Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 441: Dirk Hayhurst on the Profits and Perils of Player-Media Relations

Episode Date: May 2, 2014

Ben and Sam talk to Dirk Hayhurst about the sticky subject of player-media relations from the perspective of a person who’s been on both sides of the mic.

I'm in prison most of the day So please excuse me if I get this way I have five obligations to keep So be very careful when you speak Don't talk to me about work Please don't talk to me about work I'm up to my eyeballs in there With work, with words.

Please don't talk to me. Good morning and welcome to episode 441 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg, joined by Sam Miller. A couple of weeks ago when Sam was on vacation, Russell Carlton and I spoke to Dirk Hayhurst, the former Major League pitcher and author of multiple memoirs about doctoring baseballs and beaning batters and race relations in the clubhouse. And we heard from a lot of you about how much you enjoyed that show.

So we have brought Dirk back by popular demand to discuss a couple of new topics, including his fledgling career as a video game creator. But we'll get to that later. I just wanted to start off by saying, you know, last time we talked was after Pineda and Pintar Part 1. So now this is after Pineda and Pintar Part 2. There's been sort of a narrative that's come up about player safety, batter safety, as relates to pine tar, which is something that I don't really recall hearing before. I don't know whether it's something that's surfaced because of all the recent concerns about head injuries, but this idea that pitchers are justified in using these substances because if they didn't, it could

endanger batters seems to have caught on. What are your thoughts on that? My thoughts? Dirk Hayhurst's thoughts? Yes. Laziest narrative to justify cheating I have heard in a long time. Look, if you have trouble gripping the baseball, guess what, kids? They put rosin on the mound for you. If your hand is cold and you can't get a grip you can blow on it to

warm it up pine tar doesn't make your hand warmer okay and rosin does give you tack and those two things are legal so this this this uh conversation we're having or or at least current pitchers who like to use pine tar and i can only really think of one big proponent of it that was outspoken. That was Pineda himself who said he was afraid of hurting batters. I'm sorry. If you can't take the mound for fear of committing manslaughter, if you don't have Pintar on your hand, don't play baseball. It's not for you, okay? Because a lot of other people can throw a baseball

without having Pintar slathered all over them, and they don't need to go to that low-hanging fruit of, well, I was really worried that I was going to kill one of the Red Sox guys if I didn't have it on me. No, you never hear this brought up. Like when there's a brawl, when it's intentional or whether somebody misses someone's head because they're throwing up and in and then they get scowled at and they scowl back, you don't hear after the brawl, well, you know, it was just, I didn't have a good grip and things got out of control and we really should have pine tar because then this kind of thing wouldn't happen anymore.

False, okay? False. So, I don't buy it. I don't think that the pine tar is saving any batter's lives and honest to goodness, even if you did have pine tar on the ball or not, it's not like when you don't have pine tar on the ball, you're going to miss by a margin of six feet into someone's ear hole. It's just not how that works. At least he didn't go with the it's just dirt defense again. You've got to give him points for creativity, at least. Points for creativity, yes. But I just don't understand how there were no Yankees that said

to him, you know, maybe your neck's not a good place. Maybe it's a little too obvious. Of all the places on a dark jersey that you could hide pine tar, what makes you think your neck is like the best, most, like they'll never suspect me there, you know? I don't understand that. I'm sorry. So you wrote something recently for Bleacher Report about player relations with writers and the player media dynamic and how you've experienced that going from the player side to the media side. And you wrote about how the game of baseball and players specifically, and I'm quoting now, will stare down its nose at you like you were a waste of its time, even if you were once a part of it. So I'm wondering, are we a waste of its time when Sam or I or some other writer goes into a clubhouse and holds out our recording device or our notebook and asks some questions so we can put it in an article. Are we a waste of that player's time,

or does that player actually stand to gain something from giving an answer or even an intelligent answer? Well, I think the player is afraid that if he doesn't give you an intelligent answer or that he talks to you in general, there's a chance he's going to get smeared. And it's really quite ridiculous because I think that most players think not in terms of baseball content. And there are fans out there that want baseball content and analysis directly from the source, which is the player. But the player also thinks of themselves in terms of fame, fame factor, notoriety. And so they feel like if they say or do the wrong thing, it's also going to change the narrative around them in the fan base. It's going to make them

less of a person, or it's going to villainize them or make them sound like an idiot. It's better just to be quiet because then no damage can be done other than the, well, he doesn't talk to the media. And I think that sometimes the player's fear or paranoia will turn into this kind of disgust with media in general. And a lot of guys will try and pass it off under the unspoken code of the locker room, like, I don't need to talk to the media. The media is violating sacred ground.

They shouldn't be in here. They're a waste of our time. I'm a man man and it's very masculine of me to avoid you parasites with your tape recorders and notepads. Lots of guys subscribe to that, but ultimately it's just them psychologically assaging themselves with the fact they're afraid of what you can do to them. Now, that seems pretty ridiculous considering the fact that if it wasn't for some of the, and maybe not directly to beat writers in general, but for some of the major media contracts and coverage and stuff like that, players wouldn't

enjoy the kind of compensation they currently enjoy. I mean, there's a reason player market value keeps going up and it usually, the contract value keeps going up because the compensation for media conglomerates going up to cover them is making it possible, basically. It's a symbiotic relationship. It's not to say there are some dumb athletes. There are. You're going to get your share of dumb answers, but at least the dumb ones will try and give you answers instead of treating you like crap.

That will happen, again again because of this fear and not because they sit down and they think about they have more to gain by not talking to you and so on. It's generally just kind of a fear factor that these guys have implanted in their head that they need to avoid you. It does seem interesting that when, I mean, in the clubhouse there are sort of different tiers of reporter, but generally the local beat guys, even the good ones, I know. I mean, the newspaper kind of takes a little bit of ownership in the hometown team, and so they're not usually writing scandalous stuff. And then you've got the tier of reporters who are like stringers and, you know, don't really have much of a microphone and are, you know, just trying to make their 40 bucks filing some wire story or something.

They're not certainly going to get you in any trouble. And it's sort of very rare that there's a media person who has both the outlet and the kind of chutzpah to actually go after a player. So do you get the feeling that players, first off, differentiate between those different tiers of reporter? Or do you think that they sort of see all of them as a threat, all of them as a little bit of an enemy until they get to know them really well? Well, I think that after you start knowing the writers, players definitely will tell you, watch out for so-and-so. He's a snake, or he's always digging, or something like that. And contrary to your observation, Sam, I actually find that some of the guys that are in there every day the beat guys those guys are generally the ones that don't pull punches i found that

especially when i was with the blue jays the globe and mail jeff blair uh some of the other guys they were snarky and they've been doing it for so long that they'd seen so much that there's there's a little jaded take to some of their observation. They certainly don't try and massage it so it doesn't sound all that bad. They just let it fly. If they're a columnist and they have a negative review, they will give a negative review. That does mean that there's an ebb and flow to their access. Some guys will still talk to them, but they'll give them yes and no answers instead of elaborating or possibly incriminating themselves. And see, players will actually read this stuff.

And if it's not the player, then it will be the player's girlfriend or the player's mom or somebody who doesn't understand it's a business and can't understand how someone would badmouth their little boy or their darling husband or their, you know, their boyfriend and they will call up in a panic and then that will make the player upset and then the player will start avoiding the media again. I think the player, if left alone, sometimes will understand that there's going to be bad days and there's going to be good days and the earth's going to change and I have to really go out there and focus on playing ball. But players do keep score on who the really bad guys are. For example, when the players were doing bad, now this is funny. So the beat writers, but there's also the radio guys and the color guys and so on. So if you're a color man,

you have to go in there and be friends with everybody. You can't be critical of them because you represent the product. You're actually directly broadcasting the product. So when I was doing color for the Blue Jays, I had to mind my criticisms because I was still representing the brand. So even though you'd want to be like, that was a bonehead play that guy just did, or my God, if J.P. and CBS strikes out again, this is getting ridiculous. His bat is like Swiss cheese. ridiculous, he's got his bat is like Swiss cheese, there would be blowback from both sides, from fans, because fans expect you as a representative of the brand not to denounce it because they want to love it. And then the brand itself will actually be upset because you're not promoting it in a

way that tells people come out and watch it, spend money on tickets or consume the advertisement that we're pumping out along with the actual broadcast. So the writers actually have it a little bit easier. I mean, it's a direct one-to-one relationship. If they offend a player and the player feels offended, that player can just avoid or stop talking as much to that reporter. But if you're a color man or a broadcaster, it's a different relationship. They can actually lean on the club president to yell at you or something like that to take it easier on you. Then it gets a lot more stressed.

I know some experienced beat writers who think that, and this isn't all of them, but I know some who are like this, who think that bloggers are cowardly in a sense because they don't go into the clubhouse. They criticize players, but then they don't go in the next day and kind of be accountable and, you know, stand in front of the player that they criticize. And this makes sense. I mean, I can sort of appreciate their perspective because they do have to do that every day. But on the other hand, as a person who's been in clubhouses as sort of an unknown face a lot, hand, as a person who's been in clubhouses as sort of an unknown face a lot, the players aren't like that eager to talk to, you know, more reporters. It's not like players are sitting

around and saying, I wish there were more reporters talking to me. And so like you could sort of appreciate that they would actually maybe rather just not have to deal with every blogger or every writer who wants to talk about, you know, how their BABF is unnaturally high. Is the idea of accountability something that players actually put a lot of value in? Or for the most part, are they content with the idea that there are hundreds of people out there writing things about them, some positive, some negative, and never actually talking to them face to face? It depends on the player.

I knew some players that I had criticized during my tenure with the Jays that didn't care and didn't even hear it because they didn't pay attention to it. And they knew it's like when you write an article and you put it up on the Internet, never go back and read the comments. No good will ever come of this because someone will tell you that you're an idiot or you don't know what you're talking about you'll get upset with it right so you just avoid usually when you can your critiques but there are some players who are very caught up in this uh and they keep tabs on it and not to to harp on jpr and cba but that happened to me jpr and cba was very in tune with the media and what they

were saying about him to the point that he had the private numbers of some of the people in the Rogers Corporation who did broadcasts and would text them and criticize them every day if they said something negative about him. It was very personal for him. And after he went on record saying that no one should ever listen to me, no one should ever talk to me, I remember the big thrust of his critique, his reverse critique of our critiquing his play was that I didn't play as long as he did and that I was not in the locker room to stand accountable for what I had said. So it was a big thing and almost all players accept it. Like they accept, you know, playing the game the right way or, you know, you got to have passion and hustle and whatever. And then just this, one of these sayings that players kind of latch onto that's supposed to mean a lot more than it actually does. So after, after this criticism was made, I went right into the locker room and I went right up to him and I said, what's your problem? Here I am. Let's get this taken care of. And honestly, they're not prepared for it. Very few of them are ever going to just, I think this is a fear thing for reporters. And it's also scary for the player,

because think about it this way. If a player criticizes a reporter, all the reporters are going to gang together and the pen is mightier than the outrage player just is. And the, the media will say that, you know, this is what he said. And they'll just let the fan base chew him up as a guy who was upset about something he shouldn't be concerned about. He should just worry about playing the game. Right. Uh, and that's how it went with JP. But then when you go in there and you confront them rarely ever, will they, will they just go crazy on you? Because what's going to happen when they do? That stuff is going to get reported anyways. So whatever they say next is also going to go out there.

And if there's a bunch of reporters present when it happens, it's going to go out there through multiple venues. So there is kind of a checks and balances built in. You know, it's expected that you're not going to abuse your right as a journalist because then you'll get cut off. I think the worst thing that can happen is if that you're a complete jerk in the media, the press secretary will make you leave or remove your credentials, won't give you access. But if you're critical and a player gets offended by that criticism, usually those conversations are a lot more, hey, man, I don't understand why you'd say that. Explain yourself. Because the last thing the player wants to do is just rip into you and then have his entire screed put out there in print someplace to be judged by by the unknown masses.

And yet when that happens occasionally, as we've seen, as we saw with, say, Brandon Phillips last year, there aren't really any career repercussions. You know, you might be a little less popular among fans who are aware that this incident happened, but you're still paid based on your production largely. So I'm always kind of aware, you know, when I'm in a clubhouse talking to someone, I'm always acutely aware that that I need this quote much more than the player needs to give me the quote. It's part of his job to to answer the media's questions. But if he doesn't answer the question, then he goes out and goes three for four. No one's no one's going to get on his case. Whereas if I don't get that quote, I don't get that story and I missed my deadline, you know, that's a bigger deal for me. So I would assume that, you know, most players or most people would over time when they've had enough microphones stuck in their face, come to regard the media as an indignity that has to be borne or an inconvenience at least are there are there players who sort of take any pleasure in and and i haven't had this experience myself but are there players who sort of take pleasure in that imbalanced power relationship that you know and get payback in a sense for having to

endure all these questions well the thing is you know if they won't answer your questions they'll probably answer somebody else's questions. And you're probably standing there in the background taking those quotes from somebody else. I mean, if it's just you one-on-one trying to build an individual story, yeah, you can get screwed. But a lot of content is somebody else's questions for journalists. I mean, you're just there. You're a bystander to the asking process. You're just there. You're a bystander to the asking process.

Most players don't realize, well, I think they think that if they withhold judgment from you, they're going to screw you in the long term. But most reporters can build another story off another player who is willing to talk to them unless somehow the player that you pissed off is the captain and he's lobbied to have no one talk to you ever again. Even then, the game has changed to the point now that it's getting harder and harder for athletes to not give you something. Because it's no longer just the beat writers are the only way in which they communicate. I mean, Twitter, the invasion of social media, Facebook pages, web pages. And then most guys have brands now associated with them, so they have to kind of continue with some positive rapport with the media

because they realize that the media is a built-in mouthpiece for them. So it's kind of they do suffer. The indignity isn't so much that they have to answer your questions. That's not an indignity. That's an obligation. Players need to do that. They need to understand that this is sports entertainment, and part of the entertainment is knowing you better as an individual

and getting your views on things. So any player who thinks that's an indignity is fooling themselves. That's just ego. The real indignity comes when you get criticized harshly by someone who doesn't have any talent like you do, and they hammer you without consulting what you actually feel about it and then thinking it makes sense to not explain what actually happened to them as a way of getting back to them then this vacuum starts of kind of false information so the real indignity there is

understanding that guys who are not as talented as you are going to report on you and sometimes are going to get it wrong and so instead of being about it, you need to go and explain it to them and keep it professional. That is what I think is the biggest downfall of most players. But isn't social media also potentially a direct conduit that players can use to bypass writers, to give fans a sense of their personality without having to convey it through a quote in someone's game story? Sure, it is, but it's usually undirected and it's selfish. So if I want to go to social media as a player, I'm not going to say, well, you see, folks, what happened in that third inning when we went to do that tag play was the ball was coming in and had a little funk on it.

I don't know if that's because of so-and-so's pine tar residual residue on the ball or not, but I just didn't make the play. They're never going to be that in-depth and give you that information because they don't feel like they need to. They might say, man, tough game tonight. You know, I feel bad about not making that play. And yeah, you know, go team. We're going to get them next time. Beast mode. Hashtag want this. Hashtag, you know, whatever. You're going to get that. Instead of having somebody there directing the focus of the information, you know, kind of surgically going for good nuggets of info, you're going to get whatever the athlete decides is worth your time and his. So in news reporting, the line between on the record and off the record is very clear. If

something is said in advance to be off the record, it is. If it's not, then it's not. And in baseball reporting, I found that it's not at all. That a lot of times reporters would be told things. There would be no indication that it was off the record at all, but they would just sort of use their best judgment of whether the player would kind of, you know, want that on, you know, in public or intend it on the record. And I'm sure that you have conversations with players where a lot of things are, you know, technically not stated to be off the record, but, you know, you know not to report that thing that's been said to you.

So do you think that that is a good system of doing things? Because occasionally there will be an instance where a reporter reports something and it creates this kind of confusion about whether it was or wasn't on the record. And even in the best of circumstances, it creates this weird sort of coziness where the reporter maybe is trying to figure out how much to protect a player, which I don't know if that's a great relationship between a source and a reporter. Or is this just sort of, I don't know, the natural result of reporting that isn't in the end all that important? Well, I think that in a baseball locker room, it's funny, you'll have a lot of paranoid

players who think that the reporter is going to make up something malicious about them and get them, but they won't realize that most of the day they were probably participating in homophobic humor, racist humor, religious humor, throwing stuff at each other, dancing around naked, farting on somebody. I mean, the kind of ridiculous crap that goes on in broad view of reporters in a locker room is overwhelming. It just is. I mean, if that kind of stuff happened in any other, like, workplace, for God's sake, it's happening in congress or something like that it would be national headlines but in a baseball locker room it's kind of understood that okay this is an official talk time we're just standing here blind to all these events these secrets will

die with us you know and and so reporters just kind of assume that they will never report that stuff so most of the guys that uh you could construe are homophobes or borderline racist or just horribly religiously imbalanced. This stuff will never come to light because it's understood that I will never speak of this. You see that a lot with managers, too. I think Joe Maddon has a very open relationship with his beat writers. He never really says anything incriminating that I could ever remember. But, you know, I mean, he's very casual. He speaks his mind and he has a good relationship.

And those reporters protect him on his stronger opinions because they know how things will sound if taken out of context. Where other managers are very scared of their reporters. And so they come off very cold and sterile because they don't know if they can trust their reporters or not. And I think that that is provincial in nature, at least from the player's standpoint. But I do think as a whole, you're right. A lot of reporters inside of locker rooms will turn a blind eye to something

unless specifically noted that they can talk about it, and it's defaulted on that. Whereas in any other kind of work environment where a reporter may tread, everything is fair game in a sense. I imagine what makes this tiresome or part of what makes it tiresome is that you have to answer the same questions over and over again. How did it feel to hit that walk off home run? What were you trying to do up there? So is that, you know, when I go into a clubhouse, I delude myself. I think, man, I'm going to come up with a really clever question that I bet this guy hasn't heard it before, and he's going to be so excited that I ask something

he hasn't heard a thousand times that he'll give me a great answer. Am I totally deluding myself? Would players prefer to get the same old boring question that they've answered a thousand times because there is an accepted script for how to answer that question? They can spout the cliche and the reporter can write it down and then they can both move on with their lives. I say, what were you trying to do in that at bat? And you say, trying to get a pitch I could hit. I get that. You're totally correct. But I would say, Ben, that honestly, if you go up to them and instead of being like,

so I know you've probably been asked this a lot. It's like asking a girl to the dance. Honestly, it feels that way a lot. You're just nervous. You know what you want to say, but you don't want to say it in a blunt, easily refusable way. And so you end up wrapping it in all this word play that just makes the two-word answer they give you back sound even more ridiculous. But players are going to get asked the same thing a lot. And it depends on whether they want to think about it or not. It's difficult to say what the magic,

the key to unlocking all the information that's going to give you something. Because honestly, you know, on the player's side of it, we were just trying to get a pitch to hit. I was just trying to locate my fastball down and away. I've been taught my entire career to think in granularities. These tiny little in the moment things. The simpler, more stupid I can make it, the easier it is for me to keep track of when all that emotion is on.

If I can default to some little thing, little simple thing, that's better because then it becomes muscle memory instead of, well, I took the humidity and the barometric pressure into consideration before I put extra. You know, that never happens. Guys will never do that for you. And if they do, they're probably just screwing with you. But the truth is, is that most players are taught to think in such small bites that when they give them to you, they expect that to tell you everything. And when you stare at them like, I don't understand what that means, then they get mad at you. And it's just a disconnect in the way that they are institutionalized.

So what has it been like for you as someone who was on that side of the game and is now on this side of the game? I mean, when you go to interview a former teammate, for instance, is that a strange feeling? Is it awkward? Is it, you know, we used to be on this side of the clubhouse answering the questions and now I'm the one who's putting you through this? And in general, does having been a player give you any edge in talking to players? It does give me an edge, not in the way you'd think. Not like, hey, remember that time we were both playing together? You'll tell me anything I want to know, right? No, that never happens. But I will say this. Okay, so if a guy comes on my radio show, instead of me asking him, so, you know, what did it feel like out there when, you know, the bases were loaded and you were in trouble man what were you thinking you know instead of asking that blunt question i'll say do you think the fans understand how self-aware you where you are when you're surrounded out there and all you want to do

is think about what you've always done which is locating that fastball but suddenly you're aware of everything can you talk about what that pressure's like? And that in the question, I'm kind of saying, I've been there with you. I know what it feels like. Now here's a pathway in which you can elaborate. And they will. And they'll take it. Because they feel like they're on common ground with you. And they do know what you're talking about. And you do know what they're talking about. So that's given me an edge. But a lot of times, to be honest with you, I can't always think up that incredible insightful we're right there together in the trenches brother question so i've got to be like you know so what what were you trying to do in that at bat you know i mean i'll go to it as well i think you will offend more players um

especially me if i had 20 year career okay let's say derrick jeter retires and he wants to be a beat writer he walks into a locker room and he says uh what are you trying to do out there and they'll be like oh derrick well you know here you know what i'm thinking is is like like they're talking to a coach who's going to pronounce them worthy or unworthy but when they're talking to a dirk hayhurst's, I was just trying to get a ball to hit, man. What do you think? Right. Okay. So the next step on your transition to media mogul from playing to writing books to writing on websites to doing radio and TV, now you have branched out into video games. You have released a game called Bush League. Tell us how this happened, how it came together and how it works. games with all the crazy, ridiculous stuff that happens in baseball year to year. The A-Rod thing, the Ryan Braun thing had just been gobbling up headlines. We were talking

about Biogenesis. Actually, Biogenesis is the place in my game where you buy your PEDs from. Side note. I just thought it would be great to make a game where you had special powers. It was like a puzzle quest game or a role playing game where you were a five tool player but you only had one tool because you were a crappy player. And for the other four tools, you turn to performance enhancing drugs. And they had all these wild powers, these ridiculously funny powers. We have a cleat chaser in the game and uh she has a power called alluring cleavage which will pick you off if you're on base because you get distracted

or a mysterious rash it's like a going away present there's all kinds of stuff so we you know we have characters that are based on joe madden and he has two attack monkeys that he uses against you called longo and zozo. And there's just lots of like, if you are just knee deep in the game every day, like you guys are, you would really get a kick out of this because it takes those big headlines. It turns it into an actual baseball type game, even though it's a role playing game. And it lets you kind of use baseball cliches against other baseball cliches and make fun of scandals and take on – the last boss is actually you guys. I don't know if you know that or not. The last boss is the – it's the writers.

And at the end, they judge whether your career was worthy or not by comparing you to a small sample size and so on. But if you have to use PED peds in the game doesn't that mean that that everyone fails no no absolutely not no i mean the you you fight uh from the writer's perspective i mean oh yeah well i mean in this perspective it's more of the like the the writers get to decide if you were you know they make the narrative and so they make or break you. And, you know, it's kind of what we've talked about here so far today, like who makes who the player or the writers. And in this game, it's you have to convince the writers that you're good enough to even be written about, because if you don't, you don't matter. So all this kind of evolving

stuff that baseball is known for. And I think we put that in there because of the morality police issue that should Barry Bonds be in the Hall of Fame or not? You know, I mean, when do PEDs, how far back does it go? What does a guy deserve? You know, can you play revisionist history? So we wanted to make a game that brought up all of these things that was actually fun. So we made Bush League. Have there been any hot takes about how you're corrupting America's youth or you're encouraging people to take PEDs or anything? Well, one of the PEDs is called Prostate Exam. It's used by a character called Grampy Jamby, who's based on Jason Jamby.

I think, if anything, that's just promoting good health care practice. Can you comp it to something, gameplay-wise, that something else people might have played that they could know what to expect going in? Sure, sure. Yeah, it's a match-three style game. So when you match three baseballs, you get a hit. If you match three Ks, you get an out.

If you run your opponent's outs total to zero, while you've got more runs than him, you win. You can tie the game. You can run him to zero while he's got more runs than you, and then you get to use all your remaining outs as free turns. It works very much like Puzzle Quest, Bejeweled. It's like Candy Crush, but with steroids. That's the way I always sell it. But it is a very simple dynamic but it's very deep. People have always got into it because

they thought, oh, this is just going to be tongue-in-cheek humor. Then it turns out to be a long, full-fledged, deep game. It's been very well reviewed so far by some Touch Arcade and some other iOS gaming review sites. So I was really surprised. I thought this would go out. It would be a lot of fun. People would download it because they love baseball. But it turns out the iOS community really likes it too, and they're really getting a kick out of it.

All right, so the game is called Bush League. You can find it at the iTunes App Store. Is that correct? That is correct. All right. So go to dirkhayhurst.com if you want to find out more about the game or about Dirk's other media endeavors. You can also follow him on Twitter at TheGarfoose. Thank you for joining us again, Dirk.

Boys, it's always a pleasure. All right. And that will do it for this week. Please support our sponsor, Baseball Reference. Go to BaseballReference.com. Subscribe to the Play Index using the coupon code BP to get get the discounted price of 30 on a one-year subscription please send us emails for next week's listener email show at podcast at baseball prospectus.com join the facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and rate and review

and subscribe to the show on itunes have a wonderful weekend and we will be back on monday thanks good luck with the game. Thank you. Take care. I know you're going to download it. You better or I'll find you. I have a flip phone. I have an Android phone, so good luck.