Sandy Alderson: Paving the Path for Moneyball & MLB’s Global Strategy

Welcome to Chatter Up presented by Extra Innings Travel. I am your host Shane Barklay. With me today on the podcast, I have Sandy Alderson, a legendary baseball executive. And I do not use the term legendary lightly. I really do think that he is befitting of that sort of descriptor because Sandy has been one of the most influential baseball executives of the last 40 years. He also was really influential in my career, which we'll get into later. But first, I want to talk to you about his career. the Oakland A's just elected him, the A's I should say. They don't go by the Oakland A's anymore, into their Hall of Fame. And I think that is a necessary first step to really giving Sandy his proper due. Uh, and I would argue that this could be the thing that paves the way to eventually getting him consideration into the actual Hall of Fame in Coopertown. Why do I think that? First of all, Sandy has the resume. He has built four pennant winning teams, three with the Oakland A's and one with the New York Mets as the general manager of those teams. He has won the World Series with the 1989 Oakland A's who swept the Giants in the Earthquake Series. Uh those A's teams went to three World Series in a row. He has had a big influence in other positions in baseball, such as being in charge of all of Major League Baseball's baseball operations, being in charge of Major League Baseball's international operations. He was the team president of the San Diego Padres's. His baseball resume stretches a long time, has lots of accomplishments, lots of influential positions, and those in themselves should stand out. But really, the big thing that Sandy did for baseball, and some of you may say for maybe it was not the best thing, but he implemented analytics into the game like no one had ever done before. And yes, now you can look back and say, well, maybe we wish that analytics weren't in the game so much. Some, you know, many people think that, but when Sandy was doing it, it was innovative. Uh, it was a secret. He wasn't telling everyone else about it, and they were the only ones doing it. He was the first general manager to implement Saver Metrics into the building of his team to adopt Bill James' principles. And he was doing that as far back as 1983. And he eventually hired Billy Bean and groomed him to be his replacement and taught Billy Bean the ways of analytics and saber metrics. And of course that led to Moneyball and it led to baseball as we know it today. Uh at least the major league game and how they build teams. But when Sandy was doing it, he was doing it just because it was something to give him an advantage. And he was definitely not talking about it. And we talk in our interview about why he adopted those methods and and what it led to and whether or not he thinks what he what it led to was good or bad. But at the time it was definitely a good thing for him and without a doubt he had a huge impact on the game. Um, when Sandy was starting out in the early 80s with the A's, no one knew who the GMs were. You know, maybe if you were this the archetype of a branch Ricky, some super old school baseball guy, like maybe you knew about them, but baseball was dominated by the onfield managers. these guys like Billy Martin who Sandy inherited with the A's and clashed with um Earl Weaver, Whitey Herszog, these sort of managers on field managers who really were the face of an organization and had a huge say in how to build a team. Sandy created a winner and no one really was giving him the credit. Tony Larusa was a great manager and deserves a lot of credit with those A's teams, but he kind of shephered this new era of a front office that's inserting itself much more into the field of play than it ever had before. And nowadays, everyone knows who the chief baseball decision maker is for their favorite team. Um whether that's the general manager or more commonly now, the president of baseball operations. And Sandy kind of created that dynamic. And I think that if he were to have existed today then, and he was a modern GM for the Mets and he was the president of the New York Mets, too, which I didn't mention earlier, but he would be much more known for being an innovative figure because nowadays everyone knows who those guys are. he kind of was bridging that gap and he doesn't I think get his propers because he wasn't the big baseball guy uh you know the the Earl Weaver type or the Branch Ricky type when he started out and then he had kind of been on this tail end of his career once the infatuation with people like Theo Epstein and um and even Billy Bean for that matter started to get a lot of attention. So, he was kind of bridging the gap and really set the path and laid the foundation for modern baseball. Um, for that I think he should be recognized and I think that he really did make a huge impact on the game. As you see in our interview, he really has the good of the game in mind and the way that he views it and the way that he looks at his career and the way that he looks at what baseball could be doing. And it's just a super fascinating insight into one of baseball's pioneering minds. So that's why Sandy is relevant as a baseball executive. uh we talk about it in the interview that he was my teacher at the University of California, Berkeley and I'll we talk about that in the interview. We also talk about it in my first episode of Chatter Up with Mark Jent. But I am going to just quickly set the table to explain why Sandy is an important figure to me as well. [clears throat] So I was a sophomore in high school when Moneyball came out. That's also when I was realizing I was definitely not going to realize my dream of becoming a major league baseball player. And Moneyball changed my life in a way because it showed me that I could have a career in baseball, just not as a player. And I could use my education to help me get a job in a front office and still realize my dream of being in Major League Baseball, just in a slightly different way. So that book came out. I devoured it. I ended up writing my college application essays about Moneyball and how I wanted to use my college education to help me work in baseball. Those essays helped me earn admission into UC Berkeley or Cal as I say it. And Cal didn't have a sports management program or sports business degree I could earn. I studied abroad in the Dominican Republic thinking that's something I could do to help me. But it wasn't until the extra semester I took after my fourth years, I did four and a half years, that I realized there is a tiny little twounit class offered by the undergraduate business school that's just kind of a lecture series that um was taught by a prominent sports agent. So I [clears throat] signed up for that class and I was thinking maybe this could be the thing that finally shows me how to get a job in baseball and connect the dots from my education to a career in sports. I got my syllabus to that class and the instructor was a different name and that name is Sandy Alderson and I was like wait a second that's not the sports agent and I said I think that I kind of recognized that name. I looked it up and I was like oh wow holy schikes this is my opportunity. This is it. uh he is a very respected baseball executive with Bay Area Ties and I and it was just so fortunate that I was taking this extra semester and he became the teacher of the class just by chance. Um and I busted my butt in that class. I really worked hard to make a good impression. I went to office hours and talked to Sandy about my aspirations and he provided a lot of guidance on how to do um pursue that career. uh he let me use his names as we talked about in uh in this episode. He I dropped his name as much as I could in trying to get team's attention. I ended up getting an internship with the Diamondbacks largely thanks to Sandy. And um while I was working with the Dbacks in 2010, Sandy was hired by Bud Cig to oversee MLB's international operations with a focus on the Dominican Republic. So that was quite fortuitous. Sandy hired me because they're looking to hire some expats to go down to the DR at an entry level um position. And so that was just perfect for me. I was qualified and looking for my foot in the door. I flew out to New York for my orientation with HR. Then the next morning, Sandy and I were set to fly out to Sto. Domingo so I could start working for him. And on the little news scroll in the taxi on the way from JFK airport, sorry, on the way to JFK airport, the I read a little item that said New York Mets hire Sandy Alderson as general manager. So that was a shocker to me. I got to the airport, Sandy was there. Uh at least he still still was there for that one day. and he confirmed to me that yes, he was indeed going to the Mets and we were going to fly down. He was going to um hold the meeting that was planned and then come back and be introduced as the Mets general manager. So that was my career working for Sandy. I worked for him for about a couple hours or so before he left. But that said, I am extremely grateful for his role in my career, for the guidance he provided early on, and also for him coming on to recount uh some of those times and his career in baseball. So, let's get to it. All right, Sandy, thank you so much for joining Chatter Up. Uh it's great to see you and I appreciate your time. Yeah, happy to happy to join you. I appreciate the uh opportunity to talk about baseball. Yeah. Yeah. Always a good day to talk baseball. So, um, [clears throat] first of all, thank you for wearing the cow hat. Puts me in a good mood and, uh, it's a great day to be a bear, as they say. Well, [clears throat] I'm, uh, I'm very proud of my brief affiliation with, uh, UC Berkeley. And so, uh, in honor of this podcast and, uh, your graduation from that illustrious institution, I thought I'd wear the hat, which I wear quite often. um uh including in Ukraine recently. We'll talk about that later. Wow. Cool. All right. Um so I want to we're going to talk about international stuff and and hopefully talk about some topics that are not typical in in the many countless interviews you've given over your career. Uh but before we do that, I'm pretty interested in your early career. um early career with the A's I should say because so in 2003 when Moneyball the book came out I was it was a [clears throat] life-changing thing for me because it showed me that there's an opportunity for me to work in the game despite not being typical baseball guy or former player in hindsight you had already proven that 20 years prior when you were hired by the A's as their GM and yeah I know you had worked with the team but for all intents and purposes you were not a typical baseball guy. So, can you take us back to 83 or or shortly before and and just how that all went down and what your feelings were when you were handed the reigns of the ball club? Sure. Um, [clears throat] so, you know, the Hos family bought the A's from uh Charlie Finley in um 1980 81. First season of the Hos family was 1981. Um I worked very closely with uh Roy Eisenhard who became president of the uh A and was the son-in-law of Walter Oz. Um I had worked very closely with him at at a law firm and uh um did the legal work some of the legal work um leading up to the the consummation of the sale. About a year after that, I did salary arbitrations in 81 uh as a you know an outside attorney working for the firm the as a client and um at the end of 81 Roy asked me to come over full-time and uh as general counsel more or less and uh you know at the time my feeling was I can always be a lawyer so why not? So I joined the A's in late 1981 and uh at that time the manager was Billy Martin um of uh um Yahhei and uh variety of teams uh lore. Anyway, uh and Billy really ran the whole show. I mean he sort of acted like general manager, you know, and because Roy didn't really have any experience. Had none. I didn't have any experience and so uh we were sort of um beholdened to Billy for for some of the decisions were being made. Well, that worked for a while and then things went south and um Billy was fired I think after the 83 season. Um and of course he wasn't really fired because I think he worked yet himself back to the Yankees. But in any event, that left a void. And um so Roy picked me not for my experience, not for my knowledge. I think maybe he trusted my judgment and that uh you know, I wouldn't go uh to any extremes um and would be cautious uh knowing the limitations on my knowledge and experience. So anyway, that's that's when I took over as uh GM, if you will, in 1983, I believe. Um, shortly after that, um, I ran across a guy named Eric Walker who wrote a book we can talk about later. Um, [clears throat] which really turned me on to analytics. Um, I heard him on the radio, KQED in the Bay Area, um, public radio. I heard him, was kind of fascinated by him, read his little book. Um, we got together and we hired Eric as a consultant. I think it was 1983 84 and he worked for us right through the transition uh to Billy to Billy Bean as general manager and and for a period of time thereafter. I'm not sure when the relationship ended. Uh, so we used Eric as best we could from 83 until I left in 98. That's uh 15 years. Um, what's interesting about the whole thing is that the analytics uh sort of data-driven decision-m was really a concept in those days because there was no data. Uh it was really a a theory that it was originally espoused I think by Bill James and his abstracts. Um and Eric was a sort of a a peer of Bill James. Um but in but at the outset it was a concept. It was it wasn't really backed by data because there wasn't any except the box scores. But the box scores in themselves tended to reveal more than we were used to seeing. For example, I used to get the old sporting newses out every week, every box score of every game in the major leagues, and I would go through and identify the games that were won or lost by the team that out homerred the other team. So my team hit two, your team hit one. What percentage of the games just strictly on that basis um could you predict the outcome? And the bottom line was that if you out homer the other team, uh you win about 75 to 80% of the games. You don't need to know anything else. So [clears throat] if you flash fast forward to today, the same statistics hold. The game has really not changed since that 1983 uh period because what's happened is the analytics have filled in with data to prove basically the the original theory. Um, but the theory really hasn't been uh had to be modified or amended since that time. I mean, you can talk about stolen bases, you can talk about bunts and so forth, but uh basically the theory was on offense, hit the ball out of the park, walk, get on base, and then hit the ball out of the park. And conversely on the defensive side with pitching, it's don't walk anybody and keep the ball in the ballpark. And so what you look for are players that reflect those profiles and then you try to, you know, you identify them, then you try to predict them, then you try to develop them to fit that profile, etc., etc. It's a whole system that develops thereafter. The bottom line is the theory that Moneyball espoused in 2003, whatever it was, was never intended to be about um uh money. It wasn't really about, it was a different way of evaluating players, but it wasn't originally driven by the desire to save money. It was really driven by uh an effort to evaluate players differently. And in my case, it was easy to adopt because I didn't have anything else to fall back on. I hadn't been a scout. I hadn't done any of that stuff. So, this was a theory that appealed to me in part because it was um uh accessible and in part because it made sense. So, anyway, it that's something that we used and we never revealed it. I mean, nobody really knew anything about Eric Walker. Nobody knew anything about how [clears throat] the A's were doing things until 2023 or 2003 when it when it when the Moneyball was uh was written. But um it didn't start, you know, with Billy. Billy did some interesting things uh and kind of went all in. But uh you know, for 15, 20 years, it was not about finding cheap players. It was about re-evaluating players. um regardless of how much they were going to cost and uh salary. So you were you was a little bit of a secret I guess you're saying uh in the beginning the way you were doing things and but you did hire Billy Bean as as a scout and made him your AGM and then you know as far as I know basically groomed him to take your role when you left for MLB. So, do you Oh, my first question is what did you identify in Billy Bean early on where you kind of knew he'd be a scout and then kind of quickly elevated him and then do you feel like you created a monster that has a mind of its own? Not in Billy Bean, but just in this whole analytics movement that can no longer be contained. Yeah. Well, so let me address the first question. Um, so Billy, you know, Billy, uh, we acquired in a in a minor league trade, I think in 1989, got him from the Minnesota Twins. He had been a first round pick and, um, you know, had had been up and down uh, at the major league level. And if you look at his player profile, he's nothing like the Moneyball type player. No home runs, no on base percentage. Really, I can remember standing behind a batting cage with Wall Jockey. Wall jockey had made this deal. He was my assistant GM at the time and he made the deal to acquire Billy. And I remember turning to him after watching Billy in the in the cage. Uh I said, "Why did we why did we acquire this guy, Balt? What's what is it that we see in this guy?" So, uh, anyway, Billy was was not the prototype, but he, um, I think it was after the 1989 season, he just abruptly quit playing and said, "I want to be in the front office." And we hired him as an advanced scout. And from there, uh, um, hired him as an assistant GM. And one of the one of the things uh that that stuck out, obviously he's very smart guy um and uh um very um uh valuable, articulate. Uh but one of the things that appealed to me was that he had worked in the offseason as a used car salesman. And so we, [clears throat] you know, in the offseason we were looking for minor league free agents. And so our scouts would identify several players that we wanted and I would put Billy uh to the task of signing the players and because of his experience selling cars he was great at it. Um but then yes over time uh um you know saw him as my replacement definitely and um one of the first things I did when he became assistant general manager was said look I want you to go meet with Eric Walker and he'll explain everything we're trying to do here and uh so that was his that was his uh uh introduction to analytics and um that was probably what was 1990 I guess. Um now we didn't adhere to the analytics um completely because as I said there was there wasn't that much data. I mean one of the first things we tried to do was correlate statistics based on uh the league and and park factors. So to sort of uh normalize the statistics across many different um uh playing environments, but that was you know there there just wasn't that much data. Um and and it came later in the form of uh observations being made in various ballparks by a company called StatCast that um again was kind of an approximation. They didn't have any high-tech uh equipment. they were just observing and making subjective judgments but that was a process that took place over a period of time and now it's you know it's just burgeoned uh beyond anybody's real expectations. Now as far as you know um what's happened because of analytics is that um the everybody begins to think the same way because the analytics even if you're doing your own system and you weight things a little bit differently. Basically through the analytics everybody comes up with the same solution and and because you have this analytic structure executives are afraid to go against the data because if it doesn't work it's kind of an obvious criticism that you didn't go with the stat. So, it's easier, it's more, you know, it's safer to go with the statistics. And so, what you see today is not many clubs taking a risk. Um, now the people making the decisions are somewhat homogeneous also, you know, and you know, when I originally started, I was an outsider. Uh, and when I left the Mets in 2018 as general manager, I was still an outsider. I was an outsider in in the first instance because I didn't have any baseball experience when I came in and I was an outsider at the end because I was so much older than everybody else. Uh, that it was kind of a generational thing. Um but being an outsider has its benefits because you know you uh have a way of an ability to observe perhaps from a distance and um so right now you know there are a lot of young people who are in these positions and when you're young you take a risk a young family you know you're safe and sound in some Midwestern city Um, don't rock the boat, don't do anything crazy. Um, uh, not a lot of risk-taking that goes on and, um, sometimes taking risk can backfire. Uh when I was president of of the Mets, um not running the baseball operation, but as president, we traded uh Peter Crow Armstrong to uh uh the Cubs um in an attempt to um you know get into the playoffs and um didn't work out not because Javier Bayas didn't play well for us, but because some of our pitching including Jacob Deg Grom went went down. But on the other hand, we traded for uh UN sespotus in 2015 and it worked out great. So you got to be prepared to take some risk and uh unfortunately uh I don't see a lot of that happening today. And I don't mean signing big contracts, but um necessarily as as the exclusive way to take take on risk, but I just don't think that I think there's too much um uh the same sort of thinking that's going on. I'll give you an example of a little push back. Um I was very much in favor of getting rid of this the shift. Um and the reason was uh not just the way it affected the game but symbolically it was like taking the front office off the field. You know the shift was born out of analytics uh imposed by front offices and for a period of time it gave a competitive advantage to those teams that initiated it early or were early adopters. But after a while, the competitive benefit narrowed because everybody was doing it. But what you ended up with was a game that was completely changed. And it it e sort of reinforced the idea of hitting the long ball because going the other way against the shift doesn't generate additional runs. If you do the do the math, the way you beat the shift is hit over the shift and that leads to a lot more runs and and and extra base hits and home runs, which is kind of underscoring the original theory. Um, but to me, getting the shift eliminated was a way of kind of uh taking the front office off the field, if you will. are you're tempting me to keep going down this path because it's such an interesting topic and you have so many good perspectives on it, but we are an international baseball podcast. So, I'm going to change it up a little bit. Um, so was your first exposure to the international side of the game or realizing that it's not just America's pastime, was that when you're with the A's and obtaining international players or was there something before that? No, my exposure to Nashville baseball started with uh with the A's. Um we were I think the second team to build an academy down there. Toronto had well no maybe third or fourth. The Dodgers had been there for a long time. Toronto had a uh an academy there and uh we ended up building one there, third or fourth uh to be built. Um, at the time that I started, our Dominican our head Dominican scout was Juan Marish. Oh gosh. Uh, and he had come to the A's through Bill Riggnney who was a special adviser to us and Bill was around sort of as a safety net to make sure we didn't do anything stupid. Um but anyway, Juan was our uh uh head Dominican scout. And um to show you how sort of rudimentary everything was, uh before we had the academy, we practiced on a naval base, Juan somehow finagled our way in. We we we practiced on a naval base. The first group we we uh signed, we had we signed 10 players. And the last player we signed, the little guy, and we signed him because he could speak English and he could translate for everybody else. Well, he turned out to be the only major league player out of out of the 10 that made it. His name was uh uh gosh, what was his name? Um we we traded him to the Yankees when we got uh Ricky Henderson back. Uh uh his name escapes me at the moment, but uh he was the only one of the tent. Um so I spent a lot of time down there with the A's with a guy named Carl Keel who was instrumental in the development of the entire organization. But um uh and we established no contacts with winter ball teams. We were with Lee for a while uh at a time when they were mad at the Dodgers. They had traditionally been a Dodger team. But my first exposure to uh international baseball was was in the Dominican Republic. And then um you know later and we signed some good players. Um uh Tahada was probably the top player that we signed out of the Dominican. Um, Louis Palonia, that was the guys, that was the the translator who ended up in the big leagues. Nice. It was it was a good, you know, leadoff man for us before we got Ricky back. Um, but anyway, my first exposure was, yes, in the Dominican. And then when I went to Major League Baseball, I broadened that exposure. Um, not just the Dominican, but throughout the Caribbean, as well as China, Australia, uh, some other places. Um [clears throat] I I really haven't been happy with the way baseball has approached inter the international game. We spend a lot of time in places where the game is already popular and the reason for that at least when I was at MLB was because we could get money out of those places. You know we could go to Japan and hold a tour. We could go to Korea maybe. We could go to Taiwan. Um, we could go to places that were already familiar with baseball, supported baseball, and generate revenue, but we never really invested, you know, in the international game. We never really invested in places like China. There's a small academy there, but I mean, come on, you know, country. We kind of treated international baseball as a uh you know like a a short-term investment, not a long-term investment. India, we never even set foot in India. Um now we'd go to Australia, but the problem with Australia is there's no market there. If you I mean if the game even became popular, it wouldn't be lucrative, you know, from a from a business perspective. Uh yeah, they speak English. Yeah, they play cricket and you know there's an Australian league. I'm sure you're familiar with it and I was down there um you know looking at that as well. Um but the whole idea behind the Australian league was crazy. It was like here's another place for us to send American players to play winter ball. Well, no, we don't need Australia to develop our own players. We need Australia to develop Australian players. So [clears throat] um anyway uh now we see the NFL is considering you know teams in these various places in Europe, Mexico, what have you, Japan even uh you know and baseball's baseball's way behind uh when it comes to internationalizing the game in my opinion. So when I was in your class I was I was pretty surprised at how it wasn't a baseball centric class at all. like there was just a little bit on baseball and you talked a lot about stadium deals, economics and then it was leading it was 09 fall of09 so was leading into the Olympic year and we talked a lot about the Olympics. It was clear that you had knowledge and interest and experience in the Olympics and as you're talking about the big picture baseball status in the world order of sports. I see baseball as is kind of like a quadruple a player like it status in Olympics. like it's good enough to get a taste of the big leagues but not good enough to stick. So what's up with that? And like can you speak to in especially in MLB's absence? What is the importance of the Olympics in the development of baseball around the world? Well, the Olympics are vitally important to the development of the game around the world and the World Baseball Classic which has been successful is no substitute for the Olympics. And the reason is that um and it gets back to money uh and to some extent national pride. So if baseball were in the Olympics on a regular basis, places like China would be investing a lot of money in their baseball program, but they don't do it because baseball is, you know, only an occasional uh Olympic sport. And the reason it's only occasional is because MLB has not been willing to uh send major league players to the Olympics, which you know the Olympics has been demanding for years that you know that the every other sport sends their best players and clearly the season seasonality of baseball is a problem. But there are ways that could be it could that could be addressed. Um in addition to uh just the prestige that Olympics brings, it brings money. So governments invest in baseball if it's in the Olympics and [clears throat] baseball national baseball federations benefit from the revenue generated by the Olympics. So there, you know, two revenue sources that are unavailable to baseball programs around the world. Um there was a time when there were something like over a hundred uh national baseball federations. So every over a hundred countries had baseball uh federations. Now you know some were probably a name only. Um but the popularity was a function of being in the Olympics. Now that has uh dwindled considerably and u you know the world baseball classic makes an attempt to to uh incorporate lesser developed baseball nations but you know that's not that's not working. Um in I mean it doesn't doesn't expand the universe because the money's not there. Um so when I was at baseball I was a big promoter of the Olympics. I was the liaison with the Olympics. You know, I went to how many places did I go to, you know, support the Olympics? Beijing, Athens, Mexico City, Singapore, um you know, various places. And um it was all it was always an uphill battle. Um, I have likened the Olympic Committee to the last, you know, called it the last European empire because the Olympics is basically run by Europeans, but all the money is generated outside of Europe. I mean, most of the money comes from the United States. It's it it really is. It's an imperial organization with colonies, you know, that that uh that that um uh send money back to the you know to the home country. So um that was very frustrating. You know, you can you try to talk somebody into I remember uh the head of of the International Swimming Federation was a guy from I think like Tunisia and I said, "Are you kidding me?" You know, has Tunisia ever had anybody in the, you know, in the last semifinal of a swim meet? I don't know, maybe. But it's crazy. you know, the head of the uh International Baseball Federation when I started was from Italy and now he's from Germany. Um and uh my experience with with actually qualifying teams for the Olympics, there was a heavy anti-American sentiment. I mean, the tournaments were stacked to screw the United States and keep them out of the Olympics. Um, but of course when the team didn't go to the Olympics in Athens, everybody's now there was no the Olympic committee is saying, "Well, what happened? Why aren't the why aren't the Americans here? They're the ones that generate the interest. They're the ones that watch TV, etc., etc." No, the the uh the um the uh organization that ran baseball in the um Western Hemisphere, you know, the Americas all the way down to the Caribbean, you know, had created these tournaments where uh you know, the United States wasn't any better than anybody else. You got to fight your way through it. And uh that's good. That's fine. I I you know equal treatment. On the other hand, the reality is that uh without the the US in the Olympics in 2004, it had a big big impact. And I was in Singapore when they voted baseball out of the Olympics. At the same time they voted softball out of the Olympics. And baseball lost by a fair margin. Softball lost by one vote. And one of the two or three members of the Olympic Committee from the United States abstained from voting. Oh gosh. Because he supplied archery equipment and some other things to the to some of these other uh federations. And he he abstained. So softball was eliminated in my recollection by one vote. and one of the three Americans on the Olympic Committee had abstained, which is complete BS, you know, given the way the Olympics works and how everybody deals with self-interest. So, um, so anyway, but the Olympics are important to baseball, I think, and the fact that they're going to be in LA is great, but they need to be in the Olympics every year, and baseball needs to figure out a way to accommodate that. uh they don't want to give up their All-Star the All-Star game. Well, you know, every four years you could maybe give up the All-Star game uh and have a little bit longer uh break um for the good of the game because eventually baseball is going to be strictly, you know, an American uh Caribbean kind of western hemisphere sport and is going to be uh overwhelmed by soccer which already has world appeal and and leagues like the NBA and the NFL that are um cultivating that and and doing it very successfully. So is is um I'll put it this way. If you were commissioner for a day, you know, or not for a day, if you're commissioner, what is the single thing that MLB could do to improve the international game? Is it advocating for the Olympics or something else? Well, the Olympics to me is uh like a cornerstone. uh it it establishes baseball on an on a world scale and now it's part of that and it needs to accommodate that to some it it has to uh subordinate its its you know self-interest somewhat to in order to uh gain that international stage. That's why I say there got to be some, you know, compromises with uh scheduling and so forth. But um [clears throat] um that's a start. The second is baseball needs to invest more in places where the game could become popular. And uh you know, Yao Ming proved that you just need one guy from China um to to to drive a sport in a in a country as large as China. But baseball has not invested enough to find that person. When I went to I went to Shanghai um probably 2004 2005 and we went to a sports school uh where they had a variety of different sports all incorporated into their academic program. And we watched the basketball team. They all came out at about the same time, you know, because the the the the uh academic day was finished and they were going to their various sports. We watched the basketball team come out. They were all like 67, 69. Then we watched uh uh we watched the the the pingpong team come out and they were you know they were athletic but they weren't you know they weren't a and then we watched the baseball team come out and it was like holy cow where did they get these kids? I mean you know the parents in China the parents sort of have a lot to do with what sport their kids play and they all want to know what are what's the upside here? What's the future? And baseball didn't have a good story to tell. Why? Because there was nobody like them in the United States doing well. We didn't have a Yao Ming. We needed to find one. And the only way you were going to do that was investing money in lots of players um and hoping that you find you found one or two. And one of the other problems with China was that the clubs were super sensitive to uh clubtoclub competition. So for example, MLB would only allow investment in China and other places through Major League Baseball. So if I was with the San Diego Padres's, I couldn't go start an academy there like I could in the Dominican Republic. There were limitations on that. Well, now you're now you're you're artificially artificially limiting the ability to to find those players. You know, if MLB is only going to put in so much money, well, maybe the Yankees will put in more. maybe the Dodgers, maybe, you know, and there are ways to protect the other teams, but hey, if they develop if if the Dodgers or the Yankees went in and spent $10 million a year in China, first of all, everybody should be happy that they're diverting $10 million a year to something that's not likely to produce anything. But if they found a player, if they actually found a player and that player ended up on the Yankees, the Dodgers, then [clears throat] everybody in China is watching MLB on TV. And not just the Dodgers and the Yankees, but you know, MLB controls the television networks internationally. Everybody shares in the same in the revenues equally from international television. It's a win-win for everybody. And so what if the Yankees have a Chinese player? Uh, everybody [clears throat] benefits. And by the way, there are ways that you could, you know, limit uh what the what these teams could do individually, but they've never been allowed to go to places like China or, you know, there hasn't it's just been restrictions at the major league level all because of a concern about uh you know, equal opportunity. And um the bottom line is that teams that want to make that investment go ahead. They should be able to do that. Uh subject to you know like relationships with China which can be fraught by the way because we found that out with you [clears throat] know like uh Taiwan appreciation day in uh with the mess. Anyway, sorry to run on. It's okay. Um well, one place where the the investments are certainly being made is is in the DR. It was like maybe almost 16 years ago that uh Bud Celig appointed you to go down there and help get some structure, help try to clean things up and and um granted you didn't have a long time there because the Mets hired you away, but you did implement a lot of stuff. But then just last week, this article comes out of a big prospect getting a, you know, agent ID fraud, which I guess it's progress. The fact that it's a headline thing that someone was caught because it used to just be so frequent. But why why has it been so hard? Why do these issues persist? Guys are getting players being taken advantage of financially. Peed use is rampant at the big league level and the prospect level. Agent ID fraud still persists. Why has it been so hard to have a a better system down there? I think it's uh it's partly economics. It's partly culture. Um you know the economics are such that these kids are you know these kids are coming from poor families. I mean poorer than any of us in the in the stage could imagine. Uh some of them don't even have Dominican citizenship if they have a Haitian uh ancestry. Uh they'll do anything to get a contract and get out because that's their opportunity. Um the agents are sort of similarly situated. Their interests are aligned with the player getting as much money as possible. and whether we, you know, we will admit it in places like Caribbean, the younger the better. Um, [clears throat] and um, as a result, uh, younger the better, but more mature than, you know, you would expect for a a young young player. So the age and identity thing is unfortunately in the Dominican, you know, and you know this as well as I do, if you don't sign at 16, 16 and a half, you get passed over. It's hard to get a second look at 18 or 19 in the Dominican. I think that's starting to change a little bit, but um it's still an issue and part of it is because of the system. Now, when I went down there, I did not I was not looking to kill the system. I was looking to improve the system because the system was actually producing players. Okay? As as sort of uh badly as as the s as bad as the system was, it was it was generating players. And so, I didn't really have an interest in killing the system, but in in improving it. And so the agent identity thing um you know we we reinforced and it became part of a registration system. You had to have agent identity check. You had to have uh drug testing and um you had to be registered or you couldn't uh be signed. There was no draft but you couldn't be signed if you weren't registered. And one other element that we introduced down there was that everybody, every club had to be had to have access to the player so that somebody couldn't make an oral deal with a kid that was 13 or 14 years old and then stash him away and never seen again by another team because that's that's a lot of what led to uh uh some of the some of the uh the issues that were there. Um, ironically, once we opened up the market to all the clubs, then it became like a free agent market and the players the cost of the players actually went way up. Yeah. Uh, the other sort of uh contemporary development was that there's a tremendous amount now of information about these Dominican kids that didn't exist, you know, 20 years ago. And one of the things we we did at the time was we brought in the major league scouting bureau and said that the scouting bureau had access had to have access to all the players to make reports back to teams and it was a good use of the bureau until it uh you know it was uh uh eliminated at some point. But um now another thing that I wanted to implement, it was going to be controversial, but I left before I could is I wanted to I wanted there to be in addition to age and identity and drug testing, I wanted to administer an academic achievement test. And I think it was going to get, you know, pushed back maybe from the government or what have you, but the idea was that these kids are taken out of school and they spend all their time playing baseball and we don't know what their level of academic achievement is. But the purpose of the test was not to determine their level of achievement. It was to create an incentive for the Buscon to keep their kids in school at least part of the time on the theory that the higher the educational achievement, the higher the bonus because the players you could argue would be more coachable, would be, you know, more attuned to um instruction, etc., etc. And to some extent I think that was had previously been borne out and I I may be wrong about this but by the difference in signing bonuses for players from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. Venezuela has much better educational system. Probably not great but better. And I think that that led to somewhat higher bonuses to Venezuelan players than than Dominicans. the Dominican, at least in my day, the Dominican Republic was spending some horrendously low uh percentage of their uh gross national product on education. It was it was pitiful. So, um so anyway, I [clears throat] wasn't down there to to kill the system. I wanted to improve it. And you know, [clears throat] it's a different system in the United States, but it's similar. So you have all these these travel teams. Now the travel team sponsors are in it for the money and they don't get a contingent fee like an agent does in the Dominican where if the kid signs a big contract, you know, like a lawyer in the United States, they get a third of it or half or whatever it is, which [clears throat] probably is too much and it's complicated. But in the United States, there's no contingent fee arrangement. you you're paying out the nose for the these the amount of money that that a family actually invests uh in their in their youth baseball or youth soccer or whatever. It's incredible. And that's why all these investment firms are getting in on youth sports. It's it's crazy. But you know, the system is basically the same. If you didn't have a Busco in the Dominican Republic taking a kid from say 12 to 16, who's going to do it? And in the United States, if you don't have travel ball taking a kid between 11 and 16, who's going to do it? So, [clears throat] you know, it's it's a similar system. Obviously, not the same issues uh in the United States you have in in places like the Dominican Republic, but that's a result of culture and and economics. You can't pay a travel team uh you know uniforms, all equipment, blah blah blah travel. You don't play baseball. You play basketball or football. Yeah. Interesting. I never thought about it that way, but it's definitely a good point. Um all right, I'm going to ask uh one more question before going to the show and tell. Um, so I imagine being a baseball executive for 40 plus years or whatever it was, uh, maybe you're a little bit removed from the romanticized view of the game, you know, and uh, the the human side, you know, that I'm now on on I call it lowercase B baseball side of things and you're on the capital B side of baseball and, uh, I deal with a lot of fans and families who are just like, you know, baseball purists and just love everything about the game. So, I'm curious um despite that, well, first of all, is that true that you were kind of removed from that perspective of the game? And then is there something in a memory you have where you really saw baseball bring people together or kind of tapped into that romantic view of the game whether it's within a front office or a clubhouse or a city or bringing people together across cultural barriers um where you're kind of like removed from the competitive and financial side and see like the beauty of the game. Yeah. So there are first of all um you know I'm a lawyer by training. I wasn't, you know, used analytics, uh, several. But really what drew me to the game, kept me in the game for as long as I was were the people. And it wasn't just the people within the organization or the competition or the players. It was about everybody associated with the game. Um, so you talk about an organization, just to start with an organization. Well, yeah. Okay. You start with the players, you got coaches and a manager, but you have equipment manager, you have uh trainers, you have security personnel. Uh, and those are the people that I really enjoyed hanging out with. I used to hang out with Steve Venus in the equipment manager room. Uh, you know, during ball games, just hanging out, shooting the breeze. um Mickey Morbido, the traveling secretary. There are a lot of people that that are associated with an organization that that aren't headliners, you know, and um uh maybe I got that from my Marine Corps days where I enjoyed hanging out with, you know, sergeants, corporals, and we all had a mission and we all had a role to play and we respected each other's roles and uh respected um their work. Um, one of the great things about the A's, they have a hall of fame and two of the people that are in it. One was one is the equipment management who was there for like 50 years, Steve Vusage, and um, uh, the head of player development, Keith Litman, who was also there for 50 years. These are not, you know, headline making people. Um, they are rank and file. And one of the great things about the A's is that they've recognized those out of the rank and file. Um, but beyond the organization, um, you know, I probably am not a diehard baseball, you know, I got involved I I played a little baseball in college, not very well. Um, didn't seek out the A's job. It wasn't like my, you know, the holy grail. And of course at that time nobody like me was in baseball. But um one of the things I enjoyed about being in the organization is what I could do for people outside the organization who were fans. It was so easy to get somebody an autograph or you know do something special for someone. Uh it wasn't that hard for me to do. I just took a little time. It wasn't it but you know the and it wasn't personal satisfaction. It was the knowing that how how important it was and how memorable it would be uh to them and uh so uh so that's that's what I really enjoyed uh as much as anything else. I'll tell you a quick story. When I left the A's I gave everybody in the organization a little crystal box that said thanks Sandy Alderson uh edged on the top. And so that was 20 thou that was 1998. About a year and a half ago, I get I get a uh uh a letter with a photograph from a guy who's the sheriff in one of the one of the counties in central California. And he's got this he took a picture of the box. He's got it on his, you know, on his desk in his uh um office, his you know, sheriff's office. And [clears throat] it's the little things like that that you have an opportunity to impact people. It doesn't take it's not that hard, but uh so many organizations don't do it. Um the A's do it at least in no in two instances that I mentioned. Uh the the Padres's did it uh when I was there with John Moors. Uh the Mets forget it. It's like here today, gone tomorrow, including me. [laughter] So, so, uh, uh, there you go. It's just organizational philosophy. But, um, the fans are the best. And, uh, when I, you know, in 2018, I left the Mets because I was ill. I' been diagnosed with cancer a few years earlier and come back. And I can't tell you how many people, you know, not hordes, but how many people I bumped into on the street and said, "How are you feeling?" you know, it it wasn't, "Oh, the Mets stink this year. Mets are great." How are you feeling? Which, you know, it was incredibly uh uplifting and uh kind of a payback uh which I very much appreciated. I know I said that was the last question before show and tell, but I do got to ask, how are you doing and what are you up to today? And how did that cow bear's hat make it to Ukraine? [laughter] Well, uh I'm not doing much in baseball. I actually was working with somebody uh who thought they had a chance to buy the uh Anaheim Angels. Uh that opportunity just disappeared. Uh but in reality, I you know, I haven't uh haven't uh I'm not doing much in baseball at all. Um uh but I am, you know, I am busy with uh some nonprofits. I'm on the board of a m of a World War II museum in Savannah, Georgia. Um I just got back from Ukraine, a second trip there with uh a nonprofit that supports the frontline military there with uh non-lethal uh support. Um that's how the Calad got there. Um interesting place today obviously. Um, and uh, you have to hand it to the Ukrainians for um, what they're able to do with zero support almost from the United States. And so going there, people that I was with, other Americans, there were others from European countries, but you know, just a symbolic sort of small gesture. Um, they'd be surprised how uh Ukrainians react to Americans there who are doing just little things. They'd really appreciate the support and uh it psychologically as much as anything else. Um so I stay busy um happily uh out of the game at this point. Well, thank you again for everything. I I really appreciate hearing your insights and yeah, let's wrap things up with uh the show and tell. So, show us what you brought today. All right. So, what I've got is uh a book uh see if I can get it here. It's called The Sinister First Basement. It was written by Eric Walker, our consultant, and something that I read early on. Um it was similar to Bill uh Bill James abstracts but this is a series of essays and um some are focused on how the game you know how to evaluate players etc. Some are just more um uh whimsical on on his part. But um couple of interesting things. This was this book was published in 1982. So just before uh um you know I started looking around for a for a uh an approach to uh player evaluation. And secondly, um there's a forward by Frank Robinson who you would not identify with analytics. And interestingly, if you read the forward, uh Frank doesn't say anything about analytics, he talks about Eric being kind of, you know, an oddball type with his own perspectives and this and that. And one of the reasons that we were able to get Eric Walker to work for us is because he originally uh got connected with Frank Robinson, but he couldn't get any traction with the Giants. Uh they just they weren't interested. So um anyway, but the forward is by Frank Robinson. You would never suspect would be have anything to do with analytics and uh he certainly didn't uh underscore that. The third thing I'll say about this book, I just checked on Amazon. So this book, you know, it's only 170 pages. It's paperback. This book is selling on Amazon for almost $500. Wow. [laughter] So, and I don't think it's the scarcity. It's probably part of that, but there's got to be a reason that a book that was more or less self-published, you know, uh, uh, is now worth close to 500 bucks. And it's because of the insights here and the way it's held that they've all held up. It's just, you know, um, and again, written at a time when this was all theory, all conceptual, and, uh, the data over the last 45 years has borne it, borne it out. So, is that your original copy when you first got it? I got two copies. Yeah, I got And that this one has notes, so chapters, you know, um, um, uh, analysis of batting order. Uh these are that's not what they're titled, but that's [clears throat] um home field advantage, uh visual acuity, um one run versus big inning, um the importance of not giving up outs, you know, all all the basic concepts that yeah remain true today. Well, that thing I'll say it, that thing belongs in the Hall of Fame because that you know, Mighty Ball, everyone had that one. Not everyone had what is the Renegade first base or sinister first basement. The sinister first baseman that's like Moneyball version zero right there and without it there is no um you know Michael Lewis or Brad Pit version. So um that's a really cool piece of baseball history right there. Um, thank you for sharing my show and tell I brought so a lot of my best baseball memories happened at Oakland Coliseum and I saved some tickets uh which I've sub subsequently got signed. I'm just going to share them. Um, first one was September 22nd, 1997. That was my 11th birthday. Mark Maguire's on the ticket. Yeah, Magguire signed it. But actually, you had already traded him at this point, much to my dismay, cuz he was my guy, and I thought he was going to chase down Roger Maris in an A's uniform. And um I imagine that was a hard one, but it didn't make a lot of sense to trade him at that time. Um but that was that was a tough one, but uh you know, we had new ownership. Um they weren't they weren't enamored with big contracts. Uh he was getting a little older. we needed to turn things over and I made that deal so Billy didn't have to. That's uh that's one of the things that um we talked about. But uh anyway, that that game so my best friend and I we have basically the same two days apart and we were both baseball buddies and he hooked up he somehow had a connection where we got a suite and it was just such a memorable amazing birthday with like a bunch of 11-year-old kids in the suite at the A's game and Ken Griffy hit two home runs that game. He is like chasing 60 himself. Um the next one is actually two tickets. My dad's ticket and my ticket. Uh this is after you're gone, but it's 2000. Um October 1st, 2000 and the A's clinched the AL West. I just turned uh 14 I guess then and no one wanted to leave the ballpark. Um it was an amazing game. Uh Tim Hudson opened it and Jason is and he pitched like eight shutout innings I think and Jason is housing closed it. They both signed this one. Um, this one's signed by Billy Bean and Art How. Um, but what I remember about that, the reason why it's so special was that no one wanted to leave the ballpark. All of, you know, the Ace fans are amazing that the Coliseum is full of like 50 60,000 people and the players came out of the clubhouse with their champagne bottles and were spraying the fans. I got sprayed with champagne and it was such a cool thing for the players to recognize the fans and for everyone to be in it together. And that was like a very powerful moment. And then similarly, my last one, September 26, 2024, last game in Oakland. Um, this one signed by Mason Miller, who closed out that game. I've never had been at experienced anything like that in my life at a sporting event. It was like a an Oakland wake. It was like people were crying and hugging, but also the biggest party I've ever been to. Um there was it was like a a a celebration of life I guess would be the way I'd put it. Um in a in a very Oakland way. Um what were your thoughts when you you know saw that last game in Oakland and and you what memories came to you? For me there was a certain inevitability about it. Um, you know, once the Giants got their stadium downtown, um, in many ways that was the death nail for Oakland. If you go back in baseball history, the same thing happened in St. Louis. There were two two teams, the St. Louis Browns and the St. Louis Cardinals. and Anheiser Bush bought the Cardinals and Bill Ve moved the Browns to Baltimore shortly thereafter. It was kind of a you know one of those seinal moments. the the the new stadium downtown together with the fact that the A's had agreed to uh relinquish their territory in uh South Bay um was going to make it very difficult. It was going to be Oakland or nothing basically. I know there's some there were some other cities on the peninsula in the East Bay that considered things, but it was basically going to be in Oakland or nowhere. And you know, my experience with the Oakland City government going all the way back to uh uh Lionol when we were we were really good. Um was it was you know it was it was difficult and um uh I thought the A's did some things from a business standpoint that undermined uh their ability to succeed even in a new ballpark. If you recall, they discounted tickets, they discounted uh food and beverage, they discounted parking, they discounted everything. And so you go from an environment where everything is discounted to a new stadium where prices are going to be jacked up, you know, to whatever level. Um I think I think the city government made it difficult and you know rightly so in a way they got totally burned when the Raiders came back from Los Angeles and so they were wary but you know Oakland politics is Oakland politics and um been [clears throat] that way for the 40 years that I've been involved in baseball when I started with Oakland. Um, and then you know the market there. I know there are a lot of avid baseball fans, a lot of avid Oakland fans. We saw it, you know, in the Hos days and and later you saw it in 2000 and what have you. But um the modern economics uh if you look at like corporate presence in Oakland, you've got you know uh got an ice cream company and uh there's not much there. Yeah. and and even when companies would say we got to get out of San Francisco, the rents are too high or what have you, very often they'd skip Oakland and go into Pleasanton or some place like that. It's just very difficult environment. So, I'm not surprised the way it ended up. Uh, and one of the reasons when the Hos family sold the team, I just didn't want to be associated with a move, you know, after having spent so much time in Oakland. Um, but honestly, they just, you know, it's hard, it was, it was hard for me to see Oakland as a viable market long term, uh, with the Giants there. Um and and the whole South Bay thing, it's an entirely different story, but the A's basically got screwed uh by the Giants and uh Peter McGowan and that gang. Well, Sandy, thank you so much. Uh I I wish we could go forever, but I'm going to be respectful of your time. there's so much uh experience and and wisdom, but uh also from my perspective um you had a huge role in my career, even though it was just a short time, but it just really uh helped connect the dots of how I was going to figure out how to work in baseball and um helped put me on on the path that I'm I'm proud to have taken, which is working at MLB and then now having my own business and still being affiliated in some ways at MLB. But um even though it was a short time we over overlapped, it was just at the exact right time. It was very fertuitous for me and you were really generous with your time then as you are now. So I'm I'm really grateful for that. Well, I appreciate that. I was going to ask you one question. Yeah. Why take my class and was it worth it? [laughter] Well, it's funny you you ask why because I definitely didn't need to. Um, I was in I had already that was I spent four and a half years at Cal. That was my half extra semester and I only needed to take like two classes. So, it was easy to take a filler class, but I didn't know you were the teacher. Um, it was uh originally going to be a sports agent of some sort. Um, and then you filled in last minute because he left. So, I didn't even know I was signing up for your class. I just knew there was finally I didn't know Cal offered any sports related classes. I couldn't um I didn't really know how I was going to use my education to work in baseball even though I wanted it. The only thing I had done is I studied abroad in the DR um which wasn't an affiliated study abroad program. And then I saw the sports business class. I'm like, "Oh, that's something that could help me um perhaps." And then when you when I saw your name on the syllabus, everything changed and I said, "Well, this kind of nothing class just became the most important class in my four and a half years at Cal." Um, and so I definitely I definitely uh benefited from it. It was really interesting because I'm interest I was interested in the subject matter. I think a lot of students in the class were business majors because it was really meant for business majors and they maybe didn't really care. They're just like, "Oh, whatever. had just taken this class. But for me, it was like I couldn't get enough of it and it helped me learn the big picture of how sports work. Um, and going it was so cool how you would invite the students to the faculty club to meet with your guest speakers, which I tried to take advantage of multiple times. And um you know for as much as I love Berkeley, it's kind of this big school where you oftenimes interact more with the TAs than the professors and you might be in a class of 500 people. So, you really made it feel small and I tried to get a lot out of it and um and you provide a lot of guidance on how to try to work in the game. And I remember you said um you encouraged me to do a letterw writing campaign to try to contact teams, which I did. And um you said something along the lines of like you can use my name in the letter or say, you know, say it wasn't necessarily like a formal reference, but you could use my name. So I put in every letter on the very first line of of the letter I said I am writing you per the recommendation of Sandy Alderson figuring that that would get some attention and it did and I you know I kind of sent those letters into the ether and a number of teams did reply and I think using your name helped. So yes I got a lot out of your class for sure. Yeah, you know, it was uh for me it was first time I taught, but I I was very sensitive to the notion that this was just going to be an easy, you know, just filler class. And so I tried to make it somewhat demanding, but it was only only meant once a week, so it couldn't be, you know, super hard. Um, and the other thing was Berkeley has a system where you get raided by the students. So, and and but the students, you know, they're not looking for something easy. They're looking for something meaningful. And so, you kind of had to try to hit a happy medium. But, um anyway, I really enjoyed I learned a lot. It was fun interacting with the the students and uh you know, the faculty club and uh office hours. Uh uh yeah, it was really really a lot of fun. Um so that's why you bought us lunch because you wanted us to rate you well. No, no, no, no, that wasn't it. Uh, no, it was it was it was tremendous fun. I I really um cherish my uh my short affiliation with Berkeley. Very proud of that. Yeah. Well, you made an impact on me, that's for sure. So, I'm I'm very grateful. One out of 150. All right, Sandy. Well, yeah, thanks again. I really appreciate it. It's just super interesting [music] and um I'm glad we got to reconnect again and um I wish you well down there in in Florida and and thanks for everything you're doing in Ukraine. That's awesome. [music] And uh yeah, take care. All right, take care. All right, bye Sandy. Good seeing you again, Shane. Bye-bye.