Effectively Wild Episode 2493: Baseball Has Marked the Time

Summary

Effectively Wild Episode 2493: Baseball Has Marked the Time
FanGraphs Baseball Podcast | June 17, 2026
Host: Ben Lindbergh
Guests: Van Lathan, Thomas W. Gilbert

---

Episode Overview

This episode is divided into two major segments:

• Segment 1: A wide-ranging, energetic discussion between Ben Lindbergh and Ringer multi-hyphenate Van Lathan, covering Van’s lifelong relationship with baseball, the history and culture of Black players in the sport, baseball’s modernization—especially the emergence of advanced statistics—and the shifting place of baseball in American culture. The conversation is lively, unfiltered, and loaded with insights and personal stories.
• Segment 2: An interview with Thomas W. Gilbert, author of "Death in the Strike Zone: The Mystery of America’s First Baseball Hero," examining the life and staggering impact of 19th-century phenom Jim Creighton, his revolutionary pitching style, the origins of the strike zone, and the roots of professionalism and fandom in the sport.

A language warning is issued for the first segment, as Van Lathan’s contributions are colorful and uncensored.

---

Segment One: "Baseball, Culture, and Stats" with Van Lathan

Timestamps: 00:20 – 75:07

Van’s Baseball Origins and Family Ties

• Growing up in Louisiana, baseball was embedded in Van’s Black family history, sometimes overlooked in mainstream conversations about Black culture.
  • "[Baseball] is an underrated aspect of black history. It doesn't get talked about as much as it should in order to access Americana…" (08:03, Van)
• Van’s father was a "junkball" pitcher, an inventive athlete whose passion for baseball carried on through family reunions and games in communities throughout Louisiana.
• Despite not being near an MLB team, Van followed minor league, sugarcane leagues, and Braves broadcasts on national cable superstations, building memories around players and teams.

The Cultural Arc of Black Players in MLB

• Van and Ben discuss how, as a kid, there were many Black stars (Fred McGriff, Frank Thomas, etc.), but their numbers have dwindled.
• Multiple theories are considered: family structures, sport accessibility, the glamorization of football and basketball, and economics.
  • "Some people boil it down to a cultural argument … [but] the data doesn't really support that as far as the involvement of black dads …" (26:24, Van)
  • "As football has become America's pastime, those guys have become football players... The barrier to entry to you being a great football player is just, it's like a lot lower than it is teaching you how to hit a curveball." (28:24, Van)
• The decline is contrasted with baseball’s recent, deliberate efforts to boost representation and excitement.

Evolution of Fandom, Media, and Monoculture

• Reflecting on sports in the '90s, Van argues both athletes and fans had broader cross-sport awareness, fueled by the “monoculture” of SportsCenter and national cable.
• Modern fandom, fueled by stats, fantasy, betting, and hyper-specific media, is far more specialized, cutting off broader sports conversations.

Advanced Stats—Barriers and Entry Points

• Ben and Van dig into the journey from RBI-batting average–home runs understanding to the new lexicon: WAR, OPS, WOBA, WRC+, etc.
  • "OPS now seems like an...entry level stat now." (18:03, Van)
  • "I still don't watch the game that way," Van admits, noting the learning curve for returning fans.
• Ben gives an accessible walkthrough of how advanced stats like WAR and fielding metrics work—and why they’re useful—using examples like Adam Dunn vs. Juan Pierre.
  • "The nice thing about WAR... is that you don't actually need to know how they work necessarily. You kind of just need to know the concept..." (43:42, Ben)
• Van comically marvels at new stats and the depth of fan understanding, especially relative to his '90s fandom.
  • "Woba sounds like a Star Wars character." (71:16, Van)

The Modern Game—What’s Lost, What’s Gained

• Pitching velocity and analytics impress Van, but he misses the art of batting average and traditional small-ball elements like base stealing.
  • "It is difficult growing up in the age of Tony Gwynn to look at somebody hitting 305 and be like, there’s an elite hitter. ... Batting average is the thing that I’m having the toughest time letting go of." (66:41, Van)
• They debate lineup construction (Ohtani batting leadoff), the rise of the “superstat” fan, and whether the influx of information actually enriches or complicates fan enjoyment.
• The modern MLB labor debate looms—both express hope that the revived popularity of baseball won’t be squandered by a work stoppage.
  • "A work stoppage right now would be catastrophic ... Amongst, to me, the most boneheaded mistakes that I can remember in the history of professional sports." (84:40, Van)

The Culture of Cool: Will MLB Regain National Prominence?

• Regional fandom and baseball’s (former) coolness are discussed.
• To truly recapture mass appeal, Van argues, MLB players need more personality off the field—the return of superstar "bad boys" and romance with starlets (with Paul Skenes and Livvy Dunne cited as the modern example).
  • "Baseball treats its bad boys worse than any other sport treats its bad boys... you need controversial baseball players, [people] that say the wrong thing the right way." (39:14, Van)

Notable Quotes & Highlights

• On Baseball’s Place:
  "Baseball is such a big, big part of how we saw ourselves as members of the American experiment..." (10:30, Van)
• On Stats & Complexity:
  "The average baseball fan now is just leaps and bounds ahead of the average baseball fan during the heyday of my baseball watching." (41:25, Van)
• On Generational Change:
  "You have to give yourself over to baseball...You have to invest into baseball. It doesn’t give you the instant gratification that a lot of other sports do." (23:31, Van)

---

Segment Two: "Baseball’s First Superstar – Jim Creighton" with Thomas W. Gilbert

Timestamps: 85:29 – end

Introducing "Death in the Strike Zone"

• Thomas W. Gilbert’s new book reconstructs the life of James Creighton (b.1841–d.1862), the sport’s first phenom.
• Creighton was baseball’s first fastball/curveball pitcher, the subject of the first baseball card, and the reason we have a strike zone today.
  • “He is the reason why baseball has a strike zone. His name was James Creighton. You have probably never heard of him. That is part of the mystery.” (85:52, Gilbert via Ben)

How Creighton Revolutionized Pitching

• Before Creighton, pitching was underhand, designed not to strike out the batter but to put the ball in play ("the pitcher’s job was just to initiate the action").
• Creighton, guided by his catcher Joe Leggett, developed a new, legal but unprecedented underhand technique using hip torque and finger strength to achieve extreme velocity and spin—spoiling hitters and changing the balance of the game.
  • “Everyone agreed on one thing, that his pitches were precise and perfectly located at all times...” (96:32, Gilbert)
• Eyewitness accounts confirm: "He was throwing...easily over a hundred [mph]" in terms of batter reaction time, revolutionizing the sport.

Myths, Memory, and the Curveball

• Following his death, later writers wrongly accused Creighton of cheating (bending batting/pitching rules), conflating him with rule-breakers who came after.
  • "Posterity conspired to...hide Jim Creighton's achievements." (100:56, Gilbert)
• Gilbert clarifies that original sources consistently vouched for Creighton's legality; mythologization and confusion came later.

Early Professionalism and Complicated Legacies

• Teams compensated star players indirectly (cushy jobs, real estate), foreshadowing professionalization. Creighton’s recruitment is the first documented instance of active youth talent poaching for club gain.
• Creighton’s success also gave rise to the first true fans and city rivalries—laying the groundwork for team rooting culture.

Creighton’s Death and Its Mysteries

• Creighton died at 21 from a complicated, untreated hernia, concealed both for privacy and to shield baseball (and cricket) from blame.
  • "All they had to do was say this is what he died of...the person who did the death certificate knew what he died of, and yet it becomes a secret almost immediately." (121:59, Gilbert)
• The tragedy marked an early example of overuse and pressure on prodigious athletes, compounded by economic necessity.

Should Creighton Be in the Hall of Fame?

• Despite his profound historical significance, Creighton remains outside Cooperstown, possibly further obscuring his legacy compared to later, lesser players who made the cut.
  • "The Hall of Fame is full of people you and I would barely have heard of, let's say, had they not have a plaque." (116:24, Gilbert)
• The book attempts to set the record straight and argue for his induction, highlighting his enduring if underappreciated influence.

Notable Quotes

• On the impact of Creighton’s innovations:
  "Fast pitching...was a godsend. And the curveball—you could imagine the game without it, but I think we’re better off with it. ... Not too many fans are thinking about Jim Creighton. But he’s ultimately the source of this." (114:00+, Gilbert)
• On historical detective work:
  “It is baseball’s oldest and coldest cold case. It is a mystery that contains other mysteries, a whodunit and also a howdunit.” (85:52, Gilbert [read by Ben])

---

Key Timestamps

• Van joins/personal baseball history: 02:52-08:03
• Cultural context—Black baseball: 08:03-13:00
• Cross-sport monoculture/historical fandom: 14:28–16:34
• Modern stats discussion/teaching WAR: 41:25–49:03
• WAR, fame, and player value: 48:12-57:08
• The modern game, analytics, and rules changes: 61:00–67:16
• Labor, salary cap, league future: 75:00–84:40
• Thomas Gilbert on Creighton/pitching revolution: 88:55–96:28
• Debunking Creighton myths, professionalization: 100:05–107:10
• Death, legacy, and Hall debate: 116:10–130:17

---

Memorable Moments

• Van, displaying his glove, ball, and elaborate sunglasses, “demonstrating” pitch grips on Zoom—and his display name “Kyle Tucker” to send “King Tuck” good vibes.
• Nuanced discussion of racial representation, with both hosts agreeing there are no simple answers—“You could ask 10 different guys who understand baseball, and you get 10 different answers.” (26:09, Van)
• Van’s incredulous discovery of Max Muncie’s doppelganger—two unrelated MLB players named Max Muncy, both born on August 25th. (72:58–73:45)
• Van embracing new metrics: “Woba sounds like a Star wars character.” (71:16, Van)
• Ben and Thomas Gilbert drawing a direct line from Creighton’s innovations to today’s strike zone battles and fandom structures.

---

Final Thoughts

• Ben and Van’s rapport delivers both humor and real insight, especially regarding how individual and social histories intersect with the sport’s evolution.
• The Creighton segment showcases how even a largely “solved” sport still has foundational mysteries, and how the roots of the modern game are stranger and more innovative than many realize.
• Both conversations are rich with anecdote, accessible stats explanation, and a passion for the intersection of baseball, culture, and history.

---

Recommended for:

• Fans curious about the lived experience of returning to baseball fandom after years away
• Listeners interested in advanced stats demystified
• Students of baseball history keen to understand its deepest origins and forgotten pioneers

---

Notable Closing Quote:
"I love this sport. I love baseball. Baseball is not going anywhere. Last thing I'll say...Don't f*** this up, Major League Baseball. Don't strike out again." (75:01, Van Lathan)

Transcript

[A]

Hello and welcome to episode 2493 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer, not joined this time by Meg Riley of Fan Graphs, who is day to day with a wisdom tooth extraction. And so I've got two great guests for you. Later on the episode I will be joined by Thomas W. Gilbert. He is the author of an excellent baseball book called Death in the Strike Zone, the mystery of America's First Baseball Hero. It came out right around opening day. I just got around to reading it. I highly recommend it. Thomas is the author of How Baseball Happened, a history of the origins of the sport that came out in 2020, won the Casey Award for best baseball book of the year. Death in the Strike Zone, I'm sure will be a contender. It is the first biography of James Creighton, who more or less invent pitching as we know it today and by extension gave rise to the sport as we know it today. For better or worse, maybe a bit of both. Creighton predated professional baseball, died very young after revolutionizing the sport, and so he has been shrouded in mystery ever since. And Gilbert has solved a lot of those mysteries. If you enjoyed my Ella Black docu series from last year, which was my 19th century baseball history investigation, you'll like this book. You'll like this book regardless, so stick around to hear Tom talk about it. But before we do our Baseball Book Club segment, we will be devoting most of this episode to a conversation with a cherished coworker of mine and one of my favorite podcast people, period, Van Lathan. You may know Van from one of his many shows. He's a big baseball fan. We've been planning to pot about it for a while, so we're going to talk about his baseball background, how he got back into baseball, how he feels about the evolution of the sport. I will help school him on some stats stuff. We will talk about black players in Major League Baseball or the lack thereof, some cross sport comparisons, Van's read on how baseball's labor battle is perceived, and much, much more. I could talk to Ben about anything. I could listen to Ben talk about anything. Hopefully the same will true for you. One warning. We tend to work blue at the ringer. We don't do bleeps. And so Van was podcasting by Ringer Rules here. And Van is an artist with a swear word. So you will get the unvarnished Van in this segment. Be warned if you're concerned about your kids tender ears. Your tender ears. Anyone's tender ears. Blanket language warning here. I'm not sure anyone would want to hear the number of bleeps that producer Shane would have to add otherwise. But you will want to hear Van's every word, profane or otherwise. So let's get to talking. All right? It's time for an incredible crossover event as seen and heard on cnn. The Ringerverse. Higher learning, Ringer Tailgate, Raise the roof and beyond. It's a baseball fan in a baseball van. Van Lathan. Hi, Van.

[B]

What's going on? Okay, I'm ready to talk hardball. The ops of this podcast is way up. I got my glove. Yeah, I got my. I guess this is an imitation imitation ball. Here, look, let me show you something real quick. Let me show you something real quick.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

All right, listen, I got several different things. I got the four seamer. Okay? Yeah, I got the two seamer.

[A]

Yep, yep.

[B]

Okay. All right, I can come down here. Here's the thing about this, Ben. Before I even get into. To show you this next grip, here's the situation.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I learned this grip from Trevor Bauer. Now look, here's the deal. Here's the deal.

[A]

It was a long time ago.

[B]

The guy knows his pitching.

[A]

Uhhuh.

[B]

Okay, okay. The guy knows his pitching. When I go to my. Go to pitching people, you know, I go to pitching ninja. Yeah, right on. You ever seen him? You ever seen a pitching ninja? But I tell you something about Bauer. He knows his pitching. This right here. Sweeper. Yeah, Inside there. You throw it. You don't snap the. That's not what you do. You change the arm when you throw the sweeper.

[A]

All right?

[B]

Let it go. You want to throw the sweeper across there. Strikes early in the count, late in the count. You want to throw a sweeper off the plate. Boom. There you guys go. Get. Get more outs.

[A]

Wow. See, I know that your dad threw a lot of pitches, but he didn't teach them to you or he didn't teach you the good ones. He kept those.

[B]

He never. He didn't want me to pitch like that. Like, he always had arms. Arm problems his entire life, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He was a smaller guy and he was a nibbler. So dad had a lot of movement. He used to call himself a junk baller. Pitch there.

[A]

The screwball.

[B]

He threw the screwball, right? The 12 to 6 through the big 12 6. All right. He threw a fastball, but it had a little funky movement on it. He pitched at Shady Grove High School in Mary Gwynne Louisiana. Then he pitched for Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Then he went on and gotten a little bit of the sugar cane leagues. I don't know if you guys know what that is, the sugarcane leagues down there in Louisiana. But you know, my dad could, he really could move it around. It was hard to hit. Then in the 10th grade, I started to be able to track it and I started jacking his shit.

[A]

Well, for those who can't see Van, you've come dressed for the occasion. You got your glove, you got the ball, you got the wraparound shades. You are in athletic wear for this podcast, which is appropriate. And your display name is Kyle Tucker. Interesting choice. How did you go with Kyle Tucker?

[B]

Because I'm trying to do anything I can do to get King Tuck off the schneide.

[A]

Yeah, he needs your help.

[B]

Last night was a better game for him. He jacked a three runner. Now I will say this about that homer. It did look like he was still kind of fooled on that pitch. He got the barrel of the bat a little over the play. He was a little early, but he still got, he still got enough to, to pull that ball out. You ever see like a. Kind of reminded me of the Kirk Gibson joint from back in 88. You know how he just kind of flips the ball out of there and he gets a good crack off the barrel of the bat. That's what Tuck did last night, but we'll take whatever we can get. I think it was a two hit game for him last night as well. Multi hit game is going to be good for him. We need him to break out of Schneide, so anything I can do to get King Tuck back on top is what I'll do right now. So that's my name today, Kyle Tucker.

[A]

Wow, that's the sign of a good hitter. You get fooled and you still get good wood on the ball. So glad Tuck could do that. Yeah, I know. Well, we didn't talk about what we were going to talk about beyond baseball, which is a pretty broad topic. But you are among the people in the world who I'm most confident in not planning a podcast with and just hitting records and seeing what happens. Planning is, if anything, a detriment to a Van Lathan podcast. And. And away we go. I think that's already clear.

[B]

I am into it. This look, I told everybody, I was like, look, Ben is like Jonah Hill from Moneyball. Like he understands the game to that level. I understand the cultural parts of the game. I understand guys like Raphael Bailliard Mark Lemke.

[A]

Yeah, okay, Kyle.

[B]

Chuck Knobloch. Those are the Kyle Tucker. These are things I understand.

[C]

All right.

[B]

But I want to learn. I want to deepen my understanding of baseball. You know, just moving ducks around the pond. So that's why I had to tap in with you.

[A]

Yeah, we've been talking about doing this for a very long time because the first time we met was at a Ringerverse dinner in LA years ago, and we were mostly talking about baseball then. And then every podcast we've done since then on any topic, inevitably you say, when are we doing a baseball pod? When are we talking about baseball? I want to talk about baseball. So here we are, finally, the much anticipated baseball pod. So tell me about your baseball background. Was it just passed down from your dad? Is that how you developed your love of the game? Because you're in Louisiana, you're not close to any MLB teams at that time. Right. So it's all. What. What were you following? Were you going to minor league games or just amateur level or.

[B]

So here's an interesting thing that doesn't get talked about. I've wanted to do something about it for a long time. Shout out to Noah at the ringer, one of our guys. Noah, great guy. I love Noah. Okay, now this is what I'll say. Baseball is an underrated aspect of black history. It doesn't get talked about as much as it should in order to access Americana. There were certain things that black folk coming out of slavery when they were getting into being free Americans, and some.

[C]

Yes, yeah.

[B]

Proximity, facsimile of freedom, quote, unquote, that they did. And they did all of these things, despite what America would tell you. They bought land, they planted, they got jobs. You know, after slavery, during the times of slavery, in places where slavery had been outlawed, they became a part of the American economic and professional cultural, creative landscape. They always invested into America and they invested into baseball. They got into baseball. Baseball was being played where I'm from in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where my father's from in Maryland, Louisiana. Football was a thing. Okay. Obviously later on, it becomes a huge thing. Basketball was never really a thing for my father, to be honest with you. But baseball was a thing out there in the country that we played. No one is going to tell you that football is not a big deal in Louisiana. Of course it's a big deal. But baseball, with my ancestral home, Marin, Louisiana, if you go to Ventures Cemetery where my father's buried, God rest his soul, if you go all the way to the back there's slaves buried there. And I'm telling you, my connection to my people always, for my family, included baseball. At family reunions. My Uncle Ray was in an organization. My dad played. Everybody had a different style. Everybody had a different thing that they. But we played baseball. So there wasn't a team around. I didn't go. We weren't going down to New Orleans for Zephyr's games, but we did have the sugarcane leagues, and we did have just my father teaching me the sport of baseball.

[A]

You almost did the Terrence Mann monologue there. You were so close. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.

[B]

That's true.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's why it's so sad that it's dissipating now. That's why I'm glad to see baseball come back and glad to see young brothers out there playing because it's such a big, big of how we saw ourselves as members of the American experiment, that this particular game, in this particular sport. How can you not get emotional, spiritual about baseball?

[A]

Yeah. And not to date you, but when you were a kid, there were many more black players in mlb. African American players, to be specific.

[B]

You can say black.

[A]

Yeah. Just because there are a lot of black Latino players today.

[B]

But now baseball been very, very good to me.

[A]

That's right. And fewer African American players. But that's maybe coming back a little bit. I hope they're trying. So who were your guys then? Because. Did you have a team or were you just rooting for individuals?

[B]

So it was Atlanta Braves. So this is the thing that people don't understand.

[A]

The superstation. Ted Turner.

[B]

Rest in peace, Ted Turner. Ben is a fucking genius. This, though, this is why I like potting with Ben. There's very little work. I can just come on here with these glasses. I know you can't. People can't see me just because Ben knows. So there's a lot of things, like you watch wgn, people don't know. You had two cable stations that were superstations. And nobody really knew why, because we didn't understand, like, media markets and stuff like that back then. Nobody cared. It was just like we would get the local news in Chicago and be like, okay, we would, like, watch the Chicago local news. It would come on wg. And WGN was broadcast everywhere. But that's how I got into Ryan Sandberg. All right, and what was the first baseman? They had Mark Grace and the Cubs, but not just them, also the White Sox. The guy used to call the White Sox games. You'd hit A fly ball. He'd be like, can of corn. It's Hawk.

[A]

Hawk Harrelson.

[B]

Hawk Harrelson. Can of corn, Right. And you would be watching Robin Ventura and Frank Thomas. You know, Steve Sacks play for the White Sox a little bit during that time. And then they had two different teams. So normally it would be the Cubs in the day and then it would be the White Sox, like, at night. You would watch the White Sox at night. White Sox had a, like, really fun team to watch back then, but always the Braves. And the Braves were the team that I got with, man. Glavin Maddox, Avery Smoltz. Okay. Later on, Denny Nagel joined the team. You had Marcus Grissom, you had Mark Lenke, you had Raphael Belliard, you had Javi Lopez, you had Ryan Klesko, you had Jeff Blauser, you had all of those guys together. And you had the crime dog.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Fred McGriff.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. You had all of those teams together, all of those aces. I remember watching this. New York Yankees ripped our hearts out in a game where Glavin had pitched the gym. And then we come in, we give up the home run, the Jim Larratt and the Yankees never looked back.

[A]

And it's over. What a great moment you're reminding me of. Thank you, Vin. Shut up.

[B]

That is the worst curveball that's ever been thrown. I'm sure Mark Waller somewhere right now is, like, living his life. He doesn't want to go back, like, and relive this. But I remember, I remember watching that with my dad. My dad was, like, not mad at Mark Walder Wallers, but he was bewildered, just disappointed. He went, what is wrong with that boy? He was like, of course. Like, well, son, look at that curveball. That curveball was spinning in place. Laris blasted. And then that. That becomes that waste. I thought Andrew Jones was going to become the next Mickey Mantle, the way he played in the first two games of that series. Anyway, so all of that stuff is my time. And I'll say something else about just my time during baseball at that point. Overall in sports, Ben, we had better cross sport knowledge then than we do now. Just like the athletes played more sports then, the fans played more sports then. I'll tell you why we're all watching SportsCenter, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And because we're all watching SportsCenter, we're all watching all the highlight packages of everything. So you're watching for your stuff and then to save Patrick wa.

[A]

Yeah, that's true.

[B]

It's Lindross, it's Leclaire. It's all of these guys. It's Pete Sampras versus Andre Agassi. It's Michael Schumacher, the race car driver and Jeff Gordon. All of these people over and over and over again. It's this guy from Austin who used to ride his bike really fast and we don't talk about him anymore. But like, it's like all of these things are on the same spot where you have to go to get your highlights. So you just had a better understanding of other sports, period. Now you got basketball heads, you got football heads. Not as many people, for me, have the general understanding of the entire sports landscape as what we had back then. So there was just a better understanding of all the sports in that regard.

[A]

Yeah, I guess it's. It's the monoculture conversation that we have about a lot of things. You just got exposed to culture more broadly as opposed to the little silo that we are each in of our own interests. And I guess there was a broader knowledge, maybe there was less specialized knowledge. Maybe you knew a little less about that sport. It's just like, yeah, you did have two way players back then. You had Brian Jordan, you had Deion Sanders, you had Bo Jackson, etc. And it was amazing that they did that. But it was conceivable in a way that it's really not today. Just because you have to be so good and it's so punishing physically to do that that it's, it's next to impossible now. And so I guess also you're just expected to know so much about any sport that you follow. Maybe it's because of fantasy sports, maybe it's because of sports betting, maybe it's because we're each just listening to our own single sport podcasts, like this one or whatever. But there is a lot more to know and maybe it, it goes hand in hand with the advanced stat stuff that you're talking about. That's like the thing, you know, you have to pay really close attention to a sport to have any idea what you're talking about. Or the people who really pay close attention are gonna know that you, you're a casual, you know, and, you know,

[B]

I just be honest with you, like you're saying some of this stuff just wasn't invented. Yeah, okay. We were tracking players. RBI average, home runs. Okay. That was the thing. RBI average, home runs and everything else. The fucking announcers will fill it in. Announcers will be like, now here's the thing about that cut fastball. You really want to keep your bat inside the zone for the entire time. Because if you don't stay disciplined, that'll run right back into your hands. And that's a bat breaker right there. So what you want to kind of do is keep your bat in the zone. You want to recognize early and try to get that ball pulled or else you want to take it and see what the hump's going to give you. And you're like, oh my God, this guy a genius. And then, you know, you're in a situation infield in here, they're going to be extra spots. And then they talk about the things before it happened. Now, here, here, Hank, if, if you get a hit, hard hit ball here, the second, are you going to want to come home with this or you just going to go ahead and take the outs and see what else your bullpen can give you? It's like, I'm going to try to cut down a run if I can. The question is, at shortstop, with that bum ankles, he's still going to be able to have the range to make that play, stand up and make a great throw and that and that and that added to the game. Now it's completely different. A guy, A guy gets up, he's hitting.265 and somebody goes. He is really seeing the ball well. And I'm like, what?

[A]

Yeah, 265. He's leading the league.

[B]

I'm like, what? What are you talking about? What are you doing? What do you mean? Like, he's really just. No one cares about batting average at all anymore. There are too many other sports. I had to go deep on war. Like there wasn't even very much. And OPS now seems like a. Ops, especially ops. OPS now seems like a, kind of like a. That's an entry level stat now.

[A]

Yeah. Nobody was talking.

[B]

Yeah, nobody was talking about that. 95. Not that I can remember. Nobody was really talking about that. Slugging percentage. Slugging percentage in 95 was something that was like. People were like, whoa, okay, cutting edge.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What's batting average is one thing. What's looking for stage? What are you talking about?

[A]

Total bases divided by. You're making math.

[B]

Yeah. What are you like, what's happening? What's the deal? But now it's, you got war, you got ops. Yeah. Other stuff that I really don't understand. I know you get it all, but I don't. I still don't watch the game that way.

[A]

It's interesting talking about the, the X players in the booth because that's still the standard. And the booths get Bigger and bigger. Maybe you three people in there now, if not more. And you still often have the ex player who's giving you the mechanical breakdowns and everything. But once the advanced stats came in and once people could fact check at home, you'd still get the benefit of someone who played and they're giving you their playing experience. And here's what the players thinking in that moment. But often then they would make some assertion that was maybe not supported by the facts. And then everyone who's watching at home is checking on baseball reference. Wait, that didn't happen. What is he talking about? Or some sort of old school mentality where the people watching at home either think they know better or in some cases maybe actually do. And the broadcaster is kind of giving you some misinformation because they're from an earlier era and they're saying what the way that they understood it at the time and now things have moved on. So there was this big backlash against guys like Tim McCarver or Joe Morgan later in their career who, when they came in, were beloved and were seen as sharp and perceptive. And they're predicting what pitch is going to be thrown, but then they're sort of old school by the end and everyone's frustrated with the cliches and wait, you haven't read Moneyball and you're upset about Moneyball and you don't understand Moneyball. And so now you kind of have to bring that playing experience, but also have some sense of the stats or you're going to get drummed out of that business pretty quick.

[B]

I still don't understand how. Because, you know, I watch the games, I watch the Dodgers, I watched, I watch. Me and Collega are watching every game that we can now we're, we're full on. Baseball hits again. I'm back into the sport in a way I haven't been in a long time. I've always kept up with baseball.

[A]

Just a pitch clock thing. Is it, Is it Ohtani? Is it something else?

[B]

I don't want to get emotional.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But it was really the death of my dad.

[A]

Oh, yeah. That brings back the connection.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

My dad passed away five years ago, right?

[B]

Yeah, five years ago.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

When my dad passed away, there were just things about my dad that I didn't want to let go when he was alive. There were things I feel like I had to let go. Like playing basketball for me is gonna get a little deep. I'm sorry to the audience, but playing basketball to me was like a rebellion against my father. It Was something we did in the neighborhood. Right. Because I didn't grow up in Maryland. I grew up in Baton Rouge. So in Baton Rouge, we would play a little bit of softball. It was very funny little. We had a little softball field. I was playing baseball in the summers. I was playing baseball at school. So, you know, it was. I always played baseball, but the neighborhood guys would play, like, this little. They have a little softball. They play softball. And there was this, like, little gu. Behind the softball fields. Like, really, like a sandbox situation. It was an empty lot. I lived in Hermitage subdivision in Guardia Lane. There was an empty lot where they were going to build a house and never built it. But behind there, there was a little canal. There's canals everywhere in Louisiana. We live near the river. And so it was. It used to be back in the day that if you hit the ball into that canal, in the air, they call it an out. And they were doing that to stop you from hitting the ball into the canal. So they.

[A]

Yeah, you run out of baseballs.

[B]

I was like, yo, if I hit the ball in the air, into the canal, out of the field, that's a home run.

[A]

There are a lot of stories, like, actual big leaguers who are like, yeah, I swing this way because if I pulled the ball, then I would break someone's window or whatever. So I learned to go the other way. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. So. So me and my man, Jacob Paternostro, we started whacking softballs back there. But even that my dad didn't like. My dad was like, shout out to dad. My dad was like, man, don't play softball. That's not what he's like. He's like. He was like. And he was also. He'd be like, basketball is not a gentleman's game. Baseball's a gentleman's game. So I'd be out there hooping, getting buckets, doing all this stuff like that. He was like, football is something you do to make you a better baseball player. Basketball is something that distracts you from being the best baseball player you could be. So I was rebelling against him by playing as much basketball. And I did. I played a lot of basketball. But when he died, I didn't want to rebel against him anymore. I wanted to be him and connect with him even more. And so I rediscovered my love for baseball. I have some of his old baseball stuff over here, like, up there that I brought back with me, and I realized how much I loved and missed the game and how being away from baseball that entire time kind of changed Me, as a sports fan, it made me a more cynical sports fan. You have to give yourself over to baseball. You have to invest into baseball. You have to really sit with the sport. It doesn't give you the instant gratification that a lot of other sports do. So I want to rewire my mind back into my baseball mind, and I chose the exact right time to do it. Ohtani, the Dodgers, the pitch clock. The sport is going mainstream again, and until they fuck it up with the strike, I'm going to ride the wave.

[A]

You were very upset all last season about Ohtani batting leadoff, as I recall.

[B]

I don't like it.

[A]

You didn't like it at all. Move him down the lineup.

[B]

Yeah, I don't like it. I'm a purist. I know that he can run, but my thing is, to me, you taking runs off the board. Now, listen, I don't want to get attacked because when I said this, everybody was getting crazy. But if you have a guy that's going to hit 50 home runs and have, like, 90 RBI, to me, you leaving runs on the board. Obviously, the Dodgers had no damn problem generating runs. Guys, again, they won the World Series. I was proven wrong. I'm just saying two. Just put somebody. Maybe two, maybe. Maybe three. Yeah. Still get him to bat every first inning. He's gonna bat every first inning if you put him in at three. But she's gonna. The. You're gonna jack the RBI up a little bit. To me, that makes more sense.

[A]

No, you're not wrong. I think even. Even the advanced stats, even the simulations would probably support that. Often you want your best hitter batting second or a little lower if it's a power guy. Now, obviously, you want your best hitters getting the most plate appearances, so that helps. And it's the Dodgers, so they just had so many good hitters that maybe it didn't matter that much. It was just like when you had Mookie and Freeman and, you know, Te Oscar and all these guys. And even maybe the bottom of the lineup is not that bad. So there are guys on base when Ohtani comes up again. But I think you had a point there. I mean, Dodgers did okay and are doing okay with Ohtani batting anywhere in the lineup. But you're not wrong. So you named. When I asked you who you. Your guys were as a kid, you named a few. A few brothers in there. Crime Dog, Big Hurt. Where did they go? Because the. The rates, the percentages are way down. Are there just not as many black dads like your dad who Are emphasizing baseball? Was it other cultural factors? Was it just the accessibility of basketball? All you need is a ball and a court and a hoop and that's it. What else? Did baseball become uncool for a while? What led to the decline of representation of black players in the big leagues?

[B]

This is one of the most fascinating conversations for me because you could ask 10 different guys who understand baseball, and you get 10 different answers.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Some people boil it down to a cultural argument that talks about black fathers at homes and baseball being a sport that's passed down to. From father to son. The problem is that the data doesn't really support that as far as the involvement of black dads in the lives of their sons. A lot of those tropes aren't really supported by any data. Right. And what also doesn't support that argument specifically? I'm not saying you made it. I'm saying that's just. Let's take these argument by argument. What. What doesn't support that argument is the fact that you customarily see a lot of involvement in the young life of young basketball players. You see videos now of kids running, running around in cones. Everybody got cones. Where they getting the goddamn cones from? Like, everybody running around with these little cones and they're doing all of these drills. And you see these kids, kids, you know, performing younger. You see the juniors playing sports, but those juniors are playing basketball. You're seeing football players with sons who are the best basketball player. Like my man, shout out to Marcus Spears. Marcus Spears, his boy is one of the best basketball players. Let's see if he ends up at lsu. I'm losing that. I'm putting that on you. Swagger. And then you have. You had that argument. Then you had an argument that was more just straight structural. The question is, in places in the south that are underfunded, where football is such an easy sport to get people to glom onto and baseball is a harder one. Was there were you getting as much value out of being a baseball player in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Jackson, Mississippi, as you used to. It used to be back in the day, those resources went to baseball because baseball was America's pastime. Football is now America's pastime.

[A]

And Alabama was a baseball hotbed. I mean, a lot of the. The greats came in from there.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. Right. Georgia baseball hotbed. Right. And so now what you see is, as football has become America's pastime, those guys have become football players. And also there's a, you know, if you are a 275 pound young man and you run a 4, 5, 40 yard dash, man. I'mma be for real. The, the barrier to entry to you being a great football player is just, it's like a lot lower than it is teaching you how to hit a curveball. That's just a fact, you know, but then you also have something else. You have the weird cultural existence of Major League Baseball. Major League Baseball is in many ways emblematic of America. The perception of America, the durability of the American reputation. I mean, there's a time where everywhere we go we believe that we are the good guys and we are standing up for freedom and all of that stuff. Now, now the deeper people start to look into America, they start to have questions, right? Baseball's almost the same way. Baseball was seen as this pure, unassailable sport that represented the sort of pastoral imagination of the American frontier. It took a lot of land. America was about land. It took teamwork, it was an odd sport, it was a novel sport. Sport where the defense has the ball, all of that stuff, right? But then people start to look inside baseball and what they see a lot of dysfunction. They saw rampant cocaine use in the 80s, they saw discrimination and segregation earlier on. You does, is Babe Ruth the same type of historical figure that you think that he is? If you consider the fact that he didn't have to play against black guys, Right. Like, was baseball ever the pure American pastime that we thought that it was then we have all of these numbers and all of this stuff that that happens. And then the steroid era and we're enjoying it, but then we're like, should we have enjoyed it? The way we feel about baseball in a lot of ways, the way we feel about our country, it's something that we haven't been sure that we should enjoy in the way that we have over time. And maybe we couldn't as much as we wanted to. This is different now. Now I think there's been a, A, a direct effort to look at what Major League Baseball actually is and what it can be. Open the game up internationally, speed the game up. Like, if not make it America's pastime, make it something Americans can connect to and make the sport as accessible for everyone as it possibly can be. I think they're doing a good job of that, which is why it would be terrible if they fucked it up with the strike. And I think with stuff like that affected black representation and participation in baseball more than anything, right? My generation was the last generation that it was even cool to have an opinion about baseball.

[A]

Yeah, I've read that. The author of a book. I'm about to talk to him. He writes about the origins of baseball and how it became the national pastime. And even then, you think of that as this sort of pure thing, but it was driven by this sort of nativist movement because there was so much immigration in the 19th century and immigrants were coming over from other countries. People were playing cricket, people were playing other sports. And so people were advancing baseball as the national sport because it was pure, it was American, it originated on these shores. And it wasn't truly a national pastime, of course, because a lot of people weren't welcome and weren't allowed to play, at least in the white leagues. But that was the whole impetus, really, for it to become a big national sport. We think of it in this romantic term, but it was always just sort of, you know, us versus them and some people kind of being the other. So it's easy to forget that after a couple centuries pass. I guess there's also the fact that, you know, if you go into a career in baseball and you're a great athlete, it might benefit you in the long run, say, relative to football. You're taking less of a beating, for sure, but it's also going to take you a while to get paid, probably. You're going to be riding the buses, you're going to be in the minor leagues. You're not going to. Even if you're a star, you're not going to jump straight from college to the pros and be a star immediately in most cases. So it's kind of a. A delayed, you know, like, if you need to make some money, if you need to get rewarded, then baseball is not always the. The fastest way to do that. But there's like, Ricky Henderson. I know his mom wanted him to play baseball because she was worried about his health, and she figured you're going to last longer if you're a baseball player than a football player, which very few guys lasted longer than Ricky. So I think she was right about that. But you kind of got to take the long view, I guess, which is toug. You're a teenager and you're deciding which sport to specialize in.

[B]

One of my favorite athletes of all time.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

On a. I know I'm the best ever list. The only guys you can put up there with Ricky are, like, Ali and Bonds. Ricky, Like, Ricky is like, today I became the greatest of all time. I love that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, I remember I was watching this interview With Ricky must have been like 92, 93. Was he on the Padres? I don't know who he was playing for. He played for so many teams.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they asked him. They was like, well, Ricky, they've said that they might wanna. They might wanna restructure your contract, like in the, in the offseason. And Ricky went, well, it depends on what you mean by re. And just, just anytime he got a single, it was a double.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And if he got. And if he was on second, he might take third. He also might not hit the ball on the ground at all. He might just hit that out of the park. He was part Willie Mays Hayes. But. But then again, it was just funny. I loved Ricky, but I'm saying, to your point. Yes. So think about what you just said in the way that it works. So at the same time, we're dealing with Kevin Garnett and Kobe and later on, LeBron James, Dwight Howard, guys like that, and whether or not they should go from being 17 years old to being millionaires. And not just millionaires, but the talk of the town.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

There's something else you got to talk about. When you are a baseball player, it takes you a while to get paid, but it also takes you a while to get talked about, which is not true in the other sports.

[C]

Sports.

[A]

It's true.

[B]

Sports, like you is. I'm. I'm talking about what means like post Michael Jordan.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What you wanted to be, as well as being the best player in your sport is you want to be the most talked about player in your sport.

[A]

Yeah. The Ringer doesn't have a college baseball podcast. Not yet, at least.

[B]

They see what I'm saying.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Like in baseball, that happens at first. Who is Bright Harper? What was the guy that. JD Drew, who is Bryce Harper, who is JD Drew, who is Josh Hamilton? It starts there. And then when you go to the minors, they don't talk about you a little while until you get called back up. And then, then when you get called up now, you got to adjust to the hitting and all of that stuff like that. So that takes you a while for you. So. But if you're Kobe or you're Kevin Garnett or whatever, your rookie season, after you have jumped into the league and become a lottery pick. Kobe wasn't a lot. Kobe was 13. Is that the.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

But anyway, like, when you jump into it, you are talked about. You get to prom with Brandy, you get to do all of this stuff. Right. You get to be a part of the American sports conversation. Immediately. And baseball is like everything else about the sport, makes you wait a little bit and it's.

[A]

Unless you're Otani, even when you're a big leaguer, even if you're a star, people probably aren't recognizing Kyle Tucker walking down the street except for you as the world's biggest Kyle Tucker fan. Obviously, unless you're Ohtani. You know, it's not even like it was necessarily in the 90s with Griffey and with Jeter dating Mariah or whatever, you know, like these were the biggest stars in sports. Whereas now Otanio sides the biggest baseball players pretty much pale in comparison to the fame of the biggest basketball players, football players, soccer players certainly. I don't know whether that will change now that baseball's kind of having this resurgence. So do you think that cultural coolness is coming back? Because attendance is a up, TV ratings are up, MLB says that it's a younger audience, younger ticket buyers. Do you think that coolness is coming back? I guess also part of it is that the following for baseball is pretty regional, right? It's local, you're paying attention to your team. Everyone's watching every football team all the time. Right. And it's easy to. There aren't that many games. They're on national broadcasts. I mean, they might be on seven different streaming services now. That's another conversation. But baseball, the fandom, even if there are as many fans, it tends to be a bit more splintered. Right. So you're not getting the same sort of national footprint. So do you think that that coolness is coming back or can come back?

[B]

I think it's coming back. I think the World Series last year was a gigantic event for baseball. There was a whole Kendrick Lamar Drake narrative. There were two, there were two big markets. It was an astounding, incredible World Series. I don't think people knew that baseball could be that thrilling in that way with that type of seven game series, with that type of shit on the line. I think it can happen. I do think these players are going to need a little bit more personality outside of the game. I think guys like, I think Paul schemes dating Livy Dunn is a big deal for baseball.

[A]

I do in Louisiana. I'm sure it is.

[B]

Lsu. That's going to be the first LSU baby. Oh, actually that's not true. That's not true. You know who's the LSU baby knows the LSU baby. Who? Odell Beckham Jr. Oh, okay, yeah, right. Yep. Odell Beckham Jr. LSU baby. Like big LSU baby there, dad, LSU mom. LSU. Odell Beckham Jr. LSU, baby. So. So like Paul Skeen's dating Livy Dunn is. You know, back in the day, the baseball player used to get the hot chick, used to get the Marilyn Monroe, used to get the Madonna.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, if you're Conseco and stuff like that. Jeter got them all. Jeter's lineup is the basically 27 Yankees. Okay. Murderers rock pro. Yeah, Jeter got them all. So what I'm saying is, I think that's coming back, but these guys are going to need bigger footprints off of the diamond, some of them. Baseball doesn't like its bad boys. Baseball treats its bad boys worse than any other sport treats its bad boys. And it. In football, the bad boy is kind of like, you know, it. I don't. I'm not. I don't. When I say bad boy, I don't mean.

[A]

I don't not like Ray Rice, bad boy. But.

[B]

Yeah. Nah, all that. I'm not talking about. Yeah. I'm talking about like, like, like problematic wide receivers.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Like people like that. Football understands that the wide receiver is a diva position. You know what I mean? You got problems with that? Stuff like that. They. They kind of embrace their bad boys a little bit. Basketball certainly embraces their bad boys. Basketball loves their basketball bad boys. Baseball doesn't. Baseball likes a gentleman player, doesn't like a bad boy. It should. You need controversial baseball players. You need baseball players that say the wrong thing the right way. Anytime somebody puts a microphone in their face. You know, that's the only thing I'd say right now that the game is missing. It's a little bit more difficult now with the way people are on social media and stuff like that. But like a lightning rod baseball player, Ohtani's great for the game because he's a great guy. He likes to place a wager every now and again. Who cares?

[A]

Don't get out of here with that.

[B]

So.

[A]

So it's.

[B]

It's like, he's so good. We forgot about that. The Brendan Soaresby of Major League Baseball.

[A]

Duh.

[B]

We feel like we first. We forgot about it.

[A]

Invite you on my show and you slander Shohei Ohtani. Unbelievable.

[B]

Right? I love Ohtani. He's one of my favorites. Right? Yeah. So what I'm saying is that that's the only thing that the sport is missing. Somebody that kind of transcends a little bit because we can't take our eyes off them off of the baseball diamond. And I'm telling you, that's the guy that's gonna be black.

[A]

So we'll know baseball's back in the center of the culture when the wags are back. When we see. Yeah, when we see the players dating the starlets, that's when we'll know that baseball has become cool again. I guess maybe it will be done to start. We'll see. So when you came back to the game, when you Rip Van Winkled and you. You weren't paying close attention for a while, I'm sure you were, you had some sense of what was going on.

[B]

But I was watching. I was watching.

[A]

Yeah. When you really reconnected, then did you feel like, wow, game done changed. Like, I need to. To go back to school now. This. Everything is complicated. The stats. This is why I need to go on Ben's podcast. Like, did you feel somewhat left out or did you feel welcomed back in? Like, was the, the barrier to re entry too high?

[B]

There was a learning curve. Yeah, there was a learning curve. Like, you know, I was, you know, following baseball and looking at baseball, but. But the average baseball fan now is just leaps and bounds ahead of the average baseball fan during the heyday of my baseball watching. They understand situations better, they understand stats better, they understand what they want from their team a little bit better. They understand the financial structure better, they understand their farm system and their prospect system better.

[C]

Right.

[B]

They. They have. You know, as a college football fan, all of this stuff is second nature to me. I can tell you guys right now who are so. This is so sa. I can tell you guys right now who are in the 10th grade right now that LSU is looking at all different types of positions. Yeah, the, like, guys who won track meets that also play football that you're hoping get an offer. This is the way. That's the arms race that exists in college, in college football. That's the way that it is. Young, up and coming coaches that are at directional schools somewhere that you hope to get in as analysts or position coaches for your team, all of that stuff, right? Baseball, is that on the cream of the clear? Like, they're like the actual fan that talks about it. I'm not talking about the people that are. The casual fans are talking, but the actual fan that talks about it understands war. I don't know how your defense affects your war. I don't understand that. I don't understand how you, how you even judge that. Right? So it's like I will say, I will talk about somebody's war and they'll be like, I gotta put the defense in there, blah, blah, blah. Talk about this person defensively, I'm like, how do y'. All. What are the, what are the metrics you use to decide how somebody's. Is that an eyeball test? Do you just look at somebody and know that they're a fucking awesome defender? Like, there are guys you could look at be like, that guy's a hellcat in center field, like Griffey's. But are, is what are the advanced stats that let you know how many more base hits would have existed if Ken Griffey Jr. A replacement player for care. What is this? What's the stat? So, yeah, give me a replacement level center fielder and then tell me how many more outs you get with Griffey at center field. What's the stat for that, Ben?

[A]

Yeah, so I think the nice thing about WAR and all these advanced stats is that you don't actually need to know how they work necessarily. You kind of just need to know the concept of it. If, you know, WAR is just this holistic one value stat that sums up everything a player does as best we can calculate it. Obviously it's, it's pretty complicated under the hood, but all you need to know is, is what it's designed to do. And it's actually pretty simple, which is just, hey, we're going to wrap up everything that this player does and we're just going to put it on the same scale. Because before you had WAR or any stat like that, it was hard to come up with an overall value for a guy because it's just like, well, I know he's a good, good hitter and he's a good base runner, maybe, I don't know if he's a good fielder. And then like, how do you, how do you balance those things? How do you weight them? And so you would have just wild estimates pre war, like decades ago, you'd have people saying guys were worth 20 wins or 30 wins or whatever. And now we know that, you know, Otani might be worth 10 wins or something. That's sort of the ceiling. Yeah. And. But you could kind of say whatever you wanted because no one really knew any better. And the way that WAR works is helpful because you can take players who have nothing in common. They're completely unlike, you know, like, I think of Adam Dunn and Juan Pierre, who maybe you remember, right?

[B]

Juan Pierre. You know, my friends, my, my friend Tommy used to call Juan Pierre Slappy McPop.

[A]

Yeah, well, so it's hard to think of two players more different than Adam Dunn and Juan Pierre, but at least last time I checked when they retired, they had the same war. Basically just cuz, cuz the cuz war. Look at, okay, Juan Pierre, he's fast, he steals lots of bases, maybe he hits for a decent average. He also makes a lot of outs. Oh, he plays center field. He's got some defensive value, even if he's not a great defensive center fielder. And then you have Adam Dunn, who strikes out a ton, walks a lot and, and hits a lot of homers and has no defensive value. Maybe one of the worst fielders of all time, when they even let him play the field. How do you even compare those guys? You sort of need a stat like that to put them on the same playing field, so to speak, and say, well, what is this worth? What is that worth? And then you just do the credits and the debits and you end up with, oh, they come out to kind of the same number. So with fielding, which is just, it's just rolled into war. It's just part of it. If you look up war, it already includes fielding, base running, hitting, the position, the playing time, all of the above. With fielding you have stats that basically look at that. It depends because nowadays they can just track everything that happens on the field, right, with the statcast system. So they just know where you start when the play starts, and they know how far you had to go to get the ball, and they know how long you ran and how fast you ran. And basically they can just compare all the similar plays and say this is an X percent chance of an out, you know, and so like you put an average fielder in there, he would have had a, a 10% chance of making that catch. If this guy made that catch, well then he gets a lot of credit for that because he did something that most guys aren't going to do. And so you just add up all the plays and all the opportunities and then you come up with, with a number that can just tell you he's this many outs above average or this many runs above average. Before they had stat cast and they could track all the players, they sort of did it manually. They had people who were just watching the games and just jotting down. Okay, it was in this zone and you divide the field into this number of zones and the percentage of balls that are, they go into this zone, you expect them to be caught this percent of the time and this guy actually catches them that percent of the time. And so he's better than the typical. So you have to. It's all based on observation. It is sort of the eye test but it's a much more accurate eye test just because you have actual cameras and computers tracking these people. Or it's just, like, more rigorous, more objective, because you're actually not just going with your gut. Like, oh, that. That seemed like a nice play, but actually kind of looking at, where did he make that catch? Where was the ball? Similar plays, how often do they get made? So it's kind of conceptually simple, I guess, but it's. It's complicated in practice when you actually have to calculate it. But you don't have to calculate it. I don't have to calculate it. We just have to look it up. So it's not that bad once you get used to the idea or what it's going for.

[B]

I want you to guess. What do you think Adam Dunn's WAR for his entire career was?

[A]

I'm gonna guess it was like 15 to 20 something in that range.

[B]

It was 18.

[A]

18. Okay.

[B]

You're pretty.

[A]

And where's Juan Pierre?

[B]

Let me look at one Pierre. I just looked at Fred McGriffs. Where would you say Fred McGriffs was?

[A]

Fred McG Griff. I'm going to say he's probably mid-50s, maybe 52. All right. Yeah. It's like when you look at war as much as I do, you kind of get a sense, you know, of like, where people.

[B]

Oh, like Juan Pier is 17.

[A]

There you go. Now, some people might not believe it. They might say, this can't possibly be true. How could those guys have the same value?

[B]

Oh, One guy hit 462 home runs, so you would think that he was a more valuable super bowl player.

[A]

Think, right? Yeah, but he couldn't run, he couldn't field. Juan Pierre was getting tons of plate appearances because he was hitting leadoff and playing every game. So he was getting 700 plate appearances every year. And he's stealing lots of bases and hit for a high average and played a pretty valuable defensive position. So it's hard to put that stuff on the same scale. And so it might lead to doubts because you say, well, I can't. You know, any stat that says those two guys are the same, that's invalid. But then once you start looking at it, I. I subscribe to it more or less. I'm not saying it. It couldn't be better, but it's the best that we can do. And I think it's a lot better than we can just kind of guess, you know? And McGriff, I kind of had some sense just because, like, 60 is often seen as Kind of the cutoff for hall of Famer. Just kind of a rule of thumb. And McGriff was just below that. And so he didn't get in. In with the writer votes. He had to wait for the committees to. To vote him in ultimately. And he ended up with what, 493 homers or something? Right? He was.

[B]

So this is my deal with that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I feel this way about Adam Dunn, too. I just looked it up. Adam Dunn hit 22 homers his last year in the league. He was 34 years old.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If I can still blast 22 of them, I'm gonna try to hang on until I get to 5.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

McGriff.493. 3. If McGriff gets to 500 home runs, the writers put him in the hall of Fame.

[A]

Yeah. He would have been in sooner, I think. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. If he gets to 500, he's seven home runs away. And he. Because he's seven home runs a year where he got hurt, a year where he hit the foul pole a couple. He hooked it inside the foul pole a year where Griffey or Tony Gwyn robbed them a couple of times. You know, he got robbed by Griffey's dad, Andre Dawson got him a couple of times. You know what I mean? That's the difference between him getting in by the writers and the war. Now, here's the deal. How do you measure the WAR for positions that are not, like, highly coveted for defense? Like, he's a first baseman. Right. They're a great defensive first baseman. But being a great defensive first baseman is just less important than other positions where a defense is a premium. How do you judge a sense?

[A]

So word there accounts for that in theory. There are these positional adjustments that takes into account. So there's the defensive spectrum. Right. Which is what you're talking about. It's just like. Which are the. The most demanding defensive positions? You got catcher, shortstop, center fields. These are the premium defensive positions. And then it slides all the way down to first base or dh, if you even count that. And so the idea is that almost anyone can play first base. I mean, not exactly. Right. There's the Moneyball line about how it's incredibly hard to play first base. But compared to the positions, that's kind of where you stick someone first base, left field, when they're not defensively gifted, when you just.

[B]

First base is what I play, by the way.

[A]

So thank you. Appreciate that. It's probably because you were such a great slugger that, you know, they had to get Your bat in the lineup. But. But, yeah, you have to hide Adam Dunn somewhere, so you stick him in left field if you can't DH him. And so WAR accounts for that. Basically, if you're playing shortstop or center field or catcher or whatever, you're getting a boost to your stats every year. Year. And if you're playing first base or dh, then you're getting dinged every year. And it's. It's basically based on the idea that, like, there's a bigger pool of players who could potentially play this position and play it well. And so you're getting measured against the players who are playing that position. But then there's an adjustment that says, like, how scarce is this commodity? Like, okay, this guy's playing shortstop. Even if you're an average shortstop, that's still pretty valuable, maybe more so than being above average at left field when you're just being compared to other left fielders. So, you know, and it's all based on, like, looking at guys who switch positions, basically, and like, okay, what happened when this guy moved from shortstop to second base or something? Well, if he goes from being below average as a shortstop to above average as a second baseman, then you know that second base is a little bit easier to play. And you can.

[B]

Shortstop is.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And you can make this positional adjustment. And so it's based off on the history of position switchers and looking at, like, if a guy's below average here, he's above average there, which is more difficult. And then you account for that, and it's based on, like, the actual playing time, how many games you played at that position, and it adjusts for that. Is it perfect? I don't know. You know, they're tinkering, fine tuning those values. But that's the basic idea. Like, you're going to get credit. You know, if you put up the same stats as a first baseman as some other guy does as a shortstop, then the shortstop is going to have a much higher war. Because it's just the degree of difficulty. It's, you know, not. Not as many players can do that.

[B]

All right, I want to ask you something right now. See if you know.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

All right. What baseball player has the highest WAR of all time?

[A]

Highest war? Is it. Well, is it not Babe? If you're looking at combined pitching and batting, I think it's Babe Ruth, which is, you know, maybe the obvious answer. You know, there are multiple versions of war, too, which is something that some people are put off by. It's like, well, if the stat is so good. How can you have different values? But it's just kind of, you know, different approaches, different sites have their own, but they, they generally match up pretty well. But Babe Ruth I think is, is the leader. Just because, you know, it's, it's all relative to your peers, your contemporaries too. That's the other thing. It's like as you were talking about, Babe Ruth played in segregated baseball. So, you know, like, and he was the first guy basically to be like, what if we tried to hit home runs over the fence? That might be a good idea. So then, you know, this is a shocker.

[B]

It's not Babe Ruth.

[A]

It's. Which, which were you looking at here?

[B]

I'm looking at the war. It's not Beirut.

[A]

Are you on Bay Rich Baseball reference. Where. Where are we?

[B]

I'm on baseball. It's Brady Anderson in 1996. 1996, yeah. No, it's Babe Ruth who's got a 182 war.

[A]

Yeah. That's a lot.

[B]

182 war. Really? The only guy who's. There's only two guys in the top 10 war whose pictures are going to be in color.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Bond Bonds and Roger Clemens.

[A]

Neither of them in the hall of Fame.

[B]

You got Willie Mays there. I guess Willie Mays picture could be in color. It probably is.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So Willie Mays is right there at five. You got Hank too.

[A]

Aaron.

[B]

So those guys are modern era guys, but they're the, they're bridge guys to the, the older era. So you have of players that came in the league after 1980, you have Clemens and Bonds.

[A]

Yeah. And, and it's tough because like, there's always the conversation in every sport about, you know, like, because WAR is just comparing to your peers. And so Babe Ruth is being compared to other players in the 20s and 30s. And so you could say, well, was Babe Ruth really as talented, as skilled as Maze or Aaron or Shohei Otani or whoever? Right. But WAR isn't really trying to adjust for that. There are other stats that maybe try to adjust era, adjust WAR so that it's like looking at, well, how hard, how high was the caliber of baseball at that time? And so you're, you know, taking something away from Babe Ruth because he's playing at a time when he didn't have to face the best competition and everything. But WARS is usually, it's like, did you dominate your competition at the time? And then you can make the mental adjustment of yeah, but he didn't have to play these guys or whatever. Or Ted Williams was was away at war. So not that war, but actual wars. So he didn't get war for those seasons when he was at war or whatever. So you can still debate it, but. But that's what it's telling you, basically. Like, how much better were you than the people you were playing with? And against this.

[B]

This son of a hit 521 home runs and he missed three seasons.

[A]

Yeah, he's. He's pretty good. Yeah.

[B]

Look at old Teddy Year.

[A]

And so you look at the world leaderboard, and it's, you know, it's the names you would expect, probably, right? Yeah.

[B]

No, no, it is. It's. It's Wagner, it's Musles, Rogers Hornsby. Yeah, it's everybody whose rookie car can make you a million dollars.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know what I'm saying? It's all of those guys. It's the big train. Walter Johnson. That's called the big train.

[A]

Yes. So it. Mostly it matches your intuition, usually on a career level at least when you're looking over 10, 20 years, like, you know, the guys who are believed to be good generally are pretty good. But then you find out somet. You look at someone's war and it's like, oh, actually he didn't get on base that much, and no one really cared at the time. But now we look back and maybe that wasn't that valuable, or maybe he looked like a good fielder, but the stats say he wasn't a good fielder. He wasn't actually getting to that many balls. But maybe he just looked smooth. Like Derek Jeter. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So Ryan Carey didn't care what his war was because no one knew.

[B]

But Jessica, Bill didn't care. No, he was smooth to them.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But on the field still, his fingers didn't work quite like they did in the bedroom. Okay.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

No, you know what's funny here?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Is there's one player, as I look at this right now, there's one player in the history of baseball who I just don't believe the numbers. I don't think that they're real. Okay, Try to guess who it is. I don't think that this happened.

[A]

You don't think it happened?

[B]

I don't think this happened.

[A]

It's an all time great up here.

[B]

It's an all time great pitch.

[A]

Like. Like Cy Young or something.

[B]

I don't think it happened. I don't s. Young.

[A]

I don't think he pitched that many games.

[B]

Happen. Cy Young has 511 wins and 315 losses.

[A]

Yeah, that was Back is this son

[B]

of a. Pissing twice a day. What the.

[A]

That was when men were men. 400 innings a year.

[B]

The ERA is crazy, but it's not like Mike, while 263 for your career ERA is nuts.

[A]

Yeah, but that was dead ball era. Part of that, no one was scoring. You know, he was just. He was a compiler. Yeah, he's just, you know, a bulk guy. But no, I mean, back then, guys didn't throw nearly as hard, obviously. Right. So you were saying, you know, like, your dad got hurt. Right. I don't know how hard your dad was throwing, but he might have been throwing harder than Cy Young. So, you know, guys didn't last.

[B]

Dad used to say if he reached back, he could get to 88.

[A]

Okay, well, that's pretty good for a. For a normal person. So.

[B]

Yeah, he said if he reached back. But he said more. He said more to the point. It was like at 83, 84. Yeah, yeah, that's where he was throwing.

[A]

And if they blew out their elbow or something, they didn't have Tommy John surgery. Right. So they were sort of screwed, but they were just pitching the contact, you know, and so not to discount it too much, but that was a very different game. So guys were racking up innings totals and there were no bullpens and you were just expected to finish every game you started? Pretty much. So.

[B]

So. So every game for old side was a complete game.

[A]

I mean, more or less. You know, like, I mean, look, he started 815 games and 749 of them were complete games.

[B]

So this bitch has 18 saves. They were using psy out the bullpen. I don't believe it.

[A]

He didn't know that because they hadn't invented saves yet. But. Yeah.

[B]

Well, it says here on the baseball reference.

[A]

No retroactively, 18 saves. It's true. Yeah.

[B]

I don't believe this happened, bro. I'm sorry. I don't. I need to see. This is like Wil's 100 point game.

[A]

Yeah,

[B]

I need to see it. I gotta see it.

[A]

Like, we don't even have a radio broadcast of SAI 511 wins, bro.

[B]

That's never. No one's ever going to get close to that.

[A]

No one can get to 300 now. Yeah, it's even. 250 might be out of reach.

[B]

So nobody can hit 289.

[A]

No, it's true. So do you. Do you like this version of the game then? Because as you know, it's different. Not just the fact that there are so many stats, but also. Yeah, batting Averages are low. It's, it's much more about power and it's, you know, the pitcher usage is certainly different. So do you find this offputting? Do you want it to go back to 80s brand of baseball?

[B]

So these are the things that I like about the new brand. I like everybody throwing 170 miles an hour.

[A]

You do? Okay.

[B]

I didn't think that was possible.

[A]

Possible. Yeah.

[B]

I can't tell you guys how much in, in 96, if you hit 97, you was a, you was a dog. One of them ones.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If you hit 97, Randy Johnson intimidating. Roger Clemens intimidating. Yeah, man. Miss threw that 105 miles.

[A]

Yeah. It's nuts.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now they, the radar guns they used to have, have. And people always say this and they try to argue that, oh, guys aren't actually throwing harder than they used to because the radar guns they used to have would clock the pitch when it was closer to the plate. Whereas now they're measuring the speed right out of the hand. And so the ball hasn't slowed down yet. So. That's true. And so the radar guns back in the day might measure, you know, two or three miles per hour slower than now. But even we have now v tracked by the cameras and the computers and everything thing going back to 2008. And even in that time, it's, it's up, I don't know, 4 miles per hour, 5 miles, you know, just in terms of the average. So yeah, guys are throwing. Maybe Nolan Ryan was throwing a hundred, but the average guy was not sitting 95, which is where we are now.

[B]

I first noticed it during that those great Cardinal teams, the Cardinals bullpen stars. Remember the Cardinals had a bunch of different guys. Was they. What was the guy's name? Watkins. Waka was his name.

[A]

Yeah, Michael Waka.

[B]

Okay. Remember, like, like these guys, the Cardinals had a bunch of guys and all of these guys were throwing like 95. Plus like the starters are coming out of the bullpen. I'm like, how are we gonna beat him? Like, is, is, is, is there anybody out there that's gonna try to get you out with a change up? Well, they are gonna try to get you out with a change up, but the changeup is going to be 92. Yeah, but, but yeah, so that I like, like, I don't like the fact that nobody steals bases because that's very, very. Well, they're still in a little bit

[A]

more now than they changed the rules to make it easier. So now guys are doing it again.

[B]

Yeah, they're still in a Little bit more now, but I. I stolen bases is a very exciting part of the game. And it also allowed you to create value for a very specific type of player that I love. The traditional leadoff guy who's very, very speedy. 80 a demon on the base pass. The battle that you have between a pitcher and a guy trying to get his lead, it made the catcher super valuable because you had to have an arm back there who could throw guys out, pick guys off, sometimes have the. No look, pickoffs. All of us. I love all that little stuff about the game.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I do tend to like this blend of a lot of the traditional aspects of baseball with this sort of futuristic stuff. I love exit velocity. I love that, like, I play MLB the Show, which is a big part of my baseball love affair that I'm in right now. I play probably two or three times. Two or three games a day. That's real. That's real. Spill.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

It's true. Like, right now, Max Muncie is raking. Okay. It's July. Max has 49 homers. He's on pace to hit about 85. Okay.

[A]

How do you fit that in with the EA Sports college football sessions? It's.

[B]

It's got like, season. Season to season.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Season to season.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Season to season. So. But like, watching it, the exit VO and like, like understanding so much how the analytics. What the analytics have done in baseball to me is they have served the game. At this point, a lot of people disagree. But I think right now we have a better understanding of what it takes to be elite in baseball than we do in most other sports.

[C]

Right.

[A]

And it's.

[B]

And it's. It can't all be about analytics. It is sometimes just about, like, how you perform like this. There was no analytical data that was going to tell you. You that Yoshi was going to come in on short rest and just eliminate the Blue Jays. Like that. Like that's in your heart. Like that. There's a part of this that says that guy's special in those type of moments. And you can rely on him to literally pitch you through a World Series and win a championship. There's not analytics for that, but there are ways to measure what. What is going to work for you or what is going to be successful. An above average amount of time. You have to marry those two things. But if you don't have a guy like that, a guy who has those types of nerves of steel and also has, you know, that tremendous outpitch that you can use to get guys out at the Ends of games, that type of splitter, you know what I mean? If you, you need that, you have to have that. So that's still traditional enough, enough to afford it to resonate with a sort of caveman baseball fan with all of the new stuff being like cherry on top. I'm, I'm gonna be honest with you. It is difficult. I'll look it up right now. It is difficult growing up in the age of, of Tony Gwynn to look at somebody hitting 305 and be like there's an elite hitter. It's like, it's like 305 is dope for your lifetime average or it's dope if you hit 44 home runs.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

Is. It's just difficult for me, like growing up in the age batting average is the thing that I'm having the toughest time letting go of. Yeah, the, the, the percentage of time you get a base hit, like not mattering is just difficult for me. That's where I'm in my old man.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, it's tough because the, the fan friendly, spectator friendly thing is not always the most valuable thing. Not to say that Tony Gwyn wasn't valuable because he was cuz when you bat.338 lifetime, then you're on base even if you don't walk a ton. Yeah, he still had a high on base percentage. Cause how can you not when your batting average is that high? But, but sometimes. Yeah, like the speedster, you know, there would be guys who would steal a lot of bases and then you look back now and you say, well, they actually got caught a lot too. And that was bad. And you have to have a certain success rate to make it analytically make sense for you to even risk getting thrown out. And so sometimes teams become more conservative and it's just. Yeah, but this is fun and maybe it doesn't help you win. And teams are going to do, and players are going to do what, what gets wins and what gets them paid. And so that's why you need the league to step in and say, yeah, but fans like this brand of baseball. So we're going to try to bring that back. Which I think is what's happening now with the pitch clock, with the stolen base rules. We'll see what else. With the shift ban. Even though I wasn't a big fan of that, the idea of it was, I think to make the game more familiar to fans like you and, and make that fun again. And, and I think baseball's maybe ahead of the curve just because it Got kind of solved sort of by the nerds like me and my predecessors before other sports did. And so in, in basketball, you've got kind of like, oh, too many three pointers and this and that. And what are we going to do and how are we going to fix this? And baseball's already gone through that just because baseball is always kind of the first right to be. The code is cracked, and then you have to figure out, okay, how are we going to fix this? And again, so I think baseball, it had the disadvantage of suffering the consequences of that first, but now I think it's coming out of that era first also. And I hear fans of other leagues who are saying like, wow, I wish we could be more like baseball where we're changing the rules and we're experimenting, which is amazing to me because for years it was. Baseball is so stuck in its ways, they won't do anything different. It's all about the purists and the traditionalists. And now know that has changed at least. So that's a good thing.

[B]

So OPS for you as a living stat, Forget about war. OPS for you is the most important measure of the. Of a baseball player for you.

[A]

OPS is good. Yeah, I mean, you know, as you were saying, like, there are more advanced versions of ops, but God damn it. But, but it's. This is like a don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good sort of situation because OPS is a

[B]

more advanced version of. I mean, bs.

[A]

All right, you're going to laugh at me, but there's one called woba.

[B]

Oh, hold on, let me look this up. Let me, let, let me see.

[A]

Woba. It's weighted on base average and it's, it's on the beyond base percentage scale.

[B]

You guys are nuts, bro.

[A]

Hold on.

[B]

Like, wait.

[A]

Sometimes there's a branding issue with these

[B]

stats, but an advanced baseball statistic that measures a hitter's overall offensive of value by assigning different run weights to every type of plate appearance. Instead of treating all of his hits equally, it reflects the actual impact of singles, doubles, triples, home runs.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And walks. All scoring runs. Get the out of here, B. What the dog.

[A]

One thing we do have in baseball that I think is good is we have the. They're called the index stats. They're just like, you know, on a scale of where 100 is average, and so better than 100 is, is good, lower than 100 is bad, usually. So something like there's an index version of WOBA that's basically. It's called WRC plus. Again, a lot of. A lot of numbers and letters I know to keep track of, but it's basically, you know, ops plus, right? Ops plus, yeah. It's the same concept. It's just like, all right, 100 is average, and if you're better than average, then it's going to be above 100. And if it's below 100, and so that's pretty simple. Simple. And maybe again, under the hood, it's kind of complicated, but if you're just like, okay, he's. He has a 120 WRC plus, that means he's 20 better than the average hitter. And that's pretty simple, at least.

[B]

Okay, so, you know, let me see. Who's leading the league in wobble wobble Stars Wobble sounds like a Star wars character.

[A]

It does.

[B]

Like, who's, who's. Who's leading the league?

[A]

Jordan Alvarez of the.

[B]

Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Like, yeah, yeah, makes sense. Yeah. You're on Alvarez. He. But he is also. He's third in the league in just regular average.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah, he can, he can hit anything. He's good. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. And. And he's also, as I look at it, he's also leading the league in ops.

[A]

That's the thing. Yeah. It's like you can, you know, you can parse these stuff. It's like, oh, OPS is a little bit less accurate than WOBA or what? But basically, yeah, ops, it's simple to explain because it's just on base percentage plus slogging percentage, and it, it tracks. You know, you're not going to find someone who has like a, A terrible ops, but a great WOBA or whatever. You know, they're usually, they're, they're moving in lockstep.

[B]

So guess who's 13th in Ops? My favorite Dodger. Oh, El Max Muny.

[A]

Yeah. All right. That funky Muny probably hitting even better in mlb the show, but, yeah, not bad in real base. Yeah.

[B]

Let me. But I know we can't do this forever because I really could. I could do this forever. I'll say this. I also didn't realize the double Max Muncie thing until just recently.

[A]

Oh, yeah, there's another. There is another Muncie. Yeah, it's true.

[B]

I, I thought, because I was playing the game and I was like, matt, this is Muncie, who also plays third, Right. Does he play? I think he also plays third. I thought that they were the Muncie brothers.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they were from Muncie Land together. Doesn't he also play third base? I think he does.

[A]

It's not only. Not only that, but they have. They have the same birthday. Gonna play. No, it's true. August 25th. Both Max Funcias are born on August 25th.

[B]

Hold on, dog. This is the multiverse. You're lying. You're lying. Hold on. See? Max Muncie. Oakland. Let's see. Or not Oakland. Whatever. They play where they play now. They play in a cornfield somewhere in Sacramento for now.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Maxwell Price Muncie.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's nuts. And he's a younger guy, this new Max. That's crazy. Hold on, hold on. Where's. Where's the Dodgers Max Muncie from. He's from Texas. Okay.

[A]

Yeah. They're not from the same place, but.

[B]

Well, you know. Yeah, the other one is from. From California.

[A]

He's from California. Yeah.

[B]

That's nuts. So there's never been like a Major League Baseball feature on that. There has to be some kind of feature, right? The two. The Muncie boys?

[A]

Yeah. No, not yet, as far as I know. But no people have definitely noticed. All right. Is there anything else I can answer for you before I. I let you go? Go.

[B]

No, because I. I'm. I'm gonna continue to come back to you.

[A]

Please do. Yeah.

[B]

And get more information about the game that I love. And I'm the foremost mind in. I am looking at this woba.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And looking at the WOBA here, Ben Rice's third woba. You have Wood, you have Contreras Soto.

[A]

Yeah. Surprised? He's a good hitter.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The people, the people in New York are on Juan's ass. They pay one a billion dollars to act like a cobra at the plate, but they, they. They wish that, you know, he got, you know, did a little bit more, but I guess he must be coming on.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

All right.

[B]

Just to let you know, Max Muncie is 11th in WOBA. My favorite Dodger.

[C]

Good to know.

[A]

I'm glad.

[B]

I love this sport. I love baseball. Baseball is not going anywhere. Last thing I'll say. Say quickly.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Don't this up. Major League Baseball.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Don't strike out again.

[A]

Okay. Yeah, yeah. Because, look, I'm an optimist when it comes to this. I think they're. They're going to play next year just because there's so much riding on it, you know, in terms of the popularity and the broadcast contracts and everything else. I think they all realize we can't take a season off. That would kill our momentum completely. But I want to ask you. You. How you think this is going to play in public because I'm kind of in this baseball bubble and we, we tend to be pretty pro labor here and we tend to support the player side. And so the whole, you know, like the greedy players, they want too much money, like they should just take what the owners give them, that kind of thing. It's not typically our line here, but MLB is making an appeal to the common fans and is saying every other major sport in the US at least has a salary cap. We don't have a salary cap. We're just trying to impose a sour cap like everyone else has. And we're just trying to do it for competitive balance. And I would tell you that the competitive balance argument is a bit overblown, that the baseball competitive balance is not that bad. But people are pissed that the Dodgers payroll is what it is and other teams payrolls are, are what they are. So MLB is not going to say, say, you know, we want a salary cap because it's going to control our costs and we're going to make more money. They're going to say we want a salary cap because competitive balance and we just want to be in line with other sports. And I think it may not matter that much that that argument is really resonating with people because ultimately it's going to come down to the players and the owners and, and the people who are actually bargaining. Not just the, the public perception, but as someone who is keeping a close eye on other sports and, and follows and covers other sports too. I wonder what your sense is of where the public sympathies will lie. Because it's going to be a lockout at first. It's not going to be a strike. The owners are going to lock out the players, which is what happens a few years ago in the, the most recent round of bargaining. But I think there's still a perception that MLB just kind of wants what every other league has and so why won't the players get on board? So I wonder what your sense of that is.

[B]

Okay, there's two things I have to say. The first one is this.

[C]

This.

[B]

When I hear people saying that about the Dodges, I hear, I hear that in a specific language. And that's the language of broke ass. I hear, I hear, I hear poverty. Okay, get your billionaire owner, tell them to do a different thing and maybe make a. We're talking about billionaires playing here. Okay, I hear that there some broke ass. Okay, anyway, so I'm gonna give you, you two lists real quick. Okay, I'm gonna give you the list of the last 10 NBA champions. Okay, so Golden State twice, the Raptors, the Lakers, the Bucks. Golden State again, shout out to the Warriors, Denver, Boston, Oklahoma City and of course the America's team, the New York Knicks. So in there you have the largest market, the second largest market, another large market in Golden State, what I would say are mid tier. A mid tier market in Denver, a small market in Milwaukee and then a smaller market sort of in Toronto. Toronto, you can't really call them a small market.

[A]

Yes, yes.

[B]

And you all, you have also have Oklahoma City, a legitimate tiny market.

[C]

Right?

[B]

Okay. But you have parity there. So you don't have the, the Lakers, Lakers, Lakers, Warriors, Lakers, Lakers. You have parity there. New York, biggest market of all time. And they have one championship in the last 53 years. And they now if we go to baseball, last MLB champions. You have the Cubs, Houston, Boston, Washington, the Dodgers, the Braves, the Astros, the Rangers. Shout out to them. That's, that's a fun team.

[A]

Yeah, that happened.

[B]

And then the Dodgers, the Dodgers twice. If you look at those two, if you're looking at the NBA, Football has figured this out. Football the market doesn't even matter.

[C]

All right?

[B]

Full like football has the perfect, perfect socialist. Okay. Football has the perfect socialist guys structure to ensure that your team is going to have a shot at some point if they make the right moves and stuff like that. I get it like there's you know, different markets and different, have different allures and all of that stuff. But football's got it right. Kansas City's going to be in it all these different play. Tampa Bay is going to be in it all these different places are going to have a shot shy all that whatever. Do you see a market difference between the list of champions and obviously it's not just about the championship. It's about which teams are able to right. Compete and also which players are able to stay with the teams that bring them up through their farm systems and stuff like that. Or if every team is going to exist as a farm team to the, to the Yankees and the Dodgers. You know, that's a, that's deflating and demoralizing for fans. But at the top level of it, do you see a, a huge difference in the list of player teams that are winning in those two sports?

[A]

Yes, you're right. Yeah. In, in other sports geography is not destiny in the way that now in mlb. Yeah you can, you can compete and you can have a, a huge high payroll team like the Mets and you still stink. You can lose that's possible too, but it's true. Like, historically, there's an advantage if you're a bigger spender in the long run, that's going to help. Help. And it's not a coincidence that the big spenders tend to be New York, LA Etc. So, yes, I think, I think you're right. Even though there are a lot of different champions and different playoff teams and it's all unpredictable and everything. Part of that's just the structure of the sport being so random. But you're right, it's. It's hard to look at the payrolls of the respective teams and say, oh, this has nothing to do with market size. Right. So now.

[B]

Yeah, so, so this is the deal. This the thing. I'll say yes. If Major League Baseball feels like it is going to be a better situation for the overall long run of the profitability of the sport to have Miz stay in Wisconsin for his entire career, if that builds a more robust brewers fan base. If having the brewers be on, because football has made that decision. Football a long time ago, also a sport, we should say, where the players union has zero power.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Okay. Where, like where the, the culture of the sport just sort of overwhelms the, the, the sport where there was a strike in 88 and fans still came to the games. Okay. There was a replace, they came with

[A]

a salary cap that the union was broken at some point, basically.

[B]

Right, right. So. So the football got. But however, having said that football, Seattle, Kansas City, City, all that. Is that better for the long term profitability of the sport? Because football's kicking everybody's ass. So football's kicking everybody's ass in terms of that different sport once a week, all of that stuff. We're, I'm acknowledging all of this. Would it be better for baseball? Can you sell that to the players in the long run? If you didn't have to leave Wisconsin, if you could stay there, would that make. If you didn't have to leave? I don't know. Give me another small market team. That's going to be long suffering Kansas City.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, right. There are some. Right. Bobby Witt Jr. Right. He signed. Extension stays. Right. So that, you know, there are many cases where players do stay with the small mart. They just signed some early career extension. But yeah, you're right. Definitely in terms of payroll, there's a disparity.

[B]

So. But, but to me, but to me that's the only thing I would say. I would say sell this in a holistic aspect because I am not going to go to players and tell them that they should take less money. I mean, there's in no way in good conscience can I do that? Like I'm not going to go to players and tell them they should take less money. Is there a way, is there a possibility that figuring this out in some way is better for their sport in the long run? Because a work stoppage right now would be catastrophic. That is what, what I would say to players. But I'm. But I'mma tell them right now. I could make an argument that at his heyday, LeBron James should have been making $250 million a year. Like if, if you paid him what the market, what he was worth, the reason why you couldn't pay him what he was worth is because the market was capped, it was controlled. And we don't do that in other aspects. But in this situation, the only thing that I know for sure is that a work stoppage at this point point would be a massive and monumental mistake for Major League Baseball. Amongst to me, the most boneheaded and mistakes that I can remember in the history of professional sports. If there was nothing that was learned from 94, a season where the Montreal Expos looked like they were going to win the world season, a season where we might have had had a.400 hitter, I think Gwen ended up, he was hitting like what, 397. I don't know where he was hitting, but he was very close. And like imagine a legitimate magical baseball season was happening with multiple storylines and we got to work stoppage that was a killer and everybody had to get on drugs to bring the sports back, to bring the sport back. So what I'm saying is I don't know if they're ever going to learn their lesson, but I would think right now, now that they would have to have learned it. The question is, who's going to put the fans first? Who's going to put the long term profitability of the game first? I'm not asking the players to do that, but they do need to figure it out because they're on a high right now.

[A]

Well, I'm glad baseball got you back. You're a powerful ally. If he could be turned and he has, and I encourage everyone to listen to Ben, watch him wherever you can. You can see him on cnn. You can hear him at the midnight boys. You can hear him talking college football at ringer Taylor. You can hear him talk in culture and politics, on higher learning. He's on the rewatchables, he's on big pick he's everywhere across the ringer network. And I always love talking to you about anything and everything. And until you can talk Bill into getting a Ringer baseball podcast back, we could be the mismatch of of baseball for the ringer. But you're always welcome here. Standing invitation.

[B]

Thank you very much. I'm gonna go look up woba.

[A]

Please do. You're gonna know all about WOBA now. It's your new favorite stat. All right, thanks, Ben.

[B]

Peace.

[C]

Bye.

[A]

Well, Van's the man. Thanks to him. Hopefully he accepted my trust me, bro explanation of war and woba. But we are not finished. I've got another great guest for you. You may or may not know the name Jim Kraton, though he was a member of Mr. Burns's original softball lineup in homer at the bat. We'll give them token jobs at the plant and have them play on our softball team. Honus Wagner Cap Ensen Morai.

[C]

Three Finger Bread.

[A]

Sir. What is it, Smithers? I'm afraid all those players have retired and passed on. In fact, your. Your right fielder has been dead for 130 years.

[C]

Damnation.

[A]

Well, he's now been dead for 164 years. And also, he wasn't a right fielder. He was a pitcher and an infielder. And the writers of the Simpsons would have known that if a biography of Creighton had been written. But none had until now. And I think the best way I can tee up this segment is by reading you the very beginning of the book Death in the Strike Zone, the Mystery of America's First Baseball Hero by Thomas W. Gilbert. Here's how he begins. I will tell you a mystery. He was the greatest American athlete of his time. He was the first famous baseball player. The first baseball card has his picture on it. He threw the first fastball and the first curveball. He is the reason why baseball has a strike zone. His name was James Creighton. You have probably never heard of him. That is part of the mystery. Creighton's career was as bright as a supernova and just as brief. Grief. He died in 1862 when he was only 21 years old. Before that, Creighton was the player little boys pretended to be. Never before seen crowds turned out to see him. Baseball players made pilgrimages to his grave. Clubs were named after him. He inspired a great novel. Yet somehow he is not in the hall of Fame. And most of what it says about him in baseball histories is wrong. The book you are holding in your hands is his first biography, the Mystery of Creighton is alive and waiting to be solved. It is baseball's oldest and coldest cold case. It is a mystery that contains other mysteries, a whodunit and also a howdunit. Baseball tends to change gradually. Pitchers throw harder, players grow stronger, run totals trend up or down. But James Creighton's pitching revolution arrived with the suddenness of a tsunami. It came out of nowhere, swept away the old way of playing and changed the game in ways that we can feel today. And as the author of those words

[C]

told me, you know, I like to invite the reader along on the, on the journey and on the investigation. And I was actually shocked by how much I found when I started the book, I didn't really know I would be able to finish it. Other people that some of whom I know have tried and failed and sort of looking at it as a cold case was really a productive way to do it.

[A]

Let's HEAR More from Mr. Gilbert. Here he is. Well, these days, one compliment you can pay a pitcher is he's a pitcher, not a thrower. In other words, he has some idea what he's doing. He's not just chucking it up there. In pre modern baseball, those terms had different connotations. Pitching referred to the standard straight armed, stiff wristed, underhand delivery. Throwing referred to the illegal wrist snap release that helps today's pitchers put speed and movement on the ball. You couldn't do that then unless you were Jim Creighton who didn't do it either, but somehow managed to achieve the effect of it anyway. And in Death in the Strike Zone, Thomas Gilbert makes the case that Jim Creighton was a pitcher, not a thrower in the 1860 sense, I.e. he abided by the rules of the time. But Gilbert also makes the case that Creighton was in effect the first pitcher as we understand the term today. And Tom, you taught me that Jim Creighton was effective, not effectively wild as some of the pitchers who followed in his footsteps were, but nonetheless I welcome you to effectively wild.

[C]

Well, thank you. It's great to be here.

[A]

So as best you can. I know this is difficult in a non visual medium, but can you describe how Jim Creighton pitched? Because it, it almost defies explanation. But do your best.

[C]

Well, not only does it defy explanation now, but experts when he pitched were puzzled by what he was doing. Yeah, the whole purpose of the pitching roles that have been, they were used up until Creighton, up until the 1860s was to limit velocity. The game was a little bit like varieties of modern softball. Where the pitchers got a little bit to work with, but he can't throw very hard and he can't throw a breaking pitch. And the batters are going to all hit the ball hard. And which defense fields most of them clean and turns most of them into outs becomes the winner. That's how baseball used to work. The way they handicapped the pitcher was they told him he had to pitch, not throw. Which, as you explained very succinctly means the elbow has to be straight and the wrist has to be outside the ball. So that means that your hands, imagine your arms straight down from your shoulder in a kind of handshake motion. You could put the wrist behind the ball ball, but you couldn't do what is called pronating the forearm. And that sounds kind of technical. There's no other way to describe it.

[A]

Yeah, you can get technical here on this podcast.

[C]

Okay, there's two things you you couldn't do, let's say. All right, so going back to my straight arm in the handshake position, imagine standing up holding a ball. So the the ball is next to your leg, outer leg, and your throwing hand is on the outside of the ball. And you move the arm back to a sort of an underhand windup position position. Your arm will stop about a 90 degree angle with your back. And if you're able to twist the forearm clockwise, you can now get up into a sort of throwing position which would be used say in modern fast softball pitching or windmill pitching or overhand pitching. You can now snap your wrist in the way that it has the most range of motion. Right. That's what they didn't want pitchers to do. So if you look at pictures of pitchers on the 1850s, their arms are going back and the ball is on the inside of their hand. And all they can really do to get velocity is you can throw from. You can sort of move your arm as quickly as you can rotate it from the shoulder, but the arm has to be straight. They were allowed to run up to a line which was 45ft from the batter. And that was basically almost like cricket falling was a little bit earlier. So. So cricket bowling also started out underhand and also didn't allow you to bend your elbow. You can imagine these poor pitchers running up to a line as though you're pitching horseshoes is the best way to get a modern person to understand it. And you're throwing the ball forward. And in my book I describe, I ran into a major league pitcher, Tom Browning, in a bar and explained this all at length Where I can actually show him. And I asked him how hard you could throw that way, and he said 40 to 50 miles an hour. Hour. He felt okay from 45ft away. That's a little. The equivalent of a little bit more in terms of modern pitching velocity. But it's nothing like normal major league velocity or anything like it. The pitcher was handicapped. And what the pitcher could do in those days was he could change speeds a little bit. He could vary the velocity and the location of the pitch, and if he was really had good control, he could sort of keep the ball away from where the batter really likes. Liked it. The problem is, the big problem is there was no strike zone.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Because the pitcher was on his honor to put the ball over the plate. That's what they did. And they tried to, you know, they. They use the limited weapons they have. They can change the angle it came with the batter from. They could keep it high if you liked it low, that kind of thing. But they didn't have much to work with, and there was no need for a strike zone, which is kind of surprising to a modern baseball field event because the batters were also on their honor to swing if the ball was over the plate.

[A]

Yes. It sounds like an obvious design flaw, and yet it functioned quite well for a long time until Jim Creighton came along and others like him.

[C]

And, you know, part of what Creighton did was caused everyone to rethink the whole idea of what the pitcher was for.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Because, you know, if you go back far enough in baseball history, the purpose of the pitcher is just to initiate the action.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

And as it got more competitive, you know, he's trying to get you out, but he just doesn't have much to work with. So, you know, scores. In the 1850s, if you had a 45 to 35 game, nobody would raise an eyebrow.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

So, yeah. So Creighton, the game is getting more competitive, and there's pressure right on to try and get people out, but there's not much the pitchers can do legally to do it. Creighton has this massive breakthrough working with his catcher, Joe Leggett, who. Who was older and was sort of an expert at physical training and an early advocate of weight training, which he had Creighton do. We don't know where the whole theory of what they did came from, but they invented a new delivery in which he didn't run up to the line. So there are a couple things he figured out. One was that closing your. The front side of your body and then opening it in a coordinated way with some acceleration, what we call hip torque or hip shoulder separation. That puts a lot more on the ball than running up to a line, which sounds kind of obvious to a modern fan, but they didn't really understand that at the time. So big conceptual breakthrough. And he's doing something modern pitchers do. Right. He's not running, he's uncoiling in a sense. And even within the rules of the 1850s, you can throw a lot harder doing that than you could the other way. And he by all accounts did not bend his elbow, did not deviate from dead underhand hand, and he didn't throw in the sense of snapping his wrist. The way we think of it, what I discovered working on this was that what he probably did was almost certainly because he threw a curveball. And you can't do that unless you get some kind of spin. Right. You have to have all braking pitches break for the same aerodynamic reason. You need to get enough spin on the ball that it will break. In this case, since you're throwing a dead underhand from a very low release point, is breaking up. So it's a upside down, what we would call a 12, 6 curveball, except it's a 612 curveball. So what it looked like to be the. What he did was he, he built up the strength in his fingers with weights. And if you can imagine your hand in that handshake position and then you just flip the fingers forward, you're not getting the wrist snap. The wrist isn't doing much. The fingers are flipping the ball forward with enough force that you get a break. Break. And this is really, really hard to do. But he was a first class athlete, possibly the best athlete in North America. I'm saying that because how quickly he became a great baseball star. But also he was good at everything, including when he picked up cricket during some money on the side, he became the best American cricketer in a matter of months.

[A]

Yeah, and there's no perfect comp here because pitchers pitch differently today. The rules are different. But imagine maybe Tyler rogers, but from 45ft away. So it's, it's coming in there faster than a Tyler Rogers pitch does.

[C]

Exactly. And I there we have eyewitness descriptions of people that faced him. We have some evidence. The problem is that a lot of the descriptions of Creighton are by people who are literally confused by what they're looking at. They don't know what they're saying.

[A]

Yes, you need the high speed, slow motion cameras, you need the edge of cameras that they have Today to slow it down, down, go frame by frame, see exactly how the ball is coming out of his fingers, then they might have understood how he was doing this.

[C]

Yeah, I, I can only see those in my imagination and it would have helped.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Just to talk about velocity, I, I, the other thing is that everybody agreed on one thing, that his pitches were precise and perfectly located at all times, which is, you know, that sort of defeated the whole, it created the problem of not having a strike zone, which is the batter's on their honor to swing and you yet one unhittable strike after another is coming at him. I did try to calculate his velocity, and it, it even surprised me because with a few sort of reference points, I think conservatively, he was throwing the equivalent, if you moved him back to, you know, releasing the ball 54ft from pitch, batter or whatever pitchers are doing now, counting their stride, if you, you can actually estimate an equivalence in terms of reaction time for the batter. And he was throwing, going easily over a hundred. And so it could have been a lot more than that.

[A]

So it's, it's, you can imagine what a super weapon he was coming into this environment. And it's not as if every pitcher before him was just soft tossing. You know, they were trying to put a little pace on the ball. But when this guy comes in and the pitch is, is moving so much faster with pinpoint control and with movement nobody has ever seen before, you can imagine, imagine how dominant he was. And he was so good that in retrospect, people misremembered what he was actually doing. And this is, I think, one of the most valuable parts of the book where you kind of corrected the record, because I was aware of Jim Creighton and his significance. But I fell into the trap of thinking that he was one of the pitchers who had bent the rules. Because, of course, you know, there were pitchers who pushed the envelope slope and there were limits on, well, you can't raise your arm above this level. And then gradually they conceded. Okay, everyone's getting away with it. Well, just now you can do sidearm. Okay. Now you can do overhand. And people were, were pushing that year after year after year. And the same with the wrist snap. And so there was a perception after the fact that he was one of these guys who was bending the rules. And what's interesting is that as you document his contemporaries, his peers, the authoritative sources who faced him and observed him, they had no question that he was on the level while he was alive and while he was pitching, or at least they had questions, but their questions were satisfied when they watched. And then after the fact, after he was gone and was not there to stand up for himself, then people thought, because imitators of Creighton came along, and in many cases they couldn't do what he did. And so they tried to mimic it, either by being wild, they had the pace but not the control, or they were bending the rules a bit. And so everyone retroactively decided, well, no one can do what he did legally, thus, because these guys are kind of cheating. He must have been cheating, too. And what is amazing is that as you document, it's in many cases the same people and the same sources who during his lifetime wrote that everything was above board, who then 5, 10, 15 years later or decades later, in Henry Chadwick's case, sometimes were saying, oh, yeah, he. He was cheating just the way that. That later imitators were. And so I don't know whether it is just, you know, motivated reasoning or the failings of memory or. Or whether they had some agenda or what, but as you document, they just didn't understand what he was doing because no one else had ever done it. And so it was almost logical to conclude that he must have been cheating in some fashion because he was so much better and so different from everyone else.

[C]

Yeah, it's. It's a real lesson in human psychology. And, you know, I thought of some modern analogies. Of course, you can probably think of something too. Everyone's supposed to hit home runs, but not everyone is Babe Ruth. You, maybe you cheat. Yep. Or how about poor Brady Anderson? What. What was that one home run year he had?

[A]

96. Second reference to that season on this episode. Yeah.

[C]

People decided much later that he must have been doing steroids based on zero evidence, I believe.

[A]

Well, yeah. Anytime someone is. Is an outlier like that, there's going to be suspicions. Right. And. And some of them are borne out ultimately, and some of them are more reasonable than others. But you're always going to, you know, because players, since time immemorial, they have tried to get some sort of advantage any way that they could. So.

[C]

Yeah, And I, you know, this whole spider attack thing, I mean, right. It starts with, you know, you need to have a slider or curveball that's as good as that guy, and you can't do it.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

So, you know, this is as old as baseball, but it is. It does seem like posterity conspired to, you know, really hide Jim Crane's achievements.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And not only was he dead young, you know, his Catcher disappeared for reasons that didn't have anything to do with baseball.

[A]

Yes. It's funny, you, you write a lot about Joe Leggett, his catcher in the book. It's almost a backdoor biography of Joe Leggett. And for, for the first half or so of the book, I'm thinking, Joe Leggett, he's the unsung hero of this story.

[B]

Well, yeah.

[A]

And then, well, his reputation gets sullied a little later on. But he is quite an incredible figure because he's the common link. All the early innovators who are sometimes attributed, you know, the creation of the curveball is attributed to them. You make the case it was Creighton. Obviously, people sometimes say it's Candy Cummings or even Asa Brainard. And, and he was the, the common link. He, he caught them all. And so for all we know, he may have taught it to them or at least passed it on. And it's just an incredible iron man showing by him to catch Jim Crayton without a glove, just without any sort of protective gear and to just put his body in the way of the ball. It's, you know, later on there's much more about how he, he was in trouble with gamblers, perhaps, and maybe he even threw games and he invented a new identity and disappeared. And you trace his history and it's fascinating, but boy catchers back then, and specifically Jim Creighton's catcher, they, they had it hard. It's amazing that they didn't invent gloves immediately just out of self preservation.

[C]

I've seen D1 college games where there were 10 fastballs. And yeah, the, this guy, Tom Schieber in the hall of Fame, made a graph where he counted. Not every game we did we have these numbers for, but for a lot of them, in 1860, how many pass balls Leggett had and how many the opposition catcher had. And it's, I mean, you can't even imagine stopping a, you know, fast fastball without any equipment. But yeah, there are games when he has one, he has three, he has five, and the other guy has nine, 15. So he was an amazing athlete. And the thing about those three pitchers you mentioned, it's not proof that he's the real theoretician behind the curveball, but it seems like an awfully long coincidence that not only were these three great pitchers all taught by the same guy, but he discovered them all as teenagers. Creighton was a teenager when the Excelsiors somehow recruited him or acquired him. And there's some mystery about that. Yeah, Brainard is converted from an infielder to a pitcher by Legate. And Candy Cummings is 14 playing on a sandlot in Brooklyn when Legate says this kid's got something and he goes and visits his family and asks for permission to bring him to the Excelsiors and practice. So there's. He's a big part of the story and it really shouldn't be a shock if you know baseball. It's pitching is very collaborative between pitchers and catchers and was more so one once.

[A]

Now, one way in which the rules were bent a bit is when it comes to amateurism versus professionalism. And this was at the time a bright line, but also sort of a blurry line behind the scenes because even though you weren't supposed to pay players, they didn't have salaries, you could still appoint them to a cushy gig. You could perhaps give them real estate. And so because Creighton was such a difference maker, as you document, it appears you make a pretty compelling case that the Excelsiors were. They were coloring outside the lines a little bit when it came to the incentives that they were able to offer Creighton, which maybe was. Was not uncommon at the time, but he was the biggest prize.

[C]

It's a tricky question because literally no one ever accused the Excelsiors of crossing the line. There's a rule that says you can't compensate players. That sounds pretty clear. Clear in practice, if I had to take my best guess from immersing myself in this for a long time, I think that they kind of made a. In practice line between paying cash and helping them in other ways.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Which would explain why the Excelsiors kind of in a roundabout way, without being too public about it, gave him very valuable real estate on more than one occasion. And they got him a no show job job in the federal Customs House. And this was not. He's not the only ball player of the time that was helped in this way.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

You know, the Brooklyn Atlantics were connected to the Democratic Party, the political machine that ran Brooklyn. They all had cushy jobs, no show jobs, light duty jobs. They were taken care of in retirement. But you know, I have not entirely made up my mind where that line is that you were talking about. It's not like no one ever enforced the rule, the rule against professionalism. They did. But I think you have to kind of respect the fact that nobody thought the Excelsiors were breaking any rules with Graden. And in fact, some of the things that they lied about were not about compensating him in any way, but about the recruitment of him. You know, I think I say in my book that he's the first known recruited youth athlete by a team sport in America. Something that's very common now. Obviously he was brought from New York City to the city across the river, then independent Brooklyn by the Excelsiors. And this is something totally new. Ball clubs didn't do that. They didn't go around recruiting talent. There were little sneaky ways they could sometimes improve their team. But the whole idea of a ball club was that it was a pre existing set of social relationships like a country club or a firehouse or a neighborhood or a company where you would form your best team out of these guys that you had knew. You didn't go looking for a second basement somewhere, especially not in other city. So they told this kind of interesting lie that Creighton had grown up in the same neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights or Cobble Hill as it's now called the neighboring neighborhood. They told the lie that he'd grown up there. And people have repeated this forever. Yeah, and lies are really interesting stuff for historians, right, because they tell you what people are really thinking, what they want you to believe.

[A]

And there were a lot of lies surrounding his death as well as his life, which we will get to shortly. But he was, was, as you document baseball's first phenom, literally the first player to have that word applied to them. And he was a sensation. He was not only incredibly effective and valuable, but. But also he really inflamed fans imaginations and he drew crowds. And this is interesting to me because it sort of suggests that we've always wanted whiffs and we've always wanted dominance. You can kind of draw a line from Creighton to any number of things in, in the contemporary game. But you can talk about Jim Kraton the way that we talk about Jacob Misarowski now. And. And yet we also talk a lot about how we want fewer whiffs, we want more contact, we want higher batting averages, we want more balls in play, we want more scoring. And Creighton or Misarowski, they are the opposite of that. They are suppressing offense, they are suppressing action. And yet there's something about them that you can't look away. I guess it's just like even if you think that contact is good and you want more runners on the bases and higher batting averages and everything, when someone comes along like that who is just raising the bar and is just so awe inspiring, right. You can't look away even if you think maybe this is bad for the game in the long run,

[C]

baseball purism can be a little bit phony. And we, we all, we're not sure what we want.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

As fans. And you know, I mentioned in my book, the Robert Hoover novel, Universal Baseball association, which is sort of inspired by Creighton's story.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And he, the perfect ball player, this sort of Christ like figure is a pitcher. He's not a home run hitter. You know, Creighton significance, it's really hard to. To overstate it because he's there at the birth of fandom itself. You know, we think of that people have rooted for athletes and teams forever. And yet the whole idea of rooting for like a club, you know, a team, they were. There were politicians that had fans and boxers and horses, you know, racehorses. But this is a different phenomenon. This is rooting for this organization or uniform that you have emotionally committed to. To. And, you know, I don't need to explain it because we all do it, but it literally didn't exist until the late 1850s.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And Creighton is a big contributor to it because what it came out of was the Brooklyn, New York rivalry and it spread. It's kind of funny to read some of the journalistic accounts of the first. The crowds that Creighton would draw where they're not only surprised, but they're disturbed because they think it must represent some increase in gamma gambling. They. They don't know. They don't know what this is. Rudy.

[A]

Right. We should all just be impartial observers just for love of the game.

[C]

Why would you watch someone else play ball and care who won? That's what they're wondering.

[A]

Yeah. And you know, it's sometimes while we talk about sh. Otani today and there are Otani rules. Right. And it's. He can be a DH after he is removed from the game as a pitcher, or he can. He can be an all star as both a pitcher and a dh. And so sometimes a sensation comes along and kind of rewrites the rules. Right. Or the rules are rewritten for them. And maybe in Creighton's case, it was partly, okay, what do we have to do to recruit this guy? And then. And hide how we did it? And then after the fact, maybe all sorts of things stem from the way that he shook up the order of baseball. And so, so that's my question, I guess, given that you are a conscientious historian and you know, you can always end up with the, the great man theory of History. Right. And it's always more complicated than that. If you take Jim Creighton out of history and pretend he never existed, do you think that we would have more or less the same game today? I mean, it seems far fetched to think that we'd be out there, you know, with no strike zone in 2026 and everyone just tossing underhand. So was this inevitable and maybe he just slightly moved up the timeline or was the way he did it so remarkable that. And in a way that inspired so many imitators that it did actually change things in a meaningful, you know, butterfly effect way?

[C]

Well, I'm going to go with the butterfly because I've struggled with this question and you know, it's easy to go with the determinism answer. It's always tempting and sometimes it's true. Right. Baseball was getting more competitive. Was going to get more competitive. But here's the counter argument. There are bat and ball sports that don't have strike zones. There's plenty of them. Plenty of them. I watched a game of Pesapalu in Finland last night. It's very competitive. You know, they had a professional league for a while. It's quite competitive. They don't have a strike zone. Cricket doesn't have a strike zone. Yeah, cricket is very, very, very competitive with lots of money betting it and hundreds of millions, billions of people following it. I think Creighton's breakthrough turned baseball upside down and it responded the best it could, which is by a series of steps that ultimately gave us the strike zone. But I really do believe that it's indirectly his doing. And, you know, it could have gone another way. Certainly could have, yeah.

[A]

We had a guest from, from England on last week, Adrian Chiles, and we were talking about cricket versus baseball and how he had to, when he discovered baseball, just reframe his understanding of how the sport works. That, oh, it's, it's not just about the batter and the runner and the defense. It's really the pitcher, batter confrontation and the catcher you could throw in there. And I was saying to him, well, that's not how it started. Right. They were, they were more closely aligned in the beginning and the pitcher was just the, the instigator and started the play. And then it was all about the batter and the running and the fielding. And so maybe we have Jim Kraton to either credit or blame for that. And I guess that's another question if that's true, if you're right, that he really was this, this watershed that changed everything. Are we Better off today because of Creighton. Now it's, it's hard to say, you know, the game is still alive and thriving all this long later, that maybe you wouldn't want to mess with success. Right. But then again, there are people who think it's gone too far in this direction of just everything being about the unhittable pitcher. So I guess the market has, has judged that this brand of baseball has met with quite a following and quite a, a staying power. But is there any part of you that thinks, gosh, maybe, maybe baseball was better as it was originally conceived and maybe Jim Crayton screwed it off up?

[C]

Well, yeah, I mean, baseball finds a way to correct imbalances between offense and defense, and they, the batters have had the upper hand plenty of times since Creighton. I, I think fast pitching was, was. It was a godsend. And the curveball, you could imagine the game without it, but I think we're better off with it. And, you know, it makes it even more incredible how forgotten Creighton is because we've only talked about most of the ways in which he affected the game. And, you know, you sit at home on TV and watch the battle over control of the strike zone, and not too many fans are thinking about Jim Creighton. But he's ultimately the source of this,

[A]

and he would maybe be better remembered as the source of it if he had lived longer. He died at 21, and so he could not continue to tell his story or participate in other people's tellings of his story. You make the case that he should be in the hall of Fame, which is pretty persuasive. Obviously, the hall of Fame is pretty explicitly devoted to professional baseball, and he predated professional baseball, though he helped bring it about. There is a school of thought that if you are one of the most obvious snubs, then that actually keeps your memory alive. More so than if you get in, because there are people who will write books and say, hey, this guy should be in the hall of Fame. Whereas if you're in the hall of Fame, well, then you're just another other dusty old plaque. You know, you're just a guy who gets forgotten. The counter to that maybe is Candy Cummings. Now, I wouldn't say Candy Cummings is incredibly well known among your average baseball fan, but was certainly a name that I got to know as I was learning about baseball history, because Candy Cummings, ah, he invented the curveball. And as you note, not so fast now, he was one of the better pitchers who came along in the wake of Creighton and kind of copied him. And he did throw a curveball of some sort. But I think you demonstrate pretty compellingly that Creighton was the trailblazer, was the true trailblazer. So do you think that it's not only just that Creighton be enshrined, but that he would be better remembered if he were actually in, as opposed to being on the outside looking in, where some scholars will then make the case that he should be in?

[C]

Well, I think it definitely has hurt his legacy that he's not in, because that keeps you in the public mind. Right. The hall of Fame is full of people you and I would never have barely have heard of, let's say,

[B]

had

[C]

they not have a plaque. There's no reason to have heard of Alexander Cartwright or Abner Doubleday. But there's also some major leaguers that are overrated simply because they're on the wall there. The only book that's been written alleging that making the case that Creighton has been forgotten unjustly and underrated and should be in the hall of Fame is mine. It came out this year here.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

That I quote in the book, a man named Alexander Cleland, who was the idea man behind the hall of Fame. He was the guy that thought of it, and he was selling the people that own most of Cooperstown and Major League Baseball on this idea in the early 30s successfully. He writes a letter where he says, you know, we really ought to honor the early greats, the pioneers, the amateur greats. Kind of dispose of that whole question by picking a group of Olympians to honor, honor. And he mentions some names, and the second or third one is Jim Creighton. The tim is obvious that Creighton is in this category. Of course, 20 years later, no one's heard of the guy.

[A]

Yeah, if it were up to Monty Burns, he'd be in Cooperstown. But I.

[C]

You know, we should add that some of the amateur greats are sort of shoehorned in under other categories. Like George Wright.

[A]

Right. Yes.

[C]

He wouldn't really be in as a sporting goodsman magnet.

[A]

And it helps that Candy Cummings had a story. He had an origin story for the curveball, which is dubious. And also, he lived until he was 75, so he was around to share that story, and people printed the legend. Also, maybe it helped that he had a nickname. If you rebranded Jim Crton as. As Candy Kraton, that might help. Maybe that would do it.

[C]

Yeah, There are a lot of candies. A lot of them weren't called Candy at the time, I.

[B]

It's baffling.

[C]

But, yeah, that clamshell story, story that Candy Cummings told is abused.

[A]

Yes. Right.

[C]

I. I spent a lot of my life wondering what that had to do with throwing a baseball, but that's just me.

[A]

Yes. He was throwing shells through the air, and they curved, and he thought, huh, yeah, if I could just do that to a baseball, I'd be a future hall of Famer. Yeah. Well, I know we can't invent a nickname for Jim Creighton. It would be ahistorical. But I don't want to give away everything that you. You find here, because this is a baseball mystery. And so if you're thinking, oh, this sounds dry, it's just the story of a guy who died this long ago, why do I need to know this? No, it's. It's an investigation, and you are sifting through the archives and you're trying to sort out fact from fiction here. And of course, the great mystery about Creighton is how and why did he die? And you were able, I think, to settle that pretty conclusively. And there's a lot of misinformation about that. And. And again, not just because this was a long time ago and people forgot, but because people were trying to sell everybody a bill of goods because they did not want baseball to be responsible for killing Jim Creighton. And so they were spinning yarns on purpose, seemingly.

[C]

Yes, that is true. I mean, that's the inevitable conclusion, because not only was the actual cause of death something that was pretty well medically understood, but his team was, coincidentally full of doctors. Yeah, there were a lot of medical doctors on the Excelsiors and including the president and the first baseman, people that knew Creighton intimately. And I spent some time learning about how his medical problem, which was a type of hernia, was treated in those days. And it was very well understood. And. And people would wear trusses if they were athletes. So people that got dressed with him knew he had a problem, and they knew exactly what it was, and they knew what could happen if it got worse. It's a much more serious problem than a modern inguinal or sports hernia, because we have antibiotics and we have surgery that fixes it very easily. They didn't have a surgical option that was attractive at all. It had a really low success rate and would probably kill you, and they didn't have antibiotics. So the problem that Creighton had was that it was worsening over the time of his pitching career. And the danger was that he would have a loss, part of his abdominal tissue would lose blood supply. I don't want to get too gory, but as soon as you had that living part of your body losing its blood supply, you get gangrene. This is ultimately what he died of. And it took a while. Yeah, but because he was playing cricket to make a little money on the side and he left a cricket game a week before the last baseball game he played, which he also left even more in pain. There was a sort of a bit of a dispute, an ugly dispute between the two sports over who was responsible. It's just very unattractive kind of controversy. Yeah, baseball's really trying to deflect responsibility because he was primarily a baseball player. And if you went to a doctor today with exactly what he had, let's say you're a young athlete or anybody, the doctor would tell you that the two things you shouldn't do is lift

[A]

weights and don't violently twist your abdomen.

[C]

Violently twist your abdomen, which is a description of his pitching motion. So you can't help but wonder, you don't want to judge too much as a historian from lack of evidence, but you have to wonder about the silence and about none of these doctors correcting all the misinformation that was out there about he died swinging a bat or he died playing cricket, or he died of a burst appendix or a bladder. You know, you name it. There's something like 30 different causes are out there in the press. Yeah. All they had to do was say this is what he died of. I mean, the, the person who did the, you know, the death certificate knew what he died of and yet it becomes a secret almost immediately.

[A]

Yeah. I rail now against, you know, guys who play hurt and often it ends up becoming counterproductive because they, they injure themselves further or they don't even play that well because they're so compromised. And sometimes there's pressure from the team, sometimes it's a self imposed pressure, you know, Aaron Judge or Ellie De La Cruz or Sha Murphy, guys like that, who have hidden injuries either from their employers or from the public or both. This is far worse than that because this is, this is life threatening. And he had to know that at, at a certain point. Right. And so did, you know, you can kind of say the Excelsiors were certainly culpable in this. They were riding him hard, he was a big draw, he was a competitive advantage. And he was also pushing himself hard and, and he was doing double duty. You know, he was a two way player, but he was also playing cricket on his time off and he was pitching every inning of every Excelsiors game and, and they were not playing as many games but he was pitching way more pitches because again, no strike zone. And even though he wasn't wild, batters would just wait him out and, and tire him out. Right. And hope for a passed ball because that's all you could do. And so I wonder what drove him. Now he was not a man of means and so he needed the money. Right. But at a certain point I wonder why the self preservation impulse didn't kick in. Was it the pressure or was it that hey, he's a 21 year old kid. You know, we see lots of 20 year old, one year old pitchers push themselves too hard now. Now.

[C]

So yeah, I mean Doc Gooden when he was a rookie didn't say hey, I'm 19, you're overusing me.

[A]

Right, right.

[C]

But all right, that's just part of being an athlete. But you know, it's the sort of big tragic irony of Creighton is how many things that happen to him and bad things are just the most banal everyday athletic stories in the world now. And yet he was the first. So he's the first recruited athlete and there's a little bit of whiff of corruption about it. You know, that's not exactly a news story story, but it was new and he did it. And then he's overused as a pitcher because you know, you know what's really bad for your health in baseball? Being good at getting batters out. Yeah, I mean I speak as someone who couldn't comb his hair when I was a high school pitcher. There's plenty of stories like that. But how about poor kid from the slums where he grew up in the five point slum of New York City? Yeah, I mean he wasn't on the street poor, but he was a low working class kind of kid. Kid. And he's supporting his entire family by his athletics. You know, they, they move across the river to the equivalent of a Greenwich, Connecticut suburban house. I realized that going sort of month by month in his final year of 1862, that he was alive, that he's under for various reasons including the Civil War. He's under economic pressure, he's got a lot of people to support and he plays, he's squeezing the team for more money in fact during this season and threatens to leave them for their rival Atlantics because the Excelsiors aren't playing enough baseball. And the no show job they got him is not available anymore. The war changed everything. And so he starts playing cricket out of economic necessity. And I think as his condition is deteriorating and you can kind of trace it in some interesting ways, his workload is going up because of his circumstances. It's very sad. And now pitching, you know, costs people an ulnar ligament or, or even a career being overused, but it doesn't usually kill you. Yeah, so he's sort of an extreme example of the first of many things and, and in some ways the worst example.

[A]

Yes. First max effort pitcher, as you say in the book, and first times through the order effect. Maybe as you document, people scored on him a lot more later in games because he had thrown 250 pitches by that point, you know, so.

[B]

More.

[A]

Yeah, and as thorough as the book is, it's fairly compact. It's about 175 pages prior to the notes and index and everything because there's still just a lot not known about him and that we can never know as a person in particular. And that's partly because he died when he was 21 and he didn't share much about his inner life and also because, as you also note, the people who did know him after the fact don't really do anything to convey who he was or what he was like. It's all about his pitching and what a phenom he was, but nothing about what he was like on a personal level, which as you argue might be because of that guilt. They, they didn't want to make him into a martyr or they felt bad about the human cost of having pushed him. And so maybe they didn't want to remember him as a person. But there's just really one little, little tidbit when you note one account that says that he would sometimes stand out there and, and toss the ball up and down before he delivered, which is very evocative. You know, it sounds almost kind of cocky, but. But we're reading into that. Who knows? But that was just one little window into what was this guy like other than just what kind of pitcher he was. So that must have plagued you. You must be so curious about what he was like as a person, having spent all this time with these accountants of him.

[C]

No, it's true. It's. It's a bit frustrating. Although, you know, on another level, I've inter interviewed in a previous life plenty of Major League baseball players and they're not all interesting to talk to.

[A]

That is true.

[C]

It's possible he didn't have a lot to say. Yes, I do think There was a guilt factor. I mean, people that were very known to be very close to him never said a thing about him. And I was thinking about things like a friend I had who served in World War II in the Pacific and saw a lot of. Of pretty unpleasant stuff. And he was telling me they never had any ptsd, they never had any repercussions from some of the horrors that they saw, in some cases perpetrated. But then he admitted to me that he had never gotten together with the guys from his unit, and that would seem pretty significant. Yeah, I mean, there's some sadness to the story, but how much would it add if we knew what kind of person he was? I mean, maybe something on a more flippant level. I mean, when people ask me, how do you write a biography of someone that we know have no idea what he was like, like.

[A]

Right.

[C]

I would say, well, there's a lot of books written about people because of their impact on the world, like Jesus or Muhammad. So we don't really know much about them as people.

[A]

Yeah, I guess Creighton had disciples, I guess. But we, we, we hear more about Jesus probably, than we did about Creighton. So.

[C]

But in terms of, you know, impact on the world, if you could make a formula, a ratio of impact on the world to actual facts about them personally, it's, it's, it's a big number for. Great.

[A]

Yeah. So is that my last question? Is that what you would most want to know if you could have any question answered? Because you solved so many mysteries, or at least to my satisfaction, you did as. As best as we can hope, and you never know what's lurking in some moldy old newspaper that has not yet been digitized, that might be discovered someday. The fate of Joel Leggett was your white whale, and you were able to solve that mystery, by the way. Another innovation, Creighton, because of Leggett, seemingly was doing weighted ball work in 1860 or so, which.

[C]

When it was almost unheard of.

[A]

Yeah. And we talk about, oh, cutting edge driveline, weighted ball work. Yeah. Nothing is new under the sun. Right. And certainly not in baseball. But is there one thing that you were not able to crack that you. You hope you can someday or that keeps you up at night?

[C]

You know, I'm not sure what I would, what I would want to know about him as a person. I would be very interested in how the Excelsiors recruited him. We don't really know. We know that it happened. He was 17. We, it. Could I have some, you know, thoughts about possibilities. I'd like to know what he was thinking in the 1860 championship series when it looks like Joe Lego was trying to lose. Other than that, I, you know, I think, think maybe, maybe we know enough about him. At least I do.

[A]

Well, we know much more thanks to you. And so I, I highly recommend the book Death in the Strike Zone, the mystery of America's first baseball hero. Do check it out. And also while you're at it, you can pick up Tom's first book as well, How Baseball Happened, Outrageous Lies Exposed, the True Story Revealed. Thomas, thank you very much for coming on and also for, I think, delivering an overdue biography of a formative figure of the game.

[C]

Yeah, so that's also another white whale. Thank you for having me on. That was a great interview and, and I think you may have understood the book better than most readers.

[A]

Thank you. My pleasure. All right, that will do it for today. Thanks as always for listening. Meg will be back next time. Down an additional wisdom tooth, but no less wise, I'm sure you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com effectivelywild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners, Phil in Gracia, Christian Sessler, Evan Sills, Brian Don, and Steven Myers. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, unfettered access to a third episode of the week coming up next time, a monthly bonus bonus episode, membership in our Discord group for patrons only, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, shout outs at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, Fangraphs memberships and more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com effectivelywild if you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcast and fangraphs.com you can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple podcast podcast, Spotify, YouTube, music, and other podcast platforms. You can join our facebook [e-mail] group effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at R Effectively Wild and you can check the show notes in the podcast post at fangraphs or Patreon or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance as well as a recording assist from another Ringer colleague, Steve Allman. We will be back with another episode episode very soon. Talk to you then.

[B]

Where do you go? In a world of bad taste for the good takes on baseball and life with a balance of analytics and humor. Philosophical music. Effectively wild. Effectively wild. Effectively wild.