Episode 308 - Tales from the Dugout v_2026

Introduction

0:00hello everybody welcome to another episode of two strike noise your mom's favorite weekly usually baseball history podcast we took a little bit of time off there for the holidays but we're back it's a new year and we are on episode jeez 308 joining me as always from the pacific northwest the mike kingrey studio this week we've moved joining me is my co-host mark

0:34a johnston a little bit under the weather but he's here for us nonetheless yes the weather is above me and and yet here i am ready to talk baseball i guess if you're over weather you're dead because

Tombstone Discussion

0:46then you would be in you think i guess you would be in heaven right you'd be looking down on the weather over the weather there you go i'm feeling over the weather today all right for you just mike kingrey in college we had a joke where if you mumbled his last name it sounded like you were saying ken griffey so made him sound a little bit more elevated but i got to work with mike a whole year in tacoma when he was uh in the minors and what a nice guy he's just a really cool guy and if you mumble his name it sounds like somebody else like a whole yeah mike kingrey all right i want

1:18to start this off new year i'm going to start this off we rarely talk about anything other than

Favorite Western Movie

1:24baseball but i think mark we can agree that one of our favorite movies you and i that is not baseball related and is a western is probably tombstone and i don't think i'm going i don't think that's a reach no i love tombstone i think my favorite most quotable i have a picture with me and three of the guys from tombstone oh yeah you showed me that i think i went to these conventions very cool i want it just i love that movie i think most guys i think most people do but i saw this i didn't know this so

Johnny Ringo Story

1:56you know at the end of the movie doc holiday goes and meets johnny ringo yes you wasn't expecting doc but doc shows up and he goes johnny ringo you look like someone just walked over your grave yes and actually johnny ringo's body was found under that oak not that oak tree that they filmed it to but where this actually took place was found under an oak tree and his grave is still there and is a tourist attraction now no kidding so you can do that and also i didn't know this johnny ringo was

2:26found with a single shot to his right temple it is believed that he took his own life what so i don't know this is hollywood i did doc holiday really show up here instead that's way better if doc shot him yeah just i mean we know that han shot greedo first of course and then and then just had to slip in that fake shot but i that movie i agree just so cool like skin that smoke wagon is one of just because let's go to work who who says skin that smoke wagon that sounds like an adult film more than

2:59it does something that you would say i my favorite line is when johnny ringo comes up somebody says hey you must be doc holiday and he says that's the rumor i the one time that he says he goes oh johnny i apologize i forgot you were there you may go now you may go now just all right you can catch all of this on our tombstone podcast which is by the way called skin that smoke wagon anywhere you get this

Baseball Discussion

3:27podcast but let's actually talk about some baseball what do you say to get underway here so mark knew what new year same old lenny dykstra yeah yeah i saw that geez we can say whatever we want about him so we're going to former big leaguer lenny dykstra was got into some trouble just after the new year passed on january 1st he was pulled over and found to be in possession of narcotics and drug paraphernalia during a state police traffic stop in blooming grove pennsylvania they stopped his suv

4:01for a traffic violation and they found narcotics and narcotic related equipment and paraphernalia during an interview with the newspaper oh the tribune times of scranton for my office fans in 2024 dykstra admitted to abusing drugs but said he didn't consider himself an addict if you abuse drugs aren't you doesn't that make you an addict if you abuse them only not if you abuse them only once in a great while all right lenny dykstra still up to his usual stuff shenanigans i guess tomfoolery

4:33yeah he's being a scoundrel is what he's doing along the same lines of awful former big leaguers

John Rocker Incident

4:41john rocker so another winner yeah so we talked about him a couple of months ago but now 51 years old the old flash in a pan steroid closer clearly an adult i guess he's 51 years old but is still out there running the same old lines he's been doing since 1999 back in those days like we covered it earlier just a month or so ago he was complaining about the seven train and anyone that didn't look like him now it's unfortunately much of the same the spark point being here he got cut off at a hilton

5:12garden inn bar in columbus ohio lord just when you think you couldn't go any lower the hilton garden inn bar in the lobby cuts you off so rocker was in town to quote personally investigate end quote long since debunked fake stories about public funding for immigrant child care centers because that's what retired relievers with a history of racism do with their own free time i guess rocker claims that he had just a couple of drinks before the staff told him he couldn't order anymore and ask him to leave

5:45so instead of doing what a normal person would do be a little bit embarrassed realize they're being maybe a little bit loud leave go hit up a taco bell and sleep it off rocker instead did what you know you expect him to do he took to the internet to blame the woke mob for getting him kicked out of a hilton garden inn bar he's convinced that the hotel staff who most of which were probably not even alive when he was pitching he says that they not only recognized him but they staged a coordinated

6:16political hit on his right to drink and rant about immigrants this guy is a piece of work but i mean to be fair he's out there on the front lines paying his own way to do it even nobody's even paying for him yeah i'll tell you what if i want someone to investigate something i'm going straight to john rocker exactly the hotel hasn't even bothered to respond to him usually when these things happen there's some there has to be an official response and all that they're like it's john rocker no one exactly exactly it's like don't worry we're not going to sully our reputation by having john rocker

6:52speak ill of us yeah they just probably you're cut off and you can't you're not welcome back and that was like it but beyond what we've talked about him from being stupid before as a player let's not forget that also in the early 2000s he made headlines for directing slurs at patrons in a dallas restaurant and then last year was on social media demanding an american citizen option for uber rides because he didn't want to be driven by someone who was riding a camel 12 months ago end quote at least he put it in

7:24a kind way john rocker makes lenny dykstra look like an upstanding citizen unfortunately yes like lenny dykstra could win the fifa peace prize at this rate compared to john rocker he also has voiced his deep concern that the super bowl will be sustained by fellow american bad bunnies halftime performance maybe he could go hang out with aubrey huff they'd probably be best friends let them yeah i tell you what like i said if i need something done i'm going to john rocker he's i find it amusing that

7:58the the hilton didn't even respond let me ask you something let me ask you something what's worse a hilton bar a bowling alley bar or a denny's bar you know what i have spent a lot of time at hilton garden in bars i'm not gonna because that's where especially when i was working at the cowboys that was i stayed there once a week and they knew me like i was norm i even delivered the it's a dog eat dog world and i'm wearing milk bone boxers or whatever that line i even did that one time so i would actually say that because that's not you don't expect to get kicked out of a hotel bar right

Lighter Topics

8:33all right let's go on to something a little bit lighter what do you say i didn't yeah i'm all for that oh by the way this episode today i have so many of these stories that i've just been not able to talk about because i've been waiting to record this that we're gonna we're gonna call this we're gonna label this a tales from the dugout light episode just i've got a ton of these that i want to talk about this one though like i said a little bit more light so you know how tops makes new cards throughout the year now i don't know if it's every week or just when they decide i don't

9:05know but they're called tops now and you can get digital like i guess you can just collect them on your phone which doesn't seem like a lot of fun to me but they're usually a limited run i think i have never really honestly paid attention to them but they're unique newsworthy events that happen during the season typically so last season o'neill cruz of the pirates hit a home run that was clocked at 122.9 miles per hour off the bat that is the hardest hit ball ever tracked via statcast so

9:37nobody since statcast has been up and running has ever hit a ball harder than that ball was a home run so tops made a card for it the home run was served up by brewers rookie pitcher logan henderson so this is under the category i found this on reddit but it wasn't bros being bros it was i think this was just in the baseball subreddit but logan's longtime friends gave him a very thoughtful christmas present they got him a graded version of said card celebrating cruz's hardest hit ball ever

10:08it's great at a 10 friends trolling their old friend is like the best especially if that friend has a sense of humor like logan obviously does that's hilarious he posted a picture of it and his friends are in the background you can just see their smiles of a certain kind as he's looking at that's great i love the idea that's it yeah that's a great idea uh speaking of former brewers and mariners and met my boy daniel vogelsnacks is back in the big leagues he is i saw that too

10:43he is returning to the brewers as a hitting coach now the article that i read says that he coached last year for the pirates but i didn't say where so i don't know if it was in the big leagues or if it was in the minor leagues but i guess i just don't get hitting and if you look at my average during my men's league you'll agree with me but how do you tell a guy whose lifetime batting average is 219 that he's in charge of major league hitters yeah that's a tough one the thing about vogelbach is he

11:14had a really good eye yes i absolutely agree he could walk a million times and so maybe he'll drill that into their heads i don't know as far as hitting the ball i don't know how he's going to tell anyone to hit opposite field or just go with it and dump it the other way for a single no it's turn on it and crush it rip it and grip it that's the philosophy now here on this podcast we don't put a lot of stock in batting average as much anymore which is i have certainly come around in the last maybe year that batting average is still useful but only if you also present to me on base and

11:49slugging i can get a full picture of this player and what they do at the plate with those three numbers but if you just give me batting average it is completely useless but batting average in my mind the floor when a batting average is actually useful is it tells me how somebody handles the bat whether they can put the bat on the ball or not mario mendoza has a higher lifetime average than daniel vogelback and mario mendoza is like the poster child for a no bat player right right yeah

12:19the mendoza line of course did mario mendoza ever and of course i'm assuming most of our listeners know that mario mendoza's actual lifetime average was 220 not 200 so that's right vogie's 219 is below mario mendoza's career average and in fact ogelback's highest single season batting average was 238 and that was spread out among three teams in a single season so i was trying to remember power hitters that became successful batting coaches i came up with these names don baylor sure i i don't know if i

12:54want to say successful but longer tenured batting coaches i guess that to me makes it sound like they're successful if they keep their jobs don baylor don mattingly which leads me to believe that only if your name is don will it work out but then edgar martinez i came up with that there's a power hitter but also a very good average hitter so a little bit and his name's not don yeah and don baylor hit for okay average but mattingly of course was a batting champion as well but power hitters that

13:26didn't work out mark mcguire barry bonds i had a harder time i guess i had a harder time coming up with big power guys that had successful careers as a batting coach than i did that didn't because when you've got daniel volga back you've got a lot of guys pitching coaches as well that might have not even made the majors or if they did it was just for a cup of coffee i did these guys that have longer careers tend to not really maybe they just don't want to be in baseball anymore because they were they stuck around and had a longer career i don't know yeah i don't know but i was just wondering if you off

14:01the top of your head could come up with power hitters that were good batting coaches and i think it's i think it's going to be a tough one but maybe we'll revisit it give it some yeah give me a couple days okay or the listeners can chime in too i want your honest thoughts on this one mark we've got hall

Hall of Fame Voting

14:19of fame the voting is wrapping up we're about a week away from the announcement of who will be inducted this year and looks like it's going to be carlos beltran and andrew jones two center fielders which is rare you get two people from the same position going in but it looks like that's going to be what it is now i want your honest thoughts on felix hernandez and the hall of fame or larry bernandez as well either or we'll do i've got a little spiel here i'll give you a minute because i've just sprung

14:51this on you but you watched him for most of his career in person i watched a good chunk of it in person as well there in seattle he is currently trending to maybe make it in the next year ish or so he's plus 20 or something right now from last year and he was one of the if not the first pitcher in a long time to win a cy young on a not great team with what looked like kind of pedestrian numbers until you look at the team he was on he went 13 and 12 the year he won it the mariners were not great

15:24like vogel back and batting average the wins and losses not really something we put a whole lot of stock into anymore it's not like pitchers the sole reason a team wins or loses a game that they pitch in unless they're sometimes felix hernandez sometimes he took over the game and it didn't matter who what else was going on but there is not a single hall of fame metric that he is even within sniffing distance of the average hall of famer if you look on baseball reference right the similarity scores

15:54of pitchers compared to felix dave stebe is the only pitcher in his similarity scores that even really deserves a second look at being a hall of famer there is a record number of first-time voters this year including ryan fagan who we spoke to just about a month ago or so are we seeing a new school of voters is what i'm is what i'm asking are we seeing new voters look at things like the quality of teams that players played on and you know what they did so like a 13 and 12 record when you win

16:30this i young i'm wondering if that's the case felix was on some bad teams felix was on a lot of bad teams it was like he and ichiro versus the world for a good part of his career maybe minus one junino here and there that is still the best nickname we have ever come up with is mike janino i am looking at another chart here that lists the largest gaps between a player's war in their 20s versus their 30s

17:00so they've broken it down by pitcher and catcher by batter the largest ever is actually mickey mantle 20 through 29 he had an 83.3 war and then when his body broke down ages 30 through 39 it was only a 25.54 that was a difference of 57.8 war in those two decades of his career ken griffey jr is actually third on that list and fourth is andrew jones who is very close in terms of the difference but when you look at pitchers christy matthewson is number one 79.2 war ages 20

17:38through 29 and then only a 21.9 ages 30 through 39 for a difference of 57.3 felix is fourth on this list his ages 20 through 29 war was 47.2 at his war 30 through 39 whatever seasons he played was exactly zero so his top years were at best nine years ages 20 through 29 right i am just curious to think

18:10to not to think but to hear what your thoughts are here he played for 15 years he came into the league at age 19 only appeared in 12 games and then 2019 was really his last season and that was i guess 20 wow the last three years of his career were throwaways age 31 32 and 33 he went 15 and 27 with an era over five so those are just if you forget about those it's literally his age 20 through 30 and those those

18:46are the only years that you can really look at as a legitimate hall of famer and he was on some awful teams do you think king felix is a hall of famer yeah that's that's a tough one for me because my heart is absolutely just from being a seattle fan and and we're there and following the mariners he was the only breath of fresh air we had at certain times and they used to have this commercial hey happy felix day because we knew we would be in that ball game and like he said the teams that he pitched for

19:18they didn't score a lot of runs that was back then the mariners biggest problem was scoring runs and we just couldn't get anything across there so hence the one loss records of 13 and 12 14 and 14 12 and 10 etc so does he belong in hall of fame he was certainly dominant for one era for an era of his career 2270 ra one year 249 and another year but it wasn't it's not like your typical pitcher career year to get you into the hall of fame the career overall although he has a 49.8 war career which is

19:53nothing to shake a stick at does he belong in the hall i i hate to say this but i don't have him there i just think he doesn't have the numbers and i think his dominance for a period of time is amazing and if that's something you think should get you into the hall of fame i understand that a dominant player during a period of time where they were more dominant than the rest of the season the rest of their career so does felix belong in the hall of fame i hope so i really would like to

20:24see that happen would i vote for him i might but in all honesty i don't see him as a hall of famer personally i think i am i think i'm on board with you yeah i don't know we watched him in person with some of those bad teams and he was definitely the best player in that dugout but yeah absolutely when you look at this you mentioned you have 49.8 career war the average hall of fame pitcher has a 72.9 career war so that is 23 points higher on average if you look at his jaws his seven year peak

21:01his war during that time was 38.5 the average hall of famer is 49.8 right and war does try to it's certainly not perfect it does try to separate the player into an individual more than those numbers like era and wins and losses and that kind of stuff so i'm not sure that he belongs there and if he did is he going to be thought of harold baines and jack morris as lower tier if there is such a thing

21:34i don't care if i'm in the hall of fame hall of fame but me exactly there is definitely a difference between inner circle guys like nolan ryan and ricky henderson for that matter and people if felix were there or harold baines and those kind of guys who do deserve to be there now i do want to say this king did hit a home run a grand slam even one of his four career hits got to take into account his batting and he did take a selfie with me outside of the lv store in japan so are these things

22:05being factored that's right i don't know we'll have to ask it might be because he might want to get that picture with me he might want to submit that for your consideration to the voters all right mark we

Greg Maddux Prank

22:16have made reference in the past to greg maddox in his sense of humor and his practical joke that he plays we have made reference to one in particular several times over and frankly i think if greg maddox would have ever been teammates could have ever been teammates with jorge pesada or moises they would have gotten along really well together because they could have two birds with one stone kind of thing if he was playing yeah i see that yeah so maddox has never admitted to his

22:48most famous shower prank that he's been charged with by many times that he's been charged with many times by many different players now i'll just warn anybody if they are if you're listening to this in a car or somewhere with somebody younger or whatever you just this is a little bit of locker room potty humor potty being the key word here i'm gonna edit it but it's still implied so just know that maybe skip forward two minutes or so here if that is the case but rod friedman aka the pitching

23:20ninja talked to both of these guys and brought up this myth to see if it is such a myth so this is a two minute long clip greg maddox's interview is first and then we get to hear from chipper jones on this subject as well so just take a look at listen to this first and then we'll come back and discuss people like to make stuff up as time goes by it seems if somebody done somebody in the shower i got blamed on it freaking two years later like all of a sudden that person didn't do it i must have done

23:52it so i took the blame for a lot of stuff and still do i still hear stories and i don't remember that story that way no we're telling the truth and he's a freaking liar yeah i have witness i have witness he on me in the shower yes 100 i will i and i can cite my source right now eddie perez backup catcher for us for a long time will back me up because he was the only other person in the shower at that point he did it to me when i was young enough that he knew i wouldn't because i can't knock out the

24:29the 80 million dollar man whatever he was i'm still making basically league minimum and yeah so i can't really do anything i wasn't real happy about it but we were in the shower so i just rinsed off and swept it under a like he came in after playing golf one day and didn't take a shower the sanitary sock bin was right there next to him and he took out a sock and wiped

24:59with it threw it back in the sanitary sock bin and waited for somebody to pick it up we used to wear these white thin white socks under the our stirrups and whatnot and sure enough it was me one day i came in and i put the sock on and i had a strip all the way up my shin from greg max so i think the thing that disturbs me most about those and we got that extra bonus sanitary joke is that chipper felt he had to explain what a sanitary sock was yeah i guess

25:35to layman in layman's terms is it would they know i don't know i think people know what a sanitary sock younger fans might not know they might just yeah never touched them never seen them although most a lot of like rosin i guess you you buy rosin bags now and actual things but rosin bags used to be in rolled up sanitary socks weren't they yes absolutely yeah and used to keep baseballs in sanitary socks they're very utilitarian they are all right i still think i and chipper threw maddox's

26:08personal catcher under the bus there he threw eddie perez under the bus yeah i don't know i don't know about that we'll see how that goes all right another thing bo bichette he's been in the news a bit lately where's he gonna sign what's he gonna do there is a steakhouse in toronto called animal a n i m l they ran out of money for the last a in their bomber in the title it is a buy an a they could not buy an although they've got one in the beginning but yeah they forgot that one they they're listed as

26:42a toronto steakhouse and cocktail den not a coke den or an opium den but no cocktail den den they're offering bichette quote steak for life if he resigns with the blue jays oh man steak for life sounds like a single steak that he has to make last for a lifetime it should be steaks for life but regardless really big steak yeah really well i'll tell you about this steaks here in a minute so they took out an ad in the paper and it reads dear bo bichette toronto suits you the city the energy the fans

27:13it all feels right much like a properly cooked steak at animal we believe in commitments that last the craft the care and the city we call home in that spirit we ask you to resign with the toronto blue jays and consider this our promise steak for life on us no negotiations no fine print just a standing reservation at our table stay in toronto we'll handle dinner you bring home the hardware so they aren't providing silverware apparently for him no i guess he's got to eat it with his hands

27:47or he's got to bring his own but beau did name this den as one of his favorite places to eat in an article last year so it's not like a local denny's it's just offering right like a free grand slam breakfast once a week this is someplace that he goes and that he likes so i went to their website to check it out see what kind of see what kind of steaks there are steaks that was i meant that is like s-t-a-k-e-s what kind of steaks we're dealing with these steaks they have a 40 ounce porterhouse

28:19that you can get for only 275 dollars wow they probably do one of them that they wrap in gold too like and that's canadian money right yes but still that's so about 42 no we're not gonna do that i got things to say but i'm not gonna say it but for 275 bucks that salt bay dude better be coming and sprinkling the salt on my steak for that much money but wherever he signs the team's production staff in-house production staff will have an easy job on star wars night because beau bichette

28:51yes he's pretty not a tough one to think of not a tough one when you gotta pair him with the star wars character all right let's see i got two more stories here before we get into wax packs heroes first of all kyle farnsworth when was the last time you thought about pitcher kyle farnsworth i just when you just mentioned him right yeah exactly what if i told you that last year he was the most searched pitcher in the entire state of iowa on baseball reference no kidding yeah so a new year every single entity on the internet except for us has a wrapped feature shows you what

29:29you did during the year regarding them baseball reference is no different they had a most viewed pitcher per state and clayton kershaw almost ran the entire table i nice not my not who i would be trying to look up but regardless there it is the only states where he was not the most searched pitcher were oklahoma can you guess who the most searched pitcher in the state of oklahoma was last year nolan ryan it was he's not is he from i thought he was from texas he's from alvin texas yeah yeah

30:04like oklahoma and texas don't get along but yeah i don't know it's like a little cap on top of texas up there yeah pointing yeah finger yeah somehow nolan ryan was the most searched pitcher in oklahoma louisiana paul skeins that's a stretch but also west virginia and pennsylvania which makes sense steeler fans there let's see justin verlander in ohio and virginia charlie morton in maryland jacob de grom in new jersey and max freed in new york and then garrett crochet swept the whole of

30:38new england which is understandable all active pitchers except for nolan ryan he's from texas so again doesn't make sense but one state stands out that would be iowa iowa is so different that the music man has an entire song about it and its residents that i can sing for you if you want that to happen let's do that on the broadway musical show we have or the mute just the music man show which is called pick a little talk a little you can find it wherever you wherever you get your

31:08podcasts and that's a deep cut if you're not a big music man fan you might not get that but we're a niche podcast i could give you a thousand guesses and you would probably never come up with kyle farnsworth as being the most searched for pitcher in iowa last year for some unknown reason he last pitched in the big leagues in 2014 after all i'm sure that there was some intern at baseball reference just like sifting through sql tables trying to figure out why this is happening i'm sure but they finally got to the bottom of it so we finally got to the bottom of it somebody dm'd i'm

31:46not sure who they dm'd somebody at baseball reference it might have been adam i don't know but somebody's posted an exchange through texts here dear baseball reference i'm telling you my dad is the reason kyle farnsworth is number one in iowa and the response is just oh great love to hear it sure it is but no this is i hope this is true the response is no but actually he is when he does immaculate grid every day on his lunch break he doesn't know how to switch chrome tabs so every time

32:18he looks someone up he goes to the home screen where he has kyle farnsworth's page pinned and we'll look from there so he probably visits kyle's page 30 times a day or more so a boomer is why kyle farnsworth is outstanding i have got to i'm not gonna lie i probably look up ricky henderson's baseball reference page probably four or five times a week yeah and then just doing the grid and our other baseball dailies i i do look up the same players a lot but that is great that kyle

32:54farnsworth is number one in iowa just because of some boomer doesn't know how to actually bookmark baseball reference that's pretty awesome that is funny all right last one last one for today and i've got another question for you here mark yeah who is the most hated player in your franchise's history since you became a fan and i'm gonna limit you to seattle rather than houston here just because we talk more about seattle than you could name the whole team with the astros as being hated yeah but

33:28your fans hate yes so everyone hates the astros and everyone except apparently carlos belchman that was involved in it right they're gonna get booed till the day that they retire they're gonna get booed when they go into the hall of fame which a good deal of them are going to right but who do mariner fans hate that have been on been on the mariners since you became a fan which is pretty close to when they came in the league sure mariners fans hate alex rodriguez oh there's that i guess that's an easy one huh yeah i was there the first time he came back with the rangers and i have never seen a reaction

34:05remotely close to what that reaction was when he stepped up to the plate it was this wholehearted everybody 47 000 people booing at the same time throwing fake money on the field signs everywhere it was like i was cracking wwe event and he was a heel yeah it really was he was like like all the way back to sergeant slaughter when he was a bad guy oh yeah hatred when he was iranian all of a sudden yes that's right yes it it was it was that the vitriol was that thick so yeah i'd have to go with

34:39a rod wow that's i guess that's an easy one is there anybody else that goes in that that hated category wait i don't know certainly not to the extent no not to the extent i don't know who else do mariners fans hate that was on the team i don't know we usually like our guys pretty much maybe milton bradley yeah i was gonna say so i put together my list here for and if we're not including owners because i obviously there would be a number one easy here for a's fans but this is

35:11my list that i came up with for the a's and milton bradley is on this list as well billy butler is number one country breakfast just a big contract for somebody that didn't deserve it and then ratted out one of his teammates to a sponsor just it's just some bad stuff jim johnson remember jim johnson he was a closer for the orioles probably like 10 years ago had a great year in baltimore i think the a's i don't know if it was houston street or somebody that they had a great closer and the a's

35:43have always treated closers as expendable as right we can easily find somebody else to do this so they but they signed jim johnson to this big contract and he didn't even last half a year he was so bad and he talked smack while he was on the team and he just he got booed at home a lot just coming into the game matt holiday obviously had no desire to be in oakland just a jerk while he was here and just a miserable person while he was playing for the a's two guys that i came up with the a's fans

36:19loved but then they left and one is josh reddick and he was on the astros yeah and right during that time but a's fans loved him but he left and then he just smack talked them he was the the fans in right field even like right field will like the diehards there loved him they would make special signs for him throw things down for him throw food for him and it seemed like it was a match made

36:49in heaven but he talked a lot of smack after he left and then kurt suzuki who i think probably his politics have a lot to do as to why nobody likes him and mark molder those two together are persona non grata now in the bay area i will say but hey i just want to know i want to know other listeners of your team and since you have become a fan who are those players that just your entire fan base hates even though they played for your team put some more thought in that

37:21listeners let us know who is somebody the most hated and then others that are disliked a lot of from your team's fan base that played for your team i can it would be fun exercise just to go through teams and try to figure it out on our own but we are not going to do that because i can see producer mitch is in there standing on his head trying to get our attention that it is time that we wrap this part of the show up and we will do so and we'll go ahead and head into the final segment

37:52of the show the segment that is so popular that mob network is copying it every sunday now but it is time

Wax Pack Heroes

38:00for wax pack hello again friends it's time for another installment of wax wax pack's heroes before we can start though let's go over the rules mark and jeff are going

38:35to play an old-fashioned game of war except this is more like baseball reference war they'll each get one card and will score the baseball reference war of the year of the card but wait they can add or subtract points depending on certain aspects of the card and the player's season any 80s baseball aesthetics the card displays will earn an extra tenth of a point or if they don't like something like two and one stirrups they can subtract a tenth of a point as well also if the player won any awards that season they get a half a point for each if the player led the league in any categories

39:11they'll get a tenth of a point for each positive category but minus half a point for each negative one if there's a hall of famer anywhere on the card that's a whole extra point if the player had a costaco's brother's poster made of them they get a half a point for that if ricky henderson or nolan ryan get pulled the round is over jeff automatically wins if either pulls a ricky card and mark wins if nolan is pulled if the player has any pop culture references they get a half a point unless they

39:42appeared on seinfeld the simpsons or sabrina the teenage witch that friends is a whole point for each if the player was suspended for off the field mischief during their career or are on the 2sn don't talk about list that's a minus a half and a whole point respectively so with that out of the way it's time to play wax pack heroes all right thank you very much mr vin scully for giving us the rules to the game right now as i look up to the scoreboard mark i have taken a slight lead here i'm up

40:14six to four still early on in this season but what we are going to do is we've got a pack from executive producer marshall who has usurped mitch mitch is just the producer i guess mark is the one with the money and the ideas he's writing so but he's sent in a pack here he usually has some themes to these as well that we try and guess but we're going to do that and mark you have them so i'm going to let you go ahead and decide which one you want and whether you want to go

40:47first or second and then we'll get started i have this certified envelope with the cards in it that was left inside of a mason jar on the porch at funk and wagnalls so is that the top 10 list is that the letterman it was johnny carson oh okay so opening it now what was that for karnak or what the heck was that for i think so actually yes so we're gonna go it's a mixed years and you've got to figure out you've got to figure out what the what all these guys have in common and that always lands

41:19on you because i always have the answer all right you want to go first or second i like to go first all right go for it all right so we're starting off with red socks player bob zook chick how do you spell that because i've never heard of him and this is a 92 tops he sounds polish zup chick zup chick zup chick first round draft pick 32nd overall by the red socks wow maybe that might be the i might have just stumbled upon we'll see bob zup chick played for the u.s while he was in college overall

41:53four years in the big leagues four with the red socks and part of one with the white socks you said this was 1991 it's a 92 card 92 okay that was good because 91 was a minus 0.7 war in his rookie 92 though a bit better he was an outfielder let's see hit 276 322 on base slugged 352 for an 85 ops plus three home runs 43 ribs and a war of 0.8 is there anything on that card that is going to help you

42:23out no nothing at all he's just standing there looking at the camera like what is that thing he's never seen one he went to oral roberts so maybe they don't have cameras there i don't know could be a rule nothing's gonna help you here let's see does he have any thing that is going to help you only hit seven career home runs but two of them were grand slams during his rookie season only other players who have accomplished this feat are ellis burks and ryan kalish okay that's

42:53interesting i see played in the mexican league for a little bit but that was about it he yeah not much happening there so it looks like a 0.8 for you and bob zupchick all right that's something at least it's not the negative or the manager's card so i think you got me here though because we're going to go with the royals pitcher mark gubiza goobs this is a 90 tops all right 1990 for goobs all right he was a second round pick so there goes oh but he's got a z in his last name just like the

43:27first guy did so keep an eye on that one let's see you said 1990 yes all right overall 14 years in the big leagues for goobs 13 in kansas city one for the anaheim angels of los angeles in 1990 with the royals he went four and seven with a 4.50 era 94 innings looks like he was injured here for part of the year only 16 games 101 hits 71 strikeouts and 86 era plus and a 1.2 war so just barely let's see if we

44:01can hold on here anything on the card gonna help me out no and you can see one ankle but you can't tell if it's real or fake stirrups okay so i can't give or take away a point for there nothing else it's just it's him pitching and there's no science teacher glasses or anything like that okay looks like he's been doing color commentary for the angels for quite a while now is there anything else though that's gonna help me out i doubt it nothing visual no does not look sounds like he's friends with

44:35mike trout because they're both big eagles fans but yeah but i'll take it i'm up i'm up one to nothing we're playing best of three so all right and my theory is that everybody's got a z in their last name let's see this next guy this is my hitter the one and only blue jays renee gonzalez now i think of him as an oriole and i think of him all the time because didn't he wear 88 i think so yeah which was not enough that was a bullpen catcher's number when he was playing yes let's see yeah he

45:06wore 88 his first couple years in montreal he wore 19 and then his final season with the rockies apparently 88 wasn't available and he had to wear 28 but every other year he wore 88 what year was this again this is a 92 tops 92 all right overall 13 years in the big leagues he played for a lot of teams gonna be a good grid guy there 92 though he was with the california angels he had a good year he hit 277 363 on base 398 slug for a 114 ops plus he had seven home runs 38 rbis seven stolen bases and

45:43a 2.7 war is there anything on that card that is going to help him out no it's just like a bust and there's no glasses or anything cool like that all right let's see he was traded for denny martinez at one point el presidente and let's see oh boy he's got like a three sentence paragraph on wikipedia that is a crime why did he wear number 88 is what i want to know yeah really he was nicknamed wonder bread

46:15for carrying his baseball glove in bags that originally contained the brand's products now did he do that in the big leagues or was that as a child right because if he did that in the big leagues that's brilliant all right that'll be a 2.7 for renee gonzalez that's not bad who's he going against he was going against a guy you would normally think of as a atlanta pitcher zane one and only as they called him back when the braves had absolutely nobody but dale murphy and zane smith that's right pitching for the expos in this picture zane smith all right that would either

46:50make it an 89 or a 90 then let's see 13 90 all right let's see 13 years in the big leagues for zane atlanta for six the bucks for six and then montreal for two and the red sox for one in 1990 he split team he split time between the expos and the bucks he overall went 12 and 9 with a 2.55 era 215 innings pitched 196 hits allowed not bad 130 strikeouts for a 143 era plus and a 4.1 war

47:23wow zane that is clearly his best year by more than one point of war of his entire career no kidding anything on that card gonna help me anymore no zane's got a like nice little high and tight haircut and just a look on his face of i can't believe you just did that so i don't know what's going on back there but something he couldn't believe it wasn't butter is what the thing was that was that's what it was one time traded for a moises a young moises hello i is it just moises i i have

47:56such a hard time forming my mouth when i see his first name waste i think that's right moises yeah according to baseball references moist i did that's just always i struggle with that one not to be confused with moistness or moses a little right not those guys famously parted the lake erie way back in the day to let the canadians escape detroit i'm just making stuff up now but we don't know that it's not true let's see he enjoys listening to hard rock music that's as close as we're gonna get

48:31to anything that's gonna alter the score but i'll take it that's two to nothing and i'm on my way i think i've already figured out the i figured out i believe you have thread here but now let's see if i can just wipe you away with a three to nothing shut out all right let's see what happens cardinals catcher and you can pronounce it either virgil no ozzy there's an ozzy in it but it's his last name i was gonna say ozzy timmons but ozzy's in his ozzy ozzy ozzy oi oi oi very close i don't know tom

49:04pagnozzi oh tom pagnozzi all right or it could be pagnozzi i don't know i always said pagnozzi yeah because it sounds like nosy otherwise and we don't know that about him no we don't might not be nosy and gossipy at all we're gonna be we're gonna try and be nosy and see if he's got any pop culture but let's see here all 12 years of his big league career were with the cardinals what year is this this is a 91 91 he's also the uncle of matt pagnozzi who i do not know but 1991 was his best year of his career actually 264 average 319 on base a 351 slug this is still

49:42around the time when catchers were there for defense more than anything and he did win his first of three gold gloves this year so that's a bonus for you right there lps plus of 89 two home runs 57 ribs nine stolen bases 13 caught steal 13 that's pretty impressive wow i'm thinking okay so this is 91 this is the national league maybe he's batting eighth the pitcher's trying to bunt and they're just really bad at even making contact and he's just getting thrown out because he's going i don't know okay

50:17sure 3.0 war though anything on that card gonna help you no he's got the catching equipment on he's showing the umpire he's apparently tagged out mark lempe and is showing the ball to the umpire he's out a nice play by tom pagnozzi well i can tell you how mark lempe didn't get on base when he came around to score that run i can do that too yes you're correct let's see here pagnozzi's nephew matt pagnozzi was also a catcher and made his debut for the cardinals in 2009 placed in the top five in cardinals franchise history in catcher defensive categories such as games caught innings put outs

50:51stolen bases allowed caught stealing and fielding percentage for the tom version of the pagnozzi but again that's a 3.0 for you not bad your guys aren't bad i just happen to be getting a little bit better guys yeah yeah and pagnozzi by the way an all-star in 92 so oh wait i forgot to add your tenth of a point for that to gold glove oh yes or not tenth a half a point for gold glove all right for you i got remember this guy one of those guys picture for the red sox eric hetzel eric hetzel how do you spell

51:26that last name h-e-t-z-e-l like pretzel oh i remember his card here looking at looking at old don russ card i definitely remember this card but i don't remember him at all this is a 90 tops all right he pitched for two years in the big leagues 89 and 90 both with boston neither well a minus 0.6 war both seasons but in 1990 it was a little bit worse a one in four record with a 5.91 era 35 innings

51:57pitch 39 hits allowed struck out 20 walked 21 for a era plus of 70 was a first round draft pick twice first he was a 13th overall pick by the bucks in the 84 secondary draft and then in the 85 draft he was drafted number one overall by the red sox wow what other sport do you have a first overall pick fail as much as you do in baseball yeah all the time yeah it is just such a hard sport to really

52:33grasp who can play at a major league level when you're watching them in college let alone high school right wow i think i feel safe in saying there's not going to be a whole lot that's going to help me here he has six kids and he's married to katherine arc canal of cowley arc canal of cowley i don't know if that's a title or if that's her last name and she's from cowley somewhere yeah well good for her she's she's on the show yeah she's made her debut all right you get that one yep oh you're

53:06trailing two to one all right my next player pitcher for the blue jays maro gazo oh i remember maro gazo at least the name let's see here i'm guessing he's italian i'm just throwing it out there he's got some italian nicknamed goose that works okay anybody with gauze is nicknamed goose gotta be all right six years in the big leagues two with the mets and tribe one with toronto and minnesota what year is this card from this is a 90 fleer oh that's the only oh one of two years

53:40where he had a positive era no record two games he appeared in three innings two hits two strikeouts two walks for a era plus of blank and a point two war is there anything he's got a mustache here does he have a mustache all right he does have a mustache a little caterpillar one yeah it's like a high school driving a van kind of thing right traded by the mets with ed hearn to the royals for david cone also traded with bud no no for bud black but i think that's it not sure that he's gonna have much

54:15in the way of pop culture probably not yeah no yeah there's nothing there so you do have three tenths of a point so that's good for you there who will he be going up against he will be going up against cubs outfielder third baseman luis salad bar sorry salazar i read that one salad bar i like it all right luis luis had a good career he played for 13 years in the big leagues seven for the padres four for the cubs two for the white socks and one for the detroit tigers what year is this card from

54:48this is a 90 1990 all right his age 34 season with the cubs hit 254 293 on base that is not good a 388 slug for an 80 ops plus he did have 12 home runs 47 ribs and three stolen bases for a 0.4 war now does he have a mustache he does have a mustache yeah okay so that's a 0.5 that gives me a little bit of breathing room in case he was on the very early steroid list or he was caught up in the pittsburgh

55:20drug trials yeah i can't see that being an issue i don't think it is either if he was doping he was getting ripped off they were giving him the fake stuff yeah he was traded for dirty kurt bavacqua at one point and was traded with aussie guin to the chicago white socks for lamar hoyt okay so he's got that going for him let's see if there's anything else it's going to add or subtract here does not look like it no i think you got me here yeah so yeah that will that'll put me over the top

55:55i started out hot and then i cooled off and you caught up and now i'm hot again i'm up seven to four so yeah there we go we don't get to have the final battle rusty killings versus oscar azokar oh oscar we just talked about oscar azokar during during the stream on friday i threw that card up where he's hugging his bat it was a studio card where he's just got his eyes closed and he's just hugging his bat and i always have to say find you somebody that looks at you like oscar azokar looks at his bat this one he's got two bats and he's like chopsticks he's got a baseball in between them

56:30oh i know what that one is yeah that's a great card he's got good cards he does i'll give him credit for that oscar azokar all right thank you thank you again marshall for sending those in if you want to send us any custom packs like this curated packs please feel free to you can get a hold of us several different ways and since that wraps up wax packs heroes we can start to wrap up the show and tell you exactly how you can get those kind of things to us you can find us pretty much anywhere on the internets by doing a search for two strike noise that is spell it out t w o strike noise you can

57:04find us on all the places you can also find all of that information in the show notes mark also has an email address that he likes to flaunt that is also there but he's going to tell you about right yes one of the newfangled electronic mail things we're still trying to figure it out yeah you can write to us there at two strike noise again spell it out t w o strike noise at gmail.com also you can find me i stream a couple of times a week usually monday wednesday and friday at nine

57:37o'clock west coast time on twitch and youtube where we're doing baseball dailies we do the grid we do starting nine which is just my all-time favorite baseball daily game and stuff like that we talk baseball look at cards sometimes watch videos so if you want to join us please do we have a lot of fun there and yeah that'll do it for this episode mark please get better because we're gonna we're gonna have to keep doing this again we'll start back up weekly we appreciate everybody hope everyone had a good holiday a happy new year and yeah thank you for joining us we'll see you on the next episode of

58:11two strike noise thank you god bless you have a great day so you you you you you you you We'll be right back.