Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 367: The Listener Email Answers You’ve Been Waiting For

Episode Date: January 17, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss Fat A-Rod and instant replay, then answer listener emails about Babe Ruth, Roger Clemens, and the darkness that lurks within all of us.

It's a little crazy This is a little shame How we break each other's hearts Cause each other pain Cause each other pain How we take each other's love Good morning and welcome to episode 367 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. It's an email Friday. Ben, how are you doing? Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. It's an email Friday. Ben, how are you doing?

Very well. And the listeners outdid themselves this week with questions, both quality and quantity. I think we got more questions this week than in any other week. So I don't know what the occasion was, but thank you. Must have been a slow week at work. Before we start, a couple things. First, did you happen to see Fat A-Rod? Hmm. Uh-uh. Okay, I'll send you Fat A-Rod.

I meant to bring it up yesterday. Because we talked about Fat Canoe when that was briefly a thing, or when I tried to make it a thing. Right, and Fat Jeter. when that was briefly a thing or when I tried to make it a thing right and fat and fat cheater right and we talked about where that ranked on the the spectrum of fat he's he's really fat fat chipper well yeah so that's the thing he looks like he looks like fat jay-z so yeah so the thing about these pictures is I kind of rank them on how plausible I believe the fatness is, I guess. Because Fat Canoe seemed fat, but there were other factors. He was apparently in a photo shoot outside and was wearing a lot of layers.

was wearing a lot of layers. Fat Jeter looked very fat, but then there was a picture a few days after Fat Jeter surfaced that seemed to show Slim Jeter. This one looks pretty convincing. I've tried to... Yeah, the fat is in a convincing place. I've studied the shirt angle, and there is sort of a suspicious protuberance there, right?

There's something that seems to be pushing the shirt out that might not be a stomach. It does seem like it's possible that he's got some sort of microphone. He's wearing a wire, yeah. Or it looks like a big frog might be in there. Yeah. It actually looks like a big frog might be in there. Yeah. It actually looks like a giant frog's head. I mean, he could be. Would you put a fanny pack under the T-shirt past A-Rod?

Money belt? No, I wouldn't. So there are other explanations. This is not conclusive that he is now fat. It kind of looks like Elmo's face as well yeah uh so i don't know where i would rank this one probably pretty high just based on the circumstances surrounding the picture it would it would seem like a like a fitting time for a rod to let himself go well except, except if he's going to show up to spring, he's got to be on his game.

I mean, if he still actually is going through with this idea that he's going to play, which he says he is, he's got to be in the best shape of his life. There cannot be any fat on A-Rod when he gets there. He said something today about how they might have done him a favor and maybe he'll take the time off to readjust or contemplate or eat or something. But I don't know. I enjoyed Fat A-Rod and I enjoy all pictures of fat players

that may or may not actually be fat. That is the key to the appeal. We might as well. I mean, as long as we're talking about A-Rod. Skinny Sandoval? No, as long as we're talking about what A-Rod's going to do in his year off. Can we start with Mike's question, which I don't think we have anything to add to it. Sure.

I have another pre-question comment, but we can do that. So Mike says, listening to McCulloch about A-Rod and his job prospects for the year, I immediately thought, why wouldn't a website hire A-Rod for one year to cover the Yankees? Is there anything you would want to read more than Rodriguez writing game reviews and bashing Jeter's range on a daily basis? I suppose the Yanks could stop him from being credentialed, but he could still watch all the games or follow on Twitter. And I have to think he has more knowledge, insight than most beat reporters. Add in the fact that he seems like a pretty vengeful guy.

I don't know if I agree with that. Yeah, I don't know. For all his flaws, vengefulness doesn't seem like one of them. And I can't think of a better daily or even weekly column. If no one hires him or if his contract prevents him from working, what happens to his reputation if he simply sends out mocking, funny tweets about the team all year, etc.? And, well, I mean, that would be amazing. That's the best idea I've ever heard.

I don't know that I agree with all the details here. idea I've ever heard. I don't know that I agree with all the details here. But yeah, I mean, if A-Rod decided to spend his year off being, you know, like the, I don't know, you know, becoming a baseball intellectual in the public sphere or something, it would be amazing. Why not? I mean, if A.J. Pruszynski, I mean, well, there's just nothing else to say. It would be amazing. We would all love him. Like, by the end of it, we would all love him, right? I enjoyed reading his correspondence with Randy Levine, and that wasn't even meant for public consumption.

Yeah, I don't even need him to bash Jeter. I just need him to be better than Kevin Millar or whoever the alternative is. I wonder if there's some sort of non-disclosure. Yeah, or not non-disclosure, but non-defamation or something like that in a player's contract where he's not allowed to criticize the team publicly or anything like that. I don't know. criticize the team publicly or anything like that i i don't know um yeah it it seems like i've heard people suggest that he should spend the year doing you know nothing but charity the

entire time to to rehab his reputation and i actually don't think that would work i mean it'd be great it would be wonderful if he did because he's got a lot of resources and and people should do charity when they have resources like that would be great you he did because he's got a lot of resources and people should do charity when they have resources. That would be great. You should do that, but we'll all hate you at the end of it, A-Rod, anyway. Because everybody will just assume you're doing it because your PR guy told you to. And you're not actually going to reveal anything to us about yourself. But this, if we actually spent a year hearing you talk in a different context and we found you likable,

like you just can't get, like if a likable person wins, that just, like there's no way around it. If you're likable and people decide they like you, they'll let you do anything. Yeah. Although how many former players who become broadcasters or commentators are liked? It seems like not a whole not a high percentage you're much more likely to have a blog devoted to you getting fired or a twitter account about the dumb things you say than you are to create new fans or at least i don't know on the

internet it depends what your it depends what your job is if you have to talk three hours a day for you know 160 games a year you're gonna have a hard time staying interesting um but if you were just you know if you were just being cool you know i mean people clearly in a rod's skill set well yeah that is the problem is that the more we the more we get to know him the less we generally do like him but uh i don't know i i feel like like this is this you know fernando tatis for instance is beloved and he's not even doing anything just some guy is running a twitter account posting random things about him and i love f Tatis. So like, you know, like when Jose Canseco seemed to have hired comedy writers to run his Twitter feed for a couple months before he went all crazy with like that rape investigation.

You know, I think people liked Jose Canseco a lot more and he, you know, all he did is probably hire some, you know, funny college or die intern for $750 a month. A-Rock would certainly probably pull that off. The guy knows a lot about baseball. If he were candid about it, that's the other thing. Most of these guys who former players who we grow to hate, they're not candid because they want to be part of the system still. They want to be part of the group, part of the club. They want to be part of the

games club, though. If A-Rod wanted to be part of our club, if he's just burning bridges and he just wanted to be liked by me and you, he could probably do it we're easily swayed i'd love to see him try he does sort of have this public persona that always seems too polished like he's trying to be beloved or yeah but if he could if he could somehow

channel the essence of a rod then yeah that'd yeah, that'd be great. You're right, though. You're right, Amy. He would completely screw this up. Like, this is not his skill set. Yeah. This is like going, well, I mean, you know, geez, why doesn't he, you know, go do heart surgery for a year? You know, he's, that would be, we probably would respect that, too. Yeah.

The other thing I wanted to bring up, did you see the instant replay announcement? Yeah. So we talked about this when the plan was originally proposed, but there were some details that had yet to be worked out. And most of those details are now finalized and have been announced. And there are some interesting things in there. Like the number of challenges has been reduced quite a bit. When we first talked about this, it was like three challenges. It was like one before the sixth inning and then two after that or something. Now it's just one, and if it's upheld or if the original original call is is overturned then you get one more so you get a maximum of two and then uh i think the umpires can initiate their own if they want to

after the seventh inning the crew chief can um the other a couple interesting things where did you see the thing about the uh the clubhouse, the club access to video? To determine whether to challenge a play, personnel in the dugout will be permitted to communicate with a video specialist in the clubhouse who has access to the same video that is available to replay officials. This communication will occur via the dugout phone. So that's kind of interesting. And it also says you have to make the challenge in a timely manner, and it says guidelines will be established to determine whether a challenge is timely,

but it can't be that timely if you have to call the clubhouse and have the guy watch the replay. I mean, I guess that could go fairly quickly, but we wondered how that would work because it seemed like teams would somehow try to have someone look at the video before they decided whether to challenge or not, and that's officially sanctioned in the rules here. Yeah, it's interesting. That's interesting. The other thing is that the umpires will not leave the field at any point for the review

because the review will be conducted from Major League Baseball Advanced Media's headquarters in New York, and then it will just be communicated via some sort of communication station by home plate to the crew chief and another umpire. So that would hopefully cut down on the the time it takes there will be no no running out off the field and into the tunnel and looking at some little screen inside the the bowels of the stadium uh so that is good and the other kind of nice thing is that clubs are now able to show replays of any play they want on the scoreboard in the ballpark, which is kind of cool. That is cool. Regardless, yeah, regardless of whether the play is reviewed

or not. So even if it's not reviewed, they can show plays on the ballpark scoreboard, which is nice. That's delightful. What does that have to do with instant replay? I don't know, but it, That's delightful. What does that have to do with Instant Replay? I don't know. Well, it is replay, but it was included in this press release. I guess now that replay is officially part of the system for all these plays, I guess it would be silly to continue to prohibit them from doing that, especially because there are screens all around the ballpark and people are watching maybe on other devices and following along. But it's nice.

It's good for the ballpark experience. Indeed. It feels like a total non-sequitur. What you just said, in fact, felt like a non-sequitur as well. I don't understand. What does instant replay have to do? It's news. It's news that came out today.

I know, but what is there being instant replay review in the umpires at the league office 3,000 miles away, communicated by phone, have to do with the scoreboard? And you're saying that they can show these plays even if it's a non-reviewed play. Yeah, so you're saying why are they doing this? I'm saying why did they choose this time to announce this? I don't know.

It's replay related. I mean, anyway. It's like they just clicked the replay tag on the blog and two completely different blog stories that both use the keyword showed up and they're like, Well, I can see why people would wonder if the umpires are consulting replays, whether people in the ballpark are going to be able to watch along with them. I know, but they did not limit it to plays that are being reviewed. Well, I don't know, but I'm happy about it.

Me too. Okay. Questions. All right, so I'll start with Mike who says, let's say there is a starting pitcher whose only stipulation with signing with your club would be he doesn't have to show up on the days he doesn't start. He will set up a webcam and work with an appointed pitching coach so that the team can ensure that he is practicing on a daily basis, but he's not coming to the ballpark unless he's on the starting bill. He's obviously self-centered enough that he has no concern for the views his teammates would have toward him.

So would a team dare to sign him given how bad a precedent it would be? How good would a player have to be to get this deal? Could Kershaw ask for it? And how much of a discount would this be in contract terms like if you could get a three to four war guy for league minimum would teams do it um so I wanted to to answer this question because it occurred to me that this has happened and not even that long ago uh Roger Clemens had this arrangement um when he was coming out of retirement in midseason and teams were trying to woo him and convince him to come back every year. He had a, I guess it was called a personal services clause, but it was generally referred to as the freedom clause that said that he didn't have to be at the ballpark unless he was pitching. And the reason ostensibly was because he wanted to attend his four boys' athletic events

and do things with his family. And there was sort of a backlash to this. Not a huge one, though. Like, before these teams allowed him to do that, they sort of cleared it with clubhouse leaders. Like, before the Astros gave him this freedom clause, they went to Biggio and Bagwell and said, would you mind if Clements is allowed to do this?

Same thing when he was with the Yankees and had this clause. Torrey went to, you know, Jeter, whoever else on the team and and asked if it would be okay um there was some uh there was some backlash in the form of of hot takes certainly uh scoop jackson had an excellent hot take in 2007 um he wrote i I watched, I listened, I read, waiting for someone, anyone to say something to break down how selfish Roger Clemens really is to continue to treat the game this way. The game of baseball, the one America holds so dearly to its heart. Instead, nothing. The only point of national contention seems to be a freedom clause in his contract that allows him to go home on off days. The media, the people who are supposed to be the voices of reason,

the protectors of the sanctity of sports, collectively have acted as if Roger Clemens signing with the Yankees was about Roger Clemens signing with the Yankees. The media is failing to recognize that this is about how one man not only has put an I in team, but put a me in MLB and myself in professional sports. Roger Clemens is without question the most selfish athlete of our time. Either that or he's the most celebrated pimp in professional sports.

He put the myself in professional sports? Yep. That's what they say. I in team, me in MLB, myself in professional sports. So that was a hot take. And so it didn't really seem to be a major controversy, though, like after Clemens left the Astros, Phil Garner, who was the Astros manager, made some comments. He said what sort of happened was we turn on the TV and he's playing a golf

tournament. So it evolved to be more than just seeing family. And then Clemens fired back. And he said, Phil makes the comment that they turn the TV on and I'm in Hollywood golfing. There's not one time that I was away from my ball club, my team, that during the game I was out on the damn golf course. And then Garner said, it was not something that hurt our ball club. I have no bones to pick about anything about Rocket. Well, that sounds disingenuous. I mean, that sounds very clearly like it.

I mean, as much as your ace and your manager yelling at each other through the media hurts your ball club, I mean, it does seem like it became an issue. The comment was made after Clemens had left the Astros. I see. And Garner said, I didn't hear anybody say we can't live with this. I did not think that was an issue. I don't really believe Garner, though. Yeah.

Garner is either lying or telling the truth. I mean, he's going to say that regardless. Right. David Wells made some critical comment that I couldn't find at some point about it. But basically, so we know. A team would dare to do this if it were for a player who was as good as Roger Clemens, who was at that time pretty much the most effective pitcher in baseball and might not have come back at all under normal circumstances.

And clearly there was no discount in contract terms because at the time his prorated salary was like the highest single season salary ever i think um so if you're really good i guess teams will live with it or at least two teams would yeah i mean there's something different when it's a guy who's 44 too and i mean it's he's clearly a short timer at that point you know you're it's a different calculus you're not going to be coaching him you know nobody's even going to be coaching him. Nobody's even going to really talk to him. My guess is that if Roger Clemens joins a team when he's 44,

that there are guys on that team, even if he were in the clubhouse every day, even if he didn't have this provision. My guess is that there are actually guys on that team, on the 25-man roster, who never speak to him. Like young guys who just never once get to talk to him. It's just a guess. I don't know if that's true. So, I mean, it's a different situation.

It's almost like you're losing nothing in that situation. You're already probably... If it were kershaw though i mean kershaw's 25 it's a totally different thing is all i'm saying like it's not i'm saying it's not a matter of just how good he is even if even if a pitcher were just as good as clemens but he were 25 it wouldn't be um i don't think it would fly uh okay i will enter this one you you queue up something and i mean griffey remember griffey was taking naps in the clubhouse during the game which um bless his heart i'm not judging him but that seems to be just as um sort of provocational in in some ways

and uh griffey was terrible at the time. So, you know, again, it was more like, it's more a status thing than how good you are at anything. Yeah, once you get to Roger Clemens' Griffey status, I guess you can get away with things. Okay, this question comes from Ben. Right and left field corner dimensions at the Polo Grounds Tiger Stadium and in the 1920s slash 30s Yankee Stadium were much shorter than modern field corner dimensions at the Polo Grounds Tiger Stadium and in the 1920s slash 30s Yankee Stadium

were much shorter than modern field corner dimensions. Do you think modern pull hitters such as David Ortiz, Jason Giambi, Prince Fielder, et cetera, would have much higher production numbers in these stadiums? And on the contrary, are Hank Greenberg, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, and other older players' power numbers elevated due to shorter parks? Would love to hear your opinion on this topic because so many analysts compare Ruth's numbers to other dead ball hitters.

And I wanted to answer this because I read something relevant to it recently in Craig Wright's Baseball History newsletter, a page from Baseball's Past. history newsletter, a page from baseball's past. So Yankee Stadium in 1923, when it opened was 285 down the left field line, and 295 down the right field line. But of course, it got incredibly deep. Before you went very far over it was 395 to straightaway left and 350 to straightaway right. And then it was just crazy in left center. I mean, 460 straightaway center was 520 from 1923 to 1937. So I don't think you could pull enough balls directly down the line to take advantage of this without also costing yourself a lot of home runs elsewhere in the park. There's the idea that Yankee Stadium was built for Babe Ruth to suit his swing and that he hit a lot more home runs because he played there. to suit his swing and that he hit a lot more home runs because he played there.

According to Craig Wright's numbers, though, that is not the case. I'll quote, While old Yankee Stadium was much tougher on right-handed power hitters than lefties, during Ruth's career it was still not a home run haven for lefty sluggers. Ruth's career home run rate at Yankee Stadium was 6% greater than in road games, which is less than the average home field advantage for home runs. So Yankee Stadium was actually a slight drag on the Babes' home run production. And I think that makes sense because even if you look at pull hitters, I just pulled up Brooks baseball spray charts for the hitters that have been named,

like Prince Fielder, David Ortiz. And while they do hit most of their home runs to the pull field, as I guess everyone does or just about, they're still distributed pretty widely along the whole spectrum from the line to center. And then there are some opposite field shots. so it's not as if they're they're pulling them directly down the line i i guess it could have benefited someone who whose only chance is to hit one out down the line like a guy who just doesn't have the power to hit balls to straight away center or or down in the power alleys um and so the only time when one goes out is when it's down the line i guess it could could benefit him but I doubt it would benefit, uh, Ruth or, or these other guys disproportionately, or, or that if you were able to transport modern players back to that era, that they would hit more home runs purely as a result of the, the short porches, they would hit

more home runs because they would be unimaginably better than everyone else, I imagine. The other interesting thing that Craig Wright pointed out was that for part of the 20s and through 1930, which is when Ruth hit a lot of his home runs, there was a rule called Rule 48, which said that a ball that left the park on the fair side of the foul pole but landed in foul territory was a foul ball, which of course is a fair ball now. So that probably cost him some home runs. And also in the 1930s, if a ball at Yankee Stadium hit the foul pole and came back into play, it was not a home run. So those two things probably cost Ruth some homers over the years.

So if it went around the foul pole fair, but then it landed on the other side, then it was called a foul ball. That seems like it would have the potential to cost. I mean, what do you think? What percentage of home run hitters, home runs do that?

Like one in 25? It sounds reasonable, I think. One in 50, maybe? I mean, if it's one in 25, that means that he lost about 30 home runs, which almost puts him tied with Hank Aaron. Well, I don't know. I'm looking at this Prince Fielder spray chart, which is from 2007 to 2014,

and it looks like there are only maybe five or so homers in that, which could end. Wait a minute. Prince Fielder has hit, what, 250 or something? That could work out, right? Okay. How many has he hit? And these ball locations are not exactly accurate,

so it's not necessarily a reflection of where it landed. But yeah, he's hit 285, and it looks like somewhere around five could have landed foul. So yeah. All right. Shall I read one? Yes. All right.

So this is from Mark. After listening to the A-Rod piece on 60 Minutes and then the following podcast, I came away with a very slimy feeling about baseball. And probably, I don't know, the one that we did about the New York magazine A-Rod piece. Remember that one? I came away with a very slimy feeling about everything after that. Anyway, players with their own dope-dealing

trainers, attorneys that come off like mob lawyers, their people willing to threaten to rub out anyone who looks like they might get in the way of the player. Put this together with the slime we went through with Clemens earlier and earlier still Bonds, I can't help but wonder if these stories characterize what the game of baseball is about. Are these simply the outliers with so much money fame and narcissism that they simply

sink down to the slimy substratus of the pool of baseball or is this really what the game of baseball is about does buster posey have his people and his attorneys who stop at nothing to protect their client does this characterize the typical mlb player uh and i i think first uh before we address this the 60 minutes piece i don't know i i don't know how credible some of the more um well i guess how how credible some of the more incredible stuff was like the the the threatening to off uh uh bosh uh i don't know i i wasn't really sold on that like that kind of felt like like pretty thin gruel to to run with um do i really think that a rod was willing to kill him i don't um but point taken he'll tell us next year when he's on air. Hope so. The point is the question is still interesting.

And so I guess the question is, without getting too sanctimonious or too worried about the children or anything like that, do you think baseball skews toward a kind of better or worse part of the humanity spectrum? I guess, I don't know, maybe slightly worse. Or maybe, I don't know, honestly probably better just because it's hard to, it's probably hard to get to the major leagues if you're, I don't know, honestly probably better just because it's hard to get to the major leagues if you're involved in shady stuff constantly. It's a distraction and it's something that if teams find out about they won't like. If you're just a single-minded athlete whose only goal is to be good at his sport and make a ton of money, you probably have less time than the average person to get yourself in trouble. I mean, the A-Rod stuff is so sensational because it's so unusual, right? I mean, prominent players have their their posses and their, you know, people who surround them and help them with PR and legal stuff and everything as as you would expect. But I don't think most of it is really all that nefarious.

Yeah, I don't know. I can go a lot of different ways on this and they all sort of lead me toward pessimism. You do think baseball players are psychopaths. Well, it's not, I, I, um, I think that there is,

um, well, for one thing, I'm very pessimistic about human nature in general. I mean, I'm fairly ashamed of my own self and I think the world of me relative to, um, a lot of people.

I just, I generally think that there's like sort of a darkness at the core of every human being and it makes me ashamed to a lot of people. I generally think that there's sort of a darkness at the core of every human being, and it makes me ashamed to be a human being. I already start from a position where I think, well, yes, the nature of all human actions skews toward the evil. I particularly think that in a work environment with no women, there's a lack of moderating forces where I think that it would be... I don't know, certain characteristics would be promoted that I don't consider positive characteristics. Also, you have the fact that there's a lot of money at stake. Generally, I think whenever you put a lot of money at stake, people's ability to rationalize bad behavior gets... I forgot what I was going to say to end that

sentence. People behave badly around money and there's a lot more sort of leeches and, you know, not even just leeches, but sort of self-interested people who have a lot more incentive to protect the players and to do whatever they need to to protect players. The other day I was looking up some agent or some agent at some agency. And I Googled to see whether I could find his email address or something like that. And a whole bunch of horrible news stories about this agency came up. Really slimy stuff. You got the sense almost immediately that this agency was probably pretty rotten people and doing fairly rotten things. Then I looked at their client list and there were a bunch of players who I had pretty good impressions of and thought they seemed like good guys. If nothing else, even if you're talking about good guys, they don't necessarily have good guys surrounding them.

So there's that influence as well. On the other hand, I often think about this time that Ozzy Osbourne was on Fresh Air or something like that. And he was talking about how when he was, I don't know, like maybe 20 or something like that, he was like into mugging people. Like he was poor and he would rob people. Like he would take, he'd stick them up with a knife and he'd take their purse. Sure. As you do. And, and it was so weird to hear him listening, hear him talking to like Terry Gross or whoever it was about this. And it was a calm conversation and Terry Gross didn't feel threatened or anything like that. But you're just thinking like if Ozzy Osbourne wasn't, like if he needed Terry Gross' money, he would take it. That is part of his core, as it's probably part of a lot of our cores,

to sort of do evil and take what's ours. And the only reason that Ozzy Osbourne stopped stealing people's purses is because he didn't need to anymore. And in fact, there were financial incentives for him not to. If Ozzy Osbourne took a woman's purse right now, it would be pretty irrational from his self-interest perspective. And so he stopped stealing women's purses. But his actual brain didn't change.

His core didn't change. And so you might make the case that once players are financially set for life and they have financial incentives to behave in non-murderous ways. It actually is a calming influence and therefore they are better behaved than they would be if this was like a Colombian AAA soccer or something like that where there's a real level of poverty involved. I don't know. I go all sorts of different directions with this. I would say that- Mostly dark all sorts of different directions with this. I would say that...

Mostly dark directions. Mostly dark directions, yeah. I mean, my most optimistic take on this is that maybe money has essentially numbed their instinct toward violence, but it's still there in their soul. That's the best I can come up with. still there in their soul. That's the best I can come up with. Well, there's no reason to think that it's any worse than any other sport if that makes you feel better. So if you watch any sports at all, it might as well be baseball. I don't think it's worse than anything. I mean, well, it might be worse. But I mean,

like, I think most industries probably have a lot of rottenness in them. I mean the things that make our economy go round are often rotten industries. The guy who lent you the money to buy your house did you a huge favor. It was like a huge favor he did for your life. But he's probably a rotten guy in a rotten industry. And like a lot of teachers I met, like public school teachers, heroes, rotten, you know, like a lot of them are.

Like there's factors at play in public teaching that skew toward the negative. So, I mean, I don't know. Yeah, everybody should be pessimistic about everything. If our listeners only knew the things that we do when we're not recording this podcast, they would never listen to us again. You know what I realized the other day too is I was walking around with this sort of

deep anxiety and I couldn't quite identify what it was about. And then I realized that this anxiety was that I was worried about getting caught doing something and I didn't know what it was, but it was this sort of generalized guilt anxiety. And then I realized it wasn't even that I was guilty. Like I didn't even feel guilty. I felt anxious that I would be shamed, that like I would get caught doing something and I would be shamed. And so I had both simultaneously the feeling that I was doing something wrong and also no actual guilt about it. I was worried about getting caught and I wasn't even doing anything wrong that I know of. I mean, I knew that in my core I was also rotten and didn't care.

It's all horrible. Yeah. something even if I didn't do it I acted so I act so guilty and suspicious and suspicious because just the thought that someone might have thought that I had done that thing makes me act like I did it basically I I can't walk into a store and not buy anything because when I walk out I walk all funny because I'm worried that they're thinking I'm stealing so like if I walk past the paycheck without paying I feel so self-conscious that they think I'm stealing that I actually start walking funny. Like I can't walk. Yeah. At the grocery store across the street, if I have some

stuff and then I want to go grab a banana, the banana is by the door. So I'd have to walk past the checkout place to get the banana with the other stuff that I want to buy. And I'm so nervous that they'll think that I'm trying to shoplift that I have to put all the stuff down, go get the banana, come back, pick the stuff up, and then go check out. The other thing is that you have – baseball is interesting because on the one hand, I think that there's actually very little to – very little about the game cares about whether you're a good person or not. It's basically a meritocracy. And a lot of the things that we consider makeup have nothing to do with good behavior or good personality.

It has to do with drive. It has to do with steadiness, being able to basically perform in a certain kind of situation and then like some small part of it is having it has to do with being a good teammate but even that's not necessarily being a good guy you could be like a horrible monster um and be well liked by your teammates as you know we we hear in stories all the time so so there's nothing exactly pushing um good characteristics but on the other hand there's nothing that like if you want to be a

I take it from watching Hollywood movies that probably aren't representative if you want to be like a successful trader like on Wall Street you probably have to be able to suppress your better nature in order to be successful or if you want to be able to suppress your better nature in order to be successful.

Or if you want to be a salesman, you have to probably be able to lie to some degree. And so it actually does suppress the better nature of a person. But baseball doesn't do that at all. There's no actual nice guy's finish last element to it. And so let's imagine that Buster Posey really is the greatest guy in the world, or Clayton Kershaw, for instance, seems to be like a spectacular human being, just a super-duper human being. There's no disadvantage there.

So I don't know. Baseball doesn't seem to actually have an incentive system for behavior, for the most part. So I don't know if that helps it or hurts it. That's probably, I guess what that probably does is it probably creates a bigger range of personalities than you would see in industries where the industry does try to funnel a certain kind of behavior or personality type. I don't know. Okay.

So that's it. I got to go. All right. So I think we'll be off Monday probably for Martin Luther King Day. So we'll be back Tuesday. And please continue to send us emails at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Although we got so many good ones this week that we might just do two email shows next week depending on how much news there is. We might just do two email shows next week, depending on how much news there is. I forgot to ask last week for iTunes reviews. So if you can rate and review us on iTunes, we would appreciate it.

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