Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1956: Jock and Bull Stories

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about players snacking on the field and a baseball equivalent of the EGOT before (23:01) Ben brings on Ron Shelton, the Oscar-nominated writer and director of Bull Durham and the author of The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham, to reminisce about Shelton’s minor league career, how […]

It always seemed bad if he always had seeds to sow Like an old sandman who lived with butter and grub He wore a crown of kings and a belt of wings Stuck alone in the wall, put beans on a bed of mustard seeds Hello and welcome to episode 1956 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangrass presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined as always by Meg Rowley of Fangrass. Hello, Meg. Hello.

We've got two guests today. I'm excited about both of them, and I will tee them up in just a sec. So just the briefest of banters today. First one, another day, another way in which baseball is weird or different or unusual. And this one is one that you have noted yourself in different contexts, at least. And this one was submitted by listener Mike, who pointed out, I can't think of any other sports where players snack while on the field, except for cycling, where they are given musettes, literally the same word as a feed bag for a horse, which includes snacks and sometimes tiny cans of Coke.

So you've made this observation about on-field snacking before. Snacking on the field. Yeah, it's true. That is something. I guess this almost goes hand in hand with some of the other ones, like the pants and the belts. I mean, maybe it's part and parcel with the leisure time that baseball players sometimes have in the middle of the action or not in the middle of the action because there isn't that much action sometimes. But it's true, and it doesn't seem entirely necessary because they get a lot of opportunities to go back to the dugout and snack.

Do they have to snack constantly? They're just grazing on the field constantly. Oh, yeah. Like livestock would do. But it is kind of an endearing quality of the sport. I mean, like, they're not like chewing a cud, you know? It's not quite the... They look like they are.

I mean, they'rewing dip or something. Yeah. That's my cud sound. I don't think that's what it sounds like when an animal chews a cud, actually. I didn't expect to say the word cud so many times today. That's what it's called, right? I'm not like... Yeah.

Look at that. Anyway. We know our farm animals. So, are ungulates are, is that a, what's it called when the livestock have multiple stomachs and then that's why they have to pre-digest the food a little bit before it can. Yeah, right. Because a cub, a cud, not a cub, a cub also on baseball fields, but a cud, it's like when it comes back up, right? It goes down and then it comes back up again for a second chewing. the hooves, you know, the number. So sometimes they are divided. Sometimes they have odd-toed ungulates, and then you have even-toed ungulates.

Anyway, not related to digestion. Although I suppose there could be ungulates that have a cud. I imagine many of them do. Anyhow. This is called rumination, apparently. Rumination, yeah, they're ruminators. Yeah. So yeah, we may be a. Yeah. So, yeah.

Several of my family members are, like, so disappointed in me right now. They don't know why, but they're having this prickling sensation, like, Megan's proving she lived in a city her whole life again. I thought you were going to say they were ruminants themselves. Well, that's good. But, yes, it's not dissimilar to that. And, no, it's not cud. It's not something that they're bringing back up for further digestion.

Thank goodness. It's just seeds or gum or dip or who knows what it is. But it's something you just constantly need to be furnishing yourself with energy, it seems. Well, and it's like, you know, is there unexplored imagination in the baseball snacking space? Like, you know, maybe you're someone who's like, I'm having a moment of being conscious of how salty these seeds are. So I want some baby carrots, you know, could you take baby carrots out there with you? Could you have? That is something I would do.

Famously, infamously, Sam made fun of me for bringing raw mushrooms to the field one day. Yeah, that is weird, Ben. I mean, he's not wrong. I'm not a mushroom head. I want to like mushrooms and I don't. And I view it as a failing, so you don't have to send emails, but not a typical thing for me. But you're right. Yeah. Or maybe they could have those packs where they have a straw so you can sip on the straw from the back. Like a Capri Sun? Sort of thing. Oh, I see. Yeah. Like you wear it. Yeah. So not a Capri Sun, like a Camelback like you would wear if you're on a hike and you want

to be hands-free, but still be able to drink something yeah or like um they could take those little fruit juice packs they're not juice packs they're like um you know my my nieces would would have them when they were very little they're like baby food in a little tiny squeezy pouch carton oh yeah as a father of a 15 year old i know what you're talking about yeah yeah a little squeezy pouch and you know like don't just don't think about it or get a weird flavor and i bet you get some good little nutrients but i i suppose that the the primary appeal of like seeds and stuff is that once it's in your mouth like you you know your hands are free to do baseball right but it does once again inspire the question you can't just wait to get back to the dugout like right i know that some of those innings go on for a while

but still it can't be that they're famished most of the time it must just be an oral fixation kind of thing it might be superstition it might just be it's a way to pass the time of course they're yeah players who have had toothpicks in their mouths during games, which also seems questionable. But all these things, I think, are a distinguishing feature of baseball. Maybe it's not unique, but other sports, you know, there aren't as many breaks in the action, at least while you're on the field or the court or the ice or whatever the surface is. And there's just not as much downtime to be eating things. And I guess it might also be an issue if you were to discard things. That's the thing. I guess that kind of limits the snacks that you can have because you can keep something in your back

pocket, but you can't just be littering willy-nilly with all kinds of packaging and everything. So seeds, I guess you can just spit with impunity and someone will clean them up or they're just biodegradable. But it might be more noticeable if this were on the ice and you were just spitting seeds on the court or something. So football's grass, I guess you could do it on that field too. But I don't think you would want to be eating something and swallowing while you're on a football field. That seems even more dangerous than being on a football field to begin with. Yeah, and certainly more dangerous than having a toothpick. I mean, arguably, I would see this is the conundrum, perhaps.

I would prefer them to spit on the field than in the dugout, which is another thing they do. And we have talked before about how that's disgusting. And I feel terrible for the poor like field staff that have to clean up those dugouts after because there's a layer of gross you know

and it's gross even when you don't have Terry Francona like mashing seeds and chew into gum and then yeah so anyway I'm just saying like don't litter, but maybe spit your seeds out on the grass, but also take a baby carrot out there and see how it hits you. Or you could have celery sticks or you wouldn't want an apple, right?

Because then you have to hold it and eat a whole apple. You could have a little bag of celery sticks and baby carrots in your back pocket and have a nice refreshing hit of something. It's just sometimes those seeds are like, you know, it's just so salty. Right. Yeah.

You have to worry about foreign substances too because apple residue, that's sticky stuff. So you could get called on that. Anyway, I said this was going to be brief banter. I didn't know how much we had to learn about animal digestion. Well, I had to remember what an uncle it was, Ben. But the only other thing I wanted to ask you, this is a discussion topic that came up in our Facebook group the other day, the baseball equivalent of an EGOT. So an EGOT, the Grand Slam of entertainment, right? An Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, a Tony,

17 people have won an EGOT, depending on how you define the EGOT and whether you count a daytime Emmy. Most recently, Jennifer Hudson EGOTed. This is not counting Lydia Tarr of Tarr, who is a fictional person, but also had an EGOT in that movie. No, which is a great movie, but not a real EGOT winner. Everybody loves Tarr. I still haven't seen Tarr, but everybody seems to love Tarr, you know? You should see Tarr. Yeah. I know. It's on the list, Ben. It's a long list, I know. I know. But is there a baseball equivalent of the EGOT? I think this was prompted. Andrew McCutcheon had a Instagram post where he was shown with his awards.

He was in his award room, his plaque room with his kids, and he was showing off his awards. And he has a silver slugger in there, and has a gold glove and MVP and the Clemente Award. So some people suggested maybe the Clemente Award could be the fourth leg, the quadfecta of the EGOT. Other people said, well, maybe it should be all on the field stuff, not Clemente is for sportsmanship and work in the community, etc. So is there the equivalent of an EGOT for baseball? And what would it be? I guess you could say that being a multi-sport star would be more equivalent to an EGOT. Although really some people have EGOTed basically just doing the same thing,

just in different disciplines. You could be a songwriter and you can win all of those awards just writing songs, different sorts of songs, maybe. But I wonder because someone noted, well, should rookie of the year count? You know, you're really only eligible for that, well, when you're a rookie. So that kind of limits things a little bit, but you could still potentially count it. So you've got Silver Slugger, you've got MVP, you've got Gold Gloves. I don't know what should count because MVP often, it's like the Mookie when you win the Gold Glove and you win the Silver Slugger and the MVP too. I mean, if you win a Silver Slugger and a Gold Glove, you're well on your way toward an MVP, though you won't necessarily get one. So I wonder what is different enough, still achievable, but difficult. If there have been only 17 e-gotters, this doesn't have to be something that a lot of players have done. I am inclined to not include Rookie of the Year for the reasons that you said. I think that it is a, it is certainly a great achievement, but it is fixed to a particular stage of a player's career in a way

that feels importantly different to me than like MVP or Silver Slugger or Gold Glove. You know, it would be like if there was like Kid Oscars. Didn't there used to be Kid Oscars? Didn't they used to give kids Oscars? I don't know. I'm wondering about all kinds of things today, Ben. Did you know that a moose also an uncle?

Academy Juvenile Award. The Juvenile Oscar. Yeah. Honorary Academy Award. Right, right. So I feel like we should set rookie of the year aside. And then I think that, well, how do we want to deal with the hitter and the pitcher of it all? Because I think that you have to distinguish, like for a position player,

the egot of baseball would involve an MVP, a silver slugger, and a gold glove, right? But on the pitching side, I don't think you have to win an mvp you probably do need to win a cy young right yeah right so is the side the substitute for the silver slugger because a pitcher is eligible for the mvp even though they rarely win it they so rarely win and it's not their fault that they so rarely win right it isn't you know it's not their fault it is it the fault it's in our stars you know it's in our it's in our body that we control so and pitchers can't win silver sluggers anymore either because they don't slug right and you know is pitchers can win a gold glove there is a gold glove for pitchers but do we understand that to be meaningful to the pitcher

in the same way that a gold glove award is meaningful to a position player? Maybe not to the same extent, but I think it counts. I think it should be part of it. So you have to win a Cy Young and a gold glove. And then on the position player side, you have to win a silver slugger and a gold glove and an MVP. Yeah. Can we have unbalanced EGOTs?

Can we have? I don't think so. But it feels like we should. It feels or we could make it really difficult and say that you have to be you don't have to just win individual accolades as a player, but you also have to go on to be manager of the year. Yes, right. Terrible. Don't do that. That would be a terrible idea.

Put it out there as a trap. Some players have done that or even have gone on to be broadcasters and won the Ford C. Frick Award. That's really ultra rare. Or what about winning a World Series That's really ultra rare. Or what about winning a World Series or even winning a postseason MVP type award, I guess, is another? I'm disinclined to do that in much the same way that I do not think that you can hold a lack of postseason resume against a Hall of Fame candidate. Because that's not an individual player's thing, right?

That's not within their sole control. We wouldn't hold it against Andrew McCutcheon. He doesn't have a World Series ring. Yeah, no. I think every award, individual award, is to some extent kind of a group award. Like even you got awards. A World Series championship is really a group award. Yes, very much so.

That's like really, really long. There's conviction, you know? Yeah. Well, there probably isn't a perfect analog for the baseball you got, but we've named the major possibilities. Or you could even have like the Rolades Relief Man Award or whatever they're calling it now. It's not that. It's like the MLB Reliever of the Year Award, or it used to

be the Delivery Man of the Year Award. Yeah, which just made it sound like it was sponsored by FedEx. It probably was. They didn't rename it after Mariano Rivera? I thought they renamed the Reliever Awards after... The Mariano A.L. Reliever of the Year Award and the Trevor Hoffman N.L. Reliever of the Year Award. Okay, fair, N.L. Reliever of the Year Award. Oh, okay. Okay. Fair, fair. Yeah. You know, we like to acknowledge all sorts of folks. So, okay. Okay.

I think that you have to have sort of role-specific definitions of EGOT because I really don't think we can hold it against pitchers that they so rarely win the MVP. Although, you know, it's happened in like the not so recent past, right? Like the not so distant past is what I meant. Can you tell that I was on a conference call for like an hour before we hopped on to do this part? So it's not that it's unachievable. It just isn't common.

And I don't think that that is the fault of pitchers. So I really don't think we should hold that part against them. So then there need to be, specific ones. And we probably do need to distinguish like if you're a pitcher, if you're a starting pitcher, you need to win a Cy Young. If you're a reliever, you have to win one of the reliever awards. It's just going to be kind of a mishmash of things. Right. Yeah. Or we could dip into some of the more obscure awards potentially, like, well, there's the Hank Aaron Award, which is the top hitter in each league. I mean, I guess that's almost like a platinum glove is to gold gloves as the Hank Aaron Award is to silver slugger. Or it could be like the Historic Achievement Award that Otani won most recently. But I don't know, if we start getting into more obscure ones then it doesn't have the same cultural cachet like the egot all four of them are pretty big deal

right you don't include the you don't include people's choice awards in the egot yeah or it could be like the lou brock award is given to the national league player with the most sullen bases i assume there's a al equivalent i don't know but but most sullen bases would be just kind of a different skill set but again would anyone even know that some of these words exist so maybe that's not perfect you could do like the i don't know yeah i don't know and then and then it's like do you penalize some players and look back and say like you have to have won a college world series or you know do you go that far back into that's only going to speak to a very not a very limited but a

limited part of the baseball population because not all domestic amateurs go to college and not and certainly in a national game. Yep, yep. All right. Well, it's interesting food for thought. We will chew this over in our cud. Oh, I have a regret again. I'm just so relieved I remember what an ungulate is.

I was like, I think it's a foot thing. Thanks to listener John for that topic. Sorry for the cud discussion. If we left out any obvious possibilities, please let us know. So we've got a couple of great guests here. What about Hall of Famer? What about getting into the Hall of Fame? Is that?

Oh, boy. That overshadows everything in a way. That might make you wait such a long time, though. It does. Yeah. Well, that's something. It feels like a lot of responsibility that we're putting on baseball writers again. Or like just being an all-star?

Is that enough for- Yeah. Oh, I think you have to be an all-star. Okay. Okay. Maybe you have to be an all-star. Okay. I mean, they have tigers be all-stars. It's not that hard.

Oh, that's the Tigers. Okay. So rude. We've got two guests. Our first guest is the great, the Hollywood legend, not an E. Goddard, but he was Oscar nominated, Ron Shelton, who is best known in these circles, probably as the writer and director of Bull Durham. Also of White Men Can't Jump and Tin Cup and many other movies. And as I mentioned, I tried to get him on last year, one of the episodes when you were away, and it didn't work out in time to have him on then, but I stuck with it and I got him now. So this is just going to be a solo conversation. And it was prompted by his excellent book that

came out last year called The Church of Baseball. It's about the making of Bull Durham, but it's also part memoir about his minor league baseball career. He played several seasons in the minors, which is how he wrote Bull Durham. He was drawing on his own personal history. So we talked about that and the making of the movie and how the minor leagues have evolved or devolved and many other topics related to the entertainment industry today and baseball industry today and his future plans and other baseball stories that he might want to tell. So fun conversation. And then we will both be back after that for a conversation with, I was going to call him a real life Crash Davis, but in a way-

But he's not though. He's not. Well, he's a pitcher instead of a catcher, but also he makes Crash Davis look like a flash in the pan. I mean, he's had a much longer career than Crash Davis and his name is Chris Oxspring. He is a 45-year-old pitcher. So our favorite Rich Hill is much younger than Chris Oxspring, at least a few years younger. And like Crash Davis, he had a cup of coffee in the big leagues. So he did get up there with the Padres in 2005. He was a September call-up, but his career has gone well beyond that. And he's from Australia. He is currently pitching in Australia in the Australian Baseball League for the Sydney Blue Sox. And he has also played in Japan and he's played in Korea and he's played in all sorts of international competitions representing Australia. And he's played in Indie Ball and he's played for three major league organizations. And he is still pitching quite effectively for the Sydney Blue Sox this year. And I don't know if he expected to get quite as many innings as he has gotten, but the man, he's got a 2.39 ERA in 11 games, 26 and a third innings, 27 Ks.

He's still dealing out there. Yeah. So why would you stop? And we talked to him about all of his many, many stops along the way and his family life and how he broke into baseball. why would you stop? And we talked to him about all of his many, many stops along the way and his family life and how he broke into baseball. Really good discussion and seems like a good guy. And people sometimes think of cup of coffee players as tragic stories or disappointments, you know, like, oh, they never got back there. They reached the pinnacle and then it was snatched

away. And it can be that for some players and maybe they got hurt or whatever it was and they never got another chance. But in Chris's case, I mean, maybe he would have liked to spend more time in the majors. But first of all, it's amazing that he made it to the majors at all, given where he came from and when he came from there. We talked to him about the evolution of baseball and the development of baseball in Australia. But also, he's just led such a long and seemingly rich and fulfilling life in baseball. He's gotten to see the world. He's been a national hero. He's gotten to raise and play in front of his family. It seems like a pretty great career to me. And obviously, he made it to the majors. So we're meeting a major leaguer here, Chris Oxspringing. So this will be fun. Yeah. All right. I will be back in just a moment with former minor leaguer and longtime writer and director Ron Shelton, the man who brought us Bull Durham, for my money, the best of all baseball movies,

which will turn 35 later this year. Oh, wow, I thought I'd be out of here by now Still in Hollywood My, my, I'm running on a wheel and I don't know why Still in Hollywood Oh, wow, I thought I'd be out of here by now Still in Hollywood Oh, my, my, my, I'm running on a wheel and I don't know, don't know, don't know why Well, I'm joined now by bobblehead doll model, 39th round draft pick, and Rochester Red Wings Hall of Famer, Ron Shelton, who is probably better known as the Oscar-nominated writer

and director of Bull Durham and many other movies, and most recently, the author of the book, The Church of Baseball, The Making of Bull Durham. Welcome, Ron. You've made it to the show, or a show, at least. Oh, well, any show will do, you know. Good. In the book, you describe some studio executives who'd sometimes tell a writer that they loved their screenplay, even if they hadn't read a page. And when I say I loved your book, rest assured, I really did read the whole thing cover to cover. Though,

I got the sense that you tend to look forward to new work more than you look back at old work, and that you wrote the book in part to be more than you look back at old work and that you wrote the book in part to be the final word on the film so that when someone asks you about Bull Durham, you could say, I wrote a whole book about it. It's all in there. And if so, maybe that backfired because here I am asking you to look back again because of the book. So thanks for indulging me. You got it. Yeah, definitely backfired. I've had more phone calls since the book than before. So anyway. Well, we got to ask him one question at a time, and I will start with a baseball question. Though much as Bull Durham is about more than baseball, your book is about more than baseball

or Bull Durham. It's also about inspiration and writing and how messy the act of creation can be. But I will try not to ask you questions that you get all the time, and this one hopefully isn't one that you hear too often. I wanted to ask about a baseball game that you didn't write about in the book, but that I stumbled across while looking up a story you did mention. In 1969, you were on the Stockton Ports, which was the eight-ball affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles and the best team in the California League at the time. You finished 81 and 59. But in early June of that year, I discovered the Orioles themselves were in the area on a West Coast road trip.

And on June 1st, they beat the Angels. And on June 3rd, they beat the A's. And June 2nd looks like an off day, but it wasn't really because that day the Orioles visited Stockton to play an exhibition game against the Ports just to drum up interest in their low-level affiliate. And according to the Stockton Evening and Sunday record, infielder Ron Shelton felt it would be a thrill and an honor to play against the mighty Orioles. And they were mighty. The Orioles were the best team in baseball that year. They were 35 and 15 at the time

and would go on to win 109 games in the AL pennant. But you guys beat them. Stockton beat the mighty Orioles three to two. And I'm sorry to say that you went 0 for 4 in that game, but you must've done something good because Earl Weaver said, I'm not judging the ports on one game, but several impressed me.

I liked your second baseman. That's you. That was me. That was me. Yes. I made some, I remember I, well, I, you know, those memories never leave you. I remember I made some very good plays in the field and I hit the ball hard, even if I didn't get any hits, I might've.

I remember my buddy, Ralph Manfredi got the winning hit. You know, the Orioles also then came play us in rochester and we beat them in rochester too so i'm 2-0 2-0 against the mighty uh and they had you know they had robin brooks robinson frank robinson boog powell you know they had the 420 game winners in 69 i think paul blair uh belanger, Davy Johnson, and the great Earl Weaver and their pitching coach, George Bamberger. And they played their superstars through two at bats. So the fans could see, they didn't just show up and play their second string.

And they did. They were a very classy organization. Very classy. Yeah. And we get hypothetical questions every now and then about, well, how would a major league team do against a league that's a much lower level? And at least for a day or two, it can be a pretty even matchup. Now, I don't know, maybe you were more motivated as the minor leaguers in that matchup and the Orioles were thinking, I wish we'd had a day off

here, but still, even so. I'm sure that they wish they had a day off and they came all the way from Oakland in a bus. So that's amazing. Look, I think we weren't more motivated. Every day you play, you're trying to win and do the best you can. So it was just more interesting than playing the Bakersfield Bears on that particular evening. By the way, what newspaper was that? Because there's a guy writing a book about Earl Weaver. It was the Stockton Evening and Sunday Record. I can send you a link if you'd like. Send me a link because I'll give him that

because he was asking me about my connections to Earl Weaver. Well, he was an admirer, evidently. The Ports turned a couple of double plays that day, so maybe you were involved in those. We led the league in double plays. I'm very proud of that step. All right. Well, yeah, I mean, you were motivated to beat the big leaguers, but the big leaguers were probably motivated not to be shown up by meat, right? By the bushers.

Let me just add how classy these guys were. They're like movie stars. They come to tiny stock. They were respectful. They dressed in, you know, they never left anywhere without a sport coat and a tie. That was the organization back then. They came and visited us in the clubhouse. They tipped the clubhouse boys better than they'd ever been tipped.

They were respectful. I just was knocked out by that. You would expect it to be looked down upon, you down upon from these great heights, but never forget how classy they were. Yeah. You use some memories from that season in Stockton in Bull Durham, the scene where the manager throws the bats in the shower was something that happened in Stockton. And I know that Bull Durham isn't the kind of sports movie that ends with a big dramatic game, but this made me imagine a scene in Bull Durham where the parent club comes to town and Crash gets one last chance to face big league competition without quite having the Hollywood ending of making it back to the show. Maybe it's just the big leaguers

stop by Durham for a day. Yep. Well, Durham now is a AAA town. Right. Of course. And I read also that on the Monday when you played the Orioles, 3,314 fans showed up and saw the Ports play and beat the big guys. And then the next day, Tuesday, 183 fans showed up to see the Ports play and lose to the Fresno Giants. So that's baseball. I guess one day thousands of fans are watching you beat a bunch of superstars. And the next day, hardly anyone is watching you lose to a lot of nobody. Yeah, I can't believe it. I mean that it was packed for the orioles and that surely held maybe the pact was 3 300 people yeah but uh because it was standing room only for the o's but maybe that's how big the field was you talk about the conditions in the minors when you played in the book and and

to some extent we see them in the movie and And I wonder what you make of the overdue realization in recent years that those hardscrabble conditions probably aren't conducive to development. And I also wonder what you make about the unionization effort and the collective action that we've seen and how that kind of thing could have changed your career and what it was like to be a minor leaguer decades ago. That's a lot of questions. Let me try to answer them because I have strong feelings on them. First of all, the minor league conditions are very good now. Class A fields have good lighting, beautiful infields, none of the conditions that I talked about. Having said that, I understand the desire to form a union in the minors. I'm a union man, essentially,

but I worry that it'll kill the minors because I'm a union man, essentially, but I worry that it'll kill the minors because Manfred, the commissioner of baseball owners are already cutting back on minor leagues, which is a tragedy in my opinion. And is it going to be unaffordable? The major league owners have to step up and say, this is not just an investment in our future. It's a cultural contribution to the country to support this. And God knows with the television contracts, major league teams aren't hurting if they're writing $300 million 10-year contracts to players. So don't cry any tears for the owners. And I hope, I don't know if unionization is the answer, but, and by the way, you know, it's supposed to be a part time,

it's a job. The job at a miner's only covers you for nine months, and that's fair. Then you need to figure out the next three months, then you go back to spring training. The good thing about the minors and baseball is that it's as close to a meritocracy as we have in this country. If you hit a certain batting average and you can field to a certain level or throw strikes to a certain acceptable norm, you're going to keep moving up. And it's Darwinian in that regard, but generally the guys who rise to the top deserve to

rise to the top, not like every other business. So there's something about that Darwinian element of it that I hope they don't lose. Right. Yeah. I think the idea is, even if everyone isn't driving a fancy car around like Nuke, that if you can focus on baseball, all of your energies, whether you don't have to get an off-season job or at least during the season, you get a square meal and you don't have to share your apartment with six other guys, that kind of thing, then not having those sources of anxiety probably can only help you become a big leaguer, become the best player you can be, because there's plenty of anxiety as it is just about hitting a curveball. So you might as well ease some other aspects of the job, it seems like.

The other side of that argument is the anxiety actually separates you from those who can deal with it and those who can't because right yes you do hear that yeah from the people who who made it they say you know well it was this crucible right that uh it it separated the wheat from the chaff and all of that and and maybe there's some truth to that in some cases there is truth to it because you know and i'm and I'm not a right winger in any way, but I do believe that, you know, I got to AAA from Appalachian League because I was tough minded. And I saw guys who weren't tough minded as I was. Now, I didn't get to the big leagues, but I came close. And that mental aspect is the biggest part of the game.

A handful of guys have ungodly skills. Everybody else is kind of the same. They're the best player in the history of your college, junior college, high school, or town. You're all stars at a certain level. Now, the difference is between your ears. And I think that's true. And I think the minor league kind of sorts that out. The other thing that we don't talk about much is there is luck involved in terms of injuries because some of the best players I ever saw got hurt and you never heard of them again. Right. Yeah. And I introduced you tongue in

cheek as a 39th round draft pick. Of course, there is no 39th round of the draft anymore. I signed as a free agent. Yeah. As you wrote in the book, alas, MLB owners are cutting back on their investment in the minors and over 40 franchises have recently been eliminated. Once again, the organization doesn't understand. And as you said, you know, Bull Durham, the success of the movie was credited in some quarters with restoring interest or bolstering interest in minor league baseball. So maybe we need you to make another movie or someone to make another movie that glorifies the minors to save these teams from the chopping block of Manfred and the other owners. Well, you know that one of the things I like to point out is when this proposed cut of 40 minor league teams, which some of them have been picked up in the independent league, but

when this was proposed, the two men in Congress leading the fight who joined forces to fight Manfred on this were Bernie Sanders and Steve Scalise. Think about that. As far to the left you can get, as far to the right you can get, but what they agreed about was baseball. issue. So you just mentioned the talent that some players have. And when Nuke goes to tell Crash that he's been called up, Crash has his moment of howling at the moon, as he calls it. And he says, I got brains, but you got talent. See this right arm, it's worth a million bucks a year. All my limbs put together aren't worth seven cents a pound. And you played with a lot of guys who went on to be big leaguers and a few who went on to be really good ones, Bobby Gritch and Don Baylor and Al Bumbrey and briefly Doug DeCense, I think. So did some of those guys give you that sense of envy and inferiority that Crash feels? No. I mean, of all those guys, the one who had supernatural talent was Don Baylor, who was

later MVP in the American League. I mean, he was strong, he was big, he was fast. He had only one weakness. He had a weak arm because he hurt it. He had a full ride to University of Texas as a football player, as a receiver, and he hurt his shoulder in high school football. So he couldn't throw that well, but everything else, he was superior and had a great attitude. Great guy, died tragically way too young. But Gritch was a younger, stronger version of me in a way. He was out of high school. I was out of college.

De Finsay is another Southern California guy. You know, big, strong kid. Good skills, but smart. Very kind of smart guy in the best sense. Who are the gifted ones I'm talking about? Well, you know, Cesar Cedeno, you see him in the minors. I think he went to jail for murder. So that's Willie Mays.

I mean, you get those guys, they ran faster than anybody. They hit the ball farther, you know, and they just had something else. But most guys in the Hall of Fame aren't like that. They're guys who applied themselves. that. They're guys who applied themselves. Speaking of one weakness, you mentioned in the book that as you watched Kevin Costner bat from both sides of the plate, as he proved to you and mostly to himself that he could be a convincing ballplayer, it occurred to you that if Crash Davis was a switch hitting catcher, not to mention one with leadership skills and a talent for working with pitchers, he surely would have had a longer run in the show than 21 days.

So why didn't he? What's the canonical answer for Crash Davis' one weakness or maybe more than one as a player? Well, right place at the wrong time, wrong place at the wrong time, all that stuff. And then all of a sudden, you're 31. There was a guy, and I always cautioned that Crash Davis, the character I drew, isn't this guy. But the modeling were guys like Mike Ferraro, who played, I played with him in AAA for a couple of years. At Rochester, he was the All-Star International League third baseman two years in a row. And the two years before that, he was the International League All-Star third baseman for Syracuse, which is the Yankees. He was the International League All-Star third baseman for Syracuse, which is the Yankees. So he's the AAA All-Star third baseman, four years on the ground,

he's not getting a shot in the big leagues. Well, he's back up to Brooks Robinson. And rather than sit on the bench in the majors where he'll get rusty, he's going to be sharp playing in AAA, and if Brooks gets hurt, he's ready to go, right? So by the time he gets a shot in the big leagues he's 32 years old and you know that sort of thing happens all the time and crash could have been one of those you get 21 games and you get five at bats and you go over five and hit the ball hard three times nobody notices so you don't think it was that he couldn't hit a slider or something it was that the big club

had carlton fisk behind the plate the whole time? Well, I want to keep it a mystery and an unknown so that you and I can have this conversation. Right. And speaking of how convincing Costner was, right, he's often cited as one of the better ballplayer actors. And sometimes Tim Robbins gets some grief. You do defend him in the book and his mechanics. But I wonder what you think matters more to a sports movie or show, actors who are athletes or who can convincingly fake it, or writers who are athletes, right?

Because I think I would be more likely to enjoy Bull Durham with a bunch of guys who couldn't convince me that they were ballplayers if it was still written by you, who was a ballplayer and knows that life. And it's clear the authenticity that comes through there, because we talk often on the show about movies or TV shows or commercials or whatever it is, where if you're someone who is very clued into baseball, you watch it and you think, that's not right. Something sets off an alarm in your head and you're thinking, whoever wrote that doesn't know baseball. They're trying to fake their way through this thing. So I think your background is maybe more important than whether the actors could convincingly bring that to life. But what do you think? Well, you have to start with the writer. But then the other shoe to fall is the actors better be convinced. I mean, you can't watch a

dance movie if they can't dance. But I couldn't write a war movie. I've never been in war. The oldest adage is write what you know, of course. So it starts with that. And I think most sports films are written from a fan's point of view. I think I talk about that in the book. And I try to write them from the participant's point of view. Right. thoroughly and so well that we now see instant replay and slow-mo and 14 angles and 20 cameras. You know, you can't fool an audience the way you could before televised sports. You know, nobody knew what it looked like in the 40s or even the 50s. So I think you've got to have athletes and there's very few actors who are good enough athletes. Very few. Kevin's the rarest of creatures. I was going to ask you about that cliche,

write what you know, which is probably what if Crash Davis were an old writer and were schooling some young writer on the way up, he would probably tell them to say that, but it's also true. So you knew minor league baseball and you knew Crash and Nuke equivalents, but what made you think you knew and could write a character like Annie? Well, good question. You know, I talk about this in the book. She's based on a lot of women, and she's based on no particular woman. And she's a work of the imagination.

She takes a little of that woman, a little of that woman. You know, I was in my 20s in the mid to late 60s and 70s. And it's hard to describe the 60s and 70s to people today. Assassinations, the war in Vietnam, the draft, acid rock, sex, drugs, rock and roll, the civil rights movement was on fire. Cities were on fire, quite literally on fire. The river in Cleveland was on fire and they couldn't put it out. I mean, the whole country was on fire. Chicago was on fire during a political convention. And during all that time, I'm making my living as a baseball player. And the women of that time, you know, everybody was looking for terra firma. And women seemed to find it.

And some men in Eastern philosophy and others in Eastern philosophy, and others found it in drugs, and others found it in whatever, sex, political commitment, the whole range, the whole range. And now it's 20 years later. What are those people doing? And many women had opted to not have conventional marriages and families, or they'd tried and they hadn't worked. That's the more common one.

And Andy's one of those women 20 years later. And she's living alone and she's teaching in junior college. And she's obviously very bright. And people say she's a little wacky. Not to me. I think she's just, you know, she's got her own evolving worldview. And she's on a journey and a search. And that's who she is. And she's fun and she's funny and she's on a journey and a search and that's who she is and she's fun

and she's funny and she's sexy and she's open-minded and non-judgmental for all her eccentricities so that's who she is where she comes from i'm not sure but we'll follow that yeah it's funny you mentioned that that late 60s atmosphere the the lead of the story in the stockton evening and sunday record about the ports of the story in the Stockton Evening and Sunday record about the Ports beating the Orioles goes, the younger generation is causing upheavals everywhere, even in baseball.

And the Stockton Ports had a quote-unquote riot last night in surprising the parent Baltimore Orioles. So I don't know. It's a questionable lead in comparison there to other riots. No, but I'm smiling. I'm smiling at that because, wow, young people are rioting.

Yes. Odd way to put the state of the world in 1969. I mean, was it a young person who assassinated King? You know, that happened during spring training. Was it a young people who initiated the draft and got us into Vietnam? Was it young, you know, young people were, yeah. Interesting lead though. I can't wait for the link for you to send me.

How rare is it for the stars of a movie to be as invested in playing their parts and getting a movie made as Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon were for Bull Durham? Because as you tell it in the book, the movie doesn't get made without Costner being its biggest booster and Susan Sarandon doesn't play Annie without going to great lengths to overcome the studio's reluctance to cast her. So they were real partners for you. They were, and Kevin was the – I mean, she was the late partner, but Kevin was in early and with great strength and commitment and passion. And as I say in the book, I mean, we wouldn't have got to the finish line or to the starting line without him. So, you know, and Kevin and I are still good as you talk about in the book. And when I talk to authors, I try to ask them about things that they don't describe in great detail in the book, but to whet the appetites of

people who haven't had the chance to read it yet, could you just give a brief recap of the many ways that the movie almost didn't get made or almost didn't get made with you behind the camera for the duration, at least? Yeah, I'll try to be brief because there's a few pages that's sort of like a thriller in the book. Yes. And when Kevin got this, I got the script to Kevin Costner because I happened to know his agent

and I didn't know many agents, but I knew the agent because of my first movie, Under Fire, that I'd written. And he responded immediately. And it's hard to get an actor to read a script without it being financed because otherwise they'd get

a thousand scripts a week. And he read it and responded and we hit it off. But his agents said, his senior agent said, you have 30 days. His senior agent didn't want him to do it. His junior agent did. His senior agent wanted him to do a different movie at a different studio. And so we had 30 days to get it off the ground or he would have to go do the other movie, which was called Everybody's All AmericanAmerican which later Dennis Quaid made.

The director of that happened to be a guy I went to high school with of all freaky things. We were two high school guys competing for the same actor. Long story short, in those 30 days, I went to the studios. They read the script. They liked the script. They were nervous. Minor league baseball, nobody knew anything about it. I was a first-time director. That made them nervous. Baseball had a iffy track record. There was no foreign sales interest in baseball then and now, I will tell

you. And after being turned down, I said, Kevin, I can't sell this thing. And he said, I can't believe it. Let's set the meetings again and I'll go with you. So we went out again and they wouldn't say no to a meeting because Kevin was going to come along. And they said no again. And now it's day 29 of the 30 and it was a Thursday. And we went out to two studios, TriStar and something else. I can't remember. And he came back to my temporary office office. My temporary office was like Rob Schneider in the old Saturday Night Live. I had a chair next to the copy machine. That was the stature I had in the producer's office, Tom Mount. He said, well, what about Orion Pictures? I knew Orion Pictures because Under Fire, my political movie had been made there.

He had a movie at Orion Pictures that had been sitting on the show for six months because Orion didn't know what to do with it. And it was opening the next day. I think this was, I can't remember, August or something, mid-August. August is where they used to put movies that they didn't expect to do business because summer was ending, people were heading back to school, nobody was going to movies. So it was called No Way Out. And it was a nobody was going to movies. So it was called No Way Out. And it was a political thriller set in DC. And it's famous for the scene in the limousine with Sean Young is what people remember out the movie. And anyway, Kevin, so we sent the script,

we called Orion in New York, we're in LA. It was like seven o'clock, we got the two guys and the executives in their office. And we had sent over, no email in those days, from the William Morris Agency in New York. They rushed over two copies of the script. And I said to these guys who I knew from another movie, you've got to read it. We have 24 hours or we're going to lose Kevin. The next day at noon, Dry Star called to say they pass. They're not going to make it because there's no foreign sales. And shortly after, I get a call from New York and they say, we love this script.

Do we really have to make a deal today because these things take months? I said, yeah, because Kevin's senior agents don't want him to do it. They're going to put him in another movie. And we had a deal by the end of the day and five weeks later, we were shooting. So that would not happen. It takes five weeks to get somebody shooting so that would not happen it takes five weeks to get somebody on the phone these days right yeah that was uh in some ways just the beginning of the difficulties and the conflict with the studio which uh dogged the whole project

but i i wondered just because you know people say they lament the fact that there aren't so many baseball movies anymore although everybody wants some which I don't know if you've seen. But several years ago, I really liked that one and and A League of Their Own, because some of these things were in production at the same time. You talk in the book about Charlie Sheen being a candidate for Nuke, but he was already attached to Eight Men Out, right? So there's a scenario where Charlie Sheen is Nuke and not Wild Thing, perhaps. But what was going on at the time that there was this incredible compressed run of classic baseball and sports movies? What was going on is that the movie business hadn't been taken over by multinational that there was this incredible compressed run of classic baseball and sports movies. What was going on is that the movie business hadn't been taken over by multinational corporations, which is what has destroyed the movie business. Any movies you want to go see

lately? Seriously. I mean, how many movies did you say, I want to go to the movie this week? No. It's all mega budget superhero whatever. Because those pencil out better. They raise the stock prices. Nobody wants to make an $8 million movie that does $56 million. That's bullderm. Because even if it makes $10 million pure profit or $20, that doesn't mean anything when you're in the multi-billion dollar business. That's a shorthand is what's happened to the movie business. So in those days, in those days of the 70s and 80s, and into the 90s, started to change. Studios were run by men who loved movies, and many times women who loved

movies. And they were riverboat gamblers. And if they liked material, they like an actor, they like a director, they'd take a chance. You have to keep the budget down, but that was the given. And now it's all analytics and sabermetrics and algorithms, all of those are, computers now decide what movies get made. And so movies that are eccentric or have a point of view that we haven't seen before, they have a really, really tough time,

which is why I haven't made a movie in 20 years. But I think that's about to change. Oh, well, I'm happy to hear that. But that brings to mind just the kind of confounding reactions to the test screenings to Bull Durham, which you write about in the book and which is really fascinating. And as great as Bull Durham is and as widely as it's acknowledged as a classic, there was a lot of uncertainty as you were writing it, as you were making it. You acknowledge self-deprecatingly in the book that it has an unusual structure, that it takes a long time to get started, that it doesn't end the way that you expect either. It doesn't really quite have a traditional third act. Nuke just disappears. He gets called up to the show, but not because of

the actions of the characters. It's just an impediment that's removed and allows the other leads to come together. So there are all these reasons why it shouldn't work, perhaps. And then it seemed initially like maybe it wasn't working, that people were not responding to it, which is just wild because, of course, then it came out and it did quite well. And in the years since, it's only been more widely beloved. So that's an example. I guess, you know, sabermetrics are pretty good and pretty predictive at predicting what will happen on a baseball field. But even now with movies, not so much.

I mean, it's the old William Goldman adventures in the screen trade idea of no one really knowing anything, but it certainly seemed to be the case for Bull Durham at the time. Yeah. Right now, the movie business wants to take risk out. And when risk is taken out, adventure is taken out. New breakthroughs are taken out. I mean, why does the tech world keep coming up with stuff? Because it's backed by venture capitalists who are in the risk reward business. And that's a good thing. And I don't quite think it's a very good model. I don't even think for all those pure capitalists, it's good capitalism. I mean, you've got to invest in yourself. We used to argue about cast and budget. And then once the studio and the filmmakers had come to an agreement the film the studio let you make the movie they didn't get in your

way they didn't micromanage they trusted the filmmakers then the filmmaker trusted the studio to market it because it was in the studio's best interest of marketing it to their own benefit and now the studio they might they want to micromanage every decision. They want you to justify every piece of casting, even if it's one line, you have to send in tapes. It's a different business. It's not a particularly fun business anymore, but I think it's a bad fit for corporations. Private money, I'm going to do a rambler. Private money is always trying to get in the entertainment business and tell the entertainment business that there's a better way to do what we do. Including minor league baseball

for that matter. Exactly. In other words, this isn't run like a real business. All these Harvard MBAs are completely screwing up the entertainment business, I promise you. Because they teach that all businesses function on the same sort of set of algorithms. That's simply not true. That is not true. And you could name a hundred movies that broke every model and template and became new models and templates from Star Wars to that little one was shot on cameras. I didn't even see it. It was a horror movie that did about $300 million, it cost about five cents to, I mean, Bull Durham's not even risky in that reward because I had a movie star, but one movie after another that broke the rules. But how about Borat, you know? I mean, so, but those don't fit into a corporate system. And then the corporation wants to copy it and make

duplicates of it. That's the way it works. So why don't they take the risks as well? They don't. They want other people to take the risks. Yeah. And one way that the studios try to minimize risk is just by rebooting everything or making everything a sequel or a prequel or a remake. And you've sort of had that happen to you. I guess you stick around long enough and the things you made earlier in your career, they come back around and people try to redo them, on long enough and the things you made earlier in your career, they come back around and people try to redo them, in some cases, without your knowledge or approval or participation, right? So that's the case with White Men Can't Jump, which supposedly is coming out a new version this year. And I wrote several years ago when that was announced, I came up with in an article,

a metric I called the remake necessity score, which graded movies on various criteria. How necessary is it to remake this? And White Man Can't Jump did not come up as necessary to remake because it was all about, is this dated in some way? Does it really need a new version? And I don't think that's the case for White Man Can't Jump, not having seen the new one, of course. And I'm sure you get asked all the time about a TV version of Bull Durham. And as you note in the book, there have been some efforts to make one and develop one without you again. But I do wonder, were you writing Bull Durham today yourself, whether it would still be a feature film or whether you would envision it as a series or a limited series or whether you think it would have worked on tv

better or as well as it did on the big screen it could be a limited series now because you know it can be r-rated or whatever you don't have to deal with that issue and you could play it out longer and get to know spend more time with other players and uh that sort of thing it probably would be a limited series pitch unless unless you got the right actor at the right time, the Kevin Costner. I mean, there is no theater business right now. Unfortunately, sadly, the theater business is strictly for mega-budgeted movies. And that's sad to me.

Yes. And for anyone listening, Ron does lay out in the book what a Bull Durham sequel would have looked like, what the rough idea for that was, and why you're not sorry that that didn't happen. Although you would need a new idea now if you were to make a Bull Durham sequel this many decades on. You'd need a new framework for that story, but maybe it's for the best that we leave things in the past. But I do wonder just a couple more for you, because we've seen the Field of Dreams game, which has been successful for MLB in the past couple of seasons. I wonder whether you would be interested in a Bull Durham game. You know, Kevin Costner participated in the Field of Dreams game and played at the old Durham Park or the new Durham Park, or maybe a game played in Rickwood Field where you shot some scenes for Cobb.

I wonder whether either of those settings or themes would be a good suggestion in your mind for a follow-up to the Field of Dreams game. It's actually been discussed. of dreams game it's actually been discussed there are there are a number of people involved in durham and in the producer also bullderm who's from durham have been trying to push that very thing of a bold a bullderm thing they called me about i said yeah i'd support it but play it at the old ballpark i mean you may have to raise the fences because it's kind of short porch to right but put bleachers all around it it's right it's exactly like when we shot it and uh right surrounded by old tobacco warehouses i mean you really would get the feel of the minor leagues i think of the kind of fun as long as they don't ask me to wander around center field wondering what i'm doing well kevin told me

i didn't know what i was doing they just told me to walk out i walked out and everybody said at how thoughtful he is. I was just wondering what I was supposed to do, where I was supposed to go. that you thought, because sometimes you do hear the more cerebral players. They outthink, they overthink. Billy Bean was one of those who said that about himself. But I wonder whether that is still as true today, because often teams do want players to think, right? Because there are so many tools at their disposal. There's so much data, so much technology. And often they want players to remake their swings or pick up a new pitch or grip a pitch differently. And players who are interested in numbers and technology, now it can be a fast track to a front office job, but it can also help a player remake their careers at times. So I wonder whether you think not thinking is still an asset. I'm sure there are ways in which it is because you don't want to be thinking about all those things when you're

trying to hit a 95 mile per hour fastball. It's a great point. I hadn't thought about that. Every ball player I ever knew related to don't think you can only hurt the ball club because all of us heard it. That wasn't a unique line to me. Every, every ball player had heard it, but I hadn't put it into the context of the age of analytics. They don't say it anymore. You're right. My son's a freshman in college and he's a catcher about to start their first season. And he's totally into analytics and all that stuff. I mean, and I'm old school, see it, hit it, catch it, throw it, you know, I wish that I had access back in the day to the kind of analytics now. I think I would have been a better ball player. Yeah, right.

I mean, I think you can also overdo the analytics. So I'm not driven by algorithms, but I think they're part of the tools an athlete has and a manager has as long as they don't dictate your instinct. Right. has as long as they don't dictate your instinct. Right. My last question maybe is one with the potential to be embarrassing for me, but I will ask it anyway. Several years ago, Sam Miller and I got a message from someone who said they were working with you on a movie and told us that he'd given you a copy of our book, The Only Rule Is It Has To Work, and that you'd liked it and ordered more copies and that you said you thought it could be adapted into a nice indie film and we never heard anything else about it. Is there any truth to any of that or was that person punky? I remember enjoying the book. So I have read the book. But I've read 200 books since. I don't

remember if I thought of it as a movie or not. So I'm telling you, A, I remember enjoying the book, but B, I don't remember if I thought of it in movie terms. You want to send it to me again? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Well, I'll take that. Just the fact that you did actually read it is nice. And I think I can probably speak for Sam in saying that if you are ever interested in the rights, we could work something out. And I guess that leads me to the last thing. I was wondering, you alluded to maybe another movie being in the works. I know you've had some other baseball projects on the back burner, right? You've had for years a story about what an ex-Yankees pitcher who goes down to Latin America to rehabilitate his career. And then I know you were working on a Ted Williams story of some sort. So is what you're working on now baseball related, or do you still have hopes for another baseball related project at some point? The Latin baseball is called Our Lady of the Ballpark, and it is currently looking for a

piece of casting that might get it financed. The Ted Williams script, we finished, I wrote it with John Norville, who I wrote 10 Cup with and a couple other things, and he's a very, very close friend. And on those occasions, I choose to co-write. He's my only co-writing partner. I generally write alone, but once in a while. And we have a draft of that, and we are going to an actor soon. Ted Williams in his 60s. It's based on Richard Ben Kramer's famous article, later published as a book, a small book,

What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?, which is considered one of the great pieces of sports writing. And we were foolish enough to option a book we probably didn't have to option because nobody else thought it was a movie. But I'm fond of this. It's about a great writer going down to the Keys to try to interview a guy who doesn't want any part of it, Ted Williams. And it sort of defies all the rules for how movies and why movies get made these days. It's about two white guys, one's 35, one's 66, and there's a lot of talking in it and fishing. My kind of movie. Well, we like your kind of movie. We love Bull Durham and also really loved the book, The Church of Baseball, the making of Bull Durham, home runs, bad calls, crazy fights, big swings, and a hit.

This sticks to the sports movie trope of having extremely long subtitles. That's something you see in sports books all the time. And it really, it whet my appetite for more. If you are interested in writing more about baseball, because the baseball sections of the book, just the memoir parts about your own career made me want more. I guess we got more in Bull Durham, but I'd love a full book about baseball from you. That would be wonderful someday. All right. Ron actually got disconnected at the very end of our discussion, so I do not have him on tape saying goodbye, but he told me via email

that he enjoyed the discussion. So pretend you heard him say that. I too enjoyed the discussion as I enjoyed the next discussion you're about to hear. We're moving from the bull to the ox. In a moment, I will be back with Meg and also with Chris Oxspring, the extremely well-traveled 45-year-old Australian pitcher for the Sydney Blue Sox and the San Diego Padres and many, many, many other teams. Hope Springs Eternal and the Ox Springs Eternal, too. So stay with us. It's all I can let go Too long I feel safe at the side of my home

You're not the only one I know So long Well, we're joined now by a man you may remember from the Gold Coast Cougars, the Cook County Cheetahs, the Lake Elsinore Storm, the Fort Wayne Wizards, the Mobile Bay Bears, the New South Wales Patriots, the Portland Beavers, the San Diego Padres, the Hunchin Tigers, the Nashville Sounds, the LG Twins, the Toledo Mudhens, the Somerset Patriots, the Lode Giants, the KT Wiz, various Australian national squads, and, of course, the Sydney Blue Sox, with whom he has had several stints, including his current one.

Chris Oxspring, welcome to the show, and am I missing any stops? G'day, guys. No, you haven't. That's quite a list there, isn't it? It is, and that's why we wanted to talk to you. I don't know that we'll talk about every one of those stops, but the fact that you the first Australian ever to make the major leagues, Joe Quinn. But you and Joe Quinn were not acquainted. He predated you by just a bit. And he was born in 1862. And he didn't grow up playing baseball in Australia. He emigrated to the US, Iowa, I think when he was 10. And that's when he started playing. So by the time you came around in 1977, there had not been an Australian in the big leagues since Joe Quinn. And I guess there wasn't until Craig Shipley in 1986, and then there wasn't an Australian pitcher until Graham Lloyd

in 1993. So when you're growing up and just starting to play baseball, how remote a possibility was actually making the major leagues? Or how unlikely did it seem that you could or that any Australian could at that point? Very unlikely. Obviously, coming from so far away, it's not the most prominent sport in the country. So everybody looks at you like you've got two heads when you start playing baseball. And the old common analogy of, oh, you must play softball or something like that to wear those funny uniforms and everything. So, yeah, playing in the big leagues was a remote possibility, but it was always something that I aspired to do and dreamed of from the time that I could remember up until current. Yeah. So why did you get your second head? How did you get into baseball to begin with?

Ironically enough, through softball. Extended family played fast pitch softball in Ipswich. So I had an older brother who's nine years older than me who played with cousins and family. Just tagging along through that, got told that there was a similar sport, baseball, in the same area. That was a summer sport. Softball was played in played in the winter generally up there so it was just a transition from one to the other and from the day that I started being involved in it you know at about three four years old up until 45 it's been a passion of mine I'm ingrained in it fully and yeah I can't tear myself away from it. I don't want to jump too far ahead to the present day, but just for a moment, I want to ask a broader question, which is you have gotten to survey sort changed both in terms of how the leagues are structured and perceived and then how baseball sort of fits in in the broader sports landscape

in Australia I guess the biggest influence of late is definitely the little league world series the focus towards that and the emphasis or not emphasis I guess, but just how well it's perceived and how well it's advertised and the product that is sold to the younger generation and parents of my era that get to see it now and go, wow, my kid could play that. You know, it's not a long-lasting sport in regards to a timeframe on a Saturday morning or such. So that's been the biggest thing.

And it's brought a lot of people to the game that may probably have missed it otherwise. And how prominent is baseball now just sort of to the average Australian, if you could compare it to this popularity of a sport in the US? I mean, is it like cricket in the US where there are people who play, but it's not really part of the larger culture? Or is it more popular than that? Pretty much, probably very similar to cricket. It's probably, I don't know the exact numbers, and please don't quote me on this, but it's probably not in the top 10 or the top 15 sports in the country, unfortunately. But those that are involved in it are definitely extremely

passionate about it. And it's very much an extended family once you become involved in it. Yeah. And one of the teams I listed there, one of the first ones, the Cook County Cheetahs, they're in the Frontier League, Indie Ball in the US, and that was the gateway for you and for other Aussies who were on that team with you. So can you explain how that came about, how you got on the American baseball radar? Yeah, well, long story and I'll keep it as short as I can. Basically, a group of friends that I was playing just city baseball here in Australia with in Brisbane at the time were going to play semi-pro, I guess you would call it, the time were going to play semi-pro, I guess you would call it, league in Southside of Chicago that they'd done before. And I got invited to come along and I was going to go and just do that.

And at the time, the manager of the Australian national team was a man by the name of Mike Young, who's a former USA resident and then immigrated to Australia and took over the Australian baseball team at that stage. And he was friends with the ownership group in Cook County. And that's when they found out that there was an Aussie arm that they could possibly use. So, I went there and did that. And yeah, the rest, as they say, is history. And the beginning of that history, at least from a major league baseball perspective for you, starts starts with the San Diego Padres. So what was your process of getting to know and then signing with San Diego? the day that they turned up to scout the team we had the worst possible storm you could imagine it blew over the outfield fence it blew over um the beer garden tents it blew everything out of the sky that you could possibly imagine oh wow a fantastic day right so they were there to scout a couple of guys from the other team and a couple of guys from our team and the story goes this is

the story that the scout told me, Bill Brick. He was like, you know, we came to see some guys and asked about if there was anybody that we should see. And the owner was like, well, there's this crazy Aussie dude that throws hard but has absolutely no idea where it's going. Maybe you should take a look at him. So a couple of weeks after the season finished, the tryout camp in Schaumburg, Illinois. And from there, I got offered a contract that afternoon from the Padres, signed. And yeah, the next day,

I jumped on the airplane, came home and had to tell my then girlfriend, now wife that, yeah, I just signed a contract to play baseball for the rest of my life. And what did she think? Did she move with you? Was she at all like, oh, so I guess we're going to spend a lot of time in the U.S. now, okay? She'd been there from the start. So prior to me leaving the U.S.A., we'd been together five years at that stage. Prior to me going initially to go and play in Cook County, she understood my passion and my dreams and everything like that

and supported them wholly. So there was a surprise, obviously, that you get to sign, but there was no surprise that I was going and everything like that. And she's been by my side ever since and supported me and been my biggest fan and my biggest rock that I could always come back and count on. What did you have to learn that players maybe the same age as you who came up in the US or played baseball in a more organized way their whole lives in a more

baseball mad country would have known by that point? You said you didn't know where the ball was going. I mean, were there things that you had to learn that you were kind of behind the curve because of how you came up yeah the biggest one is just being confident in yourself i guess you know just not knowing your ability because you've never played at that such high level for an extended period of time you always face you know a couple of good hitters out of a lineup or such but when you're facing like a minor league team that's good one through nine, it's a way different feeling knowing that you've got to compete every single pitch, every single inning, and there's no per se easy outs.

So that was the biggest learning curve and just being able to throw the ball basically where you wanted to and knowing the process of how to do that. This is sort of a related question, I guess. But I think that when we think about players from abroad adjusting to life in another country and playing baseball in another country, we often associate that with the language barrier. And we'll ask you about your experience in Japan and Korea. But I'm curious what the sort of process of acculturation beyond baseball was like for you here. Was it a smooth transition or did you find yourself sort of noticing what I imagine are a great number of cultural differences between the US and Australia?

Yep. The hardest one for me when I first went to America, and you guys are going to laugh at this, is I had to learn how to say water correctly. Not correctly, just differently yeah um so first day you know first day practice is finished in in spring training you know we go to the restaurant for dinner afterwards and you know i just looked at the waitress and i was like can i get a glass of water thanks and i seriously she looked at me like I had two heads she didn't understand and it wasn't her fault it was mine as you can see I kind of talk a little bit quickly and have a bad accent so yeah that was that was my initiation into learning how to pronounce everything

more specifically and also talk a little bit slower and more precise well I don't think it's a bad accent I think it's a great accent but as you were growing up and some other Aussies did start to break into the big leagues when you had Dave Nielsen and Lloyd and all those other guys, how big a deal was that for you? And this is the early 90s and you have a huge time difference. So how easy was it even to follow what players like that were doing a bit difficult no doubt about it there was no easy way to access like to watch it or read about it or hear about it it was generally we ended up like getting a game of the week broadcast here in australia back then normally we would tape it on vhs this is showing my age here by the way and um yeah you

would sit down and you would watch it over and over again until the next week's game would come on. And then you would record that one and do the same thing over and over again. So to have access to it like we do now, there was no chance. But you still aspired to follow in those guys' footsteps and do the same things that they did and have that kind of career. And yeah, it was just everything I could do to read, listen, see, or anything in regards to baseball, I did. So even when you're with the Padres organization and you're playing with other major league

organizations later, you're still coming back over the American winter to play in Australia. I guess you've played almost everywhere except for maybe the Caribbean and, you know, Dominican Winter League and Puerto Rico and Venezuela and that kind of place, because I guess you could always just go back to Australia if you needed somewhere to play over the winter. But was there ever any consideration of maybe I just need time off? Did you always go back to play there? Did you worry about burning yourself out? Or did you think, I need the reps and I need the innings? And what did those organizations think about you going back to play for those teams? Or did you take a break at all while you were trying to make the majors? off because of I'd never thrown that many innings in a year before body was just I'm not used to playing for such a long stretch without a break and then then injury occurred in 2002 so I had that winter off recovering from that which led me to to feeling a whole bunch better when I went back

later on in my career so and then when I got picked up on the 40-minute roster with the Padres I actually used the off-season here in Australia to prepare for spring training so I actually went back there you know feeling good strong and healthy and just everything working better than in years past and that was something that I found that worked better for me rather than just turning up to spring training dry and trying to get into shape there. You had this back and forth between the off season and the regular season, but you also had breaks in your major league affiliated ball experience for international playing, including the Summer Olympics in Greece. And can you walk us through that process?

Because your team had sort of this, I don't want to say Cinderella run, that is going too far, but you guys definitely punched above your expected weight in that one, and you had quite a thrilling turn in it, as I recall. Yes. That was a – Cinderella probably is almost the right word, probably overstating the fact, but we started out 0-2 in the first two games and was ironic enough that you know we were coming back from game two and Dave Nielsen and Graham

Lloyd just stood up in the bus and you know just talked about the whole you know it's not over till it's over we've still got an opportunity to to do great things turn the tournament around and you know go further through it. And, you know, it was kind of, it was almost like the spark that we needed as a group. We're all kind of a little bit, a little bit young, a little bit inexperienced, except for, you know, Graham and Dave. So we, yeah, that was what turned us around. We go out the next day, I can't remember which team we were actually playing in day three. We win game we beat japan we beat the netherlands and then make it through to the second round to the playoff round sorry and yeah get to play against japan and dice came out to

zaka and that amazing team that they ran out there and yeah the rest is is documented in history we win that game one to nothing and then play cub in the gold medal game, which unfortunately didn't go to script, but a fantastic game in itself. of 2005 how did you hear that you were going to get to the big leagues and then i guess the actual game you got into september 2nd you didn't start and you were the the first guy out of the bullpen after the starter brian lawrence got knocked out after an inning in two thirds so did you know that you were going to pitch then or was that a big surprise so i guess just the whole how did you get the news and and break into the whole, how did you get the news and break into the big leagues officially? I got the news, I was in Arizona,

playing in Tucson, Arizona. It was our second to last or last series that we were playing in with AAA. Yeah, we were there. My manager calls me in the office and I think I'd had a pretty ordinary start the time before that. And I wasn't in a very good headspace.

I was kind of kicking myself a little bit and yeah, he just calls me in. I'm thinking he's going to talk about that and yeah, he ends up with the whole, oh yeah, by the way, you need to pack your bags. You're heading to San Diego tomorrow and I kind of just stood up and went, okay, cool, no worries and just walked out

and I got back to my locker and I was like sitting there and you know how sometimes you hear things but you don't you don't hear them and i walked straight back into the office i'm like what'd you say he's like pack your bags you're going to san diego you leave tomorrow morning i was like just to sightsee or yeah yeah yeah what i'm going on vacation early like seriously and um yeah so you know you do the regularly you start making phone calls to your parents to your wife to your family to your friends and um yeah left that next day for san diego and the first was actually you know my scheduled start day i would have started again that was my five-day rotation and they were like hey you're up today if we get into a situation where we're going to

use you you're you're in there and i was like okay cool no problems didn't get in there um and then the next day you know brian didn't have the greatest start and yeah i got to go out there and in the second inning and and have this start that you don't want to have to your career when you give up a grand slam in your first couple of hitters. That was not the way I envisioned it going, but it is what it is. Right. But, you know, I threw five and a third and saved the bullpen. Unfortunately, we lost that game. And, yeah, I was pretty down on myself afterwards.

And yeah, I was pretty down on myself afterwards because you expect great things when you get to the big leagues and the perfect start to a career and that kind of thing. And it wasn't that. And I was extremely lucky to have a very nice gentleman in the bullpen by the name of Trevor Hoffman that pulled me aside the next day and gave me the rundown on how you know everything happens in the big leagues as a young guy and the responsibilities that you have and although it didn't go the way that I wanted it to what I'd done is I'd given the bullpen a day off and he'd showed me like back then we had like pitching cards that would show who's thrown how many innings on which day and how many days off they'd had and yesterday's game card there was nobody that had had the day off in like two or three days prior to me going out there and doing that so he taught a very young inexperienced baseballer even though

i was 28 at the time the significance of sometimes doing something that you don't want to do to save everybody else and that was something that i really needed to hear and was very much appreciative of. Yeah. Sometimes you talk to guys about their big league debut and they don't remember a thing. They say it's just all a big blur or a blank, or some of them say they remember every second. So I don't know which you are, but yes, as you said, you come in with some guys on base already, and then Carlos Lee walks and Jeff Jenkins takes you deep for a grand slam. But after that, you settled in, and you pitched fairly well for the rest of that game, and then you got into four more games down the stretch, and you did not allow an earned run in any of them. And if I read right,

I think maybe you had shoulder issues at the end of that year that maybe prevented you from getting into even more games. But it went fairly well after the initial rude awakening. And then you must have been feeling pretty good about yourself by the end of that season. But then you had a difficult choice to make over that winter, right? Because the Padres and you got an offer from Hanschen and you had to decide, do I want to stay with this or do I want to go to yet another continent? Yeah, well, to talk about remembering or not remembering, one thing I distinctly remember about my debut is running from the bullpen out in right center field in Milwaukee. And I get to the mound and Bochy's there and he looks at me and he's like, have you taken a breath since you ran out of that bullpen door? And I was like, I really don't remember, Bochy. He's like, well, how about you just stand here, take a deep breath in and out and have

a look around and then go get them. So that was one thing I distinctly remember from my career. But yeah, after that, like as you said, the next couple of outings were pretty good and then you face the difficult decision of what to do when you have multiple offers on the table and I have to praise the Padres in the way they went about it they were extremely honest in regards to their stance and what I was facing personally I was facing the same choice that that I was the previous year. Most likely, I would go back to AAA and start there again as a starting pitcher due to the signings that they had previously done in the off-season and what they were looking

at doing moving forward and be that guy that would bounce up and down between AAA and the big leagues, which is not a terrible thing, don't get me wrong. Or I could go to japan on a guaranteed contract guaranteed playing time and see what transpired out of that so yeah long story short we opted to go to japan it was a fantastic experience i've got nothing but praise for did i pitch as well as i would like again no but you know you're trying to learn a whole new background new culture new country new players and everything like that so it was a fantastic time and yeah it really set me up for the things that came along after that and some of those things involved coming back stateside and getting back into affiliated ball I think you started with

the the brewers upon your return is that right that's correct yes and then I think you started with the Brewers upon your return. Is that right? That's correct. Yes. And then I think that I read in your Sabre bio that you have a knuckleball. Yes, that's correct. Yep, certainly do. Yeah. Tell us about your knuckleball. We want to hear more about your other stops along the way, but we have a minor knuckleball obsession on this podcast. Fantastic. So I learned to throw four pitches throughout my career. Obviously fastball and curveball was my big one that got me into pro ball. And in pro ball, I learned to throw a cut fastball, which helped speed my path through the minor leagues and got me to the big leagues.

But I always tried to throw a change up. And to be frank, that would be a loose term to use as change up it was a fourth pitch that was very terrible and i couldn't figure it out there was no way to um i just couldn't get the feel for it and be able to repeat the pitch so when i was playing in japan um i played catch with the same guy every day a player from the dominican republic uh darwin k Kubian his name is and we would try and work out how to play like throw a change up and I just couldn't do it so I just fooled around one day and just went oh man I'm gonna throw a knuckleball and just see what it does and the first one I threw wasn't like great by any means but it was like oh hang on I actually have some comprehension with that so over the course of the year in Japan, I fooled around with

it. And then they asked me to throw it one day in a bullpen session. And that's when I knew that I could actually throw it. Yeah. When I saw that you were still pitching this season, I read in David Laurel's notes column at FanCrafts that you were going to be back with the Blue Sox at 45. And I thought, well, he's got to be a lefty, right? He's got to be a crafty lefty. And then I looked you up and nope, crafty righty. And then I thought, okay, well, maybe he's a knuckleballer because you see someone who's pitching into their mid forties and they're not a lefty. It's got to be a knuckleballer, but you're not really a knuckleballer. I mean, it's a, it's a supplementary pitch for you, right? It's a sort of a surprise

pitch or how often do you throw it? Well, it became prominent in Korea. So that's where it kind of became more prominent. And the more I threw it in Korea, the more success I got with it. But if I was to start and throw a hundred pitches, I'd probably throw the knuckleball maybe 10 to 15 times at the most. So yeah, it's truly is like, say a fourth pitch per se. But I had extreme amount of success with it. And that was the byproduct of just having three other good pitches that I would use predominantly and then use that one as, like you say, a surprise pitch. But it was really an out pitch that I had faith in. And I could dig to that well quite often and yeah,

it just worked out well for me over there. And you were teammates with R.A. Dickey in Nashville in 2007 before he was Cy Young award winning R.A. Dickey. But I guess that was just coincidence, right? It wasn't like you worked on the knuckleball together. So it was just sort of self-taught,

which is interesting because I think, sadly, 2022, there was not a single real knuckleball thrown in the major leagues. There may have been some position players who threw some, but a real knuckleball pitcher, I don't want to say they're extinct. I certainly hope they aren't extinct. And I've written before about how I think there are reasons why it could come back or why it should come back, but you really just don't see a lot of it today. And if you were able to pick it up basically by yourself, then you always kind of wonder what could someone do if they were really taught. But I guess it's also hard to find someone who can teach you because not that many people throw it. And then you also have to have someone who can catch it, which is also tough.

The secondary part of that comment might be harder than the first part. Having somebody that can catch it on a regular basis is definitely the hard part about it. A lot of people, when you throw it to them, really don't like catching it on the other end, I can assure you. So do you think it could make a comeback at some point or do you think it's really on the way out permanently? Like it could make a comeback at some point or do you think it's really on the way out permanently? From an analytical standpoint, how do you break it down and justify that something that floats in at, you know, 60 to 65 miles an hour works? You know, like there's no way to quantify where the ball is going to go. There's no way to say, you know, it's going to have this much movement one way or the other. Because if you put the movement left, right, up and down together, I mean, it's an extreme amount of variance

that data guys like to use. So, I mean, I don't know. It's a tough question. I certainly hope it doesn't ever go away because it's fantastic to see somebody who can actually throw one, throw it and succeed. But in the age that we're in now, everybody's focused on velocity and

horizontal vertical movement and all this kind of stuff so yeah I'm not certain well you're not allowed to retire until there's a successor you're gonna you gotta stick around until someone else comes along come come back to to this side of the ocean. Pass it on. I'll be happy to come back there in case somebody's not worried at all. So playing overseas, I mean, over all the seas, you played here in the U.S. and you went through kind of a culture shock there, but not as much of a language barrier, despite your difficulty getting water at a restaurant, a little easier than going to Japan or Korea, probably. So what was, first of all, the baseball environment like there? Because we see and hear so much about just the chanting that goes on in the stands and kind of the coordinating rooting that you don't see so much here. It's really exciting. So that, but it's also

just a different brand of baseball and different culturally. And then of course you have so much to manage and learn off the field, getting acclimated to that. So how did you handle those challenges in both places? Well, Japan was my learning experience, to be honest with you, like the whole expectation of, of what you bring to the table as a, a player you know and as a teammate was um very different I won't say difficult but it was very different the expectations from the coaching staff and then the expectations from no expectations I guess but just blending in with teammates who don't speak the same language and don't have the same background and upbringing and and that kind

of thing was definitely a shock and took time to adjust to you know you try and talk to your pitching coach and everything like that to learn as quickly as you can and yeah it was very different the the expectations that the the pitching coach and the manager have sometimes don't correlate to one another and are different and to then try and take both of those on board and be successful, I struggled with at first. And once I got to learn what was going on, then I became much more comfortable. But at that stage, it was August, September in the season, and it was just too late to salvage what I would consider to be called a successful season.

I'm curious, as someone who underwent Tommy John in your early 30s and had had this career that had winded in terms of where you had played, if that experience at any point, did you say, well, this is going to be it for me. I'm going to be done after this. Or did you know when you had Tommy John that you'd be coming back? Well, when I had the surgery dr yokum who performed the surgery for me looked at my elbow scans and went normally i would give you know a pitcher a 70 30 chance of recovery he's like but after looking at the state of your elbow i don't even know if it's 50 50 oh well and i was like okay well you know this could be this could be the end i don't really

know but i'm gonna do it and see what happens. And yeah, as it turned out, it was extremely successful. I had a really easy recovery, I guess you would call it. There was no real hiccups. And then, yeah, just it came back good and I felt great afterwards and, yeah, was able to get back into pro ball, you know, a couple of years after having surgery and continue on what was already a great career and extend it out even longer.

big leagues, but that you wanted to go on anyway, because you were there 2005. There aren't many players still in the majors who were active in 2005 who are still active. I guess it's basically a favorite of ours, Rich Hill and Nelson Cruz, I think, debuted in 2005. Adam Wainwright, also just a few guys now that Molina and Pujols are retired. So I guess everyone at any level of baseball probably, oh, I should say Justin Verlander, he's still pretty good. And he was also active in 2005. Just okay, you know. Yeah. But everyone, probably everywhere in the world who's playing pro ball, somewhere in the back of their mind, they're thinking, who knows, you know,

I could make the major someday. And once you actually did it, then it's even more plausible to think that. And even after you went to Japan and Korea, you came back and you were in other major league organizations with Milwaukee, with Detroit in 2011. So was there a point where you just kind of closed the book and said, that's that, but I'm still really loving playing this game wherever I play. And so I'm going to keep going. Yeah, probably the eye-opening experience for me was 2007 in Milwaukee. And I want to preface this by saying no animosity towards the Brewers or Pro Bowl or anything like that. But I was having the season of my career in AAA in 2007. First time I'd been selected to an All-Star team.

Yeah, you were going to start the All-Star game, right? Correct. I was supposed to start the all-star game right correct i was uh supposed to start the all-star game and any before that about a series or two before the all-star break um you know you generally have you know the coordinators come to town and and everything and happened to be that the pitching coordinator was in town at that stage and i kind of just said you know what's my chances of you know a September call-up or being added to the roster you know in the postseason or anything like that and he's like to be honest with you he's like you're probably about seven or eight names down the list of those that are looking at going to the big leagues anytime soon and he's like in a September call-up

you're probably not even in the top 10 and And that was the gut punch to realize no matter what age you are, there's always somebody who's picked to be in front of you who's possibly a prospect within that organization if you've come from another one. And as a free agent signing, it's extremely difficult, unless you've had extended experience in the big leagues, to stay there and get back there unless you know there's a lot of things that fall your way to open the doorway for you to get back

there again so that was my eye-opening experience and i understood why but it didn't mean i had to like it right i think that's understandable i'm curious you know as you've moved around and gained experience and now being back in Australia, sort of what role do you find yourself occupying with some of the younger players? Because I would imagine, I mean, obviously you're still pitching and playing and you don't have to transition away from that before you're ready. But I would imagine that there are a lot of young guys who look to you and your experience and potentially see it as a guide to how they might progress their own careers? Most definitely. The younger players use me as a sounding board for, you know, different questions and different possibilities that they're faced with and different avenues that they may have to look at it going down, you know, whether you go the college route, whether you go the pro ball

route early, you know, what to do in regards to regards to you know if you've got multiple teams looking at you before signing and you know even just the mundane stuff like you know how to how to deal with the day-to-day grind of baseball and playing multiple games over like a weekend series and just how to deal with you know not feeling a hundred percent they come to me for a number of reasons one the fact that i'm still playing and still able to get it done at the highest level here in this country. And two, because I've coached at this level, I've coached internationally,

I've been on the national team for a long time. So they definitely come looking for advice and guidance quite often. And I feel privileged and honored that they think that they can come to me and ask questions. It's fantastic. being the pitching coach for Sydney. So how does that work exactly? How does that affect your relationship with other guys on the team? And how does it affect your own preparation? I mean, is it just a ton of extra time? Is it hard to do both of those jobs? It is. It is time consuming. You know, you have the post game meetings with the other staff,

and then you're talking about the roster for the next day and all of those kinds of stuff so that adds to your day probably more so at the end when you're starting to look back and analyze the game but also prior to you're talking about planning and who's going to fill which role and who needs to do what and and it also takes you away a little bit from like the player side of things you're no longer viewed as a player you're more viewed as a coach even though you know you're running out there and taking the field together with the rest of the team so it's very i would assume it's very difficult in today's game with the amount of information and data that's provided to those guys prior to a game and just the in-game strategy would be very different now than it was you know when I was originally doing it in like 2010, 11 type thing.

Yeah. And it had been a few years since you had last played at this level. And of course, there was the pandemic and everything. But how did you decide to come back for another year here? And you've pitched very effectively. Did you have any doubts that you still could? Was this a tough sell to your family at this point? Did you just want to officially become the oldest player in ABL history, which you have done now? What were your motivations for coming? Yeah, so I've read. So what were your motivations for returning yet again? I was just playing local baseball here in sydney just at the at the local level and yeah i was just enjoying it having a good time i you know i enjoy being around the

younger guys and and guiding them and helping them and just baseball is just you know who i am and what i love to do i get up every day thinking about it still you know at at this age i still read you know mob and baseball reference and all of those types of things and obviously your page as well and actually listened to this podcast prior to being on. So I appreciate that. But yeah, I just started playing again and body felt good and the stats reflected the opportunity to come back and play. And the Blue Sox asked me, i consider it if if i was interested and

i was like well you know if i can do it i will but i don't want to be a guy that just because of the experience takes up a roster spot for a young guy so that was an honest conversation that we had and yeah long story short i you know come back healthy i feel really good health-wise um and the results show that i'm healthy for the first time in a couple of years. Yeah. And even if not everyone in Australia is into baseball, for people who are into baseball, they would know your name because you've been a pretty important figure in Australian baseball and your international heroics and the Olympics and the World Baseball Cup and everything else. And you have a cup named after you.

A trophy is named after you now, right? A joint, the Kent Ox Spring Cup. Yep. Can you explain what that is? So Sydney and Canberra are only three hours drive apart, and it's linked by a single, what used to be just a single highway. It used to be called the Hume Highway Cup. So it's kind of the inter-league rivalry,

the local derby, whatever you want to call it. And somebody pointed out that the Hume Highway doesn't actually link Sydney and Canberra. There's another road that you've got to take. So they decided to change it. And the fact that Stephen Kent, the other gentleman who the cup is named after, and myself have been in the league since it started again in 2010.

We've been the stalwarts for both cities. So, yeah, they just decided to name it the Ken Oxprin Cup, the KO Cup. And, yeah, both of us were extremely honored and surprised when it happened. But, yeah, it's a wonderful testament and I'm very thankful for it. you had to make over the years playing in as many places as you've played in terms of not being able to see them as much as you'd like or or them traveling to see you i mean how hard has that been at times uh it's been a big test um of our of our relationship uh especially early on when you know she was still working here in australia and i was spending you know my full time in in america and focused on on that but

she's always been supportive right from the very word go um she was like no you've got to go and do this and see where it's going to take you and see what this becomes and obviously the further along you go and the more success you have then traveling together becomes a lot easier and we started to spend more time together you know in 05 when you know second year on the 40 man roster had better income and yeah she's traveled with me ever since until children got to schooling age and then it was decided that they would come back here and do schooling and yet they've still continued to travel as much as they can with me so the biggest sacrifice is time away from one another and time away from your family.

But at the same time, what it's brought us is some life experiences that our children would never have gotten had it not been for baseball and the places that I've gone. Right. And I told you that I was going to ask this via email, but I know that you've said in other interviews that you tried when you first came to the US and you were playing baseball, you know, tried to use a little less Australian slang and lingo just to kind of fit in or not confuse people. But I very much enjoy Australian slang. I think it's maybe the best kind of slang. And I've watched a lot of Australian TV shows. And whenever my wife and I watch one, if we watch like the Bachelor

Australia or something, then for a while after that, we're like calling each other larrikins and bogans and saying passion and all this stuff that I didn't know before, but is wonderful. So is there any Australia specific baseball slang or do you mostly just use American terms just with a different accent you know what we had training last night for the blue socks and I asked some of the veteran guys that I've been around with and you know what we all came up with nothing just crickets you know how you get put on the spot and you're like I know there's an answer to this and so I'm sure there is some slang and if I if I come up with it i'll i'll email you and let you know but last night we just all looked at one another and went there's nothing that kind of

jumps out at us but what we we do use a lot of nicknames out here it's generally related to either your name or where you're from or something or something that you've done like to make an idiot of yourself or anything like that so but more so it's just yeah it's a lot of straight up terms but yeah i can't think of anything off the top of my head i apologize ben for that no if if any existed i'm sure you would be aware of it at this point so yeah when you say other veteran guys what are you talking about relative to you in terms of age and experience here? She's Ben.

I'm sorry. I'm guessing there's a little bit of a gap between the young guys and the veterans and then the veterans and you. Yeah, well, there's a couple of other guys on this team that have been in the league since it started in 2010. But yes, they are significantly younger than I am. They're still in their 30s, which is good, but they've been around just as long as I have and experienced, you know, in this league, just as much as I have.

So, you know, they're looked at as the veteran core. And, you know, when I was not playing due to health reasons and I was just a coach, you know, those guys became that veteran presence to go to in the clubhouse and on the field. So, you know, I pay them the respect that they do as veterans and I don't step on their toes. I let them lead the clubhouse. I'm just an extra old head that sits in the corner. Yeah.

the corner. Yeah. We asked Rich Hill about this when he was on last year, but just the way the game has changed since he came up, since you came up, I mean, it's completely different in so many ways. But I wonder when you're playing against younger guys, and obviously you're holding your own more than that, but what do they do differently than you did when you came up or your contemporaries at that point? Or, you know, are you impressed by just how good they are, how hard they throw? What have you had to do to adjust to kind of keep pace with the way that the game has evolved in the past couple of decades? The preparation is definitely significantly different now than when I came up. All the exceptional things that have come from, you know, the Jaeger

program with the resistance bands and then driveline with the weighted balls and the pliable warm-up system and all of that kind of stuff. So just looking at that and understanding that dynamic and how that has influenced both training prior to, during and and post game has been wonderful to see. But there's a fine line that needs to be crossed by every player individually as to what's the right amount, what's too much, and what's not enough. I'm curious when the day eventually comes when you decide that you are done playing, what do you think the future holds for you? Is it further time in baseball in a coaching capacity or do you think you might entertain something else? There's lots of avenues that are there. I've had conversations throughout my career about scouting post-playing, about coaching

post-playing, or the possibility of just stepping away. I don't think the last one is very entertaining by any means. But yeah, there's always been the conversation there about what's next. And luckily, I haven't had to face that thought process yet. But yeah, I don't think stepping away from the game would be very entertaining for me at the moment. But there is the avenue of the possibility of scouting or coaching, you know, either here in Australia or possibly trying to go back stateside or internationally and being involved with an organization somewhere along the way. I've read that you have been a bartender and a retail salesman and a banker. You worked at a

bank. So you've tried out a few other careers, but I guess none of them quite clicked. No, they certainly didn't hold my attention like baseball does. That's for sure. the way that baseball does. No, they certainly didn't hold my attention like baseball does. That's for sure. Well, we're glad that you found your way to baseball and baseball found its way to you. And it's been really an incredible career

and you're epitomizing the tear the uniform off me type guy here. Yeah, yeah. And I hope that you're able to hold off that moment for a while yet. So we will be following your continued exploits. And we wish you the best. And thanks so much for joining us despite a 16 to 18 hour time difference.

We appreciate it. It's been an absolute pleasure, guys. I appreciate the chance to come on here and speak with you both. And yeah, just want to say thank you very much for the props. And yeah i do appreciate it how's the australian wbct looking this year it actually looks pretty good they just um announced the selection roster the other day that's pretty exciting news for everybody so yeah i'm looking forward to seeing what happens going forward and and the whole preparation to that and and the team that's available to go away should be should be exciting.

So fingers crossed some of the young up-and-coming players, both in pro ball and college, get the opportunity to experience that. Because it's a wonderful process. And playing in Japan will be an eye-opening experience for some of those guys that haven't done it before. All right. Thank you, Chris. Appreciate it, guys. Have a wonderful day. All right. Well, that was wonderful. And let us now conclude with the Pass Blast. This is episode 1956, and it comes from 1956. And as always, from our frequent Pass Blast consultant, Jacob Pomeranke, who is Sabre's Director of Editorial Content and Chair of the Black Sox Scandal

Research Committee. Speaking of Sabre, by the way, as and Chair of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. Speaking of Sabre, by the way, as you noted, Chris Oxspring has been around so long that he has a Sabre bio, which is usually the case only for retired players. Yeah. And it needs an update now because it's a few years old and he has continued to play. That's right. All right. So 1956, Jackie and Willie. Jacob writes,

One common misconception about the end of Jackie Robinson's career with the Brooklyn Dodgers is that he couldn't stand the idea of putting on a Giants uniform, when the Giants sent journeyman pitcher Dick Littlefield and $30,000 to the Dodgers in exchange for Robinson's contract. After the news broke, Robinson initially expressed some interest in joining the Giants and playing alongside Willie Mays. For his part, Willie Mays was overjoyed at the prospect of playing with Jackie Robinson. Bill Nunn Jr. of the Pittsburgh Courier interviewed Robinson over the phone and persuaded him to release a telegram that Mays had sent, which read, quote, I've always admired and respected your talent and ability. The knowledge that we will be teammates is an indescribable pleasure. I'm looking forward to some memorable days following your guidance. I hope to reach some of the heights that make your record stand out like

a pinnacle. It's one of my greatest thrills and happiest moments to be able to say, welcome Jackie to the Giants. But, Jacob writes, Jackie Robinson had already made his decision, and even after the Giants offered to double his salary to $60,000, he announced his retirement in an exclusive article in Look magazine on January 22, 1957. The Dodgers-Giants trade was voided, and Jackie and Willie never became teammates in 1957, what would become both teams' final season in New York City before moving to California. And Ron Shelton was growing up in California as a big fan of the Dodgers and

Jackie Robinson because his mother had gone to Jackie Robinson's high school in Pasadena a couple of years before Jackie did. So I'm sure he would have been excited if Jackie had made it out to San Francisco with the Giants, but that didn't happen. So he called it a career, but would have been quite a thing to see Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson as teammates. And as we discussed in our episode some time ago about the Willie Mays documentary on ESPN. There was some strained relationship later between those guys because Jackie was critical of Willie for not using his platform to be even more vocal and outspoken than he was. But there was a lot of admiration there, obviously, from Willie to Jackie, certainly at that point. So it would have been an interesting chapter of baseball history if Jackie Robinson had

gone elsewhere and kept playing. But we think of him as a Dodger only, or at least during his time in the integrated majors. All right. Couple quick follow-ups for you before we wrap this thing up. First, I have another update to the ongoing saga of the chicken tenders at the Toronto Ritz-Carlton that Brandon Belt cited as so scrumptious. We speculated that these might have played some small part in his deciding to sign with the Blue Jays. It's like that famous quote from Crash Davis. You never handle your luggage in the show.

Somebody else carries your bags. You hit white balls for batting practice and the ballparks are like cathedrals. The hotels all have room service and the tenders are delicious. I think that very last line may have been cut from the final script. And then we got a personal testimonial from listener Brian who wrote in with a wonderful memory of visiting Toronto from Detroit as a 10-year-old in 1988 to attend a wedding. And while he was there, having chicken tenders at the Ritz-Carlton that lingered in his mind for decades to come. Sadly, however, we have to issue a retraction here. We got an email from Andrew who wrote, I have the sad duty of letting you know that Brian's memories of chicken tenders in 1988

are incorrect in at least one respect. They couldn't have been at the Ritz-Carlton because there was no Ritz-Carlton in Toronto then. The Ritz-Carlton in Toronto didn't open until 2011. The likeliest scenario is that he's remembering a dinner at the Four Seasons, which would have been the top hotel in Toronto at the time. It's always possible that the Ritz raided the Four Seasons for kitchen staff when they first opened, and the legacy has continued that way. Andrew signed off pedantically yours, but hey, we're all about accuracy here. We appreciate the correction. I put this to Brian, who acknowledged that he must

have misremembered and maybe in multiple ways. It was his dad who thought it was the Ritz. So Brian's dad is the real culprit here. Brian's dad also corrected Brian that it was not a wedding, but a bar mitzvah. We have not fact-checked that claim. Probably more difficult to disprove. So it's possible that chicken tenders are just delectable everywhere in Toronto, the famous Toronto tendies. It's also possible that Brian has misremembered how tasty the tenders were. But look, I like this. This is why when players tell stories about their careers, when you check the actual details, you find out, well, actually, it couldn't have happened in that game because those two players weren't ever in the same game, or that guy was not teammates with that guy, or, well, it couldn't have been that

inning because this other pitcher was pitching. There's always something off, right? Memory is fallible. Rob Nyer refers to efforts to verify those claims as tracers. Maybe we need to rechristen them tenders. So no harm done. We also got another email from a Toronto resident named Sean, whose message had the subject line, how can you not be pedantic about hotel chicken tenders?

Great question. You can't not be. And Sean is actually a hotelier, so he confirmed that not only did the Toronto Ritz not open until 2011, there was not a pre-existing one in town or anywhere in Canada prior to that time. He also notes that speaking of Toronto pricing, I'm not sure how familiar you are with the market, but the closest proper house listed for sale to the Ritz-Carlton is 145 Portland Street in Toronto, a modest home that could be yours for 2.3 million Canadian dollars. I don't know if it could be yours, but it could be branded belts. Or actually, I guess it couldn't be branded belts yet, because as we covered on a recent

episode, there's a new law about non-residents buying homes before 2025. Maybe you can get someone else to buy it with his cash under a different name. I believe we had a listener in our Discord group who, after hearing our discussion and Belt's rave review, tried to stop by the Ritz to taste the tendies themselves. And to their dismay, they got denied. They got non-tendered. They were not served because the tenders are on the room service menu and they're not available to anyone who isn't staying at the hotel.

So even Brandon Belt may not be able to obtain tenders unless he does stay at the hotel, or I guess he can just get a room and not really stay in it. He could probably afford to do that if obtain tenders unless he does stay at the hotel, or I guess he can just get a room and not really stay in it. He could probably afford to do that if the tenders were worth it. We will keep you apprised of any other information on this tender topic that comes to our attention. Also, Meg alerted me to the fact that there is a new job opening for the Pirates social media coordinator. So if you want to be the person who puts together the Pirates hype videos for new additions, maybe that could be you. I will link on the show page if you're interested in applying. And lastly, last time we talked about the Tigers outfield dimensions and how they discovered that center field, which was listed at 420, was actually 422 feet deep. And so when they moved the fences in or as they do it now, it's now going to be moved to 412, not 410. And we wondered, what else are teams hiding? How deceptive are these outfield fence labels? Now I was thinking

that they had probably discovered that the fence was two feet deeper than advertised when they were moving it in or deciding to move it in. But listener Alex reminded me that they may have known about this for some time. There is a post on the MLB Technology blog by Clay Nunnally from October 7th, 2019. And as part of the transition of the StatCast system to Hawkeye technology in 2019, there was a full super accurate survey of dimensions. So we were laughing about this phrase in the Tiger story, highly accurate laser measurements, but that really is what happened from this 2019 post. LIDAR is a measurement technique in which a laser is bounced off surfaces and detected to generate information about an environment.

MLB regularly performs LiDAR scans of all 30 MLB ballparks. The raw data is used to generate accurate 3D ballpark maps called point clouds, which allow for easy identification and measurement of specific features of the ballparks, such as the precise location of walls, seats, banners, or any other visible reference point, a relative measurement within this point cloud is accurate with ISO traceability down to three millimeters. So if that's the case, then the Tigers have probably known for a few years now that that center field fence was 422, not 420. But I guess they wouldn't have had a great reason to broadcast that. They didn't want to demoralize hitters even further.

So who knows what other deceptions are being practiced in other MLB parks. We could have other outfield fences that are deeper or shallower than they're supposed to be, and teams may be well aware of that. So open the books. Let's see the LIDAR readings. We want total transparency here. We also want you to support Effectively Wild on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pled some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some super special perks. Bernard Healy, Andrew Kicklighter, Ryan Killian, Will Shea,

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We don't operate the subreddit. But we welcome you anyway. 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. coffee for the road One more cup of coffee before I go to the level of