Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2489: Baseball: Better Late Than Never

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the bunt’s rehabilitation and (17:49) the President publicly picking a side in MLB’s labor battle, then talk to two guests about falling in love with and learning about baseball as adults. First (32:35), beloved BBC presenter and The Guardian columnist Adrian Chiles breaks his baseball silence to expound on how he got bitten by the baseball bug, his long-distance Rays relationship, the loneliness of following baseball from afar, cross-sport comparisons, Chiles-like wonder, and what mystifies him as a fan. Second (1:21:39), Jade Van Kley joins to discuss her journey from registered nurse to baseball content creator, bingeing baseball history, finding an audience for baseball lore drops and video diaries of her first season as a fan, and what fascinates her about the sport. Audio intro: Moon Hound, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio interstitial: Kite Person, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Philip Tapley and Michael Stokes, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to Leo on left-handed hitting Link to Other Ben on bunting Link to Stat Blast about bunting Link to The Wire quote Link to Padres’ three bunts Link to MSG boos Link to Trump interview comments Link to BP on Trump comments Link to Drellich on Trump comments Link to Drellich on Trump’s influence Link to Trump’s Yankee Stadium visit Link to Dodgers White House visit Link to EW episode on Trump’s baseball past Link to voter registration research Link to article on screwworms Link to Adrian’s baseball column Link to Adrian’s Guardian archive Link to Chiles wiki Link to West Bromwich Albion wiki Link to Adrian’s BBC show Link to Adrian’s book about drinking Link to Adrian’s columns collection Link to article about Adrian 1 Link to article about Adrian 2 Link to article about Adrian 3 Link to article about Adrian 4 Link to Chiles headline generator Link to Machado comments Link to European Super League wiki Link to EW episode on promotion/relegation Link to “silly position” at EW wiki Link to Playing Hard Ball book Link to foul strike rule Link to foul tip rule Link to Snickometer wiki Link to British baseball wiki Link to “Baseball Brit” EW episode Link to “London Series” EW episode Link to Adrian on soap dispensers Link to Whales logo Link to @backlinenurse on Instagram Link to Jade interstitial video Link to Jade on her first game Link to Sulphur Dell wiki Link to Green Cathedrals book Link to Veeck As In Wreck Link to Ben on Veeck As In Wreck Link to Ben on losing track of the count Link to pitcher hitting by year Link to backline wiki Link to Jade article 1 Link to Jade article 2  Sponsor Us on Patreon  Give a Gift Subscription  Email Us: [e-mail]  Effectively Wild Subreddit  Effectively Wild Wiki  Apple Podcasts Feed   Spotify Feed  YouTube Playlist  Facebook Group  Bluesky Account  Twitter Account  Get Our Merch! var SERVER_DATA = Object.assign(SERVER_DATA || {}); Source

How do you calculate whore? Does it come from the heart? Should we use defensive runs saved or follow the OAA? It's gone with their quips and opinions. It's effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2489 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters, I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs.

Hello, Meg. Hello. Well, we have a wonderful pairing of two delightful guests today. I am very excited for everyone to hear these conversations because they were lovely. Sometimes I wonder and fear that we are not accessible enough to neophytes. We try to be. I think we try to appeal to baseball fans of all stripes and experience levels, but sometimes it can be a bit intimidating to dive into an effectively wild episode.

We try to explain things. We try to lay it out. But you never want to over-explain for the people who have listened to 2400 episodes. But you always know it's someone's first episode. I don't want them to feel excluded. And also, people have been following baseball for decades. Other people are new to baseball. This is an episode where we are in conversation with a couple of folks who have learned about,

baseball recently or experienced baseball discovered baseball as adults and have made it their own and have learned along with us and we along with them. And we will be talking to internet celebrity Adrian Chiles, who some people may be aware of not just from his decades of work as a presenter on TV and radio on the BBC and ITV and he's been a soccer commentator. He hosts the Saturday live show on BBC Radio 4 if you're within BBC broadcast range. But he is best known the world around for being a columnist for The Guardian. And he makes somewhat mundane domestic observations about his life. And he writes about them in this really relatable way. And often goes fairly viral, I think, more viral than you would expect, given the subject matter. And he's kind of a modern day,

Andy Rooney, I guess. And when we do our low stakes, rants and celebrations and observations on our bonus episodes for Patreon supporters, I often think that we are sort of stepping into his corner because he is the master at that. And, you know, there's an Adrian Child's

headline generator where you can come up with your own Adrian Child's headlines. I mean, you know, some of his greatest hits might be, I knew everyone would hate my mustard shorts. That didn't stop me from, buying them. Or I thought it was weird to have a favorite spoon that I realized I wasn't alone. Or banter is the last thing I want from a coffee machine, yet here we are. You know, lots of observations in that vein.

It's just the best. So wholesome. It is. It's very wholesome. And baseball banter is not the last thing that he would want, it turns out. And he recently outed himself as a big baseball fan and a big raise fan when he wrote a lovely column for The Guardian. Hardly anyone watches baseball in the UK. So why do we keep speaking its language? And it's partly a complaint about the fact that he has no one to talk to about baseball.

And partly the observation that there's still a lot of baseball lingo in common circulation, even though the people using those terms may not know what they mean or where they come from where he is. So I had to just reach out to him and say, hey, if you want to talk to anyone about baseball, we're your people. And here he is. So we will be talking to Adrian Childs about how he discovered baseball and his many thoughts and questions and observations about it. And it's great. In a similar vein, we will be talking to Jade Van Clay, who is a baseball fan of more recent vintage. This is her first season as a fan.

And she has also developed a following on Instagram at Backline Nurse, where she just relates the discoveries that she makes about baseball. Baseball's past and present. And she just attended her first MLB game. And she is about to throw out a first pitch at a AAA game. And so we wanted to talk to her about her fascinating career path because she is a nurse, as her handle would suggest. And yet she is also now a baseball content creator. So this is great. This is exactly the sort of episodes that I like to do.

And we had a hell of a time talking to both of them. Yes, it was delightful. Yeah. Just a couple quick bits of banter before we get to them. So one is that in pieces published at Fangraphs on consecutive days, it was declared that this is the year of the bunt. Yep. And then also that it's the year of the long.

left-handed hitter. Yep. And I'm here to say, make up your mind. No. Which one is it? Can it be both? Yes. Okay.

I guess it can be both. Why not? It can be both. They're not in opposition to one another. No. Not at all. So I think it's fine. I want you to know that we had this conversation internally.

I'm sure you did. That Leo was like, do you want me to name it something else? And I was like, you know, if another headline occurs to you, because here I'm going to confess to some shortcomings. been my job. I'm not a, I'm not a great headline smith, you know. If, if Adrian Childs is, no, if his columns were left up to me, they'd have nowhere near their reach. It is, it is a limitation of mine. Obviously, we'll bow to the wisdom of Michael Balman, although I did have to just ran him in on a headline, because every now and again, you got to say no to things, you know?

he's a raptor who tests the fences and you just got to it's reassuring you know it's like how sometimes young children push back because they want you to know that there's a boundary there and they want you to assert a boundary and it's just like you know

like virtuous cycle anyway so Leo asked me if if we needed to have a different headline and I told him that if he was moved by one sure sure but if not I thought it was fine because they're not they're not at odds.

You can, you can. You can, you can. And they're both interesting observations. And I encourage people to check out both. I will link to them. But yes, Leo Morgan Stern wrote about the year of the left-handed hitter, which is interesting. It turns out that left-handed hitters are getting a lot of playing time and also are doing well with it. Doing very well with it.

Yes. And so he explored the reasons why. And it is perhaps a response to the fact that last year was the year of the left-handed pitcher, which we discussed on. the show and left-handed pitchers have become increasingly effective against right-handed hitters maybe by developing new pitch types and, you know, tailoring their pitch selection to which are platoon neutral pitches, et cetera. And so lefties are thriving. Now the left-handed hitter is thriving and they're eating right-handed pitchers alive and they're getting rewarded with more

and more playing time. So that's quite an interesting trend. And then other Ben, Ben Clemens wrote about it being the year of the bunt. And this is something that we mentioned on a stat blast years ago. So you heard it here first, or at least previously, on Effectively Wilde episode 284. This was back in 2023. We did a stat blast about how there did seem to be a resurgence in bunting, both in the rate and the success. And those things go hand in hand. Bunts have been more successful of late, and thus they have been more common as well.

And so there's been a bunt bounce back. And this is fascinating to me also because there's been a real rehabilitation of the bunt. And I love the evolution of this where Sabre 1.0 was sort of buntz are bad. Right. And to be fair, buntz certainly were overdone and overutilized and specifically sacrifice buntz, just giving yourself up, giving up and out. And so there became this dogmatic movement, the Brian Kenny kill the bunt movement, and the idea that, oh, bunts are bad. And if you're sort of a right-thinking, analytically minded fan, then you have to hate buntz.

And we would always try to bring some nuance to that conversation and say, we're talking about sacrifice buntz. Right. If you're bunting for a hit, yes. Go with God in a swift wind. It can not only be beneficial, but also entertaining. Brunting for a hit. That's fun. Just laying one down, giving yourself.

up, jogging down to first, not so much fun. Not that there's not still some skill to it, but when you can use that skill to try to get on base as well, I think that that's great. And I want the bunt to be part of baseball. And it has been. And now it seems to be something where the numbers actually support it. And you can make a very analytically driven case that bunting is beneficial. And, you know, within reason, in moderation, obviously, it's not as if buntz have bounce back to their all-time high or anything. It's just that they've gone from the Nadir to, hey, okay, we're making a little bit of a bunt comeback here.

And as Ben Clements noted, at this point, a bunt is more valuable than a non-bunt ball and play on the whole, just in terms of run value. And so teams have gotten better about bunting. Yeah. And so teams are kind of bunting smarter, not harder, or smarter not as frequently. And so they're picking the right spots. And so they're doing it in situations where it makes sense to bunt.

And they're doing it by and large with hitters with whom it makes sense to bunt because they're not great hitters. And I just, I love this because bunts have gone from, oh, this is so silly and counterproductive and saber matrician. and analysis suggests that you should never bunt and everything to now we've gotten to the point where no, it's actually sort of saber-sanctioned. Yeah. And now there's more variety in balls and play in baseball offense.

And so I love that we've all just kind of come around and teams and players have come around and the media and fans and analysts. And so I just, I love this glow up for the bunt and the way that we have evolved in our understanding of it. teams have evolved in their practice of it. We like a diverse baseball ecosystem. You know, we want there to be a lot of different offensive approaches. And it's always sort of in this push and pull with optimization.

And I think sacrifice bunting is pretty doofy. There are circumstances, particularly with the new extra endings rules. I guess they're not new anymore, but new-ish extra innings rules where there is more of a case to be made for sacrifice. But I like the idea of getting to watch a bunch of different things. I like the bunt as a particular manifestation of baseball athleticism. The lead photo for that piece was of Nassim Nunez, who I feel terrible about having derisively dismissed as the league's stolen base leader on an episode a couple of weeks ago because I was like, I can't believe he's getting on base enough to do that. He's not the most.

prolific hitter, but he is a tremendous bunter for four-base hits. And having gone to one of the games in the Diamondback series against the Nationals most recently, boy, is that guy fast. And so I think, you know, the notion of helping to make the best use of a particular kind of hitter and have that be sort of in keeping with the spirit of Sabromatrix and having it be, barometrically sound from a run value perspective while also being a different kind of hit than we would see from some of the big boppers. Like it's just, it's very exciting. I think it's a lot of fun. You know, well executed bunk, great. Now, I will say the following. You're not watching college baseball. So bear with me. But for for those following along, college baseball, we are,

we are on to Omaha, right? During regional play, Ben, These teams were bunting up a storm, and by that I mean they were sacrifice bunting up a storm. And it was some of it was, now look, in college baseball, the defenses are not as good, you could perhaps make an argument that it makes a little more sense to bunt in some circumstances than it would in the pros because the odds that the defense is actually able to field that ball are those odds are lower. And so your understanding of what is truly a sacrifice versus trying to bump for a base hit and then having the sacrifice be, as Ben put it in his piece, sort of the fail case. Okay, we should have some understanding that that's slightly different in college ball than it is in the majors. But there are times I was just like some dumbest freaking buns I've ever seen in my entire life. These are some dumb dumb buns and I wish they would stop.

You know, these are like critical situations. And the, like, I can't remember. I can't even remember which of the games it was, Ben. can't even remember because it happened so many times. But one of the commentators, and you really got to have a dumb bump for a college baseball commentator to say it's dumb. And I don't say that as a disrespect to college baseball commentators who I think are actually very good.

And everyone who's been kind of annoyed by ESPN's baseball coverage, go watch their baseball and softball coverage at the college level because it is generally quite strong. Anyway, they're like, oh, this is a key situation. And you really, you don't want to be given away and out. And then the kid bunts and I'm like, like that, like that giving away. way and out? What are we doing? What are we doing here? Maybe it was one of the games that UCLA won before they were eliminated. Embarrassing. Anyway, bunts are back, or at least smart bunts are back? Smart bunts are back. Or they're here for the first time. It sort of depends, doesn't I? Maybe so. Yeah. And yes, there have been some games on Monday, for instance, the Padres were playing the Reds. And in the seventh, the Padres had three straight buntes. And they had. And they, they took the lead on those, and I think two of them were scored hits, and one was an error, but the Reds infielders just seemed unprepared for that.

And that's part of why this is analytically approved at this point, because game done changed. And so when the run environment, the scoring environment changes, first of all, have you looked at the league OBP lately? I know it's been propped up a bit by walks early this year, but yeah, batting average is low. You can't count on advancing runners in other ways, and so that changes the calculus. And also, when bunt's bottomed out and nobody was bunting anymore, defenders weren't prepared to field against the bunt. And so they're not ready for it. And so it's just the constant cat and mouse where if everyone's expecting the bunt, well, then it doesn't make sense.

But if the bunt is so out of vogue that no one is expecting the bunt anymore, then you can catch people sleeping. And suddenly the bunt is viable again. And if people are bunting too much, then people will catch on. and they'll prepare for buntz, and then buntz won't work as well, and then we'll swing back the other way. But I'm glad that they are not being hunted into extinction here, that there is still a place for buntz in baseball.

Yeah, I think that's right. And you're right, that it'll, there will be sort of a push and pull and a shifting around, and it'll be really fascinating to see how it trends over time. But I think that there are going to be guys where, you know, regardless of what sort of the meta game is, it is always going to maybe just make some good sense for them to be bunting for hits. You know, if you're, if you're Nassim Nunez, like the combination of your at-time struggles at the plate with your speed

and clearly an ability to get the bunt down, right? Like that's the other thing. Yeah. You know, not everyone can do that, you know, you'll hear many an old-school broadcaster sort of bemoaning how they don't teach the bunt anymore. And I think some of that is a little silly, but it's not. totally silly. Like, it is a deep, I think at times has been a deprioritized skill. And so there are guys who are better at it as just like a pure baseball skill than others.

So yeah, it'll be. And I was, Ben, sometimes I'm not able to find exactly what I want in our photo service. But that photo of Nassim Nunez bunting, mm-hmm. Perfect. I might not be able to do headlines, but I have an eye for the photo, I think. Okay. Well, most of the rest of this episode,

episode is going to be wholesome and fun and engaging. And so the last bit of banter before we get to that content warning, Donald Trump. I don't want anyone to be jump scared by this, but I was just jump scared. A brief diversion into Donald Trump. Okay. It's baseball relevant. So it is, unfortunately. So New Yorkers, like me, New Yorkers like President Trump, even less than usual right now, because he appeared at game three of the NBA fine. and here's how he was received when he was shown on the Jumbotron at the Garden. He will not be attending game four, but everyone was mad, not just because Donald Trump has to make everything about him, but because the Knicks lost after a 13-game winning streak.

Many people's entries were delayed because of all the security, etc. Well, of course he weighed in on baseball. the other day too, because Donald Trump will always insert himself into any discourse about sports. To be fair, in this case, he was asked about it by a reporter, but he did not hold back when he was asked, and here's what he said. I will play a short clip, which I have briefly edited, and you don't have to sue us, Donald. I am just editing it because he did a bit of a weave into college sports and back. But here's what he said about baseball and the state of labor negotiations and his beliefs about a salary cap. Mr. President, what do you think about Major League Baseball owners

pushing for a salary cap? Do you think it's time for baseball to have a salary cap? Oh, they should have one? Don't they? It's a luxury task threshold, but the teams that have the money are willing to spend it, like the Dodgers. You don't have a salary cap. You don't have a sport because they can't help themselves. In sports, they can't out of themselves. Football has a salary cap. Every major professional league except major league baseball in America. They should have done it a long time ago. I know so much about sports. Major league baseball, it's shocking, frankly, that they didn't put a cap on many years ago. They had a chance to do a cap and they blew it. None of this is surprising in any way. You had to figure if he was asked about the cap

or took it upon himself to say something about the cap. This is what he would say, given his other positions, not exactly being our most pro-labor president. Now, it is highly irregular for him to have picked aside, or at least it would be highly irregular for a regular president to do it. It was probably the 19th most highly irregular thing he did that day or in that interview. But it is seemingly unprecedented for a president to stake out a position like that.

And there was a good article this week at Baseball Perspectus by Daniel Epstein, and he ran through the history of every time a president has weighed in on baseball bargaining and work stoppages. And the constant throughout it all, through more than half a century of history, good presidents, bad presidents, celebrated presidents, impeached precedents, they all refuse to take sides. And some of them did urge the parties to come to an agreement. Sure.

And Bill Clinton was because he was president during the strike in 94-95. He tried to get the two sides to the table and get them to accept some sort of mediation. And ultimately, that didn't really go anywhere. But even he was not saying, hey, you have to cave, you have to do this, here's what they should do. Of course, Donald Trump did. And he was asked about this, by the way, between questions about the acting director of national intelligence and Ukraine. And so just between those things, we had a little diversion, a little interlude about baseball. But I wondered how this would have landed with baseball players, because I'm sure that they were made aware of what he said.

And we know that baseball players, at least the American ones, they tend to be the right side. of the spectrum, politically speaking, which we know from some public voter registration data and also just from observing baseball and the demographics of baseball and how Donald Trump has been received when he has, say, visited the Yankees or whatever it is, right? And so I wondered how players might have perceived this quote because a lot of players are probably to the extent that they are politically aware at all, probably pretty pro-Trump and pretty anti-salary cap. So when an anti-soury-cap person hears Donald Trump's pro-sary-cap position,

what do you think that does to them? Does that change their position on Donald Trump? Does it change their position on the salary cap or neither? Oh, how? much trouble. Am I interested in? You know the voice of the teacher and Charlie Brown? Yes.

I think that that's maybe what they hear. I guess the kindest thing I would say is that it's not like baseball players would be the first American voters to experience some amount of cognitive dissonance in their political views. Hardly a trait singular to the baseball playing population. Yeah. Would I hope that it might invite a reconsideration of other policies, particularly since they play a game that is fortunate to be populated by a number of international players who might be adversely affected by a draconian and anti-humanitarian immigration policy? I mean, I might want that, but I'm a realist, Ben, you know? I don't think that it really penetrates very much. I do think that it is bizarre that it doesn't register, maybe.

And it is interesting that they, as a population, so we are making generalizations here, because obviously there are, you know, there are some baseball players who might have a more active internal dialogue on this stuff than I'm giving them credit for, and I don't want to insinuate that none of them ever think about it because I think they do. And I also think that, you know, there might be any number of players who they'll welcome woke to when it arrives, right?

Like it's a really big population of people. So we want to be careful about our generalizations. But I think it is interesting that a group that has, at least over the last couple of negotiations, been able to demonstrate, I think, real and profound solidarity with each other and has in the things that the broader union, membership has prioritized and expressed as important to prioritize in the CBA negotiation, trying to balance a bit more the amount of money going to early career players rather than those who have managed to reach free agency. It just seems like I could suggest other policy priorities in the world that they might want to.

Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, because a lot of Trump supporters in order to maintain support for Trump, they will disregard many of the things he says and often assume that he doesn't mean them or that nothing will come of them. And then other times, though, if you are a truly fervent supporter, then you will adopt the Trump line on something. And so that's why I wonder about baseball players, are there any who will be swayed in their resolve because of Donald Trump coming out as pro cap and then thinking, oh, well, huh? If I am a true supporter of the president, then I must also become a supporter of the cap.

I would guess not in most cases that it'll probably just be a, oh, Donald being Donald sort of situation. We'll disregard that. This is not his specialty, even though he said in that quote that he knows so much about sports, even though he seemed. Do you think he could name a single player on the Knicks right now? Well, after watching the game, I would hope. But, yeah, I mean, he did have his eyes. close for part of it, it's true. But he, you know, by presidential standards, I guess he knows a fair amount about sports and has a fair amount of sports experience. I wouldn't say he's a true

ball knower. But no, I mean, his favorite baseball player is dead. Well, yeah. And he has inserted himself into baseball matters when it comes to Pete Rose and other things. And so that's ultimately, and sure, we've seen some players be more receptive in this second term to, say, visiting the White house, et cetera, accepting the plotts and the backslaps. Will that translate in any way to bargaining? I kind of doubt it. I guess the more relevant question is whether he will try to exert his will. Sure.

If and when, most likely there is a work stoppage because he never hesitates to get involved in sports matters. And this is one where he could have some sort of impact. And, of course, in 94, 95, the N.S. LRB played a pretty big role in bringing an end to that. And now it is much less labor-friendly than it was. And so that could have some bearing on the proceedings. And it might just be blather in hot air, but there's leverage.

Obviously, we've seen MLB try not to get on his bad side, which is the case for other leagues as well. And so will that sort of grease the wheels? You know, there are MLB owners who are friendly with him, some who are not. Often it just depends on who had his ear most recently. And so I don't know, maybe if a player makes a direct appeal, suddenly he will come out and be anti-cap. Who knows? Yeah.

Bryce, so make yourself useful. Yeah. Seems like he's not entirely clear on whether there was a cap, but he seemed to have some awareness that there was a soft cap, at least. But, you know, there is kind of a provision that the president can try to get it. an injunction of a strike, but only if it's something that's imperiling the national health or safety. But of course, he plays fast and loose with national health and safety and using that as a justification for things. So might he try to do that if he thought it was a smart political play or the right person spoke to him at the right time? Who knows? So it's kind of a wild card.

It's an X factor. It wasn't at all surprising that he said something about it or that he said what he said, but will he actually attempt to do something more than muse about it off the cuff? Because clearly he has taken a position, and it's not a surprising position, but will he go beyond that to trying to influence the outcome? One wonders. Yeah, I do wonder, you know, I think part of it will depend on what does he either want to distract himself or other people from at the time. You know, maybe he'll get like laser focused on screwworms. And then we can avoid a couple of catastrophes. Wouldn't that be nice?

As an aside, hey, everyone, stop posting about the screw worms. I understand it's like an important news story, but I should get to decide whether I see the little guys, you know? Like, I don't, I feel like I should get to pick whether I'm on the screw worms. Looking at the screw worms. Yeah, I mean, I think that part of the reason that we have previously seen restraint from that office is because of the possibility that these sorts of disputes can end up in front of the NLRB. And so there's been a desire to sort of maintain neutrality until a potential case is

heard on the part of the administration. So there's that. I have no idea how much conviction around this he has. I am curious, like, how do you even game plan that from the perspective of the union? Like, you're right. Like, they, which charming person can they put in front of him to? like sway him right now. Yes. Evendrelic asked the league and the union for comment on Trump's comments and they both

declined. Declined, yeah. So, so I don't know. We'll just have to wait and see. I think of all of the things that might influence the negotiation and maybe this is naive on my part because you're right that boy, does that guy really like us to be thinking about him all the time. I'm skeptical that it will end up being the most important deciding for.

factor in either the duration or direction of a stoppage, but the possibility remains. And, you know, will it sway some of the more conservative members of the union toward an acceptance of the cap? I mean, I guess we have to grapple with the reality of voters acting in defiance of their own self-interest generally, but particularly as it pertains to this guy. Generally, people don't like it when you screw with their money. that tends to be a bright line but not for everyone

but maybe your reluctance to be swayed by your charismatic leader is different when it's several million dollars of salary instead of a couple of dollars at the gas pump I don't know we'll find out yes and of course there's always the cudgel of the antitrust exemption

which can be held over MLB's head anyway we will put that out of our minds for now and we will talk to two guests who as we will learn long to visit Wrigley field and we will begin with Adrian Childs a baseball fan and a Brit and an international treasure Take me to the diamond Lead me through the turnstile

Shower me with data That I never thought to come by Now we're freely not Well, he's been called the evuncular king of cozy whimsy, the internet's favorite columnist, the greatest columnist of our time, the godfather of British journalism, and the nation's only truly good columnist. I can't testify to all of that. I haven't read every columnist, but I can testify to the fact that he wrote a truly good column late last month because it's about baseball, which prompted this appearance. Adrian Childs, welcome to Effectively Wild. Thank you very much. I'm honored to

be here. This is my first bit of baseball broadcasting. Oh, wow. In a long and storied broadcasting career, so this is quite a milestone. Yeah, absolutely it is. And I've made a little go a long way in my career in all the sports and social affairs I've covered. And this will be no difference in terms of my knowledge. Well, I've read some interviews with you where you say that it's nice to get any kind of compliment, but if somebody stops you in the street and says, I read your guardian column, that to you is Nirvana. So I assume it had to be Nirvana when you got an email from me saying, I read your guardian column. Can you come on the show? Well, yeah.

I suppose there's a bit of trepidation because I could see it was the baseball column you'd seen. So I thought, oh, what if I don't? My natural inclination is to think I've done something. wrong or said something stupid. So that you were even, you know, even erring on the side of positivity, that's good enough for me. No, we are known for being somewhat pedantic at times and for taking people to task and fact-checking, but I find no fault with your first foray into baseball whatsoever. Great.

And I've read that your writing process, you do still have to get your topics greenlit. You have to run them by your editor at first. And you wrote in the column that baseball is a sport in which no one here is interested, which is, of course, a bit of hyperbole, but because it's relatively unpopular, did you have any difficulty getting this one past your editor when you said you wanted to write about baseball? I didn't, and look, you're right to caveat it as saying, you know, it's relatively unpopular, but it's not even unpopular. It's just not in the public discourse at all.

I mean, really it isn't. You could go to certainly any provincial British city and stop 100 people in the street and ask them about baseball. You would get a blank look. Honestly, people just don't get it. But, I mean, my fig leaf, if you like, my cover for writing the piece was, which I probably didn't need, actually. But it was this fascination of how much baseball terminology is in our

lexicon in the UK without anybody be interested in baseball. So, you know, people talk about bases loaded when, as an expression, without knowing that it's derived from baseball, playing hard ball. I mean, there's so much a curve ball. Many people would use that, I would say, again, I have every hundred that use that. Probably eight will know that a curve ball is something you get in baseball. Well, I think your column can perhaps serve as the start of some evangelism for the sport, but I am curious about your own journey to your fandom. I know you noted in the column that you were on holiday in St. Petersburg

and happened to go to a Tampa Bay race game. And I'm curious, what possessed you to go to that initial game? And then what about that day in that particular venue grabbed you so? because Tropicana Field has a somewhat mixed reputation among baseball fans. I'm sure you're aware that the team is trying to get a new ballpark greenlit. So walk us through sort of that initial day and what about it so resonated with you? Well, it was kind of something to do. And I've always been interested in baseball, interested in all sports,

but I've never quite sort of gone. it. And I think thereafter, it's a bit like it was just the right moment for me with the right sport. It's like meeting a partner, you know, meeting, you can meet the right woman at the wrong time or you can meet the wrong woman at the right time, you know, and occasionally you meet the right woman at the right time. Now, here, I just met the right sport at the right time and the right team. So I was with some, an old school friend of mine actually, and his from the UK and his kids and my kids were all on holiday together and his son seemed to know the rules better than I did

and taught me through it. It was something about the fact that it was half empty. It felt a bit unfashionable, not unloved exactly, but my soccer team is West Bromwich Albion, which is the second or even the third biggest side in the West Midlands, in the Midlands of England. You know, Aston Villa is the big team in Birmingham, West Bromwich Albion Com second. So he'd had a bit of that feel about it.

And there were three things which just got me about the place. One was just the way they announced Evan Longoria's name. I just like the way that Evan Longoria. And is he related to that single woman? You know, what's that about? Then there was also Johnny Damon And I think they played Go Johnny Go When he came to

He came to bat And there was that incredibly hot I don't know how you'd describe it But he held He held his bat incredibly high And I thought what's he doing He can't start from that position It was almost sort of above his head

But I think he I think he scored a hit And he just looked so He just looked so good-looking and so cool. And then I read up on him and I found out that he's got Croatian heritage, which I have. So I liked him even more then. Then there was the coach, Joe Madden, who I just like the look of. In fact, his glasses looked a bit like mine. And with our grey hair, I thought maybe I could be a Joe Madden sort of tribute act. And then I asked around and it turned

out, you know, he used an inspirational figure. I mean, I thought his book, actually. I think he's called The Book of Joe. It's one of the better books I've ever read about anything. I've just found him an absolutely fascinating person and his thoughts on life and how he transformed the race. But, you know, all these years, you know, coaching junior clubs or farm clubs or Little League club, whatever you call, though. I don't know the terminology when he was with the angels, I think. I just found, I just found, you know, through him, I found this insight into the, into the whole, I don't know, into the whole world of, of baseball. But it's a bit like, it's a bit like God, it's a bit like the mystery of faith. It's kind of fundamentally unknowable.

I know I will never, I will never, I will never, I will never, I will never understand it all. And if I did, it might lose its magic. I'll always be slightly bewildered, like a, like a dog, looking at a card trick. You know, knowing there's something, knowing there's something clever going on, but you don't quite know what it is. You know, it's that, it's that,

that's the, that's the feeling I get. So it was Evan Longoria, Johnny Damon, the obviously wise Joe Madden, this, you know, ill-attended game. And I'm pretty sure,

I'm pretty sure the raise one, actually, it's funny that, I don't remember. And then, suddenly, I just found myself looking out, for them all the time. And the rest of that holiday, I just spent propped up in a bar or a home, just sort of watching every ball, half trying to work out what was going on, and half just

willing them to win and feeling upset when they didn't. Well, they did win a lot that year. That was 2011, I assume, because that was Johnny Damon's lone year with the race. Sadly, for you, you must have been bereft when he departed just after you discovered the team. but I appreciate your code switching and saying soccer for our primarily American audience. Yes. That was very considerate. So when you went back across the pond then,

how did you maintain contact with the race and with baseball at large? How do you stay in touch with the sport? As I remember it, it was through the MLB app, which I think's really good. And I'd often just watch the, I mean, it's a route to madness on Tewa, just watching sort of,

the graphic representation of the match. And at the time I was working covering sort of elite soccer around the world or certainly around Europe. And, you know, so I'd be sitting with ex-socker players, you know, some big names in the sport and my, you know, and the TV crew. You know, we'd be out somewhere like Valencia having covered a game there and they'd all be talking or be sitting, looking at the screen, trying to get anybody interested in the fact that rays have come from 5-0 down, 5-0-0 down in the 8-10 to win.

You can say, deal. You can't feel free. And you just got sort of blank looks, you know, from everybody. But so I kept in touch with it like that. And then actually, then I subscribe to watch any game on the telly. And then I, you know, I had to have a bit of an intervention on myself because I just, I can't sit and watch baseball. baseball for hours and hours on my own because there was no one else really to watch it with. So I just had to calm it down a bit.

I did find somebody to talk to about it. Interestingly, I was a famous cricketer here who is, it was actually the best batter in the world for a time called Jonathan Trott. And just as he retired from the game, I got, I sort of got to know him. he lives in Birmingham, which is where my family are from. And obviously we talked about cricket. We talked about football, and we went to a few matches. And then I mentioned baseball, and he really does have an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball. He really does like it.

So I said, well, let's go on a trip. So actually, we went to Derek Jeter's last game, which was at Boston, which was at Fenway Park. I remember. And then whenever I was in the States, I'd always, I don't travel as much now, but I'd always try to get to, you know, to a baseball field. So I was in San Francisco and to see the Padres, I saw the Dodgers, there's just, there's just, again, it's magic around baseball. I just feel at peace when I'm in there, you know, it's like being in church or something. I can't really describe it. I just like the, I just like the rhythm of it.

Yeah, you're preaching to the choir if you're in the church too. I'm curious, you know, baseball in the States is, and the website that I help to edit is part and parcel with this, very defined now by analytics and statistics. Does that part of the game resonate with you at all, or does it sort of interfere with the church feeling? I don't know, I've met so many athletes who, you know, play sports where it becomes all about the statistics. Cricket, for example, you know, you will have an average, the average number of runs you get. And these can become a brick round, it can become a brick round an athlete's neck. Your average is, say, 50 and then you are out in earnings for 48. My average is going down.

And just so I'm not really comfortable, to be honest, but I don't think about it, I don't think about it too much, but since you ask, you know, that hard number next to anything, there's, you know, there's more to life than a, there's more to life than a score. It's kind of, to me, it feels like baseball's an art and it's got a soul. Yet at the same time, it is kind of ruled by, ruled by numbers. But I suppose it's those that, see, you know, this is what I thought Joe Madden could do, is by reading inside the numbers and being clever about it, you can, you know, buck whatever trend that everyone else is seeing and make a decent signing, bring somebody who's good in. The Padres, Mani Machado, I think, feels pretty similarly based on some recent comments he made about numbers being everywhere in baseball, but... But listen, it's interesting about, it's interesting how there's a movement. in soccer now for the same thing.

If there's all these new metrics, a lot of which I don't understand. I spent a lifetime watching it and covering it. And I literally do not understand a lot of them. And soccer is a game of chaos. It doesn't really lend itself to it. And people are trying to make decisions and stuff based on statistics, often fueled by the betting markets, unfortunately.

And I'm not sure, I'm not sure it's, it's an especially, it's an especially healthy thing. But I do like about baseball is the, you know, they've stock with their, you know, they've stock, obviously laws change and so on in ways. I probably don't really appreciate. But the basic format has stubbornly stayed the same. I mean, our similar sport is cricket. They keep messing, I won't bore you with the detail, but they keep messing. I won't bore you with the detail, but they keep messing with the format. So some games lasted five days.

Right. And then some games lasted two days. Then there was like a one-day game. And then there was a 50-over game, then a 20-over and over-being six balls, but let's not get bogged into that. And then there was a hundred ball game. So whenever you switch on the teller, you don't know what format of the game you're watching. Whereas baseball, they've kind of stuck with it. So you can always kind of feel the hand of history.

on your shoulder, you know, with it when you watch it. And I really, I really like that. There's a, there's a great book, actually, which compares cricket and baseball. I think it's called hardball by a guy who's now England, cricket, chairman of selectors. He was a batter back in the day. He pointed to the central difference between the two sports. And this is what causes the confusion. This is why followers of cricket, British people, can't get. And, you know, their heads round baseball is because they're making the mistake of thinking baseballs about the batter. Because in cricket, you're looking at the batsman to do something. And most balls deliveries, the batsman does do something.

Whereas if you look at baseball through that prison, most of the time, the batter misses. So for me, what clicked with me that day at Tropicana was, I thought, hang on, I've got to start looking at the pitcher. And I found that fascinating. And I found it quite brutal, in fact. Yeah. So, you know, the pitcher throws, you know, he gets a strike. But then he gets a ball and then he gets another ball. And then maybe he walks. All right. Now he's got somebody on first base. So at that point, I realized, hang on, he needs eyes in the back of his head now. Right. You know, and then he sort of loses concentration and then the, and then, you know, and then he, The next batter comes along and then he scores a hit and then, you know, so the bases are getting loaded.

And you can see the pressure on him. And then there's this strange business of the mound visit. But what's going on? How on earth is this helpful? Did any pitcher ever improve their performance after a mound visit? I mean, you know, I mean, as one as a TV director I worked with on football for years, who covered baseball in the States. And he said, I never understood that.

He goes, I mean, what is he saying to him as part from, look, whatever you're doing, stop doing it. Do it better. And then walk, walk off again. Yes. You know, it's one of the many mysteries of it I didn't get. It's funny how you come to something new. And I'm sure it'd be the same if you came over here and I took you to watch some cricket. There'd be some things you just didn't get that seemed obvious.

Something I could never, a great example, I could never understand when the closer came on. Yeah. I mean, if he's so good, then why did it, why have you left it till now? Stick him on at the beginning and just stick with it. Right. I mean, and obviously, you know, I start to get it after a while, but it sort of didn't make any sense. Well, that's interesting.

I remember looking up, hang on, is it only allowed, if they only allowed to bring this special source on, and they are only allowed to bring this miracle man on in the eight innings. You've hit on something there, and some relievers, of course, some pitchers are suited to one inning at a time, and so they aren't necessarily equipped to start the game. But there has been an ongoing line of discussion about, well, should you wait until it's a save situation, until it's the very end of the game, to bring in your super duper pitcher who can get you out of any jam, shouldn't you bring that guy on when it's an actually important moment when you need that best pitcher from the bullpen? And teams have evolved in that direction, but there was this perception that, oh, closers can come in at only this particular time.

They are very special hot house flowers. But I think you're also picking up on another interesting thing, which is that baseball has evolved, I think, away from cricket in that respect, where, you know, cricket came from baseball and rounders, the way that the U.S. came from England, and we've changed in various ways since we split apart. And at the beginning of baseball history, it was much more about the batter and the runners and the fielder,

and the pitcher was just the person who put the ball in play, essentially. It just served it up to the batter, and then the game started, whereas it has evolved to be much more about the pitcher batter battle, and often, as you say, the ball is not put in play at all, which is maybe not ideal. And I was going to ask just because you'd think, oh, cricket baseball, there should be overlap there, and yet each seems to be pretty impenetrable

two followers of the other. And we're fascinated by cricket here unaffectively wild, and we often talk about the ways that it differs from baseball, but I wouldn't say that we have a firm grasp of it. And so that maybe has been an impediment, if anything, because, you know, there are baseball fans in England, in the UK, and we have had some of them on the show,

and there is a bit of a baseball community. And, of course, there's a Great Britain team and playing in the WPC and everything. But, of course, it does remain a minority. niche. So why is that? Do you think that can change? Because obviously Major League Baseball hopes that it can change and has staged games there in the hope that it would. I can't see. Because if it was going to change, it would have changed by now. Because, you know, NBA seems to me to get bigger and bigger here and in Europe. And certainly NFL does.

You know, I know a lot of people who all bore you to tears about, you know, about NFL here. But baseball, I can't really explain that. You never know something might happen to change things, a great film or something. But I don't mean, some things, why has everything got to be globalised anyway? Yeah. Most places you travel in the world, you see the same brands, the same things, the same music, the same, you know, well, it's good to have something uniquely

American, you know, or uniquely not American or something like cricket, you know, I don't think that's necessarily I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. The other thing, incidentally I'd do, I'll just go reflected on this today the head of talking to you, I found with baseball, I slightly do, the thing you do when you're

watching the Olympics, where for the one time in four years, you look at a sport, you know nothing about but become engrossed in it. Yeah. So you're watching taekwondo and you suddenly start contesting umpire's decision in the taekwondo when literally you didn't know anything about it 15 minutes earlier. And also you look at sport, you think, well, why do I, well, that's a silly rule.

Why is that there? And I found myself doing that with baseball. Why don't we do it like that? That's just, that's silly. You might be right. Some of them are silly. Sometimes you need a fresh perspective to see the silliness. The big thing I can't understand, actually, is, I mean, for sport, you need jeopardy, obviously.

So within reason. So you could increase the jeopardy a bit in baseball by not giving everybody gloves to catch the ball. I mean, cricket. You know, there's only one player that wicketkeeper or backstop you'd call him. That equivalent's got big gloves. No one else has, apart from the batters, protecting their hands. Yeah. So when a, you know, when the balls hit in the air, there's a certain amount of, will he or won't he catch it? I mean, I would, so I would suggest the following rules. I think the backstop, you know, has obviously got to have his big glove.

I will allow the baseman to have gloves, I think. Well, that would be more jeopardy. But the outfielders, I don't see why they should have gloves. Yeah. I think there's a school of thought that we should at least restrict. the size of the gloves because the fielders have gotten too good. This is another case where baseball started more like cricket. Nobody had gloves. And then they realized, well, this would help actually and hurt less. But you're onto something. Maybe the gloves have gotten too good.

Also, I meant to ask you, is there been, sorry, I know you're the one supposed to be asking the question. No, please. As you know, I'm starved of this kind of conversation. Yes, we will feed you. To your knowledge, has there been any research done? about the best place to sit in a ballpark if you want to catch a foul ball. Because I've become slightly obsessed with it. And the closest I've come actually was that Derek Jeter's last game at Fenway Park.

And it wasn't him that hit it. But a fly ball came in our direction. And I was with that ex-critic cricketer Jonathan Trott. And we were sitting on the front row of the upper tier in one of the... of the stance. And this ball was dropping just in front of me. And I launched, I lunged, I lunged forward to get it. And honestly, and Trotty let out a scream and just grabbed me around the base.

I said, what, what are you doing? What are you doing? You're going to kill yourself? You know, so that's the closest I've got. And it might have been, I mean, what a way to die though, getting catching my one and only foul ball. But where is the best place to sink to catch the foul? I know you've had other columns about falls that you've suffered,

so that could have been a good column topic too. But yeah, there are people somewhat infamous figures in the game known as ball hawks who do try to make a sort of science about positioning themselves in the perfect place to catch a ball. And yes, I think you could do some analysis on that because we have what are called spray charts, which is just where you display where the batty balls tend to be hit. They don't always track the fowls, unfortunately, which might make that more difficult. But I think the experts certainly know where to position themselves for the optimal catch probability.

So next time you're going to the part. And have you touched a ball, have you touched a ball yourself? Organically, naturally, I have not. I've never caught a foul ball. And of course, there is contested etiquette around what adults who can't. catch foul balls ought to do if there are children present and whether they are obligated to surrender those foul balls to assembled children. Although I think in your case, they would probably allow you to keep it both because, you know, you're not often able to get to a ballpark.

I would surrender it. I'd surrender it, but I'd like a photograph of myself with the ball. Yes. And the happy children. And a certificate signed by them all confirming I did it. in fact, catch that ball. That would do me, and then they could have it. We'd have to try to engineer it so that you could catch someone's home run because there is a story tradition of folks catching home run balls, particularly if it is sort of a significant home run to the player, you know, their first home run, some milestone number,

and often the team will engage in a bit of bartering so that you can get a picture with the player, assigned ball, assigned bat. So I think that would probably be your sweet spot. Do you know, for something else that fascinates me is baseball having no traction anywhere in Europe, really. You know, say Derek Jeter. I mean, he can go on holiday and walk through the streets of London or somewhere in Spain or somewhere. And no one's going to have a clue who he is. I just wonder whether he enjoys that.

Yeah. Or he actually needs to go around. handing out sort of baseball cards of himself. By the way, you know, this is what I earn, and this is how brilliant I am, and this is how many people think I'm some kind of deity for what I do. I just want, you know, somebody like David Beckham helped.

He must, back in the day, he would have had that in America. Then he seemed to take it upon himself to make himself and his sport as famous in America as anywhere else. I thought, well, what are you up to? You know, give yourself a bit of peace and quiet, but apparently not. or some inanimity somewhere. I'd love to be a top baseballer.

You earn a load of money. All right, there's a fair bit of travel. 161 games is quite a shift to put in every season. But then you can go on holiday and just please yourself then. I think that a lot of baseball players can travel fairly anonymously, even domestically. They do not seem to have quite the same recognition, other than guys like maybe Shoheyotani.

They can kind of go about their business and largely be left alone. I think even in their home markets, they're pretty anonymous. It seems like the. ideal level of celebrity to me. Have you been bombarded by other requests to talk about baseball? Have you been buttonholed by people on the street who now recognize you as a fellow baseball fan? Yeah, I mean, you've got to be a bit careful with that because then, I mean, some guy stopped

me. I think he was an American in London today and just started just talking gibberish as far as I could hear. I mean, he wanted me. It was just a load of stats and names and things. Probably a listener of our podcast. Yeah, I tried to engage. But it's got, I don't know, I just, it's like a nice club.

It's a nice club to be part of. I must say, every time I'm just following the race, because normally they're playing when I got to sleep. Yeah. And then I'll wake up in the night or in the morning, and then I see the results. And, you know, and obviously I get slightly more engaged, the better they're doing.

I mean, they're faded without trace. I think last season. And then then they're doing really well. But as soon as I start really engaging, they go on a losing run then. And I've started to sort of blame myself. And it is a bit streaky baseball, isn't it? What's that all about? Why does that happen?

That is one of the many mysteries that even people who have followed the game their whole lives have not solved. Well, if you do find out, can you let me know? Yes, I'll drop you a line. Yes. Please drop me a lie. Well, you have woken up to wins more often than not this season. And the race, even if they've tailed off a little lately,

they are still, as we speak, clinging to a tie for first place in the American League East, which was not exactly expected. So you must be chuffed. You must be right chuffed by the performance of the race this season. I am right chuffed, but I'm very much a glass, half, empty person. I mean, success is only a prelude to failure in my book. So, you know, it's a long season. and it's a marathon, not a sprint, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I'll save it. I mean, I'd be worried if it come October, and we're really in contention. I'm going to have to drop everything and just come over and see it. I mean, which is the most hapless team? I mean, to support us of which, I can't bear to use the word franchise, it's, you know, it doesn't sit well with the British. Call them aside. Yeah.

Yeah, a side club, but we call whatever. But his fans are generally thought to have had to deal with the most failure. Gosh. There are a few contenders. Yes. I would submit, well, I think you'd have to say, if you go by just longest time since championship, then you'd have to talk about the Cleveland Guardians who haven't won one since 1948. Then again, there are a few franchises.

My apologies that have never won one, including men. I've never even gone to a World Series. Right. Yes. So there are, I think, contested claims to suffering. Some would claim that the Mets are particularly cursed. Some would suggest that the Reds are the easiest to overlook. Of course, you have a team like the A's, which has now just been rested away from its city and its fan base.

And so there are teams with terrible ownership groups. It's kind of hard to quantify. And, you know, you might mention the Marlins who've won a couple World Series, but are generally pretty hapless and don't have a strong following. The Rockies. The Colorado Rockies come to mind. Yeah. The Padres have never won one. Yeah.

Although they have been good more recently. The Rockies are perpetually sort of chronically bad. And they also play in such an unusual environment because they play in Denver. So the ball behaves quite differently at altitude. So they have some natural. obstacles that they have to overcome in addition to having kind of a poor owner. That's the other thing which I don't get is that, you know, in soccer here, if you're doing really badly, the consequences can be truly dire, if not existential, because you get relegated

to the division below. Yeah. But that does at least keep the interest going all year, you know, albeit, you know, in a way, it's much more rewarding to escape relegation or demotion, whatever you want to call it. that it is to sort of, to win something. You know, the drama is often at the bottom of our Premier League here, rather than at the top of it, where the same one or two teams seem to win, seem to win, you know, every year.

So, you know, you're 15 behind come August. Then why are fans going still? Are they just going just because it's what they do? There's nothing resting on it, is there? Yeah, in many cases they aren't going, I guess. But if they are, then, yeah, I think they just, like having baseball be part of the fabric of their lives, just kind of that day and day out routine. You know, you go to church. Church can be boring sometimes too, but I guess if you're a

churchgoer, you go. And maybe if it becomes a penance. Yes, I guess that's true. And yeah, we have fielded questions about could you bring relegation to baseball and it would be quite difficult to do. But that's why I think, you know, it's profitable to have your place assured, which is why you get something like the failed European Super League experiment. Can we just bring this to baseball and we can all break off into her own thing? And then we won't have to worry about getting relegated anymore. And yeah, it is a sort of American model. I'm impressed by how many of the ballparks in the U.S. you've managed to travel to.

I'm curious if there are any that you sort of have on your list that you like to check off, ones that you haven't been able to visit just yet. there's not one I wouldn't go see I'd like to go to I like to go to Wrigley field I was in Chicago though I think they weren't play they weren't playing that's right and I just I suppose I could have gone in and do a tour but I want to be there for a a ball game I can't think of the big ones into the yam the Mets I'd like to go to I don't there's not a single ballpark where the hairs wouldn't stand up on the back of my neck you know as I walked in you know I just that's just the way I feel

about it. Yeah, so do we. Yeah. Good. Is there any lingo that we should be borrowing? You mentioned a couple of candidates in your piece, but is there anything that we could take from cricket, from soccer, from rugby, from anything that is more popular there than here just to kind of counteract the baseball supremacy or do some kind of cultural exchange? I mean, there's the absolute out-and-out cliches in you get in soccer where, I mean, even now, If a team's lost, the manager will say he's sick as a parrot.

And if he's what he'll say he's over the moon, I should have given this more thought. I mean, the ones in cricket are so obscure. Yes. I don't think, you know, you could use them. Like, I mean, interesting about cricket is that the ball itself becomes part of the game. There's no catching the ball and taking it home. you know, you have one ball which has to be used for a certain amount of time

and the decay of the ball as the inning goes on becomes critical to the passage of the match. Yeah, another commonality with early baseball that has changed, yeah. And then you also have this, you'll see players ferociously rubbing the ball

one half of the ball on their groin, which isn't for any you know, isn't for any sexual gratification. It is to, you know, you shine one side of the ball and dull the other side of the ball. Yeah, that's discouraged. And that makes, yes, but that makes it swerve in the air. And there's a certain amount of that that's legal, a certain amount that isn't. So, you know, we will say, you know, we'll say like we've got a, you know, a batsman comes in and doesn't try and score any runs.

Just what plays what you'd call a bunt, you know, but you don't have to run when you obviously, with every. every ball you're hitting in cricket. So you can just play defensively and not get out. And then it'll be said that you're taking the shine off the ball. Yeah. You know, which helps the inning. Because when the ball's brand new, it's moving all over the place. So you want to take the shine off it a bit.

Yeah, we have talked about, occasionally there will be a cricket analog. Sometimes you see baseball infielders will play very close to the batter. and we've called that the silly position because that would be the cricket equivalent. There's room for cross-fertilization here. But look, if you get yourself over here, just give me a call and I'll happily take you. I'll happily take you to a game.

The offer is mutual. If you're ever in New York or in Arizona where Meg is, then we will be your guide. You want to go to our next game. I will accompany you. All right. Fantastic. Arizona sounds great. I wouldn't come right now. It is very, very warm, but it's lovely in the spring and the fall. Now, look, sport's all about suffering. I want to suffer. That is the point of the exercise for me.

Yes, yes. You are a baseball fan. Yes, constitutionally, you are wired for the sport. Exactly. Before we let you go, is there anything else that we can clear up for you? Because as you said in your column, there's lots of things about baseball that remain mysterious to me and to us as well, and we wouldn't want it otherwise. But if there are any other burning questions, you've got to get off your chest while you have us. We're happy to answer. We'll be your oracles. Yeah, the business where you're on two strikes down. Right. And then you can just keep fouling it forever.

Yes. How long has that rule been in play? Yeah, the foul strike rule, I think that goes back to 1901. Yeah, it's right. Yeah. It used to be, though, that you didn't even have to get to. two strikes that you could just foul off indefinitely and

at that time when people didn't throw as hard there were specialists in that who would just have these interminable plate appearances because they could just foul off pitch after pitch after pitch and so they then changed it to well now it's a strike at least until you get to two but you're right once you get to two

then you can still go on forever if you're good enough to make contact and I guess the downside is that there are more fouls than ever these days on the other hand there are also more strikeouts than ever. So if you counted that foul as a strikeout, then we'd suddenly be awash with them to an even greater degree.

If you say somebody's a Arizona's second basement, but what is special about being a second baseman as a prose to a third basement or a first basement? Is it a different skill set? I mean, once you are a second basement, are you always a second basement no matter what? Well, there are great differences in the skill sets, sort of aspects of various positions that some athletes are better suited to than others. It might come down to their speed.

It might come down to sort of how deft their hands are. The strength of their arm, right? Their ability to sort of throw the ball in from the outfield might matter more in some positions than in others. and because baseball players are human beings, those skills are decaying all the time, right? As players age. And so we have a notion of sort of a defensive spectrum, positions that are harder to play than others.

And as players age, they tend to sort of move down that spectrum and potentially change positions. And then baseball has the notion of the designated hitter where you don't field at all, right? all you do is hit. So what's the pecking order as you get older? You start at shortstop, move around the bases, and end up right at the back at left field or something.

Yeah, often second baseman will be former shortstops who are just now not as good anymore. So you're onto something that I don't know that there is quite a second base skill set or archetype. It's almost defined by a lack of something. Right, well, you're not able to. Yeah, if you don't have a great arm, for instance, or often a second baseman will be more diminutive.

than others or will have less power typically. Not that there's not a knack to it. You've got to turn the double play. You've got to avoid people doing takeout slides to break up the double play, et cetera. But yeah, it's typically, well, catcher is kind of its own thing, but maybe it's the most demanding defensive position.

And then you have short stops and center fielder's just because they have to cover the most ground. And so they, yeah, they're kind of the most gifted and rangy in general. And then others, you know, right field, you might want to have a strong arm because you have to make that long throw to third base sometimes. And then, you know, first base is often a less mobile type. You know, you stick your big slugger over there, someone who can catch the ball,

but doesn't cover that much ground. So, yeah, sometimes it becomes more about your limitations. What can't you play than what are you best suited for? If the batter, if he clips the ball as it goes through and the catcher catches it, He's not out, is he? Well, sometimes. Sometimes. Yeah.

What kind of answers that sometimes? I mean, what kind of... Well, there's a foul tip, right? And so if the ball is tipped and then caught by the catcher, then that's always a strike. And then if it's two strikes, then you're automatically out. So that's why it's kind of dependent. But, you know, I interest. introduced Meg to the concept of Snicko recently.

Yes. And she was charmed by that. And that's charmed by Snicko. And not just because of the name. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that transformed cricket because caught behind was, you know, is a popular or unpopular way of getting out in cricket.

So identifying whether the batter had actually hit it or not is interesting. We could do this all day. but the day is almost over where you are. So we will let you go. But, you know, you wrote in your column that if you lived in the U.S., you'd never get anything done. All I'd do is watch baseball,

usually sitting at a long bar of darkly polished wood, sipping beer, nibbling nuts, near hypnotized by the slow rhythm of the contest unfolding on the screen. And when it finished, I'd spend the rest of the night talking about it with no shortage of fellow devotees. So the key to it is that you have to make that your job, as we have.

And then you can do that, and you can still be sort of a productive member of society. So that's the trick. I salute you. And, you know, I know you're always scrambling for a column suggestion. And I don't want to speak for Meg, who is the editor-in-chief of Fangraphs. But if you are ever moved to write about baseball and the Guardian won't have it, then just email freelance at Fangraphs.com.

Our pages are always open to you. Yes. Okay. I'll certainly do that. I just saw that you, Meg, you go to Bryn Mauer. I went to Brinmar, yes. College. Yeah.

Yeah. It's just that, it's, I went to the, I'm sure you know the history of the place, but that was founded by a Quaker, I think, wasn't it? Who left a place called DeGethle in North Wales. I was working on a hill farm there a couple of years ago for a TV thing I was doing. And I went to the actual farm called Brin Mour, which is where he, left from. Yes. So it's

such a lovely word to say as well. But in Maur, I like that. Even if you don't pronounce it that way, I guess. No, no, but it's I also have you come across something called Cardiff baseball there? No. Because I work a lot in

Cardiff, the capital of Wales. Yeah. And I did not know this until last year, but I mean, British baseball it's synonymous with Cardiff baseball. I mean, you just look at it, oh, look it up on Wikipedia.

And it's still a kind of a street game in Cardiff. You see it played in the specific area of Southeast Wales. Sort of a rounders type thing. But it's not rounders, it's very much baseball. Yeah. So that's what I might, I might, I'll keep me in to find out more about that. So I might write something for you about that, actually, if you like, if I'll, oh, God, I'll,

I'll do some exploration in Cardiff when I'm there and try and get to the bottom of that. I think the current coach of the Wales national soccer team is Craig Bellamy. I'm told he was very good at Cardiff Baseball, as they call it. It was his thing. So anyway. Well, you've taught us something about baseball.

Yeah. Well, there's a thing. Yeah. Okay, well, listen, that lot, it's been a pleasure. Thank you very much indeed. Yes, it has. Do you have a column this Wednesday? We're speaking on Tuesday.

Oh, it is so random. I can't even begin. It will have been published by the time this podcast is up, so you won't be spoiling anything. Give us a sneak preview. It's cringing. You know liquid soap? Yes.

You know it comes in those little pomp action dispensers. It seems to me that at least half of all those fail. You just can't get them to pump. Yes. Yes. It's true. And I've done a deep dive into this. And it's one of those things where chat GPT becomes your friend and goes,

oh yes, you're onto something here. And it doesn't work because of this because it's tremendously complicated. And obviously it doesn't work, but it's kind of a marketing phenomenon that it's so trivial. You'll probably never moan about it. you'll never go and take it back. So this madness continues. Yes, they get away with it because it's not a huge expense and so you just accept that level of failure.

Yeah. So I mean, I write one column of like 350 words and one of 600 words. And sometimes, or just one of a thousand words. And this one I thought, I can't stretch this to 300 words, can I? Oh, yes, I did. And I've got past the 350 mark. I'm now closing in on 600. And I honestly think I might be going the full thousand on pomp on pomp action dispenses.

Well, Godspeed sounds like another hit. I'll get back to you on that. Yeah, you know, we do bonus episodes every month for our Patreon supporters. And I feel like I'm always channeling Adrian Childs on those because we do these little low-stakes rants or low-stakes celebrations or observations. Like on this month I was complaining about the fact that from afar, at least, iceberg lettuce looks a lot like cabbage. Yes, yes, yes. And trees look like broccoli. Trees for an aircraft.

They're all in the cruciferous. And so I accidentally purchased a cabbage, thinking that it was iceberg lettuce. I could have gotten 350 words out of that. So I'm just saying. And you got at least that many words out of it on the podcast. And you didn't give me the yes and the way Adrian just did. I didn't. I was quite critical.

Anyway, you ever need a week off? I'm ready to pinch it. There's another little bit of baseball lingo that. perhaps has entered your lexicon. All right. Well, thanks so much, Adrian. This was a great pleasure. And anytime you have a question or you care to, you know, we're doing our bit to combat

the male loneliness epidemic here by talking to you about baseball. So I just need an Adrian Child style headline for this podcast episode. I don't know what it would be. You know, do you know what? I don't think of those. I know. And actually, I never like them. But I've given up the argument now.

Like, do whatever you like. Everyone loves them. Who am I? to argue. Okay, now we will take one more quick break and we will be back with Jade Van Clay, aka Backline Nurse, to hear about her torrid love affair with baseball and why she has fallen for the sport. To segue into this segment, we will play a quick clip of her work. If you like lore and whimsy and weird little guys being weird where you don't expect them to be weird, can I please introduce you to baseball? No, no, Lee, please listen. I don't even know that much about the game. I just can't

stop reading about how weird everybody is going back like 160 years. Did you know that in the 1870s there was a team called the Boston Bean Eaters? Do you know what that team is today? The Atlanta Braves. What? Also, the Chicago Cubs used to be the Chicago orphans. And also, they used to be the Chicago whales, which is the cutest logo I've ever seen. And I'm furious that it doesn't exist today.

All right, we are joined now by Jade Van Clay, who is known as at Backline Nurse on Instagram. Why backline nurse? We will get to that. Jade just attended her first MLB game. So congratulations. Welcome to the fraternity slash sorority. Is there a gender neutral alternative to those terms? I don't know, but welcome to the club of baseball lovers and game attenders. Thank you so much. So happy to be here. So happy to have you. And I have been following your missives on Instagram. And it has been great fun for me to see you get into baseball and discover what is wonderful about the sport and to see it through your eyes. So tell us a little bit about how you got bitten by the baseball bug, because this is your first official season

as a baseball obsessive. What led to this? Yeah, so it's, I can't emphasize enough how unintentional all of this was. So what happened was back in October, it was, I think, two days before the end of the world series, but honestly, I didn't even think about that. I had just decided that I wanted to start making videos about my favorite Wikipedia pages because I love Wikipedia. And I thought that would be fun. And mostly I just wanted a place to yap about it without annoying those that I love all of the time. And my very first Wikipedia page that I wanted to talk about because it's been one of my favorites for a very long time was Rube Waddell. Everyone goes through their Rube Waddell face.

Everyone, yes, everyone I have learned. And it blew up a little bit. And as a result of that, I had many baseball fans in my comments telling me, you know, you should look up this weird dude, you should look up this weird team and this thing that happened way back when. So I just completely fell down the rabbit hole. because I want to know everything about everything when something piques my interest. And so it spiraled from there.

And yeah, that was about two days before, that was like two games before the end of the World Series last year, which I'm wondering if that had play in that video doing as well as it did. And so this off season, I've just been completely down the rabbit hole talking about weird baseball history. And yeah, now it's my very first real season as a favorite. Yeah, and I know that you've been making videos for a while, whether on Instagram or YouTube. And so is baseball, are you following the market? Are you responding to the algorithm? Has baseball somehow, have we cracked the code here?

Are you going where the views are in addition to where your own interest is? Are your baseball videos resonating more than other kinds of videos you've made? He asks optimistically. Right. That's a great question. My most viewed videos actually have nothing to do with baseball, which is funny, but the ones that I've built the strongest community with has been baseball undoubtedly. And to me, that is what I'm doing this for. You know, I never set out to do this as a career or anything.

And so the best thing about it for me is just, you know, being welcomed into this community and having all these people to talk about all. these weird, this weird stuff with in my comments and getting, now I have stuff to go do in the summertime going to games and stuff like that. So as far as doing things that I want to talk about as opposed to following trends, I don't really pay attention to what's trending. I try not to scroll my feed too much, just because I get, I get, I waste so much time doing that. But I've been, most of where I learn about the actual game of baseball is from creators on YouTube. And then I watch MLB, the recap rundown on MLB TV just about every day to see what's going on. And I write down things that interest me.

They don't talk about Rubat L enough in my experience. They don't. They don't. I did hear Mordecai 3 Finger Brown mentioned on a broadcast. I was watching the other day and I was stoked about that. it's such an interesting entry point because obviously baseball has this incredibly rich history it has a tremendous amount of strangeness i've seen you and heard you invoke lore as part of like your framing of the sport and boy is there a lot of it and much of it is very quirky and then there's you know not that there's a gap between the history and the modern game

but like there's so much time and and there have been so many years of major league play. I'm curious sort of as you get into watching actual games and like the actual gameplay itself, how are you kind of finding all of that? Like is it living up to the oddity and the lore of its history? Is it striking you as sort of strange in present day as as it is in the past? Oh yeah. It's been so fun to watch. the game now after reading about its history for the first time because I read a lot of

like 19th century newspaper clippings from sports reporters about baseball back then. Yeah, that's the good stuff. Yes, protoball.org. Shout out to them doing the Lord's work, chronicling those things. I can waste hours on that website. And so it's really fun because reading that, you kind of see the evolution of rules and things that are just commonplace today, like protective gear, for example. Sure. And so I watch the game now and I see, you know, of course, the infield fly rule.

And I'm like, oh, I read about that. I still don't understand it. But I'm doing my best. And I think that what I really love is kind of the relics of the old game that still exist within the new game. For example, the managers wearing baseball uniforms. I think one of the only sports, if not the only sport, where managers do that. And it goes back to the role of the player manager back when players, yeah, they were the managers as well. And, you know, those things are so interesting and it makes it so much fun to watch the game today because, of course, it's evolved so much.

But there still are very much those relics of the past. And I love when broadcasters talk about, you know, this thing hasn't been done since Mordecai Three Finger Brown did it, blah, blah, blah, blah. I just, I live for that. Yeah, that's great because I could imagine it being intimidating. It's hard enough if you're sort of steeped in this. and it's passed down to you and you're into it from birth, basically. There's still so much you don't know. No one knows everything.

But if you're coming to it as an adult and then you're thinking, gosh, I have to catch up with 150 plus years of backstory here. Not that you need to know it all, but you want to, as you said. And it's just a bottomless well or abyss depending on your perspective. So was there any part of you that just thought, gosh, I can't catch up now. Too much baseball has happened. It's very daunting and it's so strange because so I learned about the started learning about the history first and now I'm primarily learning about what's, or not primarily, but concurrently learning about what's going on in the present game. And so I'm like working backwards from the present and working forwards from way back. And so the middle area, like I would say between like the 50s and like 1990s.

I am just out to see. I have no idea what's going on there. And so I really love it because it's, I will never run out of things to talk about or be fascinated with. I feel intimidated by learning stats, which you guys, that's most of what you guys do. And I'm trying so hard to learn and it's really fun to learn. I love that baseball has it. Baseball is a sport for every different type of nerd and I love that. And so there's just endless stuff to learn and that's what I love doing. What about the modern game is moving you right now? Because I went back through and watched some of your videos. I'm like, yeah, it is weird that sometimes they wear uniforms that aren't either of their colors. That's right. And the grays are boring. You're not wrong about that. Thank you.

And those Boston City Connects do kind of suck. Yeah. Like, what's up with the yellow? Yeah, I think the yellow was something to do with the Boston Marathon. Because I, then I felt bad. Yeah. You would find a receptive audience for some of the things that are interesting or catch your eye on this podcast because that is sort of our entire vibe. So I'm curious what has been moving you or at least perplexing you of late. Yes. So I just listened to a couple episodes that you guys did about Otani.

Plenty of those to choose from. Right. I mean, rightfully so. And I did not realize, I would say, until maybe two months ago, this is embarrassing, that the designated hitter rule was a thing. I thought pitchers still batted. I had no idea. And that is so fascinating to me.

And the fact that he is the only one, the only pitcher that is doing that now. And because looking back at history, you do have pitchers that were also power hitters, you know, Babe Ruth. Granted, they were working in under different conditions. It was a different style of game back then as far as competition goes. But that is so fascinating to me because the debate online is. really interesting to read because to me it makes sense that pitching has become so specialized that batting it just kind of doesn't make sense but there are so many people that that feel

exactly the opposite and that that discourse is so fascinating to me so yeah there's plenty that i'm very fascinated with um with pitching and batting and i'm curious right now when when pitching became so specialized, that batting kind of seemed to no longer be something that pitchers should be doing. I'm very curious about that. Yeah, it's almost if you look at the league-wide stats, the offensive stats by pitchers, it's just kind of a linear decline. It's just sort of a slow and steady. They got worse and worse relative to the league, which was kind of handy to have because

it was a way to track how much better the rest of the league was getting because pitchers weren't getting better and everyone else was. And so that was kind of this standard candle that you can kind of use to compare it to. And now we don't have that anymore. But I'm not sorry that we don't have it anymore to be clear because they were really bad at it. But yeah, I don't know if there was a moment when they went from being able to hold their own to knots. I think it was just gradually they got worse and worse and worse. Yeah.

That makes sense. Yeah. That totally makes sense. Do you find when you come to these things and you say, oh, I just discovered something like that, that, for instance, most baseball fans are aware of the DH rule, right? And so do you get gatekeeping? Do you get mansplaining? Do you get, oh, get a load of this noob who just learned about the DH rule?

Or because you're coming to it with this spirit of wonder and discovery and humility, do you find that most people do want to welcome you in and say, how can I help here? Something else that might be kind of cool. Oh, the vast, overwhelming majority of people are the latter. That's good. Because I'm very,

very upfront with the fact that I am just learning all this stuff in front of you guys. I don't purport to be an expert on anything. And so I'm just coming to,

you know, the internet saying, I just learned this thing. I can't believe I didn't know that. What do you guys think about this? Here's my opinion based on my uninformed

limited knowledge. What do you guys think of it? But I definitely, definitely do get the kind of the gatekeeping and elitism. I did, oh my gosh, I did a video about Yankees. I had realized did not have names on the back of their jerseys, even on the road. And I was so confused about that. And I made a video just kind of with like faux outrage. Like, I'm trying to learn, you guys.

I don't know your names yet. And it was very much a joke, but I got, and most people got it, that it was like I was fooling around, but I really was confused. But then I had somehow both, I had Yankees fans mad at me for thinking I was a dumb Yankees fan, and then I had non-Yankees fans mad at me for thinking I was a Yankees fan. And so that was pretty wild. But, yeah, Yankees were my first game. I was so excited to see them. But I was a little bit nervous based on the reaction of that video. But it was great.

Well, then you walk around Yankee Stadium with Yankees fans who have jerseys with names on the back. Exactly. I'm sure you're like, what's all this business? I was so confused. Yeah. I was like, what is this double standard? Yeah. Have you developed a rooting interest, a present rooting interest?

Yes, it is the Cubs, and it was always going to be the Cubs. My dad is a lifelong Cubs fan, and the most special part of all of this has been being able to connect with him about it and being able to talk with him about this stuff. And it's, you know, we joke lately the Cubs are doing so badly. And they, after doing so well. Yeah. And I'm like, this is agony. And he's like, now you know how I've been feeling all these years. Yeah.

Has he said, hey, what took you so long? I've been trying to tell you this baseball thing is kind of cool. No, it's, well, my favorite movie growing up. And it's still one of my favorite movies. He and I still watch it was a league of their own. Yeah. And so I wasn't completely new to the concept of baseball. and I would watch Cubs games with him occasionally if they were if it was on and I would always ask

really bizarre questions like why don't they all wear their socks high over their pants? I think it looks better that way, you know, but now we're able to actually talk substantively and we kind of watch the games together in that he lives in South Dakota and I'm in Nashville in that we're watching it at the same time and we're texting each other about it. So yes, the Cubs are my team. I'll wait to eventually see a Wrigley. That brings me to a question I had for you because sometimes, you know, we will get emails with listeners asking, why, you know, what is the history of this rule?

Why is this this way? You know, if baseball were different, how different would it be if, you know, everyone had a smaller glove or whatever? And, you know, sometimes those questions are silly or sometimes they're intentionally silly, but having to articulate the rationale for a completely arbitrary. game does sometimes stump us, right? Where we're like, I don't know why it's that way. Like, it's just that way because it is.

And I wonder if you've gotten some of that reaction too, because it's not, baseball is not gravity, you know, like, we just, we decided it was this way and we could have decided it was something completely different if we had wanted to. So I'm curious if anyone has been like, I don't know why it is that way. Yes, absolutely. That is, the feedback, I get that feedback a lot is that I ask questions. that longtime fans haven't thought about really, you know, because I'm looking at it like, you know, a dumb baby at the moment. And one thing I was wondering about was recently was,

is it audible to batters and catchers when a ball is called a ball as opposed to a strike? because and framing that in the concept that, you know, an ABS challenge has to be within two seconds. And I was very confused. I don't think I was the only one asking that question, but I had, you can't hear the ball call on audio and watching games, really. And so to the viewer, to me, it looks like you're waiting for the absence of a call, which then when does the time start for the two seconds? You know, somebody, one of my new friends, thanks to this, writes for the athletic and asked a couple of the Cleveland catchers that question. And they were also thought it was a good question. And I felt really good that I was asking a question that I thought was really stupid.

Actually wasn't that stupid. Yeah. Yeah, there's occasional confusion. Sometimes people don't know what the count is and the scoreboard has a different count. and sometimes people lose track and you end up with five balls or four strikes or something, that happens. Everything breaks down. So yeah, you're asking important questions here. That's why you have the diehard fans that keep score in the crowd. I love that. I love that. Yep. So as you mentioned, you live in Nashville, though your job is kind of New York based. And so you're in New York sometimes too.

And you just were last week. And you got to go to your first game. I don't know whether you had been to a Nashville sounds game? I have, yes. I'm actually throwing out the first pitch out of a science game on Saturday. All right. How about that? Well, you're obviously breaking through here. You're thrown out the first pitch. MLB itself took you to your first game at Yankee State. So how did that happen that you have come to the attention of the authorities? I have no idea. I don't know. It has all been, I just never, ever, ever thought that they would notice me and somehow they did and reached out and we had, you know, a Zoom meeting a few weeks back about potentially collaborating on some stuff.

I had said I was going to be up in New York. And they said, yeah, if you want to go to a game, let us know. And so they set aside some tickets for me. The seats were insane. I realized I am so spoiled to have that be my first game. I was posting it to my my Instagram stories. And as a new fan, too, I don't know how common things are or uncommon things are. So I was posting it to my story and, you know, people were sending me messages like,

oh my gosh, those seats are insane. I'm like, yeah, they are, I guess. Yeah, they really are. And so, yeah, and they gave me a tour of MLBHQ, which was bonkers. and just getting to do all these things. That is, I look back, you know, eight months ago, and I just have no idea how I got here, but I'm glad to be here.

You've become a baseball influencer. So hopefully I'm not going to start making videos about how great the salary cap is. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, don't worry about that. Don't worry about that. But tell us about the game, because I said to you over email that I would recommend

go into City Field first. That's my preference, but the Mets weren't. If they weren't there. Yeah, they weren't there. And any game is a good game, especially if it's your first game and any ballpark is a great ballpark. So which game was it? What did you see? And I saw that you explored Monument Park, et cetera.

Yes. Yeah. So it was against the Guardians. And it was, I think, June 3rd. It was just incredible. They lost. The Yankees lost, which is fine. I still had a great time.

And I went with my best friend Max, and he has been a lifelong Yankees fan, born and raised in New York City. And so it was really cool to go with somebody who actually did know kind of the traditions of Yankees games, the stuff that you don't see on TV when you're watching, getting to experience it as a brand new fan, and also with somebody who, you know, is a lifelong diehard fan. And it was wild to see it in person. I said this in a video that I made about that game and said it felt like when you see a celebrity in person for the first time after only ever seeing them on screen, that's what it felt like. But baseball was the celebrity to me. Yeah. Except when you see a celebrity off it, if it's an actor or something, you're like, oh, I thought he was bigger or something. Right.

But baseball looks bigger than you thought it would. A way bigger. Yes. It was wild. I was so excited to see Monument Park to see the three original monuments that used to be in the outfield in play. I love weird ballpark stuff like that. That is one of my favorite kind of sub-genres of this weird journey I'm on. And so that was really amazing to see.

I loved seeing the old advertisements in Yankee Stadium that are. still there, even though they could be outbid by millions by different, by companies at this point, which was really neat. As far as the game goes, that was wild. Garrett Cole was pitching. And when he threw the very first pitch, I literally gasped because I had never seen a ball thrown that fast in my life. Yeah.

It was just wild. Like, you throw in instantaneously, like, you got to decide to hit it or not. it was wild. There was a lot of stuff in the actual game that I had questions about and that I'm really excited to talk more about in videos. One of them, though, that I thought was interesting was when a play happens and it's controversial as in like it needs to be challenged or something and it happens far away from you. It's hard to understand what's happening. So for example, Caballero hit a home run into left field, and then it was challenged for fan interference. But when it was hidden to the stands, I couldn't see very well if it was caught because it was really close or if it made it over.

And so you kind of like hold your reaction until the reaction of the fans like spreads through the crowd. Oh, everyone's cheering now, so I think it's good. So that was really cool as well. So it sounds like Wrigley is sort of maybe top of mind for the next ballpark you'd like to visit. But I'm curious if there are others that as you've been sort of surveying the league, you think, that it would be really great to take in a game there. Yes. Of course, Wrigley and Fenway are the oldest ones.

And given my love of the history, those are definitely the most fascinating to me. from a historical standpoint, there are others that just have weird, quirky things that I would love to see. For example, the, the, I love home run celebrations, like ballpark wine ones, not just not the dugout ones, like the train with the Astros,

the train conductor, I didn't realize there was an actual train conductor, followed me on Instagram. I was so excited. I was so excited. I love, I would love to see the exploding scoreboard in where the White Sox play because I'm fascinated with the history of that. Specifically, the White Sox one was first built by Bill Vec at Kamiski.

And he did it because, and I thought this was very fascinating because I agree, because home runs in general, especially solo home runs, are really excited for like a second and then it's over. And then it's kind of like, oh, that excitement is done while they're rounding the bases. So he wanted to create something that would make it exciting for the whole time while they round the bases. And so he made the exploding scoreboard, which shoots off fireworks and does all kinds of crazy stuff. And then that spread throughout the league. So various home run, weird home run, like park-wide celebrations I would love to see. Yeah.

There's a lot of lore about Bill Beck, one of my favorite figures. Oh my gosh, I love him so much. Yeah. If you haven't read his book yet, one of these, Vecas and Rec, it's incredible. So you'll get a lot of material out of that. Yeah. Yes, yes. When you make your videos, you know, there are different approaches.

You could have sort of heavily produced and scripted sort of vibe. Yours is more kind of organic. It seems at least like you're just sort of, you're talking and you're cutting. And I wonder whether you developed. That has that been sort of, have you experimented with different aesthetics? Are you scripting at all? Do you have kind of an outline in your mind or are you just go in stream of consciousness and then editing as necessary? When I first started, I would put screenshots of the sources I was using on the screen and that was really just basically for me to read while I was doing it. So I would do the green screen thing and it would be me in front of it as I kind of got. a little bit more used to it, I would start, and this is what I still do, I make an outline, especially if it's a facts, heavy history, heavy video, I would make an outline to make sure that I have the

facts right. And then I would just kind of, I just kind of go off the dome. Usually after I write an outline, I've internalized that information anyway, and then I just don't even look at it. and just, you know, kind of freestyle it. And those videos do a lot better than when I would be really intentional about a script way back when. That is wild to me because I will spend so much time, so much time like making a script or, you know, trying to do something that's a little bit higher production value as much as that can happen in a three-minute video. and those videos don't do nearly as well as when I just like sit down and I'm like talking about stuff I'm confused about with what I've seen in baseball this week. And so, yeah, it's short form content seems to definitely favor the informal kind of organic, authentic feeling, which is good because it's really, it feels unnatural for me to do it any other way. So, yeah, it's been an evolving process, and I just recently got a microphone.

That's the big upgrade of my production value. And so, yeah, it's ever evolving, but I feel like I've found some stuff that works. Yeah. Well, speaking of ever evolving, I have to ask about your incredible career path because being a baseball creator, that's just a side gig for you. Yes. Though it's clearly one you're having some success with, but you work currently in the legal field in fraud investigation. So you can tell us anything else about that that you'd care to. But you are a registered nurse and an epidemiologist by training.

And backline nurse comes from the consulting you were doing during the pandemic. So the backline in music, it refers to the amps and the speaker cabinets and everything. Much research. Right. And often those are rented by the artist or the venue, right? And so you were the backline nurse and people could consult with you for coronavirus safety, right? So during the pandemic, how can we hold these concerts safely? And you worked with some pretty popular acts, including many baseball writers' favorite musician, Jason Isbell, right?

Yes, yes. Tell me about all of that. How did you end up? doing all these things. Yeah. Yes. So I'm not an epidemiologist, to be clear. I worked in epidemiology in the epidemiology division at the Minnesota Department of Health.

Right, started right before COVID made its appearance. And so that was wild timing. But yeah, so I am a registered nurse. I have always, always had a little bit of a wandering career path. And a lot of that was likely due to undiagnosed ADHD, which I didn't get diagnosed with until about 2020-ish. I just like to go try new things and something will catch my interest. And I'm like, I think I'm going to go try that for a while.

And so, yeah, I'm a registered nurse. I have been since 2017. I am still licensed, but I'm not in direct care anymore. I worked primarily in psychiatric mental health when I was in direct care. And in 2020, I was getting my master's in public health. Quit halfway through because the pandemic happened and the world needed nurses more than grad students at the time. So quit that.

And I had some connections in music at the time. and I was working at the Department of Health, and I had a lot of musicians contacting me, asking for advice regarding, you know, should we cancel this tour? Is it safe in this city? You know, because there was just nobody giving them guidance, really, because there's, yeah, the gig workers and there's, yeah, it's just, it's rough for them. Nobody was really giving them guidance. It was before everything got shut down, shut down. And I had always kind of had this feeling that life was pointing me towards Nashville for some reason. I just love music so much. I thought, well, everybody's dying. I could die tomorrow. Maybe I'll just give this a shot.

And so I decided to move down here. And then I started consulting for the music industry. I was wildly fortunate to have my very first client as Jack White and third man records. Big baseball fan. Yeah, he's part owner of Warstick and a huge baseball fan. So he was my very first client. And then he that he was kind of, they third man was kind of ongoing. They referred me to Jason Isbell and I actually toured with Jason for the back half of 2021. And so incredible experience, you know, as any good public health professional would say,

I did not want the pandemic to last forever, so I always knew that that was going to be temporary. And after that, I went back to nursing for a while. And then I got the opportunity to work in whistleblower law with my very good friend and who is the founding partner of a whistleblower law firm. And we work really, really well together. I did some help. I helped some on a health care fraud case. and we realized we worked very well together, and I absolutely love investigating

and being professionally nosy. And so that is what I do now. It is awesome. Our office is in New York, and so I'm up there probably. I visit New York more than anywhere else, basically. So I have an excuse to go up there whenever. Well, then City Field is in your future.

Yes, it is. To make sure to time your next business trip for one of the Mets are in town. Exactly. I absolutely want to see. I want to see every single ballpark. I am so fascinated with ballparks, yes. Well, you mentioned that you like to change subjects and you get curious about new things. Do you have any concern that you will be tired of baseball at some point, that you will burn out on baseball and be on to the next thing? Or do you think that this is now a lifelong love? No, I think this will be a lifelong love. And it's really driven by the community I've found. I went through. a period of being kind of really just kind of self-isolating and asocial for a couple years prior to making that Rube Waddell video. And it just kind of fell into my lap that all of these kind

people in this community that I found and, you know, things to go do. And it's just been really incredible. And I am so fascinated with the subject matter. And I just feel very endeavored. to the fans and of baseball that I can bond with and that teach me things all of the time. And like I said earlier, there is just no shortage of rabbit holes to fall down with baseball. And so it's keeping me endlessly fascinated. And I have, I have no concern that I will tire of it anytime soon. Yeah, I think that this is a human trait that extends beyond baseball, certainly. but when you find someone who has an appreciation for a thing that you also love,

I think it's hard not to say like, oh my God, can we talk about this for like 10 hours? Yes. And, you know, because there is so much grist for the mill when it comes to baseball, and it's a game that lends itself to conversation even when you're watching it. I think there's just a lot of room for that kind of thing, you know? It's like when I compare it to something, you know, when you're really into some really niche, band or piece of media, movie, whatever. And it's rare to find somebody that likes that thing too.

And so when you hear someone talking about it, like out in the wild, you get really excited. That's always kind of been my taste in things. But now the thing that's making me excited is baseball, which is not niche whatsoever. But I still get this feeling of whenever I'm out in public or something and somebody's talking about baseball, I get this feeling of like, oh my gosh, you've heard of baseball? Can we talk about it? Which is just so silly, but I love it. Are there any other tidbits before we let you go that you could share with us here, whether they're commonly known and they were new to you or maybe some deep dives that you have done,

some more obscure discoveries that you've made, just anything in that vein that you think our listeners might also like? It's funny. I have lists of hundreds and hundreds of things. And yet when I'm asked a question like that, it's like I've never heard of baseball in my life. I would say old ballparks. Old ballparks are, I'm reading this, or I have this book that somebody gifted me called Green Cathedral's. I don't know if you've heard of it. Yeah. Have you heard of it? Okay. Yeah. See, that's the other thing. Like, I don't know what is common knowledge to baseball fans. So I'm like, I'm going to say. sounds so dumb if I'm talking as if everyone knows this, but also I have no idea if everyone knows it. Green Cathedrals, love this book. I'm reading it right now, talking about basically every

baseball field in the country that has ever hosted a major league baseball game. And one thing I'll say, since I'm throwing out the first pitch at the Nashville Sounds game this coming Saturday, is I'm doing that because they're having. I'm doing that because they're having Solferdel night. And Solferdel was the, was a baseball field here in Nashville that was maybe one of the silliest, I think, to ever exist. And I was so excited when I, when I stumbled across it in my research. And that's actually why they reached out to me in the first place was because they saw this video, because the Nashville sounds play at First Horizon Park, which is on that site now. if you look up pictures of this park it is shaped like a bowl like the literal field is shaped like a bowl

it has a 45 degree incline in the outfield and so and it's right by the cumberland river which floods used to flood so badly in the spring but it's shaped like a bowl so 45 degree incline and in the right field it starts immediately behind first base the incline does and legendary players have played there, including, you know, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth played there. This is my favorite factoid about it. Babe Ruth played there, and he was supposed to play right field. But he said, since this field was actually built on a sulfur dell and also a dump, he said the smell in right field because of the wind was so bad.

He refused to play in right field. but I think it's because the incline started immediately behind first base. So no matter what you're getting shin splints, basically. And so that I loved that little tip it. Nicknamed Suffer Hell. Exactly. Suffer Hell. Yep.

Are you doing any practice, any training for your first pitch? How prepared do you feel? Yes. Yeah. I feel, okay, so I actually did play softball for a while in middle school. like grade school and middle school but it has been 20 years since I threw a ball

until recently I've been practicing a little bit whenever there's somebody that I can coax into letting me throw a ball at them poorly You're going to go underhand or overhand? Overhand. I'm going to do it. I'm going to go for it and we

will see who I injure in the process. Well, this has been a delight, as has following your discovery of baseball and your obvious, evident love for the game, which we share. Thank you. So please keep at it. Thank you. I'm so excited to keep listening, listen to more because I'm learning a lot about stats from you guys on your podcast. And I'm like trying to keep up with all the acronyms and stuff. But yes, I love to ask many questions. So maybe I'll have to bug you to let me ask you a billion questions about stats.

I will love that. Yes, our inbox is always open and you're always welcome. And best of luck with your many incredible careers. Thank you, Jade. Thank you so, so much. I appreciate it. Well, that was the best. Thanks to Jade.

And thanks to Adrian, absolute scenes to have him on the show. Again, go read him at The Guardian. You will want to see what he said about those soap dispensate. His book is called The Good Drinker, How I Learn to Love Drinking Less, and the show that he hosts from Cardiff is Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4, which is also available as a podcast. And do support Jade as well at Backline Nurse, give her your views, smash that follow button. We're glad to have her in our cult. As we are glad to have you here at Effectively Wild, especially if you support the podcast, which you can do by going to Patreon. dot com slash Effectively Wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the

podcast going. Help us stay ad-free. Help us continue to scratch the itch that Adrian Chiles has to talk about baseball and get yourself access to some perks. The following five listeners have already done so. Robert Stoltzberg, Dolphins Talk, Adam G. Ryan Young and Kyle Zwaxtra. Thanks to all of you.

Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only. Monthly bonus episodes where you can hear our Adrian Child's-esque thoughts. weekly unabridged episodes, exclusive live streams, access to our Discord group for patrons only, personalized messages, prioritized email answers, shoutouts at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, fan graphs, memberships, and more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcast at fancash.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube

music, and other podcast platform. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at our slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show notes in the podcast posted fan graphs or Patreon or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with another episode later this week.

Talk to you then. Have a catch and a slog with me in a virtual rise. From small sales. size these fun facts must lie it's effectively wild a strange book could hang effectively