Extra: Mark Teixeira Full Interview

A conversation with former Major League Baseball player and current ESPN analyst Mark Teixeira, recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Hidden Side of Sports.”

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 0:38Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:09Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 2:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey there. I'm Stephen Dubner and this is a Freakonomics Radio Extra, our full interview with Mark Teixeira, the former baseball all-star who's been appearing in our Hidden Side of Sports series. Teixeira retired after the 2016 season, having played 14 years in the big leagues. He hit 409 home runs. He won lots of offensive and defensive awards, and he helped lead the New York Yankees to a World Series title in 2009. Hope you enjoy this conversation with Mark Teixeira, and thanks for listening.

• 3:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  Mark, if you would, then just start by saying your name and what you do.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Mark Teixeira, currently ESPN analyst and real estate developer in Atlanta, Georgia.

• 3:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  Uh huh. Very good. How old are you now?

• 3:13Speaker 01

  I am 38.

• 3:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, you played, what, 14?

• 3:16Speaker 01

  14 years, 15 professionally, 14 in the bigs.

• 3:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah. All right, let's go back. So for people who know baseball, Mark Teixeira is a big, big, big, big name. For people who don't know baseball, and there are people out there, you know, we'll expose them to you. Let's start with you as a kid. Talk about growing up, Baltimore, I believe. Talk about growing up as a kid, your family. Your dad was a Naval Academy graduate. Just describe you, your family, and especially sports.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I kind of had one of those, you know, just really cool childhoods where, you know, both my parents were around. I had an older sister. You know, my dad, being a Navy guy, graduated from the academy, was, you know, was tough on me but fair and, you know, really kind of gave me a, you know, a blueprint of how to act and treating people with respect and, you know, keeping my hair short and, you know, making sure I said yes, sir, and yes, ma'am, and those type of things, things that he learned in, at the Naval Academy. And so, you know, I was just really lucky to have a family around me that, you know, gave me every opportunity to succeed. You know, I played every sport as a kid. We didn't have, you know, the cell phones and all the cool technology back in, in the day when I grew up in, in Severna Park.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Park, Maryland, so I went outside and played.

• 4:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  Was baseball your best sport from the outset?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Always was, and I actually enjoyed playing basketball more. I played backyard football, I played soccer, tennis, and but I was always good at baseball. So I knew baseball was going to be, you know, a sport for my future.

• 4:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  Can you pinpoint the moment or whatever, day, month, year, when you kind of said to yourself like, oh, I'm way better than everybody else.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Yes, you know, and most kids grow up being, you know, if you're an elite athlete, you're going to be the best kid on your team, but you never really think you're going to make it until you get that first call or letter from a pro scout. And I was a sophomore in high school and pro scouts started showing up to my games. And that's when I was talking to my coaches and talking to my dad and talking to some of these scouts saying, wow, I could actually play professional baseball. How cool is that?

• 5:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. Now, your role model, as I understand it, was Don Mattingly, yes?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Well, my favorite player, my role model was my dad. My favorite player growing up was Don Mattingly. And so he was a guy that, I loved the way he played the game. I loved his sweet swing, so smooth at first base. And growing up in Baltimore, you know, I loved Cal Ripken, loved Eddie Murray, but Mattingly, there was something about Donny baseball that just, you know, really grabbed me as a young kid.

• 5:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right, okay, so of course, he was a long time and beloved and very, very good first baseman for the Yankees, also very good defensive first baseman. You became exactly that many years later. I'm just curious, more of a character issue. You said your dad was your role model and one can see how that worked for you. Mattingly was your favorite player. It strikes me that his character was not that different from your dad's. Keep your head down, right? I'm just curious, what if your favorite player had been, you know, Reggie Jackson? Would you have become a different kind of player and person?

• 6:23Speaker 01

  You know what, I think, that's a great question. I think I chose somebody like Don Mattingly because of his character. And, you know, I, while some of these players, you know, today have lots of flash and flair and, you know, I like the grinders. I wasn't blessed with amazing speed and just athletic ability that oozed out of my pores, but I felt like I had a gift to hit a baseball and I grinded with everything else. Everything else in my career I had to work for.

• 6:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  When you say a gift, you know, there's this huge debate in everything in life, anything that involves what we call talent. So it could be sports, but it could be medicine, you name it, about the difference between A, nurture and nature, and B, talent versus, you know, work and what's called deliberate practice, the 10,000-hour rule. Tell me where you come down on that. Obviously, you have yourself as an example, and we know that you were physically talented from an early age. But talk about what it was that got you to be a professional at the highest level.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Yep. I think the gift is number one, because without the gift, you can't take a kid that has zero athletic ability and just happens to be a hard worker, and he goes to the big leagues. You know, at any given time, there's a thousand big leaguers out there. But there's probably 10,000 players, whether in college or amateur baseball or low professional ranks, that are good enough to someday make it.

• 7:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  Talent-wise, you're saying?

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Yes. There's 10,000 talented players with a gift. It's of those 10,000 players, which are the ones that work hard enough? Which are the ones that figure it out? Which are the ones that get it, that make the right decisions and, you know, train the right way, and eat the right way, and do preparation for games? Those are the ones that make it. So I think the gift is first, but then you have to put the time in.

• 8:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  Can you think of a particular player, or a group of players, who, when you were either in high school or college, obviously, we know you were very, very good, but maybe you saw some guys who looked to be, on the surface, more talented than you and didn't make it?

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. The most talented player that I ever saw as an amateur was Corey Patterson. And guys that know baseball, he was a fourth or fifth overall pick from the Chicago Cubs my draft year. And he had a decent big-league career. But talent-wise, I would kill for his talent. And, you know, he had some injuries and just, you know, couldn't quite make it over the top. But talent-wise, there were a ton of guys that I thought had more talent than me. But I thought I figured it out.

• 8:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  What do you mean by that?

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Figured it out means, in high school, you know, by the time I was a sophomore and I knew I had a chance, I started preparing. So I started working out and actually called the Florida State baseball coach, because they were the number-one team in the country at the time, and said, "Can you please just send me your workout regimen?" And so I started doing the Florida State baseball workout regimen. You know, I didn't go to my high school homecoming for three straight years because I was playing fall baseball. You know, I didn't, I didn't do a lot of stuff in the summertime. Played 70 games every summer. My friends are going to concerts. My friends are, you know, having a good time at the beach and, and all these kinds of things. And I just figured out, young, how to make it. And, and I think that helped me as I went along in the big

• 9:37Speaker 01

  leagues because you don't have your A stuff every day or every year even. You got to figure it out as you go.

• 9:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. Okay. So you were a phenomenally talented, embeddable, let's say, um, high school prospect.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I became a, a really top prospect before my senior year. So in my junior summer, you know, before my senior year, uh, I went to a, a wood bat tournament, which was a, you know, top, all the top prospects in, in high school baseball went to this tournament and I was the only guy to hit a homerun. So all the scouts, oh my goodness, look at this kid from Maryland. We've heard about him, but you know, he hit a homerun in this tournament. And, um, you know, now he jumps to the top of the list of high school players. And Scott Boris's, uh, office called me that summer and said, we'd love to talk to you. Met with Scott and his group and they were far and, and above anybody else in the business.

• 10:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  In terms of professionalism?

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Professionalism, their preparation, their knowledge of the market, their knowledge of amateur baseball. They gave you a really good sense of, okay, this is the landscape of baseball. This is what your career is going to look like. And this is how you should make decisions based on that.

• 10:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  So you signed with Boris. We'll jump ahead now. We'll come back. You signed with Boris and he was your agent for, for many years. And he helped you sign or helped you get or you got with him, uh, your ultimate deal, which was in 2009, coming to the New York Yankees, correct?

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 10:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  Uh, eight-year, 180 million dollar deal, correct?

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 11:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  All guaranteed?

• 11:01Speaker 01

  All guaranteed in baseball, yeah.

• 11:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now, interestingly, however, um, you split with Boris a few years into that. And I guess on the one hand, I understand like, why do you need an agent anymore? Once you're signing what's going to be the last deal in your career. But why, why did you split? And talk to me about the relationship of an athlete like you and an agent like him.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, when I, when I split with Boris, it was more practical reasons than anything else. It wasn't, we didn't have a falling out. There was none of that. But I was in New York and he's in LA. And when you play for the New York Yankees and you're the starting first baseman and you know, there's all these things that are put on your plate, you kind of need your agent closer. And so, no pun intended, I hired Casey Close, who happens to be a New York guy. He'd worked with Derek Jeter and the Yankees for years and years. And so really understood the landscape of the Yankees and New York and charity and marketing and all these things that happened. And so it just made me a little bit more comfortable being with an agent. Again, I didn't really need an agent, but just someone that could help me in New York and be closer.

• 12:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  So I guess that gets to the question of what does an agent actually do for an athlete like you at that level? And also maybe help people understand the difference between, you know, in some industries and in entertainment, a lot of entertainers have an agent and a manager. And they may have, you know, 18 other advisors and so on. When we think of an agent, we usually only hear of an agent with an athlete when they're negotiating or signing the deal, or when something goes wrong and so on. But you're talking about all the different elements that come with being a major league athlete. So, A, what does an agent do or should they do? And then B, why, what did you get Casey Close involved in?

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, what an agent does is he really helps support you from the time you sign your first contract, or even before your first contract, and navigate you through the business waters, the professional waters, and all of the things that can happen to you until you're a free agent. In baseball, you don't make your living, your career, until you're a free agent. And so what Scott Boris did for me, which was, and he's the best at it, at 18 years old, we started our relationship and he taught me so much about the game. Him and some of his associates, Bob Brower was kind of my right-hand man, Mike Fiori, he has a great group of guys around him that said, okay, Tex, you're 18 right now. When you're 26 or 28, you're going to be a free agent. And these are the things that you have

• 13:20Speaker 01

  to accomplish in your life and your baseball career to get you to free agency. That's where I think agents in baseball provide the most value. Once you sign your eight-year deal... You don't really need them that much. But what Casey did for me, when I hired him in 2011, I believe, was, you know, the Yankees, there's a lot of charity stuff that you're involved in. There's a lot of off-the-field distractions. And, you know, I started getting hurt a little bit, and you deal with second opinions, and you deal with, you know, general managers questioning, hey, what's going on with Tex? And does he need surgery? That's where an agent later in your career can really help, is helping you take some of that pressure off your shoulders when problems happen.

• 14:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  And what about business opportunities? Is that their job to help bring some to you, or maybe filter out the bad from the good?

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, marketing opportunities, yes. But, you know, honestly, baseball players don't have a lot of marketing opportunities, unless you're Derek Jeter or Mike Trout. You know, I did a handful of deals a year. So I knew I was going to do my Nike deal. I knew I was going to do my deal with Steiner Sports for my autographs. And then I had a handful of other, you know, print or local media-type stuff, local appearances. So it wasn't overwhelming.

• 14:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  What about non-sports-related investment, though? Where do those... So I know you're involved in a number of things. Some of them predate your retirement a couple of years ago. Where do those typically come from? Are they kind of à la carte ad hoc? Or do you have a way for soliciting and sorting?

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Yes, most agents don't do that for you. What they will do is they will hire somebody or point you in the right direction for financial literacy and for financial help and estate planning. And so I'm with a group called Win Point, Joe Guyer and his group out of Baltimore. Joe went to my high school at Mount St. Joe, you know, years before me, but had a really great relationship with a lot of the ex Orioles and current players in Major League Baseball. And so he's my business manager. He's the one that handles all of my estate planning and all of my investments. And I like keeping them separate. You know, if you have all of your eggs in one basket as an athlete, sometimes you'll make wrong decisions, or sometimes your decision making will get clouded. So I liked

• 15:31Speaker 01

  having that separation of power when it comes to business deals or investment opportunities.

• 15:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now Scott Boris encourages people to put a lot of eggs in one basket, yes, in terms of investment and mental guidance and so on, yeah?

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, Scott has, he has so many things that you can take advantage of under his umbrella. And investment, you know, advice is one of them. But the mental conditioning that he has, Harvey Dorfman was kind of his right-hand man for mental conditioning, literally wrote the book, The ABCs of Pitching, The Mental Game of Baseball. Harvey Dorfman was one of those guys that when I was young, when I was learning how to become a great major leaguer, I leaned on him immensely. And, you know, one of the great relationships of my young career was Harvey Dorfman.

• 16:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Gotcha. Okay, well, one more thing about agents before we move on to your playing career. There are those who argue that, you know, an inevitable conflict is, especially a very successful agent, Boris maybe being the most, you end up having a roster, a lot of players in your stable. And then you're dealing with a market where you're only dealing with a limited number of buyers, there are only 30 teams, and for any given player, there might be a very limited pool of, let's say, two, three, four teams that have the money and the need and so on. So there are those who argue that if you're with an agent, there may be an inherent conflict of interest in that they may gain leverage by dealing you low, by making a suboptimal deal.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  You're exactly right. And this is where every player needs to take control of his career. You know, you're right. If I'm a first baseman and I want to go to a team that, you know, is also looking at another player that, that my agent, you know, has in his roster, there might be some horse trading there, you know? Okay, well, you know, take him, but then I got to find a place for, for Tex, and there's back and forth. Ultimately, the player has to take control. And I tell every young player, hire a great agent, but also know what he's doing.

• 17:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  And, and the best agents are good at that horse trading. They're good at getting their clients the best deal no matter what, but you have to pay attention.

• 17:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  Walk me through the deal that you signed with the Yankees again, that was your final deal and it was a massive free agent deal that set you and your family up for life, for generations. So that's amazing and congratulations because that's, you know, it's a great accomplishment. Going into that, you were coming most directly from the Braves?

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Braves and Angels.

• 18:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  Braves and Angels, right, right. Walk me through that deal. What were the possibilities? And then talk about the negotiation of that deal and how you made the decision to come to the Yankees.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, free agency is not a fun process. As a major leaguer, I'm glad I only did it once. You feel completely helpless on one hand because there's 30 teams out there, but really, there's probably only five or six that are really interested and really want you. And I had a family. You know, I had two young kids and a wife that I wanted to make sure they were happy as well. So, you know, the process for me was not a lot of fun. Ultimately, it came down to the Yankees, Red Sox, Nationals, Angels, and Orioles. Those were the five teams that I had face-to-face meetings with. I wanted to go to a place that had a chance to win every single year. And one of the things that Scott Boris always

• 18:51Speaker 01

  told me is, don't look at the Yankees' current roster, don't look at their minor league system. This team does what it takes every year to be competitive. And playing in New York, playing, put those pinstripes on, just had too much allure. And it helped that they, you know, matched the offer of some of the other teams.

• 19:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay. You come to New York, New York loves you, even though you're not a typical, you know, New York has gotten behind a lot of guys who are a lot more aggressive than you, a lot cockier than you, and you were like, the nice, good, hard-working guy who also happened to be a phenomenal baseball player, very good hitter and a great defensive first baseman. And then you get here. And first season out, you go and win the World Series. Talk about setting expectations. So talk about the high and then the inability to win another one after that and what that was like.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, my first year in New York in 2009 was a complete whirlwind. I'm getting lost on the way to the ballpark because the new Yankee Stadium was literally brand new. They opened the doors like three days before the season started. So all the navigation systems, you know, back in 2009, Waze and Google Maps weren't around or weren't as good at least. And so I'm getting lost getting into the ballpark in the Bronx. And then you have to worry about hitting 98 mile an hour fastballs that night. So it was a complete whirlwind. We win the World Series and before I knew it, spring training was around the corner. And when you get to the top of the mountain, you want to stay there. The pressure is always

• 20:23Speaker 01

  there. But the rosters just weren't as good. I mean, I think we can look at ourselves and say 2010 was the best chance we had to win again. Thought we had a pretty good team in 2010. By 2011, 2012, we just ran out of gas at the end of the season. We didn't have the team that could make it that far.

• 20:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  How much of that is age?

• 20:41Speaker 01

  A lot of it's age. We had a team that in 2009 were called old. At 28 years old, I was one of the kids on the team. And so you get here and you win, but then you look at the best players, you look around that locker room and go, man, we have a short window here. And that window closed in four years. But listen, in those four years, we made three ALCSs. We won a whole lot of games. And yeah, we didn't win another one, but not a lot of regrets there.

• 21:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah. Your ultimate, I guess, decline as a player, you know, it's what happens. Players get older. They don't keep getting better, except in rare cases like Barry Bonds, and those are usually a little bit chemically aided, as it turns out. I'm curious about one thing. So you were a rare, relatively rare power hitting switch hitter. There aren't a whole lot of them. During your career, more and more teams started using more and more analytics. Some managers used to put a defensive shift on some players who pulled the ball a lot, but it became a lot more common. And so now defenses were putting a shift on you from the left side and the right side. And your numbers were going down. Now, you were also getting older and declining as a player. No offense, that's what happens.

• 21:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm curious, in retrospect,

• 21:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  Whether the degree to which you think that rise in analytics and the use of the shift and so on was a contributing factor to your decline and how much of it was just the natural cycle of an aging baseball player?

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's probably, you know, 70, 30, just the natural age. Without analytics, I still would be retired. Yeah, still my body, you know, analytics doesn't, you know, make your wrist blow out. Analytics doesn't make you tear up your knee, you know, the things that I had to deal with. So, but I would say that analytics, you know, took numbers that should have been better and decreased. I mean, you know, studies show that left-handed hitters hit 20 points lower, just across the board because of analytics and because of the shift. But, you know, for me, I was lucky enough to have a really great career for the first 10 years. I had a really great 10-year run. I blew out my wrist in year 11, and it just became very tough. I felt like I was playing catch-up.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  I had one more All-Star season that I felt really good about, but for me, it was much more the physical decline. And the analytics side of it, listen, if you're walking, if you're hitting doubles and home runs, the shift doesn't matter. And the one year that I did make it back to the All-Star game, it's because I was really locked in. Physically, I felt, I felt good and I was hitting doubles and home runs again.

• 23:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. What are some ways that you benefited from analytics? Did you, I don't know if you were a tape rat, if you watched a lot of tape, and I'm curious whether you studied pitchers and so on for their tendencies?

• 23:26Speaker 01

  I, I didn't benefit, I don't think, at all. I was not a tape rat. I was one of those guys, because I was a switch hitter, I didn't, I had too many things to think about anyway. I had two full swings, right? One swing is hard to keep up in Major League Baseball. I had two of them. So, early on in my career, I basically told myself, I'm not adding more junk to my head and complicating things. I'm going to see the ball and hit the ball. Now, did I watch tape? Absolutely. Did I have positive reinforcement? I would, you know, it's called our hit tape, right? So, you look back at when you're good, what are the pitches you're swinging at, where are you hitting them, you know, where are your hands and your, and your feet and your Legs and what do you look like when you're hitting those balls?

• 24:10Speaker 01

  So I use positive reinforcement, but I wasn't a guy that went up there and said, okay, it's two to one. This guy has a 73% chance to throw a backdoor slider here. I'm going to look. I never did that. And there's a whole bunch of players that still don't look at tape.

• 24:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. Talk about that for a minute. You don't do that in part, I guess, because you don't think it's going to be productive. But also, I'm curious, you know, when you talk about sports where there's live action, as the batter, you're reacting to someone else throwing. It's as a pitcher, it's a little bit different. You're generating the action. As a golfer, it's different. You're generating the action from the ball at stop. And in those cases, we know that the mind can really get in the way. Right? When you're reacting theoretically to some benefit because you don't have the time to quote, think. But on the other hand, when you're in the batter's box and you're dug in and waiting for the pitcher, talk for a moment about that thought process and maybe when your mind does get in the way.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Yep, I had two different swing thoughts that depending on the pitcher was, was my plan. Everyone says when you go up to the plate, you need to have a plan. And a guy that threw hard, you know, say 95 and above, my plan was get the head of the bat on the ball. Put the barrel of the bat, square the ball up, wherever it goes is a positive. If a guy threw soft, you know, a Greg Maddox type guy, I looked for a, a location. I said, okay, I'm going to look for the ball away here. I'm going to stay on it. I'm going to stay square. I'm going to hit the ball the other way. Or say a guy threw a lot of curveballs. Okay, I'm going to wait for a curveball. I'm just going to sit, sit, sit. So that was my plan on fast guys or guys that threw softer.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Where you get into problems was your first swing against that guy who's fast and it was a bad swing. You go, oh, wait a second. I'm going to change my plan here and I think he's going to throw, I think he's going to throw me a curveball and I'm going to sit on a curveball. And he throws you another fastball and you break your back because you're late. That's where your mind gets in the way when you should be keeping it very simple and reacting. You complicate things and then are slow to react or late to react and then you're done in baseball.

• 26:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  Did you see great hitters, however, who did think a lot at the plate in a way that you're describing was not productive for you?

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Yes, some players, you know, some guys joked, you know, he's so dumb, he's a great hitter. See it, hit it, react, and there are a lot of great hitters that did that. Then there's Chipper Jones, just went into the Hall of Fame yesterday. Chipper Jones knew exactly what he was going to do on every single pitch. He looked at the tape and he was a switch hitter, too, so don't tell me how that worked. But he really looked at pitchers. He set pitchers up, he sat on pitches, and, you know, it helps that he was so talented, eye-hand contact, you know, his coordination was just amazing. But he was one of those guys that fought through every at-bat.

• 27:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  Coming up after the break, the mechanics of Mark Tashara's swing.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Hitting a baseball is still the hardest thing to do in sports.

• 27:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  And how do you break a slump?

• 27:12Speaker 01

  I would go honey sometimes. Peanut butter and honey.

• 27:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  And if you haven't heard it yet, check out our ongoing Hidden Side of Sports series on any podcast app or on Freakonomics.com. We will be right back. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Granola. You know that moment when a meeting ends and someone says, let's circle back on this next week and everyone nods, but no one writes it down? Then next week rolls around and it's radio silence? That's why Granola exists. Granola is an AI-powered notepad built for the way real people actually meet. You take rough notes like you normally would, and in the background, Granola securely transcribes the meeting. Then it turns everything into clean, structured, actually useful notes when the meeting ends. And the best part?

• 27:59Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 28:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Progressive. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on the things you love, like those iced lattes that help you get ready to face the day. So, switch your home and auto to Progressive and see if you could save and keep sipping away. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by PNC Bank. Boring. Great word, bad rep. Yet, time and time again, here at Freakonomics, we find that when something culture-changing

• 29:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  happens, boring things like calculations and careful planning are usually behind it. Which begs the question, why not apply it to other aspects of life? Like banking, for example? Well, PNC Bank did since its inception, proving time and again that the best banking strategy isn't the exciting type, but the steady, reliable, definitely not YOLO type. PNC Bank. Brilliantly boring since 1865. Brilliantly boring since 1865 is a registered mark of the PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. PNC Bank, National Association, Member FDIC. Let's get back now to our lightly edited full interview with Mark Tashara, the former

• 30:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  New York Yankees first baseman, one of the many athletes we've been speaking with for our Hidden Side of Sports series. I've heard you talk in the past about spring training. So, I'd love you to describe this for people, again, who don't know baseball, but even who do. You've talked about every year you'd show up, and it's like relearning, like, both from a confidence and a physical level, relearning to swing. I find it hard to believe that, but I'd love to hear you talk about it.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, when I say that, it's true. Every year I showed up to spring training, I had to learn how to hit major league pitching again, because timing is so important, right? You know, if I got into a cage today... I'd still probably look like a big leaguer, you know, put me on a tee or throw, you know, 60 mile an hour softballs to me. I could probably still hit some balls, you know, and, and look like a big leaguer. If you put me in a 95 mile an hour fastball situation with a guy that's got a slider and a changeup, I would look like I never played the game. Because I have no reference point, I haven't had one in a year and a half, you know, since I retired, almost two years now, I have no reference point to the timing of when I need

• 31:09Speaker 01

  to start my swing and where that ball's gonna be at the plate. And so that's what I mean when I say you have to figure out, you have to relearn how to hit major league hitting. It's all about that timing. It's not like riding a bike. Some guys it is, but for me it wasn't. Every year, my timing from both sides of the plate had to get right, and that's one of the reasons most of the time I had a slow April.

• 31:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, and then for both sides of the plate, you've also referred to how your right hand swing and your left hand swings were really different. So I'd like you to talk about that also. Again, for people who don't know baseball, it'd be a little bit like watching, you know, a great basketball player with a jump shot start to shoot left-handed sometimes, right, when the situation called for it. It doesn't happen in other sports.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 31:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  In baseball, it does, for a variety of reasons, and it's an advantage, obviously. But can you talk about, I would imagine that one swing is a mirror image of the other. I gather, however, that it's not, correct?

• 32:02Speaker 01

  It's not because of right hand domination. So, so I throw right-handed, I right, right-hand, I do everything right-handed. So as a right-handed hitter, my top hand, my right hand, is the steering mechanism for the bat. And because of that, I was a better contact hitter, right-handed. Because, you know, that dominant hand, your top hand steering it, I could steer the bat where I wanted. Left-handed, that right-hand dominant hand is the bottom hand. And that is my, that's my pull, trigger, you know, the, the bat gets through the zone quick, I hit longer home runs left-handed, I hit more home runs left-handed. I was a much more power hitter, much more pull hitter, left-handed.

• 32:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  More strikeouts lefty?

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Probably. I'm sure. I'm sure I had more strikeouts lefty. I also hit the inside pitch way better left-handed. Right-handed, you could bust me in all the time. I was not a good inside hitter right-handed because, you know, I just didn't have the bat speed right-handed. And so that's why I had two different swings. It's not by design. It's just, you know, I picked up a bat left-handed and I just had a different swing.

• 33:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  What about dominant eye, though? I always wondered about this, you know, when I played baseball growing up, I was a right-handed batter. But then when I played wiffle ball, I could hit great lefty. And I thought, you know, why was this? Obviously, it's a different ball, different, everything's different. And I was an okay switch hitter as a kid, but not good enough to actually do it in games. And then I started to wonder, maybe I'm just seeing it better, or it's different. I'm curious about that.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  You were. You were seeing it better. I'm right eye dominant.

• 33:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  How can you tell? I see you holding up your hands here.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Put your hands in front of you in like, in like a triangle.

• 33:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Keep both eyes open and point to a spot, you know, get it like, you know, the microphone or something here. And then close one eye.

• 33:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  And or close the other one. Whatever eye you see it with, that's your dominant eye.

• 33:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  So I'm right eye dominant. That, so that being said, I could stay closed, left-handed. Right-handed, I had to open up my stance and actually point my face towards the pitcher more, so my right eye could see the ball better. But I'm naturally right-handed. And so because of being naturally right-handed, I was able to, you know, to always have better plate discipline, right-handed. But because I'm right eye dominant, I was able to become a switch hitter. I'd like to see a statistic on switch hitters that are naturally right-handed that, that are right eye dominant. I would probably guess most of them are right eye dominant.

• 34:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now, considering that you figured that out, did you think about training your left eye?

• 34:37Speaker 01

  I tried. It's one of those, you know, when you work out and you feel sore the next day, you know that it worked. What I did in the gym worked. I don't know if it works. I did eye exercises for like, two months, kind of messing around with it. And I don't know if it worked. And so I just, I ended up letting it go. Again, I try to keep things simple. Baseball is a, when you break it down, is a very simple game. They throw a ball at you and you gotta hit it. And I didn't want to complicate things. I'm not a quarterback in the NFL with 15 different plays or 50 different options of that play. I'm see the ball, hit the ball.

• 35:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Describe briefly your game day routine. Let's say it was a home game, playing for the New York Yankees. You've got your family, you live in Connecticut. Describe kind of from morning to night, what the day was like.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I slept in because, you know, your games are over at 10:30, 11 o'clock. You're not getting home until 12:30 or 1. So I slept in till probably 10 or 11 every day. Just hung out at the house, did nothing usually. Tried to spend some time with my kids. When I was on the road, I'd sit in the hotel room or maybe take a little stroll and have breakfast or lunch. But I really tried to conserve as much energy as possible before the games. Leave for the ballpark around 2 o'clock.

• 35:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  No golf on game days?

• 35:53Speaker 01

  No, never. I would probably golf once or twice during the entire season.

• 35:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wow.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  And I love golf, but I just didn't have the energy to swing a golf club or be outside for four hours and then go play a game. And some guys do it, and I could never do that. So leave for about, leave at about 2 o'clock, get to the ballpark, no later than 3. And then start the process. I call, you know, start the process, which is, you know, you maybe grab a quick bite to eat because you have a long day ahead of you.

• 36:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is this the peanut butter and jelly sandwich or is that right before?

• 36:23Speaker 01

  So, yeah, before I became gluten free, it was always peanut butter and jelly sandwich before the game.

• 36:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  But usually at 3 o'clock, it was like, you know, a grilled chicken sandwich or, you know, something semi-healthy, but it gets you to that pre-game meal. And, you know, so I would do my stretching and kind of get ready for my batting practice session. Take batting practice in the cage, kind of get loosened up in the cage, which is a T-drill. Do that T-drill for, you know, 15 or 20 minutes. Go back, do all my interviews, get that out of the way before batting practice. You go out to the batting practice and stretch, run, throw, take your ground balls, take your round of BP. And then it's like an hour of chill time before the game. So that's, that's when you kind of let everything sink in. If you do need to get treatment, you know, on injuries, whatever, you do that. If, if you need to get extra stretching, if you need to watch video, whatever

• 37:12Speaker 01

  it might be, you do that in between batting practice and the game. Then at about 6:00, 6:15, I grabbed that peanut butter and jelly sandwich, uh, again, before I became gluten free and, and then a cup of coffee because it's a long day and, uh, you kind of need a little jolt before the game. And I was on the field by 6:40.

• 37:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  Did you, um, was there any, um, mental, um, uh, concentration, meditation, prayer, anything like that?

• 37:38Speaker 01

  It was more of the, the routine got me locked in. I knew while I was doing my routine, the closer I got to game time, I looked at the clock, you know, and you always knew there's clocks all over big league clubhouses, right? No one wants to be late for, for a stretch or a meeting or, or a game. Um, so there's clocks everywhere and as the clock got closer to 7:05, I just slowly got locked in. I didn't talk to a lot of people before the game. I didn't, you know, I wasn't very chatty. I was, I was focused and I knew every single night that, that the fans of New York expected me to go out there and make my plays at first and hopefully get a hit or, or drive in a run. So I took that very seriously.

• 38:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Were you an anthem singer or an anthem hummer or?

• 38:20Speaker 01

  I prayed during the anthem. That was my time. That was my, you know, my Christian faith is very important to me and it's, if not for the God given ability that, that I have, I wouldn't be playing major league baseball. So always gave thanks to God during, uh, during the national anthem and, um, said some prayers for my family and friends or people that were struggling or whatever was happening. And that also helped too, because that was, you know, a minute or two where I could kind of lock in and, um, you know, get burdens maybe that are on my heart or on my mind and get them off my chest and then go out and play the game.

• 38:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  The anthem protests that have become a big deal in football have not hit baseball and there might be a million different reasons why. I'm just curious your thoughts on that. You know, you're not only a, a long time athlete now, retired athlete, sports commentator, but a bright guy who's involved in the real world. I'm curious what you make of those protests and especially, um, how it's affecting professional sports and the, the, the perspective that the public has on professional athletes.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. First of all, I, I definitely think that players, um, in leagues all over the world should speak out, uh, uh, you know, either for or against things that they, they feel strongly about. The problem is, is you know, the Yankees pay me to play first base. They pay me to get hits. They don't pay me while I'm on the field to be a distraction. And whether you agree or you disagree with whatever I'm standing up for during the game, you know, during the national anthem, especially when we're honoring the country and we're honoring those who have fought for our freedom, I just don't think that's the right platform. Now, a- a- and after the game, in the off season, when you're home and or you're in your

• 39:58Speaker 01

  own community that there's, there's issues going on, absolutely speak up because athletes and celebrities have a very strong platform. But whether it's the Dallas Cowboys or New York Yankees or Golden State Warriors, you know, we are paid to, to play a sport and we're paid to, while we're on the field, while we're in the uniform, to respect the rules of that league or that team. And I just don't think that the, the national anthem is a time to make that stand.

• 40:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  So I hear that argument. Here's a counter. Some people would say, you know, that a pro athlete, it's a little bit like Cinderella. When you're in the zone, when you're wearing the dress before midnight, you're a different person. Everyone's paying attention. When you're in uniform during a game, that's when you have the most leverage. And then, no matter how prominent an athlete you may be, if you're doing an interview even immediately after the game or during the off season with your local media or whatnot, and you say, hey, listen, this is a big problem that I see. It might be domestic violence, income inequality, police brutality. We know those stories get coverage, but compared to the leverage that you have during the game, it's like, what, one one thousandth, one ten thousandth?

• 41:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  And so, you know, I'm, so I'm taking the devil's advocate position. I could see why, man, if I'm an athlete, I know that the only way I have a chance to really raise hell is to do it right now. And you're saying that's inappropriate because, you know, you're essentially there to do one job and...

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Well, you're also an employee, right? So I have a really cool job at ESPN, right? If I took, you know, baseball tonight, tomorrow during the trade deadline show and said, hey, guys, just stop for five minutes because I have something I want to talk about, I'd probably be fired. You know, because I'm an employee and I have to do what I'm told when it comes to certain rules and regulations of now if the league says, hey, you guys do whatever you want, then hey, that's great, do whatever you want. But I think the NFL has seen the protests be a double edged sword. While they're proud of their players standing up for certain things or whatever it might be, they also have to understand that there's a whole lot of people that don't appreciate it.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  And you know, probably not the best time to be, you know, taking a stand right before a game when they know it's going to be a distraction.

• 42:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  There's also obviously a lot of class and ethnic racial considerations here. And I want to ask you about that on a baseball team. There are scholars who argue that sports teams are among the best institutions, along with the military, by the way, at building what they call social trust. Meaning, you know, basically you feel someone's got your back, even if you don't know them. And they say that sports teams in particular, and again, the military where people from very different backgrounds come together, you emerge from that as if you're, you know, you've got a lot in common. And I'd love you to talk about that for a moment. A, if you experienced it and B, if you think there's any way to kind of port that over into the real world without making everyone join the Yankees.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  I agree completely. You know, during my career, I played with black, white, Asian, you know, people from Dominican, Venezuela, wherever it might be. And we all got along. I mean, 99.9% of athlete teammates get along. Now, they don't be best friends, but get along on the field. Why? Because there's a common goal. In the military, why do people in the military get along? Because there's a common goal. And where I think we can use that in society is, let's not always harp on our differences. Because we have, me and you could spend an hour talking about what we disagree with. That would not be a productive hour time together. We would rather talk about interesting things in economics and sports and, and life and

• 43:45Speaker 01

  things that we, we enjoy about life, happy things in life, things that are positive. If we continue to harp on negative things in society or, or the mainstream media, you're going to have these issues. But sports and the military, as you said, were always focused on how do we win this game? How do we become a closer team to win this game for our fans and for our front office and our ownership or whatever it might be? Because let's not talk about, I'm sure we have differences. I'm sure we don't agree on every single thing. That's human nature. But what we can agree on is working hard together and showing up on time and being accountable to each other and working towards that common goal.

• 44:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let me ask you this about something you just mentioned about how we focus on the negative. It does seem to be a human trait. It does, however, also seem to be magnified by the current, meaning contemporary landscape, meaning communication media and so on. There are people who will do a comparison. If you look at like a European king in the 17th century versus like the middle billion of the world right now, that the life of the middle billion today is better than the king on every ground except housing, because palaces and castles are hard to be. But in terms of just about everything else, life has gotten so, so, so much better. And yet, we don't talk about that too much and acknowledge it. We do tend to focus on these differences often.

• 45:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  And I'm curious, look, you're an athlete, you're not a philosopher, a psychologist or whatever, but I'm curious to know if you have a perspective on that.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  Yes, it's a great perspective. One of the things I do when I pray is I thank God for being born in the United States. So I won the lottery just by being born in the United States. The freedoms that we have, the opportunities that we have, there's no guarantee. Obviously, there's a lot of pain and suffering and poverty that we're all trying to help and fix, but you have the opportunity because of the freedoms that we have in our country. And so, we can sit here and focus on all the negative things in our country, and there's plenty of them. We could fill 100 of these podcasts with all the negative things that are happening in our country.

• 45:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, we do that most weeks, just so you know.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  But let's wake up a little bit and be thankful for what we have, because there's a lot of places in this world. That if I was born into, I would not be even close to the person I am today, or even have close to the opportunity, because you start life with two strikes against you. In third world countries, or countries where you have no freedom. And so I'm just, I'm lucky to be born here and to live here.

• 46:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  Scholars say another way in which athletes and sports teams produce a social cohesion is that conflict resolution is handled really differently on sports teams. They say that outside of sports and the military, there's a lot of passive aggressive, right? So in an office world, you might send someone email with some snarky wording, as opposed to going up and saying, hey, listen, you did this, I did that, blah, blah, blah. Tell me about a case, or maybe a general scenario, maybe it's a teammate, maybe it was something, you know, Jeter was famous for being a good captain on a number of dimensions. Talk about a way that you saw a problem get resolved on a team that you think is very different from the real world.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  That's a great point, because I love it when guys bark at each other real loud for 20 seconds, and then it's over.

• 47:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Because that is way more effective at conflict resolution than a guy for three weeks, or the whole season, right? Being passive aggressive, and then creating this really weird situation around both these players. And then it permeates to the rest of the team, then you start having cliques. I would much rather, and I've done it with coaches, with players, where we've had it out, you know, almost fistfight, and then 20 minutes later, you're fine.

• 47:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  Give me a, for instance, what do you, what's the scenario, what do you say?

• 47:37Speaker 01

  2015, my third base coach, Joe Espada, who I love,

• 47:44Speaker 01

  told me to hold up at third base because I was going to score easily, ended up getting thrown out. And he just missed, just totally, just kind of botched the situation. And he knew he botched it, and I almost got hurt, I almost, you know, I had to kind of half slide, and it looked terrible, and we needed to run, and all these things. And so I went into the dugout, and I just started throwing stuff. I just, I just wet nuts, I had this like rage.

• 48:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  That doesn't sound very Tex to me.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  No, I had this like rage inside of me, because I was so mad at the situation. The situation lasted 15 minutes. I told Joe after the game, we're all good, hey, I know you're trying your best, and it was done. It was over with. And I think those type of situations, you see Tom Brady, one of the best of all time, barking at his coaches, barking at his offensive linemen, barking at his receivers. But guess what? People take less to go play for the Patriots. Coaches, you know, take demotions to stay with the Patriots because they want to be a part of the Bill Belichick, Tom Brady atmosphere that they create there.

• 48:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  My Freakonomics co-author Steve Levitt did some research and he found that pitchers essentially throw too many fastballs. Okay, so part of this is maybe mistaken belief and part of it is that many people are not good at randomizing, which is a useful trick when you're trying to, you know, in any game theory kind of thing. So let me just read you a tiny bit of this. I'm really curious to know what you have to say. When there are two strikes is when the scenario really happens. When there are two strikes, fastballs generate an OPS, that's on base plus slugging percentage, that is more than 100 points higher than non-fastballs. The authors calculate that if a team's pitchers reduce their share of fastballs by 10 percentage points, they would allow roughly 15 fewer runs in a season,

• 49:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  about 2% of their total runs.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Yep. And I agree 100%. The issue is, is you have to take the pitcher's skill and ability to perform that skill with two strikes. So the pitchers that can throw curveballs and changeups and sliders with two strikes, do it. The guys that maybe bounce that pitch or hang that pitch are going to throw fastballs and so they're going to get hit. So the best pitchers in baseball, they throw more sliders and curveballs and changeups with two strikes because they can control it better. And the last thing you want to do is get a guy down 0-2, throw three straight sliders in the dirt because you can't control that pitch,

• 50:15Speaker 01

  and then have to come back with a 3-2 fastball because the hitter knows that you can't throw a slider for a strike. You don't have any confidence, your catcher doesn't have any confidence, and you throw in an off-speed pitch for a strike. And the hitter's geared up for a fastball and that's why those numbers get up there.

• 50:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  So what we need to ask Levitt, and I'm sure this is in the paper and I don't have it off the top of my head, is whether they controlled for the efficacy of the pitcher.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right? Because you're saying the good pitchers won't do it.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  I agree. That, I think that's the issue. I think the best pitchers can't execute those pitches. I feasted my entire career was based on a guy, you know, not getting me to chase the curveballs and the sliders in the dirt and having to come with a fastball over the middle of the plate. That was the style of hitter that I was.

• 50:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, did you in your mind know whoever's on the mound, you know that they're the kind of pitcher who doesn't have the ability to throw the, the cutting?

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Yes. So that was the preparation that I had.

• 51:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  So, so I would ask the pitching coach if I didn't know this guy. Now, once I was in the big leagues for four or five years, I started knowing the players and then I would only ask the hitting coach, hey, this guy's a rookie. What's his percentage of off-speed strikes?

• 51:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  And if his percentage of off-speed strikes was really low, I'm just sitting dead red fastball. Why would I take into account, you know, a slider or change-up or, or, or split finger fastball that he doesn't throw for strikes? I'm gonna, I'm gonna bet that the numbers hold up. He's not gonna throw a strike with that off-speed pitch and he's gonna have to throw me a fastball that I can then hammer.

• 51:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Who were the pitchers that just plagued you during your season, during your career? Sorry.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  The guy that I had the worst time against was James Shields. Did not hit him well, did not hit Justin Verlander well.

• 51:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, join the, join the crowd.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  And then, and then you have weird guys like, like Aaron Sealy, who, who didn't throw more, you know, by the time I faced him, didn't throw more than 86 miles an hour. I just could not hit him. Um, and so, you know, some really good pitchers had my number. But there are also some guys that, you know, weren't all-stars every season that had my number as well.

• 52:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  And does it become self-enforcing after a while? A pitcher like Sealy, you think, man, I can't hit the guy.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  Sometimes it does. Yeah, confidence is huge in baseball. That's why. Baseball teams and baseball players are so streaky. You have these guys that hit seven homers in a month and don't hit one for six weeks. Or a pitcher that wins 14 straight games and then the last month of the season can't get out of the third inning. Because the confidence to swing at good pitches, to get good results, it builds on itself. And you've heard hitting is contagious. Well, it's not physically contagious, but mentally, when I see the three guys in front of me just got hits, I go up there going, hey, this guy can be hit today. You know, he might be an all-star, but this guy's gonna get hit because those three guys in front of me just got base hits and now I'm next.

• 52:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Were you ever totally lost at the plate?

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I mean, yeah, it happened. I had stretches, whether it was a week or even a month, where I said, this might be my last week in baseball. I am so bad right now. There is no way I'm getting another hit in Major League Baseball. I look awful, I feel awful, I can't get a hit. But then something just snaps. And it's just like in golf when you can't make a short putt. Like, you know, you go an entire round or maybe an entire week where you play three rounds and you don't make anything within four feet. You just can't make that putt. Or you're driver, you're snap hooking everything. And no matter what you do, no matter what you try, you just can't hit that driver straight. Happens in baseball all the time because it's a very hard skill. Hitting a baseball is still the hardest thing to do in sports.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  And you have guys on the mound that are trying to get you out. And if you're off a little bit mechanically, mentally, confidence-wise, and he's on, you can have some bad nights.

• 53:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, how do you get back to success? Because I'm sure you're trying to adjust. You're trying to adjust mechanically, psychically, and so on. What actually works?

• 54:06Speaker 01

  Shock the system. So, we talked about tricking the system, shocking the system. So, it's either taking more batting practice or taking no batting practice. It's changing your bat. It's changing the way you stand just a little bit, altering your stance just a little bit. Maybe just get like a hard workout in. Maybe I'm a little too jumpy, I got a little bit too much energy, let me get a hard workout in before the game. I'm gonna be a little slower, a little bit tired during this game. Or the opposite, hey, I'm exhausted, so I'm gonna sleep all day, I'm not gonna take batting practice, I'm gonna get a massage and really try to be fresh. It's just completely changing up your system.

• 54:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  Would you ever change the PBJ?

• 54:46Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I would go, I would go honey sometimes.

• 54:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  That was your- Peanut butter and honey, that was my-

• 54:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  Was that your slump food or-

• 54:53Speaker 01

  That was the slump break.

• 54:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, yeah, that's radical.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  I'm crazy.

• 54:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, you are. Um, for people, again, who don't play baseball or know baseball, um, I'd like you to describe a scenario. So you were a very, very, very good defensive first baseman, um, which is valuable and, but not necessarily so appreciated by the casual fan. There's one aspect of playing in the field, um, that I think, uh, people would love to hear about, which is what you're doing in your mind before every pitch. So I'd love you to describe, maybe pick a scenario, if it's a real one, all the better. And maybe it's a tight game and maybe there's a runner on first and maybe second and, uh, and maybe you're holding the runner, uh, depending. And then you're thinking, uh, here's my pitcher, there's the batter, what pitch is going to be thrown?

• 55:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  And what do I do if it's hit to third, to short, to second, to me on the ground and the air and so on? Just talk about that moment.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. So when I was at first base, I would actually, uh, play the entire scenario in my head. So I would say two and one, one out, ball hit to me, to my left, I'm going to second. Ball hit to my, you know, ball hit in front of me, I'm just getting the out, whatever it might be. So I would play the entire scenario ahead of time and I would actually position myself and then look to my right and left and maybe sometimes even behind me. And, and say, okay, well, if the ball's hit this way, I'm going to do that. If the ball's hit like this, I'm going to do that. So I was kind of, uh, I got bored during games. And so I started doing this probably five or six years into my career where I would actually play the game in my head in between pitches.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  And it kept me from getting bored, but it also had a really nice, um, uh, result that I actually was prepared for when those different balls were hit to me and it actually worked out.

• 56:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now, it, doesn't everybody do that? I mean, I remember learning that in Little League. I mean, that's-

• 56:41Speaker 01

  Well, everyone's supposed to do that, but a lot of guys don't.

• 56:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  Really?

• 56:44Speaker 01

  A lot of guys completely space out. I mean, listen, you, when no one's on, it's pretty easy. But when, when, when there's guys on base-

• 56:53Speaker 01

  It kills me to see fielders going to the wrong base, not being prepared for different situations, outfielders not hitting the cutoff man. These are little things in baseball that I learned when I was young that I don't think it taught anymore. I think you have a lot more players that are worried about analytics and don't spend the time on the nuances of baseball and the skills and the subtleties that make you a great player.

• 57:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. We recently interviewed Lance Armstrong on the show and he argued that he and his team started taking EPO because everybody else was doing it and that if they didn't, they were goners, that there was just no way to compete. You played in an era in which, kind of the end of the big steroid era, in which some of the best homerun hitters in history were turned out to have, many of them doping, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, and then a few of your very prominent teammates, great baseball players, Alex Rodriguez, Robinson Cano, Melky Cabrera, also were found to be doping. I'd love to hear about, first of all, let's start with this. Did you ever use performance enhancing drugs?

• 58:02Speaker 01

  No, never. And I told myself, I got offered my rookie year.

• 58:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  What'd you get offered?

• 58:07Speaker 01

  I don't even know what it was. I mean, I don't know what the names are.

• 58:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Like Bennies or something?

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Some pill. I'm not sure what it was. And a teammate, I'm not gonna say who offered.

• 58:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  But I mean, it was a teammate?

• 58:18Speaker 01

  A teammate, yeah. And he said, "Text, you can't play this game on milk and cookies." And I kind of just told him, like, you know, my flippant self at 22 years old, I said, "Well, I'm gonna try." And I told myself right then and there, if I have to take drugs, illegal steroids, to play this game, I'll retire. It's not something...

• 58:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  That's the way I was brought up. It's wrong. I can't stand people that make excuses for breaking the rules. You know, our union... Has made rules and agreed to rules because it's for the betterment of our entire union and for the betterment of the game of baseball. We agree to these rules. If you knowingly break those rules, you should be punished to the utmost degree. And I don't think our punishments are hard enough. I think we should have, you know, much stricter enforcement of the rules and much stricter punishments. And I was just, you know, one of the highlights of my career is I can look at kids, I speak to kids all the time, you know, speak to kids

• 59:22Speaker 01

  in Harlem and the Bronx and, you know, at home in Baltimore, wherever it might be. And one of the things I'm proudest to say of them is like, yeah, I had a nice career, but I didn't have to take steroids to make it. And you don't have to cut corners because what kind of message am I telling kids or telling my own children? I have a 12, 10, and 7-year-old. What kind of message am I telling them? Hey, kids, it's okay to break the rules. It's okay to cheat. It's okay to lie. It's okay to steal. These are just terrible things that we're teaching our children that you can go do these things in professional sports and get away with it and really just get a slap on the wrist.

• 59:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  I know you got to go. One more question for you. As I said, you had a very, very good career, way better than solid. Some people say about different players' careers solid. It was a long and very good career. There was a World Series. There were a lot of individual honors. You hit very, very well. You fielded great. The Hall of Fame, it's a funny thing. Election these days is contentious in part because the baseball writers who elect the Hall of Fame candidates, they've decided they don't want steroid players in the Hall, which is controversial. So there are a lot of guys who are not going in. I'm curious to know your feelings about it. Obviously, you want to get in. I'm curious to know whether

• 1:00:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  you feel you deserve it. I know you're a humble guy and you're probably not going to say yes, but I'd love to know what that thought process is like as you're in this period right now between the end of your career and when you're eligible.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I think about it, you know, definitely, but I don't think I'll get in. I Think that I had a great career under different metrics. I do believe that some of the steroid guys are already in and there, you know, there's some guys that have taken PEDs that are in the Hall of Fame. Everyone, everyone knows that. But I think you're going to start seeing some of those players get in. And I just think that, that under those metrics.

• 1:01:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  And that'll, and that'll keep you out.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  I'm not a Hall of Famer. Yeah. Yeah. 400 home runs. When, when guys were hitting 50 a year, you know, my 30 a year didn't look so good.

• 1:01:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  Don't you think they might redo the metrics a little bit and give extra points for playing clean?

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  I hope so. Yeah. If that's the case, I have a much better chance, but it's not something I think about more than a few times a year when we have these type of conversations, but it's not something that I think about all the time.

• 1:01:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  Did you lead the league in PBJs or were a lot of guys doing that?

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  I'm sure I did. I'm sure I did. And I also, you know, one of the cool stats that I do own is most hit by pitch in my career by a switch hitter.

• 1:01:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I got that, I got that hanging and, um, you know, one of the things I'm most proud of is, uh, is, is hitting 30 homers and driving in 100 runs for eight straight years. Because the first time I did it, I had to pinch myself. I said, I was a second year player playing for the Rangers and I said, oh my goodness, I just, I just hit 30 homers and drove in 100 RBIs. And being able to do that eight straight years is the thing I'm most proud of.

• 1:02:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah. It was a great career as a New Yorker. I enjoyed watching you with the Yankees and I especially enjoyed getting to talk to you today. So thank you so much.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:02:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  As you could probably tell, I really enjoyed this conversation with Mark Tashara. I hope you did too, and I hope you enjoyed getting this bonus episode. We will be back with our regular weekly episode as always, Wednesday at 11:00 PM Eastern Time. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. Our Hidden Side of Sports series was produced by Anders Kelto and Derek John with help from Alvin Melathe, Matt Stroup, and Harry Huggins. Our staff also includes Alison Kreglo, Greg Rippon, and Zach Lipinski. The music you hear throughout our episodes was composed by Luis Guerra. Our show can also be heard on NPR stations across the country. Check your local station for the schedule, also on Sirius XM, Spotify, and even your better airlines.

• 1:03:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Thanks for listening.

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  Stitcher.

• 1:03:24Stephen J. Dubner?

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