Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1639: Cobra Sigh

Episode Date: January 6, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the re-naming of Miller Park and the good and bad of ballpark naming rights, the improbable beginning of Phil Niekro’s career and what it says about the downsizing of the minor leagues, an intriguing projection of the outcome of the Padres-Dodgers NL West race, Boog Sciambi calling Cubs […]

There was an old miller and he lived all alone, had three sons all fully grown. When the time came to make at his will, all he had left was a little gristmill. Sing a fall dig a die, oh fall dig a day. He called to him his eldest son, said son, oh son, my race is run. If I'm elder of you, may, pray tell me what toll you take. Hello and welcome to episode 1639 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?

Doing okay. How are you? Doing okay. You know how? I'm doing okay. You know how I went on a little rant recently, what qualifies as a rant by my standards about ballpark naming and corporate sponsorships and how I'm just not going to bother to remember the new names when they change now? That was prompted by the Oakland Coliseum getting yet another new name. It's the RingCent Central Coliseum now, and I've already forgotten what you told me Ring Central was, and I've endeavored to forget that that is even the name of the ballpark. But there's another new name that we need to know or maybe don't need

to know at all for the 2021 season, and it's that Miller Park is no longer officially Miller Park. Yeah. The American institution of Miller Park is now renamed American Family Field. Apparently this happened last year, but it didn't go into effect until January 1st of 2021. So Miller Park is no more, except in our memories and maybe in our minds and our hearts. So the gist of that earlier conversation was that we're not necessarily obligated to update our mental maps of the ballparks. We don't have to call it by these new names. If you're a broadcaster who works for the team, you probably should. If you're a reporter who is describing the game action and want to be factual about where the game is taking place.

You should probably say the name, but we don't have to refer to it that way. And so if it's the Coliseum, then it's handy because you can just call it the Coliseum. You don't even have to mess around with the first name. Miller Park, though, is one of those that it's a corporate sponsorship, obviously. And we talked about how sometimes the corporate sponsorships can be in place for so long that you get attached to them and they start to have some sentimental value, which is sort of silly when you think about it, but it's been Miller Park for a long time. And that's one of those cases where it's a team that's named after something beer-related. It's the Brewers. Yeah, they're literally the Brewers.

Yeah, so it made sense. beer related. It's the Brewers. Yeah, they're literally the Brewers. Yeah, so it made sense. It was less bothersome to have to think of it as some corporate name because it worked well with the team name and Miller has some local history in Milwaukee. So it was good synergy. No one felt icky or weird about having to call it Miller Park, kind of like Coors Field in Colorado. It fit. So now it's American Family Field. And this is one of these names in the genre of like Coors Field in Colorado. It fit. So now it's American Family Field. And this is one of these names in the genre of like Great American Ballpark or something where if't even necessarily know that it's a company. Lots of insurance companies sponsor MLB ballparks. Globe Life Field, Progressive Field is another one. I was just reading an article about why insurance companies advertise so much, which is partly because of the competition and partly because you don't tend to think about your insurance company all that much and partly because there's just so much money in that

industry that they're able to advertise. A lot of reasons for it. But it's nice, I guess, if it is a name that sounds like it could just be a natural name, unlike, say, Guaranteed Rate Field, which we made fun of the last time, which just never sounds natural. I could talk myself into American Family Field, I guess, but I'm so used to Miller Park and there is that kind of local connection that I just don't think I'm going to update this in my mind. I think it's going to remain Miller Park. Miller Park can keep getting the benefit of their old advertising money in my mind. So I will say as someone who went to grad school in Madison that AmFam is a local insurance company. They're based in Wisconsin.

So there is a connection there, which is why they always try to put Wisconsin-affiliated athletes in their commercials. You may have noticed that Russell Wilson and J.J. Watt, both of whom played for the University of Wisconsin at Madison, are often in AmFam commercials. But here is the thing about it. They're literally brewers.

Yeah. They're not the adjusters. They're not the underwriters. They're not the other insurance words. Insurance words. The actuarial tables. Exactly. They're not the actuaries.

Yeah. Which is a terrible terrible terrible name for a baseball team but also one that would be like um very funny particularly not that injuries are ever funny but particularly if they were like injury prone because it's like what you didn't see it coming i don't know what voice that is who criticize sabermetrics say that oh baseball is like actuarial tables now so we might as well just do it. I'm sure there's some insurance company softball team that named themselves the actuaries, and it's probably pretty funny and cute. Almost certainly.

But yeah, they're literally the brewers. And I will say the following as a person, again, who went to grad school in Madison, and I hope that the people who listen to this podcast who are from Wisconsin will nod along in a, oh, that Meg, she sure does have us pegged away, and nod in a, like, that Meg, we should drive her from the face of the earth kind of way. But when you live in Wisconsin, it fundamentally alters your relationship with alcohol

if you are a person who consumes it. And I will say that, like that one of the things about Miller Park that was always so lovely when I would go to games there is that they have a terrific selection of beers. You can just have good beers that aren't, they're not Miller beers, but you can have good beers. And as a state, I don't know, Wisconsin should probably think about the way

that it sort of incentivizes bad behavior around drinking, but it is literally, they're literally the brewers. They have a guy in a barrel. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as I said last time, I don't begrudge any team for getting the money. If you want to get your $20 million a year, whatever you can get for naming the ballpark, that's fine, I guess. It's nice if you don't do that, if you are secure in your finances and you can just have it be Benway Park or Oriole Park at Camden Yards or Nationals Park or Kauffman Stadium or Angel Stadium or Thatcher Stadium or Yankee Stadium or whatever.

Or maybe you're the Marlins and you probably can't even get a corporate sponsorship, so you just keep calling it Marlins Park. But if you're going to do it, most teams do it. I understand it's the way the world works. It's a business and all of that. But it's good if you can make it fit so that I don't think about it. I don't have to remember what Ring Central is or isn't, and I don't have to think about American Family. And again, there are worse names than that. But there are also some names where you get the benefit of the corporate sponsorship and you don't even notice, like Bush Stadium, let's say, where it's named after the Anheuser-Busch, but it's named after Aki Bush or

whoever was the owner of the Cardinals who also controlled the beer company. And then you just kind of get both at the same time. Or really, Wrigley Field, which is still named Wrigley Field, even though the team is no longer owned by the Wrigleys. And I guess Wrigley Gum has just been getting free advertising for the last however many years, because the stadium has been named Wrigley Field for almost a century at this point, and it was named after the owner, Wrigley, but the owner, Wrigley, also owned the gum company, and now it's just Wrigley Field, and it's been sort of a touchy subject. Will the Rickettses, who will seem to stop at nothing to maximize their profits, will they ever change the name? Will they get some other company to sponsor it? And that, it would seem like sacrilege if you were to change the name Wrigley Field, and some people have floated the

idea that maybe Wrigley, the And some people have floated the idea that maybe Wrigley, the company, should consider paying something for it, like Anheuser-Busch does with Busch Stadium, now that Anheuser-Busch no longer owns the Cardinals. But why would they? Because they're getting it for free. So if they don't have to, I'm sure they're happy to just have the brand awareness. It's not even like I think of the gum when I think of Wrigley Field, so I don't know how much value they're actually getting out of that. It's not like Orbit Field or some Wrigley gum brand or something, but these things just get set in stone for so long that you stop even thinking of them as connected to some corporate entity, but then the name changes and we are forced to think about whether we actually want to call it that thing. But we don't have to. It can be Miller Park in our minds forevermore if we want it to be. They have a full and a partial barrel man. That is how committed to the barrel man they are.

They have a wheat ball. They have a ball, the seams of which are little wheat stalks like you would use for making beer because they are brewers. Yep, yep. Ben, this is so upsetting. Did you see, just to put a final little note on our sponsorship talk, did you see that the NHL has sold the naming rights to its divisions? No, I did not.

Apparently that is a thing that they did, and I wish they would stop it because MLB is going to look around and go, why haven't we done that. No, oh, no. Not that the MLB divisions have always made sense geographically. Like, you know, they're West, Central, East, and I like having it that way. But the teams have not always really matched up with the names of the divisions. But I still like having it that way.

So please know MLB did not get any ideas. I mean, the uniform advertising is coming for MLB. You've already got the swooshes on there, and I'm sure there will be more as there has been in other sports, and I've kind of come to terms with that. I'm not really a uniform fundamentalist. I don't pay that much attention to uniforms compared to many others. So that's fine, but I would sort of, if we had to say like the AL East sponsored by Doosan or whatever,

the AL camping world, what would we even call them? I don't know. But we're heading to that probably. It might just be for the 2021 season for the NHL because they had to realign their divisions because of covid but they are the honda west division the scotia north division the discover central division and the mass mutual east division well it's terrible ben yeah that's not great that is not great we don't have to you know we don't have to name all this stuff is all I'm saying. Like, I think that we have talked about this before.

There are any number of reasons why I do not engage in fiction writing. And one of them is that I think when you get to a point where you have to start coming up with fake nouns. Yeah. Right. And that's impossible. You always sound ridiculous. It is why a lot of science fiction writing doesn't end up working. And so we can just not name things.

It's fine. I'm officially advocating for less description, which is a weird thing for an editor to do. But here I am. Yeah. Well, it's not descriptive. It doesn't help. It doesn't help paint a picture of the conference or the division. Oh, it's the Honda West division. Well, now I understand. No, West really does all the work there. So I think that's all we need. of Milwaukee, I wanted to briefly bring up a player who broke into the big leagues with Milwaukee, Phil Necro, the late Phil Necro, who passed away recently. And Jay Jaffe wrote a nice remembrance

of him for Fangraphs, and we talked about him briefly when Jay was on the podcast. But I was just reading the latest issue of Craig Wright's great newsletter, Pages from Baseball's Past, which you can find at baseballspast.com. This is not SpawnCon, although I do plug it repeatedly. It's just really good, and I've been subscribing to it for a while, and I always learn a lot. And one thing I learned this week was Necro's origin story, and I was aware that he had an unusual path to the majors, that he didn't establish himself as a big leaguer or as a starter, at least until his age 28 season. And then of course he went on to throw more innings than any other pitcher in the live ball era.

It's just a improbable path. And he pitched until he was 48. And one interesting point that I heard Steve Goldman raise on the Infinite Inning podcast recently is like, you kind of wonder like what did in Phil Necro's career in the end, because he was like a league average pitcher at age 46, basically a league average pitcher at age 47, better than that at age 45. And then suddenly at age 48, he kind of fell off the table and was not good at all. And that was it. And you have to wonder, like, what was it from age 47 to 48? Something in Phil Necro's arm that said, I can't do this anymore. I can't go out there and throw this knuckleball anymore. Was it an injury? Was there some elasticity that just finally cracked and said,

age 47, fine. Age 48, no, that is a year too far for us. So I'd be curious about that. But I am more interested at the moment in the beginning of his career and why it took him so long to establish himself. And obviously, it was because he was a knuckleballer and they always sort of have an uphill climb in convincing people that they're good. But in this case, it was really improbable that he made it at all. And as Craig writes, it was one of the most touch-and-go unlikely beginnings to a Hall of Fame career in the history of the game. And he picked up the knuckleball from the catcher on his local team who had been good enough to be in the minors. And he knew how to throw a knuckleball.

So he passed it along to Necro's father. And then he passed it along to his sons. And so the really interesting thing is that even with the knuckleball, Necro almost didn't make it. Joe Necro, his brother, was more of a conventional pitcher and a top prospect. And he threw hard. But Phil Necro had his brother, was more of a conventional pitcher and a top prospect, and he threw hard. But Phil Necro had the knuckler. And so I'll read from Craig first.

Scouts have never been attracted to knuckleball pitchers, and no big league organization was interested in Necro when he came out of high school. He kept pitching in local games and at age 19 attended a tryout camp put on by the Milwaukee Braves. They decided to give him a try, having him report to a Class D league the next spring. Phil got off to a disastrous start. The more experienced batters did not chase his knuckleball like the high school hitters had. He walked tons of batters and would also fall behind in the count, throw his mediocre fastball, and get knocked all over the lot. After 10 games, his ERA was 7.46, and he was told he was being released to make room for a new player. Phil literally begged for a second chance, and the Braves gave him a break and set him to the absolute lowest rung on their minor league ladder, the short-season Nebraska State League.

He did well enough that the old catcher, Bertie Tebbets, fought to keep him around when most of the Braves' front office were ready to cut him loose. And one problem, evidently, was that at that time, the most famous knuckleballer was Hoyt Wilhelm. And because he was a reliever, that evidently led to Necro being typecast as a reliever. And Hoyt Wilhelm had worked as a starter in the minors, and so that helped him refine his knuckleball. But Necro was just pushed into the reliever box right away, and so he didn't get enough innings to make his knuckleball good. And so he was just sort of a non-prospect who would have been cut if not for Birdie Tebbets and no other team was interested in him. And I was thinking about this in the context of today's minor league downsizing because

Phil Necro needed that absolute last rung on the minor league ladder to keep his career going. And so I looked up in 1959, that was the year that he first pitched in the minors. Milwaukee had 13 affiliates at that time. This was not necessarily the peak of huge minor league systems, but there were, at least on the high end, more minor league affiliates than you have today or than you had even prior to the downsizing. So Milwaukee was tied for the most in the majors with the Dodgers and the Cardinals with 13. And if they had had 12 even, Necro probably would have been cut and maybe he would have just gone back to the coal mine like his dad and maybe played locally, but that might have very well been

it for his career. So he needed that bottom rung. He needed that short season Nebraska State League affiliate. And you have to wonder how many potential major league players, maybe even how many potential great players will not get a chance when you cut minor league teams. And I'm not saying that you should never downsize the minors because there could be a Phil Negro in there once in a decade or many decades. Because, I mean, we could just say, well, you should have an unlimited number of minor league affiliates and we'll all get to be professional baseball players. That would be nice. You have to draw the line somewhere. I wonder how many minor league affiliates you'd have to have before I would get signed. It would probably be more than I would want to think about. But just saying, you have to draw the line somewhere, but wherever you

draw it, you are probably going to leave someone out. And yeah, most low-level minor leaguers are just kind of the cannon fodder for the prospects. They're just there to provide competition and the vast majority of them don't make it. And so it's less of a tragedy for them, perhaps, although it's still nice to have those memories and still get to say you were a big league ballplayer. But there will be the occasional Negro or at least the occasional good or great player who doesn't make it because there will be fewer minor league teams and so because negro got that lifeline he got to keep pitching he got to stay for another year and then he was in the army he played winter ball and he

worked as a starter and suddenly he had a better feel for his knuckleball and he came back and he impressed milwaukee in spring training and he made the team and he was kind of on and off the big league roster for a few years until finally he broke through as a starter in 1967 and the rest is history. But if not for that short season league, that very well might have been it for Phil Necro and we would not know him or be talking about him now I think that he's a really interesting example of this not only because of how long it took him to break in and then how long he played but like you know he's a knuckleballer so he's an odd profile and so he's like a perfect encapsulation of the thing that I really well not the thing I worry about but one of the things I worry about with the reduction of the minors, which is not just that we are going to miss out on some really good and fun careers, although that really does bum me out. And I worry about who not only, you know, in a very practical real sense, when we

look at the rosters that are being cut down now, but who in the future that might exclude demographically. But I also, you you know i think baseball is its most fun when it doesn't look entirely the same player to player and we talked about this with jj cooper when he was on the show but if you have fewer roster spots you're just a lot less likely as an organization to kind of take a flyer on a guy who doesn't fit a conventional profile and i think that we've seen teams that have had a lot of success being willing to view those categories as a little bit squishy and try guys in different spots and see if there's some, you know, multi-positional fit that works or what have you. And so I think that

baseball is the most interesting when it is diverse in a multitude of ways and so i just i agree with you i worry about who we're gonna miss out on and what kinds of players we might find room for as we continue to refine our understanding of what plays at the major league level and what player development can unlock in guys and so that that would be a real shame because i think that that's one of the places where a game that we i think we rightly view as somewhat figured out based on the advances of the last 20 years still has a lot of potential to surprise and it would be it would be a bummer if we were to lose that because that makes it fun yeah and the knuckleball is sort of on life support at this point there have been various, and the knuckleball is sort of on life support at this point.

There have been various times when the knuckleball has been near extinction and it's bounced back, but right now we're kind of at low tide for the knuckleball, and I still have hope that it could bounce back. I wrote an article a little more than a year ago about why there might be some hope for the knuckleball and how some pitchers are starting to use high-speed cameras and those sorts of modern tools to refine their knuckleball and how some pitchers are starting to use high-speed cameras and those sorts of modern tools to refine their knuckleballs and how maybe robot umps and robot strike zones

could actually be beneficial for knuckleball pitchers potentially. So I'll link to that if people are interested in that. But yeah, it's true that if you only have a certain number of roster spots and a knuckleballer comes along and you think, well, he's a long shot or, you know, maybe he'll get things together in five years, but I just don't have time or space to carry him until he figures it out, then he might just not get that shot. And, you know, maybe you can go to IndieBall or something and keep your career alive, but not everyone is willing or able to do that. So yeah, again, it's a complicated issue. And we talked to JJ Cooper for a long time about it on episode 1628. And there are all sorts of pluses and minuses. And it's hard to say a blanket, this is bad or this is good. It's some good things and

some bad things. And I don't think the history of Phil Necro is necessarily decisive either way. And there are already fewer affiliates than there were when Phil Necro was playing. So he might not have even made it in 2019 if he had been around. But it's just we won't know which players we're missing out on. You know, if Phil Necro hadn't made it, if he had gotten cut, then we would not be lamenting the loss of Phil Necro's career because we just never would have even been aware of it. So we won't be actively aware of what we're missing, but we'll know that we're probably missing something or someone. Someone didn't get to fulfill that dream. And every once in a while, it might be a really great player who goes

on to have a Hall of Fame career. So interesting stuff about Necro. So thanks to Craig for bringing that to my attention. I just continue to love that he threw more than 300 innings three years in a row from 77 to 79. Yeah, it's unbelievable. It's unreal. Yeah, it's unbelievable. It's unreal. And he bookended those three 300-plus inning seasons with seasons where he threw at least 270 innings.

Yep. I just, 5,404 and a third innings. Yep. Just, it's just remarkable. And pitched for so long that he has some of the all-time best baseball cards. Oh, yeah. He's in his late 40s, but he looks like he could be in his 60s or something. So if I see, I mean, he went gray or white pretty young.

And so sometimes I'll see an image of him throwing at an old-timer's day or something, and I'll think, wait, is that an old-timer's day? Or is that just Philly Crow during his career career because it's almost indistinguishable so we definitely need more like grandpas out there people who either are or could plausibly pass for grandfathers not enough of those in today's game yeah and just like you know what happens if what happens if they don't find a catcher who can catch his knuckleball? Right, yeah. Right? Like, what if he's just, because that was part of the problem, too.

They just didn't, Atlanta just didn't have anyone on staff who could handle the knuckleball. And then they did. And they were like, oh, okay. We'll get that. I still think we need, like, a knuckleball academy,

Royals Academy style. I mean, this is something that gets brought up from time to time, and some teams have experimented with the concept, but I would still like to see some team make a concerted effort to just churn out knuckleballers. Because you think like in a game where everyone's throwing a hundred and nasty sliders and everything, like even just having the differential, like the rarer the pitch is, the weirder it is, the more of an outlier it is, maybe the harder it would be to hit. So I hope that we see more knuckleballs.

Agreed. I also wanted to mention a post that Dan Zaborski wrote for you at Fangrass this week about the Padres and their updated projections. So we talked last week about the Padres' trades and how they stack up to the Dodgers now. And I asked, do you think they could up to the Dodgers now and I asked do you think they could actually catch the Dodgers this is going to be an exciting race that was clear Dan re-ran the numbers and it's maybe even more exciting than I realized that it was because Zips had the Padres as the second best team in the NL before their recent trades and signings but there was a gap between the

Dodgers and the Padres now, according to Dan's current figures. And of course, it is still early January and there are many moves to be made and there's a lot of free agents still left to be signed and playing time is hard to parcel out in early January. But according to the current projections. The Padres are projected for 98 wins. And the Dodgers are also projected for 98 wins. How about that? And Dan wrote 196 wins are the most Zips has ever projected. For the top two teams in a division. Combine that with the closeness of the projections.

You need a decimal point to separate the two teams in the standings. And I don't think it's a stretch to say that this is the best divisional race Zips has ever projected going on two decades of prognostications, or at least, I guess, the top two teams in the division. So I maybe undersold this, if anything. I figured, okay, the Padres have definitely narrowed the gap here. They've brought it to the point where if things go right for them, things go wrong for the Dodgers, they could definitely conceivably catch them. But according to the true talent projections right now and Dan's playing time assumptions, it might be even closer than that. One of the great joys of being an assigning editor is that you get to bother people to answer questions for you that you're really keen to know. So I went to Dan and I was like, Dan, you should redo the Padres projections.

Please do that because I really want to know how close it is. And he's like, what if I just redid the whole NL West? And I was like, oh, Dan, that's why you're the best so um yeah it's it's a very exciting thing in the midst of you know an off season that has been slow and plotting and that has as dan notes a number of teams that have basically announced to their fan bases like the baseball you're gonna watch next year is gonna be worse than the baseball you watched last year to see a team that's like no we we see the world the reigning world series champ the consensus best team in baseball and we we want to take a run at them and to you know as you noted

like there's a lot left to be done and the dodgers are now in the position of being able to respond to what san diego has done and there's always the lingering looming threat of injury and all sorts of stuff but for them to go into the early part of the new year saying no we're we're neck and neck is is just very exciting so yeah I can't wait to see how it plays out I know yeah and this relies in part on a very rosy projection for Hasan Kim. Yes. This is the best projection that Zips has ever generated for a player from the KBO. And he's projected as basically a four-war player per year for the next several seasons, which would make him an absolute bargain if that turns out to be the case for what they're

paying him and would make me question why there wasn't more interest in him. And, you know, with a player coming over from any other league, there's always going to be a little less that we know and it's harder to translate the stats, but there have been more players coming from there recently. So there's more for the system to go on and it really likes Kim and why wouldn't it based on his numbers and his youth and all of that but that's even better than I was expecting so if you think that's a little too optimistic and that there might be more growing pains then maybe you can push him down push the Padres down a little bit but the projections for Blake Snell and Yu Darvish seem quite conservative. Sips has them as three-win players, basically, because of pretty

low innings estimates. The point is, it's really close, so I am pretty hyped for that race this year. And it's not just this year, either, because as Dan notes in his post, most of the Padres' core contributors are under their control through at least 2023. And because a lot of their players are young and still in their pre-arbitration years, they still have room to maneuver financially. They're more than $50 million a year from the first luxury tax threshold this year. So it just goes to show what you can accomplish if you are willing to be aggressive, especially while lots of other teams are not being aggressive at all. You can make major waves

And of course the Dodgers are set up really well long term too Yeah, it's going to be really exciting And gosh, you just have good broadcast booths between the two of them Speaking of good broadcast booths, I was going to bring that up too Because friend of the show, Bukshambi has a new job Or has added a job to his staple of jobs. And he is going to be the new Cubs play-by-play man replacing Len Casper on TV and teaming up with Jim Deshaies. And man, Chicago is just hogging all the great broadcasters at this point.

I mean, we already talked about having Jason Benetti and Len Casper calling games for the same team. Now you have Boog replacing Casper, which like there aren't many broadcasters who I would say you could lose Len Casper and not lose a whole lot, but going from Casper to Boog. Those are two really great broadcasters that Cubs fans will be happy with. So we've been talking about the Cubs losing players and personnel so far this winter. At least now they have actually added someone and added someone good. So congrats to Boog and congrats to Cubs fans who will get to listen to Boog. involvement with ESPN, so he will not be leaving the national stage either. I don't know if he'll be calling as many games. I guess it would be hard to do that because he was the Sunday night baseball radio voice and also a Wednesday night baseball person for ESPN, but sounds like he's still going to be doing some of that. And Book has called games for a team before. I think he was the Marlins radio play-by-play man years ago, and I

think he was also with Atlanta for a few years on TV. So this is not new for him necessarily, but it's maybe a higher profile local spot. And if people are not already aware of how good Boog is, I hope they will be now. I was thinking about whether a local broadcasting gig or a national broadcasting gig leads to more appreciation for a broadcaster's talents. And I think, I mean, you get more renown maybe if you are a national broadcaster, but when it comes to having an affectionate audience, I think having that local audience that gets to hear you every single day as opposed to just, you know, you're bouncing from team to team and kind of parachuting in. And even if you're good like Boog is, I think people just, you know, Joe Buck or in the past, you know, Tim McCarver or whomever. And I think Joe Buck is good. I quite enjoy Joe Buck.

But I get why. And we talk every postseason about why suddenly everyone's complaining about broadcasters. And it's partly because you're pitching your broadcast to that national audience and maybe more of a mainstream casual audience. to that national audience and maybe more of a mainstream casual audience. But it's also just like, hey, I listen to these people all season long and suddenly you're taking them away and you're making me listen to this imposter. This is not my real dad. Who is this person who's narrating this game? He doesn't even go here.

Yeah, right. You can't just slide in in October and act like you've been here all year. So Boog will have that national presence and also local presence. And so I hope that you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in the industry where there's just more universal affection for him than there is for Boog. So I'm very excited for him, even if I resent strongly the fact

that I am now going to be motivated to watch the Cubs. I know. In 2021. Yeah, they're not giving you many more reasons to watch them, but they are giving you this one at least. We'll see how good the baseball is, but at least it'll be fun to listen to. So there's that. Yeah, I think that Cubs fans are in for a real treat. I think that one of the things that often motivates people to complain about national broadcasters, and I don't think that

this is true of joe buck although it might be true of his frequent baseball broadcast partner is that they just don't seem to have the same not only affection for the the home nine but just for baseball generally and because they're at a remove and they're not tied to any particular team and and often they call other sports in addition to baseball and i think that one of the things that really sets Boog apart, and we saw this on his radio broadcast, and we saw this when he called KBO games, is just like he is interested in the game and inquisitive about it,

and he really likes it. And I think that that isn't enough to have a good broadcast, but I think that it is necessary to a good broadcast. And so bringing that energy to that booth, not that it was lacking before, as you noted, because gosh, there was just a lot of talent to be had there. But he is a very fitting replacement for Lennon, I think will be a really excellent addition. So man, kind of watch the Cubs. Yeah, just stacked broadcast booths in that city this season.

And yeah, I mean, maybe we're predisposed to like the analytically inclined sort, you know, like Boog and Benetti and Casper. And those are people who maybe we've talked to or have had on the show or listened to the show and have some kind of awareness of or personal relationship with and Boog went to the same high school that I did but it's not just that I think it's also valuable at times to have a former player in the booth who can give you that perspective but not if it's just the rote you know complaining about how things aren't as good as they were back in their day or just giving you the same standard analysis that you're accustomed to players giving and that you can just hear before they even say it and i think steve stone and jim deshaies are just good at that too so they give you that former

player former pitcher perspective but not in the very predictable and kind of boring way. So I think they're very good partners for that kind of, you know, analytically inclined type of broadcaster. It's great to have both of those perspectives in the same booth if you can do it. And if you can do it without having it be like, you know, Brian Kenney versus Harold Reynolds, like War of the Nerds versus the old school types, you know, war of the nerds versus the old school types you know but like the two actually getting along and complimenting each other and adding to each other's understanding of and appreciation for the game and i think both of those booths will have that so that's great yeah i'm not a fan of unnecessary antagonism in my baseball experience the game lends itself to that just fine on its own i'm gonna make a statement that's gonna make you feel bad because you don't have siblings.

But it's like, what, you didn't get enough of this when you were fighting with your siblings as a child? Come on now. That actually makes me feel better about not having siblings, I think. You're welcome, Ben. Thank you. One other thing I wanted to bring up, Eno Saris wrote an article at The Athletic about the absence of in-game video in 2020, which is something I was kind of curious about. And it would come up every now and then and you would hear players talking about it, but it was just sort of lost in everything else that was different about the 2020 MLB season and 2020 in general. But there was no access to in-game video this year. And I guess partly maybe it was response to the sign stealing scandal and some restrictions being put in place there. But I think mostly

it was because of the COVID protocols and not wanting to expose those personnel to the players and have them wondering in and out. I think that was at least the stated reason for it. Maybe it was partly science dealing blowback related. But the point is, for the first time in a while, players could not just go into the video room during games and watch the picture or watch their previous plate appearance or whatever. And I assume they still had access to like ipads in the dugout where

they're able to see some of that video scouting stuff but they weren't able to see things broken down almost immediately the way that they've been accustomed to recently and there have been some players who have attributed some struggles to that and i wonder whether you find that to be convincing or plausible. So one player who said that in September was Javi Baez, who had a lousy season at the plate. And he said, to be honest, it sucks. I make my adjustments during the game. I watch my swing. I watch where the ball was, where the contact was. I'm really mad that we don't have it. I know a lot of players are struggling too. A lot of stars are struggling. I'm just one more. But the way that it is is not the way we play baseball. I need video. I need video to make adjustments during the game. I think

I also heard either Baez say or someone else suggest about Baez that maybe he feeds off the enthusiasm of the crowd and that that's why he wasn't playing well. So there were multiple reasons advanced for why Baez was not playing well. But he attributed it at least in part to the lack of in-game video. And I believe Josh Bell, who was just traded to the Nationals, he's coming off a down year where a lot of the changes that he seemed to make in 2019 just fell apart. And he kind of went back to being a ground ball guy and not getting the lift and the power that he had had in 2019. Well, I saw a tweet the other day by Matt Weyrich, who writes about the Nationals. He said, Josh Bell says in 2020, he fell into a pattern of jumping towards the ball and lean too far into his front side at the plate. He also attributed his struggles to being unable to use in-game video.

And Matt says something MLB took away last season following the Astros scandal, though I don't know if that was the sole reason or a reason. And Eno suggests that maybe it was an issue with Christian Jelic as well, who is known to rely on those sorts of breakdowns and, you know, looks into it. And he makes the point that if it did affect people, it doesn't really seem to have created offense league-wide or anything. He does point out that the third time through the order penalty was at least on the surface smaller than it had been in recent years,

but that that could be just because it's distorted by the fact that pitchers were not going deep into games in 2020 especially. And so the pitchers who were going deep into games were disproportionately really good pitchers. And so if you just look at like the league production on the third time through the order, it might be artificially depressed by the fact that you have a better group of pitchers. So that's maybe not the best way to do that analysis to see if that ball that I thought was a ball was actually a ball or was it a strike or you know maybe they just want to see what they did last time or or look at mechanics or that kind of thing so you know this is uh obviously not been a permanent part of baseball it's not like going back decades players had access to this or cared to have access to this. So it's fairly recent that everyone's using it in games.

And so if someone comes to you and says, hey, I'm Mr. Free Agent and I'm coming off a down year and says it's because I couldn't look at in-game video and next year I will be able to look at in-game video. Therefore, you should sign me because I will bounce back to my previous level. Are you buying it? I'm trying to think which aspect of a particular at-bat would be most useful to see in real time that would make me believe it's true. I don't have a hard time believing that it has some effect, that it has some impact, but I'm trying to decide what part of it I imagine having the most consistent effect.

And I wonder if it's really as simple as having a better visualization of the umpire strike zone on any given night. I mean, I think that there is undoubtedly some benefit to being able to see the movement of a pitcher's pitches on any given night and sort of how he's, you know, where he's placing his slider relative to his cutter, relative to his curveball, relative to his fastball,

and all of that. But I wonder if the thing that you might have the the hardest time being able to uh consistently identify yourself or describe to other players would be the zone i don't know yeah yeah you know suggests that maybe it would be useful mechanically if you're someone like yell at your bias who has a big leg kick, there might be a timing issue there where you would want to see, was I too early? Was I too late? So I could see that being a factor. I think in the past, of course, players would just try to pick things up by talking to each other or looking at the game or what they saw at the plate. And they'd still do that, and they probably had to rely on that more in 2020.

And like before the game, you can still watch all the video you want of the pitcher, and then once you've seen the pitcher, then that's in your mental database, and you can watch what that pitcher is doing to your teammates. And so there's a lot there that you can just see. And, of course, if it is a mechanical issue you could just check the video after the game and maybe it doesn't help you in your you know last at bat or something but you could still fix whatever ails you before the next game so like i don't know i i could see how it could become kind of a crutch like if you're used to

having this then you depend on it and maybe you would be a little less observant in the game because you know you can just go back and look at the video and maybe get an even better angle on it in some cases or it could just be a security blanket kind of thing where you know it's there you know you can look and maybe that reassures you mentally and it's helpful of course to feel secure and so maybe even if it's not helping you that much if there's some kind of placebo effect where you feel more prepared then it might help you more than like you know not even because it's helping you so much with mechanics or scouting but just because you feel better when you go up to the plate so right i can see how like if you're someone who does rely on that then to have it taken away suddenly might be a bit jarring but still like i kind of have to question like what's the magnitude of the change like are we

saying that javi baez had a bad year solely because of this did he go from a 114 WRC plus to a 57 WRC plus because of this? Did his Babbitt fall 80 points because of this? Or was it just that that happened and this was also something that was happening? So I can buy that for particular players, perhaps it may have been a bigger issue than for others. And I could see it having some effect, but I guess I have a hard time imagining that it could really like be the difference between a good year and a bad year, let's say. Right. And like, what was his reason for a below average WFC plus in 2016? Right. So there's... He hadn't started using the video then. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know i i think that you

probably hit on it which is that it has some effect the magnitude of the effect is probably relatively small and and probably varies player to player i would imagine that some of it might depend on how how dependent you are dependence probably the wrong word but used to that as a tool yeah as a player that you are and perhaps it has something to do with sort of how either how good or how ready to listen to the other resources you have around you you are in any given moment because it's not as if you know if you go up and you have a bad at bat and then you come back to the bench, you know, like presumably there's like maybe the hitting coach is like, hey, I noticed you're doing this thing, right? Like your load is different.

The timing mechanisms you use are different. Like whatever. Like there are any number of things that they might be able to notice even if they don't have a perfect sort of center field view of you in the batter's box. So some of it might depend on how effective your teammates or coaches are at noticing those small, minute changes in game or how willing you are to listen to those people. And I don't say that to impugn Javi Baez. I have no idea. But I'm just thinking of other things that might contribute to you being able to make the sort of in-game adjustments you know this is not the only mechanism guys have it's really

common for you to see at you know if somebody if a player like you know flails at some really nasty breaking stuff it's not unusual for you to see him as he retreats back to the dugout talk to the person in the on-deck circle about how he's seeing that pitch move. So there are other mechanisms that players have, but I think that I would not have a hard time believing that guys who are used to a routine and find that consistency is sort of instrumental to their process, believing it to have a very significant impact, even if it's sort of marginal in its true effect right yeah and especially if you happen to have a bad year perhaps for

unrelated reasons right you might just tell yourself that was why i mean right it might be good to blame it on that just to kind of have more confidence going into the next season i mean if there were some other underlying issue then it would probably be better to address that. But, you know, if you just had a lousy couple months and it was randomness or bad luck or whatever, then if you just tell yourself, oh, it's because of in-game video, then as long as you have in-game video in the future, I don't know, if you're a pro athlete and you're doing this difficult high pressure job, sometimes you have to trick yourself into things. It's helpful to think of it in a certain frame, which may or may not reflect reality. But even like umpires, you're talking about how it might be useful to see how an umpire is calling the zone. And that's true. But of course, teams get umpire scouting reports too on umpire tendencies. Is this someone who has a big zone or a small zone or does he tend to call strikes here or there and it might differ on any individual day but again you could maybe pick that up just from observation or ask your catcher you know what

calls are you getting or not getting and so when guys go back to the video room to check whether a call was correct or not often they're just looking for vindication, right? You know, they didn't like a call and they want to be proved right. And maybe they'll say something next time they're at the plate or maybe they won't because the Empire won't like that. But at least they'll be secure in the knowledge that they were right and the Empire was wrong. And there might be some value to that, to seeing was this pitch a strike or not and how is he calling pitches on this day but again like there's so much other information and so many other ways to access most of that information that i can't imagine it being debilitating if you didn't have that so

i don't know it's uh it's an interesting question and i assume that there might be in-game video again in 2021. But really, we don't know what will be happening. It's like we talked last time about how it seems increasingly likely that the season will start on time. But there's still so much we don't know about what the season will look like. And hopefully the fact that MLB has kind of conceded now that pandemic permitting, they actually plan to start on the day that it's supposed to start. Maybe that means they can move on to, okay, what will this season actually look like? Because all that stuff is still up in the air. I mean, we're six weeks away from spring training or less right now.

And for one thing, most of the free agent signings haven't happened. less right now and for one thing most of the free agent signings haven't happened not a single one of mlb trade rumors top 15 free agents this winter has signed only three of the top 30 have 10 of the top 50 but beyond that we still don't know if there's gonna be a dh in the national league we still don't know what the playoff format is how many playoff teams are there i don't know it seems like something that you might want to know if you're a team that was assembling its roster right now like you might want to know if you run a baseball website ben that too i'm sure that is also a consideration give me think of the managing editors so yeah yeah i mean whatever thinks of us when all of this was undecided in

2020 it was obviously understandable because everything was up in the air and seated their pants. And so it was sort of silly and maybe took away a little bit from the legitimacy of the season at times when the playoff format was announced just before the season started or the playoff schedule was announced after the trade deadline. All these things were just being decided in the middle of the season, essentially, or as the season was starting. But at least at that point, well, when you found out about the expanded playoffs, it was like, well, the offseason's over, so teams did what they did. I mean, yeah, it might have been nice for them to know what the playoff format would be, but at least now they're locked in, they can't really do anything different with the playoff schedule. Yeah, maybe if they had known before the trade deadline, some teams might have made moves in anticipation of not having those off days in

October. So that was one of those things where some teams were sort of thrown for a loop and maybe some teams benefited and some teams were harmed by that. But now, I mean, teams are still constructing their rosters and it really might make a difference. Is there going to be 10 playoff teams or 16 or some number in between that? Or how big are the rosters going to be? Or are the weird rules from last year still going to be in place? Are we sticking with all of that or not?

And we still don't know. And I guess we're still making allowances for that because there's still so much we don't know about the world and what it'll look like a few months from now. But really seems like about time to start figuring that stuff out, you know, figure that the season is going to start and then decide what it's actually going to look like. Not just for the managing editors, but for them too. Yeah, for us too. I find myself constantly in a state of, give me that lately, the vaccine, schedule, whether there'll be a DH,

all sorts of things that I want that are just out of reach, Ben, and they'll resolve themselves in time. And I understand that there are other people and more pressing priorities ahead of them, but it doesn't slack my desire. I just have to sit here in my house. I need a haircut, Ben.

Oh, yeah? You haven't had a public haircut yet? No. I am booked for a public haircut. That sounds so grim, like I'm meeting sweeney todd or something um and it's gonna feel great but no i have not had a haircut since this all started and ben it is bad yeah well it also doesn't really matter i guess because no one is seeing you really yeah but i feel like my split ends are developing their own language yeah i guess we've all become more comfortable

with uncertainty or or if not more comfortable with at least accustomed to and resigned to i mean in what other winter would there be this much uncertainty about just like the basic structure of the coming season and we're all just like yeah we don't really know how many players there are going to be to a team or what positions they will or won't play or like how many teams will make the playoffs i'm sure they'll figure that out at some point so i don't want to downplay the extent to which this is just like a true thing so i don't want to call it an excuse but i i find it very interesting i don't know that it says anything because like we i don't

want to like try to read into tea leaves when there's just nothing there but if i were a professional baseball player and i had struggled this year i find it really interesting that the the the instinct appears to be for many of these guys to look for a baseball related reason for their struggle and not to just like gesture around them and say i don't know man pandemic yeah like it crushed my spirit every day and i didn't hit well like that's what i would say i'd be like you know how there's a pandemic yeah i i know too and so that's my stat line congratulations to me yeah yeah that i don't know if that's just like players don't want to make excuses or there's still some sort of stigma about, I don't know, anxiety or mental health. I would imagine.

Or players not wanting to cop to that. But you'd think if they ever could, like 2020, a year when everyone was dealing with that and everyone would understand would be the time to do that. But yeah, they probably don't want to suggest that they don't have the mental strength to just plow through the pandemic and be unaffected by a virus that is shutting down the entire country. It's okay if that bothered you, but maybe it's not macho or at least wouldn't be perceived that way. I imagine it's some of that that i imagine that some of them are probably aware that like on a relative basis and i hope that this kind of relativistic accounting falls out of fashion because it is both i understand its necessity because it is it is good to to be grateful for what you have and to understand your plight relative to others but also it's like what

matters to you matters to you and there's no getting around that you just have to live in your own head every day but i imagine some of it is like understanding that relative to a great many people they escaped unscathed and and i bet for a lot of them there is a baseball reason that they had a bad year and so it is not you know it is not offering a false excuse to say this is why i think I had a down season. But also, it's like, there's like a global pandemic. And there was, you know, a lot of other stuff besides that. So it's just, it's an interesting thing. I don't think that it's necessarily telling. And I don't mean it as like an admonishment that they should attribute it to something that isn't sort of consistent with their own lived experience. But it is an interesting bit of business for me as well.

Yeah. All right. So maybe the last thing we can do here, we wanted to get to some emails. And I don't know if we will, but we will get to this, which is at least prompted by an email. So we always like it when there's a baseball cameo in some sort of popular media, I like it when there's a baseball cameo in some sort of popular media, baseball scene in a movie, in a TV show, in a book, whatever, that is not ostensibly a baseball movie or show or book. And often we find holes to poke in that scene, something about it that disrupts our suspensions of disbelief. And as baseball connoisseurs, we recognize that there's something off here. So we got an email from Aaron, a Patreon supporter, and he says, Baseball on a TV show? Once again, there is a baseball game that plays a part in a television show that needs someone to vet it prior to releasing it. It is from the Netflix show Cobra Kai, Season 3, Episode 1. So this is actually timely, because when I just went to my Netflix home screen, it informed me that Cobra Kai is the number one show in the United States today.

So we are very topical and timely today. I have not actually watched Cobra Kai. Not a minute of it. No. Well, now I have. Yeah. A couple minutes. But, yeah, I have not seen Cobra Kai, although I understand that it is quite good and people like it.

And perhaps I will watch it one day. But for those who don't know, it is the successor series to the Karate Kid movies. And it is just on its third season. Its third season just came out on Netflix. And so Aaron sent us this scene and I made a little clip, which I will link to on the show page so that everyone can check it out. Or you can just go to Netflix if you have it. And it's right from the beginning of the season three premiere, just a couple minutes into the episode. I will play a quick clip to set this up here.

Diaz, meanwhile, remains in a coma at West Valley General. Doctors say his prognosis... this up here. I don't have a phone. Throw it away. What's wrong with you? When's the last time you showered, Cabrón? You smell like a piece of dog shit took a dump. Change it back. Bro, you had a bar. People want to watch the game. They don't give a shit about no weather reports and Coma Kid. And it's a high fly to center field.

And it's gone. Oh, my. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, man. Yeah. Okay, so in this scene, Johnny Lawrence, whom you may remember from the Karate Kid films, also in Cobra Kai, as is Ralph Macchio, He walks into a bar and he's watching a news story. Wait, I'm sorry.

This is supposed to be the young person from the Karate Kid movies? Well, he's no longer a young person. He looks terrible. He has stumbled onto hard times, Ben. Oof. Wow. I won't tell William Sapka that you said that. I mean, I think he's meant to look like he is in some amount of distress in this clip.

Yes, that is true. He's having a hard time. Sweep the leg, Johnny. He's suffering some trauma here, which we are not aware of. We don't understand. We just walked right into this series without any of the context. But he's at a bar. He's drinking.

He's watching a news report on TV. And then two other guys come up to him, and they're Dodgers fans in this bar and they don't want to watch the news. So they just change the channel to a game that is supposedly a Dodgers Giants game and it's the bottom of the ninth. So these bar patrons want to see the game here. And so there are two quick clips from this game on the TV that are shown in the show. And the score bug in the bottom right is consistent with the commentary here. And it says initially that the score is 2-1 Giants, and it's the bottom of the ninth, and there's a runner on third. And then we see there's a hit, it seems like. We don't see the runner, but it looks like there's a base hit,

and the runner on third is going to score and tie the game. And then there's a walk-off, and the game is over, and the Dodgers win. And there are a number of issues here, which Aaron points out in some cases. So the first thing is that this is very clearly not a Dodgers-Giants game that they're showing. For one thing, as Paul McCord pointed out in our Facebook group using the baseball reference stat head event finder, there's only one game in which a 2-2 walk-off solo homer was hit by LA as the home team over San Francisco. That was on June 22nd, 1974. This clip clearly doesn't come from June 22nd, 1974. It looks pretty contemporary.

Of course, it could be a fictional game using real footage, but it does not appear to be real footage of the Dodgers and Giants either. For one thing, it looks like there are only two umpires at this game. But more important than that, this is not Dodgers Stadium. This is not even the Dodgers spring training park. And I was trying to figure out where this is, where this game is taking place. And I asked a few people and it was inconclusive. So I put it to the Effectively Wild Hive Mind, which very rarely fails me. And I posted a few still images in the Facebook group and some sleuths scoured the footage. And it seems like there's a consensus.

And I think I agree that this is fifth third ballpark in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is the home of the High A Tigers affiliate. Speaking of awkward corporate sponsorships, fifth third ballpark. That's just difficult to say. That's impossible. Yeah. You sound like you've had too many drinks, no matter how many drinks you've had. It's Fifth Third Bank, which is headquartered in Cincinnati, I think, and I guess it's in the area in Wisconsin. So why is it called Fifth Third Bank?

Well, evidently, there is the Third National Bank and the Fifth National Bank, and they merged in 1908. And so they called themselves the Fifth Third National Bank, which I guess makes sense, but it doesn't really flow particularly well. But this happened during Prohibition, and evidently, they decided to do Fifth Third instead of Third Fifth, which sounds a little easier to say, but could have been construed as a reference to three fifths of alcohol. And so that was a no go. So it's fifth third, which I have a lot of trouble with and doesn't sound very ballparky. But anyway, I think after reviewing the footage, I agree.

I think this is fifth third ballpark. It's sort of distinctive. It has some odd features. It has a ramp that runs parallel to the fence, and then there's the outfield overhang and columns. It almost looks like old Tiger Stadium, sort of old-fashioned. And at first, I wasn't sure if this was actually the same ballpark or if it was two different ballparks in two different shots, but I think it is Fifth Third Ballpark. So the question is why? Why would you be using footage from Fifth Third Ballpark here? And I may have an explanation for that, too. just some b-roll that was shot of a minor league game in this park because if you watch anchorman 2 there is a montage where champ kind is calling some home runs and it cuts to a bunch of hitters

hitting homers and he just keeps saying whammy and it's whitecaps players it's players from that minor league team and i was reading a story from MLive.com, and evidently this came as quite a surprise to the Whitecaps front office. It says, how exactly did this happen? Graham said a Detroit-based filmmaker working for a Los Angeles film came to the stadium to film B-roll. The team signs an agreement, the footage is shot,

and nobody knows how it'll be used. So it was a shock to people in the Whitecaps office that clips of their team are featured in one of the biggest releases of the holiday season. Champ doesn't say the team's name, but local baseball fans will recognize the uniforms. So Anchorman 2, I mean, that was seven years ago. So this footage is old. It's possible that this is the same B-roll that that person shot from that old minor

league game and that it is just part of some archive where if you need a baseball game, you need a generic baseball game on your TV show, then you just use this footage of the West Michigan Whitecaps. So that is my best theory for why they use that. It's not particularly convincing. It doesn't really look like a Dodgers-Giants game, but I guess it could pass for one if you weren't a baseball fan. And the commentary lines up, I think, fairly well. The timing is off, but the score bug is consistent with it being a walk-off in the bottom of the ninth. And what you hear of the commentator on the broadcast seems consistent, although quite compressed.

It's all in real time there's no cut here and so like eight seconds elapsed between the tying run scoring and you can see over johnny lawrence's shoulder the runner who just crossed home plate is heading back to the dugout and then like eight seconds later you hear the crack of the bat and it's the walk off and so this is like rob manfred's wet dream if the game were actually moving that quickly. So there's some dead air that is kind of cut out here. And also, like you hear the commentator say, like, oh, it's going, going, gone or whatever. the runner, the batter runner who just hit the ball is already rounding second base,

which is like either the slowest home run ball ever or the fastest home run trot ever because it's not clear to the announcer that this ball is going out until the guy is already around second base. So I don't know how that exactly works out there. But I think even more than the baseball not really passing muster here the whole like bar atmosphere yes just let's get into this it does not seem right to me and like i'm not gonna i'm not a sports bar guy like even pre-pandemic i'm not necessarily someone who's going to the bar to watch the game but like this does not seem at all i mean first of all you have johnny who's been sitting here at the bar for four hours who we'd like to to reiterate looks terrible he doesn't look great doesn't look great yeah and he's been sitting there drinking away whatever pain he is

currently dealing with and he's got a bunch of beers in front of him. And the server who's trying to close his tab or charge him says he's been there for four hours. So he's been sitting there in front of the TV. Now, there's only one TV in this place, and it's not a big TV. It's like a pretty little people are congregating to watch the game, it is far from ideal because there is like a single screen that is not very big. And he's been sitting here, presumably staring at this news channel for the past four hours, and no one said anything until now. So this is like, suddenly these two Dodgers fans come up to him and they're like, oh, it's the bottom of the ninth. Like, we got to watch this. What were you guys doing for the first nine innings? Like, you weren't interested in watching this until it's the bottom of the ninth. Like, it's a pretty close game. I mean, it's Dodgers-Giants. It's rivalry. It's not a blowout or anything. You came to this bar supposedly because like you're big fans and it's a sports bar. Because you're big fans and it's a sports bar. Why are you just now saying, I want to watch the game in the bottom of the ninth? One of them is wearing a Dodgers shirt. The other is just wearing a generic jersey with the champion logo on it.

Okay. So here's the thing. Yeah. Yeah. So they were able to get clearance for bald tie-dye man to wear bald tie-dye guy shirt that has the dodgers logo and looks like a dodger shirt yeah but they were not able to get clearance for this gentleman to wear an actual dodgers jersey they were fine to get the champion logo clearance champion has not been the official manufacturer of mlb jerseys maybe ever certainly not now and there's no name on the back of this guy's jersey there's not even an LA like a generic LA thing it looks more like

a Padres mock-up than it does a Dodgers mock-up because the blue isn't quite right also this appears to be more of a restaurant than a bar yeah right so he's just a fan of of champion I guess he's just a big champion fan he's just repping the brand yeah he's really excited about the ace new stadium name i don't even remember what it is now ben okay you don't have to yeah don't remember that's a callback but i guess this is something someone could conceivably wear like if they were playing softball or something and just like it's a generic baseball jersey i guess and like maybe they just came from playing softball to the bar and one guy's wearing a dodger shirt

the other guy isn't but it looks a little weird if he's like hardcore dodgers fan who has to see the game and he's just wearing generic champion jersey but also like they're the only two people who care like there is a dodgers fan behind them right who seemingly cannot see the tv at all and he couldn't care less which which as we have established is very far away and quite small and is positioned such that the the bar lights would block most of their view of the tv anyway. True. Was Johnny sitting there waiting for this local news report? How long is the local news on? I mean, maybe it's just an all-news channel. I don't know.

Reports on karate fights? Yeah, there is a karate riot in the high school, evidently. Violent karate clash. We do not know the backstory here. No, we don't there is another dodgers fan and he's just sitting behind these two dodgers fans who are making a stink about this and he does not care at all he is seemingly paying no attention doesn't react at all when there's the walk-off there's a walk-off like the two dodgers fans who are now standing and

have put the game on they notice the walk-off no one else in this bar or restaurant establishment reacts at all there's no cheer that goes up like this is not like the local Dodgers fan watering hole here I I don't the vibe is just all wrong they look like they're in a law office. Happens to have a bar in it. It is not an airport bar, but it kind of has airport bar vibe. Yeah, right. It's just. This is not like a place where you would. This is not like your neighborhood hangout.

Like this is just. I guess we have to eat something. It's like it's like an Applebee's or something like. I don't mind a good Applebee's or something. Like an Applebee's in an airport. Yeah, but it does not look like a place where there would be a regular. There's no clientele that's coming back here to watch the game because this is a terrible place to watch a game. And so maybe these are just such casual Dodgers fans that they're in this place because they don't really care about seeing the game. And that's why they're not interested in changing the channel until it's the bottom of the ninth and the Dodgers are rallying.

But again, why are you even there? Why are you wearing Dodgers gear or champion gear in some cases? There's just a lot wrong here. Am I just like really misunderstanding the degree to which people do karate fights? I'm just like... I don't know. We might just have to watch Cobra Kai. How old is Johnny?

Well, I guess he's 50-something at this point. Wow. That makes me feel old. Yeah. Have the other films in the Karate Kid universe been accounted for in the timeline for Cobra Kai we're gonna get so many Cobra Kai emails

don't answer the question guys let me find out on my own I'm gonna do some research I'm gonna do a deep dive on Cobra Kai that does not involve me watching Cobra Kai at all we're as out of our depth with Cobra Kai lore here as the producers of Cobra Kai are when it comes to simulating a sports bar, I think. You just have to pick up the phone and

call someone. And I don't need a producer credit. You can just write a check. I'll tell you how baseball works. That's fine. And I don't know when this was produced if this was produced during the pandemic then we can make some allowances i guess you know you maybe it's hard to accurately replicate the sports bar environment when no one can go near each other and this is a pretty socially distanced environment like this pretty empty pretty dead in this bar restaurant so maybe that has something to do with it. And if so, I guess we could forgive that to some extent, but it's just not passing muster. I mean, the baseball players are not the baseball players are supposed to be. It's not the right baseball place.

And they could make it the right baseball place because other shows do. And I know because several years ago, I wrote an article about a baseball scene in the TV show Elementary, which did use real baseball footage, and I broke it down. And it was nonsense when you break it down, because the footage, which was of a Mets game, actually came from multiple games that took place over multiple seasons. And so I managed to piece together what games it was actually coming from. But it was at least real major league games in which the Mets were playing. They were playing different teams in different clips. But it was the Phillies and the Reds, so it wasn't immediately obvious from the uniforms.

Anyway, it was more convincing. And when I talked to people at MLB and the producers of Elementary about why it was so jumbled, they had good reasons for it. It was just that they had the script before they had the footage, and they had to match the footage to the script and to the descriptions of what was going on in the game. And as it happened, they could not do that with one game. It just didn't work out. And so they had to splice together a few different games to make it work and and be less disruptive to the production so it was understandable that that's why it was like that but they did use mlb footage they got express written consent or whatever they had to do and cobra kai just uh was not interested in that i guess they just give us some B-roll from this White Caps game, and that'll be good enough. Man.

And like, he says some very disparaging things about light beer in the beginning of this, but it seems that this is a bar that mostly serves light beer and also wine? Yeah. It's a lot of... I think that...

I can't account for it, Ben. I just can't account for it. They should have put a couple more TVs in here. I miss sports bars pretty badly. And so I look forward to the pandemic being over so that I can frequent one again. Yeah. I'm not a bar fly in regular life. You don't really drink anything.

Not anything, but you don't really drink alcoholic drinks. I hydrate. You hydrate, but you don't. So, like, you know, I can appreciate how that's just not top of the list. It's not conducive to conversation necessarily, but there are nice places, I mean,

and a lot of them obviously have been hit hard by this year, which is unfortunate. And Foley's, which is a great baseball bar in New York within walking distance of my apartment, that has closed. And that is a great shame because I've done events there with Baseball Prospectus and for the MVP machine. And it's just a great baseball environment and atmosphere and unfortunately is no more. So that really is a big bummer. So I don't know. Maybe Cobra Kai had some great authentic sports bar all lined up

and they just couldn't get clearance to film there. And that is the whole thing. But if that's not it, I don't know. They need an excuse for this scene, I think. Yeah, I would agree with that. I think, you know, because I'm a Seahawks fan. And when I was living in New York and then in Madison, like you just can't watch your local team. So I will always have an affection for sports bars. And you're right. A great many of them have been

been felled by the pandemic. But in tribute to the good sports bar experience, do better, Cobra Kai. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's not the most Kai right yeah yeah it's not the most egregious it's not the worst example and we obviously pay far far closer attention to these things than the average viewer who probably just did not give this a second thought at least the baseball footage part of it and you

know we've done interviews with people who were involved in the production of the baseball scene in Twilight or the baseball scenes in Moneyball and Pitch, and the people whose job it is to ensure that this looks good. And obviously this is not a baseball show. I'm sure the karate looks convincing. I'm sure the karate looks really good. They probably brought in karate experts so that the karate equivalent of Effectively Wild

is not breaking down the karate scenes and disparaging them as much as we are with the baseball scenes. So this is a one-off. I get it. I understand it. But we're still going to do our little nitpicks that we always do. Yeah. Yeah.

Man, I just typed in Miller Park in Wikipedia, and it redirected me to American Family Field. They do a very thorough job once they rebrand. Like I recalled going back through some of my Instagram pictures that I had taken at Mariners Games where I tagged Safeco as the location and those geotags get updated. So it's like I was at T-Mobile all along. And I'm here to say, do not rewrite history. I watched bad games at Safeco and then I watched bad games at T-Mobile.

They were different bad games. Well, the Wikipedia editors, I applaud them. And they're all over it. But I think also, and we may have mentioned this when we talked about the Coliseum, but if you get the first sponsorship in a ballpark, I think that's the most valuable. Oh, yeah. Because everyone associates that park with you. you get the first sponsorship in a ballpark, I think that's the most valuable because everyone associates that park with you. So Miller Park has been Miller Park since its advent. And so that's why it's even more difficult. It's not just that it's been about two decades of Miller Park and we

all got used to it, but it's also that when we met Miller Park, it was Miller Park. And now you're telling me that it's American Family Field and it just feels wrong. And again, they are literally the brewers. Yes. Yes, they are. All right. We can end there. Okay. That'll do it for today.

Thanks, as always, for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. 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. Fletcher, Travis Ice, Nick Fogg, Henry O'Brien, and Pat Deacon. 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 Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast.fangrass.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We will be back with one more episode a little later this week, so we will talk to you then. I got ice water in my veins, throwing a swift curve ball. Too much talk, this ain't a run, it's a marathon.

Put your eye on the ball when it's in your court. Dropping balls, missing goals, do you even play this sport now put your money where your mouth is put your money where your mouth is put your money where your mouth is don't choke