Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1792: Should Old Infractions Be Forgot

Episode Date: January 1, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss Ben’s decision regarding his Hall of Fame ballot, and how to handle Hall of Fame voting in the future. Then (38:05) they complete their series of discussions of Korean baseball drama Stove League by breaking down the last four episodes (13-16) and reflecting on the series as a whole. […]

🎵 How can we go on what happens next? Meg Raleigh of Van Grasse. Meg, how are you? I am overwhelmed by the dreams, Ben. Yeah, like you, I am reeling from finishing my rewatch of the emotional finale of Korean baseball drama Stove League. I needed a minute to collect myself before we started here. Yeah, I messaged you yesterday in the midst of one of these episodes and I was fired up and now I am also fired up although for different reasons than yesterday yes we have lots to discuss so this podcast is sort of a triple finale it is our last show recorded in 2021 it's our last episode of recap and analysis of Stove League We'll be covering the final four episodes, 13 to 16 And unbeknownst to you until this second

It's also the last installment, at least for now In the saga of me trying to figure out what the heck to do with my Hall of Fame ballot Oh yeah, you had to have voted The deadline is upon me So we're talking on December 31st. Hall of Fame ballots must be postmarked by today to be counted. And after much deliberation, I have decided that my ballot will not be postmarked because I am not voting this year. I am opting out, not voting for anyone.

I'm not voting against anyone. I am removing myself from the denominator. And if I didn't already have a podcast where I share my thoughts about baseball a few times a week, I don't think I would be going out of my way to tell the world why I'm not voting. a dramatic exit. This isn't the airport. You don't have to announce your departure. But you've all heard me ruminate and agonize about this on previous pods. So I feel like I owe you and our audience an explanation of where I ended up coming down on this. So let me lay out my thinking here as best I can. I don't know if I'm making the right decision, but it's the one that felt least bad to me. And I have thought a lot about it. I may have overthought it, but I definitely didn't underthink it. And if anyone feels disappointed by the decision, I do understand that.

I'm kind of disappointed by the decision. I am not gleefully tearing up and burning my ballot. I am kind of bummed about not voting. And it's probably anticlimactic for people who have heard our various discussions about how to handle voting. And there are quite a few writers I respect who have never voted when they've been eligible or who stopped voting at a certain point. But I would have been pretty surprised if you had told me when I joined the BBWA 10 years ago that I would decide not to vote. And part of me feels like the conversation surrounding this stuff is so unpleasant at

times and the thinking is sometimes so illogical that I just want to withdraw for that reason. The Hall of Fame is not making me happier these days, but as divisive as the subject is and as far apart as people are on these topics, I would still want to vote and try to make the situation a little bit better as I saw it if I felt like the current process were workable. But currently, I don't, which I didn't decide quickly or easily or lightly. I've gone in mental loops on this so many times that I kind of have the rationale rehearsed in my head. So here goes.

I might monologue a little, but please jump in and stop me at any time. Okay. Basically, it does come down to the character clause, which is a real sticking point for me. And again, let me read the instructions straight from this sheet in front of me. Again, let me read the instructions straight from this sheet in front of me. Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the teams on which the player played. And half of those criteria pertain to factors other than on-field performance. And I don't actually think that should be the case.

And I will get to that. But it is currently the case. So if I check someone's name and send in the ballot, then to me, that means one of three things. against some of these players, which honestly wouldn't reflect well on my research process, I think. Like if you're supposed to consider character and you haven't looked into the character, then I don't think that's much better than not looking at their war or whatever. It's 2021. Most of these things are on their Wikipedia pages. It's not that hard to find. So I can't be in blissful ignorance about these things the way I once was. I know about the bad things they did or are alleged to have done. So that's one possibility. Another possibility, if I check a name, is that I've ignored the instructions, that I have decided that I just don't want to consider a character. I am just voting for the best baseball players.

And maybe I am being too much of a rule follower here or taking things too literally. But I feel like if I agree to vote for your Hall of Fame, I'm kind of bound to abide by your criteria for that Hall of Fame. Like, I could start my own Hall of Fame and vote for whomever I want. start my own hall of fame and vote for whomever I want. But if I vote for your hall of fame and you tell me that your hall of fame is one that's designed to consider character pretty prominently, then I should consider character. It's not like, hey, here are some things you can keep in mind if you feel like it, but it's just a suggestion, vote however you want. This is what we want you to evaluate. You signed your name to this thing you are sort of tacitly saying that you have evaluated these criteria you're following these instructions i

guess there's some leeway when it comes to how you weight each factor but just disregarding it entirely for me that's kind of out at this point i feel like i can't just decide that i'm going to dismiss character any more than i can decide to't just decide that i'm going to dismiss character any more than i can decide to dismiss the other things i'm instructed to consider like playing ability and just put someone in who was bad at baseball but a really nice guy so the third possibility is that i'm aware of all these off-field problems but i've decided that being really good at baseball outweighs them. Like, yeah, maybe you hit your wife, but if you hit a lot of homers, I'll let that slide. And ultimately, I just wasn't comfortable with that.

I kind of like picked up the ballad. I was like dangling the pencil over it just to see how it felt sort of for a pen maybe. And it just didn't feel right. Like I can talk on this podcast about Barry Bonds being good at baseball. And if I bring him up or I mention his baseball performance in a positive light, it doesn't mean that I'm endorsing his character. I'm just saying he was good at baseball.

And here in this medium, I can talk about the bad and the good. It doesn't have to be binary. But if I check that box in the ballot, I am endorsing his character or at least saying that his character isn't disqualifying. I guess I could write a column and say, you know, I was sick to my stomach when I voted and list the various transgressions that almost made me vote against this guy or that guy or not vote at all. But ultimately what most people see, I think, and what history remembers to the extent that any of this is remembered is whether the box was checked and what the percentage of support was. And there's nothing on the plaque or on the page on the website that says he hit this many homers, but he also allegedly hit his wife or his girlfriend. There's no provision for depriving someone of a speech currently.

As far as I know, there's no note on the wall that says, hey, these guys were great players, but don't take that to mean that they were also great guys. Once they're in, they they're in and only their greatness gets acknowledged and under those circumstances i just wouldn't feel great about seeing them there and knowing i helped put them there and i understand that historically the character clause was often ignored but that doesn't mean it should have been if it was there, if it was on the books, and domestic violence was often overlooked too, and it shouldn't have been. And this is my first time being eligible to vote, so I don't think I have to be bound by the behavior of previous voters necessarily. And I don't know where the disqualifying line should be. If you're Todd

Helton and you've had multiple DUIs, is that enough? I don't know. I'm not saying you have to be a Boy Scout or a shining paragon of virtue or Mr. Popularity or anything. But if you've been associated with domestic violence or sexual assault

or grooming a minor or things along those lines, that to me means maybe you're not deserving of the highest honor in your profession again as long as we're considering character which for now i think we are so yeah steroids are secondary to me a pretty distant second and i do find it frustrating that they really dominate the character clause discussion like if we are going to have that discussion at all then i don't think that should be the beginning and end of it.

So when I hear long debates about the character clause that are entirely predicated on PED use, I don't want to say that's missing the point because those points can be valid and relevant too, but I do think it's missing a big part of the picture. So that's what I'm thinking. And maybe so far you're with me or you're thinking, okay, even if I wouldn't reach the same conclusion, I understand where he's coming from. But if I don't think that these guys deserve to get in, then why not have the courage of my convictions and vote against them all? I think one problem is that this is such a uniquely noxious ballot from a character clause perspective that literally the majority of players I otherwise would vote for or consider voting for have major non-PED related character clause baggage, often in addition to some PED history, if you care about that kind of thing too. There's a lot of doubling down on this ballot.

Yeah, you don't have to pick one. It could be both. Why not both? Yeah. So you have five no doubt or at least semi-convincing statistical candidates with domestic violence allegations on their record. Six, if you find Omar Vizquel's statistical case persuasive, which I don't, but you have Vizquel, you case persuasive Which I don't but you have

Vizquel you have Bonds you have Manny Ramirez You have Sammy Sosa you have Andrew Jones you have David Ortiz And David Ortiz Kind of looked at as a cuddly Guy and certainly a fan favorite And he was in a lot of ways but He did have a restraining order for

Threats and intimidation filed against Him by the mother of one of his kids last year, not even that long ago. And I wasn't there when that alleged incident happened or any of these alleged incidents took place. And I can't verify what did or didn't happen. And I'm not necessarily equating Ortiz with Bonds or Vizquel or anyone else. I'm not saying they're all equally guilty or implicated in these things. A lot of them have denied at least some of the allegations for whatever that's worth. In Ortiz's case, I don't think he was accused of outright violence in the 2020 incident.

It sounds like that was a larger mess where he ended up filing a restraining order too. I do know that in 2016, Ortiz was asked about the domestic abuse allegations against Aroldis Chapman and Yasiel Puig and Jose Reyes. And his response was, these are good guys. I feel so bad for them. Yeah. I know Jose well. Jose is not a troublemaker.

He's a good guy. That's not the Jose I know. He's a good kid, but people are going crazy and want to judge him. We're not perfect. We all make mistakes. That doesn't mean Ortiz did the things that those players have been accused of doing, but not a great sentiment. And a lot of people who have previously voted for him have switched to no. And maybe some of that is because new candidates joined the ballot, but most of it seems to be because of the DV and abuse allegations against him. And are those allegations so much worse than some of the allegations against other players that those same voters are still voting for? Or is it just that the allegations against him are more recent and visible and better known because they just surfaced? Or is it that he wasn't quite as great at baseball as some of the other guys who have similar stains on their records? I don't know. So you have those guys, then you have Roger Clemens and Mindy McCready, right? And then you have Curt Schilling, who I wouldn't be comfortable voting for either for different reasons. And again, it's not about which party he belongs to or how he votes.

It's about endorsing the lynching of journalists and anti-trans comments and supporting the insurrection and endorsing imposing martial law because of election conspiracies and promoting misinformation about school shootings being hoaxes, et cetera, et cetera. It could go on. Can I briefly interrupt your monologue? And I have a lot of, I think there's been a lot of debate around the sort of consistency of the application of the character clause on ballots that have been published. And I don't need to litigate any particular ballot but I do have some sympathy for the notion that Schilling is in some ways sort of a unique case because he is not shy right he's not a quiet guy and he is gonna have a speech and

I think that it is legitimate to think about how platforming him is sort of destructive in a unique way and perhaps irresponsible in a unique way. Now, the counter to that, which I also find persuasive, is that if you give a vote to one of the candidates who has domestic violence or grooming of a minor stuff associated with them, they likely aren't going to advocate for those things in their speech, but they are being platformed also, and that has an impact on survivors. Right. Or who knows, it could enable future behavior on their part in some way. It's just hard to tell and so i think that you know there are a lot of ways to sort of grapple with the platforming question but i do think that like i can i can see the argument for shilling having a particular and unique issue when it comes to that which doesn't mean that you have to vote for any of them or that you might not view the folks who are associated with with violence or inappropriate sexual

relations with intimate partners as as disqualifying in their own right. I don't mean to suggest that, but I am sort of sympathetic to that argument. Man, okay, continue your monologue. No, thank you for stopping my headlong rush here for a second. But I do think that's a valid stance. And I just, I didn't feel like I could exclude Schilling and still vote for Bonds and Clements and Co. Like I do get the argument Schilling is more vocal and he's interested in political office and maybe he poses like a clear and present danger in a way that some others don't and he might do more harm than others with the boost in profile he could get from being a hall of famer but i don't know who's to say it doesn't do as much harm or some harm to have an abuser or alleged abuser get to say he's a hall of famer and be celebrated for that with no acknowledgement of the other stuff so that's chilling i guess you can call that politics and some people do but i just don't see those things see them as things about which reasonable people can disagree. Not like within

the bounds of what traditionally, historically, I would hope we would consider politics. I guess that's what it is today. But I just felt a little icky about excluding someone who sends some really terrible tweets and including people who may have done things that other candidates were accused of. Right. Not that tweets can't cause harm, but it's just a little different. Anyway, I could submit a ballot that was just Scott Rowland and maybe Gary Sheffield and possibly Halton, who DUIs aside is really right on the border for me statistically anyway, And A-Rod potentially. Although, man, if I feel bound to consider character because that's in the rules, then maybe I'm obligated to consider sportsmanship and integrity too. And A-Rod doesn't exactly pass with flying colors there.

No. And then maybe Ortiz. I had been a bit conflicted about him just on the baseball merits, but I've been kind of coming around, especially because of the postseason accomplishments. Other guys like Abreu and Pettit and Burley and Hudson, they all just fall a bit short for me, as do Billy Wagner and Joe Nathan. I know there's an argument that if DH and reliever are positions in the sport and spots on the roster that people occupy, then the best of those things should be in. But the bar for both is really high for me. They're not so much positions with specialized

skill sets in my mind as they are places where you put players who aren't capable of playing positions where they could amass more value. Like starters and relievers are just different points on the spectrum of the pitching position i think sure and relievers pitch a lot less and have less opportunity to accrue value and those innings totals are just so low anyway that's kind of aside from the main thrust here the point is that i could turn in a ballot that excluded most of the best players on the ballot but i really wouldn't feel good about that either. I don't really think there's a point to having a Hall of Fame as we understand the Hall

of Fame that excludes a lot of the best players or includes a lot of players who weren't among the best. That's why I kind of cringe when a Bobby Gritch or Lou Whitaker or Kenny Lofton or Dick Allen is kept out. And also kind of cringe when a Jack Morris or Harold Baines or Bruce Suter or Jim Rice gets in. Or if you keep players from the PED era out but bring Bud Selig in. It's not that I don't want someone to have a happy day. It's that if you have a really inconsistent standard, it's just hard to know what significance to attach to the honor. I don't know what it means anymore. And I think most people who buy a ticket to the Hall of Fame and go to the plaque room expect that to be the place with the best players. I don't think they're looking at that mostly the way that I'm looking at this.

And I don't know that there's anything wrong with that. I think a lot of voters and visitors are able to separate the person off the field from the person on the field. And I don't think a vote for Bonds or Clemens or Ramirez or Schilling or whomever is necessarily irresponsible or malicious or an indication that the voter doesn't think domestic balance is bad. I wouldn't be upset if those guys got in really, because voter doesn't think domestic violence is bad. I wouldn't be upset if those guys got in, really, because I don't think most people are even looking at it that way or that it's really even treated as a referendum on those things in most cases. It's just something I'm personally uncomfortable with. And I don't know that I really want to impose that personal discomfort

on everyone else who might view the Holland character in a completely different light. I mean, I guess the point of poll voting is that everyone has different standards and opinions and you apply your own and hopefully you end up with something that makes sense. But it doesn't seem like that's really working out these days. And I actually don't think it's all that useful to have this whole conversation be about character. And if I sent in a ballot where most of the names were unchecked because of the character clause, I feel like I would be giving my approval to the way this system is constructed and the way the instructions are written. And I don't think that's really in the best interest of baseball history or visitors to Cooperstown or people who pay attention to the Hall of Fame in general. So there's kind of a personal discomfort and there's kind of a conscientious objection element to this, not to make it too high minded. just provide more guidance about these moral questions or should rule certain players ineligible. But I don't know that MLB or the Hall is more equipped necessarily to rule on these things than the writers are. Honestly, I just think you have to follow the lead of most other Halls of

Fame and get rid of the character clause and just have this be about whether the players were among the best at baseball or not. And then you're not necessarily endorsing their character when you check the box and that helps you avoid all sorts of sticky situations like kirby pocket getting in and having a plaque and web page that say what a great guy he is right before new reports reveal that maybe he wasn't such a great guy in every respect after all what if kurt schilling had been elected when he first became eligible before most of the objectionable things he's said or tweeted? By the numbers, he should have been. He should have been on his first ballot. And then you'd have someone who's already a mean you have to sweep all of these things under the rug or not talk about them like the museum is more than the hall of fame you can have a place where you acknowledge the best players and then also have a place where you acknowledge their unsavory sides and you just have an opportunity to talk about that because character is not part of the criteria that you're being judged by when you initially get in.

And really, you're providing a greater service to your visitors into baseball history, maybe, if you do present that complete picture, because we already have sophisticated and easily accessible stats that can tell us with some certainty who the most valuable players are. We don't necessarily have to go solely by whose plaque is hanging in a room in upstate New York. And I don't think Bonds and Clemens and Schilling are in any danger of being lost to history if they aren't inducted. You can't tell the story of baseball without them, but you can tell their stories without putting plaques of them in that room, both the good and the bad. So all that said, deciding not to vote is still a decision that

in theory could sway the results because by not casting a ballot i am deciding not to hurt some players chances and not to help other players chances but there's no real way around that unless i leave the bbwa which could affect my ability to get access to games and players and do that part of my job. As long as I'm in there, I'm going to be eligible to vote. So this is the best solution I could come up with. And I'm sure if you went back in the Effectively Wild archives, you could find instances of me saying that I would vote for this guy or that guy, because I always assumed I would would and it's just that I guess a lot has changed since I got into the PPWA 10 years ago for one thing my hypothetical ballot became an

actual ballot and a real ballot just felt different to me than the imaginary one for another I just know more than I used to and for a long time I wasn't aware of some of these character concerns and even if I had been aware of them I might not have weighed them as heavily as I do now. I think there's been a broader evolution in how society views these things and certainly how the sport views them. I mean, there wasn't even an MLB domestic violence policy until 2015. So that's changed. And my thinking on these things has shifted also So I don't know When some of these things came up

In the Effectively Wild Discord group the other day Someone invoked the quote from War Games A strange game The only winning move is not to play And I don't know if this is a winning move I don't feel like I'm winning anything But it's just the move I felt least uncomfortable with ultimately. And as it happens, I don't think my vote or non-vote would make much

of a difference. According to the latest projection, I saw Schilling, Clemens, and Bonds have zero chance to get in this year. I know they're maybe doing better than it appears because of the public ballots, but historically speaking, they always do far worse on the ballots that come out later or that are anonymous. And so if you use those past voting patterns to project, as Jason Sardell does on Twitter, I think he's acknowledged to have had the most accurate model. And he has them at zeros across the board. Ortiz seems like the only one with a chance. He's kind of right on the edge. And if he doesn't get in this year, I'm sure he'll get in next year. So maybe this is all a dilemma

in my head with no immediate real world impact. And not voting this year doesn't preclude my voting in some future year. I'll still be eligible to vote as long as I'm in the BBWAA. So if the voting criteria change or something else about the way the hall handles its display changes or my thinking changes for some other reason, or everyone on a future ballot is a saint, I will have the option to reconsider. But after a lot of thought, this is where I ended up this year. after a lot of thought, this is where I ended up this year. Yeah, I was going to ask what you sort of anticipate your reaction will be to future ballots, because I can envision some of the guys who will persist past this year, just because their eligibility lasts beyond this year, will present similar problems. And I think that we're both realistic enough to know that at some point in the future, there will be candidates who are worthy of

serious consideration for induction who present similar issues, right? There's no way that we're going to avoid that, you know, baseball players are people and they come with all of the, you know, attendant generosity and failure that people come with and sometimes that manifests in ways that is destructive and violent for people they care about and i'm not saying like forget they ever existed don't mention them or that if you enjoyed watching them play that you can't savor those memories i'm not saying it all has to be irretrievably tainted it's just that this is a really prestigious honor. I mean, this is reserved for the best of the best and at least going by the letter of the instructions, not just the best in

terms of playing ability, but the best in terms of these other factors too. Yeah. I do wonder, you know, I think the hall is as an institution kind of slow to respond to things, which is perhaps not surprising for an institution, the primary purpose of which is to be sort of a cataloger of history apart from anything else. But I do wonder if the sentiment around the criteria and the voting process will reach a sufficiently sort of fevered pitch that they have to respond and really think critically about what it is that they are using as criteria, how they are constituting the ballots. The writers have, at various points, asked for greater transparency across the board into ballots, which I think,

you know, we do see a lot of disclosure either prior to the deadline or after, I think probably more than we've ever seen before. But there's also been a lot of discussion among voters now and prospective voters about how silly it is to make ballot crowding such a problem. We have strategic voting in the Hall of Fame because you are limited to the number of guys you can vote for. And I remain skeptical that if you change the instructions and just said, you know, you should vote for however many players on this ballot you perceive to be Hall of Famers, that we would end up with a wildly diluted Hall of Fame. I think that people take seriously the notion that this should be an honor that is conferred

to the players who best exemplify achievement. So I would be comfortable with us saying, you know, vote for however many guys you think are Hall of Famers and sort of getting rid of this notion of having to vote strategically because I think that that leads to some kind of weird ballots and weird behavior. But the character thing, I remain unsettled on what I think the standard ought to be. I think that your decision as you've laid it out is a perfectly defensible one. And I appreciate that you opted to not vote

rather than submit a blank ballot because you don't want to penalize the guys. It's not Scott Rowland's fault. He's on a ballot with all of these. No, I would never vote against Scott Rowland. One of my great regrets is that I'm not voting for Scott Rowland. Right, like, it's not Scott Rowland's fault that, you know, Roger Clemens groomed a minor or that Perry Bonds, you know, hit his wife

or that Schilling is what he is. Like, that's not his fault. So I appreciate that decision relative to some of your other options. But I do think that we need to really come together as sort of the custodians and guardians of baseball's history and really decide what do we think that this should mean and what are we saying about it and the people that we're admitting. And I think that the conclusion I'm coming to increasingly is that the idea of having a history of a museum of baseball's history and an institution that confers an honorific, I think, might just fundamentally be at odds with one another.

Yeah. yeah. I think those missions might not be compatible missions. And that doesn't mean that we can't have a Hall of Fame that's about the plaques. But I think tying it to an institution that is supposed to give a clear and accurate and comprehensive understanding of baseball's history, While voters have to grapple with the reality that they are endorsing either endorsing outright the characters of these guys or as you said deciding that like it's not sufficiently disqualifying and having to do this like gross accounting where you're weighing one bad act versus the other and deciding where the line is. Or just going rogue and saying I'm not going to consider this even though I'm told to. Right. Which I guess is valid, but I just feel like it's like the contracts in a way. It's like if I accept this ballot and vote, then I feel like I am kind of bound by those instructions

even if I don't particularly care for them. Yeah, and I don't mean to suggest that all bad acts are equivalent in their impact or severity. I think that we can all acknowledge that there is a spectrum of on, on these kinds of things, but I don't think you come out of the process of like placing each bad act along that spectrum clean. Like it is, it is a, it's just a fundamentally icky kind of accounting to have to do. And so I don't quite know what the solution is within the context of the character clause, because as a future voter, I don't know that I like the idea of being told that I can't consider those things because, you know, like we do know what Schilling has done. We do know what these allegations against these guys are. And I would view it as an endorsement,

even if the exercise says, you know, only consider on field. Like, I wonder, you know, sometimes luck is such a, is its own icky way of describing this. But, like, I bet that the guys, I think they were primarily men just because of the voting body. Like, I'm sure that everyone who voted for OJ Simpson to go into the Football Hall of Fame is happy about the timing of that. Right. Because, like, what if he had come up later with everything we know? Like, do you feel good about casting a ballot there?

Like, no, you feel you'd feel gross and you'd know what the impact would be to real people about that decision. So I think that we need to, you know, there needs to be like a committee that comes together and kind of really grapples with this and tries to figure out a way to deal with it that is better than what we have. And I don't know that there is an obvious solution there. But I think that as long as we're having to deal with that piece, we maybe need to think really carefully about how easily and comfortably the sort of celebration and the history sit with one another. Because I really do think those exercises might be at odds in a way that is sort of impossible to resolve.

So, yeah. I don't know what I'll do with future ballots. I mean, future ballots, I would hope. I mean, they almost couldn't have a collection of bad characters like this, I would think, probably. And in some ways, I would feel like I was just taking an easy out or something if I just didn't vote this year because it happens to be a particularly thorny collection of characters. And then maybe in a future year when there aren't as many guys with those histories, then I just sort of go with it. I mean, maybe I'll change my thinking on this for other reasons, but it is more of a sort of philosophical or

ideological stance just about the way the system is set up and how the instructions are written than it is just that these guys happen to be on the ballot this year. I'm sure that the fact that the ballot looks like it does this year obviously made me focus on this more and think about it more and means that my ballot would be bare. If I actually considered these things and still submitted a ballot, there would not be that many boxes checked. So that's definitely brought it to the fore, but you're right, it's not going to go away completely. And if I'm being consistent, then probably unless something changes with the instructions or those institutions get decoupled, as you're saying, or who knows, maybe this is just taken out of the hands of the writers

altogether, which wouldn't bother me. Maybe there's some other kind of committee that weighs these things. Maybe there is some provision for actually accounting for both sides of a player's career so that if you let him in, it's not just solely the positive accomplishments that anyone sees or remembers. There are a lot of different ways that this could go. But really, I don't know that I could change my mind, at least if I'm using these consistent standards until something about the process changes, not just about the ballot. So we'll see. Yeah, I think it's a defensible position ben i and i will say i appreciate i mean we've just talked about this for you know uh almost 40 minutes so we can't say that we aren't indulging

in a little bit of self-seriousness we must be honest about that but i i think that the balance that any voter should try to strike in considering both whether to cast a ballot at all and then which players to vote for if they decide to cast a ballot is to take the process seriously without taking themselves too seriously because there's i don't want to pick on tom verducci but like you remember the video and then it so for for folks who did not watch the network, MLB network announcement of the Hall of Fame results last year, Tom Verdigis was in this video that was very, we'll call it florid, you know, about the seriousness and the honor of casting a ballad and he's sitting at the desk and he's, you know, got a serious face on and i have a lot of i have respect for verdigis as a as a as an analyst and a writer and and also that was one of the most ridiculous things i've ever watched in my entire life it made me laugh out loud we we overuse lull but i i lulled and then for it to proceed the writers not electing anyone was just chef's kiss perfect it was it was the best bit of theater. It was so funny.

And so I think we want to, in this particular way, avoid pulling a Ruriky, right? You don't want to seem like you're so serious because at the end of this exercise, the point is supposed to be these incredible players and acknowledging their contribution to the game. And so it should be about them and not us. And I think that you know writers are part of how we do our work is to be perceptive and to reflect and sometimes we turn that lens

inward a little too much so you know i hope folks forgive us when we are a bit self-indulgent in that way but i think that you have like taken the the exercise sufficiently seriously without being overly self-serious and so i congratulate you for that ben and i think your choice is a defensible one and you didn't you didn't ding poor scott roland so i think that you're coming away as as clean as one can in the face of a very strange thing yep all right let's transition to a happier subject dreams The big finale. Oh my gosh. This is our fourth and final recap pod. I'll link on the show page to our previous three.

I hope some of you have been following along with us here and joined us on this journey, whether contemporaneously or years later. I don't know when you're listening to this, but evergreen content, hopefully at least this part of the podcast. So we watch this and recommend watching this on Viki, the streaming platform, as we have said before. So when we left off last time at the end of episode 12, the PR team leader of Dreams had just been dragged off by goons from Json Group, the parent company. And then we find out he's in trouble for violating a law about giving gifts for favors, and he is being audited. And this seems entirely trumped up. It is just the latest iteration of the grudge between Director Kwan and Baek Sung-soo manifesting itself and redounding to some other member of the dreams. And Director Kwan says, do you know how underhanded baseball is as a sport?

And he says, baseball is the only sport that allows a steal, which I guess there's some truth to that, but you can kind of steal stuff and cheat in every sport. But anyway, you can steal and you can steal in basketball. Like you can just steal the ball in basketball. So like,

I don't know if that works. Yeah. It's very dramatic though yeah so this is punishment for baek sung-soo's continued rebelliousness and for the pr team leader not being a mouthpiece of ownership anymore and baek sung-soo humbles himself before the director he makes baek sung-soo bow down to him to ask for this to be transferred to an internal investigation as opposed to, I guess, a public legal criminal one. Yeah. And Baek Sang-soo says like bonds at work are a hindrance to him because he doesn't take direction well. And everywhere he goes, someone close to him gets punished for being associated with him.

close to him gets punished for being associated with him so now the assistant scout team leader is the new acting president because the old president was transferred to the parent company you have han jihui is transferred to the scout team to replace him and that's his punishment for protesting the fact that kwan compelled the gm to. So the GM, Baek Sung-soo, as usual, he pretends that it's his decision for some reason and takes the blame for these things, even though I think everyone can see through that. So there was one quote from the reporter on the baseball show who says,

the professional baseball league's New Year's resolution to give people hope has already failed, which that's relatable. I'm sure MLB will be in that same boat pretty soon. But she is referring to a steroid scandal because everything else that could potentially happen on the show has happened. So why not have a steroid scandal in episode 13? So there's basically a biogenesis type scandal here. Some players got caught trying to buy steroids. Yep. Led to believe that he Is one of the players implicated Here and I guess like so he's He previously has taken

A diuretic like maybe a Could be used as a masking agent or Something and so there are some rumors About him and The Vikings GM who I like but he's just kind of a hapless Guy really and He's like googling

Limdungyu it's like seems like not ideal if you're the gm who traded for this guy like i don't know maybe do a little research check into his makeup yeah his treatment in this series is very strange because on the one hand he does present as like very bumbling at times? Like he hasn't done sufficient due diligence on this major trade that he is then surprised by the idea that Lim Dong-yoon might have used steroids in the past. But also we come to understand through the next couple of episodes that he has rebuilt this pitching empire.

Right, he knows what he's doing, seemingly. Yeah, and so it's a very odd combination of things. I found that characterization to be a little inconsistent in a way that was i was like wait what is he good or bad i can't i can't decide what the show wants me to think of this guy but we do we we do see him sort of stumbling into the idea that oh no i might have a problem right yeah so Lim Dong-gyu's getting blackmailed we think it's because of the drugs right because we see him in this flashback the young Lim Dong-gyu is out running and he is accosted by this steroid dealer who hands him a vial essentially and he is considering

using it and ultimately doesn't but before he decides to throw it away, Kong Duki sees him holding it. And we realize that this is the source of the conflict that they have had for all this time. Now we know the mystery of what caused this rift between them. So there's, I think, kind of a misdirect there in that we are led to believe that kong dukey is guilty of this and the gm who we were just talking about he says he won't sell his soul to win by covering up drug use so he's sort of a noble guy i guess and uh and beck sung su i guess because he feels guilty about not telling the Vikings GM everything he knew before the trade, he comes in with some sabermetric steroid use analysis, courtesy of his younger brother. And he's got a packet of Vikings players who have some suspicious improvements in performance, and he offers it to the Vikings GM.

GM says, nope, i'm not taking it i'm trusting the players bad move i guess so when this is all going on director kwan he's running his own angle on this of course and uh he thinks kang dogi is taking something, and he has the new president looking at Kang Doo-gi footage to find some smoking gun of PD use, I guess. And he meets with leaders of other teams to say that they should make it clear that the players are the perpetrators and institute stricter punishments. And the Vikings' owner objects because there are these rumors about Lim Dong-gyu and he thinks it's going to hurt his team. But Director Kwan thinks it's going to hurt Dreams, which is his whole deal. That's all he has on his mind is hurting his own team. So he kind of pressures them into this new punishment of a two-year ban.

But if they turn themselves in, then it's only a one-year ban. And so they're given some time to own up to this and the director even intentionally implicates kong dookie because when he's like announcing this he starts saying his name and then he says it was a slip of the tongue this is like all to make baek sung-soo look bad for acquiring kong dookie and and to make the team tank so he can disband it. So that all happens. Robinson, Baek Sung-soo's brother, is doing his study. Now, I don't know why the players who were guilty didn't come forward.

Right. Because a lot of them were guilty. So five Vikings are suspended. Nine teams, all except the Dreams, have players implicated in the scandal. 22 players in total. The Dreams are the only team without one. So I don't know what all those players were thinking. I'm not sure why nobody turned themselves in when they were given the option of having that more lenient sentence. I guess they just thought right up until the end that they could get away with it. Yeah, it wasn't clear to me what the process of discerning their actual drug use was in this.

I'm sure that they, I guess they just got tested or something, but it seemed- I think they were just on a list of players who had had drugs supplied to them. Ah, right. Yes, that's true. I guess that, but it's like, is that enough? I don't know. Anyway, I was like, what does the players union have to say about this right and of course because i am viewing this series partly through the context of our current moment in mlb i was like oh isn't it convenient that the head of the

players union is suspected of yeah of steroid use that seems very fishy yeah oh and there's also simultaneously a new story about a amateur school coach who's giving his players pds so that breaks at the same time so that creates this moral panic about steroids so anyway the director's plan backfires Baek Sung-soo wins again and it turns out that Kang Dook-hee is clean and every other team was hurt by this not the dreams so the dreams are suddenly in a better position so beck sungsoo gets to come into the director's office and gloat a little bit about that and uh robinson's study i keep calling him by his sabermetric pseudonym but he realized that kong dookie didn't get better because he was using steroids he added

a third pitch like a change up he wasn'tpitch pitcher anymore, which apparently that tidbit alluded the former scout team guy somehow. He was not aware that Kong Duki had made real other improvements. Yeah. I don't know. Anyway, I enjoyed that the PR team leader suggests doing an interview to say our team is the worst but innocent. PR team leader suggests doing an interview to say our team is the worst but innocent and no one except Robinson like realizes that this means the dreams could be good now like yeah they're all happy that they're innocent but I guess they're also used to being bad and finishing last that they don't even see that this could be a big break for dreams so yeah all along Lim Dong-gyu thought that Kang Dook-hee

had reported him and that led to their conflict and Lim Dong-gyu kind of alienating himself and isolating himself from the team meanwhile Kang Dook-hee blames himself for not resolving that conflict between them so Lim Dong-gyu's name is cleared for PED use. The twist is that he's clean, but he's also dirty because he's been gambling. Yeah, he's being blackmailed for overseas gambling in Macau. And that was what Baek Seung-soo knew about and said to Lim Dong-gyu in that first whispering. Yes, he finally got resolution on the whispers. Exactly right. We finally got resolution on the whispers.

Exactly. Right. And you know that Lim Dong-gyu, he's not just a product of PEDs because he is practicing way too much, frankly. The man is taking too much batting practice. Yeah. I mean, he has big blisters and just raw, festering sores on his hand. Not ideal. No. And he's like hitting off a tee.

Like in the flashback,ong dookie comes in and says you know hitting off a t by yourself won't improve your skills and it's probably true he's got a point there and he's pitching to him initially so like there was a framework for relationship there and they could have been the the two young cornerstones of the franchise and i don't know whether lim dong kyu felt threatened by the fact that everyone was like clapping And I don't know whether Lim Dong-gyu felt threatened by the fact that everyone was like clapping Kang Doo-gi on the back and viewing him as the future of dreams. But anyway, at the end of that episode, another twist that GM offers that Lim Dong-gyu can come back to dreams if he cleans up his act and not only stops gambling but uh stops being such a bad clubhouse influence well and he and kong doogie get together over noodles which is when the best piece is brokered in my opinion and kong doogie really encourages him to he says you know when i'm if i'm not living

right then i can't pitch well and you know we at the time think that this is in reference of course to the peds because the revelation i don't think has come out at that point in the episode and he's like you know you should live right and it seems to have inspired the confession about the gambling and then you know he is able to sort of turn a corner in his professional and personal life as a ball player and kong doogie has asked if he is comfortable with his return to the team and he says yeah yeah kong doogie no character clause concerns with no really quite an upstanding citizen yeah that is he's an upstanding guy and i think you

know gives some some important advice to lim dong yoon a number of other members of the team so he inspires him to to come clean and to you know try to move forward living in a more honest way so that's good yeah so Kang Duk-hee gives his blessing to the trade so Baek Sung-soo goes to the Vikings GM again and he offers him an appealing package of prospects up up-and-coming players here, a hitter and a pitcher. The hitter is known as Little Lim Dong-gyu. And he says, Baek Sung-soo, that he's doing this out of a sense of moral responsibility. Like, he feels bad about trading Lim Dong-gyu to Vikings, knowing that he had this gambling thing hanging over his head. If I were the Vikings GM at this point,

not sure I would still trust Baek Seung-soo. Like he's already made the bad faith, like AJ Preller hiding the medical reports type trade. And like the Vikings are like ruined at this point, like solely because of dreams, because of Baek Seung-soo. Like they were doing great. Like they had this whole pitching arsenal and they're one of the best teams and then they've traded kang doogie

they trade for lim dong gyu and they find out that he's kind of a lemon and he's gonna get suspended and meanwhile the director of dreams has made it so that the vikings are going to be without five of their good players for two years so it's like complete collapse of this franchise because of Dreams so I'm not sure that I would be taking calls from this organization anymore if I were the Vikings GM but he sees an opportunity here the Dreams who were like the building for the future team at the start of this offseason are suddenly a win-now team. That happened very quickly.

So they're trading away prospects for Lim Dong-gyu. They no longer care that he is unclutch at part of the season because he is clutch late in the year. And now they're going to be playing late in the year, right? So now they want him back again. Their outlook has completely flipped in one offseason. And the rationale for trading him has completely flipped in one offseason and the rationale for trading him at the start of the offseason no longer applies at the end of the

offseason like even the scout team is looking for college players now because right win now talent yes although as lisa young points out when she gives the the presentation to try to persuade the rest of the team to make this trade she says like the reason that you were all really okay with the other trade is because we got kong dukey at the end so you know i think she is acknowledging that some of the rationale that they were presented with in in the initial proposal was perhaps you know sufficient to persuade but not necessarily full of merit on its own terms right yeah and they've gone from the limdang gyu burger to the kang doogie hot dog which has three sauces on it i wonder what they are and they're starting to suspect now that maybe there's an

exit strategy for baek sung-soo here Lisa Young asks him. She sort of suspects he may be leaving for some reason. But while that's going on, there's a wrench thrown into the potential reacquisition of Lim Dong-kyu because the Pelicans GM suddenly decides that he wants Lim Dong-kyu. And the Vikings GM leaked the news that Lim Dong-kyu was on the market, which was wise, I think. And so Pelicans GM bites. He offers an outfielder and a fifth starter who are like veterans, but they'll be better this year, just not long term than the younger players that Dreams are offering. And the Pelicans GM, his pitch is pretty interesting. He's like, hey, Vikings GM, you're on your last year of your contract. Yeah.

So there's a moral hazard here. GM you're on your last year of your contract Yeah so there's a moral hazard Here like between the gambling And juicing scandals on your team And now potentially missing the playoffs You're going to lose your job so you've got to Get some competent players now To preserve your position

But again nobly the Vikings GM he takes the long view He does what's best for the team so He's building up the Vikings Not his own job security so that's kind of nice and uh when dongyu comes back a reformed man now he's like jamie tart from ted lasso when he returns to the team he's a little bit better getting along with people although on the way out he does sign an autograph for the kid who's the vikings fan it's amazing and he signs it as a member of

the dreams and the kid is like i hate the dreams i hate the dreams it's great yeah that was great so vexung su announces the trade without director kwan's knowledge yes director kwan says can't approve it because of the budget lim dunkey is making more than the players we are trading away here. That motivates the marketing director to stop phoning it in and start making more money. And she makes a bunch of sponsorship deals. And now this is the time when we get her backstory, which is pretty interesting and pretty relatable, I think. So she always had this ability, and she used to be working 24-7, but she did all this work. She kind of burned out, I guess, and work was her life,

and now she leaves early, and everyone assumes it's because she's slacking off or because she has a family, Baek Sung-soo assumes, but actually she just has a lot of hobbies. She's a model of work-life balance. She has realized that work is not everything. So when she wants to, she can make all these deals and make up for the salary gap. But yeah, it's kind of a healthy attitude probably that she actually goes home at the end of the workday. Yes.

Sometimes you just need to be a Lego enthusiast. Yeah, right. Lego enthusiast. Just get together and put Legos together, I guess. Legos, you know, and it's fine. You gotta do it. You know, there are any number of reasons why Baek Sang-soo is an interesting character throughout this series.

I do find it interesting for a guy who is kind of gruff at times and doesn't always disclose his motivations even to his own coworkers. He does have a very good read on people, right? And it aids him in a way that is surprising given how at times disinterested he seems to be at some of the smoothing the way niceties that we all engage in, right? The little social niceties that help us get through the world without being yelled at.

He understands the real motivation and character of the GM of the Vikings in a way that the Pelican's GM just doesn't, and it is what allows him to sort of consummate this trade, but it's surprising given the other tensions in his personality, which it doesn't read as contradictory. It just makes him more interesting as a character in the series. So, yeah. And while all this is going on, there is a match fixing scandal, too. So we've got.

We've had. We've had a scouting scandal. Scouting scandal. Yeah. We've had scouting scandals. Gambling scandal. Yeah, we've had scouting scandals. Gambling scandal. Yeah, PEDs and now match fixing. We've got it all. So this former Dreams pitcher is implicated.

He walked the first batter in a game, and it's believed that maybe he did this in exchange for $5 million, which is not a ton of money. I think that's at least going by current current exchange rates about $4,000, but salaries are not what they are in MLB for these players as we learned on an earlier episode. So he is under suspicion because he was implicated by a match fixing broker who got caught, but also because there's a suspicious timing of the manager deposited 5 million won in his account at that time and also unexpectedly started him in that game.

But this goes from like, uh-oh, we're in trouble to your name is cleared in about five minutes because of the adept video investigation by Lisa Young, who comes in and points out that, well was an 8 pitch Plate appearance and he went To a full count and that final Pitch was just a tad outside it could have been called A strike and there were two Foul balls earlier in the plate appearance on pitches In the strike zone so really

It doesn't look like he was trying to Throw this plate appearance And also the original starting pitcher For that day was injured So turns out that the original Starting pitcher for that day was injured So turns out That the manager paid him That money that he would have gotten If he had accepted the match

Fixing proposition so that he Wouldn't accept the Match broker's money and fix the game So this is you know Probably pretty prescient like something like This could happen in MLB And I would not be shocked if it does Like things like this could happen yes in mlb and i would not be shocked if it does like things like this have happened in tennis for instance i mean it would take more than

five million one or the equivalent of that i think to get an mlb player to do this probably but also like with the advent of micro betting and being able to bet on like every pitch and every plate appearance yeah it would not really be noticeable if you just threw this instead of that. Right. And so certainly like in the minor leagues, let's say, where players are making little enough that they could have their heads turned by this sort of thing. I mean, this is not at all out of the question that like I know that this kind of thing has happened in the KBO in the past.

Yeah. And could be coming to our shores Sometime soon so stay tuned yeah Meanwhile The team is improved to the point That like they're starting to feel themselves I think yeah the catcher is like Let's play real baseball this season

And also the gm Like he's kind of accepting Some of these people into his confidence In his heart he is actually Adding contacts to his phone from the team. And I think it's still sort of a mystery why the manager was retained by Baek Sung-soo up to this point. And we find out that Lee Se-young liked him because apparently the manager is interested in MLB and the latest strategies like batting your best hitter second. But Baek Seok-soo likes him, and this seems kind of out of character for him, no?

Because as far as I can tell, he likes him because he fires up the fans. So he left Kang Doo-gi in a pitcher's duel when he had already thrown a lot of pitches and maybe it wasn't analytically the smartest move, but everyone was into it and it produced this very memorable game and so this is like trending away from the way things are working in nlp now but also was surprising i think to find out that beck sung soo cared about that kind of yeah yeah he he articulates sort of like the delineation of responsibility is like the front office is supposed to put the team together and the field manager is supposed to fire up the fans and get them invested in the game.

And I don't know that many general managers would articulate the sort of field staff end of that equation in quite that way. And it does suggest prioritizing sort of a squishy human thing. Yeah, humanists. Yeah, which doesn't seem in keeping with our favorite GM, but it does seem to be a primary motivator, and you're hearing him talk in this stirring language about the manager and what he's able to do, and then devastation hits. Another bomb drops. So, yes, the end of episode 14 kong doogie has been traded

to the titans and the manager approved it and for once fexung su actually shows some emotion and he angrily grabs the bp netting and so we're wondering did the manager betray him but like step back for a second dreams have now traded away and traded for yes the best pitcher and the best traded away and traded for one of the best or the best hitters in the league in a single offseason yes there has never been an offseason like this i i there probably been offseasons where a team traded away a player and reacquired that player. I mean, certainly there are times where a player will leave via waivers

or whatever and come back multiple times during an offseason. But to trade away a superstar and then reacquire that superstar and also trade away the guy you got for that superstar who is also a superstar this is the wildest offseason imaginable put aside all of the interpersonal conflicts and the turnover and the

scandals just purely on the field and then you have the whole gil chang ju robert gill saga i mean right they're cramming all of this into like span of a few months, presumably. Yeah, we can't ever let AJ or Jerry watch this show. Oh, yeah. We can't. It needs to stay off their radar because they've got enough motivation going on. They don't need to contemplate scenarios like this. No, no, no. This can't be matched.

So episode 15, penultimate episode. Did you get the sense, as I did, that the subtitles were suddenly worse in this one episode? Yes, I did. I found that the subtitle quality dipped noticeably. Yeah, this one was a little harder to, there were moments where I'm like, I'm not totally sure I'm tracking what I'm supposed to be tracking here. Right. Yeah, I did notice that. Yeah, I did notice that.

So the director, he's offering his justification for this trade. He's saying we have to rebuild and plan for the future. And yet he is trading Kong Duki for older players. We also find out that the director is a liberal arts major. And it's like, I don't know if that's like he's evil because he's a liberal arts major and Baek Seung-soo's the hero because he's a math and science guy. guy i don't know i'm kind of a blend of both i guess but i'm an english major so i don't know what that means but the director is like hey the front office shouldn't be the center of gravity i think he says like they should not be in the spotlight here he's pushing the manager to the forefront but really this is all just payback of course and part of his plan to tank the team and poor kang doogie

you see he has this blue mitt that says dreams come true on it and it looks like his dream is being dashed here and uh i did enjoy also there's a nice scene with lee se young and her mother at home where they're eating hot dogs i don't't know if they're kangdugi dogs, but her mother orders hot dogs. And they're like on a stick with all of these toppings that I didn't really recognize. It looked like some ice cream cone or something. So that was interesting. I'd like to know more about the hot dogs. But Lee Se-young tells the GM that winning winning isn't everything it's about effort and attitude

and the team culture and everything and then there's a fan group that shows up and is protesting the trade in front of the stadium though as usual they are blaming beck sung-soo for this they have not learned their lesson from the robert gill saga where it turned out that beck sung-soo actually knew what he was doing they think that this is all be Baek Sung-soo actually knew what he was doing. They think that this is all Baek Sung-soo is doing, that he has traded away Kang Doo-gi for inferior players for no reason. So while this is going on, Kwon's cousin shows up at the Dream's office and yells at everyone to stand, even though no one knows who he is. Then he goes to Director Kwon's office and he starts kicking and punching him in places where it won't leave bruises i guess he has found out that he's really gnarly stuff

chairman maybe yeah and so he feels empowered to do this but yeah these guys don't have a great relationship not a great family bond between them and everyone is up in arms about this so lim dong gyu and jin woo start a voluntary boycott of training to protest the trade and other mismanagement so the players are against this the coaches confront the manager but as usual he doesn't say anything the man does not say a lot of things no he just he is not very vocal. No. And even the PR director is like redeeming himself by he's willing to put out a press release about how the parent company is ruining the team now, making up for how he immediately issued that press release about Baek Sung-soo before. So as always with the show, we find out that when someone is doing something evil, there are layers to it.

So the manager, he has betrayed Baek Sung-soo, who put his faith in him and brought him back when everyone thought he was going to go. Well, it turns out the manager's son has cancer and he's in a cancer ward and he has these high hospital bills. And so I guess he can't afford to lose his job, presumably. So that is what is motivating him here. And he's not happy about it. And he's being his usual sad sack self. But you kind of understand why he is doing this, I guess. Meanwhile, I'm saying that a lot, but there's a lot happening here.

The Titans can't find Kong Dookie. He's not reporting to the team. And there is a rumor that he is retiring. And the GM, Baek Sung-soo, he tries to get the new president, the ex-scouting team guy, to be a whistleblower and blow the lid on Director Kwon and how he's trying to tank the team.

And the scout team guy says the GM doesn't know how hard that is because he's always on the move. He's always going from job to job, which is a fair point, I guess. And the new president, though, ultimately comes around. He knows where this secret money is. So the dreams, they get this side payout for salary dumping Kong Duki. So they get two billion won, which is a lot because later on they are like interested in selling the team for 20 billion won.

So they're getting like a tenth of the value of the franchise for dumping Kang Tuki. But hey, he's a really good player, I guess. So the president tips off Baek Seung-soo to where this like secret side contract is and the gm finally reveals to his front office that he has to leave soon and he has this clause in his contract that he's agreed to that he has to walk away and so he has nothing to lose now so he holds a press conference he reveals the secret side contract he requests that the league nullify the trade and uh that is what happened. I guess the titans agree to cancel the trade to avoid an investigation and a scandal here. So we can add

this to the top of the scandal pile. And we learned that J-Song, the parent company is going to sell to a heavy industry company so they won't be reliant on local consumers anymore. So they can just burn it all down now. They can sell the team. but at least

This trade is averted Kang Duki's back the rest of the team Hugs him and they chant a little Bit and the director like He takes out that ball that he has In his desk that was I guess Signed by Dreams players and he Throws it out so the die is

Cast for him currently but Baek Sung Soo gets a standing ovation when he goes back to the office and he says that's too much applause for normalizing the abnormal so guy can't take a compliment really but no he sure can't so at the end of this episode director kwan holds a press conference to announce that he is disbanding Dreams. And the GM we see is going over Director Kwan's head to talk to the chairman and the chairman's son of Jaesung to try to appeal to them. And that sets us up for the finale, the last eventful episode of Snowflake. I know that we don't know for sure that there won't be a second season do we know for sure there won't be a second season i don't think there will i i

have asked about that before and when i asked there was no indication that that was happening i haven't seen any subsequent indication that there will be i don't know how you could possibly you've run through so much plot in the first season that having it just be a standalone i think is probably to its benefit because you you've already used up all of your major potential scandals so what do you have left at that point really i i think that they do an episode on the character clause in hall of fame voting. Oh, no. No more discourse, please. Yeah. No, they burned all their material. I don't know whether

they knew going in that this would be a one-season series, and they just left it all on the field here. I guess I'm sorry that it hasn't continued, but it led to a really memorable season. Yes. They just did not leave anything untapped really so

here we are final episode Baek Sung-soo goes to the chairman and he says let me sell the team I can sell it at a profit and the chairman is not interested he doesn't bite this is small potatoes to him Baek Sung-soo makes the same offer then to Kwon and invokes his father's former fondness for the team. He's trying to play on his sentiment here. And he's offering to make a $20 billion deal for Dreams while J-Sung is being sold for a trillion. So baseball is basically a rounding error to this company. But I guess he wants to save face and not have the team sold at a loss and also he has this residual attachment to dreams so he says okay he concedes he gives him one week and he says if beck sung-soo doesn't deliver on the sale then uh and kwan has to like vouch for him

right because he goes to the chairman and he's like i'm giving beck sung-soo a week to do this and the chairman's like well if he fails then you have to go back to your father you don't get to go to your cushy heavy industry job so clearly he has faith in beck sung-soo's abilities even though he doesn't get along great with him and all these rumors are swirling about the team being sold the dreams front office in a pretty funny scene is getting calls from all the other teams for some reason. Because they have such great track records on this team and have been so scandal free. They're all getting poached by their rivals. But the president wants to return to the scout team to help build things up instead of tearing things down and sabotaging the team. He gives the baseball back to Kwon and I guess reminds him of his fondness for baseball.

And so he says, OK, you have a week, Baek Sung-soo, go to it. And he has already exhausted the local possibilities for people who could potentially purchase this team. So there are two potential purchases here, two potential solutions. And Lee Se-young is interested in maybe coming up with some publicly owned arrangement for Dreams. That would have been interesting to explore. It would have been cool. But Baek Sung-soo sees that the best lead here is to go to this IT or web portal company,

PF, and talk to this Zuckerberg guy, basically, this tech entrepreneur who started the company. And so essentially the climax of the season and the series is a PowerPoint presentation. Yeah. Which sounds unappetizing on paper, I'm sure, but it's a pretty interesting scene. So he's got like five different arguments to deploy here on many different slides so he gives him the logical argument first but then he hits him with the sentimental argument and he's done his research about this guy and he knows that they've had a falling out the founders of pf and so for him to purchase the team it would be a way for him to demonstrate that pf is a good guy company and is using its money in a

productive way and win his friends and fellow founders back and i guess this goes to what you were saying before about how he is a perceptive judge of character but also he has like grown as a character himself and he uses his own realization about his responsibility to the people he works with and that winning and just constantly growing isn't everything and values matter too so yeah he sells the pf zuckerberg equivalent on preserving the 10 team league and he'll be a hero and this will be great publicity value and he almost gets him to agree and then the pf guy says, if he's going to do this, then it has to be a new franchise. Like they have to dissolve dreams and then form a new one.

But Lee Se-young appeals to him and says, fans have long memories and they'll support dreams if we keep those things consistent. So she pitches in on the meeting too. And the tech guy is convinced. So they have miraculously succeeded in finding a pyre in a very short time frame for Dreams, and everyone celebrates. They go back to the office. There's a big round of cheers and chants and applause,

and Han Jae-hui gets to go back to the operations team, and the GM and the director, now that they're not superior and subordinate and they're not really on opposite sides anymore, it seems like there's maybe a grudging respect here. Yeah. Or they share a drink in the office. Maybe they bury the hatchet a bit. And Kwan realizes that just as his father was happier when he wasn't working for his older brother, even though he was making money kwan will be happier too and so he walks out yeah on j song so i guess he has learned from backslang zu in this whole saga too it's a very dramatic moment you know he comes with this like

envelope full of money to repay a prior debt and he walks out and you can like see him transformed in real time as he is walking out of his uncle's office load has been lifted yeah he's like joking around with people and seems to just be at peace with the decision i was you know you don't want shows to be too neat in their resolution of things because that's not how the world works but you know it was nice to see him have some amount of redemption at the end after being a real thorn in everyone's side for the majority of the series and he gets to get a vulcan nerve pinch in on his cousin just one who sucks his cousin sucks he does yeah that guy is the worst yeah Yeah, no. So the Dreams are still Dreams.

They still have the same name. It's still the same franchise, but they have had a rebrand. Yeah. So they've got a new mascot, and the mascot is like a duck or like a penguin or something, and he speaks, which is disturbing. He's also like kind of a comedian. is disturbing he's also like kind of a comedian he's like doing stand-up up here at this like press conference to introduce the rebanded dreams and their star players and i think that character is something that exists outside of the show actually pengsoo is a penguin from a youtube channel called giant peng tv which is run by the educational broadcasting system in south korea so

that channel has millions of subscribers and it's kind of crossed over into the culture at large. They have new uniforms too. And I got to say, I prefer the old ones, right? I mean, they've gone from like greenish and kind of lazy to reddish and I think they look better before. But I guess when you've been bad for a long time, you need change things up a little bit so it's super celebratory everything is great except lisa young goes to beck sung-soo's office and she finds that it's empty he has cleared out his desk in his office and he is sitting in

the stands staring at the field and we see that the one condition for the sale that zuckerberg had is that beck sung-soo can't keep his job because i guess the conservative shareholders of pf wouldn't want him because of his controversial history because he's been such a lightning rod but like he wants to be friends with beck sung-soo or yeah maybe more i don't know could be more but But that was, you'd think like he has this track record of success. Like they would want him around. But I guess he is just unpalatable because he constantly has his team in the headlines and sometimes stands up to his bosses and makes them look bad. So he's got to go. imagine that you know going to you know the league with the details of the kongdugi deal didn't endear him to like ownership types they're like this guy's

trouble we gotta get him out of here right yeah so there's a lot of like how can you not be romantic about baseball stuff in the finale and this last conversation in the stands between Baek Sung-soo and Lisa Young. Very touching, very sentimental. She talks about her memories of going to Dreams Games with her dad. And Baek Sung-soo says, I think I will remember this as the first time I was able to protect something. I think I will be strengthened a lot. And they both get choked up a bit And it's a nice moment And then we get a flash forward here We get a time jump And in the last little bit

Dreams are playing the Sabres in the championship series At the end of the season And Dreams are the only team that has beaten the Sabres In their season series, in the regular season. And we get a glimpse of everyone's stats, right? Yes. Of the prominent players and they all had great seasons, right? Kongdugi didn't just win his 18 games, he won 20.

20. And the catcher threw out 38.5% of base dealers and basically everyone was productive and Lim Dong-gyu came back and hit 17 homers in his half season I guess a little short of the 20 target but he is coming up big and everyone kind of panned out obviously they've ended up in the championship and so you see Baek Sung-soo like Billy Bean in Moneyball he's just driving around in his car and listening to the game. And you hear Lim Dong-gyu hits a clutch homer. So he's clutched after all, when it counts, if you're playing in these games that count. And then the final, final scene, it's Baek Sung-soo on the phone with Director Kwon.

And the GM, I guess Baek Sung-soo is either working with Kwon now or he's at a company that Kwon recommended. Yeah. I wasn't sure exactly, but they have clearly a cordial and perhaps professional relationship here. And in the last shot, Baek Sung-soo looks right at the camera and he breaks the fourth wall. Yes. And he addresses the audience. the fourth wall yes and he addresses the audience and then there's like a little text card after that that says you don't have to be strong we will help each other yeah i guess that is the message that they want us to take away from this and i i love that he had like the little keychain little

dreams keychain hanging from his rear view and a little dreams guy in there it's like you know not that he was ever the grinch but it did have like a and his heart grew through three sizes that day kind of feel to it like he is clearly comfortable with the attachment that he developed to this organization and the people in it and he is invested in them doing well and you know it's it's nice that he got to move forward in his life in that way it's pretty cool yeah all right just a few closing questions for you here are you disappointed that this was basically like a front office manager game where like they make all the moves and then they basically sim the season and skip all of the action and just like it's Stove League it's just about this offseason it's about how they transform the team and then you don't really get to see the team

doing its thing you just know the stats and the fact that they're in this final series and Lim Dong-gyu hits the big homer so maybe you're supposed to assume that they won this series but you don't get to enjoy the fruits of the labor so much. I was okay with it, honestly. Like, I thought it was fine. I think that the more actual baseball, a baseball show shows us, the more opportunity there is for us to go, that's not quite right, you know?

So I thought we got like the right amount of baseball in this. We had moments that were exciting, that showed real game action, and they were able to sort of maintain their dramatic tension perhaps in part because of their scarcity relative to the rest of the series it felt like a good way to keep it you know if this does end up being the only season of it we get like it you know it allowed us to have a jam-packed but sort of discreet and enclosed season of activity. Like, you know, you weren't going to get a team that was bad.

Like, there was no way that this was going to end with them being not good. So I was okay with them kind of yada-yada-ing the actual season itself. I thought it was fine. It didn't bother me. Yeah. It might seem backwards to some people. It's like a baseball show without much actual baseball, but you're right. If you know that it's going to have a happy ending, then how much suspense would there be watching the ups and downs of the season? I mean, I wouldn't have minded if opening day was the season finale and then season two was watching the team play and could have had its challenges during the season two, that could have been good. But if they knew that it was going to be one season and this is just it's a distinctive series.

I mean, there are a lot of movies and shows that like are about the baseball and the playing and the games on the field and everything. And maybe that's more compelling to some people. are about the baseball and the playing and the games on the field and everything. And maybe that's more compelling to some people, but this behind-the-scenes inside baseball literally stuff, I think it sort of sets this series apart. And the focus on that maybe made it more accessible also to people who don't care that much about baseball or the sport. I mean, maybe it got too deep in the weeds for some of those people people too but the fact that it's about characters and it's like a work drama slash comedy dramedy whatever you want to call it i think that probably makes it more appealing to people who

aren't necessarily hardcore into like watching sports or watching baseball so do you have a favorite character or favorite characters who's most memorable to you? Oh, gosh. It's like choosing amongst your children. I know. They're all good. Like, they're no bad characters, really. There's no one I'm, like, sick of seeing or hated their storyline.

They all kind of brought something to the table. Yeah. Let's see. Who are my favorites? I mean, like, it seems like kind of an easy out to say Baek Seung-soo or Lee Se-young because they're just both so excellent um so if we set them aside I really enjoyed Han Ji-hee the the co yes the sort of second fiddle on the ops team yeah on the ops team like I I just thought just thought he was a really fun character.

I thought that actor was great. He added some much-needed levity at times in a way that was really nice. So that was good. I don't know. There wasn't anyone where I was like, that character's a zero or that actor isn't good. It was just a really well done.

It was really well done across that whole cast. I thought they were really excellent. I will probably maintain a soft spot for Yu Min Ho, the young pitcher who had the yips just because that actor's face is so expressive and he did such a good job of having that rookie enthusiasm, that look of like i just can't believe i'm here you guys yeah he had a really lovely moment in the final episode where

he's like getting done up for their introductory like re-introductory press conference as a franchise and he's like really excited to be getting a little bit of makeup put on and to be kind of a celebrity it He wants to impress the mascot? Yeah. I don't know. He's just like a really sweet kid. So I will give him a shout out because I just enjoyed him the whole time.

I thought he was a really nice addition even as a minor character. Yeah. If Lisa Young counted for this, she'd probably be my favorite. Yeah. I got to give it to Lisa Young's mom. Oh, yeah. Makes the most of lisa young's mom oh yeah makes

the most of her minutes here oh yeah she she's not part of dreams like she didn't have to be in this show but she just sort of steals every scene and she is like devastatingly funny with everything she says and also sometimes imparts some wisdom to her daughter or makes fun of her daughter so she was great she She was disproportionately entertaining given how much screen time she got, but just a strong ensemble cast top to bottom, I think. It's sort of a soapy show in a lot of respects, but there's no love story.

Yes. Do you wish there were romance in Stove League? No. There are hints that there might be, right? Yeah. The first time I watched it, I thought, okay, is there something developing here between Lee Se-young and Baek Sung-soo or between Lee Se-young and Han Jae-hui? Are there sparks here? Yeah. I can't tell. And there weren't.

If there were any sparks, they quickly died out. And that just was not part of the show, which was somewhat surprising to me i think i really appreciated that it didn't go there because i think that you know it's not that you can't do those stories well but it was really nice to have a workplace drama that showed people being able to have you know intense and meaningful friendships but ones that weren't necessarily sexual so yeah i was fine with there not being romance it's not like we lacked for plot you know there's plenty of drama there's plenty of plot and and i think that we don't see those sort of having the friendship part of it explored and being able to appreciate deep connection and evolving and deepening

connection between friends and co-workers like that's an important part of people's lives and it doesn't have to be romantic necessarily so i i thought it was really lovely that they let it sort of operate in this space where you know like i don't know that the west wing like holds up on re-examination all that well for any number of reasons. And it wasn't like that show didn't have workplace romance. But, you know, I think being able to have deep affection for people you work with and have those relationships be meaningful in a lot of different contexts is nice. It's a nice thing to see portrayed. So I was good with it.

And that was a source of some discomfort for me in pitch, I think, at the end, right? a source of some discomfort for me in pitch i think at the end right and as i recall maybe for you too because ginny and mike had this nice platonic workplace relationship right like veteran and rookie and pitcher and catcher and then it got complicated toward the end there and it seemed like they were very much going down the romantic road and it just felt like it was kind of nice when it didn't have to fit into that box And also it was kind of complicated because like Ginny doesn't date players And like if you had a woman in that situation Like I would think that there would be a lot of discomfort with like getting involved romantically

With your catcher for any number of reasons So it didn't totally feel true to the character to me either So I kind of didn't want them to go down that road. And it wouldn't have been as like potentially problematic, I guess, to have it happen here. Although there is like a power dynamic with the relationships here. So that might have come into play too. But ultimately, yeah, I didn't miss it. I mean, these characters were fully fleshed out and well-rounded. And I guess it's also true in that Lisa Young is like totally devoted to her job for better or worse. Like she's not dating, it doesn't seem like, because she's just fully focused at all times on dreams. Yeah. The pitch thing, on the one hand, I agree with everything you say. I did have a moment where I was like, he is very handsome.

So I appreciate the appeal of the bearded catcher. But yeah, I think that it's not as if we lack for shows where we see some version of that manifested. So having one that was more focused on their camaraderie was nice. I thought it was nice. Yeah. Was there anything that didn't happen in this series that you wished had or potentially could have? Because it is one of the strong suits of the series that they shoehorned in everything. I guess you could also say it's a weakness and that it's just a heightened version of reality. It's unrealistic that all of this could happen in the span of a single offseason. But I did appreciate that, like, in the writer's room, like, they must have just had a whiteboard at some point where they brainstormed storylines.

What is baseball stuff? They got every one of them in. And to be fair, it's 16 hours of television. So, you know, even though it's one season, it's a lot of screen time. So there's that. But I'm just struggling to think. Like, you got to look at scouting.

You got to look at sabermetrics. You got to look at scouting. You got to look at sabermetrics. You got to look at every possible scandal that could happen here. What do we even talk about in baseball that was not addressed via dreams at some point? Was there anything? I mean, I guess we didn't see this group conduct a draft. We saw them conduct a secondary draft, but we didn't really see it. But yeah, apart from an amateur draft,

we saw one portrayed sort of in flashback, right? But not this group as it is constituted. But yeah, no, not really. I mean, you even had a team sale. It was the most eventful offseason one could possibly imagine. Yeah. So if you're going to watch a baseball show, not that there are that many options out there, but watch this one because all of the storylines are in this single season.

All right. Last question. Would you want an American adaptation of this or an English language adaptation of Stove League set in MLB, presumably, or wherever? I don't know that I need that. I think that I enjoyed, you know, it was cool in pitch to see, like, you know, they were at Petco. They were dealing with real teams and, you know, there were actual players playing, you know, active players who were playing in the majors who were mentioned throughout that series. But there was something about it being a fictionalized world that made some of the like TV stuff that TV shows have to do easier to take, you know, because it's you're not mentally like cross referencing your real

roster to a fictional one right like i remember i'm not gonna remember the details of it but i remember when the when pitched it it's trade deadline episode i think it was the trade deadline and they're like contemplating what moves the padres should make versus other teams and some of the details of that we just did not like fit with real baseball which would have been fine, except that they showed footage from that year's All-Star Game. Yeah. So you were kind of caught in between. You wanted it to be this immersive experience.

And in some ways, their ability to use real Major League Baseball iconography helped with that immersive experience because you're like this is baseball as i as i best know it right but i at least had moments where i was sort of taken out of it by not only differences in the narrative around players who would have been associated with the padres but like there were moments of inconsistency where they were like half describing the world correctly i think that they said at one point that like the mariners need a designated hitter when like nelson cruz was on their roster and they're like and the the angels are looking for center field help and i'm like did mike trout die in this timeline like what are we you know and so it was mentioned in that show right right yeah right exactly so i think that when you are in a fictionalized version of something you know

well the writers and the actors have to do work to to world build and so if you're equal to that you you sometimes can get not that you're getting away with anything but it's easier to not have your disbelief suspended or broken by some small incongruities, which is one of the things I appreciated about this series just in general. We have made ourselves known as hypercritical baseball portrayals, whether they're commercials or movies, because we're like, just ask someone if that works and someone will tell you. But I didn't have much of that experience here and and

i don't know if my perception of that would be the same if you know if the kbo were my primary referent for baseball you know there there might be parts of this certainly that would have spoken to me differently i'm sure that there as we talked about there were definitely references to actual kbo events and news that might have kind of flown over our heads because we're not as familiar with the ins and outs of that league. But I really appreciated how few moments I had where I was like, is that the way that they would do this if it were a real baseball team? Like it really was just really tight. Now, maybe I missed some of them because so much happened. Now, maybe I missed some of them because so much happened.

Yeah. I mean, the whole evil director dynamic and the trades of superstars, like, obviously a lot of this was unrealistic in that sense. But I think you kind of know what you're getting into here. It's sort of a heightened drama, sort of soapy. And as long as you're willing to play along with that, it's okay. Like, from moment to moment when they talk about baseball stuff often it rings true it's just not the the huge dramatic plot twists that would not happen in real life but here are pretty enjoyable yeah i think i'm with you if they were to adapt this like i don't think it could be better acted or better plotted or better produced in a really significant way. Obviously, there is just an accessibility barrier and a language barrier and a subtitle barrier and maybe a content barrier for some

people who would be like, I don't know about Korean baseball, and so I'm just not as interested in this. For me personally, I don't think I would enjoy a U.S. adaptation any more than I enjoyed this. So the only reason I would want it to be adapted is that maybe more people would watch it. I mean, I want everyone to watch Stove Week as it is. That's why we did this whole exercise. But I know there are just some people who are not going to sign up to or get a free trial to some streaming service that they've never used or heard of and watch with subtitles that aren't always perfect, et cetera, et cetera. So I appreciate anyone who did take that plunge and went along on this ride with us. And I hope you don't regret it. I hope

it was rewarding. I have no idea what percentage of our audience actually watched Stove League or listened to our Stove League analysis. I know that those who have and have given us feedback, it's all been positive and they've enjoyed the show and the discussion. So that's good. I just don't know whether that is like a tiny subset of our listeners or a lot of them or what, but it's the off season and it's a lockout. And if you're coming to this podcast for baseball content, then I just don't know why you wouldn't go to Stove League

for baseball content at this time. There is no hot Stove League in MLP. So this is the perfect time to substitute Stove League. Well, and I know that I don't mean to downplay that there is sort of potentially an accessibility thing with the subtitles, but I would just like to make the case as a person who

struggles to not be distracted by my phone at times. There is something really lovely about watching a show where you just have to pay attention to that one thing, right? Because as someone who does not speak Korean, it's not like you can't look away because you're going to miss something. You have to rewind if you do. So I think that having something that is that immersive and that rewards that level of attention with a show that's really well acted and is really well done and is really exciting is, you know, if you have time to devote to it, I think you'll find that your time was well spent. So that is my argument in favor of not just Stove League, but being open to media that requires a little bit more attention because our attention is so often divided, and I am among the worst at it. So I do not mean it as a criticism of others,

but it is nice to be like, okay, for the next hour, I am just doing this and it was it's really nice so and if you were sometimes sitting next to a fussy baby it can also be nice not to have to hear every word sure yeah that's an advantage too yeah there you go all right so that is a series wrap on stove league and on our series of stove League recaps and on 2021 for Effectively Wild. So thanks to you, Meg, for joining me this year and talking to me and being a lot of fun to talk to. And thanks to everyone who has listened and written in and Patreon supported and all the rest. And we will talk to you in 2022.

Fighting! We've worked hard. We've worked hard we've worked hard all right that will do it for today and this week and this year. Thanks, as always, for listening. And if you like Stove League, tell your friends to check it out. And then, of course, tell them to check out Effectively Wild, which you can support on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount or moderate or large monthly amount or annual amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks while also helping us stay ad free. Tiffany, JT Lindsay, Kate Kraske, Matt Hawkins, and Josh

Shaines. Thanks to all of you. If you do sign up, you can get access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for Patreon supporters and you get access to our bonus monthly episodes for Patreon supporters at the $5 level and above. I just posted our latest one this week. Meg and I ran down some of our recommended media from 2021, the books and movies and shows and video games that we most enjoyed this year. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. There are about 10,000 people in there. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. There are about 10,000 people in there. You can join their number. You can also follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod.

You can find the Effectively Wild Reddit at r slash effectivelywild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Your positive reviews are greatly appreciated. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance today and this year. And again, Happy New Year. Thanks for spending time with us in 2021. And we will talk to you early next week, which will be 2022. Your dreams have come true

Now everything's up to you You can't change what you lose Or you can turn into someone new Bye. The soul it takes Is worth it Your dreams come true