Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1928: Boras, Boldenone, Boondoggles, and Bo

Episode Date: November 12, 2022

With Meg Rowley off, Ben Lindbergh talks to three guests: James Wagner (4:55) of the New York Times about Scott Boras puns in the paper of record, why players who test positive for PEDs have disproportionately been from the Dominican Republic, and why players wear perfume and cologne on the field; Ian Araujo (41:46) about […]

It seems strange at first, but you got used to it To find yourself a guest of honor any place you sit I did what I could, you gave what you give I cannot believe we have so much life left to live Did you believe what you said about love? Tell me again what's best for us? Streets are crowded, happy fools If you ever come and find me, baby, you'd be right beside me too

Hello and welcome to episode 1928 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Well, it's been a busy week in Lake Wobegon. Scott Boris punned, Williams-Ostadio departed, crypto crashed, Twitter imploded, democracy survived, and Meg is missing today's episode. As mentioned, she has an off day today, so I am flying solo, but not for long. I'll be joined by three great guests today. I kind of keep a mental list. Hey, if I ever need to fill an episode, if I need someone to join me, here's some interesting people I'd really like to

talk to. Filling in for the really interesting co-host I always get to talk to. So Meg will be back next time. I will, at the end of the episode, give you a little baseball news brief and also, as always, the pass blast. So I will timestamp everything in this episode, all the guest segments, the outro, etc. You can pick and choose or listen straight through, treat it like an all-you-can-eat buffet, or listen selectively. Choose your own adventure. So prior to that baseball news brief, I will be talking to Jeff Perlman, formerly of Sports Illustrated and ESPN, and the author of 10 books about sports, some of which you've almost certainly heard of, if not read. The Bad Guys Won, his book about the 86 Mets. Showtime,

that's the basis of the HBO series Winning Time. And now he has a new book, The Last Folk Hero, The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson, just came out recently. Never want to pass up a chance to talk about Bo, so we will discuss his life and career and the process of writing about him and some fun hypotheticals. Before Jeff, I'll be talking to Ian Arugio, whom you may know as atnoproblemgambler on TikTok. So this is the guy you may have seen who does extremely in-depth investigations to identify the clips of sports games that are playing in the background of other shows and movies. Just, hey, I saw a game on the screen for one second in the background there. I wonder what game that was. Was that a real game?

When was it from? He has an almost preternatural ability to detect and identify those clips. He does it for all sports, including baseball. He's done some really fun baseball ones. So we will explore his process and why these videos have caught on. He has almost a million followers on TikTok. He's become a big deal, and we'll talk about why. Just to give you a little taste, if you haven't seen this,

here's the setup from one of his recent videos. In this episode of The Office, Jim is watching a baseball game at the dorm where Pam is going to school, and you first would think that this is easy to figure out because we can actually see the scoreboard. But after looking at it quickly, it becomes clear that they have edited the scoreboard onto this after looking at it quickly, it becomes clear that they have

edited the scoreboard onto this because it has the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Los Angeles Dodgers being the teams that are playing, but neither of those teams are the team that we see on the screen. And here's the payoff. But eventually, I stumbled onto this baseball card for Jeff Ballard, who wore number 39 in 1992. And looking at these pictures, you can see that he likes to wear long-sleeved turtlenecks, just like the guy in the video, which makes me think this is our guy. And if you look at the catcher next to him and pause it at just the right time, you can make out the number 25 on his back, which would make that the Redbirds' Ed Fulton. So then, after combing through countless box scores, Fulton and Ballard

only played one game together in Buffalo, and it was this game on June 2, 1992, that ended Redbirds 4, Bison 1. That video has more than 5 million views, so Ian and I will discuss how his viral magic happens. But first, and not least, I will be joined by James Wagner of the New York Times, primarily to talk about a great investigation he just did into why Dominican players seem to be overrepresented in positive PED tests in baseball, both in the majors and the minors. It's not just Fernando Tatis Jr. This is a widespread problem. The players who do test positive for steroids are disproportionately from the Dominican Republic. And James went down to the DR to figure out why that is and what can be done about it. So

that's really interesting. But we will also talk about a great story that he did on why baseball players wear perfume and cologne on the field or in the dugout or during practice. This is apparently a pretty pervasive practice you would never know from afar. And of course, we will lead with Scott Boris, who had a huge wordplay week. Everyone sent us the Boris quotes. We saw the Boris quotes. Don't worry. So now I'll bring in James and unbeknownst to him, we will start with Scott. All right.

I am joined now by James Wagner, who has been covering baseball and will still cover some baseball, although he's switching beats. We will talk about that a bit for the New York Times. And he just did a great deep dive investigation into PED testing and the disproportionate number of positive tests among Dominican players. James, welcome to the show. Thanks, Ben. Thanks for having me on. And yes, thank you for that introduction. Yes, something is changing coming forward, and I'm looking forward to it. But this story, I think, kind of fits in that vein, things I want to look further and deeper into. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, I didn't prep you for this, but can I ambush you for a second and just ask about Scott Boris quotes? Because this is a frequent topic of discussion on this podcast. We've been tracking Scott Boris's puns and wordplay and witticisms, if you can call them that, for years now. And we actually had him on the show to talk about it and kind of grill him about his process. And this was the week where he held court at the GM meetings and just really reached a higher gear, I think, potentially. I mean, he outdid himself here. And I'm just curious, as someone who covers baseball news for The New York Times and faces the decision of, do I want to quote Scott Boris puns in the paper of record, which you

did decide to do. You didn't notice that. Oh, man. Yes. Yeah. So I checked. And you did note, I will quote here from the New York Times, where this is enshrined forever. Boris, also the agent for Brandon Nimmo and Tyjuan Walker, had colorful ways of describing

the demand for both players. For Nimmo, Boris used movie illusions, including a questionable pun. I appreciate that you questioned the pun. There are a lot of teams in the free agent market that are in the waters for a center fielder. Whoever picks our guy, Gr players that's under 30 and he's had multiple 150 innings pitch seasons. So essentially, Taiwan is on an island. And I think the only question is who is willing Taipei? I thought that one was better. I thought the second one was a little better. The first one, I missed the Pixar reference.

I had to go back and listen to it. In real time, I didn't really hear that one. I just heard that. I could tell when he said waters that he was gonna start setting up a finding nemo reference uh i did not pick up on the pixar until i sat down to listen to the audio again but i mean i was like you know everyone obviously is like laughing because you know you roll your eyes because you know he's just like gearing up to you know unload one of these again and you know he tried to he tries to pass it off as if he's coming up with it on the spot. But you know, he has a sheet

of paper in front of him. I didn't really see the paper, but you know he kind of stops and like, funny you ask. And then he quickly glances at his sheet of paper and he's like, oh god, here we go. And so you can tell he was doing that in this case. I think at one point after he was

rolling through these, he does these, but to be clear, I think he probably said this, he does these at the winter meetings too. So it's kind of twice a year where he kind of preps for these. As he was rolling through these in Las Vegas and just going one after another, and at one point you could tell he was just trying to squeeze them in because he maybe hadn't been asked about X player

or whatever, a certain player or Y player. He was just going to, oh, I got these, I got to throw them in. Yeah, right. Did someone ask me about did someone say uh james paxton oh well funny you ask uh so i finally at one point was like scott like how do you keep a straight face while you do this i just like interrupted him and he was like what are you talking about this is a very serious moment of course just being sarcastic once again he just i think he rolled into the other ones that he had but yeah i mean i think that was the first time I'd ever used his puns. I think it was just funny because the Mets, you know,

there's so many free agents. The story that they were in was about, you know, the Mets offseason. Just a broad look at their offseason and how Jacob deGrom is kind of their priority. But they have so many free agents that included Brandon Nimmo and Tywon Walker. It was an easy place, low in the the story to just quickly address those two guys. And so I just thought it was fun to just use them in that moment. But I think that might have been the first time in 11 years that I'd used one of his puns like that. So I think my track record is okay.

I think it's the first time. Off the top of my head, it's the first time, I think. Yeah, and your editor wasn't like, do we need this? Or like the standards desk, are we actually putting this in the paper? Because the motto is, you know, all the news that's fit to print. So you've decided that, in fact, this Pixar Brandon Nimmo finding Nimmo print is fit to print and that it is preserved for posterity now in the paper of record. Not much pushback from my editor. And as you can see, it was published. So, yeah, it worked out okay.

Maybe because I am so conservative when it comes to these all the other times, I think maybe in this case we thought it was okay. Right, and he should hand out that little notepad that he has where he keeps track of this. It should be like a band that gives out the set list after the concert. Someone takes it home and puts a picture on Twitter. Someone should get the Boris set list for the puns. But I guess you have a history. I was going to say, I don't mind professing my ignorance,

but I guess I missed his podcast appearance for you guys. What did he say? He tests them out on his employees, right? And then he preps these for weeks and weeks. Yeah, he takes suggestions, for like weeks and weeks yeah he takes suggestions for sure from from his staff like he doesn't have dedicated writers as far as we could tell people who punch this up for him but because he always does this he will get at least unsolicited suggestions and he definitely does give it some thought beforehand like you know when he said like this is serious

to him it is like i feel like this he loves this he relishes this so you notice more often than not he loves food i've always told him like scott you really right because he loves food references yeah food that's an easy one to go to he brought up meat different types of meat the filet mignon he brought that up again too he brings the food up ones off food yes and the nautical analogies we've noticed as well. Yeah. But I guess you have a history of having to cover this because he's had these wars with the Wilpons in the past, right? And I used to cover the Nationals too, and there are so many Nationals players that he represented too.

So I'm used to this. There have been times where you had to go to Sandy Alderson for comment on a Boris quote and then report the Sandy Alderson retort to the Boris quote. This is journalism. This is the baseball beat. The number of food aisle metaphors that were just being worn into the ground at a certain point, though, were – yeah. It was – yeah. I've heard many of them. Yeah.

And speaking of service journalism, Alden Gonzalez put together a reference of every Boris pun, which we will link to on our show page here, because he was really rolling. I feel almost responsible. We may have egged him on just by giving him the recognition for doing this, but really, he kind of owns baseball Twitter every day that he does this. You and Sandy egged him on. Yeah, right. There were a couple that stood out because i i was a little

disappointed i think stephanie apstein pointed out that he was recycling some material because carlos rodan is a free agent again as he was last year and boris went back to the sculpture the the rodan the thinker which he used last year i guess he did allude to last year, the thinking team chose Rodin. So maybe it was a conscious callback, but still. And Correa, the Dior stuff, the Christian Dior stuff, that was Correa's own words that he basically just like expounded upon. So that's the thing. So that was a topic of conversation on this podcast when Correa came out with his analogy. He said, when I go to the mall and I go to the Dior store, when I want something, I get it. I ask how much it costs and I buy it.

If you really want something, you just go get it. I'm the product here. If they want my product, they've got to come get it. And then, yeah, Boris said, so you're a franchise brand. You're the Dior of defense. You're the Hermes of hitting. You're the Louis V of leadership. Or no, not Louis V, Louis Vuitton, I guess.

Yeah, I'll just put V on there. You're the Prada of the postseason. It's a one-stop shop for a championship designer. Because we had a discussion back when Correa debuted that line about whether he was getting fed that by Boris or whether that was a Correa original, whether they workshopped those things together so the plot thickens i don't know whether this is confirmation that boris came up with the dior line or whether he took it from his client or what i guess this doesn't confirm things either way but got the next guest on this podcast or not he's welcome to come back and discuss his uh his process if he wants to anyway you're not ostensibly here to talk about Scott Borre's quotes. I just hijacked this discussion. But you did some real and valuable journalism and brought something to light, which I had been wondering about. And this really, I mean, it came to a lot of people's attention. I think a lot of people are aware of this trend. But I noticed back in late August that MLB, sometimes they'll periodically sent

a press release about the latest PD suspensions. And this one just so happened to be about six minor leaguers who were suspended. And all six of them were players in the Dominican Summer League. And five of the suspensions were for the same substance, senosalol, if I'm saying that correctly, sort of one of these old school steroids. And this is not new, right? And so when I saw that, I thought I should really look into this or someone should look into this. I hope someone explains what is happening here. And of course, the Fernando Tatis Jr. news was top of mind too. So first of all, I guess, can you give me the numbers, the data on this and just how disproportionate the representation of Dominican players in PD positives has been? Yes.

And this is something that, you know, I think overall I've had the same kind of hunch as you over the years of covering baseball. This is year 11 for me. You notice when those weekly or, you know, every so often on afternoon, when those press releases come out, you see where these players are from.

And you notice a lot of them are Latin American. And you look closely, they come from the Dominican Republic. And they're using steroids like the one you mentioned, which I still butcher the pronunciation, or Boldenone, which are two old steroids that really aren't as popular anymore. And you wonder what's going on. So I think when Fernando Tatis Jr. was suspended, I think it raised a lot of questions as to what is going on here. And not just with his case, but another prime example, at this time a prominent player, as to why this trend keeps happening. And so I'm a native Spanish speaker, and covering Latinos and baseball has been something that's been part of like my beat for the last many, many years.

And so I, you know, went down to the Dominican Republic and took the time to try to figure out, kind of unfurl this kind of complicated question. It's like what, you know, why this is happening. And so since 2005, there have been 1,308 positive tests among major and minor leaguers. So it just shows you how many players have been positive cases, because some guys are repeat offenders. 1,300 positive cases, basically. According to the league, they do 30,000 drug tests around the world each year. 0.2% are positive.

Half of those come from the Dominican Republic. So I think that's's what about 60 cases per year 30 of those 60 come from the dominican republic major and minor leagues most of them in the minor leagues because they're more minor leaguers and their drug testing policy is different but so basically yes you know that's not a lot per year 0.2 isn't a lot 0.1 is not a lot but i think to see how disproportionately they're coming from one island and from players from one place on opening day there was about you know 10 of major leaguers were from the dominican republic i think that but the percentage you know

by the end of the year i think there are more than that and of dominican players in the major leagues and then it's believed to be more i think people have i don't know what estimate is but you know a lot of dominican players are from the a lot of minor leaguers are from the Dominican Republic. So you see that it's disproportionate, it's out of place, why half of the cases come from one place, but only 10% of them in the major leagues are from this place. So what's going on here? Right. Yeah. And to be clear, it is a very small subset of all players and of Dominican players specifically who are testing positive. If the numbers that MLB cited to you are accurate, they said that the positive test rate for minor league players in the Dominican Republic has been less than 1% for 10 consecutive years.

They say it's also down since they started to make some efforts in this area, which I'll ask you about. So it is still just, it's a small number of players, but it's a very high proportion of the positive tests, which themselves, it's a small proportion of players. So it does stand out. So what did you learn about why people think this is happening? How much time do you have the why is still the most complicated and you know multi-layered answer so from any number of reasons from the system the structure you know players down there compared to the united states where you're drafted out of high school as early as you know 18 years old u.s canada puerto rico down there it's the internet

you know the international amateur system is the free agents. So you can sign as young as 16, but, you know, as you know, based on the structure and the informal verbal agreements that occur, players are reaching verbal agreements, maybe as young as 13, 14 year olds with teams. So you look at the pressure that are on these kids to, you know, be good even by 12, 13, 14 years old so they can reach a verbal agreement so that by the time they're 16 they formally put the pen to paper but they've already been in verbal agreement with the team for years because they've been scouted so young. And if you look at the country predominantly, look at the median income of the country,

it's a poorer, less affluent country. Obviously they're allowed to reach an agreement with teens younger. So look at the pressures that are on teenage kids to help their family, help themselves economically. And so think about an easy way that they think, an easy way to help get out of this system. Steroids are an obvious example. So you look at the socioeconomic pressures like that. And these kids, in a lot of cases, do not finish secondary school. They leave secondary school so they can focus on baseball so that they can't help themselves and their families and the pressures on them by the adults whether it's their parents or their trainer you know like there's a trainer like quoted in the story in which he you know talks about it says it's

the parents and the trainers themselves it's not the kids it's the adults that are pressuring kids to use steroids like a 12 year old might not might not know how to go find the steroids you mentioned, but it's an adult around them that is pressuring them or pushing them to do this. And the kids see that this is a way out of poverty. Other examples, one of the people I've talked to that was very good in laying out the factors is this doctor. His name is Milton Pinedo. He's the head of FEDOMEDE, which is basically the Dominican Federation of Sports Medicine. They oversee the doping testing for the Olympic programs in the country. He says that this does not happen in the Olympic program. So this is specifically a baseball problem that the parents,

the trainers are pushing this, the culture of they believing that this is a quick fix out of poverty to help these kids get out of the situation they're in when really it's not the way to go he also pointed to the second factor which was the the ease of which you can find these uh substances these banned substances that you can find them in the and there in the dominican republic say compared to the united states uh so you can go into say a pharmacy down there and you don't need a prescription to get an antibiotic something that you would need in the united states even to get an antibiotic, something that you would need in the United States, even to get an antibiotic. But you can go to the pharmacy. You can easily find steroids, something that would get you in trouble in MLB's testing program.

You could find that so much easier down there. And the other third factor he mentioned was education, too. If the parents and maybe down to the kids are not as well educated, they can't differentiate between, he says until like figuring out the steroids like that this is not actually going to help you and henry mejia is a pitcher that i talked to in the story he's the most suspended player of all time he got suspended three times the third time was a permanent ban which he got eventually reversed henry told me that once he had consumed steroids it didn't help him throw harder that he didn't notice a difference in his velocity and in that, he learned that steroids were not like a quick fix for him. He claims he did not use it purposefully. But either way, once he had it in his system, he claims it did not

help his velocity, which goes to the point that I think that people see it as a quick fix, but ultimately it might learn it does not. Yeah. I mean, I guess if you actually weren't using it on purpose and consistently, and it was just a tainted substance that you took, then I guess that probably wouldn't really expect him to suddenly gain miles per hour from that one thing if that was actually what happened. But I guess, is there any way to tell? There's no conclusive way, I'm sure. But how much of the problem is kids actually just being given these things or the accidental dosing, which is either way is not good, obviously, but the solution would be different for each of those problems, right? And those potential causes. And, you know, there's something extra sort of nefarious and unsavory about the idea of kids being dosed with these things at an age where one would imagine

there could potentially be some side effects down the road. It's hard to tell without knowing everyone's individual case, but I think overall, let's go to minor leagues, for example. They have a minor league drug policy, and the major leaguers have a major league drug policy that's collectively bargained with the union. They know the rules. Whether you took it on purpose or by accident ultimately is your responsibility. And that's the case, I think, in the Tatis case. Him claiming he did not use it on purpose. He had something else. Regardless whether he did it on purpose or not, it's his responsibility. The same with Henry Mejia in this case. I think scouts might tell you they think that the drug problem is a serious problem. Look at the, among amateurs,

before they enter the minor league system. Look at the international draft. Part of the reason why MLB claims they wanted the international draft, they failed. The players union did not approve it. But one of the reasons MLB wanted it was they claimed they wanted this was a way they think could help clean up corruption and this drug use to give a more orderly structure to what's going on. This system that people have called the Wild West, where 12-year-olds are reaching verbal agreements to create a more structured system. And MLB has started this thing called the Trainers Program in 2018, where they go around, you know,

I think they have 50-some trainers in this program, where trainers voluntarily agree to join their program down there. And they get an MLB stamp of approval if MLB is given permission to test their players. So that way, I think, to kind of give more security and give the MLB stamp of approval onto their players and the trainer, so the trainer can tell kids, like, look, we run an MLB-approved program, and can tell the teams that want to sign those kids, hey, look, we're above board, MLB has approved us.

But anyone can be a trainer down there, and not everyone has to be part of that program so it just goes to the larger question of like how can someone kind of police all of this and you wonder like what role does the Dominican government have in this too because these are their own citizens they are there are their own children the trainers are citizens too like what can they do this and the commissioner of baseball down there said that she's trying to get government approval down there to get more resources to, you know, both monitor and to discipline the trainers down there. Because you, Ben, could be a trainer down there if you wanted to. They call them buscones, too. You're like part trainer, part agent, where you find a kid, a young kid.

You start training them. You start paying for their development. You start paying for their food. And then you take a huge cut, maybe up to 40-50% when they sign with the team. So who will police this system? And just to be clear, guys like Tatis, who already were in the majors, already had their $300 million contract. He's not under those same pressures of trying to break it out of poverty. His dad was a major leaguer. He already had his contract you wonder like why was he like why was this stuff in his system whether he used it on purpose or did not use it on purpose like he claims yes or someone like you

know robinson cano right who's you know already had a huge contract and is on his way to the hall of fame it's like why you know right without having each of those guys tell me why i mean tatis claims again that he did not use this on purpose and Kanoa has not really talked about why. He's just said, he's just apologized for using it. There is a culture, I think some people have said in the story, culture of that's what you grew up around.

Maybe it continues or you, you know, sort of turns around a pride that you want to continue performing or you have an injury that you don't want to talk about or you're trying to recover from that you think this will help you and be so readily available around you you turn to that or yeah pride that you want to keep performing or yes like you see like in Mejia's case like

you know Henry did not like he already was an established closer in the major leagues like why did he need this and you know he even referenced things like yeah like wanting to get that contract because you see someone else around you get that contract uh even though you are in the majors you don't have that 20 million dollar contract you're not you don't have the security maybe you're trying to hope hopefully hopefully you're trying to go for that so and i think i wanted to make sure it was clear like it's not like i think some people are wondering like why these guys are caught and i think this is part of the issue is the steroids that are being used again i'm going to butcher the name, but baldinone and stanozolol, those two steroids that show up often in the drug testing results

are just older anabolic steroids that Victor Conti Jr. and other people have told me. He is of Balco fame, if you remember, that those are just easy to find. Those steroids are readily available, obviously, and they're just easy to find in your system when you test. It's not like other players have not tried to use designer things that don't get them caught you've seen those cases american players have been caught u.s players have been caught for using steroids players from other countries have been too i guess in this case dominican players using those two readily available steroids to them in their country those steroids are just easy to

find they're getting caught easier faster if that if that makes sense. Yeah. And with Tatis' explanation and the New York Times headline about this in a story that was not by you was Tatis' explanation, stretch common sense, experts say, which I think was kind of a consensus opinion at that time, just because he was claiming to have used a medication for ringworm initially. And a lot of people questioned whether that would have even been an applicable medication to use for ringworm, which does not mean that he couldn't have used it anyway, mistakenly or ill-advisedly. And I don't think he was even in the DR at the time, as I recall, but maybe he was brought the medication by his parents or something was the explanation. And so I guess that would be a convenient excuse because there is truth to the idea

that there can be traces of these substances in over-the-counter medication that you can get down there. And so you could just seize on that as, oh, I got caught. I can just say it was accidental and it will be somewhat plausible. Or it could be somewhat plausible, I can just say it was accidental and it will be somewhat plausible, or it could be somewhat plausible, I guess. But either way, it's like if you're established like Tatis, I mean, if you're a minor leaguer, you can't necessarily afford to import some reliable medication or some substance that you know is on the approved list. Maybe you have to cut corners and use what you

can. But if you're fernando tatis jr just the idea of of using anything from there just given this history and track record that's what you have to kind of question and the two things i was gonna say about that like you brought up great point like i think you know it's part of mlb's programs it's part of why they've they claim they've gotten you know the percentage of minor leaguers in the dominican down from like six percent down to under one percent testing positive programs to teach the kids and tell them and to really really drive home the point and i think nelson cruz addressed like you know those programs have made a difference telling the kids just be more careful and unfortunately the players in the

dominican republic have to be more careful if this stuff is more readily available around them but ultimately what is what is in their body is their responsibility on purpose or by accident if you believe that and i think that's where like you just you have to if you're a team not to give them advice but if you're a team and you have your players if they get sick like in henry maria's case you know if he claims it was because when he was sick or whatever the case may be with tatis claiming that he had ringworm and needed something to address it perhaps you should be calling your team, the team's trainers, the team's medical staff. Hey, what can you help me with? Rather than on your own or whatever it is, going to someone else to get a B12 shot.

Maybe that if you have like a stomach bug and you've lost weight and you want to recover. Perhaps don't go to the pharmacy or use what's in your fridge or ask your buddy or your brother to help you out with something. Go to your trainer, the team's trainer. Even if you're a minor leaguer or a major leaguer, there should be people around you if you're in the major leagues, especially the support staff around you. But have someone maybe vouch for this is the medical way to do this, something that's like the NSF-approved medicine or supplement to recover from what you have. Are you optimistic at all that this might change for whatever reason? We know that there's not going to be an international draft imminently, but you've brought light to this. It seems like people are picking up on it. It's obviously known in the area. So I wonder whether you have

hope here or whether there's anything else that you want to mention that we haven't touched on that is a factor. I think like I mentioned the doctor that had talked about like, you know, the problems down there, Dr. Pinedo, he wants political willpower to change. He thinks that the government does need to step in and change like the restrictions on the substances. I mean, whether you think that will happen, I think remains to be seen because I mean, Major League Baseball is a huge, important driver to the economy, to the society down there.

So that is obviously a huge factor. And I think, you know, we'll see whether the Dominican government will step in and like maybe, perhaps through the commissioner of baseball, Junior Alboa, former player, hoping and waiting for the resources and power kind power to police the

trainers, see if that happens. And then in five years to see when the next CBA is up, whether the international draft will come around then. I think what stood out to me, this most recent round of international draft negotiations was that I heard from more trainers than I first expected, perhaps, that they were in favor of the draft. Whether they saw the writing on the wall in terms of this coming down, you know, the well of support for the future or seeing MLB really pushing hard to get this done. I was surprised by how many trainers

did say they were in favor of it. So we'll see in five years if that kind of change continues to happen and whether that international draft will get put in place in five years i mean some people have some critics have said that you know players will like the temptations to still use steroids will still be there whether there's a draft or not because you still want to get you know selected high you still want to throw hard you want to hit hard hit the ball far uh the pressures will still be there whether the draft or not to use steroids so i think seeing the rate the percentage of which stuff has gone down is encouraging, but to still see it concentrated even now, given all the improvements, I think it's alarmed some people as you've seen.

So I don't know. There's a lot of different things that could change. We'll see how the international draft or the Dominican government steps in to do something about this because ultimately just through education you've seen has made a difference, but that alone might not solve this. The substances there just being too readily available, the structure itself of which kids are developed and acquired through the system and enter the professional system remains like those remain challenges for teams and for them down there. So we started this conversation with a fairly frivolous question. I want to end with one also.

So you are switching beats starting next year. You're going to become an international sports correspondent still for The Times, but based in Mexico City and focused on Latin America. So you will be off the full-time baseball beat, although obviously you'll still have some opportunities to cover baseball there. But what we are losing in your leaving the baseball beat is not only reporting like the kind you did in this PD story,

but also the kind you did in another story about an aspect of baseball where perhaps Dominican players are overrepresented, which is... I'm guessing. Perfume?

Perfume and cologne? Yeah. I knew it. So you wrote this great story and this is just perfect story because this was back in May, and this just brought to light something that no one would know who doesn't have the access, right? Because you cannot tell this from afar. You can't tell watching on TV what players smell like. You can maybe imagine it, but you brought us into the dugout in the clubhouse here and you informed everyone that baseball players, big fans of perfume and cologne.

So tell me about the story and tell me how you came to write the story. Was it just that you followed your nose and you noticed that a lot of baseball players had strong scents? Yes. Yeah. I mean, I will say just I would not, you know, discredit this story as being service journalism. There is one baseball executive that told me after reading this story, does one or two sprays of cologne every day now since. So I would call this service journalism as well.

So in this case, yes, I just followed my nose. I mean, like other stories I've written, I followed my stomach was writing food about food and baseball. And this one was following my nose. And I think just all these years of covering baseball players and noticing this trend. But the light bulb did not really go off until last World Series when the Astros lost to the Atlanta Braves. Frambois Valdez, I remember I could smell him from the other end of the dugout. And speaking Spanish and just shooting the breeze with him, being like,

Frambois, why do you smell so strongly of cologne? And I was like, what are you? Because his nickname is La Grasa, which kind of means he's going to style his flow, basically what it comes down to. And so he was explaining to me, oh, yeah, I've got a cologne perfume for this. I've got one for that. And I've got another one for that. And I was like, what?

And so I remember other players I'd met and covered back in the day. I used to cover the Nationals a long time ago. Rafael Soriano, the closer on the team, another Dominican. He did one or two sprays before he even went out to shag fly balls during BP. I was like, what? Fernando Abad, I think, too,

might have done it, too. I was like, you're practicing. What do you need cologne for that? Even then, what do you need cologne for during the game? You what do you need cologne for during the game like what you're on the mound by yourself who's gonna smell you man like so i remember i finally licked a light bulb went off one last year and all these stories kind of that i had amassed in my mind just kind of coalesced and i was like oh i need to turn this into a story so uh just spent like spring training and early part of the season finally just putting all those stories together and going around and asking players you know what they use how often they use it it sounds so stupid they they laughed so much i laughed so much writing this story and reporting

this story just the yeah the silly seemed frivolous but the silly uh reasons as to why these guys use certain colognes on certain days like frambo has a cologne the strong one that he uses on start days he has a less strong one that he uses on his four games in between sitting in the dugout and he's got a strong one for going out with the boys on the team does he wear a very strong one on his start day so that no one will talk to him which is another tradition no one wants to be here is like too uh excitable too enthusiastic to not talk to people he's kind of in everyone's face and high-fiving and stuff. And even like I thought was hilarious, just randomly,

Jordan Romano, the closer of the Blue Jays, he's a Canadian pitcher, not Dominican. He had picked up this tradition from a Dominican teammate and then started doing it himself. And here's a dude from Ontario, Canada, who has a cologne for uses when, if I remember clearly, when he's feeling good. A cologne he needs when the team needs to break out of a rut. So he says he sprays it on the boys when they need to snap out of it, too.

So I was like, holy cow, there's so much thought into this. Baseball players are very superstitious, have a lot of traditions. And so I think this kind of spoke to that and just adds kind of another element the uh that that the smell i think to the experience because yeah and fans readers who don't get to be down there on the field and get to see what normally smells like dirt and grass and sweat there's also this other scent kind of through the dugout and through the hallways and through the clubhouses too. So yeah, that's kind of the long-winded way of explaining just the funny anecdotes and I think just added that other

kind of spice to basically the game that I think maybe you wouldn't see otherwise. I laughed so much during that story and I think just it adds a lot of, you know, it speaks to both the cultural element too though. In Latin America I don't know other cultures as well but in Latin American culture the perfume and cologne is pretty dominant i find and so the players i think just an extension

of that and to see their teammates pick up on their traditions was really funny too yeah well glad you sniffed out that story and i don't know when the the nomination windows close but get that in best american sports writing. If not Pulitzer, that's got to be something. I smelled that pun coming from a long, long while away. Even Boris would look down on that one probably, would turn up his nose, would sniff disapprovingly. But hopefully there's no Boldenone in the cologne. That would be an unfortunate just confluence of your two stories here. But I haven't heard of that happening. So that's probably not a factor. You did not mention that as a factor in your PED reporting. There's still time. There's still time.

Yeah, right. All right. Well, best of luck on the new beat when it starts. And we will miss you on the baseball beat. But people can still follow James at The Times and on Twitter as long as Twitter still exists, at ByJamesWagner. Thank you, James. Thanks, man. Thanks, Ben. Okay, thanks to James. And I should note that almost immediately after we got off the call, I got another Friday News Dump email from MLB Press Release 3 minor league players suspended, two of the three Dominican Summer League players suspended for old school steroids. And thank you to James for humoring me with my Boris questions. And if you haven't seen some of these Boris quotes, you gotta see them. I will just read you a couple.

So this is the one that James referenced. The free agent market is very much a carnivore's market. There are many grades available. For owner's menus, those are more leaning to filet mignon and wagyu than they are to the hamburger and vegan. Sure, that completely clears it up. And this one is kind of a mixed metaphor. This is on Xander Bogart's. This is the first time teams have had a chance to sign the X-Man. I think they're finding it to be a Marvel opportunity. Xander has a very famous uncle, Humphrey, and he certainly left in his memoirs, kid, there's going to be a lot of teams looking at you. Just so much going on there.

The implication that Xander Bogart's uncle is Humphrey Bogart, just wow, that is a busy one. And then I like the little lightning round at the end. So this is on Sean Mania. Man, I need a left-handed pitcher like that. These are like knock-knock joke level. This is on Matthew Boyd. It's simply unavoidable that I needhanded pitcher like that. These are like knock-knock joke level. This is on Matthew Boyd. It's simply unaboidable that I need a guy like that. Josh Bell, he just has all the bells

and whistles. Michael Conforto, he's kind of the return of the mic, the hit of free agency. And lastly on Jerickson Profar, Profar so good. I just don't know what to say. If you want more of this, just check out Scott on Effectively Wild on episode 1903. And now let's take a quick break and I'll be right back with Ian Arugio of At No Problem Gambler on TikTok, who does deep dive investigations into sports games that appear in the background on screens in other media. Now, this is serious journalism. Don't touch that dial. If it really takes that long to work out, I'm afraid we'll be long gone. But we'll know just where to start if we look real close.

Look real close. Think you can't see the way it is. Welcome to the party. There's no point dwelling on it all the time. Not something necessarily that you're looking for too. But sometimes you have to look real close. Well, I am joined now by the internet's foremost sleuth in the extremely specific niche of background sports footage identification. You may know him on TikTok as at no problem gambler. His real name is Ian Arujo, and he joins me now.

Ian, welcome. Oh, thanks for having me. So I knew I was going to talk to you today, and I went to the baseball subreddit this morning, and it just so happened as I was browsing that one of the most popular posts was very much in the genre of what you do. So someone posted on their user SBB618, the post was, what game is Robert De Niro watching in The Irishman? And then they went through the full investigation. I think this was actually a repost, and they concluded that it was the Phillies-Mets game on September 22nd, 1996.

I've not verified that myself. That is not at No Problem Gambler certified. But the fact that I just happened to come across that in the wild. Now, for all I know, that was inspired by the kind of content that you have been creating. But as I mentioned to you, I had done something similar almost 10 years ago now looking at a background scene in the TV show Elementary and just wanted to know, I wonder what game that is. So it seems like this speaks to some sort of strange semi-universal human desire. Maybe it's just a testament to the curiosity of our species that we just see something and we want to know what it is. How do you explain what motivated you and what motivates everyone who is just riveted by what you do. Why do we care?

Why do we care? So I was much like you and you opened this up by saying this very niche thing, right? And it's like, you've got a million followers. That's right. And that's why, like I had that account for, you know, over a year and a half before I even did this, because I've been doing these puzzles i like to call them for probably a decade now and it was just a joke between me and a couple friends you know it was like why would other people care because if you just say it to someone i think it doesn't give the same effect right like if you were just to say like oh there's a whatever game in the background of a marvel movie, nobody cares, right?

Like it's showing all the steps I think is the biggest part, right? It's the going down the rabbit hole and going through all of those things. And like you said, I think it's just curiosity, right? Yeah, I guess so. And right, I mean, you could easily see that and just write it off and not even notice. I mean, most people do. I mean, like the reason some of these things are so obscure, right, like some of the games being played is because the producers or whoever chooses those things goes, no one is going to look at this. This is not the purpose of, you in the show. It's just a decoration, basically. Yeah. Right. And often you'll find out that it's not actually from just one thing or it's some kind of mashup or it's not period accurate. And again, it's because they figured no one would

notice and no one would care. And then you come along and expose it to the world. And it turns out that actually a lot of people care. So when this was just you and your friends, just the group chat or whatever, what was the origin story? What was your first deep dive or the one that really got you hooked on doing this kind of thing? The first one I remember doing was, you know, the TV show Monk? Yeah. There is a... Tony Shalhoub. That's right. They go to a football game and i think they're tailgating

and uh they flash to a tv at the tailgate and uh i wondered oh well what football game is that because i didn't recognize any of the logos or anything and uh turns out it's a usfl game and something doing this enough uh usfl games must just be like super cheap to use because they're everywhere. I don't even do them on my videos anymore because it's just such a layup for me now because it's like I've seen this game in a hundred different shows. But yeah, that's the origins of it. And then the origin for my TikTok doing those is i had just watched spider-man no way or yeah no way home and you know daredevil shows up in that movie and so i went home

and re-watched daredevil and just out of the you know out of the left corner of the screen you can see a hockey game going on i thought oh well, oh, well, here comes another one. And like you said, in the group chat, I went and I was like, I figured this one out. And they're like, oh, you should post that. And yeah, that's how that started. So is TikTok integral to your taking this public then? I mean, if this had been prior to TikTok, I mean, I guess it was when you were just in the group chat. Would you have thought, I'll put this on Twitter or I'll put this on wherever else someone might have posted a video? Did you need something like TikTok to come along to be the perfect venue for this kind of video? Yeah, I mean, I had never done videos prior to TikTok.

Like I'm not as, you know, I love sports media and stuff like that. I just was never in front of the camera or even on the microphone. that. I just was never in front of the camera or even on the microphone. So TikTok was my first like dive into that. And all the videos I did prior to these were kind of the warm up, I would say, to what it would eventually become. But I think the speed of TikTok really works for these videos because it is kind of chaotic. And, you know, I'm trying to show all the steps in the shortest amount of time. And I think it works really well for the type of video that it is. Are you a puzzle person in general? I mean, are you doing crosswords and Sudoku or whatever else? Like, does your mind just just thrive on puzzle solving? Yes, yes. And no, I think the the traditional puzzle, I don't, you know, I don't find myself, you know, sitting in

front and doing crosswords and stuff. But, stuff, but solving problems and trivia and all of those things things that are going on around you, fine details, because I think really the thrill of it when you first start watching your videos, it seems like almost a Sherlock Holmes style deduction, you know, where he'll just look at, oh, your shoe left this imprint and therefore that's where you were, right? All of these little clues that no one is actually noticing and he's able to extrapolate all of these things about you. And that's fiction. But this is in real life.

So are you very observant? Or is this just sort of your superpower, this very specific superpower? Right. Yeah. Like, I think it's a mix of both. Like, I would say I'm observant. But it's also like if you stare at something for long enough, you pick up on things. And if you do it often enough, you start like being able to like deduce things just by looking at them. Right. Right. And so it's a mix of doing it often enough and having a base. Like I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of every sport. It's impossible. But having the base of knowledge, I think, is, you know, the biggest help for myself. Yeah, because that's the thing. I mean, the footage that you're

looking at is available to everyone, right? Everyone can see the same thing that you're seeing. It's not like you're working some secret sources or something. I mean, you know, when you did an interview in a story with Steven Nesbitt for The Athletic and you were working on one, then Stephen reached out to people and was, you know, working sources and trying to get inside info and everything. But generally, you're just looking at what's there. And anyone could, in theory, do that. And yet everyone is completely shocked and bewildered that you're able to mine this information from the same thing that they're seeing. So it's almost like some sort of sleight of hand or parlor trick or something where it's like, it's right out there in the open. And yet everyone else seems to be missing these things.

Right. And I have people on both sides saying either I'm, you know, I have these deep Hollywood connections and music connection, all these things, or I have people telling me, no, you are wrong. And it's like, how can I be both of these things? And well, and the truth is I'm neither, right? It's like, there's no trick about it. It's just, you know, if you look at something long enough, if you know what to look for, all of those things, you know, I truly believe anyone probably could do it. It's just like,

why would you, right? Like, I mean, I think about it all the time. Like my wife even says, like, she doesn't get it. You know, she's just like, she's like, I don't understand, you know? And it's like, it's fair. Like, why do people do it? And why are people interested? I have no idea, but you know, if I'm interested, then, you know, other people might be too. And that's how it works. Have you been wrong? Because there's sometimes where it's, if I'm interested, then, you know, other that game isn't available, that kind of thing. And so you make a very solid guess, but not completely confirmed. So has there been a time when you've put something out there and you've learned subsequently that you missed something or incorrectly identified something? No, I have some that i just will probably never know or the one that sticks out to me is the uh marvel show falcon and the winter soldier and i i concluded that it was an

australian like soccer game and i i still to this day have no idea i had one guy reach out to me saying that he thinks i got the stadium right but he has no idea the game because it is that obscure and he's like i don't even know if they record those games like he doesn't so it's like those things i'm not sure but that's with from all of the research that i've done that's what you know makes the most sense to me right and there's no one you know coming up with a better solution so to me those are there are some that i'll say this i don't usually put out a video if i'm not 90 sure of or above right you know it's like there are there are some that i've done and i've gone down the rabbit hole man like i i have done everything i'll tell you this. I currently, I mean, I shouldn't say currently

because it's like literally been months at this point. I'm doing one about a cricket match in Miss Marvel, the Disney Plus show. And I think I have it down to five games. And to say that I have explored every option would be an understatement yeah I should say five teams not five games but there's no way like I've reached out to every player every you know like that I think it could be and there's just no one that could even tell me so it's like if people who might have even been there are telling

me that I have no idea, it's like, how am I going to figure this out? But I will say I'm not giving up on that. It's still in my Word document, you know, just sitting there for hopefully one day someone responds and goes, hey, I remembered this or something. Yeah. Well, it's good that you have high standards just so people can be confident if you call it. Yeah, right. it's good that you have high standards just so people can be confident if you call it. Yeah, right. It's not just a theory. It's been backed up. So what is one, because you have this format now essentially where people will challenge you, right? And they'll be like, there's no way that you can find this. And of course they're hoping that you can. Right. But that's the format now of the requests for your investigation. So what's one

where even you doubted yourself that you didn't think on first viewing or 10th viewing even that there was enough for you to go on that you could actually identify it and then somehow you did? The one that I am most proud of is from the video game Detroit Become Human. from the video game Detroit Become Human, I found a military recreational league game, the specific game. And I don't think I'll ever top that. And I have now convinced myself there's not a hockey game in the world

that I couldn't find. Honestly, like that is as obscure as it gets. But when I saw it, I had no idea what to even go on. That one sticks out to me. The on. That one sticks out to me. The Australian soccer one also sticks out to me. But that one I didn't have confirmed. Like I went to the Military Hockey League's Facebook page and found the actual pictures from the game.

Like that's as concrete as it gets, right? And I will say I'm working on one now, not the cricket one i i'm not sure if that one ever happened i'm working on one now that i'm like 99 sure on that i'm pretty i'm pretty proud of as well where i uh it is just a blurry mess of of a screen but i kind of deciphered enough yeah and i imagine it's it's much easier if you know more about the sport. You've done all different sports, but we probably don't even realize just like if we have some history, if we grew up watching something, you know so much without even thinking about how much you know. Just the specialized knowledge you have of that sport, like you can just instantly recognize, oh, this is from that era. Probably we can narrow it down to these teams that have that color uniform oh i can see a little bit of the the ballpark or the stadium in the background and i

know where that's from like anyone could in theory research those things but if you hadn't been actually watching that sport for a large part of your life like you have to do a whole lot of leg work just to get to that point where someone who is a fan and a committed viewer would just be there to start. So, you know, what's, I guess, the one where you were most out of your depth? I mean, if you're doing cricket or Australian soccer or something, I guess that qualifies, but one where you've actually, I mean, I guess the hockey example you just gave, it's not like you had, you know, personalized knowledge necessarily. So that's the problem that I'm kind of running into now, right?

Is it's like a daredevil. It's like your next trick has to be better than the last, right? Top yourself every time, yeah. It's like, you know, the next one has to be blurry or a sport that I don't know. Otherwise, I feel like my videos aren't interesting. Like, I don't know how many times I've had people request this game from SpongeBob. It's a USFL game game you can see it very clearly on the screen i don't want to do that and even and even like i struggle to do ones that are

like the major league sports and stuff like that it's like to me i look at that and it takes me you know 10 minutes maybe to like pin down the game it's, I want something that I am slaving over and like, I'm in my bed thinking about until, you know, midnight, right? And that's what I want. Yeah. What's the longest that you've spent on one that has been published that got distilled down to a two minute video or whatever that just totally undersold how much labor and time went into the research process? I would say actually the one that me and Steven worked on, the office one, that one sticks out. But to me, that one was different because I was doing it alongside him. And I don't know if it's the same for you, but working with the media outlets, it's like some things work slowly and

some things that you know, I was waiting for him to do the story. And I still wanted it to be entertaining for him as well. That's the one that sticks out that took a long time. And I actually, I have a lot of people that ask me how long these things take, right? And there's not a clear answer, right? Because like, like what I said is like, you know, I just think about it at random times or I'm just like looking at, you know, articles or whatever. And it's like over a three day period or, you know, it just it changes for each video so much. But I mean, the cricket one is definitely the one that I've spent the most time on. And it's also like we were just talking about.

It's like the one that I'm least familiar with. So that kind of makes sense, right? Right. Do you find that any particular sport is overrepresented in these things? Because I have found that in actual scenes, so not just in the background, but where you're supposed to notice that I think baseball is overrepresented. I might be biased because I've covered baseball and so I'm more likely to notice baseball. But with these background scenes where it's just,

it's supposed to be background, I don't know that that's the case. And maybe if it's that football is popular, so you put football on or there's just an overrepresentation of USFL footage and so it's just football. Do you find that there is a certain sport that is over or underrepresented relative to its popularity, let's say? I would say that given hockey's spot in the American Mount Rushmore of sports, I think that one's overrepresented, I would say. It it's everywhere. I almost have to like filter out, right? Because I don't want to do the same sport over and over again, right? So it's like, I love doing the hockey ones.

That's probably the ones I'm most comfortable with. So I see those the most. And I think it's a lot what you said, though, the USFL, you know, whatever's cheapest and whatever it looks. But I will say USFL 10 to 15 years ago, they're not popping up as much because what USFL looked like in the 80s is not what football looks like now. Yeah. So you can't just put it in. So it's less and less of that. But yeah, I would say hockey is the one that I see the most that is probably not, you know, the most popular.

Hockey is the one that I see the most that is probably not, you know, the most popular. And do you insist on working alone or do you have people who will help you with things? I mean, I'm sure you get just a ton of requests and tips and things now just because this account has taken off the way that it has. But are there other people you will rely on for second opinions or is it just sort of, you know, the private detective just working on their own sort of film noir style? Right. I like to do it myself. You know, I want to be the Batman of these things. And the one thing that I will do is if I am stuck, I will reach out to the person, like the people that I think are involved in the game you know like I think that makes for an entertaining video I just did one with a boxer I went down the movie rounders with Matt Damon there's a boxing scene at the end where he goes like yeah pay that man he's money

the there's a boxing match going on in the background and I figured out from the clues who that boxer was and then I reached out to him on Twitter and uh we we went on back and forth because there were no videos I thought I had the match but I wasn't 100% sure so I just talked to him and he was like oh yeah you know 10 to 15 years ago all my buddies were so you know excited for me and I didn't know what they were talking about but i was a movie star you know so so he had already heard but uh yeah that i i like confirming with them i don't love going to experts i will say because this is the thing is a lot of the time people will comment on my you know on my videos and be like oh i knew it from the start. I'm a huge whatever fan. And it's like, well, they probably knew the stadium, right? And maybe they knew the game. I don't know. But that makes sense. If you're

a fan of that team, that makes sense that if you look at it and you know, whatever, you see this certain guy. So I don't love doing that because that kind of, you know, it's too easy, right? Yeah, right. It's almost like you're artificially handicapping yourself in a sense. I mean, you could crowdsource it, right, and put it out there to the million people who follow you and probably someone in that group would recognize it. Is a fan of that team at that certain era and they go, well, I know what that is. Yeah, that's no fun. Yeah, right.

It's like obviously we're all fans of teams and have watched hours and hours of this. Like we were saying at the start, it's like you are an expert on that team. But it's like the fun of these videos is like, how do you expand outside of that team and expand outside of your country and expand out of the sport? That's what I think is interesting. Yeah, right. And expand out of the sport. That's what I think is interesting. and you could start talking to people and that's not cheating or anything. I mean, it's a different way of being diligent and going super deep on these things. I think that's still entertaining, but it's just a different process. So, and I love the research part of it. I really do.

Like I love watching old games and reading newspapers and stuff like that. I find that fun whenever I have to like reach out to someone it is pretty nerve wracking and like yeah what do i say and but i will say doing all of those things like doing all these videos has made me you know i've got a big head now and there's a couple of people who have reached out to me who are like you should try and solve crimes and i have i have three or four sports related crimes that i'm actually looking into and reading everything i can about it and have reached out to a couple people about certain things so that's a little teaser for hopefully but here's the thing doing these videos there

there is a conclusion to all of them right and the thing i'm learning about actual mysteries is sometimes there's not a clean conclusion, right? Yeah. And so I will say it's difficult for me to make a video with not having the answer. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so, yeah, we'll see where that goes. That sounds exciting. Yeah.

I see a narrative podcast in your future or a vodcast or whatever. I guess you kind of need the video component. But yeah, I was going to say, I mean, I like that you sort of hold yourself to this strict way of doing it. But if you ever do determine that there are just some that you can't solve, you know, I was thinking of like there was this mathematician David Hilbert in 1900, and he published what are called the Hilbert problems. It was like a list of 23 unsolved mysteries, basically, of mathematics, and he just put it out there. And once people put those lists of like, well, I throw up my hands, like these are the big mysteries, and then everyone can pick away at them, right? And you get that sort of

crowdsourced element. So if you ever retire or if you just decide I cannot solve this, then I hope you'll put out like the Arujo problems or something so that like people can collectively come up with answers. Yeah, so if there's any cricket fans watching, like I will definitely put out that video. You can go check it out.

The reason I want it so bad is this guy on The Athletic, I can't even remember his name, he was like, no problem, gambler cannot figure this one out. And I refuse to believe that I cannot figure it out. But yeah. Is baseball any easier just because of the amount of data that's out there? I mean, I guess with most major sports, you can at least like look up when games took place and that sort of thing. And you don't necessarily need to look down to, I don't know, the individual pitch level, or maybe you do,

but just because everything in baseball is so quantified and so tracked, and there's just such a long history of recording every last detail of everything that happens on the field. I wonder whether that makes things any easier when you do do a baseball investigation. When you get down to trying to find the game, you know, that's when that's important, right? When you're trying to figure out what team this is or, you know, any of those things, you know, baseball is, I'll say this,

American football is the hardest. It's the hardest to find because a lot of the shots are just the field and the players so if you don't have the jerseys it's pretty tough right because you're just looking at a grass field i would say that baseball because of the uniqueness of the field sometimes is helpful but when it's just the pitcher and the batter, dude, it's very tough to try and decipher what stadium they're in. Right. Yeah. Do you have a favorite baseball one that you've done? Well, I'll say the last baseball one I did, it happened close to me. And so I actually had the program from this exact year that the game was happening in so i thought it was pretty cool

that i was like a part of this i wasn't at the game or anything like that but it was like not my hometown team but it's the team that i went to the most as a kid and so i i liked that i was able to like kind of relate to it it did make it like somewhat easier i will say but yeah they they had actually gone out of their way and like stripped the jerseys of their logos and everything. Which show was this or which game? Jane the Virgin. It happened. It was the Winnipeg Gold Eyes and the Fargo Moorhead Red Hawks.

Right. Yeah. So I guess the licensing fees for the Gold Eyes and the Red Hawks probably pretty affordable. Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. And have you ever heard from someone after you posted a video, someone who's involved in the production maybe and said either confirmed that you were right or was just amazed that you did this or thought it was kind of cool that you had highlighted their show or their appearance or whatever the thing is in a production it is so small and like steven found this out with the one we did is like he asked the producer of it and he was like i have no idea that is such a small minute detail that i have no idea i don't even know who picked it. I don't know if anyone, you know, was even around for, you know, when that decision was made. So I've never been reached out to by like a TV producer or anything like that.

The one I will say is I, I was sure that Buffalo Wild Wings was using fake games in their commercials because I, I mean, basketball is pretty easy to figure out because of the floorboards are so you know distinct but i was sure that they were using fake games i was like these games do not exist in the world and then i had the guy who made the commercial reach out to me and show me that uh they are they are indeed fake i can't remember where they were made they were fake slovenian basketball games they're like they they use these stock footage whatever and so like they're just using random like he said like some of the fans in the crowd are cardboard and they just like spend a you know spend a day i guess everyone did right yeah they spend like a day filming all of these

different basketball shots i don't know it was it was wild to actually see that is there any in 2020 I guess everyone did right yeah they spend like a day filming all of these different basketball shots I don't know it was it was wild to actually see that is there any specific software that you use to slow these things down like go frame by frame like any tools of the trade or like you know a certain monitor or lighting or just anything that you can use to to glean any little morsel of information i wish i had a cool answer it's literally all off my phone okay it's it's just looking at it the hardest thing is trying to find an hd stream on on the internet that you can record because netflix doesn't let you record and disney plus doesn't let you record so it's trying to find an hd fully legal obviously of course yes yes

stream of these movies but uh i mean as ridiculous as it sounds i do use a magnifying glass sometimes so i am like literally sherlock holmes at that point but uh yeah there's no like tricks or anything like that right i mean i'm sure i've you have almost a million followers i'm sure i'm almost the millionth person to say that it would be great if the CSI style enhance, you know. Yes, if that existed. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I assume that like if this were a matter of national security or something as opposed to a TikTok account. Well, sometimes TikTok is a matter of national security, but not in this sense. is a matter of national security, but not in this sense. But if this were national security was at stake and state secrets, I'm sure that there are various video technologies. I mean, there's all

kinds of technology that can make old video games look better than they did at the time by using AI to spruce it up and make it higher res and all that sort of stuff. So I'm sure that if this were a matter of utmost importance, that there probably is some fancy video technology out there that you could use. If you enlisted some video specialist, computer programmer technology, that's the next step when you form your company or your team. How do you unscramble this? Yeah, exactly. No, that would be perfect for me actually. Right. How long a to-do list do you have currently? I guess like ones on the back burner where you've kind of conceded that you can't make any more progress now, but maybe you hope that you can one day and ones that you are actively working on? So I will say requests.

I'm not even joking. I have 250 in my Word document. And I haven't even looked at those that I haven't even looked at. Then I have about 50 that I have looked at and I have down like on my phone that I've like looked at. and I have down like on my phone that I've like looked at. And then I would say six or seven good ones that are on the back burner that I will never give up on. But yeah, like they're definitely on the back burner.

I've decided to like move on to other videos and stuff like that. But I will say out of that 250, I would say there's maybe like 50 good ones. Hopefully there's 50 good ones. I mean, out of that 250, I would say there's maybe like 50 good ones. Hopefully there's 50 good ones. I mean, out of that 250, there are some that are like so blatantly obvious, right? It's like, you know, I don't know how many times I've gotten the day after tomorrow. It's like there's Manchester United all over the...

This is beneath me. This is way beneath me. I would get crucified if I were to do that video. They'd be like, this is garbage. So yeah, so like out of that 250, there's maybe 50 good ones. Have any copycat accounts sprung up trying to hone in on your territory here? Honestly, no. I welcome it because you have to be an insane person to do this but yeah like i mean i think it is such a specific and like niche thing that it's like if someone were to start doing it they probably would get the like oh you're just copying this person and i don't think that's

really great either it's like i think it's fun when other people would join in and stuff i've actually had like fans of mine not people who like run tiktok accounts but like have like shown me hey i found this one and it's like you know it's actually funny like some of the time they're just like completely wrong but i'm like oh yeah that's cool amateurs it's like someone was like telling me they were like the the game in batman rises is a miami heat game and i looked at it for a second and i was like that's definitely not a miami heat game and then i started doing that one it's coming up because i figured this one out but they were like it's a miami heat game well i looked at this it's a women's basketball game. How is it a Miami Heat game?

It's not even close, but whatever. If people want to do it, they should do it. Is your career or your expertise or your history, I don't know if you divulge your details of your personal life or professional life outside of this, but is it in any way connected to this or did it in any way prepare you for this? Or do people in your day job, if this is not your day job, know that you have this alter ego doing these deep dives? I mean, people know that I'm a sports dork. I went to school for sports management. I work in that. So it's not a huge secret, but I will say for a year and a half, my wife, my girlfriend at the time, my wife now was the only one in my life that knew I was doing it.

Like nobody else. She still married you. Yeah, exactly. So I didn't like advertise it to the people around me, but everyone knows, like I'm a huge nerd for sports. I go to a ton of sports. It wouldn't be in a character. Yeah, exactly. And I guess, I don't know whether this is good or bad, but I guess it will get easier to do this over time. What with everything being HD and everything increasingly being 4K, right? And actors will talk about like, oh, they can't hide a zit anymore, right? And so I guess it will be even easier to identify these things in theory. But again, I don't know if that's good because the difficulty is part of the appeal here. But future generations will have an easier time of doing this in theory than you.

Yeah, I'll be the old man shouting at the clouds in my day. Back in my day. Standard definition. Yeah, exactly. Well, this has been a ton of fun. and the whole account is a ton of fun. How can people add to your very long list of suggestions if they're interested? Best way of doing it is just commenting on my TikToks. Send me DMs if you want.

But yeah, that's at no problem gambler on TikTok. Are you able to or are you interested in monetizing this in some way? I mean, you mentioned that you're working on other projects, but just in terms of the TikTok videos, like has this led to more exciting opportunities than getting to talk about it on Effectively Wild? Yeah. I mean, these videos themselves, I haven't made any money on them. The account, I used to be like a gambling guy, right?

That's where the name came from. I made quite a bit of money, but I kind of got, you know, bored of like the sports gambling hot take kind of minutia of it all. But I will say that more people have like more sponsors and stuff like that. And my account has gotten bigger. This is the most relevant I've ever felt. You know what I mean? Is like, I wasn't doing interviews when I was, you know, doing sports betting because there's a million people doing it, right? Plus the people who actually know what they're doing are probably less likely to give interviews.

But yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I think now that i've kind of separated myself as like this like specialty account more people have like sponsors and stuff have reached out to me i haven't bid on any of them but i am looking towards that if i could do you know these videos and like i said where i'm doing like you know solving actual crimes stuff like that if i could make videos like that and make money and be happy i I would love that. Right. Yeah. But maybe in the future. Put your powers to use. And I guess you've you've branched out into just sort of being a sports media pundit person. Right. I mean, you know, you'll put out your your NFL picks and that sort of thing or you'll make montages, things that are not your, your, you know, trademark kind of video,

right? So I'm sprinkling that. And do you get people who are like, stick to the video investigations? Like, I don't know. See, I've kind of put that stuff in the past and I have people now being like, why don't you make your old videos anymore? And actually there's like a thing that people don't realize the old videos that I was doing. I was doing like a kind of like the SportsCenter top 10, you know, what my impression of that TikTok doesn't allow that anymore. They were taking down all the audio of my videos. They were taking, you know, they were banning my account because I was using like copyrighted videos of the games and stuff.

So I, I had to change my content and I think i changed it for the better to be honest yeah but yeah like i do have people being like why don't you ever make those videos anymore it's like i literally cannot i my my account will be banned have you had issues rights issues with with the sports ones i mean with what you're doing now no never because i think uh i'm providing like a fair use sort of. Exactly, exactly. Where I'm not like, I'm not showing, I'm not showing the game and using the audio from the game and I'm not showing the movie

and using the audio from the movie. You know, it's, I'm talking over it. So I think it's different. Yeah. Well, really enjoy it and have enjoyed talking to you today. And I'm sure there are people kicking themselves like, oh, I could have done this.

Why didn't I do this? You know, like other people have done these deep dives before, but you're just the acknowledged expert. You're proficient. You've hit on the right format and the right medium and the right time.

And it is clicked. And now you're just the market leader. So you've got a monopoly over the space almost. It would be tough to unseat you now. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, Ian, great to talk to you. Thanks very much. All right. Appreciate having me on.

All right. Love talking to Ian. Please do check out his videos if you haven't yet. Also in this genre, I enjoyed the two-part investigation that Brian Feldman did for Defector this year on the secret history of the Internet's funniest buzzer beater, that ancient low-resolution video of the little kid getting hit in the head by a buzzer beater in a basketball game. And Brian was able to determine the origins of that clip. I'll link to that on the show page too. But we've got one more great interview coming up for you, and it's about Bo Jackson. I will be right back with Jeff Perlman to discuss his new book, The Last Folk Hero, The Life and author of 10 books, the latest of which concerns someone who I'm surprised doesn't have a whole shelf full of books about him, Bo Jackson. This book builds accurately, I think, as the definitive bio of Bo is called The Last Folk Hero, The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson.

Jeff, congrats on reaching a double-digit book count, and welcome to the show. You know what? I only did it for one reason, and it's to appear on your podcast. That is the only reason. I've waited all my career, starting 20 years ago, led to this moment. Well, glad to fulfill your dreams. And I'm going to try to avoid making more Bo Knows jokes during this conversation, but I will allow myself one at the start, which is that Bo knew apparently that writing a book about him was going to be hard. He told you that during the one quick call you had with him and he was right. So aside from the

fact that he didn't want to talk to you for the book, which maybe made it slightly more difficult, why was it hard to tell his story? Oh man, he's so guarded. He's so guarded. He is a clam in a shell. He is as guarded as you can be. And it's hard when, I mean, it's weird. I don't think I've ever written about someone like this, where you're so well-known, but so guarded at the same time. That's a rare combination. It sounds like possibly a fruitful one for a biographer because everyone knows who it is, but people may not know that much about him. And I do think so. I do think so. But I just think it is a little bit of a challenge when a guy is really, really, really, really guarded and at the same time, super famous. And so you're trying to

convince people there's a reason to write a biography because they think they know everything about someone. And you're like, no, you actually know nothing about this guy. And I'm going to try to prove that. But it's a challenge. Well, it's not your first biography. It's not your first unauthorized biography. So you're used to writing around a subject and finding a way to tell someone's story, perhaps without their participation.

And if access to the subject were all that mattered, then there wouldn't need to be a Bo Jackson biography because he wrote an autobiography with Dick Schappen. That would just be all you need to know. But of course, there is more to it than that. So what is your strategy? It seems like just possibly excessive amounts of research is one way around not talking to the person at the center of the story. But how do you kind of compensate for not getting something straight from the horse's mouth? Although I guess in this case, you did have some notes that were prepared and made public from the autobiography. So that helped.

So my approach is just like, go for it all. It truly is. Go for it all. When I was at Sports Illustrated, Gary Smith was this great writer. And I heard him say, he didn't say it to me, but I heard him say, always make the extra call, always make the extra call, always make the extra call. And that's kind of my approach. Always make the extra call. Like I'll have people every now and then be like, man, you're a great reporter. And I'm like, I'm actually not a great reporter. Like

I'm not great with finding things. I'm not amazing at documents, et cetera. I'm not that great at that, but I am good at calling and making the extra call, making the extra call. And with this book, as you alluded to, like Dick Schaap wrote Bow Nose Bow in 1990. And before he died, he gave all his notes, tapes, et cetera, to the Auburn library. And I didn't know about this, but I was working on the book and someone said, you know, Dick Schaap donated, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I reached out and I don't think anyone had touched this stuff in 30 years. I really don't. And it was a freaking avalanche of material.

Number one, it was all the audio recordings from a 28-year-old Bo talking about his life and career. Number two, it was all transcribed, much of it by Jeremy Schaap, a young Jeremy Schaap at the time, his son. And a ton of it never made the book, a ton of it. And the interesting thing journalistically is maybe a ton of it didn't make book, a ton of it. And the interesting thing journalistically is maybe a ton of it didn't make the book because he didn't want it in the book. But I just kind of thought it was public information. It was donated to a library. People go to a library to read

stuff. I think that gives me kind of access to it. And that was sort of a big moment for me, finding that. Right. So folk heroes can be completely real or completely fictitious. And he is obviously real, but there's an element of myth to him. So how much of the bow we know, those of us who haven't written books about him, is real? A very large percentage, actually. Now, what I found really fun was sort of digging behind the mythology. And, you know, a perfect example is the 91-yard run on Monday Night Football against the Seahawks, which is really part one of a two-part bonanza, the other being him running over Bosworth in the same game. And all right, so we have this run. We've seen it a million times. What can I do with a run we've

seen a million times that everyone knows from a certain era? Well, you start calling people, and you call more people. And I talked to Dave Craig, the Seahawks quarterback, and he was talking about how he was standing on the sidelines when Bo ran past and he swore by this. He's like, I heard the whoosh. Like I heard as Bo and he's like, that's the only time in my career. I heard a whoosh. And then I talked to one of the coaches and he was standing by the sideline and he was holding papers loosely in his hand.

And he said, Bo runs by and the papers went and like kind of fell out of his hand. Now, I don't know, it sounds kind of crazy, but both these guys swore on it. And then you dig deeper and deeper and you look at the run and you notice it's not just a run. Seven different Seattle players had angles on him.

And the second to last guy to have an angle on him happened to be Hall of Fame safety Kenny Easley. And Bo ran through all those angles, one after another, after another. So like, I love that stuff. I love the wall climb in Baltimore when, you know, like it's insane to watch him climb up that wall. It's ridiculous. But then you start talking to people. And I talked to guys from the Orioles bullpen who were behind the wall and they said they recoiled because they actually thought he was coming over the wall. Like that's crazy.

But then you watch replay and you're like, oh, I actually get it because his head is high, you know? And like you could see it. So I love taking the myths and then take them apart piece by piece. Right. That story about him actually making a whoosh reminds me of the Buck O'Neill story, right? About how he heard the crack of the bat, what, three times in his life and ran out to see who hit it. And it was Babe Ruth and Josh Gibson and Bo Jackson.

All right. And I'm going to tell you something interesting. I don't buy that, right? Like I've heard that. I just don't buy it. It just doesn't, I don't buy it because- I was going to ask you, my next question was going to be, what are some Bo stories that you don't believe? So this is perfect. I'll give you some, I just, the thing is I covered a ton of major league baseball and people would be like, you need to watch McGuire taking BP. It doesn't sound like anyone else. And then they'd be like, you need to watch bonds, take BP. It doesn't send, you need to watch Griffey. And they all kind of sounded the same to me. Maybe I'm untrained. I don't know. I watch a lot of baseball. I don't know, but there were, all right, myth said that, all right,

number one myth that isn't true. And it's funny because it really was a guiding principle for me early on. And then it turned out not to be true. Is Bo wrote in his autobiography that he started his Auburn baseball career, baseball, not football, by going 0 for 21 with 21 strikeouts. And when I pitched the book to people, I would cite i'd be like this is crazy he even went over 21 with 21 strikeouts and i started interviewing guys from auburn's baseball program and they're like you know it's crazy he went over 21 with 21 strikeouts and like that's how this stuff works sometimes like it catches fire and all right so i i call up auburn and i get all the box scores. Bo Jackson's first college game, Southern Illinois, two for five. First at bat, beat a grounder to shortstop for an infield hit.

So like, all right, that's not true. I get it's a cool story, but it's actually not true. Then there's some where you're like, I don't know how this is. There's a game, my favorite game probably of Bo Jackson's life is one that's not on tape and it's his junior year. He's at Auburn and they're playing the first night game at the University of Georgia's baseball stadium, Foley Field. First night game ever there. And it's a packed crowd.

It's kind of a big deal. Lithograph, tickets, the whole thing. Bo's in right field, and the fans are just giving him grief the whole time because there's still this Bo Herschel thing, even though Herschel's gone. Bo's first at bat. He flies out. He returns to right field. The fans just beat the crap out of him. Everything you can call a guy, they're calling a guy.

But he comes up for his second at bat. It's a first night game. And he hits a ball that hits the lights, like actually hit the lights. And this is 39 days before The Natural came out in movie theaters. His next at bat, he hits another home run. His third at bat, fourth at bat, he hits another home run. So he goes fly out, homer, homer, homer. His last at bat, he doubles and the whole stadium boos him. And that is a true, verified, documented, written about Bo Jackson because the reality is larger than life as it is.

So it's gilding the lily, really, to have to say, oh, he went over 21 with 21 strikeouts. It's impressive enough just to quote the actual stats and cite what he actually accomplished. I don't think he was lying. I don't think he was lying. I really don't. I think he was probably like, I think somewhere. It's interesting. The other day he was on Rich Eisen's show. This is right before my book came out. So

it's about three weeks ago and he was on Rich Eisen's show. And Rich asked him, what's the greatest moment of your professional sports career? And he didn't flinch. He's like, it was July so-and-so 1990. I was on the Royals. We were hosting the Brewers and I struck out and I argued strike three. So I would get called out of the game, thrown out of the game. So I could go see, be in the hospital from the birth of my daughter. And he told this story and it was, he told it twice.

I heard him tell it on another station too. And I'm like, I don't know. That doesn't sound that familiar. And I look it up and on the date he gave, the Royals were hosting the Red Sox. Bo Jackson didn't play because he was injured. And then I looked at the whole season. Bo Jackson was never thrown out of a game that year. Like not one time. I don't think he's lying. I think memory is a

tricky thing. So that's why when someone like Bo Jackson tweets out, which he did, you can't believe it. It's not from me. You can only believe it if it's from me. I always think journalistically, it's such a flawed way of thinking because you're going to remember, go off your memories, and I'm going to go off research and memories, but mainly research. Right. Yeah. It's like the Rob Neier idea of the tracer that he used to do where he would look up, you know, so-and-so claimed that I did this on this day. And then you find out, well, that can't have happened because those players never played in that game. You know, memory is fallible. And there's a little motivated storytelling that creeps in from time to time. Is there one that sounds like a tall tale, but actually checked out? And maybe it's the one you

were just telling me about hitting the lights and getting booed after you doubled. But I wonder whether any underappreciated, not the pantheon of Bo's stories, but something you uncovered that you weren't aware of, perhaps. Can I give you two? Sure. Give me as many as you want. All right. So one is he shows up in 87 with the Raiders. It's his first season. And you know, there's all this buzz about how fast Bo Jackson is. Tom Flores is a head coach of the Raiders and they have Bo run a 40 on grass in pads and he does a 419 and they don't believe it. Like it just doesn't make sense. So they have him run it again. They measure off the distance and make sure it believe it. Like, it just doesn't make sense. So they have him run it again. They measure off the distance and make sure it's right,

and he runs a 4-1-7, which is just insane. He also, along those lines, his first major league at bat against the White Sox for the Royals, he beat out a ground ball to second base, and he ran a 3-6 to first, which was the second fastest recorded time in history by a right-handed hitter home the first in the majors. But the other one I love is he's in high school. I now told this story 8 000 times i'm not gonna lie but i just love it so much he's in high school he plays a macedonia high in alabama they're playing

fairfield high i start hearing these stories that oh man do you know about the ball that was hit against fairfield that he hit against fairfield and i'm like no and they're like you need to find out about this ball you have to find about that this ball. You have to find about that. This thing is crazy. It's the craziest thing I've ever seen. And I'm like, okay. And people start saying Bo hit a ball so high in a high school game that by the time it came down and touched the grass, he was rounding third base. And I thought that, no, that doesn't make any sense. But I start talking to people and people will be like, you need to talk to this guy. You need to talk to this guy. All right, I'll talk to this guy. It's one step removed from the cool Papa Bell is in bed before the lights go out

after he flips the switch. Yeah. Exactly. So I don't buy it. I just don't buy it. But then you need to talk to Eddie Scott. Well, who's Eddie Scott? Eddie Scott was playing left field for Fairfield that day. So I tracked down Eddie Scott,

the outfielder who fielded the ball. And he's like, Jeff, I swear to God, he hit the ball so high this guy eddie scott wound up playing in college in alabama and he said he it's the highest hit ball i've ever fielded or seen in my life i lost it in the sky for a minute it came down it hit the grass i'd pick it up i looked to throw it a second and bow was rounding third and he swore by it. And I recently did a book event in Birmingham and this guy walks up, he's wearing a mask, kind of gray hair. And he's like, Jeff. And I'm like, yeah. And he goes, Eddie Scott. And I was like, oh my God, Eddie Scott. And he's like, I heard you talking about me on the Today Show. And I'm like, damn right,

Eddie Scott, because you're the man. So, you know, kind of amazing. in the Today Show. And I'm like, damn right, Eddie Scott, because you're the man. So it's kind of amazing. When did the legend of Bo begin? By which I mean, at what point did it become incredibly clear that this was a special athlete? I think it would be his freshman year at Auburn when they lost nine straight Iron Bowls against Alabama, which is Iron Bowls, obviously the Auburn-Alabama game. And Bow comes in and late in the game, there's this play Bow over the top. That's literally what they called it. It was the only play named for a player. Everything else was, you know, numbers and letters, but Bow over the top. Auburn's trailing. It's late in the game. They're at the one yard line of Alabama.

They hand the, Randy Campbell hands a ball off to Bow. He soars over the top and they win. And Bow over the top is absolute legend in Auburn to this day, in the state of Alabama to this day. There are photos of it hanging places. Everyone knows Bo over the top. And it took him to a new level. It's funny because Bear Bryant retired at the end of that season and then died shortly thereafter. So it was almost truly like a changing of the guard where Bear Bryant, the iconic Alabama football, face of Alabama football was leaving and a new homegrown Alabama face of football, Bo Jackson was arriving.

And the funny thing about that game is, and nobody remembers this, Auburn got the ball back. They were up a minute and something left. Bo, they did another third down, Bo over the top. He fumbled and Alabama recovered and Auburn got really lucky that the defense held, but Bo over the top could have been Bo fumbles and they lose the And Auburn got really lucky that the defense held. But Bo over

the top could have been Bo fumbles and they lose the game, but they got lucky. But that moment is still one of the most famous plays in the history of Auburn football, if not the most. So you've written about people who are not the most personable at times, at least in public or with the media, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens or Brett Favre, for that matter, checkered past, let's say. And Bo, you know, has some of those qualities, some of that Bondsian-ness to him, some surliness or suspiciousness or just reticence, right? And you'd tell some stories in the book. I mean, you'd talk about how he's so fiercely protective of his autograph and he wouldn't sign anything for a former teammate unless they handed over the cash, right? And then there's also another genre of bow intensity stories that kind of crosses over to

this guy could be tough to talk to, to, oh, this is actually over the line, right? The Kevin Seitzer story that you tell from when Seitzer was his teammate on the Royals. And look, it sounds like Seitzer was a pain in the ass, but also it sounds like Bo almost killed him. So was that kind of thing the exception? Was that simmering under the surface? I mean, it seems like he's a complicated guy and that he will do a lot of good and generous things and then also sometimes snap to some extent. It's funny.

I've been promoting this book and I keep – I've been – I was using different words to describe him and I settled on a word that I'm standing by which is prickly. He's very prickly. He is not warm and fuzzy. He's I think a good person. After the Valdi shootings, he gave money to the families to pay for funeral expenses. He has a charity bike race every year, Bo Bikes Bama. He's a very good husband by all accounts, a really good dad, a grandfather now, very family-oriented. He's

super guarded. I mean, autograph shows, there are a lot of highs and lows with Bo Jackson. In fact, someone, I did a sign the other day, yesterday in LA, and someone told me, you know the famous Bo poster, the ball player with the bat and he's wearing his football pads? You know what I'm talking about? Mm-hmm, yep. So this guy brought that poster

to have Bo signed at an autograph show. And he said that Bo's people and then Bo said Bo either didn't get paid for that or doesn't feel like he got paid fairly for that for the image and therefore he refuses to sign it and I always think about like you're some guy you love Bo Jackson you pay a hundred bucks to go to this autograph show then you probably pay an extra 60 for a Bo signature and he won't sign the poster because he didn't get you know that's he kind of has that there's a story in the book Greg Townsend was a defensive end with the Raiders

and a teammate of Bo. And they did an autograph show together about a decade ago in Anaheim. And Townsend brought a helmet and a jersey for Bo to sign. And he says, hey, Bo, how's it going? Hey, Greg, what's up? He says, hey, do you mind signing these? And Bo says, well, I'm going to have to charge you. And he's like, what?

And he's like, I'm going to have to charge you. And Townsend's lying to me that he said he said to Bo was, you were an asshole when we played and you're an asshole now. So people are complicated, man. People are complicated. Yeah. And of course, you also wrote a book about the 86 Mets called The Bad Guys Won. So are you just drawn to the prickly people? Are they more interesting? I mean, you're not a lot of the people I wrote about, I mean, Walter Payton was lovely and far of actually considering what a dirtbag he is, was a light guy in the NFL. So it just depends on the, I was writing about Bo because of the mystique more than anything. with in a what-if story, and yet he's sort of a what-if story in himself, right? Because you marvel at everything he accomplished, and then inevitably at some point the conversation turns to what else could he have accomplished, right? If this hadn't happened or if this had happened differently. So do you see it as more one or the other or both equally? Essentially, this is something that no one else could have done,

no one else has really done since. And so this is basically the apotheosis of athletic achievement. Or is it a story of sort of missed opportunity to some extent too? I view it as, it's funny, I asked a lot of athletes, former teammates that question.

Is this a tragedy or, is this more tragedy or bolt of lightning joy yeah and i think by far it's more uh bolt of lightning joy i really do and i feel like for sports writers like myself there's this instinctive need to say what a shame it is oh it's such a shame and it's always like it's such a shame he could have been in both hall of fames or it's such a shame he should be in canton right now. And if we get to the nitty gritty of it, like, okay, so your bust is on a wall in a building in Canton, Ohio. Like, all right, that's cool. And I get you can sign-

He has the fame whether he's in the hall or not. Right. You can charge more for autographs because you can write HOF on it. I get that's cool. But like, he's the greatest athlete who ever lived. And if he had just said, I'm just going to play baseball, or I'm just going to play football, we would never know that. So I, I think it's amazing. All right. So if he had just played football, he'd be right there with Eric Dickerson and Marcus Allen and Walter Payton. If he'd just played baseball, maybe he'd be there. Maybe he'd be there with Mike Trout and Clemente, maybe with those guys, but like he's there with Jim Thorpe. Like he actually is there with Mike Trout and Clemente. Maybe he'd be with those guys. But like he's there with Jim Thorpe.

Like he actually is there with Jim Thorpe and Carl Lewis and guys like that. He's not on the list of the greatest baseball players of all time. He's not on the list of the greatest football players of all time. He's on the list of the greatest athletes to ever walk the planet. That's insane. Yeah, right. That's quite a legacy. And I wonder the fact that that has held up, whereas, you know, it's been decades since he was an active player. And over that time, in general, athletes, they keep getting bigger, they keep getting stronger, they keep increase in every field, then it may be more and more difficult for someone to come along and do what he did, even if athletically they are just as gifted or even more gifted. think he will be surpassed, can be surpassed? I mean, look, eventually everyone is forgotten,

right, on a long enough timescale. But in our lifetimes, let's say however long that is, can someone come along and wipe the floor with Bo Jackson's memory? Or is it just a legacy that really cannot be topped given the current conditions? That's a great question. So there's a couple of things. Number one, there's so few two sport athletes anymore. Like it's not even allowed anymore. I live in Southern California and I would say, as soon as a kid shows he can like dribble or basketball, oh, we gotta get him a tutor and we gotta get him,

we need to sign him up for AAU ASAP. And like, well, no, mom, I kind of want to play baseball. No, you can't play baseball. Cause, and that's really lost, right? And the whole, I know I'll sound like grandpa Jeff here, but like the whole, I'm going to go play pickup for three hours with my buddies. I'm going to go play kill the carrier with my buddies for two hours. Like that's dead.

That doesn't exist anymore. And that's what those athletes grew up on. You know, they really did. So I think that's a big factor is we're not really developing athletes in that way. And the other thing is that I really think matters in the legacy of Bo Jackson. Okay. We have all his great plays. We think matters in the legacy of Bo Jackson. Okay. We have all his great plays. We have the 91 yard run, just as an example. Well, Derek Henry's made some amazing runs, you know, pick a running back. He's made Saquon Barkley amazing runs. We have the Harold Reynolds throw. Well, Ellis Valentine made amazing throws and

Clemente did. Nobody has climbed up a wall. Like nobody, not one person before he did it or after he did it, no one has ever climbed up a wall. And I feel like that's the test. If someone comes along and he can climb up a wall in the middle of a game in Baltimore, run across the wall and run down the wall, then maybe we can have the conversation, but no one else can do that. So to me, that being Spider-Man puts you on a different level. Right. Yeah. By the way, I just looked at his Twitter feed and saw that his most recent tweet is about

how he will not be signing any copies of your book. Either way, that is unfair. I am hurt. You did not say my book. Yeah. Not even giving you the promotion. He said, I won't be signing any unauthorized biographies about me. Now, that could be the other unauthorized biography written by some kid in fifth grade.

It could be that. Right. Yep. Well, I did have to ask just a couple of baseballs specifically hypotheticals here. I mean, first of all, yes, the two-sport athlete at that level is essentially unheard of. Now, I've been doing this podcast in various forms for about a decade at this point. And I remember early on having A, conversations about whether a two-sport athlete could happen again, and B, whether a two-way player in baseball could happen again. And at the time,

I think both seemed pretty improbable to impossible. And the former still does. But then, of course, Shohei Otani comes along but then of course Shohei Otani comes along right and Shohei Otani there are t-shirts out there show nose right so he is doing something that was I think equally inconceivable to me quite recently which then makes me wonder is there a possibility that someone else could do that I think it it's even harder, right, to play in two different sports than to play in two different aspects of the same sport, just for all of the reasons that you've already mentioned. But the existence of Otani, it's opened my mind to a lot of possibilities. Well, I think Otani is the closest. When people say, can there ever be another Bo? I'm always like, I think Otani is as close as we get. Yeah. You know, I do.

I think Otani's as close as we get. I do. Yeah. And the other question is, I guess there are a couple of hypotheticals you could have about his baseball career. But first, I will ask this. When people talk about Michael Jordan's minor league numbers as a baseball player, they will rightly point out that A, he got better over time, right? And B, he was so rusty.

He had so little experience that even though his stats on the surface are very unimpressive, given the context, they're actually quite impressive. And some people will say it's amazing that he was able to do what he did. And if he had kept at it, perhaps he could have legitimately made it to the majors, etc. how much would you say it is appropriate to adjust the stats that he actually had without any other timeline alterations or removing injuries or anything, but just the stats that he actually had given that he was devoting himself to football, given that the Royals brought him up with very little minor league experience almost immediately after he was drafted, putting all of that together, how much more impressive are the actual stats in your mind oh man that's a great question first of all if he

had done you know he went to instructional league after his rookie year and he was there for about two weeks and he basically was like this i'm leaving and left yeah he really left he and the guy running it was a coach named joe judge and he's like uh he's like where are you going and he's like i'm leaving i don't want to do this anymore and he went home now he needed instructional league he needed to play in the dominican he needed reps he needed that batch he needed to learn how to hit the other way he needed to learn how to move runners over he needed to learn how to read pictures he was so raw like just raw i mean george brad talked to me about this at length. So did Willie Wilson. Like he didn't really know how to play baseball. He knew how

to react to baseball, which is just a different thing altogether. I think if he had never played football in the NFL, if he just played baseball, went to the winter league, played instructional league, I hate saying he could have been Mike Trout because Mike Trout is one of the three or four maybe greatest players ever. But I think he could have been Mike Trout because Mike Trout is one of the three or four maybe greatest players ever. But I think he could have been Mike Trout. I do. I just think he could have been. I think his athleticism was so phenomenal. His ability to learn things was razor sharp and quick. I just think he hurt. It doesn't matter. When he made that choice to play football, he basically made the decision not to develop in baseball. And so I think his numbers are impressive considering he basically was a wild stallion playing a sport that takes years to learn.

And he just comes up through the system, you know, and let's say, right? And plate discipline, you know, there are a lot of players who are incredibly athletically gifted, but they just don't have the plate discipline gene, whatever that is, right? And there's no real way to know, I guess, whether he could have had it as it was. He struck out a ton for that era, especially, and didn't walk all that much. He wasn't the the biggest hacker free swinger out there but compared to the strikeout rate you know it was a pretty pronounced mismatch there so is that because of the lack of experience that's certainly what you would expect to see given the lack of experience does that mean that he would have been a completely different player if he had gotten that early exposure to pitching i I guess we'll never know for sure. There wasn't that great. I guess there was some progression in his numbers.

You look at his very early seasons, he was striking out more than in his later years, but it's tough. There's just no way to know, but I wouldn't bet against someone with his gifts. I think the thing that you said that's really interesting that I actually really hadn't thought about in any depth is, all right, it's 1982 and the Yankees make him an offer he can't refuse. All right. Yeah. And instead of and they were prepared to and instead of dodging the Yankees at all costs, because basically Auburn put a cocoon around that guy and his mom wanted him to go to college and he'd never left the state except for one time to go to Six Flags. Like he was an Alabama kid. He was afraid of New York. He wasn't interested. Hypothetically, he's drafted by the Yankees in 1982. He plays low level, whatever,

rookie ball. He progresses. He's working with coaches. He's learning how to lay down bunts and sacrifice. He's learning how to run the bases. I mean, there's no reason to think he wouldn't be Mike Trout. And it's fascinating, this idea. There's a good documentary or something to be done on this, right? Bo Jackson as a Yankee, 1980s, makes it up. Let's say he makes it up in 1984, 85. He's in the middle of a lineup with Ricky Henderson, Don Mattingly, and Dave Winfield. He's a Yankee center fielder for

a decade and a half. I mean, do they ever draft Derek Jeter? You know, all these things that fall apart then what happens, but I think he would have been one of the great baseball players of all time. I really do. He was 40, 40 in power and speed. He would have learned some semblance of plate discipline. I think it would have been amazing. I do. I really do in pinstripes in New York. Yeah. Could have been teammates with Deion Sanders potentially. Maybe they wouldn't have needed Deion, but yes. What was it about baseball that he loved, your understanding, just in terms of his respective affections for the two sports? I mean, it seems like baseball was the bigger love or the first love if he had to choose one.

Track. Track was his favorite sport. He loved track. He loved running. He was really good at it. He liked everything about it. Baseball would be a number two. And I feel like football, he liked a lot. I don't think he loved it like passion, like live and die. He wasn't, a lot of the coaches at Auburn sort of bemoaned.

Like Herschel Walker, say what you want about Herschel Walker now. Back then, and maybe this is why Hershel Walker is now, but like you gave him the ball. He didn't even think he just ran. And like, he just ran and ran and ran. He was almost a robot. All right, give me the ball 40 times a game. I will slam my head into opposing defenders.

I don't care. And Bo didn't have that. He was hard and he played hard, but he wasn't living and dying. He never lived and died with a win or a loss. He could take it, you know? So I think, I just think he was a complicated guy. He really was a different level.

Yeah. It's interesting because if track is your first love, if you just really love running, I mean, football, it seems like is the sport more so than baseball that would allow you to exhibit all of your strength and your speed, right? There's a lot of standing around in baseball. Speed and strength are beneficial, of course, but perhaps a little less so than in a sport where how fast you can run and how hard you can hit is really supremely important. So it sort of surprises me, I suppose, that he would prefer baseball to football given

his strengths and given his affection for track. Yeah. Well, the thing about track uh you can't make money in it so like you're one when you're one of 11 kids growing up in best malabama in abject poverty you're probably not going to pick a track career right so having done this do you appreciate admire respect whatever verb you want to use, Bo, more or less than when you began and when he was just the man, the myth, the legend still is. Are you more staggered by the talent and the career having spent years living with this guy in your head? Definitely. Cause he was a, he was a poster on the wall, you know, and he was like replay, he was highlights, but then you start digging into it. I think the thing, honestly, and it always sounds like cliche when we talk about athletes

this way, but like he really came from nothing, like not just nothing, but nothing, nothing. His dad living across town, having nothing to do with him, wearing his sister's hand-me-down shoes to school, a bully, a thick stutter, held back, mom working three jobs, no running water in his childhood home. He came from nothing. And when you see someone come from nothing and become something this big and this meaningful, it's different than just having a poster on your wall. You kind of see behind the poster. So a million times more impressed and appreciative of Bo Jackson having gone through this ride. And if he had consented to talk to

you for the book, is there something that you wish that you could have asked him? Or did you just speak to so many sources that you feel like you have as good a picture now as you would had you gotten to ask him something? No, there are a couple of things I'm really fascinated by. Number one is race in Auburn. I talked to Lionel James james his his friend roommate and fellow running back and lionel james died a few months ago which sucks but i interviewed him before he died and he just talked about both sophomore year that the athletic dorm was under renovation so all the all the players had to live in these mobile housing units around auburn and pat died the football coach this is lionel james telling me this said told him and bo i know you guys are fooling around with the

white women i don't have a problem with it but I don't know how that's going to go over here at Auburn. So we're going to put you way off campus so people won't see it. And I'm fascinated by that. Fascinating. The other thing is, and the one thing about, I love Bo's autobiography. It came out in 1990. I was 17. I love that book. I loved it as a kid, loved it. But researching him, there was a guy named Greg Pratt, who was his teammate at Auburn, and he was a fullback. And during a drill, Bo's sophomore year, Greg Pratt died of heat stroke. And this was a close friend of Bo's. And I dove hardcore into Greg Pratt, spoke to family members, spoke to friends, spoke to a million teammates about watching him die. He's sitting in the shower under cold water and he says to Lionel James,

Lionel, tell my mom I'm going to be okay. Bo and Lionel rush off to the hospital. It's this really profound moment of young loss for Bo Jackson and not a word of it in Bo Knows Bo. And it was something that absorbed me for a long time, and I definitely would want to ask him about that. Yeah. Do you enjoy doing what you do now mostly, which is devoting yourself for years at a time to a deep dive on a certain person or a certain subject more so than being a columnist day-to-day, week-to-week, and always being able to pump something out, but not being able to do it in the same depth that you can with a book? I do. My main problem with being a sport, the reason I left Sports Illustrated back in like 2003 is I just couldn't watch like Cubs Brewers anymore. I just lost the

passion. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with people who don't have that passion. I actually envy it. I didn't have it. So having to have a take, let's say I was like an LA Times columnist or an Orange County Register columnist and having to have a take on Lakers bucks. I don't think I have that in me anymore, but I do love history and I love tracking things down. I like the idea. I know it sounds corny, but I really felt this with my USFL book a few years ago. I liked the idea that there was this league called the usfl that people had forgotten and you write a book and all of a sudden this sounds dumb but like you're on morning joe talking to people about a league that no one has thought of in years you know what i mean i dig that and i feel that way with bo jackson too like my number one thing

is i love that i'm talking i was on the today show talking about bo jackson and then maybe there's somebody watching that show who's either like, oh my God, Bo Jackson, I hadn't thought of him. Or some kid who's like, mom, is that true? Did he do that? Dad, did he do that? I live for that shit. I really do. It's not about, I'm happy I get to make a living doing this. I don't care if someone takes it out from the library or doesn't even read it. It just sparks interest in the subject. For me, that's money. I love that. Yeah. It's funny. I was just talking to Ian Arujo, who operates a very popular TikTok account where he tries to identify the sports games in footage of the background of sitcoms or other shows. Oh, wow. Yeah. And he was telling me that the USFL is very popular. Often when you see a football scene just on someone's TV in another show that's just supposed to be part of the scenery, he's found that it is very often the USFL.

It is 98% of the time the USFL. I wrote about that in my book because- Yeah, not news to you, yeah. No, but it's crazy how much, I remember like maybe three years ago, I was watching an episode of Friday Night Lights and I'm such a loser. I'm watching it and they're watching TV, they're watching football. And I'm like, Jacksonville Bulls, Chicago Blitz, 1984. Oh my God. You know, like my family's like, get a life, man. Just get a life. the hip because I was imagining that in this baseball only hypothetical, maybe he never hurts

the hip or maybe if it's a degenerative condition, it could have happened anyway, but maybe he doesn't have the severe hip injury that really derailed his career. But you do address that. You do talk to some people about how that injury would have been treated today and how it would have hampered him. So for anyone who was wondering about that particular hypothetical, could you share what you learned? Yeah. I mean, when he hurt the hip in 91 and then he had the hip replacement in 92 and the hip he received, this isn't like an exaggeration.

The hip he received was the same hip your grandma Norma would be getting at the community center in Sunrise Lakes. It was made of plastic. It had metal bolts. getting at the you know community center in sunrise lakes you know like it was like it was made of plastic it had metal bolts it was meant to sustain an elderly person you know walking playing shuffleboard you could do all that stuff take a swim in the pool at the buffet the early bird buffet but it wasn't meant for a professional athlete and the metal bolts would rub against the plastic hip and little plastic shards would fall off into your body.

So he played two full major league seasons on your grandma's artificial hip, which is one of the great under-discussed achievements in pro sports history. And Andy Murray, the tennis player, had a very similar injury to Bo Jackson, except this happened in maybe 2018. And he had a modern hip replacement. And I interviewed the doctor who did it. He said it's a completely different operation now. The technology is better, the materials are better.

And Bo Jackson never would have been able to play football again because if someone hits the hip, that's no good. But maybe instead of running a, let's say at that point he was running a 4-4, maybe he's running a 4-5. But he has the same speed, the same power, the same flexibility, it's just a tiny bit reduced.

So if that injury happens today, it's a totally different story. Right. We can rebuild him. We have the technology. Yeah. All right. Well, go get the book. It's called The Last Folk Hero, The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson. I appreciate the economy of the subtitle there compared to the one for the bad guys win. Oh my God, which I can't, it's always a bad sign when you have a book and you don't know your own subtitle, but I do not know. Wait, a season of brawling, boozing, bimbo chasing, and champions of baseball with Doc, Mookie, Nails, The Kid, and the rest of the something. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. There's been a lot of inflation or expansion in the subtitles of sports books in

general. And you're one of the culprits, I think, but not in this case. That was my editor. I was like, what are you doing? And he's like, no, that book's still my bestseller though. So I can't, I can't complain too much. All right. Well, go to jeffperlman.com for more information. We will link to everywhere you can get the book. You can find Jeff on Twitter at Jeff Perlman. Again, the last folk hero, go get it. Just do not ask Bo Jackson to autograph it. All right. Thanks very much to James, Ian, and Jeff. I enjoyed all of those conversations. I promised you a baseball news brief to end this episode. So here it is. Williams-Ostadillo reportedly has signed with the

SoftBank Hawks of NPB. He is going to Japan. I am happy for him in the sense that I assumed this was financially rewarding for him and he can expect to get more playing time than he got in the majors, but I remain disappointed that he didn't get more playing time in the majors. I still think he could be a passable major league player, at least a replacement level major league player, maybe better. Remember in AAA in the Marlins organization this year, he hit.307,.371,.541. That's a.140 WRC plus and.315 plate appearances. I will note that the steamer projection system does give him a.106 WRC plus for 2023. And look, he could be back. Perhaps his game will play well in NPB and he will earn a return trip to the big leagues,

or maybe he won't want to. But if this does close the book on Williams-Estadio's major league career, maybe he won't want to. But if this does close the book on Williams-Estadio's major league career, he left us with a lot of memories, a lot of memes, and he did what we hoped he would do. He played in 190 games, 588 plate appearances, so essentially a full season's worth of plate appearances. He walked in 1.9% of his plate appearances. He struck out in 4.8%, and he hit 16 home runs. So I don't know that we ever promised he'd be good at baseball. We just promised that he would be the anti-three true outcomes player, that he would not walk and that he would not strike out. And he didn't do those things at a historic rate.

So, so long, Williams. We hope you'll be back. But one way or another, thank you for the memories. And of course, we will keep tabs on how he plays for SoftBank. In possibly bigger news outside of this podcast, there was Astro's front office intrigue, which we hinted at the other day and weeks or months ago. There had been reports of friction between Astro's owner Jim Crane and GM James Click. And clearly there was some fire beneath the smoke there, because after the World Series, Crane extended a one-year offer to Dusty Baker to return as manager and Dusty accepted. But at his age, that wasn't so extraordinary.

However, Crane also extended a one-year offer to James Click, whose contract had expired. And that was extraordinary. A World Series winning GM getting a one-year offer. That would be unusual for any GM, really. So that was clearly a, hey, we'll technically extend an offer here, so you can't say we didn't, but we will make it so insulting that you will not want to stay. So clearly a clash between Crane and Click. And now the GM, who took over for Jeff Luno and continued to steer the team to success, he's a free agent. I'm sure he'll land somewhere. The Rays actually just hired John Daniels, formerly of the Rangers, as a senior advisor. It's not a great time, perhaps, to be

available on the GM market, but I'm sure there will be interest and click. And there's lots of speculation about what the Astros will do. I don't think they would bring back Jeff Lunau, but David Stearns, as we mentioned, of the Brewers, maybe more available than he was before, former Astros executive. The Astros also, by the way, fired assistant GM Scott Powers, whom Click had hired earlier this year. So between that and Azacapa leaving and Pete Petilla leaving, a lot of turnover in the front office of an organization that just won a World Series and has been immensely successful lately. Quite unusual. Was Crane meddling too much? Did he and Click just not get along?

I'm sure more reporting will emerge. And there have been some signings. The Dodgers reportedly re-signed Clayton Kershaw, or are about to, for a one-year, roughly $20 million deal. All is right with the world. Clayton Kershaw should be a Dodger forever, and he should also keep playing Major League Baseball. And the Padres re-signed Robert Suarez

to a fairly lucrative contract, five years, $46 million. So we can get into qualifying offers and the start of free-for-all free agency next week. And maybe we'll do our MLB trade rumors over under draft when Meg is back. The only other notable baseball thing I wanted to mention here is that FTX, the crypto exchange, declared bankruptcy on Friday. Supposedly one of the more reliable crypto exchanges. And this is baseball relevant because just last year, MLB and FTX formed the first ever global sports league hyphen cryptocurrency exchange partnership,

proclaimed the press release. A new long-term global partnership, possibly not as long-term as initially believed. Of course, it's not just MLB that was in bed with FTX. Lots of sports leagues were sponsored by FTX, tons of naming rights. But those FTX patches that the umpires have been wearing, who knows whether we will see those again. And I guess this is not great news for Shohei Otani, who was a spokesperson for FTX, a global ambassador. was a spokesperson for FTX, a global ambassador, and according to his press release last November,

Mr. Ohtani will receive all of his compensation in equity and cryptocurrencies, illustrating his strong belief in both FTX and the crypto industry. I thought it was amusing that Emma Batchelary, friend of the show, resurfaced a quote from one of her articles about crypto being everywhere in sports. This was from this February, quote, The traditional stodginess of umpires might have otherwise seemed like an odd choice for a hot industry like crypto, but that safety was exactly the appeal. For MLB's part, its chief revenue officer, Noah Garden, says the league did its due diligence and determined that FTX was a company, quote, set up to sustain for the future.

They were a company that stood for integrity. If you think of what the umpire stands for in our game, it's integrity. And so if you're going to put a brand on an umpire, you know, technology aside for a second, it has to be something that is complimentary to the person you're putting that on. So that's where this really came together. Speaking of umpires, I saw a report that MLB is going to put Robot UMPs, ABS, the automated ball strike system, in all 30 AAA parks in 2023. Some games will be just Robot UMPs, some games will be the challenge system. So they are clearly building up to the big league rollout. email we got from listener JR about times through the order in the 2022 World Series. JR wrote, I found a rather startling fun fact. Just 37 batters in the 2022 World Series faced the starting pitcher a third time through the order, and 11 of them ended up scoring. This in a series where only 40 runs were scored total across all 436 plate appearances. Starters facing hitters a third time through the order allowed a 1,200 OPS,

while relievers held hitters to a 507 OPS. And he notes the series is littered with examples of games shifting in the batting team's favor at least temporarily when facing the starter for a third time. Of course, Game 1, Justin Verlander, Wach Kyle Schwarber, Real Muto hit a two-run double to tie the game. Astros lost that game. Game two, Wheeler faced Altuve, who singled, and Bregman, who homered, put the Phillies down 5-0. He goes on to list examples in each of the following games. And so he concludes, it makes you wonder whether in future series,

teams in close games will always pull the starter after they face the lineup twice and try to load their bullpens with enough guys who can pitch the rest of the way. He also includes a PS. Relievers did allow a 11-21 OPS while facing hitters for the fourth time in the series, but that's a tiny 11-plate appearance sample, and almost all of the damage was Jordan Alvarez's Game 6 homer off of Jose Alvarado.

JR speculates that the goal going forward will be a seven-pitcher bullpen, plus someone available to pitch in extras, that can pitch four innings in all seven games with no one having to face the top or bottom of the lineup more than two or three times. Not far-fetched. I will link to his data, but thanks for the research. And that brings us to the Pass Blast. This is episode 1928, and so this Pass Blast comes from 1928 and from Jacob Pomranki, Sabres Director of Editorial Content and Chair of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. The headline, 1928 ahead of his time. Jacob writes,

In 1928, National League president John Hadler made a splash at the winter meetings by proposing what he called the 10-man rule, an early version of the designated hitter. The Boston Globe was one of many newspapers that mocked his plan, writing, plan, writing, Mr. Haidler's plan to excuse pitchers from batting and let each team name a man before the game who would bat for the pitcher would help a little, although it would be better not to name the batter and just let the people guess about him as they do in football. What really should be done is to have 30 or 40 players sitting on the sidelines of the baseball field and completely covered with woolen horse blankets so nobody can recognize them.

It should be permissible for a manager to send in these substitutes at any period of the game and for any position. Mr. Haidler is smart enough to see that the trouble with baseball is that it is too easily understood. The success of football from a financial standpoint is due to the fact that at no time is the public allowed to understand what is going on down there on the playing field. Jacob concludes the idea of a DH first surfaced in the 1880s, but this was the first time anyone with any power in baseball circles had made a serious proposal, but Haidler was before his time. It took another 45 years before the American League finally

adopted the DH rule in 1973. Haidler's league, the NL, took nearly a century before allowing the DH in its games. In their defense, the need for the DH wasn't quite as acute 100 years ago-ish when pitchers could handle the bat a bit better relative to the league, but it was clear even then that pitchers were not really qualified Major League hitters. We just had to wait a while. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up

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to the Effectively Wild Discord group, monthly bonus episodes, discounts on merch, ad-free Fangraphs memberships, and more. You can contact me and Meg via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to

Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and Meg and I will be back to talk to you early next week. Tell me what would you do? Oh, terrible favor. And I must ask you all. Be my guest. I owe you nothing. Be my guest.

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