Steve Phillips, the “GM” of ESPN’s baseball coverage, joins the show to talk about the his career in the game as a GM and broadcaster, as well as the tumultuous off season a look at the coming year.

Thank goodness baseball is back.

1. “I was a general manager in the heart of the steroid era. And I’m surprised, honestly. We used to sit and watch games and think, well, three or four guys on a team maybe were doing something and I think guys so underestimated the impact of performance enhancing drugs and who was doing it and how many guys were doing it and where they were doing it, that I’m shocked by it.”
   

Phillips was GM of the Mets in the late 90’s and early Aughts. Inside Jeff Pearlman’s book on Roger Clemens is an excerpt on Mike Piazza’s supposed steroid use. According to Pearlman, the use was anything but supposed as many people talk about the widespread knowledge of Piazza’s usage. Phillips was the man who traded for him, so I ask him what he thinks of the allegations. Was it a ‘don’t ask/don’t tell’ situation or did the GMs at the time never even think to ask?

1. “As a general manager at that time, I think that all of us wanted a clean game. I think I speak for every general manager – nobody wanted steroids or performance enhancing drugs in the game. On the other side of it, if we couldn’t get that – and there wasn’t testing at the time – then we wanted a level playing field. Now that meant that we wanted everybody not doing it. But if there was no system in place to stop other people from doing it, then as a general manager, I wasn’t going through my clubhouse looking at every shoebox in the locker and trying to see what this guy was doing and that guy was doing.
   

1. “Because I couldn’t go anywhere with information if I had it, I ended up just trying to educate, as part of our philosophy as an organization, everybody in our organization on the impact of performance enhancing drugs.”
   

1. “People looked at Mike Piazza because he was big and strong and went from being kind of a skinny guy to a big guy, and because he had acne on his back, they all thought he used steroids. But there’s not – he’s not connected to any player, any person inside the game, outside the game or anybody else that said Mike Piazza used it. It’s all just because of what people look at with their eyes, and I don’t think that’s fair. But that’s the reality, guilt by association that exists in Major League Baseball right now.
   

1. “I’m not shocked by the Alex Rodriguez one. We all heard rumors or mumbling out there about it..whispers about it. And I’m not going to be shocked by the next player either because of guilt by association, they all kind of feel like they did it. And even though Derek Jeter says ‘we didn’t all do it,’ I understand that. But because nobody stomped their feet and screamed from the highest mountain that other guys were doing it, we kind of all lump them together.”
   

We shift gears a bit to talk about being a GM. General Manager is such a, well, general term, so I ask what the actual job of the GM is from day-to-day. Are GMs solely responsible for putting a good product on the field (at all levels) or are they involved in other parts of the team, including putting fans in the seats, merchandising and whatnot?

How many GMs have an edict to win at all costs and how many GMs are told to try and make money first, win second? Phillips brings up an interesting point about small market teams and how, with big-market teams seeing these small-market organizations succeed with young players and smart drafting and scouting, the big guys are less apt to trade away their young talent (he cites the Yankees unwillingness to part with top prospects for Yohan Santana as an example). Thus, small-market teams, who were built on a model of smart trades and pilfering big-market farm systems, aren’t able to do that anymore. In other words, the model used by small markets was so successful (in places like Oakland, Tampa, etc) that it will now come back to hinder their success in the future.

I also ask Phillips about a potential salary cap. While he says it will never happen, he thinks that GMs might enjoy the challenge.

We move on to his time at ESPN and I start with his much discussed mock GM press conferences with actual reporters posing fake questions to him. He says that he enjoyed the process of doing it and respected the idea by ESPN to try something different. He even suggested that ESPN do it again, and understands -- but does not agree -- that people may have looked at the segments as a shot to their credibility.

1. “I’m kind of used to people throwing stones. It doesn’t bother me even a little bit. And so when that happened I thought, ‘what a creative, unique way to talk about issues and topics and teams and needs and strengths and weaknesses in a way that’s different. You could sit in front of a camera and do it as a talking head and it would work and people would get something out of it. But I thought it was a creative way to do it.
   

1. “I actually thought they should do it again.  Even though people criticized it, it was creative and different and why not take those kinds of chances when, you know, what’s the risk, really? I guess for some people it’s credibility but I didn’t look at it that way from my perspective or from the reporter’s perspective either.”
   

Speaking of credibility on TV, I bring up Matt Millen, and his hiring by NBC, to ask Phillips, who was in no way as terrible a GM as Millen, why we’re expected to trust GMs who have been fired or failed miserably at their jobs? Why do they get to be experts on TV?

1. “Even the most successful General Managers can make mistakes, and the fact is, you can learn from your mistakes. A lot of the things that I address and talk about – and I would bet that Matt Millen would do the same – is ‘you know what, I made some decisions that I thought were right, that in the end were wrong, but that still gives me a context in which to talk about things.’
   

Since the season is starting, we go on the field a bit. People are picking the Mets to win it all, but doesn’t everyone realize they are choking dogs? We talk about Philips picks for the upcoming season and who he thinks will make the World Series.

We also talk about who his breakout stars will be this season. He thinks one of the best young stars may not even be in the majors right now.

And last, as the show was taped on April Fool’s Day, what AFD pranks has he been a part of?

Man it’s great to have baseball back. I’m emotional just thinking about it the World Champs taking the field.

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