Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2163: Littell Big League

Episode Date: May 11, 2024

Ben Lindbergh talks to Rays pitcher Zack Littell (4:33) about his expectation-surpassing conversion from relieving to starting and his affinity for cruise ships. Then (23:33) Ben brings on author and film critic Noah Gittell to discuss his new book about baseball movies and American culture, Baseball: The Movie, followed by six Stat Blasts with frequent […]

Effectively wild, it's the zombie runner, Bobby Shands, Bobby Shands, Bobby Shands. Effectively wild, it's the zombie runner, Bobby Shands, Bobby Shands, Bobby Shands. Effectively wild. Joey Manessis, walk-off three-run digger. Stop it. Walk-off three-run shot. Oh my it. Walk-off three-run shot. Oh my god. Meg, he's the best player in baseball.

Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2163 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer, not joined today by my regular co-host, Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs, who is on the road, and so I'm flying solo. But I'm never alone for long when Meg is gone. I've got to get guests, or you would have a very long monologue to listen to. And as is often the case when Meg is traveling, I have a cavalcade of conversations for you. Three guests, three segments, and quite a range of subjects. We're living up to the title of the podcast today. At the end of the episode, I will be joined by frequent StatBlast correspondent Ryan Nelson,

and he and I will combine to deliver no fewer than six StatBlasts. No more than six StatBlasts either. Precisely six. All inspired by messages from Effectively Wild listeners. On the segment preceding the StatBlasts, I will be joined by journalist, film critic, ringer contributor, Noah Gittel, who wrote a brand new book about baseball movies called Baseball the Movie. I know we did a baseball book interview on our last episode, but you've had a few days to finish Andy McCullough's Clayton Kershaw book, and it's such a page turner, you're probably ripping through it,

and you must be wondering, what will I read next? Well, why not Baseball the Movie? After you hear Noah, you may want to tackle that one next. But first, I'll be joined by a Major League Baseball player, a pitcher to be specific, just as I was when Meg was away a couple weeks ago. But this time, I have not reached out to a 70, 80, or 90-something-year-old ex-player, not an 82-year-old today, but a 28-year-old. Zach Littell of the Tampa Bay Rays is joining me for a short chat to open the episode. And Zach Littell has served as an opener, but not now. He has a more prestigious assignment, full-fledged starting pitcher. It's about time that I talk to Zach Littell because he's been one of my muses for a while. He's come

up on the podcast multiple times. The first time, to my knowledge, was episode 1508, just prior to the pandemic in March 2020, when Sam Miller and I marveled at a story about then-Minnesota twin Zach Littell's fondness for cruise ships. The man was constantly on a cruise somewhere, or so the story said. I found that fascinating, and yes, that will come up in our conversation today. But that's not the main topic of conversation, because Zach Littell is now not just a cruising curiosity. He's also, as strange as this sounds, sort of the ace of the contending Tampa Bay Rays. He was claimed off waivers from the Red Sox last May. And from what I've gathered, the Rays didn't expect great things necessarily. They needed arms. Everyone was injured. And then Ray's magic happened. But it's not just the Rays sprinkling their pixie dust on a pitcher. Zach Littell deserves a lot of the credit too. This is a guy who in several seasons with the Twins, the Giants, briefly Boston, had a roughly league average 4.17 ERA, a 4.66 FIP, fewer than eight strikeouts per nine innings, more than three walks per nine innings,

almost exclusively out of the pen. He was the definition of an unremarkable middle reliever. So he joined the desperate Rays, pitched pretty unremarkably out of their pen too. And then they said, hey, you want to start? Someone had to. And they didn't want to disrupt their high leverage relievers. Well, it worked. He pitched to a pretty solid 3.72 ERA with a 4.08 FIP in 11 starts last season, was celebrated as the savior of the Rays rotation, boggled the minds of many doubters who thought, OK, he can 39 innings. By Fangraph's war, he has been the Rays' most valuable pitcher and the 12th most valuable pitcher in baseball as of Friday. He's scheduled to make his eighth start against the Yankees on Saturday. We've talked a lot about pitchers who have converted from relief to the rotation this season. Reynaldo Lopez, Garrett Crochet, Jordan Hicks, etc. Arguably, no such conversion has been more

impressive or more surprising than Zach Littell's. And so, 18 starts into this second act of his career. Let's find out how he's done it. Well, I'm joined now by a Tampa Bay Rays starting pitcher and a successful one at that, Zach Littell. Hey, Zach, how's it going? I'm too bad. Thanks for having me. So it seems like every Rays pitcher has a story from when they got to the Rays and the Rays sat them down and said, hey, we suggest that you do a little more of this or a little less of this, or you start filling up the zone with strikes, right? So when the Rays claimed you off waivers, even before you moved to the rotation,

what's your version of that story of that initial conversation? Yeah, they were really, really just adamant about my stuff being good over the plate. That's kind of obvious for everybody to be in the strike zone, but really taking advantage of throwing strike one and then being able to go from there, especially with the up-kick and splitter usage

over the last couple of years. And they were also kind of obviously wanting me to throw more of those. But I would say the biggest thing was really like, let's get in the strike zone and overwhelm Henry with strikes. And when it came time for you to move into the rotation, how was that subject brought up? And did they advise that you do anything differently in that role?

So I guess we had like Drew Rathmason had like a follow-up appointment that I guess didn't go quite as expected. And so they learned they weren't going to get him back on the year so they I'd been opening some and going multiple innings and they kind of approached me right before the all-star break and we're just like hey how would you feel you know about having your own day starting to stretch you out we don't really know where it's going to go or how long this is going to last but you know until we figure out exactly what we're going to do we'll see how goes. And I obviously was very open to doing that.

It was pretty straightforward. They were very honest about it, said we're not really sure exactly, you know, if this is going to be a long-term thing or a short-term thing or what, but let's start it and see where it goes. And did they suggest that you do anything differently as a starter, or did you decide to do anything differently as a starter? So I started to, like, play with a bigger breaking ball that kind of i mean i wouldn't call it a full sweeper but my true definition kind of a curveball sweeper hybrid type thing so i started

playing with in the bullpen i actually threw it a couple times while i was still in the bullpen and then a couple starts in we added a 2C, which was really designed to create more separation between my other pitches. So I added those two pitches, and the usages shifted a little bit in how I approached right-handed and left-handed hitters. But overall, it was really the same approach. It was go, fill up the strike zone, and let everything else take care of itself. And a lot of guys, if they move back and forth between the bullpen and the rotation, you see the velocity spike or decrease. And it didn't really seem to that significantly for you. So how did you manage to preserve your velo?

And do you do anything differently to pace yourself, given that you're going deeper into games? It's weird. I kind of expected a little bit of a velo dip going back into the rotation. And then end of last year, beginning of this year, everything just kind of sustained, which is funny because, you know, when you're in the bullpen, you joke about, like, having to go multiple innings. You're like, there's no way I could go more than four. All of a sudden, you're built up to four, and then five, and then six, and everything just kind of stays the same. So, yeah, it's been interesting. I don't do anything different as far as pacing myself. I wouldn't say I'm out there max effort every single pitch,

but being that the usage has changed too, my fastball usage has definitely ticked down. So I guess potentially that has something to do with it. And you're not the first guy that the Rays have converted into a starter and have that gone well. And obviously they have a track record of developing players, helping players improve. So was that on your mind when the Rays

acquired you, when they sat you down that first time, when they said, hey, we want to try you as a starter? Was there some credibility there because the Rays have done this sort of thing before? Yeah, absolutely. And then having those guys in the clubhouse, Drew Rasmussen and Jeffrey Springs, having those guys that you kind of talked to about what worked for them from a routine standpoint, from a pitch music standpoint, all these different things was really, really helpful. So they had the credibility as well of having dudes that didn't just do it and were able to complete it, but really strived moving into the rotation. So yeah, it gave me a lot of confidence being able to do it.

And I don't think I ever really lost confidence that I could be a major league starter anyway. So that helped. Yeah. I was going to ask you, because obviously you came up as a starter in the minors as most guys who eventually moved to the bullpen do. So you still had confidence that you could do that, but did you believe that you could do it as well as you've done it so far, especially this season? Yeah. I mean, yes. I don't know that I believe that it would be such a smooth transition. I don't want to say easy, but yeah, I'm not sure that it went really smoothly as it did. However, in Minnesota, I get to the major leagues, I'm not given an extremely long leash as a starter, which is completely understandable.

Teams don't generally have the luxury of letting guys just, you know, giving them a year-long runway to kind of figure it out. And I had a little bit of success in the bullpen as soon as I moved in, so I completely understand it. But the belief that I could do it never really went away. I honestly, though, just never thought I'd get another opportunity. Yeah. And I'm sure you're enjoying doing as well as you are, but just based purely on the routine of it, on starting every five days and the cycle of off days between starts as opposed to the bullpen where you're working more regularly in shorter bursts. Is one of those more appealing to you personally? I think they both have merit. I really enjoy the potential to play every day at the bullpen. You never really know if you're going to be in there.

And on the flip side of that, that part of it's really hard. The getting ready mentally and physically every single day, whether you throw or not, is incredibly taxing. It's something that I don't think gets talked about enough from a bullpen standpoint. Those guys are ready to pitch every single night for 162 games, which is very, very hard to do. And then on the flip side of the starter,

I think it was a lot easier when I was younger and my body felt better all the time. I didn't have to spend quite as much time in the training room, you know, getting treatment and soft tissue work done and taking care of my body as much, but it equally is fun to do that and then know that you've had all the prep and you're ready to go on that fifth day. And you have really thrown strikes this season especially, but also late last season. You're walking guys very rarely. Are you doing the just target set down the middle and just let the stuff move the way it will? Yeah, I think that's where I start every game for sure. There are definitely days when I can immediately tell that I'm going to have a better command,

and we can start working to the sides of the plate. But I try and keep it pretty simple, and the Rays are pretty adamant about that. I'm sure you've talked to other guys that had the same thing because they truly do believe in that stuff. But I try and keep it simple. I try and stay over the plate with everything. There's really no need in nibbling. Hitters are kind of going to get themselves out. And I don't necessarily have the luxury to, from a stuff standpoint,

I don't have the luxury to go out there and dance around guys and end up in three-ball counts and get free passes away. So, yeah, it's kind of something that I've prided myself on throughout my career. I know it hasn't always been quite to this extent, but the simplest answer is I try and keep it a simple approach of being over the plate with every pitch and try and get the guy out of the box as quick as I can. And there are guys on other teams who are making the same conversion this year. For some guys, it's gone well. For other guys, not so much. And people have looked at your example and said, well, if Zach Littell can do it, who's to say that this other guy who's been in the bullpen for a while can't do it, right? So what is it, if you look at someone

who's been in the pen and you try to forecast how he'll do as a starter, what would you look at to say, yeah, maybe that will work for that guy? Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting to think about that because like you said earlier, there's so many guys in the league that are in the bullpen now that came up as starters and odds are were pretty good starters at some point in their careers so i think the biggest thing that i guess if i was doing it myself is strike throwing you want like pretty high clip strike throwers you want guys that have a good feel of development i guess you know there are guys that and I don't mean this as a knock, there are guys that are very locked in to what they're doing,

and they're really good at what they're doing, and it's hard for them to change something, even if it's unrelated to what they're currently doing, without kind of shifting a mindset or affecting their other pitch profiles, whatever it may be. So there are definitely guys in the league that are more open to changes, and whether it be mechanical adjustments usage adjustments grip you name it and you can tell as soon as you start talking to them what guys are are really open to just making these types of changes so i think

that's a big aspect of it and then understanding that it's a guy who understands that this is not a short-term thing you know a lot of the time you're not going to flip over and have success right away. It's going to take a little bit of development. And a team really like having a long-term view and giving you a little bit of a runway, that stuff matters as well. This is a transition that the league as a whole is making, not just you, but going to as few four-seamers as you're throwing these days, where you used to throw that more than half the time.

Now maybe it's a quarter of the time and you're mixing in the sinker, as you said, but it's a lot of splitters, it's a lot of sliders, and that's worked really well for you. But as a mental adjustment, was that tough for you to really back off that pitch that for so many guys has been the bread and butter historically? Yeah, the usage is not necessarily anything different from like a belief standpoint, right? Like I still believe my fastball is arguably my best pitch. It's just a matter Usage is not necessarily anything different from a belief standpoint. I still believe my fastball is arguably my best pitch. It's just a matter of recognizing that finding the right usage overall with all of your pitches is going to lead to every single pitch being better. If I'm not pounding fastballs in there nonstop,

then all of a sudden my cutter is going to start playing up. Vice versa, when my cutter is playing really well, all of a sudden my fastball starts playing up. So it's really just about finding that happy medium with all pitches. And I'm sure that you're thinking of this from a how can I help the team perspective, and you really did bail out the raise and the rotation last year when it was shorthanded.

But do you think about how this affects your financial future, let's say, heading into arbitration, free agency, to be a successful starter, it's a little bit different from being even a successful middle reliever, let's say. Sure, yeah. I mean, it's definitely crossed my mind. I try not to think about that stuff, especially in the roster situation I was in, where I was kind of a fringe reliever there for a few years. I try and take it day by day. And I do think that obviously at this moment, I have a little bit more security,

but this game's funny and crazy things happen. So that day by day approach has really done me well and I try and stick with that. Okay, I have one more question for you and this is sort of a silly one. In February 2020, an article about you came out in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. And I don't think a month has gone by that I haven't thought about this.

It was about you and your family's affinity for cruise ships. Yeah. And at the time, you said that you had spent 84 nights on cruise ships in 2019, which is pretty impressive given that you're a baseball player. And thus, you are sort of bound to the land for most of the year. At the time, you said, I've taken upward of 40 cruises. So I need to know, what's your career cruise count up to now? Yeah. So that Phil, the guy who wrote that article, misquoted me on the 84 total night, which is what I was at at the time. Oh, lifetime. So it wasn't 84 in that year.

Yes, 84 lifetime. And I just started cruising. But still, I guess in the grand scheme, it's a lot of nights. Yeah. And I have been on upwards of 40. I've probably been on upwards of 50 to 55 now. But we do it less now that we've had kids. My wife and I have had kids.

And it's my mom's favorite way to travel from a value standpoint, getting to go to multiple different places and everything kind of being taken care of. She just, it's her way to do it. And it makes sense when you have, you know, I have two younger siblings. So when we were in high school, middle school, it was a great way to, especially me and my younger brother who could, who could eat as far as we could see, um, to go on a cruise, you get a pool, you get buffet every meal, and you get to go nuts. You get to go see a different island or whatever you want every single day. So we definitely do enjoy it. We do it less now, but it is by far and away my mom's favorite way to travel.

So that's kind of always what we did with family trips. What was your most recent cruise? The most recent one, we went on a Thanksgiving, right after Thanksgiving, left the day after. Last year? No, we ended up, we had one scheduled. My mom ended up going, but we were pregnant. My wife was eight months pregnant,

and they don't let you on the boat if you're like six months pregnant, because I don't think they want to deliver babies. But I think we went on one the previous year on Thanksgiving. That was probably the, I guess, 2022 Thanksgiving-ish would have been the last one we went on. Nice.

I actually, I wondered, you know, when COVID hit and cruises were shut down and a lot of people caught COVID on cruises, I thought at the time, how is this going to affect Zach Littell and his family? Are they still going to go out there? Are they going to be worried about cruising now? Will family. Are they still going to go out there? Are they going to be worried about cruising now? Will they have to find some other way to vacation? So you have

gone back on the ship, I guess, since the pandemic, right? It hasn't scared you away for good? No, no. My mom was definitely pulling her hair out. She was so ready to go. But she has found, she specifically, I actually think she leaves this weekend to go on like an Alaskan cruise. Oh, nice. She has found her way back onto them. The only cruise I ever went on was an Alaskan cruise. I really enjoyed it, kind of a mix from the usual Caribbean kind of warm weather thing.

But how do you train on the ship if you are on an extended cruise? Yeah, I mean, like I've never been on i haven't since i was really young i haven't been on one for more than a week but uh i just work out you know i have like this little like for lack of a better word it's like a sock or like a clothes sleeve that goes over my hand that i kind of throw into if i need to but usually i'll just take the week off and figure it out when i get back. Work out in the gym, but from a throwing standpoint, I just don't do anything. Do you still have your Royal Caribbean diamond level status? I do. I'm as high as it gets now. And it's nice because both of our kids are there just because I have the status and my wife, once we got married, it transferred to her as well. So

when we do cruise, we definitely have it pretty good. Wow. Okay. Well, I'm glad I finally got to address this with you. I'm glad we could correct the record about the 84 days thing. I'm a little disappointed, but it's better to put the truth out there. Yeah, I know. Phil meant well,

but I don't even know if that would be possible to do in an off-season. I think we calculated that it was, but you would have been out there for like most of the off season. Yeah. We're just living on a cruise ship. Right. Exactly.

It was like, it was 84 up to that point, which I mean, the grand scheme of things is a lot of nights to be on a boat, but it's probably upwards. I think like the diamond platinum or whatever, the highest level is 110 nights. So probably roughly around there.

What's your favorite all time? if we haven't talked about it, your favorite cruise ever? My wife and I went on a honeymoon cruise, like the Western Caribbean that went through the Panama Canal as well. That was pretty cool. Yeah, I would say. My mom will do a lot of short ones, like four-day, like you just fly into Miami and you're gone for a weekend type thing.

So we do a lot of those. So any the like longer ones where you go to different destinations where i like the western caribbean ones aruba belize those types uh curacao and then the panama canal was just a cool experience to get to go through and you can see that you need to work out some sort of spokesman arrangement here maybe like some sponsored i haven't thought about that yeah well if things keep going well for you, then they'll be happy to have you as the pitchman for the cruises. So we hope that you

keep cruising through starts as well as on the oceans. So thanks very much for making some time to talk, Zach. I appreciate it. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me again. Interesting, right? Other teams have followed the Rays' lead when it comes to catchers setting up over the middle of the plate. Stuff is so good now.

Most guys are throwing max effort. Just trust in the speed and the spin. Don't get too cute. And traditionally, if you weren't a flamethrower, you might have thought, I can't afford to throw the ball in the zone. Littell's mindset is, I can't afford not to. I might get hit, but at least I won't have walked anyone who can be driven in. Okay, cruising right along. We move now from Zach Littell to Noah Gittel. Okay, cruising right along, we move now from

Zach Littell to Noah Gittel. Same spelling of the surname, except with a G instead of an L. I told Noah Gittel he was going to be on the same episode as Zach Littell, and he was very excited. He said, I love that guy. No one else's name sounds like mine. Fortuitous timing, especially because Noah is the author of a book that's about to be published, Baseball the Movie, which comes out next week. I blurbed this book, which I don't do unless I really read it and like it. So it does come with my endorsement. And I'll be back with Noah to talk about baseball movies from top to bottom. To play us into that segment, let's listen to a clip of a classic scene from the 1994 film Little Big League, which will be mentioned during our upcoming conversation. This is the scene in

which 12-year-old Billy Haywood, played by Luke Edwards, who has inherited the Minnesota Twins, decides to install himself as manager after firing the old manager, and sells pitching coach Mac McNally, played by John Ashton, on his qualifications for the job.

You'll also hear the GM, Arthur Goslin, played by Kevin Dunn at the end of the clip. Well, Billy, it's not that easy. There's a lot to this game, a lot. It's all situations, situations and tendencies. And the more you've seen, the more you know what to do. Okay, try me. What?

Make up a situation, try me. All right. We're playing the Yankees. No one out. Scales is on first, great speed. Lou's up, two and one count. Abbott's on the mound. Lefty. Lonnie's on deck. And remember, he's a switch hitter. What do you do? What's the score? Tie game.

What inning? Home or away? Eighth. Home. Who's catching? Who's rested in the bullpen? Who's up in the ninth for the Yanks? Stanley. Everyone. Seven, eight, nine. Okay. I'll let Lou hit away. With Mattingly holding skills, he's got that big hole to hit to. No. See, that's what I'm talking about. You got lefty against lefty. Lou's a good bunner. You only need one run, so you sacrifice the go-ahead run to second with only one out. No. You sacrifice him to second, they walk Lonnie and bring in Steve Farr to pitch to Spencer. So you've taken the bat out of our two best hitters, our three and four men,

and we've got Spencer, a righty with no speed, against Farr and his palm ball, which means... Double play. You could pitch hit for Spencer. Now you've taken the bat out of our three, four, and five hitters. Not exactly great trips to the heart of our order. Any questions, Mac? Yeah. What's he needing me for? Well, the boom times for baseball movies appear to be behind us, at least for now.

But although theatrical releases are scarce, we can console ourselves with an excellent new book about baseball movies, appropriately titled Baseball the Movie. That's it. No extremely long subtitle. Love a non-subtitled sports book. Just as rare as the baseball movies these days. Of course, this isn't just a sports book. It's not just about baseball. It's not just about baseball movies. It's not just about movies. It's about America, man. It's about all of the above. And I am joined by its author, Noah Gattel. Hey, Noah, how's it going? Hey, Ben. Thanks for having me. It is a delight and an honor to be here. Well, it's wonderful to have you. And you know, we have a long running bit here on Effectively Wild where we define a baseball movie as any movie that includes any reference to baseball, however slight, however tangential. And it's kind of tongue-in-cheek, but I've almost

come to believe it just through sheer repetition. But we should probably define our terms here before we embark on the rest of this conversation. So you have a somewhat higher bar for what constitutes a baseball movie than that, as you should. So how do you define baseball movie and how did you define it as you were deciding which movies to focus on in this book? Well, first of all, if I had to produce as much content as you do, I would likely have an inclusive definition of the baseball movie as well. But yeah, I had to think long and hard about this as I was putting the book together. And so many standards that I came up with, I could always find a baseball movie that didn't meet it. For a long time, I thought, well, the baseball has to drive the action in some way in a baseball movie. But then Field of Dreams has almost no baseball in it whatsoever, let alone

does it drive the action. So that certainly wouldn't qualify. I guess the two things that I sort of came up with that made sense for me is that the baseball doesn't have to drive the action, but it must be integral to the plot in some way. So if you took the baseball out of the movie or change it to another sport, something about it wouldn't really make sense. sport, something about it wouldn't really make sense. By that criteria, your beloved Night Swim would not make the list. Another way that I put it is that it has to be a baseball movie first. So if you were to describe, let's say, Night Swim to someone who hadn't seen it, you wouldn't start with, well, it's a baseball movie. I might, but most people probably wouldn't start with, well, it's a baseball movie. I might, but most people probably wouldn't.

Well, that would give them slightly a wrong idea of what they were about to experience. Yeah. You would probably say something like, it's a horror movie about a baseball player. Or most people, I think, would say, it's a horror movie about a haunted pool. About a pool. Yes. And there is a baseball player involved. Yeah.

On the other hand, Bull Durham could be described as a comedy or a romance, but I feel like most people, if they were telling someone about it who hadn't seen it, would start with, it's a baseball movie. And that's the criteria I use. Yeah. Because even a baseball movie that's just incontrovertibly a baseball movie, you still usually want it to say something that goes beyond baseball, right? Like it tells us something about the human condition, right? Or human nature or America or whatever it is, right? And so it's not just going to be about baseball. You could make a good movie that's just about baseball, I suppose, but then it'd almost be

a documentary or might as well be, right? So you kind of want it to incorporate other themes that are potentially universal, but also to clear your bar, which I think is a reasonable bar. It can't be made without the baseball, or at least it would be a very different movie. So for example, you in the book cite The Naked Gun, which has one of the most memorable baseball scenes, right? And you might say, well, gosh, can you have The Naked Gun, which has one of the most memorable baseball scenes, right? And you might say, well, gosh, can you have The Naked Gun without the baseball and Reggie Jackson and Leslie Nielsen as the umpire and all of that, right? But you could, I guess, right? Like you could have Naked Gun, you could just be at a different sporting event or it could be some other sort of farce, right? It's not absolutely essential and core to that film.

The Naked Gun was a really tough call for me because I love The Naked Gun. And I do think the spoofing of baseball that is in that movie shows actually a pretty dedicated understanding of the game or at least the experience of watching the game. That was clearly made by people who love baseball. And so I appreciate that. And I also appreciate the fact that, you know, you've got 30 minutes basically of baseball in that movie. And I also appreciate the emphasis on umpiring,

which almost always gets a short shrift in baseball movies. Even when the umpire is right, we disagree with them because we're siding, you know, with somebody else, whether it's the manager or a player. And I personally, this is an unpopular opinion, but I really like umpires. When I was a kid, I knew I had no chance of being a Major League Baseball player. But for a while there, I thought, well, maybe I could be an umpire. So I have a lot of sympathy for them. But the thing about The Naked Gun is that it is a spoof first.

That is its primary genre. Just like Scary Movie is a spoof of horror movies, and Airplane is a spoof of disaster movies, The Naked Gun is a spoof, and it's not a spoof of baseball movies. It's a spoof of kind of L.A. cop movies from the 1970s. So baseball movie would fall pretty far down the list if we were defining it, and I think I have to honor that reality. So, you're a baseball fan, but you're also a film buff and a film critic, and I wonder how film buffs and film no particular interest in baseball or maybe even feel some aversion to baseball or sports in general, do they look as kindly upon the genre as we do? Or is there sort of a looking down your nose?

Yeah, that's good for a baseball movie or good for a sports movie. Or are they acknowledged in some cases as true cinematic classics? I think some of them are. I think there are a few baseball movies that really rise above their station, you could say. I don't think film critics or film buffs are going to have the same love of, say, Little Big League that you and I might. But, you know, Moneyball, Field of Dreams, Pride of the Yankees, these were best picture nominees. I mean, these were considered serious films, great works of art, popular movies. And I think those are films that you do not have to be a baseball fan to love. And I think there's probably a few others that fit that description as well. Bull Durham seems to have really transcended fans of the sport, in part because

I think, you know, there's just a lot of Kevin Costner thirst out there, and it can't be denied in that movie. So that helps a great deal. And it is a romance, and it does have an empowered woman at the center of it. So I think beyond the male baseball nerds, there's a lot of love for that movie. And there will always be people who care about The Sandlot because they watched it as kids and rookie of the year and and the bad news bears certainly as well which i feel like was on tbs pretty much every saturday when i was growing up but in terms of you know real works of cinema we're really only looking at four or five of those movies that have held up and remained in the overall canon can you talk a little bit about the ignoble origins of the

baseball movie? Because even if it seems like a staple to us, and I and many of our listeners were likely raised in a time where baseball movies were extremely common and successful and well-regarded, and we can talk about that period a little later, but it took some time for baseball movies to get to that point. I mean, the first movie that you cover really in depth, like devoting a chapter to is Pride of the Yankees, which came out in 1942. And that's 15 years into the talkies, right? And much more than that into film history. And obviously there had been baseball movies before that. But there really hadn't been a lot where they're kind of part of

the pantheon and the canon, and it really worked, let alone being successful at the box office, right? So can you explain why it took a while for the baseball movie to find its feet, despite the fact that baseball itself was, of course, incredibly popular for the entire history of the medium. Yeah, I think for a long time, when people wanted to watch baseball, they went to baseball games. You know, there was no TV back then. So the way that we experienced baseball in the 1900s and 10s and 20s and 30s was going to the game. And it was it was inexpensive to go to the game. And it was probably near your apartment back then, like isn't today and that was just something that that many people did so they made baseball movies before the pride of the yankees babe ruth was

the star of a feature film called head and home in 1920 that was like a very thinly veiled uh you know biography or sort of used his myth to tell a story about a very similar kind of slugger. There was an adaptation of Casey at the Bat starring Wallace Beery, who was also the star of several boxing movies and was sort of a big, big star at the time. There was a film called Girls Can Play about a women's baseball team in the 1930s. In that film, the team was a front for their owner, who was a bootlegger. He was trying to draw attention away from his nefarious activity. And then there were the films of Joe E. Brown,

most notably Alibi Ike, which was sort of a hit, and I think some people know about. He was a comedy star and an enormous baseball fan. But The Pride of the Yankees was different. And I should point out that it wasn't easy to get it made despite Lou Gehrig having been such a notable figure. I opened the book with this quote from Samuel Goldwyn, who I think most people know,

one of the titans of the film industry at the time. When it was brought to him, this idea, he said that the baseball movie is box office poison. And that was its reputation at the time. These movies did not make money. But he saw in The Pride of the Yankees something more than a baseball movie. He saw a great romance. He saw a story about a young man cut down in the prime of his life, dying with dignity, that I think he saw as a connection to what was going on in the country at the time. This was a nation on the eve of a great war in which many young men were about to be cut down

in the primes of their lives. And the film, I think, really draws that connection, specifically in the opening voiceover, which was scripted by Damon Runyon, the famed sports writer, talking about how Gehrig is an inspiration to men who have lost their lives on far-flung fields of battle. And this was made just before we entered World War II. And to me, the baseball movie found its footing here, which is that this is not just going to be about baseball. It's going to be a symbol for all that is great about America. And for a long time, really for the first couple of decades, that's what it was. And as I examined it over the course of its many decades in this book, it continued to be a symbol of what was going on in America. Not always what was great about America, but sometimes

what was wrong about America as well. And I think, to me, that's what makes the baseball movie such a fascinating artifact. It's the collision of these two national pastimes, and it sort of can't help but express the cultural conditions in which it was made. Yeah. So Pride of the Yankees, that connection is explicit, as you're saying. It's in the text, right? You don't need to do a deep analysis to say, huh, how does Pride of the Yankees reflect what was going on in the country at the time, right? But there are some other baseball movies where that's maybe a bit more subtle. Obviously, just about any kind of art reflects the times in which it was made. But what stands out to you as some of the movies that you wrote about where you could draw really interesting parallels, as I think you consistently did, and illuminate ways in which these movies reflect or speak to consciously or unconsciously

something that was going on in the country at the time, some kind of cultural movement, but maybe it's not quite as surface level. A few quick examples. So a few years after The Pride of the Yankees came a movie called The Stratton Story with Jimmy Stewart about Monty Stratton, who lost his leg in a hunting accident and then returned to play professional baseball. Fascinating movie. Jimmy Stewart, of course, actually fought in World War II. He came back very psychologically damaged from it. And the scenes of Monty Stratton kind of storming around the house after his amputation, angry at his wife and kids, these resonate with the post-traumatic stress syndrome that was quite common for returning soldiers. So while in the film, he's not a veteran,

he's a baseball player who lost his leg in a hunting accident. I think that the film really speaks to people who were suffering in similar ways at the time. And it makes an interesting companion piece to Pride of the Yankees. I would also cite The Bad News Bears, which not everybody thinks about as sort of a political film, but there's an important line that often gets missed early in the movie where they explain that this team that's been put together is a result of a class action lawsuit by the parents of kids who were rejected from the other teams. And the 1970s was sort of the golden age of class action lawsuits. And so it really colors the whole film and places it in this context of the times when disenfranchised, disempowered people were getting together and finding a way

to create equality for themselves. And that makes The Bad News Bears much more resonant than just a kind of fun baseball movie where people get hit in the nuts with balls. And then I would also cite Field of Dreams and The Natural as movies that were sort of responding to the rural crisis in America in the 1980s, when Reaganomics and various factors really left many family farmers in quite a lot of trouble. Rural towns were in deep distress in the 1980s. And there were a number of films that responded to that. But I think The Natural and The Field of Dreams, of course, The Natural ending with him playing catch with his son in a field very similar to how Field of Dreams ends.

Having a catch, Noah. Excuse me. I'm sorry. Am I going to get kicked off the podcast? No, I'm a playing catch person too. So I'm with you, but just want to, you know, respect the text here. Thank you so much for the correction. You know, I think those are films that really are meant to speak to rural Americans that were suffering. And I think they also tie into the rural myth of baseball's origins in a really fascinating way. So as I say, the baseball movie just sort of can't help but touch at these things because it is used as the symbol for why The Natural was the film that All-Stars and Motor Kings,

which was forgotten for a long time, but was actually a hit in 1976. The baseball movie was still considered a dicey economic proposition. I mean, it wasn't easy to get The Natural made in the first place. And I think without Robert Redford's face on the poster, it wouldn't have gotten made. But The Natural was a big hit. It was the 13th highest grosser of the year. It made $47 million, which was a lot back then. It was nominated for four Oscars, including for Glenn Close and for several of its crafts. Randy Newman was nominated for the score. And that demonstrated, finally, to studio executives and financiers that the baseball movie could have legs. I also think that there was a generation of filmmakers who had really good ideas for

baseball movies that were going to do something different. And it had been a long time since that had happened. There were basically no baseball movies in the 1960s, not counting Safe at Home, for obvious reasons, and only a few in the 1970s. So you had this generation of filmmakers who grew up on television, watching the games on television, like Barry Levinson and John Sayles, who did Eight Men Out, and Phil Alden Robinson, who did Field of Dreams. And I think they brought a real visual understanding to the baseball movie that hadn't existed before. So you have a combination of a generation of filmmakers who are excited to make these stories, and finally, some confidence that a baseball movie

could perform and succeed both with critics and audiences that produced this fantastic boom. Yeah. And I kind of became conscious and sentient at the tail end of that boom. And so to me, it was just, well, natural, right? It was just, yeah, there are plenty of big baseball movies coming out all the time. That's just the norm. That's just the way it is. But really, that was an outlier. Now, with some hindsight here, it was not the case prior to that mid-80s to mid-90s period, and it has not been the case since. And it might seem strange because it's not as if baseball was uniquely popular during that period. If anything, it was more popular, more

central to the national consciousness, more legitimately the national pastime before then, right? And I guess, you know, there's always sort of things go in cycles in Hollywood and something is successful and then everyone makes a bunch of copycats of that thing until the audience gets sick of it and that it goes away for a while until it comes back into fashion, which hopefully will happen with the baseball movie at some point. But really, the fact that the baseball movie was sort of a juggernaut, relatively speaking, during that time, I took it for granted. It's almost strange just how successful and how prominent baseball films were during that period. Yeah, I took it for granted as well. I was born in 1980, so I was right in the sweet spot for a lot of these movies. And yeah, it lasted for about 12 years, maybe 10 years. And there were a number of baseball movies that came out

in the late nineties and early two thousands, but we definitely got a sense of diminishing returns at that point. Uh, I do think the natural, just to go back to it really played a huge role here. It was Robert Redford that got this done. That led the whole boom to happen because having a movie star attach himself to a project like that, that is what got it nominated for these awards. That is what made it a hit with audiences because we had had hit baseball movies before, you know, bang the drum slowly made some money, bad news bears made some money, but Robert Redford's beautiful face on that poster and his incredible performance in this movie. I think that is what gave people the confidence. He was a tastemaker in addition to being a great star. So him choosing this project and making it work, I think that is

what inspired so many of the copycats. Was it a somewhat weathered face for the young Roy Hobbs? Perhaps, but a beautiful face nonetheless. So how essential do you think the accuracy of the baseball and the portrayal of baseball players is to a baseball movie success and does that vary based on who's watching it, right? If you know nothing about baseball, you're not going to pick up on that stuff. If you are, say, a co-host of Effectively Wild, you're going to be hypersensitive and possibly pedantic and anal about that stuff. Most audience members are somewhere in between. But you document Gary Cooper's complete inability to play baseball in The Pride of the Yankees and the degree that the filmmakers went to to try to camouflage that, right? And there are baseball movies that have a lot of baseball action and baseball movies that don't have very much at all. And it's kind of a constant bone of contention with baseball movies or sports movies in general. Who was most convincing?

Who was least convincing? Do you think there's even a correlation, though, between the accuracy of the baseball or how convincing the actors playing the baseball players are and the quality of the film? I actually do. And even in strange cases like Rookie of the Year versus Little Big League, for example. You really have it out for Rookie of the Year. If anyone's a huge fan of Rookie of the Year, you might want to skip over that chapter. You're left with a bitter taste in your mouth. And I loved it when I was a kid, of course, because what child wouldn't love that movie, that fantasy? But it's such a preposterous idea, you would think that the baseball wouldn't matter at all. But when I watch that movie, all I see are the mistakes. And some of them are just completely egregious. There's a sequence

in the big game when Henry Rowan Gardner comes in in the seventh inning, and they show him striking out nine people in a montage, and yet then it is the beginning of the ninth inning. That kind of thing does not fly with baseball fans, not to mention the whole core concept of that movie, which is that... Well, sure. No, not the arm. The thing that the Cubs are going to have to sell the team because they're not drawing enough fans in a down season. As I point out in the book, you know, we all know this is the one franchise in which that was never a possibility. They literally chose

like the worst franchise in which to situate this story. It's not Cleveland, it's not Major League. Yeah, certainly not. But then Little Big League, which is an almost an equally preposterous concept about a 12 year old kid who becomes the manager of a baseball team. They take the baseball so seriously in that movie. I love. Yeah. You made me reevaluate Little Big League as sort of a proto moneyball, sabermetric precursor kind of movie. Absolutely. I mean, he is a modern manager in so many ways, not just his sabermetric precursor kind of movie. Absolutely. I mean, he is a modern manager in so many ways, not just his sabermetric thinking, which is evident in one of the great scenes in that film

where he has to kind of prove himself to the bench coach and the general manager, but also in the way he's friends with the players instead of barking orders at them like the manager he fires. And also the filmmakers understanding that this was a preposterous concept, hired so many actual major leaguers and former major leaguers to be in the movie. Some of them are stars of the league who just have one line or fewer, like Ken Griffey Jr. plays a key role in the film. Mickey Tettleton has a couple lines in the movie. Carlos Baerga shows up at one point. But then there are guys like Kevin Elster, who was taking a year off from baseball and trying to make it in Hollywood at the time with a speaking role.

And I can't remember the player who plays a blackout Gatling, the relief pitcher, somebody who also had played in the majors. And they bring an authenticity to the movie that really grounds the whole thing and keeps it from drifting off into fantasy land, cartoon territory that Rookie of the Year does. So I think even in those two cases, you can see, even when we're dealing with the preposterous, the authenticity matters a great deal. Yeah, it was Brad Leslie, I believe. That's right.

It's Blackout Gatling. You mentioned the big game, and that's a staple of the genre, of course. You mentioned the big game, and that's a staple of the genre, of course. And sometimes a movie will subvert that trope of everything boiling down to the big game, and that can be thrilling because it's so unexpected. So, for instance, Sugar, which is maybe my favorite baseball movie, at least my favorite non-Bull Durham, super popular and well-known baseball movie. It's non-Bull Durham, super popular and well-known baseball movie. There's no big game in that movie. And then sometimes the big game ends up being a loss and a heartbreak like Bad News Bears, which I think you pointed out that may have been a trailblazer in that respect to actually have the team lose. Do you think the big game is overused in baseball movies or appropriately used? Because, you know, you want some sort of Hollywood ending. Sometimes you want the kind of movie big climax, you go home happy and everything. But also it does become a trope and maybe it loses a little of its impact. So too many

big games per baseball movie. Are we properly calibrated here? Too many big games per baseball movie? Are we properly calibrated here? I think we can't have enough of them, to be perfectly honest. If they're done well, if they're done well, they work. And they can't quite save a bad movie, but they can still hit me where I need to be hit. I think of a movie like Mr. 3000, which is not a great movie. But I found the ending to that film really, really powerful. I mean, this is about a selfish guy who learns to put the team first, and I think it was well executed and it worked on me. I also watched a movie that didn't make

it into the book called American Pastime, which is a very interesting film about a baseball team that breaks out in a Japanese internment camp during World War II, and the Japanese prisoners end up playing a game against the guards and some former minor leaguers. Not a great film, but again, they nail the ending, and that works for me. So to me, having a big game at the end of a movie, on some level, that's the reason I go to the baseball movie, is for that feeling. Having said that, I completely agree with you that when a movie rejects that and subverts that trope, it can be even more powerful. Sugar is a great example. Everybody Wants Some is a great example, which doesn't even have any like baseball games in it. I believe they only

one player's only voluntary practice that lasts about five minutes. And yet it's one of the great baseball movies ever made. So that's one of the great things about the genre. And Richard Linklater, who I interviewed in the book, spoke about this. There are just so many ways to make a baseball movie because it is a game in which for long stretches of time, not a lot is happening. So there's space. And I think the genre and all the permutations of the baseball movie that have existed over the years sort of reflect that. I expected to have a bone to pick with you somewhere when it came to your selections, what you decided to devote a chapter to and what you didn't. And I think I told you,

I didn't look at the table of contents when I read the book. I wanted to be surprised as I came across each movie. And midway through the book, I was thinking, when is he going to get to this? Is he not going to – is he going to snub this or that? And you never did. So I really did not have any major complaints about which movies you decidedled with the most, either elevating to that status of, yes, this deserves a full chapter or demoting from that status. Maybe it was a movie you really liked, but just didn't think was as culturally resonant or revealing. And so there wasn't as much to say about it. Yeah, that's exactly right. It wasn't hard to decide because this wasn't a question of

which are the best baseball movies. It't a question of which are the best baseball movies. It was a question of which tell the story of America, of baseball, or of Hollywood. And usually that's going to be some variation of what are the most popular baseball movies, because the most popular ones are typically the ones that kind of put their finger on something that is going on. Having said that, I really toyed very hard with a Fever Pitch chapter, because Fever Pitch is a very important film to me personally. I'm not a Boston Red Sox fan, but I am a fan of another franchise that has caused a lot of suffering over the years, the New York Metropolitans. And I very much related to that character. And I have struggled over the course of my life as a fan and wondering how much the Mets losing

ways have affected me as a person and my relationships and my choices. And there are some moments of that movie that really kind of helped open up my mind and change some of my thinking, particularly the scene in which Ben, played by Jimmy Fallon, is drinking, drowning his sorrows after game three of the ALCS. And he sees three players from the Red Sox sitting over in the corner having a great time. And he realizes that he is a fool for taking the game harder than the actual players are. When I first saw that, I think I was 25 years old or something. And it really started to change the way I thought about being a fan.

So I care about that movie a great deal, but I couldn't quite make a case for it being an important baseball film, certainly not one that tells the story of America. You noted that there had been no traditional baseball movies that center the Mets. There are movies that mention the Mets, that the Mets show up in one way or

another. But you did kind of consider what is the team of the baseball movie, which team shows up the most. Obviously, you get the Yankees being the bad guys a lot, and sometimes the good guys, I suppose, too. But is there a team you think is overrepresented, is kind of punching above its weight when it comes to its prominence in baseball movies? And I mean, a real team, obviously many baseball movies use fictitious teams, but which one is in more movies than one would expect given the status or success or prominence of the franchise? That's a tough question because the Yankees and the Dodgers are clearly in the most, but I don't think we can say that they're overrepresented. I guess Cleveland is in quite a bit, but you have the two major league movies. They have the kid from Cleveland, which is not a great film that came out a long, a long time ago. You know, the Mets are in a lot and I sort of make the case that they are

the most cinematic baseball team. You know, they're not the star of any baseball movie, but they're in Frequency, a very strange time travel serial killer movie with Dennis Quaid and Jim Caviezel that's set against the backdrop of the 69 Mets. They are strongly represented in the Men in Black franchise, really all of the first three films, including a great sequence where this

alien character in Men in Black 3 goes to Shea Stadium and replays the 69 World Series because it is to him the most improbable event that ever occurred. And then the Mets keep showing up in a lot of other films in small ways. Characters go to Shea Stadium to watch a game instead of Yankee Stadium. Billy Crystal wears a Mets hat throughout City Slickers. And I think in many of these cases, it's because the Wilpons, or whoever owned the team at these times, they were very happy to allow their stadium or their logo to be used for some money, whereas the Yankees may have guarded their integrity a little bit more than that. It would be a nice way of putting it.

But I also do think the Mets have this sort of magical quality, this perpetual underdog quality, that when you combine with the fact that many movies are shot in New York, in the backyard of Queens, that they're just a team that keeps popping up a lot. And despite my fandom, I'm not sure they deserve to be in the movies quite as much as they are. I guess you mentioned the angels also, angels in the outfield, talent for the game. Again, maybe proximity to Hollywood, access to the team, et cetera. I think you wrote a bit about the politics of baseball movies. Well, you wrote a lot about the politics of baseball movies, but baseball movies aren't a monolith.

movies. Well, you wrote a lot about the politics of baseball movies, but baseball movies aren't a monolith. And so it's hard to sort of sum up the politics of an entire genre and films made over many decades. But one theme that became clear is that it seems like there's a lot of progressivism, relatively speaking, in baseball movies, that baseball movies, at least some of the major ones, have been pretty progressive or inclusive, relatively speaking, despite the fact that baseball is this longtime American institution and is sometimes seen as overly traditional or hidebound in certain ways. So why would you say that is? It's one of the fascinating things about baseball is that it has this dual personality to me, politically speaking, which is that it is sort of inherently nostalgic, and you could even say reactionary, right? I mean, even from its early days, baseball was pitched as a rural agrarian sport, even though it was largely played in cities. There is a kind of reactionary

politics that goes along with that, I think, in imagining things were better the way that they used to be. But it's also a sport that has inspired such great literature. There's always an intellectual on every team, somebody who reads a lot and thinks he's the smart one on the team. And smart people do seem to gravitate to the sport, or at least, you know, analytically-minded people, for sure. And I think those are the ones who end up making these movies, some of these more progressive movies, like, you know, A League of Their Own, for example, or Sugar. There is, in baseball, a striving towards equality that I think maybe doesn't exist in other sports or isn't at least

so prominent in other sports. This might not be the most progressive strain of baseball movie, but one incarnation of the baseball movie that I was not as aware of that you document toward the end of the book is the Christian baseball movie, which has really been quite prominent of late. So it's not necessarily the case that baseball movies are not being made. You just might be missing them if you're not looking in particular places, like theaters, for instance. But can you talk a little bit about the rise of the Christian baseball movie and why that's been a match made in heaven, Iowa? I don't know. Straight to streaming.

I wasn't aware of them either, Ben. And I was looking at a list, I think a baseball almanac list of all the baseball movies that had come out. I was looking for a final chapter to kind of do something different. And I kept seeing the names of these movies that came out over the last 10 years

that I had never heard of, like One Hit From Home and Running the Bases. And I was like, what are these movies? And I kept looking them up and seeing that they were made by evangelical studios or evangelical arms of major studios. And I think it all traces back to The Passion of the Christ, which is not a baseball movie. Not sure even we could classify that one.

I'd like to hear you try them. I mean, Jim Caviezel, as you said, he's been in baseball movies. So by the transitive property, I don't know, maybe. All right, I'll stop you. Don't worry. But that was such a huge hit. And it showed studios that there was an audience, a Christian audience who was very eager to see their values reflected on screen. So they started creating these arms of their studios

to produce faith-based films and market them directly to those audiences. Meanwhile, faith-based filmmakers of their own started producing these films independently and it became a whole industry. The faith-based film industry is enormous, and very often those films will break through. There's a movie called Heaven is for Real that starred Greg Kinnear in 2014 that was sort of a crossover hit. And the baseball movie is really a kind of perfect fit for this in a lot of ways, at least the way that they're making them. These films that have come out over the last 15 years bear strong resemblance, in content at least, to the baseball films of the post-war era.

Movies like The Babe Ruth Story or The Stratton Story or The Pride of St. Louis or The Winning Team. They're very often rural set stories about people who are overcoming significant obstacles in life. Quite often, it's alcoholism. Sometimes it's an intellectual disability or a physical disability. The movies are incredibly wholesome. They always feature religious themes to some degree, although in some of the films, it's backgrounded a little more. And for my money, those are often the better ones because they feel less like sermons and more like actual movies. The quality of the filmmaking is nowhere near as good as it was back in the 1940s. But the fact that the content is almost identical is really fascinating to me because it sort of indicates that those

propagandistic values of those 1940s films, they still exist, but they have sort of moved into this other area, this niche area of the Christian right. So I think that does tell us something about how the country has shifted over that time. And it is nice that baseball movies are still being made and there's still an audience for them. I wish the studios would take note of that and pick up on that audience and make some better ones. I invite any audience members to try to define The Passion of the Christ as a baseball movie if they can, and please write in. In my quick Googling, I came up with not only some Jim Caviezel baseball connections, but also this article published by the Baptist Press, March 31st, 2004, headline, Major League Baseball Players Use Passion as an Outreach. And here's the lead. Churches aren't the only ones renting out theaters

and using Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ as an outreach tool. Baseball players are doing the same thing. I just felt like it was an opportunity to get some guys to go that maybe could ask some questions afterward, said New York Mets pitcher Brayden Looper during spring training in Florida. It was a great outreach. go that maybe could ask some questions afterward, said New York Mets pitcher Braden Looper. During spring training in Florida, it was a great outreach. I think we had like 50 guys and their wives show up.

Looper is just one of a handful of players who arrange for their teammates to see the movie during spring training by renting out a movie theater or by handing out free tickets. Mike Matheny of the Cardinals invited not only his teammates on the big league team, but also the minor leaguers and their wives. And it goes on from there. So whether it's a baseball movie or not, it was at the time embraced by some baseball players. Well, now I wonder if any current players are fans of these little faith-based movies, because I mean, you would think that they would be. There's so many Christian players in major league baseball. And I did talk to a few players for this book and asked them what their favorite movies were. None of them mentioned any of these Christian movies, but you would think you'd think it'd be right up there, Alice. Yeah. Lots of Sandlot, right?

Lots of movies from that rookie of the year is a popular choice as well, despite your animus toward it. It is. But, you know, another movie that almost every player I spoke with mentioned, and I did not write a chapter on it in the book because I don't think it's very good, is For Love of the Game. And they all mentioned the same thing, which is that clear the mechanism thing that Billy Chappell does in the movie where director Sam Raimi actually visualizes what it feels like when a pitcher kind of blocks out all the crowd noise and gets into the zone before he throws a pitch. They all were quite taken with that sequence in particular, and they're willing

to label it one of the great baseball movies seemingly on that alone. So a lot of things from the 90s and 2000s coming back into fashion these days, as tends to happen 20 or so years after something falls out of fashion. Can you foresee a comeback for the baseball movie in this environment or a future environment? I know one impediment always is that studios say, well, there won't be global box office, right? And so there's two niche interests in a baseball film. It won't play overseas or at least many places overseas. But can you imagine the baseball movie surmounting that obstacle and staging some sort of comeback at box offices? I really can. Right now, the baseball movie has two things going against it.

One is that young people don't like baseball the way that they used to, and that is an important consideration for studio executives. But you're right that the international audience is more important than ever to a film's bottom line. Historically, baseball movies have not even been given the chance to perform overseas. The Natural, Major League, Bull Durham, none of them even got an international release. The few films that have done well over there typically have a movie star they can put on the poster, like Brad Pitt. Moneyball did quite well overseas. And movie stars like that are in short supply these days because of how the industry has evolved. But to me, the international element of it is our best shot. You know, we do have the

World Baseball Classic. We do have baseball becoming popular in many countries other than America right now. And to me, the World Baseball Classic would be like an amazing setting for a baseball movie. We've got so many great characters. You've got minor league players, you know, A-ball players playing for like a home country against major leaguers. You've got veterans who have sort of aged out of Major League Baseball still kind of getting their last shot on a big stage. You got managers who are former players and trying to like prove that they can handle like calling the game from the bench. There's a lot of great storylines. There's there's mentors. like calling the game from the bench. There's a lot of great storylines. There's mentors,

there's protégés, a lot of high drama. And it can, of course, end with the two best players facing off on the world's biggest stage. So I think that would make a fantastic ensemble baseball movie. But in general, I do think the internationalization of the game could open up more opportunities for it. Yeah, I was going to ask you about rich territory that has not been mined. Where's the best baseball material that people have not made movies out of already? And you're touching on it there. You mentioned in the book, how is there not a Roberto Clemente movie, for instance, right? There are movies where Clemente plays some part, like Sugar, for instance. One reason why Sugar stands out so much from the field is that it's about a drastically underrepresented demographic in baseball, right? There just

aren't that many Latin American characters in baseball movies. And the few prominent ones that there are often kind of caricatures and played for laughs, right? You also wrote in the book, the great racial baseball film has yet to be made. Maybe that's kind of connected there. So wouldn't want you to give away your best pitch here and have someone else develop it instead of you. But are there some subjects that you would like to see on screen if the baseball movie does make a comeback that you think would be the best ways for that to happen? There's so many. I mean, I think about the personalities and the stories of these players. So maybe a Kurt Flood movie would be pretty interesting. I thought, you know,

during the World Baseball Classic, I kept thinking about Randy Rosarena's story, how that could make a really kind of inspirational baseball movie. I'm also interested in more of the Moneyball type stories. Like I would love a movie about how the miners got unionized. Like I think that could make a really cool movie. Or you could make a movie about like two analytically driven baseball analysts who take over an independent league team for a year. I think that would make a fascinating film. Got a green light for me on that one. And I have shared with you my theory, my observation that even though we are in a period where baseball movies are dormant, that baseball remains overrepresented in media, in onscreen projects, whether it's movies or TV. Because even though we don't have a whole lot of baseball movies per se, and Everybody Wants Some was really the last big theatrical release

until you just informed me today that there was one last summer called The Hill that I was not even aware of, and apparently I wasn't missing that much. But I see baseball all the time. And granted, I'm obviously wired to notice that and to want to talk about it on a podcast, but you don't have to look that hard. And I shared some examples with you that you weren't even aware of, right? But it's just like baseball will show up. You know, there's the baseball scene in A Quiet Place Part Two or Tom and Jerry, which we arguably or baseball references in the MCU, Citi Field showing up in Endgame or that throwaway joke about the Tigers and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness because Sam Raimi's a big Tigers fan, right? So, do you think that I'm onto something there? And if so, why? And will that last? It's a great question. And just as one more example, whenever I go to the gym,

Young Sheldon is always on, and they are always playing baseball in Young Sheldon. I think the daughter is playing Little League in that show, from what I can gather from my snippets of it. But they always seem to be on a Little League field. And I do think the reason is that images of baseball are just very fundamental to the character of this country. They speak to a wholesomeness. They speak to a nostalgia. You know, for the people making art today, making art at this level, they're probably our age or older, most of them. So for them, when they were young, baseball was

still the number one sport in this country, and it really held our collective imagination. So I think that is the main reason why it still pops up in so many places. The question of whether it will continue is a very interesting one because by that rationale, you would think it would be replaced over time with basketball or football. But baseball has some other things going for it, which is that it's easier to film, number one. It is hard to film the kind of constant movement in basketball, the choreography of the game, and football carries with it all sorts of other concerns. Baseball has a lot of stillness in it.

It also has a lot of confrontation. I do think there's something inherently cinematic about baseball. When I think about a pitcher staring down into the catcher, the batter staring back at the pitcher, it makes me think of a Western. the catcher, the batter staring back at the pitcher. It makes me think of a Western. It makes me think of a man with no name facing off against someone in a dusty town somewhere. And I think baseball kind of inherently touches that fundamental cinematic thing. The Western is as old a genre as the baseball movie, and both of them speak intrinsically to America and American culture. So I'm not sure that can ever be replicated or replaced by images of football or basketball. I don't think they

touch quite the same nerve. So I imagine these scenes of baseball will be around for quite a while. Yeah, maybe it does. It just sort of signifies something, right? And Young Sheldon is set in the late 80s, early 90s, kind of signifies something, right? And Young Sheldon is set in the late 80s, early 90s, kind of the sweet spot, the peak for baseball movies. It's a period piece. So maybe it's just, yeah, this was popular then, right? Or if it's A Quiet Place Part Two, for instance, you see everyone playing, the kids are playing baseball. It's this idyllic pastoral sort of scene, and that's disrupted by the invasion of the monsters from outer space. Right.

But if you want to sort of signify the calm before the storm, you're playing baseball, not like football where people are smashing into each other. Right. Maybe maybe that makes more sense. So I think it does. But on the other hand, like Night Swim, like there's no reason that guy had to be a baseball player. Not really. It could have been any sport, and yet they chose it anyway, which I think is very encouraging, actually, for the future of the baseball movie. Yeah, I hope that continues if only so it keeps providing podcast content for us. So lastly, if you want to either shout out some unsung baseball movie, one that's maybe not part of the Mount Rushmore of baseball movies,

but that you think deserves to be or that you'd like people to see if they haven't, or maybe a movie that changed your mind the most as you were working on this book. I'm sure that you had seen all or most of these movies before you started working on the book, but you must have done a baseball movie marathon to refresh your memory. I wonder how many times you have seen some of these movies now, though you were probably watching scene by scene sometimes. So it's almost tough to tabulate. But was there a movie that changed your mind or was raised the most in your estimation as you were working on this? And if it's not that, what would be your hot tip,

your kind of hipster pick for you got to check out this one? Well, I heard you mentioned The Phenom on another podcast, and I'm a big fan of The Phenom. I actually had not seen it before I started working on this book, and I thought it was really good. It's sort of in the tradition of Fear Strikes Out to me. It's about a young prospect who has these kind of Freudian issues that he's dealing with. As you've mentioned, Paul Giamatti is in it, which is there's a great baseball lineage there. Ethan Hawke has been in these Linklater movies, so that seems like a little baseball connected too.

I actually thought Johnny Simmons was really good in it as the pitcher with the yips. And, you know, unlike how Tony Perkins played a psychologically damaged person in Fear Strikes Out, which was very histrionic and very method, Simmons is very blank in this movie, which I think in my mind is actually truer to how young athletes often are. I thought it was a really good performance. I would also shout out a couple of international baseball movies that I saw. I didn't speak about them in the book because this is a book about America in many ways, but there's a great Japanese baseball film called I Will Buy You from, I believe, 1956.

I would pair it with Moneyball in a weird way because it is about a scout who is trying to sign a hot young prospect. And in fact, there's numerous scouts from numerous teams trying to sign him. And it's a very bleak look at the commodification of these players. And that's one of the critiques I've heard of Moneyball from actual players that I spoke with, including Trevor Hildenberger, who gave a great quote in my book about why he hates Moneyball so much as somebody who unionized the minor leagues. He had a very strong take on how that movie celebrates paying people as little as possible. I Will Buy You really kind of digs into that idea that like the dehumanization

of how capitalism has sort of taken over the game and how scouts and teams sort of see players only as commodities. It's a very bleak movie that has very little baseball in it, but I think it says something sort of important about the game that no American movie is really willing to do. Well, we have barely scratched the surface here. There are so many more baseball movies and so much more to Baseball, the movie. So where can people pick up the book

and where can they see you talking about it? So it's available for pre-order now. It goes on sale on Tuesday, May 14th. So if you order it now, you'll basically get it when everyone else does. I will be in New York for my launch event on Tuesday evening at the Barnes & Noble Upper West Side at seven o'clock doing an event with Bradford William Davis,

which should be a lot of fun. And there'll be a whole lot of other events across the country to come. You can find them on my Twitter account, it's Noah Gattel. And hopefully by be a whole lot of other events across the country to come. You can find them on my Twitter account. It's Noah Gittel. And hopefully by the time the book comes out, my website will be fully functional and you can find all the events there. It's just noahgittel.com. Well, congrats on the book. It's a really good one. Glad I got to read it before everyone else. I felt super special, but I'm happy that everyone else is about to get their hands on it.

Thanks very much for coming on, Noah. Nice to talk to you. Thanks for having me, Ben. All right. One more segment to go. After the break, I'll be back with frequent StatBlast correspondent Ryan Nelson for some serious StatBlasting. And the break will consist of a brand new cover of my wife's excellent StatBlast song

performed by listener Guy Russo. Wayne's Here's to Gay Stat Blast Alright, I am joined once more by frequent Stat Blast correspondent not consultant as we established last time Ryan Nelson. Hello Ryan, welcome back Hey Ben, good to be here again maybe a little too quick for some. Getting pretty regular.

Yeah, this is the shortest time between your appearances, but Meg's been traveling a lot, so this is what happens. We got a stat blast somehow at some point, and you have brought a quartet of stat blasts, and I actually have a couple that I have obtained independently of you because we don't have an exclusive stat blast relationship. I do see other stat blasters sometimes. I hope you don't mind. In fact, you probably welcome it because it means that I'm bothering you less. But it depends on the data source. And you can handle most of these stat blast requests with your RetroSheet acumen.

But occasionally, there's something that involves other data that's not available via RetroSheet, pitch data, whatever it is, where I will go to my stable. I'll send someone a late-night text, you up, and we'll reunite. I just stat around a little bit. But you're my go-to. I always come back to you for most of my requests and I appreciate that you're always there waiting for me. Oh, of course. Yeah. These data guys, man, they're stingy. They're stingy with their data. They don't want it out there. They should just post everything all the time and then we'd all be happy. I'm data-ing around, I guess you could say.

That was good. You probably shouldn't, but I did. So the first of our questions here, all of your stat blasts today are prompted by listener emails. And Craig says, I was playing a game in my DynastyLeagueBaseball.com league in which TJ Friedel hit for the cycle. It was a road game for me, but he had previously hit for the cycle in a home game earlier in the season. I know you've done a stat blast about the rarity of cycles in the past, but my mind was racing and I became very curious about something. Has any player in the history of Major League Baseball had a single, double, triple, and home run in every ballpark? Not necessarily in a single game, but have they had each type of hit over the course

of their career? Obviously, this would mean every ballpark that was around during their career. We hear talked about as an accomplishment when players have homered in all 30 ballparks, but what about the ballpark cycle over their careers? Maybe ballpark isn't the best way to look at this, but against every team they faced, I'd be absolutely shocked if someone did this unless it was from a very long time ago, especially with the lack of interleague play. If the answer is no one, which player has the highest total or did anybody in the past do it against just the teams in their respective league? What do you got for us? Yep. So the answer is no.

No one's done it. Right. Sad. So the answer is no, no one's done it, right? A lot of the times that's the answer, unfortunately. But there was some interesting stuff we got from here, from this question still. So did not go in vain. There are several examples. We kind of got towards the end of the question. They posed maybe not every team in Major League Baseball, but maybe every team in their league.

And we do see some of those, especially in the 19-teens through the 1930s. We have some players here who they got this lifetime cycle, as I called it, in every park they played in. This is only eight teams in the league at this point, so it's not as impressive. But I'll read off some names here, not big names, but names like Sam Chapman, Harland Clift, Names like Sam Chapman, Harland Clift, Bobby Estalela, Chet Lobs, Wally Moses, Brago Roth. These are players I had to look up to be candid. But actually, surprisingly, some of them are pretty solid players. Harland Clift had a 40-plus war career, Wally Moses 37 more.

So maybe, guys, we would know if we were 100 years years older than we are, but so no, no one's ever done this. Probably the closest person I found that is in relatively modern times and really fits the truer definition here is actually Dave Winfield. Uh, so Dave Winfield played in 33 different stadiums and those 33 stadiums tied to 26 franchises. Some franchises had field changes while he was playing and he got a lifetime cycle on 27 of them of the 33 stadiums and that includes 24 of the franchises I believe. He did not do it against the Reds and the Tigers who he did play many games against and then the Rays and the d-backs didn't exist yet and the marlins and the rockies he never played against because they got founded in his last couple years in the league and i guess he was in the american league at the time i believe so

of the teams he played against which is 26 he did it against 24 of them which is really really impressive um of course not surprisingly the reds and the tigers the two teams he did play against and he missed, he did not get the triple. So he did get singles, doubles, and homers against both those teams as well. But triples are the hard ones to come across. If we look a little more modern, so I did players who debuted since the 2000s. Curtis Granderson and Jose Reyes stand kind of in their own tier in this regard. Reyes stand kind of in their own tier in this regard.

We have Granderson. He actually did it in 24 of the 34 stadiums he played in, which is 71%, far and away the highest number since the year 2000. And Reyes was only one stadium shy at 23, but he actually played in 40 stadiums because I think he changed leagues a little bit more and had a little bit earlier career. I think he played in some stadiums that Curtis Granderson didn't early in his career. No one else had more than 18 stadiums or 50% of the stadiums played in.

So in modern era, those are the two guys that make sense. Guys that played a long time and got some triples, I think is the two things that you need to do to be high on this list. Yeah. Winfield, I guess, makes sense because he played forever. He played for 22 years, although I guess that could be a double-edged sword because you play longer, you play in more ballparks or more opponents potentially.

But he was also a pretty well-rounded offensive player, obviously big-time slugger, but had some speed too. So he was capable of tripling, which some sluggers are not. And then I guess it also depends maybe on the era you play in, like, was there a ballpark boom going on or was it fairly stable or was there a lot of expansion or was it pre or post interleague? So a lot of things have to line up and I guess they did, or they came close to lining up for Winfield. I wish he'd done it. That would be a cool accomplishment,

the career ballpark cycle or versus opponent cycle or whatever we would call it. I guess we don't really need to name it because no one has done it, but maybe someone will. Yeah, the 30 team era, it's just going to be really hard. Although with the balanced schedule, this is probably the best era to ever have a chance to do it is now. Because you're actually going to get a chance to play everywhere without having to change leagues halfway through. That's true. Okay, well, we'll keep an eye out. Fingers crossed that someone one day will do it.

Good question. I like these questions that are about some cool accomplishment. It's better, obviously, when you find out that someone actually did do it and we can celebrate that. But close calls are entertaining too. All right, question from Joel. This was sent in early May, but I don't think anything important

about this has changed since. After last night's game, Joel writes, the Tigers are now one and three in games that they went into the bottom of the ninth up 1-0. What are the worst team records and most losses in a season by teams in games where they had 1-0 leads going into the bottom of the ninth? For the Tigers, who've scored a disproportionate segment of their runs late, that record seems strange to me. Yeah, it is strange. It's strange in multiple ways, actually.

First of all, you expect to win most games that you're up 1-0 in the bottom of the ninth. So the fact that they have a losing record seems weird. But almost the weirder piece here, which I didn't really expect to be strange, but found that it is, is just that they've even had four of these to begin with, like four opportunities. No team ever has had more than five in an entire season. Games where they

were up 1-0 going into the bottom of the ninth in an entire season, ever five. And they're already at four in early May. So that piece alone is probably the more bizarre piece. Only 28 teams ever have ever even had four, period. So they're in the top 28 for an entire season with, what is it, four months to go, four and a half months to go. They're already tied for second all-time. Truly bizarre that they even had that, for sure. Yeah, and they're not even the team that you would think would be likely to do it. I guess it's largely random. I guess they don't have a great offense, so that helps.

They're 24th in WRC+. So I guess that part of it makes you think that they'd be good candidates because they don't score more than one run sometimes, take themselves out of the conversation. But the pitching, it's like middle of the pack pitching, I guess, so far. Maybe ERA-wise, since that's kind of what we care about, or RA, really, but ERA-wise, they've been seventh so far as we're recording. So, okay, maybe I misspoke. Maybe they are a decent candidate to do this, given their mix of offensive and run prevention skills, but still to be on pace to blow away that record,

another thing to monitor. But having had that many games, how weird is it then to have lost most of them? Yeah, also pretty weird. So the all-time record for teams in these scenarios is 1,486 and 329. So that's an 819 winning percentage. So 80% of the time you go in with a 1-0 lead in the ninth, you expect to win. So to be at 25% is not good. In fact, there's never been any team ever to have gone 1-3 in these games. So we have some teams that

have performed poorly. There's a ton of teams that have gone 0-1 in these games. They just fluke had one of these and they lost. There a ton of teams that have gone 0-1 in these games. They just fluke had one of these and they lost. There's even a handful that have gone 0-2. There's only one team ever to have gone 0-3. And even this team did not do that today. The Tigers this year have not done that because they did win their first one of these four games. And of course, it's the 63 Mets, who famously have the worst road record of any team ever in the history of baseball, or at least in the modern era. I guess if you go back to some

of these 1800s teams, perhaps that's not the case. I can't recall. But I dove into that because I thought that'd be interesting to see what's going on there. So I found some humorous game examples in their three games. So the three times they did this on July 19th, the Mets scored one in the fourth, but then closer Roger Craig allowed a walk-off to run Homer to Roy Seavers. So, you know,

walk-off home run. That makes sense. That's usually the way you blow this. Yeah. On August 20th. So about a month later, the Mets scored one in the first, but then Roger Craig allowed a solo home run to Roy Seavers.

So same pitcher, same hitter. The Mets would go on to lose 2-1 in 12 innings on that one. So Roy Seavers banned from Queens for the rest of his life, I'm sure. And lastly, just a week after that second example, on the 27th of August, the Mets scored one in the second, but then in the bottom of the ninth, there was a man on first and the Mets a lot of single both runners scored because there was two errors on the play. And so knowing that this is late into the season, one of the worst seasons of all time, I figured there was probably some interesting newspaper articles about this play. And I was able to find one from each perspective,

one from the Mets and one from the Pirates, who they were playing in that game. I don't know if you want to read it. You have the pro voice. I don't want to subject anyone. But I thought the articles were pretty humorously written. Yeah, no, go ahead. You can take it.

I will link to them, of course. So I'll skip ahead a little bit. There actually was an incident earlier in this game where the Mets starting pitcher got a line drive to the face, which is not great, and had to go to the hospital for x-rays. But in the ninth, the manager sent in his, I'll be reading from the article now, manager sent in his defensive outfield at the start of the stanza, Joe Christopher for Snyder and Wright, Rod Canel for Thomas and left, and Duke Carmel remained in center and proved to be a soft-centered Carmel,

which was great. With one out and Schofield on first via walk, Manny Moda lashed a ground single up the middle. Carmel charged, bent down for the scoop and the ball dribbled through him for just a few feet. Christopher rushing over for the backup made the recovery and fired to the plate as Schofield raced for home. The peg skipped off target some six feet to the left of the plate just as Ducky raced across with the nodder. Sisko, backing

up at home, ran the ball down at the screen and suddenly was alerted by the roar of the crowd. Here came Moda the motor, not bothering to stop at third or even slow down. Sisko fired to Gonder, but Jesse was standing for some reason a full step in the rear of the plate.

By the time he turned for the lunging tag, Moda was hooking across neatly on the inside of the diamond. Casey Stangle, manager, was so furious at the thought of being beaten

by a four-base grounder, he flung his cap out of the dugout then stomped off the field. In this strange fashion was Bob Friend's invincibility against the Mets continued. Friend now is 8-0 over them since their inception. This time, he actually was out of the game when awarded the win. He had been removed for an outmaking

pinch swinger to open the bottom of the ninth. So, not great. Obviously, some frustrating writing from the author there. Probably the 400th frustrated article he's written as a Mets beat writer at this point in the Mets franchise. Tough to rewrite game stories from about the 62 and 63 Mets. I mean, I guess it gives you a lot of material initially, right? But at a certain point, you end up repeating yourself probably. I guess it's a good book about those teams. Jimmy Breslin's Can't Anybody Here Play This Game. So initially, it's levels of terribleness that you rarely see. And poor Casey Stengel saddled with the worst teams of all time after playing with

all-time great teams across town. It lends itself to some humor. But yeah, at a certain point, the charm must wear off. Yeah, it does. And there is an article, I won't read this one because it's mostly the same info, but from the Pittsburgh newspaper that was written exactly the same, but with a grin, clearly, you can read through the words, the grin that the writer had. And also just, this is apropos of nothing. I noticed they said reliever in the article, like reliever with an F instead of a V. Right. I don't know if you know anything about that, but that was news to me that we've ever spelled

it that way. Yeah, I think I've heard that. I haven't heard it recently. It's more of an archaic thing. I don't know that it was ever like the dominant term, but maybe there's been a bit of a shift from reliever to reliever because it wasn't quite as common to, I mean, they had relievers obviously, but there were fewer of them dedicated relievers. So they had to figure out what to call them. We could chart the use of reliever versus reliever over time. That would be interesting to me and maybe one or two other listeners.

There's literally a dozen of us. Yeah. Okay. Well, you never want to be in the same conversation or cohort as the 63 Mets, so that's not a great sign for the Tigers, but they are a much better team than that, at least. Okay. Jacob says, some friends and I were talking about Alec Manoa's call-up, and I joked that he's either going to get 12 strikeouts or let up 12 earned runs, to which my friend responded, or both. That got us wondering, what pitcher has had the most of the lesser in a single game? For example, has a pitcher ever had both 10 strikeouts and 10 earned runs in a single outing?

Feels like you'd have to era limit it, because there's probably some Tungsten-doyle type in the 1890s who pitched a 13-in incomplete game and got like 15 of each. I suppose a simpler but less interesting question would be who has had the most combined, but then you'd probably just get a pretty bimodal distribution of starts with a lot of strikeouts and few earned runs,

then some starts with a lot of earned runs and a handful of strikeouts. Not totally runs. Benson starts with a lot of earned runs and a handful of strikeouts. Not totally sure where the balance between those would be. Yeah, absolutely. So it's so funny how many times people write a question and say, maybe it's this, and that's the answer. So yes, the answer is- What do you need us for?

10 strikeouts and 10 earned runs is the answer for most of, I guess, the maximum of the minimum is the way to say that? Yeah. So that has happened one time. So it was by Howard Mills, who was a pitcher for the St. Louis Browns on August 24th, 1939. He threw a complete game against the Yankees and allowed 10 earned runs, but struck out 10. So that is the standalone record.

Nine has happened seven times, mostly kind of in that same time frame, teens, 20s, 30s. But we did have one example in 1980, when on September 26th, Mike Norris pitched for the A's against the Brewers, also through a complete game with 10 earned runs, but only nine strikeouts. And then as recently as 2003, when Ryan Dempster for the Reds threw a six-inning game against the Braves, where he allowed nine earned runs and 10 strikeouts. So that's almost more impressive to do it in six innings. Both ways, both the strikeouts and the earned runs. 19 times. That's where it obviously stops getting impressive. I think a start with six strikeouts and six earned runs would almost just go under the radar as just a bad start. I don't think it would be notable in anyone else's viewpoint. That's actually Alec Manoa's first start for the Jays this year after his call-up was four innings, six earned runs, six strikeouts, right? So he also allowed seven total runs, so there was one unearned run in there,

but on a rate basis, that's pretty good strikeout plus earned run accumulation. But you're right. It's not really historic going by the totals. Right. So I did look at it the other way as well. So if we just summed the earned runs and strikeouts, so our point to beat here is Mills 20 with 10 and 10. There were three games where a pitcher beat that. I should say three games where he got at least seven of each where they beat that. We have Nolan Ryan, 1977, June 16th. He did an 8.2 inning game where he allowed seven runs and 14 strikeouts. He did not finish the game.

Well, I guess he did finish the game. He did not pitch nine innings because he actually got a walk-off loss. So despite having earned seven earned runs, he was in a position to at least hold a tie, maybe still get the win, but he did allow a walk-off there. So despite 14 Ks, lost the game and seven earned runs. There's also Tom Hughes who pitched for the Orphans, the predecessor to the Chicago Cubs, against the Cardinals on September 15th, 1901. He did throw a complete game, 12 earned runs, nine strikeouts. So both those two games are 21 is your total. And there was one game ever with 22 being the total. And I think this game is actually fairly

notable. I found an article written about think this game is actually fairly notable. I found an article written about this. This is fairly well known. But Bob Feller pitched for the Indians against the Yankees on August 26, 1938. He did throw the complete game. He got seven strikeouts, but he allowed 15 earned runs. Likely considered Bob Feller's worst game of his career. Maybe one of the worst games ever from that perspective. 15 earned runs. Likely considered Bob Feller's worst game of his career. Maybe one of the worst games ever from that perspective. 15 earned runs is really just saying, all right, go back out there and take it. Yeah, I guess we're not going to see anyone challenge these

most likely these days because it takes a lot of pitches thrown to allow that many earned runs and get that many strikeouts, right? So it'd be tough to rack up that kind of combined total these days. Right. Yeah. And then the last way I did look at it was if I just removed all minimums,

not even requiring seven of each, just saying what's truly the highest sum total between the two. 23 is the answer. So a little bit higher. They're both almost the exact same type of game. little bit higher. They're both almost the exact same type of game. It's when Steve Carlton and Randy Johnson both had 19 strikeout for earned run games. Interestingly enough, they're also the only games in MLB history where a player had 19 strikeouts and lost. So granted only 12 times as a pitcher had 19 strikeouts. So the sample is pretty small. But both of those, they had this sum total of 23. That is the highest possible there. And then just to take it all back home,

thought this was really interesting as well. We mentioned Bob Feller had his worst game ever, one of the worst games, period, by any pitcher against the Yankees that time. About a month later, there was another Bob Feller game where he actually had only four runs allowed and struck out 18. So his total there was 22 in the other direction. And that was only a month later. So a good way to come back

and recover from the worst game and really throw one of the best games of all time with an 18 strikeout four run game. Alright, well we'll see how high Alec Manoa can go. Wilson, Patreon supporter, says, at the conclusion of today's games, when he sent us this question, the Marlins and Rockies have a combined record of 16-48. Is that the most combined losses in a series played this early in the season? Using the point at which every team has played between 30 and 35 games as the rough benchmark.

This seems like a particularly futile series between two teams that fell on their faces right at the starting pistol, but I'm sure there have been even sadder early season series. I just can't find any in cursory Googling. And when cursory Googling fails, that's when you submit the question as a stat blast that I sent to Ryan Nelson. So what'd you come up with? Yeah, that's right. So the instinct there is correct. You know, if we look at futility, this example is kind of child's play.

So for reference, you know, these two teams combined, the Marlins and the Rockies, to be a 16 and 48 record at the point of this game mentioned, which is a 250 win percentage. Obviously terrible. No one wants to be there, but especially if we look at early baseball, that's kind of nothing. The lowest combined win percentage for two opponents with a minimum of 64 combined games played, which is the number that these Rockies and Marlins were at at the time. It's actually happened during a September 11th game in 1875. So the New Haven Elm Cities played the Brooklyn Atlantics. New Haven entered the game with a 6-34 record,

which in comparison is quite good compared to Brooklyn's 2-37 record. So these two teams combined to have an average win percentage of 101. So less than half the win rate of the lowly 250 we have today. So, you know, even that one, even for old timey baseball, that's an anomaly.

The second lowest ever was a year later when the athletics and the white stockings, which by the way, they're not those athletics or those white socks, but the other ones, they were six and 50 and 14 and 41 respectively, which is a 180 win percentage. So that 101 is truly, even for old baseball that doesn't count, is truly exceptional. But there's still plenty of examples lower than the 250 that we have here.

But if we just look since the year 1900, there's only one team to have it where they had a lower win percentage combined in this many games. And you have to go all the way back to May 5th of last year when the 6-26 A's and the 8-24 Royals faced each other. That is a 2-19 combined win percentage. That is the only time since 1900 that is lower than this example that the listener pointed out. And it only happened last year. So I don't know if that says anything about tanking teams or super teams. I know that's a topic we're always talking about, but the two lowest of the last 124 years have been in the last 12 months. Yeah, that makes sense. I did see a stat somewhere about this year having

like the largest collection of truly terrible teams after April. I forget the exact formulation of the fun or unfun fact, but we've had some really, really, really bad teams at the start of the season. And I guess if you're a truly terrible team, you're probably happy to see another truly terrible team come to town or to visit that team's town, you're probably happy to see another truly terrible team come to town or to visit that team's town because you're probably going to get a win somewhere in there when the Marlins and Rockies matched up. The Marlins actually lost three out of four. So maybe you feel even worse after that series if you have like the battle of the anti-Titans and it turns out you come up short

but at least they won one can feel reasonably confident that you won't get swept it's just like the misery loves company series it's like something's got to give i guess some someone's got to win it's i don't know it's like the unstoppable force versus the immovable object although here it might be like the unstartable force and the immovable object. Although here it might be like the unstartable force and the immovable objects. I don't know. They both just sit there inert. We've seen a lot of matchups

of truly terrible teams this year. Yeah, as a Braves fan, the gaps of not winning have been slim and few and far between, which is a blessing, of course. But I do recall some 2016 games watching Williams, Perez Perez and Tyrell Jenkins and Rio Ruiz

and at that point you're looking for anything just anything to keep you sane because it's not a fun place to be so if you can get a couple wins against another terrible team you'll take anything you can get Okay well thank you for your stat blasting and now you just get to be the listener and the audience

as I regale you with two more stat blasts. This one comes from John, who is a Patreon supporter and who says, I don't play Immaculate Grid, but I still found myself also about mostly bad teams, although maybe not so much this year when it comes to the Pirates. This unimpressive list has Denny Nagel at the top of the war leaderboard with 10.7. I got to thinking about how the Pirates have been mostly irrelevant for the entire existence of the Rockies, and the Rockies have been the Rockies for the entire existence of the Rockies. So in addition to not sharing a lot of good players who've played for both franchises, they also have not played a lot of important games against each other. How could we measure this? I'm thinking of something along the lines of championship probability or something like that, but on a team and game level. Maybe we could find which two franchises have played for the highest stakes on average over the course of all of their matchups in history.

The flip side, I'm just guessing, is something like the Pirates and Rockies who have played each other year after year with very little other than pride on the line. And the reason I went to another stat blaster is that sometimes baseball reference has some handy data that someone else might be able to access more easily. So I went to semi-frequent stat blast consultant slash correspondent Kenny Jacklin here, who has, of course, the entire baseball reference database at his disposal and their archive of championship leverage index, which is sort of what John was saying here. We need something that could measure how important each game is. And I asked Kenny to just give me an average of all of the games played between those two teams. What's the average championship leverage index of every matchup. And he gave me every franchise versus franchise matchup in history. I asked him to just flag the active

ones too. So when I put the spreadsheet on the show page, there will be separate tabs for all time and just the current franchises. But championship leverage index, basically 1.0 is just an average game, just average momentousness, average stakes, average amount of determining who will win the championship that year. with a significant sample. Angels versus Mariners, 728 all-time games, all of them in the regular season, average CLI of exactly 1.0 average. That makes so much sense. It does, right? That's exactly the right matchup. Angels and Mariners, yeah.

That's just as average as it gets. Those teams have been good sometimes, or at least one of them has been good at times, but how often have both of them been good? But also they haven't been that bad, right? Like they've been bad, but they haven't been truly, truly terrible for the most part.

So 1.0, they're just average. They're the baseline, the yardstick that everyone else is measured against. So I asked John whether he wanted me to include postseason here, because obviously that could skew things, but it skews things maybe in a way that you want them to be skewed, because we're talking about, well, which two franchises have had the highest stakes matchups. And John said he did want playoffs included, but Kenny gave it to me both ways.

He gave it to me overall, and he also gave me just the regular season average CLI and also just the postseason CLI. You can look at the spreadsheet. You can break it down any way you want. But if we just look at the overall average CLI in all games between two franchises, it's probably the two that you would expect. It's the Yankees versus the Dodgers, right? Like they've had a lot of memorable matchups, a lot of world serieses, lots of years where they were going toe to toe. games against each other because they're in different leagues, obviously, but 85 total games between the Dodgers and the Yankees. But their average CLI is 51.4, 51.4. So I guess 51 times more important, more exciting, more high stakes than the average game, than the Mariners-Angels game.

Now, most of that obviously is from their postseason matchups. And those are a lot of World Series matchups where you're going to get the biggest CLI figures and swings. So they have played 66 games in the postseason against each other. And the average CLI of their postseason games is 65.9. They've only played 19 regular season games, and their average regular season CLI is actually 0.99. So again, like dead on average. The average Dodgers-Yankees regular season game

has been about as high stakes as your average Mariners-Angels game. But the Dodgers and the Yankees, they have all those postseason games that have skewed things. So that's the answer if you go by that. And if you go by that same metric, I'll just give you, I guess, the top 10. There's a lot of Yankees in there, as you might imagine. So it's Yankees-Dodgers, it's Yankees-Giants, it's Yankees-Cardinals. Those are the top three. Then Red Sox Cardinals, Cardinals Rangers. I can remember some memorable matchups between those two teams. Twins Giants, Orioles Pirates, Oakland St. Louis, Cubs Tigers, and then Yankees and Braves, and then Yankees and Pirates and then Yankees and Pirates and then Braves and Cleveland. So these are obviously heavily skewed by the postseason CLI.

And if we just go by postseason CLI, you kind of have to like get the sample up or it's just going to be like one series for the most part. So like the highest average postseason CLI is Detroit versus Pittsburgh, but it's only seven total games. So if we set it to like 20, then Boston and St. Louis is actually the highest with a very nice 69.3 postseason CLI.

And then it's Braves-Yankees and then you get to Dodgers-Yankees. So maybe that's the most interesting, or maybe that's the least interesting. I don't know. But I'm going to give you the average for the regular season as well. So just the highest average CLI for all of the regular season matchups. And if we do that, again, sample size really comes into play here. So I don't know, we have to decide where we want to set that. But if we have no minimum whatsoever, then it's actually two franchises that have played a lot total games against each other, 2,013 in the regular season, and their average regular season CLI is 2.48. So that's as high as it goes, like two and a half times higher stakes than your average Mariners-Angels game. And after that, it's the Cubs and the Giants, and then the Dodgers and the Giants.

Okay, great rivalry. Makes sense. The White Sox and the Yankees, the Pirates and the Giants, the Dodgers and the Cardinals, the Tigers and the Yankees. Then you get Red Sox-Yankees, almost 2,300 total games, 2,274 in the regular season with a 2.15 average CLI, and then 24 in the postseason with almost a 30 CLI between those two teams. And then finally, the Yankees and the A's. So that's at the high end. I guess I'll give you the lowest CLIs too, because that was what prompted the question here. So again, as you were saying,

usually the listener's intuition is pretty good. Here it is too. So this was prompted by Rockies versus Pirates, and they have the ninth lowest average CLI in all games of all time, but that's with no minimum. So with no minimum, the lowest average CLI is Royals versus Padres. And again, I guess that makes so much sense. Yeah. It's, you know, not a total shocker, I guess. Like obviously, you know, Royals have had a lot of great teams. Padres have had some, but for the most part, yeah, a lot of fallow periods for those franchises, especially when they've been matching up, right, in interleague play. So 21 total games, average CLI of 0.41. So less than half as momentous as the average Angels-Mariners game. So when those two teams have matched up, which has always been in the regular season for obvious reasons,

they have both basically been out of it. But if we raise the number of games played with no minimum, it's Royals, Padres, Royals, Nationals, and then Orioles, Marlins, Cubs, Royals, White Sox, Padres. Then you get to Royals-Rays, and that's sort of a significant sample,

187 games all in the regular season. So with a sizable sample, that's the lowest average CLI at 0.49. Then you get Royals-Pirates, Orioles-Rockies, and then the matchup that prompted the question. So Rockies and Pirates they played 231 games all in the regular season average CLI of 0.55 they're either the ninth lowest average CLI matchup or the second lowest if you set the minimum at say 50 games against each other I'm

actually surprised by the magnitude of the swings from two and a half times over however many. That's a really big difference. I was kind of surprised it was going to be that big of a difference. Yeah. I'm going to channel my inner kid raising his hand asking if we have a quiz tomorrow. I think an interesting way to look at this too would be maybe absolute change in championship probability added

over the course of all games. Yeah. Because then that would actually kind of wait and control for that minimum, right? If you only played three or four games, even if they were in the World Series. True. It might not have the impact of the Giants and the Dodgers, for example, which, for the record, that was going to be my guess. So, yeah, sounds like a good guess, but maybe not that I don't think I got the number one

answer. All right. Well, thanks to Kenny for that. And then this last one isn't so much a question as a case of a listener just doing their own stat blast. It's always fun when a listener supplies a stat blast and we just relate it. But it's got to be a good one. And I thought this one was pretty good.

And this came from Michael Eisen, Patreon supporter, who says, were you aware that last year, Austin Cox set the record for most outs recorded before allowing a hit to start a career? Were you aware of that? I was not aware of that. I don't think I was aware of that either. Royals pitcher Austin Cox evidently set that record, which sounds sort of impressive. I think he also tied the record for most outs recorded before the first hit of a season until that was broken this year by the Astros' Ronaldo Blanco, who had 44. He didn't have that great a season on the whole. He had a 4.54 ERA, 99 ERA plus in 24 games. All but three were starts and maybe those were opener games. So despite the strong start, at least when it came to hit prevention, he didn't go on to have that great a season.

And maybe that is fitting because it's not that distinguished a list of the leaders in this category. So Michael says that Austin Cox's record got some mentions out there, but I hadn't heard it. Michael says that Austin Cox's record got some mentions out there, but I hadn't heard it. Neither had I. And Michael says, I came across this because a friend asked me if Cole Wynn's 18 outs and running this season were unusual. And so I parsed the Retro Chic data and Cox was at the top of the list. Cole Wynn, I think he ended up at 21 outs this season before he allowed his first hit. He is a pitcher for the Rangers.

And again, for him, things have not gone so great since then. Because Cole Wynn, he has an ERA of 6.10 on the season in just eight games. And again, the first few of those games were good. He didn't allow a hit in his first five outings. But then his sixth outing, when the streak was stacked, he allowed four earned runs and got only one out. And since then, he's had another two-inning, three-run outing. So that kind of blew up his ERA despite the strong start. So Cox at the top of the list, Michael says,

I hope he takes some pleasure in this fact as he toils in double A, which again, like this is followed by indignity. So Austin Cox, he set this record. He went longer without allowing a hit than anyone ever has at the start of a career. And not only did things not go so great after that, but he's not even a major leaguer now. He was probably thinking to himself, like, this is all I got? This is easy. Like, these guys can't touch me. And now he's back in the minors, though.

I guess he's back at AAA now, or at least he spent some time at AAA. Anyway, Michael sends along the full list, and he says, it's a lot of no-names. Most of them accumulated these innings in relief, but my own personal favorite, Billy Rohrer, R-O-H-R, remains the closest to going a full nine hit list in his first appearance. So yeah, the leaderboard, it's Austin Cox at 35 outs, and then Mark Rogers, 28 outs. Randy Hennis, 27 outs. Billy Rohrer, 26 outs. That was just in one game though.

Joel McKeon, 26 outs. Emmett Sheehan, more recently, 25 outs. Jose Santiago, 25 outs. Hank Borowie, 24 outs. You have to get to the ninth guy on the list, Juan Marichal, before you get to a really name-brand great pitcher who made it 23 outs. So Juan Marichal went on to pitch 3,507 career innings, and Hank Borwee, who is just ahead of him, he pitched 1,516 innings. 16 innings, but the top seven guys combined for 325 and two-thirds innings in their career.

Obviously, Sheehan is still adding to that and maybe Coxwell too, but a lot of those guys, they didn't last very long, which must have been real whiplash for them. It's like, gosh, I was just kind of cruising along here and suddenly I'm no longer a major leaguer anymore. They made up for lost time with those hits. So it really is not very predictive. It doesn't really tell you anything about whether the guy's going to go on to have a great career or not. You'd think there'd be like some slight signal there. But I guess it's just that most pitchers are not very good by Major League standards. And this is going to be pretty heavily subject to randomness and I guess, you know,

a lot of relievers. And so the odds are they just won't be very good pitchers, even if being a good pitcher would help you have this sort of streak, you would think. It's kind of like an impressive record, but not a very impressive group of pitchers who have compiled these runs. Yeah. All I could think of as you're reading the list is, man, what a great Diamond Dynasty team that would be, you know, just, just load it up with all those guys and I'm sure you'll win two games a season. Yeah, I guess so. Or these would be good immaculate grid choices, maybe to bring it back to an earlier question here because most people are like, who? Well, we ended up doing a sextet of StatBlast. Thank you, as always, for your help. And people, as always, can find you on Twitter at rsnelson23. Thanks again. Good talking to you, Ryan. Yep. Thanks, Ben. And I think we

have maybe 50 more questions in the hopper, so we'll have some more coming. Yeah. Some of them are timely. Some of them are not so much. And by the way, I don't send you every question we get. I don't know if you know this. You're probably like, gosh, he's forwarding a lot of these questions. We get more than I send you. There is sort of a filtering that goes on there. Sometimes it's a question we've already answered or I can answer very easily. Sometimes it's just, you know what? Not all questions are good questions. We covered that last time. Yeah, exactly.

No wonder you think they're all good questions because if I send them to you, they've cleared my personal bar for, oh, this might be an interesting step less. But touting your filtering skills. Yeah, it's a skewed sample. All right. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks for listening. Thanks for keeping me company.

Meg will be back next time. By the way, after I said recently that we should be talking more about Matt Waldron, Padre's knuckleballer extraordinaire, I did try to talk to Matt Waldron. However, I requested an audience with him shortly before his worst outing yet as a major league starter, which was inopportune timing on my part, blew up his ERA a bit. And he respectfully declined, citing a desire to string some solid outings together before he starts doing more media. Which I can certainly understand. Doesn't want to toot his own horn unless there's really something to toot about.

So let's hope he does well, both to ensure that the knuckler lives on and to make it more likely that we can hear from him on Effectively Wild. You know what else makes it more likely that you can continue to hear things on Effectively Wild? Your generous support. You can help fund Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners. Jamie Perkins, who's got perk right there in the name. I feel like I should say that like Rob Lowe in Parks and Rec. Jamie Perkins, thanks also to Jacob Conyers-Holyfield,

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