Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2512: The Superhero Baseball Draft

Episode Date: August 1, 2026

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, please visit our Patreon. Ben Lindbergh brings on baseball-loving comic-book experts David Harper (of SKTCHD and Off Panel: A Comics Interview Podcast) and Tiffany Babb (of The Comics Courier, The Comics Staple, The Fan Files, and Interesting Jobs the Podcast) to assemble superpowered baseball teams. First they banter about Harrison Bader’s scooter troubles and David’s and Tiffany’s baseball/comic-book backgrounds, trade-deadline desires, and favorite baseball/comics crossovers. Then (37:20) they take turns filling out rosters from the ranks of Marvel/DC superheroes. Audio intro: Guy Russo, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Austin Klewan, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to Bader article 1 Link to Bader article 2 Link to Bader article 3 Link to another Bader report Link to 2014 Bader incident Link to Bumgarner story Link to Kent injury story 1 Link to Kent injury story 2 Link to Giants vehicular injuries Link to Bader suspension article Link to MLBTR on Bader’s suspension Link to Shanahan injury article Link to Midnight Sun Game Link to Midnight Sons wiki Link to Brand New Day box office Link to The Death of Superman wiki Link to Goldman on power levels Link to Granillo on baseball and supes 1 Link to Granillo on baseball and supes 2 Link to Granillo on baseball and supes 3 Link to superhero strength scale wiki Link to Peanuts podcast episode Link to Joe Shlabotnik wiki Link to Peanuts baseball analysis Link to FG on the Angels/Rangers trade Link to MLBTR on the Minter trade Link to West Coast Avengers Annual #2 Link to Bullseye bio Link to David’s Eisner acceptance speech Link to Eisner Awards wiki Link to SKTCHD Link to Off Panel Link to SKTCHD draft post Link to SKTCHD HoF post Link to SKTCHD Avengers post Link to Tiffany’s website Link to The Comics Courier Link to The Comics Staple Link to Interesting Jobs the Podcast Link to The Fan Files Link to The Fan Files Insta videos Link to The Fan Files TikTok videos Link to SI on baseball and superheroes 1 Link to SI on baseball and superheroes 2 Link to Clemens home run video Link to Clemens home run article Link to Clemens fun facts thread Link to ultimate grand slam wiki  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

Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild And welcome to episode 2512 of Effectively Wild A Baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer not joined today by Meg Rally of FanGrafs

who as mentioned last time is currently enjoying or I hope she's enjoying her first ever colonoscopy, her rookie colonoscopy. My boss, Bill Simmons, recently woke up from a colonoscopy to the news of a Jalen Brown trade, so who knows what trades Meg might wake up to. I can say with some confidence that had she been here the topic of today's pod, for better or worse, would have been different. However, joining me in Megstead are two comic book experts who happened to be baseball lovers

and who teamed up on a panel at San Diego ComicCon just, last week, which, unbeknownst to them, was a mere prelude to this podcast appearance. It was a prequel to this pod. First, the newly Eisner Award winning, David Harper, host of Off Panel, a comics interview podcast and the founder and proprietor of Skech, the subscription-based comic site, which just won the aforementioned Eisner for Best Comics-related Periodical Slash Journalism, and, as evidence of that fact, has featured posts such as the Hall of Fame of Superheroes. comics being weird at sports.

Oh yeah. Comics, seriously, The Avengers Go Moneyball, which featured input from none other than Ben Lindberg and most relevant to today's episode, a Justice League of their own fantasy drafting the best comic baseball teams possible.

He's also a Mariners fan, so we've maintained our typical quota of Mariners fans on an effectively wild episode. David, welcome and congrats on bringing home the hardware. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thankfully, the Mariners are keeping me

humble because they're just continuously depressing me as Meg I'm sure it knows plenty about. Speaking of fans whose teams have kept them humble, also with us is one of this year's Eisner Award judges. I hope there's no conflict of interest there. No conflict of interest. Good. Tiffany Bab is the editor of the Comics Criticism Journal, The Comics Courier, as well as the forthcoming monthly comic zine, the comic staple, which David will also be contributing to. She is the host of the podcast's Interesting Jobs, which has featured multiple baseball-themed episodes just this month, and the founder of the baseball website The Fan Files at The Fanfiles.com. And as I just alluded to, unfortunately for her, she is an Angels fan. So we would have an AL-West rivalry brewing happening here if the Angels ever posed a threat to the other teams in that division.

Tiffany, welcome. Thank you. It's pretty rough right now. I'm not going to lie. It's a bit rough for a while. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is true. Well, I'm so happy to have you both.

How do you two feel about having gotten the call due to a colonoscopy? Does that take away at all from the great honor, the flattering offer to appear unaffectable well? You know, when you're called up, that's, you got to take the opportunity and you've got to make, make of it what you can. That's how you know you're an Angels fan, when you're getting the much faster call up than you would expect. That's true. Yep. Can't control the circumstances.

Just got to make the most of them. And today, we will be drafting teams of superheroes. And you, too, have the expertise to do that. And one could question the timing, I suppose. Why are we drafting teams of superheroes to play baseball on the eve of the trade deadline? But you know what? That's actually why we're doing this in a way. This would obviously be good offseason fodder.

and maybe we'll do a sequel sometime. But we're kind of trapped by the schedule right now because we're recording Friday afternoon a few days before the deadline and there are only so many moves that have been made. Tiffany, I'm sure you could talk about Logan O'Hoppy and Chase Silthes at great length, but I'm not sure how compelling that would be for other people.

Not at all. Nobody cares except for us. We're not here to talk about AJ Minter going to the twins. That's what, yeah, there's only so much minter materials that I have actually. So whatever trade speculation we could engage in would have a short shelf life. So rather than say some stuff that would be instantly outdated, we'll save all the trade takes for next time when Meg has recovered and returned and we'll do an in-depth breakdown of all the trades that are made or not made. But hopefully this will be a fun diversion. And I do have one brief bit of baseball banter before we talk superheroes. and also your baseball backgrounds.

Have you been following the saga of Harrison Bader and his scooter accidents? Oh, yeah. Electric scooters are dangerous. Yes, not accident singular, but Harrison Bader now has a history of getting into accidents with his scooter. And I guess this kind of, you know,

people are talking about Kyle Shanahan's mysterious crash, the 49ers coach. So if you're talking about vehicular accidents, involving Bay Area sports teams. That's probably taking up most of the oxygen these days. But I am far more fascinated by Bader because he is now a repeat offender. And the Giants have a history also of vehicle accidents.

There was Madison Bungarner and his motorcycle ride and injury. There was, of course, the notorious Jeff Kent incident where he claimed to have heard himself washing his car. Oh, yeah. And then it turned out actually, He was riding his motorcycle, and now he's a Hall of Famer.

So let that be a lesson to all of us, I guess. Setbacks don't stand in our way forever when you have the heirs committee to bail you at. But Harrison Bader now was already injured, right? So he signed a two-year deal prior to this season with the Giants, and he's played 30 games for them and has not played particularly well in those 30 games. and it seems like he will not be playing in any more games for them this season because he was already dealing with lower body ailments and foot problems. He has planter fashitis in his foot, which he's been dealing with, the left foot since late May, and that was already jeopardizing his season.

But then it comes out that around two in the morning on Sunday, he aggravated this injury and complicated the recovery because he got into an accident on his scooter. Sounds like his faculties were somewhat impaired, as one might imagine, I guess. Although you could be stone cold sober and still hurt yourself on a scooter, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That could be death traps. Scooters not as big in New York.

I mean, my daughter has one. I have one, a non-motorized kind, but the kind that people just leave lying around the street as they do in L.A. for whatever reason, not quite as prevalent. But those things, you know, you can run over people. The batteries sometimes explode. All sorts of things can go wrong. But when there's drinking involved, evidently Bader was doing some bar hopping. And he was seen leaving Balboa Cafe.

And there are police reports. I mean, the media has been all over this, right? Tony Vitello, who always has some sort of word salad quote, he said, obviously he's not better than he was prior to that, which is one way to put it, I guess. And Vitello, San Francisco manager, conceded that it would delay the recovery process for him. And this just, I think, is entered now in the annals of weird baseball injuries, right? He was taken to a hospital. It was not a life-threatening injury, fortunately, but he had to have an MRI to understand the

severity of the injuries sustained from the scooter accident. That is a quote from the San Francisco Giants. This happened the day before he was due to fly to Indianapolis to meet with a foot and ankle specialist. That's wild. They have a lot more to go over now apparently. It's going to be a longer consultation and more tests. So Giants fans are not pleased with Harrison Bader because of his performance or lack thereof. And this just adds in to insult, I suppose. So I don't have any mechanized, motorized scooter experience personally, but stay away from those things, I guess, especially if you have a foot injury, a pre-existing foot injury, and you are a professional athlete, and you have been imbibing.

Do we know if the fire truck was moving, or was it parked? That's an excellent question. That does affect things to some extent, because, yes, according to a witness, his scooter crashed into the back of a San Francisco fire department fire engine, the wheel of which then rolled over his foot. The fire engine's wheel or the scooter's wheel? Because that makes a huge difference. I would ask the scooter's wheel, but now I'm like, oh my gosh. The way that that's phrased, it would imply that it was the fire engine truck that rolled over his foot.

But hopefully that's not the case. This consultation is getting longer in Indianapolis. It's going to be a big one. Yeah. Yeah, I take it the, I'm interpreting this as the fire engine right over his foot, but that sounds. I feel like that would be, I mean, way more severe than people are talking about it. Did you see that he also has a history of actually crashing into parked cars or parked vehicles? So like, this is not a first time.

Harrison Bader. That's the thing. Stop it. Get a driver, man. Yes, because there was a 2014 incident, right? And that's what came out in the wake of this. Or, I mean, this was already public knowledge. but people dredged it up. When he was in college and he was playing for the University of Florida,

he was suspended for being involved in a scooter accident early on a Sunday morning. Oh my God. So it was also a scooter. History repeating itself. Yes. I mean, I guess if you're going to get hurt on a scooter, maybe the wee hours of Sunday morning makes some sense

because you may have been drinking at that time. According to a Gainesville Police Department incident report, Bader was southbound on Southwest 10th Street when he hit a curb on his scooter and then struck a parked Ford F-150 pickup truck. Bader was found on the ground next to his scooter and was unresponsive. According to the report, there was a strong odor of alcohol. Bader was transferred to Shenz Hospital with, again, non-life-threatening injuries. So. Wow, that sounds serious, though.

Non-life-threatening. Like, if he wasn't, like, waking up. Yeah. I mean, I'm making light of this. it's possible that he actually does have some sort of problem here, which I wouldn't want to make light of. We know of these two isolated incidents, but when you know of two alcohol-induced scooter accidents, are we to think that those were the only times that he was riding a scooter, I guess, irresponsibly after perhaps having drunk too much, perhaps not, right? So I don't know

what's going on with Harrison Bader and drinking and scooters, but I think he's, should be a bit more careful. He should save his scooter riding for after his athletic career. Yeah, and maybe call an Uber. That too. I know that, like, the teams have historically built into contracts. Like, you can't play, like, pick up basketball or something like that. Could his next team build into their contract that you cannot write a scooter? I would, it would be prudent, right? I wouldn't be shocked if there is some language in his current contract that might forbid that, writing any kind of, I guess these reports don't actually specify that it was a motorized scooter this time, but I assume so, right? But I would think that there might be contract language about doing that and especially doing it after having been drinking, right?

I mean, that's why Kent made up the story about washing his car, right, because you're not really allowed to ride motorcycles in some cases or Baumgarner and his dirt bike or whatever. Right. Yeah. When this has happened to you multiple times, I mean, maybe one time in college, you could write it off as youthful indiscretions and I learned my lesson and I won't do it again. But he did the exact same thing again with the same kind of vehicle at exactly the same time of the week, which suggests to me that he has not done enough reflection. I do like the idea that it was a non-motorized scooter, so he was just rolling around on like a razor scooter. Yeah. What are you doing Harrison Bader? That he had to carry with him, bar to bar. Yeah.

Like my daughter's little pink with the streamers hanging from the handlebars and a little bell that you can go ding, ding, ding. Yeah, it probably wasn't one of those. Anyway, I don't know what you can get charged with. I assume can you get like a DUI, DWI? I think so. It must be serious because it is motorized, yeah. Right. Yeah.

I don't know if there's like a scooting while under the influence or something. but probably it would be contained within that same category. Anyway, we wish Harrison Bader well and also anyone who is in his vicinity, I guess, when he is on scooter. Yeah, so please be careful. I feel like every trade deadline has one weird injury. Yeah, that's true. Was Jonathan LeCroix breaking his hand with a suitcase when he was looking for a soccer or whatever? Was that around the trade deadline?

It was somewhere in the vicinity, and I just feel like every trade deadline we're like, is this person trying to not be traded by injuring themselves in an extremely unusual way? I don't think it's the case here, but still, we're always good for one. Yeah, yeah. You're also more likely to get injured if you're under high stress. So it could be that. And on a scooter. Yes, it reminds me of, we did a staff last recently about Glenn Allen Hill and how he had a tendency

to, after he was traded, really ramp up his offensive performance for his new team. And I can sort of sympathize with him because he, he had a notorious injury where, according to him, at least, he had a bad dream about a spider because he had a touch of arachnophobia. And so he was having a bad dream, a nightmare about a spider. And he woke up and he was still kind of groggy and he jumped out of bed and ran into another room and crashed through a glass table. Oh, my God. And suffered several bruises and had to go on the injured list.

And I recently suffered a glass table induced injury prior to Podger. podcasting as well, where the top of the glass table fell onto my head, close to my eye. And I have just now recovered from that where you can really no longer see a mark from that. So it was glass table induced or just me induced because it was user error to some extent, I will admit, nonetheless. That's scary, though. Everyone, stay safe out there. And you're all on hug watch and could get traded at any time.

So try to preserve life and limb at least until. then. Or there's always the Curtis Mead case of get traded and then immediately have your wrist fractured when you're making your debut for your new team. But look, if it's in a game, that can happen to anyone. If it's on a scooter early on a Sunday morning when you've been drinking, that probably shouldn't happen to anyone. Okay. So, comics, baseball, why are we doing this now? Well, one, because it'll be fun. Also, because, look, Spider-Man brand-new day is out, right? and dominating the box office, potentially poised to set some records. So much for superhero fatigue doesn't apply to Spider-Man.

The Spider-Stans are all crowding the box office this weekend, as we will be, perhaps. And also, look, there's X-Men 97, Season 2 going on, where we're hot on the heels of Comic-Con. It just feels appropriate. So I want to hear about your comics backgrounds, but also your baseball background. grounds because what would a baseball comics crossover episode be without some origin stories? So, David, how did you get into baseball? Well, I was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, and is regionally the closest to the Seattle Mariners. I was obsessed with sports cards.

I was obsessed with baseball from the very beginning. But I was five years old when Ken Griffey Jr. started playing. That'll do it. That'll do it. It was basically Optimus Prime and Ken Griffey Jr., the two coolest people I'd ever seen in entire life up until that point. And only one of them played baseball. So I was a huge fan of the Seattle Mariners from that point on.

But yeah, I mean, I was right or die. I was also like, back then I was a little bit easier to spread to other teams too. I love the Mariners, but those Braves teams back then I was obsessed with. And so, yeah, I also played. I played up until I was about 16 years old. And I would say very good for an Alaska pitcher that, you know, never went anywhere with it. but that's always so good. I was never considering going pro by any means.

But yeah. Did you ever play or see the Midnight Sun game in Fairbanks? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I've always wanted to do that because that would be perfect for me and my sleep schedule or lack of sleep schedule. And I would enjoy that.

It's a good spectator experience. Oh, yeah. And Summer League Ball in Alaska is actually shockingly good. We have an amazing history of players that came through here. I mean, like Mark McGuire. Aaron Judge. I'm somehow, I think Randy Johnson was up here at one point. There's been a ton of really great players who come up here during the summer because Alaska during the summer is really amazing. Just don't come when it's winter, which is basically the other nine months of the year.

I have been there. It was lovely, but did not get to go to the Midnight Sun game. Maybe we will draft some Midnight Suns on this episode. We will see. Tiffany, how did you get into baseball? Just a few years ago, my friend who is in comics, a letter named Hassan Ottsman-El, who, who just won the Eisner for best lettering this year. He is really into American sports. He's English. He's really into American sports. We often play this game where we're like on Google Maps and we're like, what's near you?

Because we have no idea what the other's geography is. And he's just like, you're really close to Angel Stadium. And he's just like, you should go see this guy show Hey Otani. And I had watched baseball as a kid. Like my dad had brought me to stadiums and stuff, to Angel Stadium, to Dodder Stadium. He stole Dodder Dogs, actually, when he was in high school, I think. And I had always found it extraordinarily boring. I was like, you can go to the bathroom and shop and come back and like nothing has happened yet.

This was pre-pitch clock. Yeah, pre-pitch clock. And so I went to go see that Shohei Otani because I love trying new things. And I was like, why not? Go to a baseball game. Seems pretty cheap. And I went and I was like, wow, this guy's pretty cool. I went to see him pitch and started reading more about Showo Atani, started learning more about baseball.

and then all of a sudden, like, baseball's a really big part of my life. And now Shohei Otani is playing for the other L.A. team, the one that's actually in L.A., and you are still an Angels fan. That is true. He has abandoned you. She's been cursed. I'm now feeling, because this is kind of, I mean, even with the weird time about the Logan O'Hoppy, Chase Silseth thing, like, I'm experiencing the feeling of the team that I came in on is just slowly disappearing for the first time. In this case, it might not be a totally bad thing, though.

Right. Yes. It's a good thing for the long term. But, like, in the moment, it is very weird and odd to just be like, oh, wow, okay. That just changed overnight. And now, like, you know, I was at the stadium last week. And now when I go this week or next week, I'm like, okay, it's different. And so that's a weird feeling to have.

And also kind of one of the interesting experiences of coming at it as a new fan who's very involved. It's just like I'm having a lot of these first-time experiences every year. Yeah. And I guess you get sort of spoiled when you start with Shohei Otani. That's true. Is it hard to have the historical perspective to understand, wow, this guy is singular. We haven't seen anything like this. Or do you just sort of absorb that from the starter?

That's part of the pitch, I guess, because I took my daughter last week when you were at Comic Con. I was taking my daughter to City Field to see Shohei Otani in hopes that that would hook her on baseball. And he is often comped two superheroes. I mean, he is often described as sort of a real-life superhero. I don't know whether that made it a more natural fit for you that you could port one interest to the other. It is interesting. I think, like, because the way I approached getting into baseball was reading, like, I just read a ton of books, any baseball book I could get my hands on. And like most of those are like out of print.

And like I think picking up little bits of history from here and there from like the deadball era, you do kind of have a sense of like the place in history just because you're reading about different times. I feel like if I was only watching contemporary baseball, it would be harder to place. What are your wish lists for the deadline here? I guess in David's case, it would be players you want the Mariners to acquire. And in the Angels case for Tiffany, it might be players that you are willing to. part with. Is there anything on your wish list, David, that you need Jerry DePoto to acquire at some point in the next few days? One way or another, he's going to acquire something. Whether or not I like that is going to be an entirely different story. I mean, we need someone to,

you can tell him an ultra baseball fan because I'm referring to the Mariners as we. We really need somebody who can hit a baseball that is thrown by a left-handed pitcher. That would be a really nice start. I have to admit, like I'm not saying that I want to replace Cal Raleigh because that would be insane. But at the same time, I'm just like, I'd really like him to stop hitting 163. I think the best deadline acquisition the Mariners could make is a fully functional Cal Raleigh, and I don't know if that's coming. But yeah, they really need a right-handed bat.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure every team in Major League Baseball would like a right-handed bat. And so the cost is going to be really high. I keep seeing that they're going to trade Emerson Hancock or Luis Castillo. I would be surprised if they can find a way to get rid of Castillo. But Emerson Hancock, I'm like, we know we're going to send someone out. Who are we going to get for him? I would really like to have an idea as to who that is. But my big things that I would like to see is I'd like somebody who can move the needle on offense,

and then I would like to see Kate Anderson pitch for the Mariners. Those are my big two things, really. And Tiffany, are you hoping that John Mosellack can convince Artie Moreno to rip the Band-Aid off? Do you want to see Detmer's, Soriano, Adele, even Netto? whom are you willing to part with or even eager to? I don't want to see any of it, but I mean, no one enjoys tear down, right? It's a painful, horrible thing. But I also understand that, like, something's got to change, right?

Like, I am very attached to these guys. I'm very attached to Netto. But we have hit the point where we are so bad and only getting worse. You've got to pull the Band-Aid off. But I feel very emotional about it. And I feel very much like I'm a backseat. Like, I'm just, I'm going along for the ride, and I'm trying not to open my eyes because until it's all over.

And then I'll kind of readjust to what we have. Like, it's going to be brutal, right? If we're going along the direction that they say we're going to be going, like, it's going to be a rough couple years. But at the end of the day, that is what you need to do. Yeah. It's easier to have a couple rough years when you have some hope that there are better years on the other end of those rough years because.

But it is hard. Because, like, with our rough years, there was always the promise of, like, at least we have our special boys. Yes, right. At least there's Otani. At least there's trout. And now you're also removing the special boys. Mm-hmm. Yes.

Which is hard. I have to say, I mean, I hope to, I wouldn't be surprised of Depoto and Moseilic are talking because Joe Adele wouldn't be a terrible. He is a right-handed bat. He, I don't know. Have your people talk to my people, Tiffany. He's had a crazy. I was there at that game where he, Jose Cansecoed. the ball. He also robbed

three Mariners' home runs in the same game that we lost by one, which was the duality of Joe Adel. He also got, he did the first, I think it was the first, in history, full count, hit by pitch, walkoff. He's a record-setting individual that Joe Adele.

Just the season. Ben, can I give you a quick aside about Tiffany's background? So I feel like you would appreciate this. Tiffany does a lot of moderation of panels at comic conventions, and one time she did one for Star Wars the Clone Wars. And afterwards, she got to meet Angels legend, David Eckstein.

Ah, and of course, Ashley. Yes, Star Wars legend. That was actually how I found out that Assocata Tano is married to a former Major League Baseball player because she told me and I was like, why is he there? Oh my God, last name is Exxine. It was very exciting. I'd feel more starstruck, I think, meeting Asoka than meeting David Eckstein. Me too.

That's so interesting. I'm backwards because I meet a lot of people in things. but I don't meet a lot of baseball players. She was a person who actually presented during the Eisner Awards, and the idea that she could hand me an Eisner Award that I won for a category was like ripped straight from my Dream Journal. I was like, I'm winning an award that Assocato is handing me? Oh, my God.

That is very special. And your comics origin story. So I got into comics to some extent around the time I got into baseball, I guess via the same vector, which was card collecting. So I had a binder of baseball cards or binders and a binder of superhero cards and cool sets and you'd put them together and you'd have the whole team and that was great. And the death of Superman was sort of formative for me in that era as well. And I got more into baseball ultimately than comics, but always retained some affection for them. This was a core interest for you too.

So, David, you said you were very into Ken Griffey Jr. and Optimus Primal. That's right. Was your interest in comics kind of running in parallel with your interest in sports? Transformers introduced me to comics. I needed a new transformer delivery device, and I discovered comics, and I got a whole bunch of Transformers comics, and I fell in love with the medium. And I was, you know, same thing. I was really into trading cards, sports cards, and I found the Marvel Universe trading cards, and that was, like, massive for me. Because you put, I'm a top 10% user of fan graphs.

I love statistics and looking at the power ratings on the back of the cards and getting an understanding of like, holy crap, like, or dagger from Cloak and Dagger has somehow won 73% of her fights. How is this possible? Turns out it was actually totally made up. But I just absolutely loved it. And like when you combine that with like the X-Men, the animated series coming out a couple years later, it was game over. Basically, that just created a lifelong fan. Yeah, I remember one of my mentors in the baseball. business Stephen Goldman at Baseball Perspectus. He wrote a piece years ago about how his interest

in baseball stats and also comics was tickled by, I think it was in 1981, there was an amazing Spider-Man annual number 15. And it had a little tidbit in there where it sort of gave a hierarchy of power levels for heroes and sort of raided their power. And, you know, this was kind of new and novel at the time. and he was so intrigued by this. And this was a BPP piece from 2011, and he was saying, well, what if we had the same sort of thing for baseball? And we kind of do now, I guess. I mean, we have the baseball savant percentiles, right,

in addition to 20 to 80 scouting scale and all of those things. And something about that, it's still frustrating to this day, sometimes when you have the exhausting kind of tired power level debates, right? When hero X fights hero Y and you think, well, wait, why didn't this guy? beat that guy and how is this consistent and all of that. You sort of want to approach it almost sabermetrically to say, you know, who would triumph in this battle? But it's a little bit squishy and flexible when it comes to comics because you win some, you lose some. Especially when there's like the lifelong thing of no matter what Batman wins. It's just,

he'll find a way. I will tell you, prelude to my baseball team, there's savant pages are all red. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. And Tiffany, how did you get into comics? Like baseball, I got into comics kind of late. Well, I'd grown up reading Calvin and Hobbs, Archie, that sort of thing. But I didn't get into like superhero comics until college. And I had a friend who was really getting into superhero comics. And this was during Marvel Now.

And she handed me Hawkeye by Matt Practon and David AHA. And I was just like, okay, this is, like, this is going to be my life for a little bit. And I read nothing but comics for like the next four or five years and I talked about nothing but comics and I just read all I could about it. And I was recently doing a spring cleaning and I found this old notebook that I had where I had pretty much written down like I'd taken a comic book, a floppy, a monthly comic book and I'd measured the size of each panel with a ruler and kind of counted out how many panels per page and how many kind of like scene beats were in each page. I have no memory of doing this, but I was very obsessive. Like at school, I was in college. I was just like, okay, every term paper from now on I'm writing, I'm in find a way to write about comics. And I just, I made it happen.

And then slowly but surely, like it became, again, like baseball, a huge part of my life. That's great because sometimes I worry that all of my interests and passions were developed and frozen when I was about 10. And so just all the things I liked then I still like. except that they're my job now. And I try to cultivate new interests and remain curious about the world, but I do have these kind of core nerdy passions that have just stayed with me.

And I always am impressed and heartened when I meet and talk to people who developed really life-defining interests as adults. I think that's great. That suggests that we could all be a day away, a brand-new day away, from developing some new interests that will change the course of our world.

lives. So that's exciting. You're living proof. It is exciting. Let's get to drafting with one more bit of prelude, which is, you know, this is going to be hypothetical. Obviously, we engage in a lot of hypotheticals here at Effectively Wild. And we have entertained questions about superheroes and baseball before, and also many superpowers for actual baseball players and how different would baseball be if players could do this or could do that. So this is right up our alley. But we're not entirely in the realm of hypothetical here. I mean, we are because we're talking about fictional characters, even though they're real to us. But there is a lot of literature.

There's a lot of comics canon in which superheroes have played baseball. And sometimes also baseball players have taken the field with superheroes. We've had actual comics crossover events. So I wondered if you two could just throw out any examples that you would recommend to people or that maybe you've drawn. in developing your draft strategy here? Just what are kind of the canonical pantheon examples of baseball comic book crossovers? Ben, I talked to you for an article that was specifically about one comic, which was West Coast Avengers annual number two, which is, in my opinion, one of the greatest comics ever made.

Don't actually read it and tell me otherwise because I don't want to know. I read it when I was a kid and I absolutely loved it. But it begins with the West Coast Avengers and the Avengers playing a game of baseball in the Astrodome with Wonder Man pitching and Thor at bat. And yes, Thor is using Yolnier as his bat. It is absolutely spectacular. It also involves Thor hitting what clearly is going to be a home run until Silver Surfer burst through the Astrodome's dome

and tells them there's a crisis going on. And the whole thing is absolutely spectacular. That is, I mean, that you actually, you really get a sense as to like what the hierarchy would be on the field and where everyone would be playing while you read that comic. It's incredible. But, I mean, the other one I would say is, like, probably the most inseparable comics from baseball history is, are the X-Men.

X-Men have always played baseball. They've always played baseball. And that is a really, really big thing. I don't really have any specific issues for that one. But that was a thing that they used to just do where the different teams would get together and they'd play baseball, which was a very charming thing and a very Marvel thing, because their whole thing is the world outside your window. So they want to seem more realistic.

The last one I'm going to say is not an actually inside comics crossover. They, for a long time, used to have regular softball games between Marvel and DC comics, the actual publishers. And there was a gauntlet thrown down at Sandio Comic Con where Steve Wacker, the new editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics said, we're bringing it back when we move out to L.A. We're going to bring the softball game back. So if you live in the L.A. area, keep an eye out because you might see your favorite Marvel and D.C. creators battling on the softball field soon. Anything you'd care to add, Tiffany?

I have a couple. One is not a comic thing. It was a live event, which is that Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson had a wedding ceremony at Shay Stadium, and Stanley officiated it. And if I remember correctly, because I was trying to someone who had originally had a press pass for it, but if I remember correctly, it was the day that Doc Goodin came back. And a bunch of like the... pop culture press ended up getting their press credentials booted because the actual real

important sports writers needed to be there, which I find amusing. But then I have two other non-superhero recommendations for people interested in reading comics about baseball. And one is James Sturm's Gollum's Mighty Swing, which is really interesting. It's a cool, like, historical fiction graphic novel about a Jewish, like, traveling team and kind of the myths that we create through baseball and also through culture. And then the other one is to read some peanuts.

There's a lot of baseball stuff in peanuts. Charlie Brown is a Giants fan. And he also has a favorite baseball player named Joe Shlabotnik, who, like, you never see. And he's always, like, on his way down, I assume to single A. And then, like, he's like the worst player and exactly the kind of player that you think Charlie Brown would be obsessed with. And going back to read those baseball strips,

I think there's a couple collections that you can pick up that are just the baseball peanut strips. And they're so charming and funny. I think Joe Shoblotnik was in the angel system, right? I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah, they called him up immediately after he was drafted. Exactly. Yeah, a little prematurely.

Yeah, Peanuts was foundational for me and anyone who's interested in hearing more about that, Earlier this year, I went on the excellent Ellen Adair's podcast about baseball movies, take me into the ballgame. And we did two plus hours on Charlie Brown's All-Stars, the second Peanuts animated special, the baseball one, or one of the baseball ones, where we talked at length about my history with peanuts, my encounter with Charles Schultz himself as a kid. I had lunch at his ice arena.

He's still a French fry off my plate. I have never been so starstruck in my life. It was amazing. So, yes, I still have a great soft spot for peanuts and have tried to pass that along to my daughter as well. There were several years as a kid when my Christmas lists every year, and my birthday is Christmas. So Christmas list was big for me. That was the only time I was getting gifts. My Christmas list just consisted of every peanuts thing in the world was just the entirety of because I didn't want to limit myself to like individual because there was at least a theoretical possibility that I could just acquire.

every bit of Peanuts merch, which I never quite fulfilled that ambition, but I came close, and a lot of it is still stored in various closets at my house and my mother's. Okay, so let's do this draft. That'll do it for the free preview of today's Effectively Wild. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to listen on and hear whatever wisdom and wit await, we would love to have you. You can visit patreon.com slash Effectively Wild to access the rest of this episode and plenty of other exclusive content.

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