Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1235: Becoming a Beat Writer and Marketing Mike Trout

Episode Date: June 26, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler discuss Lindsey’s transition from blogging to beat writing, how to talk to players and become comfortable in the clubhouse, the contrasts between the Yankees and Mets (and Aaron Boone and Mickey Callaway), writing about teams vs. writing about baseball’s big picture, the beat-writing fraternity, being a beat writer […]

Give me back the beat, give me back the beat, give me back the only thing that makes my life complete. If you come back to me, I'll be dancing in the street. I missed the tune we had before that made me tap my feet. I used to rock this boy asleep, that you've gone She's really gone Give me back the beat and let's rock on Hello and welcome to episode 1235 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, not joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs today.

Jeff is sick. He was losing his voice on our last episode, and he has now entirely lost his voice. His immune system is weakened by working from home, and he was in contact with other human beings this weekend, and it did not go well for him. So he'll be back later in the week. But filling in for Jeff, I am happy to be joined by Lindsay Adler, who covers both the Mets and the Yankees for The Athletic. Hey, Lindsay. Hi, Ben. So later in this episode, we're going to have a guest. We're going to talk to Jeff Heckelman, who is a former MLB PR guy. He is going to tell us why it is or isn't MLB's fault that Mike Trout isn't more famous, which is a debate that we hear all the time, that it's MLB's fault that they're

not doing a good job of marketing their stars. Maybe, but it's debatable and Jeff will tell us why. But this is not terrible timing for Jeff to be sick if he had to get sick at some point, because I wanted to talk to you anyway, because I'm kind of fascinated by the career change that you have made this year. And for people who don't know you, you were at BuzzFeed News and then you were at Deadspin. And now you are at The Athletic. So you are basically a beat writer for two teams at the same time. And so whenever I make one of my visits to a clubhouse in New York, I see you. I saw you at Yankee Stadium earlier this year.

I saw you at Citi Field this past weekend. Now you're in Philly because the Yankees are there. So how did you make this transition? What prompted you to? Was it purely just kind of economic considerations or worries about Univision or Gizmodo or whatever? Or did it have to do with your actually wanting to do this type of work rather than just be at home and lead a hermit's existence like me and Jeff? I think the best thing about Deadspin for me was that I was pushed and challenged to do all sorts of different things. I got to write personally. I got to do straightforward new stuff. I got to do all

sorts of different things. And at the end of the day, I realized that really all I wanted to do was something with like a bedrock of reporting. And that's what makes me feel most secure personally and in my career. And so when The Athletic reached out to me about this, I found it really intriguing because of course, one of the limitations at Deadspin is not really having access to teams. And that was always kind of limiting. And so I felt that to be able to continue to build a career in this forever contracting industry, it was really a necessary step.

And, you know, I don't know that I would have, no, I know I would have been an awful fit at a newspaper or something traditional. So going somewhere where the coverage is very features-based, I think, was the only way I could make this work. So I think I really just got lucky. Yeah. I mean, putting myself in your place, it seems like a really intimidating transition. I mean, putting myself in your place, it seems like a really intimidating transition. I've been going into clubhouses and I've been a member of the Baseball Writers Association for several years now, but I wouldn't say I feel completely at home in that environment

even now. And I don't cover teams on a daily basis. So I just kind of make targeted strikes. If I need to talk to someone for an article or a book or whatever, I'll just go up there and find that player and then I'll leave. And no one really knows who I am. Definitely the players don't know who I am. Had you had much experience being in clubhouses talking to players before you switched over to the athletic? Not in this capacity at all. Right. So was that somewhat scary? I would imagine it would be.

Okay. So the thing is like, I'm an idiot and didn't really anticipate like how much of a change this would be for me, which I know sounds extremely stupid, but you know, I was like, okay, reporting and writing is reporting and writing and sure the like variety and scale and nature of it is different but at the end of the day you're doing the same thing okay this is it's it's it's a whole new way of interacting with people and being around the same people all the time and trying to find different ways to finish stories and And so, yeah, it's definitely been an adjustment. And I would say only recently I've started to feel settled in. And I think that's because I've, you know, been given the opportunity to go on a few more road trips in the last month or six

weeks like that. Yeah, I've never really gotten to the point where I would walk into a clubhouse unless it was the Sonoma Stompers Clubhouse where people would recognize me and we would just have small talk. It's always kind of get down to business, whatever I'm talking to that player about. So you're covering two teams at the same time. So that's sort of an obstacle, I guess, in that you're not always on the road with either one. And so they're not seeing you every day. So has that hurt? And what tips or tricks have you picked up since the start of the season when it comes to getting players to say something interesting? I think I've really just had to figure out in a sense what most guys prefer. Going into spring training, I really had no idea what I was doing. And because it's spring training, and there's just not really much of total consequence going on, I tried to make small talk kind of the basis of things. And some guys, they're so busy. And especially on the New York beat, there's like 800 of us, like some of these guys just don't need to make small talk. And so kind of figuring out who I have things in common with,

and especially, I feel like the dam has started to break a little bit for me with both clubs, as I've, you know, finished some one off stories. So I've had a little bit, I've had more conversations of like true relevance and consequence with some people. Yeah. It's just kind of inherently an awkward situation unless you're there every day, or maybe even if you are, I've been reading No Cheering in the Press Box, the old timey sports writer, oral history book. And things were completely different in those days because the writers would be on the trains with the teams, they'd be playing cards, they'd be going drinking with them. And that affected the coverage in a lot of ways that weren't always

great, but there just wasn't such a separation between those worlds. And they were kind of social friends in a way that we just aren't today. But when I walk into a clubhouse, it's not like I'm awed by the baseball players or their salaries or anything. It's just they're at their workplace. They're at their office. And my job is to go up and interrupt them essentially. And I have a right to be there too. We all do. But it's still just kind of like being at a cocktail party where half the people

are naked part of the time and they don't really want to talk to you and they're busy with something else. And if you do engage them, they might just kind of give you canned answers that aren't really helping anyone. So it's just it's a tough sort of icebreaker type environment, I think. It really is. And like, you know, like you and I or anyone else can do all of the research, all of the reading, all of the reporting in the world. And because we've never been there, we're still going to ask questions that are just stupid because we don't get it. But I think about it like, you know, unless I've, and I don't think I've gotten to this point with any players so far, but like, unless I have like a, an actual just kind of friendly free flow of information, casual, how's your family, whatnot, back and forth. Like I am going up to these guys and trying to find, trying, trying to poke at something kind of in the dark.

trying trying to poke at something kind of in the dark like imagine if I went up to you and was just like oh I don't even know just without knowing someone it's really you just wind up asking them things that they may not find all that interesting and important about themselves and so that's kind of been a thing that I've worked on is trying to find a way to kind of get guys to volunteer what they what they like who they are, what they're into instead of saying, Hey, I read that you worked out with guy XYZ and the offseason. Can you tell me about that? Because maybe they're like, I don't know, I met with that guy twice. Why does this matter? Like, why are there so many damn reporters asking me about these like, you know, like inconsequential things all the time. And so I try to really think like these guys who even though I cover them, if they were to come up to me and try to write a

story about me, I know it would be difficult on their end too. Yeah. And I'm often starting these conversations with guys where I just start reeling off information that I have about them. And it's just kind of, it's almost creepy. It's like, you know, here is your swing rate on O2 counts or whatever. I try not to be too wonky, but often I'm looking for specific information about some thing that I've picked up about that player. And so you're coming in having researched this person. And I think some of them appreciate that, that you're coming in having done some work and looked information up. So you're not just kind of casting about or looking for some narrative that you're hoping

that they'll support. But on the other hand, you're sort of lecturing them about what they're doing at times, which you kind of have to be careful about sounding as if you are the authority on this player and you're telling them something that you've noticed about them. And I don't know, it's just, I'm always conscious as well of how many times has this guy been asked this question? And I'm hoping that I'm not conscious as well of how many times has this guy been asked this question. And I'm hoping that I'm not writing an article that's been written a dozen times already. But it's almost inevitable that whatever you're asking about, this guy has probably heard before from someone. And so it's a first time for you, but this person has already had this conversation in some way.

So I try to avoid that where I can, but there's no way to avoid it every time. Yeah. I, I was talking to a player who came over from a small market team once, and I asked him something that I was kind of just curious about as, as a theory. And he was like, no, I, he was like, that's a good question. I can't say I've ever really thought about it. You know, it's really funny because there are so many of you guys trying to, you know, be competitive and do your jobs that you guys look for so many small things that since coming here, I've had to think about my game kind of differently because you guys keep raising things to me that I hadn't even thought of. And I was

like, man, it was like, I was like that, um, that gif of Weeby from the wire, like, just like totally blown away. Like, oh shit. Because like these, these guys, you know, there are, there are the Trevor Bowers of the world. There are guys who take a very scientific or even, you know, not in the case of Bauer, but may not have the physical gifts to just kind of play on instinct. But again, it's the same, like if you came, if a player came to me and started breaking down the components of kind of my work process, my writing, my brainstorming, things like that, or even the components of me taking care of my dog, I'd be like, I don't know. This is just something I've developed. And so I have had that moment where I bring some statistical quirk to a guy and I'm like,

hey, are you trying something new? They're like, well, I don't even think about this. I'm like, okay, cool. Yeah. I was talking to Rich Hill and Ross Stripling this weekend. And in each case, we were talking about a pivotal conversation that they had when they changed something in Rich Hill's case with Brian Bannister in Boston or in Stripling's case with Andrew Friedman. And I asked each of them, well, do you ever think about if you just hadn't been at that place at that time, if you'd been in a different organization, if you hadn't crossed paths with Bannister and Friedman, would you be here today? Would you be having this success? Would you be out of the game?

And both of them said, huh, I never thought of that. And I don't know whether they're just humoring me and trying to make me think that I asked an original question when really they've gotten this question 10 times or whether they really don't think about it that way. Because to them, it's just their life. And it's kind of, you know, one day after another or one day at a time, as they always say. And for us, it's like this story, this narrative that we're trying to craft. So you think about how it could have gone differently, but we don't always think about that when it comes to our own lives. Yeah, I mean, I think when you and I or anyone else is when we're writing about these guys,

we're trying to better showcase the impressively difficult work they do to fans and other people who do not have the privilege of simply going up to a guy and asking him why the hell he's stopped using one specific pitch. Yeah. And I think they get it. But you know, the thing that I've found is I've tried to identify at least a couple people, usually players who who I can at least ask dumb questions. I would say that with the Yankees, Austin Romine is really good with humoring all of us and just being like, no, you guys, this is the deal. Jay Bruce is that guy for the Mets. Understanding that in a lot of cases, if they don't explain things to us,

that in a lot of cases, if they don't explain things to us, we can't write about them very well. And so I would say Jay Bruce and Austin Romine kind of act as translators from their position to ours. Yeah. And often the person who plays that role in a clubhouse will be like the backup catcher or the last guy on the bench or something. And you wonder, why does this guy get quoted so much? And it's because he has time to talk and he's willing to talk and he has time to think about this stuff. So we all go to those players. That's kind of how it works. of these stories that you can pursue compared to Deadspin, let's say, or is it freeing in certain ways? I mean, on the one hand, you are primarily covering these two teams. And so it's a little harder to write about league-wide stories unless you can find a way to apply it to these two teams. But on the other hand, you can write about the 25th man on the Mets roster at any point, and that's actually something you can get a story out of, whereas it wouldn't have been before. Yeah, I would say it's actually

increased the range of what I feel like I can write. Like last year, I had this very nerdy spreadsheet of the rates of three true outcomes per team dating back like many many years and I was like tracking it and I was waiting for it to become like statistically significant and at that point the Rays had some like unprecedented rate of three true outcomes and yeah I I didn't have access to write any to talk to anyone with the organization about it. And so that kind of died on the vine because while the Rays were emblematic of a big, large trend that definitely does translate, I would say, to like a deadspin audience. It wasn't something I could kind of finish.

Whereas now, like I have a story that should run this week about a Player just getting quicker into his arm slot. You know, he's he's not a particularly he's not a Cy Young guy, but something very Particular is changed with his mechanics and in beat world at least in mine That is that is worth writing about and so it's not everything has to be so big picture because like I said, we're trying to just help fans understand really what's changed, what's working, what's not. And so even if it's not Jacob deGrom or Luis Severino, it's still a picture they're seeing every fifth day or every

few days if they're a reliever. So I think it's actually made things a little bit easier in that way, which I was not expecting. So you're going back and forth between these two teams that just could not have more different results right now or atmospheres surrounding them. And I know you're probably not rooting for either, except to the extent that you get stories out of it. So do you get more stories out of the Yankees being good or the Mets being bad? And when you're covering one team or the other, are you thinking, oh man, it's a Yankees series. I have all these good players to write about, or oh, it's a Mets series. Everyone's struggling. What doom and gloom these good players to write about or oh it's a Mets series everyone's struggling what doom and gloom am I going to write about today does it make a difference?

I would say I would say there's you know a number of differences I think with the Yankees every single person on that roster is somebody and it's very easy to write, you know, one-off examinations of some particular element of a guy's game because that's fine. The team is winning other than being swept by the Rays this weekend, which everyone seems to think the season's over. But it just, it's easy. just, it's easy. I think it's easier to write kind of about the components of the Yankees versus with the Mets I've found in recent weeks. And, and I should say that I'm around the Yankees more than I am with the Mets, but the Mets, what people want to read right now is really only big picture chaos, unless it's about Jacob deGrom. Yeah. So, you know, and that was something that like really stood out to me this weekend because, you know, they're losing these games. It's,

it's, it's total chaos, total anarchy. The Dodgers are a team that's also had a lot of injuries. Everyone is just at their breaking point. And after Saturday's loss, I asked Noah Syndergaard how his flat ground throwing had gone. And he said it was fine. He said his finger felt fine. This is like if DeGrom were not having the season he's having, like this is an ace who has been on the disabled list. I tweeted something like Noah Syndergaard says he feels fine after throwing or whatever. A bunch of people were like, who cares? What about Sandy Alderson? What about the Wilpons? And I was like, Noah Syndergaard? People definitely care

about whether or not Noah Syndergaard is on the road back to throwing. And maybe that was just poor timing on my part or something. But I was like, I'm interested to know if this dude's finger is going to be a big problem in the long run. But it was a very funny moment that it was like, who cares about Noah Syndergaard? We need to focus on the state of the organization and how this validates everything I have said about this organization for the past X amount of years. And so I'm realizing that there needs to be larger pursuits and examinations with the Mets is the point I was getting to. Having seen them both up close, do you detect differences in the ways that these organizations operate? I mean, the Mets have this reputation for being inept and handling injuries poorly. And meanwhile, it seems like everything the Yankees touch turns

to gold right now. Do you sense that whether it's in terms of injuries or just the messaging and the PR efforts? I mean, is there a real difference? Would you know that there was this giant gap in the perception and reputation of these two organizations? I would say, and I really tried to go in with a clear head, I would say it's night and day. Even from the PR standpoint, the way that the Yankees do things, it's very regimented. There is just an expectation that if you played a significant role in a game, you will talk to us. You don't always have to say anything interesting, but you are accountable for your successes and your struggles. And I think that comes from top down, but I also think that comes from the veterans in the room. It's easy,

I think, for the Yankees to be functional because they're good, because they have the resources and whatnot. But they managed to kind of keep their shit together. The Mets, by my understanding and by my quick and hasty interpretation as a person who is not yet fully plugged in, but has talked to people kind of on the inside, when things go wrong with the Mets organization, they kind of turn against each other. And I've been told there's just a huge amount of group think there are so many cooks in that kitchen. And I think it's very obvious. You see the things that are pushed out through the media. It can be obvious who's talking to whom. And it really is as chaotic as it seems. And I think, like you said, every player the Yankees touch turned to gold.

Well, Mickey Calloway told us yesterday that Dominic Smith has never bunted in his professional career. Like, I am not a bunt happy person. Like I am not a bunt, happy person. But the way things have gone with the Mets' best prospects has, I think, been a huge indictment of the flow of information and proficiency from the top down. It is very stark. And so you're a rookie beat writer who's covering two rookie managers. And you wrote about Mickey Calloway and Aaron Boone a couple weeks ago. So what are your thoughts on how each of them is acclimating to this role? I think they just have very, very different jobs. I think Aaron Boone is fun. He does have a really

great long view perspective. I think there was obviously a lot of concern about bringing in an experienced guy in with these set of expectations, but I think he has kept a cool head. And I think Mickey Calloway and his coaching staff, they're just trying to find a way to win with what they're working with. There have been a couple times where Callaway said, you know, when more players were injured or whatever, we are working with the guys we have. Or the other night saying that after Zach Wheeler gave up a grand slam in the sixth inning, they brought him back out for a seventh at like 102 pitches because they felt that he gave them the best opportunity to get through that inning. I think they were both very smart men who, I mean, there are growing

pains. There are growing pains. I think it's been big for Mickey coming over and figuring out bench and bullpen management in game. But I don't think his mistakes are as consequential as they seem because the overall proficiency of the team is just not there, I guess I would say. Yeah. Well, and so you don't have one of the types of beat writing jobs where you have to be tweeting the lineup the second it goes up and, you know, necessarily writing stories about every single transaction and this guy's on the DL and this guy's activated. You can focus a little more on the bigger stories and take your time. But do you feel a pressure to develop connections and get scoops and report things that, you know, go beyond talking to guys and drawing connections, but actually

uncovering something. I mean, do you see that as part of your mandate in a way that maybe it wasn't before? I would say that I'm probably never going to be a transactions person. My strength is in being thorough. And so I think when I write about someone in a feature perspective, it's very nice that at this company, I guess, important stories, I suppose if I were to take on the Mets front office dysfunction right now, I believe that I would try to dig very deep, but at the same time, I don't need to break the news of who's being optioned and who's coming up. Yeah, right. That's going to get out one way or another, even if it's just a team press release. So it seems a little less important. And so do you find that your Twitter mentions are much different now than they used to be, whether it's people who want you to just stick to tweeting

about these two teams or one of these two teams or are just mad because of how the Mets season is going or whatever it is? Like, has it changed? Obviously, it's changed your tweets in that you're often tweeting about these two teams now. But do you feel like it's changed your online persona and the response to it in some way? I mean, I do genuinely tweet about injuries a lot. And I tweet about who is doing something new in the lineup. And some of my friends from Deadspin have texted me my own tweets and have been like, you know, just mocking me for going, I guess, to an extent full beat writer. But I would play by play so much. I would say the the big thing this is this is maybe a plea to the people who follow me on Twitter. I will tweet something about the Mets and something going wrong. And then Mets fans

will respond and be like, yeah, I can't believe that they can't win with Jacob de Grom pitches and this is really painful for me. And then a Yankees fan who follows me will jump in and be like, ha ha, send de Grom to the Yankees. Who cares? You guys are worthless. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The Mets don't even deserve to exist.

And I'm like, you guys, you are both of my children and you are arguing. And it is always Yankees fans picking on Mets fans. And I just feel so bad. And I'm like, this is a hazard of covering both of these teams that as the Mets are heading toward train wreck territory, it is just giving layup after layup to the smug Yankees fans who follow me, which is, it's funny. Uh-huh. Do you give any credence to the DeGrom trade rumors? I mean, I don't think he's going to the Yankees. They couldn't figure out a deal with Neil Walker or anything like that. Yeah. And have you found the beat writer fraternity? I guess at this point it is

still mostly a fraternity. Has it been welcoming? Do people kind of show you the ropes and say, welcome to the club? Or is there any kind of animosity there? Like here's the new competition, the athletic, they're coming for our jobs, that sort of thing? I would say, at least to my face, everyone has been very nice. There are some people who I just don't interact with a lot, but there have been some people who I have gone to with questions. And I think with a lot of people on the beat, we attempt and we like to do different things. the beat. We attempt and we like to do different things. And also, I am a rookie. They're not really intimidated by me. And they shouldn't be. I would say it's been good. I was, you know, I was concerned about that. I'm on the Yankees beat. I am the youngest, newest and only female print reporter for an American outlet there consistently.

Wow. And I'm not even there all the time, you know, but I stand out and in a lot of ways and trying to figure out whether I should just always go with black jeans and a gray shirt or lean into who I am and wear Jordans with a dress. Things like that have been genuinely kind of weird to figure out, but I'd say it's good. No one's really told me to piss off, go to hell. I'm sure I've made some dumb mistakes and annoyed some people, but no one's ruined my life over it. Good. Well, I admire that you've hit the ground running doing this because it's a tough change to make, I think. And it's just it's both baseball writing, but it's a very different type of writing and just everything surrounding the writing.

You had to take Amtrak today. I didn't. So even that, that is a hardship that you have to handle that I do not. that you have to handle that I do not. So I'll be interested to see whether you are just a lifer on the beat and you're just a grizzled veteran in 20 years who is still in clubhouses doing this or whether you burn out like a lot of people do because I guess it's not quite as demanding if you're not on the road all the time.

But I don't know how people do it, just being away constantly and living out of suitcases and taking flights all the time, but I don't know how people do it. Just being away constantly and living out of suitcases and taking flights all the time, it just seems extremely grueling in addition to just being at the ballpark as much as you are and the way in which it's become kind of a 24-7 job because of Twitter and breaking news and things happening at all hours of the day. So it has to be stressful in certain ways. So I guess congratulations on doing it as well as you have. I'm trying.

If everyone could give me through the end of the season to figure it out, that's appreciated because, like I said, I didn't really anticipate the adjustment. So who knows? Yeah. All right. So we will take a quick break and we'll be back in just a second with Jeff Heckelman, former director of business public relations for Major League Baseball. be popular. I don't really care who you are. I just want to be popular. I want to be more popular than the rest. I'll do anything that I think will impress. Everyone is average, but I just want to

be the best. Everything I do has to be of special interest. If it were up to the audience of this podcast, baseball would be the world's most popular sport and baseball players would be the world's most popular athletes. Unfortunately, it isn't and they aren't. Even though MLB has been blessed with a wave of talented and personable players, it still seems as if the sport and its stars are struggling to make an impression on the public, which leads to a lot of complaints that MLB is doing a bad job of marketing itself and its most marketable personalities. So our guest today, Jeff Heckelman, spent several years as one of the people responsible for marketing the league. And last week he tweeted, MLB could have 1000 of the smartest marketing people on earth in its office and they still wouldn't be able to overcome the fundamental things about A, the sport and B,

the players personally that stand in the way of making stars. So we wanted to have him on to talk about those things. So, Jeff, welcome. Thank you for having me. You made it sound as if I was being especially bleak about baseball's prospects. I apologize to the entire sport if it came off that way. If anything, the game is doing as well from a business standpoint as it ever has. So reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated and always

have been. Yes, that's true. Well, we know that MLB is solely to blame for any failures that the sport is having, and you are solely to blame as someone who worked at MLB on this effort. So we hold you personally responsible. Absolutely. Tell us what you did. You were at MLB for about six years, a little more than six years. You were the director of business public relations. What did that entail? Sure. So I joined the league in November of 2008, which was about a week after the Phillies beat the Rays in the rain to win that World Series. And it was a couple of months before MLB Network went on the air.

So just to put that in historical context. So yeah, so I was there for about six and a half years, as you said. And it was my job to promote and publicize the game and work with the media specifically focused on it was called business PR but it was really everything off the field everything from the business itself to community relations international entertainment etc the group that I was part of worked on that there were other PR folks and still are who do a fantastic job of working on the game itself on the field. So they work more closely with the baseball writers,

although I did interact with some of them from time to time and deal with everything involving rules and discipline and the game itself and baseball operations. itself and baseball operations but my job was business PR so I worked with our national sponsors the licensing department which is merchandise not just caps and jerseys but really anything that has a logo on it the marketing and advertising department which I'm sure we'll talk more about broadcasting which meant I was among our liaisons to Fox and ESPN and Turner for all the work they did and I was also somewhat involvedaisons to Fox and ESPN and Turner for all the work they did. And I was also somewhat involved in social media.

Obviously, the folks at MLB Advanced Media really owned that space from a consumer fan standpoint. But I, as part of my role in the PR department, created that Twitter account that's MLB underscore PR that was really designed to communicate news and information that would be of interest to media, although a ton of fans wound up following that as well. So yeah, my job was to work with the media that don't necessarily automatically come to the ballpark. So late night shows, morning shows, magazines, business writers, all the people that you kind of need to call up and convince to come and cover the sport or do something about baseball. And yeah, just promote everything positive and do our best to mitigate or provide context around anything that was negative.

So Jeff, the biggest topic of contention I would say around MLB's marketing of its players is obviously Mike Trout. I mean, even Brandon McCarthy jumped in the other day and was like, you know, why is there this, you know, Hall of Fame talent? And all I will be able to tell my children about him is that he likes the weather. I've been around Trout. I've spoken with Trout. I found him actually really engaging when he was talking about Shohei Otani. But, you know, I've kind of seen up close how tough it is to bring out more from Trout. And so I'm interested in if you can tell us about your efforts behind the scene to kind of make Trout into the superstar that he should be. Yeah, I mean, I love Mike Trout. Mike Trout is awesome.

He's amazing. He sees everything that those of us who love the game know that he is. What sparked my little mini thread last week wasn't really... I hope it didn't come across as picking on Mike Trout. It was really pointing out the kind of systemic issues that get in the way of marketing him or anybody else. It was really responding to this notion that you see just this narrative that is formed that this quote unquote MLB needs to market its players better, which for people like

me who are on the inside is like nails on a chalkboard. It's along the lines of saying baseball is dying or people who say the MLB. We react in a visceral way because again, we were on the inside and we were doing it and we know all the things that stand in the way. I would say there's a couple of things. One, and Lindsey, you alluded to this, the player one, and, you know, Lindsay, you alluded to this, you know, the player, you know, has to have, you know, not just, you know, the great personality, but also a willingness to participate in a lot of these things. And again, this is not to pick on Mike Trout. We experienced this with countless star players. But, you know, you could have all sorts of opportunities to do either national advertisements with

sponsors, to do media interviews, to do extensive profiles, to do magazine things and photo shoots. These opportunities do come along and people inside MLB headquarters make those opportunities happen. Very often sometimes the player just doesn't want to do them. Sometimes the schedule and reality of baseball simply doesn't allow it. You know, I'm not going to sit here and say that football and basketball players have it easy, but they do have many more off days in between their games than baseball players do. Baseball really is a grind. It's every single day and it's not just the three hours of the game. It's, you know, for an average 7 p.m. game, players are

getting to the ballpark around one or two. They have their routine of stretching and working out. They are talking to media. They're talking to the beat writers before and after games. And, you know, they'll have an off day maybe every two three weeks and on that one day they want to rest you know or they want to do whatever else interests them and so very often you know someone like myself would come up with opportunities that might you know qualify under that banner of quote-unquote marketing players and for whatever reason uh you know it's very difficult to pull those things off during the season. Yeah, and I've talked to Trout too, and I was asking him about him as opposed to asking

him about someone else. And so I had to work pretty hard to find a line that I could quote that was actually worth quoting. And he's not necessarily the most attention-seeking type. But even if you are, and there are players out there who are maybe a little flashier in some ways or seek that kind of publicity in a way that Trout doesn't. And even they, at this point, in the post-Cheater, post-A-Rod era, there really aren't any baseball players who are national figures in the way that the biggest stars in other sports are. And that's not just because of Trout's

personality or any other one guy's personality. It seems like it's because of some larger obstacles that have to do with the sport itself and the way its fandom is organized. So can you talk a little bit about just some of the institutional barriers here that are standing in the way of baseball players being big stars or baseball itself breaking through among younger viewers? I mean, the first thing is simply the game itself. is simply that the game itself and and and that meaning Mike Trout is you know our LeBron James or Tom Brady but the fact is you could go to a game you could bring your kids to a game and you or you could watch Mike Trout play on TV and you could sit there for three hours and that might be the night that he goes over

for and an hour might go by without a ball being hit to him in the outfield. And as amazing as he is, he cannot dictate play every minute of the ago. And you watch, 30 seconds don't go by without you seeing LeBron on TV or Steph Curry or Kevin Durant. They affect every single play. The ball is in their hands, you know, within, you know, 10 seconds of every play. And so it's just much easier for an individual to stand out in those sports. And also, you know, you look at the postseason. stand out in those sports. And also, you know, you look at the postseason, you know, in those sports, the star players have a better likelihood of directly, personally being able to kind of drag their team to the postseason and have success in the postseason. You mentioned Derek Jeter, you know, aside from just playing in New York, he also had the benefit of being in the World Series

four of his first five years and performed well. I'm not going to take that away from him. He did perform well, but he had that stage and he had those opportunities. Whereas Mike Trout in his five, six years has been in the playoffs once and he has one postseason hit and it was in the first round. There was nothing we could do sitting around a conference room table at MLB headquarters that could manufacture Trout versus Kershaw in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series with the bases loaded and the game on the line.

You just can't snap your fingers and make that happen as much as we would have loved for that moment to happen. Yeah, I think it's, I very much agree with what you say about how obviously Trout cannot drag the entire team by himself as we are uniquely seeing this year. I also think, yeah, I mean, I very much agree with the market platform, but looking at someone like Aaron Judge, who has the benefit of playing for the Yankees, has the visibility benefit of being six foot eight, has kind of shown himself to have kind of a relatable young people personality. But Judge's thing is that he's a big, strong man and he hits big, strong home runs. I think on its face, it's just, you know,

when I think about when I was young and the first time I really paid attention to baseball outside of watching A's and Giants games with my uncle was, you know, the 98 home run record chase. You know, it's, I think an overall, an all around guy like Mike Trout is more difficult to market than someone like Kershaw or Judge who kind of really operate at the extremes of one particular skill, which is not to say that, you know, Aaron is not an all around player, but there's a lot of bang and flash when he's there. And so I guess, Jeff, you know, I know that in the past, you and I have actually talked about trying to arrange specific things with players who have kind of made their their outside personalities more

known I think maybe we talked about something like going shopping with Carlos Correa or something like could you I never really asked you kind of what the the brainstorming and you know idea building process is for for story ideas like that and how you kind of go about going beyond just this is what you need to know about Bryce Harper. Yeah, I mean, that was a lot of what I did at times, our entire department. And by that, I mean, you know, our business PR group, as well as the marketing team. I'm sure you guys both remember the MLB Fan Cave. That was a project that existed from 2011 to 2014 that I was very involved in. And that was a lot of what the goal of the Fan Cave was, was kind of bringing out the personality of the players and making them better known beyond what they do on the field. And a lot of that was

kind of exactly what you just said, Lindsay. It was our own just putting our heads together, maybe starting with a list of 30, 40 players who we knew were the best players in the game or were poised to be the best players on the field that year. And then you start looking through that list and saying, well, what makes any of these guys stand out from the standpoint of their personality? And then Mike Trout being a prime example. I remember being part of that meeting the first time that anyone made the connection or pointed out, hey, this guy really seems to be into weather. And I remember sitting around that room saying, okay, what can

we do with that? You know, let's book him on the Weather Channel. Let's, you know, it was during the fan cave years. So, you know, could we get him to be willing to, you know, participate in kind of a fun viral video where he is a weathercaster? Actually, I think we even had an idea for something where we were going to pull a prank on him and actually get the Weather Channel in on it and have him under the impression that he was really going to get to be on the Weather Channel as a meteorologist and that there was going to be some kind of thing where we pulled the wool out from under him. But again, you need his time and cooperation and if if anything like you said sometimes we in order to rise above or

combat those issues about the schedule and and all the other things on these guys plates we would try and tap into those things that interested them because you know our our mindset was maybe Mike Trout wouldn't give us an hour to just do anything, but if involved the weather, maybe he would. You know, so so not only would those things allow us to show a different side of their personalities and maybe kind of bring that out. But we also thought maybe it would make them more likely to to play along and do things with us. And sure enough, you know, not not to keep picking on Mike. But I remember that being an example where we just could never quite make it work, either when he was in New York. We were willing to send a crew to him wherever he was to do it.

And it just, for whatever reason, never came together. But yeah, those are the types of meetings we would have. And I'm sure they're still having to this day. I think I should deal that shopping idea and try to apply it to Aroldis Chapman, who comes in fairly often in white outfits from head to toe with big high-level fashion sneakers. Maybe I'll take a run at that. So I think I was maybe one of the only people who regularly watched the MLB slash MTV2 classic crossover off the bat. I don't know, Jeff, I don't know whether you were involved in organizing that, but it was an unlikely mix of cultures and personalities. It was a show on MTV2 hosted by Sway and Fat Joe and Melanie Iglesias and Chris DiStefano, some of the people from MTV's Guy Code and Girl Code. And yet it was a baseball show and it was executive produced by David Ortiz and it would have stars on coming to the fan cave.

And it was kind of this crossover that seems like the sort of thing that people always say baseball should be doing, right? They should be doing outreach to markets and viewers who may not already be interested in baseball. And that's what this was. And I don't know that it always worked all that well, but it was definitely entertaining. And I am guessing that it just didn't generate that great response because it didn't last all that long. But it was at least an attempt to do the sort of thing that people say that baseball should be doing. Absolutely. And look, I was involved in every minute of that show, and I'll be the first to say everything didn't land.

Everything didn't work. But like you said, we were trying, you know, and I think part of what happened with that show, if you, you know, it, we got off to a rocky start because we were all figuring it out as we went along. It came together. And that's not just from baseball standpoint, from the folks at MTV who were working on it as well. We were kind of all in this together and we were patching things together from week to week based on which players we could get access to and what ideas everyone had.

And, you know, that was definitely a case where by the time we got to the second half of the season, we started traveling a little bit more. We brought those guys to the playoffs and World Series. We did more segments with fans especially you know around the playoff time and and we really you know we were on to something I think what happened though was those first couple of weeks when people were more likely to have given it a shot you know weren't necessarily our

strongest episodes and so you know a lot of that potential audience kind of wasn't there anymore for us when we really started hitting our stride and and I think that the same would go for I would say the same for the fan cave overall I think it was a worthwhile experiment I think we had some hits we had some misses but everyone who worked on that knows in their hearts that we were on to something we know that you know we had the evidence that the average fan of the Fan Cave on social media was 20 years younger than the average baseball fan. The players who participated all had a great time.

They said good things about it. Some of the teams got it and understood and were on board. Some, it took a little bit more heavy lifting. And then that really went for the entire sport and the industry and everybody around it. That was the kind of thing that if everyone, the teams, the players, broadcast partners, BAM agents, you name it, if everybody had truly gotten behind it in a big way, we might have really accomplished something. As it was, we did the best we could with what we had to work with. Like I said, I think we were onto something. And a lot of the things that we were trying to do back

then are still things that they're trying to do now. They just call it something different. Yeah, I think that's really interesting. I think as a whole, the way the league has attempted different formats and kind of, I think, and I say this cautiously, I think the league has loosened up a little bit about the distribution of its product. I think I know that they are still very aggressive with unauthorized social media video takedown and whatnot. But when I was at Deadspin, if there was a play I was writing about or something like that, and the MLB native video was not able to embed, I could just, you know, in my position, I could email someone and say, hey, I want to put this in my story. Can you provide me an HTML code? And they would do it.

I don't think they're as liberal about it as the NBA, but this has been a big point of contention. And I think they have kind of figured out ways to make the best parts of the game more accessible and digestible. Jeff, I know, I believe it's you who's had, who had, you know, back and forth with BAM and the commissioner's office. And I imagine with the changeover from Bud Selig to Rob Manfred, there was actually a big change in how the use of technology for that type of thing was perceived. You know, was, am I kind of, am I on the right track with that? Was there, was there a noticeable change? Yeah.

And look, to be clear, I left right as that transition was happening. But from what I understand, part of Rob's goals coming in as commissioner was to kind of break down some of the silos that had formed where the league office and BAM and MLB Network really operated very independently of one another. They still are in separate offices at least for now. I know that they're talking about moving to one central headquarter in Midtown in the next couple of years. But even just functionally, and I know that a lot of that work has happened. I don't know if it's completely as seamless

yet as they want it to be, but they did do a lot to try and bring everybody together. In terms of how they react to technology and their willingness to let clips live online, I don't know that that necessarily was a shift from Commissioner Selig to Commissioner Manfred. It's not like it was Bud who was deciding, no, I'm not going to let Deadspin have our HTML code. Do you think Bud Selig's ever heard of Deadspin?

Or HTML code or a GIF or email. Satisfying thought experiment. I think it's possible that one of those times that Deadspin ran that photo collage of all different photos of him from various press conferences over the years, it's possible that that might have made its way to him. But yeah, no. So yeah, exactly. It's not like he was the one making those decisions about things like that. But under Rob, I think it's fair to say that there is more of a willingness to either try things differently or just embrace, you know, different audiences. And, you know, but at the end of the day, you know, BAM has their philosophy and they do their best to stick to that. I think their answer, and again, I didn't work for them, so I don't want to speak for

them. I think their answer was kind of like what you just said, Lindsay, which is they have an army of people who can move just as quickly as anybody on the internet to cut highlights and post things online. And so their answer would just be, just wait the extra 10 seconds and we'll give it to you our way. And they would just prefer that you use their version of it. But I don't disagree with you that the NBA in particular has been much more liberal in their just kind of tacitly being okay with certain things happening online in a way that baseball has been slower to, or at least been less willing to be that free.

On the flip side, the NBA does not have a digital business the size of BAM and didn't spin off BAM tech to Disney and make a billion dollars. So there are pros and cons to different approaches. Right. That's the perplexing thing in some ways is that MLB has been just the cutting edge, the forerunner of everything when it comes to technology development and streaming and the platforms and the ease of use and the availability of information. And so you'd like to think that that would translate to reaching people, but it doesn't always. And one other comparison you can make between baseball and basketball is that in basketball, you just get so much personality out of the players, whether it's on the court or on social media, that there just still seems to be some resistance to in baseball.

There's kind of this cultural belief in button-down players and straight-laced players and not showing emotion. And we still hear about it constantly when someone looks too happy on the field and he gets drilled with a baseball because of it. Or, you know, very rarely do we see players really interacting in an entertaining way online. There was one exception earlier this year when Trevor Bauer started going after the Astros and Garrett Cole and their spin rates and whatever you think of Trevor Bauer or that whole controversy. It was kind of fun to actually see baseball having that sort of public drama for once, because I think fans really get into that. So this again seems like something that's changing, but maybe not changing quickly enough for marketing purposes. I mean, I just want to say on the subject of Trevor Bauer, who my brain has automatically reclassified as Tyler Bauer

already. Like that was so satisfying. Like baseball truly needs more drama. Like it needs more petty, dumb bullshit like that. Like some of these guys are just way too professional. Like just let loose and make public inconsequential mistakes like the rest of us, in my opinion. And I guess I can speak for myself, but based on a bunch of friends of mine who are still there, I can tell you if everyone at MLB headquarters listens to this podcast, and I hope they do, at least 100 heads are nodding right now. I assure you guys, during my time there, and I'm sure to this day, that kind of stuff drove us crazy. You're right, Ben. It's starting to change, but it's not happening quickly enough. That's not something that is controlled

at the major league level even. That is the minor leagues, it's little league, it's high school, it's every little coach on every little sandlot that grew up being told this is the right way to play the game and this is the wrong way to play the game, just implanting that in every successive generation of kids. And by the time the kid gets through that whole gauntlet of every coach and every teammate that is around him to the point that he actually gets to the major leagues, you know, you're lucky if every bit of personality hasn't been beaten out of them by then. And then if you somehow manage to survive all that time and you're someone like a Bryce Harper or Puig or whoever, and you've somehow managed to make it to the major leagues and still

hang on to your personality, then you first are a victim of every single time you do anything to stick your neck out and draw any attention to yourself or show any kind of happiness or personality. You're getting a baseball to the head or you're getting a stern talking to behind the scenes by a coach or a manager or a GM or a veteran player in your clubhouse. And that's kind of what I was getting at last week with my little mini thread on Twitter, you know, in terms of these systemic issues in the game. I think it's twofold. One is what we talked about before, just the idea that a Mike Trout,

you know, can't impact every single play every single minute. And the other is, is this culture inside the clubhouses. And I don't know what anyone can do about it, but the entire sport together just has to drag itself kicking and screaming into the future because it's just so frustrating when, you know, and this was something that affected us because sometimes we were the ones who, you know, we this was something that affected us because sometimes we were the ones who you know we do a funny fan cave video or we'd you know sometimes we would tape those at the ballpark before games and and sometimes we would have to do them earlier in the day because you know that we had times when players would say to us okay i'll do that but i don't want to do it when all my other teammates are around." Then they'd have to deal with the fallout and get crap from people after the fact.

It's just very, very frustrating. Again, you look at those people inside MLB headquarters, there's nothing they can do about that. You can't just walk into clubhouses. There's definitely a divide between the quote-unquote business side and baseball side, and that happens inside the league office. And then it also happens at the team level. You have – even at the team level, you have marketing and PR people who might want to do different things, and they bump into the clubhouse culture themselves. I don't know the answer to that.

If I did, I'd be doing something else. Yeah. Having been in the visitors clubhouse at Citi Field this weekend, just in time to watch the closing minutes of the Germany-Sweden World Cup game with Yasiel Puig right next to me, that should be a show because I think Puig not only would have made me a baseball fan, but just would have made me a soccer fan watching World Cup with Yasiel Puig. That would be a smash hit if that could somehow be bottled, I think. I agree. Whether he's late for a game every now and then or, you know, reacts the wrong way after he hits a ball or whatever it is, you can't really replace the kind of enthusiasm that

he has. Quick Yasiel, I mean, I don't remember what year it was, maybe 2013, 2014, whatever it is. I think it was his rookie year. He came to the fan cave one day while the Dodgers were in town. I think it was his rookie year. We didn't know he was coming until about a half hour before. We didn't have a plan for a video to shoot with him. We didn't, you know, usually you'd have a week. We'd talk about the player's personality and come. We did, you know, usually you'd have a week, we'd talk about the player's personality and come up with something, you know, somewhat scripted, you know, at least a setting.

We didn't have any of that. He just came to the fan cave and we gave him a tour and he played ping pong and he played, he danced and he just did Yasiel Puig things. And just that minute and a half package of here's Yasiel Puig having fun at the fan cave was one of our most successful videos of the year. He didn't even have to do anything except just be himself. And, you know, I remember sitting there that day saying, man, if we could have 50 more

of this guy, we wouldn't even need to do anything. Yeah, I think in general, I think athletes watching sports, but especially baseball players watching other sports is just it's it's fun. And it's great. And it's just such a nice reminder. Like I did a story in spring training with Yankees reliever Tommy Canely, who is just a Philadelphia Eagles super fan. And it's just it's so fun to see their competitiveness and love of sports or games, if it's something like ping pong, you know, just be represented in such a different way. And so when there is like a Puig watching the World Cup, or the Yankees clubhouse watching the NBA finals thing, it's just it, it kind of, to me, it kind of brings back the purity

of what this stupid thing we're all obsessed with is about. And I agree. And, you know, there were times when, when we observed things like that, or we knew that something like that was going to happen and, you know, look, sometimes it was, you know, a team or a group of players not being comfortable, you know, with us bringing cameras into the clubhouse or something like that. But a lot of times it's just general risk aversion, you know, and it's not anybody's fault. You know, I mean, this is the media world that we're living in nowadays where everybody has a camera and guys have gotten burned, you know, or had things taken out of context.

It just makes it so that it's much, much easier to say no. You know, people are asking, you know, the top 50 players in Major League Baseball to do things for them every single day. You know, every day the team PR guy has to walk up to him and ask him to do this, that, or the other thing. He's got the community relations people, the marketing people, his own agent, friends, family, the other thing he's got the community relations people the marketing people his own agent friends family you know everybody's got their hand out everybody's asking them to do things and it's much easier for them to say no because to to not do it means that they can't get burned you know uh and even within baseball you know i mentioned before about kind of all of the the baseball industry being on the same page These were some of the things where we were

even fighting with ourselves sometimes where a team would come to New York one time and it wasn't just us reaching out to the agent or the team PR guy for the fan cave. You'd also have MLB Network and BAM reaching out to them for their things. You'd have MLB Productions maybe needing some access with them for something. And then in my role as a PR guy, sometimes I was asking for the fan cave, but sometimes I would have an opportunity with the Rolling Stone or a GQ or a BuzzFeed or whoever. And so you're a Mike Trout. Maybe you're willing to spend one hour while you're in New York doing one thing, but that means that 10 other things all are no's. And it's unfortunate, but it is what it is.

So I don't know whether you've been privy to some of the research that Rob Manfred has cited about what makes people baseball fans, that it's going to games early in life that cements that love of the sport, or maybe it's high scoring games is popular among fans. Have you seen those sorts of surveys? And do you have a sense of, is there a window? Is there a formative period where you have to reach someone or else they're lost to you for life? Yeah, I've seen some of that. And I've heard Rob talk about the importance of going to games when you're young. And I don't disagree with him. I don't think that there's any one thing that is kind of the magic bullet that this is the thing that needs to happen at a specific age. But I do think, you know, generally people form their attachments

to things at a somewhat early age. You know, for me, I grew up, I'm 38 years old. So when I was six years old was 1986. Growing up on Long Island, the Mets were in the World Series that year, won it in remarkable fashion. That was the year that my grandfather decided to teach me baseball. He was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, so he raised me first and foremost to hate the Yankees. And then it just so happened that the Mets were doing what the Mets did that year and so I fell in love and And I I said this is great You follow a team and then they come from behind and win the World Series in miraculous fashion And that's just what happens and you know 32 years later. I'm still waiting for that to happen again

But yeah, you know I was six and that was that that that that's you know Kind of when you become a fan, But I don't think that, you know, and I think Rob would agree, just because you go to a game when you're six, and just because, you know, you like the game then, doesn't mean that you're going to change your mind when you're 18 or 25 or 35. You know, you still need to have the sport be something that is appealing to people at every step along the way. Yeah, I agree with that. I would say I was kind of a late bloomer, but I think that's, I mean, I don't know what

the league's research might have turned up about the last few years of the postseason, but having the Cubs win, having the Royals win, having the Indians go, having the Mets go like that is, that was to me something that was genuinely exciting. Because I think if you go to a game as a kid, if you go to, let's say if you go to a Royals game as a kid, maybe there's a period of 10 years where you don't really adhere to those like family traditions or whatever. But as soon as the improbable happens you start to get sucked back in so I don't know that I necessarily believe that that's kind of a requisite I I do believe

when they say that maybe that there's a correlation to lifelong fandom but um yeah I I think that's I think that's interesting and I think it's interesting that they're kind of trying to quantify these things, but I don't know that that's really possible. Yeah. And look, I'm going to preface all, I should have said it right at the outset, you know, baseball's fine. You know, the reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated. It's actually one of my favorite stories I ever worked on during my time at baseball was a piece written by Brian Curtis, your colleague Ben, when he was at Grantland. I think it was called something like Baseball's Dying Century.

It actually was a year in the making. I had dinner with John Thorne who's the historian for baseball who's just a wonderful, brilliant guy. I was kind of commiserating with him about the challenges of dealing with the quote-unquote baseball's dying crowd during the World Series, citing TV ratings, comparing them to 1980 when there were three channels, and saying, why aren't 50 million people watching the World Series like they did when it was just that or MASH? But anyway, John looked at me in a little twinkle in his eye and said, you know,

if you'd like, when I get home, I'd be happy to send you some newspaper clippings dating back to the 1850s proclaiming the death of baseball. And it was true. He unloaded all this stuff on me and he had, there was a quote from a player in 1858. So this was 18 years before the advent of professional baseball, saying something like baseball is a fine game but they simply don't play it like they did in my day. Then all the way through to in the 1870s, 1880s, people saying now that they're paying players as much as $10 a season, people will lose interest. Then it was the advent of the bicycle and the talking

pictures and the war and you name it. Every single decade, there was some reason why baseball was going to not be popular anymore and here we are. So yeah, I don't know where I was going with that, but that just needed to be said. Now, that said, it's not a simple black and white thing. Just because baseball isn't dying and just because the game is doing as well kind of, you know, off the field from a business standpoint as it ever has before, doesn't mean there aren't things that need to change. And I think, you know, first among them, and I know that this is a priority of everyone inside the league office, is pace of play and all the things

that I know you guys talk about all the time. I mean, I love baseball. I will always love baseball. It is not easy to sit through an average Tuesday night game in June between two teams that aren't necessarily in it. I mean, something could always happen. There could always be a no-hitter. It could always be an amazing play. We all know what baseball is. But man, when there's 45 seconds between every pitch and a half hour goes by without a ball being hit in play, it can be tough. And again, that's the other thing I meant when I said it could be a thousand smart marketing people. And again, that's the other thing I meant when I said it could be a thousand smart marketing people. And at the end of the day, if that is still the case, short of playoff time, it can be challenging. Now that we have the attention spans that we have and we have the options that we have, it just makes it all the more important to make sure that if you are exposing someone to baseball, that they're getting the best version of baseball that it can be during that formative moment. Right. And attendance is down five and a half

percent this year. So now baseball is really dying this time. It's for real. But yeah, I think every generation thinks baseball is dying and obviously it hasn't died. And in many ways, it's healthier than it's ever been. On the other hand, it has a lot more competition. And so it doesn't have the share of the market that it once did, even when it was relatively small business compared to today. So I wanted to ask, I know that you probably don't want to be a backseat driver because you probably got sick of people offering their own opinions on what baseball should be doing differently when you were part of baseball. But I think we've established that it's probably the case that there's not going to be some Don Draper equivalent who's going to come in and think up the perfect

tagline. And it's just going to be this campaign that manages to penetrate through all the distractions and brings baseball to everyone. it's probably not that simple. But based on your experience, was there anything that worked really well or worked really terribly or something you wanted to do and didn't get a chance to do or think that would work but hasn't really been tried? Any general advice for how things could be improved, even given all of the problems that we've discussed? Yeah, I mean, again, like you say, there is no magic answer to this. When I think back on the things that worked especially well, and I think I alluded to this earlier, it was the times when

the entire industry and everybody involved in the inside were all on the same page. And one example of that that I can think back on were the first couple of years that we had the players during the Home Run Derby using social media from on the field when they were just kind of hanging out there. That was something I cannot begin to describe to you what an uphill battle that was getting that approved by the Players Association and the TV networks and just the agents and just everybody involved there's always a reason to say no there was always the possibility and again this was I think 2011 or maybe 2012 was the first year we did this you know so it was still the early days ish of social media so there was a lot of fear there

was a lot of unknowns there was a lot of well what if this happens what if that happens and you just needed to overcome it and you know I was one of the people who was who was down there on the field with laptops you know helping players you know do it was one of the people who was down there on the field with laptops, you know, helping players, you know, do it. I remember the first year they could only do it on our laptops by logging into their Twitter account. We still couldn't let them have their phones on the field. You know the league office the broadcast partner the teams the players the agents everybody the Players Association everybody Wanting it to be a success and having their own kind of stake in it that made it work

Ultimately, and I think there are two too often all of those entities Either have competing interests or aren't necessarily completely aligned. And again, that's not the kind of thing that someone like Rob or anybody in the marketing department can just snap their fingers and make happen. It's something that you need to work out over time. And it's something that we try to do all the time. And I know that they continue to do. In my opinion, the times when something works in baseball are the times when everybody who has a stake in the game cares about the same thing at the same time and all kind of put their collective weight behind the same thing being a success. I mean, last week or whenever it was that the Terry Collins, Tom Hallion video came out, that went viral in a way that I don't know if any actual baseball play has this season. And that was leaked. It wasn't supposed to be public.

And so you don't want something that was not intended to be public becoming public. But at the same time, that's kind of what people want. And the problem is maybe that if you did have people mic'd up and they know that they're mic'd up and that it's going to be out there, they're not going to say anything entertaining. It's going to turn into one of those mid-game in-dugout interviews where maybe some people like it, but mostly it's just kind of the same old cliches that you hear, except it's in the middle of the game instead of after the game. So I guess there's no way around that. You're just always going to have people watching their words if they know that someone's listening. And that's dead on. I mean, you had Doug on last week, the former umpire, to talk about that. And like, you know, it came out last

week. That was obviously something that was collectively bargained with the umpires union and i know from you know i wasn't part of those discussions or or really any collective bargaining but i know from being behind the scenes that that is definitely the case with anytime you want to mic anybody up there are so many guarantees made that absolutely nothing will slip through and make its way onto the broadcast, let alone anything beyond what made its way into the broadcast, even what ESPN or Fox or whoever is allowed to air on television. There's a reason why you don't hear that sound live. You hear it coming back from a commercial because they've spent the three minutes vetting

it to all the people that need to say, okay, you're allowed to put that on the air. And you're right. If all of a sudden, it wouldn't happen this way, but if all of a sudden Rob Manfred decided to snap his fingers and say, that's it, no more of that. If we mic you up, we're letting anything fly, then no one would agree to mic up. And if they did, they would never say anything. So it's's true that there's i i agree i love that terry video i think everybody in that video came out of it looking better and it was one of the most enjoyable clips that the that would any of us have seen all year but i absolutely understand that that from everyone's perspective it's about the precedent and it's about well you know what

what happens when there's another clip that doesn't make everybody look good. And again, there's always, it's much easier to say no. And so unfortunately that's what people do too often. Yeah. Another clip in the same genre from spring training where Mookie Betts was mic'd up in the middle of a game and he was talking to the broadcasters and a ball was hit over his head and he said, I ain't getting this one, boys. And he just started running. That was great. Yeah, I'd like more of that. I don't know how we get to that point because that's a spring training game.

It doesn't matter. So you're not going to have players doing that in the middle of a game that does matter. But in our ideal world, that would somehow happen. So from 2008 to 2015, it was your fault that MLB was not marketing itself better. Mine and mine alone. Yes. So why did you decide to move on and what are you doing now? Oh, well, so I left as part of that transition that we talked about earlier.

I left during spring training 2015. about earlier. I left during spring training 2015. So there were probably all told maybe about 100 of us or so between the league office and MLB Productions got hit particularly hard. There were just a bunch of groups as part of that effort to bring the three offices together, the league office and BAM and the network. A bunch of us moved on. So I decided to take a step back, kind of wait until something felt right and branch out if I could. So I'm working at a company called Finsbury, which is a strategic communications firm, a PR firm. They're not really known for doing much in the sports world, but we are doing, we have multiple clients touching the sports world.

But Finsbury's bread and butter is corporate reputation, corporate crisis, financial communications. So it's much more behind the scenes, much more strategy, just generally helping companies be smarter about how they communicate both with the media, with their customers, with their own employees, with investors, etc. And like I said, we do have multiple clients in the sports world, so we're doing that type of work for them. So it's been interesting, a little change of pace.

I do still interact with the media, but much less than I did during my time at baseball. I get to kind of pick my spots a little bit more. And again, the work I'm doing is a little bit more behind the scenes and strategic than it was at baseball, I get to kind of pick my spots a little bit more. And again, the work I'm doing is a little bit more behind the scenes and strategic than it was at baseball, but no less enjoyable. All right. Well, we appreciate you picking this spot and you can all follow Jeff Heckelman on Twitter at his name, Jeff Heckelman. Feel free to direct your complaints about MLB to him, although he is no longer responsible. And perhaps no one is really responsible. It's just the world is responsible and the sport itself. So Jeff, thanks for coming on and sharing some insight. Bye, Jeff.

Thanks for having me. This was great. Yeah. Thanks, Lindsay. Thanks, Ben. So Lindsay, I've got to let you go. You probably have to get to the clubhouse. And the clubhouse in Philadelphia and Citizens Bank Park is very far away from civilization, as I recall. So good luck. Enjoy the series and good luck with the continued beat writing. Thank you, Ben. See you around. Yes, I'm sure I will. And you can find Lindsay on Twitter at her name, Lindsay Adler. That's Lindsay with an E and you can meet her at The Athletic. All right, that will do it for today.

Thanks very much to Lindsay for filling in and to Jeff for coming on. The other Jeff, we hope, will make a quick recovery and be back in time for our next episode. You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already gone there and signed up and pledged some small monthly amount.

Sean Gobby, Burke Adams, Travis Ingram, Kyle Lewis, and Isaac Stevenson. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes as well as most other podcast services. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcastoffangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. We'll be back soon. Talk to you then. To a man comes along and says Have you been in good fun? Never played with your time

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