Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1545: Boogie Mornings

Episode Date: May 23, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a mystifying comment on the back of track star and Oakland A’s designated runner Herb Washington’s 1975 Topps card, the phenomenon of wildly inaccurate appraisals of player value, and the utility of pinch-running specialists. Then (21:48) they talk to ESPN broadcaster Jon “Boog” Sciambi about calling KBO games […]

It isn't nearly fast enough for you It isn't nearly fast enough for you It's what I was afraid of I stumbled into you But it isn't nearly fast enough for you But it isn't nearly fast enough for you. It isn't nearly fast enough for you. Hello and welcome to episode 1545 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing well. How are you? I'm doing okay. Cool. Well, we will be joined shortly by ESPN's John Boogshambi, one of the best baseball broadcasters out there. I think we would both agree. And he has been one of the American voices of the KBO for the past few weeks. And we're going to talk to him about that whole experience of learning a new league and calling games from thousands of miles away and what his setup is like and what the future of remote broadcasting is. But just for a few minutes before we get to Boog, I fell

down a bit of a rabbit hole yesterday, and now I want to drag everyone else down with me, if you will indulge me. So we got an email from a listener named Andrew Morris. He is a history professor at Cal Poly, and he wanted to alert us to a book that he wrote about 10 years ago about the history of baseball in Taiwan. It's called Colonial Project National Game, A History of Baseball in Taiwan. But he also included a little tidbit that really caught my attention and sent me on a search. So he wanted to pass along something that's on the back of the 1975 Topps Herb Washington baseball card. We haven't talked about Herb Washington in a while, but he is, of course, the designated runner that Oakland Athletics owner Charlie Finley, the visionary and eccentric and mercurial owner,

owner, Charlie Finley, the visionary and eccentric and mercurial owner, decided to employ for the 1974 and part of the 1975 season. And he was an accomplished track star, and he hadn't played baseball since high school, but they stuck him in a uniform and they said, hey, go run, be our designated pinch runner. There was some resistance to the idea because he had almost no baseball skills. And this guy was really fast, of course, but still there's more than speed that goes into base running. And so people doubted that he could actually be a baseball player as opposed to just a sprinter. And the returns were pretty mixed, which is why I really was sort of surprised to see that on the back of this 1975 Topps card. of surprise to see that on the back of this 1975 Tops card, so there are three sentences here. It says, signed by Oakland owner Charles Finley strictly for pinch running duties last season.

And in fact, I think this is the only baseball card that has a player listed at the position pinch runner. Then the second sentence is, Herb was personally responsible for winning nine games for the A's in 1974 with his speed. And then it just moves right along without any citation or anything for that and says he's a holder of world indoor records for 50-yard dash, 5 seconds flat, and 60-yard dash 5.8 seconds. But really, I kind of got hung up on that middle sentence there because that's a pretty bold claim. Herb was personally responsible for winning nine games for the A's in 1974 with his speed. The A's won the World Series that year, but they only won 90 games in the regular season. So this card is claiming without any kind of support that Herb Washington personally won one out of every 10 games for the A's that year,

which is a pretty bold claim. And so I wanted to dig into how the card writer came up with this and what it could possibly be based on, because I collect all of the examples that I can find of pre-Wins Above Replacement instances of people saying that so-and-so was worth this many wins or this or that was worth that many wins because it seems like before war, you could just kind of throw numbers out there. And when we did episode 1500, this is one of the things that I drafted that I like about baseball was that people would just come up with these wild estimates of what things were worth because other than the number of team wins, they didn't really have anything to judge on. of team wins they didn't really have anything to judge on. So for instance, Whitey Herzog once said a good third base coach can win 16 or 17 games a season for his club. Sure, okay. And in dollar sign on the muscle, there's a scout who says Andre Dawson's a better all-around player, but Omar Moreno saves our ball club 50 doubles and 20 triples a year that would go by most fielders. And if you

add up the value of 50 doubles and 20 triples, that's way more than any fielder could possibly be worth. And then there's an Ozzie Smith quote where he said, I may not drive in 100 runs each year, but I can prevent 100 runs from scoring against us, which as good as Ozzie Smith was, even that, unless you're comparing to no shortstop at all, that seems like a stretch. And Phil Rogers, the writer, relayed that an AL manager had told him that Yvonne Rodriguez saved the Rangers one run per game, which is a lot of runs over the course of a season if you add it up.

And in summer of 49, David Halberstam wrote, no one valued Phil Rizzuto more than Yankees pitchers. Off whose earned run averages he was saving a half run or more, which again, if you do the math there, if he's saving all the pitchers on his team half a run in ERA, that would be an immensely improbably valuable defender. And there's one that Fire Joe Morgan highlighted in 2005, where then Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said of Luis Castillo he's worth 15 wins potentially and Gardenhire justified this by saying we lost 30 one-run games last year with Luis's ability to get on base steal runs score runs and play defense

a guy like that can make a difference in at least half those one-run games going the other way. That's sort of shoddy math, maybe, but that's the genre. And I love these quotes because it's just like you could say anything and who could really disprove you because there was no real objective benchmark that you could judge against. And there's also an Earl Weaver one where actually Roger Angel wrote that he thought that Earl Weaver wins 10 or a dozen extra games for his club every year on pure cogitation. And I guess we still don't have manager war, but that seems like a bit of a stretch. Anyway, I have this small but growing collection of these quotes. And so now I have added this Topps quote about Herb Washington

to my collection. So I tried to figure out, okay, what could this be based on? And I figured, well, nine wins, maybe that's like the Ron Gardenhier-Louise Castillo thing. Maybe it's like he scored nine game-winning runs during the season. And so they're just taking a little bit of a liberty with the language here. So I went through his game log because he only scored 29 runs in 1974. And using the same definition for game-winning runs as game-winning RBI, like the run that puts your team ahead and it never relinquishes the lead after that, I only counted seven regular season games in 74 when Washington scored the winning run. And he played in five postseason games, but he didn't steal any bases there and certainly didn't win any games single-handedly. So I couldn't figure out unless I miscounted or Topps miscounted how they ended up with seven.

And I kept looking and I figured, OK, maybe someone else made this claim and Topps just borrowed it. And so that's what I found in a December 27th, 1974 article as a pinch runner, which eventually led to the leader winning run. And he just put it down there without saying manager Alvin Dark said it just sort of matter of factly states that this was the case. And he didn't even, if I look back at the seven games that I counted when he scored the winning run, he didn't even steal a base in most of those runs. He just sort of happened to be there scoring that run. So I don't know how Dark was even calculating this, whether he was including times when Washington stole a base and then that somehow helped someone else score the lead or winning run. It seems

pretty vague. And I only found one game when he scored the lead run that wasn't the winning run it seems pretty vague and I only found one game when he scored the lead run that wasn't the winning run so I don't know exactly how he came up with that number then I kept looking and I found a December 1st 1974 UPI story that says Reggie Jackson figures Washington won nine games outright for the A's last season by stealing himself into scoring position manager Alvin Dark believes Washington should be credited with a higher total. So evidently the nine game claim came from Reggie Jackson and Alvin Dark thought it should be even higher. So I don't know whether they actually believe this or whether they were just trying to boost a teammate or what. You'd think that if they actually believed he was that valuable, they would not have released him the following May.

He definitely did not win nine games for the 1974 A's. I don't care what you say, anonymous Topps writer. I have two things for this. The first of which is given the paucity of his other potentially significant stats, this seems like you have room in the flare text to just attribute the quote. Seems like you should be able to just throw it in there. Yeah, space is limited, but still, it's quite a claim. room and the flare text to just attribute the quote. It seems like you should be able to just throw it in there. Yeah.

Space is limited, but still, it's quite a claim. Maybe just provide some support for that. Right. So there's that part. And then as you were taking us down this rabbit hole, I pulled up his game logs for 74 at Baseball Reference and sorted by win probability added. And I find it very funny that the two games in which he accrued the highest win probability added for the A's were both losses. Yeah, yeah. One against Minnesota and one against Cleveland. So, you know, he is a fun and interesting historical oddity for sure. But

one that perhaps could have borne a bit more context and explanation on his Topps card. I would think so. Yeah. And in that first article I quoted where Dark makes the claim about him winning nine games, it says, outspoken critic of Washington, third baseman Sal Bando, this was one of his teammates. Some of his teammates were quite critical of this idea. So Sal Bando said, yeah, but how many games did he lose? Which is a fair point, Sal Bando. So it says Bando believes that Washington was just taking up the space as 25th man that a combination hitter, fielder, runner should have had. And Washington, of course, never batted. He never fielded. He never pitched or anything. He really was just a designated pinch runner. And it's not even just

that he was a limited player, but that he wasn't even that great at doing the thing that he was there to do because like he stole 29 bases that year and he was actually caught 16 times which is not really a great ratio if your whole job he had one job and it was to steal bases and not get caught and he wasn't that great at that job so if you look at fangraph stats for that season fangraphs has him at negative 0.4 wins above replacement so not winning nine games for the a's but maybe like losing them half a game and it actually has him as negative in base running runs i guess because he got caught so often. And in terms of win probability added, it has him just barely positive 0.12. So the stats that we have now say that he was essentially just kind of a wash,

which I think is what I enjoy so much about this particular quote compared to the ones in the genre that I cited earlier. Like, yeah, Phil Rizzuto might not have been taking half a run off everyone's ERA, and Ozzie Smith may not have been saving 100 runs, and Ivan Rodriguez may not have been saving a run per game, but all those guys were good. They were saving some runs, whereas it's not really clear that Herb Washington was helping at all. It's not like he was getting on base every time he stole a base. Someone else was getting on, and then someone else was driving him in, and if he hadn't been there, another runner sometimes would have scored instead. You have to take into account the pinch runner replacement level.

How many, hypothetically, for someone like this, what is the platonic ideal of their stolen base success rate that we would accept for us to look at this and say, yeah, this is an interesting way of sort of constructing your roster and trying to account for some very specific game states. Because I think realistically, even a very good base runner and good base running isn't just pure straight line speed, right? It's a combination of that plus instincts and sort of acumen. So 100% effectiveness is probably not realistic, but I think the number has to be fairly high before you sit there and say this is a good use of a roster spot yeah probably what north of certainly north of 90 maybe as high as 95 yeah i would say i was gonna say 90 yeah and this is a conversation that we had about billy hamilton at times because he was not contributing in many other ways. And Hamilton at least was a great

center fielder, but he just didn't get on pace. But when he first came up, there was some talk about, well, how could you deploy him? I remember Sam wrote an article about just how valuable he could possibly be if you always used him as a pinch runner and just used him at the most valuable times. And I think Travis Sachik wrote something about that later, just looking at if you maximized his value as a runner, how valuable would he be? And even then, it wasn't really that impressive. And it turned out that Billy Hamilton wasn't that great a bass dealer, which was kind of disappointing on top of just the disappointment that he couldn't really get on bass. But he wasn't really the otherworldly stolen bass artist that we thought he would be when he was in the minors either. Yeah, I imagine that when the roster rules for 2020 are announced and they have this taxi squad and expanded rosters,

that teams will probably for the most part use those extra spots on pitching because everyone's going to be pretty nervous about pitcher usage this year with the weird schedule and the spring training 2.0 and what have you but i hope i want there to be one team at least one team that decides to do a little experimentation around base running as a way to deploy some of those roster spots because i think it would be you know this is going to be a goofy weird year anyhow we may as well learn some stuff and potentially see some good gifts we want good gifts because you know what happens when you get good gifts is you get you get good articles or you you at least get articles whether they're good or not i guess it depends on how they're executed it's a lot like base running in that way yeah no i i love the terrence gore type role and so if we get someone in that role that would be great just uh probably don't claim that he personally won nine games for a team in

a season it seems like a little bit of a stretch. Yeah. It was a cool card, though. It was like a special card for him as a special, unique player. And this was actually covered in the great book by Josh Wilker, Cardboard Gods. And he wrote about this experiment and he wrote about this card. And Josh said, as recounted on the back of his 1975 card, Washington entered 91 games in 1974, his first season in the majors. He stole 29 bases and was caught 16 times.

This is not a good ratio and, in fact, would be identified by present-day baseball number crunchers, that's us, as counterproductive. Washington's jittery, unpolished improvisations on the base pass, killing too many possible rallies to justify the occasional extra base. He lasted only until May of the following year, adding two more stolen bases and one more caught stealing to his all-time record. When I was a kid, I did not scrutinize the stolen base to caught stealing ratio, but was instead mesmerized that these statistics were included at all, for at the time and throughout the 1970s, stolen bases were not among the statistics on any other card. I also completely believed the overheated back-of-the-card

space-filling prose created by a nameless Topps functionary who wrote, among other things, that Washington was personally responsible for winning nine games for the A's in 1974. My guess is that in a couple of these nine games, Washington merely trotted across the plate in front of a home run by one of the actual baseball players on the team, that in a few more of the nine games he scored after a series of events, not of his own doing, that would have led just as easily to a score by the actual baseball player he replaced, and that the game or two where his speed actually seemed to provide the winning edge were more than canceled out by his inexperienced base running gaffes in other games and by his taking the place on the roster of someone who could, say,

field a ground ball or dump a pinch hit single into right field once in a while. Then again, his mere presence may have inflicted psychological damage on other teams. By carrying a guy on their roster who could not hit, pitch, or field, the A's were in essence declaring to their opponents that they could kick their asses with one hand tied behind their back. And I guess that's kind of true, and they did, and they won the World Series. And I did find a quote somewhere by Herb Washington where he sort of talked up that psychological advantage. And he said, yeah, but you're not counting how many balks I induced or how many pitchers I distracted or the times when they caught me because there was a pitch out.

And I guess that's true, but still not nine games worth. but still not nine games worth so yeah it does make you appreciate just how unlikely it is that you would have a player who would be able to have speed be their truly their only carrying tool and that they would sort of persist through baseball long enough to get in a position where they could serve this role on a roster because it isn't like we said it isn't just speed it's you know it's having good base running instincts and sort of knowing when to go and when not to you have to be in a baseball setting long enough to develop those but if you really can't hit enough that you would just be a pinch runner the odds that you're going to keep doing that and not go you know be a track star

or go be an nfl wide receiver what have you seem very, very low to me. So there are a lot of fast guys and we have base runners in baseball now who are, you know, better and worse at it than others. But I think it's, it's a stranger profile than even you might appreciate at first blush. I also am realizing that we have at Fangraphs, we have Herb Washington listed on his player page as a DH. And now I'm going to ask Sean Dolinar if it would scrub our database just terribly to have him change that to Pinch Runner because it's just wrong. It's inaccurate. So there you go. Yeah. All right. So we're fact-checking 45-year-old Tops cards and also FanCrafts pages. That's good. Yeah. And Sal Bando, I think, was one of the players who were

critical of Herb Washington being even on the World Series roster that year. And he was vindicated because in Game 2, Mike Marshall picked off Herb Washington. He just kept stepping off and stepping off. And then he got him. And it's like, again, that's your one job. Don't get picked off. But you did in an important moment. That video is actually online on YouTube.

So I will link to it. It's got Finn Scully on the call. And you can actually see Reggie Jackson and Al Dark watching as Washington is picked off, but evidently not making a mental adjustment to how much he was worth. Marshall is trying to take advantage of his, let's say, lack of maturity by stepping off the rubber twice now and faking a throw. And the third time. Three to two, Los Angeles. Rated to Los Angeles.

Herb Washington at first. Reggie Jackson and Alvin Dart watching intensely. They got him. Yeah. Marshall. I knew if he was going to try and take that lead.

Mike was too quick for him. And he nailed him. He really set him up by stepping off the rubber three times and that was all part of it now watch out he's got him leaning on his right leg he is hung out to dry all the way take it from another look and it's simply experience over immaturity and look at there he is dead anyway it's funny that you could just kind of take players' words for it or managers' word for it. If they said so-and-so was worth nine wins, well, who was to say they weren't? Because they weren't really basing it on anything, and there wasn't really any way to disprove it,

at least without diving into this rabbit hole yourself. And at that time, it wasn't even like you could go look up the game logs on Baseball Reference and even check that easily. So I sympathize, but I've added this to my cherished collection of people saying that someone was worth a ridiculously inflated number of wins. So that's the story of Herb Washington. If you were going to prepare your own wall for broadcast of a KBO game, this card, it sounds like, would go on it. It probably would. And that makes an excellent segue into our interview. So we will be back in just a moment with Boop Shambi to talk about calling baseball games from very far away. On the rolling sea, jollies for a word. On the rolling, rolling jollies for a word.

On the rolling sea. On the rolling sea. On the rolling sea. On the rolling sea. On the rolling sea. On the rolling sea. We are joined now by one of our favorite baseball broadcasters, ESPN's John Boog Shambi. You know him from Sunday Night Baseball radio broadcasts, Wednesday Night Baseball telecasts, and now, depending on where you are, crack of dawn or maybe middle of the night, KBO

baseball broadcasts on ESPN2 on various days of the week. Boog, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I appreciate you guys having me. Yes, I got my nap in and I'm ready to pod. Yeah, we'll ask you about your sleep schedule in a moment, but take us back a few weeks before you actually embarked on this KBO Baseball experiment. How familiar were with the KBO, and had you watched KBO games before? I had not watched KBO games before. My experience with Korean baseball was from the 06 and 09, and there are the sirens, by the way, in the background.

I'm in New York City, so I live sort of close to Lenox Hill Hospital. Used to that. The way it worked was 06 i did the far east bracket in uh for the wbc we did it remotely so i had china chinese taipei korea and japan we did six games from like a broom closet in bristol And then in 09, I went to Tokyo and did those four teams again. And that year, Korea and Japan got to the finals. So I think I had Korea five times. So I will tell you that I did get at least a little bit of a sense of the level of play. I got a sense for what it was like being hip deep in the names.

Yeah. And, yeah, I think that I came away with a couple of thoughts. But first and most basic was they got some guys that could hit. So otherwise, yeah, I vaguely knew about the bat flips. I had an idea that there were a dozen teams. There were 10. But I hadn't but I hadn't watched the league. So, I mean, that's my of us from making embarrassing errors as we have embarked on KBO coverage. But beyond that, what resources did you use and what help has ESPN provided to you? And then I'm also curious how much of an obstacle it is to not be able to go to the clubhouse and talk to the people who are involved in the game action. I found out probably eight to 10 days before the opening

of the season. I want to say like eight days was my heads up officially was my boss called and we were talking about something else. And in it, he said, yeah and i think that kbo thing's probably gonna happen and then eventually i had somebody in my house i guess that we had already started so i guess they were they were in my head the season opened may 5th so somebody was in my may 5th may 6th yeah they were in my house may 6th setting it up 12 hours before the broadcast and as far as resources our research people sent us stuff you know that basically directed us towards mykbo.net mykbo stats baseball prospectus had done some things i clipped those articles fan graphs had done some stuff as well it got pointed to some different sites. As it's gone on,

I've connected with different people, Sonnen and Kim, obviously, the number of different scouts, Daniel Kim, who is over there, who covers the league and is also a New York native. He grew up in

Bayside, Queens, so he's been really helpful. I would say, look, the lack of information, ESPN's done some stuff. I think it's difficult not being in the clubhouse, but I would say the best way I could describe it is that there's no one thing that makes it really challenging. Like if I had to do the Royals and the Rockies the way I'm doing it right now, it would be hard. If I was getting the lineups 40 minutes before first pitch and I didn't control a single shot for TV

and they just showed me the Rockies dugout and just went face, face, face with no font help, it'd be challenging. If I got no update on, if we just came back from commercial and, hey, there's a new pitcher on the mound, or I think that's a pinch hitter. That would be hard. But all of that in combination with not knowing the names, not knowing a ton of background on the players. Yeah, it's difficult. My second game, it was funny, 15 minutes to air,

and I got a call that the game I was going to do had been rained out, and we were going to do a different game. Jeez. Yeah, so you've got to roll with it. And I'm seeing exactly what you're seeing. So I don't and I have access to really nothing more than anyone else has. So that so that's one of the things. it as I want to teach people about this league as I'm learning about this league. I want to bring guests on who can inform, add color to it, humanize the players and the stories as best we can. But it's also our only baseball window. So I wanted to turn it into a little bit of a variety show type thing. I've had some fun with pictures over, you know, that I made a sort of

like a backdrop, a set where I rotate the pictures in and out. So I have a, you know, a picture of Craig Council riding his lawnmower in full uniform. I have a picture of Rick Sutcliffe with his shirt off. I have a picture of my little sister when she was two with balloons, on and on. I mean, there's been some really good, funny ones. But for the most part, it's baseball-centric. We had Colin McHugh on today, and I had a great picture of him quarantined with his hair, just kind of with a dead look, and I put that over my shoulder. My first broadcast of Kyle Peterson, I got his freshman year headshot at Stanford And I put that over my shoulder. My first broadcast of Kyle Peterson,

I got his freshman year headshot at Stanford. I put that over my shoulder. So I have a wall and I tweet it out or put it on, on Instagram. So my, my vision is, you know, that we'll do these games and honor the games and also talk some baseball and have some fun. But if it's nine, two, yeah, we're, we're going to wander and go different places. But that's kind of how we've been doing it. It's a real challenge. I mean, it's really hard. Yeah, I was going to ask you about the wall because I think that's been one of the sort of fun and unusual parts of everyone adapting to our current environment is sort of seeing their at-home setups. And yours is, I think, by far the most aesthetically pleasing.

I hope that I don't bum out your fellow ESPNers by saying that. How often are you swapping stuff out and how do you decide what makes the wall? I mean, I'm changing it every game that I do. Not every single picture. But, yeah, I'm not – I wish – wish i'm just trying to i'm trying to turn and and look because i'm actually in the the room right so like i have my a big picture of my buddy tim sheehy who died of als and founded my charity our charity project main street but then gosh i have this amazing picture of of Chris Singleton from him when he's probably five.

And I just love the picture. And then I just keep sort of rotating different funny pics out. I have a side-by-side of me and the Heat Miser. You know, I went on the Michael Kay show and Don LaGreca asked me about it. And Don LaGreca sent me one of him as a two-year-old in a sailor outfit. So I put that up there. I mean, I'm soliciting and just trying to have fun. There's a great picture that I got.

When Aaron Boone got named manager of the Yankees, we had worked together a bunch. In fact, his first big league broadcast was with me in the playoffs on the radio. And I sent him a gift for Christmas, which was a T-shirt from the Key and Peele substitute teacher sketch. And it's him standing in front of the tree. And I sent him the T-shirt and said, I hope this doesn't end up on the back page of the New York Post. And the T-shirt says, you done messed up, A.A. Ron. So he's in that. And I just keep rotating them out and just keep trying to have fun. I had a great picture of Larry Rothschild as a pitching coach at Florida State. And I have some more. And yeah, we're keeping FedEx and Kinko's in business. And yeah, I got I get a picture of Dan Schulman with hair that is incredible. And Joe Buck with a mustache and all on and on. So I'm confident that it will keep keep getting better. I would say that if I'm willing to print, I would say that I'm going to be able to continue to get my hands

on good pictures of people inside the game of baseball. So that's what the viewer is seeing as you do the broadcast. So what are you seeing? Describe your setup. Where exactly in the house are you? What are you looking at or listening to? Because you've done remote broadcasting before, but this is a bit different from doing it at ESPN.

But I haven't done much. So I did that game. I did those games in 2006. And then I did a Caribbean League World Series game in 2012. And that's kind of been it. As far as my setup, I have an iPad that is the camera. And then I have an LED light. And then I have a laptop that's probably, I don't know, 12 inches. And that's what the game's on. And the game is on a Zoom call, basically. And then I have a headset box where I can talk off air to my partner, the producer, the research guy. But again, it's just a lot. And it's hard when the other part of the equation is

not having your partner next to you. You wouldn't think about it. You guys can appreciate this doing a pod. But if you're next to each other all the time, the nonverbal is so important in terms of I'm about to finish. I'm done. I have a little bit more to say. Let me jump in here. All that stuff. All those things go out the window. And so you're stepping on each other and that type of thing. So, you know, but on a basic level, you know, when we do the day games on Sundays, it's hard to see.

At least for me, it's hard to see. I'm having trouble. You know, you don't always pick up the ball. I'm doing the, and so, you know, guessing whether, you know, is it gone or did he get it? Yeah, it's a challenge. Yeah, Meg and I do the same thing when we're doing these interviews or Sam or whoever is on that day. We're messaging each other. Okay, I'll take the next question.

You take the next question. I have a follow-up here. I don't know if you can do that effectively while you're also calling your game. We can do it with the interviews. That's the thing. We can do it with the interviews. But in terms of the play-by-play and the flow of the broadcast, it's still going to happen a little more organically. So that's where it's challenging.

In the interviews, our producer is doing that. He is saying Kyle's next or Eduardo's next. Boog has one more. Boog's going to follow. That part, then we don't step on each other. But as it relates to, again, it's not our feed. So the pictures and they're replaying and replaying and they have a tendency to replay a lot. Are we going to talk about that or are we going to talk about something else? So it's challenging. You can't organize it quite the same way. Walk us through the day or night of a game.

How early are you getting up or are you just staying awake? Are you a vampire night person now? Are you taking PEDs to stay alert? How are you getting through this very strange schedule? I think that at some point I was contemplating this the other day. I have a Starbucks that's close to me. I like coffee, just period. That's the sentence. just period that's the sentence and i now am the guy walking around with four venti ice coffees unsweetened in a tray and they're all for me and i put them in my fridge and i have probably five

different styles of beans and a bean grinder so we're drinking a lot of coffee. As far as the sleep schedule, for the first three games were brutal because the first game it did was 5.30, followed by the next day's game at 4 a.m., followed by the next day's game at 1 a.m. Yeah. I mean, kill me. So for the five, now that I've settled in, my schedule roughly has been Thursday, Friday, I'm doing the 5.30 a.m. and then the Sunday at 1 a.m. So for the 5.30 games, I'm going to bed at 9.30 or 10, waking up at 2, doing prep, trying to get a lineup from, you know, keep reaching out to people, trying to see if I can find a lineup a little bit early, testing equipment. And then I call the game. These games have been long. I've had

some four-hour games. So I'm up, you know, by 2-ish, 2.30-ish. And then I do the game from 5.30 Eastern time to say 8.30, 9 a.m. And then I usually stay up for a couple hours, get something to eat, and then I'll sleep for like two hours and then get another four that night. And then for the 1 a.m. game, by and large, I'm doing six to nine or so, six to ten, seven to ten, and then doing the game and then going to bed for five, six know, the type of sleep like somebody, you know, chloroformed me, you know, like in the movies where they sneak up behind you with like a handkerchief or something like that. That's usually what that what that is like, where the alarm goes off after 12 hours. And my reaction is when I find the person that's making that noise, I'm going to swing on them. And then I realize, yeah, that's the alarm. So even with the coffee, how hard is it to bring the same energy at unusual times? And also,

I guess, without the electricity of being surrounded by a big crowd. And I don't know if you have any crowd sounds or whether you're just hearing the broadcast, but how hard does that make it? So here's one for you. I'll tell you this, this is like, this is a funny one. There is some crowd sound. I'm not sure whether the stadium is pumping it in or the Korean broadcast feed that we're taking it from is pumping it in. And we're three weeks in and I don't know who's supplying that. So there's some slight crowd. Remember that they still have their cheerleaders there. So when the home team hits, they're making some racket. They got their DJ and their MC and their cheers and they play a lot of music. So that probably changes a little bit, but yeah,

it's weird. And I would say you're just not doing a game at 7.30 in the morning. You're just not – yeah, that's not the schedule I'm used to being on. I don't know what else to tell you. So how do you think about balancing the play-by-play responsibility, helping the folks at home sort of understand and follow the action versus the in-game interviews that you guys are doing? And I would imagine that having experienced broadcasting before, doing radio, it's not like this is the first time you've had to juggle, but this is a pretty unusual situation. So how are you balancing those things? I think where it's hard, what's, what's, I think we have to do it this way, you know,

because I'm, I'm assuming that the bulk of our viewership is getting its baseball fix. And I, of our viewership is getting its baseball fix. And I, so I, I don't think you can call every game. Like it's game three of the ALCS. I just don't, we don't have enough information in order to do it that way. Like we can't totally honor the game in that regard.

And as far as, I mean, I, frankly, I had a moment in the game I did this morning where, I mean, there was a new pitcher, a new hitter, two pinch runners and a defensive change, and I didn't know any of them. Now, I've worked hard.

June Lee has been so magnificent in helping me with pronunciations. And I really, if you write the names down in front of me, I feel like I've gotten to a place where I can do fairly well with what the sounds are supposed to be. I think I'm doing okay with that. I'm trying my best. But if I can't get my hands on the information, you know, and I'm calling, you know, so the other thing is the commercial breaks are short so it's 75 seconds and you're back and then I'm in my external voice of welcome back John Chomby and Kyle Peterson and my internal voice is is that a new pitcher that looks like a new pitcher is that a five on his 25 on his back or is it a 45 on his back and I'm looking at the roster and I need him to turn because I can't read Korean and a lot of these teams don't have

numbers on the front and so it's hard and then as far as I mean look I trust myself in terms of content managing interesting interest is interesting so like we Jared Diamond on today we got to do a good conversation Jared smart you know so that's what we we. You know, we have the players over there have been magnificent about coming on during games. So like LG's playing and Tyler Wilson did an inning and a half with us. And he was wonderful. He was smart and interesting and human and just he was great. And then we also had Colin McHugh on, and he's fun and super likable. And you're trying to use, in Tyler Wilson's case, fill in some of the blanks.

It's not so easy. So I think it needs to be done this way. And look, I understand we're not going to satisfy everyone. Sorry. I also like the other part is, look, my way of doing it is I'm going to have fun. I mean, I'm not going to do it when there's two outs in the ninth and I don't hit her. But we're going to have some fun. And we're doing Korean baseball at 530 in the morning.

Like, breathe that in for a second. So, like, it's going to be a little lighter. Sorry, you know, so for the people that get agitated. I think what's hard is that, and Meg, you touched on it. Yeah, I've done interviews and I've done both radio and TV where you're navigating that. And it's a great, great help. But when the anchor is, I know the players. I mean, heck, the Yankees could play the Red Sox.

And if it's happening in front of me, I mean, I could probably do the games without numbers because I know the shapes and sizes of all the players so well. It's, you know, we do these teams so frequently and my knowledge base is there. When you don't, when I have to actually read the names, that way of doing it is a tiny bit more challenging. and we're not gonna do it perfectly or at least I'm not gonna do it perfectly that's that's for sure but I you know my goal remains the same when I'm broadcasting a game I'm trying to make it smart I'm trying to make it interesting I'm trying to

make it fun those are the three notes that I'm trying to hit every time MLB KBO whatever you know and there's, whatever. And the amount of ingredients for each that you're striving for is different each time. And look, are there times when we've wandered from the play-by-play during KBO? Yeah, we have. And sometimes it's because the game's 9-1. And by the way, we do that as well in a big league game. But other times it's just hard. I mean, like I said, there are times when I just don't have who's on the field. I don't know who it is. So it's just not simple.

Yeah, it's like every game that you're calling is September with the Royals expanded roster. It's like, who are these guys? Yeah, and the way it can feel at times, after the first game that I did, I thought we had a good broadcast. But the way that it feels at times, my metaphor is log rolling. It's like I'm log rolling for three and a half hours, and I'm just trying not to fall in. Yeah. And despite there not being baseball in the States, there actually is still a lot to talk about when it comes to MLB. So how are you thinking about devoting time to MLB topics?

Because we have this huge question of whether we're going to resume play and how we're going to do it and what the compromises between the Players Association and the league might look like. So you have to weave those topics in as well, I would think. look like. So you have to weave those topics in as well, I would think. We do, but I'd also say, so I guess my feeling is, it's hard to, yeah, I need to articulate it clearly. So they haven't presented something economically yet to the players that's specific. Right. So I'm not going to get into my personal views on owners versus players in this format. Do you know what I mean? Like that generically, we're not going to navigate that. And as far as trying to break down the health protocols even, I don't think we're even there yet.

So you sort of, you know, I'm more interested in Colin McHugh's playing catch with a net. And if it starts to get closer, then I want to ask him, okay, what are some of the specific things that you're worried about? And we'll get there. So, you know, again, I think that, you know, today we used it as with Jared, we talked about his book, Swing Kings, which is great. But we also talked about just kind of the state of the game and some of the things you like about KBO. The way I break it down, again, my opinion, but where MLB is right now, I think it's going in a bad direction. I think it's going in a bad direction. I mean, I have a hard time imagining that even the best baseball fan,

and I love it as much still now as I did when I was seven, but there's a train coming. I mean, in terms of what's happening, the way I put it is this. There are three things going on at the same time that are bad, and you can't have all three at the same time. You can't have the games getting longer, the amount of time between pitches getting longer, and the amount of time between ball and play getting longer. You cannot have all three.

If the ball's not being in play, and the pace is slow, and you're guaranteed to have it happen in a two-and-a-half-hour window, I think that would be tolerable. I'm not advocating for it, but two of the three in that spot, okay, I think that the sport would be okay. But you can't have all three. They've got to address it. Preferably the ball's in play more, it's happening faster, and it doesn't take as long.

It would be good, I think, for the long-term health of the sport for all three to be improved in some way. So, yeah, I just, look, I, the ombudsman to some extent, right? I mean, I sit there and I'm the guy that determines what we're going to do and, you know, oversees it. And so I feel like, look, both of you guys, I am, we know each other and, but I'll pay you both the compliment of you guys both know what interesting is. It's what your strength is. And if you were being totally honest with yourselves, like what do you think you're good at, you could sit there and tell me all day the different skill sets that you think you bring to the table.

But if you really take a deep breath and meditate, Ben, Meg, both of you, both of you, and you sit there and you say, what do you think you're good at? Both of you believe, and in my opinion, are very good at understanding what is interesting. Well, I think I am too. Stating that explicitly makes me sound like a jackass, but I feel like I know what's interesting. So I'm going to try and continue down that path. Or at least I know what's interesting as it relates to baseball. I'm not particularly interested. I'm kind of a dope, to be honest.

Was there consideration of having sort of a sideline person who is in Korea, maybe not physically in the ballpark, but sort of on the scene who's been covering the league for years and maybe could help out with this guy's backstory? Or is that just kind of too much to juggle on a technical level? Meg, is it okay if we – are we allowed to turn it into two against one? So now it's going to be me and you against Ben. This is where I say, Ben, I just explained to you it's like log rolling, and I feel like you basically said to me, yeah, that's great. Have you thought about juggling chainsaws as well?

My answer would be I don't know whether they consider that. But like another thing in the mix. I mean, look, we have the guests. So that would be my answer to that. But like if they want me to juggle chainsaws, I'll juggle chainsaws, whatever. Yeah. You talked about some of the trends in MLB that are maybe not so spectator-friendly. So has there been anything about KBO baseball and the style of play there that you have found refreshing

or different or fun? Well, what I like, so here's what I would say. What I like is it's not like Japan where they're doing, they don't do as much small ball as Japan. They certainly are more three-run homer centric. I'm down with that. So they're not trying to give away outs, but the ball is in play more. Right. The problem is the stuff isn't good enough and the defense isn't good enough. So it's really hard when the average fastball is 88 miles an hour. They're good hitters and stuff gets hit. And then the defense gets banged around. But I like the idea that they're not trying to play small ball,

but it doesn't come with the cost of the strikeout of the ball not being in play. That's what I like about it. I guess kind of related to that, one of the things that Dan Kurtz said to us when we interviewed him was that he hoped American audiences would appreciate the KBO for what it is rather than constantly comparing it to MLB. Totally. But at the same time, MLB is the baseball context

that most U.S. fans have and are familiar with. So when do you find yourself utilizing MLB comps versus trying to watch KBO free of, you know, how its run scoring environment compares to the majors here or how pitchers might attack hitters or the quality of the defense? So, yeah, I mean, there are a couple of things. One is, yeah, I'll give the comparative slash lines from last year. And we talk about how they de-juiced the baseball last year. It seems like it's going back in a different direction. I mean, I think those are all things just to inform the viewer, you know, from 14 to 18.

It had a similar vibe in terms of it was home run palooza. Yeah. Now people want to do the, you know, what level does it reflect? And the thing, if you really, if you really break it down, I don't think you can do it that way. I think you take the skill sets each, like for me, guys can hit. I mean, I think that the three, four-5 guys or 2-3-4-5 guys in most of the lineups, there are, I would say every team has three guys that are capable of hitting on a big league team, is what I would say. And so they can hit. I would put the offense at AAA-ish, the stuff of the pitchers is not what you're used to. I mean, Desponnier pitched for the Wiz today, and 93-94 was like, whoa, I'm not used to

seeing that. And then I think the thing, if there's one part that's been disappointing, it's been the defense on some pretty basic plays i would say that that part has been been a little bit of a bummer but you know look i still you know like we did the game today and there's a kid on the whiz becko kung who is now out for three weeks i want to see him hit man he's 20 years old he was the first overall pick in the draft a couple years ago. He's 20 years old. He's got a thousand plate appearances in the KBO. They got some, I mean, there are guys that can swing and that are fun to watch hit. Yuji Young, who's the catcher for the Dinos, is a really good player. We've had

Josh Lindblom on a number of times. He's smart. He's funny. He's likable. And he gives us great context on what's happening in the league. But back to what you asked. Yeah, look, you're going to comp to Major League Baseball. It's always going to kind of come back to that. But you're just trying to explain to people, OK, so what are you really watching here? And we do our best. But look, it's baseball. It's still cool. And yeah, when there are really good players, I mean, like I said, today I was bummed out that we didn't get a chance to watch Beck Ho-Kong play. So that's part of what you're looking for. You're looking to see who the stud players are. what you're looking for. You're looking to see who the stud players are.

And I guess anytime you call any baseball game, you're trying to make it accessible to casual viewers, but also not trying to turn off people who are watching baseball all the time and maybe don't need the basics explained to them every day. And so now that you've been at this for a few weeks and you've learned a lot about the league and people who've been tuning in regularly have learned a lot about the league, where do you sort of set that level as far as here's how much of the context you need to set up every time i think it's just kind of feel i mean you just yeah it's just it's feel and how does the game go and i think that yeah it really depends we've we've had weird stuff we've had you know blowouts and walk-offs and it's it's just it's felt extreme bullpens are a fiasco at least that's what they've demonstrated so far so yeah it's it's just feel it's hard it's hard for me to explain I don't sweat that You know what I mean? Like, but I still look, I will sit here.

I'll talk about, you know, I mean, Ben, you and I got connected in our nerdness, you know, from back in your days at BP. And obviously we both went to Regis speaking of nerdness. you know, when you're putting stuff into context, it's, it's just, it's important where I will doing a big league game say, Hey, so the two stats that correlate most with run scoring are on base and slugging. And here's the slash line in the majors this year. So, so if I'm referencing a guy's OBP and a guy slug, yeah, I will still every few games say, here's what the league average is this year in these categories. It's just feel. I wish I could say that I have a script on it, but I think that there's just a feel to do that. And yeah, you try your best to use the good word, to make it accessible. That's what you're trying.

Well, you've outlined a number of the challenges. And I think in spite of those, you guys have done a really great job of putting this broadcast together. What do you think you've gotten better at since you started doing these KBO broadcasts? How has the log rolling maybe gotten a little easier to manage?

Well, here's what I would say is that I think that, you know, you get the teams. I mean, I've done LG now, I think, four times. So you really start to get a sense for Roberto Ramos, although Tyler Wilson gave us permission to call him Bob now. So you start to get a sense for some of these guys and get opinions on different players. Yeah, the Dinos leadoff guys, Minwoo Park, he's a nice player.

I think that it's that automatic type of recognition of a player that I think just gets helpful and it makes it a little bit more smooth. Ultimately, I think that really what's taking place is I hope, I really hope that these broadcasts continue to get better. I think just as we get more and more familiar with the players, as guys, you know, it becomes a little easier for us to recognize them on our monitors and know the information. what it really is going to end up doing is probably, probably, if there's, you know, there's a decent chance that we're going to be calling games like this in some form, some of the time for Major League Baseball this year. I don't think there's any question that there's a chance, whether it's from my house or from a studio, you know, that is not out of the question. And I would

say probably even likely, I think that that version of the log rolling is probably going to be easier because I've done this. And when you're calling a game in person, roughly what percentage of the time are you actually looking at the field versus the video monitor? And what do you most miss being able to see just by actually being in the ballpark? Okay. I get asked this question a lot and I will, I will answer the question and it's anecdotal and I, you know, I, I'm the one that subjectively gets to say there, there is, I guess, an objective answer. I will, it's different for radio and for TV, but I'm going to do something that I've never done before. Give me a percentage guess that you have for radio and for TV, each of you. So your guess would be, I look at the field, what percent of the time and

the monitor, what percent of the time in radio and the field, what percent of the time and the monitor, what percent of the time on TV? Oh um wow all right yeah that's right yeah you're turning around i just did i took control of this podcast yeah you did i just took control of this podcast you're an experienced broadcaster yeah that's right and now you guys are thinking now you know what it's like now you're like you're basically you're broadcasting korean baseball you gotta you gotta answer on the air boog shambi i love talking in the air. Boog Shambi, I love talking in third person. When Boog Shambi is broadcasting a game on the radio,

Meg, when Boog Shambi is broadcasting a game on the radio, what do you suspect is the amount of time he's looking at the field and the amount of time he's looking at the monitor when he's broadcasting a game on the radio? And I'll give you a little extra time and I'll re-ask the question. It's a good mechanical device. What percentage of the time

when Boog Shambi is doing a TV game do you think he's looking at the field, and what percentage of the time do you think he's looking at the monitor? I've got guesses if you need more time to think, I don't know. I'll guess. So I'm going to guess that on the radio, it's 60% field, 40% monitor, and that it's flipped for TV because you have to worry about graphics and bumpers in and out and that kind of stuff. Is that a terrible guess? No, that's pretty close to what I was going to say. Ben, you don't get to tell her whether her guess is good. I get to tell her whether her guess is good, Ben. I get to tell her whether her guess is good. I get to tell her whether her guess is good, Ben. It's about as good as my guess would have been, which does not mean that my guess would have been good.

But yeah, I was guessing that maybe 60-40 or something TV for field and monitor just because you're seeing what the viewer is seeing and you can look down and identify the pitch. And then I would think that on radio you might want to look more around the ballpark just because you're trying to set the scene and people are not seeing exactly what you're seeing on the monitor. Yeah.

All right. So my answer is on radio, I'm looking at the field probably 80% of the time and the monitor about 20% of the time. I just, because, and there are other guys that will work off of a center field camera and work off the monitor my problem is as long as I have a decent sight line I feel good about calling pitches just

off the field like I just I'm basically I find out what guys have I know how hard they throw I can look at the radar gun calling pitches is usually not a problem. I mean, taking DC and Pittsburgh out of it when we're broadcasting from the Empire State Building. And then you're looking at the monitor to fill in stuff. So it's about 80-20. TV, I would say it's probably 50-50. But it's really more, it's this. So the play happens and I'm probably in the monitor for the pitch close to like 75% of the time. As soon as the pitch is delivered, I'm on the field. So it's monitor to field and then the play ends and then it's probably back to monitor. So I would say it's closer to 50-50. So you guys were,

yeah, you were, I mean, in the range, in the range. It's pretty solid. Meg, you feel okay? Not embarrassed. No, you did fine. You did fine. You see how awful it would be to work with me? I mean, this is what I'm like. You're a delight. And I'm kind of a bully. Don't sell yourself short. Yeah, you're a delight. I am curious, you know, one of the things, obviously, South Korea is in a position to play baseball right now where the United States is not.

And you guys have spent time on your broadcast both amongst yourselves and then in terms of the folks who you've talked to, sort of laying out for American audiences the other societal factors that needed to be in place before a play could resume. And I'm curious how you've thought about balancing that. Obviously, in some ways, that probably strikes a lot of people as a fairly obvious question and a topic that needs discussion, but it is not without some political overtones in the States. So how have you thought about that? some political overtones in the States. So how have you thought about that? Maybe not quite as much as I should, but I just do it. I do it. I trust my judgment and just do it. I mean, look, I live in New York City, so we're at the epicenter of it. So I take this as very real and very scary and was really scary for a stretch.

I have parents who are in their 70s. So, I mean, I don't want to get into that too much, but I also, for the people that are asking, well, why is Korea able to do it? They did a better job of mitigation and widespread testing. And look, you're right, there is a political component regardless. But I will say that it seems pretty obvious. You know, the other distinction is, so they're not testing in a KBO. They make them take their temperature, and as long as they're asymptomatic, they don't test them. If they're symptomatic, then they will test them. But I think that when you have three times as many players, testing asymptomatically is kind of a must, plus you have these support staff that will clearly be

cut down. But I think that, look, I understand the implications, but I've said it once or twice. Yeah, so if you're going to do that, you do need to make sure that it's right. You can't have the Diamondbacks back up second basement getting access to tests six times a week when somebody in the middle of Michigan who works in a hospital was exposed to someone quarantined themselves and is asymptomatic now and can't get a test.

You know what I mean? Absolutely. You can't have that. Yep. And I'm not looking to get into a greater discussion. So I don't know that I've actually answered your question, to be honest. I think that there are little things that seem obvious that might be a little editorial, but we're staying away from that. I'm not interested in stirring people up in that regard.

I want people to be safe. I want the sport to be safe. I want everybody to be healthy. If you were one of the many baseball broadcasters who don't have any live action to call right now, what would you be doing to stay sharp? To stay sharp? Yeah, just to kind of keep your skills honed so that if baseball comes back, you're not rusty. I mean, yeah, that's a great question. I don't think I would do anything.

I mean, I think I would just end up being rusty is what it would end up being. I would end up being stinky. And you really notice it on the radio. I love that I get to do both. People ask me, which one do you like better? They access different skills, right? So that I love being able to paint the picture and doing it, being descriptive, but being efficient with it. And there's a timing component that is so challenging, but so fulfilling when you're able to really paint the picture and use the sounds in the ballpark.

So there's that, but your timing can get really screwed up. And then on TV, because I don't have to describe stuff, I can impact the content more. I've worked with a great producer who knows my analytics bent. Heck, we had it happen the other day on the KBO broadcast. You know, Eduardo and I, we were talking, it was late in the game, and I can't remember whether the team was down a run or whether they were even, and it was a guy on second and nobody out, and they bunted. And so, you know, I made the point that, you know, this isn't anti-analytics, by the way. I brought up my, you table because, really, who doesn't have a run expectation table on their laptop, on their desktop, on their computer?

And just went through the percentages. And I love doing stuff like that. I still love doing stuff like that. Telling people, look, here's the basic idea. This is how often you're expected to score this percent of the time with a man at third and one and this percent of the time with man at second and nobody out. So yeah, there you go. Do you think the experience of relying on remote broadcasts during the pandemic will make remote broadcasting just as a whole more common, even after it's safe to call games in person? And if it did, what would you miss about being on site? Oh, man. You really did it.

You'd have to keep changing up the wall. That's a big ask. Well, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, you're keeping it light. But on a real note, yes, my thought is that I think that there's an element of this. I mean, this year, certainly. But in the next 10 years, yeah, we're seeing the future. And it bums me out.

Yeah. I love broadcasting games. I like connecting with people. I like seeing Chris Singleton, making him laugh. I like seeing Justin Ware. He's our radio producer. I like seeing Justin Ware. He's our radio producer.

When I do a TV game, I like making, you know, Andre, Bruce, and Amy, our camera guys, Greg Logan, all making them laugh. Jeff Dufine, Jimmy Platter, our producer and director for the longest time. You know, Rick Sutcliffe and David Ross this year. It's going to be Chipper Jones. You know, being next to them. Yeah, I like connecting with people. I like telling stories. I think I'm good at connecting with people,

engaging in conversation, getting good stuff out of them. And I just, I like the human contact of the players, the coaches, the GMs, the managers, the other broadcasters. I really love it. I just do. I love getting a chance to see.

I love going to the Yankees-A's game, wild card game, a couple years ago, and I'm on the field and I'm talking with Brian Cashman, and Billy Bean comes up and interrupts, shaking Cash's hand and says, so what's up, Cash? You going to out-analytics the shit out of us tonight or what? He says, so what's up, Cash? You going to out analytics the shit out of us tonight or what? And then waiting to find Billy and say, hey, is it okay if I use that?

And he says, yeah. But I love that. I love that. Finding that stuff is just – and I love, you know, the analytical side, getting good information. And then, I mean, look, the Chipper Jones looking up at me in the booth starts with my curiosity and finding something on a Fangraphs page and bringing it to him and then putting a coin in the machine. And so that, yeah, that interaction, I just, I love it it I love seeing you guys and laughing and met you know the next time I see you guys I'll start making fun of you for how much of an idiot I was on this podcast you know what I mean like about you know asking you that dumb question and whatever

but I love that part of it I know it sounds sounds corny, but I like all of it. I mean, I'll miss watching baseball in person as well. Yeah. But the connections with the people and the players and the stuff that I'm able to get and learn and in the process then translate to the fans is so much fun. It's so fun. I mean, you guys can relate on that, can't you? You just do it in a different way. You do it through a podcast or through the written word, and I get to do it on the radio and on TV.

Do you think that fans will continue to follow the KBO if and when MLB action resumes? I don't know the answer to that. I would have to think at least a little bit. I mean, the amount of attention that it's getting is crazy. I mean, like, and again, you know, it's the atmosphere that we're in. But once it was announced that we were doing the games and I was doing the game, I mean, for two days, my phone just exploded. Hey, let's talk KBO baseball. Let's talk about it. And I was like, can we wait till I do a game? Yeah, I hope it'll be big for international baseball.

I mean, obviously, when MLB comes back, we'll all be thrilled about that. But this exposure and, you know, whether it's KBO or CPPL, just having it kind of be our sole source of baseball right now, I'd imagine that produces some fond feelings, right? Absolutely. If you've gotten used to the players and the teams and you know the league a little bit now, then naturally, I think you'd hopefully be a little bit interested. Oh, I know I will. I mean, I absolutely will be like, this is something that I will, I will personally stay connected. I mean, I'm not saying I'm going to be locked in on it every day,

but it will be viewed from this point. If they started MLB tomorrow, I would still have a curiosity and a connection to KBO going forward, no doubt. All right. So lastly, May is ALS Awareness Month. And as you mentioned, you are very active with an organization called Project Main Street that helps people with ALS deal with the financial burdens associated with that disease. And I know that your annual fundraising gala that was scheduled for next week had to be canceled along with everything else that's getting canceled. But how can people find out more and help out? I appreciate that. Yeah. My buddy, Tim Sheehy, we grew up together on Roosevelt Island. There's one street on Roosevelt Island,

it's called Main Street. So all the addresses for the most part may have changed, but it's Main Street. And Tim thought of the idea and he's over my shoulder on the wall. That's one picture that'll stay the whole time. But yeah, you can go to projectmainstreet.org. It's main and then it's ST, the abbreviation for street. So projectmainstreet.org, you can donate. It's tax deductible. We're a 501c3. 100% of the money goes to people living with ALS. And so ultimately in today's atmosphere, you know, the economic impact of COVID-19, yeah, it's made it more challenging for people that have ALS to get care, to afford care. And so we raise money and give grants to help pay insurance. We'll even buy your groceries. We'll buy a hospital bed,

a wheelchair, an eye gaze machine, that type of stuff. So I'm still trying to figure out. I have, I collected a number of things for an auction. In fact, I have a Peter Alonso polar bear cartoon that Kev Roche did that's over my shoulder on the wall that he signed. And I'm going to auction it off. But I have some other things. And I'm not sure whether I'm going to do it in drips and drabs. I'm not sure. But I have a bunch of stuff that I'm going to auction off.

But like I said, anybody, I mean, $10 helps. And it will go to a person that has the disease. So I appreciate you asking me about that and anybody that wants to help. I thank you very much. Yeah, we will link to all of those pages on our show page and in our Facebook group. And you can also find Boog on Twitter at Boog Shambi. And of course, you can hear him usually on ESPN2, Colin KBO Games. And I guess we will let you rest your voice and rest your brain and replenish your coffee stockpile because you've got a game coming up, as always. Thanks, you guys.

Thanks so much for having me. It was great. I really enjoyed it. All right. I want to share with you something that Patreon supporter Brian just emailed into us as we were putting the finishing touches on this episode. He is rereading the great book by John Helyar, Lords of the Realm, which we have mentioned and recommended many times on this show. It's about the history of labor relations in baseball and was published just before the

strike in 1994. I wrote a piece about its 25th anniversary for the ringer last year. Anyway, Brian uncovered a passage that I had forgotten. This is toward the end of the book, and it's very relevant today. It says, Michael Jordan was no less self-centered and no more virtuous than any baseball player, and his income was considerably higher, yet the NBA had marketed him beautifully as a genial Superman in designer sneakers. Baseball owners obsessed with denouncing the overpaid players never did that. As agent Scott Boris once put it, if the players were a can of Campbell's soup, the owners would roll it down the aisle, step on it, kick it, call it overrated and overpriced,

and then stick it on a shelf and try to sell it. This is kind of akin to what the owners are doing now, for one, but also it just goes to show that Scott Boris' way with words and appetite for analogies extends, oh, 25 to 30 years back at least. The owners never change, and neither does Scott Boris.

That'll do it for today and for this week. Thanks for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Ryan Shores, Dan, Patrick Morgan, Nate Gilman, and Tom Mohan. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild.

You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg and Sam coming via email at podcast.bandcrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. If you're looking for some reading material, you can pick up the paperback of my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players. Both the paperback edition and the Kindle edition include a new afterword. We hope you have a nice long weekend, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. As easy as rolling off along I must be crazy baby

But you make me think it's true