Craig Calcaterra, Rethinking Fandom: How to beat the Sports-Industrial Complex at its Own Game

• Baseball is Back & Craig Calcaterra visits BaseballBiz 
• Baseball team Owners still make money when their teams lose
• Teams with a payroll of $50 million are guaranteed $65 million in national tv money 
• Social Contract: Fand & Teams -  You win & we support you 
• Atlanta Braves and the development of Truist Park & The Battery
• Alex Antholpoulos – understands the Social Contract with the players
• Owners who wanted to win – Ted Turner, George Steinbrenner
• MLB owners are finding more revenue outside the stadium
• Detroit Tigers – family businesses is Pizza or Baseball making more money for the owners
• Texas Rangers & Cleveland Guardians stadium built on public approval
• Tanking can be beneficial & profitable just ask Houston Astros & Chicago Cubs
• Cincinnati Reds have no interest in winning in 2022
• The Success Cycle
• Embarrassing product on the field or just a bad team
• Craig’s take on Expanded Playoffs 
• MLB, Gambling & micro-betting
• Rob Manfred 'nuff said
• How we invest into our teams as fans
• Talent Drain from baseball
• We have the power to not let sports negatively impact our lives
• Rooting for a player not the laundry they wear, LeBron James & Wander Franco

Craig Calcaterra, author, upcoming book:  April 5th is the publication date for Rethinking Fandom: How to Beat the Sports-Industrial Complex at Its Own Game

Craig’s newsletter “Cup of Coffee” https://craigcalcaterra.com/cup-of-coffee-newsletter/ 

Craig’s book can be found at Rethinking Fandom: How to Beat the Sports-Industrial Complex at Its Own Game https://craigcalcaterra.com/book/

Special Thanks to XTaKeRuX for the music “Rocking Forward”

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

craig calcaterra 
 "rethinking fandom" 
 how-to-beat-the-sports-industrial-complex-at-its-own-game 

[00:00:00] Mark Corbett: Welcome to Baseball Biz. I'm Mark Corbett, your host, and with me today. I have a very special guest, Craig Calcaterra. Craig, it's great having you here today on Baseball Biz. My gosh, man I've been following you with your column, your newsletter, cup of coffee that you put out five times a week, and it just is eyeing you, you have a sense of the depth of what's going on with baseball, and this isn't something new to you.

[00:00:30] Mark Corbett: You've been on, I think, what worked with NBC Sports and some others. I know I've see you as a commentator sometimes, like on espn. Our NPR as well. So we have a very learned friend here today with baseball, Mr. Craig Calcaterra. 

[00:00:46] Craig Calcaterra: I don't know how learned I am. I've just been doing it for a while. When you get old man, you hang around long enough and people start calling you nice things.

[00:00:52] Craig Calcaterra: So we'll take it. 

[00:00:53] Mark Corbett: Okay, man. The one thing I tell you what, when I first saw your book, the new book that you got coming out, that title just. [00:01:00] Me rethinking fandom and being a, a Tropicana race fan, that's something I do every day. But re rethinking fandom and how to beat the sports industrial complex at its own game.

[00:01:13] Mark Corbett: And being a child who grew up in the age of Eisenhower. When I hear that sports industrial complex, my mind immediately goes to military as his exit strategy from the White House. He was talking about beware the military industrial complex. And so when I saw your title, I thought, Damn. You 

[00:01:32] Craig Calcaterra: know I can't say that I was a big fan of Eisenhower.

[00:01:35] Craig Calcaterra: He obviously predated me, but I'm a student of history. I know stuff. But I was always struck by that speech his going out the door speech in 1960 and. Part of that is I've been on the inside. I've been studying this for a long time. I've been part of it for a long time. I'm even complicit in it a little bit more than a little bit considering he was literally the most powerful general on the planet.

[00:01:58] Craig Calcaterra: Yeah. And the [00:02:00] president. So the idea that you could look inside and see something, And then realize how big it is and how big the problems are, especially if you were part of those problems. And then walk out and start warning people about it. I, there's something inspiring about that. You don't want somebody to be complicit in it, but it's good to hear someone issuing the warning.

[00:02:21] Craig Calcaterra: And to be honest, if we had all listened to Eisenhower in 1960 and acted accordingly, maybe things would've been a lot different in the last 40, 50 years. I 

[00:02:29] Mark Corbett: think that's true enough because it was a, it is a good warning, but I don't even know if most people got of him like yourself. I look at history so much much less at the politics of things that he may or may not have done.

[00:02:41] Mark Corbett: But that message was clear and you figure if a president on his way out says something like that, it may be worth at least taking a little check mark to it. And look at it, but looking at that about, be wearing as far as that go, talking about the sports industrial complex and you know what you're covering in that new book with free thinking fandom, man.

[00:02:59] Mark Corbett: Oh [00:03:00] man. You give us some depth. I think as a fans, As a casual fan, it's real easy to maybe just follow some players and see what's going on with the game. And maybe a lot of those folks haven't been seeing what all is going on with the C b A, the collective bargaining agreement between MLB and its players association.

[00:03:15] Mark Corbett: But one thing, one, thank God that's done. Yeah I'm glad you're here to tell us about it. Cuz folks, again Greg Ka, if you're looking at his newsletter, cup of coffee, you're gonna get great insights every day. Not only does he have the news. Craig sees things through a unique lens, and he can give it.

[00:03:36] Mark Corbett: He give, I say, I don't wanna say spin. You can give a nice, clear look at what's happening above and beyond. Just here are the facts about what's happening out there. So thank you for that. 

[00:03:44] Craig Calcaterra: Oh, hey it's fair to say spin. They're spinning you and I'll spin you back. It's all right. Everybody's spinning something.

[00:03:50] Mark Corbett: That's right, brother. Things. Just soon as this collective bargaining agreement was done, a little over 99 days. Bam. Here we are. We, everybody says it's okay. We're actually gonna have a [00:04:00] full year of baseball. And what's gonna happen with free agency trades, health services from that lockout I was concerned about my own title glass now as a pitcher he couldn't get any health services supposedly, and we see you posted today about Tatis Jr.

[00:04:15] Mark Corbett: He had a what? A motor, what a motorcycle accident about two months ago. What happened there? 

[00:04:20] Craig Calcaterra: Yeah, early December Fernando Taiz Jr. Had a motorcycle accident down in the Dominican Republic, and at the time it was announced and reported, it said he had some scrapes and that's probably all he thought he had, but he didn't have any contact really with the Padres doctors.

[00:04:36] Craig Calcaterra: The Padres didn't have any contact with him because it happened just after the lockout began. He shows up to spring training this weekend and they were like, Hey, you need surgery? You're gonna be out three months. Now, that's not to say that Tatis handled this perfectly, obviously, one just got a giant contract.

[00:04:52] Craig Calcaterra: Maybe he shouldn't be driving around on motorcycles, but that's between him and his motorcycles and his team. But the other thing is how much [00:05:00] did the lack of communication between the club and Tapis affect delaying this by over three months on a surgery that the recovery time for is three months.

[00:05:08] Craig Calcaterra: They're not gonna get him back till after the break, probably now. And you just wonder if there was better communication lines between the team and the players things would've been better. I really do hope that someone, like Glasnow, for example, has been certainly talking to all the right people about his rehab.

[00:05:23] Craig Calcaterra: I'm sure he is because his future depends on it. But man, anytime there's some sort of breakdown in communication there you gotta worry. 

[00:05:31] Mark Corbett: Yeah, and it was interesting to see during this period, some people took very positive actions you could say, and I can't remember if you're the guy who wrote, reported this or not, so forgive me, but we're talking about show Hail Tani's interpreter and how he quit working with the Angels so he could actually continue to help Tani while this lockout was 

[00:05:51] Craig Calcaterra: going on.

[00:05:52] Craig Calcaterra: Yeah, that was interesting. Yeah he resigns his job and then immediately gets hired back by the angels after the locker was over. I don't think everyone could do [00:06:00] that. No I don't think the Kevin Cash can't do that and go talking and working with his players and then go back, but true enough.

[00:06:09] Mark Corbett: The thing of it is too, Is there we've been in turmoil. Anybody who follows this and they're impassioned about it as a fan, they've been looking for something new every day. We're looking from the different portals, as you say, each have their own spin and looking for some shredded truth.

[00:06:28] Mark Corbett: Some people say, oh my gosh, pointing fingers at this one and that one, our old doom and gloom. There's not gonna be a season. No, we're gonna be out eight games. We're gonna be this, that, and the other. And then light comes through the skies, and here we are and we have this, the fans, the more evident fans can take a breath.

[00:06:45] Mark Corbett: Maybe some of the more casual fans didn't even know what was going on, not paying attention. I get that. And 

[00:06:49] Craig Calcaterra: there's nothing wrong with that. In fact I would argue that my book is aimed more at casual fans than almost anyone else because the one thing that [00:07:00] people like you and me who are paying close attention to this stuff all the time, it's easy to get disillusioned.

[00:07:06] Craig Calcaterra: I think we know enough and we're in it enough and have dealt with it long enough to be able to deal with it. I could write about labor strife for six months and then if things come back, I'll go right back into it talking about baseball. I'm okay with it, I get it. But if you're a casual fan, it's very easy to be alienated by sports these days.

[00:07:23] Craig Calcaterra: Whether it's the bad business news, whether it's greed, whether it's players or owners or whoever you think are the greedier parties in that whether it's the legal stuff involved, whether it's anything. That that sort of turns us off about sports. That's a good way for people just to say, you know what?

[00:07:40] Craig Calcaterra: I don't care about sports anymore. Now I think that's a bad thing. I want people to care about sports. They don't need to live and die sports, but I want them to care about it. Cuz I think sports is a good thing for our community. I think it's a good thing for human nature to have a common point of interest and those sorts of things.

[00:07:55] Craig Calcaterra: So when I went and sat down to write the book, I was trying to think, how do you [00:08:00] stay a fan? If you're turned off by all the negative things, and I talk a lot in this book about the negative things, but then I also try to offer ways to either rationalize it or live with it or ignore it if you want to.

[00:08:14] Craig Calcaterra: One perfect way to approach this lockout that we just had would've been on December 1st to check out a baseball, completely, watch some football, watch some N b a, see some good movies, whatever. And now that it's over, Check back in and pay attention again. There's nothing wrong with that.

[00:08:30] Craig Calcaterra: It's self-defense. And what it is not letting, what I refer to in the book as the sports industrial complex run your life. Don't let the people who own teams and sports networks you dictate how happy or how sad you're gonna be at any given time. 

[00:08:46] Mark Corbett: Amen to that. And I know I've been talking with our audience for a while now.

[00:08:50] Mark Corbett: See, He finds something else out there. One, one thing I said, guess what? You got minor leagues out there. You're gonna be able to watch whatever happens with the mlb. Myself, I've been following NCAA softball. I [00:09:00] started following it a little heavily last year with the World Series and following it more this year of course yourself.

[00:09:06] Mark Corbett: I see you're with soccer and my co-host Brandon he's with nascar. We've got these things and at some point, The passion kind of moves to those other sports. So do I bring all that time, do I bring all that passion back to baseball or did they lose some of it? Because you talk about in your book about the basically I guess it's an implied social contract between the fans and the teams.

[00:09:30] Craig Calcaterra: Yeah, it's that's how we've all come to understand sports. When we're little kids, we think of it this way. We think that we're gonna root for a team and they're gonna try to win. That's pretty simple. That's the agreement. If they don't try to win or if they really stink, then you know, our enthusiasm wanes.

[00:09:47] Craig Calcaterra: But if they're winning, we're cheering, we're happy. That's a very basic thing about how sports is supposed to work. But it really doesn't work that way anymore. Not always. Certainly not in the closer you look, [00:10:00] especially the sports like baseball league. I focus on it's always been a business.

[00:10:06] Craig Calcaterra: There's always been money involved, but that essential contract of if we win, the fans will buy the tickets and the merchandise and watch on tv. That's going away. And the reason that's going away is because the people that own baseball teams and football teams and run the leagues have realized that they can make money even if they lose.

[00:10:26] Craig Calcaterra: And we see this in baseball because of revenue sharing and real estate developments that the teams own and stadium deals and gambling income and official partnership of Major League baseball. You're getting money from trucking companies and things. There is a pool of money that comes in to the people who own sports teams, regardless of how many tickets are sold.

[00:10:49] Craig Calcaterra: And in fact, tickets now are far lower a percentage of team revenues than they ever have been before. If you're the Cincinnati Reds, [00:11:00] you are guaranteed 65 million in national TV money every year before you sell a single ticket. And then you're getting another 30 or $40 million of local TV money, and then you're getting a few tens more millions of dollars through other revenue sources.

[00:11:14] Craig Calcaterra: You're well over a hundred million dollars, probably considerably over a hundred million dollars. Probably over $200 million. Their payroll is gonna be like 50 million bucks this year. Wow. And they're gonna lose about 110 games I would guess. They don't care. They don't have to care because they're still going to make money.

[00:11:30] Craig Calcaterra: And that underlying contract you win, we support you, doesn't matter to them anymore. So if you're a fan, what 

[00:11:37] Mark Corbett: do you do? And you talk about that further. I wanna get into that because to me part of the solution has been to, to step back from it. But I wanna talk a little bit more about how those, how the teams got there, how the ownership got there, and how we never really saw it coming.

[00:11:55] Mark Corbett: Looking at what happened again with the C B A and seeing what happened as far as Matt Olson going to the [00:12:00] Braves. I think that might be a good example. Looking at the Braves, I'm looking at one of my favorite GMs, Alex Sinpol some of the shrewd moves he did after the All-Star game last year.

[00:12:09] Mark Corbett: Really building a stronger team and doing all they did get to the World Series of win it, but. The Braves have been smart on a lot of other things too that, that weren't necessarily friendly to all the taxpayers of Atlanta. And I was wonder if you could walk us through some of what happened when the development truist and that stadium and how they got there.

[00:12:30] Craig Calcaterra: Yeah. It's it's, a lot of people know they, they used to play in Fulton County Stadium, which was your old style 1960s. The government builds it and the team moves in and pays rent. That's they, and the Falcons did that for years. And then in the nineties when the. Atlanta Olympics happened. They made a deal with the city and with the Olympic Committee to get that stadium.

[00:12:49] Craig Calcaterra: The Olympic Stadium is theirs, and that was Turner Field. And they played in it for I guess less than 20 years. Around 20 years. Wow. And then a few years ago, they just made a deal [00:13:00] to build the ballpark in the northern suburbs of Atlanta in Cobb County, Georgia. And the county taxpayers are on the hook for most of it.

[00:13:09] Craig Calcaterra: The bras contributed some money, but the county taxpayers are and continue to pay a heck of a lot of money for that stadium. But what the Braves were looking for was not just a new stadium. They weren't just looking for the, if you build it we will come kind of situation where more fans would come.

[00:13:28] Craig Calcaterra: That was part of it, but that wasn't the real big part of it. The real big part of it was surrounding the ballpark. Were a few hundred acres of empty land that the Braves purchased and that they are now developing a huge suburban mixed use development on office buildings, hotels, bars, restaurants, apartments, condos, things like that.

[00:13:48] Craig Calcaterra: That is called The Battery, and it's run by the Atlanta Braves. And if you look on the organizational chart of the Atlanta Braves baseball team, The guy who runs the baseball team [00:14:00] is on the same level of the org chart as the guy who runs the real estate stuff, and they both answer to the president of the team.

[00:14:05] Craig Calcaterra: It shows you that the real estate development and the real estate money for the Atlanta Braves is every bit as important, if not more important to the bottom line of the team than the exploits of the baseball team. Now, to be fair, the Braves won the World Series last year, so you know, they're doing all right on that part.

[00:14:22] Craig Calcaterra: But a big reason why they just announced record profits was because of that real estate deal. I think they're on the right track. Baseball-wise. You mentioned Alex Anthopoulos. I think he is one of those guys who hasn't lost a sense of the implied contract when he was with Toronto. He went out and got some good players and pushed that team to the playoffs and then he got fired because the owners didn't like it.

[00:14:45] Craig Calcaterra: He was spending too much money. They didn't wanna win. They wanted to make money. Apolis I think, is a good guy and I think he understands it. So he's continuing to try to do things to keep the Braves winning, but that's not a given. There are other teams, the Cubs are a great example, that are also doing real [00:15:00] estate deals around the ballpark.

[00:15:01] Craig Calcaterra: The the Rockies have done this. The the Cardinals have done this. The giants are doing it. There are a lot of teams that are doing this now, looking for revenue streams that have nothing to do with baseball. That way, it doesn't matter how the baseball team does. That way you don't have to spend as much on the single biggest expense baseball teams have, which is player salary.

[00:15:22] Mark Corbett: Wow. It's, yeah. I wouldn't have initially thought about all the real estate development, but what you were talking about also with Atlanta, They got that pushed through in the government without actually even what, having to post it and let people 

[00:15:36] Craig Calcaterra: know, they oh it was announced as a done deal.

[00:15:40] Craig Calcaterra: I remember the day I was sitting here in my house, I used to write for nbc, and I remember when that came across the wire of the Atlanta Braves and the county, Cobb County Commissioners just announced, we have a deal. This is going, there was no talk about them moving out of the city. There was no talk about them looking for a ballpark because their ballpark was less than 20 years old.

[00:15:59] Craig Calcaterra: [00:16:00] It just happened. It was a backroom deal. There was no taxpayer input. There was no public in fact, they were found to the county commissioners in Cobb County were found to have violated open meeting laws by having meetings and stairwells and things like that, so the public didn't have to know about it.

[00:16:14] Craig Calcaterra: This is the kind of thing that. When I say the sports industrial complex, I don't just mean the teams in the leagues, the local governments are in on it too. The city of Buffalo or whoever's given the bills a billion bucks for that new football stadium they announced earlier this week.

[00:16:29] Craig Calcaterra: They're part of the sports industrial complex. They are making choices about sports that affect you, whether you care or not, and whether you like it or not. And that's what we have to contend with as fans. How can we be sports fans knowing that this is what goes on? 

[00:16:45] Mark Corbett: That's it cuz if we're just looking at a passion where we're saying we are giving to you the team.

[00:16:50] Mark Corbett: We're buying your gear, we're buying your tickets, we're watching the team, and we just want a winning team back. The owners aren't looking [00:17:00] at that relationship the same. They say, yeah we might give you a winning team, but hey, guess what? I'm a lowly team, but I'm gonna make money on gear that's sold on mlb.com for the Yankees.

[00:17:10] Mark Corbett: So that has nothing to do with you. Yeah. They share all that money. Yeah. And that one that kind of surprised me. I read it long time back. It's oh my gosh, look at this. All these other teams that really don't have maybe a chance in hell doing anything. They're making money on the larger teams, sales through mv but anyway, getting back to the idea that it's not directly an involvement with that fan as it is an involvement with that community, an involvement with the media, and a willingness to find the best opportunity you can as far as land development and a commercial ideas around 

[00:17:44] Craig Calcaterra: that.

[00:17:45] Craig Calcaterra: It's the priorities aren't the same as our priorities. That's true. And it extends to the ownership now. There was a time I. And I'm not saying that there was some perfect time, there never was a perfect time. There were always things to complain about, but there was a time when more owners, and again, I'm [00:18:00] gonna keep going back to baseball because that's the sport I know the best when more of the owners were in it as an extension of their ego, right?

[00:18:07] Craig Calcaterra: Yeah. You own a baseball team. And I want my baseball team to win. Ted Turner didn't buy Ted Turner bought the Braves partially for programming for his cable network, but Ted Turner also wanted to win things. That's why he raced boats and bought sports teams and things. He wanted to win.

[00:18:21] Craig Calcaterra: George Steinbrenner wanted to use the Yankees as an extension of his ego. I'm a champion and my baseball team's a champion, and that makes me a better person. And that's ugly in a lot of ways, and it created a lot of bad stuff, but at the same time, they still wanted what you wanted. George Steinbrenner wanted to win a World Series in New York just as much, if not more, than Yankee Span snip.

[00:18:42] Craig Calcaterra: And there's something to be said about that, even if George Steinbrenner was a jackass. The idea is their interests were aligned and we are now certainly in an age where far more of the people who own sports teams are in it for. Financial reasons, [00:19:00] business reasons. They might as well be owning a a steel supply shop.

[00:19:04] Craig Calcaterra: They might as well be owning a reinsurance firm. It doesn't matter for some of these guys. It's just a means of making money. There are articles written just this week in the Los Angeles Times, there was a great article about how private equity firms. Are really investing in Major League baseball because revenues are so good.

[00:19:21] Craig Calcaterra: If revenues weren't good, they'd be investing somewhere else. But that's where a lot of money is right now, is in sports. So that's where they are. And a lot of the current ownership class are those people too. There's a reason why a hedge fund guy bought the New York Mets. There's a reason why private equity firms have minority shares in something like six or eight major League baseball teams.

[00:19:40] Craig Calcaterra: It's just a business proposition to them. And that's especially true when you're seeing second and third generation owners. Mike Illitch in Detroit was the old school kind of guy. The guy who owned the Tigers. He bought the Tigers because he wanted to win. That's why he had the Red Wings and the Tigers.

[00:19:55] Craig Calcaterra: He wanted to win championships and satisfy his ego. His sons own it. Now [00:20:00] he's dead and his son's own it now. There's a sense that for them it's just if the family business was something else, which it is. They own Little Caesar's Pizza too, is pizza or baseball making more money right now.

[00:20:11] Craig Calcaterra: That's where we're gonna put our focus on. I think that's the sense that you get looking at a lot of the modern owners and it's a little dispiriting cuz we like to think of sports as, even though we're smart and we know that sports is a business, we like to think that there's an element of it that's aside from the business, that give us satisfaction and help us do things that make us happy.

[00:20:30] Mark Corbett: Yeah. I think early on the book you talk about Detroit. And some of the things that happened early on tying the the sports team's success to the success of the city coming back, which, neither one, I, I don't think either one was ac accurate, but it was something for people to dig their teeth into.

[00:20:49] Craig Calcaterra: It's it's a way that they Play on our sympathies, right? Not every stadium deal is like the one in Cobb County, Georgia where they do it behind closed doors. A [00:21:00] lot of them, they put out for votes and taxpayers agree to, to Dallas is a great example, or Arlington, Texas, where the Rangers just got a new ballpark again for the second time in 25 years.

[00:21:12] Craig Calcaterra: They put that out for a vote. In Cleveland, they put a vote on for renovations to where the Cleveland Cavaliers play to massive renovations to where the now Cleveland Guardians play. They built that stadium for the Browns. A lot of it was based on public ascent to that sort of thing.

[00:21:32] Craig Calcaterra: And what happens though is I. The team is just a business and it's a private business, and it's allowed to pursue its own profits most of the time. But when they need something from the public, all of a sudden it's a public trust. Oh, the Cleveland Browns are the city's team, not just my team.

[00:21:48] Craig Calcaterra: So please give me some money for the stadium. It's for all of us. And that whole narrative you mentioned before, About how sports teams help lift the spirits of a city and make cities better. Therefore, we're [00:22:00] supposed to give them more money for their stadiums and give them tax breaks and give them big parades when they do things.

[00:22:04] Craig Calcaterra: That's a false narrative. They said it in Detroit in 1968, that it healed the city after race riots in the mid sixties. It didn't heal anything. It just made people feel good for about five minutes. When the Cavaliers were in the N B A finals a few years ago, there was this whole narrative that goes around about the Cleveland Cavaliers of the heart.

[00:22:23] Craig Calcaterra: Of the city and they're making the whole city better. And that was a huge reason why they ended up getting money to renovate their arena. That linkage is very convenient for the sports industrial complex. When they want something, they're a public trust. When they don't need anything from us, they're a private business, and we can take what we can get.

[00:22:44] Mark Corbett: Oh, that's painful, but true. What can I say? As I was reading your book, And I was going over some of these things you just mentioned too, Cleveland. I was, I've been had four or five things going at the same time and I was watching an old movie. I enjoyed Major League,[00:23:00] oh yes. And it starts out, it's funny because it starts out with an, the camera on one of the guardians of the bridge, since that's the new name.

[00:23:09] Mark Corbett: Yeah. The new team and all that. But the thing of it is in that movie, the owners doing everything that she can think of. To tank that team. So they'll do so poorly with attendance that they can break their lease and go to Miami. 

[00:23:24] Craig Calcaterra: You know what, when that Mo, I remember when that movie came out and people saying, oh, it's so over the top, that villain, she was so bad.

[00:23:31] Craig Calcaterra: It's that's pretty par for the course now. That was maybe the most realistic thing about that movie. That movie gets baseball, so in so many ways. Oh yeah. But I think it gets the way that owner works in a lot of ways. 

[00:23:42] Mark Corbett: It was a sad story, but it was, it's fun to watch, but yes, at the same time, I think damn it that this is too true.

[00:23:51] Mark Corbett: This is too much how things are going on. One of the things you do talk about in the book is tanking. You talk about the basic blueprint for that. [00:24:00] Can you tell us a little bit about that basic tanking blueprint and a couple more times how it's been utilized? 

[00:24:06] Craig Calcaterra: Yeah I think it really got.

[00:24:09] Craig Calcaterra: The most momentum behind it in basketball, that's when people started to really pay attention to tanking. And the idea being a team is going to lose intentionally in order to do better down the road. That's the ideal, right? And in basketball, one player or two players could be all the difference between a championship and being terrible.

[00:24:28] Craig Calcaterra: It doesn't take much. You only need a LeBron James or a Michael Jordan or somebody like that, and you can do really well. The Philadelphia 76 ERs probably perfected it. They almost admitted they were doing it. They went out and said, you gotta trust the process. We're gonna have a few rough years here, but then it's gonna get better.

[00:24:45] Craig Calcaterra: And to be fair, it worked there. In football it can kinda work a little bit too, because even though there are way more players on a football team, the quarterback is obviously the most important guy. So if you can. Tank and get a really good quarterback, have a really bad year, [00:25:00] and ensure the number one draft.

[00:25:02] Craig Calcaterra: Pick the year that you know someone like a Joe Burrow or somebody comes out. That's not a bad deal for you. You could do that and you can turn things around. Baseball tanking is a little different. Baseball you could draft the best player that's come out of either high school or college in 10 years, and there's still no guarantee that guy even makes the majors.

[00:25:20] Craig Calcaterra: It's a big grind and it's a big jump to go from high school, college, baseball to the major leagues could take four or five years, sometimes even with the best players. But that started anyway. The Houston Astros did it. The Chicago Cubs did it. It was very clear what they were doing. They were tearing down the big league roster to its bare minimum cutting salary as much as possible so the team can be profitable.

[00:25:40] Craig Calcaterra: And so the team doesn't do particularly well. That helps get them draft picks. They have free agents that leave, they get compensation picks. They lose 105 games for three years in a row like the Astros did. They get a lot of high draft picks. They stockpile that. They build their system from within, and then eventually they come out and they win.

[00:25:59] Craig Calcaterra: It worked for Houston [00:26:00] and it worked to some degree for Chicago. It wasn't just the tanking that did it in Chicago, but that definitely helped. But that also served as a blueprint for a lot of other teams, but teams that maybe didn't have the same ability and the same brain trust as Houston and Chicago did.

[00:26:14] Craig Calcaterra: But they certainly saw that they came out okay on the other end after four or five years of low payrolls and poor talent. And there are a lot of teams that are doing that now, but there aren't that many baseball teams that can get away with it because you can't guarantee wins down the f. Down the road like you can in basketball with one player.

[00:26:30] Craig Calcaterra: So tanking has just been a terrible problem. It was a huge issue in the collective bargaining agreement, talks that we just had about teams need to at least try to win. You've gotta spend some money, you've gotta get quality players and not just be content to lose a hundred games. But as we're sitting here talking today, we're one day removed from the Cincinnati Reds trading away two of their best players for basically nothing.

[00:26:53] Craig Calcaterra: After letting one of their best pitchers walk on waivers for nothing, after trading away their catcher for almost nothing, the [00:27:00] Cincinnati Reds have no interest in winning in 2022 or probably 2023 or 24. And there are, at any given time, four or five teams in baseball doing that, and it just makes for miserable competition.

[00:27:14] Mark Corbett: Yeah. You know the whole phrase we're rebuilding and gets utilized a lot. It's maybe sometimes it's true, but a lot of times it's just that there you do have 

[00:27:23] Craig Calcaterra: to rebuild. In baseball you do have to rebuild. There is such a thing as the success cycle as it's been referred to. There is a thing that.

[00:27:30] Craig Calcaterra: Your players get older, you gotta get younger players and stuff, but I think there's a difference between rebuilding and just completely tearing it down and putting a horrible product on the field for a few years. You can, you could put recognizable major league quality players on the field.

[00:27:44] Craig Calcaterra: You might have to spend a little bit more to do it. You can make a product that is a competitive product. I don't mean a winning product, but there's a difference between a team that wins 78 games and a team that wins 54 games. And one of them is an embarrassment. The other one is just [00:28:00] a not a very good team.

[00:28:01] Craig Calcaterra: And I think that Major League Baseball has gone far too far in allowing teams to put embarrassing product on the field as opposed to merely bad teams. Again, I was a Braves fan in the eighties when I was a kid. I watched a lot of bad baseball between 1984 and 1990, and they did have one or two years where they lost a hundred games.

[00:28:19] Craig Calcaterra: It was pretty bad. But at any given time, they still had entertaining players. They still had they kept Dale Murphy maybe a little too long, but you could turn on a Braves game and know that you're gonna see Dale Murphy playing, and he's a legit two-time mvp, real major league player. You could see some veterans guys they had Greg Nettles or they brought in Ted Simmons, or they brought in players that maybe were past their prime, but were at least guys that you would want to see you're not seeing that now with some of these rebuilds that that I consider to be tank jobs. I 

[00:28:50] Mark Corbett: hope that for the fans sake, that we see less and less of that. But quite honestly, Craig I'm a little concerned about the number of teams that are gonna be in the playoffs now, and [00:29:00] 

[00:29:01] Craig Calcaterra: yeah, that's another one that gets me.

[00:29:04] Craig Calcaterra: So we, what, we got 12 this time, right? Yeah. Yeah, they went from 10 to 12. I don't play old man very often in baseball, but I sure did like it when it was just a couple of playoff teams or just two wor two teams winning their league and gonna, the World Series was a little before my time, but two division winners playing in a, in an L C S and then going to the World Series.

[00:29:24] Craig Calcaterra: I liked that. My problem with the expanded playoffs is that it. It makes the regular season, it devalues the regular season. In that the more teams in the playoffs, the shorter the series, the more likely it is that whoever the best team over 162 games is not gonna hang around very long. Cuz anything could happen in three or five games.

[00:29:46] Craig Calcaterra: And so I've started to I know I lost that argument years ago. We're never going back. There's too much money in playoffs. But I've started to think of the baseball season and the playoffs as two distinct things. The [00:30:00] baseball season at the end of 162 games at October 1st or second or whenever it ends, is we know who the best baseball team of the season was last year.

[00:30:08] Craig Calcaterra: It was the Giants or the Dodgers, depending on how you think about. The difference between those two teams we know over the course of the season that is a crucible and that tests you in every way possible that they were the best teams. And then the playoffs for me are a tournament. It's like college basketball, as far as I'm concerned.

[00:30:25] Craig Calcaterra: It's entertaining, it's fun. It'll tell you who won the World Series, but it doesn't tell you who won, who the best team is anymore. And that's something I just gotta get cool with because again, that train left the station 25, 30 years ago. 

[00:30:37] Mark Corbett: Yeah. I wind up, I w, the World Series has a lot of importance to me, but I gotta tell you, I'm looking closely at those divisional winners too.

[00:30:45] Mark Corbett: I'm saying, you know what they had to do to get there, and especially if you're looking at a division where you have. Three or four really great teams who do have to slug it out for an entire season. 

[00:30:56] Craig Calcaterra: Oh yeah, absolutely. I. It blows my mind [00:31:00] that if we were playing under a different system last year that the Dodgers wouldn't have made the playoffs.

[00:31:05] Craig Calcaterra: But I remember 1993, I remember, or yeah, 93 when the Braves and the Giants were both in the last season, the Braves were in the n l s. And giants won like 102 games and didn't make the playoffs. And that's really rough, but that was a heck of a pennant race and it definitely meant something.

[00:31:25] Craig Calcaterra: And now I just, it doesn't sit well. It's a great story for the fan of the 89 Win team that wins the World Series because they got a wild card and then they got hot at the right time. I'm not gonna take that away from them. I don't wanna devalue what fans of those teams experience because it's still a great, wonderful thing and a great, wonderful story.

[00:31:42] Craig Calcaterra: The man just doesn't tell me who the best team is. It just tells me who was hot in October. 

[00:31:47] Mark Corbett: Yeah, it's hard to make a bet on who's gonna be there and Oh, gosh. And talking about bets. I've been, it's been interesting watch over the last several years watching gambling slowly creep into [00:32:00] MG with MGM and the Major League Baseball, DraftKings and others.

[00:32:04] Mark Corbett: And I've seen offtrack betting built 20 blocks away 30 years ago. Go. But now you've got a place right next to the stadium and some. R F Believe are incorporating sports books inside the stadium, and this is something that I thought was anathema to have a gambling involved or attached to M l 

[00:32:25] Craig Calcaterra: b.

[00:32:26] Craig Calcaterra: Yeah, it's for years. It was obviously the cardinal sin in baseball is gambling. They couldn't have anything related. Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays took jobs that had nothing to do with the gambling floor at Atlantic City Casinos and got suspended. They were just going golfing with guys cuz they working for the casino and they got suspended.

[00:32:47] Craig Calcaterra: This, it was crazy. Against anything that the professional sports leagues stood for. But that all changed. It became inevitable that they were going to legalize sports gambling outside of Nevada. The [00:33:00] sports industrial complex saw that there's money to be made. They're we're either gonna get on that train or we're gonna get run over by it, is what they decided.

[00:33:06] Craig Calcaterra: And so they decided to get on the train and, hey, that's a defensible move. I understand it. If you're Rob Manfred and you run Major League baseball, how can you go to your 30 bosses and say, there's probably about 5 billion bucks to be made by partnering up with casinos, but I'm not gonna do it on principle I gotta be fired faster than you can imagine.

[00:33:27] Craig Calcaterra: What irks me about it though is again I'm not a prohibition guy. I'm not a gambler by any stretch of the imagination. I don't like it. I personally don't like gambling. But I'm not a guy who thinks it should be illegal because I don't think that you could make vices illegal, attractive vices is what I refer to them as.

[00:33:43] Craig Calcaterra: Things like drinking and gambling and whatever. It's gonna happen. So if you legalize it, at least you can take a big part of that and make it legitimate and regulate it and do things. So that's fine. What really bugs me about how it's. Played out is just how thoroughly the [00:34:00] leagues and the media, sports media have jumped in on it, and they're very clearly.

[00:34:07] Craig Calcaterra: Focusing on the idea that the way to make money in this is to extract every possible penny we can from people who are basically problem gamblers. If you look at how the business model is setting up right now, it's designed to. Work against the weaknesses of a gambling addict. They're creating this idea of this whole market called micro bedding, and it's all on your phone.

[00:34:31] Craig Calcaterra: It's not a matter of, it'd be different if we had that tb down a couple miles down the road and someone had to every day get in their cargo down there and put a little money on it. There'd be at least a barrier. There'd be a practical limit to what you could do. There's a saying that someone gave the other day about how there's a million pitchers pitches in a major league baseball season.

[00:34:50] Craig Calcaterra: And Major league baseball has ensured that you can gamble on every single one of them. With phone apps and things like that, you can guess is the next pitch gonna be a strike? Is gonna be a ball? Is the [00:35:00] next hit gonna come from a left-hander or a right-hander? That's how it's going. They call micro bets and that's the sort of thing that is gonna play.

[00:35:06] Craig Calcaterra: Addicts more than anything else. And they're going to ruin people's lives by extracting as much money as they can from people who have gambling problems, and they're going to encourage gambling problems among people who are susceptible to them. A great, many of us, great, many of the people listening to this are perfectly capable of going and putting $50 down on a game and just doing it for the fun of it and not worrying about it.

[00:35:28] Craig Calcaterra: There are people that aren't that way though, and there are people who are going to be ruined by the way sports has taken to sports betting. Yeah, many of 

[00:35:37] Mark Corbett: us may have had a friend or family who wound up digging a deep hole be because of gambling. And I personally I I have no problem with people doing the legal, gambling.

[00:35:51] Mark Corbett: Me growing up in Kentucky, going out to the track and put a few dollars down on a race. But those where you continually have a situation like you're talking about, especially [00:36:00] when you're breaking down your betting almost on every pitch I have something to bet on. Say if I had to bet on world once a day and I was putting down two bucks, not so much.

[00:36:09] Mark Corbett: But if there's continuously an opportunity for me or someone else to gamble play after play, yeah. It, yes. Gambling is something that captures people and there are those folks. Who have a weakness there and it can destroy their lives. So it does bother me because of that.

[00:36:31] Mark Corbett: And if the type of gambling that you're talking about is there where a person can make a be play by play that's a trough of danger. I just wouldn't wanna put somebody near 

[00:36:43] Craig Calcaterra: Yeah. And I don't think they're taking it seriously. I really don't think that the leagues and the networks who are promoting all this kinda stuff are I.

[00:36:51] Craig Calcaterra: Are really appreciating what they're doing. I know the casinos are because that's their business. But I don't think they realize the business that they've [00:37:00] gotten into. 

[00:37:01] Mark Corbett: I'm hoping some kind of enlightenment comes to them and they find a way to, to make it what do I wanna say? Less problematic.

[00:37:09] Mark Corbett: I don't think it'll ever be, not be a problem, but less problematic for a lot of people. We'll see. It comes, yeah. Talking about whether or not owners care or aware or things. I gotta tell you, one thing that really just blows my mind is when I hear whether it be a commissioner or an owner, or a lot of these people speak, it's can you tell the temperature of the room folks?

[00:37:33] Mark Corbett: Can you tell what's going on? And looking back to when you were talking about the Braves and what was the president of the Braves, he was talking to the press club and he was letting it go ahead and tell me, tell us a little bit 

[00:37:46] Craig Calcaterra: about that. Yeah I think it was John Malone of I can't remember if it was John Malone or Terry McGirt, the president of the Braves.

[00:37:53] Craig Calcaterra: Yeah, Terry McGurrk. He the Braves had started the season out something like three and 14 or something terrible. And[00:38:00] the comment that he made was, don't worry about it. The Braves are a baseball team and it's bad when we lose baseball games, but we're also a real estate company, so we're doing okay.

[00:38:09] Craig Calcaterra: I'm like, oh my God. Do you not understand I get why you're doing what you do. Don't say it out loud like that. Don't rub our faces in it. Another great example I think the worst person at this ever is Rob Bamford, the current commissioner of baseball. God bless him. When he was dely he was taking questions about fan anger over the Houston Astro stealing sign a couple years ago.

[00:38:32] Craig Calcaterra: And his response was the World Series Trophy. It's just a piece of metal. Why do we care so much about that? I don't think he understands what people. Get out of sports and that we have an emotional attachment to it. Bud Selig was somebody who no one had a lot of great love for. He certainly had his share of faults on the public stage, but one thing that no one ever doubted about Bud Selig was that he loved baseball.

[00:38:54] Craig Calcaterra: Yeah, he loves it and he could talk about it for, and he's knowledgeable about it. He made a lot of decisions that were [00:39:00] bad for it, I think, and he certainly angered a lot of people, but there was never a sense that Bud Selig didn't care about baseball as a sport. He understood why people liked it. Rob Manfred.

[00:39:11] Craig Calcaterra: I don't say this as a disparagement of lawyers because I myself am a lawyer and I practiced law for 11 years and I still have my law license and all that kind of stuff. But Rob Manfred is a lawyer, first and foremost, and he was a labor lawyer and he might have gotten hired by an auto plant or he might have gotten hired by.

[00:39:29] Craig Calcaterra: A distribution firm to deal with labor law with them. But no, he just happened, this law firm that he worked for got hired by Major League Baseball and that's how he got into the business. And there's never been a sense from Rob Manfred in any way that he loves the game, that he particularly appreciates the game in its history, or that he certainly appreciates what fans get out of baseball.

[00:39:50] Craig Calcaterra: I think he thinks it's a product like anything else. And if he's selling the right number of the widgets, then he's doing okay. But people don't view sports the same way they [00:40:00] view other businesses, even if they are a business. We don't view sports the way we view I, I drive a Subaru, okay?

[00:40:06] Craig Calcaterra: I don't wake up in the morning thinking about how Subaru is doing. I don't spend my off hours looking up newspaper articles about Subaru, hoping that their stock price is going well, or hoping that the next car they make is gonna be a good one. I don't care. It's just a product I bought cuz at the time it made sense for me.

[00:40:24] Craig Calcaterra: We don't interact with sports that way. We have a emotional attachment to sports and a commitment, a lifetime investment, sometimes one that's even more important than sports could even imagine. If you and your dad, for example, bonded over sports and he's no longer with us that transcends even life for some people.

[00:40:43] Craig Calcaterra: Is it fair to Rob Manfred to have that kinda weight on him? Maybe not. But you gotta know that going in cuz that dynamic in sports predated him. But he doesn't seem to care and he says things all the time. That almost makes it seem like he's insulting people for caring as [00:41:00] much as we do.

[00:41:01] Craig Calcaterra: And that's just what irks me. I can deal with someone dealing sharply with me or taking positions I don't agree with if I think that on some level we both love the thing we're arguing over. There you go. Yeah. But I don't think he does. And that's what really makes me angry about him.

[00:41:20] Mark Corbett: I'd hope as long as he has been involved with baseball, that would've developed. I. But I think he started out with the mindset of a business person, an attorney, and has never gotten beyond that. And it's sad. He at least, I don't know if it's him or somebody in PR said, Rob, you gotta go back out and you have to apologize to the fans.

[00:41:40] Mark Corbett: Now that the lockout's over and we've got a CBA because man, you didn't do anything great as far as building love with the fans during that period. Yeah, 

[00:41:49] Craig Calcaterra: he did have that comment about I, he said something last week about how I gotta do better about communicating this stuff. But he doesn't believe that cuz he's had the same thing happen before [00:42:00] and I think he just wants the bad press to go away as fast as it can go.

[00:42:06] Craig Calcaterra: I think they were really, I think major league baseball was really take taken aback. By how negative the coverage was of the lockout compared cuz when Rob Manford was an attorney for baseball back in 94, 95 the media was generally pro ownership. But with the internet and with the way fans are a lot more educated about the business of the game and stuff.

[00:42:25] Craig Calcaterra: Now it was overwhelmingly against the league and on the side of the players. I don't think the league was prepared for that. I think it ruffled him a little bit. 

[00:42:34] Mark Corbett: There's a certain detachment I think that's, From the tower that they don't get to see everything and it even, what's evolving around them.

[00:42:40] Mark Corbett: So yeah, wake up and they got, they certainly gotta wake up cause, so we'll see how that translates into the rest of the year. One thing I was talking about we, before we started this show, I think we may have a little time for this. Is looking at the C B A, I think one point of contention was what would be happening with international draft and free agents?[00:43:00] 

[00:43:00] Mark Corbett: Because as those people come in, if I understand correctly, they're not union, whether or not with the players association, the people who come in for the national draft. How 

[00:43:09] Craig Calcaterra: does that work? Yeah, you are not on the Players association. You are not a union member until you're on a 40 man roster. So most minor leaguers are not in the union.

[00:43:18] Craig Calcaterra: Certainly amateurs are not in the union. If you're a high school player or a college player or if you're a 14 year old playing in the Dominican Republic, you're not part of the union. But since they don't have a union the Major League Baseball Players Association is who negotiates with. Major League baseball about how the mechanics of the draft work, but it doesn't really affect their membership.

[00:43:38] Craig Calcaterra: It affects the future members. That's why the union's allowed to do that, because the argument is there are future members, so we get to say something. So the way it works now is in, in. In the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico, everybody's subject to the draft. But in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, any other country Nicaragua, Bahamas now increasingly [00:44:00] kura, wherever it is, those are all free agents and they can be signed from the time they're 16 years old.

[00:44:04] Craig Calcaterra: There's a lot of excesses in that market. Anytime you're dealing with kids, there's the chance for exploitation, especially when you're dealing with very poor families and very poor kids. And then there's this entire. Industry that has evolved in which these guys go out and identify talent and then take them to major League scouts and demand a cut of whatever they're going to get.

[00:44:28] Craig Calcaterra: It's ugly, right? It's like any sort of situation. It can be ugly. Major League baseball has a lot of rules and a lot of power to crack down on that and to make it better, but they just generally haven't for a lot of reasons. Then for the last several years, because there have been a lot of stories about the exploitation in places like the Dominican Republic, major League Baseball says if we put them all subject to a draft and we don't have free agents, and there isn't this cash incentive for guys to come and get big free agents contracts and things, then all those excesses will go away.[00:45:00] 

[00:45:00] Craig Calcaterra: Maybe there's a chance. A lot of it does. It's also the fact that it could go away without a draft. And there's also the fact that having a draft is a great way for Major League Baseball to lower its talent acquisition costs. I'm a cynical guy. I tend to think that the reason Major League baseball wants to have an international draft is so it doesn't have to pay 2 million to a top prospect who's 16 years old.

[00:45:23] Craig Calcaterra: There you go. I think they just want to draft 'em and put 'em under slot payments like minor leaguers are now. For whatever the merits of that is, it does look like we are going to eventually have an international draft. And the way it was left was the players wouldn't agree to it to get a C B A done, but they agreed to talk about it.

[00:45:42] Craig Calcaterra: And so between now and July, the end of July, Some committee of the owners and the players are going to talk about it and if they can agree on the terms of an international draft, we'll have one starting probably in two years. If they can't agree on it, it goes back to the old system. And then in exchange, the [00:46:00] players will have free agent draft picks attached to them, the qualifying offer and things like that.

[00:46:06] Craig Calcaterra: If we get an international draft, the players get something out of it. They lose the qualifying offer and free agent compensation draft picks. So it's a lot of people that are bargaining the future of a lot of 14, 15, 16 year old kids that have nothing to do with those kids at all. Wow. Which makes it all a little unseemly.

[00:46:21] Craig Calcaterra: And that's my biggest issue with the union. If anything, I'm a very pro-union guy when it comes to all this stuff. Anybody who's read my writing knows that. Yeah. I might as well be a pr arm for the Major League Baseball Players Association sometimes, but I'm very much opposed to the way the union bargains away.

[00:46:39] Craig Calcaterra: The power and the futures of these kids. And I certainly don't like the way Major League baseball exploits them. 

[00:46:46] Mark Corbett: Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. One of the things about this too, I thought that the conversation, agreeing to have that conversation if it didn't turn out the way they wanted, I thought the whole C b A was at risk.

[00:46:58] Mark Corbett: Even though it's already been said, [00:47:00] no, 

[00:47:00] Craig Calcaterra: no, yeah, they made it a they made it a side deal so they've gotta, they've gotta fail safe in there. If it doesn't, if they can't come to an agreement, then it's a skid revert back on those particular terms to the old system. But this C B A is lectin.

[00:47:12] Mark Corbett: Wow. Yeah, I, again, I'm glad to hear that part. At least I'm not too crazy about what's going on with the international draft. And since they're talking about working on issues or players who aren't actually underneath union contract. Was wondering if we'd ever seen anything with minor league ball.

[00:47:29] Mark Corbett: I thought there's not a minor league union and saw a lot of activity while the lockout was going on. People who were coming into the minor leagues probably saw more about it cuz there wasn't anything, there wasn't anything to report on the major league players. But I, there's. There's real, no, really no protection there.

[00:47:45] Mark Corbett: I guess they're gonna have to come up with their own thing for minor league ball. 

[00:47:48] Craig Calcaterra: Yeah. And it's so hard just because minor leaguers careers aren't very long. It takes a lot to organize a union and it would take a couple of years and half the guys it would be for, it would be outta [00:48:00] baseball by the time it came around.

[00:48:01] Craig Calcaterra: And so it'd be a very difficult thing to do. There's talk about how why doesn't the Major League Baseball Players Association just say, okay, minor leaguers, you're all member of us and we negotiate for you now. That doesn't work quite that easily. Labor law is such that Major League Baseball would have to agree to that because they get to agree with who they recognize as a union.

[00:48:19] Craig Calcaterra: And then you'd have litigation. So it's not an easy nut to crack, but minor leaguers are woefully treated. I. And to some extent, the same situation that happened with those international kids has happened with the minor leaguers. Major League baseball's Union has bargained away some minor league rights that you wouldn't think are necessarily theres to bargain away, but it's happened.

[00:48:43] Craig Calcaterra: It's rough and when you've got. Congress helping major league baseball keep minor leaguers underpaid, which they did passing a law a few years ago that classified them as seasonal employees, as if they were landscapers or lifeguards or something. It's the deck is stacked against you. And if you're an 18 year old [00:49:00] kid, 17 year old kid in high school and you're a star athlete and like most high at most high schools, star athletes can play multiple sports.

[00:49:07] Craig Calcaterra: The guy who's the best basketball player is probably a great wide receiver on your football team and is probably your best pitcher. If you're that guy. Why are you picking baseball? Yeah. Why are you gonna pick a sport that might take six years for you to get any kind of money? And in the meantime you're making sub minimum wage and riding buses through nowheresville US a, whereas if you play basketball, you might be in the N NBA this time next year.

[00:49:32] Craig Calcaterra: I think it's gonna cause it, it has caused already and I think it's gonna cause more talent drain from baseball where promising young athletes are going to look to other sports or other things to do rather than play this game. 

[00:49:46] Mark Corbett: Wow. You talk about some of that early on about your own journey and seeing some things like football, not necessarily being part of your viewing anymore because of what happened with rec, recognizing the injuries, the [00:50:00] concussions that come with that.

[00:50:01] Mark Corbett: And what kind of fan you wanna be. This is a way maybe of saying, okay, I'm stepping away from this cause I'm not gonna support that. Looking at becoming more of a casual fan of some other sports. I was wondering if you could tell us maybe a little bit more about how fans can respond to baseball or other sports to say, Hey, remember me.

[00:50:24] Mark Corbett: Take care of me. The social contract. What's going on guys? I don't wanna put it in a position where we can make sports bend to our will. Cause I don't think fans can, I don't think we have the power to. To make Major League baseball change the way that what it does. Maybe if millions of us get together and do things, sure, but no individual fan has the power to, to bend sports to their will.

[00:50:47] Craig Calcaterra: But what we do have is we have the power to. To not let sports negatively affect us and our experience with sports, it's a hard needle to thread because I, as I spend much of the [00:51:00] book talking about the excesses of the sports leagues and the negative things that happen, and a natural response to that would be you know what?

[00:51:07] Craig Calcaterra: I should just give up sports. Why am I watching this? If this stuff is so bad? I don't want that to happen. I want people to find a way that they can still enjoy the entertainment aspects of sports to where they can still go into a bar and look at somebody next to them on the bar stool and look at the TV up above and have a common point of reference and say, oh yeah, that guy, isn't he good?

[00:51:24] Craig Calcaterra: You can talk a little bit about it. Those are the good parts about sports, watching a game and enjoying it. So a good way to protect yourself is make sure sports keeps an appropriate place in your life. Don't let it. Have an outside place in your life to where you are letting it affect your moods and it affect your life too much.

[00:51:44] Craig Calcaterra: Don't let it have a place where your happiness is dependent upon what some billionaire doesn't care about you does. And if that means I can't watch. The Cincinnati Reds anymore because the Cincinnati Reds owner doesn't care about me and he doesn't wanna put a good product on the field and they raise [00:52:00] the prices anyway.

[00:52:00] Craig Calcaterra: And it's terrible. Maybe I'm just gonna now become a St. Louis Cardinals fan and we're, we are conditioned from the time we were little kids. To say we can't do that. You gotta stick with your team thick and thin. No you don't. They don't stick with you. Why do you gotta stick with them?

[00:52:16] Craig Calcaterra: This is supposed to be fun. Why don't I watch a team that's enjoyable. There you go. Or if I can't watch any team that I love or enjoyable, I'm gonna root for a player. You know what? If you're a LeBron, if you're from Akron, Ohio and you saw LeBron James playing in high school, then you saw him play for the Cavaliers doesn't mean you gotta be a Cavs fan than a heat fan, than a Cavs fan, than a Lakers fan.

[00:52:35] Craig Calcaterra: You could just be a LeBron James fan if you wanna be. I know that's weird. I know that we're not supposed to do that cuz we, we haven't been taught to do that. But you can do that. You could root for players just as much as you can, root for the laundry they wear. And a lot of little things like that I think are ways, protect yourself as a sports fan and just think differently about how you approach sports in the position that it has in your life.

[00:52:57] Mark Corbett: Wow. You bring up a good [00:53:00] point there too. I like the idea of falling a player. And being a raised fan, I've also found myself. People when they leave here, Wilson Ramos Willie Adamis. My mind goes out to watching these guys play at other teams. While I enjoy watching my race, especially when they're winning, there's players who have either a lot of heart or they've done things and to follow them makes it exciting for me.

[00:53:22] Mark Corbett: So I absolutely get where you're at with that man. 

[00:53:25] Craig Calcaterra: Wanda Franco, man. I saw him play at single A at Princeton, West Virginia back in 2018. I went down there to a game and he was, I think 17 or something. He was younger than everybody and he was very clearly the best player on the field. And I saw that guy hit and I then saw him come up last year and play.

[00:53:43] Craig Calcaterra: He's amazing. He's got a good contract, but there's very good chance given the way, the raise role that he's not gonna be playing for the raise five years from now. Oh yeah. And if he's not, that doesn't mean you can't still like wa Franco, cuz he's still gonna be good. Hey, follow where he goes doesn't mean if he goes to the Dodgers, don't, you don't gonna become a [00:54:00] Dodgers fan, but you could certainly tune into watch a Wander Franco at Baton Root for him.

[00:54:03] Mark Corbett: There you go. Wow. We've been speaking with Craig Calcaterra and he is the author of the book, rethinking Fandom, how to Beat the Sports Industrial Complex at its Own Game. And ma'am, we've just touched on just a bit of what you do, what you're saying in that book. I encourage everyone to read that.

[00:54:22] Mark Corbett: Thank you, Craig. Any other topics or anything else you wanted make sure we know about? 

[00:54:27] Craig Calcaterra: No man, I'm just looking forward to the games coming back. You're here, 

[00:54:29] Mark Corbett: brother, you're here. Spring training games and minor league games here shortly. So we'll see how it goes. But it's exciting. So it's good to have baseball back.

[00:54:39] Mark Corbett: Well, Craig, thank you very much again for being on the show. And they can check you out daily, at least Monday through Friday on your newsletter. And that's a cup of coffee. Check it out boys and girls, cuz Craig gives a unique perspective on what's happening out there. Not just the news, but why it's news.

[00:54:56] Craig Calcaterra: Thank you very much, mark. Thanks for having me. 

[00:54:58] Mark Corbett: All right, brother. [00:55:00] That was Craig Calcaterra, author of the book, rethinking Fandom, how to Beat The Sports Industrial Complex at its own game. Craig's book will be released on April 5th. So thank you all once again for joining us here at Baseball Biz, and we look forward to talking with you again.

[00:55:16] Mark Corbett: Real 

soon.

[00:55:22] Mark Corbett: Special thanks to x, take R UX for the music Rocking 

[00:55:26] Craig Calcaterra: forward.