Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1301: Twilight Doubleheader

Episode Date: November 27, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Oliver Drake’s new/old home, the Braves signing Josh Donaldson and Brian McCann and converting Johan Camargo, the Pirates signing Lonnie Chisenhall, and the Twins claiming C.J. Cron, then (11:20) talk to Bill Rowe, official baseball advisor for the film Twilight, about how he helped make the movie’s depiction […]

Don't put me in a frame upon the mantel For memories turn dusty, old and gray Don't leave me alone in the twilight Cause twilight is the loneliest time of day Hello and welcome to episode 1301 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello! Hello! We have Oliver Drake news. Yeah, we do. Oliver Drake, new team, also old

team. Yeah, that's the, that's a good and bad thing. Do you think it's more, maybe we just need to talk to Oliver Drake and get this settled, but we had talked before about how Oliver Drake has belonged to seven, or was it six? Six or seven baseball teams in just this calendar year. Yeah, played for five,

but then also went through the Rays, right? So, I guess i guess yeah he's had seven movements at this point or six i don't know i've lost track he's probably lost track too he's been on a lot but now he's uh because when we last spoke he had been designated for assignment by the raise looking for a new job and he has a new job and it is an old job he's going back to the blue jays he was i don't like to say it with these words, but he was Blue Jays property for about a week. He was selected off waivers by the Blue Jays on July 26th. He was selected off waivers by the Twins from the Blue Jays on August 3rd of this year. And I was going back to the Blue Jays, which

do you think that's better or worse for someone in Drake's situation than going to a different team? I don't know. I mean, he's probably got his passport in order at least, so that's probably not an issue. I mean, he was with the Blue Jays for two games, and he allowed three runs in an inning and two-thirds, so probably not his fondest memories from the season. But I don't know. He probably at least talked to someone with the Blue Jays before and

maybe met the media people and got settled. It's probably easier for all involved, just they've gone through this once before, so I guess that helps. I did manage to get in touch with Oliver Drake's agent and was told that Oliver Drake is hunting for the first part of this week. And you asked me if he was job hunting and I said, I doubted it, but if he was success, so good job, Oliver Drake. And I hope that we will talk to him sometime soon. And for his sake, I hope that he can be a Blue Jay for a while. It's interesting that you have someone's career is changed. Like Oliver Drake is gone. I don't know where he is hunting he's probably not completely off the grid but maybe he is but what he is not doing is just like sitting in his home office or whatever oliver drake has just like trying to figure out where his

career is going he's just like being dfa'd and claimed and he's uninvolved he's not a part of that process which is interesting and something to hopefully be able to ask him about when he is done well i i was going to say murdering animals but that seems a little judgmental. When he is done providing for his family. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's probably easier to go through this in the off season when you don't literally need to move every time it happens. So there's that at least. So this episode will be largely devoted to the cinematic masterpiece Twilight from 2008, which just celebrated its 10th anniversary last week. And of course, Twilight is a well-known baseball movie. There's more than one reason why it's a baseball movie. I believe Bella's stepdad in Twilight is a minor league Baseball player so there are a few tie-ins To baseball but most memorably There is just an extended Baseball scene right smack

In the middle of the movie just kind of Disconnected from other things although It does set up some subsequent Events and we had questions About how this came to be And how It was filmed and Noticed some time ago actually that there was a baseball advisor

listed on the IMDb page for Twilight a man named Bill Rowe obviously had something to do with the scene and we had thought about having him on before 10th anniversary as good an occasion as ever so we are going to talk to Bill Rowe who who is a College World Series hero from OSU and played briefly for the Brewers and now is back at OSU where he just won another title as a coach. But we spent the bulk of the time talking about Twilight and how this scene happened. And to be clear, this is something that I believe you were interested in talking to Bill Rowe for so long that it predates my joining the podcast. This is like a two, this is, I wouldn't say it's a white whale, but this is like two years at least work in progress.

This is transcended co-host. Yeah, it's been a while. And I'm fascinated by people who do this job. We had actually the baseball advisor to pitch the Fox show pitch on the podcast once, who is more of a kind of a full-time person who does baseball consulting and we're always curious about that because we see terrible examples of baseball in media and we always wonder why didn't they consult someone why didn't they ask us and uh often they don't because they're cheap as Bill tells us and they don't want to pay someone to

make sure the baseball looks good but Twilight Twilight took it seriously and made vampire baseball look as much like baseball as they could. So Bill fills us in on the details, and we'll get to him in just a moment. And it turns out that the scene, the baseball was filmed in an area that is like 30 minutes from my front door. I've driven by it a million times, And now the next time I go by it, I think I might want to pull over for a little stop and take a look and refresh my memory. Because as I say to Bill, during the interview, this is pretty much the only scene from the film

that I actually can still remember. Yeah, movie magic was made in that empty field in a wetland. So we'll get to Bill in just a second. I know you're pressed for time. There were a few transactions, but probably nothing worth dwelling on for a long time. The Braves were the team making moves on Monday. They signed Brian McCann, reunited with the Braves, and more notably brought on Josh Donaldson on a one-year $23 million contract. I was disappointed. I was hoping he'd go for the multi-year contract because I took him in the free agent contracts draft,

but he settled for the pillow contract, one year, $23 million, and that seems like it will benefit the Braves. Josh Donaldson seems like potentially could still be a really good player. And when he's a free agent next year, he'll be up against Nolan Arenado and Anthony Rendon, the yeah perennial underrated anthony rendon who's very good but you know donaldson he's matching last year's salary and now this is going to be interesting

because the braves are going to reportedly turn johan camargo into something of a basically he's going to be their new marwin gonzalez who i guess is marwin with the new ben zobrist that's kind of what we're doing here every there's every winter has what we're doing here. Every winter has a new Ben Zobrist and every winter has a new Charlie Morton. I don't know, a new pop-up reliever, but I don't know. I kind of like the idea of just ending this segment having spent longer talking about Oliver Drake than Josh Donaldson.

And we have breaking news. The Pirates have signed Lonnie Chisholm. Who cares? He's going to make $2.75 million to be insurance for Gregory Polanco, who I had forgotten has had major surgery on his shoulder and will miss time. So Lonnie Chisholm, the very injury-prone Indians outfielder, will be taking the place of an injured player for the Pirates.

I'm sure that will go well. And Josh Donaldson is an impactful move. But Oliver Drake, back to Canada, or maybe somewhere else by the time he's back from his hunting trip. Yeah. And of course, Jerry DiPoto reportedly trying to trade Robinson Cano, but has not managed to convince anyone to take Cano yet. But if he succeeds, we will certainly talk about that in the future. One quick thing, since you wrote about CJ Krohn and his being designated for assignment by the Rays like Oliver Drake, he was claimed on waivers by the Twins. So the Twins said, you don't want CJ Krohn? We'll take

CJ Krohn. What does that mean? Because we've seen the Rays do this before. You wrote about it. It happened last year with Corey Dickerson, where they just feel like, well, why pay this guy? Because we can just go get people we don't need to pay who will be most of what that player is. But the twins decided that they did want this guy, that he could still be of use, but just different situation, different roster, I suppose. He's not a player who's horribly overpaid at about $5 million, which is what he's projected to make through arbitration. But he's not a player that the Rays had any real use for. He's not defensively versatile. He's not that athletic. The Rays have more cost-controlled players.

And they were facing a 40-man roster crunch. And so they essentially decided there were three players in the minors they wanted to put on the 40-man roster. And they like having those players for multiple years more than they like the idea of having Krohn at or around market value for one year or two and clearly everybody in the league knew that Krohn could be had there were there was talk about him being a trade candidate weeks before he was designated for assignment and the market decided no one was that enthusiastic about CJ Krohn he's worth having for some teams but not worth an extra effort and so it was pretty clear he was going to end up getting some sort of job but now he's going to i don't know either step in for or play along with tyler austin who is a similar kind of player in minnesota but you know crone is someone who can help the twins he could help a team like the mariners he could help a number of teams just not much but like he's in the same way that oliver drake deserves to be on a 40-man roster cj crowe deserves to be-man roster. Just, you know, he's not going to be one of the 10 best players on it.

Right. Yeah. People look at his stats and they see, oh, 30 homers. He's a 30-homer guy. But of course, we are still in a very high home run era. He doesn't walk a whole lot. He doesn't really add much on defense or base running wise. So it's just a skill set that is worth a major league roster spot, but not worth getting all that excited about and not necessarily worth it for every team. Although obviously the Rays are always looking to cut costs and they had been linked to Donaldson, you know, via rumor. People had wondered whether that might make sense, whether they would go get him. And obviously now they cannot. The Braves are pushing in their chips and we'll see if the Phillies match.

But Rays will have to look elsewhere to fill their vacancies. Yes. And probably that will be Nelson Cruz, but I guess we'll just let these things materialize. And we will talk about them when they do. So we will take a quick break and we'll be back with bill rowe to talk about baseball in twilight light glances off the blue glass we set right before the window and you who accept in your soul and your head What was misunderstood, what was thought of with dread A new self is born, the other self dead

I accept the newfound man And set the twilight real Since when do vampires like baseball? Well, it's the American pastime. And there's a thunderstorm coming. It's the only time we can play. We'll see why. All right, so we are joined now by Bill Rowe,

undergraduate assistant coach at Oregon State University, college World Series champion as both a player and a coach, former Brewers minor leaguer, and perhaps most pertinent to our talk today, official baseball advisor for the film Twilight. Bill, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. Appreciate it. Yeah, we are excited about this. So before we get to Twilight, tell us a little bit about yourself as a player. I'll circle back later and ask about your College World Series experiences, but tell me

how you ended up at OSU for your senior year and then how you went on to join the Brewers briefly. All right. Well, it's a pretty interesting route that I took. I went to high school in Oregon and came from Southern California as a kid. I played Little League Baseball in Laguna Beach, California. My father is an actor down there and he got a job at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. We moved up to Ashland and I played high school ball there. And of course thought to myself, you have to get back to Southern California to play college ball. That's where all the good college baseball is in Southern California. So worked really hard and got a scholarship down to UC Santa Barbara, played there for three seasons and, of course, wasn't getting much better as a player and really missing being home.

And all the guys I played high school ball with on Oregon State and asked my coach for a release down there. And he gave it to me, luckily. And I transferred back to Oregon State for that 2006 season. It was a pretty good decision on my part. Yeah. So what kind of player were you? I'd say a big, bad-bodied, left-handed first baseman. Can we say that? part. Yeah. So what kind of player were you? I'd say a big, bad bodied, left-handed first baseman. Can we, can we say that? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I was like growing,

growing up as the, the, the days of, of big power hitting left-handed first baseman. And I just never, never took my speed seriously enough, I think. And just always thought that as long as I could hit dingers and, and mash, I was going to be good to go. And then you realize that everyone's catching up to you pretty quick. And you did have a big senior year, so you didn't get drafted, right? But then how did you end up in pro ball? Yeah, that's correct. I didn't get drafted and I got a call from the Milwaukee Brewers organization right after the second day of the draft telling me they were interested in signing me as a senior.

But of course, we still had season left to go. So we can't sign anything until after the College World Series. And I thought that my position with them was secure. But then every day, the College World Series would happen, I'd play well, I'd get another call from the brewer and say, Okay, now we're definitely sure we're going to get you. And I just got the feeling that they were never really confident. But luckily, I played well that week and signed with them and went out to Montana and started playing in their organization right after the College World Series. So you were in Pro Bowl in 2006 and it went OK. How did that come to an end?

Yeah, it went great. You know, I feel like as a player, I was just, first of all, being a senior and just being having a bunch of school taken care of and having some different options, just being there playing the whole time. And I love the game of baseball, but man, that's just, it's a tough lifestyle. And I think too many players think once you get to the pro level, you've kind of made it. And that's, that's really when the hard work gets started and your whole life becomes baseball. And so even though I had a good season there, I don't know, I think I ended up hitting like 280 or something like that. I just couldn't see myself playing baseball every day, all day,

all year. When I got this opportunity to start getting into the film industry, working on baseball, I just kind of made a decision that I was going to pursue a different career and waited until the day before spring training the next season and called the brewers and said, you know, I'm sorry, but I'm just not going to come back. So you said that you waited until the end of spring training to sort of deliver word, but for how long did you agonize over the decision? Because, you know, for some people, this takes place over the course of several seasons. Some people are just reluctant to give up the dream. But for you, I mean, you sort of had other irons in the fire here, but how

long was it sort of on the forefront of your mind before you decided okay that that's it this isn't going to work so I'm going to pursue this this other avenue instead well it really was was during that minor league season I don't think I really was prepared for what it was going to be like I mean what your life was going to be like doing that and everything that with that, you know, the curfew at age 23, not being able to wear certain clothes out in public, the facial hair control. And I mean, we're getting paid $1.85 an hour out there. And I just felt like the way that I was being treated for how much hard work I was putting in just didn't make sense. And I knew that

if I was willing to work this hard and I'm an intelligent person, I can really go do anything that I'm, that I want to do and be successful at it. So I remember one very clear instance where we were playing in Orem, Utah against the angels, I believe. And one of the big head scouting directors came through or I don't even know what his name was. And it's, that's even funnier considering this story, but he went around the locker room after the game and said hi to everybody and went by cole gillespie who was on my team at oregon state just winning the national championship a month before and said oh cole congratulations on the national championship and cole was a third round draft pick and i was a senior sign and when he got around to me he had no idea i had even played on that team you know he just met me for the first time said hi nice to meet you and it just like, these people really don't care about me at all. You know, like not even a

little bit. This guy doesn't even know I played on that team. And I just, I don't know, that was tough for me. I always liked having personal relationships with my coaches and I feel like I just didn't really want to fight for them. And once I realized I was just there for myself and the pursuit of maybe a big paycheck, it started getting a lot easier for me to see myself doing something else. I went to a Helena Brewers game this past summer, and it's not glamorous baseball at that level. It's a nice city and a nice historic park.

This was the last year that the team was there. So it was a good kind of minor league experience as a fan for a day, but yeah, it's very far from the big leagues. So I get it. Yeah. I just, I thought I was going to be able to do a bunch of fishing out there in Montana, you know, and you have one day a month where you don't have a four hour practice before a game. And then you got to jump on that bus at midnight that night and head out on a week road trip. So the fishing didn't really happen. And, you know, I just, my father's 80 now. And so he was about 70 back then. And I just, I knew that I'd rather play one more round of golf with him in the summer than play another baseball game. I just would easily trade those things off. And once I was aware of where I stood on that matter, it was

pretty easy to walk away. So he was in the industry and I guess that led in some way to your getting into it. So how did that initial break in come? Yeah, kind of. I mean, he was the artistic director of the Laguna Beach Playhouse growing up and my brother and I auditioned for some TV and movie things and, you know, did the school plays and everything. And then my dad's still working in film and television to this day. And my brother got into it. My younger brother, Jackson, right out of high school, he's two years younger than me. And so he was already working in the film industry and I had been on some sets and just, you know, had the opportunity, found out they were making a baseball movie in my hometown, which, you know, go figure.

They wanted my dad to act in it. There was a part for me to act in it. And I don't know, I just, it sounded like a really good opportunity and I didn't want to miss it and ended up turning into some more stuff. And we can go into the twilight deal. The producer on Calvin Marshall came up to me one day and said, there's a vampire baseball movie filming in Portland and they need a guy who knows baseball. I was like, all right, well, that's going to be a terrible movie if it's a bunch of vampires playing baseball. It's like a mini film, right?

And I believe you, you and Ben were talking before we started recording here. There was an article just last week at Vulture that was about this scene. And I don't know how much of it you've read. Maybe you've read all of it, but it does include the line in the lead. Quote, the funniest movie scene ever created reached movie theaters on November 21st, 2008. Obviously, I'm talking about the vampire baseball scene from Twilight. So when one sees a movie like Twilight, and when a movie like Twilight includes scenes that include sport

or some sort of event that is not necessarily pertinent to the plot, I think as an audience member, you think, well, how realistic do they really expect this to be? We've seen a lot of unrealistic baseball scenes. We've seen a lot of unconvincing actors and actresses trying to play baseball before. But, I mean, we could talk to you. I don't know how many days went into filming the scene, but we could talk to you for the minute equivalent

of all of those minutes that you spent on this scene. But, I mean, how? Why? What was even the beginning? minute equivalent of all of those minutes that you spent on this scene but i mean how why what what was what was even the beginning how how did they sell you on this scene what was your role supposed to be for this scene well i came in and i was told by one of the assistant directors that the director just really these people were supposed to be have been playing baseball for about hundreds of years several hundred and so to make them look like they had never played baseball before just was going to be so glaringly obvious to her that it wasn't going to play and i mean that's just the first layer of it like the

girl who pitched had never thrown a ball before and she had to pitch because that's what it said in the book and nikki who was playing rosalie who was swinging had to swing left-handed because her character's left-handed and she's not even left-handed so I mean that's that's how deep it got with the director wanting it to be true to the official story and then I come in about I don't know two weeks before we're filming the scene and I'm on the sound stages with all the actors just working with them on their particular motions that they're going to have to do in the shot and then we film for a week with the actors and then another week with the second unit, which is all the stunt doubles come in at the same location.

So I stood, I was at that location for two weeks while we were filming with both the first unit and the second unit. So it ends up being about a three minute scene, I believe. Yeah, it's quick. But still, I mean, as you say, that's, that's two weeks of filming for, for all those mechanisms. So I don't, I don't even know where to begin. I don't know what is most unfamiliar, a mechanic for someone who doesn't have a baseball background, but how do you, how do you teach someone who's not left-handed to swing convincingly left-handed in the matter of days? Well, it helps that I've done it with a bunch of kids already. So that

was pretty nice, but I actually found that these actors picked up the instruction quicker than the kids would because they haven't been doing it wrong for years and years and years. So they've, they don't have any bad, you know, muscle memory that's going to hurt them. So like, if I can show her the different five different stages of a swing of a major leaguer, she's going to be able to understand how to physically move her body to imitate that. That's what she does professionally. A lot of these kids have, you know, dance background or physical performance is just, is what they do for a living. So if you tell them, no, it needs to look like this, they can do it a lot better than I would say young athletes who have been taking a thousand hacks, doing it wrong are able to do, you know?

Hmm. So just to get the sequence right here, you played a role in Calvin Marshall, which is a comedy, a baseball film. And I guess you had shot that in late 2007. That movie actually didn't come out till 2009. So after Twilight, right? But you had been in this movie and you had been a minor leaguer. And so they just thought, who can we get who knows something about baseball and is around? And you were the guy. Someone just knew that that you were in the area and knew baseball. Yeah. I mean, and going back to what we were saying earlier is just, you know, they were trying to do it kind of sneaky there there's people in la who you can hire for you know a thousand dollars a day to come up who are technical advisors for sports for sports movies who are on set making sure that everything looks good and that they're not doing anything stupid but the studio didn't want to

spend five ten grand flying some guy up from la paying him a thousand dollars a day for a three minute clip in the movie that really has nothing to do with the movie itself. And so that since there's a little bit of battle, they say, okay, well, who else can we find locally who knows baseball really well, who we might be able to hire for a little bit cheaper and just still get the same, same results out of it. And so they knew a baseball movie was being filmed in Oregon at the time. And they contacted our producer and asked him, you know, who was in charge of making their baseball look good. And that's how they got my name. So to me, I think the vulture piece that Jeff referenced sort of does a disservice to the scene

because it makes it seem like it's completely random. Why are these vampires playing baseball? And sure, it's a little bit different from the rest of Twilight, but who could be older and whiter than vampires? And what sport is for old white people more than baseball? This makes all the sense in the world. These vampires have been around forever. They want to blend into the fabric of the country. They want to be part of the culture and experience life like humans. And what better way to do that than to play baseball? So to me, this makes perfect sense that vampires would be baseball players. Yeah. And in the film business, it just matters how much emphasis you put on it, right? So if there was some scene where the family was just out playing catch randomly in the background, no one's going to question that. They're going to say, oh, cool that the family's playing baseball but since they spent like a million dollars and did all these incredible stunts and like you know had 300 people out there for two weeks and created this big production out of it it's like of course people are going to notice it because it's like you just

spent all this money and time featuring this one scene that really doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the movie i mean you have an encounter in the end of it where the bad guys find them and they have a little confrontation on the field. And so it propels the story a little bit. But other than that, I think it was just kind of a way to showcase their physical abilities because the stunts that we did on out there were some really complex stuff with, you know, magic carpets along the ground and heavy cable rigs going through trees and just really, really crazy stuff. So where did this scene take place exactly? It looks like it's in a field in the middle of nowhere.

It's not an actual baseball diamond. There are sort of base paths crudely drawn on the field. But do you know how this location was found or where was it? How remote was it? Yeah, it's called the Shire and it's a wetland habitat project. I believe it's owned by the University of Oregon and it's right across the Columbia Gorge on the Washington side from Multnomah Falls. So if you are on that highway out there and you're at Multnomah Falls and you look right across the river, you can kind of see

a green berm over there of lawn that's just in the middle of trees. And that's one of the big fields. That's the big main baseball field where we filmed right there. And the base paths on the field is really just about 300 bales of hay because our crew out there in a wetland for a week, just the whole thing was like eight inches of mud. And we had a team of greensmen, which is actually what i ended up becoming in the union a union greensman i'm watching these guys on this set just hay everywhere and grass and just working their butt off and i'm thinking that's a terrible job and then of course i joined the union is that like five years later very funny yeah there was a lot of hay on the ground a lot of branches and sticks just trying to make it look like it's

we're in a wild place even though if that all came up, it'd look like a concert had just happened there. So yeah, you're over by Beacon Rock and Hamilton Mountain, and you're just in this whole setting of being on the gorge and around the Columbia River. I don't know, maybe it's just because having seen the movie, I have this impression in my head, but it feels like a vampire-y kind of landscape. You know, it's kind of gloomy, there's a lot of grays and browns and in fog, clouds, precipitation, it felt appropriate. And it feels like there's a lot of areas in that specific part of the state that feel

like they're in forks, even if they're, you know, 100, 200 miles away. Well, that's great. You know, that's a credit to the art department. And you got to give your props to special effects for getting the fog going just right in the art department for setting everything up in the camera department for everything looking matching. So that's that's a choice. So they wanted the baseball to look realistic. But on the other hand, this is vampire baseball. And therefore, it is not completely realistic. So what kind of insight were you able to offer in addition to just making the swing look roughly like a swing or a pitching motion look roughly like a pitching motion?

look roughly like a swing or a pitching motion look roughly like a pitching motion. Were there any larger conceptual ideas about this is what it would look like if umpires played baseball? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my job was more of the actual baseball stuff. So like when they slide into a base to make sure that their slide looks like they're really doing it right. Or when there's the play at the plate andlla is the umpire that she's standing in the right spot and she makes the right hand motion for an out with a play at the plate you know little things like that or the way that they run the bases and

how they need to round the bases to look like they've done it before you know and it got it got pretty deep i mean i don't want to talk too much smack about about rob pattinson because he was a really nice dude, but just one of the most unathletic people I've ever worked with. He knew it right away. Like the very first day they're like, we need to make him look like he's been playing baseball for a hundred years.

And I take him outside and he's like, you know, any dude who's like kind of smoking a cigarette. And he's like, no, I've just never really done sports. I've just been in acting my whole life. And he was like,

all right. And we start doing some just shuffles side to side and things like that. And I mean, you can just tell that there's not going to be a way for this guy to do a movement that looks athletic, you know? So most of the stuff for him is a stunt double in there. I mean, even just with like the jogging and the running stuff around the bases, it's like, all right, this guy can't even jog and make it look like he's had a run before so we're gonna need to get this done so how how much time how much time do you invest in in trying to get someone to look halfway competent before the decision is made to just mostly use a stunt double in a situation like that i saved him pretty

early i went she gave me all this was the script and i broke it down and kind of looked the stuff they're gonna have to do and i went to the director because he was the one that she wanted to look the best. And he was by far the worst of everyone. And I just said, you know, I can do it, but I'm going to need him for five hours a day, every day. And it's, I'm working with for 20 minutes of time, a few hours a day in between the other fittings and stunt rehearsals and things that they're doing in the soundstage area. So with that amount of time, you're not really going to be able to make a guy who's never played baseball look like he's been playing for a hundred years. Now the girls had to do one pitching motion and she had ballet experience. So we just got a really, really stylized wind up super high leg kick, you know, it just looked really cool. And then the release point had to work because they wanted her throwing baseballs right past the camera and so that was tough for her and we literally filmed it with a hundred and fifty thousand dollar camera like 10 feet away and the director's just telling her to try and drill the camera square you know and pieces are starting to fly off it and the whole

camera department's freaking out but that i mean that's just that was my first experience on a big budget film just watching these guys you, spend so much money every day. And these little things are really fun for me because I was on that particular film. I'm like right in there on those scenes with the director of photography and the director getting to just really take part in the conversations that happen right before you film, which is pretty special. And after you've been on a bunch of film sets, you realize that that's kind's kind of a privileged space to be in, in terms of a creative person on a film set. So I don't think I was as grateful then, but looking back on it, I, it was just such an amazing experience. And I still have a lot of friends. I made great friends with all the stand-ins from that show. And I'm still good buddies and go fly fishing with, with Preston Johnson,

who was a stand-in on that show. So it's really, really cool. With Preston Johnson, who was a stand-in on that show. So it's really, really cool. So I noticed that the vampires do not wear gloves in this scene. Is that just because they are so talented that they don't need them? Was there a discussion about that? That's right. Vampires are so hardcore.

They don't need gloves. I see. So it's like throwback baseball, 19th century style. Just don't even bother. Because they can almost fly in the scene essentially they can jump so high and run so fast and another thing i think the the the vulture piece misses it kind of questions why they need to play during a thunderstorm and obviously it's because they hit the ball so hard they've got their swings and their contact to the thunder strikes or else everyone will hear them totally no yeah no one's going to question all those extra lightning and thunder that you They've got to time their swings and their contact to the thunder strikes or else everyone will hear them.

Totally. Yeah, no one's going to question all those extra lightning and thunder that you hear in the background if it's already stormy Pacific Northwest. Maybe that's the whole reason they live in the Pacific Northwest just because they get their baseball games in. Right. Yeah. So when you were helping everybody, was there any baseball playing background at all among any of of the actors or actors i mean you you already described to who might have had the most trouble but i mean aside from you know some some dance background was there was there any foundation

how is kellen lutz doing here yeah absolutely i mean well and then you have guys who have played other sports you know like kellen and god i forget the the dad's name now but he he had played baseball before like in high school and stuff but it just worked out that the guys who knew the most about it weren't really the ones who were featured doing it that much you know so i think kellen really only had to do one play where he like runs up a tree and turns and catches it and so you know he does that tree thing the only baseball action he has to do is when he lands he has to do the right steps to throw the ball in. And that's the only thing baseball-wise he had to really do. Other than that, it's just running around the bases, I think. high scoring or low scoring? Because on the one hand, they seem to be able to break the sound barrier with how hard they can hit the ball. On the other hand, they can run at super speeds and

get to everything. So would this be a slugfest or would this just be like a pitcher's duel, except every ball is hit super far and then caught anyway? You know, that's a good question. And if we're going to get into that, I would say that if, when we're playing pickup baseball, we're usually not pitching our very hardest. You know, you want to see some action. So I would say probably for the most part, they're just like playing for fun. So they want the ball to be hit. Maybe they're like only fastballs or fastballs and changeups only. No, no, like reverse upside down flash curve balls or some pitch that you've never seen before. And not a lot of throws.

If you were if you were to draw up a scouting report, can you think of sort of a college or major league comparable? Someone you've seen on the internet or on television or on your own team who played the most like a vampire? Jeez. I just think about the movie Space Jam. If I had to compare it to another sports theme, it's like if these guys were cartoons, that would they be? Just like some freakish monster that can just throw the ball like scouting report fastball 150 to 300 miles an hour plus plus plus curveball 100 miles an hour backdoor slider you know just just the

gnarliest yeah underhand underhand 200 mile an hour fastballs. I don't know. These guys are crazy. I like at the end when there's sort of a fight or almost fight that breaks up the game when the bad vampires show up and they detect a human there and they smell Bella. It very much plays out like a baseball fight or like a baseball brawl where no one actually does anything and they just kind of stand around staring at each other for a while and then it breaks up yeah just you know the the pitchers in the bullpen were just looking for an excuse to to get involved in the action they're bored out there i think exactly yeah they're just jealous the other guys are playing baseball they wanted to get in on it a little bit did anyone i mean did you hear from a lot of people about this scene when the actual movie came out? And I don't know whether people knew that you were involved or not. But as Jeff was saying, this is very memorable.

Maybe it's memorable for us because we like baseball and you have probably a lot of baseball playing friends who would pay particular attention to the scene. But did it make any kind of cultural impact that you were aware of? No, I mean, it's fun to tell people that. And I think for a while I could really associate with the generation right below me because of that. And still, even to this day, I mean, it's starting to get kind of like a throwback now at this point, but I don't know. Yeah, it's of course you tell people you work on it and then you watch the film and your name's not in the credits. So it's like a huge letdown at that point um and that's i've talked to a lot of people who worked

on that film who didn't get their name in the credits it was unfortunate it was like embarrassing for your first big movie you know what i'm saying my mom's in the theater with me yeah but yeah it was great i mean what an experience get to do three weeks my little brother was working as a production assistant with the stunt team so got to work with him on set for a week and got to work with him a lot after that, too. And yeah, it was just a magical experience, man. It was great. I have one more question about Twilight. Were you seeing dailies?

Like, were you reviewing footage in the moment just to see if it looked OK? Or when you saw it in the theater, was that kind of the first time you had seen it all together? Yeah, I hadn't seen it cut together. We have playback available on set for each shot so that we can just make sure we got, got it afterwards. And especially if it's something that happens really quickly and they just want to look at everything. But, um, as far as seeing it all cut together now it was, and that's, you know, two weeks of working on those things and just, it was fun. I, I think that's why I enjoy it the most is just because it's it's a random fun baseball scene. And, you know, the baseball is not so bad that it looks.

And like you said, it's baseball players don't like seeing bad baseball. I can just appreciate a director who is going to pay the extra few hundred dollars to have someone there who knows what they're doing, you know, and just make sure that, OK, these vampires are doing some weird stuff. But let's at least make sure that they don't look like they're just picked up the ball for the first time. Right. So might as well just keep dwelling on that. I was curious when instructing these, these people who don't know a whole lot about the motions and you know, that, that takes a certain amount of time, as you said, it took two, maybe, maybe three weeks of work. And I was, I was curious, what, what is sort of the mood on set? What is the patience level among people, not only those directly involved, but also those who are just trying to

get things to move along when you are spending that amount of time going over a scene that is memorable, but also that is relatively inconsequential for the development of the story? How patient are people? And how patient are you also as an instructor of the people who are trying to look like they know what they're doing? Yeah, it's tough. I would say the patience is not difficult because everyone on a film crew is just used to standing around for so many hours in a day waiting for a certain department to finish what they need to do before everyone else can start working again. So that's and it's all departmentalized like that. Like no one is going to care about how much time we're spending on something except the people like a producer who's responsible for all the money or the first AD who's responsible for making sure we get everything done in the same day. Other than that, everyone's pretty patient. But for me, it was just difficult not having been on a lot of film sets up to that point, especially not big ones, just knowing when I should say something and when I shouldn't.

Right. So there's there's going to be something in every single shot or move that I can critique and say, well, that wasn't quite right. And we can do it again. But it's you know, if I start asking for multiple takes for some little thing, it's not really going to work out. You can get that sense from the director and the director of photography and you stand there and look and be close and be available. And then when they ask you a question, you're ready to answer it right away and you can jump in. and be available. And then when they ask you a question, you're ready to answer it right away and you can jump in. And if they tell you to work on them,

work on them with something, you jump in and do it, but you try and do it as quickly as possible. You'd think that in this situation, you'd probably want to hit the ball on the ground. I mean, it's good to hit line drives and launch angle. We know about all of that.

But if you have vampires in the field who can catch everything, you'd think maybe just kind of hit it on the ground and beat it out. That seems like the safest play. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, out there, the ground was not very even, so you might have a problem there. But I feel like these guys could just like body up and let the ball drill them in the chest and it's not really going to damage them at all. So yeah, not a big deal. So when you're when you're listed as a baseball advisor for Twilight and and a baseball consultant for calvin marshall and and then it goes on from there you

listed as a baseball technical advisor for an episode of leverage and then you were also helped out with a baseball scene in portlandia and so when for for as small of a role as as you might have had for the film twilight still it is it's one one of the bigger pictures of the past 10 or 15 years. So how many doors does that open up for you to have an advisory role for a scene that, as maybe inconsequential as it was, was still incredibly memorable, such that it's one of the only scenes I remember from having actually seen the movie. And it's the only one that I can still picture exactly what it looks like when I close my eyes. That's really nice of you to seen the movie and it's, it's the only one that I can still picture exactly what it looks like when I close my eyes.

That's really nice of you to say that. And I, it's amazing how many of my friends say the same thing, you know, like, Oh, that's my favorite scene in the movie. And I think probably just for adults,

like you get to that scene, it's kind of fine. The rest of the movie for an adult isn't really as exciting in my opinion, but I think it would open a lot of doors for me if I wanted to go to L.A. and contact the people who are doing it on the big movies and become that person and travel all over the country from movie to movie. But you start noticing similarities between that and the minor leagues and professional baseball. baseball. And for me, being in the Northwest, spending time around my family and my friends and getting to do the activities that I really love doing, golfing with my family, wild mushroom hunting, fly fishing, snowboarding, these things are really, really important to me. And so when I see a career that's going to start taking me down that path that has the similarities that I

didn't like about playing professional baseball, I kind of started steering away from that. And at first, it was discouraging me from a job. But now I realize I just need to work harder to find a way to have my special set of talents utilized if I'm going to be in this small market. So a few years later, when you were listed as a baseball technical advisor for one episode of Leverage, how did it compare not only the budget wise now i can't i can't claim to have seen an episode of leverage so i'm not talking from any position of experience here but i can assume it is not a television show about vampires ben don't believe so about vampires so i mean not only the characters but then also budget wise it seems like it's not really all that comparable but you were the one who actually did it.

So what what was what were the how would you compare and contrast to the two roles between Twilight and then moving on to Leverage? Well, I was already working on Leverage as a production assistant, not full time, but enough that I was on every other episode or so. And it just so happened that they had a baseball episode that came down the line from TNT and they wanted me to be on it. So they did same deal. They wouldn't have to spend an extra, you know, five, 10 grand on getting a baseball advisor.

I'm already there. And that was pretty minimal. There's like no baseball action really in that one. It was more of like a, well, first I tried out for the pitcher. It was a really cool part. There was like a speaking line for this pitcher and they were going to give it to me. But the guy, Christian Kane, who's one of the actors in the show, this is what I'm told. I do not, this is not confirmed from Christian himself, but this is

what the assistant director told me that I was too tall and standing on the mound when he's the catcher coming up, I was going to make him look the mound when he's the catcher coming up, I was going to make him look so short that he wasn't having it. And so they ended up putting some short guy as a pitcher and they made me stand as the first baseman down off the side of the mound so that Christian Kane actually looked like he was tall when in reality he is not. You also did a baseball episode of Portlandia. Yeah. If you call it a baseball episode, they're the same deal. I had new people working on it and they had a baseball sketch where they're holding open tryouts for Portland's first professional baseball team at a local softball field.

And it's just the two main characters out on the mound, basically auditioning a bunch of Portland weirdos to come onto the baseball team. And so I was just on the show as the only real baseball player who was in the dugout. Everyone else was like a motorcycle rider and a Stars and Stripes speedo or like a 90 year old man or, you know, just a bunch of weirdos out there. Yeah. I meant to ask about that because I also remember that scene. I live in Portland, so therefore I'm obligated to have watched the show. And, you know, you said you're in the dugout, but I don't know if you were supposed to be a consultant in that scene or be giving advice as well. But in a scene where I guess the joke is that nobody knows what they're doing, what utility do you have as the only baseball player who's real in that scene?

Yeah, I mean, basically nothing. Basically, I came up to the plate and they wanted to have people do baseball motions and they were kind of making fun of them as they went and or having them do something really weird like i just remember having fred armisen having this 90 year old guy like try and swing the bat but in super slow motion and then like make the noise that the ball would make when you hit the bat as the contact happened and just like we were just all dying laughing but for for me personally, it's like, go up there, look like you know what you're doing. And they honestly didn't even play on it. They're just like, all right, you're on the team and just, you know,

move on next guy. Yep. We got a winner there. All right. Well, before we let you go, I did want to ask you an OSU question or two. So tell us about what you do now and what an undergraduate assistant coach does. And obviously, you guys won the championship again this year. So this is the third one, third title for OSU. You were there as a player for the first one, and you were sort of a hero for that one. And now you were in a coaching role for the second one.

So tell us about what you did this time around and what that atmosphere is like. Yeah, well, I was really blessed with the opportunity to get to join the program last year. I called the school and expressed my desire to finish my degree, and they had the position available for these undergraduate coaches, which is for ex-players who have either gone to play pro ball or for some other reason, like a transfer, didn't finish their degree, and they can come back and finish their degree while they're coaching on the team. And so getting to come and do that last year. And obviously I actually came in January last year. So I, I came partway through the year. I wasn't even there in the beginning of the season and joining up a team like that with a bunch of high profile players who are really, really good, you know,

better than I ever was as a player was challenging. And I tried to stay out of everyone's way at first and just offer what I had and just make sure I was available to throw batting practice. I did a lot of work with Zach Taylor at first base and a couple of the other first basemen since that was my position and just got some footwork done and was with the infielders for last year and the hitters every day. And, you know, having been through that experience kind of gives you a little bit of instant credibility with the team, just not only having won the championship, but the fact that I performed well in Omaha just kind of, kind of makes the kids listen to you a little bit more and they want to hear the secrets you have and the tricks that you learned that you can help them out with.

So I just I tried to be really good energy this year as a coach and just help these guys to be in a really good headspace while they're playing and explain to them that you need a little bit of magic to win a College World Series, you know, and and we need to find a way to tap into tap into that magic and so I was just I was basically like the intangible guy I was like handing out bubble gum and doing weird rituals in the dugout and just you know throwing a lot of left-handed batting practice which is a valuable asset for a team if you have a coach who's lefty you can throw a lot of bp yeah I'm just doing whatever I can this year I'm working with the outfielders a lot I played left field for a full season at UC Santa Barbara so have a little bit of experience there and work with the outfielders and the hitters. We have a lot of new kids this year, and I get to work with them all. They're all making great steps in advancement in the batting cage, which is great to see,

and I think we're going to have a pretty solid group of guys this year. If I could go back and ask you about your playing at Oregon State, but before you were a coach, I was curious. In 2006, you spent a year and you overlapped with Darwin Barney. And Darwin Barney, at that point, he was a sophomore. I believe he was the second baseman on the team. And Darwin Barney, of course, made it to the majors. He had a fairly extended major league career, not that much of a hitter but like a premium defender and when you watch a premium defender at the major league level you can usually tell they have a sort of a look about them but everybody at the major league level who's who's playing the middle infield is good and i was curious because i i don't watch that much college baseball and certainly

10-15 years ago i didn't watch that much college baseball. And I was just curious, what does a defender like Darwin Barney look like at a high level, but still at the collegiate level? Because he was a fourth-round draft pick, and the year that you played with him, he slugged 395. He clearly wasn't drafted because of his bat. So what does a great defender look like in college? Well, he was our shortstop. And so he was our number one defender in the infielder in 2006. he was our shortstop. And so he was our number one defender in the infielder in 2006. And I mean, he was great. I mean, if you're playing, if you're playing shortstop for a division one program, that's in Omaha, you're one of the best shortstops in the country. So I mean, it amongst baseball players, you don't really put too much stock in the numbers because somebody like that, you just never know with a few years of hard work, who's going to be the next hall of famer or a professional or you know successful major leaguer and honestly if you

look at that team like you said he's not the guy you probably would have looked at and said this is the one who's going to have the longest major league career so i wouldn't say you're not really comparing him to everyone else and he was great i mean the we set records that year in 2006 that still hold as far as I know in terms of the most put outs and the most attempts without an error at first base, which means our infield made an incredible amount of plays and did really well doing it. So just fun to watch him play. But I actually asked him because, you know, he didn't look like a gold glove major league defender in college. And I saw him last year and asked him that question

just how he got so much better you know like what was the difference what made him a gold glove defender and he said right when he got to the minors he just outworked everybody and he said he took hours and hours of ground balls after practice and was the last person there just taking you know unlimited ground balls and just put the work in and really took himself from being a you know a good college shortstop to one of the best defenders and that you can get in the major leagues and it's cool and he got two gold gloves because of it so it's nice to it's nice to see that hard work get rewarded and I think the kids who I work with who might be going into the professional level I just try and tell them and explain to them that that's when the real work is going to start for them. And if they want to succeed at the next level, they're not going to be able to sit back and just rely on their talents. They're going to

have to put in extra work. And I'm writing about this in the book that I'm working on, but maybe people aren't that aware of just how sophisticated and advanced college programs have gotten in terms of statistics and technology and development. I mean, comparing 2006 when you were there to 2018, both championship teams, but I know that OSU is at the forefront of a lot of analytical things at the college level. So to the extent that you can talk about that, can you tell us how that has changed in terms of the tools available to players there? Yeah, and we have a few guys on the team from coaching now from the 2006 squad.

Ryan Gibson, who hit me in for the winning run, is our volunteer assistant. And we have Tyler Graham, our director of player development, who was the center fielder then. And we sit around. And then, of of course the other two undergrads, Parker Berberette and Ryan Gordon, who were here in like 2010 ish, I think, and just talking about just all the things that these guys have. And I think in oh six, you know, we,

we didn't even have video capability really to watch us. I was kind of a special thing. You know, the thing, iPhones like hadn't even come out yet. You know, I think I got my first iPhone when I was working on Calvin Marshall. So it just wasn't as easy. You had to really have a facility and cameras and everything to get all those deals. And like you said, now we do have a lot of extra tools at the stadium just to analyze players and ways to look at stats differently but we try and keep a lot of that away from the players and we give them like all i can record swings for these guys on the ipad in the morning in slow-mo and talk to them about it and then send them the videos for them

to look at throughout the day if they want to and just having those kind of that kind of instant feedback from and at bat you might have had in a fall ball game or just little things with the swing you're taking that you just can't see unless it's on slow motion high quality video you know they're just you're not your eyes can't pick up everything and it's really easy for a player if you can show show it to them in slow motion or you know just with some tech that like i don't know i these players need to hear it in a bunch of different ways when you want to get through to a player like this, it's, there's not always one way that you can tell a kid that's going to work for everyone. And so all these little tools that we have are just a bunch of different ways of communicating similar ideas. And you just never

know which one I'm going to click with a player and what's going to help them take the next step. From time to time, I think Ben and I have both received correspondence from students at some colleges around the country who have talked about like, hey, do you have any advice? I'd like to make some sort of contribution. I'd like to help out our school's baseball team. And I was curious, have you been approached by a student or any number of students at OSU who are just sort of analytically minded and they want to get sort of like a big league front office experience, except at the collegiate level? No, I mean, we have kids who want to come in and be like a manager type position and just get out involved with the practice.

But, you know, we have people who work for us who specifically handle video and stats and are available to just kind of get that information if we need it. I haven't been approached really. It's interesting because I'm now working in digital media. I'm kind of the person who's approaching the school because I have friends who have really nice cameras and I'm thinking about all these interesting videos that I want to shoot and trying to get my friends to come down and film our players doing some things and just getting the clearance from the school for that kind of stuff.

And, you know, I think there's a lot of red tape to go through with the school and in terms of filming us practice and stuff, I think it'd be hard for some random student just to come down and get involved in that somehow. Well, whatever you're doing there is working pretty well because you just won a title and you've obviously had some of the best college players in the country there every year, whether it's Nick Madrigal just this past year going fourth overall to the White Sox, or I know Adley Rutschman is going to be a top pick most likely next year. So obviously doing a good job of recruiting and developing, although not quite Cullen level players yet, but they're getting there. Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, our coaching staff is incredible. I mean, Nate Yeske, Andy Jenkins, Pat Bailey.

And, you know, of course, when we have had the skip, Pat Casey there with us last year, Jake Rodriguez. And we just have a lot of really good baseball minds contributing. And I think the thing that we do really well is we delegate really well and everyone is able to take on a different responsibility and find a way to make it work with each other. And that's kind of unique. I think a lot of times everyone's worried about, you know, pleasing one person or they're just, I don't know. We have a lot of freedom here and especially having played for the program before the experience we have the coaches trust that and so the coaches the other coaches really trust us to to work with the players and i know that i appreciate that and the other undergrads do as well all right well we are

glad that you could join us and that we could bring some attention to your role here you weren't in the credits of the movie so we're trying trying to write that wrong. It's a significant scene in film history and in baseball history. I mean, this has got to be certainly in the last decade, but for a while going back, this is probably one of the biggest crossover appearances that baseball has had in any form of media. the Twilight core demographic, probably not huge baseball fans for the most part. So this is important. There are probably a lot of people whose first exposure to baseball

was the scene in Twilight, which I don't know whether that makes them more or less likely to actually watch baseball, but still it's significant. Yeah, either way, at least they got to watch some vampires play baseball and you don't always get to do that. Exactly.

All right. Well, this has been Bill Rowe. Thank you very much for coming on. Yeah. Appreciate you guys having me. Thanks a lot. Thank you.

Because again, it burns too bright. Well, I almost forgot it was twilight Even if I think that you are right Well, I'm tired of being down, I got no fight Alright, that will do it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild.

Following five listeners have already done so. Dean Larson, Dan Wood, Ryan Quinney, Aaron Wuffner, and Derek Dixon. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to effectively wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast at fan graphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system.

If you are a supporter, thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. This is either your last or second to last reminder to sign up for the effectively wild secret Santa. If you're interested in participating. Last I heard, more than 120 listeners had signed up. See the link on the show page at Fangraphs or in the Facebook group if you're interested. The idea is that everyone who participates, including me and I believe Sam, not sure about Jeff, will be sending each other inexpensive baseball-themed gifts sometime in the next month for the holidays.

Should be fun. Thanks to listener Zach Wentkos for organizing. If you have any other favorite baseball scenes in non-baseball movies, well, as we know, every movie with a baseball scene is a baseball movie, but not primarily baseball movies, let us know. Maybe sometime we can talk to the people responsible for that, too. So thanks for listening, and we'll be back to talk to you again soon. I only meant to stay alive I gave you time to steal my mind I only meant to stay alive

Twilight I only meant to stay alive Twilight Bye.