Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2308: Field of Streams

Episode Date: April 12, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the acceptable circumstances (if any) for a bobblehead of a team owner, the Grand Junction Jackalopes belatedly embracing their destiny as the “Chubs,” and more, then (29:35) review and discuss the Netflix documentary The Clubhouse: A Year with the Red Sox, followed by a tease for an upcoming […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2308 of Effectively Wild, a fan-grast baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of Fangrafts and I'm joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing okay and I'm pleased to report that you still have time to get to Oriole Park at Camden Yards if you want to be one of the first 15,000 fans to attend an Orioles Reds game and get a David Rubenstein bobblehead. one of the first 15,000 fans to attend an Orioles-Reds game and get a David Rubenstein bobblehead.

It's not today, the day that this episode is going up. It's a week from today. So Saturday, April 19th, just cross it off or circle it on your calendar if you wanna make the trek to Baltimore. Not only to see the Reds, a four or five start, but if you are one of the lucky first 15,000 fans, you will get a bobblehead of the team owner. So look, you know, we, we've talked about this in the context of hats.

We've talked about this in the context of hats. We've talked about this in the context of ballpark promotions we've talked about it in the context of other bits of Team related ephemera where you need like you need some empowered people on your PR and marketing staffs to say so Hey, there's an accidental dick in this or hey Yeah, you put the word tits on a hat. Did you mean to do that? Hey, did Georgia O'Keeffe design this for us? And I'm not saying that having a bobblehead of the owner is quite the same as having tits on a hat. For one thing, tits are more fun. But I feel like this is a

very bad idea. I guess I'm not shocked that there wasn't anyone in the room who said, so David, we're so happy you're here. We think you're taking the franchise in exciting new directions. A couple of notes, you know, because like, here's the thing about it. Let's imagine for a moment that you have no issues with the way that the Orioles are being run at the moment. And you know, maybe you don't, maybe you're just excited about the young position player core. Does require some imagination, but one could conceive of that stance. But like, we are creative people, you know, professionally creative in some respects.

So we're imagining a world in which we don't have anything negative to say. And in that world, maybe your owner isn't sort of on record, alluding to the fact that he thinks a salary cap would be good, but like, you know, we're in a parallel universe. So you don't have any notes and you're so excited and you, you really do think that we will collectively look back on this era of Orioles baseball and see it as the beginning of a long competitive reign, multiple world series appearances, perhaps a championship, good times had by all. Even in the midst of that scenario, there are going to be ups and downs. It's baseball.

What's your favorite expression? A game of failure? And so I don't know that it's super advisable to give to your fans 15,000 of them, to be precise, a physical object that they can do all manner of depravity to that has your face on it. You gotta be, I mean, I don't know, maybe he's just like a very secure person. Maybe he is largely out of remove from the broader community where the Baltimore Orioles fan base comes from. Because he's a very rich guy.

So how many normal Joe's and Jane's does he really interact with on a daily basis? I don't know. But here's the thing I do know. Sports fans, when a player from their team reaches free agency and then that individual sides with another team will sometimes like burn a jersey. They will alter a Yankees jersey that has a name on it, which look, that's a whole separate conversation but they will alter a Yankees jersey that clearly was a Juan Soto jersey to say sell out. They will call American Express and say, thank God I have jersey insurance.

Weird that I can get better service from you guys on this than I can and say the American healthcare system, but my guy's been traded. Please help me. Why would you give people a breakable object with your face on it so that they might, in a moment of frustration, act their frustrations out on that breakable object? And again, like, sports fans are creative. They've just imagined a world where they don't have any notes to offer the Baltimore Orioles on their off season. They can think of so many things to do to that bobblehead. So there's that. That's the argument

you make in the room as the PR person, perhaps less colorfully than I just did, but that's the argument you make. They will burn your bobblehead in effigy, sir. I just did, but that's the argument you make. They will burn your bobblehead in effigy, sir. In effigy, probably. Maybe, you know? Maybe. Maybe.

Maybe they'll never have occasion to, but again, game of failure. Ben Lindbergh always says that. And so we should protect ourselves from that eventuality by not putting your face on the bobblehead because the thing about sports fans, the second thing about them, is that their relationship to players can be fraught, it can be transitory, but the speed with which they will turn on an owner, much faster. Because the thing about it is, you've never done anything for them on the field. You fund the team to some degree, although they also feel like they fund the team

because to some degree they do, but you're not, you're not a securing outs or scoring runs, you're just the guy who's in the booth every couple of games. And then the broadcasters have to think of a new way to say nice things about you. So I just think this is a bad idea. It's hubris taken away that I'm kind of floored by. I shouldn't be because we're in it. This is like, here's what it is. It's very emblematic of our era, you know, that this guy, this very rich guy is like, hey, you know how you take a bobblehead from the ballpark and you put it on your bookshelf?

Don't you want my face up there instead of like Gunner or Cedric Mullins or Adley? No, you want my face on there. I just, Ben, what a notion. They have had Gunner bobbleheads as well, but on this day, then it was decided that, yes, let's go with an owner. And I'm sure it's not the first ever owner of a franchise bobblehead. I haven't really done extensive research,

but I'm gonna guess there is precedent. But, and what you're saying about someone should have spoken up, maybe someone did and then that person was overruled because they're not the owner of the team. I can do what I want. Right. It's the thing. But I was trying to think of in what circumstances would it be somewhat acceptable to have an

owner bobblehead or at least more defensible? I don't know that you would really ever get to a point where you would prefer. It's never a good idea. Yeah, but this is not it. If there were such a circumstance, it would not be this one, because David Rubenstein has owned the team for about a year. He was approved as the Orioles owner. It's like the blue link of an eye. Just over a year ago. Yeah. The link of an eye.

And there was considerable optimism surrounding his taking over, obviously following the Angeloses. And so, hey, you have a local guy, he's from Baltimore. It seems like maybe he'll spend, maybe he'll put some money into the team. At least we won't have to worry about the team being moved. So he bought a Gutenberg that one time. So there was there was some hype and some gratefulness that there was at least going to be a different owner, but nothing has happened since then to merit bobblehead status. He has raised payroll somewhat, but not to an enormous degree.

They're still middle of the pack in payroll, so it hasn't been truly transformative there. Obviously, they didn't win a playoff game last year, not that you could have really given him much credit if they had, but he hasn't even, I mean, he's had one full-ish season, I suppose. So this is like his real first full season where he's actually fully in control and they're coming off an underwhelming off season. And so just merely being a local guy doesn't do it.

I don't think merely being better than Angelos doesn't do it or at least the younger Angelos. So I think you could get away with it if you really took a team from the seller to perennial contender. If you had a team that never spent and you said, no I'm gonna to do things differently. And then you were more of a John Middleton type owner or look, even a Steve

Cohen type owner. Like I could, I could envision a Steve Cohen getting away with this because he kind of has cultivated a cult of personality to some extent, like he's sort of a public figure, for better or worse. And because he was following the Willpons, and that was just a clown show and combination of clown show and cheap, and he at least has improved on the cheapness part and hasn't delivered the World Series yet, but at least he's made the Mets the big spenders and he's kind of a well-known... They have Soto. Yeah, they have Soto, a public figure.

I'm still, I'm not suggesting that Steve Cohen should bobblehead himself. No, absolutely not. That would be a more likely candidate or really what you would want. Yeah, look, if John Henry had come in after winning the World Series in 2004 and 2007 and 2013 and before things soured a bit before the Mookie trade and you know, the 2018 World Series. Like if John Henry had had a bobblehead in 2019 or something, it's like, hey, you were the cursed franchise. You hadn't won in 86 years. And here I come in and I revamp things and I spruce up Fenway. And now we have the most world series this century and probably wouldn't have happened without me, even if I'm not directly your side and win the games,

but I created the conditions that maybe made it possible for those games to be won. And I was the guy who hired the people who hired those players, you could get away with that. If you were truly transformative, or if you were beloved, like a local institution, local person, if you were like a Bill Vek type where you were kind of a character, or you know, this would have been easier maybe in earlier eras where there was a little bit more of a mom and pop flavor to team ownership sometimes. Not that owners were ever like not exploiting labor and nickel and diming

and all the rest, but at least it wasn't like multi zillionaires so much owning teams. So or if you were just there forever and you delivered some success, like I don't know if there was ever a George Steinbrenner bobblehead, but if there was, if it's like, hey, we won a lot of World Series and I always spent and I was a celebrity in my own right and the team is closely associated with me. There's really no scenario where I would say this is a great idea, yes, by all means, let's have an owner bobblehead,

but you could, if you really transform the franchise and spent a lot more and delivered titles. Fine. And we're a mostly unobjectionable person by owner standards. I'm just saying David Rubenstein, he hasn't earned it to the extent that any owner has. Maybe he will, but not yet. I think you have to be dead. I think for an owner bobblehead, and I still think it's a bad idea. I still think it's a bad idea. I think even though I know that not everything with Steinbrenner

was great, I think he might be the only guy where it would make any amount of sense. John Henry is the perfect example of why you don't do it, right? Because you're right. Here was this transformational moment in Red Sox baseball, and they have had several World Series since. But the relationship between the city and Henry is prickly, you know? And it can get kind of spiky at times. And I think that from a self-preservation perspective, from the pretend I'm John Henry, again, you just never want to give people a thing they can smash that has your face on it. It's just a bad idea because people like to come together, they like to commiserate, they will go to Fenway, they will smash the baubles, it will be on the local news, and then it's going to circulate on the internet for the rest of time. So I think it's a bad idea no

matter what. And I think the only time it is remotely reasonable is if the owner in question is dead. And even then it's a bad idea because if you were to go to I don't know every person in the city of Boston but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that if you were to go up to imagine you walk into a bar an hour before first pitch close to Fenway and you were to ask them who was responsible for the Red Sox winning that first World Series back. They break the curse, they overcome the Yankees, they do it. Who is responsible?

How many names deep do you think you'd have to go before you got to John Henry? I bet it would be a lot. I bet you'd be naming members of the coaching staff. I bet a trainer gets thrown in there before that happens. And I don't say that's denigrate coaches or trainers. I simply mean that it is not, you're not the emotional fixture. With rare exception, there are rare exceptions, but generally when you become part of the story to that degree, it's not easy.

It's not a free and easy kind of vibe and you don't want to do it. Keep the focus on the baseball. You've already got, I'm going to use bobble in a different way here. We're talking about spelling the word differently. It's different, right? I can't spell. This is one of the great secrets of Mike the Editor. I can't spell for anything. You already have a shiny bauble. It's the baseball team. You don't need a bauble head. What is wrong with you?

You already have the thing. You already have the thing that you can go to the other rich guys and say, in addition to my Gutenberg, which I then gifted back, I have a baseball team. What do you got? And you've already done it. You already have the shiny object. Yeah, that's bubble with a U, that one. Right. Yeah, crush it. So, so, and I think that particularly this early into his tenure,

like again, I don't want to overcomplicate it. It's very easy to look at this situation and say with some degree of confidence that what happened here is that he was like, I'm an important rich guy, put my face on some. You know, like that's probably what happened and I didn't think too much about it. But I think it sends an actively bad message

because this isn't supposed to be about you, David. This is supposed to be about the Baltimore Orioles, who, as we have pointed out, haven't done shit yet. It should be a rule that you can't have a bobblehead of yourself as the owner until your team has managed to escape the first round of the playoffs or even secured a playoff win. Like, what are we even doing? It's such a bad idea.

I cannot, I can believe it, but I can't believe it, Ben. Well, in the category of people should be employed to tell teams not to do things or to do things. Oh, you're talking about the Rivercats? Well, I was going to bring up the Chubs. Now we've gotten a number of emails about the Grand Junction Chubs, who are really the Grand Junction Jackalopes, but they have now belatedly embraced their Chubs persona. And if you've been listening to the podcast for several years,

you may remember episode 1396, titled Stars and Chubs. Stars and Chubs. We, in real time, this was June, 2019, I think we, did we find out about Chubs as we were recording or we just recounted or I explained Chubs to you perhaps after the fact, but. I think it might be the first time that I legitimately lost it on Mike

in my tenure as a co-host. This is a screenshot of a tweet, of two tweets by the Grand Junction Rockies. The. Well, you didn't make it through that without laughing. Didn't even start without laughing. The GJ Rockies are not considering changing their name and never have. Suggesting we would be called the G.J. Chubbs is offensive and a slang sexual term for erection. They proceed to follow it up with a tweet that says,

They proceed to follow it up with a tweet that says, the GJ Rockies pride ourselves on providing fun family entertainment and suggesting inappropriate name changes will not be tolerated. Anyone who continues to suggest the GJ jobs in any way will be blocked from our account. A professional marketing type person thought that they would earnestly tweet this and that it would solve and end the discussion. It would end the discussion instead of starting a discussion in which we all had to grapple with the reality of saying chubs multiple. You know, Ben, what a gift. I think I blacked out on air.

It was just so funny. It was great. And for those who don't remember the team, which was the Pioneer Le's Grand Junction Rockies, they were rebranding, they were looking for a new name, and people suggested that they should be the Grand Junction Chubs after the fish. And they, someone went on their social media

and just vehemently protested the idea that they could be the Chubs because of alternate meanings of Chub. And this was obscene and how could you suggest such a thing? And it was just, it was a great example of the Streisand effect. It was just, no one would have paid any attention to this if not for the little meltdown that they had about the idea of their team being named the Chubs. And it was just, it was so fun. And-

It was beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, it was. So now the team has been called the Jackalopes now for years, but they are now belatedly embracing Chubbs. And so we've gotten a number of emails and people contacting us.

Yes we have. Yeah, believe me, we were aware. The thing is, like, I'm not that into the belated embrace of the Chubs because, I mean, I'm not against it, but I'm just, I kind of don't care at this point. I guess, I mean, it's partly like the world has moved on. I mean, first of all, I guess I am still tickled

by the memory of the Chubs meltdown day. I question- I mean, that was amazing. Yes, I question how many other people remember all of this lore, this somewhat obscure, sicko, extremely online lore. And I bought my Chubbs shirt then, like back in 2019, which I still haven't wear sometimes, which was not official team merch

because it was not the official team name and logo. It was some, one of those places that turns things into shirts quickly and they were selling a Chubb shirt and I got, I don't know if I got one or maybe I think maybe a listener sent me a Chubb shirt. So I've had a Chubb shirt for a while and this is a new ownership group. Oh man, it's so good.

The GJ Rockies are not considering changing their name and never have. We are owned by a group led by the Colorado Rockies and having a team on the West slope helps build their brand, suggesting we would be called the GJ Chubs is offensive and a slang sexual term for erection. I thought that they had to explain why it was offensive, allegedly. Anyway, what's happening now is this is like different ownership. And so the current, yeah, Jack Loeb's president, Harrison Shapiro, or Shapiro, he said, obviously I wasn't here when that happened. He's like, I'm a warning boy. I wouldn't have had a problem with it. He didn't say that

to be clear. No. And actually looking back on it, I thought it was quite funny that they had such a negative reaction. Yeah, so did I. I've always loved the name. Then this off season, when I became president, I said, this is my first order of business. Like we're going to do this. I do appreciate that that was like day one. Like we all have the, what would we do if we were commissioner for a day or something? This guy's like day one, chumps. have the, what would we do if we were commissioner for a day or something? Oh yeah. Guys like day one, chumps. Bring the dicks in. Yeah, we're making up for it. I'm just, this was six years ago, so I guess,

I don't know, I don't know how many people it's for. And also it's like half the fun. I mean, the name was not the fun part really. The fun part was the fact that they thought the name was not the fun part, really. The fun part was the fact that they thought the name was offensive and they were so up in arms about the suggestion that they could be called the Chubs. So I guess in retrospect, I'm glad that now like the people or person who were upset about it then, they have now been overruled in retrospect, just after the fact. But I don't know, it just, it feels like maybe the moment has passed, but I don't know. If people are still happy about this, I guess I'm happy for them. So Ben, I understand everything that you're saying.

And there is this phenomena within sort of minor league baseball where it's a, you know, it's about the goofiest possible name and the weirdest slash most suggestive rebranding that you can get away with. Exactly. Yeah. And this team, by the way, is no longer affiliated. They're an independent team, pioneer league. They're a pioneer league. Yeah. But, you know, in this space, right, the various levels of affiliated and unaffiliated ball

that are beneath the majors, this is like a common thing. My counterpoint to you is, have you seen Sir Chubb? He's such a fancy little guy. He's got a little top hat. he has a little monocle, he's such a fancy little Chubb. He's so fancy, but also the main Humpback Chubb's logo with the fish is great. Yeah. I get what you're saying.

I do like that. I also, I don't know how I feel about the alternate identities. Like every once in a while, you're the humpback chubs, because they're still, they're still the Grand Junction Jackalopes. It's just that every Wednesday, the Grand Junction Jackalopes will become the Grand Junction humpback chubs. So it's like, instead of having an alternate Jersey, you just have an alternate name and identity and logo, and then they'll do Jersey and Chubb's giveaways

of some sort. I guess, I don't know, we're getting a Happy Gilmore sequel. I guess Chubb's sadly won't be in that, but there will probably be a tribute to him of some sort. I don't know. I don't need a Happy Gilmore sequel. That's unnecessary in my life.

But again, he's just a fancy little guy. I love him. He is a fancy little chub. Yeah, it's true. I think he's great, you know? Like, it's really... Here was one that I was struggling with. Are you aware of the the hub city

Spartan burgers, are you aware of this team? This this is the high affiliate of the Texas Rangers, I think they're a Rangers affiliate. I Need you to I need you to Google this We have to talk about it I need you to Google this. We have to talk about it. It's not the purpose of our episode, but I need to get this off of my chest. So Google Spartans Burgers. It's in Spartansburg, South Carolina, so they're trying to do two things at once.

Also is Hub City redundant? Isn't a city a hub? You know, Isn't it? That's not the point of the, that's, no, forget I said it. That's not what we're- The Hub City Spartan Burgers. I see them. Okay.

Okay. Look at the logo and you're going to be like, oh, there's a logo with the little guy pointing. No, the new, the logo that says Hub City in it. You see that one with the burger? He's got a little hat. He's licking his chops. He's licking his chops, Ben. He's licking his chops. What does the burger eat? What does this burger eat? What does it eat, Ben?

Yeah, this is a good... Yeah, cannibalistic logos and cannibalistic mascots. Yeah, that's a problem. What? Is it eating other burgers? It's made of vegetables and cheese and bun. Like it's options for eating things that are not of itself, very limited. Is it on, does it eat fries? Why is it so hungry? Why is the bat not a fry? The bat should be a French fry.

Why isn't the bat a French fry? Yeah, you're asking excellent questions here. I am asking, what is a hub city? You know, now someone from Spartansburg, Spartanburg, that's hard to say. It feels like there should be another S in there, you know? Spartansburg is what I wanna say. Spartanburg is gonna write in and say,

oh, a hub city is, cause like, we're the hubcap capital of the world or something. I'm sure there's a reason, but hub city feels redundant to me. Is a city is a hub. A hub of what doesn't, it could be any kind of hub, you know, cities. They have vibrant cultures, Ben. It could be all kinds of hubs.

What does it eat? Why is it hungry? Why is it a hungry bird? You could have just had it be smiling. It doesn't have to have like the obviously hungry little face. Why does it have a hungry little face, Ben? In 1831, Spartanburg was incorporated, later becoming known as the Hub City, railroad lines radiated from the city, forming the shape of a wheel hub. It feels redundant still. That makes it, cause it's all, cause it was a hub for the railroad. It was exactly. It was literally a hub.

Why is it hungry? I guess it could be hungry for something other than a burger, but it is suggestive. Well sure, but what? It's made of so many of the constituent elements of food. And so again, it's options, including a tomato. So you can't even say, oh, I'll have have any fruit. No, it's got a tomato on it Does it eat chicken? Is it a chicken only diet?

Yeah, inquiring minds want to know at least this one does so yeah anyway, I I am Freaked out by the Spartan burgers. There really should be another S in there. You guys should add another S. Spartans-berg is like a Spartan burger. Spartan-berg. It's probably the Spartans-berg somewhere. It's just not this one. Yeah. It's just not this one, but I do like the chub.

Pennsylvania, there's a Spartans-berg in Pennsylvania. They've got it, right? Yes, which is why I, for a while, thought that they, I thought that this was that one. And I thought that this team was like a Pirates or a Phillies affiliate. No, the Rangers. It's all very confusing.

So in slightly bigger baseball news, there was a new Netflix documentary released this week. And it's called The Clubhouse, A Year with the Red Sox, which is an apt title because it is about spending a year with the Red Sox, much of it in the clubhouse and documenting it via a docu-series. And this has been in the works for a while. It was announced early last year

and we talked about it at the time. And the Netflix folks just followed around the Red Sox all year and documented their actions, and they have produced an eight-part docu-series, which premiered this week, and I have seen it in its entirety. You have seen it in its partiality. You've seen some of it.

I've seen all of the first four and much of the sixth episode because I had to do a little check-in on something in that one. Okay, all right. So you've seen more than half. And I was sort of excited for this project when it was first announced.

Or I had some reservations, but in general, I was into it because Netflix has given this treatment to a number of sports and some of those resulting docu-series have been popular and many have not, but there's a level of production value there. And Greg Whiteley, who's the director of this series, has good pedigree and has worked on a number

of acclaimed projects. And this was actually pitched to us as, hey, do you wanna have him on the podcast? And ultimately we said, sure. And then they were like, psych, he's too busy. But we watched it nonetheless. And then I was like, well, I'm not finishing it then. I did plan to watch it anyway,

cause I was intrigued. And this is the guy who has produced, or he's worked on cheer, the cheerleading series and last chance you and wrestlers and, you know, other things in this vein. And so this is the baseball take on that. And so there was some hope that, oh, this could be like drive to survive for baseball or the various drive to survive for baseball or

the various drive to survive imitators that haven't been as popular as drive to survive. They're actually sports documentaries, I think are pretty overrated in terms of their popularity. There have been a ton of them lately and not that many of them actually do that well. There's only one last dance, but there are others that are in a medium tier at least of popularity. So I was intrigued by this because the idea was, okay, they're giving this treatment to baseball and we'll have a lot of access and they'll just have so much footage and high quality production and no expense spared and we'll get to see behind the scenes. And so my initial reaction, if I recall it correctly,

was this is cool, this sounds like a good project. I'm not sure that the 2024 Red Sox will be the best subject for this project. We're saying knowledge in the documentary, which I thought was very funny. Yeah. So even in a forward looking way, I'm not just saying this in retrospect

because the Red Sox ended up being a pretty bland baseball team, all told. They were expected to be that basically. They were expected to be a middle of the road baseball team and they played perfectly to expectations more or less. There were times when they were in the running for a wild card spot, but their peak playoff odds were like just over 50%. And, you know, by late August, they had plummeted.

And so there was a period there, like they were, you know, kind of in it for the first half of the season. And then there was a, like, late June to late August, they were like kind of more in it, but never really favorites. They were just kind of hanging around the race and you know, they were never far out of the running. And then, you know, they were technically playing meaningful games. They were not eliminated until very late in the season, but it was a long shot. And so they just seemed like they weren't going to be the best team to do this with.

They would be good in the sense that there are a lot of Red Sox fans who would be interested in watching the Red Sox. It's a franchise people have heard of, but they didn't seem to be that interesting a team in terms of their competitive positioning or even the makeup of the roster, really. There were individuals who were interesting, but like they were just, you know, like the Red Sox have had a lot of great teams lately and have had a lot of really bad teams. Like they've been kind of well known for being first or worst and sometimes in consecutive seasons

going from one to the other and back again. And this team just seemed like it was gonna be meh. And then it was mostly meh. And so that was my main reservation, but I think I also said at the time, but maybe that will just go to show that you could make an interesting series like this about any team.

Because if you have that sort of access and it's a long season and you're privy to all these things that we don't typically see, there are gonna be interesting personalities and characters on every roster, and there will be moments that are compelling. So you could surely cobble together something of interest about every team.

And so maybe this will be an illustration of that and it'll spawn a franchise because, hey, if this kind of boring on paper team produces a compelling documentary, then you could do it about anyone. And maybe there'll be a new team every year. And I sort of hoped that that would be the case. So having seen it, I would say that my initial impression

was pretty much born out. I would say that even in retrospect, Red Sox, not the ideal team, the 2024 Red Sox specifically for this series, which might be why they allowed this level of access because, hey, we got to drum up interest in this franchise again. And I was mostly entertained, I guess, because it's baseball and I'll watch anything if my bar is low for baseball, but it's fine.

It's my takeaway. I also think it's maybe not for us, for you and me, and I think that's an important distinction. I think there will be people who will find this revealing and quite enjoyable and riveting and not just Red Sox fans, though certainly Red Sox fans, but a bit of a mixed bag for me. What's your take? I came away from it thinking that the highlights were quite compelling and that there weren't enough of them was kind of my takeaway. And I don't think it's a flaw of like the filmmakers involved. I think that you're right to say that part of this is we are just maybe not quite the

target audience for a lot of this. This amount of sort of really gripping to just kind of normal behind the scenes transplanted into say the Mariners Clubhouse would be much more interesting to me because I care more about that team, right? And there are definitely other teams in the league where I think there might've been just sort of a higher, like the whole thing might've had sort of a higher resting heartbeat than this one did. I did find some of it to be very compelling. It's a lot of, it's a commitment. You know, I messaged you and I was like, wow, this is a lot of time to spend with the people of Boston. Just eight episodes, dude, so many. I think that if you are

listening to this and you're trying to decide, do I check it out or not, I think that there are definitely things about it that are compelling. And I also think that if you're not a Red Sox fan, you know, you might find yourself being like, eh, do I need to do all eight episodes of this? Like part of it is, and I have sympathy for this as a sort of just luck of the draw, you know, who, who ends up in the postseason isn't random, but like, you're not assured even if they had decided to chronicle a team that had sort of higher playoff projections than the Red Sox did, they aren't assured that that's going to happen.

But it kind of, it just kind of lost a narrative thread to me at a certain point. Like, you know, there, I can't remember what episode this was, but they were like, we were talking about this. I was like, they're making so much of this like series between the Red Sox and the Yankees. And I get doing that because of the history between those two franchises. And you want to have that be part of the story you're telling because that's going to be a plot line for any Red Sox team. But it's also like, they play 162 games, man.

This three games set in like May or whatever is probably not going to be the thing that ends up deciding the course of their season. And for a team that was just like pretty middle of the road, it, I guess it did as much as anything else, but it wasn't like, you know, it wasn't like it was the final day of the season. You got to win this one and get, or, or you won't get in. Like it wasn't like that. So some of it is just like, to your point, it had a feel in places to me of being a more

general sports documentary than a baseball documentary, which I think they got a lot of the baseball stuff right and found interesting ways to talk about it. But I also felt like I also felt like they were maybe trying to port over some of the narrative threads that might make better sense if the documentary had been about a football team, where it's like, oh, this big, but it's like, again, they play so many games. Right. You know? Baseball makes this difficult, I think. Yeah, it does.

On the one hand, it gives you a ton of material, but probably too much. So much, probably too much. This is why I actually would like to talk to Greg Whitely because I'm almost more interested in the production process than I am in the production itself. Just to- How did they decide to- How do you sift through this just, yeah.

And he has said before that they actually burn through much more of their budget than they had anticipated in spring training. And then they kind of had to recalibrate because I guess they underestimated just like, there's so many games and there's so much stuff and are you going to have someone filming every single second, knowing that very little of it ultimately is going to survive to the final cut. And they had to kind of cut back a bit. There was a point later in the season, I think in August, maybe where they weren't traveling with the team or embedded with the team the way that they had been earlier

because they just kind of blew through their budget. And so then they came back at the end of the season, but it wasn't 24 seven throughout the year, the way that they had initially envisioned just because it ended up being just such a demand. And then I can't even imagine, yeah, trying to craft, I mean, the number of hours of footage that they must have had to wade through

to produce this thing. It's just, my mind reels thinking about it. I think it is least successful when it is just focused on the games themselves, unless they're focusing on a certain player's performance in a game and how that affects them off the field. But when it's just kind of play by play, it's like here was a game that maybe seemed

sort of big in the moment, but we know how that season ended is the thing. Like spoilers, you know, the 2024 Red Sox. This is something I was worried about when Sam and I were writing The Only Rules It Has to Work. I was like, this is going to come out the season after and won't everyone know what happened. But no, because no one knew what the Sonoma Stompers did in 2015 in the Pacific Association unless they went out of their way to look that up. But people know, at least people who care about baseball know what happened with the 2024 Red Sox.

And so yeah, all the times when they try to inject the typical sports story, where it's like, oh, the big game and the suspense and the drama and okay, maybe it felt like that in the moment to players and fans sometimes, but watching it now, many months after that season ended with a thud, it's just hard to really drum up the sort of excitement that one might have had in that moment. So there's a little more of that than I think I wanted, but they do steer away. It's not all like here was this game and then here's what happened in the next game. Also the thing about the game action is that they're not really getting exclusive footage for that. We can watch the games, like there are cameras on all of the moments in a game

already, and maybe they're getting, when a guy goes back to the clubhouse and is upset about how he pitched in that game, that kind of thing. But the actual footage, even if it's maybe higher quality in some respects, then you're going to get on a typical game broadcast. It's not quite as revealing because we see the play by play as it is. I felt a strange sensation watching the gameplay pieces of it because, you know, to your point, we know how the season concluded in its broad strokes and we've been trained by these kinds of documentaries before, right? We've been trained by, and we've been trained by these kinds of documentaries before, right? We've been trained by, and we've been trained by sports movies before. And so there were, you

know, I didn't watch every single Red Sox game last year. I had a, I have a sense of how their season one, I definitely watched them play. I couldn't recall from memory like, oh, that's a game that they definitely won or lost. But because of the kinds of stories that were anchoring particular episodes, I sometimes was like, he's probably going to get a big hit here or he probably going to blow this lead or that ball's going to go over his head. Like I, you know, you could kind of piece it together. So you have this odd, I had this odd sensation of being like, well, I kind of know what's going to happen. And I don't know if I'm, that's good thing or if that's a problem.

Anyway, that, that piece of it was a little odd. And you always have this, you also always have this thing where it's like, they know they're on camera. Right. And they know they're miked. And I don't want to say that anybody like lied or Definitely presented themselves in a way that is completely different than how they are but they are Presenting a particular version of themselves in front of the camera. This is not a new concept, right? And so I'm like is that is that actually what Alex Cora would say in that moment? If he weren't miked and there wasn't a camera on him? Or would he say something different?

Would he say something a little gruffer? This is a problem that I think a lot of people have with just documentary filmmaking in general right now, which is that it's so heavily tilted toward participation by the subjects. And that can come with compromises. And I don't know that there were a ton of those that were obvious, although we didn't hear about Alex Kaur having been suspended for the Astro stuff until the third episode of this documentary, but we knew that, so maybe it doesn't matter. But you do have this negotiation that's going on. And I'm very conscious of it now in a way that documentaries of the past didn't necessarily

make me be because they weren't as dependent on the participation of the subjects for access. And they're entirely dependent upon that here. And again, I think they did a reasonable job navigating that. It's not like every person in this documentary came out looking great in every single moment. But I was aware of like, is that how it looks, Cora Dox, when the cameras aren't rolling? Yeah, there weren't many moments where we heard something that you would think the player wouldn't have wanted to be in the documentary. And we've got to think with this many people mic'd up

throughout the season, there had to be moments when things were said that would get someone in trouble. And I'm not suggesting they should just put in random, like offensive stuff people said for no reason. Like they're telling a story here and it's, it's not, I don't really want to watch a documentary that's just about like baseball players saying offensive stuff because they forgot that.

Like I'm sure that happens, but very rarely was there something newsworthy that came out of like a off the cuff unscripted moment here where someone was just, like, not mindful of the mics and the cameras. So, in that sense, it seemed like there were fewer obvious instances of, oh, we're getting the straight dope here.

We're getting, like, unvarnished access to these players' thoughts and feelings. Though, you know, there was certainly a lot of emotional stuff in the series. So, yeah, I do think that it attempts to just tell the story of a baseball season and they do it through the lens of the 2024 Red Sox, but I almost wonder if maybe it wouldn't work if you did it as a franchise

and kept repeating it because maybe it would if you had more interesting material to work with, but a lot of it was just, this is what baseball is like. And so there was a lot about the grind, for instance, and how it wears players down over the course of the season, or the fact that baseball's a global sport and it's international and people come from all over the place.

Like these are all things that I think if you were just on the Netflix home screen and you see this and you're not a big baseball fan and you tune in and watch, you would want that context. And I think that's all valuable and it absolutely has a place in a season long documentary. So maybe part of it is just we know too much, not necessarily about the Red Sox specifically, but just about baseball. So it was, yeah, it's just, you know, there's like the trade deadline. Here's how a trade deadline works. And some of that was mildly interesting. I guess, again, they didn't have a super interesting trade deadline either.

But, but that was, you know, but all the like, oh, players and their families, they don't know if they're going to stay or they're going to go. And you know, the team doesn't know, GM has to think about this and that. And it's just, it's stuff that we knew. So I don't know, I'm not like, I don't wanna be like, we just are too expert to watch this documentary. But I think a lot of people who listen to this show,

they might enjoy seeing it. Again, I enjoyed even that stuff in kind of a low grade way. I just, I didn't feel like I learned that much from watching this. And given the time investment, I guess I would have liked to have learned more, but then again, I've put a lot of time into knowing things about baseball as it is.

So there wasn't a specific thing that I would have wanted to see more of. And if there was, it probably would be stuff that most people wouldn't be that into. Like when they showed a snippet of a bullpen session, that was like kind of a pitch design session. It's like, oh, yeah, like, wait, hold on, show me the track man. And then, yeah. And then like it was, you know, Andrew Bailey, the pitching coach who has just piercing blue eyes, the star of this documentary in my mind. And he's talking to Brian Bayo, who's struggling at that point. And they're talking about changing their grips and oh, let's

look at the movement. That sort of thing that you read about, but you don't usually get to see in that kind of detail. But how many people want to watch that? Like, yeah, let's see how Brian Bayo's trying to fix his change up or so. That is true sicko stuff. And most people are going to be like, this is way too in the weeds for me. So yeah, less is more, I think, in that respect.

It is really interesting. I think just who they chose to tell the story through, because that's got to be a big one. And that's something Sam and I dealt with too. Again, when the stompers are the subject, no one knows any of these players who's gonna be reading the book, but you still, you have a full baseball team,

you have this big cast of characters, and you have to choose, how am I gonna tell this story? Who are the protagonists? And it's not necessarily the best players or the most prominent players. And if you just ignore that, then that can be bad. That can give you a skewed sense of things. It's like how people have been complaining for 20 years about how Moneyball barely mentions

the big three starters and Miguel Tejada and everything. Yeah, they didn't have a single starting pitcher on that team. It's crazy. Yeah, right. And it's, well, the story that Michael Lewis was telling was best illustrated by Scott Hatterberg and Chad Bradford, et cetera. Right. And so yeah, you kind of choose your subjects based on your message and your narrative and who makes the most compelling protagonists. And as we knew when this was announced, and as we said, I think at the

time like, okay, Tristan Kassas is America's going to meet Tristan Kassas now. And that certainly happens. There's a lot of Tristan Kassas in this. There's a lot of Jaren Duran in this. There's a fair amount of Brian Baio in this. I would say those are the three main characters. And then there are a bunch of sort of supporting characters who, you know, some come and go like Kambooser when Kambooser gets called up. That's nice.

It made me emotional. I cried. Me too. Yeah. Yeah. And that always gets me like the story of the, and I have mixed feelings about the videos, like the candid camera. What? Yeah. I just, I hope that the players are okay with them. If the players are okay with them, you know, I don't- Then it's camera. Yeah. I just, I hope that the players are okay with them. If the players are okay with them, you know, I don't. Then it's fine, yeah. Yeah, like if they don't realize they're being filmed

and then it feels like, oh, you're using this emotional moment for me, for social media cloud, but maybe they want people to see how happy they were and how meaningful a moment. So if they're not like, hey, that was a private moment for me and those team personnel and my family or something, and they don't mind it being broadcast, then I think sure, it's nice to lean into these really heartwarming moments, especially someone like Boozer, who's just going through all sorts of things to

get to that stage and classic meet a major leaguer type guy. It is kind of interesting though who wasn't really in this. Like Raphael Devers is just not in this documentary. I mean, he's there, he's getting hits and stuff, but I don't think he had a single on camera talking to Netflix moment. Yeah. There are moments where you see him in conversation with other members of the team. I can't recall if he did. If he did, it was only one or two very early that he did like the sit down, you know, talk to the camera kind of, let me tell you about stuff.

And you know, I'm sure that there were guys who were like, I don't want to do this. That's the thing. That's another thing that I'd like to ask about who was just like, nope, like you, you can do this around me, I guess if you must, but I'm not really participating beyond that. Tyler O'Neill, there's a lot of Tyler O'Neill in this as well. And some, some Cutter Crawford and, you know, just assorted people. But yeah, like there's basically no Devers.

And like early on, Trevor Story's injury becomes a story and they have footage of him talking to reporters about the injury, but nothing really exclusive to this documentary. And so, yeah, and they're talking about, oh, this is so tough for the team and tough for him, but there's no him talking about that. So those kind of glaring things, I assume it was just, yeah, like these players probably didn't want to participate that much. So you have to pick your spots and also have the players go along with it. But Indiran and Casas and Bayo, you know, those are pretty compelling personalities. And Casas also, like we know he's quirky and he's a character and all that. And

Casas also, we know he's quirky and he's a character and all that. There is an aspect of that that feels like he's very aware that he's on mic and on camera. I don't know that he's any different at other times, but it does feel like there's a performative aspect to that at times. But I don't know the guy, so I don't know that that's the case. I know he's definitely eccentric in those ways and singular as a personality, but also, I don't know, it just seems like he's kind of measuring what he's saying and he's aware that he is going to be quoted, that this is going to be on camera at times, whereas other guys when they talk seem a little less practiced or polished or self-conscious of that, even if they are on some level.

He said something, and I wish I had written the quote down. There's a sort of offhand comment early in the first or second episode where they're talking to Casas about sort of his whole vibe, right? And he says to, I think one of his teammates, he wants to do things that people tell him not to do. Jared Ranere Yeah, whatever's going to make the haters mad, basically. Right. Is that what goes into the nail polish thing? And he's like, yeah.

I think that you're right that there is a certain amount of performance there, but I don't know that it's necessarily an artifact so much of there having been a camera present, although again, all of these guys are, I'm sure conscious of the fact that they're on camera. But I just, I think he, my sense of him from watching this is that he thinks a lot about sort of what the preferences and proclivities of other people would be anyway. And is, which isn't to say that all the things he does or all of his personality is purely reactionary. I don't think that that's true, but I do think that like he strikes me as the kind of person who is thinking a lot about other people's engagement with him

in any given moment. And so that was clear from watching this. Which is revealing in its own way, I suppose, to get that window into his personality. And Duran is probably gets the most screen time of anyone, and it doesn't hurt that he was by far the best player and had a great season, but also just the pressure that he puts on himself and the mental health struggles that he has gone through and talked about, but does so even more frankly here. And that's been, I guess, the thing that's been sort of aggregated or

reported most, yeah, content warning for this and also for the documentary itself, but he talks about a suicide attempt and hadn't really previously aired that in such an explicit way. And it is tough to watch because he's in the midst of being one of the best players in baseball and just like having this breakout sort of storybook season on the field and all-star game MVP and everything. And yet he is still just so hard on himself, just habitually. And you do kind of feel for him on that aspect of things, at least, because you just wanna be like, enjoy it.

And he talks about his upbringing and how his dad, who like they seem to have a loving relationship, but also his dad was pretty tough on him. And his dad even- The dad stuff is intense in this. Yeah, it is. And his dad says that he regrets not separating the personal and the baseball more.

And yeah, you can see that. Like he was just he was just, yeah, putting a lot of pressure on, on the young Duran. Kaitlin Luna I just, I do appreciate, you know, it's, he's an imperfect person, right? And the documentary, you know, part of why I skipped ahead was because I wanted to see sort of how they dealt with his suspension later in the season, because listeners might remember that he served a two game suspension for saying a homophobic slur to a fan. The doc does not shy away from that incident.

Like you hear the whole thing in the doc. Yeah, it was weird to watch because that doesn't come until one of the later episodes because the season, it's chronological more or less. And so they're following game events and that didn't happen until one of the later episodes because the season, it's chronological more or less. And so they're following game events and that didn't happen until later in the season. And so they cover it when it happened, which makes sense. But also if you know that that happened,

then for the first five episodes or whatever it is, as they're portraying him as a very sympathetic figure, which he is in a lot of ways, but also, yeah, I was thinking in the back of my, but also, yeah, I was thinking in the back of my mind, like, are they then going to downplay this? But they didn't, ultimately. They didn't. And I, you know, everybody's mileage on his apology might vary. My sense of him from the way he talked about it in the documentary was that, you know, he seemed sincere in his remorse

for having said that and talked about how he heard from kids, like kid fans who told him that like what he said hurt them. And you could tell that that upset him, that he didn't want that to have happened. So, and you know, they don't leave it that he didn't want that to have happened. So, and you know, they, they don't leave it entirely to him to tell the story of it. There's, you know, participation from a number of media members and our good friend Alex talked about how

the reason it's disappointing is this is a guy who has obviously dealt with self doubt and, um, self-doubt and self-loathing. And so to hear him use a word that is used to describe a vulnerable community that also deals with self-doubt and loathing is incredibly disappointing. So he comes across as very human to me in this. And I think that a lot of people, particularly a lot of young men, deal with these issues and don't have an outlet for them. These issues being the issues with anxiety and depression that he has dealt with. Unfortunately, there are a lot of young men

who also use slurs, but that's not what I mean right now. And a lot of those young men look up to athletes. And so I do think there's a lot of value in these guys when they feel comfortable sort of sharing that part of their lives doing so and encouraging people to get help when they need it, because I think it makes a difference. And it's so like you watch him and you watch his dad and you listen to him talking about his dad and I was like, okay, maybe they're going to show his dad and he's going

to be like, he's going to have mellowed and no, he has not seemingly done that. So you can, you know, I don't want to like, I'm not his psychologist. I don't want to like armchair, psychologize this guy, but I also was just like, man, I hope you're working through the dad stuff because that seems like it might be at the root of some of your stuff here, bud. But like it was just very, it was very Frank. And I think a good reminder that like this guy was an all star to your point. He had an incredible season last year on the field and he's going to be a really important

part of that Red Sox team going forward. And just the complete allergy he seems to have to letting that talent in for any length of time. It's like, it's really sad, you know, it's really a bummer. Like you think that if it were you, it would feel so amazing. Like this is a thought I have about pro athletes so much of the time, I'll watch a game and I'm like, what it must feel

like to be able to do that with your body, right? To be that strong, to be that fast, to be that agile, you know? Very foreign experience for me. And so, you know, I've talked, I fell out of a chair just sitting down one time. So you know, I'm not exactly like threatening the Olympic team in any sports here. And so to me, it feels like that has to just be so transformative a feeling, even if it's the one

that you're dealing with and experiencing every single day that just has to alter your perception of yourself, right? And I think for a lot of pro athletes, it does, but not for everybody, you know? So I don't know, I thought given like the format that the doc dealt with sort of, I don't even know if duality is quite the right way to describe it because I don't want to say that that incident didn't matter because I think it does and it's important that he suffered a consequence for that and that he was apologetic. But I don't know, duality

sets it up as this equal part and I don't know that that's necessarily true either. But I thought that they did not shy away from the complexity of this person who seems to have a lot of self-understanding and a lot of care for how his actions impact others and still did not live up to the standards that we would probably want for him and that it seems like he would want for himself. So I thought that they, you know, I was worried, I was like, are they just not going to address that this happened? Because the episode where he is talking about sort of his evolution as a person and his struggles with mental health and depression and anxiety is

so appropriately sympathetic to him that I was a little worried that they wouldn't let in this thing that happens that does disrupt your understanding of him, you know, and that he has to account for in his understanding of himself and our understanding of him. So I did think that they handled that fairly well. And again, people's reaction to his apology might vary. And as not a queer person, I don't wanna like overstate my ability to sort of accept that apology, but it was nice.

It's just nice when people apologize, you know? We could use more of that in the world, like to have someone just say, I hurt someone and I'm sorry I did that was like, okay, cool. I appreciate that. We should make that a part of this process more. And I do think people when presented with unequivocal apology that isn't just like mealy mouthed often will accept that apology. So, you know.

Yeah. And I, yeah, he was very frank about things. And I liked when we got to see Bayo missing his family. I didn't like that he was missing his family, but that was a good window into something where he's really in tears just because he's kind of on his own and also struggling on the field, but also maybe those things are related.

And so how do you help him? There were like visa issues. And so that was tough to watch, but also good to see. And I liked some of the like self-talk that you heard. And yes, they knew they were miked up and who knows if it's completely authentic, but both positive and negative. When there'd be a misplay, often it would be Duran

just berating himself for sucking, which was kind of hard to hear, but also again, revealing. And then some of the positive self-talk too, I guess, especially with Casas, when he'd just go up to the plate and be like, you're the best hitter ever. He's talking to himself about how his swing is perfect and all that sort of thing. Just the sort of stuff that you might see a player's mouth moving, but you can't really lip read it. You don't know what they're saying. And I would have

liked even more of that just casual, There were snippets of first base conversations and mound meetings, but a little less of that than I liked and I know narratively, maybe it's not driving the story forward always, but the story, the arc of the season just wasn't that compelling to me because it was the 2024 Red Sox. And so I kind of wanted it to be more of a hangout, I guess. And there was some of that, but like when you see Kenley Jansen in one of the later

episodes, he's just like golfing in the clubhouse, just like taking full golf swings and golf balls just like caroming off of things, ricocheting, everyone's like ducking and covering. There's probably expensive equipment. And it just kind of reminds you, these are just like boys being boys in many cases, even Kenley Jensen, a veteran who's up there in years, like these are just, you know, there's kind of an arrested adolescence aspect to being a professional athlete. And, you know, the cliche about playing a kid's game and everything, I would have just like to hear even more of that sort of uncensored conversation, just people kind of shooting the shit, basically.

And there was some of that, like bullpen hangouts and clubhouse conversations, but I almost wanted it to be all that or more that at least. It did feel a little caught in between sometimes. Yeah, and there were moments where you'd see part of something and then I'd want to see the rest of it. And I know you can't show everything even in eight episodes. At the end of...

So many episodes. Yeah, at the end of and mostly an hour-ish long. And they'd show it like in spring training when they're making cuts, they showed basically a montage of Alex Cora breaking the news to the players and he had the same stock opening line to all of them. We're making moves. Sending you, or reassigning you to minor league camp. I was like, okay.

Right. He'd always lead with, we're making moves. And the move was like, you're going to the minor leagues now. But we didn't get to hear the deliberation that led to that. I wanted more of like, okay, who are we cutting and why? And some of that behind the scenes sort of front office coaching staff stuff, or then we didn't really follow any players who had their dreams end. We followed like Kam Buzer and other guys, but someone who got cut and didn't make it back and what's that like?

And yeah, look, they covered a lot of things and there would always be some other things that I wish they had covered more, but there were some good moments in it. And I did enjoy early in the season, Duran is driving this old Bronco and it breaks down outside of Fenway and Tristan Casas just wonders out and is kind of spectating Duran's attempt to fix

his transmission or whatever. And he does get it going again. He does ultimately get it going. Yeah. Casas is making the good point that like, hey, you're a baseball player. You're not a mechanic and your hands are valuable. And you're like banging on stuff and there's sharp stuff in there. And maybe you should call someone.

And then he calls his dad, I guess, ultimately Duran. And he's kind of getting a walkthrough. And then Casas, he tries to call AAA or some sort of, this is, I think, my favorite moment in the whole thing. Yes, he tries to call AAA. thing. He tries to call AAA. Yeah, he tries to call roadside assistance to get a tow job or something. And instead he calls the limousine service

and they're like, sir, this is a Wendy's or an Arby's or whatever. And they're like, we aren't gonna come pick up this Bronco. And then the line that Casas said when they informed him that this was a limousine service, he said just very seriously, like in the same tone of voice, okay, I'll make an adjustment. This is my favorite line in the whole thing. Okay. I'll make it. It's like, as if he was in a baseball mindset, even then it's like, you just called the wrong number. Like this is the wrong company.

And he just puts that in terms of, I'll make an adjustment as if he's making a minor swing change or something. You just called the limousine service instead of AAA. Yeah, that was quite funny. I think that the part of it that I, again, I don't think this is something that I hope that we didn't need a reminder of, but that I was glad to see be a point of focus given sort of how potentially general the audience for this is going to be.

Like there were a number of times where players talked about how, you know, fans can be real shits sometimes. And it isn't at all proportional to, you know, we think baseball is important. Baseball is our livelihood and baseball is important to these guys. It's much more directly their livelihood and it's a multi-billion dollar industry and it's bound up in our civic institutions. It's part of the like social fabric of the US and it's and the world and it's part of our social fabric of the US and the world, and it's part of our civil religion here.

But also, it's not that important in the grand scheme. We can have perspective on its importance relative to the social issues of the day, for instance, right? And so for them to spend some time being like, hey, people do not have any kind of regulator on this. And the things that people will say to these guys is, you know, those things are unhinged, right? It's like the kind of thing where I've been having this thought a lot lately, where it's

like, hey, if you said what you just said to Brian Baio in like line at Subway, would you expect to have a normal social interaction after that? Or would you imagine that you're going to get clocked and that everyone in the Subway is going to be like, well, you were kind of asking for that, right? So seeing that side of it is important because even though like we go to the ballpark, we see these guys at work. I can't remember if it was Casas Sideran,

who's like, sometimes I feel like an animal in the zoo. The way that people talk to them and sort of observe them. I don't know, I think that that's a good reminder, like so much of our interaction with each other and with strangers and celebrities, this mediated thing and often it takes place over the internet. And so I do think that it's like,

hey, we're like people in the world, like seeing each other, like don't be a monster. No one feels worse about striking out than that guy does. Like he already feels so bad. You do not need to berate this person and you certainly don't need to. But Beo tells this story about a fan telling him that he hoped that Beo got hit by a car leaving Fenway because he had like a bad start or something. And it's like, Jesus Christ, like, what are you doing?

This is a human being. Like he has a family he cries about in this documentary. What is wrong with you? You know, like just be a person. And I don't know, especially with the trajectory that sports gambling has taken and the way that that is interacting with how fans or not even fans, sometimes it's just gamblers interface with these guys. I just think that like more reminders that like human person with like thoughts and feelings, like that's not a bad thing to spend five minutes an episode on. Like, you know, you just treat him

like you'd want to be treated. This seems so straightforward. Yeah, yeah. And I like when it does focus on some people who are outside, Josh Cantor, the organist, who was on Effectively Wild recently, he gets a little bit of screen time, or just broadcasters.

It's interesting how writers who are not always the most camera-ready folks, I'm not making a commentary. Everybody looks great. Yeah, they all look fine. But it's funny how they become almost the narrators of these projects. Like there's a lot of Sean McAdam in this documentary. You'll hear more from Sean McAdam

than just about anyone else. And our friend Alex Beers here and other writers also. Because yeah, if you're not gonna have an actual narrator, then you need someone who can come in and just kind of give you the big picture, where are we in the season? What's going on here? Just basic context and writers hopefully are good at providing basic context that's part of the job.

So they do kind of ultimately rely on the least famous people and sometimes the least like polished, because maybe you haven't had media training if you are the media. But yeah, they become an important part there, almost like the voice of the series sort of helping us through the season. So good for us, our fellow writers

having an important part to play in documentaries. Yes. And again, they all did well and they all looked great. Good job, guys. Yeah. I guess. And Jocasta Gleone, you know, at the end of the season, he retires. And so that's kind of a heartwarming and bittersweet moment as well.

And maybe you hear a bit more than you need to from like people who are changing the numbers in the green monster or people like parking attendants or police officers who were working outside the game or, you know, but, or ushers or, but it's good to give a little bit of that flavor of like baseball teams are not just the baseball players and the chief baseball officer and the manager, but also just all these other people who make up the fabric of the sports. So it's nice that they get to be characters too. Yeah. I liked hearing from the people sort of in the team's orbit. I thought that it

added a nice something. And I liked hearing from the Green Monster folks, they had a lot to say. One of the guys in the Green Monster had one of the best things to say about the Durant suspension of anyone in the entire documentary where he comes up in a crucial moment late in game in the first game he's back. And the guy in the Green Monster notes that there were like a bunch of people basically giving him a standing ovation. And he was like, we wouldn't be doing that if this wasn't one of our guys, we'd be doing there needs to be a middle, there needs to be a middle lane. Just silence is fine.

Yeah. Cause like, I do think that when people show contrition in these moments and it's not enough in one moment, right? you have to continue to show growth, but like we need to allow people that opportunity. And if they continue to disappoint us, then it's a different conversation. But I do think you wanna give people the chance to atone and express remorse and then demonstrate growth and change and better behavior, because otherwise,

like what is our alternative? We can't just cast everyone aside, right? and demonstrate growth and change and better behavior because otherwise, like, what are we gonna, what is our alternative? We can't just cast everyone aside, right? If they're actually willing to change, but we don't have to applaud them in the first place. This was like way back in the day, it was like five years ago or whatever, but like when all of the Josh Hader stuff came out

and like fans were giving him a standing ovation in Milwaukee. And I'm like, but he needs to have a moment of reflection and growth. You can't assume that. It has to be demonstrated. And we should- I think the same thing happened with Jose Reyes when he came back from a domestic violence thing, which was even worse.

Sometimes that happens. I know, it's gross. Yeah. So- Yeah. It's like, you want to give people the chance, but you also need that. Like they should, they should take the first steps through that chance before, you know, we're like, oh good, now we get to move on. Cause it, what it smacks of is like, I don't want to

think about this uncomfortable thing about this athlete I really like and enjoy. I don't know seeing people can't enjoy Durant anymore. He seems to be right. But like, you know, we have to sit with it too. It's not just something that athletes have to sit with because we're spending, you know, money on this thing. And sometimes we're putting these guys' names on our backs. Yeah. Or it can come off as even support for what they did or at least like sounding as if you're

you're up in arms. I don't want to say anything about the good people of Boston. Yes, right. And maybe it's meant as moral support. It's like, hey, we're still behind you. We still have your back, but it comes off as... Yeah, it's like... This is not a clear signal, you guys.

Right. Maybe it's even like you got unfairly canceled or something, you know, not that two games suspension, but still, yeah. Anyway, I think it was ultimately a successful endeavor. I would say maybe I expected too much. I guess I was expecting like, you know, this will be like the ball four of baseball documentaries. like we'll really get an insight into something that we don't normally see. And I didn't feel like that that much. And maybe we just already know too much because ball four was a long time ago. And because of ball four and many other subsequent things,

we just understand this aspect of the sport better than we used to because people didn't use to report on these things so much. And so maybe there's a little less just uncharted territory to be mapped and settled here. But if you're a Red Sox fan, I would certainly recommend it. And if you're less of a hardcore baseball fan or someone in your life is, I would recommend it as just a good kind of primer about, hey, how does a baseball team work? What's baseball like? What are the ebbs and flows of a baseball season? I think this does capture all of that. But yeah, if you're a super sicko and you're just hoping

you're going to get to see all sorts of behind the scenes stuff that you might not have known otherwise, there's a little less of that than I had perhaps unfairly hoped. But I would support a second season. I don't think they're making one, not currently, at least maybe they'll evaluate and see if people watch this thing. But it's a big investment of time and money. But if they were to do it again, I think another reason why baseball is challenging

and a lot of sports would be, but individual sports, you know, they've done this for F1, they've done it for golf, they've done it for tennis. That's just easier, I think, probably than a team sport with as many players cycle on and off of a baseball roster over the course of a season, which Alex Korr says that at some point in the documentary, the team is not the same as the team that was here last week. I mean, that's even more true in this era of baseball when you're constantly sending people down and bringing people up again. But the chain, the team is an amorphous thing that's evolving over the course of a season as its results do, but also as the composition of the roster does. But it's hard to, you just have to pick

certain players and say, okay, they're the protagonists and we're going to ignore a lot of other people basically and, and any one player on a baseball team doesn't have that much impact on your overall fortunes. And so, yeah, if you're, if you're doing cheerleading or driving or golfing or tennis, then yeah, it's an individual thing, at least in some of those. And so it's easier to sort of set the narrative, I guess, than it is in baseball. But if they were to do a second season, I would say A, hopefully just have a more compelling

elevator pitch than a 500 team. Even Alex Cora said this. He said, at the end of the season, I'm like, bro, how are you going to make this look good? We played 500 baseball. And then he says, the director said, don't worry, we will. And I think they did as well as they could have just about. But yeah, it would be nice if you had even like this year's Red Sox would seemingly be, which the series ends with them basically being like, wait till next year, but hey, we have all these young guys who've established

themselves and also now we've signed some, we traded for crochet and we signed Regman and the Red Sox came into the season with higher hopes. So yeah, a different team just for variety sake and maybe a team that's really ready to contend or has more stars or is truly terrible. I would watch that too, but just something that's not in the middle. It's like, what do they say about the pitches? It's like the dead zone with a fastball. If your fastball movement is like right smack dab in the middle of the league average movement, then even if you're throwing hard, it just might not be an effective pitch

because the hitters are so used to seeing that. It's kind of like the Red Sox were in the dead zone for a season, essentially, no matter how much they tried to dress it up a little bit and add some suspense. So a different team, and also if they did a second season and could go into it with the presumption that the viewers will have watched season one, that would be nice too, I think, just because there would be a little less of just explaining

the structure of a baseball team. What is baseball? Right, and it starts in the spring training and then they go from there to the regular season. You know, just the basics, the broad strokes there. If they could just say, okay, we'll take that as read previously on the clubhouse, you know, and then they could really focus on other things and it could be shorter too, depending on how interesting the season actually was, but. And it could be shorter. It's just, it is like so many episodes. Yeah, and a lot of that is because of that just basic,

what is baseball kind of information. Right, there's groundwork that has to be laid here. Yeah. Yeah. But, ooh, that groundwork. It takes a minute to lay that track. It does, yeah. So qualified recommendation.

I'd say, you know, they didn't do it wrong. Like there weren't a bunch of growners, you know, I wasn't sitting there like they got the baseball wrong regularly or anything or misrepresented that the way baseball works. I thought, you know, on the basics, they pretty much nailed it. Yeah, I think that's right, yeah.

Okay. And speaking of docu-series, I guess this will be a segue into teasing what will be coming to Effectively Wild next week, barring some last minute change, the first ever Effectively Wild scripted series or narrative podcasts. And we've had occasional one-offs

that were more scripted and produced, like the one that I did on sign stealing years ago, and the one you and Sam did about the shortest game, or when we did like that fake Shohei Otani trading game and had a bunch of people role play, or the Roger Angel tribute episode with a bunch of, you know, we've had things that strayed from the typical format, but we've never done just an actual podcast docu-series, a multi-part scripted narrative

series. And I have wanted to do that for a long time and was waiting for the right idea to come along that just really grabbed me where I was fascinated by a subject and thought I could add something to the existing knowledge and hopefully make it interesting for people. And I think I'll let it be a surprise for now what it is. You'll find out in your feeds next week. I will just say that if you want to sneak peek or you want to speculate about what it is, I'll just say I've been thinking about this since episode 1890. So there's a little hint for all of you. So that was years ago and I've been more actively working on this for more than a year, not like every day, but at least like working on it

in some kind of concerted fashion in my copious spare time or just thinking about it or talking to people. So it's gonna be kind of like a Ken Bernstein audio documentary from an effectively wild spin. And it'll be a three-part series. audio documentary from an Effectively Wild spin. And it'll be a three-part series. And if all goes well, those parts will come out, first thing Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings.

And that will be next week on Effectively Wild. So we'll get the week off for new content, barring some sort of baseball emergency. If someone signs Rich Hill or something, maybe we'll say, oh, we gotta break into. What a tragedy that they did this Clubhouse documentary the one year when Rich Hill wasn't there. And he showed up late in the season,

he doesn't show up in the documentary at all. It should have just been, the last episode was like Rich Hill's four innings or whatever. I have a feeling that Rich Hill was like, absolutely not. Anyway. No, thank you. Yeah, I hope people will enjoy this.

I hope it'll be a nice change of pace. I hope this obsession of mine will prove contagious and I will pass it along to you, but it'll be a now for something completely different. So let me know what you think. It's a historical story. So we'll take a week off from current events and then we will be back with a vengeance the following week. All right, by the way, lots of on-the-ground reporting, original research in this upcoming scripted series. In addition to expert interviews,

hard to do that kind of work without the support we get from our Patreon supporters, whom I will thank in mere moments, but first, several follow-ups, quick ones. Already regretting not making a Netflix and Hill joke? That's what I could have titled this episode if only Rich Hill had been featured in the documentary. Also looking forward to the Netflix documentary about the Grand Junction Chubs, which of course they can call the Chub House. Meant to mention that Jaron Duran and Tyler O'Neill's biceps should be billed on IMDB as co-stars in the Red Sox documentary. Lots of screen time for them. Congrats to Mark Ripperger, who became the second MLB umpire to get a perfect accuracy score

from umpire scorecards. This was in Thursday's Royals Twins game, a little less exciting than when Pat Hauberg became the first. Ripperger has been an MLB ump full time since 2015. Hopefully the rest of his career will not follow the same trajectory as Hauberg's. You may have heard about the game this past week in which the Jupiter Hammerheads,

the single A affiliate of the Marlins, walked 22 Dunedin Blue Jays. This is the most walks on record ever given up, or I suppose drawn, by a full season professional baseball team in a single game. I think what I enjoy the most about it is that the Hammerheads had seven pitchers in the game. That's not surprising. They lost 19 to 5 by the way. The first six of those pitchers allowed at least three walks apiece, even the ones who pitched less than an inning.

But then Juan Reynoso came in and he pitched two innings without allowing any walks in the eighth and ninth. So I'm just imagining Juan Reynoso looking around at the rest of the staff and saying, guys, just throw strikes. It's not that hard. He did give up three hits, including a solo homer, but he also struck out three. The important thing is that he pitched to the scoreboard. Listener and Patreon supporter Dennis Abrams relayed in our Discord group that

Pat Mahomes was evidently wearing his pants above the knee in 2000, so 25 years ago. Last time I noted that Hunter Pence had done this more than a decade ago, but now we have pushed back the timeline of short pants in baseball to at least the turn of the century. Dennis also did some extensive research on players who set deadlines of opening day for extension negotiations. It's not a comprehensive list but dozens of guys and the latest any of them actually ended up signing an extension was a few days into the season Alex Rios in 2008 and Kurt Schilling in 1997. So no one really went beyond the opening day deadline by

more than a few days, except for Carlos Zambrano in 2007. And before opening day arrived, his agent gave an indefinite extension on the extension negotiations. And so he ended up signing in August of that year. Of course, Vlad Greer Jr.'s extension deadline was not opening day, but the beginning of spring training, so he went beyond his deadline without an explicit extension of it by more than anyone Dennis could find. On the Vlad front, we talked about the tax avoidance that comes into play with many long-term contracts, including Vlad's. That's part of the reason why he's getting most of his salary in the form of a signing bonus which is still paid out in a bunch of installments over years which does sound salary-like but it's classified as a signing bonus. This has happened in hockey too and in fact with a Toronto team.

The Maple Leafs captain John Tavares has had a dispute with the Canada Revenue Agency because he claimed that 15 and a quarter million American dollars the team paid him in 2018 was a signing bonus and the Canada Revenue Agency has said that it was effectively a form of salary and should be taxed at a higher rate and Tavares went to court over this last year arguing that the payment from the Leafs should be taxed at the reduced rate of 15% for signing bonuses paid to athletes and other performers as set out in a tax treaty. And for him, this would have made an $8 million difference.

But the Sportsnet story says the case could also have a bearing on the ability of Canadian professional sports teams to lure players north of the border by structuring their compensation with signing bonuses, an increasingly common practice in the big leagues. So yeah, there's some salary slash bonus gamesmanship going on here. And generally we're pro player when it comes to contracts, but maybe we're even more pro taxpayer or pro taxpaying. So I'm sympathetic to arguments which have been made in California too pertaining to Shohei Otani that some of these definitions should be made more strict. Per a Reddit thread I saw, there was apparently another baseball reference

on the pit, the Max Medical Show of 12-6 slider fame slash infamy. This was actually on episode seven of the first season, which I still haven't seen, but I'm going to get to at some point. Evidently a patient asks for the score of the Pirates game and a nurse responds they're up by two in the bottom of the first. McCutcheon hit an oppo taco. And then the poster looks to see if that matches the circumstances of any particular Pirates games over the past few years and finds that no, that never happened. McCutcheon hasn't hit a first inning opposite field homer on the Pirates post-COVID. I don't mind that. I'm mostly impressed that the nurse used the term oppo taco, which again lends further credence to the idea that there's a baseball fan, or maybe multiple baseball fans, on the writing staff of the pit,

and maybe makes it more curious that 12-6 slider slipped in there. I'm about to play a clip that will reference some Angels hitters who had two Homer games, so I'll share something about another Angels hitter who did that recently. One of the biggest early season surprises has been Kyron Paris who completely revamped his swing and has a 321 WRC plus so far. Well someone alerted me to a codify baseball tweet that shows how far back in the box Kyron Paris is. 39 inches he's so far back that in the graphic from baseball savant at least his back foot is actually out of the batter's box. He's just using every last millimeter there

and maybe more if that graphic is to be believed. Just love that people are tagging me on these things now because I've made move back in the box, my new rallying cry. Finally, I see that the Padres have called up Tyler Wade from AAA, so brace yourself for some potential Tyler Wade, Taylor Ward name screw-ups. We did have our first report of a Taylor Ward name mix-up this season, which came to us on Thursday courtesy

of Patreon supporter Josh Newman, who is watching the Red Sox Blue Jays game, and when Tristan Casas was up to bat in the fourth, heard this mix-up of Taylor Ward and former Blue Jay Turner Ward, no relation, on the Blue J's broadcast. Another team that's struggling a little bit right now, they got beat today already. Tampa Bay, the Rays lost 11 to one to the Angels. The Angels hit six home runs. Mike Trout had a couple, Turner Ward a couple,

and Joe Adele a couple. Zach Littell got hit hard for Tampa Bay. The Rays are, I said Taylor Ward, not Turner Ward, thank you. Taylor Ward. As soon as I saw you pick up your pen, I said, what did I do? I was trying to help you out. I know. And I did. What did I do? Well, we remember Turner Ward fondly from his Blue Jays days, right? And a great guy. Taylor Ward had a couple. I love that that tradition is back for yet another year. And I also love when people support this podcast on Patreon, which they can do by going to

patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free, help us keep trying new things like a reported scripted series as we near our 13th anniversary, and get themselves access to some perks, as have the following five listeners. Nate Bell, Glen Aberg, Alexander Brock, Peter Teller, and Becca Bolton. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly

bonus episodes, prioritized email answers, playoff live streams, discounts on merch and ad-free FanGraphs memberships, and so much more, check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcast at fangraphs.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. 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 find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. And you can check the show page of Fan Graphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing

and production assistance. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you, hopefully first thing next week with an exciting scripted series. Well, it's moments like these that make you ask,

how can you not be horny about baseball? Every take hot and hotter, entwining and abutting, watch them climb, dig, and mountain. Nothing'sutting, watch him climb dig a mountain Nothing's about nothing, every stitch wet with sweat, breaking balls back, Dormy on effectively, wow that can you not be horny When it comes to podcasts, how can you not be horny