Effectively Wild Episode 2512: The Superhero Baseball Draft

Summary

Podcast Summary: Effectively Wild Episode 2512 – The Superhero Baseball Draft

Release Date: August 1, 2026
Hosts: Ben Lindbergh (The Ringer Next), (Meg Rowley is absent)
Guests: David Harper (Off Panel, Sketched) and Tiffany Babb (Comics Courier, Interesting Jobs, The Fan Files)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Effectively Wild is a playful and insightful crossover between baseball analysis and comic book fandom, featuring two award-winning comic journalists: David Harper and Tiffany Babb. With Meg Rowley out for a medical procedure, Ben Lindbergh invites David and Tiffany to draft teams of superheroes as if building a baseball roster. Before the draft, the trio dives into current baseball events, particularly the strange saga of Harrison Bader’s repeat scooter accidents, and shares their own baseball and comics origin stories. The episode is rich in both baseball banter and comics lore, setting up the draft with a tour of the long-standing connection between superheroes and America’s pastime.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Host and Guest Introductions (00:16–03:02)

• Ben Lindbergh: Introduces the episode and explains Meg’s absence. Jokes about Meg undergoing her "rookie colonoscopy" (00:34).
• David Harper: Mariners fan, newly minted Eisner winner for Sketched, past collaboration with Ben on superhero sports pieces, brings humor about the humility Mariners fans endure (02:02).
• Tiffany Babb: Eisner judge, editor of Comics Courier, Angels fan, founder of The Fan Files, experience of keeping humble as an Angels fan (02:52).

2. Setting the Theme: Superhero Baseball Draft (03:35–04:56)

• Justifies the whimsical topic amidst looming trade deadlines; admits this would typically be offseason fodder, but circumstances provided the window.
• "We're kind of trapped by the schedule right now because we're recording Friday afternoon, a few days before the deadline..." (04:05 – Ben Lindbergh)

3. Baseball Banter: Weird Injuries and the Harrison Bader Saga (05:01–15:53)

Bader’s Scooter Woes

• Ben, Tiffany & David extensively discuss Harrison Bader’s "history of getting into accidents with his scooter"—citing not just the recent injury which sidelined him for the Giants, but a college accident at Florida as well.
• "When you know of two alcohol-induced scooter accidents, are we to think that those were the only times...?" (11:28 – Meg Rowley)
• Details include Bader colliding with a fire truck’s wheel (possibly), and suggestions that teams should contractually ban him from scooter use.
• "Get a driver, man." (10:08 – David Harper)

Broader Baseball Injury Lore

• Recalls classic odd injuries (Jeff Kent’s “washing car” incident, Madison Bumgarner’s motorcycle crash).
• Touches on the annual weird injury around the trade deadline (suitcase mishap, glass tables).
• Ben’s story about childhood hero Glenn Allen Hill’s arachnophobia–induced injury (14:33).

4. Baseball and Comics: Origin Stories (16:19–30:33)

David Harper (Baseball)

• Grew up in Alaska, became a Mariners fan via Ken Griffey Jr., passion for sports cards (16:42).
• Played baseball to age 16, attended classic Alaska summer games.

Tiffany Babb (Baseball)

• Recent fan, inspired by friend Hassan Ottman Alhau and Shohei Ohtani’s greatness (18:27).
• Embraces the quirks of being a new, deeply involved Angels fan amid team turnover and emotional investment.
• "Now Shohei Ohtani is playing for the other LA team...and you are still an Angels fan. He has abandoned (you)." (19:34 – Ben Lindbergh)

Both discuss the emotional toll of team rebuilding and the unique experience of losing "special boys" (Trout/Ohtani) to transitions (24:11–24:33).

Comics Origin Stories

• David: Obsessed with Transformers and sports/trading cards, fell into comics via "Marvel Universe" trading cards and statistical comparisons (26:49).
  • "Transformers introduced me to comics. I needed a new Transformer delivery device, and I discovered comics." (26:54 – David Harper)
• Tiffany: Grew up with Archie/Calvin & Hobbes; delved into superhero comics in college, obsessive approach to analyzing comics (panel sizes, scenes), comparative life-changing impact (29:19).

5. The Interplay of Baseball and Comics Fandom (28:04–31:16)

• Ben and guests compare the passion for baseball stats and superhero power levels.
  • "You sort of want to approach it almost sabermetrically..." (28:49 – Ben Lindbergh)
• Discussion about how childhood interests can evolve into meaningful adult passions—or, in Tiffany's case, be adopted and become central later in life.
  • "I always am impressed and heartened when I meet and talk to people who developed really life defining interests as adults." (31:00 – Meg Rowley)

6. Baseball in Comics: Canonical Examples and Recommendations (31:43–36:44)

Key Comics Recommendations

• David:

  • West Coast Avengers Annual #2: Avengers baseball game at the Astrodome, a classic in superhero/sports crossover (32:24).
  • X-Men’s tradition of playing baseball, reflecting the humanizing Marvel ethos.
  • Marvel vs. DC publisher softball games (comic creators as players).

• Tiffany:

  • Spider-Man and Mary Jane’s staged wedding at Shea Stadium with Stan Lee officiating (34:17).
  • Gollum’s Mighty Swing by James Sturm—historical fiction about a Jewish barnstorming team.
  • Peanuts: Foundational baseball strips; Joe Schlabotnik as Charlie Brown’s hero (35:49).

• Ben:

  • Childhood obsession with Peanuts, personal anecdote about meeting Charles Schulz, and deep attachment to Peanuts baseball lore (36:01–36:44).

7. Transition to the Superhero Baseball Draft and Wrap-up (37:10–37:44)

• The group sets up for the titular draft of superhero baseball teams, closing with a playful callback to the episode’s crossover theme and a sign-off noting the episode’s Patreon-exclusive format beyond this point.

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On receiving the podcast invite:
  "You know, when you're called up... you gotta take the opportunity and make of it what you can." (03:23 – Tiffany Babb)
• On weird baseball injuries:
  "Every trade deadline has one weird injury… I just feel like every trade deadline we're like, is this person trying to not be traded by injuring themselves in an extremely unusual way?" (15:52 – David Harper)
• On crossing over fandoms:
  "Optimus Prime and Ken Griffey Jr – the two coolest people I'd ever seen in my entire life up until that point, and only one of them played baseball." (16:47 – David Harper)
• On the emotional side of baseball fandom:
  "With our rough years, there was always the promise of like, at least we have our special boys… now you're also removing the special boys." (24:19–24:32 – Tiffany Babb)
• On superhero power scaling and baseball stats:
  "...the lifelong thing of no matter what, Batman wins, he'll find a way. I will tell you. Prelude to my baseball team. Their Savant pages are all red. It's beautiful." (29:03 – David Harper)
• On the universality of Peanuts baseball:
  "Charlie Brown is a Giants fan and he also has a favorite baseball player named Joe Schlabotnik … the kind of player that you think Charlie Brown would be obsessed with." (35:49 – Tiffany Babb)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:16–03:02 – Introduction of hosts and guests
• 03:35–04:56 – X-Men Baseball, Justifying the Draft
• 05:01–15:53 – Harrison Bader’s scooter misadventures, odd injury stories
• 16:19–20:18 – Guests’ baseball origin stories, fandom dynamics
• 20:18–24:33 – Baseball emotional connections, team rebuilding
• 26:49–30:33 – Comics origin stories and statistical obsession
• 31:43–36:44 – Baseball in comics, canonical stories, and personal favorites
• 37:10–37:44 – Transition to superhero baseball draft

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Episode Tone & Style

• Conversational and witty, blending dry humor with deep fandom knowledge.
• Self-aware geekiness: direct comparisons between baseball sabermetrics and superhero power levels.
• Rich with personal anecdotes and tributes to both the emotional weight and the absurdities of fandom, whether in MLB or the Marvel/DC universes.
• Easy rapport among participants, with in-jokes about the perpetual pain of being a Mariners or Angels fan and the quirks of comic book history.

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For New Listeners

This episode is an ideal listen for die-hard baseball fans who also love comics, as well as anyone curious about the unexpectedly deep connections between the two worlds. You'll learn as much about the joys (and agonies) of fandom as you will about player stats or superheroes, and you’ll come away with plenty of comic recommendations that will amuse any sports fan.

Note: The titular Superhero Baseball Draft follows in the Patreon-only version. For the draft itself—including which heroes "make the roster"—consider subscribing.

Transcript

[David Harper]

Effectively wild. Effectively Wild. Effectively wild.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Hello and welcome to episode 2512 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters.

[Meg Rowley]

I am Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer Next, not joined today by Meg R.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Of Fan Graphs, who, as mentioned last time, is currently enjoying, or I hope

[Meg Rowley]

she's enjoying, her first ever colonoscopy, her rookie colonoscopy.

[Ben Lindbergh]

My boss Bill Simmons recently woke up from a colonoscopy to the news of a Jalen Brown trade. So who knows what trades Meg might wake up to? I can say with some confidence that had she been here, the topic of

[Meg Rowley]

today's pod, for better or worse, would have been different.

[Ben Lindbergh]

However, joining me in Megstead are two comic book experts, experts who happen to be baseball lovers and who teamed up on a panel at San Diego Comic

[Meg Rowley]

Con just last week, which unbeknownst to

[Ben Lindbergh]

them, was a mere prelude to this podcast appearance.

[Meg Rowley]

It was a prequel to this pod.

[Ben Lindbergh]

First, the newly Eisner Award winning David Harper, host of Off Panel, a comics interview podcast, and the founder and proprietor of Sketched, the subscription based comic site

[Meg Rowley]

which just won the aforementioned Eisner for

[Ben Lindbergh]

best comics related periodical slash journalism. And as evidence of that, has featured posts such as the hall of Fame of superhero comics being weird at sports. Oh yeah, comics. Seriously, the Avengers Go Moneyball, which featured

[Meg Rowley]

input from none other than Ben Lindbergh. And most relevant to today's episode, a Justice League of their own fantasy drafting the best comic baseball teams possible.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He's also a Mariners fan, so we've maintained our typical quota of Mariners fans on an effectively wild episode.

[Meg Rowley]

David, welcome and congrats on bringing home the hardware.

[David Harper]

Thank you, I appreciate it. Thankfully, the Mariners are keeping me humble because they're just continuously depressing me, as Meg, I'm sure knows plenty about.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Speaking of fans whose teams have kept them humble, also with us is one of this year's Eisner Award judges.

[Meg Rowley]

I hope there's no conflict of interest there.

[Tiffany Babb]

No conflict of interest.

[Meg Rowley]

Good.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Tiffany Babb is the editor of the comics criticism journal the Comics Courier, as well as the forthcoming monthly comic zine,

[Meg Rowley]

the Comic Staple, which David will also be contributing to. She is the host of the podcast

[Ben Lindbergh]

Interesting Jobs, which has featured multiple baseball themed episodes just this month, and the founder of the baseball website the Fan

[Meg Rowley]

files@the fanfiles.com and as I just alluded to, unfortunately for her, she is an Angels fan, so we would have an

[Ben Lindbergh]

AL west rivalry brewing happening here if

[Meg Rowley]

the Angels ever posed the threats to the other teams. In that division. Tiffany, welcome.

[Tiffany Babb]

Thank you. It's pretty rough right now. Not gonna lie.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's been rough for a while.

[Tiffany Babb]

Yeah, that is true.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, I'm so happy to have you both. How do you two feel about having

[Meg Rowley]

gotten the call due to a colonoscopy? Is that. Does that take away at all from the great honor, the flattering offer to appear unaffected?

[Tiffany Babb]

You know, when you're called up, that's. That's. You gotta take the opportunity and you gotta make. Make of it what you can.

[David Harper]

That's how you know you're an Angels fan when you're. You're getting the much faster call up than you would expect.

[Meg Rowley]

True. Yep.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Can't control the circumstances. Just got to make the most of them. And today, we will be drafting teams of superheroes.

[Meg Rowley]

And you two have the expertise to do that.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And one could question the timing, I suppose. Why are we drafting teams of superheroes

[Meg Rowley]

to play baseball on the eve of the trade deadline?

[Ben Lindbergh]

But you know what?

[Meg Rowley]

That's actually why we're doing this in a way. This.

[Ben Lindbergh]

This would obviously be good off season

[Meg Rowley]

fodder and maybe we'll do a sequel sometime.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But we're kind of trapped by the schedule right now because we're recording Friday afternoon, a few days before the deadline, and there are only so many moves that have been made. Tiffany, I'm sure you could talk about Logan Ohap and Chase Silseth at great lengths, but I'm.

[Meg Rowley]

I'm not sure how compelling that would be for other people and not at all.

[Tiffany Babb]

Yeah, nobody cares. Except for us.

[David Harper]

We're not here to talk about A.J. minter going to the Twins.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's what. Yeah, there's only so Minter material that I have, actually. So whatever trade speculation we could engage in would have a short shelf life.

[Meg Rowley]

So rather than say some stuff that

[Ben Lindbergh]

would be instantly outdated, we'll save all the trade takes for next time when Meg has recovered and returned, and we'll

[Meg Rowley]

do an in depth breakdown of all the trades that are made or not made. But hopefully this will be a fun diversion.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And I do have one brief bit of baseball banter before we talk.

[Meg Rowley]

Superheroes and also your baseball backgrounds.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Have you been following the saga of

[Meg Rowley]

Harrison Bader and his scooter accident?

[Tiffany Babb]

Oh, yeah. Electric scooters are dangerous.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes. Not. Not accident, singular. But Harrison Bader now has a history

[Meg Rowley]

of getting into accidents with his scooter.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And I guess this. This kind of, you know, people are talking about Kyle Shanahan's mysterious crash. The 49ers coach so if you're talking

[Meg Rowley]

about vehicular accidents involving Bay Area sports teams, that's pro, taking up most of

[Ben Lindbergh]

the oxygen these days. But I am far more fascinated by

[Meg Rowley]

Bader because he is now a repeat offender.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And the Giants have a history also of vehicle accidents. There was Madison Bumgarner and his motorcycle ride and injury.

[Meg Rowley]

There was of course the notorious Jeff

[Ben Lindbergh]

Kent incident where he claimed to have hurt himself washing his car.

[David Harper]

Oh yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

And then it turned out actually he

[Ben Lindbergh]

was riding his motorcycle and. And now he's a Hall of Famer. So let that be a lesson to all of us, I guess.

[Meg Rowley]

Setbacks don't stand in our way forever when you have the errors committee to bail you out.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But Harrison Bader now was already injured, right? So he signed a two year deal

[Meg Rowley]

prior to this season with the Giants

[Ben Lindbergh]

and he's played 30 games for them

[Meg Rowley]

and has not played particularly well in those 30 games.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And it seems like he will not be playing in any more games for

[Meg Rowley]

them this season because he was already dealing with, with lower body ailments and foot problems. He has plantar fasciitis in his foot, which he's been dealing with the left

[Ben Lindbergh]

foot since late May and that was already jeopardizing his season. But then it comes out that around 2 in the morning on Sunday, he

[Meg Rowley]

aggravated this injury and complicated the recovery

[Ben Lindbergh]

because he got into an accident on his scooter. Sounds like his faculties were somewhat impaired, as one might imagine, I guess.

[Meg Rowley]

Although you could be stone cold sober

[Ben Lindbergh]

and still hurt yourself on a scooter, right? Oh yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

Oh yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That could be death traps. Scooters not as big in New York.

[Meg Rowley]

I mean, my daughter has one. I have one. A non motorized kind, but the kind that people just leave lying around the

[Ben Lindbergh]

street as they do in LA for whatever reason. Not quite as prevalent here. But those things, you know, you can run over people, the batteries sometimes explodes, all sorts of things can go wrong.

[Meg Rowley]

But when there's drinking involved, evidently Bader was doing some bar hopping and he was seen leaving Balboa Cafe.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And then there are police reports. I mean, the media has been all over this, right? Tony Vitello, who always has some sort of word salad quote, he said obviously he's not better than he was prior

[Meg Rowley]

to that, which is one way to put it, I guess. And Vitello, San Francisco manager, conceded that

[Ben Lindbergh]

it would delay the recovery process for him. And this just, I think is entered now in the annals of weird baseball injuries.

[Meg Rowley]

Right? He was taken to a hospital. It was not a life threatening injury, fortunately, but he had to have an MRI to understand the severity of the

[Ben Lindbergh]

injuries sustained from the scooter acc. That is a quote from the San Francisco Giants. This happened the day before he was due to fly to Indianapolis to meet with a foot and ankle specialist.

[Tiffany Babb]

That's wild.

[David Harper]

They have a lot more to go over now, apparently.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Oh, yeah, it's gonna be a longer consultation and more tests. So Giants fans are not pleased with Harrison Bader because of his performance or lack thereof.

[Meg Rowley]

And this just adds injury to insults, I suppose.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So I don't have any mechanized motorized

[Meg Rowley]

scooter experience personally, but stay away from those things, I guess. Especially if you have a foot injury,

[Ben Lindbergh]

a preexisting foot injury, and you are

[Meg Rowley]

a professional athlete and you have been imbibing.

[Tiffany Babb]

Do we know if the fire truck was moving or was it parked?

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's.

[Meg Rowley]

That's an excellent question. That does affect things to.

[Ben Lindbergh]

To some extent, because, yes, according to a witness, his scooter crashed into the

[Meg Rowley]

back of a San Francisco Fire department fire engine, the wheel of which then rolled over his foot.

[David Harper]

The fire engine's wheel or the scooter's wheel? Because that makes a huge difference.

[Tiffany Babb]

I read it as the scooter's wheel, but now. Now I'm like, oh, my gosh.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The way that that's phrased, it would imply that it was the fire engine

[Meg Rowley]

truck that rolled over his foot. But hopefully that's not the case.

[David Harper]

But this consultation is getting longer in Indianapolis. It's going to be. It's going to be a big one.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. I take it I'm interpreting this as

[Meg Rowley]

the fire engine ran over his foot, but that's it. I did, too.

[Tiffany Babb]

I feel would be, I mean, way more severe than people are talking about it.

[David Harper]

Did you see that he also has a history of actually crashing into parked cars, so park vehicles. So, like, this is not a first timer, Harrison.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's the thing.

[David Harper]

Stop it. Get it. Get a driver, man.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes, because there was a 2014 incident.

[Meg Rowley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And that's what came out in the wake of this.

[David Harper]

Or.

[Meg Rowley]

I mean, this was already public knowledge, but people dredged it up.

[Ben Lindbergh]

When he was in college and he was playing for the University of Florida, he was suspended for being involved in a scooter accident early on a Sunday morning.

[Tiffany Babb]

Oh, my God.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So it was also a scooter history repeating itself. Yes. I mean, I guess if you're going

[Meg Rowley]

to get hurt on a scooter, maybe the wee hours of Sunday morning makes

[Ben Lindbergh]

some sense because you may have been drinking at that time. According to a Gainesville Police Department incident report. Bader was southbound on Southwest 10th street when he hit a curb on his scooter and then struck a parked Ford F150 pickup truck.

[David Harper]

Truck.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Bader was found on the ground next to his scooter and was unresponsive. According to the report, there was a

[Meg Rowley]

strong odor of alcohol. Bader was transferred to Shand's hospital with

[Ben Lindbergh]

again, non life threatening injuries.

[Tiffany Babb]

So that's serious though, like if he wasn't like waking up.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. I mean, I'm making light of this. It's possible that he actually does have some sort of problem here, which I

[Meg Rowley]

wouldn't want to make light of. We know of these two isolated incidents, but when you know of two alcohol

[Ben Lindbergh]

induced scooter accidents, are we to think that those were the only times that he was riding a scooter? I guess irresponsibly after perhaps having drunk too much?

[Meg Rowley]

Perhaps not. Right. So I don't know what's going on with Harrison Bader and drinking and scooters, but I think he should be a bit more careful.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He should save his scooter riding for

[Meg Rowley]

after his athletic career.

[Tiffany Babb]

Yeah. And maybe call an Uber that too.

[David Harper]

I know that like, that teams have historically built into contracts like you can't play like pickup basketball or something like that. Could his next team build into their contract that you cannot ride a scooter?

[Meg Rowley]

I would. It would be prudent.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right.

[Meg Rowley]

I wouldn't be shocked if there is some language in his current contract that probably forbid that.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right. Writing any kind of. I guess these reports don't actually specify that it was a motorized scooter this time, but I assume so.

[Meg Rowley]

Right. But I would think that there might be contract language about doing that and especially doing it after having been drinking.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right. I mean, that's why Kent made up the story about washing his car. Right.

[Meg Rowley]

Because you're not really allowed to ride

[Ben Lindbergh]

motorcycles in some cases or Baumgarner and his dirt bike or whatever.

[Meg Rowley]

But.

[David Harper]

Right.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

When this has happened to you multiple times. I mean, maybe one time in college you could write it off as youthful indiscretions and I learned my lesson and

[Meg Rowley]

I won't do it again.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But he did the exact same thing again with the same kind of vehicle

[Meg Rowley]

at exactly the same time of the week. Which suggests to me that he has not done enough reflection.

[David Harper]

I do like the idea that it was a non motorized scooter. So he was just rolling around on like a razor scooter. What are you doing?

[Tiffany Babb]

Harrison Bader that he had to carry with him bar to bar. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Like my daughter's little pink with the streamers hanging from the handlebars and a little bell that you can go ding, ding. Yeah. It probably wasn't one of those anyway. I don't know what you can get charged with. I assume can you get like a DUI dwi?

[Meg Rowley]

I think it's motorized.

[Tiffany Babb]

It must be serious because it is motorized. Yeah, right.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah. I don't know if there's like a scooting while under the influence or something, but probably it would be contained within that same category. Anyway, we wish Harrison Bader well and

[Ben Lindbergh]

also anyone who is in his vicinity,

[Meg Rowley]

I guess, when he is.

[Tiffany Babb]

Any parked cars.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah. So please be careful.

[David Harper]

I feel like every trade deadline has one weird injury. Like was Jonathan Lacroix breaking his hand with a suitcase when he was looking for a sock or whatever. Was that around the trade deadline? It was somewhere in the vicinity. And I just feel like every trade deadline we're like, is this person trying to not be traded by injuring themselves in an extremely unusual way? I don't think that's the case here. But still, we're always good for one.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Tiffany Babb]

You're also more likely to get injured if you're like, under high stress. So could be that.

[David Harper]

And on a scooter.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes. It reminds me of.

[Meg Rowley]

We did a stat blast recently about Glenn Allen Hill and how he had a tendency to, after he was traded, really ramp up his offensive performance for his new team.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And I can sort of sympathize with

[Meg Rowley]

him because he had a notorious injury where, according to him, at least, he

[Ben Lindbergh]

had a bad dream about a spider

[Meg Rowley]

because he had a touch of arachnophobia. And so he was having a bad dream, a nightmare about a spider. And. And he woke up and he was still kind of groggy and he jumped

[Ben Lindbergh]

out of bed and ran into another room and crashed through a glass table.

[David Harper]

Oh, my gosh.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And suffered several bruises and had to go on the injured list. And.

[Meg Rowley]

And I recently suffered a glass table induced injury prior to podcasting as well, where the. The top of the glass table fell onto my head close to my eye. And I have just now recovered from

[Ben Lindbergh]

that, where you can really no longer see a mark from that. So it was glass table induced or

[Meg Rowley]

just because it was user error to some extent, I will admit. Nonetheless, that's scary though.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Everyone stay safe out there.

[Meg Rowley]

And you're all on hug watch and could get traded at any time. So try to preserve life and limb, at least until then. Or there's always the Curtis Mead, case of get traded and immediately have your wrist fractured when you're making your debut for your new team. But look, if it's in a game, that can happen to anyone. If it's on a scooter early on a Sunday morning when you've been drinking, that probably shouldn't happen happen to anyone.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay, so comics baseball. Why are we doing this now? Well, one, because it'll be fun. Also, because, look, Spider Man. Brand new day is out, right? And dominating the box office. Potentially poised to set some records. So much for superhero fatigue. Doesn't apply to Spider Man. The spider stands are all crowding the

[Meg Rowley]

box office this weekend, as we will be, perhaps.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And also, look, There's X Men 97

[Meg Rowley]

Season 2 going on where we're hot on the heels of Comic Con. It just feels appropriate.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So I want to hear about your

[Meg Rowley]

comics backgrounds, but also your baseball backgrounds, because what would a baseball comics crossover episode be without some origin stories? So, David, how did you get into baseball?

[David Harper]

Well, I was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, and it is regionally the closest to the Seattle Mariners. I was obsessed with sports cards. I was obsessed with. With baseball from the very beginning. But I was 5 years old when Ken Griffey Jr. Started playing, and that'll do it. It was basically Optimus prime and Ken Griffey Jr. The two coolest people I'd ever seen in my entire life up until that point, and only one of them played baseball. So I was a huge fan of the Seattle Mariners from that point on. But, yeah, I mean, I was. I was ride or die. I was also, like, back then, it was a little bit easier to spread to other teams, too. I loved the Mariners, but those Braves teams back then, I was obsessed with.

[Tiffany Babb]

With.

[David Harper]

And so, yeah, I also played. I played up until I was about 16 years old. And I was, I would say, very good for an Alaska pitcher that, you know, never went anywhere with it. But that's only. That's only so good. I was never considering going pro by any means. But, yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Did you ever play or see the Midnight sun game in Fairbanks?

[David Harper]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

I've always wanted to do that because that would be perfect for me and my sleep schedule or. Or lack of sleep schedule, and I would enjoy. It's a good spectator experience.

[David Harper]

Oh, yeah. And summer league ball in Alaska is actually shockingly good. We have an amazing history of players that came through here. I mean, like Mark McGuire, Aaron Judge. I think Randy Johnson was up here at one point. There's been a ton of really Great players who come up here during the summer because Alaska during the summer is really amazing. Just don't come when it's winter, which is basically the other nine months of the year.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I have been there. It was lovely.

[Meg Rowley]

But. But did not get to go to the Midnight sun game. Maybe we will draft some midnight Suns on this episode. We will see. Tiffany, how did you get into baseball?

[Tiffany Babb]

Just a few years ago, my friend who is in comics, a letterer named Hassan Ottman Alhau, who just won the Eisner for best lettering this year. He is really into American sports. He's English. He's really into American sports. We often play this game where we're on Google Maps and we're like, what's near you? Because we have no idea what the other's geography is. And he's just like, you're really close to Angel Stadium. And he's just like, you should go see guy. Shohei Ohtani and I had watched baseball as a kid. Like, my dad had brought me to stadiums and stuff, to Angel Stadium, to daughter Stadium. He sold dodder dogs, actually, when he was in high school, I think. And I had always found it extraordinarily boring. I was like, you can go to the bathroom and shop and come back and like, nothing has happened yet.

[Ben Lindbergh]

This was pre pitch clock.

[Tiffany Babb]

Yeah, pre pitch clock. And so I went to go see that Shohei Ohtani because I. I love trying new things. And I was like, why not go to a baseball game? Seems pretty cheap. And I went and I was like, wow, this guy's pretty cool. I went to see him pitch and started reading more about Shohotani, started learning more about baseball. And then all of a sudden, like, baseball is a really big part of my life.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And now Shohei Ohtani is playing for

[Meg Rowley]

the other LA team, the one that's actually in la and you are still an Angels fan. He has.

[Tiffany Babb]

That is true.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He has abandoned curse.

[David Harper]

She's been cursed.

[Tiffany Babb]

I'm now feeling. Cause this is kind of. I mean, even with the. We were talking about the Logan Ohapi Chase Ilseth thing, like, I'm experiencing the feeling of the team that I came in on is just slowly disappearing for the first time.

[David Harper]

In this case, it might not be a totally bad thing though, right?

[Tiffany Babb]

Yes, it's a good thing for the long term. But like, in the moment, it is very weird and odd to just be like, oh, wow, okay, that just changed overnight. And now, like, you know, I was at the stadium last week and now when I go this week or next week, I'm like, okay, it's different.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Tiffany Babb]

And so that's, that's, that's a weird feeling to have. And also kind of one of the interesting experiences of coming at it. As a new fan who's very involved. It's just like I'm having a lot of these first time experiences every year.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah. And I guess you get sort of spoiled when you start with Shohei Ohtani. Like is it.

[Tiffany Babb]

That is true?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Is it hard to have the historical perspective to understand?

[Meg Rowley]

Wow, this guy is singular. We haven't seen anything like this. Or do you just sort of absorb that from the starter?

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's, that's part of the pitch, I

[Meg Rowley]

guess because I took my daughter last week. When you were at Comic Con, I was taking my daughter to Citi Field to see Shohei Ohtani in hopes that that would hook her on baseball.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And he is often comped two superheroes. I mean he is often described as sort of a real life superhero.

[Meg Rowley]

I don't know whether that made it a more natural fit for you that

[Ben Lindbergh]

you could port one interest to the other.

[Tiffany Babb]

It is interesting I think, like, because the way I approached getting into baseball was reading like I just read a ton of books, any baseball book I could get my hands on and like most of those are like out of print. And like I think picking up little bits of history from here and there from like the dead ball era, you do kind of have a sense of like the place in history just because you're reading about different times. I feel like if I was only watching contemporary baseball, it would be harder to place.

[Meg Rowley]

What are your wish lists for the deadline here?

[Ben Lindbergh]

I guess in David's case it would be players you want the Mariners to acquire. And in the Angels case for Tiffany,

[Meg Rowley]

it might be players that you are willing to part with.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Is there anything on, on your wish

[Meg Rowley]

list, David, that you need Jerry Depot

[Ben Lindbergh]

to acquire at some point the next

[David Harper]

few days, one way or another, he's going to acquire something. Whether or not I like that is going to be an entirely different story. I mean we need someone to. I, you can tell I'm a ultra baseball fan because I'm referring to the Mariners as we, we. We really need somebody who can hit a baseball that is thrown by a left handed pitcher. That would be a really nice start, I have to admit. Like, I'm not saying that I want to replace Cal Raleigh because that would be insane, but at the same time I'm just like, I'd really like him to stop hitting 163 I think the, the best deadline acquisition the Mariners can make is a fully functional Cal Raleigh. And I don't know if that's coming, but yeah, they really need a right handed bat. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure every team in Major League Baseball would like a right handed bat and so the cost is going to be really high. I keep seeing that they're going to trade Emerson Hancock or Luis Castillo. I would be surprised if they can find a way to get rid of Castillo. But Emerson Hancock, I'm like, we know we're going to send someone out. Who are we going to get in for him? I, I would really like to have an idea as to who that is. But my, my big things that I would like to see is I'd like somebody who can move the needle on offense and then I would like to see Kate Anderson pitch for the Mariners. Those are my big two things, really.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And Tiffany. Are you hoping that John Moselak can

[Meg Rowley]

convince Artie Moreno to rip the Band Aid off? Do you want to see Detmers, Soriano, Adele, even Neto? Whom are you willing to part with or even eager to?

[Tiffany Babb]

I don't want to see any of it, but I mean, no one enjoys teardown, right. Like, it's a painful, horrible thing. But like, I also understand that, like, something's got to change. Right. Like, I am very attached to these guys. I'm very attached to Neto. But we have hit the point where we are so bad and only getting worse. You've got to pull the Band Aid off. But I feel very emotional about it. I feel very much like I'm a bad. Like, I'm just, I'm going along for the ride and I'm trying not to open my eyes because until it's all over and then I'll kind of readjust to what we have. Like, it's going to be brutal. Right. If. If we're going along the direction that they say we're going to be going, like, it's going to be a rough couple years. But at the end of the day, that that is what you need to do.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. It's easier to have a couple rough

[Meg Rowley]

years when you have some hope.

[Tiffany Babb]

That is true.

[Ben Lindbergh]

There are better years on the other end of those rough years.

[Tiffany Babb]

But it is hard because, like, with our rough years, there was always the promise of like, at least we have our special boys.

[Meg Rowley]

Yes. Right. At least there's Ohtani. At least there's Trout.

[Tiffany Babb]

And now you're also removing the special boys.

[Meg Rowley]

Yes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Which is.

[Tiffany Babb]

It's hard.

[David Harper]

I have to say. I mean, I hope to. I mean I wouldn't be surprised if Depoto and Mozelik are talking because Joe Adele wouldn't be a terrible. He is a right handed bat.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He.

[David Harper]

I don't know. Have your people talk to my people. Tiffany.

[Tiffany Babb]

He's had a cr. I was there at that game where he. Jose Kenseco, he also robbed three Mariners

[David Harper]

home runs in the same game that we lost by one, which was the

[Ben Lindbergh]

duality of Joe Odell.

[Tiffany Babb]

He did the first, I think it was the first in history, full count, hit by pitch, walk off.

[David Harper]

He's a record setting individual that, that Joe Odell just this season. Ben, can I give you a quick aside about Tiffany's background? So I feel like you would appreciate this. Tiffany does a lot of moderation of panels at comic conventions and one time she did one for Star the Clone wars. And afterwards she got to meet Angel's legend, David Eckstein.

[Meg Rowley]

Ah, of course, Ashley.

[David Harper]

Yes, that's right.

[Meg Rowley]

Star wars legend. Yeah.

[David Harper]

That was actually how I found out that Ahsoka Tano is married to a former major league baseball player. Because she told me and I was like, why is he there? Oh my God. Last name is next time.

[Tiffany Babb]

It was very exciting.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I'd feel more starstruck, I think, meeting

[Meg Rowley]

Ahsoka than meeting David Eckstein.

[David Harper]

Me too, me too.

[Tiffany Babb]

That's so interesting. I'm backwards because I meet a lot of people in things, but I don't meet a lot of baseball players.

[David Harper]

She was a person who actually presented during the Eisner Awards and the idea that she could hand me an Eisner Award that I won for a category was ripped straight from my dream journal. I was like, I'm winning an award that Ahsoka Tano is handing me. Oh my God.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That is very special. And your comics origin story. So I, I got into comics to some extent around the time I got

[Meg Rowley]

into baseball, I guess via the same vector, which was card collecting. So I had a binder of baseball cards or binders and a binder of superhero cards and cool sets and you'd put them together and you'd have the

[Ben Lindbergh]

whole team and that was great. And the death of Superman was sort of formative for me in that era as well.

[Meg Rowley]

And I got more into baseball ultimately than comics, but always retained some affection for them. This was a core interest for you two. So David, you said you were very into Ken Griffey Jr. And Optimus Prime.

[David Harper]

That's right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Was your interest in comics kind of running in parallel with your Interest in sports.

[David Harper]

Transformers introduced me to comics. I needed a new Transformer delivery device, and I discovered comics, and I got a whole bunch of Transformers comics, and I fell in love with the medium. And I was, you know, same thing. I was really into trading cards, sports cards, and I found the Marvel Universe trading cards, and that was, like, massive for me because you. You put.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I'm.

[David Harper]

I'm a top 10% user of fan graphs. I love statistics. And looking at the power ratings on the back of the cards and getting an understanding of, like, Holy crap, like, Clo or Dagger from Cloak and Dagger has somehow won 73% of her fights. How is this possible? Turns out it was actually totally made up, but I. I just absolutely loved it. And, like, when you combine that with, like, the X Men, the Animated Series coming out a couple years later, it was game over, basically. That just created a lifelong fan. Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

I remember one of my mentors in the baseball business, Stephen Goldman at Baseball Prospectus, he wrote a piece years ago about how his interest in baseball stats

[Ben Lindbergh]

and also comics was tickled by.

[Meg Rowley]

I. I think it was in 1981. There was Amazing Spider man annual number 15.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And it had a little tidbit in there where it sort of gave a hierarchy of power levels for heroes and

[Meg Rowley]

sort of rated their power. And, you know, this was kind of new and novel at the time. And he was so intrigued by this. And he was. This was a BP piece from 2011, and he was saying, well, what if we had the same sort of thing for baseball? And we kind of do now, I guess. I mean, we have the baseball savant percentiles, right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

In addition to 20 to 80 scouting scale and all of those things. And something about that. It's still frustrating to this day sometimes when you have the exhausting kind of

[Meg Rowley]

tired power level debates, right. When hero X fights hero Y, and you think, well, wait, why didn't this guy beat that guy? And how is this consistent and all of that?

[Ben Lindbergh]

You sort of want to approach it almost sabermetrically to say, you know, who would triumph in this battle. But.

[Meg Rowley]

But it's.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's a little bit squishy and flexible when it comes to comics because you win some, you lose some.

[David Harper]

Especially when there's, like, the lifelong thing of no matter what Batman wins, it's just. He'll find a way. I will tell you. Prelude to my baseball team. Their savant pages are all red. It's beautiful.

[Meg Rowley]

And Tiffany, how did you get into comics, like, baseball?

[Tiffany Babb]

I got into comics kind of late. Well, I'd grown Up reading, like Calvin and hobbes, Archie, that sort of thing. But I didn't get into superhero comics until college. And I had a friend who was really getting into superhero comics, and this was during Marvel now. And she handed me Hawkeye by Matt fraction and David. Aha. And I was just like, okay, this is like, this is going to be my life for a little bit. And I read nothing but comics for like the next four or five years. And I talked about nothing but comics, and I just read all I could about it. And I was recently doing a spring cleaning and I found this old notebook that I had where I had pretty much written down, like I'd taken a comic book, a floppy comic, a monthly comic book, and I'd measured the size of each panel with a ruler and kind of counted out how many panels per page and how many kind of like scene beats were in each page. I have no memory of doing this, but I was very obsessive, like at school. I was in college. So I was just like, okay, every term paper from now on, I'm writing about. I mean, find a way to write about. About comics. And I just, I made it happen. And then slowly but surely, like, it became again like baseball, a huge part of my life.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's great because sometimes I worry that

[Meg Rowley]

all of my interests and passions were developed and frozen when I was about 10.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And so just all the things I

[Meg Rowley]

liked then I still like, except that they're my job now.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And I try to cultivate new interests and remain curious about the world. But I do have these kind of

[Meg Rowley]

core nerdy passions that have stayed with me. And I always am impressed and heartened

[Ben Lindbergh]

when I meet and talk to people

[Meg Rowley]

who developed really life defining interests as adults.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I think that's great. That suggests that we could all be a day away, a brand new day away from developing some. Some new interests that will change the course of our lives. So that's exciting. You're living proof.

[Tiffany Babb]

It is exciting.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Let's get to drafting with one more

[Meg Rowley]

bit of prelude, which is, you know, this is going to be hypothet. Obviously we engage in a lot of hypotheticals here at Effectively wild. And we have entertained questions about superheroes and baseball before and also many superpowers

[Ben Lindbergh]

for actual baseball players.

[Meg Rowley]

And how different would baseball be if players could do this or could do that? So this is right up our alley.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But we're not entirely in the realm of hypothetical here.

[Meg Rowley]

I mean, we are because we're talking about fictional characters, even though they're real to us. But There is a lot of literature.

[Ben Lindbergh]

There's a lot of comics canon in

[Meg Rowley]

which superheroes have played baseball, and sometimes

[Ben Lindbergh]

also baseball players have taken the field. With superheroes, we've had actual comics crossover events. So I wondered if. If you two could just throw out

[Meg Rowley]

any examples that you would recommend to people or that maybe you've drawn on in developing your draft strategy here.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Just what are kind of the.

[Meg Rowley]

The canonical pantheon examples of baseball comic book crossovers?

[David Harper]

Ben, I talked to you for an article that was specifically about one comic, which was West Coast Avengers Annual Number two, which is, in my opinion, one of the greatest comics ever made. Don't actually read it and tell me otherwise, because I don't want to know. I read it when I was a kid, and I absolutely loved it. But it begins with the West Coast Avengers and the Avengers playing a game of baseball in the Astrodome with Wonder man pitching and Thor at bat. And yes, Thor is using Mjolnir as his bat. It is absolutely spectacular. It also involves Thor hitting a. What clearly is going to be a home run until Silver Surfer bursts through the Astrodome's dome and tells them there's a crisis going on. And the. The whole thing is absolutely spectacular. That is. I mean, that you. You actually. You really get a sense as to, like, what the hierarchy would be on the field and where everyone would be playing while you read that comic. It's incredible. But, I mean, the other one I would say is like, the. Probably the most inseparable comics from baseball history are the X Men. X Men have always played baseball. They've always played baseball. And that is a really, really big thing. I don't really have any specific issues for that one, but that was a thing that they used to just do where the different teams would get together and they played baseball, which was a very charming thing and a very Marvel thing, because their whole thing is the world outside your window. So they want to seem more realistic. The last one, I'm going to say is not an actually inside or inside comics crossover. They, for a long time, used to have regular softball games between Marvel and DC Comics, the actual publishers. And there was a gauntlet thrown down at San Diego Comic Con where Steve Wacker, the new editor in chief of Marvel Comics, said, we're bringing it back when we move out to la. We're going to bring the softball game back. So if you live in the LA area, keep an eye out, because you might see your favorite Marvel and DC creators battling on the softball field soon.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Anything you'd care to add Tiffany.

[Tiffany Babb]

I have a couple. One is not a comic thing. It was a live event, which is that Spider man and Mary Jane Watson had a wedding ceremony at Shea Stadium and Stan Lee officiated it. And if I remember correctly, because I was talking to someone who had originally had a press pass for it. But if I remember correctly, it was the day that Doc Gooden came back and a bunch of like the pop culture press ended up getting their press credentials booted because the actual real importance sports writers needed to be there, which I find amusing. But then I have two other non superhero recommendations for people interested in reading comics about baseball. And one is James Sturm's Gollum's Mighty Swing, which is really interesting. It's a cool historical fiction graphic novel about a Jewish traveling team and kind of the myths that we create through baseball and also through culture. And then the other one is to read some Peanuts. There's a lot of baseball stuff in Peanuts. Charlie Brown is a Giants fan and he also has a favorite baseball player named Joe Schlabotnik who like you never see. And he's always on his way down, I assume to single A. And then like he's like the worst player and exactly the kind of player that you think Charlie Brown would be obsessed with. And going back to read those baseball strips, I think there's a couple collections that you can pick up that are just the baseball peanut strips and they're so charming and funny.

[David Harper]

I think Joe Shablotnik was in the angel system. Right?

[Tiffany Babb]

I wouldn't be surprised.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, they called him up immediately after

[Meg Rowley]

he was drafted as the tactics. Yeah, a little prematurely. Yeah. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Peanuts was.

[Meg Rowley]

Was foundational for me and anyone who's interested in hearing more about that. Earlier this year I went on the excellent Ellen Adair's podcast about baseball movies. Take me into the ball Game. And we did two plus hours on Charlie Brown's All Stars, the second Peanuts animated special, the baseball one or one of the baseball ones where we talked at length about my history with Peanuts,

[Ben Lindbergh]

my encounter with Charles Schulz himself.

[Meg Rowley]

As a kid, I had. I had lunch at his ice arena. He stole a French fry off my plate. I have never been so starstruck in my life. It was amazing. So, yes, I still have a great soft spot for Peanuts and have tried to pass that along to my daughter as well.

[Ben Lindbergh]

There were several years as a kid

[Meg Rowley]

when my Christmas lists every year and my birthday is Christmas, so Christmas list was. Was big for me. That was the only time I was getting gifts. My Christmas list just consisted of of

[Ben Lindbergh]

every Peanuts thing in the world was just the entirety of because I didn't

[Meg Rowley]

want to limit myself to like individual because there was at least a theoretical possibility that I could just acquire every bit of Peanuts merch, which I never

[Ben Lindbergh]

quite fulfilled that ambition. But I came close and a lot of it is still stored in various closets at my house and my mother's. Okay, so let's do this draft. That'll do it for the free preview of today's Effectively Wild, thank you for listening. If you'd like to listen on and hear whatever wisdom and wit await, we would love to have you. You can visit patreon.com effectivelywild to access the rest of this episode and plenty

[Meg Rowley]

of other exclusive content.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Weekly subscriber only episodes, monthly bonus shows, our Discord Group, our livestreams. Either way, we will be back with another episode soon which will appear in full on this feed. Until then, we wish you well and thank you for your support of Effectively Wild.

[Meg Rowley]

Whatever form it takes.