Episode 311 - Mickey Lolich, Why the Detroit Tigers Replaced a 31-Game Winner with a "Mailman" in the World Series

0:00hello everybody welcome to another episode of two strike noise we've reclaimed the top spot we are your mom's favorite baseball history podcast i'm one half of the show my name is jeff joining me as always the other half of the show this week from the russ swan studio in the pacific northwest it's mark a johnston mark russ swan and often forgotten but never made fun of seattle mariner

0:35yes why not made fun of because we don't remember him even though he's never forgotten how's it going jeff boy it's uh nice to be back in the studio he's really an enigma wrapped in a question mark isn't russ swan that's right uh yeah guess what mark there's baseball happening all over the place they yeah it's beautiful as we record this ncaa baseball officially started today we've got camps open they've open been open for a couple of days we've already got guys on the 60

1:08day dl it's there's stuff happening all over we're like i think we're oh yeah we are one week away from our first spring training game we've got wbc stuff coming up it's a good time to to be distracted by baseball and maybe make people happy somehow there you go we're starting off it's a new season so let's warm up we don't want to we don't want to cramp up and go on that 60 day dl before we get too far i would be remiss if we did not mention a passing that just happened in baseball our whole

1:43episode today is on somebody that passed that we mentioned last week and now we've got another one if we could just all stop passing away elroy face passed away in the last couple of days known as the baron of the bullpen also known as roy face probably more than elroy but elroy's his full name and i was thinking of the jetsons so elroy face was an incredible i knew him from that si cover it's a famous si cover where it's five or six shots of him throwing a pitch in sequence which i don't think

2:16you saw a whole lot at that point but some of his notable achievements 18 relief wins which remains the major league record and none of them were really vultures either in one season he was a dominant closer in 1959 face posted an 18 and 1 record including 17 in a row to begin the year wow he had ended the previous season with five in a row so that's a 22 game streak over two seasons where he did not win or did not lose a game easy for me to say yeah his first loss was in his 99th

2:55appearance since he had previously lost i mean that's incredible 59 so the pirates were good in 60 we know that because maz hit that home run off of ralph terry in 60 but in 59 they were not good he had those 18 wins he had 10 saves that contributed to 36 of the pirates wins in 1959 a reliever i mean that's that's impressive i gotta say yeah i mean you could get some relievers that might have that

3:25percentage of losses for their team but face as i mentioned faced ralph terry not faced but they went head to head in the 1960 world series face actually got credit for that win when ralph gave up the home run to maz oh okay yeah i didn't know that was of course ralph terry i think still one of my favorite moments on this show just so great absolutely one of the pinnacle moments of two strike noise was talking to mr terry he was boy did he have great stories he really did and he was

3:59still he was sharp when we talked to him which was he was just great yeah it was funny because he told us at first i'm not sure i'm gonna remember everything that well and then he's third pitch and i decided to throw a slider i know my god and then his stories from just go back if you have not if you are new or even if you've already heard it i would really recommend going back and listening to those ralph terry that ralph terry interview just he's meeting up with zach wheat cy young i mean just it's incredible it's his stories were great and i feel like we were i don't

4:33say this often but blessed that he was like immediately responded to my email to him and he said yeah sure his son did but then he came on and sent us books he autographed his books for us and it's just great r.i.p to him but we don't want to get too far off topic it's just when you get us talking about i know he's just great he's a great guy face held nearly every record for reliever when he retired a lot of them have now been surpassed but he was legit at the time he retired

5:04the best reliever that the game had ever seen this though i found fascinating his father was a well-known square dance caller from the 1920s to the 1950s i didn't know those existed that's a strong 30-year career as a square dance caller which i too did not know was a profession that you could major in or yeah wow what do you do for living i'm a square dance caller so all the man left yeah i wanted to know do they make up those things as they go along are they like rappers or comedians

5:39where they kind of have fallback things that they can ad-lib and just kind of chain together i have so many questions do they get in fights with polka people oh that would be you know that's not a bad idea for an episode who is the yankovich is that a bad name yeah in the face household nice that's a good point a 30-year career is a square dance caller i now have a new goal i've got a couple of a couple of japanese notes here this is going to be our all japanese bp segment

6:12here for the rest of this so i obviously the white socks had a big signing from japan during the off season munitaka murakami okay that's great i was excited about that i was excited from the last wbc seeing him play now he's going to be here the white socks though this was news for a while that they're adding bidets in the clubhouse as murakami had requested which i mean we all know that baseball players are children and i can guarantee you there will be like a week of players just dicking around

6:44with this squirting you know squirting other people making just havoc the old trick where you go and you turn it on and you go hey is this a drinking fountain you know that kind of thing i just see greg maddox would have loved this just with his style of humor i think he would have loved this turn up the pressure on that thing and just wait for people to anything could happen yeah yeah what's funny is this is a big signing the white socks trying to get out of being that worst franchise in

7:17the american league that they're battling with the a's you know for but they make this big signing they're putting in the bidet and it's truck day at the spring training facility and they're putting the name tags in the lockers and they completely butchered his name oh no they got his first name right but they misspelled his last name on his locker tag it's somebody had to not be paying attention i'm sorry i mean wasn't it their gm just got called out because he had traded luis robert jr to the

7:49mets for luis angel acuna and he thought acuna was a switch hitter he's not a switch hitter that's the gm so he might have been making these name tags himself you gotta save money where you can yes that's an a's that that is an a's call right there you got billy bean down there with a sharpie so okay another one i didn't know about this one i just heard about this for the first time during my my my stream today july 2000 hideo nomo he was with the tigers at this point which you got to remember he was with

8:23the tigers at some point but they're playing the brewers which i do remember him pitching for the brewers apparently nomo dressed up as one of the sausages during the sausage race and one dressed as the italian saw wow good for him you know like you were saying baseball players are children yeah i mean remember we talked about i i can never remember his name he threw a no hitter or no a perfect game i think it was tom browning yeah for the reds where during a game in uniform he went up and sat on the roof top next door at wrigley field that's right yes players will do this

8:57kind of stuff or we've we talked about jay johnstone dragging the infield and then sort of telling him he's pinch hitting and then he homers it's so funny when players do things during a game i guess unless you're nick castellanos and you're yeah drinking a beer in the dugout that's not so much great but i like these things that was good not to be not to finish up with our japanese angle here former yankees pitcher kai agawa is making his acting debut finally fans have

9:31been calling for it he is going to appear in what is quote a locker it said locked i thought that said locker room but it says locked room occult mystery drama i thought it said locker room i mean with a baseball player that makes sense but i guess not locked agawa was cast because he's from the same hometown as the director and i love this is so japanese he is said to have practiced enthusiastically and filming went smoothly of course that's what they say about you when you show up on set yeah

10:04yeah and then you never see it in the movie because it's in the cutting room floor let's cut the homeless get the homeless guy out here he's depressing us all but he practiced enthusiastically and when we filmed it went really smoothly i don't care that's right that's right get him out of there so this led me oh first of all no video could not find video of that which i found shocking but no no video of that i couldn't find video of nomo in the costume i thought that would have been easy nor did i look up but there is of this i will try to get some of this in 2006 ichiro acted in an episode of one of

10:40his all-time favorite shows fuahatra ninzaburu which is the japanese version of colombo and in this episode he murders a man who is blackmailing his brother oh what's wrong with that i don't have a brother so i don't know i where's the crime in that but it's funny because the comments people had watched this episode and it is literally japanese colombo so he already knows everybody knows who did it it's watching fuahatra ninzaburu you know work through and solve it himself that's

11:12the catch i don't know if he wears rumpled clothing if he leaves and then turns around and says oh one more i got one more thing i don't know but apparently there's a dubbed version of this so i kind of want to watch it for sure did he it doesn't say he played himself because that would have been kind of weird it just says he was in it and he murders his brother who was blackmailing him or something like that so all right hammet bones a lot of hammet bones going around not good

11:44ones but did you so last week we talked about insurance in the wbc right yes and that uh francisco lindur and javi baez and carlos correa couldn't play because they couldn't get insured then javi baez couldn't play anyway because he got smoking caught smoking pot on a drug test and then lindur is now out six weeks because he's hammet bone is hurt and he's just gonna have it removed i don't know why players don't have that done like during the off season like so a bunch of that and

12:19we made fun of that but then i saw this bad bunny who is apparently an american singer very famous from puerto rico in case you haven't heard of him recently i used to watch his cartoons yeah he gets he always gets lost at albacuq yeah yeah that's a wrong turn there but the bad bunny who obviously riled up a bunch of i'll just say people and put on a pretty impressive halftime show last week he actually offered to pay the insurance premiums for carlos correa and francisco lindur

12:53but he didn't get it done in time how cool is that though like i know bad bunny wrestled in wrestlemania one time and then i think just on some some tv shows as well like raw and stuff but he's a big sports fan i like that offering to pay for his fellow puerto ricans to appear that's i think that's just awesome the last thing we're going to talk about today mark before we get on to mickey lulich is the rangers the texas rangers have got a giveaway on may 29th this year a listener has

13:28brought this to my attention it is a nolan ryan bloodied jersey replica jersey i did see this i think i said jersey like eight times in a row there but you get it's a nolan jersey ryan jersey i wanted to stress that it's a jersey okay we got it it is the you know his rangers 34 it looks like it's even a button down and it's got the blood smears on it from after he took the the line drive back off his face from bo jackson who is not somebody you want to have that happen to i am curious to know i think

14:05this is going to be mainstream news come baseball probably not like real baseball people but just you know sports anchors or somebody that's going to think that this is from the robin ventura brawl right of course yeah that's a great prediction right there because you know it's going to happen yeah i think except for you know like people listen to our podcast the smart baseball people are going to know what this is from but the lay baseball fan is going to think this is from the ventura brawl we'll just let them know oh you know what that's a lot of people think that we're

14:38not going to gatekeep we're just going to we're going to gently course correct people we're not going to point and go wrong yeah well i probably will that's just that's the way i roll all right let's let the grounds crew come out and get our spring training field all prepped and ready to go here mark last week we talked about his passing and i had done some research on him to talk about his passing and then i realized this guy needs a whole episode so today we're going to be talking about the late unfortunately recently late mickey lolich so mark we so many of our stories that we've

15:15covered in the past about baseball history is players suffering farm accidents as a youth that gave them some kind of superpower missing a finger lost a leg got bitten by a radioactive chicken all these things come together to form some of these backstories of these incredible baseball players mickey lolich was no different he didn't grow up on a farm though he grew up in portland oregon he didn't even live on a farm he liked rocks like a lot just kids do throwing them in particular

15:49anything that moved which is we know cruel because he threw them at many small woodland creatures that didn't want anything to do with mickey but that got a rock chucked at their head regardless he had a strong arm and good aim i'm sure those small creatures wanted nothing to do with him even more then the proverbial accident that changed the trajectory of his life happened it's so weird because this is not the usual story mickey was riding his tricycle so that tells you how old he was probably like 15 or 16 yeah i just stopped riding mine two years ago yeah i don't have kids so i

16:24don't know when they stop riding tricycle me neither yeah hold on no my notes here say he was two years old two years old he's riding his tricycle so mick's riding his tricycle and he decides he wants to be the first super dave osborne or johnny knoxville one of the two he's not sure at this point in the early 40s so he rides his tricycle into a parked motorcycle as fast as he could kids are not smart you generally doing this he breaks his right arm and collarbone so to offset this damage the

16:56doctors would have him do exercises to help him strengthen his left arm so as a two-year-old i have no idea what these would be or that doctors would really be giving him exercises but this is from a saber article so i believe it okay yes absolutely then being in a cast on his right side he had to do everything with his left hand for a while and thusly he went from being a natural right hander to a left hander mickey was not a big man to start out at least he was 6'2 he only weighed 160 pounds in

17:28his rookie season with the tigers out of high school the tigers signed him sent him off to the minors where he spent four years learning how to pitch then in 1963 he finally got the invite to big league camp and off he goes sort of mickey showed up late for his first spring training with the big squad because he was back home in portland taking a test to become a mail carrier nice yeah his fellow rookie teammate that year was denny mclean so just a quick study in the two personalities here denny mclean

18:01would be great but he would also have his toes broken by the mob for not paying debts and mickey is here dreaming of being cliff clavin the dichotomy between these two is is fun to to compare here also being a mail carrier gives you a pension which being a ball player at that point did so very true very wise decision by mickey yeah mickey's pretty smart so mickey's first five seasons in the big leagues are okay he's an average pitcher in era plus of 98 so yeah average i mean right there

18:36right there yeah he had a 66 and 54 record he's throwing 200 plus innings each season he's a solid guy for the rotation but he's no denny mclean then comes the summer of 67 this if you know anything about history or even if you don't i learned this literally just by being a baseball fan but detroit is literally on fire there are riots happening and mickey being that civil service guy is a member of the national guard kind of makes sense like i said he's late for spring training taking a civic

19:09service exam so during the season and because of these riots he's called to active duty he is in uniform but it's just not the one with the what do you call that d i want to say the royal d but it's not the oh shoot what is it the old english dd i'll just and i'm gonna stop saying d because it kind of means something else now we're not gonna go there so if you're not aware the tldr version of the riots in detroit 1967 was because of a illegal police raid on an unlicensed after hours bar that

19:43happened to be in a black neighborhood there were five days of just real intense civil unrest made worse by long-standing systematic grievances over things like housing and jobs and police brutality all the things that have totally been cleared up today and are not causing civil unrest at all as we speak this second mickey starts off getting death threats from the black panthers because of his guard service and it was so serious in fact that the fbi actually put snipers on the roof of tiger stadium during his

20:16starts because they were that credible it would be kind of similar to if in 1989 will clark had joined ice during the offseason then went on to play like nothing had happened which if you listen to jeff perlman's latest story on will clark is what would have 100 percent have happened if ice had been around when will clark was playing by the way enough of my i'll get off my soapbox then 1968 happens we know what that is it's the year of the pitcher guess what mickey's a pitcher the tigers easily yeah that's

20:50why we're talking about him the tigers easily win the american league pennant by 12 games over the orioles and they meet bob gibson and the cardinals in the world series 1968 and bob gibson should make every batter ever break out in a cold sweat thinking of how good he was that season we've talked about it they changed the rules of the game after this season because not how dominant bob gibson was but every pitcher was almost as dominant as bob gibson nobody was but bob gibson more than any other 22 and 9

21:221.12 era and 4 million strikeouts slight exaggeration but 4 million ish around there we always like to round up to the nearest 4 million yeah it's just how we do it here heading into the world series so nobody's talking about mickey it's the year of the pitcher the tigers have danny mclean who just won 31 games he is the main event for the tigers in game one he goes up against bob gibson and givey just destroys the tigers he strikes out 17 the county coroner had to actually come out

21:56after the game to collect the tigers off the field it was that bad so the tigers pivot now if this was a friends podcast i would put in a clip of ross yelling pivot here we go pivot pivot pivot pivot pivot pivot pivot shut up shut up shut up in game two mickey's on the bump and he goes the distance he gives up one run strikes out nine gives up only six hits in an eight to one tiger victory and because the universe knows that pitchers

22:31hitting home runs is hilarious mickey hits a solo home run in the third inning off of nelson briles the only home run of his entire 16 year career in a game world series that he wins and hits a home run i so wanted this to be what would be considered a game-winning rbi but it was not i was just i was because i knew he hit it early and i was just like what if that put him ahead but no it wasn't i was bummed but a world series win is a world series win world series home run is a world

23:02series home run the tigers lose the next two games and they're now down three to one heading to game five this includes a game for where bob gibson again defeated denny mcclain ten to one real nail biter that one was the tigers are essentially dead in the water at this point down three to one so mickey goes out there and he throws another complete game to and just to be fair mcclain went out there on three days rest in game six and also gets a complete game win against a complete game win which was his only one of the series but that sends it to game seven so here comes

23:39mickey on two days rest against bob gibson this is one of those games that if you could travel back in time to watch a game this would be one of them absolutely it's scoreless heading into the six the cardinals lou brock lou brock the lou brock the who used to be the symbol of greatness you know ricky brock was the symbol of great base stealing but today i'm the greatest of all time thank you all right lou brock singles to lead off the inning that's not ideal this is how the cardinals kill you

24:12of course they run that's it they just run you can't stop them it's a scoreless sixth inning in game seven of a world series everybody knows that lou brock is standing over there on first base just planning to steal second base it's like dave roberts in the 2004 alcs everybody on the planet whether they're paying attention to the game or not knows that brock was going to try to steal second base there's like a blind 102 year old woman taking a nap in mozambique and she suddenly sat straight

24:43up and said that's lou brock he's gonna go and he did mickey stepped off threw over to first they threw it in a second he's out all right the thing is the next batter julian javier lines out to short now if brock had still been on first or it had been a hit and run tiger shortstop mickey stanley probably is not positioned where he catches a line drive right off of javier's bat but that's baseball that's the great thing about it it's like it's literally like the butterfly effect you know this

25:13happens so therefore this is allowed to happen that's two outs here comes kurt flood he singles another speedy guy at first another guy trying to steal second there he goes again lolich steps off throws over to first they get him in a rundown and he gets out of the inning after allowing both brock and flood to reach base jim northrup and bill freehand knock and runs for the tigers in the seventh and that was all mickey needed another complete game win and the tigers win the world series now you might want to sit down for this one mark mickey was named the world series nvp

25:47nah he beat the greatest pitcher of a generation in the biggest game of his life mickey lolich never has to buy another meal in detroit guaranteed he gets a sports car for being named nvp of the world series he doesn't care because mickey rides his motorcycle 33 miles to and from his house to tiger stadium regardless of what other kind of car they give him you know i'm thinking maybe once he crashes tricycle into that motorcycle back when he was two he's like i'm gonna be a

26:19motorcycle guy from here on out he's that hurt those things are sturdy there's this that's it that's his whole origin story with motorcycles we've just come up with it the next seven years as a tiger mickey averages 289 innings a season 289 logan webb of the giants led the big leagues in innings pitched last year with 207 mickey would have that in early august most seasons 1971 he starts 45 games he finishes 29 of them he pitches 376 innings he faced over 1500 batters that year those are satchel page

26:59like numbers so i don't know if mickey was putting snake venom on his elbow like like satch did but i do know that what he would do after every game is he would just put his his whole harm his whole harm i cannot talk today he would put his whole arm in hot water like real hot scalding water he would stand in a scalding hot shower for 30 minutes until his skin was red then he would get on his motorcycle and

27:30he'd get the heck out of there it was gracious yeah obviously these numbers are gonna make you popular even popular enough to get the black panthers to call off their fatwa on him apparently he outshone mclean his teammate he started to put on some weight too as we all do me especially but his weight seems to gather around his gut again i feel this but this just made him more likable to the fans he looked more like the guy sitting in left field pounding beers versus like a roll this chapman so man of the

28:05people mickey eventually gets traded to the mets where he clashed with the trainers about his arm care routine shockingly enough he's no i'm good just make sure there's enough hot water for me then he finished up in san diego before retiring for good from the game in retirement mickey opened up a donut shop in the suburbs of detroit where he spent his waning years actually working the counter and i'm i'm just wondering how many people would go in there and get a bear claw and a coffee and have it served to them by the guy that broke bob gibson's heart and have no idea probably a lot

28:41majority yeah yeah probably a lot so despite winning 217 games in a 16 year career striking out 2832 batters in almost 3700 innings being named the all-star team three times and winning the 68 world series nvp award for his historic performance and three victories in one world series completing nearly 40 of his starts over his career and throwing 41 shutouts lolich never got serious hall of fame

29:12consideration both on the regular ballot as well as the veterans committee and unfortunately he died at the age of 85 on february 4th this year in his home in michigan mickey i think he just kept that civil service exam in his back pocket in case the ups in case the ups in case the postal service ever called him in like the national guard did but it was probably for the best mickey was the last pitcher to earn three complete game wins in a world series and i'm willing to bet you everything i own mark that

29:44he will be the last yeah i'm not gonna take the bet and i'm just i just have a funny feeling yeah now the closest we have come recently 2001 randy johnson he won three games for arizona but they weren't complete games and he came in relief in game seven yes this last year in 2025 yoshinobu yamamoto won three wins for the dodgers but again he worked in relief for the clincher and he didn't even rack up 27 complete for the you know for the three complete games so both of those just

30:20historic performances but still nowhere near what mickey lolich did so mickey still holds a lot of tiger franchise records he holds the career strikeout mark the career shutout mark and the career game started mark for the tigers still i'm wondering if since verlander just signed a contract with the tigers again if he's threatening any of these things i have to look it up we'll follow it but there it is that's mickey lolich you know it was sad that he passed away but i'm glad that it at least got me to do some more research and find out what an incredible career he was incredible career

30:55he had and i'm really shocked he didn't get more hall of fame support i don't know if he's a hall of famer but i think he should have definitely gotten more support than he did especially when you've got and i hate to throw shade at jack morris all the time but you know jack morris right but that's mickey lolich those are solid numbers man i mean um you know maybe his the pinnacle of his career wasn't didn't last 20 years but boy when he was pitching he was dealing yeah i would just

31:26i would love to see that game seven that would just sounded like yeah i mean you and i both love pitcher's duels and that would be up there yeah absolutely all right so there it is there's mickey lolich um i am looking at the clock here mitch is our executive producer mitch is absent this week after we i don't want to say we besmirched him last week but we mocked him a bit and uh reminding him he might want to get his uh his weave tightened yes and so he's not here i don't know if he's getting it tightened or if he's just pissed at us but if he were here he would tell us that it is time for

32:01the final segment of the show which is a segment that we have referred to for the past five years and so we will continue to refer to as wax pack heroes how how everybody and welcome to today's edition of wax pack heroes you know wax pack heroes backwards

32:39is so a cat sow hey the rules were simple jeff and mark are here from two strike noise long time friends of mine jeff and mark they're gonna play an old-fashioned game of war but instead of using playing cards they're gonna be using budweiser's hey what okay no they're gonna be using baseball cards that makes much more sense they'll be using war of the year of the cards and

33:14whoever has the highest war that round wins cobs win cobs win cobs win just like that but there are extra factors arnie's telling me that can add or subtract from their war totals 1980s baseball aesthetics there you go extra points hall of famer bud lover extra points and if they have a pop culture reference

33:45like they were in a budweiser commercial extra points but whoa nelly if they appeared in seinfeld the simpsons or sabrina that's he's witch and they get a whole extra point or if no one ryan or ricky henderson show up the round is over and we drink budweiser's hey but they can also lose points if they show up in the mitchell report or are on the do not talk

34:20about list you know who i think should be on that list arnie mark bred's a gred's a lot mark gred's a lot and that guy's name is is too difficult they can also get more points if they led the league in any good categories that season if they want any warrants and if they have a costacos brother poster oh boy i could go for some tacos i love tacos but

34:54if they top the leaderboard in something bad like airs or spilling budweisers they're gonna get a minus point so no hey let's wrap this up and go get some tacos and some budweiser now let me hear you uh one uh two uh three wax pack heroes how about that mark we had i we've had to dust that one off i had forgotten that we had harry

35:30carry do us an intro yeah gosh it's been a while it has and i had forgotten and actually that was under a stack of other legendary announcers that had have recorded that for us before they'd passed so yeah there's so many that was executive producer mitch did find it so we will give him credit for that a very little but we'll give him some all right you won last week mark the scoreboard currently reads seven to six i am in the lead i told you that this pack of 2003 tops is a super

36:00pack of 35 cards so we've still got some that we're going to go through here today i did try to buy some new cards this week because they came out on wednesday the 2026 tops but i couldn't find them i did i went to target i went to one target i've been busy but they were out but i'm going to try to get some because we want to open some on stream and maybe we'll even i don't know maybe we'll even do some here we've never done contemporary cards here that'd be interesting yeah all right so let's see

36:32what we have got here i am going to shuffle these again because we know how they put these in order so i'm gonna what a stack of manager cards you need yeah i mean we both got the manager cards to start off and and so forth so we're not gonna do that all right i had shuffled them last week too so hopefully this will be okay all right mark i'm gonna let you decide i guess i think i know what your decision is but do you want to go first or second i want to go first sir all right here you go you

37:03have got a card i watched this guy pitch quite a bit with atlanta it is starting pitcher jason marcus all right it's interesting when i type him in the old google box that his wikipedia comes up first versus his baseball reference i don't know if that's a harbinger of bad things to come or not i hope not let's see jason marquis overall 15 years in the big leagues four wow i never realized this guy's a grid cheat code four in atlanta three in st louis two in at the cubs the padres and the

37:38gnats and then one for colorado cincinnati minnesota and arizona it's a buttload that's an official term all right 2003 he was hurt only appeared in 21 games only started two of them had an era of 5.53 and a record of zero and zero pitched in 40 and two-thirds innings struck out 19 had a 78 era plus and a minus 0.3 war not his best nothing on this card is going to help you out it's taken at at&t park

38:09or what's it called oracle park now i can tell from the background there let's see he was traded for luis viscaino at one point oh a first round draft pick by atlanta 35th overall in the 96 and he was also traded by atlanta with ray king and adam wainwright to the cardinals for jd drew and eli marrero i was still working when that went down i remember that those guys let's take a look at his wikipedia and just see oh it looks like he's been editing it because it's jason marquis has got a really

38:43long wikipedia not him but somebody in his maybe his wife debbie or his three kids that currently reside in tottenville staten island oh there you go looks like he was involved with team israel during the wbc while he was still playing beyond that there's just a wall of text here and the yeah nothing's gonna nothing i think that's gonna help me out or help you out all right so you're at a minus 0.3 so i like my chances good start yeah i have got a oh i've got a flashback car i'm gonna win

39:18because i got a hall of famer so much for this one flashback 1973 first cy young award for jim palmer yeah i mean i don't think we really need to pick a year for him since you uh have a minus i think palmer i think most people will have heard of him as well so we won't go in too deeply into mr jim palmer's ability to defeat what's my guy's name again anyway jason marquis i mean i think also

39:49didn't jim palmer didn't he do an ad where he appeared in pantyhose all uh underwear underwear underwear okay who was pantyhose was that joe namath joe namath oh it was something like that oh he's he's also been in commercials for the money store oh that's right i think that would be a minus those things they're very predatory we don't rip off places yeah yeah i feel pretty safe in saying that yeah i'm just gonna i'm gonna win this one yeah i'm fine with that all right so i'm up one to nothing you have got oh this is a good card oh this is a rookie card rookie card with

40:25the marlins which might not help you a whole lot but it's josh beckett's rookie card oh yes a baby-faced josh beckett do you think his uh his father or grandfather started beckett baseball card no no i would have known that right i don't know jeopardy knowledge i don't know what you know let's see josh beckett overall 14 years in the big league seven with boston five with florida three with the dodgers in 2003 with the good news for you this is his third best season of his career

40:57he only went nine and eight with a 3.04 era but he pitched in 142 innings 132 hits struck out 152 everything's in twos here for a 138 era plus and a 3.8 war that's that's very good that works for me let's see two-time world series winner world series nvp and three-time all-star wow he was a oh the marlins picked him second overall in the 1999 draft they then traded him with mike lowell to the

41:33red socks for hanley ramirez who has been in the news under similar circumstances to uh castigliano did you see that yes i did we're not going to talk about that but not this week anyway and then he was traded by the red socks with carl crawford adrian gonzalez and nick punto to for the dodgers for nobody i mean that was a salary dump though right because crawford had that huge contract that

42:04the red socks signed him to after he was a free agent from tampa and adrian gonzalez i mean he was making mad money and never produced after those big contracts this has to be a salary dump i would assume yeah let's see here anything that's gonna hurt or help you has been linked to such celebrities as models slash sportscaster leanne tweeden singer danielle pack i don't believe i've heard of either of

42:37them i mean they're both very attractive women i'm looking at them here but peck was invited by cleveland to sing the national anthem prior to game five of the alcs between the red socks and cleveland beckett was the starting pitcher in that game and some red socks fans theorized that her invitation was an attempt by cleveland to distract beckett nice move yeah but then in 2011 he married holly fisher an astronautics engineer and former high school classmate they have three kids together

43:09he's an avid deer hunter of course he is and he's won a deer hunting contest good for you bro uh was featured in a kevin fowler music video alongside teammates john lackey tim wakefield john lester and clay buckholz well he did have a dui so that i am gonna nick you on but he's in a music video so those should cancel out those shouldn't cancel out but we're going to yeah for some reason those cancel out in our mixed up game they those cancel out all right so you're at 3.8 i have i've got

43:44another one of those future stars cards with two guys on it i know who i'm gonna pick though because i've heard of one of them and not the other this is for the twins there's michael kadair or michael restovich he's got a restovich face i nailed that one i nailed that one right heck yeah all right i'm gonna choose michael kadair obviously he's the only one i've heard of i say obviously i don't know maybe everyone else has held it heard of the other guy and not michael kadair but i was a pretty good ball player if i remember right i think he had a pretty good

44:16crowd he's not it wasn't like a star by any means well a two-time all-star so there you go and won a silver slugger he won a batting title oh my 2013 with colorado he hit 331 wow let's see 2003 though this is gonna be a no contest it's the only negative war year of his career only appeared in 35 games for minnesota this year 245 average 326 on base 431 slug for a 97 ops plus four home runs eight ribs and a minus 0.3 war so there's a lot of ground that he would

44:51have to make up to get to 3.8 he was a twins first round over a ninth overall pick in 1997 and he compares favorably to milton bradley so hopefully just in the numbers department and not right yes not in the attitude department not the off i was gonna say off-field stuff but on-field stuff too yeah both he married an english teacher in 2006 i love how they have to put her career there kadir was born deaf in his left ear due to a childhood virus however he insists that

45:25his partial deafness never interfered with his ability to hear teammates on the field and does not view himself as hearing impaired all right didn't know that all right there's a win for you we are tying at one one your next card is a it's got a special first year card stamp on it it is for the cardinals first baseman chris duncan who i believe wasn't he dave duncan's he was isn't he dave duncan's son i honestly do not know but sounds good to me i'm almost 100 oh wow chris duncan i was

45:58prophetic i guess passed away in 2019 he didn't know that was the youngest son of dave duncan huh that's sad age 38 he passed away in tucson overall he spent five years in the big leagues all of it with st louis in the bad news for you is he didn't make the big leagues until 2005 so i don't know that we'll see if it's good news or not i was gonna say these are 2003 he's got a gold chain on i was gonna say if that's a fighting chain i was gonna give you i was gonna give you a tenth of a point

46:33you remember those things as a magnet oh yeah did you have one because i know i did i did not have one i had a good collection those are from seattle and you didn't have one no wow well i'll do this for you he's got his he's at first base with his you know he's got his first baseman's glove on taking infield here during spring training he's got batting gloves hanging out his back pocket okay so i'm gonna give you a tenth of a point because i love that look absolutely let's see first round again wow we got a lot of first rounders 46th overall in 99 traded by the cardinals

47:08to the red sox for julio lugo at one point all his older brother shelly duncan also played in the big leagues talented family baseball family was a host in st louis began a nightly program stully and duncan and he was replaced by former fast lane commentator bob ramsey i don't know what that means but then he started to co-host with a former defensive tackle for the rams demarco farr but

47:39he was diagnosed in 2012 with a brain cancer underwent chemotherapy and then unfortunately passed away well he you know the he did live for seven years after that diagnosis wow all right that's tough man yeah r.i.p to chris duncan but he got you a positive point 10 i have got i've got a likewise a first year card stamp on pitcher for the raise doug wachter walk i remember this guy w-a-e-c-h-t-e-r yeah what wachter wachter didn't even hardly knew

48:17yeah that is not as good as the michael rostovich that's my best ever that is legitimately my best ever use it in a sentence name it's no menkiewicz but it's close very close i have a feeling he didn't make the oh he did make the big leagues wow his first year was in 2003 he went three and two with a 3.31 era in six games 35 and a third innings 29 hits 29 strikeouts for a 134 era plus

48:48and a 1.2 war i was gonna hit you up because he's got the pants that just go down to the knees and then the long socks but there's no stirrup and i don't think we can count that as because we want to see the sanitaries if they're stirrups no yeah but i don't think it matters because he's got a 1.2 war yeah third round pick for the raise let's make sure he's still alive okay he's this guy's still breathing as occasionally appeared as a sportscaster alongside dwayne stats covering raise games okay so

49:23he's just doing color i don't why would they call him a sportscaster that's what i think of as somebody on tv and your local news that gets three minutes to do sports at sportscaster yeah right 11 30 or whatever also serves as a realtor for the dmk group of douglas element real estate so if you want to buy a house from doug wechter there's your shot i'm assuming that's in tampa or somewhere in florida give him a call wechter yeah give a plus don't don't we sing it maybe we'll get part of the commission

49:54all right so i'm up two to one and you are gonna get your go at a future stars okay this is gonna be an interesting one you've got a and it's your favorite team too it's the yankees you can choose juan rivera or marcus thames i'm gonna go with marcus thames yeah i think that's probably the best it's just he didn't wasn't a big name here until he came back from japan right but i agree i don't

50:25remember juan rivera let's see marcus thames 2003 it's his second year in the league you're not going to do this second year in the league he had already been moved to texas he appeared in 30 games hit 205 298 on base 274 slug for a 47 ops plus that's not a good sign one home run four ribs and a minus point four war jeez uh we'll look at we'll look up juan rivera too in a minute here just to see he

50:56was traded by the yankees to texas for ruben sierra who gets plenty of pop culture points but that doesn't help you at all thames nickname is slick because he got his hair cut too short when he's four years old now whose fault is that do you think at four years old he's yeah just keep going bro this is this is where parenting needs to take effect there the parent is watching the haircut i'm assuming oh thames served in the mississippi national guard from 94 to 98 just like mickey lulich he was a

51:29platoon leader in basic training and the yankees granted him leave and allowed him to make up his guard time in the offseason okay not a whole lot going on there for you no i do let's look up juan rivera i i'm i mean he had a major league career oh if you would have picked him in 2003 he had a positive 0.7 war he actually played for 12 years i chose unwisely yeah you did boy he had a great year in 2009 with the angels 3.8 war 25 home runs 88 ribs at 287 average he's a good player arguably

52:08better than marcus thames career wise oh geez i'm starting in the hole here already because i've got pitcher the arizona diamondbacks kurt schilling your favorite your favorite guy so currently you're in the lead because kurt schilling is a minus 0.1 and you're at minus 0.4 oh brother i like i don't even want to type his name because i don't want him to get

52:39into my search history that's how much i hate kurt schilling all right let's see 20 years in the big leagues philadelphia boston arizona baltimore houston 2003 he was 36 years old no all-star this year all right i win he had a 6.0 war yeah you beat me by a little bit all right that's all we're gonna do for him i'm sorry i can't stand talking about him and he'll just set me off so cue up cool in the gang because that is a cool win for me three to one yeah my guys didn't show up again yeah when you

53:14let kurt schilling beat you it's like half of the league yeah that was yeah what can you do all right that'll do it for this version of wax pack heroes it'll also do it for this episode as a whole thank you for joining us if you want more of us you can do a search we are two strike noise t w o strike noise you can also find all of our social links down in the show notes just a reminder i do stream on twitch and youtube monday wednesday and friday at nine o'clock west coast time we do some baseball

53:47dailies talk baseball watch some videos i cannot tell you mark how much i learn from these streams we've got our regulars that show up and then we've got some you know people that just pop in some like today had never even heard of the show popped in and dropped some baseball knowledge on me and it's great i love it love learning all right great mark we also have an email address that you can tell us about we do i have not been writing have you not been checking it oh checking it yeah for i

54:18just got confused i was gonna start writing you know okay yes please we need your attention write to us at two strike noise spell it out that's t w o strike noise at gmail.com all right thank you very much everybody i hope you all stay healthy safe and warm and baseball season is upon us i think mark is back this is the last weekend where there will not be major league baseball being played until the end of october cue the happy joy song yes definitely all right everybody thank you very much

54:54we'll see you again on the next episode of two strike noise thank you god bless you have a great day

55:24amazing you is is is is is