Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1541: Taken Out of Context

Episode Date: May 14, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the difficulty of interpreting the context of old articles about baseball and a man obsessed with smashing certain plate glass windows, then answer listener emails about what qualifies as hitting a ball out of the ballpark and eliminating force outs, plus Stat Blasts about the all-time defensive indifference […]

Oh, and you're a long way from home All of the thoughts you had were not your own Even the time you came was somebody else's time You draw a line between the lines Don't you know that I won't go Hello and welcome to episode 1541 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. Doing some emails today. Anything you want to discuss first? Yeah, some stuff. A few things. A bunch of things.

By complete coincidence today, I was reading an article from 1938 in the new york times and again total coincidence i read this this sentence this paragraph when a club is struggling with a slump there is no telling from which quarter fresh trouble crops up just when lou chiosa looked to be ready for a fresh start at second. What does Lou do but grab a bottle of wintergreen thinking it's an eyewash? Oh. With the result that a doctor had to be rushed into the Giants clubhouse to bring relief. So Lou Chiozza tried eyewash. Literally.

It was not. Yes. And it was wintergreen, which we'll get into in a second. Apparently splashed it in his eyes. It burned and he missed the next six games. Huh? and it was wintergreen, which we'll get into in a second, apparently splashed it in his eyes, it burned, and he missed the next six games. Huh. Yeah.

So maybe that's where eyewash comes from in baseball. Maybe it has nothing to do with the military thing. Maybe it is literally that putting eyewash in your eyes seems like a good idea but only makes you miss six games. Yeah. Well, no wonder it has such a bad reputation. Yeah. That's how it started. So has such a bad reputation. Yeah, exactly. That's how it started.

So I don't exactly know what wintergreen is. I mean, I know what wintergreen is, is a plant, is an oil. But I mean, you know, it's the clubhouse. It's not like they're going to have a... I wouldn't think they would have like food coloring or food extract in there. And so I didn't quite get an answer to this. In fact, I wouldn't say i got

the answer at all uh there there was in the early part of the century wintergreen extracts sold by an apothecary called the toileteen company and they i don't know exactly what the prescription was for miners wintergreen but they sold a lot of cure-all tonics and so i think it might have been considered a tonic i it's really hard to say because you know wintergreen is a common word and so it's hard to find like i i find this article from the new york times in the 19 teens where a man is listing the things in his wife's cupboards. And note where wintergreen appears in the list. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da. The Venetian salts, the bitter salts, the wintergreen essence,

the fruit coloring, the glycerine, the wood alcohol, the java soap, the grease spot soap, the supply of matches. So it seems like maybe something that would be medicinal and perhaps lethal. Anyway, Lucioza apparently splashed this in his eye. But before I fully commit to this story having happened, I will note that I was reading a bunch of old New York Times sports pages and game stories today. So I'm just going to name a couple names and you tell me what you know about him, right?

Okay. Schemalillo. He had an all spinach diet. Exactly. Do you know anything? Prescribed to him. Know anything else? Not really, right?

No, nothing substantial, no. Okay. Eddie Murphy. Eddie. Eddie Murphy, the ball player. Yeah, I had to think for a second to make sure I was getting it right. Eddie Murphy, the ball player. Yeah, I know nothing about Eddie Murphy except that he came up the other day. He led the league

in caught stealing one year. That's what we know about him. Yes, right. Let's see, Freddie Fitzsimmons. Fat Freddie. Fat Freddie. That's about it, right? That's all we know. Yes, mostly the nickname. Okay, good stuff. Jeff Pfeffer. I had never heard of him before episode 1500 you know he has a brother named ed yes that's it and that he's either the big one or the little one and and either the older one or the younger one right and then ned garber you know a fair amount about ned garber talk to him yeah talk to him the late ned garber these are all people who have basically other than ned these are one one one episode cameos in our in our lives and you know i didn't go seek any of these players out i was just looking at old sports sections and every one of them appeared in my day today and you realize when you're going through old sports

sections you start to see you know names that you sort of vaguely remember and then you see them and then like five minutes later you see him againuely remember, and then you see them, and then like five minutes later, you see them again, and then 10 minutes later, you see them again. Bader Meinhof. And you just realize that these players who are only one line in our story are just, they were there every day. They were in every sports section every day. And if you were alive back then, you would know so much about them.

And somebody asked a couple of weeks ago about whether there was a way to appreciate Mike Trout more. And we both basically came down on the side that you don't really need to try. Like as long as you're aware of him and you know he's great, you're exposing yourself to as much Mike Trout as you need to. And you are definitely going to know much, much more about Mike Trout than anybody in the future will know about him. Even his biographer, 80 years from now, will not know as much about Mike Trout as you do. Because you see him, you see the way he moves, you see the way he moves spontaneously. And you understand the context of his career and his place in the world. You understand this very, very kind of

feel-based thing of like where he fits in the huge, huge world. And so the other thing you notice when you're reading about Schemalillo and Jeff Pfeffer and everybody, or about Lou Chiozzo and his eyewash, is that back then, and now too, I'm sure now too. But a lot of times you're not really sure whether it's a joke, whether whether they're joking, you don't quite get the jokes. Like a lot of stuff is sort of sarcastic or exaggerated or is just would be obviously not true to a person then that like they would get the joke. But 70 years later, you're not quite sure if you get it. So that's another reason that you're going to understand Mike Trout better now than anybody else will and appreciate him now in a way that no one else will.

Because all of the writing that's being done about Mike Trout by the people who know Mike Trout the best, only if you live in that particular moment of time can you really even understand the writing. particular moment of time can you really even understand the writing the tone of of writing changes just within a couple years the tone of of tweets the the way that we tweet about things has changed so many times in just the past seven or eight years that if you look at a tweet from 2012 even now there's a pretty good chance you'll misunderstand it if you're reading it out of context anyway lucioza i believe splashed wintergreen in his eyes thinking it was eyewash and missed six games, but I can't say for sure. Yeah, well, that's how the whole Don Mattingly baseball card thing arose,

right? Or I guess that was in the moment even not really understood. That was an actual hoax, so it wasn't something that was misunderstood after the fact. But at the time, maybe some people understood he was joking when he said that his birthdate was different from what his birthdate actually was. But then it ended up on the back of a baseball card, and it came to your attention, and it became part of the historical record there. And no one after the fact knew how that had even happened until you did some digging and until someone asked him about it and he came clean. But that kind of thing could easily be a joke in the moment. And everyone might know it's a joke, maybe not in that case, but in many cases. Yeah. But then you read about it 50 years later and you think, wow, that's just some wacky thing that happened back then.

They sure were gullible. So you do lose some of that context. Exactly. Can I read you my favorite article that I saw in the New York Times, Old New York Times today? This is not a sports article, but this is kind of a man who was inventing his own sport. So the headline is, Grogan loves to smash plate glass windows. Okay. Deckhead, yesterday he broke 16 in the mercantile building.

Deckhead below that had done the same before. All right. Here's the article. I'll read as much as I can before I start to feel like I'm losing you. John Grogan has a passion for smashing plate glass windows, and he admits it. Also, he just loves to smash the windows of the mercantile building at 4th Avenue and 23rd. he just loves to smash the windows of the mercantile building at 4th Avenue and 23rd. Policeman Fitchell of the East 22nd Street Station had stopped yesterday morning at 2 o'clock to ask himself, as he always does once a day, if he had done any worthy deed in the last 24 hours.

When, two blocks away, at 4th Avenue and 23rd, he heard the moan of glass in the throes of disintegration, he found Jack, the glass smasher at work on the plate glass show windows of the mercantile building on the 23rd street side jack had a hatchet he had just finished the last of 16 windows night watchman mean came out then and between him and fitchell jack the smasher was then he came out on the 16th window no No. Where was he for the first 15? No, no, no. Oh, yeah, okay. That's a good point. He might have been scared because between him and Fitchell, Jack the Smasher was taken. So he might have been like, I'm not taking the glass smasher on my own.

I'm going to need backup. Some night watchman. All right. So anyway, well, he was watching. Jack the Smasher was taken much against his will to the east 23rd street station where he said he was john grogan 33 years old and that he lived at the olive inn lodging house all the way over to the station mead kept looking into jack's face muttering fiercely to him and so it's you again blast ye it's you again bless ye for he said he

remembered that in december 1904 jack had been arrested for smashing the same set of windows. Ben, my favorite part is coming up. But was turned loose and did the same thing over the next month, for which he was sent to Blackwell's Island for six months. Why do you break windows? asked Magistrate Finn. I can't bear them windows in that building, answered Grogan positively. I ain't nutty, but I won't have any plate windows in that building. That's all. Oh, sure.

That's not my favorite. Most of the merchants, wait, hang on, blah, blah, blah. There's a bunch of things here about what the merchants put on the sign. Okay. Grogan told the court attaches yesterday that after he left the island in 1905, he got a job as fireman on the steamer Teutonic so that he could keep away from plate glass windows. Oh, I was going to say, if you were a fireman, you probably get to break a lot of windows as part of your job. That's true. Like it could weigh a good outlet for you to get that out of your system. There are places you can go, like you can pay to go to a junkyard or something and smash stuff, right? People do that as just like a cathartic release of energy. But I guess that wouldn't work for him because it had to be those particular windows in that16 that you're describing. So, I mean, look, the point is, besides that that's a great story, is how seriously are we to take that story?

Like all the way seriously? A little bit seriously? By the way, I said 1916. I think this is 1906. All the way seriously? So it's clearly a man named Jack Grogan smashed some windows, I think, unless this is all made up. Then Jack Grogan smashed some windows. I think, unless this is all made up. Then Jack

Grogan smashed some windows. Did he say all this, though? Did he really explain that that's why he became a fireman? I feel like in 1906, a reader would know, would be able to answer that. To us, you kind of feel like you're just being a dupe. It was much more common than for writers to just invent things or make up quotes or certainly make the quotes more colorful. That was just kind of accepted practice at the time. So pretty hard to say. All right. That's anyway, that's what I had to say.

All right. Thank you for sharing those discoveries. So let's do some emails and we can start with one from Daniel who says, John Carl Stanton recently posted a really fun Twitter thread about hitting a baseball out of Dodger Stadium. start with one from Daniel who says, outside the stadium, what is required for a baseball to be hit out of the park? Is it landing beyond the bleachers, beyond the outfield concourse, beyond the walls containing the park? I think we would all agree a baseball hit to McCovey Cove is out of the park, but that's clearly beyond the stadium walls. Is Stanton's triumph misplaced?

Have you watched this video yet? Yes. Okay, I'm going to watch the video because i have not yet seen where this lands uh boom oh well it's not very clear do they show a replay i don't know if there's a replay i read about it just to supplement my watching and from what i could tell it seems like in the video at least it bounces off a roof and out of the park as far as you can tell the people in the back row of the stadium of the the final row they're not like reaching up for it like they're just sitting there and they watch it go

over and then they turn around and look at it bouncing so it's it's over the top people for sure yeah it's not clear from our angle what is exactly behind them but but there is i uh underneath those bleachers there's hot dog vendors and then there's like some walkway that goes out to the gates. I don't know. I'm going to guess it's like 75 feet of concrete that goes out to the parking lot. Yeah. I read about it somewhere, and it said it hit off a canopy, the back of a canopy in the outfield pavilion, and then it did bounce out of the stadium, according to this article I read. So to me, that counts. To me, that's out of the ballpark on account of the bounce on account of

it never landed in the ballpark really i mean it it landed on a a roof that was inaccessible to people so let me just pause real quick okay okay so if it had hit wherever it hit and then it had just like landed and popped right and not bounced at just went poof, would it have been out of the park by your definition? No. Okay, so it needed to bounce out. But I don't think any bounce would count. a dozen times and some kind of Rube Goldberg thing happened and it was out of the park but not really still carrying then I don't think that would really count or if it I mean I don't think it has to be on the fly necessarily if it hits off a roof or some other object and carries it's not

like it got a boost from anything it it just continued to carry and if that pavilion roof had not been there it would have just kept sailing out of the park right so i to me i think it counts okay if the pavilion roof had not been there it would have well i guess i don't think it would have been out of the park really if if the wall hadn't been there every ball would be out of the park but so my answer to daniel was and i don't know if i'm totally on board with my answer but my answer to daniel is that to be out of the park it must be uh where you do not need a ticket to pick it up so anywhere within the confines of the stadium that requires entry is is the ballpark. So the ballpark extends outside of the circular seating area. It has to reach car land. Okay. Now, as to the bounce, I told Daniel that

if it bounces where it could be caught by a paying customer, like for instance, the concourse at Oracle Park, and then bounces into the water, not out of the park. And that happens kind of sort of frequently, I think, because it's elevated and there's all these people up there in the standing room. And if it bounces off that, it goes into the water. To me, not out of the park because it landed clearly within the park. The question is if it bounces, the question that I'm not convinced on one way or the other is if it bounces on something that is above any fan, but that it requires the bounce within the stadium confines in order to get out of the stadium, is it out of the park?

And I just do not know. I think that in that case, I would say, yes, it's out of the park. But my understanding of the geography of this Dodger Stadium here is that there's a fair amount of space there that it really like it probably came up 40 or 50 feet shy of the parking lot and only got there because of the bounce. So it's not like it's not like it was on its way. I think that it was well short. But on the other hand, that's sort of a quirk of this ballpark that that's all dumb wasted space back there. And they didn't need to build it that way. And you don't really see it. And you don't really think of that as the ballpark. And maybe my you need to buy it. You know, you need to not need a ticket to get it rule is too demanding because here I feel like he definitely has hit it out of the ballpark except

for that technicality. So I'm kind of on the fence. I have been unable to get a consistent definition that I can accept. I want to say that this one is out of the park, but it does not match the definition that I had come up with. Yeah. To me, maybe there is a you know it when you see it element to this, which is not very satisfying. It seems like something you should be able to define. And I don't know if we are biased towards saying it's out of the park because it's Stanton and because he's this Herculean figure. And if someone else had hit it, we would say, eh, not out of the park. But Stanton, you want it to be the legend of Jean-Claude Stanton driving a ball out of the ballpark and a ballpark where balls don't routinely leave. So that makes it more fun, I think.

It's fun, obviously, when a ball leaves Wrigley or something. We just talked about a Wrigley field home run out of the ballpark on our last episode. But if it is a McCovey-Cove shot or something, it's great, but it's just something that the ballpark makes possible. It's really special when it's something that the ballpark actively tries to prevent, and somehow someone circumvents all the obstacles and manages to get it out of there. And sometimes it's because they're John Carlos Stanton, and they're incredibly strong, and they hit a ball really well. Sometimes there's the Bernie Williams hit a ball out of Yankee Stadium in batting practice. So, you know, it's automatically less impressive. But he hit it out not the way that, like, Mickey Mantle is supposed to have hit a ball out of a ballpark,

just like on the roof or hitting one to the top of the ballpark. But he hit it in that little gap where you can see the train go by. It's like, you know, over the bleachers. It's a really impressive shot to get it out there on the fly but if he had hit it a little bit to the right or left it would not have been out of the ballpark because there wouldn't have been a gap there so it's not like he hit it over he just found the hole sort of which is impressive still but not quite as impressive and it's batting practice so who really cares but i think that it was Stanton that

it was in a place where you don't usually see this to me it's good enough like it was close enough it was off a part of the ballpark that no one could have gotten it and maybe that is the best definition it works for me in this case at least it's an odd thing because clearly a 530 foot home run in a ballpark that is 540 feet long is more impressive than say a 400 foot home run in a ballpark that is 540 feet long is more impressive than say a 400 foot home run in a ballpark where 390 is out of the park. It's a definition that in some ways misleads. And so you really do sort of want to have a different standard for each ballpark because the whole point is to create a secondary level of impressiveness.

And if it's impressive at one ballpark, then define it however it needs to be to be impressive, I think. And it's just not going to be something that you can probably do consistently. If I had to do a consistent definition, I have now settled on it must land beyond the last paying fan who can watch the game so where stanton's landed there are fans milling about with their beer and their hot dog down at ground level but they can't see the game they're beyond behind the bleachers they're i think they're well i don't know what they're doing now but my guess is that 12 years ago or more that was the smoking section they can't see the game so they're not in my opinion within the stadium confines in the same way so it has to be over if a fan who's watching through the knot hole catches it that's okay because that fan's not a

paying fan but over a paying fan that is over the last paying fan that was watching the game seems to me a fair standard and i will note that the official dodger stadium definition does have stanton's as being out of the stadium they have five listed including stanton's which at 475 feet is the fourth longest to go out of the stadium according to dodger stadium records willie stargell went 506 feet six inches now the fact that they added six inches the fact they added six inches tells you that it was a publicist who went out and fake measured it yeah and so that's um made up right as most of these things are when people measure how far a ball went or when they used to where it was just like let's pace the number of steps it takes to get there and we don't actually know where it landed and we're just guessing about everything but we'll pick a number that sounds pretty impressive and

is maybe like six inches longer than the next most impressive ball it's like the scott boris approach to getting contracts for his clients where he just wants one dollar more i mean more if he can get it but he wants that record even if it's broken very quickly after that all right question from eric and you had a response to this one that i was not anticipating and that i think eric was not anticipating so i'm looking forward to hearing you justify it eric said this question has been bugging me for a few days is Is the rule, which states that a run does not count if it occurred on the same play as a force out, that marks the final out of an inning a good rule?

I've never seen anyone question it, so maybe that's proof enough things are just fine the way they are. But could the game be slightly improved if the rule was changed such that the run still counts as long as the runner crosses the plate before the force out was made. Doesn't the current rule essentially just rob us of an exciting infield in-play or two

and a potential web gem or two every game without really benefiting anything? Changing the rule should theoretically be a small boost to hitters who are good at putting the ball in play, which is supposedly something the league wants. Am I missing some obvious exploit that this rule prevents, or should I start a movement to change things? And so my response, which I can't believe I've really I've never I've never stated this. Yeah, I don't know. exist anymore and that if you were to invent baseball with modern players and modern equipment or even 1900 players and 1900 equipment there wouldn't be force plays uh that force play only makes sense in a sport where it's extremely hard to convert outs which it used to be when you were fielding barehanded and when they hadn't invented the what what was the the guy invented the uh

running throw or something? Like he invented like throwing from his back foot or something? Yes, the first infielder to figure out how to like field and transfer and throw in one motion. Yeah, exactly. So back then, if you put the ball in play, it was like when we watch our friend Joe Bilheimer in vintage baseball. Like every time a ball is in the air, you hold your breath because you think, well, that's going to be hard to catch. And they only catch some of them. And I think that probably when they invented baseball, it made sense that you couldn't possibly expect an infielder to field the ball, throw the ball and then have the person catch the ball and tag them every time too hard.

You'd have I mean, they were already at the beginning scoring 30 runs a game. So this would just be way too, too much. Nowadays, there's no suspense whatsoever on a routine ground ball. It's too easy. There's like, it's, it's, there's no tension, right? Once the ball is hit, you know that the player is going to be beat. You know that the play is easy for everybody to make. And so you're just waiting until those four seconds pass. And a lot of times the runner doesn't even feel the need to run that hard because he knows how easy it is. If I have one philosophy for what baseball rules should change or should promote, it's more chase. I think that more chase is good for everything. So anything you can do to create more chasing of base runners, I think that more chase is good for everything. So anything you can do to create

more chasing of base runners, I think that's good. Anything you can do to create more chasing of baseballs, I think that's good. So you want to chase a lot of things. And this is a way that you would create a chase in every play. If every play is a tag play, then you'd have a lot more pickles. You'd have a lot more value in being quick, in being athletic. And you would make every play suspenseful because you can't take any tag for granted necessarily. Tags are fairly hard to make. I mean, I watched a Korean game from last night where the guy was coming home

and he was thrown out by like 12 feet and he was safe because tags are hard and he just avoided the tag and so you have that on every play at first base i think it would make the game more interesting and and yeah i just don't think we need to make it easy ground balls are too easy as it is and so make it harder in my opinion so you don't want a strike zone you don't want four sets it's just gonna be the wild west out there it's gonna be people chasing chasing everyone around and defining the strike zone however they feel like it. It's anarchy.

I mean, you say I don't want a strike zone. That's not to say I don't want umpires. I want umpires. I want to have pitches called balls and strikes. I just don't think that the strike zone itself is the right way to handle it, given that for 100 years, everybody has agreed that it's better that they don't call the rulebook strike zone. I mean, to me, it's reflecting what everybody has already represented is in their wishes, which is to have different strike zones on different types of pitches, on different counts in different

situations, lefty righty. And so I'm just saying, if you're going to do it that way, then get rid of the strike zone. That's a totally different thing. You can go read that article. I don't know if it holds up. I don't even know if it's still on the internet. But yeah, no force plays seems right. Now the question is, I mean, that to me seems like a no brainer. Everybody agrees with that. The question is, the question is whether you have no force outs and no baselines, which is probably my, I go back and forth throughout the course of every day, like have no force outs and no baselines, which is probably my, I go back and forth throughout the course of every day. Like obviously no force outs, but do I also want no baselines? And I just can't decide.

Yeah, we all wrestle with that one. Yeah, I mean, I think I'm with you on chasing being good and base running action being good and who doesn't like a pickle and the longer the better. The best. being good and who doesn't like a pickle and the longer the better the best yeah but a wouldn't you have some injury concerns if you're if there are no force outs at first base and the first baseman has to tag everyone and someone's barreling down the line and the first baseman's got to be in a position to catch the ball but then also be in a position to apply the tag like that's how you sometimes do see injuries in that situation, right?

When the first baseman has to reach out to make a tag on a guy who's sprinting to first and no one can see the other guy because they're focused on their own stuff. And then someone breaks an arm or something. That just seems like to me, maybe it's a safety issue, at least at first base. And then I don't know if I could make the mental adjustment, like if there had never been force outs and you just told me, yeah, you got to tag everyone all the time. I guess I would be used to that, but I don't know if you just suddenly instituted that, whether I would feel like those hits or whatever you would call them were legitimate, you know,

like how many routine grounders or what I have internalized as a routine grounder over the years would suddenly be not an out? And to me, I just don't know if I could adjust to that. It might just feel to me like, this is cheap. He should be out. He rolled over on a little grounder. Pitcher did his job. And now because the tag wasn't applied applied it's no out i i would sort of feel like that was undeserved or unearned in some way even though like tag avoidance is great nothing better than a clever tag avoidance and nothing better than a brilliant tag application either like a hobby bias special so in a way this would make that skill and avoiding tags much more valuable. And we'd probably see a lot more of that. And that would be great. But I do have some serious reservations

here. So the first one about there being injuries, that is also my most serious reservation. I worry about the injuries. I think that you would probably have to get rid of the running through first base rule, which is not hard to imagine imagine doing you already can't run through other bases and other bases have mandatory tag rules and things work out just fine so in that sense i i think it would it would be like uh there would have to be a secondary rule change and you maybe maybe you're just too committed to the running through the first base rule that you can't abide by this but the other thing is that I just think that I generally think that players have a certain amount of risk that they are willing to play with in their style of play.

And this is the Peltzman effect, right? Where if something becomes less risky, then people take more risks to kind of absorb an equilibrium of risk level that they're comfortable with. And if something becomes more risky, then they become more cautious. And so I suspect that you would have players not running into injuries intentionally, that there would be, for the most part, there would be a fairly consistent level of injuries, even in this scenario, because people would, first baseman would figure out ways to be more defensive with the way that they cover

the bag for instance as it is now first baseman it is regularly the case that first baseman are straddling the bag almost or like standing right on top of the bag and forcing runners around them in a way that seems very intentional and very aggressive as an active defense and that seems to have caused uh you know a fair number of either injuries or close calls over the past few years. And so they're already taking unnecessary risks. I think that if you made it a bit more violent down there, then you would see them act more defensively and not quite so carelessly with the way that they play first base. But I forget where else I was going with that. Anyway, yes, I wouldn't want people to get to get injured but i think that like we we know that we know that the fielders and the

runners are capable of doing plays where tags are necessary and that uh they they manage to not get hurt doing it yeah i like the idea of having fewer routine plays though just like having more things in question at all times because because you want surprise, you want suspense, right? And as you said, with the majority of ground balls, you have very little suspense. Something occasionally goes wrong, but in this world, every play, the outcome would be in some sort of doubt. So in an entertainment sense, that might actually enhance things. I just, I don't know, I wonder whether it would actually increase offense all that much if you are taking away

the running through first base rule so that you would have guys needing to slow down going into first. So on the one hand- Well, slow down only a little though. Slow down to slot, which is, it does slow them down, but it doesn't slow them down that much. I mean, in fact, I know that we all get mad

when people dive into first base because it slows them down, but that is slightly controversial. That position that it slows them down is, in fact, slightly controversial, and that there does seem to be something about the way that you pivot your body on like kind of an axis that does get the top half of your weight to first base faster, that compensates for the slowing down of your momentum. And while it probably slows you down, it's very, very little. And so, you know, it probably wouldn't slow them down that much if they had to slide into first base, just like they do other bases.

Okay. Did you have one more thing you wanted to say about this? The thing about how you are so used to, you know, what a base hit is that it would cause you disorientation. Yes, almost everything I say is a good idea if you're creating it for people who've never seen baseball before, and a terrible idea if you've become accustomed to baseball and you have calibrated everything you expect. So these are changes that I probably would not actually appreciate if someone made them to my game. I'm speaking more about the world where you're uh you know reinventing it for people who've never seen it before which probably doesn't have a lot of utility but you know that's what we

talked about all right stat blast time i've got a couple and you probably have one but first we have our guest stat blast song cover of the week and last, you requested a version with hand claps and you got your hand claps, courtesy of Jonathan Crimes, who went really heavy on the hand claps. You can't complain about the quantity of hand claps in this cover. They'll take the data that's ordered by something like ERA- or OPS+, and they'll tease out some interesting detail, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways.

Here's today's StatBlast. All right, what do you got? Okay, so this one is prompted by a listener email, which was in turn prompted by the story about Armando Galraga that was published in The Athletic this week. Someone caught up to Galraga and asked him how he's feeling about his imperfect perfect game 10 years after it happened. And it turns out he's still not feeling great about it, still thinks it should be a perfect game. And he wants MLB to change that non-out to an out so that he will be credited with a perfect game. And he said, why not? Why wait for so long? I don't want to die. And then they'll be like, you know what? He threw a perfect game. And he said, why not? Why wait for so long? I don't want to die.

And then they'll be like, you know what? He threw a perfect game. And I doubt that will happen. I don't think so. Yeah. I don't think that's going to be a problem. I don't think they're going to revisit this postmortem because I don't think they will ever. I mean, maybe a compromise would be that we tell them that we will. Yeah, sure. And then... Yeah, no problem, Armando. Yeah, no, they should not do that. There's obviously a slippery slope issue there and so many incorrect calls. And I Harvey Haddix's famous game that was perfect into

the 13th inning was then, after the fact, reclassified as not a perfect game. That's different, though. That is a semantic difference. That's whether we call it perfect or not. They weren't taking away an out or giving him an out that was not recorded at the time. And yes, it's unfair, and it was a bad call call and we all know it should have been a perfect game and everyone saw it seconds after the fact, but it's worked out all right for him in certain ways. He got a book out of it. It's reflected well on him how he's handled it up until this point. It's arguably much more memorable that it worked out this way, but I'm not going to begrudge him feeling aggrieved because he had a reason to be. But yeah, there's no great argument there, I don't think, for revisiting this.

Can we just pause? I totally agree that it makes sense that he would be aggrieved and I feel bad for him even 10 years later. But it is really something amazing about the human mind that this turned out to be so much better for him in all you know pretty much all practical ways right like his his start is more famous than it would be as a perfect game i mean i think his start is considerably more famous than dallas braden's or philip umbers and it's only probably going to get more famous will it i don't know maybe i think yeah that's the best argument is i think it will get less famous okay all right mind then. When we're all dead and no one remembers what the reaction was in the moment, then, you know, a hundred years from now, if there's still baseball and it's still being broadcast and someone puts up a list of here are all the perfect games or, you know, someone tweets out a list of the perfect game people, he won't be on it. And that's maybe some notoriety that he is not going to get after the fact. I don't know that it would bother him at that point because he won't be around. But, you know, he'll know that he won't be on that list.

that play was a really significant moment in the instant replay conversation. And it took a couple more years before they changed the sport and had replay review in games. But, but I really remember that being like the, the, the moment when it just became like, well, come on, this is, this is cruel to the players. It's cruel to the umpire more than almost anything else and the inevitability of replay review seemed to really kick in at that point and so if if armando galarraga becomes really famous for being the victim of the play that brought in instant replay then he will be more memorable than umber and and brayden uh centuries from now and so it feels to me like what they should do as a kind of a compromise and to to do what they can is to like i don't know maybe rename the cameras the galaraga cam something like that or you know not the cameras the uh headphones or the

or the the boot you know the the the booth in chelsea instead of saying let's go to chelsea say let's go to the galaraga cams and and that forever will be known like people will know that play as the reason that we have replay which some people will not consider that a tribute to him but it will make him very memorable and i think in a hundred years certainly people will find it you know hysterical that there was ever not replay so i don't think there will be quite as as much risk that people will hold it against gal that point yeah good point all right so anyway that story prompted this question from one of our patreon supporters who goes by knife dad he says looking at the box score for galaraga's perfect game i noticed that jason donald was allowed to take both second and third base after the botched

call but before the final out thus being credited with defensive indifference twice in one inning And I went about it the same way I often go about these things, is that I emailed Dan Hirsch at Baseball Reference, and I didn't even know whether this was tracked or whether it was accessible somewhere, but Baseball Reference does have defensive indifference records from RetroSheet, and I have the all-time leaders here, and it sort of surprised me and prompted some additional questions, but the all-time leader in defensive indifference is Ichiro Suzuki with 36. I don't know if I would have guessed in that neighborhood for what the all-time leader would have. I don't really know that I would have had any idea, but that's the most on record Ichiro with 36.

And then if you look at the top 10 or almost all of the top 10, it's all recent guys. the top 10, it's all recent guys. It goes A-Rod, 33, Carl Crawford, 23, Gerardo Parra, 22, Brett Gardner, 22, Jimmy Rollins, 21, Ryan Braun, 21, Joe Maurer, 21. So at this point, I'm thinking, well, this stat must not have existed for long, or maybe RetroSheet just wasn't tracking it for very long. It can't be that all the all-time leaders are recent guys. But then the next name on the list, P Trainer. So, okay, Pi Trainer has 20. So clearly this has been around for a while. And Ricky Henderson, by the way, because that was the guess, he only has 17 and other people have 17. Rogers Hornsby has 17. So clearly this has been tracked for a while, but I was kind of curious why it seems to be

so many recent guys. And Dan sent me a list of the yearly totals that RetroSheet has tracked. So that kind of tells the story here, but it's not a very clear story. It's not that they suddenly started tracking them. It seems to ebb and flow over time. So you go back to like the 1920s, they were tracking a fair amount. Like there were 122 defensive indifferences in 1925 when there were fewer games and fewer teams. That's kind of a lot. But then in, you know, 1940, there were nine. But then if you fast forward to like 1999, there were 157. So it seems to fluctuate over time. It's kind of like box, I think, where they decide that they want to give out box for a while and then they stop giving out box and it just kind of comes back into vogue. So

there is this era effect here where for years and years, like in the 30s, there were a fair number of defensive indifferences and then 40s, not really. 50s, not really. 60s, not really. 70s, not really. 80s started to pick up a little bit. And then all of a sudden in the 90s, it came back. And then in the 2000s, it's been full swing defensive indifferences. Like there were 244 in 2019, and it looks like the record is maybe 352 in 2012. So anyway, Dan didn't know exactly why this was, so I emailed David Smith, the founder of RetroSheet, to ask him about this, and I wondered whether maybe it was that some stolen bases were getting classified as defensive indifference in some years and not others. And David said,

The changing totals are interesting. However, the suggestion that we may have miscoded defensive indifference as stolen bases or vice versa is a complete non-starter. We match these values for every player and note discrepancies for the very few cases where we disagree. So the totals that were compiled from our data have been thoroughly proofed. So he is saying that these are the official defensive indifference totals. And then he went on what he acknowledged was a little bit of a rant about scoring decisions. And he said, there is no doubt that defensive indifference is much more common now. 100 years ago, almost all of these plays were scored as stolen bases. Then there was what I call a quote-unquote moral push not to reward players who were undeserving.

All the quotes are intended to convey my annoyance at such a concept of purity in baseball statistics. The same is true for not awarding an RBI to a batter who grounds into a double play. Throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s, official scores routinely scored RBI on those plays. Similarly, charging a runner with caught stealing when he, quote, would have been out except for the shortstop dropped the ball is an appeal to some sense of merit. However, note that if a batter hits into what would have been a grounding into double play, but the first baseman drops the ball, then that batter is not charged with grounding into a double play. I see that as a moral double standard.

So he wants us just to call it like it happened and not make any judgment calls about who was deserving of this or that. Just say what happened. And I did come across an article in The Times from 2009 where Jack Curry wrote about the history of defensive indifference and talked to the official scorer in New York at that time, Bill Shannon, who had been a scorer for 31 seasons. And according to Elias in this article, this is a rule that came about in 1920, although it seems like Retro Sheet has a few records even earlier than that. But Bill Shannon, the official scorer, says it's an old rule and a very good rule. And he essentially says what David was criticizing, I am loathe to give away statistical achievements. And then he says achievement is not a gift. So he likes the idea

of distinguishing here. But it is debatable because there is another quote in here in this article that notes that it's the only way to advance that doesn't show up in the stat column, except that, I guess it does in some obscure stat column that I've uncovered here. But Nate McClouth said that in the article that he feels like you should get something for doing it because you did advance and you don't get any credit for it. it was instituted in 1920 and you sort of just get the feeling that there's a big a big number of them in the 1920s because when you say all right we have a stat now we're going to use this then everybody uses it they're very alert to it uh it becomes like the new sort of reform movement and then after a few years people get bored of it and say why am i using this

i don't like it and so then it's really rare and uh it really does feel very familiar to me that sometime around the late 90s we as a culture started to get really scoldy and uh it seems one of the things that's always seemed weird to me about defensive indifference is that it is nevertheless an earned run if that if that runner scores on the next hit i mean which is it in my in my opinion but i think that it would be perfectly fine not to have defensive indifference you already have a culture in the sport among the players of discouraging stolen bases that the defense is relatively indifferent toward. And so to put this extremely narrow definition in place that in the ninth inning, it doesn't

count. But, you know, like in the eighth, if you steal up by, you know, if it's 13 to nothing in the eighth and you steal, you get a stolen base. Yeah. And yet in a lot of times, defensive indifference itself, I think, is sometimes inconsistently called, where sometimes if you steal to get to second base and take the force off in a, well, I guess in a lot, that's what it always is. If you steal second base, you're taking the force off. And sometimes the broadcasters actually will say like, well, that, you know, that, that matters. That keeps them from having a play at second base. So there's even a strategic benefit. You're not just doing it to rack up the stats.

You have a real strategic benefit to getting to second base. So it seems really dumb to have it. In this article, Steve Hurt from Elias said it's a good rule because it protects the spirit of what a stolen base is. And he cited an article from 1920 when that rule was being changed in the Chicago Tribune, and the the headline was cut out the joke steals. So I guess people were really railing against non-legitimate steals or what they saw as non-legitimate at that time. But there's an argument in this article here that I will cite.

It says there are examples of players accumulating statistics in other sports because opponents do not defend them. Basketball players go unguarded in garbage time. In football, a team that has a 28-point lead with two minutes left will surrender chunks of yardage. And then there's a quote from Brett Gardner, who we now know is one of the all-time leaders in defensive indifference. So not an unbiased sorts here, but he says, that's football though that's different why is it different you're trying to eat the clock in football bill shannon the scorer said we have a linear game the clock will never eliminate the other team so that's why they're saying that we can have this in other sports but not in baseball hmm i am surprised a little bit that it's each row i would not have

thought that defensive indifference would necessarily correlate to speed since it usually isn't a base stealer who's doing it. It's usually dictated by the circumstance, by the situation. And in fact, I would guess that if Ichiro were to go in the same situation that say Adam Dunn were to go, that Adam Dunn would have been more likely to be credited with a defensive indifference because it doesn't look like a steal if Adam Dunn is doing it. And since it's a judgment call, you would look at that and say, well, that's not a stolen base. Adam Dunn. Yeah. Good point.

Yeah. I don't know. I guess Etro was on base a fair amount and I guess he had a tendency to take that base when he could. So something I didn't know about Etro. Yeah. It's interesting because, you know you if you really were okay i don't know this is probably an overly simplistic way of viewing types of people so this is probably unfair to everybody but if you i would guess that the in general the people who are worried about you getting a stolen base that you didn't

have to work for are also the people who would maybe be more suspicious of stats in general right yeah nah nah i don't know i'm gonna take that i was just gonna i was gonna wander over to the idea of uh win probability added stats, which you can also have for base running stats. You can have more advanced base running metrics that treat all of these things under the same consistent objective analysis, where if you were to steal second base and your run didn't matter, you, it would be acknowledged. It would be calculated. It wouldn't cause a huge change in your team's win expectancy, though. And so you wouldn't get a big base running boost.

Whereas if you stole second base in a base stealing situation, then you would get a boost. And so if you wanted to, you could just do it that way. But that sort of more it's like, I don't know, I guess take back what I was saying about the different types of people and just simply say that all of us, we have a kind of degree of specificity that we want our stats to aspire to, but no further. Yeah, that's true. Well, last week you looked for an official score bias when it came to errors. I'd be very curious about an official score bias when it came to defensive indifference versus stolen bases. Because in this article at the end, Shannon, the official scorer says Yeah. If Henderson finished with 999 career steals, that was Shannon's way of saying he was never altering his call. So Shannon loves the defensive indifference.

He was not going to change it for anyone under any circumstances. But other people may not have been so resistant to that pressure. So possible there is a score bias where if you're a visiting player, you get the defensive indifference. But if you're the home player, you get the steal. Other people might have been so spiteful that they actually retired on 999 just so that they could get credit for that stolen base that had been deprived of them yeah or that they had been deprived from them that they had been deprived of yes all right i have a couple other quick ones but if you have a meteor one you could do that one uh you have a couple of other quick ones.

I'm saving mine. Okay. All right. Mine will hold. Mine's from back when they still played baseball. So it'll be current next week. Okay. Well, this one is from Clayton.

And he says, I was playing MLB The Show tonight and had what seemed to be a strange stat line. Final score, Dodgers 15, Cubs 7, Walker Bueller with 7 earned runs and the win, while Hugh Darvish had 6 earned runs and the loss. It made me think, what has been the biggest difference between each starter or winner of the game and their losing counterparts in earned runs? Maybe this has been on the pod before, but it struck me as something that probably doesn't quite happen often, and definitely not with a large range.

So the winning pitcher has more earned runs allowed than the losing pitcher. He wants to know if that's common and what the biggest gaps are. And for this one, I went to listener Adam Ott, who is a regular in our Facebook group and often answers questions for people. He has a database and the skills to query it, and he has been very helpful. So I asked him to look into this one, and the situation that Clayton is describing where it's just a one-run difference, that's not really unusual at all. It's not really uncommon for this to happen. In fact, since 1918, it has happened about 11,000 times. So that's not rare, although there are a couple reasons that this can happen,

if you think about it. The first reason it can happen is that the losing pitcher had a lot of unearned runs. So he's still given up a lot of runs, but they're just not credited to his line. The other way it can happen, and it's very common for this to happen is for a reliever to come in and give up the lead when the opposing starter is still in the game so the reliever gets the loss with only a couple of runs allowed while the starter who's in there for the long haul gets the win while potentially allowing many more runs so that is still that one at least is still in the spirit though because the starting pitcher who left with the lead went shorter than the starting pitcher who was showing, which is probably very common. Yeah. OK. All right.

Right. Yeah. So the biggest disparity ever happened in a June 2nd, 19 up 11 earned runs in six and a third innings. And the losing pitcher, reliever Art Delaney, gave up no runs or no earned runs in his one third of an innings pitched. He gave up one unearned run and was the hard luck loser. What would you call this? Like the good luck winner? Is that what this is? The guy who wins despite giving up more earned runs? I guess it's the opposite of the hard luck loser. So Donahue, who was the winner but gave up all those runs, he gave up seven of his runs later in the game after the Reds had scored a bunch more runs off of other pitchers to take a large lead.

So that's the reliever case, and that's the biggest differential. So 11 runs in that case. So for the kind of game that Clayton was probably really more interested in, where both the winner and the loser are the starting pitcher, the biggest disparity is nine runs, which has happened five times, but not since 1941. So in the past 40 years, the biggest gap is only 5 runs and That happened most recently in a July 26, 2011 game Between the Mets with John Neese pitching

And the Reds again With Johnny Cueto pitching So this has become less Common over time and Adam Made some graphics to show the frequency Of this. It's a little less Common for it to happen for any Reason or with any disparity

in earned runs, but it's become very uncommon for it to happen with a big earned run difference. Like more than a two earned run difference is very unusual now. And again, all of these record ones happened in the 40s. Like you go back there, a lot of them in the 20s and the 30s. So it seems to be an artifact of pitcher usage that seems to be what's changing this because guys aren't going as deep into games and so i guess there are fewer opportunities for this to happen than there were when you would be left in for a long time even if you were allowing a lot of runs and you could still be the winning pitcher even though you had given up a bunch so this is

something that doesn't really happen anymore with a giant disparity like that but it's still not uncommon for it to happen with some number between them yeah you know it's not just that there are fewer long outings which it would be helpful to to have in a situation like this but at least i have seen it suggested, I believe this is true, but I'm not currently looking at the math that proves it, but that there are fewer super short outings because starting pitchers who get roughed up these days are expected to stay in and throw some pitches

because the bullpens just aren't capable of eating nine innings. Whereas back in Pete Donahue's day, your relievers would all be capable of going 24 innings in a game as well. Everybody was just throwing as much as they wanted. And so in this game, for instance, Kent Greenfeld was pulled after four batters, and that's why he only allowed four runs but took the loss. Hardly anybody would be pulled after four batters these

days they would leave you in for at least i would say at least nine or ten at the minimum and really they want to get you through you know three or four because every pitcher can only throw one inning after you yep less bell in that game had three homers and a triple which is surprisingly not as rare as i thought it was seven of of those, including by Kendry Morales. Three homers and a triple. That's a day. Last one I got here. This should be quick.

This is Gary from Columbus, another Patreon supporter, who says, I was perusing said Landrum's baseball reference profile for some reason, and I noticed in the first game and last game areas at the top of the page that he went one for one in both games, meaning he batted a perfect 1,000 in the bookend games of his career. This struck me as something that feels fairly rare, although you can limit your at-bats in these games, and if you do that, it seems doable. How common is this, and what is the most combined hits by a player with perfection in these two games? This would have to exclude players for

whom their first and last game happens to be the same game. So Adam went after this one again, and he did exclude some people who played only one game but were perfect in that game, like John Pichorek was 3 for 3 in his only game, and Hal Deviney was 2 for 2 in his only game, and Hal Deviney was 2-for-2 in his only game, but also had a 15 ERA in that game, didn't get another one. But there were 599 players with perfect debuts and 535 players with a perfect final game, but only 36 players were perfect in both the first and last game of their career. And this is going back to 1918, I think, and only including players who both their first and last game of their career. And this is going back to 1918, I think, and only including players who both their first and their last game was in the data.

So there were some players that weren't included because of that, but only 36. The most recent being Jeremy Hermita, a player I don't typically associate with perfection, but he went one for one in his 2005 debut. That was a homer. And then also one for one in his 2005 debut. That was a homer. And then also one for one in his 2012 finale. And somewhat surprisingly to me, this has never even happened with someone who did it with more than three combined hits. Maybe it's not that surprising,

but like Ernie Lombardi, for instance, his debut in 1931, he went two for two, and his final game, he went one for one. That's three hits. There's one other guy who had three, Don Hurst, 1928 and 19 least someone who went two for two or three for three or something. But I guess those games are rare enough. And we're talking about first and last game only here. And plus, most guys probably are not at their peak in their first game and last game. They're probably rushed up to the big leagues and they're nervous or maybe they're at the tail end of their career and they're just hanging on. So they're more likely to make out in those games anyway but you put those two things together and it's never happened no one's actually gotten more than one hit in a perfect game in both their first and last poor cedric cedric cedric landrum said landrum he had to wait three years

to celebrate this fact because uh you know his career wasn't actually over until he washed out of the minors. I wonder if that's true of everybody. I wonder if anybody popped the champagne from joining this list of prestigious first and last bookenders. Yeah, I don't know. One more thing. This is off topic, but have you been aware of the fact that there is a Snowpiercer TV show that's coming out this weekend? By what standard do you consider that off topic? Well, I guess it's not off topic for us. It is at least as on topic as Glass Smashing Jack. That's true, yeah. It is part of our ongoing conversation yes it started more than a thousand episodes ago as i'm sure you all remember when we talked about snowpiercer the movie when it came out

and a few times after that but now it's a tv show and so i was aware that this was coming many years ago and then i think i just assumed like a lot of tv shows that it was already out and that i would get to it when it was in the library. So you're telling me that it has been coming. So has it been delayed or is this just how long it takes to make a TV show? No, it took very long to make this TV show. It took like five years and there were changes in the showrunner and there are all sorts of production difficulties. So it took a very long time, but it is here or it is about to be.

I think it debuts on TNT on the 17th, and it has Jennifer Connelly in it and Davi Diggs, and I have seen some screeners of it. I've watched the first three or four of the episodes, and I don't know how to describe it. It's definitely not the disaster that you might have imagined based on how long it took to make. It's fine, but it's kind of like they took the wonderfully deranged and visually captivating Bong movie about a revolution on the train and turned it into kind of a competent conventional TV procedural. It's very strange, or maybe it's not strange enough, but like David Diggs is like kind of in the Chris Evans role in that he's a tailie, he's in the back of the train, and they pull him up to investigate a murder, and then it turns into just a murder mystery because he used

to be a homicide detective, and so he's just investigating a murder on the Snowpiercer train, except it takes place like seven years into the train journey instead of the 15 years into the train journey that the movie took place. It's not clear to me. It's a prequel to the revolution. It's a prequel. Yeah, I'm not entirely clear on whether this is the same timeline or whether it's like a reboot or whether we're just supposed to assume that Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton

are elsewhere on the train while all of this is happening, but just off screen. But it has like elements of the revolution story, but it's also just about like solving this murder and like walking back and forth on the train, except instead of only forward as they do in the movie. So it's odd to see it in this form. It's like, what if we made the whole plane out of bottle episodes? Yeah, it's like if you made Parasite into a sitcom or something. It's like it's very TV. So it looks sort of like it's clearly the same train and everything, and they do some of the same stuff that they do in the movie.

Wait, they do some of the same stuff? Wait, they do some of the same stuff? Well, like, I don't want to spoil the Snowpiercer TV show for anyone, but, you know, like the punishments are the same. There's a punishment scene that is very similar to a movie punishment scene. And, you know, like they have the same grievances and they show some of the same cars and it's the same kind of like class parable that's, you know, very thinly veiled, but also there's a murder and Jennifer Connelly and everything. So I kind of enjoyed it. I'm fond of the movie and that world. Although I will say that the concept of Snowpiercer held up better in a two-hour movie than I think it does in a 10-episode season.

Because when it goes on and on you start to think why are they on this train again why is it better to be on a train in the frozen apocalypse than it would be to just hunker down in a bunker somewhere plus they're like walking back and forth on the train constantly and there's like a thousand cars in the train and so you would think that the train must be at least like 10 miles long. And yet they're going back and forth with no apparent time passing. And it just seems like it wouldn't be very easy to insulate a train. Like there have to be better plans than this. And the tracks can't be maintained and there's avalanches all the time. It doesn't seem like it's that well thought out. And that

didn't bother me so much in the movie, but in tv show you start to think about those things are you convinced that this is the exact same train and not a different train in the same like that he's got like a like train franchises yeah yeah it's definitely supposed to be the same train i think it's it's got the eternal engine and wilford well they would all have eternal engines right but okay but they have shared characters. No, they don't. Well, Wilford is a character in both, like the guy who built the train and is supposed to be running the train. So, you know, I guess sort of. I guess there technically could be two trains for all I know. That's the twist.

At the end of the season, there are multiple Snowpiercers, although you'd think they would know that, right? It would be hard to hide a train that goes around the entire planet, but who knows? Okay, if it was the same train, don't you think there would be some of the same actors? You'd think, because where would you put Tilda Swinton the whole time? I mean, you think, why wouldn't they get the same actors? No, I mean, I'm not saying that you would get Tilda Swinton,

but I'm saying that for some get tilda swinton but i'm saying that like for some of the character you know the small characters if you want it right if you wanted to have continuity it was some of them would be very you know employable right yeah so the fact that there are none to me is suggestive yeah all right maybe i need to delve deeper into the snowpiercer war but it's the same setup regardless. So it's just you stay alive that's like a fish stops swimming and it dies or whatever right so you got it i mean now i'm now i've just undercut it with a dumb metaphor but i mean like literally speaking it feels like maybe you keep moving so that you don't freeze in place could be yeah it does seem like the the train engine running seems to be what

powers their batteries like it generates the the power somehow. But still, it seems like it would be very hard to heat a train with a thousand cars and there can't be that much insulation. I don't know. I haven't thought it through fully. But the fact that I'm thinking about it at all in the movie, I was just like, yeah, all right, sure. It's a train that circles the globe eternally. I'm fine with that. Okay, let me ask you two questions. Are you going to continue watching it? I think so, yeah. And two, what does it stream on? I don't know if it does. It's on TNT for now. So I don't know if it will eventually be on a streaming service,

but I do have access to them. I can binge them, so i think i probably will finish just because i don't know i'm attached to the snowpiercer verse but i don't know if i'll be back for season two if there is one depends on how this ends what was the show that you liked so much that i made fun of you for liking well i made fun of you for liking elementary that's a good show though no that's it this was the one about the sheriff, maybe? Oh, Longmire. Longmire.

Yeah, that's a good show. Oh, my goodness. That was so bad. Okay. All right. All right. All right. That will do it for today.

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coming for me and Sam and Meg via email at podcast at fancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. If you're looking for some reading material, you can pick up the paperback version of my book, The MVP Machine, how baseball's

new nonconformists are using data to build better players. Both the paperback version and the Kindle version now include a new afterword. And if you were waiting for Super Mega Baseball 3 to come out, I interviewed one of the developers on our video games episode a few weeks ago. It is out now for all platforms, Switch, Xbox

One, PS4, Steam. Haven't tried it yet myself, but editor Dylan has, and he says it is fun, quirky, arcadey, but also deep. We'll be back with one more episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. Deep into the night I love the sound of this condition Flying all around Oh, all around Sound of breaking glass Nothing new Sound of breaking glass. Nothing new, sound of breaking glass.