Mintz: Trout is really good for the sport as far as retention goes. If you’re a Little League kid who’s already in, Trout is going to keep you hooked. You go to Williamsport and you see a lot of Trout jerseys. He’s not a great billboard, but I do think he is important for retaining people who are already interested.
Shusterman: Every year that passes with the Yankees coming up short again, that also ratchets things up to another level. Everything with those high-stakes teams that are spending that much money—which is awesome and amazing for the sport—that makes it more interesting.
Mintz: How much do you know about a gentleman named Max Clark? He’s a projected top-ten pick in the upcoming draft—blonde-haired white kid from middle of nowhere Indiana. He has 223,000 Instagram followers. That is more than a lot of All-Stars, like way more. So we have this guy who’s 18 years old who’s already more famous online with younger fans—they care about Max Clark more than they do somebody like Freddie Freeman. That’s notable. Austin Riley was a top-15 player in the world last year, he’s won a World Series, and he’s only 25. He has fewer Instagram followers than Max Clark.
For so long, the culture was all about the team, not about individuals. We need to make sure that the guys who want to be famous can do that. More than any other player in recent history, Jazz [Chisholm] wants to be famous. At times it comes off as kind of self-serving to some people, not to us, but that’s just because the vibe of the sport is so crotchety. If he was in the NBA or world soccer, he’d just be another guy.
The amount of baseball that y’all watch, and the amount of time you spend thinking and talking about baseball, would be unhealthy for most people. Do you have any plans to slow down? Are there things from normal guy life that you yearn for?
Shusterman: I’m getting married in August, so presumably that will have some level of impact. But, every season we’re re-calibrating and figuring out, when am I going to not watch baseball? I don’t know if slowing down is the right phrase. Targeted regulation.
Mintz: It’s re-prioritizing when you watch ball and when you watch ball. If I’m cooking dinner, I’ll have a game on in the background, but I’m not locked into every pitch of Cardinals-Diamondbacks, right? Then, there are some nights once or twice a week where I’m sitting here at the control station or whatever the hell you call this, and I’m zeroing in on certain things.
To be honest, my ideal day is: do a podcast in the morning, have lunch, go to the yard, do clubhouse [media access], go coach Little League until it gets dark, either go back to the yard, or come home, cook dinner, watch ball, and hang out with my girlfriend. I would do that every day.
Shusterman: With people you’re first meeting, or just getting to know, there’s definitely that moment of them being like, “Oh, you’re really doing this all the time.” I’m like, yes I am, and part of that is because I know how lucky I am to do this. I should live that up!
Matthew Roberson
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