Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1950: Well, We Tried

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Hall of Famer Jim Palmer‘s endorsement of Netflix series Emily in Paris, a questionable Cubs-related baseball scene in the EiP series premiere, a Royals rookie record and a follow-up on Harold Ramírez’s hair, Ben’s latest former major leaguer Facebook friend recommendations, another way in which baseball is unique […]

I believe there's a point to everything, that it all adds up to something. If you don't feel that way about anything, it can seem like less than nothing. Did it seem like less than nothing? Did it seem like less than nothing at all? I could have been the one to tell you it's alright I can do nothing to reach you now No one can reach you now Hello and welcome to episode 1950 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello.

Well, I don't know what everyone listening did over their holiday vacations if they had one, but I know what Oriol's great Jim Palmer did. He binged season three of Emily in Paris on Netflix. And I know this because he tweeted this on Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas to all. Binged watched the third season of Emily in Paris on Netflix. Disappointed I have to wait another year to watch season four. Watch it if you can. Hashtag fantastic. And I guess he had a follow up tweet that was about some blowback that he had gotten to some tweets because there was a tweet that noted that he had fired my tweets horrendous, then may I suggest unfollowing me? I enjoy Emily in Paris, but you may not. Your choice. And then he added Elon Musk at the end of the message for some reason. I don't think that was necessarily the horrendous tweet that that other account was referring to. I think he had a political tweet mixed in there too, an immigration related tweet. Yeah, but he was also tweeting a lot about emily in paris and i have not watched season three of emily in paris unlike jim palmer i considered it i have watched the first two seasons you have i have oh my gosh me and jim yeah but i decided i was out on emily after season two i think unless something extraordinary happened to pull me back in. And it's just not yet.

And I'm not someone who's like out on trashy TV in general or just like guilty pleasure watches. You don't even have to call it guilty pleasure watch. Whatever brings you pleasure if you're watching TV, that's just fine. It doesn't have to be some sort of ultra intellectual improving your mind and being edifying. Emily in Paris, it's just, you know, you watch it and it goes by very quickly and it's very frothy and frivolous and fun at times. Season two was just like it was so insubstantial that at the end I just like I felt worse about myself that I had spent that time watching that show. It's just it's not a great show. It's kind of entertaining.

But Jim Palmer's still in. The reason I bring this up, other than Jim Palmer's tweet, is that there was another tweet by Richard Roper, the media critic, movie reviewer for the Chicago Sun-Times. He tweeted about Emily in Paris also. And I cannot believe that this has not come up on Effectively Wild before, especially because I've watched Emily in Paris. I have not. Okay.

Well, you have an excuse. I have no excuse either for watching Emily in Paris or for not using the time that I put into that to create podcast content, because as Richard Roper pointed out in the very first episode, one of the very first scenes of Emily in Paris season one, episode one, the premiere, it started with Emily in Chicago. She's not in Paris yet. OK. boyfriend says that the Cubs just made the playoffs via a walk-off Grand Slam with two outs left in the bottom of the ninth, followed by a sports bar celebration that lasts all five seconds. So I will just play quickly a clip of the scene, and it will be a quick clip because it is a very quick celebration. So there are a few issues with this scene, which falls very much into the genre of,

why didn't they call us? We were right here, And they could have asked us to consult on the scene, and they did not. We could have helped them. But the issues with this scene, well, there are many, right? There are myriad options. Myriad options for what I could critique for what is wrong with this scene. So the first issue is that the boyfriend mispronounces David Bodie. So he calls him like David Bote. He says Bote, which I mean, it is true to life that people mispronounce surnames sometimes. But you'd think if he's a big Cubs fan and he's psyched about this homer, he would know that it's pronounced Bodie. Yeah.

So that's one issue. The other issue is that he says with two outs left in the bottom of the ninth. Yeah. Which, first of all, there are multiple issues there. One is that they do use the footage from a real David Bodie walk-off Grand Slam. And this was in mid-August of 2018. So I give them kind of kudos for using the actual footage instead of being one of these shows that uses some random footage or old footage or whatever. This is real footage of

a Cubs player hitting a walk-off. A couple issues, though. I mean, that was an ultimate grand slam, a concept that we talked about on an episode last week, and it was hit with two outs. So not only would it be inaccurate if this is the real-life Bodhi home run that they're purporting to show here, it's inaccurate that there were two outs left. They were just two outs, period. But also— That's not how you say that.

No, that is not how you say it. That's not how you say that. No one would say, he hit a home run with two outs left in the bottom of the ninth. Even if that were the case, you would probably just say with one out. With one out, yeah. We have a mechanism. Yeah, we have a mechanism. It's just saying with one out, you know, is the thing.

And also, this home run, again, it was in mid-August. I don't think this clinched anything. It was like a walk-off over the Nationals, the Cubs. They did make the playoffs that year. They were in the wild card game but in mid-august they hadn't clinched that yet so again unless this is like uncoupled from time then that would not be the right sequence of events right and then the really big issue another one that richard roper points out is that the sports bar celebration is extremely abbreviated.

Yeah, so brief. They're standing next to a Cubs fan who is a Cubs fan because he's wearing a Cubs shirt and a Cubs hat. Yeah. And he's super psyched for like three seconds. Yeah. And he's just like, all right, well, that's that's the walk off. And I just came here to watch this game at the sports bar. And I'm going to be really elated about this for about three seconds.

And then I will just go back to my resting state with no expression as I watch the post game or the celebration or whatever. So not that I've spent a ton of time in sports bars in general or in sports bars watching games. But this is not how it goes. No, it's not. It's a much longer celebration. I mean, if people are there watching a big game that could clinch a playoff spot and then someone in the bottom of the ninth hits a grand slam to win it, that's going to be a long tail to that celebration.

That is not what happens here because I guess they need to start talking about other things in the scene. I don't want people just going wild in the background so that you can hear Lily Collins talking about moving to Paris or whatever the scene was actually about. I don't even remember. Drinking French wine. Yeah. So that's why I guess they had everyone quiet down instantly, but it's just not great verisimilitude to have a sports bar scene and then have it settled down and simmer down so quickly. Right. I have spent a good amount of time in sports bars, Ben, and I'm here to tell you that if there is any, any kind of stakes attendant with the game, and it doesn't have to be playoff clinching stakes, right? It can be, it can be, we don't like that team stakes

you know it can be excuse me I'm going to just swear it can be that guy stakes you know like those can be the stakes and the bedlam you might experience can last for you know for minutes or chance you know and I don't think that uh the Cubs fans are known for

being like demure like there can be a rowdy bunch when the when the mood strikes them. So is it important to the show that her boyfriend is a baseball fan? I don't think so. No. Couldn't they have just been like, here we are on the street. Oh my god, it's the Sears Tower. I guess we're in

Chicago. Sears Tower's in Chicago, right? That's the one that's in Chicago. Okay. I didn't want us to get emails. If all that they need to do emails. You know, like, if all that they need to do is to be like, we are Chicago folk. You know, we are of Chicago. You could also just, like, be in a bar and have people

in, like, gear that indicates Chicago. Or they could have done what, like, the Princess Swap. Have you seen this Princess Swap? No. You haven't seen the one where Vanessa Hudgens, I think Vanessa Hudgens being in it makes it a baseball movie, assuming she's still dating Cole Tucker.

I don't know. I don't know either of them. But she's like a baker from Chicago, and then she goes to a tiny European country and swaps places with a princess and falls in love with a prince. Yeah, I missed that one. Yeah, it's Ben. You like Christmas stuff.

It's wonderful. It has a sequel where they get swapped again. I think there are two sequels. I think there's a third. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Yeah, Jodie Walker, one of my colleagues at The Ringer, did just like every day in December did a piece on a Christmas movie.

And I think one of the criteria that she discussed for each one was like, is Vanessa Hudgens in it? It's the princess. Switch, switch, not swap, switch. And there are indeed three of them. I was disappointed this Christmas season that there was not a fourth. And you might say like,

how could they keep swapping? And the answer, Ben, is for them to have children and then for the children to get swapped. You know, that's the way to do it. So free idea, Netflix. Give us us a call we're here for you anyway that's not the point she is wearing she's a baker from chicago and then she goes and enters this baking competition in this tiny european principality and i think at one point is just wearing a hat that says chicago on it

because netflix is like look we really need people to understand that she is from chicago on it because netflix was like look we really need people to understand that she is from chicago so we should put chicago on the hat so they could have done that you know and it said they didn't do they didn't do any of those things you know yeah like no and just in fact speaking of gear i believe four or five seconds into this clip which i'll link to on the show page there appears to be someone with a Royals jacket walking behind Emily and her boyfriend, which nothing to say you can't wear a Royals jacket in a Cubs bar when you're watching a Cubs game, but why would you really? They weren't playing the Royals in this game. So would you wear that? Would you be there at all? If you were not a Cubs fan, would you feel like I

have to show that I'm a baseball person? I'm a Royals fan, but I'll wear my Royals jacket to the Cubs bar to watch the Cubs game? Eh, I don't think so. So that was odd as well. Yeah, I just think that it's like I want to better understand the frame of mind that is going sort of halfway, you know, on these commitments to the baseball bit because to your point like they had to secure real mlb footage to do this scene right like they had to and you know they correctly named the guy in the in the thing i when you first sent it to me i was like oh i'm gonna come to find out that like you out that the player they reference actually hits left and he's in the right-hand batter's box.

I was prepared for that level of error. And so it's like you're halfway. You're like, I'm going to spend some money to secure this. I'm going to pick an actual walk-off Grand Slam. But then it all falls apart after that. so i'm just saying like call us you know we aren't opposed to getting that netflix money no you know we would say yes to netflix money to bring a greater one might say obsessive level of versatility to your baseball scenes you know we'll just give us a call we'll help you out. Yes, we will.

There are very few things that I have encountered that seem to inspire such a strong hate watch as Emily in Paris, you know? Again, I haven't watched it, and that's not me being like, you know, it's trashy. It's just like I can only watch so many things. I'm behind. Bye, bye, bye. The people I see tweeting about Emily in Paris paris hate emily in paris and they are strapped in for season three you know they're ready for season four they are sitting there

i i noticed your ringer colleague allison herman tweeting about it and how like it is a show that is clearly designed to watch while you were scrolling through your phone but it has subtitles and yet people watch this show anyway i don't think they're watching it for the baseball accuracy but i i know that if they're gonna entertain this kind of stuff call again call us just call us there's a quote tweet of the richard roper tweet by a guy named brendan gallag, who is a screenwriter and director. And he said, as writer's assistant on season one of The Bold Type, I was the, quote, heterosexual male consultant. And numerous times I had to say, OK, so sports don't work like that. The Bold Type is a show about a women's magazine.

So that just confirms that whoever is on hand who knows something about sports on certain shows, it's just, hey, does this make sense? And maybe that person doesn't actually always know that much, or maybe there isn't someone who knows that much. And they just throw up their heads and say, well, close enough, instead of calling Ben and Meg. But the sports bar scene is not unindicative of the overall quality of Emily in Paris, which is probably why I'm no longer watching it. And if I were to watch it, I would be hate watching it to a certain extent. I think a lot of people hate watch it because she's kind of this oblivious, arrogant American who's kind of obnoxious and also just

seems to have enough money to wear a new outfit in every scene. But Jim Palmer is not hate watching, and I don't know if it bothered him, this baseball scene, but evidently it was not an impediment to him continuing on and watching the rest of the show. So, look, it's a Darren Star show, and I have not watched all the Darren Star shows, but I've watched a good number of them. I've certainly watched all of Sex and the City and Younger. And no, I'm not going to them for the baseball content, although I think it has come up, the baseball scene from Sex and the City from 1999, that has been mentioned on Effectively Wild, where one of the characters references on base percentage back in 1999, a little bit ahead of its time, if anything. But this is not so great.

And I know that this is after 2016, and maybe Cubs fans wouldn't be quite as excited about a playoff appearance after 2016, but still, but still, and it's been, you know, like lately it's been kind of a rough go for them. So I feel like they would be into it. Isn't Miranda a Yankees fan?

Like, isn't that sex in the city cannon? Cause they go to Yankee stadium and she's like really into it. And the other three are like, meh, which is, you know, it's fine.

And then Carrie ends up dating a Yankee. This has been us remembering parts of Sex and the City. Yep. Okay. Well, now you know about Jim Palmer's TV watching habits and also something about mine, I suppose. So you can let us all know what you binged on your Christmas vacation and whether it was Emily in Paris. It does appear that Cole Tucker and Vanessa Hudgens are still together. Oh, well, good for them.

Yeah. Recent minor league free agent draftee. Yeah, that's right. By Ben Clements, Cole Tucker. No, I drafted him. Oh, you did? Yeah. Well, how did you not know whether he was still in a relationship?

Because you should know if he's on your team. Dating Vanessa Hudgens was not material to my decision to draft him. Could be. Also, yeah, I guess. If he goes through a tough breakup, I mean, that could affect his performance and thus his playing time. You got to know these things. That's a fair point. I have to say, Ben, I worry that we did the minor league free agent draft too early because

there have been so many signings in the last little bit here. There have been a bunch of guys who have gotten contracts. I imagine some of whom would have been taken, although one of the guys to sign a minor league deal was my very own Jacob Nottingham with the Seattle Mariners. So that wasn't inside intel. That was just good sense. Yeah. Well, we usually do it either right at the end of the year or at the very beginning of

the year. So there's always some uncertainty and that's just part of the process that's just baked into it. Yeah, that's true. All right. right well that's all i got oh no i've got a few other things to talk about effectively wild for the first time in 2023 yep no i have some follow-ups first of all to last week so last week we talked about stories that we missed in 2022. And we talked about one story at least for each team. And just a couple follow-ups. So first of all, not to put you on the spot too much here.

This is low stakes. It doesn't matter. But what would you think would be the record for the most number of rookies on one team homering in the same game. In the same game? Yeah, if you had to guess what the most number of rookies, the highest number of rookies on one team that ever homered in the same game, what would that be? And it's just rookies at any point in their rookie season, right?

This isn't like guys called up simultaneously or any weird little special edge cases there. I'm going to say four. You are correct. I feel so to say four. You are correct. I feel so fancy, Ben. Yeah, that was a very good guess and a better guess than I would have made because I saw this stat courtesy of listener Robert, who wrote in as a Royals fan to respond to our Royals story. We missed. to respond to our Royals story we missed.

We talked about the reliever, Jose Cuas, and Robert just pointed out that the Royals made history in early September when four Royals rookies homered in the same game. This was, I believe, the September 3rd game, and four Royals rookies homered. And according to Elias Sports Bureau, as cited by the at Royals Twitter account, this. And according to Elias Sports Bureau, as cited by the at Royals Twitter account, this was the first time in MLB history that four different rookies

hit a home run for the same team in one game. And I was shocked by this. This made me say, wow, I guess it wouldn't have made you say wow, but I could not believe that this was the record or that this had not happened before. It wasn't tying a record. It just had never happened before. And I really thought it would have been more than that. So it was Nick Prado homered and Kyle Isbell and Bobby Witt Jr. and MJ Melendez. So those four guys homered against the Tigers in a 12-2 Royals win. And this was unprecedented. And I just, I would have thought in the long history of baseball that more than four rookies homering in the same game would have happened. Or at least that four would have happened once before 2022. But no, this was a first. So I was expecting you to say a higher number because i

would have said a higher number just like you think of all the teams that are young and and they have a lot of rookies in the lineup i mean i've tried to retroactively explain it to myself why this hasn't happened before i mean yeah you only have so many times when four players period hit a home run in a game it's not that common for four different players to homer and then for four players to be rookies who homer. And rookies usually are not at the peak of their power as players yet. And so they'd be less likely to homer. And how often do you have four or more rookies in the starting lineup? And then they'd all have to homer in the same game so i get it like now that i think about it and break it down i guess it shouldn't have shocked me quite as much as it did but it did i would have thought that this sort of record might have been set in 2019 like when when all of the when everyone was hitting a home run yeah basically when like every team record or a lot of team records and single game records for homers were When everyone was hitting a home run? Sergio Guerrero, Jansen McKinney, Billy McKinney, and Rowdy Tellez all hit 10 or more homers for the Blue Jays in 2019. So I would have thought that it might have been set then. And I guess I just wouldn't have thought of the Royals as the most likely candidate to do this because just like historically speaking, the Royals have been known more for not having people who hit homers than for having people who hit homers.

And in fact, when in late July, MJ Melendez hit his 10th home run of the season, it was the first time that the Royals had had even two rookies hit 10 or more homers in the same season because Bobby Witt Jr. and MJ Melendez then had hit 10. And that was the first for the franchise. The Royals had never had a pair of rookies hit 10 plus homers in a season. So they were kind of an unlikely candidate to set this record. But as it turns out, the Royals had the most homers by rookies in the majors last season. They had 76 homers hit by rookies, which was the most over the Pirates, who had a nice 69. And the Royals also had the most plate appearances by rookie hitters. So they just, they had a lot of rookie hitters. I mean, that was part of the Royals season story. So I'm glad that we pointed out this story. This was a good story I missed,

and it really took me by surprise although i guess not you your your expectations for how many rookies could have homered in a single game better calibrated than mine i just you know it's like you said it's like how many rookies are there on a roster at any given time and how many multi-home run games are there really? And what feels like a high-ish number amongst those four? I don't know. It's just like I had a sense, a savant-like sense, I suppose. Yeah, good guess. And another follow-up.

So Harold Ramirez was the Rays story we missed. I mentioned him just because he had a good year and he was the unsung player whom the Rays acquired in a deal shortly before opening day, like Isak Paredes. But Paredes had a more notable good year and Ramirez maybe a bit more under the radar good year. And I mentioned just like he's a really good guy and everyone loves him and he's a great clubhouse presence and all that. I also mentioned his hair, which is very blue, blue tinted and kind of floppy. And it used to be orange colored and now it's blue colored. And I learned that there is a reason for that. And it is to raise awareness of autism, which in my case last week failed. My awareness was not raised about why his hair was

blue, but now it has been. And I am in turn raising our audience's awareness because he has a son who is autistic. And so in honor of his son, he changed his hair color and he went to blue so that when people would ask him, hey, why is your hair blue? He would then explain his son's situation and autism and be able to promote good causes, etc. And some other Rays were said to be considering going blue as well if the Rays made the playoffs. I don't know whether that happened or not. But that is why he has blue hair or had it. It's not purely that it looked good, although I think it did, but there was a reason, also an altruistic, meaningful reason to him behind the blue hair.

So even better now that I know that. Yeah. Yeah. That's nice. Yeah. All right. So a few other things. First of all, I spent maybe a little more time than usual in the Facebook group and on Facebook just over the holidays as people were posting holiday stuff and people in the Effectively Wild group are posting things they got from their secret Santas, etc. And thus, I have been treated to more than the usual number of former major leaguer friend recommendations by the facebook algorithm so i'm just gonna to give you a rundown of my recent please here from zuck all right so i'm still not a fan of you just casually being like zuck i don't like that but just carry on i have such positive feelings about facebook now that it helps me remember some guys every time I log on. So here's who I've gotten.

Sean Estes. Nate Fryman, who actually is kind of a friend of sorts. I did friend him when it recommended that I friend him. That's nice. Usually I don't, but Nate Fryman, he's been on the podcast. I've met him. He works for the Guardian's front office now, and he wrote for Fangraphs all too briefly. Yes.

So Nate Freiman. Randy Johnson, but not that Randy Johnson. Okay. Not the big unit, but the former Braves third baseman, Randy Johnson. Okay. Who was like an infielder for the Braves for a few years in the 80s and probably many times in his life has been like, yeah, I'm former major leaguer Randy Johnson. There are, I think, three actually former major leaguers named Randy Johnson, but one of them is disproportionately

associated with the Randy Johnson big leaguer name. There were two Randy Johnsons prior to the Randy Johnson showing up. There were two Randy Johnsons in the early 80s who actually overlapped a little bit. So there was a Randy Johnson who was like a DH pinch hitter type for, I guess, a couple teams for the White Sox and the Twins in the early 80s and actually played in 1982, which was the rookie year of the Braves' Randy Johnson, who played from 82 to 84. So in 82, there were multiple Randy Johnsons. But at that time, no one was thinking about the other Randy Johnson. Randy's Johnson. Yeah. He had not yet arrived on the scene. So who else do I have? Omar Moreno, Sid Bream.

I was almost, I was fooled for a second when I saw Sid Bream, another former Braves legend. Because he goes by Sidney on his Facebook. And also, unlike a lot of players, he's just just he's wearing civvies he's not wearing his uniform or anything so it's just a gentleman named sydney bream who's just wearing normal clothes i had to do a double take and be like oh sid bream right right right yeah sure who else uh brian bass david saggy dan johnson the orange haired yeah big home run hitting Dan Johnson, Sean Berry, Dave Parker, name brand, Eric Young Jr. I may have mentioned before, Christian Bethencourt. Yeah.

Sean Nolan, Ryan LaVarnway, Brock Holt. And now here's the thing. I've gotten a couple that I think might be imposters. I got a Sandy Koufax. Yeah, that doesn't feel real. I don't think it's real. Happy birthday, Sandy. Just turned 87, but I did not leave a post on his wall or the imposter's wall. Did not friend him. But I think for famous players, there may be some imposters. The Dave Parker appears to be Dave Parker, but I saw Sandy Koufax and then Sandy Koufax is friends with Juan Marichal.

And I don't know if that's the real Juan Marichal, but like if you search for Sandy Koufax, there are a few Sandy Koufax accounts. So clearly there are some that are not actually Sandy Koufax and perhaps all of them are not Sandy Koufax. So that's the thing about this exercise is that I enjoy it much more when it's a Sid Bream because I, or, youream or Brian Bass or Sean Estes or Randy Johnson, but not the Randy Johnson, because I figure probably no one is taking the time to set up a spoof Randy Johnson, the mid to early 80s Braves infielder spoof account, right? Whereas

if I were to see the real Randy Johnson I don't know if he seems like a Facebook guy yeah he has his photography brand to promote and everything yeah I think he's more of an Instagram man probably yeah once you get to a certain level of fame then I start to question would this player actually be on Facebook right they have a public account the incentives for people to create a fake account are higher so when it's's David Segee or Brian Bass, then I'm just more inclined to believe it and think, all right, hey, he's still out there. He's on Facebook, just like a regular guy, just like any of us, just on there, just friending, just looking at pictures of family, kids, or whatever you do on Facebook if you're not in the Effectively Wild Facebook group. I don't know what people do anymore, but those are my recent friend recommendations courtesy of Facebook and the MLB Players Association alumni, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Got to get in there. You're missing out. You're missing out on these great recommendations.

I mean, I'm comfortable with the amount of time i spent on facebook let's put it that way yeah like i've found the right register yeah yeah people should probably limit their time on facebook and watching emily in paris and i've done at least one of those things so i again like i don't want you to feel like i'm judging your your choices here that's not the project. But I'm just saying that it is not a choice that I have made. So that's fine. And also, people seem to hate that show. And yet they watch it. And I just think that's an interesting bit of, you know, this and that, as it were. So well, Jim Palmer's not hate watching. He's not ironically watching. He just he loves it. And he's telling the world. So you should share the things that you're passionate about. All Game. And it's from Triumph Books. And Russell,

of course, a friend of the show and frequent guest and writer of a book called The Shift, which he has been on this podcast to talk about. He's been on this podcast many times to talk about many things. And he writes regularly for Baseball Prospectus, of course. But he has authored a new book and it's uh coming out early in 2023 and you can pre-order it now it's actually it's coming out in uh in june i think i jumped the gun a little june 13th then the new ball game but you can pre-order it now and i will link to where you can do that so that you can enjoy his book as well but But I'm getting a sneak peek so I can blurb it if I like it, which I do thus far. I'm about halfway through. The subtitle is The Not-So-Hidden Forces That Shape Modern Baseball. And it's kind of an explainer of how we got where we are in baseball

and why things have changed and how they've changed and whether they could change back. And whether you bemoan or celebrate the way that baseball has evolved. It's handy to know why and how it has evolved. And he does a great job of laying it out and connecting it to his own life. And so I'm enjoying it quite a bit. And a few things that he has pointed out, not spoilers, but relevant to our previous discussions. But relevant to our previous discussions, we talked some weeks ago, not that long ago, about the ways that baseball is unique or nearly unique, what sets it apart from other sports in some important ways. Things like, you know, having an incredibly granular statistical record and being easy to analyze lending itself to analysis. And also the thing that prompted it was our discussions about how often the baseball itself is replaced and how that core piece of equipment is replaced more often in baseball than in most or all other sports. That was what prompted that.

And then we talked about other things and talked about how there's no clock and how the defense starts with the ball and kind of controls the action. And also we talked about how there's not sort of a set playing surface where everyone has to be the same dimensions and everything. And that is not unique exactly. There are other sports where you can have different dimensions. But one thing Russell observed in this book that I think it's not that baseball is unique because the playing surfaces can be different because like in soccer, for instance, you can have different sized fields or in cricket and things like that. But Russell pointed out that in baseball, you can have asymmetrical fields. It's not just that the dimensions are different, like some ballparks are bigger than others, but also they're asymmetrical so that you can have, even within the same park, you can have a deeper right field

than left field, let's say, but also across parks from one park to another. So I think the asymmetrical part, I think, because even in soccer, if you have a bigger field, I think it's still sort of a rectangle. It's like different dimensions. Or in cricket, maybe it's like a bigger oval or a smaller oval. But I think baseball is even more uncommon, at least in having asymmetrical dimensions in addition to variable dimensions. But another thing he mentioned, which I think is at least as strong a candidate as we mentioned, and there was some reader feedback we got, like the fact that in baseball, coaches and managers

wear the same outfit as players, which is, I don't know if that quite cracks my top five, but it is true. It is very unusual and weird and whimsical. But one that Russell pointed out that probably should have occurred to me because this whole discussion was prompted by how often the equipment is substituted. But in baseball, you can't substitute players and bring them back in again. So there's one-way substitution. Once you're out of the game, you are out of the game and you can't come back in again, which is very unusual. I don't know if it's unique.

like rugby, like association football. There are sports that have like limited substitutions or maybe like injury-related substitutions. And then those maybe do or don't count against your total number of substitutions. And then there are a lot of sports where you can, as many as you want, you can substitute to your heart's content. But in baseball, no substitutions and no exceptions.

I mean, even for injuries, once you're out, you're out. You can't come back in again. And that is, I'm not going to say unique because there are so many sports out there, and I'm sure it's not exactly precisely unique, but very unusual, right? So baseball is unusual in that you substitute the ball much more often than in most sports, but you cannot substitute players, or at least interchangeably once once they're out that is irrevocable yeah yeah it's it is an interesting it's an area i wish we would explore like an exception or two you know like i wish that we would like think of a time where it's like what if we what if we let you yeah back in though like right and not wearing a mustache or like having your twin brother on the team building.

You had an exception. Like that would be, I don't know. There could be fun to be had there. There could be some fun, I think. Yeah. They used to have what was called a, like a courtesy runner. Right. And they still have that in some competitions.

But like in MLB, I think they outlawed that. It was last year, it was in like 1949, but you could have a courtesy runner who could leave the game and come in later. Like if a base runner had to leave because of injury, then a courtesy runner could come in and replace them, but then maybe the original runner could come back. So it was a case of like in an injury, you could have someone kind of come in and go out again or someone who is out could come back in again in that specific situation. But we don't even have that anymore. Which I guess this leads to just concerns about stretching your roster in extra inning games and by extension, the zombie runner, because you have to plan for long games or you have to have it in the back of your head that, hey, we could end up with a long game and therefore we can't use everyone because we

have to sort of keep someone in reserve just in case because we can't bring someone back in again. Right. And we get position player pitchers now and everything. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. Maybe I'd rather have just being able to bring someone back in again instead of like a zombie runner situation although with pitchers in particular you probably would have teams not want to do that anyway because just because of injury concerns once someone gets cold after having warmed up and thrown you know if you sit too long and even between innings or a rain delay or something then they won't bring you back out So that probably wouldn't happen even if you were allowed to do it for a pitcher.

Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. The use cases are somewhat limited, but. Yes. And another thing that Russell had in here that I hadn't really thought of, and we got a question about this, a listener email over the summer. This was from Corey, who pointed out, here's one for the pedantry segment. It has always bugged me when announcers say that a fielder took a hit away from a batter. When the fielder makes a nice play on a well-struck ball, the batter doesn't have or not have a hit until the play is over. A fielder can't take away something the batter never had. I get that in practice, what this expression communicates is that the batter or anyone else

observing the situation might expect a particular batted ball to go for a hit and then have that expectation thwarted. As far as I can tell, there are two things someone saying that might mean, but on both interpretations, taking a hit away is a bad way to express it. First, it might be that we expect this batted ball to be a hit in a predictive sense. That is, we think it's likely to be one. But if that's what's being said, then it's not true that a hit is being taken away. At most, some high percentage chance of a hit is being taken away. Alternatively, it might be that we expect this batted ball to be a hit in the normative sense, like we think the batter has a right to it or would have in a just world, but that just ignores the role of the fielders in the outcome. If the batter has the right to

try to produce batted balls that are likely to be hits, surely the fielders also have the right to try to prevent those batted balls from being hits. And we can say that the batter did everything right or everything a batter reasonably could without saying that the batter was wronged if things don't work out. Normally, I find myself on the this doesn't impede communication, so let it go side of pedantic disputes. But for some reason, this one irks me. And I see what he's saying. And Russell kind of clarified this for me because Russell pointed out

that we have a bias toward seeing everything from the batter's perspective when we talk about baseball, which he realized when he had to explain the rules of the game to his brother-in-law, who is not from the US and didn't really know much about baseball. So when Russell explained how baseball works to him, he found himself describing it from the batter's perspective. Like the batter comes to the plate and the batter has to hit the ball and the batter has to round the bases and touch home plate before he's put out. And the objective is to score runs. Like everything is from the batter's point score runs. Everything is from the batter's point of view. It's about the batter's adventure. It's about the batter's hero's journey.

And he says it's understandable that I framed it this way. It's a good idea to start with the more universal features of competitive games. Baseball is a points game. So I naturally described the way in which baseball's points are scored. You can't score if your team is pitching. But as he notes, and as we're just discussing with one of the things that sets baseball apart being the fact that the defense initiates the action and starts with the ball, it would be just as valid, if not more valid, to frame the sport as the objective is to get outs and to stop the batter from reaching base or scoring, right? And so Russell says when fans would talk about the infield shift, they would instinctively talk about how it took hits away from the batter as if the batter was entitled to those hits and the defense was doing him some grave injustice. So it's all like we see it and we talk about the

sport from the perspective of the batter in a way that Russell hadn't realized that I hadn't really even thought of. But it is really kind of true. Like when you think of yourself on the field, maybe it's different if you were primarily a pitcher in your own playing experience. But like the pitcher's sort of the star, like the pitcher's out there. The batter's come and go. The pitcher, especially the starting pitcher, especially in the past, would be the central figure, the protagonist of the game, as we've said. So in a way, it's almost odd that we think of it from the batter's perspective, but I guess it's true that you do have to score. You can't win just by preventing the other team from scoring. You have

to score yourself in order to win. And so that's the way that we tend to frame it. Yep. I think that that's right. We use the offense as the entry point to a victory. And from there, I think we kind of proceed along and use that as the character we're sort of avataring into when we're trying to understand how things have gone. Yeah, so I think that's probably why we say took a hit away. I guess, I mean, you could frame that as just like the fielder made a great play, which obviously we say sometimes, or you could say like the batter threatened to take away an out

or deprive the defense of an out or something like there's a passage of the book where russell does go through the exercise of just describing the game from the fielder's perspective from the pitcher and fielder the defense perspective and as he says it almost like it it's an uncanny valley it like makes you feel uncomfortable to read about it that way because it's it's kind of like flipped on its head but it's completely valid to look at it that way because it's kind of like flipped on its head, but it's completely valid to look at it that way. So having read Russell, that reminded me of this email from Corey because initially I'd read the email from Corey and thought, eh, I don't really care about taking the hit away. Like technically, yeah, it's true that you're not entitled to a hit. You earn one when you get one. But now that I think of it that way, yeah, it is sort of striking that we say that.

We don't necessarily need to say it that way. Although I think, as Corey acknowledges, we all know what we mean when we say that. It's funny, too, because I think of what is the equivalent in other sports? And if you're talking about football, you might argue that the main character is the quarterback. And what's our closest proxy for that? From a scoring perspective, it's a position player, but in terms of the singularity of the skill and the sort of role relative to the rest of the offense or defense,

it's probably the starting pitcher for baseball. So it is kind of funny that despite that corollary, we're still really up in the hit hitters business. But here we are. on it. It wasn't a point he was making necessarily, but he has a graph of the percentage of players born outside the United States over time. And this also includes players from Puerto Rico, which is one of those weird baseball quirks. Obviously, Puerto Rico is part of the United States, but it has been classified for the purposes of international competition in baseball and the WBC, et cetera, as somehow separate. So he has a graph of this percentage, and it's kind of striking because it goes up very sharply over a certain period. And what I had not realized is that it has completely plateaued the

percentage of MLB players born outside the United States. Over the past 20 years or so, it has been flat. And if you would ask me, I would have said that it was probably still slowly but steadily increasing, and it has not. And I don't know why I would have thought that, but I guess just because it was the case for decades before that, or as we have noted, a lot of the main characters, as we say in baseball these days, are international or foreign born. And whether it's just all of the young, you know, whether it's Otani or just, I mean, so many players we talk about all the time are born outside the United States, obviously not in all cases, but in many cases. So they have maybe become increasingly prominent, but it surprises me that it has plateaued because if just looking at his data here, so in 2022, and actually in each of the past five years, five seasons, it has been 28% of all MLB players born outside the United States, according to this data. And in 2004, it was also 28%. 2004, 2005, 2006,

it was 28% all those years. It has been basically flat since. I guess it peaked in 2017 when it got up to 29%, but it was 28% the year before that, 28% the five years since that. So it seems to have just found its level at a little more than a quarter of all players being from countries outside the US or places outside the continental US. And there was a steep increase years before that. Right. For obvious reasons, I guess. He started this in 1950 when it was just 4%. And it was 4%, 4%, 4%, 3%. Then gradually, it started to increase in the late 50s. And then really, it increased very sharply like in the 90s, like the 90s to early 2000s. Like it went up by more than 10 percentage points. Like it kind of steadily rose in the late 50s and then it kind of plateaued for a while in the 70s.

And then it went way up again in the 90s. And since then, it has been flat. And that did sort of surprise me, I guess. I mean, maybe not as frequently as they could. There's still a posting system and hoops that they have to jump through. But post-Hideo Nomo, post-Itro, it's obviously a lot more common than it used to be. And, of course, going back to the beginning of his data set here, you had, you know, just racism was a barrier and darker skinned players who were not allowed to play. And so that took a lot of Afro Latino players out of the player pool in MLB. There was still a great tendency for a lot of teams not to have diverse players for decades after that. And so that was a gradual process. And then, I don't know, maybe teams improved in international scouting and put more resources into that. And

you had players coming from Cuba. And I guess it makes sense, though, that over the past 20 years or so, it has not increased, which, again, sort of surprised me. I don't know whether that would have surprised you or not. But I guess over the past 20 years, we've reached the point where there's less of a barrier or impediment than ever just based on discrimination, which is not to say that there's no barrier there, but greatly reduced. And then there hasn't been a new baseball market, a new fertile territory for baseball be opened up necessarily. Like there have been efforts and some strides, like obviously, you know, like in Europe and in even like Brazil and China to some extent. There have been efforts to develop

baseball talent there and occasionally a player will come over from there or other places. But for the most part, over the past 20 years or so, like the places that players have been coming from outside the US have had long established baseball playing populations like the DR and Venezuela and Cuba and Japan, et cetera. So in recent years, I guess maybe you've had more players, well, from Japan, you've had more players maybe from Korea, maybe more players from Australia, I guess, but there isn't some new hotbed of baseball where players have really been pulled from. So maybe this is just kind of – this is the we have not seen MLB expansion over that period either because if there was an influx of players coming from new markets and it were really apparent that the talent level in the league was skyrocketing because of that or that the potential player pool had grown and deepened significantly, then maybe you'd be more likely to have more than 30 teams. We have not gotten a new team added since 1998. It's a really, really long time to go without adding a new team, historically speaking. So those things kind of connected in my mind that

I wonder whether that plateauing in the international presence has something to do with if there were more and more and more international players kind of pushing out domestic players because they were better than they were, then I wonder whether you'd be more likely to see more teams like, oh, we need expansion because the player pool has grown so much and the talent level keeps climbing, which it still does. The talent level still continues to climb. And I think the caliber of play is far higher than it was 20 years ago, but perhaps not quite as much as if it had been pushed further by a rising international presence. Yeah. I think that we, yeah. Yeah. You said so

many words, Ben. I don't really have anything to say in dispute of those words. I think that those were good words that you said. You said a lot of them. And I was like, those are some good words from Ben. Thank you. Yeah. You're welcome. I mean, it did surprise me because my general impression is that we're seeing more and more.

And certainly from certain markets. Right. We are. You know, probably more Dominican players than ever. I think I've seen stats to that effect. So certain markets maybe are still increasing, but on the whole, it seems to have leveled out, which, you know, I mean, you would like to continue to see players from all over the world play baseball and want to play baseball. Right. the talent level of the league than it is just like the market for baseball or the perceived market. Because even though the population in the US keeps rising and in international countries, and so the player pool keeps growing, you also have more competition for baseball players and baseball talent, but also for just among consumers and spectators. And there are many more competitors for entertainment. So

I guess the barrier now is not like, oh, we can't expand because there aren't enough good players to go around. I mean, you can just see like in the rising pitch velocity alone, there's probably enough talent that we could expand without really watering down the talent level too much. But now maybe the concern is just like, are there markets that will support baseball? Right. There probably still are, but we just, we haven't seen that. And I guess part of it is also probably like the weird,

you know, antitrust exemption and owners wanting the franchise fees, but maybe not wanting competitions in there, you know, like a NIMBY sort of somewhere we want a new franchise, but not in my area. Not in Portland. Not anywhere that could compete with me. So, I don't know. We should probably devote like a whole episode

or a week of episodes or something to expansion because it's got to be coming at some point. But the fact that it is not, it struck me that maybe it has something to do with this plateauing in the international presence. All right. And that's the last of my observations about Russell's book, the rest of which I will not spoil, but I continue to enjoy and recommend to everyone.

And just wanted to mention I saw a story on MLB Trade Rumors about how the Tigers had pursued Gene Segura. Of course, they did not get him. The Marlins got him, as we discussed last week. But there's a whole story on MLB Trade Rumors about how the Tigers had pursued him and not like in a creepy stalking way, but they just had tried to. I'm envisioning literal tigers in pursuit of Gene Segura, and I am worried for him. Exactly. Yeah. But no, not that.

But this was sourced from a report in the Miami Herald, which indicated that Detroit tried to sign Segura, but that evidently he just decided on the Marlins ultimately. But evidently he just decided on the Marlins ultimately. And I think this might be the entry that I've seen that's like the most pathetic we tried type story of the offseason. Because you always get these like we tried to sign this guy like we were the runners up for him or we put in a competitive offer for him. And often you will see that sort of story after someone goes to another team. And it's just like, well, we tried to make the fans feel better about the fact that we didn't get this guy. We were totally in the running. And people kind of mock that type of story. And I think it's different if you have this type of

story before someone signs and it's just like Team X and Team Y and Team Z are pursuing so-and-so. I'm talking about after the fact when someone lands him and then it comes out that this was like Tiger's ownership, you know, trying to leak to friendly reporters that we were in local media that like we tried. And that's one kind of genre. I think there's some value in just reporting what the market was like or who was interested. I mean, you can derive some information from that if it's actually true, as opposed to just PR spin and trying to change the narrative. I don't mind knowing who was in on someone and if they didn't get them. But if it's like Gene Segura, who ends up signing for two years and $17 million with a third-year option, I don't know whether there's been a better example. And you're saying like, we tried and we offered 300 million for someone like, okay, that's, you know, you're putting some money on the line there. You got some skin in the game. If it's like, we tried to get Gene Segura and we just couldn't get him.

First of all, it's like kind of sad, I guess, if it's that level of free agent and it's like we couldn't persuade him to sign or like, or we weren't willing to blow his competition out of the water. Like, you know, how much would you have offered or had to offer Gene Segura to get in? Maybe he just wanted to play in Miami. Again, like sometimes free agents, they just want to go somewhere and not somewhere else. And it's not necessarily a reflection on you or your offer. Maybe they just prefer to play this other place for some reason.

They have agency. They can decide where they want to go. It's not always in your control. But I don't know. We should have an award for the saddest we tried report by a team. We tried to land this mid-tier free agent who didn't actually get that much money. And even if we had signed him, it wouldn't have been that exciting, really. But we tried. Get excited for the 2023 Tigers. We tried to get Gene Segura again. I don't know how this particular piece of news leaked, and maybe it wasn't

motivated by that, but you do see that sometimes. I mean, if you were trying to leak it and launder it, like putting it through the other team's newspaper. That might be some shifty smart thinking because people are going to be like, why would they do that? Because they don't live in Miami famously. They live in Detroit. That's the whole thing. But maybe it's a strategy, Ben. Maybe it's strategy. Yeah.

Yeah. Cover your tracks. Yeah. Yeah your tracks yeah plausible deniability yeah it was marwin's reporters miami reporters they wouldn't be plugged into us no definitely not no yeah good point all right and uh and the last thing i i guess i'll say is that so i ended up uh not voting for for the Hall of Fame again for reasons that I have mentioned before. Wait a minute, you're a dropout, Ben. Sometimes I don't know about you and your feel for bearing the lead. Like you didn't want to, we've, we've. Yeah, I don't want to belabor it because I've explained it before. I mean, last year I thought about it and talked about it a lot because it was my first time making this decision. And this year, it was like, do I still feel that way?

Yeah, I guess I do. And that was kind of it. But you didn't submit a blank ballot. You just didn't send one in. I just refrained from voting as some other voters do and have done. But I don't know whether it's because of that, because now that I've gotten to the point where I could vote and I've opted not to. Because now that I've gotten to the point where I could vote and I've opted not to. And again, this is, you know, for people who have not heard my explanations before, I'll link to the full ones. But basically, it's just some reservations about the process as it is put in place by the Hall of Fame and just not really wanting to participate as designed currently as it functions now. And look, if Scott Rowland misses out on election by one vote, which probably won't happen, but if it does, I would feel a little bit bad about that. I think he would just get in next year instead, but still don't want to make him wait longer than he has to. I think he deserves to be in. But it looks like Rowland is probably the only guy who has a shot, which is not really

unexpected. Todd Helton is up there too. But it looks like it's going to be touch and go. Ryan Thibodeau and his ballot trackers and the people who use their data to make projections, it looks like it's going to be kind of right on the cusp of maybe making it. And if Roland doesn't make it, then you'll just have Fred McGriff, I guess, you know, no one will get in via the BBWA ballot this year. or whether this would have happened anyway. But I do find myself just getting less invested in this over time and kind of caring less about it and sort of seeing the Hall of Fame as just a less, I don't know, definitive arbiter of like who's good and who was great and who wasn't. It just means a little less to me.

And I was thinking that really what people think of, I think, when they think of the Hall of Fame, I mean, specifically the people in the plaque, not the museum of the Hall of Fame, which is great. But the plaque room where we say this person deserves a plaque and an induction ceremony and speech and all that or not. I think what people think of when they think of that is like these were the best baseball players, probably. And I would kind of like it to be that more than what it is. I mean, one of my objections to the process as it works now and the character clause and all of that is that you just get this sort of fuzzy, you know, no one knows exactly what they're voting for. No one agrees on the criteria or which ones they're actually abiding by or which ones they're not. And it becomes all about morality.

And I think morality is important, but I don't know that the Hall of Fame or like the baseball writing electorate is necessarily the people to pass judgment on people's morality and to say, well, this person was a great baseball player, but is not in the Hall of Fame because they did this or they did that or they cheated or they just weren't good character guys off the field, which maybe matters more to me than the typical voter who's kind of looking at on the field issues. So I just think if it is saying or implying or suggesting or giving people the impression that this is a place for the best baseball players, it's not doing that great a job of delivering on that mandate because not only do you have a lot of cronyism that has gone on historically where people kind of just put in the people they like, whether they meet the benchmark or the established standards or

whatever, but also you just have people who are in even though they cheated, and you have people who aren't in because they cheated, and you have people who are in even though they were bad guys or they aren't in because they're a bad guy. And it's not really about were you just the best. And so a lot of people will say, well, it would be boring if it were just like stats, if it were just based on did you have this war or whatever or whatever magic number you would have had in the past hits or homers or whatever i just i'm starting to feel like the two kind of alternative halls that we have we have the hall of stats which is maintained by adam drasky and uh he's been on Effectively Wild, and he's talked about that.

And it is just literally, like they say, it's the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Stats. This is the Hall of Stats. It's just based on war and wins above average and your peak in career value. And it's just, it's kind of a constantly updating tabulation of who the best statistical baseball players were. So if you want to know that, I think the Hall of Fame is less vital than ever because we have war and we have these advanced stats. And so that can give you really just as good an answer as anyone else, really. Not to say that stats capture everything, but they do a decent job. They probably do as good a job, if not a better job than the average Hall of Fame voter historically. So if you just want to know who had the best stats, you have the Hall of Stats,

hallofstats.com. And if you want to know who was a significant figure in the history of the game, then you have the baseball reliquary and the Shrine of the Eternals, which people will say about the Hall of Fame, well, it's the Hall of Fame. Fame is important. Were you famous? Right. Can you tell the story of baseball without you, et cetera? And I always say, well, you can tell the story in the museum without giving a person a plaque anyway. But the baseball reliquary and the Shrine of the Internals, that's for people who were like significant figures in the history of the game who were not necessarily the greatest statistical contributors ever. You know, you have like Jim Bouton in there, right?

Because Ball Four was so significant and Jim Bouton was such a significant figure and you wouldn't put him in the Hall of Fame. He doesn't have the requisite stats, but he's in the Shrine of the Eternals as are so many greats like that. And we should probably do an interview at some point with the Baseball Reliquary and Shrine of the Eternals. The founder passed away a couple of years ago. But like lots of great legends who are not in the Hall of Fame do not have plaques are in the Shrine of the Eternals because they're like really significant figures in history of baseball. So if you want it to be the place for fame and and for just like legends and folk heroes then you have

the shrine of the eternals if you want it to be for stats you have the hall of stats and cooperstown the hall of fame the plaque room it's just like some sort of hazy middle ground between those two and it's it's kind of inconsistent criteria and so i will default to just saying oh is so and so a hall of Famer, like that's just the lingo. It's been around for so long and it's been so prominent for so long that that's what we think of greatness as being. It's like synonymous with the Hall of Fame. But for what I actually- Care about? Yeah, care about or like find useful about inducting a certain number of people into a really august group.

I feel like the Shrine of the Eternals and the Hall of Stats are sort of like, they're fitting the bill more so. They're answering the questions that I want answered. They're defining themselves more clearly and consistently in a way that I think there's a lot of utility in. Whereas the Hall of Fame and the plaques these days, it's like most of the greatest players, except some really great players are not in there because they cheated or they did something unsavory. And also there are a lot of players who aren't really that great in now just make it more obvious that it's kind of a hodgepodge really so that's increasingly my feeling and a hodge's podge now that oh my gosh ben a hodge's podge. Hodges Podge. Hodges Podge.

I got trapped saying Hodges Podge. I went to the Black Lodge and said Hodges Podge. I just finished my Twin Peaks rewatch. Yeah, I could tell. So that last episode is so upsetting. Anyway, so what you're really saying is you want to give Jay Jaffe more power somehow. You want to really imbue the process with more Jay Jaffe. I support that.

I think that's fine. He's got a good sense for these things. It's tricky. It's a tricky business because I think you're right that we want it to – it's hard for it to be as expansive but as precise as we need it to. I think this is a place where having something that has almost in a way less institutional memory than the Hall of Fame has

is profound because I think that there are constituencies that like, I don't want to like give anyone in particular a hard time, but like there are constituencies that you and I are more invested in satisfying

than the Hall of Fame seems invested in satisfying. And I think that when you think about some of the moves that the writers have tried to make to make the process more transparent, to make it more responsive, to have it maybe try to account for a broader swath of the player population

and the Hall's resistance to that in various spots. I think some of that is stubbornness, but I think some of that is also the hall having a bunch of different entrenched constituencies that it feels like it has to satisfy in order to be relevant to the people it wants to be relevant to. And so, yeah, there's something about, and I'm not like trying to make like a weird disruption argument here, but like you can be nimble and i think bring less baggage with you on some of these questions when you're a website you know and i think that you lose you lose stuff by shifting that way but it's not like we're tearing down the hall of fame so maybe that's fine yeah you know like it's it's not like we're saying and also we will march on Cooperstown

and tear it down brick by brick. That's not the project here. But I guess one question, and you might not have an answer to this. Is there a set of circumstances, a set of institutional changes that you, if the hall were to make them, I know you're not like making demands or anything,

but like if they were to make some changes where you would go, I would consider voting again. Because like I do. I appreciate Ben. But like if they were to make some changes where you go, I would consider voting again because like I do. Oh, yeah. I appreciate Ben. I think it's admirable that presented with a quote unquote easier ballot in some ways because some of the gnarliest cases of at least off field conduct, not all of them, but some of them have exited the ballot that you didn't say, well, I don't have to answer the shilling question. Put me down like that. I think that that is,

it suggests an admirable consistency on your part that you didn't easy your way out after that. But is there like a, a reform that could be made where you would go? Yeah. Like now, now that you mention it. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh yeah. If they, if they remove the character clause, I would vote. I think the hall is, no, no, let me mention it. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. If they remove the character clause, I would vote. I think the hall is, again, I don't know if it's unique, but it's highly unusual in having a character clause, which is just sort of vague and murky and talks about character and integrity and sportsmanship and all these things that don't specifically limit it to on field. and all these things that don't specifically limit it to on field. And so one of my objections is, again, like kind of making it about that because I don't think that that's what most people want it to be about, which is not to say that I want to sweep under the rug nasty stuff that people have done.

If anything, quite the opposite. I don't like the fact that because there is a character clause that suggests that anyone who is in must have had good character. It's like, well, we evaluated their character and they're Hall of Famers, so they must have spotless records. Or then you end up like, was this person good enough at baseball that it outweighs the fact that they had domestic violence or sexual assault or multiple DUIs or whatever, all these marks on people's records. Right. and bring it into line with whatever, the NFL, the Football Hall of Fame, most other Hall of Fames. It's not necessarily about whether you were a good person or not. And then there can be an understanding that these were the best baseball players, but

they weren't necessarily good people. And we can acknowledge that and we can talk about that and we can account for that in some way. We could even put it on their plaque or put it, whatever asterisk for what bad things they did just so that we're not kind of holding them up as great characters. It's just, no, they were good at baseball. And beyond that, we're not passing judgment one way or another. We're not saying now you could say that I think one thing that football hall of fame does, I mean, it will just sort of pre vet people. I mean, you could say like what this person did is so heinous that they cannot even be considered

even though we're stripping the character clause. But yeah, if they either stripped the character clause or had some way of accounting for character in some way so that you could learn more about the characters

or you could walk into the Hall of Fame and not think, oh, these must have been a bunch of great guys. Good eggs all. Upstanding citizens, great ambassadors and representatives of the game. I'm just kind of uncomfortable with that whole aspect. And I know that historically speaking, the character clause wasn't really prioritized.

And then it was in recent years as people started to use it as a way not to vote for PDs, people and steroids guys, et cetera. But now that we've, I think, belatedly begun to really appreciate just the harm that can be done by other things and just like baseball is a sport, you know, didn't used to have like a domestic violence policy and now it does and it's a much bigger deal than it used to be i mean it's perceived to be then why should that not weigh into whether you're voting based on character and integrity and all these things so yeah i think if they removed that or if they provided some mechanism to account for that kind

of thing the way that you go to the hall of Fame website and it summarizes their statistical accomplishments. It could also give a picture of, you know, or if there were any mechanism for removing people. And I'm not saying that we should just remove everyone retrospectively and retroactively, willy-nilly, based on evolving standards and everything. That's a difficult conversation. But when you put in someone you think is spotless and blameless, and then it turns out to be Kirby Puckett, and after they're in, a bunch of stuff comes out that makes them seem not that way, there's no way to account for that or be like, oops, or at least put some sort of note about, we didn't know about this when we put this guy in. It's like purporting to

have character be a big part of it, which again, if you're someone who says, I don't care about character in this context, I just want to know who the best baseball players were. I think that's totally okay too. If you just want to go and give a tour of the best baseball players and then it's up to you to say, by the way, Jimmy, when you're giving your kid a tour of the Hall of Fame and introducing them to the best baseball players ever, like this guy was really good at baseball. Not necessarily a great role model or someone to look up to, but was just really good at baseball. That's okay, too. I think that is what most people want out of the Hall of Fame. And that's what you get from something like the Hall of Stats or, for that matter, the Shrine of the Eternals, where Pete Rose is in each of those, I think. And it's not

necessarily Pete Rose was a great guy. It's just Pete Rose was good at baseball and a big figure in the history of baseball. And thus, he will be recognized here, but not in a way that precludes us talking about how not a good guy, in fact, he was it is. I would be really curious to see, and I mean, there's probably an answer to this online, like, what does the Football Hall of Fame look like? Like the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the actual museum look like? Because like, how did they deal with OJ, for instance? You know, like he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, the Football Hall of Fame in like 80 in the mid to late 80s. I think, you know, he was it was pre him murder. Yeah. And it's like, how do they deal with that? Like, I think that part of this that I find, like a tricky bit of rubber meeting the road for a lot of these guys is like you have a body of writers who are electing and not all of the guys who enter the hall of fame go in on the writer's ballot obviously but like you know you have a body of writers who are applying different criteria

within hopefully the prescribed set of guidelines and then you are leaving it to like museum curators to figure out how to represent those people and players in a museum, which is it's like, that's a skill, you know, that's like a profession and an expertise, right? How do we represent history within a museum? And so it's like, I'm sensitive to the fact that we are like as much guff

as Hall of Fame voters get online for you know including guys or not including guys and having a particular interpretation of the character clause versus not like in some respect like our job is easy relative to what the people at the hall who are actually like putting together you know displays and stuff have to do where it's like okay now you have to figure out how to account for you know he's not gonna get in anytime soon but like barry bonds like how do you do justice to the totality of barry bonds because some of these guys you know you put in a stinker and he maybe doesn't necessitate anything more than his plaque because he's not as central to the story of baseball but for some of them you really have to try to do it justice.

I don't know. It's a hard problem, and I don't look forward to having to deal with it because I have a little ways, but it's not like the baseball playing population is going to become uniquely virtuous in the time between when I joined the BBWA and when I got my first vote. I hope that the indiscretions that we are dealing with at that time don't have such a

meaningful real world impact to other people, but it feels naive to assume that I'm going to get off easy. That seems foolish to assume. Some writers. So they just disregard the character clause or they just don't give it much weight or they don't think there should be one. And so they just basically ignore it. But I think the hall really wants there to be one from what I've heard. Like they're pretty invested in having that.

And I think more so, so they can keep PD guys out than you know other people with off the field issues but they kind of have put their thumb on the scale there and they said you know we want this to to be a big factor so yes as a writer as a voter you can personally just disregard that if you want and a lot of people do. And I think that's okay. I personally wasn't really comfortable kind of subscribing to that process, I guess, if that's the way they want it to work. So if it changes, and I think, I don't know, if writers had their way, maybe it would change. I don't know that writers necessarily like having to weigh this or pass judgment on

someone's moral record the way you do on your baseball playing record a lot of other writers have opted out for the same reason or have expressed discomfort with this so i don't know maybe at some point that changes but it doesn't seem like the hall wants it to change as for oj he's he's still in the football they don't have a mechanism for i don't think they have a mechanism for removal no yeah you know i imagine that his presence there at least in terms of like the physical museum is probably minimized you think i think they've still invited him to to come like when they invite all the members but i don't know if he has anyway yeah and i don't want to paint a picture where it's like the fine upstanding

writers versus the evil hall of fame like that's that's not an accurate depiction of this at all like i do think that you are right to say that the institutional impetus for the character clause for the hall has more to do with performance enhancing drugs than it does with the other stuff but it's not like every writer is out here being like, well, I have a hard line on X and I am prevented from honoring that hard line by the Hall of Fame. That's not how it goes. All right. We'll close with the past blast and also one email we got in response to something we talked

about last week. Remember when we were talking about a player, and I forget which player this was, but someone who was quote unquote-unquote, purchased, right? The transaction said purchased, and we were like, ew, it's weird to say that a player was purchased. And Scott wrote in to note, is purchasing a player, quote-unquote, really worse than trading them? And he wrote, I totally understand a person balking at applying the language of purchasing to a human being, but why is it any more disturbing than the notion of trading one or more persons for another? It seems like it shouldn't be, though I admit to the same visceral reaction in the baseball are very rare while purchasing players is commonplace. And I experienced the language of purchasing as unobjectionable in that context. Friends I know who grew up on international football rather than North American sports find

the notion of trading players profoundly strange. From an economic perspective, it seems obvious that the purchases slash sales model is superior to the barter slash trade model, more efficient markets. I don't think that this would only benefit the owner class either. It seems like it would improve mobility for players as well. While the other North American sports have salary caps that probably require trading players, it seems like purchasing players could or should be more common in baseball. In short, I don't think that the icky thing here is purchasing players. The icky thing is treating people as mere assets.

We're numb to the language of trading players, but using purchasing in an unfamiliar context reminds us what is really happening. So I thought that was a pretty good point. I didn't really have a way to refute why one makes us go, and the other not so much, I guess just because we're so used to it. It's so, it's so commonplace.

Yeah. I think that they're both yuck. It's a weird business. It's a very strange industry. It's a weird thing. Our reaction to it might be different if the legacy of it, if we were better at referring to them trading or purchasing the contract rather than the person, right? If we affixed it to an actual object rather than making the person seem like one, I think our reaction to it might be different. But that's not what we've done.

So instead we go, blech. Right. All right. Here is the pass blast. This is from 1950 and from Jacob Pomeranke, Sabre's director of editorial content and chair of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. 1950, losing is a disease. In 1950, the St. Louis Browns made history by hiring baseball's first full-time sports psychologist to help improve what they called a defeatist attitude among their players. The Browns weren't the first team to explore the benefits of sports

psychology. A decade earlier, Cubs owner P.K. Wrigley hired a consultant to conduct an analysis of his manager and players during the 1938 season. I think that was in the MVP machine. In 1949, the Browns lost 101 games, and they entered the 1950 season with the youngest team in the major leagues. Their hiring of Dr. David Tracy made national headlines, but many observers were skeptical of what he could do. Here's a report from Frank Blair of the Long Beach Press-Telegram on January 2, 1950. Quote, Jack Graham is a poised and personable young fellow with no apparent traces of an inferiority complex, but it's likely that when he reports to the St. Louis Browns at their Burbank camp next spring, he'll be one of the pupils of the eminent Dr. David Tracy of New York, a registered doctor of metaphysics, a hypnotist, and a consulting psychologist. Dr. Tracy will endeavor to build up morale and confidence among the Browns, especially among the players who have a defeatist attitude.

Dr. Tracy will teach Graham and the other Brownies the powers of autosuggestion, by which they may be able to talk themselves into a state of confidence that may enable them to finish as high as fifth place. If everything goes well, the Browns may be able to talk themselves into the first division. I will teach the Browns players to talk to their arms so they will feel more limber and strong and to talk to their legs so they will feel more speedy and supple, explains Dr. Tracy. He also recommends hypnosis as a means of helping the Browns next summer. Vice President Charlie DeWitt of the Browns predicts that there will be no inferiority complexes among the Browns next season and that old Doc Tracy will instill in them the same

winning spirit that has made the Yankees famous. David Tracy didn't help the Browns as much as he hoped, Jacob concludes. St. Louis improved from 53 wins in 1949 to 58 wins in 1950. I mean, I guess if that was all attributable to him, if you had a five-win psychologist, that'd be pretty valuable. Tracy wrote a book about his experience called The Psychologist at Bat,

where he suggested that in the future, all baseball teams would be led by a manager, a bench coach, and a sports psychologist. That hasn't come to pass yet, but a generation later, Dr. Harvey Dorfman became famous for his work with baseball players earning World Series rings with the 1989 A's and 1997 Marlins. Today, more than a dozen MLB teams employ mental skills coaches. So yeah, this was ahead of its time, although it probably was not just a defeatist attitude that was hampering the Browns back then. It was the defeats that came from them not being that good at baseball and not having very good baseball players, regardless of what their attitude was.

I think there's probably a limit to hypnotizing players into being productive. I'm sure it can help in certain cases. I'm definitely not discounting the power of having a sports psychologist. It can be very valuable, but you do also have to have some physical talent and some good baseball players to start with. So the Browns were maybe lacking that a little bit at the time. Yeah. I imagine that there is a good amount of removing of barriers and lifting of potential, but that there is a ceiling to what it can do. All right. If you, like most of the country, but unlike us, took last week off, I hope you'll take some time to catch up on the Effectively Wild you missed. We had some good episodes last week, talked about the things we missed in 2022, and also did the minor league free agent draft, plus the usual stat blasts and pass blasts and banter and news reactions. Before I end this episode, one correction of myself to make. I said that Pete Rose was not in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, but was in the Shrine of the Eternals and the Hall of Stats. Technically not true. He is in

the Shrine of the Eternals at the Baseball Reliquary. He is not officially in the Hall of Stats because Adam, the proprietor of Hall of Stats, made the decision to exclude banned players, players who were banned by MLB, also technically banned from the Hall of Stats. But his Hall rating is still there. So you can see that he would be in. He has a Hall rating of 150. So anyone 100 or above is in the Hall of Stats and he would comfortably be in there. But his page notes that he is also banned. Pete Rose is also in the Hall of Merit, which you can find at the Hall of Stats site. And this was kind of another alternate Hall of Fame that was curated by Baseball Think Factory, where each year members of that site will vote for new inductees based on merit and not fame.

I guess merit can be kind of a squishy word too, but this tends to be more statistically based. So you can look the Hall of Stats and the Hall of Merit much more closely agree than the Hall of Stats and the Hall of Fame. So this is another attempt to solve the problem of having some sort of pantheon for players that is maybe more clearly defined, or at least the criteria are more consistently observed. And I'm not suggesting that any of these will actually rival the cultural prominence of Cooperstown and the Hall of Fame, which has been around for so long and has been such a big part of the baseball fan popular imagination that I don't expect the Hall of Stats or the Hall of Merit or the Shrine of the Eternals to compete with it in terms of how well-known it is or how big an honor it is perceived to be. But the utility of it really is

right up there because not that many people who are arguing about the Hall of Fame are actually visiting the Hall of Fame and the plaque room, you know, are actually walking around that room in the little museum in upstate New York. It's great if you can go. I've been many years ago. But for most people, this is sort of an abstract debate that they are waging online or with their friends. They're not necessarily setting foot in the room. It's just kind of a construct. So in that sense, give the baseball reliquary a shot. Give the Hall of Stats and the Hall of Merit a shot. They're answering interesting questions clearly. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to

patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free and get themselves access to some perks. Kevin Meehan, Jerry Kropp, Katie Razor, Shane Shuby, and Sean Viziac, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group, now more than 940 members strong, talking baseball all day and all night, and talking other things, off-topic things too. It's quite a warm and thriving community. You also get access to monthly bonus episodes that Meg and I put out, and you get discounts on merch and ad-free Fangraphs memberships and access to playoff livestreams and more. You can contact me and Meg via the Patreon site if you are a supporter.

Makes it easier for us to notice and flag those emails. But anyone can contact us via email at podcast at fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. We just got one recent review on New Year's Eve from someone on iTunes who gave us five stars and wrote,

Great show. It's hornier now. Five stars. Well, you're welcome, and thank you for the review. You can join the aforementioned Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod. And you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with another episode a little later this week.

Talk to you then. Strange victory. Strange victory. Strange victory. Strange defeat. Strange victory. Strange victory. Strange victory. Strange victory. Strange defeat.