Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1788: Toil on Canvas

Episode Date: December 21, 2021

Ben Lindbergh continues a short series of conversations with baseball content creators who work mainly in a medium other than writing or podcasting by talking to painter Graig Kreindler about Noah Syndergaard, Nick Adenhart, and the best way to pay tribute to past players via uniform number, how Graig got started as a baseball fan […]

They stumbled about, the lobby there's the name, forgotten inside the hour, and what they became, the painter's paint. Painters paint all those sad old saints Take the dust sheathed down in this old thing town Hello and welcome to episode 1788 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, not joined today by my co-host Meg Rowley of Fangively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, not joined today by my co-host Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, who is on vacation traveling for the holidays. I'm not traveling until a little later this week, and so I am with you today. Yesterday, I started a podcast mini-series of episodes devoted to conversations with baseball creators who do work mainly in a medium other than writing or

podcasting. So on episode 1787, I talked to the baseball YouTuber Bailey Freeman of Foolish Baseball. Next time, I'll talk to another surprise guest. But now it's time for the middle episode of this series. So let me introduce today's artist. I'm joined now by Greg Kreindler, who is known as the painter of the national pastime, which I believe is a trademark term, but it's one he laid claim to with his work well before it was trademarked. Greg, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Ben. I appreciate it. Well, I'm looking forward to talking to you about your work, which is wonderful. Thank you. But briefly, before we get to that, and maybe this will be related to that, but last week in a fit of lockout-induced

desperation, I was browsing through some old emails that we received years ago and I came across one that we actually answered way back on episode 1346. This was almost three years ago and Sam Miller and I talked about it then and I don't remember what we said, so I might say something completely different now. And it's newly relevant, I think, because of something that's in the news that I'll mention in a moment. But I thought you'd be an interesting person to ask about this because so much of your work is concerned with history and memory and representation of things gone by. So this question was asked by a listener named Andrew, who said it was announced recently, recently then, not recently now, that new Blue Jay, Freddie Galvis, would be changing his uniform

number in tribute to Jose Bautista once he discovered that the number he had been assigned, 19, was once Bautista's. Jose Bautista, a subject of yours. Yes. was once Batista's. Jose Batista, a subject of yours. Yes. Meanwhile, new Tiger, Josh Harrison, recently decided to wear number one in tribute to Lou Whitaker.

Which do you think is a more fitting tribute, to deliberately wear someone's number or to deliberately not wear it? And this was on my mind this week because this came up with the Angels, who recently signed Noah Sinderinder guard and cinder guard who's a texas native has been wearing 34 for his whole career in honor of nolan ryan and 34 was nick aidenhart's number with the angels the great young pitcher and prospect who tragically

was killed at 22 and no one with the angels has worn the number 34 since. And so Syndergaard evidently considered or was open to changing the number, but the angels and Aidenhart's family approved of him bringing it back into circulation. And so there's been a bit of a conversation about that and the best way to honor someone like Aiden Hart. So do you have any thoughts on the subject, whether specific to the Angels or just in general? Oh, man. I mean, it's such an interesting question. The thing is, I think in my head, if somebody is not wearing a player's number, if know, if, if Syndergaard does not necessarily want to wear Aiden Hart's number, I, you know, I take that as this, this sign of, of reverence,

you know, which I guess if you decide to wear someone's number in honor of them, it's also in reverence or, or at least appreciation. It's really hard to kind of pick which one is more of a tribute. I mean, obviously, I guess in this case, the fact that Aiden Hart's family has given their blessings, that adds a bit to the story. And I think it would kind of, I don't know, maybe it helps Syndergaard's decision, but oh man, it's hard, you know? Like with the stuff that I do, the paintings that I do, the numbers are kind of just, it's like the numbers are just kind of a byproduct of where you are in the batting rotation. So it's like back then that stuff wasn't really thought of in this way.

So yeah, I wish I could offer a black and white answer but i don't i don't know i i kind of feel like choosing to not wear something in somebody's honor is maybe a bit more of a tribute um that's kind of where that's kind of where my heart goes like it yeah it's more i don't know yeah i think that it kind of depends on the motivation maybe, and either can be okay if it is done with the right frame of mind. I mean, if you're coming in and saying, this guy wasn't worthy of the number, and so I'm going to wear it now because I deserve it more. Right. You know, screw that guy. Then obviously that is not a tribute to that player. But if you're saying, well,

I want to bring him back into the public memory and keep his memory active and alive, then I understand it. And that's sort of what Aiden Hart's stepfather said in this article that Sam Blum of The Athletic wrote. He said, we appreciate the type of pitcher that Sindergaard is and the type of competitor that he is, I think hopefully it will spark some conversations. There's a generation of baseball fans who don't know who Nick is and don't know Nick's story. And 13 years later, it might be time that sparks a conversation of, hey, this was Nick Adenhart. Sometimes you can make the legacy go on by wearing the number and putting it out there in public. And it has sparked this conversation that we are having right now. I

hadn't talked about or really even thought about Nick Adenhart for a little while, and this has made me think of him. So yeah, there you go. It worked, I guess. And it depends. Obviously, if you have a team that retires numbers and you're hanging the number in the rafters, then it's still present. It's still visible and it's in front of your face. Someone like Nick Adenhart, he sadly only pitched four games for the Angels and so would not be a traditional number retiree. But if you are all-time great with a franchise and you have a monument park sort of set up and people can go and remember that and it's conspicuous in its absence, you know, that no one is wearing this number and then

you're constantly reminded of why that is, then I think that can be a great tribute. But if it's someone who's sort of slipped through the cracks and hasn't had their number retired for whatever reason and has maybe faded out of view a little bit, and you can bring it back. And even if you're saying, hey, I think this should be retired, but as long as it's not, I'm going to wear it and remind people about this. If you use it as an opportunity to say something and remind people, then I think it could be a good tribute. It's kind of like Jackie Robinson Day or Roberto Clemente Day in MLB, where some or all players wear those numbers, and it's just unavoidable and visible. And, you know, Jackie Robinson's number is retired everywhere, of course, but just to see some players wear that again,

it is unavoidable. It brings the past alive, which is kind of what you try to do with your work. avoidable it brings the past alive which is kind of what you try to do with your work yeah yeah it's it's kind of one of those it's one of those things that you know i hadn't thought of it uh in in that way but yeah i mean i guess you kind of are bringing these players and their stories back to life when when you consider their numbers coming back to life in a way you know it's kind of a continuation of that of that lineage right you know, kind of like with, even though they're, they're a lot closer in, in, uh, era, you know, I think about like Ichiro, you know, wearing like Bernie Williams's number and, and it's like, obviously, you know, Bernie's still playing, but, uh, it's just amazing to think that this guy, you know, grew up, uh, across the world, had this love of love of Bernie Williams and wanted to kind of pay tribute to him. And

in the end, kind of, I mean, no offense to Bernie, I love Bernie, but I think we're going to remember Ichiro a lot longer than we will Bernie. So yeah, it's interesting how those numbers can kind of tell those stories. Yeah. I will remember Bernie. I'm quite fond of Bernie. Me too. Me too. Yes. Same here. I love Bernie, but you know.

Yeah. Yeah. Ichiro, he wore 51. I want to say when he was with the Yankees, he wore 31 for a while because Bernie's number had not been retired at the time. Subsequently, it has been, but both of those guys are associated with that number. And there was some question of when are they going to retire? Bernie Williams' number, will they ever? And if you're the Yankees, then you sort of have high standards for that sort of

thing in some cases. But yeah, not every case necessarily, but there are, I think, other ways you can do it. I think the Angels have a Nick Adenhart award that they give out to the best pitcher in the organization every year. So you could name something after the player, even if you are using their number for someone else. So I think it can be nice as long as it's done respectfully. I'm fine with either way. It really depends on how you approach it. I'm fine with either way. It really depends on how you approach it. But I guess I see what you're saying about just taking it out of circulation and saying, no one else can wear this. No one else deserves to wear it. It was so synonymous with this one player. But if that's true, then

maybe that rises to the level of the team taking it out of circulation and removing it from players' consideration and just saying this is off limits. But if the team taking it out of circulation and removing it from players' consideration and just saying this is off limits. But if the team hasn't decided that, then I can see how it would make sense in some cases. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and yeah, it's like a total like case-by-case situation, team-by-team situation. I mean, you know, the Angels don't necessarily have a ton of retired numbers. So I kind of feel like, you know, in tribute to Aiden Hart, they could theoretically retire that. And it wouldn't necessarily, you know, be a problem for any other player who, you know, I guess wore that number and would have to switch or whatever. Yeah.

But yeah, it's a very interesting conversation. I find myself being a little less sentimental about numbers than most people because I have a hard time remembering them, frankly. I don't know if it's just because I have all the information at my fingertips at the internet. I've never really needed the number to know who someone was unless I'm watching, say, a spring training game or something. So it's never really something I've internalized except in the most famous cases. So I think it means a little less to me. But obviously, in some of these cases, when it is so closely associated with a certain player, then I understand the reverence that is given to it. And speaking of reverence, so I have the utmost admiration for what you do in part because I can't conceive of doing it myself. And there are some forms of artistic expression that I have maybe little to no firsthand experience with, but believe I could kind of do without embarrassing myself. And I might be deluding myself in thinking that I could even fake it, but I can imagine

myself doing that. However, I can't draw. And drawing is a very reductive and oversimplified description of what it is that you do. But even that is a bridge too far for me. If I worked really hard and drew a horsey, maybe you could tell it was a horsey, but you wouldn't want to hang it. Maybe my mom would put it on her fridge to humor me, but that's about it. So I know that you are named after Greg Nettles, and it was almost foreordained that your life would have something to do with baseball. But where did the art enter into it? Was that something that was similarly handed down to you, or is that something you discovered yourself? Well, I think that I, I kind of discovered it myself. I mean, my, so my mom, my mom was a math teacher. Uh, my father was a science teacher and really, I don't want to say that they didn't have a creative bone in their body, but you know, they, they weren't really into creating things. My grandmother was somewhat of a, uh, of a seamstress. So I think she was, if nothing else, very good with her hands.

And that might've been where I guess I might've had a little bit of a talent or gift or something, but it kind of all started when I was young, maybe three or four years old. I was drawing ever since I could probably pick up a pencil. I don't know how old you are, but I'm 41, amazingly. And I think, you know, I grew up in the early eighties and kind of fell in love with the cartoons of the era, you know, like He-Man and Thundercats and G.I. Joe. And I think that a lot of the stuff that I was drawing at the time started there. You know, I was trying to duplicate what I saw on the screen and draw my favorite characters. And somehow, you know, I was trying to duplicate what I saw on the screen and draw my favorite characters. And somehow, you know, when I was just a little bit older, maybe five, six or whatever, I was, you know, I was into baseball. You know, my father kind of instilled the beauty of the game,

the love of the game into both me and my older brother. But at around that age, I think I kind of discovered what was left of my father's baseball card collection. And he, so he was born in 1944 and grew up a Yankees fan and kind of was collecting baseball cards in the late forties and early fifties. And the majority of those cards were actually illustrated and, you know, photography was used to an extent, but the majority of them, you know, it was clear. Like if you look at them, that somebody, somebody drew or painted, you know, that particular player on that card. And I think when I saw them, you know, at that age, I think something kind of clicked

subconsciously, you know, I was thinking that, you know, that this is something that I could do or maybe not do, but try, you know, not necessarily as a, as a job or vocation or anything like that, but, oh, you know, I could, I could draw Mickey Mantle, you know, it's my dad's favorite player. Maybe he would like that and, and, you know, give me a pat on the head or whatever. Right. So the seeds are kind of planted pretty early on there. Right. That's my memory. I mean, just casting my mind back to when I was a little kid, I feel like there were certain kids who could draw and others who couldn't. And I was in the latter group, but it seemed like even at that age, there were kids who just took to it. And I don't want to discount the value of practice. And for

all I know, those kids were going home after school and sketching all day and that's why they were good but i guess there is a certain inherent skill that you have or have to a lesser degree and that you can choose to cultivate or not and if you do have some inherent talent then it is probably more rewarding to cultivate that and you get praised and you feel good about the fact that the thing that you're sketching looks like the thing in real life that you're trying to sketch and it just becomes a self-reinforcing cycle. So it sounds like you had some aptitude for that. And then obviously later you studied it formally and went to art school and developed your skills. But from an early age, I guess it sounds as if you were not necessarily destined for this

life, but you at least had the option open to you. Yeah, very much so. I mean, and I can't discount my parents and their fostering of that. You know what I mean? They were very much into the idea that I was drawing. And my brother was also drawing at the same time. So we were lucky in that my parents really saw value in that. And we, uh, you know, we grew up in a suburb that, uh, was about, you know, 45 minutes outside of Manhattan. So we were going into the city, I want to say fairly regularly to, you know, to go to museums and go to like Broadway shows and

stuff like that at a pretty early age. And I think we were really lucky because there were so many, so many of my friends who did not have those same kinds of opportunities. And I think that the, you know, the environment that my parents kind of created for both of us was really nurturing to those creative endeavors. So, I mean, you know, without that, and, you know, and obviously, I guess, you know, a lot of practicing and grinding it out, I certainly would not be where I am today. And obviously, a ton of luck. And how much of the end result, I suppose, and we can talk about the historical research that goes into your work, but I just mean your ability to represent a person or an item or it on the page and how much is actually studying how to do that in the history of how to do that. Because something I mentioned on our last episode, which I probably sort of saved for

the one when I was talking to an artist, is the idea of linear perspective in art, which I imagine is something you studied at some point. And it fascinates me that that's something that had to be discovered and passed down and built on and that there's a technique to it. And then it's not just looking at the world and saying, here's what it looks like to me, and now I'm just going to put it on the page. You might actually need some technique that has to be discovered and rediscovered. There's a certain lore there. there's a certain lore there. So how much of what your work looks like today is the result of you studying and knowing these techniques? And how much is just kind of this magical alchemical process where you can look at something and translate it through your brain and through

your fingers and through your brush to your canvas? Well, that's, man, that's a really good question. It's, it's hard to, it's kind of hard to say where, where I guess, you know, what you've studied and practiced or whatever ends and, and where, you know, where the other stuff kind of comes into play. I want to say that, you know, the majority of, of what I do is probably due to whatever I have studied or learned. I think that I kind of, let's say, the first, I don't know, 16 or 17 years of my life, I was drawing and not really painting at all at the time. I was really scared of color and kind of the medium. So it was really all drawing. But, you know, a teacher here and there might kind of teach kind of a technique or a principle or something like that. But for the most part, you're kind of

doing your own thing. It was when I went to school to, you know, to study my undergrad work at the School of Visual Arts. That's kind of when I discovered that there are certain – I don't want to say that there are rules that you follow, but I guess there are certain formulas that you become aware of. Basically, it's almost like you're learning more how to see and how to kind of observe the world and kind of look at things differently. You know, it also helps that at that age, you know, there's some kind of new connect between like what it is that you see and what it is that you can actually do or produce with your hands. I don't know why, but at that age, it seems to be most prominent. I think just being in that environment and having teachers who were not only teachers, but they're more so professionals. They were people who worked in the field. And in my case, I studied illustration and all of the professors at the School of Visual Arts are illustrators.

It's like they're part-time teachers, but otherwise they make their money by illustrating, you know, book covers or, you know, editorials or whatever it is that they do. And so kind of learning from them techniques, how to kind of, you know, look at the world, how to look at painting, how to do any number of things. And also, you know, being in a class full of other kids who are kind of learning the same thing and having that camaraderie, it all adds up to a bunch of different instances in which you're leveling up, I guess. You know, it kind of all – it all augments whatever it is that you're trying to do and it all affects what you're trying to do. Right. what you're trying to do. But that might just be me talking about my own experience because there might be a lot of people who don't really listen to whatever it is the teacher says or aren't really influenced by the people around them and they do their own thing and they're very successful. But with me, it was all about that. It was all about absorbing whatever was told to me, whatever I could view, whether it was a demonstration or

going to a museum and just kind of plopping down in front of a painting for an hour and just kind of trying to dissect it. It's all just kind of an amalgamation of everything that I've seen in my life or tried to kind of create, if that makes sense. Yeah. So I've read a little bit about your origin story when it comes to doing baseball art and the first Mickey Mantle that you created. Could you tell me a little bit about what your process was that first time and maybe how it has evolved or improved over time? Sure. Yeah. So that painting, I did that in my senior year at SVA. And the assignment that was given to us, it was, you know, your portfolio class, which is kind of like, you know, just a mandatory class for

every student. And they kind of just get you in there and try to help you build a portfolio full of work that you can theoretically get professional work with after you graduate, the assignments that the teacher would give were usually, actually not usually, I'd say very often, very general. He'd give you kind of a buzzword and it was up to you to kind of take it wherever you wanted it to go. And this particular assignment that the, that the teacher gave us was to, to illustrate a relationship. And for whatever reason, one of the first things that I thought of was the relationship between a pitcher and a batter. And I kind of, I really liked the idea. And at the time I hadn't really, I hadn't done any sports or, or baseball artwork in a very long time because I, I had kind of gone to, uh, to SVA, uh, in the hopes that I would be a

science fiction slash fantasy book cover illustrator. But, uh, at the time I was kind of floundering trying to figure out what I was going to do. But anyways, I guess I just kind of gravitated towards doing a baseball painting. And I thought, okay, well, here's another opportunity where maybe I can do something for my dad. Again, his favorite player is Mickey Mantle. Why don't I do a painting of Mickey Mantle? And at that point, I think it kind of just occurred to me that baseball is a very, I guess, strict history, and its fans are very anal with things, with statistics, with how things look. And I thankfully was conscious of that. At the same time, since I'm doing this for my father, and since he watched Mickey Mantle plenty of times, I knew that I had to get Mickey Mantle right for him. So I started kind of doing some research.

I had in mind, I guess, this angle that would create, I guess, an interesting painting that would provide drama. provide drama, if I'm kind of doing this, this scene from behind home plate and, you know, you can see the batter, you can see mantle and you can see the pitcher and you can see a bit of the ballpark like that would, that would be perfect. So what I tried to do at that time was just think of a ballpark that had a unique center field to it and something like unique, not only in terms of its look, but unique in that it would be kind of a dynamic thing to have in the composition. And I kind of settled on Ebbets Field because there are just all these weird kind of diagonals going on in Ebbets Field because of the shape of the stands. And then you have, you know, the great advertisements on the right field wall and the buildings in the background.

So I thought, okay, I got to have Mickey Mantle in Ebbets Field, you know, doing something. So I figured, okay, well, I can have Mickey Mantle, you know, playing against the Dodgers in the World Series, you know, in the early fifties. And I kind of just, I kind of narrowed it down at that time. I kind of just narrowed it down to, I guess, what I wanted to do pictorial pictorially, what I had images, what I had reference to work from, you know, what would work, like what, what things that I have to include about the, I guess, about Ebbets Field, like to kind of make this picture work. You know, it had to be, it had to be a young Mickey Mantle for me. So I thought,

okay, here's, you know, a game in the 52 World Series. Was there a game in the 52 series when Mantle had a good game, you know, or did he hit a home run or something like that? And I, you know, I found an at bat that he had against pitcher named Ken Lehman. I don't remember the exact game of what it was right now, but he had a home run off of him. And I just decided that that was what I wanted to illustrate because I had, I had mantle batting righty, if I remember, and the pitcher was also, was he throwing righty? Yeah, I think he was a righty as well. So I think that was the matchup. And I just kind of got into it. Okay, 52 World Series, you know, here's the game. You know, what happened? I just I wanted to get everything perfect you know so it's kind of like not only do I want to get Mantle right like with this particular image it's uh him kind of waiting for the pitch I need to get his batting stance right sure but you know was it a cold was it a cold game is Mantle wearing

you know an undershirt underneath his uh jersey you know is there any dirt on his jersey like on his knees or something like that because you know maybe he slid into base a couple innings prior you know what what bat was he using um same with ken lehman same with the other players i knew that the the advertisements in the back they had to kind of be indicative of that particular year because i knew that those ads probably changed, you know, maybe maybe once a year, sometimes twice a year and on really rare occasions, three times a year. But I just wanted to make sure that I got all that stuff right.

So I got into, you know, the serious minutia of what the ads looked like, you know, what color they were, you know, what what the proper clothing these guys were wearing was, you know, what color they were, you know, what, what the proper clothing these guys were wearing was, you know, what the field looked like, what the weather was like, you know, what the lighting was like, you know, was it at the point where the shadow of, you know, the grandstands had it kind of enveloped home plate by then, or was it at a different angle? And I mean, I really, I just, I've dug that whole process of it. You know, I made this painting that at the time I was, I was proud of and I think was successful, I guess, for, you know, the teacher and I guess the people I was in class with thought it was a good piece,

but I think more important to me at the time was that I loved doing it. You know, I got off on, on the research aspect of it and the fact that i got to paint something that just seemed really kind of electric to me not not even necessarily in what i was depicting but the fact that there was so much nuance that could be put into it and i wasn't bored by it you know what i mean i was i was so into the idea of just doing this kind of homework to get this painting right. And yeah, that was kind of like, that was how this whole thing kind of took off. Yeah, that's interesting because I talked on the show a few years ago, episode 1183, to Tom Schieber, the senior curator at the Hall of Fame. Yeah, who does the baseball researcher blog.

curator at the Hall of Fame, yeah, who does the baseball researcher blog. And he just does these deep dives into photos or movie footage. And he's able to determine, okay, this was taken at this game or on this day by just paying close attention to the most minute details and doing this extensive research. And you can understand why a senior curator at the Hall of Fame would be into that sort of thing. People might think, you know, the stereotype of the artist, oh, it's just, it's from the heart and it's passion. And you're just, you know, spraying paint all over the canvas and you're almost transcending yourself and it's not even this conscious process. And meanwhile, you are pouring over photos and books and reading research. And as you said, doing all this homework before you even embark on the actual painting, I imagine. So it's kind of this union of the analytical process, which some people might not describe

as artistic, with what you then do with all of that information, which is, of course, very artistic. And I guess they are both artistic. It's just two sides of the same coin and not every painter's process is like that obviously but it works well for you yeah yeah it's it's interesting because I I never I mean there are other so like there are other artists who I think work in that way where it's kind of you know a very emotional thing and they paint what they feel and and and everything and that's great and you know, a very emotional thing and they paint what they feel and everything.

And that's great. And, you know, whatever works for them. For me, it's just it's all about being accurate or as accurate as possible. That's kind of it's just something that kind of always appealed to my to my obsessive nature. And and I guess the fact that, you know, baseball fosters, I guess, historical accuracy really, really kind of helps. And yeah, I mean, in a way, it's like I do kind of consider myself, you know, a weirdo because of that. It's like I have a lot of, you know, working knowledge of a lot of like useless visual information of, you know, random ballparks from the 1930s. But, you know, if my son asks me to help him with his math homework, I'm pretty useless.

It's funny that you said you started out working on science fiction type art, because that's kind of what I started out writing and thought I would end up writing and still sort of aspire to do. But baseball gets its hooks in you at a certain point. And sometimes it's tough to get it to let go, or maybe you don't want it to let go. And how did this transition for you from a successful one-off piece or project to kind of your calling and career? I mean, it was a very interesting time for me because I was, I guess I graduated when I was 22 and I, you know, I moved back home and I was kind of just doing this artwork. Not all of it was baseball related, but that was kind of what I was gravitating

towards. And I didn't really know what the market was for it. I just knew that I really liked doing these paintings at the same time, you know, I'm, I'm 22 and, and I'm, I'm an artist and I basically, you know, it's like I graduated and was basically given a license to make art. And in like the illustration world, you're kind of thrown to the lions, you know, all of a sudden people who were teaching you in school are your competition. They're the people that are getting jobs who you want to kind of take jobs away from. You know, it's not, I guess it's not that cutthroat because there's plenty of work around for everybody, but I guess I thought of it in that way. And, you know, like a lot of kids in their twenties, you know, it took a while to kind of get going.

And I did a lot of soul searching and growing. And it took a little while for me to kind of, I guess, figure out how I was going to make a living off of this. a living off of this. I mean, like I said, I was living at home, so I was very lucky and super blessed that my parents were all about having me home. And I didn't really have a ton of, I guess, expenses that I think a lot of people my age would have had. So I think I was able to really, really buckle down and try to make a go of being an artist. And for a while, I didn't think it was going to happen. I ended up going to Lehman College, which is a local CUNY school, to get certified to teach art because I just figured I was getting an illustration job here and there, but it wasn't enough money to make a living, like not even close. But I figured that, you know, my mom and dad are both teachers

and maybe it was something that I could do something that I could enjoy. And I ended up doing the program and getting certified. And I think I want to say it was maybe a week or two before graduation. There was a piece about me and, and my the New York Times in the Sunday arts section, which I don't even understand how that happened. But it did, and it was incredibly lucky. And I don't really – still to this day, I'm thinking I did not belong there. I mean, that spot is reserved for real artists, but I was there. And really, like, that was kind of the catalyst that started the whole career off where people, a lot more people saw my work, people were interested in buying it, people

were interested in commissioning me. You know, it's been kind of nonstop ever since, which I'm so grateful for. But also, you know, at the same time, I'm kind of waiting for a knock on the door where someone shows up with a clipboard and they're like, oh, well, Greg, you've been jerking around for 20 years. It's time to go out and get a real job. Right. So is most of your work at this point commissioned? I wondered how you find your topics and come up with your subjects and whether it's just that you happen to see an old photo that inspires you and you want to try to capture it. Or at this point, whether you just have a long list of people who are asking you to paint specific players or specific scenes. Yeah, right. So right now it's mostly the latter, which I'm, you know, incredibly,

incredibly blessed for. I have like a backlog that I'm embarrassed by, but at the same time, you know, there's still plenty of stuff that I, that I see and get inspired by. So while the majority of my clients, I think are really into, I guess, the bigger names in baseball history, you know, whether it's Mickey Mantle or Ted Williams or Jackie Robinson or whatever, I also have a major affinity for the lesser knowns and like the role players, the people that no one has ever really heard of, because I I'm just, I'm into the whole idea of the whole story of baseball, you know, kind of being this, this tapestry that just kind of works together in all these different ways it's not it's not just babe ruth and lou gehrig to me again not that there's anything wrong with that

or or people who just do those guys but i feel like i need to kind of create more of a i guess a broad picture of of the game and i think most of that kind of happens when I'm able to kind of just paint for myself. Because yeah, the majority of what I guess my clients seek me out for are those famous guys. And in recent years, as you have been painting figures from the history of black baseball more and more and former Negro leaguers, I wonder, clearly, it seems as if that's been rewarding for you to discover and explore that part of baseball history. But from a research perspective, is it more challenging just because you might not have access to the same number or quality of photos or coverage that can give you clues about how to present a certain scene?

Yeah, exactly. Exactly that. I mean, baseball as a whole is kind of, I guess, our most visually documented sport and certain, I got to imagine it's our most documented sports in terms of, you know, pros and newspaper coverage and everything. But yeah, when it comes to the Negro Leagues, it's a bit different because, you know, the papers that focused on covering the black teams were not kind of like everyday papers for the most part. You know, they might be weekly papers and they weren't necessarily sending a ton of photographers out to take photos of these guys. And certainly the, you know, the white papers weren't really doing it either. And at the same time, the kind of the minutia that, you know, I'm usually able

to kind of find with, I guess, the white leagues, I can't really find with the black leagues. I mean, finding, finding descriptions of ballparks and uniforms is, it's such a challenge. I mean, is it's such a challenge i mean you know people like like schieber and and mark okanen and and todd radom it's like when it comes to like uniform stuff you know anything sartorial it's like they have such a a strong beat on that uh or at least okanen did he had passed away but uh but there are no there are no real guides for the negro leaguesagues and for the pre-Negro League stuff and the Latin American Leagues. It's just – it's not out there. The information is not out there. So I dig and I have a lot of friends who are kind of in the memorabilia industry who collect that sort of stuff.

And they might have access to a lot of imagery that is not necessarily you know available to the public so they help but yeah there's a lot of stuff i mean especially when we're talking colors of uniforms and things like that there's a lot of stuff that i have to just kind of make educated guesses on. And when you are painting a scene from long ago or a player from the distant past, then you are injecting color into what we think of as a black and white era, although it obviously wasn't, but that's how we receive it. When you are painting a more modern scene, and as I alluded to earlier, you've painted Jose Bautista's bat flip, for instance. What are you trying to

bring to that? And maybe it's the same thing you're trying to bring to the older photos and portraits too, because I guess the idea is generally of portraiture. I mean, you're trying to capture what something looked like and present that in your case in a semi-photorealistic way, but I imagine that you're also hoping to capture something, some elusive essence of a person or a scene that might or might not be present in that original image. Yeah. I mean, there's something I feel like with the modern stuff, you know, especially say 1970 on, I feel like I'm after something that is maybe a bit more intangible. Yeah. I think a lot of it also has to do with the fact that here we are in history.

It's 2021. baseball game on television, you can see basically any play, any pitch from 50 different angles, you know, and everything's in vivid color in 4k. You know, I think that, I think that there's a luxury, you know, that we have that I guess experiences, uh, or that helps us experience baseball in a very different way than we might've experienced it 50 years ago. So I feel like I have to bring something a bit different to the paintings because sure, you know, I can, I, if I can paint Babe Ruth in color, you know, effectively, I think I'm able to kind of show somebody something new because, you know, no one, there are not many people who were alive who can actually remember what Babe Ruth looked like, like you know when he played

like in color like there's like a disconnect between that black and white world and and our world even though he was in our world and breathed the same air so with the modern stuff there's it's just it's something intangible that i i try to kind of inject into those scenes and those players. It's, it's kind of, it's like less, it's less me, you know, copying a photograph, if that makes sense. Like there's certain things that I try to kind of, that I try to kind of push to the background and kind of pull other things to the foreground to kind of, I don't know, to make it, I guess, less obvious that it's taken from, you know, this color photograph that was shot weeks ago or whatever. I just, it's hard to really to articulate what that is, if that makes sense. But it is, I do think of it a bit differently.

If that makes sense. But it is, I do think of it a bit differently. And one of the things that I'm asking the people I'm talking to this week is, what are the tools of your trade? Because the tools of my trade are not all that interesting. I don't think it's Microsoft Office. It's a keyboard. It's a microphone. But you have these tangible objects, things you can hold and touch and feel and smell. So obviously you have the research component and I'm sure that you have certain tools that are helpful for you there. But not just that, you also have brushes and oils and canvases. So I know you have a studio set up in Brooklyn where you do your work. So what is in or around there that helps you do what you do? Well, I mean, if I were to give you kind of a, you know, a visual tour of what I have in my studio and by studio,

I mean, just one of the smaller bedrooms in our three bedroom apartment. I, you know, I have an easel. I have, I have my paints. I have my palette. I have tons of brushes, I have a ton of different surfaces to paint on. And whether those are, you know, canvases or boards that have nothing on them, or they have, you know, half-finished paintings on them, the studio is completely littered with them, like to the point where I have a hard time kind of walking around. It's just all these unfinished works just kind of staring at me waiting to get finished. But yeah, in addition to that, I, you know, I have a lot of books, whether they are baseball books or art books, just stuff that I can always kind of grab when I need them, even though now it requires that I move a lot of paintings

around to grab them. But I have, I have that I have, you know, I have a computer, which has, I guess, all of the files and a lot of the information that I've collected over the past, gosh, almost 20 years of doing this sort of thing. It's like a, it's a space that I wish was larger, because, you know, my dream studio is definitely not what I have. But I also have a feeling that if I ever did get larger space or my dream studio, it would be just as cramped as this because I would just fill it with more stuff, with more stuff that isn't finished. And I find that I do have a hard time staying on task with, you know, whatever commission work needs to be done. You know, I kind of get excited for other things, you know, whether that's a commission down the line or just something that I've kind of randomly seen that I want to paint. And I think that although a lot of the stuff in the studio, like the books and the computer, I think they help me get through those commissions.

I think they also kind of hinder the commission work because they foster the ability to look into doing other work. Right. And what's on your easel? What are your raw materials, your tangible objects? Well, right now on my easel, I have a painting of Roberto Clemente that I just finished. I actually haven't shared it on social or anything because a friend of mine who runs a memorabilia auction house, he's going to be auctioning it off next year and uh i think early next year to kind of coincide with the uh 50th anniversary of uh of him passing away the auction the 100 of the proceeds are going to uh i think benefit uh unidos us which uh is you know a latin american kind of uh humanitarian charity that i i think is kind of like in that spirit of clemente

but uh yeah so that that's just currently the the only painting that's sitting on my easel but uh you know if i get the chance to work on it i guess before the kids get home uh you know i might work on it for half an hour and then i'll be like okay well it's time for something new so then maybe it'll be a you know painting of Tris Speaker or the 1869 Red Stockings. I don't know. I'm all over the place. Is it hard for you to let go of a work that you have created, even if you know from the start that you will one day give it away to whoever bought it from you? I wonder just because if I make a podcast or I make an article, it's out there. It's in the public. It's not behind closed doors and you have to make a living. And I guess it's tough to make a living just selling or giving away your work to museums or other places where it can be displayed publicly. So not that it's gone forever because you have some sort of record of it and you can look at what you painted but the actual object itself

is ripped away from you as soon as it's done yeah i to be honest if i'm if i'm giving you the honest answer not the not the pc answer i mean the pc answer is they're all my children and they're all really hard to get rid of uh and in a sense they are, but I'm, I'm glad when I'm able to kind of get them out of here because, you know, there is kind of a feeling of accomplishment of finishing a painting and also kind of getting it in my case, you know, I'm really lucky in that it'll usually go to a client or whatever. And I know that he or she will appreciate it, or at least I hope he or she will appreciate it and love it and whatever. But there are times that I, that I have finished a painting and I'll, there've been, uh, I'd say with almost every one of those situations, I've contacted the owner and have asked, uh, he or she, if they wouldn't

mind me fixing the painting, you know, even if it's just a small detail, like the color of a, of, you know, a dugout roof or something like that, you know, just for my own OCD issues. And I'd say 99% of the time, they're totally cool with it. I mean, granted, I, you know, I pay for shipping and all that stuff, but, but they appreciate the fact that I guess that I try to get that stuff right. And maybe they appreciate the fact that I'm insane. Is that easily accomplishable? I mean, if I want to edit something I wrote or edit a podcast, it's at least mechanically speaking, it's a pretty simple operation, you know, hit the backspace key or snippet in a piece of software. But if you want to, what, paint over something you already painted or change something,

is that technically challenging? For me, it's not super technically challenging. And that's just because of the way that I paint and the medium that I use. Just oil paint in general is very, though it can be very frustrating, it's also very forgiving and you can paint over things and change the look of things pretty easily. If it was say, you know, watercolor, then, then it's a different story and, you know, I would possibly have to start the piece over or somehow be at peace with the fact that I made the mistake knowing me, I would have to start the piece over though. Um, but yeah, technically it's pretty easy and, uh, you know, I'm able to kind of, you know, update my website or update social and stuff like that and, and try to make sure that no one ever sees the mistake.

And it doesn't sound as if you have much spare time in your life and whatever spare time you do have. I imagine you might not want to devote to painting something because that's what you're doing the rest of the day. But is there any part of you that wants to mess around with different subjects or different styles or do you secretly long to be a pointillist or an impressionist or or you know do a different type of art or are you still finding this completely fulfilling you know what i'm i'm really really lucky in that it is totally fulfilling. I just, I love the subject matter so much. And I think there's so much variety and nuance in it. I've never really had the interest of, you know, being an artist that kind of focuses on, you know, elevated

subject matter, you know, whether it's kind of like an allegorical painting or doing portraiture or landscape stuff. I just, I want to paint these baseball players and I haven't gotten sick of it yet. If anything, I feel like the, the intensity that I bring to it has kind of only made me want to do it more. So I'll admit that sometimes, you know, it's like, okay, oh, another Babe Ruth painting. But, but. But even then, I still love doing it. It took me a while to, I guess, be at peace with that because I, at first, I thought that there was, not that there was something kitschy about the subject matter, but I think I was worried that I would never be, quote unquote, taken seriously because I was, you know, painting baseball subject matter. But as I get older, I just care so, so little about that sort of thing because I just, I love painting these, these men and women and the fact that I get paid to do it and can make a living off of it. You know, I'm so lucky to do that. And I,

it's like, I never take it for granted and I just want to keep doing it for as long as, as long as the muse is there, I guess. And is there any other baseball art past or present that you particularly enjoy or admire by other artists? I mean, who maybe paint different subjects or in different styles? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I love, who maybe paint different subjects or in different styles. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I love it all. I mean, though I kind of, you know, I guess I work in a realistic or quote unquote realistic fashion. I kind of love all of it. You know, I love Norman Rockwell. I love J.C. Leyendecker who's done some baseball pieces. You know, I love Andy Warhol. I love JC Leyendecker's done some baseball pieces I you know I love Andy Warhol I love Leroy Neiman they're you know artists who are working today whose stuff I really love you know whether that's like a Blake Jameson or Lauren Taylor or James Fiorentino or Dick Perez or Christopher Peluso it's like

everybody does so much great stuff. And I just, I love seeing how everyone handles everything so differently. You know, even like in the world of design, you know, I've mentioned Todd Radom before, you know, I love his work, even though it's just so incredibly different from, from mine. And we're after different things and obviously have different clientele. It's just, it's all like in the same world. And I just, I love seeing it. Can you leave us with one recommendation or one personal pick? Do you have a favorite among all of your children? I know it must be tough to choose, but is there one where you felt like, I really nailed that. It either looks the way I wanted it to look or I captured what I wanted to

capture or maybe you were pleased by a certain subject. Just something that fills you with warm feelings when you look back on one of your completed paintings. Sure. Can I give you two? Sure. Yeah. Okay. Because I say two because they're different. One that I keep going back to again and again after all these years is it's a painting I did of Johnny Vandermeer, where he's sitting in the dugout at Ebbets Field. It's in 1938. I think it's – I guess it's probably right before – moments before I guess he started the game in which he pitched the second consecutive no-hitter. consecutive no hitter. And it's what I like to call, it's like a very quiet painting in that he's just kind of sitting there and he's looking at the viewer and he's in the dugout and he's in the shade and everything. But right by his feet, you can kind of see where the shadow ends and you

catch, you know, the light of the sun where it's catching, you know, the floor of the dugout. the sun where it's catching, uh, you know, the floor of the dugout. And there's a little part of his foot of, uh, of, of his toe basically that catches some of that light and all of the light that's on, uh, that's on that ground kind of reflects back into his face and the wall behind him and his uniform. And it's just, there's something about it that, there's something about it that really, I think, encapsulates what I like about painting these men and women, because it's, you know, it's subject matter that is pretty mundane, I guess. And I guess the way the light kind of works in the painting, I feel like it makes it profound. And I think that that makes it really powerful.

So I think that that painting, that kind of just hit everything the right way for me. And it's just a nice example of that. The second one is a painting that I have warm feelings towards, but also hatred towards because it nearly killed me how long it took um it's a a painting i did of the uh the 1927 yankees of basically the entire team and uh it's this large piece it's 44 by 66 you have 31 main figures who are there kind of posing for the photographer or posing for me, however you want to think of it. And out of those 31, 30 of them are wearing, you know, their uniforms, their home uniforms, pinstripes. So they're all kind of, you know, the uniforms are folded and, you know, the pinstripes are undulating in space. And you have 31 faces that have to look

exactly right they'd have to look like you know each player not only does you know babe ruth and lou gehrig have to look like babe ruth and lou gehrig but ben pascal and and joe stiborski like they need to look like those guys you know i'm not, I'm not going to put all the effort towards the big names and forget about the other guys. So you have 31, you know, full figures, recognizable portraits, and then you have the architecture of I want to say about a hundred different fans who are sitting behind them in the stands, each of whom has to have their own personality and has to kind of look a certain way, whether there's somebody who's reading a newspaper or somebody who's like smoking a cigar or something like that. And they're all dressed differently. There's just, there's a lot of visual information in there.

There's a lot of stuff happening. I don't know if I, I don't know if I should say how long it took to do the painting, but it took a very long time and it nearly killed me. And thankfully the guy who commissioned it is, he's a friend. So he was very patient with me and, and really just loved watching it kind of come together. But it's out of my life and it's on his wall and that's all that matters. Well, I will link to those two images and to a lot of other coverage of your work and videos and your website at gregkreindler.com. That's K-R-E-I-N-D-L-E-R. You can also find Greg on Twitter at Greg Kreindler, where he tweets a lot of images of his work, which makes it a great follow. And I'm glad and I'm sure many others are glad that you found your muse and that which my inbox is overflowing these days with NFT this and NFT that. And I wish I could unsubscribe from all of them and all future NFT related emails.

So thank you for sparing me that. At least that seems like an area that you have not delved into as yeah no not not really interested i i think it's great it's just not really for me yeah i don't know if i even think it's great the environment that's thanks you for yeah that's true that is true all right well this has been a great pleasure to talk to you and learn a little bit about the process that produces these works. And thank you very much for coming on and for your time today. Thank you, Ben. I really had a great time. Thanks so much for having me on. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks, as always, for listening. And thanks to Greg for his time.

He sent me some high resolution images of the paintings that we talked about today. So check the show page if you want to appreciate them in all their glory. Last week, I had a conversation with Meg about learning to love a sport later in life. We talked about how daunting it is and questioned whether we could do it having grown up with baseball the way that we have. And when we discussed that, I invited listeners to write in with their stories of discovering a sport later in life. I don't mean on their deathbeds. I just mean not from birth the way that we are often inculcated into our sport of

choice. Many of us hardly have a choice in the matter, or the choice is to renounce a sport more so than it is to embrace it. It's just forced upon us, and most of us are pretty happy to have it. But it can be tough to replicate that immersion that you get as a kid. But it can be done, and we received quite a few responses from people who told us their stories. So I think I'll read a smattering of those. I'll read a few today and read a few next time. Thanks to everyone who wrote in about it. So this is a message from Patreon supporter Andrew, who says, I'm a late baseball convertee from the UK. I got into it as I work often at night and wanted something sports-based

to listen to, and I got dragged in by the club's Cleveland World Series ESPN radio broadcasts. The main joy for me, which perhaps does partly come from being in the UK, is that I had minimal prior knowledge of baseball beforehand, other than some basic understanding of the rules. This means I get the satisfaction of learning and figuring out the subtleties of the sport all by myself and without the conventional wisdom handed down from parents, friends, and or broadcasters that I've ingested about soccer and cricket since birth. For example, I never had to unlearn the value of batting average versus on-base percentage. I just thought, the objective is not to get out, so why would batting average carry more weight? So I get additional enjoyment in following baseball

as a lack of preconceptions and historical cliches is fun. This may also just indicate I am weird and antisocial. No, I don't think so, Andrew. I understand that completely. And I hadn't thought of some of the advantages of learning a sport this way. You don't have any misconceptions drilled into you before you can understand why they're wrong. All right, this question is from Bohan, who says, I write to you today to tell you a tale of how I got into baseball. I did not get into baseball late in life, as I don't consider myself later into life yet, but I do think my story is rather unorthodox and you might get a kick out of it. My love of baseball was born out of video games and math. For some context, I'm 26, about to turn 27. I reside in southern Ontario, and I emigrated to Canada from China with my parents just

about 20 years ago this November. As you can imagine, with my parents both being Chinese, I did not have any familial introduction to baseball, not one bit of it. We initially lived in Montreal in Canada, and so I was very much immersed in hockey culture. My first exposure to baseball was through torrenting PSP games to play on my handheld, which I cracked myself so that I could play downloaded ROMs. We did not have too much money, and my parents were generally pretty against video games, so I couldn't ask them to buy me more games. I simply went online

and downloaded them illegally. In middle school, I was looking for new PSP games to play when I noticed that MLB The Show 08 had really high ratings on PSP. I didn't know much about baseball at the time, but I did play FIFA and Madden already, so I knew that I enjoyed sports games, and so I decided to give MLB The Show a try. I fell in love with it immediately, fascinated by pitcher-batter matchups and how different pitches moved. In 2009, my family would get cable for the first time, and I started being able to watch baseball on TV. I became obsessed with watching baseball, putting on every game that I had free time to watch. And of course, my favorite team was the Blue Jays. I still believe Jesse Litch will turn into a great starter, and Brandon Morrow pitched the greatest single game in history in a

Toronto uniform. A couple years down the line, the Jays were still scuffling, and my baseball fandom started to waver as I got more into playing football in high school, and with it came consuming more football content. But late in high school, I started discovering the sabermetric side of baseball more and reading fan graphs. I've always been interested in math and went to university for engineering. The analysis just immediately drew me in. I didn't understand why some people would be against advanced stats, as all it's trying to do is describe the game with numbers more accurately than the current popular stats. So I would read any advanced stats article I could find, and that eventually led me to discovering fan graphs, and my baseball love was rekindled

by the discovery of a very strong math community around this lovely game. I also discovered out of the park baseball halfway through university, and I probably put somewhere between 500 and 1000 hours into that game yearly. I've now been a daily Fangraphs reader, reading probably 90% or more of published blog posts since the start of university. I discovered now been a daily fan graphs reader, reading probably 90% or more of published blog posts since the start of university. I discovered Effectively Wild and podcasts in general only the past couple of years, but I've listened to most of your episodes since I've started listening. The mathematical analysis keeps driving my fandom, and right now is a hell of a time to be a Jays fan. And he ends by saying that he hopes he hasn't over-hyphenated, and I can assure him that he

hasn't. All right, last story today comes from Yusuf, who says, I'm a Middle Eastern guy who started watching baseball in my early 20s, mid-2013. No one watches baseball in my country. It started out of curiosity, and since then, I've been in love. One of the first baseball books I read was The Hidden Game of Baseball, the 2015 edition. It got me into baseball stats. I think I have an advantage over lifelong fans who are attached to one team. I can pick and choose the best games of the day rather than watching a meaningless game for my home team. Rangers versus Mariners, for example.

Hey, maybe those won't be so meaningless for long. Regarding the time zone difference, I watch most early day games, which starts at 8 p.m. usually here. I also watch a lot of NL West teams. I'm a doctor and usually wake up really early, and usually there's a Rockies-Dodgers match ongoing at 4 a.m. Thank you, Yusuf. Thanks to all of you. I will read a few more of these tomorrow. Always enjoy hearing how people fell in love with baseball, especially if they took an atypical path.

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 monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going and help keep the podcast ad free while getting themselves access to some perks. Ani Assan, Daniel Hillier, Will Labadee, James Grieshock, and Jason Eades. Thanks to all of you. Meg and I will have a special Patreon-only bonus episode coming out next week, and you can access the patron-only Discord group now, where you can join more than 400 other Patreon supporters in discussing baseball, and you can attend the upcoming Effectively Wild Discord group patron trivia night,

which is scheduled for the 29th. Check our show page for details. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod. You can join the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. You can write to me and Meg at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins

for his editing and production assistance. I'll be back with one more episode for this week very soon. So I'll talk to you then. Train wheels Running through the back of my memory When I ran on a hilltop Following the back of my knees

Someday Everything's gonna be Smooth like a rhapsody When I face That mess with me