May 4, 2022 • 49 mins
The Kentucky Derby is this weekend, but one of the sport’s most notable—and notorious—figures won’t be there. Bob Baffert has had more than 30 of his horses fail drug tests and was subsequently banned from Churchill Downs for two years due to doping allegations. Sports Illustrated senior writer Pat Forde joins us to discuss the controversial horse trainer.
The Netflix show Cheer took viewers inside the world of competitive cheerleading and made stars out of its athletes and coaches. Our producer Jess Yarmosky sits down with the Queen of Cheer, Monica Aldama, to discuss winning her latest national championship and the sport’s explosion in popularity.
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MLB teams are using the shift more than ever. SI staffer Emma Baccellieri explains why that is, why the shift is so effective—and why baseball is changing the rules next season.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
On this episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly, the Netflix show
Cheer took viewers inside the world of competitive cheerleading and
made stars out of its athletes and coaches. Our producer
Jess R. Mooski sits down with the Queen of Cheer,
Monica Aldama, to discuss winning her latest national championship and
the sports explosion in popularity, and later MLB teams are
(00:25):
using the shift more than ever. SI writer m A.
Bachelari explains why that is, why the shift is so effective,
and why baseball is changing the rules next season. But first,
The Kentucky Derby is this weekend, but one of the
sports most notable and notorious figures won't be there. Bob
Bafford has had more than thirty of his horses failed
(00:47):
drug tests and was subsequently banned from Churchill Downs for
two years due to doping allegations. SI senior writer Pat
Forty joins us to discuss the controversial horse trainer. It's Wednesday,
May fourth. I'm your host, John Gonzalez from Sports Illustrated
and I Heart Radio. This is Sports Illustrated Weekly. Get
(01:13):
into the finish and the Kentucky Derby. Here's the wire,
Black Friend doesn't again the spirit. That's what the Kentucky Derby.
I got some horrible news Mendina's spirit our Derby horse
tested positive for data method zone. I got the biggest
(01:36):
gut punch in racing for something that I didn't do.
Churchill Downs cracking down, releasing a bombshell just at for
four o'clock today, the best known name in the sport
of horse racing is now suspended for two years from
the Louisville Track and others owned by Churchill Downs. Messing
(01:56):
with the run for the Roses is considered a mortal
sin in racing, and Bafford has done exactly that. A
Spirit became just the second medication d Q in the
history of America's oldest continuous sporting event. Even the biggest
name and the most recognizable figure in the sport had
to face this truth, as delivered by Churchill Downs. Nobody
(02:16):
is bigger than the Kentucky Derby. Pat forty, Welcome back
to Sports Illustrator Weekly. John, Thank you thanks for having
me give us some background on Bob Bafford and his
place in horse racing history. You can make a convincing
argument that Bob is the greatest trainer in the history
(02:39):
of a very very old sport. He's one six Kentucky
Derby's was seven last year until the disqualification, which is
the heart of the story. UH sixteen triple Crown races overall,
and h has established himself as the guy who's the
big personality, gets the best horses, gets the richest owners,
(03:01):
and finds his way into the winner circle more than
anyone in the big races. So, as you mentioned, six
different Kentucky Derby winners would have been seven. The Kentucky
Derby is this weekend. Baffort will not be there. He
was banned from Churchill Downs for at least two years.
Explain to everybody what happened for that to transpire. Bob's
erstwhile one Kentucky Derby winner for a period of about
(03:26):
a week Medina's Spirit across the finish line first, but
then uh failed a drug test for an excessive amount
of beta methasone, which is a allowable substance, but on
race day can only be at a certain level, and
this hourse had a medical overage of that level. UH,
and so he was disqualified. And this was the latest
(03:50):
in a spate a very high profile positive drug tests
for Bafford horses, including one in the Kentucky Oaks, which
is the second biggest race that Churchill Downs puts on.
So the Kentucky Derby is the most sacrosanct event in
thoroughbred racing. And while there is has been a I
(04:12):
think alarming tolerance of medicating and possibly just outright cheating
and drugging horses in therbid racing, you don't mess with
the Kentucky Derby, and he messed with it and now
he is facing a two year ban as a result. Yeah.
As you wrote in the piece, Churchill Downs is sacrosanct
and it's considered off limits for these types of things.
(04:33):
And yet Bafford was caught in violation and Churchill Downs
hasn't just banned him, right, They've removed imagery of him.
You wrote that they've basically deep badvertised the grounds. Yeah. Right.
His barn, Barn thirty three on the backside, was the
the gathering spot for fans for media curious, uh, you know,
onlookers every year virtually from seven when he first came
(04:58):
to the Derby, actually ninety six Kevin here through last year.
He had an incredible run and people flocked there and
he had a wall that was covered outside of the
barn with you know, plaques commemorating his Derby wins and
his triple Crown horses. He's had two of those. There's
only been thirteen in history. He's had the two most
recent American pharaoh in and justifying, and those plaques are
(05:23):
all gone. That is now just a plain beige wall
the stalls of horses where he usually brought in a
powerhouse squad with him from California for not just the
Kentucky Derby, but other races in the spring. In Churchill
Downs empty there used to be a Baffort lounge on
the second floor grandstand at Churchill Downs. That's now the
(05:45):
Ben Jones Lounge, which is the other trainer who to
have won six Derbys. So I guess Johnny would say
that this just has all the makings of a bad
breakup or a bad divorce, wherein one couple through all
the other couples, one spouse, through the other house's belongings,
all out on the yard basically and said get lost. Yeah,
I mean, these two were so symbiotic Bafford and Churchill
(06:08):
Downs for so long. And yet, as you mentioned, Medina's
spirit popping that positive wasn't a one off incident. It
was the fifth violation for Badford in thirteen months of
Churchill downs bans him as a result, and Badford does
not take this well. He goes on Fox News and
he rails against cancel culture in this unhinged rant. We
live in a different world now, this this America is
different and uh, this it was like a chancel culture
(06:33):
kind of a thing. I'm wondering though, how he's taking
it lately. What did he and his lawyers have to
tell you? Uh, well, his lawyer is still pretty bellicos.
He's got a couple of guys who represent him, and
they insist that he has been maligned, unfairly singled out,
that they can come up with reasonable explanations for each
(06:54):
of these medication overridges. Uh and that as Bob Baffort's
a big name, they wanted to make an example of him. Uh. So,
you know, Baffort and Churchill downs. It's really it feels
like it's gotten personal. So it's been a ren escalating
war of words. And for Churchill not just to ban him,
(07:15):
but to basically scrub Baffort from the premises, tells you
how it feels and Baffort will continue to I think,
to fight in any way possible. He has not laid
down and accepted really any of the rulings that have
gone against him, and he's lost several of them recently
in court as he's tried to get in this ban overturned.
I expect him to continue to be a thorn in
(07:37):
the side of Churchill Downs until they let him back
into UH to saddle horses. But it's not just Churchill
Downs accusing Bafford of this, right, I mean, none of
these allegations are new. More than thirty horses have tested
positive in the past the combination of drugs. What other
states and tracks have had these same sort of accusations
leveled against Bafford. Well, Bafford he did have two big
(08:00):
positive tests in Arkansas at Hot Springs there with two
high level horses, UH and then also had one at
Santa Anita, his home base in southern California. So yeah,
these are things that that have not just been it's
not just been a Churchill problem, it's been a Baffort
problem and UH it's followed him around the country and
(08:21):
it's interesting to see that some other tracks, even like
he hasn't had a problem a regulatory problem in New York,
but New York has opted to try to ban Bafford
as well from from its racing there and obviously will
take him out of the Belmont Steaks. He's not going
to be able to race at the Preakness in Baltimore,
so he's effectively out of this Triple Crown. And we'll
(08:42):
see how long those tracks continue to try to exclude
Bob Bafford from their races, because I mean, the races
will go on without him and people will still show
up and bet. But if you want the casual fan
to show any interest, you want Bob Bafford there, but
he's got to be able to do it within the
rules of the game. Yeah, it feels like the controversy
around Bafford really ramped up in December when Medita Spirit died.
(09:07):
Santa Anita official say Medina Spirit collapsed after a morning
workout and died of a probable cardiac event. The veterinary
team took blood, hair, and urine samples which were sent
to the California Horse Racing Board a full necropsy, and
that really put the spotlight back on him, and not
in a good way he's had seventy four horses die,
not all race related, but still it feels like a
(09:28):
really big number. I'm wondering what people inside the horse
racing community, other trainers feel about Bafford's methods. Well, that's
a great question. Uh, and I'd say there's a split,
because there's still there's a lot of people that respect him,
admire him, appreciate the way he's kind of elevated the
the profile of the sport at times, and a lot
(09:50):
of them training the way he does training your horses hard,
or uh, the way that he will build up to
big races, or quite frankly, maybe even the way that
horses are medicated. So there is a certain school among
the trainers and and other people in the throwbred industry
who do not look at him as a pariah. And
then there are others who absolutely do and and think
that he has been getting away with with a lot
(10:12):
worse than what he's been caught with, even though there
has not been evidence of that. But one of the
big problems with horse racing is that most people have
felt there is a common thread and undercurrent that the
medications have been ahead of the testing for quite some time.
Somewhat similar to the way baseball used to be, the
way Olympic sports are. And if the sport is that
(10:33):
dirty top to bottom and he's that much better than
everybody else, then there's a lot of people to think, Okay,
there's a reason why he's that much better than everybody
Else's not that he's an exalted trainer per se, although
I don't think anybody doubts his wordsmanship. But what makes
him so much better, Well, maybe it's the same thing
that made Lance Armstrong so much better in the Tour
de France. Yeah, that's a really great point that you
(10:55):
bring up about the medications maybe being ahead of the testing.
Two years ago, the U. S. Attorney's Office charged twenty
seven people with essentially international doping scheme, and in it
they said that the standardized testing can't really detect these
designer drugs. So do we think that like a lot
more horses could be on performance enhancers that we don't
know about. I think they certainly have been. And whether
(11:17):
that that federal crackdown changes that or not, I don't know.
And again I can't I'm not sitting here saying Bob
Bafford drugged his horses or so and so drugged their horses. Now,
the people that were caught in that federal sting, Yeah,
there's proof that they did it. But is there a belief, Yeah,
that there's been a lot of designer drugs going around
race tracks and and that horses have been ramped up
(11:40):
on those for for quite a while. Yes, yes there is.
Bafford is obviously the biggest example of this problem within
horse racing, but he's not the exception, right, I mean,
he's sort of the rule. Yeah, No, I mean I
think that there there are plenty of people out there
who believe that. That's just kind of one of the
things that you have had had to do over the
(12:00):
last couple of decades to succeed in thoroughbred racing. Is
you know, if if your competitors are medicating their horses
with whatever the substances, you better find a way to
do it as well. So the guys who have been
caught in this sting are not necessarily the only people
perpetrating under the table medication, just the way in the
(12:23):
the FBI UH scandal in college basketball they caught some,
but everybody else was doing it as well. We're spending
a lot of time here talking about Bafford and these
other trainers and the people that are involved in it,
But I'm wondering about the actual animals and the impact
on their health and their lifespan and who's watching out
for them. Well, I mean that's a huge question and
(12:45):
it's been one of the I think real lightning rod
topics and horse racing is, you know, are these animals
basically being abused? Are they being drugged just so they
can run and then be sold quickly for for breeding right?
And their health and uh, longevity is compromised in that way.
(13:05):
And one of the big problems in the sport is
that these are three year olds that compete for the
Triple Crown. Three is a young age for a horse.
They are pushed hard to be ready at basically a
premature age. What's the stress level of that, what's the impact?
How many get injured? And it's pretty shocking number how
many horses that if you pushed them towards the Kentucky
(13:25):
Derby and the Triple Crown either don't race again or
never the same again. Trainer Chad Brown, who actually has
a favorite in this year's Derby, said, you know that
there is often a price to be paid for taking
a big swing at the Kentucky Derby, and that's your
horses just may not recover from being pushed that hard
that early. Yeah, Bafford took a lot of big swings,
(13:48):
as you mentioned, and he was basically held up as
a legend in this sport and now has had this
fall from grace. How do people who may be used
to exalt by Badford think about him now? I mean,
what's the overarching thought on Bob Bafford in the sport?
I think there's a lot of disappointment, disillusionment, anger even.
(14:12):
I mean, I'm a guy, I'll be honest. I had
a great relationship with Bob. Haven't spoken him for a
while now, but he was incredibly media friendly. He was available,
he was glib, he was funny. Uh. You know, you
deal with enough football and basketball coaches who are paranoid
and standoffish, and then you go to the racetrack and
it's like, hey, the rock star of the sport is like, yeah,
(14:33):
come on buy anytime. You know, what do you need
da da da, you know, and talk to him for
an hour. So you like those kind of people in
our business. But that doesn't necessarily mean they're doing everything
the way they're supposed to be doing them. And so,
you know, I think that there were a lot of
people and I'd probably put myself in this boat that
was like you kind of wondered and you you were like,
(14:53):
is this all legitimate? And then these tests keep popping
up and finally it's like, you know what, you I
have an excuse for all of them. But the accumulative
effect is it's it's just not believable. It's not believable
that you aren't improperly medicating your horses. So what happens
with him now moving forward? Because I think a lot
of people, uh if they had, if they were subjected
(15:15):
to this kind of scrutinty and they had had this
uh fall from grace, maybe they would go away. But
it seems from your reporting that he has designs on
staying in the sport right. Absolutely, He's still got some
deep pocket owners who believe in him and know that
he can get their horses to the top level. UH.
In April, he bought a two point three million dollar
(15:36):
two year old with Amr Zadan, who is the owner
of Medina spirit UH and the owner of Tava and
this year's Kentucky Derby, which had been in Badford's born
and so you know, the belief is, you know, you
don't spend that kind of money on horses to see
if they're gonna be okay in the sixth race at Aqueduct.
You're just taking a swing at the big races. Uh.
And so if Badford's going to continue to have that
(15:58):
clientele and contin need to be able to spend that
kind of money on good horses, I expect that he
he will certainly attempt to be in the game and
at the top of the game for years to come.
He's got the money, he's taken those swings, but he's
still suspended from the Kentucky Derby for two years. Do
you think we'll see him back there again? I think
(16:21):
he has every intention of being back there. Uh. And
if Churchill Downs two year band runs out, I don't
think they would have much recourse to keep him from
coming back. So I would expect Bob Baffort on the
first Saturday and May is saddling a horse at Churchill
Downs to compete in the derby, and there will be
some gritting of teeth from people to Churchill Downs Incorporated.
(16:42):
All Right, So Bafford is out, but then that leaves
somebody in his place. Tell us about his assistant and
the lottery ticket he told you about. Yeah, fascinating wrinkle
there that while Bob Bafford is out, his horses are
in right, Messier and Taba, two of his star three
year olds that finished one two in the San da
Nio Derby. They were transferred out of Baffort's born in
(17:03):
March when it became clear that he had exhausted all
his legal options to try to get into the derby,
and they were given to Tim Yaktine, who had been
a former Baffort assistant. Uh, it's a really a pretty
low profile trainer, like a guy who's never been to
the derby and really never been close to the derby.
Has had some decent horses, but this is a guy
who's never really operated at that level, and now all
(17:24):
of a sudden he inherits two incredibly talented horses. They
run one two in Santa Anita and they're going to
the derby and they're gonna be, you know, among the
five or six horses that have a chance to win
this thing. Most people think, And uh, yakteen, he's he's
He's an interesting guy, uh friendly, but by no means
ready for this spotlight at all. He's never had any
(17:45):
spotlight on him in his life, and so he's kind
of dealing with this. And he did have a great
quote about it where he said that he felt like
a lottery ticket fell in his lap and he's just
trying to get to the window to cash it. And
I think that that's kind of the where he is.
It's it's it's an incredible opportunity, but also a lot
of pressure that comes with this spot This is quite
(18:07):
a story. You can read his excellent piece about Bob
Bafford and horse racing on si dot com and we'll
link to it in our show notes. Pat forty as
always great work, Thanks for this, Thank you John. After
a break, we look at the world of competitive cheerleading
and the Netflix show that made the sport explode in popularity.
(18:38):
They've won the Grand Championship several times. They could beat anybody.
People from all over the country come here to cheerful Monica.
Where is it located? Where I guess I'm going there.
My goal was to be the best cheer program in
the country. On January, Netflix released the docuse series Cheer
(19:07):
which made stars out of the Navarro College cheerleading team
and its coach, Monica Aldama. First of all, none of
us had a clue that this show would be popular.
I mean it's it is cheerleading, and cheerleading does have
a bad rapp It has a stereotype of, you know,
this typical main girl, little popular person that's just trying
(19:28):
to look cute too. The boy ed everything you're not
I'm and that's not what cheerleading has become at all.
(19:53):
Last month, Monica Aldama and her team won their second
national championship in three years and their fifteenth overall and
our Van clark Ed Junior college national champion within ninety
nine to one. It was redemption for Navarro. They won
the n c A College Nationals in nineteen, which was
(20:16):
documented on the first season of cheer In. Their championship
was canceled due to COVID and in their rival Trinity
Valley Community College took back the crown, which was seen
on the second season of Cheer. Our producer Jess R.
Moski has watched the show more times than she'd like
to admit. She sat down with Monica Aldama to discuss
(20:37):
her latest national championship. Here's Jess with the Queen of
Cheer Monica. First, congratulations on winning your fifteenth title. That
is amazing. How does this one feel different from the others?
The first one was amazing. We've never done it before
and there were zero expectations from anyone. But the more
(20:59):
you in, the more people think you should win. And
so I think over the years there's been a tremendous
amount of pressure on myself that I put on myself, um,
because I don't want to disappoint anyone. I don't want
to disappoint the school, or the community, or our alumni
or anyone. And then of course cheer came out and
(21:21):
the whole world became invested in what we were doing.
So it was the pressure that I already had times
a million, and um, coming off such a tough year
last year, I think that I just thought so much
relief after we went out there and did our job.
I mean, I knew that we had put in the work.
I knew that we were ready. And that's the only
(21:41):
thing that I know that I can do every year
is go and have zero regrets that as their coach,
I just need to know that I've done everything that
I can to prepare them and get them ready, and
I knew I had done that. It's already a very
difficult thing to execute. Our job is to make it
look easy, so hopefully we do that, but it's not
easy at all. It takes a lot of practice, a
(22:03):
lot of hours. So to take all of that and
then throw it outside in the sun, that heat, in
the wind. I mean, any given sunday, you don't know
what's going to happen, and from somebody who's just sitting
on my couch under a blanket watching you, you do
make it look easy, I have to say, But I
(22:23):
do have to ask, like I could barely watch your routines,
Like I get so nervous that I sit there like
with my hands over my eyes. Same thing happened when
I watched the live stream of two UM and you're
there at the edge of the stage and you're knowing
it's you know, it could be a fluke, but like
one millimeter off and and and things could just go south.
I mean, how do you breathe? And every time a
(22:46):
stunt goes up successfully, are you just like yeah, celebrating
and then you're like onto the next one or like,
what is going through your mind there? Like you must
be so nervous. Oh, so nervous. And I can't show it,
you know, as the coach, I can't. I just but yeah,
I don't watch it for entertainment. I'm strictly looking. I'm
looking when they're tumbling, I'm looking at their feet. Did
they land on their feet? Are they all together? Did
(23:09):
the stunts go up? It's like I'm just checking off
the boxes as they complete the skills, and then, like
I said, but it's building up. It's this energy that
builds up, and as they're checking off more and more boxes,
You're like, Okay, we're doing it. We're doing it. You know,
it's exciting, it's scary, it's exciting. It's an emotion that
is just out of this world. We did the hardest
(23:30):
routine this year. We really tried to push. You know,
when you lose, it really pushes you. I mean, we
always push ourselves, but coming off of a year that
we had lost the determination and these kids was just
every day they there was no question that we were
gonna work our butts off, you know, every single day
in the jo. No complaints. I love pyramids, So that's
(23:53):
that part where there's multiple people holding and I I
that's kind of one of the things that I love
to choreograph. I love visual I love it to look
like a circus. And so I had a lot of
sleepless nights where I was thinking about the pyramid and
what we were gonna do. And there's no motivation like losing,
and yeah, we just paid everything we had into it.
(24:15):
And for listeners at home, the pyramid is like three
levels of people, I think, and then you have one Gabby.
I think it was backhand springing up to the top
of the pyramid. I gotta watch it. It's just it's insane. Um.
(24:38):
Cheer is kind of this niche sport, or at least
it was for most people. For you, obviously, it's been
your life, but it exploded in popularity with the show.
So when I was approached many years ago about doing cheer,
I'm actually a very private person. I would never want
cameras in my face or anything like that. I was
just proud of my team and I wanted to holight them.
(24:59):
I mean, I didn't go to college to coach cheerleading.
I thought I would be on Wall Street running some
big company and and this just kind of fell in
my lap. And even then I was super young. I
was two years old when I started here, so I thought,
I'll just do this until I figure out what I
want to do. And then this year and I'm still here.
So it's already pretty improbable that you're here, you know,
(25:22):
coaching this team. And it's even more improbable it seems
that suddenly this film crew shows up and says, we're
going to make a show about cheerleading, and suddenly it's
one of the world's most popular shows. When Greg Whiteley,
who created cheer when when they came out here, I
don't think they even had a clue what they were
(25:42):
going to be filming. They just kind of were intrigued
on some cheerleaders that they had seen filming Last Chance You.
And it's so funny because you said it's scary to
watch that. The crew was terrified. For the first week,
it was oh, they would they screamed, they were just
you know, like and then they got Yeah, they got
used to it and they were like, Okay, it's even
(26:05):
more impressive in person. If you watch it, it's like wow,
you know, but they got so they got to see
the behind the scenes too, so they saw the falls
and it took him about a week to be like, Okay,
who I can do this. Greg said in an interview
that these were the most athletic kids had ever filmed,
and that's that says a lot. So spoiler alert to
(26:26):
any listeners who have yet to finish cheer Season two,
but you guys did not win the championship. And I
will never forget A scene that stood out to me
was you walking off the mat with your armor on
Jillian Grouper. Yeah, sorry, it was fine. Jillian had fallen,
(26:50):
just one of the flyers, and she had fallen during
the routine, and I just remember thinking, you really seem
to be the coach that she needed at that point,
and I just want to know what were you thinking.
What was that moment like for you? Well, um, you
know it. I was trying to process it because it
wasn't a huge mistake, but I know cheerleading, and I
(27:13):
know if you make a mistake, you're gonna get hit
really hard for that mistake, and so I knew that
that did probably cost us. Wasn't in the actual stunt.
It was in the transition of the stunt and something
that was very flukish like it never had happened at practice.
(27:34):
We still don't to this day. We watched it, We're like,
what happened? We don't know. What I do know is
that the guilt that these kids can carry with them
forever over knowing that if we would have hit, we
would have won. We had hit the day before, we
were in first place. But like I said, I knew.
I was like, this is probably cost us the national championship.
(27:55):
And I just know how much that can really stay
with someone. And I did not want her to feel
that guilt. And you know, she's really I mean, she's
got death threats. It's crazy enough, yea, through once the
show came out, some of the things that people have
deemed her or commented on her about it was your
fault and just people are really mean and nasty. But
(28:18):
the good thing is the team has lifted her up,
you know, even then, And and it didn't show poor Alex,
but her partner, I consoled him for a good thirty minutes.
He cried like I had not. I mean, I just
as a parent, I just can't imagine that weight that
my child would have to carry. And I didn't want
them to feel that, you know, and the team was
(28:39):
very supportive and then this year we've just kind of
laughed about it. So I think it was great this
year for a little bit of a redemption for her
and Alex to just get some of that weight off
of them, you know, from last year. This show really
and and your your division is really the perfect setup
(29:01):
for a championship storyline. You have these two schools, you
have this big rivalry, and then you have these flip
flopping teams. You guys, was bad, now you have it
back in two. Can you just take us through the
rivalry with Navarro and Trinity Valley Community College. What's it
mean to the communities and what's it been like? You know,
(29:21):
I think it's it's so intriguing because we are so
close to each other, two small junior colleges that are
thirty five minutes from each other, just down the road,
and so we play each other in all sports, you know,
we we play each other in football, we play each
other in basketball, volleyball. So it's a unique situation. Um
(29:42):
when I came here, so I started here at the
college back in and we had never won before and
Trinity Valley was the team to be So then obviously
once we won. It was kind of like, wait a minute,
now we have some competition and we're so close to
each other. So I think that's probably in the you know,
the rivalry kind of started growing because they finally had
(30:04):
some competition and we were so close, and we're just
battling back and forth. We're battling for recruits, were battling
for national championships, were battling in all the different sports.
It's a very unique situation. I think some viewers were like, wait,
there's like two teams in your division at Nationals. And
that's almost by design, right, because I watched almost every
(30:25):
routine in the Nationals, and I mean, my humble opinion
is that your two schools, I mean above and beyond
the competition. So how really did two junior colleges in
Texas you guys are are, in my opinion, competing at
a higher level than than some of the D one schools.
How does that work? Thank you for bringing that up,
(30:45):
first of all, because I get some very hateful comments,
you know, like wow, good job to teams, you know,
and they don't get it. And the thing about it
is is when we go out there, we go out
there to have the higher score. Of the entire car
petition because we want to be able to say no, no, no,
we didn't just beat one team. We're like really good.
(31:05):
You know. We have scored the highest score of the
entire competition six times out of all our fifteen national championships,
and this year including we had beat every every team there.
We beat their score and we set another record. You
seem to kind of undergo this transformation, you and the
whole team between seasons one and two. It's almost like overnight,
(31:28):
same just knocked down your door. And given the success
of the show, right, that's not surprising. But what was
it like? I mean, you said you were a private person.
What was it like to sort of wake up one
morning and have the entire world paying attention? What was
that like for you and for the team? It was interesting,
to say the least. I mean to see people perceive
me in all different ways because I got so many,
(31:52):
so many things from that. I was crazy to this
and some people love me and that was a little
bit of a shock to my system. Um, I had
to learn how to deal with it. This is the
season of blocking. I never blocked anybody in. I just
let them attack me. I did it I'd let them
attack me in and I was this year, I was like,
(32:14):
you know what, this is my personal space, this is
my social media. Do not come over to my space
and say these horrible things. So I just started blocking
people and it's never felt so good. But you know,
as far as the team goes, I mean, it was
really wild because the campus, we had to cover our windows.
We had people um in the gym, we would have
(32:35):
people filming us through the windows. Busloads of people stopping
every single day. The amount of people on campus every
single day, it was a little bit out of control.
So we tried to put some parameters up and try
to add a little bit more security. But you know,
when we were in practice, I know there was a
lot of talk in the media that year like, oh,
they're they're gonna lose their focus, They're not gonna do
(32:57):
well in Daytona, all this attention, they're going to Ellen
and they're going to New York and and that wasn't
it at all. We were just so determined to prove
everyone wrong about losing our focus. So yes, it was
probably a big adjustment for a lot of them to
get used to. But when it came to practice and
our goals for Daytona that was in a bubble that
we were protecting, and that has to be so hard because,
(33:21):
you know, and maybe it was sort of unfavorable editing
in season two, but it did seem like you guys
were going through some things. Sometimes we think Monica is
like this alien superhero woman who can take on anything,
and we have to remember that she's human. So frustrating.
It's almost like, you know, that year of bad luck,
(33:42):
I mean over a year, you know, and I don't
know if she broke a merselven years ago or something,
but it's just like she has just had really just
bad luck. She's going to have days that just like
we do, that you're going to be like, is this
even worth it? You had COVID, you had the Jerry
(34:04):
Harris news that came out. Jerry Harris won the hearts
of fans with this famous Matt talks. But now Harris
is under arrest, appearing in court Thursday, accused of repeatedly
asking a thirteen year old to produce sexually explicit videos
and photographs of himself. So suddenly it seems like season
(34:25):
two was kind of almost less a show about cheerleading
and more a show about a group of people just
sort of trying to adapt to this instant fame. Yeah,
well it was a talk two years that was reality
and we were overwhelmed. I was working fourteen hour days minimum,
(34:45):
I was not sleeping, and I didn't even know to
expect this, and um, yes, we had a very tough
couple of years, and I think you saw a lot
of sadness in my face. I watched it and I
was like, jeez, I was really going through it. The
Jerry stuff just tore me down, and and then the
fallout that I have with La Darius, like that just
(35:07):
hurt my heart. And so I was really struggling. Yeah,
it was just a really tough couple of years. But
it wasn't it was everything. It was just like spiraling,
you know. And uh, this year has been so great
because I finally, you know, we're in a better place
and healed from a lot of that and you know,
gotten ourselves in a better situation. So so obviously you're
(35:32):
on a podcast for Sports Illustrated and you're I've obviously
heard this before that oh, cheerleading is not a sport,
it's it doesn't count. I mean, what would you say
to those naysayers who are like, this isn't bad athletic.
I've never been offended when people say it's not a
sport because I'm like, okay, well to each his own,
I don't care. But if you say they're not athletic,
(35:54):
that's where I will become offended because and I think
when Cheer came out, that's where people were like, whoa,
people are not just athletic. They're probably more outlet than
than most of the you know people that I know
the athleticism that it takes to compete a routine that
we do. And obviously there's a lot of routines that
are easier, but what we do and we're pushing ourselves
(36:16):
and and and going full out. The term full out
means we're doing our routine with all of the skills executed.
It's like running as fast as you can for two
minutes and fifteen seconds. And it doesn't sound like that
that might be that hard, but go try it and
just say, you know, because you you don't really have
a moment to breathe yet we're expecting you to throw
(36:37):
people up and catch them and and flip your bodies
and and do all these crazy things. Without a moment
to breathe. Because our our routines are very fast paced.
I'm not one to go, oh, you don't think it's
a sport. Well that's fine, I get it. But if
you say these kids are not athletic, then we're gonna
have a whole conversation. You're about to re invent the
sport again. Uh this summer with this cheer tour, Cheerly
(37:00):
is from Navarro ANDTVCC. What is the cheer Tour? What's
it going to look like? So it is going to
be a ninety minute live show. We hope to make
you laugh, cry, all on your feet, fill all the emotions.
It's gonna be great. I mean just you know, just
like if you go watch certain Deslay or any of
those shows and you get to, you know, see some
(37:21):
amazing things, but you also laugh and you also get
this journey and this storytelling. We just have some of
the best athletes in the country coming together to entertain
you through amazing cheerleading. It's gonna be epic. It's gonna
be throughly exciting. Monica al Dama, you are royalty, the
Queen of cheer Thank you so much for being here.
(37:47):
After a break why MLB teams are using the shift
more than ever, and whether Baseball is pending push to
limit it is a good idea. We offered a procedural
agreement that would allow for the timely implementation of sorely
(38:09):
needed rules like the pitch timer and the elimination of
shifts to improve the entertainment value of the game on
the field. Are we really going to ban the shift?
I don't want to see a guy look at a
piece of paper and then walk three paces to the
right and then it's hit right at them. I'm not
playing a video game. In March of this year, MLB
(38:29):
Commissioner Rob Manfred said baseball would undergo some rules changes,
perhaps most notably an effort to cut down on the shift.
SI stafford Emma Bocholari joins me to discuss why baseball
is taking this step, how to execute it, and whether
it's even a good idea. All right, and so, obviously
(38:50):
the shift has been part of baseball forever, but let's
start with what it is and why it works. Basically,
it's just shifting your fielders around the baseball yield in
a way that you're making it less likely for your
opponent to get a hit the ball tracking data that
you have from stack cast. That's not just saying like, oh,
this hitter has a tendency to pull the ball or
(39:10):
to go to the opposite field. Those are the sort
of tendencies you might have always known about it. It's
letting you know exactly, like, here's where this guy hits
the ball. Here is where he is most likely to
make contact. Here is how he responds to this type
of pitch. Here's how he responds in this count. You
have such specific data on the hitter's tendencies on when
he's more or less likely to produce a certain kind
(39:32):
of contact or a certain kind of hit, and that
allows you to know exactly where you want to position
through fielders. It's not just like, oh, we're gonna shade
the second basement over a little bit because that seems
like it might be the thing to do. It's like, no,
there's an x percent chance that he's going to hit
it exactly to the spot on the field. And with
(39:52):
the defensive data that we have on our own team,
combining that with this offensive data on your opponent, you
can pretty much exactly put toge there a game plan
to set up your fielders in a way that you're
going to take away those hits. Right, You're trying to
target where you think the batter is most likely to
hit the ball. But the interesting part here, and what
you wrote about for s I dot Com, is that
(40:13):
the use of the shift has really skyrocketed over the
last decade. Why is that The biggest thing is just data, Like,
as you said, this has been around for a while,
but it's based on looking at where your opponent is
most likely to hit the ball. You might have had
an idea of what that was twenty years ago, fifty
years ago. Ted Williams famously had ships used against him,
(40:35):
so seventy years ago. But now you have specific data
that lets you know. You have stack casts, you have
all this ball tracking data, the sort of things that
you see used on broadcasts, and that allows you to
know with pretty incredible precision what your opponent's tendencies are
and how to best position your fielders to make it
unlikely for them to get a hit. Robinson can only
(40:57):
leads off, Matty drops out a butt. It's a perfect
want and I'll have himself a base. There's your shift buster.
So as that's really become a bigger part of the
game over the last seven years is how long we've
had stockcast and had that data. This is one really
big way that teams have been harnessing it and responding. Right.
(41:18):
The proponerance of data here is obviously fueling it. And
MLB wants to regulate the shift next season, which we
want to get into and a little bit. But in
the interim, MLB teams are going out in this blaze
of shifting glory. Emma. I know it's still early in
the season, but teams are shifting more than ever before. Right, Yeah,
they're shifting on thirty seven percent of plate appearances, even
(41:40):
more against left handed hitters, which is really really high.
So thirty seven to put that in perspective, that's a
massive bump over last season. Right. How significant is that
because over the even just the last four years, the
shift rate has doubled. Yeah, so we've seen it over
for the last couple of seasons now, but if you're
looking at over the last three four years, it's as
(42:01):
you said, it's it's more than doubled, which is pretty profound.
That has a something that you can pick up just
watching a few games a week, seeing how much more
common it is, and that it hasn't sat well with
people who are looking at baseball and want to see
more action. Everybody's position and bunched up exactly where you
know somebody's going to hit it. And now I'm hearing
people saying, well, they should just bunk their way on.
(42:22):
And I'm not taking my eleven year old and thirteen
year old kid to Dodger Stadium to watch Max Munsey
bunt his way on. So the game of baseball and
math have obviously reached this critical point, at least in
terms of the shift, and so baseball is trying to
get rid of it. And in our show meeting, when
I brought this topic up, I expected that most of
(42:45):
our producers would say, yeah, I get rid of the shift.
I hate it. Our team, our production team universally loves
the shift, which kind of blew me away. What do
you say about the shift? I don't mind the shift.
I don't don't know if i'd say that I love it.
Sometimes it is an wing when you see what feels
like it should be a really well struck ball, and
for ninety years, you think that would have just gone
(43:06):
through the gap and been a hit, no question, And
now it's not like sometimes that's annoying, But for the
most part, I like the idea that it's a type
of strategy that teams have access to and hitters also
have access to, knowing like maybe you bunt, maybe you
just try to hit it over the shift ship nobody there,
why not make too. It'll be the shortest rubble of
(43:28):
new schooler or standing up onbelievable, like there are options
at your disposal here. It's not like it's automatically removing
any potential to get on base. Understand where they're legislating
it away most likely, but I will kind of miss it,
and I just like the idea of being a part
of the basic strategy that teams have, you know, in
(43:50):
their arsenal to try both too to stop guys from
getting on base, and something that hitters also have to overcome.
I think it can be kind of fun and interesting
and I'll miss it a little. I'm curious what players
and managers think about it, because yes, the shift has
been around forever, but as we've outlined here, it's really
ramped up over the last you know, seven to ten years.
(44:11):
Are players and managers ready for this to go away
or do they also still like it. I think you
have kind of a mixed bag. I mean, I think
there are a lot of pitchers who love playing in
front of the shift because it's making them look better
when you have your defense behind you taking away those hits.
A lot of hitters, particularly RDIs, who don't get shifted
on very much. They don't care so much. Then you
(44:31):
have lefties who are seeing it used against them all
the time. I mean, you have some hitters prototypical like
lefty power hitter that see it like almost literally every
single app at they have. For some of them, that's
something they've gotten used to and they've been able to
thrive despite it. For some of them, it is kind
of annoying and they're ready to see it go now Baseball,
(44:52):
because it's gotten to this point where it's being used,
as you said, especially against left handed power hitters all
the time. Baseball is trying to get rid it realist
legislated and restricted a little bit. But the devil emma,
as always is in the details. Explain to people why
getting rid of it is so complicated. The most basic
thing here is that baseball positions aren't legislated at all.
(45:15):
Like if you look in the baseball rule book. Obviously
they have names, but there's nothing in the official baseball
rules about where a shortstop has to stand or what
makes you a third baseman. It's just you need to
have fielders on the field, and that's it, other than
the picture and the catcher. Obviously, the rest of that
is all left entirely up to a team's discretion, and
(45:38):
so there's never been an attempt to define a position
to legislate where fielders can stand. So this is all
totally uncharted territory for Major League Baseball, and they came
to an agreement this winter with the Players Association to
say that the league could regulate the shift for so
we know that they're going to try to regulate it
(45:58):
in some fashion, but or a couple different ways to
do that because the structure of Baseball's rules doesn't really
have anything in there right now that makes for an
easy adaptation. If it said a shortstop is X, y Z,
it'd be easier to say this is what your shortstop
has to do, But the rule book doesn't really have
that language, and so it's going to have to come
up with something totally new. Yeah, I love this about baseball,
(46:21):
where baseball identifies what it thinks is a problem and
says we're gonna fix it next year, and then people
like you go, how are you going to do it?
And they go, don't ask us about that right now.
We're not quite sure. We're some of the suggestions that
people have floated two fielders on each side of second
base or four players on the infield dirt. Is it
as simple as that? Would you pick one of those?
(46:42):
I think the most straightforward one is just having two
players on each side of second base. This has been
really focused on in field shifts because we see them
the most teams are also doing a lot more outfield
shifting and doing a lot more with four outfielders, which
can actually be more effective then the infield shift in
some cases. And so if you just say two fielders
(47:05):
on each side of second base, well, if you position
your four outfielders such that you do have two guys
on each side of second that's still opening up room
for that um. But then if you've legislate it by
saying it's just four guys on the infield dirt, well,
then you can still do a basic infield shift of
moving over your second baseman to have three guys on
one side of the endfield, so it's not like an
(47:26):
insurmountable problem. You can also do a definition that combines
those two options, or you could do something else entirely.
But it is just a question baseball has never had
to answer before, and I'm curious to see how they
do it with eight months to figure it out. So
they've got eight months, Emma. And bottom line, is this
good for baseball? Because you said you kind of like
to shift, but it is the game better off limiting it?
(47:48):
I think there is a fairly strong case for what
you get from limiting it. I think baseball has bigger
existential questions about the type of offense it's encouraging the
pace of play. Like when you're talking about baseball as
an aesthetic entertainment product, there are a lot of factors
that go into that, and this is just one very
small piece of it. So I don't think it solves
(48:08):
any of these bigger problems that baseball has, but I
do think it addresses part of it. I think if
it only does a little bit too nudge baseball back
to an environment where you're seeing more hits, you're seeing
more offense, I think that's a good thing. And I
don't think it will have a profound effect. But if
it has a slight effect, that's something and it makes
(48:30):
sense for them to at least look into it. A
little impact could go a long way. This was a
wonderful conversation. Read her on SI dot com. No shift
could stop her. She always hits them where they ain't
m A Bachelari. Thanks for this. Sports Illustrated Weekly is
a production of Sports Illustrated and I Heart Radio. For
(48:51):
more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
And for more of Sports illust At its best stories
and podcasts, visit SI dot com. This episode of Sports
Illustrated Weekly was produced by Cooper McKim, Jessica Armoski, and
Isaac Lee, who was also our sound engineer. Our senior
(49:12):
producer is Dan Bloom. Our executive producers are Scott Brody
and me John Gonzalez. Our theme song is by Nolan Schneider.
Thanks for listening, and if you've stuck around this long,
we leave you with this. Did you go to Duke? Yeah? Uh?
(49:33):
If I had known that ahead of time, this is
like when I found out Cooper was a Giants fan.
On this episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly, the Netflix show
Cheer took viewers inside the world of competitive cheerleading and
made stars out of its athletes and coaches. Our producer
Jess R. Mooski sits down with the Queen of Cheer,
Monica Aldama, to discuss winning her latest national championship and
the sports explosion in popularity, and later MLB teams are
(00:25):
using the shift more than ever. SI writer m A.
Bachelari explains why that is, why the shift is so effective,
and why baseball is changing the rules next season. But first,
The Kentucky Derby is this weekend, but one of the
sports most notable and notorious figures won't be there. Bob
Bafford has had more than thirty of his horses failed
(00:47):
drug tests and was subsequently banned from Churchill Downs for
two years due to doping allegations. SI senior writer Pat
Forty joins us to discuss the controversial horse trainer. It's Wednesday,
May fourth. I'm your host, John Gonzalez from Sports Illustrated
and I Heart Radio. This is Sports Illustrated Weekly. Get
(01:13):
into the finish and the Kentucky Derby. Here's the wire,
Black Friend doesn't again the spirit. That's what the Kentucky Derby.
I got some horrible news Mendina's spirit our Derby horse
tested positive for data method zone. I got the biggest
(01:36):
gut punch in racing for something that I didn't do.
Churchill Downs cracking down, releasing a bombshell just at for
four o'clock today, the best known name in the sport
of horse racing is now suspended for two years from
the Louisville Track and others owned by Churchill Downs. Messing
(01:56):
with the run for the Roses is considered a mortal
sin in racing, and Bafford has done exactly that. A
Spirit became just the second medication d Q in the
history of America's oldest continuous sporting event. Even the biggest
name and the most recognizable figure in the sport had
to face this truth, as delivered by Churchill Downs. Nobody
(02:16):
is bigger than the Kentucky Derby. Pat forty, Welcome back
to Sports Illustrator Weekly. John, Thank you thanks for having
me give us some background on Bob Bafford and his
place in horse racing history. You can make a convincing
argument that Bob is the greatest trainer in the history
(02:39):
of a very very old sport. He's one six Kentucky
Derby's was seven last year until the disqualification, which is
the heart of the story. UH sixteen triple Crown races overall,
and h has established himself as the guy who's the
big personality, gets the best horses, gets the richest owners,
(03:01):
and finds his way into the winner circle more than
anyone in the big races. So, as you mentioned, six
different Kentucky Derby winners would have been seven. The Kentucky
Derby is this weekend. Baffort will not be there. He
was banned from Churchill Downs for at least two years.
Explain to everybody what happened for that to transpire. Bob's
erstwhile one Kentucky Derby winner for a period of about
(03:26):
a week Medina's Spirit across the finish line first, but
then uh failed a drug test for an excessive amount
of beta methasone, which is a allowable substance, but on
race day can only be at a certain level, and
this hourse had a medical overage of that level. UH,
and so he was disqualified. And this was the latest
(03:50):
in a spate a very high profile positive drug tests
for Bafford horses, including one in the Kentucky Oaks, which
is the second biggest race that Churchill Downs puts on.
So the Kentucky Derby is the most sacrosanct event in
thoroughbred racing. And while there is has been a I
(04:12):
think alarming tolerance of medicating and possibly just outright cheating
and drugging horses in therbid racing, you don't mess with
the Kentucky Derby, and he messed with it and now
he is facing a two year ban as a result. Yeah.
As you wrote in the piece, Churchill Downs is sacrosanct
and it's considered off limits for these types of things.
(04:33):
And yet Bafford was caught in violation and Churchill Downs
hasn't just banned him, right, They've removed imagery of him.
You wrote that they've basically deep badvertised the grounds. Yeah. Right.
His barn, Barn thirty three on the backside, was the
the gathering spot for fans for media curious, uh, you know,
onlookers every year virtually from seven when he first came
(04:58):
to the Derby, actually ninety six Kevin here through last year.
He had an incredible run and people flocked there and
he had a wall that was covered outside of the
barn with you know, plaques commemorating his Derby wins and
his triple Crown horses. He's had two of those. There's
only been thirteen in history. He's had the two most
recent American pharaoh in and justifying, and those plaques are
(05:23):
all gone. That is now just a plain beige wall
the stalls of horses where he usually brought in a
powerhouse squad with him from California for not just the
Kentucky Derby, but other races in the spring. In Churchill
Downs empty there used to be a Baffort lounge on
the second floor grandstand at Churchill Downs. That's now the
(05:45):
Ben Jones Lounge, which is the other trainer who to
have won six Derbys. So I guess Johnny would say
that this just has all the makings of a bad
breakup or a bad divorce, wherein one couple through all
the other couples, one spouse, through the other house's belongings,
all out on the yard basically and said get lost. Yeah,
I mean, these two were so symbiotic Bafford and Churchill
(06:08):
Downs for so long. And yet, as you mentioned, Medina's
spirit popping that positive wasn't a one off incident. It
was the fifth violation for Badford in thirteen months of
Churchill downs bans him as a result, and Badford does
not take this well. He goes on Fox News and
he rails against cancel culture in this unhinged rant. We
live in a different world now, this this America is
different and uh, this it was like a chancel culture
(06:33):
kind of a thing. I'm wondering though, how he's taking
it lately. What did he and his lawyers have to
tell you? Uh, well, his lawyer is still pretty bellicos.
He's got a couple of guys who represent him, and
they insist that he has been maligned, unfairly singled out,
that they can come up with reasonable explanations for each
(06:54):
of these medication overridges. Uh and that as Bob Baffort's
a big name, they wanted to make an example of him. Uh. So,
you know, Baffort and Churchill downs. It's really it feels
like it's gotten personal. So it's been a ren escalating
war of words. And for Churchill not just to ban him,
(07:15):
but to basically scrub Baffort from the premises, tells you
how it feels and Baffort will continue to I think,
to fight in any way possible. He has not laid
down and accepted really any of the rulings that have
gone against him, and he's lost several of them recently
in court as he's tried to get in this ban overturned.
I expect him to continue to be a thorn in
(07:37):
the side of Churchill Downs until they let him back
into UH to saddle horses. But it's not just Churchill
Downs accusing Bafford of this, right, I mean, none of
these allegations are new. More than thirty horses have tested
positive in the past the combination of drugs. What other
states and tracks have had these same sort of accusations
leveled against Bafford. Well, Bafford he did have two big
(08:00):
positive tests in Arkansas at Hot Springs there with two
high level horses, UH and then also had one at
Santa Anita, his home base in southern California. So yeah,
these are things that that have not just been it's
not just been a Churchill problem, it's been a Baffort
problem and UH it's followed him around the country and
(08:21):
it's interesting to see that some other tracks, even like
he hasn't had a problem a regulatory problem in New York,
but New York has opted to try to ban Bafford
as well from from its racing there and obviously will
take him out of the Belmont Steaks. He's not going
to be able to race at the Preakness in Baltimore,
so he's effectively out of this Triple Crown. And we'll
(08:42):
see how long those tracks continue to try to exclude
Bob Bafford from their races, because I mean, the races
will go on without him and people will still show
up and bet. But if you want the casual fan
to show any interest, you want Bob Bafford there, but
he's got to be able to do it within the
rules of the game. Yeah, it feels like the controversy
around Bafford really ramped up in December when Medita Spirit died.
(09:07):
Santa Anita official say Medina Spirit collapsed after a morning
workout and died of a probable cardiac event. The veterinary
team took blood, hair, and urine samples which were sent
to the California Horse Racing Board a full necropsy, and
that really put the spotlight back on him, and not
in a good way he's had seventy four horses die,
not all race related, but still it feels like a
(09:28):
really big number. I'm wondering what people inside the horse
racing community, other trainers feel about Bafford's methods. Well, that's
a great question. Uh, and I'd say there's a split,
because there's still there's a lot of people that respect him,
admire him, appreciate the way he's kind of elevated the
the profile of the sport at times, and a lot
(09:50):
of them training the way he does training your horses hard,
or uh, the way that he will build up to
big races, or quite frankly, maybe even the way that
horses are medicated. So there is a certain school among
the trainers and and other people in the throwbred industry
who do not look at him as a pariah. And
then there are others who absolutely do and and think
that he has been getting away with with a lot
(10:12):
worse than what he's been caught with, even though there
has not been evidence of that. But one of the
big problems with horse racing is that most people have
felt there is a common thread and undercurrent that the
medications have been ahead of the testing for quite some time.
Somewhat similar to the way baseball used to be, the
way Olympic sports are. And if the sport is that
(10:33):
dirty top to bottom and he's that much better than
everybody else, then there's a lot of people to think, Okay,
there's a reason why he's that much better than everybody
Else's not that he's an exalted trainer per se, although
I don't think anybody doubts his wordsmanship. But what makes
him so much better, Well, maybe it's the same thing
that made Lance Armstrong so much better in the Tour
de France. Yeah, that's a really great point that you
(10:55):
bring up about the medications maybe being ahead of the testing.
Two years ago, the U. S. Attorney's Office charged twenty
seven people with essentially international doping scheme, and in it
they said that the standardized testing can't really detect these
designer drugs. So do we think that like a lot
more horses could be on performance enhancers that we don't
know about. I think they certainly have been. And whether
(11:17):
that that federal crackdown changes that or not, I don't know.
And again I can't I'm not sitting here saying Bob
Bafford drugged his horses or so and so drugged their horses. Now,
the people that were caught in that federal sting, Yeah,
there's proof that they did it. But is there a belief, Yeah,
that there's been a lot of designer drugs going around
race tracks and and that horses have been ramped up
(11:40):
on those for for quite a while. Yes, yes there is.
Bafford is obviously the biggest example of this problem within
horse racing, but he's not the exception, right, I mean,
he's sort of the rule. Yeah, No, I mean I
think that there there are plenty of people out there
who believe that. That's just kind of one of the
things that you have had had to do over the
(12:00):
last couple of decades to succeed in thoroughbred racing. Is
you know, if if your competitors are medicating their horses
with whatever the substances, you better find a way to
do it as well. So the guys who have been
caught in this sting are not necessarily the only people
perpetrating under the table medication, just the way in the
(12:23):
the FBI UH scandal in college basketball they caught some,
but everybody else was doing it as well. We're spending
a lot of time here talking about Bafford and these
other trainers and the people that are involved in it,
But I'm wondering about the actual animals and the impact
on their health and their lifespan and who's watching out
for them. Well, I mean that's a huge question and
(12:45):
it's been one of the I think real lightning rod
topics and horse racing is, you know, are these animals
basically being abused? Are they being drugged just so they
can run and then be sold quickly for for breeding right?
And their health and uh, longevity is compromised in that way.
(13:05):
And one of the big problems in the sport is
that these are three year olds that compete for the
Triple Crown. Three is a young age for a horse.
They are pushed hard to be ready at basically a
premature age. What's the stress level of that, what's the impact?
How many get injured? And it's pretty shocking number how
many horses that if you pushed them towards the Kentucky
(13:25):
Derby and the Triple Crown either don't race again or
never the same again. Trainer Chad Brown, who actually has
a favorite in this year's Derby, said, you know that
there is often a price to be paid for taking
a big swing at the Kentucky Derby, and that's your
horses just may not recover from being pushed that hard
that early. Yeah, Bafford took a lot of big swings,
(13:48):
as you mentioned, and he was basically held up as
a legend in this sport and now has had this
fall from grace. How do people who may be used
to exalt by Badford think about him now? I mean,
what's the overarching thought on Bob Bafford in the sport?
I think there's a lot of disappointment, disillusionment, anger even.
(14:12):
I mean, I'm a guy, I'll be honest. I had
a great relationship with Bob. Haven't spoken him for a
while now, but he was incredibly media friendly. He was available,
he was glib, he was funny. Uh. You know, you
deal with enough football and basketball coaches who are paranoid
and standoffish, and then you go to the racetrack and
it's like, hey, the rock star of the sport is like, yeah,
(14:33):
come on buy anytime. You know, what do you need
da da da, you know, and talk to him for
an hour. So you like those kind of people in
our business. But that doesn't necessarily mean they're doing everything
the way they're supposed to be doing them. And so,
you know, I think that there were a lot of
people and I'd probably put myself in this boat that
was like you kind of wondered and you you were like,
(14:53):
is this all legitimate? And then these tests keep popping
up and finally it's like, you know what, you I
have an excuse for all of them. But the accumulative
effect is it's it's just not believable. It's not believable
that you aren't improperly medicating your horses. So what happens
with him now moving forward? Because I think a lot
of people, uh if they had, if they were subjected
(15:15):
to this kind of scrutinty and they had had this
uh fall from grace, maybe they would go away. But
it seems from your reporting that he has designs on
staying in the sport right. Absolutely, He's still got some
deep pocket owners who believe in him and know that
he can get their horses to the top level. UH.
In April, he bought a two point three million dollar
(15:36):
two year old with Amr Zadan, who is the owner
of Medina spirit UH and the owner of Tava and
this year's Kentucky Derby, which had been in Badford's born
and so you know, the belief is, you know, you
don't spend that kind of money on horses to see
if they're gonna be okay in the sixth race at Aqueduct.
You're just taking a swing at the big races. Uh.
And so if Badford's going to continue to have that
(15:58):
clientele and contin need to be able to spend that
kind of money on good horses, I expect that he
he will certainly attempt to be in the game and
at the top of the game for years to come.
He's got the money, he's taken those swings, but he's
still suspended from the Kentucky Derby for two years. Do
you think we'll see him back there again? I think
(16:21):
he has every intention of being back there. Uh. And
if Churchill Downs two year band runs out, I don't
think they would have much recourse to keep him from
coming back. So I would expect Bob Baffort on the
first Saturday and May is saddling a horse at Churchill
Downs to compete in the derby, and there will be
some gritting of teeth from people to Churchill Downs Incorporated.
(16:42):
All Right, So Bafford is out, but then that leaves
somebody in his place. Tell us about his assistant and
the lottery ticket he told you about. Yeah, fascinating wrinkle
there that while Bob Bafford is out, his horses are
in right, Messier and Taba, two of his star three
year olds that finished one two in the San da
Nio Derby. They were transferred out of Baffort's born in
(17:03):
March when it became clear that he had exhausted all
his legal options to try to get into the derby,
and they were given to Tim Yaktine, who had been
a former Baffort assistant. Uh, it's a really a pretty
low profile trainer, like a guy who's never been to
the derby and really never been close to the derby.
Has had some decent horses, but this is a guy
who's never really operated at that level, and now all
(17:24):
of a sudden he inherits two incredibly talented horses. They
run one two in Santa Anita and they're going to
the derby and they're gonna be, you know, among the
five or six horses that have a chance to win
this thing. Most people think, And uh, yakteen, he's he's
He's an interesting guy, uh friendly, but by no means
ready for this spotlight at all. He's never had any
(17:45):
spotlight on him in his life, and so he's kind
of dealing with this. And he did have a great
quote about it where he said that he felt like
a lottery ticket fell in his lap and he's just
trying to get to the window to cash it. And
I think that that's kind of the where he is.
It's it's it's an incredible opportunity, but also a lot
of pressure that comes with this spot This is quite
(18:07):
a story. You can read his excellent piece about Bob
Bafford and horse racing on si dot com and we'll
link to it in our show notes. Pat forty as
always great work, Thanks for this, Thank you John. After
a break, we look at the world of competitive cheerleading
and the Netflix show that made the sport explode in popularity.
(18:38):
They've won the Grand Championship several times. They could beat anybody.
People from all over the country come here to cheerful Monica.
Where is it located? Where I guess I'm going there.
My goal was to be the best cheer program in
the country. On January, Netflix released the docuse series Cheer
(19:07):
which made stars out of the Navarro College cheerleading team
and its coach, Monica Aldama. First of all, none of
us had a clue that this show would be popular.
I mean it's it is cheerleading, and cheerleading does have
a bad rapp It has a stereotype of, you know,
this typical main girl, little popular person that's just trying
(19:28):
to look cute too. The boy ed everything you're not
I'm and that's not what cheerleading has become at all.
(19:53):
Last month, Monica Aldama and her team won their second
national championship in three years and their fifteenth overall and
our Van clark Ed Junior college national champion within ninety
nine to one. It was redemption for Navarro. They won
the n c A College Nationals in nineteen, which was
(20:16):
documented on the first season of cheer In. Their championship
was canceled due to COVID and in their rival Trinity
Valley Community College took back the crown, which was seen
on the second season of Cheer. Our producer Jess R.
Moski has watched the show more times than she'd like
to admit. She sat down with Monica Aldama to discuss
(20:37):
her latest national championship. Here's Jess with the Queen of
Cheer Monica. First, congratulations on winning your fifteenth title. That
is amazing. How does this one feel different from the others?
The first one was amazing. We've never done it before
and there were zero expectations from anyone. But the more
(20:59):
you in, the more people think you should win. And
so I think over the years there's been a tremendous
amount of pressure on myself that I put on myself, um,
because I don't want to disappoint anyone. I don't want
to disappoint the school, or the community, or our alumni
or anyone. And then of course cheer came out and
(21:21):
the whole world became invested in what we were doing.
So it was the pressure that I already had times
a million, and um, coming off such a tough year
last year, I think that I just thought so much
relief after we went out there and did our job.
I mean, I knew that we had put in the work.
I knew that we were ready. And that's the only
(21:41):
thing that I know that I can do every year
is go and have zero regrets that as their coach,
I just need to know that I've done everything that
I can to prepare them and get them ready, and
I knew I had done that. It's already a very
difficult thing to execute. Our job is to make it
look easy, so hopefully we do that, but it's not
easy at all. It takes a lot of practice, a
(22:03):
lot of hours. So to take all of that and
then throw it outside in the sun, that heat, in
the wind. I mean, any given sunday, you don't know
what's going to happen, and from somebody who's just sitting
on my couch under a blanket watching you, you do
make it look easy, I have to say, But I
(22:23):
do have to ask, like I could barely watch your routines,
Like I get so nervous that I sit there like
with my hands over my eyes. Same thing happened when
I watched the live stream of two UM and you're
there at the edge of the stage and you're knowing
it's you know, it could be a fluke, but like
one millimeter off and and and things could just go south.
I mean, how do you breathe? And every time a
(22:46):
stunt goes up successfully, are you just like yeah, celebrating
and then you're like onto the next one or like,
what is going through your mind there? Like you must
be so nervous. Oh, so nervous. And I can't show it,
you know, as the coach, I can't. I just but yeah,
I don't watch it for entertainment. I'm strictly looking. I'm
looking when they're tumbling, I'm looking at their feet. Did
they land on their feet? Are they all together? Did
(23:09):
the stunts go up? It's like I'm just checking off
the boxes as they complete the skills, and then, like
I said, but it's building up. It's this energy that
builds up, and as they're checking off more and more boxes,
You're like, Okay, we're doing it. We're doing it. You know,
it's exciting, it's scary, it's exciting. It's an emotion that
is just out of this world. We did the hardest
(23:30):
routine this year. We really tried to push. You know,
when you lose, it really pushes you. I mean, we
always push ourselves, but coming off of a year that
we had lost the determination and these kids was just
every day they there was no question that we were
gonna work our butts off, you know, every single day
in the jo. No complaints. I love pyramids, So that's
(23:53):
that part where there's multiple people holding and I I
that's kind of one of the things that I love
to choreograph. I love visual I love it to look
like a circus. And so I had a lot of
sleepless nights where I was thinking about the pyramid and
what we were gonna do. And there's no motivation like losing,
and yeah, we just paid everything we had into it.
(24:15):
And for listeners at home, the pyramid is like three
levels of people, I think, and then you have one Gabby.
I think it was backhand springing up to the top
of the pyramid. I gotta watch it. It's just it's insane. Um.
(24:38):
Cheer is kind of this niche sport, or at least
it was for most people. For you, obviously, it's been
your life, but it exploded in popularity with the show.
So when I was approached many years ago about doing cheer,
I'm actually a very private person. I would never want
cameras in my face or anything like that. I was
just proud of my team and I wanted to holight them.
(24:59):
I mean, I didn't go to college to coach cheerleading.
I thought I would be on Wall Street running some
big company and and this just kind of fell in
my lap. And even then I was super young. I
was two years old when I started here, so I thought,
I'll just do this until I figure out what I
want to do. And then this year and I'm still here.
So it's already pretty improbable that you're here, you know,
(25:22):
coaching this team. And it's even more improbable it seems
that suddenly this film crew shows up and says, we're
going to make a show about cheerleading, and suddenly it's
one of the world's most popular shows. When Greg Whiteley,
who created cheer when when they came out here, I
don't think they even had a clue what they were
(25:42):
going to be filming. They just kind of were intrigued
on some cheerleaders that they had seen filming Last Chance You.
And it's so funny because you said it's scary to
watch that. The crew was terrified. For the first week,
it was oh, they would they screamed, they were just
you know, like and then they got Yeah, they got
used to it and they were like, Okay, it's even
(26:05):
more impressive in person. If you watch it, it's like wow,
you know, but they got so they got to see
the behind the scenes too, so they saw the falls
and it took him about a week to be like, Okay,
who I can do this. Greg said in an interview
that these were the most athletic kids had ever filmed,
and that's that says a lot. So spoiler alert to
(26:26):
any listeners who have yet to finish cheer Season two,
but you guys did not win the championship. And I
will never forget A scene that stood out to me
was you walking off the mat with your armor on
Jillian Grouper. Yeah, sorry, it was fine. Jillian had fallen,
(26:50):
just one of the flyers, and she had fallen during
the routine, and I just remember thinking, you really seem
to be the coach that she needed at that point,
and I just want to know what were you thinking.
What was that moment like for you? Well, um, you
know it. I was trying to process it because it
wasn't a huge mistake, but I know cheerleading, and I
(27:13):
know if you make a mistake, you're gonna get hit
really hard for that mistake, and so I knew that
that did probably cost us. Wasn't in the actual stunt.
It was in the transition of the stunt and something
that was very flukish like it never had happened at practice.
(27:34):
We still don't to this day. We watched it, We're like,
what happened? We don't know. What I do know is
that the guilt that these kids can carry with them
forever over knowing that if we would have hit, we
would have won. We had hit the day before, we
were in first place. But like I said, I knew.
I was like, this is probably cost us the national championship.
(27:55):
And I just know how much that can really stay
with someone. And I did not want her to feel
that guilt. And you know, she's really I mean, she's
got death threats. It's crazy enough, yea, through once the
show came out, some of the things that people have
deemed her or commented on her about it was your
fault and just people are really mean and nasty. But
(28:18):
the good thing is the team has lifted her up,
you know, even then, And and it didn't show poor Alex,
but her partner, I consoled him for a good thirty minutes.
He cried like I had not. I mean, I just
as a parent, I just can't imagine that weight that
my child would have to carry. And I didn't want
them to feel that, you know, and the team was
(28:39):
very supportive and then this year we've just kind of
laughed about it. So I think it was great this
year for a little bit of a redemption for her
and Alex to just get some of that weight off
of them, you know, from last year. This show really
and and your your division is really the perfect setup
(29:01):
for a championship storyline. You have these two schools, you
have this big rivalry, and then you have these flip
flopping teams. You guys, was bad, now you have it
back in two. Can you just take us through the
rivalry with Navarro and Trinity Valley Community College. What's it
mean to the communities and what's it been like? You know,
(29:21):
I think it's it's so intriguing because we are so
close to each other, two small junior colleges that are
thirty five minutes from each other, just down the road,
and so we play each other in all sports, you know,
we we play each other in football, we play each
other in basketball, volleyball. So it's a unique situation. Um
(29:42):
when I came here, so I started here at the
college back in and we had never won before and
Trinity Valley was the team to be So then obviously
once we won. It was kind of like, wait a minute,
now we have some competition and we're so close to
each other. So I think that's probably in the you know,
the rivalry kind of started growing because they finally had
(30:04):
some competition and we were so close, and we're just
battling back and forth. We're battling for recruits, were battling
for national championships, were battling in all the different sports.
It's a very unique situation. I think some viewers were like, wait,
there's like two teams in your division at Nationals. And
that's almost by design, right, because I watched almost every
(30:25):
routine in the Nationals, and I mean, my humble opinion
is that your two schools, I mean above and beyond
the competition. So how really did two junior colleges in
Texas you guys are are, in my opinion, competing at
a higher level than than some of the D one schools.
How does that work? Thank you for bringing that up,
(30:45):
first of all, because I get some very hateful comments,
you know, like wow, good job to teams, you know,
and they don't get it. And the thing about it
is is when we go out there, we go out
there to have the higher score. Of the entire car
petition because we want to be able to say no, no, no,
we didn't just beat one team. We're like really good.
(31:05):
You know. We have scored the highest score of the
entire competition six times out of all our fifteen national championships,
and this year including we had beat every every team there.
We beat their score and we set another record. You
seem to kind of undergo this transformation, you and the
whole team between seasons one and two. It's almost like overnight,
(31:28):
same just knocked down your door. And given the success
of the show, right, that's not surprising. But what was
it like? I mean, you said you were a private person.
What was it like to sort of wake up one
morning and have the entire world paying attention? What was
that like for you and for the team? It was interesting,
to say the least. I mean to see people perceive
me in all different ways because I got so many,
(31:52):
so many things from that. I was crazy to this
and some people love me and that was a little
bit of a shock to my system. Um, I had
to learn how to deal with it. This is the
season of blocking. I never blocked anybody in. I just
let them attack me. I did it I'd let them
attack me in and I was this year, I was like,
(32:14):
you know what, this is my personal space, this is
my social media. Do not come over to my space
and say these horrible things. So I just started blocking
people and it's never felt so good. But you know,
as far as the team goes, I mean, it was
really wild because the campus, we had to cover our windows.
We had people um in the gym, we would have
(32:35):
people filming us through the windows. Busloads of people stopping
every single day. The amount of people on campus every
single day, it was a little bit out of control.
So we tried to put some parameters up and try
to add a little bit more security. But you know,
when we were in practice, I know there was a
lot of talk in the media that year like, oh,
they're they're gonna lose their focus, They're not gonna do
(32:57):
well in Daytona, all this attention, they're going to Ellen
and they're going to New York and and that wasn't
it at all. We were just so determined to prove
everyone wrong about losing our focus. So yes, it was
probably a big adjustment for a lot of them to
get used to. But when it came to practice and
our goals for Daytona that was in a bubble that
we were protecting, and that has to be so hard because,
(33:21):
you know, and maybe it was sort of unfavorable editing
in season two, but it did seem like you guys
were going through some things. Sometimes we think Monica is
like this alien superhero woman who can take on anything,
and we have to remember that she's human. So frustrating.
It's almost like, you know, that year of bad luck,
(33:42):
I mean over a year, you know, and I don't
know if she broke a merselven years ago or something,
but it's just like she has just had really just
bad luck. She's going to have days that just like
we do, that you're going to be like, is this
even worth it? You had COVID, you had the Jerry
(34:04):
Harris news that came out. Jerry Harris won the hearts
of fans with this famous Matt talks. But now Harris
is under arrest, appearing in court Thursday, accused of repeatedly
asking a thirteen year old to produce sexually explicit videos
and photographs of himself. So suddenly it seems like season
(34:25):
two was kind of almost less a show about cheerleading
and more a show about a group of people just
sort of trying to adapt to this instant fame. Yeah,
well it was a talk two years that was reality
and we were overwhelmed. I was working fourteen hour days minimum,
(34:45):
I was not sleeping, and I didn't even know to
expect this, and um, yes, we had a very tough
couple of years, and I think you saw a lot
of sadness in my face. I watched it and I
was like, jeez, I was really going through it. The
Jerry stuff just tore me down, and and then the
fallout that I have with La Darius, like that just
(35:07):
hurt my heart. And so I was really struggling. Yeah,
it was just a really tough couple of years. But
it wasn't it was everything. It was just like spiraling,
you know. And uh, this year has been so great
because I finally, you know, we're in a better place
and healed from a lot of that and you know,
gotten ourselves in a better situation. So so obviously you're
(35:32):
on a podcast for Sports Illustrated and you're I've obviously
heard this before that oh, cheerleading is not a sport,
it's it doesn't count. I mean, what would you say
to those naysayers who are like, this isn't bad athletic.
I've never been offended when people say it's not a
sport because I'm like, okay, well to each his own,
I don't care. But if you say they're not athletic,
(35:54):
that's where I will become offended because and I think
when Cheer came out, that's where people were like, whoa,
people are not just athletic. They're probably more outlet than
than most of the you know people that I know
the athleticism that it takes to compete a routine that
we do. And obviously there's a lot of routines that
are easier, but what we do and we're pushing ourselves
(36:16):
and and and going full out. The term full out
means we're doing our routine with all of the skills executed.
It's like running as fast as you can for two
minutes and fifteen seconds. And it doesn't sound like that
that might be that hard, but go try it and
just say, you know, because you you don't really have
a moment to breathe yet we're expecting you to throw
(36:37):
people up and catch them and and flip your bodies
and and do all these crazy things. Without a moment
to breathe. Because our our routines are very fast paced.
I'm not one to go, oh, you don't think it's
a sport. Well that's fine, I get it. But if
you say these kids are not athletic, then we're gonna
have a whole conversation. You're about to re invent the
sport again. Uh this summer with this cheer tour, Cheerly
(37:00):
is from Navarro ANDTVCC. What is the cheer Tour? What's
it going to look like? So it is going to
be a ninety minute live show. We hope to make
you laugh, cry, all on your feet, fill all the emotions.
It's gonna be great. I mean just you know, just
like if you go watch certain Deslay or any of
those shows and you get to, you know, see some
(37:21):
amazing things, but you also laugh and you also get
this journey and this storytelling. We just have some of
the best athletes in the country coming together to entertain
you through amazing cheerleading. It's gonna be epic. It's gonna
be throughly exciting. Monica al Dama, you are royalty, the
Queen of cheer Thank you so much for being here.
(37:47):
After a break why MLB teams are using the shift
more than ever, and whether Baseball is pending push to
limit it is a good idea. We offered a procedural
agreement that would allow for the timely implementation of sorely
(38:09):
needed rules like the pitch timer and the elimination of
shifts to improve the entertainment value of the game on
the field. Are we really going to ban the shift?
I don't want to see a guy look at a
piece of paper and then walk three paces to the
right and then it's hit right at them. I'm not
playing a video game. In March of this year, MLB
(38:29):
Commissioner Rob Manfred said baseball would undergo some rules changes,
perhaps most notably an effort to cut down on the shift.
SI stafford Emma Bocholari joins me to discuss why baseball
is taking this step, how to execute it, and whether
it's even a good idea. All right, and so, obviously
(38:50):
the shift has been part of baseball forever, but let's
start with what it is and why it works. Basically,
it's just shifting your fielders around the baseball yield in
a way that you're making it less likely for your
opponent to get a hit the ball tracking data that
you have from stack cast. That's not just saying like, oh,
this hitter has a tendency to pull the ball or
(39:10):
to go to the opposite field. Those are the sort
of tendencies you might have always known about it. It's
letting you know exactly, like, here's where this guy hits
the ball. Here is where he is most likely to
make contact. Here is how he responds to this type
of pitch. Here's how he responds in this count. You
have such specific data on the hitter's tendencies on when
he's more or less likely to produce a certain kind
(39:32):
of contact or a certain kind of hit, and that
allows you to know exactly where you want to position
through fielders. It's not just like, oh, we're gonna shade
the second basement over a little bit because that seems
like it might be the thing to do. It's like, no,
there's an x percent chance that he's going to hit
it exactly to the spot on the field. And with
(39:52):
the defensive data that we have on our own team,
combining that with this offensive data on your opponent, you
can pretty much exactly put toge there a game plan
to set up your fielders in a way that you're
going to take away those hits. Right, You're trying to
target where you think the batter is most likely to
hit the ball. But the interesting part here, and what
you wrote about for s I dot Com, is that
(40:13):
the use of the shift has really skyrocketed over the
last decade. Why is that The biggest thing is just data, Like,
as you said, this has been around for a while,
but it's based on looking at where your opponent is
most likely to hit the ball. You might have had
an idea of what that was twenty years ago, fifty
years ago. Ted Williams famously had ships used against him,
(40:35):
so seventy years ago. But now you have specific data
that lets you know. You have stack casts, you have
all this ball tracking data, the sort of things that
you see used on broadcasts, and that allows you to
know with pretty incredible precision what your opponent's tendencies are
and how to best position your fielders to make it
unlikely for them to get a hit. Robinson can only
(40:57):
leads off, Matty drops out a butt. It's a perfect
want and I'll have himself a base. There's your shift buster.
So as that's really become a bigger part of the
game over the last seven years is how long we've
had stockcast and had that data. This is one really
big way that teams have been harnessing it and responding. Right.
(41:18):
The proponerance of data here is obviously fueling it. And
MLB wants to regulate the shift next season, which we
want to get into and a little bit. But in
the interim, MLB teams are going out in this blaze
of shifting glory. Emma. I know it's still early in
the season, but teams are shifting more than ever before. Right, Yeah,
they're shifting on thirty seven percent of plate appearances, even
(41:40):
more against left handed hitters, which is really really high.
So thirty seven to put that in perspective, that's a
massive bump over last season. Right. How significant is that
because over the even just the last four years, the
shift rate has doubled. Yeah, so we've seen it over
for the last couple of seasons now, but if you're
looking at over the last three four years, it's as
(42:01):
you said, it's it's more than doubled, which is pretty profound.
That has a something that you can pick up just
watching a few games a week, seeing how much more
common it is, and that it hasn't sat well with
people who are looking at baseball and want to see
more action. Everybody's position and bunched up exactly where you
know somebody's going to hit it. And now I'm hearing
people saying, well, they should just bunk their way on.
(42:22):
And I'm not taking my eleven year old and thirteen
year old kid to Dodger Stadium to watch Max Munsey
bunt his way on. So the game of baseball and
math have obviously reached this critical point, at least in
terms of the shift, and so baseball is trying to
get rid of it. And in our show meeting, when
I brought this topic up, I expected that most of
(42:45):
our producers would say, yeah, I get rid of the shift.
I hate it. Our team, our production team universally loves
the shift, which kind of blew me away. What do
you say about the shift? I don't mind the shift.
I don't don't know if i'd say that I love it.
Sometimes it is an wing when you see what feels
like it should be a really well struck ball, and
for ninety years, you think that would have just gone
(43:06):
through the gap and been a hit, no question, And
now it's not like sometimes that's annoying, But for the
most part, I like the idea that it's a type
of strategy that teams have access to and hitters also
have access to, knowing like maybe you bunt, maybe you
just try to hit it over the shift ship nobody there,
why not make too. It'll be the shortest rubble of
(43:28):
new schooler or standing up onbelievable, like there are options
at your disposal here. It's not like it's automatically removing
any potential to get on base. Understand where they're legislating
it away most likely, but I will kind of miss it,
and I just like the idea of being a part
of the basic strategy that teams have, you know, in
(43:50):
their arsenal to try both too to stop guys from
getting on base, and something that hitters also have to overcome.
I think it can be kind of fun and interesting
and I'll miss it a little. I'm curious what players
and managers think about it, because yes, the shift has
been around forever, but as we've outlined here, it's really
ramped up over the last you know, seven to ten years.
(44:11):
Are players and managers ready for this to go away
or do they also still like it. I think you
have kind of a mixed bag. I mean, I think
there are a lot of pitchers who love playing in
front of the shift because it's making them look better
when you have your defense behind you taking away those hits.
A lot of hitters, particularly RDIs, who don't get shifted
on very much. They don't care so much. Then you
(44:31):
have lefties who are seeing it used against them all
the time. I mean, you have some hitters prototypical like
lefty power hitter that see it like almost literally every
single app at they have. For some of them, that's
something they've gotten used to and they've been able to
thrive despite it. For some of them, it is kind
of annoying and they're ready to see it go now Baseball,
(44:52):
because it's gotten to this point where it's being used,
as you said, especially against left handed power hitters all
the time. Baseball is trying to get rid it realist
legislated and restricted a little bit. But the devil emma,
as always is in the details. Explain to people why
getting rid of it is so complicated. The most basic
thing here is that baseball positions aren't legislated at all.
(45:15):
Like if you look in the baseball rule book. Obviously
they have names, but there's nothing in the official baseball
rules about where a shortstop has to stand or what
makes you a third baseman. It's just you need to
have fielders on the field, and that's it, other than
the picture and the catcher. Obviously, the rest of that
is all left entirely up to a team's discretion, and
(45:38):
so there's never been an attempt to define a position
to legislate where fielders can stand. So this is all
totally uncharted territory for Major League Baseball, and they came
to an agreement this winter with the Players Association to
say that the league could regulate the shift for so
we know that they're going to try to regulate it
(45:58):
in some fashion, but or a couple different ways to
do that because the structure of Baseball's rules doesn't really
have anything in there right now that makes for an
easy adaptation. If it said a shortstop is X, y Z,
it'd be easier to say this is what your shortstop
has to do, But the rule book doesn't really have
that language, and so it's going to have to come
up with something totally new. Yeah, I love this about baseball,
(46:21):
where baseball identifies what it thinks is a problem and
says we're gonna fix it next year, and then people
like you go, how are you going to do it?
And they go, don't ask us about that right now.
We're not quite sure. We're some of the suggestions that
people have floated two fielders on each side of second
base or four players on the infield dirt. Is it
as simple as that? Would you pick one of those?
(46:42):
I think the most straightforward one is just having two
players on each side of second base. This has been
really focused on in field shifts because we see them
the most teams are also doing a lot more outfield
shifting and doing a lot more with four outfielders, which
can actually be more effective then the infield shift in
some cases. And so if you just say two fielders
(47:05):
on each side of second base, well, if you position
your four outfielders such that you do have two guys
on each side of second that's still opening up room
for that um. But then if you've legislate it by
saying it's just four guys on the infield dirt, well,
then you can still do a basic infield shift of
moving over your second baseman to have three guys on
one side of the endfield, so it's not like an
(47:26):
insurmountable problem. You can also do a definition that combines
those two options, or you could do something else entirely.
But it is just a question baseball has never had
to answer before, and I'm curious to see how they
do it with eight months to figure it out. So
they've got eight months, Emma. And bottom line, is this
good for baseball? Because you said you kind of like
to shift, but it is the game better off limiting it?
(47:48):
I think there is a fairly strong case for what
you get from limiting it. I think baseball has bigger
existential questions about the type of offense it's encouraging the
pace of play. Like when you're talking about baseball as
an aesthetic entertainment product, there are a lot of factors
that go into that, and this is just one very
small piece of it. So I don't think it solves
(48:08):
any of these bigger problems that baseball has, but I
do think it addresses part of it. I think if
it only does a little bit too nudge baseball back
to an environment where you're seeing more hits, you're seeing
more offense, I think that's a good thing. And I
don't think it will have a profound effect. But if
it has a slight effect, that's something and it makes
(48:30):
sense for them to at least look into it. A
little impact could go a long way. This was a
wonderful conversation. Read her on SI dot com. No shift
could stop her. She always hits them where they ain't
m A Bachelari. Thanks for this. Sports Illustrated Weekly is
a production of Sports Illustrated and I Heart Radio. For
(48:51):
more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
And for more of Sports illust At its best stories
and podcasts, visit SI dot com. This episode of Sports
Illustrated Weekly was produced by Cooper McKim, Jessica Armoski, and
Isaac Lee, who was also our sound engineer. Our senior
(49:12):
producer is Dan Bloom. Our executive producers are Scott Brody
and me John Gonzalez. Our theme song is by Nolan Schneider.
Thanks for listening, and if you've stuck around this long,
we leave you with this. Did you go to Duke? Yeah? Uh?
(49:33):
If I had known that ahead of time, this is
like when I found out Cooper was a Giants fan.
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