Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. Hi everyone, welcome to
Speaker 1: the Deal.
Speaker 2: I'm Jason Kelly alongside my partner Alex Rodriguez. All right, Alex,
Speaker 2: this week something a little bit different kind of I
Speaker 2: went a little rogue, like I went away from the
Speaker 2: deal for just a few minutes.
Speaker 1: You know, you have your businesses.
Speaker 2: I have mine, And I did an interview with a
Speaker 2: guy who I think it's fair to say as a
Speaker 2: hero of yours, cal Ripken Junior. It's part of a
Speaker 2: series that I'm doing for Bloomberg Originals called power Players.
Speaker 1: You got a chance to watch it, I.
Speaker 3: Mean an icon of icons, right, Jason, I'm so excited
Speaker 3: about this.
Speaker 4: First.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you know this, but col was
Speaker 3: my hero growing up. My mother bought me a great
Speaker 3: poster I think for like my ninth birthday, which lived
Speaker 3: on top of my bed till I graduated from high
Speaker 3: I might have been a rook.
Speaker 4: He's still at eighteen.
Speaker 3: It was still there because he was the tallest shortstop,
Speaker 3: right he was six four two twenty five. He gave
Speaker 3: me hope that someone tall like me can't play shortstop.
Speaker 3: And I think Derek Jeter had the same inspiration as well.
Speaker 3: But I love Cal for so many reasons because he
Speaker 3: is the epitome of sticking with it. He is the
Speaker 3: epitome of what I call narrow and deep. I mean,
Speaker 3: if you think about it, for the last forty five years,
Speaker 3: he's done two things. He's played baseball at a Hall
Speaker 3: of Fame level, and two he's taught baseball to little kids,
Speaker 3: And I think it's just wonderful.
Speaker 1: I too, grew up watching Cal Ripken.
Speaker 2: I mean I remember, like so many people do, watching
Speaker 2: him break that record. When you think about sort of
Speaker 2: the best known athletes of our time, especially when you
Speaker 2: and I were younger, he's up there.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no one like.
Speaker 3: Him in many ways, Jason. He is almost single handily
Speaker 3: responsible for bringing baseball back after the nineteen ninety four strike,
Speaker 3: which I was.
Speaker 1: A part of.
Speaker 3: Yes, and look, you were in George Sound in the
Speaker 3: early nineties and he was breaking records right down the
Speaker 3: street from you, which phenomenal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was fascinating to spend time with him. So
Speaker 2: I went down to Aberdeen, which you know is kind
Speaker 2: of in the middle of nowhere. It's like, if you've
Speaker 2: ever driven down ninety five from New York to DC.
Speaker 2: You pass by this complex, it's sort of like sitting
Speaker 2: up on this hill and as you go back there
Speaker 2: and I mean, you would dig this so much. He's
Speaker 2: focused on teaching baseball to little kids, particularly with his foundation,
Speaker 2: but the business is much bigger than that Ripkin Baseball.
Speaker 2: It's centered around three baseball complexes, one in Aberdeen, the
Speaker 2: one I visited, one in Tennessee, and one in South Carolina.
Speaker 2: Each of these places has replicas of world class baseball stadiums,
Speaker 2: places you're very familiar with Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium. And
Speaker 2: what Cal, his brother, and the team do is they
Speaker 2: really sell the Ripkin experiences to young players. And those
Speaker 2: experiences include training camps, on site tournaments, stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And this is going to be I think a generational
Speaker 3: asset for the Ripkin family. Obviously, Rippin Senior started the legacy.
Speaker 3: Everything's around him and what he taught Billy Ripkin and
Speaker 3: cow and I believe Ryan, his son, Cal Ripkin's son
Speaker 3: will ultimately one day maybe take over this business. Who
Speaker 3: also played college baseball at the University of South Carolina.
Speaker 2: That's right, yeah, And it's also interesting too because this
Speaker 2: gets right into the heart of what we talk about
Speaker 2: in the show every week because Cal and his brother Billy,
Speaker 2: they did a deal. They got into business with Josh Harrison,
Speaker 2: David Blitzer and Unrivaled. You know, a couple episodes ago,
Speaker 2: we were talking to Jesse Jacobs about the TCG investment
Speaker 2: into Unrivaled and all the ambition around youth sports. One
Speaker 2: of the interesting things that I discovered, which which Alex
Speaker 2: I think you will appreciate too, is this idea of
Speaker 2: when I first saw that deal, I thought, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: well that's nice.
Speaker 1: Billy and Cal like built.
Speaker 2: This business and you know, sort of get paid and
Speaker 2: go off and do something else, when in fact, they
Speaker 2: were doubling down and they are making this bigger and
Speaker 2: bigger and part of this big empire.
Speaker 1: The deal.
Speaker 3: I want to just kind of lean in here a
Speaker 3: little bit because from Afar Jason, you knew that Cal
Speaker 3: and Billy were working on something around sports. It was
Speaker 3: very admirable, but you never thought about the business. You
Speaker 3: looked at it more. At least I did as a
Speaker 3: civic duty to Cal Senior's voice that Billy and Cal
Speaker 3: were kind of bringing onto the next generation, and all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, two of the Titans buy into the business.
Speaker 3: Josh Eris and David Blitzer as you mentioned, and you go, oh,
Speaker 3: these guys do not get involved unless it's top tier,
Speaker 3: and they know how to scale a business, they know
Speaker 3: how to recruit world class and now they have turbo
Speaker 3: charges business. I would think about it as Facebook buying
Speaker 3: Instagram and off they go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh wow, that's a great analogy. I hadn't thought
Speaker 2: about that. Anyway, it was fascinating to do. I knew
Speaker 2: you would like it, so I'm.
Speaker 1: Glad you got a chance to watch it.
Speaker 2: Without further ado. Here's Power Players. Kyl Ripkin, Welcome back
Speaker 2: to the deal. I'm Jason Kelly. Well, as you heard
Speaker 2: me talk to Alex about, I have this whole other
Speaker 2: life outside of him. I do another series for Bloomberg
Speaker 2: called Power Players, and it's a super exciting series for
Speaker 2: me because I get to go and visit really influential
Speaker 2: people in the broader sports world. I traveled all over
Speaker 2: the world for this season, but actually for the premiere,
Speaker 2: I didn't have to go that far. I got in
Speaker 2: my car and I drove down to Aberdeen, Maryland to
Speaker 2: see none other than Cal Ripken Junior, the iron Man
Speaker 2: himself and I showed up to this incredible complex that's
Speaker 2: there that Cal and his brother Billy have built and
Speaker 2: really expanded over the years. It's the cornerstone of their
Speaker 2: youth baseball empire. So you have to keep in mind.
Speaker 2: You drive up to this and there are baseball fields
Speaker 2: as far as the eye can see. It's just off
Speaker 2: of I ninety five. There's even a hotel there where
Speaker 2: players can stay. And it's built to mimic Camden Yards,
Speaker 2: which of course is the famous ballpark in Baltimore where
Speaker 2: Cal and Billy and his dad, Cal Senior all hung
Speaker 2: around and played baseball and managed baseball for so many years.
Speaker 1: Here's Cal Ripken. I'm going to go.
Speaker 2: Back aways and ask what I think is a pretty
Speaker 2: obvious question. I'm going to read stats that you know
Speaker 2: very well, and eighty four hits, four hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: one home runs, two Golden Gloves, Rookie of the Year,
Speaker 2: most Valuaball player times, two World Series champion, and of
Speaker 2: course the most famous setheator.
Speaker 1: But I know it's two.
Speaker 2: Thousand, six hundred and thirty two consecutive games played unmatched career.
Speaker 1: Why are you doing this?
Speaker 4: Let me give you a.
Speaker 5: Perspective Now, someone just reminded me of the day that
Speaker 5: you played twenty one years with the Orioles in and
Speaker 5: around here, and now you've been out of the game
Speaker 5: twenty two years.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 5: So that's a forty three year window, a chunk of
Speaker 5: time when you retire from baseball. I mean, you have
Speaker 5: a wonderful career. And I was forty one. I got
Speaker 5: to play a long, long time. But you're not ready
Speaker 5: to pack it in. You're ready to do something. And
Speaker 5: I enjoyed the feeling that I got, or I hate
Speaker 5: to use the word platform, that you get from being
Speaker 5: a player. I always enjoyed the influence you had with kids.
Speaker 5: I always enjoyed the game of baseball. I always enjoyed
Speaker 5: what Dad represented about baseball. My first fourteen years of
Speaker 5: my life was following him around in the minor leagues
Speaker 5: as a manager and then get a chance to come
Speaker 5: to the big leagues and then have a big league career.
Speaker 5: And so Dad communicated through kids, through clinics and baseball
Speaker 5: and all that. He was a great teacher, but he
Speaker 5: kind of talked about life through baseball, and so Billy
Speaker 5: and I wanted to extend that from a content teaching standpoint.
Speaker 5: You know, I thought we could help players be a
Speaker 5: little bit better, but experientially, that's what Billy and I valued,
Speaker 5: and we wanted to try to bring that sort of
Speaker 5: experience to the kids. So I didn't look at it
Speaker 5: as a money making entity. At first. It seemed like
Speaker 5: it was more philanthropic. And then you realize that if
Speaker 5: you're going to do this, it's got to wash its
Speaker 5: own face. No matter how well you did or how
Speaker 5: much money you put aside, the model has to work.
Speaker 5: And it seemed like in the early days there was opportunities.
Speaker 5: There was abundant opportunities everywhere. We could go down any
Speaker 5: path that we wanted to go down, and I think
Speaker 5: many times we were going down too many paths. And
Speaker 5: it wasn't until we started to really think what are
Speaker 5: we good at, what can we really do for the
Speaker 5: kids that we started to make the business side work.
Speaker 5: But when you look at it now, that couldn't be
Speaker 5: more proud. Some of the complexes that we visit and
Speaker 5: that we have under our control. Now it's the same
Speaker 5: sort of feeling in all the complexes for the kids.
Speaker 5: You know, sometimes I say baseball is dying in a way,
Speaker 5: you know, from a youth standpoint, less people are playing,
Speaker 5: but of the less people that are playing, more of
Speaker 5: them are playing more baseball. But you see the spirit
Speaker 5: capture the spirit of baseball, just like it was when
Speaker 5: Billion and I were kids. You feel like the whole
Speaker 5: world revolves around baseball. When you're in it. It's fun,
Speaker 5: it's great, and we couldn't be more proud of of
Speaker 5: contributing to some of that happiness and some of that
Speaker 5: joy that Billy and I felt.
Speaker 2: Tell me about those early days and sort of getting
Speaker 2: into it. I mean, you're retiring from baseball. You and
Speaker 2: Billy are trying to figure out that next chapter, Like
Speaker 2: what are those conversations like as you're kind of doing
Speaker 2: that trial and error.
Speaker 5: Billy and I are a little different in the fact
Speaker 5: that I'm optimistic and you think you can do anything,
Speaker 5: you know, especially coming off your baseball career, and now
Speaker 5: you're getting into this.
Speaker 4: I dreamed a little bit bigger.
Speaker 5: Billy is more practical, and so we always had conversations
Speaker 5: every time you come in. You know, you blow things
Speaker 5: up and you make it bigger, and let's do this,
Speaker 5: let's start small. And so I think the lesson that
Speaker 5: both him and I learned probably more me was that
Speaker 5: it has to make business sense, and maybe planning would
Speaker 5: have been a little bit better. But in many ways
Speaker 5: you're learning as you go, and I think one of
Speaker 5: the lessons what you learn when you go through the
Speaker 5: minor leagues is that you don't know how good you're
Speaker 5: going to be. You just got to keep doing things
Speaker 5: and trying things and out how you do it, and
Speaker 5: then keeping those things in disregarding the other ones. In
Speaker 5: this it seemed like we were trying new things going
Speaker 5: on in all different directions. Maybe a better business plan wouldn't
Speaker 5: have been the right way to start, maybe not, but.
Speaker 1: Things What were some of the things you tried that
Speaker 1: didn't work? If you remember.
Speaker 5: Well, again, it was pretty capital intensive to do the fields.
Speaker 5: The story with the warehouse here, I wanted to have
Speaker 5: a building that would give the kids a feel and
Speaker 5: there was a development opportunity, but first we thought of
Speaker 5: it as a office building. We would have done really
Speaker 5: bad if we did the office building. And then we
Speaker 5: started to look into it, and then the feasibility studies
Speaker 5: came back about what about a hotel that's right off
Speaker 5: ninety five, et cetera, et cetera. So going down that
Speaker 5: path of getting that done. I take great pride in
Speaker 5: the fact that we had to convince Bill Marriott to
Speaker 5: change the branding of the box to allow us to
Speaker 5: do this. It's a double Marriott hotel. And that meeting
Speaker 5: was a little nerve wracking going down there and trying
Speaker 5: to present your vision what you want to do.
Speaker 4: Because Bill was really quiet.
Speaker 5: You didn't say a word, which made you feel like
Speaker 5: you had to present more and to keep pitching, you know,
Speaker 5: and saying, Okay, he's not getting I'm dying here.
Speaker 4: But at the end he kind of gave.
Speaker 5: A little cheapish smile and says, I get it. You know,
Speaker 5: we'll do it. Yeah, And that was a good feeling.
Speaker 5: But just some of the things you run into, how
Speaker 5: do you get the fields built, how do you run
Speaker 5: your tournaments, the teaching entity. It seemed like everybody trusted
Speaker 5: their kids with us, and we were thinking, Okay, they're
Speaker 5: all going to be about the same baseball level. These
Speaker 5: are all baseball intense kids or whatever else. But then
Speaker 5: you realize that there's a big range of skill level.
Speaker 5: So then you had to get your curriculum, so to speak,
Speaker 5: where everybody could benefit. And then sometimes we went through
Speaker 5: a period. Well, we'll just evaluate them real quick, and
Speaker 5: then we'll put them in different groups, and then we'll
Speaker 5: be able to give them the more advanced kids, some
Speaker 5: more advanced, we'll give them the kids that need a
Speaker 5: little more simple, more simple. But when you start throwing
Speaker 5: a number of kids in there, the numbers become overwhelming,
Speaker 5: and you got to trying to figure that out. So
Speaker 5: I think that's probably normal growing pains in any sort
Speaker 5: of business that you the realities of what you're thinking.
Speaker 5: What you're thinking is not always the reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know you mentioned that the Bill Marriott story,
Speaker 2: And I do wonder what that feeling is like for
Speaker 2: you because, and I'll say it in a way that
Speaker 2: you would never say it. It's like you're cal Ripkett,
Speaker 2: Like you're used to walking into a room of people
Speaker 2: like what do you need?
Speaker 1: What can I do for you? You're my hero.
Speaker 2: I've been to a fan since I was a kid,
Speaker 2: and here, like, you're not just like asking for something,
Speaker 2: You're asking for a big something.
Speaker 1: What's that feeling like for you?
Speaker 5: There is an advantage to having that sort of reputation
Speaker 5: or that sort of name. We could get a meeting
Speaker 5: with most anybody. We want to get a meeting with.
Speaker 5: But the hard part is what.
Speaker 4: Do you do then?
Speaker 5: And that's what we're worried about all the time, is
Speaker 5: that substantively it has to match what your persona is,
Speaker 5: I guess and I never thought, you know, we're baseball players.
Speaker 5: Now we're getting into some areas which I think Billy
Speaker 5: probably helped to pull us back down a little bit
Speaker 5: now because I kept thinking, well, let's we can talk
Speaker 5: to this person, we can talk to that person, Let's
Speaker 5: do this, let's do that. Billy said, let's do this,
Speaker 5: And so Billy probably grounded us a whole lot more.
Speaker 5: And I kept thinking, because you could get a meeting
Speaker 5: with anybody else. And I think we're generally feeling that
Speaker 5: we could partner, you know, And maybe that was a
Speaker 5: philanthrope more than philanthropic view that we have, Like with
Speaker 5: the foundation, we feel if you want to help kids, then.
Speaker 4: We're with you. Let's all do it together.
Speaker 5: In a business sense, you have to think a little
Speaker 5: differently how that works, but still a partnering sort of idea,
Speaker 5: bringing different resources to the table was a good thing
Speaker 5: and you just have to figure out how that all works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So tell me about the sort of initial concept
Speaker 2: like going way back to this place where we're sitting,
Speaker 2: if you.
Speaker 5: Want to go back to the seed of the idea. Well,
Speaker 5: I mean Dad ended up leaving baseball, and Dad at
Speaker 5: a baseball school, and Billy left baseball before I left baseball,
Speaker 5: and then Billy did some of the baseball school stuff.
Speaker 4: He kind of ran it.
Speaker 5: And I always had the vision when I stopped is
Speaker 5: that we were looking for places to bring Dad's baseball
Speaker 5: school into Aberdeen or to have the fields. And then
Speaker 5: we bumped into an effort too for the minor league
Speaker 5: team that they were looking at the same time. We
Speaker 5: looked at each other, you know, because we were looking
Speaker 5: at similar spots here in Aberdeen, and we decided to
Speaker 5: come together. So I helped them, and I thought the
Speaker 5: vision of creating a kid's complex, a teaching facility to
Speaker 5: play tournament games here, and also you would have the
Speaker 5: vision of the start of a pro career over there,
Speaker 5: so you could actually then carry that over and watch
Speaker 5: like the next phase. If you're really good and you
Speaker 5: get up the ladder of high school, you get drafted,
Speaker 5: and all of a sudden, now this is where you go.
Speaker 5: And then obviously we have Cameron Yards down the street
Speaker 5: where you can see the big big league product. So
Speaker 5: that was sort of the vision coming in and how
Speaker 5: we were going.
Speaker 4: To do that.
Speaker 5: Billy and I liked celebrating the individuality of a field.
Speaker 5: Like from a design standpoint, we didn't like quads. You know,
Speaker 5: they're the most efficient use of your space, but they're
Speaker 5: angled in four areas and balls are flying everywhere. We
Speaker 5: wanted to make each field have its own identity. And
Speaker 5: then we liked the fact that we played in Fenway
Speaker 5: where there's a green monster. You know, the game can
Speaker 5: be played a little bit differently based on the dimensions.
Speaker 5: That's the beauty of baseball. And so we set out
Speaker 5: to do that in the design aspect of here. So
Speaker 5: kind of go on teeter and back and forth. From
Speaker 5: a business standpoint, I retired from baseball. I took on
Speaker 5: the whole project myself over here. We didn't have a
Speaker 5: team for the minor league team. I had to find
Speaker 5: a team, move a team, go through territorial issues with
Speaker 5: the Phillies, the Orioles, and the Wilmington Blue Rocks that
Speaker 5: was down the street and the Orioles, Mister Angelos created
Speaker 5: an affiliate to get in the New York Penn League team,
Speaker 5: but somebody else had to get out of the New
Speaker 5: York League. So all that happened in the time that
Speaker 5: I retired and your building a stadium, which I was
Speaker 5: on the hook for the third of that was on
Speaker 5: the hook for have a team at the time, so
Speaker 5: my focus went immediately over there.
Speaker 4: Billy's focus was.
Speaker 5: A little bit more in the start of this side
Speaker 5: of the of the street, the kid's side, that was
Speaker 5: a resounding success in the minor league team over there,
Speaker 5: we found a team, came in, we sold it out
Speaker 5: for the first ten or twelve years, and then the
Speaker 5: kid's side was developed a little bit more slowly. But
Speaker 5: now when you look at it, we've maximized our lot.
Speaker 5: We got a number of fields over here. We have
Speaker 5: a good following, good reputation all the way around, and
Speaker 5: it's fun to come on the complex and see how
Speaker 5: the two stadiums interact. But the seed of it was
Speaker 5: just to be able to help kids out and create
Speaker 5: an experience. And really Dad was really interesting because Dad
Speaker 5: kept his baseball school small, smaller so he could have
Speaker 5: one on one interaction with the kids. He didn't want
Speaker 5: to make it so big. I was of the thing is, well,
Speaker 5: we can make it really big and we can help
Speaker 5: more kids. Billy was more like my dad, so we
Speaker 5: had sort of a model in there in between where
Speaker 5: we wanted to be more hands on so that we
Speaker 5: would get a chance to teach and move through like
Speaker 5: Dad's model.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got to talk about your dad.
Speaker 2: I mean, his name, his ethos clearly is so deeply
Speaker 2: baked into this.
Speaker 1: This is the family business.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's no other family that is probably as
Speaker 2: deeply embedded in this sport as as yours. Like, how
Speaker 2: does that influence your decision making? How does it influence
Speaker 2: the way that you and Billy have decided to do
Speaker 2: this as businessmen?
Speaker 5: Huh, Well, I would look at it a little different
Speaker 5: than that. The family business was professional baseball because Dad
Speaker 5: was in professional baseball. I guess if you add it
Speaker 5: up close to forty years maybe and first fourteen years
Speaker 5: as in the minor leagues, the Oriels were a great organization.
Speaker 5: They were developing players and Dad was part of sending
Speaker 5: the players to the big leagues.
Speaker 4: And then right in my high school year.
Speaker 5: He had a chance to come to the big leagues
Speaker 5: as a coach, and I got a chance to experience
Speaker 5: a little bit of that, but the family business wasn't
Speaker 5: using you know, our success in baseball to actually expand
Speaker 5: on that.
Speaker 4: I mean that that was a night away in baseball.
Speaker 4: That was the idea of Billiy and I. So it
Speaker 4: was more of the professional.
Speaker 5: Side, and I think sometimes you've learned so much by
Speaker 5: playing so long at the highest level and you want
Speaker 5: to have that sort of talent that you want to
Speaker 5: deal with. So I think Billy a lot of times
Speaker 5: was thinking about that, and then you in some ways
Speaker 5: you got to go all the way back to the
Speaker 5: beginning and then simplify and start to build the blocks
Speaker 5: up for how you're going to help, you know, a
Speaker 5: talented kid become a better baseball player.
Speaker 2: It's interesting too that your dad very early on saw
Speaker 2: that sort of teachable aspect of the game and really
Speaker 2: embrace that.
Speaker 1: It sounds like well with his school and I.
Speaker 5: Think he always had a soft spot for kids that
Speaker 5: especially didn't have a good fatherly influence, you know, and
Speaker 5: he was a.
Speaker 4: Fatherly influenced in the minor leagues.
Speaker 5: You know, kids were coming in right out of high school,
Speaker 5: your first time away from home or first time doing
Speaker 5: you know, a lot of these things, and so he
Speaker 5: was looking out for them as well as trying to
Speaker 5: make them big leaguers. And so that sort of legacy
Speaker 5: started us in creating the foundation in Dad's name to
Speaker 5: use baseball the way he did to get in front
Speaker 5: of kids, kids that didn't have all the same advantages,
Speaker 5: and we would give them an opportunity to move in
Speaker 5: a positive direction. That was sort of Dad's impetus. And
Speaker 5: so it all played in the experiential side when you're
Speaker 5: actually doing tournaments and all that kind of stuff, you're
Speaker 5: feeding from, you know, Dad's thoughts to do things the
Speaker 5: right way. He used to always say, if it's worth doing,
Speaker 5: it's worth doing right. You know, you make more of
Speaker 5: a mess of it if you do it halfway. You
Speaker 5: got to go back and do it again and again,
Speaker 5: those sorts of things. So Dad's voice and Dad's thoughts
Speaker 5: are in, you know, our every day thinking process.
Speaker 4: But it does get confusing.
Speaker 5: You have the Cawrochmen Senior Foundation is that we we
Speaker 5: target kids and use baseball in which to get in.
Speaker 4: Front of them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and now that's expanded all across the country. You know,
Speaker 5: we're doing we call them youth development parks where we've built,
Speaker 5: you know, over one hundred and fifteen, one hundred and
Speaker 5: twenty of those by now, which costs a million a million.
Speaker 4: And a half dollars a pop.
Speaker 5: And it's all to give them a safe place in
Speaker 5: these areas in which to do anything they want. It's
Speaker 5: a sports field. And then now we're even into stem centers.
Speaker 5: You know, we're getting into curriculum in schools and those
Speaker 5: sorts of things, and the success we've had there, you know,
Speaker 5: it has been good. So a lot of times when
Speaker 5: people look at it's hard to separate the work that
Speaker 5: you do for the foundation under Dad's name, and then
Speaker 5: also under the name that you're doing for building kids
Speaker 5: complexes and having an experience, a tournament experience, and also
Speaker 5: you know, a teaching one. So the growth of those
Speaker 5: things have kind of side by side in some ways.
Speaker 5: In the early days, I was thinking the foundation, we
Speaker 5: hard well, built a board really well, and that grew
Speaker 5: really fast, and you know, you could see the success
Speaker 5: of having the right people in the right places. This
Speaker 5: side was a little bit more slow. We had people
Speaker 5: that might have been the right people at the time.
Speaker 5: But then you know, as you're going you get your
Speaker 5: team together and you're building the model because it's interesting.
Speaker 5: You build a model first, and then you could duplicate
Speaker 5: it some other place to help more kids. But I
Speaker 5: think that we were trying to duplicate the model before
Speaker 5: we had the model in some ways interesting. And Dad
Speaker 5: would say about that. He says, you're getting too big
Speaker 5: for your briches. And that's where Billy's practical sort of
Speaker 5: common sense would say, here, let's do this.
Speaker 4: Let's do this first. I'm thinking, but we can do this.
Speaker 4: We have influence in there.
Speaker 5: We can go to California, we can go right and
Speaker 5: they're saying, come on back.
Speaker 2: So one of the things I was especially interested to
Speaker 2: talk to Cal Ripkin about was coming together with David
Speaker 2: Blitzer and Josh Harris. These are two private equity tycoons
Speaker 2: who have gone heavy into the world of sports. They
Speaker 2: own a bunch of professional sports teams, including the Washington Commanders,
Speaker 2: Philadelphia seventy Sixers, and more. They've also made a huge
Speaker 2: bet on the world of youth sports. And so I
Speaker 2: asked Cal what it was like when he first met
Speaker 2: up with David Blitzer. So, tell me about like the
Speaker 2: coming together with but I mean, do you remember meeting
Speaker 2: him vividly.
Speaker 5: The interesting part about being cal Ripken is that, as
Speaker 5: I said that, you can get a meeting or talk
Speaker 5: and to me, I always thought anybody ever met when
Speaker 5: to talk baseball. And then I was thinking, Okay, we'll
Speaker 5: talk a little baseball, and then I'll ask business questions
Speaker 5: because now you have someone hugely successful that have gone
Speaker 5: through and they have all this information that so you're
Speaker 5: trying to grab something back. You're giving the baseball inside
Speaker 5: stories and you're saying, but what about this? And I
Speaker 5: remember that because David helped sort of organize, you know,
Speaker 5: some of the business thoughts, because as I communicate our
Speaker 5: success or our path, it seems like we were all
Speaker 5: over the place, and because opportunity was pretty abundant. But
Speaker 5: it's still you've got to focus on what you're doing
Speaker 5: and you got to build a model. And I remember
Speaker 5: asking him for advice or how to do this, or
Speaker 5: just some of the concepts, and he was very open
Speaker 5: and I think that we had a good interaction back
Speaker 5: and forth. What I would say was when I first
Speaker 5: went into business, you're thinking, okay, look, I'm overmatched. I
Speaker 5: was twenty years in baseball. I was playing a game
Speaker 5: over here. Now I gave everybody else twenty or twenty
Speaker 5: five years a head start, you know, and now I
Speaker 5: got to catch up. But then the process is you
Speaker 5: realize the success that you had in the sport, some
Speaker 5: of the principles and values, the way you go about
Speaker 5: things or whatever it is, they definitely moved towards the
Speaker 5: business side. And so it's just kind of understanding how
Speaker 5: to place your work ethic, your persistence, and all that
Speaker 5: kind of stuff into another model. So I've learned a
Speaker 5: heck of a lot by being a baseball player for
Speaker 5: twenty years, right, And the part about it was how
Speaker 5: do you apply those things?
Speaker 4: And I remember that meeting and that it was sort
Speaker 4: of an application or this is how you apply it,
Speaker 4: this is how you do it.
Speaker 5: So I was asking him a lot of questions and
Speaker 5: we did hit it off pretty well, and so then
Speaker 5: we went off and started to have a little bit
Speaker 5: more success and started to organize our business a little
Speaker 5: bit better. He was doing what David does and talk
Speaker 5: about has his hand in a lot of things and
Speaker 5: his love for sports, and he was going through the
Speaker 5: youth sports. At the time, we were trying to make
Speaker 5: some sense out of parents' roles in the experience, putting
Speaker 5: pressure on the kids and all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 5: and this is what we wanted to try to create together.
Speaker 2: How does it culminate into an actual business relationship because
Speaker 2: it's cool to be swapping stories and giving advice, but
Speaker 2: like to actually put your businesses together is a whole
Speaker 2: other thing.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, he.
Speaker 5: Had an interest in and he had some assets in
Speaker 5: the youth baseball business. One of those assets we were
Speaker 5: talking to them about running, you know, because they would
Speaker 5: have to ramp up and this.
Speaker 4: Village.
Speaker 5: And so that's where we sort of came back together.
Speaker 5: And I really had no intention of kind of merging
Speaker 5: you know, our business interests at the time. But the
Speaker 5: more we talk, the more they liked our management staff,
Speaker 5: and we got a really good management team and we
Speaker 5: were at the right place at the right time, I think,
Speaker 5: and they said, Okay, before we grow things separately, why
Speaker 5: don't we consider growing together. And the growth part of
Speaker 5: that was really interesting to me because that's the big
Speaker 5: picture analysis again, is we were growing, but we were
Speaker 5: growing sort of in a controlled way, and then every
Speaker 5: time that you had an opportunity or something comes in,
Speaker 5: then you got to figure out, Okay, how do I
Speaker 5: raise the money for this?
Speaker 4: How do we do that?
Speaker 5: And David of course brought a sophistication to you know,
Speaker 5: high little business that all of a sudden it's a
Speaker 5: good idea and it makes sense business wise or whatever else.
Speaker 5: Capital is not going to be you know, an issue.
Speaker 5: This is how you do it, and so all of
Speaker 5: a sudden we felt I felt that the growth could
Speaker 5: be accelerated, and I wanted to be able to move,
Speaker 5: you know, at different parts of the country and expand
Speaker 5: on the good work that we were doing. So then
Speaker 5: once we start, it took us about six months back
Speaker 5: and forth talking before we thought this was a good idea.
Speaker 5: But I couldn't have asked for a better partner to
Speaker 5: come in. And you know, the idea of expanding to
Speaker 5: other sports and then using the same model to have
Speaker 5: tournaments and get in other sports, that sort of upside,
Speaker 5: that sort.
Speaker 4: Of growth really interests me. So yeah, that was why
Speaker 4: I came in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's interesting to look at that, I mean
Speaker 2: because at first, blush cynical business journalists that I am,
Speaker 2: I see the announcement, I'm like, oh that's cool, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, Callumbilly have built their business and now they're
Speaker 2: selling out.
Speaker 1: Then you look at it and you're like, oh no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: they're like doubling down. They're like selling in in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways.
Speaker 2: So it's like, was that that was always the plan
Speaker 2: or what was it that really like struck you about
Speaker 2: this particular opportunity.
Speaker 5: David and Josh love the brand. We had private equity
Speaker 5: take a run at us a number of times over
Speaker 5: the years, and I had one of the private equity
Speaker 5: person we have a fund, you know, we have the
Speaker 5: own majority of the fund, Da da da da, and
Speaker 5: we're saying we can monetize your brand way better than
Speaker 5: you are. And I took that a little bit personal, thinking, well,
Speaker 5: you probably could, but it's our name, it's what we're building,
Speaker 5: whatever else, it's support And that didn't interest me, you know,
Speaker 5: in those days. But then once you're talking to David
Speaker 5: and Josh, they really liked the brand and they wanted
Speaker 5: to expand the brand in the same way that we
Speaker 5: were thinking about expanding. Now, of course we can accelerate
Speaker 5: it a little faster and grow a little faster because
Speaker 5: of the partnership. But I was convinced and comforted that
Speaker 5: we were all on the same page. It wasn't just
Speaker 5: about trying to roll things together and then bundle up
Speaker 5: assets and then sell them in a short period of time.
Speaker 5: This is a longer term view. Yeah, And I really
Speaker 5: like the longer term view. And the kids business has
Speaker 5: been a fun business. You know, sometimes it's crazy because
Speaker 5: parents are probably the ones that you have to worry
Speaker 5: about the most. Because everybody feels that they have their
Speaker 5: star athlete and they're going to put everything, all their
Speaker 5: resources into getting that person to college and getting into
Speaker 5: pro ball.
Speaker 1: They're telling cal Ripkin that they are son is the
Speaker 1: next cal Ripkin.
Speaker 5: Right, So it brings along a little of that, and
Speaker 5: we try to help because to me, one of our
Speaker 5: general philosophies, and maybe it's more me, is that.
Speaker 1: Let's try to take pressure off the kids.
Speaker 5: It seems like the way that you're playing more games,
Speaker 5: there's more travel, there's more at stake, there's pressure that's
Speaker 5: being applied to them. And I tell parents just on
Speaker 5: the side, I go, you know, try to think of
Speaker 5: ways where you can alleviate some of that pressure, that
Speaker 5: you can make them enjoy the game and all that,
Speaker 5: because if they have the talent to make it, they're
Speaker 5: going to have to call on that their internal love
Speaker 5: of the game when they get to the hard parts,
Speaker 5: when they get to the pro balld. It's got to
Speaker 5: be from within. It can't be from you know, somebody
Speaker 5: else forcing me to do this. It's got to be
Speaker 5: that your love of it that carries you through those
Speaker 5: challenging and difficult times. When you go from being a
Speaker 5: big fish in a small pond to a small fish
Speaker 5: in a very big pond, that's when you have to
Speaker 5: tap into your love. And this is the time that
Speaker 5: you hope that you're cultivating a love of the sport
Speaker 5: that they want to wear their uniform to bed for
Speaker 5: a game tomorrow. That's how I used to feel. You
Speaker 5: don't want to kill that joy and love. And by
Speaker 5: playing so much baseball and making it more serious and
Speaker 5: professional at a earlier time, you run the risk of
Speaker 5: doing that.
Speaker 2: I hadn't done the math like you did at at
Speaker 2: the beginning of the conversation about you know, essentially you've
Speaker 2: now spent just slightly more time in business in post
Speaker 2: career as you did playing baseball.
Speaker 1: So what's your assessment at this point? How do you
Speaker 1: like it?
Speaker 5: I think I'm given way more credit than it's due
Speaker 5: number one, not to play down We've had success, and
Speaker 5: it's feel good success because I would imagine, if you
Speaker 5: want to spend your money, you want to look at
Speaker 5: it from a straight money standpoint. And maybe David will
Speaker 5: convince me differently now that we're partners and we see
Speaker 5: the big market. I think that I probably could have
Speaker 5: taken the money that you were seeding the business and
Speaker 5: keeping the businesses rolling that if you invested it someplace else,
Speaker 5: you would have done a whole lot better, but it
Speaker 5: wouldn't have given you the same feeling of accomplishment. And
Speaker 5: then this was an area I thought in business. I
Speaker 5: liked the minor league baseball model in business because it
Speaker 5: was something I was familiar with, you know, and so
Speaker 5: you learn business as you go in a model that
Speaker 5: you're comfortable with and the kid's business side. I don't
Speaker 5: know if there was other models that really supported what
Speaker 5: we were trying to accomplish. And I don't know if
Speaker 5: we even knew fully what we were trying to accomplish. What
Speaker 5: it's what we knew how to do from a baseball standpoint, yeah,
Speaker 5: and so trying to make a business out of that
Speaker 5: was fun. And so you know, twenty some years into it,
Speaker 5: extremely proud of what we've been able to do. But
Speaker 5: a lot of times I think people over state and
Speaker 5: give me more credit than I actually deserve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one thing that also strikes me that especially you know,
Speaker 2: walking around here and then talking to David and hearing
Speaker 2: you talk about it, is this name. You know, your name,
Speaker 2: Billy's name, you know your dad's name. There's a tremendous
Speaker 2: amount of value in it. Clearly, I would also think
Speaker 2: you feel very protective of it too, And so as
Speaker 2: you grow the business, you know, you hear Roger Goodell
Speaker 2: talk about, you know, don't tarnish the shield.
Speaker 4: You hear you know the.
Speaker 2: Dallas Cowboys, don't tarnish the star, Like, how do you
Speaker 2: ensure that you don't tarnish Ripken.
Speaker 4: By trying to make good decisions?
Speaker 5: The name enlightness thing is everywhere now and so when
Speaker 5: you start to think about essentially building a brand and
Speaker 5: all that kind of stuff, I think people now in
Speaker 5: sports are thinking about building the brand before the brand
Speaker 5: is built. And to me, the brand is built by
Speaker 5: a collection of your choices and your decisions over time
Speaker 5: and what your name resents. And then you have something
Speaker 5: that has some sort of credibility or some sort of
Speaker 5: meaning to me. It's not artificially built. It's built, you know,
Speaker 5: over time, and so we value that and we want
Speaker 5: to protect that. I think some of the deals that
Speaker 5: we made, some of the marketing deals over my time,
Speaker 5: there was always a what's the clause called a good
Speaker 5: citizen type clause that protected them if you did something
Speaker 5: stupid or something that they could get out of the contract,
Speaker 5: and I'd always insist on it back. I'd always say, okay, fine,
Speaker 5: I'll do that to you, but if something happens to
Speaker 5: the company, you know, I want the same sort of
Speaker 5: thing back. And maybe that gives you a little bit
Speaker 5: idea of how we think about it.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 2: Now, a couple decades into being a business person, have
Speaker 2: you been able to sort of like distill down like
Speaker 2: what a cal Ripken deal is or the type of
Speaker 2: business relationship you want to be a part of.
Speaker 5: I think the most fundamental part is the people. The
Speaker 5: quality of people that you're considering partnering with, the quality
Speaker 5: of people that you bring in to your organization to
Speaker 5: manage others. If I can use sort of the Oriel
Speaker 5: example for a minute, when you go through a rebuilding process.
Speaker 4: You've got to get the right.
Speaker 5: Person at the top that trickles down and then they
Speaker 5: consequently hire people and then you have to give them
Speaker 5: responsibility and trust and those sorts of things. So I
Speaker 5: think that's a normal part, but it begins with the people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I remember in the endorsement world.
Speaker 5: I mean I had no training in figuring out what
Speaker 5: choices do you make in the endorsement work, so you
Speaker 5: had to go back on your instincts and my instincts.
Speaker 5: I think I had a pretty lucrative jockey underwear offer
Speaker 5: in front of me in my first or second year,
Speaker 5: and I had also one side, I had a local
Speaker 5: milk opportunity. So he had these two opportunities you're weighing out,
Speaker 5: and I couldn't see myself posing in my underwear, and
Speaker 5: so I turned down that because it didn't feel.
Speaker 4: Like it was me, like it was authentic enough. You know,
Speaker 4: that's not who I was. I'm not.
Speaker 5: Jim Palmer had great success in it, and it's wonderful
Speaker 5: for him, but it didn't work for me.
Speaker 4: So I started thinking.
Speaker 1: It's got to work for me, and local milk worked.
Speaker 5: You know, I drank a lot of milk grown up.
Speaker 5: I thought, that's how I got some of my size.
Speaker 5: It was sort of a secret ingredient that was easy
Speaker 5: and it worked. So when you're making these decisions, sometimes
Speaker 5: you have to fall back just on your instinct and
Speaker 5: trust your instinct a little bit more. I mean, you
Speaker 5: had confidence that I built in baseball. I mean if
Speaker 5: I was trying to hire a manager, if I was
Speaker 5: in a position to hire a manager for a team,
Speaker 5: I would know what questions to ask, you know, to
Speaker 5: figure out what kind of manager of that baseball guy
Speaker 5: that he would be. When you get into business, it's
Speaker 5: not always that clear, so you have to lean on
Speaker 5: other people with expertise. It says, Okay, if we're hiring
Speaker 5: a CFO, you've got to evaluate the.
Speaker 4: Financial part of his job.
Speaker 5: But I can tell you if I like him, or
Speaker 5: I can assess certain things from the interview, but I
Speaker 5: can't do it all. So and many times you have
Speaker 5: to then come back to your instincts and say, okay,
Speaker 5: now what Yeah, that's great, and trust your instincts.
Speaker 2: The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and me Jason Kelly.
Speaker 2: This episode was made by Victor eveyas Stacy Wong. Annamazaakus
Speaker 2: and Lizzie phillip Ar. The music was made by Blake Maples,
Speaker 2: Brendan Francis. Neonham is our executive producer. Sage Fouman is
Speaker 2: the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Additional support from Kelly Laferrier,
Speaker 2: Ashley Hoenigg, Rachel Scaramzzino, and Elena So Los Angeles. Part
Speaker 2: of this episode of the Deal featured my interview from
Speaker 2: the series Power Players. That's a show that's hosted by
Speaker 2: me Jason Kelly. The showrunner is Tom Connors. The producer
Speaker 2: and writer is Dominique Musaccio. The editor is Katarina Glanz.
Speaker 2: Creative director Rubob Shakir. Consulting producer Raymond Schillinger, Editorial supervisor
Speaker 2: David E.
Speaker 1: Ravella.
Speaker 2: Executive producers Jason Kelly, Jordan Opplinger, Neville Jillette, Trey Shallowhorn,
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