour. She loves to read as well,

and she read the first three, or the maybe not the first thing, but the three main ones. I read one of them was written by my friend Dave Kaplan, The Plan, which we've been making fun of him about for about a year. I have not read Bertucci's yet, although I heard it's very good. And then there's also the David Ross book about being a teammate. I probably won't read that one.

I'll be honest. I might skim it. And then Scott Simon has one. Yeah, the NPR. The NPR guy. I actually have one of his old, I have that book home and away I've never read. I put it like a book there that he wrote about his fandom then. And that book kind of looks good.

I might check that off in the library. I will read it for Ducci. I will say like the thing that kind of, I was talking about this the other day with someone, and I know probably what you want to talk about, insta books is that, you know, you don't get as much from the insta book because you got to get it out really quickly. I think it's two months to write it.

So there's going to be a lot of like play by play. You know what I mean? And like it's not like Busterolny end of the Yankee dynasty. You know what I'm saying? Like really, I love those, you know, like really well done research books. Yeah, well, they're like pulp novels, aren't they? They're sort of written in white heat. You know, and a pulp novelist would have like a shootout or a sex scene.

And a sports writer writing in white heat would do a bunch of play by play from the World Series. Right. Yeah. So that's what's happened. I think it's what's funny when I think about Cubs books is that there has actually never been a great Cubs book somewhat surprisingly. And, you know, if we think of the White Sox, right, we have eight men out. My Wobagon, Texas Rangers have this great book called Seasons in Hell. The Yankees have a billion books.

Do you have a theory about why we've never had a great Chicago Cubs book? You know, I think in a lot of ways because the book publishing industry wants, you know, usually you want a winner. right or at least like some drama and there just really hasn't hasn't been it maybe it's also I mean Jerome Holtsman wrote you know no cheering in the press box yeah you know and he covered the Cubs and the White Sox

I'm trying honestly I've said it took there's a writer Paul Sullivan I'm friends with the tribute and he's covered the team you know pretty much around the longest and I've told him he should have been writing a book all this time and I think it's just you know guys are just more maybe it's more just a work a day

type mentality here I mean Sam Smith wrote the best, you know, the best covering a team book, I think, of all time for the Bulls. Absolutely. You know, the Jordan rules. So it's not like it can't be done. I mean, I've, honestly, I've sent stuff out to agents trying to do it, and I really haven't got much response, and I've just kind of been busy. You know, I wanted to do it last year, too, but I was starting up to cite the athletic, and I just really didn't think I'd have the time.

And I'm still trying to maybe put together notes for this year, because I think it's kind of interesting, you know, the kind of hangover, season they're having. But yeah, I don't know why there hasn't been a great Cubs book. Now, I've refresh my memory. You know, the Lardner book, where did that guy play? I'm trying to think, I can't think of the name right now. I'm like totally blanking when I brought this up on a podcast. Are you talking about you know, you know me out? Who do you play for? Boy, I can't remember. We'll look that up. We'll do that. I feel like he was in Chicago. I think he said it in Chicago, though. Well, that might be, that might be close then, even if it's fictional.

There was a guy on the Cubs we used to call, we used to say it was a lot like the busher. The guy used to play. It was just kind of like a big knucklehead. What do you find from being in Chicago that people want to relive about last season, given the long wait, all the years of ineptitude? What is it they want in book form or otherwise right now? I guess maybe some reassurance that it actually happened. You know, I think they like the.

deep details. People really fell in love with this team and it's not a controversial team. No one wants to read about any fights really. I mean, a little bit, you know, there's always that curiosity. But people like the stuff like Anthony Rizzo dressing as rocky. You know, in boxing, like,

naked or half naked. They want, like, Theo stuff. Anything you write about Theo is like gold. You know, because people just love Theo and love to read about him because he's so, you know, he's eloquent, he's funny. And he says, like, you know, all these high-minded things that people dig. You know, I guess game seven, I mean, people love to relive game seven,

maybe the whole world series. I mean, we were yesterday, I was at the park, and we were talking with Bruce Bochy about, and Joe Madden about game four of the NLDS, because that turned out to be a very pivotal game. But I think really all that, I think the first two rounds have washed away, they really want to hear about maybe a little bit of the regular season,

and then into the World Series, and just remember how, because you've got to give, like, I would say the White Sox got screwed, historically, the 2005, because they just blew through the playoffs. You know, they sweat the Astros who are not a national team, you know, four games. And then it was over. The Cubs, you know, it was going to be a big deal regardless there in the World Series.

But then it turns into one of the most dramatic series, you know, of all time. It really, like, paid off in that sense. Yeah, against another cursed team, the Indians. I think it's funny. I had a book editor tell me one time that great baseball games or famous baseball games were, like, big battles. in World War II and that we could always revisit them and always find unearthed new details than we hadn't before. And I sort of think game seven like that is going to be like that, that we're going to go

back and back and find this little thing and then someone will come through with a confession about something, about some minor bit of gamesmanship or something, and it'll just live forever. Right. We've got to find this soon, though, because, man, they have combed through every detail of that, you know? The one thing we didn't know, we didn't know the stuff about. Theo and his kid, and he brought that up in his Yale speech.

We did, like, the transcript of it on our site when he said Theo spoke at Yale's class day. And he brought us some stuff about a son that was really cute. But, yeah, you're right. I mean, we should, I guess the Indian stuff hasn't been his mind. You know, maybe we need someone to see if there's an actual record. I think the next step is if someone actually recorded the, like, the Jason Hayward's speech in the wake room. That would be the find. That would be the fine. If they can record conversations in the White House, as Trump has alleged, why can't we record the Cubs locker?

No, and I think, you know, I was really amazed at the Theo story because in this world we live in, where everything gets harvested for news on Twitter or otherwise. How did something like that make it past not only Tom Verducci, but Wright Thompson and all the other editors, excuse me, all the other writers who have written about Theo over the last year? That's pretty incredible. The one about his kid, the details about his kid. Yeah. Yeah, you know what? He doesn't really want to talk about his family that much. And I remember that was in the right story.

And the right story came out, I think he came out during the playoffs, if I remember, or around that time. And he said, like, yeah, my wife would be the best source for you, but you can't talk to her. And I think, you know, obviously we're not talking to an eight-year-old kid. I don't, I don't, I can't remember I ever really seen him that much except for after playoff games. So yeah, that one, good for Theo For keeping a couple things for himself You know I mean Theo, listen, talk about a book

If Theo wanted to publish like any kind of book It would be like the biggest seller in the world And obviously he helped for Ducci a lot And he helped the other guys a little bit But Theo could really I mean, he can do anything Anything he touches like turns to gold right now But that would be interesting

I actually really like At dealing with Theo a ton I mean for a guy that's like the most Pretty much one of the most famous executives if not the most famous right now, he's surprisingly down to earth and, like, fun to talk to, which is very helpful in my job. Yeah, you're absolutely right about the Theo book. I mean, in book publishing and in whatever little world of sports book and publishing there is,

that is, I think, probably next to maybe a Jeter memoir or something we haven't had yet. If you talk about people that are active in baseball, that is the single most sought-after book. That's a million-dollar book that will be written because you hit Boston, you hit Chicago, You get the two most dramatic World Series wins in a long time. I do think it's funny that all the Cubs' instant nostalgia is very much kind of in the Sons of Moneyball vein. It's about the building of a team. It's about the architect. I think the Red Sox are the obvious analogy here, because that was our last little literary outpouring.

I feel that was half Theo, but it was also half the idiots. It was a lot about the players and this weird rag tag bunch. I feel the Cubs thing is very Theo-centered. Am I wrong about that? No, you're 100% right. I mean, there's the Madden stuff, and there's a Madden book coming out. It should be out sometimes this season

because my friend wrote half of it with the Tampa Bay writer. So there's the Madden stuff, though Game 7 kind of took the sheen off Madden like this genius. He was about to get really, really hammered by the national press. But yeah, and then, you know, the thing is

the other players on the, the good players in the Cubs are either really young, you know, so they're not like name brands yet, or they're not that personable, or, you know, like John Lester, you know, John, they're pitchers, you know, unless you've got like a Roger Clemens type persona, you know, that's not, you're not really going to be a superstar. So yeah, it really is Theo, and like we've joked that, you know, oh, now they're good, Theo's has it easier, but he really doesn't.

And like, I'll give you a good example. After, it was the last game of the 2016 season. It was in Milwaukee. And brief aside, I remember this because I found out I was getting laid off from ESPN earlier that week. And I stole my buddy, he gave me a pep talk, and I went to the last home, the last Cubs game, just to do a column, you know, keep going on. So I was going to still cover the playoffs. And Theo, you know, I met him out outside of seats. You know, in road games, the GMs and presidents would ever sit in the stands, usually.

So he was out there, he came out in Milwaukee, and he gave me great stuff. He actually gave me a really good pep talk about my career. And then I end up taking about 15 pictures of him in a fan because everyone kept stopping. So in the middle of our interview, I'd stop, take out someone's camp, take someone's phone, take a picture, people are taking pictures of us talking. Like he jokes that he can walk around fine in Chicago, but like he gets, you know, people don't mob him, but like he is super famous. And he's, I mean, he's in very in demand for speeches right now.

Like he could do two or three a week for a lot of money. And just to his control over the franchise, the smoothness with which it operates. That affects all this too, because I remember growing up, the Cowboys won three Super Bowls when I was in high school. All those books were about how this team almost came apart or was about to just fly apart. Whereas Cubs nostalgia is about how just wonderfully well everything went and, you know, it's going to continue to go hopefully. Yeah, I mean, there's some stuff that, you know, it doesn't get reported. as much, you know, the off-the-record things about how, like, people really get along

some ways, you know, there's always a little friction here or there, but, you know, the thing is, Theo was brought into this team that, you know, it never won. And, you know, the management of the Tribune company and the Wrigley family before that was so poor, and then Ricketts, you know, he was obviously, you can really know

what he got himself into. How could he? And he really, they really had a, through hell Mary, because we were all writing, like, they should hire a Theo Epstein type. And they actually hired Theo Fstein. I wasn't plugged into the, you know, the turmoil in Boston, I guess, like I should have been, to see that would have been an option. But yeah, so they hired Theo, and then the first, you know, a couple years it was slow. And, you know, you hate Theo because he's that smart guy that,

you know, he doesn't tell you he's smart, but kind of does. And he was like, listen, this is what's going to go on. You're going to complain. Everyone's going to say it's too slow. And then all of a sudden we're going to catch fire and all these fans are going to fall in love with the prospects. And we're like, whatever, man, this is a big market. Don't treat us like we're, you know, we're kids and some small market. And of course, everything he said came true, even though a lot of it came true in ways he didn't imagine it was going to come true. Like, he didn't know. You know, he couldn't, he could not, even he would admit it a hundred times that he had no clue, like, how quickly it was going to come together like this. And that they got really lucky on some breaks. But you're right,

deal is just like he's got, he's good looking guy, he's got a name brand, and he's actually, like, interesting to talk to, which, you know, in today's world, you know, there are, one, we don't get a ton of access to the athletes. There aren't a lot of athletes that want to be, they don't want to be super interesting as a brand, or they want to be very bland. And listen, there's some sports I'm talking to you from Bears right now at House Hall. I mean, I think the GM is good to the

B-writers, but like, you're not going to get anything from them if you're not, you know, in tight. Ristillo, you know, I've gotten a little close with him and he's really easy to talk to. So, you know, he gets a good, he gets a good treatment from us because he treats us well. And he,

actually provides information on the record, too. He's good in groups. He's good and telling him stories. I think that's the big thing, right? He's good telling stories. And he makes people feel smarter when he talks. Can we spend a moment congratulating David Ross for turning 140 regular season games as a cub

into not only a memoir, which would have been, by the way, unimaginable two years ago in David Ross's life, to a starring role on a network television show dancing with the stars where he is apparently still alive or got a perfect score or something like that. I cannot bring myself to watch. That's incredible.

That's incredible. I mean, talk about the winners of the Cubs nostalgia lottery. David Ross. You did it, buddy. I mean, it's unbelievable the David Ross story. That he, you know, listen, this is what I always say. I joke with people about opening a consulting firm called clubhouse guys, where you get hired by agents or teams, and you, you know,

You talk to these guys on coming up or whatever and be like, listen, man, be nice to reporters. Be always be at your locker. It takes like 20 minutes your day. Tell stories, be funny, and you will have a career for the rest of your life in sports. It usually helps if you're a white backup catcher. But it could go for anything. The backup catchers in the Cubs have always been for some reason very personable. I don't know what it is, but we always find ourselves talking to Paul Baco or some of these guys.

So, yeah, it's amazing what he did. And, you know, he was really, his first year, he was basically just there to catch John Lester. And he didn't hit it all that first year. And then he actually came back last year and hit pretty well for most of the season. I mean, you know, when we make, listen, there's plenty of a blowback in Chicago. People are, you know, sick of it a little bit, right? Sure.

You know, we're a little cynical here. But he did hit a homer in game seven off Andrew Miller. So that's like even, that's the funny part is that doesn't even get, that's crazy that he hit a homer off Andrew Miller. the best reliever in the playoffs. This guy, you know, it's amazing that John Lester, John Lester got him the job. You know, I mean, Theo liked him and he worked with him before,

and they knew he'd be a good, you know, veteran guy, but he's here to catch John Lester, basically, which is just, it isn't an amazing story, and we don't feel like it's ever going to end. Like, you'll be, God knows what he's going to be doing next. But you know what? I talked to him when he was, we all met with him when he did the seven-th inning stretch here, couldn't have been nicer.

Couldn't have been a nicer guy. And I do think this, we all seem to think this dancing with the stars think a little rigged with the ABC Disney stuff. Not a bad conspiracy theory. By the way, you start your firm Clubhouse guys. I'm going to start a competing firm Clubhouse cancers. And I'm actually fascinated. Who gets more TV and book deals? Because it would be close, right?

Clubhouse cancers are interesting too. And, you know, A rod is on Fox. So, you know, there's hope for both of us in there. Let me ask you one last question because I think the Cubs finally winning the World Series changes a lot of things. There's been a lot of talk about how it's changed the mindset of Cub fans who have existed in this realm of loserdom for so long. Do you notice any change at all so far, it's early, but so far, in the Chicago media,

who, in the way they talk about the Cubs and the way they cover the Cubs? That's a good question. Well, you know, here's the thing. I moved here in 2003, and I lived in Chicago. Chicago and Evanston in a couple summers in college, but full-time I moved here in 03, you know, I think around May, so the season it just started. The Cubs, you know, were really good. They obviously got on that run that year and had that famous game.

So there was a lot of expectations that year in the next year. And then, you know, 07, 08, 09, when they didn't make the playoffs, there were those expectations again. So, you know, I guess you have to end. The biggest thing is there's no more talk about, you know, there's no more fatalism with the Cubs. that I mean it was that was you know that was missing for a couple of those years like I said but that that stuff's done there is it isn't there anymore there's no more like well this is definitely going to go wrong you know there's no more smirking like you know it even happened in the playoffs a little bit you know like smirking when stuff was going wrong like here you

go again they can't escape it you know no matter who's in charge or how well the team's built there's something there yeah the mystical the mystical nature of cubs reporting is probably done I think that that part is over. You're not going to get the poetry of that. I think we all wrote our Game 7 stories, you know, and mine was probably pretty overwrought, at least one of them. And, you know, we then went to the parade, and we did that too, and, you know, all the people.

And then it kind of just went back to normal. You know, I always joke that the thing that made me happy is how much criticism there was at Joe Madden in the offseason. Like, every time the guy would talk, it was just people bringing up Game 7. I'm like, that is great, because we've been, you know, Dusty Baker gets killed for everything. Lupinella.

You know, it's like, things are back to normal. We always said, like, what's going to happen when the manager wins the World Series will be treated like a hero? No, people treat Joe Madden like he's an idiot, even though he won the World Series. So I do think that is the big thing that's changed. I think people trust Theo now. That has changed.

You know, no one's ripping on the owners anymore. But, you know, things always have a way of working out, right? This run is going to end, and then people are going to just go back ripping on everyone again. I feel like there is always going to be some normalcy, you know, with any team. But, yeah, I would say the mythical nature has been buried. The goat has been buried. I think we could call that the Shaughnessy effect when all the voodoo and mystical thing

and the one column that you write every year come hell or higher than goes out the window and you just got to read about baseball. That's, you know, what, that's, and I said I was, you know, listen, it's good. We have a new business, the athletic, you know, it's a subscription thing. So what we want, Cubs fans to be happy to want to subscribe to our content, right? So them winning is good for me personally But I also wanted them to win because I'm tired of writing the same stuff Like something you know like I'm just tired of it

I mean there's new problems now but like Let's move on to new story people So thank you to the 2016 Cubs for for ending the bad The bad stories and now we can have new bad stories You can read John Greenberg and subscribe to John Greenberg On The Athletic Chicago He will be filing columns between reading 18 Cubs books this year.

John, thanks for doing this. Thanks for having me, Brian. I appreciate it. Huge thanks to Brian Kinney, Claire McNier, and John Greenberg. I'm Brian Curtis of the Ringer. Stay tuned for more great stuff on Channel 33. See you soon.