Episode 315 - Tales from the Dugout, New Rules, Missing Coaches and Speedruns

Introduction

0:00hello everybody welcome to a another episode to strike noise your mom's favorite baseball history podcast my name is jeff i'm one half of the show as usual and joining me from the pacific northwest in the jj putz studio this week it is my co-host mark a johnston mark how you doing oh my goodness yes the jj putz studio a couple good years of uh we had a lot of saves here in

0:37the studio in the studio it did take place in in in what safeco at that point it was in the studio it was safeco yes all right but we had we had saves in the studio too it's just hard to explain in layman's terms i don't even know what that means okay anyway for the idiots is what it means

BP Segment Introduction

0:56which would be you describing it for me so hey let's get into our bp segment right away i mean i've been talking about the wbc on their streams on on youtube and twitch i think we're gonna move on from the wbc i've had enough of it it was really weird this year but let's get into our bp segment and let's talk about something better mark we've talked about former yankee athletic i don't remember where else he went but hideki matsui well we've described his collection as a one of his hobbies

1:33as an extensive very extensive collection of adult physical media is the way that's one way of putting it and i guess when you've watched enough of something people you get to the point where people consider you an expert at it right yeah pretty much anything so hideki matsui is scheduled to give a special lecture at the 44th annual meeting and academic conference of the japan society of fertilization and implantation wow so they're saying that he is going to come and speak because

2:07he was a classmate in middle school of the conference president i think it's because he's an expert like i said you watch that much i mean he probably only watched it like five minute increments but still he was an expert he is an expert on that kind of stuff so i guess you would have him come and talk about fertilization and implantation you know you it's interesting you're some things you're born into other things you choose you decide what you're going to be an expert in and that's an

2:38interesting choice on his behalf yeah he's the foremost i guess expert on that kind of stuff

New MLB Rules

2:44all right mark new rules coming not i don't know if there's i'm sure there's some real tweaks in the mlb that i'm unaware of but in the minor leagues you know where they always test things out before they it gets to the big leagues like the abs i mean that's been the the pitch clock all those things were in the minors before they made the the big leagues so here are some of the rules that they are going to be implementing in various levels of the minor leagues the first one and i hate this they're just hell bent on getting stolen bases up so you know bases are 90 feet from each other

3:20from the yes edge of the bag to the edge of the other bag it is 90 feet or no since the bases are bigger now but what they're going to do is they're going to move second base a little bit closer it seems which will make it a little bit closer to first base which is it's it's not much it's a three inch difference but still they already made the bag bigger i mean it's over half a foot closer now with that thing so i'm not a fan just leave it alone everything comes back into vogue it'll

3:57we'll get back to stealing bases yeah i kind of feel the same way along the lines of the abs which we just mentioned in the pcl there is going to be a check swing challenge yes where you can challenge whether a check swing was a actual check swing or not i think they could handle this even better i mean sure they've got technology apparently so they can tell if the bat handles greater than a 45 degree angle that's what they're doing it on why don't you just not let the home plate umpire call

4:32them and you just have to you know go down to first or third every time i i just make sense i i think i think we're getting to a point where everything is going to be judged artificially and it's going to take away some of this stuff i i don't like so far we're oh for two you don't like either of these

Game Length Discussion

4:48no let's see last year the average time of game in major league baseball went up two minutes to two hours 38 minutes which i am still pretty pleased with what they're going to do is they're talking about not in in single a they're not going to let batters request a timeout at any point if there's a unless there's a runner on base and then they'll just get their one but otherwise they're just you're you're in

5:19there i guess so wow and pitch calm issues are going to count as mound visits so i guess i guess what they're saying is if your pitch calm stops working you're gonna have to flash signs yeah i mean i why not did you see all of the the you know location and pitch tipping from second base during the wbc i mean they were so obvious about it too yeah there was no um sneaking around no they're just pointing wave like they're doing semaphore on second base because what are you going to do you're not

5:54going to hit somebody in the world baseball classic because the games are too important you might see some sort of retribution in a major league game and everyone will be like why do these two guys have beef but i don't know they're also talking about reducing the disengagement from two to one so that's wow really getting it and then they're also talking about this returning starters to the game so as long as the re-entry occurs in the inning that immediately follows the starters departure

6:25they're eligible for re-entry weird and they must throw at least 25 pitches in the inning during which they are removed i i don't like any of these i don't know that one really strikes me negatively yeah i i am open to the uh there's the suggestion of you lose the dh when you take out your starting pitcher which i like i the players union would obviously never go for that but i like that because then it gets back to you gotta you've got to manage your your pitcher and you know where they

7:00are in the lineup and some actual strategy yeah and i mean you've already got expanded you got 26 players now instead of 25 or even 24 way back in the day so you've got enough players yeah i don't

NPB Rule Changes

7:13like those all right let's see here let's talk about the npb their season getting ready to get started as well they have implemented a new rule that i likewise do not like first of all this they had a rule that i didn't know already where when you get to the climax series though the essential world series of the npb the series starts with a the higher seed team getting a ghost win so you start with a one game to nothing advantage before anybody's played a game i don't like that at all but now what

7:48they're talking about is that if you are playing a team that in the regular season had a winning percentage of less than 500 or you finish 10 games behind the pennant winner you are going to give up two ghost wins to the higher seeded team wow so that's half of the you know that's half of what you need yeah i mean that's you're down two to nothing already that just doesn't seem fair i mean obviously they're trying to wait the regular season performances more but that's extreme right make it

8:24more important yeah very extreme yeah two games yeah it's a two game series it's you win one of those like two at home and then you're like i gotta win one out of the next five games right don't like

Shrinking Players

8:40it hmm don't like it what i do like though is the shrinkening it's happening in mlb it's it's short king summer y'all coming up so we know the abs we can't get off the abs but major league baseball is having to definitely well they're not having to they have recorded everybody's height in a special way during spring training here so that everybody has their individual strike zones so that when a pitch is challenged it is matched to their body type the exact math used is the top of the zone

9:15is 53.5 percent of the measured height the bottom is 27 and i don't know where the rest of it is it didn't tell me i think the listeners should insert their own jose altuve joke oh i've got one yeah hold on to that hold on okay okay they noted that every player was remeasured this spring training to ensure the digital strike zone would be perfectly calibrated i have made some wrestlers in a like a creator wrestler in wwe video games that would have no strike zone at all if this is the case because you can really make some some things ryan mcmahon i guess of the rockies is probably the most

9:52where most people know him from he tried to slump as much as possible during their official measurements he said hoping that what it probably did is just lowered his strike zone he probably screwed himself there brought the knees down even lower yeah but one guy that got nicked a bit was gavin lux so he was listed last year as six foot two and coincidentally wore number two jersey number two

10:22after being measured this year he is now 5 11 whoa that's three inches and as a man i know that's a lot wow wow that's crazy so he's 5 11 so he's changed his number to 11 which he's got a good sense of wow that is pretty funny it's interesting how i mean you know these teams are fudging numbers now and then yeah it's just kind of funny to see it come out yeah also connor wong also lost three inches and that was collaborated by both sports illustrated and the times of india they're all

10:55over this oh the times of it well shoot that's done deal yeah a couple of players did actually gain some inches again it's a man i tell you it helps osvaldo cabrera went from 5 11 to 6 foot anthony volpe gained an inch 5 10 to 5 or 5 9 to 5 10 as did ben rice who used to be 6 1 now he's 6 2 these guys are still growing they're so young yes that's it it's interesting though because you mentioned jose altuve he stayed the same height you would have thought that it's somewhere along

11:29the line he would have added or the astros would have added an inch or two so he's not listed at like three foot four but no he's still same height you can all those measurements that you made using altuves as a unit of measurement back a couple of years when that was a thing they're still all good yeah that's just true you can build stuff in altuves and and apparently it is you know those of us that lie about our heights can take a page from mr altuve and no need to do such a what do you what what do you say you are and how tall are you we're spilling

12:01we're spilling all the tea here well i i always thought it was five eight and then recently i was the doctor and they said oh you're five eight and a half and i was like oh i grew right on so you know i still got a shot of six foot i think by the time you're 173 right you should i gotta not shrink like you normally yeah i am battle the shrink i've not measured myself forever i'm either 5 10 5 i usually just say 5 10 because you're taller than me 5 11 seems a little like i'm showing off

12:33and i don't i don't think i'm that tall i you know in wallets they used to give you those cards like they're like id cards where you fill out all your information i don't do is am i the only one that remembers that i doubt they do it no i remember those yeah this is i this was back in the day i mean i remember my first wallet i remember it vividly it was a fake leather it was a spider man wallet but it had one of these id cards in it and i filled it out and when it got to sex i put none i was like five that is a family joke that will not let it i can't get away from it i

13:10see okay i was a little shocked i remembered that that was in there and i'm like as a five-year-old not girls are gross get me out of here oh all right that'll do it for our shrinking part of this

Tales from the Dugout Introduction

13:26let's let the grounds who come out and do their thing it is time mark i'm not sure we've done one of these for a while but it's a week that we are going to go ahead we're just going to do some shorter stories that don't warrant an entire episode so it is our tales from the dugout i have no idea how many we have done now it's been a while it's just show 315 so it's been it's a good amount but let's go ahead and get into this mark i'm going to start off with one of these stories we're going to travel back to the year 1900 on the dot it's july 12th and a couple of members of

14:02the new york giants they're heading to the polo grounds i'm talking about george davis kid gleason future manager of the black socks i think george davis is a hall of famer and mike cahoe they're on a street car no idea what it was named this is i was gonna go there yeah it's not no we're in new york so they're on a street car they're heading to the polo grounds and they're playing the phillies that day apparently and as they are riding in the street car they see an apartment building engulfed

14:32in flames and everybody is just standing around recording this fire with their cell phones apparently yeah as people do especially in 1900 so the chicago tribune reported it this way they said that the trio quote were among the first on the scene and worked like trojans in carrying down the helpless and wow it's very flowery they saw a woman on the top floor george davis went up the ladder

15:03like a squirrel is what they said and reached her carried her back down davis and gleason reportedly climbed in a fire escape or climbed up a fire escape and pulled this woman and a child through a window and then helped them climb down to their safety so life-saving rescues sussed the fire department showed up they're like all right you guys got it from here we got a game to play and so off the head just a normal back to back to their day job the giants trailing 10 to 5 in the ninth inning of

15:35this game they come back to force extra innings after a two-run shot in the ninth by kip selbach show favorite kip after giving up three runs to boston though i think i said they were playing the phillies but here it's i've seen there's a lot of conflicting reports here they gave up they went to extra innings they give up three runs in the top of the 10th the giants i couldn't be boston this is not the world series let's phillies let's get this straight my brain's figuring this out in real time so the giants aren't feeling good they're down three they're in the the bottom of the 10th

16:11they i mean they scored five apparently in the bottom of the ninth but that was kind of all they felt they had in their tank so they come up with a plan let's stall all right no lights games got get called on account of darkness their ties at that point so let's let's stall here in this inning the umpire behind the plate was tommy connelly that day just let's let's get him to call this game so the giants started lighting pieces of paper as they pretended to look for their bats it's probably

16:41like three o'clock in the afternoon it's july i mean come on it's gonna be light out until like 8 30 9 o'clock they're doing all these things i mean we've talked about these kind of games where teams would stall and you know do these antics to just take up time they refused to step to the plate until they were threatened with being called out which would get them closer to actually possibly ending the game fans in the stands started to light things on fire which new york is never a good thing that the new york world reported that there were quote 50 small bonfires burning at once

17:17in the grandstands and bleachers end quote i'll take that with a grain of salt but whatever the tactic worked though eventually with two on and two out a blast here they're tied again but two on two out bottom of the 10th connelly finally calls it the game is a tie selbach and davis and jack doyle the first baseman were fined five dollars each for their roles in this which would be today about 150 bucks i don't even think that's per diem for big leaguers this day george davis though it should be

17:51mentioned he did hit a triple that afternoon despite his face reportedly being blistered from the heat of the fire tough guy he's a hockey player is what he is yeah no kidding but i had not heard that story i didn't know that no i never heard that that's interesting it's that seems like something that we would have come especially when we were talking about games that well i i guess i guess we just talk about the game you know lighting the the fires and stalling we don't really care how they got to the ballpark that's true too well we do now yeah we're it's now known to us so yes we know it's a

18:25big deal well that was cool man i got kind of an interesting story um it's about a pretty short night game that took place in 1944 so it's ice tent uh this is wartime baseball you got your patched together rosters night game under the lights at crosley field boston's national league club is rolling into town to face the cincinnati reds cincinnati sending out bucky walters oh boy it's a big draw

18:55at the gate bucky walters i'm telling you and and he and you know he's a guy you sent out there you expect to win boston counters with red barrett oh wow pitching matchup all right not flashy not overpowering but he does throw strikes as we will see here uh the game starts and immediately you know it's something special because it's pitch contact out pitch contact out all right you're settling into your seat that you just got there and it's the second inning you blink and half the lineup has already hit no deep counts no drama no strikeouts just baseball at its absolute bare minimum here's the

19:34ball put it in play thank you next so boston scratches a run across in the second inning nothing special just enough to get on the board and then in the fifth they add another one so we got it's a two nothing lead and now you're thinking all right reds will adjust of course you know and uh they do not adjust barrett's out there is just throwing hittable pitches like it's ap and cincinnati is just happily obliging by hitting everything directly at somebody so barrett gives up two hits no walks

20:05no strikeouts which is almost harder to do because think about it it's harder than throwing a no hitter because it means everybody's swinging everybody's making contact and everybody's getting out so it's like perfectly choreographed routine of failure meanwhile uh walters is doing his job he gives up just two runs a totally winnable game but it does not matter because barrett has turned the entire night into a speed run nine innings no interruptions no nonsense no pitching changes

20:37one hour and 15 minute ball game okay and then you get to the stat that just blew me away all right 58 pitches the man threw 58 to get 27 58 pitches complete game shutout 58 pitches that's an average of barely over two pitches per batter it's pretty awesome when i read about this i was like man what would that drive my hourly wage to because you know we get paid by the yeah it would cost more

21:07in gas to get there than to well you'd make from the game yeah so so that means like okay so you only face 29 batters total that means every single reds hitter walked up swung early and politely exited like they had somewhere else to be final out hits a glove game over boston wins two to nothing and the crowd is probably sitting there like okay so that was the prelim where's the real game what's going on you know it was just uh no fireworks no legends being made just one pitcher and one

21:38philosophy throw it down there let them hit it let your fielders handle the rest what was the attendance because this you said this was wartime so it's not you know these are not major league players for the most part what was the attendance in this game that's a good question i have it up here somewhere 7783 i i would call that a pretty decent attendance then for that kind of game i wonder how many how many showed up after the sixth inning which is probably like 40 minutes in yeah what do you mean it's eighth inning what's going on beer sales is over i just got here

22:13yeah so that was that's the uh the shortest night game that's ever been played jeez uh what what did you say a buck 40 one hour and 15 minutes 15 minutes jeez we we joke when we stream because the older games that you don't have a time of game they'll usually just put an hour and 50 that's like the default this is the default game time yeah an hour and 15 minutes man the dodger that will make a make

22:47a cheap dodgers joke from the 80s as half the fans would have missed the game yes of course throw that out there with the hose al tube we're just recycling all the greatest hits yeah there you go all right so my i got well i got one more story here after this we're going to be heading into wax packs heroes

Wax Pack Heroes Introduction

23:06which is very centered on baseball cards so i've got a couple of related baseball card stories here that i had not heard about so have you ever heard of mike proly yes you have i i have may ask why was he hold on let me make sure i got the right guy was he in the twins organization um let's see he never made the big leagues on the twins no no no no oh wait no yeah no yep hey oh 1977 tacoma i do remember that that's really weird yeah so he is essentially though he's a reliever he

23:43was actually a pretty decent reliever pitched for seven years in the big leagues lifetime era of 3.23 let's see 545 innings struck out 180 but he walked 195 so there's your there's your problem right there is uh is the walks a whip of 1.33 for a reliever so he he was he was there he was uh he was a righty he pitched you know kind of bounced around had a had an okay career but he went into coaching after

24:15he retired so he was with the rochester red wings here and he's a coach so it's picture day for the right for the red wings and pro cards which is a small company at this point in 1990 they are doing minor league cards so they've got a photographer shows up at the red wing stadium to take the coaches picture pictures proly was nowhere to be found though they didn't know where he was couldn't find him so rather than waiting or maybe coming back later or another day the photographer just snapped a

24:47picture of an empty bullpen bench where he was going to have proly sit for this card it's just an empty bench so uh in the biggest so in a big display of well that's not my job for for both the photographer and if there was such a thing as an editor at pro cards nobody saw anything wrong with this picture at all they cropped it put it on a card that says mike proly coach and they were printed so now this is it said thousands were distributed in these 1990 packs featuring a weathered green bench

25:25some grass and a brick wall it's it said thousands i could not find a single picture of it it's so elusive it's a it's a collector's item that i could even find a picture of it on the internet so if somebody can can point me towards one i would love to see it because it seems seems meme worthy to me but this reminds me of a photographer that i talked about just last episode it was sent to take ken williams pictures and instead shot a whole roll on baby doll jacobson that's right hey man i was there

25:59on time i gave him like five minutes if he doesn't show up what am i supposed to do the the mike proly brick wall error yeah i took a picture of where he was supposed to be and then i'm out that's all you pay me for i mean this this is really though the the peak of the wax pack junk wax era though right so many cards are produced that the quality control was right it's like the quality control of of mark de rosa uh grasping the rules of the first round of the wbc just didn't get it it was the

26:30only card that anybody can figure out that contains exactly zero percent of the player that is listed on the card which i guess isn't true because there are cards like that gary pettis card where the bat boy or you know somebody's brother that's zero percent of the player that was supposed to be there so i find fault in that statement that i just made so wow you're uh you're on top of it today sir yes so there's mike proly now in a related document i wanted to talk about your favorite player of all

27:04time derrick jeter oh good now this isn't really a derrick jeter story he's just involved in it but likewise we're still in that junk wax era 1992 there's a company called little son or at least it's called the 1992 little son set have you heard of it i don't think so me neither it was produced by a little company in monrovia california they only made about 3 000 sets total so in 1992 there's this kid chad roper he is a can't miss prospect also the illegitimate son of one of the

27:44ropers on three's company oh wow yeah no that's i made that interesting to know i made that up he was stanley and helen his stanley and helen yes probably stanley's probably stepping out on helen and those moo-moos so he's the second round draft pick 64th overall by the twins he's a power hitting third baseman out of south carolina and actually a lot of scouts were higher on him than this skinny kid from michigan derrick jeter roper was chosen along with three other players to sign 250 cards

28:19in this set now this is something that they just didn't do at this point there weren't autograph sets especially rookie cards of of guys that were just drafted like they've they're nowhere near the big leagues so they chose four players to sign 250 cards so you've got this chad roper you've got jeter they've got a guy a guy named jason kendall who went on to have a fantastic major league career and dave landeker who i think i don't know why i'm just looking this up right now as we record but i

28:54think he made the big leagues let's see no he did not make the big leagues either been a couple of years in the astros organization but never got higher than a ball but so we've got chad roper here he was climbing the minor league ladder until his average dipped into the low 20s and he eventually transitioned to trying to pitch in 1997 to save his career but an 8.93 era is hard to hard to come back

29:25from so actually in this set collectors were were chasing this chad roper card not the derrick jeter cards oh wow you know this is a very small company like i said so many of the un so they printed out more than 250 of these cards they got 250 signed but they still had an extra couple hundred of each of these that they started to just hand out to you know the players themselves maybe some people in the company but what happened here caused a caused a kerfuffle i used that earlier in the day it sounds

30:02like a boomer word but again it's this great word it really works here yeah these extra cards somebody got a hold of them and they sold them to an unscrupulous dealer which describes a lot of them let's be honest here he acquired a large stack of these unsigned jeter and roper cards and you know they're the exact same ones that people are pulling from packs so he just started signing them with the names of chad roper and derrick jeter of course but these are sought after cards at this

30:36point and oh i've got 200 of them here yeah so the thing is jeter's signature evolved over time so these forgeries were harder to spot because jeter has a bunch of different ways that he has signed his name and so you don't actually know there's no certificate of authenticity with these things psa actually stopped grading the little sun autographs for a while because they couldn't distinguish between the official 250 that were polled and the ones that were backdoored

31:08is what they're calling it i did i had to look up what backdoored meant i had no idea i could not figure it out so if you've got if you find a chad roper card hang on to it and this is by the way a new segment that we're trying out it's called baseball cards that actually exist but jeff can't find a picture of even on the internet this is this is a great segment we're still workshopping the name but that's maybe we can get a theme song written about that it kind of kind of rolls off the tongue

31:38yeah yeah seriously because i think people would come in just if we had that as once every once every month or so i cannot find any of those cards i thought the chad roper card i could find the the mike actually you know what i don't i don't know why either of them i couldn't find but i could not so if you know of a chad roper picture of that card or the mike pearly card let me know because i'd like to see it and i know we've got a couple of guys that listen to this show that i'm guaranteeing you

32:09will will come through for us so we'll we'll check back in later and see how they look all right let's see producer mitch he's here he's got his uh he's got his hair coiffed getting ready for the regular season you never see mitch that says get on with it yeah you mitch doesn't wear hats a lot at least he doesn't keep them on does he because he wants to show that off and hat air is a thing you fork over a lot of money for those things for hats show them off no for weaves he could get a hat that has it

32:41you know those those ones that have like a mullet hanging out of the back yeah he should just get one that's just got the same hair think of all the girls he'd pick up all right well i can see he's now frantically telling us to move on um so we're gonna move on to the final segment of the show

Wax Pack Heroes Game

32:57this is the segment that we've called for quite a while and we're going to continue to do call how everybody and welcome to today's edition of wax pack heroes you know wax pack heroes back

33:32backwards is 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

34:07whoever 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

34:38culture reference like they were in a budweiser commercial extra points but whoa nally if they appeared in seinfeld the simpsons or sabrina the tige witch and they get a whole extra point or if nolan ryan or ricky henderson show up the round is over and we drink budweiser's hey but they can't also lose points if they show up in the mitchell report or are on the do not talk about list you know

35:16who i think should be on that list arnie mark breads uh gredzilla car mark gredzolonic 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 if they top the leaderboard in something bad like airs or spilling budweiser's

35:56they're gonna get a minus point so no hey let's wrap this up and go get some tacos and sub budweiser now let me hear you uh one uh two uh three wax pack heroes all right thank you mr harry carry for reading those directions and singing a little bit for us us there at the end that's that's always

36:29great mark looking at the scoreboard right now you you're on uh you're on a heater right now you're up nine to eight you want a couple in a row here we're struggling we're worried and my job is on the line here so i'm on the hot seat i need to need to come up with some wins here we are going to keep going on with these 2003 tops one of our listeners mentioned to me i seem to be getting roasted with these cards why not go for another different year but we're gonna keep going no we don't want to do

36:59that we're getting we're getting some names that we we don't typically hear so i'm gonna shuffle these up a little bit because uh the manager cards are on the front and tend to be the same kind of things every everywhere so mark do you want to go you know what screw it i've lost like eight in a row i'm going first okay okay here we go my first card oh i have watched this guy pitch a lot he pitched a combined no hitter for your seattle mariners mark it is none other than kevin millwood big dude innings eater

37:33yeah just like a workhorse like he's your number three your number four guy and he's never gonna miss a spot in the rotation he's an innings eater 200 plus every year yeah overall 16 years in the big league good grid guy now that i think about it atlanta for six texas for four philadelphia baltimore cleveland seattle and colorado i don't remember colorado he actually had a winning record there and an era under four wow let's see overall pretty good in 2003 he went 14 and 12 this is his first

38:07year in philadelphia with a 4.1 era i get a tenth of a point here he led the league in shutouts with three this year also has some facial hair here on the card i forgot to mention that pitch 222 innings struck out 169 for a 99 era plus but a 2.3 war so that'll take me up to 2.5 not bad out of the gate let's see came in third in cy young voting in 1999 that was his lone all-star

38:42appearance um he's kind of good just as a manager you just know you he's gonna get out there he's gonna do his meetings yeah he's a good pitcher yeah all around oh i remember this he was traded by atlanta to philadelphia for johnny estrada johnny estrada was gonna take over he was gonna he was the next you know takeover for javi lopez that's right didn't didn't it didn't work out that great i'm not sure there's gonna be much here pop culture wise for me i don't see don't see anything

39:13i mean there's just nothing nothing all right but that's a 2.5 for me i'll take it it's a strong start your first card is going to be with the chicago cubs cory patterson i think he was just a solid outfielder 12 years that's a great career 12 years in the big leagues cubs for six baltimore for three cincinnati toronto st louis milwaukee and the nationales for years apiece in 2003 he hit 298 329 on base for a 839 ops a 114 ops plus he had 13 home runs 55 ribs stole 16 bases

39:56and a 1.8 war there is nothing on this card that is going to help you out which is i mean you're i have 2.5 and you've already got a 1.8 here let's see first round pick third overall in 98 by the cup was traded by the blue jays with octavio dotel and edwin jackson and mark zibchinski to the cardinals those three players i think played for every team in the majors twice those

40:29are three grid all-stars right there wow wow no kidding cory patterson pop culture wise nothing i we just had him recently because i i his link is clicked and i remember this son was committed to play at georgia tech before he went off and or no he was signed to george to play football at georgia tech before signing with the cubs nothing else there i'll take the win all right nice all right you or no this is me oh i like this this there's no way i'm losing this round

41:05i don't know who your card is but there's no way i'm losing this round it's a league leaders card for the american league it's al batting average i get to choose between manny ramirez mike sweeney or bernie williams hmm nice now i'm leading towards bernie and i'll tell you why this is an al batting average so you know he hit well right manny's gonna have the home runs the rbis i think they're both gonna be all-stars they're both gonna probably have led the league in something but bernie's got the

41:37seinfeld bonus that's true this is true i think i'm gonna go bernie i have to it's got to be we're gonna be on brand i think you're right i think that's a good goal all right bernie williams obviously played for the yankees and his entire career 16 years in 2000 i might have made the wrong choice since how can all right well i had i did not remember that he was the in the top batting category from the previous year not the year of the card oh yes in 2002 he had a 4.5 war he

42:15hit 333 at 19 homers 102 ribs 146 r 107 ops plus unfortunately in 2003 was his downturn he hit 263 367 on base slugged 411 a 107 ops plus 15 home runs 64 ribs five stolen bases but only a 1.0 war i am gonna get 1.0 for the seinfeld reference yes yeah he's got a five o'clock shadow

42:50here i can't call that facial hair we don't have to talk about the musician thing do we no okay well i mean we've talked about it enough yeah exactly that's why i was saying is there anything else that would possibly get me any more no i think you got the big chunk with seinfeld but i i think that's it you don't get any others for just you know yeah for being a good jazz guitarist that's so i think i made a mistake here let's just for fun let's just for fun look up man rams numbers here for 2003

43:28all-star led the league in on base intentional base on balls came in sixth in nvp voting hit 325 37 whores a 5.4 war okay i made a bad decision but i had to stay on brand had to stay on brand all right i swear we had this guy just a couple of weeks or maybe last week jose valentin with the white socks here yeah all right this is a different pack so we do get duplicates his link

44:03is not checked so oh remember there was valentine and valentin this is definitely valentine who we have not had and is going to help you with a mustache oh it's valentine yeah it's jose valentine there is no on this uh on the card there is no accent but it is definitely him jose valentine you so you get you get a bonus for he's got a mustache let's see for the white socks oh geez he had a good year 237 average 313 on base slugged 463 for a 100 exactly ops plus but he had 28 home runs 74 ribs eight stolen

44:41bases and a 4.0 war so that's good yeah i didn't mention he played 16 years in the big leagues milwaukee for eight the white socks for five mets for two and then the dodgers as well did not hit well when he got to the postseason i will tell you that was traded for gary sheffield by the padres with ricky bonus and matt miski and then he was traded with cal eldridge to get to the eldred i'm sorry to get to the white socks for jamie navarro let's see anything here that's going to help you and you

45:18don't need it he has been coaching a lot valentine is the older brother of major league catcher javier valentine but that's it that's a win for you easy win i these when you get these leaders cards it should be an easy win for you but no i've i've messed i've managed to mess it up well yeah what can you do man i think you overthought it i did i well i did you know i was trying to be on brand

45:49it's important we've got a brand to protect here mark well this is true all right i've got this is a special card it looks like they made like playing cards where you could play some sort of baseball game you know there's no stats or anything on the front it looks like a playing card but it says out like this is not a good card but it is with a cincinnati reds it's austin kearns austin kearns played 12 years in the big leagues five for cincinnati four for the gnats two in cleveland and miami and one for the yankees in 2003 it was his second year in the big leagues he hit 264

46:28364 on base 455 slug for a 117 ops plus had 15 home runs 58 rbi believe it or not five stolen bases for the 63 240 kearns and a 1.4 war uh nothing on this card which is just a cutout literally of his head is going to help me first round draft pick seventh overall by the reds in 1998 he was traded for a lot of guys that were base card-esque i've i've embraced that from your base card yes you're

47:07pretty good nomenclature uh it's a interesting little piece uh when the cincinnati reds opened great american ballpark in 2003 kearns became the first reds player to hit a home run in the new stadium all right so uh overall though that's going to be a 1.4 for me i'm feeling good though because it's a positive and you've got a manager card oh you've got the manager for the angels mike socia oh you got the simpsons though right off the bat yep but got that one going on yeah i

47:42mean that's going to be good since we don't we don't actually use any stats for manager cards just know that mike socia played his entire career for the dodgers 13 years two-time all-star won two world series and was the manager of the year twice well let's see if he was manager of the year in 2003 or won a world series you should get points for that but he was not 2002 is when they won the world series yeah so close and it doesn't tell me when he was named manager of the year 47 overall ejections

48:17as manager though i could see that 2002 and 2009 he was the manager of the year all right so you have got you you get nothing for his playing career we've already mentioned his nickname is el jefe i mean i don't like mike socia but i it's my nickname so i like that that's right hold on i don't see well he made a second appearance on the simpsons but i don't think we you can't double that up no i don't think we double up yeah otherwise like danny tartable would be one of the best car

48:49like if he was on a leader card i would take that yeah i think we mentioned before a celebrity endorser of howard's appliance and big screen superstore in southern california that's pretty big yeah but i think i'm gonna squeak out a win by four tenths of a point with austin kearns over mike socia all right it's two to one i'm on i'm on the brink here i have got a first card which is never good it's a pitcher for the new york metropolitans matthew peterson does not i we must

49:20have had him before because uh his link is clicked never made it to the big leagues uh made it as high as double a in 2010 but that is also 2007 he made it to triple a but never made it to the big leagues uh therefore i'm gonna guess that he is not hey i don't see anything there oh he's got real stirrups how about that well there you got something that's pretty impressive too i mean this is it could be enough to win another manager card yeah come on manager card yeah all right so that is it

49:55for me uh matthew peterson you'll never believe what card you're gonna get you have got a tops all-star rookie card which is nice it's got the little cup on it but it's uh outfielder for the cincinnati reds austin kearns what do you know that's his actual card though so i can guarantee you that he has got a 1.4 value um we don't even have to look this one up yeah nothing nothing on the card is going to add to that but it doesn't matter you've got a 1.4 versus my 10th of a point

50:28so okay that was the easy one so we're tied up we're tied up at two a piece and i have got a manager card oh wow now good thing here is my manager is in the hall of fame oh well see and he's wearing glasses oh man so that means i have got a 1.1 at least here maybe he won manager of the year i think i should get i think i should get an 80s baseball aesthetic because he's the manager of the expos he's in an expos uniform it's frank robinson oh there you go frank robinson obviously a hall

51:05of famer great player manager of the year in uh let's see i doubt it's 2003 1989 with the orioles the year after the the bad start i think right yeah 88 was the was the bad i i did a whole podcast on but like the heck i remember he was only ejected total of 29 times compared to mike socia's 49 nicknamed the judge i'm pretty sure that's because he was uh always the judge in kangaroo court if i

51:40recall correctly now i might get some pop culture points here i'm guessing he had to have done some tv maybe home run derby he pulled a pistol during an argument in a restaurant uh guest starred in an episode of yes dear as himself alongside ernie banks and johnny bench dang it okay that's a definite pop culture so that'll be a 1.6 for a manager card for me and of course he just passed away or no i guess he passed away wow only like eight years ago he passed away didn't realize it was

52:15that long ago all right so i got a frank robinson you are going up in our winner take all game with a first year card but i've heard of this guy i think i'm okay i don't know here he is with the rays the devil rays you're gonna get nothing from the card it is doug wachter w-a-e-c-h-t-e-r this is the obvious wachter i was i was waiting you stole it i wanted to pronounce it right

52:45to see how i could work that joke in there darn near killed her okay well we've had him before wector doug wector let's see overall six years in the big leagues four with the rays and then florida and kansas city 2003 he did appear he appeared in six games five starts one complete game shuddy as a rookie he went three and two with a 3.31 overall 35 and a third innings pitched only

53:1629 hits allowed 29 strikeouts walked 15 for an era plus of 134 and a war 1.2 1.2 i've got a 1.6 are you going to be able to pick up at least four tenths of a point through pop culture for doug wachter i truly doubt it wector i'm sorry i already mispronounced his name i'm not thinking so either occasionally has appeared alongside dwayne stats covering rays games also

53:51serves as a realtor for dmk group at douglas element real estate so i am afraid not and the streak is busted we're back in the game boys my job is safe for another day it's a tough one to take oh you know what's funny i remember wector i think that wasn't that uh shutout against the mariners i think i remember that game let's see who is this guy i could have told you already with the old menus but since i have got to go through all these stupid oh i hate these so bad

54:26they just they're ridiculous no oh yes it was against seattle but it was in tampa i was thinking maybe you would work to the game but yes he uh shut out the mariners watching it two hit shutout of the mariners guess how long the game took this is 2003 we had seven to nothing 13 total hits in front of 8,696 excited fans at tropicana field in september for sure the rays are out of it they're 54 and 83 what do you think time of game was sounds like a fun one three hours exactly it

55:02would have been would have been pretty fun it was 207 so you're out of there quick oh wow not quite as quick as the night game in cincinnati we talked about no pretty quick but close i mean close yeah all right yeah no i mean all right well we're tied up again we're at nine a piece so race to 11 wins wow another battle yeah all right that'll do it for this uh version of wax

Episode Conclusion

55:27packs heroes is also going to wrap up this episode thank you very much for joining us just a reminder you can find more of us just about anywhere just do a search for two strike noise it is tw o strike noise you can also find all of our links in the show notes a reminder i do stream monday wednesday friday at nine o'clock west coast time on both youtube and twitch played a new game today tried to make it a little baseball it's wikipedia speed runs which was kind of fun i got stumped on one of them but also thinking about putting together some listener created teams via out of the park baseball

56:05so i like i want to put together like a world baseball classic or some a tournament with all-star teams from different decades so um i want to i want to get some listener created teams in there so start to think about that start to start to come up with a theme of of a decade team so like i would probably choose the 80s or the 90s you know and i have ricky henderson have max mattingly eric davis

56:35you know just my favorite players on those teams so start to think of some teams like that mark and and listeners as well and we'll try to put this together and we can sim these sim these games out we also have an email address that once you put together your 25 person roster from a specific decade you could email them to us and mark will tell you about that you could yeah you can write to us at two strike noise that's twostrikenoise at gmail.com that's the way to do it all right

57:07everybody thank you very much for listening we'll see you again on the next episode of two strike noise thank you god bless you have a great day we'll see you again on the next episode of two strikeouts so so so so so

57:41so so so so so so so so so