World Baseball Classic with an epic ending

Do we need to have the discussion about where Adam Gold is?

Is he just playing hooky? Yeah, he's on a voyage with eighth graders in DC. Oh wow!

Wow! Yep, a field trip voyage. He'll have a week worth of stories when he returns.

I know. We might have to do a daily check-in with that. The bus ride alone is the stuff of legends for field trips like that. I'm telling you, I would love to be a fly on the wall.

That'd be great. Oh my God. I was with somebody recently and they were like, I remember a bus trip we did. I think this was high school and they were like, yeah, you could sleep in the luggage rack. I was like, yeah, that's how skinny and small I was.

Yes. Joining us now, a man who's never been skinny. He's always been burly and cut. He came out of the womb swole because he looks like Mike Trout.

Only cooler and more exciting. Nothing was more exciting than seeing two of the baseball's best show down in the final out of the World Baseball Classic. Joining us now to talk about it is Darren Vaught, broadcaster with Team USA, Hi Pulling Hoops, ESPN, ACC Network, and he hosts a weekly ACC baseball podcast with former big leaguer Danny Graves that is not yet up on his link tree, but it will be soon. Darren Vaught, what's going on, man? Hey, he's always good, man.

I hope you're doing well. It's been a while since we did this sort of thing. So obviously given the game, the big moment last night, excited to talk baseball with you.

I'm pulling back the curtain a bit. Darren and I also share a former job on our resume as producers of The David Glenn Show, and I'm sure like me, when you're putting information about the guest into the screen so that the host of the time, David Glenn, could read it, you're looking at their Twitter bio to see like, all right, what do they list themselves as doing, right? So I was doing that before the show, trying to get things straight, and then Darren was like, oh, will you mention the ACC podcast? And I was like, of course, sorry. I think it's good that you told me to promote that. I wanted to. I'm not trying to sell you out. It's not a self-promotion. It's what I want to do.

I want to get that information accurate. So then I was like, well, you need to update your Twitter bio. And then he was like, wait, no, my Twitter bio is up to date. And then I realized it was the link tree in the Twitter bio that still has the link to an old podcast. And we need to update that with the new podcast.

That was a lot, but I just wanted to let the listeners know that that's how we roll in this world. So update that link tree, my friend. I got it. I'm on it.

I'm on it. But World Baseball Classic last night was awesome. Did you watch every game of the tournament?

No. So, you know, I've had a lot of people ask me and obviously being a USA baseball guy, I've got the best interest in that tournament. It felt like, and I'm sure a lot of listeners can identify with this. It was just like a tricky time for it. Now the games at 6 a.m., you know, there's not first and second round college basketball on at that time, right?

Fire away. I've also had some ACC baseball assignments to eat up some of that time and some travel involved with that. So honestly, I didn't really check in until like the semifinals, but I'm glad I did, because that's when Trey Turner decided he was going to be Captain America.

And then obviously we got last night what we got in the final. So, no, I was not an every game consumer, although, again, I get that question a lot because I think it's fair to assume that I would be. Yeah.

All right. Well, let's talk about that specifically, because, you know, March Madness, I know that everybody has this in the sports world. We see a lot of times sports trying to dodge, you know, NFL windows, like let's not put our marquee events up against those things. You see, you know, college football, bowl games and NFL trying not to step on each other's toes a little bit. And you would think, even though it's a global event, obviously American television views are important to big dollars. So trying not to do it in March Madness would be to its advantage. But there are a lot of other things that go into the schedule for the World Baseball Classic.

Is there any proposal to put it any other time of year, specifically looking at pausing a season to be able to put one of these in? Is that ever something that's a point of discussion? It hasn't been to this point, but honestly, especially with the success of this year's World Baseball Classic, I wouldn't put it past at least a discussion for future years, because when this thing first got put into play in the early 2000s, it was a huge cause for concern because they wanted to do it at this time, right? Major League teams are like, I don't know, like we got to have guys in spring training.

And obviously those teams still, there are still teams that have those issues, right? There were stars that were not able to play with their nations in this World Baseball Classic because their big league teams put the kibosh on it. And I think we just needed to see it get some success as an international event. Like soccer has, right? There are leagues that stop for World Cup play. Baseball's never had a World Cup.

Yeah, it's been in the Olympics, but most of the time it's done with amateurs. This is something that is in partnership with major league baseball. I think given the success of the event, and as long as that continues, there's room for at least a conversation for doing it, you know, middle of a season, although the big league teams who are in the hunt, especially are going to have even more issue with that, I think probably. So I don't see it moving anytime soon for better or worse, right?

It's a tricky, tricky thing to nail down. And remind me, do we still have baseball in the Olympics? I know it was like an in and out thing and maybe I'm misremembering, but it felt like the World Baseball Classic was... It was in in Tokyo and not again. So it's TBD for future Olympics. It was just sort of the one-off there in Tokyo in Tokyo for the one Olympics, but it's going to go up to a vote basically every cycle. So who knows, right?

Sometimes it'll be in, sometimes it'll be out. It's ridiculous in that way. Well, do you think we'd be better off just picking one or the other, either make the Olympic Baseball big and try and have players do that or say, forget Olympic Baseball and let's go all in on the World Baseball Classic? I mean, you know, there's some sports where the... Like you talk about the World Cup is the biggest thing in its sport.

For golf... It's from the Olympics. Yes, but for golf, you know, winning a major is much more than winning a gold medal, right? You know, so it's different. Do you think we'd be better off going with the Olympics or the World Baseball Classic, just like only focusing on one of those two? Yeah. I mean, you know me, I'm going to vouch for more baseball.

There's a way to do both. And it's out of the nature of each situation, there is that Major League Baseball partnership with the World Baseball Classic. We can guarantee we're going to be able to get the best at the actual best players from each country in those games. With the Olympics, because there's not as close a tie there with the International Olympics Committee, it's not going to be a guarantee that we can sort of wedge this stipulation in where MLB players can play.

People who play professionally in Japan, the second best league in the world, can play. So as long as it's sort of separated, where, you know, say Olympics can be free agent types, guys who are just out of college and have not begun their pro career types, sort of like what we got in Tokyo, minor league players, prospects, you know, there's room for both because then they're totally different tournaments. But I do think if you're going to pick one or the other, the World Baseball Classic has the potential to be, and obviously there's not the decades and decades of history like there is with the world cup, but there was a first world cup, right?

And, and it had to build its way up to what it is now. I think the World Baseball Classic has that kind of potential, especially with the best player in the world right now, being Japanese, the second best player, arguably right. I'm not here to do the rankings, but Shohei Ohtani is the best player in the world by my estimation.

Mike trout is the second best player in the world by my estimation. Both of those teams in the final had the two facing off. I mean, like this is an opportunity to capitalize upon so that you can lift this event up to where it, it does become sort of the world cup of baseball. And, you know, the guys love playing in these tournaments, right?

You see the quotes, you see the reactions, even the U S players who lost last night in the championship game in heartbreaking fashion. Mike trout said it's the 10 most fun days he's ever had. Mike trout, who, I mean, he's assumedly had a lot of fun days playing baseball.

I don't know. I think in that, in that kind of our problem with Mike trout, doesn't it look like the bar is low and how much, how much fun he has. Like, it'd be kind of like giving away the game.

They're like, ah, so you admit this is the most fun. Like if we get you off the angels, we can do something else with you. I saw a tweet.

I cannot remember who sent it out. So I hate that I can't attribute this to, to whomever said it, but they were like, ah, once again, Mike trout's angels teammates, keeping him away from success. That's a show. Hey, obviously they play with the angels together. Is there any other reservation, uh, from baseball owners or whatever? Is it all about players getting hurt? Like the potential other players, even if not hurt than like usage outside of, you know, their team.

I know for, for pictures, it may not be direct injury as much as it is. Well, you know, we've got X number of innings for you charted for the season. If you give away 15 to the world baseball classic, that's 15 fewer for us. Is it, is it merely that and guys getting hurt, which we saw Edwin Diaz get hurt, right? That's going to stink for the Mets and every owner would be like, Oh no, I don't want that. But I feel like owners have to realize, I mean, again, like I said, in the world cup and the long term, if the best players are in this thing, it grows baseball and it makes your product more lucrative. And there's every reason to believe, you know, Trey Turner, Kyle Schwarber, Otani, you Darvish, all these guys were getting displayed and marketed and like, yes, it is terrible luck when a guy gets hurt, especially the way it went down, you know, not even playing the game, but yeah.

Can you as team USA representative get the word out of like, Hey, there is risk involved in this. Absolutely. But there is also a big payoff in that if all the stars are in it, it becomes a huge event. Baseball comes a bigger deal, and then all your stars are, you know, um, worth more and all your teams are worth more.

Yeah. And I'm not, I mean, you know, I'm not here to make bold predictions, but I do think the timing is interesting in that major league baseball teams individually by themselves have more of a reason than ever to try to promote extra before when you would make an argument for something else and where it's like, Hey, it's promoting the game, it's promoting the game, and that's going to lead to more dollars and cents for you later. Eventually they could laugh in your face and point to their RSN local TV deal and say, well, we don't need that. Like, and, and, and as a matter of fact, we barely even need viewers for this money to get into our pockets for those.

Right. So it's like the Pittsburgh pirates argument is the TV money is so good or was, and has been for so long because of this format of the RSNs, which is breaking down because diamond sports who owns a lot of them, most of them has filed for bankruptcy and it's going to shake up the way local TV baseball games are distributed and teams are no longer going to have that revenue stream. So yeah, like, I think it makes total sense to lean into this from a promotional aspect, no matter how grandiose it is, right? If you, if you are the pirates and you don't have a star player who's partaking in these events, you need the game to be as popular as it's ever been, right?

Whether it's in Pittsburgh or Florida or California, like across the board, you need the game to be as popular as it's ever been. If you're going to fashion another way to get that money back that you were once getting from your RSN TV deal, when you no longer are getting that money, which again, is going to happen very, very soon. And it's going to be, it's going to force small market using that air quotes teams to no longer pretend to be small market teams that can't afford things. And you're going to actually see them, okay, you're in that situation, right? So they're more incentivized than ever to lean into something like this.

That's going to grow the game, grow the game, make it buzzy and as popular as ever. Darren Vaught, broadcast for Team USA, and check out his weekly ACC baseball podcast with Danny Graves, former major leaguer. Appreciate the time and a tribute to David Glenn.

I didn't do too bad, but that kind of went over the clock. But always good to talk to you for as long as possible. Follow him on Twitter at Darren Vaught. Appreciate you, man. Hope to see you in person sometime soon. Yeah, for sure. Looking forward to it.