Doug Glanville

They are.

They absolutely are.

And it's a lot of fun.

I think Chicago is going to have a big battle talking about the Crosstown series, you know, as they keep changing the name, of course, every year.

But I love that rivalry.

It's always been a lot of fun.

I mean, this is the day we're in in baseball 2026.

I mean, there's just no time with teams that have put so much in terms of resources into these teams.

They've expected to win today or yesterday in the Phillies case.

And there's no question that once the investment structure of these teams that are built on

you know elaborate front offices that are very engaged in the day-to-day the algorithms the math the analytics uh the expectations very high to get off to a good start and to show signs that you're you know gonna win a world series and the thing about the phillies that's interesting is rob thompson

was there in replacing Joe Girardi, which had a similar flavor a few years ago.

Girardi started off slowly as the Phillies manager, and Dave Dombroski said, goodbye, that's it, we're making a move.

So they're not afraid to pull the trigger and make changes early on.

Same thing in Boston, of course, with Alex Cora, who signed a long-term contract.

and they felt that the results weren't there.

So more and more of the front office have this influence certainly to make decisions and feel confident that they can put a lot of different personalities in place and still win ball games.

And it's made the managers a little bit more expendable.

I'd probably say a lot more expendable in today's game.

Well, you know, baseball certainly has that traditional sensibility around, you know, I guess historically to say fathers and sons, but it's like there's a family component.