Interview #15: Vikram Juneja, the '06 Baseball Trip co-pilot

A very interesting person talking about a very interesting topic, according to his wife

Background: Vikram was born in the Bay Area in 1986, the youngest of three kids. His parents being native to India, he started as a soccer player before getting hooked on baseball. He has been to 28 team’s home ballparks, mostly before his studies at Oxford, Harvard and MIT. He now works as a scientist in biotech focused on cancer immunology and lives outside of Boston with his wife and three sons, ages 2, 4, and 6.

“Before we start, tell me. How are you.”

Um, that’s not how this works.

“You gotta tell me something about your life.”

Oh, I’m fine. I got your Christmas card. That was exciting.

“Nice.”

Getting into baseball

How did you get into baseball?

“So my parents didn't really expose us to much besides soccer. My dad didn't grow up playing baseball, he grew up in India, so we grew up only playing soccer. I didn't start playing baseball until AA (10 or 11) with Carathimas (Interview #6: Greg Carathimas). I never played T-ball. I just went to AA and didn't really know anything about baseball at that time, I went from zero to sixty there.

I've never developed proper techniques, like even pitching, I was three-quarter arm angle and between that and football, like I was throwing the ball pretty well, not always very accurate. I was never a really good hitter, but I could at least kind of keep up. So it was fun for me and I feel like I had four or five really good seasons. I liked playing AAA and then that one we played on the Giants. That was really fun.”

“But then, and I really liked Coach Murphy, but I feel like we practiced all the time. We had games or practices 6 nights a week and it was really fun. I loved night baseball. I just feel like we played until our arms were dead, and it just wasn't fun anymore. And that's when I was like, I don't really want to do this anymore. Having my arm hurt the next day, I was like, I'm a teenager, my arm should not be dead right now.”

Why didn’t you stick with soccer?

“I played soccer until freshman year of high school and then I stopped. I could not have played high school baseball, I was not good enough to play in high school. But in high school soccer, I just really didn’t like the kind of kids that were were playing high school soccer and I kind of felt the same about the baseball players. They just weren't fun people to be around, if I'm honest. So, you know, we played roller hockey at Golden Skate and those were people… just people that didn't take it so seriously, like they just had fun and and played. That's what I liked. I didn't really like the crowd that was getting into more serious sports.”

“The mistake I think I made was I tried to play goalie. I felt too much pressure there. So you make one mistake and that really screws things up and I guess it’s a similar thing as a pitcher. I think the best athlete mentality is when you don’t have that fear. If you mess up, whatever. You're on to the next pitch. And I never really had that, I would overthink it. I remember in baseball when I was pitching, I'd give up a hit and I would just throw my glove all over the place until I got ejected. That was one benefit of not having my parents at the games was that they never saw me ejected from the game. I got ejected from three games in one season. Not that I'm proud of it, but it's pretty impressive. That's got to be a record.”

I have never been ejected. Well, not from baseball. Hockey, yes.

“Yeah, you were you better at internalizing your anger. I remember that you'd be mad, but you wouldn't take it out in front of the umpire.” (note: yes, I am a man who has reached inner peace and the anger just washes over me)

How did you become a fan of baseball?

“My cousin that lived in Oakland at the time, he basically got me into fandom for each of these sports. So that's why I'm a Niners fan and A’s fan because at that time, the Raiders were in LA, so he was a Niners fan and he was an A’s fan. So yeah, that's how it started for me was with him.

And then at the time, the A’s were just so accessible, right? It was so easy to go to games. We would go as a team. We'd go for basically any organized activity. An easy thing to do is to go to A’s games. So even at the lowest frequency growing up, we'd go to five or six games a year and sometimes a lot more than that.

I would say hockey is the best sport in person. But baseball is much better in person than on TV. Going to the games is definitely what hooked me. Honestly, it's not even just going to the A's games. It's more going to watch any baseball event. Even now, I think I prefer watching minor league games, or even honestly, as silly as this sounds, like Little League games. Just because there's more action, right? You don't know what's gonna happen, versus in the Major Leagues, if the ball is put in play and it's going towards somebody, they're going to make the play 98% of the time. In Little League, you don't know what you’re gonna get. They might boot it into the stands. It's fun to watch.

People, if they didn't grow up loving baseball, and they didn't play it, I understand why it's a hard game to get into later. But if you really understand it and you know what could happen, you know how things could go awry, and you know what needs to happen for an inning to unfold, it really is a fun game to watch. Like I said, I watch very little baseball now, but when I do, and I go, I'm hooked back in. I watch it and I immediately remember all the great things about baseball. It is a fun game to be a fan of. I don't feel that way with… I feel like football is an easier game to watch, but I just don't feel the passion for it. The only games that I really feel tied to are baseball and hockey.”

Didn’t you go to the hockey game with Tia? The one I sent you tickets for.

“No, that wasn't me.”

No, it was you. I sent tickets to the Bruins when the Sharks were out there like 10 years ago. I'm glad it was a memorable experience.

“You did not send me tickets to a Bruins game.”

I swear to God I did. I'm pretty sure it was with her, so maybe she remembers.

“All right, I'll ask her.”

Ha!

“This is an aside from the interview but what definitely sticks out to Tia was the turtle that you brought when you came to meet Kavi.”

Oh yeah! When I drove down from Maine.

“Yeah, you got a stuffed animal turtle and it has little baby turtles. So first of all, my kids still love it, but she also just mentioned that she has a soft spot for you because, like, what, like, single guy… are you still single?”

Yes, I am. The girl I like is not, however.

“She’s like what single guy would remember to bring a stuffed animal for a baby. Like, that's just not a thing that most people think of. It was a very nice thing for you to do, so I think that sticks out to her more than anything else.”

(note: it was a pretty adorable turtle)

What was it about the game that drew you in?

“I never was the kind that memorized the stats. And I'm not that into the analytics, not like bound by them. I'm also not Michael Wilbon who hates analytics. I don't think that they're ruining the game. But I’m also fine with rules against the shift or whatever. There's certain things, like, to me the numbers that I thought were cool, like someone being able to have a fastball that was over 100 and the changeup that was in the 70s. That to me is wild. If you could have a delta like that.”

“Those are the kind of things that when we go to the game I pay attention to. The concept of having a batting average… this is gonna be embarrassing for me. The concept of having a batting average of .250 versus .350, like I recognize .350 is way better. But still, conceptually, when you come up to bat, like you're still about as likely to get a hit than if you're .250, right, like you're very likely not going to get a hit. I think the way that I always thought about it was like, you're most likely, in any scenario, to fail. Maybe that's what made it so exciting, is when someone didn't fail. You know, like it’s the last inning and your team is losing, odds are they're gonna lose the game, right? Cause odds are they're not going to come back at that point. Each batter is most likely to get out. And so the fact that that wasn't true was one of the things that I like about baseball, because there is, and this is where I turn off the analytics, there is the concept of momentum or a rally cap or whatever, like people stepping up and going against the numbers. You could be a .200 hitter, but in this clutch moment you're hitting .400.”

Balancing work, family and being a fan today

How far are you from Boston now?

“We're in the suburbs. Fenway is very close. I go by there all the time. If we drive there, which I wouldn't do for a game, but if we drive there it’s only 15 minutes, but we can hop on a train and be there in like 20 minutes, no problem. So I took the boys, their favorite part was actually the train. We took the train and then walked over and it was a spectacle for them. Like, they've never really been part of a crowd that large. So just going on the train, then getting off and walking. You know, hundreds of people and then thousands of people and then walking up to this giant stadium was a big thing. So we're very close. I've not been to a minor league game here, but there's a lot of, like Boston College and Boston University, there's a lot of schools nearby, so the way I'm going to get them to go to sports, as opposed to taking them to professional ones.

When we went to the Red Sox game we were there for, even with the new rules, like five innings and I think we watched like two innings of actual play because I was getting snacks and whatever in between. That day cost me like $300 to take the kids to the game for five innings or something like that. So I'll take them to a college game to warm them up before they actually want to go and engage with the actual game.”

How was Fenway for kids? It seems like a crowd better suited for PG-13 and R-rated audiences.

“I mean there’s some family sections. And so you're supposed to not go there if you're going to get drunk and be belligerent. We ended up buying tickets at the stadium and I couldn't get those ones, but I got one over and that was fine. It was mostly okay. People were not wild or crazy. It was a day game. So they always have a day game that is on the same time as the Boston Marathon so it's like a big thing. This was a couple of days after that, and I just feel like things settled down a little, so it wasn't a crazy game.

I haven’t taken the boys there, but I've been to Foxborough (where the New England Patriots play). I am not taking kids there. People are jerks, like all the stuff you hear about Boston fans is true, and it's all centered in Foxborough. They're nasty and aggressive people. It was Niners versus the Patriots when I went. I was wearing Niners stuff, and, besides wearing Niner stuff, I wasn't out there yelling at Patriots fans. But I was getting, like, physically assaulted by old ladies.

But Fenway I've actually always really enjoyed. It is a fun stadium, but when you go with the kids, it's not the same. You're just trying to squeeze between people and usually you're kind of scared of your kid falling off of the side because the railings are not so high. So it's an adult park. It's not geared towards kids, especially now that it's just built up all around there, bars and the busy streets and stuff. So, it's not the same.

What stood out to me about Fenway was that they sold some large number, like three times as many tickets as they had seats, and people would just go there to be on the terrace so they have access to the bars and then standing room only. And it just felt super vibrant. So that was a big part of it. I mean. But even now, it’s pretty cool.”

So why aren’t you as big a baseball fan now? You’ve lived in one of the most baseball crazy markets for over a decade now.

“Yeah, I guess it's a couple of things. I think the first is, like I was not philosophically against the Padres (when he went to UC San Diego). I was able to care about them and root for them. But I really could not get into the Red Sox. I tried really hard, but there's just too much history against the A’s. I just couldn't get past it. I was able to root for the Celtics, able to root for the Bruins, but I just, I tried so hard to root for the Red Sox. I wanted to, because I mean, yeah, Tia’s a Red Sox fan now, my kids are going to be and I'm OK with that. But I just cannot find myself rooting for them. During the game, I'm outwardly cheering for them, but then if they lose, I'm kind of happy.

I really like going to the games, and when I went to grad school, in my lab where I was for four years, for the first three years, from our lab, every day during work, I could see into Fenway. I could see the scoreboard. I could actually see the outfield. And then they built a building and it blocked my view by the fourth year, so that sucked. But I felt very connected to Fenway.

I like the concept of a baseball team playing there. I don’t like the Red Sox, but I like the concept of the team there and we would go during those years, we'd go quite a bit through grad school. It was super easy. We’d work ‘til whenever, go to get dinner nearby, then we go to the game. So I'd go to a lot of games, but because I wasn't so into the Red Sox, it wasn't like I was following them that much. I wouldn't wake up and check their scores or whatever. And the A’s games wouldn't start ‘til 10:05 here and then it was just too hard to keep up with.

It just kind of trickled away because of that. And then the last thing is what we talked about. It became semi-unattainable to go, especially as I had my family. I was telling Tia this actually before we jumped on that I'd have to tell you this. But you know, we went to so many games, right. And we never left early. We went to A’s games growing up and then obviously on the trip. And I went to minor league games and never left early. And then the first game that I went to with Tia was the first game I ever left early. And I don't think that I've stayed through a whole game since. She was pregnant at the time, and so it was hard for me to say no.”

Is she a baseball fan at all?

“She's like the opposite of a fan. She thinks baseball's dumb. When I was telling her about this, like, oh, yeah, he wants to talk to people about baseball. And she's like, that's two uninteresting things, baseball and you, how is that going to be a good interview? I was like, ‘You married me. So at least you found something interesting.’”

Yeah if she found you entertaining then she should love baseball.

“I find that most people that I interact with, they're either a diehard baseball fan or they don't like baseball. There's not really an in-between. Most of the people I work with don't like baseball and not just that they don't like it, they think it's dumb. They think that people that like baseball have something wrong with them. This looks like it's surprising you. That's not something you've encountered?”

I don't know a lot of smart people. How do they think it's dumb? Do they like other sports? I can understand being bored with baseball. For them to say dumb, is that the right word?

“Boring. And being a fan is dumb, because you're committing yourself to something that's boring. I wouldn't classify myself or the average person I work with as smart. But I do think I would classify us as like, trying to maximize efficiency, right? All time is accounted for. It's planned out. You're always trying to squeeze the most out, and that is the thing about Boston. The side of Boston that I'm part of, the biotech out here and the academic side is… there is an electricity to it. It's cool. It's fun. There's a lot of innovation, but there's also just this… the rat race is real. It's very intense and your every minute is accounted for, and that makes baseball difficult because baseball, there's no clock on it.

I think that's a big part of it. It's hard to give up that many hours of your time. If you grew up liking it, which I did, I can have a game on in the background and I can appreciate that I can do other things and I can kind of know when to engage with the game. I mean obviously something could happen at any moment, but you kind of know when there's intense periods, it's like, OK, this is a big at-bat and unless you're a fan, then you don't know that and it’s just background noise, it's not fun.”

How does that career not burn you out now that you’ve got a family that’s going to be occupying more of your time?

“It is overall intense. I can step back and recognize that this is the busiest time of my life, for sure. I can see at this point with the young kids, where you can’t just send them off to entertain themselves. You're with them at all times. I do kind of wish we were better at this, but we do have all of their time planned out. And then when we have downtime, and you saw, even before we hopped on this call 20 minutes late, this is like my only time to squeeze in a workout, right? So like every minute is accounted for and I have to take 10 extra minutes to do that. It is busy in that way. I think first is you just kind of get used to it. I know it's a finite thing because my kids are two, four, and six, and already with the six-year-old, he is much easier. I can set him up with things to go do and he can come up with his own things and I see him already having his friends.

Then outside of that, the work side… It's because of the work that enables us to have these other positive things in our lives. So I'm like, fine, I can compartmentalize in that way. I like what I do. I think it's cool. It is intense. Now, having the family I’ve been able to decouple that work is not life. Work is work. I am passionate about what I do. I think it's really cool. I’m a scientist so I work on trying to develop immune therapies for people with cancer and I think that's a noble thing to do. I do want to help people with that, but at the same time, I'm also okay to sign off at the end of the day. I will finish that tomorrow because me working on this tonight is not gonna be the thing that cracks the nut.”

But you were like that at some point, right?

“Yeah, I was like that. In a lot of ways I feel like an old man now. And that sucks. But with that comes just the ability to kind of calm down. Like I mentioned, Boston is intense. Trying to drink water from the fire hose here because there's so much going on and it can feel overwhelming. But with age, the experience comes, and the ability to just be like, no, it's OK that I'm not part of that or that I'm not doing this. I feel that with the kids getting into sports. To me, it is a worthy use of whatever amount of time it takes to just be out there playing sports with them. I don't have this feeling like OK, the clock is ticking on this and now we gotta get on to this next thing. That is, to me, the perfect afternoon. Just go play for however long they can last or however long the game goes and that is one of the fun things about sports. To me, it's both fun and and it's a good it's a good use of time and there's actually not a lot of things with the kids like that. Like when we're playing video games, I always have to be watching for the clock, like we should probably stop this soon and probably not what I should be doing with a six-year-old.”

Boston is intense, like trying to drink water from a fire hose because there's so much going on, and it can feel overwhelming

Raising three boys

“I took my two older boys to their first game in April (2023), and now in the basement here we have batting practice and stuff. So we're getting back into it. My oldest one is going to get into to t-ball this season, so you're right, I’m going to be dragged back into it.”

So you’re just letting them play? You’re not running them through Tom Emanski drills?

“Maybe that works for some kids. But that kind of coaching or parenting just does not work. If I try to do that… I mean, they all have their different personalities. Like my my oldest, he likes the accomplishment. He wants to do the thing and he wants to know that he can do the thing. Not necessarily that he wants other people to know, I think he does like that recognition, but it's mostly like it really pisses him off if he can't do something. We have a tee and he hit the ball off the tee. But then we were watching the game, he was like, ‘There's no tee.’ And I said, ‘That's just something that you're learning with.’ And then he said, ‘Oh then throw me the ball. I don’t wanna hit off this tee.’ So we did that. It turned out he's amazing at it. He's got a natural swing. I had no idea that he was going to be able to have that kind of hand eye coordination and so he's like, throw it harder and harder. And at some point, obviously he couldn’t hit it. That really drove home that concept of, oh, this is gonna get harder and harder.

But then my middle son had zero desire for that. He does not like the competition and he'll just sit there and watch. But he's also the more athletic one. So he'll sit there and watch and then he’ll just pick up the bat and then smoke the rest of us. I don't know what they're going to be good at. It's going to have nothing to do with me. I'll set them up to try out different things. They’re rock climbing and in tennis, and they'll try all these different things. There's some things I hope that they gravitate towards because it would be more fun for me to watch or participate in. But I have no idea what they're going to gravitate towards or be good at.”

The A’s

Give me your favorite memory at the Oakland Coliseum and any thoughts you have on the team moving.

“I think being well over a decade out of California makes it a little harder. And I saw it coming. I mean, I find it sad. That's all. I'm not mad about it really, but I do find it sad. Look, the Coliseum, it was a fun place to be able to go. But only during that time, like it's only a good stadium for teenage boys who want to be able to take BART and go watch a game and have tickets to the upper deck, but sneak down to the very bottom. We drove around, we saw every other stadium. And aside from Tampa, right, it was, those two were by far the worst. I mean I get it. Something had to change. And it does suck because the A’s have history, but it's not like they didn't bounce around before. So I'm sad about it just because, to me, it was special. But I also think that this is probably better for baseball, if I'm honest. What made you guys so mad (other A’s fans and myself)? Is it the money grab or what actually made you mad?”

To me it was the betrayal, and the money for sure. It’s just more money for owners while fans and the product suffer.

“This is what I was saying before. I get that MLB is the engine that drives all of this. But there is so much more to baseball than MLB. I'm much more excited to take my kids to a college game or a minor league game. They're just so much more fun and engaging.

We lived six months in Montana during the pandemic and there was a minor league stadium a couple blocks away from us, so we would just walk over. You literally didn't need a ticket. You just walk in and there was like a handshake agreement to buy something at the concession stand. And you could go to the batting cages and take batting practice in their cages while watching the game. It was so fun and so engaging and that was such a better memory.

I get the corporate side of MLB and so maybe I just kind of stopped caring about that side. It's not that I'm not a baseball fan. I'm not following MLB because that's not that engaging to me. But the rest of baseball is. I have my glove at work and once in a while, there's a park outside and I'll play catch with people out there. I like playing baseball, I like throwing a baseball, I like holding a baseball. Like, when I think, I like to hold a baseball. That's that's the fun side. That. Yeah, exactly like that. That is much, much more to me.

But yeah, this feels like just another example of the MLB as about money more than anything else. But baseball is not.”

Baseball Trip Stories

What was your favorite memory of the baseball trip?

“I've already said it a couple of times, so you probably know what's coming. I don't even remember what town we were in, but yeah, we stopped to have our own Home Run Derby.”

It was around my birthday, so it must have been Illinois or Wisconsin or somewhere around there.

“That was to me the high point of the trip where, you know, we couldn't get enough baseball. The trip was very little to me about watching the games. But like experiencing the stadiums, experiencing the road trip, going with you guys, that was literally 90% of the time, right. Yeah, we had ups and downs. Actually playing is the first thing I think of when I think of that road trip was a Home Run Derby and I think you know, only partially because I won.”

Yeah, except I won. It was shorter to right field at that park.

“You definitely won, I’m joking with. But you were very mad because all of my home runs were pop-ups.”

Why did you want to go on that trip?

“That was different than anything else I had done up to that point, or since. I think that's part of it. I kind of knew that was like the last opportunity to do something like that. Let me first say in hindsight, I'm really glad that I did it. And I think I kind of knew that I was going to feel that way, that was part of it. Honestly, it was not to me about watching the games, per se. That wasn't the draw right?”

We saw a lot of your relatives too.

“Yeah, that's true. It was everything around the games. It was seeing the different cities, seeing the different stadiums, that was fun. Seeing the different types of fans in different places, experiencing the different cultures of the stadiums. All of that was cool. It was actually like the eclectic side of it, like, all that went into actually going around the whole country. That that made it fun, not the actual games. I did have fun, you know, like I enjoyed all of the baseball we watched, but I think I enjoyed the minor league games just as much. We could have done that, that would have been totally fine. I can't actually think of like a memory during a game that stands out. I know you have a perfect memory of it reading your articles.”

I'm a good researcher.

“I remember playing video games in the car. Trying to stay awake driving. I didn't think about this before we started talking, but so much of baseball to me, is like the context, not the actual game that we're watching.”

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Takeaways

Obviously I’ve probably watched more baseball in person with Vik than anyone else, even my own family. He was on our baseball trip in 2006 to every stadium, which I need to at some point put more info in a post about that trip.

But growing up, we did play baseball together, and hockey, basketball, football, whatever we could to be outside with other kids. And went to a ton of A’s games and playoff games, so baseball has been a huge part of our friendship and this group of friends’ history.

We definitely agree that the minor league games, and the college and anything mellower is so much more fun. While nothing compares to a Major League stadium, there’s still a lot of great things about these other leagues. Especially since they’re family friendly, affordable and still pretty good baseball.

It’s again another thing where access to baseball is the reason he’s a fan. And his idea to take his kids to these smaller crowds and let them see if they like the sport without spending a fortune is a great one, I wish it was something available in more markets. Out here, there’s ASU baseball and the Diamondbacks. Spring training is borderline unaffordable now. Because once again, baseball is a sport that grows on you. It’s not a game you watch once and love wholeheartedly. It’s a game that slowly makes it way in, like a stray cat adopting itself into your home. All of a sudden you realize you’re watching games more closely, more interested in going, feeling more emotional about a win or a loss. But it takes time and exposure, and hopefully not much money if they’re being smart.