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Chapter 1: What is the controversy surrounding the Roberto Clemente plaque removal?
I've done a lot of things wrong, and I know it. Self-inflicted wounds are the worst. The Pittsburgh Pirates this weekend had a self-inflicted wound, the likes of which you don't see happen in sports very often. We're talking about Roberto Clemente. We're talking about the nightmare of having to do two statements, not one, two statements to explain
The idiocy of honoring Roberto Clemente with an outfield wall plaque, removing it, putting a sponsor instead, and not telling the Clemente family. So many layers to this. Let me start with the most interesting one to me. The Clemente family is high maintenance. You know that going in. They need communication. They need understanding. They want to be front and center.
They deserve to be because of Roberto Clemente. But you've got to know your customer. If you're the Pirates, you can't do something regarding Roberto Clemente without telling Roberto Clemente's family. And they violate it right off the top.
So it was moved? It was moved, right? It wasn't completely replaced. It was moved.
Taken down.
That's the dumbest thing ever. That's terrible.
They still have a statue. They have other ways that they've honored him.
They have a ton of ways. Yeah. But that doesn't change. And what the president of the team tried to say was, hey, listen, totally sorry, but we have... A 21-foot wall. We've got so many things that we've done for Roberto. A bridge. A bridge. It's a really cool bridge.
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Chapter 2: Why did the Pittsburgh Pirates mishandle communication with the Clemente family?
But the number's retired. The number needs to be there. Straight up.
Well, there's different places the 21 is. This was an extra thing that was put because there was an available space, but they forgot to just be honest with the family and say, hey, we're giving you a little extra. We're just putting it right there, but we're trying to sell it. And once we do... We're removing it. They didn't communicate.
And then they sent out their PR head to do a statement Saturday, doubling down, and then they sent out their president Sunday, saying, sorry, our bad, my mistake. He wore it. I had to wear so much as team president, so much that I had nothing to do with that I would just wear.
What was the worst one that was akin to something like this? Because this is about as bad as it gets, right? You're disrespecting not only a legend of the Pirates, but a legend of baseball that is celebrated across the league, and you're coming off the heels of what just happened.
with the government website and Jackie Robinson and so everyone is is feeling the effects of like history of our great players of color being a race there's all of it is there anything that you ever dealt with that was even close to what this type of ire that you're sort of going out in front and and taking the heat on they got ire Jeremy I would say that what we did with Karl Barger and on retiring his number we didn't do that probably the way we should have and
And I had to take that, even though I had nothing to do with it. But I had to wear that one. Even though it wasn't your decision to make? No, it was not. Listen, that's your job. When you run a company for an owner or for a founder, you're the meat shield. You have to take stuff that you don't deserve to take, but you do it, you smile, and you say it's your fault.
Trevor Williams, the president of the Pirates, he had to take this. But to me, what bothers me about what happened is that he was in that position to start with. When you're a president of a team, you know exactly what your inventory is, your sales inventory. You know exactly what you're doing when you're doing a deal with Surfside.
That deal doesn't get done without the president signing the deal.
And so what upsets you is that he made that decision and didn't communicate it to the Clementes, right?
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of selling the Clemente plaque space to sponsors?
But the statement from the Clementes included the specific nature of the Pirates continue to do these things, not only without consulting us, but without sort of consulting their fan base at large.
Well, a couple of things. The statement is on the screen if you're watching this live on YouTube. If you're listening, we have a statement from the Clemente family. So I don't agree. The fan base at large is not a factor for me. I don't need to go to the fan base when I'm doing things like this. I need to go to the family and I don't need to do it publicly.
I can do it privately because then I've got the ability to say publicly, hey, I did that. It's a very much check the box thing. The Clemente family is a very big check the box family.
If you were wanting to make this decision, though, right? And the Clemente family had an issue with it, then what? How does that conversation go for you in that that spot as the president of the team, right? Like, are you actually going for a conversation where you're actually caring what they have to say? Or is it just checking the box? It's just checking the box.
Why don't you give the Clementes like the opportunity to match what Surfside was going to pay to continue to honor their father in that one spot?
They wouldn't. They couldn't. Totally. That's very nice. That's nice. We'd like to give you the right to match. We've sold the behind the plate. We would do this if you have open inventory and you don't want to make it look like there's open inventory. So let's today behind plate signage. There are approximately 18 units to be sold each baseball game.
Half an inning, you buy a half inning behind the plate, you have a rate card, you sell it. But what if you have three half innings that aren't sold? You go to your existing partners and you say, hey, we're going to throw you an extra half inning. We love you. We're not going to charge you more. But once we sell it, we're taking back that half inning.
Thank you for your business type deal.
That's it. Thanks for being here. We appreciate you. So this Clemente thing, this one area on the wall was just a, hey, we got nothing else there. We're trying to have something there. But the problem is they chose to do it with a family that is very, very much a keep score family.
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Chapter 4: How do fan reactions and franchise reputation factor into the Clemente plaque issue?
But even if they weren't, it keeps score family. This would be a problem, I would think, for any franchise given the value of the specifics of the player. If someone's pointing it out on social media and there's a conversation that happens, you think that essentially this goes totally unnoticed if you don't have a family that's actively participating in that legacy? Yeah.
Let's face it, what brought this to a bubble was the Clemente statement, but then the Pirates dealt with it so badly, so badly. The Clementes do this, it's known around baseball, like there's certain families, there's certain people from the history of the game who are higher maintenance than others. Roberto Clemente is one of the second,
arguably the second greatest story of any baseball player ever behind Jackie Robinson. I would say that's one, two. And I think that's a fair assessment of it. And the Clementes, they are celebrated. The family is brought to events. Baseball pays for them to go to events. I mean, there's a whole level of support that is deserving.
But the family of other superstars do not necessarily get that support. But you got to know your customer. And that's what the Pirates, to me, did the most wrong is they forgot. It's a simple phone call. It's Williams calling the family and you never, with the Clementes, you don't have an account executive do it. You go, it's the top.
You have to know there's certain people who can be contacted by lower level people and certain people where they have to hear from the owner. And you just have to know it. And so it just bothered me what the pirates did because the pirates are getting a bunch of crap over their payroll, over their lack of revenue and the fact that they don't win. And now it just makes it worse.
Who's the highest maintenance family that you've had to deal with?
The highest maintenance family that I personally had to deal with. The Ali's were actually great. There was a lot to do. When you say high maintenance, I think pejorative.
Don't you? You've said they're kind of annoying to deal with, basically. So who, I guess, is the most annoying? Because I... This sounds terrible. But the more I'm looking at this, the more I'm kind of like, there's still a lot of ways Roberto Clemente is honored in this stadium. In fact, there's a number 21 about five feet away from the ad that replaced the other 21. Like there's 21s everywhere.
It's everywhere.
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Chapter 5: What can be learned from past high maintenance family interactions in sports?
But for a fan perspective, for someone who is a fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates, their frustration is a different one, which is really like that's how we're going to go ahead and erase something that matters to all of us, even if it's one of several different public displays. One of the public displays of our love of our hero is now going away so that we could sell it for something.
Are you sure about that, Jeremy? Because if the Pirates right now were 9-2 and the Dodgers with a high payroll, would this have happened? Or is it the fact that the Pirates are the fan? It's a matter of all of it.
100%.
If you walk around in Pittsburgh, you will see shirts that say, sell the team, Bob Nutting. Yeah.
So that's the whole thing that you can't give a fan base a reason. They're going to find their own reasons if the team doesn't perform, if you're not signing players who fans want you to sign. But that's why I called it a self-inflicted injury. That's right. And this and you have to avoid those if you're in a position the way the Marlins are and were the way the Pirates are.
You've got to avoid self-inflicted injuries.
Well, I wonder if for the Pirates and sort of sticking within that theme, we saw some contract extensions in Major League Baseball over the last week that I found really interesting. Not just Vlad Guerrero, who signs this mammoth deal that we could get into, but it's some of the other guys, right? And I forget the name of the player who just signed with the Red Sox.
Yes, Campbell, who signed an eight-year, $60 million deal. You see Jackson Merrill.
With as much experience that you have.
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Chapter 6: What is the trend in MLB contract extensions for young players?
So what the player is trading is those two years of free agency to lock up what they have now. And I can go down the list of players who have signed these deals and it's been a disaster for the team. We can go all the way to Kingery of Philadelphia. We can go to Jimenez and Robert of the White Sox.
We can go to starting way back with Singleton, going to some of the players who are in them now, who just end up disappearing, but you don't realize it, but they're being paid the major league rate in the minor leagues because they got guaranteed money. And why are teams doing this? Why do they feel the need?
Because they want cost certainty in an era when revenue certainty is so uncertain, it doesn't make smart business sense. When you're in a market where you're worried about what is gonna happen with expenses, with your money, the key is to have no fixed expenses. And this in your life is what you should do. Only have variable expenses that you can get out of.
A fixed expense is something that no matter what happens in your life, you have to pay that money each month or each year. A mortgage is a fixed expense, not variable. A variable expense is your entertainment money or money if you take your vacation fund or even if you put away money for different types of food. All of that can be variable. So this is all about budgeting. It's all about budgeting.
And what baseball teams do is they want these expenses fixed so they know exactly what they will pay Campbell because they view that as smarter than keeping it variable where if he has a great year, you could have to pay him more. If he has a bad year, you'd be able to pay him less. Their view is screw it. We're going to make it a fixed expense. My view always was I disagree with that.
I'm okay with variable because then I'm paying for performance.
Well, and then you're just getting rid of them by the time you need to pay them. Right. Because that that often seems to be the thing. Right. When I'm talking about teams like the Pirates or the Marlins or whoever in the future, theoretically, this would be the way that a smaller market team could hold on to their stars in the long run. We just saw no discount. Well, no, that that's my question.
Right.
Yeah. There's no discount.
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Chapter 7: How do guaranteed contracts versus arbitration impact MLB teams' finances?
So it's a great question. How much time did he miss?
Well, he missed a year, and a pitcher is a different conversation, obviously.
He was paid as though he didn't miss a year. People are talking about this contract of how great it is. He's only at 17. Go look at what he would be in the system.
Sure, but the pitcher part of it, I guess, is a different conversation because we end up having guys who miss full seasons in that respect at a far higher rate.
than what you see for position players but there's kyle raleigh there's jackson turio sound signed one of these a couple years ago the famous example is ozzy albies who signed for way cheaper than anyone would have anticipated and to me i guess what i've always viewed this as something that is team friendly that allows a player to guarantee themselves some money before they would hit the giant contract in their prime is that not the reality of how teams look at it when
we get lucky we got lucky with Yellich had a team friendly deal and then teams feel badly when it's team friendly and then they give raises and increases and extensions to players because they feel like they took advantage when players don't give you money back when they stink when they're hurt they keep the guaranteed money so how would you say you handle Giancarlo Stanton that's actually a different story the Giancarlo Stanton story is that we were trying to change the narrative of you the fans in Miami oh it's our fault it was your fault totally great totally your fault
As a matter of fact, it was more Billy and Mike, but Roy, you were right in there. Hold on a second. Yeah, Billy, it was your fault.
I'm blamed for you trying to change the narrative you created? Exactly.
I would have been very happy to keep my narrative going. You could have. Yeah, but you made me crazy.
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Chapter 8: Who is responsible for the Giancarlo Stanton contract and what was the issue?
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Do you think Capitals fans are pissed off today? Probably. They were spending $1,500 a seat to go to the game.
That one's a little different just because he needed to score three goals in that game. The fact that he even got close was crazy, and he was in there at the end. I mean, he was holding himself out.
He did two and then one. So he scored two in the first game and then one to break it.
Yeah, I'm saying. But for him to do it at home that day, he would have had to score three goals.
I'm talking about the home game that's coming up tomorrow.
Oh, yeah. No, he should.
It's like the Otani 50-50. I could not believe that happened here. It was like one of the greatest single individual feats of athleticism I've ever seen on a field. And it happened here instead of in L.A. when they were going the next day. And he had already hit a home run to get within 50. And they were up by like 10 runs. Dave Roberts... easily could have pulled him out.
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