The biggest thing, I think when it
comes to finances for me,
I don't know what I think.
I know you got to go to people that
understand money and understand wealth,
and that should always be the goal to get better.
And the same thing applies here,
particularly with taking care of your finances,
because you're never as good as you think you are.
Welcome to another episode
of Nasdaq's The Winning Formula,
presented by the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One team.
I am your host, Joel Kalani.
We have an extremely special two guests today,
two former MLB All Stars Roberto Clemente Award winners
and founding MLB network
analyst Harold Reynolds and Al Leiter.
Thank you so much for being here today.
Good to be here. Good to have us. I love that.
Founding members because we really are founding members.
Founders.
I actually wanted to start
there in particular at the time,
it was January 1st, your first show in 2009.
That was at the time,
the first time that the MLB network kind of structured
a 247 kind of network around that.
What kind of powered both of
your decision to go that direction,
considering there were powerhouse networks
elsewhere that you both had experience in,
and kind of how do
you think about the evolution and the growth of
the network since you've been there
from the 18th season coming up now?
I think both of our paths are a
little bit different to the network.
I was actually with mlb.com and
kind of was ahead two years ahead of the time.
So spending time with Tony Petitti,
the CEO and president at the time.
Um, I was really in on being able to lay it out,
all the different auditions and everything else.
So I was excited about where it was headed.
I think for me, the drawing card
was when you're watching
college basketball March Madness,
and they were clipping away to
the last big moments of those games.
And Tony's like, that's what we're going to do.
We're going to jump in,
live in the games and you're going to have to react.
Live in the games. Like David Ortiz
had to play the bases loaded.
Hold it. Let's go to California
and watch Mike trout having that bat.
That was pretty cool.
It had never been done before.
So that was kind of something
that attracted me. What about you, al?
So mine was a little different. H was already
a big TV star with ESPN and other places.
I was essentially a few years removed from retirement.
I was doing Yankee games as
an analyst for the yes network.
But I think what really attracted me
to the network was it was a forum for retired players,
analysts to be able to have the opportunity to breathe,
if you will, and have a longer, um, explanation.
And I think it was the only place for us on
the planet from baseball to explain in detail.
And we, we have a real unique studio with respect to our,
our main TV studios like this,
but we also have a studio,
studio 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson.
It's a little league field.
It's a massive field.
So H and I, if we were doing this.
Joel. And as Harold just alluded to,
Mike trout did something terrific.
We would literally get up
and run over to this Little league field.
So you had ex major leaguers that
were hopefully knowledgeable, astute,
and not being afraid of television that were
explaining the real deal to our viewers.
There was nowhere like that
that had that opportunity and that excited me.
I'm into pitching, you know,
sliders, curveballs, deliveries and all that.
And the other part of that is
everybody was pretty much still in playing shape.
So you could actually have real action that makes
looks real better than a movie, you know?
So I remember al we were talking about
Mariano Rivera was the biggest thing at that time.
He was throwing a cutter and I was like,
well, how do we show the viewers that?
So we set a plexiglass
up and they all got back on the mound.
He threw a cutter in his big league career,
and he's throwing a major league cutter
that you can now have a camera set here,
and people at home can see how that ball cuts.
It wasn't manufactured.
We didn't walk up and say,
here's what the ball looks like.
It was a real, actual.
Here comes a 90 mile an hour pitch,
and you can see it cut at the end
because he was not that far out of play.
I still my arm still was okay.
It was pretty good stuff.
So revolutionary concept.
At what point at both of your tenures
there did you realize actually this is very sticky,
whether it's a casual viewer or a baseball coach,
this is actually conceptually something that
viewers want to see because at the time,
that level of detail may have
been to some people's something
that's really only relevant to folks that
really play the game, but it's not.
It actually grew into being
something even casual fans want to hear.
So I'll answer before H and I.
That's what excited me because
when we would do our two hour show,
whichever they would snap off or edit a piece that
was poignant and a good point
or opportunity for us to explain.
And when I started getting feedback from,
yeah, social media, but coaches,
parents, kids looking at this as,
as, hey, look what Al and Harold were doing.
And they're, we're actually teaching.
I realized what we were actually
providing for the viewer and baseball fans.
So it was it was the coaches. It was the kids.
It was, you know, we really were.
We still are. But like I that excited me.
When I'd come into the studio,
I'd say, who am I working with?
All right. What can we do in studio 42?
I want to show, you know,
and the feedback was the fans and the viewers.
I think al hit the nail on the head. We were teaching.
Yeah. You're teaching the game.
You're taking people into
places they'd never been able to get to.
You know, you can talk about on video,
breaking down a guy's swing or whatever,
but to be able to take it to
the nth degree and now hop in
the cage and see
a major leaguer swing a bat and him explain,
it was even better.
So it went from us being able to do
it to bringing current big leaguers in.
I remember Tim Lincecum,
you remember that crazy wind up he had and his delivery.
And he he was talking about
how he learned his delivery from his dad.
And his dad used to put a dollar down
on the floor and make him reach down and grab it.
So. Okay. Show us.
So here's Tim Lincecum in the prime of his career,
winding up and throwing balls and
showing us how he's picking a dollar off the ground.
So it was it was.
Because of the unique space that we had.
Harold, coming from ESPN,
you go into these studios, this is a nice one.
But they're little they're little boxes, right?
So now you have these analysts
now are copying what we were
doing and they're doing
like a Fugazi little box right here.
And you know, it's not really, you know, it's small.
They're trying to build something out of
nothing because they don't have much space.
We had a lot of space.
And it's fascinating because that inadvertently ended
up being a vehicle for growing the game in general,
showing folks how things are done,
how technical the sport is,
how many different areas of
your skill set can be improved,
or what mistakes you could be making,
because that's another thing I always
notice for you in broadcasts is you always
showed how things could be better improvement points,
you know, whether it's the delivery,
hitting style, anything with fielding,
both of you, obviously,
with many awards that have been won in
the space to speak to incredibly now,
what do you think of it and how it's evolved now?
So we're 18th season.
I wanted to ask about, you know,
beyond that, how the how the show
has evolved and what are you excited about now?
Well, I think even on that line,
the evolution of it,
the thing that will always be
the staple is the players and the excitement.
And I think the foundation of being
able to drop into a current game,
a current situation, you're not
having to wait around for the bases to get loaded.
We're taking you there.
Oh, you can't miss this moment.
Or he's in the seventh inning with a no hitter.
Al, what's he going to throw right here?
What are you thinking? What's he thinking?
What's going through his mind?
Because all our analysts have
been in situations in the game.
So now to sit there with Al Leiter or
Pedro Martinez or Al or Pujols and asks,
what do you think about in that situation?
Or even myself being
a defender when a guy's throwing a no hitter,
like, I'll dive and take the air,
I want him to have the no hitter.
So those things were cool.
But to drop you in
the situation is where the excitement really came from.
And at some point there would be
alerts that would go out and we
could tell that our ratings
went up because people were tuning in.
Oh, you got to be kidding me.
Kershaw looks like he's throwing a no hitter.
Got to tune on MLB network and watch
the ninth inning and everybody start watching.
So being able to capture
those major moments when they were happening,
instead of having to wait around and kill time,
really help the viewer, I think.
I think the, um,
the forum, if you will,
of the way in which our,
our shows are produced allows us
to be very extemporaneously as we speak.
There's a levity to it.
We realize we're not
solving world peace or curing cancer.
So we can have fun.
The, the, the synergy or energy or friendship is is real.
You could push back on guys and you know, it's friendly.
Uh, I think the evolution of the network is we're in like
all of the key places that baseball moments happen.
So as I watch from afar in the 17 years and,
um, not on every show,
but when I watch what we're doing, we're,
we're actually bringing our fans
to places that never happened before.
ESPN wasn't doing it.
ABC, NBC, all of them.
They're all great, but they had to come here.
So they knew that if it was a baseball moment,
we were doing it in,
in in depth with
not a bunch of not a bunch of fools at the desk.
We're, we're knowledgeable.
We're given opportunity to breathe and talk about it.
So yeah, it's, uh, it's a great place.
I mean, it's the only place if you're a baseball fan.
Well, and there's tough subjects,
you know, we dealt with, man,
I've been on the air for everything,
whether it was a guy got busted for
steroids or a car accident and a player died.
You know, we've we've had to live through
all these different moments and be able to
take the viewers into those real situations.
And I've cried on air.
I've felt the pain of the families.
You know, we've had all these different things.
And those are real emotions because
it's real and that's been for us.
You always talk about
baseball as a family and extension of it.
You really learn that.
I'm not competing with Al Leiter here.
When we're talking about what's going
on or in a in a clubhouse or locker room,
guys are stopping for the moment.
Player announces he's got cancer.
You know, you name it, we've had so many moments.
And that's, I think,
what makes it raw, authentic and real.
And that's not rehearsed.
It's not scripted.
We come in, have
no idea what's going to happen in the day.
You sit down for your three hours.
I have no idea what's going to happen.
It may be a no hitter.
It might be, you know,
we just get news that Hank Aaron passed away.
You don't know what's going
to happen in your three hour window.
And that's what makes it exciting.
Shows also the range of the show in terms of beyond
just even the teaching and dynamics that the human
lessons that you can kind of give through the show,
through the life things that happen through the players.
And, you know, as a segue to that,
when it comes to life, I,
I want to ask this question to you both,
because you both would be very astutely
kind of capable of answering it.
Financial literacy as a concept for
pro athletes was not nearly as much of
a thing in the 80s and 90s
in the early 2000 as it is now.
Investment vehicles, businesses, ventures,
broadcasting, podcasts, these are
all relatively novel ideas.
And the money they're making.
Correct and novel extensions of of pro athlete careers.
How early or late potentially
in either one of your careers for both of you,
did you start to think about
a broadcast as an avenue, but also B,
what is the career for you both
after the career, considering, you know,
we've had athletes come on and say there's
a mourning that occurs when you officially
retire and you have this period
of time where there's some gray area.
How early or late in
your career did you start to think about it,
and how did broadcasts materialize?
Well, let me talk about the financial piece first,
and I'll let we'll both dive into that because I was
really in the finances way even more than me.
But I remember early on,
I was triple A breaking into the major leagues.
And when I broke in,
the salary was what, minimum 30,000?
Then it bumped up to 60,000.
So you thought there was a lot of
money and you realize it's not.
And I remember being at my agent's office.
Jim and I had friends
asking for money like anybody's going to have.
And he sat down and said, all right,
let's go over how much money you think you really have.
And we went over taxes.
He explained how much it's
going to be taken out by the government.
This is what's going to be taken
out every time you travel.
Before you know it, I was like,
I got ten grand.
Can't be loaning these guys
some money so he can go buy a car,
you know? So you understood.
I understood from that conversation early
on that money's hard to make.
and the tax stuff is real.
And I got to figure out how to take care
of this a little bit and make it last.
And that was an early lesson for me.
And and al and I were just talking.
He would come in here, we're talking finances
earlier today and he's looking at the Nasdaq and the Dow,
and he's looking at all these things and and all that,
because the education is totally different.
And I think today's player gets that even earlier on
with more stuff than I got basic things early.
But as we've gone through life,
you realize, how am I going to make this money last?
And that's been been a big thing.
You want to pick up from there.
So, uh.
The financial literacy, I think there,
there are earners and, and spenders.
There's earners and savers.
And I, and I think that's either
taught or over a period of time,
you're, you learn the hard way,
as H was just saying about,
oh, wait a minute, I just made that much.
And they took out that much and they only.
Um, so for me,
I've been an earner and a saver
and the saving mindset for me took me to places
of curiosity and my curiosity
would be and heralds the same way like we.
He brings a lot of people from
the business world even to this day.
And it's not that you're always looking for a deal.
My curiosity was, I want to become more
educated about all of this stuff that I'm not privy to.
So as a result of these opportunities
of my celebrity and yes,
the money I made,
we get we professional athletes, I'll stay with that.
But baseball, we get these opportunities
of people who think they have a great idea.
So if you don't have financial literacy,
you can easily get sucked into being ripped off.
Maybe inadvertently, not purposely.
So I think it's paramount
that now they are now signing their corporations, right?
I mean, we're looking at $700 million deals.
These are many corporations.
These are market caps of what we're
looking on these these these tickers here.
So guys are just better.
You know, when Harold broke in,
he was a little before me and me,
my my minimum salary in the major leagues was 625.
And the veteran guys were
making 400 grand. I'm not diminishing that.
Whoever's listening to that.
But, you know, now we see what guys are making.
So most of the guys in the winter time,
they were picking up, you know,
charity dinner, you know,
dinners and, you know,
maybe a side deal, maybe a sales job.
And, you know, and I'm not going back
to the 50s and black and white.
No, that's as recent as the 90s and 2000.
That's the 90s and 2000.
Because it wasn't it wasn't what we're seeing today.
So you had to be more resourceful
with how you looked at your portfolio and how you spent.
But I would say, I mean, anybody if
players and Harold is
at the tip of it, because, you know,
we're in the studio over in Secaucus,
he's bringing a lot of friends and they have
they have business ventures and all that.
And I, I think that's excellent.
But so long as you tap the brakes on these opportunities,
we all know some friends that have
gotten into some really bad deals.
I mean, lost a lot of money.
So the more you seek all of this out and you see
what's actually maybe something you're uncomfortable
because you're not familiar with it, read up on it more.
You know, let that be part of
your vernacular and understanding.
You know, the biggest thing,
I think when it comes to finances for me,
I don't know what I think.
I know I want to if I'm going to get a haircut.
When I had hair, I went to a barber.
My mom quit cutting my hair a long time ago.
And the same thing here with you got to go to people that
understand money and understand wealth and understand.
And the deeper you go and the
more you're around people like that,
geez, blows your mind.
It's like talking to a major leaguer.
I want to learn how to hit. Let me talk to
Rod Carew. You know what I mean?
In my day. Now, I want to talk to Aaron Judge.
What are you working on? I want to talk to Bobby Witt.
I want to talk to the best hitters
and figure out what are they doing.
And that should always be the goal to get better.
And the same thing applies here,
particularly with taking care of your finances,
because you're never as good as you think you are.
r. You know, I'd go see Yogi Berra when
he was alive at Yogi Berra Museum,
and I'd walk in every time Yogi would go.
I saw you last night.
Do you think you know everything?
I go, no, I don't know everything, Joe.
Then why do you act like you know everything?
Because if you knew everything,
then you'd know everything.
But since you don't know everything,
don't act like you know everything.
Ah! That's good. And every time he would say that to me.
And after a while, you're like,
that makes a lot of sense.
And I think that has to come into play with finances.
You think you know everything.
You don't know everything. And it's.
And you can always continue to learn and grow.
And it's crazy because to both of
your points as you have success,
especially as a professional athlete,
there's more pitfalls actually than the average person.
There's more opportunities to.
And you're more of a target to.
I'll give a snapshot because we're here at the Nasdaq.
Sure. I it was later part of my career and it's
investment strategy on how
much you're willing to risk and lose.
That's where I think a lot of guys go wrong with,
with getting involved in, in,
in investment opportunities and companies, etc.
whether it's a private equity where they're
not public yet, etc.. Um,
I met a guy who I ended up just loving the guy as a,
as a, as a great person.
And it was, it was a start of
a company that he had ipo'd with
Dlj in 1998, 1996. I'm sorry.
Um, at Nasdaq, a $24 million IPO,
uh, after I retired, I was on the board for
12 years and we sold the company to.
And it went from Nasdaq to private equity.
Um, company was called Ultimate Software.
It was a Wall Street darling story,
and he just wasn't interested in
promoting it the way we all thought he should have.
But my point is I invested in the person and yeah,
the product is great. And they do.
They've done amazing stuff to go from
$24 million IPO to $11 billion.
Sale is crazy story.
As you know, being here at Nasdaq,
this is ground zero essentially.
Um, but it was it was me not thinking,
wow, okay, well, if I only if I put that much more,
I'll make that much more.
You know what Harold said?
What? What did you say about Yogi? What? You don't know?
You do? Yeah, yeah.
You know, so.
You know everything. It might be a.
Good idea, but like, okay, tap the brakes a bit here.
This is a really cool story.
I really think this man is
genuine and he's really
bright and he's got a great product.
But I'm not I'm not mortgaging my future, you know?
So that's where financial literacy for players,
they get sucked into that.
And if they have this much, they're like, oh,
it's only 10% of your portfolio. No, no, that's too much.
I'm going to do 1% or, you know, I'm giving you,
we have a thing now with with the alumni association,
I'm the with the alumni Association,
we do a symposium for retired players.
When I tell you. Have you been to that yet?
No, I have not.
I want you to go.
So it's now up to like
200 retired players within the first three years.
And they are lost and they're not sure.
And they do have a nice nest egg.
But what do they do? Where do they pivot?
Could they get an opportunity
to be the next Harold Reynolds.
Etc. but.
They're scared, you know,
they played baseball since they were 18 or
19 or 20 or even before that,
and now they're 30 years old or
28 years old, whatever the number.
And, um, we're helping these guys
get through that because it's a massive sucking sound.
When you go from Citi Field to
Yankee Stadium and you're no longer playing,
and then it's like, what do I do?
And it's fascinating. You're saying that even now,
recently retired players, it's still somewhat
of a void in a learning curve no matter what.
Even with the amount of resources available,
it's still like some guidance
is always valuable for these.
Because that's all they know. They could be.
They could have gone to Vanderbilt or
USC or Oregon or wherever.
But they've played baseball.
They're baseball players.
Could be super bright. I'm not diminishing intelligence,
but that's that's there.
That's there. That's what you know.
That's their.
Lighthouse.
Yeah, it's a great segue
because you already started to allude to this.
Are there areas from your playing career that then have
transitioned or translated into any deals you've made?
Not specifically be in terms of traits you've thought
about or things that you learned
from the game and took from your career,
and what you've learned about
contract negotiations, agents, you know,
all the things that go into
outside of playing just the business side of baseball.
Have you ever taken that and applied
or took those learnings
and used that in your own personal career?
Two. Two things. First thing that comes to
mind for me is work ethic.
And secondly, I think it's we work more than anybody.
I can talk baseball all day long.
I can look at things
and continually, continually, continually.
So I have a daughter who's a junior in high school.
She's made team USA,
she's a D1 player.
She's committed to University of Oregon for softball.
And we got hit last night and she's working on something,
and I would have worked on it all night
long. That's my motor.
I have to back off and realize my motor is way more.
I'm in the middle of the night
still figuring out she's got to
get her body to go that way
a little bit more on a ball away,
because that's what we did.
Yeah, we would go home after
a game and sit there and go, why did I make that?
Why did I chase that ball?
Why did I do this?
Because that was that was the grind.
And that's the work engine in me.
I can do it all day. I wake up in the morning, here I go.
I'm obsessed. I have to realize
I can't have the same obsession that other people do.
That's number one in everything in my life.
I have to realize I got to back off
because that's the motor that we had to get to,
the level that we got to and whether that's anything.
So I learned that from sports.
I learned work ethic,
but I'm learning in life.
My work ethic was crazy.
And to get to where we got to,
I wasn't the only one that was everybody.
And if al and I were on the same team,
we were at the same level. We talked.
We went all the way through the minor leagues.
You're going to discuss this stuff.
We're getting there because
there's only a few that get there.
And if you want to be an all star, you want to be elite.
You're even less than the other guy.
So that is a motor that you carry forever.
So I've had to learn. I've got to back that off.
That's one thing about the network kind of
helps me continue with that.
But I mean, we'll sit here even now,
I'll watch a show and I'll call him up
and go, oh, great show.
Hey, I thought about this point you were
making and it's like,
yeah, it's 1 a.m..
Yeah.
It's built into you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, especially he's got an amazing combination of, of,
and I'm not saying it because he's here
because I rip on him all the time.
He is has been
the benchmark for how
many years have you been in television?
Oh geez. 30, 30 years.
Almost 30 years. So, you know,
he got the knowledge of what what is in
his brain as the execution of what he's
doing to try to explain to the viewer.
But he also gets this.
And there's so many guys much better
than Harold and I that had greater careers.
And they're just they don't get this.
And he the combination of both is unique.
Um, I'll say this of what Harold said, um,
which is why companies Higher ex-athletes even
college athletes because there is a there's a there's
a chip in our head of of the discipline,
the work, the process program and routine.
And I can say that to you as well.
I don't know where your life's
going or what you're going to do,
but it's in you to want to be friggin great.
And there's some guys that are like, no, I'm good.
You know, I just, I'm going to get
one contract and take it
to the house. I play with guys like that.
I'm like, what are you talking about?
You got Hall of Fame stuff?
Nah, I don't want to.
It's like crazy.
So I know Harold's not that way and I'm not that way.
You know, we're workers and grinders and we,
you know, had to do what we do.
But that applies to everybody.
You sitting side by side,
wherever you go from here, upstairs,
wherever you are in this office,
like there's people just kind of
just going through the motion
and there's other people going,
all right, all right, what do I have to, you know,
how do I, you know, and like here he's, he's.
That's why Michael Jordan couldn't coach.
There you go. Michael Jordan.
Couldn't coach. He couldn't
sit there and understand why this guy.
You're ten for 15 from the line.
You missed five shots.
Why are you not shooting to make those five in practice?
Ted Williams, the one of the greatest,
if not the greatest hitter.
He he was not a good manager.
Like they're one of those guys going, wait a minute.
Why? How come you can't you know.
You're leaving already. Like.
Yeah, exactly.
One of those.
Yeah, exactly. Like teams asked
me questions about some of their players.
And I mean, I'm like,
this guy's never going to get to where you think he is.
He doesn't want to go out and work.
Well, yeah, he's working
because the coach is hitting him ground balls.
I didn't need a coach to tell me. I need to work on this.
I'm calling al. Hey, al,
can you meet me at the batting cage?
And true story.
Scott Bradley's the coach at Princeton.
He's been there for 20 something years.
We're in Oakland playing the A's.
I'm struggling at the time.
Come out for early BP,
not getting enough extra batting practice.
There was a pitching machine down the street
at this complex had an iron mic.
It was like, how many guys have quarters?
I took everybody's quarters. Me and Scott.
Next morning he's like, bring
your batting gloves and your bat.
Take them home tonight.
After the game, we'll go hit in the morning.
Oh that's good.
He took me down to the batting cage. We hit.
He had that same motor.
And that's what you have to have.
You have to have that iron sharpens iron.
You hear it all the time. Not everybody's irons
the same, you know.
So that has to come.
And even in business,
you got to find
that person that has that drive that says,
I'm not quitting until the deal's done.
That's why Steven Cohen is up all night
or Mark Walter or those guys are they don't sleep.
They get four hours of sleep.
How are you managing? Because they're driven by the game.
They're driven. They have a motor
that's that's different.
And that's why they're walking around with billions.
Yeah.
Win in this game. It's a game.
To them. This is a game.
But it shows also that that is
universally understood as a requirement.
If you want to be successful is that desire to
continually figure a problem
out and have an obsession almost,
if you will, about getting to it.
We have a segment called Final Lap presented by
the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula one team.
We have fan submitted questions.
A couple left here to get you out of here on this.
One thing that I think you both would
be uniquely kind of, you know,
equipped to answer is around how
much the game has changed around analytics.
Now this is applicable across all sports. Yeah, right.
But obviously things like exit velocity,
launch angle, like these weren't terms.
When I was watching baseball in 99,
2000, 2001, they are now.
And they're heavily applied not just to broadcast,
but also how coaching is done.
How do you think about if you had
access to analytics and if this was
a thing when you were playing
with about your career extended,
shortened, is there a different way
you would have approached things?
How do you think about analytics in
general and how it's impacted the game?
Analytics has a place for it,
and there's a misnomer that we didn't have analytics.
We had numbers, I had everything.
If I faced a guy, I knew exactly what he was
trying to do and where we had it here,
we had it in conversation and pitchers had it in charts.
That's why analytics to me,
has taken off with the pitchers first,
because that's what they've always done.
Al's job, when he was not pitching,
was to chart in the minor leagues on up.
There was a blue streak, a red streak.
This guy gave up a ground ball.
This is green. He charted all the time.
So now you come in with
these greater numbers and al gets to go.
You mean 80% of the time?
If I put the pitch here, he won't hit it. Thank you.
As a hitter, you tell me that that doesn't apply for me.
Because I got to know what's he going
to do with that other 20.
I can't sit here and think,
okay, he's not going to throw.
He only throws a cutter 35% of the time.
That doesn't help me.
That's great to know. I knew that already.
But now where's he putting it at?
So there's there's good numbers.
You have to be able to dissect it.
I think that's been the division
because I think when analytics start taking over,
they never gave credit to
the players of understanding, oh, the time out.
You always had numbers.
I always did. Cal Ripken can tell you
today what every pitcher threw him and where he stood.
With every hitter in baseball,
this guy is going to hit the ball here continually.
So the last thing I'll let al talk.
I was playing against the Orioles
probably for 4 or 5 years.
I would ground out to short to
to Cal Ripken ground out to short.
And finally I realized
they're trying to throw me that pitch.
I lay off it and I quit.
Nelson, they want to throw something in.
I started getting base hits,
and so Cal knew
exactly where that ball was going to be hit,
what that pitcher was going to throw,
because he played it enough and
he calculated it and he played the numbers.
He played the percentages.
He's going to chase this pitch.
If they continue to throw it there doesn't matter.
Three, two, he's going to have to
swing or else he's going to get called out on that pitch.
So boom, ground ball to short. I'm out.
He's standing right in front of it.
And that's where I think.
We never gave credit to
the older guys of understanding the game.
There is numbers being
played and numbers in your mind and everything else.
So go ahead, al, I'll let you bring it a little forward.
Harold said it, we were like Neanderthals
because we played in the 80s or 90s 2000 or whatever.
Um, it was out there and we were selective
with what we thought was helpful to us.
Analytics. Fancy word.
It's statistics and numbers and measurements.
What we would have used it,
I would forget about we,
I would have used it because I did use
our version of analytics.
The problem that is happening now,
and it's not just in baseball,
it's now going across. We're creating robots.
We're having athletes that don't use their eyeballs
and instincts and their natural athletic ability to
flow as a result of an iPad or
a number or an angle or a degree or a or a size.
And we're taking away athleticism,
analytics, and the technology behind it is a tool.
It's not the whole damn toolbox.
It is not the blueprint.
It is part of the plan of our house that we're building.
But it's not the whole blueprint.
And that's where we're going.
We're eliminating players with
experience and using their eyeballs.
I say this, my son plays baseball.
I'm like, Jack, what
are the guys come back and they go right to a laptop.
I said that one guy was watching the guy warming up.
We have a guy warming up.
You're going to watch his fastball.
How many did he throw over his plays?
Gets eight of them.
What's his first pitch that he throws?
That's going to be his number one secondary pitch.
As a reliever you got a chance to go fastball,
strike one, fastball, strike two,
and you're going to have a putaway pitch.
What did he throw? What is it?
Slider curve change.
Oh. What did the hitting coach say?
We're losing that natural thing
that when we play it in the backyard,
we weren't turning to a laptop.
So that has to be fused better.
And I'm not saying like,
oh, throw away the laptops.
Oh, you know, I'm not saying that I would use it,
but start using your brain and
your eyeballs of what it's telling you out there.
There's people out there playing a game.
It's not a computer.
Well, I think the biggest thing too,
is every day is different.
You know, just like in life,
al may not have his best fastball.
He may not even be the same guy I faced two weeks ago.
But the data tells you it is.
But this data is telling me it doesn't match up.
That's good.
I'm watching him throw and warm up.
He can't land a breaking ball.
Why am I worried about.
He struck me out on two breaking balls last time.
No, he can't throw it tonight,
so I got to be able to eliminate that.
Take the information. Thank you.
He throws a fastball,
curveball, and a slider.
Got it. Thank you.
But is he delivering it?
You know, and maybe two weeks ago he
was delivering a back door curveball at every time.
And that says it here.
But tonight I'm watching him throw and he can't throw it.
So I eliminate that pitch.
That was the stuff that would happen on the bench.
There'd be conversations.
When you're watching your next game,
if you get to a Yankee game or city,
sit there and as soon as a reliever comes in,
watch the guy on deck circle and see what he does.
He walks back to the hitting coach.
The hitting coach comes out with this binder,
and they're both going like this.
And the guys warming up right now,
and they're looking at it and they're saying, okay,
Al's going to throw like what he just
described and the dude's throwing over there.
It's just it's turning.
I, I don't have a better word
other than the turning them into robots.
No. And it's kind of like
going to the movies and watching
a review of the movie while you're at
the movies almost is what you're describing, right?
Like you're, you're, you're, it's right in front of you.
And it's almost a, an analogy for what happens every
day with everyday things
like the little tools that we depend on.
You start to outsource some of that thinking.
You then lose some of the instinctual benefits
that historically have made players great.
God, I'm so glad you said that.
Can you can your kids read a map? Do they know?
Yeah, they can. They can because I've made them.
But you're right, my son.
A smart kid who went to Vanderbilt.
Like if he doesn't plug in,
Jack doesn't plug in where he's
going and then look at the screen.
Oh, yeah.
He doesn't know. I said, Jack, which way is north?
He's like, uh. And I'm not kidding.
I'm not picking on him. But you know,
I'm so glad you mentioned that.
It's like, it's crazy because I
remember going to cities and like,
I knew my way around Los Angeles. I didn't have a map.
I knew if I go down La Cienega, I could get off here.
It's going to beat the traffic.
I don't have to be on the 405,
you know, I knew all that.
Now I pop in and sometimes
GPS can't even be where I know I can get to, you know?
But that's that's not I
don't even know my kids phone numbers.
I'll be totally honest with you, my wife.
And I were.
Talking about that the other day.
I don't know their numbers.
I don't either.
Because I just plug in their name and it calls them.
Yeah. Right. So we're getting.
No phone and you're not calling anybody.
You're not going anywhere. No, you guys are.
But maybe, you know, the younger generation,
his last question here on this segment,
what's been a phenomenal conversation?
The state of the MLB today, as you know.
Now a lot more information is available to fans.
You see now, you know,
fans who have dialogue
and conversation around things beyond just the game,
you know, teams, super teams,
if you will, teams with, you know,
they're getting more involved in contract conversations
and how this team able to do this and that.
Yeah, ratings also show that, you know,
I brought not multiple Non-baseball fans
to watch the last World Series with me.
And they were pointing at the screen like,
this is one of the craziest things I've ever watched.
Right? And so there's still
so much natural raw entertainment factor in the game.
If you can bring fans there,
what do you think of the kind of the
state of where the MLB is
now with its its global stars?
You have, you know,
Goliaths and Davids, if you will,
their storylines and what.
Kind of excites you about
the state of the game and where it's going?
I think it's phenomenal.
Where we're at, um,
I'll be, you know,
we've had this debate about
Babe Ruth and Shohei Ohtani. I'm sorry.
Babe Ruth didn't run like him.
He didn't throw 100 and he hit the ball like this dude.
You know so it's just a total different growth.
I do think there's you know you can argue.
Do they play the same type of game.
I mean when a when a guy's
playing you way back and you're zero for 20,
you're not going to take a bunt hit.
You know, those are things that boggle your mind.
But where the game is at internationally to be.
Able to go to Japan last year and watch the reaction of
the Japanese fans to the Dodgers and the Cubs.
And the following of it.
And what's going on as a global empire.
So where the game is at globally. I'm jealous.
I wish I could have played at this time.
It is so cool From youth levels on up,
they're playing all over the globe.
They're playing all over the country.
It's pretty cool where the sport is at right now.
I think there's always criticism, right?
So, um, you know,
we've had traditionalists the old school way
and the new school way and um,
you have to evolve and the pushback is,
oh, they're ruining the game.
What are they doing? No. As you just said,
I'm glad you set that question up by.
You brought in some of your friends that
don't that aren't baseball fans. And they saw like, oh.
My God, this is great.
We have a commissioner and we have
a commissioner's office of really like innovative,
forward thinkers and smart people that
they have to get ahead of what people,
the ticket buyers,
the people who are coming to the ballpark.
They listen to their fans.
Yeah, they listen to the fans. Thank you.
So one of the,
the number one, number one thing,
and I'm guilty was
the clock because I was I was a real mental pitcher,
not mental, but I had a thought process.
And, you know, I was very, very,
um, you know, cerebral.
And as soon as the clock, God,
God, we got a clock now,
man, that one thing.
And I know the commissioner and
the people made the decision was like,
you know, there's always criticism.
It was the best thing. You know,
we didn't have enough guys that that like,
hey guys, keep it moving.
The umpires are always going, come on now, chop chop.
And like, okay, guess what?
You have a clock. And it was
good because it's making it crisp.
And why did we do it for
your non-baseball friends and
other people who are friends,
they're like, oh, this is a better it's a better watch.
So you constantly have to keep evolving.
H was talking about, I'd love to have had a, you know,
a chance to play down in Mexico or
Japan or London or whatever,
like, wow, that's cool.
So we got to keep going.
The game is evolving positively.
Are there going to be some things?
We go, oh yeah,
yeah, but it's part of it.
And as Harold just said,
like we have a sport and
a commissioner's office that listens
to our fans. That's what you got to do.
Amazing conversation and I
love where the game is going now too.
By the way, I just want to add this.
Joel. And I think
this was it because we were I was at the World Series.
You had you had
the first pitch thrown in Japan in Major League Baseball.
The last pitch in Canada by a Japanese pitcher.
Yeah. Yamamoto was amazing what he did to come
back in the next day and get up and down
three different times like crazy.
Which pitches, they say if you don't pitch,
you don't understand how outrageous
that is. Yeah. On that kind of.
Rest, to come back the next
day and he was still throwing 96,
97, whatever it was. No.
So, so so to, to end this,
if you want to compare the generations,
that would have never happened.
Al Leiter is not throwing nine innings the night
before and getting up and closing the game the next day.
It's not going to happen. So I think we have.
Couldn't happen.
No. We have we have
some freak athletes were displaying them properly.
And I think we're merging
the sport because it is really cool to sit there and go.
Is Shohei Ohtani better than Babe Ruth?
Is this guy better than Griffey?
Is judge has really one of the best Yankees of all time?
Is he the most popular? Is he.
So it's really cool to be able to really
see the sport and compare
it because conversations are what drive this.
And by the way, we're sitting here as
MLB network analysts like,
honestly, this is going to sound gratuitous or shill.
There's no better place for
your even your marginal baseball fans to watch
baseball or get the right kind of coverage and
the right kind of analysis than MLB network.
And that's a wonderful way to, to kind of end this.
It's been a phenomenal conversation.
That was Al Leiter and Harold Reynolds.
Thank you so much for joining us
and we will catch you next time.