Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1454: Where Have You Gone, Mr. Robinson?

Episode Date: November 9, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s return from vacation and Meg and Sam’s episodes in his absence, former Angels minor leaguer Mike Fish (not to be confused with Mike Trout), and a roundup of recent news, including Stephen Strasburg opting out, J.D. Martinez not opting out, Mookie Betts trade rumors, robot umps coming […]

But no, no, no, no, no, no one was concerned So won't you please, my heart, it return And baby, return And fill this loneliness My heart in turn. Dip, dip, dip. And fill my heart with happiness. Hello and welcome to episode 1454 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters.

I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hi. Welcome home. Thank you. I am home. It's nice to be of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hi. Welcome home. Thank you. I am home. It's nice to be home. Yeah.

I had a nice trip. Okay, good. I was just about to ask. Did you have a good trip, Ben? See, we got to get our timing back. I know. Right. Getting back in the swing of things. Yeah, it was nice.

We went to England. It rained every day, but that's kind of what you expect, I think, when you go to Cornwall in November. We were told to expect that. We brought our wellies, so we were prepared, and we got to see some nice rainbows, which is the upside of rain. So yeah, it was good. Awesome. Well, we tried to keep the home fires burning while you were gone. You did. They're blazing. They're roaring. You did a great job. I got the authentic Effectively Wild listener experience because I didn't ask you what you were doing or

when you were doing it. So I was just opening my app and refreshing and wondering, will there be a new Effectively Wild episode? And a couple of times there was, and that was exciting. And then I got to listen to it, totally surprised and it was great. I would subscribe to this podcast based on those couple episodes. That was that you i'm glad you felt that way we decided to to go a little weird yeah it's hardly surprising and people seem to have come along with us during our weirdness so yes uh we appreciate their generosity and uh you uh also seemingly liking it at least not enough to be like so next time no i liked it a lot i have so many questions about how it came about and how long this was in the works and just how you did it i assume that

you were you scripted it and you were reading from scripts although it didn't sound very scripted but i assume you must have i will give credit where it is due which is that especially since you liked it i told sam that if you did not like the episode that we could blame it on me but since you did like it i will give uh the credit where it is due which is uh sam found this whole thing he found the original saber piece that outlined the game and decided he wanted to engage in some effectively wild experimentation. So he wrote the bulk of that script. And then there were moments in there, which I imagine were kind of obvious,

where we bantered a bit and went off script. And we maybe benefited from a bit of Dylan's editing assistance, as we usually do. But yeah, we read from a script. It was hard. Made me sympathetic to broadcasters. Yeah. Did you do a rehearsal?

Like, did you time it so that you knew that it would take roughly as long as the actual game took? I think we each read through it. Sam read through it, I think, a couple more times than I did, which Dylan could probably tell in the edits. But yeah, he kind of gamed it out. And we had set times we were trying to hit. And I think we were confident in our ability to talk quickly because we have demonstrated that skill in the past.

Yeah. Well, that was a delight. And my only regret is that I've seen people saying Ben must have hated this idea so they had to wait until he was gone. I didn't know. This was a total surprise to me. I don't know how long Sam was sitting on this thing could have been years for all i know i have i don't i don't quite know how long i don't think that i don't think that he was worried that you would hate it especially but i think that you know it seemed like we we had some episodes to fill so it seemed

like a good opportunity to do it yeah it's the season. That's when we get weird or weirder. We're always pretty weird, but even by our standards. Yeah. Well, yeah, if you or Sam are sitting on any other weird ideas, let's do them. Because I'm all for experimenting with the form because we're seven and a half years into this thing and almost 1,500 episodes and anything to keep it fresh. this thing in almost 1500 episodes and anything to keep it fresh. Jeff and I talked last year about maybe doing some kind of reported episode, like a narrative, like a 30 for 30, except effectively wild. So on some weird, strange, silly subject that would never actually be considered deserving of a 30 for 30, but maybe for us. So something like that, except then he had his whole job thing

and I had my book and we never got around to it but yeah let's let's keep pushing the boundaries on what an effectively wild episode can be not just banter not just interviews but also radio plays i guess radio plays yeah yeah i think we can uh we can get a little bit creative i will say I enjoy talking to you very much. It was very nice to have a chance to chat with Sam a bit more, but it did make me appreciate greatly the amount of work that you and Dylan put into each episode of this. I have some podcast editing experience from doing Van Graaff's audio stuff, but it's a little more straightforward. And, you know, we only ever just have that one song. So, yeah, it made me appreciate all the work that you do for our listeners and for your co-hosts.

So we're happy to have you back for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is I no longer will have the anxiety of picking the right song for the intro and outro. It's quite stressful. Yeah. Yeah, well, that was fancy. It was well produced. There was a national anthem in there.

There was the sound of someone speaking from very far away that was embedded in there. So, yeah, that was some production trickery. Well, those two bits of production we can credit Sam with. But, you know, selecting train-related songs that were not done by the group train i get all the credit for that yeah thank you for going with the very obvious absolutely not so i hope that we will have a treat today too we have not yet recorded it but if you're hearing it that means that we will have recorded it so this is an interview that I've been hoping to do for a while now. We will be speaking to Eddie Robinson, who is the second oldest living major leaguer.

His 99th birthday is coming up next month. His nickname was the Big Easy, and he has had just an amazing baseball life. He was a player, a lefty swinging, righty throwing first baseman, and a good one, four-time all-star, got MVP votes in three seasons, he had power, he walked much more than he struck out, made his major league debut in 1942, then went off and served in the Navy for three years, came back and played until 1957, played for seven teams, and later worked, I think, for another nine, so he was employed by 16 teams in total, two more than Edwin Jackson. But he was on the 1948 Cleveland team that won the World Series, the last Cleveland team to win the World Series. He's the only living player from that team. He was on the great Yankees teams in the mid-50s. be in baseball, basically a coach and a GM for years with the Rangers and a scout and a farm director. And he was in baseball for 65 years or so, and he still pays attention to the game. And

he just saw so much and played with so many people and against so many people that I've just been very eager to talk to him. And he's kind of an independent thinker too. He was ahead of his time in some respects and he was even an important figure in sabermetric history because in 1981 when he was GM of the Rangers he hired Craig Wright who was the first person ever to work for a team with the title of sabermetrician. So we will talk to him about all of that. I always enjoy the offseason as a time when we can just talk to some players from earlier eras. Eddie Robinson was born in 1920, which was just a few years after the game that you and Sam were talking about on the previous episode. So he's seen some baseball in his time.

Yeah. When you suggested that we do this today and the timing worked out, I didn't realize that he had co-authored an autobiography. Yes. And now having done some reading in advance of us talking to him, I really want to read this book because what an incredible life this guy has lived. Yes, very much so. Yeah. I will link to his autobiography in case you want to procure it.

And he faced so many great legendary players, and maybe we will talk about some of them but our old friend of the show ned garver he faced ned garver 92 times and he owned ned garver he uh he hit 282 385 26 as a 906 ops against ned garver who was a pretty good pitcher in his time too so it's nice to have connections between our players from previous eras of baseball. So we will get to Eddie shortly. A few things before we do, this is strange and silly and maybe something that you're aware of, but Jeff actually g-chatted me to wish me a happy vacation. And he just said, happy vacation. And he just sent me a screenshot of a baseball reference page. And I feel like maybe I've seen this just sent me a screenshot of a baseball reference page and i feel

like maybe i've seen this before because it's one of those baseball reference pages that possibly gets tweeted when like jeff and john boyce will go back and forth and just name weird baseball reference pages but are you aware of mike fish no mike fish so mike fish is basically Like off-brand Mike Trout And I love this So Mike Trout, we know Mike Trout Mike Fish is also An Angels player, or was He was born the same year as

Mike Trout, 1991, so he's 28 years old, he was drafted by The Angels in the 32nd round Of the 2013 draft And he was a centerfielder, or at least largely a centerfielder. He played other outfield positions too. So you have Mike Fish, who played professionally from 2013 to 2016. He was in the independent leagues in 2016. Prior to that, he had risen as high as AA with the Angels. So at the same time you had Mike Trout as the face of the franchise and best player

in baseball, you had Mike Fish, who was laboring away in obscurity in the Angel system. Same birth year as Trout, same position as Trout, same vaguely fish-related last name as Trout, except just the generic. He's like the off-brand. He's the generic Mike Trout. He has the fish name, but the species of fish is not specified. And so he overlapped, and I'd love to know what it was like to be Mike Fish in the Angel system at the same time as Mike Trout. I have a couple of things to say in response to this. The first of which is that Mike Fish looks like, I'm looking at his baseball reference page now, and I, you know, one could interpret what I am about to say as an insult because we are a scruffy sort,

but I don't mean it that way at all. Mike Fish looks like a baseball blogger. He looks like he could be a baseball blogging sort. Yeah, he looks a little like Bauman. He does look a little bit like Bauman yes without glasses in uh in this particular picture but yes he does have sort of a bauman-esque air to him and we should clarify which mike bauman we mean because there is a bauman baseball player at the orioles pitcher yes the ringer writer yeah we mean our pal mike and also I am inclined to believe that Jeff meant to perhaps insult me as the off-brand, effectively wild host. Oh, that did not occur to me.

I'm joking. Yes, I am. I'm sure that's not true. But wow, Mike Fish. Mike Fish is from New York. Yeah, from Albany. is from new york yeah so even a northeast player yes even a oh my gosh drafted drafted in 2013 yes my stars not not out of not out of high school mind you college went to siena college in new york not really a baseball hotbed, I would assume. But yeah, if you were Mike Fish, would you have wanted to be

in a Fish-friendly organization? Would you want to be on the Angels or would you not want to be there? Because it's like if he were with some other team, it wouldn't be as notable. No. We would maybe remark on it, but not at

length. But the fact that he was an Angels player playing the same No. minor league managers who probably coached and managed mike trout are thinking oh we've got another mike fish name are are you the new mike trout did he have to like put up with expectations because people thought if you're an angels draftee named mike fish something then you must be great i mean you've this is the organization of tim salmon and mike trout mean, it's a proud legacy of fish surnames, and he really didn't quite carry on that legacy. I don't imagine it would be fun to be an outfielder of any sort or stripe in the Angels organization with Trout ahead of you. If you're going to do it, you need to be like a Joe Adele, right? You need to be a top prospect in baseball so that you feel like you're on some sort of even footing. And ideally you need to come along and sort of the moment that Adele has where, you know,

we all know that eventually Mike Trout, best player, perhaps ever, will still have to move off of center field because, you know, he'll age and that's just how these things work and it'll be fine. He'll still be incredible and everyone will relax that's not true they will crow about it and feel very insecure as human beings but we will eventually relax and so like there is a circumstance under which it is fine to be an outfield prospect in the angel system because we all know that even the very best player potentially ever is subject to time in the same way that we all are. Yes. But when you're a 32nd round draft pick out of college and your name is literally Mike Fish,

I think it's impressive that he kind of hung around the way that he did. Because I would have a hard time not just reading that as um the universe saying this isn't gonna happen for you friend yeah right righty thrower righty hitter like mike trout no mike trout is listed at 62235 mike fish 61205 so slightly smaller and well i guess Slightly smaller. I guess they threw him back. He wasn't. The angels believe in catch and release is what you're trying to say. But, you know, one inch and, okay, 30 pounds, I guess, is a significant difference even over that size frame. But if you were to see Mike Fish from far away, just throwing and swinging from the right side, you might think, is that Mike Trout? No, it's just Mike Fish. Mike Fish. Now, here is the really important question. How sure are we

that Mike Fish is actually Mike Fish's name? Is it possible that Mike Fish's name is Mike Trout and much like a rookie sort of giving way to a veteran on a on a big league roster who has his number and having to just take a different number was his name Mike Trout and they're like look we have some bad news for you and then he was like I don't I can't pick amongst the other fish couldn't possibly pick a favorite fish among the fish like all the fish so i shall be my fish right yeah it could be oh and i'm looking now at his siena college player page and it says if i could go anywhere in the world i would go to colon california i've never been there so he got to live his dream he got to go to california i assume right he played uh i think he had well he had some he was on um he was on let's see inland empires yeah 66 yeah yeah yeah he got to

do a little uh a little california he got to do a california st Man, he was in, let's see, he was in the AZL in 2013. So that's probably before Eric would have been out there to see him. I'm going to ask Eric if he ever saw this guy. Yes, please slack him in. Yeah, we need a Mike Fish scouting report for sure. Also from this page, oh, this is very relatable. The best piece of advice I have gotten is colon do less. I think Mike Fish might be my favorite baseball player.

Wow, I love that. Getting to know Mike Fish, major creative arts. My favorite class at Siena is music improv. I don't know what that means. Is that like jazz? Fre improv. I don't know what that means. Is that like jazz? Freestyle? I don't know. Pro sports team, Green Bay Packers.

He's from New York. I'd like to hear more about that. His favorite animal is a cheetah. Cool. Favorite color, red. Got to go to a team with red uniforms. And, huh. All right.

Well, lucky number seven, the number of Mickey Mantle, who is often compared to Mike Trout. Sure. I'm stretching, but do less. Mike Trout is like Mr. Work ethic. He's always trying to do more. And Mike Fish is just like, no, do less. We can all learn a little from Mike Fish. We should all take vacations. This is maybe, now we understand why Jeff sent this to you. Perhaps he knew, hey, Mike Fish's advice, do less. And you, Ben, were about to go do that. Well, a very well-deserved bit of doing less. Yeah, I just did less. And it worked out just fine.

Yeah, came back, podcast was still here. All right. So Mike Fish, i don't know what mike fish is up to these days i'm sure he's gone on to a happy and productive post-baseball career or perhaps not given that his life motto is do less and i don't know that that plays well in in interviews creative music major i don't know about that yeah, yeah, that's Well, I was an English major So I know the feeling, Mike Fish Anyway, if anyone knows the current whereabouts

Of Mike Fish, if Mike Fish wants to Come on the show, we'd be happy to talk to him So, glad to know you, Mike Fish Yep Alright, so before we bring on Eddie, there wasn't much news But I guess very briefly Just a quick little news roundup. Five minutes here.

So there were some opt-outs and some non-opt-outs. So Steven Strasburg did opt out and is a free agent. J.D. Martinez did not. So he is remaining with the Red Sox. And I don't know that it was surprising for Strasburg to opt out. It's sort of a shock to the system coming right after the World Series, but he had three days to decide and he did. I would say maybe slight surprise in that I sort of expected it to be a Kershaw situation where he never technically opted out or just used the opt out as leverage. And he may very well still return to the Nationals,

but I wasn't sure it would ever even get to this point. And it did. And now maybe he will end up somewhere else. We will see. Yeah. I still think that there is a not small possibility that he ends up back in D.C. But we, you know, when we were assembling our top 50 free agents post, we were sort of operating under the assumption that he would be opting out. So well done. Good job, Stephen. You made my life easier. So thank you for that. But yes, he opted

out. JD opted to stay, I guess, while you were gone. Aroldis Chapman reached an extension with the Yankees in lieu of opting out. So those were a couple of the big ones that we weren't quite sure of. Yep. And JD Martinez probably figured that the free agent market being the way it is, perhaps a 32-year-old DH, as good as he is, he was not coming off a career year. He was coming off a very good year, but did not quite, I guess, rise to the level that he or scott boris thought that he would make more than the three and 62 or whatever he had coming to him so i would guess probably somewhat mixed feelings in red socks ownership front office circles about that because they had come out and said that they wanted to get under the competitive balance tax threshold and

that it would be tough to do with both Martinez and Mookie Betts. So Martinez opting out maybe would have gotten them out of that self-created problem, which is not really a problem, but they've decided that it is one evidently. So now I guess that means that we get months more of Mookie Betts trade rumors, which is like the last thing I want to be talking about. That's going to be an off-season storyline and is not one that I want to be talking about or think there's really any reason to be talking about. If anything, we should be talking about an extension, which maybe we will be. an extension which maybe we will be and maybe they will talk to him about an extension and maybe they will work out something where it's backloaded so that they can keep him and still be under that threshold for whatever reason but clearly they have hired heim bloom they've gotten rid of dame

dobrowski they want to keep winning but they don't want to spend as much money as they've been spending and now perhaps they will trade Mookie Betts or even the fact that we're like talking about him as a player who is potentially on the block is just silly and strange because he is like the definition of a franchise player and he is young and he's great and there is no reason for a good team of means to even be considering not continuing to employ him. Yeah, and there's been some speculation that perhaps having decided to stay that they would maybe look to move Martinez, but that seems, given the contract, quite difficult. Although I don't know what's more difficult, moving a large contract or securing a prospect return that makes

you feel good about trading away your franchise player. Those seem like very difficult tasks good luck with either of those yeah writing a check seems much easier than either of those things if i were ranking things that are hard and easy i'd rank i'd rank some things that way so yes anyway i'm sure that we will be talking about that even though we'd really rather not probably. But that'll be something that we will return to. Other news, automated strike zone. Seems like it's going to be coming to some level or level of the minor leagues this coming year. So it was tested, of course, in the Atlantic League. It was tested in the Arizona Fall League.

And now it is making its way into affiliated ball. And we will see how it goes. So I know that there have been articles written. Rob Arthur wrote something following up on an earlier BP article about some of the technical hurdles that still remain. And I don't know. I'm not totally convinced by articles that say that we're not ready yet or that the technology can't handle it yet. that say that we're not ready yet or that the technology can't handle it yet. I think there are still pluses and minuses here, and you and I will be very sad to lose catcher framing whenever this happens,

but I understand why people consider not having batters be disadvantaged by something that they can't control, why people consider that more important than catcher framing, which is a skill that has been part of baseball going back to the beginning, but has been recognized for its true value lately. And so there's been an even greater emphasis on it. But the idea that we can't make this work, like I know that there's still some hurdles and there's still some kinks to work out, but the idea that it wouldn't be better than what we have currently, to me, it just seems like even if the system is off a little

bit, we know that the current system is off a lot all the time. And we're constantly reminded of that as we watch baseball games, which is why I think the momentum toward Robot Ops keeps building and is probably irresistible. We just have this situation now where we know more about the pitch location than the umpires do, and it's glaring as you follow along. So maybe, I mean, having to do it in real time, you're going to get some glitches and you're going to get some kind of embarrassing situations that arise. And so because there will be some institutional resistance to this and the weight of tradition and all that, there's the idea that, well, we can't implement it until it's perfect. So if that's the standard perfection or near perfection, then we're probably not there yet. If the standard is, can we be better or as good as

human ups, then I don't know, we might very well be there, but maybe that's not good enough to actually make the change. I think that, so having observed the RoboZone in action in Fall League, I think that there are two things that, apart from appreciating framing, that make me still quite nervous about this getting implemented. The first of which, and I think Rob pointed this out, I can't remember if he did it in that article or if he did it just on Twitter, but there is latency, right? There is some delay between when the ball hits the catcher's mitt and when you get a call in the field, and that latency, I will note, varied umpire to umpire. There were some guys who took noticeably longer, and it's just a matter of a couple seconds, right, but noticeably longer than some of their fellows to relay the call that they had gotten in the headset.

You know, stretched over the course of a game that that latency adds up, right? So there will be at a moment when the league is supposedly very concerned about pace of play, you're introducing, you know, a couple of minutes into, into the game, which, you know, maybe we don't care about, we might not, but we should know that that will be one of the consequences of this. When Eric and I talked about this on FangraphsGraphs Audio, he noted, and there was, I think, something to this, that especially if you're waiting to see if a ball is going to be, well, ball is bad, if a pitch is going to be called a strike and there's some delay, it can add some tension, perhaps you enjoy that. But there is a latency that I think will be

noticeable to folks. The other is that the zone is going to be pretty different than what fans are used to. Yes, and players. And players, right? And so I think that if we think the discourse around umpiring is bad now, just wait until they're calling an actual rulebook zone that is going to look and feel very, very different than what we have grown accustomed to over the years. I don't know if the idea behind RoboUmps is at least in part to improve our experience of the game because we're getting more accurate calls and thus are not so angry. I don't know that this will achieve that. But yeah, I think that we have to be open to

persuasion around new technology. We don't want to be grumps. We don't want to smolts it. Don't want to do that, even though after having to call a very rapidly played baseball game, I have new appreciation for the hard work that announcers do. But I think that we just need to be prepared that the implementation is going to be not just from a technological perspective, but from an expectations perspective, probably pretty rocky. And I don't know that we'll like it. We might not like it. We don't have to like new tech. We should be open to new tech, but we don't have to like it. Yeah. Anyone who wants to hear about how this could go wrong, go back and listen to episode 1433. Yeah.

Where Sam and I talked to two Atlantic League players about all of the glitches and the problems and not knowing that this was coming and then the strike zone being different from what they were used to. So yes, I think that you would want a much more smooth introduction if you were to try it at the major league level. So this is probably still years away and we'll see how it goes in the minors. And you might have to preempt part is that I remain convinced that the machines will rise up and kill us all. And this feels like a furtherance of that eventuality. So I'm bummed out by that. And also, and I've said this on other podcasts, the thing that struck me the most watching this in Fall League is that, you know, the guy's back there and he's got his little headset in and they, at least in the beginning of fall league, were not telling the crowd that he was calling an automated zone. And so they would still yell at him. I don't know what we will do with that in terms of our manners, but it seems like we'll just still yell at umpires because fans like to yell at folks. like we'll just still yell at umpires because fans like to yell at folks. But he's doing his thing and he's calling the game and guys are yelling at him and there was a Phillies fan swearing at him.

And then a runner crossed home plate and he still had to get his little broom out and sweep up. And it felt horrible. So that part might only matter to me and the umpires, but it didn't feel great. So I'm excited. I'd rather talk about the auto zone than Mookie Betts getting traded. So maybe this will balance out in the long term.

It's ironic that you still need the human umps to clean the plate off because that's the thing that robots did first. Like robots came into our lives first by being able to clean up some dirt you spilled on something. That's how we know them. We need a baseball Roomba. Yeah. So can we combine the robot umps and the Roomba? Can it be something that calls pitches but also sweeps the plate? I don't know.

I will admit that I have at various points in the past just like it is obvious that you still need a human being back there. Yes. But I will admit that like in my mind's eye i saw like i saw like a jetson's robot that's not what it's gonna be at all ben no it would be cute though if they were like a little animal on top of it you could be like here is our our cat our baseball cat on our baseball roomba now now we're cooking with gas all right and there was also a new slate of hall of fame candidates announced in the Veterans Committee. It's not actually called the Veterans Committee anymore. The modern baseball era ballot. get in. I think Ted Simmons and Lou Whitaker and certainly Marvin Miller have strong cases,

but that's probably something we can revisit and potentially talk to Jay Jaffe about. Oh, yes. At some point down the road, it was also announced that there is a pilot in the works. Amazon is adapting A League of Their Own as a half-hour comedy. It's set to star Darcy Carden from The Good Place and Abby Jacobson from Broad City. It's still in development. This is kind of a long way away probably, but exciting news. Always good to have baseball on TV. If we can't have pitch, maybe we can have A League of Their Own and hopefully it will last longer than the 1993 CBS sitcom version of A League of Their Own, which was canceled after I think three episodes. So fingers crossed and if that gets closer to becoming a reality, I'm sure we will discuss it. If you missed it, you can hear me talk to Katie Baker about the movie

last December on episode 1312. And then the last bit of news, there was another little flare up in the ongoing collusion discussion and frozen free agent market discussion. So Alex Anthopoulos, Braves GM, made a comment. This was the part of the quote that was repeated everywhere, though it was a longer statement at the time. He said on a conference call with reporters, every day you get more information and we've had time to connect with 27 of the clubs. Obviously the Astros and Nationals being in the World Series, they were tied up, but we had a chance to get a sense of what the other clubs are going to look to do in free agency, who might be available in trades. And obviously, this set off some alarm bells and the Players Association, its ears perked

up and Tony Clark released a statement. He said, oops, no collusion. Didn't mean it. Did a little whoopsie. Yeah. In advance of the general manager's meetings, I called around to clubs to explore the possibility of potential off-season trades. At no time during any of these calls was there discussion of individual free agents or the Braves' intentions with respect to the free agent market. To the extent I indicated otherwise during my media availability on Monday, I misspoke and apologize for any confusion or any collusion for that matter. So this is obviously something that made everyone pay attention because there is a rule. The CBA says that players shall not act in concert with other players and clubs shall not act in concert with other clubs. And, of course, that raises the question of what is acting in concert exactly how do we define inclusion we are all very familiar with that debate from other

arenas these days and given what's going on with the free agent market and the fact that teams are not spending as much on free agents and also the history of teams colluding and being found guilty of collusion and having to pay large sums to players in the late 80s this is something that is on everyone's mind was kind of a conspiracy theory that was going on and then anthopolis seemed to tread into territory that indicated that teams might be doing this it's kind of hard to say what exactly he was doing and what he meant but obviously it made sense for the players association to say hold on what is going on here yeah i think that i could believe i don't think it's implausible to think that he didn't mean to kind of give the show away and indicate collusion i think it's perfectly possible that

he was talking about sort of the usual business that clubs do in the off season but i don't know how do i want to say this because i don't want to accuse people i don't think that that is just positive one way or the other on the question of collusion right those things are largely unrelated to one another i don't think that we can say oh oh, he did a whoopsie, and that means no collusion any more than we can say this proves definitively that collusion is happening. which is that they are going into a period where, you know, the union and the league are always in an antagonistic relationship with one another by definition. That level of antagonism gets dialed up or down depending on the situation. Obviously, when you're going into a new CBA negotiation, that's a moment where you are going to be the most antagonistic toward one another because you're advocating for very different things, even if you have some goals in common about the direction of the game or what have you. So we should be prepared that this is going to be the public posture of the players association.

And I think it's an appropriate one because however much blame you want to sort of proactive blame, you want to lay at the feet of ownership for the current situation we find ourselves in. And I think I've said before, I tend to be of the mind that they should get credit and blame for getting what they wanted in the last CBA negotiation in much the same way that the union should have perhaps anticipated some things better and gone a different way with what it wanted. But this is their job. Their job is to advocate on behalf of their members and take a skeptical look at what ownership and team officials are saying. And we should all prepare ourselves for this to be the tone of the conversation going forward, because I think it would be an abdication of their responsibility to not approach things very skeptically and to be prepared to be adversarial where necessary. Yep. Teams did this before.

So they kind of brought it on themselves that there's going to be suspicion arising whenever you get something happening in the free agent market like we've seen in the last few years. something happening in the free agent market like we've seen in the last few years. And granted, that was decades ago, and Alex Anthopoulos was 10 years old at the time and was mostly a different group of owners except for, I guess, Jerry Reinsdorf. But owners have similar motivations today as they did in the 80s. So it's not out of the question that this could happen, although I would guess that they'd be smarter about it than they were last time and that it would be difficult to prove and that there wouldn't be a literal information bank and you wouldn't have records of people calling each other and consulting. It would be hard to hide, I think, given how easy it is to find receipts for everything that happens these days. But yeah, it makes sense to be vigilant.

And this may have been an innocent comment that ran afoul of what we're all thinking of already. But we were thinking that for a reason. There's a reason to even have it on your radar to some extent. So this will probably not improve relations and not lessen the suspicion on both sides. So we will see what comes of it. Yeah, I think it will be a consistent theme and approach throughout this whole process. And yeah, you're right to say there's reason to believe even with a change in ownership that the incentives are largely the same. The only thing that's really changed is the magnitude of them, right? Now we're dealing with even more money at stake than they were in the 80s and 90s. So if anything, the incentives

have gotten worse. Yep. Well, we've already been talking for as long as the Asheville Taurus and the Winston-Salem Twins played on that afternoon in 1916. But let us take a quick break and we will call Eddie Robinson. Eddie's dreaming. Eddie's dreaming. Oh, I'm dreaming. All right, well, we are joined now by Eddie Robinson, who has led an amazing life in baseball, and we're thrilled to get to talk to him today. Eddie, hello, and how are you? I'm fine, thank you. So I guess we'll go back to the beginning.

There's so much ground to cover, but I'm very curious about your upbringing, growing up in Texas and during the Great Depression. And I know you were raised by a single mother, and so I'm sure life was not easy at the time. So I'd love to hear a little bit about what it was like for you and how you found time for baseball in those days. Well, I thought I had some ability in grammar school when I could hit better than anyone and hit it further, hit the softball we played. And then I got to high school and they didn't have high school baseball in the Depression era. They couldn't afford it.

And the only baseball we played was sandlot ball, which we played on Sundays. And I had a neighbor, Charlie Osborne, who had a son who was a second baseman and he wanted his son to play so he formed a kids team made up of young young guys in the area who liked to play we played every Sunday and I graduated from that to the parish semi-pro team that had older players and I was playing for them my junior and senior year in high school and

Scott came to town one day and saw one of our games he came to scout one of our pitchers really but he liked me and he wanted to sign me so I didn't want to sign and I wanted to play my last year of eligibility in football in high school so when I got out of high school he came around and I signed with Knoxville, Tennessee and those days, there weren't farm systems like there are today, development

leagues. Minor leagues, they were independent. Each club was independent. And they signed their own players and developed them, and then they made money by selling them to higher classification clubs. So I signed with Knoxville, and they sent me to Valdosta, Georgia, which was, they owned my, they had a working agreement with Valdosta. Valdosta was an independent team, and they signed some of their players, and Knoxville sent some players to them. And that's how it all got started. I got a $300 bonus to sign

and a $150 a month contract. And reported to Valdosta, had a mediocre year. And the next year I got a contract for $100 a month. I got a big cut $100 a month. I got a big cut. But I was happy to still be playing. I just barely made it. But the second year, I had a great year.

Baltimore had acquired my contract from Knoxville, and Baltimore took me to spring training. I almost made the Baltimore team. Baltimore took me to spring training. I almost made the Baltimore team. But right the last few days, they got a player named Al Flair from Boston, the first baseman. And they sent me to Elmira, New York, which was a high-classification team. In those days, there was Major League, Double A was the highest minor league rating, and then A, Elmira in New York was an A classification club.

I had a good year in Elmira, and the next year I made the Baltimore team, had a good year in Baltimore, and was sold to the big leagues. That's how my minor league career went. And was it a hard upbringing at that time? What did your mother do and how did you make ends meet? Well, it was hard. Not many people today ever experience going through a depression. But depression was very difficult times. When I was in high school, I worked for my uncle who had a motor freight line,

and he ran trucks from Dallas. Parrish was the hub, and he ran trucks to Texas County, Texas, Dallas, Texas, and some towns in Oklahoma. And I worked for him all through high school. I went to work every morning at 5 o'clock, got off at 8 to go to school, and after school, of course, practiced football and basketball, et cetera. And he paid me $6 a week. And $6 was very – my mother had a job too.

My father and mother were divorced. And between what she made and my $6 kept us going through my high school days. And it was just, it was very difficult times. My grandmother at one time borrowed $5 from the bootlegger so they could have Christmas dinner. And things like that went on, years scraped by. And when I got the $300 bonus, I bought my mother a washing machine. And that was a big, big present for her. And then I went to Valdosta and made $300 a month.

I came home after the season. My uncle gave me a big raise. He raised me $12 a week. And I had the same job. But that's the way things were it's hard to describe but I picked cotton when I was before I got to high school I picked cotton for half a cent a pound and that's not much that's not much wage but you did anything to make a buck. Baseball saved me.

I had a chance to go to the University of Texas on a scholarship, a baseball scholarship, and then I had to make the decision whether to play pro ball and take the bonus or go to University of Texas. And I figured if I'm any good, and I thought I was a good ball player, I thought if I'm any good, in four years I ought to be in the big leagues, and in four years I'd be graduating from college. And I thought the way times were, the way we needed the money, I thought I should turn professional, which I did.

For me, it worked out great. In four years, I was in the big leagues, the way I'd planned. But for a lot of young players who don't make it, it's a bad deal. They sign a minor league contract. They go to minor league town and play, and they meet a girl, and they get married. And they never get a chance to go to school. And they're stuck with some job that they could be more qualified for, but they just don't have the college or the education for it.

Yeah. So that's kind of the way things were. I don't know if I've been very descriptive, but I've tried to be. You've painted quite a picture. Like many people in your generation and many pro ballplayers in your generation, your pro career was disrupted by military service. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the time you spent in the Navy and also how it was adjusting back to civilian life and also baseball when you came back.

Well, at the end of the season in 1942, I was sold to the Cleveland Indians, Baltimore being an independent team. And they had an agreement with Cleveland Cleveland sent them their players for development and for that Cleveland had the right to buy any two players that Baltimore owned for $10,000 each and I was one of the two players that they bought and I went to Cleveland after the minor league season was over,

and I got into four or five games before the season ended in the major leagues. And then I immediately had to go into the service, and I enlisted in the Navy, and I got into a program called the Tooney Program. Gene Tooney, the World's Heavyweight Champion, had a program that they trained athletes to set up programs for the servicemen, intramural, baseball, basketball. It was a valuable program and it gave the troops a chance to get away from their everyday military duties. And I got in, I went in the Navy as a chief specialist, athletic specialist. And I was in Norfolk, Virginia for a while, for two years, and then I went to Hawaii.

And it was going on down as our armed forces would retake islands in the South Pacific. Then we would go in and set up programs for the players on those islands that had been retaken. And I had a bone tumor on my leg, and they operated on it in Hawaii. And the guy paralyzed my leg, and I didn't go down to the islands like the rest of the guys. They sent me back because I had a paralyzed leg.

I had what was called foot drop. And foot drop. You can't pick your toe up. Your foot sort of hangs. You have to wear a brace. I didn't think I'd ever play baseball again. But a doctor finally got to Bethesda, Maryland, and they had a couple of neurosurgeons there. Bethesda, Maryland, and they had a couple of neurosurgeons there. Neurosurgery was in its infancy, but these doctors were very good. Dr. Pudenz operated on my leg, on the nerve in my leg, which the doctor in Hawaii had injured. He cut an inch of the nerve out and sutured a nerve is like a inner tube and the fibers grow down the center and he had to delicately sew the inner tube back together in my

nerve in my leg and then the nerves started to grow back and by the by the spring of 1946, I was able to throw the brace I was wearing away and start playing baseball again, which was a God-given thing, I thought. That's the only reason I thought I was able to play. They sent me to Baltimore and back to Baltimore, and I had a tremendous year. Bobby Brown, the former president of the American League, was playing at that time. He's a doctor now here in Fort Worth where I live. He was in Newark and Jackie Robinson. He was in Montreal.

So the three of us, we were three of the top players in the league. The next year, Robinson went to Brooklyn, Brown went to the Yankees, and I went to Cleveland. I was going to ask you about that year because you were the MVP of the International League that year, and I think Jackie was close behind you. So what was it like to have him in that league at that time? Well, him being black, I think it mattered to some people. It didn't matter to me. He was a good player, and you could tell he was going to be a big leaguer. And Bobby Brown was the same. Bobby was a big bonus boy. He went to Tulane, and he was going to be a doctor, but the Yankees

gave him a $50,000 bonus. He was a fine player at Newark. Then Jackie had problems in the Major League, I guess, with people who didn't want to expect blacks and respect them in the league, but he took it like a man and deserved a lot of credit. However, in 1947, Cleveland signed Larry Doby, and he was the first black player in the American League. And he went through all the same troubles that Robinson went through,

but you hear little of Larry Doby. All you hear about is Robinson, and that's a shame because Doby was a good guy, a good player. He's in the Hall of Fame today, along with Robinson, and I've always thought that that was, he wasn't getting a fair shake.

And during the war, I wanted to ask you, I know that you were on a team that played exhibition games to entertain players with many other great players who were also in the service. So did you feel fortunate to be able to do that during your time in the service? Yeah, I did. I didn't see anything wrong with it. We were doing our job. We had other jobs other than playing baseball. I had a job instructing people. Norfolk was a ship that accompanied convoys across the ocean. It was a little bit smaller than a destroyer. And it was called a destroyer escort, and it escorted troops. And we would instruct the officers of those ships on submarine warfare using the Doppler system, which they would send out signals,

and if they hit anything, it's involved. The signal would come back, and then we could tell if it was a submarine. And if so, the ship would drop depth charges and try to sink the submarine. And so that was a valuable job. It wasn't like we did nothing but play baseball. We all had valuable jobs that we did while we were in the Navy. Absolutely. And after you recovered from the bad surgery that you had and were coming back into civilian and baseball life, what was the experience like transitioning back to baseball

full-time after the war concluded. How did that go for you? Well, it went okay. I played, as I say, the first year back from the Navy. I played in Baltimore with the Orioles, and I had a tremendous year. And then I went to Cleveland the next year. I didn't do too well, but I hit.250. I knew I was capable of doing much more than that. And I played two years for Cleveland,

and we won the World Series in 1948. There were six Hall of Famers on that team that I played on in 1948. Then I was traded to Washington, and in Washington I kind of found myself as a hitter. I made the all-star team that year. I was on four all-star teams, totally. I became a good hitter. It took me a while to get adjusted to the big leagues. We could probably spend the whole time asking you, what about this guy? What was it like to play with this guy or against that guy? But one person I am curious about on that 1948 championship team, you played with Satchel Paige. So what was it like to share a clubhouse and a field with him? satchel he was he was a funny guy and he had a lot of funny things that he used to make and he was a good teammate and he really helped us he helped us win the pennant and he helped us

win the world series but uh one of his famous sayings was don't don't ever look back somebody might be gaining on you and uh things that. He was fun to have around. He and Dobie were the two black players on the team. And then you later were traded to the Yankees and you were in your 30s by that time, but those were also great teams. And you were still a very good player at the time, but because those teams were so great, you kind of played a part-time role. And there was one year when you hit 16 home runs in only 173 at-bats. That was 55 when you got to go to the World Series again. But was it difficult to be in a part-time role? Did you wish that you were somewhere where you could play every day? Or were you just happy to be on those great teams

with Mantle and Ford and Barra and all the rest well yeah I knew I was winding down but it was fun to be with the Yankees I thought I was going to be the regular first baseman when I went there but a player named Bill Skyron came along a young player and he had a great spring, made the team, and it was understandable. He was our first baseman of the future. So he became the regular first baseman. Joe Collins was the outfielder first baseman in me.

And for that season with the Yankees, I think our first base production was like 130 runs batted in and 45 home runs. And first base had a great season. But we lost. Cleveland beat us. And we won 103 games, and Cleveland beat us by eight games. And 103 games is the most games the Casey Stengel team ever won. And then Cleveland turned around and lost four games in a row to the Giants in that series.

That's the year that Mays made the brilliant catch off big words in the outfield and then the next year I had a good year I hit a lot of home runs I hit the most home runs with the fewest amounts of bat that record stood for a long time that about sums it up well that sums up the playing career part, but you obviously went on to continue to

have a long career in the game, and after you were done playing, transitioned. Yeah, I did. I wanted to be in the front office of baseball. I wanted to have a career in baseball. I got released. Cleveland released me, and I called Paul Richards, who was the manager. He had been my manager in Chicago. We had a close relationship, and he was the general manager of the Baltimore Orioles. I called him, and he gave me a job working in the player development department. And I did that for two years, and then he took the job as first vice president and general manager of the Houston Astros.

And we chose the first Astros team. And Paul asked me to go with him to Houston, and I did. I owned a restaurant at the time in Baltimore, and Brooks Robinson bought half interest in it and he ran it for two or three years after I left and then he sold it. But I went to Houston and we chose the very first Houston team. We played in a little stadium while they built the dome called Colt Stadium, C-O-L-T. And we watched the dome being built. And then Richards got fired and I resigned. And I went with Kansas City and Eddie Lopat, who had been my teammate with the Yankees, was general manager there. I went there as his assistant.

Then Richards went to Atlanta. He got the job as general manager in Atlanta. Finley was moving the Kansas City team to Oakland. Richards asked me to come to Atlanta, which I did. I was there for 10 years. We had Hank Aaron on the team, and Eddie Matthews came. Then Richards left Atlanta, and I became the general manager, and I hired Eddie Matthews as the manager.

I enjoyed my 10 years in Atlanta. It was great. Ted Turner bought the team. You know who Ted Turner is, of course. Yeah. Turner Broadcasting. And I worked with him. And then I got a chance to come back to Texas. Brad Corbett had bought the Texas Rangers, and he wanted me to come here and be the general manager. I was happy in Atlanta, but I thought the chance to come back to Texas, being a Texas born and bred guy, I just thought I couldn't turn that down,

so I came back here. And I worked with Brad for three years, and then he sold the team to Eddie Childs. Eddie and I didn't get along, and he let me go in 1982. And I became a – I worked for several clubs as a consultant from 82 on and finally just retired. Yeah, I'm curious, given all the different roles that you've had in the game, from being a player to a scout to a player development person, a general manager, a consultant, which of those roles you found the most rewarding? I charge of all the minor league players

and scouts and signing the player, depending on how you're having good scouts, signing the player, developing the player, and seeing him make the big leagues, that was the most enjoyable thing. The only thing

that's what I enjoyed the most in baseball was that. Other than playing, playing was tops. But when you can't play anymore, when you can help players get to the big leagues, that's a big thing. That's what I enjoyed. But you didn't

make much money at that. Of course, if you were in the front office, you wanted to be the general manager. I was able to do that. Of course, if you were in the front office, you wanted to be the general manager. And I was able to do that. And, of course, you make a lot more money. But then you kind of isolate yourself. You're the big dog, and everybody kind of looks up and stands off from you. You're in charge of hiring and firing all the baseball people. And they don't know quite how to take that.

And as a result, you become kind of out there by yourself. And that's what I didn't like about being a general manager was the fact that you didn't have the closeness that you once had with the coaches and the players and everybody. That was a different deal. Yeah. And when you were a player development, a farm director, I think you were a pioneer in some respects. And maybe this was the influence of Paul Richards. But I thought I read, didn't you do some things with tracking pitch counts and exercise regimens?

No, I didn't. The only thing I did that was out of the ordinary, I guess, was I did believe in baseball and balls. I thought players who got a lot of baseball and balls were more valuable than they received credit for. And Craig Wright, he kept writing me. He wanted to work for me, and he felt that there was a room for statistics in the game and he finally convinced me and i hired him and he came here to texas

and he was a help but we it was in its infancy the statisticians were they was the first one and it must have been a 10-year gap, maybe a 20-year gap before anybody else started hiring him. I guess they saw the value of it. But Craig was a pioneer. He was the first one, and as I said, he was helpful to me. When I left the Rangers, he stayed for a while, and then I think he worked for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

I don't know about what he did after he worked for the Dodgers, but I think he was quite successful. And I think that was kind of the inroad of today's statistical baseball. And I think statistics has a place in a game i think there's that there are certain statistics that are helpful but you know you can go a long way with statistics and you can get mired down in it and i think uh they might be carrying carrying it too far that's my observation yeah well craig was a pioneer, but it took someone like you to open the door, you know, as a traditional baseball man to say.

I take credit for that. Nobody wants to hear it, but those who will listen, I'll tell them about it. Yeah. Well, you also, you either played or worked for some of the biggest characters ever in the game. I think, you know, going back to Bill Veck and then Ted Turner, you mentioned, you worked for Charlie Finley in Kansas City and then George Steinbrenner in New York. So you worked for all kinds of different larger-than-life personalities.

I did. How did you get along with all of them? life personalities. I did. How did you get along with all of them? You didn't name the most important one that I was associated with. That was Paul Richards. He was the best baseball man I've ever known. And he had great ideas. He was just ahead of the game. And I had the privilege of being his assistant. I played for him two years in Chicago when he was a manager. And that carried on. And I worked for him for years as his assistant and farm director in Houston. And I enjoyed working for him more than anybody.

Ted Turner bought the Braves while I was there. Ted's a good guy. He was a sportsman. He won the America's Cup. But then I got a chance to come here with Corbett, Brad Corbett, and he was a wonderful guy, a great guy to work for. Loved to have a good time. Wanted to bake the Rangers a winning team.

And I worked for Charlie Finley. Charlie was a knowledgeable baseball person. He was a smart guy. He was the head of the game, too. He wanted to promote like Bill Beck did. The owners were so stodgy and set in their ways. They didn't want anything new. Marviner came into the game while i was general manager and marvin did more for the player than anybody i mean he he should be in the hall of fame i don't know why they don't put him in the Hall of Fame. But Marvin and I got along fine.

He was a good guy. Well, before Marvin, weren't you involved even earlier in the Players Association or at the very beginning? Well, yeah, I was. I was involved in it, and we were trying to get a pension. And the owners didn't. We wanted part of the World Series money, and the television was coming in, and we wanted some kind of a pension.

And they finally gave us a token pension. And every club had player representatives, and I was a representative. And the very first representative, I was with philadelphia and i was philadelphia's representative and there were 16 of us there were only 16 big league teams and uh yeah we did a lot i i was very active in getting pensions for the players uh not not from the very beginning, but from the player representative time from then on,

I was instrumental, not instrumental in it, but heavily involved. Early Wynn, he was in the big leagues. He was a big league pitcher. Early Wynn really fought for a better pension.

You never hear early's name mentioned, but he did more to get it off the ground than anybody, I think, with the Players Association. I was going to mention Early Wynn, who, of course, is a Hall of Famer, and he's the pitcher that you faced more than any other pitcher. I was traded for him. When I was traded from Cleveland, he came to Cleveland from Washington. We went back a long way.

He was pretty good against you. You had a hard time hitting him, so I guess you weren't the only one. He was a tough pitcher. I wasn't the only one who had a hard time hitting him. only one he was a tough pitcher i wasn't the only one i had a hard time hitting yeah uh and i know that ted williams said that you were the most underrated and best clutch hitter he ever played against which is true if you look back at the numbers you were very good with runners in scoring position those clutch situations and i wanted to ask because you played against williams and dimaggio and mantle and played with many of them also,

if there are any players that you might want to mention, either your favorite teammates or the toughest guys you played against, because there aren't a lot of people who have that experience that you have of playing against players from that time. Yeah, well, I've had a lot of roommates, of course. And when I played, you always had a roommate. You didn't have individual rooms. And I enjoyed Joe Gordon. He was my roommate in Cleveland.

He's in the Hall of Fame. He had been most of the time a player with the Yankees. And Joe and I got to be very good friends, and I admired him a lot, and he helped me quite a bit. Ted, I got to know Ted well, and I got to know Joe DiMaggio well. I admired them both. I thought DiMaggio was the best player I ever played against, all-around player, and I thought Williams was the best hitter.

And I thought Allie Reynolds, who is not in the Hall of Fame, was the best pitcher. He should be in the Hall of Fame. I thought he was an excellent pitcher. And Yogi and I were good friends when I was with the Yankees. Yogi and I were, I guess he was my closest friend on the Yankees. And I enjoyed all the guys. They were all good guys.

To be a big leaguer in those days, you had to have some stuff in you. I don't know how to explain it, but they were kind of special guys, big leaguers were. And we had dress codes, and we did things a lot differently than today. Yeah. And is it true that you gave Babe Ruth the bat that he was leaning on on Babe Ruth Day in 1948? Yes, I did.

They were retiring his number. Not retiring his number. They were honoring him. They were retiring his number. And the Yankees at one time had their clubhouse on the third base side. Then they moved over on the first base side with their clubhouse, but they didn't move the lockers. And Dave's locker was in the visiting clubhouse,

closed and had his name on top. And when he came here that day, he wanted to use his old locker. So he came out and got dressed in his old locker and came out on the visiting bench the cleveland bench and he had his doctor with him he was a very sick man yes he had throat cancer and he he didn't talk all that much nor that well and uh when he went i started to go up to home plate to have his number retired, I could see that he was shaky and I just reached in the bat rack

and picked out a bat and handed it to him. And he went up for the ceremony and that famous picture, I think it's a Pulitzer Prize winning picture of him holding the bat. That's the bat. When he came back, I got him to autograph it, and I kept that bat for a long time.

What did you do with it? You don't still have it? No, I sold it to Barry Halper, who was a minor owner of the Yanks. He had a few shares, I guess. He was a Ruth collector. He always told me, if you ever want to get rid of that bat, I want it. So memorabilia at that time was nothing. You had a lot of memorabilia, I guess, but you didn't know what it was worth. I had no idea what the bat was worth. I told my wife one day, I said,

I think I'll call Barry and I'll ask him a price. I know he won't pay, but whatever he offers me, that'll give me an idea about what it's worth. I really didn't want to sell it, but I just wanted some idea of what it was worth. I called Barry and I said, I'm thinking about selling that bet. He said, how much you want for it? I said, $10,000. He said, I'll have the money to you tomorrow. The bat was gone. Yeah, he probably would have paid more, I would guess.

Oh, hell, you know, you could get $200,000 for it today. Yeah, sure. It's in the museum in Cleveland. It's at the ballpark in the museum there. So you've seen it all. You've done most of it. I know that you still get chances to come out to the park sometimes, and you went to the World Series in 2016 when Cleveland was in it again. Do you still follow the game very closely? And even though it's changed quite a bit, do you still enjoy it? Yeah, terrific fans yeah we follow the texas rangers and uh when you get out of baseball

after having been in it for so long you become a hell of a second guesser and we sit at home watch them play. Second guess, the manager. It's fun. We enjoy it. We were very sad to see the season end. Yeah. I hope we make it through another season. Baseball is fun, but I have one pet peeve, and that's the shift.

I think the shift is unfair. I think it's ugly. I don't think it has any place in baseball. Well, I was going to ask you because the game has changed in a lot of ways, but not so much. In a lot of ways, it's completely changed. The game isn't anything like it was when I played. But you still love it, it sounds like.

Yeah, it still takes three outs to get the team out. They keep averages today that you'd never think of in the past. Yes. But, you know, we won pennants. We had wonderful players. They were heroes. We did all the things they do today, but today they just do it a different way. I think that's the way baseball is.

I don't think it'll ever go back to the way it was. I don't know where baseball is headed. Well, it's still here. It's been here before you. Yeah, it's our national pastime. And when you read or you hear that you're the last living player from that 48 team or the oldest living player from various franchises, how does that make you feel? Do you feel proud? It makes me feel damn good.

Yeah, to be here still, I guess. I'm still here. But I have so many memories. And I wrote a book. Yes. Lucky Me is the name of it. It's a very good book. The people that read it tell me how much they enjoyed it,

and we've sold a lot of copies. It's a popular book. I'm writing another book at the present time. The history of baseball is seen through the eyes, seen through my eyes as a player. How I view and viewed the changes that have come about in baseball over the years up to the present day. I get such a kick out of that because it allows me to

relive my life and my experiences and all my friends and players that I played with and enjoyed being with and things that happened, funny things that happened. Yeah. You know, every year there's some extremely funny things that go on that fans don't ever know about. You don't know those things go on. Yeah.

I don't know if they do today or not, but just being Yogi's teammate for two years, just wonderful. That was so funny. There's things he would say and do. Yeah. And, uh,

others, others, funny things that were at the time. You didn't think they were very funny, but when you look back at it, they were funny. Yeah. And your memories just from talking to you, it sounds like they're very sharp. And I'm sure that you have been asked these questions many times and you're used to telling people about all these things, but it must be nice just to be able to replay all these players that you saw

in your mind, you know, whether it's Bob Feller or, you know, all the legends that you played with or against, just to be able to have that in your mind's eye. Yeah, that's right. That's why I think this book will be extra special for those who read it. And if they don't read it, it'll be special for my family. Yeah. But you've had a pretty good thumbnail sketch here.

You did your homework when you researched me. The only thing I know is you know Craig Wright. Yes. Craig's a decent guy, a good guy. Yes. And that's the reason I'm doing it for you. Well, thank you. What do you do?

Where does this go? Well, I'm a writer, and my stuff is mostly on the internet, although I've written a couple books too. I've been hosting this program. It's called Effectively Wild. It's for a company called Fangraphs, which is one of the newer sort of statistical sabermetric sort of sites. Oh, God. Are you a sabermetrics guy? Well, not as much as Craig. I'm not as good at it as he is, but I'm interested in that side of things. Well, you tell me, where do you think baseball is going with this? Every front office, every front office in baseball. Yes. They don't want baseball people. They want

statisticians. It's true. Well, you started it. You hired Craig. It started everything. True. Well, you started it. You hired Craig. It started everything. Yeah, I made a mistake there, I guess, because nowadays they're getting rid of all the scouts, the guys that go out and find the players. Yes. And they're divesting themselves of a lot of damn valuable information. That's true. So I don't know where they're going with it.

Yeah, it's true that some teams are cutting back on their pro scouts at least, although these days there's so much technology that replicates at least some of what a scout could do. Yeah, they can do all, but they can't look at a player and see things in him that you can't get with statistics. And those players, good hitters are born. You can't make a good hitter. And statistics, you can't tell him you've got to swing up at the ball. You've got to do all these things to be a good hitter. That has to be born into a guy.

And he comes and he has that ability and it'll come out and he'll learn how to play his position by talking to other players and i think statistics has a place in the game i i think a lot of good has come from i think starting with baseball balls yes that now has become a big thing that was my first thing that I thought about. But it seems to me like they're taking it too far. Well, it has changed things a lot, and I think there's a lot of good things, and I like following the game that way. But it has changed some things to the extent that now the game is unrecognizable in a lot of ways, whereas

in your career, you walked much more often than you struck out, which is unusual today. Of course, you get so many strikeouts because, you know, it's valuable for a pitcher to be able to get the out himself. Yeah, you know, they build the ballparks today. Home runs are easy to hit. And the ball is different. And I don't know whether the ball has been tinkered with or not. Yes. You guys hit home runs today that you just can't figure it. Their tail flies out and they stick their butt out and it goes over the fence.

Yes, that's true. And they break their bat and it goes over the fence. Yes. that's true. And they break their bat and it goes over the fence. Yes. It's nice to talk to someone who's involved in it. I didn't know you were a statistical person. Yes, I am to some extent. Well, baseball has gone on for 100 years and been the national pastime, and I don't know how they're going to improve on it a hell of a lot.

They're just going to do it another way. And, well, I just don't know what's going to happen. Well, as long as it keeps going, and you keep going, too. So let's hope it lasts a little longer. Well, I hope I keep going to finish my book. Yes, I hope so, too. And I will tell people where to find the one that's out already, Lucky Me, My 65 Years in Baseball.

If there's anything we didn't cover today, it's all in there. I don't think you missed much. You did your homework. If that's what statistical people do, then you did all right. Okay. Well, it's been a...

And your partner. Yes. He had a couple of good questions. Yes. Well, it's been a pleasure and an honor to talk to you, and I appreciate the time because you've had a fascinating career in life, and you've seen so many things. And I like the stats, but I also like the history, and you've seen as much of it as anyone else has.

Well, I'm glad you liked it, and whatever you do with it, I hope it'll be positive. All right. Well, thank you very much, Eddie. Okay. All right. Good talking to you. Bye. All right. Well, thank you very much, Eddie. Okay. All right. Good talking to you. Bye. All right.

Well, thanks again to Eddie. We really appreciate his time. Meg had an appointment and had to drop off before the end of the interview, which is why she went quiet. She didn't want to interrupt Eddie. I could do a whole podcast where we just talk to players from earlier eras, like Glory of Their Times, the podcast. These guys just have so many memories and so many great stories to tell.

And I would encourage you to check out Eddie's autobiography, the first one, that is, the one that's already out. I asked him during the interview about pitch counts and exercise equipment, and he said that he hadn't pioneered those things, but he does write in the book about how he hired a nutritionist and a full-time fitness instructor when he was with the Rangers, which was obviously unusual at that time. And he also writes about how in 1967, the year that he was with the A's, he had ordered the manager of their double-A club to keep this highly touted 19-year-old pitcher, George Lazarik, under 100 pitches.

And during the year, Lazarik had a no-hitter going into the eighth inning, but had already thrown 110 pitches. year, Lazarik had a no-hitter going into the eighth inning but had already thrown 110 pitches, so the manager followed Eddie's orders and took him out of the game, which cost him the chance at the no-hitter, which obviously happens today but was more unusual then, although Lazarik did hurt his arm later on anyway and didn't have a long major league career. He actually made some news when that book came out a few years ago because he told a story in there about the 1948 Cleveland team stealing signs. I'm reading from his autobiography now, just a little excerpt about that. We continued to scuffle, and after the Labor Day doubleheaders on September 6th, we're in third place, four and a half games behind the Red Sox and three behind the Yankees.

One of our hitters thought it was time for desperate measures and suggested we try to get visiting catchers' signs. We picked a spot in the municipal stadium scoreboard in center field and placed one of our pitchers out there with a telescope sitting on a tripod. Our pitcher would let us know when he had the opposing catcher's signals. We had one of the grounds crew dressed in a white uniform sit in the bleachers alongside the scoreboard. For the hitters who wanted the signals, he'd hold his legs together for a fastball, spread them for a curveball, and get up and walk around if he didn't have the sign.

You know how Sam has said on the podcast that he doesn't believe it when hitters say that they don't want to know which pitch is coming? Well, Eddie addresses that too. Some of our hitters, including me, didn't want the signs. Our pitcher who was sitting in the scoreboard once asked me why I didn't want to know what pitch was coming. I told him I didn't look for specific pitches because Rogers Hornsby, who was with us in spring training as a coach and was one of the greatest hitters of all time, had advised me to just hit what I saw.

Of course, Hornsby was so good he could just react to the pitch. I probably shouldn't have followed his advice because I wasn't as good a hitter and needed all the help I could get. I should have been looking for pitches. Joe Gordon, Ken Keltner, and some of the others may have benefited from getting the signs, but it sure didn't help me. Joe Gordon, Ken Keltner, and some of the others may have benefited from getting the signs, but it sure didn't help me. Of course, we didn't have the signs on the road, and it had no impact on the playoff game against the Red Sox in Boston or in the World Series. Over the years, a number of teams have been accused of stealing signs from the scoreboard, such as the New York Giants in the old polo grounds, the Brooklyn Dodgers in Ebbets Field, and the Cubs in Wrigley Field. But I've always thought sign stealing from way out there was overrated, and that it rarely, if ever, has had any impact on the outcome of a game. So the more things change.

That's another example of teams doing the same sort of things today that they used to do then. Although maybe not with a telescope, maybe with a high-speed camera. Anyway, Eddie's 99th birthday is December 15th, so think of him on that day. The oldest living player, by the way, is Val Heim, who played 13 games for the White Sox in August and September 1942. So he actually made his Major League debut just a little bit over a week before Eddie did. And then Val Heim went off to military service. He went and enlisted in the Navy also, but unlike Eddie, he didn't make it back to the big leagues after the war. Eddie, by the way, finished with a 113 OPS+. He was quite a good

hitter in his prime. He started the 1949 and 1952 All-Star Games for the AL at first base. So that 1949 AL lineup, Dom DiMaggio, George Kell, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Eddie Joost, and Eddie Robinson, first six hitters. By the way, Paul Richards, the former manager who was such a big influence on Eddie, you heard him talking about him, he was the wizard of Waxahachie, and he was the one who reintroduced what has come to be called the Waxahachie swap, where you move a pitcher out to a position to gain the platoon advantage and then move that pitcher back from the field to the mound. That was a classic Paul Richards move. So thanks for listening this week. Thanks to Sam and Meg for holding down the fort in my absence. And you can help support the podcast and keep us going by

pledging on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Following five listeners have already pledged their support. Mark Sabah, Finn McHattie Straley, John Giles, Nishant Menon, and Jacob Kagey. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and

Meg and Sam coming via email at podcast at vangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back with another episode early next week. But I think I've got the perfect way to end this one. We didn't talk about it with Eddie,

but he and his wife Betty got married after the 1955 World Series, which I think means that they just celebrated their 64th wedding anniversary. So in their honor, here are the Crystals in 1963 singing, I love you, Eddie, but so does Betty. I love you, Eddie, but so does Betty Cause you're such a handsome guy Who's gonna kiss you? Who's gonna miss you?

Who's gonna laugh? And who's gonna cry? But so does Betty. I love you, Eddie. But so does Betty. Tell me which one would it be? Make no mistake now One heart will break now Do you love her? Or do you love me?