Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1211: The 21-Loss Salute

Episode Date: May 3, 2018

Ben Lindbergh, Jeff Sullivan, and SB Nation’s Grant Brisbee banter about Trevor Bauer, sticky substances, and spin rate, Ken Giles’s self-harming home-run reaction, the best baseball clips to rewatch, the unwritten rules of not avoiding hit by pitches, and party-hard Matt Harvey. Then they discuss Grant’s story about the record-setting 1988 Orioles, who went 0-21 […]

The solution has been dissolved. The crisis has been resolved. There's no need to change your plans. It's a hopeless situation. But tomorrow is another day. And everything will be okay. And by the way, it's hopeless Hello and welcome to episode 1211 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello, Jeff.

I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Van Graff's. Hello, Jeff. Hi. And we are both joined by our pal and your former colleague, Grant Brisby of SB Nation. Hello, Grant. Hello. So we have Grant on for a reason today. We are going to talk about the 1988 Orioles and their historic season-starting losing streak.

And we're going to bring on Tim Kirkjian, who covered that team, to talk to us about what it was like in person. A few things that we want to banter about before we get to a very bad baseball team. Should we talk about this Pintar gate, spin rate gate? Trevor Bauer was insinuating that the Astros were using some sort of substance to increase the spin rate on their pitches. sort of substance to increase the spin rate on their pitches. There's some analysis that supports the idea that you can increase the spin rate on your pitches by applying certain substances. Bauer has now released a more measured statement, I suppose, about how this is a problem baseball wide because what you use on your hands and your fingers is not enforced and some pitchers are getting unfair advantages. Jeff Passan is writing about it now. It has gone beyond Bauer.

Does either of you have thoughts about Spinrate Gate? It's a sticky situation. Thank you, Grit. God damn it. You can go now. Dad joke in one. Got it. You should go now.

So on the one hand, it's annoying. I can't imagine why Trevor Bauer is so deeply unpopular. I can't get my head around it. I hand you know i it's annoying i can't imagine why trevor bauer is so deeply unpopular i just i can't get my head around it i don't know what it is to bauer's credit what i love about i don't know how much of this we need to set up if anyone's listening to this you're probably enough of a baseball fan you already know what has been going on but you know ben you set it up pretty well but this is all because i think the word is out because garrett cole's fastball suddenly has a higher spin rate this season after he asked just rated for him and he's been super good. Now there are a few

potential explanations for that one, including cheating, I guess. So it's not like there's no evidence that Cole is doing something new, although I sure the pirates have also heard of pine tar. So who knows what that's about. But what I do like here Trevor Bauer. Then Eno Saris wrote an article that was like, hey, so how might Trevor Bauer understand the relationship between Pintar and spin rate? Look at his spin rates from the first inning of his most recent game, which he did in the major leagues, and his spin rates were the highest that they have ever been so trevor bauer secretly used pine tar during a game to prove that pine tar could increase the spin rate on his fastball by the second inning his fastball went back to normal so it's not like it was some calibration error and so while on the one hand bowered he did like break the unenforced rules to prove something for no great reason on the other other hand, I love that he did it.

It's like, how do you know that Pintar increases spin rate? Oh, because I did it in my last game and nobody noticed. That's incredible. That's the best possible way for Bauer to prove that relationship. And I love it. Absolutely love it. Yeah. Grant, have you written about the unwritten rules of Pintar usage ever?

Is that something that's come into your purview? I have not, but it has to now. I've been so busy with different articles that I haven't been able to touch on the pine tar sticky gate, but the unwritten rules are fascinating because it's like everyone sort of does it. And in a past article, he says 70 to 80 percent is kind of like a popular guess among players. Yeah. Bauer says more than 69 percent because he is Trevor Bauer. So he had to get a 69 in there. I get it. I go. That's very, very deep Internet. So I don't know, like if everyone's sort of doing it, how egregious is it to break that rule?

You know, clearly Bauer can't go back. I mean, that's the one flaw to his diabolical plan to show the world that it does increase spin rate is that now if he decides, you know what, screw it. I'm going to do this every start. We'll pick up on it. Like, you know, the Internet will know that he is being shady and doing it for real now. So he's he's boxed himself into a corner in case he changes his mind. But if everyone's doing it, either enforce it or let it happen. I don't quite understand how it's this widespread. I guess the unwritten rule is maybe against tweeting about individual

other pitchers doing it. Maybe that is frowned upon in the fraternity of Major League Baseball. And he didn't outright accuse anyone of anything, I guess, but he had many suggestive thinking face emojis about certain pitchers and certain teams potentially doing this. And there's not compelling evidence that the Astros as a whole are doing something different. I don't think they have some guys whose spin rates are up and some are not, and some are unchanged or down. So historically, the thought has been that spin rate is not really something that you can change, that it's maybe innate or mostly innate. And I think that maybe that's part of this. It's not like you can change your arm angle or even your grip or something and necessarily improve your spin rate.

So if your spin rate does spike, then maybe that is indicative of you're doing something. So I guess in the sense that, I mean, Bauer's making the comp to PEDs and saying that a performance enhancing substance doesn't just have to be something that you ingest, but can be something you put on your fingers. And I guess that is a logical point. I don't know how you police it that strictly. I think he suggested maybe that just you make it explicit that everyone can use the same certain substance and it's just there on the mound and you can just apply it without being furtive and hiding it somewhere on your person. So I guess that makes some sense. And I know that hitters prefer to have pitchers who will not lose control of the baseball. So there's that.

Although they would also prefer for pitchers to be worse at pitching. So I don't know whether they would support this or not. So that, I mean, I'm sort of, you know, I don't know why you guys let me on the show because I read about people getting hit in the beans with baseballs. Like that's my specialty. So I was always thinking that if you change the grip, that there was a way to sort of affect spin rate. But like, you know, maybe you change the grip a little bit this way. You've got a different some or other, but that's not the case.

That spin rate is sort of set. It seems that way. I mean, I think it's all pretty recent, so I don't know that we necessarily know, but the research I've seen from Driveline or Bauer, Kyle Bode, who is his teacher at Driveline, I think has suggested that it's at least one of the more resistant qualities to change.

So it's not necessarily something that you can just coach, but maybe in certain cases it can be. Got it. Fascinating. It probably has a lot to do with finger length or something. So much of pitching comes down to the pressure that you are applying with your fingers, but you can only apply pressure in so many ways. And I'm going to guess that, I don't know, with longer fingers or shorter fingers, I don't want to get into this. Finger length. You can't change finger length. You could stretch your hand on the rack or something. Stretch. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Stretch your fingers. Maybe like Garrett Cole,

this whole off season was like doing these weird isometric like finger stretching exercises. Yeah, like a hangboard. Are you familiar with a hangboard? Forget it. Okay. So Grant, if we're done with Trevor Bauer here, and I would like to be forever so i have a question for you that's about i know that you one of your specialties is writing about the unwritten rules and how teams try to enforce them but i was curious so inspired by a d gordon hit by pitch i saw the other week but also inspired by every time prince fielder was ever hit by a pitch have you written about the unwritten rule of not enforcing the written rule of batters getting out of the way of a hit by pitch? Because it is in the rules. It's not just like a little league rule that is a hit by pitch unless the batter doesn't make an

effort to get out of the way. The way it's written in the rule book is that a hit by pitch is null and void if the batter, quote, makes no attempt to avoid being touched by the ball. This is a very well-known rule that you have to try to get out of the way. And batters often don't and umpires don't care. I think maybe there's one example like every four years of an umpire saying, no, you didn't do enough. So have you have you ever written about this? Have we ever talked about this? Because this does seem like it's an absurdity.

No, you know, I've never written a full column on it. But it's a huge pet peeve of mine. So at some point, I definitely slipped it into a couple different articles. And we've probably we probably talked about it in campfire back when we worked together. It's a big when I was like a newly reborn baseball fan in like 1997, like I was a zealot. I was the guy who was just consuming baseball more than is healthy. Like I consumed more baseball than I do now as a professional baseball writer where I was just, you know, studying. I could tell you the bullpen of the Expos. I could I could just go through like that.

And I was also very like strided and angry about different things because I was on online in the late 90s. And that's what you're supposed to do when you're a baseball nerd. And Craig Biggio was like my arch nemesis because he had the elbow pad and he was like just adept at sticking out just enough and not moving. And I was constantly like, it's in the rules, man. You can't do that. And like, I would like yell at umpires when I was at games. Like, I think it's just hard for them to enforce because you're so focused on balls and strikes. You're not necessarily looking at someone trying to get out of the way. I don't know why they don't do it more, but it does bug me. It's right there in the

rules and it's a rule that makes sense. Like get out of the freaking way. Yeah. So I just don't know why they don't do it more, but it does bug me. It's right there in the rules, and it's a rule that makes sense. Get out of the freaking way. Yeah, so I just don't understand why it doesn't come. I mean, I know that some batters might take offense if it's perceived that they didn't make an effort. They'd say, well, the pitch was 100 miles per hour. What am I supposed to do? But you know what you do when a ball is coming toward you. Batters move out of the way all the time.

Right. But I just don't get it and maybe it's one of those things it's a lot easier to see from from the tv perspective than from the home plate umpire perspective because you know you're just back there there's bodies in front of you and you can't tell that this guy dipped his elbow but still i don't know maybe another umpire could make that call but i it's hard for me to believe i mean hit by pitches are on the rise league wide and while I know that we're all about trying to keep offense up, this this seems like it's this doesn't seem like it's good. It's just it can just like, you know, radio on the field. Like, uh, he didn't get out of the way at all. Like, like that guy can't go anywhere. I mean, like that's the only solution I see is one guy whose job it is to say, nah, now that putts didn't get hit.

You know, it didn't even try to get out of the way. Hey, speaking of not getting out of the way, did you guys see Ken Giles punch himself? It was more of a slap. Yeah. I didn't, I don't think he really went for it. I think if he like went for it, it would have been more interesting. But he held back. He held back.

A little bit, I guess. It's like the Dwight Schrute punching yourself and having the element of surprise sort of thing. I don't know whether it's possible to punch yourself hard enough to actually hurt yourself, but it looked like it could have hurt. I'm not sure I've ever seen this before. In fact, I probably haven't because Roger Angel wrote that he had never seen this before. And Roger Angel is 97 years old and has been watching baseball since literally Lefty Gomez's first win. Angel said he looked like a newborn flailing in his crib.

Anyway, I'm not sure how to react to that because it seems like Ken Giles has had a pretty tough year. And he's always been expressive on the mound in good ways sometimes and now in bad ways. So this was on Tuesday for anyone who didn't see it. Justin Verlander held the Yankees scoreless and struck out 14 of them over eight innings. And then Ken Giles came in in the ninth inning and immediately gave up a three run homer to Gary Sanchez and also put the couple guys on base ahead of him. And he was upset and he came out and he punched himself or slapped himself in the face. And normally this was like the opposite of the Eric Lauer reaction that you

and I talked about last week, Jeff, where Lauer in his major league debut at Coors Field gave up a grand slam to Nolan Arnauto and just sort of smiled like, yeah, he got me. This was the opposite of that. And I mean, I guess if you're going to punch something, it is better to punch your own face than the dugout wall or something that could hurt you and has hurt other pitchers in the past. But I don't know whether this is like given Giles's struggles during the postseason last year and kind of losing his job and being on a high profile stage and that had to be hard. So I don't know whether this is just like a gift we can make fun of forever or whether this is one

of those things where it's like, I hope he's okay. If he were to go on the seven day concussion DL, like he would have to invent a story. He closed a car door in his head. You would have to invent something. He was washing his truck. Even if we all knew. I'm not hoping for that, but I'm not not hoping for that. There was a Twitter moment, those horrible things that you click on in moments of weakness, like after lunch. And there was a Twitter moment that I saw a baseball player hit self in the face or

whatever. And it just came up as one of those things that was going around. So all three of us are writers. And you know, even if we're, we don't explicitly say it, we all have these jobs because we are successful at and try to get attention. We need that's the internet currency, we need people to click on on what we do.. Otherwise we will lose our jobs. We're in this to get traffic. And it's frustrating to realize nothing I will ever do can compete with like baseball player punches himself in the face that will circulate among non-baseball fans everywhere. Everyone, a lot of people on the internet a month from now will be like, oh yeah, I remember that baseball player who slapped himself in the face.

But they're not going to know shit about oh, Tyson Ross is back and he's pitching better than ever. This is the adjustment that this guy made so that he could hit more doubles and home runs. It just doesn't matter. There are things that happen in baseball. Who was the runner? Was it Jose Ramirez or somebody else who was sliding into

second and his helmet came off, then he kicked his helmet with his feet, and then it hit his head again? You remember that? That's Jose Ramirez. Yeah. Unbelievable thing that now, granted, one baseball writer did manage to write about the science of how that happened. I can guess who that was, but maybe I'm wrong.

But there was one tiny little way that some baseball writer could write about that. But that's not something that like any of us would write a feature article about. But that is all anyone cares about. This is why Grant is on the hit himself in the beans beat. Well, I mean, so we're going to talk about this big, long story I wrote about the 1988 Orioles and their losing streak. And I spent a lot of time on this article and a long, long, long time.

I did a lot of research. Like I was really proud of, of, of it and how it came together. And all day when I was watching chart beat, it was beat and beat soundly by little eager runs home in slow motion. This little eager running to home plate in slow motion was crushing my Orioles story all day. And that used to make me mad. It can't, you can't live life like that. You're always going

to lose to little eagles running home in slow motion. You can't even say that like your story will necessarily have more staying power. Like sometimes, sometimes that's the case where it's like, all right, this is getting a lot of clicks right now, but 10 years from now, people will still be reading my story. 10 years from now, people will still be watching Little Leaguer running in slow motion. And I guess it'll be the 40th anniversary of the 1988 Orioles losing streak then, so it'll be relevant again. But still, that gift's not going out of style. Yeah, that kid owned me. I mean, what old baseball... Shut up, Ben.

What old baseball videos do you... If you ever pull up old baseball videos, what do you watch? Because obviously, it's the Randy Johnson bird video. Thank God that happened after cameras and they were showing spring training games. But what old baseball content do either of you even consume? I'm sorry for telling you to shut up that was rude but you were talking over the randy johnson what do you consider like i'm sure grant like it's old barry bond's home run clips right and i i get that but i mean it's mostly like old

viral clips in a sense right the one that i go back to a lot that's not an old viral clip is benji melina hitting for the cycle just because he ended it with the triple, which was like the greatest, like, I just, I, that fills my heart with such joy. Like he hits it in the gap and, and they kind of, the announcers kind of are clued in like, this might be a Benji Molina triple. Um, so I go back to that one a lot. Uh-huh. Occasionally I'll, I'll watch a web gem that was particularly notable. Like I'll go back and watch the, the Gary Matthews catch. I don't know if that was the best catch ever, but it's maybe the most aesthetically pleasing catch or the Jim Edmonds, you know, jumping and diving behind his back with the no look catch that was up there too. So probably web gems, defensive highlights, I think are the ones that I would

gravitate to aside from just your basic bloopers. What's the best way to end a cycle? So, Grant, you're talking about Benjamin Molina hitting for an unlikely cycle, and he finished with a triple. Now, John Olerud hit for two cycles against literally all odds in his career, and he ended one of them, at least, with a home run. And I can't tell which one would—I mean, the cycle is dumb, but you're rooting for it when it has the chance anyway. So is it better to end with a triple or a home run. And I can't tell which one would, I mean, the cycle is dumb, but you're rooting for it when it's has the chance anyway. So is it better to end with a triple or a home run? I can't actually tell. Triple if you're fat and slow, home run if you're anyone else. That settles it. I think it's best to end once you already have all the extra base hits and then

you hit another extra base hit and you have to decide whether to stay on first to get the single. That's my favorite cycle. Oh, John Ulrood ended his first cycle with a bases loaded triple. Oh, that's pretty good. Wow. That's pretty good. Suck it, Steve Klein.

So one other thing I wanted to mention, I don't know whether you guys saw this quote, Anthony DeComo tweeted it. It was a Sandy Alderson tweet. And this was, I'll just read the tweet. Asked if he's upset about a page six report that had Matt Harvey out partying in Los Angeles the night before pitching in San Diego. Mets general manager, Sandy Alderson said, usually I get upset if a report is unexpected. So I guess the short answer is no.

That was savage. That is impressive. I like that. Sandy Alderson, he must be the oldest GM right now. He's what? He's 70 or so. GMing seems to be a young person's game these days. And everyone who's a GM now is the Ivy League type who watches his words and rarely says anything interesting or non-diplomatic. And I like that there's at least one guy out there. I mean, he's not exactly Dave Stewart, but still we have Sandy Alderson to occasionally say something savage like this. I like that. You don't get that out of GMs anymore. If I had a choice to go back and be 20, you know, my mid twenties and like go there

and I had two choices. One is to be a professional baseball player at the top of my game, or the other choice was just to party wildly and live my best life to its fullest enjoyment. I think I might just go with the partying and page six lifestyle. I don't think I need baseball at that point. I think if I'm going back to my twenties, I'm going to act like Matt Harvey. Is that so wrong? What gets a little, I think, lost this tweet is that it's not what it says is that Matt Harvey was out partying in a different city than the city in which he pitched the next game. The Mets were somewhere else. And then they went to San Diego.

So Matt Harvey went out in the city that was not the city he was going to. And I know that Los Angeles is only like two hours, two and a half hours from San Diego, depending on when you're going. And also depending on when you're going, it can be six hours away. But San Diego has a nightlife. It's like a real it's a real place that has a downtown. And in fact, it has not only a downtown, but a downtown that also has the baseball stadium in it. That's where the teams stay. Like there was no reason. It would have been so easy. It's so easy for Matt Harvey to go out and party in San Diego before a game.

But everyone who goes to a Padres game goes out to party in the neighborhood. But I like the sixth inning that everyone. So I just there's layers of this is all. That's an amazing detail. I didn't even catch that. Yeah. He's just like, you know, if I'm going to be there, I'm going to party in LA. It's like San Diego and the Gaslamp District is AAA to partying.

He's got to go to the majors and party in LA. And wait. Okay, so the Mets were in St. Louis on Thursday, April 26th, and then they played the Padres in a weekend series that started Friday and I believe the report was that he was he would have been there for what partying Thursday night I think it was he would have I just I don't it's not even like the Mets played in Los Angeles and then he just stuck around a little later I don't need to I don't need to go into this anymore than I already have but like why why do why who is I don't know I didn't read the report because I don't need to go into this anymore than I already have. But like, why? Why? Who is?

I don't know. I didn't read the report because I don't care. I just saw the Tacoma tweet and like the Roto World stuff. And I understand Harvey is probably partying with like famous friends or something. But they probably didn't have a game scheduled then. Like he would have flown in to San Diegogo thursday night probably not friday morning because i think it was a thursday matinee he was not the starting pitcher because he is no longer starting pitcher but he's he as a reliever he could pitch at any point in the game and maybe

he doesn't want to acknowledge that he's a reliever at this point but the mets played 13 innings on thursday then they flew into san diego i imagine they could do that direct or at least not a stop over in Los Angeles. I don't know. I don't know what they fly, but no, they have their own flight. I just don't understand why go all the way. Yeah. I'm reading the report now and a spy told Page Six that Harvey was, quote, out at the Avra opening, stumbling around. He had to sit down at one point. He must have been so desperate to party. He came up from San Diego. Another guest said that among so many stars, nobody knew who Matt was, but he was sober. I mean, I guess maybe he's just taking advantage of his invitations to these parties while he still gets them.

He doesn't seem like he's going to be getting invited to a lot of society events for a lot longer if he keeps pitching like this. Stupid. So let's talk about the 1988 Orioles. We will bring on Tim in just a minute. But to set the scene here, however bad your team is right now, and there are some bad teams out there, it's not as bad as the 1988 Orioles. It's not as bad as the 1988 Orioles. A couple of weeks ago, a listener, Remy, emailed us to say that the Royals, after their latest loss, were 0-9 to start the season against teams that had scored at least one run.

And he wanted to know if they were approaching a record. And I said, no, the 1988 Orioles start the season 0-21 against teams, period. No qualifiers necessary. And if I had been smarter, I would have said, hey, period. No qualifiers necessary. And if I had been smarter, I would have said, hey, 1988, this is also a year that ends in eight. I could do a retrospective on that team, but I didn't think of that.

Grant Brisby did think of that and he did do that. And so you wrote this article. It came out earlier this week, which, as you pointed out, was the 30th anniversary of the 1988 Orioles' first win, which, given that it was late April, that's not a good sign. What drew you to this story? What is your favorite

part of this story? What did you enjoy uncovering about this team? I'd say what drew me to the story was that the Orioles lost 21 games in a row. That is a lot of games. I didn't mean to write like a big long thing. It was actually Mark Normandin, who's the editor at SB Nation MLB. He's good with the anniversary. He said, Grant, you should write something about that. And I said, okay, I had a note. And the note popped up about five days before the anniversary. And I was going to write a thousand words or whatever. But I dug into the old sporting news anniversary. And I was going to write, you know, a thousand words or whatever. But I dug into the old sporting news archives.

And the first thing I found was this sort of progression. They had the Orioles team report to the sporting news every week. And in January, there was a report like, the Orioles basketball team opened a 20-game schedule that will run a week before pitchers and catchers report to spring training. team opened a 20-game schedule that will run a week before pitchers and catchers report to spring training. And I thought, the Orioles basketball team opened a 20-game schedule? It's like, okay, that's weird. Among those expected to play on a regular basis are Cal Ripken Jr., Larry Sheets, Ken Gerhardt. And I thought, okay, this is weird. Then the sporting news two months later,

Ken Gerhardt's projected move from left to center in the Baltimore Orioles outfield was delayed by an ankle injury he suffered while playing basketball in the offseason. And I thought, okay, I gotta, I gotta really start to go through all these newspapers because if this is the first thing I found, like it took me 10 minutes to find this, like there's gotta be nuggets to unearth. And I, there's probably way more than I unearthed just because I didn't get all the newspapers. They weren't available to me. So I was, I was relying heavily on, on Tim Kirchhen and the Baltimore sun. Uh, but there was just all sorts of stuff like that. And then when they tried to put them on the DL, there was a clerical error and they didn't put them on the 15 day DL. They put them on the 21 day DL because they had that back then.

And someone in charge, like check the wrong box and telefaxt it to the league office. And now he couldn't come back because he was on the 21 day deal. And just everything like that was, you know, there are balls lost in the lights. There were blown saves. There was Fred Lennon center when he was 63 years old, there was Bo Jackson hitting a triple with the wind blowing out that just went over people's heads. My favorite detail, I think, was the game they won in the first inning. Morgana, the kissing bandit,

jumped on the field, ran to Cal Ripken and gave him a big old smooch. I think that's my favorite. That's what broke the streak was Morgana. And this is a very bad team, obviously, to be clear. But after they started the streak was Morgana. And this is a very bad team, obviously, to be clear. But after they started the season 0-21, I guess they then went 54-86, which is still very bad, but not historically bad on its own. So, I mean, how improbable was this? How close did they come to not losing this many games in a row? Obviously,

the odds, and Tim will mention in a minute the odds, but astronomically against this sort of thing happening. But how close did it come to not happening? I mean, they were blown out in a lot of games. Don't get me wrong. There were a lot of games that weren't close. They had some pitchers who were at the end of their career, some pitchers who probably never should have had a major league career. So there were a lot of big, big, big time blowouts. At the same time, you can't lose 21 straight games without just weird, weird banana stuff going on. And there were games like that. They had a game where Mike Morgan pitched a shutout into the, he pitched nine shutout innings. The Orioles lost one to nothing in 11 innings. And that was, you know, the night before they had lost three to two. Night before that, they'd lost four to three. So there were close games mixed into that.

There were blown saves and all that. But if you took a community college team, maybe a division one team and match them against the Astros right now, I don't think they lose 21 games in a row. I really don't like it. Let's just say a D one team. Let's bring rice up. I don't know what rice university is doing this year, but let's, let's have rice university play the Astros 21 times and see what happens. I think they win again. I mean, I got to write about this in March, right? When college teams have faced major league teams in spring training. And I actually forgot everything that I found, but it was lopsided. Let's see. Gosh, what were the results? College teams lost a lot is the point. Here we go. Over the past decade, the big league teams

against college teams have gone 63 and four. The average score has been 8.8 to 1.9. So yeah, college equivalent. That would be the Orioles. And you uncovered some really good quotes like Frank Robinson after the 12th loss started his press conference, I guess, or his gaggle with reporters by saying, first to answer your questions, I don't know. That was before nine more losses. And then the story about the GM, Roland Heyman, and farm director, Doug Melvin, later the Brewers GM, getting trapped in an elevator at Memorial Stadium on April 15th for 73 minutes with seven other people. That's nine people in an elevator. That's a lot of people. And that's a long time to be stuck with them.

Obviously, the symbolism there is hard to avoid. with them. Obviously, the symbolism there is hard to avoid. I don't know whether every team would have things like this that you could dig up if you were writing a story about how bad they are, and it's just that you found them while you were writing this one. But it seems like there were a lot of stories like that. My favorite part about that one wasn't just that the GM was stuck in an elevator for more than an hour. It was that he planned to make a roster move after the game, and he couldn't. He missed the deadline because he was stuck in an elevator. He wanted to call someone up from AAA, and he couldn't. Right. Probably didn't have a cell phone. It's 1988, so can't just say, hey, make this move.

So yeah, not that it would have helped them win to call someone up from AAA, but that is still amusing. Yeah. I mean, this is, I don't know. I feel like we get kind of carried away with just how bad the bad teams are today. They're bad, but they're not worse than the bad teams of yesteryear. And in some cases, they're better. And there's just never been a team that has started worse than this. There've been a few teams that were ever worse than this. And so it was amusing to read the retrospective, maybe not amusing to actually root for that team or be a member of that team. Did you think about talking to anyone from that team or did you figure that they wouldn't be eager to talk about that chapter of their lives?

I thought about it, but it was too late by the time I realized like, whoa, I'm trying to write something a little bit longer than I was expecting. If I had planned it and if I had been smart, I would have done that and reached out to a lot of players. But I did reach out. The one guy I knew I could get fairly quickly was John Miller, who was the announcer, the play-by-play for the Orioles at the time.

And he described the situation like when they won, his analogy was it was like the Titanic when they were rescued. The survivors of the Titanic when they were rescued, they weren't jumping up and down and saying, yes, thank you. Oh, you know, hallelujah. They were just ground into a powder

and just, they couldn't believe anything. They had just like a stone face and they weren't even like happy about being saved. They didn't know what to feel. So that, that was his go-to analogy. And I don't think he would reach for like hyperbole. I think that there was like a real deep sadness with all the players. He described it as the worst sporting experience of all of their lives, you know, bar none. Yeah. As I was reading it, I was thinking, I mean, this is 30 years ago.

Everything has changed. The media has changed. How we cover and consume baseball has changed. So I wonder whether this would be covered any differently today. I mean, reading your story, and we'll hear from Tim in a moment, it wasn't like this was under the radar or something. It was, you know, national media were flying in to cover this. It was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Billy Ripken holding the bat against his head and looking dejected when they were 0-18. So do you think it would have been worse today that there would have been even more attention or based on your reading, was it basically as, as bad as it gets even then? I think it would be worse today. There's, there is a difference

between opening up the paper in the next morning and going, God, they lost again. And the kind of environment now where every, every single screw up would be tweeted out a hundred thousand times, every mistake they made, it'd be all Orioles. It would be, it would be impossible out a hundred thousand times. Every mistake they made, it'd be lol, Orioles. It would be impossible to escape from. Even if one guy on the team had the kind of resolve to say, I'm not going to go on social media. I'm not going to pick that battle. I'm just going to go home. I'm going to watch the telly and I'm going to go to sleep. The other 24 wouldn't have had that result. Like you just, they wouldn't be able to avoid it. They would have spiraled. So I think back then you, you know, cause when the national media came in, that's when it started getting really weird based on

the quotes and the players, the players were like, well, you know, I can't even get in the shower. There's just so many reporters here like that. That's when they started really gripping their bats a little bit more tightly around loss 12 or 13 is when the national reporters really kind of swarmed. So that would that would be sort of an approximation of what they'd be going through today, because the national media is just, you know, are always around as omnipresent, just, they're always going to be there in today's environment, tweeting every little thing you do. I love that Mickey Tettleton was released by the A's toward the end of spring training in 1988. And on April 4th, the Orioles lost their first game 12 to nothing. And on April 5th, Mickey Tettleton was like, this seems like a good time to sign with.

I'm going to sign with the Orioles as a free agent. You always wonder with any sort of rule, of course, there's going to be some sort of background to explain why the rule exists in the first place. This is going way back further in our conversation. There's going to be some sort of background to explain why the rule exists in the first place. This is going way back further in our conversation. But, of course, if you look at the standard uniform player contract now, baseball players are basically prohibited from participating in anything physical that isn't baseball. You can't rock climb. You know, R.A. Dickey had that problem when he wanted to go do Kilimanjaro in Africa. But you most certainly can't play basketball in your free time that is your contract can be rendered null and void and i have to assume that wasn't the case in the uniform player contract in 1988 because it was

just publicly news the orioles had a basketball team that had a 20 game schedule so 20 games and it was just like oh by the, here's what our players are doing to stay in shape. Do you think that this is why that clause exists now? I mean, maybe there's probably a litany of reasons, but I mean, times have changed, man. It couldn't have hurt. I mean, just the idea that it's like, well, pitchers and catchers are about to report better, better hoop it up. I just my jaw dropped when I read that. That's definitely one of my favorite parts of the story. All right.

Well, we will link to the story. Everyone should go check it out. I noticed that you've really been slacking on those Giants recaps lately, but at least we're getting something out of the deal. Yeah, yeah. You know, Grant, it was only a few years ago that you, myself, and Rob Neier were in charge of Baseball Nation, the Espination Baseball Hub. And I noticed that neither one of us has been named the commissioner of the West Coast League, a collegiate summer wood bat league.

And so I don't know if you feel inferior. Yeah, I was passed over. Well, we're planning to talk to Rob about that sometime soon, I hope. But we will take a quick break and then the three of us will be back to talk to Tim Kirchhen, who was the Baltimore Sun beat writer in 1988 and experienced this suffering firsthand. to the beautiful losers. Whatever happened to the beautiful losers? Whatever happened to the beautiful losers? Whatever happened to the beautiful news? All right, so we are joined now by a man you all know.

He is Tim Kirkjian. You've heard him on many an ESPN program. You have read him in many a place. He has written many a baseball book and for Sports Illustrated and in a prior life as a baseball beat writer. And that life took him to Baltimore in 1988, which is what we are having him on to talk about today. Hey, Tim. How are you, fellas? Everybody okay? We are doing all right. So I believe this was your third and perhaps not coincidentally

final year on the Baltimore Orioles beat. Is that right? It was my third year, but it was my second incarnation. I did them in 80 and 81 here and there, not as the full-time beat guy. So I knew the Orioles when they were really good. So when I got there as the full-time beat guy, they were really bad, which was quite an adjustment I had to make. And no, I also covered the 89 team, which was, in another discussion, supposed to be terrible, and almost won the division in 89 after starting out 0-21 in 1988. So I saw the good and the bad in Baltimore in many ways, believe me. Right. So I guess it probably goes without saying that maybe this is the worst stretch of baseball

you have witnessed in person on a day-to-day basis. Is that a stretch? No, that's certainly it. In fact, it's the worst stretch anyone has ever seen in the history of baseball, certainly at the start of a season. And many years after that, Sheldon Ocker, who's going in the Hall of Fame from Akron, he and I had a discussion, who wrote the most losing game stories in the 80s, me or him? And I thought it was me.

And he looked at me and goes, Tim, I covered the Indians for 10 years. No one wrote more losing game stories than I did. And I bowed to him. He was right. But I wrote a lot and no one wrote 21 in a row like I did. That was just ridiculous. One of the things that we understand from beat writers today is that, of course, beat writers will commonly remind their followers on Twitter, they are not fans. They keep an emotional distance away from the product that they cover. But when you're covering a team that's going through something like this, as it as it develops, what is your own psychological state? Of course,

there's value in being able to write about something that is historic. But you know, you're also interacting with these people on a day to day basis when they're sinking into depths of despair that hadn't even been chronicled yet. So what was the approach for all of you writers as you went into the press room and then the clubhouse every day? Well, I think we all kind of hoped they would win a game early so we wouldn't have to write a negative, terrible story every single day. I mean, it is not easy to walk into that clubhouse, even when they were 0-3, because it starts to get a little testy at that point. But at some point, we all acknowledged, oh my goodness, this is a gigantic story we're covering. And I'm not saying we were rooting for

them to lose, but there's no way around it. The story got better and more compelling with each loss. And then with each national baseball writer that showed up after that, it got even bigger. Scotty McGregor looked at me after 14 straight losses and said, Tim, when are all these people going to go home? I said, Scotty, all you got to do is win one game, and they'll happily go home tomorrow. But they're not leaving until you win a game

and they stay for at least another seven or eight days till they get so who at the end of it then of course the the orioles eventually won nine to nothing in a game in which someone did record a save as i look at the line score right now but obviously there was going to be some celebration of the clubhouse but the to stick with the writer's psychology, how did you feel when it was actually over? You know, it didn't happen abruptly. A 9-0 game doesn't just happen by surprise. But how complicated and conflicted were those feelings? Well, it was really weird at the end because you finally realize, okay, this is over.

And I couldn't wait to see what the reaction was in the clubhouse. And I remember distinctly, I don't remember any reaction in the clubhouse, and I called Terry Kennedy, who was the catcher on that team, I called him the other day just to make sure I didn't miss anything, and he said, no, there was no celebration in the clubhouse. He said there was no sense of relief and then he kind of laughed he said we were way past that at that point meaning there was no emotion left they couldn't celebrate hey we finally won a game it was the end of april beginning of may so you can't you can't make a big

deal out of it then i think everyone indeed was thankful that it was over and we could move on. The problem was for the beat guys is, you know, they lost a couple more. Now they're one in 23 and they're going home. And we're thinking, oh, my goodness, we got a team that's like 18 games out of first. And we have 140 games to go. How are we going to keep this interesting the rest of the season when our team the team we cover is hopelessly out of it by may the first now hey tim this is uh grant brisby i'm hopping on here i'm uh i'm i'm an interloper here on this podcast but i have i have a deep fascination with this streak

and i want i want to know so there's no celebration in the clubhouse. In that 9-0 win, Billy Ripken was beamed in the head and taken off on a stretcher in, I think, the seventh inning. Did that have an effect on the clubhouse celebration? Was that kind of weighing on their minds, or was he already sort of cleared and back with the team by then? Yeah, well, Billy was, Billy's a different guy and a great guy in every way. So there was nothing about any sort of meaning that was going to deter him or anybody else from celebrating. That did not deter things because they all do. Billy is Billy and he's going to be okay. But it was just, it was just such a combination of things that were so bad.

Like I said, Scotty McGregor told me after 14 games, he said, Tim, a high school team couldn't lose 14 games in a row, meaning playing against major leaguers. They couldn't lose 14 in a row. And of course this team lost 21 in a row. And the best part of the whole streak for me,

at least was on the Monday night going into Minnesota when Frank Robinson, who carried us with his humor and everything else through the whole thing, took the writers out to dinner, the beat guys, the three beat guys out. And he'd never done that before. He never did it after that. I think he just needed some support. So I casually asked him during dinner, Frank, has anyone called you during the streak? Anyone interesting? And he said, yeah, the president called me today. And I said, no, Frank, seriously.

Has anyone interesting called you? I pressed him on this three times because he was such a big kidder. And finally, he looked at me and said, damn it, the president of the United States called me today. I said, Frank, what did he say to you? He said, Frank, I know what you're going through. Frank said, Mr. President, you got no idea what I'm going through. And Richard Justice and I, who work for the Washington Post and for the Baltimore Sun, we raced to the pay phones.

They actually had pay phones back then. And we called in this little box for the front page of the newspaper the next day that President Reagan had called Frank Robinson with words of support. Those are the kind of things that keep you going during a streak of that magnitude. Yeah, this is a pretty distinguished group of beat writers covering the Orioles in those days with you and Richard Justice and Ken Rosenthal around as well. So what was the tone of the coverage that you were going for? Was it pure doom and gloom or were you going for a gallows humor sort of thing once it got to a certain point? Well, I'm not sure gallows humor really applied after about

12 or 13 because the record, when went on 14 set the record there was nobody downstairs yucking it up at 14 and I didn't sense that really trying to be funny here and piling on that way was the way to go when I had to deal with those guys every single day, every single game. So I, you know, I found some interesting stuff. In fact, I asked my father, my father was a PhD in mathematics. He went to MIT. So I asked my dad, I said, pop, what are the chances? What's the probability of a major league team losing the first 21 games to start a season. And my dad had the greatest feel for baseball of anyone I've ever met. He taught the love of the game to me, taught his three boys how to play. He was an expert on a lot of levels and he was a mathematician. So he came up with

some absurd number and it wasn't exactly precise. He apologized a thousand times. It was like one chance in 35,621 that a major league team could lose 21 games in a row. So I quoted my own father in a story that I wrote for the Baltimore Sun. I'm sure some people at home are going, what are you doing here? But he was the best source for me because he was a mathematician, a PhD, and his priority was probability and statistics. Now, I have to ask you about your relationship with the players and the team at one point, because after I believe is the sixth game, they fired Cal Ripken Sr. And they lost their seventh game. And your lead was maybe they should have fired the players. It's as cutting of a lead as I've ever seen from a beat writer. My jaw dropped.

Did you ever get any pushback from the players, or were their heads down just trying to figure out how to win a game? Well, I think their heads were down to begin with. But also, let's not forget, the team lost a ton of games in 1987. And to finish the 86th season, they went 14-42 to finish the 86th season when they thought they were going to win the division. So they went 14-42,

then this horrendous 87 season, and then the beginning of 88. So I don't think they were in any sort of position to argue with anybody who said, boy, the players think right now, because they did. And even though I'm sure I got some pushback, I had been there for three years. A lot of those guys obviously knew who I was because I was there for every game for four years. So I think they probably weren't real happy about it, but it wasn't my style to, you know, to pile on or make fun of anyone. But I mean,

really, you don't fire the manager after six games if he really deserves it. And nobody deserved to be fired other than the players in that situation. That's one of my absolute fascinations with this streak in the whole. So not only did they fire the manager after six games, which is like, all right, what are you expecting? Like, what sort of miracles were you expecting with this team? But the manager happens to be the father of like the greatest player in franchise history and and i mean the entire middle infield those were his sons the double play combination their dad was the manager

and he was just fired how did that affect clubhouse morale i mean it just seems like such a bizarre decision six games into the season yeah well morale obviously was way down at that point, but I learned, I really knew the Ripkins really well from a bunch of situations over the years, but I think I learned more about them that day than any day because neither one of them really shot back at the organization for firing their father after six games on a horrendous team. If that were my dad and I'm not the most controversial guy in the world and somebody asked me, what do you think of this? I would have blasted away. I'm not sure how I couldn't.

And yet Cal Junior and Billy refused to take part in that because their father always taught them. Cal Senior, look, this is not your job to be controversial. It's not your job to be colorful. Go do your job and don't worry about what everyone else is writing or saying. So they both bit their tongue, even though I know, and they had every right to be furious, that they fired their dad after that amount of time. And it really led to even more real bad feelings

in the clubhouse, not just by the players, but from everyone involved, because it was just such a terrible situation. And, you know, maybe they didn't like their dad. But this is going to be maybe a more difficult question, but I'm curious. Of course, the entire team is glum, worse than glum. There's words we probably shouldn't even use

on this podcast that the players were feeling over the course of the slump but do you do you have a sufficiently precise memory to remember like which players might have been taking it the hardest but maybe more than that if there were any players who were maybe a little just kind of zen about the whole thing players who were able to find any sort of positive? Because, of course, with any slumping team now, you'll see the quotes of some player talking about being better through adversity and all that stuff. But who seemed to be taking it, I guess, the least hard internally by the end of this thing?

Well, first off, Cal Jr. wasn't that guy because, again, he was very cautious and very protective on everything he said and the other hall of famer on that team was eddie murray who rarely talked to the press even in the best of times so he was no help either when these are the two best players on the team so to answer your question freddie lynn who had been a lot of places and done a lot of really good things and was close to the end of his career. He at least could see the history in this and once in a while came up with a funny line here and there. Not too many of them, but I do remember I got on the bus. This is back when writers used to travel on the team bus once in a while. Wasn't always comfortable, but after they lost in Chicago,

bus once in a while wasn't always comfortable but after they lost in chicago they're one in 23 and they're going home back to baltimore after a 12 game road trip freddie lynn announced all the players in the bus he said fellas you better wear your helmets in the field tomorrow when we get home because the fans are going to be throwing rocks at us. And, of course, half the players laughed and half of them didn't. But at least he found some levity in the situation. And the irony there is when they got back home on a Monday night against the Rangers, a 1-23 team was greeted with 50,000 people at Memorial Stadium, like basically welcoming them home, saying we still love you.

And they went out and beat the Rangers that night, 9-4, and it was one of the most amazing nights I've ever spent in a major league stadium thinking, this team is historically bad. They're impossibly terrible, and the fans of Baltimore showed up 50,000

strong to welcome them back and say, we're still with you. It was amazing. was that was my next question because they they opened the season with what the biggest crowd in orioles history or something like that 52 53 000 and then you know their their last home game before they won on the road that when they went to oh and 12 they played before 21 000 people on a sunday probably afternoon so you know pretty standard mid-April crowd. But then to come back, it's just so foreign now in 2018 to think of a crowd of 50,000 people

showing up to support a god-awful team in early May on a Monday. Like, was that all just walk-up support? Was there some sort of like everyone gets a signed car promotion at the ballpark or what was that? Well, what that was was there was no football team in town and there was no basketball team in town. So baseball was the only thing going on in Baltimore at that time. No college basketball, no college football. They were the only story in town. And a bunch of people got together in Baltimore and said, all right, they're hopelessly bad, but there are, so we're going to show up and support it. So it was just a walk-up crowd, and that's what made it so amazing is there

were so many stories, you know, DJs staying on the air for hours and hours at a time until they won, all sorts of stories like that. So the whole city kind of pulled together and said, we're going to support you guys. And it was in part because of the rich history of the Orioles. We can't forget how great this team was basically from 1966 through 1983. And only five years later, they're impossibly bad. I think that led to it that, hey, we have a great tradition of baseball here in Baltimore, and we're going to show how great we are here with the fans.

We're going to show up and watch this 1-23 team play. Do you have a most memorable game or most memorable moment on the field during that stretch that stands out to you? Just like, you know, the most improbably terrible moment in the entire ordeal? early on, like game six. That was not good. They should have won that game. Mike Boddicker pitched really well. Then, of course, we had Roland Heeman, who was just the playful general manager. He actually got the suit that he wore

from the celebration when he was the GM with the White Sox, and the suit he was wearing had been shrunken to the size where even I could have worn that suit. OK, I'm really short. All right. So that suit was under glass at Comiskey Park as like, here's the suit Roland Heeman wore when they clinched the division title in Chicago in 83. title in Chicago in 83, he had it taken out from under glass and he wore it to a major league game in hopes that the losing streak would end. So he showed up with a suit on that barely covered, you know, the top of his socks. It was the most ridiculous thing ever, but this was playful

Roland saying, we have to try something here to turn our fortunes it was his first year as the gm of the team so i think once i saw that on the field pre-game i just kind of threw up my hands and said this is way bigger than me or anybody else i think one of my favorite stories from that eventual win was that he a fan just asked him after the win hey can, can I dump my beer on you? And he said, yeah, yeah, go ahead. And so he was soaked by beer. Just some fans like, yeah, let me celebrate by dumping my beer. I don't have any champagne.

Let me just dump a beer on you. And Roland Hebman said, yeah, yeah, go ahead. It makes sense. Everything makes sense now. Right. Well, that was very much in keeping with the way things went i remember i'm not sure which one it was maybe 16 or 17 or 18 doesn't matter in minnesota bill shearer who's a great dude he had just been called up from the minor leagues and no one even knew him because

they had just we didn't know him as these guys because he had been with another team, joined the AAA team, and then gotten recalled to the big league. And in his first game up, he's facing Kent Herbeck of the Twins, who hit a ball off the hardware hang sign in right center field like a 440-foot homer. It was a grand slam and broke that game wide open. And now we're thinking, great, now we have to go down and talk to a relief pitcher that none of us even know. He might take a swing at us after the first question. And as it turned out, Bill Scherer was like the greatest guy in the world, and he talked to us for like 15 minutes after giving up like the breaking open grand slam.

And finally we had to say, Bill, we got to go. I got to go right now because he was still talking. That's how bizarre that entire streak was. So maybe lastly, did the rest of the season prove to be as unentertaining as it seemed like it would have to be? I mean, the team was way out of it, obviously, and it was just kind of after the climax of this streak. Did you find stories to follow that kind of kept your interest for the rest of the season, or was it really all downhill from there? Well, it was not an easy rest of the season, but I took great pride in being a beat writer. It's the best, most important, most difficult job I've ever had. I did it for 10 years.

So my challenge was to find something interesting to write about for the rest of the year. And given that the season was over, they made a bunch of changes. They brought up a bunch of people. They experimented a bunch of things. So it wasn't like there was nothing to write about because there was, you know, the old cliche, either cover a really good team or a really bad team. The team in the middle is the hard one to cover because you don't know if they're in it or out of it.

Well, we knew the Orioles were out of it middle of April, certainly by May the 1st. So we just found other ways to write stories. But again, people in Baltimore cared about everything that we wrote, especially since there were no Ravens or Colts or anybody else there. So I had plenty to write about, believe me. It just wasn't a whole lot of positive stuff from there on out. So to actually finish, obviously the 1988 Orioles were terrible. You can't go 0-21 and not be terrible. But as you mentioned earlier on, the following season, 1989, the Orioles finished just two games out of first place.

They were 87-75. They finished behind only the Blue Jays. How did that happen? What is that turnaround? How does that take place? Well, here's what happened. They changed their entire outfield. The defensive outfield for the 87 and 88 Orioles was the worst I've ever seen.

So they got rid of all of those guys basically, and brought in Brady Anderson and, and Mike Devereaux and Phil Bradley and Joe Orslak and Steve Finley. And then every ball that was hit the air was caught by the outfield. And I watched a terrible pitching staff say, I can't put it in play at 88 or 87. It'll never be caught because every ball was caught in 89. They changed the whole team, younger, more athletic. And this is amazing, fellas. And I don't care what anyone says. I was there and I saw it and I felt it.

On opening day, they were supposed to be terrible. They're down 4-1 in the seventh inning, opening day of 89, Roger Clement dealing for the Red Sox and Ripken hits a ball up at his neck into the left center field seats and it's 4-4. They won 5-4 in

extra innings and it was like the whole team said, we don't stink anymore. The curse has been lifted 14 and 42 87 season horrendous 88 season impossibly terrible and suddenly everything changed in one day i watched it and it was amazing and years later uh or later that year i asked jim dwyer and fred lynn on that team about what happened here. And he said, the night that we lost in 86, they hit two grand slams against Texas and lost 14 to 10 in a game in which they had two grand slams. He said, we knew after that game in 86, something really bad

was going to happen. And it happened for two and a half years. And the curse was lifted on opening day of 89. And that team played so well. They were so much fun to be around because they were winning again and they were winning in really exciting ways. It was the most amazing turnaround I've ever seen. All right. Well, you all know where you can find Tim. He is on ESPN.

You can hear him and see him. You can read him all see him. You can read him all the time as well. His most recent book is I'm Fascinated by Sacrifice Flies. He's on Twitter at Kirkjian underscore ESPN. Tim, thank you very much for joining us and reminiscing about some very bad baseball. Well, thanks, fellas. I'll never forget it the rest of my life. All right. Thanks very much, Tim. Okay, guys. Thanks for having me. I'll never forget it the rest of my life. Believe me. All right. Thanks very much, Tim. Okay, guys. Thanks for having me. I'll talk to you soon. I assume what he meant is he'll never forget this podcast for the rest of his life.

That's right. All right. Thanks to Grant. Thanks to Tim Kirkjian. That will do it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners who have recently signed up and pledged some small monthly amount include Logan Vessi, Ryan Deal, John Anderson, Alex Friedland, and David Lizerbrom. Thanks to all of you. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. We need you to leave a review because the most recent review from this week left by a listener named Must Be Trouble says,

Baseball talk with nerdiness and pretension. And this is probably nerdy and pretentious of me to point out, but he spelled nerdiness and pretension wrong. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. About to go over 7,700 members. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We are probably bypassing the email episode this week, but please do keep your questions and comments for us coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We will get to those questions next week,

but we do have one more show to go this week. And I believe that we will be joined by another fan favorite and familiar voice. So we will talk to you soon. And you will also hear some Easter eggs from this episode in just a moment. Don't use the door This is what Our hands are for Yeah Alright, we're done. The Giants are winning.

Oh shit, they're playing? They're playing the Padres. I thought that started at 105. Oh, this is the life. Isn't it great? Oh, my God. Abandoning recaps was the best decision I've ever made. See, I started doing longer recaps because of you.

I learned it by watching you. It was, you know, in 2011 when it came on, I would laugh at you because you were doing 2, 2000 words every night and killing yourself and complaining. I was like, yeah, you dummy. And then by 2012, I was like, I want to try. You know, people really like it when he does that. I want to be liked. And so I'm going to do this, too. And then it like sort of grew from there to by last year.

I'm doing a full Sullivan. You know, I'm doing the 2000 words. I'm like taking time to make gifts. It's hard. There's at least 30 or 40 baseball games in every season. It's a lot of time. I don't do it now

and it is so great. It was weird because it was really hard, but it started to feel like routine. When you do them for a while, you're just like, I have these notes and I'm going to write three paragraphs about every single note that I took. And so now it's three in the morning and I'm done. I'm living a healthy life and now I'm going to go to bed with my partner who has not split up with me yet. Oh, my God.

Just stepping away. It's like, I don't think I've watched a game since. Grant, you could have just filmed one of your kids running in slow motion down the third baseline 20 times you would have drawn all your recaps for years that's a good point damn it i talked to john miller for for my story and it was like i would go hey so talk about the tipping point what do you think the tipping point was when you knew it was going to be something more than your typical losing streak?

And he'd go, well, it was this game. And then it's like three hours later. And he would talk, and then by the end, he's talking about it. And when Don DiMaggio came up with the Seals, remember, what you have to understand is there was a diner opened up on 3rd and Brannan. I have an hour of recording where I asked him literally maybe eight questions. Oh my gosh, there's another Bob Nightingale who writes about baseball now? It's his son!

There are two Bob Nightingales? Yeah, there's two of them. Bob Nightingale Sr. heard a rumor that his son was going to write about basketball. That's a good one. I'd love to use that. Start with that. You can't replace this genuine laughter with a second time. Okay.