Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1816: Another Date That Lives in Infamy

Episode Date: February 26, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a week of many meetings but no breakthroughs between MLB and the MLBPA, Liberty Media’s financial disclosures about the Braves’ profitability, the prospects of a labor deal before the owners’ deadline for starting the season on time, and more, then (25:22) talk to historian and author Kerry Yo […]

So everybody, fake a liberty, don't give in to those forgiving. All those men and women who get off on a circular stride for all our lives Come on, get it on Hello and welcome to episode 1816 of the Viking Blue Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of Luringer. Ben, how are you? How am I? How would I describe how I am? On tenterhooks, maybe, would be one way to put it. We're recording on late Friday afternoon, early Friday evening, depending on the time zone.

We've been waiting and waiting and waiting to see if there would be any notable updates from today's talks between MLB and the MLBPA. And as of yet, there have not been. If there are big updates after we speak, maybe I can slip in an update before I post this, but it seems as if there has been a busy day of meetings. It is not yet clear as we speak whether there will be any actual productive outcome from those talks, but there have been at least three or four meetings. There's a whole gaggle of reporters just stationed down there in Florida, seemingly just like observing people walking from one room to another. Evan Drellick is tweeting four second videos of Rob Manfred walking from one building into another building. It's exciting stuff. Yeah. I mean, I'm glad folks are getting their steps in you know

it's important to be active move around you know yep feel your body but yeah it does seem kind of silly as an endeavor which i don't say is a knock on any of the reporters who are there like this is this is what they have to do while they wait to see something more substantive and hear something more substantive i hear something more substantive i think that we should always take a moment to appreciate that one of the people involved in this whole thing is named morgan sword like you know sword is a last name we probably haven't talked enough about that just as a human phenomena so yeah we've watched people moving back and forth across parking lots we got our first wild manfred sighting of this phase of the negotiations.

Obviously, he's been present for others. But yeah, we're waiting. I'm hoping, Ben, I'm hoping that what is going to happen here is that because I asked that we just record already because I'm very tired, that we will record this segment and we will go our separate ways. You will, I'm sure, go engage with your lovely wife and tend to your daughter. I will go fall asleep on the couch. And then maybe we'll get a resolution to this whole thing. And we'll feel silly for having

recorded, but I think that we will have played an important role. We will have contributed something to the process here. So that's what I'm hoping. This is a document of what it was like in those hours of waiting to see whether there would be a deal or no deal forever. But yeah, if you were to graph my level of optimism about whether there will be a season and whether that season will start on time. Going back a number of months, it would probably look like one of the wilder win expectancy charts, right? Because for a while there, I was pretty optimistic. Not that I've been reporting directly on these issues, but just going off the general vibe

of what people in the industry seem to think leading up to the expiration of the CBA, it seemed like they'll work this out. They're not so far apart on fundamental core issues and everyone knows how much is at stake here. So I was feeling fairly good about things as I think many people were. Then the CBA expired and suddenly there was no deadline anymore and it was all pretty nebulous. And then weeks and more than a month went by before MLB even made a proposal. And so over the course of that time, my level of optimism was waning somewhat. And then, okay, they get back to the table and they're talking again. Great. But then it turns out, well, MLB is not going to budge on anything and they don't even want to discuss certain fundamental issues here. So now I'm leaning toward pessimism again. And really, like, that's even been true this week and maybe this day, okay, well, this is crunch time. They're going to be meeting every day. Surely they will hammer something out. But then as the exchanges happened the first few days of this week, and we're speaking on Friday, which is the fifth consecutive day of meeting, as they were, were really just kind of the most minute cosmetic changes, barely coming close to bridging any significant gaps. And so my mood was decreasing by the day. And then now we're on this final day or at least final day of the week where I'm thinking, well, they're just going to pack it in and go home maybe.

Well, they're just going to pack it in and go home maybe. And yet they have kept us riveted here by meeting all day. And so some small part of me is thinking, well, they must be meeting about something, right? Something must be getting done here. I'm trying not to allow myself to hope that that's the case. But really, like the number of meetings and the length of the meetings, probably deceptive, probably not all that telling. I think people have taken it as a depressing sign when we get a tweet that's like, they met for two minutes and then they left. But sometimes that's the way bargaining works. You exchange your proposal and then you go back and you caucus with your group and it's not necessarily a bad sign. I guess it's also not necessarily a good sign if you are meeting multiple times. Maybe the meetings are just about how little progress you're making. I don't know. But I'm just kind of hanging. The whole season is hanging in the balance, and so is our mood. Yeah.

These negotiations, I think that they're going to be a lot like baseball itself, Ben, where there's not a lot of action, and then there's a lot of hurry up and hustle all at once. It's a bunch of guys walking back and forth, some of them in collared shirts, and then all of a sudden you have the crack of the bat, and we will find out just how long a season we're going to get or at least how many games we're gonna lose to start but i don't know what my level of optimism is i'm having a hard time experiencing any feeling right now but

tired i do imagine that regardless of how productive the meetings have necessarily been toward reaching an ultimate agreement and resolution to the negotiations that they were likely always going to be talking a lot today just because they do have the pressure of the deadline that they've they've asserted for themselves on monday or at least that the league has so that piece of it i would find it i guess it could we could interpret it as a very very bad sign if there were not meetings today, that would be bad. But I don't know that we can necessarily feel confident that it's good. So I don't know. Does the presence of Rob Manfred make you feel better or worse? Like some people,

if it weren't Rob Manfred, you might think, all right, the commissioner's here. He's going to lay down the law and they're going to get a deal done. But this is Rob Manfred and we know what the role of the commissioner actually is. And generally what Rob Manfred appears places, it doesn't improve them necessarily or lead to encouraging news cycles. So the fact that he's there does not really reassure me on its own. That made me feel worse, if anything. You know, it has to be such a strange thing. i i'm not saying this to like woe is me the the commissioner to be clear but what an odd job it is and i realize that part of the incentive here is that like rob manford makes a good a good chunk of change and he is a powerful and important

person and the combination of the prestige of being commissioner with his compensation likely makes it a role that he relishes even in moments like this but it is weird to be like i'm gonna walk into the room and people are gonna be bummed about it like that would make me not want to do my job if people were like oh meg's here yeah i'd be like oh maybe i should go work at a bookstore or something because this is sort of a bummer isn't it maybe that's what he was doing from december 1st through mid-February. He's working at a bookstore. Yeah.

I wonder if that bookstore is unionized. No, I wonder about it. I would love to know what the feel in the room was. Because the assumption that we have gotten from the reporters on the ground is that manfred went and spoke with the players by himself right that he went and talked to the pa uh representatives without the the rest of the ownership entourage there and then returned to caucus with with the owners and like what did max scherzer's face look like when he walked in the room like what is that you know did he just look at him and go like what if if you can hit one pitch we'll we'll end this thing right now right yeah the the player contingent

has been very pitcher centric i know that miguel rojas was there i saw him mentioned but it's been like lance mccullers and yeah sure sir and other unhittable people yes there there are a number of unhittable pitchers there and then like I know Lindor has been there quite a bit because he's on the executive committee. There are position players represented on the executive committee. I imagine that the Players Association takes pains to have good representation, sort of balanced representation there. But yeah.

Scherzer and Andrew Miller are among the most visible leaders. And not just because they're so tall. No. But I'm sure that hitters' interests are being represented as well. But, yeah, I mean,, you know, maintain a certain repertorial tone. Ken Rosenthal, for instance, earlier this week, I think highly of Ken as a reporter, but he wrote, the owner's strategy from the start was to squeeze the union until regular season games were in jeopardy, all the while recoiling in disgust when the player surfs rejected their crumbs and refused to view them as benevolent despots i mean that's not necessarily

the tone you usually hear from ken so i think in some senses the tide is turning there and you have jeff passon for example tweeting do not believe the lie that baseball teams are not extremely profitable ventures. That is not a both sides thing of anything. That is very much the side is lying to you. And that was prompted by Liberty Media's Friday revelation of its recent earnings. Wait, hold on. I appreciate why you're calling it a Friday revelation, but can we just take a moment to appreciate the fact that a couple of weeks ago the commissioner told us that like owning a baseball team is a bad investment seemingly forgetting seemingly forgetting that public companies have to file quarterly and that we tend to find out about you know the prior quarter's earnings in the middle of the of the quarter that follows it i was like you know you could assume that we're not total dummies if you wanted.

But sorry, I interrupted you. No, that's okay. Yeah, so Liberty Media owns the Atlanta Braves and they released their statements and hey, what do you know? It turns out that team was pretty darn profitable last year. Granted, the Braves won the World Series. That will tend to increase revenues, but they were profitable to the tune of $100 plus million and had previously been profitable in every year except for 2020, the pandemic shortened season.

And this profit also came in a season when early on in the year, at least, parks were not open at full capacity and attendance was somewhat restricted. So yeah, Atlanta's doing quite well. And that probably goes for all the other teams that didn't win the World Series as well, or at least most of them. So just adding some fuel to the fire there and putting the lie to what Manfred said, just having those numbers come out. I'm sure he wasn't thrilled by the timing necessarily. It's like, what was it when there was the standoff in 2020 about starting the season and oh yeah in the middle of that there was like a giant national broadcast

deal announced yes like all right well there's a lot of money in baseball sure is anyway we are waiting we are still waiting and really it's been discouraging to me just to see the back and forth this week because it's been just, you know, the smallest changes that you could make and still say it's a new proposal. It's like, you know, a little bit more here and a little bit less there. The owners are the ones who have refused to budge on many other core issues and are trying to further press their advantage and some of the imbalance that we've seen in revenue. Those Atlanta earnings statements, by the way, and you know more about reading financial statements than I do, but these are just about the baseball revenue of the team and not necessarily some of the ancillary things that are associated with the team from what I understand. So maybe if anything, this could even be undershooting the amount of profit that is happening there to say nothing of the appreciation over time. But, you know, between that and between just the owners up until the time that we were

speaking here, not even entertaining any cutback in the CBT and if anything, just the opposite. I mean, until today, at least, they hadn't even talked about that this week. It hadn't even come up. And that's like the final boss of these negotiations. Like, if you're not even talking about that, then how much hope is there? that, then how much hope is there? So that has been a bit depressing just because there's been kind of a game of chicken, it seems like, where the league said February 28th or bus, that's when we have to have a deal done to start the season on time. And then further saying that if games are missed, they will not be made up, which seems like something that would also have to be bargained at

that point once there is a deal you would think but they're taking an extremely hard line and saying no we're gonna do the 1972 we're not gonna make up any games and if it just so happens that one team finishes half a game ahead of the other well tough yeah i don't know that that's how it would actually play out in practice but that is the message that they are sending and then in response the players are saying hey if we don't get 162 if we don't get a full season then no expanded playoffs for you which would be fine with me but would not be fine with the owners so they are both kind of taking it to the wire here and also taking it to the hilt so we'll see whether that actually produces any movement yeah i will point out that if you look in if you actually look in the release from liberty media so they just there are

two line items here and there will be more analysis of this forthcoming at fan graphs next week just so everyone can keep their eyes peeled for that but so that we know what is being accounted for here baseball revenue so there's that line item. Baseball revenue is comprised of ballpark operations, tickets, concessions, corporate sales, retail suites, premium seat fees, and post-season local broadcast rights and shared major league baseball revenue streams, including national broadcast rights and licensing development revenue, which is also listed as a line item here is derived from the battery Atlanta mixed use facilities and primarily includes rental income. So there is an accounting of some of their non-baseball-specific revenues in their financials here.

So, yeah, I just think that's important to know. We do have some sense of what the little area around the park is bringing in. And I'll tell you, Ben, it's profitable. Yeah, I'm not shocked. bringing in and i'll tell you ben it's it's uh it's profitable yeah 42 million dollars in the 12 months ended december 31st 2021 well like many others i assume i have canceled my mlb tv auto renew which is scheduled to go into effect next week and i would be very happy to sign up again once there are games, once the season is scheduled to start. But as it is not, I will not be committing my funds one way or another. Love MLB TV.

Great product. Great games. But I am not interested in paying for it until I know that there will actually be games to be broadcast. So that's a little PSA for everyone who might be signed up and might have the auto-renew set up to go next week as well. And who knows? Perhaps there will be news before that point. But if not, be aware. You can always re-up.

It's not like you can't sign up again. So if it's a thing that you want to do, both to save yourself the money and also I think that when you cancel, you're able to give a note as to why. So if that's something that sounds meaningful to you, given the limited ways we are able to provide feedback to corporations in the midst of capitalism, go nuts. Right. All right. Well, we will see. And it's just it's kind of a simplistic, naive way to think about it. But I've been thinking, you know there's going to be a deal at some point. One of you is going to cave or there's going to be a meeting in the middle or something.

Just do it now without the intervening months of missing the season, which I know that that's not really how negotiations work. I know that that's not really how negotiations work. And sometimes, you know, if the owners are out to break the union, let's say, then they actually have to run out the clock there. And you have to wait all that time to test the resolve of the other party. So I do understand that you have to go right up to the edge of the cliff and maybe beyond that in order to get the concessions that you want. But just as an observer who is not an owner or a member of the union, I just keep thinking like, you know, just imagine the deal that you are one day going to agree on and just agree on that now. That'd be nice. I wish that it worked that way, but that would be contingent on the owners actually budging from some of these positions, especially when it comes

to the CPT and the players messaging on that in recent days. I saw Alex Wood had a tweet and Walker Bueller had a tweet and they were just saying, hey, we just want to keep pace with rising revenues and inflation or even come closer to keeping pace as opposed to going back in the other direction. And not all of the replies to those tweets were kind and understanding and approving, but it is a message that seems to be resonating to some extent, or at least to the extent that it ever can when you're talking about this kind of negotiation where most people just want the games to be played. Yeah, it does seem as if there has been progress on the part of the players

in terms of both honing that message into one that is seemingly compelling to a lot of people and also sort of swaying people to agree with them. But I don't know that it represents even a majority of fans at this point. I mean, candidly, I think most fans probably don't really care all that much about the ins ins and outs and if they had their druthers and the way to get a season started tomorrow was for players to have 60 of league revenues they'd say okay fine like whatever but you know there is still i think a meaningful segment of the overall baseball fan base that for any number of reasons find themselves to be still ideologically aligned with ownership and gosh they uh they sure do get hung up on that that league minimum don't they yes they sure do so

yeah i think it's a it's an ongoing conversation that has resonance beyond just baseball and i don't know it is heartening to see the players be able to put this stuff into terms that I think probably resonate to with all kinds of folks who work in fields that are far less lucrative than than major league baseball at least lucrative in the way that it can be when you're on the the big league roster on a consistent basis so all right well my plea to the owners is just be a little less greedy like you don't have to give up greed entirely. I know that that's how you got to this point or your ancestors did who bequeathed the team to you. You got there via greed. Greed was good for you maybe, but just be a little less greedy in this specific case. Be happy with the gains that you've made. Don't try to make even greater gains because everyone will lose if you push for every last cent and games are canceled and we miss part of the season and fans are mad and you miss out on attendance. Let's just get a deal done. Let's

just be a little more amenable to these proposals. Everyone wants baseball to be played. Please make it happen. Yeah, I think that no one is looking at this and saying that it shouldn't be a profitable enterprise for everyone involved. It's clearly a profitable enterprise for everyone involved. We're simply asking that the distribution of those profits align more closely with who's doing the actual production on the field versus not. So no one's saying that they have to come away poor. Well, that's not true. It isn't that no one is saying that, but that doesn't seem to be the dominant thrust, put

it that way, right? I think that what we're asking for is a recognition that the thing that makes people excited about baseball is the people who play it. And that should be reflected in the sort of distribution of revenue that we see. All right. Well, the assembled baseball Raiders are now tweeting pictures of a dog on a golf cart. So aren't you sad that I didn't hold out and have us record later into the day? Clearly, this is going somewhere big, Ben.

There's a new commissioner. It's a dog. Yes. more big ben all they there's a new commissioner it's a dog yes if the dog is the smoke that announces a new pope if that's the equivalent of a new cba then great i already love dogs that's just another reason to like them but if there is an update before i post this i will try to sneak something in and uh hopefully it'll be a good update and not a bad update. But we have a guest today. Yes. We should move on to that segment.

So the silver lining of the fact that spring training has not started and we are not currently doing season preview podcasts is that we do have been an activist when it comes to preserving the history of Japanese American baseball. And this is a timely time for this discussion because this past Saturday, February 19th, was the annual Day of Remembrance. The 80th anniversary of the executive order FDR issued in 1942 that led to the detention of about 120,000 Japanese Americans, most of whom were U.S. citizens. It is one of the disgraceful episodes in American history. And it is also tied into baseball because there was a thriving Japanese American baseball community. And that community continued and was in some respects even strengthened in those internment camps. And so we wanted to talk to Kerry, who has done a great job of bringing that history to light and has written books about it and curated exhibits about it and has some family history that is related to that. So he is going to join us to tell us all about that history and some of those great players.

And we have talked a fair amount about the Negro Leagues and black baseball over the past year and a half or so. And there are some parallels here in that these were also players who were prevented from playing in affiliated ball in the majors and constructed their own leagues and their own baseball community, which was also high caliber and entertaining and very important to those communities. So it's like Ken Burns has said, the story of baseball is also the story of race in America. And this is an aspect of that story. It's like Ken Burns has said, the story of baseball is also the story of race in America. And this is an aspect of that story. So stay tuned.

We will be back in just a moment with Carrie. The order came down in the middle of March. These are our friends and our neighbors. All Japanese persons from Bainbridge must part. Let justice flow like a river The Woodward spoke out in the Bainbridge Review These are our friends and our neighbors If they're coming for them, they'll be coming for you Let justice flow like a river

Well, we are joined now by Karyo Nakagawa. He is the founder and director of the nonprofit Nisei Baseball Research Project, the curator of the museum exhibit Diamonds in the Rough, Japanese Americans in Baseball, and the author of the books Through a Diamond, 100 Years of Japanese American Baseball and Japanese American Baseball in California, a history among many other efforts in Japanese American Baseball and beyond. I could go on, but instead I will let you go on. So welcome to the show, Kerry. Oh, Ben, Meg, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. the beginning here before we get to Japanese American baseball. Maybe we can go all the way back to early Japanese baseball and talk a little bit about the origins of baseball in Japan, which of course led to it eventually coming across the Pacific as Japanese people immigrated to the US. So how did baseball get introduced and embraced so enthusiastically in Japan? Well, again, Ben and Meg, I appreciate you having me on. And it's a significant year this year because it is the 150th anniversary of baseball. And this is what I call the bridge across the Pacific and having baseball starting in Japan as early as in the early 1870s. In 1872, Horace Wilson, who was a teacher,

went to a small, kind of like a grade school, Kaisei Gakko in Tokyo, and introduced a sport that really prior to that was individual disciplines. You had kendo, you had sumo, you had karate. But here was a sport that had, as he implemented, you know, you had one sport with nine players, but they played with one mind. And if they could flow with this one mind and an aspect of all the dynamics of baseball, then it was a very unique team sport. And it took off like wildfire. It went from grade school to high schools to college, and that's why in 1936, it was an early start to professional baseball in Japan. And so when you really think about the dynamics of Abner Doubleday taking a bat and ball out of Cooperstown in a cow pasture in 1839. And then we go fast forward to 1872. That's why I really believe that, you know, in Japan, even to this day, the Japanese really feel

that it's as much as their pastime as any American here would consider it ours as well. Because 30 years in that distance of time and space really isn't a lot of, you know, three decades. But it's just an interesting dynamic on how this team sport really took off. And once it hit the professional levels, I mean, then we could talk about, you know, all the dynamics of the pro level. But, I mean, it was really embraced by even in school they schools they had curriculum and we have old pictures of woodblock prints that have baseball integrated into their school system so to think about even before the turn of the century that kids were learning about baseball in japan prior to coming to the United States in America. It's really a unique situation because even our American kids, I don't think

before the turn of the century, we were learning about baseball in their classrooms. And, you know, anytime you adopt a new sport, you also work to transform it. Were there stylistic or strategic differences that you can point to in that early period of Japanese baseball that would have distinguished it from its American counterpart? I think if you really look at the Japanese dynamics of baseball and how there was such a reverence towards the game, And of course, the individual disciplines, I think it carried over, you know, when you look at the ritualistic start of a sumo match or the start of two kendo swordsmen battling each other, there's an extreme respect for each other's level and

their fairness towards the game, you know, to always make sure that you respect the game. In karate, the same thing, you know, it's a martial arts and it's such an internal spiritual art and sport as well. So I think they took that spirituality from what they had in their culture, their heritage, their upbringing, and they transform it into a team sport, which baseball. Extreme reverence towards the umpires, which would be like their teachers or their senseis, as they say in Japan. An extreme respect towards the other players, like, you know, in our sport here in the U.S.,

I mean, we don't think twice about taking out the second baseman or the third baseman if you want to slide and get to the base and be safe. The respect of each player, even your rivals, you know, they looked at it as, you know, the higher level that that player that you're facing is only going to bring out that higher level in yourself. So they really weren't considered like the enemy or, you know, an extreme negative rival. They looked at them as as equals to help each other boost each other's performance and their athleticism.

So after baseball got big in Japan, it was only natural for Japanese people who moved to the States to bring baseball with them and play it in their adopted country. So when did that immigration begin in earnest, and what form did early Japanese American baseball take? Well, I always like to, Ben and Meg, point out to the 1899 Excelsior team that was in Oahu, Hawaii. And a lot of, including like our family, my grandfather Hisotaro Nakagawa went from Hiroshima, Japan, to the Big Island in a little village called Ola. And he worked at the Puna sugar cane plantation. And there he was, it was pretty much like slave labor, seven days a week working with a diverse group of other

immigrants that were Asian. But on Sundays, they allowed you a few hours to either travel or to play for your plantation baseball team like my grandfather did. And so it gave the community an outlet to cheer on their local plantation team playing other plantation teams. And in 1899, Taki Okamura, who was a priest in Honolulu, started the 1899 Excelsior team. It was a boys' school and he needed an outlet for them to use their physicality. And he was also versed, like most immigrants from Japan, on the game. And as I always talk about, like for instance, one Issei, Takeo Suo, he said that putting on a baseball uniform was like putting on the American flag. And as much research that I have been doing, I really take it another step further. I think not only did they want to prove their Americanism, they wanted to prove as an immigrant from Japan,

or if you were from Ireland, if you were from, you know, Cuba, or whatever country you came from, Italy, you wanted to prove that you were the best in this sport. And that's the unique part about baseball now. And even, you know, in the turn of the century is that it's very black and white, Maybe outside the lines you can't communicate with that immigrant diverse person that you are talking with, but inside the line the rules and the game is very black and white. If you have the, you know, five tools and you have the passion and you could play at its highest level, then you'll gain immediate respect despite your faith, despite the color of your skin. So I think that's why baseball was such a sport that all these immigrants gravitated

towards because basketball and football didn't come to a way later. Baseball was the sport to play. And everybody knew how to play it. And I think once they got inside the lines, you know, they wanted to prove they were the best as an immigrant in this sport. Now, outside the lines, it got a lot more blurrier. And faith and the color of your skin did make a difference. But inside the lines, as it is today, it's become almost an international sport.

I think that's the beauty of the game as well as today. Yeah, I was going to ask if we have any sort of records or accounts from that period from some of these immigrant communities themselves, because I would imagine that negotiating and navigating your identity in a new place some of these immigrant communities themselves, because I would imagine that negotiating and navigating your identity in a new place where you do have this game that links you back to your home country and is also central to the culture of the country that you've immigrated to

does sort of ground you in it, but also might present challenges as folks play baseball a little bit differently here and the style might shift. So do we have any accounts from that period of how people were sort of navigating that transition for themselves? Well, Meg, I think about the early Frank Fukuda, who was an Issei, and he started in Seattle, Washington, the Seattle Asahi. And he went in 1914 with his team and they made these goodwill and bass I call them our American ambassadors to the game as early as 1914 then they went back to Japan in 1918 and then in 21 then in my uncle Johnny and his nice a team ants went in 1924 and 27 and then 37 but i think what frank made it for me so impactful is that he uh they asked him why are you here with your baseball team introducing this american sport to

our country and he says well we wanted to learn about our japanese roots, the economy, but most importantly our Yamato Damashii, our samurai roots here in Japan. And we wanted to introduce this game as such a positive, a spiritual team, team sport. And we want to show that we are Japanese Americans, but we also are Japanese American Japanese. We're proud of our heritage, our culture, our customs, yet we were born in the United States. And I think maybe all the immigrants felt this way, you know, to return to their roots, their home country, but to also be interested in the dynamics of their roots, because being American born, you know, we're used to all the Americanisms that were brought towards us and born into. But then to travel back to our countries, the home countries, and to see how the natives approach the game,

The natives approached the game. I think they all had that kind of same disposition to really understand where they came from, even though they were Americans. And I know your own family history had a big impact on your decision to work in this area and your preservation efforts. And you just mentioned your Uncle Johnny, whom you described to me via email as the Shohei Otani of the 1920s. We love Shohei around here. So I have to hear more about your uncle Johnny, please. Well, you know, I'm so proud that, you know, we have four generations of baseball in our family and possibly with our Will the Thrill, who's four now, possibly five. And, you know, to see my, our grandfather play play uh plantation baseball and then he came to the mainland in california in um 1886 so he was one of the first the wave of of japanese americans from hawaii to to come with this love of the game and introduce it to his sons. My dad was born in 1905, my Uncle Johnny in 1900, and actually in

Ola. But our Uncle Johnny, he was the Nisei Babe Ruth. He was a left-handed pitcher. He was a home run hitter. He was a center fielder. And he actually hit.377 against the All-Stars of the Negro Leagues in the 1920s. And my dad threw a nine-inning no-hitter for his high school team in 1924 against Leighton High. He was with the Carothers Blue Raiders. I was an All-Star shortstop. My son was an All-Star catcher. And so, you know, to come from the background or a lineage or the DNA that was in our family as baseball, much like, you know, Americans that were born into a military family or if their family were involved with race cars, you know, generational. So we're real proud of our generational heritage of baseball and especially our Uncle Johnny, who really was. He had, we feel, the tools to be a Major League player.

Unfortunately, because of the Jim Crow laws, he wasn't able to get a chance, much like many of the Issei and Nisei, to play Major League Baseball. And as much as we love Ichiro and Otani-san as well. We had pre-war Issei and Nisei Ichiros and possibly Otanis, but much like the Negro leaguers and the Latinos in baseball, they had the tools, they had the passion, they just never got an opportunity. And so they had to play within leagues of their own. Most marginalized players had to do that. And so I remember telling Buck O'Neill, the legendary player in the Negro Leagues that played with Satchel Paige and, you know, Josh Gibson. was that my uncle Johnny was in center field playing. They were undefeated playing all the different big six universities in Japan. And Biz Mackey, they were playing for the championship against an all black all-star team.

And Biz Mackey was one of the greatest catchers for the Negro Leagues. He came up to bat. It was a close score. And he had a towering fly ball to left center. And my uncle Johnny went over the wall and three or four rows into the stands to try and bring it down. And he didn't. But the picture we have in the next day's Japan newspaper is my uncle coming, climbing down the wall as Biz Mackey is circling third. And as I was telling this story to the kids in Cooperstown, Buck O'Neill was in the audience and he jumped up and I mentioned Frank Duncan and Biz Mackey,

Rap Dixon, who are all enshrined in the baseball hall of fame. And he goes, that was my manager. Your uncle played against my manager, Frank Duncan, because Frank Duncan was the man, his manager with the Kansas City Monarchs and so it was a beautiful thing to to share stories with Buck O'Neill

and I really considered him like my uncle because we had spoken a number of times for baseball as America and the traveling exhibit and so yeah my uncle Johnny and even Buck remembered a 1935 team, the Watsonville Nisei All-Stars, played against in the NBC tournament in Wichita and Bismarck, North Dakota. And he remembers the House of David in the semifinals was playing this Nisei team. And they had a pitcher that had seven different release points much like his friend satchel page did and and uh unfortunately the nisei got beat by the house of david but he remembered that tar shirachi who i remember meeting at 95 but we took him to

the baseball hall of fame when the the museum honored a lot of our players in our exhibit in 1998. So talking with Buck about, you know, not only my uncle, but other Nisei greats that I knew personally was pretty special and priceless. I realize that the question that I'm about to ask you is book length potentially in its answer. But, you know, you mentioned the move to California and the play of Nisei players there. Can you give us a sense of what that playing landscape looked like as time went on for immigrants that had come to California? Well, Meg, you know, the thing about what I talk about pre-war baseball in America, I mean, there was Nisei baseball teams, Nisei baseball teams as far south as the Tijuana Nippons.

They went as far north as the Vancouver Asahi. It went as far east as the Nebraska Nisei. And as far west as the Hawaiian Islands, which was a whole another baseball world in itself and then i i think about the japan baseball hall of fame i mean we have hisashi koshimoto who's in the enshrined in the baseball hall of fame in japan he was a legendary manager for the keio college team tadashi bozo wakabayashi also from haw Hawaii, became. He was much like Satchel Paige, too, had six or seven different release points. Wale Yonamine played for the inaugural 1947 49ers football team and then was with the San Francisco Seals with Lefty O'Doul

and then helped the Tokyo Giants win four world championships. He was kind of like our Jackie Robinson in Japan. In the beginning, he was pelted with coins and told to go home a gaijin foreigner. But then when he helped the Tokyo Giants win so many championships, and then he would go on to manage and coach for 26 more years he became a hall of famer and so frank narushima who was just inducted a couple years ago he you know was from fresno where you know i'm living today and so we have all these uh koshimoto wakabayashi yonamine narushima all from hawaii so even the hawaiian islands you know it's amazing then later the legacy players like len sakata and you know we

just have so many players from that hawaiian islands area so it really the landscape of america and baseball you know covered the whole country and even as far west as the Hawaiian Islands, which is amazing. I love to talk about Sai Tawada, 1918. He played for the Otto Rittler high school team, state championship team, and he was the cleanup hitter, batted 500 for the season. Johnny Virgis was at shortstop. Dick Bartels was at second. Soon as the season ends, Bartels and Burgess go straight to the major leagues. Saito Wada, who was clearly the best hitter and player on the whole team, never even got a call. In 1935, I think about, you know, Santa Maria High School versus Hoover High. Hoover had Ted Williams. The Santa Maria team had one of our legendary players, George Aratani, who was their shortstop. Again, 400 hitter.

Lester Weber was their pitcher. They beat the Hoover High team for the state championship. Lester goes straight to the majors, and Aratani never gets a call. So it's unfortunate. We had great players. We had, you know, they had, again, the tools to play at that level, but they just never got an opportunity at a major league level. So they played made a documentary on this topic, but Kenichi Zenimura was one of the major, major figures of Japanese American baseball in the first half of the 20th century. Can you talk a little bit about him? Kenichi Zenimura, who, which, you know, was again from Hawaii,

along with Kenzo Nishida, who was his teammate with the, you know, Hawaiian Asahi semi-pro team, was the father. We consider him the father of Japanese-American baseball, who organized so many early tours as early as 1924 and 1927, then went back again in 1937 to not only just in Japan, but to Korea, Manchukuo, China. He was a famous game here in Fresno was in 1927 after the Yankees beat the Pirates four straight in the World Series. Their promoter had a brilliant idea to bring Garrigan Ruth to the West Coast because West Coast fans only had, you know, we didn't have a chance to see Major League Baseball, just the Pacific Coast League teams. And so at Fireman's Ballpark Stadium, there was 5,000 fans and they made an eight city

tour and they picked all semi-pro players and ex-Major Leaguers that were in the off season to be on their All-Star team. Well, my uncle and Zenimura, Yoshikawa, and Iwata were picked for Gehrig's team, and they beat Babe Ruth's All-Stars 13-3. My uncle went one for two, had a stolen base, and there's a classic picture of Ruth and Gehrig, my uncle uncle Kenichi, all standing together in a group. And we even actually have found 21 seconds of that on 16 millimeter film. But Zinni was even able to get and help negotiate Ruth to go to Japan. And at first he wanted, you know, $60,000.

And I think they were able to settle for $40,000. But in the late 20s, that's an amazing amount of money to just, you know, do an ambassadorship in another country. But Zinni was pound for pound, you know, not only a coach, manager. He crossed over and changed perceptions of the times. He also was the coach and manager of two of the Twilight League teams here in Fresno, which was Al's Club and Jane's and Company. And these were all white ballplayers. And at the time, you know, for to see a Japanese-American coach and manage, you know, an all-white team in the 30s was pretty remarkable. But that shows you the power of Zinni and his mind

and his ability to really go past faith and color. And both his sons, Kenji and Kenzo Howard and Kenji, they both went on to, as their own, great careers at Fresno State. And they went on to play professional baseball with the Hiroshima Carp in the early 50s and that was right after the devastation of the atomic bomb so to have these two American kids and then later a teammate Fibber Hirayama you know raise the spirits of the people as a community team after the devastation of the bomb blast was pretty remarkable. So that's why we look at Zinni as someone that we hope one day will be enshrined in

the Baseball Hall of Fame, much like many of the Negro Leaguers are, because he was such an ambassador, a bridge builder, and also a player for his size at the time. So as I mentioned in the intro to this episode, this past Saturday was the annual Day of a bridge builder, and also a player for his size at the time. So as I mentioned in the intro to this episode, this past Saturday was the annual Day of Remembrance, the 80th anniversary in this case of Executive Order 9066, which led to the detention of so many Japanese Americans, most of whom were U.S. citizens. So can you tell people who aren't familiar with that sad part of our history, what happened, what the effects were for Japanese Americans in California and elsewhere? And then I guess we can also get into how baseball became a part of life at the internment camps. Well, going back to Zenimura, we call him Zeni in a lot of reverence when we say that.

Not only did he build the pre-war 1919 Japanese-American baseball ballpark in Fresno, but when the war came, all of his family, our communities here, I grew up in a small farm town just south of Fresno called Fowler. And my mom and dad, my grandmother had a restaurant on the west side of Fresno. My grandfather had a general store. They were all Japanese Americans were interned into the Fresno fairgrounds. And unfortunately, they had to spend their time there for six months in the animal stalls where they kept the horses and the other animals. And they would wash out thinking they can get rid of the stench and the manure by taking fire hoses. But in our Central Valley, you know, our summers can reach 100 plus degrees and our winters in the 20s and 30s.

and our winners in the 20s and 30s. So they went in the hottest part in the summer, and Zenni built an amazing baseball field at the Fresno Assembly Center. When they were relocated to their permanent housing, which was the Gila River, Arizona campsite, which was on a Pima Indian community site, he built a Field of Dreams with a, it was almost like the Field of Dreams movie. It had a grass infield, grass outfield, 10-foot caster bean home run fence from left field to right field. They would chalk the fields with flour. They had, you know, sometimes 7,000, 8,000 internees at the games. And ironically, when all the internees went into the camps, you know,

they couldn't take in a baseball bat. It was considered a weapon. They couldn't take in radios, cameras. The Issei couldn't practice their religion or speak their language. They took everything away from them that was American, but they didn't take away baseball. And instead of them rejecting the all-American sport, they gravitated it to it in every major 10 camps. At Gila River, where Zinni was, they had 32 teams and three divisions. They played outside teams at Gila River. The all-black Negro League All-Stars of the Thunderbirds came in and played the semi-pro Guadalupe YNBA team. The Tucson Badgers came in from Tucson. A three-time state championship baseball team came

in and played Zeni Mura's high school All-stars. And Tucson Badgers hadn't been beaten in 52 games. I had a pitcher, Lowell Bailey, that had a 0-0-0 ERA. And it was 10-10 in the 10th inning. Bases loaded for the Eagles, the camp team. Harvey Zeni Mura comes up, takes three straight balls, two straight strikes, and on the sixth pitch, rips a line drive past the third baseman to win it for them 11-10 in 10 innings. And so it was like David against Goliath, yet the high school team of the Eagles actually won. And, you know, we have examples at Moon Karima throwing a 6-0 shutout against Arkansas A&M at the Jerome, Arkansas camp. And so in each camp, you could see that the ballplayers, you know, even though they were denied a shot at getting to Major League Baseball,

and I always believed we would have had a Japanese-American Major Leaguer prior maybe even to Jackie Robinson if it wasn't for World War II. We had Henry Honda, who was with the San Jose Asahis pre-war, get signed on December 1st to the Cleveland Indians. And then on December 7th, the bombing of Pearl Harbor pretty much nullified and they tore up his contract. We have Henry Honda, who was also a pitcher on that team, who, you know, was a great pitcher. But in the camp baseball dynamics, he threw his arm out. And the Brooklyn Dodgers gave him a tryout after the war, but he said he was never the same pitcher. And I remember at Cooperstown when we honored a number of these pre-war players in 1998 at the grandstand theater

henry talked about how he loved baseball before the war he loved baseball during the war but today being honored with his fellow peers and ball players at the museum was the greatest moment of his life and i remember saying well hen, but what about your kids and your grandkids? He goes, Kerry, today is the greatest day of my life. So it shows you how much, you know, the game really meant to these players that even though they had the tools and they had the desire and passion, they just never got that major league opportunity. Ben mentioned, and you've talked about sort of your role in helping to preserve that history at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

I wonder if you could talk about that process and whether it's gathering actual artifacts from that time or speaking to folks who played baseball while interned in the camps, how you have gone about and how the folks who have assisted in your research have gone about preserving that chapter. baseball history. Although our Diamonds in the Rough exhibit was at the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998, that was 22 years ago. And to see the exhibits of the Pride and the Passion, the Negro Leagues in baseball, the All-American Girls, Latinos in baseball, we know that Ichiro is going to be probably a first-line ballot acceptance of the enshrinement in 2024, I believe. But we look at Otani-san and Ichiro as, you know, they're standing on the shoulders of these Ise and Nisei ballplayers that, you know, made these early ambassador tours. And so we're hopeful that one day we can get our exhibit that was there in 98, which was just temporary, permanently there into the museum. And, you know, much like when I talked with Buck O'Neill, you know, he was really responsible for getting 17 of the Negro Leaguers enshrined, and yet he didn't his, his first round. He lost by a few votes. And so we're very hopeful, you know,

we're not asking for, you know, 17 Japanese American ballplayers, but we certainly would love to have a few of ours recognized and enshrined at some point, and even have major league baseball recognize our, our ballplayers and our history. In 2023, we have the 1903 San Francisco Fuji Athletic Club team will be 120 years old or young. And we're hopeful that Major League Baseball will allow the San Francisco Giants maybe to take the field to honor the Fuji Athletic Club. And Chiro Obata, who was the founder and later became an art professor for Cal Berkeley.

And his son, Gyo, in St. Louis, started HOK, which HOK Sports built some of the most magnificent baseball stadiums in the United States. And they still continue to build them. stadiums in the United States, and they still continue to build them. And so to recognize, much like the Negro League players that are able to take the field, the major leaguers with, you know, the throwback Kansas City Monarchs uniforms, maybe, you know, in a couple of years, we could have major league baseball recognize our players and our pioneers as our amazing American ambassadors that really enhanced the game. And much like we talked about baseball in the camps, you know, there was no

other race that can say that, you know, they kept the all-American pastime alive, even from behind Bob Weir. And so that's one of the things we want to recognize as well as the hardships and the sacrifice that, you know, their constitutional rights were taken away, the civil liberties, everything pretty much that they identified with, but they didn't take away baseball and they really gravitated towards it. And the irony and kind of the uh if you were a baseball player the amnesty that you got you know to go from Gila River Arizona all the way to Heart Mountain Wyoming to play another baseball team if you had a relative that passed away outside the camp you couldn't leave the barbed wire or your account you know the confines of the of the concentration camp but by having a being a

baseball player it gave this this amnesty where you could go thousands of miles to play another team camp team and that heart mountain team and amachi colorado came to gila river so all these ironies of war and all the different ball playersers were hopeful that at some point, you know, they can get on because as you said, your movement was impeded. You couldn't go anywhere, and there were only so many things you could do to pass the time, I suppose. And so having baseball for recreational purposes must have been vital. Oh, so vital. Even the women, the mothers would take the mattress ticking that was on the mattresses that were striped and make baseball uniforms or sliding pads. Or, you know, they sometimes there would be, imagine, seven, eight thousand internees watching a game like against the Tucson Badgers and the Gila River Eagles. Tucson Badgers and Gila River Eagles.

And the way I always point it out, if you see images of the barracks and the camps, they were 20 feet by 100, separated by a rope in quadrants, depending on the size of your family. So where would you rather be in that searing 120 degree heat in a barrack or out at the baseball field cheering on your favorite player or your community team. And, you know, in the desert wastelands, they could practically play year round. So it really enhanced the athletic ability of the players. But I think more importantly, it gave them, it created a social and positive atmosphere. It fostered their skill level year-round. It gave them self-esteem, even under the harsh conditions of the desert life. images. They're eight or nine deep from the stands all the way around from left to center to right field. And the Issei would even bet on some of the games. And there's, you know, a lot of oral histories where the Issei would run up to the ballplayer who would hit a walk-off home run. And

as he's circling third base they're trying to stuff one dollar bills into his pocket before he got the home plate because they were able to win i think about zeni who raised two thousand dollars in cash to help support the 32 teams that they had inside the camp so it really was uh you know their their national pastime, even if it was behind barbed wire. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about the work you've done to build curriculum around those experiences. I know that you've assisted in the creation of two curriculum guides to try to sort of marry the experiences of playing baseball in the internment camps with students to broaden their understanding of what was happening to Japanese Americans at the time. How have those curriculums been met

from teachers and students? And what are some of the things that they've perhaps been surprised by in their experience as they've gone through them? Yeah, thank you, Meg and Ben for mentioning that, because it really for us, educational components to as I talk about you know 70 percent of this country is still unaware that Japanese Americans were interned and so to have you know curriculum guides we develop co-produce too with Stanford University Spice organization and Dr. Gary Mukai who has always been supportive of all the different dynamics of the curriculum, of the ballplayers, teaching with the students. I consider myself a multimedia person, and that's how it really began.

It started with our exhibit, Diamonds in the Rough, and it started in an art museum in Fresno and then ended up going around the country to the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown and even internationally to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Tokyo in Japan. recruited our godpapa, Noriyuki Pat Morita, who you and most of your audience would know as Mr. Miyagi, to help on a documentary to make our exhibit more interactive. So Pat became our on-camera host, our narrator. He helped me write the doc. And then from the documentary, it went to the curriculums with Stanford University, which are history standardized so that any teacher that teaches however much time they have, they will get credit for it. And I always knew, Meg and Ben, that there was a dramatic narrative here as the projects kept rolling. And so we were able to develop and produce a movie, American Pastime, which really is a tribute to fight for our country. And then they went on to become the most decorated in the history of World War II.

And then to honor the ballplayers that, you know and the movie, to take a peek at the curriculums that are history standardized that they can see. The goal of getting Major League Baseball and the Baseball Hall of Fame to recognize some of these, you know, hidden ballplayers or the Issei and Nisei ballplayers that I still really consider the ambassadors for American ambassador for our sport, as well as the godfathers to the great players you see today on almost every major league roster that are Asian. And speaking of that, to jump a couple decades past the war, Masanori Murakami became the first Japanese-born player to make MLB in 1964 with the Giants, and he spent two seasons with them. And then, of course, it was another three decades until Hideo Nomo came over and started this era of frequent imports from NPB and other Asian countries. So can you explain how Murakami came to play for the Giants and then what led to that long interval without any other Japanese players after him? Wow. Yeah, Ben and Meg Mashi, who friends of his like to call him, you know, he's such a pioneer in itself. And he had an agreement with the owner of the team that he was with in Japan to more of an ambassadorship come to the States. And I was 10 years old at the

time. And he came to the Fresno single A Giants team. And I remember we would all wait out on the street because if anybody hit a home run, and that was the era of Wendell Kim and Rob Deere and Will Clark. And they were single A Giants. And coming from a small farm town, you know, it's so exciting to come up to Fresno, which I thought was a big city, and grab a home run ball and take it in. And they would either give you the option to have a Coke and give the ball back or keep the ball. And none of us would ever get the Coke. And after the games, the players would walk through the field to their locker room. And I remember at the time, Murakami, who was huge at the time to

me, he was like seven foot tall. I took my ball up to him and he actually signed it. And so in 2014, the San Francisco Giants honored Murakami and I was able to catch his first pitch and the night before we had a mini exhibit opening and I showed him the ball they had signed for me when I was only 10 years old and he re-signed it in kanji but you know he was such a an amazing ambassador for not only Japan but for America and had a great you know he was four and one when he was sent up to the majors. And then, you know, probably could have played with, I mean, he played with Hall of Famers, Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda. And I know he wanted to come back, but because of that loyalty towards his owner and friend of the professional team, That's why he only played for those couple

seasons and had to go back to Japan. But you mentioned Hideo Nomo and Nomo Mania. It almost took 30 more years before we saw another Asian player, a Japanese player from Japan. And I think at the time, the stigma was that players from Japan could only play at a major league level if they were pitchers. And so that's why, to me, I'm so proud to know and have like a person like Ryan Kurosaki, Len Sakata, who broke down those barriers as infielders. But again, it took another 30 years for Len to break through. I mean, he was on the 1983 World Series Orioles team. And Len Sakata, I mean, Ryan Kurosaki was a pitcher for St. Louis. He played with Lou Brock and Bob Gibson. But yeah, why was there such a long gap, Ben and Meg? I still don't understand that. But I do know from Mashi's standpoint, it was sad for him because he really wanted to stay and play, you know, with his teammates like Gaylord Perry and Cepeda and Mays and Marisha. But, you know, he felt this obligation to his team back in Japan. So he honored it. I meant to ask one more World War II era question. You mentioned the Vancouver Asahi, and there is a documentary about them that I think you can stream online for free, and we'll link to that on our show page. It's called Sleeping Tigers, but Japanese Canadians were interned, too, for the same reasons. Can you talk a little bit about the history of that team?

Well, again, as I mentioned, the Asahi there, I always like with any of our projects, our Nisei Baseball Research Project is to break down barriers and change perceptions. And, you know, the perceptions for the Asahi in Vancouver was that, yeah, they're, you know, pretty much a marginalized group. And I'm not saying it was a hostile situation growing up. But by the time the Asahis finally gathered and they were such an early pre-war team, they were really embraced by the community and diverse communities. And they were such great ballplayers that they really broke down, you know, huge barriers for the Japanese Canadians. And again, that's kind of, as you mentioned, Ben, a story that hardly anybody knows about, but they only think about, you know, Japanese Americans only in California, Oregon, and Washington that were rounded up. But in Canada also, you know, they

were pretty much, in fact, I'm going to be doing a talk and they're going to show our film American Pastime with the Bainbridge Art Museum in March. And on the 80th anniversary, which is on the 30th, they were the Bainbridge Island Nisei were rounded up first. Yeah. So it really shows through the prism of baseball, much like an onion skin, you hook everyone with both genders, men and women with baseball. But as you unravel that onion skin, we can get into a lot more serious issues and and in more depth with some of the dynamics that brought that to fruition so i'm very proud that you know we're able to kind of uh through the lens and prism of baseball uh not only talk about the game but all the conditions and the aspects much like the asahi much like much like, you know, whether you're in

Vancouver, most people don't realize that even in Peru, Japanese Peruvians were used as a hostage exchange during World War II, and many of them never even got reparations. So there's so many different tentacles to what we're talking about, but when it really comes down to it, it starts with the sport and baseball in itself. Well, before we let you go, can you please plug any of your work? Tell people where they can learn more about these subjects and this history, how they can support the NBRP and anything else you're working on. Well, thank you, Ben and Meg. You know, as I mentioned, you know, parts of our diamonds exhibit and artifacts

and our documentary is going to be shown at the Mesa, Arizona Heritage Museum starting this Monday, March 1st. The Bainbridge Art Museum are screening American Pastime on March 15th. I'll be giving a talk on March 30th, which is the exact day of the 80th anniversary of the Bainbridge Island Japanese-American community being rounded up. You know, Hall of Famer broadcaster Marty Lurie, his website

AmericanInnings.org gave us an opportunity to share about baseball in the camps. You know, Bill Staples has a wonderful, he's an author, Negro Leagues and Nisei Leagues historian. He has billstaples.blogspot.com. Our personal Nisei Baseball Research Project, if you're interested, is www.niseibaseball.com. And on Facebook, we're at Nise Baseball Research Project. So those are some of the shameless plugs right now. But thank you so much, Ben and Meg, for giving us an opportunity to really share our stories. And in the spirit of all the Issei and Nise ballplayers, I know that they're very much proud, too,

that we're carrying on this legacy. Well, we appreciate all of your efforts and your time today. So we have been talking to Karyo Nakagawa. Please check out the show page for links to a lot of the topics we've been talking about today. But thank you so much for coming on and sharing this history.

We really appreciate it. Thank you. Take care. Well, the good news is that our intro to this episode was not rendered horribly out of date by big news out of the MLB and MLBPA meetings. The bad news is that there's no CPA and seemingly not a ton of progress toward one. I'll read you some selected tweets from baseball writers who were on the scene. Evan Drellick said, A little progress. selected tweets from baseball writers who were on the scene. Evan Drellick said, a little progress.

MLB players made gains today in one area, amateur draft order slash lottery. MLB made a proposal on it. Players countered in same day. Not done yet, but there is optimism. Rob Manfred met with Tony Clark one-on-one. Manfred did not meet with players. They'll meet tomorrow. Jesse Rogers of ESPN said, the sides made progress on the draft. They might be able to close that out soon, but there's still a ton of work to do. Michael Silverman of the Boston Globe, Sides made progress today on draft order. There's hope that issue can be resolved soon. No movement on the significant issues that remain. Manfred met one-on-one with Tony Clark.

Manfred's initiative talk again Saturday. Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post, Today yielded enough progress on draft order issue that they are close to agreeing on that issue and closing it out. Not quite there yet, though, per person involved, and they might start talking earlier tomorrow. Manfred, who has not been in the room for months, did not meet with players, instead met one-on-one with Tony Clark. Any progress feels like a lot of progress. We'll see if momentum builds. It's true, it does feel good that they're

agreeing on something. Not so great, though, that they have not really even discussed the biggest sticking point, which is going to require some significant movement in order for a deal to get done. A draft lottery is just so insignificant in baseball compared to other sports and also compared to the other issues at stake in the CPA, teams don't tank for better draft picks primarily. It might be a nice perk, but to the extent that teams are uncompetitive or less competitive than they could be, it's because they can make money without competing. It's not like in the NFL or the NBA where there's some sufficient incentive to tank

for a number one pick. Not so much in baseball. I don't know whether the players see things that way, but to me it seems sort of like a peripheral issue, and I don't know how much progress there would actually augur progress on minimum salaries or payroll taxes. And as I speak here, the MLB imposed deadline is about three days away. Let's hope the owners come to their senses, have a big breakthrough this weekend, make like a procrastinating college student finishing a term paper the day before it's due. Maybe it'll come down to the deadline and disaster will be averted. I will remain on tenterhooks for now. That'll do it for today

and for this week. Thanks as always for listening, and thanks very much to Kerry for joining us. Did want to clarify a couple things he mentioned. He referred to the idea that Abner Doubleday invented baseball. That's pretty widely understood now to have mostly been a myth. If you want to read more about the 19th century development of the game, you could check out episode 858 when John Thorne came on to talk to us about Doc Adams and the evolution of the game during that period. I should also note that when Kerry was talking about some Negro Leagues players, he mentioned Biz Mackey and Frank Duncan and Rat Dixon and said that they were in the Hall of Fame. Biz Mackey is in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Duncan and Dixon are not as of yet,

although Dixon actually leads the list of recommended candidates that was produced by the 42 for 21 committee. That was episode 1785, if you want to check that one out. But Dixon is an overqualified candidate. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going and help us stay ad-free while also getting themselves access to some perks. Michael Zambotti, Gus, Sarah Cumby, Kevin Clark, and Neil Behrman.

Thanks to all of you. Meg and I will be recording one of our monthly Patreon-only bonus pods this weekend, so stay tuned for that. And of course, our Patreon supporters can get access to the Effectively Wild Discord group as well as other benefits. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcastatfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. 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. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod. And you can browse the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks as always to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance this week. Normally I say we hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Most people would probably settle for a decent weekend, a non-unnerving weekend, whatever weekend you'd hope to have. We hope that you have it, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. Well, I had to go. You see the sign that says so. A well-known title comes to mind. Did you ever have to make up your mind? Can't you figure it out?

Yeah, figure it out.