Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2190: If You Call Him, He Will Pitch

Episode Date: July 13, 2024

Ben Lindbergh talks to Sam Miller of Pebble Hunting about the increase in IL stints at the All-Star break and Sam’s obsession with the evolving strategy of first-and-third situations. Then (41:29) Ben talks to Iowa state representative and Sioux City Explorers pitcher J.D. Scholten about his incredible baseball comeback at age 44, his baseball background, […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2190 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, not joined today by Meg Riley of Fangraphs, who is en route to Texas, where she will be podcasting from All-Star Week. And so I'm flying solo, though you know I won't be alone for long, because I did what I always do when Meg is away. I think, what am I going to do? Who am I going to talk to? Meg's not here. Where's my partner? What's my plan? And then I end up, if anything, overcompensating for her absence by booking several guests.

Yes, I've done it again. I've got a big, juicy, meaty podcast for you. I think it'll be a fun one. Three segments today. In the last one, I will be joined by Evan Drellick of The Athletic for a conversation with Ken Schanzer, former president of NBC Sports and former president and COO of the Baseball Network. You know how MLB broadcasts games itself these days and is talking about taking over more broadcasts, maybe having a national central plan and package instead

of each team determining its own local broadcast contract? Well, what if I told you that back in the mid-90s, before MLB Network, the league already did something sort of similar to what it's trying to do now. It teamed up with ABC and NBC to form a joint venture called the Baseball Network, the first TV network in the U.S. to be owned by a professional sports league. It launched 30 years ago this week with the 1994 All-Star Game. It had terrible timing, was derailed by the strike. It was an ambitious but short-lived experiment, was flawed but also fascinating, and ahead of its time, possibly doomed to fail, but nonetheless pretty impressive prelude to today's sports broadcasting environment. And Ken's here to tell us what the Baseball

Network did right, what went wrong, a little-known but pretty compelling story. Before Evan and Ken come on, I will be joined in the second segment by J.D. Scholten, an Iowa State representative who has revived his baseball dreams by pitching professionally for the Sioux City Explorers of the American Association at 44 years old. He's now made two starts for Sioux City. They've both been successful. Last Saturday, he threw six and two-thirds innings for the Explorers in an emergency start, gave up seven hits, two earned runs, struck out two, won the game, made another start for them on Thursday. This time, six innings, one run, two walks, three strikeouts. He's doing all this while running for reelection and also authoring bills to try to ban MLB blackouts. But before we bring on JD, let's get to the first segment.

It's time for some game theory with an old friend. Joining me now is Effectively Wild co-founder, former co-host, pebble hunting sub stack author, Sam Miller. Hello, Sam. Yo. Are you aware, I don't know why you would be, that next week is the 12th birthday of Effectively Wild? Actually, maybe you would be aware because it's also your birthday, right? Yeah, of course I'm aware. That's why I remember your birthday, because it was your birthday when we started the podcast. 12 years, it's a long time.

It's actually how I remember Craig Goldstein's birthday too. That it's your birthday when we started the podcast. 12 years, it's a long time. It's actually how I remember Craig Goldstein's birthday too. That it's your birthday? No, that it's effectively Wild's birthday. I go several additional steps in all my logic computations. I see. Well, that's a long time in podcast years, given the typical lifespan of a podcast. 12 years has got to be like 50 or 60, I would think, especially a baseball podcast. Yeah, I don't listen to that many podcasts, but a few that I listen to are originally from like 2007. Yeah, well, Hang Up and Listen predates us.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Well, I'm glad that it's still here and that you're here today, although you're not here because of the upcoming birthday. You're here because of a new baseball obsession of yours. I was weighing whether it would be hyperbolic for me to call it an obsession, but then I reread your second piece and you called it an obsession. So in fact, that is what it is, and it's okay for me to call it that. Can I run one stat by you before we get to this listener email that you're here to answer to see if you find this persuasive.

So Meg and I were talking last time about all-star selections and how they've changed over time. And there's evidence we shared that the present season is now weighed more heavily when it comes to- Wait, hold on. Hold on. Just so I'm in the right headspace here. Is this an unrelated- This is unrelated. Yes. Okay. All right. Okay. I'm sorry. Let me get unrelated. Let's go. Let's go. I'm in the right headspace here. Is this an unrelated? This is unrelated. Yes. Okay. All right. Okay. I'm sorry. Let me get unrelated. Let's go.

Let's go. I'm open to anything now. Okay. So all-star selections are different now because they weigh the present season more heavily than the preceding season or seasons than they used to relative to, say, the 1990s when it mattered more what you had done before. In practice, that's how it happens. Yes. Not that there's some, it's not like a gold glove situation where they're like incorporating

advanced stats into it. No, no, no. It's, yeah, it's not like the criteria changed. I mean, I guess the voting selection criteria did change over the process, but this is just an effect of that seemingly. but this is just an effect of that seemingly. And we were speculating about the apparent tendency for players to take the All-Star break off to come up with nagging injuries or to go public with nagging injuries or even to go on the IL to avoid the All-Star team, which we speculated is more common than it used to be, but didn't really have any hard evidence

for that. For example, Tyler Glasnow of the Dodgers just went on the IL with a back thing, and Craig Calcaterra in his newsletter wrote, I know Glasnow has a long injury history and that you got to be careful with your top starters, but this sort of smells like a phantom IL situation, like the Dodgers would prefer that he not pitch in the all-star game and that they'd otherwise like to manage his load and effectively give him a week and change off in the middle of a long season. Who knows? Maybe his back does hurt. Everyone's back hurts now and then.

But that is something you hear about players and Phantom IL stints are not completely Phantom, but just this probably wouldn't be IL worthy at some other time. But I can do it now. I can get out of the All-Star game. I can have a little longer break. So I looked for any evidence of that being the case to support that contention. And here's what I came up with. I looked at injured list placements in the week prior to the All-Star game. So the All-Star Game, it's on a Tuesday. I looked at IL placements the previous Sunday to Sunday week, and then the Sunday to Sunday week before that. So two weeks before the All-Star Game, and then also the Sunday to Sunday after the All-Star Game. So two weeks before, one week before, one week after. And I just counted

the IL placements, excluding 60-day placements, because I figured you're probably not going to go on the 60-day if you're just kind of faking or just nursing some nagging injury. So if I look at the total placements, I went back 10 years, not including 2020, so back to 2013. And the totals are for placements two weeks prior, 287. One week prior, 317. One week after, 266. So 287, then it goes up to 317, then it goes down to 266. So it is 10.5% higher the week prior compared to the week before that, and 19.2% higher the week prior compared to the week after. So it's not huge, but there's a difference. Does that strike you as compelling evidence of some all-star break effect? Don't take this the wrong way. This is a confrontational podcast.

I'm kind of disappointed at the level of thought that you put into this. So I'm going to just two big objections I have here. One objection is that you're counting IL stints of all players, but, you know, most of those players aren't in the All-Star game. Yes, that's true. And wouldn't be in the All-Star game. So you're basically just collecting like all sorts of riffraff that has no relevance to the question at hand.

And second, I think that you're misunderstanding what's happening here. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think there's any doubt that you take advantage of the all-star break to use the IL time. Right. But it's not to avoid the all-star break. It's that the all-star break

makes the cost of an IL stint much less because those are four days that you're not without a player. And so I remember hearing Mike Kruko maybe 20 years ago talking about how when you're a player and you start getting through the long grind of the summer and your manager tries to give you a day off, like that's all well and good. But like a lot of players, they don't need a day off or two days off. Like you don't heal unless you get like a nice two week break. Like you've got, you're carrying around all these sores and injuries or tendonitis or whatever that need like an extended like week or two. And I don't remember if then he went on to say this or if I then formulated this plan in my mind.

So forgive me for that. But the idea that stuck in my head from that was that a team, and again, Kruko might have said this explicitly, but a team should rotate. Like one guy from the team should just be getting two weeks off at a time, like in a rolling cycle, like no matter how healthy they are, give all the joints a chance to heal in an extended period. And the all-star break, I mean, you can't really do that. Like that's not practical for various reasons. Like one being that like a lot of guys probably would say, sign me up for August. And not many guys

would say, sign me up for April. You wouldn't necessarily need that break in April. Anyway, but the all-Star break essentially gives you the chance to have a discounted IL stint where you get your 15 days or for hitters, your 10 days, and it only costs your team like five to 10 games instead of the regular. So obviously you would expect, I would think, an All-Star break IL pooling effect, but I don't think it's anything so cynical as like players don't want to go to the all-star game. And also I think that no one's enforcing the, you have to go to the all-star game rule. The commissioner might say that, you know, he wants all-stars to show up or whatever,

but you can just lie. Like Tyler Glassnow doesn't need to be on the IL to say he's got a back thing and he's going to take, you know, the week off. He can just do that. I don't think the Dodgers would use a phantom IL stint to get away with that. They don't need to use a phantom IL stint. They could just say, well, he's not going to go. It's fake baseball. It's pretend. He's going to choose not to exhibit himself in the exhibition game. Yeah. Although players, I mean, maybe now it's normalized so no one gets up in arms about it. I'm not, to be clear. I don't care particularly if I were on an all-star team and it were not my first one, especially, I would be tempted to take that week off too. But I think sometimes players will get asked about it, or they at least have to explain

why they're not going, right? I mean, maybe sometimes the manager might kind of cover for them or something. Then they have to say, oh, it's an honor to be as selected, et cetera. And I think to have an actual IL stint, it's a good excuse. If you want one, it kind of gets everyone off your back if you have a back problem, as opposed to just saying, no, I don't think so. You know, like Zach Greinke might say, no, I don't think so. But most players probably would want to come up with some excuse.

I mean, they would prefer to, but the cost is so low. Are they really that cowardly that they have to take two weeks off work to hide from the world for two weeks so that no one asks them where they are for a four-hour period on a Tuesday? Is Tuesday a Tuesday or Wednesday? Kirk Gibson, one of the things that I remember from an odd fact about baseball when I was growing up was that Kirk Gibson was the MVP in 1988, but he didn't even make the All-Star game. And I thought, wow, that's incredible. Like what an odd thing to win the MVP, but not make the All-Star game. And then I think maybe

in our Marcakis discussions, we discovered that Kirk Gibson had never been an All-Star. And I went, wow, he was like a superstar. He had, you know, like four MVP-ish years and never made the All-Star. And then it turns out that he just made it known that he wasn't going. And so don't pick him. And not everybody is Kirk Gibson. Not everybody has that fearsome scowl, but these guys are pretty used to saying no, I think. I bet they tell a lot of people no a lot of the time. And then they have agents for the slightly harder no's, and they have press folks in the team front office for the slightly harder no's than that. So I don't know. It seems a bit unnecessarily conspiratorial. Yeah. I guess this is Glasnow's first All-Star selection, so maybe that makes the no slightly

harder. But you still get credit for having been an All-star. Yeah, you do. Whether or not you go. You get your bonus. Yeah, you get the baseball reference AS next to the seasonal line. That's what would matter to me most, I think, more so than the experience probably. Because I get to talk to other big leaguers whenever I want, if I'm a big leaguer. Yeah, you get that signed ball wear. You get to be part of the autograph sesh if you want. And I think you're right. And there are many cases where a player begs out of the game and doesn't go on the IL. Like Raphael Devers, for instance, of the Red Sox, he's not even taking games off.

He is still playing and playing well, but he scratched himself or was scratched from the All-Star game because he has this left shoulder soreness thing that he's been managing for a while. Doesn't seem to have hampered his performance that much, but he and the Red Sox just figured, yeah, why play more when I could rest during that time, even though this is not an incapacitating, debilitating injury, but they're not even putting him on the IL or anything. Well, that's what I said earlier. Why didn't you say when I brought that possibility up, why didn't you say like Raphael Devers?

Well, now I have, but it is true. I was talking to Rob Maines of Baseball Perspectives about this because he works on injury data at BP. And I did acknowledge to him the fact that there is a little spike here doesn't mean that they're just a bunch of completely made up injuries, but maybe you have a minor injury that just wouldn't be IL worthy at another time. And so you go on then and you get to miss fewer games than usual. So I guess that still does say you might be more likely to go on the IL at this time of the season for something that otherwise wouldn't cause you to go on the IL. And if you are someone who's in All-Star consideration, then you kind of have a built-in get out of All-Star game free card. But you're right. It is a subset of players, a small subset who this is really even applicable to. And I don't know how I would study that more rigorously. It would be kind of tough to, I guess, just filter it down to players who were actually having All-Star worthy pre-All-Star

breaks and whether they get injured more often, but then the sample would be very small. Anyway. I wonder if, if players that are IELD are more likely to get picked for the all-star game by the managers, because they're basically a free, like if you want to have as few snubs as possible, or you want to get as much like goodwill from players and teams as possible like ideally if you were a manager and you don't want to irritate everybody you would pick every major league player for the all-star game and it's the matt kemp hall of fame put them all in adam jones adam jones matt matt kemp was the one in the studio who was in the studio recording the album right right right i knew it was one yeah okay anyway like if you're

a bubble all-star guy and you're not sure you're gonna make it it seems like good strategy would be to go on the il like two days before the manager makes the picks and then he can just pick you it costs nothing for him you get your bonus yeah that's a good point hey you know one other thing is like you know it's interesting to the degree that there's any social criticism for skipping the all-star game which I don't know that there is. I kind of doubt there is. But let's say there is. Let's say that it's like a level four.

You're going to have to deal with level four disappointment from the powers that be or the pundits if you just skip the All-Star game for no reason. But like really none of that for skipping the Home Run Derby. Like it's for some reason it's just decided that the All-Star game is an obligation, but the Home Run Derby. Like it's for some reason, it's just decided that the All-Star Game is an obligation, but the Home Run Derby is not. And I don't feel like the All-Star Game is any larger of a share of All-Star Weekend than the Home Run Derby is anymore. It feels like the Home Run Derby

is at least a co-equal event. And, you know, maybe even more of a showcase of an individual's season than, you know, showing up for the All-Star Game to sit on the bench and never be used. So it's interesting that anybody would criticize someone up for the All-Star game to sit on the bench and never be used. So it's interesting that anybody would criticize someone for skipping the All-Star game. And yet we just take it for granted that you have to beg and plead players to get into the Home Run Derby. Well, I guess that's because the All-Star game is just a baseball game and

probably just a fraction, a small fraction of that baseball game. Whereas the Home Run Derby is something out of the norm. It's not your routine. There has been the perception, at least, that it can screw up your swing. And there are certain players who have said that. And I guess it's more of a time commitment, right? I mean, you have to be at the all-star game, but you probably only have to play for an inning or two. Whereas the home run derby, I guess you only have to be actively swinging for a small portion of it, but it's more strenuous, right? And more fatiguing while you're actually doingains to something that has become your beat and your obsession. And you said, well, I could just come on to talk about this. And so here you are. So for those who, for some reason, still are not pebble hunting subscribers, which they should be, I've read every post, every word. Why have you gotten so obsessed with first and third

situations? Well, the initial reason, the sort of like deep psychological reason is that when you're a kid, and when I was a kid, I caught for a while. And when you're a Little League catcher, like any catcher, you really pride yourself on shutting down the running game. But when there would be a first and third situation, you knew that the runner was going to go and you weren't allowed to throw. And it was really like a frustrating part of the little league experience that if there's a runner on first and a runner on

third, the runner on first is going to steal automatically first pitch, no hesitation at all. And then you're not going to throw, he's just going to get to take second for free. And the reason for that is that if you kid with a weak arm, try to throw to second base, then the runner on third is going to take off for home. And then your weak armed shortstop teammate is going to try to throw it back. It's going to be too late. The ball's going to probably get away from you, the poor catching catcher, and the runner is going to score.

And then the trail runner is going to be on second or maybe third anyway. So you just don't throw to second. And so that's an automatic steal with no defense against it. And I thought that's just part of being a kid is like you have these physical limitations. You're on this big field. There's this one part of the game that you're not good enough at. And so the structure of the game kind of breaks down. And that's how it's always been.

Like Little League is like that. The major leagues are not like that. And a couple of years ago, and particularly last postseason, I noticed that the Little League logic was starting to take over in the majors. The stolen base attempts in first and third were like going way up. Some teams especially, but league-wide, they were going way up. And part of the reason, a large reason that they were going way up is that teams had quit throwing to second base. They were just letting that runner have the base undefended. And so this year they went up even more and they continue to go up. In fact, as the

season goes on, if you watch the game, you'll see that a lot of these stolen bases are coming without a throw. And so that's why it's become my obsession. Like you basically have a situation where the defense has several options of what to do. And none of them seem to be either effective or comfortable for them. And so the league right now is in this like weird moment where it's periodically it looks like little league. There's balls being thrown all over the place. There's mistakes being made, or there's just runners taking 90 feet. And I should note often 90 crucial feet. Like there are games this year where it's like seventh inning offenses down by two runs, first and third tying run is the one on first.

And he just walks to second and the defense is like not going to try to get that guy out or the go ahead run in the eighth or ninth inning or you know in the first inning you know you don't want to have a runner in scoring position in the first inning but they just don't know how to stop it so that's why it's become my obsession roughly how many first and third situations have you watched this year in intentional fashion, not just in the course of watching a game? Oh, I don't remember. Well, so I did the first fairly large piece in the offseason. And so that was looking back at 2023. And I don't know, I probably watched two teams in the entirety in all of theirs from the offensive side, and then two teams in their

entirety from the defensive side. So I two teams in their entirety from the defensive side. So I guess what is that? It's probably 100. And then I just did all of June. And so that was 99, plus scattered ones that you pick up here and there along the way for various reasons. And are you just now like living for first and third situations? Is this like the main draw of baseball for you? You get more data, you get to see how this plays out? I was watching, I was with my friend who's a big Giants fan a couple of days ago, and the Giants were rallying and they were down in the ninth inning. It seemed like they were going to lose. And then they were rallying. And then I had to leave. And I came back 10 minutes later. My friend goes, Giants won. And I go, wow,

they did. What happened? And he's describing this unlikely sequence of events where the Giants came from behind by like three runs against the closer. And at one point, there was a first and third. And I go, did he steal? And my friend said, yes, he stole. And that was the highlight of the story. Yeah, Brett wisely took second. And then I was like, oh, no, was it defensive indifference? And I actually like, went to my phone and looked it up. And I saw that he got credit for the steal, not defensive indifference. So yeah, I'm into it. Yeah. So you've gone through all the game theoretical implications of this and if the defensive team does this and the offensive team does that and they know they might do this and so they might do that. But why do you think this has changed

so dramatically? To be clear, it's still fairly rare in the grand scheme of things that there is base dealing in first and third. You said in May and June of this season, it was about 14% of the time. But that is almost triple the rate of the 2000s, more than double the rate of the 2010s. And as you said, seemingly increasing all the time. So why is this happening now? Why didn't it happen sooner? Okay, great question. I don't have a definitive answer, or I'm not sure that it is entirely one thing. But I would say that there are maybe two or three factors that come into play along with the sort of larger one, which is simply momentum. Like once a behavior starts to become more common, then it often becomes even more common. But the main factors are one, framing, right? Framing is

everything. Framing is life. And in a lot of situations, the catchers simply don't want to give up the opportunity to present a pitch well. Like you'll see a lot of times they will not throw and the pitch is not close to being frameable. But because they're sort of like going into the pitch with the mindset that always be framing, they're set up to frame, they're sort of like going into the pitch with the mindset that always be framing, they're set up to frame, they're like prepared to frame, they're not thinking about the throw. And you particularly see this, I would say in two out situations, or in two strike situations where there's a sense that the batter is so much more important than the runner, that we're not going to do anything to compromise the ability to get the batter out. And there are benefits to ignoring the runner. One of them is that you can frame.

One of them is that your defense isn't having to get out of position to cover. One of them is that your pitcher, you know, who maybe just wants to bear down can ignore that runner, particularly because he's probably going to be safe anyway. So don't put a lot of effort into worrying about what he's going to do. So anyway, framing is one factor, a big factor. The second one, it's kind of hard to explain the mechanism by which this works, but this is sort of observational. So Jerry Weinstein, he's been a coach for the Rockies for a really long time. And he's a particularly has an expertise in catching. He's been a catcher's coach in that organization. And I asked him what changed. And he said that his observation is that a lot of what changed is that there was sort of a stasis where

for a long time, what catchers were instructed to do was if the runner goes in the first and third, you look over to the runner on third to make sure he's not going, he's not taking off on your throw, and then you throw to second. And then that would keep the runner on third from coming home. And what teams realized over the last, I don't know, however many years, is that if that glance takes away any chance you have to throw to second, you're not going to get the guy out if you have that glance to third. And so catchers were told no longer to glance. Don't glance. Don't look at the runner on third at all. If you're throwing to second, you're not going to get the guy out if you have that glance to third. And so catchers were told no longer to glance. Don't glance. Don't look at the runner on third at all. If you're throwing to second, just up and fire.

And then when runners know that, then they can get a much bigger break from third because they're not being looked back. And so now with that math in play, if you throw to second and the runner on third gets a good break home, the math no longer works. You can't stop that runner on third. It used to be that you could stop the runner on third from coming home. But now it really is a little bit more like the situation where even two good throws are not going to beat him home. He's going to score easily if he gets a good break. And if he's going to score easily, then as the defense, you have to decide whether you want to throw at all. And so you just opt not to throw. You'd rather have that runner get to second

uncontested than to let the runner on third score from home. So that's like a kind of a description of what's happening. I don't know how much to attribute the cause and effect to that, but it's just sort of a description of like why the perception among the people on the field is that the advantage has tilted so heavily to the offense in this situation. And then I think maybe a third one, I don't know. I haven't put any math into this and I might even talk myself out of it before I reach the end of this circular sentence. But I think that part of it is that being on third used to feel like you were pretty close to scoring. There were a lot of ways to

score. And just the fact that now being on third, the next batter is going to strike out. Like you already know that guy's going to strike out. So being on third is not that close to being home anymore. And so offenses are more willing to try something to get that runner home from third, since it's going to be so much harder to bat him in. And then defenses are kind of less worried about that runner on third, since they know that they can get out of the inning with no more contact being made. So they figure, well, you know, let's not give them an easy way home by throwing down to second or even worse throwing into center field. Let's just worry about the hitters because the game, in a sense, the game has tilted to advantage the pitcher in these situations.

Like there's just a lot less chance that a hitter is going to put the ball in play and get that run home. He might homer. Like there's always the chance that the batter might homer. But since so much of offense is now kind of of like homer or bust the pitcher doesn't really have to worry as much about the runner on third as he used to he's not as worried about sack flies he's not as worried about flares he's not as worried about any of these other ways to get the runner home from third and so they just figure let's strike this guy out let's ignore the runners

let them do their crazy thing and then we'll focus on getting the strikeout and framing the... And I guess also, I know that this uptick preceded the new pickoff step-off restrictions, but I guess that's helped probably too. Yeah, it did. Yeah. And you're right. It preceded the new pickoff rules and it is now extending. So you could argue that what happened last year, the rise in first and third stolen bases was proportionate to the rise of first and third stolen bases was proportionate

to the rise of all other stolen bases from 22 to 23. Now, it still was the case that they were going up before 23. But also now in 24, they have raced past the other stolen bases. So it is no longer proportionate to the other base stealing advances. It's interesting because a lot of the low-hanging fruit when it came to in-game tactics and managerial moves, I think those things started to move sooner. I mean, if you're talking about sacrifice bunts and pitch outs and intentional walks and that sort of thing,

probably all of that has increased or accelerated recently also, but it seems like maybe there was a shift in those things before this. But Russell Carlton has this thing at Baseball Perspectives where he says everything started in 2013, basically, or right around there a decade ago. That's when all the trends that we talk about that are changing the game sort of started in earnest. And I guess that's sort of similar to this. There's a slight increase in the 2010s

even, or I mean, before relative to the 2000s, but maybe it's the same sort of timeline where just all sorts of optimization has taken off in ways that are good and bad for a spectator. I guess this is arguably good. Maybe it makes these situations more exciting because there's more potential for this sort of action to happen. People like action on the bases, supposedly. So this is more action. What do you think the optimal rate is? How much room is there for further optimization if teams are still sort of leaving bases on the board here? I don't know. So they're going on roughly 14% of attempts right now. The way that it plays out now, I don't know, 80%. Okay. All right. As long as it's playing out the way that it plays out now.

The more often they go, then the more prepared defenses will be, but yeah. Okay. I don't think that the way that defenses are playing this is working. And I think that there's going to be a shift in the defensive response before the base running slows down. As you said in your most recent piece, the success rate on first and third steals is 90% now. And a lot of those steals come with no throw. So there's no risk, really.

I don't know what the rate of scoring is on those attempts the runner from third i mean but hi it's you went through all the various responses that the defense can do and mostly they don't work one of them is just don't do anything one of them is fake a throw convincingly one is fake a throw unconvincingly. I mean, I guess there's something really tricky, like someone cuts off the throw midway, and then there's other stuff you could do. Don't even try to get that runner out when the throw goes down at second. You just throw home. And sometimes, as you said, even if they do the theoretically right thing, it still doesn't work. So you're just kind of in a bind here. And I guess that prompted this question from Kyle, who has a suggestion for defenses. He wrote, I was just struck by an idea while watching today's Guardians Giants game. You were probably watching this one too. The Giants had first and third with two outs

and on the pitch, the runner from first attempted to steal second. When the Guardians catcher threw to second, the runner on third, Matt Chapman, was able to race home safely ahead of the return throw from second. This is a common play, and the question of whether the catcher should even throw in this situation is usually raised in this scenario. My question is, why aren't catchers trained to try to backpick at third base in this scenario? Obviously, an out is an out, but I'm not so sure the risk of not catching the runner at

second is worth risking a run. Clearly, Kyle has not read your investigations of this. Refer him to your exhaustive accounts. Now, the score was 4-2, and a successful steal would mean a base hit ties the game. But the runner got an incredible jump off first, and you have also recently documented what exactly is an incredible jump. How can you tell when a jump is good? Which theoretically the catcher can see in the moment and the runner at third must take a large secondary lead to make his gambit a viable one. So why not coach your third baseman to guard the bag in these scenarios and coach your catcher to make the runner at third

the priority to nab rather than the runner at second. Like a quarterback going through his progressions, first read is at third, second read at second, catching the runner leading off third, which is a shorter throw, seems to me to have a greater chance of success than nailing the runner at second and does not run the risk of immediately conceding a run if you are unsuccessful. What say you? Yeah. Well, you know, if you look straight to the runner on third, the runner on third is going to just smile at you because he's not going anywhere until you start to throw. This is not a situation where the two runners take off at the same time. The runner on first goes for second. And then if there's a throw down, then the runner

on third takes advantage of that and goes home. And so there is a lot of trickery of different degrees that goes on to either try to put doubt into that runner's mind at third or to try to catch him if he goes too early. Those are the two things. You either put doubt in his mind so he doesn't go, or you're trying to trick him into breaking. I think roughly a third of the ones I watched in June involved the catcher making, you know, a fake throw of different degrees of convincingness.

And the reason that you do the fake throw instead of just eating the ball, which is what they do a lot too, is that you're hoping the runner on third will break. It's a trick. And when you're in little league, what you would do is you would throw, it's such a dorky play. One of the middle infielders would go to cover the base. And then the other middle infielder would basically cut to right behind the pitcher's mound. And you as the catcher would act like you were going to throw the runner out at second, but really you would throw it to that short cutting infielder. And that is not designed to get the runner out at second, obviously. There was no thought of ever trying to get the runner out at second. If you tried to get the runner out at second, you didn't get to catch anymore.

Your manager was very mad. But you would do this trick to try to take advantage of the over-eager runner on third. So that's what the fakes all are. There's a lot of fakes going on. They just don't work. The runner on third doesn't really hardly ever go. Every once in a while, he goes. And then you get the out.

That makes it look like this is working, but it's very rare. So I guess that's the answer to the question is that the runner on third doesn't go until you throw to second base. You can try to fake, but it usually doesn't get him to bite. If it does get him to bite, yeah, like this letter writer mentions, you have to have the third baseman at the base. The third baseman usually often isn't at the base. It's not where he's trying to play to get an out on the batted ball. And so a lot of times the runner maybe gets slightly fooled, but the third baseman is nowhere near the bag anyway, which obviously is not a winning strategy for the defense.

But like you need to come up with a way that you're gonna trick the runner. That's the letter writer's challenge is how do you trick the runner into thinking that you threw a baseball when you didn't throw the baseball? Ricky Jay could do it, but I don't know if, to be honest,

if Austin Hedges can do it. It's a hard trick to pull off. You fake a throw and the guy on third just goes, oh, that was a fake throw. I'm going back. So then again, since the idea is kind of to trick the runner on third, the least committed version of this is you just pump fake. Okay. And then the second least committed is you do a full fake throw, but you don't release the ball. The third most committed bit is that you throw it to like the little league. You throw to someone who's cutting, who's cutting in, which is very rare in the majors but people whenever i write about this speculate that maybe that it could be brought back that there are various ways that you could

have an infielder cut off the throw and i think it's conceivable it could work and then the most committed is that you basically just throw all the way down to second base but the defender who's catching the throw at second base is basically stepping forward to get the throw quickly and then throw it back home if you try to go. And in some ways, that's great because then if the runner doesn't go, maybe you can tag the runner at second. Like that's what a lot of teams are sort of trying to do is you throw down because if you throw down, then the runner who's trying to steal second knows that he's not going to have a free, you know, whatever, like take his time is free every time. Maybe you'll tag him out.

But if you're willing to step up and then throw back home, then maybe you can cut the runner down at third. There's too many moving pieces and I'm not describing them with all that much clarity. But the point is that that is the strategy that a lot of teams are sort of like trying to make work. It's just such a delicate play. It's too fast. It has to be super precise. The margins are really small. The throws often tail. You see a lot of tailing throws. You see throws get away. You see defenses kind of miscommunicating. And as it is right now, it's not working. Yeah, I like the one that a commenter, James, noted on the comments in your most recent piece

about the pitcher cuts off the throw. He had an example of Roger Clemens doing that in his final season in 2007. And it looks almost like the Manny Ramirez cutting off Johnny Damon's relay throw, except kind of in the other direction, where apparently this is something he and Jorge Posada had practiced years earlier, or there had been some planning for this at some point, but in this instance, it was spontaneous. So Roger Cummins, you just never knew if he was going to spontaneously throw a bat at someone or spontaneously cut off a throw at a second. But that is kind of a clever one if you could make it work, but it's probably tough to make that work reliably. The rule of thumb, the baseball wisdom,

is that the runner on third is not supposed to break until the throw clears the pitcher's mound. That was always the standard. And it isn't really the standard anymore because, I don't know, I guess because these cut plays don't exist anymore. But yeah, if you could make it work where the pitcher is basically an optional cutoff man and could catch the ball to get the runner on third out, I mean, it feels really like a disaster waiting to happen frequently to me.

For one thing, the pitcher has to decide whether to cut this ball off without knowing whether the runner on third is breaking or not breaking, or maybe just bluffing. And so it's really hard, I think, for that pitcher, like Roger Clemens in the situation that was referred to kind of, maybe he got kind of lucky because the runner on third actually did go and got hung up. But I think it would be hard to actually get that runner hung up and for the pitcher to know when to cut the ball off or not. And then the question beyond that is, then is the catcher's throw to second going to be weird because he's trying to throw to two targets at once. He's trying to throw

to the base, but he's also trying to throw to his cutoff man. And maybe they're not in line. And then can the catcher or can the pitcher catch that ball? Is it hard to catch a 90 mile an hour throw from the catcher? It seems like it might be. It seems like it would be hard for a pitcher who just finished his windup and is trying to cut off this ball from, you know, 53 feet away. It feels like it might go off his glove a lot. Anyway, that is definitely an unexplored avenue. That might be a defense that works,

but it might not. Yeah. Pitchers just throw so hard now, and maybe they're not in as good fielding position as they used to be potentially, and their heads are shaking all over the place. They're not famously good at fielding. Yeah, and they're not good at throwing to bases. They're pretty good at throwing to the catcher, but not in this kind of throw. So yeah, a lot could go wrong there. But I guess a lot is already going wrong for the defensive team. So you've passed your obsession about this on to me and many others, probably. When I first read this, I was like, this might be a little too inside baseball even for me. But then you kind of made me interested in it through your sheer

fascination with this. It became contagious. So I look forward to seeing how high the rate rises the rest of the season and whether there are any counter tactics because it does feel a little like John Lester style, you know, why aren't they running even more on him or them? And maybe it's just kind of conditioning or not being willing to do the bold thing that maybe makes sense and also look silly sometimes when it doesn't work. But I'm sure that you will return to this topic in the future. Let us know. Keep us surprised about any future developments. And you can read about those at pebblehunting, pebblehunting.substack.com.

To be clear, you've only written twice about this. You write about a lot of other things too. It's not purely a first and third situation, Substack, although that is an emphasis, but one of many subjects that you cover so thank you for coming on and happy birthday yes i i also write about things that are at this level of importance yeah but different different of various topics yeah like it's it's not all first and third base stealing but it's all kind of first and third base stealing level yeah all right let's take a quick break and i will be right back with pitcher turned politician turned pitcher again, a true two-way player, J.D. Shulton.

Belt, the 2-2 from Marmon. Swing and a miss. Strike three. Got him. And the game is over. And the X's in the three-game losing streak. And J.D. Yes.

I am not making this up. J.D. Shulton, another win for Sioux City. This one's for all the middle-aged men who think they still can do it when they're up in the stands. Is this heaven? No, it's Iowa. State Representative J.D. Shulton, who represents both District 1 in the Iowa House of Representatives and the Sioux City Explorers in the American Association, among other occupations, which we will touch on. Hello, JD. Hi, how are you doing?

I'm doing okay. How are you doing? How's your arm? Arm feels great, actually, you know, especially considering that was the first time yesterday was going on five days rest. And the thing is, the felt great. The last time I threw the hips were sore and stiff and the back was, but that was because I lifted and wasn't really ready for my starts. Yeah. Well, I'd imagine having giving up only three runs in two starts and 12 and a third innings or 12 and two thirds, that probably makes the soreness, any soreness you experience a little more tolerable. It's the good kind of soreness, the soreness of knowing you did a good job, which wasn't even your job a couple of weeks ago.

So tell everyone how this came together, how you became a Sioux City Explorer again, because of course you were a Sioux City Explorer, oh, 20 plus years ago, and a little less than that too, to be fair. I don't want to age you any more than time already has, but where were you on the call sheet when it came to the Sioux City Explorers having to find an emergency starter last week? Yeah. So we have a huge music festival around July 4th here in Sioux City that's free to the public called Saturday in the Park. And we had bleachers headlining it this year. And for about the past five years, I've been volunteering there. And so I've been playing town team baseball. So I think there might be a notion that I just got off the couch and did this. And that definitely was not the case. That definitely was not the case. But no, I got 50 innings in.

I was 9-0 with a 1.05 ERA for my town team. And I was supposed to start on Wednesday. And so I worked backwards. I throw a bullpen on Sunday. And then the day before, the day I got the call that Friday, I ended up throwing a bullpen there. I did my running workout that I usually do. Walked in a political parade. Well, for politics, we had the Woodbury Democratic Party have a float and walk that parade.

And then I went to the X's game that night, actually. Had a brat and a few beers, just like I normally do. And not thinking that within 24 hours, I'll be pitching for them. So then the next day rolls around. That's Saturday. And I get my post bullpen lifting in in the morning. And I prepare to go to the music festival to do my volunteer shift. And my friend had a pre-festival party.

I went over there at a Miller High Life and helped a friend finish her drink as well. So I had a beer and a half and did my volunteer shift. I was delivering ice about an hour into my shift when I just checked the time on my phone and I saw, oh my goodness, I have 10 missed calls and Mongo, Steve Montgomery, our manager of the X's, text me saying, call me back ASAP. And he laid it out, the scenario.

And I was just like, man, out of all the days to do this, you know, I've been waiting for this call for four years. And I'm just like, why today? Why when I'm not prepared, but when the opportunity knocks, you got to open that door. And I was just like, you know what, I'll ride with it. And it ended up turning out well. And so you said you were waiting for a few years. So you had offered, you had said, hey, if you ever need someone not thinking that they would ever take you up on that, most likely. Well, so there were seven years I didn't play baseball and it was actually my second congressional run. So the 2020 campaign, when COVID hit about a month into COVID, I needed something to keep my mind occupied other than just politics and running a campaign during that time. And so there was a Saturday night, I went down rabbit hole on YouTube for pitching mechanics. And I was just like, oh man, if I would have done that, or I could do this. And then the next morning I woke up, I was just like, you know what? I'm going to buy a couple dozen balls and a net and I just start throw. And so I lost my race. And so that next summer,

I was looking to spend more time with my parents who happened to move up to Minnesota. And I used to live up there for a brief amount of time. And I played town team ball up there before. So I called my old team up and I was like, Hey, I don't know what I have. I'm 41 at that time. I go, but what I have, I'll get my all. And they go, of course, we'll take you. And so I went pitch there that summer and I went 10 and one with like a one five era or something like that. And what kind of competition are we talking in town ball? Yeah.

So Minnesota has amazing town team baseball. It's very well organized. I don't think there's another state that does it as well as Minnesota. It's a lot of guys who are playing college ball, who may not go to the Northwoods League, but like Division II or Division III or NAI, JUCO guys, then a lot of guys who just finished college, and then there's some has-beens like myself. I mean, to put it in perspective, my team, our three four-hitters are both D1 hitters. The three-hole hitter for the Gophers. And then our shortstop played for Southeast Missouri State who knocked off Arkansas in the regional.

So, I mean, it's not like this is like a beer league. I mean, we still drink a lot of beer, but it's not just like a Sunday league. This is a very competitive. My team plays about 50 games a year. I only show up to the games that I can pitch for the most part. But yeah, so it's highly competitive. So I played that year. I played again the next year and I just felt there was more that I could be doing. And so I ended up getting elected into the Iowa House. And once I got elected, I asked the folks that run our caucus, I go, what are my obligations the first summer after our session?

So not an election year, because it's an every two year term. And they go, oh, you don't have any obligations. So I go, I could go and play baseball hypothetically somewhere if I, they're like, yeah, no problem. And that turned into me playing in the Netherlands for the second half of the season last year. And I will say that the success that I've had this week would not be possible without that experience in the Netherlands, because I learned so much about what I need to work on and just different things that just like opened my eyes

to things I needed to be better in if I was going to improve myself as a pitcher. And what is the level of competition there in the Netherlands Major League Honkball hoof class? I'm probably massacring the pronunciation, but... Yeah, I never got good at it either, so don't worry, even though my last name's Dutch. So who are you playing with and against there?

Yeah, I was with the Oosterhout, and I probably butchered that to twins. And so the hoof to class is interesting because there's nine teams and the top three, it's kind of into thirds. The top three are really good, very impressive teams. The middle three are competitive. And then there's the bottom three teams and they play each other in a three game series. And then after that, they split into a top half and a bottom. And then it all wraps up with playoffs at the end. So I joined the Twins when they were in the bottom half and trying to get that one position to play in the playoffs.

And so the top teams are very impressive. My last start, I faced a former big leaguer who was pitching for neptunus and another one who was playing outfield for them and a couple of former minor leaguers and it's really good it's the best league in europe that in the italian league and i was able to compete at that level it was interesting because like we played one of the bottom teams and for my first start and i got called for five box that game and like i went back on the video and i like i for five bucks that game. And like, I went back on the video and I like, I was like, like maybe one, I rushed like maybe one, but it was just like little things like that, that taught me a lot to like help prepare me for this week.

It was a great experience though, especially getting my mind off politics. Yeah. It was a nice break. Yeah. That would be nice for all of us, I think right now. But so what were your realistic expectations going into your first start for the Explorers here? Despite your town ball dominance, what were your real hopes? I mean, you probably didn't even have time to get nervous, I guess. Maybe that benefited you, that first start, because you're a beer and a half in, and you're like, all right, let's go for it. 100%. But I mean, to be fair, the beer was at noon noon and I pitched at six, but yeah. And it was just a highlight.

But I've been trying to think about like, what was my expectation? Because they were exceeded. I'll say that. But I was hoping to get four or five innings. The biggest thing I was worried about is that I wouldn't have my legs. And then I was worried that i would try to arm everything a little bit too much and when i do that i i can flatten out a little bit because the success that a lot of huge part of my success i may not have a blazing fastball but my fastball moves both my form my forcing moves kind of left to right and then my two seamer is a true sinker and just dives down and I get really good movement on it. And do you have breaking stuff too? Yep. Yep. So I can spot those. And then I have a cutter that I worked on since last year that

really, I had a lot of success with yesterday and then a slider and a change up as well. And so, yeah, and I can throw any pitch in any situation and I throw a ton of strikes. I get ahead, stay ahead. And like, I'm not worried about strikeouts. I'm not worried about my velo. I'm not worried about my spin rate. I'm worried about getting outs and allowing my team to have a chance to win when I get taken out of the game. And from what I read, you're, you're sitting mid eighties, touching 89. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. You know what, if I'm doing this long enough, I'm thinking I might touch 90 and like, I might just retire after that pitch. Yeah. Time to go to driveline. Get that deal up.

Yeah. What's, what's the driveline, uh, program for 44 year olds? Right. So you surpassed your own expectations and presumably your team. So what is the reaction from the mostly younger guys? Right. I mean, so, so my catcher is literally half my age. He just finished college. It was, it was interesting because the two games prior to my first game on Saturday, they were rough. They went through 10 pitchers. The two nights prior, the starting pitcher only pitched one inning. And so the bullpen was beat. And then all of a sudden they're bringing in a 44-year-old pitcher. I could tell the morale was not great. Yeah. It's only an indie ball sort of situation. Yes. But they were, I mean, the guys were amazing. They were warm and just like,

hey, thank you so much for doing this. Just give it your all. We appreciate you still in the spot here. And then about the third inning, we took the lead, and I put up another zero, and we came back in. And that's kind of when the mood started to change. And then a couple innings later, everybody was like, hey, what are you doing in five days? Yeah. And it was just so great. The guys were great. And then a couple innings later, everybody was like, hey, what are you doing in five days? Yeah. And it was just so great.

The guys were great. Mongo, our manager, was fantastic. He took me out at the right time, got a standing ovation, which I never got before. But it was just so meaningful to me. I'll never forget that night, that moment. It was pretty darn special. Yeah. And you're not playing with or against your actual constituents here, I would imagine, or maybe in some cases. I read in one of the stories, I mean, your teammates are not necessarily politically aligned with you. I think there was one anecdote about a Republican bullpen on this

team, right? That's more of the pitching coach. I don't think they... You're reaching across the aisle. You're bridging the political divide here. It's baseball. Everyone can get along in that context, perhaps. Are there people who are aware of your outside life? Are they giving you any grief about that?

Are they ribbing you? Are they like, you know, I don't agree with your policies on this, but if you keep pitching well for us or do people not really care, is it just kind of, you know, can you pitch? So I don't bring anything up, but if they approach me, I definitely have. I mean, I've had dozens of conversations with guys who just kind of want to ask me about something more than like, I'm right, you're wrong type of thing. And everyone Googled me like, either before the game or after like during the game, like they're like, Who is this guy? Yeah. But it's also like, for me, as a politician who's up for reelection, it allows me good feedback to see where people are at politically. Because I can kind, and I got used to this because I mean, when I ran

for Congress, it was in a district Trump won by 27 and up losing by three. And I got really good at it is just talking to folks who you don't know where they're at politically and just having like a couple of questions and just by their answers, you can kind of guide where the conversation goes. And this is for me, a good test of test of just seeing where the general public, because there's one political science minor on the team. Everybody else is pretty apolitical, other than our pitching coach. Yeah, right. And he's okay with you as long as you keep putting up zeros, I guess. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it certainly gets you attention and publicity i don't know how many

effectively wild listeners are voters in in iowa district one but it is a good story i wonder whether you were concerned at all about your constituents reaction if people are reading about up he's in the netherlands pitching right now you know i know i know you were just in recent days that you were dealing with a flood response right right? And helping people locally. So it's not as if you are putting baseball first and not doing your regular job. But I wonder whether you were concerned about giving the impression that, oh, he's off, you know, pursuing his boyhood dreams here and playing baseball again when he should be doing whatever we expect a state representative to do. Yeah, I'm not worried about that whatsoever perception. I told everybody locally that my number one focus this week was making sure our flood victims got the resources they needed. And we had a great resource fair for the people impacted by the floods on Wednesday. And I made sure I stayed around for that. And then I drove up to four and a half hours up to Fargo after that. And so I ended up meeting up with the team Wednesday evening. I got there like in the eighth inning, which I was listening to the game on. Luckily, the American

Association has an app that you can live stream and listen to all the games for free. Major League Baseball should start paying attention to that we'll get to that yeah okay okay um but uh yeah my constituents come first but at the same time like mongo and all the x's organization has been phenomenal i'm doing an event to help some folks out on sunday and the x's chipped in with some free tickets and so it's been great. And I'm just very fortunate to have such a great organization. And I tell folks all the time, like just representing Sioux City, whether it's in the Capitol or on the road with our names across our chest, like I wear that very proudly and pretty heavy because this town's given me so much and I just want to make sure I give back to it as well.

And you kind of have the late career Roger Clemens arrangement going on here where you can just sort of, you don't have to travel with the, and I think you're the same age that he was at that point where he could just show up on the start days, you know, you don't have to travel with the team all the time. And yeah, it's not a 24 seven job, I assume being a state representative. So some other state representatives might do something else that might be a little less known or public, but you have time to pursue your passions. The thing that I don't think people realize too, is that this state rep job, like the session's over. So like, I mean, we're more in campaign season and we're only part-time. So like I have a day job too. So, and then have a sub-stack called You're Probably Getting Screwed.

I know, I was going to say, you're an analyst at a law firm, you're a sub-stack writer, you're a state representative running for re-election, and you're a professional pitcher. I don't know if I've left anything else out. No, so I haven't watched a movie, sat down and watched a movie in a few weeks. It's going to be a long summer, but this has been one weeks it's kind of like it's gonna be a long summer but like this has been one of the greatest weeks of my life to be honest and i was just talking with one of my best friends who i played with in germany in 2011 and we're baseball guys and we've talked through our friendships and everything and he reminded me he was you talked

about like always knew that there was more to you when it came to pitching. And he goes, you're living it. And so that to me is like I've always had this thing where like I know I'm better than what I've previously done. And that's the part to me that I get emotional about. Like it's nice to have like all the attention stuff, whatever. The fact that I am being the best pitcher that I possibly am in my lifetime at this moment is the thing that I think for me is just so meaningful. And for people who don't know, the American Association is no joke. I mean, that's impressive to me as someone who ran the Sonoma Stompers of the Pacific Association back almost a decade ago. Now, the American Association was the league that would take our players, right?

That would be a promotion. I mean, if we could have gotten you on our team, an American Association caliber pitcher in the Pacific Association, we would have been thrilled. We should have called you. I guess that was during the period when you weren't pitching. But if only we had known free talent just sitting out there on the waiver wire. But you have a couple of former major leaguers on your team. I mean, this is a mid-level independent league that is a partner league of MLB. I mean, this is a quality league, right? And yeah, after my first start, I think one of the beauties of my first start is again,

you mentioned that it happened so fast. I started looking like I knew the names because I went to the night before, but I didn't realize there was three guys who were literally in AAA the previous year. There was one guy who played in the bigs two years before he went 0-2 against me. And I can't fathom that. That's just so bizarre to me. But here we are. So the Milwaukee Milkmen were your first opponent, right? Is it Jalen Davis was in the big leagues? So I was texting with my friend, Tony Watson, played 10 years in the bigs, all-star for the Pirates, played with the Dodgers and Giants. And so I told him like, this guy hit the highest ball ever off me. It was a pop-up to first. And he asked like who it was. I was like, Jalen Davis. And he goes, get out. He goes, I played with Jalen for two years in

San Francisco. Yeah. He was in the played with Jalen for two years in San Francisco. to University of Nebraska, Lincoln, the Cornhuskers as a senior, and you did not get drafted, but then you went right into, I guess, the Canadian League and the American Association for four years with Sioux City. So what were your ambitions as a baseball player in college? Were you expecting to get drafted? Were you hoping to? Were you surprised that you didn't? What happened? I got called my junior year in the 32nd round by the angels and said, you're next. We want to sign you for a thousand dollars. Will you, will you take it? And I didn't know you you're supposed to say yes. And then you negotiate. And so I said, well, I can get that next year. And I said, no. And I decided decided to transfer I did all I could at the D2

level and so I wanted to see if I could do something more and I happened to play at Beatrice Nebraska for the Beatrice Bruins in the mink league for summer ball and the Nebraska closer got drafted and so they were looking for somebody and and I was working their camps then I had to stop working once they started recruiting me because that was a violation, but I got brought in baseball. America had me as the closer going into the season and I ended up leading the team in ERA, but just didn't get the innings. And so I had to go to the indie route and I was always had potential,

but I was mostly, I could, I could throw hard in my ball moved but like I sometimes had a slider so like just being a one and a half pitch pitcher when your pitch is working then that's good but like you got to have some more to it and you need to be a pitcher not just a thrower and and so that's kind of how my career went like I at, like when I felt good and healthy and could spot, like I had success, but then I battled bicep tendonitis because I overthrew everything. It just wasn't the career that I, like, I wish I had a better career. I traveled around geographically, an amazing experience, all that. But, but when it came to indie ball and trying to get picked up, I always felt there was more and it just never worked out. Yeah. And you've certainly got the build for it, right? I comped you to Roger Clemens a second ago, but you got a couple inches and 20 pounds on the rocket. So you're 6'6", 228 at least is your baseball reference listed. I don't know how accurate that is.

Yeah, probably a couple more pounds than that, but yeah. Yeah, not too many, I guess. And so what were the changes that you made mechanically after watching that video and getting that net and everything? How are you a different and better pitcher, if not necessarily in raw stuff, but in pitchability, wiliness, and I guess just general, I mean, it sounds like your repertoire has expanded considerably. So do you feel like, gosh, if I'd known what I know now when I was 24 or 21, then things might've been different? 100%, but at the same time, you just got to go with what you got and that's like my philosophy now i think back in the day if i was hitting 89 i'd still try to throw 93 and and now like in two games i've even looked

at the scoreboard once to see what i'm hitting because i don't care to me it's it's just it's a chess match with each hitter and like that's the part that like, that's my drug, whatever that is, like in, out, off speed, up, down, like just changing speeds, changing locations. I love the strategy of all that. And mechanically, I'm good enough now where I can be consistent with all my pitches where in years past, if I threw my slider well, then my changeup was off or something like that. And so the biggest thing I was able to do is work on using my legs more and being 6'6", being able to use my legs more, I can bounce back way better. And like my body feels great.

I think that's the part that I don't think people understand is how much I've actually worked, especially in off seasons and lifting and running and being pretty on a strict routine for when I start and having a 48 hour non drinking rule traditionally, other than one time. But what happened this week has been years in the making. And even like during the legislative session, I helped my cousin's kid train. And I ended up seeing that at the place where I went to show him how to, he wanted help with a slider and where we went, it was like a 24 hour place that you just punch in your code and you can throw off a mountain there, an indoor facility. And so I threw a bullpen at 6am. I've thrown a bullpen at 10pm during the legislative session, just when you can find it. And so I threw a bullpen at 6 a.m. I've thrown a bullpen at 10 p.m.

during the legislative session, just when you can find it. And to me, it's both therapeutic as a release, but it's also physical training. And it's part of the things that add up to this story that people will never see. Right. And I saw lots of comps to Billy Chappell or the rookie, right? Are you thinking of it in this sort of cinematic way? I mean, I guess Jim Morris was considerably younger than you in the Rookie or the story that inspired the Rookie. I guess maybe Robert Redford was about as old as you when he was actually in The Natural, although he wasn't supposed to be that old. But I wonder whether you see yourself out there as kind of the costner just the veteran, you know, just getting through this surprising everyone. I don't even think of it as any of that.

The crazy thing, though, is and this is how weird my world is. So when I ran for Congress in 2018, we did a beautiful ad that was basically a knockoff to Field of Dreams. And it won national political awards because it was such a knockoff to Field of Dreams. And it won national political awards because it was such a wonderful ad. And because of that, when I launched my 2020 campaign, we got Kevin Costner to do the voiceover for that for my 2020. And so like, I got to meet him for just a hot second

at the Field of Dreams game, the first one, the White Sox, the Yankees in Dyersville. And I got to thank him in person for doing that. That was just, that was really cool. So I don't know how to take all this in. It's just like, when I tell folks at my age, just being able to be on the mound, that in itself is just such a pleasure. And then going from the mounds that I pitched at in town team ball, I mean, not to dog anything, like a lot of them are great mounds, but the mounds that we get to pitch on in the American Association, holy cow, they are nice.

And just like, it makes my mechanics better. It just makes everything a little bit more crisper. Yeah. And I think, I mean, not to date you or make you feel older than you do, but I think you are a full decade older than anyone who has pitched in the American Association this year before you. And so it would be a great story regardless of your many side occupations, just this incredible comeback. Did it feel like though when you got on that mound, or I guess even before this, when you were in the Netherlands, like, did it kind of come back to you and you felt like you used to when you were out there or the competitive juices started flowing? Or you felt like, yeah, I can still do this. Like this is still in my blood. Yeah. I don't know. It's one of those things like after yesterday's game, like the first game was amazing. And my mom even said,

Hey, you should just quit. Like, it's not going to get better than that. Thanks mom. Yeah, I know. See, that's, that's, uh, yeah. So, I mean, I pitched better yesterday and there was a lot of press after the game, which is again, surreal, but I, I had a chance to walk in the tunnel up to the locker room just by myself. And like, I started getting super emotional because I just thought of like the hours I've put in, in my lifetime, let alone just the past few years, this easily could have never happened. I didn't know what I was training for. It's just the better myself and not taking days off. And even when I'm sore, getting a lift in or getting a run in or getting a bullpen in, there are days where I'm just tired from a long day at the Capitol,

still being able to drive out to the suburb and get a bullpen in. When you put that much heart into something, it's something that you may not ever see blossom, but to see that flower finally blossom, I can't even describe it, how emotional it really is. Now, is politics always part of your plan or was that a pivot to politics post-baseball or I guess post and pre-baseball because you're back in baseball? Right. That was definitely like I never in a million years, like I've always been an active voter and paid attention to the news and stuff like that. But like being a Democrat, the 2016 election, I think really influenced me to do something more. And to coincide with that, my grandmother,

who's my biggest inspiration, she passed away right after the election. She passed away right around Thanksgiving. And I was the last person to get her to eat. And the last thing she told me was I was living out of state and she goes, you got to move back to Iowa and you need to take care of our farm. And we rent our farm out to a family friend. So I wasn't going to hop on a combine anytime soon. But that just resonated with me and snowballed into running for Congress. And it's been a journey. I never thought in a million years I would ever be a politician or do any of this stuff.

I never thought in a million years I would ever be a politician or do any of this stuff. But it's definitely an honor to represent Sioux City, a place where I'm from and I love, down at the Capitol. Yeah. Well, I almost reached out to have you on the podcast years ago before this whole Hollywood Cinderella story because I had read that you had introduced a bill to end MLB blackouts. MLB blackouts because, of course, that has been a scourge on Iowans who are blacked out of so many baseball broadcasts that they can't realistically actually attend. And so if you go to your website, shiltonforiowa.com, you'll see various issues listed there. Public education, health care, economy, climate change, campaign finance reform, taxes, and ending MLB blackouts, which is just, you know, the staple of every politician's platform, really. So when I saw this, I thought, gosh, that's, you know, kind of clever. That's fun. Of course, an Iowa state representative does not have the power to end MLB blackouts. So is this more of a symbolic? I disagree. Okay. Well, make the case, please. Yeah, go ahead. So I will say that my first year, the bill may be a little bit suspect, but I wanted to get

attention. And MLB flew two people out from their commissioner's office to meet with me when I drafted the bill. The second bill, the bill that I had this year, but got less play, was more accurate and would do something because the way that Major League Baseball does the blackouts is on a state by state basis. So if you are doing commerce in the state, we have the authority to impact that. And so maybe not blackout entirely or anything, but there's a way to do it. And the reality is, you're right. Iowa is the number one state in the nation that's picked on by MLB because of this. We don't have a major league team. We have six different media markets that we cannot watch. And if they're all playing other teams on a given night, that's 40% of major league baseball we don't get to see. And it's not growing the game.

And right now, my parents live up in Minnesota and all my teammates, my town ball teammates all up in Minnesota, none of them are watching Twins games anymore because the switch that happened this year, nobody can watch them. And they're having a good year. There should be excitement. There's decent excitement on it. But when you can't watch your team play, how's that growing the game? That's why the baseball aspect of me and the just picking on Iowa aspect of it, that's why I'm so passionate about it.

Yeah. So what sort of reception did that latest bill get? And what sort of reception does this get from voters or constituents? Do they see this as frivolous or did they say, yes, finally, so we have a standard bearer here? I get the most random emails in a positive way. You get random emails no matter what when you're a state representative, but the most positive ones from people all across the political aisle and all across Iowa. I have people who said, I can't stand you on most issues. Single issue voters, just MLB blackouts. Yeah, whatever else you want to do, fine, as long as you take care of that. Yeah. But the thing is, we have a trifecta on the Republican Party for the state. And in order to

get anything done, I need a Republican partner on this. And the guy who was working with me in year one, I asked, hey, would you get a subcommittee for me this year? And he said he would, but it didn't happen. So I'm waiting for Republicans to jump on board because this should it shouldn't be a partisan issue. It should just be a baseball fan issue. I'm hoping maybe if I win this election cycle, maybe somebody might be willing to work with me. And what did MLP say when when they sent people out to meet with you was it a productive conversation or i mean it was they they said we're working on it and and i was like well i i literally read that comment five years ago right and here we are a year later and i think it's i mean you could argue it it's gotten worse with apple and the new buyout. I know they're working on it. I know it's more complicated than what I would like a simple solution, but at the same time, we're hurting here as fans. And I was part of advocates for minor leaguers. I was working with them when we

were trying to get better pay and better housing for them. Then I was done by the time they got the unionizing efforts. And that was amazing. Players got the unions. The owners have the commissioner's office. The fans need something. And I hope we can find a way that we can grow the game and get fans more involved in baseball because I love this game so much. I want to make sure that when my time comes, I want to pass on to the next generation. Now, as an Iowan farmer and a baseball fan and player, what do you make of the depiction of farming in Field of Dreams and the idea that Ray would be ruined economically by building a baseball fan on this small portion of the field, etc.?

Because I've heard Nick Offerman go on a little rant about the lack of realism in the actual farming aspect of the film, to say nothing of other aspects of the film. Yeah, I'll have to look that up. That's amazing. So I will say, well, first of all, both my parents grew up on farms, but I'm first generation to be raised in town. So I'm probably not the best when it comes to the practicality of this. But I will say this, having a baseball

field on your farm does not hurt as much as the monopolies that are squeezing farmers right now on the input side and on the market side. And I'm very much, when it comes to politics, I consider myself an anti-monopolist above many things. And was it a disappointment that the Field of Dreams TV remake or reboot ended up not proceeding? Well, I mean, I think the movie is good standalone. It would have been very tough to live up to it. But, you know, there's a lot of great names behind it. So I don't know.

I've thought about that quite a bit. If it's good, then no question asked. But that movie is just so good on so many levels. It'd be hard to live up to. So you're running for reelection right now. And of course, you're a politician. You may not want to give away what you're going to do in the future, what you hope to do. But I wonder whether you do still harbor ambitions of pursuing national office at some point and also what your baseball ambitions are are they just i want to make my next start and we'll go from there or are you harboring bigger dreams now no i the thing is both in politics and in baseball right now i don't have

a five-year plan i was never those one of those people to just have a plan from sixth grade and figure it out and do that and all that. So I have no idea what's next. The biggest thing for me is I'm just trying to enjoy all this, even just being in the locker room with the guys again. That's such a treat. And when you talk to old ballplayers, that's one of the biggest things they miss is just that camaraderie and all that and getting that again, especially at 44. And like the guys have been so wonderful to me. And like, I feel for them because like, this is weird. And they're all getting messages from their friends, because like all their friends and their former teammates all know that they're where they're playing and like, is this guy for real? What the heck the heck like is this a gimmick yeah and

to be part of it they've been great mongo's been great the whole x's uh and the american association the whole league's been great with this and so i've gotten a lot of great publicity from this that i can easily cut into an ad for this fall, including the manager for the Fargo Redhawks on their radio after the game yesterday said, I don't care what party he's in. He's got my vote. Perfect. Thank you. What a great soundbite. Well, at the very least, I guess if you were to make a third run at Congress and a victorious one, I mean, you've established your qualifications for the congressional baseball game. You would be early off the board in that one. You know, in 2022, Hakeem Jeffries, Representative Hakeem Jeffries came to,

this is before he was the minority leader, came to Iowa for a big event we have. And I think we connected when I was running for Congress. Anyways, he told me, he goes, just so you know, we have our eyes on you for the congressional baseball game. I go, well, my district was tough. And then with redistricting, it got a little tougher. He goes, well, he goes, you don't have to run for Congress. You know, there's another seat. Oh, yeah.

Well, they'll just, yeah, put the whole muscle of the party behind you just to get you into the congressional baseball game. Just a ringer. Well, it was not pretty this year. I'll say that. All right. Well, this has been a really fun story and I hope it continues to be. You can find JD's Substack. You're probably getting screwed at screwed.substack.com. And as I mentioned, his campaign website is shiltonforiowa.com. And we wish you the best in certain of your athletic endeavors here. It's been refreshing to talk about how old a politician is with you. Gosh, you're so old for the American society.

And then it turns out that you're 44 years old. It's a little bit different from the national conversation going on these days. You're just a whippersnapper when it comes to politics. You might be the old man in baseball, but not in your other arena. If there was ever a week to be distracted from national politics to play baseball, for me, it was this week. JD's next start will be July 19th. All right, from a pitcher and legislator who's trying to end MLB blackouts, we transition to the storyator who's trying to end MLB blackouts, we transition to the story of a network that was notorious for its blackouts,

the Baseball Network. I'll be back in just a moment with Evan Drellick and then Ken Shanzer to play us into this last segment. Let's listen to the banger of a theme song for the Baseball Network, which preceded its inaugural broadcast of the 1994 All-Star Game. All right. It is time for our final segment. And I have another guest with me, kind of a co-host for this segment specifically to tag team this interview. Evan Drellick, senior writer for The

Athletic, author of Winning Fixes Everything. Hello, Evan. I've always wanted to be kind of a co-host. Temporary. Don't get too comfortable in the co-host seat. But for this segment, you are welcome. And I wanted to have you on for this because I thought it was really right up your alley. We are talking about the Baseball Network, which is a fascinating experiment in the mid-90s, perhaps too far before it's time to work. And it's kind of a forgotten chapter, I think, for many people, and yet not forgotten for whoever handled the Wikipedia page, because there are like 300 sources on there. So they've been very diligent about documenting it, which was helpful for us in preparing for this. But as I was reading, and we'll get into this in the interview a little bit, but we just had you on episode 2168 to talk about all of your recent reporting about MLB trying to come up with some sort of national broadcast arrangement to deal with the post-Cable bundle uncertainty.

cable bundle uncertainty. And it does seem like a lot of this applies, even though it was 30 years ago, some of the same issues at least are at play here. So I assume that some of those similarities and overlaps stood out to you too. Yeah. When you sent me some of those links and I was reading up on it, I'm a little ashamed I didn't know that much about this before you mentioned it. I'm glad you did mention it. It starts off by saying the baseball network rises from the ashes of baseball's deal with CBS and the CBS deal was a disaster. And baseball is then sitting there looking for a broadcast partner and it's not easily finding one on a national level. We're talking about national broadcasts and well,

yeah, I mean, that's kind of the moment we're at today. And I felt kind of dumb because it's like, well, geez, shouldn't, that's kind of the moment we're at today. And I felt kind of dumb because it's like, well, geez, shouldn't I understand that this is just history repeating itself 30 years later? The situations certainly are not identical, but it did have some similar tones. Yeah. That's my favorite thing about covering baseball is that none of it is new. It might be new to us, but there's always some sort of precedent. And I always enjoy

bringing some of those precedents to light and talking to the principals involved if they are still around. And we're lucky that the principal in this case is and is willing to talk to us. So let's do that. All right. Let me start this segment with a quote. This comes from The Washington Post by one Leonard Shapiro, September 17th, 1993. New York. The most powerful man in baseball these days is not Cecil

Fielder, Barry Bonds, or Juan Gonzalez. It's not de facto Commissioner Bud Selig or Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf. And it's certainly not George Steinbrenner, despite what the boss probably thinks. No, the most powerful man in baseball is a 48-year-old Columbia Law School graduate most people inside or outside the game probably had never heard of until he was anointed in July as chief executive officer of what is now called the Baseball Network. His name is Ken Schanzer, and his task is daunting. Reinvigorate baseball on national television enough to improve the ratings, increase advertising sales, and provide adequate revenue to justify all those fancy contracts being paid to so many players, whether they hit 225 or 325. And later in the

piece, it says there's a very specific timetable for all of this. It's called the 1994 All-Star Game next July 12th. That's our focus, Shanzer said in interview Wednesday. And if we lose our focus, the one inexorable factor is the clock. It keeps ticking. We go on July 12th. Well, here we are on July 12th, 2024, 30 years later, and we are talking to the former most powerful man in baseball, allegedly, according to the Washington Post, Ken Schanzer. Hello, Ken. Hello, Ben.

Hello, Evan. You know, I did not know. I have no recollection of that quote, and I didn't know what you were going to say when you said it was by Len Shapiro. But no matter what he said, I was going to say what a terrific person Len Shapiro is. And he is, by the way. He's a great writer, but an even better person. And I am no longer 48 years old. Yes. And I suppose maybe no longer the most powerful man in baseball, if you were at the time. But just so you don't get too big ahead, according to the Sporting News list of the

100 most powerful people in sports in 1993, you rated merely number 43. So, you know, that'll take your ego down a peg, I guess. No, not horrible. Well, that was in sports too, not just in baseball. I guess there were a few baseball people ahead of you. It was fine. Listen, I must say, it was an extraordinary experience. Most of the people who worked there, I think, will tell you to this day that it was one of the great experiences of their life. That doesn't go to the

nature of what the business itself was, but it was a terrific experience. And I was talking to someone the other day and remembering that on that day in July, when this thing started, I was sitting in my office with my then assistant, a woman named Audrey Gumo. And I said to Audrey, let's remember this day because today you and I are the Baseball Network. And a year from now, we'll have a thousand people working for us, assuming that we're successful at building this thing. And it will be a very, very different property. So it was a fascinating couple of years. I guess that's not exactly how it turned out, but we will get to that. So let's start by just explaining what was the baseball network? What led to this?

What was the impetus for a network devoted to baseball before MLB Network, before any of the current conversations 30 years ago? You have to understand the context within which the network was founded. You have to understand the context within which the network was founded. And that was that in 1990, Major League Baseball made a deal with CBS Sports to sell their rights to their national package. Prior to 1990, they had been split by ABC and NBC Sports. And both of us were stunned by the bid that CBS made to acquire Major League Baseball. And as it turned out, we were appropriately stunned because CBS lost a bloody fortune. The estimates were that between 1990 and 1993, they lost a half a billion dollars

on their purchase of Major League Baseball, which is, by the way, what both ABC and NBC had anticipated would happen with the amount of money they were paying for the rights. Anyway, as a consequence of that loss, CBS was not interested at all in the beginning in extending their term with baseball. So Major League Baseball went into the marketplace. And the truth is neither NBC nor ABC was wildly acquisitive in terms of acquisitive in terms of its interest in baseball. So baseball came to NBC and ABC, essentially with its tail between its legs. It didn't have a broadcast partner for its properties. And they proposed to the two networks that we jointly bid on the rights to Major League Baseball's national inventory, which consisted of a game of the week and then a new

division series, the league championship series and the world series. Right. Because you were the president of NBC Sports at the time when Sporting News had you even higher on the top 100 list in 1992. You rated as number 34. I'm telling you these decades old rankings of your power, hopefully this is inflating your ego somewhat. No, it isn't at all. Anyway, I really never thought I was that important. I'm even less so today. Anyway, remember, this is an incredible consequence of the situation that major league baseball essentially says to two networks, you can sit down together with us. Okay. No antitrust questions. We are authorizing you to sit in the same room with us and come up with a

plan to acquire, or it's not even the acquisition, because the acquisition was less important than the distribution. Major League Baseball was now desperate to have its national property exposed, because they didn't have a bidder. So as I recall, the group was Dick Ebersole and myself from NBC, Dennis Swanson and a guy named David Downs from ABC. And the Major League Baseball group was Bill Giles, Tom Warner, and Eddie Einhorn. So Giles from the Phillies, Warner from the San Diego Padres then, now the owner, co-owner of the Boston Red Sox, and Eddie Einhorn, who was the minority owner of the Chicago White Sox, but who had had a long history in sports television. Without going through all of the

negotiating machinations, we ended up agreeing on the structure that became the baseball network. In simplest terms, there were three parties to it, Major League Baseball, ABC, and NBC. We decided on the amount of contribution that each would put in every year to support the cost of the baseball network. It was a joint venture between the three entities. There was a division in the revenue that came in, baseball taking the lion's share in the beginning and each of the networks getting a piece of it. And then in different tranches as revenue came in, each of them shared in different percentages. And if you ask me those percentages, the fog of 30 years is going to eliminate my recollection. But whatever it is, from the network standpoint, we were making a minimal investment in terms of dollars,

unlike most rights deals. We were contributing our time. Baseball was getting the bulk of the early revenue. But, and we convinced them of this, as the revenue increased, they got a reduced share because they wanted to incentivize us to get more and more revenue. And then there was a division as to how the games were going to be distributed. There were 12 primetime nights, six for NBC, six for ABC. The All-Star Game and the World Series were on one network, and the Division Series and the League Championship Series were on the other network. And then the most controversial aspect of it was that we decided that we would run all games in all of the property, all of the entities, that meaning regular season, division series,

LCS, would be run simultaneously. And I'm sure we're going to spend some time on that as we go forward. It took a long time to get to the agreement. There were fits and starts. We finally agreed on the day that the Major League Baseball owners were meeting. And Eddie Einhorn and Giles left the meeting to go to the owner's meeting to present the package to them. And I will never forget this. We're sitting with Tom Werner in New York. And about two hours after we had concluded the deal, we get a call from the plane.

And it's Eddie. And Einhorn says, by the way, we're two hours into the deal. We already have one owner who's opposed to it. We said, who? He said, me. Anyway, it got passed. And they came to me and asked whether I would run it. I hesitated and then agreed to do it. And despite all of the controversy, and again, we will, I'm sure, get into that, it was a remarkable experience. And the people who did it were extraordinary. And the service, I must say that we have, I think, justifiable pride in what we delivered to the public, meaning that the level of production, the quality of the production, given the breadth of it, was extraordinary. So that's the genesis of it. I worked initially at NBC. And then I think in August of 93, we established our own offices and we were off to the races. Ken, when you start off on this model, the one you just described, from what I've been able to read, I was a little bit too young to really remember this, but from what I've been able to read- That is, by the way, is that the last time I'm going to have to hear you people talk about how young you are, how long ago this was, you know, I'm on the, I'm in extra innings.

Well, so, so the model, it sounds like there was less upfront money, but it was incentivizing performance. Had that been done before? Was that in itself kind of a new, risky thing? And the second part of that would be, it sounded like you need a little convincing to take the job. Were you confident it could work? What would it need to work, the new model that you're describing? Not only do I have to answer questions, I have to remember them.

This is not fair. Okay. So had the model been done before? In its purest sense, no. But listen, I had a very long career in sports and there were a thousand executives who were more competent and more accomplished than me. But I do believe that one of the things that I had started doing when I was at NBC, largely because I had not been in the business for my whole life. It was my second career that aside, by the way, you will hear a lot of asides tonight. But as an aside, when I taught a course for seven years at Notre Dame, I used to open with

my biography. And I would say to this class, I'm in the third of three careers, each of which matched a passion of mine as a child. My first career was in politics. My second career was in sports television. And in my third career, I do nothing. My whole life, I've been told I'm good for nothing. And it turns out I'm great at. So this was the career before nothing. But when I came to NBC in the 80s, I had come from politics, so I had no history in broadcasting. And one of the things that struck me very early on was how incredible the amount of money was that was involved in everything we did, ranging from rights to salaries and the like. And I tried to deal with that. And one of the things that we did at NBC that nobody else had done and wasn't doing was revenue sharing. So as

a way to try to limit the risk in some deals, I would propose to the guy with whom we were making the deal, we will pay you this amount of money and then we will share revenue that goes above this. Okay? So that was fundamentally at odds with what the structure of virtually every deal was in television at the time, and is to this day, actually. That element, the revenue sharing element of it was not unique. We had done that in some other places. What was unique was not paying a rights fee. You didn't say that, but that's at the core of this is the limit of our exposure as a network going into this. Okay, now I'm on the network side because I'm making the deal is the amount of money

that we have to put in to provide the cost base, to cover the cost base of what will become the baseball network. And the second thing was the value of the time that we are going to commit to the venture. So for example, you know, we were giving six prime time nights, right? And then they were Friday or Saturday, plus whatever the value of the time was that we were giving to the post-season. And when I say the value, just understand that when you put sports on, in those days anyway, the network looked at its prime time schedule, its entertainment. And when a sports property invaded prime time, the network would charge you for preempting time that was otherwise used to provide revenue via entertainment

programming. This is probably more in the weeds than you need to be. But that's part of the value proposition is that we are contributing very, very valuable time that could otherwise be used for something else. But that's our only contribution. We're not contributing rights. The second question was, I mentioned that I hesitated about taking the job. I had a very good job. I was the number two guy at NBC Sports. I was executive vice president at the time. I'm working for arguably, if not the greatest sports executive in history, as close as you get to the greatest sporting, if it's not Rune Arledge, it's certainly Dick Ebersole. I had a terrific life and a terrific career. And I was rolling the dice to go start this venture, right, that had all kinds of

risk, reputational risk attached to it. So, you know, did I really want to do it? At the end of the day, for me at the time, I was number two at NBC Sports. I'd never run a business. This was an opportunity to run a business. If nothing else, I could show NBC that I was capable of running a business. If Dick ever decided to retire or go to something else and they wanted me to come back, at least they'd have seen that I could run a business. So at the end of the day, that was the principal calculus of it. And I thought the whole notion of beginning something from nothing and creating this thing out of whole cloth. I mean, there was literally, we had no idea how we were going to buy the paperclips. We had nothing. We had no system. I didn't have an organization chart. There was nobody had ever

done this before. Again, I know that it gets very controversial. And as I say, we will deal with that. But what we built and what we delivered was extraordinary. I mean, understand that one night a week were 12 consecutive weeks. We produced 14 baseball games simultaneously. Well, they weren't simultaneous because there was some West Coast. So maybe 10 on the East Coast and four on the West Coast at one time. It's like doing the Olympics. Nobody had ever done anything like this. So you start from scratch. You put everything together. You hit that July 12th, 1994 target. You get a good all-star game. The National League wins in extra innings, eight to seven.

You've got an all-star lineup in the booth. Bob Costas doing play-by-play. Joe Morgan, Bob Uecker, Greg Gumbel. All seems to go smoothly, except that one month later, exactly, August 12th, the strike starts. Now, by the way, but remember, we 12th, the strike starts. Now, by the way, but remember, we've also launched the weekly Baseball Night in America, right? We want some credit for the Baseball Network. One, we named it the Baseball Network. It was the first one of its kind. And two, we named our weekly show Baseball Night in America. How many times has that been copied? Now, we stole it from Hockey Night in

Canada, but it was the first so-so night in America, and now everybody does it, right? But anyway, we had done a couple of weeks of Baseball Night in America, right? And you were telling me the slogan, the motto of the network, right? What was that? Welcome to the show. You ever heard of that one? Yeah. But let me just spend a moment on the weekly games, because I will never forget. So if you go back to Lenny Shapiro writing about the baseball network, and nobody had ever been entrusted with the obligation, or let's say, forget entrusted, had been obliged to do every baseball game that was on the schedule simultaneously. Now, step back and understand

what that means. So from this entity, we had to arrange and pay for the production of 14 games. We had to hire the talent. We had to make decisions on what the talent was. We had to produce the games. We had to join them so that they all fed into one central source so that we could do updates in and out of games. Dick Ebersole was the smartest broadcasting person I've ever known. His reputation is warranted, okay? Dick and I made the deal. And I'm talking to him. Now I go over to run the Baseball Network. And I'm talking to him about the cost of putting together a central studio

for the Baseball Network. So on top of producing all the games, I've got to have a central studio. And Dick says, well, what do you need that for? This is a man who had done the Olympics. He knows broadcasting better than anybody. He's a producer. He said, what do you need a central studio? Just do the games. I said, Dick, we're going to do highlights into the games. How are we going to do highlights if there isn't a studio that we're going back and forth to, right? We were fashioning this thing out of a blank piece of paper. And I'm going to tell you, on the first night, I think ABC did the first night of games. They did the first six weeks.

So we rent ESPN's studio in Bristol to be our control studio. So I would go up there every week for 12 weeks, and I would sit behind our producer. But that first night, when we are sitting in the studio, and we open with Al Michaels on camera, introducing everybody to the Baseball Network, right? And he now throws to each of the sites, and on screens simultaneously come up our logo and the production from that site. And I'm going to tell you, the place went crazy. We had done it out of nothing. I'll just tell you one more story about production. So we have to launch, we had to pay talent, 10 games, and we had a certain budget.

And so you couldn't pay, you know, a guy would come in, I want $20,000 to a game. And one of the early decisions I made was that we would pay everybody the same thing. And if they wouldn't work for that, my recollection, it was $1,500 a game. And I'm talking about some big names in television. And if they wouldn't work, we said, we'll find somebody else. There were only three guys who didn't work for us. It wasn't because they refused. It was because we didn't go to them because we didn't get a chance. One was Vin Scully. One was Harry Carey. And I don't remember the third. Every other guy worked for us. And what

we would do is we would have the lead announcer for each of the teams. And they never have ever worked together before. So it was very cool. Well, the strike killed us because the deal was this. We were automatically renewed if we hit a certain revenue target over the two years. My recollection was that it was $320 million. I could be wrong, but I think that was the number. Yeah. 330, I think. You're close. Okay. In my office in New York, we built out an office from bare, the space was bare. And what we did was we built an office that kind of replicated a baseball stadium. So when you came in, home plate was right at the entrance to it. And that home plate was

actually the home plate that Joe Carter had touched to win the series the prior year, because the guy who owned the Blue Jays gave it to me. And then there was a foul line that went down to my office and the carpet was green, except there was an area for the infield. Anyway, above the foul line was 330, which was our number. Anyway, so 330 was the number. But the minute we got struck, we could never hit the number because the number was a two-year number. So baseball had a way out of it when we had built in an automatic extender, but the strike killed it. We were dead, unless they loved us. And Fox made sure they didn't love us. From everything I understand, again, the strike killed it. We were dead unless they loved us. And Fox made sure they didn't love us.

From everything I understand, again, the strike wasn't a surprise at that point. It had been building for years. The owners had been fighting amongst themselves about revenue sharing for years, which makes me wonder, you know, when you start off and it sounds like there was this very sincere earnest effort here, were you under the almost a naive belief in hindsight that this could work? When the strike hits, you go, well, gee, nobody saw that coming. Or it's like, well, yeah, that was the likely thing that was going to happen anyway. Was it kind of doomed from the outset, I think is what I'm asking in a long-winded way. Well, first of all, I don't think anybody in baseball, more particularly the union, I don't think the union ever believed that Major League Baseball would forgo the World Series.

Okay? So, no, it's not naive by any stretch. They thought they would announce a strike and then baseball would cave and they would do the postseason. Nobody had ever lost the postseason. And I think if you go back, you'll see that guys either said they'd be back before the postseason or they posted, they said. So when the strike ends, you do come back, you continue to broadcast. From what I read, a couple of the major things that were bandied about about the network,

one was the primetime aspect of it, right? Every game in primetime in the postseason, which prior to that, there had been a lot of day games and this was a shift. And also the regionalization aspect of it, right? The blackouts, the fact that there were no other games you could watch on the night that the Baseball Network had games, right? So can you explain a little bit those decisions and whatever controversy they caused, especially, I guess, the blackout and the regionalization? The regionalization is not such a big deal during the regular season, right? Except in the two-team markets, it's a little controversial. But in the postseason, it was very controversial. So the decision was driven by an attempt to make ratings greater.

And remember, you're living in a world, in the world of the early 90s, you had less outlets for distribution. If we had to do it differently, if we had gone to another term, I think we would have addressed the issue of the regionalization of the postseason, either by putting the games on simultaneously on other distribution outlets, or potentially by changing the times. But the idea was that we could accumulate the rating from all of these games that putatively were of greater interest in the regions in which they were telecast. Now, you didn't satisfy in any way, because there was no way at the time to do it, the out-of-market fan or the fan who wanted to see all four games, right? But if they had been available via different distribution outlets,

But if they had been available via different distribution outlets, the controversy would have been less significant. Now, having said that, did you look at the ratings? They were strong, right? Yes, they were. Well, I'll give you an example. Our weekly rating, so I'm talking about a Friday night or a Saturday night. Now, this is a long time ago, but our weekly rating was higher than the rating for the World Series last year. Think about this. Our weekly rating was around a six. The World Series

last year did a four, three, I believe. Our World Series rating was higher than the year before on CBS. It was a 19. With all the controversy, our numbers bore out the value of doing the thing simultaneously. But listen, I love baseball. I mean, I hated having to live with that controversy. And as I say, I think we try. It's a little like when my son was, my younger son played hockey when he was a kid. I'm sitting with the fathers up in the stands and it's a two-on-one breakaway and my son passes to the other kid on the breakaway and the kid misses the net. I turned to the father and said, he's done it. He'll never do it again. You know, I think if we'd had another year, we would have looked at whether we addressed it. I don't think we would have done anything with

the regular season because I think accumulating the rating was the right thing to do. It was one game a week and we had highlights. We were throwing in highlights, but post-season, I definitely would have done differently and I get it. I mean, I get the criticism. And the primetime shift. I want to point something out, by the way. In the World Series, we vowed we would never start a game later than 7.30. I think CBS was starting them at 8.30. So our games, yes, they were in prime for part of the country, but they were ending at an earlier time. I will also tell you, we were trying desperately with Bud, as was Bud, to shorten the length of games. We hated the length of games. bud as was bud to shorten the length of games. We hated the length of games. And unfortunately, when they looked at it, they violated my rule number one about it. When they came to talk to

me about how you shorten the game, I had my own ideas. But I said, the one thing you can't do is don't think you're going to cut down on the commercial load unless you're going to take less money. And the first recommendation they made was reducing the commercial load. It wasn't going to happen. But you could do a lot of other things, right? Like enforce the strike zone was my principal recommendation. When I was reading about it and understanding the service, the CBS deal and how baseball is searching for a partner,

and that's what leads ABC to NBC to come together, it felt a little reminiscent of what we're seeing today. Just take the Sunday midday morning package that baseball had. They had a $30 million annual deal with Peacock, and now it's a $10 million annual deal with Roku. They're different because Peacock is behind a paywall. But the ESPN deal, I think, is coming down in money as well. It did feel to me like I was rereading history that is being lived right now. I don't know if you feel that way, but I'm curious if you see some similarities as baseball tries to figure out what to do with its rights and does talk about the possibility of centralizing them. Well, I mean, okay, you're asking a couple of questions. First of all, again, remember,

I love baseball. I love baseball. I hate seeing the diminution in audience and popularity. I know they keep talking about attendance figures being up and all that. But I mean, at the end of the day, you know, the money is driven to a large extent by people who view it remotely, you know, and so we're seeing the NBA on the precipice of this extraordinary deal and baseball having its own issues. Now, centralization is driven by the demise of the regional packages. It's diamond. I mean, and by the way, they're not going to be alone in that regard. So when you talk about centralization, you're talking about centralization of daily baseball,

I think. Yes. Not post-season and the like. They're going to sell those to networks or to national distributors as much as they can. But listen, I think if you end up centralizing it, it gives you marketing opportunities you don't otherwise have. You have to remember and pay homage more than lip service to the local nature of baseball. So the telecast has to, in one way or another, reflect the community within which its principal fan base exists. By the same token, what you could do, both in terms of marketing and in terms of sales, is limitless. I would see that in a lot of respects as an opportunity.

I really would. It's a big job for which I am more than disqualified in years. But as I say, I think it's an opportunity. Is there any similarities between the landscape then and now? There is in what appears to be a potential diminution in interest, you know, on behalf of the national broadcasters for the national package. I mean, when you look at your Crown Jewel producing a four rating, right? They say we did, it was a 19 rating. That's not an insignificant difference, which goes to,

now listen, they didn't have the most attractive teams last year. This year, if you end up with the Yankees and the Dodgers, you're going to have a bigger number, I suspect. But although it's not going to be three times as large, they got to find a bigger number, I suspect. But although it's not going to be three times as large, they got to find a way to arrest that first. You know, we had a president named Grant Tinker, whose name is regrettably lost a little to history. He was president of NBC. Fabulous guy. But he described how NBC was going to have to operate in prime time. And he said, first will be best, and then we'll be first. Don't ask me to be first. Let me get it right. The baseball has to kind of get it right first.

Now, I think what they've done to the game in my mind, other than I don't love putting the guy on second. I'm with you there. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, other than that, I mean, I think they've done a terrific job in speeding up the game and making it more attractive in a lot of ways. I mean, I really believe that. You know, whether that's enough, you know, who knows? But at least they're unabashed. I mean, if you're looking at what you guys are talking about, you got to be willing to

take some big swings. Well, I saw that in 93, when this was all coming together, Ebersole said he hoped this would be the start of a 40-year deal. And then fast forward two years, he says, I can't imagine being involved in baseball the rest of this century. Now, of course, that changed pretty quickly. But the experience soured him on baseball briefly, at least. It didn't work out quite the way everyone had hoped. It wasn't the experience. It was that they bailed on us. I mean, baseball, I must say, they were great partners with us in the deal. There were a couple of guys who didn't like the deal, Steinbrenner principally. George Bush wasn't a big fan of it. Peter O'Malley didn't love it.

And yet, all of them were really cooperative during the two years. It was just the way they left. It seemed to us that we had delivered what we were asked to deliver. But we just felt we had done what we were asked to do. And we had done it so far within budget, it was a joke. We were so efficient. And we did it well. So we thought, you know, maybe you might want to give us another year to see what it works like if we can we can operate outside of the strike yeah because that's what i was going to end with really because you've been through so many different experiments in your careers and highs and lows and the xfl and everything you because i told you about that you had to raise it? Yes.

So, you know, certain things don't work out the way you want them to be, but they're interesting experiences or they're ahead of their time. But let me tell you something interesting, Ben. So we did the XFL, which, you know, when the XFL was over, I was hoping I could do something else really significant in my career. So my obit wouldn't read, you know, involved in the XFL. But on the far side of the XFL, Dick and I were meeting with Jack Welch. And you would think that Jack would have been appalled, right? Jack Welch turned to us and he said, if you've got any more of those, bring them to me. He said, because it cost us, it's $50 million, I think was the cost. us was $50 million, I think was the cost. He said, but if it had worked, it was going to be a gusher. He said, I don't mind rolling the dice. And so that's what you do.

Yeah. So if the timing had been more fortuitous, if the strike had been avoided or had been much shorter, if you had managed to hit that revenue target, how would the world be different today? Do you think we would still be watching the baseball network or something like it? Well, here's the problem. In structure, the baseball network could only produce in revenue whatever it was capable of selling in the marketplace. So its ceiling is whatever you could sell, right? Years and years ago, a guy named Art Modell,

you know that name? Art Modell was the owner of Cleveland Browns and he was in the day, the television guru for the NFL. And we were making a deal with the NFL and Art Modell looked at us and he said, listen, the issue here is what premium are you prepared to pay for our product? You know what premium is?

How much money are you prepared to lose to acquire our product? So the baseball network in its structure would never throw off more revenue than the pure value of the product, whatever you could sell it for. Whereas a network comes in and they say, we will pay you $100 million, 40 of which is loss, because the NFL is so valuable to us, we're prepared to eat that amount of money. So the likelihood is you would not have seen the baseball network survive, because as long as the sports world and the sports television world consists of one person, one entity that's prepared to lose money to acquire a product, you can't compete with them. The ideas from the baseball network might survive,

but the structure probably never could. The experience of NBC and ABC working together, did that go off without a hitch? People have knives out at any point there? Generally, it was really terrific. Generally. In the World Series, when we did the only World Series we did, remember, we went back and forth. So there was a certain amount of competition that you could feel between the two networks. I ended up having a fractured relationship that ultimately got healed a long time later with the head of ABC Sports because he saw me at one of the games wearing an NBC Sports jacket. I said to him, if you guys had given me a jacket, I would have worn it. But no, we cooperated quite well. You got to understand,

in the sports business, by and large, the executives have pretty good relationships. Now, back then, the normal rubric was we didn't mention the other network. So during the World Series, for example, they never said tomorrow is going to be on NBC. Eversol later on blew that up. And now you routinely see guys promoting that it's going to be on another network. So there was a lot of that in those days. But I must say, our working relationship with each of them was terrific.

Coming out of the baseball network is the start of that run of Fox. And I saw some quote from Embersol that was kind of putting down Fox. I wonder if Fox was in some ways underestimated, right? Because it feels like a turning point. We go from the baseball network to then Fox, which carries us, I mean, to now. But they carry you to now because they were prepared to pay. Listen, I mean, the network goes in to make a deal. They're always, if they're not disparaging the other network blatantly, they're implicitly doing so. And they're saying, we can do it better and you want to be with us, et cetera. Now, we all know that all of the networks can produce sports. We'd like to think we're the best, but we all can do it competently.

So at the end of the day, this is going to come as a shock, maybe not to you, Ben, but certainly to Evan. It's about money. At the end of the day, when you go in to make a deal with these guys, right, it is who's got the most money, right? So Fox took over because they were going to pay the most money. And did we say, well, Fox doesn't know how to do baseball? Of course, but of course they know how to do baseball. By the way, you know who they hired?

You know who their baseball producer was? The executive producer of the Baseball Network. That's who they hired. John Filippo, the same guy I hired. Oh, Flip, who went with John L John Phillip, the same guy I hired. Oh, Flip, who went with John Littner, yes. Yes. Yes. John Littner came from the Baseball Network. He was our legal guy. I hope if you asked them, they would say they had a... It was a really terrific place. It really was. We

celebrated everybody's everything. I had learned so much from Ebersole about running a place that it was just terrific. And I think the people really felt that way. Did you get anything out of this? Was it as big a waste as I thought it was going to be? broadcast history. It's an interesting alternate history, what if? And I'm glad that you took some time out of your third career of doing nothing to discuss your second career and interrupted your retirement. Well, I'll tell you. So you know what I'm going to do tomorrow? Nothing. And you know why? I'm not finished. That's why I'm doing nothing tomorrow. I'm not finished yet. Okay, guys, I really appreciate it. Nice meeting you guys. Thanks so much, Ken. Thank you. All right. Thanks to Sam and JD and Evan and Ken. Where are the lists of the 100 most powerful

baseball podcasters? That's what I want to know. And where would I rank? I guess any of us would have to have some amount of power for such a list to exist. By the way, Meg and I talked at the end of our last episode about whether Paul Skeen should start the All-Star game for the National League. And hey, he is. I'm pleased. He'll be the fifth rookie All-Star starter after Hideo Nomo, Fernando Valenzuela, Mark Fidrich, and a little less sensationally, Dave Stenhouse. I was pro-Paul Star game. I wouldn't give a guy, say, a Cy Young award for being merely the most exciting recent arrival. Though who knows, if Skeens keeps pitching like this and doesn't get shut down, he might be in the running for that too. But all-star starter, apologies to Chris Sale, Paul Skeens is the man of the moment.

It's what exhibition baseball is all about, and you never know how long a phenom will remain phenomenal. Carpe diem, let Skeens start. And Meg will be with me next week to give me an in-person report on his start, as well as the Futures game, and the Derby, and the Draft. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks.

Hannah Bennett, Nikhil Javeri, Gary Egan, Maddy T, and V Nguyen. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, autographed books, discount Thanks to all of you. page for links to upcoming Effectively Wild listener meetups at MLB ballparks. Thanks to Zachary Goldberg filling in for Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. There's no all-star break for Effectively Wild, so we will be back to talk to you next week. Does baseball look the same to you as it does to me?

When we look at baseball, how much do we see? Well, the curve balls bend and the home runs fly. More to the game than meets the eye. To get the stats compiled and the stories filed, fans on the internet might get riled, but we can break it down on Effectively Wild.