Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1220: Brockmire and Upon Further Review

Episode Date: May 23, 2018

In a bonus EW episode, Ben Lindbergh brings on The Ringer’s Michael Baumann to talk to actor Hank Azaria about the second season of IFC’s Brockmire, real broadcasters’ affection for the show, proving his baseball bona fides, and throwing out first pitches. Then Ben brings on Slate’s Mike Pesca (35:16) to talk about his new […]

We've still got a little more time Time for an extra inning of love An extra inning of love And that just isn't enough, girl I need more love I need one extra feeling of love the ringer flying solo today. This is a bonus episode of Effectively Wild. I'll be talking to a few people I like a lot. You all know I'm working on a book with Travis Sotchick from Fangraphs, but I've also contributed to a book that is out right now. It's called Upon Further Review, The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History. And I contributed a chapter about what would have

happened, how things would have been different if Major League Baseball had started testing for steroids in 1991, which as a lot of people don't realize, is actually when steroids were officially banned in baseball. But the book has 31 chapters, all sports are covered, many really great writers, and the editor and organizer of this book is Mike Peska of Slate, who many of you know from hosting Hang Up and Listen for years. Now he hosts Slate's daily podcast, The Gist, of which I have heard every episode. So he's going to join me a little bit later to talk about the book and also its accompanying podcast, which is also called Upon Further Review. But before we get to Mike, we have another guest I'm excited about, Hank Azaria.

You know Hank, of course, from The Simpsons and many other movies and shows. But he is currently starring in Brockmire on IFC, which is a baseball show. And not just in the sense that there is some amount of baseball in it. It is actually a baseball show. It features a baseball broadcaster. And last year before it premiered, Michael Bauman and I had Hank on the Ringer MLB show to talk about Brock Meyer. And now midway through its second season, we're going to have Hank on here. So we're going to talk about the evolution of the show, how it's caught on among real life broadcasters, and also his upcoming first pitch at Citi Field. Hank's a fun guy. It's a fun conversation.

Jeff has not, to this point, been a Brockmire viewer or an Upon Further Review reader, although I'm working on him. So to talk to Hank, I am joined by my pal and my colleague, The Ringer's own Michael Bauman. Michael, welcome to the Baseball Podcast, where we actually do talk about college baseball. Some pal. You talked to Grayson Griner without me, you son of a bitch. Yeah, you gave me some backstory on Grayson Griner when I mentioned him in Slack.

I don't think you were prepared for the amount of backstory I gave you. Yeah, I heard all about Joey Pancake who was at Grayson Griner's debut, but between Grayson and St. Peter's University, this has been a college baseball podcast lately. I told you you'd come around. I have come around. Whatever is weird and stands out from the rest of baseball, that's what I want to talk about. Even if it is Division I, a team that even you had never heard

of when I asked you about St. Peter's. So we are going to talk shortly for our other podcast. But while you're here, we're going to talk to Hank Azaria, which we did once last year. We're still watching and enjoying. Nothing's going to replace pitch in our heart, I guess, just because- It's a very different place in my heart. Very different. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Both baseball shows, but about as far away from each other as you could possibly get on the baseball show spectrum. So I think season two of Brockmire has been an improvement on something I already liked. There was an element of the first season at times where it was kind of frat-ish or

bro-ish. It felt like, okay, how far can this guy go and how much can he curse and how many toxic chemicals can he consume? That's still a part of the show, but as we're going to talk to Hank about in just a second, I think there's more to it now while still retaining what made that entertaining. So I really liked the show. Yeah. It's all part of the bloodstream and this is a show that definitely blows a 0.4 out. That is true. All right, let's bring Hank on. So we are joined now by Hank Azaria, who is the star and executive producer of Brockmire, which I guess almost by default is the best baseball show on TV currently, but is just a genuinely good show, period, and I think is only getting better with time. Hank, thanks for coming on. time. Hank, thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I guess that's it. Is there any other baseball show right now? I do not think so. Apart from like, you know, this week in baseball, which doesn't exist anymore either. No, I think you have the whole corner carved out for yourself.

Apart from the MLB network and what they offer up for baseball tonight. Great. So the last time we talked to you was last April, just before the show premiered. So the public hadn't seen it yet. You had no idea what the response would be. Obviously, it's been positive. The show not only came back for a second season, but was then renewed for a third and fourth, even before the season started. So I'm curious about the reception within baseball.

Is this a cult favorite among baseball broadcasters? Do you hear from them that they watch the show? Yeah, a lot. Actually, I would say that now I would be surprised if I ran into a baseball person. Hi. And they didn't know of the show, which is really a kick for me. You know, the first season when we finished the show i really i was really happy with it before it you know even went out anywhere and i i sent it out i just blast emailed some guys i

know in sports but even guys i didn't like bob costas i just use it as an excuse to you know send a little fan letter email and attach the chat to the show. I got really great response that way. In fact, Bob has become a big fan, and he hosted our season two premiere, and he's going to be in season three, in fact. Bob Costas always seems a little bit too wholesome for this show. That's a little hard to wrap my head around. It's just the public persona.

He gets sad. Inside is Brockmire, through and through. What are Bob Costas' inner demons like? I couldn't tell you yet. I don't know. I haven't made a, I haven't studied him

long enough yet to report on that. But he really enjoys the sicko, weirdo nature of the show. And it's gratifying that somebody like Bob who I know

is a baseball purist. And is there any bigger lover of, I guess, you know, Gammons and, who writes, is a baseball purist. And is there any bigger lover? I guess, you know, Gammons and who writes, you know, Ken Burns and what's that guy's name? George Will. There's a few iconic American men who like obviously, you know, help bolster the tradition of the game.

Bob, I would say is one of them. So the fact that he left the show means a lot to me, but you know, that baseball folks have embraced it really means a lot to me. It's a game that I really love and gotten so much from. So to give back a little something means a lot to me, even if it's kind of sick and twisted. Yeah. One of the, I mean, obviously, obviously so much is different in season two, but one thing that really stood out to me was the character of Charles Tyrell Jackson Williams, who is fantastic as sort of the straight man character in season one. It has an even bigger role in season two. How has that been like to witness and be a part of, and how has your relationship with Tyrell evolved?

be a part of? And how's your relationship with Tyrell evolved? Tyrell is a really awesome young man. Very bright, very good writer in his own right. I had never seen, I told him this, and I told many other people as well. I've auditioned many, many people in my life. I've never seen a greater difference between one actor and everybody else reading for a role. He was so head and shoulders above everybody else to the point where we worried that the role was unactable. We were like, I think we might have to reconceive this because nobody seems to be able to project the kind of nerdy intelligence and yet sort of emotional kind of openness at the same time being really reserved and sort of being believably oblivious to baseball and yet a quick learner and understanding of the game, even though they dislike surrounded by adults, these adults are much less mature than you are. And, you know, in a believable way. It was really, we realized as we were auditioning it,

that Joel had written quite a difficult part. And Tyrell was just from the beginning, just unbelievable. And he continued to be. And one of the great things about this golden age of cable television we're in is like with Brockmire, we don't have to, we can break the mold every year. Season one was in Morristown, Pennsylvania. Season two is in New Orleans. Season three will be probably central Florida.

And not only can you do that, but you can just switch up which characters you focus on. And we wanted in season two, Joel did. Joel Church Cooper wanted to focus on a more unconventional love story, well, it's more codependent because Jim and Jules are pretty codependent, but a different flavor of love story between

Charles and Jim and sort of flesh out that character more. And so Joel wrote that beautifully and then I knew Tyrell was great, didn't know that he would step up. But you've seen season two. It's kind of amazing how great he is.

I mean, he really seems like the adult in the relationship. And the other kid just turned 21. And Brockmire himself, I think, is maybe more of a well-rounded character in season two. And he still goes to excess in every possible way. But there is a cost to that eventually, and you show that. And as much as the excesses that he goes to are played for laughs at times, there's a more serious aspect. And there is probably a lot more of him away from the booth this year. There are entire episodes that feature no baseball, no broadcasting whatsoever. He's kind of more of a person.

So I don't know if that's more or less fun for you to play because I'm sure it must be fun just to be Brockmire slamming drinks and doing lines the whole time as well. But I guess it's more satisfying in a way that there's this new depth to the character. Yes. The great thing about Table and the creative freedom you're afforded is if you want to get real dark for a while, you can. Whether that's for five minutes within a show or for a whole episode.

I mean, my only constraint I put on Joel as a writer is please just make it funny. I don't. That's about it. I just wanted. That doesn't mean we can't depart and get super dark. I worried a little bit and we do, as you've mentioned. You know, we seem to, it's so hard to find a formula where you do make something funny,

which we found in season one that I was a little bit loath to depart from it. Like, well, let's, we only did eight of those. Let's keep doing that but joel you know he takes pride in one of the things he takes pride in as a writer is uh not resting on his laurels and continuing to push things and offer up something a little different and so i was game and then he wrote it so beautifully it's hard to argue with it so we did that now those scenes we get pretty dark dramatic sad edgy they're not as much

fun to play it's more fun to do a comedy than a drama for obvious reasons it's more fun to spend the day deciding how you can get the best laugh than how you're gonna you know make people cry uncomfortable or sad or freaked out but this show is a really cool combination of both. And, you know, as an actor, it's a fun challenge to sort of bounce back and forth between tones like that and figure out how to make jokes work. It almost becomes this crazy game. Like, okay, given the harsh, harsh scene we just did,

how do you pull a laugh out of that? It's more challenging. Yeah, and I wanted to stay on that for a second. There's a line in season two where Charles tells Jim, people like you better when you're drunk. And Jim says, oh, that's the thing every alcoholic wants to hear. And I think that's true. I mean, it's definitely true of the character. And in season one, it just felt like figuratively, they never showed the hangover, right? It was all just good times all the time. And there's a lot more consequences to Jim's actions and Jim's drinking and drug use and

gets into that in season two. And beyond the dramatic elements, was there a discussion about the responsibility of portraying Jim as this fun drunk who's just going to live like this forever versus, you know, was there a decision to go forward and be bring some real world stakes into it? There was no discussion. I don't discuss with Joel where he wants to go with it. I mean, I'll raise my hand and I feel like it's way out of bounds,

but really I'm after 35 years of making publishing, I got smart enough to know that when you hook up with a really good writer, let him do his thing and let him write where he feels there's a lot of juice and guts. And we don't discuss too much of that stuff. But other than that, no, there was no, I don't even think on Joel's part, there was no like motivation of, oh boy, we're being kind of glorifying alcohol and drug use. Let's be a little more socially responsible. I think it was purely a creative choice, and what he felt was real and believable. You know, with drug addicts and drunks,

they say the way the disease kind of progresses is fun, then fun with problems, and then pretty much just horrible problems. So if season one was fun, season two gets into fun with problems, and then pretty much just horrible problems. So if season one was fun, season two gets into fun with problems. Yeah, that definitely seems like how things have gone so far. No question, which is how things tend to go in life. That's the great thing about K-Way. You can just...

I'm used to, like, you know, you have a show, wherever it is, in a network, and you're working on a thing, and you feel like a very believable turn of the road for the story of the characters would be a certain thing let's say that the characters like what we're talking about like the character starts finding this consequence to drinking like that and drugging like that and the network goes oh but come on that's the way he's funny we don't want to break that mold let's not do that and so you can't do it and in this

when you're afforded this kind of creative freedom a you can do not do that and so you can't do it and in this when you're afforded this kind of creative freedom a you can do what you want and b you can really the only thing you have to answer to is does it feel believable does it feel funny is it interesting and compelling and it just felt like the natural place to go i worried that you know people kind of the fun of the character as you mentioned was he was the superhero almost who could just bash himself with whatever substances and sort of bounce back like a cartoon character and so to kind of make him human and start to you know run out of gas or encounter some kryptonite i worried about i and you know even we had done the first six you know we sort of edit them in order and I was real happy with the first six.

And then you've seen the show in the last two episodes, it kind of gets really rough. And I was really worried that, that we had earned that. I'm like, well, here we go. I hope this tonal shift doesn't feel like a tonal shift.

Hope it's still funny. And I hope people are with it, the story enough and the characters enough to just kind of go with us here. And I really felt like we did accomplish that, and the response seems to be that as well. So it was gratifying. Yeah, you mentioned that maybe occasionally

you'll put up your hand if something goes out of bounds. How often does that happen? It doesn't seem like it could happen all that often given where the show does go. And I wonder whether the admiration or the enjoyment that other real broadcasters get out of the show is partly just jealousy of, I wish I could say something like that on the air just one time. I have to keep everything so polite and I have to restrain my true feelings and thoughts. And Brockmire very rarely does that, even when he's on the air.

So are there times when even this show says we can't say that? No, I don't put up my hand saying we've gone too far. I'll just I'll put on my hand more about like, I just don't think that joke works or. Yeah. I'll just, I'll put on my hand more about like, I just don't think that joke works or, or we haven't gone far enough or, um, you know, I don't quite buy this character motivation. Like, why would he be yelling in front of people like that? It doesn't need like little things like that, but a more just kind of like believability of story. And, uh, in fact, we discovered when we made the short about eight, nine years ago, much to my surprise, we shot a lot of stuff.

And I thought this was going to be a very good jumping off point for a lot of broad comedy, a lot of silliness. And there is some of that. But to our surprise in editing, the thing was funnier the more real it seemed, the more you just kind of really bought that this was an actual baseball announcer who sounded like this. Sure enough, still sounded like this in his civilian life. But other than that, was a flawed,

messed up, emotional guy. Was funny. And then that means you had to surround him with very believable good actors in believable situations. Because the meltdown in the booth is funny if you really think it's actually happening

in a real baseball broadcast. If you doubt that, if it's just kind of a silly excuse to curse, not as funny. And yes, the character can get away with... I mean, I've started making appearances just as Brockmire, the more I promote the show, the more I find it's fun just to go on highly questionable or get up on ESPN or wherever as Brockmire, I'm throwing out the first pitch of the Mets game

tomorrow as Brockmire. And he can say whatever I marvel at. Well, like I was in the booth calling an inning with Tim Kirchhen and Carl Ravitch and Eduardo Perez a couple months ago. And I had jokes in there that were really risque. In my ear, the ESPN producer was like going, oh, my God. ESPN's cable, too. Yeah. Well, but they're Disney cable they're pretty straight ahead

I mean but I even I'm like my god I could not as me I couldn't say this it was Easter weekend when I was on doing the game and I went hey you know of course happy Easter everybody this is the time of year

where we commemorate Jesus' love of scavenger hunts, which is wonderful. Now, even that, I wouldn't say that is me. It would just be too, I wouldn't want to deal with, you know, people getting upset with that. But Brodmark, I'd say whatever. It's kind of like being, having an English accent. Remember how Hugh Grant got away with apologizing for, you know, picking up a prostitute? I think that's what he did.

But because he did it to Jay Leno in a delightful English accent, it's kind of like it was a scene from Notting Hill or something. We were all like, oh, isn't that delightful?

It's sort of the same with Brockmire, that he can just, you know, if you say it like this, and then especially if you give the count afterwards, pretty much say whatever you want. Setting has always been a huge part of this show.

The first season with the sort of, you know, the Pennsylvania setting and now New Orleans. I don't know if there's a more distinctive American setting than that. So, you know, how is that like to shoot a show where, you know, the city is once again almost like another character, but it's a, the city is once again, almost like another character, but it's a completely different setting.

No, it very much is another character. It's another wonderful aspect of Joel Church Cooper's writing is that he really gives a lot of thought to where he's setting the series and why. And again, another shout out to Cable, monitor of Cable, you can move around, you know, that's usually not the model for how they make shows so joel you know if morristown sort of represented sort of uh the environmental embodiment of jim just bottom of the barrel smelled bad you know down on its luck fucked up by modern society uh you know it was the perfect place for jim and new orleans you know is the perfect place for jim to escape to it's like a city where you can't you can't be alcoholic enough you can't be out of control enough and there he is you know with a career opportunity but separated from his

lady love from amanda peete's character jewels so he's really going off the rails and boy is New Orleans the alcohol-soaked place to do it. I mean, people are just vomiting everywhere anyway. So, you know, and season three will be similar. It will sort of reflect Brockmire's state of mind. Again, Joe Church Cooper, like I knew he was a good writer. He's a young guy, still a young guy, And again, Joe Church Cooper, like I knew he was a good writer. He's a young guy, still a young guy. But the way he weaves in themes and how the environment is a part of the story and societal commentary and homages to baseball and truths about alcoholism and codependency. And all the while telling a really tight story and making it really funny, like hard, laughable jokes, pretty amazing to me. I mean, I don't I wish I could take more credit for it.

He's just incredible. One of the funniest things that happens on real baseball broadcasts is when the announcers don't realize that they've come back from commercial and they'll actually have a frank conversation about something or make some off-color comment and then immediately switch into, and we're back, and not even acknowledge that they're real selves for a moment. And in Brockmire, there's this storyline in the season, Jim's trying to get back to the big leagues and he has this rival broadcaster, Raj, who's very personable and a glad hander. And so there is this kind of focus grouped approach to broadcasting that the team is considering here and looking at the numbers and the data, almost broadcasting sabermetrics in a way. Is that pulled from

real life? Is there an aspect of that going on in real booths that you've become aware of or, or sensed, or that Joel has that the personality is being leeched out a little bit by a desire to appeal to everyone at all times. Well, I don't know about the broadcasting world, although I'm more and more approached becoming an actual broadcaster. I spend so much time appearing in broadcasters, but I can tell you that in acting, it definitely is becoming a part of it.

You know, a lot of times, you know, between two actors, go with the person with the bigger social media following or more of an influencer presence. Even more so than whether they feel they're right for the role necessarily. It matters more and more, these kind of analytics, in as much as they exist which is mostly people's measurements i mean it used to be q ratings and now they've advanced way beyond that scale uh of of what you know people uh the influence people have and the recognition factor

they have and what that actually means for eyeballs and significant eyeballs and all this kind of stuff. So it's for sure real. I mean, you know, the numbers don't lie. Same in sports. It's like, or maybe they do, but we're certainly in an era where we're lying more and more on what the numbers tell us more than the eyeball test. So not as much probably in sports, but to a certain degree, for sure. So for as well written and tight and heartwarming and smart as this show is, I'm not sure it works

if the original gag, the Brockmire voice and the act and that persona isn't still funny. And like even two seasons in, I still crack up every time I hear the voice. And you know better than probably most actors what it's like to play one very broad character over a long period of time. How rare is that for just the voice or one impression to just be sidesplittingly funny over the course of years, to not get old? to just be sidesplittingly funny over the course of years, to not get old? Well, that's part of what led me to develop it because I'm a mimic.

Besides even on The Simpsons, certainly on The Simpsons and many other jobs, but a lot of times my job, my gig, my niche is I either do imitations or vocal quirks or accents that work and are funny. So I've gotten a pretty good instinct over the years as to what is just a vocally pleasing thing, what just seems to kill every time. And there's only like four or five, six voices I've encountered over 30, 35 years that I can say that about. And I mean, just like at the poker table with my

buddies, you know, if I would try, we just call them baseball guys you'd never knew back then but if I just start you know calling the hand like this calling the poker hand and saying oh two tens for Steve and that has got this thing if you're any kind of an Allen fan you know it just always seemed or calling pinball games with my buddies in college that way it just always seemed to tickle, especially guys of a certain age, you know, who grew up. We didn't even realize how much that voice or a similar kind of voice was just in our nervous systems from when we were children as a delivery system for the sports we love. It's like an uncle, it's like a quirky uncle you didn't even realize you had a great affection for or something. And so because that voice seems to never fail is why I kind of stayed with, over the years,

trying to unlock some premise that would work for it. And it only seemed to grow over the years, you know, that people found that voice really funny. And it's so hard to make a good comedy. And it's really just one piece of Brockmire. I mean, obviously, again, it's really what Joel, you know, I created the character in that voice and it's Joel who kind of created the world of the show

and decided where it could go and kind of saw a lot more depth in it than I did. But the fact that there's a sort of go-to cylinder that it fires on, which is bottom line is a guy talking like this, saying certain things is just going to be funny. It definitely works for the show. No question. And the more the sides of Brockmire's personality come out that initially got him banned from the broadcast booth, the more popular he gets online. So in season two, he becomes a podcast star

with these live shows that he does, very confessional storytelling type podcasts. Is this inspired by a particular person or show? No, that would be a purely Joel Church Cooper question because although now I am now catching up to the world of podcasts, and there are several that I really enjoy, including this one.

He's so immersed in that world. I mean, he's like, he and I share baseball. We're both really up on baseball. Joel is, and sports in general, Joel's super, super aware of every podcast out there, every social media trend. So this was very much Joel realizing realizing where a guy like brought in the same way that charles comes up with i get you know the brainstorm he has in season one which is

your strengths are you're you know you can talk endlessly you're in love with your own voice podcast i mean i don't know how i didn't see this earlier i wanted vin scully to do a podcast his last couple years with the dodgers because that's essentially what Dodgers broadcast turned into. It was just that very digressive, oh, I'm calling the game, but also I'm telling the story about Jackie Robinson. Why not just sit him in front of the microphone and have him tell the story about Jackie Robinson

for 30 minutes at a time? Probably less drinking with Vince Scully in the booth, but who knows? Who knows at this age? Maybe he's in his retirement uh you know i don't know what i i imagine that vince gulley would drink schnapps for some reason i told you the shops man um licorice licorice but uh yeah you know it is very uh probably anybody in sports who approaches raconteur like you imagine guys like you know like guys like Newker or Joe Garagiola or Cosell.

Can you imagine the insane podcast these guys would have had? It would have been awesome. Lastly, if your persona is Brockmire, someone said, let's make this a full-time gig. You can be in the booth as Brockmire for a full season with one team. Where would you go? Would you go to the biggest media market and call the most popular team? Would you go to the minors, to IndieBall

where you can get kind of weird and the stories are a little out there? Do you have a team, a destination in mind? Well, I'm such a Mets fan that I would definitely just would do the math. I mean, as an excuse, I finally, you know, it hasn't come out yet, but I finally cracked the Mets booth.

I got to interview Keith Hernandez last week. As part of his, you know, promoting his book. It'll be on like, it'll be out on Yahoo in a week or two on Yahoo Sports. But I would, are you kidding? I'm at half the Mets games anyway. So I would combine the two interests there. Yeah.

For sure. Brockmire would fit in pretty well in that booth. You wouldn't even have to change things that much, I don't think. No. Well, yeah, the Mets lend themselves to a lot of self-deprecating. Yankees might be a different story. I don't know if Brockmire would. I think, you know what,

if Brock Martin called Yankee games, everybody would love that except for Yankee fans. Yeah. Even just hammering the Yankees all the time. Right. You know, you mentioned you're at all the Mets games. You're a real baseball fan. Do you almost have to prove to people that you are a genuine lifelong baseball fan. I always wonder because we hear from women who listen to this show that when they say, oh, I'm a baseball fan, men will often test them and say, oh, are you a real baseball fan? And do you know this guy's numbers in that year? Because there's just this societal perception historically that women aren't

true baseball fans. So that's this kind of bias that they have to deal with oftentimes. I wonder whether to some extent that applies to celebrities, to actors, to people who are famous from other realms. And then they show up in the stands at a baseball game and it's like, well, are you just promoting your baseball show? Do you have the credentials here? Are you a true baseball fan? Do you ever get that kind of testing? Yes, absolutely. I think you've hit on a true thing, which is, I've said this for a while, being a famous actor anyway is sort of similar to being a very attractive woman. You get a lot of attention from folks that, you know, from strangers. And people kind of assume things about you. One of them being that you may not know,

you know, a lot about a certain topic. You know, it also happens, I play a lot of poker. That happens at the poker table a lot, too. People assume a pretty woman at the table, or really just any woman at the table, no matter what their level of attractiveness is, don't really know the game so well.

They just assume that. And the smarter women at the poker table will use that to their advantage. And they assume, I know the poker tables, you know, if I sit down with a bunch of strangers, they assume that about me too. I'm an actor, I must not really know how to play. Just a bill of time, whatever.

And so, yes, that does come up.'m like in my you know i just turned 54 i'm a huge huge match fan huge huge sports fan i think it at this age and given how much is out there i enjoy i think i enjoy sports talk and sports analysis maybe even more than sports itself. I mean, it means a lot to me. You know, I listen a lot. I watch a lot. So I'm not a reporter who covers a team or covers a sport, but I listen, I take in a lot of information about sports because I really like it.

It relaxes me to listen to guys analyzing what's going on, keeping up to date on what's going on. So I walk on to these sports like on Get Up in the morning or wherever on Highly Questionable or wherever I go. I know a fair amount and I just kind of want to sit there and talk about the sport and the host assumes I'm an idiot

who has no idea what he's talking about and let's just keep it light and surface. I'm like, I'll be like, excuse me, I know. I know what the state the metro station is in. Let's talk about it. Explain to me, you know, what pitching, the difference between starting and relief pitching is. I mean, we can move beyond that.

So yeah, it definitely happens. Yeah. All right. Well, you can follow Hank on Twitter, just in case his next potential employer is hiring based on his number of Twitter followers. He is on Twitter at Hank Azaria. You can watch Brockmire on IFC on Wednesdays. We're about midway through the second season, but you can catch up on IFC.com, the first seasons on Hulu and elsewhere. Good luck with the first pitch.

Don't do an embarrassing one. Thanks, man. I've thrown three. Yeah, how'd they go? I've thrown two strikes. I threw two strikes. One at Shea, one at Citi Field. I bounced it at Dodger Stadium.

So I'm one and two. So I'm going to go for the strikeout. We'll have a two and two catch. Yeah, I saw Paul Simon the other day did one, and he bounced the first one. So he just did a do-over. He just did a second first pitch. So I guess that's an option now.

I'm on my way right now. You have to go practice. He's a fellow far-sails queen boy, Paul Simon, by the way. But you have to go and practice because it is so much farther than you think. Yeah. 66 inches. Right. It's a throw.

And, you know, these guys, you know, Syndergaard makes it look like it's 20 feet away. It's all these guys. And especially that angle you see it on from TV, you don't really get how for us mortals, it's a fairly significant throw. And if you don't practice it a little bit, you will 50 cent yourself into a good end. Right. For sure.

All right. Well, we'll be watching and crossing our fingers. Thanks, Hank. Thank you guys very much. Thanks for having me on. All right. Thanks to Hank. Thanks to Michael.

Let's take a quick break. And I'll be back in just a moment with Slate's Mike Peska. Yeah, man. Do you ever sit and wonder sometimes, what if? I mean, like, for real though. I mean, sometimes I just think to myself, like,

what if? I mean, that's a big question, right? If it was a fifth, we'd all be f***ed up. But what I really want to know is, what if? Hey, Sugarfree, give it to me. So this is a podcast that often explores hypotheticals and what-ifs. Usually they feature Mike Trout or Shohei Otani, and there's vivisection involved or laws of physics being broken.

Just 30 seconds ago, I got an email from a listener named Stefan or Stefan who says, if you could build a ballpark with extreme or cartoonish properties, what would it be? That's a what if. It is perhaps not the greatest what if in sports history, but there is a book of the greatest what ifs in sports history out now. Or so it says on the subtitle. I've read it. I believe it. I am now talking to the editor, organizer, impresario behind the book, Upon Further Review, the greatest what-ifs in sports history. It's Mike Peska. He is the host of Slate's daily podcast, The Gist.

He is also the organizer of this book, and he is also the host of the new podcast, Upon Further Review, which is paired with the book. Hello, Mike. Hi. I prefer God of this universe, but, you know, all your titles are fine. Yeah. I guess I should disclose that I am in the book, which is part of the reason that we're doing this interview, but not the whole reason. I think we'd probably be doing it anyway. It is very effectively Wild-esque material. And I counted the sport by sport breakdown in the book, and I think it goes basketball most chapters. I think there are seven basketball chapters, then baseball second at six. And you actually talk about this a bit

in the introduction where baseball ranks among the what-if sports, and you think it's the best. Make the case for why baseball is the best what-if sport. Because it happens pretty slowly, so we can really pay attention to every distinct thing. I mean, for every, let's take a Super Bowl what-if, why didn't the Seahawks run it instead of throw an interception to Malcolm Butler? And as much as we debate,

like, how do we know what the left guard is going to do on that play? And how do we know what the left guard is going to do on that play? And how do we know what the, you know, how do we know the Butler jumps the route there? It just seems to me that there are many, many more contingencies with football, with another sport. But, you know, baseball, the outcome of the one pitcher and the one hitter, I just think it's more clean and distinct. It's why there's this statistical revolution in baseball before there were other sports. That's one big reason. And also, I think the pastoral nature of the game lends itself to, oh, just surmising, a little bit more surmising.

There's not such a quick hit dopamine fueled reactions as opposed to let us now ponder this situation. I think that's the baseball's benefit. If it sounds like I'm insulting baseball, I am not. Yeah. And as you also mentioned, there's just been more baseball than there have been the other high-level sports. I guess a lot of those early hypotheticals maybe wouldn't be of interest to a modern reader, but there's still just more material to work with, more players, more teams, more outcomes that could have been different. So that helps too. Right. And you're right. There are more basketball chapters, or I will say you're right. I haven't actually done that calculation, but it shouldn't be too hard to bar graph. But I did beat back

more baseball chapters than any other chapter. So anytime that there was a person who I, there are two ways I approach contributors. One was I wanted a specific essay done and I commissioned it through a person. So an example of that would be what if Bobby Fisher had the proper psychiatric help? And I said, all right, let's go find a top chess writer. And I found Dylan McLean. But for a lot of the other ones, I just approach smart sports people. And most of the time, not always, but most of the time, they came back with a baseball one. I think baseball sparks the imagination of those who like to imagine. Certainly a lot more than football. I mean, I know football is the most popular sport. And there was one point where our

two football essays were sort of just on the existential nature of the game. Jason Gay doing what if football were deemed too boring in 1899 and Nate Jackson, the former NFL player reinventing football, what if football were invented today? And I said, I just need a chapter about an actual game rather than the game itself. So for some reason, football was much more antithetical to this exercise. And it also goes back to my theory of there's a lot of humor in the book, and it goes to my theory of whimsy in football versus baseball. Right. So there's me on steroids and what if steroid testing had started earlier? There's Rob Neier on the National League and the DH. There's

effectively wild listener Will Leach with maybe the most effectively wild-esque topic here, what if baseball teams only played once a week? And there are a few others, too. Do you remember any of the reluctantly rejected pitches for baseball what-ifs or any others that were floating around your head that are not in the book? Yeah, there was one that we went a little far down the road of reimagining free agency essentially occurring in the early aughts. And that was – it was a little hard. That was the – it came closest to getting the book that did. And there was really only one essay like that.

I do wonder – one essay that I didn't actually commission or talk about seriously But I would like to do What if Babe Ruth were a teetotaler And Christy Mathewson were a drunk? Well, there's an art to the what if Which you also lay out in the introduction Because if it's just what if this guy had caught this pass Instead of dropping it or vice versa

Often there's not really anywhere interesting to go from there. Maybe the other team wins the game instead, or maybe not even that. There's just not all that much expansion there. So what were the criteria that you were looking for as you were putting this collection together? Right. So anytime you set up a binary, and this is my problem, why there is no golf chapter, and I sort of regret it. I think it's possible you could do something with Tiger Woods and just his biography. If I had to do it again, the Jeff Benedict, Armin Katayan book came out after, and I would have hit up one of those guys. There's a golf example in the foreword from Malcolm Gladwell. So there's that.

Right, right. There's a good jumping off point there. But my problem with golf is my problem with all the binaries. So in golf, if we imagine what if one player didn't win, then some other guy would have won the golf tournament. I can't think of too many too many ripples in times where the entire history of golf and even better, the history of society would have changed. In our book, the history of society sometimes changes. history of society sometimes changes. And another argument against certain what ifs are if you take a dynasty and just make them better, I find no pleasure in that. So any what if that proposed more wins for the Yankees, Patriots or Celtics, I was having none of. And this is one of the reasons why the number one essay that is asked about when I tell people the topic or the subject of the book is,

what about Len Bias living? And I understand the pull of that, the allure of that. But since the answer is something like the Celtics definitely would have been better, and they probably would have won a couple more NBA championships. Yeah. And then what? It's not as thrilling as the ripples, or it leads to a cascade of actions that we wouldn't have considered but is plausible. Or it's one of those debates that is out there among the serious-minded sports fan or the not-so-serious-minded. And this was the case with your essay, Ben. And the argument is marshaled really well. So people ask about steroids and baseball and PED testing. And you, I mean, I don't want to brag on you, but you were the charts guy.

You brought charts to the party. Yeah, sorry about that. No, it's cool. The PDF of the audio book now has extra graphics because of you and your charts. Yes, I read my chapter in the audio book and we had to figure out what are we going to do here? Am I going to describe what the chart looks like? It turned out that we could just kind of skip it and the text referred to it. So it was pretty simple. I thought you would do something like the slide whistle to illustrate gains and loss. And then the laboratory balco was enjoined. Right. There's a whole range of approaches here.

There's John Boyce, the great John Boyce, with a chapter, one of those basketball chapters, which is just about what if the basketball rims were smaller than the basketball, which is brilliant and hilarious and not real at all. But I did come across that exact situation at a carnival this weekend. exact situation at a carnival this weekend. Yeah, right. So do you want to explain how this came together? Is it an interesting story at all, the idea, the genesis, and then actually the mechanics of putting it together? Because this was a pretty long process that you went through here. Yeah, I hit you up like a year and a half ago, right? And it's just coming up now. I always, like any sports fan or a listener to Effectively Wild, you do wonder about different odd situations. But for me, I covered sports for NPR. I worked for NPR for 10 years and covered sports for about seven. And I would go to, I think I did six World Series, seven Super Bowls,

five Final Fours, Olympics, World Cup, always a champion. That was consistent. Confetti was usually involved in the championship. Fans were exultant. At one point I said, you know, I've not really had this but for once in my life as a Mets fan. 1986, because I was born in New York and I could have been a Yankees fan, but I am a Mets fan. And I could have been a Giants fan, but I am a Jets fan. So that alone, that fact alone has denied me, me what is it nine or ten championships in my lifetime and then I like the Knicks in basketball and St. John's also so except for those 86 Mets as a cognizant human since I was alive during the

Knicks second championship in the 70s I was less than one as a cognizant human I've only experienced one championship and so it did get me to say just thinking a little bit about what ifs. And then I guess the value add as someone who's off-puttingly speaking business speak would say, is that I applied this structure. So it can't just be, you know, what if there were nine trouts on the field? Or what if there were trouts in a trench? And what if there were landmines in the outfield? Or as my nine-year-old proposed, what if every baseball team had three gophers on it? And at any point, they could pop out of the ground. And if they catch the ball in their mouth, it counts as an out. Great idea, Emmett. I wanted to have structure. And I wanted to have one of a

few things, which is it either has to be really funny, or it has to be plausible, or it has to be a good argument, or it has to be reconsidering, or it has to have huge societal changes. And then based on that was how I decided to go about commissioning the book and getting all these essays assembled. And this must be something that you wrestle with on a weekly basis when you're doing the gist too, because you have a sports background, you have interest in sports, but you don't want to go too sports heavy on the show. And yet there are times when sports is of natural interest. There are a lot of times natural interest and national interest. So last week, for instance, you did a Becky Hammond interview or the week before that you did a Tiger interview.

These are kind of these crossover topics. If anything, I think there are probably times when you could do even more of that without driving people away? I don't know. But how often do you have to talk yourself out of doing a just sports-centric episode? It's a good question. So I did do, I think, as you say, two in the last three weeks. And that's probably higher than average. When the World Cup is on, I'm talking about it. When the Olympics are on, I'm talking about it. As a general rule of thumb, I'm talking about the sports that breaks through and transcends to the real non-sports fan. And I

have, I keep in mind that the audience is a bunch of non-sports fans, like the NPR audience is, but they'll go with me because they're also my audience. And I guess the rule of thumb is even if I'm watching a very, if I'm watching a Mets game and the announcer says something totally goofy, I'll possibly address that somewhere in the gist. But I mean, I do think, for instance, Becky Hammond's a really good example because right now people outside the world of basketball and sports don't realize how close Becky Hammond is to getting a job. And when she does get a job, which will probably be next year, I think it's going to be the biggest story since I don't know when. It's not Jackie Robinson big, but it's gigantic. It's every kid, every person in America who can only name LeBron James and maybe can, if you ask them another basketball player, we'll say Shaq or Kobe. They'll all know Becky Hammond. So I wanted to be a little bit ahead of it. It's really a non-sports story. I thought Tiger was really a non-sports story. It's the story of a

psychopath who happens to be the best in the world at one thing. How to raise, I mean, if Tiger Woods didn't have athletic gifts, it would be how to raise, you know, probably a serial killer. I'm not sure. But that's probably true with Tom Cruise also. So this is something that you talked a bit about with Stefan Fatsis on last week's Hang Up and Listen. But how often do you think the what-ifs that we dwell on actually would change the world or would have changed the world if they had played out differently? So Stefan's chapter in the book, for instance, is what if Bucky Dent doesn't hit the big homer in 1978? What if Jerry Remy hits that homer? And so the way that he spins that story out, there is a real difference, I think, in the ensuing four decades or so because of that one change. But do you think

that most or many of these hypotheticals that authors are wrestling with here or that people in general do in their daily lives would actually make a difference in a butterfly effect kind of way? I don't. So with the Red Sox chapter, the 78 chapter, I think it changes the tenor of what it means to be a Red Sox fan. Of course, that, you know, reveling in that misery, but I don't think it changes one win the next year, unless you want to make an argument about, you know, investing more or trying to do different trades. This is like, oh, it's not pre-free agency, but free agency isn't a big thing in 78 for sure. I think that, yeah, so that's a good example. Stefan writing this faux memoir can do whatever

he wants with it, and I encouraged him to, and he changes everything in baseball and outside of baseball. And I think Goodwill hunting takes place in the Bronx, for instance, right? Sure. Why not? It's a flight of fancy. So I really don't think that that one, that specific game or a couple of the other games we talk about would have really changed. I do think Michael McCambridge, who wrote about what if the Jets lose Super Bowl three, he really did convince me that Don Shula never goes to Miami. There's no undefeated Dolphins team. Quite likely the Colts remain in Baltimore. But of course, I didn't really speak about anything on the field. And Shula staying as the coach because Carol Rosenblum was very upset with him and his

golfing buddies would make fun of him. That seems to be a very plausible consequence of that loss. So yeah, I think a lot of these, it's just fun to consider, but I can't tell you, yes, I really think that would change things. But with Rob Nyer writing about the DH and the NL, he makes a pretty good case that we probably wouldn't have had any of the World Series. We would have had a different series of World Series winners, most of them, post DH and the NL. Yeah, it does come back to something that I actually cited in my chapter in the book, which is something from this podcast, the famous question that we were asked by listener

Vinit, who said, if baseball were different, how different would it be? Which was kind of a joke based on the fact that whenever Samurai, or now Jeffffery will play out these long hypotheticals with wacky scenarios will often come down on the side of maybe things actually aren't all that different the game is pretty resistant to change so i think that often is the case even when it seems sort of surprising that it would be well the game is resistant to change because what change it's not resistant to already has changed so So it doesn't feel like change. I've just spoken in a Zen cone, but we have but one example for how might the world play out. And that is how the world played out. So I don't know that we could take any

weird occurrences in baseball or even common occurrences in baseball. And we can prove that if they occurred, that they could have occurred. Do you have any in your personal history as a sports fan, what ifs that are relatively insignificant by national standards, but that you keep coming back to some childhood team or player, or even, I guess we could say more personally or professionally in your life and your career, some juncture that you often speculate about and return to and wonder what would have been different if that had happened instead of this? Yeah, I mean, stabbing the hobo, I stand by it. No regrets. Well, professionally, I don't know.

The deal is, as a Jets fan, there are so many bad draft picks where someone else was on the board, you know, passing on Warren Sapp or not taking Dan Marino, just to pick two guys who got scared away because of drug rumors. But I do have to say, I was on a Cleveland Sports Talk radio show, and they were going through their list of terrible whiffs and quarterbacks. And I want to say, but guys, don't you realize if you had drafted Tom Brady, he just would have been a Brown. Like there's no way the Browns would have developed him. And we talk and that really is the same. I think that's similar to a lot of baseball teams. There is such a thing as a good development process. And there is such a thing as ruining your players. And when you talk about all, take the Mets, my team. When you talk about all the bad luck they've had with their arms, I think perhaps how they handle their pitchers has to do with the bad luck they have with their arms. I think there is somewhat of a correlation. Yeah. So tell people about the

podcast because this is a podcast listening audience. They are likely to embrace another sports podcast. This is, I guess, a limited series by design, although it seems like every limited series that's on TV eventually gets less limited if it does well. So you never know. But I've listened to the first episode that Leon Nafak hosted about Richard Nixon and what would have happened if he'd been good at football. So give us the pitch, the premise for the podcast. So it is upon further review of the podcast, there are five episodes. They're not reading from the book. I know fans of yours will want to hear how the chart was read. We have an audio book for that. It is bringing five chapters

from the book to life in different ways. So the chapter in the book on if Nixon were good at football was written by Julian Zelizer, the Princeton professor. But here at Slate, I have Leon Nafak seven seats away from me. And he's a friend that I said, Leon, we have this idea. You're the number one expert on Richard Nixon under the age of 35. What do you think? And he was game. And he did this report, which was considering Nixon's time as a terrible football player at Whittier College, where he was, of course, a Whittier poet. So that is episode one, What If Nixon Were Good at Football? Episode two, which will post soon on Tuesday, May 22nd. So if you subscribe to Upon Further Review, it's Jesse Eisenberg, who happens to have the same name as the famous actor,

because he is the famous actor, doing a story. He wrote it for the book about writing a piece of fan mail to the Phoenix Suns. Episode three is the obligatory Dodgers and Brooklyn piece. But what we do a little bit different is we get Robert Siegel from NPR out of retirement. He has agreed to sully his reputation by reporting in NPR style. If the Dodgers were leaving Brooklyn in 2018, this is absolutely the report you would hear on NPR. Then episode four is about the Women's World Cup, and Louisa Thomas does that. And episode five is, I hope, our piece de resistance, although it could be whatever

the French version of Flaming Mess is. Fake Boston sports radio. What if Bledsoe never got injured and Brady took over? And we have the guy who wrote the chapter, Steve Kornacki from MSNBC, calling in as an expert on Boston Sports Talk Radio. And the hosts, of course, give him a hard time for suggesting that this third string backup, Tom Brady, was in any way the salvation to what is in our alternative universe, the perennially pathetic patriots. Right. So I noticed in the acknowledgements to the book, you thank everyone who ever bought you a ticket to a sporting event. And one of those people is Keith Hernandez. Is that the Keith Hernandez? Is there a story there? Or do you just know another Keith Hernandez?

I know another Keith Hernandez. But what did he bring me to? Opening game of the Mets a couple of years ago because as Keith Hernandez growing up, he had to become a Mets fan. By the way, this book came out the same day, my book, Upon Further Review, came out the same day as the Keith Hernandez memoir. I did not know that. Yeah. If you had, you would have cleared some space just so you weren't competing for the sales, maybe. All right, I guess I'm supposed to do the self-deprecating thing where I say, I wrote a chapter, but buy the book anyway because there are 30 good chapters by other people or something like that. And there are 30 other good chapters. But I think people who listen to this podcast, either they like baseball or they don't dislike me

or they don't dislike me so much that they don't want to hear about baseball they'd probably enjoy my chapter but also all the other chapters I'm enjoying them too your chapter let me say your chapter is a good chapter I don't think you've really expounded it upon it elsewhere before no I haven't right and what do you before before you let me go yeah what did you think of will each this chapter of baseball once a week I liked it I think we've talked about this on the podcast in some shape or form in the past. And I think the main thrust of Will's argument is that obviously baseball's everyday structure is great for those of us who like baseball and want baseball always to be on. But if it were

once a week, then it would be an event and it would be more popular by certain ways of measuring baseball's popularity. And I don't think I could disagree with any of that. I think it's interesting that he speculates that maybe there's no sabermetrics because everything is a small sample and there's just no need for that kind of analysis. And you have your ace pitch every game and that's that. I don't think it would be better, but maybe we would, I guess the casual fan would be more likely to tune in, although if you just have your best pitcher pitching all the time, and then your closer coming in, no one's going to score any runs, which might be less entertaining. So I think we're probably better off the way we are now, or maybe some middle ground where it's not 162 games or 26 games, but I don't know, 110, something like that.

I know you're a sabermetrician. That's not a middle ground. But I just think the biggest thing is it's hard to get your mind around just eliminating the 110 worst pitchers. It seems like, well, that's not baseball. But we don't have 150 quarterbacks in the NFL. It's the idea of a pitcher, a decent starting pitcher with a 4.8 ERA, you know, a back end of the rotation guy, should be unheard of, at least in Will's universe. And there's a logic to it being unheard of. Right. Yeah. All right. So go buy the book. It's called Upon Further Review,

The Greatest What-Ips in Sports History. The podcast is also called Upon Further Review. It's not the film podcast, Upon Further Review. The guys who host that, probably not thrilled that they're being bumped down the rankings by another Upon Further Review, but hey, it's the new Upon Further Review in town. So you can also hear Mike every day or every weekday on The Gist.

You can find him on Twitter at TeskaMeMI. Mike, thanks very much for coming on. You're welcome. So that will do it for today. Thanks to Hank. Thanks to Mike. Thanks to Michael. And while I'm at it, congrats to Big Mike Bauman, Orioles prospect Mike Bauman, who has just moved up to high A Frederick.

After recording a 1-4-2 ERA at Loewe Delmarva, Big Mike Bauman headed for AA, and the Orioles need his help. You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already done so. Evan Thiesing, Stefan Eisenberger, Tim Wolfe, Alex Roche, and Genevieve Luthi. Thank you to all of you, and thanks to everyone who helps keep the show going. You're getting bonus content this week, even more for your money money you can join our facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and you can rate and review and subscribe to effectively wild on itunes thanks to dylan higgins for his editing assistance on an extra episode this week please keep your questions

and comments coming for me and jeff via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the patreon messaging system jeff and i will be back with our regularly scheduled midweek email episode. So watch Brock Meyer read upon for the review, and we will be back to talk to you very soon. I've seen the world with a five piece bang looking at the backside of me singing my songs and one of his now and then But I don't think Hank done them this way No

I don't think Hank done them this way Take it on