Effectively Wild Episode 2500: Yet Another “Things We Like About Baseball” Draft

Summary

Effectively Wild Episode 2500: Yet Another “Things We Like About Baseball” Draft

Date: July 4, 2026
Hosts: Meg Rowley (FanGraphs), Ben Lindbergh (The Ringer)
Guests: Sam Miller (Pebble Hunting), Grant Brisbee (The Athletic)

---

Episode Overview

Effectively Wild celebrates episode 2500—coincidentally released on the USA’s 250th birthday—with its signature tradition: another “Things We Like About Baseball” draft. Longtime friends and contributors Sam Miller and Grant Brisbee join hosts Meg Rowley and Ben Lindbergh to draft idiosyncratic, beloved, or simply funny aspects of baseball. The gang reminisces about favorites from previous milestone episodes and dives into a new round, highlighting the serendipity, quirks, and communal joys of the game. Lighthearted, insightful, and brimming with nostalgia and inside jokes, the episode embodies the podcast’s enduring appeal after 14 years.

---

Key Discussion Points & Notable Segments

1. Reunited Draft Crew & Episode Context ([00:21]–[05:56])

• The Milestone: The draft tradition dates back to episode 500, and now aligns perfectly with America’s 250th anniversary—purely by accident, the hosts claim.
• Guests: Ben, Meg, Sam, and Grant express their “patriotic” spirit and joke about the “motley crew” nature of the podcast’s recurring guests.
• Jeff Sullivan’s Absence: Sullivan, another frequent guest, couldn’t join despite extensive advance notice, prompting much good-natured ribbing. He now works as a senior analyst of “baseball process and strategy” for the Rays, providing inspiration for tangential jokes about job title inflation and bunting technique.

"Just a blanket unavailable for the next six weeks. Unimportant baseball business. So he, he big leagued us, basically, but he is a big leaguer."
— Ben Lindbergh ([02:55])

2. Recap of Previous “Things We Like About Baseball” Drafts ([05:56]–[29:40])

• Detailed rundown of quirky, beloved, and sometimes esoteric past draft picks, including radio commercials, obscure player anecdotes, rally caps, and ongoing inside jokes (e.g., “the sadness of undoing your rally cap,” the idea of “players being afraid of weather,” and Miguel Cabrera’s triple-crown-winning smile).
• Ample laughter at Ben’s “teacher’s pet” selections and Grant’s delightfully weird picks, like the sadness of undoing one’s rally cap.
• Debates about the distinction and meaning of “motley crew” and playful banter about U.S. Presidents and which ones might have liked the podcast.

“It really kind of puts things into perspective. It makes America seem sort of pathetic.”
— Ben Lindbergh on the episode count/age ratio ([06:12])

3. The 2500th Episode “Things We Like About Baseball” Draft

Each panelist selects three things (plus plenty of digressions).
Selections are rich with personal insight, philosophical musings, and inside jokes.

---

Sam Miller’s Picks

1. Ballpark Policies Allowing Outside Food ([29:42])

• Celebrates “spaghetti policies”—most ballparks permit fans to bring in outside food, a rare consumer-friendly policy.
• Relates to his frustration at amusement parks/theaters gouging customers on concessions.
• Example: A detailed mention of a fan bringing a full spaghetti dinner in a bag.

“It's good, honest civil behavior to let someone eat food in a place where food is allowed.”
— Sam Miller ([33:10])

2. The Uniformity of MLB Starting Pitchers’ Strike Rates ([72:31])

• Observes that almost every qualified MLB starter throws between 61-68% strikes, with vanishingly small variance.
• Finds the narrowness both delightful and mysterious, pondering why wild pitchers don’t survive and why the distribution is so tight compared to other skills.

“I just don't think that there's anything else in sports that has such a narrow band of performance.”
— Sam Miller ([73:11])

3. Baseball as a Window to Human Variety ([91:34])

• Appreciates the sheer diversity of people and backgrounds encountered through baseball, from curious naming decisions (like twins named Tyler and Taylor) to cross-cultural quirks.
• Considers the game a valuable social exposure tool.

"Baseball exposes you to a world of different people from different backgrounds with different behaviors that you just would never be exposed to."
— Sam Miller ([91:34])

---

Grant Brisbee’s Picks

1. Baseball’s Ambient “Other Room” Noise ([37:40])

• The pleasure of baseball on TV/radio in another room as a comforting, uniquely recognizable murmur—with the cadence revealing plays even without details.

“You aren't hearing the play by play. You're hearing a frequency. And then when that frequency goes in a certain direction, you intuitively know that sounds like a single. That sounds like a home run.”
— Grant Brisbee ([37:58])

2. Luis Arráez’s Defensive Improvement & The Potential for Transformation ([77:32])

• Savoring dramatic mid-career skill improvements; uses Arráez’s leaps in defense as an example.
• Marvels at the ability to “unlock” totally new baseball skill sets late in a career.

3. Joe Niekro’s Only Home Run Was Hit Off His Brother Phil ([98:19])

• Tells the quirky story of pitcher Joe Niekro, a terrible hitter, cranking his lone career homer off his Hall-of-Fame brother Phil—proof of baseball’s endless weirdness and the knuckleball’s caprices.

“That moment is just moi. Chef's kiss.”
— Grant Brisbee ([99:50])

---

Meg Rowley’s Picks

1. Players Looking Sheepish During or After Replay Reviews ([42:37])

• Loves when athletes' honest facial expressions betray guilt or admission after a challenged call.
• Particularly enjoys the nuanced, sheepish interaction between players and the unspoken acknowledgment with the opposition.

“I really love it when players look sheepish after a replay review has been initiated indicating that they know the call should go against them. ... They can't help but make that face.”
— Meg Rowley ([42:42])

2. Transaction Terms That Are Also Human Experiences ([88:46])

• Draws attention to the poetic, even melancholy, language of roster moves—“tendered a contract”, “granted his release”, “recalled”, or “designated for assignment.”
• Finds humor and pathos in literally and figuratively being “outrighted.”

3. Play Ball Kids Who Get Bashful ([101:16])

• Takes joy in the adorable, sometimes anticlimactic moment when a little kid is given the stadium mic to shout “Play ball!”—especially when shyness prevails.

“They get shy and they go play ball. They talk so quiet, or they have to take like a couple of seconds and then they muster up the courage ... it's one of the cutest things you'll ever see in your human life.”
— Meg Rowley ([102:39])

---

Ben Lindbergh’s Picks

1. The Backhanded Baseball Compliment: “He’s a Baseball Player” ([50:25])

• Recounts being described by his junior high coach as “having a great understanding of the game”—the classic euphemism for limited athletic ability.
• Enjoys the complex, often veiled meaning behind “he’s a baseball player,” which can range from a genuine compliment to a subtle dig.

“That's clearly not true. No, people have paid much better compliments to Clayton Kershaw than he's a baseball player.”
— Ben Lindbergh ([53:32])

2. Players Radically Changing After a Mental or Simple Physical Switch ([79:08])

• Fascinated by stories where a player's entire performance is unlocked by a simple tip or mental approach shift (“do damage,” “crush the inside part of the ball”).
• Highlights Kébert Ruiz and Zack Cozart as recent examples.

“Have you thought about swinging harder? It just seems like, how did that not occur to you?”
— Ben Lindbergh ([85:09])

3. MLB GameDay 3D Glitches ([105:57])

• Loves the surreal, often hilarious errors in MLB’s new 3D pose-tracking visuals—players sinking into the earth, floating into the sky, or swapping equipment at random.

“Sometimes the players are presumably possessed and they leave this earthly plane and sometimes they ascend into the sky and sometimes they descend and they sink into the earth ... It’s just the best.”
— Ben Lindbergh ([107:45])

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the passage of time & tradition:
  “It was me and Sam and Grant and Jeff ... Sam’s picks in the inaugural version of this episode: Babe Ruth and Ernie Shore ... The sadness of undoing your rally cap.”
  [Throughout, recapping drafts—multiple timestamps]

• On the power of simple advice:
  “Have you thought about throwing harder?... I think it would really solve things for you.”
  — Meg Rowley, recounting the Zack Greinke anecdote ([87:35])

• On language and “baseball player” as a backhanded compliment:
  “If you look at all the teams beating us, they're loaded with baseball players. Astute.”
  — Ben Lindbergh, quoting Kevin Malone ([64:21])

• On why baseball games allow outside food:
  “I really admire ballparks for letting you bring in food. Most places...monopolize food and, like, hold you hostage. … To me, that's like awful capitalism.”
  — Sam Miller ([33:19]–[34:01])

• On MLB GameDay’s wild glitches:
  “It's like someone is a marionette and there's some satanic puppeteer who's just pulling them into the sky and contorting them and just horrible rictus of suffering.”
  — Ben Lindbergh ([108:00])

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:21] — Introduction of guests, milestone context, and “motley crew” discussion
• [05:56]–[29:40] — Full rundown and reminiscing about previous Things We Like About Baseball drafts; recurring bits and classic picks
• [29:42] — Draft Round 1: Ballpark food policies (Sam)
• [37:40] — Grant’s pick: Baseball game sounds as “other room” ambiance
• [42:37] — Meg’s pick: Players’ sheepish looks during replay reviews
• [50:25] — Ben’s pick: “He’s a baseball player” as a backhanded compliment
• [72:31] — Sam: Uniformity of pitchers’ strike rates
• [77:32] — Grant: Luis Arráez’s defensive leap & mid-career player transformation
• [79:08] — Ben: Players immediately transformed by a new mental approach
• [88:46] — Meg: Transaction terms as emotional or experiential language
• [91:34] — Sam: Baseball as a window to human diversity (names, twins, etc.)
• [98:19] — Grant: Joe Niekro’s only home run against his brother Phil
• [101:16] — Meg: Play ball kids who get bashful on the mic
• [105:57] — Ben: MLB GameDay 3D glitches as high comedy

---

Memorable Digressions

• The enduring question of how/why twins get similar names like Tyler and Taylor ([91:34])
• Cardboard Meg: Where is her pandemic cardboard cutout now? ([25:47])
• Imagining players being “outrighted” (as in, they are outright wild) ([90:54])
• Playful exchanges about which U.S. presidents would be Effectively Wild fans ([06:31])
• The special suffering of rally cap reversal ([12:14])
• Media and baseball in odd pandemic times (cardboard cutouts, empty stadiums) ([24:13]–[28:38])

---

Episode Tone and Style

This episode is full of affection, self-aware inside jokes, and the dry, observational humor familiar to fans of Effectively Wild. The hosts and guests keep the conversation playful but insightful, blending personal anecdotes with arcane baseball knowledge and appreciating the oddities as much as the moments of communal joy the sport brings.

---

This summary captures the essence and the best moments of episode 2500—a testament to what makes Effectively Wild, and baseball itself, so enduringly lovable.

Transcript

[A]

Ben isn't here and we're lacking production, so this is me singing you the introduction.

[B]

Hello, and welcome to episode 2500 of Effectively Wild, a Fan Graphs baseball podcast, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fan Graphs and I am joined by a motley crew, the first of whom is Ben Limberg of the Ringer. Ben, how are you feeling?

[C]

Patriotic for this podcast.

[B]

Okay. I was going to say. And we have. We have some friends along for the ride. Sam Miller of Pebble Hunting. How are you?

[A]

I'm pretty good. Do you think that motley is supposed to describe the individual members? It's a crew of people who are all motley. Or is the crew itself only made motley by itself? Unification.

[B]

That is such an effectively wild question to be asking.

[A]

No, it is. In fact, it is an incongruous or heterogeneous mixture.

[C]

It describes the crew, right?

[A]

Yeah, describes the crew.

[C]

We've got to consult Tommy Lee on this one, right?

[A]

Yeah. I'm not personally being accused of motley,

[B]

no, but only when in concert with me and Ben and our fourth guest, Grant Brisby of the Athletic. Grant.

[D]

My pockets are overflowing with motley people. I got motley everywhere. Enough for all of us. We're a crew now because I'm here.

[C]

We've got mle, We've got moxie. We have everyone except Jeff Sullivan. Sadly, Jeff Sullivan could not join us. He was invited, but he big timed us, basically.

[A]

How long ago was he invited, Ben?

[C]

He was invited six weeks ago.

[A]

And was he, Was he offered anytime, any day?

[C]

Yes. I mean, there were some restrictions just because of other people's unavailability, but. But it was pretty open ended and in fact, I contacted you all six weeks ago so as to preclude possibility that any of you might have an excuse for getting out of this thing, because there's got to be some time in six weeks. But. But no, I think a good way

[D]

to describe how early you were trying to set this up is that you sent an email that I replied to.

[C]

That's true.

[D]

That's all you got to say? I replied the email. That means you gave plenty of Runway for this. So we can all make fun of Jeff. I think that's perfectly reasonable.

[C]

I may have had to prompt you via text to answer the email, but nonetheless, it was.

[D]

Text is a different kind of email. It's electronic, it's mail. It comes to your house.

[C]

Jeff did. He did send his regrets, but I. I question the sincerity of them.

[A]

I don't want to leak internal documents here, but his, his decline was I would rather do the podcast than what I'm going to be doing, but I'm unavailable. Which is why the six weeks notice and literally anytime you want is relevant.

[C]

Just a blanket unavailable for the next six weeks. Unimportant baseball business. So he, he big leagued us, basically, but he is a big leaguer. He works for the Tampa Bay race. They're a first place team, I'm sure a lot to do with that. And he is now a senior analyst of baseball process and strategy. He was an analyst last time I checked. Now he's a senior analyst. So either he got a promotion or he got old or maybe both. So, you know, it's like enough raise executives, get poached by other teams, it's only a matter of time until he's running the race.

[A]

I feel like besides the senior, because the senior might just be, you know, inflation, title inflation. But process, that, that's a big addition. Like, process is a completely different area of the, of the org.

[C]

Tree. Of the org chart. Yes.

[A]

So that's kind of exciting. Like, he would be the one in charge of telling them to. Like I, I've noticed that the Rays are the team that most aggressively drops their bat in between the catcher and the ball when they bunt. And so he would be the, the person who would. That's process, right?

[C]

Yeah, I guess that's not strategy. Maybe it's a tactic. But it's probably process too. And I guess the process doesn't include public podcasting anymore. Sadly.

[D]

I'm just picturing him like back on one of those, like rolling gurneys, like a mechanic and underneath Stephen mats and going, oh, here's what your problem is. And if that's not right, I don't want it to be fixed.

[C]

Anyway, we're happy to have two cherished guests here for a milestone episode, because we all Convene this crew, MLE or otherwise, every 500 or so episodes to talk about things that we like about baseball. And we've had a few years to brainstorm since the last one, which was in 2023. We've done for episode 2000, episode 1500, episode 996, and episode 500. And I know on a previous edition of these we got into why not 1000? Well, it was because Sam went to work for ESPN and the podcast was changing and so we had to do it a little early that time. But nonetheless, it's a tradition and we are continuing the tradition and it Just so happens that this milestone for the podcast is coinciding with a milestone for the country.

[A]

The last week of the country.

[C]

You never know. We'll find out. But Tim Patreon supporter wrote in in June to say, tell me you didn't plan for episode 2500 to be released on the same day the USA turns 250. And I told Tim that we didn't. We did not play that. That just was a complete coincidence. I like the implication that.

[A]

So we did plan it.

[C]

Yeah. 14 years ago, Sam and I were plotting in. In the summer of 2012. If we start now and we do it five days a week for this number of years, and then we switch to three, and we almost never miss an episode, then it will perfectly line in 2026, it'll be 250 and 2500.

[B]

Is this the real reason you podcasted on the day of your wedding?

[C]

Just to stay on schedule, just to be on pace? Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Every. Every holiday that I haven't taken off, it's all been the long game. That I had this target in mind, that I had to make this goal. And effectively wild may be turning a mere 14 years old later this month, coinciding with Sam's birthday, as always, but are 10 effectively wild episodes for every year of our nation's history. So how about that? It really. It kind of puts things into perspective. It makes America seem sort of pathetic.

[D]

Which one do you think Rutherford B. Hayes would have liked the most?

[C]

We had him on I. I think a few times.

[A]

Yeah, I think Taft would have been a listener, since everybody knows. Everybody knows two things about Taft.

[C]

It's true.

[A]

Bathtub and opening day.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Stuck in a bathtub and listen to podcasts.

[C]

And as a personal favor to Grant and Sam, I will not be bringing up the San Francisco Giants because we're. We're drafting things we like about baseball and things that will make us and our listeners happy. So unless you want to bring up the Giants of your own accord, I will not be initiating that. And so I could do a quick little recap and review of the things we've drafted before. And I think these episodes are pretty evergreen. They probably hold up. So you could go back and revisit them if you haven't been along for this very long ride. But just to summarize, bring everyone up to speed back on episode 500, which was before Meg joined the Motley Crew. I don't know whether it was Motley at that point, but it was me and Sam and Grant and Jeff. Sam's picks in the inaugural version of this episode, Babe Ruth and Ernie Shore. That's a favorite of yours. The Ernie Shore Babe Ruth story. Radio commercials during baseball broadcasts, which I know you still love. Right.

[A]

And I think it was particularly plumbers and pipe fitters.

[D]

Yes.

[A]

Commercials.

[D]

I just drove by a tap plastics this morning.

[A]

Fantastic plastic place.

[C]

Yes. Yeah, that was much covered during the first Sam Miller run on effectively wild baseball commercials, radio broadcasts, War road, et cetera. What else did you draft? A third thing. GM is making predictions. Oh, that was, of course, the. The Krasnicks, which has now been inherited by Jesse Rogers. The annual predictions by baseball insiders, which were usually no better than a coin Fl. If that according to your research. All right. Grant's picks that time were the other Ryan Braun had forgotten about when baseball players are mentioned in rap or hip hop lyrics.

[A]

Action Brunson. What was it? Action Brunson. And who was the. Who was the player that was.

[D]

Oh, gosh, it was a funny one. Oh, it was Randy Velarde.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Yeah. This was also the subject of some. Sam Miller works for bp, if I recall correctly. And searching for players with dirty words in their name on baseball reference tradition that Jeff and John Boyce maybe have extended to the present day, as far as I know. Still going. And Jeff's picks were Petco park scoreboard faces in 2005 or 2006. Parentheses. Jeff isn't sure. I'm citing from the effectively wild wiki here. Reactive player expressions and John Olrood's tree battle with his neighbor. Views being obstructed and so forth.

[A]

Oh, geez. And now you're gonna. You're gonna read yours. Yours are so bad. I remember the first year they were so bad.

[C]

Yeah, I think I got better at this. Evidently. I drafted Pitch FX. This was. This was 2014. It was. I mean, it wasn't really new even then. So I don't know why I drafted Pitch fx.

[B]

Just like a brown noser pick. I don't know why. Like, that feels like a. That feels like a teacher's pet kind of.

[A]

Bud Selig was his second pick.

[B]

Bud Ceiling.

[C]

No, that was a joke. That was a joke. No, I actually drafted Rob Manfred because I was great commissioner prospect at the time, but I also drafted different field dimensions, which, you know, maybe that's predictable. It's. It's still certainly something I love about baseball and lament that they're not as different as they used to be. And platoons, which, you know, I still like platoons, but sure. Not the most creative picks or esoteric picks.

[D]

I will give you a spoiler for Baseball Superstars 2029. I just filed it. Scholastic Books. There's a little, little article in there about what if. Huh? What if different sports had different field dimensions? Huh? You know, like if you're talking about Fenway park, the Green Monster, like what does that look like in football where you've got like maybe one half of the field going straight up, you get to score on the 10 yard line. Real clever stuff. I look for it. Scholastic Books.

[A]

Grant. You know, one time I think I've mentioned this, but Grant one time surveyed a bunch of writers asking them what, what weird thing they would do for ballpark dimensions if they could do anything. If they were like making the homer of ballparks. You know, the homer, the vehicle from the Simpsons. And he surveyed a bunch of people and then he never wrote that piece. And I keep waiting for it and it's so. It sounds like you're scholar. I'm guessing Grant, correct me, I'm wrong. You pitched that to them, right?

[D]

I wouldn't say pitched. It's more like you have to come up with six ideas like duh here.

[A]

So wacky field dimensions is in Grant's DNA is what I'm saying.

[D]

Yeah, I'll take it. I'll take it.

[C]

Episode 996. So that first one was in 2014. 996 was in 2016. And it was the same four person crew. Jeff picked the Baltimore Orioles off season rumor mill.

[D]

Evergreen.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, that was a pressured pick that would have worked in almost any subsequent year. I think it was about how the rumors weren't very exciting. Fernando Rodney. I don't really remember what about Fernando Rodney, but there's a note here that says Jeff says that Fernando Rodney is a player you love more when he isn't on your team. So maybe it was about the Fernando Rodney relief experience and how it didn't really offer relief because it was kind of a high wire act. And finally, Bill Bergen, one of the great all time terrible players Grant picked the sadness of undoing your rally caps. The best, best ye.

[A]

This is the exact reaction I had 500 episodes when you were reciting these when you said that again at the time I also was just inspired anew. Grant, it's your career highlight was the sadness of undoing one's rally cap.

[C]

It's incredible, dude.

[D]

I mean, one time for a Twitter bit, I did a rally coffee table and it was like this is back in the day where like I was, you know, trying to. People cared about the Giants and I was trying to join in and I. The Giants were down, and I flipped my coffee table over and the legs were in the air and I put a picture on. On the Internet and they didn't. And then I had to turn the coffee table over and somehow it was worse. But I think the hat's just as bad. It's just. You just feel stupid. Like, what have I done? What have I debased myself for?

[A]

You guys know that rally cap commercial? The Google AI can. A rally cap. Whatever. Untapped good mojo. Whatever. Have you noticed that, like, the AI doesn't apparently know what a rally cap is? They just included Corbin Carroll wearing a headband. No watch next time you. It's not. It's not all rally caps.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, it's just a hallucination. You got to careful overturning coffee tables, as I learned last time I. I regaled Mick with an injury that I suffered this week. I seriously injured myself hurting hours before

[B]

we were set to record. And I didn't learn he was injured until we were on mic and I had to remind him, you are allowed to take episodes off and you don't even need to suffer like a blunt porous trauma.

[C]

Yeah, well, we couldn't take an episode off because imagine if my. My 14 year long plot to have episode 2500 line up with Americ50 was scuttled at the last minute. But yeah, you could have subbed. It would have been okay.

[D]

We.

[B]

We would have had a sub. We would have had a sub.

[C]

Well, the blood had dried, so it was fine. But. But I like the. The sadness of undoing your rally cap. I prefer the other Ryan Braun. That's my favorite grand. You still have to undo your rally cap even if the rally succeeds, but then it's not sad, I guess.

[D]

Oh, then, yeah, then you're releasing, like joy particles into the. The air. That's fine.

[A]

Yeah. You know what? You shouldn't. Any rally cap that works should be displayed. Yeah. On a. You know, in. In your room, in your trophy room, you should have a row of successful rally caps.

[D]

Or you could just, like, wear it to parent teacher conferences or whatever. Like when you need that little extra, you know, spark what's going on in

[B]

your parent teacher conferences that you need a rally cat.

[D]

Rally cat. Let's go. All in 110. Leave nothing out there, kids.

[B]

Are your kids bad? Are they, like, rotten?

[D]

They are my kid. They technically, they share my DNA.

[C]

So. Yeah. Well, that could be an expensive Habit. If you had to get a new hat every time.

[A]

I think that's exactly why it would work though, if you're not willing to really commit your hat to the cause.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And speaking of suck up picks, Grant's last one was how talented umpires are. It's true. Quietly though.

[A]

The funny thing is they were garbage at the time.

[C]

Like.

[A]

Like we now know that they're.

[C]

Yeah, they're way better now than they were then.

[A]

Way better. They weren't even trying. Like all you had to do was say we're watching you and they get way better. And back then they were garbage. So they were still so good.

[B]

Does that mean that elf on the shelf works?

[C]

Sam's picks were the worst ever sacrifice bunt.

[A]

Yeah, that's a good one.

[C]

I don't really remember the specifics. What? Oh, it was okay. Sam, details. When Terry Francona called for sacrifice bunt against Mark Wallers, a pitcher who the yips and was struggling to throw strikes. Sam thinks that Francona was trying to be kind to Wallers calling for the bunt.

[A]

I believe. I asked Doug Glanville the bunter. I think I asked him one time and I think he said something like, oh, that's. That's interesting. No, I don't remember.

[C]

Speaking of baseball related raps, you drafted Matt Kemp's rap album. And one of my favorites was Phil Nekro being old because we all got to Google Phil Nekro and how old he looked. Even older than he actually was, which was very old. I drafted drafted players being afraid of weather, which was when. Like when lightning would strike or something and players would get startled. I drafted pitchers bodies when they are throwing, they're the elbows. It's just nightmare. Absolute nightmare. Nightmare Fuel. And Mike Trout. That wasn't very creative of me. I don't know if I was drafting anything specific about Mike Trout, but just maybe all the material that he had given us up to that point. Episode 1500 was in 2020 and Meg joined the team for this one. And that time we had Jeff's picks were feeling hopeful about a team in spring until they lose their first game. The unsolvability of baseball. Which is maybe why he's unavailable for this episode. He's still in the lab trying to figure out baseball and fan understanding of managers Grant picked. Searching baseball reference. This is a theme with Grant for player names from the 1904 season and the fact that Paul Giamatti is the son of former MLB commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti Classic.

[D]

Bit classic.

[A]

I don't understand why you like that so much?

[D]

It's so good.

[A]

Because I found out about it.

[D]

No, I found out about after the fact. So, like, if you. If you're thinking like, you've got the 19. Was it 1988 tops? And you've got the Abarth Legiamatti, like, you grow up when you've got a commissioner's baseball card, and then you grow up and you see, well, that guy's Pig Vomit. And then Pig Vomit becomes like a big star in his own right and one of America's beloved character actors. And then at some point they dovetailed and I. My mind was blown and I just love that. I just. I'm sorry. I'm not going to apologize for it.

[C]

It is still a not very widely known fact among mainstreamers. You can still. Not that the mainstream people know who apart with Giamatti is either. So it's kind of like really land.

[D]

But what he did kind of broke containment, though. So you can say Paul Giamatti's dad was the one who banned Pete Rose and knows who that is. You know, like that kind of brings it all together. It's like, wow, really? So I don't know, it's maybe not that cool, but I. I was reading a book where it was talking about different professors and stuff, and it starts talking about, well, my friend Bart and all this stuff. And it was like, oh, that's. That's Pig Vomit's dad. I know him. And beat Rose.

[C]

Anyways, evidently Grant had only two picks that year. Unless the effectively wild wiki is missing something. Sam picks Willie Mays's house party.

[A]

Yeah, that's a good one.

[C]

Bo Jackson's 1990 score, baseball cards number 697, and the 1989-91amateur drafts of the Houston Astros.

[A]

That's not that good A1, to be honest.

[C]

I.

[A]

That one was. I. I could never figure out how to write about that. So I basically just dumped it on the podcast.

[D]

Remind me again.

[A]

They. You could draft as long as you want it it back. Then if. Even if no other teams were drafting, you could just keep picking players. And so the draft would stop at like round, you know, 40 or 50. But then the Astros decided to just keep going. So they did like 90 to 110 picks a year. So they have just this like the draft sheet for those years is just like constant Astros that never. They didn't even sign most of them is a weird thing. Like, it's not that interesting, but I had to. It was in the tickler file. And I had to use it up.

[C]

Yeah. They drafted as many players as all the teams together. Will be drafting in the next cba probably if MLB gets its way. Willie Mays had a housewarming party when he bought a house in San Francisco. And for kids. Every kid in the neighborhood showed up, if anyone was wondering. Meg drafted baseball scandal names involving horniness. I'm. I don't even really remember.

[D]

We all know this, so you can just move on.

[B]

What did I mean, mean?

[A]

Yeah, Was there any. Are there notes? Are there any notes there?

[C]

Not really. It says horny baseball scandal names, but that doesn't offer any additional details really.

[B]

Oh, maybe I meant the banging scheme.

[C]

Ah, that's probably. Yeah, that it was.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

This was 2020. Yeah.

[D]

Randy Johnson is untainted by controversy, so

[B]

I probably meant the banging scheme.

[C]

Yep, yep. I think so. Okay. Goof based walk offs, for example, a wild throw.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Maybe a walk off. Bach. Who knows? Fans misjudging foul balls.

[B]

Yeah, I do love that.

[C]

And then. Oh, you had a bonus pick. I guess. So you were picking up the slack for Grant here for making up for drafts you had not participated in. When pitchers figure it out, when everything clicks, I guess. Yeah. A corner is turned to do another effectively fallback.

[D]

Yeah, I think I had to leave early.

[C]

Oh, maybe that's what it is.

[D]

Because I can like juggle things and show up, but then also do my other accommodations, I suppose. Just telling you to, you know, buzz off like Jeff. Anyway, sorry, go.

[C]

And finally, heartwarming pick. The friends we met along the way. Parentheses friendships with other writers and researchers. That's nice.

[B]

Oh, that is nice. So wait, how many picks are we doing?

[C]

It's three. Three each. It's.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

You don't need five this time.

[B]

Okay. I was like, I was briefly panicked.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I picked quad A players first baseman doing the splits, which does really still impress me, the fact that they can all do that, even the ones who don't look that flexible or athletic. And incorrect and exaggerated appraisals of player value in the pre war era, which I collected and later wrote about. That is still a favorite thing of mine because back then nobody knew nobody had any upper or lower bounds on what a player might have been worth. And so just wild ass guesses. This guy was costing us 10 wins. This guy was worth 20 for like good defense around the first base bag or something. You know, it was always something like that. Now we know better, but I'm sort of sad about it. And last time, episode 2000, this was 2020.

[A]

3.

[C]

And Jeff joined us. But half heartedly, we were.

[A]

He only talked about the pitch clock.

[C]

Yeah, we were already losing him at that point. He drafted the pitch clock. And then number two, he drafted Rob Manfred for introducing the pitch clock. And then number three, Pedro Baez for prompting the introduction of the pitch clock. He was right, though. History has vindicated that pitch clock. Pretty good. Pretty popular. And the other people's picks. Grant drafted learning that a celebrity played minor league baseball. That's always a good one.

[D]

The Rifleman Connors team name.

[C]

Suggestions from fans. Is this like a boaty McBoat face kind of thing?

[D]

Seattle had a. A name the team contest before the Mariners and someone did streakers. Seattle streakers. So that was that context.

[C]

And how much Ted Williams loved his bats.

[D]

Love those bats.

[C]

Sam Drafted pointless infield practice while the pitcher warms up.

[A]

Oh, that's good.

[C]

Good errors that make baseball cards valuable and players who served as umpires in a game.

[D]

Huh? Okay.

[C]

Meg. Drafted players showing affection for each other.

[B]

Yeah, I do like that.

[C]

That's been a running theme. Frisky teams that emerge from mediocrity. So not frisky in. In the affection showing sense. But we don't know, competitively speaking, probably.

[B]

Maybe that's what's driving their leap forward.

[C]

And I guess there was like a little lightning round. Those were the two main picks I drafted. Silly player injuries and baseball broadcast. You know, when you get the behind the scenes of. They're like in the compound and. And they've got 20 different screens and they're calling out cuts. And I always like seeing that nerve center. Oh, and I drafted Jeff King. Not liking baseball, which is a favorite of mine. Just, you know, top draft pick, top prospect who just seemingly didn't like baseball all that much, even though he was very talented. Meg's lightning round picks were baseball in empty or near empty ballpark works when fans misjudge a fly ball as a home run. Did you draft that in two consecutive drafts or no? I guess one was foul balls and one was fly balls and one was baseball trying and failing to be cool, but then succeeding in being cool by accident.

[D]

Still waiting. Still waiting for it to be cool.

[A]

When you guys watch, when you guys are like looking something up and you find you. You find yourself watching a clip from 2020 based baseball, does it just make you queasy? Like, I, I mean, like, I really have to, like, turn it off. I. I really don't like it.

[B]

Yeah. And I should clarify that. I didn't mean it in that sense. I. I was probably thinking most specifically about, like, the experience of fall league.

[A]

Oh, that's right. Yeah.

[B]

Where you go and it's like you and 15 retirees and like a bunch of children who should be in school but aren't for whatever reason.

[C]

That.

[B]

That part's not as much fun because you're. It's the middle of the day. I know we're kind of loosey goosey down here, but you really should be learning math right now.

[C]

What better way to learn math than to take in a baseball game?

[D]

I know exactly what Sam's talking about, though, because I think one of the coolest, like, rarest. It'll never happen again baseball events that I've experienced in person was Trent Grisham hitting a walk off home run for the Padres at Oracle Park. It was because the game was canceled here. The schedule was here. It's the pandemic season. The Padres are the home team at Oracle Park. So he hits a walk off home run. It's the most ridiculous thing. But also that memory's awful because it's like you're looking around and there's like, there's literally cardboard cutouts of my parents somewhere in the stadium.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And it's like, it's just awful. So I don't know how to treat that memory. I still don't. It's like it's. It's there, but it doesn't fit and so I might need to purge it.

[B]

I have my cardboard cut out.

[D]

Do you really?

[B]

Oh, yeah. The Mariners sent me. They didn't, like, do me a special favor. I think you were able to get it at the end of the year.

[D]

Oh, that's right. My parents must have it. Oh, I'm definitely going to. That's for the living room.

[C]

Where do you keep Cardboard Meg?

[B]

It's in the garage. It's in the garage with the. In the cabinet of, like, holiday decorations that are a weird shape. So, like Meg. A Cardboard Meg is sandwiched in between a shark fin that has at times been used as a Halloween decoration and also a giant spider with opposable digits that sits outside at Hell. It's. She's. She's near Halloween, which is good because both Cardboard Megan and Real Life make have an affinity for Halloween.

[D]

So you don't have to answer this now, but could. Could I borrow Cardboard Meg? Like, I'll get it back to you in good condition. Just. If you could just send it to me for a little bit. I don't even know why.

[C]

For what purpose.

[D]

Yeah, I'll figure it out later. But Cardboard Meg seems like it shouldn't be hidden. It should be.

[B]

No, belongs to the world. She should be. It's like a weird job. I mean, again, again, makes sense that it's with the Halloween decorations because it ends up being like a weird trauma jump scare every time I see her to sound hunting.

[A]

Where did Cardboard Meg sit?

[B]

I don't remember. I don't remember where in T Mobile she was.

[D]

So who you all going down to the lake with? Well, I'm going down with Steve and Dan and Cardboard Meg.

[B]

And Cardboard Meg.

[C]

Don't get Cardboard Meg wet because that

[B]

might be the end of the material that. That it's not actually carbon.

[D]

That's true.

[C]

I guess they had to be water resources.

[B]

Yeah. It's like that. Well, no, we have a. We have a roof at T Mobile, cuz, you know, you got to worry about that. But it's like the material that those signs that they put on the side of the road that say, we'll fix your windshield and give you $300. And I'm like, whoever calls these people,

[A]

you know, did they. Did they bring them in at night?

[B]

No, they left them there. There were thousands of them.

[A]

So are they like sun bleach?

[D]

Have to be?

[B]

Oh, I. I don't recall it being particularly sun bleach short season, but you'd

[C]

think being exposed to the elements be a bit worse for wear.

[B]

And like, did it ever smell like wildfire smoke?

[A]

And you paid for that, right? They didn't. Yeah. Okay.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Do you remember how much?

[B]

I do not remember how much. I remember it being a low enough dollar amount that even on like pandemic pay cut salary, I was like, this seems fine, you know, like, what else am I doing? I'm not going to dinner.

[D]

It was one of. It was like that brief interregnum where it was like they weren't trying to gouge. It was like, this is just sort of a fun thing because people need fun things in the world. Just kind of COVID the costs and we'll all have fun together because the world's a mess.

[B]

I think it was less than $50.

[D]

Yeah. I think my parents was like 25 bucks or something.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm really surprised that I didn't do it. In retrospect. Why didn't I do it?

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't know.

[C]

Hopefully you won't have another chance. And it sounds like we will not be drafted. Favorite baseball memories from 2020 as things we like about baseball. But let's find out what we will draft. We have completed the recap portion of the podcast.

[A]

Wait, real quick. Just a real quick correction. Not that anybody cares, but I just checked and Doug Landville emailed me back about the. He did, in fact, email me back. And he did remember this bunt. He remembered it very well, and he wrote about it in his book, in fact, because it was. He remembered it being a really light, profound moment. Moment. Seeing this guy in stress and anxiety and his part in it. And he felt really bad laying down the bunt because the throw was wild. And he was also very frightened because he didn't know if he'd get, you know, drilled in the face.

[C]

And did he know if it was because Wellers was so wild they were trying to do him a favor?

[A]

No, he did not know that. And I said, I'll have to ask Tito someday. And, yeah, that was the end of the interaction.

[C]

Okay. So it might be the worst analytically, but maybe the best if it was done out of kindness. Who knows? All right, we can let our guests go first, I guess. Sam, you like to lead off.

[A]

So my first pick is non ballpark food. Um, I. There was a great piece in the Athletic, which I don't podcast for, by Talia Minsberg a couple of. A couple months ago, about the. I guess you would call this the spaghetti policy.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Basically, it's about, like, fans that bring spaghetti in full spaghetti dinners in. In quart or gallon bags. There's a site that. I think it's called the Sicko. The Sickos or the Sicko Committee. I think it's called the Sicko Committee. Anyway, they log the food policy, the spaghetti policies for every ballpark, whether you can bring a spaghetti dinner in. In gallon bags. And I read that piece and really enjoyed it because I really admire ballparks for letting you bring in food. Food. Most places, most things that you go to that could conceivably monopolize food and, like, hold you hostage. Essentially hold you hostage until you have no choice but to give them money for overpriced bottled water and popcorn. They do that. They gouge you. Ever since I worked at a movie theater and I would watch the bill that people would have to pay to eat at a movie theater. I've been pretty radicalized on the. On this. I. I really don't know how they get away with telling you you can't bring food in. If it's a place where food is not allowed to be eaten, that's fine. But you're saying it is legal to eat food, but only food that has been provided by them. I hate that. Like, to me, that's like awful capitalism. Like, we can make you unhappy until you have no choice but to pay, you know, ballpark prices or movie theater prices or amusement park prices. I've always been a sneak food into the movie theater guy. I've snuck food into sporting events in my sock, and I will continue to do so. But, you know, you're limited in what you can put into your sock. Anyway, the point is, this spaghetti policy movement and this article in the Athletic both reveal or, like, show that ballparks are exceptions. For the most part, in almost every ballpark park, you can bring food in. Even though they sell food. Even though, like, it's a big part of their business model to sell you food, they will let you bring in your own food like normal people treating you like normal people. There are limitations on the. On the carriers. You can't bring them in necessarily in a glass Tupper, you know, a glass jar or a huge cooler. But if you want to put a sandwich in a gallon bag, all but like two or three ballparks, parks will let you do it. One of the ones that won't is the raise. And they paid for it. I don't know if you guys remember this, but about 20 years ago in the pre. Good Rays era, you know, like the, the bad raise era, the devil race era, they had. They. They were embroiled in controversy because they wouldn't let a woman bring in like, pistachios or something, and they kicked her out of the ballpark, and they were for her blood sugar. Like, she got kicked. So now they're even, I believe, believe even the Rays now are forced to have a medical exemption in their policy. I like that. I think it's good, honest civil behavior to let someone eat food in a place where food is allowed. I think it also tells us maybe something about baseball as a product not being quite as good as some other things that they have to let you bring in your food. Like.

[D]

Like, I think there's just so many games. Games.

[A]

It's like there are so many games. Yeah, they. They can't. I guess that's a way. But not. It's not that baseball isn't a good product, but that baseball has to be pleasant all the time. You know, they. They have to keep it pleasant for 500 hours a year to keep people, repeat customers coming back. And so they can't quite be as abusive to their audience. You know, like. Like a movie theater can be like, hey, man, you don't want to watch Avengers, someone else will. And with baseball, they have to kind of keep bringing you back. They have to keep you happy. So I like that. Disneyland, too, by the way, is also a place that you can bring in a bag of spaghetti, or maybe not spaghetti, but you can bring in drinks.

[D]

At the very least, Disneyland is pockets full of spaghetti, no bags. That's allowed. I know from experience.

[C]

Yeah. I question how appetizing just a bag of spaghetti that you smuggled into a ballpark would be, but I guess it depends on the situation.

[B]

You're raising issues on the.

[C]

Sam's about to invoke my raw mushrooms.

[A]

Raw mushrooms in a bag. Sweaty mushrooms. Sweaty mushrooms on a hot summer day.

[D]

I will say that my daughter has an egg allergy. And so that's a tricky one when it comes to buns, hot dog buns, stuff like that. And if you've ever asked at a ballpark, does this have eggs in it, you know that you're not getting no one, like, even in a bakery, like a really, like, nice bakery, you ask if this has eggs in it, and people look at you like, well, I don't know. So in that respect, we bring food for the kid with the allergy problems out. So I one vote for Sam.

[C]

That's a good one. I think it probably is also, especially because pre pitch clock games were of indeterminate length and Pre Zombie Runner 2. And so you go to a movie, you know, more or less what it's starting. Maybe you have to add 25 minutes for ads and Nicole Kidman and trailers, but basically you have some idea and you know what the running time is. But they don't list that in advance for baseball games because people would probably think it was rigged. And there's no clock counting down, so. So you don't know. You can't really make dinner plans or. Or anything. So you. You might starve. And. And also it's. It's outdoors. Maybe that's part of it too. And there's the convention of just, you know, shedding your peanut shells and your Cracker Jack or whatever and just making other people pick it up for you. But. But yeah, I think. And it's also, there's. Historically, at least, there was a lot of downtime and the games were long, and there's time between pitching is time to talk or time to chew. So I think it's a good sport to eat, too, if they let you.

[A]

But.

[C]

But I'm with you. Yeah. I mean, they have a captive audience. I usually try not to buy anything at concessions. Both Because I don't want to miss anything and also because it's so expensive. But yeah, I either abstain and just eat before I go or try to slip something in. But I'm with you. Their permissive policies are appreciated.

[A]

Yeah, I don't think I've had a ballpark. I don't think I've bought a ballpark. Ballpark concession in like 30 years. Yeah.

[C]

And obviously the. The options have expanded. I thought at first that you were drafting non traditional ballpark fair at ballparks, which you can get, obviously, just things that don't seem appetizing to me in that setting particularly. But I mean, I've had ballpark sushi and it was okay, but I'll eat grocery store sushi. I will. I will take the risk. But you know, all sorts of stuff that, like, congeals and maybe it's good under the heat lamp, but then you bring it back to. Or it's some sort of triple decker construction and you can't actually transport it back to your seat or eat it and it collapses and then everything's messy. So like gourmet dining at a ballpark. Unless you're one of the fancy people in one of the clubs or something and you get an actual sit down meal if you're eating it in the stands. I don't know. It's not for me. And then there's the whole, like, conspicuous consumption monstrosities that teens compete to create that, like, calorie max. How many calories can we cram into this thing? What is more American than that?

[B]

I guess I think it's more about height or length that they're trying to max, actually, than calorie. Calorie is a byproduct of that, certainly. But the super long hot dogs, the very tall burgers.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And you're like, like, even in a restaurant, how would you eat that?

[C]

You know, it has no structural integrity. All right, Grant, you want to go?

[D]

I do. And I'm so glad. When you were reading out what we had taken in previous drafts, I was half sure that I had done this before, but I have not. It is the ambient noise of a baseball game in the other room. So it can be tv, it can be radio, and so you aren't hearing the play by play. You're hearing a frequency. And then when that frequency goes in a certain direction, you intuitively know that sounds like a single. That sounds like a home run. That sounds like a straight. Like, honestly, try it. Just you're in the kitchen cooking. You've got A baseball game in the other room. You can't hear the particulars, but you know what's going on.

[C]

This reminds me of the exercise Sam did with his friend at the Giants game, right? Where you went and you. You stood outside the ballpark and you tried to gauge what was going on,

[A]

tried to keep score of a game that we were listening to from outside.

[D]

What was this, BP or.

[A]

No, no, it was. It was pebble hunting, like 20, 24.

[D]

Oh, my God, I missed that.

[C]

Now we know who reads salmon, who doesn't, anyway, so. But it wasn't super accurate, right?

[A]

It was pretty inaccurate. In fact, it was pretty bleak. I. I was surprised at how little. And we were. It was at. It was at Oracle, so we were, like, right outside an open air, you know, like, right outside. Outside. This wasn't like. I'm not. I'm saying, like, we weren't at one of the big bowls, like the Angels stadium, right, where you can only hear a home run. In fact, I was gonna do two types of parks, like a downtown park and a suburban park to see the difference. You know, the downtown park was, like, hard to make out much sound. It was. There's a. There's a lot less pop than I expected there to be. So I say bleak only because I would like everybody to be free to clap and yell because the pitcher gets ahead over one, and if you're the only one, then you kind of aren't free to do that. And there was a. There was a lot less cheering. Like, if you. Look, if you think that you're sort of, like, only going to cheer when other people are cheering, then there's a lot less cheering than I kind of had realized, and I felt sort of silenced in my own ability to cheer. And we knew who won.

[C]

Like, we.

[A]

We knew who won. We knew. Kind of like. We knew it was a. Kind of a blowout.

[C]

Anyway, off topic, do you still do laps while you're watching a game or while you're.

[A]

No, I do not do that. Because of the pitch clock?

[C]

Yeah. Cause I don't know whether your route would take you out of the room so that you'd be hearing the ambient noise or whether you always maintained line of sight.

[A]

No, I always. I left the room. I would. Yeah, but. But, Grant. So I. That's a great pick. I love the ambient noise of baseball, and I. I would bet that if you were to just survey movies and TV shows, shows which often use ambient programming in the background of scenes, that baseball outnumbers all the other sports, like, 100 to 1. Every baseball broadcaster's IMDb page is like, long because they're just like taking random clips of baseball. I don't think you have that for like, NFC showdowns. Like, I don't think football ambient noise works in movies the same way. But we all now watch baseball mainly on MLB tv, I assume. And. And the ads are often highlights of baseball, Right? Like, the ad programming is often highlights, bloopers, et cetera. And I found that very confusing. I'll be cooking in the kitchen and I'll hear the pop. And then you go in and it's like Bo Jackson in the 1990 All Star Game.

[C]

Yeah. The crack of Bo's bat. It's like, you only hear that three times in life, right?

[D]

Yeah, there are. When I'm driving my daughter home from soccer practice. Her soccer Practice ends at 9:00'. Clock. And so a lot of times now with the pitch club clock, it's. That's peak. Something's happening in the Giants game and I gotta listen to it for. For work on the way home. But she'll get in and she'll want to talk and. Yeah, I'll just say it. I. I think my kids are more important than baseball. You know, I'll just. I'll just say it. And so I turned down the. The radio a little bit, and it's to the point where I can not really make out words, but I can tell if a reliever is screwing up. You know what I mean? Like, you can just tell, like, John Miller's voice gets to a certain pitch when it's like, well, this is a problem. Now it's 3, 0. You know what I mean? It's just. But you're not hearing the three. You're see. Yeah, I'm sorry. I just love it. It makes me feel. Makes me feel like I have a sixth sense.

[C]

Yeah. And the murmur of the broadcaster's voices, that's a crucial component of that generous. If you are lucky enough sometimes to be able to do, or if you used to be able to do the ballpark overlay, where you could mute the broadcasters and just listen to the ballpark sounds. That's a. A nice ambiance too. But from the other room, it. It does help to have the broadcasters getting animated or subdued. It's good one. We've all heard it. We've all enjoyed it. Meg.

[A]

Oh, was fast. That was abrupt. Grant, yours is not worth talking about anymore.

[D]

Well, you talked to everything I was going to say, Sam.

[B]

Okay, so I. The odds that any of these get Picked is small.

[D]

So why.

[B]

Why am I worried about how I'm sequen?

[C]

You had three years to prepare. We gave you time.

[B]

I love the idea that you think I prepared yesterday. I really love it when players look sheepish after a replay review has been initiated indicating that they know that the call should go against them. Right. That the, that the replay review should redound to the benefit of the team challenging whatever the outcome is. You know, the guy who knows he oversled the bag. I especially love it when a guy maybe knows he didn't get hit by the pitch and he has a little bit of a look like, I'm gonna have to go back in there. But he keeps it kind of close because the look on his face isn't going to dictate the outcome of the replay review.

[C]

Right.

[B]

It's going to be those, those goobers in New Jersey. It's going to be whatever they see on Super Slow Mo. But he has a look like, I might get away with one here because didn't happen quite the way they called it on the field. And I just, I love that. I love when they can't help but especially if they make that feel face at an opposing player. Like, we both know what happened here, didn't we? Don't we, buddy? I just love that. I love it when they, when they look a little sheepish, like, yeah, that's one of my favorites.

[A]

Can I offer a subcategory of this, which. I don't know if this counts, but one of the things that I've loved about ABS is seeing how immediately many challengers wish they hadn't challenged. Like, there's something really kind of. Of impulsive in the movement and there's like a little like, once they have a second to review their actions, and not only their actions, but the pitch itself, they replay the pitch itself. And you can sometimes see them realize that they have challenged and they're not going to win, they shouldn't have challenged and they're going to lose. And they already know they're going to lose. And I love that. I love that look as well.

[D]

I'll just throw in the. I like the chaos that is currently now. Like, it's not codified. You don't really know. All these players are kind of just winging it as far as when expectancy and like, is this the moment in the game to use this last challenge? And they, you know, it's. They haven't been briefed on it. I don't think they've. They've had to do the Cliff Notes or anything. It's just sort of everyone's winging it and just said, yeah, no, that's. This is the time to do it. It is two outs, nobody on, and you know, 2o count. I'm gonna challenge this. Oops, wrong. And I, I love that it's chaos. And you could see like a few people, people like a few players get it. Like, they understand. It's like, ah, that I know, I know that's a ball, but not the time. Not the time. And other players like, tap, tap, tap. You have wronged me. So.

[B]

Yeah, well, and, and, and maybe a further subcategory of this. And I'm going to offer this and then if it's on anyone's list, I think you can still draft it. I am increasingly enjoying the guy who, like, looks aggrieved at a call, but had and has challenges at his disposal, but doesn't opt to use them.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Or where it's like, hey, buddy, you know, the solution is right in front of you. It feels very, like, childlike to me, like you're not willing to help yourself. Or maybe you, you know, that the leverage doesn't make sense or it's too early in the game. There's a team policy about when you use the challenges and you would be running a foul of that. But the guy who like kind of looks at the ump and it's like, I don't know, man. Tap, tap, tap away if you think it's wrong or.

[C]

You identified a few cases earlier this season, Sam, of. Of the case strut. When the pitcher case struts.

[A]

Oh, have I already? Yeah, I'm 100% gonna. I'm 100% gonna write that article. I did not realize I'd already said you did, but.

[C]

But yeah, you. Some cases where someone will do that and then they won't get the call, but then they still won't challenge.

[A]

And the K STR and the case stair. Yeah. Doesn't get challenged. Yeah.

[C]

Challenge where your emotion is. Yeah. Just have the courage of your convictions. So. Yeah. Now, does this sheepishness apply as much to abs? Because. Because obviously there's less of a turnaround time. There's less. I mean, the umpires aren't conferencing. You get that little graphic that sometimes blocks our view of the player. And so there's a little less. You might get that immediate, ooh, shouldn't have challenged that one. But you don't really get the dawning realization so much unless like mid pitch trajectory as you're seeing the graphic.

[B]

I think you get some of it in the, in, in that moment where it's like, oh, that's not gonna, that's not gonna land in the zone. Or, oh, oh, that's, that's gonna land well outside where the guy kind of goes. You can kind of like see his shoulders drop. I would be curious to hear from players about the, the split of. I am mad that the call didn't go my way versus I'm afraid of getting yelled at when I get back to the dugout about having wasted a challenge. And I don't know what is motivating the physical reaction most of the time,

[A]

but obviously you can let your team down in many ways. But generally speaking, if you let your team down, it doesn't affect your teammates chances of getting an RBI later or getting a home run later. It hurts your team's chances of winning, but it doesn't hurt the other players chances of putting up stats. And I sort of believe that most guys mostly just want to put up stats. And this is the one thing where you can ruin the rest of your team's stats. Like, for the rest of the game. They don't get to have as good a station stats as they want because they're at the mercy of a, of a bad strike zone, potentially. It's like an ex, an example of like, it's like, say you were trapped in a mine, okay, for like 70 days, and you only had like, a little bit of food. Using the abs and losing is kind of like being caught stealing rations.

[D]

Right.

[B]

That's very dramatic.

[A]

So I do think that you see a different kind of thing face there than you do with any other. Yeah, yeah. It's a bad face. Do you know, you guys, I've mentioned this in a post, but so the brewers basically have like a hitters don't challenge. I, I, I don't know this, I haven't seen this reported, but basically none of their hitters challenge ever. Like, they, they challenge a ton on defense, and then they hardly ever challenge on offense. And it's a big enough differential that like, that has to be a directive has been sent down since spring training. And so most brewers will not challenge, but Gary Sanchez and challenges more than any hitter in baseball. And he's not that good at it.

[B]

So bad at it.

[A]

So he's done. He has Gary Sanchez. Gary Sanchez has 45% of the brewers offensive challenge challenge.

[C]

Yeah. Chaos.

[A]

So I think because this is such an impulsive act, not saying that he's necessarily impulsive but, you know, we all know. Like, we've seen the impulsive.

[C]

He's like the Leroy Jenkins of the Brewers.

[A]

The pitchers, the challengers, even though they're not supposed to. You know, we all know pitchers aren't generally supposed to challenge. Like, I've seen, like, openers use a channel, like an opener pitcher use a challenge. And I'm like, that's not allowed. You're not allowed.

[C]

Right.

[A]

So I think that the team should be able to preemptively tell the umpire, this guy doesn't have the right. Like, even though he is. The rules say he can. We are just. We're putting a. Like, when you put a pause on your credit card because you can't find it, you're not canceling your credit card.

[D]

Yes.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

You should be able to. Before a plate appearance, you should be able to just send out a note to the umpire saying, this guy's not authorized.

[D]

And then, like, when he taps the helmet, the umpire, does he placate him? Like, yeah, we'll look into that. You should.

[A]

It's like being muted on Twitter.

[B]

Not blocked, but muted.

[A]

You don't even necessarily know. Like, maybe you even be like, oh, you lost. Oh, yeah, we're gonna check. We're gonna check. But, yeah, it doesn't go through.

[C]

Okay. Should I go?

[D]

Yes.

[B]

Yep.

[C]

Okay. So I really like backhanded compliments about baseball players, and I got one a few years ago because Jesse came with me to some sort of alumni event at my grammar school, where I went for 10 years from nursery through eighth grade, and I was on the baseball team in seventh and eighth grade, and my coach.

[A]

You're kidding.

[C]

My coach from there was at this event.

[A]

Wait, Ben, you were on your school baseball team?

[C]

I was. Was.

[A]

Tell us more.

[C]

Well, I'm about to give you the scouting report that my coach, Coach Jorge Roman, who was one of the coaches in those years, Jesse met him, and I. I mentioned that he was one of the baseball coaches. And so she asked him for a scouting report about me or to describe what kind of player I was. And Coach Roman said he had a great understanding of the game.

[B]

That's terrific.

[C]

Which, you know, kind of tells you all you need to know, I guess now, you know, at that stage, I was 4 foot 7. I mean, it was 13 or 14. Hadn't hit my growth spurt yet, but that was Coach Roman's memory of me. So I guess maybe that told you that I was cut out to be a podcaster and blogger more than anything else. And I like When. When baseball players are described that way in terms similar to that. For example, just this week, the Red Sox made a very minor trade, and they picked up from the A's. A. An infielder, Brett Harris. Chad Tracy of the Red Sox was asked about Harris and why they had picked him up because he was DFA'd by the A's. He had been in AAA. And Tracy said, I think a big part of it was that he's available. I think a big part of it was he's available. He's infielding depth. He's played first, second, and third.

[B]

He has a pulse.

[C]

Yes. Big picture. We've gotten fairly thin on infield depth over the course of the last couple of weeks. We've exhausted a good portion of our infield depth. So. Did not say one nice thing about Gret Harris other than he is technically a baseball player. He knows how to play infield positions, and he was available.

[D]

I. I mean, half of that's on Brett Harris. For being named Brett Harris, maybe you got to be Aloysius Jumanji if you want to, like, have a memorable career.

[B]

Yeah, Aloysius Jumanji.

[C]

Well, you.

[D]

You'd put that guy on your bench.

[A]

I'd get his jersey off the top of your head.

[D]

Grant. Sure. We all have names. We can.

[C]

Sure. That must have been one of those 1904 baseball names. Big Jeff Pfeffer.

[B]

It's a college baseball player.

[C]

Yeah, maybe. So. My favorite version of this is he's a baseball player or sometimes he's a ballplayer. And obviously it's context sensitive, because sometimes the. This can be a legitimate compliment. Sometimes it's just factual and informational, like you're just literally explaining that someone is a baseball player. But more often than not, it is a great compliment that is also a backhanded compliment. So, for example, in 2021. And I'll play a clip of this, but Clayton Kershaw was asked about Zach McKinstry. Hey, Clayton, what can you kind of say about what Zach McKinstry has been

[D]

able to do here in the last week or so?

[C]

He's a baseball player.

[B]

Player, man.

[C]

That's like.

[A]

I think that's just the best compliment you can give somebody that plays our game. And he really is.

[C]

And that's clearly not true. Like, no, people have paid much better compliments to Clayton Kershaw than he's a baseball player. Like, he's a many times Cy Young Award winner. He's a future hall of Famer. He is the best pitcher in baseball. He's arguably the best pitcher ever. Like these are the best compliments you could give somebody who po our game.

[D]

I'm technically going to say something that's true.

[B]

True.

[D]

Ben Lindbergh is a baseball player, right?

[C]

In seventh and eighth grade at least. And so I've collected many examples of this over time.

[A]

I wonder if you're going to name mine. I've got one in mind.

[C]

Well, there are nuances to this. So in 2016, Jordan Bastian of MLB.com he did a post called the Tito Translator. So invoking Terry Francona again. And one of these Tito ism was about being a baseball player. He's a baseball player. And Jordan Bastian wrote, well, aren't they all baseball players? Every person who wears a Cleveland uniform is indeed a baseball player. But some of those baseball players are baseball players. Just the other day, Frank Kona used this one to describe Mike Napoli. Tito even took it to a new level. He's a down and dirty baseball player. Oh, what does it mean? It means the player in question has great instincts that he does more reacting than thinking. Thinking. And he does so well when he's out on the field, he'll get his uniform dirty and do whatever it takes to put the team first and his own stats second. Probably because his own stats aren't that great, but that goes unstated. Another go to descriptor for a baseball player is that he's conscientious. Tito used that one for Michael Bourne all the time. Once I asked Frank Kona, when you say he's a baseball player, what do you mean exactly? He replied, you know, he's just a baseball player.

[B]

Player.

[C]

And I nodded. So that's what it. It usually goes like. And I mentioned one of these earlier this season because we were talking about Ildamaro Vargas and this was when Ildamaru Vargas was like the best hitter in baseball and had a.400 batting average or whatever. And Pat Murphy, Brewer's manager, was asked about Ildamar Vargas and he wanted to say something, something kind of complimentary about him. But what do you say? And. And Pat Murphy said he's always been a baseball player. And then he went on to say he's always been a winning player. He's always been a little less tools than his performance is better than his tools. He's playing with a freedom. He's finding the barrel. He knows himself as you mature as a player and get more time, you can find pockets like this. So even when he was riding high, he acknowledged that this is small sample fluke it's a pocket and it will not last. And it didn't, as we subsequently talked about. He then became the worst hitter in baseball after that, but was still a baseball player, I guess. So sometimes it's something to brag about. Sometimes it's used in the context of like in the great 2016 Richard Linklater movie, Everybody wants some. And you know, they're talking about, you can be different kinds of athletes in college. And the Glen Powell character, Walt is talking about how there's kind of a cachet to being a baseball player. Bottom line is this. Her friends are going to ask, what's he like?

[D]

What's he do?

[C]

She's not going to have to say the old, I don't know, he's a, he's a marketing major. That's not going to cut it. He's a baseball player. See, now they got something special to talk about at that level. Maybe it's a mark of distinction. But then once you're actually a big leaguer and it's clear that you are a baseball player, then it's sort of a slap in the face to be a baseball player. Or it says something, something about your character and your effort level, but also says something about your skill level.

[D]

See, because my, my first instinct is I, I coached softball for 13 years, right? And it was rec. Softball wasn't at a high level. And so to me, she's a softball player or they're a softball player. It has like a connotation that I get. It's like you line up a bunch of kids and there are some kids where you say, here's how you go down and you get your glove dirty and like all that stuff. And some kids are just like, hell, hell, yes. This is what I do. I've done it and it worked and I'm gonna do it even harder the next time. Right? Yeah, that's how it is at rec for 10 year olds. And then they weed out because some of them are like, I don't want to get dirty to catch a ball. That's dumb as hell. I am going to draw some really good art. And Right. You know, you peel off and that's the selection bias. By the time you get to Division 1 softball, they're all softball players, man. Like, they're all, they aren't there because, you know, you might get the occasional Jeff King, but in general they're all the people who are like, this rules. I'm going to devote my life to it. And yeah, I'm a softball player.

[B]

It Reminds me of the. The bit in one of Taylor Tomlinson's standup specials where she's describing the challenge of finding a Father's Day card for a dad you have a contentious relationship with and opting for you are a dad. This is a card, this is a day. She'll simply state the. The most neutral facts available to us and hope that suffices.

[A]

I'm not sure that I accept this as a backhanded compliment. I. I think that there is embedded meaning to this phrase. It's clearly understatement and cliche, but in the same way that scouts refer to a guy as a dude or a guy and we're like, yeah, I mean, they all are. You could say that. Right. But we know what it means. Means. We know what a guy means in a scouting context.

[C]

Right.

[A]

And I think that he's a baseball player is like saying he's a comedian's comedian. You know, like, there is, there is that meaning to it. It's not intended to be. I don't have anything else to say about him. It's intended to say something very precise about him, which is that, you know, he's a big. He's based on. He's a baseball player.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So I think that you're right that it can, because it's like, so general and non specific and also like, unfalsifiable, that it becomes something that you can say about players who aren't actually good. Yeah, but I don't think that it always is.

[C]

No.

[A]

About players who aren't good.

[C]

It is intended to be a compliment, but it, it's said selectively. And so it's kind of. Of there's a qualifier which you're usually not referring to a superstar as a baseball player. So it's always. You're trying to say something nice about someone and you really are. You do appreciate and, and admire this quality in them. But you can't just say like, well, he's a star, he's an All Star, he's a Hall of Famer. Like, you're. You got to reach for something else.

[A]

So like, you're saying if we collected all these and then like charted their wars, that it would be like they have an average war of 0.1.

[C]

Right.

[A]

That it's a 0.1 war compliment.

[C]

Yeah. I have a few other other examples. You know, the caliber of player, like just this week, Phillies play by play guy, Scott Fransky called Bryson Stott a baseball player. He's a baseball player. Last year in the alcs, I wasn't able to hear this myself, but someone said that Buck Martinez said that the Blue Jays someone was a ballplayer. There are a lot of them on this team that, okay, there were some good players on the Blue Jays. One of them, though not one of the higher profile ones, was Nathan Lucas. And Blue Jays manager John Schneider called Lucas a baseball player. Less than a month to go. John, what makes Nathan Lucas a good baseball player?

[B]

That.

[D]

That's it.

[C]

He's a baseball player. You know, he's a, he's a good defender. He runs the bases well. He understands situations, understands what he's good at. He knows when to work account. He knows when to, you know, be aggressive. He knows when to take some shots. You know, it's just the biggest compliment I can give a player usually is that he's a baseball player, you know, and I think Nate is, has been that for his whole career. And I think, you know, the world is kind of just seeing that. Last year, Otto Kemp got called a ballplayer or a baseball player multiple times. Rob Thompson called Otto Kemp, he's a baseball player. And I like baseball players because they play the game the right way. Also. Larry Boa said, he works for everything. Nothing's given to him. He does everything well. He's a baseball player. He's a student of the game. He handles himself. Unbelievable. But that's, that's Otto Kemp. That's kind of, you know, quad A type player. Alex Cora last year said that Marcelo Meyer, he's not just a prospect, he's a baseball player. You know, that's, that's a compliment. He was a real prospect. 2024, Rocco Beldelli on Christian Vasquez. He's a very dedicated baseball player and he is a baseball player inside his body. He's not a guy who just plays baseball. He's a baseball player. He loves this stuff. He's never going to stop working and trying to improve himself, et cetera. Dave Roberts called Johnny Delight Luca a baseball player.

[A]

This is very damning. This is very damning.

[C]

Yeah, he's a baseball player. He's that old school, gritty grinder type. He's a good defender. He can play all three outfield spots. Positional versatility is a big thing when it comes to being a baseball player because it's like you can play all these positions. You're, you're playing more than anyone else is. And Joe Madden called David Fletcher a baseball player in 2021. Of course, he's the kind of guy that can get overlooked with today's methods. I would take several more of those. We all would. He's a baseball player. He just does things properly. He plays the game right. He's got great skills. He sees things that other people don't see in advance. We never heard what happened to David Fletcher and, and his possible sports betting activities. I never, never got an update on that. So that's it. And you know, sometimes, like in Space Jam, Michael Jordan is described as a baseball player and describes himself as a baseball player. And then it's kind of dismissive. It's like, oh, yeah, baseball player. Because, you know, he's playing basketball. Then what I'm trying to say is

[B]

we need your help.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

I'm a baseball player now.

[D]

Right.

[B]

And I'm a Shakespearean actor.

[C]

All right, guys, we right back in this game.

[A]

Come on now, let's play some tough defense.

[D]

Why didn't you get this guy?

[C]

He's a baseball player.

[B]

Yeah, Ball's a baseball player.

[D]

Looks like a basketball player to me. Yeah, me too.

[C]

There was another good one I found in Baseball America from 2019, and this was USA Baseball GM Eric Campbell on Clayton Andrews, the 5 foot 6 pitcher who later got a little bit of big league time. But I think the word the scouts use is he's a baseball player. Whether he's a pitcher or a left fielder, he's a baseball player. He's a California kid who just loves to play the game. That's the definition of Clayton Andrews baseball player. So, yeah, it helps if you are sort of short of stature. And that's. I found one example from. From 1999, which was Kevin Malone, then the Dodgers GM.

[D]

The sheriff. Yeah.

[C]

On Craig Council, they acquired Craig Council and Kevin Malone said he's a baseball player. And if you look at all the teams beating us, they're loaded with baseball players. Astute. It's.

[D]

That's a real monocle popping out of the eye moment, like by Jovi's. Right, Right.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, it's.

[C]

It's pretty tautological. There are some other. Like in 2022, Brian Snitker called Ronald Auna Jr. A baseball player. And that's unusual because he's, you know, totally tooled up star. But he was being asked about him making some misplays in the outfield. And so he was saying he's a baseball player, as in he's fallible, he's human. He can make mistakes from time to time to time.

[D]

I mean, it just seems like maybe the, the throw and then he's had a couple plays.

[C]

Oh, he's a. He's a baseball player. You want. I don't, I don't expect him to be perfect. I know that. So that was an interesting little wrinkle. So the only way that like a true star can be called a baseball player, I think is either when they did something wrong like that, or if they're a littler guy and they did something small ballish, then you can kind of compliment that on like Dave Roberts last year called Mookie Bets. He's a baseball player. And it was, you know, after he made some heads play. Right. So that happened. Jason Stark referred to Jimmy Rollins in 2008 as a baseball player. There's a connotation that, like, you're not too flashy. It's not all about you. You're a team player like Ryan Sandberg. Okay, probably maybe the best player who was referred to as baseball player, but he referred to himself as a baseball player.

[D]

Can't do that.

[C]

Yeah, you can't. That's like nicknaming yourself, you know? But yeah, it was when he retired in mid-1994 when he'd stopped being a baseball player. Exactly. Right. Yeah. And he said, like, the, the skills that he had, he said, the thing that helped me become the player I was have left me. And so, yeah, he was no longer a baseball player, but he said, I. I've devoted everything all my life to baseball. I haven't had any distractions or anything else on the side. And he just, he was a baseball player and he just wanted to be remembered as a baseball player. And Larry Himes, the Cubs GM at the time, said, there are no Ryan sand billboards. I've never seen a Ryan Sandberg ad. That seems unlikely, right? There had to be. Yeah, but he enjoys playing baseball, not doing peripheral stuff. So he wasn't in it for just the stardom or the money or anything. He was a baseball player and that's how he wanted to be remembered. And so, you know, I found some columns. Mike Royko, the legendary Chicago Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, he had a real hard on for baseball players in the 90s. So he talked about how Sandberg was a true baseball player. He talked about how John Kruk was not an athlete, but was a baseball player. Again, backhanded compliment.

[B]

I agree with that.

[C]

I agree with that. Croc might agree with that too.

[B]

Did you guys happen to be watching the Phillies game when they had one of the Artemis 2 astronauts in the, in the booth with Craig?

[D]

I saw, I saw the details.

[B]

I have just, I have developed over the last Couple of years. Just like a really profound affection for croc, Which I'm not the only one.

[A]

I don't.

[B]

I'm not like, you know, having a take here, but watching him interact with the notion of a human being going to space was. Was really beautiful. It was such a magical. He's like, you guys got beer up there, you know? And then he had clearly asked her. It was Christina Koss had asked her all these questions when they'd had dinner together in the media dining room. And he. He noted that, like, he asked. Asked her, we really. Have we really been up there? And she was like. She was like, yeah, of course. And he was like, you know, what am I. I believe her. What am I going to do? Get my information from podcasts? And I was like, this suggests that not only is John Krug aware of podcasts, he has, like, a developed understanding of some of the shenanigans that. That podcasts get up to in conspiratorial spaces and finds them wanting. And it. It filled my heart. Heart with joy. So that's the story about John Crook.

[A]

Ben, can I give you my. Can I give you my favorite backhanded compliment?

[C]

Sure.

[A]

He does things that don't show up in the box score.

[C]

Yeah, of course.

[A]

Especially with the modern expanded box score, like literally every. So I. I was going to write a post about things that truly don't show up in the box score. And I can only think of one. And it was backing up a throw that didn't get away from the fielder. Yeah, just back. He backed up the throw. The throw was accurate. It was fine. He got caught, but he backed it up that didn't show up in the box. Everything El shows up in the box score.

[C]

And even that is tracked. It's tracked. Yeah, but it's.

[A]

It is hard to get. Even the tracking data that is released does not like. If you try to get the tracking data for the other players in the field of a play that are not the primary actor in the play, you will see that it is very hard to do. And therefore, I consider that not in the box score.

[D]

So would you say a catcher running to first, you know, as a matter of course, that's something that doesn't show up in the box score.

[A]

Are you trying to trick me? That's what I just said.

[D]

No. Did you say the. The catcher. The catching position?

[A]

I mean, he's a fielder backing up a throw.

[C]

Yeah, but like.

[D]

All right, gosh, you know, I just wanted to clarify.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

This is why the podcast was canceled.

[B]

You Know, you know, the only other one, you know, the only other one that occurs to me, Sam, is like, if a guy is the, the final hitter in a half inning and then one of his teammates brings out out his hat to him, you know, because he's like, he doesn't go back to the dugout for it. Somebody brings it out to him and is like, here, you need this for the next, the next half inning.

[C]

I found a reputed Pat Tabler quote, which I couldn't confirm, could be apocryphal. But he's a baseball player. And what do baseball players do? They play baseball.

[B]

So I think it's Christina Coke, not Kass. I think I miss.

[A]

I think I did. I actually googled because I, I thought, oh, Christian. I thought exactly, I thought it was a Christian.

[C]

What happened?

[B]

That is exactly what happened.

[A]

Yeah, well, we are all cost brain.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Honestly, I was already primed to think about Christian cost. And you, you have to know why

[C]

we invoked the Giants. I promised that we wouldn't.

[B]

My brain did a weird little, little cross there. So I, I, before we get any

[C]

emails, you know, just, I. Royo, in that column on Crook, said one of his teammates said, and this was when Crook was on the Padres in 86, I guess he was a rookie. One of his teammates supposedly said, I've never seen anything that looks like, like Croc. I've never seen anything that moves like Croc. I've never seen anything shaped like Crook. So. But he was, he was a baseball

[B]

player so much one time.

[A]

One time recently, a couple weeks ago, Croc somehow, like, they got taught talking about like, high school football or something like that, or maybe high school basketball something. And, you know, his partners, like, asked him like, you know, did he play or like, was he good or something? He's like, yeah, I mean, I was the best player in the, the state. And like, it does remind you that even John Kruck was not only the best baseball player in the state.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But even John Crook was the best athlete in all of West Virginia. Like, he was the best at everything. Yeah, that's what these guys are, all of them.

[C]

And so if you get described as a baseball player as an amateur as a kid, that's probably not a great sign for you. And, and it wasn't for me, I guess. And the last example I'll share is I found an example from 1970 about a player named Kevin Willoughby on the New London, Connecticut Whalers high school baseball team. And I don't know what happened or became of Kevin Willoughby, but it it starts. Coach Gil Varhas describes Kevin Willoughby the best. He's a baseball player. And although that may sound like an oversimplification, it really is not, because that's just what Willoughby is, a complete ballplayer. But even that, if you're adding an adjective complete or he's a great baseball player, you know, that's different. You're dressing it up.

[D]

And you could throw adjectives in there like wet, that really change the meaning. Yeah.

[C]

Then know who you're talking about. It's Brandon Marsh. But, you know, anyway, so Sandberg. I'm not anything besides a baseball player, but that's not usually that great a thing. Although they're all big leaguers, they all deserve some acclaim for that. All right, back to Sam.

[A]

So I mentioned this in a post very recently. This might be another example of dropping an article idea that I just don't know how to get into in an article. But there were something like. Something like 80 pitchers, qualif qualifying pitchers last year, whatever, wherever you set the threshold. Like 8, 80, I think, was the threshold. 80 qualifying pitchers last year, 79 of them threw between 61 and 68% strikes. Technically 60.9% and 68% strikes. So call it 61. So basically every pitcher 68, 61 to 68% strikes. And you know, for the life of me, I just don't think that there's anything else in sports that has such a narrow band of performance, which is weird to me because we all think of some of these pitchers as being very wild and some of them as having great control, and yet they all are in this tiny band between 61 and 68%. And so I'm. I don't know how to phrase that, but the fact that everybody. Pitcher basically throws the same percentage of strikes is my thing. I think it's crazy, right? Like, that's crazy, isn't it? And so somebody. I mean, look, it would be hard to stay in the majors if you threw 40% strikes. So I'm not saying that there should be the full, you know, human distribution of strike rates among these pitchers. They're selected for that, but they're selected for many things. Things. And yet you see much, it seems to me, much wider variance in skill level for swinging strike rate or velocity or, you know, ground ball rate. If you look at hitters, they have way wider distribution as far as, like, contact rate, chase rate, exit vlo. Like there's a million different ways to be good at baseball. Good enough to make the majors in every other way, but somehow if you throw fewer than 61% of strikes, you are not allowed. And if you throw more than 68, you just don't exist. You're the greatest player of all time.

[C]

Can't be a baseball player. Yeah.

[A]

And so I think that's crazy and delightful. I think that the fact that Jose Soriano and Brian Wu throw like five different pitches over the course of a hundred, like, that's like the wildest guy I've ever seen and the most accurate guy I've ever seen. And it's like one out of 20 pitches differs.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

That's nuts.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Couldn't even tell. I mean, unless you watched a big sample. Right. You wouldn't even know who was the wild guy, who was the effectively wild guy, who was the control artist.

[D]

You're pretty clearly the effectively wild guy.

[C]

Yeah. Does. Does that speak to the importance of the strike zone in baseball? It's like the, the Bill James quote, you know, the. The strike zone is the very heart of a baseball game. An inch in the strike zone means far more than 10 yards in the outfield. I don't know how he calculated that, but it's like you can't. There just isn't much of a allowable range there, really, because it's just so crucial. It's so central to the way the game has evolved. I don't know. But.

[A]

Yeah, I don't know either. And I'm, I'm cheating somewhat because you're a lot less likely to qualify as a pitcher if you're walking guys.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And like, not just that, that you're like less likely to make the majors if you're wild, but like, there are pitchers that are under 61, you know, 61% from last year, but they only threw, you know, a smaller number of innings and pitchers doing, you know, like relievers and Tyler Chatwood. Tyler Chatwood is always my go to guy who somehow stayed in the majors a long time despite seemingly throwing very few strikes. I don't even know if that's accurate. I just like bashing Tyler Chatwood for some reason. Totally inexplicable. I don't know, Ben. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what it, what it speaks to. I haven't decided how to write this yet. I don't know what it speaks to.

[D]

I haven't. I purposely didn't pick something that was baseball reference related today because I, I tend to do that every time. But one of the things I love about baseball is this simple conversation has me on the nick Nugenbauer page right now. It just popped in my head and I was, what, what was that guy all about? And yeah, Nick Newman.

[C]

Yeah, that's a good one. If anyone has examples of similar phenomena in sports where there's that narrow a range at the highest level of something, the skill spread is that small, please write in. I would be interested. Okay. Grant, I.

[D]

And this kind of dovetails in with the idea of he's a baseball player. Because I love. One of my favorite baseball things that I've watched covered over the last couple decades is coming in this hellish season four season, the Giants. And it is such an oasis. And it's Luis Arise, his defensive improvement, which is it passes the eyeball test. He's doing. He's doing stuff out there where it's like, wow, that is a hot shot defensive second baseman. And I love the idea that that's still possible. And I don't know who the other. Because first off, you have to be a baseball player to be able to, to commit to fielding like this. And if you're a baseball player, I feel like you can work with Ron Washington and get coached up. But just the idea that out there some, somewhere is, you know, a pitcher that's been told to focus on getting that velocity up or getting this, you know, spin rate, getting this snap on a slide or something like that, that you can put all these efforts into it and then still on the side, there might be something that's untouched that you can rediscover later in your career and go, you know what? I'm going to work on this now. And then that takes you in a whole nother direction. It's the skill it takes to do what Luis Arise did as a hitter seems to be like, it would be the. You would need to put all of your efforts into being that good as a hitter. And it's a reminder that it's, it's the whole, he's a baseball player. I'll just say he's a baseball player. But the idea that that's still available to some of these baseball players is fascinating to me.

[C]

Yes. Oh, I completely co signed. Can I jump the line, Meg? Because I have a very related one and it'll dovetail with this.

[B]

Yes, sure.

[C]

So, yeah, I'm, I'm fascinated by this too, because this was one of the things that made me want to write a book about player development because there was that whole wave of Rich Hill and Justin Turner and J.D. martinez, and it was just like these guys were already big leaguers. They already had reached the pinnacle. And then it turned out they had another gear and all they had to do was whatever, start swinging up or learn a new pitch or throw one already good pitch way more or something. And it seems so simple. So I wanted to take today players just deciding to change something and it's and suddenly they're a completely different player. And it's more about the mindset of it specifically. So not even picking up a pitch or I worked with Ron Washington or something where there's like an actual physical change. They're doing something different. But just like someone told them, hey, why not think about it this way? And then they did that and, and then they were a completely different player from that point forward. And the most recent example of this is Kbert Ruiz, Nationals catcher this year or for many years, but this year he is actually good. And Spencer Nussbaum wrote a piece about this for the Athletic and it's about how they unlocked Kor Ruiz after years of stagnating or going backward, if anything. And it turned out they just, they had a meeting with him. And the Nationals have these player plan meetings where they kind of talk about what could improve and how you could do something better. And for Kor Ruiz, the idea was basically just that, like, he should try swinging harder. Like, have you thought about that? And that worked, seemingly. So they had this meeting for him in early May and they just, they told him so. Here, Ruiz's diligence in pregame work work, quoting from Grant's athletic colleague here, they said, put him on the precipice of his breakout. If he embraced a couple of modern philosophies, swinging harder and pulling the ball in the air, he could become a productive player at the geriatric by national standards, age of 27. In his first at bat after the meeting, Ruiz pulled a double into right field. In his next at bat, he did it again. His next time up, he swung harder than he had in almost any at bat this season. He pulled a home run inside the foul pole and ran Mike Field. His OPS jumped 127 points in one day. Over the next three weeks, it spiked another 130 points and sits at 763. Since the meeting, Ruiz has been the most productive offensive catcher in baseball. And this was published May 28, just looking at the previous three weeks or so, but it's still true. He is still the most productive catcher in baseball since that meeting in early May. And all they had to do, really, and there's a little more to it, obviously, they worked with him in the cage and they showed him some data and stuff. But basically, here it is after the meeting. Over the weeks that followed the meeting, the Nationals had him spend time in the cage, generating more power from his backside, taking more swings before the game. Okay, these are more mechanical changes. He was doing underweight and overweight bats and stuff like that to work on, on swing speed and bat speed. But it says when Ruiz went up to the plate, he said the Nets wanted him to think of two words, do damage. So how did this all work out before the meeting, swing speed from the left side, 66.7 miles per hour. After 68 point before the meeting. Percentage of batted ball events pulled in the air, 25%. 70th in MLB after 58.3%, the highest rate in MLB. Before the meeting, one extra base hit every 11 at bats. After one extra base hit every 4.1 at bats. And all they had to do was tell him, you're doing great. Just do damage. Just swing harder, swing hard. And he did. And Sam, you might remember because we talked about it at the time of. I think Zach Kart had a similar epiphany back in 2015. He had been one of the worst hitters in baseball in the proceeding. Come on, you might not remember. I do.

[A]

I do not.

[C]

Well, it's implacable on my minds, at least. I'll never forget the Zach Kart transformation.

[B]

Full snort on that one.

[C]

How could you forget our our pal C. Trent Rosecrans, who now works for the Athletic but was then with the Cincinnati Inquirer? He wrote a piece and it led with this. This spring training, this is 2015. Reds hall of Fame shortstop Barry Larin had a simple question for the team's current shortstop, Zack Kart. Hey, you ever thought about telling yourself to just crush the inside part of the ball? Not guide it, but wherever that ball is, just crush the inside part of it. For some reason, that struck a chord with Kart, who was hopping between two minor league games to get extra at bats. He thought about crushing the inside of the baseball in that very next at bat, and he crushed the ball off the wall for a double. On a change up, I was like, oh. Kart remembered before Sunday's game with the Cardinals. It was kind of eye opening. The simpler you can make everything. And if it's that one thought that keeps me clear, it's definitely going to help. So this was our mistake with the Stompers when we had a whole scouting board of information and all we should have said was have you thought about crushing the ball? Have you thought about doing damage? And maybe Kart was especially suggestible because then he had like a re breakout in 2017, and Trent wrote about that, and apparently it was because he watched a YouTube video, and the YouTube video told him to think of his swing like putting pizza in an oven, and you want to put the pizza in level. And so he did that with his swing, but, you know, it showed up in the stats. He was very bad, and then he got very good. And seemingly, because it was like Barry Larkin was like, have you thought about being good at baseball, basically instead of being bad?

[D]

I feel like there's, there's those stories, but the famous ones are like Nolan Ryan saying, hey, Randy Johnson, want you to move over on the mound a little bit? You know, and then it's like, now he's hall of Famer or, yeah, yeah. Hey, how do you throw that cutter there, Mariano? And then now I'm Roy Halliday, you know, but you have to wonder those stories where it takes someone from a quad a player to someone who gets a pension, and I bet you there's a lot of those things that we're not privy to.

[C]

Yeah, when there's a physical manifestation of it, it's a little more understandable to me. But when it's more like, have you thought about swinging hard? It just seems like, how did you, how did that not occur to you? And the, the third example and final example, you must remember the supposed. The Buster Only anecdote about Connor Wong and Aroldis Chapman last year, where according to Buster only in spring training, Connor Wong was catching, Chapman was using pitchcom, and called for an inside fastball. I'm quoting only here. That's when the light bulb went off over Chapman's head. He told Wong and Jason Veritech that he never thought about spotting his fastball. He would just throw it to home plate. All of a sudden, his entire perspective has changed. And supposedly that was why Chapman had halved his walk rate, because the pitchcom called for an inside fastball. He's like, wait, I can't.

[A]

Ben, you know better than to use that example. We all know. Yeah, that that was.

[C]

Yeah, I, I don't know that I buy that. And, and I don't know that I buy any of these, frankly.

[A]

Oh, I do. Oh, my gosh, I do. I, I, this feels so true to how I experience life. That like that really, the habits of mind that we have, and in particular, the sort of cognitive distortions that we have that give us you know, that put limitations on us or that give us stress or anxiety or that, you know, suppress what we think we can do are often overcome by very simple awareness of those cognitive distortions or very simple mantras that counter them. And it's the hard thing is keeping them fresh and accessible, like the mantras or the fixed Is the hard thing is keeping them fresh and accessible so that you don't go back to the self defeating habits of mind that you've been relying on for your entire life. But I feel like I've had so many of the best days or weeks of my life have been due to like, three words of advice. So I really do relate to this. I. I feel like this sounds true to me.

[C]

Okay. All right, well, do damage, Sam. See how that changes things. Okay.

[B]

I think, though, that there's like an alternate version of this where the advice given is something that's completely, like, unachievable. And those are. Those are admittedly funnier to me. I'm blanking on which picture it was now, and I have a text out to clarify, so if I can find out before the episode closes, I'll let everyone know. But there was a minor leaguer who was having a hard time, and he was on a team with Granky, so that narrows it at least somewhat, I guess. But he was having a really hard time. He had just gotten called up, it wasn't going well, and he asked Granky for advice. And Granky's like, yeah, throw a bullpen for me. I'll watch. And he's like, oh, great. And Granky was like, I think you should throw like five miles an hour harder. And he was like, okay, well, okay, thanks. Like, yeah, yeah. He's like, have you thought about throwing harder? You know, like, I think it would really solve things for you.

[C]

Yeah. And probably there are a bunch of examples of counterproductive advice that screwed someone up and that doesn't get written about. But. But yeah, it's almost miraculous to me the idea that, oh, this could just unlock something. Eureka moment. All right, sorry, Mick, go ahead.

[B]

That's okay. Mine is transaction names that double as, like a human experience or interaction or feeling. So, like a player being tendered a contract or sadly non tendered, you know, a player being granted his release, like, that's some heavy stuff. Or. Or even just like a team has recalled a player. Like, oh, yeah, that guy, he's down there. We should get that guy up. We have a problem right now. He might be able to solve it for us.

[C]

Yeah, you've all gotten the last of mileage out of those when it comes to like, Roto Wire updates or. Yeah, that you quote tweet drawing trade interest.

[D]

Oh, I love that.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Like. And so I, I just. I think the tendered non tendered one is. Is the most evocative for me. Granted. His release is certainly evocative, although kind of tragic. But there, you know, there we have. We've all talked about, in fact, on this very podcast, like the. The long sort of tradition of, you know, the way that GMs are talking to each other about a potential trade sounding somewhat salacious. And this feels like another version of that. And I just. Language is fun. And this is one of the examples.

[A]

I'm a big fan of that and those. And I wonder whether there is. Whether our brain is like somehow drawing some metaphor between these things in our own experience or if it's just that, like, all words have several meanings and we can pick the one that most tickles us.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But yeah, I think those are great that. That you mentioned. Those are all great ones. I love granted his release.

[B]

I mean, it's just.

[A]

It's. It's so euphemistic.

[B]

Yeah, it's wonderful.

[D]

What about. What about the. The. The harsh reality of designated for assignment? He could be going anywhere. You could be assigned to Madagascar.

[A]

Like, opposite of a. An assignment too, you know?

[B]

Right, Exactly.

[D]

Let's figure out what to do with you later.

[B]

Yeah, that guy could. Could be at a gas station or on vacation.

[C]

Outrighted is just very. Oh, harsh.

[A]

So outrighted is an interesting one to me because you know that like how sometimes you'll be like, oh, Tommy. Oh, yeah, he's an outright monster.

[C]

Right?

[A]

Like, you know that. That way of using it. So every time I see Giants outright Wil. Wilin Ramos, I'm like, that's right. They are outright Wilson.

[C]

Yeah, they're bad. Yeah, they're bad. They.

[A]

They deserve to go to aaa.

[D]

All of them.

[A]

They're outright Wilkins.

[D]

They're Wilkin all over the place, man.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Yep. Yeah, it's like, yeah, the Can't Hardly Wait scene where they're talking about Preston and they're trying to describe Preston and it's just. I mean, he's Preston. What can you say? That's. That reminds me of the baseball player.

[A]

You know, we're back to this Ben guys moved on.

[C]

All right. We're gonna. We're gonna grant. Grant his. His release soon, so we should do our. Our final round. Sam, what's your closer?

[A]

I like that baseball. You know, we all Live in silos for the most part. You know, I very rarely travel more than, you know, 20 miles from where I live. You know, most of my friends are, like, the same age as me and pretty similar. And I like this. It's like, sort of, like, subtle, but baseball exposes you to a world of different people from different backgrounds with different behaviors that you just would never be exposed to. And I like that. And you. Sometimes. It also exposes you to a certain amount of, like, evil that frankly, or, like, rottenness that you frankly wouldn't. And the best example of this is the people that named their twins Tyler and Taylor. I just can't believe that those people exist, that there are people in this world who had identical twins and named them Tyler and Taylor.

[D]

I think you said this on the last round table. Like, tragedy. No, but I'm with you.

[C]

It's.

[D]

It's you. You've got imp and skimp, and it's like.

[B]

No, we. We were on our. Not our last episode, but the episode before that, contemplating, or at least I was like, so Molly Jolly, you know?

[A]

Uhhuh. Yeah.

[B]

I. I wasn't sure if. If Jolly was Molly's maiden name or if she had taken her husband's name. And we came to find out that it is her maiden married name. She. And. And. But the point I was making is, like, the calculus. You know, there are all kinds of reasons that women take their husband's names, and that calculus is. Is one set of decisions, and then there. There would be the parental decision of being like, this is our precious baby girl Molly, and our last name is Jolly.

[C]

We are.

[B]

We. We are in. We are creating the Molly Jolly combination, which is delightful, but also, like, kind of inherently ridiculous. Right? And that. Than a. A grown woman being like. No, I'm. I'm. I am aware of the. The hilarity of Molly Jolly, and I accept Molly Jolly. I. I am Molly Jolly. You know, her. Her. Her husband's name is Bert. They're Molly and Bert Jolly.

[C]

Bert. Yeah.

[B]

Jolly. Doesn't that just. She's married to a Muppet, you know, like, that's a Muppet man's name. Like, she's.

[A]

This is a Muppet man, you know, Jolly is such. Jolly is such a delightful last name. I could see why. Like. Like, I don't think she would have necessarily gone with Molly Folly. Like, if. But like Jolly, when you get the chance to marry into the jollies.

[B]

Yeah, we think it was Zach Lee. Zach Lee was the pitcher who Granky

[C]

told to throw harder, I guess he didn't do it.

[B]

He didn't do it.

[C]

So good advice.

[B]

It might have been a spring. It was probably a spring training situation, not a close up to the major.

[A]

And then drawing. I believe I was workshopping Zackly, where Zackly is short for. Exactly. I believe I was workshopping a Zachly Tweet for like 10 years. Yeah, he just retired.

[D]

Yeah. I had a, I had an obsession with all baseball players who are adverbs. So it's like, oh, yeah, yeah. You know, you cliffly walk out to the mound and you know, so you've

[C]

reminded me of the former owners of Twins.com who blocked the Twins and MLB from buying Twins.com for years. And they were named Durland and Darvin Miller. No relation. Darvin, Sam. Yeah.

[B]

Durand, Durlin and Darvin. Yeah. I don't know. Like, I, I understand the, the myriad ways in which this could be problematic and it's a bad idea and we can't do it. And it's a free society and people have to be able to make their own choices. But sometimes I do wonder if, like, parents should have to submit some of these names to like a review board.

[D]

You know, you are so going to get so many emails from Derlins.

[B]

Derlin's a fun find name. It's the combination of the names. It's the. To Sam's point, it's the. It's the. Hey, you're already gonna. People are gonna comment on your existence in particular ways because you're twins. Right. Like, I don't know if these kids were twins, but I just assume they were twins.

[C]

Yes, they were. But that's, that's right. Twins.com. yeah.

[B]

Right, right. And so it's like, you know, like you're just already gonna have a lot of conversation about you. Because despite the fact that there are a lot of twins in the world, they're still relatively rare on like a per birth basis. And so why complicate it? Give them wildly different names, differentiate them. They're already not distinct enough from each other. Cuz they're twins. Cuz they're twins.

[D]

All right. Another. The Simpsons. I mean, Sherry and Terry. Right on the Simpsons.

[C]

It's.

[D]

They nailed it. It's. They're annoying and she should feel bad about.

[A]

Taylor and Tyler are hard to keep straight.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Anyway, like, if you call, like every phone call, you'd have to clarify. Clarify.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Did you say Taylor or Tyler?

[B]

Yes.

[C]

You'd have to have them demonstrate their delivery on the mountain.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

To tell them apart.

[B]

Do you think that Parents always get the identity of their twins, right? What's the error rate on that, do you think?

[A]

What do you mean? Like, in what? Like they know.

[B]

Different. Differentiating.

[C]

Yeah, I think they know.

[B]

Do you think every time, though, do you think every single time one of.

[A]

I do.

[B]

One of the guys who got drafted into, who got taken in the NHL draft this year, and I'm not remembering their names and it doesn't matter. He's a twin and his brother was also in the draft and they asked his parents, the. The higher drafted player who I think went in the first round, they asked his parents, like, did they ever play a trick on you? And I so appreciated his dad's answer because he was like, no. And then he's like, but I guess I wouldn't know. And I was like, that is. He's like, maybe they did, you know? And I just was like. I was like, I feel like this is an honest man.

[C]

It's like that, that conspiracy theory that Ozzie Canseco and Jose Canseco switch places in a game and no one knows who.

[B]

Yeah, I would try it. I would try it at least once if I was.

[C]

They didn't even look that similar though, right?

[B]

Yeah, but not them. But if you were true twins and you were on the. And of course the, The Rogers, it's a real editorial nightmare, man. Whenever we have to write about one of them, I have to do. I make myself do like an extra two rounds of fact checking that we have. Have the right guy in the piece.

[A]

I think humans, it turns out, are like super perceptive at differentiating gates of. Of each other. So I actually think that if you knew the people, you would be able to tell just by the way they walk and carry themselves. It would. Even if they dressed up the same, I. I don't think it would scan as correct, but I would bet that we have something like. I would bet something like, like 30 to 70% rate of accidentally switching them in infancy without realizing it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like it's at some point and then they just live out their entire lives with their identity. I think that probably happens, right?

[B]

Because they're just like, they're, you know, when they're in the like blobby baby phase, they're. They're not able to differentiate themselves as reliably.

[C]

Go, Grant.

[D]

Okay, I'll. I'll keep this quick, but I have to ask. We mentioned Phil Nero earlier. Does anyone. Anyone? If I say Joe Nicro's batting career, does anyone understand what I'm getting at?

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, he had what he had.

[D]

Don't blow it.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

I don't know.

[D]

Okay, good. Okay. So Joe Nicro, a bad hitter for his career. He is. Let's see, he pitched for 22 years, and when it comes to being a hitter, he had his OPS plus was 8. That is a.156 batting average.188 on baseball percentage.188 slugging percentage. A bad hitter. However, when you're going through Joe Nico's line, May 29, 1976, he does have one home run. And so he comes up, and it's Joe Niekro, and it's.

[C]

He's behind.

[D]

The Astros are behind two to one. He comes up with one out in the top of the seventh, cranks a home run to tie the game. Eventually, the Astros end up winning. Joe Nicro is the winning pitcher, the losing pitcher. Who gave up that home run. Phil Negro, which I just freaking love that. That this guy can just suck. And his brother's a Hall of Famer, but that hall of Famer, if he screws up with one knuckleball, even the crappiest guy can hit a ball out when it's the floatiest knuckleball ever. And it's just. It. It brings in knuckleballs, it brings in quirkiness, it brings in siblings. Like, that moment is just moi. Chef's kiss.

[C]

That's a good one. Yeah, that's. It's almost like the Gaylord Perry home run coinciding with the moon landing kind of story.

[D]

No. Everyone kind of agrees that that's true, though.

[C]

Not true.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Like a lot of good stories.

[D]

Yeah. Apocryphal. But don't, like.

[B]

I just don't tell Crook that.

[D]

And I like the idea that his brother was trying to get him out. It's a one run game. He's up there, he's trying to throw his best knuckleball and his dang little brother. Just like a little brother.

[A]

Yeah. And you had to figure the knuckleball is. It's the great equalizer. Right. Like, the major league quality pitch that you're most like a good hitter against is the knuckleball. Like, obviously, these guys are much stronger than us still, so if they connect with the knuckleball, it goes a long way, whereas we're weak. And if we connect, it would not go that far. So there's a difference. But how different would the contact rate really be between big leaguers? Because they don't really have any control over it. They can't explain how they hit it or why they hit one and they don't hit another. It's just kind of random.

[D]

And also, like, why they're able to hit a baseball so regularly. The. The steps that it takes to do that might be counterproductive.

[A]

That's true.

[D]

Specifically for a knuckleball.

[A]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[D]

I just love the idea. Knuckle. That was honestly one of my backup choices in case one got taken. Was it just that we. All of us talking. We could make the majors with one weird trick, is we could just throw a great knuckle ball for strikes. We could be in the majors, and I just love that idea.

[C]

We'd be baseball players. Yeah. All right, Meg, your final pick.

[B]

I. I like it when the play ball kid jokes at the beginning of the game. So like. So. So baseball's such a funny thing because in the rule book, rule 5, playing the game starts with rule 501, starting the game in parentheses, play ball. And then it proceeds to say that at the time set for beginning the game, the players of the home team shall take their defensive positions. The first batter of the visiting team shall take his position in the batter's box. The umpire in chief shall call play, and the game shall start. But most teams interpret this rule as a little kid should stand at a microphone and yell, play ball. Or at least some teams do, including the Arizona Diamond Backs, who are the. The big league team I see in person the most often now. And most of the time, the kid for the. The biggest potential, like goof that a kid will. Will commit in this moment is forgetting that a microphone is its own amplification device and that they are hooked into the stadium sound system. And so they needn't scream as loud as they possibly can because we're gonna. We're gonna hear you, buddy. We're gonna hear you, little friend. Um, but sometimes, especially if it's like a really little kid, like a really small kid, they get shy and they. And they go play ball.

[D]

And they.

[B]

They talk so quiet, or they. They have to take like a couple of seconds and then they muster up the courage to say what they're meant to say, and then the action commences. And I just think it's one of the cutest things, things you'll ever see in your human life. And I say that as a non parent, maybe this is activating the anti. Part of my brain. But when that little kid is just like, play ball. You're just like, everyone's waiting on you. And. And they could get going without that because the, the rule is about the umpire saying play and, and commencing. And they're not gonna wait an hour for this kid to muster up the gumption to say play ball in front of a crowded ballpark. But it's, it's really cute because it's like, what did you think you were here to do, little friend? You know, And I just love that. So that's my, that's my final pick.

[D]

I just think that there's like something internal inside everyone, that if that kid says what's really on his mind, like he steps up the microphone, says, dracula has never been to the moon. Then like, he goes viral. And like, so he, there's like a part of you that knows that this is important and you have to say, yes, play ball and get out.

[B]

It's a more direct and magnified version of when the camera, like if you're at a game and the, and the, you know, it's between innings or what have you. And they're like spanning the crowd to be like, wave at the. Everybody waves. They're so excited. They have no plan after that, right? Like, everyone wants to engage with the camera and be seen. And then they have the moment of. I am engaged in human recognition and it is terrifying. I have no other plan after that. This. And there are the people who flex and they're the people who dance and, and I don't understand the confidence of those people. Like, those people sleep better at night than I do and have fewer concerns. And I envy them because if I'm waving, I'm like, this is all I got is the waving. The. All there is is the waving right now. So I love the ballpark. It's a moment of. They, they at the, at the. If you go early enough to Diamondbacks games, like, let's say you're getting there really early because you're worried that they'll give away all the Corbin, Carol, Bob, El heads and you have to get one of each, you know, because they, they're doing the, the, the home runs and the stolen bases for the 30, 30 season. You're like, oh, I gotta get there really, really early. And so then you see all the pregame ephemera and they have a, a scoreboard thing where they will find a person on their phone and then they will, they will set a time timer and see how long they remain oblivious to the fact that they are on the jumbotron on their phone, which is a kind of high stakes thing because like, what if they're on their phone for a long time? Because they're learning of like a medical emergency or something. But people are always. It feels like it could be mean spirited, but the couple of times I've seen it, everyone wants the person to remain oblivious for as long as possible. And it has a. A very like, kind of friendly energy to it. And then when they finally look up and see, without exception, that person always looks bashful and then waves and everyone cheers for them. And you know, like, being oblivious on your phone can feel antisocial, but this feels communal in a way that kind of flips it in a nice way. So anyway, I've talked for a long time, only some of which is about my pick. But that's what we're here to do, isn't it?

[C]

Yeah, that's a good one. MLB just tried to trademark play ball and the patent office said nope. Yeah, keep it pure, keep it wholesome. That's a good one. All right, well, I'll keep the. The last pick short and sweet. I won't. Fernando Rodney it. I will try to save this one, close it out without incident, but I am taking MLB game day 3D glitches.

[A]

Yes. Oh, yeah.

[C]

I just. I have a small but growing collection which I just emailed. Nailed you all if you care to watch while I talk, which I will link to on the show page as well. And this is the advanced technology that was introduced or at least fully rolled out in 2024. And as we noted, everything baseball players do on the field is tracked. And so this is their pose tracking. It's when they're running around, they're all transmogrified into stick figures and wireframe figures. And it initially wasn't clear, clear to me what purpose this was serving or why we needed this because we have the video. But often we don't have the video of every play on every angle. And so you can kind of pause it and you can look from here or there somewhere where a camera wasn't, and you sort of strip it down to the basics, the bare essentials. And so sometimes it actually provides some insight into how a play went down. But sometimes it goes terribly, horribly wrong. And the players are presumably possessed and they leave this earthly plane and sometimes they ascend into the sky and sometimes they descend and they sink into the earth. And it, it seems like it usually goes wrong. Well, when it's something out of the normal. I don't even know which one you're watching the fog.

[D]

I. I was hoping, because Brian Grubb wrote a newsletter about, about all this and one of the Links that you sent in the email is to one of his Blue sky posts. It just has catchers emerging from the earth. It has batters disappearing into the earth.

[C]

Yeah, it's like they're taking. We entered an email once about what if the mound just rose from the bottom of the earth subterranean or like our mole man hypothetical where you have a mole player who's burrowing under the bases. It's kind of like that. They just rise from subterranean layer and then they disappear whence they came. And it's, it's just the best. It usually happens also at some celebratory moment. Often it's like a walk off and so the system just gets overloaded and Stack is like, what are all these people doing? I don't, I lost track of where they are and who they are and they're, you know, fist bumping and they're butt padding and their chest bumping or whatever. They're making all kinds of contact and so they like blend into each other or one person just, just like is a marionette and starts. There's some say satanic puppeteer who's just pulling them into the sky and contorting them and just horrible rictus of suffering. And I. Sometimes they just disappear like Jesse Orozco's glove or Prince's guitar or something and. And you just don't know where they went. So sometimes it's like a walk off, sometimes it's between innings, like maybe, I don't know, the system isn't. Isn't ready for that. It's like some interstitial interlude and, and the most recent example, heartbreaking. It was posted on Blue sky and deleted and now I can't find it anymore. It was June 2nd, I think it was in the Reds game, but somehow the catcher and the batter switched places so that the batter was wearing the catcher's gear and then they both sank into the earth at the end. So I just love that this happens because it's like this is such sci fi advanced technology. It would have totally blown our minds, you know, a decade ago really like we would have been wowed or I guess a decade ago. Stackhouse was new but you know, before that we would never have thought that they could ever do something like this or that we would ever have this wealth of information. And as advanced as it is, it still regularly Fs up and just its only job is to portray what happened on the field and do a one to one mirroring of the. The play. And it usually does, but sometimes it definitely doesn't I love that stuff.

[D]

It's like. It's like the. On Blue Sky Roto World, their head shots of players is, like, extremely pixelated. And they.

[B]

Why are they like that?

[D]

Well, they say it's a thing they grab and like, they. They're apologizing. Like, don't apologize. Every time I see it, it lifts my day up. Like, literally, like, I just see this ultra blurry headshot of a baseball player and it lifts my day up. I don't know why, but it does. And, like, I unironically love that glitch. Never fix that.

[C]

Yeah. The unintentional comedy value of this is just off the charts. I love it. Okay, I think we did it. Good thing Jeff spurned us, or we would have been here all day.

[B]

All day.

[C]

I'm gonna get off this recording and invite him to episode 3000 immediately so that he has three years to up. Yep, I think I have something that that day, but by then he'll probably be pobo, so maybe he'll have an excuse. But anyway, I'm glad that you guys could join us. Happy birthday to the usa. Whatever its faults, without it, we wouldn't have baseball. So that's a point in its favor. Got something going for it.

[B]

Yes, that's true.

[C]

And the Giants may not be worth the price of admission, but Grant always is, so read him at the Athletic, as is pebble hunting. Also always worth the price, though. I get it for free, but nonetheless, I read every word. Subscribe to Sam's Substack.

[D]

You don't.

[A]

Yeah, just to be clear, though, you. Yeah, you. You get it for free, but you have the paid level. You would not be satisfied with the free level.

[C]

No, if you hadn't given me a comp, I would have paid. So you caught your cost yourself a sub.

[D]

I had my wallet out and then you gave me a comp. So, like, I could probably just mail you a check for the difference over the months, but at this point, it's gotten gotten up a little bit. So, like, I'm not sending you a check for a couple hundred dollars.

[C]

Like, all right, I'm glad this podcast is still going. What an institution. Hopefully we'll all be back for 3,000 or sooner than that. We don't have to wait three years between conversations, but happy birthday to us, the country writ large. Happy early birthday to Sam and also to effectively wild. Happy 2500. Thanks to everyone who has helped us get to this point. Point. Thank you, Sam and Grant, thank you for having me.

[A]

You're welcome.

[C]

All right, that will do it for our sister Millennial maybe episode Hard to tell. Anniversary numbers typically don't go that high and our episode count goes that high and hopefully we'll go a good deal higher. Thanks in large part to you, our listeners, our supporters, particularly our Patreon supporters. If you've been here since episode one or episode 24 now, maybe this is even your first effectively wild welcome aboard. Regardless, we thank you for listening and if you'd like to help ensure that we can keep making this show for the foreseeable future, please do consider supporting us 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, Howard Justin Zacek, Esteban Rivera as Devils Run, and Tyler Das. Thanks to all of you, Patreon perks include access to a third unrestricted episode every week, plus a monthly bonus episode, exclusive live streams, membership in our Discord group for patrons only, personalized messages, prioritized email answers, shoutouts at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, fan graphs, memberships and more. Check out all the [e-mail] 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 podcastsangrafts.com youm can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music and other podcast platforms. That helps perpetuate the podcast too. You can join our Facebook [e-mail] group effectivelywild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at R Effectivelywild and you can check the show notes in the podcast, posted fan graphs or Patreon or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the show, stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. That'll do it for today and for this week and for our first 2500 episodes. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you next week.

[D]

Effectively Wild it's war with a smile. Effectively Wild Wild. It's the good stuff. It's baseball nerd stuff. We hope you'll stick around for a while. Effectively wild effectively wild effectively wild effectively while.