Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1328: National Past Time

Episode Date: January 31, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about players playing for their lives, Bryce Harper rumors, Harper’s fame vs. Mike Trout’s, feeling less intense anticipation than they used to, the Red Sox signing the previously permabanned Jenrry Mejia, and uncertainty surrounding the latest labor strife. Then (30:06) Ben talks to Chris Enns, author of The Death […]

🎵 Hello and welcome to episode 1328 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello, Jeff. Sometimes we say a Fangraphs baseball podcast, sometimes we say a baseball podcast from Fangraphs. Hello, Jeff. Sometimes you say a Fangraphs baseball podcast. Sometimes you say a baseball podcast from Fangraphs. And I don't know which one is more standard because when you say a baseball podcast from Fangraphs brought to you by our patrons and supporters, it sounds like we have multiple sponsors. We have one sponsor. It's Patreon. We're not. Fangraphs doesn't put us up.

We pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and also by Patreon, mostly Patreon. Fangraphs doesn't pay me. Fangraphs pays you. So we're sort of presented by both, I suppose, in a way. That's right. baseball episode because nothing is happening in new timey baseball. So we're just doing some time travel today. So later in the episode, we will be talking to a longtime listener as well as the commissioner of a vintage baseball league in Southern California. So you've all seen the Conan O'Brien video of people who are playing using vintage uniforms and vintage rules. This is one of those. It's a new league in Southern California playing under 1886 rules, and we will talk about why and how that's different.

But before that, I will be talking to author Chris Enns. Now, you've been traveling for the past couple of days, which is why we have not put out a podcast yet this week, and unfortunately you were not able to join me for that interview, which I'm sad about because I think we were both excited about. This is something that came across my radar in the Facebook group, courtesy of listener Matthew, who posted an article about this from some time ago. We are going to be talking about a convict team made up of players on death row in Wyoming in 1911 who essentially were playing for

their lives. And Chris Enns has written two books about this team. And I don't know what could be more in the Effectively Wild wheelhouse than a team that is playing in order to keep itself alive, because we talk all the time about how baseball is a distraction from death. We have even discussed a study that suggests that reminding oneself of one's mortality may improve one's performance. So this is the ultimate distraction, I guess, except it's not really a distraction because you're constantly afraid for your life, which perhaps enhances your performance. So no wonder this team was successful. So much talk right now about how the league should re-incentivize

or try to re-incentivize competition in winning. And I can think of one way that's kind of off the board. But maybe if you have a team that doesn't win 70 games, well, you can figure out the rest. So I want to ask you a question. Let's say, so let's take the Yankees, whatever. Last year's Yankees won 100 games, right? And this year they should win 9,500 games again, playing under ordinary conditions.

Let's say the Yankees and only the Yankees were told, if you don't, I don't know, if you don't win X number of games, you will all die. How many more games in the regular seasons do you think, if any, do you think the, or maybe fewer, maybe your answer is fewer. How many more games do you think the Yankees would win if they played under a potential penalty of death? Yeah, it's hard to know which way it goes. I brought this up with Chris. It's hard to know what the player's mindset was in this situation. A, it is literally life or death. And so you can't imagine a greater motivation to perform well than being put to death if you perform poorly.

On the other hand, that would only add to the anxiety of playing Major League Baseball, knowing that if you did something wrong, you would suffer the ultimate penalty for it. I'm going to guess that it would enhance your performance. I guess there are some people who might just be reduced to quivering lumps and would be unable to perform because of the extreme pressure. But I'm going to guess that when it comes right down to it, your survival instinct would come in and you would throw your fastballs a little bit harder and you would have a laser-like focus in everything you do. So I don't know whether you'd be able to sustain that over a 162-game schedule. I could see if it were one game, it's like you have to win this game or you die. Then maybe you get that adrenaline rush that boosts you.

But over the course of a six-, seven-month season, would you actually keep getting that boost or would you just get totally drained and exhausted? I don't know. I guess you'd play through nagging injuries i think would probably be one effect so we'd have fewer dl days and uh i guess you'd have enhanced performance but yeah i'm gonna guess it just would sap you so much over the long run that they wouldn't actually win that much more it would be a great test of human adaptability because we can kind of get used to everything but can we get used to playing under penalty of death because if you can get used to that then i mean there's there's no reason to ever be knocked off keel by by anything

anything in the world yeah so i don't know baseball meets the running man and hunger games it'd be good for ratings i guess but bad for everything else it seems like baseball might be the sport where you wouldn't get as big a boost from this, not just because of the length of the season and the number of games, but it's not a contact sport. It's not so much a physical sport. One would think, I mean, in football, it seems like people are already basically playing with this hanging over their heads because they know they are severely hurting themselves and damaging themselves and possibly leading to early deaths in many cases. And so I would think in that

kind of case where you're just like running into people, maybe that would help more than in a non-contact sport like baseball. This feels very Mesoamerican ball game-esque. I don't know. I mean, we talk a lot about how baseball is screwed up these days and the labor situation is a problem. We're probably about to talk about that for a few minutes more. At least that is a lot better than it was in 1911 or 1886. At least we don't have the reserve clause and at least we don't have players playing on pain of death. So look on the bright side, everyone. Players do not die if they lose. Captives were often shown in Maya art, and it is assumed that these captives were sacrificed after losing a rigged ritual ball game rather than nearly nude and sometimes battered captives. However, the ball courts at El Tajin and Chichen Itza show the sacrifice of practiced ball players,

perhaps the captain of a team. Decapitation is particularly associated with the ball game severed heads are featured in much late classic ball game art and appear repeatedly in the popol vo there has even been speculation that the heads and skulls were used as balls so i guess history repeats and if we want to understand how players would do under penalty of death we need to go back and research ancient central american cultures who were playing playing the ritual ball game and see if they did better when they knew where they're going to be sacrificed. This podcast gets pretty strange in the offseason when we get desperate for things to talk about. It's funny. We're all like frustrated at baseball for not entertaining

us. But should baseball be something that entertains us 24-7 year round? I don't know. Maybe we're expecting too much of baseball. This is the offseason. It's the depths of the offseason. It would be okay if baseball is just boring for a while, right? I don't know. There are so many entertainment options out there. Maybe it's okay if baseball recedes for a while, but not so okay when you host a baseball podcast and you have to talk about baseball one way or another so while you have been traveling there have been some very minor moves that no we're not talking about to spend time on skip skip right by this part ignore it people have talked sorry greg holland sean kelly whitmer field freddie galvis sorry guys so just no we just it doesn't

yeah so many people will talk about the baseball offseason and say, well, you know, in basketball, the free agency, like everyone signs in a day or like hockey or football. They all move so much faster. But is that better? Because then it's done. And then what's happening all offseason long? Why would you want that? Yeah. There's a lot of off the field drama in the NBA, which is pretty engaging.

Lots of stuff happening on Twitter and things that end up in NBA desktop at the ringer. That all is really exciting and entertaining, and baseball doesn't have as much of that for better or for worse. So what has been consuming baseball over the past few days is Bryce Harper continuing not to sign with anyone but seeming perpetually to be on the point of signing so it's become a meme now with various random phillies fans tweeting that they have inside info that bryce harper is about to sign there was a scare where mlb the show is going to be making an announcement and of course harper is the cover boy for that game so people were thinking maybe the video game will announce where Bryce Harper is going. That didn't happen.

None of these rumors about my best friend's cousin's caterer heard this and that, and he's signing with the Phillies any day now. None of that has come to fruition as we speak. Presumably, he will sign somewhere, potentially with the Phillies sometime soon. But the rumors have just gotten out of control. And I guess it's one way to entertain yourself. Is Bryce, I think, didn't we talk some time ago about how Tim Tebow might be the most popular well-known baseball player? Is Bryce Harper among actual good baseball players who aren't

Tim Tebow who sucks? Is Bryce Harper the most well-known baseball player in America, do you think? What's the think what's the what's the what is it Q score yeah I would think so I remember being surprised that like Mike Trout for all we talk about how he is not nearly as well known as he should be it seems like just in terms of like social media presence like I don't know if this is a great, reliable indicator of how well-known or popular a player is, but Bryce Harper has only 987,000 Twitter followers. Mike Trout has 2.5 million Twitter followers. And I don't know why he's not tweeting anything particularly interesting other than just unusual punctuation.

I mean, by all means, follow Mike Trout. I mean, by all means, follow Mike Trout, but that doesn't really jibe with what we tend to hear about how Bryce Harper is this celebrity with marquee value and Mike Trout is not. So I don't know. It seems like Harper is the best known, but I don't have any objective metric saying so. Yeah. So anyway, the rumors are out of control i know that everybody thought the phillies were going to sign harper on on tuesday based on i don't know some kind of weird rumors coming out of las vegas that like that's had been removed from a board i don't know yeah how it all works but i mean at some point if you just keep predicting that bryce harper is going to sign somewhere he's going to sign somewhere because there's only so many days left until the season begins and presumably scott boris is not

going to allow bryce harper to like sit out the start of the season waiting for $350 million. So if you are someone who lives for fleeting Twitter attention and you just tweet every day some new rumor about why Bryce Harper is going to sign with the Phillies, well, guess what? Probably the most likely situation is that Bryce Harper is going to sign with the Phillies for lack of other teams who seem to be in the mix. No idea what the Nationals are doing. So eventually it stands a pretty good chance of coming true. So maybe just set up like, let's see, what is it today? January 30th. So like 55 or 60 burner accounts and just every day from a new one, tweet out Bryce Harper signing with the Phillies today. And then eventually you're going to get your ephemeral social media fame. And then you'll be fulfilled. You will have lived out your purpose.

Yeah. By the way, the Instagram gap between Trout and Harper is much smaller. I don't know why, but Trout has 1.5 million followers on Instagram and Harper has 1.4. But either way, Trout is in the lead. Somewhat surprising. Are you on Instagram? I am not on Instagram. I don't know what I would put on there.

I don't have any pictures that are good. You have good pictures. You go outside and take nice landscapes. So you should be on Instagram. No, who cares? Why would anyone know? Nobody has good things to put on Instagram. Well, this has been kind of consuming the news cycle or the non-news cycle over the past few days.

And I get it. Like if you're a Phillies fan, I understand why you are excited by the prospect of Bryce Harper playing for your team. There's not much else going on in baseball right now. I just find that I don't know whether it is getting a little bit older or whether it's the glut of other entertainment options. But I just find that I don't look forward to things anymore. And I don't mean that I don't enjoy things or that I don't still find joy in life. I do. But I just I don't anticipate things anymore.

I don't know if it's just me or if it's like once you get to a certain age or or what. But like I'm always entertained for one thing like there's never any shortage of things to do or play or watch and so i find myself thinking of everything in this abstract way like oh yeah that movie will probably be good i'm sure i'll enjoy that movie but i'm not like counting down the days till i don't know even like you know the next star Wars movie or Game of Thrones or The Last of Us 2 or like things that I'm really looking forward to that I know I will like a lot. I don't really think of them all that often. And I think it's just because there's so

much else out there, which is kind of a problem for baseball and other sports is that, you know, there's like 500 scripted shows on streaming television. There are movies coming out constantly. There are more games than anyone could possibly play. And this really kind of was driven home for me when I basically took a few months off from culture to finish the book. And just in those few months, I missed so many things that right now there's such a backlog of things that my wife and I want to watch or play that basically we could just stop creating things for the rest of the year and I would never catch up even aside from baseball coming back so I don't know if that's it but

that's kind of how I'm thinking of Harper and Machado it's like they'll sign somewhere and then the season will start but I don't know I'm not refreshing MLB trade rumors hourly other than the fact that when they do finally sign we we'll have to write something about it. If you have a day where maybe – if I have a day where I write less than I wanted to or maybe I don't even get anything published at all, I can just justify it at the end by saying, well, you know what? I reduced the decision fatigue of everybody else who's on the internet who might have read this article that I might have written. Now I've made it easier to consume all that you want to consume because, I mean, how often do you just like – I don't know if you – when you wake up or if you spend a few hours away from Twitter, then you maybe – I like to go go because i follow so few people i like to go back and just kind of catch up on my entire feed and then almost with that this isn't even necessarily entertainment but almost without fail i'll just have opened up nine or ten links of things that i'm like supposed to read and then yeah i'm so consumed by just trying to keep up and and do the things i'm supposed to do

and read the things i think i'm supposed to read on a daily basis that you don't really have time to think longer term and like think about the future. Like maybe I'm probably not supposed to say this to the world, but getting married in a few months and like it's always in the back of my mind, but it probably should be more pressing in the back of my mind that it's coming up like the greatest achievement of my life is like just around the bend and all i can think about is like well let's see is cattell martin gonna make it as a center fielder in arizona or like did greg holland get better in september i just these these things that are so pressing in the day-to-day just so much time spent treading water and so little time to think about like oh yeah what's coming up so we should all take a break and leave the internet i guess is where this is coming down

to uh yeah maybe maybe society in 100 years won't have the internet anymore we'll go back this could and you know and this this dovetails well into the uh the vintage theme of this podcast maybe in some ways not many ways but in some ways life not many ways, but in some ways, life was better when it was simpler. Perhaps. I don't know. There were times when I was bored, though, when I was younger, and now I'm never bored because there's just always something I want to read or play or watch or whatever. I remember at one of my very first jobs, I'd listen to a certain radio show in the middle of the day. It was Max Kellerman, who used to listened to a certain radio show in the middle of the day. It was Max Kellerman, who used to do a really good radio show in New York before he started doing First Take,

and he did it with Brian Kenney for a while. I really liked that show. And so it would be on for a few hours in midday. And before that show, I would just look forward to that show. And then after that show, I'd be like, well, I have no way to entertain myself now. I was doing a boring, tedious data entry job. And that was pre-podcast. It was just like, well, I guess I could listen to music or something. There was just, you know, entertainment would cease. And then you would look forward to it resuming at some point, which now you really never have to face that sort of situation. So I definitely had times in my youth when I literally

counted down the days to things. And now I just don't really. I still look forward to like personal things like I'm looking forward to the book coming out, for instance. And sometimes I look forward to an article that I'm enjoying working on that I think other people will enjoy. I look forward to that being public or personal milestones and gatherings like a wedding. I don't know if I even looked forward to my wedding that much. It was a great day, don't get me wrong, but it didn't really change anything about my life in a material way.

I was already living with the woman who would be my wife and our lives didn't really change all that much after the wedding. So it was just kind of a very nice day where we got to see everyone and then it was over and I didn't even have to do that much of the planning or that would have made me look forward to it probably being over. But anyway, that is a meditation on anticipation and that's kind of how I feel about baseball news and rumors these days. Partially it's because it's a job and we cover these things in a professional way and we're not fans of any one team, at least not in the way that we used to be. And so we're not really, you know, roster baiting and looking at what our team's opening day lineup is going to be.

It's just like, well, when news happens, we will cover it and talk about it. And I mean, we've had all off season to think about bryce harper and manny machado as free agents we've had longer than the off season to think about that and still whenever whenever it happens i'm going to be surprised and i have no plan like to write i don't have like i i've had months to come up with some like clever premise or intro to like bryce harper signed and no i i got nothing so when it happens i'll be like crap it's because it's probably going to happen at like 10 p.m. Pacific time. And I'll be like, all right, well, now I have to go write 2000 words on Bryce Harper, which, by the way, it's not going to be that interesting of an article because it's going to say, here's Bryce Harper.

He's on this team now. He's good and he's expensive. That's going to be that's going to be it. You've read. if anything when you when you have players like this who are out there longer and not even just free agents but also someone like jt rail moto you do even if you're not sitting and anticipating it maybe this is now talking from the writer perspective even if you're not sitting back and anticipating when they're going to sign you still think about them because they're in the news and you see the rumors and at least at fangraphs we've written in exhaustive detail about harper

about machado about rail moto such that we've kind of written and published almost all of the necessary content before anything ever happens. So when they sign, what's new will be the team and the terms, but that'll be it. Like we've already talked about Bryce Harper's defense or Manny Machado's patience or JT Real Muto's home road split, whatever. So you were kind of laying out the Bryce Harper contract article in several pieces over the course of an entire offseason before the contract is ever signed. Right. And if anything is interesting about the signing, it will probably be the amount of money that they received. And if that amount is lower than what we expected coming into the

winter or prior to the winter, that will touch off another round of articles about how free agency is broken and we're heading for a strike and all of that. And even that conversation, as important as it is, feels like something where we are already repeating ourselves. This is almost one reason why we kind of just wanted to do something completely different today and go off the beaten path and do an old-timey baseball episode is that we just did a few episodes about finances and salaries and payrolls and whether we're heading for a strike. And we will continue to talk about that because it's

important and it's going to be one of the defining issues of the sport over the next few years. But nothing is happening except for more news that kind of confirms that there's a problem. And we can't actually change this system in any material way, it seems like, for almost three more years. So things will continue to heat up. And in that vein, Ken Rosenthal just wrote about the escalating tensions between the union and the league. There has been some tweeting by players, especially it seems like in the wake of the Henry Mejia signing. Henry Mejia signed a minor league deal with the Red Sox. This is, of course, the reliever who has tested positive and been banned

for PD use three times, and that triggered a lifetime ban, which has now been forgiven, And that triggered a lifetime ban, which has now been forgiven. And he is back in baseball. But some players are not happy about that, either because they don't like when players use PDs and they are willing to say so, or they're just still unsigned themselves. And they're thinking, how did this guy get signed when I'm still unsigned? Of course, it is a minor league deal. So it's not like he got a ton of money. Yeah, I don't know how. Of course, it is a minor league deal, so it's not like he got a ton of money.

Yeah, I don't know how. I mean, he was the first player banned for life under the new steroid policy. Is that correct? I believe so. And even if he's not, he would be among them. Certainly one of the first people banned for life from baseball just across the board. Not the first, but it's not that long of a list. And it takes the teeth out of the policy when you overturn it and allow them to come back into baseball but anyway because like you said i've been traveling i haven't caught up

on the player tweets but i did want to bring up something from that same rosenthal article because this is an article that's uh that's titled inside the frayed relations that could have mlb owners and players quote walking off a cliff together end quote and there is something in that article that touches on something that you wrote about i believe it was last year that when i saw it i kind of stopped and thought oh so what's the problem so i'm going to read this i'm going to read this out loud you maybe already know what i'm going to read out loud the players would be rightly alarmed if they were receiving a diminished percentage of industry revenue a perception that exists in some quarters but according to baseball is incorrect since 2007 players have received between 53 and 57 percent of revenue annually including 54.8 percent in 2018 those figures

which include amateur signing bonuses and minor league salaries are audited and given to the union they are not in dispute so what then isn't that the point isn't that i mean i know things are moving slower and teams are treating free agency differently, but if the union isn't disputing that they're getting basically the same cut as they've gotten for the past 11, 12 years, isn't it fine? writing it because I didn't want to say something inaccurate that would hurt the perception of the players or something or make it look like I was just passing along the major league line. And the reason I wrote it is that because I spoke to the union too, and they said, yeah, we agree with these figures. We co-signed these facts essentially, and that was why I went ahead with it, and that sort of surprised me. Now, I don't know whether part of it is that you can get a little creative with your accounting about how you define revenues and what exactly is included in that bucket.

I mean, what is baseball revenue? Is it only revenue that comes from attendance? Or is it merchandise sales? Or is it local and national broadcast deals? Or is it local and national broadcast deals? Or is it the BAM tech payoff that the owners got for just MLB starting that spinoff MLB Advanced Media and having the streaming technology, which is not included in those figures, I believe. But you could argue, well, it's separate.

It's technology. It's something MLB built. On the other hand, they built it basically on the backs of the players are being cut out of that you could argue that they don't deserve a cut of that but i think you could also very convincingly argue that they do and are not getting it so i guess it's that but you're right the figures definitely muddy the waters to a certain extent and i understand like multi-year contracts are harder to come across like three or four year deals, unless you're like an eighth inning relief pitcher now are harder to

get on the free agent market. And so there, that introduces more uncertainty, but like, even, even if you have a multi-year contract that you sign, I know you're guaranteed that money, but it's not like you're guaranteed to stay in the same place. Players are traded all the time, or you can be dumped or waived or whatever. So can sign a four-year contract it doesn't mean you're going to like play with the diamondbacks for all four years it's just you get your guaranteed money if you have shorter contracts then in theory what that would do is just redistribute free agency money more frequently to players who are better and more deserving of the money now what has happened and this is not a new observation is that you have sort of

this uh a more bifurcated baseball population where you have the really highly paid players and then you have the the low-paid young players arbitration players and then you have this declining middle class but while that reflects the decline of the middle class in broader american society the middle class in baseball is also the upper class of american society so it's not as if it's the same sort of crisis that we are seeing play out in in the country like again not to go back to neil walkers or like the nick marcakis is but yeah nick marcakis might suffer now because he signed for six million dollars and said if maybe he would have gotten 20 million dollars in free agency a few years ago or in his case what did he get 44 million dollars in free agency last time

around but how much of a crisis is it if nick Markakis is down a few million dollars from where he would have been before? It gets complicated. But when I saw that paragraph in the Rosenthal article, I. I mean, there's also the facts that say that the average player salary decreased and spending on free agents has stagnated or decreased, and at the same time, MLB revenue is setting a new record every single year, which it seems like it would be hard for both of those things to be true if players are not getting paid more and yet teams are making more. Then how can players be making the same cut of the overall revenue unless other charges that are included in that are increasing? So I don't know. I kind of think that maybe in some ways things are not quite as dire as they've made out to be.

But in other ways, maybe that distorts the actual picture of the information. Anyway, we have ended up talking about baseball economics in yet another episode and probably will continue to do so. And by the way, one last note about Mejia, as I know some people have pointed out that, of course, there are problems with supplements in the Dominican particularly. So you will see there are some tainted supplements that people are more likely to take there. Now, maybe they should know that. Maybe they should be more careful, but maybe they don't have a choice and they have to take what they can get. And, you know, if you get caught three times, you're probably doing something that you shouldn't be doing and should have learned from. But I think that was maybe a factor in his being reinstated was that

one of the positive tests, there was some doubt about whether one of the substances had been tainted without his knowledge, something like that. I think there was some extenuating circumstance. So I wanted to point that out. Well, I guess it's time to take this podcast back to the old days when there were no finances in baseball. Yes, right. Back to a simpler time when, to be honest, just about everything was worse than it is right now. But in retrospect, with the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia, things seem simpler and better, even though they work. So we will take a quick break and then i will be back to talk to chris ends about a team that was playing for its life and then you will rejoin me and we will talk about the modern vintage baseball league people if i ever can get up off

of this old heart killing flow lord i'll never get out. There's no more. So I am joined now by Chris Enns, a best-selling writer and screenwriter who has authored dozens of books about the Old West, including two books about the Wyoming State Penitentiary All-Stars of 1911, Playing for Time, which came out in 2004, and The Death Row All-Stars, which she wrote a decade later with her frequent collaborator, the producer Howard Kisangian. Chris, thank you very much for joining me. Thank you very much, Ben. I'm excited to be a part of the broadcast. Thank you. So you have written extensively, though not exclusively, about the Old West. You've focused on some of the most famous personalities of that time. You've also written about women of the Old

West who played prominent and long-overlooked roles. But what led you to the story of the Death Row All-Stars? And what made you want to write about it not once, but twice? Well, I was in Rolland, Wyoming, doing some research on women who had been placed in that prison there in town. And while I was there doing research, I happened onto some notebooks and a picture of these baseball players in prison uniforms, all of them surrounding this little boy who looked maybe three or four years old. And he was the bat boy. And I was wondering who that little boy was and who would let their child be photographed with these men in these situations. And so that led me to want to know more about it. And so then I started poking into that particular baseball team, which was made up of all death row inmates. And as long as they played and won, they got states of execution. And I wrote about the book at the beginning called Playing for Time.

And the company didn't want to, after the book was done, they didn't want to go any further with the title. And so I went to the publishing house that I've been working with for a number of years, which is Two Dot, Roman and Littlefield. And they said, sure, let's do another book about that. So I did another book about the Death Row All-Stars, which is what the book is called, and did much more extensive research into the team, into the prison itself, and really did work on making sure that I had proper end notes and everything could be backed up so nobody would come and say, that didn't happen. And what sort of sources were you generally working with? I would imagine this was covered

by newspapers at the time as you document, but you would think that it wouldn't be that rich a source of information, a penitentiary team. So I'm sure you had to do some digging. You had to go on a real deep dive for it. I did go through newspapers. I did go through what the other inmates, what they had written about, tracked different families down, spent a great deal of time working on the story of the most valuable player on the team, who was a gentleman by the name of Joseph Singh. And Joseph Singh, his family

came from Europe and moved to the Pennsylvania area. And so I just tracked, started with his story, really, because he was the most valuable player, and tracked his family all the way back to Pennsylvania, actually all the way back to Germany, to be honest with you. That's how far back I went and where I went to get the story on this player and on this team. So I spent a lot of time diving into the warden's life, and the warden was best friends with the captain of the baseball team, who was also an inmate at the prison. And that gentleman's name was George Saban. And Saban had been arrested in Wyoming for killing sheep herders and recognized in the territory there of Wyoming as a hero, even though it's illegal to murder people,

but sheep herders just had a different feel at that time than people that raised cattle in that area. So although he went to prison for that, he was still held somewhat of a hero. And he stood up for the warden at the warden's wedding. And so, I mean, I started, I'm also a private detective. at the warden's wedding. And so, I mean, I started, I'm also a private detective. So I started going through these stories to find out the connection and what was really going on, which then led to the whole information about the betting on the team and how George Saban was the bookie. He could come and go from the prison whenever he wanted to. He was the bookie. He was the warden's best friend. So that's exactly what he would do. A guard would take him into town, and he would take the bets. Well, I never realized that sheepherders were so unpopular, but maybe that's a different book. That was back in a time where there was a great deal of contention between sheep herders and cattle ranchers in the state of Wyoming.

I mean, nobody wanted sheep herders there. So it felt as though it ruined the land for the cattle. I see. So there was that animosity, although, I mean, it's ludicrous, of course. It's ludicrous that Sabin could have killed the number of sheep herders that he did, and no one recognized that as a crime except the courts. Yeah, right. Well, broadly speaking, can you tell us anything about the role and popularity of baseball in the Old West? I mean, this is 1911, but maybe even earlier than that. Of course, there were no major league teams west of St. Louis until 1958, but there was baseball. You just rarely see it depicted in movies or shows or games set in that period and that place. I'm wondering whether it was something that made its way west along with the railroads as the frontier it, but I mean, it was even played by the

Native Americans there. I mean, they got hold of gloves and balls, and it wasn't uncommon for them to be throwing a ball back and forth in the late 1880s, early 1890s. So, you know, it was something that people knew of. It was a very popular sport in the West. There wasn't a whole lot of sports anyway in the West, but what there was was always baseball. And certainly with this particular baseball team, this prison baseball team, they were exceptionally good. They played other teams there in town who wanted to challenge this incredible baseball team. And so you had the teams in, you had the teams in Rollins and in Wyoming as a whole, different teams that would go and play other, and let's just say AAA ball teams. I mean, that's the closest I could come to.

Nothing major league in the Old West, but certainly at what would be on line with AAA ball teams today in the Old West, very good teams that were interested in playing this phenomenal team called the Death Row All-Stars. They had a reputation. Yeah. And this was fairly early in the period in which prisons actually made an effort to rehabilitate prisoners and have them entertain themselves as opposed to just pure punishment. State Penitentiary, Felix Alston, who took over just before this team was formed. He was the one who sort of transitioned to a more humane model, and sports was part of that. So it's not uncommon now to see prison baseball teams, for instance, but back then, that was still a fairly recent phenomenon, it sounds like. Well, it very much was. And I mean, I don't want to even say that Felix's, the warden's motivation for this was completely altruistic. I do mention in the book

that he wanted there to be exercise, but I do think that there was a motivation behind that. I think that he saw how popular the game was in town. And I think that there was some larceny in the warden. Well, we know there was some larceny in the warden. So I do think that he saw his best friend, George, be the captain of the team. So I think that because he made those kinds of moves, I believe early on that they had a plan. Even though I have nothing to back that up, that's just my gut. I believe early on that was their plan. And can you explain what we know about how the team came together, how it was formed,

how it was decided who would be on it, and how it became as big of a story as it did? Well, I think that what they did was they recruited from within the prison those men that they felt had this aptitude for baseball and had a great interest in it. Men that stayed out of trouble for the most part, of course, with the exception of George Saban, but men that stayed out of trouble within the system itself and showed an aptitude for baseball were the ones that were recruited to play. You had Joseph Singh, who I said was the most valuable player, who had an amazing ability with medicine that had things been different for him, I think could have had a bright future

in that, in the medical profession. I think he could have had a bright future in baseball too, had things been different. And certainly saying his background is one in which he played baseball when he was a kid too. But I mean, from within the prison itself, those who were the best, the people within the system who behaved themselves and also showed an aptitude for playing baseball. Heavy hitters. I mean, the book includes pictures of the grounds themselves. And it wasn't like, I mean, I'm sure they did hit some balls outside of the prison wall.

But, I mean, it's amazing how if you see the pictures of the prison, it was a very stark atmosphere. If you see the pictures of the prison, it comported itself on the field, which was supposed to be sort of gentlemanly. But obviously, these were not gentlemen in their prior lives. These were murderers and rapists and thieves. I mean, can you give some idea? You mentioned George Sabin's crimes, but why were other members of the team in the prison at that time? You had rapists that were in there. You had people who had stolen money from different posts. They weren't known as the Postal Department, but from mail trains.

They were stealing from trains themselves. I mean, these were people that were involved in many nefarious activities, from multiple murders to rape and everything in between you can think of. And it was interesting that the decision was made early on that this particular prison would be in Rollins, Wyoming, because Wyoming was noted for being very strict with anybody who broke the law. There was a gentleman there in the town by the name of George Parrott, George Big Nose Parrott. And George had stolen some money and was caught. And when he was caught, he was executed for his crime. And then they skinned him, used his skin to make some shoes, and then put those shoes in the window of the barber shop, which was a statement. This is not where you want to be to perpetrate a crime, because these are the kinds of things that are going to happen to you.

So I think that the men who were already incarcerated at the prison there in Rollins were quite aware, the Crossbar Hotel, they called it, were quite aware that this is a very strict place to be. That's why it made it, it was so amazing to know this is how they treated inmates, but that you had George Sabin, who was the captain of the team, who was a murderer, as I said,

was able to come and go whenever he pleased. And ultimately escapes the prison, and you never hear from him again. Yeah. And the little blonde boy you mentioned in the middle of the photographs of the team, that was Felix Austin Jr., the warden's son. Go figure that. That's the warden's son. That's how you could be so trusting with this little bat boy. You'd be so trusting with all these people around this little bat boy. It's the warden's son. Yeah. Evidently, he believes that the players were reformed enough to trust his son around them.

It's staggering to me. I mean, I think it's also amazing when you get a mental image of these ballplayers being shackled and handcuffed and being transported to places outside the prison to play. And, you know, being elevated from being these hardened criminals to local heroes. You had children walking up to them wanting their autographs. I mean, and you think, okay, well, gosh, there's a great deal of crime in sports today. So we haven't really – well, people are seeking the autograph of somebody that is a criminal within the arena of sporting events. So we haven't really changed that much.

But, I mean, to me, it's just this image of these ballplayers being shackled and handcuffed, waiting for the team, waiting for the games to start, and children asking them for their autographs and not recognizing for a minute, wait a second, this guy, he shot sheepherders and then set them on fire. No thought of that going on. It's just like, gosh, this guy's an incredible first baseman. I want to get his autograph. Yeah. If you're good at sports, it causes people to overlook a lot of sins. But I wonder, I mean, what do we know exactly about what the players were told? It's difficult to say if something was not written down, and this probably wouldn't have been at least by the warden, but how explicit was it that, hey, if you win, you live?

I think it was pretty obvious when you started seeing ballplayers disappear who had not performed at their best at the last game. I think you don't need to tell somebody this is what's going to happen. You know, Bob pitched a bad game the last time out. Bob is no longer with us. And I don't mean no longer with us on the team. I mean, Bob is gone. Bob has been put down. It is in your best interest. And, you know, George Saban was a bragger and he was not shy about telling people. He's also the captain of the team. He wasn't shy about letting them know, this is what could happen to you. Don't make me have that decision made, because I am very well connected here. So, I mean, I think there are things that you can do without explicitly saying, if you don't play well this game, you're going to die.

That didn't need to be said. Yeah. Do we know anything? Did anything survive about how the players felt in this atmosphere? I mean, on the one hand, if you're playing to save your life, that is quite a strong motivation. On the other hand, you would think it would be difficult to focus and execute on the field when you're worried about being executed

off the field? I think some of them believe they had nothing to lose. You were going to be put to death anyway. You might as well go out playing a game that you absolutely loved. And that was something that these men, when they were on the field, they were elevated way beyond the walls of that prison. It was something that they were playing for their lives, of course, but they were good at it. They were very good at the game. So it wasn't hard for them to be at their best. They loved baseball. And I can't say that there wasn't some stress, but maybe that particular motivation, as it were, helped you to play better. And you wanted to make, and I think to some degree, especially in Joseph Singh's part, you wanted your other teammates to do well because you were in the business of saving their lives too. Right.

So I think all the way around, it was a camaraderie and a field of battle, as it were. It's in everybody's best interest that we win this game. And the team was fairly short-lived in more ways than one. I guess that's a grim way to put it. But can you talk a little bit about who the competition was and how this team fared against it? Well, there was a plumbing company there in town that they played against consistently, and they were very good. And it was just a matter of people in town finding out that there was all of this betting going on. I mean, that's

really what became the demise of this team. And it was the gentleman who, in the book, it's a lot about the history of the prison itself and how the prison was run by Otto Graham, who was the head of the broom manufacturing company there, who gets ousted by the warden. And there's a great deal of animosity there. So how the baseball team, the betting and everything is found out comes through Otto Graham.

And he couldn't wait to let people know that this is going on. He was hoping it would be the demise of the warden. It doesn't turn out to be the demise of the warden. The little guys get put down first because the minute this particular event was unfolded or was made known, then they had to start saying, oh, that really, we aren't betting on the team. That's not what's happening. And to prove it, we'll make sure that the first one that goes is our most valuable player. And that's essentially what happens to Sing. The book is also, I mean, it's about the team, but the book is in large part about the prison, how it all came about, that you had the perfect setting for this kind of scam to go on, and the backstory behind all of that,

and also about Joseph Singh, the crime that he was in there for, his relationship with the woman that he eventually, you know, I don't want to give the story away because it's a pretty remarkable murder mystery in and of itself. because it worked on the level of, I love baseball, and I love that aspect of it, but it worked on the standpoint of how these people came together to be better people, both on and off the ball field, and how the betting itself is exposed, and then what becomes of Singh, who's in there for a murder that he ultimately, we do or do not know if he committed. You know, at the end of the book, what really has gone on. And I thought that that was pretty amazing, too.

And the fact that it's a true story makes it all that much more remarkable. And you have the appeals from his family members writing to the governor to try to save him. And he was a popular figure in the town, which, as you know, it is surprising because it was such a strict place where people who committed these crimes were not really tolerated. show of something. We have to show that we're not corrupt, that we will actually punish these prisoners. Did anyone actually want them to be punished anymore? Or was it just, hey, we have to go through with this to show that we are tough on crime. But in the town, there was quite an outpouring of support, it sounds like. Yes, I believe that there was an outpouring. There was an outpouring of support in the town because people were getting rich off of this team. I see.

So that was part of it. Singh was a hero because he was the most valuable player on that team. That was a big part of it. People were profiting from it. So no one wants to get rid of that gravy train. Of course, his family were interceding for him like crazy. Heartbreaking. Heartbreaking.

his family were interceding for him like crazy. Heartbreaking, heartbreaking. I mean, at one time, his mother sends in a picture of her with one of her grandchildren, I guess, and she's in black taffeta, I guess, to show that she was a compassionate person and had gone out of her way to raise compassionate people. Just anything that they could do. I mean, Singh had always been involved in petty crimes anyway. I don't mean to imply that he was pure as the driven snow. Indeed, none of those players were.

But I think ultimately these people were going to be killed for their crimes anyway. It's just the timing of it that I think people were objecting to. Right. It just was, it's an amazing tale. It's an amazing tale. It's so hard to be able to say all the intricacies with it. And that's why I hope people get the book. It's called The Death Row All-Stars. And I hope people get the book and read it and learn more about this amazing team and the players behind it. I hope so too. And I will link to it and tell people where they can get it. And can you explain a something of that era. Well, other than Ty Cobb himself. I mean, it's hard to know how good these players were, but it sounds as if some of them were pretty talented. Well, I know a great deal

of them. And that was something that I found when I was in the prison, a lot of postcards and a lot of, they were huge fans of Honus Wagner. He was on, everybody wanted to play like Honus Wagner. So, I mean, that was their standard. That was the bar that they set to play like Wagner. And you're right. It's very hard to say. And certainly you can't compare it with what goes on, what makes a good player today. It was 1911. I think consistently hitting, which is what they did, they were consistently good at hitting.

And they had incredible pitchers. And that was something to really be focused on as well. I mean, they were a good all-around team because they had to be. You wanted to prolong your life as much as possible. And then sweet life for them was just coming alive on the ball field itself. I love there's a story in the book about how they play a particular team at the prison, and the players were very concerned about putting together snacks and refreshments for the spectators who would be there. So in one part of this yard is a place where you can go get lemonade. It's just so preposterous. Right.

It's so preposterous. Right. But they tried to make it as much like a ball club as they possibly could. You're right. I don't know how you would compare it to where they really were as good as Honus Wagner. You have no stats to really show that. Right. But they were good enough to play, to win.

People were getting rich off of them. So I suspect that they were pretty doggone good. And I note that the original book, Playing for Time on the cover, said something about soon to be a motion picture. And you wrote the follow up, The Death Row All-Stars, with Howard Kazanjan, who's a prominent producer. And it just seems hard to imagine that this is not a movie yet. I guess it probably doesn't quite have the Hollywood ending, but it definitely has movie-like qualities. So what discussions have you had? May you have? Why have we not seen this on the big screen yet? The motion picture rights and everything has been optioned by Ginny Lou Tugin Productions. Ginny Lou Tugin and her folks did Free Willy movie. She was also involved in Lethal Weapon. And it's in their hands now, and they've been making the rounds. Hollywood's, you know, one time they're all excited about it,

and the next time they say no one's interested in baseball. No one's interested in period baseball. But this isn't just a story of baseball. This is a story of these men, how they got to the prison, the most valuable player. It's about the warden. It's about the prison system as a whole. So the book really has, and the people that are the writers on this that are the same people

that wrote a television series called Numbers that was on CBS for a number of years. So they're making the rounds. We'll see what happens. I hope that people would be interested in

a baseball movie set in 1911. But right now, a lot of the people that run the industry are people that are the 30-somethings and don't know much about that era and think that people aren't necessarily interested in that and are not altogether certain that anybody is interested in baseball, which as a baseball fan, I don't know how you can possibly say that. I don't know how you can possibly say that. I don't know what to say. And as somebody that's, I have been a, you know, Kansas City Royals fan forever and ever and ever, and huge fan of George Brett, who wrote a piece for the book,

which I was really pleased with. I mean, I just, that, and the fact that the book was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame a few years back. So those have been a real kick, and I just appreciated all of that. And I would hope that Hollywood would see the power in this story and the possibilities in this story. It gets almost there, and then it falls through. So we'll see. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. Well, I hope it comes together. It may just be a baseball story, but it is quite an extraordinary one. I think so, too.

Yeah. This was a colorful period in baseball just everywhere, I mean, with gamblers and some of the characters that were populating the game at that time at the major league level. But this is a whole other level of colorful, I suppose, when you're talking about a team of convicts. So I don't know. I know Kevin Costner said he's looking for another baseball movie, right? So maybe he's a little old to take the field at this point. Well, but he could certainly be a producer he could certainly be a producer but i think that they have gone to him with this particular project and i don't know he's a hard he's a hard get you know i mean he's a guy that can do whatever he wants to

do now and um you know people come to him i mean he if he decides he wants to do it i mean it it would be um it would be a home run. Let's just say that. And that would be great if he did. But, you know, all we can do is put it out there. And I know that they're going to meetings with it. And I just heard from a gentleman in England yesterday who does documentaries on sports who wants to do something about it. So you never know where this is going to go. But it doesn't take away from the fact that

it is an incredible team and that the book, The Death Row All-Stars, a story of baseball corruption and murder is an enjoyable read, I think. Yeah. So last question, did anyone, not to spoil the ending, but did anyone escape their fate? Was there anyone from the team who went on to live a long life and survive past this point? I believe George Saban did. George Saban escaped. Not sure whatever happened to George Saban, but I believe that the warden knew what happened to George Saban and that he lived a life, a very long life after that. So, and that I don't think we'll ever know what happened to him. But no, most of those, most of the gentlemen on the team did die. Starting with Seng.

But Saban's the only one I know that got away scot-free. Okay. All right. Well, hopefully we will see this story on a bigger small screen or possibly both sometime soon. But until then, you can read all about it in the book, The Death Row All-Stars. I will tell you where to find that. And you can find Chris's many other books at her website, chrisenz.com.

That's E-N-S-S. And she even has another baseball book in the pipeline one of these years. So we can look forward to that. And it has been a pleasure. Thank you very much, Chris. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. All right.

We will now take one more quick break, and we will travel both backward and forward in time to talk about the Southern California Vintage Baseball League. Don't hold on to something that's changing fast What we are is what we are And what we wear is vintage clothes Vintage clothes All right, we are now joined by two members of the Southern California Vintage Baseball League. That is baseball with two words because this is vintage baseball.

That's how they used to spell it. So we are joined first by Wes Abarca. He is the co-founder of the league as well as its commissioner and the captain of the Crestline Highlanders. Hello, Wes. Hey, how's it going? Thanks for having me. And we are also joined by longtime listener and Patreon supporter Joe Bilheimer, who is, I'm going to guess it's pronounced the behind, not the behind, which is the catcher for the Crestline Highlanders. Hi, Joe. Good morning. Thanks for having us.

Yeah. So I read in the league bylaws that everyone is mandated to have a nickname and that you are not allowed to give yourselves nicknames. So, Wes, do you have a nickname already? You know what? They've been trying to give me a nickname and it's just not sticking. Huh, okay. Maybe we'll come up with one during this interview. I can clarify. We're trying to get Hitch to stick because he's not the fastest one in the group. Joe, you have a nickname? I do. My nickname is The Ripper. The Ripper. The origin story of that is kind of silly.

Well, first of all, I hit the ball pretty hard, which was cool to be recognized that way. But also the very first exhibition match I played, I borrowed somebody's uniform because I didn't have my own yet. I was testing it out still. And, you know, as the behind, I'm squatting back there behind the dish and the crotch of my pants blew out. And I was just, you know, I ripped the seams. I had about a six or seven inch just hole in the middle of my pants. So they thought it was funny. And therefore I am the Ripper. All right. That's a good nickname. They had better nicknames

in those days. So you are you are true to form. And wow. OK, so it is the behind. I apologize for trying to spare you that. Anyway, Wes, this is the inaugural season of the league. You've been playing exhibition games for about a year now, but you're about to begin your first official season. Give us the origin story of the league. Yeah, so I can give you the long story and the short story. The really quick, I guess, I'll try to get quick about it, but I played in 2008 up in the Bay Area.

They have a vintage baseball league there. It's called Bay Area Vintage Baseball League. And that's how I got introduced to the sport. And then I came back to L.A., had an idea of creating a league because there wasn't any in Southern California. I had that idea probably in my back pocket about 10 years. Just never moved forward with it. Then I started playing softball up in the mountains where I moved. and I noticed a lot of guys were ex-baseball players. They missed the game, and I said, maybe I can introduce them to this vintage style of play.

And I started showing them how to do it, and they wanted to create a team. Now, I had an idea to start a mountains vintage baseball league, like a local league, but then I came across a league that I was trying to get going in L.A. It was called the L.A. Vintage Baseball League. And when I realized that there was one team, they only had one established team, and they were having a hard time trying to come up with more teams, and that's kind of what happened with my league as well. I was only able to create one team in my

area so i talked to the captain who uh from the redondo beach warfrats and that's the name of the team and we just said hey man let's uh how about we just join us together we have two clubs and maybe we'll go from there and we'll just consider it a southern california thing and he was all for it and so that's how the league got going so how do you spread the word and generate enough interest in playing a version of baseball but by a number of different rules and with different equipment how do you how do you get people excited to to play a 130 year old version of the game as opposed to playing something that's more contemporary well um it's definitely definitely has a lot of history and roots to it.

So you could definitely pitch the idea of going back into history, baseball history. And so there's a lot of historian type people who like to get involved with that. Then you have the people who are into the vintage look, the actual look of the uniforms, the equipment. And then you got the baseball players like myself and probably Joe who we just want to play the game again. And it's actually a challenge because you're using different types of equipment, heavier bats, smaller gloves, less protective equipment.

And it's just there's different people who are interested in different ways. And we've been promoting it, just talking to people, but also getting enough folks to come out and actually have an exhibition match, which draws more interest to people itself. It's 15 years old, but the league that he went and took footage of was using 1864 rules very early on. Your league is using a modified version of the 1886 Major League rule set or National League rule set. So Joe, I don't know if you can take this one. If not, Wes, feel free to jump in. But why 1886? How did you choose? And what unique demands does that place on players? Well, I joined the team to harken back to your previous question, because Wes put some stuff out in the community. He's done a great job of driving the awareness. I mean, I love baseball, so I was all for it. 1886 specifically, Les, correct me if I'm

wrong, but we got to go to work the next day, so there's at least a little bit of equipment that's used in the form of gloves. And for myself, there's a chest protector, there's a mask, and there's a glove for behind the dish. So I'm at least a little bit protected as are the fielders. The glove that the fielders use, it's not much more than a glorified gardening glove. You know, it has a little bit of padding. If anybody wants to check it out, you can go to the Vintage Baseball Factory, vbff.com, and it's the Foxy Irwin glove. That's the standard that the fielders use. But I think it's just more for protection because there's some equipment. That's the standard that the fielders use. But I think it's just more for protection because there's some equipment. That's why we stick to the 1886.

And for people who are not intimately familiar with 1886 baseball rules, we're talking about seven balls and three strikes. You have to call for higher low pitches and the pitcher has to deliver them there. There's no mound or rubber. so the front of the pitcher's box is 50 feet away from the plate. Foul hits, also known as foul balls, are not counted as strikes. So this is a very different brand of baseball. Wes, what would you say is the hardest thing to get used to or the most dramatic difference from modern baseball aside from the equipment? There is a lot of different rules we do. Besides the seven balls, there's a hitting ball trick.

There's a quick pitch. It makes the game go a lot faster. Maybe Major League Baseball should adopt that again. And there's just so many different rules that are similar, but there's not an info fly rule. So those are things, as a new player, you need to get used to. We're still trained in the way it is now, that if you come up against anything... I can share a little bit of my experience with my first exhibition match. So I played baseball for a very long time, exclusively as a catcher. So the biggest thing for me, difference-wise, was the quick pitch. After my first inning, I stopped calling pitches. I told my hurler,

that's the pitcher, I said, hey man, throw what you want. Throw your breaking stuff, throw your fastball, you know, just hit your spot and I'll catch it. And that enabled him to quick pitch as he wanted to. So I just have to be ready. The hurler has basically, the only way he could balk is if he fakes a pitch home. Anything else is not a balk. He can be in the box, ready to go. The first baseman could have the ball and that's the hidden ball trick he can uh as soon as he catches the throw back from me he can you know do a mini quick pro hop and deliver it right back over the plate so the batter can't step out the batter just has to be ready the only person who can call time is the sir who is the ump, or the captains of the teams.

Correct. And then he was saying the box. In that reference to what it is, the pitcher's mound, there is no mound. We play on a flat ground. It's 50 feet from the middle of home plate to the front of the box. Then you're talking about a six-feet deep box and then a four-feet wide box. So it's like a rectangle that the pitcher needs to deliver. He has to finish and start in the box when he goes home, delivers home plate.

So in the amount of time that you've been playing by these relatively unfamiliar rules, and you're probably still kind of learning how the game flows in and out, but have you, what are the main strategic differences that you play with relative to like the modern baseball that people would be more familiar with? That's a very good question. I think the strategic differences would be the hurlers utilizing the quick pitch. That's probably something that is least implemented by the other teams that I've noticed. We've had a few exhibition matches that I've partaken. They just don't really do it. And it could be to their benefit to utilize that it takes a bit to get used to it obviously so what we've had to do is really strategically position our strongest

defenders who have the best the best hands it's hard to catch these balls a ground ball coming at you you know there is there's no wiggle room you have to stick it otherwise you're just going to drop it so fielding is is we'll call it fun that That's part of the reason I'm glad to still be the catcher because I don't have to deal with that. Fly balls are interesting. They get caught surprisingly often. Ground balls are challenging. Thankfully, not a lot of the guys in the league are extremely fast, so there's still time to recover to make a play. Those are some of the key strategies that need to be implemented in order to have the success. Are you shifting defenses, or is that not appropriate for 1886 rules? We're not, but we could. It depends.

I have a buddy of mine on the Warfrats, and he's a slappy, real fast type, so we might shift everybody over to the left side for him. Another thing that's interesting is that if you get hit by the pitch, it's just a ball. So I've threatened, hey, man, if you want to walk, you're going to have seven bruises. So we'll see. And Wes, I'm curious about how widespread this is. I mean, you have a five-team league. All the teams are in Southern California.

I mean, you have a five-team league. All the teams are in Southern California. But as evidenced by the fact that you can purchase newly manufactured vintage equipment, obviously there is a demand for this. This is a nationwide pastime. So do you have any sense of how many fairly well-organized leagues there are around the country, how many people play vintage baseball? There's quite a few, especially in the East Coast. I know it's really big in the East Coast, especially the Civil War era ball, which is underhand, no gloves. In California, there is three 1886 vintage baseball leagues now. And there's also one starting in central valley which is in sacramento area uh which is starting the 1860s style as well underhand uh no no glove but there is quite a few

teams i don't even i can't even put a number to it how many leagues there is in the east coast i i constantly come up across them in on social media I'm just blown away at how many clubs there is and how long it's been going on in those areas. I guess this would be a question for both of you, but given that you're trying to create an entire experience here, how much have you tried to hew your in-game chatter to what you might perceive to be old-timey vernacular? Are you talking in modern English,

or does this kind of go in with the nicknames? Yeah, I've been trying to educate the fellas on the language. I'm still trying to get used to it as well, but I do encourage them to use it, to use the old terminology. Maybe, for example, a ground ball that's hit hard on the ground. We call it a daisy cutter. Someone who's showing fierce play. We say that's a nice ginger there.

Maybe a fly ball. It's called a sky ball. The outfield area, we call it the garden. In some years, the shortstop's called the short field. The catcher is referred to uh playing the behind position that's the behind area the pitcher you know the terminology is like the pitcher is the hurler or the feeder depending on what um era you're playing in there's a lot of different uh terminology the fans are called the cranks so i try to encourage the guys on my club and even the other captains on other clubs to do is we try to keep it to handshakes

or you can applaud for the other team when they make a great play or something like that. It goes back to the gentleman's play of the early 19th century baseball. Yeah, you should all have to go on the DL with dysentery or dropsy or something just to keep it really accurate. I saw that in the rules it specifies that umpires may smoke cigars if they care to. Do many of them take advantage of that? Oh, yeah. They definitely love that idea.

I think that's how we get most of our sirs interested in that they can smoke a cigar while they're calling the game, and they kind of roll with an iron fist, and no one's really allowed to, actually no one's allowed to disrespect them like you see baseball nowadays. It was an honor thing. Usually the only person that would be seen that could call a great game under the eyes of God would be a judge, a clergyman, or an undertaker. So you would trust those men, and they would come right after work dressed up in their

top hat or their derby cap or tie and coat and suit, and they would just pull out their cigars and call the game. So yeah, they can smoke as they please. So given that foul hits are not Canada strikes, you can see that there's the opportunity there for a little bit of strategic edge if you get really good at hitting the ball foul, maybe wearing out the pitcher. So, in your estimation, who would be the Takuya Nakashima of your own roster? Who's really just perfected the art of hitting the ball foul just over and over and over

again? I'll take that one, Wes. Hikui Nakashima is the Japanese professional baseball player that just hits everything foul and drives opposing pitchers nuts. So on our team, you know, I've had some long ABs where I'm a lefty batter or lefty striker, excuse me. And I've pulled five or six balls foul over the course of an at-bat because I tend to turn on them. And it drives me nuts because I'm like, geez, I still have zero strikes on me. What's going on?

Just as a person who is familiar with modern-day baseball more so than vintage. But I've had some long ABs. I know a couple of our guys, Kentucky, our shortstop, he's kind of a slappy guy. He has the nickname Kentucky because he's from Kentucky and he sounds like he's from Kentucky. So he's kind of slappy and he can get in the pitcher's head if he wants to. He's got very good bat control. So Joe, tell me also about the pace of the game. We've talked about the quick pitching, which would speed things up. But on the other hand, you've got the seven balls and three strikes and foul balls not counting as strikes. And you'd think that would tend to slow things down. So

I guess you guys play seven innings, right? But roughly how long would a full game take compared to a modern major league game? Right. The seven inning games, they're between two and a half and three hours. For me as the behind, the at-bats can get long. My legs are not what they used to be when I was catching full time. So I get tired back there and I'm like, golly, just swing the, you know, put the ball in play. Let me get a bit of a break because I have to be ready every time for that quick pitch just in case it's implemented. Pace of play is good unless you have a wild hurler who just can't find the high zone or the low zone. Then it just gets a bit annoying. But we have very good hurlers on our team.

Our top hurler is named Ace. He starts our games for us, goes several innings, and then we bring in a couple other guys, either Sandlot or Pickle. They come in and they close things out. So pace of play is good, especially if you have a hurler who finds the zone. Yeah, and I think the more we play in the league, the teams get more comfortable on how the game is played. The games will move a little quicker and maybe even be less scoring with people getting used to defense.

I understand you're not into this for the money or for the fame, but still, you know, you're playing at a ballpark. And what have you noticed in terms of local people coming out to watch? What's your attendance look like? Because of course, anyone walking by would think, oh, this is like a curiosity. I should sit down and watch this. Do they stick around? How many cranks? Well, most games weren't the exhibition matches that we were having at the beginning weren't really advertised very much. We were more just trying to get up out on the field and play and just kind of get the guys familiar with the rules. But we did have a Labor Day match against the

Oakland Colonels. They're part of the Bay Area Vintage Baseball League. They've been around for about 15 years and got in contact with them. They were looking to barnstorm. So they came all the way to Southern California. We set up two matches on a saturday and a sunday we put out it was up in crestline in the mountains it's a small town community so we put out information for everyone you know flyers or social media we got some press involved and for both of those games i believe we had roughly around four to five hundred people show up on on those. So it was a good amount of people that came out and watched us. So for both of you, I guess, do you enjoy this brand of baseball independent of the historical reenactment element as much as the

modern rules, less than, more than? I mean, if you just had to choose, you're playing a pickup game with friends and you're not observing any of the period, you know, language and uniforms and all of that. I mean, how much of the enjoyment of it is the history aspect and how much of it is it's just as fun as playing regular baseball? I guess, Joe, you can start. Yeah, well, if I were to just play a pickup game with some guys, it would probably be regular baseball because that's what we're all familiar with. I've told several of my friends with whom I've grown up playing baseball about this thing, and they are all extremely curious and want to, they all want to see the glove. They all want to, you know, try catching a ground ball, try catching a fly ball. So there's that novelty aspect. As far as what I'm used to, I'm used to baseball, regular one-word baseball. So that's probably what I would stick with. This is extremely fun for a couple of reasons. One, I'm getting plugged into my community. I've been in Crestline for about a year and a half now.

My family moved there, and it's really great to get to know the guys and their families. And I know there are Sunday leagues out there for regular baseball. This league, also, the time commitment isn't so great. We have our season, which stretches from February through September with playoffs in October. And it's usually one match per month, maybe two, with occasional practices. So the time commitment isn't overwhelming. That's a great benefit of this league.

Plus, it's just a heck of a lot of fun to challenge yourself with the equipment. You have the hurler who's very close, but they're not throwing gas because the rules dictate they are not allowed to have a really big leg kick. I think they can just kind of slide step. And plus, if you can imagine somebody quick pitching, they're not able to reset and put all their max effort behind it. So while the hurlers are close, they're not really exerting themselves fully every single time. I don't know. Those are some of the reasons I really enjoy vintage baseball. But of course, I'm used to modern day. Yeah. You have anything to add, Wes? Well, yeah, I'm pretty convinced that I do not ever want to play modern baseball again.

I love watching it. I love watching it. I understand it. I've played it all my life, but ever since I got back into the vintage, when I played in 2008 for one year in the bay it was just i fell in love with it and ever since then i've just been striving to get back into it and now that i'm that we got something going here in southern california i'm never never again gonna touch the baseball bat like i used to i just love it so much it's so challenging and just the quirky rules and the history behind it. I'm just all for it now.

So the last thing I wanted to ask you, you referred to the regular season, then you have the playoffs. And you've also talked about how there are other teams, other leagues that play by 1886 rules. But there are also, you've brought up, silver war leagues and leagues that play by 1864 rules. So can you envision, maybe something already exists now, but can you envision some sort of national or regional tournament where maybe you or your team, your representative from your league ends up playing another team in another league by some other year's rules and then you kind of have a home and home kind of situation in the championship series? Yeah, we've already been in discussion with the Central Valley

of the Indian Baseball League in Sacramento. They play 1864, I believe, yeah. We've already discussed meeting up with each other at some point, and I don't know about a championship, but more of an exhibition of showing, them teaching

us and us participating in the old way in Civil War times, and then fast forward it for another game and showing how it evolved to the 1886 overhand style with some equipment. All right. Well, if you want to find a vintage baseball league or team in your area, it looks like there's a vintage baseball association that has a lot of them. So you can search. If you are in Southern California, you can go see Crestline play on what, February 9th is your next game. Crestline is playing the Long Beach Oilers in Long Beach. So that's something to see.

I will link to the rules of the league. I'll link to some photos and video so you can get an idea of what we're working with here. And I wish I were closer so I could come see, but this sounds like a lot of fun. So thank you very much, Wes and Joe. Thank you for having us. I appreciate it.

Thank you guys. We appreciate it a lot. And it's great fun. If anybody's in the Southern California area, there are teams in Riverside, Redondo Beach, Long Beach, Palmdale, and Crestline, but we're looking to add clubs for the upcoming season in 2020. So please get a hold of Wes if you have a desire to check it out. All right. If you were serious about this, you wouldn't even use cars to get to the games.

You'd have to take horses or coal trains. Yeah, you know, we do a parade every year up here in Crestline. Well, we just started it last year. We're doing it again. It's like a Fourth of July parade.

And we walked it last time and we had an idea of getting an old vintage car and we're like, wait a minute, we shouldn't be in a car with a horse. You really're like, wait a minute. We shouldn't be in a car. We should be in a horse. You really should not be doing a podcast interview, Ethan.

You should have insisted that we conduct this in person and appear only in a newspaper. But thanks for making an exception. Totally correct. Yeah. Yeah. No problem. Thank you for that. Thank you both.

All right. Bye. Okay. That will do it for today. Thanks to all our guests. Long episode. We don't always stick to the same schedule, but we do make up for it eventually. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild,

signing up to pledge some small monthly amount. The following five listeners have already done so. Nathan Valentine, Nathan Lewandowski, Josh Curran, Ken Hui, and Brandon Youngblood. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter.

Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. You can pre-order my book, The MVP Machine. It comes out this spring, but it is available for pre-order now. And we will, of course, cram a couple more episodes into this week, so we step back to talk to you very soon. Take care of your heart and cry Oh, and somehow we'll survive one other day Just one other day I'll find my girl walking away I'll find my girl walking away