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 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?
Cartoony Clang #6.mp3 by AUDACITIER; kick_w_bone_crunch_inspired_by_tmnt_2012 by Artninja
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?
Cartoony Clang #6.mp3 by AUDACITIER; kick_w_bone_crunch_inspired_by_tmnt_2012 by Artninja
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Last time on the Infinite Inning, you're looking for the
skip recap button, but that won't be necessary. All I
wanted to remind you of is that last episode I
mentioned the knuckleball pitcher Gene Bearden star surprise star of
the nineteen forty eight Cleveland Indians team, which had a
lot of surprise stars, given that, among other things, the
(00:22):
manager the shortstop one in the same Lou Boudreau, had
what is still one of the best seasons by a
major league shortstop, hitting three point fifty five with eighteen
home runs, one hundred and six RBIs, ninety eight walks
only nine k's good defense. But more importantly for both
baseball and the nation, that team had both Larry Dobie
(00:44):
playing at a high level in center field, and it
had Satchel Page in the major leagues for the first time,
and although he was in his forties, he was still
terrific working in a swing role. A few years later,
when he was working as a pseudo closer for the
Brown Casey Stangele would turn to the dugout if the
team was trailing and say, hurry up, hurry up, father
(01:06):
time is coming. And I love that hat tip, that
gesture of respect. It wasn't simply that Page was old.
It was that he was old and effective umpire. Bill
Clem was old, and Casey made fun of Bill Klem.
He said he doesn't see so good anymore. He umpires
by hearing. If it sounds like a strike, you can
imagine the rest. No one saw Bearden coming, and maybe
he was the essential ingredient. Because all these years later,
(01:29):
we're still waiting on a sequel to that team. I
fear they're going to have to dage some of those stars,
like Disney tried to do with Harrison Ford in Indiana
Jones and the Digital Watch of the Crystal Cavern of
Doom or whatever. That last one was called Raiders of
the Lost Arc might be my favorite movie of all
time on a lot of levels, and yet I still
couldn't finish that one. What I'm trying to say is
(01:50):
that they're going to have to recast some parts. They've
already brought Kerry Fisher back once. Hey, it's Star Wars.
It's about futuristic technology enabling necrophiliac encounters. Is well, yeah, totally,
but for the bad guys, maybe you missed that part.
I'm sorry, folks, I'm a little punchy tonight. I'll explain later.
I still want to tell Beardon's story, and would you
believe Casey figures in there too. He helped get Beard
(02:13):
into the major leagues via Oakland. But for now, I
just want to give you this little bit that isn't
so much about Bearden himself, but about the changing of
the seasons, which I mean as a metaphor for the
way a hero can be the glory of his or
her times, but perhaps not of any other people. Move
on and forget this week. I watched the Netflix miniseries
(02:33):
Death by Lightning. It's about the assassination of President James
Garfield by the mentally disturbed Charles Guiteau, often described as
a disgruntled office seeker, which he was, except that he
had no more right to expect some sort of patronage
position from Garfield or the Republicans in charge than I
do to expect the Mets will make me their new
(02:54):
first basement if Peelwonzo leaves in free agency. He was
just completely delusional, as I would be, And who's to
say I'm not for reasons all of my own. But
that would be a different podcast from today's episode. Anyway,
I quite enjoyed the show, which was broadly accurate given
the usual standards of historical dramatizations, particularly one that's limited
(03:15):
to four concise episodes. I especially enjoyed Matthew mcfaden as
Guitau and Nick Offerman in kind of a big fun
performance as Chester Arthur. I flatter myself to think that
I got more out of it than the average bear,
just because this is stuff that I studied. I've studied
it on my own, I studied it in school. And
(03:35):
whereas I'm by no means an expert on the period
of American history and politics that spans from the end
of the Civil War to say, the beginning of the
Progressive era, I do know my stalwarts from my half breeds.
And for those who did not go to that class, well,
first of all, congratulations, you probably shouldn't have. And second
of all, those were Republican Party factions of the moment
(03:58):
that Garfield's election took place. The show doesn't ask you
to know those labels at all, and in terms of
the conflict between them, which I'm going to get to
in half a second, I won't dwell on it for long.
We're getting to baseball. I promise they explain that conflict
multiple times in each episode, not only so you understand
what was at stake for the country, what was at
stake or is it stake within the show for the characters,
(04:20):
but also to underscore its relevance to the present day.
And it is. Yes, it was a long time ago.
But what the characters on that show are arguing about
is how much corruption should be baked into politics. America
had slipped into fee for service government, where a civil
servant could get pretty wealthy just by getting his palm
(04:40):
greased for every single thing his job required him to do.
Sometimes the government would actually give that person a tip
for whatever it was, whatever task they were assigned to do.
More often it was the citizen who needed the service
who would provide that extra incentive. There was no FBI
back then. If you were in the unfortunate position of
(05:02):
having to say, director Hoover, Director Hoover, John Dillinger has
kidnapped my mom, well we'll look into that. I know
you'll make it worth our while to do so. And
that money received by those civil against servants, I'm trying
to say the quotation mark servants, some of it stayed
with the person who first received it, and some of
(05:22):
it got kicked up the latter, and it funded the
bosses who ran the parties. So the bosses liked having
this system in place, even though it was exploitative and
not good government. Garfield and the half Breeds wanted to
change that. Roscoe Conkling of New York he was a senator,
and the Stalwart faction liked things the way they were.
(05:44):
Guiteau in the Swiss Cheese of his mind thought that
by assassinating Garfield and thereby elevating Arthur, he was resolving
things in favor of the Stalwarts. And yes, I know
every time I say Garfield, do you think of the
cartoon cat? So do I. When our current president argues
he should be able to fire every government worker who
(06:05):
looks at him cross eye, or isn't a member of
his party or doesn't support his agenda and replace them
with red hat wearing cultists, he's trying to reverse some
of the protections we've had against that sort of corruption
that resulted from this intra party warfare back in the
eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties. The marketing for the show
(06:29):
and some of the reviews were very insistent that this
president of the United States and this assassin had been
totally forgotten by history. And that's probably true if you've
only had the minimalist education in history that most of
us get. We've only had so many presidents in the
approximately two hundred and fifty years this show has been running.
(06:50):
I don't mean mine, I mean the nations, and every
one of them is supposed to be the supreme, the
most important, the toppermost of the poppermost, even though a
lot of them were mediocrits or like Garfield, were just
short lived and their memory can't withstand the on rush
of more and more time and more and more events.
Think of all the important things that are now slipping
(07:13):
out of living memory just due to the human condition.
And you'll know that outside people who have taken the
time to read about post Civil War American politics, most
folks won't have heard about this stuff. And if not
for our current president reviving some of these issues, you
might not have needed to unless, like me, you just
(07:34):
have a taste for this stuff because these were largely
solved problems that said, it would be better if we
all had because the success or failure of the attack
depends upon our lack of knowledge of why those structures
were in place to begin with. It's kind of like
someone saying, well, no one gets milk sick anymore. There
are never any germs in milk, So why don't we
(07:56):
waste all this time and money pasteurizing it anyway? So
in this high ypathetical, we stop bothering with pasteurization. A
thousand kids get listeria, a few of them check out
at the age of two or three, and all of
that was avoidable. But because some nice people took care
of that for us in the nineteenth century. We've had
it so good. We've forgot why we had it so good.
We think that tradition is so strong, but if you
(08:18):
think about it, we get the tiniest fraction of the
accumulated wisdom of humanity passed down to us. And there
are some things that every single generation of humanity probably
has to relearn from scratch. I suppose that's one reason
that extremely religious people are so defensive about everything and
(08:39):
always talking about how they're under attack. Well, they are
not necessarily by temporal opponents, but simply by the march
of time, which is temporal in a different sense. That
brings me back to Gene Bearden, the rare left handed knuckleballer.
As I said last time. Bearden was a twenty seven
year old rookie who shock the league by going twenty
(09:01):
and seven with a league leading two forty three er
in the World Series against the Boston Braves. He started
Game three, following future Hall of Fame teammates Bob Feller
and Bob Lemon in the rotation. He pitched nine innings,
allowed five hits, no walk, struck out four, and allowed
no runs. In Game six, he came on with the
(09:22):
bases loaded and went out in the eighth in relief
of Lemon. He did allow a couple of inherited runners
to score, but Cleveland had a bigger lead than that.
He didn't give it up and held on for the
save in the ninth. Now, his season turned out to
be a one off, but for a moment, he was
quite the baseball celebrity. Everyone wanted to meet him and
shake his hand. One such person turned up after his
(09:43):
victory in Game three. A sixty one year old man
met him in the clubhouse. He pushed his way through
the scrum around Bearden and said, how do you do you,
old rubber? Arm. He shook Beardon's hand. You are a
truly wonderful pitcher, and then he left. Who was that?
Bearden asked Bill Killifer. Someone said who, Beardon asked again.
(10:04):
Cleveland owner Bill veck thought that Lou Boudreau was kind
of dumb, so he surrounded him with some really senior coaches,
among them Hall of famers Bill mckeckney and Tris Speaker.
And Speaker happened to be standing there. He said, he's
the man who caught Grover Cleveland Alexander, which was to say,
one of the greatest pitchers in National League history to
(10:26):
that point and in fact to this point. In other words,
Killifer knew what he was saying, and if he said
you were a good pitcher, that was quite the compliment.
Yet if you didn't know who he was, you would
have missed it, as Beardon did. Now. Bill Reindeer Killifer,
as ballplayers go, was a common card. He hit two
thirty eight with a two seventy three on base percentage
(10:47):
and a two eighty three slugging percentage in a little
over one thousand games from nineteen oh nine through nineteen
twenty one. And yes, that was the dead ball era
and no, those are not great averages, even after we
account for the balls mucus like consistency. His career wasn't
notably successful in terms of championships. He played in two
World Series, one with the Phillies one with the Cubs,
(11:09):
and lost to the Red Sox both times. But he
was indeed Alexander's personal catcher, and when after the nineteen
seventeen season, skin Flint Phillies owner William Baker didn't want
to pay alex and traded him to the Cubs for
Pickles Dillhoffer Mike Prendergrast in fifty five thousand dollars, Killifer
(11:30):
had to go along. He and Alexander, again arguably the
greatest pitcher in NL history, formed the Battery in nearly
three hundred games. The band only broke up because Killifer
retired to manage at thirty three, and indeed he had
a long post playing career. He managed the Cubs and
the Browns, not too successfully in either case. He went
(11:51):
into scouting, and the reason he was in Cleveland in
the Cleveland Clubhouse, I should say to meet Bearden after
his Game three victory was because he worked for the team.
Beck had hired him to scout the Negro leagues, and
in that capacity, Killifer validated Veck's decision to sign Larry
Doby and make him the first black player in the
(12:14):
American League. So Bearden didn't know any of that. And
as much as I enjoy knowing that and getting to
tell you about it, and as much as I hope
you enjoy knowing that, I find it hard to fault
him for not knowing it. You know, when I was
in about the eighth grade, a friend gave me a mixtape.
This was his early morning Rise in Shine, Get your
(12:35):
pep on and go sees the day mix. So I
was instructed to climb out of bed, slap this thing
in the cassette player, and press play. So I did.
I went into the bathroom, I got the sink going,
I got my razor wedded up. I started shaving at
a pretty early age. I pressed play on the little
box that I had in there, and the first song began,
(12:56):
dust in the wind. All we are is dust in
the My God, I don't know how I avoided just
climbing back into bed for a week. I don't know
how I avoided just dragging the razor across my throat.
It was like turning on the radio and hearing good morning.
I am your Mourning Drive DJ and also your funeral director.
(13:18):
We begin with taps, a series of inspiring requiems, and
then the greatest hits of D D D, death, disease
and despair. But you know what the song is wrong.
We aren't dust in the wind. We're a femera. And
you know what, as slight as that is, it's something
to aspire to beyond dust. I met a traveler from
(13:42):
an antique land who said, two vast and trunkless legs
of stone squatted in the desert, and on the pedestal
these words appear. My name is Ozzy Mandis, catcher of catchers.
Look on my stats, ye mighty and despair. Nothing beside remains.
The back of the baseball card has long since vanished
(14:05):
into the Infinite Inning. Well, hello there, and welcome back
(14:44):
to the show Infinite Inning, number three fifty three. I am,
as ever Steven Goldman, your congenial host for this trip
to the past, on a mission to understand the present,
or better understand via the time machine, in the vehicle
of the national pastime, the game of baseball, And sometimes
(15:06):
we talk about other things as well. Last week I
talked about a true crime story, actually, which is almost
a perotic thing to say at this point, there's so
much of that stuff. Well, while researching this week's stories,
I was again distracted by a long forgotten tale of
murder of a man praying on a woman, this one
in New York City. I don't know if I'll tell
(15:27):
that story. I'm not doing it this week. And in fact,
as I investigated further, I found that another show, another podcast,
had taken a shot at it about six years ago,
and I don't know that seems like long enough. And
there are so many podcasts that I don't know if
anyone could have heard them all, and thus it might
be new to you anyway, But I'm not inclined to
(15:48):
do it. I know that over the course of this
show I have often gone away from the spy and
the stem of the game of baseball when it felt
like a useful or important or entergying thing to do.
And you guys have been great in following me wherever
it is that I did want to go, but I
still worry sometimes that I'm pushing it. I didn't get
(16:09):
very much feedback at all on the last episode so
I don't know how you felt about that story. It
still continues to affect me. The murderer buddy, insofar as
I can tell led a blameless life before and after,
but in just one moment, he threw himself away, and
in doing so, he threw another child away as well.
(16:29):
It feels like it's both uncommon and something that happens
with terrible frequency. I'm going to try to keep this
interstitial section brief this week. I'm feeling kind of poorly.
I hope that none of you have had the misfortune
of having radiation applied to either of your eyes well
as you know I have. And one thing that tends
to happen is that from then on your eye should
(16:52):
you get to retain it. And I have. I don't
know why at this point, but I have. I mean,
I'm hoping against hope to get it back. But it's
been a long time now. And if you want to
hear something funny that when this hit me, stem cells,
for all the rage and medical research, somehow we hear
less about them now. And maybe the reason is what
I'm about to tell you, which is at the same
time that I got my diagnosis. The upshot was that
(17:15):
should I live, I was going to lose vision in
the afflicted eye, the eye that had cancer. And while
they said perhaps stem cells, someday, we'll grow you a
new optic nerve pal, well they still haven't. And one
reason they haven't, well there are several. One is that
the optic nerve is just an incredibly complicated organ and
it's part of your brain, so you really don't want
(17:36):
to mess around with it unless you're really sure you
know what you're doing. But the other part is that
about the same second they said that to me, the
then Bush administration Bush two came out and said, stem cells,
they're a horrible affront to God, and man, we won't
have any more of that around here, and in so
far as I know, we haven't. And so they set
back the research, maybe permanently, if it ever had any
(17:59):
hope at all. And I am still with a very
sick eye, as my doctors like to say. And well,
one thing that happens as a result of taking radiation
damage to your peepers, your baby blues, is that they
tend to dry out pretty easily, and it's spectacularly painful
when they do. And I'm supposed to retard this process
(18:19):
by using drops several times a day. But I get
lulled into a false sense of security by the summer
months when the air conditioning is on and I'm in
sort of a moisture environment. But once winter comes and
the heat turns on, if I don't have a humidifire going,
then I really suffer. And well, I kind of forgot
this year, especially today. So as I sit here speaking
(18:40):
to you now, it feels like a night in rusty
armor has charged at one of my eyes with a
saw tooth lance and he has rammed that sucker right
through and out the back of my head. So if
I do sound a little addled today, well it ain't
easy for me. Just now. I'm in here punching, though,
because there are stories to be told, and if you
(19:01):
want to hear them, then I want to tell them.
It's what I live to do. I also want to
tell you I've meant to do this every year for
the last couple of years, and I always just forgot.
But I went into Amazon and I dropped the price
of paperback copies of the Infinite Inning Book Baseball's Brief
Wives by about fifteen percent, which is all that I
(19:22):
can do there's a formula that they follow, and they
say that's the floor. So that book now goes for
twelve dollars, and I dropped the kindle price two seven
dollars and fifty cents. So if there is someone in
your life this holiday season who would enjoy having a
book of esoteric baseball stories about esoteric players, then please
go buy a copy. I'd be very happy if you did,
(19:44):
and not just because I see a little money out
of that. And the truth is, even though the book
is available outside of Amazon, in some circumstances, when someone
buys it outside of the Amazon system, and I realize
a lot of people have problems with Amazon, I do too.
At times. I get literally with the current price one
(20:05):
thin dime. I do a little better, well a lot better,
if you buy it through Amazon. But the real reason
I'd love it if people bought more. Well, first of all,
I just like it when my work is read. But
when I look at the lifetime sales, I'm very moved.
First of all, it's so touching that someone would want
to buy something with my name on the cover. It's
a thrill every single time I've been in the position
(20:29):
of doing that, whether it's one of my own or
a book I've done with Baseball Perspectives, and this one
is a little bit of both. We released it on
the Baseball Perspectus label, although I'm the only Baseball Perspectus
writer in there. But if you're somehow a VP completest,
well this should be part of your collection. But it's
neither the money nor ego gratification that I'm after here,
(20:50):
but rather that I'd like to do another one. And
although over time people have bought enough of them that
I'm both grateful and gratified, I'm not sure that it
was enough that it would justify doing a volume two.
I'm going to go halfway to that point, because, as
you know, those chapters originated in some cases not everyone.
(21:12):
There's stuff unique to the book, and every single one
of them got revised and expanded, but a number of
them appeared as Patreon exclusives for those of you who
are generous enough to support the show, and lately, after
a kind of fallow period, there are more all the time,
more of you, I mean, and I'm so moved and
(21:32):
so grateful that you think it's worth helping me continue
to do this program that I want to go back
for the first time in a few years and do
more of those posts. There are over one hundred now,
but I'll add to them in the new year. That
is my plan. That is my resolution. More infinite inning
dead players of the day, as we so tastefully called them.
(21:54):
One last note before we move on to Act two
of the show. I haven't mentioned Afuera coffee this week.
You know. I was paging through an old magazine this
week as I am wont to do, I came across
an old ad for craft cheese. Isn't it true when
you buy cheese, nothing really matters so much as the
certainty that the quality and flavor are going to please you.
(22:14):
This was in the nineteen thirties. Craft cheese will please you.
You may be sure of that. If it were not
so highly pleasing, it wouldn't be so widely imitated. There's
a picture of something with a rind that might be
either Cheddar or Velveta. I'm not sure how Velveto would
come by a rind, and in very small print a
request that you send for their book Cheese and Ways
(22:36):
to Serve It. That's almost a Twilight Zone episode. To
serve cheese. And then at the very bottom of the
page the slogan decidedly better. And folks, all I want
to tell you about a Fuata coffee this week is
that everything that Kraft said about its cheese back in
the nineteen thirties applies to their coffee, which is rainforest friendly.
(22:58):
And that's the important part. It also drinks well, which
is well, I won't say more important, but almost as important.
If you go to a Fuera cooffee dot com and
use the code infinite inning, you will save fifteen percent
the lowest price possible on a Fuera coffee and you
will find out what I know, which is that it
too is decidedly better. So tell me gang, was that
(23:22):
adread cheesy enough for you? I'll say one other thing.
I was listening to a number of old radio shows
this week just to hear their adreads. And the Shadow
who Knows what evil a lerks in the Hearts of
Men was sponsored by Anthracite blue coal, Pennsylvania blue Coal.
And why was it blue? Because they died it blue
so you would know. And I just want to say
(23:43):
I'm pretty sure, well I know from experience that Alfuera
does not dye their coffee blue. You can rest assured
it looks like coffee. You can also rest assured that
I laughed very hard when that ad reader back oh
over eighty years ago said this winter, heat your home
with health ful coal. Remember a few minutes ago I
was talking about pasteurization. We've forgotten why coal wasn't healthy too,
(24:06):
or at least some of us would like to pretend
that we have okay, time for a break. And on
the other side, I want to reflect on an old
time gambling scandal. Actually that's not true. It wasn't a scandal.
It was, oddly enough, a gambling riot, but one where
the players kind of came out ahead thanks to the
creative use of well a baseball bat. Hang with me, comrades,
(24:30):
won't you? And I'll see you on the other side.
(24:52):
Baseball has had many gambling scandals prior to the current
pitch selling case in which the Cleveland closer Manuel Clause
and starting pitcher Luis Ortiz allegedly tanked certain pitches to
facilitate payoffs on prop bets, but only a few in
which someone did the right thing. I wrote about one
of those people at Baseball Perspectives this week. Phillies shortstop
(25:15):
Heine Sand Sand as with just about every Phillies player
of the nineteen twenties, was of no particular note and
wouldn't be remembered at all now. But in nineteen twenty
four he was approached with a cash offer to lay
down for the Phillies opponent in the second to last
game of the season. Sand not only strongly demurred, but
(25:37):
he went to his manager, who in turn went to
Judge Landis, the commissioner. I told that story in full
back in episode thirteen, very early in the show's run,
and I also put it out as part of our
series of reissue episodes. And by the way, just to
validate that last statement about the decade of the nineteen
twenties in the Phillies, think about who they had back then.
(25:59):
There was center few Cy Williams who was able to
hit a lot of home runs in their small ballpark,
two seasons of lefti O' duel in one of which
he hit three ninety eight, the beginning of Chuck Klin's career,
and a few random pitching seasons when how Carlson put
up a three twenty three era in two hundred and
sixty seven innings in nineteen twenty six, that was an
(26:20):
excellent season given the park, but he wasn't a great
pitcher overall. There was also Jimmy Ring and a few
others of that nature. The Phillies lost over one hundred
games four times during the decade. They didn't do much
better than ninety some losses in most of the other seasons.
And the lesson is that if you trade Pete Alexander
because you don't want to pay him, the Cosmos will
(26:42):
smite you. So San talked as he should have talked,
and it wasn't just a question of being an upright, moral,
law abiding citizen, but of self protection first, because merely
by making him the offer the crooks had given him
guilty knowledge made him a co conspirator, whether he wanted
to be one or not, whether he acted or not.
(27:03):
So he was in both baseball and legal jeopardy, or
maybe I should say baseball legal jeopardy and legal legal jeopardy,
which is the situation the two Guardians pitchers find themselves
in the end of their baseball careers and the beginning,
potentially of their federal prison careers. And again I have
to emphasize all of the accusations against them are alleged
(27:26):
and they are innocent until proven guilty, and I really
really hope that they are innocent. Second, in Sand's case,
while I very much doubt he was thinking about the
vitality of the industry in which he worked, he was
acting to protect baseball from losing yet more credibility with
the public, which in turn could have endangered his job
(27:46):
more than he was endangering it himself by being a
fifty era a year shortstop. I mean, I don't think
there were too many occasions, though, in which baseball players,
instead of taking the money, instead of talking up as
Sand did, struck back against the gamblers. But it kind
of sort of happened once. Would you believe that it
involved the Black Socks. No one knew they were the
(28:09):
Black Sox, yet, they didn't know they were the Black Sox,
yet it hadn't happened. It was nineteen seventeen, And actually
there were subsequently rumors about some games being bought that
season as well, and it's very possible they were, But
certainly no one had yet committed to tanking a World
Series which the White Sox would actually win at the
(28:29):
end of that campaign. Certainly, though all your favorite John
Sales characters were there for this story. It happened at
Fenway Park. It was June sixteenth. The Red Sox were
the defending champions, having beaten the Dodgers or Robbins in
the World Series the year before. The White Sox, at
thirty four and seventeen. At that point in the season,
(28:50):
were leading the Red Sox by two and a half
games and the Yankees by five. It was a rainy Saturday.
The White Sox lineup led off with right field Shane O'Collins,
then progressed too, as I said, all your favorites Buck Weaver,
Eddie Collins, Shoeless, Joe Hapfelch Chick Kandle Swede, Riesberg, Ray
Shack and on the mound Eddie Seacott. Boston's lineup included
(29:14):
future Hall of Famer Harry Hooper leading off and playing
right field, former one hundred thousand dollars infielder Jack Barry
at second and also managing the club, and Larry Gardner,
probably the best third baseman of the early American League.
And I should mention the pitcher, a twenty one year
old lefty named George Herman Ruth, also called Babe but
(29:36):
occasionally still called Honey as well Ruth was coming off
of a cy Young Award type season, finishing with a
league leading one seventy five ERA to go with his
twenty three and twelve record. He pitched nine shutouts and
allowed no zero home runs inside or outside the park
in nineteen sixteen. He wasn't quite as good in nineteen seventeen,
(29:57):
his ERA jumping all the way up up to two
oh one two point zero one. And I know that
sounds ridiculous to say that it was all the way
up to and even two basically, but first of all,
that's what happens when you set a high standard. And
the other thing is that in context it was similar,
say to what Logan Webb or Matthew Boyd did this year,
(30:20):
very good but not great. Great was Paul skeens In
Tarik Schoobel, hence the cy Young Awards that they just
received this past week. Similarly great that year was well
at e Cecott, whose ERA was one fifty three over
in the National League. Grover Alexander, throwing to Bill Killefer,
His RA led the league at one to eighty three.
(30:43):
The Babe had about the twelfth best ERA in the
major leagues among qualified pitchers and today. That will make
you a very rich man. It was just a step
back from what he had done the year before. This
game was a contributor to the rise in the babes Ra.
He wasn't at his best. He was also starting on
two days rest and on his way to pitching over
(31:04):
three hundred innings for the second season in a row.
So give the old man a break. The young man,
I should say. He gave up an RBI double to
Jackson in the first, an RBI single to Gandle in
the fourth, and an RBI infield hit to Felsch in
the sixth. Meanwhile, Zacatt had his old team on lockdown.
He had them shut out through seven. The Red Sox
(31:25):
finally broke through in the bottom of the eighth, getting
RBI hits from Gardner and first baseman Dick hoe Blitzel
White Sox three, Red Sox two. Going to the top
of the ninth, there was hope for a second, but
then Buck Weaver, White Sox third baseman, did something that
only about a dozen players before him had done. He
(31:47):
hit a ball over the Green Monster, a two run shot,
and Ruth just broke at that point, allowing three consecutive
hits with the last by Felsch again driving in Collins
and Jackson White Soie seven, Red Sox two. Seacot got
Boston in order. In the bottom of the ninth, Ruth
made the last out and that was the final score.
(32:08):
But that wasn't the whole story. See, gambling was open
in baseball back then, with whole sections in the park
almost designated for gamblers. In Fenway Park it was right field.
It was like smoking, non smoking, gambling or not gambling.
Now they just have betting parlors in the park. Major
League Baseball's motto is addicts are going to be addicted.
(32:29):
It's just a fact of life. So we want our taste.
There was, as always money on this game, and that
money had agents sitting in the stands trying to will
it to payoff. Too bad that it had been bet
on the Red Sox. So when the home team got
behind early, the attendance became restive, or at least certain
(32:50):
sections did. A subset of the nine thousand and change
who were in attendance that afternoon were they controlled by
the tall man in the raincoat. Sorry that was lame,
but I couldn't help it. There is a tall man
in a raincoat. He'll be along in a second. In
the fourth inning, it had begun to rain. People in
the stands in the gambling part of the stands started muttering,
(33:13):
then chanting, Call the game, Call the game. The Boston
Globe said, the call the game. Chant steadily grew in
volume until when the White Sox came to bat in
the fifth it seemed as if every man in the
bleachers was shouting. They wanted the game stopped. The beat
writers into ited before the score counted, because then they
(33:34):
could still get rain checks, but also because they could
get their money back from the bookies. The sky darkened
and it began raining harder. The attendees in the center
field bleachers saw it shelter by crowding into the section
behind first base, which was covered by the grandstand. They
got there by walking across the field while the game
(33:56):
was still in progress. There were about five cops on hand,
not enough to stop all of this from happening. And
whereas today at most ballparks, if you try to move
up a seat class, the ushers will try to break
your legs. Whoever, the Red Sox had working the park
that day, and this was under Harry Frizze they made
no effort to stop centerfield from moving to first base,
(34:18):
burnham Wood from moving to Dunsnane Hill, and that sort
of thing. The chanting continued as the rain fell. Now
it was all focused in the first base seats. The
umpires did not listen, and so with two outs on
the top of the fifth, about three hundred attendees just
took matters into their own hands, climbing the railing and
swarming the field call the game out. The Chicago Tribune
(34:42):
said the rioters were spurred on by some tall fan
in a long raincoat. Now who that evil mastermind was,
I do not know, because he wasn't the one who
got in trouble that day. Would you believe it was
a couple of the White Sox And I will tell
you that story and conclude this week's episode right after
(35:04):
this brief intermission, at the point that the fans charged
(35:28):
the field, the game was paused because it had to
be paused. The rioters weren't violent at first, but we're
content to just trespass and block up the diamond. Retro
sheets play by play for the game says there was
a thirty minute rain delay, and there was a rain
delay subsequently, but really at first it was the police
(35:48):
coming in with the Mounties and shutting down this want
to be riot. By the time they got that done,
it really had been raining too hard to continue, so
they took a further time out thirty or forty five minutes,
depending on the account. Boston's groundskeepers, which at that time
was probably more like grounds keeper singular, dumped a whole
(36:09):
lot of sawdust on the field and the umpires said,
play a ball. All the writers, whether they were from
Boston or Chicago, said that the field really should have
been declared unplayable at that point and the game stopped,
But for whatever reason, the umpires just weren't going to
be persuaded, and as I've already told you, the game
(36:29):
did go the full nine. The White Sox argued that
the game should be forfeited to them once the fans
had swarmed the field, which was not an unreasonable argument,
and indeed, after even Harry Frizzy said yeah, you should
have done that, the umpires were just really motivated to
make this a legal game. The Chicago Herald strongly implied
the umpires were trying to let Frize keep his gait,
(36:51):
but that seems sort of unlikely. And the funny part
is how misguided the riers were in fact. When they
were milling about the field and refusing to leave. Jack
Barry again the Red Sox second basement and manager had
to explain to them, look, if you don't go, the
umpires are going to forfeit the game to the White Socks.
(37:15):
That means that those of you who bet on us
to win will lose your stake. What don't you understand
about this? And they did. They finally got it, uh oh,
and they wandered back off the field, most of them.
There was some violence. A few of the fans and
one of the cops, with some provocation, went after the
(37:38):
White Sox. As Chicago's players left the field via the
Red Sox dugout. During the swarming, I mean, and then
the rain delay, someone sculled Buck Weaver with a bottle,
and someone else, supposedly a sailor although he doesn't figure
in the rest of the story, punched Buck in the jaw.
He hadn't even hit the big home run yet that
(37:59):
was still in the future. Sure. Simultaneously, White Sox catcher
Ray Shock turned to the head of the police brigade
that was at the park and said something to the
effect of why don't you go fix this? What are
you a coward? And that officer said something to the
effect of, oh a coward, am I and was narrowly
prevented from doing a tap dance on Ray Shock's face.
(38:21):
Chief o'harow was much more relaxed after his later transfer
to Gotham City. You think it would be the opposite,
but no. Gotham City is much easier to police than Boston.
The roads are more rational, and although it sounds like
Buck Weaver got the worst of it, after the game,
one Augustine J. McNally of Norwood, Massachusetts, alleged that he
(38:42):
had been assaulted by Weaver and utility infielder Fred McMullen.
It may seem odd that one can be assaulted while
illegally trespassing and possibly threatening a professional ballplayer, but I
suppose you can be to imagine the scene. It was
kind of chaos under the stands and in the clubhouses.
(39:05):
There was a terrific wrangle of players, umpires, club owners,
and police officers. Wrote The Chicago Tribune, the raid apparently
accepting himself, whereas McNally, the trip said was one of
the mob which attempted to break up the game Saturday,
and during the fussing is supposed to have bumped McMullen's
fist with his eye. Also, he is supposed to have
(39:27):
had his fingers on the railing just when Weaver let
his bat fall. Boy Buck Weaver sure showed great eye
hand coordination throughout that game, didn'ey two big hits for him,
won over the Green Monster, one over Augustine J. McNally.
McNally got no satisfaction. Both players pled not guilty, and
(39:49):
the charges were dismissed in September when the complainant failed
to show up for his own case. Weaver and McMullen
were totally out of the woods forever. Just kidding. As
for our Augustine, I don't know how the rest of
his life went, except that he was a milkman with
five children, and he was thirty six years old at
the time, old enough to have known better than to
(40:11):
be getting into fistfights with two ballplayers who were both
in their mid twenties, and at least one of whom
was armed with a big wooden stick. Maybe he'd been drinking,
maybe he'd been gambling. Maybe both would you believe he
outlived both Buck Weaver and Fred McMullen. Living outside the
law isn't healthful, and given that Milkman Guss seems to
(40:32):
have finished his trip to the ballpark with broken fingers,
gambling on a rainy day between the White Sox and
the Red Sox isn't too good for you either, especially
back then when you really didn't know whether the game
was on the up and up. Americans of the time
just had to hope and acted in ignorance of the
(40:52):
reality that some of these ballgames were cooked. That's yet
another thing we've forgotten why we put the institutional rails
in place to prevent that from happening, and that is
in part what the ongoing suspensions and possible prosecutions of
class A and Ortiz is about. The foregoing isn't simply
(41:15):
a screed against gambling. As with any vice, gambling can
be fine if indulged in moderation. It's also not as
fun as it would be if the gambler in question
hadn't been Gus the Milkman who got creamed by a bat,
but Sports Sullivan or one of the other dogs who
were bent on bilking the public. It's just a wish,
(41:36):
a wish that these two relative children with the guardians
hadn't done something so dumb. Maybe the gamblers had something
on them. I don't know, but either way, I wish
that when they'd been approached they did what Buck Weaver
did and picked up a bat, and failing that, they
could have been more like Heiny Sand and simply talked. No. Wait,
(42:00):
on second thought, I take that back. Buckweaver's approach would
have been the better course of action, pick up the bat.
How often in the last one hundred and six years
have we been able to say Buckweaver had it right
if only he had been consistent in his approach in
nineteen nineteen with what he had done in nineteen seventeen.
When it comes to gamblers, don't stop, don't think just
(42:26):
I mean, what's the simple assault charge compared to being
banned from baseball for forever? Should you wish to talk
to me forever? You can do so at Stephen Gooldman
dot bsky dot social and you can write us, by
which I mean me at Infinite Inning at gmail dot com.
And there's a Facebook group search on infinite inning. Bang
you're there. Say what you want to say, do what
(42:47):
you want to do, go where you want to go.
That's a song, isn't it. Should you wish to support
the show, and so many of you have, again, thank you.
Please visit patreon dot com slash the Infinite Inning, and
on that note, I would like to thank the latest
to join up, Todd and Jason. Thank you so much,
fellas you, like all other subscribers, will get new posts
(43:08):
in the new year, as I promised earlier. Dear of
a Rudimentary Kind available at the hyphen Infinite hyphen Inning
dot creator, hyphenspring dot com. Original soundtrack available gratis at
casual Observer Music dot bandcamp dot com. Finally, should you
find yourself with what the proverbial moment to spare, please
go to the podcatcher of your choice if podcatchers are
(43:29):
still a thing, and rate, review and subscribe. And if
your podcastcher doesn't let you do those things, just be
really careful. Who's lurking around when you put your fingers
on the railing could be a fellow holding a bat Howard.
A theme song which you are hearing now and have
been listening to throughout the episode was a co composition
of myself and doctor Rick Mooring, who at the conclusion
(43:50):
of this episode, turns to Statler and together they chant
call the show, Call the show. Well if the cat
who rides cows isn't deceived by piebald Hippo and decides
to bring him home to try out the hot tub,
resulting in my snood collection being flooded out. I'll be
back next week with more tails from inside the Infinite
Inning
Last time on the Infinite Inning, you're looking for the
skip recap button, but that won't be necessary. All I
wanted to remind you of is that last episode I
mentioned the knuckleball pitcher Gene Bearden star surprise star of
the nineteen forty eight Cleveland Indians team, which had a
lot of surprise stars, given that, among other things, the
(00:22):
manager the shortstop one in the same Lou Boudreau, had
what is still one of the best seasons by a
major league shortstop, hitting three point fifty five with eighteen
home runs, one hundred and six RBIs, ninety eight walks
only nine k's good defense. But more importantly for both
baseball and the nation, that team had both Larry Dobie
(00:44):
playing at a high level in center field, and it
had Satchel Page in the major leagues for the first time,
and although he was in his forties, he was still
terrific working in a swing role. A few years later,
when he was working as a pseudo closer for the
Brown Casey Stangele would turn to the dugout if the
team was trailing and say, hurry up, hurry up, father
(01:06):
time is coming. And I love that hat tip, that
gesture of respect. It wasn't simply that Page was old.
It was that he was old and effective umpire. Bill
Clem was old, and Casey made fun of Bill Klem.
He said he doesn't see so good anymore. He umpires
by hearing. If it sounds like a strike, you can
imagine the rest. No one saw Bearden coming, and maybe
he was the essential ingredient. Because all these years later,
(01:29):
we're still waiting on a sequel to that team. I
fear they're going to have to dage some of those stars,
like Disney tried to do with Harrison Ford in Indiana
Jones and the Digital Watch of the Crystal Cavern of
Doom or whatever. That last one was called Raiders of
the Lost Arc might be my favorite movie of all
time on a lot of levels, and yet I still
couldn't finish that one. What I'm trying to say is
(01:50):
that they're going to have to recast some parts. They've
already brought Kerry Fisher back once. Hey, it's Star Wars.
It's about futuristic technology enabling necrophiliac encounters. Is well, yeah, totally,
but for the bad guys, maybe you missed that part.
I'm sorry, folks, I'm a little punchy tonight. I'll explain later.
I still want to tell Beardon's story, and would you
believe Casey figures in there too. He helped get Beard
(02:13):
into the major leagues via Oakland. But for now, I
just want to give you this little bit that isn't
so much about Bearden himself, but about the changing of
the seasons, which I mean as a metaphor for the
way a hero can be the glory of his or
her times, but perhaps not of any other people. Move
on and forget this week. I watched the Netflix miniseries
(02:33):
Death by Lightning. It's about the assassination of President James
Garfield by the mentally disturbed Charles Guiteau, often described as
a disgruntled office seeker, which he was, except that he
had no more right to expect some sort of patronage
position from Garfield or the Republicans in charge than I
do to expect the Mets will make me their new
(02:54):
first basement if Peelwonzo leaves in free agency. He was
just completely delusional, as I would be, And who's to
say I'm not for reasons all of my own. But
that would be a different podcast from today's episode. Anyway,
I quite enjoyed the show, which was broadly accurate given
the usual standards of historical dramatizations, particularly one that's limited
(03:15):
to four concise episodes. I especially enjoyed Matthew mcfaden as
Guitau and Nick Offerman in kind of a big fun
performance as Chester Arthur. I flatter myself to think that
I got more out of it than the average bear,
just because this is stuff that I studied. I've studied
it on my own, I studied it in school. And
(03:35):
whereas I'm by no means an expert on the period
of American history and politics that spans from the end
of the Civil War to say, the beginning of the
Progressive era, I do know my stalwarts from my half breeds.
And for those who did not go to that class, well,
first of all, congratulations, you probably shouldn't have. And second
of all, those were Republican Party factions of the moment
(03:58):
that Garfield's election took place. The show doesn't ask you
to know those labels at all, and in terms of
the conflict between them, which I'm going to get to
in half a second, I won't dwell on it for long.
We're getting to baseball. I promise they explain that conflict
multiple times in each episode, not only so you understand
what was at stake for the country, what was at
stake or is it stake within the show for the characters,
(04:20):
but also to underscore its relevance to the present day.
And it is. Yes, it was a long time ago.
But what the characters on that show are arguing about
is how much corruption should be baked into politics. America
had slipped into fee for service government, where a civil
servant could get pretty wealthy just by getting his palm
(04:40):
greased for every single thing his job required him to do.
Sometimes the government would actually give that person a tip
for whatever it was, whatever task they were assigned to do.
More often it was the citizen who needed the service
who would provide that extra incentive. There was no FBI
back then. If you were in the unfortunate position of
(05:02):
having to say, director Hoover, Director Hoover, John Dillinger has
kidnapped my mom, well we'll look into that. I know
you'll make it worth our while to do so. And
that money received by those civil against servants, I'm trying
to say the quotation mark servants, some of it stayed
with the person who first received it, and some of
(05:22):
it got kicked up the latter, and it funded the
bosses who ran the parties. So the bosses liked having
this system in place, even though it was exploitative and
not good government. Garfield and the half Breeds wanted to
change that. Roscoe Conkling of New York he was a senator,
and the Stalwart faction liked things the way they were.
(05:44):
Guiteau in the Swiss Cheese of his mind thought that
by assassinating Garfield and thereby elevating Arthur, he was resolving
things in favor of the Stalwarts. And yes, I know
every time I say Garfield, do you think of the
cartoon cat? So do I. When our current president argues
he should be able to fire every government worker who
(06:05):
looks at him cross eye, or isn't a member of
his party or doesn't support his agenda and replace them
with red hat wearing cultists, he's trying to reverse some
of the protections we've had against that sort of corruption
that resulted from this intra party warfare back in the
eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties. The marketing for the show
(06:29):
and some of the reviews were very insistent that this
president of the United States and this assassin had been
totally forgotten by history. And that's probably true if you've
only had the minimalist education in history that most of
us get. We've only had so many presidents in the
approximately two hundred and fifty years this show has been running.
(06:50):
I don't mean mine, I mean the nations, and every
one of them is supposed to be the supreme, the
most important, the toppermost of the poppermost, even though a
lot of them were mediocrits or like Garfield, were just
short lived and their memory can't withstand the on rush
of more and more time and more and more events.
Think of all the important things that are now slipping
(07:13):
out of living memory just due to the human condition.
And you'll know that outside people who have taken the
time to read about post Civil War American politics, most
folks won't have heard about this stuff. And if not
for our current president reviving some of these issues, you
might not have needed to unless, like me, you just
(07:34):
have a taste for this stuff because these were largely
solved problems that said, it would be better if we
all had because the success or failure of the attack
depends upon our lack of knowledge of why those structures
were in place to begin with. It's kind of like
someone saying, well, no one gets milk sick anymore. There
are never any germs in milk, So why don't we
(07:56):
waste all this time and money pasteurizing it anyway? So
in this high ypathetical, we stop bothering with pasteurization. A
thousand kids get listeria, a few of them check out
at the age of two or three, and all of
that was avoidable. But because some nice people took care
of that for us in the nineteenth century. We've had
it so good. We've forgot why we had it so good.
We think that tradition is so strong, but if you
(08:18):
think about it, we get the tiniest fraction of the
accumulated wisdom of humanity passed down to us. And there
are some things that every single generation of humanity probably
has to relearn from scratch. I suppose that's one reason
that extremely religious people are so defensive about everything and
(08:39):
always talking about how they're under attack. Well, they are
not necessarily by temporal opponents, but simply by the march
of time, which is temporal in a different sense. That
brings me back to Gene Bearden, the rare left handed knuckleballer.
As I said last time. Bearden was a twenty seven
year old rookie who shock the league by going twenty
(09:01):
and seven with a league leading two forty three er
in the World Series against the Boston Braves. He started
Game three, following future Hall of Fame teammates Bob Feller
and Bob Lemon in the rotation. He pitched nine innings,
allowed five hits, no walk, struck out four, and allowed
no runs. In Game six, he came on with the
(09:22):
bases loaded and went out in the eighth in relief
of Lemon. He did allow a couple of inherited runners
to score, but Cleveland had a bigger lead than that.
He didn't give it up and held on for the
save in the ninth. Now, his season turned out to
be a one off, but for a moment, he was
quite the baseball celebrity. Everyone wanted to meet him and
shake his hand. One such person turned up after his
(09:43):
victory in Game three. A sixty one year old man
met him in the clubhouse. He pushed his way through
the scrum around Bearden and said, how do you do you,
old rubber? Arm. He shook Beardon's hand. You are a
truly wonderful pitcher, and then he left. Who was that?
Bearden asked Bill Killifer. Someone said who, Beardon asked again.
(10:04):
Cleveland owner Bill veck thought that Lou Boudreau was kind
of dumb, so he surrounded him with some really senior coaches,
among them Hall of famers Bill mckeckney and Tris Speaker.
And Speaker happened to be standing there. He said, he's
the man who caught Grover Cleveland Alexander, which was to say,
one of the greatest pitchers in National League history to
(10:26):
that point and in fact to this point. In other words,
Killifer knew what he was saying, and if he said
you were a good pitcher, that was quite the compliment.
Yet if you didn't know who he was, you would
have missed it, as Beardon did. Now. Bill Reindeer Killifer,
as ballplayers go, was a common card. He hit two
thirty eight with a two seventy three on base percentage
(10:47):
and a two eighty three slugging percentage in a little
over one thousand games from nineteen oh nine through nineteen
twenty one. And yes, that was the dead ball era
and no, those are not great averages, even after we
account for the balls mucus like consistency. His career wasn't
notably successful in terms of championships. He played in two
World Series, one with the Phillies one with the Cubs,
(11:09):
and lost to the Red Sox both times. But he
was indeed Alexander's personal catcher, and when after the nineteen
seventeen season, skin Flint Phillies owner William Baker didn't want
to pay alex and traded him to the Cubs for
Pickles Dillhoffer Mike Prendergrast in fifty five thousand dollars, Killifer
(11:30):
had to go along. He and Alexander, again arguably the
greatest pitcher in NL history, formed the Battery in nearly
three hundred games. The band only broke up because Killifer
retired to manage at thirty three, and indeed he had
a long post playing career. He managed the Cubs and
the Browns, not too successfully in either case. He went
(11:51):
into scouting, and the reason he was in Cleveland in
the Cleveland Clubhouse, I should say to meet Bearden after
his Game three victory was because he worked for the team.
Beck had hired him to scout the Negro leagues, and
in that capacity, Killifer validated Veck's decision to sign Larry
Doby and make him the first black player in the
(12:14):
American League. So Bearden didn't know any of that. And
as much as I enjoy knowing that and getting to
tell you about it, and as much as I hope
you enjoy knowing that, I find it hard to fault
him for not knowing it. You know, when I was
in about the eighth grade, a friend gave me a mixtape.
This was his early morning Rise in Shine, Get your
(12:35):
pep on and go sees the day mix. So I
was instructed to climb out of bed, slap this thing
in the cassette player, and press play. So I did.
I went into the bathroom, I got the sink going,
I got my razor wedded up. I started shaving at
a pretty early age. I pressed play on the little
box that I had in there, and the first song began,
(12:56):
dust in the wind. All we are is dust in
the My God, I don't know how I avoided just
climbing back into bed for a week. I don't know
how I avoided just dragging the razor across my throat.
It was like turning on the radio and hearing good morning.
I am your Mourning Drive DJ and also your funeral director.
(13:18):
We begin with taps, a series of inspiring requiems, and
then the greatest hits of D D D, death, disease
and despair. But you know what the song is wrong.
We aren't dust in the wind. We're a femera. And
you know what, as slight as that is, it's something
to aspire to beyond dust. I met a traveler from
(13:42):
an antique land who said, two vast and trunkless legs
of stone squatted in the desert, and on the pedestal
these words appear. My name is Ozzy Mandis, catcher of catchers.
Look on my stats, ye mighty and despair. Nothing beside remains.
The back of the baseball card has long since vanished
(14:05):
into the Infinite Inning. Well, hello there, and welcome back
(14:44):
to the show Infinite Inning, number three fifty three. I am,
as ever Steven Goldman, your congenial host for this trip
to the past, on a mission to understand the present,
or better understand via the time machine, in the vehicle
of the national pastime, the game of baseball, And sometimes
(15:06):
we talk about other things as well. Last week I
talked about a true crime story, actually, which is almost
a perotic thing to say at this point, there's so
much of that stuff. Well, while researching this week's stories,
I was again distracted by a long forgotten tale of
murder of a man praying on a woman, this one
in New York City. I don't know if I'll tell
(15:27):
that story. I'm not doing it this week. And in fact,
as I investigated further, I found that another show, another podcast,
had taken a shot at it about six years ago,
and I don't know that seems like long enough. And
there are so many podcasts that I don't know if
anyone could have heard them all, and thus it might
be new to you anyway, But I'm not inclined to
(15:48):
do it. I know that over the course of this
show I have often gone away from the spy and
the stem of the game of baseball when it felt
like a useful or important or entergying thing to do.
And you guys have been great in following me wherever
it is that I did want to go, but I
still worry sometimes that I'm pushing it. I didn't get
(16:09):
very much feedback at all on the last episode so
I don't know how you felt about that story. It
still continues to affect me. The murderer buddy, insofar as
I can tell led a blameless life before and after,
but in just one moment, he threw himself away, and
in doing so, he threw another child away as well.
(16:29):
It feels like it's both uncommon and something that happens
with terrible frequency. I'm going to try to keep this
interstitial section brief this week. I'm feeling kind of poorly.
I hope that none of you have had the misfortune
of having radiation applied to either of your eyes well
as you know I have. And one thing that tends
to happen is that from then on your eye should
(16:52):
you get to retain it. And I have. I don't
know why at this point, but I have. I mean,
I'm hoping against hope to get it back. But it's
been a long time now. And if you want to
hear something funny that when this hit me, stem cells,
for all the rage and medical research, somehow we hear
less about them now. And maybe the reason is what
I'm about to tell you, which is at the same
time that I got my diagnosis. The upshot was that
(17:15):
should I live, I was going to lose vision in
the afflicted eye, the eye that had cancer. And while
they said perhaps stem cells, someday, we'll grow you a
new optic nerve pal, well they still haven't. And one
reason they haven't, well there are several. One is that
the optic nerve is just an incredibly complicated organ and
it's part of your brain, so you really don't want
(17:36):
to mess around with it unless you're really sure you
know what you're doing. But the other part is that
about the same second they said that to me, the
then Bush administration Bush two came out and said, stem cells,
they're a horrible affront to God, and man, we won't
have any more of that around here, and in so
far as I know, we haven't. And so they set
back the research, maybe permanently, if it ever had any
(17:59):
hope at all. And I am still with a very
sick eye, as my doctors like to say. And well,
one thing that happens as a result of taking radiation
damage to your peepers, your baby blues, is that they
tend to dry out pretty easily, and it's spectacularly painful
when they do. And I'm supposed to retard this process
(18:19):
by using drops several times a day. But I get
lulled into a false sense of security by the summer
months when the air conditioning is on and I'm in
sort of a moisture environment. But once winter comes and
the heat turns on, if I don't have a humidifire going,
then I really suffer. And well, I kind of forgot
this year, especially today. So as I sit here speaking
(18:40):
to you now, it feels like a night in rusty
armor has charged at one of my eyes with a
saw tooth lance and he has rammed that sucker right
through and out the back of my head. So if
I do sound a little addled today, well it ain't
easy for me. Just now. I'm in here punching, though,
because there are stories to be told, and if you
(19:01):
want to hear them, then I want to tell them.
It's what I live to do. I also want to
tell you I've meant to do this every year for
the last couple of years, and I always just forgot.
But I went into Amazon and I dropped the price
of paperback copies of the Infinite Inning Book Baseball's Brief
Wives by about fifteen percent, which is all that I
(19:22):
can do there's a formula that they follow, and they
say that's the floor. So that book now goes for
twelve dollars, and I dropped the kindle price two seven
dollars and fifty cents. So if there is someone in
your life this holiday season who would enjoy having a
book of esoteric baseball stories about esoteric players, then please
go buy a copy. I'd be very happy if you did,
(19:44):
and not just because I see a little money out
of that. And the truth is, even though the book
is available outside of Amazon, in some circumstances, when someone
buys it outside of the Amazon system, and I realize
a lot of people have problems with Amazon, I do too.
At times. I get literally with the current price one
(20:05):
thin dime. I do a little better, well a lot better,
if you buy it through Amazon. But the real reason
I'd love it if people bought more. Well, first of all,
I just like it when my work is read. But
when I look at the lifetime sales, I'm very moved.
First of all, it's so touching that someone would want
to buy something with my name on the cover. It's
a thrill every single time I've been in the position
(20:29):
of doing that, whether it's one of my own or
a book I've done with Baseball Perspectives, and this one
is a little bit of both. We released it on
the Baseball Perspectus label, although I'm the only Baseball Perspectus
writer in there. But if you're somehow a VP completest,
well this should be part of your collection. But it's
neither the money nor ego gratification that I'm after here,
(20:50):
but rather that I'd like to do another one. And
although over time people have bought enough of them that
I'm both grateful and gratified, I'm not sure that it
was enough that it would justify doing a volume two.
I'm going to go halfway to that point, because, as
you know, those chapters originated in some cases not everyone.
(21:12):
There's stuff unique to the book, and every single one
of them got revised and expanded, but a number of
them appeared as Patreon exclusives for those of you who
are generous enough to support the show, and lately, after
a kind of fallow period, there are more all the time,
more of you, I mean, and I'm so moved and
(21:32):
so grateful that you think it's worth helping me continue
to do this program that I want to go back
for the first time in a few years and do
more of those posts. There are over one hundred now,
but I'll add to them in the new year. That
is my plan. That is my resolution. More infinite inning
dead players of the day, as we so tastefully called them.
(21:54):
One last note before we move on to Act two
of the show. I haven't mentioned Afuera coffee this week.
You know. I was paging through an old magazine this
week as I am wont to do, I came across
an old ad for craft cheese. Isn't it true when
you buy cheese, nothing really matters so much as the
certainty that the quality and flavor are going to please you.
(22:14):
This was in the nineteen thirties. Craft cheese will please you.
You may be sure of that. If it were not
so highly pleasing, it wouldn't be so widely imitated. There's
a picture of something with a rind that might be
either Cheddar or Velveta. I'm not sure how Velveto would
come by a rind, and in very small print a
request that you send for their book Cheese and Ways
(22:36):
to Serve It. That's almost a Twilight Zone episode. To
serve cheese. And then at the very bottom of the
page the slogan decidedly better. And folks, all I want
to tell you about a Fuata coffee this week is
that everything that Kraft said about its cheese back in
the nineteen thirties applies to their coffee, which is rainforest friendly.
(22:58):
And that's the important part. It also drinks well, which
is well, I won't say more important, but almost as important.
If you go to a Fuera cooffee dot com and
use the code infinite inning, you will save fifteen percent
the lowest price possible on a Fuera coffee and you
will find out what I know, which is that it
too is decidedly better. So tell me gang, was that
(23:22):
adread cheesy enough for you? I'll say one other thing.
I was listening to a number of old radio shows
this week just to hear their adreads. And the Shadow
who Knows what evil a lerks in the Hearts of
Men was sponsored by Anthracite blue coal, Pennsylvania blue Coal.
And why was it blue? Because they died it blue
so you would know. And I just want to say
(23:43):
I'm pretty sure, well I know from experience that Alfuera
does not dye their coffee blue. You can rest assured
it looks like coffee. You can also rest assured that
I laughed very hard when that ad reader back oh
over eighty years ago said this winter, heat your home
with health ful coal. Remember a few minutes ago I
was talking about pasteurization. We've forgotten why coal wasn't healthy too,
(24:06):
or at least some of us would like to pretend
that we have okay, time for a break. And on
the other side, I want to reflect on an old
time gambling scandal. Actually that's not true. It wasn't a scandal.
It was, oddly enough, a gambling riot, but one where
the players kind of came out ahead thanks to the
creative use of well a baseball bat. Hang with me, comrades,
(24:30):
won't you? And I'll see you on the other side.
(24:52):
Baseball has had many gambling scandals prior to the current
pitch selling case in which the Cleveland closer Manuel Clause
and starting pitcher Luis Ortiz allegedly tanked certain pitches to
facilitate payoffs on prop bets, but only a few in
which someone did the right thing. I wrote about one
of those people at Baseball Perspectives this week. Phillies shortstop
(25:15):
Heine Sand Sand as with just about every Phillies player
of the nineteen twenties, was of no particular note and
wouldn't be remembered at all now. But in nineteen twenty
four he was approached with a cash offer to lay
down for the Phillies opponent in the second to last
game of the season. Sand not only strongly demurred, but
(25:37):
he went to his manager, who in turn went to
Judge Landis, the commissioner. I told that story in full
back in episode thirteen, very early in the show's run,
and I also put it out as part of our
series of reissue episodes. And by the way, just to
validate that last statement about the decade of the nineteen
twenties in the Phillies, think about who they had back then.
(25:59):
There was center few Cy Williams who was able to
hit a lot of home runs in their small ballpark,
two seasons of lefti O' duel in one of which
he hit three ninety eight, the beginning of Chuck Klin's career,
and a few random pitching seasons when how Carlson put
up a three twenty three era in two hundred and
sixty seven innings in nineteen twenty six, that was an
(26:20):
excellent season given the park, but he wasn't a great
pitcher overall. There was also Jimmy Ring and a few
others of that nature. The Phillies lost over one hundred
games four times during the decade. They didn't do much
better than ninety some losses in most of the other seasons.
And the lesson is that if you trade Pete Alexander
because you don't want to pay him, the Cosmos will
(26:42):
smite you. So San talked as he should have talked,
and it wasn't just a question of being an upright, moral,
law abiding citizen, but of self protection first, because merely
by making him the offer the crooks had given him
guilty knowledge made him a co conspirator, whether he wanted
to be one or not, whether he acted or not.
(27:03):
So he was in both baseball and legal jeopardy, or
maybe I should say baseball legal jeopardy and legal legal jeopardy,
which is the situation the two Guardians pitchers find themselves
in the end of their baseball careers and the beginning,
potentially of their federal prison careers. And again I have
to emphasize all of the accusations against them are alleged
(27:26):
and they are innocent until proven guilty, and I really
really hope that they are innocent. Second, in Sand's case,
while I very much doubt he was thinking about the
vitality of the industry in which he worked, he was
acting to protect baseball from losing yet more credibility with
the public, which in turn could have endangered his job
(27:46):
more than he was endangering it himself by being a
fifty era a year shortstop. I mean, I don't think
there were too many occasions, though, in which baseball players,
instead of taking the money, instead of talking up as
Sand did, struck back against the gamblers. But it kind
of sort of happened once. Would you believe that it
involved the Black Socks. No one knew they were the
(28:09):
Black Sox, yet, they didn't know they were the Black Sox,
yet it hadn't happened. It was nineteen seventeen, And actually
there were subsequently rumors about some games being bought that
season as well, and it's very possible they were, But
certainly no one had yet committed to tanking a World
Series which the White Sox would actually win at the
(28:29):
end of that campaign. Certainly, though all your favorite John
Sales characters were there for this story. It happened at
Fenway Park. It was June sixteenth. The Red Sox were
the defending champions, having beaten the Dodgers or Robbins in
the World Series the year before. The White Sox, at
thirty four and seventeen. At that point in the season,
(28:50):
were leading the Red Sox by two and a half
games and the Yankees by five. It was a rainy Saturday.
The White Sox lineup led off with right field Shane O'Collins,
then progressed too, as I said, all your favorites Buck Weaver,
Eddie Collins, Shoeless, Joe Hapfelch Chick Kandle Swede, Riesberg, Ray
Shack and on the mound Eddie Seacott. Boston's lineup included
(29:14):
future Hall of Famer Harry Hooper leading off and playing
right field, former one hundred thousand dollars infielder Jack Barry
at second and also managing the club, and Larry Gardner,
probably the best third baseman of the early American League.
And I should mention the pitcher, a twenty one year
old lefty named George Herman Ruth, also called Babe but
(29:36):
occasionally still called Honey as well Ruth was coming off
of a cy Young Award type season, finishing with a
league leading one seventy five ERA to go with his
twenty three and twelve record. He pitched nine shutouts and
allowed no zero home runs inside or outside the park
in nineteen sixteen. He wasn't quite as good in nineteen seventeen,
(29:57):
his ERA jumping all the way up up to two
oh one two point zero one. And I know that
sounds ridiculous to say that it was all the way
up to and even two basically, but first of all,
that's what happens when you set a high standard. And
the other thing is that in context it was similar,
say to what Logan Webb or Matthew Boyd did this year,
(30:20):
very good but not great. Great was Paul skeens In
Tarik Schoobel, hence the cy Young Awards that they just
received this past week. Similarly great that year was well
at e Cecott, whose ERA was one fifty three over
in the National League. Grover Alexander, throwing to Bill Killefer,
His RA led the league at one to eighty three.
(30:43):
The Babe had about the twelfth best ERA in the
major leagues among qualified pitchers and today. That will make
you a very rich man. It was just a step
back from what he had done the year before. This
game was a contributor to the rise in the babes Ra.
He wasn't at his best. He was also starting on
two days rest and on his way to pitching over
(31:04):
three hundred innings for the second season in a row.
So give the old man a break. The young man,
I should say. He gave up an RBI double to
Jackson in the first, an RBI single to Gandle in
the fourth, and an RBI infield hit to Felsch in
the sixth. Meanwhile, Zacatt had his old team on lockdown.
He had them shut out through seven. The Red Sox
(31:25):
finally broke through in the bottom of the eighth, getting
RBI hits from Gardner and first baseman Dick hoe Blitzel
White Sox three, Red Sox two. Going to the top
of the ninth, there was hope for a second, but
then Buck Weaver, White Sox third baseman, did something that
only about a dozen players before him had done. He
(31:47):
hit a ball over the Green Monster, a two run shot,
and Ruth just broke at that point, allowing three consecutive
hits with the last by Felsch again driving in Collins
and Jackson White Soie seven, Red Sox two. Seacot got
Boston in order. In the bottom of the ninth, Ruth
made the last out and that was the final score.
(32:08):
But that wasn't the whole story. See, gambling was open
in baseball back then, with whole sections in the park
almost designated for gamblers. In Fenway Park it was right field.
It was like smoking, non smoking, gambling or not gambling.
Now they just have betting parlors in the park. Major
League Baseball's motto is addicts are going to be addicted.
(32:29):
It's just a fact of life. So we want our taste.
There was, as always money on this game, and that
money had agents sitting in the stands trying to will
it to payoff. Too bad that it had been bet
on the Red Sox. So when the home team got
behind early, the attendance became restive, or at least certain
(32:50):
sections did. A subset of the nine thousand and change
who were in attendance that afternoon were they controlled by
the tall man in the raincoat. Sorry that was lame,
but I couldn't help it. There is a tall man
in a raincoat. He'll be along in a second. In
the fourth inning, it had begun to rain. People in
the stands in the gambling part of the stands started muttering,
(33:13):
then chanting, Call the game, Call the game. The Boston
Globe said, the call the game. Chant steadily grew in
volume until when the White Sox came to bat in
the fifth it seemed as if every man in the
bleachers was shouting. They wanted the game stopped. The beat
writers into ited before the score counted, because then they
(33:34):
could still get rain checks, but also because they could
get their money back from the bookies. The sky darkened
and it began raining harder. The attendees in the center
field bleachers saw it shelter by crowding into the section
behind first base, which was covered by the grandstand. They
got there by walking across the field while the game
(33:56):
was still in progress. There were about five cops on hand,
not enough to stop all of this from happening. And
whereas today at most ballparks, if you try to move
up a seat class, the ushers will try to break
your legs. Whoever, the Red Sox had working the park
that day, and this was under Harry Frizze they made
no effort to stop centerfield from moving to first base,
(34:18):
burnham Wood from moving to Dunsnane Hill, and that sort
of thing. The chanting continued as the rain fell. Now
it was all focused in the first base seats. The
umpires did not listen, and so with two outs on
the top of the fifth, about three hundred attendees just
took matters into their own hands, climbing the railing and
swarming the field call the game out. The Chicago Tribune
(34:42):
said the rioters were spurred on by some tall fan
in a long raincoat. Now who that evil mastermind was,
I do not know, because he wasn't the one who
got in trouble that day. Would you believe it was
a couple of the White Sox And I will tell
you that story and conclude this week's episode right after
(35:04):
this brief intermission, at the point that the fans charged
(35:28):
the field, the game was paused because it had to
be paused. The rioters weren't violent at first, but we're
content to just trespass and block up the diamond. Retro
sheets play by play for the game says there was
a thirty minute rain delay, and there was a rain
delay subsequently, but really at first it was the police
(35:48):
coming in with the Mounties and shutting down this want
to be riot. By the time they got that done,
it really had been raining too hard to continue, so
they took a further time out thirty or forty five minutes,
depending on the account. Boston's groundskeepers, which at that time
was probably more like grounds keeper singular, dumped a whole
(36:09):
lot of sawdust on the field and the umpires said,
play a ball. All the writers, whether they were from
Boston or Chicago, said that the field really should have
been declared unplayable at that point and the game stopped,
But for whatever reason, the umpires just weren't going to
be persuaded, and as I've already told you, the game
(36:29):
did go the full nine. The White Sox argued that
the game should be forfeited to them once the fans
had swarmed the field, which was not an unreasonable argument,
and indeed, after even Harry Frizzy said yeah, you should
have done that, the umpires were just really motivated to
make this a legal game. The Chicago Herald strongly implied
the umpires were trying to let Frize keep his gait,
(36:51):
but that seems sort of unlikely. And the funny part
is how misguided the riers were in fact. When they
were milling about the field and refusing to leave. Jack
Barry again the Red Sox second basement and manager had
to explain to them, look, if you don't go, the
umpires are going to forfeit the game to the White Socks.
(37:15):
That means that those of you who bet on us
to win will lose your stake. What don't you understand
about this? And they did. They finally got it, uh oh,
and they wandered back off the field, most of them.
There was some violence. A few of the fans and
one of the cops, with some provocation, went after the
(37:38):
White Sox. As Chicago's players left the field via the
Red Sox dugout. During the swarming, I mean, and then
the rain delay, someone sculled Buck Weaver with a bottle,
and someone else, supposedly a sailor although he doesn't figure
in the rest of the story, punched Buck in the jaw.
He hadn't even hit the big home run yet that
(37:59):
was still in the future. Sure. Simultaneously, White Sox catcher
Ray Shock turned to the head of the police brigade
that was at the park and said something to the
effect of why don't you go fix this? What are
you a coward? And that officer said something to the
effect of, oh a coward, am I and was narrowly
prevented from doing a tap dance on Ray Shock's face.
(38:21):
Chief o'harow was much more relaxed after his later transfer
to Gotham City. You think it would be the opposite,
but no. Gotham City is much easier to police than Boston.
The roads are more rational, and although it sounds like
Buck Weaver got the worst of it, after the game,
one Augustine J. McNally of Norwood, Massachusetts, alleged that he
(38:42):
had been assaulted by Weaver and utility infielder Fred McMullen.
It may seem odd that one can be assaulted while
illegally trespassing and possibly threatening a professional ballplayer, but I
suppose you can be to imagine the scene. It was
kind of chaos under the stands and in the clubhouses.
(39:05):
There was a terrific wrangle of players, umpires, club owners,
and police officers. Wrote The Chicago Tribune, the raid apparently
accepting himself, whereas McNally, the trip said was one of
the mob which attempted to break up the game Saturday,
and during the fussing is supposed to have bumped McMullen's
fist with his eye. Also, he is supposed to have
(39:27):
had his fingers on the railing just when Weaver let
his bat fall. Boy Buck Weaver sure showed great eye
hand coordination throughout that game, didn'ey two big hits for him,
won over the Green Monster, one over Augustine J. McNally.
McNally got no satisfaction. Both players pled not guilty, and
(39:49):
the charges were dismissed in September when the complainant failed
to show up for his own case. Weaver and McMullen
were totally out of the woods forever. Just kidding. As
for our Augustine, I don't know how the rest of
his life went, except that he was a milkman with
five children, and he was thirty six years old at
the time, old enough to have known better than to
(40:11):
be getting into fistfights with two ballplayers who were both
in their mid twenties, and at least one of whom
was armed with a big wooden stick. Maybe he'd been drinking,
maybe he'd been gambling. Maybe both would you believe he
outlived both Buck Weaver and Fred McMullen. Living outside the
law isn't healthful, and given that Milkman Guss seems to
(40:32):
have finished his trip to the ballpark with broken fingers,
gambling on a rainy day between the White Sox and
the Red Sox isn't too good for you either, especially
back then when you really didn't know whether the game
was on the up and up. Americans of the time
just had to hope and acted in ignorance of the
(40:52):
reality that some of these ballgames were cooked. That's yet
another thing we've forgotten why we put the institutional rails
in place to prevent that from happening, and that is
in part what the ongoing suspensions and possible prosecutions of
class A and Ortiz is about. The foregoing isn't simply
(41:15):
a screed against gambling. As with any vice, gambling can
be fine if indulged in moderation. It's also not as
fun as it would be if the gambler in question
hadn't been Gus the Milkman who got creamed by a bat,
but Sports Sullivan or one of the other dogs who
were bent on bilking the public. It's just a wish,
(41:36):
a wish that these two relative children with the guardians
hadn't done something so dumb. Maybe the gamblers had something
on them. I don't know, but either way, I wish
that when they'd been approached they did what Buck Weaver
did and picked up a bat, and failing that, they
could have been more like Heiny Sand and simply talked. No. Wait,
(42:00):
on second thought, I take that back. Buckweaver's approach would
have been the better course of action, pick up the bat.
How often in the last one hundred and six years
have we been able to say Buckweaver had it right
if only he had been consistent in his approach in
nineteen nineteen with what he had done in nineteen seventeen.
When it comes to gamblers, don't stop, don't think just
(42:26):
I mean, what's the simple assault charge compared to being
banned from baseball for forever? Should you wish to talk
to me forever? You can do so at Stephen Gooldman
dot bsky dot social and you can write us, by
which I mean me at Infinite Inning at gmail dot com.
And there's a Facebook group search on infinite inning. Bang
you're there. Say what you want to say, do what
(42:47):
you want to do, go where you want to go.
That's a song, isn't it. Should you wish to support
the show, and so many of you have, again, thank you.
Please visit patreon dot com slash the Infinite Inning, and
on that note, I would like to thank the latest
to join up, Todd and Jason. Thank you so much,
fellas you, like all other subscribers, will get new posts
(43:08):
in the new year, as I promised earlier. Dear of
a Rudimentary Kind available at the hyphen Infinite hyphen Inning
dot creator, hyphenspring dot com. Original soundtrack available gratis at
casual Observer Music dot bandcamp dot com. Finally, should you
find yourself with what the proverbial moment to spare, please
go to the podcatcher of your choice if podcatchers are
(43:29):
still a thing, and rate, review and subscribe. And if
your podcastcher doesn't let you do those things, just be
really careful. Who's lurking around when you put your fingers
on the railing could be a fellow holding a bat Howard.
A theme song which you are hearing now and have
been listening to throughout the episode was a co composition
of myself and doctor Rick Mooring, who at the conclusion
(43:50):
of this episode, turns to Statler and together they chant
call the show, Call the show. Well if the cat
who rides cows isn't deceived by piebald Hippo and decides
to bring him home to try out the hot tub,
resulting in my snood collection being flooded out. I'll be
back next week with more tails from inside the Infinite
Inning
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Ruthie's Table 4
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home. On River Cafe Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers. Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt, and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks. Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation. For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/ Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/ Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/ For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.