Reaction: Alex Rodriguez Says the MLB Needs to Act on the World Baseball Classic’s Momentum

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0:30Welcome back to The Deal. I'm Jason Kelly alongside Alex Rodriguez. It's emergency pod time, partner. Like, we had to jump on the mics. You know, this actually reminds me a lot of when Juan Soto signed his record-setting contract. Something very similar happened, which is you and I are texting over the weekend. We've got to talk about this. You left me a very long voice memo on Saturday morning after your workout, essentially saying this is like nothing you've ever seen. I have a million questions for you. We're talking about the World Baseball Classic, of course, and it has captivated the sports world, and it comes at such an interesting time in the sports calendar.

1:07Set the scene for me. You're there in Miami. You've been doing pre - and post-game over the weekend. We're talking hours before the final. You're going to be doing pre - and post-tonight for Fox. What are you seeing right now? You know, it's like nothing I've ever seen before, Jason, because baseball has found something really big and really cool here. And when you tap into baseball, a great sport that's been around for over 140 years, you're tapping into the global ecosystem of the passion of all these great countries, 20 of them, that come into a two-week tournament just like March Madness, and they're playing to be the king of baseball.

1:45and just think of a team like Venezuela tonight playing against the U.S. or the DR playing. You can never beat the U.S. at anything, but if you can defeat them in just one game, what it does for the spirit, self-esteem, and energy of a country is second to none. Look, we work for Fox, right? And we go and we do the pre - and post-game. We're there about four or five hours before the game. When I say there's 25 ,000 people dancing and singing and concerts, it feels like Alabama against LSU on a Saturday. It's awesome. I mean, part of what is driving this is talent. We talk about talent all the time.

2:1878 Major League Baseball All-Stars are participating or have participated in this tournament. And one of the things you and I talk about all the time is this idea of like, best needs to play best. You really need to know that if you win this game, you really are the best in the world. Help me understand, and then we can get into sort of what it means for baseball, but help me understand the player's perspective here. You talked with Paul Skeins for a segment on Fox. I know you've been talking to a lot of players. How are the players approaching this from the sort of the business of themselves?

2:49I think when I first started, when I played with Jeter and Chipper Jones 20 years ago, I think it was wholly different. We didn't know what we were coming into. It was a new place. It was a bit of a pilot. We knew it was going to be around for five years or ten years. Well, here we are 20 years later and it's ballooned to the biggest events in baseball, according to the players. Now, I talked to about five or six Dominican players, about three or four Venezuelan yesterday, and they all told me unanimously, and we'll get to judge in a minute. This is much bigger than us winning a World Series game.

3:21We're playing for being a patriot of our country. And by the way, we had Garcia on in the postgame who had the game winning hit last night. He goes, if we don't win, it would be scary to walk on our country. This is how much it means to the people of our country. So that's really cool. And then on Aaron Judge's side, who had a quote, he said, this is bigger than playing in a World Series. I'm paraphrasing a little bit. But for Aaron Judge, who's very smart and very measured, and the captain of the team to say that, I know it opened some eyes in New York and even for New York fan base for the Yankees.

3:52So here's the exact quote. Quote, the crowd we had when we played against Mexico, it's bigger and better than the World Series. So let me ask you this. What changed? How did this go from like, oh, yeah, we're going to do this thing in the offseason? It's a bit of an afterthought, as you said. Thank you for mentioning Chipper Jones. I always appreciate a shout out to former Braves, Braves legends. You know, you, Chipper, Jeter and others are playing. How did it become this thing? Is it the world we're living in? Is it better marketing? Is it more viewership? Like, what is it? honestly i think it's social media and the reason why is i can tell you from dominican because my algorithm is all dominican in the u.s right the two teams that i follow most the amount of dancing singing celebrating by the way the country the world's not in a great place right now but when you see so many people dancing and singing and loving each other and the pride that is tied into you know puerto rico beating venezuela venezuela been in the u.s u.s beating dominican it's like second to none.

4:50And I think they're feeling the pressure. And I think they see this as a global stage to be able to not only become the king of baseball, but for players alone to establish themselves as kings of their own country. All right. So let's talk a little bit about viewership. Viewership versus 2023. This is based only on pool play. So not even into the knockout phase where we're in now, where we'll have to wait for a subsequent episode for those numbers. viewership up 142 % versus 2023. That's incredible. The U.S.-Mexico game on March 10th averaged 5.02 million viewers. That's bigger than the 2023 Japan-USA final.

5:27That was around 4.97 million. And so, so far, and I'm guessing this will be surpassed tonight again, most watched World Baseball Classic game in history. Here's the stat that blew me away, and this goes to something we've talked a lot about on this show, the Otani effect, 100 million Japanese fans have tuned into the world baseball classic, a hundred million. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. And to add to that, Jason, I was talking to Francisco Cervelli, who was my former teammate with the New York Yankees, and he's doing a really respectable thing. I mean, he's, he's, he was torn last night, He's managing the Italian team, Francisco Cervelli, but he was born and raised in Venezuela.

6:13So one parent is Italian, one parent is Venezuelan. So he was the ultimate conflict, right? And he's done something beautiful. He's moved six months out of the year to move to Italy, and he's going in buses all around the country promoting and talking about baseball. And they had a game at 2 o 'clock when they were in Houston, call it about a week ago, which was prime time in Italy. Yeah. And like soccer, all the bars were open. People were talking baseball. And he's brought great attention and energy to Italy about baseball. It's a beautiful thing. I mean, it's also amazing just to make it hyper local.

6:49Lone Depot Stadium, you're going to be there tonight. 35 ,000 fans sell out. I mean, it's going to be sold out with all respect and admiration for our friends at the Marlins. When was the last time there was a crowd like this at Lone Depot Park? I mean, it's crazy. Well, I'll give you one better, Jason, is my Dominican friends. I had one of my colleagues buy a flight in American Airlines, Coach. Now, this flight from Dominican to Miami, it's very common, probably an average$500 for economy. He paid$7 ,000. What? Right? And you had about 12 ,000 people come from DR2 to Miami. And then you've seen online tickets going for$5 ,000 or$6 ,000 per ticket.

7:36it, you know, obviously in the front second row, this has become really big. And I got to tell you, baseball has something here and I hope they just keep it going because a good, good day for baseball.

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8:23So you obviously know Rob Manfred and his team, the commissioner, are watching this very closely. how do they take advantage of this? What do they do? What can baseball, what can major league baseball do to, as they say in the investment world, consolidate these gains and really just build on this as we get into what you have said is one of the most important seasons in the history of major league baseball. Yeah, I think we're starting to do that. I think by having, you know, a lot of media there from all over the world, bringing attention and focus to it, Social media helps because you can have so many viral moments that are tied into emotion and self-esteem and countries being happy.

9:06But even having Fox there, right, the pregame and the postgame, it feels big. You have John Smoltz and Joe Davis on the call. That feels big. But I would just talk about it. I mean, this is a page from Roger Goodell and the NFL. Yeah. To find a property in March when really nobody's really – they're starting to think about baseball as more March Madness. They'd taken a bite of the apple the other day. And I'm sure on Sunday when the Oscars were there, they took a nice chunk of that fan base in the middle of March. That was non-existent. It was a non-starter. Yeah, the calendar is a really important point because, you know, that's what to echo what you're saying about the NFL.

9:42The NFL has made the business of football a 365 day a year proposition, whether it is playing up the combine, whether it's playing up the draft, making a spectacle of all these different things. There is a beauty in this, as you say, because it's the conference tournaments that are happening in basketball. You're not fully into March Madness yet. Obviously, football is out of the picture. It's, as you know, from the Minnesota Timberwolves, it's like it's later in the season, but it's not quite crunch time. The WNBA season hasn't started yet. So there really is a nice window here. and it's a great prelude to baseball, you know, and you can see some of these players, you know, again, taking it back to the Braves, as I love to do Acuna, you know, it's like you see what he's doing, Ronald Acuna Jr.

10:36That makes me excited as a Braves fan. Like it sort of reminds me what a great player he is. And, and, and that's going to carry presumably into the season. Yeah. I agree with all of that, Jason. And a few things to add. Number one, if you're Rob Manford, I like your question, and Dan Halem and other powers to be, Pat Courtney at the Major League Baseball who do a great job. Think about the last six months for Major League Baseball, arguably the best six months over the last 20 years. You have a world-breaking World Series that's represented Japan, Canada, and the U.S. You go seven games and you have 53 million people watch with absolute brilliant baseball full of stars, strategy, and everything else in between.

11:17Now you go to the World Baseball Classic and you have this. And in a few weeks, you have opening day on Netflix. I mean, the game is changing for the better. And to your point, Jason, I think Rob has to do everything in his power to continue the momentum as we embark in the most important season in the history of a sport with the CBA. Why? 1994, I was there when we walked off the field. Lou Piniella sent me down a week earlier. I think it was August 12, 1994. We're playing Oakland A's, Mariners against Oakland. We walked off the field. And at that time, baseball was still king. At that time, there was no Netflix, no Apple, no Prime, no YouTube, none of this, no WhatsApp.

12:01There's so many companies fighting for consumer eyeballs today that were not alive then that baseball has to have a great year. And please keep on wins and going. We're going to be talking a lot about baseball over the coming weeks. We've got a really exciting calendar, you and I, just to tease ahead to things we have coming up. Later on this week, we'll drop an episode, one of our regularly scheduled episodes with David Levy. He, of course, going back to March Madness, he sort of created the modern March Madness as we consume it now. So he has a lot of thoughts on what's happening there. I'm going to turn the mic on you again and really talk about what we can expect this coming baseball season for the business of baseball.

12:41This will be a great sort of prelude to that. And we're going to talk to the founder. We have recorded this and you and I both were blown away by it. Jesse Cole, who is the founder of the Savannah Bananas. I mean, a different view of baseball for sure. But it all is of a piece here of, you know, something is going on. And listen, I love talking to you about baseball. You're so passionate about it. I can't even imagine what the feeling was for you in your hometown and watching U.S. versus the Dominican. Just to close it out, what did that feel like for you? I mean, as the sort of Uber DR American man?

13:25Well, I'm going to answer that, and then I want to turn the tables on you because I do have a question about you and your experience. For me, you have 12 million people in Dominican Republic, and I think this is as close as 100 % attendance as you're going to get for the whole country watching the game. Basically, friends of mine down there said to me, Alex, if you walked or drove down the street in the highway, you can go a mile and not see another car. It was empty. And it's just a really, really beautiful thing. Again, trying to establish themselves as a king of baseball, you know, it's a missed opportunity, but they'll be back and they'll be back strong.

14:00They did a beautiful job. My question to you is talk to me about your mom and your dad and your wife and your kids. Even attract them, because I'm sure mom and dad are huge Atlanta Braves fans, but they're not watching baseball in March. Are they watching, for example, tonight? Right. They're tuning in for sure. And I think, you know, in part because of you, they'll probably tune in because you're you're there. You're their other son, brother, uncle, whatever it is, Uncle A-Rod. But yeah, I mean, this is capture the imagination, I think, in part because of an Acuna, you know, the players like that.

14:36These are not I think it is so important that these are the players that we're rooting for throughout the year. And so I think having that connection with the individual players, because keep in mind, this is what you know this better than anyone because you have Anthony Edwards and Nafisa Collier as two examples of athletes that you work with, you know, through your basketball teams. We love individual stars and we love to follow individual stars. And so if we can get to know them, you've been talking about this for so long, if we can get to know them in different contexts, if we can see them achieve different things in different formats or in different venues, that's why we love the Olympics.

15:16That's why we love the Dream Team. That's why that helped the NBA. So I do think I'm giving you a much broader answer to your question, but I think these individual stars and these star making moments are really the things that bring in those more casual fans, not just the diehards like like you and me. So, all right. Have a great time tonight. It's going to be it's going to be wild. I'll be tuning in. So good luck. It'll be fun.

15:46The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly. And this episode was made by Alexis Haught and Stacey Wong. Will Connolly is our video editor. Our theme music is made by Blake Maples. Our executive producers are Ashley Zingaro and Amy Keene. Additional support from Rachel Carnevale, Nick Silva, and Elena Saus Angeles. Thanks so much for listening to The Deal. If you have a minute, subscribe, rate, and review our show. It'll help other listeners find us. I'm Jason Kelly. See you next week.

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