Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1257: Being Baseball Ambassadors

Episode Date: August 16, 2018

Ben Lindbergh, Jeff Sullivan, and writer Rachael McDaniel banter about a Scott Boras quote about Bryce Harper, the hot streaks of Matt Carpenter and Ronald Acuña, an Ender Inciarte comment, aging in relation to baseball players, the cold streak of Luis Severino, and a possible old example of groundskeeping gamesmanship. Then (24:22) they bring on […]

I'm an engine driver On a long run, on a long run Would I work beside her? She's a long one, such a long one And if you don't love me, let me go And if you don't love me, let me go Hello and welcome to episode 1257 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs.

Hello, Jeff. Hi, Ben. We are also joined by someone whose work we really enjoy and admire. Hopefully you have read it or soon will read it at Baseball Perspectives or the Hardball Times or Vice. She is everywhere these days, Rachel McDaniel. Welcome to Effectively Wild. Hello. Thanks for having me on. Thank you for joining us in the midst of wildfires that are ravaging your native territory of Vancouver,

which is very near and dear to my heart. I know that both of you are just enshrouded in some sort of toxic air right now. I hope that you are both safe and okay, and that so is everyone around you. The air quality measurements, they're on the China china scale right now so where it's this is a good time to be working from home yeah it's great to look out the window and just see a bank of smoke drifting down from the sky yeah i i get that here too but it's not from natural causes so like if uh if ramon loriano were to throw a baseball from where i'm sitting right now, I couldn't see it land. So later in this episode, we are bringing on Billy Bean, the former Major League outfielder, not the one who is the Oakland A's GM, but the one without an E at the end of his name, who is the ambassador for inclusion for Major League Baseball. We're going to talk to him about the somewhat difficult topic of the tweets that have arisen from players' archives in recent weeks, as well as other topics, Pride Night and players coming out and various other subjects that are in his purview. And Rachel, we're glad

that you could join us for that conversation because you often tackle some difficult topics in your writing in a really compelling way. I was going to say in a fearless way, but probably with some fear, which makes it even more admirable, I think. These things aren't easy to write about. Just with a reasonable amount of trepidation. Yeah. Mild panic. Right. But no one can tell when it comes out the other end of your keyboard, so it works. So a couple things I want to bring up of a less serious nature before we bring on Billy for a lengthy conversation. One, I have to get to today's Scott Boris quote.

This one is not a nautical analogy, but in some ways it's even weirder. I don't know whether you saw this, either of you, but this is from Ken Rosenthal's article at The Athletic. And here's the quote. It is in reference to Bryce Harper, who of course is a Scott Boris client. Here we go. Few possess the engine of greatness, Boris said. It's a very personal skill level. Great expectations and difficulty arise from its rare power. Only time and the pain of self-understanding create the necessary path to optimum. Once the course is built, greatness becomes defined and the engine roars for years to come.

Is this English? I think it's English. It sounds like just a bunch of unrelated phrases that were smooshed together or possibly potential titles for my book. I'm not sure if any of them, other or possibly potential titles for my book i'm not sure any of them necessary path to optimum maybe might be a book title i don't think it would sell but it might be fitting this is it's felt broken necessary path to optimum it doesn't like i don't think that's a proper conjugation of of the last word but i think that do you think that he aware now? Like, does he plan these things out? Do you think that he has like blueprints for the weird ass metaphors that he speaks in or is it just getting worse? Yeah. The Scott Boris Mad Libs,

like this genuinely reads like something that was a format that had random words pasted into it. I think it's fully intentional. He succeeds in getting people like us to talk about it every time. So we're playing right into his hands or his mouth here. So well played, as usual, Scott Boris. But he really ramps up the oddity every time he does one of these, and's an engine of greatness involved here. The engine is roaring. This is like, what was the other one we talked about, Jeff? Like the hot rocks, it was a volcano. There was some kind of volcanic- The hot talent lava, right?

Right, yeah, something like that. That's among the worst moments of 2018. Was that 2018? That was 2018. Yeah, it's one of the extremes. It's either the hot talent lava or some kind of cool ocean analogy. It's all the elements and it never makes much sense, but it's kind of a regular segment. Is that your cat, Rachel? We have a new guest. Yeah, she's crawled up to the microphone and she's yelling into it.

So she has a lot to say on this topic, on Scott Boris. What's your cat's name? Minnie. Oh, well, welcome, Minnie. Possibly the first cat officially to be on Effectively Wild. I'm not sure. Probably some others have spoken up in the background from time to time. This is probably overdue.

It's the internet cat content as well. A couple other things that I wanted to get to. First, it feels like we should talk about Ronald Acuna, who is about as prodigious and precocious as you, Rachel. I don't know whether you are older than Acuna or he is older than you. It's got to be pretty close, right? I think Acuna is slightly, he's about a month younger than me. Okay. I see. So he makes you feel old i guess yeah he does make me feel old yeah so he is really good at what he does as well and we knew this i think we haven't talked as much about acuna this season as we thought we would coming into the year because

for a while there when he was just raking in spring training, it looked like he was the biggest threat to dethrone Mike Trout as just most talked about or emailed about player on this podcast because he just kept getting better and better at every level he ascended to. And that didn't happen immediately when he got to the majors because he hurt his knee and he was out for a while and then he slumped when he came back. And maybe that was the league getting the better of him or maybe it was the after effects of the injury whatever it was it seems like he's made some mechanical changes he has already evolved as a hitter in certain ways and now he hits a lead off homer every single day so this is the Acuna that we

were waiting to see okay so did we ever settle how to pronounce Luis Robber? I think that's what we're going with. Yeah. So, okay, we talked for a little while ago, several months ago. There was a scouting director, Luis Robber. That's what I'm going with. Jim Callis confirmed, so I'm going to go with that. There was a quote from an American League international scouting director referring to the teenager, Luis Robber, quote,

the best player on the planet, And that's no exaggeration. So we had some fun with that one. So here's a tweet. This is from at Kevin McAlpin. He's a Braves reporter for Braves Radio Net and 680 The Fan. He's an MLB Network correspondent. He's a parrot head and a temple owl. I didn't need to read those things, but he had a tweet.

In case you missed it last night, here's what Ender and Ciarte had to say about Ronald Acuna. Quote, it's a joy to watch him play. He's the best leadoff hitter I've ever seen he's the best player i've ever seen he's just unbelievable ender inciarte hey ronald acuna great player andy inciarte i uh i had forgotten he was in the 2017 all-star game it's a game that featured eh aaron judge mike trout jose altuve yes carlos santon bryce harper you know the the best the best players in baseball Aaron Judge, Mike Trout, Jose Altuve, Carlos Santin, Bryce Harper. You know, the best players in baseball. Max Scherzer for sale. Yes, we can

confirm that he has seen Mike Trout unless his eyes were closed that whole day. Gary Sanchez, Corey Seager, Zach Brinke, Justin Turner, Paul Goldschmidt, Joey Votto, Robinson Cano, did I say George Springer? I'll say it again. Jose Ramirez.

I'll just shout out Mike Trout again. The best player he's ever seen. He could become, very realistically, he could become the best player Ender Enciarte has ever seen. But to say he's already,

he went straight from the best leadoff hitter I've ever seen, which, you know what, whatever. I can grant that maybe, even though that's also definitely not true. We know that Ender Enziardi is not watching American League Baseball when he's not playing a game in Atlanta. He went straight from, I think Acuna is the best at this little thing. I think he's the best, period.

He's the best in the world. I don't understand the need to be so hyperbolic. Just say he's great. What a good young player he is. This just invites criticism and mockery, as evidenced by right now. Yeah, I guess maybe partly it's just the fact that we keep having to one-up our level of hype because these really great players keep coming up year after year. This is something that Zach Kreiser wrote about

at Baseball Perspectives back in January, that we've seen just some of the best debuts ever clustered in the last few years, just disproportionately so. And that could be just a fluky or cyclical thing, but there are reasons to think that maybe it's not, that teams are getting better at developing young players or knowing when to promote them or scouting is getting better so that they're more familiar with the pitchers. Whatever it is, there are lots of potential explanations. But we do keep seeing these guys come up just as fully polished players seemingly at ages where we're not used to seeing this. And so every time it happens, we keep having to invent new hyperbolic language to describe them. And yet, ultimately, it always

comes down to Trout is better than everyone. But I guess it's kind of boring to just say, well, he's great, but Trout is still the best. So we could say Trout is just the best and never compliment another player that way if we wanted to. The run that he's on right now is very much fulfilling the potential that we had all envisioned for him. And as he is perhaps slightly younger than Rachel and is not yet 21, that is pretty impressive what he's doing right now. Ozzy Albee's not doing as well right now. I don't know whether they are sharing a certain amount of finite production and when one of them does well, the other has to slump accordingly, but they are both really good and it's going to be fun to watch them both play side by side ish at least in the lineup for many many years to come i feel bad for

potential national league rookie of the year brian anderson who's been up all season long he's just like i'm accumulating great numbers and then like just these two unbelievable players who combined are younger than fernando rodney are just lighting the National Leagues on fire. So Brian Anderson will get no recognition for the duration of his entire major league career. And Rachel, it's kind of, it must be a new experience for you for a player to come up and be younger than you and be good, which is something that I think we all kind of judge our stage of life and trek to mortality by how we compare to baseball player ages. So once you start getting up there in age, you really love the old players who are hanging

on because as long as there's someone older than you in the majors, you get to feel kind of young by comparison. And when you get to 30 or whatever, 32, you just kind of think of it in terms of the baseball aging curve. And fortunately, writers' aging curves, perhaps not quite as steep in the same ways, but we still kind of think of it the same way. So there is that moment. I don't remember who it was for me. I could probably try and figure it out, but who the first player who came up, who was younger than I was. And I kind of got that sense like, oh, you could be a major league star by the age I am already. So you kind of get the like, oh, maybe other people have done more with their

lives by this point. Yeah, I mean, I wrote a short relief about this last week. But there are only eight players who have appeared in the major leagues who are born within a year of me. And only two, only Acuna and Soto are younger than me. And I don't even know who the first one who came up would have been, who was like even relatively close to me in age. But I realized as I was sitting, I was watching the Soto and Acuna highlights as one does. And I was like, oh my God, he's so young. Like, how are they doing this? And then I was like, wait a minute.

These people are my age. Like, what does that say about me that I'm marveling at how young they are as I sit on my couch feeling decrepit? I hurt my back writing like a few months ago. So it has been making me feel very, very old, even though I know that is just an incredibly ridiculous thing to feel when you are 20 years old. But that's what's happening. That is my experience. Baseball is here to

reassure you that one day you will die. Yes. All right. I also wanted to bring up, Jeff, you wrote about Matt Carpenter, and he's been amazing as well. He is not young and amazing. He is older and amazing, but is there anything notable about Matt Carpenter other than the fact that he is amazing again after not at all being amazing in April? Has he done something differently or just gone back to what he was doing before? Amazing kind of covers it, but essentially Matt Carpenter is a guy who, he has the lowest grand ball rate in baseball. So that's one thing we know. He's also the seventh most shifted hitter in baseball, which is not a surprise because he's a lefty and he pulls every single grand ball he ever hits for the most part. So yeah, you shift him, but he has the lowest grand ball rate in baseball, which is one way that you can try to beat the shift and for someone if you if you think about how balls come off the bat

in like a a launch angle plot kind of kind of way let's it let's figure so if you have someone who hits the few scrim balls his average launch angle his average like the way the ball will come off his bat is going to be well above the horizontal so now i'm asking you to visualize this with me i don't know if this works if i can can convey this through talking, but I'm trying my best. So he would figure that when you aim at a certain angle above the horizontal, balls will vary around that horizontal by a pretty consistent amount in either direction. You will hit on top of some balls, you will get under some balls, and you'll just have this band of balls that come off your bat averaging around, I don't know, 15, 20 degrees above the horizontal. Matt Carpenter hits everything in the air, but he almost never pops the ball up, which is interesting.

He is Joey Votto-wee-an. Votto? Votto? He is similar to Joey Votto. Votto-esque is far superior. See, Richo's a better writer than... Writer and speaker. Matt Carpenter and Joey Votto-esque is far superior. See, Richo's a better writer. So, yeah, writer and speaker. Matt Carpenter and Joey Votto are two players who, based on the little analysis I did,

they hit the greatest percentage of the balls right in that ideal launch angle window of, like, plus 5 to plus 35 degrees above the horizontal. They just hit, like, 55, 60% of their batted balls just right there. So this essentially comes down to bat control because neither Matt Carpenter nor Joey Votto really hit the ball as hard as the hardest hitters in baseball. But they are among the best hitters in baseball. And it's because they are consistent with how the ball comes off their bat. It is for Matt Carpenter. It's as much about the balls that he does hit that he hits well.

But it's also just as much about the bad contact that he doesn't hit. So if you figure that the average player hits, I don't know, 20% bad contact, bad balls, if Matt Carpenter only hits 10% bad contact, that's 10% of his batted balls that are something other than bad. So that just doesn't drag his numbers down. So Matt Carpenter just looks good at the end of the day. So he's good. He's been hurt often, so it's kind of dragged his numbers down. But he's always been good. And the hysterical part is that this spring, Matt Carpenter conducted like a half-hour interview at his locker where he said,

You know what? This year, I'm tired of a low batting average. I'm going to try to hit everything on the line. I'm going to have a flat swing plane and spread the ball around the field. He is more extreme than he has ever been. Yeah, things said in spring training, not always in line with things that happen during the regular season. Someone emailed us recently to request that we always make sure to mention which teams players are on when we bring them up,

which I think is a helpful tip because we don't want to assume that everyone knows everyone we are talking about. We're not talking about anyone obscure here, but just in case you're following along at home and are new to baseball, Ronald Acuna, he's on the Braves. Matt Carpenter, he's on the Cardinals. And the last player I wanted to mention, Luis Severino, he's on the Yankees. And that has not been as big a positive for the Yankees as it was through the first half of the season. I want to ask you what the alarm level should be about Severino, right? Because he has lost a little velocity. He seems to have lost a little slider movement. He certainly lost a lot of results. And sometimes pitchers will just go through these things. We saw Corey Kluber go

through this. He had a rough patch, at least by Corey Kluber's standards, and he had a little bit of a knee issue, and now he seems to be back and fine. And unfortunately for the Indians, Trevor Bauer is now hurt and out for a while. But point is, you can get bad for a little while, even if you're an ace, and then get better. And Severino says he's not tired. He says he's not hurt. Says there's nothing wrong, but the Yankees look a lot different with a really effective Severino than they do now with a not-so-effective Severino, because especially as they're likely to end up in the wildcard game, and it's very easy to project and say Severino for a few innings and then the bullpen for the rest,

and that's a really tough combination. But if you have a shaky Severino with CeCe Sabathia on the DL and Jordan Montgomery having a bum elbow and Sonny Gray being Sonny Gray, then that looks like a much more beatable team. Well, let's try it this way. First half, Luis Severino had an ERA of 2.31. Second half, 7.96. Terrible. First half, Luis Severino, let's see, what are we going to look at here? First half, Luis Severino had an XFIP of 3.12. Second half, 3.52. His strikeouts are a little down. His walks, though, are also a little down. I'm going to be honest with you.

I haven't taken an in-depth look at what's going on with Luis Severino, but I did glance last Friday during my chat because I do research on the fly, which is always a bad idea. I didn't see anything that was too terribly alarming. For anyone who throws that hard, throws that many sliders, there's sort of like a slightly higher baseline concern level anyway. But forino right now I'm like a three or four out of ten okay yeah Mike Petriello wrote about him at MLB.com and he says there's been a change in the slider spin rate and in the movement and maybe that's somewhat worrisome like you could say well just give him

a break shut him down like there have been concerns about Severino's durability going back bit. People used to say he should be a reliever because he didn't have the build to be a starter. And we know he can be a really effective starter, but maybe if he is wearing down and doesn't want to say so or something, you just give him a break, except that the Yankees kind of need to win some games now, because it's actually a race for who wins that wildcard spot and who wins the first one and who wins the second one and having to fly across country to play that one game rather than staying where you are and getting a home game that actually maybe makes a meaningful difference both financially and on the field so i don't know if they're in a position to just say

hey you know go on the 10 day and we'll see you when you're refreshed yeah no probably not but i guess now maybe they get to look forward to playing against houston in the wildcard games at oakland because you know other things are going on but looking at severino right now on the fly his brooks baseball page i don't see anything that's terrible but i don't know this could require a mechanical analysis slash when a pitcher is hurt it doesn't always show up in the numbers until it shows up on his mri so you know louis severino could be pitching with a blown out elbow and the hell would i know that rachel i wish i could bring up a blue jay who's in the news but oh god there really aren't the last time a blue jay was in the news danny jansen hit a home run yesterday his

first major league home run so that's something to cheer for. Right, that's something. We mentioned the Blue Jay, mission accomplished. So my last thought, we talked to a groundskeeper on our most recent episode and we asked him about gamesmanship and how groundskeepers can and can't affect the field of play to maybe sway things a little bit in their team's favor. And as our guest Zach Ricketts was saying,

it's pretty hard to do and pretty much unheard of at this point, most likely, or at least he wasn't willing to break the code of silence that the groundskeeper fraternity has. I don't know which one, but someone sent us, Richard Moore, a listener, sent us an example of this that I was not aware of or had forgotten. This is from 2000. So June of 2000. Of course, this is the era when the Braves were notorious for getting extra strikes and big strike zones because this was obviously pre-pitch FX and they had Maddox and Glavin and all these guys who would pitch on the periphery of the zone and they would expand the zone and maybe they got good framing. Maybe there were other things at play too.

When I worked for the Yankees and they were just discovering framing and first running those numbers, they found that the Braves of that era got way more strikes than expected. And they speculated that maybe it was because Bobby Cox was just a jerk to umpires and would just argue about everything and shout from the dugout and get thrown out. And maybe umpires were intimidated. I don't know. Maybe that played some small role. But Richard's story that he sent me here, this is from 2000. And so what happened is the Braves catcher was called for a balk, a catcher's balk, for lining up with his right foot outside the box. So he was trying to just

present a really outside target to try to give Greg Maddox a little bit of extra real estate outside the zone. So he was called for a balk. Bobby Cox got mad. He got ejected. And then what happened was on the TBS broadcast, the next day, they superimposed footage of the catcher's box in that game over the catcher's box of the next game. And they found that the catcher's box itself, not where the catcher was positioned, but the actual lines appeared to be four to five inches smaller or narrower in the second game,

as if once the Braves got called out on this, they then actually shrank the catcher's box. John Sherholtz, who was running the team at that time, he says, I don't think there was any more to it than maybe a particular Day the lines weren't drawn exactly where they Ordinarily are it's not a big deal It's the first time I've seen a catcher's buck Called Frank Wren said he hadn't seen

One called since he was 15 in Little League That box was designed when catchers Were 5'9 now we've got big Guys trying to keep their feet inside the lines It's not that the catcher's box Got small it's that the catcher's box got small. It's that the catcher's got big. It's like a Sunset Boulevard quote or something.

So they kind of got caught, it sounds like, trying to change the margins of the catcher's box, which there would have to be a groundskeeper implicated in that process unless Sherholtz was going down and drawing those lines himself. And then the Braves even banned the TBS broadcasters from the team playing for a while as a form of reprisal for their exposing the scheme. Very silly story. Yeah, that whole press release and those statements, that sounds like people are lying to us. Yeah, well, these are 18-year-old lies, so I guess we can let them lie and we will take a quick break and we will hear a little music. And then all three of us will be back to talk at length to Billy Beane. Strange voices in my ears I feel the tears

But all I can hear are those words that never were true Spoken to help nobody but you Words with lies inside But small enough to hide till your plan was through All right, so we are joined now by Billy Bean, former Major League outfielder, and since 2014, MLB's ambassador for inclusion. He has been a busy man the past few weeks, and is still a busy man, but he is making some time to talk to us. So, Billy, thanks for coming on.

My pleasure, my pleasure. So, for people who don't know, and maybe we're those people. Could you describe your role and how it has evolved since it was initially conceived back in 2014? Absolutely. So 2014, baseball had finally expanded its workplace code of conduct, its anti-harassment and discrimination legislation to include sexual orientation under those groups that are protected. And there was a group here that brought me in, and they really created a position that there wasn't that much definition for, as it had not existed prior to that. And what was interesting was, you know, right out of the gate, Dan Halem, who is still my boss here, he wanted me to introduce myself to the general managers of MLB at the GM meetings.

And what was interesting about the takeaway there, I had the last 10 minutes of a three-day annual meetings that they have. And I had played with or against on the field or someone coached against me with 27 of the 30 MLB opening day managers, at least that was conveyed to me. But the point is that I had some strong relationships that I literally had forgotten because I'd been out of baseball for well over 10 years. And that really moved me close to the field. And I think to get to a long way around to answer your question is that as it was more apparent that our clubs were making a priority to expand a socially responsible consciousness about our community and realize that we are trying to get better each and every day and where that responsibility lies with baseball. I started to really cultivate relationships with the clubs, and then I had some really ideas that I thought were valuable, And I began to share those internally, things about the hazing

policy pipeline program here that did not exist at the time. And it just moved me into a position where I was come from speaking about myself, perhaps the novelty of the only former player able to speak about being openly gay and having played in the major leagues. That was an interesting dynamic that did not exist before. But I think the elevation of that dialogue really expanded the conversation along with the arrival of Commissioner Manfred, his desire to prioritize educational resources and the impact that we can have on our youth initiatives, expanding those programs. It was really the timing was just right to really be in a really formidable moment in

baseball where we have an opportunity to make an impact not only on our players, our employees, our fans, but our community. So my job, I wear a lot of hats. I would say I've had a chance to create some programs that I'm very, very proud of. I just think that the representation, the opportunity that may have been overlooked 20 years ago, where baseball was focused on the product on the field, more so than the responsibility that we have as an influencer in the world and in our country and in our 30 communities that we represent and the states alongside those.

So my job today is, I think, is a communicator of those resources. It changes each and every day. Sometimes we have great days and sometimes we have days that are not so great, but we are prepared in each instance to always try to have a solution and be the best we can be. For purposes of inclusion, of course, one of the most important parts is for members of a community to have someone to look up to. And I believe it was in 2015, I believe Sean Conroy was the first openly gay professional baseball player. That was with the Sonoma Stompers run by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller. But the first openly gay professional baseball

player in affiliated ball, I believe, was David Denson. And relatively early in your tenure with Major League Baseball, you had the fortune of working with him and helping him map out his entire process of embracing that role. And I was wondering if you could not only speak a little bit to how that process went from start to finish, but also whether there's any sort of frustration that you had a candidate, a promising young player, and David Denson now, he's been retired from professional baseball. He never made it to the major leagues. And I was wondering if there was any sort of disappointment that you couldn't, the first openly gay affiliated baseball player couldn't reach it. Well, I think, of course, there was some, I mean, I became very fond of David. David and I talked

for months and months and months before he made his choice to come out in his clubhouse before a ballgame one day. We started speaking to each other during spring training of that season. And, you know, he's young and he was full of exuberance and positivity. And I think he felt for him that was the best decision. And I think he felt for him that was the best decision. And when he decided to stop playing after, you know, hundreds and hundreds of text messages, I actually became very close with his father, talked to him often and, you know, really rooting for David and admiring his courage. There was a part of me that was disappointed.

There was a part of me that was grateful for, you know, his courage during that process and that he had a chance to play baseball and make that decision for himself, which is not often the case for a minor leaguer. But I just think it's an example of how difficult it is to get to the big leagues for any athlete, whether you're gay or straight. The percentage of players that come into our league, we draft 1,200 every June, and 1,200 most likely exit the sport at one way or another before the following year. The competition as a former player, I can tell, and I've said it for many years, it's a wonderful, amazing experience to be in the major leagues. It's not always easy. It's not always fun. But the minor leagues is really a tough experience because you have to really have that

intestinal drive and self-motivate and believe in something that you don't often get to see. And for those that make it through, that's why some of those players, they play so hard and they're so determined because those memories don't go away. And I feel like for David, he became a little impatient with the process. And sometimes that happens when you sign out of high school. You know, you start very low in the minors and it's a long journey. I think the Yankees have eight levels of minor leagues now. I mean, we're 10 minor league teams in total. It's a daunting task.

And the competition is getting better and better. Our sport, our athletes are taking better care of themselves than they ever have. And the focus is laser sharp on what you have to do, what skill set you have to have that's going to take you there. And he made his decision before consulting me in both instances. And so I had to be as a, you know, a big brother type friend to him, support that choice. And, you know, I don't put a grade on baseball for our efforts in the, you know, diversity space, especially where LGBT education and conversations go by how many players are out. I think the culture is shifting what is acceptable in commentary from our

clubs or from our league. We've proven ourselves over the last few years that we are an inclusive and accepting workplace and place of entertainment for our fans. We want everybody to feel welcome and that there are not going to be images that say otherwise. So for me, until that day that someone rises to the major leagues or maybe perhaps makes that decision after they've been there for a while, that cannot deter our efforts to make everyone feel respected

if they are pursuing a job, if they are reporting on our games like you guys do, or if they are a fan that walks through the turnstiles and waiting in line for a hot dog and a giant soda pop and then want to go sit in their seat. You want everyone to feel welcome, and a part of that process is educating our players on what their employer stands for and that we hope that with those consistent images that they would learn internally and feel that way organically about, you know, treating

each and every person with respect that comes to watch them play or works alongside them. So recently, obviously, we all know, those of us who are listening to this podcast, and those of us who follow baseball, there have been quite a number of controversies with players tweets from when they were young people surfacing with offensive, racist, misogynistic, homophobic language. And you actually addressed this in your very first interview done when the position of ambassador for inclusion was created. You addressed that athletes have to be role models now, especially in this world where we are on Twitter things are said instantaneously people are speaking perhaps without thinking and then

having these things available to the public as they become public figures uh now you have had you have spoken with the players involved in these incidents uh with Josh Hader most specifically and so you have access to the kind of accountability process and the feelings that these players might be going through that LGBTQ fans who are hurt by these incidences might not necessarily have. And I've seen a lot of frustration within the community at player apologies being said and people saying this happened when players were young. This happened many years ago and, you know, they have changed now. But we're not seeing quite the same outward accountability process that you would be seeing. So moving forward, do you think there's any way that when baseball faces these incidences again,

as we grow up with this generation of players who did grow up with social media, do you think that there is any way that that accountability process can be improved for the fan experience to be improved? Because there are many people who are hurt whenever these things happen. Well, absolutely. I mean, I was hurt when they happened because I, you know, I care about our sport. And I think what is an interesting, we are in a, it is a priority that has been, you know, set in front of us that is sort of a fluid moving target because this happened long before these athletes had ever signed a professional contract. Now, the process that, you know, when you talk about the players feeling remorse or apologizing,

that process, the context of the subject matter, they're individual unto themselves. It's easy for everyone to lump them in together because they're all baseball players and the three that you mentioned are playing in the big leagues. But as you said, I was able to have a meeting with each of the three examples that got the most publicity. And the players in each instance, it was very interesting and a learning experience for me for them to not only have talked about the type of person they have become since they've been a part of baseball, but that they had basically forgotten that they existed, the context that they were trying to be humorous with a small group of their own friends, and really the humiliation that it did not look that the same to them as it may have six or seven years ago. And I think our conversation would be different had these comments taken place a month prior, not six or seven years ago when they were

teenagers. It's no excuse. And you can tell by the way it was a priority to our sport, not only our commissioner, but the offices here and each organization, because that is a message that we want conveyed immediately that is unacceptable to represent our sport. And I think that all of baseball activated itself in a way throughout the industry. And we are trying to use an unfortunate situation as a learning experience. And for every player, they did sit up a little straighter and take notice and realize how accountability, the responsibility that goes with being in the big leagues and the ramifications of your actions, how that world has changed. And what, when, you know,

it may feel like when you're, you know, 16 or 17, none of those players knew they were going to be a major league baseball star at that time. But because of that privilege, they're being held accountable for something that they wish had never happened. Now, what we do with that, that is the great challenge for us. If those actions, if those words had taken place while they were employed by the three teams that they work for, that would be a violation of our workplace code of conduct and there would have been a punitive disciplinary action taken. But because it happened before, instead of throwing them under the bus and letting them just be the brunt of a circumstance that they created, but as a league, as a sport, what are we going to do? How are we going to take constructive action? And going to be, make it, take constructive action? And the first, the first thing to do was to sit down with each of those individuals and just find out where they stood in regard to the, you know, the revelation of the information. And it was a

difficult moment for all of them. And, and, you know, it was a learning experience that, you know, only they can really probably describe when the whole media world turns, you know, you're used to getting a lot of adoration and applause, and then all of a sudden people want to know why and when and what were you thinking and how they were able to communicate that. But for us, we are taking very proactive steps. I work in an exhausting way to create educational resources and efforts to try to get in front of our players. We have a program called Ahead in the Count. We started a bullying prevention program

called Shred Hate that we are going to implement as part of our extensive youth programs. But now what I can tell you, the consensus across the league is understanding just how important it is that we put expanded education in front of these players the minute that they put a uniform on. Because they are, as I said in 2014, every player is an ambassador of our sport, whether they want to or not. They can be a great ambassador or they can be an ambassador of negativity. And they are going to be responsible for those choices. But I feel like it's our responsibility to give them as much information as early as we can so they can make a choice that they're willing to live with. And I can tell you that there is not one of those three players that wouldn't do anything to take away that moment. Them understanding now that what they thought was funny, what they thought might never be seen, what they thought about gay people or women or people

of color and what they were comfortable saying in a disparaging context, because now they are in front of people. is uh an experience that each of them would never want to go through ever again i know we don't really live in counterfactuals and hypotheticals but regardless after after all three of those tweets series were published and brought to public light much of the conversation was about how it's weird that in 2018 these these old tweets even existed in the first place, and there was a lot of chatter about how teams or maybe PR agencies should instruct players to scrub their old social media accounts so that this stuff never sees the light of day,

and you just start from a blank slate. Now, if that happened, then of course tweets like this and messages like this would never come up because we'd never know. But in a strange way, I guess, do you prefer this form of existence and progression over? I don't think that's a solution. That is trying to hide a symptom of behavior that, again, we had no recourse at the time because they weren't part of our sport. You know, our country is based on the freedom of speech and all those kinds of things. And I think that the novelty of Twitter, and especially for someone

at that age, when it was, you know, still basically in its infancy, I think they're, you know, I'm what I'm hearing from the players is they did not even really understand the mechanics of it. It's no excuse. So scrubbing and erasing and, you know, taking things away, you know, that dialogue did not come out of this office. That's not being the direction that's coming for us. We have to get to the core of why young men think part of humor is talking in a disparaging way, especially in the context of feminizing other men, which is absolutely related to the respect for women and understanding how every word that we use in a way that disparages women is connected to respecting each other under the most difficult circumstances, which is why we have to talk about life skills,

where domestic violence awareness is an absolute priority and part of that education process. So for me, I don't bother myself with that dialogue. I saw some prominent players making comments, advising young players to do. But the example that we have seen that there are people out there that want to make examples of professional athletes. So going backwards now and to try to take away something that seemingly exists forever, that's not going to remedy the situation. So that to me, you know, whatever each individual does, like I said before, they're responsible for their own actions. But for us, we have to get to the core of the problem. And I hope that every 16 and 17 year old kid who's out there right now that wants to grow up someday and be a prominent personality or a person

in their community or be an athlete or be a, you know, a politician or an entertainer or whatever they want to be, they see this example and realize, you know what, I am accountable for my actions from this day forward. And, you know, our, my goal is to, I wish every kid could, you know, that signs a professional contract could make it to the major leagues or every kid who plays college baseball or every kid who plays little league. Unfortunately, that's not the situation. But one thing we can control is that if we prioritize our efforts about the type of people that we want playing baseball, we have a chance to have an impact on the cultivation of well-rounded citizens, male, female, boys, girls, old, young, whatever language is your first language, whatever community or culture you come from, if we're consistent, that would be a pretty amazing legacy. And I think one that would live up to being the sport of Jackie Robinson instead of just hoping that whatever representation we see from one team,

that's going to be the example of our efforts in the diversity and inclusion space. And that sometimes is an unfair account because, you know, we're smaller than the perception is. We feel it sometimes, and you guys know this better than me, we're like omnipresent with the streaming capabilities and the games everywhere 24-7 on our phones. But the truth is, is that, you know, we have only 30 teams. There's only 25 guys on each team. Our player development, the scale of it is much bigger than, you know, football or basketball or hockey or the other bigger sports. But with that, you know, seemingly huge, you know, responsibility, there's a great opportunity there. And I think that the only

way as human beings that we can get better in light of a moment where we have failed ourselves, our teammates, our sport, our families, we have to learn from the mistakes and we have to look at each other and work together for lack of a better metaphor as a team and find why does this take place? You know, does it start with the parents? Does it start with our teachers in our school? Does it start with our coaches? Or are we all a part of this process? Are we all a little bit responsible for our 17- and 16-year-old kids

making comments like that? Or is it only the responsibility of an employer seven years later down the road? And if, if, if we can look at each other in a, in a way that says, you know what, nobody thinks that this is a more important priority than baseball. And I can tell you that we are, we feel a sense of responsibility that is like a punch in the gut every single time. And that, you know, our young players, we know the impact they have on young kids. We know how every kid wants to look up to Mike Trout or Bryce Harper or Andrew McCutcheon or David Price or Mookie Betts or Aaron Judge and what they say or do. So we have a chance to

participate in their lives alongside the effort to give them every resource to be the greatest baseball player they can be. But we are going to do that and we can't go back in time. I wish that people would have listened to me in 2014 and said, you know what? Perk up because these guys are going to be in the big leagues in a few years and we are going to be held accountable. But all we can do is keep doing what we're doing. We have thousands of people that are participating in the education process for the over 8,000 kids who are signed to a professional contract somewhere in South America, the United States, and throughout. And each and every day now that we wake up, we realize that, you know, we have less and less time to implement a structure that allows us to get in front of them and have a

healthy conversation. And now, unfortunately, we have three very vivid examples that they're going to be able to relate to. And I hope that if anything comes from this, it will be every single player will be able to remember those days last two or three weeks when the revelations of those tweets came out. Yes, I agree with you about the many positives that can potentially come out of an unfortunate situation like this. I also know that a lot of people struggle with how to perceive these particular players going forward because it's so difficult to know the state of someone's mind, even if you can talk to them personally as you have, but certainly from afar,

watching them from on TV and judging them based on their public comments. Of course, many people, their thinking evolves dramatically between the time that they're 17 and 25. Of course, many people, their thinking evolves dramatically between the time that they're 17 and 25. Other people, not at all. So there's this spectrum of responses when one of these stories arises from this player's dead to me on one end to this player gets a standing ovation when he returns on the other end. Do you have any recommendation for how fans should think of this sort of thing? Because I know that you personally also probably want to be in a situation where you know for sure that you're changing minds. Of course, many fans' minds, but also these particular players' minds.

And you don't want to be in a situation where you're just kind of brought in to gloss over the situation. You know, a bad PR story arises and Billy Bean comes in to talk to the player and that's that. I know that you want to make more of an impact than that. Yeah, I definitely, and we, that has obviously, you know, the moment that the hater revelation at the All-Star game came out, we did not know what was going to transpire in the next two weeks. So, you know, having someone in place like myself who has had a relationship with almost every single major league player, maybe for 15 minutes, but there, there's a consciousness understanding of what my place in baseball, I've been out there enough over the last four and a half years that that seemed to be the, the,

the first remedy, you know, the, the first part of the, not only the gathering information process, but the rehabilitation process of trying to solve this problem. The optics of the fans' response to Josh Hader's return, none of us could have predicted that. I think a lot of it has to do with the type of season that Josh Hader is having as a dominating, you know, person in a team that is eager to, you know, win a division title, a lot of positive energy around the team. Maybe perhaps they saw that all of his teammates supported him on camera. I was there when it happened.

I saw it. It was a tremendous moment. Lorenzo Cain showing, you know, incredible leadership in that clubhouse who could easily have dismissed Josh forever and maybe would have divided that team in a way. And maybe, you know, them trying to see the opportunity as a healing moment. I don't know, but I do see the generalization, how it hurt baseball that the fans are applauding someone who made racist comments on Twitter. I don't know if that's fair.

I can't get into the minds of 25,000 fans that, you know, or if it was 5,000 or whatever. I think there was some, you know, definitely some intangibles to, you know, what that optic was. But depending on how this situation evolves, we know that we need to have a greater bandwidth on education resources and professional organizations that can be impactful, but they need to be relatable and they need to be able to communicate to young men in a very competitive and difficult work environment. When it comes to job security, this is not a group of college students who, by choice, decide to sit and have a talk about diversity and acceptance and respect. You know what I'm saying? We have to pick our moments

where we can capture the athlete in a place where they're as receptive as possible and understand the gravity of the choices they make and how that ramifications of those choices might not happen for two or three years because they, not until they arrive in the major leagues. You know, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that a kid in the lower minor leagues could, let's say, make a comment disparaging about David Denson two years ago because he didn't know the backstory. And then he rises to the major leagues.

That's a reality that could take place for us. That's in the past. And until we are able to have a moment with each and every athlete and explain to them, this is a reality that you need to understand. And a lot of our athletes don't speak English as a first language still. You know, there's a lot of cultural disconnect and there's a lot of players moving around and there's, you know, it's not like we're looking at, you know, a set of 30 people and trying to mold them into, you know, being perfectly well-rounded citizens

who are accepting and respectful of everybody. They're. You know, so the context of how we're trying to approach the possibilities versus what has already taken place and what might be somewhere along the line. And that for us, that can't detour, you know, whether, you know, someone in, you know, with their own Twitter feed or who is a big baseball fan said we should just eliminate those three players. We have to come to a determination about a disciplinary measure that takes place when an action like this happens, when a player is a part of our baseball family, and that is yet to be determined.

That's for a lot of people to, you know, weigh in, and obviously the commissioner will make the final say on that, but we need to take into consideration every possibility, and so far that has not happened. That is, it's only happened with kids who were underage with their own Twitter account and maybe their first iPhone, and they were, you know, six, seven years before they arrived in the major leagues. So I don't, you know, we are working as fast as we can.

It feels like, you know, those comments happened six months ago already, but it's not even been a month. It's just, you know, we're trying the very best we can to address it with the moments that we have. So as you were saying, like these players were very young, six or seven years ago, when they made these comments on Twitter. They were in high school. They were young athletes.

They may never have received the resources to understand what exactly was so hurtful about their language, even though the language that they were using was actively hurting LGBT people. They were not employed at the time. So we don't have. And again, that goes back to parents, big brothers, big sisters, you know, influencers, mentors, coaches. You know, this dialogue needs to take place on the high school field, too, about being responsible and representing your community or your family or your teammates. your teammates, you know, however we break it down, right? Those three players that we've talked about are representing, you know, major league cities with millions and millions of citizens that live there. So that is why there's uproar. And that is why, as you said, you know, people that are part of the LGBT community or people of color or women are offended, and they are painful for those of us who don't feel that way, it feels like we should be focusing on those communities that are targeted as opposed to 100% of the attention. Are we doing everything we can to make those communities feel embraced and part of our sport?

And with the diversity initiatives, the beautiful, splendid makeup of the diversity of our youth events all around the country. It feels like what we're seeing is going to, you know, it'll take a little time, but it will manifest itself. And our big league fields will better represent our communities in the future, which is for us to feel a sense of moving forward and not just holding, sitting on our hands and holding our breath and hoping for the best. But what we're trying to accomplish is not something that happens overnight. There has to be a lot of communication and a lot of infrastructure put in place. The outreach has to be comprehensive.

pulling from the broadest, most diverse groups so we can get the best and brightest minds to run the sport, run our ball clubs, and play on our fields. And so that takes a little bit of time because as we can tell, the choices, they're becoming more and more choices for people, different sports to play, different jobs to pursue, and we have to go out there and do our best to be a part of that big pool of people. My last one is about maybe some of the progress that you have detected in your time in baseball. We're talking about some of the negative outbursts here. They certainly still exist and need to be addressed strongly, but you were in clubhouses at a time when this sort of speech, say, 30 years ago, and whether the fact that we're even talking about this as something that needs to be addressed is itself a sign of change or progress.

Well, that's what I talk about, changing the culture. And what was acceptable dialogue when I was a player, especially in the late 80s, compared to now, I couldn't be prouder of the way our sport has evolved and how from the top down in each organization, that message is loud and clear. And it's been interesting in the conversations I've had with the players that we've been talking about, their clear understanding of how, I mean, even when I was playing because of the impact of not only Jackie Robinson, but the, the amazing African-American superstars that, you know, of the fifties and sixties, you know, the country may have been a step behind, but baseball, you know, the way athletes and teammates talk to each other,

there has never been a tolerant moment in my life experience as an athlete to, you know, utter racist comments. But there was a time where you could say things that were homophobic and disparaging towards women and nobody would blink an eye. And so, you know, part of that painful journey and growth process is that, and what I've heard from the three that I talked to that made me feel a great sense of hope was that they all, all three of them said that they would not have a problem with a gay teammate and that they have really benefited from the conversations that may have been inspired by my return to baseball about, you know, LGBT inclusion and acceptance, and that we have prioritized and really incorporated into that dialogue and understanding of this, the Me Too movement around the country and the world and

why respect for women is not a choice. It is an absolute mandatory part of a working place in whether you're a professional athlete or if you're a professional that works in corporate America or anywhere. We can't expect young men thrown together from different cultures, like I said, a very high percentage, maybe up to 40% of minor league athletes not speaking English as a first language. we can't expect them to understand exactly what's going on in the world politically, what's going on with government or in a socially conscious way, the way some of us with a little more life experience do. But we can ask them to do their best to absorb that information if we put it in front of them. But the culture in the

clubhouse, the images that are splashed across our scoreboards, you know, the eliminating, disparaging, you know, humor that is directed towards LGBT community, I'm obviously very, very sensitive to that in ways where that was overlooked in the past. I don't think it was meant to target or be specifically evil or aggressive to any community, one or the other. But unless we continue to get better and be in front of you know, the world changes, information moves 100,000 times faster than it used to. Our actions are going to be judged in ways. So, you know, baseball, as we've grown as a sport, we have more and more people that are, you know, specific responsibility and priority, just like mine with my job, is to be conscious of that and lead by example. And sometimes, you know, those choices feel a little, you know, maybe too progressive for some players or for some former players. But our priority is first and foremost, not only to, you know, like I said, create that culture that allows the players to know, but also through them, let our fans know, let every person who applies for a job or pursues a career in our sport or wants to be a part of it through entertainment portals

or through journalistic portals, that they will be treated equally and fairly and with respect when they intersect with the sport. We only have two more, one from me and one from Rachel. And I'll say that I think we can agree on three fundamental principles here. One, we have a limited cultural appreciation for nuance. We have a strong cultural appreciation for symbols. And we have a strong cultural appreciation for headlines.

So I was curious how you would respond to the headline. I've seen it recently, other people have seen it recently, that the only baseball team that hasn't had and isn't scheduled to have an LGBTQ Pride Night is the New York Yankees. Well, that is not exactly true, that headline. But I guess context is the first thing that jumps out to me. The Yankees have had the most progressive. I'm very, very close with the Yankee front office. Maybe that was inspired by logistics and how close the office is. But the activation that, first of all, the Yankees, I brought to an LGBT homeless youth center in 2014. Brian Cashman and Gene Afterman brought hats and caps and made a lifelong memorable experience to a group of LGBT youth, most of color and dealing with gender identity issues where their family had thrown them out of their own homes.

And we were there, spent the day, not only learned about the incredible challenges that those kids in our community face, but took pictures and posted them on social media. They got Yankee hats and caps, and we had a career day for them back at Yankee Stadium to where they spent the whole day in the human resources leaders and walked through all the different jobs, and they were exposed to the opportunity of working in Major League Baseball in a front office capacity, if not, if they didn't want to be a player. They also did an incredible memorial to the Pulse nightclub victims in Orlando in 2016 on the field. I was on the field with Brian Cashman. And I've also, they're the only team

that's allowed me to speak, or as not allowed, but has invited me to speak to their major league club and their minor league camp every single spring since I returned to baseball. So a Pride Night has great influence and impact on a lot of people. And certainly New York City probably has one of the largest LGBT communities in the world, of which I'm a part of as well. And so I am excited to hear that the Yankees want to do something. But for me, the culture, the consistency of the actions that the Yankees have placed far outweighs, you know, a one-nighter that has nothing behind it.

And every single club determines when and where a night like this would take place. I think there is a sense to generalize what a night like that means. I've been invited to almost all of them over in one capacity or other, and each one has been a profound experience for me. If I had seen an image like that as a player, it might have changed my life. I would not have probably walked away from baseball without talking to my family when my life got a little bit complicated off the field. So I'm tremendously appreciative of each and every one of those, but the generalization of the context of each one, the size of them, there's been a few

teams that were unable to do that this year, but that doesn't detour from the 24-5 that did. And so to focus on a headline that wants to perpetuate that baseball is discriminating conversation about, you know, how much each and every team is doing, then perhaps I would probably have a little more leniency to, you know, something that's just thrown up there to get readers to click onto it. So on the topic of Pride Nights, we've seen Major League Baseball teams over the past few years embrace these promotions in a really incredible and encouraging way, to the point that it's a near universality now at a major league ballpark that there will be a Pride event at some point. And as you said, it really is a profound experience

as a member of the LGBT community to come out to one of these games, to the ballpark that you love, to watch a game and really feel celebrated and included. And so now that it has become such a universality and that it's become so wonderfully widely accepted, the Pride Night is such a visible benchmark of how MLB is moving forward in its inclusion and acceptance of LGBT people. I'm wondering what you see for MLB moving forward now that this kind of visible benchmark has been achieved. What other experiences we might advance toward for fans to feel included at ballparks?

Well, I think it's been an interesting, it gets a lot of attention because, you know, just a few years ago, I think a lot of people perhaps thought that that would never, these types of nights would never take place. I think clubs are learning more and more that to be progressive in an accepting and inclusive way is not bad for business. So I think it's going to be much, you know, as we move forward, there will be less and less attention to special nights of this nature because it will just be understood. color, your religion, your sexual orientation, your gender, your national origin, your age, your military status, and maybe perhaps more centric to groups that have a specific meaning in a community, whether that's based on the type of profession or what the community produces or

a type of population that has a high percentage of citizens in that community. I don't think there's across the board. What I try to remind everybody is any special night is not an entitlement to a part of the community. One of the things that I am proud of about the LGBT community is that most of these nights around the league have been created out of great determination to bring a group to the ballpark and show the club that they love the team. And, and literally it, the core is about being a sports fan. It's not about anything else. It's just that for all the, you know, tremendous amount of sports fans we have around the country, many of them that are LGBT in the past were not really comfortable sharing that at the park because they just, they wanted to be treated the same and not

differently. They were wearing the same jersey as the person next to them, but they probably weren't as sure because baseball had not been as free with the message of acceptance and inclusion. So as we become universal across the board, and I don't think that's going to take much more time. And I'm, again, appreciative of that, because from the best of my knowledge, just about every single one of these nights has been a very positive, empowering experience for the club, as well as the fans in attendance. And while the world is not perfect, all you have to do is turn on the news and know that, you know, we have great challenges

in our community still. I feel great that baseball is like a healer and it brings people together. And there's something that we can all, as we sit next to each other, we stare out into the same location and we see something that we're proud to watch or entertains us and makes us feel happy. It bridges generations of age. You know, there's nothing cooler than seeing a, you know, a grandpa, a dad, and a little kid all wearing the same ball cap, you know, eating some food, watching their favorite players play, you know, and whether, what, it doesn't matter, you know, the color of the skin or the sexual orientation or the religion that they follow or the language they speak.

They just love, you know, their baseball team. And to me, that continues to inspire me to that we can rise above these moments where we stub our toe and we feel like we're not being perfect. And the game itself, it makes you smile. It makes you happy. It smells good. And the sounds are awesome. And, you know, you close your eyes and it doesn't matter what city you're in.

It sounds the same, you know, in a big league ballpark. And that's an exciting foundation to build off of. All right. Well, Billy, we thank you so much for being so generous with your time. It's been, as you say, a somewhat challenging time for the sport and for many of its fans, and I'm sure for you personally, but we're all happy to have you and someone like you in your position to help with some of the healing that you were just talking about. So thank you very much for coming on and talking to us. I appreciate you guys taking

the time and I appreciate you investing enough to hear the whole story behind it. And I look forward to seeing or hearing the podcast and stay in touch with me and Roach and we look forward to working with you guys again. Okay. All right. Good talking to you. Thank you. All right. You guys be well. Bye-bye. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. So we appreciate Billy giving us his time, a lot of his time, probably more of his time than he expected. That's kind of a theme with our guests. But I thought his answers were very thoughtful and frank, and I'm glad we got to talk to him. And Rachel, I know that you were telling us off the air about something you read earlier today that maybe is, I don't know whether it's encouraging or discouraging, but maybe points to

why this will be a continued topic for conversation. Yeah, I was trying to work this into a question, but I didn't get a chance to. I was reading a study this morning that was published a few months ago by the Human Rights Council and the University of Connecticut. Last year, they did a survey of LGBT student-athletes. The sample was like over 12,000 people ages 13 to 17. And what they found was that 80% of lesbian, gay and bi teenagers and 82% of trans teenagers who play sports are not out to their coaches. And only 24% of LGBT youth play a school sport compared to 68% of non-LGBT youth. And this is in 2017. So, you know, as far as we have come in terms of diversity and inclusion and trying to change the culture that discourages

LGBT kids from playing sports in high school and thus advancing to play sports maybe someday in the major leagues, it's still this huge problem. Like 80% say that they are not out to their coaches. This is a place. This is a place where they should feel safe to be able to share themselves, you know, with a teammate. It's an important part of being part of the sports team. And so I was just I was hoping to find out what MLB thinks it can do in terms of youth initiatives to combat this culture, because the tweets from Josh Hader and Sean Newcomb and Trey Turner and whatever tweets might end up being uncovered in the future, like there are tweets being tweeted by people of this age group,

like people in high school. And this is the time when like potential LGBT athletes, the person who may someday become the first out major leaguer, they end up getting discouraged from continuing with the sport because of the compromise it puts on them living their full identity, like living their full lives. So I think that's really the most important battleground in terms of this, this cultural, this, this move towards cultural change is with the, with the youth. And so I hope MLB can do more to

promote changing the culture among the youth. Yeah, of course, that's going to be a challenge that young players will continue to face. I have seen and heard some suggestions that, you know, this is only the beginning, that this is the start of a torrent of these tweets that will continue coming out. And it did seem like that for a while when those three stories broke in quick succession. And that's possible, but I hope that that won't be the case. I hope that we'll look back on this as the worst of times when it comes to unearthing terrible tweets. Not that it will ever end entirely, but I hope that they won't continue to come out indefinitely, But I hope that they won't continue to come out indefinitely, just whether it's because players, agents, teams, whomever will get smarter about scrubbing them. That's one thing, but also that fewer people will feel impelled to tweet such things and whether that's because they have actually changed their minds and these attitudes are not as prevalent as they were in 2011, 2012 when these particular tweets surfaced or whether, you know, kind of in a more cynical way, other players,

younger players are looking at this and saying, I don't want to be the next guy who's the subject of that story. So even if I think this, I won't say it publicly. I'll be smarter about what aspects of my personality I disclose one way or another., hopefully it's more the former than the latter, but one way or another, I hope that this will not be something that surfaces season after season after season with player after player after player. But, of course, as long as teenaged human beings are given a platform to say something public

that does not disappear automatically, it's going to be kind of an occupational hazard. I think we're running out of, we're also going to run out of years in which people could say that, well, Twitter was in its infancy when I was tweeting these things. So at a certain point, like if you're in high school and you're tweeting these things now, yeah, the world, the world is watching and they're probably retweeting you right now.

Right. Yes, exactly. Just as someone who was like in high school recently, though, I think an issue is that like we are my generation is probably and the generation of players that's coming up in the major leagues right now is like one of the first that grew up with social media as this kind of extension of your personality that like was around you from the time you were very young. And I think an issue is that a lot of these players do not perceive their personal Twitter accounts when they're using them as teenagers as like a public facing thing. It is just an extension of your personality and you talking with your friends. So I think that perspective has probably changed somewhat over the past few weeks. I would imagine there's been a lot of tweet searching and tweet deleting among prospective professional athletes. But yeah,

I think my cynical view as somebody of the age group where this is coming from is that it's probably going to keep happening, probably not like with the deluge of these three people that we had over the past month or so. But I think we're going to have to deal with it again with some frequency. Yeah yeah I was actually gonna ask you about that because it's it's one thing for me or Jeff to hear the excuse well he was young and dumb and we all said stupid things when we were 17 or something and for us it's a while in the past for other people it's even longer. In the past, for you, we that the extremity of the language used in the tweets, I think was very shocking to a lot of people when the tweets were unearthed. I did not

find it that shocking. Because people were saying, well, first of all, how could you say such a thing? And secondly, how could you say it on the internet? This is just what the internet is like. Like, this is what people, this is how teenagers talk on the internet, like in, within certain circles. But particularly, like, unfortunately, within these kind of athletic circles in high school, you get a lot of, you get a lot of that kind of stuff. Like that was, that was like the day-to-day reality for me a few years ago being in high school. So I think for me, it was less surprising for then for somebody may even like five or 10 years older. And I think that's just something that my generation is going to have to work on. Because I think the internet and the

relative anonymity of the internet, like it's one thing to say a homophobic or racial slur out loud in the presence of others to somebody's face. It's another thing. It's a different action to go and tweet it on your Twitter account that has, I don't know, 20 followers. That's just you and your friends. People feel safe and comfortable doing that kind of thing. And the only, really, it's so prevalent, doing that kind of thing. And the only really, it's so prevalent, the only reason why it had any repercussions for these guys is just because they eventually became public figures, and gave up home runs in the All-Star Game and people went digging through their tweets. So that's, it's just something that it's a sad reality of growing up in the internet age and growing up where so much communication between friends and so many social circles are communicated exclusively through the internet. And I think

that's just something that we're going to have to work on and be more aware of. And that like, like you guys have been saying, that is kind of a sort of positive of this whole situation is that we are having this discussion now. And hopefully it will inspire at least a few people to be more aware of the language that they are using on the internet. Right. I mean, there's two ways of looking at it on one, what we don't really want to be the mindset here, but that will probably be the mindset for a lot of people is that, well, this is social media and I'm a brand from the time I'm born. I'm a brand and no one wants to, well, not more than a third of the population wants to buy from an openly

homophobic brand. But of course, the ideal is that you have people reconsidering their language and what their actual brand is, how they actually feel. Now, that's what we can't really control. That's much more difficult to do. So first step is to reduce the usage of the language. Second step is to get people to think about the language in the first place. That's more complicated, more difficult, more long-term, but that's more than we can cover in this podcast right now. All right. Well, Rachel, we really appreciate your coming on. You can find Rachel on Twitter at Rum Hamlet. You can find her writing at Baseball Perspectives, at the Heartball Times, at Vice. We hope that we get to talk to you again sometime soon and that you continue not to be on fire. Thank you so much.

I hope so too. We don't need the sun to know Bedtime So after we recorded this episode, both of the extremely hot hitters we talked about in our intro, Matt Carpenter and Ronald Acuna, were hit by pitches and removed from their respective games. Fortunately, in both cases, x-rays were negative and those players seemed to be okay, but the Acuna case became baseball's biggest story on Wednesday. You've almost certainly seen what happened. On the very first pitch of the game, Marlins starter

Jose Reina hit Acuna on the elbow with a 97.5 mile per hour fastball. This was Enya on Enya violence. Acuna tried to stay in the game, but ultimately took himself out. This was one of the hardest pitches that Irenia has thrown all season, his hardest pitch to start a game, and I'm just so sick of seeing this sort of thing. Acuna came into this game with eight homers in his eight previous games. He had homered in five straight. A bunch of those were leadoff homers. Look, it can be hard sometimes to divine the intent of a pitcher who hits a batter. The shadow knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. In this case, I think we all know this was not one of those borderline cases where there's a lot of uncertainty. The context of the situation and Ureña's reaction or non-reaction told a pretty clear story that he was hitting Acuna purely because

Acuna has been good at baseball. That's basically it. I know he said after the game that he was just trying to pitch inside and he missed his target. I know that Ureña led the majors last year with 14 hit by pitches. I know he leads the NL this year with 11. He's not a bad control pitcher, so I don't know whether he does this intentionally at other times or whether pitches just get away from him. But in this case, from all appearances, this was no accident. This isn't even one of the stupid stories where Acuna committed the grave offense of looking happy on a baseball field and celebrated his accomplishments. As far as I know, this hit-by-pitch was not issued in response to a bat flip or excessive celebration. If anything, this was even worse than one of those

because Acuna's only offense was hitting baseballs hard. And for that, he had to be hit hard by a baseball. Now, it wasn't up and in, but it wasn't a breaking ball in the butt either. This is a really hard pitch in an area where a hitter could be hurt in a way that ends his season, keeps him out of the playoffs.

Obviously, it's terrible for baseball to have a young hitter like Acuna, whom we were all so excited to see. We're all on the edge of our seats. Can he go deep again instead? No, he is clutching his elbow and trotting to first base and ultimately leaving the game. This sort of thing endangers players' futures, potentially tampers with a pennant race. And I really think, you know, we were just talking to MLB's ambassador for inclusion. I think MLB needs an ambassador for exclusion for players like Raina who use potentially damaging, even deadly weapons to send a message. The message in this

case being, hey, I can't get you out. You're too good at this. I am too intimidated by your talent even to try to retire you. So I'm just going to try to hit you instead and possibly hurt you. It's one thing to pitch inside, make sure a guy's not digging in too much. You know, if someone is as locked in as Acuna has been, I understand the need to try to keep him off balance. That's part of pitching. And what Arreña did has historically been part of pitching too, but it shouldn't be. He was ejected after that pitch and will almost certainly be suspended. But the precedent for this sort of action is five games, one start, maybe one turn through the rotation. That's just not enough. It's not going to go away if that is always the response. We can sit here and call this cowardice, but if MLB doesn't discipline Ureña as if this

was a serious act, it won't change the culture. It won't be a deterrent to the next pitcher who's considering something stupid like this. This practice just has to stop. No one benefits from this. The fans who want to see Acuna don't benefit. Acuna himself doesn't benefit. The Marlins don't benefit. This is so silly and retrograde and dangerous. And just once I'd like to see a really strong response. Baseball has cracked down on performance enhancing drugs. This is a performance impairing pitch. So please, please let this sort of thing be banished from baseball soon. All right, that will do it for today. You can support this podcast by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild

and signing up to pledge some small monthly amount. Following five listeners have already done so. You should emulate them. Matt Wine, Joe Camerata, Dylan Lake, Steve Descala, and Alexander Elschultz. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. Such a great group. I was just in there a moment ago.

I saw a thread from Andy Dirks. Andy Dirks, the former Detroit Tiger, just popped in to say hello and he likes the podcast and now he's in the Facebook group. Sure. Why not? You never know who's going to show up in there. You can also rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and many other podcast platforms.

Thanks as always to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. If you're a supporter, we are currently planning to answer emails on our next episode. We will be back to talk to you very soon. you're gonna send to make it a better day it's the pride that makes you feel that you belong it's the pride that keeps you strong

thank you guys it's a very surreal experience for me because this podcast taught me everything I know about baseball oh no yeah you're responsible for shaping the minds This podcast taught me everything I know about baseball. Oh, no. Yeah, you're responsible for shaping the minds of the youth.

So just keep that in mind. Oh, boy. So wait, we're the youth initiative? You guys are the... The answer was in front of us the entire time. You guys are the youth initiative. That seems like a very uneven and odd education. You've learned a lot of useless stuff. Let me tell you, America's youth is very pro-Mikeout, but like in weird handicapped disabling kind of ways.