August 5, 2022 • 13 mins
What are the odds of catching a foul ball at a game, or being dealt a Royal flush in poker, or even being struck by lightning? Some things are rarer than others, and on this episode SI Senior Writer Jon Wertheim tells the unlikely tale of how Phillies OF Nick Castellanos became a meme by hitting oddly and hilariously-timed home runs again and again and again.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Before we begin, a reminder to please rate and review
our show. It helps new listeners discover us and grow
the program. What are the odds of catching a foul
ball at a game, or being dealt a royal flush
and poker, or even being struck by lightning? Some things
are rarer than others, But today we're looking at some
(00:21):
occurrences that are truly unlikely, and they're all tied to
one guy, Philadelphia. Philly's outfielder Nick Castillanos isn't exactly having
his best season, but while his numbers are down, he
still leads the league in a pretty remarkable category that
you won't find in any traditional stats. On this episode
of Sports Illustrated Weekly, s I, senior writer John Wortheim
(00:43):
tells the tale of how Costaianos became a meme by
hitting home runs that have been, let's say, oddly and
hilariously timed, again and again and again. And we should
note this piece also includes the voice of the late, great,
legendary Dodgers announcer of In Scully, perhaps the only person
who was castaganos Pero. May he rest in Baseball broadcast habit,
(01:08):
I'm your host John Gonzalez from Sports Illustrated and I
Heart Radio. This is Sports Illustrated Weekly. Here's John Wortheim
to calculate the long odds on the timing of Costallanos's
long bombs. Never mind the honey delivery, the wit, or
(01:29):
the accumulated baseball wisdom. For all his various and sundry
broadcasting gifts, Vince Scully was blessed above all with exquisite
timings for all the high five of the goes back
to the fan. He may have called baseball games all
(01:49):
those years, but he would have been a wonderful conductor
or musician, says Al Michael's a Scully protege dating back
to his Brooklyn boyhood. He just has this intuition for
the rhythm of the game. A viable woman for baseball.
What a viral vomit for the country in the world.
The running joke was at baseball waited for Scully, not
(02:11):
the other way around. If Ben was in the middle
of an anecdote and it was a two two count,
says Ted Robinson, a long time MLB announcer, you could
be sure the batter would foul off the next pitch,
just to be sure Vin would get through his story.
All of which is to say, it's a good bet
that's Scully never much intersected with Philly's right fielder Nick Castianos.
(02:38):
By now you likely know the story or stories all
three of them. On October, Castianos was playing for the
Reds during an otherwise somnolent summer game devoid of much significance.
Cincinnati's played by play ban at the time, Tom Brenneman,
spoke carelessly and cruelly into an open mic during the
(03:00):
seventh inning of the first game of a double header.
Brennaman didn't realize the broadcast was back from commercial break,
and he made an anti lgbt Q slur. By the
second game, as social media did its thing, it had
become clear that Brenneman's vile comment was going to be
a problem. In what was both an apology and a
(03:20):
clear attempt to salvage his job, Brennaman began the fifth
inning with a soliloquy, I made a comment earlier tonight
that I guess UH went out over the year that
I am deeply ashamed of UM. If I have heard
anyone out there, I can't tell you how much I
say from the bottom of my heart I'm so very
(03:42):
very sorry. I pride myself and think of myself as
a a man of faith. As he was winding up,
so was Kansas City reliever Breg Holland, who offered a
fastball to Castianos, the batter at the time. As Brennaman continued,
castiano'ss bad collided violently with a pitch, resulting in a
(04:03):
towering four hundred and ten foot drive. And we got
this from Brennaman. As there is a drive in a
deep left field by Costiganos, it will be a home
run and so that'll make it a for nothing ball game.
When that awkward interruption was over, and as Castiano's rounded
the basis, Brennaman went back to doing damage control. I
don't know if I would be putting on this headset again,
(04:25):
As ESPNS public Torrey puts it perfectly. Watching Brennaman break
the fourth wall and then suddenly reconstruct that wall in
the same breath remains one of the funniest things I've
ever seen. Brenneman was indeed done in the Red s booth.
He finished the apology, then turned the broadcast over to
Jim day mid Gay. The team suspended Brennaman that night,
(04:47):
and he resigned a little over a month later. He
now broadcasts high school sports in the Greater Cincinnati area. Castianos,
on the other hand, was just getting started. The next
time the Reds visited Kansas City, he struck again George Gorman,
a World War Two veteran and the father of Royal's
(05:08):
longtime equipment manager Patrick Gorman, had recently died. Coming out
of the break at the top of the seventh inning,
Kansas City announcer Ryan la Fever began a poignant eulogy
of Gorman. Nick Castiano Snow was batting, and he chose
that precise moment to go deep with this seventeenth home
run of the season. Here's the call delivered by La
(05:29):
Fiver as it coincided with the first pitch. Well, we're
gonna tell you about a great man, and it's a
loss for the Royals family. That's a great life. Nineties
six years and Pat, just like his dad, went to KU,
he also went to Bishop Ward High School. And there's
a drive in a deep left center field. And there's
(05:50):
never a great time to eulogize someone during the broadcast,
So we apologize for the timing. But by this point,
a drive into deep left by Castianos had become a
full fledged me But he wasn't done using his bat
to interrupt somber moments acquired by the Phillies in the offseason.
(06:12):
Castianos was in the box on the final Monday in
May when NBC Sports Philadelphia announcer Tom McCarthy saw fit
to deliver a Memorial Day tribute the Gold Chair, which
will sit vacant here at Citizens Bank Park, honoring UH
those who paid the ultimate sacrifice, and as if choreographed
(06:33):
Castiano's rips on a deep left field, it is god.
Three successive seasons, three earnest moments, each broken up by
a nick Castiano's home run unlikely, comically unlikely, The question
just how unlikely? To try and grasp the improbability, we
(06:57):
consulted sports statistician and NFL dor actor of Data and Analytics,
Michael Lopez. He was kind enough to help us come
up with an answer and to show his work. The
first and most basic question, how often does Castianos hit
the ball over the fence? In twenty one, he had
combined forty eight home runs and eight twenty seven plate appearances.
(07:19):
The home run he hit on Memorial Day was his
seventh home run of the two season. In his two
hundred plate appearance, that's a home run five point four
percent of the time he steps into the box. But
that's too broad. What Lopez rightly calls grief announcements came
early in the plate appearance, as baseball broadcasters stories usually do.
(07:41):
Over the last three seasons, through his Memorial Day blast,
Castianos hit nineteen home runs on the first or second
pitch of his plate appearance, which is to say that
there's roughly a two percent chance that in any given
plate appearance he would hit a home run in one
of the first two pitches. Extrapolating that the likely hood
that he would hit a home run in each of
(08:02):
those three plate appearances, it's about one in a hundred
and twenty thousand. But the probability really plummets when we
ask how likely was he to have three plate appearances
in grief announcement settings. To answer this question, we first
need some sense of frequency. How often to broadcasters depart
from the game to offer the sorts of sombers soliloquies
(08:24):
that Castiano's has an uncanny way of interrupting the sonic
equivalent to photo bombing. We put this to Ted Robinson,
a veteran of calling more than MLB games, mostly for
the Giants and Twins. But how often a broadcaster would
deliver a somber monologue. His estimate once a month, and
that's maybe, he says, there's a question of what do
(08:46):
we want to impose on an audience honoring Memorial Day. Absolutely,
maybe there's an unfortunate death of someone close to the
team or an arrest you feel you have to acknowledge,
but weeks can go by between those that. As a guide,
a monthly grief announcement would equate to ten such announcements
over the last three seasons, accounting for the pandemic short
(09:07):
and twenty campaign. Given that Castianos has played in most
games over that period, one can assume that in a
given game with a grief announcement, he'd have a one
in twenty chance of being a bad after that. Extrapolating
that to the ten grief announcements, the likelihood of his
being the bat or after three such announcements is one.
(09:29):
Combining castianos Is early plate appearance home run rate with
the odds of Castianos would be batting when the rare
grief announcement was made. Rate Lopez makes the back of
the envelope calculation. We'd say there's one in ten million
chance that Castianos would follow three grief announcements with first
to pitch home runs. Those are literally powerball odds. Lopez
(09:54):
points out that the odds improve if we consider the
probability that any member of the population of Major league
batters do what Castianos did. The odds also improved when
we consider that the grief announcement could have been made
by broadcasters of either team. Then again, the odds become
longer if we want to refine this and note that
Castiano's not only hit home runs, but did so to
(10:17):
left field each time, and though it wasn't a home run.
Castiano's interrupted a fourth grief announcement. Earlier this season in
spring training, Blue Jay's announcer Buck Martinez was awkwardly addressing
the d u I arrest of Toronto pitching coach Pete
Walker when Castianos laced a single to right field, fittingly
his first at bat with the Phillies. But little that's
(10:40):
gonna drop for a basic Castianos reached out of propin
in the right fair no sport revels and coincidence and
numerology and statistical cork quite like baseball does. Pictured Joe
Nicro's only career home run, it came off his brother
Phil niekro a stand Musual's thirty six hundred and thirty
hits eighteen fifteen came at home in eighteen fifteen, came
(11:04):
on the road. Mutual incidentally was born on November twenty one,
nineteen twenty and Tiny Dinorah, Pennsylvania, population four thousand, five
d eighty. That's the same unlikely birthplace as Ken Griffy Jr.
Who was also born there on November twenty one, nineteen
sixty nine. Castiano's speak, though, set the standard for improbability
(11:28):
one in ten million for perspective, the odds of being
struck by lightning in your lifetime. For the National Weather Service,
it's one in fifteen thousand, three hundred. The odds of
getting bitten by a shark one in three point seven million.
The odds of getting struck by a meteorite. The astronomer
(11:49):
Allen Harris once haded it one in one point nine million.
The odds of being elected president of the United States
one in ten million, which is to say the awe
and amusement we all have for Castianos, who's grief announcement
triple Crown is well placed with that kind of timing.
When his baseball career ends, he might have a second
(12:10):
career as a baseball announcer, the successor to Vince Scully.
Thanks for listening, and a reminder to please rate and
review our show. It helps people find us. Sports Illustrated
Weekly is a production of Sports Illustrated and I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
(12:33):
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
favorite shows. And for more of Sports Illustrated It's best
stories and podcasts, visit SI dot com. This episode of
Sports Illustrated Weekly was produced by Jessica Armoski, Jordan Rizzieri,
and Isaac Lee, who was also our sound engineer. Our
senior producer is Dan Bloom. Our acting senior producer is
(12:55):
Harry Swartout. Our executive producers are Scott Browny and me
John Gonzales. Our theme song is by Nolan Schneider, and
if you've stuck around this song, we leave you with this.
He might have a second career as a baseball announcer,
a successor to Fid Sculling. That's all I got. I mean,
(13:16):
you'll you'll cut in the audio there. You don't need
me saying right like yeah yeah good good h
Before we begin, a reminder to please rate and review
our show. It helps new listeners discover us and grow
the program. What are the odds of catching a foul
ball at a game, or being dealt a royal flush
and poker, or even being struck by lightning? Some things
are rarer than others, But today we're looking at some
(00:21):
occurrences that are truly unlikely, and they're all tied to
one guy, Philadelphia. Philly's outfielder Nick Castillanos isn't exactly having
his best season, but while his numbers are down, he
still leads the league in a pretty remarkable category that
you won't find in any traditional stats. On this episode
of Sports Illustrated Weekly, s I, senior writer John Wortheim
(00:43):
tells the tale of how Costaianos became a meme by
hitting home runs that have been, let's say, oddly and
hilariously timed, again and again and again. And we should
note this piece also includes the voice of the late, great,
legendary Dodgers announcer of In Scully, perhaps the only person
who was castaganos Pero. May he rest in Baseball broadcast habit,
(01:08):
I'm your host John Gonzalez from Sports Illustrated and I
Heart Radio. This is Sports Illustrated Weekly. Here's John Wortheim
to calculate the long odds on the timing of Costallanos's
long bombs. Never mind the honey delivery, the wit, or
(01:29):
the accumulated baseball wisdom. For all his various and sundry
broadcasting gifts, Vince Scully was blessed above all with exquisite
timings for all the high five of the goes back
to the fan. He may have called baseball games all
(01:49):
those years, but he would have been a wonderful conductor
or musician, says Al Michael's a Scully protege dating back
to his Brooklyn boyhood. He just has this intuition for
the rhythm of the game. A viable woman for baseball.
What a viral vomit for the country in the world.
The running joke was at baseball waited for Scully, not
(02:11):
the other way around. If Ben was in the middle
of an anecdote and it was a two two count,
says Ted Robinson, a long time MLB announcer, you could
be sure the batter would foul off the next pitch,
just to be sure Vin would get through his story.
All of which is to say, it's a good bet
that's Scully never much intersected with Philly's right fielder Nick Castianos.
(02:38):
By now you likely know the story or stories all
three of them. On October, Castianos was playing for the
Reds during an otherwise somnolent summer game devoid of much significance.
Cincinnati's played by play ban at the time, Tom Brenneman,
spoke carelessly and cruelly into an open mic during the
(03:00):
seventh inning of the first game of a double header.
Brennaman didn't realize the broadcast was back from commercial break,
and he made an anti lgbt Q slur. By the
second game, as social media did its thing, it had
become clear that Brenneman's vile comment was going to be
a problem. In what was both an apology and a
(03:20):
clear attempt to salvage his job, Brennaman began the fifth
inning with a soliloquy, I made a comment earlier tonight
that I guess UH went out over the year that
I am deeply ashamed of UM. If I have heard
anyone out there, I can't tell you how much I
say from the bottom of my heart I'm so very
(03:42):
very sorry. I pride myself and think of myself as
a a man of faith. As he was winding up,
so was Kansas City reliever Breg Holland, who offered a
fastball to Castianos, the batter at the time. As Brennaman continued,
castiano'ss bad collided violently with a pitch, resulting in a
(04:03):
towering four hundred and ten foot drive. And we got
this from Brennaman. As there is a drive in a
deep left field by Costiganos, it will be a home
run and so that'll make it a for nothing ball game.
When that awkward interruption was over, and as Castiano's rounded
the basis, Brennaman went back to doing damage control. I
don't know if I would be putting on this headset again,
(04:25):
As ESPNS public Torrey puts it perfectly. Watching Brennaman break
the fourth wall and then suddenly reconstruct that wall in
the same breath remains one of the funniest things I've
ever seen. Brenneman was indeed done in the Red s booth.
He finished the apology, then turned the broadcast over to
Jim day mid Gay. The team suspended Brennaman that night,
(04:47):
and he resigned a little over a month later. He
now broadcasts high school sports in the Greater Cincinnati area. Castianos,
on the other hand, was just getting started. The next
time the Reds visited Kansas City, he struck again George Gorman,
a World War Two veteran and the father of Royal's
(05:08):
longtime equipment manager Patrick Gorman, had recently died. Coming out
of the break at the top of the seventh inning,
Kansas City announcer Ryan la Fever began a poignant eulogy
of Gorman. Nick Castiano Snow was batting, and he chose
that precise moment to go deep with this seventeenth home
run of the season. Here's the call delivered by La
(05:29):
Fiver as it coincided with the first pitch. Well, we're
gonna tell you about a great man, and it's a
loss for the Royals family. That's a great life. Nineties
six years and Pat, just like his dad, went to KU,
he also went to Bishop Ward High School. And there's
a drive in a deep left center field. And there's
(05:50):
never a great time to eulogize someone during the broadcast,
So we apologize for the timing. But by this point,
a drive into deep left by Castianos had become a
full fledged me But he wasn't done using his bat
to interrupt somber moments acquired by the Phillies in the offseason.
(06:12):
Castianos was in the box on the final Monday in
May when NBC Sports Philadelphia announcer Tom McCarthy saw fit
to deliver a Memorial Day tribute the Gold Chair, which
will sit vacant here at Citizens Bank Park, honoring UH
those who paid the ultimate sacrifice, and as if choreographed
(06:33):
Castiano's rips on a deep left field, it is god.
Three successive seasons, three earnest moments, each broken up by
a nick Castiano's home run unlikely, comically unlikely, The question
just how unlikely? To try and grasp the improbability, we
(06:57):
consulted sports statistician and NFL dor actor of Data and Analytics,
Michael Lopez. He was kind enough to help us come
up with an answer and to show his work. The
first and most basic question, how often does Castianos hit
the ball over the fence? In twenty one, he had
combined forty eight home runs and eight twenty seven plate appearances.
(07:19):
The home run he hit on Memorial Day was his
seventh home run of the two season. In his two
hundred plate appearance, that's a home run five point four
percent of the time he steps into the box. But
that's too broad. What Lopez rightly calls grief announcements came
early in the plate appearance, as baseball broadcasters stories usually do.
(07:41):
Over the last three seasons, through his Memorial Day blast,
Castianos hit nineteen home runs on the first or second
pitch of his plate appearance, which is to say that
there's roughly a two percent chance that in any given
plate appearance he would hit a home run in one
of the first two pitches. Extrapolating that the likely hood
that he would hit a home run in each of
(08:02):
those three plate appearances, it's about one in a hundred
and twenty thousand. But the probability really plummets when we
ask how likely was he to have three plate appearances
in grief announcement settings. To answer this question, we first
need some sense of frequency. How often to broadcasters depart
from the game to offer the sorts of sombers soliloquies
(08:24):
that Castiano's has an uncanny way of interrupting the sonic
equivalent to photo bombing. We put this to Ted Robinson,
a veteran of calling more than MLB games, mostly for
the Giants and Twins. But how often a broadcaster would
deliver a somber monologue. His estimate once a month, and
that's maybe, he says, there's a question of what do
(08:46):
we want to impose on an audience honoring Memorial Day. Absolutely,
maybe there's an unfortunate death of someone close to the
team or an arrest you feel you have to acknowledge,
but weeks can go by between those that. As a guide,
a monthly grief announcement would equate to ten such announcements
over the last three seasons, accounting for the pandemic short
(09:07):
and twenty campaign. Given that Castianos has played in most
games over that period, one can assume that in a
given game with a grief announcement, he'd have a one
in twenty chance of being a bad after that. Extrapolating
that to the ten grief announcements, the likelihood of his
being the bat or after three such announcements is one.
(09:29):
Combining castianos Is early plate appearance home run rate with
the odds of Castianos would be batting when the rare
grief announcement was made. Rate Lopez makes the back of
the envelope calculation. We'd say there's one in ten million
chance that Castianos would follow three grief announcements with first
to pitch home runs. Those are literally powerball odds. Lopez
(09:54):
points out that the odds improve if we consider the
probability that any member of the population of Major league
batters do what Castianos did. The odds also improved when
we consider that the grief announcement could have been made
by broadcasters of either team. Then again, the odds become
longer if we want to refine this and note that
Castiano's not only hit home runs, but did so to
(10:17):
left field each time, and though it wasn't a home run.
Castiano's interrupted a fourth grief announcement. Earlier this season in
spring training, Blue Jay's announcer Buck Martinez was awkwardly addressing
the d u I arrest of Toronto pitching coach Pete
Walker when Castianos laced a single to right field, fittingly
his first at bat with the Phillies. But little that's
(10:40):
gonna drop for a basic Castianos reached out of propin
in the right fair no sport revels and coincidence and
numerology and statistical cork quite like baseball does. Pictured Joe
Nicro's only career home run, it came off his brother
Phil niekro a stand Musual's thirty six hundred and thirty
hits eighteen fifteen came at home in eighteen fifteen, came
(11:04):
on the road. Mutual incidentally was born on November twenty one,
nineteen twenty and Tiny Dinorah, Pennsylvania, population four thousand, five
d eighty. That's the same unlikely birthplace as Ken Griffy Jr.
Who was also born there on November twenty one, nineteen
sixty nine. Castiano's speak, though, set the standard for improbability
(11:28):
one in ten million for perspective, the odds of being
struck by lightning in your lifetime. For the National Weather Service,
it's one in fifteen thousand, three hundred. The odds of
getting bitten by a shark one in three point seven million.
The odds of getting struck by a meteorite. The astronomer
(11:49):
Allen Harris once haded it one in one point nine million.
The odds of being elected president of the United States
one in ten million, which is to say the awe
and amusement we all have for Castianos, who's grief announcement
triple Crown is well placed with that kind of timing.
When his baseball career ends, he might have a second
(12:10):
career as a baseball announcer, the successor to Vince Scully.
Thanks for listening, and a reminder to please rate and
review our show. It helps people find us. Sports Illustrated
Weekly is a production of Sports Illustrated and I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
(12:33):
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
favorite shows. And for more of Sports Illustrated It's best
stories and podcasts, visit SI dot com. This episode of
Sports Illustrated Weekly was produced by Jessica Armoski, Jordan Rizzieri,
and Isaac Lee, who was also our sound engineer. Our
senior producer is Dan Bloom. Our acting senior producer is
(12:55):
Harry Swartout. Our executive producers are Scott Browny and me
John Gonzales. Our theme song is by Nolan Schneider, and
if you've stuck around this song, we leave you with this.
He might have a second career as a baseball announcer,
a successor to Fid Sculling. That's all I got. I mean,
(13:16):
you'll you'll cut in the audio there. You don't need
me saying right like yeah yeah good good h
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