Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1514: The Fictional Game Goes On

Episode Date: March 13, 2020

In the absence of real baseball (and with plenty of solitary time on fans’ hands), Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley devote an episode to three new fictional depictions of baseball, speaking to novelist Emily Nemens (9:18), the author of spring training tale The Cactus League, novelist Gish Jen (36:56), the author of dystopian baseball saga […]

🎵 Hello and welcome to episode 1514 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. Hello. So we do not have new baseball to talk about as discussed on our previous episode. Baseball has been suspended and the regular season start has been delayed and spring training has been canceled. And therefore, we thought we would do a little something different today. This is obviously something we had planned already.

And we wanted to devote an episode to new baseball fiction, which is probably pretty well timed because there's no new baseball reality. So we actually need to distract ourselves if we want some baseball content. We have to use our imaginations or pick up the new edition of MLB the show. Yeah, I think this is going to be one of those times where you curl up with good books and get them passed to you very carefully in packages through the front window if you're hanging out at home. And so, yeah, we had the chance to read two books. I think we posted the details of that in the Facebook group, right? So maybe folks have read along with us as we've prepared for these interviews. folks have read along with us as we've prepared for these interviews, but if they haven't, I think we'd recommend both of these as a welcome distraction from some pretty gloomy events

around the world and definitely around baseball. Yes, it's been about a year since we had Linda Holmes on to talk about her book about baseball, Evie Drake Starts Over. I guess not quite a year, but we quite enjoyed that, and there has been a nice little run of fiction books about baseball lately, novels about baseball. There's always a huge crush of nonfiction books about baseball at this time of year, and I seem to have a new one in the mail every day, but it is not as often that we get to talk about good literary fiction about baseball. So the two books that we'll be discussing today with their respective authors are The

Cactus League, which is by Emily Nemmons of the Paris Review, and The Resisters by Gish Jin, who has written four novels before this one. So should we give a quick little layout here? The conversations that we're going to have, you may enjoy them a little more if you have read the books, but we're going to have. You may enjoy them a little more if you have read the books, but we're not doing massive spoilers or anything. So if you do want to listen just to see if you think you'd be interested in the books or because you're interested in the process of writing novels about baseball, you certainly can do that without having read the books yet.

But just to orient everyone a little bit, do you want to describe, I guess, what the Cactus League is like first? focused around Jason Goodyear, who is an outfielder for the fictional Los Angeles Lions. But Emily weaves in the stories of not only Jason, but the people who are in his orbit, and goes through nine separate chapters that detail some of the personalities that you see in and around Scottsdale and Phoenix, and also orients this particular story in place. So Emily will talk about this in the interview, but that was a really important part of her fictionalization of this individual and his sort of journey through spring. So we get to know Jason, but you also get to know a minor league batting coach. You get to know a mature woman, sort of in the Annie Savoy genre, who gets involved with Jason. You get to know some of his other teammates,

one of the team owners, some just regular civilians that are sort of ancillary to baseball itself, but are very much part of the story. So it follows that spring season and we won't give away any of the big details there, but that's sort of the general idea of the Cactus League. Yeah. So the Cactus League is set in the past slightly in 2011, and the Resisters is set in the future, an unspecified point in the future, but some decades ahead and not in an unrecognizable version of America. I wish it were an unrecognizable version, but it is sort of disturbingly recognizable in some ways. So in this future dystopian vision of the country and of baseball, there has been sort of an automation of everything. In addition to global warming and environmental catastrophe, there is an entity called AntNetty that is sort of this omniscient AI slash sentient internet that kind of controls everything and has

divided society into two classes, the netted, those who are very connected to this net, and the surplus, who are not, and are sort of this lower class that has been removed from the workforce and has just been tasked with consuming instead of creating. And there is, of course, almost an apartheid aspect to that. There's a racial divide as well. But baseball emerges in this society as sort of a symbol of resistance, as something that comes back to the fore and becomes a way for the surplus people to express themselves and to sort of express their resistance to this state that has banned this sort of activity. And it revolves around Gwen, a young woman who has a very, very special arm and becomes a talented pitcher.

And as baseball sort of awakens from its slumber and becomes a national event again, she has to wrestle with whether she wants to play, whether she wants to join an organized league, even though it's sort of sanctioned by Aunt Nettie. And we really enjoyed it a lot. I'm sort of a sci-fi guy to begin with. And so to blend that and baseball, obviously right up my alley. And it has a blurb by Stephen King and Ann Patchett and Jane Levy. And I can't think of many better people to recommend a book. So I was sold. And I think you would all mostly enjoy both of these.

And I have them both on my desk right now. And they really they're the same size. They both have blue covers. They just go together really well. So I'm glad we got to talk to both of the authors about them. So we'll be bringing you Emily first to talk about the Cactus League, and then Gish to talk about the Resisters. this podcast because I will be talking to Hank Azaria about the fourth and final season of Brockmire, which I was going to wait to run until next week, which is when it officially premieres March 18th on IFC. But they have put that first episode online already for free, so you can go

check it out now and I will link to it. And I've had Hank on podcast each of the past three springs as Brockmire has premiered or come back to talk about the season. And so we do talk about this season and about the show as a whole. And this actually pairs quite well with The Resisters because this last season of Brockmire is set 10 years in the future in a pretty dystopian society and a dystopian version of baseball where the games are five hours long And there's global warming And all the trends that we lament in the game today Have been taken to their extremes

And Brockmire, the character that Hank created several years ago He is now the commissioner of baseball Not the broadcaster, but the commissioner And it is his job to try to turn baseball around Which he finds to be more difficult than he had imagined. So I've really enjoyed the show. There aren't a lot of good or even passable baseball shows out there, RIP pitch. And so Brockmire has been one of the only options and it's been a good option. So if you have not checked it out yet, I'd encourage you to go back.

I especially liked seasons one and three, but it's all worth watching. So Hank will be coming up at the end of this episode as well. So unfortunately, no actual baseball that we can turn on and there won't be for a while, but there are other baseball related ways to distract ourselves. So doing our best to bring you baseball content without baseball. We will be right back with Emily Nemems to kick off our conversations with the Cactus League. All right. We are joined now by Emily Nemons, who is the editor of the Paris Review and the author of The Cactus League, and like Meg, a long-suffering Seattle Mariners fan.

Hello, Emily. Hello. It's good to have you, and I've been reading a number of other interviews that you've done to prepare for this interview, and so I feel bad repeating questions that I know that you've answered before. But since our listeners have probably not read those other interviews to prepare to listen to this, I guess I will ask you for just the basic origin story, how you ended up caring about baseball enough to write a baseball novel and how this specific one came together. Oh, certainly. I am from Seattle, a Mariners fan. Long suffering is correct. What, it's been

2001? There's no other kind of Mariners fan, really. But my dad is a New York Yankees fan. He grew up walking distance from Yankee Stadium, showed up in Seattle in the late 70s, and there was this new team. He quickly had two little girls. My sister refused to watch baseball. And so he looked at me and said, all right, kid, it's you and me. And we started going to the kingdom when I was very little, watching Ken Griffey Jr., his rookie season, Edgar Martinez, Tino Martinez, Jay Buehner, Omar, Randy Johnson, you know, the late 80s, early 90s Mariners were a joy to watch. But watching them in the kingdom was no fun at all. And, you know, not that long

after that, maybe when I was 10 or 11, we started going down to Arizona for a long weekend of spring training baseball, which was, you know, fun because it wasn't Seattle in March, it was Arizona in March, but also fun because you get to see outdoor baseball, you get to check in with the team after a very long winter. The stadiums are so much smaller, and there's all these interactions with athletes. And I was just totally captivated with the experience of spring training as a fan, as someone who loves the game. And we didn't go every year, but we went often enough over, well, I'm in my middle late 30s now,

so over the last 25 years I've been going often enough to, you know, one, really love it, two, have a pretty good sense of what's going on in that six week season. And three, really notice how spring training has changed the culture around spring training, but also how Phoenix and the Cactus League and that part of Arizona has changed. And, you know, when I'm not thinking about baseball and not thinking about literature, I think about cities a lot and sort of the communities that come together in architecture and how people interact with one another in gathering spaces. And all of that seems like a really exciting thing to explore in a novel. I'm curious how the decision to sort of intersperse your chapters with the sports

writer's perspective came about just structurally. I imagine you are a person who has thought a great deal about how literature ought to be structured and sort of its ideal presentation and those little interstitials that for our listeners who haven't had the fortune of reading your book yet, sort of try to relate baseball to, you know, we think of baseball as unfolding over a long season and this sort of puts it within the context of geological time, which I thought was quite interesting. How did that decision come about? Yeah, well, maybe I'll step back and just talk a little bit more about the structure of the book. It's a community novel. It's nine chapters, nine innings. They all sort of pivot around the star of the team, Jason Goodyear.

Goodyear having a bad season. But, you know, I wanted to write about this team and not just the athletes and the coaches, but the community around them and sort of concentric circles. And there is a narrative across the book and there is a timeline across the book, but each chapter does have its own star, as it were, and its own narrative engine and its own perspective. And it felt really important to have a refrain, a uniting voice in between those chapters to sort of help reorient the reader between these different episodes.

So, you know, I'm not the first person to think of that. You know, there's, I think the Greeks did something not so similar with the Greek chorus, right? And so I was just trying to figure out a way in between chapters to help with wayfinding, to emphasize the points I was trying to make and to sort of set the scene and help transition between these different stories.

And so that's where our sports writer began. You know, when I was thinking of sort of the qualities of a Greek chorus, it's, you know, a collective voice. It's sometimes a bit all seen and slightly disembodied or speaking from a remove. And, you know, when I thought of that in our contemporary moment, it seemed a lot like a disenfranchised sports writer, someone who knows almost everything, you know, has access to a lot of information, can distill it and summarize it and share it in a compelling voice. And that was just like an aha moment when I figured out that's who my narrator would be. In terms of putting it in geological time,

you know, I'm talking about, I mentioned place, and Phoenix being a place that's changed rapidly and pretty profoundly over the last 50 years. You know, I'm really interested in monumental architecture, baseball stadiums in particular. I don't know if you guys have had a chance to read Paul Goldberger's great book, Ballpark. But, you know, thinking about the scale of these monuments

and how important and impressive they are, the mountains right behind them are pretty impressive too. And thinking about place as being something that we build, but that we also experience and that it's not all about sort of the man-made construction, you know, knock on wood and iron and steel of physical buildings, but, you know, our constructed timelines and narratives of late breaking news and this season being the most important thing in the world. I wanted sort of that humbling refrain, I think, of putting it in the perspective of a much longer timeline. And as someone who writes about sports, I was trying to put myself in the headspace of the sports writer who is trying to tell the story of Jason Goodyear. And I was wondering what his motivations are in your mind, because he is trying to get back to the top.

Perhaps he has recently been laid off from his newspaper job. get back to the top perhaps he has recently been laid off from his newspaper job and so he's digging into this star outfielder story this guy who i think you based outwardly on derrick jeter who is kind of bland and sanitized and is doing endorsements left and right but he has this hidden depth so that's just the tip of what you see and he has all these off the field problems that the sports writer is sort of chasing and telling Jason's story through all the people who are surrounding this team. So in your mind, is the sports writer about to sell this story to TMZ? What is he planning to do? Because it does seem that he has sympathy for the characters, or certainly you do. And it doesn't seem as if he's out to get them or sensationalize them. But

at the same time, he is presumably trying to bring attention to this for his own gain. Yeah, you know, I hadn't his own gain. That's a good question. I think I had, perhaps too romantic, maybe not too romantic, but I had a bit of a romantic or nostalgic approach. You know, he lost his press pass when he got fired. he's locked out of the locker well everyone's locked out of the clubhouse now but you know he couldn't get into the stadium anymore so that's sort of the motivation for why he's sort of getting the story around the edges and coming at it from these oblique angles right but you know at least the way he sets out in his opening sort of soliloquy and and his orienting principle is to tell the long story and the true one which honestly i always sort of

assumed was not going to be commercially viable so i don't know that he thought that he would be able to sell it to tmz but instead make this lasting document of what was really going on here. He probably wanted to get a book deal. I guess he did. Yeah, in his own way. I want to talk about some of the other characters that these chapters focused around. And I guess the first of which is Tammy, who, you know, she has some shades of boulderum in her. I'm curious. I thought the thing I liked the most about that character is that it would be

very easy to paint sort of a shallow portrait of a woman, especially, I think she's referred to as mature by your sports writer at one point, which is a delicate way of putting it, who is interested in and perhaps trying to be romantically involved with players. But you painted her with a great deal of humanity. And I'm just curious, how did that character start to come about? Because she did feel like someone, when you talk about place, who is rooted not only in a very particular place, but a very particular time within that place and the effect that forces beyond baseball, like the economic downturn of 08 might have had on a place and a person.

beyond baseball, like the economic downturn of 08 might have had on a place in a person. Yeah, you know, I was thinking of Bull Durham. I was thinking of, you know, baseball literature writ large, novels, of course, but also representations on film and in TV. And I think sort of a refrain of the work I was trying to do in the book is that yes, that and, and, you know, understanding these tropes or these archetypal characters that we might lean on in sports narrative, whether it's, you know, the heroic outfielder, the best guy on the team, or, you know, this mature woman or, you know, a baseball Annie is another term that gets floated around a lot, right? And give her more dimensionality, give her, you know, a slightly tragic, but believable and, you know,

viable backstory for why she's gotten to this really challenging spot. And yeah, and, you know, that didn't come out in the first draft. You know, there was definitely just thinking about, you know, a woman who's been divorced twice and in her mid 40s. And, you know, it's not unlike, I think her trajectory is not unlike an older athlete where the likelihood making the team, sort of her arsenal, what she's relied on to compete in the world that she's built and the things that she cares about in terms of building out these romantic relationships, there's diminishing returns there every season. It doesn't mean she stops playing or that she hopes that she won't still be successful, but reckoning with one's mortality happens way before the deathbed, right? It sort of happens every, if not every day,

every season when you've got this annual marker of what can I do now? What was I able to do before? What will I be able to do next year? She, you know, she's asking that, but a lot of athletes are, or a lot of characters are in the book. So that's the sort of roundabout way of answering your question. But it was, you know, the thing that I did with Tammy, which is the thing I did with most every character, except for, you know, maybe the real estate developer is try to build in a lot of nuance and empathy, understand sort of the expectations of that kind of character, and then make it a bit more surprising and a bit more compelling. Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of a book called The Grind by Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post, which is nonfiction. It tells the story of a Washington

Nationals season, but by framing it in a similar way, by devoting chapters to major and minor characters on the team, everyone from star players to fringy players to rookies to veterans to clubhouse people and people who control the team's schedule and that sort of thing. It kind of paints this picture of this giant community that is a baseball team that makes it all go. And I wondered if there are any particular people surrounding a baseball team in a baseball team's orbit that you've always been especially fascinated by, or whether you had a hard time winnowing it down to nine, and whether there were many rejected characters that you thought of devoting chapters to, but ultimately didn't. Yeah, you know, I wish I had read The Grind. I think it was what's that called when, like, the not divergent evolution, but convergent evolution, where, you know, I arrived at the same form for natural reasons. You know, it's exciting to sort of go around the horn that way and thinking of different components of an ecosystem chapter by chapter.

At one point, I had the named 40-man roster and sort of all of their wives and girlfriends or other sorts of friends. So there was a much larger list of players, literally players, but also community members, more front office guys, more coaches. literally players, but also community members, you know, more front office guys, more coaches. I'm really sad that like the clubhouse attendant gets like one line and there's no more about him in the book. But at a certain point, you know, I also had to sort of think about the scattergram of these characters, where the clusters are. Is that cluster like a helpful resonance or is it redundant? And then sort of spreading out the touch points in terms of these nine characters and what they represent in this ecosystem. And just how they talk to each other and like not an analytical way, but in a just, you know, more of a feel and the emotionality of it. So, you know, there were other, it's closed now, but Don and Charlie's was,

you know, a famous watering hole there. And so it was helpful that a lot of people came and went from there. For a long time, I had sort of a counterpoint, which was the takeout taco joint. And I really love that place. I could like taste the tacos. And I really wanted to have that in the book. But you know, it just wasn't doing enough to have another restaurant off campus, as it were, so no more tacos. Or I guess there's, Herb does do drive-through there in chapter three for just a minute, but, you know, so yeah, a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff got left. That's why there's a four-man rotation, for goodness sake. You know, I was trying to figure out some drama around the last spot in the rotation.

And, you know, to have six pitchers competing for five spots was just a little too tedious in terms of trying to keep track of six guys. But, you know, if there's only four spots because their ace has a really quick recovery time, you know, you've just increased the, I don't know, the math of that. But like, you know, it's 20% more interesting or 20% less tedious, right? If there's one less picture in that combination. So there was just a lot of, I don't know if I was ruthless, but there was, you know, giving everything a pretty cold stare and saying, do I need this? Is this doing enough work to stay in here? Yeah, there's definitely like several drawers of characters that are exciting and interesting and couldn't make it into the book. With that in mind, did you project out how the Lions would perform over the season? Do you know

how this year ended up going for these guys? Because we have some resolution on some of their characters, but a lot of threads that I think are sort of purposefully left unpolled into the reader to resolve. But do you know how they went? No, I don't. I haven't really thought about it. I've got a new configuration in Outfield. Well, that's not entirely a spoiler.

No, I don't know. I mean, I was very satisfied to know sort of, I think I planted enough breadcrumbs that someone could imagine what the opening day roster would look like and sort of who's starting and what that rotation would be. But no, I think, you know, in terms of what's going to happen 162 games later, that's a whole nother question right i hope they win well was the fact that you set this in spring training i mean i know it had to

do with the setting geographically of course but did you almost see that as sort of a rejection of the idea that there has to be a season that matters or that it's all building up toward the big game or or the hollywood ending and that the games all building up toward the big game or the Hollywood ending and that the games themselves are so besides the point in this story and in spring training in general that it really does place the emphasis on what's going on in these characters lives yeah that was absolutely a thing that was front of mind I mean listen I love Pafko at the wall as much as anyone you know the idea of the shot heard around the world and these really just memorable plays and important innings in baseball

being the narrative driver for great fiction is great, but it's also been done. And I was excited by and maybe bullheaded to think that, you know, you can, where is the other drama? You know, if we're not relying on the bottom of the ninth or the one last column or that, you know, really important game, can I build a baseball narrative without any of that? So in that way, I pretty purposefully tried to ignore the one last column. I know that you talked about, you know, your experience growing up watching our terrible Mariners. Well, they were good then, but

sort of instilled a love of baseball. But I'm curious if the particular emotional experience of being a Mariners fan influenced the way that you went about going, you know, toward this book and outlining this book, because it is not, I wouldn't say that it's unromantic about baseball, but it is very honest about some of the characters that populate the game, not all of whom are savory or in a good spot in their own lives. And I'm curious how your fandom might have colored that understanding of the people who end up in baseball at its orbit. Right. You know, the Mariners, I'm still just pretty nostalgic about, frustrated by, but nostalgic about. I think a lot of the skepticism and, you know, being adoring but critical at once, you know, loving the game, but trying to unpack sort of the complications of it came just as, you know, well, one big thing was moving to Louisiana and starting to watch SEC football. And I mean, talk about an industrial complex, like just the way even tailgating happens on a Saturday in Baton Rouge is, you know, joyful, but also really wild and a little upsetting. Just the amount of drunkenness and the way the campus gets trashed and, you know, the highs are high and the lows are really low. And people can get really nasty and mean at these 19-year-old guys who are, you know, trying to play a game of football and sometimes screwing up.

So watching sort of that manifestation of organized sport, you know, collegiate and not professional, and not professional, but sort of got the gears turning for me to think about community building, the pros of it, and the opportunities of how we all come together to watch sports and celebrate, but also the real sort of the underbelly and the complicated side of when those things break down or competing forces and, you know, the stuff that, you know, would be great to ignore, but it's definitely there in complicating the game. In your mind, is baseball good for Jason? Is it therapeutic for him, or is it doing more damage in certain ways? Because I was trying to imagine what Jason's life would look like

if he had never become a professional baseball player. Would he be in even worse shape? Would he just be indulging his vices and worst impulses at all times because he wouldn't have the distraction of baseball or does baseball and the way that it's structured and the way it sort of feeds his search for adrenaline and all the attention that kind of makes him hide who he really is does that reinforce some of his worst behaviors it's probably both but i also kind of felt like the left field was his safe space like i could probably tell him to go like stay out there and you know just pop a tent you know i

think for him you know for all of the emotional challenges and struggles off the field, and they have been exacerbated. I mean, baseball is definitely, you know, fueling the fire. You know, the first thing he is as an athlete and sport and playing is bring some real joy. And, you know, he might not be good at everything, but he's really good at left field. So I think it's a good thing for him. And I know that you started the book around when it's said in 2011 or so. And there may be some advantages to that time period with the story that you're telling. Did you think about modernizing it more?

Did you think about having it sort of travel with you in time as you worked on it? Or did you always know that you wanted it to stay in that setting? I thought about it. as you worked on it? Or did you always know that you wanted to stay in that setting? I thought about it. I definitely, early draft sort of slid between 2011, 2012, 2013. And then I put it back in 2011. And sort of decisively, so maybe five or six years ago, because the book opens and the inciting incident of it is this new baseball stadium, this monumental piece of architecture arriving in the middle of a recession. And the idea that these neighborhoods are going feral, that building a city has failed this city in a lot of ways. new building emerges, this big building that promises to be a new community center rises from the ashes, which is convenient that it's placed in Phoenix, right? So that felt too necessary, too much of an important starting point to try to transpose

that onto 2016 or 2020. I think in terms of it is very much a snapshot of the recession. But, you know, in terms of economic vulnerability, housing vulnerability, I don't think we've gotten past that. You know, it feels a little bit strange to be talking about, you know, the Great Recession during like the worst week on the market since 2008. Because, you know, is it suddenly it was it was recent history, but are we about to enter back into that? I don't think so. But, you know, it felt just sort of even that emotion of feeling like, oh, it's another bear market. I'm glad that I decided to just sort of put the pin in 2011 and stay there. And did you try to do any research in terms of talking to actual baseball wives or talking to an actual organist? Or did you prefer to just imagine what

their lives would be like? I mean, I'm a shy person. So I preferred imagining, but I did do sort of as much scrappy research as I could. I actually, I, you know, played a bunch of music growing up. I was a jazz saxophonist. And so I could imagine a lot of this, you know, jazz pianist turned organist, his life and sort of his outlook on music and performance, just extrapolating from my own community of musicians. But then I was somewhere a couple of years ago, and a friend mentioned, oh, that guy over there is the organist for Fenway Park. I made a beeline to him, and I was like, you don't know me. I'm working on a book. There's an organist.

Can I please get you dinner and just talk through all of the things that Lester does, and can you tell me if that makes sense? We did this pretty—I felt sort of horrible for ruining his dinner, but, you know, it was helpful. I didn't have to make that many changes. And it ended up being a really fun conversation. He bought the book and he was really excited about it. So, you know, it was my research was, you know, determined and self-guided. And there was definitely a bit of serendipity along the way, too. I have to ask. There's a character, William Goslin, the rookie who's trying to make the team. And he's the great, great nephew of Goose Goslin. And so everyone calls him Goose and he's upset because it's not his nickname.

But I was wondering how you decided that it would be a descendant of Goose Gos he's upset because it's not his nickname. But I was wondering how you decided that it would be a descendant of Goose Gosselin on your team. I love the book Glory of Their Times. Uh-huh. Yeah. The early oral history of that generation of baseballers. And I read it, I don't know, probably 15 years ago and Goose stuck in my head. So I wanted, I mean, I don't know, probably 15 years ago and goose stuck in my head. So I wanted, I mean, I made up a baseball team. I made up all of the players on the team, but there's probably a half dozen real athletes that are named dropped.

And, you know, I wanted to do that lightly, but I was really glad to work in one of those players from that book and that generation as a bit of a breadcrumb of my appreciation of that book. And then the last thing I wanted to ask was in the New York Times review of the book by Charles McGrath, which was very positive. It ended by saying that unlike a lot of baseball books, including very good ones like The Natural or The Art of Fielding, it doesn't traffic in myth or metaphor or larger meaning. Baseball is never more than just a game here,

or rather a business disguised as a game, one that will nevertheless break your heart. And I wondered whether that felt true to you, or whether that's what you wanted baseball to be in the book, or whether you were trying to imbue it with some deeper meaning. I mean, I wouldn't characterize it like that, but I take that summary and say, okay, you know, another early book for me that felt really important to a lot of the writing I've done, you know, other stories, projects that will hopefully not take 10 years to write like this one did,

is Stud Circles Working. You know, the book, again, oral history, thinking about the work people do and why they do it. And, you know, some people in the Cactus League are playing baseball, and that's their job. Some people are supporting athletes, and that's their job. And some people are other cogs in that wheel and other parts of that ecosystem and doing the work that they have to do because they love it or because they have to. And so that was definitely, you know, not front of mind, but, you know, stuck deep into my brain somewhere because it had just been such an important book to me when I

was starting to think about all of these things. So that he says it's a business and, you know, that it is a more critical look is true. All right. Well, you can pick up the Cactus League now while we're all waiting to see how much baseball there will be and when there will be baseball. You can read about spring training, at least that many problems are going on in this town and to this team, but not a pandemic. At least that's one thing that your characters did not have to deal with. You can also find Emily on Twitter at Emily Nemons. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for having me.

All right, let's take another quick break and we'll be right back with Dish Jen to talk about her novel, The Resisters. sisters. always one in every crowd. Yeah, you see them when you think you're alone. It all just seems like science fiction. No one knows what they are talking about. Okay, we are joined now by Gish Jen. She is the author of five novels, the most recent of which, and the most relevant to our conversation today, is The Resisters, a novel about baseball to some extent. Hi, Gish. How are you? Good. How are you? We're doing very well. And I wanted to ask you how you got the idea to inject baseball into some speculative fiction and a piece of dystopian fiction, which seems like a very

popular and fitting genre today, but I guess it probably does seem that way in every time. But to fuse baseball with that and to find a place for baseball in this somewhat dark vision of the future was a pretty fascinating exercise, I think. So how did that happen? Well, you know, of course, I don't remember the exact moment when this occurred to me. But the book is very much about, you know, the future, you know, our collective future as Americans, like what the future could look like in 50 years or so. And when I was trying to think about, you know, what might be lost, you know, like, you know, I needed kind of a metaphor, you know, so what's at stake, you know, and I thought, oh, I know, of course, baseball, the great American game. And of course, baseball, though, for me, does have emotional resonance. I mean, it's not just, you know, it isn't just that I read an article like, oh, yes, it's a national pastime. I thought, oh, I'll use that. You know, I do come from a Chinese immigrant family, meaning that my parents were born in China. And that means that like many, many immigrants,

you know, their first experiences of performing American-ness, if you will, had to do with going to a baseball game and having a hot dog. And in the case of my mother, particularly, this turned into, you know, the most avid fandom. And I will say that, you know, she is not alone. I mean, especially since writing this book, you know. Every single immigrant family that has turned into rabid baseball fans has been in touch with me. And so I think it's really quite a common thing. In my case, my mother became such a fan that literally a couple of summers ago, she's in her 90s, and she was in septic shock. So she was comatose and non-responsive. And we were all rushing to her bedside, and a priest had been called in for last rites. She's very, very serious. And my brother was trying to get my mother to respond.

What did he do? He leaned over her and he said, Mom, the Yankees are in a slump. He said, the Red Sox are eating their lunch. And sure enough, my mother opens her eyes and she says, that Aaron Boone should be fired. Aaron Boone, of course, being the manager of the Yankees. And I mean, that is just, it just gives you an idea of just, you know, what baseball has come to mean to my family. And I will say also that my brother was very athletic, was quite an amazing pitcher in his youth. So, you know, we grew up in Yonkers, New York, and baseball take it very seriously. His coach had played for the Chicago White Sox. And really, Julie, you

know, baseball in Yonkers, it was run like a training camp. You know, you miss one practice, you were dropped. And there's a lot of tough love involved. And I say, you know, in this atmosphere, training camp-like atmosphere, my brother actually became a very good pitcher. He was taught to throw curveball by Tom Seaver and more. It's really kind of amazing. I was struck by, so this is a dystopian future that you were predicting, one that is marked by technology. I think baseball often sits in juxtaposition and has a tense

relationship with technology. I think Ben and I are both opposed to a robo zone. So we were very happy to see one of your characters also advocate for human called balls and strikes. Everything is automated in this future, except for the strike zone. Yeah. And I gave a little cheer when I read that part, but I wonder if you can talk a little bit about how baseball not only is sort of emblematic of an immigrant experience that you're talking about, but also how you thought about how baseball and technology fit together or didn't and might be a good site of resistance in your book.

Well, let me just sort of say that, you know, of course, you know, in using baseball, it wasn't just that I had attachment to it through my immigrant past. You know, baseball is the great American game. You know, we do have the level playing field. We do have the idea that everyone should is the great American game. We do have the level playing field. We do have the idea that everyone should have a chance at that. We have the idea that you can have a public space that's governed by rules, rules that can be changed, as we're discussing, and to which everyone has agreed. That's for people coming from another country. That's a big deal. And rules that

are explicitly set up to kind of bring something out in us, something, you know, some kind of inner spark. So, you know, so baseball, you know, in baseball, sort of choosing baseball as an emblem of what was threatened, you know, by technology and so on, you know, this was not accidental. And as you know, of course, the culture of baseball, you know, there's a lot in my book about, you know, because they have this underground baseball league. You know, there's a lot in my book about, you know, because they have this underground baseball league. You know, there's a lot in my book about, you know, the parents paddling out to get, you know, in their kayaks. There's so much climate change that everything

is underwater. But, you know, as they kayak over to find sites, you know, places for their kids to play, you know, this, you know, it's just an extension of the whole little league culture that many of us, you know, really know, grew up with it and very much cherish. And that does stand in stark contrast to, you know, the technological world, right? Where in this world, we have, you know, not just auto umps, but auto judges and, you know, auto counselors, you know, and there's a way in which these auto counselors are the opposite, you know, it's like, you know, baseball is like a flexible system, right? And the technological world is like the opposite, you know, we've, you know,

in the auto counselors, we've had, you know, many of our biases have just been baked into the system, you know, so that, you know, at one point, I think there's a, you know, there's a lawsuit and it's found in favor of, you know, the resistors, you know, the heroes and heroines, obviously, of my book, in part because it got kicked out of the system and they got a human judge and human judge actually came to a different conclusion than the auto judge would have. And so, you know, so, I mean, I don't know if this is exactly answering your question, but there is a way in which, you know, this whole automated world,

when I, you know, sort of look at this many ways in which I feel it could impinge on our humanity. But one of the ways is simply the way that, you know, kind of judgments can be handed down by such a system, which is to say, you know, in a way which is not reflective of our human complexity. Does that answer your question? Yeah, for sure. I think. No, no, it absolutely doesn't. There's a when Ben and I have expressed our concern about the robo zone, for instance, I think part of it is that umps get calls wrong, but I think that there is a lack of appreciation for just how hard a job it is and how much good judgment they actually do bring to an incredibly difficult task. So yeah, that resonates. Yeah. And just that word judgment is such an important word for us as humans. I mean,

we think of a judgment as being a thing handed down. But in truth, you know, human judgment, you know, it's just it's not something that we should set aside lightly. And there's another tension in baseball, which is efficiency and whether it's running teams in the most efficient way possible or trying to streamline the games because the games keep getting longer and we keep trying to figure out how do we shorten the games. And so there's this exchange between Gwen, one of the central characters, the young player, and her roommate at the university, Sylvie, where Sylvie is talking about Aunt Nettie, who is this all-seeing, all-controlling fusion of AI and the Internet who has shaped this world. And she says, one thing I've never understood is why Aunt Nettie is always about maximizing efficiency or profits. Why is she so goal-directed? And Gwen says, you mean, like, why does she always play to win? Why can't she just play to play? And Sophie says, why can't she just leave stuff alone? And Gwen says, because we didn't design her. Old people did, and adults are like that. And that's a conversation that we have in baseball all the time Because some people want to leave it alone And let it expand and enjoy the day at the ballpark

That might last upwards of three hours now And others kind of want to move things along And figure out how we do that And what rules we can change to make it more efficient Or more entertaining So I thought that tension is another thing that is represented in the sport. Yeah. And I think that what you're looking at there is that, as many have commented, in baseball, you see a kind of a balance between our older agrarian past and our current modern

industrial age, where efficiency is everything, except that, as you're saying, it's not, except that it's not. And I think that, I mean, I'm not going to comment on whether the games are getting too long or not, but I do think that there's a way in which, you know, the one thing wonderful about baseball is it's a place that we can kind of have that conversation, which is kind of like, well, is that what we're about? You know, are we only about efficiency? And if we're only about efficiency, then can't machines just take our place because they're far more efficient than we're ever going to be, you know?

And the fact of the matter is that, you know, we may, you know, you know, our agrarian past is, you know, getting is becoming more outmoded every day, you could say. But you would also have to say that as humans, we evolved for that task. That's kind of foundationally who we are as people. You could argue that we're actually hunter-gatherers, but in any case, we're certainly, we did not evolve to be widgets. And I don't think for people who think that it would be great to augment us and make us more like machines.

You know, I think that a lot of us have a lot of trepidation about that. And my novel and baseball itself, I think, are the sorts of, you know, give us a chance to have a conversation about, you know, what exactly do we care about and what would be lost? I mean, I think that the word soul has kind of gone out of fashion. But honestly, I think that a lot of us feel that, you know, that at the heart of us, we do have a soul. And I don't mean that in a religious way, but, you know, that there's something about us that we have a kind of, you know, there's something about being human, which, as I say, at one point is, you know, it's beyond algorithms and beyond upgrades. You know, I think Grant's mother says, you know, you know, we have a bigness in us. And, you know, that might be kind of a fantasy, but I would say, well, it may be a fantasy,

but a lot of us really believe it. And I think that we defend it with good reason. it to Aunt Nettie and to what extent it's actually a tool of oppression of the opium of the masses or you know how has it been co-opted by this larger structure of the society because there is this underground baseball league which of course is banned and if anyone found out about it they think they'll all have some serious consequences but then Aunt Nettie does learn about it and doesn't stop it and there's some speculation that maybe she's decided that, well, there have to be social safety valves and we'll just let the people play baseball and they won't be bothered by the more serious issues there. And Gwen talks about how there are these American ideals in baseball and the level playing field and you can succeed on your own merits and everyone gets a

chance to hit. But of course, that is very much not how her society is structured and in particular, her people and her background. So I wondered whether you thought that baseball was kind of in a tug of war between these two sides. Is it actually a means of resistance or does it work both ways? I think it work both ways? I think it works both ways. And, you know, of course, you know, my book is a dystopia, but it has kind of a utopia built into it, right? So that, you know, the underground, the underground baseball league is kind of the utopia, you know, it's a utopia in many ways, but one of the ways in which it's utopia is an arena in which women get to play, right?

And so, you know, I mean, in writing this book, I was very aware of, you know, figures like, you know, Mamie Peanut Johnson, if you remember her, you know, 5'3", 101 pounds, I think, with the uniform on, played in the Negro Leagues. And, you know, she could really throw that ball. Yes, you say that Gwen has posters on her wall of Jackie Mitchell and Mamie Johnson and Isla Borders, Monet Davis. Jackie Mitchell, absolutely. And, you know, I had all these guys in mind, you know, and also, of course, among the men, Satchel Paige, you know, first and foremost. But the answer is that, you know, in my book, which is, you know, kind of a reflection of our society, we have both baseball in this kind of very pure form, you know, this kind of idealized baseball. And, you know, baseball, kind of the reality, which is, you know, involves, you know, very much a geopolitical football, you know, in my book.

You know, this is not, you know, this is not play for play's sake. Quite the contrary. It's very much about power and other things. And, you know, and there's a struggle there. But, you know, but I will say that just as whether, you know, baseball can be a site of resistance. I mean, it is in my book, but I think, too, in a general kind of way that sports can be a site of resistance. And, you know, I did write this book in 2017, you know, and that was the year that Colin Kaepernick, of course, 2017, you know, and that was the year that Colin Kaepernick, of course, famously took a knee.

And I'm sure that the idea of sports, you know, a sporting event as a site of resistance, you know, I'm sure kind of grew out of that moment. And I do think that that, you know, that possibility kind of is always there because you have masses of people and, you know, exciting things happening. And yeah, you know, worldly concerns will definitely enter in. I want to ask a non baseball question in terms of the way that you were thinking about catastrophe in this book. I think that one of the things that was interesting to me is, you know, we come to think of dystopian literature as, as often being marked by an inciting event. And, as often being marked by an inciting event. And obviously climate change plays a really big role in your novel. But I think that one of the things I found the most compelling was that there was a sort of slow series of choices that was being made where it was not just a catastrophic climate event,

but a little bit of convenience here and a little bit of convenience there. And then suddenly we found ourselves in a situation where you have this dystopian future. And I wonder if you could talk about how you thought about those two things in concert with one another and the interplay between them. Yeah, I think you've got it exactly right. I mean, you know, you're right. This is not a world where there's been some kind of takeover by a authoritarian regime as, you know, waged war and taken over America. Now, this is a world in which we've given our own freedom away, you know, and we've given it away really, you know, out of kind of an addiction to convenience. And I guess Grant's mother would say, you know, because we can be lazy as a rock at the bottom of a hill,

you know. So there's just a way in which, you know, our desire to spare ourselves, you know, little inconveniences have added up, you know, to a future that none of us would choose if we kind of really understood that we were choosing it, you know. you know, Aunt Nettie write his emails and using the mimic your voice option and, you know, and choose and teaching Aunt Nettie to kind of teach his classes, you know, training her to do these things. And all these things seem like they're just going to make life a little bit easier for himself. But the next thing you know, you know, he's contributed to a world where it's a lot worse. I mean, you know, look, I can understand this too. I mean, I myself have a Roomba and I have to say, I love my Roomba. Although I will say that if I discovered that Roomba was, my Roomba was sending data back, back, you know, to its parent company, I don't think I would, I would get, you know, my, my room back out. But I mean, I, you know, I understand this and I, you know, this is a world in which I think, you know, as you know, the houses talk to you and surveil you,

but they also clean themselves, you know, and, you know, and that's the Bob, right? I myself was the right thing to have a house that cleaned itself. I mean, what, what I would do. And I had that thought, like what I would do. And then I think, but wait, wait, wait, but we don't, but would I give up my freedom, my privacy? Do you know what I mean? So many of these things that we actually treasure, would we really give them up to have the house clean itself? We might think for a moment we would, but maybe if we thought a little bit more about it, maybe we wouldn't. Or that's my great hope.

And because you're not normally writing science fiction or speculative fiction in this way, did you go about it in sort of a methodical way? Did you map out exactly what you thought the future history of this world or of baseball would be just to kind of keep it in your own head as you were writing and figure out what this world would look like? No, I did quite the contrary. I've never done so little planning, I mean, truly, as in this book, you know. I just kind of sat down. It was interesting. My daughter had just gone off to college, so I was an empty nester, first time in 30 years. And, you know, I just kind of, you know, I just finished telling her, you know, have fun, take risks, explore. And I sat down and I thought, well, why shouldn't I kind of, you know, have fun, take risks and explore, you know, so I just decided I would write whatever I damn well pleased. And this is what I did. And, and I never really, you know, I mean, of course, you know, all these things kind of bubbled up. I mean, they bubbled up, not because I thought, you know,

I didn't really need to warn the world of climate change. But, you know, the worry in the book is my worry, you know, it's this, you know, it's a citizen's worry. And so, you know, it just kind of the world just arose around me. And I just wrote on and yeah, like I say, I actually, I did, I did no planning. I mean, truly, I just let the story kind of tell itself. Yeah, there are any number of things to worry about, whether in your book or in our world, which, of course, the concerns of our world are very much reflected in this future world. It's all the seeds of things that we're concerned about now have sprouted in a pretty terrible way. So whether it's xenophobia or automation or surveillance or the environment. It's a dystopia in several ways, really. It's an

overdetermined dystopia almost. But in terms of baseball's trajectory, how did you envision that playing out? Because as you describe it, baseball has essentially gone extinct for a while, but then come back somehow has revived itself. And there does seem to be an appreciation for tradition and baseball history and an awareness for that sort of thing. And even among the young players on Gwen's team, there are some players who seem to have very old-timey baseball names like Righty Grove and Rube Foster, and then other players who are clearly inspired by contemporary players of ours, like Pietro Martinez or Itro Mariner, which is a wonderful name. So there does seem to be kind of a cultural prominence for baseball in this future, even though at least temporarily it did seem to decline and disappear. Yeah, well, that's right.

And all the big stadiums are gone. And, you know, a. And baseball is in eclipse. And it is a kind of memory that people have resurrected. As you know, in my book, there are two sets of people, some who have jobs, some who don't have jobs. And among the people who don't have jobs, but they do have a lot of time. And so when they start kind of resurrecting this little culture, some of the older ones especially kind of reach back. Now, I have to say that the names, that's the author. I'm just having fun, right? I have to say that, you know, the names I just, that's the author. I'm just having fun, right? They aren't making up those names.

I'm making them up, you know, and I'm just on holiday and fooling around. But I do think there's something about baseball. You know, when they reach back, I mean, I don't think it's a surprise when they reach back and they're trying to kind of remake a world for their children, you know. I don't think it's surprising that they would make, you know, make this little league and that everybody would sign up. One thing, they're really pretty unemployed. They don't have a lot to do, you know, and especially, you know, the parents are quite worried about their kids. And, you know, and they're trying to, like, you know, parents have rolled over. They're trying to keep their kids out of trouble.

And here is this, you know, this sport, which is organized, but not over organized. You know what I mean? It's just a right level of organization. It involves an incredible amount of community participation. And people love that. You know, I mean, the parents love it. But, you know, they love having, you know, bringing the pies and bringing them for snacks. And, you know, they love the orange slices, you know, and, you know, and they love it

that, you know, everybody has a role and has some, you know, you know, they love it, even that the kids can't kind of just do it by themselves. You know, they need the parents in there to help a little bit. And everybody can play and different level of people can play. And, you know, there is a way in which I just think that, you know, in that moment where they're looking back for something to hold on to, I don't think it's surprising, you know, that it would be baseball. I mean, do you? You know what I mean? Just think of it, you know, of course, in their heart of hearts, it's baseball. poorly, which yours was obviously not kind of cringy for baseball folks, is when the baseball itself is not described in a way that is accurate. Sometimes you'll get a writer who is clearly not familiar with the game as you are. And so I wondered if you could talk about the process you went through of sort of how you thought about actually describing that game action and the process of pitching. Because I think one of the things that I really enjoyed was just how

sparkling and sort of lively that prose was and how accurately it described the actual game itself. Oh, thank you so much. Of course, I did worry about it. Well, I worried about two things in terms of writing a baseball novel. One thing was simply getting things right. The other thing I worried about was being in the genre, because of course, I am a girl and guy territory. And there have been many, many, many, many, many great writers have tackled baseball, you know, from John DeLillo to Philip Rolfe to John Upshike, you know, Bernard Malamud, it goes right down the line. And, you know, I was very aware of that. And as you're saying, I was very aware that, you know, you've got to get the mechanics right. You know, I was very lucky

in that, you know, my brother was a pitcher. He didn't actually talk to me about it very much, but I think that, you know, the kind of the obsessive quality of it, you know, with the practicing, I mean, I do remember him being in the backyard, you know, throwing and throwing, you know, trying to hit those corners. And so, you know, so I had, you know, I had some background there. I did a lot of reading and, you know, it's of reading. And it was kind of the normal process of talking to people, reading, looking at it again, reading a little more, looking at it again. That said, with every book, I've written about cultures and activities to which I did not belong and, you know, which I do not myself practice before. And so, you know, but there's always that moment where,

you know, did you get it right? You know, and I have to say, when I passed muster with, you know, Jane Levy and Bill Nolan, as you both of whom, as you know, are a big baseball biographers, Bill Nolan, of course, did Ted Williams and Jane Levy did Babe Ruth and Sandy Koufax and Mickey Mantle. And, you know, when I passed muster with them, I have to say I was just very relieved. I'm really, truly relieved. And then let me say, too, that had I not passed muster that, you know, I would have gone back and I would have taken the whole thing apart, you know, until until I got it right. Much like a pitcher that way myself. You know, until until I got it right, much like a picture of myself that way. I probably would have taken taken the whole thing apart until I figured out, you know, what exactly was wrong and put it back together.

But in any case, I was lucky enough to be able, you know, to hit it right the first time. So we've talked about how central women are to this story, and it really centers on this little nuclear family of Gwen and her parents, Eleanor and Grant. And really all the action is with Gwen and Eleanor. They're out there fighting the legal battles and playing the games. But you have Grant tell the story. He's the narrator, even though he very often quotes his mother. So he is often kind of telling a woman's story in a way too. But I wondered why or when you decided that Grant would be the one to tell the story as opposed to having Gwen tell her own story or Eleanor or even just an omniscient narrator who would follow one of the two? That's a great question. First of all, I should really point out that Grant, although he's not kind of one of the stellar members of the family, he does a lot.

He's in his basement. He's underrated. He does a lot of things behind the scenes. Absolutely. And so much of what goes on really does depend on his hacking and technological proudness generally. So he's a very important member of the team here. The other thing, though, is that as I was writing, when it became clear to me that I had not one,

but kind of two larger-than-life characters, one of whom, meaning Gwen, is sort of particularly hard to put over, I realized that I needed kind of an ordinary person to be a witness to her. In other words, I'm trying to get the reader to believe that this young girl kind of wakes up one day and starts throwing things around her that she has quite an arm. Yes, she's natural.

And if you think about it, that is right, but she's a natural, but, but, you know, getting the reader to believe that, you know, especially with a girl, you know, is, you know, it's kind of your first problem and, and what could be more off putting than for her to sort of say, you know, wow, I think I've caught a lot of harm. In fact, I think I can throw better than anybody I've ever known. In fact, I may be one of the greats. I mean, it would be terrible, right? I mean, A, you wouldn't believe it,

and B, it'd be very off-putting. It's just like, if you think about the great Gatsby, how do we believe? Why do we believe that the great Gatsby is kind of this mythical figure? It's because he's filtered through somebody who's an ordinary mortal. And so I realized that we need somebody to be kind of looking up at these figures, you know, to make us believe that they really are, you know, phenomenal. And so I needed an ordinary mortal. And then once I realized I was going to have an ordinary mortal, you know, the feminist in me, the whole idea that I would have a mother supporting her, you know, her stellar picture son and her legendary lawyer husband. That was no can do.

So I flipped it. Also, I was interested, because I did Satana 2017. It was the year of the Women's March. And I was very interested in the idea of a femin you know, of a feminized world, like, what was that going to look like? You know, I'm sure, as you know, this is knitting in my book as well. And I'm sure that came straight out of the Women's March, you know, all those pink hats. And, but it wasn't just the Women's March, you know, that year was the year that, you know, people were knitting, they were enclosing tree trunks, you know, in knitting, for instance, you know, this idea that kind of, we could kind of have kind of a, you know, a radical care, you know, caring, and, you know, that we actually kind of feminize the public space, you know, you can see very well by what's gone on with the election, how far that's gotten. But in any case, you know, but that impulse is there, and that impulse is also there in this feminized, you know, utopia, that impulse is there and that impulse is also there in this feminized, you know, utopia, right?

So I did imagine a man, I mean, a wonderful man in kind of a supporting role, an extremely important supporting role, but in the supporting role. And so, like I say, it's both kind of imagining a guy, you know, in that role and also using him to kind of, you know, uplight, if you will, these two towering figures. Does that make sense? Yes, it does. Yes, I see why that would be the best way to do it. Well, as disturbing as the future that you have laid out in the book is, at least you have solved a couple of problems with baseball. So not Tommy John surgery, not torn UCLs, those still happen. But for one thing, you've fixed the strikeouts. So you've shrunk the strike zone.

So that's not an issue anymore. And you fixed sign stealing. No one else can fix sign stealing, but you did it because there is, I guess, an embedded app called Retina Zing so that the catchers can just, I don't know, move their eyes or blink or something. And it just immediately transfers their thoughts or will to the picture so you fixed a couple things that mb is still struggling with so it's not all bad it was fun it's fun to be the author and be able to do something about that right now you know

what i mean yes it's easier to write about it than to do it but it's a step at least absolutely all right well we really enjoyed the book again it, it's called The Resisters. We've been speaking to its author, Gish Jen. And I noticed that in the very nice blurb that Stephen King wrote for the book, he basically begged you for a sequel in the blurb. So I don't know if you feel obligated to deliver one or not, but we would certainly be in the market for one as he is. Well, thank you so much. I haven't started anything new yet. But but, you know, of course, I you know, I heard I heard Stephen King and I'm hearing it from others as well. It's you know, it's hard to just put in an order, you know, into the imagination and get it to cost. into the imagination and get it to call things up.

My imagination is nowhere near so submissive, you know, but, but I, but I hear everybody and thank you very much for your enthusiasm. All right. Well, great talking to you. Thank you, Gish. Thanks. Oh, my pleasure. All right. Have a nice day and hope you don't have too many more cancellations. Thank you. It's been nice to be able to do something on the, you know, a podcast that's, you know, can't be canceled. It's wonderful. Thank you so much. Thanks.

All right. Let's take one last break, and I'll be right back with Hank Azaria to talk about his IFC show, Rockmeyer. Double feature Dr. X Will build a creature See androids fighting Bran and Janet All right, I'm about to play for you my conversation with Hank Azaria. This conversation took place a couple weeks ago. I was speaking to Hank so that I could write a Ringer article, which came out last week, about the last season of Brockmire and its depiction of the future of baseball. You'll hear Hank bring up the possibility of shortening the MLB season.

That was obviously before we found out that this season might be shortened. And you'll hear us talk about the idea of players getting miked up during games, which of course happened again during this spring training and was very well received. You'll also hear me reference something called Lamone. That's the personal assistant in Brockmire, sort of the AI device that caters to people's every need in the future that it depicts of 2030, much like the resistors, actually. So I will link to my article if you want to check it out. And again, the first episode of Brockmire Season 4 is available online, streaming for. So I will link to my article if you want to check it out. And again, the first episode of Brockmire Season 4

is available online, streaming for free. I will link to it on the show page. So now you'll hear a brief clip from the first episode of Brockmire followed by Hank. Looks like the heat wave gripping the East Coast

is about to break with temperatures dipping all the way down to the high 110s by your weekend. And former home run hitter turned cricket champion Bryce Harper stops by to talk about his new passion, cupcakes.

He's here to share his favorite recipe and shed some light on why he is the latest baseball superstar to leave the major league behind. Jim? Jim, you still with us? What's the attendance looking like? 16,000. Oh. It's the highest in the league. Yeah, I stand by my original.

Oh. Well, can't really blame the public. What a great time to be outdoors in America with the heat and the guns and the product placement facial tattoos, which are pretty horrible on the inside as well. Not to mention the water shortages, which have led to the aggressive comeback of BO. Right, Todd? BO, sir. Hi, Ben. Yes, Hank. Hi. Hello. How are you doing, man?

I'm doing well. Well, I finished the season and the series this week, and I was sort of sad to finish. But on the other hand, I was reflecting about how unlikely it was that it got to this point, I guess, that a skit based on a baseball broadcaster would not only spawn a series, but a four-season series, and one that culminated in this future sci-fi dystopian vision of baseball and the country. So probably not something that you envisioned from the start? No, I always thought it had potential as a series from movie or some kind of long form something. But I did not expect it to get so, you know, deep and intense and narrative driven and go on into the future. Yeah. So at what point did you find out or was it discussed or decided that there would be this time jump after season three

joel church cooper had this idea i thought it was a big swing no pun intended and said so and and you know tried to dissuade him i kind of thought it'd be more fun this is really revealing of how differently joel and I look at this. I was like, let's just go back to the last years of Brockmire and like kind of fill in his 10 missing years with his crazy drunken drug field romps around the world. And probably it's because I love playing the drunken crazy version of this

character. Yeah. So kind of want to do that. But Joel loves, had a really strong idea, stuck to his guns, loves, you know, social commentary, comedy and comedy and, you know, science fiction based comedy. Yeah. You know, so he really had a vision for this. And I was like, well, as long as you feel strongly about it, I've learned not to get in between him and his muse.

And, you know, sure enough, I thought he came up with a great season. So I was good with it. Yeah. And that's one of the things I've appreciated about the series, I think, is that it could be just a sort of smaller scale story about this character, and that would be entertaining because it's a great character, but that it has all these added dimensions and that there are these different layers to the character and that it does kind of reach for this commentary when it doesn't necessarily need to. I kind of always admired that about it, I guess, that it's not just funny, but it's also trying to say something.

Yeah, that's very Joel. And to me, as long as it's good, I'm happy to do it. The future vision of baseball that is presented in this series, was that solely Joel's vision? Was that a collaborative effort at all? No, again, pretty much solely Joel's vision. I mean, by this point, we all were in agreement that one of the things we've had fun with is the decline of baseball, you know, in our society. much like we look at everything in the future is like,

well, if this is where we're going, then this is a possible outcome, unfortunate outcome of where we're headed. And baseball's no different. You know, it's funny, man.

I didn't shooting season one of Brockmire. There were all these jokes about how baseball's declining and it's, you know, only old white men care about it and, and kids don't care. And I'm like, what is all this? And Joel was like, yeah, you don't know how this is how baseball is perceived now? I'm like, no, I don't.

I love baseball. He's like, yes, well, you're an old white man. So that's how you feel about it. But most kids today couldn't care less. So we've been riffing on that for a long time. Season four is just kind of a sort of a final say on that. Yeah, it's interesting because if you look back at the history of baseball and people have written about this and dug into the archives,

but people have been predicting its demise for decades, if not centuries at this point. And so maybe there's some truth to it. Obviously, it's not quite the national pastime in the way it once was, but it's also still around and healthy and fairly strong in a lot of ways, too. And so I always wonder whether this is just something that we will perpetually say about baseball that is on the way out, or whether at some point it will actually be true. Like, maybe is it just something that we will perpetually say about baseball that is on the way out, or whether at some point it will actually be true. Like maybe is it just something that an older audience tends to like and gravitate toward it because of the pace or something.

And so maybe some of the kids who don't like it today will one day like it when they're older and ready for it, or maybe I'm just fooling myself and once this generation is gone then no one will care anymore i don't know it kind of could go either way it's certainly it's doing well you know regionally like it doesn't get huge national numbers although the you know last year's postseason did pretty well but uh i i think baseball will endure it might have to adjust itself along the way here and there with this or that. But it's just kind of fun to speculate about how bad it could get. Right.

Did you have any misgivings about reinforcing this perception of baseball as a dying sport since you don't want that to be the case? I hadn't thought of that. No. you don't want that to be the case? I hadn't thought of that. No, I kind of more look at it as cathartic, like it helping me accept that it isn't as beloved or as vital as it was when I was young. So I'm trying to laugh at that and not cry at that.

Are there aspects of it that you love less than you once did? I mean, do you find it any less compelling, less entertaining than you did when it was different in some ways? Well, I'm about to sound like, you know, again, old white man, but I don't like the launch angle swings, and I don't like how nobody can bunt,

and I don't like, you know, that a lot of strategies left baseball. I don't like the situational hitting doesn't really exist anymore. In the same way that I don't like that basketball is, you know, just a three-point contest and the mid-range jumper is gone pretty much. And, you know, I didn't like when basketball, you know, I'm a Knicks fan. When the Knicks were good in the 80s,

I didn't love that. I thought it went too far then, that kind of physical brawl that ended in a free throw shooting contest. I thought it got sort of boring too, but I think the pendulum swung too far the other way. So, yeah, I miss baseball days of strategy and pitcher's duels. And I liked a nice, you know, one-nothing game where the excitement became, somebody got to score.

But that's not a popular view. Baseball's situation is worse than you know. Okay, we took a survey of American 10-year-olds asking, who's your favorite sports team? Okay, we took a survey of American 10-year-olds asking, who's your favorite sports team? My Yankees are the only team that made the top 100 at number 81. And that's right behind Sampdoria.

What the hell is a Sampdoria? It's the fifth most popular Italian soccer team. Watch him. Watch him alone. So half the owners, they want to contract their teams. The other half of the owners don't want to buy them. There are reasonable scenarios that the league will fold in five years. You're right. That's a lot worse than I realize. But, you know, all the more reason for me to say no.

No, thank you. Give me one good reason why you don't want to be commissioner. I'll give you several good reasons. The position has no actual power, sir. No, I'd be a mouthpiece for you and your owner buddies, all of whom I cannot stand. And I mean to a man. Okay. And people say, well, if you were commissioner for a day, what would you do? And the reality is that you wouldn't really be able to do anything because there are these owners who have their interests and then there's, you know, everything is collectively bargained. And so you can't just walk in and say, here's how it's going to be different. And I thought that was the season sort of gave a good look at that, that, you know, it's not necessarily a simple fixed and it's not a unilateral thing. Yeah.

I mean, to me, I, I, yes, it's hard to know how to fix any sport. You know, I would, except for football, I would reduce the number of games for every sport. The idea that football is going to go to 17 games is just absurd to me. And it's also, you know, green-driven. I mean, I get it. It's a business. But, I mean, every sport, baseball included, would benefit a lot from a shortened season.

I mean, significantly shortened season. We do not need 162. My God. Come on. Yes. Chop 60 games off of that. Right, except that then you're, in theory, reducing revenues too. And so owners are going to say no thanks and players might like to have the days off.

But if that means lower salaries, then they might not want that either. So it's always going to be that push and pull probably i know what my answer to that would be which is uh you know you don't you don't have it significantly at that player's salary and i mean the the i think what what the what baseball would gain in revenue based on streamlining itself would more than make up for asses in seats over 60 games but you, you know, easy for me to say. Not to mention TV contracts now and the shared revenue. I mean, these franchises, think about how they've increased in value over the last 20 years in every sport.

Really? Really? Do we need to worry about ticket gate receipts for these guys? I mean, come on. Yeah. Yeah, there's a line in, I forget which episode it was, but it was mentioned that franchise values are decreasing for the first time in history.

That's when you know it's bad, when even that's not continuing because that's always the case, that those keep skyrocketing no matter what else goes wrong. I mean, it's crazy. Look at the Knicks. You can't get more hapless and detailed than the Knicks in the last 20 years. They're the most valuable NBA franchise. Talk about failing up.

I thought one of my favorite parts was when you have your first press conference as commissioner and you're introducing Baseball 2.0, and all it is is bats with different colors which is very much something that baseball would actually do because it seems like whenever they try to change something and modernize it's it's always just the most minor thing that hardly affects anything exactly you know again that's joel brilliant it's like that is exactly baseball might even really do that i totally agree but this is what you're oh my god and not even and two of the colors aren't even different right so as someone who recently played a commissioner what have you thought of how the actual commissioner has come to the fore in the past couple months and handled this whole science doing scandal?

handle this and then and similar to like some of the recent nfl scandals like with hindsight like as new information gets added like in the nfl stuff we're like all of a sudden we see a videotape it's like well now wait a minute that's different and i think some of the players definitely should have gotten punished uh for sure i think that sets a bad precedent. And I think that, I don't know, I wouldn't have had a, let's put it this way, I wouldn't have had a problem with the trophy being taken away. At first I was like, well, who do you give it to?

But you don't give it to anybody, obviously. You just put a big, I really like the idea of calling the Houston Astros the Houston Asterisks from now on. i really like the idea of calling the houston astros houston asterisks from now on i really like that whole concept be fun you know change the logo but uh you know on the other hand now baseball has two villains right got the yankees now and the astros yeah i mean i know it's embarrassing for baseball right but these kind of scandals are part of baseball history as well.

Yep. As is sign stealing. And it's only going to, you know, let's put it this way. When's the last time you were actually interested in looking at a Houston Astros preseason game? I was thinking of that as I was watching this season, because on the one hand, this is, I think, as Derek J cheater said a black eye for baseball but on the other hand it seems like there's a lot of interest in the sport right now from people who i don't know just personally people have brought up baseball to me and this

whole scandal just people who normally wouldn't care or be aware of baseball at all and it certainly made the offseason more entertaining, even if it hasn't always been in a positive way. It's definitely increasing the attention and the interest. And so I guess that's kind of what you have to weigh and what you do weigh in this fictional scenario in the fourth season of like, how do you increase attention? And maybe it's not always for good reasons or traditional reasons, but if what you care about is making people interested again, maybe sometimes having a villain or doing something that seems sort of embarrassing might actually be the way to go.

Yeah. I don't think we did that on purpose, but yeah, when's the last time we were really, you know, talking baseball in an interested way in February time we were really you know talking baseball in an interested way in february i mean you know i can't remember and so some of the things that are discussed in the show you know whether it's robot umps or pitch clocks or restrictions on pitch and

changes some of that stuff seems to be happening getting closer closer to happening. And I'd maybe be surprised if some of it hadn't happened by 10 years from now. So are you hopeful that we will reach a point or are reaching a point where baseball realizes that it does need to change and is getting closer to making some significant changes? I think they will, but I agree more with what you said originally. It kind of is what it is uh meaning like i i like the idea of a robot um just because i get annoyed by uh balls and strikes because it's a subjective event and you know and it's one thing right when and and they're astonishing these umps like they get it right right like 98.6% of the time. It's absurd.

Every game, you've got to adjust to whether a guy's calling an inside strike or an outside strike. Then the two or three pitches where he bucks that towards the end of the game, especially if it's a significant game, is kind of maddening. Why? Why not just have that be a quantifiable ... Why should that be subjective quantifiable, you know,

why should that be subjective? I never understood that. And so I'm kind of for that. The pitching change thing, I like the idea of it moving the game along quicker, but boy, I don't know. Right? Come on.

Like you're bringing the right hander to face. That being taken away. I mean, nobody likes waiting for all those kitchen changes to happen, but I don't know. I don't know. I feel very mixed about that. Although I guess it's probably some version of it's going to happen.

Yep. Aren't they already, aren't they already like, you got to face three batters. Yes. Yeah. That's going into effect this year. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don that's going into effect this year. Yeah.

See, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know about that. It's interfering with strategy to a certain extent, but maybe when strategy gets to the point that it is actually making the game less entertaining, then you have to do that. There's some tradeoff there. Yeah, yeah.

On the other hand, I mean, it might be interesting to see, you know, situations where a pitcher gives up that hit, but then has the ability to settle down, you know, and that kind of quick hook can be really annoying. Although, man, you know, when a guy comes in, you know, his stuff is just not there. And then, then you know you're going to have to endure the next two batters I mean wow that's it's going to be interesting have you had the experience in your life of you know as on the show when you're trying to

make Reina Hardesty's character enjoy baseball or love baseball the way that you do have you attempted to pass that on to anyone in a younger generation and have you had any success oh i don't even try i'm looking my son's 10 and it was less about love of the game and more realizing that baseball is complicated when you start looking at baseball from the through the

eyes of a child to cope as we take for granted we know the game intimately. Not just the rules of the game, but situational rules of the game. Stupid things like why is it called a walk if he jogs down to first? When my son was five, he said, Dad, what's the difference between running home and a home run? I said, it's the difference you know between running home and a home run you know it's kind of a good question um and there's uh you know not to mention just the concept of tagging up try to explain that to a five-year-old you know it's like or why you have to run when there's

two outs but not when there's one out stuff like that um My son just made his, he's 10, he just made his travel baseball team and he's still learning these things. But he likes it? He cares? He likes it. My son's funny. He loves to play baseball. He's got a passionate love of playing baseball.

He does not love watching it. I mean, he'll watch it and he knows what he's watching now. And that's atypical, though. I find most boys and girls who love to play sports love to watch as well. My son's also a huge tennis player,

but he definitely likes to play it more than watch it. He will watch it, but I'm like the opposite. I'm like so far gone. I think I prefer watching sports talk programs and listening to sports talk than even watching the games themselves at this point. I like personalities and people analyzing what's going on even more than the thing itself. Do you use a limoan-like personal assistant?

Do you have any of that stuff in your life I don't have I mean I have a series hooked up on my phone but I rarely use it I really like that though

this what content fatigue yes at times uh huh two things about that one is like

that last episode of this season I really enjoyed this sort of weirdo comedy black mirror episode we stumbled onto. And it took me a while to realize that the cholera, the medication for content fatigue, is like somebody must have discovered that if you inject people with cholera, they can take in more information.

But if you notice the side effects of cholera, they can take in more information. But if you notice the side effects of cholera, they're cholera. They just really crack me up. Give me a while to get them like, hey, this is cholera. Well, it was a satisfying resolution, I think, in that Jules comes back into Brockmire's life, and Charles is there, and your daughter is part of it, and so he's grown as a person in many ways, and maybe that made him a little less entertaining to play for you than when he was a wild man, but he has learned as he aged and matured, at least to some extent. Yeah, it was fun to take this journey with the character

and grow with him a bit. And I did get more than I bargained for, which is great. You can rarely say that. And you got to say Joe Buck can eat a big bag of dicks. I did get to say that. And you got to say Joe Buck can eat a big bag of dicks. I did get to say that. Well, I enjoyed the season. I always enjoy talking to you before it comes back, and this was

up my alley because I'm always wondering about what baseball will look like five years, ten years down the road, and if it will even look like anything. So, hopefully it'll go a little bit better than it does on the show. It almost can't help, but I'm sure the fact that it's like the Yankees are like 81 behind the fifth most popular Italian soccer team among ten-year-olds. I mean, I'm a 10-year-old.

The idea of personal cameras and having the players be camera-ed and mic-ed up and sort of putting out social media during games is maybe not a bad idea. No, I like that. There was a spring training game maybe a couple of years ago where Mookie Betts was mic'd up, I think, as he was playing. And there was a ball hit over his head. And he was like, you know, oh, I'm not going to get to that one. And he was laughing about it as he was going after it. And it was just an exhibition game, but it was nice to see that personality and to hear from players in a way that we don't normally. So I think the show is right that it would probably turn into just an ad and something that people are trying to monetize right away but getting that sort of personal perspective of players is something that i think baseball could use a little bit more of just because baseball players tend not to be

national figures and celebrity is the way that athletes do in other sports these days i agreed and it's also going to be interesting to see how i mean baseball's already i mean gambling's legal so you shouldn't see baseball's relationship to gambling. Yeah, I'm surprised that the show didn't go in that direction. I could imagine something in that vein, too. Yeah, it would have been rich fodder. I'm sure we're going to get a horrible gambling scandal soon. One surprising thing was that cricket evidently is doing just fine.

Baseball players are abandoning baseball for cricket. If that's happening, then you know things are bad because cricket is. I think that's one of the more absurd, you know, absurd jokes you made. Yes. So boring, even cricket seems exciting. Right. All right. Well, good talking to you, as always, and

I hope people enjoy the season. I'm glad that the show got as long a life as it did. Thanks, Matt. Me too. All right. Good talking to you, Hank. Thank you. Take care. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks for listening, and thanks to Emily and Gish and Hank for joining us. Again, if you're looking

to fill those hours that you will not be devoting in the short term to baseball, go check out Brockmire and the Resisters and the Cactus League, which has been canceled in real life, but not in literary form. Effectively Wild will, of course, continue, so we will do our small part to occupy your hours, and we hope that you can all stay safe and relatively unstressed, and that the world will be back to normal as soon as possible. In the meantime, you are welcome to support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going. Sam McNerney, Eric Edston,

Matthew Bensley, Ryan Kelly, and Joshua Blanchfield. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group where the discussion will be going on. That is another way to occupy your hours and to find a nice community to talk to during these days when you may not be actually having much human contact. That is at facebook.com slash groups

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under the circumstances, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. As you run by the sea Soft Headed down to the bay Looking over the water I could hear myself say It's life