We expect that Baltimore will soon be chosen as a future site of the Major League Baseball All Star Game for the first time since 1993. It’s always educational when Eric Fisher of Front Office Sports goes deep on all things MLB, Orioles labor and what an All Star Game for Camden Yards would mean in 2030.

Nestor Aparicio and Eric Fisher discussed the Baltimore Orioles’ struggles, the upcoming MLB All-Star Game in Philadelphia, and the potential labor issues in baseball. Fisher highlighted the Orioles’ lack of progress despite high hopes, noting the team’s failure to build on past successes. They also touched on the potential for Baltimore to host the All-Star Game in 2030. Fisher explained the complexities of the ongoing labor negotiations, including the possibility of pooling local revenue across all teams. They also briefly mentioned the World Cup, expressing hope for a successful event despite recent challenges.

• [ ] @Nestor Aparicio – Schedule and air an interview episode with sportswriter and author Ben Bergeron (Belson/Belson) in the next couple of weeks to discuss the business of sports.

Orioles Labor and All-Star Game Discussion

• Nestor Aparicio introduces the show, mentioning the upcoming Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Philadelphia and the Maryland Crab Cake Tour.
• Nestor humorously mentions his media status in New York and Luke’s vacation in Wildwood.
• Eric Fisher, an attorney and journalist, is introduced as a guest, with a focus on sports and business.
• Nestor and Eric discuss the Orioles’ recent performance, expressing hope for the team but acknowledging the lack of progress.

Eric Fisher’s Insights on Orioles and MLB

• Eric Fisher reflects on the Orioles’ past successes and the expectations that followed, noting the team’s failure to take the next step.
• Nestor and Eric discuss the impact of the Alonso signing and the broader issues affecting the team.
• Eric highlights Baltimore’s strong baseball lineage and the desire to see the team succeed.
• Nestor reminisces about Eric’s long career in sports journalism, mentioning his work at Sports Business Journal and Front Office Sports.

All-Star Game 2030 and MLB Market Rotation

• Nestor expresses optimism about Baltimore hosting the All-Star Game in 2030, despite current challenges.
• Eric explains the rotation of All-Star Games between American League and National League markets, noting the recent trend of American League cities hosting.
• Nestor and Eric discuss the potential for Baltimore, Toronto, and Boston to host the All-Star Game in the coming years.
• Eric mentions the importance of balancing the rotation to ensure fairness among different markets.

Ownership and Management Challenges

• Nestor criticizes the current ownership group, led by Peter Angelos, and their impact on the team’s performance.
• Eric discusses the transition to new ownership and the challenges faced by Rubenstein and Araghetti.
• Nestor highlights the disconnect between the new ownership group and the local fan base, expressing frustration with the team’s direction.
• Eric notes the broader issues affecting MLB, including the economic structure and local TV deals.

Trade Deadline and Labor Issues

• Nestor and Eric discuss the upcoming trade deadline and the potential for the Orioles to be buyers or sellers.
• Eric mentions the recent labor proposals from both management and players, highlighting the significant cost-containment measures proposed by management.
• Nestor expresses concern about the impact of the labor issues on the Orioles and other teams.
• Eric explains the potential for pooling local revenue across all teams as a solution to revenue imbalances.

Future of MLB and Player Perspectives

• Eric discusses the potential for pooling local revenue and the impact on small market teams.
• Nestor and Eric talk about the players’ perspective on the labor issues, noting that many players are more focused on their own financial security.
• Eric highlights the increased public disclosure in the current labor negotiations compared to previous rounds.
• Nestor reflects on his experiences covering past All-Star Games and the excitement of attending the upcoming event in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia All-Star Game and Personal Reflections

• Nestor and Eric discuss their plans for the upcoming All-Star Game in Philadelphia, including attending events and enjoying local cuisine.
• Nestor shares his memories of past All-Star Games and the significance of the event for him as a baseball fan.
• Eric mentions the various activities and attractions planned for the All-Star Game, including the Home Run Derby and the MLB X event.
• Nestor expresses his hope for a successful All-Star Game and the potential for Baltimore to host a similar event in the future.

World Cup and Soccer Discussion

• Nestor and Eric briefly discuss the ongoing World Cup, mentioning the impact of Trump’s involvement and the overall success of the tournament.
• Eric highlights the positive aspects of the World Cup, including the global interest and the cultural exchange between countries.
• Nestor reflects on the challenges faced by soccer, including corruption and human rights issues, but emphasizes the beauty of the game.
• Eric and Nestor agree on the importance of focusing on the athletes and their talent, despite the broader issues in the sport.

Final Thoughts and Future Plans

• Nestor and Eric wrap up the discussion, expressing their excitement for the upcoming events in Philadelphia and Baltimore.
• Nestor mentions the Maryland Crab Cake Tour and other upcoming events, including the Ravens training camp.
• Eric reiterates the importance of the All-Star Game and the potential for positive changes in MLB.
• Nestor thanks Eric for his insights and looks forward to their future interactions and events.

Nestor Aparicio 0:01
Welcome home, we are W and S T A and 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. It is a baseball week around here, still a soccer week for a couple of us that like Argentina or Spain or whatever. We’ll have a good time with Norway as long as they’re in, and God save the king. If England were to win, and they were to try to hand the trophy to Harry Kane from Donald Trump. We’re going to be doing the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. There’s a rumor that I’m still a media member in some circles of New York, but we’ll be in Philadelphia all next week. Luke’s on vacation, he’s in Wildwood eating pizza. Leave him alone, everyone. He’ll get to the trade deadline when he returns next week, as well as Ravens training camp. We’re gonna be doing the Maryland Crab Cake Tour. Fate leads to all brought to you by friends at the Maryland Lottery. I have the Maryland Treasure scratch-offs to give away, also GBMC and Farne and Dermer. They are the comfort guys, as said with the American Standard Heating and Air Conditioning. If you are getting hot under the collar. Find them little hot here last week. It’s a little more temperate. We got the team home here for a couple of days, and it was just time. I will be gathered with this gentleman next week. We get together two, three times a year. We usually take a deeper dive in. A lot of times it was really nerdy about Massen and money and Angelos and all that, and I’m sure it’ll get real nerdy again in about five months when the baseball labor thing starts. Eric Fisher is an attorney by trade, a journalist by choice, and a business analyst of all things sports and business and money out on the interwebs. I’ll let him tell you about his work, but he’ll be in Philadelphia with us next week, and every time we get together, I mean, you know, like an Orioles fan, even though you were in Washington when the Nationals came, you sort of covered the Orioles and all of this stuff 20 years ago, but like you’d like to come to Baltimore for an all-star game, and let’s say 2030 and have this thing be a relevant operation again, and I know you and I get at it a couple times a year, and you’re a core, really, your baseball nerd, a core, and I guess this Oriole thing is, we’re waiting. This isn’t the year, Eric. I don’t think this is the year.

Eric Fisher 2:11
Yeah, there was so much hope that you know there was a confluence of things a couple years back, you know, is on your show talking about it, that you know, two straight playoff runs, and you know, 100 win season, almost, and you know, new ownership, and a, you know, great young core of talent, and then the next step never just really came together, that this, you know, core of homegrown talent, as promising as it once was, has not taken the next step, the Alonso signing, you know, tip my hat to him on that one. Alonso has been fine, the rest of the team not so good, but I think the bigger thing is again, you just after what happened in 23 and 24 and then the new ownership coming in, you were hoping to see the franchise, the team take another step forward, and that other step has not happened, not to say necessarily that it will never, but it’s looking bleaker for sure. You’re there every day, I’m not, but you know, just seeing this from afar and seeing this more in a macro view, you know, we all, Baltimore’s got a great baseball lineage, it’s a great baseball town. It’s just a great town. Period. And you just, you know, a lot of us that just like to see good things happen in that regard, you know, we’re hoping to see that next step happen, and it just hasn’t happened.

Nestor Aparicio 3:33
Uh, front office sports is, uh, Eric Fisher is here. I forgot to say that I used to say Sports Business Journal, because there’s a lot before that was Washington Times. Eric’s been around the block a time or two, as they would say. This only be his fifth worth stoppers or something like that at the end of this year. I, you know, I don’t know where to begin with this, because, like, you and I can go through Jackson Holiday and Adley Ruchman and Gunner Henderson. We could talk about Boris and money, we could talk about the labor situation, and how that’s going to affect this month of baseball, but let’s start with the sunshine. I’m Baltimore positive, right? They’re getting an all-star game in 2030 right? Like that’s Katie Griggs is taking this to bring back, that’s the big gift in this. We’re la la la, we won’t talk about labor, la la la, we won’t talk about last place, or who the general manager is going to be, all of these things that are attendance, messing all of these crises that are around the corner. The thing they’re going to have by the end of the summer is the all-star game of 2030 right? Probably, maybe.

Eric Fisher 4:37
So we actually have several all-star games that are sort of needing to be determined, that we’ve got next year at Wrigley Field in Chicago, and nothing beyond that has been determined. So this whole 2829 30 period does need to be settled in some order, and we’ve had a confluence lately of more national league markets. We had Atlanta last year, you. Philly this year, and then the Cubs next year, and so there’s kind of probably going to be some tilt back towards American League markets, and they even think that

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Nestor Aparicio 5:09
way. Do they think that way anymore? Are there two leagues in their lines? Used to

Eric Fisher 5:13
be very much in Bud Sealing’s day, very much a back and forth rotational thing, particularly when it was deciding home field advantage in the World Series, it was very much an even sort of thing. The Manfred era has been very much about whoever has got the best bid in a given year, but in a general sense, there is some sense over, you know, five plus years that you want to start to have some semblance of balance, but again, it’s not the strict alternating thing, it used to be that all said the confluence of markets that are really kind of thought to be at the front of the line are all generally American League markets. We’ve got Baltimore that hasn’t had it since the 90s, Toronto, Boston also haven’t had it since the 90s. All three of them would like it, and they’re probably going to get it in some sequence.

Nestor Aparicio 6:04
Where’s Baltimore in the grand scheme of things? I mean, you cover the sport very closely. You go to annual meetings, you’re up with owners of what your work at front office sports, and you have just a general base of knowledge that’s as deep as anybody I know, over four decades, going back even to the 94 strike to cover this and talk about this, these guys have come in and they’ve been fraudulent from the beginning, right? Like, whether it’s the bobblehead and Rubenstein’s in Aragon’s really running the team, it’s pretty clear he’s going to be sort of the prime mover and more of the baseball guy and the guy that cares more about baseball than Rubenstein, who doesn’t know much about baseball, and clearly, since the Epstein files have come out, and he’s been running to the hills, hasn’t been spotted behind him, played, he’s got married recently, he’s writing a book on sports ownership, because he knows so much more about it than you and I do at this point. I just, I can’t, I mean, you and I have been at this 20 years, Eric, about Angelos, and when the end happened. We’re now 28 months into Rubenstein and Araghetti. When it was a day, a little couple days after the bridge went down here, the Key Bridge went down. We had opening day that Wes Moore. There was a press conference, you know. We’re getting out on this thing now to where if there was a Rosenthal still writing here in Eisenberg, and the paper mattered, and the new and, and TV mattered, and there was real journalism being done here, they’d be getting really ambushed, and the fans are ambushing them one by one. You can see the stadium emptying out, and the issue isn’t just the fact that they inherited what they thought was, you know, put it in the oven and bake it, baseball franchise, because they had young talent, team was coming back, just the notion that Angelos didn’t know in the team. I know tons of people that bought tickets in the last two years just because they wanted to support it, and now Eric, it’s so frosty, I can’t, and it’s not even me or Peter or the team or my radio station or Free the Birds. 20 anniversary is coming up on September 20-first. I see it on my Facebook, I see it with empty stands, I hear it when I dine with people about dealing with the new people, and it feels like this corporate billionaire hedge fund group took over and put in stalled Ivy League people that have algorithms about bobble heads and everything that they do, and it is lost the human touch in an even larger way locally, and I don’t know how they’re going to fix that, and I don’t know whether Manfred’s office can care about anything when the larger issue is the good of the game and the labor war that’s going to happen, but I have no idea where Araghetti and Rubenstein are going to side on this, and how it’s going to affect Mike Rub or Mike Elias baseball operations money. I mean, I remember in the old days it was like, do the PR directors get paid during a strike. Do the ticket people, they won’t have tickets to sell? Do we put them, we furlough them? I mean, there’s just all sorts of ugliness that happens once that thing happens. And I don’t know Rubenstein and Araghetti’s soul about this, but they’re about to fade. Baseball’s about to really have some hard times here in the next eight to nine months that I don’t know how they’re going to navigate being where they are, which is a non-winning franchise right now,

Eric Fisher 9:26
and that in the winning, that’s kind of the big thing. We can sort of put the labor stuff to the side for a minute, because there are macro issues way bigger than Baltimore, and there’s big questions about what the economic structure is going to be, and how the TV, local TV thing particularly fits into that, but again, going back to the 2324 period, all the issues with the prior ownership, incoming ownership, a lot of those macro issues locally, those were kind of there, but it was, you know, winning, they say winning is the best disinfectant, and you know a lot. The inherent issues around local TV and those kinds of things that were there, there, there, then they’re there now, but it was kind of papered over, at least for the moment, because there were two really good years where the team was winning and going to the playoffs, and you know, again, winning is the best disinfectant, and had this team taken the next step, there’d be a very different all those challenges that we’re talking about, they’re still there, and they would still, they’re still going to be there, but we’d be doing it in a very different context if the team was winning, and I think, sort of adding to the crime, for lack of a better word, of the tragedy of this is that the American League, as a whole, is weak. The National League, if you look at the interleague numbers, you know they’ve been taking the ALS lunch money. There is no power team in the AL, and you know we’ve seen what the Yankees have been doing in the last almost a month now of playing some pretty miserable baseball. We can say the Dodgers are a good team, the Brewers are a good team, the Braves are a good team. The other 27 are kind of iffy, two or worse than iffy. And there’s no, you know, the American League, it’s, you know, you’re two good weeks away from standing out from the crowd, and the Orioles, much like pretty much everybody else, have not put together those two good weeks

Nestor Aparicio 11:21
a pennant race would go a long way. I mean, it’s hard to think about that when you’re seven 810 games under 500 heading into the all-star break, right? Like buying and selling, where they are specifically on where the expiration date is, on the groceries, on where they are in Rochman, where they are in Henderson, where they are with holiday, I mean, where they are with their real assets, and how other teams would view Colton Cowser and Bisayos, and you know, Bisayo, Boz, you know, I guess at this point Alonzo, all the rest of it, do they entertain offers, do they think about things? Westberg’s out of the picture now. They’ve got a lot of question marks here, and the biggest one, perhaps not, perhaps, definitely Elias is the one making all of these decisions, and he feels as lame duck as anyone if this ownership group were alert and alive and awake, primarily because they didn’t hire him right, like he’s not even their guy, and he’s come in and turned first place into last place into whatever this is, and to give me a bunch of money and I’ll sign Kittredge and I’ll sign Helsley and we’ll sign Alonzo, and we like all of the will sign O’Neill, all of these things that have happened would say like well they might have a new baseball guy next year, but the labor gets in the way that, and the draft is this week, so like you can’t just fire a GM because you’re angry at him. The way the Phillies got rid of their manager and caught fire with Mattingly, like I don’t, and I don’t know what these guys know about baseball, and that’s.. I’ll keep going back to if the emperor has no clothes, and they don’t know that Katie Griggs is doing a lousy job, and they don’t know that Greg Bader’s running the base, the television network, and they don’t see how awful I’ve been treated, or even care, or see other fans are getting treated, or see how they’re, but they just don’t know, and they don’t care, so therefore, and I’ve talked to several people, they’re like Elias is safe, no matter I’m thinking based on the baseball track record based on the money based on what based on the labor situation I don’t know but it feels to me like I’m tired of him picking the groceries not media guy critic fan whatever like I don’t see any circumstance where a guy with eight years of this track record where the one ones aren’t blooming and Gunner Henderson’s in the hole, the pitching hasn’t worked out, you’re not winning again, the ballpark’s empty. I don’t know how Mike Elias would survive this, but he’s picking the players again next week, dude, and he’s the one controlling the trade deadline in two weeks, so, so it is very thick here for me with how this team gets up and ever walks again when I haven’t found competent people and accountable people anywhere. It’s like Peter Angelo’s didn’t die, Eric,

Eric Fisher 14:16
and again relative to baseball ops, who would be the next guy? I think kind of to a certain extent, the recent issues with the Angels and the Mets are somewhat instructive. Where the Angels made a move and the Angels have been even worse than the Orioles. The Angels been horrible for, and they’ve basically wasted Mike Trout’s entire career, and they wasted the first chunk of Otani’s career, and they finally let Perry Minasian go, because they had, for the moment, John Mosley, formerly the Cardinals, you know, they’re waiting in the wings, and he’s kind of running the show on an interim basis, while they kind of figure out their next steps, and there was another sort of experienced major league level person kind of running that operation. Then you look at the Mets, where you know, up where I’m at in the New York area, David Stern’s been all sorts of pressure because the Mets have woefully underachieved a different situation than the Orioles, but they’ve got, you know, the number two payroll and all the expectations in the world, and much like the Orioles, it hasn’t come together and they haven’t taken that next step after getting to the LCS in 24 and all sorts of calls here for Stearns to either resign or be fired, or whatever, and Cohen stick and buy him, and I think in part because there’s not a then what, and is the then what going to be necessarily better, and I think that’s part of the issue with a lot of these underachieving teams, that if you’re going to make a move, what’s the next move going to be, and what is the promise for that to be necessarily better than what you got now, and that’s a kind of depressing framing of it, but that’s kind of where again, because there’s so many underachieving teams, and there are only a few that are really kind of standing out from the crowd, you know. We’ve got a morass of these kind of teams out there that, you know, should be doing better, would like to be doing better, but don’t necessarily have that next move figured out, even if they’re going to sort of break the glass.

Nestor Aparicio 16:17
Eric Fisher’s here, he’s a longtime real journalist and insider for sports business at Front Office Sports, you can find him out on the internet, it’s Eric with a C, and it’s F I S H E R, you can find him anywhere tweets happen or news breaks. I want to stay on the field for a minute and just talk about the trade deadline and money and labor, and we used to have rich teams and poor teams, right back in the day, there would be a fleecing that would happen at some point here, or a fire sale, or a sell-off at some point. I haven’t seen anything particularly instructive or predictive in any of this, to your point, with so many teams thinking they still might be in it at eight games under 500 I mean, like

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Eric Fisher 16:57
Elias just said he was a buyer,

Nestor Aparicio 17:00
and then they went out and lost four games in a row, right after he said he was a buyer, so, and who knows by the end of the month, but he’s only what his owners tell him he’s going to be, Rubenstein, who comes off as mr. Magoo every time he steps in front of this, right, we’re, you know, we’re, we’re open for business, he said, right, like, so I, and he’s not even the guy like Araghetti’s the guy here, everybody, anybody that knows anything here will tell you that he’s the one ultimately who knows more baseball, thinks he knows more baseball, and I don’t know what they think they know about a labor situation, because I remember the last time here, and so do you, at the Washington Times, where Peter took the side of the players, still one of the more interesting parts of my Peter Principles deep dive into my term paper from 20 years ago on the ownership of Peter Angelo’s, but I have no idea how deep these guys’ pockets really are, their belly for it, all of that assets selling off guys. What’s the state of the industry in armoring up to go to war, and Lord knows the Bryce Harpers, and you and I have talked about that over the last year or two. The players are going to have whatever resolve you think they have, and they’re going to get their Tony Clark’s together and their Marvin Miller’s together and get their battle plan together. Do the owners have a battle plan? Because they don’t even damn, we have two Mickey Mouse television networks here amongst 20 other Mickey Mouse television networks, all trying to figure out how to beat the Dodgers and the Yankees and the Yes Networks, and whatever, and there ain’t no Yes network coming to save the Baltimore Orioles or the Washington Nationals or the Kansas City Royals or the San Diego Padres or any of these other teams trying to climb up the hill, as this week we see the Cubs coming here, which are one kind of business, and the Royals coming here next week. And then I’m going to go up to Philadelphia and see an All-Star game next week, where they have a whole different business model. When I’m at their convention center with you, eating whatever ice cream and Shake Shacks, you and I’ll muster together, and we take our selfie together next week in Philly. Liberty and justice for all. I don’t think their business model is so disjointed. Where at least when the NBA comes at it with their international this or Goodell comes down the train with his NFL this, and I’m reading – I’m reading Belson’s book right now on the NFL. I’m going to have Sir Belsen El Belson from the New York Times, on in the next couple of weeks, he’s committed to talk about how the business of all this gets put together. There ain’t no good baseball book ever been written on the business of baseball, because they, since Lords of the Realm, they don’t – it’s a nightmare, they’re a business nightmare, and for all the money they, and all the red, white, and blue, and all the hot dogs were going to sell in the home run derby that’s available on Netflix. Who makes these decisions? I had to steal a peacock address to watch a freaking Sunday afternoon game in Cincinnati. Looked like nobody in Cincinnati even cared about the other day. So, like, what’s going on here is objectionable all the way around, and I don’t I. I’m going to be in, am I going to be in a room with Mann for next week? Does he have a press conference at this thing in Philly?

Eric Fisher 20:04
He does a thing with the Baseball Writers Association of America, so if you’ve got a writer’s card, you can get into that meeting. So,

Nestor Aparicio 20:12
is it transferable? No,

Eric Fisher 20:15
probably not,

Nestor Aparicio 20:17
but nonetheless, I kid you, but like, is there a plan? Is there anybody in his office that can even, off the record, go have a steak with you and me in Philadelphia on Monday night and explain to me what they think this business is five years, 10 years from now, and what they even think it is eight months from now, once they get whatever after the war, whenever, whatever it costs them, however we go into April, May, February, peace, love, war, Kumbaya. It won’t be any of that. I mean, it’s going to be a shit show, but when it’s done, what do they think this looks like? Because I can’t figure it out, and I study this, Eric, and I try to talk professionally with it with people like you that are smarter than me, who’s smarter than you, and what do they have to say about

Eric Fisher 21:01
it, so there was a really.. we’ve had a bunch of initial labor proposals from both sides, mostly from the management, but the players have tossed out some things as well, and there’s been a lot of blue sky, and a lot of, like, you know, one says day and the other says night, but there was one really interesting thing that sort of came out of this initial batch of offers, and that was pooling all of the late local money across all 30 teams. Now it was presented by management to the players in the context of accepting a salary cap, which obviously the players don’t want to do, but all of this stuff that we’ve talked about forever, and the revenue imbalances, and everything, and there’s been all sorts of monetary and political reasons why this hasn’t happened heretofore, but because of all of this external industry disruption, it’s kind of forced things along, and now you, they sort of see what’s happening with the NFL and all the success they’ve had, and what the NBA has done in their current and their new TV rights deal, and sort of pooling and nationalizing the product as much as possible, is is a potential pathway, and we’ve already kind of seen this in these new interim deals again, particularly with NBC, that on a national level they’re doing great numbers with baseball, Fox, they’re up, even ESPN, and they’re restructured, they’re, you know, seeing some real gains, so nationalizing the product on that level, we’ve already seen good gains on this, and if in these labor negotiations there’s a way to sort of decouple the cap idea from the pooling the local revenue and do that regardless, that’s that’s a pathway, and then then you’re just everybody’s in the in the boat together, and you sort of figure out whatever the distribution model is, and if Mass and restructures, merges, goes away, whatever it is, you’re just continuing to monetize those local rights as best you can in whatever structure this morphs into, and then it’s just thrown into that pot, I think that, and then everybody’s kind of swimming together, and we don’t have this hawk and dove thing that we’ve had forever on the management side. I think that was the real kernel of the idea, and forever in the traditional RSN structure, there was a million reasons, or billions of reasons, for that not to happen, but now just it was kind of tossed out almost casually in the midst of all of these other ideas that management wants. Let’s just pool the revenue, and that’s what the NFL does, and that’s I think ultimately what the NBA is going to increasingly going to have to do, because they’re dealing with the same local market issues in a lot of instances a baseball is, and so that kind of that restructuring, I think, could be a real good pathway for the for baseball, and sort of lean into some of these other positive trend lines for the league.

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Nestor Aparicio 23:56
How do you get Rogers Media and the Steinbrenner family and billionaires like David Rubenstein and Michael Araghetti, and then old line Reinsdorf types, and just all of these. How do you get them to agree, and how do you get the really rich people? I mean, I remember 30 years ago, by the way, Harris Fisher’s done it

Eric Fisher 24:19
in the context of a cap, there was already management side agreement that they will do this if the players accept the cap. Now,

Nestor Aparicio 24:27
oh, okay,

Eric Fisher 24:28
to do it without a cap, that’s a big question. There’s going to have to be over these forthcoming months of negotiation a lot of gives and takes, as there always are. They’ve never

Nestor Aparicio 24:40
been good at that. I was gonna say the give and take thing, they’ve never that well, and I would let me just say this about the players for a second, because, like, 30 years ago, when I was in the soup with this, I remember Kirk Schilling being in my car, I don’t keep his company anymore, because I’ve traded up, but, but he was one of the, you know, the guys involved in there in the 90s, 94 I, Messina, and I were very close. Jim Poole, the late great Jim Poole, was a player rep, very close with him. Tom Glavine and I kept company at that time, so I knew the people that were involved, not to mention the Marvin Miller types on my show, and the agents that were banging around on behalf of all Arndt Hellems, and those people that would come on my show and try to explain it all for the people out there, you know, above and beyond what the Baltimore Sun was writing at the time, or whatever, but my sense of it from the John Hellyer book all the way through, and the more I got to know athletes and players and their agents, but not so much, players don’t care, they just want to be paid. They didn’t want to know about this. This is a fight between billionaires and billionaires. This is a fight between big markets, and this has nothing to do with the players. Just pay me my money down, as you know, was once written. Pay me my money. I don’t think they care about media revenue

Eric Fisher 25:57
this time. Is it okay? Because if you look at the management proposals across the board, it’s all about not just paying less, it’s paying a lot less, everything that we’re talking about relative to salary cap limits on free agent contracts, pretty radical limits on how and when amateur players become professional, if you sort of take, take this down, so it’s more

Nestor Aparicio 26:23
screw the next generation, but get yours right now, which is that America, no, it’s both.

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Eric Fisher 26:29
There is a very serious effort, massive cost containment across the board, and this is also, I don’t know, how they’re

Nestor Aparicio 26:38
paying Peter Lonzo 30 millionaire, I swear to God, I go down there, the place is empty. It feels empty. I do this professionally. I traverse the areas.

Eric Fisher 26:48
There’s more national money than ever. Okay, their share of the national money, and this kind of gets to what I’m talking about with pooling the money even more. I mean, you know, we have competitive small market teams. This is, you know, we say this forever. This is how the Jacksonville and Green Bay thing works in the NFL, is because they pool more money, and Pittsburgh

Nestor Aparicio 27:11
has to participate and play Major League Baseball, right? Like this tanking thing, where the Tigers were going to win 48 games, or the Astros, that came to my town, death came to my hometown. 2018 Michael I said, we bang trash cans, we’re gonna do it the Astro way. I mean, books written on it, right? Oh, we’re gonna draft one one, we’re gonna stink again, we’re gonna be one one, we’re gonna stink again, we’re gonna be one four. And then here we are, and that is the promise that every season ticket holder here that bought into the Birdland thing is pissed about. I didn’t buy into it, I just talk about it on the radio and get lost. People that are invested in it are pissed, man.

Eric Fisher 27:51
I do think the players care, and I do think the players are more educated than they ever have been. And so care about the

Nestor Aparicio 27:59
whole banana or more about themselves. What’s the whole banana to care about? If you’re a player, well, my agent tell me why I should care

Eric Fisher 28:06
a little bit, both because they think they’re, because again, in part because of all of the structural changes we’ve had in media and everything else, they’re getting a better understanding of where the banana comes from, and so yes, they fundamentally want to have more money for themselves, and they want to have more ability to get to free agency, get to arbitration, have more choices in managing their career. That’s all pretty understandable, but I think where all that sort of comes from and where that money derives from, because again, the old revenue models on the local level are been so heavily disrupted that sort of forced a new level of thought on the player side, and I think that’s going to sort of inform what, in fact, we’re already seeing in this in the labor negotiations, we’ve had more public disclosure in this labor negotiation already, in terms of like the talking points getting out there and people being available and the public messaging already more than we’ve had in like the last four rounds combined, where it was all kept very much on the down low. This is going to be a PR war in a lot of fronts.

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Nestor Aparicio 29:17
Eric Fisher is here, he will be covering it better than anyone in front office sports. I’m gonna get a piece of soccer out of you, but yeah, here’s my parting shot for you, because we’re gonna get together in Philadelphia next week, which had World Cup games. I found myself in the train station in Philly, in the terminal before the World Cup started. I saw my first, it was a FIFA pop-up in the train station, where I could buy Wingdings and widgets and key chains for 38 bucks with a swipe of my credit card with the FIFA logo, so I mean I’ll see all of that, but I’m going for the All Star game, and I want to just give a little color to this for anybody that comes in on your side of the fence that loves your work and just happens to be hanging out with the whack job guy from Baltimore and Baltimore positive all this way in. I mean, I’m I’m an Aparicioma baseball guy, I long. For an all-star game, I watched every all-star game of my youth. I remember watching the Cubs game in 75 with my father and Bill Matlock. I remember waiting for Ken Griffey to make it into the seventh inning in 1978 with my parents and Myrtle Be like I remember Steve Stone. I remember every part, Atley Hammer, I go through it all, and we got our game in 93 and I had my radio show, and I had my press pass, and we.. I didn’t have a station then. I was just doing a show, and it came to my home. I ran into Getty Lee at the buffet in front of the Science Center. He signed my.. my gala ticket is signed by Getty with that big GL on it. So, I ran into Getty that night. Oh, Canada. So, anyway, that was 33 years ago now.

Eric Fisher 30:46
Yeah,

Nestor Aparicio 30:46
okay. So I went to that All-Star game, and then, like, everyone after for a long, long time, almost to like New York Yankee Stadium. I was there when Bud did this. I, you know, was there when Elbow happened 30 years ago with Cal Ripken. I’ve only been to, I went to the Yankee Stadium All-Star game in at the end

Eric Fisher 31:08
2008

Nestor Aparicio 31:09
I went to the Citi Field game 13. I went to DC, where I bought you a milkshake, you mean Barry Bloom, 18. So it’s been eight years since you and me and Barry Bloom had that milkshake at Shake Shack in Nance Park. I got my wife tickets, the woman who helped save her life, Michelle Bresnik Walsh, whom I love. From There Goes My Hero, support them, they’re wonderful people. There goes my hero, like the Foo Fighter song.org leukemia, lymphoma, changing lives, helping families. So she went with my wife, I got a couple of tickets, I don’t even.. I think Freddie Yeoman. Thank you, I love you, Freddie from San Diego via Baltimore. Got my wife a couple of tickets, and she went to the game that night. I had a press badge because Luke was on vacation. Luke’s on vacation next week in Wildwood. I damn, I tried to talk. I’m like, dude, it’s in Philly. He’s like, “You took me to Miami. What year was that? 19. Miami,

Eric Fisher 32:00
17 was Miami.

Nestor Aparicio 32:01
I took him to Miami in 17, so he did Miami. I dropped him off at the door. I was like, I went to the Keys. I was like Jimmie Johnson. I came back. I thought Louie was going to be there that year. He wasn’t, but either way, this year I’m going to go to Philly. I have our press credential. Thank you, John Blondell and Pat Courtney, for being professionals for four decades, and I do appreciate all that. What am I going to find? What’s the all-star game in 2026 and what’s it going to be when it gets here? And I say 30, you say 2829 you say Toronto, I say Boston, but it’s going to get here. What is it at this point? Because Katie Griggs is going to wrap an orange flag around and tell Don Roback that they can sell it for a billion dollars, and everybody’s going to want to be in the Truist Club for 10 grand. And then, honestly, tickets in Philadelphia, which is going to be a good market, strong couple 100 bucks, will probably get you in Monday or Tuesday night, one way or another. And here, there, my buddy Micah booked all will be there. I’m fascinated. I’ve been to 1618, 20 All-Star Game. I don’t have any a lot. I’m going to pull it all out next week and brag about it. I don’t know, I’m really excited about this. Eric, literally going

8

Eric Fisher 33:09
to be back. I’m excited.

Eric Fisher 33:11
This is an event that kind of, like, a lot of things took a bit of a hit during the pandemic and took a while to sort of really kind of come back, and you know, and there’s certain guys like Judge and Scoob, that are hurt, been hurt, that kind of thing, so we won’t have all the stars that you might have expected to see, but we’ll have three days of big crowds at the ballpark, even Sunday, they’ve told me it’s basically going to be a full house for the futures game in this new MLB X, this three on three thing that they’re doing, so it’s going to be some elements of the familiar, where we’re going to have the home run derby on Monday, and then the game itself on Tuesday, but they’ll also be some changes that the draft has been changed to Saturday afternoon, we’ve got this new MLB X thing on Sunday afternoon, we’ve got the Home Run Derby on Netflix, so it’ll be kind of a mix of the new and the familiar, but then we’re also going to have a lot of the 250 declaration of independence theming, because the important thing to remember on this is that the Phillies have had this game since early 2019 that they’ve had a seven year run up on this one, way beyond the normal sort of cadence for these site selections, I’m guessing better

Nestor Aparicio 34:22
fireworks because of this. Yes,

Eric Fisher 34:24
yeah, because they deliberately wanted to have the 250th anniversary thing for this year. So this has been an all-star game, literally seven plus years in the making, and it’s.. I think it’s going to be good. I think the fans are going to be out. We’re not going to have situations like we had in Miami, with not full ball parks. It’s going to be three days of lively activity at the ballpark, and then the downtown area, where the fan fest is going to be at the in the draft, will be at the convention center. Downtown will be hopping as well. I’m expecting big things.

Nestor Aparicio 34:58
Can I count on you and I? Me to have a proper roast pork sandwich, maybe Tuesday late morning, right there at Reading Terminal. Is that possible?

Eric Fisher 35:06
That would be great. Now I’m not a broccoli raw person, but that’s your mistake.

Nestor Aparicio 35:11
That’s eat it the way you eat it.

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Eric Fisher 35:12
I love the cheese steaks, and I love the broccoli or the roast pork straight. I’m just not a broccoli raw person.

Nestor Aparicio 35:19
Without, I don’t do whatever you do, right,

Eric Fisher 35:21
but I, you know, between that and a lot of the other cuisine, local cuisine, I, I’m, you know, I’m always down for Philly trip, it’s a nice easy drive for me, it’s, you know, hour and a half in the car, but here’s what I’m gonna do,

Nestor Aparicio 35:34
I’m gonna, I’m doing this right now, I’m calling this, okay, I have friends that are in Todd Radon, will be running around doing his scribbling, and his character, whatever he’s doing, and whoever else is there, and that could be Micah, that could be my Philly Mafi up there, cats, or some of my buddies that come down. I’m gonna put together like a Philly thing, where like maybe we get some roast pork, and then like do that convention center thing, the all-star, the I used to call it the Fan Fest, they call it a village now, right?

Eric Fisher 36:04
Yeah, all-star village now. So, like, is there

Nestor Aparicio 36:06
going to be like a card show, and like all of that? Does all that be

Eric Fisher 36:10
all that sort of stuff? There’ll be, there’ll be a lot of the fan attraction stuff. Well, I better get there early, dude, because you know what a freaking nerd I am, right?

8

Nestor Aparicio 36:18
Can I wear my Tony Gwynn jersey?

Eric Fisher 36:20
You wear any jersey you want.

Nestor Aparicio 36:22
Yeah, I’m gonna have fun. I want to have fun. I told my wife, I’m like, I’m going to the All-Star game. They gave me a credential, and I see

Eric Fisher 36:30
a lot of Montreal Expo jerseys. Always your number one time of the year to see Montreal Expo jerseys is at the All-Star game. I

Nestor Aparicio 36:37
can wear mine. I have a Florida, yeah, I have the thing, the whatever they call that, yeah, that’s Fleur de Lis, so Saints, but I have that thing, whatever that bubble thing they have there, that Grand Orange, or whatever. Hey, I’m really looking forward to it. I like, I kid a lot. I love baseball. My last name is Aparicio. I wish I weren’t as effed up. I wish our team were better. I wish I could be Bubblegum and Sunshine. I wish we were in a PA. I wish all of this right. You

Eric Fisher 37:00
can’t kill it. This is the great thing about the sport, you cannot kill it.

Nestor Aparicio 37:03
Yeah, and as a representative, you

8

Eric Fisher 37:06
cannot kill it.

Nestor Aparicio 37:07
As a representative of the oldest living Hall of Famer, Luis Aparicio, and me, 35 years of doing this, I want to go to the baseball All-Star game, and I want to come back on Wednesday on the train, literally, and say, man, that was great, and I can’t wait for Baltimore to have it, and I hope that the experience I have will lead me back to 1993 and that moment when I ran into Getty Lee, you know, and it was a bunch, it was they were oysters and shrimp, it was a whole Eastern Shore corn, there was all of this outdoor, and there’s Getty Lee helping himself to some pate, and I’m thinking that’s what we need to have in Baltimore. So I want this to be larger than life, and I hope it’s a great week, and I’m looking forward to getting a roast pork with you, my man.

Eric Fisher 37:54
Looking forward to it.

Nestor Aparicio 37:56
And right now, here’s where the negative Nestor steps in and says, you better enjoy it before they go on strike, or whatever they’re going to call it, right.

Eric Fisher 38:05
We’re still in prelude. I mean, that’s the other thing. Just one more note about labor, that the deal runs through December, and if you remember back in the 22 cycle, nothing really got serious until spring training, and the threat of missed games really became real, so just strap in. Nothing really super serious is going to probably happen until the holidays. We’re still very much in prelude. We’re not even in the top of the first inning here. We’re still, we’re still in the war, we’re still taking BP at this point.

Nestor Aparicio 38:37
Can I try to leave on some other optimistic note, other than we only have one all-star, and we’re not in the better race. Do you have any optimism on the labor thing at

Eric Fisher 38:48
all? The real optimism is, again, we’ve been on this great run, what I sort of call the Ohtani era, to a certain extent, these last three, four years, great viewership, great attendance, you know, baseball becoming much more of a national thing, where, like, people like Judge and Otani are truly global superstars, you know. Can I get an empty ballpark here and don’t

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Nestor Aparicio 39:11
feel it? You know what I mean? Like, I want to feel that. That’s why going to Philly will help me feel that, I think. You know,

Eric Fisher 39:16
yeah, but sort of the hope in the labor thing is that both sides will be smart enough to realize that let’s not kill the golden goose here, that at a macro level, and I know you’re not feeling in Baltimore, but on a macro level, there’s a lot of gross science or baseball that I think there are people on both sides who would like to not see that interrupted.

Nestor Aparicio 39:38
Um, I go back to Papa Joe doing a fan bill of rights 35 years ago, and the fans don’t matter, and he burned all his baseball cards, and my dad stopped the sporting news from being delivered in 1980 8184 you know, like, you know, like those years. I just hope that they don’t kill the golden goose, and I do. Hope that whatever labor deal they come up with helps a city in a franchise like mine, right? This way, this

Eric Fisher 40:07
pooling thing that I’m talking, right, like it’s got to happen regardless.

Nestor Aparicio 40:11
On the back end of this, it’s got it. The next 30 years here have to be better than the Red Sox have silver slippers and the Yankees have gold slippers, and all the rest of us fight for one bronze, right? Like that’s interesting.

Eric Fisher 40:27
You bring up Boston because they’re screaming for blood up there too, that you know this well. They’ve mismanaged

Nestor Aparicio 40:33
their franchise the way the old man did here, too. Right? Talk about shooting the golden goose. They’ve done a lot of that in Boston.

8

Eric Fisher 40:38
They’ve got four titles, and they saved Fenway Park like they’ve got a tremendous record, like you know, the last 25 years there are a lot of teams that would kill for the last 25 years of Red Sox baseball, but they’re very unhappy.

Nestor Aparicio 40:53
Well, they’re in New England, they’re always miserable. I’ve met the manager, he is Eric Fisher, he is a front office sports, and anything a World Cup you want to throw in. I loved having you on. I don’t monopolize your day, but the World Cup thing here has been a big balloon for the last month. I had Pete Corinji on at length, our legendary UMBC soccer coach. We talked a long time, and as bad as it feels when you lose four to one and all that, they made it here. Nothing weird’s happened. Trump tried to screw it up. They were probably going to lose anyway. The World Cup’s going to come and go next week. New York people came. It’s been a good cup. Cape Verde, you know, there’s a bunch of things they made it like it’s been a good

Eric Fisher 41:35
tragedy in the last 72 hours, like putting the result off to the side that you’re, you may raise a very good point that you know UST might have very well lost anyway, but this whole thing of like everything that Trump touches dies kind of thing, that like if he just stayed away and let this thing play out, because this tournament, aside from this mess of the last 72 hours, has been a great thing, the competition has been great, all of these folks coming from other countries, falling in love with the great things about America, and discovering, you know, the byways and sideways, and our local cuisine, and everything else. That there have been so many great things about the World Cup, and you know, and FIFA’s still a mess, and they’re still corrupt in a lot of ways as well, that you know, again, soccer’s also great sport, and they can’t kill it either, despite people trying, and that’s one of the things that’s really kind of bubbled through that I hope doesn’t get lost, and again, with the mess of the last 72 hours or so, that like soccer’s still a great sport, this has still been a great event, the competition has been great, and we’re still looking for even with the US out, there’s still great things. I mean, you mentioned the Norwegian team, they’ve been so much fun, in particular, but there are other fun teams as well, that that this thing is almost succeeded in spite of itself.

Nestor Aparicio 42:57
Look the other way on the corruption, forget the lack of integrity on or off the pitch, forget all the human rights issues, forget all the bribery and scandal. Just focus on the game. There’s only a handful of them left,

Eric Fisher 43:12
much like what we’re talking about with baseball. If you sort of focus on the athletes and what they’re doing and their immense talent, you know that’s your pathway.

Nestor Aparicio 43:21
Yeah, it’s a beautiful game when it’s played right, you know. We’ll get to golf and live in Saudi Arabia in our next episode. Eric Fisher’s here, he’s still the journalist, they don’t bone, salt people like me, and we’re the ones that try to report truth and talk about the business of sports. And I guess the real news is, if you involve the business of sports, you’ll hate sports, so just watch the games, ignore the Fox commercials, and all the propaganda that comes along with it, and just put on a messy jersey. Have a strong Malbec. If the French are involved, get some croissant, Eric Hochmadan, and just, you know, enjoy the game, enjoy the dives, enjoy the whistles, and it’ll be football season in a couple weeks, I promise. Eric, I appreciate you. Love you. Fist bump to you. Roast pork is in your future. I got $14.65 right here on the website. It says here, and you’re even cheaper, cheaper date. You don’t go for the broccoli rabe, so I save a buck 95 when I take you with the sharp probe alone. We’re gonna be a Philly for the All-Game next week. We’re gonna be at Fadley’s on Friday, doing the Maryland Crab Cake Tour. It is Luke’s last stand before he gets that, he gets funny suntan things, he’s got his nieces, and a lot of pizza is going to be involved next week. I’m going to have a lot of cheese steak, as well as apparently a lot of roast pork, and some all-star aggression in Philly. I might even run into Howard-esque and some other Philly mafia. It’s going to be a great, great week in Philly next week. I’ll come back with some reports on that. Follow me on social media. My thanks to our partners at Farn and Derner, Farn, and only once a week I messed it up. Farn and Dermer, they’re the comfort guys, and our partners at GBMC. I’m Nestor, Baltimore Positive. Stay with