YouSaid · the spoken record

Theo Epstein

lines on the record: 104
first: 2020-07-20
most recent: 2020-07-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, exactly. And so you have to look to other areas for competitive advantages. So years ago at the Red Sox, we met these neuroscientists who were interested in what the brains of really great hitters look like and if they could learn anything from them. And so we developed a partnership with them where we gave them access to all of our professional players from David Ortiz and Dustin Pedro down through the lowest levels of the minor leagues and they would test these players on pretty simple baseball simulations on a computer, a little software. They look like computer games, video games, essentially. And in exchange, we got some exclusivity for whatever insights they were able to derive from all this testing. And so after many years, they were able to develop some tests that”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we do. We have a huge data team, and most teams do. And you have to just to stay current. But 10 years ago, you could get a huge competitive advantage by finding an insight, let's say, for example, in the draft, finding some metric that you can use in assessing college players and their performance and projecting it going forward into professional ball. And we did. But these days, it's so hard to find any competitive advantage based on exclusively on statistics that you have to get really because everybody's got the same information. Everyone's hiring kids out of MIT and Stanford and Ivy League schools with advanced math degrees to dice up the numbers.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so these days, 10 years plus past money ball, there's been deep into the information age, there's so much data out there that's publicly available that the landscape is really flat now. All 30 teams have statistical information. They have analytical staffs. We're all plumbing through the same numbers. And you can get small advantages with finding new streams of data and maybe analyzing it in a little bit more sophisticated way. You've got data analyzing.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Adversity failure is inherent in the game. So if you don't respond well to adversity, you're probably not going to have any kind of a long career in baseball. And on top of that, we're taking amateur players who are Usually, the best player on the field in these big fish and these little ponds, and then thrusting them into an environment that's foreign to them where they're not going to have immediate success. They're going to be surrounded by other players who are more. When they're part of hopefully a championship team 10 years later at age 27 and 28 when they're in their baseball prime. And so it's a really interesting endeavor in our area scouts have to do a great job predicting how a player's personality will play in a group. We definitely factor that in.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, our scouts have to get to know the player off the field really well, and they need to write a case for why we should bring this player into the organization, why he's going to be an asset for us beyond just his talent, why he's going to fit into a group, why he's going to be a contributing member of a championship team. And so they get to know the player over several years and chronicle all their interactions with him. And they list multiple examples of how the player faced adversity in his personal life and how he responded, how he faced adversity on the field, in his baseball life, and how he responded, how he treats his teammates, how he treats the clubhouse guys, what his girlfriend says about him, what his ex-girlfriend say about him. Probably even more. Yeah, what his friends and enemies say about him, what guidance counselor says his teachers say. And you get a pretty good feel for the player. And we really do focus on how a”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As much as we possibly can. I think fans would be shocked if they could sit in a draft room. And this is not just us. I think this is most teams. But when you're assessing an amateur player for the draft, whether it's a high school senior or a college junior, if you spend in the draft room an hour talking about the player, I would say 40 minutes of the conversation is about off the field issues, what makes them tick as a person, what's his background, what's his upbringing, what kind of teammate is he.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and it's something I didn't always believe in. When I first started working in baseball, I felt that talent always would triumph in the end. And talent is, you know, Exceptionally important ingredient. Yeah, it's a rate limiting step. You have to have the talent. But with every year that I've spent in baseball now 25 years, I gained an increased appreciation for the importance of The chemistry of the group, the importance of filling your clubhouse with as many good teammates as you possibly can, the importance of those connections, the relationships, the conversations, the buy-in to a group principle that players have to have for you to have success. And it's not always the most talented team, but the best group with the most talented. I think that wins.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And who I had already worked with as peers, and so I respected them and trusted them and knew that they were good. I pulled them close. And so we had an inner circle of six to eight guys, and we pulled all nighters together and we went about reshaping the Red Sox together. That next year in spring training, we all lived together. We rented this little McMansion in Cape Coral, Florida near Fort Myers. And we just ate, breathed and sleep baseball. had a ton of fun at the same time. And now if you look around baseball, there are three or four of those guys have become general managers and they're all VPs and working.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And challenging each other, yeah, absolutely. And I think that's one of the great things about team sports and why I'm encouraging my sons to play team sports is that you learn about how rewarding that can be. And you don't always have to be the best player, but there's a role for you on the team and you support your teammates and the hole can be greater than the sum of the parts if you have the right attitude and if you really commit to the group. So that's the way we approached or the way I approached building a front office team as well. I had no when I got the Red Sox job at 28. I had zero management experience, very little leadership experience, and certainly no business school training or principles at all about how to manage. So I think sort of out of necessity, I ended up just pulling people who I had worked with who were like-minded, who were about the same age, who shared a passion for business.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I've always been that way since I was a kid. You know, I just really like being around other people who I like and trust and respect and working towards a common goal is something that to me is really rewarding. So any individual pursuit, whether it's, say, playing golf instead of playing baseball or writing instead of working with others on a project to me just isn't as meaningful. And I know it's great for some people, but I've always really gotten energy from other people and I love being shoulder to shoulder with people that I like and respect. And challenging.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and the media serves a role as a liaison between those who are actually in the trenches making decisions and those who follow it with tremendous passion. And these narratives get created sometimes by the intermediaries. And so fans sometimes end up following the narratives more than they're actually following the reality of the game. And so getting a handle on those narratives and understanding them and knowing how to manage them and knowing how to protect yourself from them becomes really important. We're going to take another shot.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Morning of the press conference, I walked downtown and there were five TV cameras right on my front step, you know, their cameras right in my face and followed me. Nothing I could say would get them to go away. And they followed me every step on the walk to Femway Park. And my heart was pounding. And I realized at that moment that my life had changed forever and that I had been thrust into this public sphere in these waters that would be”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was my biggest hesitation. And those fears were realized the day I was announced as general manager. So I lived really close to Femway and would walk to work. And I was completely anonymous. No one knows who the Assistant General Manager is, and for good reason. I really cherished that anonymity. I am probably more an introvert than I am an extrovert and just appreciated being nobody. I liked it. I was really happy in my skin at that time as a completely anonymous worker bee at the Red Sox.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly, and maybe working in baseball too. But yeah, the more I thought about it, it was just the opportunity of a lifetime. And I did feel like I knew the organization well. I'd been there for a season. I worked really hard to get to know everybody. I felt like I knew what our strengths were as an organization, what our weaknesses were, what we had to do to take the next step. And I felt like I had been an observer of the game and had thought enough about the game where I could do some good things. And I knew enough about what I didn't know too, that I knew I'd have to surround myself with great people and really listen. And I felt like it was an opportunity that I had to try to seize.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I failed up. And yeah, they eventually caucused and called me in and said, you know, we've thought about it and we just want you to do it. And it was pretty stunning. I was 28 years old at the time and had only been an assistant general manager for eight months, I think, at the time. And it was a shock. And I didn't say yes right away because I felt I was 28, but I was probably from an emotional maturity standpoint. I was probably younger than that.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, my tail between my legs to my bosses and tell them that the first two nominees that turned the job down. And so I did.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They would have to find a less handsome actor for sure had that been me. But yeah, so we talked to Billy and he actually accepted the job and then did a lot of soul searching and 24 hours later called me and told me they just couldn't take the job and they were. He had put a lot of thought into it, and there were a lot of very legitimate personal reasons why he couldn't take it and leave family and move 3,000 miles away. So now I've completely bungled the search for a full-time general manager, and I have to go back with...”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And out of loyalty to the Blue Jays, he declined the opportunity. And then thinking big, we decided to go after Billy Bean, who had had a tremendous amount of success.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How did that happen? Yeah, no, I'm innocent of any scheming, I guarantee you. But no, I got the job in March of 2002. I was named the Assistant General Manager, but there was no full-time general manager. There was an interim general manager, Mike Port, Dan Duquette had been fired a few months earlier as the full-time general manager. And what the owners decided was that we would go through the season with just an interim general manager and with me as assistant GM that they'd name a permanent general manager after the season. So we had a pretty good team in 2002, but didn't make the playoffs, and they tasked me with leading the search for our next general manager. And it led me to two individuals, JP Richardi, who was a disciple of Billy Bean, who was at the time the general manager of the Blue Jays, but a Worcester native and someone who I thought would be really interested in the job.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They were just a closed shop, and I didn't, even when I was working in baseball, it was a pretty insular operation over there at the Red Sox. And it was hard to ever envision myself working there. So when the opportunity came up to work for people that I really respected and to go over there as assistant GM, it was an instant yes. And Kevin even supported me and said you have to take this opportunity.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was. It was. I got to be out there from age 21 to 28 and had some great experiences. I turned down an assistant GM job elsewhere just to stay with the Padres at a lesser position because we had such a tight-knit group and it was such a nice life out there. But it felt like time and really the Red Sox, that was my ultimate dream, right? I grew up half a mile from Fenway Park. I was a huge fan of the team. They were sort of the ultimate ivory tower franchise where you really had to know somebody. It was the old Yaqui, the old Yaqui regime.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, Larry got involved with the new ownership group of the Red Sox in late 2001 and by the end of spring training, so March of 2002, he had brought me back there as assistant general.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think had I worked initially at a big market team that would have had a bigger staff and maybe didn't have to be as innovative to solve problems or as aggressive and resourceful it wouldn't have been the same experience. Starting out in baseball is whoever your boss is or your bosses are, they have 20% of their job that they just don't like. And so if you can ask them or figure out what that 20% is and figure out a way to do it for them, you'll both make them really happy and improve their quality of life and their work experience and also gain invaluable experience for yourself. And if you do a good job with it, they'll start to give you more and more responsibility. And that's really what happened with me at the Padres.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Eager and eager to please them and help them out. I got to hear the best from both of them and maybe some things I didn't agree with as well. And they would try to lobby me on why their way of seeing the game was the right way. And what I determined is that they were both great baseball guys and really insightful about the game, but that I thought I saw the clearest picture about players and about projecting players' future performance by looking through both lenses, by looking through the traditional scouting lens, and at the same time also looking through an analytical, more objective lens. It was probably a pretty good move for your team.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Subjectively with his eyes. He and the stats guy who would evaluate players objectively and didn't even want to see them play would only want to see their track record. Those two hated each other. But they both like me. Again, I think just because I was young and going out.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the general manager runs that department, but he promoted me to something called director of baseball operations, which is. Basically, you know, it's just a jack of all trades that do a lot of things in the baseball operations department. I was in my mid twenties. And the great thing about the Padres at the time is it was a small market team. So we had to be resourceful. And it was a really small shop. So we're another organization might have had 20 folks in their baseball operations department in the home city. We had four or five. And so got to do a little bit of everything to work in pro scouting, got to go out for the draft, got to help out in player development, got to help out on Major League transactions. And it's really where I formed my current view of the game. My office was situated literally between the scouting director and the statistical analyst that they had at the time. They were one of the first teams to have a stats guy on staff. And those two, the scouting director who saw the game really traditionally would go out and evaluate players.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then didn't love it, but was working in baseball, and that's all that mattered. But I befriended the general manager, Kevin Towers, who at the time was a new young general manager there. And we hit it off. He was married, and I was single and 21 right out of college, so he was kind of living vicariously through me a little bit. And I got to hang around his office. Listen to how they evaluated players and the different things that would go on in baseball operations department. He took a liking to me and started taking me out to teach me how to scout, seeing amateur players, and then quickly brought me over to work in the baseball operations department, which was my ultimate dream.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So my last internship with the Orioles ended in August of 1994 with the baseball strike that ended up canceling the World Series the last real labor stoppage in baseball. So the prospect of a job seemed to be waning at that point and I started to apply to law schools and other things. I wasn't really all that interested in. Got a call out of the blue from Charles Steinberg and Larry Lekino, who had just gotten an opportunity out in San Diego. And I'd never been to San Diego, but they offered me the job. There was about 10. Just with Padres. This is with the Padres. They were 10 inches of snow out my dorm room window in New Haven. So I said, yes, I had unseen and accepted and then flew out there the day after I graduated to start new job and new life in San Diego.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. And the phone rang, and it was Calvin Hill with the Oreoles that kind of snuck off into it at the one quiet room I could find, talked to him, and he invited me down. So I just interviewed with him and with Charles Steinberg of the Orioles during my spring break freshman year and got an internship and it ended up becoming a great start.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I wrote letters to a number of teams and sort of the old-fashioned good old boy network, Yale Connection came through. I'm a little bit embarrassed to say, but ended up being a great break. Calvin Hill, the great Yale football player, the father of Grant Hill, the basketball player, and still a big force in sports. He's currently working for the Cowboys. But Grand Hill at the time Calvin Hill at the time was the vice president of administration for the Baltimore Orioles. And he got my cover letter and resume and saw Yale on it. And I think I mentioned a couple of research projects I had done on the Negro leagues and that caught his attention. And he ended up calling me. We were getting an early start on the weekend one Friday, spring Friday at our... At our dorm in Yale.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think it did. And then I also, in breaking into baseball, I got my first start for a year or so in public relations. So I got to see the game from that standpoint too.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but I hope that could continue to play baseball and soccer, but ended up going to Yale and was not nearly good enough to play there. So was looking for other ways to stay involved in sports and the Daily News ended up being a great opportunity where I met some great people.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that doesn't speak well of the other writers of the Daily News at the time. Maybe the false monastery is part of it. That's a nice compliment. Yeah. I went to Yale and I was choosing between Yale and Williams, which is a Division III school where I could play.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was working for the Orioles in the early 90s and saw Cal Ripkin Sr.'s Oriel wave playing baseball. So it made an impression on me and I realized that if you wanted to get the whole organization on the same page about how you wanted to play the game, how you wanted to teach the game, it was really important to codify it. So that was one of the first things we did at the Red Sox and then here at the Cubs that was, I think, literally the first thing we did after the press conference, sat down together to define how we wanted to play the game.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, he had his whole organization vertically integrated from top to bottom, their entire farm system. And then out of his impact on the Dodgers came Alcampanus, and he's the one who I think officially wrote the first manual, the Dodger way of playing baseball. Campanus wrote that, and that helped lead the way to the Dodger dynasty, the 60s.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think he'll forever be the best baseball executive of all time because of his innovation and really modernized the game and probably most importantly integrated the game in a very courageous way by signing Jackie Robinson. But yeah, he invented the modern farm system. He understood the importance of finding quality through quantity by signing hundreds of players to play in your farm system and through evaluating the performance the best ones would rise to the top and was the first one to really understand the importance of statistics and evaluating players and projecting their future performance.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can drill as deep as you want, and there's so much more that we don't know about the game than we do. We probably understand 3% or 4% of the game, and the rest is a great unknown that you can research just trying to find these slivers of insights that might help you.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just the best one to talk about is the one I just mentioned that Branch rookie understood just because it's easy to grab onto just how much more important on base percentage is to scoring runs than batting average, for example. And so the whole industry was based on batting average. If you watched a game on TV, they showed the hitters batting average. Everything was about becoming a 300 hitter, and it didn't matter how much you walked and how much you got on base. But if you were trying to build a team to win, winning is all about scoring as many runs as you can and preventing runs you would essentially ignore batting average and focus just on how much a hitter got on base. And Bill understood that and I think Branch Ricky understood that and that's why his teams won so much and Sandy understood that and then Billy and then the whole world with Moneyball. And of course that's just the surface level insight and you can drill. The great thing about baseball.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And his principal, I know Sandy Alderson, who's currently the GM of the Mets and was the GM of the A's in the mid 80s through the 90s was a fan of Bill's writings and applied some of those principles and that helped those A's teams win and ultimately win a World Series and then Billy Bean. I picked up the mantle from Sandy. He was assistant GM under Sandy. And then Money Ball really brought it to more popular light. But yeah, so I grew up reading Bill's books and starting to look at the game from an objective standpoint as well and understanding some of the basic truths with the numbers of the game. And I think that's like basic.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, he really was. He really is. And, you know, to some extent started with Branch Ricky, hired a statistician, and he understood The importance of on base percentage versus batting average, for example. But Bill was an amazing writer and quite the iconoclast and was publishing these truths about baseball from his basement essentially while holding down a job at a factory or as a night watchman at a Franken Beans factory or something. It's amazing. It really is. And it's quite the writer too. So you ended up reading the whole thing cover to cover.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, and certainly not Sandy Coufax. But love playing the game was always thinking about the game, watched a ton of baseball in person at Femway, I lived a half a mile from Femway Park, and watched a ton of baseball on TV. So I could appreciate it from a traditional standpoint, the way a fan would, or even the way a scout would watching players and thinking about what they might do next projecting their future performance, so to speak. But then I also got exposed to Bill James writing at a pretty young age. My dad bought me some of those abstracts in their Bill James baseball abstracts in the early 80s.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, I love to read, love to write. I did pretty well at math, but was no math savant at all. I think I grew up appreciating the game from both perspectives. I played the game through high school, was pretty good for a little Jewish kid from Brooklyn, Mass, not good by any other standard.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I play Stratomatic a little bit too. But it was kind of a big deal. I remember when the Apple IIC came out, everyone could have an Apple in their house and micro league baseball was the most sophisticated baseball simulation along the lines of Stratomatic, which actually does a great job of teaching you the percentages of Baseball strategy and when to bunt, when not to bunt One year they came out with this add on disk that allowed you to not only just play the games but also trade players and construct your own teams. It's called the general manager slash owners desk and I fell in love with that right away and it was fascinating to make deals and construct your own teams and looking back on it was probably pretty good training.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. So I grew up playing this game called Micro League Baseball, which was sort of the computer version of Stratom Act. Yeah, like my generation.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so yeah, my dad asked me that all the time, but yeah, he did push literature a lot. In school in general and scholarship. And he made us read a ton when we were growing up. And I thank him for that. My parents say I was always in love with baseball from the time I was two years old. They say, I don't know if these stories are true or not, but they say I would attract a big crowd in Central Park hitting home runs with a wiffle ball and wiffleball bad. And then when I was five, if they ever needed me to relax and calm down, they'd just sit me in front of a baseball game on TV. And they say when I was eight, they ask me what I wanted to do. When I grew up, and I said, well, I can't see myself being happy if I'm not working in baseball in some way. And, you know, I was just a typical kid growing up in Boston initially in New York and then Boston wanting to play shortstop for the Red Sox. And that pretty clearly didn't work out. So I had to find another avenue.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and Harvard one time asked him to come teach a class on women in small business. One year she made more than my dad, my dad taken home a college professor salary. And when the economy was really booming, my mom made more than my dad one year. And we all loved that because he had all the yell. Yell education and the postgraduate degree and everything, and my mom was a big success.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it is. It sure is. We tease them about that a lot. But so then my mom, you know, no college whatsoever, but started this clothing store 40 years ago with her twin sister and with her best friend in the studio apartment of the best friend. So it's called the studio and still going in Brooklyn.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They met when my dad was teaching an English class at Queen's College at night, sort of a night education class. And my mom's twin sister was taking the class and she was married, but she thought the teacher was handsome. So she told my mom to come audit the class. So she came and then they followed him home to the subway one time and they ended up getting that. That's like.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, my mom kind of had the opposite upbringing of my dad. So my dad grew up in Hollywood because his parents, because his dad worked in the movie as my mom grew up in Brooklyn Spent a lot of time in and out of foster homes with her twin sister and had to start working during high school and was very much self-made woman. And she ended up opening a woman's clothing store. How did they?”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, my dad's a longtime novelist and created the creative writing program at Boston University and has published many books and probably the King of the Jews is the best known. It was the New York Times bestseller list, a Holocaust novel. Writes a lot of historical fiction, mixes a lot of Yiddish to make sure it's just about unreadable for most of the population. But he's a great author and teacher.”
2020-07-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Theo Epstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source