There are lots of reasons I decided to do this show. Obviously, I love the game, I think I have a different view of the game, a unique relationship with the game and was searching for a creative outlet after leaving film.
With 2020 becoming the disaster we’ve all experienced, it was important for me to try to formalize what I wanted the show to be.
The biggest thing I wanted to maintain in our show was tone. The fact is, we knew we would have to be active on twitter. Have you been on twitter lately? It’s awful on its best day. But to grow the show, we knew we had to be involved and we really wanted to make sure we had a purpose and that we interacted with people in a kind way, with a positive, welcoming tone. We celebrate fandom, we don’t care if you’re a Gateway Grizzlies fan or a New York Yankees fan. Baseball is great. People who love baseball are mostly great. And our focus is mainly the beauty of the game focusing our lens on the MiLB, Collegiate Summer League and Independent Baseball: the game at it’s purest.
But let’s be honest, many people on Twitter are out there being trolls, they are throwing bombs with fake accounts and seeming to take a sense of pleasure in upsetting people, in adding a little extra misery to fan bases they deem unworthy. In 2019, that made you an awful person. Who does that? In 2020, it makes you even worse. We have a pandemic, we have a divided political culture. The economy in the US is contracting. We have so much going on. So what does it say about someone who gets some kind of delight by being a prick on twitter? And I know, it’s yelling into a hurricane. Or, ‘old man yells at cloud’.
So, we on this show, will maintain our very different tone. Because any other tone would make me depressed. I’m a smart dude with a sharp wit and I can go toe to toe with anyone. But when I’m done, I honestly feel bad for going after someone and lowering myself to a level.
The fact is, there are lots of roads we travel, lots of paths that lead us to logging into Twitter. Internet tough guy doesn’t impress me. I’m an Army vet. Did over a year in Bosnia where I saw shit that no one should see. Mass graves. A hand grenade tossed in my direction. The results of a little kid falling into a minefield. And more. So, all this tough guy twitter talk? Unimpressed. The desire to make people feel worse just cause? Over it.
I’m unapologetically an Astros fan. I’ve become the Astros fan other fanbases will hold up as “reasonable.” While it’s a compliment, I’m far from the only. I know lots of Astros fans. Many of my favorite people are Astros fans. So, no, not the only one.
Conversely, I’ve seen a Yankees fan mock a cancer patient for wearing an Altuve jersey. The story of my grandson being called a cheater by an Ms fan. I don’t judge every fanbase by them, so maybe we should all admit that there are loud, obnoxious percentage of everyone’s fanbase and look each other as humans instead.
If I could waive my hand and fix things, it would go like this (for example) Yankee fan should be able to celebrate every home run. every Cole K, Judge homer without some jackass posting the Chapman/Altuve walkoff. Conversely, I should be able to talk Astros with Astros friends and not have to worry about some moron posting trashcan memes. Let’s just acknowledge that life SUCKS. and not try to make it suck more for other people.
So our show will always be positive. We’re not going to attack other fans. We’re not going to isolate, we’re going to welcome. And we’re going to help you find other shows and twitter folks who do the same thing: bring some positivity to it. And at such time as people we have on our show, or people we recommend behave in a way that’s overtly negative, going after low hanging fruit, they will no longer be associated with the show.
We know we could get greater notoriety by going full troll, but we couldn’t live with ourselves doing it that way.
We’re just going to be us. People who love baseball and who love people who love baseball.
