Opening Day Baseball & Comics Roundtable

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Tad Eggleston: Good afternoon, everybody. I guess morning still for our LA area.

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Tad Eggleston: Friends, we're doing our first ever opening day!

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Tad Eggleston: Baseball and Comics Roundtable. We normally do this after the World Series, because that's when people are most free, but

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Tad Eggleston: For the second time in baseball history, the season is starting on my birthday, and I thought, what do I want to give myself for my birthday? And I said, I want to talk baseball and comics. So thank you all for joining me for the thing that I've been looking forward to.

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Tad Eggleston: Well, since I emailed you initially, it's gotten me through.

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Tad Eggleston: Knowing that it's coming, I'm, I'm very, very excited, and, and, like, I'm gonna lead off with, with, any of you…

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Tad Eggleston: I wound up following more than watching, just because I've cut all my cords, and not enough of it was on things that I could watch, but did any of you follow the World Baseball Classic?

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Tad Eggleston: There were some good games there.

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Tiffany Babb: Yeah.

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Tad Eggleston: Yeah.

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Fred Van Lente: Venezuela vs. Japan game, I thought was kind of classic.

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Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I saw a bunch of highlights of that. I actually watched

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Tad Eggleston: rewatched the Bad News Bears last night, and as I was watching it, I went, oh, so… the U.S. team is… is the… the…

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Tad Eggleston: The Roy Turner Yankees.

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Tad Eggleston: And the Bears are, like, everybody else.

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Tad Eggleston: You know, because, like… I mean, what I love about the World Baseball Classic every year, or not every year, every time it comes around, is twofold. First,

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Tad Eggleston: sometimes even with the U.S. teams.

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Tad Eggleston: There's a lot more, just, joy shown on the field. I love the way that they have fun.

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Tad Eggleston: And the other thing is, like, because it's in a form that we so rarely see baseball, it's the round-robin tournament where the one game can really matter, you see some really unexpected things. I mean, I remember being, like, an hour late for work.

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Tad Eggleston: when, when, the Netherlands, led by Rendell Simon.

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Tad Eggleston: beat the Dominican Republic that had 5 MVPs

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Tad Eggleston: 3 Cy Young Award winners and, like, 6 future Hall of Famers on it in 2009, I think.

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Tad Eggleston: 3 to 1.

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Tad Eggleston: When, like, er, 2 to 1?

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Tad Eggleston: with, like, the sum total of all of the Netherlands hits went… 212 feet?

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Tad Eggleston: But they played good defense, and they just held on, and it was like, how? How? But that's… that's…

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Tad Eggleston: what I love about baseball is that, like.

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Tad Eggleston: If you take Mark's mighty New York Yankees and put them up against the actual bad news bears, you know, the ones with the 6-year-old in right field, the bad news bears are probably gonna win at least one game in a thousand.

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Tad Eggleston: And that's.

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Eric Reynolds: I didn't realize…

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Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna love.

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Eric Reynolds: I only… I don't think I realized until this current WBC that Major League Baseball owns the WBC.

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Tad Eggleston: Yeah.

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Eric Reynolds: In a weird way, that kind of, like.

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Eric Reynolds: diminished it a little bit for me. It does.

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Rob Neyer: Right, I mean, the whole thing was built, essentially, to spread baseball around the world, and ultimately, generate more income for Major League Baseball, and support this… what's become a massive business with hundreds and hundreds of employees. So, it's one of those things where you… you… you…

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Rob Neyer: You kind of have to enjoy it despite it.

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Rob Neyer: A lot of things, as Tad says, a lot of things happen within the event that make that easier.

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Eric Reynolds: Yeah.

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Rob Neyer: All the great stories.

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Tad Eggleston: And I.

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Fred Van Lente: With the hope, right, that some team like Italy did this year goes on a bit of a Cinderella run and spikes interest in that home country.

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Rob Neyer: Exactly.

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Tad Eggleston: Yeah.

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Tad Eggleston: So, anybody have… Anything that they're really looking forward to this season.

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Eric Reynolds: Mariners World Series.

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Tad Eggleston: Mariners World Series? Of course.

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Rob Neyer: They are… weirdly, the projections I looked at last night of the Mariners.

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Rob Neyer: with easily… no, the second widest gap between first and second place in baseball. I think the Dodgers have the biggest between them and second. And then the Mariners are… are…

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Rob Neyer: have a, I don't know, 8 or 9 game gap between them and the next team, which is a bunch of teams that are hoping to win 82 games, basically.

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Rob Neyer: So yeah, if this was… if there was a year for the Mariners, this would be it.

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Rob Neyer: Beforehand, obviously, things change.

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Tad Eggleston: I have actually seen that pic by a couple of people already.

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Eric Reynolds: Yeah, they seem to be the sexy pick.

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Tad Eggleston: What a fun team.

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markchiarello: Let me… if I can ask, hyperbole aside, what do we expect from the Dodgers, realistically?

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Rob Neyer: 95 is their number.

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Eric Reynolds: The Dodgers are unquestionably the best team on paper, but they're also a little older.

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Eric Reynolds: And then they seem like they're a little more potential for things to go sideways.

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Tad Eggleston: Well, and one of the things I saw pointed out, in a baseball column this morning is, like, in spite of everything, like, we…

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Tad Eggleston: They only won 92 games last year.

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Rob Neyer: How many?

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Tad Eggleston: I mean, 92? I mean, to say… Is that a rough middle.

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Tiffany Babb: season.

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Tad Eggleston: to say only 92, like, if you're… if you're a Royals fan, you're kind of upset with me that I said only 92. But, like, given the way we treat the Dodgers.

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Tiffany Babb: Right.

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Tad Eggleston: You know, 92… 92 wins is… is…

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Tad Eggleston: And what he… it was Craig Calcatera, I think, that I was reading, and what he pointed out was that, like, the Dodgers are built to have a lot of depth, but essentially what they use their money for is to be able to take the gambles on

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Tad Eggleston: The guys that they don't actually expect to be able to play a whole season.

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Rob Neyer: Right.

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Tiffany Babb: Yeah.

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Tad Eggleston: So really, what the Dodgers are playing for is if they get into the playoffs, and if most of their guys are healthy.

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Tad Eggleston: they're gonna be a force to reckon with.

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Tiffany Babb: They had so many injuries last year. Yeah.

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Rob Neyer: Here's the thing about what the Dodgers figured out.

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Rob Neyer: It used to be… I used to always write things like.

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Rob Neyer: All the money in the world, that's fine, but you only have so many roster spots.

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Rob Neyer: Which is… then was 25, and you can't… you can't…

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Rob Neyer: find enough guys to spend the money on to fill those roster spots, because it's not even 25, some number of those are players that you're locked into for whatever reasons. You're already paying them, or they're a prospect and they need a chance, whatever it is.

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Rob Neyer: Well, the Dodgers basically have 35 roster spots, or 30.

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Rob Neyer: And… because they know that there's gonna be so much churn, especially in the pitching staff, and they don't mind paying $10 million for a guy who's gonna give you 60 innings, because they have an unlimited… they don't care about… I shouldn't say they don't care about making money, because they're… I'm sure they're making a profit every year anyway, but they just don't think about their…

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Rob Neyer: Roster and their payroll the same way that teams have historically.

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Tiffany Babb: Because they're even starting with Roki, and he's been bad spring training, right? So, like, that shows you what the Dodgers are doing that other people aren't, which is they have this leeway where they can run with him for a bit to see if he heats up at a certain point. And other teams don't have that runway.

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Tad Eggleston: Or choose not to.

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Tiffany Babb: Or choose not to. That's fair. A lot of these teams have money, but they just don't spend it.

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Tad Eggleston: do a lot more than they do. I mean…

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Tiffany Babb: That's one of the…

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Tad Eggleston: One of the things that I laughed at when everybody got upset about this Shohei contract is I'm sitting there going, do you understand how marketable this man is? If you think for a second that they're not making money on that contract, you're insane.

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Tad Eggleston: If you think for a second that if he manages to play two seasons, they won't have made all $700 million back, you're insane.

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Tad Eggleston: You know, if you think of it strict… like, if you think of contracts strictly in terms of baseball value, sure, but, like.

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Tad Eggleston: teams are businesses, so there's more than just baseball value. For that matter, it's always one of the things that's bothered me in terms of some of the spring… er, some of the free agent decisions that ballplayers make. Like, when Pedro Martinez left…

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Tad Eggleston: the Red Sox for the Mets. I'm sitting there going.

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Tad Eggleston: Okay, the Mets are giving you a million and a half more a year. Tell me you couldn't have made that up 10 times over in Boston area endorsements.

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Eric Reynolds: Probably make that up just by never having to buy a beer again.

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Eric Reynolds: Right.

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Tad Eggleston: Right.

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Tiffany Babb: And for the teams, there's also, like, the fan retention, right? Like, this is what the Rays struggle with, and their fans, like, they can't keep fans because they can't keep their stars. Whereas, like, when they signed Vladdy, when the Blue Jays signed Vladdy, like.

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Tiffany Babb: the fans felt a certain… a lot of this was just, like, it… the fans were happy about it, right? And they felt like this is a team that I can invest my time in, because they're investing in players that we like, and can stick around.

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Fred Van Lente: And that's where the Mets got a lot of ire this, off-season. Our… our absent pal Heidi still has not gotten over to Pete Alonso.

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Tad Eggleston: Yeah, though, I mean, they also made a lot of good moves. I think you're gonna like Freddie Peralta, I think you're gonna like…

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Fred Van Lente: I mean, just…

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Tad Eggleston: Jet?

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Fred Van Lente: to shake my fist at the Dodgers again, I mean, I think the one that really hurts is Diaz, losing our closer, you know? Yeah.

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Fred Van Lente: you know, why wouldn't you want to go play with the Dodgers if you were a…

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Tad Eggleston: Right? Isn't it surprisingly.

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Fred Van Lente: to the Dodgers also?

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Tad Eggleston: I think Devin Williams is a good bounce-back candidate.

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Fred Van Lente: Yeah, we'll see.

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Tad Eggleston: great, great mo… I mean, I watched him in Milwaukee, and certainly when he was playing the Cubs, I never liked it when he came into the game.

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Tiffany Babb: You know…

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Tad Eggleston: Yeah. It's so…

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markchiarello: Kershaw done, or is he coming back?

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Tad Eggleston: No, I think Kershaw's done.

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Tad Eggleston: And actually, that reminds me of, you know, answering your Dodgers question, like, even in the playoffs last year, they had, what, one reliable bullpen arm?

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Tiffany Babb: That was a crazy bullpen, when you think about it in hindsight.

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Tad Eggleston: Yeah.

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Tiffany Babb: Like, it's nuts that they were going into those games with Apple Pen.

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Tad Eggleston: I mean, their best bullpen performance of the entire postseason came from a guy who got called off of his couch

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Tad Eggleston: Because they'd had another guy have to leave for a family issue.

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Tad Eggleston: You know, a guy with how many Major League innings? Like, 5?

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Tiffany Babb: He… he brought it, though. Like, he was great.

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Eric Reynolds: What was pitching?

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Tad Eggleston: Which…

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Tiffany Babb: What was his name?

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Tad Eggleston: try to.

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Tiffany Babb: I can see his face in my…

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Tad Eggleston: Me too!

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Tad Eggleston: I can too. We will figure it out before the end of this podcast.

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Tad Eggleston: But, but, but yeah, no, I mean, so… I mean, that's the beauty of baseball, is that there's, like, no amount of money that guarantees everything. You're a Yankee fan, Mark, you know that.

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Tad Eggleston: You got 3… payroll went up for the next 3, and how good were those?

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Eric Reynolds: It's no different in comics publishing, really.

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Tiffany Babb: Hmm.

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Tad Eggleston: That's true.

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markchiarello: That's interesting, Eric. Why do you say that?

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Eric Reynolds: Look at the… look at the… the trail of tears of well-capitalized fly-by-night comics publishers.

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Tad Eggleston: Yep.

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markchiarello: Do you think it's, peripheral question.

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markchiarello: something he said, do you think it's possible to start a comic book company these days?

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Eric Reynolds: That's a good question, because I think in terms of fanographics, which is really my only perspective.

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Eric Reynolds: No, I don't think we could. I think we are… I think we benefit from…

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Eric Reynolds: You know, being grandfathered into the direct market, and…

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Eric Reynolds: You know, having made the inroads into the book trade that we did 20, 25 years ago.

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Eric Reynolds: I think it would be really, really, really hard, and I don't think it's,

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Eric Reynolds: You know, strictly a question of how much startup capital you have.

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Eric Reynolds: I don't think that… that's a guarantee of… of anything, any more than a bloated payroll.

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markchiarello: Do you even think it's a question of content? Like…

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Eric Reynolds: No.

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markchiarello: Yeah.

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markchiarello: You know, I see Mad Cave making a decent run at it.

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markchiarello: But these are…

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Tad Eggleston: They're also 10 years old, so they're not really new.

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Tad Eggleston: This is their 11th year. That's right. You know, I was thinking that, too. Both Mad Cave and Uncivilized feel like they're new, and seem to be doing pretty good runs right now.

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Tad Eggleston: But, like, in reality, they're… they're not new.

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Tad Eggleston: They've been able to hang on.

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Tad Eggleston: for long enough to… to… you know, Iron Circus is similar. So, I mean, I…

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Tiffany Babb: Kickstarter might be, like, the Kickstarter publishers, or the digital publishers.

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Tad Eggleston: That's where I was gonna go, is that I don't know that it's impossible to start a comic book company, but I don't know how much it would… I don't know how much it would look like…

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Tad Eggleston: what phanographics looked like when they started, what image looked like when they started, certainly not what Marvel or DC looked like when they started, you know? You'd have to be thinking more about crowdfunding, you'd have to be thinking more about digital markets, library markets.

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Tad Eggleston: I mean, if you can crack the library market…

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Tad Eggleston: That's a big deal. And the fact that there are more and more

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Tad Eggleston: Libraries that are stocking more and more comics, not just for kids, but for adults.

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Tad Eggleston: Matters, but, but, like… .

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Eric Reynolds: It only matters in the aggregate, though. It's like, it doesn't, you know, the library market's not gonna sustain you. It's just… only if it's another piece of the overall pie.

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Eric Reynolds: But each of those segments, channels.

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Eric Reynolds: You know, are getting more and more difficult.

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Tad Eggleston: They're getting more and more difficult.

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Eric Reynolds: What's that?

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Tad Eggleston: Get on syllabuses and reprint a new volume every couple of years.

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Tad Eggleston: You know, with that extra thing that the students need, you know, get professors to force the book, and you're in good shape.

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Tad Eggleston: I was talking to a comics teacher recently.

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Tiffany Babb: I know startup capital was mentioned, and in my opinion, the startup capital makes it way worse, because there's that pressure to spend big at the beginning, and you can't kind of mete out the money where you want, and then company's gone in 2 years.

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Tad Eggleston: Well, and also.

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Fred Van Lente: The problem is, so many of the recent startups and comics are still predicated in the same IP farm model.

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Fred Van Lente: And the studios just aren't buying as, like, they used to, and there's less studios to buy. So, it's a rock and hard place, if that's what you're trying to do.

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Tad Eggleston: Well, I also…

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Fred Van Lente: Movies.com.

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Tiffany Babb: the…

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Tad Eggleston: In general, startups.

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Tad Eggleston: expect a much higher return on investment than, like… it's different when you need to…

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Tad Eggleston: Break even and pay everybody, versus you need to pay back the people who gave you money 10 times over.

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Tad Eggleston: Ye, y, and, you know…

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markchiarello: But is the ultimate goal with starting, you know, some of the smaller companies that have started over the last 4, 5, 6 years, is the ultimate goal to put out comic books, or is it to get properties for Hollywood?

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Tad Eggleston: It depends on the company. Will Klein, really quick, was the relief pitcher. Managed to find him.

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Tad Eggleston: Like, I've talked to people at Mad Cave, and I think one of the reasons that they're actually…

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Tad Eggleston: Holding on, is their goal is comics.

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Tad Eggleston: Whereas one of the reasons that you saw Aftershock and Action Lab really struggle is they were spending as much money trying to sell their IP as they were spending making their IP.

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Fred Van Lente: And Mad Cave's contract, I've got two Mad Cave books. It's very competitive, and it's one of the better ones with other media than I've seen recently.

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Fred Van Lente: You see even bigger companies book publishers you think would know better are offering, kind of, these

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Fred Van Lente: weak sauce contracts where, you know, your name is on the copyright of the book, but all relevant rights are tied up 50-50.

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markchiarello: 50, but…

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Fred Van Lente: With the big corporate publisher, and it's just unfortunate, but…

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Tad Eggleston: Right.

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Fred Van Lente: I don't think people, to answer your question, Mark, I don't think people are expecting to make money on comics.

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Fred Van Lente: You know, so it's hard to have a publisher whose business model is for-profit comics.

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Fred Van Lente: You know?

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Fred Van Lente: Phantographics, notwithstanding.

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Eric Reynolds: Yeah.

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markchiarello: What's the, what's…

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markchiarello: I don't pay that much attention to it. What's the arc of that company? What's it called? Distillery that Tula Lote was drawing for, and Becky Clooney?

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Fred Van Lente: That's the ex-comixology guys, right?

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Eric Reynolds: Yeah, and they've already… they've already kind of… Press pause. Well, they…

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Tad Eggleston: Yeah, they press pause, but they're coming back in the news solicits.

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Tad Eggleston: So, so April, you can, you can, like, so… it seems like their pause was literally, look, we had supply chain issues, we had stuff that, that got in the way…

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Tad Eggleston: Rather than trying to rush out and give you an inferior product, rather than folding.

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Tad Eggleston: we're pushing stuff back, we're regrouping, because I think they've got 5 books…

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Tad Eggleston: Finally picking up again in the April catalog.

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Tad Eggleston: That was definitely… I was gonna be talking to a couple of people at C2E2 that I know have been doing distillery work, and…

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Tad Eggleston: asking if they had… because, I mean, overall, everybody that I've talked to that's done work for them is still happy.

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Tad Eggleston: So, like, whether or not the… the comp… I mean, it's kind of like Bad Idea. I don't… I don't know for certain that Bad Idea is making money, but I know that if they're losing money, it's Dinesh and… and…

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Tad Eggleston: The people at the top that are losing money, they're making certain that their… their creators are paid up front and still have…

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Tad Eggleston: some backend whatever. You know, I haven't talked to anybody that's like, oh yeah, I did work for Bad Idea and it was terrible. You know, I've talked to people that's like, I did a 10-page

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Tad Eggleston: for a bad idea, and got paid 3 times as much as I normally get paid for a full comic.

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Tad Eggleston: You know? And they just gave it away at a con.

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Tad Eggleston: I'm looking forward to the fact that the Bad Idea panel is right after one of my panels in the same room, so I might be able to talk to a handful of people off the record in between.

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Tad Eggleston: That actually is a good way to spin, though. Like, spring season is when we start getting solicits for some of the bigger comics of the year. Is there anything that people have seen?

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Tad Eggleston: coming soon, that they're like, I can't wait to see that.

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Fred Van Lente: My big summer announcement hasn't come yet, so…

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Fred Van Lente: The answer is no, you have.

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Fred Van Lente: My thing's gonna be in July.

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Tad Eggleston: You wanna give me an exclusive fret?

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Fred Van Lente: I can't, I'll be murdered.

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Fred Van Lente: There's the spot.

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Tad Eggleston: Okay, so it's a…

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Fred Van Lente: Somewhere.

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Tad Eggleston: So it's a sequel to Murder Kingdom, check.

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Fred Van Lente: No, my… yeah, that's that… that's my fir… that was my first Mad Cave book.

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Fred Van Lente: That second one's come out later this year, but that's not one yet.

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Tiffany Babb: I'm looking forward to the new Archie stuff.

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Tad Eggleston: Yeah.

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Tad Eggleston: I am.

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Fred Van Lente: through ONI?

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Tiffany Babb: Yeah. Yeah?

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markchiarello: I don't know anything about that. What are they… are they retooling?

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Tiffany Babb: Yeah, they're kind of rebranding, putting it out as a monthly.

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Tad Eggleston: Yeah, they've got some interesting creative teams involved, it's gonna be really…

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Tad Eggleston: really interesting to see what they do. I hope…

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Tad Eggleston: I mean, this is the second time in my lifetime that they've done it, and I think it actually went pretty well the last time.

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Tad Eggleston: So I'm assuming that it just kind of petered off, and it was… it was time to…

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Tad Eggleston: to… to do something cool again. I feel like that's a good partnership. Oni seems to be…

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markchiarello: Is there a new… is there a new takeaway?

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Tad Eggleston: Out of the wreckage.

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markchiarello: Is there a new take on that?

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Tad Eggleston: It'll be more modern.

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Tad Eggleston: But I don't know anything.

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Tiffany Babb: They haven't put out that much stuff about it. It's mostly just been teaser art and stuff. Right.

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Eric Reynolds: There's a new Chris Ware comic coming out for.

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Tiffany Babb: That's right. That's exciting.

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Tad Eggleston: A new, a new, it's actually another…

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Eric Reynolds: acne.

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Tad Eggleston: Acme, yeah, that's right.

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Tiffany Babb: When's that coming out?

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Eric Reynolds: I think in the fall, it's a drawn a quarterly book.

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Tad Eggleston: Oh, look at him, plugging the competitor.

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Eric Reynolds: Well, I was trying to think of something that wasn't phantographics.

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Tiffany Babb: You can talk about Phantographics books.

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Tad Eggleston: There's a lot of good stuff coming from Fanographics. A couple of Karl Bark's artist editions, you've got the complete Palomar stories.

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Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's just the reprint stuff.

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Eric Reynolds: Probably the thing I'm most excited about… I'm not even working on it, so I can… I can kind of tout this without it being too self-serving, is,

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Eric Reynolds: a big box set of the complete Harvey Kurtzman mad.

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Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah. That's cool.

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Tad Eggleston: That's totally on my radar.

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Tiffany Babb: How big is that gonna be?

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Eric Reynolds: Well, it's, what, 20… 27, 30 issues, I forget exactly. That's cool.

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Tiffany Babb: And they're all going to be presented in.

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Eric Reynolds: Baximile form, like a bound.

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Tiffany Babb: Nice.

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Eric Reynolds: Found copies of the original magazines.

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Eric Reynolds: Comics?

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Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it, it, it, if, if, if you, if you remember the, the recent,

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Tad Eggleston: first 50 Lovin' Rockets, it's got a similar design.

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Eric Reynolds: Similar, not quite as… Big.

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Tad Eggleston: No. Well, it's not 50.

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Eric Reynolds: Right, right. But yeah, same… Same… similar place.

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Tad Eggleston: Aren't you also doing the complete Zap coming up in the same…

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Eric Reynolds: We are. We did a big box set of the Complete Zap and hardcover, about a decade ago.

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Eric Reynolds: And that was a big, deluxe… $500 box set.

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Tad Eggleston: There is the… This, this one's only 300.

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Eric Reynolds: Yeah, and then the new Zap set is kind of a reconfiguration of that, but in paperback and more of a… it's still expensive because it's a lot of material, but it's still a lot more.

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Tad Eggleston: It's 200?

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Eric Reynolds: I don't even think it's that much, although I could be wrong off the top of my head.

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Eric Reynolds: I was gonna say more like 100, but…

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Eric Reynolds: Yeah, there we go. Oh, it is 200. You, you, you…

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Tad Eggleston: I may have looked through your catalog recently, I need to send your PR guy, my listings…

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Eric Reynolds: Well, I'm impressed by your, you know, you mentioned earlier that, like, Distillery has 5 books in the April catalog, like… I think it's 5. Well, the April catalog.

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Tad Eggleston: just dropped. The April catalog just dropped, so, like, I've done my first perusal. But also, for our weekly episode.

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Tad Eggleston: We'll… we'll highlight items from… the…

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Tad Eggleston: The catalogs, and we'll make certain that we highlight the

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Tad Eggleston: the stuff that we're really interested in that's coming out, or that has FEO, so, like…

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Tad Eggleston: I try to stay on top of it so that I can tell my 4 or 5 listeners, hey, go buy this book.

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Tad Eggleston: But, like, at least one of my listeners is a comic shop owner, and at least one of my listeners has library connections, so sometimes it gets farther than 4 copies sold.

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Eric Reynolds: Take it.

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Tad Eggleston: I mean, to be fair, I think I'm up to consistently 30 downloads, and since the downloads don't necessarily represent streaming, I probably have more listeners, but I like to stay humble. And they're certainly not paying me yet.

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Fred Van Lente: Each recording is handed out to 5 people, so…

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Eric Reynolds: Yeah.

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Tad Eggleston: All of my Patreons are family members, so this is me remembering that I should occasionally plug the 22 Panels Patreon. You can give us money.

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Tad Eggleston: Sometimes I don't know why you'd want to, but, like, I have fun anyway.

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Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, I,

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Tad Eggleston: It's weird to me. I mean, Mark and I have been talking on and off. It's been such a weird year that it doesn't feel like it should be baseball season yet. Because the world is just… the world!

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Tiffany Babb: that too, but also the… I feel like the postseason was, like, it was quite late, right? And then… and then we also had WBC.

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Tad Eggleston: Right. Right.

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Tad Eggleston: You know, and, like, the earliest U.S. start to a baseball season ever.

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Tiffany Babb: Short off-season.

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Tad Eggleston: Right.

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Rob Neyer: I'm never going to get used to opening day being in March. I'm not going to look long enough.

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Tiffany Babb: I can't with this opening day thing, too. I was complaining about this earlier, which is just, like…

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Tiffany Babb: So, we gotta watch the Yankees and the Giants, and that's it. Like, what happened to opening day?

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Tad Eggleston: I liked it when, you know, I think the Reds always got the first game, but that was because they started at, like, 1 o'clock, but there was a full slate on opening day, I think, when I was a kid.

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Tiffany Babb: Yeah, everybody gets to watch their game.

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Tad Eggleston: B.

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Tad Eggleston: is full slate opening day. I mean, it's great if you're a Giants or a Yankees fan, particularly if you're a Giants-Yankees fan, and live in the Bay Area and can afford tickets, but…

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Tad Eggleston: For the rest of us, it's like, okay.

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Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's not…

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Fred Van Lente: I mean, the forecast for Mets opening day, which is tomorrow, up until about a couple days ago, was like 42 degrees, and I'm like, no.

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Fred Van Lente: I'm not going… my wife's birthday is April 2nd, so she gets excited, and she's like, I want to go to the Met, so let's get tickets, I want to go for my birthday. I'm like, I don't want… it's gonna be 40 degrees on your birthday, I do not want to go. I'm not sitting in a.

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Tiffany Babb: That is very cold.

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Tad Eggleston: It's.

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Fred Van Lente: Oh, man, and it's not gonna warm here, get warm here for, like, 2 weeks.

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markchiarello: Jeez, you know… It's not Mets opening day if it's March and Tom Seaver isn't starting.

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Fred Van Lente: Street on that one.

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Tad Eggleston: That leads… that leads to a…

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Tiffany Babb: and…

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Tad Eggleston: You know, we've got a lot of people who've been to a lot of games. What is the worst weather that you've actually gone to a game in, and how many innings did you stay?

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Eric Reynolds: I don't know how to… I don't know about that, but I do know that some of my favorite games to go to in Seattle are the dreary April days when they draw 10,000 people, and you feel like you've kind of got the stadium to yourself.

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Eric Reynolds: There's something to be said for that. I mean.

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Fred Van Lente: Do they have a dome in… do you have a roof in Seattle?

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Eric Reynolds: Well, yeah, we have a… what do you call it, a retractable.

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Fred Van Lente: graduate.

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Tad Eggleston: roof.

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Eric Reynolds: But it's still open air, you know?

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Rob Neyer: Yeah, I have frozen my ass off at Mariners games, roof or no roof. I wasn't smart enough to bring a real jacket, or any jacket at all, and there can be sort of a tunnel effect, where the wind just goes under the roof, right into the stands on the right field side.

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Tiffany Babb: That's rough. In California, it's mostly heat. Like, last two years ago, David Harper came out and he wanted to see a Dodgers game.

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Tiffany Babb: Which sucks already, because you have to drive all the way there, and it's such a mess to get in. And it was, like, 95 degrees, and he wanted good seats, so we had no shade, and we were gonna die. But we stayed… we stayed 9 innings. There were extra innings, and we didn't stay for that, because I think we actually would have gotten heatstroke.

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Tiffany Babb: But that was pretty bad.

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Fred Van Lente: they were handing out, like, a David Wright Captain America t-shirt as a giveaway, like, some Friday night promotion at Mets, and it was in April, and it was low 40s, pouring.

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Fred Van Lente: And, like, you know, you're just mopping up

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Fred Van Lente: using David Wright's face to mop up all the seats as they're just getting ringed on.

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Tiffany Babb: Jeez.

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Fred Van Lente: Guys walking around in five thick David Wright Captain America shirts.

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Fred Van Lente: And I was with a bigger die-hard than I am, and we left. We, I don't think, made it out of the sixth. It's like…

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Fred Van Lente: Through this! To the bar!

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Tad Eggleston: Here's exactly one time that I have left Wrigley Field before the 7th inning stretch.

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Tad Eggleston: And that was a April game.

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Tad Eggleston: Against the Dodgers.

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Tad Eggleston: Where there was freezing rain, It was 28 degrees with freezing rain.

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Tad Eggleston: And… The Cubs were down 8-0, despite having out-hit the Dodgers.

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Tad Eggleston: 6 to 3.

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Tad Eggleston: In… in that time, because in the first 6 innings, they'd walked 12 batters and made 4 errors.

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Tad Eggleston: And when they gave up a 3-run double to the opposing pitcher, I said, okay, that's enough.

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Tad Eggleston: That's enough. I went across the street to Salt and Pepper, which isn't there anymore, but it was a nice diner that I used to love going to after games, and we watched the rest of the game there. I could not, could not bring myself to leave Wrigleyville, because if, if, by some crazy occurrence.

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Tad Eggleston: we had come back to be able to say that I was on a train when I found out that was too much. I had to… I had to be nearby.

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Tad Eggleston: But, man, that was brutal. However, there was one… one day

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Tad Eggleston: that was as cold and as miserable physically that I've been at Wrigley Field. And what's really annoying is it's one of the few times that I went down at 7am for a night game, because it was opening day, and WXRT Radio does an opening day broadcast.

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Tad Eggleston: You know, and they started at 7 AM, because Lynn Bramer is the one that did it. Rest in peace.

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Tad Eggleston: But this year, they had a night game opening. So I was down there at 7am, I was there all day, it was, like, 60 to 70 and sunny most of the day, and, like, 10 minutes…

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Tad Eggleston: Before game time, it started raining, And dropped 40 degrees.

356
00:32:23.120 --> 00:32:24.120
Tad Eggleston: Which…

357
00:32:24.830 --> 00:32:34.259
Tad Eggleston: is when scalping… because I also went down without a ticket, that's when the price on tickets fell enough that I could afford one, so that got me in.

358
00:32:34.850 --> 00:32:40.080
Tad Eggleston: But it was a truly miserably cold experience, except for one thing.

359
00:32:40.650 --> 00:32:45.479
Tad Eggleston: we raised a championship banner, so I stayed for all 9 innings.

360
00:32:48.000 --> 00:32:56.820
Tad Eggleston: I got to see rings from, like, because the Cubs gave rings to, like, all of their staff, so… so, like, the… the…

361
00:32:56.920 --> 00:33:00.460
Tad Eggleston: The hot dog vendors, and the… the… the…

362
00:33:04.550 --> 00:33:11.479
Tad Eggleston: Ushers and whatever, the security people were all wearing their championship rings and more than happy to show them to you.

363
00:33:11.770 --> 00:33:21.179
Tad Eggleston: I spent the last 3 innings sitting on a rail with one of the security guards, talking about the fact that she was an accountant, but the Cubs have a system where, like.

364
00:33:21.340 --> 00:33:25.920
Tad Eggleston: It's really kind of first, you know, once you get the job, it's like, first come…

365
00:33:26.360 --> 00:33:48.700
Tad Eggleston: Until… until they've got enough people, so she managed to get the gig, because she had a gut feeling that the Cubs were gonna win the World Series that year, and that was the only way that she was gonna be able to go to the games. So she got in the gig, she's like, you know, I'd come down here on… on the days that I was free, whatnot, but I was at every playoff game.

366
00:33:49.520 --> 00:33:50.560
Tiffany Babb: That's a great story.

367
00:33:50.560 --> 00:33:56.079
Tad Eggleston: show up 2 hours early for work to make certain that I was one of the ones.

368
00:33:56.080 --> 00:33:57.689
Tiffany Babb: Hacking the system.

369
00:33:57.690 --> 00:33:58.630
Tad Eggleston: Right.

370
00:34:00.070 --> 00:34:04.980
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I had a… I had a friend who was a peanut vendor, even though he had

371
00:34:06.550 --> 00:34:23.099
Tad Eggleston: season tickets that were incredible, like, because he, A, it got him in, B, you know, make a few bucks, and C, he'd just go down every day and go, do I feel like sitting in my seats, or do I feel like scalping my seats? And…

372
00:34:24.800 --> 00:34:26.879
Tad Eggleston: And walking around as a peanut finder.

373
00:34:26.880 --> 00:34:27.590
markchiarello: Wow.

374
00:34:29.489 --> 00:34:33.930
Tad Eggleston: You know… But yeah, no, I've known lots of people

375
00:34:34.050 --> 00:34:38.929
Tad Eggleston: Who… who have gotten various jobs at… at…

376
00:34:39.600 --> 00:34:42.269
Tad Eggleston: Wrigley, just to be able to go to games.

377
00:34:43.350 --> 00:34:46.120
Tad Eggleston: I think that's a common thing for a lot of…

378
00:34:46.260 --> 00:34:55.090
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I don't know how other teams run their… their concessions and their security and whatnot, but I know the Cubs have always run it in such a way that, like.

379
00:34:55.830 --> 00:35:00.049
Tad Eggleston: Your commitment isn't really any more than you want to make it.

380
00:35:00.680 --> 00:35:02.479
Tad Eggleston: The pay is decent.

381
00:35:02.830 --> 00:35:11.130
Tad Eggleston: The work can be hard, but not grueling, and you get to be at the game in a way that you can actually kinda watch parts of it.

382
00:35:11.360 --> 00:35:15.429
Tiffany Babb: Chris Seidman, from Mad Cave, her mom worked at Wrigley.

383
00:35:15.700 --> 00:35:16.110
Tad Eggleston: Yeah?

384
00:35:16.110 --> 00:35:27.870
Tiffany Babb: Yeah, I don't know in what capacity yet. I'm trying to, I'm trying to get her on the website, but I have to go through the Cubs media situation, and that's a whole headache. But yeah, I think, yeah, she worked at Berkeley for years.

385
00:35:28.340 --> 00:35:29.090
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.

386
00:35:30.070 --> 00:35:34.250
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I worked in senior care, so I took care of a couple of people who did long…

387
00:35:34.820 --> 00:35:39.019
Tad Eggleston: term Wrigley work, and one woman who…

388
00:35:39.340 --> 00:35:42.289
Tad Eggleston: Got to go to Wrigley as payment for babysitting.

389
00:35:42.400 --> 00:35:45.900
Tad Eggleston: Because she babysat Charlie Root's kids.

390
00:35:46.580 --> 00:35:48.799
Tad Eggleston: Idea of how old she was.

391
00:35:49.730 --> 00:35:54.160
Tad Eggleston: Wow. She would babysit Charlie Root's kids in exchange for…

392
00:35:54.160 --> 00:35:54.980
Tiffany Babb: Wow.

393
00:35:55.730 --> 00:36:08.979
Tad Eggleston: and continued, you know, because of that, she had, like, connections, so… and she lived close enough to the ballpark, so I think the first kids that she babysat in exchange for tickets were Charlie Roots, and the last were Stan Hacks, so…

394
00:36:10.250 --> 00:36:13.829
Tad Eggleston: 1920s to the, like, 1940s.

395
00:36:14.060 --> 00:36:19.120
Tad Eggleston: And then she passed away, I think, 3 months before they won the World Series.

396
00:36:20.890 --> 00:36:25.700
markchiarello: There was a guy, I remember when I worked at Marvel in the 80s, there was a guy in the bullpen

397
00:36:27.230 --> 00:36:33.249
markchiarello: doing production work, but he was also an anchor, and I cannot remember his name, I can picture him, real nice guy. He…

398
00:36:34.500 --> 00:36:37.949
markchiarello: was in the band that would walk around Yankee Stadium.

399
00:36:38.420 --> 00:36:40.079
markchiarello: In the 7… in the 80s, 90s.

400
00:36:40.080 --> 00:36:40.650
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.

401
00:36:40.650 --> 00:36:43.910
markchiarello: You know, in, like, 5-piece band with the trumpet and stuff.

402
00:36:43.910 --> 00:36:44.610
Tad Eggleston: Right, right.

403
00:36:44.610 --> 00:36:46.159
markchiarello: They used to have one of those at Wrigley, too.

404
00:36:46.160 --> 00:36:47.069
Tad Eggleston: I loved it.

405
00:36:47.070 --> 00:36:49.509
markchiarello: There's a comics… baseball crossover.

406
00:36:49.510 --> 00:36:50.130
Eric Reynolds: Wow.

407
00:36:50.130 --> 00:36:50.560
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.

408
00:36:50.560 --> 00:36:54.099
Eric Reynolds: Well, it was. Was it… I mean, it wasn't, like, Al Milgram, or…

409
00:36:54.100 --> 00:36:59.429
markchiarello: No, no, no. I'm trying to look it up. I can picture them.

410
00:37:01.200 --> 00:37:02.380
markchiarello: Short guy.

411
00:37:03.150 --> 00:37:07.609
Tad Eggleston: I don't know my Marvel 80s inkers well enough, I was too young.

412
00:37:07.740 --> 00:37:10.390
Eric Reynolds: I'm trying to think of inkers who worked in the bullpen.

413
00:37:11.390 --> 00:37:19.099
Tad Eggleston: I just started noticing names on comics at all by the end of 1980, or the end of the 80s.

414
00:37:21.740 --> 00:37:29.620
Tad Eggleston: So… I don't know if I've asked this question with this group of people. Talk to me about, like.

415
00:37:29.950 --> 00:37:33.300
Tad Eggleston: What you remember about falling in love with baseball?

416
00:37:33.440 --> 00:37:39.940
Tad Eggleston: It's a good beginning of the season question. What's your earliest… oh, I… I'm…

417
00:37:40.710 --> 00:37:46.280
Tad Eggleston: I'm hooked. Like, like, when you look back, you go, there was no turning back from this point.

418
00:37:46.730 --> 00:37:50.020
markchiarello: I can remember falling out of love with baseball about 5 years ago.

419
00:37:51.050 --> 00:37:53.629
Tad Eggleston: Well, and about 25 years ago.

420
00:37:54.020 --> 00:37:54.530
markchiarello: Yeah.

421
00:37:54.530 --> 00:37:59.060
Tad Eggleston: Because since you fall… you fell out of love with the strike, and you fell out of love again…

422
00:37:59.910 --> 00:38:04.220
Tad Eggleston: with the steroids, and… we suck you back from time to time, and I'm…

423
00:38:04.220 --> 00:38:04.850
markchiarello: You know.

424
00:38:04.850 --> 00:38:07.380
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna get you going to minor league games now.

425
00:38:07.380 --> 00:38:08.099
markchiarello: Yeah, I'm in love with that.

426
00:38:08.100 --> 00:38:11.020
Tad Eggleston: Major League Baseball, not with baseball.

427
00:38:11.020 --> 00:38:16.070
markchiarello: Well, yeah, that's a good question for the group. I'm thinking of…

428
00:38:16.240 --> 00:38:21.540
markchiarello: Because the World Series was enjoyable, and it's the first couple games I've watched in 5 years.

429
00:38:21.890 --> 00:38:24.740
markchiarello: Other than a couple live games that I've gone to.

430
00:38:25.390 --> 00:38:27.919
markchiarello: Is it worth my time getting back into baseball?

431
00:38:28.320 --> 00:38:34.909
Eric Reynolds: Well, but the great thing about baseball is you don't have to devote your full attention to it, you know?

432
00:38:35.240 --> 00:38:50.430
Eric Reynolds: I mean, I have almost exclusively listen to baseball on the radio, and it's just… it's a… you know, it's the kind of thing where I'll have it on every night, but I'm not really listening to it. What I hear is the inflection in the voices that kind of

433
00:38:51.520 --> 00:39:00.110
Eric Reynolds: perk my interest and, you know, break me out of whatever I'm doing to kind of listen to, and I love it. It's a great rhythm,

434
00:39:01.110 --> 00:39:02.560
Eric Reynolds: But to go back to your…

435
00:39:02.680 --> 00:39:16.400
Eric Reynolds: to Tad's question, I… I kind of… when I think back to when I was a kid, it's hard for me to know if… like, baseball cards and baseball is kind of a chicken and an egg relationship. Yeah. And they definitely…

436
00:39:16.800 --> 00:39:24.119
Eric Reynolds: you know, the cards definitely fueled the interest in the sport. And then the other big thing I remember as a kid that really

437
00:39:24.230 --> 00:39:28.910
Eric Reynolds: like, captured my imagination was, Fernando Valenzuela's.

438
00:39:29.550 --> 00:39:33.210
Eric Reynolds: Fernando Mania. I grew up in Southern California. Yeah.

439
00:39:34.380 --> 00:39:35.999
Eric Reynolds: And, that was…

440
00:39:36.000 --> 00:39:38.909
Tad Eggleston: I watched one of his no-hitters on YouTube recently.

441
00:39:38.910 --> 00:39:40.099
Eric Reynolds: Yeah, it's, like, kind of hard…

442
00:39:40.100 --> 00:39:41.969
Tad Eggleston: From… from that era.

443
00:39:42.230 --> 00:39:49.140
Eric Reynolds: It's… it's almost hard to… Believe, like, just what a phenomenon that was at the time.

444
00:39:50.300 --> 00:39:53.800
Eric Reynolds: I also grew up partly in… in…

445
00:39:54.180 --> 00:40:02.459
Eric Reynolds: Palm Springs, California, and so we would go to spring training every year. It was, like, a mile away from where we lived.

446
00:40:02.800 --> 00:40:04.930
Eric Reynolds: And go get autographs, and…

447
00:40:04.930 --> 00:40:08.360
Tad Eggleston: That's something that I haven't done yet, and want to. I want to go to spring training.

448
00:40:08.360 --> 00:40:10.200
Tiffany Babb: I was just there a couple weeks ago.

449
00:40:10.200 --> 00:40:11.920
Fred Van Lente: Yeah, I did that.

450
00:40:11.920 --> 00:40:17.949
Eric Reynolds: It was great. We used to go to the… we lived very close to the Gene Autry Hotel, and of course, at the time…

451
00:40:17.950 --> 00:40:19.060
Tiffany Babb: Where are the angels?

452
00:40:19.360 --> 00:40:26.850
Eric Reynolds: was the owner of the Angels, and the Angels were still in Palm Springs. I don't think there is any spring training in Palm Springs anymore.

453
00:40:26.850 --> 00:40:27.899
Tad Eggleston: It's all Arizona.

454
00:40:27.900 --> 00:40:29.369
Tiffany Babb: They're in Tempe now.

455
00:40:29.370 --> 00:40:42.310
Eric Reynolds: But my dad would take me to, the Gene Autry Hotel for breakfast, because we would go, and just, like, all the players would be eating breakfast. I got… I remember getting Reggie Jackson's autograph, and Ricky Henderson.

456
00:40:42.530 --> 00:40:43.330
Tiffany Babb: Wow.

457
00:40:44.660 --> 00:40:45.420
Eric Reynolds: Yeah.

458
00:40:45.740 --> 00:41:04.559
Tiffany Babb: That's very cool. My story is much more recent, so I have a much clearer memory. I only got into baseball a few years ago. I mean, I also grew up in Southern California, I still live there. And growing up, I remember when the Angels won the World Series, and I had some passing interest, but I didn't… like, for me, it was…

459
00:41:04.560 --> 00:41:21.109
Tiffany Babb: a handful of years ago, Haas Otzmanel, how the letterer, was just like, you gotta go, because one fun thing that we do, because we live in very different places, he lives in England, is we'll look up where we live on a map, and he'll be like, well, how often do you go to Disneyland? That's really close to where you live. How often do you go to the beach?

460
00:41:21.120 --> 00:41:26.040
Tiffany Babb: And he was just like, you gotta go see Shohei Ohtani pitch, at Angel Stadium. And I'm like…

461
00:41:26.120 --> 00:41:43.550
Tiffany Babb: I chase novelty, so I was just like, yeah, I'll go watch a game, and I started going to games, and then it just kind of took over my life, and now it's a big part of my life. But… it is very different, I think, getting into it as an adult, as opposed to as a child, because…

462
00:41:43.550 --> 00:41:53.599
Tiffany Babb: Like, I don't have that long history with it, necessarily. I never played the game. I didn't collect baseball cards as a kid. So it is very different.

463
00:41:54.470 --> 00:41:57.750
Tad Eggleston: I also love that it's Haas that got you into it.

464
00:41:57.750 --> 00:41:58.680
Tiffany Babb: Because, because.

465
00:41:58.680 --> 00:42:16.370
Tad Eggleston: He's… and I've never managed to get him on one of these, mostly because he's in the UK. Like, Haas… there's no good reason for Haas to be a major baseball fan, except that somebody turned him onto it, and then he… he… kind of like you, Eric.

466
00:42:16.370 --> 00:42:27.739
Tad Eggleston: I mean, he tends to have the TV on, but he more listens to the calls while he's working, so he loves the rhythm of… he's somehow a Texas Rangers fan.

467
00:42:27.740 --> 00:42:30.830
Tiffany Babb: Yes. He's all Texas teams for everything.

468
00:42:30.830 --> 00:42:31.590
Tad Eggleston: Right.

469
00:42:31.590 --> 00:42:33.020
Tiffany Babb: No explanation.

470
00:42:33.320 --> 00:42:35.020
Tiffany Babb: He's never been to Texas.

471
00:42:35.020 --> 00:42:36.150
Eric Reynolds: That's random.

472
00:42:36.880 --> 00:42:49.079
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, I discovered that because he started, you know, he did a thing on Twitter for a while where he was just… he would take calls from games and just letter them with nothing else. So just be the word balloon.

473
00:42:49.080 --> 00:42:51.999
Tiffany Babb: I didn't know about that. That's crazy, I'm gonna have to look that up.

474
00:42:52.000 --> 00:43:05.269
Tad Eggleston: this was one of the things that I, like, before I'd reached out to… it was one of the things that went, well, I kinda wanted to talk to a letterer anyway, and Haas is amazing, but, like, he's got baseball tweets?

475
00:43:06.140 --> 00:43:11.240
Tad Eggleston: I gotta reach out! So, I mean, that's how he wound up

476
00:43:12.570 --> 00:43:29.820
Tad Eggleston: on 22 panels to begin with is, like, I wanted to talk to him about these. I saw these, so I then looked into it, and I'm like, wait a minute. He's of Indian descent in Great Britain, and he's a baseball fan? How? How? What!

477
00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:33.060
Tiffany Babb: And the funny thing is, he doesn't even follow, like, English sports.

478
00:43:34.080 --> 00:43:36.339
Tiffany Babb: Like, he's just… he has no…

479
00:43:36.530 --> 00:43:43.709
Tiffany Babb: he has no interest in cricket or whatever. He's like, he watches basketball, he watches football, he watches baseball.

480
00:43:44.330 --> 00:43:50.200
Tad Eggleston: Right. And I think baseball's the one that he came to last, but the one that he likes the most, at least when I was talking to him.

481
00:43:51.370 --> 00:43:53.399
Fred Van Lente: I mean, I'm an adult.

482
00:43:53.630 --> 00:43:55.200
Fred Van Lente: baseball fan as well, I mean.

483
00:43:55.200 --> 00:43:55.760
Tiffany Babb: Yeah?

484
00:43:55.760 --> 00:43:56.809
Fred Van Lente: I have a nerdy…

485
00:43:57.040 --> 00:44:02.560
Fred Van Lente: you know, picked on kids, so, you know, I… total disdain for sports, you know, it's the…

486
00:44:02.740 --> 00:44:07.470
Fred Van Lente: what's the Dark Knight Returns line? You know, the sports is the weapon of the enemy, we do not use the sports.

487
00:44:07.720 --> 00:44:08.600
Tiffany Babb: Yeah.

488
00:44:08.600 --> 00:44:23.210
Fred Van Lente: But then, my wife, she's my girlfriend at the time, was a huge 80s Mets fan, so took me to a Braves-Mets game during the Piazza era, and I just fell in love immediately, you know? It's weird, like, baseball's, like, very structured.

489
00:44:23.790 --> 00:44:30.320
Fred Van Lente: There's a lot of numbers involved, and it's great if you have, like, an OCD, like, addictive personality.

490
00:44:31.230 --> 00:44:35.250
Fred Van Lente: shocked at how… but within… by the end of the 99…

491
00:44:35.640 --> 00:44:40.999
Fred Van Lente: season, I was completely hooked. And I… I think, literally, we went on July 4th. It was the July 4th game.

492
00:44:42.110 --> 00:44:47.209
markchiarello: Fred, I am confirming myself, I thought you were from Ohio, and you are.

493
00:44:47.210 --> 00:44:48.439
Fred Van Lente: I am, yep.

494
00:44:48.440 --> 00:44:50.690
markchiarello: You weren't a Reds fan as a kid?

495
00:44:51.070 --> 00:45:04.779
Fred Van Lente: Well, I'm from Cleveland, so we would have been, what was then the Indians. No, no, I was, I had a total hostility to sports. I often find that in my, geek compatriots.

496
00:45:05.090 --> 00:45:13.889
Fred Van Lente: It's weird, it's either I hate sports, they're the tool of the enemy, or I'm as crazy addicted as everyone else, you know, that's definitely me.

497
00:45:13.890 --> 00:45:14.780
Tad Eggleston: Though, the…

498
00:45:15.170 --> 00:45:23.420
Tad Eggleston: There is definitely a very… there is a very select group that's like me, where the crazy addiction is only to baseball.

499
00:45:24.540 --> 00:45:26.350
Fred Van Lente: Yeah, me too. Yeah, I don't…

500
00:45:26.350 --> 00:45:26.880
Tad Eggleston: They know, I mean.

501
00:45:26.880 --> 00:45:27.519
Fred Van Lente: People… I…

502
00:45:27.520 --> 00:45:28.010
Tad Eggleston: People are like.

503
00:45:28.010 --> 00:45:32.140
Fred Van Lente: basketball. I wrote the comic history of basketball. Right.

504
00:45:32.140 --> 00:45:47.639
Tad Eggleston: People will say to me that, like, oh, I'm not into sports when I'm talking about baseball. I'm like, I'm not into sports anyway, either. I'm into baseball. I differentiate between the two. And I think a lot of it is what you were just talking about, like, there is…

505
00:45:48.950 --> 00:45:54.289
Tad Eggleston: there is that set of rules, and the stats, and all the ways to be OCD with it, but…

506
00:45:55.860 --> 00:46:12.670
Tad Eggleston: it's also so creative, and open-ended, because the outfield wall doesn't have to be, you know, the foul lines can reach for forever, and… and it's not amount of time that you play, it's a number of outs that you need to get, and, like, all of that stuff… I mean, I recently discovered.

507
00:46:12.680 --> 00:46:13.620
Tiffany Babb: that…

508
00:46:13.770 --> 00:46:24.429
Tad Eggleston: I mean, two things. First, have any of you read the, I think it's Robert Coover's book, the Universal Baseball Association, by Henry H. Waugh, proprietor?

509
00:46:24.950 --> 00:46:33.660
Tad Eggleston: It's a fantastic novel that's all about this guy who created his own stratomatic-type game, and then fell into it.

510
00:46:34.290 --> 00:46:46.150
Tad Eggleston: Like, like, so he's… he's rolling dice to, like, decide if they went out partying the night before, or if they got divorced, or whatnot. But what I discovered recently…

511
00:46:46.900 --> 00:46:51.180
Tad Eggleston: is Jack Kerouac had a similar game that he made up.

512
00:46:52.610 --> 00:47:06.039
Tad Eggleston: That he would play, and he'd draw scorecards, he'd draw programs, he'd do the postseason, you know, wrap-up that wasn't just about the games, but, like.

513
00:47:06.040 --> 00:47:13.210
Tad Eggleston: all of the players that he created would have personalities and whatnot. It was, like, how he entertained himself on the road, and I'm sitting there going.

514
00:47:13.360 --> 00:47:18.529
Tad Eggleston: I mean, A, now I need to track down Coover to ask if that was the…

515
00:47:18.530 --> 00:47:21.310
Tiffany Babb: the inspiration, but B, like…

516
00:47:22.650 --> 00:47:26.310
Tad Eggleston: How cool is it that, like, this sport inspires…

517
00:47:27.070 --> 00:47:33.530
Tad Eggleston: not just, rah, rah, I want my team to win, but… but, like, all of this cool…

518
00:47:33.840 --> 00:47:44.059
Tad Eggleston: storytelling, and I mean, you read W.P. Cancella works, and everybody knows Shoeless Joe, which became Field of Dreams, but, like, the… the… the…

519
00:47:44.820 --> 00:47:55.820
Tad Eggleston: Well, the Iowa Baseball Confederacy is just a crazy good book, you know, and he's got a ton of short stories. You know, Ring Lardner baseball short stories are amazing.

520
00:47:57.340 --> 00:47:58.770
Eric Reynolds: We don't have enough U.S.

521
00:47:58.770 --> 00:48:02.459
Tad Eggleston: Comics yet, but there are how many… how many baseball mangas?

522
00:48:02.590 --> 00:48:07.559
Tad Eggleston: That are all just… At least all the ones that I've come across are just… fun.

523
00:48:08.540 --> 00:48:12.549
Eric Reynolds: Does anybody have a, like, a favorite piece of… Writing about baseball.

524
00:48:12.850 --> 00:48:14.929
Eric Reynolds: Nonfiction, fiction, whatever.

525
00:48:15.920 --> 00:48:18.159
Tiffany Babb: Favorite all time is hard.

526
00:48:18.450 --> 00:48:20.690
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was about to say, so many.

527
00:48:20.690 --> 00:48:45.279
Tiffany Babb: I was gonna say, out of books last year, I really enjoyed, this book that I read called In the Japanese… Inside Japanese Baseball, I think is what it was called. And it's all… I know very little about MPB, and it's all just interviews, and they format it into essays, from people who work throughout MPB, so key interviews, like the cheerleaders, the beer girls, a commissioner, like, the mascot.

528
00:48:45.440 --> 00:48:47.160
Tiffany Babb: And that was really interesting.

529
00:48:48.090 --> 00:48:49.180
Eric Reynolds: That sounds good.

530
00:48:49.600 --> 00:48:50.030
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.

531
00:48:50.030 --> 00:48:50.990
Eric Reynolds: What did you say, Fred?

532
00:48:51.770 --> 00:48:55.709
Fred Van Lente: Boys of Summer. Angles. The Boys of Summer is probably my favorite.

533
00:48:55.710 --> 00:48:56.530
Eric Reynolds: Is that Halberstan?

534
00:48:57.530 --> 00:48:58.210
Fred Van Lente: What's that?

535
00:48:58.210 --> 00:48:59.829
Eric Reynolds: Is that David Halberstam?

536
00:48:59.990 --> 00:49:02.229
Fred Van Lente: No, it's… it's Roger Engel.

537
00:49:02.230 --> 00:49:03.830
Eric Reynolds: Oh, Roger Angel, okay, yeah.

538
00:49:03.830 --> 00:49:04.819
Rob Neyer: Roger Khan.

539
00:49:05.330 --> 00:49:06.960
Eric Reynolds: New Yorker. What?

540
00:49:06.960 --> 00:49:10.140
Rob Neyer: Roger Kahn wrote, Boys of Summer, is that the…

541
00:49:10.600 --> 00:49:11.380
Fred Van Lente: Farewell.

542
00:49:11.650 --> 00:49:12.580
Rob Neyer: Dodgers book?

543
00:49:12.840 --> 00:49:13.979
Fred Van Lente: Yeah, the broken dot.

544
00:49:13.980 --> 00:49:16.669
Rob Neyer: That's Roger Karn. Yeah, Roger Angel's also awesome.

545
00:49:16.670 --> 00:49:27.790
Tiffany Babb: I just found out that Roger Angel didn't get into baseball until, like, they had started the Mets, and he was, like, sent to cover, like, the beginning of the Mets, and then he fell in love through that.

546
00:49:27.940 --> 00:49:28.260
Rob Neyer: group.

547
00:49:29.110 --> 00:49:32.090
Eric Reynolds: Have any of you read, Don DeLillo's Underworld?

548
00:49:33.700 --> 00:49:35.429
Eric Reynolds: The first thing… Not the whole thing.

549
00:49:35.430 --> 00:49:38.049
Rob Neyer: I read the baseball part in the beginning.

550
00:49:38.050 --> 00:49:40.199
Eric Reynolds: Yeah, the first hundred pages.

551
00:49:40.200 --> 00:49:41.540
Rob Neyer: It turned into a standalone book.

552
00:49:42.530 --> 00:49:47.770
Eric Reynolds: It's… I think that's my favorite. It's just… it's… it's the shot heard around the world game.

553
00:49:48.260 --> 00:49:50.089
Eric Reynolds: And it's the most immersive.

554
00:49:51.730 --> 00:50:00.739
Eric Reynolds: baseball experience, in prose that I've ever read. It's great. It's actually one of my favorite pieces of prose of any kind I've ever read.

555
00:50:02.790 --> 00:50:06.040
markchiarello: There was a great… my memory's gone. There was a great book

556
00:50:06.200 --> 00:50:19.589
markchiarello: Came out about 15 years ago. I think the… I think the author was from Ohio. It was about what if that deal that VEC… what's his name? Bill Veck?

557
00:50:19.590 --> 00:50:19.990
Tiffany Babb: Yeah.

558
00:50:19.990 --> 00:50:25.670
Tad Eggleston: This is, and you know what? This is somebody who was invited to this, because that's Peter Schilling.

559
00:50:25.670 --> 00:50:26.670
markchiarello: Peter Schilling.

560
00:50:26.850 --> 00:50:36.650
markchiarello: The summer of, let's say, baseball or something, the premise is, what if that deal for the, for the, was it the Browns? To get…

561
00:50:36.650 --> 00:50:37.230
Tiffany Babb: the top.

562
00:50:37.230 --> 00:50:42.280
Tad Eggleston: No, it was VEC offered by the Philadelphia A's from Connie Mac.

563
00:50:44.080 --> 00:50:44.670
markchiarello: Right.

564
00:50:45.870 --> 00:50:47.419
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I know this book.

565
00:50:47.690 --> 00:50:57.229
markchiarello: I was just about to bring it up myself. He essentially works out a deal to buy Cool Papa Bell, Josh Gibson, Satchel Page, and I think Judy Johnson, and the deal…

566
00:50:57.820 --> 00:50:58.530
Tad Eggleston: I think it was a hole.

567
00:50:59.250 --> 00:51:03.970
markchiarello: It's a great, great book, Schelling, Peter Schelling. I had lunch with a real nice guy.

568
00:51:04.510 --> 00:51:05.680
Tiffany Babb: Sounds great.

569
00:51:06.000 --> 00:51:07.759
markchiarello: Man, I highly recommend it.

570
00:51:08.060 --> 00:51:14.419
Tad Eggleston: One second, and I'll… and I'll… End of Baseball is the name of… The End of Baseball is the name of the book. It's a great book.

571
00:51:14.470 --> 00:51:18.890
Tiffany Babb: And this is where I was about to go. He also…

572
00:51:19.840 --> 00:51:20.780
Tad Eggleston: Has a book.

573
00:51:21.020 --> 00:51:21.570
Tiffany Babb: about.

574
00:51:21.570 --> 00:51:23.439
Tad Eggleston: Carl Barks at Uncivilized.

575
00:51:23.440 --> 00:51:25.389
Tiffany Babb: Oh, well, there you go. Crossover.

576
00:51:25.390 --> 00:51:28.319
Tad Eggleston: baseball and comics guy. Right. Interesting.

577
00:51:28.560 --> 00:51:40.149
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, we almost had him last November, and I reached out for this one, too, and we just didn't manage to connect, so… one day, he will be in one of these conversations. Mark my words.

578
00:51:40.560 --> 00:51:46.690
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, I was a little frustrated at the way…

579
00:51:47.570 --> 00:51:58.470
Tad Eggleston: Josh Gibson was portrayed in that book, because it had him in the depths of addiction, though there's some evidence to indicate that he might have been, so I'm not…

580
00:52:00.140 --> 00:52:03.380
markchiarello: Yeah, all according to what year, all according to what year it was.

581
00:52:03.550 --> 00:52:08.679
Tad Eggleston: Right, I can't… can't be completely unhappy about it, because…

582
00:52:08.990 --> 00:52:14.770
Tad Eggleston: Because the other thing is, like, it portrayed it in a way, like, like, one of the things that, that…

583
00:52:15.880 --> 00:52:27.640
Tad Eggleston: that shocked me for a second and a half, and then made me go, oh, no, that makes perfect sense, is when I discovered that Louis Armstrong was a total pothead. But… but, like…

584
00:52:27.970 --> 00:52:33.680
Tad Eggleston: he gave an interview once where he got asked about it, and he's like, dude, I played all of these places.

585
00:52:33.870 --> 00:52:43.710
Tad Eggleston: you know, listed off, like, the biggest of biggest musical halls of the era. And he's like, and I had to walk through the back door of every one of them.

586
00:52:43.960 --> 00:52:44.570
markchiarello: Yeah.

587
00:52:45.070 --> 00:52:47.740
Tad Eggleston: And he's like, so, I could be pissed off?

588
00:52:48.220 --> 00:52:49.800
Tad Eggleston: Or I can get high.

589
00:52:50.750 --> 00:52:54.699
Tad Eggleston: I make better music when I'm high than when I'm pissed off.

590
00:52:54.860 --> 00:52:58.040
markchiarello: And he lived 5 minutes away from Shea Stadium in Corona.

591
00:52:58.040 --> 00:52:58.660
Tad Eggleston: Right.

592
00:52:58.780 --> 00:53:03.639
markchiarello: Yeah. There's a… there's another book, that I really love, Game 6.

593
00:53:04.880 --> 00:53:16.779
markchiarello: about the Carlton Fisk home run, that series. Mark Frost didn't… you know, here's another connection to comics. Didn't Mark Frost write the… one of the Fantastic Four Silver Surfer movies?

594
00:53:19.040 --> 00:53:20.580
markchiarello: Or am I crazy?

595
00:53:20.580 --> 00:53:20.899
Fred Van Lente: That's awesome.

596
00:53:22.700 --> 00:53:25.649
markchiarello: That's a great book. Man, that's one of my top 3 favorite books.

597
00:53:25.650 --> 00:53:26.890
Eric Reynolds: Peak Sky.

598
00:53:26.890 --> 00:53:27.790
markchiarello: baseball books

599
00:53:31.060 --> 00:53:32.140
markchiarello: Everybody's looking it up.

600
00:53:32.140 --> 00:53:34.729
Fred Van Lente: Mark Frost, the co-creator of Twin Peaks.

601
00:53:36.020 --> 00:53:36.480
Tad Eggleston: Easy.

602
00:53:37.850 --> 00:53:39.430
markchiarello: That's probably a different Mark Rose.

603
00:53:41.720 --> 00:53:44.279
Tad Eggleston: Well, now I have to do research.

604
00:53:44.280 --> 00:53:45.690
Fred Van Lente: Well, the Twin Peaks guy…

605
00:53:45.690 --> 00:53:46.250
Tad Eggleston: Awesome.

606
00:53:46.580 --> 00:53:52.819
Fred Van Lente: was, in fact… the writer of the Michael Chickless Fantastic Four movie, so you…

607
00:53:53.060 --> 00:53:54.019
markchiarello: What's got a beginner.

608
00:53:55.300 --> 00:53:56.300
Tiffany Babb: Intriguing.

609
00:53:57.160 --> 00:54:00.350
Tad Eggleston: But did he also write the baseball book? That's… that's what we.

610
00:54:00.350 --> 00:54:01.980
Fred Van Lente: Oh, that is the question.

611
00:54:03.010 --> 00:54:04.229
markchiarello: New York Times best-selling…

612
00:54:04.230 --> 00:54:06.430
Tiffany Babb: Yeah, it is, it is the same guy.

613
00:54:06.430 --> 00:54:07.590
markchiarello: Is it really?

614
00:54:07.590 --> 00:54:11.750
Tiffany Babb: Yeah, so he created… no, co-created Twin Peaks. It's the same guy.

615
00:54:13.630 --> 00:54:19.420
Tad Eggleston: And it actually looks like he's got another… book called…

616
00:54:19.980 --> 00:54:21.340
Tiffany Babb: The Grand Slam.

617
00:54:21.570 --> 00:54:27.929
Tad Eggleston: The Grand Slam… Is… about Bobby Jill… no, that's golf.

618
00:54:27.930 --> 00:54:32.219
Tiffany Babb: Oh, well, I see that's what happens when you make assumptions.

619
00:54:32.220 --> 00:54:34.209
Tad Eggleston: Not nearly as interesting.

620
00:54:34.370 --> 00:54:38.500
Tad Eggleston: There was another one that I was trying to find, cause it looked like it was,

621
00:54:39.290 --> 00:54:48.050
Tad Eggleston: Grand Slam… No, the match is… er, no, greatest game ever played, a true story… is that…

622
00:54:49.270 --> 00:54:50.510
Tad Eggleston: No, that's another.

623
00:54:50.510 --> 00:54:56.820
Tiffany Babb: I was gonna say, we're also just assuming that's baseball, but I think that's one of the interesting things about baseball.

624
00:54:56.820 --> 00:54:59.379
Tad Eggleston: Doesn't he know that, like, golf is what you do?

625
00:54:59.380 --> 00:55:05.740
Tiffany Babb: Well, he can't, yes. Well, Mike Trout has opened a golf course with…

626
00:55:05.740 --> 00:55:06.120
Tad Eggleston: Corsi.

627
00:55:06.120 --> 00:55:09.680
Tiffany Babb: With Tiger Woods. Like, they… that's… well, that's the big thing that they do.

628
00:55:09.680 --> 00:55:10.580
Tad Eggleston: Kinda cool.

629
00:55:10.580 --> 00:55:14.180
Tiffany Babb: Yeah, they all… they all golf, but like… Yeah, great.

630
00:55:14.180 --> 00:55:16.599
Tad Eggleston: Greg Maddox was apparently an insane golfer.

631
00:55:16.600 --> 00:55:17.740
Tiffany Babb: Was he really?

632
00:55:17.990 --> 00:55:19.700
Tad Eggleston: SI…

633
00:55:20.020 --> 00:55:22.059
Tiffany Babb: an SI column.

634
00:55:22.270 --> 00:55:24.219
Tiffany Babb: I think it was, .

635
00:55:24.300 --> 00:55:30.029
Tad Eggleston: Oh, God, who was… who… Rob, do you remember who got to cover Maddox the most at SI?

636
00:55:30.740 --> 00:55:32.289
Rob Neyer: Oh gosh, no, I have no idea.

637
00:55:33.360 --> 00:55:36.130
Tad Eggleston: It's somebody… I think it was Tom Verducci.

638
00:55:36.890 --> 00:55:37.290
Rob Neyer: I agree.

639
00:55:38.130 --> 00:55:51.329
Tad Eggleston: But, like, the beginning of the column was, like, Tom Verducci went up to some other person in the pneumatics well and started the conversation with, so I was golfing with Greg Maddox the other day, and

640
00:55:51.560 --> 00:55:53.839
Tad Eggleston: And the guy said, let me guess.

641
00:55:53.950 --> 00:55:58.420
Tad Eggleston: Off the tree, through the sand trap, onto the green.

642
00:55:58.690 --> 00:56:04.539
Tad Eggleston: And he's like, no, and gave some other crazy thing that had happened.

643
00:56:04.540 --> 00:56:05.700
Tiffany Babb: That's crazy.

644
00:56:06.630 --> 00:56:15.499
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, apparently Maddox, Glavin, and Smoltz, like, spent almost every off day, and often the days before games that they weren't pitching.

645
00:56:15.750 --> 00:56:16.910
Tad Eggleston: out golfing.

646
00:56:16.910 --> 00:56:20.609
Tiffany Babb: Who was the fish… Ted Williams? Did he fish? He can pet a.

647
00:56:20.610 --> 00:56:23.100
Tad Eggleston: Ted Williams was a fisherman, fly fishing.

648
00:56:25.090 --> 00:56:25.799
Tiffany Babb: You gotta have hobbies.

649
00:56:25.800 --> 00:56:27.000
Tad Eggleston: Combat pilot.

650
00:56:28.210 --> 00:56:33.059
Tad Eggleston: Ted Williams did a lot of things, and apparently, when he was taking batting practice.

651
00:56:33.240 --> 00:56:36.610
Tad Eggleston: With every swing, he'd say, I'm Ted fucking Williams.

652
00:56:38.870 --> 00:56:39.830
markchiarello: Hence the song.

653
00:56:41.270 --> 00:56:42.280
Tad Eggleston: It'sball project.

654
00:56:42.280 --> 00:56:48.370
markchiarello: Who was the… Who was the guy who was fishing, the Hall of Famer who was fishing, who died?

655
00:56:48.810 --> 00:56:52.269
markchiarello: The guy he was fishing with fell over, and he tried to save him in the water.

656
00:56:54.940 --> 00:57:01.210
Tiffany Babb: I know who you're talking about, because he was quite young, wasn't he? Or he had come over from Cuba, was that it?

657
00:57:01.210 --> 00:57:05.899
markchiarello: No, no, he was a… I wanna say it was, like, Archie Vaughn or somebody like that.

658
00:57:06.010 --> 00:57:06.640
Tiffany Babb: Older than me.

659
00:57:06.640 --> 00:57:10.800
markchiarello: Charlie Garinger, somebody like that, like a great… No.

660
00:57:10.800 --> 00:57:12.620
Tiffany Babb: still, visible.

661
00:57:12.800 --> 00:57:15.659
Tiffany Babb: But a Hall of Famer. I think it might have been Arkey Vaughn.

662
00:57:16.740 --> 00:57:18.339
markchiarello: Sorry for that.

663
00:57:18.340 --> 00:57:18.860
Tad Eggleston: So many…

664
00:57:19.230 --> 00:57:22.130
markchiarello: Sorry for the ridiculous trivia question.

665
00:57:22.130 --> 00:57:25.800
Tad Eggleston: No, that's what… I have the…

666
00:57:26.190 --> 00:57:31.910
Tad Eggleston: Because… because, among other things,

667
00:57:32.560 --> 00:57:46.140
Tad Eggleston: particularly people who are into both comics and baseball are that much more likely to be the ones that are into the esoteric, weird, cool stuff about baseball. So just, I love that we get to share these little…

668
00:57:46.670 --> 00:57:51.540
Tad Eggleston: nuggets of… of… whatever.

669
00:57:51.540 --> 00:57:58.759
Tiffany Babb: That answer to Mark's question, which was, is it worth it to get back into baseball? Which is, there's so many different ways to be into baseball, right?

670
00:57:58.760 --> 00:57:59.200
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.

671
00:57:59.200 --> 00:58:03.210
Tiffany Babb: to be watching the games, necessarily, to, like… I mean… Yeah.

672
00:58:03.570 --> 00:58:10.040
Tad Eggleston: I probably only watch… maybe 3 games a year on TV.

673
00:58:10.040 --> 00:58:11.409
Tiffany Babb: Wow, I watch a lot of characters.

674
00:58:11.410 --> 00:58:11.930
Eric Reynolds: That's cute.

675
00:58:11.930 --> 00:58:13.230
Tiffany Babb: I watch a lot of…

676
00:58:13.230 --> 00:58:18.729
Tad Eggleston: Almost… There's almost never a day where I don't read something about baseball.

677
00:58:19.030 --> 00:58:20.070
Tad Eggleston: Yep. There's…

678
00:58:20.750 --> 00:58:41.539
Tad Eggleston: And I go out of my way to go to at least 3 or 4 Major League games, and at least 3 or 4 minor league games every year. There are certain people that when I get together with them, you know, Dennis Kitchen couldn't make it today, but, like, the last time he was in Milwaukee, it's like, oh, the Brewers are out of town, are there any bays? We went to a Milwaukee Milkmen game.

679
00:58:41.540 --> 00:58:43.009
Tiffany Babb: Because it was a baseball game.

680
00:58:44.260 --> 00:58:45.500
Tad Eggleston: You know?

681
00:58:45.530 --> 00:58:46.509
Eric Reynolds: I'm the same way.

682
00:58:46.510 --> 00:58:47.260
Tiffany Babb: I watched…

683
00:58:47.260 --> 00:58:57.400
Eric Reynolds: I watch about maybe 3 games a year, too, if they happen to be on national TV. And last fall, when the Mariners made the playoffs and went as deep as they did.

684
00:58:57.760 --> 00:59:04.830
Eric Reynolds: I watched all of those games. And, you know, by the end of it, I was fucking exhausted.

685
00:59:04.830 --> 00:59:06.189
Tiffany Babb: It's a lot of time.

686
00:59:06.190 --> 00:59:12.480
Eric Reynolds: I mean, I was almost a little bit relieved, you know, even though I wanted them to go all the way, but…

687
00:59:12.670 --> 00:59:13.680
Tiffany Babb: I mean…

688
00:59:13.680 --> 00:59:18.940
Eric Reynolds: Yeah, I can't imagine somebody watching, you know, 162 games on television.

689
00:59:19.940 --> 00:59:32.179
Tiffany Babb: a lot of games, not 162, but I definitely watch a few a week on TV, especially at the beginning of the season. As the Angels start to really fall off, it gets harder to emotionally steal myself for, like, 9 hours of bad baseball.

690
00:59:32.180 --> 00:59:35.910
Fred Van Lente: What drives me crazy is that the playoffs are always during near a Comic-Con.

691
00:59:35.910 --> 00:59:36.470
Tiffany Babb: Right.

692
00:59:36.470 --> 00:59:38.040
Fred Van Lente: So, when…

693
00:59:38.240 --> 00:59:46.820
Fred Van Lente: a team I like isn't in the playoffs, they're a fun distraction, but when my team is in the playoffs, it's extremely stressful.

694
00:59:47.150 --> 00:59:47.780
Eric Reynolds: Yeah.

695
00:59:47.780 --> 00:59:50.400
Fred Van Lente: On top of what is already a stressful week.

696
00:59:51.290 --> 00:59:57.620
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. No, I, I… I… I love going to games.

697
00:59:57.790 --> 01:00:03.729
Tad Eggleston: And part of it is I was spoiled. I still don't think that there's been a better production crew.

698
01:00:03.750 --> 01:00:20.250
Tad Eggleston: than the Arnie Harris-Joe Corneo Cubs crew that was literally their producer and director for, like, 50 years on WGN. And they figured out camera placings before any other team did, et cetera, et cetera, and I think…

699
01:00:21.830 --> 01:00:32.950
Tad Eggleston: Rob, have a great, great day. Thank you so much for joining us, and one of these days, I'm gonna get out. Rob is the commissioner of the West Coast League, a wood bat summer…

700
01:00:33.590 --> 01:00:34.160
Tiffany Babb: Cool.

701
01:00:34.380 --> 01:00:35.400
Tad Eggleston: The, the, the snow.

702
01:00:35.400 --> 01:00:35.750
Rob Neyer: improvement.

703
01:00:35.750 --> 01:00:36.410
Tad Eggleston: Pickles.

704
01:00:36.920 --> 01:00:38.299
Rob Neyer: If anyone's ever up here.

705
01:00:38.380 --> 01:00:39.649
Tad Eggleston: Need to go to a game.

706
01:00:39.650 --> 01:00:43.730
Rob Neyer: teams, and all over the place, so, keep… let me know.

707
01:00:43.970 --> 01:00:46.969
Eric Reynolds: I gotta get down there. I have a friend who has season tickets.

708
01:00:47.250 --> 01:00:48.459
Rob Neyer: to, what, Pickles game?

709
01:00:48.460 --> 01:00:49.380
Eric Reynolds: They're the pickles, yeah.

710
01:00:50.130 --> 01:00:51.490
Tiffany Babb: It's a great team name.

711
01:00:51.490 --> 01:00:52.839
Eric Reynolds: I gotta, I gotta get down there.

712
01:00:52.840 --> 01:00:54.829
Rob Neyer: Big party every night there. A lot of fun.

713
01:00:55.250 --> 01:00:56.060
markchiarello: Rob, before you…

714
01:00:56.060 --> 01:00:56.570
Rob Neyer: Everybody thinks.

715
01:00:56.570 --> 01:01:03.610
markchiarello: Wait, before you go, Rob, I did have a quick question. I'm assuming you've been to, like, every Major League stadium?

716
01:01:04.090 --> 01:01:10.269
Rob Neyer: I have not, I think I'm at, like, 38 or 39, but some of those are defunct, and I haven't been to all of the new ones.

717
01:01:10.740 --> 01:01:14.060
markchiarello: My question is about Candlestick. Have you ever been to Candlestick?

718
01:01:14.060 --> 01:01:23.730
Rob Neyer: I was there in, the summer of… 19… 99?

719
01:01:24.360 --> 01:01:27.000
Tad Eggleston: Wow, I went to Candlestick the year before you did.

720
01:01:27.000 --> 01:01:29.619
Rob Neyer: Speaking of weather, I knew all the stories.

721
01:01:29.620 --> 01:01:30.810
Tiffany Babb: Right.

722
01:01:30.810 --> 01:01:39.250
Rob Neyer: It was July, and I took a heavy coat, and I was still cold. Wow. It was the most dramatic ballpark experience I've ever had. I'm very glad I got to do it once.

723
01:01:39.510 --> 01:01:41.659
markchiarello: Wow. I wish I had gone.

724
01:01:41.810 --> 01:01:43.300
Rob Neyer: Yeah, it was something else?

725
01:01:43.580 --> 01:01:45.449
Tad Eggleston: I enjoyed my night at Candlestick.

726
01:01:45.700 --> 01:01:53.049
Tiffany Babb: That's my… that's my, like, if I could go back in time, I'd watch Willie Mays at Candlestick. But also, like, I was, I was… I wrote about this.

727
01:01:53.050 --> 01:01:54.000
Tad Eggleston: Polo grounds.

728
01:01:54.000 --> 01:01:57.889
Tiffany Babb: Well, there you go. That candlestick, it's the crazy bit, right?

729
01:01:57.890 --> 01:01:58.240
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.

730
01:01:58.240 --> 01:02:19.550
Tiffany Babb: you have the chaos, and I was looking it up, and it's because of the placement of the park. It was in, like, the worst spot, and so when the gusts of wind came in, like, it rolled around the basin and just made this crazy, weird… and, like, apparently if they had moved it just, like, a few hundred feet or something, like, a mile or two, like, it would have been totally fine, but it was just that one placement.

731
01:02:21.560 --> 01:02:25.089
Eric Reynolds: You can see it from the freeway, and it was just exposed.

732
01:02:25.590 --> 01:02:27.020
Eric Reynolds: Out there.

733
01:02:27.020 --> 01:02:27.850
Tiffany Babb: Crazy.

734
01:02:28.000 --> 01:02:28.650
Eric Reynolds: Yeah.

735
01:02:29.290 --> 01:02:31.029
markchiarello: Sorry, Rob, I didn't mean to hold you up.

736
01:02:31.030 --> 01:02:36.839
Rob Neyer: That's alright, no, I had a couple minutes. I just gotta take a shower before my hair cut, so good to see everybody. Take care.

737
01:02:36.840 --> 01:02:37.330
Tad Eggleston: Good morning, Rob.

738
01:02:38.130 --> 01:02:40.200
Eric Reynolds: I think I have to jet as well.

739
01:02:40.200 --> 01:02:41.320
Tad Eggleston: Eric needs to run, too.

740
01:02:41.870 --> 01:02:44.700
Tiffany Babb: I do too, actually.

741
01:02:44.700 --> 01:02:49.060
Tad Eggleston: then we should wrap up everybody giving one thing that they hope to see this year.

742
01:02:51.010 --> 01:02:52.309
Tiffany Babb: One thing.

743
01:02:52.470 --> 01:02:54.630
Fred Van Lente: That isn't our team winning the World Series? Right.

744
01:02:55.100 --> 01:02:56.520
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's kind of the cheapy.

745
01:02:56.520 --> 01:02:57.100
Fred Van Lente: bang.

746
01:02:57.710 --> 01:03:01.249
Eric Reynolds: I'll go with a healthy Mariners rotation, which I think.

747
01:03:01.250 --> 01:03:01.650
Tad Eggleston: Okay.

748
01:03:01.650 --> 01:03:03.509
Eric Reynolds: The key to their success.

749
01:03:03.510 --> 01:03:07.769
Fred Van Lente: I'll do the spiteful thing, and I'll say the Dodgers not even making the.

750
01:03:07.770 --> 01:03:10.160
Tiffany Babb: It's very possible.

751
01:03:11.130 --> 01:03:13.859
Tiffany Babb: I mean, we were talking about the weaknesses earlier, so it's very possible, and it.

752
01:03:13.860 --> 01:03:15.909
Eric Reynolds: Larry David's spite boat, yeah.

753
01:03:15.910 --> 01:03:22.090
Tiffany Babb: I would like to see Mike Trout have, like, a stellar, like, Mike Trout year.

754
01:03:22.460 --> 01:03:23.439
Tad Eggleston: That would be great.

755
01:03:25.010 --> 01:03:25.520
Tad Eggleston: I.

756
01:03:25.520 --> 01:03:27.949
Eric Reynolds: I would like to see that, too, as long as the angels.

757
01:03:28.040 --> 01:03:31.049
Tiffany Babb: Finishing last notes. There you go.

758
01:03:31.050 --> 01:03:32.680
Fred Van Lente: We're all wrong spite mode.

759
01:03:32.680 --> 01:03:33.919
Eric Reynolds: Continuing the spite thing.

760
01:03:33.920 --> 01:03:39.059
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna go with something hyper-specific. I have never seen a triple play in person.

761
01:03:39.800 --> 01:03:50.780
Tad Eggleston: So I'm hoping that at some game that I'm at, I get to see a triple play. And what I'm… like, if there's, like, a sub-hope, I hope that it's not a 5-4-3.

762
01:03:51.340 --> 01:03:51.939
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'd love to.

763
01:03:51.940 --> 01:03:52.370
Tiffany Babb: Yeah. Stop.

764
01:03:52.370 --> 01:03:59.579
Tad Eggleston: That's really cool, but I'd love to… I'd really love to see one of those just wacky, like.

765
01:03:59.660 --> 01:04:03.790
Tiffany Babb: 8… 2… 4… Right.

766
01:04:03.790 --> 01:04:06.480
Tad Eggleston: 3, 6 triple play.

767
01:04:06.480 --> 01:04:25.749
Tiffany Babb: It was a great one last year, that was 6-6-3. Right. That was nuts against… it was Zach Neto against Shohei Ohtani, which was hilarious, because they had been teammates, but it was crazy. Unassisted triple play? Yes, I guess technically it would… yeah, that would be… that would be ideal. It was almost there.

768
01:04:26.190 --> 01:04:29.280
Fred Van Lente: I had… I had Peter Parker had to do an unassisted trouble.

769
01:04:29.420 --> 01:04:30.410
Tiffany Babb: There you go.

770
01:04:30.410 --> 01:04:31.050
Fred Van Lente: Spider-Man Kids.

771
01:04:31.050 --> 01:04:34.420
Tiffany Babb: He can do it. I crammed baseball into college.

772
01:04:34.420 --> 01:04:36.090
Fred Van Lente: I remember that.

773
01:04:36.170 --> 01:04:37.459
Tad Eggleston: I remember that.

774
01:04:38.250 --> 01:04:39.540
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I don't even care what…

775
01:04:39.540 --> 01:04:40.060
Eric Reynolds: I go.

776
01:04:40.700 --> 01:04:49.860
Tad Eggleston: Some of the coolest things I've ever seen have been at minor league games. I got to see Wilson Contreras get on 5 different ways in a game without actually getting a hit.

777
01:04:49.920 --> 01:04:52.079
Tiffany Babb: There you go.

778
01:04:52.080 --> 01:05:11.129
Tiffany Babb: There you go, I mean, I've… you were talking about that crazy game earlier? I literally saw, this week, the spring training Angels… Dodgers at Angels. Like, it was… I think they had 3 hits, and they, like, walked in, like, 8 runs. It was unbelievable. But to be fair, it was, like, our minor leaguers against, like.

779
01:05:11.130 --> 01:05:12.439
Tiffany Babb: The starting lineups.

780
01:05:12.440 --> 01:05:14.009
Tad Eggleston: Oh, their starting lineup.

781
01:05:14.010 --> 01:05:18.400
Tiffany Babb: like, a guy you've never heard of against, like, Shohei Ohtani, and, like, it was…

782
01:05:18.400 --> 01:05:21.279
Tad Eggleston: But you see, he got struck out by an electrician in the…

783
01:05:21.280 --> 01:05:29.410
Tiffany Babb: I did see. Well, he's not an electrician, he's an… he's actually an electrical engineer. They've come out with a clarifying…

784
01:05:29.410 --> 01:05:32.389
Tad Eggleston: In some ways, that's even more embarrassing.

785
01:05:32.500 --> 01:05:34.819
Tiffany Babb: Yeah. Cause, like, this is a high level.

786
01:05:34.820 --> 01:05:35.580
Tad Eggleston: Electrical.

787
01:05:35.580 --> 01:05:36.720
Tiffany Babb: Stage offer, yes.

788
01:05:36.720 --> 01:05:40.260
Tad Eggleston: Or an electrical… an electrician, you expect to at least be, like.

789
01:05:40.560 --> 01:05:41.130
Tiffany Babb: Yeah.

790
01:05:41.130 --> 01:05:45.379
Tad Eggleston: Probably whatever. Electrical engineer is some dude who sits at a desk.

791
01:05:45.380 --> 01:05:48.450
Tiffany Babb: Shows you baseball's all a mind game, right?

792
01:05:48.450 --> 01:05:48.850
Tad Eggleston: Idiot.

793
01:05:48.850 --> 01:05:53.100
Tiffany Babb: This was a lot of fun. Thank you, it was great to chat, everyone.

794
01:05:53.100 --> 01:05:54.419
Tad Eggleston: Always a blast, everyone.

795
01:05:54.420 --> 01:05:58.990
Fred Van Lente: And, I'm at Y7, Dad, so hopefully you'll see me over the weekend.

796
01:05:58.990 --> 01:06:03.279
Tad Eggleston: I will make certain that I see you over the weekend, and hopefully you come to my panel.

797
01:06:03.280 --> 01:06:04.930
Fred Van Lente: Hopefully I get on a plane, that's my…

798
01:06:04.930 --> 01:06:05.290
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.

799
01:06:05.290 --> 01:06:08.040
Fred Van Lente: LaGuardia, we'll find out whether or not I got it.

800
01:06:08.040 --> 01:06:08.780
Tiffany Babb: Yeah.

801
01:06:08.780 --> 01:06:21.190
Tad Eggleston: For Rob Nyer and Eric Reynolds, Tiffany Babb, Fred Van Lenti, Mark Chiarello, this has been the Opening Day Baseball and Comics Roundtable on 22 Panels, and we will see you after the next page.