Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1528: The Talented Mr. Henry

Episode Date: April 16, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the strange story of a man named Bill Henry who impersonated former major league reliever Bill Henry for decades, then answer listener emails about seasons with an ERA+ or OPS+ of 420, teams from the past that they would most want to cover as time-traveling beat writers, and […]

I never expected to be struck By the fatal hands of fortune Or by sheer bad luck But now we won't change And memories just rearrange And fall into place So I'm back again Oh, I'm a master pretender

Hello and welcome to episode 1528 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, and I'm joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello, Sam. Hello. I do have a little bit of banter. Do you have any? No. Okay. Well, mine is inspired by a listener email. Actually, we're doing listener emails on today's show, and I was just looking through to see what we were going to answer today, and there was one

that I didn't necessarily think was worthy of answering, but I answered it just to indulge a Patreon supporter, and that led me to an interesting story that I don't think we've discussed before, and I don't think I was aware of before, although I had one of those weird moments where I reacted to it as if it was something I had never heard before, and then 15 minutes later I started thinking, wait, have I had that exact reaction to that same story before? Is this the second time I discovered this? So someone may write in and say, you guys talked about this on episode 150 or something, but nothing on the wiki. So this is a question from Adam, who says, on a recent episode, Sam mentioned a season when Pete Rose had an OPS plus of just a little over

68. This made me wonder, what would it look like for someone to have an OPS of 420 or an ERA plus of 420? Is this even possible? How would this person change the game in the ways that Ruth and Bonds, both players with obscene OPS pluses before, changed it? And obviously Adam is asking if it's possible to do this over a full season, and it's conceivable but it would be the best season ever by far I mean Bonds's best OPS pluses are what in the low to mid 200s so that's about as good as it's ever gotten and you'd have to be about twice as good as that so

almost inconceivable but just for fun I look to see if anyone had done this in extremely small sample seasons. And both have been done three times if we take away all plate appearance and innings minimums. So three hitters in baseball history have had a 420 OPS plus all in seasons of one plate appearance. The most recent being RJ Alaniz in 2019. He is a pitcher, of course, but he had one plate appearance and he went one for one, and that was a 420 OPS plus for him. One for one with a single? Yeah, with a single. This is something that I suppose could change in the future because park factors change in retrospect, and so maybe in the future he will not have had a 420 OPS plus but he has for

now on the pitching side I was expecting to see maybe a bunch of guys who had pitched in one game or something and they're actually a few slightly larger sample seasons so the three Kimbrell's got like 300s on his resume right in a real season in a real season. So, yeah. So, like, I would imagine a Zach Britton ERA might be better than a 420 when he had the.5-ish ERA. Yeah. So, there have been three seasons. Again, so it was 2007, Joey Devine had a 420 OPS plus in eight and a third innings. 2013, Sean Burnett had one in 9 2 3rds innings. And then the one that was kind of eye-popping was Bill Henry in 1964 with the Reds. He had a 420 ERA plus in 52 innings,

and that was a 37 game season for him and a.87 ERA with a 2.89 FIP. Very good season for Bill Henry. So then I started looking up Bill Henry's career because I wasn't that familiar with it. And he had a very nice career. He pitched for the Red Sox. He pitched for the Cubs, the Reds, the Giants, the Pirates, and the Astros very late in his career. So he had a 16-year big league career and he retired or finished with a 120 ERA+. So he was just a good pitcher, but he was a reliever for much of his career. And so he wasn't spectacular, but he was sort of a trailblazing reliever. He was a lefty. He was an all-star once. He pitched for a World Series team. Nice career, but not really that notable or memorable because, I don't know, his name is Bill Henry, and he just sort of

blends in. And other than the one all-star season, he doesn't really have black ink or anything. He once led his league in games pitched at a time when there weren't really that many relievers. 65 games was a league-leading total. So nice pitcher, but nothing really that spectacular until I looked up his bio and Bill Henry passed away in 2014 in his 80s. But in 2007, another Bill Henry died. And it turned out that the Bill Henry who died in 2007 in a different part of the country had stolen the pitcher Bill Henry's identity and was living as if he was the pitcher Bill Henry, a different Bill Henry who just pretended to be Bill Henry for a large portion of his life. And this came out when his local paper, the non-real Bill Henry, Bill Henry, ran an obituary of him

and included the details that he was a major league pitcher and, you know, Bill Henry's life. It also mentions that he was a World War II Army veteran. That part, at least, appears to have been true. And this obituary circulated and someone at Sabre noticed that some of the details looked a little off and checked with the real Bill Henry, who was still very much alive and surprised to find out that there was another man in a different part of the country who had been posing as him for years. And this was picked up by the Associated Press. Again, this is fairly recent, 2007, so I'm not sure why I wasn't aware of this, or maybe I forgot about it. But I'm just going to read from this AP report that appeared in the New York Times,

September 5th, 2007. Everyone here knew Bill Henry as an old major league pitcher. At church, around the golf course, and certainly at home, the 83-year-old Henry did not like to boast, but he had stories. Both of those things are actually exactly the opposite yeah he lived to boast and he did not have and he had no stories yeah the boys at the 19th hole lounge at the golf course where the six foot two left-handed henry retired so he was six foot two and left-handed just like the real bill henry had to pry for nostalgia but henry knew his. His appearance in the 1961 World Series with the Cincinnati Reds, the 1960 All-Star Game selection, the 16 seasons in the majors. But it turned out that the Lakeland, Florida man was not the Bill Henry who played Major League Ball, and the tales he spun were unraveling a week after his death following a heart attack. The former reliever by the same name is alive and well in Texas, stunned someone had claimed his accomplishments for decades.

The 79-year-old Henry learned of the imposter after the Associated Press distributed a short obituary, etc., etc. I really can't understand why a man would do something like that, said the real pitcher, to impress his family or his neighbors. The Lakeland man's family was not sure when the deception began. His widow, Elizabeth Jean Henry, said the couple met more than two decades ago in Michigan. His third wife, she said she never met her husband's two children, who were both dead. She said he did not mention right away that he was a former Major League pitcher, but she had no reason to doubt him when it came up. Elizabeth Henry said she did not have any memorabilia aside from a few

baseball cards, no rings, no trophies, no photos, but she said she and his stepchildren still believed he played at least some level of minor league ball. He told me once he could hear his father when he was pitching in a game. Elizabeth Henry said he didn't tell me what game, but he said he could hear his father in the stands calling his name. I don't think he lied about all that, although you have to admit his credibility is sort of shot after the rest of this. It continues. never doubted him. McHenry said he had played for a team fielded by RCA several decades ago. The two even gave a biannual lecture called Baseball Humor and Society at Florida Southern College. To me, there were two relievers at that time, Joe Page for the Yankees and Bill Henry for the Cincinnati Reds, McHenry said. It was about the early 50s that relieving became a big thing in the majors, and I could accept Bill as that person. He knew the names, McHenry said.

He and I had a lot of opportunities to talk about people in the 40s, 50s, 60s. He knew his stuff. And the real Bill Henry featured on the baseball cards looked just like the one in Lakeland. It's creepy, striking, the nose, the face, the squinty eyes, said Janine Hill Cole, the wife of Henry's stepson, David Cole. I mean, I'm still here looking at the picture we put in for his obituary, and you'd swear it was the same man. However, it goes on to say that they had different middle names, so that kind of gave it away. They had different dates and cities of birth,

which seems like something of a red flag there. I mean, they're different people. Yes, that is the thing that I did. One's alive, the other is no longer. I mean, there's differences. The fatal flaw in his story was that he was not Bill Henry. The Lakeland man had explained to family and friends that the different birth dates were a deliberate deception when he was a prospect to make scouts think he was younger. Plausible.

So that's a pretty good cover story. I guess he would have been four years younger, I think, which that seems sort of extreme. But it's happened. It could be true. Skip Perez, the Ledger's executive editor, that's the local paper, said the newspaper said it should have done a better job confirming whether the local man's stories were true. There had been some discussion over the years about doing a story on him. One of our staff writers, I think, was a member of the same church. In a way, I wish we had done the darn story 10 years ago or whatever, because hopefully we would have checked or made a call or something. Although,

maybe it's better that this was not exposed while the guy was alive, because that would have been very embarrassing. Anyway, the real Bill Henry, who was alive at the time, said, it doesn't bother me at all. He is quoted as saying in the story, and he seems, if anything, He is quoted as saying in the story, and he seems, if anything, somewhat amused by it. And I guess kind of touchingly, the real Bill Henry actually called the fake Bill Henry or the imposter Bill Henry's widow to wish her condolences, which was nice of him. So I have so many questions. I don't know what to make of this story. Can we just though, I just want to make clear because I was listening and also browsing for more Bill Henry stuff. He never legally stole his identity. He did not open credit cards in the man's name.

No. He wasn't even living under an assumed name. This was his name. It was his name. Yes. He just told stories and pretended not to boast. Yes. That's it.

Okay. Yes. All right. To the extent that his whole family thought that he was the pitcher, Bill Henry. So sort of harmless in the sense that it's not like identity theft and that the real Bill Henry had to go cancel his credit cards or whatever and didn't even know about it. Well, the imposter was alive. But also very strange. And Rick Riley also wrote about this for Sports Illustrated.

Great title to his story, The Passing of a Counterfeit Bill. Clever. He's got some additional details in there. So when the imposter Bill Riley would give those addresses to the class at Florida Southern College and tell stories, he would claim to have gone barnstorming with Satchel Paige. Heck, I'd make more money with Satchel than I ever did in the regular season, he'd chuckle. Most they ever made in the big leagues was $17,000. This is incredible.

The man had cojones the size of pumpkins. When the Detroit Tigers were in Lakeland for spring training, he'd go to the games and mingle with the old-timers. He'd even get the big backslap from former Tigers managers Sparky Anderson and Ralph Houck. Tells you how dumb baseball people are, says Anderson. Riley talked to the still-living, real Bill Henry, who said, It's amazing a guy could pull a hoax for that long, isn't it? I'd congratulate him.

If that's what the guy needed to do to help his career, it don't bother me. I just hope they don't stop my social security. Then Riley writes, the real puzzle is why? Why would a handsome man with a lot of friends, a great wife, and a six handicap create such an elaborate and exhausting lie? Not for love. Gene didn't know a bunt from a banana. Did he say it once as a lark and then get caught in it? Did he yearn for a ballplayer's life instead of a salesman's? Did he thrill to the con? What does it matter? Asks one of his best friends, Bob McHenry. Bill was a good man. He hurt nobody. He never tried to make money off it.

Look, we live in God's waiting room here. Bill probably made a lot of old guys happy. All of a sudden they knew a major leaguer. Then it goes on to say that when Gene went to the funeral parlor, the people there couldn't find his ashes. His remains had mysteriously disappeared. I just have to wonder, like, at what point in life did he consider starting to do this? Because it's not a contemporary player. This is a player who had been retired for years, seemingly by the time the fake Bill Henry, or I guess he's a real Bill Henry, just not this Bill Henry, decided that he was going to appropriate this identity. So had he been considering it for years? Was he a Bill

Henry fan his whole life? And he was just waiting until he could get away with it? And I guess once he was sort of alone and he had remarried and his kids were no longer alive, there was no one who could actually expose him as a fraud. So he thought, well, it's finally time. I'm going to deploy my Bill Henry story. Or did it just occur to him? Is it like a sad sort of secret life of Walter Mitty type tale where in retirement or in his somewhat advanced age, he thought, you know, I just didn't have the life that I had envisioned for myself. And it'd be much more fun to pretend that I was the pitcher Bill Henry instead of the Bill Henry that I am. So it's funny and sort of sad. And I guess I'm glad for the guy that this didn't come out while he was alive, because again, it's kind of a victimless crime. And

at least he was spared the embarrassment of having this story exposed while he was alive. But I'd also really like to know, was he a baseball fan? I guess he was, according to the wife's story about his pitching with his father in the stands. So I guess it's the sort of thing that if you have the same name as a big leaguer and you're a baseball fan you're hyper aware of that player and so at some point he just figured i'd like to tell these stories that i don't actually have boy oh boy i first i would just say that he uh the fact that he was the same height as pitching bill henry should have been well that should have been a real red flag because I'm, you know, in your eighties, you're not, you're playing height. Well, yeah. Okay. But I, uh, I'm not mad at, at Bill. This is definitely not something I would do. I want to be clear that I wouldn't be able to pull this off. Yeah. And so I can just say flat out, like the thought of it, my palms are sweaty. I don't like I could not pull it off. And therefore, I don't really even have to engage with the moral question of whether I would try if I had that superpower.

Yeah, fortunately for you, there's there's no temptation because there's no Sam Miller who is the right age for you to pull it off. There are some Sam Millers, but they're all much too old for you to get away with it. But I don't think I would do it. And I don't think I would do it because, you know, I would feel bad lying to people around me. And so I guess in the way that I would feel bad doing it, I suppose I should think other people should feel bad doing it. But if he didn't feel bad doing it, am fine with him doing it it's weird because you know he can either feel guilt for doing this in which case i don't think he should do it i think if you feel bad

doing it and you do it anyway you're you know you're violating your own sense of integrity if you don't feel guilt because you recognize the harmlessness of it and it's a funny prank that you see it in the spirit of what it is, which is you're not really stealing anything of value from anybody. And it is a certain sort of kind of it takes a bit of acrobatics. You're challenging yourself all the time to keep this thing going. Today, I wrote a long article about a hoax in baseball. And that'll run early next week, I believe. And I don't feel mad at the person who pulled it off. I don't think that it was, it was done from a spirit of, I know what the story is of greed or anything like that.

I think it was, uh, you know, sometimes you just throw a thing out there and then you see if you can keep the ball in the air. And I think's probably what bill henry fake fake bill henry was doing and and so i support that now there's a third possibility so there's the guilt and he did it anyway i don't approve there's the no guilt and he did it i approve there's also the no guilt because he is incapable of feeling guilt for anything yeah and that you know i don't i would not like that. I don't think that that person should. Mr. Ripley, talented. Exactly, exactly. So ultimately having never met the deceased,

I can't speak to this, but I'm kind of glad that this came, I'm very glad it came out when he was already passed away. And I'm pretty glad at everybody's reaction to it. Yeah. I'm glad this is a part of baseball history. You know, Bill Henry II wrote himself into baseball history in a very creative way. And so I'm not fired up. I like it. Yeah. I'm amused by it. I guess the only thing that

makes me wonder whether this is actually a bad thing is I don't know how his family really felt. There are a couple quotes from them here in this story about this revelation, but you have to put yourself in the place of that family, right, of his stepchildren and his wife. And if you find out that your husband or stepfather was lying about his whole life, basically, then you have to question well was he serious about other things did he mean anything else he said to us did he like us right did he really what like was santa claus really real did the tooth fairy really break into our house i mean what do you do when you realize that your dad lied to you about something right most of us realize that it happens for various fun reasons and we

get over it and so i guess again i've never met bill henry i've also never met bill henry survivors and so i don't know what spirit they would have taken this in i don't know bill henry left a little note somewhere saying gotcha like if he opened the will and and he revealed it i mean there's lots of fun there's a lot of i, fun ways that this story could be resolved in the family. And then there's also like, right, dark and unpleasant ways. Yeah. And it's very hard to know what he left his survivors with. There was a story about a year ago that was going around that the New York Times wrote about and others wrote about, Washington Post wrote about it,

Others wrote about Washington Post wrote about it, about a couple, a very normal suburban couple that had walked into an art museum in 1985 and stolen a hundred and sixty five million dollar de Kooning and then hung it on the back of their bedroom door. And no one knew it was there because anytime you open the door, it would go against the wall. So for twenty five years, they lived with this like they would close their door at night and they would see this classic now if there is a victim there it's the de kooning that they slashed when they tore it out of its frame and and it's the people who owned it the de kooning and the people who didn't get to see it and there there's all sorts of, but, so I'm not, this is a different, anyway, though. So then, you know, they died. And so their survivors, their children, my recollection is that some of their survivors

are like, yeah, boy, that does not look good. And then others were like, no, they just picked it up at a garage sale. I'm sure of it. They would never do that. And one of the justifications for that position was if they had known that, I mean, if they had stolen it, you know, they would have gotten rid of the evidence before they died. Like they wouldn't want to get found out after they died that they were like, like humongous thieves. Right. And I just don't know if I believe that is how they would act or how anybody would act. And so I guess the question is, if you had $160 million to Kooning that you had successfully

heisted for 35 years, would you get rid of it before you died? And if you were pretending to be Bill Henry for all your life, do you think you would just hope that you would get away with it after your death and you wouldn't really care anyway because you're dead? Or do you think that you would really feel like it was important to have a contingency in the event of your death that you get one last chance to spin this in your favor, to frame it in a nice way? Yeah, that's tough. Yeah, that's tough. The de Kooning story reminds me of The Goldfinch, where a character steals a valuable painting and keeps it and is sort of wracked with guilt over having it, but also really likes having it because it has a special significance to him. being found out and of people knowing I was a fraud. And I can't imagine that whatever pleasure I would get out of pretending that I was a former major league pitcher would actually make up for that constant dread of being exposed. Because, I mean, I don't know that I personally could

actually take much pleasure out of people being impressed by my Bill Henry stories, knowing that I'm not actually that Bill Henry. And that makes me wonder, did he eventually convince himself that he actually was that Bill Henry? By the time he died, he'd been living as this other Bill Henry for 20 years or so. It sounds like a quarter of his life. Did he come to think of himself as Bill Henry the way that you tell a lie a number of times or someone tells you about a false memory that you supposedly did something when you were a kid and suddenly you remember doing that thing even if it didn't actually happen or you remember it differently from the way it happened so yeah

but probably not probably not I guess not but the other thing is that the real Bill Henry is like the perfect player to do this with. Like the circumstances really have to line up. You could make your, I don't know why you would, but if you could make yourself look like and have the same name as any baseball player and then live as them in your golden years, whose career would you want to steal? Knowing that it would be hard to, for instance, say, I'm Carlton Fisk. Like you probably would get caught, but you also don't want to say, I'm Jamie Brewington. You probably wouldn't find anybody who cares. And so is Ed Henry, Ed Henry, Bill Henry? What about Ed Henry? Ed Henry is still available.

Would Bill Henry, right. I think that the problem with Bill Henry, the one problem with Bill Henry's career that if you could pick, you would pick somebody else is that he inevitably someone's going to say, Bill, did you ever pitch in the World Series? And then you'd say, of course I did. they'd say how'd you do and you'd say i gave up five runs in two innings yeah 19.9 career postseason era that's unfortunate but yeah i do think this was perfect in a lot of ways perfect obviously in that they had the same name, were roughly equal contemporaries, and were both listed as 6'2 left-handers. So the story was there for the taking. But also, Bill Henry's in that sweet spot, I think, where if he were a bigger star, if he were a household name or a more uncommon name, even if it were just not that incredible a career, but a distinctive name, you probably couldn't get away with this. And if it were a legendary player, you couldn't really

get away with this. The story would come out. And yet you can't be a bad player, really, because then why bother pretending to be that player? I guess, you know, any kind of big leaguer, that's a story for you to tell at the golf course. Hey, I made the big leagues. I was there for two seasons and I sucked, but I was a big leaguer. In a sense, it would be lower stakes because you're probably even less likely to get exposed. But, you know, it's not as fun to brag about. Whereas Bill Henry, the real Bill Henry, you go to his baseball reference page, you're impressed.

I was, you know, not really being that aware of him and suddenly seeing, oh, wow, 16-year career, well above average pitcher, was an all-star, pitching a World Series, etc. You know, you could tell stories of all the great players you pitched against or played with over this long career. So really, it's perfect, I think. Bill Henry, it's just the perfect cover story. So I don't know. I'd have to think about what big leaguers identity I would want to assume because there'd have to be something special about the career, but not too special or it just wouldn't work. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I mean, because not only is Bill Henry like perfectly in that, like, you know, long career, but not not such a great career that he's going

to be you know expect that he's right like you're not like you're not carlton fisk but but also real high high points you know had that great era had the year he was an all-star you know had 16 seasons like you like it's it's so rich for drawing things out of like you're not just even a plain compiler you have you have highlights you led the league you got bold ink yeah i like to imagine that bill henry the fake the fake bill henry was not actually left-handed but had to be left-handed had to do everything left-handed to keep this going and so for the last 20 years of his life he was just like constantly like clumsily screwing everything up

like the whole town's like yeah bill's got coffee on his shirt again he can't why can't he drink from a cup what is wrong with him he drives like an idiot yeah like everything everything you do is like 30 percent worse right and the whole town knows you as just this walking failure because you're trying to be bill henry yeah yeah he really had to commit to the pit so not to end this on a down note but i did just look at his saber bio and there's a quote in here from his widow that's not in the ap story and it was in the local paper after this story came out. When the hoax was revealed, Elizabeth Henry, widow of the deceased Floridian, was besieged with phone calls from reporters. So, A, she was hounded for a while, which is unfortunate. She's in mourning.

And meanwhile, she has to field this call about her husband's hoax. And then there's a quote, I just took his word. That's who he was. She said, it's an awful shock. It's hard. And also, I was married to said, it's an awful shock. It's hard. And also I was married to somebody that maybe I didn't know. So that kind of moves me more from the harmless prank to this was not a nice thing to do. So yeah, maybe this, I don't know if this should have been a

deathbed confession. I guess he had a heart attack, so he didn't have an opportunity to make a deathbed confession maybe. But actually it looks like he had Alzheimer's for a few years before the heart attack. So by the time he went, he may actually not have known which Bill Henry he was, or he may not have remembered being either Bill Henry, which almost makes it sadder. Maybe it would have been easier on his family if he had had a chance to say the Bill Henry thing that that was fake but I love you I really do I meant all those things I said to you so yeah it really it's tough because you you think about like you think about old men and they tend to either be you know really nice or like get really mean and like it's oversimplifying things. But as we talked about in my family, a lot, the sort of inner core of you comes out as you reach a certain age,

and you become a more extreme version of that, that thing at your core. And if that thing at your core is spiteful and insecure, then you, you know, often become a very spiteful and insecure person. Or the other way, you become, you know, quite wise and calm and at peace. And so if he was the jovial old man who was kind and wonderful and just found joy in everything and was the loving grandfather who pulled quarters out of his grandchildren's ears, then you could see this being a fun little thing. And if he were, you know, mean and grumpy all the time, then you could see it being really nasty. And yeah, that quote, we don't know, but that quote from his widow points in a certain direction. Yes, it does. All right.

So that's the Bill Henry story. How would you feel? I'm trying to remember no this was a different thing how would you feel ben if you found out that somebody was pretending to be you and they were getting nothing out of it except for 12 minutes of conversation when they would introduce themselves at cocktail bar oh you're on a podcast like what's that like like how do you choose the music? Like, that's it. That's all they get. But they are living as you for 12 minutes a day every couple weeks. If they were gone and I found out about it after the fact, I guess I would be semi-disturbed and maybe at least partly flattered that someone thought my life was interesting enough to want to assume my identity. So as long as it didn't go any further than cocktail parties, I guess they're part of me that would be kind of gratified that I had done something worthy of imitation. It's tough because you can't tell your wife. You can't tell your wife and have your wife be complicit in this hoax. So you do have to, if you're going to keep it going, you have to lie to the wife. And that's probably something that could be pulled off by the right person in

the right relationship and have it be done in a good-natured spirit, but very tricky and could not be done in my relationship. And so I am now saying it is unlikely this could be done in a generous spirit. It could be like a Jimmy McGill, Kim Wexler kind of shared secret where you're defrauding others as a couple and you're getting something out of pretending to be someone you're not. So if they were both in on it and they were both getting a rise out of telling this story, then I guess that could be kind of nice as a couple's activity. Let's pretend that you were a big league pitcher, but yeah, it's probably not that. Yeah, right. And I guess if he had come clean late in life, I wonder at that point, maybe it's just so socially embarrassing. Maybe the family just props up the lie, goes along with it, just figures this would be an awkward conversation to have with everyone to come clean about this. So let's just continue to pretend that you're Bill Henry and we'll back up your story. that i think about it i think that the survivors of the de kooning couple did accept that the dad

that the husband took it but didn't believe that the wife was in on it uh and it gets really weird because a man and a woman are on this you know the security camera they go up there and then the i think one of them kind of distracts the lone guard while the other takes it away and there is a theory that the man and the woman are not the husband and wife but actually the husband and the son in in a dress his son in a dress or something i don't know i don't remember take everything i have with the extreme caution of me not quite remembering this story and trying to convey how little I want to incriminate anybody by accident. Okay. I will do the real story on the show page.

Okay. Thank you. Yes. Ben will do the real story on the show page. Okay. All right. There's a third Bill Henry, by the way who's still with us he pitched two games and three innings for the yankees in 1966 while the other bill henry was still in the league never allowed a run but that was it so the bill henry imposter had multiple bill henry's to choose from i guess he chose the one with the better stories plus the other bill henry was a 6-3 lefty so he never could have gotten away with it. All right, let's take a question that is not about Bill Henry. This is from another Patreon supporter, Jesse, who says, if you could go back in time to be a local beat writer for any team in MLB history,

or I guess to pretend you were a beat writer for any team in MLB history just like Bill Henry, which team would you pick? You would get to follow the team from the end of the previous season through the end of the following calendar year. It won't take any time off your life as you'd be transported back to the day you left on this trip. You would still know who you are while back in time and that this was a two-way journey, but you can't influence the future in any way and your knowledge of what occurs in baseball during that particular season and beyond is eliminated from your memory. So what mlb team from the past would you most like to experience anew either again or from before you were born so like if if hypothetically i was just

really i wanted to see what the world was like in 1935 and like what the food was like and what tomatoes were like then i would enjoy that experience like i wouldn't have my memory wiped or would i have my memory white it sounds like after the fact in jesse's scenario you would so it says that any knowledge of what occurs in baseball in that particular season and beyond is eliminated from your memory which makes it less appealing to me it'd be nice if i could remember, but it would still be fun to experience in the moment, I guess. Just once you flash back to the future, you would not even know that you had been gone. And I guess your work would be gone, too.

So if you were a beat writer for that team, then Jesse's saying that you can't influence the future. So I guess it would be as if you had never existed. Do you have an answer? Well, it's a lot less appealing to me if I don't get to remember it and if my work is not preserved, because then it wouldn't burnish my reputation. Like if you went back in time to cover a really excellent season and you got to write about it, that might make you a legendary beat writer or something. So you don't get to be that and you don't even get to savor the memories when you come forward again. So in that sense, I don't know that I would even care to do this, but I was going to say,

since we are in the waning hours of Jackie Robinson day, as we record this, that I would even care to do this, but I was going to say, since we are in the waning hours of Jackie Robinson day, as we record this, that that would be, I think the obvious choice for me, at least that you go back and you're a beat writer for the 1947 Dodgers and you get to see Jackie Robinson break the color line up close. Now, part of this, I think the appeal would be that you could cover it in that moment with your sense of what the sweep of history would be like and what this story would mean to future generations. And you could document it and cover it in a way that maybe it wasn't covered at the time. Obviously, it was very well covered and everyone knew it was an extraordinarily significant event, but knowing how it turned out and how that continues to resonate, to be able to go back and maybe get some stories that aren't preserved and some scenes and talk to some people

that aren't on the record, that would be really interesting and of historical significance. And you could just really kind of flesh it out with an eye towards how it would be perceived by later generations. So you'd be doing some work for the future that would be of value. And I mean, if you were interested in just being a legendary baseball writer, you could go back in time and sort of be on the right side of history, right, and cover it as a person from 2020 covering this event, knowing what it meant and having no reservations about what was happening at all and, you know, very stridently denouncing everyone who was against this and sort of being a crusader so that you could paint yourself as a very sympathetic figure and future generations would say,

oh boy, he really was a liberal thinker. He really saw that there were injustices and that this was the right thing and all of that. So if that's not on the table, I still think it's the right choice just because what other season could really give you that sort of human drama and emotion. and could really give you that sort of human drama and emotion. Because if you went back in time just to cover an interesting team, you'd know how the season ended. It wouldn't really be a big surprise to you. So, well, okay, so I've read his question again. And I think that all the restrictions that you put on it are actually not in his email.

The only restriction is that once you get there, you will forget what happened once you get there, you will forget what happened, you know, after you're there. So anything that happens will be fresh to you. He is wiping your 2020 memory about baseball once you arrive, but everything else is fine. So you do get to bring the information back home with you. And you do have like general 2020 knowledge about everything. So you would have had to pose as an imposter, right? You would have had to do a Bill Henry thing. You couldn't pretend to be yourself because then when you came back to the future, it would be awfully strange that you were the same age that you had been in 1947 as a beat writer.

So you'd have to have pretended to be someone else. Somehow you're in same age that you had been in 1947 as a beat writer. So you'd have to have pretended to be someone else. Somehow you're in this job or you're just, are you occupying the body of the actual beat writer? I don't know, but you have to be a separate person. So it's not like you are getting some reputational boost here. No, you're not getting a boost from your beat writing, but you could bring back your notes. Okay. And then you can say, I found this in the attic or something, and you could put it out there. You could describe in incredible detail what the room smelled like, right? Or the reports would be there, right? The newspaper archives, you would actually have published these stories. That's true too, but yeah. Although everybody will have had access to those. But I mean,

you know, that's where this is like. It's not primarily about punishing your own reputation. That's what we've turned it into. We're just clarifying, though, that you would have the suspense. Like any other season or that season, you wouldn't know what was going to happen as it was happening. Oh, okay. All right. That's what gets wiped.

That's all that gets wiped is your memory of what's about to happen. Okay. And so you would be covering the 19. If you didn't do, like let's say you picked a season for the pennant race, you wouldn't know that you were watching the Giants. I see. So your memory is wiped when you're in the past. Right.

You wouldn't know that you were. Right. If you went to 51, you'd spend most of the season thinking you were covering a dud season before the Giants furious comeback. Yeah. And so you would live through it the same way that the actual beat writers did where you'd be kind of excited. But I mean, just like the answer, like the only season that really matters in baseball history is 1947. And the only player who really matters in baseball history is Jackie Robinson. And so like that's the answer for everything if we're choosing a second choice then from storytelling

from competitive standpoint like let me ask you this if you were in 1950 you kind of want to I have kind of been trying to decide which season would I like to cover as me, where I think that probably the coverage at the time maybe wasn't that good or where I could, you know, do we, for instance, in 2020, if you know that the team is stealing signs, then you would probably report it. And in 1951, if you knew the team was stealing signs, you wouldn't report it. And so, like, would you want it? If you had the chance to go back and bust the Giants

for having, you know, somebody with the binoculars when Bobby Thompson hit the home run, would you want to do that? Would you feel like that was a productive use of the time machine? Or, like, does that make you a fun part of a baseball story and baseball lore? Or does it make you a snitch and pick something better to do with your time? I'm a little bit struggling with this. I'm having a hard time deciding how much to weight just the fun of living in a different era entirely versus of course the grossness of living in a different era entirely probably i wouldn't probably like

how things smelled and tasted so that's all tough i mean i feel like the 1908 season with merkel's boner and the last day of the season is the I think that that's the greatest month of baseball history. That occurred to me, too, except that I probably wouldn't even be watching the game. Right. Like I thought I'll go back in time and I will pay close attention to Merkel's Boner and I'll see what actually happened and I'll be able to document it. actually happened and I'll be able to document it. But if my memory is wiped of what's about to happen in this scenario, then I'll probably be looking at my notes or something and I won't even be watching the play. So that's a problem with that one. But it was still a very exciting season and event, obviously. That's, yeah, I mean, it all comes down to do you just want the most exciting season? Now, the 47 Dodgers were a very good team, too. You get a seven-game World Series. You get a great team. You get Ebbets Field, that whole atmosphere. You get to see Branch Rickey. You get to see a lot of other legendary players.

My family is from Brooklyn, and my mom talks about how when she was very small, she remembers Gil Hodges in the neighborhood, and the players used to walk and drive around and play ball with the locals and everything. And she was not quite born in 1947, so I wouldn't get a weird scenario where I met my mom. But I would like to take in that whole heavily romanticized era in baseball, the Brooklyn Dodgers and Ebbets Field, and get to see that for myself. So that would be a nice perk that it just so happened that Jackie Robinson broke in with that team at that time and not a terrible team in a terrible place at a terrible time. I would love to cover the first year of the Dodgers in LA, but it was a bad season. They finished seventh. There wasn't much going on for the game. And so that one is kind of off the board.

But I think in general, that has one of the most cinematic sceneries of a season. Just like LA in the 50s, brand new team, young Vin Scully, everything cool except for terrible. Can write Eric Nussbaum's book before he has a chance to. Totally do it, yeah. Let's see. I feel like the 2015 Royals were pretty fun. Yeah. If you're asking me to pick which team was the most fun to read about by its beat writer, then it would be the 2015 Royals.

Yeah. by its beat writer, then it would be the 2015 Royals. Yeah, that 2014 to 2015 Royals team is probably the most fun team that I have seen and watched a lot of. Not every day, obviously, but as confounding as that team was and the way they kept defying predictions and everything that made them more fun, the way that they won and the way that they played was incredibly fun. So yeah, I'd go back and the way that they played was incredibly fun. So yeah, I'd go back and relive that season, I guess, except that I already lived through that time.

So if I were going to choose a team, maybe you could choose the team of your childhood, say, like the team that you really loved growing up, and you could cover them in a new way. I don't know if you'd actually want to do that because maybe it would puncture some illusions of your heroes of your youth or something. But if I could go back and watch the dynasty Yankees or something that I grew up watching, that would be sort of fun for me to be able to do that with adult eyes and sabermetrically educated eyes. So I would consider it kind of a waste, I think, to relive a season that I had already lived through just for the historical significance of getting to see a different time. The 2012 A's had Brandon McCarthy,

Brett Anderson, and Sean Doolittle. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's a good clubhouse. That was the famous... Was that the... Yeah, that was the famous chemistry clubhouse too. The one where Brandon Inge and Johnny Gomes came and were worth 28 wins or whatever. Yeah, that might be the best for a beat writer if you need a quote. Can't beat that. All right. Yeah. We covered a lot of possibilities.

There's a lot. There's a lot of ways you could go with that. I mean, yeah, the tricky thing too is that, you know, I'm not a good beat writer. Like if I, if you gave me 20 years to do it, then I, I would trust that I would get pretty good at it, but I'm not a good one right now. I wouldn't be a good one if you sent me out there and told me now you're a beat writer, I don't think. And so you'd send me back but i would miss everything like i wouldn't be there when yeah the thing needed to be got so i don't it's a little if i don't know what's going to happen i don't think that i would get the good stuff yes i agree all right stat blast all right i got a couple you have one inspired by listener email, and I have a StatBlast cover of the week submitted for the StatBlast Covers competition. This one is a virtuoso violin performance, instrumental, by Tess Taruskin, or possibly Taruskin, so here's her version.... All right. I actually have two, both inspired by listeners. All right.

I'll do the quick one first. Kyle Lobner notes that Cleveland and Milwaukee have played each other 414 times in franchise history, and the all-time series is tied 207 to 207. franchise history and the all-time series is tied 207 to 207. Are there any other all-time series in MLB history where the teams have met at least this often and are tied? And I will tell you that the answer is no, that there are in history 23,500 matchups that show up in a play index search. 10 of those 23 are either 9-9 or 8-8. None are 7-7 or below because every other team has played each other that many times

or I guess played each other zero times. And of the other 13, one isn't real. It's actually the Kansas City Packers versus the Brooklyn Tip Tops of the Federal League. So they're in the search, but of course they're not a major league team as we typically mean it. And then another one isn't real. They show up because they're in the search but of course they're not a major league team as we typically mean it and then another one isn't real they show up because they're at 500 but cleveland

and detroit are actually not exactly 500 they're 1090 for detroit 1092 for cleveland so they're two games off rounds to 500 that leaves 11 and of 11, most of them are in the teens. The second highest is the White Sox and Astros at 33-33. So Milwaukee and Cleveland at 207-207 is by far the highest number. But I will just say that it's all fake because the search goes back to 1904 and, you know, Cleveland and Detroit played before 1904 too. So this is all kind of a somewhat arbitrary thing. There's nothing innately more interesting. If Detroit wins the next two games, they will be at 500,

and then there will be a third game in the series, and they will no longer be at 500. But the same basic point will be true. So I don't know if any of this is that interesting, but it did, I answered it, and it did reveal something that I think is actually a little bit more interesting that I found on accident, which is that as of right now,

all 29 major league franchises have played the New York Yankees and not one has a winning record against the New York Yankees. Every single team. That makes sense, I suppose. It does, except, well, I mean, it does, because the Yankees have been better than everybody for a century and consistently better. And like, for instance, Baltimore,

who's also been a franchise for that whole time, you know, in different cities before, but have lost almost 500 more games than they have won. They have a 400 winning percentage against the Yankees. The Royals have a 399 winning percentage against the Yankees in 500 games. The Yankees just, you know, crush everybody. But even the interleague teams are all at the moment 500 or lower. And that is news because the Phillies are 15 and 15 against the Yankees. They were actually over 500 until the last time they faced. And the Yankees won two out of three to even the season series at 15,

15. And that was in 2018. And the Dodgers are at eight and eight against the Yankees. And they were over 500 until the last time they met, which was this past year when the Yankees won two out of three. So I don't know if this is the, I presume that until interleague play happened, the Yankees were over 500 against every team in history. I mean, that's basically a mortal

lock, I think. But once interleague play began, I don't know if there had been a time before this where they were over 500 against none of the interleague teams, or I should say under 500. At the moment, they are at least 500 or better against every single team in the majors. So there you go. Okay. All right. The second one is a question from Tyler. And Tyler basically asks this question. He's talking about the difference between pitcher war and hitter war. And he says, if you decided to allot all your dollars to build the best starting rotation possible how many starting pitcher war would you need to overcome a lineup and bullpen that was replacement level at hitting and at fielding to make the playoffs and then he

rephrases it more simply would a 2019 team with a rotation of garrett cole jacob degrom lance lynn max scherzer and justin verlander still be considered a World Series contender if the lineup was, and here he lists a bunch of replacement players, and you answered accurately, a replacement level team is expected to win about 48 games, so you need at least 40 war to be a potential playoff team. The highest team starting pitcher war ever, according to fan graphs, is 27. So if you had 599 Pedro's and a replacement level everyone else, yeah, you'd be good. But if you had any rotation any team has actually had, no. And I feel like the question actually, I'm glad you put answered those two things and put it that way. But I feel like the question actually asks for the third option in the middle, which is not 599 Pedro's and is

also not a team that has ever existed but is the five best pitchers that exist in that year so obviously there have never been 599 pedros i believe the record is one in 99 otherwise you have no 99 pedros but you have other good pitchers there are five best pitchers in the league every year so i simply wanted to see whether the five best pitchers in the league every year. So I simply wanted to see whether the five best pitchers in the league in any year, in any year, would be good enough to make you a great team or a playoff contending team. So I got the five best pitchers every year, starting pitchers every year, and looked at their combined war. And you said you needed 40? Yeah, roughly.

To be a contender? That'd be a mid to high 80s. That'd be a mid to high, right. So you're not a World Series, well, once you get to the postseason, then maybe you would find that those five pitchers have, maybe you'd be dangerous in the postseason, but you might not get there.

A lot of teams win 88 games and don't make the playoffs, but that would make you a contender. You might not get there. A lot of teams win 88 games and don't make the playoffs, but that would make you a contender. So in 2002, the five top pitchers, which at the time were Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling, Roy Halladay, Derek Lowe, and Barry Zito,

they had a combined 41 more, but they started 171 games. And if you're pulling these five pitchers together, you could not start more than 162 games. So if you prorate that to 162 games, they dropped to 39 more. And that is actually the second highest. So every other team is below 40 and then prorated to 162

because most years the top five starts slightly more. Then all of them are below 40, except for one year, one year alone, the 2018 season, the top five actually were worth 44 war and they pitched exactly 162 games. So you don't even have to make an adjustment. So for that one year, it was Aaron Nola, Jacob DeGrom, Max Scherzer, Kyle Freeland, and Blake Snell. They were combined 44 war. If you assume replacement level everywhere else, that would get you to 92. Now, the tricky thing is that Aaron Nola's war that year

and also Kyle Freeland's war were both slightly suspect involving the defense around them, and I don't think either one was as good if you look at Fangraff's war, for instance. So maybe that's slightly exaggerated, but sure, 44. at Fangraph's War, for instance. So maybe that's slightly exaggerated, but sure, 44. Now here's my question for you. If you had these five great starters and they were worth 44 war, do you really think they would only be worth 44 war? Do you really think they would be worth 44 war? Or can you come up with a reason that the sum of those

five pitchers plus replacement level everywhere else would actually be either better or worse than 92 wins other than you know random fluctuation right you know that that they all have healthy full seasons so you're you're not actually having to call up replacements which in theory is is accounted for by the stat But I don't know, maybe the fact that you don't have to risk the variants that you normally do, because you might call up someone and he'll be terrible. He'd be worse than replacement level. And in this case, you know that you don't really have to dip deep into your minor league stockpile. You're going to have these five workhorses and they're always going to go. So that would be good, I think. And maybe the fact that you save the bullpen a lot, so you could use

your relievers in a more optimal way. Like you're not going to have to be bringing them in early just to get through games. And so maybe will stay fresh and and healthy late in the season and you could deploy them in a very efficient way because all of their innings would be late in the game and and high leverage in many cases so i guess that would be good i'm trying to think of anything else like maybe a run saved. I think some studies have suggested is slightly more valuable than a run scored, but I don't know that that would really make an appreciable difference here. I don't know. Is there any other possibility you're considering? Yeah. Well, the run saved, I think is a crucial one. The idea being that a run is worth more in a low scoring game

that it's more likely to determine the outcome. So a pitcher who saves a run in a low scoring environment is worth more than a hitter who adds one in a high scoring environment. So there's that. But generally speaking, if you have five aces, you figure their baseball reference war does not care whether those aces strike batters out or not. They don't really care if you're a strikeout pitcher or not. It's a runs allowed based war system. But usually you would imagine that five aces would also strike

a lot of batters out, in which case the poor defense of your replacement level position players could be less damaging. That's assuming they are poor defenders. So if you had five aces and then all replacement level hitters, but they were actually better than replacement level as hitters, they were just worse than the average as fielders. And so you were sacrificing a bunch of defense in order to get a little bit more offense while trusting your ace pitchers to do more of the job themselves. Also, if you are, you know, if you are an ace, if you have two pitchers and each one allows a hit, the ace is a lot less likely to give up a run with that hit because he's less likely to have runners on and he's also more likely to strand the hit

that he allows because he's less likely to allow another hit afterward and so it could be that uh i don't even know where i'm going with that one yeah i think there's probably some effect there it's like when you add a certain type of hitter to a certain type of lineup, there can be sort of a bonus to that. I don't know if you're a team with a bunch of low OBP power hitters or something and you add a high on base percentage person who's going to be on base for all of those power hitters, maybe there's a benefit there. with starters they're going on different days so there isn't really a lineup effect where they complement each other necessarily unless they're so stylistically different that it's giving opposing hitters different looks and maybe that helps you in a way but otherwise probably there isn't that kind of multiplicative effect but i i bet there's something along the lines of what we're saying yeah yeah what i'm gonna try to rephrase the last thing,

which is that if you have a bunch of aces, it feels like you could maybe build the rest of your replacement level team to make the aces worse by allowing a bunch of singles. Like basically you're going to put a defense behind them that's going to allow a ton of singles because they're really bad at defense. But you don't care that much about the singles because you know the pitchers are so good overall that they will be able to more effectively pitch around the singles, if that makes sense. So in a way, the negative defensive war that your

fielders are on paper producing are not leading directly to runs at the same proportion that they would if you had a league average pitching staff. Uh-huh. Yep. All right. Okay. Do you have time for a last one? Let's do one more. All right. Let's see. This is, well, I've got trout questions that are kind of related. Let's see if we can tie them together maybe here. So one is from Andrew, Patreon supporter, who says, You all, and maybe Meg to a slightly lesser extent, readily acknowledge that you are no longer fans of a team due to writing about the game.

You also gush about your favorite players. Would you consider yourselves fans of Mike Trout? If so, what's the difference between a fan of a team and a fan of a player? between a fan of a team and a fan of a player? And I thought that was an interesting question because I don't consider myself a fan of teams or a team anymore, but I do sort of consider myself fans of a player or certain players. I don't know if I would say fans. I think when writers become writers or journalists, some of them just decide, okay, I can no longer root for a team anymore. I have to be objective. I'm renouncing my allegiances. Others, and I think most probably, just sort of lose it because you're doing this as a daily thing. It's your job. Some of the romance and mystique goes out of it. You get to know the players maybe, and they're just regular people, and you're less awed by them perhaps.

And ultimately, you're covering the game. You're seeing every team. And so it's hard to really retain that allegiance to one team, or at least it was for me. And I briefly worked for the team that I had grown up rooting for, and that sort of made it even harder in a way to continue to be a fan of that team. You'd think it wouldn't because I'd have every incentive to root for them, but something about it being my job just sort of took away the relationship to that team that I had already had. And I think you can be pretty objective and you can cover a team well and write about a team well while being a fan. You know, maybe you can write about it from the fan's perspective sort of. But even if you're not, I think it's possible to sort of separate those things. But it's tricky.

You know, you don't want to be a booster of that team if you're trying to provide pretty objective, informative coverage to people. But with individual players, I think, you know, A, I'm rooting for players to perform a certain way. I don't necessarily think I know them as people or that they're great people. You know, I mean, Mike Trout seems like a very good person from afar. I like the Mike Trout public personality, but I don't really know Mike Trout, and I root for him to do well because I enjoy his excellence. And I think the thing is with players instead of teams is that you're not born to it, right? Like if you're a fan of a team, that's something you inherit. It's just my team, wrong or right, thick or thin. I am supporting this team whether they're terrible or not, whether they do bad things or not. Whereas with a player, you didn't inherit that.

It wasn't drilled into you from birth. You had to pick that player, assuming it's not a player who just plays for your favorite team and that's why you're a fan of them. Something about their personality appealed to you and you chose them. You have some agency in that choice. And if that player is no longer a person worth rooting for, then you can abandon them, which is difficult to do, I think, with a team that you're a fan of. I think I need to talk to some people who are golf or tennis fans to find out how they relate to their favorite players so that I can judge what it means the way that I relate to my favorite players. Cause I don't really know how to put how I feel toward Mike Trout or anybody else within that context. And I would like to know

from somebody since I would like to hear from somebody who definitely identifies as a fan of golf or tennis players and hear them describe it and see if i hear the same thing yeah in which case i could then say oh yeah that's that's me that's fandom i think that i like watching mike trout but i think i like watching mike watching Mike Trout because it's interesting baseball. And given 15 games, I look at him and say, what's the interesting baseball here? And sometimes that's Mike Trout. Sometimes it's a pennant race. Sometimes it's a new pitcher, you know, like a new prospect showing up.

Sometimes it's just a compelling story that day. A lot of times, though, it's Mike Trout or the best player or the best pitcher. A lot of times, though, it's Mike Trout or the best player or the best pitcher. And does that make me a fan or is that just me making a cost-benefit analysis of how to spend my time? I also, separately from that, I also like Mike Trout to do well, but that's because it produces content for me. Yes. for me. And a lot of the time, what I'm rooting for in any game, in a single at bat, is I hope this will make the thing I want to write about become more compelling so that I actually do write about it, or so that I can write about it, or so that when I do write about it, I have a good story. So a lot of times you're just rooting for a double play and you don't care at all about

the next day, you won't care at all about that team or that player, but the double play and you don't care at all about the next day you won't care at all about that team or that player but the double play is good for your lead and so in both of those cases what i've described as a is a very sort of self-centered way of making his achievement work for my benefit yeah and so i don't know if that is any different than every other fan, source of fandom, but it feels a little bit different. It's not, I'm not feeling, I would say that generally speaking, I'm not feeling the joy vicariously, which I think is how I did when I was really passionate about a team.

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, when you're a fan of a team, their success sort of reflects on you in a way, or you adopt it as your own success. You have a pride in it. You have a real stake in it, which I don't really with players, with individuals. There are players I want to do well,

but yeah, part of it is for the content. Like when I really get obsessed with a player, if it's Trout or Williams Estadio or whatever, in general, I am really keying in on them because of their performance on the field. Like I'm generally not that invested in a player because of his personality or backstory or something. I mean, you know, I like Zach Greinke stories. I like the personality of Zach Greinke. Am I a Zach Greinke fan? I wouldn't say so. It doesn't really bring me any particular pleasure when Zach Greinke succeeds, aside from the fact that I think he's an aesthetically pleasing pitcher to watch. And someone like Williams Estadillo, I really got interested in him before I knew that he was even entertaining as a spectator.

I just thought, wow, this guy never strikes out and never walks. This is a unicorn. I am fascinated by how this person exists. And so I want him to play well because I want him to continue to be a story and something I can write about and talk about and marvel at when I see his stats. So does that make me a fan? I don't know. Am I just instinctively recoiling from the idea of being a fan of something? I'm a fan of bands. I'm a fan of people who make other kinds of art and authors and things. So why can't I be a fan of a baseball player? Maybe it's not actually that different. I want them to do well. And no, it's not really

reflecting my own sense of self-worth in the way that it did when I was a fan of a team. But it's not so different to say, well, I'm a fan of Stephen King. I love Stephen King's writing. And I'm a fan of Mike Trout's baseball playing. He's really great at playing baseball and I enjoy it. Yeah, right. You don't have any problem saying that you're a fan of Stephen King's. No. It is no different. It is like you enjoy the experience of it and also you might write about it. Yeah, exactly. Like that's, that's how you relate to many of the things that you consume. Right. And, and I don't question your love for them. So yeah, I don't know. Like I said, I want to hear what a, what a Jordan Spieth head describes as their, their reason for rooting for

Jordan Spieth. Yeah. I used to think that was kind of curious too. When I was a fan of a team, I enjoyed tennis, for instance. I liked watching tennis. I like playing tennis, but I never really got that invested in any particular career because I always thought, well, that's just a person. Why should I care really if that person does well? They're not rooting for me, so why should I really live or die based on whether they win this major or not? I'll enjoy the experience, but it's sort of strange almost to be a fan of that person in a way that it affects your mood. And yet that is how many people interact to people and celebrities and personalities and teams, obviously. So there's nothing really inherently that strange about it.

So yeah, I don't know if I'm just kind of uncomfortable with the idea of describing myself as a fan of someone because I might conceivably interview that person or write a story about that person. And I don't want my reader or listener to think this person is biased because he's a fan of this person, so he's not going to give me accurate coverage. He's going to look at everything through rose-colored glasses. I don't know how you could even do that with Mike Trout and exaggerate how good he is because it's hard to do that. because we want people to hear in our experience and our discussion something that they relate to that is familiar to the way they consume things. And since other people don't have that same inherent un-fan attitude, I worry that people will just not relate to the way that I describe

Mike Trout or anybody, that they will just be, I'm not on the same emotional frequency that they are. And so describing this right here, I'm worried that, I actually worry that it's like aliens or something, right. That we're putting it too, too bluntly. And that people won't believe that we actually like, like really enjoy baseball as much as we do enjoy baseball when we write, watch it and then talk about enjoying it. baseball as much as we do enjoy baseball when we write watch it and then talk about enjoying it yeah it's just that like you know when you have a job you're really you spend a lot of emotional energy hoping that your job will go well like jobs take over your life like i was when we were talking about the stompers the other day i was thinking about but i didn't say but kind of an undercurrent of how i related to that season is that I, I was very quickly a Stompers

fan and I cared a great deal about it working. And I also cared a great deal about the players doing well. And what I really cared about more than anything was that I had already gotten in advance and I was terrified of what would happen if we didn't produce a book. And that was like the thing that caused me stress. And the thing that I was most rooting for was a book to happen out of it. And you just like you become sort of a very greedy hoarder of self interest when when it's your job at stake. And so there is an aspect of like, I turn on a baseball game, and I'm like looking for a thing to benefit me. And so I worry. I worry that that makes it unrelatable.

Yeah. But mostly though, I still feel like I watch baseball the same way that I did. It's like I have to sort of suppress the part of me that is worried about work. And when I do, like the baseball is still there. It's still like I enjoy so many of the same things about it. I enjoy the weirdness of it. And I get really into the drama of it when I'm watching it, especially if I'm watching it without an article that I'm halfway through.

So I can enjoy baseball very well until I'm halfway through an article. And then everything that happens after that has to go in a way that makes the article, the second half of the article work out. Yeah, I think, right. I don't want to sound too cold or clinical about it. We really care about these things and respond to them, maybe not in quite the way that a fan does or that we did when we were really fans. And that was one of the nice things about that Stompers experiment was that I was living

and dying with every pitch in a way that I hadn't since I was a kid. And yes, that was largely self-interest, but also I did care about the team and the players and everything. But I think it's just a reflexive resistance to calling yourself a fan of something just because it's so drilled into you that no cheering in the press box, right? And you have to maintain this impartial journalistic stance about everything. And I think that is helpful in many ways but also you can kind of take it overboard i bet it's okay to enjoy these things and i think if one of these players who i really love and enjoy watching as a baseball player turns out later not to have been a good guy

or something then i'm gonna revise my opinion of him and I'm not going to celebrate him in the way that I once would have. I won't be so blind to his flaws as a person that I would say that, well, I'm just going to ignore this because I like his baseball playing. So I'm not just all in on someone I'm a fan of in the way that when you're a kid and you're following a team, your team and its players can do no wrong and they're larger than life figures to you. Whereas now it's just, well, I admire this person's work. He's very good at his job. He does it in an aesthetically pleasing way. He's hopefully a good citizen too, And I enjoy his career very much. So I think it's fair to call that fandom of a kind. It's just that fandom kind of gets a bad rap. You can be a smart fan who maintains perspective on things, or you can be a fan who just thinks that everything that the

thing he's a fan of is perfect and better than everyone else. So Trout is better than everyone else, but not because I'm a fan of him. All right. Let's end it there. All right. That will do it for today. Many other excellent questions we didn't get to, but we will get to them in future episodes. Thanks to all of you very much for keeping the questions coming at a time when it's probably a little bit tougher to generate questions that aren't related to the coronavirus or when baseball will be back. We need you now more than ever.

Speaking of which, you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already gone to Patreon and signed up to pledge some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Manny Diaz, the Hooper family, Kara, Jeff, and Hayden, Tripp von Minden, Lyndon Barker, and Michael Poplowski. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Your reviews supposedly help us find new listeners, and they also just brighten our day. You can keep your questions and comments coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter.

Thanks to Dylan Higgins, as always, for his editing assistance. If you're looking for some reading material, the paperback version of my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players, is out now. It includes a new afterword, and you can pick it up anywhere books are still being sold. Support a local bookseller if possible. We will be back with another episode later this week. Talk to you then. Pretender, just laughing and gay like a clown. I seem to be what I'm not to see. heart like a crown pretending that you're still around

right okay you ready your vest is off my vest is off but I just can't know something i can't get comfortable ridiculous i've been hearing noises odd unexplained noises since you said hello i'm in the pandemic lounge which is uh has lots of different ground level, floor level seating options. And I've done this in here 15 times and it's always comfortable. And today nothing's working.

All right. Sounds like you're squirming a lot. I am. All right. Anyway. Okay. Here I am. Here we go.