Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 776: One Man’s Winter Meetings Saga

Episode Date: December 1, 2015

Ben and Sam talk to Andre Archimbaud, whose experience at the 2002 Winter Meetings, just before Moneyball blew up, was chronicled in Josh Lewin’s book, Getting in the Game.

The way is up, along the road, the air is growing thin. Too many friends who try, blown off this mountain with the wind. Good morning and welcome to episode 776 of Effectively Wild, a daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight. Hello, Ben. Hello. And we are joined today by a guest, Andre Archimbo. And the reason that I wanted to have him on, and who he is, is I was recently reading,

in anticipation of the winter meetings in Nashville, the book that Josh Lewin wrote in 2004 about the 2002 winter meetings in Nashville. And Josh's book, which was called Getting in the Game Inside Baseball's Winter Meetings, was primarily about the job seekers, about the meetings that, while we're following all the rumors, the meetings are actually dominated by these scores of people, well, more than scores of people, hundreds of people seeking jobs with hundreds of minor league teams and also with major league teams and also with various ancillary companies around the industry. And Josh followed in particular three of them. And among those three in particular, he followed Andre, who emerges in some ways as the star of the book because of his great openness and charm and the kind of

incredible degree to which he's pursuing a job in baseball. So I wanted to have Andre on to talk about that period of his life, but also to find out what happened afterwards. So Andre, hello. Hello, Sam. How are you? Very well. So we will talk about some of the details of your search and your career after the book concludes. But first, can I just ask you in a very general sense, we often get asked, one of the most common questions I get asked is,

what's the best way to get into the game, to get a job in the game? This is a question that I think a lot of passionate baseball fans dream about, and there's never any one right answer. But you went through the search. What would you advise to somebody who has that question? The best advice I got, and I will parrot it for you and Ben and your listeners. It was advice from the New York Daily News columnist, Anthony McCarran, and I think he's still at the Daily News now. He said, go to the winter meetings. I would have connected with him in the spring of 2002 at spring training in Tampa. And he said, go to the winter meetings. And I had heard of them, but I had not heard much about them other than what you would hear on ESPN at the time.

Obviously, this predates MLB Network and the scores of other media outlets. BP, Baseball Prospectus was around, but it wasn't at the level that it is now. FiveThirtyEight certainly wasn't around. Nate wasn't around, but it wasn't at the level that it is now. FiveThirtyEight certainly wasn't around. Nate wasn't around, et cetera. You know what I mean? So it was a very, very different world back then. So Anthony just said, go to the winter meetings. And that was sort of the extent of the advice, and that's the same advice.

And it happens every once in a while, whether it's as random as how we got connected via Twitter or wherever. People will find out that I have this background in baseball. And they'll ask me that question. And I will say to them, go to the winter meetings. It's also a great test to see how committed people are. Because if they're like me, first winter meetings I went to, I drove from New York to Nashville. You got to get there. So it shows the level of commitment that someone has to doing this. And then I say the same thing about Twitter in general. If someone wants to get at me, I urge them to find me on Twitter because it means that it's a public forum. You know what I mean? It's the same sort of litmus test that in my mind, that's someone who's committed to seeking me out and engaging.

And that's no different than going to the winter meetings. So I would imagine that not nearly as many people were taking the advice to go to the winter meetings in 2002. It was pre-Moneyball, obviously. It was before the MLB trade rumors era. trade rumors era. Obviously, it wasn't so long ago that it's incomparable. But you know, this wasn't like the smoky rooms and trade talks sort of winter meetings that people remember from long ago, but still probably quite different from today's winter meeting. So what was the ambiance like at the time? Yeah, that's pretty spot on. I think it was at the time, it basically ran from Thursday evening until Sunday morning. And then either Sunday afternoon or Monday morning was the Rule 5 draft,

if I recall correctly. I got there on Thursday for a special sort of day before preview as to what to expect at the winter meetings. And by then I had already been in touch with Josh probably by a week or two. And it was so happenstance that I even got connected with him in the first place, which I don't doubt we'll talk about in a minute. But there were about 30 people. It felt like I was in college or high school again. I was in a room of 30 to 50, quote unquote, kids. And I was by far, by a good five years, the oldest one in the room. There were a couple of 18-year-olds. There were 19, 20, and most everybody was 20, 21, 22.

Come to think of it, I had just turned 30. That was the Thursday sort of preview of what to expect. And then Friday, the meetings really kicked off. And it was a little madness. You know, there were every minor league. Every affiliated minor league club was there. There were a few independent league guys that would sort of try to call the thing, but they weren't really welcome. So the affiliated minor league clubs were all there and they all had jobs to post. And there were a handful of major league teams that used the winter meetings as a place to source jobs. And so, you know, it's a room, let's call it, you know, the size of maybe two ballrooms big at the Opryland facility, the Gaylord Opryland facility out, you know, about 15 miles north of Nashville, if my geography is correct. And so you had these ballrooms filled with people having interviews,

job postings, actual, you know, postings. So you had all of those folks. And then you had the major league folks who were there as well. And they were there. It was a different vibe because the minor league folks were there to source jobs, have meetings, et cetera. The major league folks were there to talk deals primarily. And then you also had the vendors, uh, who were there, the bat manufacturers, the, the maple bat guy, I remember meeting and getting a kick out of him. He had these, uh, overalls and, and, uh, he was somewhat of a caricature coming out of the, you know, I think, I think he was a Canadian guy coming out of the, he might've been California, but for some reason I picture him as this Canadian guy with these maple bats.

And it was almost like a fable, a guy with – he was a big guy. I want to say like 6'4", 6'5", with these overalls. And he had bats, and he was there to sell his bats. It was kind of cottage industry in a lot of ways. So I think I might have caught the tail kind of cottage industry in a lot of ways. So, you know, I think I might have caught the tail end of the quote unquote glory days. And I say that with no disrespect to the people who are there now, but it felt still kind of small. And I've seen it sort of secondhand take off in the last 10, 12 years since then. Yeah, it sort of almost feels like what happened

with the World Series of Poker poker where it went from being really all insiders and fairly quiet and an actual you know industry event to being this massive thing where every kid with a dream showed up and so did you when you went out there i guess two questions when you went out there did you sort of feel like you were being swept up in the zeitgeist did you feel like you were part of like a, I don't know, a marketing movement or something like that? And secondly, what were you thinking? You had a job. Why did you want to give it all up and work in baseball so badly? Yeah, well, I mean, I'll answer the first question first. I didn't really feel like I got swept up in anything other than just

the sheer excitement for the game and what I wanted to do. The second part, the sort of condition on that first statement is that I had just spent 10 years in the hard news business. That business is a world that conditions you to not get swept up in anything. You're trained to remain calm. The first day flying solo as a broadcast producer, to remain calm. The first day flying solo as a broadcast producer, audio engineer for the CBS radio network was the day that the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke. The last day at CBS News was several weeks after 9-11. So I was trained not to get swept up in much of anything, if that's a fair sort of answer to your first question. The second question is, in fact, while I was working, I didn't have a full-time job. I was doing freelance audio and video work. I was doing some sports work for a broadcast group here in the city that would hire freelance engineers and

producers. And that work was catch-as-catch-can, probably the best way to explain it. I had been downsized at CBS News, like I said, a scant few weeks after 9-11. And it was a gut check. The whole thing was a gut check because when I was a little kid, the thing I was most passionate about was baseball. And I got to three months after my 29th birthday. And I said, if lives can end so dramatically and so tragically the way they did only a few miles from where I'm speaking to you now, down at the World Trade Center, ground zero, if lives can end so tragically and dramatically that way, then mine can too.

I wanted to try something. I wanted to do something I was more passionate about. And baseball had always been a passion. And in full disclosure, it was a passion that got rekindled after the Yankees started winning again in the mid-90s and after they had had that tremendous 98-99-2000 run, you know, only a few weeks later to have a very disappointing end of 2001. But nevertheless, it was a gut check. That entire time was a gut check. That entire time was a gut check. And so the beginning of it was I had enough money in the bank to be able to not have to work full-time somewhere for a year and a half or two. And I stretched it to two and a half because I really held out hope that this was going to work out for me.

So you get to the meetings and I assume your dream, like everybody, well, you explicitly say your dream, like everybody is to work for a major league team to be in some team scouting department or something cool like that. And you end up applying for what sort of jobs and what sort of jobs do you get offers for? Well, you know, because I wasn't a kid and I'm actually using air quotes because I wasn't 22 and because I had had some real world experience. It's not that I felt like I was above working at the minor league level because I, in fact, I'm still connected with a lot of the people that that helped me out from that sort of that niche. You're right.

The dream was to go work for the Yankees. And I got closer than a lot of people would. It's funny. I was having a conversation with somebody a couple of months ago and was sort of rehashing that version of this story for them. And they stopped me in the middle of the conversation. They said, you just did this on your own. You didn't know anybody. You didn't know any, you know, there was nothing. And I said, I guess I didn't. I was completely naive of the fact that I, you know, why wouldn't I be able to do this? For me, it was strictly about

pursuing this. And so to actually answer the question, I did apply for a handful of jobs, mostly on the East Coast. In fact, I ended up applying for a job in the catering group, the food service division of one of the minor league teams down in Lakewood, New Jersey, the Lakewood, I think their name was the Blue Claws. Their stadium was about three minutes from my grandmother's place in Toms River, New Jersey. And so I actually went down and interviewed with them. When I got back, they actually offered me something and I said, you know what, it's not really the fit, et cetera, et cetera. And there were a whole bunch of moving parts in my life at the time. So I just didn't feel comfortable commuting from New York City to the Jersey Shore for the sort of money that was involved. That was

the big thing. But the guy said to me, Justin Babula, who actually now works around the corner from my office over at Madison Square Garden, he's the one who opened the door to the Yankees and said, you know, I just got this job posting at Yankee Stadium to be the manager of one of the three private clubs in Yankee Stadium. And I said, well, it's certainly closer than anything else I had sniffed while I was down at the winter meetings. And I figured it would be a great opportunity to meet, really, really have a great inroad into some tremendous people inside the Major League operation. Did you have a sense of what teams were looking for in prospective employees at that point? Because nowadays you hear current GMs who've been in the job for a while say that they never could have

been hired because the requirements have just skyrocketed so much since they were hired that they would no longer be qualified to apply for the job that they have. And you look at listings for even internships and its advanced degrees and its computer science and its programming languages. Did you have any sense of what teams were looking for at that time? Were you trying to pitch yourself as some sort of employee? Yeah, I mean, to frame this out a little bit, and I think it really plays well into the baseball prospectus 538 thing. I mean, I very specifically had taken up the charge of doing analytics and wanting to do quantitative analysis of players, the game, all of the various

variables involved in there. You know, when I tell people the story about this time in my life, I always say, you know, I pursued my dream of working in baseball. And they look at me funny. I'm about 5'9", you know, about 200 pounds. So I don't come off as the guy who would play today and certainly 10 years ago, even 10 years ago. So I always tell them, no, I gave that dream up of being a player when I was about 16.

But the bigger piece to me was pursuing the analytics thing. And it was just starting to blow up. I had become a big advocate and a fan of Rob Nyers in particular. He and I, in fact, exchanged emails during that time. It was just sort of this, that's what I wanted to do. And it was such fertile ground and it was such new territory for the game of baseball that I just had no, you know, there was no sense of what anyone wanted. That being said, and the bigger piece of this, and I sort of spoke to this earlier with

all the other vendors and the other folks who were in the space, there are loads of different places that you can make a dent in the game of baseball that don't have to do with on-field operations, that don't have to do with, you know, whether it is in food service, whether it is in customer service, whether it's in ticketing, at any level, media relations, you name it, there are a bunch of different ways to get in there. I can't even imagine, you guys would have a much better sense of this now since it's been 10 plus years since I've really been in it. I can't even imagine you guys would have a much better sense of this now since it's been 10 plus years since I've really been in it. I can't even imagine how competitive and more than anything, I can't even imagine the technology that's involved. I mean, I taught myself how to use Excel to be able to crunch the numbers that I was crunching.

You know what I mean? And I know, you know, Rob and Bill James and whatnot did all of that same sort of work back in the 70s and 80s and early 90s too. So getting back to the core of your question, there was no sense because there wasn't an established need for statistical analysis in the game. I remember full well, I was at the GM meetings in Phoenix in November, 2003. And I said to the then AGM of the Pittsburgh Pirates, I said, you know, I've been doing these reports now for players, agents. I had done a few freelance reports for a couple of teams. And I said, I'd love to be able to do some work for you guys. And he said, listen, we just hired a bunch of math majors to, you know, sort of jump into this. And of course,

it was a completely misguided. We know what the pirates did until recently, until the last two or three years. So it's, you know what I mean? It was a little, I think there was, there was some sense of, we got to do something, you know, we've got to get somebody, but you know, and I didn't say it, but I certainly thought it when the, when the AGM of the pirates said this to me, I said, I wonder if those math majors looked at your win-loss record last year. They've done the math there. You know what I mean? And I think a lot of it was there was this rush to not judgment, but this rush to sort of fill the hole. Everybody's doing this.

The Red Sox are doing this. Billy Beane's doing this. Actually, the Red Sox were kind of late to the game by comparison. But what Billy was doing and what some of the other clubs were, were kind of late to the game by comparison. But what Billy was doing and what some of the other clubs were doing, they felt like they had to jump on. So the actual answer to your question, there was no established protocol for stats analysis in the game of baseball yet. And that's sort of why I felt like as an early mover, I had an advantage, but just couldn't quite figure out the right way to package myself and get what it was that I wanted out of what I wanted, if that makes sense.

Yeah, it seems like sort of maybe something that is universal from your experience is this idea that the GMs are so far away from us. And the first step, the hardest step, maybe the first thing that you have to overcome is that gap. step. Maybe the first thing that you have to overcome is that gap. And so you're trying to get in any way physically closer to them or organizationally closer to them. And so that shows up, for instance, in the sorts of jobs you consider taking, that $1,200 a month catering job that you considered and the job that you ultimately took in Yankee Stadium, which was basically in food services too, because at least you're getting closer. And you also have, there's a scene in this book where you're trying to figure out like, how do I get, how do I talk to, how do I get in touch with anybody on the major league side and tell them what I want to do? And sort of serendipitously

in your mind, you end up in a Ben and Jerry's line with a Mariner scout, who by the way, coincidentally, that Mariner scout goes to my church and is the first scout I ever met too. And he's the nicest guy in the world. And I could see being very encouraged by talking to him. But the point is that you have these meetings or whatever connections that are extremely loose. Like what are the odds the GM is going to notice the dude doing catering in his high A affiliate or whatever? And what are the odds that the scout you meet at Ben and Jerry's is going to get you a job? Did you ever feel like those connections had any potential to lead anywhere? Did they actually feel encouraging or was it really just like, well, there's nothing

else. There's no other way in there. So you're taking a one in a thousand shot. There's nothing else. There's no other way in there. So you're taking a one in a thousand shot. Oh, God, my entire life is what you just described. I'm not kidding. I mean, like, so it's the only way I knew. And I mean that really, really sincerely.

That said, I also sent blind letters. I mean, I try to explain to people how absolutely exhausted I was during that two and a half year period, because in addition to pursuing the thing with baseball, which I could do some of the time, you couldn't stay on top of that all of the time, mostly because the market didn't exist yet. You know, not every agent knew that doing reports would be of benefit to them. The Levinsons who eventually hired me to do some work with them. They eventually started to come around on the need for this sort of analysis. I couldn't do it full time. And so I was working on the Sopranos at the same time as I was working on Law & Order SVU, as I was working on at the

stadium. So I would like work a 10 game homestand at the stadium. And then I would ring up the guys at the Sopranos and say, I've got 10 days off. Use me as you need. So it was just a little haphazard because it couldn't be full time. Just wasn't a need to do anything more. But the core of it really was I knew a guy, Tom O'Connell, who's still in the game. He said to me very early on, he said, this game is all about relationships. to me very early on, he said, this game is all about relationships. And especially when you're talking about like in my day-to-day world today, I work for a digital advertising agency that works with local businesses, right? There are a million, actually quite literally billions, it feels like billions of local businesses that could work with my company. But there are only 30 major league general managers,

30 major league team. You know what I mean? It's really, really niche. So for you to get in that door to work within those organizations, theoretically, you're the cream of the crop. And so you have to develop relationships. There are two things that floored me about my experience around that time, how tight-knit a group it is and how nice they all were. Earlier this year, I watched the AFI tribute to Steve Martin. And they had an interview with Ron Howard. And Ron Howard was talking about Steve Martin. Ron Howard said, Steve Martin could be an a-hole, but he's not. And those guys could have been a-holes, but they weren't. And I knew that I had to develop relationships with guys like Ken Compton, guys like Tom O'Connell, the Levinson brothers, the agents, even down to the players and their wives.

I actually, the primary reason that I thought it would be interesting to work at Yankee Stadium was having access to the players' wives. Because, you know, just like in any household, it would be interesting to work at Yankee Stadium was having access to the players' wives. Because just like in any household, the wife oftentimes is a really pivotal figure in any household. And so if you can become friendly and connected and get to know them, they can bring you in the door to the player, to the agent. And then obviously the real critical piece was being able to put a good foot forward inside the organization. Here's this guy, you know, he's trying to do this very, very different sort of approach, not only to the game at large, but also within the organization, et cetera, et cetera.

But as I was saying, I was also sending out blind letters. I remember writing letters to each and every organization. And one of the other things that I did, and I don't know if Josh would remember this, but I ended up buying, I want to say 60 or 100 copies of Getting in the Game and sending them off to the general managers and highlighting the portions of the book where I was and sort of dog-earing them and saying, hey, this is me. This is what I'm trying to do. I would recommend that anyone buy 60 to 100 copies of our book and send them to executives in the coming year. Yeah, please do. Did anybody ever reply to those letters and or books that you sent? Did a GM ever actually send you back an acknowledgement? The short answer is yes. The long answer is it was, so when I went to the winter meetings in 2002, the book came out probably, I want to say, not quite a year later. I think the book came out just after the World Series in 2003. And about three weeks later, I was due to go to the GM meetings. And then about three weeks after that, I was going to be at the winter meetings in New Orleans.

And so the process, if you consider the timeline, I was really in front of these people in baseball, hardcore in front of them for a year. I had started, I did the letter writing, I want to say in the summer of 2002, where I provided some snippet reports. So I did all of the letter writing over the summer of 2002. I got form letter replies, certainly, but I got some very genuine responses. And I also followed up with phone calls and, hey, I'm going to be at the winter meetings again or the GM meetings.

Or by that point, I had started. So I went off to the winter meetings. I didn't have any specific relationships, but my strong suit is developing relationships with people right on the fly. Whether it's meeting somebody at a pub, at the bar, meeting somebody at a restaurant, running into someone. I mean, it's just sort of how I operate because you just never know how a conversation is going to spark. I sent all the letters. When the book came out, I sent all the books. I hand-delivered a handful of them when I was in Phoenix because I knew some of the guys by that point.

I knew a few of the eight GMs. I knew one or two of the GMs. Allard Baird was an early advocate of mine. The Royals, sadly at the time, who really needed the help at that point, they just didn't have it in their budget to include someone like me in their plans. But Allard was a great – still, I haven't checked in with him in a long time, but he was a really, really great friend to me during that time. I've told people recently that I used to watch six or 700 games a year and their jaw drops. And I said, well, that was my job. I felt like it was my job to watch as many games as I could and as best I could. Because one of the things that Ken Compton, the fellow from the

Mariners at the time said to me, he said, you can't just do the numbers. And I tend to agree with him. The numbers only tell a part of the story. You have to be able to see, you need to be able to analyze. He actually, I mentioned to him at one point, I said, what about the idea of going to scout school? And he said, if you were 22 or 23, I think you'd be up for it. But he said, you know, you're seven or eight years. This is a conversation he no doubt has with talent every day. You're a little long in tooth for this kid. I'm shocked to learn that the Royals wouldn't hire a stat head in 2002. Biggest revelation of this episode. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. And again, I love Allard, but they just didn't get it. They just didn't get it. So now you have on your resume, you have this sentence, which not many people can put on their resume.

For two and a half years, I worked in baseball, crunching numbers for baseball teams and their players and their agents, which is a fairly modest achievement in the grand scheme of baseball. But it is also kind of like the guy who gets a plate appearance in the big leagues and is in the baseball encyclopedia for the rest of all time. Do you feel, do you generally feel satisfied by the role that you got to play in baseball? Do you feel like you missed a lot of opportunities? Was it worth the persistence? Do you have regrets? So on and so forth. Well, the lessons I learned during the time are invaluable. It taught me how to really genuinely build relationships with people with whom I had no previous experience. Prior to

that point in my life, I had been a producer engineer in the news business, you know, and that's a very, it can be strategic and it has to be strategic at times, but it's still a very, there are five steps to getting a piece filed. There are 10 steps to getting it edited and produced. I'm telling you guys this. You have your own show. You know how it is. When you get into developing relationships, it's this massive gray matter, gray area where no one, there are no rules.

And so it was freeing in a way to be in a place where there are and were no rules. And so it was freeing in a way to be in a place where there are and were no rules. Now, 10, 12, 15 years later, I imagine that there's a good amount of, like you mentioned earlier, protocol, et cetera, to this. So that's one thing. In terms of getting a fair shot, I gave myself a fair shot. I think I was just a smidge too soon in terms of timing. And I ran out of time. As I said earlier, I had about a two and a half year window and that was stretching it to make this happen and make it work and be able to figure out a way to either continue to live in New York City or move elsewhere with the club. I had handpicked four or five organizations that were top tier for me that I would be willing

to relocate for. In hindsight, the one thing I wish someone had told me, I wish someone had warned me about the money. There was shockingly, when I did get offers, and the book wouldn't go into this because it had already been written, but I did get two offers at the winter meetings in New Orleans. One was from the Mets. Jim Duquette was the AGM at the time, and he and I had developed a relationship. And the initial offer was $18,000 a year to be in the front office of the New York Mets in 2002. And I leaned over to him and I said, you know, I live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, don't you, Jim? That's not even going to cover my rent. And I ended up negotiating them up to

a whopping $22,000 a year. And in fairness to myself in that situation, I had already made approaching low six figures in the news business. So it was literally a real tough shock. And then the mad irony is that the Red Sox actually offered me an internship in Boston. You know, the mad irony is that the Red Sox actually offered me an internship in Boston. I had already lived in Boston, so I wasn't necessarily gung-ho about that. But the idea that they actually offered me the job, the irony, the ultimate irony of the thing is that that would have been at the New Orleans winter meetings in 2003. Anyone who's a self-respecting Yankee fan knows what happened 11 months later when the Yankees were up 3-0 and got swept out. So the silver lining, I guess, out of that situation is that I would have had a ring, but I also wouldn't have made any money that year.

I wonder who got that internship because a lot of Red Sox interns have gone on to become GMs. So I wonder who got your job. The last thing I want to ask is that there was a guy who is given a pseudonym. I think they called him Rick Light in the book, sometimes referred to as the Bada Bing guy. You hated him. You got immediately a bad hustler vibe from him. Did you follow his career at all? Do you know whether he ever got in the

game? I don't think he did. In the book, it detailed, and I don't remember actually how detailed Josh was in the story about this, but he, this guy, and it was a pseudonym. He had been, and funny enough, he had been in that training class that Thursday afternoon or Thursday day long class. And I thought, again, you know, to me, I thought it showed a lot of gumption for him to show up a day earlier, just like I did and the other 30 or 50 folks who were in that room. So I was impressed by that. But then by Thursday evening, he had underwhelmed me by just being an ass, for lack of a better expression. And then Friday, he ended up, he was super aggressive with the then Mets GM, Dee Phillips. Phillips basically had to get him escorted out of the complex because he

was so aggressive. And I mean, vulgar, he was drunk, he was intoxicated. And so that's the last I ever heard of that guy. Honestly, it was almost like out of a movie. He got escorted out of the bar area at the Gaylord Opryland and then just faded away in the distance. If he's done anything since, I'd be shocked. I think he, if I recall correctly, he came out of the finance world, which is seemingly typical of what I know of a lot of those guys, you know, sort of bravado, bravura, and just didn't on that relationship development thing. It's not going to jive in such a small click. All right. Well, Andre, thank you very much for talking to us and reliving

this period of your life, which sounds like a, like I said, it sounds like it was in some ways, maybe the most interesting few years to be trying to get into the game because it was going through such big changes. And I'm glad that Josh was there to document it. So thank you very much. Of course, the winter meetings will start next week. You can be thinking about this if you want to while you're following all the major league rumors and imagining the thousand or so people who are just like andre was trying to get in the game uh and that's it ben you want to read the uh credits sure yeah you can send us emails for tomorrow's listener email show at podcast at baseball perspectives.com join the

facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and rate and review and subscribe to the show on itunes also please support support our sponsor, the Play Index at baseballreference.com. Use the coupon code BP, get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. We'll be back tomorrow.