Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1563: The Masked Swinger

Episode Date: July 11, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Meg’s editing activities, MLB’s COVID-19 intake testing results, Buster Posey and Michael Kopech opting out of the season, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. switching positions, and the Blue Jays’ quarantine conditions. Then (19:08) they bring on Baseball Prospectus writer Shakeia Taylor to follow up on the podcast’s recent Negro Leagues […]

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Answer the questions of the test. Answer the questions of the test. Answer the questions of the test. Hello and welcome to episode 1563 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. I remember you saying some time ago that you wished that all you had to worry about was positional power rankings, right? And now you are currently worrying about them. So is it everything that you imagined it being every year ben i block out this

experience i like i know it's not good but the ins and outs of it being stressful i block out and i man it's like that reaping and sowing uh tweet from long ago. It's fine. The staff does a great job. They write a lot of very good words. They write a lot of them, Ben. They write so very many good words, and then I get to edit them. What a privilege. Yeah, it is a privilege. It is an honor. It takes a while. It's a strange exercise in our current moment just because of how much uncertainty there is about how guys who we know have tested positive for COVID are going to recover and return and whether guys who are currently on rosters will continue to be on those rosters or if they will exercise their right to opt out of the season.

And so there is some uncertainty, but it is a very familiar kind of stress. And in a year that has presented a lot of new forms of stress, none of which have been pleasant, it is welcome in that sense. So, yeah, positional power rankings coming to you live fanagraphs.com starting monday yeah monday monday monday so we have a few guests we will get to soon but just a little bit of baseball news we had a couple of prominent players opt out late this week giants catcher buster posey and white Sox pitcher and prospect Michael Kopech, two players at very different stages of their careers and very different resumes, which

just goes to show, I guess, that this affects everyone and that any player could be concerned about these conditions. So we did get a jointly released statement from MLB and the Players Association, which said that the results of the intake tests were that 1.8% of all of the samples that were tested came back positive, which I guess was not as disastrous as it might have been. Although, again, given all the testing difficulties and given how these results were released sort of prematurely last week before the tests were actually completed, I think it was Stephanie Epstein suggested that there should probably be some sort of third party here or some impartial force that could kind of monitor this stuff. in keeping the season going. And maybe those interests are different in some ways from the Players Association, but they have some interest in it too. One would hope that they're looking out

for the players' well-being, but still you would think that maybe there's a role for some other party that could kind of keep an eye on all this just to make sure that everything is being reported accurately and there's no skew to the results. But we know that a lot of players are very concerned about this, and Posey and Kopech have both decided not to play this season.

And Posey, we know his rationale is that he and his wife just adopted twins, and those twins were born prematurely, and so they're taking care of them, and that's taking up a lot of their time and attention. And Kopech, we have not heard as we record whether there's some specific reasoning or what his thinking was exactly, but maybe it's just a global pandemic. But those are two players, you know, Posey, who has made his money or a lot of money and won World Series and won MVP awards and done almost everything you can do in baseball. And Kopech, who is a lot younger and unproven and is really at the stage where you would think a player would be

very motivated to play. And so that just goes to show you anyone who doesn't play, who opts out this year is forfeiting their salary, but also opportunities. And if you're a player like Michael Kopech, that matters. He's coming off injuries and wants to prove himself and be part of that rotation. And obviously there are other things that are on every player's mind right now. Yeah, I think that it's not surprising to me that a pitcher who is recovering from Tommy John is perhaps, and again, as you said, we don't know that this is what motivated Kopech's decision that hasn't been reported as we're recording. And we, you know, we might not hear more from him as time goes on, but given sort of the uncertainty

around guys coming back and how it's going to affect pitchers arms to have ramped up and then been somewhat idle for a while and then ramp back up again and have this compressed schedule. I can completely understand how someone with his injury history is looking at it and saying, you know, it's really important that I not have additional injury setbacks. That doesn't come without sacrifice. If he's not deemed to be high risk, it's not just the salary he misses out on, it's the service time, right? So for a guy in his position, you have to imagine that that was a pretty excruciating choice to make. It's just, I think that so often, not just in the intricacies of Major League Baseball's testing for COVID-19, but just in society more generally, like small logistical

details make a really big difference in your ability to execute anything. And we tend to not appreciate those. And so while I am being a bit snarky when I say like, did anyone ask the lab if they had the capacity for this? Like, I'm not being totally snarky about it. It's a big, complicated thing. And it takes a particular kind of skill to be able to navigate all of it. And given the failures we've seen so far, I can understand guys looking at it and saying, I just don't know that I would ever be comfortable or confident that that stuff has been remedied sufficiently for me to feel safe playing. Because even when it is remedied to the point that your testing operates smoothly, you still

have a non-zero chance of contracting COVID. your testing operates smoothly, you still have a non-zero chance of contracting COVID. So it has to be a very difficult choice. I imagine difficult in different ways for these two guys, but I imagine it's difficult. Although maybe, you know, it doesn't have to be difficult. Like it could be a very clear and easy decision, even though it comes at personal cost, right? So I do think we need to be careful about how we talk about this stuff as media members because we don't want to say, well, Buster Posey and his twins, like that's a good reason to sit out. And that guy over there, he doesn't have prematurely born twins,

so his reason is bad. It's like there's a global pandemic. Every reason is a good reason to not play baseball this year. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, of course, Posey wants to play too. He can be out there under normal circumstances. And he's a player, when Jay Jaffe did a look at some of the players whose Hall of Fame cases might be affected by a shortened season, Posey was on a short list of those players. And granted, there are probably a lot of players whose Hall of Fame cases might be affected,

and we don't even really know it because they're young and they're not really close to Hall of Fame level yet. But maybe losing a full season at an early age is more costly to your eventual Hall of Fame case than missing a season at Buster Posey's stage. But when you're at Posey's stage, we can kind of see the finish line and you can see how close he is and what he might cost if he misses some time. So it's easier to make a list of those guys than other guys. But he's one of those players.

And, you know, even though he's not making the league minimum, he's making much more than the league minimum. I'm sure he still would want to be out there if it were safer to be out there. And I should also mention, I noted that 1.8% figure, but as some other people pointed out, Alex Spear said that it's worth noting that those numbers don't include players who tested positive before they reported to parks for summer camp. So Eduardo Rodriguez, for instance, tested positive in Florida, isn't included as a positive in these testing results. And Zach Binney, our epidemiologist guest from a recent episode said, what we really want to know is the number who would have tested positive at intake had everyone

been tested. That sets a baseline acceptable risk for MLB moving forward. That number is somewhere in between the number MLB reported and the total number of positives thus far. is somewhere in between the number MLB reported and the total number of positives thus far. Fun to talk about positive tests. Oh, goodness. Test results. I will take a moment to be a bit of a scold. Will you allow me to be a bit of a scold? Sure.

I think that we should all proceed in our public communication around players opting out as if our mothers, assuming you are close with your mother, or a family member whose opinion matters to you, or your significant other, or your, I don't know, regular overnight guest, whoever's opinion matters the most to you, imagine they follow you on Twitter and are going to judge your tweets. It's just a good thing to think about because these are human beings and media members who do the

I'm just asking questions posture around guys opting out. You have an opportunity to help your readers understand the stakes for players. Don't just ask questions. Help your readers answer them. Don't be that. Don't be that. I'm going to say that guy

and I'm sure that it is not exclusively a problem with men although it might be so just everyone remember that they could be your friends or neighbors and they have their own human concerns and those are valid and important and we should we should pretend that our moms follow us on Twitter and understand our tweets. My mom follows me on Twitter, but she regularly tells me, she's like, I don't understand your tweets, Mike. I don't know what this means. And that's fine. It's okay, mom.

You don't have to. But just imagine, have whatever, whoever that voice is in your life, have them on your shoulder and think about it before you hit send. Yeah. There was a bad tweet about Mr. Posey. And I never know. And I think we both struggle with this. Like, do you pay attention to the bad tweet? Do you want to amplify it?

Yeah. Do you dunk on the bad tweet? Do you quote tweet the bad tweet and say, this is a bad tweet? Or do you just ignore it? Because probably what the bad tweeter wants is for that tweet to get engagement. And most of the tweets were good tweets. Most of them are fine. among the people that I follow. So Smash Mouth tweeted

that they supported Buster Posey's decision. Not only did they support it, they supported it 110%. So that's the important thing. What did Smash Mouth say? But yeah, it's, you know, there are opinions out there that we wouldn't want to share,

but you never know whether you want to let it stand and not bring attention to it or whether you want to bring attention to it, but in order to show why it's a flawed opinion. Yeah. We get this discourse with the paternity leave discussion and decision a lot of the time. And I know that baseball is magical and we all want to think that we would do it for free, but we wouldn't because it's very taxing and you're on the road a lot and I would get very tired of room service. And so we should just remember, if you're an accountant, that you would not miss the birth of your child for like a big accountant thing. I don't know about accountants, but you wouldn't miss it. It's about to be tax day.

It's about to be tax day. It's about to be tax day. File your taxes, people. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Gosh, file your taxes. But yeah, so people, you know, just keep, try to abstract it a little bit from the field and think to yourself, would I do, would I miss X life event for my job? The answer is almost certain to be no. It's almost certain to be no. answer is almost certain to be no it's almost certain to be no and just remember if your spouse or partner or again regular overnight guest sees your sees your tweets saying i would miss the birth of my kid to play baseball they might stop being any one of those things to you because you sound like a real jerk so don't don't uh don't be a jerk everyone don't be a jerk it's such a strange

time to talk about baseball because sometimes there will be like very on-field nitty-gritty basic baseball stories that intersect with weird pandemic baseball stories like on friday there were two big blue jays stories right there was one story which is that vlad jr is switching positions so they are no longer going to try to pretend that he's going to be a third baseman he's just going to move over to first and play first or DH and that's a notable story it's something that I think people have long envisioned for Vlad Jr. and his performance at third base last year did not disabuse anyone of the notion that he is probably going to be a fielder on the other corner sometime soon.

And now we know it's very soon. It's imminent. It's right now. And that's interesting, but also interesting about the Pooch Haze was a story that circulated, which is the penalties that they face essentially if they go outside or if they leave the ballpark or their hotel just because of the quarantine act in Canada, according to some sources. And Scott Mitchell reported this, a member of TSN Sports. He said players have been told that the penalty, if seen outside of the ballpark, is a $750,000 fine and potential jail time. And Travis Shaw of the Blue Jays tweeted something about how they were told that it would only be two weeks and the whole summer is a long time. But it's something that applies to anyone who's coming and going in Canada. If you're allowed to do that they go on road trips each time that quarantine applies.

So it seems like maybe for the entire season, they will basically be under ballpark or hotel arrest pretty much. So it's like, yeah, it'd be interesting to talk about the implications for Vlad's value in his career of moving from third base to first base. But then it's also like, this is also happening right now Vlad Jr. is not just dealing with switching positions but also just like basically not being able to go outside as he plays baseball and is separated from people he would normally be associating with yeah it's a tricky challenge I think that like the approach that I have tried to take and that we have tried to take at Fang graphs has been to say, we're going to try to cover all of it. And hopefully by covering all of it and, and

confronting the realities of the danger that guys face by playing, you know, it allows us to also tell them more on field baseball stories because you want both things and both things are interesting. And I don't mean this, I hope that this is not, either does not sound like and is not actually me trying to justify something to myself, though I'm open to the feedback that it might be. The players are choosing to play. How easy and accessible the choice not to play is varies guy to guy. So I think we should acknowledge that, But they're choosing to play. They're doing so at risk.

I want to tell the story of the season that they're playing because otherwise, why are we here? But I think we also need to be clear-eyed about the risk that they are taking on by doing so. So I don't know. I hope that that balance is the right one. We're going to kind of feel our way through as best we can. But yeah, it's very notable that the Blue Jays are just admitting

that Vlad should play first base. That's a big deal. So we got to talk about that. But we also have to talk about the fact that, yeah, I guess that they're like trapped in their hotel attached to the Rogers Center. So that's sure a weird work thing. Yes, it is.

So we have a full episode for you today. I will list our segments and guests here. First, we will be talking to Shakia Taylor, who joined you on a recent episode. She is back to kind of continue the discussion that we were having last week about the Negro Leagues because she's done a lot of great writing and historical research on black baseball. And she is here to tell us about her process and the story she's found most interesting and the one she still wants to tell. Then we will be talking to Jacob Pomerenke of

Sabre. And he wrote and did research into a game in 1919 when the players wore masks on the fields. So very topical right now as we are seeing many players wear masks as they practice on the field. It actually happened for a full game, and it's this kind of weird historical quirky event that Jacob dug into, and there are photos of it. And it's really interesting and has a lot of connections to today. We talked to Shakia about making connections from the past to the present. And sometimes it's easy, like when you're talking about players wearing masks and people being upset about wearing masks because there's a pandemic. Sometimes those connections just draw themselves. And lastly, I will be having a brief conversation with Jerry Blevins,

the longtime left-handed reliever. I spoke to him for an article I wrote at The Ringer earlier this week about the three batter minimum and the Waxahachie swap, which is one of the casualties of the three batter minimum. And so is Jerry Blevins from a professional perspective in that he's one of the players most affected by that rule. So we talked about what he thinks about it and his evolution into a loogie and how it's affected his career prospects and why he has decided to take this summer off. So we will get to all of that and we'll be back in just a moment to kick things off with Shakir. Okay, and we are joined now again by Shakia Taylor. We were not done talking about the Negro Leagues and the history of black baseball, and who better to help us conclude our Effectively Wild series than Shakia.

Shakia, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Really excited to be on with you all. Well, we're excited to have you. Your work at Baseball Perspectives and the Hardball Times and other places has ranged so widely from black baseball during the Civil War to the Negro Leagues to F.M. Manley's complicated life and legacy to Reggie Jackson and Clutchness. I'm curious how you go about selecting your topics. Obviously, there are so many stories from the history of black baseball that deserve and still need telling. So how do you narrow things down and kind of come up with what you're going to write for any given piece? You know, the question sounds like I actually have a method and I wish I did. There's no rhyme or reason. There's no method. Sometimes I'm just inspired by current

events or a conversation I'm having with friends. Sometimes there'll be a conversation happening on the timeline and I'll go, oh, as you mentioned, there's so many stories that I feel need to be told. And I wish that I had all the time to just tell them all but i do feel like each piece is not just me sharing with other people but i'm learning a new thing as i go i think that drives me to each each subject to each topic yeah anything i write i'm trying to just cover it from a fresh perspective yeah and do you always look for some sort of through line to today? You mentioned wanting to comment on current events in some way. So if you come across some interesting story that doesn't necessarily connect to today, is it harder to frame that in a piece for modern readers? Or

are you pretty much always looking for a way to tie the history to the present? Well, I kind of feel like that I have to tie the history to the present. It gives people a better understanding that everything that happens isn't just happening in some sort of bubble. You know, I also think when it comes to certain pieces with regard to race and culture, that those connections help. They help people grow. They help people with their understanding. They help people see that none of these things happened that long ago. And I think time skews the way people view things. So the way I write them is to kind of bring it back to you. This happened in your grandparents' lifetime. This happened in your parents' lifetime. Well, sometimes I do get a little stuck if I can't find the connection,

but I wait. I let the peace come to me as opposed to me pushing it out. Yeah. I was going to ask you how you think the average fan's understanding, or maybe perhaps unfortunately, more likely for many white fans, their lack of understanding of the Negro Leagues and the segregation and racism that the league's players face and continue to face when many of them made the jump to the majors affects their perspective on where Major League Baseball is today when it comes to issues of racism and how far it still has to go to make the game accessible and equitable, both for players and for fans. That is right along there with what I was just saying,

honestly. It's time. And it's extremely recent. And I think one thing that the average fan or even the not so average fan doesn't seem to consider is that integration did not cause racism and other issues to immediately evaporate. I feel like we often approach it from the perspective of this long ago thing, this like monster in the past, that we're still dealing with the effects of it, but it's not really real. When racism isn't the monster under your bed

and your parents can come and tell you a story about it. It's very real. It's still here. I don't like to do the one form of oppression is bad or better than the other. It's all bad. It's still there. It's just a little quieter. The execution is different. Yeah. Yeah. And you always bring a lot of rich historical detail to whatever you work on and you're a meticulous researcher, but it's not always easy to uncover that information as we talked to Larry Lester about last week and Bob Kendrick.

So what are some of the sources that you rely on to go back to that material and bring it forward to today? I rely heavily on black newspapers. I rely heavily on Black newspapers. Some of the best information I have found in the last few years of me writing has been there. A lot of the stuff that I find, I need to corroborate. Meg, you know how I am about it personally. I will dig and dig and dig. And if I find one sentence that doesn't match or a fact that doesn't make sense, I keep going. And the Black newspaper, the Black press, the Black writer, extremely important throughout the history of sports, period. Not just baseball, but period. And if you go back and you look at your Chicago Daily Defender, for example, I have a slight bias, obviously, because I live in Chicago

and have for the last 20 years, but it's one of the great Black newspapers. There are so many people who we look to as heroes now, like Rube Foster and Jackie Robinson, who actually wrote op-eds in the Black press. They used the Black press to get the message across that they wanted to to the people they wanted to get it across to. Even in the Black press to get the message across that they wanted to, to the people they wanted to get it across to. Even in the founding of the Negro Leagues, if you look a little closely, you'll see that some of the initial members of the board, so to speak, were members of the press. Rube Foster knew that if he wanted to advance his league, if he wanted to get the word out, if he wanted to put it in the public, that the press was the way to go. And I still say that that is still one of the best ways

in my experience of finding my research. I reach out to members of the press who I know, or researchers who are Black, because sometimes the resources are just different. Sometimes you don't think to reach out in these places. And I want to say to anyone who wants to start digging, shout out to the library. All of these non-existent resources are still there. These papers, a lot of them don't exist anymore, but the libraries have made them available. And sometimes I'll find myself looking super hard and my brain will go, you know what? Just check the library. I miss the library. I mean, I know a lot of the online resources are still accessible, but the branches in New York have been closed for months and I do miss just going there and checking it. It's a great place. Yeah. Well, Shakia, I can personally say as someone who has edited you that meticulous research is always appreciated by editors.

It's never, ever a bad thing. Sloppiness is far more common, although not for any of our writers at Fangraphs, I should say. They're all very careful too. I'm curious, you know, you've talked about some of the resources that the Black Press provides in looking at the Negro Leagues and Black baseball history sort of more generally. But I'm curious how much of an obstacle to the preservation of that history you found it to be that those leagues were not as well covered by contemporary writers as white baseball was, at least among press that focused mostly on white baseball that was probably mostly white press. I feel the information is out there.

It may not just all be in one neat and tidy location. Yeah. I've spent hours searching sometimes for something and I think the inability to view the immediate importance of the league at its time by the white press has definitely made it very difficult to find things. But the Negro leagues are becoming talked about more widely in baseball circles, which is helping bring a lot of the information out. But much of the preservation, I would

say, is still in the hands of the families of those who played the game. And it's kind of highlighting something that I've been thinking about for a little while, that it's important that we as individuals within our own families create our own archives. Because the more I write and research on this, I'm really learning the importance of archives. There was a story in the Chicago Reader a few weeks ago by Ariane Nettles, and she wrote on archivists documenting movements, particularly African American movements. And I think the Negro League falls as a Black movement. Maybe we're so far removed from it that we don't view it that way, but if we view it in that lens, the Negro Leagues was a revolutionary act. The

formation was revolutionary. It went against, quote, the norm, if you will. So I think if we could encourage a lot of families, particularly Black ones, to save things, share things, archive things, take pictures, those newspaper clippings of your grandpa winning that baseball game, it matters. It all matters. I had a really difficult time with Effa Manley. Yeah. I reached out to Cooperstown and it was a dud. They're like, this is all we have.

And it was pretty much a PDF. Stuff like that is important. And because the league wasn't viewed the way it should have been in real time, we're now having to scramble to find information. Yeah, and there are ways that I guess we might not even realize sometimes that some of that history is inaccessible

in a way that we take for granted with white players. Like I was reading something earlier today by Mark Armour, who's on Sabre's Baseball Cards Research Committee. And it was all about how there are just no baseball cards or next to no baseball cards for players for decades and decades. And, you know, we know about the famous Honest Wagner cards, and there are just no real equivalents for the black players of that time. And, you know, Mark Rigg wrote earlier this week about the attempts to save Hinchcliffe Stadium, one of the last remaining Negro League parks. And

granted, a lot of the old major league parks are gone too, but you don't necessarily get that same experience with black baseball. And it's just kind of that cultural connection that we sort of take for granted doesn't necessarily apply it. Those artifacts aren't really there or aren't part of our lives in the way that the white baseball artifacts are. No, absolutely. I think the shift, honestly, from written to things being on a screen to technology also has affected the way we save things, the way we preserve information. If we can't get it on our hard drive, we probably throw it away. I think about that often. I have a couple of baseball cards currently, and I have none of the cards I had as a kid. None of them. Because it became

bulky. As adults, we move, and things can't live in our parents basements anymore or maybe that's just my mom every now and then she'll be like you know you have these baseball cards in this cabinet and i just try to put it off because i kind of want to keep them there but that's her way of telling you to hurry up and get them or you're going in the trash. But yeah, it's just, it's, I think there's so many different factors in the preservation of information, right? And some of the joy, honestly, is in the long form. Look at how many people still love keeping score at a game. It's the same thing. We have to kind of keep the joy in the long form, like teach kids to enjoy these baseball cards. I do think that there's

a disconnection with Black players due to the lack of cards on them, due to the lack of, you know, like hype, if you will. We're not talking about them in the way that we probably could, and we don't always speak about them on the joyous things, right? There's so many times where a player gets really excited and they're, you know, that's not how you play baseball. You're supposed to be really, really stoic. So when you stifle personalities, technology, there's so many different factors to it. Yeah, I think that one of the other factors that you've talked about, at least on Twitter, is the detrimental effect that white scholars and white scholarship and the gatekeeping that goes on there can have on which baseball stories get told, often to the detriment of Black baseball stories. The incomplete historical

record presents its own challenges, but I'm curious what stories you think we're losing now because of the dearth of Black voices in baseball writing and how it affects our understanding of the game's past and present're just not getting a complete story or we're getting a very watered down version of it that is meant to appeal to a broad audience, which I think is what we often say when we mean a white audience. So what else are we losing, do you think, right now? As a Black writer, whenever I write something Negro Leagues related, I've noticed it's primarily white scholars, white writers, white men who sort of think they own the history. And I can completely understand and appreciate them having a respect for it, wanting to learn it, wanting to share it. But respectfully, it's not their history. It's not their story to tell. And that's not to say that they can't be interested,

that they can't study, that they can't contribute, because these stories need to be told like desperately. They need to be out there. And I'm a believer that we can't move forward without understanding and looking to our history. But it gets frustrating when white writers and scholars are constantly trying to sort of, I don't know, whether intentionally or not, control the information, because then it becomes very sanitized. It lacks a certain cultural understanding that it's not their fault for not having it, but it is something they should consider. I've actually seen someone on Twitter argue that because they've spent a good amount of time interviewing Negro League players, that they have an elevated understanding of the Negro League.

And I'm like, how? That doesn't make any sense. Like, I'm never seeking to divide when I bring these up. I just want people to understand that there's so much more to it. And I'm always trying to remind people that the Black voices are critical to the heart and soul of this whole thing. It was literally Rube Foster's mission to make a place for Black people to enjoy baseball. And I think that gets lost when I understand baseball fans are super, super passionate and they really feel a way and they want to connect to this. But at the same time, pause, take a second, think about what you're saying. Think about what you're doing when you're dismissing, like just the levels, the nuance of what it was like to be a Black person, a Black player, you know, in the 1920s,

in the 1930s, in the 40s, today. I don't think they have that. And so it will always come off as like a detached form of storytelling. Yeah. And that sort of leads into this question, which is something that we asked Bob last week. But when you talk about the Negro Leagues, they have these two sort of inseparable legacies One is that these were incredible ballplayers And we should appreciate their skill at playing this game But then there's also the legacy of the racism And the segregation that forced the creation

Of a separate league in the first place So it's important to acknowledge those realities of the era On the other hand, many of those players just had really incredible careers and were remarkable talents and should be remembered for that too. So how do you think about balancing and engaging with those two things in your writing? They're incredible, but often overlooked and forgotten. And I feel like I don't need to do much work to highlight the positives about them because it's there, it exists. They are great players. They were great players. But I think it's important to try not to focus too, too hard on the racism and just bring to light that they existed. They lived, they thrived in spite of it. that they existed, they lived, they thrived in spite of it. That's the thing that I find brutally important,

particularly at the current juncture in history. Like every Black person deals with racism in some way. So we should focus less on the racism or the racist acts per se, and maybe focus more on the Black joy, the Black triumph, the success, the comeback stories. And I try to treat every person's story with care. I view them as ancestors. They're important.

Like, many of them have passed on or returned to the earth, but like, it's my goal and I feel like it should be everyone who writes about them's goal to make sure that their memories remain and are celebrated. We don't have to stick so hard on the endurance part of it. They went through so much. Yes, they did. But look at all the other things that they experienced. And I think a lot of people view the Negro Leagues through the lens of Black pain, right? And struggle. Like, oh, this league had to be created out of whatever, when instead of being like, hey, this league was created at a period in time where the Harlem

Renaissance was going on, where creativity and culture in the Black community was huge. We don't talk about that. We talk about the circumstances under which it needed to happen as opposed to all these great things out there. We don't see these players looking sad in their photos. They look happy. They look happy to be playing baseball. And I think it's important that we talk about that too. question that we put to Bob and Larry last week, which is, are there any particular players that you have a soft spot for who you wish got greater recognition? Players who maybe don't have the name recognition of a Satchel Paige or a Josh Gibson or a Cool Papa Bell? I'm going to throw a monkey wrench in here, you guys. Oh, do it. I'm going with the ladies, all the ladies. Wonderful.

Period. I'm going to start with olivia taylor i mentioned her in my piece at the hardball times on the negro league's grave marker project she was actually an owner a decade earlier than effa manly her husband was the owner of the indianapolis abc clowns and his family was pretty much like black baseball royalty, Candy Jam, Ben, Johnny Taylor. Anyway, her husband died in 1922. Olivia ran the team for four years before it folded. But we don't hear about her. Yeah.

She was even buried in an unmarked grave. Like, I think she should be talked about. I think we should be learning about Olivia Taylor too. And she's super unheard of. And then I feel like the importance of women in the history of baseball, just period, goes super understated, right? Connie Morgan, Mamie Johnson, Toni Stone, they could get far more attention than they do. Because at a time when baseball was both racist and sexist right like Negro League baseball had female owners and then players I feel like we should stay in a somewhat progressive League right yeah like they were somewhat progressive I'm positive there was

still sexism in the Negro League but the very fact that when there was no place for them to play, even with other women, they weren't even allowed to play with white women, that they were able to find their place there. So I think the women of the Negro Leagues, from top to bottom, deserve more recognition. the next question we were going to ask, which is, are there any particular areas that you think are still underexplored or that are particularly difficult to illuminate? Or when you've written things in the past, are there certain research questions that you've really wanted to answer that you haven't been able to, or maybe pieces that you haven't quite been able to write because there's still something that you want to know that we just don't have the answer to. Oh, my gosh. Well, as far as the eras, I really think, you know, people should be talking more about the efforts in Ohio regarding Moses Fleetwood Walker as an Ohioan. I feel like I have to shout that out as often as possible because that's such a big deal.

I also think there's room for more discussion on Black baseball during times of war. I was re-watching Forever Brothers, the story of the 71 Pittsburgh Pirates a couple nights ago. And there was a minor mention that I kind of was intrigued by of Black soldiers playing baseball during the war in Korea. Because everyone had a feeling then, right, about something social, racial, political. But the soldiers played baseball together, though they were segregated for everything else. Isn't that really intriguing? Like, people are willing to lay down their whatever beliefs for a game of baseball. I also think that honestly, there's more room to discuss the significance

of more modern era Black players, current players. Many of them are still alive and there's still so few stories out there about them. I would love those stories to be out there. If anybody wants to talk to me, I would love to do that. It doesn't have to be a sad story. It doesn't have to be the race story. It could just be their baseball story. I love origin stories. Any of those would be great.

Could you talk a little bit about the Moses Fleetwood Walker efforts that you mentioned? Okay, sure. So Moses Fleetwood Walker, for those who may not know, but I'm assuming most of you do because you're all very smart people um he is credited with actually being the first black man to play in mlb before jackie robinson and this was like a significant before the conversation has always been that there was no color barrier then there was no color barrier. Then there was a color barrier. Then there wasn't, you know, this back and forth thing, but he was born in Ohio and he died in Ohio. And there is an effort there to have him recognized with Moses Fleetwood Walker Day. There's a mural of him on a wall. I believe it's in Toledo. Don't quote me on that. But there's been a massive community effort to

just get this man's name out there. And a lot of people view it as like an anti-Jackie thing, but it's more of a correction of history. And I like it honestly, because then it takes away MLB's white savior story because it's like, hey, actually, this happened before you did this thing. And let's talk about that. It's a great story. Honestly, it's a great story. If this becomes like a very public thing, I think it could be huge. It might be a nice lead into our next question, which is you tweeted recently about having enough ideas to write a book or perhaps multiple books about black baseball history, which as you've noted, preceded the Negro Leagues and has continued since they stopped operating. Do you think there would be more industry obstacles to

making that a reality than there would be for like another book about Babe Ruth or the Yankees, of which, you know, I'm sure we've had enough by this time. And what, what would you want to, what would you want to write about if you were going to give a book-length treatment to Black baseball history? I feel like this is like a trick question because, okay, so ever since I tweeted that, that tweet got so much more attention than I expected. That's one of those tweets that I kind of meant

to fly under the radar and it didn't. It was like, oh no, what have I done? I have always wanted to be a writer, okay? Like little Shakia used to write her own birth story. I was telling my coworker this and she thought it was so weird, but I'll share it anyway. When I was little, I wanted to be a writer and I wrote like very detailed descriptions of what it was like the day I was born, except I viewed myself as like a demigod. Like I wrote stuff like the earth shattered and lightning struck and blah, blah, blah. And my mom mom's like where the hell do you think you came from and it wasn't that i didn't know you know how babies are born or made or whatever it's just i guess in my own little way i view myself as some different being that being said i do have ideas

for books and i've always had like a knack for storytelling. I think successfully breaking into publishing is difficult on its face, no matter what you're writing about. But I do think there's a market and maybe even a need for more baseball books, particularly about Black players. We don't need them to be, I keep saying this, we don't need them to be books about race, but books about people. Even 360 views of their life, essays on the time, essays on moments in baseball. Like, I will say this,

baseball fans are avid readers. I get so many people asking me what book I'm referring to, can I share what books I'm reading? And I'm not really a sharer of books because people always want to give me recommendations. But I think we have to make these kinds of books available for them. Not everyone is going to be a me and they want to go crate digging and read old newspaper clippings for hours and hours. And I don't want to tell too much, but I do have ideas for books. I would love to write some sort of, I don't want to say comprehensive because that would be like an encyclopedia, but something on, you know, the Harlem Renaissance to now and African-American sports writers and their impact because it's huge. Integration happened because writers kept complaining, right?

The Boston Red Sox, especially them being the last ones, it really took Black media hammering at them. And I think, you know, Meg kind of alluded to it earlier, the dearth of the Black sports writer in baseball is something we don't talk about and we should. And there's so many great stories out there that show how important they are to the sport, full stop. Yeah. And when you wrote about black baseball during the Civil War and its role as a precursor to the civil rights movement, you started that piece by saying, for many, the conversation of black baseball and civil rights begins and ends with integration, the hardships endured by Jackie Robinson as he broke the color barrier along with the slow march

to integrate other greats of the Negro Leagues occupies much of the popular imagination. But the story is much older than that. And as we were just discussing, it's also newer than that. There's recent black baseball history that is maybe undercover too. So if we haven't touched on any of the older history that you think should be brought to light, I'd be interested in that. But also maybe what are some of the more recent stories that we should be paying more attention to? When CeCe Sabathia retired, I definitely, I shed a thug tear, right? And I think baseball at large

doesn't view him the way they should, right? They view him as he's large, larger than life. His personality is very booming, but CeCe Sabathia is majorly important to African-American baseball fans. Like just so important. When I wrote that piece, I felt a way, like hearing that he was no longer going to be playing anymore because he started playing baseball when I was about to graduate well started playing in major leagues when I was about to graduate high school I am not high school age anymore

very relatable for all of us and that's so time. And if you listen to like the younger players, they love him. They talk about him. That video that went around with him and Tim Anderson being interviewed, that was the, that's the kind of content we need. We, we need to talk to these African-American legends and other, you know, legends of the game who are still here with us. They can tell us things. They can share things in a way that we would never be able to know. I think we have to move past this whole idea of appreciating people after they're dead. Give them their flowers while they're here. So there's so many guys who, I mean, honestly, I would probably listen to somebody give me a good 30 or 40 minutes on Tim Anderson's life and times and what he's thinking from day to day. I actually spoke to him at Sox Fest earlier this year, and he's fascinating.

He thinks like, I don't know, like in almost like rap lyrics. It's so cool listening to him talk and everything is very poetic. I find that to be super intriguing. I don't know, you could, there could be stories on like the Black Latino players, right? The ones we don't really hear from because everyone acts like it's so hard to get a translator or that these guys speak, you know, like there's so much there i had such a good time talking to these guys that i think just going around and being like what's your experience to current players is would be a fantastic story there's just so much there we we don't have to live in the past but i do think it's important that we make those connections

so you said you get a lot of people asking you for recommendations of what to read. So I guess we can be those people. And we will link to some of your work that we've touched on today, too. But have there been any particular pieces that have been really eye-opening for you over the years or books even or things to watch, too? Oh, man. This is such a trap. things to watch too. Oh man, this is such a trap. So admittedly, I haven't been doing too much leisure reading lately. I've been doing a lot of digging. I have some ideas and before I pitch anything, I spend way too much time trying to figure out if this is worth pitching. A book that

I share all the time, I'm sure you guys have heard me mention it, is After Jackie. I love it. I love it. I think it's one of those books that it gives you an idea of the things that you don't think about when we talk about Jackie Robinson. It talks about all the players who came after him, not all, a significant amount. And it also mentions those who maybe should have been before him, but that's a story for another day. I recommend that a lot. Any book on Effa Manley, I would recommend just because I want other people to be as frustrated as I am. She did not leave any information. She lived her life as a great mystery. And she even wrote a book on herself. I would recommend that. I would also recommend Strongly.

But I say this with a caveat. I recommend it strongly, but I don't think people should take it and internalize it. And that is when baseball isn't white, straight, and male. There's some interesting stories in there. There are things that we talk about now in the present day that are referenced in this book. It's only like six years old, but there's a story in there about Barry Bonds. And I should stop calling it a story because it's really an essay, but it's about Barry Bonds and the pursuit of death. And it talks about how Barry was disparaged by writers because they felt he wasn't kind, because they felt he wasn't nice.

There are many reasons to dislike Barry Bonds, and I would never say that someone should love him. But I do find the language choices to be interesting. It actually names some current sports writers and will make you raise your eyebrows like, oh, wow. But I think it'll give people perspective on just the way you view things, the lens through which you view things is important. Well, as your digging results in pieces, people can find you on Twitter at Curly Fro. Shakia, thank you so much for joining us. We'll have you back soon. Thanks for having me.

All right, we'll take a quick break now, and we'll be back with Jacob Pomnicki to talk about the 1919 Mass Game. Look, it'd be longer than I could defend Cause if you're telling a story At some point you stop But stories don't end Stories don't end. No stories don't end. Well, in the past week, we have seen players like Mike Trout and Fernando Tatis Jr. model masks on the field and in Zoom calls even.

We've heard Tatis say, I just feel it's more protection. I feel my boys are protected from me if something happens or from each other. I just feel it's more protection. I feel my boys are protected from me if something happens or from each other. I just want to feel more safe all the way around. He also said, sometimes I forget it's on there. It's not going to bother me at all. Cody Bellinger chimed in to say, I don't think it's a hassle to wear a mask. If your breath stinks, it sucks, but it just means you brush your teeth a little more. Helpful advice. We also heard Mark McGuire said, I think the players should play with them on. You'll learn how to do it. They did it back in 1918 during the flu pandemic, and not a lot of players got sick. A few of them did, but not a lot of them. Obviously, that was the flu. We're dealing with something a lot worse than the flu. We can fact check McGuire on a couple points there, but his point is that players should wear masks during games, and there is some small precedent for this actually happening. And to talk about that,

we are joined now by Jacob Pomeranke, who is the editorial director for Sabre. He has joined us before to talk about the Black Sox scandal, but today we're going to be talking about another aspect of 1919. Welcome back, Jacob. Thanks for having me on, Ben. So before we get to the mask game that you researched and detailed, I want to back up a bit and just ask a little bit about the impact that the 1918 pandemic had on baseball or the lack of an impact in some ways. So can you summarize what the effect was and why it maybe wasn't as large as people might assume?

Well, the 1918 baseball season was very, very weird because you've got this one-two punch of the end of World War I and then a global influenza pandemic. The first wave of the flu hit around the spring of 1918, but it was mostly confined to military camps around the world. It wasn't really hitting the civilian population too much. So the baseball season really was not impacted very much by the flu in 1918. There was a much greater impact because of World War I. That was the the black cloud that was hanging over the game and the US government instituted a work or fight order for baseball players. You had to join the military or join a

defense industry job. And that's what cut the season short in 1918. And it was very, very fortunate for baseball that the season ended early in the September around Labor Day, because that's when the second wave of the flu hit. And it was much more lethal, and many more people died in the fall of 1918. But by then, baseball was over. So they largely were able to avoid a huge impact because of the flu. You saw a few players get sick. There's some rumors around that Babe Ruth actually got sick with the flu in the spring of 1918, but he was able to come back.

And not a whole lot of players got sick in 1918. The flu really didn't have a huge impact. It was the war that kind of hung over the game during that time. And what was the process like for you as you were researching this piece? I think as people read it, the thing they'll be most struck by is the photography. So how did you go about digging up and resting these photographs from the archive and finding the rest of your citations for this? So these photographs are fascinating. They're very haunting images of this baseball game that was played in California with flu masks. All the players, the umpires, all the fans in the stands were wearing cloth masks and watching this baseball game being played.

were wearing cloth masks and watching this baseball game being played. And I was interested to find out, first of all, you know, what happened, why this game even took place in January of 1919. Turns out that it was a winter league game in California. And the California Winter League was fascinating. It was actually an integrated baseball league. There were black teams throughout most of its history playing against white players. And unfortunately, this year, particular year, it was all white teams. throughout most of its history playing against white players and unfortunately this year particular year it was all white teams so there it wasn't not an

integrated game but a lot of major leaguers went out to California to play in the Winter League and this is the circumstances for for how this game came about the again the baseball season the regular season ended in September of 1918 and then a Winter League season started in october well this is when that second wave of the flu pandemic hit and all throughout the fall and winter of 1918 1919 the winter league was canceling its games because of outbreaks of the flu in southern california and so the the teams that were involved in this uh in this game from pasadena and La Habra, California, they did play about eight or nine times, but they had to cancel just about every other week because of the flu.

And finally, they were able to play at the end of January in this game. And the city of Pasadena had established a strict ordinance on wearing flu masks outdoors about one week before this game. And the managers of the teams decided that they wanted to continue playing ball, but follow the law, and they would have everybody wear flu masks. And it's kind of this almost absurd spectacle to have everybody on the field and off the field wearing masks, you know, for this game. And they invited some photographers out. It turned into kind of a PR opportunity for the Winter League to play this game. But the photographs are very haunting to watch baseball being played while this pandemic is going around. Yeah. How did you first come

across those images or where? You know, the photos are actually on the Getty Images wire and a couple other news outlets have used them in recent months to talk about sports being played in you know during a pandemic and so I had seen the photographs around but all the photographs if you check the wire services if you check the New York Times other places that have used these photos nobody has ever identified the people involved and so that was what really got me searching was to try to figure out who these players were, who the umpire was in the most famous photograph

of the batter's box. You've got a left-handed batter and a catcher kneeling down and then an umpire behind them and they're all wearing flu masks. And so I was trying to figure out who they were and what happened with this game and why it took place and who was involved. And it turns out that it was a ton of major leaguers that were on both teams that were

out there playing winter ball in California. Of course, this is decades before Major League Baseball moved west with the Dodgers and the Giants. And so California was the home to a lot of players during the offseason. They just continued to play ball during the offseason. This was a popular pastime that would draw a couple thousand people every weekend to watch these games.

And so, seeing these photographs, I just, I wanted to find out more about it. And I just, I started digging in. I had some help from the Los Angeles Public Library and the University of Southern California out there, trying to find out a little bit more about these photos. And you just start digging in and finding some of the old articles in the newspapers about these winter league teams which were covered pretty well

by the local papers and i had i had help from tom schieber at the baseball hall of fame in cooperstown uh who's one of the best photo identification experts in the world and and he was able to help me he's been on the show to talk about how he does that. It's a mystical, magical. Absolutely. And, uh, and so he was able to help me, uh, start narrowing down who these players might be and identifying, uh, who was on the field that day. And so we were able to come up with a pretty good identification for, for most of the players on, in those photographs. Yeah. I was going to ask you for the folks who haven't had a chance to read the piece yet, who are some of the notable names that they might recognize who participated in this particular game?

Well, this is where my expertise of the Black Sox scandal comes in handy here, because Chick Gandel and Fred McMullen, two of the White Sox players who got wrapped up in the Black Sox scandal later that year, in October of 1919, were involved in this game. They were on opposing teams and there were other players like Frank Schellenbach, another White Sox pitcher, Irish Musial of the Philadelphia Phillies, his brother Bob played for the New York Yankees with Babe Ruth in the 20s, fairly famous at that time. And then there were other major leaguers from the Pirates, from the Reds, the Tigers, the

Braves, other teams. So you've got a ton of major league players out there. So this was a bunch of names that people would have recognized at the time playing winter league ball every weekend throughout Southern California. And you mentioned that this became a bit of a PR sensation. So what was the contemporary response like? What did people think of this? Was it just a sideshow or a spectacle? Or was it something that actually set a positive example for people? Was it considered something that could be done again? And was there any need to do it again? Well, this was a one-time exhibition and it really was kind of an absurd spectacle. We don't know how many fans showed up for this game, but they were all sitting in very close quarters, which is not exactly the best public health guidelines for what we want to see during a pandemic. But no, it was a one-time spectacle because the city of Pasadena lifted its mask order about a week later.

And the outbreak kind of had died down a little bit bit and the infection rate was decreasing throughout California. This was toward the end of the third and final wave of the flu at that time. And so once the city lifted its order, the very next week they started playing ball again just like normal. And, you know, just like today, you had a lot of people who were not very interested in wearing flu masks outside, that were not interested in following the public health guidelines. You had the so-called anti-mask leagues that would, you know, storm into public gatherings without wearing masks and be very angry and protest the idea that the government could order you to do this. And so, you know, there are a lot of similarities to how human beings have reacted

to public health crises. And, you know, what happened in 1918 and 1919 is very, very similar to how, you know, certain segments of society have reacted today, you know, in the middle of the current pandemic. Yeah, it's hard not to read your piece and see a lot of very sad and sort of dispiriting parallels between our current moment moment where the losses were obviously very significant, but people, as you said, were still sort of bristling and in some cases being very agitated and angry about the requirement to wear a mask. Do you have a sense of whether players and officials saw themselves as having any kind of an obligation to sort of model good behavior to those who were in attendance or who might read about the game after? I know you said that the ordinance was lifted, but I imagine that,

you know, there was still some concern that there might be further resurgence of the flu after this. So what was the players sort of perspective on what they ought to do to sort of help encourage others to make good choices? No, I really wish that we had their perspective. I wish that reporters had asked them what they thought because we know what a player like Mike Trout thinks about playing and the risks that he has to take. And his wife is pregnant, and this is something that might affect their family

if he is away and has to travel and play baseball. We don't know what players like Chick Gandel or Shoeless Joe Jackson or anybody 100 years ago thought because nobody asked them. So I really wish we did have their perspective because baseball players are human beings too, and sometimes fans forget that. But the flu pandemic in 1918 affected these guys just as much. There was a player by the name of Carl Sawyer. His wife and baby girl died in October of that year, just a couple months before the flu mask game.

Frank Schellenbach and a couple other players contracted the flu in December, and they were forced to miss a couple games. So, you know, the flu pandemic did affect baseball. And this is something that, unfortunately, you know, we don't know what the players thought about this and the risks that they had to take. I have talked before about some of the Black Sox players. You know, two of them had pregnant wives, just like Mike Trout during the 1919 season. And, you know, so they had children in their families, you know, who might have gotten sick. It was something that, you know, everybody had to gotten sick. It was something that everybody had to think about. This was something that affected everybody.

So we're hearing about it now because we have a lot more access to these players. So we know what they think about the risks. And we're seeing news reports trickle in every single day and players are expressing their concern. They have ways of expressing their concern that they didn't really have 100 years ago through the media. So it's very interesting to get that perspective. And I think it would be foolish to think that players 100 years ago didn't think about this stuff.

I'm sure they did, just like we do. So I would love to know what they thought about all this and get their perspective on it. Unfortunately, we have to speculate and find out. And, you know, back then they didn't have a players union to negotiate on their behalf. They didn't have any way to, you know, opt out of their contracts and say, hey, we're, you know, this is too risky. We're not going to play. They kind of had to take it or leave it. And if the owner said there's going to be a season, we're going to have some

games. They really had no choice. So that's one of the biggest differences between the pandemic 100 years ago and what we're facing today. Even Babe Ruth is believed to have contracted it, right? If not twice, at least once. At least it was reported that he had symptoms that were consistent with it and was weakened for some time with the flu. So it affected even him.

And I am curious also about the game itself. How did the game go? Were there indications that players were affected in one way or another by the masks? You know, it wasn't very well reported on how they felt, but as far as playing the game and if there were any complications, the game itself was very high scoring, and it went into extra innings. It was a 10-9 game, and Chick Gandel ended up getting the game-winning hit in the 11th inning. So that was amusing to anyone who understands the Black Sox scandal that was to come. But, yeah, no, it was a high-scoring game,

just like a lot of the Winter League games. Pitchers typically are not giving 100% in games like this. So whether or not the batters or the pitchers had more trouble playing with masks, again, I wish we had their perspective. I wish somebody had asked them what it was like to play. Because we've seen Mike Trout running the bases in a flu mask. And again, somebody can go ask him what that what that feels like but nobody asked Chick Gandal what it was like to step to the plate wearing a flu mask in 1919. I guess you'd probably have

some other questions for him first if you had a chance to talk to him. Oh yeah I'd love to get that exclusive interview one day maybe maybe at the Field of Dreams game we'll see. Right. This obviously came in January of 1919 and you've already noted the ways in which organized baseball at the time was different than it is now. And this was the Winter League and not the majors. But just throughout the experience of the pandemic, was there a sense of sort of existential dread on behalf of the sport like we've seen as we've kind of navigated COVID-19, because, you know, some of that is obviously attributable to the labor situation. But I think there has been great concern about sort of the future of organized

sports and the capacity we're going to have to get fans close together to sit and enjoy a game. So how did the press at the time sort of talk about the future of baseball in the midst of this pandemic? Well, you know, I think anybody that has followed baseball media really for the last 150 years has heard the cry of, you know, is baseball dying? And that was true 100 years ago as well, because like I said, the 1918 season was very, very weird in that you had this one-two punch of World War I and the flu pandemic that was silently killing millions of people around the world. And so there certainly was a little bit of an existential crisis. And even in other sports that were popular, horse racing and boxing and college football and hockey, there's a prominent NHL player who died after the Stanley Cup finals because

of the flu in 1919 as well. You know, so you certainly had people talking about, you know, what sports is going to be like. But as we've also seen, fans typically have a short attention span and a short memory for these things. And once the games return, generally, you know, fans are ready to start cheering again and, you know, try to block out the real world as much as possible. And so once the games resumed in 1919, there really wasn't a whole lot of talk about the flu, unless somebody happened to get sick. But back then, just as now, you've got young, you know, who are in pretty prime physical condition. And so the ballplayers themselves, the ones that people noticed, were not the ones generally getting sick from the flu.

And, you know, that may or may not prove to be true now as well with COVID-19. So, you know, fans themselves started, you know, going back to the games. Teams had a set attendance records in 1919. to the games. Teams had a tent set attendance records in 1919. And so, you know, by the time the summer and the fall of 1919 happened and a new season had been played, you know, most fans were ready to forget about, you know, kind of the horrible off season when everybody was dealing with this pandemic and the aftermath of World War One. They were ready to get, you know, get on with it, cheer for cheer for their favorite players and teams, and not think too hard about what had happened. You have some newspaper images in here,

like Carl Sawyer wearing a mask with Doc Crandall's dog, who was also wearing a mask. And you found that there was this series of articles across the country that published these photos of the players wearing masks and asked people to try to identify who they were, which can have been easy at the time, even if they weren't wearing masks, because it's not like anyone had MLB TV and immediately recognized every player if it wasn't someone that you could go see in your backyard. So what kind of pieces did you see in subsequent weeks about this? And did people seem to have fun with it? You know, it was interesting because the photographs, again, are very haunting images.

And when the photos of this Flumass game started circulating around the country, a couple weeks later, they hit the wire services and appeared in a lot of different newspapers. It was this fascinating spectacle that people were trying to figure out why this game happened. And so the photographs have lived on for 100 years, and people have been fascinated by these photos. And lots of news outlets over the last 100 years have used them. But it's fascinating to see why these photos continue to hit you so hard because, again, it's very weird to see Major League Baseball players wearing these flu masks.

That's not something that we typically see. And because this was a one-time spectacle, it was just one game. It wasn't the whole season, the whole Winter League. It didn't affect the regular season at all. It was just one game on one day. And to see these players doing this, you know, it gives us a chance to, you know, think about what baseball is like in a pandemic. And certainly as we're going through, you know, the current public health crisis, it's interesting to think about, you know, what do these players think about all this? And, you know, how did they react? And what was society

like? And to learn more about it and to find out that, well, it really wasn't all that different. You had people that really hated these masks and you had, there's a news story in 1919 in Pasadena where a police officer burns his flu mask as soon as the city lifts the order and creates a huge bonfire on a prominent street in Pasadena.

People are all the same and it's interesting to see that people reacted to a public health crisis a hundred years ago in many of the same ways that they're reacting today. Learning about history in that way and finding out that we're all human beings and we all react to our circumstances in similar ways. I think, you know, it can give us a little bit of hope and optimism that, that, you know, things will get better. And, you know, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and, you know, eventually we will get back to some degree of, of normal life and baseball will resume again at some point. And, you know, and I think it's, it's helpful to, to learn those

stories and to see what people went through and, you know, our grandparents or great grandparents or whoever, you know, and what they had to deal with in, in their lives. And, and so I think it's interesting to, to look at these photos and to read these stories and find out, you know, what life was like a hundred years ago and realize, yeah, it wasn't always that different. There are a lot of similarities. And were you left with any lingering questions or players you were not able to ID or ID definitively, at least? You know, there's a team photo. There's a photo taken of one of the team's benches, and all the players are lined up on the bench with their flu masks. And unfortunately, I'm not able to identify, because their faces are covered, I'm not able to identify the order in which they're sitting.

And the caption that has gone around for 100 years identifying who these players were, unfortunately was wrong, the original caption. And so the one that you might find in a newspaper or on an auction site or in a wire service article identifies players from different teams. And the team photo turns out to be of just the one Pasadena team. Um, so I have, you know, lineups of, of who was on that team,

but I have no idea, uh, other than the catcher and the umpire who are wearing their gear. Uh, I have no idea who else, uh, who else, uh, is in that photo and where they might be sitting. But, uh, so maybe one day we can take the masks off and identify them properly. One other, I think, unfortunate parallel to our current moment that you find in the pieces, you say, no one seemed to ask Dr. Luther Powers, the city's health commissioner, what he thought of that bright idea, that bright idea being playing this game with masks. Given how quickly after this game was played, the ordinance was lifted, the answer to this might be no. But do you have any sense of how the city reacted to this plan to play a game and allow fans in the stands? Was there any pushback from the city of Pasadena

about them playing even masked as they were? Not that I could find, although it's hard because a lot of the people involved, both from the baseball side and the public health side, were not interviewed directly. And so it's very difficult to find reactions from individuals, you know, who were involved. But no, I'm sure that it was not a good idea to bring a crowd together. And certainly when the managers tried to, you know, turn this into a PR stunt and invite photographers to come by and take photos and invite fans to come to this game. I'm sure the people in the medical profession were not happy about it, but unfortunately

we'll never know. Like I said, this was kind of the end of the third wave and so the infection rate was already going down and the death rate was going down toward the end of January. So, you know, as far as I'm aware, nobody got sick because of this game, but we really don't know and we'll probably never know. So all the players who were involved ended up, you know, playing either major or minor league baseball in 1919. So they did not get sick at least. Who knows about the fans? All right. Well, if we're fact-checking McGuire, I guess we can't say that players wore masks in 1918, at least not as far as we're aware, but some players at least did wear masks on one day in 1919. And I guess if we're fact-checking what

he said about that was the flu and this is far worse than the flu, not quite accurate either in that, yes, this is worse than the flu, but that was a lot worse than the regular flu too. But his heart was in the right place. And I think we always approve of anyone who is advising people to wear masks. So I doubt that we will see a big league game where people are going about wearing masks, but maybe Trout or Tatis or someone else will decide to do it. And I will link to this article so you can go appreciate these photos and the research that goes with them. You can also find Jacob tweeting at Buck Weaver, and you can find his writing at his website,

jacobpomrenke.com. He is also the masked man who tweets at the Saber account. So Jacob, thank you very much for the work and for coming on to tell us about it. Thank you both for having me on. Okay, let's take one more quick break, and I'll be back with a chat with longtime Major League pitcher Jerry Blenheim. you I'll drill the poison to the way you hide I'm gonna turn the lock like you did in the eyes

Cause I don't care what you're all about Shut your mouth Okay, you're about to hear a little conversation I had last week with 36-year-old left-handed pitcher Jerry Blevins. This was for an article I wrote for The Ringer about the Waxahachie swap, one of my favorite baseball tactics.

That's where you take the pitcher and move him to another position in the field for a batter, and then you bring him back to the mound so that you can get the platoon advantage, but you can keep that pitcher in the game. I've always enjoyed that. It's rare, but always fun when it happens, and it won't happen anymore because of MLB's new three batter minimum rule. Now when a pitcher comes in, he has to face at least three batters unless he's coming in to end the inning. And if he stays in for the next inning, he still has to have faced three batters by the time you take him out. So that basically kills the Waxahachie swap, and you can read about why in my article,

and you can read about the history of that tactic and why it will be missed. Jerry Blevins was never Waxahachie swapped, but I still wanted to talk to him because he's one of the pitchers who's most affected by this rule. Only a small number of relief appearances in the majors actually would have violated this rule last season. Only 3.8% of relief games would now be banned by this rule. So it's very rare you only see it maybe once a week per team. Granted, it's annoying when it happens, but it's a bigger deal for someone like Blevins. Over the past five seasons, just about a quarter of his appearances have been that type of appearance that's no longer allowed. So from 2015 to 2019, minimum 100 relief appearances. The

highest rate of these disallowed appearances goes Javier Lopez, Mark Zepchinski, Oliver Perez, Tyler Olsen, and then Jerry Blevins at 24.3% of his pitching appearances. So he's had 13 years in the big leagues, mostly with the A's and the Mets, although he was with Atlanta last year. And this spring, he got a minor league deal with an invitation to spring training with the Giants. They released him in early April. And as you will hear, he is a free agent right now and for the foreseeable future. He's also a good Twitter follow at his name, Jerry Blevins. So here he is. Hey, Ben, how you doing? Doing well. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. Feeding my youngest son as we speak. He's eight months old, so I'm waiting for mom to get

home so I can dedicate my full attention. This is, you know, you're recording it, so you can chop up my words to make sense if you need to. Sure. Yeah, I was hoping to talk to you back in March, but I know you were with the Giants and maybe somewhat limited in what you could say, and then the world went to hell anyway. Yeah, crazy, man. I'm curious about when you first heard about the three batter minimum rule. I wonder if you remember where you were when you heard the way we sometimes do when we get bad news. Yeah. So I don't remember specifics, but I remember the first time really hearing it as an official proposal when I was at the executive board meeting for our players association.

The way they implement rules from the commissioner's office is they they have the right to submit it to our players association, the way they implement rules from the commissioner's office is they, they have the right to submit it to our players association. And if we agree, we can move forward. But if we deny it officially, you know, deny that they have the right to implement it into the next year with regardless of what the players say, right. With things like pitch clock, you know, you've seen them implement that kind of stuff on their own. So I had always heard it as a rumor, you know, probably the whole season leading up to that. And then when I heard it, it was something that we discussed as a players association. It was the first time that it was like a real volatile thing that I could think about because there's so much speculation. We get so many things thrown at us from the commissioner's office that if we dove into each and every proposal or each and every thought, it would just be all-encompassing, all-consuming. And so, yeah, I just remember

hearing it and being really disappointed that it was an official thing that we had to talk about. Just a strange concept for me. What was the general response from the players as a whole, not just the left-handed relievers? Yeah, so I think as a whole, I hate to speak on behalf of everyone, but the general consensus I would say is it just feels like a day to change just to make change. I think, you know, we'll see how it works out. Obviously, you know, everything, it's easy to say something isn't going to work now, but it's definitely going to work. Baseball is going to be baseball. But I think as a whole, very much against, I think on the whole, on the average,

I'd say, you know, the majority of guys were against it. It just felt like, you know, I'll speak on behalf of me instead of everybody i just feel like it's a it's an unnecessary change to the fundamentals of the game that were already being changed as we speak you know i felt like you know to dig in a little deeper i feel like the the loogie itself was it was a dying thing in baseball anyway with the the way they're using relievers nowadays i felt like eventually there there were there weren't going to be any anyway that's just how the implementation and the evolution of the game was going right you know maybe one or two just like you saw in the last season i think oliver perez and myself might be the last two do you find the term loogie i've

always been curious about what loogies think of the term loogie. Is that like demeaning or just because? No, it's, it's, it, I mean, it was my role. It was my, it was what I did. You know, if a guy is a pinch hitter coming off the bench, you know, like, uh, you know, it's not all he can do, but it's, it's definitely the job that you need to do. I mean, I never thought of it as offensive. I know some guys don't like to be pigeonholed into a very specialized, you know, they think they can do more. But, you know, it is what it is. That was my role. And so I wasn't ashamed of it.

I've done, you know, I've had a great run in baseball because of it in the latter part of my career. I own it with a smile. Yeah, I was looking at some numbers and it seems like you've sort of shifted more toward that role in recent years. So through 2014, I think only 9% of your career appearances to that point had been the kind that are being banned now. And then over the past five seasons, it's like 24.3%. And that includes 20 appearances like that in 2018, which was the second most of anyone in the league except Andrew Chafin. So I wondered whether that shift came from a change in your stuff or approach,

or was it just sort of the way the Mets wanted to use you? It was a little bit of everything. You know, just like in any profession, if your boss tells you this is what they want you to do, it's your job to be able to do that. And then when I got traded over from the Nationals to the Mets, one of the very first conversations we had besides introduction was, hey, we've got some big left-handed bats in this league.

You know, I was going to be facing, you know, going to be facing Murphy, eventually moving back to the Nationals, but I had Harper, Freddie Freeman, Christian Jelic, Ichiro, all these big left-handed bats right in the heart of the lineup. And they basically told me, this will be your job, is to get these guys out in big situations that will help us win a ballgame. And I took that as a us win a ball game. And I took that as a compliment because those are game-winning moments that need to be taken care of. And so I think from that moment forward, I could fit a role that the Mets needed, and it was very fruitful. Yeah. And I wondered whether when you heard about the rule and that

it was actually officially happening, whether you considered trying to do anything or adapt or adjust in any way. I mean, you can't become Pat Vendetti or something and learn to throw in ambidextrously at that point. But is there anything you could do or thought about doing to just demonstrate that you'd be more effective against righties or that you wouldn't be limited to that role? Yeah, I mean, it's definitely I mean, like I said, again, if they tell you what your job is, it's your it's now your job to be limited to that role? Yeah, I mean, it's definitely, like I said, again, if they tell you what your job is, it's now your job to be able to do what you're required to do. I mean, if you look back at my career, I've had reverse splits before where I did better against righties.

When I was in Oakland, I was a one-inning guy where I had to get both guys out. And so you just go about your offseason preparing to face both guys, whereas when I was with the Mets and then with the Braves, I knew exactly what I had to do. I had to get that left-handed hitter out, so that's your focus. So it's just a preparation thing, a preparation switch. And you have to be able to roll the punches a little bit more throughout the

game because i knew exactly when i might pitch when i was the loogie whereas when you're a full inning guy you never know what would you change going back and forth between those roles i mean in terms of pitch selection or i don't know where you stand on the rubber or location or what would you do differently? Yeah, so it would be a little mix of everything. So it's fastball location, making sure that when I go what would be a way to a right or to a lefty, I make sure that I'm missing in on that occasion because that's a lot of damage. And then just making sure when I'm coming out of the bullpen that I have the ability to spot my curveball on the outside of the plate as well. Instead of that chasing back foot kind of breaking ball, being able to put that what would be front door to a lefty.

And then, you know, just having that change up ready to go. I think I got a lot of my outs from righties on like a, you know, a 2-0-3-1 change up to get them to roll over or a weak pop out. So it's just a slight mental adjustment that you've got to be able to make. So how do you think the rule has affected you? Would you say that it's the primary reason why you're a free agent right now or a partial reason? Have people told you that it's a factor? I mean, it's definitely a factor. 100%. It's playing a significant role, along with, you know, my age and just kind of the shape of the game in today's world. It's just kind of been a perfect storm for me to, you know, kind of be on my way out of the game, which is fine. You know, everybody's playing career comes to an end at some point.

fine. You know, everybody's playing career comes to an end at some point. This rule has definitely limited my options of, you know, teams that are looking for a guy that have room on their roster for, you know, a one-out guy. Well, they can't make that move now because there's no space for, you know, a veteran lefty that can, you know, I can help a team in many ways. Just on the field, it would be from a loogie standpoint. Uh, so it definitely, it definitely limited my opportunities. Did the giants tell you what role they had in mind for you or, or whether they would try to use you as a one inning guy or whether they thought there was still a place for a loogie? Um, yeah, it was a little bit of both. Um, they, they still, you know, believed in my ability to get right-handed hitters out. And so we focused on that in spring training was, you know, believed in my ability to get right-handed hitters out. And so we focused

on that in spring training was, you know, what I can do and where I could put some of my pitches to be more, you know, advantageous for me against righties. Basically, curveball usage has kind of been the new metric of, you know, how everything's going. So curveball has been my best pitch my whole career. And, you know, righties, it was early in my career, I didn't use it as much. And they were just saying, you know, throw it just as much as you do to lefties, you know, maybe even more so to righties, because if they're going to, you're going to give up damage, you might as well have it on your best pitch. Statistically, righties didn't do much damage against my curveball either. So

that was basically a basic approach. Since the Giants let you go, I mean, obviously, we haven't known for most of that time whether there would be a season or teams weren't really allowed to make moves at all. So now that that's changing a little, are you still trying to catch on somewhere, or are you or your agent talking to anyone? No, I'm definitely not going to play this season. I think about a month in when I,

I stayed in Arizona for an extra month, staying in shape, throwing with some of the guys out in the parks. And, you know, once I, we came home, we drove, we took an RV from Arizona back to Ohio. Once I got home, there's, there's limited resources for me to be able to work out here in general. And then with the pandemic, everything was shut down. And I figured, why not take this time to be with my family and to have a full summer of being home? And so I hope baseball gets back. It seems like everything's ramping up. I hope they have everything under control, but I'll definitely be watching as opposed to playing for the first time in a long time. Yeah. Is any part of you relieved not to is ramping up. I hope they have everything under control, but I'll definitely be watching as opposed to playing for the first time in a long time. Yeah. Is any part of you relieved not to have

to make that decision about playing this year under these circumstances, or is that sort of a silver lining? I mean, it's definitely a decision I made. I've had a couple of calls made to my agent to see if I wanted to be at least in the consideration of being on the team. And it was a simple no for me. Uh, but I do feel for those guys that are making those decisions. I think it's a bold stance, you know, Ian Desmond, Joe and Tyson Ross, who else has opted out? Ryan Zimmerman, these guys, I mean, there's, these are big decisions and, and, you know, apart from everything that's going on, you're, they're a family unit and they have some people close to them that are, you know, are compromised. And, you know, I'm not sure what decision I was, I would make if I already had a job, but, uh,

like you said, I am glad I don't have to, to make it on a public forum like some of these guys do. Right. So I guess looking back, you could kind of say that there was a window where a player with your skill set could have a long and productive career. we're left-handed one-out guys, or if this rule had come along when you were 25 instead of 35, or 15 for that matter, then that might have made things difficult too. So I guess you could be kind of bitter about it and say, oh, this rule is almost targeting me and players like me, but I guess you had a good run, and if it had to happen, it came at sort of the right time for you. Yeah, that's the truth. And I'll never be ungrateful for what baseball has provided for me. It's a beautiful game, you know, whatever, you know, happens to it. I think this rule is still not, you know, my favorite thing that's

ever happened, but baseball will adapt, players will adapt. You know, like I said before, with the skill set that all these young relievers are coming in. You know, my role, the Loogie role, was a dying breed anyway, so I feel like they missed the train on stopping it. So it was already on its way out anyway. There's just so many guys that can come in and just with pure stuff can get lefties and righties out. So, yeah, so I think it's almost, you know, an antiquated rule already being imposed. Right, yeah, at this point it seems a little like eyewash, yeah, so I think it's almost, you know, an antiquated rule already being imposed.

Right. Yeah. At this point, it seems a little like eyewash, really, because it's not going to make that much of a difference. Change to say you made change. That's how I feel. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, it must be difficult for a player like you to sort of separate the way it affects you professionally from how you might feel about it otherwise. But, you know, I don't have that conflict. And I appreciate the effort, I guess, to try to cut down on game times or make the pace of play a little bit better. I just don't think this particular rule will actually make that much of a difference. That's I couldn't agree with you more. Like I understand, you know, certain aspects of what they're trying to do. Conceptually, I just think the implementation of this particular rule, I don't think serves that purpose.

Right. Okay. Well, thanks for talking to me. If you decide to try to play again next year, good luck with that. And if not, I guess good luck with your second career, whatever that turns out to be. Thanks, Ben. I appreciate it. And I look forward to seeing, is it going to be an article on The Ringer? Yeah, I'm writing an article that's kind of just specifically about the Waxahachie swap, as they call it, the move where you take a pitcher and you move him from pitcher to a position for a batter and then move him back again, which is something I've always enjoyed. And that's going to go away too now because you're not going to be able to do that anymore it was rare obviously but i always enjoyed it when it happened so i know so that's

the that's like a fun thing and especially for a pitcher that you know you get so specialized in today's game that you kind of lose that ability to play a position when all of us grew up you know doing a little bit of everything you know a lot of us were good hitters when we were young and you know obviously hitting major league pitching is, it's different, but yeah, I think you're, you're losing a small kind of anomaly part of the game. That's really fun. If it happens. Yeah, I agree. Are you interested in getting back in the game as a non-player whenever that happens? Yeah, I think so. Uh, I'm, I'm not sure. I really like TV, radio. I'm not skilled enough to be a writer per se, but I enjoy that aspect of it as well. The people that put out quality content about baseball, I consume large amounts of it. We'll see. I'm in no hurry of figure it out. I'm just enjoying my first summer with my family forever. I've never had a summer off, so this is surreal for me.

Yeah. Well, enjoy it. Thanks, Ben. All right. Good talking to you. Thanks, Jerry. All right. Have a good one. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks to all of our guests, and thanks to you for listening. You can support Effectively Wild 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.

James Burns, Michelle Lenhart, Andrew Lindsay, Lee Domingue, and Steve Discala. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg and Sam coming via email at podcast

at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We have two more season preview episodes to go. We'll get to both of those next week. The next one up will be the Astros and the Mariners So we hope you have a wonderful weekend And we will be back to talk to you early next week

This life is complicated This death is overrated Your dream has turned to faded blue This love is obligated This time is still stated Your mind is agitated too Hold on Jerry, hold on The family needs you now Hold on, Jerry, hold on.

The family needs you now.