Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1630: What’s Next for the Negro Leagues?

Episode Date: December 17, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss the news that MLB is belatedly designating the 1920-1948 Negro Leagues as major leagues (with a word from 1948 Negro Leaguer Ron Teasley), touching on the various reactions to MLB’s announcement, the positives and negatives of MLB’s approach to this process, the upcoming, complex integration of Negro Leagues stats […]

It's about time, it's about time, it's about time, don't you know now, it's about time, it's about time now, it's about time, don't you know now. It's about time we get together, to be out front and love one another, brothers, sisters, everybody. We better start to help each other now. We need it now. When we're sharing our love, brother, that's when you know we can change another world. Hello and welcome to episode 1630 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I stumbled a little bit, Ben.

I was like, oh, preparing to stumble, but then I caught myself. You kept going. You had the momentum. I kept going. It was fine. It's like when you knock a glass off the kitchen counter, but you catch it. Stuck the landing. I guess you haven't stuck the landing yet. No, because I... You're still in the middle of the intro. I'm still in the middle of it, but I am Meg Rowley of Fangraphs,

and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? There you go. You did it. Yeah, I'm good. I had a nice day, mostly. News breaker Ben. I know. Look at me out here breaking news left and right. Dangerous game. It's a dangerous game to be in. Not a game that I want to get into or am at all equipped to get into, but every now and then something stumbles my way. So, yeah, there was a lot of discussion today about MLB's decision to designate the Negro Leagues as major leagues officially.

And this is something that we talked about some months ago. It came up then because I had inquired about this, prompted by an effectively wild listener email, of all all things that sort of started this snowball, which is kind of cool. And there, of course, had been a lot of scholarship and research about this already out there and people who had been advocating for it for decades and have just put in the work, the painstaking effort to collect all of the stats and make this possible. And yeah, once it got going, which took only 50 plus years for them to like even consider this question. But once that happened, it moved fairly quickly, I guess by Major League Baseball standards.

So there are just a lot of implications of this and a lot to digest and a lot of different perspectives and things that will have to be worked out. But for today, it was nice. Not a universally positive reaction, nor should it be necessarily. But I think there were a lot of heartwarming things in my mentions from people finding out about this and just people I talked to for the story, people we had on the podcast this year, Bob Kendrick from the Negro Leagues Museum and Larry Lester, who has been responsible for so much of the data collection efforts dating

back decades. They were both happy about this. And this morning I got to call Ron Teasley, who is a 93-year-old former Negro leaguer, who is one of the few living players who is actually affected by this and will have their stats reclassified. And he played for the New York Cubans of the Negro National League in 1948, didn't make the majors with them, but now will officially be a big leaguer in the record books. And got to call him up and tell him that this was happening, and he seemed quite pleased about it. And I was gonna describe what he said, but why don't I just let you hear it?

I'll let him speak for himself, and this is just a quick clip from our conversation after I gave him the news. That's a great feeling, that's a great, wonderful feeling, great feeling. Things news. That's a great feeling. That's a great, wonderful feeling. Great feeling. I think it's a wonderful thing. It's a great thing. It's a great thing for baseball in general. I think we deserve it. Growing up, I used to, Father would talk to me about the teams and

the caliber of play and that sort of thing. The fact that so many of the... After the league was integrated, players were the most valuable players and brought the different teams to greater heights. And I think this is just a great,

wonderful, it's a wonderful thing. I know I have a good friend, Dr. Leonard. I would say a wonderful thing. I know I have a good friend, Dr. Leonard. I would say a good friend. I say we chatted quite a bit on different occasions. He's just such a wonderful person. You could tell he was a big-time ball player. Also, when I played up in Canada, I played against Willie Wells.

What a great player he was. I think he was like 45, 50 years old when I played up in Canada. I played against Willie Wells. I thought what a great player he was. I think he was like 45, 50 years old when I played against him. He was still playing at a high caliber level and admired him so much. I used to hear Buck O'Neill on many occasions talk about the fact that in the squad, the games that played between the black major league and the white Major League teams were equal. They'd win

some, and the other white Major League teams would win some games. Also, I used to hear Double Duty Radcliffe talk about the fact that how they would play these exhibition games. Also, I heard Bob Feller, I hear him on occasions,

say that he felt that the teams were high caliber. He just always had a lot of praise for the players. And we'd come to some of our reunions, and the players would have a good time chatting, living old times and some of the great games that they played against each other. So that was Ron Teasley keeping our streak of 90-something-year-old guests going. So as overdue and belated as this is, it seems like something that really had to happen. And I'm glad that it finally has.

really had to happen. I'm glad that it finally has. And so, yeah, for one day at least, or part of one day at least, there was a positive story in 2020 about baseball, no less. So that was nice. That was nice. And I did think when your story came out about the conversations that we had had with Bob and Larry and the perspective that they shared and how meaningful this must be to them. And in a move that will perhaps continue a recently remarked upon trend on the podcast, then MLB decided to win. I think that, you know,

clearly like my stakes in this are very small compared to the families of Negro League players and all of the folks who we've talked about here who have done such good work to, you know, to push for this sort of obvious recognition on MLB's part and also to complete the historical record, which is only in the state that it's in because of the refusal of baseball to acknowledge the quality of these players in the first place right and so you know i don't want to take anything away from from their experience or speak for them but i do find it frustrating that the baseball uh seemed to suggest in the way that it talked about this that it didn't quite understand the full scope of the harm that had been done here. And when MLB's PR account tweeted this out, they said, Commissioner Manfred announced today

that MLB is officially elevating the Negro Leagues to major league status. And I think that that word choice, that word choice is meaningful because when we are communicating in public, we're saying something about the topic that we're discussing, but we're also saying a lot about ourselves and our understanding of the situation and sort of our role in it. And between that and sort of I think at one point there was discussion about a longtime oversight. oversight, it just removed a lot of the agency that Major League Baseball has had in it taking this long for them to acknowledge something that I think a lot of historians have commented on now,

and that was clear to a lot of people in the time that the Negro Leagues were operational, which is that these players were excellent, and they were great competitors. And the reason that they were excluded from Major League Baseball was because of racism and prejudice and not because of their sort of lack of skill. And so I think that, you know, it's hard to have that kind of reckoning with a really terrible legacy in a press release. But I think it is important for Major League Baseball to do some work to grapple with the role that it had in all of this, which is a very active and pivotal one and one that denied, you know, a lot of Negro League players the opportunity to make it into Cooperstown at all, make it into Cooperstown during their lifetime. I think I'd encourage people to go read Clint Yates's piece at the Undefeated about, you know, his perspective on this, which I will not spoil.

I think you need to read and kind of sit with it. But the line he has at the end of this piece, I think is a really powerful one, which is to say, Major League Baseball is one league in one country. In 2020, joining the globe and recognizing that black folks are real people without whom you could never survive is not a reason to say you're welcome.

It's a reason to say sorry. And I think that this sort of underscores a theme of a lot of what's gone on in Major League Baseball in 2020, which is them finally doing something they should have done a really long time ago and then kind of expecting to but in like a doing some real reckoning and self-reflection that's clear and sort of happens in a proactive way rather than a reactive way. Because I think that this is a really important moment for the history of baseball. And I do think that it changes sort of the state of that research going forward and hopefully will change you know some of our leaderboards and bring a new understanding of some really great players to a lot of folks who haven't taken the time to look at them before and it would be nice to be able to focus on that part

rather than the like why did it take you guys so long to do this stuff right so that's the that's the other half of the day which i think we have to acknowledge but the part of it that is you know a lot of very dedicated people getting to see a thing they've worked really hard for realized after a long time that part is really special and i don't want to take anything from that yeah because that would be that would be a real shame on a day like today like it's really great that the sort of families of Negro League players, like you said, got to hear this news. I think it is meaningful to a lot of people. So I don't want to whine or be a bummer, Ben. No, it has to be pointed out. It should be.

It has to be both aspects of this conversation have to be given their due, I think. And yeah, I think it's really great that Larry Lester, who has dedicated a large portion of his life to digging through box scores, which is not fun, frankly, you know, digging up microfilm and recording these things. It's not fun. I've done some work like that, and it can be really tedious, and he has done it for decades. And so for him to be in the press release and, you know, see his name and know that this was done in large part because of his efforts, that's got to be good. And I think the Seamheads Negro Leagues database, which is the most comprehensive source of these statistics, fueled in part by Larry's work, it went down today because of the traffic, which has never happened before. I emailed Gary Ashwell to say, hey, is your server down because of the traffic? And he's like, yeah, this does not usually happen to us. And it's not good that the server went

down, but I think it's a symptom of just the increased interest. There were a lot of people looking at these stats, getting to know these players and their accomplishments who would not have otherwise. And, you know, hopefully MLB will cover their hosting costs and, you know, kick some money their way so that that doesn't happen again. But like, I hope that that is a sign of increased and sustained interest to come for years. And hopefully that the statistical record, which is roughly three quarters complete for this 1920 to 1948 period that is being designated as major league, hopefully something like this encourages MLB or other parties to contribute

to that effort and help spearhead it because there's still a lot of work to be done and it takes time and resources and sending people to places where they can look up microfilm for newspapers that haven't been digitized and maybe when you designate the stats as major league well now all of a sudden there's more pressure for them to be complete and accurate and so hopefully that helps spur some of that research or hopefully this spurs a an evaluation a re-evaluation of some Negro Leagues players who perhaps deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. And there has not been a new player from the Negro Leagues inducted into the Hall of Fame since 2006, and players are still underrepresented. One potential reason for that might be that voters have at least at times been instructed to consider Negro League's performance and ALNL performance separately. So they weren't supposed to treat it as if it was all Major League play, which it is. And now presumably they would not be instructed to draw some distinction there so i think there are a lot of positive

byproducts that will come from this and i i hope it will be a net positive and just talking to bob and you know sean gibson and and seeing that they think that this will bring more attention to their programs and initiatives like i think that's good for the legacy of these players and leagues and families. But yeah, like, you have to talk about the other aspect of it. And I almost feel like we need one word that can kind of encapsulate, like, all of these different reactions that we're having to all of these different things, or really the same reaction to a lot of different things because like in my twitter mentions you know when people were quote tweeting my tweet about this it broke down fairly evenly i would say between people saying this is great this is huge this is exciting and then other people saying long overdue which i think you were one of those and uh and other people saying about damn time and you know having the lebron picture from 2012 when he won a championship and said that, like, all of that has to be part of the reaction. Like, you can't celebrate it and say, good job, MLB, pat them on the back. Because, like, A, this only has to happen because the Negro Leagues, you know, existed in the first place because these players were prevented from having the opportunity to play in the American League or the National League. And then when there was an opportunity to designate

the Negro Leagues as major leagues 50 plus years ago, that didn't happen and they weren't even considered. And then in the subsequent five decades, it never came up. Basically, at least MLB never considered the question. And so I hope I was careful to frame it in my piece as like there are a lot of positive things that will come from this but it's not a matter of like say thank you to mlb for doing this because like it's terrible that this didn't happen before so yeah i think this can be a reason to celebrate without being a reason to celebrate mlb but i likened it in the article to the kim eng hiring or the Cleveland name change. It's not just in baseball.

It's like a lot of things this year that have happened that are positive steps and get you closer to the world that you want to live in, but also remind you of how far from that world we have been and still are. of how far from that world we have been and still are. And yeah, you don't want to be deflating and focus on the negative to the exclusion of the positive. I consider myself an optimist by nature. But you also don't want to be like, rah, rah, let's ignore everything that happened up to this point and the incredibly long path it took to get here while we're praising this decision. So it's tough to talk about. It's going to be messy. It's bound to be when you're talking about subjects as sensitive

and potentially painful as this. Yeah, I just think we would do well not only in baseball, but just in life to get out of the habit of giving institutions credit for tearing down barriers that they erect, right? That's not commendable. I think that the opportunity and the chance for advancement or healing, depending on the situation that doing that affords, is great for the people involved, and it can be exciting and thrilling to see progress in a thing you care about or in your community. But,

you know, I think that one of the things that was sort of a recurring theme in the writing around Kimming's hiring in Miami, and, you know, I know that Jen Ramos pointed this out in their piece at Baseball Perspectives, and Rachel pointed it out at Fangraphs, is that, you know, there's a lot of crowing about a thing that could have been resolved and sort of done and dusted decades ago if there had been not only institutional will to make it happen, but not resistance rooted in sort of, you know, whether it's racism or sexism or what have you. And so it's an odd moment to sort of grapple with as a person who doesn't owe anything to MLB as an institution. So I just think that we get to be excited. And I think that one way to make sure that we don't continue to have these moments is to meet them with an appropriate amount of skepticism and with feedback, critical feedback on how they ought to be handled better. And I think that like, I thought your piece threaded the

needle on that really well. And I think that the reactions that have come out today are, are important ones for us to all kind of sit with as we think about how we can make sure that like injustices like this don't replicate themselves over future decades where we will be the participants in them so yeah right i tried to be careful about this and i i hope i was careful enough in making clear that these players are not major leaguers today who were not major leaguers yesterday because mlb said so like right no they were major leaguers all along. These leagues were major league quality. MLB did not recognize the reality of that. And now they have.

It hasn't changed the reality. They didn't make them major leaguers. And that's something Bob Kendrick said in my piece. Like, they didn't need the validation. Like, they didn't have any doubts about how good they were or how high the skill level in the league was. So it's not a case of MLB conferring something on them or like giving them something that they didn't already have. It's like MLB or it should be MLB saying we screwed up. denied reality for all this time. And now we're no longer going to deny this reality. And perhaps that's good. I think like, it's better not to deny that reality, but also it's, it's just, it's not really like a great job guys. Cause like, you know, this should have happened a long

time ago. So, so that's the thing. I hope that people will understand that distinction, that it's not that these players were not major leaguers. It's just that they were not treated as such as what they were by MLB. And now MLB is no longer making that mistake. I don't even know if rectify is the right word because it's not like they can undo what they did or didn't do for all those years. It's just that they're not going to continue to do that. So it's tough. And, you know, if the reaction is like, well, who are you to even weigh in on this? Like, why do we even care what MLB says about this?

Like, they're the ones who kept them out of the league in the first place and snubbed them for all these years. I understand that perspective. And I guess I would just say, based on the people I talked to, that it seems like a lot of them believe that more good will come out of this happening than it not happening. And I don't know, you know, in their heart of hearts, why did Rob Manfred decide to do this? Why did other people at MLB decide to do this? Certainly, I'm sure a part of it is trying to cover their ass, trying to avoid blowback,

because once this is pointed out, especially in this environment, it's like, are you serious? This hasn't happened before. How is that possible? It's just totally untenable not to do something. And so I think you have to do what they did. And then, you know, could they have gone even further? Should it have come with be something where some bitterness comes out of it just because of the negro leagues and and that's part of that legacy and like any appearance of trying to sweep under the rug of like why these players were not in al or nl in the first place is not going to be received well so yeah like you know the language some of the language in the press release seemed fine and like yes they acknowledged that it was an oversight and that it was long overdue and like it was an error at the time.

So it wasn't as if they were praising themselves in that way for doing this finally. But using that word elevate is not a word I would use because the whole point is that it was not a lower league. So the Negro Leagues don't need MLB to lift it up. It's just I said in my piece I recognize or designate or classify or whatever. But anything that avoids the appearance of making it seem as if they are. They deign to make room. They deign to make room, yeah.

I think the language there is tricky, and MLB's choices were fine in some places and very clumsy in others. And I just think that it's such a complicated, it was such a complicated legacy even at the time, right? Like the decision to finally integrate the majors came with the destruction of the Negro Leagues, right? Like this was not an sort of unequivocally good thing, even though it was the right thing to do.

It certainly had an effect on the state of the Negro Leagues in a way that I think, you know, like Clinton talks about in his piece and Bob Kendrick brought up in our conversation with him that, you know, it did in some ways do damage to these communities. So I think that it's kind of always hard for, like institutions are by definition impersonal because it's not, you know, you have the commissioner, but it's a different thing than a person who has done a wrong being able to sit down and have a conversation with someone else that they have harmed which isn't to say that those should not be attempted or that institutions don't need to hold themselves accountable but i do think that there's sort of a communication challenge here and while i am sympathetic to that i do wish that mlb sort of rose to it more often

if only because it is so frequently pointed out to them where they fall down and there is a theme to their failure so and you know there are a lot of really good people who work for the league office and are smart about this stuff but the way they talk about it really does need some some work and you know i think that's true even understanding that there are a variety of perspectives on this across baseball across the black community right it's important for us to acknowledge this is not like a monolithic entity right there are a lot of different viewpoints on this but i think that when damage like this is so directly the effect of your own policy it's just it's good to come to it from a place of humility and acknowledging harm done. And I think that if that's where it

starts, then language like elevate doesn't tend to enter the conversation naturally. So there's still clearly a lot of work to be done there. Yeah. Rob Manford's comment in the press release was, all of us who love baseball have long known that the Negro Leagues produced many of our game's best players, innovations, and triumphs against a backdrop of injustice. We are now grateful to count the players of the Negro Leagues where they belong, as major leaguers within the official historical record. So I guess the real breaking news here, we buried the lead. Rob Manfred does love baseball.

He said so in the press release. All you people who said Rob Manfred hates baseball, no, he said all of us who love baseball. See, it's right there in the text. Rob Manfred hates baseball, no, he said all of us who love baseball. See, it's right there in the text. Rob Manfred, baseball lover. Until he gets it tattooed on his forehead. I'm not going to believe it, Ben. Yeah. So this is kind of the culmination of an effort by a lot of people who have put a ton of time into this for years and years and years.

And I'm happy for them. into this for years and years and years, and I'm happy for them. And this is also really just the beginning of another effort because they have to figure out how to do this exactly and how to incorporate these stats into that official record the way that other major league stats from non-AL NL leagues were long ago. And that is really sort of a fascinating subject and writing about this. It occurred to me like all of the implications here and the ramifications and all the complications when it comes to how do you display these stats? Like what do you count? What do you not count? And so I guess I'll just answer a few of the frequently asked questions that I saw from people who quote tweeted my article, but for whatever reason did not

click on the article to find the answers that they were seeking which I would never I would never understand that behavior like it's very first time it's ever happened though so yeah I hope it's not a trend shocking shocking it's just that I rarely go even like semi-viral because I don't tweet at all. So like when it happens, I am confronted with Twitter behavior again. I don't get it. Like I appreciate that like you have any interest in the subject and you're like engaging with the tweet at all, which you don't have to do. You could just ignore it. But like if you are curious about these things and if you do have these questions, then the answer is right there like there's an article you could click on it like i laid it

all out there i anticipated some of these questions that were in your mind they were in my mind too like they're there i like i don't know if if people understand that like with the tweet like there's a link that takes you to a story so it's not just the text in the tweet like there's a link that takes you to a period. And that is kind of the consensus, like not everyone agrees on exactly where you set the cutoff for the end of the quote unquote major league period, because some scholars will say, no, it was a major league until 1950 or 1951. But the consensus that seems to have developed that MLB has kind of followed the lead on here is that 48 is sort of the appropriate cutoff because, A, it's after integration. And so there had been the talent drain and just the lack of financial viability after MLB raided the rosters basically of all the Negro Leagues teams. And that affected the condition.

So that was part of it. And then that was the last year that the Negro World Series was played. And it was also the last year of the Negro National League, the second Negro National League that folded after that. So it's kind of viewed as a cutoff that a lot of people have adopted and MLB decided to do that too. And so because it's 1920 to 1948 and 1920 is the natural starting point because it was the founding of the Negro Leagues and Rube Foster and sort of the first enduring league in black baseball, that's the period. And so if you're wondering, well, does this mean that Hank Aaron gets more homers now because he hit some homers in the Negro Leagues? No, it doesn't mean that because he hit those homers in 1952.

So this will not be counted toward his famous total that we all know by heart. And does this mean that the women who played for Indianapolis in the Negro Leagues in 53 and 54, are now considered major leagues. No, unfortunately, that is not a byproduct of this because that is not contained within this period either. And does this mean that Josh Gibson is now the all-time home run king? Because people know the numbers of, you know, Josh Gibson hit 800 homers or 900 homers or whatever. And no, that is unofficial. That's sort of a vague number that gets tossed around that includes non-league games and exhibition

and barnstorming and everything. And he has fewer than 300 documented homers in Negro Leagues games. So it's not really going to overturn a lot of the legendary career records that we all grew up learning, but there are only 17 hits of his right now that they have box scores for and that we know happened. And so I think only 10 of them were during the regular season. And so it's not a huge change, but like Willie Mays has the number of hits that he has had since 1973. Like that number has not changed. And, you know and he's credited with 3,283 hits. Well,

now that number is going to go up, because if you're a player like Willie Mays, who spanned both of these leagues and eras, then your stats will be combined. And for Mays, that's not a huge difference, and his 660 homers, at least for now, will stay the same, Not a huge difference. And his 660 homers, at least for now, will stay the same, although he did hit at least one in that 1948 season, which is known because there is a description of it in a newspaper account. But there is no box score that has been found yet. So it's not actually part of the database. So this means, though, that the hit that Willie Mays celebrated as his 3,000th hit will now no longer have been his 3,000th hit. It's hard to even frame that with the correct tense.

But his 3,000th hit in retrospect now, as far as the record books are concerned, will turn out to actually have been whatever. His 3,010th hit or 3,017th hit or something. his 3,010th hit or 3,017th hit or something. And his actual 3,000th hit will now have been what he thought was his 2,983rd hit or something along those lines. And his first major league hit is now not the homer he hit off Warren Spahn in 1951, but the single he hit in 1948 that is documented. So a lot of those little things will change and they will keep changing because not all of his stats for that season have been found and documented yet. So that will continue to change. And that's just a small thing because

Mays played almost all of his career in the National League. But for others, I mean, obviously for players who never played in the majors as they were defined at the time, Josh Gibson, for instance, like, you know, suddenly all of his stats are reclassified. Satchel Paige, who played most of his career in the Negro Leagues, like now suddenly his quote-unquote major league innings total like quadruples immediately. And so that really I think will change things, certainly in terms of like career rate stats. Suddenly like, gosh, Gibson will be way up there and a lot of the other great Negro Leagues hitter will be way up there in batting average or OPS plus.

And in terms of single season accomplishments, as we talked to Sean about, no, Ted Williams will not have been the last 400 hitter anymore. Josh Gibson did it. And Larry Wester mentioned to me, Bob Feller is the only major leaguer with an opening day no hitter. Well, nope, no more. Leon Day pitched an opening day no hitter. It's going to be a reframing of these numbers and fun facts that we feel like we've known for a long time, and that will be challenging for sure to figure out continue to update it and present it? And it's really just kind of a fascinating quandary, but one that I think had to happen. And maybe we'll talk to someone who's involved in that effort to get into the nitty gritty of it all. But it's really going to be quite an undertaking, I think, to unify these records.

Yeah, I think that this is the beginning of another phase of work. Isn't that always the way you get what you want and your reward for it is more work? But I think that, yeah, it's going to be fascinating what this does, not only the decisions that are made to sort of unify the record, but the language we use to talk about them and the sort of additional archival work that it inspires. I think one thing that would be great for MLB to do, like you said, is to help to fund this work, right? So to fund it, not only in terms of its specific practical on the ground, like let's make sure that that person

doesn't have to pay for their plane ticket to whatever archive in the middle of a college town in the middle of a cornfield but also you know to help fund the work of the negro leagues museum so that it can be part of this this effort both to to figure out the statistical record and then to celebrate it so it's a good and interesting stat challenge it was funny when the announcement came down, I got a lot of people asking me, when is this stuff going to be on Fangraphs? And I was like, I think that that is the eventual goal, but there's a lot of stuff that people who have been doing this work

for a long time have to sort out before we can import stats. We have to know what the stats are, right? We have to agree on the set of stats. So it's going gonna be an effort although one made easier by all the work that came before it certainly so right yeah and i think that the researchers who are at the forefront of this want to make sure that there is like one place for now that is uh the most up-to-date and comprehensive so that there aren't multiple versions of these stats floating around. And that is kind of the case already. The stats on Baseball Reference are somewhat outdated. If

you want the most complete stats available, you've got to go to Seamheads. And Baseball Reference has not licensed all of that or has not been able to license all of that. And so yeah, I'm sure based on his track record, I know that David Appelman is always interested in having the most information and the best information on fan graphs and of providing a platform for anyone who wants to share that data or licensing it. So I don't doubt that he will certainly be interested if others are interested in providing it there. But Seamheads is a great resource. And there's a lot of precedent for this sort of thing because record keeping was quite shoddy early in baseball history in the AL and NL and other leagues that were already regarded as major. And so there have been a lot of cases and some high profile famous cases of numbers

being changed decades after the fact because someone else discovered new information or found out that something was inaccurate. And so it's always changing. It's always in flux as we get more and better information. So this is not unprecedented in that sense, but the scale of it will be really quite an undertaking. So I think it's good that they stated that they're doing it before all of that was figured out. I mean, you could have said, well, let's figure out how exactly we're going to do every little detail of this before we announce it. But the longer you go without announcing it, I think once it was pointed out that this was such a glaring oversight and so hypocritical in light of everything else that's going on, you got to do it. And I am semi

surprised that there wasn't some official committee forum to deliberate about this, but you could say, I guess, that that's a sign that MLB was just trying to rush this and cover their ass before they that I'm not sure what would have actually been gained by making this an even more drawn out process with some kind of committee, because, you know, you're not going to form the committee and then say, well, we looked into it and we decided that we're not doing anything. Actually, everything's fine. And we're just going to stick with this decision that was made 50 plus years ago where they didn't even think about it. Like, you know, if you're even going to consider the question, you are going to do something about it. So why not just do it? There's this great body of work out there by all of these experts and scholars who have already done this research and looked into it and made recommendations. So if anything, it's a positive that MLB just said, okay, whatever their motivations and what was in their hearts.

And I'm sure there's a mix of multiple things. And I do think people there genuinely care about this and think it was the right thing to do. But also just do it. Figure out how to dot the I's and cross the T's later. Because once you have stated publicly that you're doing it like okay you're committed you you have to figure this out now and to use the stats as an excuse like that's something that has happened before where people have said well we can't do this because the stats are not complete and that is just penalizing these players doubly you know for

the conditions that were imposed on them that led to the the lack of comprehensive stats so you can't say that you know i don't think you can use that as a justification not to do something so you have to say yeah we're doing this and it may be a headache in some respects and hard to figure out but it has to be done it's the right thing to do and so we will figure it out one way or another. I agree. All right. So I'm sure there will be much more about this in the coming weeks and months and years, and perhaps we will discuss it at greater length. But I think at least the story today was Negro Leaguers and the Negro Leagues and Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige. And like, that's what people were talking about, as opposed to talking about like MLB owners not wanting to play a full season or whatever would have been the story.

Otherwise, like that's like the opportunity cost here. There was not some other feel good story about baseball that was out there. I don't think it was like that was the thing that was leading the news cycle was the report that owners don't want to play a full season because of course they want fans in the stands. And so it's in their interest to delay opening day so that they can make the most money possible or avoid losing as much money as they can. And the players quite naturally were not receptive to that idea because why would they be? They just played a whole season already with no fans in the stands. They've demonstrated that they were willing to do that and that it could be done. And so why now would you not do that? And why would they take a cut in their salary if if you decided that you could go ahead with conditions in 2020 then why not continue to do that in 2021 when hopefully fingers crossed by by that time

things will be a little better than the the truly terrible state they're in right now so anyway that would have been the story is like yeah mlb wanting there to be less baseball basically and uh the continued back and forth between owners and the players association and instead we got to talk about like josh gibson all day yeah i think that was nice i agree and i guess also we uh got distracted from talking about scott boris which was like the leading story the day before. Ben, are you ready? Yeah. Are you ready?

I feel obligated. It's kind of become our corner here, which in a way I feel like we created a monster here because I don't know if we've contributed. We didn't help. Yeah, we didn't help. Yeah, I'm not sure how responsible we are for like Boris quotes becoming a thing. Like he's been talking like this for a really long time.

So we didn't start it, but we're not discouraging him from sharing these things. And boy, did he drop a whole lot of analogies and oddities. Yeah, there are a lot of, but here's, I'm going to highlight a couple. Okay. Because I think that, you know there there were a great many and uh if we were to read this entire transcript that would be the that would be the episode that would be the the entirety of the episode and i don't think that we really want that and so um i'm going to start with one that have you seen any of these have any of these made their way to you i i didn't

set out to see them but people made sure that i saw them thank you to our listeners for diligently bringing these to our attention yeah you're you're very you're very committed in a way that we we certainly appreciate um it doesn't make our mentions kind of weird. Let's start with one in response to a question on where Jackie Bradley Jr. is sort of fitting in the overall center field market. Jackie Bradley Jr. is kind of the PB&J of the major leagues. He's sweet, smooth, and spreads it all over. Covers it well.

Yeah. Food metaphor. Bring back the old Fire Joe Morgan food metaphor bring back the old fire joe morgan food metaphor tag yeah this is it's not uh the most typical territory for him not nautical not something from the animal kingdom it's a food one i guess he is he's trod on this territory before but i mean it's kind of like a less good version of the famous quote about garydox, like 70% of the earth is covered by water, two thirds of the earth is covered by water, and the rest is Gary Maddox. And that has been applied to other players, I think. So instead of that, it's peanut butter, which I like.

It's peanut butter and jelly. Peanut butter and jelly. PB&J. Yep. Yep. Well. and jelly pb and j yep yep well i guess that we've learned some important things not the least of which is that he is not a crunchy man neither am i i am absolutely a smooth peanut butter person uh-oh have we have we found something we we strenuously disagree on here i just again you know my feelings about food which is that you should eat whatever you want as long as it's not people or dolphins but um i i just enjoy having a little bit of obstacle a little bit of crunch so okay but i'm glad that you have a thing you like yeah i like my smooth peanut butter and i like putting it in the refrigerator which i think people consider somewhat strange which i guess is because I want some resistance too.

Like it might be too smooth if it were warm, but if you put it in the fridge, then it's kind of cold and hard. And I know I'm not making this sound appetizing, but cold, smooth peanut butter from the fridge. One of my favorite snacks. Are you one of those people that likes a little bit of pulp in your orange juice? No, absolutely not one of those people. In fact, I hate pulp in my orange juice. All right. Well, I'm going to give you a nautical one just to go back to something familiar.

So Scott Boris on the Cubs. This comes from a Jesse Rogers tweet. Sometimes you get water in your boat. First thing is to figure out how that water got in there and then make sure you get the water out of it before you add people into the boat it's about understanding the players you have yep that's more like it that's scott that's like if you would if we were playing the game that we played at the winter meetings last year where you made up fake boris quotes and quiz me on which ones were real if you had said that one i would have said fake probably because that sounds so stereotypical but but no it's just him playing the hits playing to his strengths

we couldn't even play that game this year because we got spoiled immediately so fast i was not aware like last year we had some warning right because you were actually at the winter meetings and you knew he was going to talk and so you warned me to unplug for a little while yes this time it was zoom and i didn't know what's happening and suddenly we were getting bombarded by tweets and messages and so we were spoiled instantly oh so very many um so this one is less an analogy and just like a um a good insight maybe into what scott boris has been watching while in quarantine. So he was asked about the direction of the Angels under their new general manager.

Well, our position, of course, and this is an excerpt from a longer tweet, or quote, I should say. Well, our position, of course, is that they have to solve the case of the lost playoffs. And so they've gone out and gotten their Perry Mason, which I would like to quibble with Scott a little bit. And I realized that Scott Boris's age and my age would make you think, hey, Meg, doesn't Scott Boris know a lot more about Perry Mason than you do? And to that, I would say you weren't raised by two mom lawyers. I was.

And I will say the following. The Perry Mason is a prosecutor. And I will say the following. The Perry Mason is a prosecutor. True. And I would, if I were Scott Boris, note a famous detective in this case, not the prosecutor who had prosecuted the case. I think that Scott needs to learn something

and perhaps watch an episode of Law & Order. Just the intro to get a sense of who does what in the midst of an investigation. Yeah. And, well, there's a remake, right? There's a new Perry Mason that came out this year. Of course there is. Yeah.

I mean, naturally. Of course. If there's an old show, there's a new version of it. But I have not seen it. But he is a defense attorney. Like, I don't think they turned him into. I don't know. I have not seen it.

Isn't Perry Mason a prosecutor? See, now. Well, see, in the new Perry Mason, I'm just reading the IMDB description. Oh, no. You know what, Ben? I must be hoisted on my own petard. Ah, Scott was right all along. No, he's definitely a defense attorney.

No, he's still wrong. Okay. Yeah, he's still wrong, but I was also wrong. So I will acknowledge that I got a little sassy about what Perry Mason did. We're all fallible. Yeah, he's still wrong, but I was also wrong. So I will acknowledge that I got a little sassy about what Perry Mason did. We're all fallible. Yeah, yeah. It is a mystery, though. The Angels continuing to miss the playoffs every year.

That is one of the most enduring mysteries in baseball. Isn't the solution to that that they just can't put a 500 baseball team around Mike Trout? Pretty much. I solved it. That is a mystery in itself. Okay, and then this one is a bit longer and I'm going to sort of pick and choose because there are a couple of different things at work here. Okay. So he was asked about the feasibility of a contract extension for Michael Conforto. I think Michael is like a lot of Mets players, very encouraged. It's nice to have an ownership with big apples.

Oh, right. Look, I know that we live in a world where we know a lot about why Mitch Hanegar went on the injured list. But men could talk about their apples less. I'm just saying that. Just talk about them less. No one wants to know about them. So that happens. And then he's talking about the ways that the Mets might improve themselves.

And he says, and in the area of catching, they didn't let anybody else eat their lunch. They went out and got a Big Mac. And you might argue that in the general manager category that they didn't go out and get the Hamburglar. They went out and got themselves a porterhouse. So, Ben, we're going to get to the back end of this quote which also has some some nonsense but does scott boris not know that the hamburglar is a character in the mcdonald's cinematic universe and a porterhouse is a kind of steak these are good questions i don't know also why would you

contrast so the the place where you contrast it should be the Big Mac and the Porter House. That's the contrast in terms of quality. I don't know. I think that he got a little lost along the way and just wanted to bring up the Hamburglar. So there's that. So I think the Mets are now kind of shopping in that organic produce aisle where they've been looking for that special melissa's met delicious apple and i think this apple is not going to have any worms in it so michael's pretty excited about

what's going to happen with the new york mets how does he do it why does he do it really is the better question i i continue to wonder who this is for like Like, I guess it's for us. It's become for us. And I guess it's become for our audience. But I still don't totally understand the direct line between us talking about this and Scott Boris's clients making more money, which it seems like would be his goal in saying these sorts of things. And I'm not sure how it translates. Like, unless, you know, certainly Boris has had a lot of success in the past by kind of

doing an end around around the baseball operations department and appealing to owners. So like if some owner were like, huh, I want to acquire an outfielder who's like peanut butter and jelly, I will give Jackie Bradley's agent a call. It's hard for me to understand that happening. He used to make these big Boris binders, right? Maybe he still does. I haven't heard much about them lately. But those were seemingly for show, partly, I think, to show his clients that he was putting in the work and he had resources and he had a crack research staff that could come up with like selectively chosen statistics to make his clients look good and like probably the clients

themselves liked reading about how great they were and how much money they should make so that was maybe for the clients or maybe to impress owners or something but like this wordplay, I don't know who it's for. I don't know if it leads to any more offers or bigger offers. Maybe having these players in the news in some way leads to more publicity for those players and maybe in some indirect way that translates to revenue. I don't know exactly how that happens it's just uh maybe it's for Scott Boris himself maybe he just enjoys this and that is the only reason he does this yeah I think that that is as good an explanation as any that I could come up with I mean he did speak on some important labor questions right like the possibility of a shortened season next year and how guys are you know thinking about preparing for next year given a shortened season this year and how guys are you know thinking about preparing for next year given a shortened season this year and how we should think about those stats and so there are definitely nuggets in there that as sort of the premier agent it's important to hear from him on

and also he's been watching perry mason yeah so he had to get that in ben yeah and just the sheer quantity of these that he unloaded all at once conclusively establishes that he prepares for this oh he has to like which i think we knew but it's just a funny image to me to imagine this like incredibly successful, prominent, wealthy agent, like really one of the defining figures of this era of baseball, just at some point just brainstorming or sitting down and writing down these things, which are just incredibly corny and convoluted. And like we've speculated before about whether he has writers, whether he has help with this material or not, But clearly, if you're going to drop all of these at once, and I've heard him say one of these things here and there on an interview, and as we've talked about, it sounds like he sometimes just looks around the room

and sees a lamp or a vase and says, this is like that thing that I just laid eyes on. But in this case, it's clearly prepared. He does not come up with 20 of these off the cuff. So, you know, does he make flashcards? Is he memorizing them? Like I continue to want to know about the process here. And I still think maybe I should write about it or we should have him on if he is willing to dish on how exactly the magic happens here. And it really perplexes me entirely,

which I think is why I keep coming back to this, is that he is such a prominent figure and he chooses to speak this way in public and then we all just joke about it. And maybe it's like a Trojan horse to get us to pay attention to the things that he says about like baseball's economic conditions which are sometimes astute like clearly he has uh motivations and incentives and interests here and he's not an impartial party but he says things that frankly like you know i'd rather hear from scott boris about these things than the commissioner or the owners in most cases. And so he is not above

distorting things himself, obviously, but I think he is generally maybe a little more clear-eyed about these things just because of the incentives at play than a lot of the other people who speak about baseball's economic condition. So maybe it's just like, hey, I'll get them in the door with the PB&J quote, and then they'll pay attention to me talking about how actually MLB isn't losing all this money. They're just not making as much money as they had before. Or when they talk about losses, really, it's like profits that they expected to get that they're not getting. Yeah, I think that I would imagine that it is a combination of ego and savviness on his part. And I saw people on Twitter bemoaning his ridiculous quotes.

And to them, I say, it is a long offseason. Let us have our fun. I was a little disappointed. Lindsay Adler noted on Twitter that the Boris Zoom was a great example of sort of baseball room raider because there were a lot of folks who were dialed in. And so I am disappointed that he did not notice the great well of inspiration sitting in front of him. He could have looked at people's homes and called out that this free agent

is like that shoddily constructed bookcase or the commentary of the commissioner on the state of the game is like the unwelcome intrusion of a wayward child in the middle of a work meeting. He had all sorts of things that he could have called upon and he decided to go with his pre-can stuff. And I find myself a touch disappointed by that, Ben. Yeah. You know, there's one that I don't think we talked find myself a touch disappointed by that, Ben. Yeah. You know, there's one that I don't think we talked about, the DH one. Oh, yes. I don't have that handy.

Yeah, I have this one. This is Scott Boris talking about how we still don't have resolution on whether there will be universal DH in 2021. He said, maybe in the commissioner's office, the DH may stand for dragging their heels. Which, you know what? I kind of like that one. I know, but you mean...

It's simple. He's not like reaching for an analogy or something. It's just a burn. I don't know if it's a sick burn, but I chuckled. Yeah, but wouldn't it be, if it's dragging their heels, wouldn't it be DTH? DTH. Well, maybe. Yeah, i'll give them some creative license but i kind of yeah i kind of appreciate that one you know and they are dragging their heels and

it's frankly ridiculous we have a baseball season to play in a couple of months shockingly soon next week is christmas ben yeah well it seems like uh mlb owners are hoping that we do not have one to play in a few months so it seems to be in their interest to drag their heels because the less is resolved maybe the easier it is for them to say well we can start the season a little later which uh like if if they were starting the season a little later or wanting to start the season a little later because they felt like it wasn't safe or something or because they didn't want to put players in those conditions, then that would be fine. But that's not it. Because, like, we just had the season, you know, they played.

So I think it's not that. It's just that they want to maximize the money and minimize the games. And a lot of people think the season should be shorter anyway. And there's some merit to that argument, I think. But in this case, it just seems like, well, we want to pay prorated salaries during this time when we will not be making as much money as we could because the vaccine will not have made its way to enough people for everyone to be comfortable filling up ballparks yet so so yeah why not uh drag things out and delay a little if it makes it easier for us to argue for that they have so little confidence in our memories i remember being very uncomfortable watching human beings in the stands at the world

series i remember that yeah so little confidence it's really shocking like as we were recording this it is the seventh night of hanukkah and like a week from now almost is christmas eve where did this terrifying year go ben i'm i'm not sad about seeing it go but no did surely fly yeah when it wasn't dragging and interminable well we're all gonna need a great deal of therapy after this yeah so we've uh we've basically done a whole episode here we talked about maybe doing some emails but uh i guess we can just push that to next time, right? So I did just one last thought on the Negro Leagues conversation because Randy Wilkins tweeted something about this, which is, I think Clinton Yates touched on also, which is that MLB should not, cannot remove the

description and titling of the Negro Leagues. The players should always be recognized as Negro Leaguers. And to be clear, like, I didn't get the sense that that was not going to happen or that Absolutely. But the Negro Leagues were, so I don't think they are suggesting that we suddenly exclusively refer to them as major leaguers and not Negro leaguers. So I don't know that that was an implication here, but I agree that that absolutely should not be an implication. And I don't think there's too much danger of that distinction being lost because we have the history and because we have the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and because we have so many people preserving and sharing these stories. I would hope that there's not too much imminent danger of people forgetting the history here and just lumping all of the major leaguers together in a historical sense. Like in a statistical sense, maybe we should or we can

in certain ways that have not been done to this point. But I hope that no one is saying that we should pretend that there is not still a distinction or that they were not playing in different leagues, like just different leagues that were both of major league quality with incredibly skilled players. But there were different leagues for reasons that it is pretty important not to lose sight of. Yeah, I think that I didn't get the sense that there was any plan to do that, but I also think that baseball, Major League Baseball, I should say, because I think we probably, this conversation, not that you and I are having, although that you and I are having, but the sort of broader conversation here suggests that we really ought to do,

as a collective, a better job of distinguishing between MLB and sort of small B baseball. But I think that I am sympathetic to the concern that MLB might take an appropriative stance to aspects of history that it actively played a hand in denigrating. So while I don't get the sense that there was any sort of move here to do anything other than recognize what we all already knew about the quality of the play, I don't begrudge someone wanting to be like, hey, just to be sure.

We need to make this very, very clear because I think that while we don't want to dwell exclusively on the racism and prejudice that kept Negro Leaguers out of Major League Baseball, and we do want to be sure to celebrate the players they were on the field and the people they were off it, we certainly don't want to lose that historical understanding or the context of their play so uh yeah i think it's i think it's good to be like hey just double checking yeah right i don't have an exemplary track record on this score so let's just be right yeah and i i did see andrea williams say on Twitter that, you know, she thinks it actually is important to reclassify them just to establish, you know, I'll read what she said here. I say this all to say this is the end of a thread. Some of us, and when she says us, she is referring to other black people, actually need to hear that the Negro Leagues were major league level, that in the words of Shonda Rhimes, we were slash are the damn candy. Some of us need this recognition so we can stop helping these bastions of white supremacy

diminish our worth. And I think that's important too. Like, yes, they were major league quality, but maybe not everyone knows that. Maybe not everyone recognizes that. And maybe more people will now. And frankly, like when I was growing up and I was a kid and I was learning about baseball and reading about baseball, like my impression as someone who learned about it through the lens of, you know, my race and MLB as it was defined then in the American League and the National League is that, you know, I thought, well, there were great players in the Negro Leagues. And that's undeniable because so many of them went on to be great players once they made it to the AL or the NL. But I did think that the overall level of quality in the league was lower just because of the population of players who were there, because of the conditions, all of that. I was not well-educated about this, and there was not as much research and scholarship about it at the time. And so I thought, yeah, Josh Gibson was great, but maybe the average player was not as good. And now my mind has been changed about that.

And I don't know if the quality of play was one-to-one. It probably wasn't identical, it's tough to say, but it certainly wasn't a clear major versus minor situation. There may be others who have not come across this incredibly persuasive research that may actually benefit from hearing this, because when you look at just all the evidence that points toward these leagues being every bit as good, whether it is the performance of black players from the Negro Leagues in exhibition games against white players, where they more than held their own, whether it's the way so many former Negro Leaguers just dominated the AL and NL for decades after integration, and black players were just so prominent and excelled so much in the wake of

segregation that it was incredibly obvious that, of course, all of these great players who came out of the Negro Leagues and were immediately amazing, like, you know, of course, they were already playing in a great laboratory for their skills, you know, a great place where they were able to develop and play against high-level competition. And just all of the stats and the research that are out there, it's pretty apparent that these leagues were close to equivalent in terms of skill. But, you know, not everyone knows that or grew up being taught that or reading that. And so I hope that that will change,

that the next generation who grows up reading about baseball thinks of it as, well, there can't be an MLB or a majors if you're not including the black players and Hispanic players in that because like the white leagues at that time were also diminished by the absence of the black players and Hispanic players and their quality was reduced too. So I think that's important for everyone to know and maybe this makes it easier for everyone to know that and recognize that. Yeah, I agree. I think that having an accurate understanding of history is always a worthwhile endeavor. And so this is an important corrective toward that goal. And I'm not suggesting that you think otherwise, but the way we talk about that

is also important and so i'm glad that this is the result of it and i hope that major league baseball hears the feedback of this day the good and the bad and uses it to do better in the future and that we get an opportunity to earnestly continue the celebration of these players so that their families can experience that and so that fans can experience that and so that we have a better understanding of the game that we really love because it would be a real shame to, like you said, we want future generations to know this better than we did. And I think the other aspect of this that I'm honestly still struggling with is this idea of default authority.

MLB is the only game in town, so it possesses this power to unilaterally bestow recognition and determine the level of influence that recognition wields by default. And that is a strange sort of situation where the very entity that kept these players out is also in the position of like being able to you know shine a spotlight on them now it's almost like the

industry is like regulating itself or something like there should be some some independent authority or something that decides these things but because MLB is such a dominant force in the baseball landscape, it's a big deal what they say and what their records say, even if it doesn't change the facts or the reality. It's just inevitable that how MLB treats these things will be how a lot of people encounter them. And Sabre is doing its own inquiry here. Before MLB announced that it was doing this,

Sabre announced that it had formed a task force to consider this question as well. And many of the people who have contributed to the body of knowledge about the Negro Leagues are also Sabre members, including Larry Wester and Gary Ashwell and others. So they're certainly equipped to do that. And they may make the same determination that MLB did here, but there are multiple prongs to this. But Randy's right.

It is sort of strange that MLB has the position of authority here, like, you know, not the sole authority, but it's just undeniable that if MLB puts out a press release, it's just going to get a lot of attention and it's going to be something that influences what people think, even if there are other people who are already saying this for years or have been saying something different. Yeah, I think that it gets back to this idea of the institutions that put up barriers being in a position to celebrate taking them down. And I think that the credibility of those efforts is determined in large part by the people outside of the institution that they bring in to be a part of that process. And so I am heartened to see some of the folks that we've been discussing seemingly

very intimately involved in this process. But yeah, it is, I don't know that there's ever going to be a way to really reconcile that in a way that's satisfactory. And in some ways, I think, at least for folks like you and I, having to sit with that discomfort is probably instructive in a way that's valuable. So there's that part of it. But yeah, I don't have a good solution to that issue. I think that having a broader and sort of more inclusive understanding of what baseball is, which likely means looking beyond Major League Baseball and even beyond baseball in

the United States, is one way to help us situate it in a way that I think makes you appreciate the sort of broad nature of the game, right? Like baseball is not just Major League Baseball. Despite Major League Baseball's efforts to make all baseball in the U.S. connected to Major League Baseball, we do not live under the one baseball Skynet yet, so we can cast a broader understanding, I think. I hope that will be one of the legacies of this year because I feel like I am personally more conscious of that distinction than I was coming to this year because of so many

things, because of the centennial celebrations of the Negro League's foundings, because MLB screwed up and the U.S. screwed up so much that for a long time, MLB was not the game in town. And we were all watching KBO and NPB and CPBL and paying attention to these other great leagues that stand on their own. So I think between those two things, hopefully, even as MLB is trying to consolidate its control over domestic leagues, hopefully people are even more aware now that in terms of the history and in terms of the international landscape, there's a lot more to baseball than just MLB. i think that we every time i see like the cut for account

be like i miss baseball i'm like i get what you mean like you miss being able to go to the ballpark which i think we all miss not and not just in the usual off-season way but i'm like but i have the dominican winter league on as i edit right i mean not right now while we're podcasting but like i'm watching dominican winter league and guess what a lot of those guys are gonna make their way into the majors like you know it's like there's vlad guerrero jr like you have a tie to baseball that is local like you just need to seek it out a little bit and i think that connection between something that is far-flung but also has you know it's it's tendrils into something that might be much closer to home is really, really cool. And we should take advantage of that while we can because December is a lonely month for the baseball fan

if what you want is to be able to walk down to the ballpark that's near to you. But there's a lot out there for you if you want to sit and watch a game. So I hope that you're right that one of our lessons this year is that we can engage more thoroughly if we just seek it out. All right. So we will talk about all of this. Perhaps we will have some of the people that we have been referencing here on the show to talk about this stuff in the coming days, because it's important and because there's no other baseball news either. So we do a baseball podcast that continues year-round on the same schedule,

even when baseball's schedule changes pretty dramatically. So this is not only important news, but also the biggest news right now. I need to know when to start people on positional power rankings. Ben, I opened Twitter knowing that we were wrapping up and I saw a cut for a tweet that says, day 50 without Major League Baseball

so they could sense my podcast subtweet. Okay. I'm learning. We're all learning. All right. We will end there. That'll do it for today. Thanks as always for listening.

You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. 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. Ethan, David Reeves, Linus Marco, Brian Strauss, and Joe Stitch. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back with one more episode before the end of this week. Talk to you then. It's about time. It's about time.

It's about time. It's about time