Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1546: Best of the Best

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about viral particles, Mike Trout’s self-identified best at-bat, Carney Lansford’s possible link to Sir Francis Drake, sports card “breakers,” a perplexing story involving Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner, Wilbert Robinson’s five birthdays, why a love of playing baseball often translates to a love of anything connected to baseball, the […]

🎵 From the best of the best in times. A long way, long way from the best of the best in times. Good morning and welcome to episode 1546 of Effectively Wild, the baseball podcast from Fangraphs.com brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I am Sam Miller of ESPN along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben. Hello. All right, I'm going to try to tell you this fun fact, which is not very fun, but is in the form of a fun fact, and which is my favorite current fun fact,

not because it's actually my favorite, but because it's the most incredible one that I've seen in a very long time. All right. So I'm going to try to get this right. I've read these paragraphs like 5,000 times to try to make sure that I'm getting this correct. But okay, if you're infected with COVID-19 and you're just breathing, you're just sitting there breathing, you know, sitting at a desk breathing, you release about 30 infectious viral particles per minute, okay? Okay, not very fun so far. 30 infectious viral particles, all, okay? Okay. So- Not very fun so far. 30 infectious viral particles, all right? Okay.

30. If you are speaking, then it goes up. It goes up about like 10 times that much. So instead of like 30 viral particles per minute, you're up to about, say, 300 viral particles per minute, okay? So 30, 300. And then if you sneeze or cough, you release more than 300 viral particles with that sneeze or cough.

And I would like you to guess, how many viral particles do you think you release when you sneeze or cough? This seems like exponential or something. So let's see. So you're going from 30 to 300. So I want to say like 3,000 or something, but I bet it's more than that because you seem to love this fact. So it must be a big number, right? So I'm going to say it's like instead of 10 times more, it's like 100 times more. I'll say it's like 30,000. 30,000?

I don't know how many viral particles there are. There could be any number of viral particles. I don't know. We're not a virology podcast, though. Something about this so struck me that I had to open a baseball podcast with it. Yeah, so it must be a big number. It is a big number but you want to try again would you try again oh at first i thought you were saying i went too big

but okay so it's bigger all right three million viral particles 200 million what that's so many viral particles 200 million oh my gosh oh my gosh huh right so that's that is according to dr aaron bromage who wrote a extremely i found it very useful practical guide to the known covid 19 risks and how to avoid them it's even worse because of course when you're breathing the viral particles they just sort of flop down like straight in front of you like they don't make it like they hardly escape your your gravity gravity Whereas a cough goes 50 miles an hour and a sneeze goes 200 miles an hour Or up to 200 miles an hour and so all those particles Immediately shoot around the room base and then they just hang there right and they just are suspended for a while

So that if someone even just walks by even after you're gone, then yeah, lots of viral particles even then. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Wow. All right. So we're back.

Do you have anything to talk about? Yeah, I've got one thing, and it's not viral particle related. It's about Mike Trout. And we talked on episode 1537 about things that we would save in the Hall of Fame, and one of the categories was something related to Mike Trout that we would save. And we all had trouble trying to figure out some Mike Trout-related item to save in the Hall of Fame, and we got kind of creative and went with sort of weird ones because we couldn't really think of a particular play that was such a highlight that it's so closely associated with Trout that we would preserve it. But I read or heard what Trout considers his best at bat ever. So this is maybe what he would save in the Hall of Fame for himself if he could. And last weekend, he and the golfer Brooks Koepka were on an Instagram chat. I think they're both Nike-sponsored athletes, and so they were having a Nike-sponsored chat, and Koepka asked Trout who the best pitcher

he's ever faced is, and the answer is somewhat surprising in one way and not at all surprising in another way. It's Max Scherzer, he said, which is not surprising because Scherzer is one of the best pitchers of this era, but somewhat surprising because Trout hasn't actually faced him in a regular season game since 2014 because Scherzer signed with a team in the National League. So in his times facing Scherzer from, I guess, 2012 to 2014, he faced him 16 times and it did not go well, as you would imagine. Trout has batted 188, 188,438 against Scherzer in those 16 plate appearances. He struck out in 10 of them and didn't walk once.

And he had only one extra base hit, a double off him. So no wonder he thinks he's so hard to hit. But they did face each other in the 2018 All-Star game. And they came up, it was the first inning, and Scherzer struck out Mookie Betts. Then he struck out Jose Altuve on three pitches I think to start the inning and then Trout fell behind 1-2 to Scherzer but then he worked the count full and he fouled off a couple pitches and then he drew ball four he walked on a pretty close pitch and Trout told Koepka it was the best at bat I've ever had

he was throwing nasty pitches and I was just fouling stuff off. And that really struck me that that would be the best at-bat he's ever had, because obviously he's had a ton of successful at-bats, and they ended in much more remarkable, sensational ways than this one, which was just a walk, just a humble little walk. And Trout has even been a hero in All-Star Games. He was the All-Star Game MVP in 2014 and 2015, the only player to win back-to-back All-Star Game MVP awards. And in his next at-bat after he faced Scherzer in that game, he hit a home run off of Jacob de

Graan. And he also hit a home run, I think, in that 2015 All-Star Game. So you could have said, well, what's your best at-bat? Oh, it's the time I hit a home run, I think, in that 2015 All-Star game. So you could have said, well, what's your best tip at? Oh, it's the time I hit a home run off the eventual Cy Young Award winner in the All-Star game. But no, it's not that one. It's the walk that he drew. And I guess that makes sense because going into that plate appearance, he had, again, struck out 10 times without ever walking against Scherzer. And this one time after he struck out Betts and Altuve and got Trout within one strike of a strikeout, Trout fought back and ended up walking. And I guess that's kind of emblematic of Trout, maybe, that he would pick such a, you know, almost forgettable to most

of us plate appearance as his best plate appearance ever. but also that that kind of represents the maturation that Trout made over those years between his at-bats against Scherzer. That was really how he got better. Like he added power, sure, but really I think the biggest, most notable improvement in Trout's game over those years was his plate discipline and his great strikeout to walk ratios

and his ability not to swing at pitches that he shouldn't swing at and so that was the at bat that stands out most in his mind which uh that just sort of represents trout to me that he picked that and i never would have picked that yeah it's interesting that he picked a plate appearance that didn't count because of course it like it doesn't count to us but the the physics of it are the same to him. He was there, and the pitch was coming just as fast, and it was just as hard to hit Max Scherzer. And so for us, that's just a plate appearance that we forget about. I mean, some people really love the All-Star game, and so that might be a plate appearance they really remember.

And I do remember Mike Trout, I think it was in 2012 when he was in the All-Star game. I think I have this right that part of his legend was that he was in that All-Star game and his plate appearance was against R.A. Dickey and he got a hit against R.A. Dickey and it was the first knuckleball he had ever seen in a professional game. And so your All-Star game, game you know exploits can create legends but otherwise i mean i don't care what do you i would i would tend to focus a lot more on the ones that that do count but like i said to to trout it's hard no matter what like it's hard if you like i don't know it's it's hard even if it's in practice it would be hard uh to face max scherzer

if max scherzer was trying to get you out do Do you think that Brooks Koepka ever asked Dick Grote who the toughest pitcher he ever faced was? No, probably not. Well, Dick Grote is his great uncle. Oh, well, maybe he did then. So Dick Grote, one of the heroes of the 1960 Pirates. I believe he was the MVP that year. And if he did ask Dick Grote,

I think almost certainly the answer would also not be surprising. I think he would almost certainly pick Sandy Koufax, who is both probably the actual most difficult pitcher he ever faced, and also was a pitcher who pretty much dominated him. And if you look at batters or pitchers he faced at least i don't know let's say more than 40 times then sandy kofax it was has the second best numbers against him almost identical with with don cardwell faced kofax twice as often and hit 180 236 248 against him but really if you just limit it to the years when kofax had matured and was good. So 1961 to 1966, he faced Koufax 97 times and hit 152. In those 97 plate appearances, two doubles and no other extra base hits.

So slugged 174 against him over the course of 100 plate appearances with a 188 on base percentage. So there you go, Brooks. I did your work for you. Yeah. So if Trout had had some bigger games, if he had had a tiebreaker game or some game with big pennant implications or more playoff games in which he had had success, then maybe he would remember one of those as his best at bat. But best result doesn't necessarily mean best at bat. I mean, best at bat can come anytime. And so it came for him in an

exhibition game. And I wonder if you surveyed every player about their best at bat, what percentage of them would be walks? Because on one hand, you'd think, well, that wouldn't really stick in your mind, a walk. But on the other hand, it's probably the most likely type of plate appearance to get complimented by a broadcaster like oh good at bat professional at bat you know when you're in the hole maybe and then you work your way back and you even the count and then it's a full count you foul off a couple pitches and then you take a close pitch for a walk that always gets you broadcaster kudos so i wonder whether people do think of that as just a good at bat like Like, you know, if you just go up there

and you hit a home run on the first pitch or something, that could be a good at bat too because you were ready and you were aggressive and maybe you adjusted after your first plate appearance when the guy threw you one there and you took it and now you're not going to wait and that's a good at bat. But I think probably when people say, oh, good at bat, it's a long at bat, right?

It's when you foul off a bunch of good pitches and take a couple close pitches. So maybe a walk wouldn't be that unusual, but I don't know. It just seems very trouty to have such a non-sensational plate appearance be his best one ever. Yeah, I think almost certainly that if you asked every player this question, the median number of pitches would be at least eight or nine. Yeah, right. Yeah. By the way, I guarantee you that Dick Grote's best plate appearance,

if you asked him that, would also be a walk. It looks like it was in 1966, I believe, and it was a nine-pitch walk that he earned off of Sandy Koufax. Well, maybe we should just have Dick Grodon instead of putting words in his mouth. Who knows what he would say. But ball, ball, strike, foul, foul, ball, foul, foul, ball. Good at that. Yeah.

Okay. I enjoyed the Herb Washington baseball card discussion. The fun fact, all that whole thing about nine wins with his speed. And while I was working on the Don Mattingly card back story, Patrick Dubuque pointed out that there's another 1987 Tops card back that's a great card back bio, which is for Carney Lansford. Carney Lansford's bio that year was, Carney is a direct descendant of sir francis drake the 16th century british admiral this is a good card back partly because sir francis drake has no known descendants huh no he had no children he was married twice produced no offspring and so this gets you thinking yeah you're trying to figure out if there's any other way that this could be the case.

And it turns out that Carney Lansford addressed this quite a bit. In fact, it turns out that if you were alive in 1987, you had probably heard this Carney Lansford, Sir Francis Drake story because it got mentioned all the time. Just a ton, all the time. because it got mentioned all the time, just a ton, all the time. I think it went national when Jim Murray of the LA Times wrote about it in 1979 when Lansford was called up. But before that, in fact, in 1978, the Orange County Register wrote about it. And it also said that he is a, I believe, fourth cousin of Tex Ritter, the country music singer. Fourth cousin.

Fourth cousin. Hardly worth mentioning. No one even knows what it means. Yeah. This was brought up a lot, but it was also brought up that Sir Francis Drake had no heirs. He had no children. And so even way back in 1978, 1979, it was just a thing that people were talking about

for some reason, Carney Lansford having a connection to Sir Francis Drake, but also maybe not. Some reporters pushed him on it. And like the LA Times claims that he took the fifth. In one case case he says that

his grandfather traced it back in another he uh i guess this this fact got to uh writers because according to carney the angels when he was a prospect a minor leaguer the angels uh sent a questionnaire to players asking you know their basic biographical stuff and and maybe also like what's interesting about you? Or I don't know, maybe they asked, are you related to Dick Grote or any other famous people? And so Carney says that his mom filled it out. He doesn't know anything about it. At one point, he actually said, my mom filled it out. I don't know anything about it. But he says that, you know, he figures she knows enough. She's not making it up. Same thing with Tex Ritter.

Anyway, near as I can tell, this is both not quite fiction that Carney Lansford created, but also not probably true. He claims illegitimate child. At one point, he says, you don't know. Maybe he had an illegitimate child. And in another interview, he says, what people don't know is that he had an illegitimate child. Carney Lansford's all over the board here. And as it keeps getting repeated, it's been repeated in the last couple of years in blog posts. Every couple of years,

more writers discover the Carney Lansford, Francis Drake connection and then mention it. And then also usually mention that Sir Francis Drake, sometimes mention that Sir Francis Drake has no descendants or no children. Anyway, I wanted to bring that up as another card back. And I've been in newspapers.com and other archives a lot in the last few weeks, first looking at World Series, second more recently looking at a different article that's going to be going up, I don't know, sometime. second more recently looking at a different article that's going to be going up, I don't know, sometime. And it's just really interesting to me how there's this cycle for fun facts or for legends or for interesting things or for any content, really. It's the cycle for content,

which is that the thing happens, the content exists in its day and time and then a whole bunch of time passes and then the content becomes fodder for us to fact check the content there's like there's a rediscovery and then trying to figure out where did that come from and so all this content gets this second life and so like the the carny lansford i don't know the car Carney Lansford being To me Him being related to Sir Francis Drake Is not that interesting And yet 20, 30, 40 years

43 years later, 42 years later We're still talking about it just because It's something to go check and the checking Is fun Yeah, there is a resemblance Both red hair, mustaches so passes the eye test i guess maybe maybe that's where it comes from maybe but yeah well i think to me what is interesting about the herb washington fun fact and i guess also the carnie lansford one on the card back is just that

it's stated so matter-of-factly yes it's not like he once said that he was related it's just like no he is he is yeah it's like there's no journalistic standard there you don't have to cite anything you don't have to have two sources corroborating it it's just you know if someone once said it ever if he said it if someone said it about him then it's fair game to be on a card back just stated as fact, which just, I think that makes it more enticing to fact check when it's just stated so boldly, just like that. It's like, well, really prove it. How do you know? If he said, well, my mom said it once and, you know, then you might ask his mom where she got the idea and that might be interesting. But I think it's much more enticing to me as a fodder for fact checking when

it's just stated so plainly like that and yet with no evidence whatsoever yeah no that's exactly right it it is the fact that in the in the minute or at the time when you're writing it you cut corners on your attribution and you don't you don't feel the need to explain or to source it necessarily and then you leave this whole mystery where mystery where we get to figure out whether you made it up entirely. Or what, with the Herb Washington one, what's so great is that you have to go into the mindset of a 1970s statistician or coach or teammate. And figure what information was even available to them. What philosophy were they following. It is very much trying to solve the mystery of how a 1970s athletic would think.

It's a time capsule in so many ways. And I imagine right that if that baseball card had said, I don't even remember what the final outcome was, but if it had said nine times Herb Washington scored the winning run as the pinch runner, you'd go, oh, okay. Right. But it's the fact that they phrase it in a way that is open to interpretation and they don't source it that makes it interesting. And so there's another one that I've been thinking about, which is the Krauthead story.

This is what's known as the Krauthead story. I don't know. Krauthead. I don't. We okay saying Krauthead story. This is what's known as the Krauthead story. I don't know. Krauthead? I don't... We okay saying Krauthead? Well, I don't know how many German listeners we have, but I don't know. Hopefully they'll allow it for the sake of historical accuracy.

But what's the story? All right. In 1909, the Tigers and the Pirates were in the World Series, and that pitted Ty Cobb against Hannes Wagner, which is, you know, a great matchup of two of the all-time greats and the two greatest players at the time. And really in an era, probably when the greatest player on each team was able to sort of take over the game a little bit more than they do with base running and with by hitting,

you know, 470. And so Ty Cobb had a very quiet World Series. He didn't do much. And there is, I'm going to read now. This is the Wikipedia page under the title, The Krauthead Story. There is a longstanding legend that Cobb, standing on first base,

called the German-ancestored Hannes Wagner Krauthead, told him he was going to steal second and was not only thrown out, but that Wagner tagged him in the mouth, ball in hand, drawing blood from Cobb's lip. All right. I'm going to just tell you in advance that this story is probably not true. In fact, it's not true. But when you hear that story, where do you hypothesize it originates and for what end?

To what end? I would think that maybe wagner said it okay because wagner wants to make cob look bad for instance yeah and because he's kind of the hero of that story yeah he was wronged and then he tagged him out and he got his comeuppance so okay yeah or maybe not from wagner directly but maybe from a teammate of Wagner's, let's say, or someone who covers that team. Okay. Yeah, that's a very good hypothesis. Okay. The Wikipedia explanation is the story is largely attributed to the creative press at the time and Wagner and Cobb were actually on good terms. So if it were attributed to the creative press at the time, then you'd think, well, it's to create clicks, to create a little drama. And I guess your theory for like why these details about these people would be, well, it's in character with the narrative that people are already into, that they're familiar with. You've got your good guy and your villain villain and we're sort of playing those characters up a little bit more sort of uh the same way that like a pro wrestling uh storyline might play up the characteristics of two people in a match right and so i will tell you that it is

i it could be that it was the creative press at the time i don't believe so though because this doesn't show up until 1949 so it happens actually actually 40 years later. So to what end would someone invent this story 40 years later, would you guess? Huh? Boy, well, you hear a lot of old player stories who say something or other about something that happened 40 years earlier that they never said at the time, or it even contradicts something that they said at the time. I'm trying to think. I mean, Wagner was still around. He had been a coach until not long before that, but I don't know why he would have. At that point, that was before the Cobb legend grew, really, before the Al Stump books came out and before Cobb was really vilified. So I would have guessed if it were a little later that it would be

something that would come out in connection to that. But I guess it's a little bit too early for that. So I don't really know why that would come out then. Okay. Well, I can't say this is for sure where the story originates, but this is the earliest reference I could find to it in any newspaper. It's in 1949. It's the Long Beach Independent. And it's by a writer who would repeat this almost exactly the same way about 10 years later. And here's how he says, Cobb still enjoys telling how he and Wagner met. So Cobb invented this story. Cobb. Now, we all were thinking, why would someone make up a lie about Cobb? Well, maybe they don't. Maybe they're his rival. Maybe they're just trying to play off of his surliness to make him look worse. Maybe they're just taking something that they sort of broadly

know to be true about his personality and punching it up to make it more colorful, unconcerned with the truth of it. And in fact, Ty Cobb is out there telling a lie that makes him look bad. It's a very interesting thing. So according to, I mean, at least according to Wikipedia, an examination of the play-by-play does not indicate that such a play occurred in the one caught stealing charged to Cobb during the first inning of game four. He was actually safe at second due to a throwing error by first baseman Bill Abstein. So he was never caught stealing in that World Series.

He was quote unquote caught stealing, but he ended up being safe on the play. According to the Long Beach Independent, 40 years later, quoting Cobb, I was standing on first base in the 1909 World Series. Hannes was at second. I cupped my hands and yelled, hey, crowd head, I'm was standing on first base in the 1909 World Series. Hannes was at second. I cupped my hands and yelled, hey, crowd head, I'm coming down on the next pitch. Wagner didn't say anything. But when I got there, he had the ball and slapped it into my mouth. And I had to have three stitches taken. Sometimes Wagner doesn't say anything. Sometimes Wagner replies with a sassy reply, like bring it on down or something like that. Like sometimes he's like, bring it, sir. And then sometimes he has stitches. Sometimes he is merely bloodied.

And sometimes Ty Cobb loses teeth. Boy, well, I don't know. I guess that term maybe was back in vogue after World War II. I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but it doesn't make him look good. So unless he was asked to like compliment Wagner or something, but it doesn't sound like that's what he's doing. So I don't know. It's a self-deprecating story, I guess, or maybe it just shows his competitiveness and his fiery spirit on the field or something. Maybe that's what he's trying to show. It's weird. Yeah. By 1951, by the way cob is uh in this story is now saying get in my way and i'll cut both your legs off which has escalated quickly yeah yeah it's it's interesting how people how like the narrative that gets attached to to people

you might think that it makes them look bad but they might think that it makes them look bad, but they might think that it makes them look good. And it could be that Cobb was really invested in being the villain and that he thought that that made him look good. Like the things that a villain does were actually things that he admired in a person. Now, the fact that he chose to tell, again, assuming that I'm in any way accurate about the origin of the story, the fact that he would tell this story Yeah. actually bloodying him is interesting. Like you could imagine him telling a story where he,

for instance, threatens Wagner. Wagner calmly says, you know, something polite back. Cobb goes down and then actually like, you know, slides into Wagner and draws blood and everybody boos Cobb and he like, you know, encourages the crowd to boo him and you know he doesn't care if you boo him but he still wins but he actually apparently chose to tell a story where he lost which is interesting yeah I don't know there's lots of stories told about Ty Cobb many of them exaggerated so I guess he did the same for himself but I don't know what he would have been trying to say about himself there other than I guess just orderliness. Maybe he thought that was a virtue. There's another story that I have found interesting in the last couple weeks, which is

Wilbert Robinson, the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the manager of the Brooklyn Robins in the 1920s. In 1925, the Associated Press congratulated him on his 62nd birthday. And then he denied that it had been his 62nd birthday. And to prove it, he did the Charleston. He got up and did the Charleston to prove how young he still was. And he said that, yeah, they got his birthday wrong. And they were wrong. It was just a total fiction that it was his birthday. I don't know how they got his birthday wrong, but I thought I went looking to see what the history of that birthday was. And there are at least five different birthdays

that were attributed to Wilbert Robinson during his life. So he was sometimes at one point, he was given a birthday silverware set by his teammates and it was not his birthday, but he didn't say anything. Yeah, sure. Why not? The media, the media, he kept the gifts and then he went out and then the newspaper wrote it up the next day. And then there was the AP, different day entirely. And then there was after he died the day in his obituary. So June 2nd was the Charleston birthday where he said, it wasn't my, so June 2nd was the Charleston birthday where he said, it wasn't my birthday yesterday,

and he did the Charleston to prove that he had not just celebrated his birthday. So that was June 2nd. And one of the obits when he died said that he was born on July 2nd, which I don't know, maybe that's a transcription error from a transcription error, I'm not sure. And then there was disagreement

about whether he was born in 1863 or 1864. And he maintained 1864 and others maintained 1863. And to this very day, the Sabre bio says 1863. Wikipedia says 1863. Baseball reference says 1864. And I asked Bill Carl of the Sabre Biographic Committee, which is the final word on all this, in my opinion, and he found the birth record and it is 1864. And so this guy just lived five different birthdays over the course of his life. And I find it interesting that I care. Why would I care about this just because he was involved in baseball? I don't know who Wilbert Robinson is. Like, it's not like I have a personal connection to him.

I do not. I mean, I know Don Mattingly. I know why I was into that. I had the card. He's Don Mattingly. It was interesting to me. But why did I spend so much time on Wilbert Robinson? Just because there's a baseball connection to it.

I find that to be a very odd thing too, that just putting something, putting baseball around something makes us pay more attention to it. Yeah, that's true. Well, you might get an article out of it or at least some banter. So yeah, there's a self-motivated reason for that.

But I think anyone who's played baseball, they have some kind of connection to us more than someone who is in some other profession that we know nothing about. And he's a prominent player and manager. I mean, he's a Hall of Famer, so he's not no one. But still, it's odd and kind of quirky that he would have five birthdays. I mean, why not? If people will give you more birthdays than you actually have, why not take them? More parties, more gifts, no downside for you. Do you think there are any non-baseball fans that chew bigly chew gum? I bet yes. I bet there are probably people

who just like the taste. You think they walk into the grocery store and they go, I'm going to get the baseball one? Yeah, probably. I don't know how they would have tasted it for the first time, if not in a baseball context, but you never know, maybe you get it for Halloween or something and you develop a lifelong taste for it. Who knows? When I wrote about the Mattingly card, the researcher who I traced it all back to was Bill Haber, who was one of the founders of Sabre and also was the Topps card back writer. And afterward, I talked to his son, who called and told me more about Bill Haber's life. And he loved, when he was a kid, he loved playing baseball, as many children do. But then he got, I believe he became really badly

afflicted with, I want to say asthma, I might be getting that wrong, but I want to say he got very badly afflicted with asthma. And so he couldn't play baseball anymore. And so he instead became this incredible researcher of the game, one of the titans of baseball research, maybe the greatest biographical researcher in baseball history, just a legend, founder of Sabre. He also dedicated his life to writing baseball cards, designing baseball cards, doing the statistics on the back of baseball cards,

choosing the photographs of baseball cards, baseball, baseball, baseball. He also was a longtime collector of baseball cards baseball baseball baseball he also was a longtime collector of baseball cards he had the t206 honest wagner he had that entire set in fact and the wagner was the last card that he got to complete the set and all of those things are baseball right they're all baseball related but in no way would you naturally think well that's a substitute for being able to run around in play on a sunny day like it does not seem to have any direct connection to that physical activity that you started with and i have when i was a kid i was telling my daughter this recently, she said,

what did you love when you were nine? What was your favorite thing when you were nine? And I said, well, I had three favorite things. They were playing baseball, watching baseball and collecting baseball cards. And other than the word baseball, I don't think that I considered any, I don't think those three things necessarily had anything in common. The things that I liked about playing baseball were not the things that I liked about baseball cards, for instance. And the things I liked about watching baseball weren't really— like I didn't collect baseball cards because the cards somehow recreated the crack of the bat for me or recreated the sense of being outside for four hours eating cotton candy and hot dogs i don't know why putting baseball in front of something makes us like it so much and i've been

thinking about this with regards to things like wilbert robinson's birthday and fun facts about carnie lansford if you just told me that these were, if there was a big controversy over whether Brooks Koepka was a descendant of Sir Francis Drake, I don't think it would send me down the rabbit hole. And yet I do. Yeah. Well, baseball's your job and it's been your passion for most of your life. And it's, yeah, it's not the physical activity, but I think for me, And it's, yeah, it's not the physical activity, but I think for me, baseball has always been pretty inextricable from just the cultural aspects of baseball and the historical aspects of baseball. When I was a kid and I still played baseball and I didn't aspire to be a pro player or anything, but I liked playing. But even then, I read lots of baseball history books and I collected baseball cards and looked at the stats and the facts.

And to me, it was all just part of a piece. I mean, I guess it was for you too. So it's sort of strange that the physical activity would transfer over to anything connected to the physical activity that's not really physical at all. But to me, it's always been sort of part and parcel like baseball just as a physical thing. The reason I care about it so much more than I care about other physical activities that I enjoy is just because of the way that it's connected to the culture and the people and the stories and the history and the way that it has such significance to each of us. So yeah, it doesn't have to be that way, but it always has been that way for me do you find that going back to the baseball

songs conversation do you find that you like a baseball song because it's about baseball are you naturally more likely to like a song if you if i changed all the words to a song to be about baseball do you think you'd be more into it no Do you like baseball video games more? No. No. Okay. Do you like big league chew? I don't know that I like it more than other kinds of gum. Of bubble gum? Yeah. Do you chew sunflower seeds? No. I have at times, but it's too salty for me. Yeah. I don't know if I objectively like any of those things more, but I'm much more likely to consume them, or at least I have been throughout my life. And I was watching the plot against America on HBO, and one of the boys in it has a stamp collection that's very valuable to him. And he's like really into his stamps.

And I'm just thinking like, you know, like there was a part of me that thought how funny that people used to care about their stamp collections. You know, kids would be really passionate about their stamp collections. And of course, I was very passionate about baseball card collections. And to a dog, they look like the exact same pursuit. And yet something about putting a face on that was of a sport I recognized made me want the cards more, even though I didn't, it's not like I liked those. I wasn't a baseball card collector who liked to collect my favorite players. I liked to collect all the players that were worth money in my favorite sport. So why didn't I just collect stamps? I could have had the market in my town on stamps.

Yeah. I collected superhero cards in addition to baseball cards. I wasn't a huge comic book guy, but to some extent I was, but I liked the cards a lot. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess there's just a residual positivity associated with the thing that you love, right? And baseball cards is like, it's always been part of baseball and following baseball and the culture surrounding baseball. And it's like, you know, for you, I guess it was to some extent like a father-son thing. And so maybe it's just all of that. It just gets passed down to you. And kids like play with them, like trade them and stuff.

And I didn't really do that so much. It was more of a solitary thing, just kind of enjoying them myself. But you're right. There's nothing inherently great about it. It's like baseball video games. I guess I have been more likely to try them or to get them. I've probably had more baseball video games than other sports video games, but I don't consider baseball to be the best video game sport. I like hockey games and soccer games better just as a video game sport, even though I don't follow those sports nearly as closely. So in that case, I do kind of like the non-baseball thing better, but still, I have a lot of baseball video games that I have played and still try at least.

So anything associated with baseball, I'm at least willing to listen. So yeah, that's sort of what you're saying. Nathan Bishop had a piece at Baseball Perspective some years ago about bobbleheads and how he just, he spends the first like 800 words just ripping bobbleheads as like an aesthetic travesty. They're just really, they're ugly, they're kitschy, they're cheaply made, they are nothing but commerce, they're totally, they've become completely detached from the meaning of the thing they're meant to represent, they are a gross micro industry, etc, etc. He goes on and on and he says, then he says, I set all this up because I wanted you to have a firm

Idea in your mind where I stand on bobbleheads and now i'm going to show you a picture from my home And he has a picture of his wall that is just covered in bobbleheads baseball Baseball bobbleheads and he says there are a few boxes in the garage, too I don't even really know where they came from. I swear they multiply at night, but there they are. They sit above my desk and I like looking at them very much. This is the dichotomy of my existence and perhaps all of modern existence itself. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus said, achieving perfection involved selling all your

earthly possessions. And to that I say, I can't even get rid of the things I own and actively dislike. Emma Batchelary had a great piece a couple of weeks ago at Sports Illustrated about box breaker culture. And had you been exposed to breakers before that? Nope. Okay. So breakers are this, not that new. I guess they're having a moment. And so breakers are this, not that new. I guess they've been, they're having a moment. And so breakers are people who open boxes of baseball cards, pack after pack after pack on the internet. And then they post the video of it. And in a lot of cases, they then, you can buy a share of the box.

And if like your share might be Oakland Athletics and they'll send you all the athletics in the pack. But I've seen some, I stumbled upon breakers because I found some breaker who was accused of like basically fraud. Like he was taking all this, like all his Patreon supporters were revolting against him because the Patreons were supposed to be like getting them shares of breaks. And instead they were claiming he was, they were never getting anything. And I thought I always get sucked into a neighborhood disputes. And so I added that to

the list of articles that maybe I would write and it would have just been such a disaster. And instead Emma wrote a fantastic one about breakers. And it's a really odd thing to watch because it's just like there's I saw one video where it's just an entire hour of a guy opening packs looking for one card. And so like he has he has he had a case which was like, I don't know, 24 boxes. He's like, all right, guys, let's see if we can find the. And then he had some like jargony name for something with a hologram. He's like, let's see if we can find the and then he had some like jargony name for something with a hologram and he's like let's see if we can find it and then for an hour he just opens pack after pack and he never he almost never stops maybe one every 15 packs he pulls one out and he's like zach granky and then he like goes on and this video had 150 views So this was not a major industry that he was working on or anything

like that. And I was haunted by it. And I, in some ways, Emma's piece was so great because it explained what's happening here, like what the mechanics are of it. And so you understand how people would be invested in what the person is opening. But also there's this quote that has similarly, I just have been stuck on this quote. This is Rich Klein, a Texas man and a veteran card collector. He still remembers the first pack that he opened, 1968, Topps' third series when he was eight years old, cards that he saved and revered.

In those days, he says, it was really one of the few ways you had a physical way to see what the players looked like. And then he says, it's just fun to open. There's a joy about opening the pack, not knowing what you're getting. And the thing that it's just fun to open, he then says, it's a lottery ticket. You hope you get something really good. But on the other hand, you're not necessarily worrying about that when you're opening the package. A friend of mine introduced me to a similar thing on the internet which is people opening toys on youtube and then two and three year olds just watch for hours they just watch them open these toys and these toys are sort of like baseball cards in that you they're like packets that

involve that you open them and then you see what the toy is after you open it and so it is super baseball card like where you you don't know what you're going to get. Maybe you're going to get, I don't know, a marble or maybe you're going to get a top and they just open it and then you see the toy and then they open another one and then you see the toy and they open another one and you see the toy and the apparently toddlers are totally into this and rich klein captured that same mindset which is the same mindset that i had whenever i was collecting cards and which i still get if i open cards it's just fun to open i sometimes have been at company events at baseball perspectives company uh retreats where there's boxes of cards and you

just open them and then they just get left on the, you don't keep any of the cards and yet there's something about opening them. And I just, I, I, again, I don't think that if this were football cards, I would have any interest in it. And I don't know why it's fun for baseball cards. And I don't know why for breakers, it has to be baseball cards. I couldn't figure out at the end of this article about breakers. I still couldn't figure out why are they baseball cards? Why, why does it have to be baseball cards? Because nothing about it is like, I am obsessed with baseball faces.

I have to see them all the time. They like the, they're not, the cards don't exist to be looked at. They don't exist in any way that's like totally intrinsic, like where the sport is necessarily totally intrinsic to it. And yet you can't enjoy it unless it's something you're familiar with. Anyway, Ben. There has to be a level of recognition there though.

That's part of it. I mean, if I opened packs of football cards, unless it was like a few of the most famous players, I just wouldn't know who was good or who wasn't. I wouldn't have any idea whether this was a valuable card or not. There would get to remember each of them. I mean, if they're contemporary cards, then you're not really remembering them. They're active players, but you still do get that little flicker of, oh, I know that guy and I remember this and that thing that he did. And it's just kind of a confirmation that the world is an orderly place and you know this person and you know what uniform he's associated with. That's a big part of it. I mean, if I opened any other sports cards, it would mean very little to me just because I don't know who those people are. I don't know who the good players are. So that's all of it, right?

I mean, if we were opening baseball cards from some era of baseball, like if there were an era of baseball that you and I know nothing about, if there were some alternate baseball universe where like it was baseball, but it wasn't the league that we had ever watched, if it was like the federal league or something, and we didn't know any of those players, would that still be fun? I don't really think it would. Can you make a case for why it is fun though, that when you do know the players, I mean, if, if you, if these didn't exist and you were pitching it to me

right now, like if I'd never heard of baseball guards and you said, all right, picture this, they're little cardboard things. They're worth nothing. They come in packs of 15 and all they are is players selected at random from the Major League Baseball universe. And you're going to open them, look at them, and then immediately move on. Doesn't sound great. It doesn't sound like a very good pitch. I'd probably pass on that. But yeah, well, there probably is something to the fact that when baseball cards were introduced, and for much of baseball cards history, it really was the only time that you could see these guys, and so that and their stats weren't easily accessible. So it really was giving you

information about players that you wouldn't have otherwise. Like these would be names that you knew maybe from the newspaper, you saw the names in box scores or something. And if you had no idea what these guys actually looked like, then it would be kind of cool to see them, right? And to see them in some action pose and then to be able to flip over the card and see where they played and what their stats were like, that would be valuable. Nowadays, it's not really because you can go to baseball reference anytime you want and you can look at a headshot or you can see their stats or you can open up mlb tv and actually watch them play and i don't know if that's part of why i don't really buy cards anymore or pay attention to cards anymore but it could be even when i was a kid looking at these things, I didn't know these guys in the way that I know today's players. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to hear a good kind of explanation. I don't know. I don't even know what

field it would be that could explain why it is that it's so comforting. If you like baseball, why it's so comforting to be surrounded by baseball in any form that something immediately becomes familiar. I guess maybe it's the familiarity, the way that this thing that you like can become, I don't know, just like if there's enough stuff, then it's just like a blanket that can cover you entirely with itself. Yeah. It is weird though, because it's not like Pokemon cards or Star Wars cards or magic cards where the cards do something, you know, like they let my riches, but it does something too. Whereas baseball cards just don't do anything other than remind you of baseball, maybe inform you a little bit about baseball and then hopefully appreciate and be worth something, which, you know, they

haven't been reliably over the longterm. Lately, I've been using a baseball card as a bookmark. I had, I, all my baseball cards were in a box, the ones that I had saved after the purge. And I went through a whole bunch of them looking for like basically 1987 tops Don Mattingly or any other 87 tops. And so there were a few on my desk. There were maybe 50 on my desk.

And when I start a new book, I just grab one randomly and I'm kind of excited to see who's going to be the bookmark in that book. Like this is sort of exciting to just actually that is like opening a pack where you're like, oh, it's going to be Delino DeShields for the next couple of days until I get my index card bookmark in there. All right. Do you have anything else to say about this? I have one last thing. Well, I guess I'd just say, I don't know how you came across that Uncle Robbie five birthdays, fun fact, but I would assume that was an accident and you just kind of happened to come across it

while you were looking up something else, which is one of the nice things about doing a newspapers.com deep dive is that you come across all sorts of stuff that you would not have imagined. And I guess that still happens in more modern sources. I mean, if you're on Wikipedia or something, you can end up in a Wikipedia rabbit hole and you click one link and then it takes you to another page and that takes you to another page and you end up somewhere you never expected to be. But there is really a nice aspect to just flipping through a paper, which I don't do anymore. I don't have any papers delivered to my home. And so if I'm looking at a paper online, generally I'm there because I saw a link from Twitter or from a search result or something. And so I'm taken to that one page and maybe it'll say, here's a related article or here are our most popular articles, and that'll take me to something else unexpected. But usually it's more of a targeted search and i know what i'm going to get when i click and that doesn't really lead me to anything

else whereas when you're doing a newspapers.com search you never really know what you're going to stumble across and that's one of the nice things about it well ben this segues perfectly because this the last thing i wanted to mention is a new thing I stumbled across on newspapers.com. And it is it is the unlike Carney Lansford, Ty Cobb, and Uncle Robbie, I have failed to get an answer on this one. So this is in 1989. Now, the in modern, in modern understanding, the big moment in Cy Young voting, becoming kind of modernized and and less wins and more war kind of based was either when Tim Lincecum won with like a 13 and 12 record, I think, or when Felix Hernandez won with like something similar, like maybe 12 and 12 or something. Let's see. Felix went 13 and 12, 2010.

All right. In 1989, Oral Hershiser finished fourth. Mark Davis finished first in Cy Young voting. Mark Davis was a closer. He was a good closer that year, but he was just a closer. Led the league in saves, but had half the war of a top starting pitcher, of an A starting pitcher. And Oral Hershiser, I believe,

led the league in war. And this was the year after he had had the scoreless inning streak and won the Cy Young Award and won the World Series MVP Award and all of that. So Hershiser comes out the next year and he's just fantastic when the season begins. And then he starts to hit a little bit of a run of bad, bad run support and his numbers get slightly worse. So in the first nine starts, he had an ERA of 1.76. And then it's in the kind of low to mid twos for the rest of the year. And he ends up with an ERA of 2.31 and a 15 and 15 record. And the 15, the second 15 is key because he actually led the league in losses so felix went 13 and 12 and that's barely a winning record and and that was a lot for voters to overcome to still vote

for him and we were all excited when they did and uh i don't even know why i thought lindscombe what lindscombe is not involved in this story at all um just Felix. Felix is the only one involved in this. But Hershiser actually led the league in losses. So bold ink that year in losses. And he managed to finish fourth in Cy Young voting, which I thought, oh, wow, that's pretty early modern thinking. I mean, he didn't win, even though maybe he arguably should have, and he had the best ERA plus in the league and all that. But just finishing fourth seems pretty impressive. But then I, if you look at the voting, in fact, he finished tied for fourth. He had two third place votes and then one first place vote. So Mark Davis got 19 first place votes. Mike Scott got four first place votes. Greg Maddox finished third. He had no first place votes. Mike Scott got four first place votes. Greg Maddox finished

third. He had no first place votes. And then Hershiser. And so really, Hershiser wouldn't have finished fourth or wouldn't have finished in any sort of significant position, except that one person happened to vote for him first. So that's like a real out, like in 1989, that person's 30 years ahead of everybody else. Yeah, of course, you know, Hirshhiser was coming off his incredible legendary season when he won the Cy Young and had the scoreless streak and everything. So maybe he might have been more likely to get that vote

than some other guy who was worth seven war, but didn't have that kind of pedigree coming in. Maybe, but still. But still, I'm going to tell you one other thing about this voter who voted for Oral Alertizer first. He is the only person who left Mark Davis off. So he's the only one who did not get swayed by the saves and went with all starters.

And so in 1989, somebody was A, ahead of the game on win-loss record, and B, ahead of the game on not overvaluing closers. Because at the time, closers were winning basically every other year. So I do know who this person is, or at least I know who this person is named to be. And his name is Dennis Arcand, A-R-C-A-N-D, Arcand. And he wrote for La Presse newspaper in Montreal, apparently. Okay, that's the story. That sentence shows up in the Cy Young voting results articles at the time.

I can find no evidence that there's ever been a person named Dennis Arcand who wrote for La Presse newspaper in montreal let alone wrote about baseball there is there is a denny denny arcand d-e-n-y-s which is you know how a actual french person would spell what an american would spell right out as dennis right and and he's a famous somewhat famous famous film director, Canadian film director. And he was very often in the Montreal newspaper, La Presse. And so I like to think that maybe while directing films, they also somehow gave him a Cy Young vote. a Cy Young vote? And he voted for Oral Hershiser and left Mark Davis off his ballot entirely.

I'm guessing it's somebody else, but I can't find anybody. I can't find anybody with that name, any spelling of that name, writing about baseball anywhere ever. And I can't find anybody in La Presse, which is on newspapers.com. It's not like this is off the archive. I can't find anybody in La Presse, which is on newspapers.com. It's not like this is off the archive. I can't find that name appearing on La Presse in, again, in any spelling or really even just the last name, Arcand, in La Presse at any point for any reason other than the filmmaker. And so this is now my mystery. I need to find the voter who cast this extremely odd and convincing ballot. Yeah. Maybe it was an early Bill James acolyte or maybe he was a time traveler. But I guess Arkand is still around.

You could try to track him down. The filmmaker is, yeah. Yeah, right. So I don't know how or why it would be him. But you would think that like if there were just this one outlier voter, maybe it would be someone who was just from a different industry or something and somehow slipped in because he would be not so susceptible to the groupthink. And he would say, oh, this guy, well, he threw the most innings of anyone and he had this number of wins and he had a low ERA.

So sure, why not that guy? Whereas everyone else was saying, well, he led the league in losses and he had a low ERA so sure why not that guy whereas everyone else was saying well he led the league in losses and he didn't have the saves or whatever maybe he just didn't know what saves were and so he just went with the good starter that almost makes sense except it makes no sense that he would have to have an MVP vote I don't know why like I guess they were probably less stringent in those days about who had the votes, but probably not just like a random director. So unless like the person for La Presse who actually had a ballot,

just he was sick. He had to delegate someone else. And Denis Arcand was just in the office that day and he filled it out. Who knows? Maybe it was just a protest vote or something he just had him randomly pick it or he gave it to someone who knew nothing just to make a point but yeah now i want to know who that was all right so if you happen to be a canadian baseball fan in the 1980s and you can shed light on who was covering ball for the press did you find any

baseball writing in the press by someone else my memory is not quite fresh enough. I did all this like four hours ago. And since then, I have walked into and out of many rooms. But I don't believe I found a significant baseball presence in La Presse. But I could be wrong. I might not have searched that. Yeah. Wasn't there an Expos beat writer or something, you think? Yeah. Yeah. Huh. All right. Yeah, wasn't there an Expos beat writer or something? You'd think. Yeah. Alright, well that's a mystery. If anyone can shed some light on it, let us know.

Alright, that will do it for today and there is more good news on the international baseball front. NPD, Japanese baseball, announced that its opening day is now scheduled for June 19th, so another league will be in action in a few weeks. And it sounds like this may be a pivotal week for MLB. The owners are supposed to present their

economic proposal to the players on Tuesday. I don't know if this will be a decisive week, but one of these days we will hear whether there will actually be a season, whether the owners and the players can come to an agreement on the financials, assuming that the safety aspects are ironed out as well. So stay tuned for further developments on that financials, assuming that the safety aspects are ironed out as well. So stay tuned for further developments on that this week. And of course, we will talk about them as needed later in the week. In the meantime, you can 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 and get themselves access to some perks. Leith McAnduar, Dustin Toon, Ken Hui, Ryan, and another Ryan,

Ryan Shores. 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 Sam and Meg coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.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 find the paperback edition of my book, The MVP Machine, which includes a new afterword, as does the Kindle edition now. Check it out, let me know how you like it, and we will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Wilford. Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you Happy birthday dear Wilbur Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Wilbur. Happy birthday to you.