Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2177: Remembering Rickwood

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about this season’s giant cluster of wild card contenders, the potential for an inactive trade deadline, the role the White Sox will play, whether the compression of the standings is good or bad for baseball, and expanded-playoffs incentives. Then (33:46) they talk to NPR producer Alana Schreiber, creator and […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2177 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Tawny wood a minor trade, though involving a not-so-minor name. Major league player, to be clear. Kevin Biggio was traded from the Blue Jays to the Dodgers, which kind of marks the end of an era, the era in which the Blue Jays had all the big league sons. They used to have even more than they did at the start of this season, and it looked like this would be their trio, their core back in 2019, 2020. They'd have Biggio, they'd have Bichette, they'd have Guerrero. And Biggio didn't pan out so well. It turned out that the initial plate discipline he showed, that wasn't really sustained.

And then he also just didn't really hit the ball that hard. The point of this is not necessarily about the Kevin Biggio trade, but about the fact that I think that might be the last trade we see this season. I just don't see- Like ever? At all? I think that's a wrap on trade deadline season here on June 12th, 13th, whatever day it is. 13th, today is the 13th.

Thank you. Because I don't see that the conditions exist for inactive trade deadline. I'm being hyperbolic about no more trades will be made. But I am more confident than I ever have been before that this might be a quiet deadline. Because this is something we talk about before every deadline. Oh, do we think this will be active? Do we think it will be quiet?

And we never know. I never know. Sometimes I'm surprised that it's slow. Sometimes I'm surprised that it's slow. Sometimes I'm surprised that it's fast. But I would be surprised if there were a lot of moves made this season because I just don't see who's going to be trading anyone. Who is a seller in this market? Who is going to decide we're out of it? Because have you looked at the standings lately? We're out of it because have you looked at the standings lately? Very, very few teams are. There are so few teams that are so far from the closest playoff spot that they could trade right now, that they could say we have no chance, that they could sell that to their fans, sell selling to their fan base.

Where's the activity going to come from, if anywhere? What a great question you ask. What a good observation you have. I've been thinking of- Great conversation prompt for the podcast. I've been thinking about this a lot myself. So I'm so thrilled to be able to talk about it with you. You probably have to deputize people to respond to trades.

And now you can just call that off. You can say, Ben said, that's a wrap for trades for this season. So we don't have to have anyone on call for any trades. And I'm sure that won't screw you over when the time comes. Yeah, that's adorable. First of all, you're forgetting the size of bite that we need to be able to take for it to be a thing where I'm like, someone should write that up. Yeah, Kevin Buccio is all hands on deck for that one.

Yeah, it's tiny. It's funny because someone volunteered to write that trade, and I was like, I don't think we need to write that trade. We're busy today. We have a lot. That's how far Kevin has fallen. You know, we had like six things on deck already, and I was like, you know. Yeah, I don't blame you. Your editorial judgment is sound.

I do think that you're right to wonder, not just because a lot of teams are really bunched up around each other, particularly in the National League, around the wild card. They're just like all, you know, it's like crabs in a bucket. They're just like right on top of each other. card they're just like all you know it's like crabs in a bucket um they're just like right on top of each other but the teams that are bad um i don't know that they have like a ton on offer you know like or they're teams that maybe maybe they they do but they're starting to have to do this dance of like well well, we're close. We think we're getting close to being a team that is competitive. And so do we really want to start moving guys?

Which of the guys do we view as actually tradable relative to when we think we're going to be good? I think about a team like the Pirates, right, where they're currently in last place in the Central. They are seven and a half games back they're 32 and 35 so they're like not they're one game out of a playoff spot and they're gonna be you know i think that that pirates team is gonna be good pretty soon i think it could be good pretty soon ben i think it i mean good the rest of the season it could be the rest of this season i don't know if the piratesates know how to develop hitting, but that is a separate conversation. So, like, you know, or like you look at the White Sox, right? The White Sox, I think, are the only team right now that has this intersection of definitely ready to sell, right?

Itching, I would imagine, to sell. And something that anyone would want to trade for but they have some guys they have they do yeah yeah and like that isn't necessarily a thing you can say about all the teams that are like comfortably out of it either because they have guys but those are guys they want to keep because those are good guys and they think they're going to be better than they are now, at least if not in the second half, then next season. Right. Or, you know, it's like it's the Marlins. It's like, what do you want from that?

Yeah. There are six teams currently, as we record here on Thursday afternoon, that have single digit playoff odds, according to fan graphs. And they're all like low single digit playoff odds, according to FanCrafts, and they're all like low single digit playoff odds. But even that might overstate how many teams are out of it, because you could even, the Nationals are one of those teams, and the State of, the Nationals are a game and a half out of the wildcard race. What's the cutoff for you? Obviously, it varies based on are we talking wildcard? Are we talking division? How good is the team actually?

What are the expectations for the team? How much talent does it have? Has it won a lot lately? Et cetera, et cetera. But what do you think in general the cutoff is where your fans will not be upset if you were to run up the white flag there. Because even if you're the Nationals and you're 32 and 36 and no one was expecting you to contend and it's not that strong a roster and the playoff odds say you're an extreme long shot, you can't look at the standings and say we're a game and a half back.

You can't. Like, is Mike Rizzo? Mike Rizzo always wants to contend. Is he not going to say, let's give it a try. Let's roll the dice, right? And if you're a fan, aren't you interested in rolling those dice and saying, hey, it's not like you have to be good, you know? Like, there's a possibility that you could have a losing team make the playoffs this

year. That's a sad fact and reality of the expanded playoff field. That probably won't happen. This is probably whichever teams emerge from this just morass in the middle here

probably will have one more game so they lost, but it could happen. So you can dare to dream if you're the Nationals even. You know, my favorite thing

about the word morass has the word ass in it, you know, it feels like you're morass in it. Yeah. Yeah. It's like more.

I'm thinking about Al Pacino. So anyway. Yeah. Morass. If where you are is like hanging around the final wild card, I think you can start to say to your fans, like, hey, you know, let's talk like adults here. You know, let's have a conversation like grownups do where we're honest about ourselves and don't try to trick ourselves into thinking that we are something we aren't, you know, like, I think that, uh, you can like kind of put on your therapy hat and unpack your emotional toolbox and go trade for some prospects, you know? Um, but if you're, I mean, first of all, if you're in a playoff spot, come the deadline, you can't, you can't.

So, I mean, you can, but we're gonna give you the business about it mean you can but we're gonna give you the business about it you know we're gonna give you the sharp business and i i like what am i like envisioning that we're gonna stab you we're not gonna do that we're gentle sorts over here but you know we're gonna we're gonna say stuff about you that might make you feel bad you know we'll be nice about it but also kind of mean. So you can't do it if you're in a playoff spot. And I think if you're within, like, a game, and you look at the underlying quality of the team,

and maybe you think that you've been jobbed a little bit, then I think it's hard to sell. You know, we're savvy now. So, like, if you were to look at, and I don't have a team in mind specifically, I'm going to have to look at our projected scenics. Who's underperforming their base runs record the most? Let's see. The Astros are down there. The Red Sox. Yeah, I think the Astros should tear it down. And that's not me being selfish. It might be, but it's not just that, you know, just tear it down. Your pitching is so hurt. If you're Houston, we're going to take a small aside about Houston for a second here. If you're Houston, you really think that your rotation is going to be able to do anything in the postseason? I thought not.

I thought not. I mean, you have Verlander, but come on. You don't have Verlander. Verlander, you have Verlander. Probably, but they have outscored their opponents on the season. They've got a lousy one-run record. They were a losing team that snuck into the playoffs in 2020. And then, as always, they went to the ALCS, went to Game 7.

And given their history and expectations and window and everything, I can't imagine them making that decision. And there might be more clarity, obviously. There will be more clarity. There's several weeks to go. So this is premature. I noticed at the start of June that seemingly every site simultaneously published a trade deadline preview at the same time. It was almost like. We didn't do that. Not you, but I saw an ESPN one.

I saw an athletic one. There were probably some others. They just all seemed to. It was like there's just a memo went out June 1st. This is when we publish our trade deadline previews. But there's just, there's so little to preview right now. And probably some teams will separate themselves and some teams will suck in the next six weeks and it'll be an easier call, but probably not that much easier because this is not unexpected.

This is something that was forecasted and I wrote about and we talked about on the podcast that there was just this great mediocre middle and that there were so many teams projected for between 80 and 85 wins. And that has happened. Sometimes the standings don't look at all like the projected standings, but to this point, at least in terms of the clustering there, they do. Like if you look even now at the updated projected end of season win totals on the FanCraft playoff odds, there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven teams projected to finish between 80 and 82 wins.

And then a couple more between 80 and 85, and then another at 86. There's just like a third of the league is like right around that 500 mark. And then there's so little separation. If you look at the standings now, the interesting thing, there's a fair amount of separation in the divisional races. And they're not out of hand or anything. divisional races and they're not out of hand or anything but i think the closest second place team in a division race well it's the orioles who are a few games behind the yankees and then it's the royals five and a half behind the guardians everywhere else it's six and a half or more so there's some separation between the first place and second place teams in

every division except the AL East. But my goodness, those wildcard standings. And we talked about this in response to Sam's tweet about the fact that there are only a handful of good teams on episode 2174. But look at the standings right now. And the AL, it's a little less extreme. But still, you have one, two, three, four, five teams within four games of the third wildcard spot. And then we mentioned the Astros at five and a half. They, I think, probably still see themselves as contenders despite all the pitching losses.

And we should say that, you know, Dana Brown has indicated that they do not at this juncture plan to sell. So, you know, and that was from like a week ago and a lot can happen between now and the end of July. But their understanding is consistent with yours. It's just that they don't want to satisfy my urge for them to bow out quietly because they're afraid, you know, intimidated. intimidated. So they're one of only four AL teams that are more than four games out of a playoff spot. And only three are farther out than the Astros. You got your Angels, your A's, and your White Sox. So, okay, those are the three, no doubt. Yeah, you can trade for someone from them if they have someone you want. And then in the NL, I think everyone was expecting, okay, the Mets are definitely going to divest once more. But as bad as the Mets have been,

they're three and a half games out of a playoff spot. And yeah, a third wildcard spot is not worth as much. Your expectations are not as great of actually getting to a longer playoff round and advancing, but it is certainly well within the means of any playoff team that makes it to that point to go on a run. We've seen that happen. So it's really just two teams now that are out of reach in the NL, your Rockies and your Marlins, which are both about 10 games out, but it's the Mets three and a half games out. And then one, two, three, four, five, six teams within two games of the third wildcard spot. Cubs, Reds, Cardinals, Pirates, just every NL Central team. Diamondbacks, who certainly saw themselves as a contender and were a pennant winner and

invested to get better. They're going to stay in this thing. And then the Nationals we mentioned, you're looking at like five teams now that are kind of categorically out of it based on the standings. And of those five, there's one, the White Sox, that really has a lot to offer. What a weird situation that it's the White Sox who are really has a lot to offer. What a weird situation that it's the White Sox who are by far the worst team to the point that we talked on episode 2174 about whether they should even trade or whether they should hang on to some guys to try to avoid the ignominy of having the worst record ever, potentially. They're on track to be that historically terrible. the worst record ever, potentially. They're on track to be that historically terrible.

And they're the team, though, that if they are open for business, as Jeff Passan reported, like all the business is going to go through the White Sox because weirdly they have at least three highly appealing players in Luis Robert, Eric Fetty, and Garrett Crochet. And of those four other teams that are pretty totally out of it, I mean, who do the Rockies have? Ryan McMahon, I guess. And who do the Marlins have? Jesus Lizardo, maybe? Yeah, Lizardo.

And, yeah, like, who do? Josh Bell? I don't know. I mean, the A's have Mason Miller, of course, although even he's run into a rough patch lately. the fastball is getting hit all of a sudden and he's going away from it more, which is sort of scary. I've just been kind of waiting for the ax to fall on Mason Miller. Not literally, like not talking amputation, but, you know, I've just been worried about him. So any sign of trouble, I'm going to take as kind of confirmation of my fears.

But, you know, Brent Rooker, effectively wild guest. He's having himself a heck of a season. It's because he's not afraid of the pool. Exactly. So there are only a few guys there. It's like the White Sox themselves have about as many appealing trade candidates as the rest of the non-condenders combined. It's just really slim pickings. So unless there are some other teams that fall out of it in the next several weeks, which could happen, it certainly seems like there are just going to be more teams that are theoretically in this thing

and at least for face-saving reasons would not want to subtract from their rosters than there are going to be teams that are putting out their shingle and saying, yeah, we are open to dealing. Yeah. They won't be able to knit together a compelling package quite like the White Sox. Yeah, they're a compelling package, quite like the White Sox. Please appreciate my Garrett Crochet joke. My, like a lead balloon it fell. My stars. Oh, my God. Sorry.

Wow. Usually it's Bauman complaining about me no-selling some joke he made, but yeah. Because his name's Crochet, Ben, you know? I get it. I get it. Yeah. Do you? I don't.

I do now. Oh, furious. Yeah. Do you? I don't. I do now. Oh, furious. Wow. I didn't even mention an angel who would be like Luis Renjifo, Patrick Sandoval, Tanner Scott of the Marlins. I'm just looking for like anyone, you know, maybe. There are some guys. Yeah, there are guys, but it's not enough for, well, you know, maybe. There are some guys. Yeah, there are guys.

But it's not enough for, well, it's not a stove. It's summer. It's hot. But not enough for whatever the summer equivalent of that is, the trade deadline. Joe Sheehan has already dubbed it the trade deadline. So we'll see if it does turn out to be a dud. That's funny. I bet you laughed at his joke.

I chuckled, yeah. It was in print, so it didn't go over my head. But I just don't see where the deals are going to go down. This could be one of the slowest, least interesting trade deadlines.

I've gotten you psyched for what's coming next month. But in a sense, it's good because it means that there are a lot of teams that can convince themselves that, hey, you know, things go our way for a few months and we could sneak in there. Because not every team is looking at, well, every team is looking, but not every fan base is looking at playoff odds and projections. Right. Most of the fans. Just the ones that want to be mad at. Yeah.

Most fans are looking at the standings and the games back. And so if you're what the Red Sox have done in some recent deadlines where they're like, well, we're half in half out, you know, we're kind of close, but we're not really that good.

And we don't really think we have a chance, but we technically do, you know. And so that seemed to confuse people within the organization and certainly without. So there is a real risk to conceding too soon, I would say. Yeah. And then what happens if your rivals slump? What happens if you get hot after the deadline and you haven't called in reinforcements? And again, you don't have to be good. The bar is not high here to sneak into the playoffs this season.

So you really could legitimately just say, yeah, we get some good luck, some one-run wins. We get guys staying healthy. Some good luck, some one-run wins. We get guys staying healthy. Or if you're one of the teams that's underperformed but has injured players returning, like the Rangers, let's say. Not that the defending champs are going to sell or anything, but I'm just saying, like, I just don't see how many teams can declare themselves out of it. Well, and here I will point out that the Red Sox, this year's Red Sox, are the team that is most underperforming its base runs record. By base runs, they should be a 41-27 team. You know, that's a 6-1 winning percentage, Ben.

That's a much better record than the one that they're being presented with. I wonder if that'll come up in the Netflix doc. Our base runs record is incredible. I totally forgot about the Netflix doc. Oh, yeah. that's happening. When does that start? I don't remember. Here's a pro tip to our listeners. I don't always remember our episodes.

The Netflix, I mean, it's being filmed right now. They're following Red Sox around constantly, but I think it's not airing until next year. Until after the fact? Yeah. I bet there will be a whole 15-minute segment where they just sit around refreshing fan graphs and go,

oh my God, yeah, look at us. Look at our baseball underperformance. Yeah. Yeah. Could be true. Guess what I heard on the Mariners broadcast yesterday, Ben? What? You know what I heard about the Mariners?

Mariners, I'm given to understand, might have the best record in one-run games in baseball. Is that right? They have quite the... They are having quite a time in one-run games. It's better to have that kind of time than the alternative.

I suppose so. When you don't have a great offense, but you got good pitching, you gotta try to win some one-run games. They have bunting machine Luke Raley, who just was like, no, I'm going to hit a home run tonight. Sorry, Mac. 16-6 in one-run games. 16-6, yeah. For those Mariners.

Pretty good. Yeah. They're division rivals at the Astros who are kind of on the other end of those one-run record standings. Although the Mariners are only four games. Five and 14 for the Astros. Mariners are only four games over their Pythagorean Pat and two over their base run. So they're no illusion. And, Ben, yesterday we got good pitcher injury news courtesy of the Mariners.

Brian Wu's MRI, clean. Yeah. How often does that happen? That's nice. It never happened. Came back clean. Flawless. Immaculate.

Yeah. No second opinion. No follow-up. No consultation. They didn't say any of those things. They just said that it came back clean. Yeah. It's not going to have to get surgery. here. So the fact that they can seemingly kind of name their price tag for these players because

of the scarcity here, if things persist the way they are right now, it's still going to be tough for them to, if they are still on pace to be maybe the worst team of all time to say, yeah, we want to get worse right now. And they did just call up Drew Thorpe, but you know, there are only so many other prospects they can call up who will help in the short term. But they're really maybe going to have the rest of Major League Baseball over a barrel here because it's like, you want to trade for a good pitcher, for a still young and cost-controlled position player? Like, we got what you want, and almost no one else does. So it really, if the offers are commensurate with their position here,

that might sway me to say, you know what? This might make us more likely to be one of the worst teams of all time, but it will also make a meaningful difference in how soon we get good again. I kind of think they should do it. I kind of think they should do it. I kind of think they should. And I am now really invested in the idea of Louise Robert being on the Phillies because, gosh, that would be great, Ben. Yeah. Buster Olney's hacker had it first. Well, this was our effectively wild trade deadline preview, I guess, which is nothing's going to happen. Nothing to preview. Don't get your hopes up unless you want a white sock, but that's it.

Well, you know, we'll do more as things come into focus, I'm sure. I'm sure we'll have opportunity for more conversation. But yeah, man, I don't know. Maybe it'll be quiet. I doubt it. I understand that my feelings about the deadline and what it should look like are like so specific to the megs of the world, you know, of which there are not very many where it's like, what do I want? It's better for the site if the deadline is really busy because then we write the good stuff and the people come to read the good stuff and then go click, click, click. And that's good for fan graphs. And then there's like human Meg who sits there and says, why is the deadline allowed to be on a Tuesday?

That should be against the law. That should be the deadline should be like Memorial Day. You know, the deadline. But but on a Friday, the deadline. No, like a Thursday. The deadline, but on a Friday, the deadline, no, like a Thursday, the deadline should be on a Thursday every year. It should be on a Thursday because then you get a day after the deadline to, you know, catch up on anything you might have missed the day before, you know, if there was trade

analysis that someone needed more time to complete or wants to take like a step back and say who's the winner and loser of the deadline. You want a normal publication day to be able to do that. But this Tuesday business, Ben, it's like they do the deadline on the Tuesday. Let's imagine it's busy. You work, work, work, work, work. You feel very tired. You wake up the next day and you have three more days of working.

You have three more. Yeah. Against the law. much more conviction than you would give to say Punxsutawney Phil calling for an early or late end to winter. That's basically my confidence level here. But the fact that I'm even calling it speaks to how relatively confident I am that just the conditions are in place for this to be a slow deadline. You don't like to make predictions. That's something we know about you. You're famously anti-prediction. You find them troublesome. Out of humility, which I'm bragging about right now, that I just don't think I have any special insider prescience, but I'm just reading the expanded playoffs and neither do I. But one reason why he doesn't is that he thinks that it places the spotlight and our attention and the emphasis on these mediocre teams, on these teams that are a little bit below or above or at 500 because those are where the races are. That's where the uncertainty is. Whereas we're

not really paying that much attention to the good teams. We're not really analyzing the division race between the Yankees and Orioles so much because they're both going to be in it. It's just a seeding exercise really, which isn't to say that it doesn't matter, but in an earlier era, it really would have mattered. It would have been the difference between being in or out as opposed to having a slightly more or less advantageous playoff position. And so we end up focusing on the teams that really are on the bubble in or out. And now that cutoff is at a level of extreme mediocrity if there is such a thing, right? So we end up focusing on these teams, some of which are entertaining teams despite not being that great,

but some of them just really are mediocre, but that's where the intrigue is because that determines who's going to have a shot to play in the tournament. So that is potentially a downside of this structure, but the glass half full interpretation would be, yeah, but all those teams are in it. And thus their fans are theoretically still invested in the season.

It gives a lot of teams something to watch for and root for. So I think that is a good thing on the whole in the abstract. I think that that part of it's true, but I do share his frustration with, you know the the instinct that the current structure gives you to like i don't know i feel bad picking on a team because like some of these teams like we shouldn't be thinking about the nationals so much you know and and i don't say that to to knock what's going on there the nationals are on a trajectory to give

us a lot of reason to think about them and in pretty short order, I would argue, right? So Nationals fans, I'm not trying to harsh your vibe at all, but, you know, like we shouldn't be thinking about them this much. We shouldn't, I shouldn't be thinking about the Tigers or the Twins this much. And I like the Tigers and the Twins and I want them to do well, but like, what are we doing here, you know? And some of these very good divisions, like, okay, fine, like, maybe you think about them more. Like, but we should really be thinking about the AL East all the time because, like, that's a – look at that.

Look at that, Ben. Look at that. Those Yankees have 49 wins. They do. Amazing. Yeah. We're probably in this situation to some extent because of the incentives of the expanded playoff field. I think these things fluctuate from season to season.

But it's got to be at least partly because some teams have decided, well, we just have to be good enough in theory. We have to not be so totally terrible that we're out of it, which applies to maybe five teams at this point. And everyone else can think, again, this was kind of predictable. And this might be sort of fluky, but also probably a response to these conditions. This is something we talked about and was written about when this playoff format was being discussed, when it was put in place. Huh, this seems like this will be what the incentives are to be not that great, but also not that terrible. Which is sort of a mixed blessing to have only five teams that are so hopelessly out of it in mid-June, but also just a whole lot of teams that are kind of blah. So pluses and minuses. And not every club has Luke Rayleigh bunting to make it. Are the Mariners good?

I don't know. But they're in first place in the division. What else are you going to say? If anyone will find a way to be active at the trade deadline, it will be the Padres and or the Mariners. So I anticipate what they will get up to. Yeah. Gosh. Who could unpack?

Who could peel apart the layers of those brains? Gross. Crochet to the Padres. Already rumored, right? And then we can send Robert to I guess they have a pretty good center fielder, but you know, they can fit

him in somewhere. Yeah, I don't know that that's the Mariner's MO. Yeah, but they'll be making some moves if there are moves to be made. Sure. And two of the other teams that are in this group of, are they good? Are they bad? Who knows?

Time will tell. The Cardinals and the Giants, and the Cardinals and the Giants will be matching up in a game next week, next Thursday, June 20th, to be precise, at Rickwood Field for an event that's been dubbed MLB at Rickwood Field, a tribute to the Negro Leagues. It is a tribute, as it says, to the Negro Leagues, to Willie Mays, to Juneteenth. This is the first MLB game to be played in the state of Alabama, not the first major

league game, obviously, but it's being played at Rickwood Field, the oldest professional ballpark in the country. played at Rickwood Field, the oldest professional ballpark in the country. Beautiful. So much history, so much wonderful restoration that has gone into this. I am extremely psyched for this game. I think it is going to be great. And one thing that has helped me be better informed and more excited for this game is a podcast series that we have both enjoyed. It's called Road to Rickwood Field, and it has been produced by NPR and also by MLB. It's a four-part series, three parts of which are available right now. And we just so happen to have the creator and executive producer of that series, Alana Schreiber, on our next segment.

So we will be back in just a moment with Alana to talk about the podcast and get you ready for Rickwood Field. When we look at baseball, how much do we see? Well, the curveballs bend and the home runs fly More to the game than meets the eye To get the stats compiled and the stories filed Fans on the internet might get riled But we can break it down on Effectively Wild All right, we are joined now by Alana Schreiber,

who is a radio producer for New Orleans Public Radio and also the executive producer of Road to Rickwood. Hello, Alana. Hi, thanks so much for having me. Please tell us about the genesis of the series, because it seems like there are a bunch of moving parts. You've got NPR affiliates involved. You are partnered with MLB. You're talking about the history of a ballpark in Birmingham. How did this all come together the way that it did? Yeah. So I think for me, just going back to like my interest in the Negro Leagues, all started in fourth grade. I had to do this fourth grade history project, and so did my twin sister. And she asks my dad, like, hey, you know, who was the second Black player in Major League Baseball? Everyone's going to be asking, everyone's going to be

doing a Jackie Robinson project. Let me do the second guy. And my dad tells her all about Larry Doby. And I was amazed. I had never thought about the second player. I, you know, in my mind, I hadn't thought about the before or after to Jackie Robinson. That was just it. And so now I'm thinking, oh my god, I need to do a cool project. What am I gonna do? And then my mom had been reading Buck O'Neill's obituary, and she tells me all about how he is this incredible former player of the Negro Leagues, and how he really dedicated his career to making sure that former Negro Leaguers got the recognition they deserved. And when he didn't make it into the

Hall of Fame, he was okay with it because other former Negro Leaguers did. And that really propelled this lifelong interest in Negro League baseball. I do my project on Buck O'Neill when I'm 10. No one knows what I'm talking about in my classroom. But then as I just became a journalist at various NPR stations around the country, I would always find these really interesting connections to Negro League history. You know, being in Colorado, I did a story on the Denver Post tournament, the first integrated baseball tournament. It was 13 years before Jackie Robinson integrated the Dodgers. And you have Satchel Paige playing with the House of David, the Jewish traveling team against the Kansas City Monarchs or being in New Orleans learning all about Tony Stone, one of the handful of women who played in the Negro League spent some time for the New

Orleans Creoles. So when I heard about this game at Rickwood, I knew that it would be this amazing story. And I really just thought that why don't we just look at Rickwood as a venue of history, and not just baseball history, but civil rights history. And I was able to get in touch with Roy Wood Jr. actually through an old friend of mine from Hebrew school. My friend Jasper, his dad used to be a writer on The Daily Show. So I told them what I was thinking. They connected me with Roy. And the minute you have Roy's name attached to the project, it's really hard for anyone to say no. So NPR said, you know, let's get involved.

And MLB said, we're right there with you. And we were able to set up this really cool partnership between my two great loves, baseball and public radio, to pull this thing off. I think that one of the things that I really appreciated about the series, at least as it's progressed so far, is that point that you made about sort of using Rickwood as an entry point to this larger history, right? Because the Negro League story needs to be told on its own, but it's obviously a story that can't be decoupled from American history and all of the sort of nastiness and racism and segregation that forced these players to play separately to begin with. And, you know, I hope that this

comes off the way I mean it to, but I will admit being pleasantly surprised at how frank the series was because of Major League Baseball's involvement. You know, I think that they are going through their own reckoning with that part of baseball's history. And so I'm curious, sort of from just a production perspective, how did you start to piece together the baseball of it, the history of it? And then what was that partnership with Major League Baseball like as you were constructing an honest accounting of the field and the people who passed through it? To start, I guess I'd say that meeting with all of these players, you know, we went to Birmingham and spoke to a bunch of former Negro League players or, you know, the daughters of players or anyone who was involved in Rickwood in some kind of way. And

all of their stories in itself weren't just about baseball, it was about the civil rights movement. You know, someone like Bill Greeson, the first Black pitcher on the Cardinals and legendary pitcher on the Black Barons, talked about how he was a member of the 16th Street Baptist Church, and he would have been at church the day it was bombed if it wasn't for having to go play a baseball game 20 miles away. That's just one example of how these players did seem, you know, even if they weren't aware at the time about kind of this intersection of baseball and civil rights, they were all aware that the Black Barons was this sort of escape for a lot of people in the Black community in Birmingham during this really divisive period of time. They, you know, called it an oasis,

a temple. Like, You would go straight from church on Sunday to a Black Barons game, and it was a different kind of church. People were just so poignant with what they had to share. But I think in terms of working with Major League Baseball, it was a push and pull at times, right? There were some things that they didn't necessarily maybe want us to say at times, but I think in the end, we were able to compromise really well. And I think that I really respect them a lot for all the ownership that's being taken. And I think a lot of other people will too. I think one of the biggest kind of lines of contention was, you know, they're so proud

that they have okay, the new stats announcements are coming out. And these new statistics are going to be incorporated. When you look at the statistics, we're only including anything that happened in the Negro Leagues from 1948 and before. So that's the year of the last Negro League World Series. It's the year after Jackie Robinson integrates Major League Baseball. And they do have to have a cutoff somewhere, right? The Negro Leagues didn't all collapse at once. It was slow. It hit the Midwest and the South later than, you know, places in the North. But someone like Willie Mays played in the Negro Leagues in 1949 and 1950. So it's a little weird to say, okay, we're counting his statistics in 48. That says that's Major League, but not 49 and 50. And a lot of the players we spoke to, you know, they didn't even start in the Negro Leagues until 1950. So, you

know, at first, MLB was a little bit more hesitant to have us talk about that. And then when we explained, hey, these guys that we spoke to, this is something that's important to them. And they understand that there needs to be a cutoff year somewhere. But, and a lot of the reasoning also for the cutoff year being, you know, this thought, you know, oh, well, by then maybe there was more of a pathway for talented Black players in the major leagues. But, you know, this thought, you know, oh, well, by then maybe there was more of a pathway for talented Black players in the major leagues. But, you know, for everyone who makes it through, so many more fall through the cracks. It was not that easy. In the end, I think we reached a place where they are able to celebrate the inclusion of Negro League statistics, and we're able to

celebrate that alongside them while also looking at it in the larger context. Yeah. And as we noted recently, Sabre recently concluded that actually 49 and 50 were major league quality, some of the games then. So you can reach different opinions, different informed sources. Just out of curiosity, as Meg said, I didn't get the sense that anything was sanitized in the final product or that there were any compromises made that I could detect. But was the advantage of partnering with MLB just to increase the reach and get better distribution or access for interviews, etc.? Because, of course, NPR could probably produce a podcast on its own. It's been known to produce a few. Yeah, I think that part of it was also just internally, there was so much excitement about working with the other side. I think MLB, it wasn't just about

the reach, but it was also about the connections, you know, like they were able to connect us to some of the players on the first integrated team in 1964 in Birmingham, you know, it's thanks to them, we got guys like Burt Campanaris on the phone with us. And they were also able to connect us to some really amazing people to kind of put in a larger cultural context, like, you know, writer and Sabre member Shakia Taylor. They even, you know, got me a conversation with Tim Anderson. That'll be in the final episode. So that definitely helped. But I think, honestly, NPR was so excited to work with Major League Baseball. There's a lot of very dorky baseball fans, myself included, among us.

And I think that NPR sometimes feels like, you know, if NPR wants to cover sports, people might not maybe take it seriously or not that they won't take it seriously, but they're just kind of like, whoa, where's that coming from? But by being able to partner with Major League Baseball, it kind of gives us a new group of people that, you know, maybe only listen to baseball or sports podcasts and wouldn't really consider something more history-based. And vice versa, with Major League Baseball, there's the opportunity to take some players who, or some people who might not normally listen to any sort of baseball podcast, but then they see, oh, it's NPR, it's culture, it's history, it's civil rights. So it's been a really exciting partnership. And both groups have just been really excited to work together. And I think for me, it all came together when I got to see NPR and MLB do a collab Instagram post. I was like, my two identities are merging. This is

beautiful. So I hope that everyone listening will learn a lot more about Rickwood Field over the next week or so, preferably from your podcast initially and then also from watching the game. But can you give a little overview of its history, its construction? It is the oldest professional baseball park in the United States and older than Fenway and older than Wrigley. states and older than Fenway and older than Wrigley. And of course, one key component of its survival is that it was not made out of wood so that ballparks that predated Rickwood, often they would burn down and thus they're not around anymore. So I guess just the physical construction of it is one factor, but of course there are so few ballparks surviving from that era, even given the capacity to survive.

So many things had to happen a certain way for it to come down to us. So that sounds like a four-part podcast series answer, but if you want to summarize. For sure. Well, one of the things I love about the way Rick Webb came together as this iron and steel, it's in Iron and Steel Town, right? Birmingham, a lot of people don't know, but you'll find out on the podcast. It's not this old kind of Confederate town that some people might think it is. It wasn't born until after the Civil War. And a lot of Black families came there thinking, hey, this is a brand new city. This is a fresh

start. And they came there for the industry. They called it the Pittsburgh of the South. There was the iron and the steel mills. So a lot of these people were working in the iron furnaces and the companies started baseball teams as a way to, you know, give them a day off. And originally before there was Rickwood, there was the slag pile where players would play, where literally the fans would sit on the smelting of iron called slag in the stands until finally Rick Woodward comes along and loves baseball and decides to build this ballpark and name it after himself. The guys kind of first to play at Rickwood were actually, you know, I imagine them looking around talking about the construction of the field itself because they, you know, were all part of this industry. But, you know, Rickwood, you know, at first is this, you know, were all part of this industry. But, you know, Rick Wood,

you know, at first is this, you know, more or less serving white teams, but Rick Woodward is going to rent out the ballpark to anyone who pays, which is why Black teams are barnstorming there from the very beginning. And then not too long after Rick Wood is founded, we see the first rendition of the Birmingham Black Barons coinciding with the official formation of the Negro Leagues in 1920 in Kansas City. At the same time, Rick Woodward is also renting out the ballpark to women's suffrage organizations to have suffrage rallies and suffrage day and to have women's teams playing baseball on the field, literally a year after it's founded. That's crazy. And then you also have a Klan rally that he rented the stadium out to as

well, which is so very paradoxical from the very beginning. And then you really see the way that the stadium, I think one of the first things that stuck out to me about it was that when, you know, when it was a white Barons game or just, you know, the Birmingham Barons, Black fans could come, but they'd sit in this, you know, area off in the right field bleachers called the Negro Bleachers. And then when the Black Barons would play, white fans would come and they would sit in the Negro Bleachers. And so already Rickwood is this really, it just feels like there's all these kind of paradoxes happening there. Bull Connor, the famous racist commissioner of public safety in Birmingham,

who's known for unleashing the hoses on children and during the Children's Crusade, you know, kind of known for being the second tier George Wallace, he gets his start as a baseball announcer for the Birmingham Barons. So that is what elevates him publicly and allows him to launch into politics. So there's just these really clear examples of the way that this field is just intersecting with everything else that's happening in Birmingham, to the point by the early 60s when Major League Baseball is saying, come on, you know, Birmingham, every other team is integrating. We have made it official now that all minor league teams need to integrate.

Bull Connor convinces the owner, just shut down baseball. And Rickwood goes dark and there's no baseball for two years. And the teams have to move because Bull Connor was committed to upholding segregation against all forms that he's going to take away this national pastime. And then you see, you know, after the 16th Street Baptist Church in 63, it's less than a year later that baseball comes back to Birmingham because people are thinking we need to give folks something to root for here. We need to prove that Birmingham isn't just this racist, segregated city of the past. We are ready to move forward. And they did. And they moved forward with some of the most amazing players to play this game and have done their time at Rickwood, including, you know, legendary Reggie Jackson. And you see by the late 60s, half the roster of the

Oakland A's, which was the Birmingham Barons became the feeder team to the Oakland A's, half their roster were guys who had played at Rickwood. So you see this amazing talent coming out of there. And then where the series kind of ends is really a look at black baseball today among youth in Birmingham and around the country. We go to Roywood Junior's old high school, talk to players there who actually get to play at Rickwood when it's not under construction as their home field. We talk to local coaches about what they're doing. And we just talk about a lot of the obstacles that are keeping more black youth from playing

this game in Birmingham today, but also all of the really incredible things being done about it. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that because you gave us a little sneak peek at the script for the final episode and we won't spoil anything. But I think, you know, I appreciated that you viewed this as sort of an ongoing story, right? I think that the mistake that is often made when talking about Jackie breaking the color barriers, the sense that, well, now everything was fixed, right? That the league integrated and it was relatively smooth and peaceful. And we know for a fact that wasn't true. We know that it wasn't true in Rickwood for the guys who returned when that team returned, that it was a contentious process and one that wasn't always comfortable or fair for those guys. And that this is a story that continues into the present

day, that there are real obstacles to young people playing baseball and that those seem to be disproportionately disadvantaging communities of color, including Black American communities. So, you know, can you talk a bit about, you don't have to give anything away, but just talk a bit more about that fourth episode and maybe the perspective that Roy Wood Jr. was able to offer there, because I imagine that that's a very personal conversation and subject for him. Yeah, absolutely. So I think that one of the biggest kind of transitions that you'll see from the third to fourth episode is that the third episode, you know, okay, where integrated baseball is happening in Birmingham, the black

baseball players are doing amazing things in the major leagues and have all these fans. But there's still this mentality of don't fight back, right? That was this Jackie Robinson model of, you know, be grateful that you are allowed to play on a white man's field, don't have a temper. And even we talked to some Negro leaguers who said, you know, listen, we love Willie Mays. We grew up playing with him, but there were guys who were better than him, but they were too temperamental. They were never going to get signed. It was this idea that you needed to be incredibly restrained. And one of the things that I love in the fourth episode is we talked to some people working in MLB today, especially on the Swingman Classic,

the new HBCU All-Star game, folks like Tony Regans and Jerry Manuel. And one of the things that I loved was talking about just giving more Black athletes the opportunities to be themselves, right? They're not trying to stifle any personalities anymore. And one of the quotes I love, and hopefully this doesn't spoil too much, but Jerry Manuel at one point says, we need your dreads. You know, we need your personality. ways in which Black players often get labeled as raw. And what does raw mean? And, you know, some people think it's this good thing. It means you just have this automatic talent without any training. But it also can be really insulting. It sounds like you're saying they're undeveloped. They're not, they might not be as poised. And what the stigma of this term raw means. And then also talking to Roy, you know,

especially getting to watch him go back to his old high school and talk to some of the guys playing baseball there now. I mean, the difference is really amazing in just how much it costs, right? Like he talks about growing up, you know, you needed a bat, some shoes, and you could just go to the local park and play with kids. But there's fewer places to play now than there used to be. And also travel baseball has just really taken over the system of, you know, the kind of wealthier families putting their kids into this really competitive system that if you

don't have the means, you're not going to be able to be a part of that. So how do we get recreational baseball back? One coach we even spoke to had to start a nonprofit for his team. He has a team of seven-year-olds, and it was too expensive. So he, you know, was doing outside funding. So there's a lot of different themes kind of talked about in this episode. Everything from, you know, the barriers of cost and to, you know, how this doesn't always seem to be like the friendliest sport for Black athletes. And I think that one of the most kind of things that stuck out to me the most is when we spoke to these high schoolers

and I asked them, who were your favorite players? They were saying Adley Rushman and Bryce Harper and Jose Altuve. They didn't really name any current Black American players because unfortunately, there aren't as many to choose from, which is so different, you know, from Roy growing up getting to watch Tony Gwynn and Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Bonds. And there's just there's less ways for you to see yourself. Really looking forward to the game next week, because even watching from afar, I feel like it's just going to be one of those things where you're going to get chills seeing players take that field because of all the history and the legacy which the podcast covers. And as we've said, it's not purely a podcast about baseball. It's maybe half about baseball and

half about just the past 120 years of US history and segregation and civil rights and so much. But there is so much baseball history that people might not know if they know Rickwood primarily as the home of the Birmingham Black Barons. They may not realize how many other legends played there at some point, whether it was exhibition, barnstorming, minor leagues, whatever it was. You had a stat in one of the early episodes about how many Hall of Famers have played there. It was, I think, what, close to 200, right?

Yeah, it's like 30% of those in the Hall of Fame have played at Rickwood. Yeah. Who were some of the players who people might not know that their paths would ever have crossed with Rickwood Field that when they're watching this game next week, they should be thinking, oh, so-and-so actually stood there and it is in the same place? Oh my God, I love this question because this gives me the opportunity to share some things that there was never even really time to share in the podcast. So Jim Pearsall, famous for having schizophrenia, but also being a baseball player and actually, I think doing a lot to really draw awareness to what it's like to be a professional athlete battling mental health issues. He played at Rickwood Field and was actually famous for this one instance of there were some fans heckling him. So he climbed on

top of the scoreboard and squirted them with a water gun. Denny McLean, he actually went to Rickwood and that was kind of the space he was trying to go to to rehab himself. Another one that I think is really interesting is Ray caldwell uh who was famous for getting struck by lightning yeah he comes to birmingham to play on the barons he's thinking you know he's going to end his career in the minor leagues he's older and he has to face off against this young fresh-faced dizzy dean that everyone is so excited to see in this dixie series tournament it was the biggest tournament in rickwood to the date you know it, it's late 20, I believe 1929, and they face off. And by, you know, all accounts, everyone is so excited about Dizzy Dean. No one believes in Ray

Caldwell, but Caldwell ends up beating Dizzy Dean and winning the series and breaks down in tears. And it's this kind of emotional final moment of his career. Those are a couple of the ones that I think are really meaningful. And yeah, and I mean, of course, of course, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, everyone's barnstorming there. But there's just so many hidden gems. I could go on and on. One of my favorite Rickwood anecdotes that I'll share, because again, we couldn't fit this in the podcast, but it's absolutely hilarious, was the director Ron Shelton, when he's filming the movie Cobb at Rickwood Field, he has this problem because back when Ty Cobb would have been playing baseball, it would have been a segregated crowd.

So he can only hire white people to play extras to make it authentic. But, you know, this is the 90s in Birmingham. He's not going to go around with flyers that say, you know, whites only. So he gets his, he calls in a favor and gets his friend jimmy buffett to agree to play a concert and rick woodfield knowing that it's going to bring in all the white people and it absolutely works and they film the concert and they have the concert that they ask people you know stick around and be an extra in the film and also i i'm pretty sure in the film itself some of the footage of white people cheering is literally just pasted from the jimmy buffett concert so i thought that one was was absolutely hilarious and and i think the last

one i'll share is uh dick seipic one of the handful of deaf players to play in major league baseball in the last until curtis pride he played at rick woodfield well. And in one game, I know he faced a one-armed player. And it was like the first game anyone could remember of like two players with different physical disabilities playing against each other. So yeah, those are just a handful. Yeah, that's a

good Cobb story. I remember from Ron Shelton's book about Bull Durham, which he was on the podcast to talk about, he also had to fill the stadium in Durham for the scene, the marriage between Jimmy and Millie and had to pack the park. And so they got the sound engineer at a Pink Floyd concert arranged for an announcement at intermission that Pink Floyd would be playing at Durham Athletic Park when the concert was over and there'd be free beer and shirts and the band band will show up. So, they got a bunch of extras to

show up, and then Pink Floyd never showed. But all the people are there, so you can see people wearing Pink Floyd shirts in the background in the movie, if you look. But nice that Jimmy Buffett actually showed up to Rickwood, so that's good. Yeah. Well, and I'm struck by Rickwood has a special sort of place in terms of the number of, you know, Hall of Famers that passed through there, the longevity of the history, the role that it played in Negro Leagues baseball. But it's hardly the only field that probably deserves some amount of not only memorialization, but rejuvenation. of not only memorialization, but rejuvenation. And I wonder, you know, if NPR were to let you do another series like this, if there are other stories that you're keen to tell from this era of baseball. I've thought about that a lot. One thing that I have always been really curious about is the way that baseball seems to have had more players with disabilities than any other sport. There was quite a handful of Deaf players in the late 1800s, early 1900s.

There was even a summer in 1900 when the New York Giants had three Deaf pitchers. There was Luther Taylor, there was William Hoy. I read a whole book about the kind of contributions, and it's been disputed, but they've definitely certainly made certain contributions to the way that signing has taken over baseball in so many ways. You've seen players, you know, like Jim Abbott with the one arm and Pete Gray. So there's so many more players with disabilities, it seems like in baseball than any other sport. So that's always been something I've been really fascinated into looking into. And I think also one thing that I've always been curious about is just kind of like the

legacy of these baseball families. I don't know the story in there, but, you know, one thing I'm really curious about at Rickwood itself that I'm so excited about is that, you know, we have Mike Yastrzemski is on the Giants. He'll be coming with that team to play this game at Rickwood. But his grandfather, Carl Yastrzemski, I just realized this a few days ago, actually. Carl Yastrzemski had the last hit off Satchel Paige of his whole career as a young guy on the Red Sox. And Satchel Paige, of course,

played countless games at Rickwood Field for the Birmingham Black Barons. So now Mike Yastrzemski is coming back to the field that Satchel Paige played on after knowing that his grandfather, not only did his grandfather get the last hit against Satchel Paige of his legendary career, but his great-grandfather, Carl Sr., actually also once played against Paige in a minor league or semi-pro game on Long Island. So I just love the historical connections there that feed through. And I know there's been so much effort by the friends of Rickwood, who you talk to and document their efforts on the podcast. And we did an episode 1887, where we talked to Ron Teasley, and we talked to Gary Gillette and people who helped restore

Hamtramck Stadium in Detroit, one of the other surviving Negro League ballparks. Can you talk a little bit about the recent efforts that have been made, not only, I guess, over the past few decades, but also in the past couple of years to get Rickwood up to snuff to be a big league ballpark again? Yeah, absolutely. So I want to just also start by saying how indebted I am to the friends of Rick Woodfield. I reached out to them back when this podcast was still a pitch and MLB and NPR were reviewing it, and they have been incredibly helpful. One man in particular, Art Black, who wrote three books on Rick Wood, has been my liaison into this whole community and has connected me to so many incredible people,

you know, and knows exactly who's going to be great to talk to. Gerald Watkins, who's the current president of the organization, has done an amazing job of, you know, always invites me to the park, which would be under construction, and has a hard hat and a vest for me and has been really generous about opening up that space. And Jeb Stewart is another one who's been incredibly helpful. He's also a Sabre member. So he just has all these stories locked in and they've all been featured on the podcast. So, I mean, these efforts have been going on for a long time.

It really actually helped when Ron Shelton came in and wanted to film Cobb there because at that point, the Birmingham Barons had moved to Hoover and it was this vacant park. It was run down. And actually, Shelton was able to make a donation to restore the park with some of that Hollywood money, which was really helpful for them. So and I think also I really want to shout out the head groundskeeper at Rickwood, Jabril

Weir, who's been working there for a long time and is the one overseeing all the renovations, getting this field up to MLB standards. One thing a lot of people don't know is they have to raise the field. They literally have to lift up the field a couple inches in order to get it to MLB regulation. And I've made a few trips to Rickwood watching this process and just seeing what he's been able to pull off has been incredibly impressive. And, you know, he's someone, if you listen to the first episode of the podcast, he talks about, you know, he shows up to work every day and gets chills just knowing, you know, Willie Mays was here and Jackie Robinson was here and all the players who have stood on that field. So the efforts have been really, really amazing, just how many people are really dedicated to this.

And one of my favorite things was some of the guys actually like to go hiking together. When I was in Birmingham, they arranged for a big group hike. So me and my production team and all the MLB guys and about, you know, 15 of the Friends of Rickwood guys all went on a group hike together in Birmingham, which was really fun. And they just had so many stories to share. which was really fun. And they just had so many stories to share. Yeah. And I know that MLB has said that they don't want this to be sort of a, we parachute in and play one game and leave. They want there to be effects that come from this. And so I wonder what you heard while working on the podcast from people in Birmingham, from people

who've been there their whole lives, who grew up playing on this field, from former Negro Leaguers who were interviewed for the podcast. What does this mean to the city? How excited is Birmingham about this game being played? Obviously, it would have been nice if it could have happened sooner somehow when more people who played there previously were still around to see this, but better late than never, I suppose. And what might come from this in the future? Do you think or hope that this will be a recurring event? I learned from your podcast that there was a plan for MLB to build a facility in Birmingham several years ago that got blocked by a disc golf contingent of all groups. That is a big part of episode four, yes. Yes.

So what sort of investment has MLB made, would it like to make, and what could come from this beyond this one exciting event? Yeah, so I know that MLB is dedicated to keeping a relationship going with Birmingham. And the city itself has put in like 4.5 million into this event. There's a lot of ideas as to some of the things that could happen next, but I know that

people really are dedicated. But you know, one of the main things is Rickwood Fields up until this year was used by high schools that had nowhere else to play. This year, they weren't able to use it, which was a big loss. But now that it's been renovated, it looks like a major league ballpark, right? And one of my favorite moments was being there on the field with Roy taking photos because he played high school baseball there. And he's taking photos, and he gets to show the kids at Ramsey's, guys, look what you're going to have next year. So the fact that now these high school players are going to be having their high school games at a major league caliber ballpark is pretty amazing but there's lots of ideas coming you know as far as expanding the swingman classic more and getting

more black players to play and kind of just looking at that but also i know mlb is interested in what this relationship can be they're talking with mayor randall woodford and they want to make sure that this isn't like a one and done situation, but they are really, you know, setting down some some roots there. And maybe that's doing more training camps. Maybe that's more development stuff. I mean, especially because if you look at some of the top, a lot of the top black major leaguers today came through some sort of MLB training program. There's just not a ton of those in Birmingham.

But maybe now that Rickwood is this really up to Sn snuff park there can actually be a lot more events there so this is something that's really top of mind um you know i'm not the one in the room in these decisions but i know that people really do care about this um and as far as you know what are people thinking about this game what could it do it's definitely not a monolith and you'll hear in the fourth episode some of the negro leaguers we spoke to are so honored they are so excited that this is going to happen. They love Rick Woodfield. They grew up with Rick Woodfield. One of them we spoke to, his name is Rev Blue. He lives half a mile from the ballpark. You can see it from his house. And he is just giddy with excitement about all these people that are going to be here and what it's going to mean to him. And he's

someone who didn't just play in the Negro Leagues, but also, you know, painted the, like, the stands and did odd jobs around the park. Like, this park means so much to him. And then you have some other players we spoke to who are saying it's too late. Everyone's kind of dead and gone. And, you know, I think for someone like Bill Greeson, who's 99 and he was the first black pitcher on the Cardinals. But, you know, he didn't even last a month. He said no one would talk to him. No one spoke to him at all. He didn't touch a ball. He was just kind of there. And now the Cardinals are coming back to play. And I think that for him, it's kind of mixed emotions of remembering what that pain was like of being signed to this major league team, but never really given a fair shot. So it's a mix for sure. But I

do think that overall, the city's really excited to see what could come out of this. And I think hopefully a lot of younger kids are going to be watching this and realizing just how much baseball history there is in Birmingham. We think of Alabama and we think of college football, but I think this is going to be really inspiring a lot of people to learn more about their baseball history right in their backyard. I wanted to ask you about the experience of speaking with former Negro Leaguers because one of the things that has underscored sort of the urgency that a lot of people have felt in the last couple of years around getting Negro League stats properly recognized by MLB is that you know these guys

are old and a lot of them have passed away and we will just continue to lose more of them and you know if if rickwood is a part of the historical record in some ways this podcast is too right because you have conversations with these men who are able to relay their experiences firsthand so i just wonder what that was like for you as a producer to get to, you know, converse with these guys and hear their stories while they're around to tell them themselves. It was remarkable. Like, I don't even have the words to explain it because these people are living history and the stories that they have are phenomenal. I mean, someone like Bill Greeson,

who grew up across the street from Martin Luther King in Atlanta and served in World War II in Iwo Jima and, you know, was playing on the same team as Willie Mays. The two of them are the last surviving members of this 1948, you know, pennants winning Birmingham Black Barons. And I think, you know, a lot of these players right you can't google them there's not statistics out there over the summer when i first was in birmingham kind of you know i was actually there to believe it or not play an ultimate frisbee tournament and then i just snuck away to the museum and not disc golf not one of those um but was able to kind of sneak away to the museum and talk to the director and And I met a former Negro leaguer named Chico Rutledge, and I'm looking him up and I'm like,

why can't I find anything on him? Well, a lot of—there wasn't great bookkeeping all the time. A lot of the statistics have been lost. So it's kind of just who you know. And one of the most amazing things was the players would connect me with other players. But talking to them, I mean, their stories are remarkable. And even if you haven't heard of them, you've heard of people they've played with. They will tell you about playing with Satchel Paige, playing with Willie Mays, growing up with Willie Mays down the street.

It's really, really remarkable. And one of the things that I also mentioned is a lot of them feel like they weren't given their fair shot in baseball, right? The cards were stacked against them. And maybe they got an offer from a team in 1951, but it was like a $2,000 signing bonus and they have a wife and four kids and they can't relocate with that little money. But a lot of them have gone on to accomplish really incredible things too. You know, Coot Willis, childhood best friend of Willie Mays. If you read Willie Mays' autobiography, Coot is the only kid in town who can catch his fastball. He's their best friend.

You know, he doesn't go on to the major leagues, but he does go on to be the mayor of Fairfield, Alabama, and has two really accomplished children. And he's really proud of the life that he's built, as he should be. So I think that speaking to some of these players has, you know, it's not just their baseball stories. It's their life stories. Rev Blue, who we spoke to, walked us through, you know, his den where him and his wife have like upwards of 30 bowling trophies from how good they are at bowling, you know.

So getting to be in their homes, having them open up their spaces to us in their homes was really special. And I think that they are proud to know that they're part of this history that's getting to be celebrated more and more. And there's also an element of, you know, where were you guys all this time? We've had these stories for years. And, you know, it's been really special and really remarkable. And I grew up in Montclair, New Jersey, you know, where Larry Doby retired not too far from the Newark Eagles. So I knew some of the stories that happened in my backyard, but now living in the South, getting to hear these stories face to face, it's been really special. And I hope that they've, you know, enjoyed getting to tell their stories to us. Yeah, I was impressed by the number and variety of voices on the podcast. How many people did you

speak to for this podcast? Because, you know, it's players from several eras, locals, historians, you left no stone unturned seemingly oh my goodness there was we spoke to so many players and i went through the ends of the earth to get in contact with them it was and i will say one of my favorite things is you know we spoke to quite a few members of that 1964 first integrated baseball team and a lot of them you know went on to have major league careers like bururt Campanaris, like Blue Moon Odom. A lot of it was you talk to a player, they're still in touch with a guy from that team and they'll give you their information. You know, we got to, you know, Burt Campanaris keeps telling us he couldn't speak any English and the catcher, a guy named Woody Hoike, who is actually most famous for later convincing Tim Wakefield to become a knuckleballer.

He says, talk to my buddy Woody Hoytkey and connects us to Woody Hoytkey. And I talked to an author who connected me to Paul Seitz, who then goes ahead and connects us to Blue Moon Odom. So I love that the players are still in touch with each other all these years later. We had to have spoken with upwards of 40, maybe even 50 people. It was wild, because then when you're in Birmingham, you meet someone and they say, well, who you really gotta speak to is this guy, and then it just grows and grows and grows. Everyone had these incredible stories, and we kept saying, you know, this is a new side podcast over here, just on this one person's life,

because, you know, like Shelly Stewart, we spoke to for an hour. He's an icon in Birmingham. This famous radio personality who, you know, was giving coded messages during the Children's Crusade. He went to high school with Fred Shuttlesworth. They were organizers together. Everyone in Birmingham knows who he is. He's this legend. He's also an old friend of Roy's dad from back in the day and has known Roy forever

and is really proud of him. And also, Shelley was a pretty good lefty pitcher. So whenever the Birmingham Black Barons needed a southpaw, they put him in. So really, yeah, every one person you talk to has another person for you to talk to. And it just grows and grows and grows. As deeply reported as the podcast is, I'm sure you just scratched the surface and the finished product of the history of Rickwood and Birmingham. And we've just scratched the surface of the surface in this conversation.

But as people are preparing to watch this game next week, is there anything else you think they should know that they should look for that they might not hear on that broadcast? Whether it's Birmingham history or Rickwood history, any little tidbit, maybe it made the podcast, maybe it didn't make the podcast, but any other stories or tidbits that you care to share that are too good not to? Oh my goodness. That should have been when I shared the Mike Yastrzemski anecdote. Yeah. But yeah, I think that I would just say everyone in Birmingham has a relationship to this field. And, you know, some people, they heard of it, but they don't know that much about it.

And other people, you know, I remember I was at a restaurant once and the cashier says, oh, you're doing a story on Rickwood. My brother always wanted to be a baseball player and he didn't make it, but they did let him be an extra in the 42 movie. So he got to play a baseball player at Rickwood Field for a movie, right? Like, really, everyone in this town has some sort of connection to this field and to this baseball history. And I think that I just hope that people understand that, like, Rickwood itself is living history. You do get chills when you walk in. And it's not always good stuff. I mean, for every suffrage event, there was a Klan rally.

You know, for every Black baseball team that barnstormed there, well, they weren't allowed in the locker rooms and had to change in the hallway. But I think that I've grown to have this really deep appreciation and respect for Birmingham as a place. And it still tends to get a bad rap for things that happened, you know, over 50 years ago. And I think that I hope that people watching this can know not only how far Birmingham's come but also how it's working to tell its own history and some of that is a really dark and devastating history but some of it is really worth celebrating.

How incredible the Black Barons were and what they meant to this community for so long, that's a remarkable story. You know, Birmingham really is a baseball city, and you might not think it is, but it really, people are so proud of the baseball history that's come out of there. And, you know, even today, you know, one of the people we spoke to was Tim Anderson, who, he is from Tuscaloosa, he plays for the Marlins now, and he has, you know, got to play for the Birmingham Barons. And, you know, growing up in Tuscaloosa, you're surrounded by football, but all of a sudden

he's getting to play for this historic minor league team in his home state. So I really just hope that people are also more encouraged to learn about the Negro Leagues too. I mean, there's so many stories just from the women who played in the Negro Leagues to women, like, effing manly. I just hope that they know that this is just one story of multiple, countless, incredible stories. The Negro Leagues have touched every part of this country. I'll never forget when I was in Anchorage, Alaska, and saw a picture of Satchel Paige with the then mayor of Anchorage about the time Satchel Paige went all the way to Alaska to try to start a baseball team called the Earthquakes. You know, it really, this baseball history has really touched every

single corner of this country. And I hope that people are maybe inspired to look into that history wherever they are. So, yeah. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to the game because, like, the Field of Dreams game was cool, of course. It was a distinctive setting. And there was cinematic history sort of there. But that doesn't compare to this. This is actual baseball history, right? And the Field of Dreams baseball history, that was a segregated game going on in that movie, right? So this is the full tapestry of baseball history, good and bad. It all happened there.

And I hope it's not a one-time event, but it's going to be special however many times they play there. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the players we spoke to kept saying, this is the real Field of Dreams. This is a true story. Yeah, exactly. Well, you can hear that story by listening to The Road to Rickwood. Three episodes are up now. The fourth and final one will be up next Tuesday in advance of the game on Thursday. I'd tell you where to find it, but you're currently listening to a podcast, so you almost certainly know where to find podcasts, the usual places, the places where

Effectively Wild is. And Alana Schreiber is the creator and executive producer of the podcast. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me, and I hope you guys enjoy listening to the rest of the podcast. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. And I hope you guys enjoy listening to the rest of the podcast. All right. I'll leave you with this fine find from listener and Patreon supporter Jonathan. I don't know if you're all as obsessed with the mid-plate appearance pitching change as I am, but here's a nice nugget. Jonathan writes, I just discovered a use of strategy in a big game that I don't believe has been discussed on the pod. In the 1991 ALCS Game 3 between the Blue Jays and Twins,

Twins manager Tom Kelly removes starter Scott Erickson in the fifth inning with a 1-2 count on Joe Carter in favor of David West. Yes, he did. Here are Dick Stockton and Jim Cott on the call. David West has been up on three different occasions for the Twins. There he is. He'd be ready if Kelly wants him. Most of the time when Tom Kelly goes to the mound

is to make a pitching change. I think here he might be a little bit disturbed with where Erickson is going with the ball. No, he's going to make it. Plus, he's probably close to that 100 pitch mark that you mentioned. So Scott Erickson leaves the game here in the fifth inning with the count,

one ball and two strikes to Joe Carter. David West coming in and will return to the Sky Dome. Erickson had actually thrown only 82 pitches. Now there is no call for the first pitch West threw to Carter, which was a wild pitch because Dan Rather broke in with an update on the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing. I will spare you that delightful little trip down memory lane, and we will pick up with West's second pitch. Joe Carter has the count two and two in a wild pitch thrown by David West, a pitch that hit home plate umpire Rocky Rowe in the foot, and that stung him, and Alomar advances to second base with the count two and two david west making his

first appearance in this series why would they bring in a left-hander west to face carter with the count one and two when a left-handed batter is on deck good question west had success against toronto back in july pitched a strong game against them and swung on and missed strike three so and swung on and missed strike three. So Tom Kelly must have known something as Carter strikes out. So hey, it worked. Strategy. What did Tom Kelly know?

Well, I found a column about it by Dennis Bracken of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, October 12th, 1991. At first glance, the move defied logic. At second glance, the move defied logic, but only sort of. Twins manager Tom Kelly summoned David West from the bullpen to replace Scott Erickson with nobody out and a runner on first in the fifth inning.

Joe Carter was standing at the plate with a one and two count. Carter, a right-handed hitter, batted.335 against left-handed pitchers during the season, 88 points higher than he batted against righties. Erickson was a right-hander. West, a left-hander. What gives? In this case, Carter. And some conventional baseball wisdom that says left-handed pitchers fare better against left-hander. What gives? In this case, Carter. And some conventional

baseball wisdom that says left-handed pitchers fare better against left-handed batters than righties. West, the left-hander, struck out Carter. Before the inning was over, he also struck out two other right-handed batters, Kelly Gruber and Candy Maldonado, beginning a stretch of six scoreless innings by Twins relievers. The regular season stuff is all behind, said West, whose dominant characteristic throughout his major league career has been inconsistency. You're going to find guys doing things now they're not used to doing. That's all part of the playoffs. Whenever anyone's called on to do something, you have to be ready to do it.

Even if, the column continues, it defies some of baseball's most timeless beliefs. A left-hander out of the bullpen to face a right-handed batter? I looked over to pitching coach Dick Such and said, I know I'm going to bring in a lefty here, but I don't think it really matters, Kelly said. Carter's hitting the heck out of the ball. Indeed, Carter had homered off Erickson in the first inning. After striking out in the third, Carter hit two screaming fouls off Erickson in his fifth inning at bat. One in upper deck would be homered to left that was fouled by 20 feet. Kelly became even more concerned when Erickson threw to first three straight times to keep Roberto Almar close,

prompting Kelly to fear that not enough thought was being given to Carter. TK had seen enough, Such said. It seemed like Erickson's mind was taking him away from the job at hand. It goes on to say that during the regular season, righties had actually hit better against West, the lefty, than lefties did. But that was a small sample fluke. Wasn't true over the course of his career. I wonder whether the normal platoon advantage even applies in that situation, when you were just facing a righty in that same plate appearance,

and then suddenly you're facing a lefty. It seems like it could be somewhat disorienting, even though in theory it should be better for the batter. Anyway, given the fact that it was the third time Carter was seeing Erickson in that game, that Carter had hit some balls hard off of Erickson in that game and in that plate appearance, that Erickson seemed distracted by the runner at first base, and that a lefty John Ulrood was up next anyway. Why wait? And hey, it paid off, not only in that game, but also when the Twins went on to win the World Series.

So moral of the story is, make a mid-plate appearance pitching change, win a championship. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon 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 keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks. Daniel Baxter, Jack Conway, Thomas Matera, Josh Rodriguez, and Robert Johns. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only.

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And you can check the show page and the links in your podcast app for information on upcoming Effectively Wild listener meetups at MLB ballparks. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with one more episode before theB ballparks. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you soon.

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