Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2023: What’s Past Blast is Prologue

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

Ben Lindbergh addresses an interview upgrade on the preceding episode, chats with FanGraphs’ Dan Szymborski about Luis Arraez’s chances of batting .400, Stat Blasts (22:36) about extremes in team winning and losing streaks, welcomes in David Lewis (28:00) for the final Past Blast, and talks to prolific science fiction (and baseball science fiction) author Rick […]

A baseball podcast, analytics and stats, with Ben and Meg, from Fangraphs. Effective in the heart. Effective in the heart. Effective in the heart. Hello and welcome to episode 2023 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, my co-host Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, still on the road. She'll be back next time. And in her absence, I've got a grab bag of an episode for you, but I think it'll be a fun one. First things first, on our last episode, episode 2022, we had some sound quality issues in the first segment, my conversation with Russell Carlton of Baseball Perspectives about the

Reds and his new book, The New Ball Game. Russell's sound was muffled, tough to make out at points. Apologies for that. However, after the initial posting of the episode, we did re-edit and re-upload a new version that is much easier on the ears. I informed our Patreon supporters and put notices on Twitter and Reddit and in the Discord group and in the Facebook group, but I wanted to make sure everyone was aware, and so I'm mentioning it here. So if you did download that one immediately, but you haven't gotten to it yet or you didn't make it through that segment, please do delete and re-download the episode. I'm pretty sure a more garbled version of

an interview won't make it a collector's item. In the current version, Russell is much more intelligible, which is good because you wouldn't want to miss a word that Russell Carlton says. Here's the plan for today. I'm going to give you a stat blast a little later on, and then we're going to do an in-person past blast because we have finally caught up to our timeline. So we will officially complete the past blasting. And then in the subsequent segment, we will reveal the successor to the past blast. And I've got a great guest joining me for that. I'll keep you in suspense for the moment, unless, of course, you looked at the episode description. And finally, I'll leave you with some closing thoughts. But first, I wanted to talk about Luis Uriah and his

ongoing chase for a 400 batting average. And who better to tell us how much the odds are against him and how much they're for him than Dan Cymborski of Fangraphs. So he's here now. Well, whenever a player is doing something extremely fun and extraordinary, in comes Fangraphs senior writer Dan Cymborski to be the bearer of bad news. It's probably not going to continue. However, he can put that more precisely than most of us when we just eyeball it and say, yeah, probably not going to happen. And the latest phenomenon he has turned his attention to and trained the attention of Zips,

his projection system on, is Luis Arise, who played his most recent game as we record on Wednesday. He got two hits, of course. It's his 31st multi-hit game of the season. Seems like he could keep this up forever, but will he is the question everyone is wondering if anyone is even taking the possibility seriously.

So Dan has run the numbers, and he is here to share them as he also will in print on Fangraphs.com. Hello, Dan. Hi, Matt. How's it going today? Do you feel bad about dashing our dreams when something fun is happening? When, I don't know, Jacob deGrom is making a run at Bob Gibson's ERA record or whatever it is, and then you have to run the numbers and say, actually, there's a 2.3% chance that that would probably be on the high side

for when you usually do these exercises. I feel a little bad sometimes, but my job really in sabermetrics for the last 20 years is I'm the heavy, I'm the chaotic neutral sabermetrician. It's my job to take your happiness and to make it neutral. Right. Has there ever been a time? I mean, probably last year, I assume you did a Will Aaron Judge hit 62 home runs post, right? And he did do that.

That was maybe more likely at the time. But I wonder how often, I mean, if we were to calibrate your projections here to see there probably haven't even been enough of these extremely rare possible occurrences that you have written about to judge whether you're accurate or not, because they're all so unlikely to happen. I do test in-season projections all the time, but these singular milestone in a season projections are, you don't really do them that often.

I don't sit there and model every player's odds of hitting 400 at every time because generally that's really close to zero. And that we're talking about it at all, not as a joke, indicates that there is a chance. And I'm not even going to say it's zero. It's a real chance. And not in the dumb and dumber, I'm saying there's a chance. There's actually a number you could bet on and not even go rich betting on it because the odds aren't that bad. All right. Well, give us the news. How likely is it that Luis Arias will bet 400 this season and what went into answering that question?

Okay. Well, I ran the numbers through whatever day today is Wednesday's afternoon games. And the odds of 400 or the probability of 400 stands at 2.9%. Okay. All right. That's not bad at all. You're not going to go. You're not going to win a lot of money on a 33 to 1 bet.

I mean, unless you bet like a million dollars. But please don't bet a million dollars on this. Yeah. I wonder what the probability would have been before the season started. I assume a rise probably would have had the highest chance to do it, but it would have been even more minuscule. So he's probably raised his odds quite significantly since then, despite still having pretty minuscule chance to do it. Oh, quite a lot.

If you look at this preseason projection, Zips has always liked a rise as a batting average hitter. It was projecting him to win batting titles before he was even in the majors, which annoyed some people. But I'm like, he's going to hit for a pretty high average. And that hasn't been wrong. In the preseason, Zips had him as a 311 hitter. Now for the rest of the season, Zips sees him as a 334 hitter.

And that's pretty important because that's a pretty significant boost. The projection goes down to around 320 when you're talking next season because in-season numbers tend to be a little stickier. There's gains in batting average on balls in play, those kinds of things. It does seem to be a short-term ability that's sticky in that sense. So Zips is more optimistic about the batting average than the other projection systems are. And the reason that even the 334 in itself wouldn't give him a great chance

because if you did the whole binomial distribution it all out, the reason that even the three 34 in itself wouldn't give him a great chance. Cause you know, if you, if you did the whole, you know, binomial distribution at all out, it would still be like, it would be well under 1%. But the thing is zips knows that it doesn't really know how good he is.

It thinks that on average, he's a three 34 hitter the next year. That's his underlying ability, but he might truly be a three 50 hitter. He might be a 334 hitter the next year. That's his underlying ability, but he might truly be a 350 hitter. He might be a 320 hitter. He might be a 300 hitter. He might be a 380 hitter or even more because essentially it's an answer. You never really know what the underlying probability of any event in baseball is. You can have a player have a career and you still don't really know what the underlying probability is. It's in the ether and we just kind of guess it using logic and math around that. So in the

scenarios that what if he is, because he only has to maintain that level of ability now for a little over half a season, what if he's truly a 350 or 360 hitter? All of a sudden, when that 350 or 360 ability hitter is fortunate and is on the high end of his percentile projections, all of a sudden, that's a guy who could hit 400 over a short period of time. Again, not super likely, but 2.9% is really good, especially in the era we're in. I think it would be more impressive than many 400 seasons just because of the relative league offenses. I haven't run those numbers yet. I will before my article goes live. But even if he comes to, say, 380, I think we could say that's as good as a 400 was 50, 60 years ago. Oh, yeah.

I mean, you could look at average plus on fan graphs, right? Which adjust for the season. And I've mentioned this before, and Bailey from foolish baseball was tweeting about this a couple of weeks ago that if he were to hit, it depends where the league average, uh, well, the league batting average finishes the season. But if it were, you know, where it is now, roughly, he could probably hit 380 something and he would have the highest average plus, you know, batting average relative to the league of any qualified hitter in modern baseball history, right? And it would be as impressive as some actual 400 hitters if he were to hit 388 or whatever it is in 2023. Because, I mean, so many things are going against him, right?

Just everything is stacked against him. And there's a sad realization that I probably shouldn't be saying 50 or 60 years ago anymore. Because that now only puts us in the 60s and 70s. It was 50 or 60 years ago when I was getting into baseball, but I'm 45 now, and I was just thinking, oh, 50, 60 years ago, that's the late 60s. That was not a good time to hit for offense. No, right.

For batting average or any kind of offense, really. Yeah, those are about as bad as now or recently, right? So, yeah, I mean, it's the league average is low. He has to face so many different pitchers over the course of a season and over the course of a game. I mean, he's an outlier

when it comes to strikeouts as well. And I guess before the season started, you didn't know exactly what the scoring environment would look like. What with all the rules changes, you made some educated guesses. I don't know how close they were

to what we've seen thus far. Not too bad so far. Zips tends to assume a running weighted average, and that's kind of worked out this year. But I mentioned it on Twitter recently that when you see one of these high 90 mile per hour two-seamers that have you know a foot and a half of bend in the of fade you think it's a miracle that anybody ever gets a hit at all right let alone 40 of the time that's just absurd yeah yeah and does your system sort of account for the fact that he's strange in the sense that he has managed to outperform his expected stats. If you look at, say, StatCast, for instance, and it sort of makes sense that he would because he seems to have traits as a hitter that are not really replicable or common, but he

obviously he doesn't hit the ball super hard. He also doesn't miss hit the ball very often. Right. And he hits it kind of, you know, consistently line drives in that window, that donut hole where because he's not hitting it so hard, it will drop in. a singles hitter, but he has a repeatable skill for that. Whereas if you were just to look at his exit speed or just launch angle or whatever, and not look at the spray angle and all the other factors and how he's consistently managed to do those things, you might think what he's doing is even flukier than it is. I mean, it's probably somewhat fluky. You don't bat almost 400 without some fluke going your way, but maybe a little less fluke than you would think just looking at some of his numbers. Well, the good news for him in this sense is that Zips has its own kind of version of the StatCast XStats. I call it ZStats, which the Z stands for Zips, because I'm super creative in that way. The way that I named my projection system

the Zaborski projection system, but it likes him better than StatCast does, and his Z batting average has been in the 350 range. Zips also looks at direction of balls hit. Zips looks at player speed, and Zips looks at play discipline because that can be a lagging or leading indicator of future performance. So Zips probably puts the best case for a rise of any of the projection systems.

I mean, it has a pretty significant bump from the others. So for his sake and for those who want 400 batting averages, I hope that Zips is correct. Also, I like being right, which is better than being wrong, I can tell you. Yeah. Well, you can't be right or wrong when it comes to any individual projection of something that's extremely likely. You just get to say, well, if he actually does it, I told you he would do it in 2.9% of the simulations or the timelines or the multiverse or however we're going to put it. So I was right. And if he doesn't do it, then you could say, well, yeah, I said he probably wasn't going to do it. So that's the fun of percentile data. I'm always slightly right and slightly wrong. I'm never,

but I do check the calibration every year at the end of the year for it as a whole. Unfortunately, I don't think there's gonna be enough 400 hitters in my lifetime to be able to test that adequately. I might at some point go back and re-Zipsify some of the old 400 hitters and see their probabilities and see how that modeled it. But I'm not going to do that tonight. Yeah, that'd be fun. Yeah, well, just looking at his expected batting average

according to StatCast, which this may be from before his most recent multi-hit game, but it was at.337. So as you're saying, his expected batting average according to your version of that is in the.350s. And so that's not saying he's a true talent.350 hitter. As you said, it estimates that he's more like a true talent 330 hitter, which is itself quite extraordinary. But if he is based on how he has hit the ball this year, he, quote unquote, should have had something like a 350 average, which means that he's only, you know, 40 to 50 points above where he, quote unquote, should be, which makes it a little less improbable than if he should have had a three 37 batting average, let's say either way, he is a little bit over his skis,

but not to the same degree. Well, one thing that's, that's really amazing when you look at it beyond batting average is if you look at his plate discipline stats, he's swinging at a lot of out of zone pitches and he's hitting like almost all of them. Right now on fan graphs, we have his out of, out of zone strikeout or out of zone pitches and he's hitting like almost all of them uh right now on fan graphs we

have his out of out of zone strikeout or out of zone contact percentage as 93 and he's not even being like super selective he's he's swinging at an above average of these pictures i want to see just out of curiosity i want him to swing at everything maybe not this year because we don't want to ruin the 400 batting average yes but i just want him to swing at everything. Maybe not this year because we don't want to ruin the 400 batting average. But I just want him to swing at everything and see how bad a pitch has to be for him not to be able to hit it. I mean, if it was like four feet above the strike zone, would he jump up and hit it and make a single? I'm not necessarily thinking that he wouldn't do that. Yeah. Yeah. It's so much fun to watch him. He's really entertaining. And when you see him on one of those five hit days, which he's already had a

few of, then you really can convince yourself like maybe he could do this. You know, it just, it doesn't seem that impossible. It's not impossible. You have crunched the numbers and it is possible technically. But I was also thinking, you know, he plays in Marwyn's Park or Lone Shark Park or whatever we're calling it. And I was thinking, well you know, he plays in Marlins Park or Lone Shark Park or whatever we're calling it. And I was thinking, well, that's a pitcher's park that probably doesn't help him. But it's really only a pitcher's park when it comes to home runs. Yeah, but you're playing for the Marlins. And, you know, you're going to go somewhere else as soon as you make a lot more money. Yeah, the Marlins are playing well now. But I think that

it's nice to have something good happen to a player on the Marlins are playing well now, but I think that it's nice to have something happen. Good happen to a player on the Marlins. Yeah. Uh, but, and it's, and really it's, it's good for baseball simply because he's the type of player we don't see anymore. Right. It's probably, he's probably the closest player we have, uh, towards an equivalent of Tony

Gwynn in his, in his heyday. Obviously he hasn't maintained this level of ability as long as Tony Gwynn did but we don't really have that anymore all baseball offenses these days are pretty much the same uh everyone's kind of max mended out or min max I always forget which is the correct order of that term is yeah but it's nice to see someone who has a different approach and is able to succeed with it. Because generally, different approaches don't actually succeed at the plate, but his is. And he's one of the few players who could play like he does and get success out of it. David Fletcher tried a little, but Fletcher couldn't keep this up the way he has. Yeah, or Nick Madrigal, for instance, who I was excited about.

But he had the contact ability maybe, but not necessarily the high average ability. So yeah, it's the biodiversity of baseball, as we always say on this podcast. It's nice to see him succeeding like this. I mean, that seems like a terrible idea if you're a Luis Horizon, you're batting 400. But if he wanted to employ the same approach at the plate as other hitters, presumably he could sacrifice some batting average and pop a few more balls over the fence. But I assume that he has recognized his skill set and that this is the best way that he can put it to use, right? So, you know, it wouldn't work for everyone, unfortunately, or fortunately, because if everyone could do it, then it wouldn't be extraordinary and we wouldn't be talking about it. But it's not like you could tell anyone else, hey, just have a contact-oriented approach and it would work for them, not even as well as a rise, but better than whatever approach they employ. He probably has some preternatural hand-eye coordination and ability to get the bat to the ball that, you know, other players, even if they were to prioritize contact, they could not come close to making the kind of contact that he does. So I hope that it encourages copycats, but I'm sure that most copycats would fail if they tried to do what Luis Reyes is doing. Anyway, we hope that he can beat the odds.

And, you know, people might wonder what's the point of even trying to put a percentage on it. We know it's unlikely, right? I mean, even if you weren't a stat head or a saver matrician or someone who subscribes to projection systems, I would guess that your gut might not be dramatically different from this. I don't know. Maybe some people think he has a better chance than Zips would say. But I think most people understand that he is defying the odds here, that he's like Wile E. Coyote just running out over the canyon and you hope that he never looks down and realizes that. Oh, don't say that. It never ends well for him. Yeah, no, I don't want it ends well for him less than 2.9% of the time. Yeah. If you did a Zips projection for how often

would Wiley Coyote catch Roadrunner, it would be even lower than Luis Saray's batting 400. Anyway, I like to know the numbers, even if it's kind of confirming my expectation that, yeah, it's extremely unlikely because, A, the longer he can keep it up, I mean, the more fun it is, the more you appreciate how unlikely it is. It's not like I'm mad that he defies the projections. I'm rooting for him to defy the projections. I assume you are as well.

So knowing how unlikely it is and being able to quantify that, that makes it even more fun as long as he can keep this up. You know, when he was down in the 370s just recently, I thought, okay, that was fun. Well, it lasted. He had a good run. And now it's just going to slowly sink into, you know, batting title, but not challenging 400 territory. And then all of a sudden, he bounced it right back up over 400 or close to 400. So just keeping it up, like giving us this joy of following this and talking about it into late June, that's a treat. So, you know, even if it's all downhill from here, it was quite a ride. And I hope that it's not downhill. I hope it's a level except two points more. That'd be great.

No, totally agree. I'm ready for a 400 hitter. Yeah, I mean, I thought there was essentially no chance that I would ever see one, barring some just dramatic change in rules. And of course, we have had dramatic changes in rules, but not necessarily ones that have made it that much more likely that we're going to get a 400 hitter. So I still think it's extremely unlikely, but the fact that it is so extremely unlikely would make it wondrous if it happened. That would be, I think, the story of the season if he were able to pull that off. Maybe it would even overshadow Shohei Otani striking out Mike Trout and then

having himself possibly another MVP season. So thank you for running the numbers and being the wet blanket, as always. That is your lot in life, but you always bring data to your wet blanketing, and I appreciate that. And we can kind of calibrate how much we allow ourselves to root for this, I suppose. Well, thanks for having me in to talk about it. And hopefully he won't end up at 330 and I'm summoned here in September to take my beating. Yeah. All right. You can find Dan writing about baseball and Luis Reyes at Fangraphs.com. And of course, you can find him on Twitter at DeSimporski. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. All right. Dan did inform me, by the way, that Zips' projection for Arise's end-of-season batting

average, not what he'll hit from here on out, but what he will have hit by the time the season is over, 362. If we exclude DJ LeMayhue's 364 in 50 games in 2020, then no qualified hitter has finished with a batting average that high since Joe Maurer in 2009, 365. Before that, Chipper Jones, 2008, not discounting the difficulty of winning a batting title as a catcher, although Joe Maurer made it look easy. But in 2009, MLB's batting average was 14 points higher than it is now. It has gotten demonstrably harder to stay in rarefied air in the past 15 years or so. Before Maurer, it was Chipper Jones in 2008, Magliordonez 2007,

364 and 363 respectively. Then you have to go back to Barry Bonds and Ichiro. So a rise is really resisting gravity here. Gonna give you a quick stat blast, so let's play the song. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit,

discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to day step last. So first I should let you know that the StatBlast segment no longer sponsored. Our previous sponsor, Tops Now, signed up to sponsor a certain number of StatBlasts and we have completed them. And so we are back to being unsponsored except by you, the listeners. We are back to being 100% ad-free, no caveats, entirely listener-supported and in our audience's debt. But the sap lasts continue. You may have noticed MLB's been streaking lately. The Reds won again on Wednesday, as did the Giants. You may have seen some fun facts or purported fun facts about

those streaks. The longest winning streak for the Reds since 1957. They're the first team to have an 11-game winning streak in the season following a 100-loss season, etc. Well, all of this streaking has prompted some listener inquiries, including this one from Patreon supporter John, who wrote on Wednesday, Lots of streaks ongoing right now. As of June 21st at 3.04 p.m. Eastern, seven teams have a streak of six games or more. Seems like this would be pretty rare, but probably hard to look up. Don't say that. Frequent StatBlast consultant Ryan Nelson takes that as a challenge. So when John wrote in, we had the

following win streaks, the Braves at seven, the Reds at 11, the Giants at nine, the Red Sox at six, and the following losing streaks, the Pirates at eight, the Rockies at seven, and the A's at six. So is this weird? Seven teams at the same time with a streak winning or losing of six games or more? Well, Ryan reported that it wasn't too hard for him to look up. You can find him on Twitter, Seven teams at the same time with a streak winning or losing of six games or more. Well, Ryan reported that it wasn't too hard for him to look up. You can find him on Twitter, by the way, at rsnelson23. And he determined that the record is seven and that it has happened five times. September 2nd, 1890, July 22nd and 23rd, 1914, September 14th, 1915, June 14th, 1978, and most recently, May 23rd, 2021.

Some of those years, there were fewer teams than there are today. In that most recent occurrence, May 23rd, 2021, the winning streaks were Rays 10, Padres 9, Dodgers 7, Yankees 6. The losing streaks were Diamondbacks 8, Orioles 6, Mariners 6. So, Ryan wrote to me, this record could be broken if on Wednesday, the Braves, Reds, Giants and Red Sox win and the Pirates, Rockies, A's and Nationals lose. As of that message, the Rockies had lost, the Reds had won and the Pirates had lost. So we were three eighths of the way there. But Ryan said, according to Fangraphs, the odds of the other five outcomes going the right way were 3.34%, which is just a tad higher than the odds that Luis Arraiz will hit 400 this season. And indeed, it did not happen. The Braves got rained out, so that preserved their winning

streak. The Giants won, joining the Reds. The Pirates and A's lost, joining the Rockies. But the Red Sox won and the Nationals won, so their streaks were snapped. The record for most concurrent streaks of six games or more will not be broken now. I'll give you a couple bonus streak-related answers, though. In our Patreon Discord group, listener Brandon, a few days ago, noted that the A's are owners of a seven-game win streak and an 11-game losing streak this season. How does this compare to other teams that had win and loss streaks of notable length in one season? In addition to that, after the seven-game win streak finally ended, the A's had then lost five consecutive games.

How does this compare to previous streaks that occur back-to-back like that? And another Patreon supporter, very oddly specific, said, I wonder what the longest winning streak followed by the longest losing streak is or vice versa. So Ryan and I conferred and he decided to search for the longest minimum back-to-back streak. So five losses followed by five wins would be five, but eight losses followed by two wins would only be two. It's the highest number that you won and then lost or lost and then won in connected streaks. And Ryan determined that the record is nine. The 1920 Cubs won nine straight games, then lost 10 straight. So May 22nd through the first game of a doubleheader on May 31st, they were winners. And then from the second game of a doubleheader on May 31st, they were winners.

And then from the second game of that doubleheader on May 31st through June 11th, they were losers. 1920 Cubs tied with the 1985 Twins who did it in the other direction. They lost nine and then won 10. They lost from April 11th through April 20th, and then they won from April 21st through May 1st. I gotta think that's the better way to do it. It's like the debate about whether you should see Barbie or Oppenheimer in that order, or see Oppenheimer first and then Barbie if you do a double feature when they both come out on July 21st. I guess I can see the argument for the amuse-bouche Barbie, the appetizer before the entree of Oppenheimer, but I think you want Oppenheimer as the shot and Barbie as the chaser,

right? You want to leave the theater happy. So I think it would have been better to be the 1985 twins, lose a bunch of games, then win a bunch of games. Take that momentum than to do it in the other order and feel like life came at you fast. Finally, I asked Ryan if he could check that within a team's single season so the streaks don't have to be joined. But what's the highest number of games that a team lost in a row and won in a row at some point in the same season? The record is 12. The 1987 Brewers had a 12-game losing streak and a 13-game winning streak. The 2004 Rays had a 12-game losing streak and a 12-game winning streak.

Spreadsheets, as always, linked on the show page. And now, drumroll please. What a long, strange trip it's been, but it is time for the final Past Blast. We had a suggestion from a couple of listeners that now that we are up at these lofty episode numbers, these episode counts, that we are now in the territory where our episode numbers correspond to years in which baseball existed and baseball was being played. And so maybe there was some opportunity for a tie in there. So I don't know if I'll have one of these for every episode, but how many podcasts get up to almost 2,000 episodes? So I guess we should take advantage of having done so many.

I will just end with the history segment of the day. I think I'm leaning toward calling it the past blast. Just, you know. Because we like rhymes. Yeah. We have a stat blast. We'll stay on brand. It'll be the past blast. Past blast. Past blast. Past blast. Well, for the final time, I say it is time for the past blast. The last past blast. It's episode 2023. So the past blast comes to us today from 2023, which almost makes it a present blast, but not quite.

It's a near past as opposed to the more distant past that we typically traffic in here. And I always say that these past blasts come to us from David Lewis, who is an architectural historian and baseball researcher based in Boston, and who is in person today to deliver the final past blast. Hello, David. Hi, Ben. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. So I've done this sort of backwards throughout this series that we started way back last May when Richard Hershberger inaugurated the pass blast series, and then Jacob Pomeranke took it

over and then handed it off to you. And each time I have had the pass blaster on at the end of their labor, when they reached the end of their pass blasting, probably backward, probably should have had them on at the start. I will rectify that in the next segment. But if people have been wondering all the while what an architectural historian does, we finally have you here to explain it. So before we get to the final pass blast, tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah. So as an architectural historian, I work for a historic preservation consulting firm. So work to save old buildings. A lot of my job is based on kind of similar to Pass Blast, some research and writing. I work on some national register nominations as well as historic tax credit projects, which is taking advantage of certain tax incentives when renovating historic buildings, as well as some survey work and documentation of different historic resources, whether they be buildings or landscapes or things like that.

So, yes, that is much like baseball related things that I do. It's a lot of research and writing, so I like it a lot. Yeah, that must be nice. You get to keep a part of the past alive, I guess, and in physical form. What kind of research do you have to do? You've been doing newspapers.com, deep dives, and many other ways of deriving these pass blasts, but are you diving into old blueprints and architectural records or writing or newspaper accounts or what? Yeah, so it definitely is, again, similar to the pass blast.

And a lot of newspapers.com is a lot of what I do, but definitely a lot of going to different archives and looking for, like you said, historic blueprints and different architectural records, as well as building permits and historic photographs, books, writing, you know, any sort of primary source documentation. I get to go travel around a little bit throughout New England to go to different archives and libraries and museums, which is a fun part of the job is getting to see different places. And where do your baseball interests lie? Because I always describe you as

a baseball researcher, which is true. It's almost tautological because you do that when you are supplying us with our pass blasts, but you've done other baseball research. You worked at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. You have a sub stack that I link to in all of these episodes. So what do you prefer to research when it comes to baseball? Yeah. So I love, I mean, every aspect of the game, but the majority of my research has been in reference to or relating to stadiums. So because of my work related to historic preservation with my graduate studies and now career. It's sort of the natural, you know, the way to include historic preservation in baseball is looking at

stadiums. So I've done a lot of research on that, written about Fenway Park, about Braves Field, which was part of the Boston University campus where I went to school, as well as some other places. And those, I believe all those writings are on my sub-sac as well. And then my other major interest in baseball research is the Negro Leagues. So that was something that I got to write a lot about when I was working at the Hall of Fame. So I'm originally from South Jersey, and I got to write a whole article about the history of black baseball in Atlantic City, which was a lot of fun. Atlantic City had a Negro Leagues team, the Backrack Giants, for a number of years. And there was also some earlier pre sort of like Negro Major Leagues history related to Atlantic City that was fun to research. So yeah, those are my two ballparks. The Negro Leagues are sort of my two biggest interests in baseball research. right which was renovated reopened uh there was just a play ball event there for juneteenth but that could possibly be another site of a big league game again in the future yeah i definitely think that's really exciting um i think it's a cool way to sort of keep that past alive and um you know i guess draw more attention to negro league's history as well as uh history of

individual ballparks and why it's important to keep those things around because of the connection to the past you can have with an old building and structure. So I think it's really exciting. I definitely hope they go to Hinchcliffe next as well. And are you entirely living in the past when it comes to baseball or do you have rooting interests in the present?

I do. I am a Red Sox fan. So I do like watching modern baseball a whole lot as well. Yeah. It's been a confusing season for the Red Sox. I never know quite how to peg them. They exceeded my expectations for a while, and then they played down to my expectations for a while, and then recently they've been better and they're in last place, but in the strongest division, which means they're still a pretty decent team, but also means it's a tough path to the playoffs. It's just a strange place to be for them. And it's hard to know exactly where they are when it comes to their competitive cycle or their rebuild or how to classify them exactly. Exactly.

They're definitely in a weird position, but they, like you said, certain games, they look great, and certain times they look kind of awful. So it's been kind of a weird season to watch, but fun. I think Yoshida has been a great, he's kind of exceeded at least some people's expectations. So there think in some ways, maybe you've had it easier than our previous Pass Blasters, our past Pass Blasters, but I think in some ways you also had it harder. I'd say easier just because it's more recent history. And so in theory, maybe it's easier to uncover. Although, of course, Richard Hershberger has 19th century baseball at his fingertips. So maybe it's not that hard for him to uncover. He had already uncovered it. But there's a little less digging that you had to do potentially. But also you had to keep things interesting for an audience that may have been more aware of events than they were when we were talking about 19th century baseball.

And I think you've done a good job of that. So what was your process, and did you learn anything in the process? Yeah, well, definitely I learned a lot. I would say that was one of the biggest things I wanted to do with pretty much every episode was to do something I hadn't known before. I mean, there were certain episodes that certain years

I knew something happened that I wanted to highlight, but I pretty much always looked for, if I had heard of it before, especially the things within my lifetime, within my baseball watching lifetime, I definitely tried to look for something that I didn't know as well. I mean, obviously the last few years with the pitch clock and stuff, but I definitely learned a lot. But yeah, my process was, I got some great pointers from Jacob Promrenke when I was starting, which was helpful, but I pretty much started on newspapers.com every episode and would just put in like baseball experiment or baseball innovation, baseball strategy, something like that and the year and just kind of see what came up. So there were certain years that there were things

that were really sort of easy and that popped up right away. And I definitely think, like you said, I think at the beginning of doing it, sort of between like 1960 and 1990, it was easier some years because there was a lot of newspapers available, a lot of interesting things were happening. So it was definitely kind of interesting things were happening. So it was

definitely kind of easy in that period. But once we got post sort of 1990, it got a little bit harder, especially, it's funny, the biggest thing that came up was after Michael Jordan played baseball, there were like 100 newspaper articles every year that referenced his quote-unquote baseball experiment. So that strategy of finding a pass blast no longer worked anymore because I couldn't really find anything else. But I definitely think some of the years where I had to do some digging ended up providing some really sort of fruitful and exciting pass blasts. The one in which we found that sort of early adopter of analytics and you're able to talk to his son. That one was one of the more challenging earlier years. And I was struggling to find something and

I was on like deep in several pages deep of newspaper.com searches and hadn't come up with something. And it was like a random letter to the editor. And it ended up being maybe my favorite one that we did because it was so interesting to see. And obviously, you getting to follow up with the sun was really cool. So, but yeah, that was basically it. And if I kind of struck out on newspapers.com, I tended to look through Sabre's articles about the winter meetings because you could pretty much count on at least one vaguely

interesting thing happening at winter meetings, whether it be a rule change or, you know, a trade or even like the trade show I talked about in one episode. So yeah, that was kind of my process, unless there was a year in which I knew something happened. Right. Yeah. Check out episodes 1974 and 1975 for the segments that David is referencing with Richard E. Truman and his son, Greg. So, it's hard to stump people with a pass blast from 2023, but you have delivered one that probably took a little less research than some of your prior pass blasts, but I think it's a fitting one to end on. So, I'll let you lay it out. Absolutely. So this one is, at long last, Major League Baseball is put on the clock. After decades of experimentation and failed attempts to improve pace of play and lower the average game length, Major League Baseball

instituted a pitch timer for the start of the 2023 season. Of the changes, Commissioner Rob Manfred said, we've tried to address the concerns expressed in a thoughtful way, respectful always of the history and traditions of the game and of player concerns. Our guiding star in thinking about changes to the game has always been our fans. What do our fans want to see on the field? We've conducted thorough and ongoing research with our fans and certain things are really clear. Number one, fans want games with better pace. The new pitch timer would allow for 30 seconds between batters, 15 seconds between pitches with the bases empty, and 20 seconds between pitches with a runner on base. Pitchers would be required to begin their motion before the timer hit zero,

and batters needed to be in the box and ready by the eight-second mark. If the pitcher violated the clock, an automatic ball would be called, and if a batter violated, it would count as an automatic strike. Additionally, pitchers were now also limited to two disengagements, defined as pick-off attempts or step-offs per plate appearance, with the base runner awarded a base if a third unsuccessful pick-off attempt was made. The pitch clock immediately had the impact Major League Baseball was hoping for. According to Baseball Reference, the average time of a nine inning game has dropped to this far in the season to just two hours and 37 minutes, nearly a half hour shorter than the 2022 season and the quickest average game time since 1984. At last, it seems

that our long national pastime nightmare might be over, that Major League Baseball has finally found an effective way to curb the length of baseball games. Yep, that does ring a bell. I do vaguely recall that happening. But it's a pretty momentous change, and I think it's appropriate because you had multiple pass-blasts leading up to this about earlier ineffectual attempts to speed up the game, right? And I don't recall, but we could probably go back to the beginning of the Pass Blast series and find complaints about games lasting too long, right? So this has been a repeated refrain, and they've finally found a way to rectify the problem, at least for now. Yeah, definitely. I remember it coming up, especially a lot in the last 30 years or so, kind of since the late 80s, it seemed to be every third or fourth pass blast

was about some way we were going to shave off two or three minutes from games. So it's cool to end with a, like I said, a very effective way. Yeah. Well, thank you for picking up the baton or carrying the torch or whatever expression you want to use for carrying this series to completion. You were a worthy successor to Richard and Jacob, and I thank you as I thank them for being our docents, taking us through baseball history here. And I think it has been very illuminating and entertaining and enlightening. I have also learned a lot. And I think one of my favorite things about baseball history, which as I've noted before, I first really realized in a visceral sense in a college course about the history of the United States through baseball,

sort of, where we read a lot of primary texts and we just kept coming across the same crises and the same complaints over and over and over again. So many things in history are cyclical. So many of the same complaints or proposed solutions, or sometimes the solutions are proposed long, long before they're implemented, right? And it just, it kind of, it connects you to the past. It makes you remember that maybe we're not so different from what people were then, which is both heartening and also dispiriting sometimes. But it's a good way to study history, I think, through baseball. It's a rich text. There's a lot of primary sources, a lot of material there to dive into.

And obviously, it reflects American culture in many ways as well. But just to be confronted with how many times the same sort of stories repeat themselves, I think is a useful thing. Because then when something else comes up in our present or the future, then we have the impulse to maybe look to the past and say, huh, has this happened before? What did they say then? What did they do then? How did they get out of this one? How can we get out of this one this time? Right. So, I mean, you know, the old saw about people not knowing the past being doomed to repeat it, et cetera. So I think it's a valuable exercise and I'm glad we did it. Yeah. and I thank you so much for the opportunity.

It was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed getting to do this a couple times a week. It was really fun. All right. Well, you can follow David on Twitter at dgarflewis. You can also find his Substack at ballparks.substack.com, which will be linked once again in the show notes for this episode. David, thank you for this Pass Blast and every previous Pass Blast. Thanks so much for having me. Well, ever since we've started

the Pass Blast series almost, people have been asking us and with increasing frequency as time has gone on, what we were planning to do when we caught up to the present. And now we have. And so we must answer that question.

And one option was to just say mission accomplished and wrap it up and we made it to 2023 and from people, and we were already thinking along these lines, but why don't you continue it into the future and have some speculative entries about what could happen're talking about the future here. I guess we could outsource the job to some chatbot to AI and have that do it. But for one thing, it probably wouldn't be very entertaining. And B, we don't really want to hasten the decline of human-made art and creativity and hand over all the responsibility to the machines before we have to. And so then I thought, well, I guess we could write these things ourselves and take a crack at it. But what if there were someone who was something of an expert in the field of baseball and science fiction? Could there be someone who occupied that niche? And, you know, it's not a huge group, I wouldn't say.

It's not a thriving field necessarily of speculative fiction about baseball. But if you look up anything about baseball and science fiction, probably the first name you him now. So Rick Wilber will be the man who is spearheading our future blast effort. Rick, welcome to Effectively Wild. Hi, Ben. Glad to be here. There is, I don't even know how to introduce you because your own website has a short version of your bio, a longer version of your bio, and a longest version of your bio, which is quite long. But you've had a long and accomplished career and you've done a number of things. So I guess just to summarize, you are a novelist and a novellist, if that's a word, someone who writes novellas as well. You're

a prolific short story writer. You have edited anthologies. You're a poet. You're a longtime teacher of writing and journalism and creative writing. You've done many, many different things. And you also happen to be the son of a former major leaguer, Del Wilbur, which led to your interest in baseball and then your interest in science fiction fused with your interest in baseball to produce a lot of baseball science fiction. So, have I roughly covered that? That was the medium version of the bio, maybe. I think you've done a very good job of it. I grew up in baseball and I grew up reading science fiction when I wasn't playing baseball. Ultimately, in adulthood, that led me to the career such as it is that I've enjoyed. Yeah, you're the perfect man for this job. And

you've written many, many works that have nothing to do with baseball, but what would you say are the highlights of the baseball writing career that you have managed to blend with science fiction, if people wanted to check out some of those works? If they want to check it out, I did some years ago, I did a baseball mystery that has a little bit of a fantastic element to it called Rum Point for McFarland Books. But I've done a lot of novellas that feature a fictional version of Moe Berg. And this blog is one of the few places where I can say that and expect everybody to know who Moe Berg. And this blog is one of the few places where I can say that and expect everybody to know who Moe Berg is. So, you know, fascinating, fascinating character. And so, it's my chance. I love spy novels and I love alternate history novels. And of course, I'm

steeped in baseball. Moe Berg was just kind of the perfect character to be inventive with because he incorporates all of that. And so, I would say there's a couple books out there that feature my Moe Berg material and my agent is pushing me. I have another, the first novel of the Moe Berg onesins is going to be turned in soon. I keep saying soon. Yeah. Well, it seems like you always have several different things in the works at any given time. Yeah, always, always. I think it was another blog, Coot Street Station, a science fiction blog, that called me the Dean of Science Fiction Baseball, which is a tiny, as you said.

Right. If you're the dean, how big is the student body? I don't know, but... Not very big, I can tell you that. But, you know, that's what I'm interested in, and I'm glad that certain magazine editors... I usually write my stories for Asimov's science fiction magazine. I've been in there a couple dozen times. And that there's an interest there is great. And the editors like it. And I've won a couple minor awards for these stories. And I'm pretty proud of that.

I'm happy doing it, which is why when you approached me, I thought, yeah, I mean, I got to admit, I don't need more things to do. But I got to admit that this is something I probably should be doing. So that's why I'm here. Yes. I came straight to the source, the perfect person to do this. And I was glad you were interested. You also edited an anthology of baseball stories, right? Field of Fantasies, baseball stories of the strange and supernatural? That was so much fun. In doing that, I came to realize just how often mainstream writers, as well as science fiction and fantasy writers, love to write baseball stories, and they almost always edge into the fantastic. So that was a lot of fun to edit. And putting that together was difficult because I'm talking to science fiction authors who are used to getting paid very little for a reprint of their story.

But also some pretty famous people. And they're used to getting paid a bit better than the science fiction writers. But we managed to negotiate it and get it done. So that's a good anthology, I think. It's a good collection. It's great for the hot stove season. People might bear that in mind come November. you find ways to slip baseball in. Sometimes, you know, you have first contact books, alien invasion stories, right, where your protagonist is, I guess, a former basketball player, right? Yeah, that was me being rebellious. Yes. Just try not to be typecast. Yeah. Yeah. I thought, you know, I always, that always would be a baseball person. And I thought, no, not this time. I'll get edgy.

And I made him a basketball player. I played Division, no, not this time. I'll get edgy. And I made him a basketball player. I played Division II basketball, not very well, but sat on the bench. But I played enough basketball that I could sort of carry that off. And you also wrote a nonfiction book about baseball, which you were kind enough to send me, called My Father's Game. And it's sort of a part memoir, part story of your father's life and career, and also an account of his decline being your dad's son, although I felt almost guilty doing it because, as you note in the book, when you're a former big leaguer, you constantly get asked about that or you find ways to bring it up, right? Or if you're the son of a former big leaguer, then it can become almost a conversational crutch. You know, it's a great

icebreaker. Hey, my dad played for the Cardinals and the Red Sox and played with Ted Williams and Stan Musial and was friends with all those guys, right? And there's just an endless well of stories there. But you almost developed an aversion to going that route, right? Because it became almost too easy. right? Because it became almost too easy. When I was taking him to innumerable doctor appointments, he wanted to be the old pro, the old baseball player, and I was his enabler. So I would always manage to get it into a conversation. Yeah, he played for the Phillies. He played for the Red Sox, and then they'd be off and running and I wouldn't have to do much after that. Right. Yeah. And so it's got to be a great sort of, you know, if you're at a dinner party and someone asks about your family or what you did, I mean, if you're sitting next to the right person,

then you just have to name drop, hey, my dad was a major leaguer and you're off to the races, right? And it's easy, but maybe it's almost too easy. Maybe you almost feel like, you know, I should be branching out like this. You note in the book that your dad, you felt like was almost trapped by his identity as a former baseball player and the family's veneration of him as a former baseball player, that became his self-image in a way. And that was maybe kind of confining, you know, almost brought him a lot of joy, of course, in his later years and pride, justified pride, but also that became who he was. Yeah, very much. You've nailed it. He was, you know, baseball can be so passionate on the part of some fans. And it becomes the kind of hobby where he was still

in his 70s and in his 80s, and he was still getting baseball cards to sign in the mail and return to people and requests for autographs. And bear in mind, he was modestly talented at the major league level. I think he maybe hit 240 or so lifetime, and he had 19 home runs over eight years. But he was there. He was there. He was with the Red Sox, good pinch hitter for the Red Sox. And he had his big day hitting three home runs for the Phillies. And all those things just accumulated sort of a darling of trivial pursuit questions, right? He's a player that if you're from Boston and of a certain age,

you would remember him because Red Sox fans remember everyone who played. Yeah, right. Yeah, I was going to bring that up. You know, I like nothing more than to interview old pros, former ballplayers on this podcast. And I find that sometimes the more obscure and less accomplished the players, the better the conversation, because every old ballplayer has great stories, even if they're just sort of reflected glory. You know, I pitched to so-and-so, I caught so-and-so, I batted against so-and-so. That's still entertaining to hear. And if it's someone who doesn't get deluged with interview requests and isn't sick of talking to people about those things because they're so famous in their household name, then often they're more willing participants in the conversation. So if your dad were still around, I would love to interview him.

Of course, he passed away more than 20 years ago now, but he'd be the kind of player that I like to talk to. And yes, you're very clear-eyed in the book about his career and what he accomplished and what he didn't accomplish. And as you noted, that could be sort of a source of tension in your family, you know, when you would maybe uncover some story he told that wasn't entirely true. And perhaps your siblings preferred to think of the way that he told it as opposed to the actual reality. But, you know, I don't know if you're familiar with new age stats and sabermetric stats that we discuss a lot here, like wins above replacement, for instance. discuss a lot here, like wins above replacement, for instance. Now, at baseball reference, your dad basically is replacement level, according to that metric, which is sort of a way of saying that, you know, it's a journeyman, right? It's someone who came and went and was up and down

and, you know, hung around, but didn't distinguish himself that much statistically. I mean, it's an accomplishment to make the majors, let alone to be there for eight years and to have the long, long career in baseball and other positions that he had. But it's striking because even for someone who didn't have a marquee career in that way, A, it is still such a source of fascination for so many people. And B, even if you didn't set the world on fire when you were there, just being there and being around that baseball world for so long, you really do have a wealth of incredible stories. And even if you weren't great routinely, you still had your moments, right? even if you weren't great routinely, you still had your moments, right? So your dad had his famous moments about hitting three home runs in a game and three at bats and accounting for all three

runs in that game or the pinch hit homers he had or the one game he managed in the majors, which he won, right? I mean, all of these things that, you know, some people he played with, those would be small beans, right? But it's still extraordinary, right? So even if you're there, that in itself lends itself to so many stories, even if you're not someone who's going to be in the Hall of Fame on your merits as a player. Sure. It's a matter of sort of consequential and inconsequential. And what might be inconsequential for a star player was very consequential for my dad. And he was always sort of humble about it, but you could tell he was really proud that he'd made it to the big leagues and stuck it out. And he'd been a lifer. He'd been a AAA manager, a successful AAA manager, and a scout and a coach. That was a lifer career that was great for his family, for the most part. I mean, it was a wonderful way to grow up for us as children.

We were the cool kids on the block. That was for sure. We're raised Catholic, and Joe Garagiola was dad's best friend and lived in St. Louis, so he was my confirmation sponsor in like eighth grade, whenever confirmation was. And that was cool. When I was struggling later he and, and my mother were going through that, that difficult last year and a half or so, I just kept reminding myself of what a wonderful childhood I'd had. I mean, it was really a terrific childhood, even, even when he was managing in the minors. Yeah. It was cool. The whole family went there for some years. I was

the bat boy in Charleston, West Virginia. Right. yeah. And, you know, Trey, cool. It was really cool. I know. I mean, you're a kid playing ball, and then you're using Luis Aparicio's glove just as a hand-me-down. I mean, could you put that in perspective at times? Because it sounds like in the book, sometimes you would recognize how great you had it, and maybe sometimes inevitably you would take it for granted and assume that everyone got to go hang out on the field at Fenway with their dad. And that was just par for the course, right? So at the time, could you actually sense how extraordinary, how much of an outlier you were in that respect? I have to admit, I could not. I just thought that was my childhood. And then all through high school, all five of us

were gifted athletes. And the three boys went to the same high school and we all participated on the various teams there. And all of that came easily to me. And I did not appreciate the fact that it did not come easily to everyone else. And I had these wonderful stories to tell, and it took me a long time to appreciate the history I'd been part of and the importance baseball has in our culture and that I'd been part of that importance just by being a child of a big leaguer. All of these things came to me late, I have to say. Yeah. Having been a bat boy and been in the clubhouse,

were those baseball figures, was the game itself more or less larger than life than it would be to someone who's watching from a distance? If you're right up close and talking to these people and playing catch with them, you know, you tell stories about pitching to Rod Carew later on or catching balls at first base and recognizing how hard major leaguers throw and that maybe you weren't going to be one. But having that vantage point, did that sort of pierce some of the mystique of it all or did it actually enhance it? I would like to say that I understood and appreciated what I was doing as a ballplayer's son, but that ain't the truth. I was just living life. And I thought it was perfectly ordinary that I'd be in the clubhouse with Zoya Versailles in Charleston, West Virginia, while he's on his way up to the big club. Pretty soon he's going to be MVP. And I'm just sitting there having a Coke, you know, talking to this guy. And Jim Cott was on that team. That team,

I was the bat boy. And of course, what a distinguished career he had in so many respects. And of course, what a distinguished career he had in so many respects. And again, I had no idea. I was a bat boy and I didn't appreciate it at all. I'm glad that I have that history, that childhood. And I'm glad that I'm here to appreciate it now. And it's a big part of what I write because, you know, it's, I was like steeped in baseball all the way through my life. It's been, it's been part of it every now and then I tried to walk away from it, sort of up to here with baseball. But, you know, we're culturally

bound in this country. Baseball, we make it important because of its impact and its history and its participation in the culture. And I'm glad to be sort of an insider. Yeah, right. You make clear in the book, it is really just a large extended family. And once you're in there, you're in for life, really, it seems like. And I did want to ask one question about your dad's early career, because, of course, he was in the service during World War II for several years, and he was hardly the only ballplayer to set their baseball career aside during that time and serve their country. And you could say, I mean, potentially baseball may have saved his life, right, because it helped dictate the course of his military career.

And he became an instructor. And of course, he played some ball with a lot of really prominent players. So, you know, perhaps that could have kept him off the front lines, although there were baseball players who ended up there, of course. So you would have to be grateful for that, I'm sure. On the other hand, it's got to be a setback to your baseball career, right? Because he was a pretty promising prospect. And you look at his numbers in the low minors when he was in his late teens and early 20s

before the war, and they were pretty impressive numbers. And he was kind of coming along. And then suddenly you take several years off, right? And of course, he was, you know, honing his skills to some extent playing baseball in the service, but it's not the same as working your way up through the minors and the majors. So I wonder what sort of setback that would be for a player at that crucial point in your development to just sit out several seasons. You know, it's a little different, I guess, if you're Ted Williams and you're already a star and you go away and you come back and you're great again. But if you're at that period where those pitches that you're seeing and those pitches

that you're catching, a catcher for him, that's got to hurt your development, I would think. Not that that was necessarily foremost on his mind or the country's mind. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure it wasn't. But you're right. He was safe enough, but it was kind of static. I mean, he wasn't getting better as a baseball player for running, being the manager of a base, an Air Force base or an Army Air Corps base baseball team. He was just doing the job he had during the war. And he was fortunate that he got a chance to reignite that career or to return to that career. But he had a few years there when he was struggling to get back in. So he certainly lost his prime years, but then so did everyone. I don't know that I ever asked him that question, but I'm sure he would have said, well, sure, everybody lost their prime years, everybody that was in the Army or the Air Corps or the Air Force or the Navy or wherever. So it was just, you know, you serve your country during wartime. It was just, you know, you serve your country during wartime.

Yeah, right. It's not ideal timing, I guess, but you've got to count yourself as lucky that you're still there and that maybe baseball helped keep you there. I did want to ask, you mentioned and you note in the book, My Father's Game, that you and all of your siblings, men and women, athletically inclined. Your two brothers played professionally. They played baseball in the minors, and you played multiple sports up to the college level. And we've talked often on this podcast about the fact that the sons of major leaguers become major leaguers at an elevated rate, a disproportionate rate. And we've always tried to puzzle out the nature nurture problem there. Obviously, it's a bit of both. But I wonder what your perspective on that is, because obviously, you all had athletic gifts that came to some extent from your father. And you also note that because he was a big leaguer, because he had connections, he could pull strings,

he could get you all opportunities, right? So again, it's a blend of both, but I wonder which you think has more to do with it, or is it the personal instruction that you get from your dad who's a big leaguer and teaches you your mechanics when you're a kid? What goes into sons of big leaguers becoming big leaguers at such a high rate? For me, I didn't have the passion to play the game that I think both of my brothers had. And they, my older brother, another war interrupted and cut short his minor league career. He was worried about Vietnam and it was that era. And he had a draft-deferred job, as I recall, but that meant giving up baseball. And it was the same for me. It was during Vietnam, and I think I wasn't worried very much about baseball.

I was glad to be on the team at Southern Illinois Edwardsville in my freshman year at University of Minnesota. at Southern Illinois Edwardsville in my freshman year at University of Minnesota. But I was too involved, I think, in all of the turbulence of the late 1960s, political turbulence and racial turbulence. And I was marching and carrying signs. And even as I was sort of developing a career as a journalist. And baseball, for me, definitely took a back seat for some of those years. Yeah, right. But I guess if you had had the passion, then you would have had the talent, at least maybe to make a go of it. And then you would

have had some doors opened by virtue of your dad being Del Wilbur, potentially, right? No question. Are there phone calls made? Absolutely. Yeah, I'm sure the door was open had I had the talent and the passion. You know, I played like town ball for many, many years. I played small town, Southern Illinois weekend baseball. And it was, I have to say, it was joyous. It was like pure baseball. We'd all played college ball. We all had some skills. And we would drive around from one small Illinois town to another and play baseball. And it was wonderful. But one year, we had an especially good year. But one year we had an especially good year and a friend and I, I brought him in another, I was teaching at the time. I was on the faculty at Southern Illinois Edwardsville. And he joined our faculty and he was a catcher. And we played a lot of baseball that summer. And he and I were on,

I remember this very distinctly. We were on our way to a game and it was like the third game that week. And we were looking at each other and saying, man, this is too much. It's just too much baseball. Once a week would do fine for us. And it took me a long time to realize that that was sort of my pivotal statement about living the baseball life. Yeah. You know, 162 games. Oh my God. For 20 years. Oh my God. Who does that? And I could not, I could not have done that. Even if I'd had the skills, I'd have had a hard time. Was it difficult to be in a family of athletes and be athletic yourself, but also be a bookworm? Did you feel like the odd sibling out? Did the fact that your brothers were both pursuing professional baseball careers kind

of take the heat off you? I didn't get the sense that your dad was extremely pushy when it came to trying to steer your career necessarily, but did you worry about disappointing him or was it hard to take a different path than your dad and your siblings did? You know, I was in third grade when I discovered juvenile science fiction novels, pulp science fiction novels written for kids. And I just ate them up. All summer long, I would go to the local town library in Kirkwood, Missouri, pick up two or three books, drop off two or three books. These are these pretty short juvenile novels, bring them home, and I would read all day. And dad was

concerned about that. He was a little concerned about me. And he came in one time to tell me, get outside and play some ball. It's a beautiful summer day. Go out and play some ball. And I was lying on the couch reading Lucky Star and the Moons of Jupiter or something. And I was off saving the galaxy and enjoying it. And I said, oh, I just kind of grumbled. And then my mother came in and this is my memory of it. I think it's an absolutely true memory. She said, now, Del, it's okay to have a son who reads.

Well, it's so good that she was there. She was there for me. She was there for me. And she read heavily. Obviously, that's where I got all that from. And she was a very good writer. And I'm sure I got my interest in writing, I'm sure I got from her. Yeah, that's really interesting because I had that. I mean, that would have been me on the couch reading too. I was fairly athletic, but not so much that I ever harbored dreams or delusions of anything,

nor did I really desire it. You know, people talk about how they wanted to be big leaguers, and they thought they were going to be big leaguers, and then they turned 12, and they faced a curveball, and they thought, okay, that's it for me, right? I never even had the impulse to do it, not that having the impulse would have gotten me there anyway. And so there was, I think that affected the way that I saw the game. I mean, I enjoyed playing with my friends and at school and still do, but I think I probably saw it more from an outsider perspective. Maybe that's why down the road I got interested in analytics and sabermetrics, you know, and trying to think about outsmarting as opposed to outplaying, you know, and trying to think about outsmarting as opposed to

outplaying, you know, and outsiders and they can make a contribution to the game, right? And then it turns out maybe that contribution can destabilize the game. And even though I'm still sort of tickled by finding ways to outsmart people in baseball, I think it's important to preserve that element of things. Sometimes that starts to override what's happening on the field, and then it becomes a war of front offices as opposed to the war of the athletes on the field, and that's not as entertaining. But I think that colors your background in the game and what you aspired to do in the game, if anything, I think colors your relationship to the sport. And so for you, having a dad who was a big leaguer, being around big leaguers constantly, having brothers who were trying to be big leaguers,

I just could imagine feeling some pressure, right, or some weight of expectations to go down that road. And you took a completely different course, which I think took some courage maybe, but it sounds like you had some support from your mother at least. I did. And once I started to write, my father, dad bought into that a little bit as long as I was going to be a sports writer. So he helped me enormously early in my magazine writing career. I proposed a story to Sport Magazine. You might remember when it was a major magazine in the 70s. And I proposed a story that I would be there for Bob Gibson's last game at Bush Stadium. And I would chronicle the game and write about Gibson's career. And they said, yes, go for it. Then I contacted dad and I said, can you get me?

I mean, Bob Gibson was notoriously prickly, right? And he said, can you get me an interview with him? And of course, dad did. I'm sure he made a phone call. And all of a sudden I'm in the clubhouse with Bob Gibson while he was sitting by his locker and he was debating whether he should go out in a suit or in his baseball uniform because it was going to be the saying goodbye to Bob Gibson. And I chronicled that and eventually they, Sport bought the story and published it. I could not have done that without my dad,

without all those connections. He made that happen. And then once that happened, then I was writing for Football Digest. But he's the one, just as he would getting us a chance to play, he was the one that got me a chance to write. And then how and when did you decide to make the pivot to fiction and science fiction? And I guess as a kid, you had graduated from Lucky Star to Foundation and iRobot and other stories, presumably. But what were the ones that really got you going and just jogged your creativity and your imagination? And then how did you decide to pursue that? Well, there was this flurry of what we called new wave or new science fiction in the 70s. And I was heavily reading that. Ursula Le Guin had a huge impact on me. And at the time,

I was working for local newspapers where there was no question about whether or not I could sell them the story. They would give me an assignment. I would write it. I would turn it in. It'd be published the next day. But selling a science fiction short story to a magazine seemed impossible. And I kept sending them in and I kept getting back these notes, you know, no thank you. And then as I started to approach being 30 years old, I thought, what do I really want to be? Do I want to be a sports writer? approach being 30 years old, I thought, what do I really want to be? Do I want to be a sports writer? And I was getting pretty bored as a sports writer. The coaches always say the same things. The players always say these perfectly safe, same things. And so I thought, well, you know, I want to write science fiction. So there's this famous workshop you can go to,

science fiction. So there's this famous workshop you can go to, the Clarion Writers Workshop. And I applied to that and they let me in. And then I went to that. This is all 1976, 77, 78, in that time period. And I decided that I was not going to write any more sports. I was going to write science fiction. Turned out it didn't quite work out that way, that I kept writing for newspapers, but I did quit writing sports. I decided I would try to be a science fiction writer. But guess what's contained in all of my science fiction? Sports. Baseball. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's the classic write what you know, and part of what you know is baseball. And was that a niche that you thought, I mean, again, not a ton of competition, I guess, but also you had to wonder what the market was for that potentially. Of course, there's a lot of classic baseball fiction, but baseball science fiction, it's a little... Not so much. Right. baseball. Science fiction, it's a little... Not so much. But no, I didn't... Again, I was sort of

unconscious about this. I was just writing the stories I could write, which often contained some sort of athleticism and often contained baseball, because as you said, write what you know. By then, my son had been born, and he has Down syndrome. And he is in a lot of those stories. He's the bat boy in many of the baseball stories. I wrote for Spitball magazine. I don't know if it's still published. And oftentimes, the bat boy would be a kid with Down syndrome. And here we are all these years later, and I just had a story published in Asimov Science Fiction Magazine. I don't know, my 20-something, 24th, 25th story in Asimov Science Fiction Magazine. And there's a kid with Down syndrome who is in the story making a big decision about her life.

And let's see, what's my last baseball story? Well, I'm writing right now on my screen as I'm looking at this. I'm writing a part of a novel that's set in 1943 Hollywood. And the star of the story is a young girl who's a shortstop for the Hollywood Stars Baseball Club. And why is that? Well, it was great fun to research. And I have the feeling that we don't pay enough attention to women fans, much less women players. And we have a very athletic daughter and she had no interest in throwing things. Very good soccer player,

very good track star. But those are my interests. And so those are the things I know. And so that's what I write about a lot. And that takes us up to the present because another thing you're working on is future blasts for the Effectively Wild podcast, which will start on our next episode. And I've had a sneak peek at the first several, and I'm excited to go on this journey with you. So what is your hope or expectation or plan for how these are going to go? Do you have a grand ambition about an interconnected universe and a mythology of future baseball and Effectively Wild that you're hoping to build here?

I do. I have a friend I've published a couple stories with in Asimov's. He's a Baltimore Orioles fan, which until this year was sort of a sad thing to be, but not so much this year. And he and I are working on a story that's got futuristic baseball connections where the fans at home can wear what amounts to an Apple device where you feel like you are inside that athlete as they're playing. You feel like you can feel the bat in your hands. You can feel the bat in your hands. You can feel the ball in your hands. You could feel the move at shortstop to go over and get it and throw it to first. And I think things like that are going to happen. We mic up players right now.

This is just the next level of that and then the level after that. So I'm predicting that. And I think this is going to be a lot of fun once we get farther away from the current players, where I'll get to be more and more inventive. As it is, I want to pay attention to the players, especially the young ones who are stars just coming up. And it's a losing game it's a losing gamble to bet on the career of some young player who's 20 or 21 years old and just got into the big leagues and is hitting a ton for the first you know for the first six months of his first or second season so

because how many times do you see that sort of fizzle out and they revert to the mean and become another wonderful major leaguer, but maybe not quite so impressive. But I'm gambling on some of that. And it's kind of fun to see who might become the big stars. I don't want to give it all away, but I'm convinced that stolen bases are going to take over the game. I think it's going to be very exciting baseball for the fans. Not only are the bases a little closer, but the pitcher, I think by next year or the year after, the pitcher only gets one disengagement. And the idea that there's going to be a designated pinch runner who can just come in and run anytime, just like your beer league softball.

Yeah. You know, it's the same thing. And then can come again the next inning for another player and be a runner, that's just begging for track stars to want to be major league baseball sprinters. Right. I think that, yeah. Charlie Finley designated runners. It does. sprinters. Right. I think that, yeah. Charlie Finley designated runners. It does.

It does. Yeah. And just, these are kind of profound changes. And, but I, my initial impact from the rules changes this year is they've all been to the good, I must say. My wife goes to the games again with me now because they only take two and a half hours instead of dragging on forever. Right. Yeah. Well, we won't spoil too much of what's coming, but I'm looking forward to it. And yes, some of the alternate futures that you concoct for

some real life players may turn out to be better than their actual futures. But, you know, somewhere in the multiverse, they would have had that career, presumably. Absolutely. In the multiverse. That's what I use all the time. It's a great excuse to be wrong. Right, exactly. And I'm looking forward to hopefully when we get far enough in the future that these are all Rick Wilber originals and you've created all these characters and then maybe their descendants, you know, the Rick Wilbers to the Del Wilbers that you create, the sons of the big leaguers who maybe come along and become big leaguers if we play this out long enough. Fun, fun, fun. Yeah. Yeah. Easter eggs and references and callbacks to earlier years. So we'll see how complicated

it gets, whether we need some sort of mythology, a lore book or wiki to track the alternate future that you devise here. Oh, help us. Oh my, okay. All right. And you mentioned going to games. Are you primarily a Rays fan now? I know you go to a lot of Rays games or you have.

Yeah, definitely a Rays fan. My son and I have the Sunday season ticket package. So all the Sunday home games. And they throw in some other games during the week that he doesn't want to go to because he only wants to go to day games. And he works at McDonald's. So my wife goes to those. And she was hard to get to come along to the games until this year. Now she's having a blast because the game is moving along so smartly. All right. Well, we will see where it goes next in the science fiction of Rick Wilber as presented by the Effectively Wild podcast. So that will start on the next episode.

And again, we'll link to where you can find all of Rick's books and work. RickWilber.net is the compendium for all of it. And I encourage you to check it all out. And thanks so much for doing this and also for coming on and chatting. Thank you, Ben. Thanks for the chat today. And thanks for the opportunity to write the future of baseball. All right.

A few closing tidbits for you here. First, some listeners alerted us to the fact that Orioles pitcher Tyler Wells faced Rays batter Taylor Walls on Wednesday. Not for the first time. They had faced each other in previous seasons, but maybe not since name mix-ups became a recurring bit on this podcast. Patreon supporter Alex let us know that the Rays radio broadcast crew got into the spirit of the thing.

Here's how they handled the first Wells-Walls matchup on Wednesday. And now we've got the matchup, Tyler Wells against Taylor Walls. And the first pitch to him is low on its side, 1-0. No sign of Tyler Wade or Taylor Ward, even Ty Wall, the Rays' own clubhouse manager. Maybe we'll find him somewhere on campus. Probably. Walls walked and also singled off Wells the first time that he had reached base against him. As tickled as I am by Wade and Ward and Wells and Walls,

I also enjoy that Isak Paredes often bats behind Walls in the Rays lineup. Paredes means Walls in Spanish. Next, earlier in this episode, I briefly invoked the Otani Trout showdown in the championship game of the WBC this season, possibly the baseball highlight of the year. Well, Mookie Betts has a bleacher report show called On Base where he talks to players and he had Mike Trout on and they talked about what was going through Trout's mind as he was preparing to face his teammate Otani. Here's Trout talking about how he hadn't faced him as a batter before. I haven't faced him in live BP. Oh, nothing. Nothing. So I haven't seen him. I just see him from behind. Okay. You know what I mean? So I know what he

can do from behind. It's just the movements. You see him moving crazy. Yeah. Okay. I didn't have to play the part where he talked about watching Shohei's movements from behind. Here's the important part. Okay. So you're on deck. I hit into a double play. Boom. Now you're walking to the plate. What's going through your mind, bro? What's going through Mike Trout's mind? I got to go deep here. I'm going to be real with you. I got to go deep here. I think it might have messed me up because it took me out of my approach.

But there was one thing on my mind. I was trying to take him deep. I mean, there's no other explanation. You know? I mean, you know how it is. I know exactly what you're saying. I know exactly what you're saying. I know exactly. And I think one time, I think I've gone deep, like go up to the plate and I'm like, hey, I got to hit a homer here.

I think I did it one time my whole career. That's what I'm saying. We say it all the time. And I did it when I hit for the cycle. Oh, okay. My last at-bats. It was a 2-0 pitch. I said, this is it.

If I'm going to do it right here and I hit a homer. Got it. Other than that, it's not, it's, I'm going to get out. First of all, it was fun to hear Trout loosen up a little. Secondly, this was the perfect approach to the plate appearance from a spectator perspective. Remember he came up with two outs, ninth inning, down one run, no one on base. A home run would tie it, a strikeout would end it, and everyone wanted it to be one of those things. Now you'll often hear hitters say that they never really try to hit home runs. I bet they do it a bit more often than they let on, but I don't know what the effect of trying to hit a home run would be. I would guess

that you would be more likely to get all or nothing results. Your chances of striking out or popping up would be elevated and maybe your chances of hitting a home run would be slightly elevated too. And that's what we want in that situation. If he had grounded out, not nearly as fun. If he had singled or something, also not nearly as fun. The only fitting ending for that plate appearance was one that would decide or drastically alter the game. And so it had to be a homer or a K, had to be one of those two true outcomes. And I'm glad that Trout went into it with that mindset, as opposed to just trying to keep the inning alive, trying to stay within himself, just trying to put a good swing on

something, get a good pitch to hit. No, he was going up there hacking. He wanted to homer and that upped the odds of a dramatic outcome. I'm glad he copped to it too. Also, Rob Manford was at it again. He did an interview with Time Magazine, which named Major League Baseball one of 2023's most influential companies. He did for the first time publicly concede that he has some regrets about granting the Astros players immunity in the sign stealing scandal. But I wanted to point out one other comment. He did this interview in late May before his recent comments about the A's and ballpark funding, but he was singing the same tune back then. The interviewer said, economists have

pointed out that public financing of sports facilities doesn't really pay off. In Nevada, some lawmakers had balked at the price of the A's relocation to Las Vegas. Why should public financing be involved at all? Manfred said, I have read, obviously, people's arguments about public financing. There's an equal number of scholars on the opposite side of that issue. Whatever the merits of that debate in the context of sports, generally baseball produces a kind of growth because of the number of games involved. I lived in Washington for 15 years before I came to work for baseball, the thriving area around Nationals Park. Nobody went there when I lived there. I defy people to tell me.

Another form of government action or renewal effort that produces that kind of change. I could think of some, but wanted to highlight that line about an equal number of scholars on the opposite side of that issue. Granted, there are often people paid to promote the pro-public funding side of the issue, but to say it's equal numbers makes him sound like someone who works for an oil company and tries to say that there's no scientific consensus on human-caused global warming because there's one sketchily credentialed crank on the other side saying that there's no such thing. I'll link to this on the show page, but there have been surveys of experts on this subject asking whether they would agree or disagree with the statement that providing state and local subsidies to build stadiums for professional sports teams is likely to cost the relevant taxpayers more than any local economic benefits that are generated. Far more responses of strongly agree or agree than disagree or strongly disagree. So Manfred is misrepresenting the scholar consensus on this subject. I know what else is new. What would we expect? But still, he says these things

as if there's no way to disprove them or as if no one will look them up and point them out on a podcast. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if not for those meddling journalists. What he might want to address one of these days is plays at the plate. In our past blast for episode 2013, we covered the home plate collision rule. Love that there is one love that we're discouraging dangerous collisions at home plate. But boy, the wording and enforcement of that rule sure seems a little too imprecise and inconsistent and somewhat inscrutable. We've had back to back days now with manager ejections because of plays at the plate and replay reviews of those plays. First, Bruce Bochy got run,

then Bob Melvin. Bochy was objecting to a crucial play on Tuesday where the White Sox scored the go-ahead and ultimately winning run on a play at the plate where the runner was called out on the field. He was tagged before he touched the plate, but replay review overruled it on the grounds that Rangers catcher Jonah Heim had violated the rule about blocking the plate. The replay review center statement said the catcher's initial positioning was illegal and his subsequent actions while not in position of the ball hindered and impeded the runner's path to home plate. Heim was also upset.

And when he hit a three run homer the next day, he made a replay review motion with his hands on his head. I've watched that play from every angle. I've read the rule over and over. I do understand, I suppose, how MLB's replay umps could have ruled the way they did going by the letter of the law, but I do think it goes against the spirit. Bochy and Melvin said that these were a couple of the worst calls that they'd ever seen. Of course, those calls ultimately went against their teams, but that first one especially just demands clarity before this happens in, say, a postseason game because it's approaching almost Balkian levels of confusion where no one knows why any particular call is going one way or the other.

Some calls seem to look a lot like other calls and they go the other way. And plays at the plate are pretty important. You do want your fans and your players and other participants to understand the ruling and what they are and aren't allowed to do. So much as is always the case with box, if you look at any tweet about these things, you will find people confidently declaring that this was a horrible call and completely contrary to the intention of the rule, whereas other people will confidently declare that, no, it made sense and the ruling was justified but this was clarified once because there was confusion initially and so there was a comment that was added in 2014 catcher shall not be deemed to have violated the rule unless they have both blocked the plate without

possession of the ball or when not in a legitimate attempt to field the throw and then the comment clarified also hindered or impeded the progress of the runner attempting to score a catcher shall not be deemed to have hindered or impeded the progress of the runner attempting to score. A catcher shall not be deemed to have hindered or impeded the progress of the runner if, in the judgment of the umpire, the runner would have been called out, notwithstanding the catcher having blocked the plate. So look, Haim's foot was on part of the plate. There was clearly a lane there, but could you make a case that he impeded the progress of the runner, that the runner had to alter his path slightly because of Haim's placement there? I guess you could make that case. And did he have to be standing there? the runner that the runner had to alter his path slightly because of heim's placement there i guess

you could make that case and did he have to be standing there did the throw pull him to that particular spot all i'm saying is it would be good if we were all on the same page about plays at the plate and why runners were safer out and much as we want to avoid injuries there are a lot of these plays where there doesn't seem to have been all that much danger, where the call seemed clear at the time. We got to get the umps on the same page about this one. Preferably a page that we all understand and don't have to apply John Boyce's you can't just be up there and just doing a balk like that explanation to these plays. You can't just be up there and doing a block like that. I'm pro replay, but boy, does it make your head spin sometimes. doing a block like that. I'm pro replay, but boy, does it make your head spin sometimes. Finally, staying near home plate, just wanted to shout out a tool I saw on the baseball subreddit, not a poster who is acting like a tool, just the opposite. In fact, like to draw attention to people in the baseball community online who build stuff that is handy for people. Sometimes we have people on the podcast who program something like MLB trade trees dot com or baseball trade values

dot com or other utilities that have nothing to do with trades. And this one is a database of walk up songs. The walk up song database walk up DB dot com was created by a Brewers fan on Reddit who built it because his kid is borderline obsessed with walk up songs, always refreshing each team's page, trying to figure out who updated their song and when. It's hard to track song updates by looking at every team's official MLB page. So this person wrote a simple app for his kid. He probably checks the site 50 times a day. I thought other baseball folks might enjoy it, so I put it on a public-facing domain. This is brand new. It's just scraping the walk-up songs from the official MLB team pages, some of which are better curated than

others. But it's handy. You can search by player or artist or song. You can see who has the same song. Hopefully this will track changes in songs, whereas I think the MLB pages only present the current song, not past selections. And the programmer started a subreddit just for this and solicited requests for features. Would be handy to have a way for users to submit songs that they hear to fill in some of the gaps on the MLB pages. I think there have been other sites like this in the past, like plate music.com, but that doesn't appear to be updated. This is a handy resource. Maybe we could have this on baseball reference someday along with what uniform numbers the player wore. What songs did they walk out to? And not just hitters, also pitchers warm up songs. Even though I guess we're kind of past the heyday of walk-up songs, what with the

pitch clock cutting them short. Still a nice way for players to express their personalities, even if in shorter snippets. You can express your support for Effectively Wild by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help us keep podcasting, help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks. Stephen Kimmel,

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and playoff live streams, discounts on ad free Fangraphs memberships and merch, and so, so much more, patreon.com slash effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. Anyone and everyone can send us questions and comments via email at podcastandfangraphs.com.

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 us on Twitter at EW pod. You can find the effectively wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back.

And by we, I mean me and Meg with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you then. Effectivement Sauvage. Effectivement Sauvage.