It's Time to Remember One of the Worst Athletes Ever

Summary

Pablo Torre Finds Out

Episode: "It's Time to Remember One of the Worst Athletes Ever"

Date: November 19, 2024
Host: Pablo Torre
Guest: Nate DiMeo (Host, The Memory Palace)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Pablo Torre is joined by Nate DiMeo, the Emmy-nominated creator of The Memory Palace, celebrated for its narrative storytelling and unique engagement with history. The conversation centers on the storytelling process, the nature of memory and history, and a deep dive into arguably the least athletic Major League Baseball player in history: Charlie "Victory" Faust. The episode weaves between storytelling philosophies and the unlikely, poignant story of Faust, ultimately reflecting on what and who we choose to remember.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Art & Intentionality of Storytelling

• Algorithm vs. Authenticity:

  • Both Pablo and Nate bemoan modern pressures to optimize for attention and algorithms, emphasizing their intentional, often "anti-algorithmic" approach.
  • Quote:
    • "We're trying to make a show here on Pablo Torre Finds Out that I'm so delighted that you enjoy. And you said one of the kindest things a person can say to me, which is, I listened to one of your episodes twice." — Pablo Torre [03:25]
  • Nate intentionally omits clickable keywords in The Memory Palace episode descriptions to preserve serendipity.

• Imagination as a Narrative Tool:

  • Nate explains how memory and history always involve a fictional, imaginative act:
    • "The past is inherently fictional... it creates this kind of like fictional space, you know, where you're picturing your buddy hitting on this girl... you can conjure this thing. And I am fascinated by the way memory works." — Nate DiMeo [03:56]

• Raising Questions, Not Just Giving Answers:

  • Each story should spark curiosity, not just satiate it.
  • "Every single line ought to be either raising or answering a question because that journey, it turns every story into a mystery." — Nate DiMeo [08:18]

2. Remembering Some Guys: The Joy and Purpose of Nostalgia

• Anti-Algorithmic Nostalgia:
  • Recalling forgotten players and stories (the "remember some guys" bit) as an act that resists quick Google searches and instead prizes communal, spontaneous memory.
  • Quote:
    • "The name that I want to remember...is a guy I can only remember now because I listened to your episode about him. And his name is Charlie Faust." — Pablo Torre [12:45]

3. The Charlie "Victory" Faust Saga

[Starts ~12:45, Story Deep Dive from 13:16]

• Faust's Background:

  • German immigrant roots; a young man who never fit into the classic ideal of a farm-strong son. Labeled as "simple" or "moron" by his era, implied neurodiversity. [13:38]

• Arrival & Prophecy:

  • Faust travels alone to St. Louis in 1911, seeks out Giants manager John McGraw, relays a fortune teller's prophecy: "I am going to pitch the New York Giants to the World Series."
  • McGraw, a harsh but superstitious manager, indulges Faust. [15:19–16:54]
  • Memorable Moment: Faust's "tryout" is a comic spectacle, yet he's allowed to join the bench as a good-luck charm, wearing a comically small uniform. [17:24–18:58]

• The Giants' Winning Streak:

  • With Faust in the dugout, the Giants go on a dramatic winning run. When they travel without him, they lose four straight—belief in his "magic" grows. [19:17–21:44]
  • Faust follows the Giants to New York against all odds, rejoining them at the Polo Grounds. [21:03–21:45]

• Playtime on a Major League Field:

  • As the season closes, Faust is finally allowed to pitch in a real MLB game—becoming arguably the least qualified athlete to do so. His stat line: two innings, 4.50 ERA. [22:23–22:58]
  • Quote:
    • "I truly think he is probably the least qualified baseball player to ever suit up and participate in a major league baseball game." — Nate DiMeo [16:16]

• The Bit Turns Bittersweet:

  • The Giants lose the World Series; the joke turns sour, and Faust is left behind as the team moves on. [23:10–24:41]
  • He spends his final years searching for the Giants, ultimately dying alone in an institution. On his hospital intake form, he lists his profession as "baseball player." [25:28]
  • Quote:
    • "For record keeping, [Charlie Faust] writes down what sort of work did you do. And he writes baseball player, which is entirely true." — Nate DiMeo [25:28]

4. Meaning, Memory, and Narrative Voice

• The Power of Crafting an Ending:

  • Good storytelling, for both men, involves structuring the narrative to leave lasting emotional resonance—a "kicker" or “tiny little note” that stays with the reader/listener.
  • Quote:
    • "You want the last line of something to be a bell that is ringing in someone's head." — Pablo Torre [34:05]

• Mortality and Ephemera:

  • All stories, even the greatest, will one day fade—but planting a meaningful idea in one person's mind justifies the effort.
  • "It is only the Shakespeares and the. In the McCartneys and the Lennons that will, you know, persevere and for who knows how long." — Nate DiMeo [37:19]

5. Bonus Memory Palace: The Vanishing Passenger Pigeon

[Narrative Segment at 28:40]

• Nature's Memory:
  • Nate shares a Memory Palace segment on the extinction of the once-ubiquitous passenger pigeon—an example of radical change and how easily the miraculous is lost.
  • Quote:
    • "There were 5 billion passenger pigeons in North America at the beginning of the 1800s... But all of this made them incredibly easy to hunt... By 1900, the flocks were gone... The last known passenger pigeon died in the Cincinnati zoological Park in 1914." — Nate DiMeo as Memory Palace Narrator [28:40–31:31]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• "The past is inherently fictional... the way that we can access that is an act of imagination." — Nate DiMeo [03:56]
• "Every single line ought to be either raising or answering a question because that journey, it turns every story into a mystery." — Nate DiMeo [08:18]
• "I truly think he is probably the least qualified baseball player to ever suit up and participate in a major league baseball game." — Nate DiMeo [16:16]
• "For record keeping, [Charlie Faust] writes down what sort of work did you do. And he writes baseball player, which is entirely true." — Nate DiMeo [25:28]
• "You want the last line of something to be a bell that is ringing in someone's head." — Pablo Torre [34:05]
• "We are trying to make stuff that lasts. Even while it's ephemeral, even while we know we are the raccoon dipping cotton candy into water, then wondering, where did our beautiful treat just go?" — Pablo Torre [37:09]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:01–07:04: Philosophy of anti-algorithmic storytelling; background on The Memory Palace's approach
• 12:45–26:08: Deep-dive: The Charlie "Victory" Faust narrative
• 28:40–31:31: Memory Palace segment—The extinction of the passenger pigeon
• 34:05–36:17: Discussion on narrative endings, why crafting a moving conclusion matters
• 36:56–38:16: Reflection on the quest for stories to endure and leave a mark

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Episode Tone & Style

The episode balances playful banter, literary reflection, and poignant storytelling, seamlessly moving between philosophical talk and historical deep-dives. Both Torre and DiMeo maintain a tone of humility, curiosity, and wonder—inviting listeners into the mystery and beauty of memory, both personal and historical.

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Bottom Line

This episode is both a tribute to one of baseball’s oddest, most bittersweet stories—Charlie “Victory” Faust—and a meditation on the act (and purpose) of storytelling itself. Torre and DiMeo champion remembering “some guys,” crafting narratives that linger, and cherishing the fleeting, surprising wonders of both history and everyday life. It’s a must-listen for fans of narrative podcasts and sports history alike.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

[Nate DiMeo]

I truly think he is probably the least qualified baseball player to ever suit up and participate in a major league baseball game.

[Pablo Torre]

Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraffe Kings Network. The number one rule I have for this show is that if someone is going to be a guest and they've written a book, I must read the book.

[Nate DiMeo]

I very much appreciate that in your.

[Pablo Torre]

Case also re listen to a bunch of your podcast re familiarize myself with why I'm actually passionately, genuinely into this.

[Nate DiMeo]

It's exactly right.

[Pablo Torre]

That's the mission for everything. And I say that to you, Nate de Mayo, because this is also something that I think we are a bit of a. A kindred pair of spirits about.

[Nate DiMeo]

Yeah, I think that's entirely true. I think that one of the things that is key to me when I sort of look out in the world and try to find these different stories, because it's super easy to find things that you might potentially write about, you know, like in one's algorithm, it will just feed you, like fun factoids. A thing that makes it a memory palace story instead of just like a sort of interesting thing that you heard once is, is that it has to move me in the same way that it has to move you.

[Pablo Torre]

To fully explain why it is that I am so moved by Nate DiMeo and his show, which is now a book, the Memory Palace, I feel obliged to let you in on what I consider to be a deeply embarrassing secret about how my own show gets made, which is that we spend a lot of time trying to figure out the optimal title and optimal description for every single episode that we make. And I should say that we do this because the subjects we cover, the stories we tell, are so deliberately not engineered for the algorithm. We do stuff on this show that nobody else in sports media will or wants to or can. And so for that reason, we also felt the need to create an entire Slack channel where we will argue over how to best persuade the sun God that is the algorithm to perhaps one day shine its light upon us. And I hate that part of my job. I hate it so much viscerally that I have never been more jealous of the man in studio with me today. Because Nate de Meo has been hosting and producing the memory palace for 16 years now. And just one reason it is so deeply respected in what I will call the public radio cinematic universe is that his podcast marketing strategy when it comes to including any such identifying or searchable or discoverable or clickable bits of information of any sort can be summarized in two words that.

[Nate DiMeo]

I fear what you're about to say. Tell me what you're gonna say.

[Pablo Torre]

No. Which is to say that I am trying to make a show that is not reverse engineered according to the popularity, the whims of the audience that we are trying to capture.

[Nate DiMeo]

That's exactly right.

[Pablo Torre]

We're trying to make a show here on Pablo Dori finds out that I'm so delighted that you enjoy. And you said one of the kindest things a person can say to me, which is, I listened to one of your episodes twice.

[Nate DiMeo]

Yeah, absolutely true.

[Pablo Torre]

It was the Prince episode, I believe. And I. I thank you for that. Because you trust us to surprise you. You don't trust us to give you the thing you already know you want.

[Nate DiMeo]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And you in your anti algorithmic sensibility are so much more hardcore about that than us.

[Nate DiMeo]

And it comes down to this thing that, like, that is just fundamental to my understanding. Not just of the past, but my. The way that I just sort of like move through the world is that the past is inherently fictional. Like, no matter the fact that we know that this stuff happened, we can dig up the bones, we can read the letters, we can read the diary entries. The way that we can access that is an act of imagination. If you're on the subway and you're reading a book about Gettysburg and part of you is on the sixth train and part of you, you know, is in the bloody junction or whatever the names of the places are at Gettysburg, I don't think that's one, but it sounds like one where, you know, wherever. Wherever you are.

[Pablo Torre]

Somewhere where. Trench foot. Somewhere.

[Nate DiMeo]

Exactly. Where people had trench mouth. Trench foot. But all the trench stuff, like, it's the same thing. If you're sitting there and you're reading about Middle Earth, like you are transported to this imaginary space in which the past lives. And that is true of Gettysburg, and that is true of Normandy beach, but it is also true of the story that your buddy tells you at the bar of the thing that happened to him. It happened to him. It is already living in his memory. But when he's recounting it, it creates this kind of like fictional space, you know, where you're picturing your buddy hitting on this girl. Haven't explained exactly what she looks like, but you can kind of picture her. You can, you know, you can conjure this thing. And I am fascinated by the way memory works. But what I really Love is that.

[Pablo Torre]

Conjuring act because we are relating at every possible juncture to the details we're imagining.

[Nate DiMeo]

That's exactly right.

[Pablo Torre]

Our imagination is inevitably, yes, a character in this story. In fact, it is more than that. It is the narrator of our interpretation of the story. We are hearing. You go so far as to not even include the names of the people that you're making episodes about in the descriptions of the episodes.

[Nate DiMeo]

Yeah, I mean, and I'm sure that has cost me money. I guarantee I have bad news.

[Pablo Torre]

It's cost you a lot of money.

[Nate DiMeo]

I guarantee that that's true. And believe me, this is a conversation that I have, you know, like, ongoing in any number of venues. And that is the truth. Like, at the beginning of an episode, there's often a cryptic title. And then there is no, like, hey, we're about to talk about the Korean War. We just start talking about the Korean War. Part of it also comes down to, like, I got into this whole thing in part, like, through music, you know, like, when I was in my 20s, I played in bands that people don't remember and love that experience. But what I really loved was the idea that one day the song will be on the radio. That a song that I write might come in and change someone's day out of the blue, that they're in one mood and then the song comes in and they are changed and. And I started to notice that that's the way that radio works. And I started to fall in love with public radio in part because a story from the news could sneak into your day the same way. Here you are, you know, wrapped up in the whir and sputter of just like. Of. You're trying to find a parking spot. You're trying to remember what you're supposed to do that afternoon. You're replaying the fight you had with your girlfriend the night before, whatever it turns out to be. And then suddenly some, like, sort of beautifully crafted thing, like, comes into your day and. And snaps you out of it. This is the Memory palace.

[Narrator (Memory Palace excerpts)]

I'm Nate DiMeo. The sound of the chains, the creaking door, the lumbering footsteps. They'd recorded all that before Bobby had shown up in the studio right on Sunset Boulevard, a stone's throw from Hollywood High. That location alone still had some magic in it for Bobby Pickett, only six years since he graduated high school himself on the wrong side of the tracks in Boston.

[Nate DiMeo]

Part of, you know, not telling people what the story is about is because I want to take them on a ride. But I also don't want them to prepare.

[Narrator (Memory Palace excerpts)]

Not long after his ill fated stint in post war Korea, all kitchen duty and bordello's and blown curfews and court martials, and just months since he'd come out to California to make it to take a chance on his henchmen to the teen bully in a beach party movie, good looks and his fourth best singer in a five man boy band voice. But he was starting to find his footing. Make friends, make connections. Meet that guy at the bar who knows the girl who works on the desk of some agent who knows this producer who knows this woman who's one of the mistresses to the aging actor he used to play the buttoned up dad on that sitcom and is trying to pull together his next project. That whole hopscotch of like the best.

[Nate DiMeo]

Like writing advice I ever got from a former host of the public radio show Marketplace. When we were writing the little introductions to the thing, he said, every introduction that you hear in public radio, almost everyone tells you the whole damn story. And what you need to do is you need to raise a question. And I have realized that every single line ought to be either raising or answering a question because that journey, it turns every story into a mystery, no matter how straightforward. And I do think that people have found in its weird like hypersincerity and kind of purity, they have like connected to the project on this sort of deeper level because they feel like they're not being kowtowed to or manipulated.

[Pablo Torre]

The retention editing of everything. Retention editing being the term on YouTube for the way or on TikTok or anything for how you edit it, such that the person is not merely hooked but is almost neurologically, yes, entrapped. You have me here and you have me at second number two and then three and then four and it's just so manipulated. Yeah, I do have some appreciation for the general mission there. Right. Which is, as you said in your sentences raise questions. Also, the way I put it is make it so that there are as few exit ramps as possible, sentence by sentence in retention editing. Mr. Beast is trying to do that too. I'm about to show you what a.

[Nate DiMeo]

Half a million dollar experience looks like.

[Pablo Torre]

I promise this is going to blow your mind.

[Nate DiMeo]

One starts to realize, I mean like you must contend with this all the time as you have a new venture, as you are trying to make sure it gets in front of everyone and gets in front of different audience. It says like, all the while knowing certainly that, oh, this show could have a bigger audience than it does there is freedom and release in the notion of, like, well, let's let the algorithm do this. Let me, like, allow it to tell me. But at the same time, it's like, what's the version of the algorithm of the past? It's sort of like you look back and you see these polls of the stories that, you know. Right. That if you're talking about World War II, you can rattle off the handful of facts you might know. And you can picture Marines storming Normandy beach, and you can, you know, maybe picture, you know, FDR speaking at some conference or whatever. And you can picture these different moments.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, you got Douglas MacArthur.

[Nate DiMeo]

Yeah, exactly.

[Pablo Torre]

Wading through the waters of the Philippines, vowing, I shall return.

[Nate DiMeo]

That's exactly right.

[Pablo Torre]

He didn't return in the way that we wanted.

[Nate DiMeo]

So whatever matters to you, Filipino American, might be different than what matters to me and what matters to the audience, et cetera. But you look back at these polls and you look back at the story we're told, and I'm constantly sort of aware and kind of trying to unearth and ultimately trying to imagine and trying to find the facts that allow for better, more accurate imagining and more sincere and more sort of ultimately like more true guessing and gap filling.

[Pablo Torre]

All we gotta do, though, is just make sure that we do a good Mr. Beastface into the camera so that they have the teaser image.

[Nate DiMeo]

That's exactly right.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Just the big.

[Nate DiMeo]

I'm always taken by the like. The like. I'm puzzling something out today. It's amazing. I'm glad to participate in this.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm glad to participate.

[Nate DiMeo]

Thank you, Faith, for dragging the purity of the memory palace.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm glad to drag you down to the trench. Thank you so much. That is discoverability.

[Nate DiMeo]

And all day long you can see endless debate about, you know, whether Karl Anthony Towns, Interior Defense, what that might.

[Pablo Torre]

Mean to the shooting, 90% on him in the paint.

[Nate DiMeo]

That's exactly right.

[Pablo Torre]

I should make clear, if it's not clear enough already, by virtue of you just casually referencing Karl Anthony Town's.

[Nate DiMeo]

Sure.

[Pablo Torre]

So you are a guy who likes to remember some guys.

[Nate DiMeo]

Absolutely. Because in a way, because it is anti algorithmic. You know what I mean? It's like, yes, you can look up any guy. Right? You can look up anything. But to just sort of sit here and just let your mind go.

[Pablo Torre]

Scott Roland.

[Nate DiMeo]

Yes, exactly. To just say, like, John Candelaria. Right. And to just throw out these names for, like, for every. Like Greg Gagne, you know, like Eric Gagne. Eric Gagne. Because they're paired in your head in the same way. Kirby Pocket will suddenly enter the picture, and you won't know why Kent Herbeck is there. All of a sudden, it just, like, activates this we, you know, sensation. Like, that is part of, like, the conjuring act that I tried to participate in.

[Pablo Torre]

The name that I want to remember, the guy I want to remember is a guy I can only remember now because I listened to your episode about it, about him. And his name is Charlie Foust.

[Nate DiMeo]

Ah, Charlie Faust.

[Pablo Torre]

So the episode. The episode title is Victory.

[Nate DiMeo]

You can look for that, but don't expect to, like, have any other useful search for this.

[Pablo Torre]

If you're gonna search for this in Nate's feed, you gotta look up the word victory. This, I think, is the least athletic player, arguably on the medal stand for least athletic player in the history of baseball.

[Nate DiMeo]

I truly think he is probably the least qualified baseball player to ever suit up and participate in a major league baseball game.

[Pablo Torre]

And he's just one of those people where I'm like, I should have known about him long before I listened to this, and I didn't. He fell through the cracks. And so the story of Charlie Victory Foust begins where Nate.

[Nate DiMeo]

Well, for me, it begins in Germany. You can understand who Charles Victor Faust is by, you know, thinking about his father leaving Germany in, like, 1880 something, traveling across the world, ending up in Kansas. Classic immigrant story. And what is he going to do? He's going to buy some land. He's going to. He's gonna, like, have some strong sons. They're gonna take over the farm one day. And he has this son who simply can't. Charlie Faust. He is neurodivergent in some way. Like, people at the time call him an idiot or a moron or simple or simple or whatever their pejorative or even technical term they're trying to apply that now seems like chaotic and cruel and imprecise. We don't know what that means to him. We don't know whether that was a thing that pained him. We don't know if he could understand his father's disappointment. But what we do know is that one day he shows up in St. Louis, Missouri, in the summer of 1911. He has traveled hundreds of miles from Kansas, which one would assume would be a very challenging thing. The New York Giants are in town, and he gets the attention of John McGraw, the pugnacious manager of the New.

[Pablo Torre]

York Giants, by the way, John McGraw is a harsh man, one of the greatest managers and one of the. It sounds like According to the historical record. Also one of the cruelest at times.

[Nate DiMeo]

Yes, exactly. So here comes this man, Charlie Faust. He essentially says, like, hey, Mr. McGraw, I have something to tell you. He speaks in a apparently, like, accent that's part sort of German accent, part kind of like, hick from the country. And he says, a month or two ago, I went to the fair in Wichita and I talked to a fortune teller. And at this point, McGraw is like, Fortune teller. Do tell. Because he is pugnacious. But he is also apparently, like, super superstitious. He is a lucky penny picker upper. He is a, you know, okay, guys, let's wear the road uniforms even. We're home. Let's break this streak.

[Pablo Torre]

He's a true baseball man. He's like.

[Nate DiMeo]

He's the Wade Boggsian, and, like, he's going to eat chicken the whole time. Whatever.

[Pablo Torre]

Jason G. Wearing the gold thong.

[Nate DiMeo]

Jason Giambi wearing the gold thong. So you've done it again, remembered some guys. And he says, okay, so, you know, so you. What do you have to tell me? What did this fortune teller tell you? And the thing about fortune tellers is that they are typically giving you the most vague thing that will resonate specifically. So Charlie Faust tells John McGraw, this fortune teller told me that I am going to pitch the New York Giants to the World Series. John McGraw looks at this guy. He's 6 foot 2, corn fed. Something's a little off with him for sure, but he has no idea. Like, this is. This is 1911. Like, the greatest baseball player ever to live might be in the next town. Undiscovered.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Fan graphs didn't exist yet.

[Nate DiMeo]

Absolutely. John McGraw, superstitious man, says, okay, let's see what you can do. So Charlie Foust is there, like, in his Sunday suit. He walks out to the mound. John McGraw, gets behind the plate, puts on his glove. You know, he says, okay, it's one finger for the fastball, two fingers for the curve. If you got something else, that'll be finger number three. And Charlie Faust gets out there, and he gets into his wind app, and then his arm starts flailing around.

[Pablo Torre]

You're doing the Bugs Bunny thing.

[Nate DiMeo]

Not even. Like, Bugs had way more grace than that. It sounds like it's just this sort of chaotic mess, you know, and he fires that ball, and it very slowly glides to the plate. You know, it is, like, pretty straight. It is roughly accurate and is incredibly slow. He puts down the number two. It is the same pitch. It is straight. It is slow. It is just imminently Crushable. People are gathering around. The other players are watching this, you know, and they are certainly laughing at this guy they think is simple or whatever. They let him bat. He swings 20 times, he hits something into the field. Everybody's kind of in on the joke. So they are, like, letting him run around the bases. They're fumbling. They're pretending they can't tag him. He slides into home and he gets up and he says, like, when am I starting?

[Pablo Torre]

Right. So John McGraw, just to be very clear here, is now going along with this in a way that has made this itself a spectacle.

[Nate DiMeo]

They're walking that fine, you know, fine line between laughing at and laughing with.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Nate DiMeo]

And they invite Charles Victor Faust to hang out on the bench with them that night. They give him a uniform. They intentionally give him a too small uniform. It is comically small. They are playing a joke on this man. Like they are being cruel to this man sitting on the bench at a major league baseball stadium whose whole dream has been to do this, whose focus has been after someone has told him with a presumably straight face that you, sir, you, young man, are going to pitch the New York Giants to the World Series.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. What we're watching here on this field is both joke and prophecy.

[Nate DiMeo]

Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

Unfolding hand in hand. And I just want to point out that this is insane.

[Nate DiMeo]

It is insane.

[Pablo Torre]

And so this is where I do need you to know that you can actually look up what happened next in the record books yourselves. Because while we do not know and cannot ever truly know what Charlie Victor Foust had by way of inner monologue at this time, what he really thought of himself, we can confirm that the 1911 New York Giants in St. Louis, with Charlie Foust sitting right there in the dugout at age 30, wearing that too small uniform that John McGraw had given him, proceeded to win. They shut out the St. Louis Cardinals eight, nothing. And so John McGraw brought Charlie Foust back the very next day in that uniform, and the Giants shut out the Cardinals again. And so John McGraw did the exact same thing. Charlie Foust was back on the bench. The Giants won again. Charlie Foust and the New York Giants wound up just a half game out of first place in the National League when it was finally time for them to leave St. Louis.

[Nate DiMeo]

And they've taken him out to dinner. They've bought him some beers. They've, like, bought him a burger. They've said, like, hey, we've had a fun time with this rube, or whatever other more cruel thing they've been saying about him, and they say, like, yeah, have a nice life, man. Thanks for these victories. You really helped us out.

[Pablo Torre]

And so the Giants decide to leave St. Louis and Charlie Foust, who had been waiting to pitch this entire time, behind. At which point the Giants proceed to lose four in a row in Pittsburgh and then Chicago.

[Nate DiMeo]

They thought they were in, like, spitting distance of being able to play for the pennant. Everything has kind of fallen apart in this thing.

[Pablo Torre]

But when the New York Giants get back home to Manhattan and they finally get back to the Polo Grounds, their home ballpark, they find a very familiar face waiting for them somehow. Charlie Victor Faust.

[Nate DiMeo]

Who previously had crossed 300 miles or so to get from Kansas to St. Louis, he has now crossed half of the United States, has seen Manhattan for the first time, has showed up at their stadium and is like, am I going to pitch tonight? And they say, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, who knows what'll happen? But, hey, we need some luck.

[Pablo Torre]

Let's. Let's.

[Nate DiMeo]

The penny has suddenly rolled back in front of me. Let's pick it up again. They win 36 times when he is sitting on the bench. They lose twice in the rest of the regular season. Every night, Charlie Faust is saying to John McGraw and saying to all the guys, saying to the equipment manager, saying to the peanut guy, to everyone, like, tonight's the night. I'm going to get in the game. I'm going to get in the game. And he's driving people crazy, but they don't mind because they're also winning. He eventually does get in the game, which is when he becomes the least qualified person to ever play in a Major League baseball game.

[Pablo Torre]

I just can't believe that he actually got a good game.

[Nate DiMeo]

It's September. They are already booked their ticket to the World Series. They can lose any of these games. He comes in in the ninth, he pitches. The other team is, like, in on the bit. You know, they're swinging and missing. Some guy really tries to take him for a ride, but he just kind of gets under it. And the ball goes deep to, you know, to right field, and someone catches it.

[Pablo Torre]

By the way, you can go look this up on baseballreference.com and he's there. 4.50 ERA. Yes. Two innings pitched.

[Nate DiMeo]

Everyone in the papers is like, they're covering Charley Foust all the time. For a long time. It's this great bit. They have changed his middle name to Victory Faust. The Giants go on to lose the World Series that year, and the joke is that it is because the Mojo in the Philadelphia Athletics dugout because they have their own cruel mascot, which is. There is a little person in their dugout who has a hunchback.

[Pablo Torre]

Louis Van Zels.

[Nate DiMeo]

Louis Van Zels. And they have been rubbing the hump in his back for luck, as though it is the Buddha's belly at a Chinese restaurant for their whole season. And apparently that mojo brings them to victory.

[Pablo Torre]

Just baseball, man.

[Nate DiMeo]

Baseball. And the next year comes around, and Charlie's like, all right, let's do it again. Let's roll it back. And like, hey, you know, I'm really sorry. I must have let you guys down, because I like the prophecy. So clearly, this is our year. I mean, the truth is, he's also a person who is struggling being a person. He's a little bit too insistent. He gets a little bit too agitated. You know, it's not a joke to him. It was fun for them for a while, and now it's not. And, like, how do they adjust when it's fun? And I'm sure some of the guys were total. I'm sure some of the guys weren't. And. Because that's just the way people are. And they tell him to take off, you know, and they'd say, we'll catch up with you. And they never do. And in a lot of places, like, this is where the story ends. Right. You can either do, like, some sort of weird movie version, which, thank God, they would not make today, but they might have made in, like, 1968, where Charlie Faust, you know, is hoisted on someone's shoulders after sliding into home, you know, hey, Charlie, it's been a good season.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. You make it narratively convenient.

[Nate DiMeo]

Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

So they can feel like, actually, this was nice all along, you know, but.

[Nate DiMeo]

The truth of the matter is, like, that's not the way we tell stories anymore. Charlie Faust, he goes back to live with a brother who lives in Seattle, who, like, tries to take care of him as best as he can. But at some point, Charlie is found wandering in Portland, you know, having walked all that way. And he's looking for the New York Giants. He's trying to connect with them in Portland where. Where they will never be. He's remanded to an institution where he dies in poverty, like, quite soon thereafter. This sad death.

[Pablo Torre]

But there is this scene where, you know, before victory, before Charlie Faust dies, he checks into a hospital.

[Nate DiMeo]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And the thing that he does there is a marker of this is how he thought of himself.

[Nate DiMeo]

He is supposed to, for record keeping, write down what sort of work did you do. And he writes baseball player, which is entirely true. And however he came to it, the truth of the matter is this guy played baseball.

[Pablo Torre]

In fact, he is a guy. He's a guy that one can remember.

[Nate DiMeo]

Yes. And, you know, we've created this little memory palace here. And now you too can remember some guys.

[Pablo Torre]

Storytelling is one of the most overused words, sure, across human civilization at this point, but the reason I cling to it as this heading is because it implies something. Because you're writing and you're structuring, which is to say that you are strategizing and manipulating.

[Nate DiMeo]

Yeah, sure.

[Pablo Torre]

And I do the same. And I just want to know for you what is the voice that you're. That you're listening to as you're trying to formulate your own.

[Nate DiMeo]

When I think about trying to write the best memory palace story or trying to figure out, like, what's the mode that I want to be in, it really comes back into what are my favorite ways to have heard a story. And it is some version of, like, your best friend at the bar where they have just read some incredible book, or they have come back from a trip to Venice, something has just happened to them and they have come to you and they have thought about what you, Pablo, you, Nate, kind of need to. What's really going to get you going, and they have, like, blown your mind. It's this kind of like, intimate thing where someone has thought it all through and they have a sense where, like, well, if I tell you this, first you're going to be thinking this and then I'm going to flip it over. And so there's craft stuff. But ultimately, what underlines that and under and underlies it is meaning that the past is just like the present. It is just as complicated. The big picture understanding is that it is everything all at once. That it is as complicated as today feels, that the people in the past are just as human as we are. And it's surprising how hard that idea is, you know, for even me to hold. Who thinks about that all the time. I am not an expert in history, but I think about how we live in time all the time.

[Pablo Torre]

The fact that you had to close your eyes shut as you grapple, how much you are thinking about the past, think about it all, is very convincing.

[Nate DiMeo]

And thinking about the present as this, like, historically constructed thing in the way, you know, it's. You know, it's hard to. It's hard to just, like, hang out in the Walgreens and hear and hear a song on the Radio and not think to yourself, boy, 1997. They were really thinking, like, the ways that they were sanding off the rough edges of grunge in this one, you know, or whatever. It's like, it's constant. It's a constant presence.

[Pablo Torre]

I should confess that I didn't expect my ass to be kicked emotionally by a story about pigeons for our YouTube audience. We have a treat for you. If you're just listening on audio, go to our YouTube channel. And, my God, I sound like a youtuber when I say such things, right? But I want you to enjoy this.

[Narrator (Memory Palace excerpts)]

It's impossible to know for sure, but ornithologists tell us there were 5 billion passenger pigeons in North America at the beginning of the 1800s. That is one out of every five birds. And when they would fly south in the fall and north again in the spring, the birds would literally darken the sky. The flocks would stretch out a mile wide and 300 miles long. They would take hours, often all day, to fly overhead. You'd wake up in the morning to the sound of approaching birds, and while you ate breakfast, tended your fields all day, brought your livestock in at night or whatever, the flock would still be overhead when you went to bed. The sound must have been incredible. The droppings, the from a couple of million birds would rain down, defoliating whole swaths of forest, making fields fallow. When all those birds would set down in the woods as a layover, it would take years for trees to recover. One nesting site occupied 850 square miles of Wisconsin. There were as many as 136 million birds there at a time. But all of this made them incredibly easy to hunt. It is said that if you shot a rifle into the air as they flew overhead, one shot could take down 30 birds. They were flying so close that they collide like some sort of horrible highway pileup, and they plummet. As the American human population spread west, the forest started to disappear. And as industrialization and immigration swelled the eastern cities, people needed meat. Industrial hunters stepped in. They'd light fires and stands of trees to smoke the birds out and kill them. They'd take a single pigeon and sew its eyes up for some reason. Then they'd tie it to a stool so its panic flapping would cause curious flocks to land. Then they'd be trapped and killed. Sometimes they'd soak birdseed and alcohol to get them drunk so they'd be easier to kill. In Petoskey, Michigan, in 1878, 50,000 birds were killed every day for five months. They were packed into boxcars and shipped to New York or Boston or Providence or Buffalo or Newark or Baltimore. That same year, a different Midwestern supplier shipped another 3 million passenger pigeons, and the birds started to disappear. The females only laid one egg a year, which is a terrible evolutionary structure. By 1900, the flocks were gone. By 1909, the American Ornithological Society was offering $1,500 to anyone who found a pigeon in the wild. The last known passenger pigeon died in the Cincinnati zoological Park in 1914. She was stuffed and mounted in the Birds of America exhibit at the Smithsonian. Some years back, she was put into Stranger Torch.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, look, we're a show that is perhaps biased towards remembering some guys and also remembering some animals.

[Nate DiMeo]

Great. That's why I turn to it.

[Pablo Torre]

Of course, I should have known that the passenger pigeon was so numerous as to be omnipresent.

[Nate DiMeo]

But more than omnipresent, it literally darkened the sky sometimes with these stories. Like, the point on some level is to be like, yeah, people are just like us, right? You go back and you're like, you find yourself connected. But there's also such value in just being like, yes, but the past has changed so quickly. It is so different, like, from 5 billion down to, you know, the one stuffed in the Smithsonian.

[Pablo Torre]

Right.

[Nate DiMeo]

That there was, like, a single bird just, like, sitting there is stunning. It really is. And every once in a while, you are at a museum or you are, like, you know, scrolling through TikTok or whatever, and something comes in and knocks you out. And this is one of those things that knocked me out. And for a long time, the memory palace was things that knocked me out 12 years ago that I could not shake and that I would roll out occasionally, like, at that bar, you know? And, like, you know, it's a thing that will blow your mind. And I've come to just sort of trust that if I noticed it, there was some reason I'm inherently interested in why we remember the things we do. And sometimes it's because it was traumatic. Your reptilian brain has, like, put up some warning sign and made you remember it.

[Pablo Torre]

The sky can be blackened for numerous such reasons. Yes, exactly.

[Nate DiMeo]

Right. You know, but the other thing about it is, like, kind of like the inverse of trauma is like, epiphany, you know, and joy, which, you know, that there are these things that happen that are novel and wonderful. Like the thing when you're suddenly like, oh, wait, shoot, this is the way the world work. Even more importantly, this is the world. The way the world can work. There are times that this sort of wonder is around you, and, oh, my God, sometimes it goes away. There's something useful about just sort of realizing how radically things can change and how at one point, these birds darken the sky and they are no more. Then what is it that is occurring around me all the time that I'm taking for granted that I might engage with more deeply?

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. And how can you communicate that to somebody such that they remember it too?

[Nate DiMeo]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

One of the things that I learned from one of my sort of mentors, but it's like a writer I looked up to, S.L. price, Scott Price, is just how he approached kickers and endings, which is that you want the last line of something to be a bell that is ringing in someone's head.

[Nate DiMeo]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And exactly. Right. Yeah. Such that when you stop reading it or you stop listening to it in that literal sense, you're still. You're still hearing it.

[Nate DiMeo]

Yeah. I sometimes think about it as, like, I love going to the movies in the middle of the day, and you walk out and you forget that it's daytime. And to have been just moved by something really wonderful and having your day change by art or by, you know, a beautifully told story. What I want to try to do is I want to move you and give you that experience sometimes. I like the kicker. I think about it as, like, a tiny little note that I passed you so that you can open and be like, oh, that's what that thing is about.

[Pablo Torre]

Actually, you know, thinking about what are the through lines through any given episode, but also your whole catalog.

[Nate DiMeo]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

It does feel like we're all gonna die is a real key aspect of it.

[Nate DiMeo]

Sure. I mean, it is. Does come with the territory. Part of it is like, you know, if I'm telling some story about this remarkable athlete who had this incredible triumph, on some level, I'm just like, it's never that satisfying. Because the truth of the matter is, what is often so interesting to me is like, well, what else do you do? There's a story from the podcast about this woman who swam the English Channel, and she became the second woman to do it. And for a long time, I was like, well, what's. You know, that's not a story. But ultimately it becomes a story about keeping going. That it's actually okay to be the second to do it. That, like, it is in the doing that there is this pride.

[Pablo Torre]

After landing, Florence got into the accompanying boat and returned immediately to France. You might think, of course, that conquering the Channel would be enough swimming For a bit, but not for Ms. Chadwick. Oh, no. She was soon in the sea again. And she obviously has the know how.

[Nate DiMeo]

She then, like, went around the world, like, swimming, like, any chance channel that needed crossing.

[Pablo Torre]

This was her own comment.

[Nate DiMeo]

Hello, folks. I'm feeling fine after my big swim. Like, any place where people are like, boy, it seems far over there. She'd be like, I'm gonna be the first person to swim that. These lesser channels.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Nate DiMeo]

But there's something really beautiful to me about the keeping going. And there's something really beautiful to me in the right arm breathe. Left arm breathe of these repeated movements that does sort of resonate. But ultimately, a thing that, you know, ties these things all together is that, yeah, everybody dies. And I find it very useful to remember that this is the time that this person had. And, you know, here I am in 2024, and this is the life that I get to live. Like, every couple weeks, I sit down and I put on, like. I start to imagine and start to conjure these spaces and think about these other people's lives. And it helps ground me in that way.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. You know, I get the sense, you know, part of the kindred aspect that I feel with your show is that however futile in the big picture, this mission is, we are trying to make stuff that lasts.

[Nate DiMeo]

Sure.

[Pablo Torre]

You know, even.

[Nate DiMeo]

Even while it's ephemeral, even while we.

[Pablo Torre]

Know we are the raccoon dipping cotton candy into water, then wondering, where did our beautiful treat just go?

[Nate DiMeo]

For as ephemeral as it is, and for the fact that we have just dipped cotton candy in the water and it has disappeared and dissipated and the water just slightly pink. And that's the only thing that we. That we can hold on to. It's those things. It's that I will carry that with me that. That is now in, you know, my sort of personal, like, memory palace. All of the stuff that we are doing, besides the fact, you know, we will all die, you know, things will. Things will crumble to death. It is only the Shakespeares and the. In the McCartneys and the Lennons that will, you know, persevere and for who knows how long.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't know how much longer they got at this point.

[Nate DiMeo]

That's exactly right. In this book that I have written, like, truly may not sell very many things, but at the same time, you know, like, the person that finds it and the person that flips through it, where that gets, you know, knocked on their ass by one story, that little thing will live on.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Nate DiMeo, thank you for leaving a little bit of sweetness in the. In the waters, perhaps, of these lesser channels such as mine.

[Nate DiMeo]

Very excited to be here. I really am.

[Pablo Torre]

This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out a Meadowlark Media production and I'll talk to you next time.