November 6, 2025 • 41 mins
In the new commentary segment of this week’s reissue episode, we talk about childhood fears of the end times, the degraded state of Times Square in the 1970s and 1980s, the slugging 1964 Twins, and one way the Colorado Rockies might go out in a blaze of fire, weird new GM hire or no. Then we go back to episode 21 for two tales of Hall of Fame catchers under extreme duress.
The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand 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?
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?
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Well, hello there, and welcome to the twenty third Infinite
Inning reissue episode. I thank you for being here. I
myself am Steven Goldman. Who else would I be kind
of redundant to say I myself? And yet I did.
Just in case either of us had any confusion about that,
we go back this week to episode number twenty one,
(00:47):
early in the run of the show. More about that
in a minute. This portion of our reissue experience is
dimly about eschatology, but also about the very devout Colorado
Rocket and being very devout, they must be interested in eschatology.
If you want to know what I think about this
in a more concrete way, then I'm going to discuss here.
(01:09):
Read Other Lands, a journey through Earth's extinct worlds by
Thomas Halliday that contains a pretty good set of previews
for where I think the human experience will ultimately end up,
or at least resolve. When I was a kid, I
had a bad experience with Nostradamus, not in person, but
close enough. My parents used to take me, my sister,
(01:30):
and three cats on these long cross country car trips
during the summers. Late in the summers, so we barely
made it back in time for school, and while sometimes
we didn't. My folks were not wealthy. Only one of
them was their own boss, and I don't wholly understand
where they found the time or the money, but somehow
they did. And as with every movie on this subject,
(01:51):
sometimes being trapped with one's family in that way was
wonderful and sometimes it was the worst thing that ever
happened to you. But I wouldn't trade those experiences is
for anything. One of those several trips, I believe it
happened in the very early nineteen eighties, saw spend some
time in and around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park
in Tennessee. I was just young enough that for a
(02:13):
moment I took the name of the mountain range seriously.
I expected to see some smoking mountains. One day, it
was a bit foggy, smoke really did seem to rise
off the mountains, and I felt validated. One of the
main entrances to the national Park lies at Gatlinburg, Tennessee,
and we paused there for a day or so. I
don't know what it's like today, it has been a
long time, but it felt to me at that time
(02:35):
and at that point in my life, well, very cheesy.
It was there to take some money off of the
tourists before they took in some nature, And no doubt,
you've seen a number of places like that around the
country that try to take advantage of their proximity to
the national parks. In my memory, it very much resembled
a more rural version of what Times Square in New
(02:57):
York later became. I don't mean the version that we
have now with so many lights that you can see
the place from Batelgeist. But what I mean is that
at the time, in the early eighties, Times Square and
the adjacent areas of Manhattan just featured sex shops. I'd
be in the city to go to a museum or
a play and we'd pass Marquis after Marquee saying live
(03:20):
nude show, live sex, and my curiosity would be peauked
in a very different way from what it was we
were going to see. Ever, did satisfy it? Many of
these should? I I wouldn't know where to go. I've
seen a lot of things in my life I've never
seen that, at least not professionally. If you think about it,
it should be an Olympic event. But getting back on subject,
(03:40):
many of those theaters. Probably all of them hadn't been
purpose built, but rather, once upon a time had been
legit theaters in movie houses, but the culture could no
longer support them, and so these lower rent industries moved in.
But ten or fifteen years later, all of that was gone,
replaced by foe attraction in middling chain restaurants. And that's
(04:02):
what Gatlinburg felt like to me around nineteen eighty faux attractions.
I'm sure there were chain restaurants too, but I don't
recall those. I am embarrassed to admit that I was
not immune to the lure of faux attractions. There was
a Ripley's Believe It or Not museum in town, and
I was very intrigued by that. I should have said that,
like this Ripley's Believe It or Not museum. I'm trying
(04:26):
to get the quotation marks in there so you know
that I understand it was not a real museum. I
don't exactly remember why it intrigued me so much. I've
never known. Actually, immediately after, when I started regretting things,
I asked myself that question. I was, from a very
young age interested in past culture and things like old
(04:46):
comic strips, so I probably had seen Robert Ripley's comics panel,
the thing that started that brand. But they're boring, They're
kind of tedious. I would take almost any other Golden
Age comic strip over Ripley's, believe it or not. I
don't mean to brag when I say that, even as
a little kid, Crazy Cat, which I've talked about on
(05:07):
this show a number of times, appealed to me more
than something is flat and as filled with useless trivia.
And I am nothing but fascinated by useless trivia. As Ripley's,
believe it or not, see that was boring useless trivia.
It still has to have some interest to it. And
whereas today many people refer to Crazy Cat as art,
(05:28):
and it is, and it's been republished in many forms
over the years, people still write about it. No one
is clamoring for a giant coffee table book of old
Ripley's panels. So it wasn't that. And I don't think
it was the TV show that ran on ABC on
Saturdays for about five years, the one that was hosted
by Jack Palantz. I don't think it had happened yet.
(05:50):
I did know that a young Sparky Schultz, as a kid,
had gotten his dog Spike mentioned in a Ripley's panel.
Spike was one of his models for Snoopy, But that
wouldn't have motivated me to beg my parents to buy
me a pass into that building. All I really know
is that I had a young boy's fascination with the
maccab the frightening, the eerie, and I thought I could
(06:11):
find that kind of stimulation in that building. What I
also knew but didn't like to admit, was that I
really couldn't handle any of that, the implications of it all.
I was always reading scary books and things and then
hiding them on myself, or watching movies I wasn't ready
to watch, because as a latch key kid, no one
was going to stop me from watching them, And then
(06:33):
I couldn't fall asleep at night. So I badgered my
parents into taking me into this thing that they had
to know was garbage, a freak show at best, and
it must have been terribly unimpressive because I remember almost
nothing about it except for one thing, and that one
thing blocks out everything else. Somewhere in that building was
(06:54):
an exhibit. Hear those quotes again about the sixteenth century
French astrologer Nostre Damas. I hadn't heard of him before that.
There was a paragraph explanation of this guy, that he
made all these predictions and they were always right, and
that he predicted that the world would end in nineteen
eighty three or eighty four or eighty five, some date
(07:14):
of destruction that was imminent, that was just around the corner.
At least that's how I remember it. I think what
he actually said was nineteen ninety nine, or maybe that
was Prince. Either way, it scared the hell out of
me for the rest of the trip, and we still
had literally thousands of miles to go around the North
(07:34):
American continent. I was an anxious and depressed wreck, with
the hand of doom upon my neck, of the extinction
of myself and everyone I loved. I had hours a
day in the back seat to contemplate the termination of
all as faceless miles of the great planes rolled by
(07:55):
outside the window. Funny thing one of the cassettes my
dad would play on the stereo again and again during
that trip was the Greatest Hits of Perry Como. And
what was one of Perry Como's greatest hits that he
would love you till the end of time. I was
inclined to that sort of morbid thinking to begin with,
because it was the Cold War, the age of Ronald
(08:18):
ray Guns and the idea of nuclear annihilation was very
much on people's minds. Both the television film The Day
After and the theatrical film Testament, both of them about
the aftermath of a nuclear attack, came out in nineteen
eighty three. The film adaptation of Stephen King's The Dead Zone,
partially about an insane president starting a nuclear war, also
(08:40):
came out in nineteen eighty three, as did the somewhat
lighter War Games, the Matthew Broderick and Ali Sheety adventure
film about a rogue computer taking over at Norad and
starting a civilization ending war. Something was in the air,
and you just had to hope it wasn't a missile.
For no reason at all, that experience had popped into
my head early yesterday, and then that night, rather unintentionally,
(09:03):
I watched Mike Lee's nineteen ninety three film Naked. It
just happened past me, and I'm really liking Mike lee films.
I'm catching up on his back catalog from time to time,
and it's about some very disaffected Londoners at that time,
and there's a discussion of Nostradamus in there as well.
So it's like I was being kicked in the head
by this memory. I was prepared to say to you
(09:23):
just now that the end of the world may be imminent,
and yet the Colorado Rockies still have neither a team
president nor a general manager. But as I open my
mouth to speak, that became no longer true. They finally
found the man to head their front office and it
is former A's WonderBoy defroct Dodgers general manager ten years
(09:47):
strategic something or other for the Cleveland Browns, an organization
know neither for on field success nor good process. He's
been in football the last ten years, Paul Depodesta, and
I can only say to mister Deepodesta, God bless you
and good luck, because you really have your work cutout
for you. And at least I know that this man
(10:08):
understands what on base percentage is, which is something that
no other Rockies executive ever has been able to say.
Let me interrupt myself this much, though, this guy has
been with the Browns for ten years, which means in
some way he was in the decision making chain about
the Deshaun Watson trade. If I've got my chronology right,
(10:28):
the quarterback was first accused of sexual assault in twenty
twenty one, and they traded for him in twenty twenty two,
and that he's barely played since then is sort of
beside the point, except that it means the deal was
bad morally and bad in a purely athletic sense. And
so we turned to another chapter of Rockies Baseball that
may not be all that promising here at the edge
(10:49):
of everything, And so let me give them some advice.
If the end of the world were imminent or Rob
Manfred was just going to really screw up the twenty
twenty seven season with a lockout, and I could take
over the Rockies. I think that for twenty twenty six,
I would just shoot the entire bank account checking a
savings and give the fans a home run palooza. Just
(11:09):
really lean into the ballpark, not into winning, into the show.
I'd tell agents, I'm not going to be outbid. Signed
Pete Alonzo and Eugenio Suarez and Kyle Schwarber and any
other free agent on the block with plus power. That
team wouldn't win because I'm not signing any pitching, damn it.
But the fans can come out and see a daily
home run derby from both sides. Nowadays, teams routinely hit
(11:33):
over two hundred home runs and post losing records anyway,
just because the ball is filled with helium and sugar
cocoa bombs. But prior to the post nineteen ninety four
nineteen ninety five stoppage, when things were a little more balanced,
it had happened to only four times in the nearly
seventy five years since the lively ball was introduced in
nineteen twenty. So here's what I'm getting at. In nineteen
(11:56):
sixty four, just one example, the Minnesota Twins led the
am Erican League in home runs by hitting two hundred
and twenty one of them. Even the shortstop future al
MVP Zeil Oversaias hit twenty home runs, But the big
numbers came from first base. In the outfield, Bob Allison,
who mostly played corner outfield in his career, was jumping
between first and the pastures, with Don Mincher taking over
(12:18):
at first when he was away. Mincher was a lefty
slugger who probably would have hit over three hundred of
them home runs. I mean if he had come up
earlier or later, but playing in the sixties and seventies
just wasn't conducive to that. As it was, he hit
two hundred, including twenty three in just three hundred and
twenty eight bats. In nineteen sixty four, Alison hit thirty
two on his own, center fielder Jimmy Hall hit twenty five,
(12:41):
right fielder Tony o Leva thirty two, and left fielder
Harmon Killebrew led the league with forty nine. Despite all
that power, they finished seventh in a ten team league,
going seventy nine and eighty three. The pitching was decent,
with Jim Cott Camillo Pascual a half season of My
Kat grant their Pythagorean record. Their expected record based on
(13:04):
runs scored and allowed, was eighty seven and seventy five.
So my glib analysis here is simply that they had
bad luck and needed perhaps one more starting pitcher. They
opened this season with a rotation of Pascual, Caught, Dick Stigman,
Lee Stang, the e at the end of Stange is silent,
and Jim Roland. The latter three pitchers had their moments
(13:27):
over the course of their careers, but they weren't very good.
In nineteen sixty four, the Twins realized that and they
attempted to repair it by trading Stang and third base
prospect George Banks to Cleveland at the June fifteenth deadline.
That's how they got Grant. It wasn't too late, they
were only three and a half games behind, but it
wasn't enough. They'd be ten games under five hundred the
(13:47):
rest of the way. In nineteen sixty five, though, Grant
paid off, going twenty one and seven with a three
point thirty ERA, as the Twins won one hundred and
two games and the Pennant. This is all interesting from
a team building point of view, but my real game
here is that with all those fireworks going on and
also ran Twins team finished third in the American League
(14:08):
in attendance and seventh overall in the major leagues, and
we're one of seven teams to draw over one point
two million fans. So they made bank, is what I'm saying.
Not that making bank matters. When the world is coming
to an end, you can't take it with you, folks,
so enjoy yourself. It's later than you think. I realized
the Rockies draw because it's a nice day at the ballpark,
even when they're terrible. But I think they would really
(14:28):
draw this way, and they would give the fans something
to look at, even if winning another pennant remains a
subject for further research. And won't it be fun to
see the home runs sail into the distance as volcanoes
pop off in the background. My other takeaway from this
watch out for your imaginative, impressionable children. They may not
(14:49):
be talking about it out loud, but their emotions may
be churning under the surface. Look up, shouts the child inwardly?
Is that an airplane, a shooting star or an ice?
This week we go back, as I said earlier, to
episode twenty one of the Infinite Inning, to two stories
of Hall of Fame catchers under duress. The first concerns
(15:10):
Roger Bresnahan and a horrific train crash, the latter Mickey
Cochrane and the crashing noises produced by everyday life. I
don't think there's a topical hook for this, except as
usual empathy. That's all for me for this reissue episode.
I'll be back periodically if I need to be to
paper over some breaks, and you'll hear from me to
say farewell. At the end. Our reissue adventure begins right
(15:33):
after this brief intermission. So fasten your seat belts, pull
down your helmets, and pull up your trousers. I suppose
this isn't one of those shows I used to wonder
about in Times Square. A trip to the infinite inning
(15:59):
can determine the outcome of a pennant race as much
as the talent on the team, bagaries of the schedule,
or lucky bounces of the ball. The player manager of
the nineteen eleven Saint Louis Cardinals was Roger Bresnahan, thirty
two years old and a tough guy. He's in the
Hall of Fame as a catcher, and perhaps simply because
as a catcher he popularized the wearing of shin guards
(16:22):
and a face mask rather than just standing aways back
behind the bat and hoping that every bone in your
face didn't get broken. But he was also a tremendous player,
a leadoff man with a career on base percentage of
nearly four hundred and a star on John McGrath's early
Giants teams. He was not a soft guy during his career.
People thought of him as having an Irish temper because
(16:43):
he was born over there, but in fact he was
from Toledo. The Irish temper, though, was real. Bill James
said of him, almost every paragraph written about him seemed
to include the adjective fiery. He was one of those
guys that if you were on his team and played hard,
he was as nice to you as could be. But
if you got on his bad side, you'd think he
was the breath of hell. Retrochiate lists thirty ejections for
(17:05):
Bresnahan as a player and another twenty six as a manager.
He only managed five years. My favorite story about him
about his intensity was the one about how he got
to be catcher in the first place. See Bresnahan played
a bit of everywhere, came up as a pitcher, moved
to the outfield, spotted at third base. But one day
he was talking to McGraw and he said, our catcher sucks.
(17:27):
Why don't you get a real catcher on this team?
And McGraw probably just being sarcastic or drunk or hostile
or both. He was usually one of those three, if
not all of them, said you think it's so easy,
you do it and so from then on Bresnahan was
a catcher and was awesome at it. This was not
a guy who got pushed around easily, and yet everyone
has their breaking point. On the night of July eleventh
(17:48):
of that year, the Cardinals were changing series. They had
just finished a four game set with the Phillies in
Philadelphia and had dropped the last game. They won three
of four, but the last game they had the misfortune
to run into a rookie named Grover Cleveland Alexander. The
Phillies were a pretty good team that year, and as
the Cardinals taking three or four from them suggests, so
were they. At the conclusion of that game, they were
(18:09):
ten games over five hundred and on a pace for
eighty seven wins, a little uptick, and you could imagine
a Pennant being in the offing. They were in fifth place,
but it was a tightly packed league and they were
only three games back, so running into Pete Alexander's side,
things were looking up. That night, they got on the
Federal Express, a train that ran from Washington to Boston,
(18:29):
to go play the Braves. It was a big train,
an important train on the New York, New Haven and
Hartford Railroad. It was the same train that William Howard Taft,
who was president that moment, liked to take when he
went out of town. The Cardinals occupied two sleeper cars
out of six in total. There was also a day
coach full of convention goers returning from Atlantic City, where
(18:49):
they'd attended the annual meeting of the Northern Christian Endeavors.
In addition, there was a car full of fish. Sounds
a bit surreal, but the government was bringing a load
of fish to be seeded into lakes. I'm not really sure.
The trains consist had the Cardinals coaches up towards the front,
not too far behind the engine and the tender Resnahan
(19:10):
complained as players couldn't sleep from all the noise. When
the train crossed into Manhattan, they actually listened to him.
It was broken up and reordered. This added an hour
and a half delay, and the two Cardinals cars were
moved way to the back of the train. At that moment,
a relief engineer was also called in, presumably a more
rested driver to finished the trip up to Boston. Thing
(19:31):
was that he didn't know the route as well as
the guy he had replaced. They took off again. A
mile and a half out of Bridgeport, Connecticut, the train
hit an embankment, going sixty miles an hour where the
speed limit was only fifteen. It jumped the track plunged,
depending on what you read, fifteen to thirty feet. The
day Coach, the car that replaced the Cardinals car, and
the lineup suffered the most damage of any car in
(19:51):
the train. It was just destroyed utterly. The engine, the tender,
and seven other cars were completely wrecked. The engineer and
the firemen were hurled sixty feet from the wreck and
crushed beneath the tender. Most of the injured were pinned
by wreckage, and the responding firemen carefully had to chop
them free with axes. Living were intertwined with the dead,
sometimes their family members. There was a Sergeant G. E.
(20:13):
Rodgers of the United States Coast Artillery traveling on the
train with his wife, his three year old son, and
his one month old daughter. He and the boy took
an upper berth, his wife and the daughter a lower one.
When the train wrecked, he and the boy were thrown clear.
Somehow his body protected that of his son and they
were able to crawl out of the train. He couldn't
find his wife and his baby girl. It was only later,
(20:34):
after frantic digging, that their bodies were found. The cardinals
were digging too. Thanks to their spot at the rear
of the train, they were thrown around quite a bit
and suffered scrapes and bruises, but no serious injuries. Hadn't
realized what happened at first, and then slowly they stumbled
out of the train, still in their pajamas, pulling on
random items of clothing, and as you would expect ballplayers
(20:55):
to do, they jumped into help with the rescue effort.
Rebel Oakes, the center fielder on that team, said, the
cars that had fallen onto the street were piled up
like a monster heap of kindlings. Men, women and children
were sticking out of the debris. Some had arms cut off,
others were minus legs. In some instances the tops of
heads had been crushed. Among the passengers was a man
who was returning from the funeral of his sister. Oakes continued.
(21:16):
He was accompanied by his wife, two children, and his brother.
Only himself and one of the children had escaped. It
was pitiful to hear him calling aloud for his wife
and children as he dashed about the wreck searching for them.
Rupe Geyer, a pitcher, said, I helped to carry out
a woman who had two boards protruding from her body.
Her head was split open. I heard that she died subsequently.
One of the toughest sights was that of the little
(21:36):
babies crushed and mangled. There were fourteen killed, forty seven injured,
and the Saint Louis Cardinals must have seen most of them.
When they finally got into Boston. The game had to
be canceled because of how late they showed up. Resnahan said,
it was horrible, horrible. What effect it will have upon
the nerve of my men can only be told from
their future performance upon the diamond. Remember this is a
very hard man in a hard bitten era. Baseball had
(21:59):
that ethic. Everything was a test of your manhood. Everything
was about bearing down and gritting your teeth and gutting
it out. Wasn't a lot of room for sentiment, But
as we now know, dramatic events do have a long
term effect on you. Sometimes they move in and they stay.
Almost fifty years earlier, Charles Dickens was on a train
passing through Staplehurst in Kent. There had been a misunderstanding.
(22:21):
A construction crew had removed about forty feet of track
ahead of the train for repairs. That train two took
a fatal plunge. Seven of eight first class cars went over.
Dickens was in the eighth was turned over. He had
to climb out at the moment. Though bruised up some,
he was not shaken, and he went about trying to
bring aid to people who were badly heard. He'd cut
(22:41):
water in his hat and bring it to them. At
least one person died in his arms. He had the
presence of mind to remember that he had a copy
of the latest chapter of Our Mutual Friend, which he
was working on, in his jacket, which had been left
behind in the train, and he actually crawled back into
the car to get it once everything was over with.
It was only later, when he got away from it all,
that he broke down. He lost his voice. There wasn't
(23:02):
a physiological reason for that. He had no sore throat.
It was just a stress reaction. He described himself as
shattered for the rest of his life. He had a
problem with trains. He had a problem going everywhere, sometimes
even in a horse drawn carriage. He said, I have sudden,
vague rushes of terror which are perfectly unreasonable but quite insurmountable.
We call those panic attacks. This man, who was known
(23:25):
for not just writing, but for reportage, for traveling, for
doing dramatic readings on the stage in front of audiences,
couldn't get on a train anymore. Maybe the effects on
a ball player wouldn't be too different. Perhaps a week
or ten days after the accident, outside of Bridgeport, Resnahan
told a reporter regarding his team's chances, this may not
(23:45):
be a cardinal year, after all. Why would he have
said that they still had something like sixty games to
play and were only five games out. The answer was
that something had changed. Hans Wagner, the great shortstop, said
of Resnahan, he could do anything. He could catch pitch,
play the infield, or play the outfield. He could hit, throw,
(24:06):
and run. I'd say he was the most talented and
versatile player in the history of the sport. He was
also the Duke of trelle As. The writers called him,
a guy who could never be cowed or intimidated on
the field, least of all by umpires. But he could
be cowed. He could be intimidated. The Cardinals fell apart
in the weeks after the accident, went thirty three and
(24:28):
forty two. The rest of the way finished twenty two
games out. So what can ruin a team's chances and
a pendant race? Sometimes all it takes is a ticket
to ride in the Infinite Inning. I'm Stephen Goldman, and
this is the Infinite Inning Baseball Podcast. Well, hello, there
(25:24):
a diddle diddle, the cat in the fiddle cow jumped
over the moon, coming down anytime now, and her utterers
are looking very full. So get you deep underground to
episode twenty one. You're too old for nursery rhymes, aren't you.
It's very good to be talking to you again. I
wanted to continue with the theme that I explored in
our prologue with another tale of a catcher who might
(25:47):
have gotten a little bit lost. The Infinite Inning is
not solely about depression, and depression is not fully what
being in the Infinite Inning is about, but the two
conditions do overlap significantly. In both states. Words can operate
on two levels, being humorous or pleading or angry, and
simultaneously meaning something else altogether. I've often said that having
(26:10):
depression is like saying I want to go home and
you already are home. You joke about wanting the impossible,
the contradictory, the quixotic, but it's not a joke. You
really want to go home. The tragedy of it is
that you're there and you can't feel being there. It's
got me now a little bit. Brothers and sisters. It's
not unusual for me. It's something I have to deal
(26:33):
with on a day to day basis. But I'm very
fortunate in that at this stage of my career, I
am self supervised, and if necessary, when the black dog
has got me pinned to the canvas, I can disappear
a little bit, and as long as I meet my deadlines,
no one will really notice that I'm gone. I'm not
sure what they assume that I'm doing between deadlines. See
(26:55):
the secret of freelancing, for those of you who are
going to attempt it in your life. You get the assignment,
you go away, and you turn the assignment in clean
and ready to go. You don't trouble your editor with
questions or extensions or anything unless it's absolutely necessary. Well,
I misspoke slightly there. As someone who has spent many
years working as an editor, let me assure you that
(27:16):
you never ask for an extension. Extensions are for near
fatal illnesses and deaths in the family. There are no exceptions.
So when I'm gone, I guess they assume that I'm
working on it or indulging in some hobby flying kites.
Perhaps there's a character in Dickens like that in David Copperfield.
He's absolutely nuts, but he flies kites and that seems
to make things better for him. I'm sure some of
(27:37):
you who are of similar disposition have a more difficult experience,
and that you get up each day, you do that
gut check, and for whatever reason you've been turned down.
The emotional thermostat has been dropped to a cold forty
degrees or something like that, and you still have to
go to the cubicle. You still have to report to work,
(27:57):
You still have to stand in front of the class
and teach it, even though what you really want and
need to do is pull the covers up to your
nose and never get out again. Imagine being a ball
player in that situation, having to go out on that
field and perform to your utmost when all you want
to do is hide. But there have been some I
strongly suspect that Mickey Cochrane was one who would have
(28:18):
understood what I'm talking about. The player I'm referring to,
if you're not familiar with him, he's a Hall of
Fame catcher, kind of an important one. I guess that's encouraging.
I'm going to explain why I said that about Cochrane,
but I need to give you a little background first. Cochrane,
whose birth name was Gordon, came out of Boston University
rapidly established himself as a top prospect and the miners
(28:39):
in at twenty two, was a star in the major leagues,
hitting three thirty one for Connie Mack on the nineteen
twenty five Philadelphia A's. Mack was building a great team
which would win Penance from nineteen twenty nine through nineteen
thirty one and won the World Series the first two
of those years, and Cochran was a big part of that.
In the time that he was with the A's, overall
he hit three twenty one and he had such a
(29:00):
great reputation as a team leader that he was voted
the Al MVP in nineteen twenty eight, a year in
which he only hit two ninety three and the as
hadn't even won the Pennant, they'd finished second to the Yankees.
If you are not old enough to have seen Cochrane,
and I think very few people are at this point.
As Casey Stengel said, most of them are dead at
the present time. The player today who probably best matches
(29:20):
Cochrane at least an output is Joe Mauer, at least
when Mauer was a catcher and playing at his best.
In that, both were left handed hitters who emphasized patients
and batting average over power. Physically, they weren't similar at all.
Cochrane was five ten and one hundred and eighty pounds
and Mauer is six' five and two twenty. Five although
there's one other. Similarity their catching careers ended for broadly similar.
(29:42):
Reasons i'm not just talking about. Concussions although concussions certainly
played a role in the dnument Of cochrane's, career there
were injuries worse than concussions and other, things heavier things
going on inside as. Well Connie mack started to break
up his Great a's, team the one that Had cochrane
And Lefty, Grove Jimmy, Fox Al, Simmons Jimmy Dike's max's.
(30:04):
CAMERA I bishop let him not go. Unmentioned in the
early nineteen, thirties the stock market crash had wiped him
out and the depression was killing a's ticket, sales and
he was of the opinion that The philadelphia fans were
taking his team for granted, anyway so he began selling
players off for. Cash whole bunch of them went to
The Red, sox but Not. Cochrane In december of nineteen thirty,
(30:25):
three he was traded to The Detroit tigers for a
fringe catcher Named Johnny passik and one hundred thousand. Dollars
and it should be obvious from the WAY i said
that that the one hundred thousand dollars was the important. Part,
hey it's present Day steve interrupting Past steve to warn
you of an incoming. BREAK i go back and forth
as to how mad we should be At Connie mack
for breaking up that great. TEAM i do see it
(30:47):
as tragic that he never could build another. One the
depression was the depression even for the well, off And
mack was well, off not, wealthy and less. So after
the stock market, crashed it was a good break For
cochrane in that he always wanted to be a, manager
(31:09):
and the, Owner Frank, navin was in the market for.
One he had actually just tried to Make Babe ruth
the manager because The yankees were done With ruth and
they were looking for ways to kind of palm him
off on somebody, else and they knew he wanted to.
Manage they also knew he wasn't going to be The yankees,
manager both because familiarity breeds contempt and because they really
Liked joe McCarthy and properly, so so they tried to
(31:31):
broke her marriage Between navin And, ruth But ruth Blew navin,
off And navin decided not to, wait and it was
a mistake that would Haunt ruth for the rest of his.
Life So cochrane became player, manager and in his first
season with the, team The tigers won The pennant there
first since nineteen oh, nine And cochran hit three twenty
picked up his SECOND mvp award at a time when
guys mostly didn't win SECOND mvp. Awards there was just
(31:54):
a prejudice as If Tom hanks would only get to
win One Best Actor award ever for forrest Or. Something
and then The academy was forced by rule to Ignore
philadelphia or vice. Versa cochran's on field leadership manifested itself
in a really intense. Approach it wasn't always positive, intensity
and on occasion with The a's he was catching Lefty
(32:14):
Rube wahlberg And wahlberg was. Struggling cochran ran out to
the mound regular mound conference, right but. No he Grabbed
wahlberg by the, shoulders spun him around so he faced
center field and kicked him in the, ass and then
he went back behind the. Plate cochrane's nickname Was Black.
Mike some sources will tell you that this is supposed
to reflect the color of his, hair, which to be,
(32:35):
honest if you look at, pictures it's about as black
as hair can possibly. Be it is midnight on top
of his. Head BUT i think it also reflected his.
Moods cochrane was fortunate, enough both because of his own
plane because of his, teammates to play in Five World.
Series the postseason was always really hard on. Him in
the nineteen thirty One World series between The a's and The,
Cardinals Saint louis's rookie center Fielder Pepper, martin who we've
(32:58):
got to talk about more another time hit five hundred
and he stole five bases and six, attempts and The
a's lost in seven, games And, cochrane as The a's,
catcher was very much the goat of that, series although
The a's loss for all kinds of reasons, still as sometimes,
happens the fans just pick somebody to be the. Goat
the game of that series that left the most visceral
(33:18):
impression was the second game in that The a's lost
that one to, nothing both on runs manufactured By martin's base.
Running that game was also a three hit shutout By Bill,
Hallahan so it's hard to say that all the blame
was on the. CATCHER i, mean if you don't, score
you could lose one, nothing ten, nothing one hundred. Nothing
it's all the same damn. Thing all the runs after
the first runner are just. Gravy they were, redundant even
(33:40):
though it shouldn't have all been On. Cochrane he was,
ailing he was, distracted he was trying to stave off
the landlord because a bank failure had just wiped out his.
Savings it was The Great, depression after, all and two years,
earlier the stock market crash had wiped him out, too
just Like Connie. Mack even if you throw that in
though the pitchers played a role in allowing the stolen,
bases they just weren't set up for. It back, then
(34:01):
it wasn't a big stealing, time And cochran also wasn't
the one who Allowed Pepper martin to get twelve. Hits
cochran was so exhausted during that, series which remember he's
both catching and. Managing he played during the day and
he spent his nights in the. Hospital The tigers won
another pennant in nineteen thirty, five and this time they
(34:21):
beat The cubs in six games for the first championship
in team. History and as far AS i, Know cochran
got through all of that in good. Shape no stolen base,
problems no running back and forth to the. Hospital but
this is the problem with. Life doesn't freeze frame like
the end of a nineteen seventy. Sitcom there's always another.
Season On june, fourth nineteen thirty, six The tigers were
(34:41):
playing The a's In. Philadelphia the game was scoreless in
the top of the third when The tigers started pounding
away at the Ag Starter Gordon Rhodes cochran got to
hit twice in that. Inning the first time, around he
walked to load the bases with no outs and then
scored On Charlie garringer's. Single two pitching changes, later The
tigers are still, going having scored six, runs and When
cochran came up, again the bases were again. Loaded the
(35:04):
pitcher was now a fellow Named stuart MacGuire, flyfe whose
brief career in the majors includes just thirty nine point
one innings in which he issued sixty one walks and
that year a league leading sixteen wild. Pitches this was
a special, guy. Improbably flife actually threw a pitch in
the strike zone And cochrane lined it to right center
(35:24):
field and it reached the wall and it bounced away
from centerfielder while he moses three runs scored And cochrane
did two and inside the park Grand. Slam we just
saw one of those this year with The. Nationals he
crossed the, plate stumbled to the dugout and, collapsed though
not wholly from the exertion of rounding the. BASES i
don't know what, happened he said. LATER i started to
go to bat but was suddenly seized by a dizzy.
(35:46):
Feeling then my heart started beating at a rapid, rate
AND i THOUGHT i was going to. Die this is
what we now call a panic. Attack he had been
hospitalized for this reason before during the nineteen thirty Four World.
Series after this, attack he benched. Himself he tried to
manage for a few, days but when he tried to
do a little running to see if he was up
to getting back in the, lineup all those symptoms. Returned
the hard fluttering scares me half to, death he. Said
(36:09):
he returned To, detroit checked into the, hospital and they
diagnosed him with a hyperthyroid, Condition but everybody knew there
was something else going on as. Well Jimmy, dikes his old,
teammate the manager of The White, sox said If mickey
had our, troubles he'd wind up the Zion check of
The American league dykes who never want. ANYTHING i always
(36:29):
thought he was funnier than he, Was and this is
an example of a joke in Bad. Taste Zion check
refers To Congressman marion Zion, check who had just jumped
out of a fifth floor window the Previous august following
a nervous breakdown in the, hospital cochrane was allowed no
visitors except his, wife no newspapers or, radio no. Baseball
thyroid treatment doesn't require that you do not get handled so.
(36:52):
Gingerly after ten days in the, hospital he was sent
away to recuperate on A wyoming. Ranch and, again if
you Think wyoming is, remote now imagine it in the
days before cell phones and satellite. Coverage this was exile
from all. Stress this is nothing to do with your thyroid.
Clan he was away about ten weeks out there on that,
(37:15):
ranch finally returning to the team In. August though he barely,
played he got into a total of forty four games that.
Season given an, offseason he seems to have. Recovered nineteen thirty,
seven he was back as the catcher. Manager he played.
Well he was hitting three zero six through twenty seven.
Games but On may twenty, fifth The tigers were playing
The yankees In New. York Bump hadley was on the
mound for The. Yankees cochran had homeward earlier in the,
(37:38):
game another inside the park. JOB a very patient, hitter
he worked the count to three to. One the next
pitch was way inside up and. In it was not
as is sometimes reported. Beanball cochran recognized it was a,
ball and he was taking all the way, somehow, though
and he confirmed this. Later he just stopped seeing the
ball as it was closing in on. Him he threw
(37:59):
up his arm to defend himself and he fell, away
but the ball just kept homing in on. Him it
knocked him. Out next time anybody heard From, cochrane it
would be In. St Elizabeth hospital after hours of. Unconsciousness
the ball hit his right, temple just over the right.
Eye it fractured his skull in three. Places the impact
was audible up in the press. Box one of the
(38:19):
fractures went almost all the way around his. Skull another
laced through his right. Science there was some question as
to whether he would. Live the question wasn't so much
internal bleeding or, pressure but the sinus fracture meant that
infection might set. In while he was still in, danger
his wife flew in by plane From detroit To New.
York she arrived at the hospital after one. Am cochrane
(38:41):
was sort of. Awake now CAN i get you? Anything she, said,
yeah he said a new. Head cochran wanted to, play
but the tiger said, no it was too, dangerous and
although he attempted to, manage his heart wasn't in, it
and on field career was. Over i'm, left, though with
the idea of black mic in that exchange with his.
Wife CAN i get you? Anything, yeah a new, Head
(39:03):
no doubt he meant it the way he said it
at the, moment but given the contours of his, life
the way that stress affected, him applied the other way.
Too change out my, personality make me. New sure IS
i had heard as, well but that was. Transient the other,
stuff black, mic stuff that was permanent By hercules eleventh.
(39:25):
Labor we have made it to the end of another.
Episode here is the part of the end credits WHEN
i used to tell you how to follow the guest On.
Twitter but there is no guest and there is No,
twitter and such things are beyond my powers to. Repair.
BUSS i will simply tell you that should you wish
to follow me on social, media you can do so
At Stephen gooldman Dot Best guide Dot Social hope to
(39:47):
see you. There you can also write us At Infinite
inning at gmail dot com and PLEASE i peg of.
You please rate, us rate, us rate us at the
podcast of your choice iTunes or what have. You every
positive review helps keep this program. Alive we have a sponsor,
now but this episode is nonetheless brought to you by
(40:08):
the number. Sixteen ever SINCE i mentioned That Bill bevins
bit earlier in the, show my producer is just wondering
about the, office, saying here comes the tying, run and
here comes the winning, run over and over again in
a really Bad Red barbara. Impression but he won't get
back to. Work our theme, song which you are listening
(40:28):
to now and have listened to throughout the, episode was
co written by myself and Doctor Rick, moring and he
AND i are going to have Bad Duncan dunne's coffee,
later because friendship is a garden you have to tend,
it and bad coffee is just the price you have to. Pay,
well IF i can just get the ghost Of Leo
durocher to get back in the closet and stop challenging
me to a game of that's all from both past
(40:49):
and present b for this reissue. Episode i'll be back
tomorrow with an all new episode three fifty. Two be
well until, Then, okay, yeah
Well, hello there, and welcome to the twenty third Infinite
Inning reissue episode. I thank you for being here. I
myself am Steven Goldman. Who else would I be kind
of redundant to say I myself? And yet I did.
Just in case either of us had any confusion about that,
we go back this week to episode number twenty one,
(00:47):
early in the run of the show. More about that
in a minute. This portion of our reissue experience is
dimly about eschatology, but also about the very devout Colorado
Rocket and being very devout, they must be interested in eschatology.
If you want to know what I think about this
in a more concrete way, then I'm going to discuss here.
(01:09):
Read Other Lands, a journey through Earth's extinct worlds by
Thomas Halliday that contains a pretty good set of previews
for where I think the human experience will ultimately end up,
or at least resolve. When I was a kid, I
had a bad experience with Nostradamus, not in person, but
close enough. My parents used to take me, my sister,
(01:30):
and three cats on these long cross country car trips
during the summers. Late in the summers, so we barely
made it back in time for school, and while sometimes
we didn't. My folks were not wealthy. Only one of
them was their own boss, and I don't wholly understand
where they found the time or the money, but somehow
they did. And as with every movie on this subject,
(01:51):
sometimes being trapped with one's family in that way was
wonderful and sometimes it was the worst thing that ever
happened to you. But I wouldn't trade those experiences is
for anything. One of those several trips, I believe it
happened in the very early nineteen eighties, saw spend some
time in and around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park
in Tennessee. I was just young enough that for a
(02:13):
moment I took the name of the mountain range seriously.
I expected to see some smoking mountains. One day, it
was a bit foggy, smoke really did seem to rise
off the mountains, and I felt validated. One of the
main entrances to the national Park lies at Gatlinburg, Tennessee,
and we paused there for a day or so. I
don't know what it's like today, it has been a
long time, but it felt to me at that time
(02:35):
and at that point in my life, well, very cheesy.
It was there to take some money off of the
tourists before they took in some nature, And no doubt,
you've seen a number of places like that around the
country that try to take advantage of their proximity to
the national parks. In my memory, it very much resembled
a more rural version of what Times Square in New
(02:57):
York later became. I don't mean the version that we
have now with so many lights that you can see
the place from Batelgeist. But what I mean is that
at the time, in the early eighties, Times Square and
the adjacent areas of Manhattan just featured sex shops. I'd
be in the city to go to a museum or
a play and we'd pass Marquis after Marquee saying live
(03:20):
nude show, live sex, and my curiosity would be peauked
in a very different way from what it was we
were going to see. Ever, did satisfy it? Many of
these should? I I wouldn't know where to go. I've
seen a lot of things in my life I've never
seen that, at least not professionally. If you think about it,
it should be an Olympic event. But getting back on subject,
(03:40):
many of those theaters. Probably all of them hadn't been
purpose built, but rather, once upon a time had been
legit theaters in movie houses, but the culture could no
longer support them, and so these lower rent industries moved in.
But ten or fifteen years later, all of that was gone,
replaced by foe attraction in middling chain restaurants. And that's
(04:02):
what Gatlinburg felt like to me around nineteen eighty faux attractions.
I'm sure there were chain restaurants too, but I don't
recall those. I am embarrassed to admit that I was
not immune to the lure of faux attractions. There was
a Ripley's Believe It or Not museum in town, and
I was very intrigued by that. I should have said that,
like this Ripley's Believe It or Not museum. I'm trying
(04:26):
to get the quotation marks in there so you know
that I understand it was not a real museum. I
don't exactly remember why it intrigued me so much. I've
never known. Actually, immediately after, when I started regretting things,
I asked myself that question. I was, from a very
young age interested in past culture and things like old
(04:46):
comic strips, so I probably had seen Robert Ripley's comics panel,
the thing that started that brand. But they're boring, They're
kind of tedious. I would take almost any other Golden
Age comic strip over Ripley's, believe it or not. I
don't mean to brag when I say that, even as
a little kid, Crazy Cat, which I've talked about on
(05:07):
this show a number of times, appealed to me more
than something is flat and as filled with useless trivia.
And I am nothing but fascinated by useless trivia. As Ripley's,
believe it or not, see that was boring useless trivia.
It still has to have some interest to it. And
whereas today many people refer to Crazy Cat as art,
(05:28):
and it is, and it's been republished in many forms
over the years, people still write about it. No one
is clamoring for a giant coffee table book of old
Ripley's panels. So it wasn't that. And I don't think
it was the TV show that ran on ABC on
Saturdays for about five years, the one that was hosted
by Jack Palantz. I don't think it had happened yet.
(05:50):
I did know that a young Sparky Schultz, as a kid,
had gotten his dog Spike mentioned in a Ripley's panel.
Spike was one of his models for Snoopy, But that
wouldn't have motivated me to beg my parents to buy
me a pass into that building. All I really know
is that I had a young boy's fascination with the
maccab the frightening, the eerie, and I thought I could
(06:11):
find that kind of stimulation in that building. What I
also knew but didn't like to admit, was that I
really couldn't handle any of that, the implications of it all.
I was always reading scary books and things and then
hiding them on myself, or watching movies I wasn't ready
to watch, because as a latch key kid, no one
was going to stop me from watching them, And then
(06:33):
I couldn't fall asleep at night. So I badgered my
parents into taking me into this thing that they had
to know was garbage, a freak show at best, and
it must have been terribly unimpressive because I remember almost
nothing about it except for one thing, and that one
thing blocks out everything else. Somewhere in that building was
(06:54):
an exhibit. Hear those quotes again about the sixteenth century
French astrologer Nostre Damas. I hadn't heard of him before that.
There was a paragraph explanation of this guy, that he
made all these predictions and they were always right, and
that he predicted that the world would end in nineteen
eighty three or eighty four or eighty five, some date
(07:14):
of destruction that was imminent, that was just around the corner.
At least that's how I remember it. I think what
he actually said was nineteen ninety nine, or maybe that
was Prince. Either way, it scared the hell out of
me for the rest of the trip, and we still
had literally thousands of miles to go around the North
(07:34):
American continent. I was an anxious and depressed wreck, with
the hand of doom upon my neck, of the extinction
of myself and everyone I loved. I had hours a
day in the back seat to contemplate the termination of
all as faceless miles of the great planes rolled by
(07:55):
outside the window. Funny thing one of the cassettes my
dad would play on the stereo again and again during
that trip was the Greatest Hits of Perry Como. And
what was one of Perry Como's greatest hits that he
would love you till the end of time. I was
inclined to that sort of morbid thinking to begin with,
because it was the Cold War, the age of Ronald
(08:18):
ray Guns and the idea of nuclear annihilation was very
much on people's minds. Both the television film The Day
After and the theatrical film Testament, both of them about
the aftermath of a nuclear attack, came out in nineteen
eighty three. The film adaptation of Stephen King's The Dead Zone,
partially about an insane president starting a nuclear war, also
(08:40):
came out in nineteen eighty three, as did the somewhat
lighter War Games, the Matthew Broderick and Ali Sheety adventure
film about a rogue computer taking over at Norad and
starting a civilization ending war. Something was in the air,
and you just had to hope it wasn't a missile.
For no reason at all, that experience had popped into
my head early yesterday, and then that night, rather unintentionally,
(09:03):
I watched Mike Lee's nineteen ninety three film Naked. It
just happened past me, and I'm really liking Mike lee films.
I'm catching up on his back catalog from time to time,
and it's about some very disaffected Londoners at that time,
and there's a discussion of Nostradamus in there as well.
So it's like I was being kicked in the head
by this memory. I was prepared to say to you
(09:23):
just now that the end of the world may be imminent,
and yet the Colorado Rockies still have neither a team
president nor a general manager. But as I open my
mouth to speak, that became no longer true. They finally
found the man to head their front office and it
is former A's WonderBoy defroct Dodgers general manager ten years
(09:47):
strategic something or other for the Cleveland Browns, an organization
know neither for on field success nor good process. He's
been in football the last ten years, Paul Depodesta, and
I can only say to mister Deepodesta, God bless you
and good luck, because you really have your work cutout
for you. And at least I know that this man
(10:08):
understands what on base percentage is, which is something that
no other Rockies executive ever has been able to say.
Let me interrupt myself this much, though, this guy has
been with the Browns for ten years, which means in
some way he was in the decision making chain about
the Deshaun Watson trade. If I've got my chronology right,
(10:28):
the quarterback was first accused of sexual assault in twenty
twenty one, and they traded for him in twenty twenty two,
and that he's barely played since then is sort of
beside the point, except that it means the deal was
bad morally and bad in a purely athletic sense. And
so we turned to another chapter of Rockies Baseball that
may not be all that promising here at the edge
(10:49):
of everything, And so let me give them some advice.
If the end of the world were imminent or Rob
Manfred was just going to really screw up the twenty
twenty seven season with a lockout, and I could take
over the Rockies. I think that for twenty twenty six,
I would just shoot the entire bank account checking a
savings and give the fans a home run palooza. Just
(11:09):
really lean into the ballpark, not into winning, into the show.
I'd tell agents, I'm not going to be outbid. Signed
Pete Alonzo and Eugenio Suarez and Kyle Schwarber and any
other free agent on the block with plus power. That
team wouldn't win because I'm not signing any pitching, damn it.
But the fans can come out and see a daily
home run derby from both sides. Nowadays, teams routinely hit
(11:33):
over two hundred home runs and post losing records anyway,
just because the ball is filled with helium and sugar
cocoa bombs. But prior to the post nineteen ninety four
nineteen ninety five stoppage, when things were a little more balanced,
it had happened to only four times in the nearly
seventy five years since the lively ball was introduced in
nineteen twenty. So here's what I'm getting at. In nineteen
(11:56):
sixty four, just one example, the Minnesota Twins led the
am Erican League in home runs by hitting two hundred
and twenty one of them. Even the shortstop future al
MVP Zeil Oversaias hit twenty home runs, But the big
numbers came from first base. In the outfield, Bob Allison,
who mostly played corner outfield in his career, was jumping
between first and the pastures, with Don Mincher taking over
(12:18):
at first when he was away. Mincher was a lefty
slugger who probably would have hit over three hundred of
them home runs. I mean if he had come up
earlier or later, but playing in the sixties and seventies
just wasn't conducive to that. As it was, he hit
two hundred, including twenty three in just three hundred and
twenty eight bats. In nineteen sixty four, Alison hit thirty
two on his own, center fielder Jimmy Hall hit twenty five,
(12:41):
right fielder Tony o Leva thirty two, and left fielder
Harmon Killebrew led the league with forty nine. Despite all
that power, they finished seventh in a ten team league,
going seventy nine and eighty three. The pitching was decent,
with Jim Cott Camillo Pascual a half season of My
Kat grant their Pythagorean record. Their expected record based on
(13:04):
runs scored and allowed, was eighty seven and seventy five.
So my glib analysis here is simply that they had
bad luck and needed perhaps one more starting pitcher. They
opened this season with a rotation of Pascual, Caught, Dick Stigman,
Lee Stang, the e at the end of Stange is silent,
and Jim Roland. The latter three pitchers had their moments
(13:27):
over the course of their careers, but they weren't very good.
In nineteen sixty four, the Twins realized that and they
attempted to repair it by trading Stang and third base
prospect George Banks to Cleveland at the June fifteenth deadline.
That's how they got Grant. It wasn't too late, they
were only three and a half games behind, but it
wasn't enough. They'd be ten games under five hundred the
(13:47):
rest of the way. In nineteen sixty five, though, Grant
paid off, going twenty one and seven with a three
point thirty ERA, as the Twins won one hundred and
two games and the Pennant. This is all interesting from
a team building point of view, but my real game
here is that with all those fireworks going on and
also ran Twins team finished third in the American League
(14:08):
in attendance and seventh overall in the major leagues, and
we're one of seven teams to draw over one point
two million fans. So they made bank, is what I'm saying.
Not that making bank matters. When the world is coming
to an end, you can't take it with you, folks,
so enjoy yourself. It's later than you think. I realized
the Rockies draw because it's a nice day at the ballpark,
even when they're terrible. But I think they would really
(14:28):
draw this way, and they would give the fans something
to look at, even if winning another pennant remains a
subject for further research. And won't it be fun to
see the home runs sail into the distance as volcanoes
pop off in the background. My other takeaway from this
watch out for your imaginative, impressionable children. They may not
(14:49):
be talking about it out loud, but their emotions may
be churning under the surface. Look up, shouts the child inwardly?
Is that an airplane, a shooting star or an ice?
This week we go back, as I said earlier, to
episode twenty one of the Infinite Inning, to two stories
of Hall of Fame catchers under duress. The first concerns
(15:10):
Roger Bresnahan and a horrific train crash, the latter Mickey
Cochrane and the crashing noises produced by everyday life. I
don't think there's a topical hook for this, except as
usual empathy. That's all for me for this reissue episode.
I'll be back periodically if I need to be to
paper over some breaks, and you'll hear from me to
say farewell. At the end. Our reissue adventure begins right
(15:33):
after this brief intermission. So fasten your seat belts, pull
down your helmets, and pull up your trousers. I suppose
this isn't one of those shows I used to wonder
about in Times Square. A trip to the infinite inning
(15:59):
can determine the outcome of a pennant race as much
as the talent on the team, bagaries of the schedule,
or lucky bounces of the ball. The player manager of
the nineteen eleven Saint Louis Cardinals was Roger Bresnahan, thirty
two years old and a tough guy. He's in the
Hall of Fame as a catcher, and perhaps simply because
as a catcher he popularized the wearing of shin guards
(16:22):
and a face mask rather than just standing aways back
behind the bat and hoping that every bone in your
face didn't get broken. But he was also a tremendous player,
a leadoff man with a career on base percentage of
nearly four hundred and a star on John McGrath's early
Giants teams. He was not a soft guy during his career.
People thought of him as having an Irish temper because
(16:43):
he was born over there, but in fact he was
from Toledo. The Irish temper, though, was real. Bill James
said of him, almost every paragraph written about him seemed
to include the adjective fiery. He was one of those
guys that if you were on his team and played hard,
he was as nice to you as could be. But
if you got on his bad side, you'd think he
was the breath of hell. Retrochiate lists thirty ejections for
(17:05):
Bresnahan as a player and another twenty six as a manager.
He only managed five years. My favorite story about him
about his intensity was the one about how he got
to be catcher in the first place. See Bresnahan played
a bit of everywhere, came up as a pitcher, moved
to the outfield, spotted at third base. But one day
he was talking to McGraw and he said, our catcher sucks.
(17:27):
Why don't you get a real catcher on this team?
And McGraw probably just being sarcastic or drunk or hostile
or both. He was usually one of those three, if
not all of them, said you think it's so easy,
you do it and so from then on Bresnahan was
a catcher and was awesome at it. This was not
a guy who got pushed around easily, and yet everyone
has their breaking point. On the night of July eleventh
(17:48):
of that year, the Cardinals were changing series. They had
just finished a four game set with the Phillies in
Philadelphia and had dropped the last game. They won three
of four, but the last game they had the misfortune
to run into a rookie named Grover Cleveland Alexander. The
Phillies were a pretty good team that year, and as
the Cardinals taking three or four from them suggests, so
were they. At the conclusion of that game, they were
(18:09):
ten games over five hundred and on a pace for
eighty seven wins, a little uptick, and you could imagine
a Pennant being in the offing. They were in fifth place,
but it was a tightly packed league and they were
only three games back, so running into Pete Alexander's side,
things were looking up. That night, they got on the
Federal Express, a train that ran from Washington to Boston,
(18:29):
to go play the Braves. It was a big train,
an important train on the New York, New Haven and
Hartford Railroad. It was the same train that William Howard Taft,
who was president that moment, liked to take when he
went out of town. The Cardinals occupied two sleeper cars
out of six in total. There was also a day
coach full of convention goers returning from Atlantic City, where
(18:49):
they'd attended the annual meeting of the Northern Christian Endeavors.
In addition, there was a car full of fish. Sounds
a bit surreal, but the government was bringing a load
of fish to be seeded into lakes. I'm not really sure.
The trains consist had the Cardinals coaches up towards the front,
not too far behind the engine and the tender Resnahan
(19:10):
complained as players couldn't sleep from all the noise. When
the train crossed into Manhattan, they actually listened to him.
It was broken up and reordered. This added an hour
and a half delay, and the two Cardinals cars were
moved way to the back of the train. At that moment,
a relief engineer was also called in, presumably a more
rested driver to finished the trip up to Boston. Thing
(19:31):
was that he didn't know the route as well as
the guy he had replaced. They took off again. A
mile and a half out of Bridgeport, Connecticut, the train
hit an embankment, going sixty miles an hour where the
speed limit was only fifteen. It jumped the track plunged,
depending on what you read, fifteen to thirty feet. The
day Coach, the car that replaced the Cardinals car, and
the lineup suffered the most damage of any car in
(19:51):
the train. It was just destroyed utterly. The engine, the tender,
and seven other cars were completely wrecked. The engineer and
the firemen were hurled sixty feet from the wreck and
crushed beneath the tender. Most of the injured were pinned
by wreckage, and the responding firemen carefully had to chop
them free with axes. Living were intertwined with the dead,
sometimes their family members. There was a Sergeant G. E.
(20:13):
Rodgers of the United States Coast Artillery traveling on the
train with his wife, his three year old son, and
his one month old daughter. He and the boy took
an upper berth, his wife and the daughter a lower one.
When the train wrecked, he and the boy were thrown clear.
Somehow his body protected that of his son and they
were able to crawl out of the train. He couldn't
find his wife and his baby girl. It was only later,
(20:34):
after frantic digging, that their bodies were found. The cardinals
were digging too. Thanks to their spot at the rear
of the train, they were thrown around quite a bit
and suffered scrapes and bruises, but no serious injuries. Hadn't
realized what happened at first, and then slowly they stumbled
out of the train, still in their pajamas, pulling on
random items of clothing, and as you would expect ballplayers
(20:55):
to do, they jumped into help with the rescue effort.
Rebel Oakes, the center fielder on that team, said, the
cars that had fallen onto the street were piled up
like a monster heap of kindlings. Men, women and children
were sticking out of the debris. Some had arms cut off,
others were minus legs. In some instances the tops of
heads had been crushed. Among the passengers was a man
who was returning from the funeral of his sister. Oakes continued.
(21:16):
He was accompanied by his wife, two children, and his brother.
Only himself and one of the children had escaped. It
was pitiful to hear him calling aloud for his wife
and children as he dashed about the wreck searching for them.
Rupe Geyer, a pitcher, said, I helped to carry out
a woman who had two boards protruding from her body.
Her head was split open. I heard that she died subsequently.
One of the toughest sights was that of the little
(21:36):
babies crushed and mangled. There were fourteen killed, forty seven injured,
and the Saint Louis Cardinals must have seen most of them.
When they finally got into Boston. The game had to
be canceled because of how late they showed up. Resnahan said,
it was horrible, horrible. What effect it will have upon
the nerve of my men can only be told from
their future performance upon the diamond. Remember this is a
very hard man in a hard bitten era. Baseball had
(21:59):
that ethic. Everything was a test of your manhood. Everything
was about bearing down and gritting your teeth and gutting
it out. Wasn't a lot of room for sentiment, But
as we now know, dramatic events do have a long
term effect on you. Sometimes they move in and they stay.
Almost fifty years earlier, Charles Dickens was on a train
passing through Staplehurst in Kent. There had been a misunderstanding.
(22:21):
A construction crew had removed about forty feet of track
ahead of the train for repairs. That train two took
a fatal plunge. Seven of eight first class cars went over.
Dickens was in the eighth was turned over. He had
to climb out at the moment. Though bruised up some,
he was not shaken, and he went about trying to
bring aid to people who were badly heard. He'd cut
(22:41):
water in his hat and bring it to them. At
least one person died in his arms. He had the
presence of mind to remember that he had a copy
of the latest chapter of Our Mutual Friend, which he
was working on, in his jacket, which had been left
behind in the train, and he actually crawled back into
the car to get it once everything was over with.
It was only later, when he got away from it all,
that he broke down. He lost his voice. There wasn't
(23:02):
a physiological reason for that. He had no sore throat.
It was just a stress reaction. He described himself as
shattered for the rest of his life. He had a
problem with trains. He had a problem going everywhere, sometimes
even in a horse drawn carriage. He said, I have sudden,
vague rushes of terror which are perfectly unreasonable but quite insurmountable.
We call those panic attacks. This man, who was known
(23:25):
for not just writing, but for reportage, for traveling, for
doing dramatic readings on the stage in front of audiences,
couldn't get on a train anymore. Maybe the effects on
a ball player wouldn't be too different. Perhaps a week
or ten days after the accident, outside of Bridgeport, Resnahan
told a reporter regarding his team's chances, this may not
(23:45):
be a cardinal year, after all. Why would he have
said that they still had something like sixty games to
play and were only five games out. The answer was
that something had changed. Hans Wagner, the great shortstop, said
of Resnahan, he could do anything. He could catch pitch,
play the infield, or play the outfield. He could hit, throw,
(24:06):
and run. I'd say he was the most talented and
versatile player in the history of the sport. He was
also the Duke of trelle As. The writers called him,
a guy who could never be cowed or intimidated on
the field, least of all by umpires. But he could
be cowed. He could be intimidated. The Cardinals fell apart
in the weeks after the accident, went thirty three and
(24:28):
forty two. The rest of the way finished twenty two
games out. So what can ruin a team's chances and
a pendant race? Sometimes all it takes is a ticket
to ride in the Infinite Inning. I'm Stephen Goldman, and
this is the Infinite Inning Baseball Podcast. Well, hello, there
(25:24):
a diddle diddle, the cat in the fiddle cow jumped
over the moon, coming down anytime now, and her utterers
are looking very full. So get you deep underground to
episode twenty one. You're too old for nursery rhymes, aren't you.
It's very good to be talking to you again. I
wanted to continue with the theme that I explored in
our prologue with another tale of a catcher who might
(25:47):
have gotten a little bit lost. The Infinite Inning is
not solely about depression, and depression is not fully what
being in the Infinite Inning is about, but the two
conditions do overlap significantly. In both states. Words can operate
on two levels, being humorous or pleading or angry, and
simultaneously meaning something else altogether. I've often said that having
(26:10):
depression is like saying I want to go home and
you already are home. You joke about wanting the impossible,
the contradictory, the quixotic, but it's not a joke. You
really want to go home. The tragedy of it is
that you're there and you can't feel being there. It's
got me now a little bit. Brothers and sisters. It's
not unusual for me. It's something I have to deal
(26:33):
with on a day to day basis. But I'm very
fortunate in that at this stage of my career, I
am self supervised, and if necessary, when the black dog
has got me pinned to the canvas, I can disappear
a little bit, and as long as I meet my deadlines,
no one will really notice that I'm gone. I'm not
sure what they assume that I'm doing between deadlines. See
(26:55):
the secret of freelancing, for those of you who are
going to attempt it in your life. You get the assignment,
you go away, and you turn the assignment in clean
and ready to go. You don't trouble your editor with
questions or extensions or anything unless it's absolutely necessary. Well,
I misspoke slightly there. As someone who has spent many
years working as an editor, let me assure you that
(27:16):
you never ask for an extension. Extensions are for near
fatal illnesses and deaths in the family. There are no exceptions.
So when I'm gone, I guess they assume that I'm
working on it or indulging in some hobby flying kites.
Perhaps there's a character in Dickens like that in David Copperfield.
He's absolutely nuts, but he flies kites and that seems
to make things better for him. I'm sure some of
(27:37):
you who are of similar disposition have a more difficult experience,
and that you get up each day, you do that
gut check, and for whatever reason you've been turned down.
The emotional thermostat has been dropped to a cold forty
degrees or something like that, and you still have to
go to the cubicle. You still have to report to work,
(27:57):
You still have to stand in front of the class
and teach it, even though what you really want and
need to do is pull the covers up to your
nose and never get out again. Imagine being a ball
player in that situation, having to go out on that
field and perform to your utmost when all you want
to do is hide. But there have been some I
strongly suspect that Mickey Cochrane was one who would have
(28:18):
understood what I'm talking about. The player I'm referring to,
if you're not familiar with him, he's a Hall of
Fame catcher, kind of an important one. I guess that's encouraging.
I'm going to explain why I said that about Cochrane,
but I need to give you a little background first. Cochrane,
whose birth name was Gordon, came out of Boston University
rapidly established himself as a top prospect and the miners
(28:39):
in at twenty two, was a star in the major leagues,
hitting three thirty one for Connie Mack on the nineteen
twenty five Philadelphia A's. Mack was building a great team
which would win Penance from nineteen twenty nine through nineteen
thirty one and won the World Series the first two
of those years, and Cochran was a big part of that.
In the time that he was with the A's, overall
he hit three twenty one and he had such a
(29:00):
great reputation as a team leader that he was voted
the Al MVP in nineteen twenty eight, a year in
which he only hit two ninety three and the as
hadn't even won the Pennant, they'd finished second to the Yankees.
If you are not old enough to have seen Cochrane,
and I think very few people are at this point.
As Casey Stengel said, most of them are dead at
the present time. The player today who probably best matches
(29:20):
Cochrane at least an output is Joe Mauer, at least
when Mauer was a catcher and playing at his best.
In that, both were left handed hitters who emphasized patients
and batting average over power. Physically, they weren't similar at all.
Cochrane was five ten and one hundred and eighty pounds
and Mauer is six' five and two twenty. Five although
there's one other. Similarity their catching careers ended for broadly similar.
(29:42):
Reasons i'm not just talking about. Concussions although concussions certainly
played a role in the dnument Of cochrane's, career there
were injuries worse than concussions and other, things heavier things
going on inside as. Well Connie mack started to break
up his Great a's, team the one that Had cochrane
And Lefty, Grove Jimmy, Fox Al, Simmons Jimmy Dike's max's.
(30:04):
CAMERA I bishop let him not go. Unmentioned in the
early nineteen, thirties the stock market crash had wiped him
out and the depression was killing a's ticket, sales and
he was of the opinion that The philadelphia fans were
taking his team for granted, anyway so he began selling
players off for. Cash whole bunch of them went to
The Red, sox but Not. Cochrane In december of nineteen thirty,
(30:25):
three he was traded to The Detroit tigers for a
fringe catcher Named Johnny passik and one hundred thousand. Dollars
and it should be obvious from the WAY i said
that that the one hundred thousand dollars was the important. Part,
hey it's present Day steve interrupting Past steve to warn
you of an incoming. BREAK i go back and forth
as to how mad we should be At Connie mack
for breaking up that great. TEAM i do see it
(30:47):
as tragic that he never could build another. One the
depression was the depression even for the well, off And
mack was well, off not, wealthy and less. So after
the stock market, crashed it was a good break For
cochrane in that he always wanted to be a, manager
(31:09):
and the, Owner Frank, navin was in the market for.
One he had actually just tried to Make Babe ruth
the manager because The yankees were done With ruth and
they were looking for ways to kind of palm him
off on somebody, else and they knew he wanted to.
Manage they also knew he wasn't going to be The yankees,
manager both because familiarity breeds contempt and because they really
Liked joe McCarthy and properly, so so they tried to
(31:31):
broke her marriage Between navin And, ruth But ruth Blew navin,
off And navin decided not to, wait and it was
a mistake that would Haunt ruth for the rest of his.
Life So cochrane became player, manager and in his first
season with the, team The tigers won The pennant there
first since nineteen oh, nine And cochran hit three twenty
picked up his SECOND mvp award at a time when
guys mostly didn't win SECOND mvp. Awards there was just
(31:54):
a prejudice as If Tom hanks would only get to
win One Best Actor award ever for forrest Or. Something
and then The academy was forced by rule to Ignore
philadelphia or vice. Versa cochran's on field leadership manifested itself
in a really intense. Approach it wasn't always positive, intensity
and on occasion with The a's he was catching Lefty
(32:14):
Rube wahlberg And wahlberg was. Struggling cochran ran out to
the mound regular mound conference, right but. No he Grabbed
wahlberg by the, shoulders spun him around so he faced
center field and kicked him in the, ass and then
he went back behind the. Plate cochrane's nickname Was Black.
Mike some sources will tell you that this is supposed
to reflect the color of his, hair, which to be,
(32:35):
honest if you look at, pictures it's about as black
as hair can possibly. Be it is midnight on top
of his. Head BUT i think it also reflected his.
Moods cochrane was fortunate, enough both because of his own
plane because of his, teammates to play in Five World.
Series the postseason was always really hard on. Him in
the nineteen thirty One World series between The a's and The,
Cardinals Saint louis's rookie center Fielder Pepper, martin who we've
(32:58):
got to talk about more another time hit five hundred
and he stole five bases and six, attempts and The
a's lost in seven, games And, cochrane as The a's,
catcher was very much the goat of that, series although
The a's loss for all kinds of reasons, still as sometimes,
happens the fans just pick somebody to be the. Goat
the game of that series that left the most visceral
(33:18):
impression was the second game in that The a's lost
that one to, nothing both on runs manufactured By martin's base.
Running that game was also a three hit shutout By Bill,
Hallahan so it's hard to say that all the blame
was on the. CATCHER i, mean if you don't, score
you could lose one, nothing ten, nothing one hundred. Nothing
it's all the same damn. Thing all the runs after
the first runner are just. Gravy they were, redundant even
(33:40):
though it shouldn't have all been On. Cochrane he was,
ailing he was, distracted he was trying to stave off
the landlord because a bank failure had just wiped out his.
Savings it was The Great, depression after, all and two years,
earlier the stock market crash had wiped him out, too
just Like Connie. Mack even if you throw that in
though the pitchers played a role in allowing the stolen,
bases they just weren't set up for. It back, then
(34:01):
it wasn't a big stealing, time And cochran also wasn't
the one who Allowed Pepper martin to get twelve. Hits
cochran was so exhausted during that, series which remember he's
both catching and. Managing he played during the day and
he spent his nights in the. Hospital The tigers won
another pennant in nineteen thirty, five and this time they
(34:21):
beat The cubs in six games for the first championship
in team. History and as far AS i, Know cochran
got through all of that in good. Shape no stolen base,
problems no running back and forth to the. Hospital but
this is the problem with. Life doesn't freeze frame like
the end of a nineteen seventy. Sitcom there's always another.
Season On june, fourth nineteen thirty, six The tigers were
(34:41):
playing The a's In. Philadelphia the game was scoreless in
the top of the third when The tigers started pounding
away at the Ag Starter Gordon Rhodes cochran got to
hit twice in that. Inning the first time, around he
walked to load the bases with no outs and then
scored On Charlie garringer's. Single two pitching changes, later The
tigers are still, going having scored six, runs and When
cochran came up, again the bases were again. Loaded the
(35:04):
pitcher was now a fellow Named stuart MacGuire, flyfe whose
brief career in the majors includes just thirty nine point
one innings in which he issued sixty one walks and
that year a league leading sixteen wild. Pitches this was
a special, guy. Improbably flife actually threw a pitch in
the strike zone And cochrane lined it to right center
(35:24):
field and it reached the wall and it bounced away
from centerfielder while he moses three runs scored And cochrane
did two and inside the park Grand. Slam we just
saw one of those this year with The. Nationals he
crossed the, plate stumbled to the dugout and, collapsed though
not wholly from the exertion of rounding the. BASES i
don't know what, happened he said. LATER i started to
go to bat but was suddenly seized by a dizzy.
(35:46):
Feeling then my heart started beating at a rapid, rate
AND i THOUGHT i was going to. Die this is
what we now call a panic. Attack he had been
hospitalized for this reason before during the nineteen thirty Four World.
Series after this, attack he benched. Himself he tried to
manage for a few, days but when he tried to
do a little running to see if he was up
to getting back in the, lineup all those symptoms. Returned
the hard fluttering scares me half to, death he. Said
(36:09):
he returned To, detroit checked into the, hospital and they
diagnosed him with a hyperthyroid, Condition but everybody knew there
was something else going on as. Well Jimmy, dikes his old,
teammate the manager of The White, sox said If mickey
had our, troubles he'd wind up the Zion check of
The American league dykes who never want. ANYTHING i always
(36:29):
thought he was funnier than he, Was and this is
an example of a joke in Bad. Taste Zion check
refers To Congressman marion Zion, check who had just jumped
out of a fifth floor window the Previous august following
a nervous breakdown in the, hospital cochrane was allowed no
visitors except his, wife no newspapers or, radio no. Baseball
thyroid treatment doesn't require that you do not get handled so.
(36:52):
Gingerly after ten days in the, hospital he was sent
away to recuperate on A wyoming. Ranch and, again if
you Think wyoming is, remote now imagine it in the
days before cell phones and satellite. Coverage this was exile
from all. Stress this is nothing to do with your thyroid.
Clan he was away about ten weeks out there on that,
(37:15):
ranch finally returning to the team In. August though he barely,
played he got into a total of forty four games that.
Season given an, offseason he seems to have. Recovered nineteen thirty,
seven he was back as the catcher. Manager he played.
Well he was hitting three zero six through twenty seven.
Games but On may twenty, fifth The tigers were playing
The yankees In New. York Bump hadley was on the
mound for The. Yankees cochran had homeward earlier in the,
(37:38):
game another inside the park. JOB a very patient, hitter
he worked the count to three to. One the next
pitch was way inside up and. In it was not
as is sometimes reported. Beanball cochran recognized it was a,
ball and he was taking all the way, somehow, though
and he confirmed this. Later he just stopped seeing the
ball as it was closing in on. Him he threw
(37:59):
up his arm to defend himself and he fell, away
but the ball just kept homing in on. Him it
knocked him. Out next time anybody heard From, cochrane it
would be In. St Elizabeth hospital after hours of. Unconsciousness
the ball hit his right, temple just over the right.
Eye it fractured his skull in three. Places the impact
was audible up in the press. Box one of the
(38:19):
fractures went almost all the way around his. Skull another
laced through his right. Science there was some question as
to whether he would. Live the question wasn't so much
internal bleeding or, pressure but the sinus fracture meant that
infection might set. In while he was still in, danger
his wife flew in by plane From detroit To New.
York she arrived at the hospital after one. Am cochrane
(38:41):
was sort of. Awake now CAN i get you? Anything she, said,
yeah he said a new. Head cochran wanted to, play
but the tiger said, no it was too, dangerous and
although he attempted to, manage his heart wasn't in, it
and on field career was. Over i'm, left, though with
the idea of black mic in that exchange with his.
Wife CAN i get you? Anything, yeah a new, Head
(39:03):
no doubt he meant it the way he said it
at the, moment but given the contours of his, life
the way that stress affected, him applied the other way.
Too change out my, personality make me. New sure IS
i had heard as, well but that was. Transient the other,
stuff black, mic stuff that was permanent By hercules eleventh.
(39:25):
Labor we have made it to the end of another.
Episode here is the part of the end credits WHEN
i used to tell you how to follow the guest On.
Twitter but there is no guest and there is No,
twitter and such things are beyond my powers to. Repair.
BUSS i will simply tell you that should you wish
to follow me on social, media you can do so
At Stephen gooldman Dot Best guide Dot Social hope to
(39:47):
see you. There you can also write us At Infinite
inning at gmail dot com and PLEASE i peg of.
You please rate, us rate, us rate us at the
podcast of your choice iTunes or what have. You every
positive review helps keep this program. Alive we have a sponsor,
now but this episode is nonetheless brought to you by
(40:08):
the number. Sixteen ever SINCE i mentioned That Bill bevins
bit earlier in the, show my producer is just wondering
about the, office, saying here comes the tying, run and
here comes the winning, run over and over again in
a really Bad Red barbara. Impression but he won't get
back to. Work our theme, song which you are listening
(40:28):
to now and have listened to throughout the, episode was
co written by myself and Doctor Rick, moring and he
AND i are going to have Bad Duncan dunne's coffee,
later because friendship is a garden you have to tend,
it and bad coffee is just the price you have to. Pay,
well IF i can just get the ghost Of Leo
durocher to get back in the closet and stop challenging
me to a game of that's all from both past
(40:49):
and present b for this reissue. Episode i'll be back
tomorrow with an all new episode three fifty. Two be
well until, Then, okay, yeah
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
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
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com