Thoughts from lunch with Commissioner Manfred. This being All-Star week and all, earlier today I took advantage of my National Press Club membership (a steal!) and attended a lunch with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred. Joe Torre was there, as was Mark Lerner of the Washington Nationals.
But you don’t have to be an NPC member to watch his Q&A session. My question was about the no-pitch automatic walk and how that impacts pace of play, and the young experiential-focused fans. Why piss off the loyal fans to appease young fans who care more about the availability of a burger from a place (like Shake Shack) they can already get elsewhere than watching baseball? Not changing the rules to make things faster benefits baseball franchises, doesn’t alienate diehard fans, and keeps Instagram influencers at the bars and burger joints. The question I asked was split into two questions that are part of a theme—I’m sure a few others submitted the same questions—and Manfred’s series of answers comes at about the 44:00 minute mark.
Some other interesting takeaways from Manfred: He talks like he’s a CEO of a technology business. Lots of talk about product, platforms, and #content. It’s clear he knows he answers to the owners, but at about 19 minutes in, he talks about the evolution of the game (Manfred is obsessed with, and hates, the “shift”) and says something to the effect of that the game belongs to the owners. From where he sits, sure. But in reality, it also belongs to the ballplayers, the managers, and the fans.
My main worry about the pace of play rules is that the MLB will go down the same road as the NFL, NHL, and others in changing the rules of the game in such a way that make it far less enjoyable. They’re not there yet, but they’re going down that road. I got the sense that Manfred cares a lot about the data, and hopefully if something isn’t working or isn’t popular, maybe he’ll have the sense to abandon any changes to the game. At least we can hope.
You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists. Al Shabbab is banning plastic bags. Pick a side.
These, Tom, are your causeheads. Think your workplace’s expense process is brutal? Imagine not being able to expense any meals where a client orders meat. And that your workplace bans tasty sources of protein. That’s happening at office-sharing giant WeWork:
(Side note: McKelvey is building himself a house on a mountaintop in Utah.) Once again, PCU predicts the future.
Elon Musk steps in it. After claims that the use of his submarine in the rescue of the soccer team in Thailand were… overstated, Elon Musk exploded on Twitter. Will his sycophants care that he suggested, with no evidence, that a critic of his was a “pedo”? Doubtful. This is why billionaires shouldn’t use Twitter.
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