🤦🏼‍♂️ MLB Can't Do Anything Right

You know you’re in the dog days of summer when all there is to talk about in the sports world is baseball and purposely bad QB Tier lists.

And while our European counterparts are away on month-long holidays, we Americans are spending July and August doing what we do best:

Debating whether or not Dak Prescott is a top-15 quarterback.

Here’s what we have cooking today:

🗞 The Big Story: MLB Restores Baseball History, and People Aren’t Happy

📉 Biggest Loser: Gambling’s Dumbest Crook

🏆 Winner’s Circle: All-Star Games Are Dead, or Are They?

🗞 The Big Story

MLB is going to play a game here.

And fans aren’t happy about it.

You see, as a part of MLB’s Specialty Games - which have featured teams playing regular season games at:

• Fort Bragg in North Carolina

• Charles Schwab Field Omaha at the site of the College World Series

• The Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania

• The Field of Dreams in Iowa

The San Fransico Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals will be playing the next game in this series in Birmingham, Alabama next season.

The game will be played on June 20th, which is intentionally set around Juneteenth, and will be hosted at the oldest playable ballpark in the country, Rickwood Field.

Now, Rickwood is most notable for playing host to the Black Barons of the Negro League, which was the first professional team that Willie Mays played on in 1948 despite being only 17 years old.

Mays actually played in a Negro World Series that year with the Barons in which the Homestead Grays beat the Black Barons four games to one.

And the next year, Mays signed with the New York Giants at just 18 years old.

Now, since being built in 1910, Rickwood has seen some of the best players in baseball’s history from Satchel Paige and Babe Ruth to Bo Jackson and Michael Jordan.

(Ok, maybe MJ isn’t one of the greatest baseball players of all time but I still had to throw him in there.)

But in 1992 the stadium fell into a state of disrepair and was even threatened to be demolished as many historic Negro League ballparks had been before.

But a group called Friends of Rickwood formed in the 90s with the goal of restoring the ballpark and now, with help from MLB, the stadium will receive an additional $550,000 this year for renovations that include padding the outfield walls, making the dugouts bigger and upgrades to the playing surface.

The city of Birmingham has also allocated $2 million in its 2024 budget for Rickwood Field upgrades, which are set to include:

• Replacing concrete ramps

• Fixing rotted wood on the grandstands

• Repainting parts of the stadium

• Repairing other areas of “concrete, steel, and wood around the park”

Now, currently, Rickwood Field’s biggest event every year is the Rickwood Classic - which they hosted between 1988 and 2019.

Historically, the Birmingham Barons, a Double-A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, would play one game here per year which was halted due to COVID and lack of stadium repairs.

But now the promise of MLB coming to town could also mean the return of the Rickwood Classic, as well as various rumored SEC games.

However, not everyone is happy about this.

That’s because some fans are concerned that hosting an MLB game in the 10,800-person stadium will price local residents out of being able to experience a game at the historic ballpark.

And, for good reason, because as NBC Sports reports the first Field of Dreams game had an average ticket price of $1,237.

Even in the game’s second year, which featured a matchup between the Chicago Cubs and Cinicannit Reds, tickets still averaged $967 with prices ranging from $644 to as high as $2,281 on secondary sales sites.

But there is a solution…

As one Birmingham resident points out, a highly exclusive event like the Masters is able to avoid high mark-ups by offering their tickets through a lottery system.

This system allows a select number of fans the option to buy passes for the full four-day event for as little as $450.

While those same passes on the secondary market go for as high as $17,000.

But regardless, it’s going to be insane to watch an MLB game here likely with Willie Mays himself in attendance.

Good job MLB, now don’t mess up the tickets.

📉 Biggest Loser

Remember that Alabama baseball coach that got fired for allegedly gambling on his own team?

Well, new details of how it all went down just came out, and this crime turns out to be even dumber than we all originally thought.

Now, when the story broke in May all we knew was that Brad Bohannon was fired after sportsbooks across the country had to shut down gambling on an April 28th LSU vs. Alabama game because of suspicious wagers that were linked back to the Crimson Tide Head Coach.

But in a recent Sports Illustrated article, we learned who was actually behind all of this, and let me tell you - this guy was a fucking idiot.

His name is Bert Neff, a former college pitcher himself, and on April 28th he entered the BetMGM Sportsbook at Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati with more than $100,000 in hand.

Now, as I initially reported - that night’s matchup between #1 LSU and Alabama had basically no betting traffic.

In fact, FanDuel said that they didn’t even take a single bet on the game.

Which means some dude walking into a sportsbook with over six figures in cash raised some red flags.

But not just because of the money - which already exceeded the sportsbook’s established house limit on college baseball games.

It was also because Bert Neff stood at the betting window and basically tried to beg the staff to let him make the bet because he had “inside information” on the game.

Which he indicated was in the phone he was holding.

Now, Bert was, in fact, telling the truth - he did have inside information on his phone in the form of encrypted messages from Brad Bohannon himself on the app Signal where the Alabama Head Coach had just informed Bert that he’d have to scratch his ace from the line-up due to back tightness in favor of a sophomore who hadn't started a game in two months.

And the best part is that Bert Neff was so indiscreet with his text messages that the sportsbook’s security cameras could literally read the back-and-forth conversation Neff was having with Bohannon.

But wait, it gets worse.

Because Bohannon wasn’t the only coach Neff was texting.

In fact, Neff is also thought to be responsible for the firing of two University of Cincinnati assistants and the resignation of their head coach after an internal investigation revealed that the coaches were involved in Neff’s circle of insiders who help him bet on games.

And to top it all off, Neff’s own son - Andrew, is a pitcher on the team.

Now, neither his son nor the no re-signed head coach have been accused of betting on games or helping Neff do so but this still isn’t the end of it.

That’s because, Xavier - a school also located in Cincinnati, is currently being looked into by the NCAA for similar offenses.

University coaches have even admitted that they know of Neff but only through recruiting circles - however, it seems like the NCAA has reason to believe they were also giving Neff insider tips for him to bet on games.

And if that’s true, then this one guy will have taken down three different Division I baseball coaches in 12 months, all while likely landing himself in major trouble for gambling with inside information.

Now, I should point out that we’re still not sure why these coaches were willing to tip off Neff on changes they were making - I mean this dude was literally just a random little league coach in Indiana.

Which leads me to speculate that they must have been getting some cut of the action.

But regardless, this might be my favorite sports story so far this year…

🏆 Winner’s Circle

The average cost for one ticket to this year’s MLB All-Star game was $1,004.

For that price, I could pay for an entire month of rent.

Not to mention the ridiculous price of parking and MLB’s inflated cost of food and drink, it makes you wonder:

Why does anyone go to these things?

And frankly, that’s a fair question because while this year’s All-Star Game was the fifth in the last seven years to set a record low in TV ratings, the game also set a record high for the average ticket price.

So what’s happening here?

Well, the inverse correlation between ratings and ticket prices seems to indicate two things:

1. People value unique, in-person experiences more than ever

2. It’s hard to capture people’s attention when they’re at home

For a deeper dive into the changing trends and economics of all-star games across all sports, listen to this week’s episode of Sportonimics where my co-host, Jake, and I breakdown our experiences working for a baseball league that just put on an All-Star Game and Home Run Derby.

Also available on Apple Podcasts.

And I actually got a first-hand look at this on Monday and Tuesday this week when I was in Milwaukee, WI for the American of Professional Baseball’s All-Star Game and Home Run Derby.

For some quick context: The AAPB is a client of ours, we do social media marketing for the league. The league itself is what would be traditionally considered “independent baseball” which basically means it’s minor league-level talent without the direct affiliation to an MLB club.

And even though this wasn’t the MLB All-Star Game and Home Run Derby, it still was eye-opening to me to see the value proposition of both events play out in person and contrast them with the MLB equivalent.

Price:

• Cheapest All-Star Game Ticket

  • MLB: $393

  • AAPB: $9

• Average All-Star Game Ticket:

  • MLB: $1,004

  • AAPB: $12

• Most Expensive All-Star Game Ticket

  • MLB: $3,000+

  • AAPB: $44 (includes all you can eat and drink)

Experience:

If you take away the star power of an MLB All-Star game, both leagues really boil down to the same thing: watching highly competitive baseball with the league’s most talented players.

In both instances, the fans were packed, the energy was good and the effort on the field was extremely high.

Goal for the League:

Again, not much is different here between MLB and the AAPB. The all-star game in any sport has always been used as a midseason reset. Teams get a chance to take a breather and the league gets a chance to set its agenda for the rest of the season.

This is done by solidifying the storylines and stars that they’ll be promoting the rest of the year, establishing a new baseline of content and broadcast quality, and giving fans a really cohesive experience that represents the best of the league.

At the end of the day, these all-star games are self-servicing, meaning they’re not optimizing for reach, they’re optimizing for engagement.

These events require heavy context of the league to understand what’s going on and what’s at stake - context that only consistent fans of the sport will know.

I documented both experiences and contrasted them to their MLB equivalents on TikTok.

I’ll give you one guess as to which league’s experience was cheaper…

⏱ In Other News

• A fan taking a selfie caused a 20-person pile-up at the Tour de France.

• Did you have a Phiten Necklace? If so, you might be entitled to compensation.

• I’ve announced the 9 finalists for the Mic’d Up Football Job. If you’re one of the 9, you got an email…

👋 Happy Friday and go USA 🇺🇸 I’m looking forward to a soccer team of ours actually winning something for once.