Mariners CEO and wireless pioneer John Stanton on the future of baseball
GeekWire
GeekWire
4.8 • 127 Ratings
🗓️ 12 August 2023
⏱️ 33 minutes
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Summary
How can baseball embrace technology and new traditions while honoring its legacy and listening to its fans? Those were the questions at the heart of the Seattle Mariners CEO's conversation this week with Taylor Soper, at the GeekWire Rooftop BBQ and Mariners Day at the First Mode headquarters in Seattle.
Stanton brings his experience as a longtime business and tech leader to his role with the Mariners. He also chairs Major League Baseball's competition committee, the group leading some of the biggest changes in the history of the sport, including the pitch clock that has dramatically shortened game times this year. He spoke with Taylor in the midst of a Mariners' winning streak that has since been extended to eight games with a 9-2 victory over the Baltimore Orioles on Friday.
An early McCaw Cellular executive and founding partner at Bellevue, Wash.-based venture firm Trilogy Equity Partners, Stanton was CEO of Western Wireless and VoiceStream, the predecessor to T-Mobile USA, and also served as chairman of broadcast communications provider Clearwire.
Listen for highlights from Stanton's remarks in the second segment, and read an extended writeup with more of his comments on GeekWire.
In the first segment, GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop revisit a recent conversation with Brinc CEO Blake Resnick based on John's sighting of the company's technology during an armed standoff in his neighborhood this week.
In the final segment, John and Todd offer their thoughts on Stanton's remarks, Todd rants about an annoying tradition carried on by Seattle Mariners fans in the stands during a pivotal moment in a game this week, and they discuss Todd's idea to use technology to help fans keep more engaged with the action on the field.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I was with a friend at one of the early games where Ichero appeared for the Seattle Mariners. |
| 0:07.0 | Yes. |
| 0:08.0 | We lay claim to starting the Ichero chant. |
| 0:14.0 | We believe we were the first in the stadium to start the Ichero chant. |
| 0:20.9 | It's pretty obvious. |
| 0:21.9 | It's obvious, but not great, but somebody had to do it, right? |
| 0:24.7 | And we were the people who did it. |
| 0:26.8 | Who's going to dispute that? |
| 0:27.7 | No one can dispute it. |
| 0:29.7 | It's the perfect thing that might explain to. |
| 0:31.8 | Because no one would argue. Hi, and welcome to Geekwire. |
| 0:43.0 | I'm Geekwire co-founder, Todd Bishop. |
| 0:45.0 | And I'm Geekwire co-founder John Cook. |
| 0:46.8 | Well, John, we had an exciting week on multiple fronts. |
| 0:50.8 | We had John Stanton, the CEO of the Seattle Mariners baseball team, speaking at our event this week. |
| 0:57.0 | And we're going to be playing highlights from some of his conversation with our colleague Taylor Soper about some of the latest technological and rules changes in baseball and what we can expect going forward, including robot umpires. Although he would say, |
| 1:12.2 | don't call them robot empires though. Exactly. So stick around for that coming up. Quick |
| 1:16.6 | addendum here in case you want to skip ahead. Highlights from that conversation with John Stanton |
| 1:21.2 | start a little over 10 minutes into the show. But another development happened in your neighborhood, |
| 1:27.4 | John, related to a recent |
| 1:30.3 | guest that we had on the Geekwire podcast. We talked just a couple weeks ago with Blake Resnick, |
| 1:36.1 | the CEO of Brink, the drone and law enforcement technology company based here in Seattle. |
... |
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