Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1104: Operation Mic Drop

Episode Date: September 1, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about their raffle for Hurricane Harvey relief, the Justin Upton trade, walk-off hit by pitches, the brief baseball career of Olympic javelin thrower Jan Zelezny, Rich Hill and pitcher bunting, the Pirates placing Juan Nicasio on outright waivers, and infield dirt, then talk to musician and artist Will Johnson […]

Hey everyone, in this episode we talk about a couple ways that you can help Houston. Just so you know, we do not talk about the way that the Houston Astros helped themselves late Thursday night when they acquired Justin Verlander from the Tigers. Typical procrastinating teams, waiting till the last minute to make moves, and we had already recorded this episode by then, so we'll talk about the Verlander deal next time. But we do have a lot lined up for today, so let's get to it. Hello and welcome to episode 1104 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hello and welcome.

Thank you. Later in this episode, we are talking to Will Johnson, who is a musician and an artist. He does baseball art and he has created a work of baseball art concerning Mookie. It's a portrait of Mookie and he is auctioning it off now. I guess I have to specify which Mookie it is, right? It's not Mookie Betts. It's the Mets Mookie, Mookie Wilson. And he is auctioning it off now for Hurricane Harvey relief. All proceeds go to Houston, and we'll get to him in a bit. We'll get to banter first, but we are also doing a little bit of our own auctioning off or raffling off, in our case, for Hurricane Harvey relief. And I mentioned several episodes ago that my trusty Yeti mic, which had served me well for more than

a thousand episodes of Effectively Wild and episodes of everything else, had finally kicked the bucket on my recent trip to the West Coast. I don't know exactly what's wrong with it, but it has a loose part or a missing part in its USB socket. Maybe it's fixable. I don't know. But I joked a bit about how maybe we could auction it off for a good cause. Turns out, in retrospect, I wasn't actually joking. We are doing that. And there's been a lot of interest in it. I was a little self-conscious about auctioning off a non-functioning microphone and presuming that it has value because I have spoken into it as if it's some sort of relic. But there was a lot of interest.

It's a piece of sentimental memorabilia of Effectively Wild. It's the microphone I was talking into when we got the idea for the book, et cetera, et cetera. So we are packaging together three items, that mic autographed by you me and sam as well as a new paperback copy of the only rule autographed by me and sam and an effectively wild t-shirt which we all can autograph if you want to wear our autographs i don't know if it's preferable with autographs or not so we are packaging those together and this has already begun you can go to the facebook group It's the pin post

at the top of the page if you want the details, but I will quickly summarize. All proceeds are going to the Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund, which was started by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner. It's administered by the Greater Houston Community Foundation. The minimum donation you can make on the site is $10. So $10 gets you one entry into a random drawing for these three items. If you donate increments of $10 above $10, then you get additional entries. So if you donate $30, then you get three entries into this random drawing. And the details are all there. The site is ghcf.org slash hurricane hyphen relief. We will, of course, link to that in the blog post at Fangraphs, and it is linked in the Facebook group. So just go there, donate $10 or some multiple of $10, and then forward the confirmation email that you get or a screenshot of the confirmation page to our email address, podcast at Fangraphs dot com.

That is singular podcast. Some people ask if I'm saying podcast or podcasts. I am saying podcast at fangraphs.com. And next week, we will do a random drawing with everyone who has contributed, and then we'll get all these items autographed and mailed out to the winner. And I just started this a couple hours ago as we speak, and the donations are really already rolling in. I sound like a telethon person or something, but they really are. People are actually contributing quite generously here, and I'm excited about that. I'm glad that my mic is going to some use and these other items, and I hope it serves someone well as a doorstop or paperweight or just sentimental item, or maybe you can repair it and do your own podcasts with my old mic.

But I'm happy, and there's a Facebook group post by a listener named Michael Belhoff who is in Houston, and his house was flooded by Harvey. He has had to leave his house with his family, and he says that he had to be evacuated by boat. He is looking forward to finding out what condition his house is in with some trepidation. And he posted in the Facebook group that as he was getting into the boat that was taking him away from his flooded house, all he could think to himself was, such is life. his flooded house all he could think to himself was such is life so we we applaud your attitude michael and we hope that you and your house are okay and the same goes for all of our other houston

area listeners but we hope that a lot of you will help out and thanks to those of you who have helped out so far gonna feel a little strange signing your microphone although i guess i did speak into it once yeah very briefly although i think that was for your other podcast yes that's right a very brief jerry depoto inspired segment so we could also i suppose raffle off a screenshot of a skype window that we could all sign and that would maybe be a little more appropriate but whatever somebody gets a microphone and the other swag but a microphone to do with whatever you please you could as ben said you could in theory repair it you could use it as a doorstopper paperweight or you could do something even more explicit.

It's really up to you to do whatever you want. And it was never my microphone anyway, so I have no loyalty to it whatsoever. Yeah, just don't bludgeon anyone with it. But other than that, you're free to do what you want. Or if it's a justified bludgeoning, I guess that's okay too.

So you can either rewind what I just said if you want to go look up that URL to donate again, or you can go to the Facebook group, facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. It is pinned to the top of the page, or you can go to Fangraphs and click on the podcast post. It will be linked there too. And we will remind you in upcoming episodes, but we'll close this off next week and do the drawing. So if you're interested, please contribute now. And thanks everyone for considering it. close this off next week and do the drawing. So if you're interested, please contribute now. And thanks everyone for considering it. So things that we wanted to banter about. The first thing,

I guess, is just a basic baseball thing that you just wrote about. Do you want to give the one minute take on the Justin Upton trade so that we can claim to be a baseball podcast that talks about current baseball events? Cameron Mabin is now an Astros player. Justin Upton is now an Angels player. Justin Upton is now not a Tigers player. No one is now a Tigers player. They got nothing. Technically, they did get something. But the Tigers traded Justin Upton to the Angels, who sent Cameron Mabin to the Astros

as a waiver claim. Anyway, Upton now will take over in left field. He will be pretty good. The Angels left fielders before were not pretty good. And even though the Angels as a team are not pretty good they just have to be good enough and they are i think a game and a half now behind the twins the twins came back to win today in the fashion we will banter about next i'm sure but yeah upton is there and i as much as people have talked about he has this opt-out clause coming up and then he has four years

for 88 and a half million dollars under contract after that if he decides not to opt out my understanding at least my read of this is that upton probably will still opt out however his value is like right on that line where it would be reasonable for him to either opt out or not so it could depend on how he feels about the angels but in any case i think the angels did this because they're thinking about the next month or the next two months i don't think the Angels want to have him for the next four plus years they might I don't know and if they did then it's kind of like getting a free agent early yeah but I think that they just want him for the stretch run and and they are right on that bubble where a not very good team is now going to be better with Justin Upton because he's better than Ben Revere and Eric

Young and Cameron Maben and if that's enough to put them over the hump, where the hump is the Minnesota Twins, then it's worthwhile. Yeah, well, Angels left fielders have been like one of the worst physicians in baseball, right? In recent years, it seems like that. There was that one terrible, terrible, terrible year when, I don't know, who was it? Matt Joyce was having one of his bad years and Josh Hamilton maybe was still there and it was truly abysmal, but that's been a real weak spot for a while now so that is now a strength so their playoff odds were you pointed out in your post like 36 percent as you were writing that pre

Upton do we have post Upton numbers yet I'm curious about the magnitude of this improvement here i don't know if they will have updated right now it looks like they have not updated so look for an update tomorrow but then tomorrow's update will include the results of today's action so whatever so i i would imagine that he'll improve their odds by maybe even 10 points maybe that's too many but i'm gonna say five or ten points and meanwhile i am buying myself some extra time so that i could run a query as i frequently do and i guess i need to buy a little more time which i will do uh if you have not used the baseball reference play index i highly recommend it it's available at baseballreference.com it is a frequently used tool and now that i have bought that much time i can tell you that over the past three years oh my god this is even better

than i thought okay i looked up team splits over the past three years, oh my God, this is even better than I thought. Okay, I looked up team splits over the past three years combined. I don't know why three years. Could have done four, could have done two. I did three. The best left fielders or the best team left field position offensively,

the Tigers, maybe some coincidence, maybe not coincidence. 8.26 OPS for the Detroit Tigers left fielders over the past three years. Second worst, second worst, Baltimore Orioles, 6.75 OPS for the Detroit Tigers left fielders over the past three years. Second worst, second worst, Baltimore Orioles 675 OPS. Second worst, Orioles 675. Worst, Angels 609. 609 OPS. That is 66 points, 66? 66 points worse than the second worst. Angels left field, terrible. Not made up with defense, just terrible so yeah there

was probably also some additional urgency here angels just thinking like the hell with this position let's just get someone actually good instead of just trying to catch lightning in a cardboard box so they went and they got justin upton and he should be pretty good although it's a month and who knows what he's going to do over a month because there was that month eric young played like mike trout so yeah you know can't actually know that's the one downside of trying to make a move where you have so little time left. All right, you want to talk about the twins? All right. So twins were losing to the White Sox as I was writing my post about the Angels, which is relevant because at that point, the twins were one game up on the Angels in the race for the second wildcard position.

The twins ultimately came back to win and they came back to win in the following fashion.an mania is apparently closing for the white socks juan mania apparently a major league pitcher he took over for danny farquhar who i would have guessed that he was on any number of other teams before i guessed he was on the white socks but ira adrianza singled zach granite bunt popped out bad bunt by zach granite only playing because byron buxton hurt but should be fine anyway single bunt out, walk, single. That's a game tying single. So put runners on the corners, then a walk, then a line out, a soft line out, back to the mound. And then bases loaded, two outs, bottom of the ninth, tie game.

Max Kepler comes up against Juan Mania. And on the first pitch, he gets hit in the leg. And it's a walk-off hit-by-pitch for the Twins. That is the first walk-off hit by pitch of the season in major leagues according to the baseball reference play index i don't know how much detail they have the further back you go but the play index at least lets me search back to 1930 which uh if we just assume that these results are as reliable as anything there have been this is now the 67th at least regular season walk-off hit by

pitch the all-time leader in walk-off hit by pitches issued randy moffitt so okay uh he leads with two he's the only pitcher with two and the uh the all-time leader in walk-off hit by pitches gathered i guess johnny gomes johnny gomes with And in fact, to make it just a little more fun, back in August of 2011, Johnny Gomes drew a walk-off hit-by-pitch against Bradledge. And then the next Major League walk-off hit-by-pitch in April of 2012 was by

Johnny Gomes against Jonathan Broxton. So Johnny Gomes, not only is the only guy who's done it twice, but he had the two consecutive for reference. Last season, there were two all year long 2015 there was one 2014 there were three just going back i don't see any evidence of any season that ever got to four so this is actually more rare than i thought when i looked it up in the play index i was thinking that maybe it was like the third or fifth time it happened this season but nope it's the first. Max Kepler, one Mania. Thank you for your amusement. Well, when I was at your house a couple of weeks ago

and putting the finishing touches on my Salinas stockade story, I was waiting to see what would happen in the game before the piece went up. And I was actually listening to the live radio broadcast because I was waiting to update some stats and copy editors and fact checkers were all waiting for the Salinas stockade game to end so that we could finalize the article and they lost on a walk-off wild pitch. So I guess it's not shocking they've lost a lot of times and a lot of ways this season, but another fun aspect of their season. So I wanted to mention an update on javelin throwing and pitchers, I am surprised that this actually didn't come up before when we talked about this, but I saw it posted in the Facebook group. The, I think, consensus best javelin thrower of all time, Jan Zalesny, is... The Jan Zalesny?

The, yes. He is a Czech track and field athlete. He won some gold medals, I think, maybe back-to-back gold medals. And after he did that, he, for some reason, tried out for the Braves, kind of. So there's this 1996 article in the New York Times. It's from August. Javelin thrower shows Braves his stuff. And it says,

Jan Zalesny gave a mighty heave and threw the baseball, the first he had ever gripped, over the backstop and into the tarpaulin, And it says, And he had then, he was 29 years old, four days earlier, he had won his second Olympic gold medal in the javelin. He was the first to win consecutive gold medals in javelin since 1924. The Braves director of scouting and player development, Paul Snyder, said, we were not disappointed at all in what we saw today, which doesn't really, not really a ringing endorsement. Maybe they had zero expectations. So he said that Zelashny would be invited to spring training, and're not disappointed. One iota, it will take a prolonged process of dedication, the same dedication Jan has had to the javelin to become a major league pitcher. But I was quite surprised how quickly he adapted and picked things

up from Leo. And evidently Bill Clark, who is an international scout for the Braves, heard of Zalesny from the managers of a baseball team in Prague. And the scout Clark said he watched Zalesny at a track meet, called Snyder, the Braves director of scouting and player development. And he said, I don't know whether this guy can throw 70 miles per hour or 110 miles an hour, but he can sure throw the javelin. 110 miles an hour, but he can sure throw the javelin. So evidently, brave scouts went and watched Zelezny throw the javelin and heard reports that he had thrown a softball more than 400 feet. He said after this tossing session that he had never thrown a baseball except one to toss to his eight-year-old son. So Mazzoni had to show him how to grip it and then tell him about the pitching mound and the rubber and all of that and pitching motion. It says Snyder estimated later that Zalesny was throwing 80 to 85 miles an hour and Zalesny estimated his effort at about 70%.

So that would suggest that he could throw pretty hard. I don't know if the math really works out there exactly. But anyway, Zalesny says, I am twice the Olympic gold medalist, twice world champion, and I have set five world records in the javelin. If I can be successful in baseball, I would like to do it. I am looking for something new to do in my life. You have just sent me a link, which I'm guessing is the link that I was going to send to you. Is it Jan Zaleshny throwing a baseball? Yes, it is. Yeah, a 41 second video. And I was going to ask you to tell me what you thought of his motion.

Well, his motion looks like the motion of one of those Hollywood actors who's trying to pitch. You know, he gets a lot of it kind of correct. But if I am looking at this correctly, he's short arming the ball, which may be not so much of a uh of a surprise but the thing that sticks out to me the most is uh i guess i should say the thing that sticks out to me the second most because what sticks out to me the most is that this is a javelin olympian pitching for the braves but if you look closely there's just a fleeting image of the uh the catcher he's pitching to which is ned yost the braves bullpen coach or a catcher uh in 1996 but in any case i'm looking now at the 22 second mark.

I have it just kind of going frame by frame. But Zalesny, he's got his forward arm out there like you'd think. And his lead leg is out there and everything looks okay. He doesn't have much of a follow through. So I don't know a whole lot about how a javelin is thrown. But Zalesny, Zalesny, Zalesny, Zalesny. I think you get it. If Jan zelesny would like to come on and correct our pronunciation then you are more than welcome to talk about your experiences with

the braves but yeah the motion is close and i would assume it's maybe it's the kind of motion that could be coached and polished or maybe on the other hand his background was so wedded to javelin throwing that maybe he his muscle memory just couldn't be overwritten but i mean if he was throwing in the 80s with this motion then he probably could have climbed up to i don't know 144 miles per hour yeah sure i mean he was at 70 percent at like 80 to 85 so god it's math yeah so we could just do some quick calculations there. 114. Yeah.

If he's throwing 70% and he's throwing 80 miles per hour, then it's only math. Then his 100% Jan Zalesny, this is tripping me up, 114.28 miles per hour would be his 100% effort. So Braves missed the boat. Yeah, they really did. I guess every other team missed it even more. But if anyone knows the outcome of the story, I assume the outcome is just he went back to throwing javelins and no one ever spoke of this again. But I am curious about why it never went anywhere. Okay, I found an article from The Guardian Thursday, September 9th, 2010, written by Paul Doyle, but seemingly with Steve Back backley this is a former javelin world record

holder okay okay and so this is a question from the interviewer to steve uh tell us steve with your phenomenal throwing prowess you'd probably have made a decent quarterback did you ever consider a lucrative move into american football okay so here is the full text of his response i probably couldn't have made it as a quarterback because that's a very technical position, but I'll tell you what. There was some interest as a baseball pitcher. Pitchers are massively reliant on a fast arm more than technique. My sort of nemesis, Jan Zalesny, tried out for the Atlanta Braves,

and they were very impressed with his speed of release, which was over 100 miles per hour, which only the top pitchers can do, but his aim wasn't so flash. In fact fact at this media day they set up to have another look at him he hit a japanese photographer which i found quite amusing but apparently in the atlanta brave stadium only three people have ever thrown a home run from the plate where you hit from which is about 120 yards or something and he did it with his first throw you see throwing flat wasn't so easy but once you have to put a bit of elevation into it like a javelin thrower, he was brilliant.

Interesting. I don't know how much of this. So this is from an article from 2010. So I don't know how much is apocryphal or how much is accurate. It was 14 years earlier, but 100 miles per hour. I feel like I feel like he would have gotten a better offer if he was throwing 100 miles. Yeah, I would think so if he had wanted one. Anyway, this is a good entry in the saga of Javelin throwers as pitchers.

If anyone knows more, please feel free to let us know. So I just had two more things I wanted to package together before we get to Will or before I'm finished with bantering. And these are two things that I wanted to get your thoughts on why they don't happen more often. Two fun things that have happened recently. The first is that Rich Hill bunted for a base hit. Carson Sestoli wrote about this on Fangrass.

And this is something that Hill has done before. At least he did it in the NLDS last year. It's just another reason to love Rich Hill. He did it in the midst of a pretty terrible start that followed his excellent almost 10-inning start prior to that, but it was just a very competent bunt. He laid it down the other way, and he beat it out, and not the first time he's done it, but Carson went through the math and pointed out that it is very rare for pitchers to bunt for base hits, and that in many cases, even when they are credited with

bunting for a base hit, that's not really what happens. Often there's a squeeze play or something that they get credited for a base hit for, and it's pretty rare for a pitcher to bunt with the bases empty, which is the case here. So why do you think that is? Because Rich Hill, I don't know where he ranks on the pitcher athleticism spectrum, but you'd think that pitchers bunt a lot just by necessity. They sacrifice all the time. It's not an enormous leap from sacrificing to bunting for a base hit. Now, I guess you just take out all the sacrifices. Maybe there aren't really all that many opportunities left but why do you think we do not see this more often i think it's probably two things aside from how bunting is hard

the the stat cast sprint speed leaderboards don't include pitchers because i guess they just don't have enough to qualify but i'm going to guess the pitchers are slow certainly slow relative to the other players and then you are also just going to have infielders who are playing more shallow because they hit the ball poorly. And so you if you have a slower runner with infielders who are at least somewhat anticipating either a weekly hit ball or a bunt, then you have the recipe for a lot of automatic outs. Now, you could argue, on the other hand, that most pitcher plate appearances are already kind of automatic outs. And that's true. But I suspect that it's almost too obvious that pitchers would try to bunt. And I think that the opponents would sniff it out almost all the time.

All right. And the last thing I wanted to ask about is this Juan Nicasio situation. Oh, good. That was on my list as well. Okay, cool. So this seems like an effectively wild scenario. I don't remember getting this email, but it seems like we should have gotten this email at some point. So the pirates, it's hard to describe because there are waivers involved and different types of waivers and claims, and that always gets confusing for listeners and for speakers. But essentially, the pirates placed Juan Nicasio on outright waivers, which means that he can just go anywhere. And I will read the statement here from Neil Huntington. And this is unusual because Nicasio is good. He's one of the Pirates' better relievers and

certainly someone who could help a lot of contending teams. So there was a lot of consternation about why they were just letting him leave. And Huntington says, we took the unusual step of placing a quality person and pitcher in Juan Nicasio on outright waivers for a variety of reasons. Given our recent record and regression in the standings, we intend to give the higher leverage innings to other pitchers that may or will impact our 2018 club. We acknowledge the minimal amount of money saved by making this move. However, as a result of our decision and Juan's pending free agency at the end of the season, we felt it appropriate to attempt to move Juan to a better situation for him.

We recently requested trade waivers on Juan, and he was claimed by a playoff caliber club that indicated to us their primary motivation was to block us from being able to trade Juan elsewhere. This is where it gets confusing. And that they were not willing to give us more than very marginal value in return if we chose to trade Juan to them. Rather than help a direct competitor and recognizing the difference in claiming order between trade and outright waivers, we chose to take the chance to see if by placing Juan on outright waivers, he would end up with a different playoff contender, preferably one in the American League. We appreciate all that Juan has done for our team and our organization. We wish him the best. And I know there was a Keith Law tweet. As far as he is aware, there are no injury concerns with Nicasio, no character concerns with Nicasio. So it's not that. It's really, it seems to be what Huntington is saying here, that they just felt like Nicasio would be better off if they just let him roam free. So I'm curious about why you think the scenario happened in this instance and why we don't see this sort of thing more often,

because obviously there are a lot of teams that are out of the race at this point in every season, and there are impending free agents on those teams. So why don't we see this sort of thing, do you think? And what are the possible downsides? I don't know. Okay. I don't we see this sort of thing do you think and what are the possible downsides i don't know okay i don't know why this doesn't happen more i think that this is a confusing situation on its own just because you have the pirates caring about where nicasio goes even though he's a free agent in a month or two so you think it shouldn't really matter i don't know who claimed him but if you figure it's a it's a rival who was trying to block a trade, then it's someone who, I don't know if that means it's the Cardinals or the Brewers or what, who might have interfered. It's still weird though, because he's conceding that they're not in the race, right? So they don't really have a rival. I mean, maybe they have a historical rival, but does it even matter if someone in your division takes them if you are conceding the season already i guess maybe it's just tougher to swallow for your fans or something i guess but is

that tougher to swallow than letting him go for for nothing and i don't this is every year we uh we get asked if it really matters uh trading players within your own division or if that's just something that writers say and apparently it does apparently people still don't like to exchange players with divisional foes or or league foes so you have huntington here saying on the one hand he didn't want to give nicasio to a rival for a a return of very marginal value but then he had nicasio go for no value at all and he went to a bad team that's way out of the race so if anything it put Nicasio in a worse position than he was already in so I don't first of all I'm not entirely sure what yeah he went to the Phillies by the way we should say yeah I shouldn't yeah that should be mentioned

I don't know entirely what the Phillies are doing here and I don't know what reason they have for claiming him I can understand why Huntington would have thought that maybe Nicasio would slip through until he got to a team that kind of mattered a little bit. And it's weird that the Phillies jumped in, but it's just a, it's a really strange transaction. And I guess, I don't know what, what would be contributing reasons for why we don't see this more teams, first of all, aren't as cheap as the pirates. That's probably part of it. Yeah. What is Nicosia it's like 600 000 or so yeah a very small amount of baseball money yeah right so i guess it's that maybe players in your clubhouse would be upset just to have such a tangible sign that you are giving up i mean it's not like they've been

mathematically eliminated yet so maybe that could rub players the wrong way or fans the wrong way although you'd think that maybe players would appreciate this in a sense, like it's something that maybe they would be happy about if a team did it for them. So you'd think that maybe they would think, oh, you're doing a nice thing for my former teammate here. But maybe it just goes against the competitive nature of fans and players and front office people for that reason and managers and coaches to give up on a season so clearly yeah and one of the elements here is that the pirates were kind of on the fringe of the race around the time of the trade deadline so maybe they would have been unwilling to to give

away a player to trade a player there so you need sort of a change in team circumstances post deadline because otherwise if the pirates were selling then they could have sold Nicosio before the deadline as a quality late inning reliever which is something that teams are always looking for around that time of the year so it's it's weird you see a lot of lower profile moves that organizations make to try to give their players better opportunities you'll see this often with like veterans who are stuck in triple a or just kind of generally very low value players where organizations just treasure them as people and they want to give them an opportunity somewhere where maybe that player isn't blocked. But this is one of the higher talent cases of this that I can recall.

And in the end, I'm not entirely sure anyone is sappy about it because the Pirates didn't get necessarily the outcome they wanted they didn't get any value in return and now nicosia is on the worst team in baseball yeah right all right that was all i got you got any outstanding banter here oh it's not outstanding but there's one left uh and it's it's i don't even have a point to make about it it's just an article regarding something i'd never thought of before in the article it's from the uh the post gazette i don't know if this crossed your feed or got your attention it's by elizabeth bloom and the title of the article is why western pennsylvania dirt is used in the infields of most mlb stadiums i have never really thought about

the dirt i mean i've thought about the dirt but i've never thought about the composition of the dirt or where it comes from and i think more people have an understanding of where like the baseball mud comes from right that's in new jersey or Delaware, one of those. Yeah, right. Along the Delaware River. Okay, so maybe I don't have the understanding. But anyway, I used to have the understanding. And actually, if I'm not mistaken, aren't they phasing out the baseball mud? I think so. Yeah, it is in New Jersey, I believe. But yeah, I'm not sure if they're going to continue doing that. But it's been used for quite a long time, South Jersey off the Delaware River, the Lena Blackburn baseball rubbing mud. Okay.

So if you cease thinking about baseball rubbing mud because it ceases to be a thing, then perhaps more people will think about baseball dirt. And we've got the company profiled in this article is called Dura Edge. That's Dura Edge, one one word camel case e and d and it uh there's just an interesting article to read just because it talks about now granted this article might be framing dura edge infield dirt as being better than it actually is however it is the dirt that's used in i think it says 21 of the 30 major league stadiums and it's also used in hundreds of other fields even specifically specifically in the Pennsylvania area. There are some quotes toward the bottom.

Let's see. Sean Rodriguez. The article concludes with, quote, But perhaps the strongest endorsement came from utility player Sean Rodriguez, who recently returned to the Pirates after a stint with the Dura Edge-less Atlanta Braves at the new SunTrust Park. So for reference, SunTrust Park does not have a Dura Edge dirt infield. PNC Park does. In fact, they have a brand new Dura Edge infield.

Quote, this place has been amazing since I've been back a couple of days, Rodriguez said of PNC Park. Atlanta, I don't know, being a new field, I don't know if they're still trying to get a feel for how it's going to work, but I would definitely give this field a way bigger edge than Atlanta right now. So Sean Rodriguez throwing a little shade at SunTrust Park and really talking up the brand new PNC infield. Jordy Mercer is in here saying the infield has been, quote, amazing this year.

They did it right. It needed to be redone, but they did it the right way. And it's been awesome. This is apparently something that some players do care about. And this is supposed to be a very high quality composition of soil. It's a mixture of clay and sand and something else that's also in the article. And I don't remember what it is, but it's it's super absorbent. And then there's facts in here about how the pirates have had fewer games postponed by rain ever since installing this dirt because it just takes up

so much water. So it's probably not the kind of thing that you're going to think about for weeks on end. It's not something that you're going to have dreams about. But if you've ever been curious about the dirt that is in 70% of Major League Baseball stadiums, there is an article waiting for you. All right. Curiosity satisfied. And apparently warning tracks are made of Colorado lava rock. Volcano fact. Does that mean it comes from like the rim of a volcano or it used to be magma or something? Well, any lava rock would, yeah, that would be former magma. I don't know when magma stops being magma. I wonder if there's a specific place where it comes from.

We'll have to do further research into this somewhere. Well, one of the largest eruptions, in fact, maybe the largest known eruption in the history of the planet took place in what is currently southwestern colorado i believe but that's a very very ancient eruption but there's there's lava rock everywhere and just to be clear so no one sends in corrections i know i just said under my breath i don't know when magma stops being magma that was dumb i know what it does and it's when it breaches the surface but i don't know when lava stops being lava i don't think it ever does okay all right let's take a quick break and we will be right back with will johnson Ganging on the final try And if it's time Just rearrange everyone

To change the scenery And to let go Like a victory And you should see So you might be aware of our guest today from his musical career. He is a very prolific singer-songwriter. He has been in almost too many bands to keep track of, most notably Centromatic and South

St. Gabriel, but he has also become a baseball artist later in his career and is auctioning off a work currently for Hurricane Harvey relief, which is why we wanted to have him on now, although I've been meaning to have him on for some time. So it's Will Johnson. Hey, Will. Hey. Hi. So I love the art and I've seen it pop up in our Facebook group from time to time. People will point it out to each other. I'm curious about how it kind of became a thing that you exhibit and sell as opposed to just a hobby or a pastime. Because I know that Ben Gibbard, who's a listener of the show and my other podcast, has talked up your work and has bought some of your work. But how did it kind of reach the larger world? I started making these things, I don't know, almost 10 years ago.

I started making these things, I don't know, almost 10 years ago. And I had gone through a breakup and, you know, moved into this sort of dank apartment and didn't have a lot to decorate the walls with. And so I just figured, I don't know, I'd always been messing around with painting, but never seriously. I finally started making a couple of baseball paintings just to hang on the walls to fill the space and kind of pay tribute to some of the players that I've always loved, but also some of the players that I wanted to learn more about and that I also thought more people should know about. So I did that for about a year

and a half or two years, I want to say. And then finally, a friend from Vermont commissioned me to make a painting. And then about six or eight months after that, a record store asked me to put a collection together for an art show. And it's been pretty steady since that time. I'll try to make time for painting or working on commissions or building art shows whenever, really whenever I'm home between tours, I don't know, it just sort of provides kind of a peaceful and therapeutic way to create something a little more quietly than banging on a loud electric guitar, really. I don't have access to every single piece of baseball art that you've ever made, but at least for the most part, I'll say for the most part, you have a pretty consistent theme, pretty consistent layout. You have sort of one of the upper side quadrants of a baseball player's body and a name and a quote or something biographical. So how long, I guess, have you sort of stuck with that theme and why is that a format that appeals to you so much? I've always liked the idea of having the player partway in the frame. I mean, for space and for text real estate purposes, it has to be that way just to get some of their story in.

But also there's something about, there's maybe a little more mystery to it when they're sort of peeking into the frame. And usually their eyes are averted, you know, left or right. I think one or two of them are looking straight up. I think Rube Waddell was looking up in the sky because he was obsessed with planes and things like that. Usually mid, you know, mid-pitching start. But most of the time, there's something about it that feels kind of subdued to my eye and a little bit tranquil.

And the game itself can be can be that way but it also can be you know sometimes I'll get requests for action you know action shots or action poses which is fine but it seems so rare even through baseball card culture you know a lot of the time I always enjoyed the cards that had the players in more of a tranquil sort of subdued state, perhaps during spring training or something. When they're just kind of warming up to the season and warming up to the idea of we got six or seven months of this, you know, down the road. And sometimes when you catch a player in an introspective state, it just, I don't know, it intrigued me as a kid. It intrigued me as a kid. I always wanted to know what they were thinking about.

And I think with the paintings, I've worked to kind of transmit that similar energy or even lack thereof. There's something about it that's somewhat introspective with each player. And I want to go for that with each portrait. If it's a commission that wants, I don't know, Don Mattingly in his famous stance, I'll definitely do it. But for whatever reason, I kind of enjoy the more introspective takes on players. Do you remember what your first piece of baseball art was? I mean, maybe it was some childhood doodle or something, but, you know, your first kind of fully produced piece? Yeah, I made a small, I made a tiny painting of Satchel Paige from my bathroom, like, I don't know, 12, 13 years ago. And then the first one of the larger scale, like the size of paintings that I work with now, the first one I made was Alta Weiss.

So, and then I think, you know, some of the more household names after that Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron and such but Alta Alta's number one and as far as my paintings history catalog goes she's she's the first one and there are a lot of legends obviously you get asked to do prominent players is there like a most obscure player you've been asked to draw? There's definitely an obscure one, and I've become friends with the guy that commissioned me for it. This happened about five and a half years ago, and I received an email from my manager,

and it was forwarded from this fellow in Iowa, and he wanted me to make a painting of his father, and his father happened to pitch the first no-hitter in Swedish baseball history. Wow. And so I learned a lot in that email because I wasn't really aware that there was. Swedish baseball history. Swedish baseball history. And so at first I thought, man, this guy's just messing with me.

And that's pretty funny if he is. That's pretty freaking awesome. But then I looked it up and, you know, did some research. And then he sent me a few clippings. And lo and behold, it was true. And his father's name is Bill Hagelin. The guy's name is Carl Hagelin. He's a painter from Charles City, Iowa.

And we've since become good friends. But his father, Bill, was one of the more obscure ballplayers that I've painted. And I was happy to learn a lot about Swedish baseball history right there while making that painting. I finally wound up meeting him a couple of years later and we had a good talk. But I do occasionally get something along those lines. Maybe someone whose father pitched a no- hitter for a certain college back in the day, things like that. If there's a family tie in and there's actually some stats and more importantly, if there's a story that I can kind of, I don't know, sink my teeth into and

really kind of get going with, then I'm really excited to take on a painting, no matter how obscure the player. I mean, a lot of the time, the more obscure paintings are often the more fun ones to do, because not only am I learning a lot of new stuff, but I feel like maybe potentially I'm going to transmit some new stuff to the viewer. Whereas we're all well familiar with the Babe Ruth of the world, you know, and I'll paint a Babe Ruth. But it's usually the more obscure ones that I get more fired up about painting anymore, it seems like. I think Ben and I are probably on the same page, where we would agree that we'd like to now convert this into a podcast episode about the history of Swedish baseball. I don't know how much you remember learning from your learning process, but if somebody asks you about the history of Swedish baseball, what do you recall? What are facts that you have off the top of your head?

you recall what are facts that you have off the top of your head well the guy played for lex and i believe it's spelled for l it's spelled l-e-k-s-a-n-d i think that's how you spell it but nonetheless he threw the snow hitter i guess in the late 60s he was playing ball in germany before that and was in the military and this is kind of what they did for you know spare time and fun and all that stuff and then he wound up stationed in sweden and playing for lex and and uh lo and behold he threw the first no hitter so when um oh do you have more more about swedish no that's that's about that's about the best i can give you i mean i can i can dig up a print or the painting itself i can look at an image of the painting itself and tell you even more but that's what I know off the top of my head. It's listed here on Wikipedia.

Lexund is home to one of the oldest and more successful baseball clubs in Sweden. One of the oldest and more successful. You know, never mind. Go ahead. It's all yours. So how do you decide, unless it's a request from someone who has commissioned it, how do you decide what text to put on the painting? Because sometimes it will be a quote, sometimes it will just be a big block of text that you wrote about the player's career. Are you trying to get at the essence of that player or just summarize his career or what's the goal?

It kind of depends. It goes from painting to painting. his career or what's the goal? It kind of depends. It goes from painting to painting. I mean, certain commissioners are a little more hands-on with regard to what stats or what quotes they might want included. But most people are just like, hey, man, run with it. Do your thing and we'll be happy, I'm sure. Which is a nice vote of confidence. I don't know that I deserve that vote of confidence still. I feel like I'm still kind of in my apprenticeship with all this stuff. But a lot of the time, a quote can really sum so much up, you know, and the quote can kind of dominate it. So I'll make sure that that at least gets in there toward the end.

And in some cases, the quote is so good that it speaks louder than the stats in so many ways. And I'll just make it the painting. You know, if you want to look up more on the player, you're free to do it. But that Mookie Wilson quote, I didn't really want to put anything else on there because the quote is so powerful and strong, whether or not it's true. I come back to it quite frequently. If ever I find myself in daily question or existential crisis, I think about the Mookie quote. Do you want to read it since you brought it up? We'll link to it for everyone. But

do you want to tell us about the Mookie image? Yeah, I got to get back close to it. I'm running around the house here. Now, you guys know that it's probably not true, right? I've been told it's not true. Yeah, I think there's a parody newspaper article that it comes from, right? I think maybe. Yes, I feel like I saw another one from Ray Knight, perhaps. But anyway, the Mookie quote goes, when I'm in a slump, I comfort myself by saying,

if I believe in dinosaurs, then somewhere they must be believing in me. And if they believe in me, then I can believe in me. And then I bust out. Word start. I mean, I could put a lot of stats and stuff in there, and perhaps I will the next time I make a Mookie painting,

but just on Sunday when I was making this one, it just had to go that way. I didn't want to muck it up with anything else. What is sort of the process from start to finish? How long, I guess, does one of these paintings take as you're designing it coming up with the quote or the biography and then just the execution of it um usually i can get i can get one done in about if it's a smaller one and this one i say smaller maybe that's like

10 to 12 inches across but i say 20 24 inches tall i can get one of those done in a day and then maybe one of the larger ones which is like a foot across by say four feet tall that's you know maybe a day day and a half you know but i've gotten i've gotten faster at them over time i just i don't know i feel like maybe i've gotten a little bit more confident with them but i also kind of have them kind of got my method down to where i'll cut the board to size and then sketch the player out and get a lot of the nuances and sort of the wrinkles and things like that taken care of just with the pencil and then i'll uh and then i'll set into painting but

a lot of the fun is uniform research and that gets real fun especially when it you know before we had color photographs and say you know guessing, guessing exactly what the Page Fence Giants uniform looked like or, you know, the Chicago American Giants. I have sort of a feel for it from the black and white photos, but it's always fun to get in there and do the research and try to figure out colors through black and white photographs, if that makes sense. And kind of go through that. I mean, and that sends me down a whole different wormhole of, you know, fascination with uniform history and uniform design, function, you know, function over fashion or fashion over function, whichever the matter may be. That sends me down a whole new nerd path.

And what's your own history with baseball? I know you grew up in Missouri, right? So you're a Cardinals fan, but you're in Texas now. What kind of fan are you, I guess? Oh, I mean, I tuned in. I'm not going to tell you I'm tuned in every game. That's not true, but I'm tuned in for three or four games a week at least. My wife and I, we've got two kiddos and they're active and I can't always just

hold up in the corner and watch baseball on my computer, but I will have it on the radio and, you know, kind of check in as we're cooking or as we're kind of doing our evening routine. And that was always the way it was when I was a kid. I was fortunate enough to grow up, you know, with the voice of Jack Buck regularly kind of streaming through the house. And that's how I became a Cardinals fan, I guess, in the late 70s. And then the 82 team, of course, was a really attractive, you know, appealing thing in our part of the world. So I've just been loyal to them ever since.

And I've been living in Texas since 1983. So there wasn't a lot, there wasn't much else to do in the little town that I come from. It's a town called Kennett, Missouri. It's not so far from the Mississippi River, up from Memphis a little ways. It's cotton and soybean farming country. And I mean, you know, you played sports, you got one out and got in trouble pretty much. So I played baseball for all my years, you know, as many years as I was allowed to there and then got down here and played a little bit. But after that, I discovered punk rock and got into bands and realized that all the other

kids were growing up big and strong and that I was always going to be about five, seven and not that big and strong and I was going to play music instead. I mean, yes, there are the Altuves of the world, but I knew reality set in about age 15 or 16. And I realized, yeah, I think I'm going to play music. Yeah, it would be a different story if somebody had introduced Jose Altuve to punk rock back in the day. So I guess if you still most identify as a Cardinals fan, then I think that you have sufficient authority to be able to express. You must have a Mike Matheny opinion. You are now free to express it.

Man, he had me so twisted for so much of the year on the lineup. I just didn't know what to expect each night. It was changing every night. And I was concerned that, you know, maybe the players were kind of tangled in their shoestrings with the whole thing, not knowing what to expect and what roles to, you know, to be expected of them through the lineup

for the first part of the season. I can't profess to know, though. I don't know anything about baseball. Good grief. The year 2006 told me that I don't know anything about baseball when the Cardinals went 81 and 81 and backed into the playoffs and then won it all. So, you know, I can't profess to know. I mean, a lot of people gripe about, you know, a lot of people want a colorful and charismatic and, you know, a dazzling

manager personality. And he definitely is, you know, he's pretty tight-lipped for sure. Even the strange quirks of La Russa, you know, being what great friends with Dennis DeYoung and the only vegan manager in baseball and, you know, his kind of his interesting quirks, you know, a lot of people, I think at the beginning really missed that. Of course, they missed the winning team. The teams winning the World Series also helped, of course. But there's sort of a stoic consistency about Matheny that I still like and that I still respect. I feel like he's a relatable manager to the players.

And I feel like, I mean, in a way, I think the dude could probably still go out there and play. But I like him. I'm happy with him, actually, so far. But the lineup thing earlier in the year was, you know, it was a little bit of a head-stretcher. But, again, I can't profess to know. He knows far better than most of us.

We found the Cardinals fan who's happy with Mike Matheny. That's a hell of a guess. I'm still giving him a chance. I'm not bailing on him. So has the baseball art opened up other artistic opportunities? Because just browsing your Instagram, I see that you recently did a concert poster for Jason Isbell. You did an Evel Knievel portrait. It seems like you're branching out a bit or have had chances to do other things.

Yeah, sometimes I'll get asked to do things. I mean, the Evel Knievel thing has spawned some new direction and then I'm thinking about doing just a series of stunt people, quite frankly. So yeah, I've done a few things like that. I got asked to build a show of Tennessee Volunteer Football Legends a couple of years ago, which sounds pretty obscure, but I was very, very excited to do it because my father graduated from there. And he raised me on Tennessee Volunteer Football and took me to a lot of games as a kid. And so it was a big part of our family and kind of a big part of our bonding as father and son. So I said yes to doing it. And I picked him up on the way to Knoxville to hang the show. And we went to the homecoming game I picked him up on the way to Knoxville to hang the show,

and we went to the homecoming game. And the whole deal, I got to do something that I'd always wanted to do, which was take him to a football game in Knoxville. So I've kind of checked out some other subject matter here and there, and sometimes it is nice to, I don't know, to take a little bit of a break from the baseball thing just to do, I don't know, stadium paintings or the Isbell thing or the Evel Knievel kind of thing. I have this series called Shit I Think About When Trail Running, which is, it gets kind of out there because you run a heap of miles and you're, you know, it gets a little psychedelic at times and

they'll come home and kind of try to document some of those things. Anyway, I'm not altogether sure I know what I'm doing in those realms, but I sure like messing around with them, and I figure it teaches me a little something. So I'll break away from baseball from time to time to do that kind of stuff. Well, you're not going to break away from baseball for the remainder of this podcast because I'm going to go right to baseball. Because you obviously come at watching baseball from a different perspective than what Ben or I do where we have the

analytical bent and then you're uh i don't know hate the word creative but you might look at it in a little more artistic sense but you i was also scrolling through your instagram not too long ago and you uh you recently presented an argument against the espn strike zone frame that is placed on the screen and uh i yeah i was uh i was curious if you'd like to delay out your argument against it because uh do you uh i think it's it was it read more unique than arguments i've heard against it before well i think it's you know i sort of think it's this it's like a new version do you remember the glow puck in the mid 90s i think it's just like an extension of the glow puck. I think it's insulting to the viewer. I mean, we can all see where the ball's going and we know that the,

every imp has his, has his own strike zone. And that's going to differ sometimes within the matter, not only of a game, but within a matter of an inning. And, uh, there are many times where the ESPN strike zone, it's not a strike. It might land outside of the strike zone, but it's still called a strike. It just seems useless and it seems kitschy to me. I think it takes away from, we don't need another video graphic on the screen, especially not there. Is there a legacy of baseball art that you pay any attention to that you take any cues from like are there other artists who have done work in baseball or or even just individual works that you admire there are a couple there's a guy that did the book um we are the ship do you know what i'm talking

about i'm totally blanking on his name right now you got me running around i'm gonna find it on the shelf here at least i think'm going to find it on the shelf here. At least I think I'm going to find it on the shelf here. I'm not sure where it went. Is it Kadir Nelson? Yes, Kadir Nelson. Thank you very much for bailing me out on that. I love his work.

Just as soon as you said it, I found it. I really like his work a lot. But most of the time, it's more American folk artists. Definitely love the work of Howard Fenster a lot. I think the bright colors in his use of text and the energy within his paintings was definitely an inspiration, no question about it. So he would be one that comes to mind for sure. My buddy here in town, actually, a guy named Tim Kerr, I think he captures the human form in a really amazing way. He uses some text, but it's not quite as carpal tunnel as mine, I don't think. I definitely dig in and write a lot

of tiny, tiny texts and kind of push that a little bit more. But I love his use of color and his use of the way that he positions his subjects for sure. He's got a rawness to his work as well that I've always loved. So there's a couple right there. I mean, it's from the past and from the present that definitely inspire me to kind of keep messing around with the human form and just trying to get better, you know? Where do you stand on baseball music, whether it's like, you know, the Baseball Project or the Isotopes or just a one-off song like Ben did for Ichiro?

Or has there been any baseball influence on your musical work? A little bit, but it's been mostly sort of obscure metaphors that are just sort of tucked into songs that you would, I mean, if you read the title or even listen to it sort of casually you probably wouldn't pick up on it but there have been a few you know there have been a few little references here and there i suppose i i leaned heavy on the sports metaphor within my lyrics from i would say about 1998 until 2005 and i just had to like i had to back off and just said too i just had to kind of back away from it because it was, I don't know, it was becoming a little too much of a regular thing. So I haven't done as much lately. But as for the baseball project, yes, I love them very much.

And I'm friends with all those folks. Actually, we're all on an email list together. It's probably 15 of us. And we're all obsessed with rocking. I mean, we're all obsessed with rock. And I mean, we're all musicians. Most of us are musicians and, um,

varying levels of baseball obsession. And so we check in with each other quite a lot, just on various topics and subjects and mostly baseball, but sometimes just life or TV or rock and roll or whatever the case may be. I just remembered something though, when you brought up the, and K-Zone, a friend of mine had a really good idea, and I do think I have my Halloween costume put together

and that I think I'm just going to face it. I'm going to look it in the face and do the full uniform but do the white square cutout in my midsection and just be the catcher with the K-Zone and see how many catcher with the k-zone and see if see how many people actually get the reference because i've had a lot of responses on my uh on my outburst about the k-zone has there uh has there been one particular piece among your your history of baseball art where maybe you just kind of ran into a wall or you just you found that it was it was

more difficult than you were expecting, whether it's the painting or finding the text to put beside it? Yeah, I've slaughtered the text before I got to start up. I just break the thing over my knee and I've done that a time or two. I've run out of space before

because obviously it's space intensive. You only have so much to work with and you really got to wrap it up if you're running low on space and had to back up and paint over some things and correct that. I've had misspellings in the middle of it that I'll, you know, get done and reread. And it's like, oh, crap, man. You know, I misspelled that word.

I got in a hurry, and now I got to back up. And I was dealing with a seven-letter word, but now it's an eight-letter word. And, of course, everything's so packed in there. And it's like, you got to make it, you got to smooth it out and make it look, you know, like you didn't miss anything. But that's definitely happened for sure. Now, I haven't painted a name. I don't think I've painted a name across the top incorrectly yet. But yeah, I've had some typos here and there.

And then I think there was a time or two where, you know know just juggling a couple of brushes and i'll drop one and of course it doesn't like bounce off of it but it rolls right across it and paint goes right all over it so yeah there's been a couple of dad tantrums i guess but they don't last long as a quick follow-up just maybe it's a little obscure but i was curious in the mookie painting youookie painting, you write in all capital letters except for I's that aren't the word I. What is your reason for having lowercase I's in the text? I'm not real sure. I thought about that not so long ago when I was making opinions. Like, damn it, I'm still doing that. the lowercase i is if the i is at the beginning of a sentence yeah or if it's in the context of

i or i'm you know in a quote or something like that i don't know what that is my 10th grade english teacher got on to me about that pretty bad basically suggesting i was going to fail out of college if i didn't learn how to write in cursive or if i didn't write correctly but i managed to get through college doing that. But I'm not telling you that it's right. I don't know the rhyme or reason to it. It's kind of strange. So the Mookie auction ends on Sunday.

People can still get their bids in on eBay. We'll tell everyone where to find it. Why Mookie for this one? And is there anyone on your to-do list, just someone you want to get to not necessarily a commissioned piece i was just in a mookie mood the other day i've been meaning to make a painting with that quote on it for a couple months now and i had a little bit of extra time on sunday morning and just kind of knocked it knocked it out and um so anyway that was just one that was on the to-do

list that it had been sitting on it for a while, and I just decided I'm going to go do something constructive this morning. There are a bunch of players that I still want to get to, and even managers and owners. I still want to do a Bill Veck piece. I've never done one of those. I really would like to get to one of those. Let's see. There's a few others here. I'd like to do a Mon to one of those yeah let's see uh there's a few others here i'd like to do a amani urban piece i want to do a saul white piece there's a bunch of stadium pieces that i'd like to

do still i really want to get to a lot of the 19 like the early 70s oakland a's i just think some of those personalities were fantastic i've done maybe three or four of them, but I'd like to do some more, predominantly because I love painting that uniform. But so anyway, there's some 70s players that I would like to get to. I just think that that era of baseball was fascinating, and it's what I kind of came up with. So I go back to it whenever time allows. Anyway, there's great facial hair,, you know, there's just amazing

haircuts and facial hair from back then. It's always fun to paint those guys. All right. Well, the auction ends Sunday at 2 p.m. Central. It is 10 by 22. It's acrylic and pencil and 100% of the proceeds go to the Houston Food Bank. So go bid if you're in the Mookie Market. And you can find all of Will's work on Twitter and Instagram at willjohnsontx and also at

his website, will-johnson.com. All of his music is there. All of his paintings and shows are there. It is the central repository of Will Johnson work, and he is ready and waiting for commissions. I guess if you have a favorite player, you can let him know. So, Will, thank you very much for coming on. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you guys so much for letting me come along for a little while. This has been really enjoyable. I really appreciate it. No, thank you. All right, so a reminder, you can enter our raffle to benefit the Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund. No, thank you. Speaking into autographed by me and Jeff and Sam, as well as an autographed copy of the book and an Effectively Wild t-shirt.

And most important, the satisfaction of having helped people. And if you have any money left over, you can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already done so include Casey Olney, Adrian Lamont, Dominic Banfield, Ryan Johnson, and Mike Lehrman. Thanks to all of you. You can join the aforementioned Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. If you're looking for something else to listen to, Michael Bauman and I have a new episode of the Ringer MLB show up.

We did 15 prop bets or over-unders for the rest of the season. It was pretty fun. There were some agonizing choices. You can find that on the Ringer MLB show feed. And you can keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcastwithfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system.

You're listening to our guest today, Will Johnson, singing for Centromatic. The song is Calling Thermatico, which Will tells me was inspired by Barry Bonsa's ascent and all of the suspicion and fallout that later surrounded his career. We will talk to you soon. medical into the sunset he had lost options he lost time we were related but the magical had never passed us by Bye.