The Infinite Inning

TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Consequences of Being Boojum Wilson*A Fight in Oakland: “Here’s My Chance”*Ginny Searle: What Can Be Done to Make Baseball a More Welcoming Space for LGBT People?*“I Wouldn’t Say It’s a Lifestyle, I’d Say It’s My Life”*Empathy*Is Jackie Robinson an Inapt Comparison?*Why is Homophobia the Last Socially-Acceptable Prejudice?*There’s More Than One Way to Be Male or Female*That Kissing Scene in Ball Four*“Love and Theft”*What Has Been Good About the 2020 Season?*Fake Crowd Noise*Shakespeare Can Make You Feel Dumb*The Most Confusing Sentence in Shakespeare*Editing Mistakes and Jo Adell in Right*Some Old Texas Rangers Who Didn’t Quite Work Out*Midlife-Crisis Sonnets?*Shakespeare Wants to Have Your Babies (or Vice-Versa)*“Who Gets to Speak?”*“Romeo + Juliet?”*Is There Hope for Understanding?*Goodybyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’ll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

A look back at Tom Seaver stories we have told over the years on the occasion of the great man’s passing.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Rest in Peace Number 41*From Episode 23: Tom Seaver’s Prayer for Peace*Tom Seaver at Twilight*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’ll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

Paul Dickson returns to discuss The Rise of the GI Army, an increasingly hard-to-imagine moment when the country overcame resistance and demagoguery to pull together. Plus a tale of two terrible first basemen going to war and a reply to Thom Brennaman.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Mahan, Sturm, and the Lost Players of 2040*Thom Brennaman: “Bye Bye Blackbird”*Paul Dickson: A Timely Recollection (An Army in Yankee Stadium)*Charles Lindbergh and the Isolationist Gang (And Their Enemies)*The War After the War Before*“The Veterans of Future Wars”*Bipartisanship in a Time of Crisis*General George Marshall: Hall of Famer*The CCC Saves the World*Discovering Eisenhower and Scouting Patton*Marshall and the Plattsburg Movement*Grenville Clark*The Struggle for a Desegregated American Military (The Double V)*Robeson and Robinson*Did Patton Cheat During War Games?*A Peacetime Draft and Wearing Your Mask*Playing Politics with Safety*We Could Do That But We Can’t Do This*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’ll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

This one has everything: David Roth, the Defector, a mysterious player with a name that suggests a large animal with a slack colon, a rumored Mickey Mantle trade of 1958, the Mets, and more.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Frank Lane’s Hypothetical Mickey Mantle Trade and the Media*Three Announcements Invoking Craig Calcaterra*New Baseball Song: “The American Game”*Bevos and Hippos (Oh My)*David Roth: “Jeopardy” Category: Bad Royals Trades, All Thing Gabriel Byrne, and other Trivia*What is The Defector?*Freelancing is a Drag*The Vanishing Internet*The Defector Elevator Pitch/A Blogging Fresca*How Can a Website Have a Broad-Based Appeal When Fox Exists?*The Walt Disney Formulation and Ursine Copulation Coverage*How Will the Nation React to College Football Being Cancelled? (The “Sham of Amateurism”)*…And the MLB Model*The Marlins and the Cardinals*Are We Enjoying the 2020 Season?/Low Offense*Andres Gimenez: Blogger-Sized*Marcus Stroman Opts Out*Have All Teams Become the Mets?*Summing Up the Cespedes Era*Albert Pujols and the Long, Long Contract*Goodbyes.

Warning: One or two cusswords and mature animal subject discussed. Hide the hippos.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’ll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

Cliff Corcoran returns to discuss actual baseball, plus tales of pandemics past, vanished players, and cheering home runs through the valley of death, 1945.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Seventy-Five Years of Home Runs and Questions*Shad Rhem*Cliff Corcoran: Branded Masks*First Baseman-Leadoff Hitters*Cubs 2020 Lineup*Slow Leadoff Men (Part 1000)*The Blue and the Gold of Milwaukee*Expansion is Contingent*The Brooklyn Super-Bus, Sour Cherry Jelly, and Aphasia*For the Love of Baseball Cutouts*One More Ride for the White Elephants/What’s an Athletic, Anyway?*A Dozen Relievers*The Season You Skip*Cubs Fever, Catch It*The Nationals Struggle Early*Causality Problems*A Very Brief Nod to the Marlins, Phillies, Cardinals, Et Al*Moral Hazard in Baseball Coverage*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’ll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

Hall of Famer Rod Carew discusses his career and his life both before and after baseball. Plus tales of a future Hall of Famer demoralized by the Dodgers and Carew encountering racist gamesmanship in civil rights-era Florida.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
A Dodger Says Uncle*Rod Carew and the Poisoned Handshake*Rod Carew: Hall of Famer in the Pandemic*A Private Player in the Public Eye/A Father’s Promise*It’s All for the Best*Are All the Greatest Hitters Obsessed?/The Number-One Tool*Free-Swinging but High-Contact*Is Being a Great Hitter About Intelligence or Memory?*“Super-Loner?”*Rod and Reggie*Against the Shift/How to Hit Nolan Ryan*Childhood Abuse and Putting the Anger Aside*Meeting Jackie Robinson*Vs. Mariano Rivera*When the Brewers Swept the Knee*The Steal of Home Year and After*Billy Martin in Minnesota*Could Gene Mauch Manage Today?*Carew and Griffith*Leaving the Twins*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’ll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

Sociologist Dr. Jennifer Earl discusses how the Internet has changed the way we come together to change the world. Plus an old-time catcher celebrates the good old days that never were and Lefty Gomez is tortured into gaining weight.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Piggybacking on Christy Mathewson’s Rep*Lefty Gomez Has a Weight Problem*Jennifer Earl: Life in Arizona*Remote versus In-Person Teaching*Optimized Teaching*Life Before vs During the Internet (One Approach to the Scientific Method)*Starting a Movement Online*“Bowling Alone” and Movements Without Money*Flash Activism/A Sports Example*Boaty McBoatface and Harry Potter Fandom*J.K. Rowling Confronts Harry’s Autonomy and “Pro-Sumption”*The Positive and Negative of Affiliation*“The Karens”*Too Much Optimism on Police Reform?*The Evolving Consensus on Protest*Fake Social Movements*The (Now-Rescinded) ICE Order*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’ll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

Eric Nusbaum, author of Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught In Between discusses the long tug-of-war over Chavez Ravine, who had it, who lost it, and who was to blame—featuring a cast of thousands. Plus Cap Anson situated in his times (meet the old times/same as the new times) and one more look at Addie Joss’s passing.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Ten Men Out of the Hall Revisited (Don’t Cry for Cap Anson)*Addie Joss and John Keats Revisited (On First Looking Into Joss’s Cerebellum)*Eric Nusbaum: A Widescreen Approach to History*Santa Anna’s Chewing Gum and Hitler’s Bathtub*The Human Vultures of Chavez Ravine*Immoral Egg Metaphors vs Society’s Need to Build*How Can a Private Ballpark Be a Public Good?*A Hypothetical Sewage-Treatment Plant*The Great Frank Wilkinson and the FBI*“Slum Clearance” and Public Housing*Private Real Estate vs. Chavez Ravine*The People of Palo Verde vs. the City of Los Angeles vs. the American Dream*Little Wrigley Field*The Death of the Red Cars*Research Addiction*Walter O’Malley’s Monument to Himself*O’Malley Was Not a Villain*The Part of the Story Still to be Told*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’ll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

Eric Nusbaum, author of Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught In Between discusses the long tug-of-war over Chavez Ravine, who had it, who lost it, and who was to blame—featuring a cast of thousands. Plus Cap Anson situated in his times (meet the old times/same as the new times) and one more look at Addie Joss’s passing.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Ten Men Out of the Hall Revisited (Don’t Cry for Cap Anson)*Addie Joss and John Keats Revisited (On First Looking Into Joss’s Cerebellum)*Eric Nusbaum: A Widescreen Approach to History*Santa Anna’s Chewing Gum and Hitler’s Bathtub*The Human Vultures of Chavez Ravine*Immoral Egg Metaphors vs Society’s Need to Build*How Can a Private Ballpark Be a Public Good?*A Hypothetical Sewage-Treatment Plant*The Great Frank Wilkinson and the FBI*“Slum Clearance” and Public Housing*Private Real Estate vs. Chavez Ravine*The People of Palo Verde vs. the City of Los Angeles vs. the American Dream*Little Wrigley Field*The Death of the Red Cars*Research Addiction*Walter O’Malley’s Monument to Himself*O’Malley Was Not a Villain*The Part of the Story Still to be Told*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’ll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

Craig Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus returns to discuss the MLB reopening, how the “legitimacy” question is misapplied to this season, and repudiates greeting cards. Plus: Tales of a Native American ace who overlooked the many slurs he heard and an owner who tried to retaliate against a manager and got burnt—but maybe he should have been heard.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chief Bender Copes*Wear Your Mask*“Hey, Barney!”*Craig Goldstein: Hating Hallmark Holidays*Special Pleading for MLB Restart*Player Health and Safety in 2020*“Legitimacy” and the Ship of Theseus*Postseason Legitimacy*Reverting to the Pre-Draft System*The Grievance*The Lifespan of an Owner*Will Baseball Be “Irreparably Damaged?”*Baseball-Free Prospectus?*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’ll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

Jesse Spector returns to discuss the non-return of baseball, an old baseball arcade game, and his decision to join the revived Deadspin. Plus: Tales of an early Cuban star who might have been a very young revolutionary and the poison dispensed by the most evil Red Sox player/manager/executive of all time.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Brief, Laudatory Career of Armando Marsans*Earl Wilson’s Cryptic Reply*Jesse Spector: Back in the Saddle Again*The “Baseball Owes Us” Crowd (Vs. Jayson Stark)*MLB’s Mysterious Covid-19 Plans*The Closer Mentality in Everyday Life*Stark vs. Gammons*“You Need” vs. “I Want”*Old Nintento Sports Games and “World Series: The Season”*Old-Time Coin-Up Baseball Games*Bigotry at the Bowling Alley/The Curse of a Strong Memory*The Revived Deadspin*When It Ends, It Ends: That’s a Freeing Thing*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’ll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

Writer/artist Anika Orrock discusses The Incredible Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, plus tales of a catcher who would not ask forgiveness and an interaction between a policeman and four African American soldiers in New York in the interregnum between Jackie Robinson’s signing and his debut.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
John Roseboro’s Pledge*Between Jackie Robinson and the Deep Blue Sea: Freeport, New York, 1946*Anika Orrock: In the Pandemic Book Club*A Book that Operates on Two Levels: Approaching the Art*When the Words Come Through to You*Some of the Best Cartoons in History*Illustration vs. Photographs*The Simplistic Complexity of Peanuts*The AAGPBL and Baseball vs. Softball*WAVES, WACS, and WASPS (plus the WNBA)*Women’s Sports Can Be Its Own Thing*The “Paranoia of Masculinity” in WWII*The Joy of the AAGPBL, and the Loss of It*“A League of Their Own”*“No Pants-Wearing Softballers”/“A Secret Love” documentary*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’ll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

Brad Balukjian, author of The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife discusses his cross-country journey to find players, great and obscure, of the 1980s and find out how they’re doing. Also bugs. Plus: Tales of ballplayers breaking curfew and a player really harmed by a Branch Rickey brainstorm.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Shufflin’ Phil and the Inevitability of the Broken Curfew*The Don Padgett Story*Brad Balukjian: Mutant insects and ballplayers*Lamarck is Vindicated? (Epigenetics)*The Now-Impossible Road Trip*The Cards You Didn’t Pull*“Life-WAR”*Even the Best Athletes Get Nervous*Ballplayers Have Damaged Families Too*The Personal vs. Heroic Approach*The Brad “Character”*Baseball, OCD, and the Instinctive Buddhism of the Old Timers*“Coffee Was My Companion”*A Visit with Don Carman*Clearing Up the Garry Templeton Incident*Dating an Entomologist*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’ll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

David Roth returns for a very “There is No Sports, Rudolph” special episode, discussing KBO baseball, the non-sale of the New York Mets, bad Mariners draft picks, old “chase” baseball cards, and dissects the current political scene. Plus tales of a pitcher who correctly counted his number of groins and a deadly panic at Yankee Stadium.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Pitcher Who Only Had One*Death at the Stadium*David Roth: Quarantine Beards and Keith Hernandez Ads*Remembering Some Guys in a Pandemic*Selling the Mets/Keeping SNY*“Joe Biden Made Me Sign Eduardo Nunez”/Tanking*A Manny Ramirez Digression*Short-Printing Topps and Greg Swindell Collectibles*KBO as an MLB-Substitute*Extreme There-Is-No-Baseball-Chat (Late-Night WPIX in New York in the 1980s and Goodfellas )*Back to the Mets: All the Apes Are Interns*Are the Mets a Small-Market Team?*A Moment With the Mariners*The Political World: The Emperor’s New Clothes was Wrong*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’ll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

Cliff Corcoran returns and makes a game attempt to stick to sports and hates on The Sandlot, plus tales of ballpark fighting words of 1910 and bigotry and bacteria in early baseball.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Ballpark Fighting Words 1910-Style With the Giants*Blue Stockings, Bigotry, and Bacteria*Cliff Corcoran: The Puppy is Not Ill*I Want a Pony/A Toddler with Sharp Teeth*Are Cats In It For Themselves?*Pandemics Above Replacement Level*Sticking to Sports: The Best Major League Player Performances of 2020: Trout vs. Scherzer*Didi Gregorius Heckler at the Crowd-Mic*Baseball Fans Failing at Averages/Getting the Game Back*Baseball at the Movies: Is Any Baseball Film as Good as the Best Films in General?*The first Rocky Movie*The Joe E. Brown Baseball Trilogy and Other Cliché Baseball Films (Cliff Hates The Sandlot)*Imagining a Robert Altman Baseball Film*The Disappointment of 42*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’ll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?