Infinite Inning 348: The 1925 World Series Without Tears

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, 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? 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Career long Boston Red Sox outfielder Mike Greenwell passed away
this week from medullary thyroid cancer. That is one rough
diagnosis to get. I too had thyroid cancer, but mine
was of a vanilla variety compared to that. One funny
thing recently, a business that I patronized was having a

(00:21):
cancer fundraiser for breast cancer, I think, and they asked
me if I would care to donate as I was
checking out, and I said sure because my dad had
recently died of cancer and I had twice had it.
And they asked me which ones that I had had,
if I didn't mind saying, and I began to speak,
and I said, well, the easier one was thyroid cancer,

(00:45):
and the person asking cut me off and said, oh, no,
not easy. None of them are easy. Never say that
it's easy. And what I had been about to say
was easier than having ocular melanoma, where your vision is
destroyed in one eye. Undergo surgery, I mean you undergo
surgery for both, or at least I did. But the
tortures of having eye cancer were so much more significant

(01:09):
than those of having thyroid cancer, and I had them
in that order. First, the eye cancer, then the thyroid cancer,
and possibly I had the thyroid cancer due to the
radiation I received for the eye cancer. No one can
really say that, I mean, not definitively. Maybe it was
too many dental X rays on old machines. No one knows.
And certainly I've gone through a lot as a result

(01:30):
of having thyroid cancer, and it inconveniences me and causes
disruptions to my life to this day. But being partially
blind and being routinely poked in the eye as a
part of my aftercare is such a constant and continual thing.
I have some peace of mind when it comes to
the thyroid cancer that as long as I'm properly medicated,

(01:53):
that thing will remain quiescent forever. The eye cancer offers
you no such safeguards, because because belanoma likes to hide.
But even so, even when I forget about it, if
only for a few minutes, somebody surprises me by coming
at me from my right, or I walk into a
wall where I spill something, or I'm just rustrated by it,

(02:14):
and I feel like that should be up to me
how I relate to these events in my life, not
someone behind the counter who I think was well intentioned.
I know that they were, but at the same time,
I feel like going back now and saying the easy
one compared to what just happened to Mike Greenwell was
thyroid cancer. Because even within the world of bad things

(02:36):
happening to you, there are degrees of suffering. He was
only sixty two years old. I feel awful for him
and his family, And as with so many cancers, if
you catch the one that he got before it gets
out of its original bounds, you might be okay. But
if you get it a day light well, it's going
to be a short and sad ride. And the tragic

(02:59):
part of that is when the cancer is an aggressive one,
it's not just on you. We can't stand here and say,
whether we're talking about Mike Greenwell or our uncle Mike,
who we just put in the ground, if he had
only gone to the doctor. It's not always like that.
It's not that you put off the doctor's appointment an
extra week. It's just by the time you felt the

(03:20):
symptoms it might have been too late. Greenwell will be
remembered as a very good hitter, but he had a
short career as injuries wore him down early. There's a
strong what might have been aspect to his career, but
I hope no one was disappointed. If there's a theme
to this week's episode, it's that he was a third
round pick of the Red Sox in the nineteen eighty

(03:41):
two draft. He was selected out of high school. The
third round that year had better returns than the first
round in some years. Players selected included Jimmy Key, Roger McDowell,
Joe McGrain, Zane Smith, Dan Pasqua. He had his moments,
and John Habian. Boston had three picks in the first
round that year and pulled Sam Horn with the first one,

(04:04):
and two players who didn't make it up high school
pitcher Bob Perkins and college first baseman Jeff Ledbetter their
second round. I don't know why I said Jeff Ledbetter
that way, as if it had some me like I
was saying, Huddy led Better, Led Belly, the folks singing legend.
Heytel presents the best of Huddy Ledbetter, the Beloved Led Belly.

(04:26):
Thrill as you once again hear e Turtle songs like
good Night Irene, Rock Island Line, jump Up, turn around,
and pick a bell of cotton. That's not a suggestion,
that's the song you may not have a bale of
cotton handy, but you will have the best of led Bell.
I'm going to quit while I'm wait behind here. You know,

(04:46):
my favorite, or I think the funniest led Belly bit,
is that he moved to Washington. He tried to rent
an apartment and he couldn't because it was segregated. So
he wrote a song called the Bourgeois Blues, which begins,
I tell all you colored folks, listen to me. Don't
you try to find no home in Washington, DC, because
it's a bourgeois town, home of the brave, land of
the free. I don't want to be mistreated by no

(05:06):
bourgeoisie lord in a bourgeois town like led Belly will
be spending some time with that bourgeois town in the
second half of the episode. It's fun to go back
and look at some of these failed prospects. And of
course I say that only in the sense of the
objective story of what happened. You have to divorce it
from the human story, which is that some young fella

(05:29):
didn't have his dream come true. Nowadays, our coverage of
ball players and their swings or their pitches is so
granular that there usually is some coverage of what happened,
but if you're going back over forty years, as in
the nineteen eighty two draft, that information may be hard
to come by and you just have to infer it
from interrogating the stats. So if I tell you that

(05:52):
the Red Sox second round pick a high school player
named Steve Jongleward, didn't make it up either. And the
problem seems to have been that he didn't have a position.
He was drafted as a shortstop, made thirty six errors
in his first fifty eight professional games. That's an eight
sixty five fielding percentage, and the Red Sox seem to
have said to be either the outfield or the plank.

(06:13):
For ye lad Well, he chose the outfield. But of course,
if you're a shortstop and you're moved to a position
that requires offense, a lot of pressure is put on
your bladder. I almost said bladder, I meant bat, but
maybe on your bladder too. So it was a bad
sign that he subsequently was moved to first base. Then
they tried him as a pitcher, and then he went home.
And there's sort of a quintessential American story in the

(06:37):
tale of Steve Jongo Ward or Yanga Ward. I'm not
really sure which and would you believe Later in the episode,
I have a comment by Calvin Coolidge which sort of
seems to address that that's why you're here, right the
Calvin Coolidge comments the best player taken in the first
round nineteen eighty two by anyone, Dwight Gooden, fifth overall pick.

(06:58):
If you retroactively re order the draft so that Greenwell
and Key, as well as second rounders David Wells, Barry
Bonds didn't sign and Barry Larkin were taken in the
first round, you can pretend that everyone was far more
perspicacious than they actually were. Greenwell had cups of coffee
with the Red Sox in both nineteen eighty five and
nineteen eighty six. It took some time for him to

(07:21):
get into the lineup because he wasn't a center fielder,
and the left and right fielders were Jim Rice and
Dwight Evans. Rice is in the Hall of Fame. He's
one of the weaker Hall of famers, but of course
the guy could hit, and Dwight Evans was arguably a
better player on both sides of the ball. They weren't
going anywhere. He made his debut as a pinch runner
for Rice almost precisely forty years ago, in September of

(07:44):
nineteen eighty five. Managers just wouldn't make a kid the
DH back then, and the Socks had good hitters there too,
Mike Easler the hit man in year one, Don Baylor
in year two. So Greenwell was just blocked for a bit.
In nineteen eighty seven, when the Socks started to figure
out how to find room for him, Evans played some
first base and Rice missed time with injuries. Greenwell helped

(08:07):
himself by hitting a lot when he got into the lineup.
So not even a manager as sleepy as John McNamara
could be so dull as to miss a rookie hitting
three forty two, four zero one five eighty three From
June on in nineteen eighty eight, Greenwell played every day.
He hit three twenty five for a four to sixty
one on base percentage, a five point thirty one slugging percentage,

(08:30):
twenty two home runs, eighty seven walks, and the hope
was given how robust that was in context. Eighty eight
was kind of a pitcher's year, you know. Earl Hersheiser
and all that that the Red Sox had found their
next Ted Williams. It's an unfair comp especially when you
add in the left field lineage that they had at

(08:50):
that time that went from Ted Williams to Carl Yastremski
to Rice and now maybe Mike Greenwell. That's a lot
of pressure to put on a kid. In the event,
they wound up with Greenwell to Troy O'Leary, and that
was kind of that. No disrespect meant to Troy O'Leary
or anyone else who has subsequently played left field for
the Red Sox. It's better that it stopped so that

(09:12):
each player can be his own person rather than the
heir to this weighty legacy. I'll give you another one, though,
to return to Greenwell's nineteen eighty eight season for a moment.
I know the Red Sox have had some great outfields
nineteen seventy five with Rice Evans and Fred Lynn, nineteen
seventy nine, the same guys with a little bit of
yazz mixed in. And of course we can go back

(09:34):
to the nineteen tens and Duffy Lewis, trist Speaker and
Harry Hooper. But how about nineteen eighty eight, Greenwell was
in left, Evans was in right, hitting two ninety three
with a three seventy five on base and a four
to eighty seven slugging percentage, and young Ellis Burks was
in center, hitting two ninety four three sixty seven, four
eighty one. Greenwell finished second to Jose Canseco in the

(09:57):
MVP voting that year, and Evans finished nine. Greenwell never
got another MVP vote, not a single one. I wonder,
in a sense if he was victimized by whatever was
going on with the Red Sox and their team physician
back then, because he started to suffer injuries which degraded
his ability to hit. Second baseman Marty Barrett, who was

(10:18):
with the team from nineteen eighty two through nineteen ninety,
ended up suing the club and its doctor for misdiagnosing
his nineteen eighty nine ACL injury, which hurried his career
to a close. And I'm probably going too far to
infer some broad based dysfunction in their system for evaluating injuries.
But at the same time, every now and again a

(10:40):
team has a period or at least a series of
players where they just insist they're not hurt and they
don't need the remedy the player thinks he does at
the very least nowadays. And then two, there's so much
money at stake that a player owes it to himself
to get another opinion. If he isn't sure, don't take
the first guy's word for it. If he denies you pain,

(11:00):
this is true for all of us. No, you're fine
is not an answer. They need to walk you through
it and explain why the pain is transient and why
it doesn't require a further remedy. Nah, just give it
some time. Show me on the X ray man. I
base all of the four going on the fact that
there's a note on Greenwell's page in the nineteen ninety

(11:22):
one scouting notebook I told you I was going too
far that said that he only hit fourteen home runs
in nineteen ninety because his left foot and ankle were bad,
he couldn't plant and pull, and that he had said
that he needed to have surgery on those parts of
his body. But and here I quote some passive voice

(11:42):
writing at the end of the season it was postponed
by who why? Because he didn't get better. Greenwell was
only twenty six. Then, over the remaining six seasons of
his career, he missed increasing amounts of time and hit
only and I realized this only is doing a lot
of work here. But two ninety three three point fifty one,

(12:03):
four thirty eight, which is not bad at all. It's
just not a star level performance, and that's where he
had been, at least at the plate. Then you figure
in that he wasn't a gazelle in the outfield, particularly
with a bad leg, and you start trending towards neutral.
Both his power and patience declined, along with his ability

(12:23):
to pull the ball. It was a bit of a
Don Mattingly repeat. Bad back. Mattingly was a lot less
selective than healthy Mattingly. Bad leg Greenwell lunged at more
pitches than good leg Greenwell. Somehow it all had to
be working for any of it to work. That was
true of both of them. In nineteen ninety two, he
didn't hit at all and underwent elbow surgery his season

(12:46):
ending in June. He had a bit of a bounce
back in nineteen ninety three, but it turned out to
be a one off. He went back to being kind
of a light two ninety five hitter, which again isn't bad.
In the absence of something more rounded. But by nineteen
ninety seven, the Red Sox, who were in one of
their more confused periods, and this is traditionally a very
confused franchise, had decided they wanted to seek that more

(13:09):
rounded player, and Greenwell went off to Japan. He didn't
really perform there either. You know, a player having an
early peak and a quick decline, or having debilitating injuries
while still in his twenties is not dissimilar to drawing
the wrong card from the cancer deck if you are
forced to draw one. I'm not trying to trivialize that

(13:31):
anymore than I was when that person at the cash
register chastised me for the way I characterized my own experience.
If anything, I'm trying to emphasize the tragedy of it.
All of it was out of our hands. It wasn't
anything that you did that Mike Greenwell did. It might
have been luck. Maybe it was genes, which isn't even
your parents' fault or their tenth grandfather's fault. It's just

(13:54):
the way your personal batter got folded. It's a random,
often cruel universe. No matter what you do, you ain't
getting out of this fix alive, and when you get
down to it, that's the essence of the Infinite Inning. Well, well,

(14:44):
hello there, and welcome back to the show Infinite Inning,
number three forty eight in an ongoing series. Collect them,
trade them, lend them out to your little nephew Milton,
but insists that he not drop cookie crumbs between the pages.
Those are really hard to get out of there, even
if you shake it really hard, and you try shaking
a podcast. Once again, I am, as always your convivial host,

(15:06):
Steven Goldman, and I have the honor to be me.
Sometimes it's less of an honor than at other times,
but either way, we are all together taking a trip
to the past on a mission to better understand the present.
The time machine as always being the game of baseball,
and the theme this week, as it very often is, is

(15:26):
to have to borrow from Alan Ginsburg a little patience
and generosity and also to be amused a bit. I
wanted to share this with you. Sometimes I use a
transcription program to remind me of what I said in
the older episodes, and I would share those with you
if I thought they were any good, because I do
understand that sometimes often it's faster to read than it

(15:49):
is to listen, And you might be, for whatever reason,
in a mode where you prefer to read. Sometimes that
happens to me with certain podcasts that come to my attention.
You really need to catch up with the latest. This
horrible thing that Ezra Cline said on his podcast, well,
God forbid. I listened to that for ninety minutes. The
steady drip drip drip of false equivalencies, poor reasoning in

(16:09):
category errors. No, I'm gonna read that because, as our
first segment today demonstrates, life is too short. The problem
with my transcription program, and I am grateful that it exists,
but you do get what you pay for. And while
I'm not paying anything, it doesn't understand me very well.
It may not understand anyone else very well either. So
here's a sample of what I supposedly said in an

(16:31):
episode back about two years ago. I quote apparently me,
Come on, lantern, lantern, this effect is open again. Come
come cake in we go, Let us the world come over.
Cake In is open. Loach shall open our hands. Cake
In is open vital. Here's our move. Freedom is tomorrow

(16:52):
to be coupled with Andrea. Where As we go all
the way to Sky's bread. We are not in your
loved time. I think the game, you know, as long
as the sky make it right when we're so clear
as we go all the way woohoo the woo. Who
is literally there on the transcript? I don't know who.

(17:13):
Caken is a prophet, some sort of ancient god. I'm
not sure who this Andrea is that we're all going
to couple with either. Thanks in advance, though, Andrea, note
please that I am a married man and I will
need to discuss this with my wife before we progress
any further. I am kind of excited by the alliteration
of kame kaken. It's almost poetry. Is it good poetry?

(17:34):
I suppose not either way. I didn't say anything like that,
But it's cool that we almost have the technology to
do this again. Maybe if I mustered up a few cents,
I could move up the evolutionary ladder of AI. Here.
This is why AI will never write this program. That's
the part that has me in it. That's the weird thing.
Someone said on Blue Sky the other day. Maybe this

(17:57):
is a cliche at this point. I don't know that
they're not looking for technology to do their writing. For
them so they have more time to do the laundry,
but rather that they're looking for technology to do the
laundry so they have more time to write. There's not
a lot of creativity that goes into doing laundry, but
there's a ton of creativity that goes into telling stories.
And that's why I'm in it, and I figure almost

(18:19):
everyone else who does something creative is in their end
of it. There's magic to that. It feels so great
when it works, and it is such drudgery when it's
not working for you. But that's also part of the
fun in a way, because you know there is another
side to it. You know you're going to get through
that tunnel and the epiphany will strike you. You get

(18:40):
to disappear for a bit in the middle. Is the
best part, because it starts flowing through you when you
get out of your own way. That's the whole reason
I'm here. I like telling stories, I like talking to you.
I don't want a machine to do it, but it
is kind of fun to see the machine doing it wrong.
It reassures me that I'm not wholly replaceable in this
little skin cake and willing. I mean, as I alluded to, earlier,

(19:03):
as I was researching the upcoming second segment of this
week's show, which takes us back precisely one hundred years
to nineteen twenty five, I found a speech. I wasn't
looking for it. I just stumbled across it by then
President Calvin Coolidge, very conservative Republican, almost inertly conservative Republican,
as he laid the cornerstone for a new Jewish community

(19:24):
center in Washington. It's a long speech for such as
jaesun occasion, but sort of shocking in its common sense
about relationships in this country. I don't mean boy girl relationships,
but I mean the various groups to which we might subscribe,
religious or racial, or cultural or political, and not becoming
too alienated from each other. And I'm not going to

(19:45):
read you the whole thing, because we'd be here an
extra hour. But this thought from a guy who was
pro capital and very hostile to labor in particular, that's
how he got to be a national level politician, could
have come from Eugene Debs. Maybe I'm not sure. Tell
me what you think he said. If our experiment in
free institutions has proved anything, it is that the greatest

(20:06):
privilege that can be conferred upon people in the mass
is to free them from the demoralizing influence of privilege
enjoyed by few. This is proved by the experience here,
not alone of the Jews, but of all the other
racial and national elements that have entered into the making
of this nation. We have found that when men and
women are left free to find the places for which

(20:29):
they are best fitted, some few of them will indeed
attain less exalted stations than under a regime of privilege,
but the vast majority rise to a higher level, to
wider horizons, to worthier attainments. Then again, maybe that's an
argument for laissez faire economics and letting people rise or
fall without any help from the government, which a little

(20:49):
bit later is how he handled the epic flooding in
the South in nineteen twenty seven. I'm just going to
leave that there. This week at Baseball Perspectives, I wrote
about the Yankees playoff exit and the time I was
hanging out in the hallway at the Old Stadium when
a team employee started sexually fantasizing out loud about one
of their then star players. No, I'm not going to

(21:10):
say who they were talking about. But they spoke of
them quite graphically, and somehow I think it all ties together,
that old story and the one we witnessed just this week.
At least I think it does. It's all about keeping
your eye on the ball and setting expectations. And now
we paused prior to our second story of the episode.
We're coming up on the one hundredth anniversary of the

(21:32):
nineteen twenty five World Series, and the Yankees weren't in
that one either. I had planned on discussing this even
before Orian Kirkering's error mental and physical error ushered the
Phillies out of the twenty twenty five season. But now
what happened in that long ago world series is almost topical,
And we'll return to nineteen twenty five right after this

(21:53):
brief intermission. Check your time travel manual for appropriate garments
for the period, and I'll see you on the other side,
all right. One resource I consulted when looking back at

(22:24):
nineteen twenty five noted that fashions for women had turned
to the little girl. Look that's a quote, and I thought,
oh no, and I did not investigate any further. I
think it meant shapeless knee length frocks and I'm hoping
that that's all that it meant. So the nineteen twenty
five World Series, I was already thinking about talking about

(22:44):
this postseason, as I said, not just because it's the
one hundredth anniversary of that World Series, but because it's
so weird from our perspective, featuring what is now an
unthinkable matchup of a team that no longer tries and
another that is dead is the Dynosta or the Pirates
and Senators. And then you add in the Kirkering factor,

(23:04):
which I mentioned a few minutes ago, because errors figured
heavily in the outcome of that series and why it
is remembered as much as it is, or to the
extent that it is. But was it all as the
man who made the errors aver just a conspiracy to
get Hans Wagner off the hook for errors of his own.

(23:24):
Surely that is a story for our times. It was
Mark Twain who said, at least I think he said,
because so many Twain cotes are misattributed or invented, that
history doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes. And well, here
we are again. I'm not going to run down every
player on each team, especially because I've talked some about
these clubs many times before. I'll just note a highlight
or two that happens to be tickling me right now.

(23:46):
So here's a fun bit of trivia about the nineteen
twenty five Pirates. Their shortstop was Glenn Wright, right, was
a very good defensive shortstop who was noted for his
throwing arm. But the reason that you don't know about
him that he's not in the Hall of Fame. I
don't mean to assume that you don't know about him.
I assume you know everything. But the reason that he's
not considered an all time great player who comes up

(24:07):
in these kinds of discussions is he hurt that arm
and he came to a quick end as it affected
him at the plate as well. He actually wasn't a
great hitter overall because he never walked and he had
to hit three hundred to be productive. Thing was, it
was the nineteen twenties and batting average was cheap, so
he could hit three hundred in just under seven hundred
games as a Pirate. He hit two ninety eight with

(24:29):
a three thirty two on base percentage and a four
to forty one slugging percentage. It sounds a little better
than it was because league averages were so high, but
at that time, not too many shortstops were hitting, so
the numbers really jump out at you. In three of
Wright's first four seasons in the majors, he drove in
over one hundred runs, and then later after he was

(24:49):
traded to the Dodgers, he reached that mark one last time.
So here's my trivia question for you. How many pirate
shortstops since Glenn Wright have driven in one hundred runs
in a season. I'll give you a second to think
about it. I hate when I'm watching a game and
they pose a trivia question and maybe they're posing it
for the second time, but I missed it when they

(25:10):
posed it for the first time. So they just give
you the answer instantaneously before I've had a chance to
think about it. How's the weather by you? Is it good?
Is your city under occupation yet? No good? If Texas
can invade Illinois, why can't Illinois invade Texas? Or at
a time, the answer is none. Arkie Vaughan topped out
it ninety nine in nineteen thirty five. He got into

(25:30):
the nineties in four different seasons. He also wound up
with the Dodgers Arkie aside, no pirate shortstop has driven
in as many as eighty runs in the last ninety years.
Now a pirate shortstop has won the MVP since then.
That was Dick Groaton nineteen sixty. He led the NL
and batting averages three twenty five. He batted second all

(25:51):
year and hit all of two home runs, So he
wasn't going to drive in one hundred regardless. Now here's
another one. Bright drove in one hundred and twenty six
runs for the ninth teen thirty Dodgers. As I said,
that was his last big year before the injuries ate
him up. How many Dodgers shortstops have driven in one
hundred runs in the ninety five years since. Once again,
I will give you time to ruminate, cogitate, and utilize

(26:14):
your powers of ratiocination, or at least recall. Hmm. I
see here that beneath the trees where nobody sees, which
is a serial killer story drawn in the style of
Richard Scarry just picked up a Harvey Award. Well are
you ready for the answer? It took eighty two years,
but one has Trey Turner did it back in twenty
twenty two. He got to one hundred. Even Turner is

(26:36):
about two strong seasons from getting serious Hall of Fame consideration.
I would think can he do it at ages thirty
three and thirty four? Stay tuned. You know what could
stop him more than age, illness or injury. Rob Manfred.
He seems to be angling to lock the players out
after next season. So that's something we all have not
to look forward to in this wonderful world, so full

(26:59):
of things to be excited about. I haven't made a
full list or anything, but there must be some players
who missed some important round numbers due to nineteen eighty one,
nineteen ninety four and ninety five, even one of the
earlier stoppages like nineteen seventy two, not to mention the
one that no one could help the loss of one
hundred games approximately due to COVID in twenty twenty. So

(27:23):
back to nineteen twenty five, right was not by far
the best player on the nineteen twenty five Pirates. That
was outfielder Kai Kai Kyler, who played mostly right field
that year but also got in a month and center
when Max Carry, another future Hall of Famer, got hurt.
He hit three point fifty seven four twenty three five
ninety eight with forty three doubles, a league leading twenty

(27:44):
six triples, eighteen home runs, one hundred and two runs
driven in, and a crazy one hundred and forty four
runs scored, a number so high that show hey Otani
only passed it by two runs this year. We don't
have a metric for most fun players of all time.
It would not be Rob Manfred. Such a thing can't
exist because fun is really defined by one's expectations. But

(28:06):
I would still like to argue that Kyler could be
on that list. If you take the offensive inflation and
segregation of his time away from his numbers, he probably
wasn't too different from Johnny Damon or Juran Duran. And yeah,
before I get emails, I know I said Duran Duran
as opposed to Jaron Duran. It's more fun that way
for me anyway. What if Juran Duran is a lonely

(28:28):
outfielder waiting by the park. Don't answer that question. My
point is that these are versatile fast players who could
do anything or can do anything that a hitter might
do on a ballfield, from hit it out to run
one out. And Duran has hit some inside the park
home runs. That's the kind of player Kai Kai Kyler was.
There are also so many fun aspects to the Senators

(28:51):
in this period, but this time I'll restrict myself to
just a few details. Their best position player was New
Jersey's own left field Leon Goose Goslin, who hit three
thirty four, three ninety four, five forty seven with a
cool two hundred and one hits, including thirty four doubles,
a league leading twenty triples and eighteen home runs. His

(29:14):
hitting more triples than home runs was almost entirely a
park effect at work. It's not that he wasn't fast.
He was, but as you know, it was very difficult
to hit a ball out at Griffith Stadium. Forbes Field
was hard too. As such, Goose hit three twenty three
with twelve triples and only six home runs in Washington,
as lead Belly saying it's a bourgeois town. That must

(29:36):
be the explanation. On the road, he hit three forty
six with eight triples and twelve home runs. He played
about fourteen hundred career games as a Washington Senator or
NAT depending on your mood or their mood, and he
hit thirty one home runs at Griffith Stadium ninety six
on the road. So he was just punished by that ballpark.
And I should mention that all of this was before

(29:57):
he wrecked his arm trying to throw a shot gun
from throw a shotgun, throw a shot put from the
warning track to home plate. Don't do that if you
are in aspiring or professional athlete. There's a surgeon General's
warning out against that. The Senator's two best pitchers were
the spitballers Stan Kovaleski and Walter Johnson. Both won exactly

(30:19):
twenty games, with Kovaleski also leading the American League in era.
Johnson's era was only three oh seven week by his
exalted standards. But here's the fun part. He had a
show Hey o Tani season. Not only did he win
twenty games, I mean show Hay has never done that
and he probably will never do that. But on the mound,
Walter hit four thirty three in one hundred and seven

(30:41):
trips to the plate, including a couple of home runs.
So take that. Tarik Skooble, may I talk about the
world of nineteen twenty five for a second. Republicans had,
as I already mentioned, the presidency, both Houses of Congress,
and seven of nine seats on the Supreme Court. Scott
Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby Edward Hopper painted House by
the Railroad. Charlie Chaplin came out with the gold Rush

(31:04):
and his final wife, Una O'Neil Chaplin was born. Don't
think too hard about that. Charlie had his preferences. The
Scopes trial took place, Paul Newman and Jack Lemon were born.
They were never in the same movie. It's sort of
hard to imagine them sharing the same cinematic universe. They
were both very good at what they did, but they
were different flavors like peanut butter and mustard. Flannery O'Connor

(31:28):
and Edward Gorey came into the world then too, Mel Tormay,
Sammy Davis, Junior, Gorvidal Elmore, Leonard, Lenny Bruce, American Martyr
Medgar Evers, and that beautiful beautiful man Yogi Barra and
Dick Van Dyke keep punching, mister Van Dyke. We also
lost foundational ballplayer and attorney John Montgomery, Ward Charles Ebbetts,

(31:52):
the amazing artist John Singer Sargent, and the poetess Amy Lowell,
who wrote one that went like this through the spring
thickened branches. I see it floating an ivory dome headed
to gold by the dim sun. It hangs against a
white misted sky, and the swollen branches open or cover

(32:12):
it as they blow in the wet wind. That was
Fenway Park, subtitled Study in Orange and Silver, and I
should mention we also lost Big six Christy Matthewson to
tuberculosis during the World Series. This was the year of
the Florida land bubble, with lots later revealed to be

(32:33):
in the ocean being sold for huge prices coming soon
condos to twenty thousand leagues under the sea. Yes, sucker.
It was the year that John McGrath sold his reputation
as part of that pumping another bit of vanishing real
estate called Pennant Park, who talked about that in a
prior episode. While looking at that, I happened to notice

(32:55):
that Florida passed and its governor signed a law requiring
daily reading of the Bible in the public schools now.
No comment was permitted on the passages read. Monthly reports
to the state on the passages read, however, were required.
I feel like comprehension being neglected. The value of the
exercise was negated. Often comprehension requires guidance. I realize people

(33:19):
assign greater meaning or value to the Bible than say,
this month's issue of The Amazing Spider Man. But in
both cases, if you don't understand what you just read,
or if you're only a kid and not practiced in
the art of decoding and interpretation guided to understand it,
there's no point. See if they happen to be reading
let's just say The Great Gatsbie since it came out

(33:41):
that year, they weren't. It flopped, but still stay with
me on this, Then we are willing to acknowledge that
there are many different possible ways to read and interpret
a passage and a book. There's the author's intention and
what you get out of it, which aren't always the
same thing. And it really comes down to what you
can argue for and convince someone else to believe. But

(34:02):
when it comes to scripture, which is a book, we
get nervous about that. So make them read it, but
don't let them try to understand it. That would be risky, dangerous.
So if we're going to talk about the nineteen twenty
five World Series, which did go the full seven we
have to talk about Washington Senator shortstop Roger Peckinpah. I've

(34:22):
brushed past this story so many times on the show,
I've lost track of it, but I don't think I've
told it in full until now. So let's start with
the basic facts of his career. He was born in
Ohio in eighteen ninety one and signed with the Naps
out of high school when he was nineteen. They farmed
him out for nineteen ten and nineteen eleven, then gave
him a half season major league trial in nineteen twelve.

(34:45):
He was in competition with a couple of other kid shortstops,
Ivy Olsen and the ill fated Ray Chapman, with Chapman,
who was inarguably the best of the lot, ultimately winning out.
Olsen hung around as a utility guy for a couple
of years and was eventually sold to the Reds. He
then went on to have a long run as the
starting shortstop for the Dodgers, though in retrospect it's hard

(35:07):
to see why we also profiled him in a prior episode.
Never got on base ever. Ever, Ever, Peck and Pa
was traded to the Yankees in nineteen thirteen, since he
had been squeezed out for a couple of fringe players,
one outfielder, one infielder, neither of whom did much for Cleveland,
although I admit I'm cheating a bit here and not
breaking that down a little more because it might spin

(35:28):
us off on another long digression. The outfielder was one
Jack Leleavelt of the Netherlands land of Gouda and Ida.
Lelavelt was a career three oh one three point fifty
three three eighty one hitter in a short major league
career roughly four hundred games. But those averages are very
good in the context of nineteen oh nine through nineteen fourteen.

(35:50):
But his clubs, the Senators, Yankees, and Naps, just wouldn't
let him play. He spent eighteen years in the miners.
It's something like three thirty and if you add up
all his hits from both the majors and minors, he
totaled over three thousand. The sense I get is not
that he was blocked at every position that he played
throughout his major league career, but that he was very,

(36:14):
very slow with bad feet, and they just wouldn't play him.
Maybe if he had been a catcher like Ernie Lombardi.
Managers might have tolerated his being a forty five foot
sprinter in a ninety foot game, but he was an
outfielder and triples were a real hazard back then. The
Yankees were in need of a shortstop in nineteen thirteen
and Peckinpot took over right away. He was a very

(36:36):
good glove. His fielding, wrote Baseball Magazine has always been
an optical delight. And although he wasn't an impact hitter,
he wasn't terrible when considered in the context of his position.
During the center of his career nineteen thirteen to nineteen
twenty five, and again, remember the bulk of that came
during the dead ball era, he hit two sixty one

(36:59):
three point thirty eight three point, which was right around
the median for regulars at his position. What I'm trying
to say, and this is probably cruel in kicking a
fellow when he's down, is you would have rather had
him than Anthony Volpe. What's a bit weird about the
fact that he was at the median in terms of
production is the timing. Many of the superior hitters at

(37:22):
shortstop were about to age out, as Hans Wagner and
Art Fletcher did then or leave the field due to
death or disability, that would be Chapman and Charlie Holliker, who,
as you know, had some combination of physical and emotional breakdown. Thus,
while several shortstops were better on a peak basis during

(37:42):
that twelve year window, when you look at the totality
of it, you're really down to Dave Bancroft and then
Peckin Paw. He was considered a serious, sober young man,
and in a turn that was strange even for the
Yankees of that time or now, in nineteen fourteen, manager
Frank Chance no longer a peerless leader, not a leader

(38:06):
at all in this moment, violently fell out with owner
Frank Farrell over hal Chase's corruption and was let go. Peckinpah,
all of twenty three, was made manager for the final
twenty games of the season. He'd later have a long
and respectable run without winning anything as Cleveland's manager, but
this move wasn't made in recognition of his potential so

(38:29):
much as the Yankees just weren't very serious. Somehow, he
survived that period and lasted into the far more scene
ownership of Jacob Rupert and till Houston well marginally more seen.
The Yankees didn't start becoming truly rational until Rupert bought
Houston out in nineteen twenty three and became the sole owner.

(38:50):
Peckinpah got to play alongside Babe Ruth for a couple
of years and played on the first pennant winner in
team history in nineteen twenty one, although that was what
ended his run in Pinstripes. In Game eight, the decisive
Game eight, in the first inning, only foreshadowing Batman, he
let a ball go through his legs, said ball, scoring

(39:12):
what would prove to be the only run of the
game for the Giants. He also hit one seventy nine,
and so the Yankees, in tantrum mode did what they
always did back then. They exiled him to the Red
Sox with three players and one hundred thousand dollars in
easing Harry Frizzy's divorce money in return for half a
starting rotation sad Sam Jones and Bullet Joe Bush, and

(39:35):
a more reliable shortstop, Everett Scott. Scott was an awful hitter,
but he was durable. He had the consecutive game streak
that Lou Garrick broke, and he hadn't yet fumbled any
balls in the World Series, so win win. To just
stay on Everett Scott for one second. He hit two
fifty four with a two eighty two on base percentage
for the Yankees three twenty four slugging percentage in about

(39:57):
five hundred games. If I had been watching, then I
would have been checking my calendar in eager anticipation of
the day when Alvaro Espinosa was due to be born.
And I was not exactly what you would call an
Espinosa fan. Nothing against him as a person at all.
He seemed like he was trying very hard. But I,
just as a matter of religion and morality and science,

(40:21):
do not like those players who put up sub three
hundred on base percentages. Heck and Pond never played for
the Red Sox. They held him for about three weeks
before sending him on to the Senators in return for
jumping Joe Dugan, the third baseman that Washington was holding
for the Yankees. We've covered this saga in a previous

(40:43):
episode as well, the short version being that Connie Mack
was sick of Dugan's antics. The Yankees needed a third baseman.
With Frank Baker aging out, but it would have looked
bad if the Yankees had hoarded yet another good player.
So Dugan was sent on a little trip around the
American League before he finally went to New York at
Midsea in nineteen twenty two. That didn't look so good

(41:03):
then either, but that's how the Senators got Roger Peckinpaw.
He began to wear the big W on his chest
when they bothered to wear anything at all. The Senators
had some seriously plain uniforms back then. When I say
they didn't wear anything at all, I don't mean they
played naked. They just played without branding a lot of
the time a needless expense. I can imagine Clark Griffith grousing.

(41:26):
He was so cheap that if you bought yogurt with
the fruit on the bottom, he would pick it out
and return it to the store. I'm not saying that
really happened, but it's what he would have done if
he could have gotten away with it. Peaches a luxury,
you'll have the plane go and like it. That said,
the Senators were building into being a very good team,
and Roger Peckinpaw arriving for the nineteen twenty two season

(41:49):
and providing defense leadership, and yeah, a little bit of
hitting was part of their rise, and how that led
to his downfall is something that we'll discuss right after
the break. I just want to mention I rechecked this

(42:25):
during the break. The uniform database at the Hall of
Fame site is so much fun and such a nice
resource that from nineteen twelve through nineteen forty, with the
exception of two years, the Senators wore nothing on the
breast of their uniform. On the blouses, sometimes they had pinstripes,
sometimes they just wore plain white uniforms. There were years,

(42:49):
including the pennant winning nineteen thirty three season, when the
caps were just blank. They just wore blue caps. In
most of those seasons, maybe all of them, they had
a w on the left sleeve of the jersey, but
no logo, no city name. The two exceptions were nineteen
seventeen when Griffith was very involved in the war effort,
and so the Senators wore a kind of patriotic shield

(43:10):
on the breast of the uniform. And in nineteen thirty
eight he finally sprung for some embroidery. He must have
had a good year and they got a stylized W
on the blouse, but again they had to give it
back after that one season. The Senators were very good
in this period. Their sixty year existence was largely miserable,
but the twenties, thirties and select moments in the early
forties were pretty good. They won the World Series against

(43:33):
the Giants in John mccros's final postseason in nineteen twenty four,
and Peck hit four seventeen redemption. Not so fast. You
have all no doubt heard of how the Most Valuable
Player Award announcement was moved until after the postseason. I
don't think the MVP award was blamed fairly in this instance.
It was an example of the fallacy post hoc ergo

(43:56):
propter hawk after therefore, because because the award doesn't make
it rain. But the legend is that Peck and Pa
played so tight in the nineteen twenty five World Series,
having won the award beforehand, that it was considered a
mercy to move it and spare future winners from experiencing
the same sort of embarrassment. It didn't really happen that way.

(44:19):
It is true that in the fall of nineteen twenty five,
as the Senators successfully defended their pennant. Peck and Paw
was voted the al MVP. The Baseball writers felt he
was more valuable than players like Tiger's outfielder Harry Heilman,
who hit three ninety three, or Al Simmons, who followed
him with a three eighty seven batting average and a
crazy two hundred and fifty three hits. Since there was

(44:41):
no Cy Young Award, we should also mention Walter Johnson,
whose accomplishments of that season we've already discussed on a
war basis. It was Heilman, then Johnson, Simmons, Tris Speaker, Goslin,
Herb Pennock, Urban Shocker, Slim Harris, that's an unexpected name,
Ty Cobb and Eddie Rommel, Peck and Paw with and

(45:03):
again this is in retrospect. Two point seven wins above.
Replacement was down in the low twenties in the voting.
He edged bucket foot Al by just a couple of
points and then went off to meet the Pirates. What's
a bit odd about the timing of the award was
that Peck was thirty four years old and in his
last season as a regular. Normally, you don't think of

(45:23):
players getting an award that primarily recognizes their defense when
they're about to leave the league. There are exceptions, but
primarily glove work is for the young. Maybe his winning
it was like Henry Fonda getting Best Actor for on
Golden Pond when he was seventy six and everyone knew
he was ailing, so it was a career service award. Young,

(45:44):
mister Lincoln. No grapes of wrath. No the oxbow incident.
Uh huh, mister Roberts, come on, please the wrong man,
twelve angry men. No, we got to fix this. In
any case, players didn't get to double dip on MVP
awards back then, and Walter Johnson had won it in
nineteen twenty four, so the writers had to find another senator.

(46:06):
When Peck and Paw was voted MVP, The Washington Evening
Star wrote, day after day, this veteran of the Diamond
has been playing his best, and a good best. It
has been steady as a rock, never flustered, making his
errors along with others, but without discouragement or demoralization. A
dangerous man to opposing pictures and emergencies. Always shrewd in

(46:29):
his swift analysis of a critical situation, Gifted with an
uncanny instinctive knowledge of the plans of the opposition, and moreover,
capable of extraordinary speed in defensive play. Peckinpah has made
the Washington infield one of the fastest and most effective
in baseball history. He has inspired his associates with confidence,

(46:51):
and thus has contributed greatly and directly to the morale
of the team, which is the winning element. The Washington
Post editorialized, the award to peck and Pa comes to
the veteran shortstop after sixteen years service in baseball, and
after having been discarded, not perhaps as it has been,
but as having outlived his usefulness as a member of

(47:12):
the New York Yankees. There is a lesson to the
youth of America in this honor given to Peckinpah. It
is never too late to win. Keeping everlastingly at it,
never giving up, plodding on and on, beating down barriers
and overcoming obstacles, often turns defeat into victory. Simultaneously, Post

(47:35):
columnist Baxter wrote, he plays the game as he lives,
with his mind and his heart alert. The cold fingers
of baseball do not show peck and Pa in the
true light that he deserves. No system has ever been
devised for putting in their proper place the sensational plays
turned in at the moment when they staved off defeat,

(47:57):
nor the hits registered at the one moment in the
game when they were most needed. These have been the
things in which Peckinpah has specialized. Well, you know what
happened next. What's next is the whole legend. The Senators
played the Pirates in the World Series. The weather was
miserable throughout the week, and perhaps maybe had something to

(48:21):
do with what happened. Peck claimed that it did. As
I said, the Pirates were a club with good speed.
They led the National League in triples and stolen bases,
with Kai Kai and Max Carey stealing over forty bases each.
Maybe that put pressure on the Senator's defense. That explanation
was offered at the time. Whatever the reason, Heck went

(48:46):
to pieces in the field. He made eight errors, but
there were other misplays that weren't scored as errors, like
double plays not turned. In Game one, he made a
high throw on an easy roller. Now that didn't change
the outcome, But in Game two he made two errors,
one of which led to the winning run, crossing the plate.

(49:06):
In game three, it was reported that, and it shouldn't
amaze anybody at this point that the papers can turn
on you quickly. Peck and Paul led aid and comfort
to the enemy, as he had Thursday in Pittsburgh, by
committing a wild throw of Wright's roller. The Senator still won.
He was clean behind Walter Johnson, who pitched a shutout

(49:27):
in Game four. The Senators by then were up three
games to one. It was all but over in Game five,
though he threw away a Stuffy McGinness grounder didn't affect
the final score, but the Pirates won. Pirates won Game
six as well, taking a three to two decision. Peck
made another bad throw, but that runner did not score. Parenthetically,

(49:49):
both teams had part time first basemen having great years.
For the Pirates, that was Stuffy McGuinness, who hit three
sixty eight, four thirty seven, four eighty four in fifty
nine games, whereas the Senators had Moon Harris, who, once
again we've profiled in previous episodes, he hit three twenty three,
four thirty five seventy three in one hundred games, and

(50:10):
in the World Series he played in all seven games
and went eleven for twenty five with three home runs.
That's four forty and an eight eighty slugging percentage. It
just happened to be in the losing cause. After Peckinpah
made his sixth error in Game six, Hans Wagner, in attendance,
was reported to be very happy. Boy. I've been pulling

(50:31):
for that, he said. Someone asked him if he had
something against Peckinpah. No, Wagner replied, I've just been praying
all these years for someone to come along and equal
or break my record. Fall after fall. I have seen
the World Series come and go and no one getting
near enough to give me a run. Until this year
comes an old packed bobbles and bobbles and bobbles, just

(50:54):
when nobody expects him to, and at last he has
caught me. My name is and in the book. So long,
I've wanted someone to come along and erase it, and
maybe Peck will do it. Yet. Wagner was talking about
his performance in the very first World Series nineteen to
aught three, when he made six errors in eight games,

(51:15):
and the ball was irregular, and the fields were irregular,
and they weren't gloves, they were old lamb chops or
something Game seven cemented Peck's place in history. The Senators
led six to four in the bottom of the seventh
inning at Pittsburgh. First, Peck misplayed what was called an
easy pop up to deep short Max Carrie doubled home

(51:36):
that runner, and he in turn was tripled home by
third baseman Pie Trainer. That tied the game at six.
Peck and pa batted with one out and going on.
In the top of the eighth, the score still tied,
and seemingly redeemed himself again, hitting a solo home run
off pitcher Ray Kremer to give his team a seven
to six lead. But but the bottom of the eighth

(52:01):
was coming, and what went wrong wasn't just on Peck.
The Senator's player manager was Bucky Harris, the second baseman,
not the most astute in game manager. He had started
Walter Johnson on short rest, even though Johnson number one
said that at his age thirty seven, he could not
go on short rest and b he had a bad leg.

(52:22):
At the time, it had obviously proved to be a
bad call. Walter proved to be a wonderful marksman. Ring
Wardner wrote and hit bad after bad, It was a
terrible strain to have a runner on first base. Walter
avoided this by having most of them on second. Yet
here Harris was pushing Johnson into the eighth is not hooking.

(52:46):
Johnson at any point in the game was second guest
as much as Peck and Pau's general existence. And yet
Harris and the Big Train might have gotten through it
all if not for Peck and And I just can't
resist saying this is the same Bucky Harris who is
manager of the nineteen forty seven Yankees. In the famous

(53:07):
almost no hit game pitched by Bill Bevins, intentionally walked
Pete Reeser when the Dodgers put him up to bat,
even though everyone in the ballpark but Harris knew that
Reeser was severely concussed and wasn't quite sure where he
was at the time. But here we go to the
Pirates ht bat in the bottom of the eighth, the
Senators leading seven to six thanks to Pexhomer. Johnson had

(53:28):
induced two outs on a pop up to first base
and a flyout to center field that brought up Pirates
catcher Earl Smith or oil Smith if you prefer, He
doubled Pirates manager Bill mckeckney one of the Great sent
up Carson big B to pinch hit for the pitcher,
who was still Kramer, and Pinch ran for his catcher.
With Emil Edy, big B doubled, scoring Edie tie game.

(53:51):
Johnson should have been out of there today. He would
have been, but Harris made no move. Next, Walter Johnson
walked Eddie Moore to put runners on first and second
and bring up the fastest man in the NL, or
one of them if not Kyler. Max Carry Carrie hit
a bouncing ball to short Peck and Pah could have
thrown to first to end the inning. And here you

(54:13):
have your resonance with Oriyan kirkering because Peck and Pah
didn't go to first base. Instead, he attempted to get
the force on Eddie Moore at second, and that was
a poor decision because Harris, the second baseman as well
as the manager, hadn't yet made it to the bag.
In any case, even if he had been there, Peck
and Paw threw high, with Harris having to jump for it.

(54:36):
That was error number eight and it loaded the bases.
Carry was credited with reaching via a fielder's choice, but
he thought he would have beaten the play even if
Peck had thrown to first not wholly implausible. It was
entirely possible, in fact, but we'll never know. Kyler followed
with a ground world double, scoring two runs. If the

(54:56):
umpire's judgment had been a little different, it would have
been an inside the park home run, but it hit
the tarp in foul ground in right field, so Kyler
had to go back to second base after scoring. Johnson
finally got out of the inning at that point, but
it was too late. Nine seven Pirates, the Senators, Sam Rice,
Bucky Harris, and Goose Goslin went down in order against

(55:20):
journeyman reliever Red Oldham in the top of the ninth,
and the Pirates were champions, which no one ever gets
to say anymore, and haven't gotten to say it since
nineteen seventy nine. Remember all the things, the nice things
that the Washington papers had said about Peck and Paw
when he won the MVP Award after the World Series.

(55:40):
Headlines from the Washington Star said Pirates got invaluable assistance
from Raja, and Peck's failure in series may give Meyer chance,
meaning a replacement for him, shortstop prospect Buddy Meyer, who
would turn out to be a very good player. Indeed,
and here's a favorite. Peck defeats Johnson, meaning Walt Johnson

(56:00):
in Great Sea Disaster. Roger Peckinpah, named by the Committee
of Baseball Writers as the most valuable player to his
club in the American League of nineteen twenty five, comes
out of the series as Grand high Master of the
Order of Sublime and Ancient Goats. Never again will Peck
be asked to be named the best ball player in

(56:21):
any league, or even the best cultivator of early potatoes.
This was typical before nineteen twenty four, he was considered
to be on the downside. Now after nineteen twenty five,
he was on the downside again. What have you done
for me lately, Buddy, mister MVP. The Senators put him

(56:41):
on waivers. The Yankees actually claimed him. Miller Huggins said
he could use some veteran help in the infield. It
was true. The Senators pulled him back. He played only
part time in nineteen twenty six, the Senators going with
the twenty two year old Buddy Meyer, who would eventually
spend most of his career at second base. Peck later
told the historian Eugene Murdoch that nineteen twenty five series

(57:04):
was not as bad as it seems. I had a
lot of errors, but the field was bad and wet.
I think about four of the errors were on low
throws with that soggy, muddy ball. Joe Judge, who would
normally eat up those throws, wasn't able to come up
with them. Anyway. I wound up with getting credit for
eight errors. I seriously doubted two of them. As I

(57:27):
tell people, what the Pittsburgh scorers were trying to do
in that series was let me break Honness Wagner's world
series record for errors. The only problem with that excuse
is that Peck and Palm made errors in two of
the three games at Washington as well, when Pittsburgh official
scorers wouldn't have been in charge. He died in nineteen
seventy seven, probably still shaking his fist at the angry

(57:49):
sky that made him a goat, or maybe the angry
press box that made him a goat. Whatever gets you
through the night. As John Lennon saying, you know, Peck
really was a great shortstop. He's still in the top
in games played at the position. He had to be
worthwhile for managers to run him out there that often
for that long. He also made five hundred and fifty

(58:10):
three errors. It was just part of the deal back then,
small gloves, slippery ball, forty your fifty errors by the shortstop.
Sometimes we just have to accept our limitations too right.
Sometimes the ball just slips. Sometimes it slips eight times.
Sometimes you throw to the wrong base, make the wrong investment,

(58:30):
marry the wrong person, say the wrong thing, and destroy
an important relationship. My god, how do any of us
get through a single hour without screwing up? From that perspective,
it's a miracle Peck didn't make sixteen errors, or that
anything is fielded cleanly. Ever, I somehow completed this episode
concurrently with the final Mariners Tigers game, and my goodness,

(58:55):
what a great contest. I feel bad for Tommy Kinley, though.
Should you wish to follow me out on social media
and express your regrets to Tommy Kinley, you can do
so at Stephen Gooldman atbeskuid dot social. You can also
write us, by which I mean me, at infinite inning
at gmail dot com. And there's a Facebook group. Simply
go to Facebook search on infinite inning. Bang, You're there.

(59:16):
I've got nothing else to say. About that. Should you
wish to support the show, and I very much hope
you do, please go to Patreon dot com, Slash the
Infinite Inning. Hear of a rudimentary kind available at the
hyphen Infinite hyphen Inning dot creator, hyphenspring dot com. Original
soundtrack available credits at casual Observer Music dot bandcamp dot com. Finally,

(59:36):
should you find yourself with the proverbial moment to spare,
please go to the podcast or of your choice and rate,
review and subscribe. And if your podcater doesn't let you
do those things, spare a thought for Kirkering and Kinley.
Our themesong which you are hearing now and have been
listening to throughout the episode, was a co composition of
myself and doctor Rick Mooring, who says come comea cake

(59:58):
in his I let us oh to Sky's Bread. Freedom
is tomorrow. That explains a lot if he's caken, and
if freedom is indeed tomorrow at Sky's Bread, then I
will be back next week with more tails from inside
be Infinite Inning.