The Infinite Inning

The Infinite Inning

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseball reflects, anticipates, and even mocks the stories we tell ourselves about our world today. Baseball Prospectus's Steven Goldman shares his obsessions: history from inside and outside of the game, politics, stats, and Casey Stengel quotations. Along the way, we'll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

Episodes

Infinite Inning 353: The Catcher Who Loved Me

November 15, 2025 • 44 mins
A pitcher throws a great game in the World Series and is congratulated by a backstop unknown to him, but once he was known to the game. Then we travel back to 1917 when gamblers tried to fix a White Sox-Red Sox game by throwing their bodies in front of it—and the one player who struck back.

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseball ...
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Infinite Inning Reissue 24 (106): Got Those Girl Don’t Want You Team Signed Charlie Hayes Blues

November 13, 2025 • 62 mins
In this week’s new material, we compare a team signing a low-OBP player to the girl you were crushing on choosing the only suitor you would have had her avoid (not that it was up to you, but also not that the universe isn’t cruel that way), all of which may turn out to be a tortured political metaphor. Then we return to 2016 for the Dodgers at third base, the tragic and not-at-all funny tale of Giants pitcher Bugs Raymond, and a lo...
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Infinite Inning 352: Why Are There Bad People When There is Also Good Baseball

November 8, 2025 • 55 mins
We look at an ordinary day of baseball, May 8, 1949, and some extraordinary—and tragic—things that happened. First, a couple of good pitchers get shelled, then we witness some typically disposable regular season games before noticing a young woman who was treated as if she too were disposable, though she very much was not.

Trigger Warning: The second half of this episode contains discussion of a violent crime and some images may be ...
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Infinite Inning Reissue 23 (021): Live! Home Run! Baseball!

November 6, 2025 • 41 mins
In the new commentary segment of this week’s reissue episode, we talk about childhood fears of the end times, the degraded state of Times Square in the 1970s and 1980s, the slugging 1964 Twins, and one way the Colorado Rockies might go out in a blaze of fire, weird new GM hire or no. Then we go back to episode 21 for two tales of Hall of Fame catchers under extreme duress.

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand ...
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Infinite Inning 351: The World Series and the Surplus of Piggies

November 1, 2025 • 73 mins
We spend the episode in 1933. First, Will Rogers comments on the broadcasts in a way which suggests that not much has changed between the start of on-air baseball commentary and its current state. Then we turn to the World Series and the government anti-hunger programs that arose at the precise moment that the Washington Senators were about to make their last bellyflop off the championship high-dive, and what each says about their ...
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Infinite Inning Reissue 22 (047): Home Run Hitting in Major League is Becoming Farce

October 30, 2025 • 56 mins
A slightly discursive rainy-day episode in which we question the unlikely players who have hit three home runs in a game and ask if the Rockies-Pirates season series was really necessary before examining two players who were called “Fat”—Fothergill and Fitzsimmons. 

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseball reflects, anticipates, and...
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Infinite Inning 350: Overlooked Baseball - The Greater Bullet and the Lesser Babe

October 25, 2025 • 57 mins
First we make amends to a great of the game who was not only left out of last week’s Shohei Ohtani-Babe Ruth approbation, but was poorly served by baseball (and Baseball). Then we jump from the bizarre Muncy double play of NLCS Game 1 to the most famous baserunning mishap of the Dodgers’ Brooklyn years.  

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mi...
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Infinite Inning Reissue 21 (093): Baseball and the Unlimited National Emergency

October 23, 2025 • 57 mins
In both this week’s new remarks and our reissue, we go back to pre-Pearl Harbor 1941 and the days when Joe DiMaggio was, day by day, counting up hits and the president, without the medium of television available to him, spoke on a nationwide radio broadcast—an event so new that it caused a major league game to be put on pause. Meet the old boss, different than the new boss, because the world was demonstrably on fire. Then we return...
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Infinite Inning 349: The Very Complicated Bat Factory

October 18, 2025 • 53 mins
We observe the passing of the Milwaukee Brewers out of the championship picture via Casey Stengel (who once managed the minor league Brewers to a championship) mourning a day Whitey Ford was outdueled by a journeyman. Then we go back to 1965 to note the difference between a protest and a riot, theorize about what the latter implies about its participants, and finish with a sincere attempt to alleviate the pain of one of America’s w...
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Infinite Inning Reissue 20 (072): An Injured Pitcher, an Injured Country, and a Hurricane

October 16, 2025 • 48 mins
In this week’s new remarks, we observe how quaint the racial dialogue of 2018 was (or at least your host’s was) in light of what was coming down the line for the nation. After a brief discussion of protest and backlash, we proceed to flash back to episode 72’s discussion of how the same message can be heard differently in the context of race (that’s the quaint part), revisit an oft-injured left-hander who was a low-key Red Sox grea...
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Infinite Inning 348: The 1925 World Series Without Tears

October 11, 2025 • 60 mins
We note the passing of Mike Greenwell and an odd time to be an injured player with the Red Sox, and observe the cruel turns fate can take. Continuing on that theme, we go back to the 1925 World Series and ask if Roger Peckinpaugh was truly a goat, just wet, or perhaps some wet-goat combination?

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseba...
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Infinite Inning Reissue 18 (067): Ballplayers and Pastries Above Replacement-Level

October 8, 2025 • 47 mins
In both this week’s new remarks and in the reissue segment we revisit our obligation to think critically and how the concept of WAR can help us frame the abstract concepts of “better” and “worse,” and that comes to baseball players, politics, and, yes, chain and independent-bakery coffee rolls—that is, WADD (Wins Above Dunkin Donuts). How many more apples is Aaron Judge than the number of apples you need or want? We even find Luke ...
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Infinite Inning 347: Spahn, Bringer of Screwballs; Mars, Bringer of War

October 4, 2025 • 44 mins
We begin by fixing the Rockies with the 1987 Cardinals, stopping off at the intersection of George Steinbrenner gaslighting and (one more time) my Chuck Knoblauch Story. Then we journey back to World War II and look at some dire events adjacent to some future Hall of Famers and try to place them in context of some current events involving today’s fighting forces. And then we come back to the Rockies, who turn out to be the key to t...
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Infinite Inning Reissue 18 (007): Lou Gehrig and Austin McHenry Haunt the ACA

October 1, 2025 • 33 mins
We revisit an early episode about two great ballplayers who sickened at midcareer and, sadly, could not come back in any sense. What can we learn from them? This week’s new remarks expand on that theme, the government shutdown, and on the idea of the Infinite Inning podcast itself.

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. Baseball, America's brighter mirror, often re...
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Infinite Inning 346: Minnesota Twins Columnated Ruins Domino

September 27, 2025 • 52 mins
Collapsing teams this September inspire a visit with a Twins journeyman who has a huge day at the plate, keeping an unexpected contender in first place for a little longer (though the magic leaves when Elvis does), and then reveals the way he’s tried to take charge of his destiny, Rod Carew wonders if he’s been accepted, and three old guys living near Cincinnati go to jail for “contumely.”

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the pas...
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Infinite Inning Reissue 17 (076): Sammy Sosa and the Illuminati

September 25, 2025 • 70 mins
Before we go back to 2018 for a discussion of the only Cubs general manager who was moonlighting from his job at the fish-market and a non-baseball tale, one of the more obscure and unflattering episodes of America’s westward expansion, we discuss our need for a shared reality and one of the earliest conspiracy theories. How are you going to be here with us if you believe that we’re being controlled by them?  

The Infinite Inning is...
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Infinite Inning 345: In Which Babe Ruth Marries a Man and Mickey Mantle Feels Poorly

September 20, 2025 • 56 mins
Babe Ruth backs the attack as Babe Ruth gets married, but to a guy named H.C., not a former model named Claire. Cal Raleigh goes on a rampage and Mickey Mantle finishes 1961 quietly, but why did the latter happen and what can we learn from the way he and Billy Martin lived their lives?

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseball refle...
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Infinite Inning Reissue 16 (011): You Have to Be Resilient in Baseball

September 17, 2025 • 40 mins
...Because you might just field the ball with your skull. This week’s new remarks include further reflections on the national calamity unleashed last week, leading into a reissue episode focused on a time the manager of the Dodgers, a chronic lie, told a self-protective, CYA fib that got away from him and nearly cost him his job. We also get a look back at slugging first baseman whose knee quit in spectacular fashion, and, in part ...
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Infinite Inning 344: If Czolgosz Had Read the Box Scores

September 13, 2025 • 48 mins
In which the outfielder called Zaza is rediscovered, as is the hit “dirty” turn-of-the-century play that gave him his name. We then briefly pause for a Dodgers outfielder’s career to come to a sudden end, leading to an unusual inning in more ways than one, and the ride concludes with a visit to the world of September 1901 and an argument about who acts, who doesn’t, and what games they might have attended instead.

The Infinite Inni...
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Infinite Inning Reissue 15 (055): A Baseball Conversation with Davey Johnson

September 10, 2025 • 68 mins
We return to 2018 and a conversation with the late great manager Davey Johnson, with a cameo from his very excited dogs. This week’s new remarks expand on Johnson’s Hall of Fame case, though it’s now beside the point. We also have a brief story in which Babe Ruth gets hurt, but someone else suffers a worse injury.

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. Baseball, Ame...
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