Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1560: Unearthing Negro Leagues History

Episode Date: July 3, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the difficulties of disclosing or obscuring the identities of players who hit the injured list after contracting COVID-19, dissect a few new analogies from Scott Boras’s brain, and discuss resuming their season preview series, then (35:47) conclude their week-long celebration of the Negro Leagues by bringing on esteemed […]

🎵 One more cup of coffee before I go To the valley below Hello and welcome to episode 1560 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing okay. Watched all of Stoepfleek yet?

No, I've been working. I'm sorry. Okay, I'm going to get on it. The stove. It's burning. It burns us, the stove. Ready? I need someone else to talk about it with other than my wife. We've been talking about it plenty, but I need someone else. Okay, I will get on it. I promise. Okay, well, we've been busy this week because we have been doing a lot of interviews and a lot of prep for those interviews for this week when we are celebrating the Negro Leagues. And we are doing that for a third time today. And we are welcoming on another great guest. I don't want to slight any

other Negro Leagues researchers, but I would say perhaps the preeminent Negro Leagues researcher and historian and advocate, Larry Lester, who is the co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and really has been involved every step of the way with all of the major initiatives that have happened surrounding the Negro Leagues. So he will be on shortly to tell us all about that. And it's been great to learn about all of this Negro Leagues history. And there's so much more that I don't know and would like to know. So we will make an effort to incorporate that

into future weeks as well. Yeah, it does not need to be a focus. Only this week, we are students of baseball history and this is a very important part of it. So we should all, not just you and I, but our listeners too, if you want to say you know stuff about baseball, you need to know about this baseball. So let's make a point of not having it be a once a year, once a centennial kind of a deal.

Yes, indeed. So what's going on in baseball's present? You know, Ben, I'm going to say the following, which is I don't think it will surprise you or our listeners to know that I spend a lot of time reading manuals related to baseball. I've read the rulebook, the official rulebook, and its supplemental materials many times. And so I always feel a little bit happy when we have an occasion to revisit the rule book or the CBA. I wish though that we did not have occasion to revisit the CBA on this day because the reason is just really a bummer. But I think we do the bummer CBA thing first and then we can have a little fun before we yeah scott boris said some stuff yeah he sure did so as as you might imagine ben with the presence

of the covid injured list there has been some question about how exactly players placement on that list is going to be reported and announced and And our good friend Lindsay Adler did some work this week to try to illuminate that question for readers after comments from, well, from, I believe from Brian Cashman. And then there have been other baseball executives and managers who have had stuff to say on sort of how clubs are going to deal with this. And it seems like the sort of thing that we're going to be left to guess with an uncomfortable amount of precision. And so I guess to set the stage for our listeners who might not be as inclined to say, read all 373 pages of the collective bargaining agreement as I am.

Those aren't the most readable documents. Like I've read a fair amount of the rule book just looking things up over the years, and it is written often in the most confusing way possible. And I would imagine that the CBA, which I have not read, although I think you and Sam have both done that, but there's a lot of legalese in there and lawyerly language. And it's not really a page turner, but I guess I'm glad that you've turned the pages at least. Yeah. You know, Sam, I think in terms of the written work on this as the definitive expert, I imagine we're both really fun at parties. Who's having parties anymore?

So what does it matter? I think the rulebook is the most readable. As a non-lawyer, I find it to be the most readable. I definitely fall as a child of lawyers in the know enough to be dangerous category. So I find the rulebook to be the most readable. There are other, there's the rule book and then there's the official conduct. I don't quite recall the, there are like two rule books. It's very confusing. But yeah, I think the official rule book that governs play on the field is the most readable. And then I think the CBA is probably the least readable. It's not so inscrutable though, that you can't find your way through it

or bother any of the lawyers we know, you know, just like throw a rock and you'll hit one to sort of interpret the relevant sections. But thankfully for our purposes, this, the most relevant section for our discussion is actually, I think, pretty easy to interpret. So the question is there's this balance that needs to be struck between respecting and maintaining player privacy. And then, you know, there's this balance that needs to be struck between respecting and maintaining player privacy. And then, you know, there's like the reality of ailments that keep players from being on the field are sort of interesting to reporters and to fans, and people want to understand how long a guy's going to be out.

And so there is a collectively bargained policy around this question. And reading from the CBA, for public relations purposes, a club may disclose the following general information about employment-related injuries. Remember that phrase, employment-related injuries is going to be relevant to our purposes. A, the nature of a player's injury. B, the prognosis and the anticipated length of recovery from the injury. And C, the treatment and surgical procedures undertaken or anticipated in regard to the injury. For any other medical condition that prevents a player from rendering services to his club,

a club may disclose only the fact that a medical condition is preventing the player from rendering services to the club and the anticipated length of the player's absence from the club. So things that fall under the category of say non-employment related injuries would be, for instance, Kenley Jansen has a heart condition that has kept him on the injured list at various points throughout his career as he has sought treatment and had surgery to remedy that. The Dodgers were only able to disclose that it was a heart condition because Kenley Jansen granted them permission to say what it was. And the league and the union have apparently made the determination that placement on the COVID injury list, which if we recall, does not actually require a positive COVID test, but can also just

include, you know, proximity to those who have been sick or have had a positive test, is a non-employment injury. Now, I think we could all say, excuse me, you're increasing your chances of getting COVID by all being together, mushed together on a ball field, regardless of the social distancing efforts that the clubs are undertaking. So we can all kind of look sideways at the idea that this is not an employment injury, but it becomes relevant for our purposes because we are used to knowing what is wrong with a player. If you go to, say, Mitch Hanegger's MLB.com page, you will see that he is on the 60-day injury list, which is really the 45-day injury list now, but that's not relevant to our conversation here.

And it is because he has a lower back problem and we know that that's what it is we know a lot more about mitch hannigan's body much more than we want to know much more than we want to know be well mitch we're all rooting to know less about you yeah we're all rooting to know a lot less about how you are but we know that that's listed there. And this became relevant again today, because the Phillies put a number of players on the 10 day injury list without a specific designation. And the Blue Jays too, a few of them. Yeah. Right. And, and it has since been reported, I think, because the players must have given, hopefully, hopefully, because the players have given permission to the Phillies to disclose that they had positive COVID tests and not because somebody's helping somebody engage in a HIPAA violation.

But we're going to have this very weird and uncomfortable thing. And it's something that we've been thinking about on the Fangraph side because if you go, we say why a player is on the injured list because that's information that we're given, right? You know, somebody's tweaked a lead or somebody, I know about guys groins. I don't want to, but I do, you know, this guy needs Tommy John, what have you. And it appears that not only will clubs not say that a player has a COVID test, but they will

obscure that it is the COVID IL that they have gone on to. And we'll just put them on the 10 day injury list, at least for public reporting purposes, as we saw the Phillies do today. But we're essentially going to know what the COVID IL is because we don't have an injury associated with that 10-day placement. Right. But we will for all of the other guys. So I don't know what the right answer to this is. I think that it would be fine with me

if we knew a lot less about players' health stuff. I think that it would be fine with me if we knew a lot less about players health stuff that I think it will in all likelihood fall on media members to say, hey, we have a lot of people in baseball sick with COVID. Should we be baseballing? And the union and the league have said that they're going to disclose the numbers, but obscure the individuals who are tested and found to have COVID. And that's fine, except that we're all going to really know about it unless everybody has a heart condition at once. Yeah, that was one of Lindsay's concerns, I think, was is this going to allow them to obscure the spread and how many people have contracted this because they want the season to keep going. So they'll just kind of keep it quiet. And yeah, as you noted, Buster only

tweeted, MLB plans a public reporting of league-wide data listing the overall tests conducted, the number of positive tests, and the percentage of positive tests on a periodic basis. No individuals named. The period of intake screening is ongoing prior to first workouts Friday. So in theory, then it sounds like we should know how widespread it is. So that kind of takes care of that concern, I guess, if we trust them to report everything accurately. So that's good. But I don't know what the perfect answer is here, because as you said, there's no way to really hide it without hiding all injury information, which hasn't been the case in baseball. And I guess it could be the case. It's the case in other sports, right? In hockey,

they just say, well, lower body injury or upper body, and you have no idea. Is it a heart attack? Is it a shoulder strain? It doesn't really differentiate. And in baseball, obviously, for analytical purposes, it's helpful to have that information at times. And just to be able to write about someone and have those details, it's handy to have that. But if we didn't have it, I guess we would get by and we would all get used to that. And it is sometimes a source of conflict because teams and managers sometimes don't want to divulge those things. And players may not want to either because it can be a competitive disadvantage if they have to say that someone is out for this specific amount of time or this guy is unavailable now or he might be diminished in some way. And so sometimes they'll obscure it and some managers try to be cagey about it and then the beat writers get mad at them because they can't report what the injury is exactly.

what the injury is exactly. And for this year, maybe it would be better just to give those players some anonymity just to not kind of out them almost inevitably because everyone else is having their injuries or ailments disclosed. But then maybe that becomes kind of concrete and solidified and that's what we will always do. And I guess we would get used to it, but that hasn't been the case now. And so, yeah, if you put someone on the IL guess we would get used to it, but that hasn't been the case now. And so, yeah, if you put someone on the IL and we don't know the reason, then you almost just have to infer that it must be the coconut IL. And maybe the players will just usually disclose that. I don't know. We'll see how many of them do.

I guess there is maybe some stigma to that. I don't know how much, given that everyone seems to be doing it these days, unfortunately, contracting cases. It's not exactly rare, but still, if you don't want that knowledge out there, you shouldn't have to have it out there. But just because they will probably get hassled by fans or writers who are asking them if they want to disclose it, maybe some of them will just feel like, well, it's not worth the effort and they'll know anyway, so I might as well just tell them. Yeah, I have a hard time gauging how much stigma there actually is attached to the diagnosis, but I think that there is, I mean, there's certainly some, and I think that people are,

because the onus has been put on individuals to, you know, wear a mask and wash your hands. And it seems that our focus as a country has been put on individual people rather than a competent state response to this part of a pandemic. I do think that it's reasonable to worry that there will be stigma attached to that diagnosis or an assumption that you were being irresponsible or were in a crowded bar or that your family members gave it to you or what have you. And oftentimes, that might be true, but it might not be. And I understand why players would be hesitant, especially for a respiratory condition that might affect the way that they are perceived in terms of their long-term sort of competitive capacity. Although I suppose teams know they will have had a diagnosis.

So in that respect, I don't know how much it matters. But this doesn't strike me as one of those moments where there was, you know, either sort of concentrated disregard for, or purposeful, I should say, disregard for player privacy. I think it's just, this is the weird reality of disclosing some, but not all conditions. And clearly, given that they don't want this to be considered a workplace problem, I don't know that there's any way that they could avoid this, you know, non-disclosure disclosure that they were setting up. So I don't know. I think the most important thing apart from players' privacy being respected is that we are able to have a reliable sense of the scope of the spread. Yes. And I think that that information is useful sort of down to the team level.

to be able to get a sense of particular geographies that are witnessing spread versus others and teams that might be compromised to the point of needing to stop playing for a little while. So I am concerned. I think we've talked a lot about the appreh for this kind of a season going forward at all and commencing at all. So I think it's really important because somebody has to say, excuse me. somebody has to say excuse me yeah yeah and we wouldn't want to set a precedent of players needing to divulge diseases or other ailments so if you said well they have to say they have covid then what does that extend to in the future and how do you rope off certain ailments and it's better just to say non-workplace related even if if it is kind of workplace related. In this case, it's still maybe for the best. And it's just one of those things that's going to be a strange and kind of uncomfortable season in a lot of ways. And this is one of those ways.

Yeah. We talk a lot about athletes being hyper-competitive and sometimes being their own worst enemy in terms of preserving their long-term health in order to accomplish short-term sort of team objectives. And I think that that applies to baseball writ large also, where in order to preserve the health and safety of players and non-player personnel and the families of everyone associated with those folks, the media might need to play the role of a stern but caring manager and say, no, no, you can't pitch another inning. And that's an uncomfortable spot for us to be in. There are a lot of ways in which the media will need to be very clear eyed with itself and understand its own interests and make sure that those aren't sort of dictating the way that they report these numbers. But we really need to be able to say in one voice like, we got to shut it down, folks. Yeah. When we had our epidemiologist guest, Zach Binney, on to talk about how long a player might be on the COVID IL if they are infected and test positive. He speculated that it might be a couple weeks at

least, and it sounds like it might be even longer. I saw a tweet by the Mets beat writer Anthony DeComo who said, if a Mets player tests positive for COVID-19, Mets manager Luis Rojas said, it will likely require a minimum three-week ramp up for that player to return to active duty. Essentially, a positive test would cost a player one third of the regular season, even if he recovers quickly, which, gosh, if that's happening a lot, I mean, even aside from the obvious health concerns that we have discussed a lot, there's also the perception of this season as reflecting talent or accomplishment in any real way. And you can't get around the 60-game season and small samples inherent in that. But if you have significant percentages of certain rosters disappearing for a third of

the season and you get great players involved in that, and if it's widespread or if it's concentrated in certain teams, if there's kind of a cluster with a certain team. I just don't know that you could, A, even really care about the outcome of the season when the outcome of those players' health is in question, but just also if you're missing large swaths of certain teams for that percentage of the season because of this thing that just strikes and can happen to anyone at any time. of this thing that just strikes and can happen to anyone at any time. I just don't know that it would even seem like a competitive campaign or an endeavor worth doing. So we've talked about what it would take for MLB to call this thing off if it does get started. And I still don't really know,

but we hopefully will not find out because hopefully there won't be any occasion to do that. But if there is, I wonder whether those questions will be asked and how loudly they will be asked. Yeah, I think it especially matters for individual players sort of when in the course of a season, they become sick. If they do, you know, we already have this very uncertain situation with, you know, with pitchers in particular, how much they've been throwing, the kind of program they've been observing in during the layoff. You know, if a guy is just trying to come back and he's starting to ramp up and then he gets sick and he needs to be away from the team so that he can quarantine, like what kind of season is that guy going to have? You know,

that's, that concern exists for everyone. And obviously, like how how well they're able to throw a baseball and how many innings are able to pitch is very inconsequential in comparison to the long term health of that player. it just underscores how many things have to go right, how many days in a row, in how many moments for this entire experiment to be at all, I was going to say seaworthy. I don't know if that's the word I want to use. Maybe I'm thinking about Jaws because it's the 4th of July and that's when I think about that movie. And also, gosh, is it a particular kind of rewatch in our current situation? But yeah, I just think that it is a reminder of all the tiny things that everyone has to get right every single day for this to be remotely feasible. And I hope that they can. The players clearly want to play. to play and I definitely you know I want everyone to remain healthy and whole but I feel very nervous about and unsure about how viable that's going to end up being over the course of even just

the summer camp brought to you by camping world again I will say Ari I would never and uh and then the the 60 game season and postseason so So it's going to be tense. We're going to feel nervous every single day, which is great because I was looking for another excuse. Well, maybe you said seaworthy because you were thinking about nautical language. Ben, you're a hell of a podcaster, Ben. You're just a real pro. Segway expert.

So we were planning to talk about a couple of scott boris metaphors so scott boris was on a podcast this week it was a podcast on what you have i think brilliantly labeled the bad chair sports site and we did not listen to this podcast because it was on the bad chair sports site but one of our listeners j, thoughtfully transcribed a couple of the comments that Scott Boris made and sent them to us. And as expected, he delivered some very Boris-esque language during the course of this interview. And here are the highlights, according to Jason.

So he started out by saying, negotiations are often like commuter trains. There's many starts and stops before you get to the final destination. Okay. It's, you know, pretty standard. Okay. But like, isn't that true of every train? Isn't that true of most trains?

There are nonstop trains, I suppose. But most trains stop. And I don't know that this really illuminates that much. We all know what negotiations are like. We just live through months of them starting and stopping. So we get it. But okay, commuter train's fine. Makes sense.

So here's where it gets a little stranger. So here he's talking, Jason says, about the draft situation, the effect of the pandemic on the future of the minor leaguers beyond this year. And Boris said, it's kind of like when you have tulips you only have a few bulbs but on the other hand you've got the earth you've got the fertilizer you've got the water you've got the sun you have all these components so it sounds like he's working with free agency as the vase of championships it sounds like he is extending the flowers and vase language to player development now so now now this is actually consistent, right? Because in his previous statement about how free agency is the vase of championships, the core and the homegrown players, he said, were the flowers. So here he's saying essentially the same thing, I guess, that it's like when you have tulips you have a few bulbs but you've got

the earth the fertilizer the water the sun all these components okay but so like and so some of this is definitely that we are lacking the context of what came around this because again we do not participate in content from the the bad chair sports site but nothing about this feels specific to 2020, right? Like nothing about that metaphor for the draft works in any year. Does he think that tulips can't be, that you can't have a lot of tulips? Is he under the impression? Because like, so I'm from, you know, I'm from the Northwest and in Washington. Because like, so I'm from, you know, I'm from the Northwest and in Washington.

Every year, the Skagit Valley has a tulip festival and you have fields and fields and fields of tulips. The only thing I know about tulips in terms of them being kind of persnickety is, well, like bulb stuff can be persnickety because they can rot and it can be bad. And tulips and I think daffodils are bad for each other. They don't fight because they're flowers, but I think they extract the same stuff from the soil, and so they tend to die if they're planted in close proximity to one another. But you can have a bunch of tulips. There's nothing about this. I asked our listener, Jason Amico, to try to clarify what Boris was saying, which, which of course is an impossible task because no one could ever do that.

But I asked him if there was any other context. And Jason says, I think the tulip line was in regard to the importance of ancillary players who will never advance to the big leagues to the development of the few select guys who do. the development of the few select guys who do so he was saying the minor leagues are about a system that develops major leaguers but they're not explicitly about big leaguers and it's important that we maintain those systems rather than downscale so i think he's saying that you need the other players the other so they are like the soil and all the other stuff. Yeah. So I think the tulips are the future big leaguers, the top prospects maybe. And then the other guys, the guys who maybe their teams are getting contracted or they're getting released, they're the conditions that you need for those tulips to flower. I mean, okay. That's true. That's the most you could ever really say about one of these boris metaphors it's like i mean okay okay okay i guess all right i mean i i like the idea that that we can acknowledge that

draftees you know are even if they are not themselves to become big leaguers are vitally important to the future development of big leaguers. That strikes me as a good thing to say out loud a bunch, because if you do that, then you look around and you say, well, just because they don't develop into a beautiful flower themselves, they allow the beautiful flower to do so. And that beautiful flower has a lot of value to the field in which he grows. And so we probably should pay the manure too, right? That's very important because without the fertilizer and the soil and the water,

you can't get the beautiful flower. And so we got to pay the water. It's important to do because otherwise you don't get the beautiful flower. And so you got to pay the water. It's important to do because otherwise you don't get your beautiful flower. So I'm on board. You know, like so many of Scott Boris's quotes, the sentiment is sentiment I agree with. But boy, does he make you work for it. Yeah, which is the opposite of the point of making a metaphor or an analogy. It's supposed to clarify something or illuminate something.

And instead, we spend many minutes talking about, well, what exactly did he mean here? But there is a third one, or maybe it's a combination of two here. So he was talking about the 60-game season, and he said, it's really about the coffee, not about the cup. He said, it's really about the coffee, not about the cup. So I think he is saying that it's about the baseball you do play, not the container in which that baseball appears. So it's not about the structure of the season. It's about the games, the action. And Jason says that he went on to say or preceded the coffee cup comment by saying the performance levels within a boundary are basically what everyone had to deal with. And so to suggest that someone does it longer in the normal environment than it does in the environment that we're in, the truth of the

matter is you're not negotiating normal. You're negotiating the environment we're within. So he was saying, you know, don't blame the players or the teams for 60 game seasons. It's not their fault that it's small sample and that you shouldn't judge their value differently based on the length of the season. So all right, sure. I still think that Scott Boris needs some sample size understanding help. Yeah, well. Yeah, it continues to be. This is like when he was like, framing doesn't matter. And then you looked at his roster and I'm like, oh, you don't rep any of the good framers. That's what you do.

Yeah. I will be curious to see if some of his clients have great small sample seasons and he'll say, well, you can't hold it against them that it was only 60 games because it's about the coffee, not about the cup. Which he's right. And then what if other of his clients have really lousy seasons? Will he try to say, well, it was only 60 games and you know it's about the cup not the coffee that's what i've always said we should well i mean i'm reticent to have anyone on the public side whose work i like and respect take it behind behind the wall of either a team or an agency because then we lose it but i wonder we should anonymously we could do it because then it won't be our work, right?

We should send him some of the work that Russell has done on when like particular stats stabilize. And then we'll know. Then he can say, well, you know, this guy, it's just a small sample, is fluky. He was fine. But this guy, you know, the thing he was doing that that skill stabilized very early and then and then russell will get to remind everyone what that really means because scott boris will undoubtedly use it wrong just like i kind of was a little loosey-goosey with it and then it'll and then it'll be an educational moment for all of us yeah right beautiful like

like you know it'll be the soil that grows the beautiful flower of our understanding. So what goes with coffee in the morning? You grab your coffee. If you're a coffee drinker, you need to wash something down with that coffee, maybe breakfast. And Scott Boris has thoughts on breakfast, too. So asked about the potential for statistical aberrations in this small sample season. He said, he said, you know, it's like breakfast.

There's times you can have a casual one, and you can have bacon, eggs, pastries, coffee, juice, berries, full day. And then there's the day when you put the toast in the toaster, grab it, get the coffee, and run out the door. The reality of it is it's breakfast.

Okay. A couple of things here. First of all, what Scott Boris is describing as a casual breakfast is very much not casual. No, that's a full production. That's a full production. I don't know if Scott Boris has domestic help. I'm going to speculate that he does because he's done quite well for himself by helping his clients do quite well for themselves. So his understanding of casual might be very different from mine or yours or really anyone who does not have a staff.

I don't know if he has a staff. Maybe he doesn't have a staff at this moment because perhaps they're not quarantining with him. So we're just speculating wildly about his domestic situation. But this is not a casual breakfast, which is interesting because at the end of the quote, he seems to know that by saying full day. Yeah, right. Full day. Yeah.

Also, there's the day you put toast in the toaster, grab it, get coffee and run out the door. That's relatable. As a person who used to go to an office it get coffee and run out the door that's relatable as a person who used to go to an office there were days when i would do that but i don't think that he really knows what casual is i do support his idea that anything you eat in the morning is breakfast because i think that we are overly prescriptive about breakfast food um and a mole wrote a really good piece at the at The Atlantic about this.

Eat whatever you want for breakfast. It's all pretend. Just eat what's sustaining to you. I wonder if Scott has read that article. But mostly I don't think he knows what casual means. Yeah. So I guess what he's saying here is sort of the same sentiment as the coffee, not the cup.

It's just you take what you get. Big breakfast. It's all breakfast. It's the thing you eat in the. It's just you take what you get. Big breakfast. It's all breakfast. It's the thing you eat in the morning that sustains you for a full day. So you get a 400 hitter. Well, that's the breakfast we got this season. I don't know. Sometimes you get a full season.

Sometimes you don't. It's all delicious and sustaining, I guess, is his point. The best part of Just Toast for Breakfast is that it allows you to do one of the best things in the world, which is eat lunch at 10.30 in the morning. Yeah. Big fan of the 10.30 lunch. By the way, I suppose I should say I have not confirmed that these quotes are authentic

because, again, we have not listened to this podcast. So, look, if Jason is fabricating these quotes and is pranking us here with made up Boris quotes, I salute him. Yeah, I say. I say you came up with convincing ones. Well done. Yeah. And if and if these are, in fact, authentic Scott Boris quotes, then I say to him, thank you for your service in transcribing them.

Yes, that too. All right. Well, we will take a quick break now and we'll be back with Larry Lester. All right. Well, we will take a quick break now and we'll be back with Larry Lester. And I should mention that when we come back next week, we will be resuming our team preview podcast series, which you may remember we were previewing the 2020 season a few months ago because we thought there was going to be one a lot sooner than there was and we were close to the end we had four episodes and eight teams left to go and we're just gonna pick up where we left off and cross off those unchecked boxes and i think a lot has changed obviously since we previewed the other teams so you could justify previewing every team again probably but we're not gonna do that we don't have time to do that but we will not going to do that. We don't have time to do that, but we will finish. I will say that just by virtue of kind of how the season shook out, I think that some of the ones that we were in the greatest need to revise, we just happened to not have done yet. Yeah, I think that's true.

Mostly, I mean, we have not yet previewed the Yankees. Right. We have not done the best teams and the worst teams, basically. Yeah, and so that's fun. And we haven't done the Mariners, so we get to talk about all the prospects that are in their player pool. But yeah, we're not redoing all of them. We're very sorry, but we're also very tired. Yeah. You can just prorate the guests' predictions for the number of wins they would have over a full season over 60 games, which maybe doesn't really make sense because maybe certain teams would do better over the 60-game season.

But you know what? It's about the coffee, not the cup. Well done, sir. So we'll do a couple of those preview episodes in each of the next two weeks. And in theory, that takes us up to the week of opening day, pandemic permitting. So that's the schedule. So for now, we will be back in just a moment to talk to Larry Lester

about unearthing Negro League's history. We'll be safe. Baseball. Well, we are really pleased to be joined by Larry Lester, whose resume would take a really long time to read. But for now, suffice it to say that he is the chairman of Sabres Negro League's committee and a recipient of Sabres Bob Davids and Henry Chadwick Awards, the author or co-author of several books, Bob Davids and Henry Chadwick Awards, the author or co-author of several books, and that he has played an integral role in several Negro Leagues initiatives that we are about to discuss. So, Larry, welcome. Well, thank you for having me, Ben and Meg, on your show. I appreciate it. So what was the state of knowledge of and interest in the Negro Leagues when you began to get involved in documenting and celebrating its

history decades ago? Well, I basically grew up in a Negro League environment. I went to school with Satchel Paige's kids in high school, and I grew up near the old ballpark in Kansas City on 22nd and Brooklyn. And in the process of growing up in an all-black neighborhood, going to an all-black church and all-black schools, I always asked the question, where are the black ballplayers? And the residents in the neighborhood would tell me they played in the Negro League. And I'm like, what is that? And so I started to get curious and wanted to know more and the men would tell me these great stories and about cool Papa Bell and Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson and others and by the way on the next block as a former Negro League player and I'd go over and talk to him. And he would just be very humble. And so it was part of my maturation process.

Didn't really think a lot of it, other than that we were segregated at the time. America was segregated. Until I went off to college and discovered Robert Peterson's book, Only the Ball is White. And suddenly all these stories that these old men were telling me appeared to be true.

I'm like, wow. I thought this was just old men talking budget stuff, crap, you know. I'm like, this is cool stuff. So when I really started jump-starting my career and studying the Negro League and that great, wonderful history and legacy that they have left with us today. Yeah. Now I know you saw Satchel Paige pitch because I've read that when you were 16, you attended his last appearance in the major leagues when he pitched three innings

for the Kansas City A's as a 58-year-old in 1965. Three shutout innings, of course. According to that box score, fewer than 9,300 fans in attendance for that game. And you were one of them. But did you ever meet Satchel or get to talk to him when you were growing up in that neighborhood? No, I mean, I had a lot of classes with Pam. I played basketball with Robert, his son.

But Satchel was never at home. He was always on the road, even in the winter. You know, he played in South America. And so I never met him and never felt like, well, you know, I missed out on something because, you know, Dad would call home, but they didn't see him very much, you know. But unfortunately, I never met him. Other Monarch players I did along the way, but never Satchel.

You mentioned Only the Ball Was White. I'm curious what impact that book had on rekindling sort of broader interest in the Negro Leagues and then what some of the other developments were that led to that renewed interest and attention for the league as time went on after the publication of that book? Well, Meg, Only the Ball Was White by Robert Peterson made everything real. He had actual game accounts. He had interviewed these ballplayers across the country. He had statistics.

In the back of the book, there's a register of every ballplayer he could find. It's probably roughly 3,000 ballplayers. For the first time, folklore became fact. And many of my colleagues credit that book with jump-starting their interest in black baseball. And you were the co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. We spoke to Bob Kendrick, the current president, earlier this week. How did the museum come to be, and what was your role in it? Well, I had an upperclassmate by the name of Horace Peterson. He was the executive director of the Black Archives of Mid-America.

And he called me one day and asked me to meet with him, Buck O'Neill, and the mayor of Kansas City, Mayor Richard Berkeley at the time, for a meeting. So I walk in and I have no idea what this meeting's about. And Horace Peterson has this great idea to have a jazz and baseball museum in the historic 18th and Vine. And he says, Larry, I can do the jazz the historic 18th and Vine. And he says, Larry, I can do the jazz if you can do the baseball. He knew my love for baseball from high school. I said, well, I got this. I got that part. So we needed the mayor there because there was a $20 million bond proposal on the table. However, that money was just for brick and mortar. No money was available for administrative costs or development or program development and so on. So I said, well, you know, I've got this corporate experience.

I can write a business plan. I can develop a institutional membership plan. And we were off and running. So I developed a plan. And by that time I had interviewed a bunch of ballplayers and they had given me tons and hundreds of pictures because nobody cares about them except you. They wouldn't just take them. I'm like, I'm not going to take them. I'll make copies. No, just take them.

So I had plenty of photographs. I think to date I've got about 16,000 photographs. It's not a lot when you compare it to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, who has maybe 300,000. But for me it's a lot. So I was able to develop the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum static exhibit with photographs. I wrote all the captions and it worked out pretty good. The exhibit has not changed very much since I left in 1995.

But as you know, exhibits need to be more dynamic instead of static. They need to be more interactive now with the younger generation. So they need an upgrade. But that's how we got the museum started. It was not my idea. It was Horace Peterson's, who tragically died in a drowning accident in 1993. So he never got to see the two museums open up in 1995. You mentioned the photographs.

I know in the early days of the museum, you helped to acquire artifacts of all kinds belonging to Sasha Page and Oscar Charleston and Josh Gibson and Archie Ware and Chet Brewer and so many others. And apart from family members volunteering those, what did that process entail of you sort of bringing together all of these important remnants of the Negro Leagues? Well, we had to back up one step, Megan, I had built a relationship or rapport with many other families before the museum was an idea. I'd always send them Christmas cards, birthday cards. I had a list of maybe 200 ball players that I would call every now and then to check up on. And so when I walked into their homes, I said, we got a museum. Would you like to donate?

They're like, oh, yes. Take whatever you need, Larry. Just get out of here. It was not a sale job. I'm not a salesperson. I mean, when I went to Kuwapa Bell's house really, really early in the process, he offered me a ton of stuff, which I refused because we didn't have a museum at the time. His home was just filled with single-sign baseballs by Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige and Crutchfield and Judd Wilson. Oh, my goodness. He had trophies from his 1942 World Series championship with the Homestead Grays, and he was really like, just take this stuff out of here. Like, it's worth a lot of money. I don't care. I'm old.

But I never took anything out of that house. But to answer your question, Meg, many other families were very receptive to donating items to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. And one of the challenges of writing about the Negro Leagues used to be that it was much harder to say how well players performed on the field because the statistical record was so incomplete. But now we have a much better idea of that in large part because of the work of researchers and historians like you. idea of that in large part because of the work of researchers and historians like you, and you helped oversee the creation of an extensive statistical database, and sites like Seamheads now put those stats at researchers' fingertips, and I know that was a massive effort that you helped oversee. So how did you go about finding and preserving those stats, and how has the

digitization of newspapers aided that ongoing effort, and how much more needs to be done? Well, that was a long road. I refuse to accept the notion that the black teams did not keep statistics. The statistics were available in black weekly newspapers, and I would spend almost every evening over the next 20, 20, 25 years scanning microfilm and making copies of box scores. The problem with the Negro League's research is many of the road games were not reported in the hometown newspapers.

So if the Monarchs, Kansas City Monarchs, played in Chicago, I had to access the Chicago Defender to get a full game account of that game. They normally play five-game series. And then when they went to another city, Philadelphia, I had to go to the Philadelphia Tribune. So in the process, I probably had roughly 13,000 to 14,000 box scores from 1920 up through 1948 or 1949. The problem was, how do I compile the stats? The Eastern newspapers sometimes did not have ADBAT, so I had to work up a formula to back into ad bats, RBIs, and sometimes they would not list walks, so I had to recreate the lineup.

Every game had to be almost recreated based on the information available. At that point, because of my IT experience, I developed a database. I wrote the code and designed a database for manual entry. And now I can kick out probably more than 200 can reports. I mean, I can tell you what really the devil wills hit on Sunday against left-handed batters on grass. But I have not had the time to validate all the games and what I mean by that is if a team gets 10 hits that means the pitchers gave up 10 hits and sometimes the balances don't check so I have to figure out you know which side of the ledger am I on I have to go back through and and validate hits on both sides runs runs on both sides, and sometimes there's errors,

printed errors in the database. When we got the grant proposal, we reached out to roughly 30, 35 researchers in cities across the country because sometimes the teams would play in small cities and we did not have access to their newspapers. And that's when Gary Ashwell stepped up and became a big-time contributor. Seemed his is the most robust statistical database on the planet, thanks to him. And I continued to send him box scores and printouts from my database so he could upload it to the website because that's how people do business today. But Gary Ashwell is,

I consider my twin, statistically speaking, someone who I've never met, but he is incredible in what he does. He's super, super man. And do you have any estimate of the completeness right now? Or I guess it varies by the year and maybe by the team. But how much more is there to do? And has it gotten easier to find things now that there are more digital archives and more newspapers that are easily accessible? Oh, definitely. More papers have continued

to come online in various database archives. Gary and I plan to finish probably in the next, I want to say 12 to 18 months. It's been a long journey. It can be done, but it's just one game can take an hour to, you know, correct and validate. And so you could be running along really smoothly, this checks, this checks, this checks, and then one game just, oh, no, we got this game is the World Series and we got three different newspapers with three different accounts. Which one is right? with three different accounts, which one is right.

We're off by one run or one hit, and that takes some time. So I hate to say 12 to 18 months, and then we find another 10 games. It happens. Megan, being in the 1920s, game accounts were so complete. They were incredibly detailed. We go into the Great Depression in 1930. Newspapers had scant coverages. Sometimes did not cover a game at all. We can go into the 40s, and they got complete coverage again.

So the 1930s are just a nightmare to research because of the economic conditions of the country. But hopefully we'll get something out to the public in two years. Can you tell us about the role that writers like Wendell Smith and Sam Lacey and Lester Rodney played in chronicling the Negro Leagues and also advocating for integration? Well, that is the beauty of researching black baseball for Meg. Wendell Smith, Lester Rodney are icons to me. I actually spent a great deal of time in Sam Lacey's apartment talking to him. Those men, I put on my Mount Rushmore of Negro League writers. They mean everything to me. They fought the good fight, especially Lester Rodney, working for a communist newspaper. The word communist meant something different back in

the 40s, but he was a great influence of mine. I met him at the Jackie Robinson Conference in Long Island University in 1997. Life-changing having that conversation with him and what he had to go through dealing with death threats, et cetera. Wendell Smith died early. I never met him, but I met his widow winola in chicago spent some time in her apartment uh what an incredible loving husband he was and sam lacy was just all about doing what what is right my favorite sam lacy quote is trying to think how he phrased it when the constitution says all men are created equal, he always say, well, some people were created more equal than others. So those men inspire me daily.

which led to 17 figures from the Negro Leagues getting inducted. That must have been quite an undertaking too. I know you had already been doing the research for several years at that point, but how did you help narrow down and ultimately select those candidates? Oh, see if I can remember. We had a, I think a list of 93. It was a weighted list, votes 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. From that list, we had a five-man team who met in Florida, I think Miami, Florida. And we knocked that 93 list of names down to 39. Thirty-nine names went into the final ballot for the 12-team committee to vote on. I think it was by three-fourths majority to get into the Hall of Fame. And as you said, 17 players, managers, and executives made the cut.

I was shocked, surprised. I mean, I would have been happy with a half a dozen or a dozen, but 17 was incredible and well-deserved. And it was one a year getting inducted for quite a while but 17 was incredible and well-deserved. And it was one a year getting inducted for quite a while, and was it frustrating to see the pace so slow, just kind of a trickle as opposed to all at once like 2006? You have no idea.

Oh, my goodness. We tried. We finally got our game strategy together. We would take a ballplayer, and we did a letter-writing campaign back in those days. And I'd have everybody in my committee, everybody in my group write in support of the same ballplayer. And we would send letters to everybody on the Veterans Committee, and we would get them in. So I probably knew before anybody in the country who the next Negro League was going to be because we had a concentrated letter campaign to put Hilton Smith in and Leon Day and Bullard Rogan and all those ballplayers in because before that we were dividing our

our energies and so we would just say this year we're going to get him in and we we did it we did it we we developed business models and scenarios and we had quotes from all the white ballplayers who had played against such a ballplayer. We divided up all the documents, and everybody sent them in. They had to put them in. Yeah. It was just too much information. How did you decide which players to prioritize? Did you go by players who were still alive, who you wanted to get recognized while they could still see it,

or did you give preference to players in order of how great they were and how deserving you thought they were? They were prioritized by if they were living. Yeah, that's one reason why Leon Day went in probably earlier. Most of them had been deceased, but I think Leon Day was the exception. It was all good, all good. You've worked with so many researchers and different institutions that are devoted to baseball history broadly and have been focused on trying to sort of fill out the details of the historical record when it comes to the Negro Leagues. And I'm curious if you've noticed any shifts in the focus of that research over time, whether it's been trying to sort of fill in the

details of individual biographies or the statistical record, or perhaps the histories and traditions of particular teams. Has there been a noticeable sort of shift in focus over time, or is everyone still just trying to do justice to the play of these guys on the field and their lives off it? Well, Meg, I've seen somewhat of a shift. I would say 20 years ago, most of the Negro League history was oral history. They would interview a ballplayer, and they would capture that interview and print it in a book, which is fine. People would read these books and say, wow, this is interesting. I want to know more. He threw a no hitter win. Can you prove it? Well, then they reach out to me, and yes, here's the box score. Here's the game account. They had 9,000 people in the stands that day in Yankee Stadium.

So it helped the history gain more momentum. As in anything, it evolved. People wanted to know more. Everybody got hungrier. Right. Who is this guy? I've never heard of him. Who is Hilton Smith?

Poor man, Satchel Paige, you know. Who was Bullet Rogan? I mean, he was the black Babe Ruth. He played outfield and pitched every fourth day. And bad at cleanup. Who? Bullet Rogan? Yes.

Let me tell you more about him. So it just created more energy and more excitement and more interest in this chapter of baseball history. Well, that's a good segue to our next question. And we asked this of Bob Kendrick when we spoke to him earlier this week are there any particular players you have a soft spot for or who you wish got greater recognition and Bob talked about Martin DeHigo but you know players who don't have the name recognition of Satchel Paige or Josh Gibson or Cool Papa Bell but you think should be known to everyone well as I mentioned earlier I'm very, very satisfied that 17 players, managers,

and executives got into the Baseball Hall of Fame. I was disappointed that cannonball Dick Redding did not get in. Great ball player, great pitcher. He pitched mostly before 1920, and so that was before the league, team 20. And so that was before the league. And therefore, a lot of his games are hard to find because he pitched for independent teams. But based on my research, the man was just awesome. I found he pitched four doubleheaders in his career and won, I think, six of the eight games. I mean, the man was a machine. He pitched first and second game of a doubleheader,

and he was the equivalent of Smokey Joe Williams, who is in the Hall of Fame. They were considered the top pitchers of the period. But Cannonball Dick Redding died at an early age in a mental institution, and based on some research, he was illiterate. And I think that hurt his recognition in baseball history. But his pitching record is outstanding. I think he needs to be in the Hall of Fame.

That's just my vote. You've helped to campaign for pensions for former Negro League players and have also helped to raise money to purchase headstones to place on players' unmarked graves. What can you tell us about those efforts? The pension effort was very difficult. The pitching effort was very difficult. Many of the ballplayers, when they retired, say at the age of 38, 39, or 40, they had no meaningful skills. I mean, James Kupapa Bell was a security guard for the rest of his life. And so they had no pitching.

And Major League Baseball said they don't deserve a pension. They never played in Major Leagues. And so I flew to New York. I met with their lawyers, banged my fist on the table, and I said the Negro Leagues were created from the bias of Major League Baseball. If you had allowed them to play, there would have never been a Negro Leagues. They are a product of racism in this country. So I think you owe them a pension. And this is the article that I have ready for the Washington Post and the New York Times, showing how Major League Baseball

has benefited from the Negro Leagues because the memorabilia was starting to get out. And Major League Baseball had an apparel campaign. And I said, you're benefiting from these men. And I said, basically, you're pimping these players. And that was the words I actually used. And they whispered to each other. And they said, well, let's do something. If they play at least four years in the Negro Leagues, let's get them a pension.

It passed. I said, what are we going to do about the royalties? He said, it's going to be pro bono. We're going to give 50% to the Jackie Robinson Foundation, I think 30% to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and 20% to the players. So now they get a royalty check from the sale of a pearl, and they get a pension check of $10,000 every year.

Of course, that created a lot of animosity. That's okay. You know, as Reggie Jackson said, people don't boo nobodies. So I got booed and criticized, but it didn't bother me. As Reggie Jackson said, people don't boo nobodies. I got booed and criticized, but it didn't bother me. None of the money came to me. It all came to the ballplayers. Everybody who played four or more years in the Negro Leagues got a pension from Major League Baseball of $10,000 a year.

My job was to provide documentation with the box scores to show that they played four years or more. The Great Marker Project was an idea of Dr. Jeremy Kroc out of Peoria, Illinois, an anesthesiologist. Great guy. He called me one day and asked me about raising money for an unmarked grave. I'm like, well, I don't think that's going to work. I mean, who cares? I mean, I do, and you do.

And we shared our stories how we go to our family grave sites on Memorial Day and plant flowers. My wife and I, we've done that for years. I said, I'm on the same page with you, Jeremy, but who's going to give us money for a headstone? He said, well, I've got it. I did this for Jimmy Crutchfield, who grew up in this hometown of Ardmore, Missouri. I got permission from the family. Julia was still living, Jimmy's widow. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to at least try. I mean, and so I put it in the newsletter and money started rolling in and I'm like, okay, I'm going to at least try. I mean, and so I put it in the newsletter, and money started rolling in,

and I'm like, wow, this works. But he had the idea and the game plan, and I just had to reach out to my base of Sabre members, roughly 600 members in the Negro Leagues Research Committee, sent them a group email, and money started rolling in. And then next thing you know, he's on the front page of the New York Times, Horse Illustrated, ESPN did a little segment on him. I'm like, this is great.

This is cool stuff. Yeah, that is great. And you mentioned the memorabilia and the royalty from those sales. And in order to sell apparel or items, you had to figure out what it looked like so it could be recreated. And I'm sure it wasn't just lying around well-preserved somewhere. And, of course, you only had black and white photos. So how did you track down those details so that these things could be reproduced and sold and that there could be proceeds from that? Well, Ben, I used two processes.

I would call ballplayers up and I would ask them, what was the color of your uniform that you wore in 1944? They're like, what? And some of them knew, some of them did not. And so I had a lot of phone calls, a lot of phone calls. And I made a notebook, and I looked at photographs, and I did team-by-team, year-by-year analysis based on interviews. And then I would go to the newspapers, and some newspapers were great.

They would say the Chicago American Giants marched out on the field in their new uniforms for opening day, beige colored with red trim letters in bold blue. And I'm like, whoa, there it is. Eureka. Like, it doesn't get any better than this. So, you know, you get lucky sometimes. So I started looking at May was basically opening day in Negro Leagues,

not April like it is now because of the weather. So I look at newspapers during the month of May and see if I could find an entry of players in their new uniform. And I track them year by year. Pretty soon I had a whole notebook of every team for every year and the color scheme and everything and sent that off to the manufacturers like American Needle, Wilson, Spalding, and they would make uniforms and make a lot of money. efforts and the efforts and scholarships of so many other baseball researchers and historians, we know a lot more about the Negro Leagues and Negro League players now than we did in the 70s, and we'll continue to know more as this research proliferates. But I'm curious what some of the unanswered questions are that you're still keen to explore in your own research?

Unanswered questions. still keen to explore in your own research? Unanswered question. Yeah, is there a game whose box score just needles you when you go to bed every night that you wish you could find? Is there some detail of the postseason or a player's life that you wish you could just fill in and satisfy? I don't know if this is the sort of thing that keeps historians up at night, but if there's one fact that you wish you could know with certainty. Yes, there are a few games, Meg, from the 1948

World Series that we have still not found the full box score. Sometimes they would play in a small town. It irritates me to no end that we have not been able to find that one or two games. In 1938, Josh Gibson hit four home runs in a ball game in Zionsville, Ohio. One of the researchers went there in person and looked at all three newspapers from that hometown. They all validated that Josh Gibson hit four home runs in that game, but there's no box score. Oh, geez.

So I cannot put it into the database with Gary Ashwell because I need to balance the box score. I need to have four hits given up by a pitcher for the four home runs that he hit. So that's not a part of the totals. That irritates me to no end. I mean, when we do the all-time career home run record, Josh Gibson is going to be four home runs shy. So the only thing we can do is make a footnote.

In the process of putting together the statistical database, we also need to have the biographical information. When the player was born, when he passed away, of course we do the cemetery for obvious reasons. And sometimes a ball player with a common name is very hard to locate that information. Some obituaries are never printed, and if they are, they're in the black newspapers. And sometimes ballplayers are played under an assumed name, and so we have a lot of players that are missing biographical data. That keeps me up at night.

I have some great researchers out there who know how to use Ancestry.com, FamilyTree.org, and Genealogy Bank. And every day there's a new discovery coming across my desk. So we're still filling in those blanks. It's fun, but at the same time, it's like, ugh. Yeah, I bet. Well, thanks to your work and the work of so many others, a lot of these players have been brought to life in a way that they couldn't have been otherwise, and we can read about them and we can look up their stats

and we can know their names. But to you, they are more real than to most people because you have had such friendships and relationships with so many of the surviving players, and I know that you still do. And I wonder which players you have gotten the closest to over the years, or what it has meant to you to have that network of players in your life. Well, I would say Bullet Rogan's family. I still see them around the city. I was very close with Kupapa Bell.

Sherwood Brewer out of Chicago. We would go to ball games together, and Nap Gully was another ball player that I liked. There are a lot of lesser-known ball players that I've become close with. I really loved a ball player by the name of Saul Davis. He played for the Birmingham Black Barons. And we would talk late at night. And, you know, I mean, his daughter called me one time late at night and let me know that, you know, my father just passed away. And I'm looking at all these letters that you have written him over the years. And I just wanted you to know what they meant to him and so those are aha moments that I know I'm doing the right thing I mean I remember one time Toni Stone one of five female athletes in the Negro Leagues she called me on Christmas Day saying she was lonely and wanted to talk so I'm here for you Toni what's

on your mind we talked at great length about her career and She told me some great stories. So it's a personal journey for me. I love what I do. I'm embarrassed to take money for it sometimes. But a lot of great stories with great families. The only downside is if I interviewed three ballplayers the same day, I would have to eat at everyone's house because their wives would feed me. I'm like, I cannot eat anymore.

We're so glad you're here. Nobody's never heard of my husband, and you're going to write about him, so please have another piece of pie. That's the only downside. You cannot say no. So this year was supposed to see the return of the Jerry Molloy Negro League Conference, which Sabre puts on and says is the only symposium dedicated exclusively to the examination and promotion of black baseball history. promotion of Black baseball history. In addition to presenting research, I know the conference also helps to raise funds for the Grave Marker Project and awards scholarships to high school seniors and has an annual art contest. And unfortunately, like so much else in 2020, the conference had to be

postponed due to the pandemic. But I wondered if you could tell our listeners a bit about it. We have many Saber members among our listenership who might not know about this conference, but be interested in attending in 2021 and also what they can do to learn more about the Negro Leagues through Saber's work while they wait for the conference and 2021 to come around. Well, the Jerry Molloy Negro League Conference is an opportunity for people to present their papers on a ballplayer who may not be in the Hall of Fame or a team that they found playing around 1915. It's an opportunity to expand the knowledge base. We have people from all over the country come to our conference. We move it around every year. to expand the knowledge base.

We have people from all over the country come to our conference. We move it around every year. In 2021, it will be in Birmingham. We already have a contract sometime in July. I try to invite, say, four ballplayers. We have a player panel where I interview the ballplayers. Sometimes we have an author's panel because everybody's writing a book about the Negro Leagues now. We go to a ballgame and maybe have one of the Negro Leaguers throw out the first pitch.

It's a fun event. I mean, people come from Canada and every corner of the United States. If you want to learn more about the Negro Leagues, that's the place to be. It's just an opportunity to fill that gap. Well, you have filled so many gaps over the years, and we're grateful for that. And we will link to where people can find your work and some of the resources you mentioned. And your website is LarryLester42.com. And we thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us today. Well, thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it.

And batter up. All right. Thanks to Larry and to all of our guests this week. I hope you enjoyed this podcast programming. I have a few follow-ups here. First, if you're interested in learning more or doing your own research into the Negro Thank you. in your podcast app. Also, please do check out the SeamHeads Negro Leagues database. It's really well done. There's some fascinating stats on there, and there's some fascinating explanations of how those stats are calculated and displayed, especially the advanced stats. As I noted on a previous episode, friend of the show, Dan Hirsch, has done a lot of work

on the back end there. And just reading from a post on the front page that was published earlier this year called Normalizing Negro League Statistics, it gives you some sense of the difficulty here. It's talking about park factors here, and it says the reason simple park calculations work for normalization is that there is an underlying assumption that except for home parks, players within a league all face almost identical conditions under which their teams perform. Those conditions include playing the same number of games as all other teams, playing schedules with close to the same difficulty, playing an equal number of home and away games and not playing any neutral site games, and playing most or all home games in the same park. For the Negro Leagues, those assumed conditions all fall apart. Not just for the pre-league 1900-1919 era, but even after formal leagues formed, the following conditions still prevailed in the Negro Leagues.

Teams played varying numbers of total games. Teams played differing numbers of games against other league teams. Teams played an unbalanced number of home and away games. Teams played in multiple neutral parks. So you get some sense of the challenges there, even aside from the challenge of finding those box scores and that data in the first place. And it goes through some of the steps that they use to kind of correct for those obstacles. So I will link to that too.

I will also link to a few pieces by one of our guests from last week, Shakia Taylor, who has written extensively about the Negro Leagues and she has covered some of the topics that came up on this week's episodes, including Effa Manley and the centennial of the founding of the Negro Leagues

and the continued underrepresentation of black leaders of baseball teams. She also wrote about the grave markers that we talked about today. So she's published pieces at the Heartball Times and Fangraphs and Baseball Prospectus and SB Nation. I will link to some of those and encourage you to check them out. Also, please check out Rob Arthur's recent work at Baseball Prospectus, where he has mined the statistical data to uncover evidence of racial bias in scouting and in player evaluation and promoting players. And for much of this, he has used the database of Red's scouting reports that I was able to obtain and that he and I analyzed for a series of articles at The Ringer

last year. And in that article, we were able to determine that there is kind of coded language that scouts in that period were using to describe non-white players, that certain terms, which you can probably imagine, got applied to white players more often than non-white players and vice versa. And he has continued to dig into that resource and has found that non-white players have historically been undervalued compared to white players and that they seemingly have also been promoted more slowly given comparable performance. So this week we've been talking about prejudices that were in place several decades ago, or a century ago or more, and in baseball some of those prejudices are still in place,

just in less obvious and visible ways, but still significant ones. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks andrew winn evan haldane jivas kdb and tom on 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 platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg and Sam coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance this week. This is episode 1560,

so we are ending this week on a multiple of five and a multiple of three. So satisfying. We hope you have a good holiday weekend, and we will be back early next week to resume the season preview podcasts. Talk to you then. Well, if one can't be my answer to you Well, if one can't be my answer to you

Lord, if one can't be my answer to you See that my brain is kept Lord, it's one giant tree, I'll last a year See that my friend is counting It's a long way, ain't got no end It's a long lane, ain't got no end It's a long lane, ain't got no end. It's a long lane, ain't got

no end. There's a bad wind that never changes.