The Infinite Inning

A rare solo episode features 3.5 tales of brawls, zoos, and recently-departed greats of the game, plus a brief explanation of why mask-wearing is controversial.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Babe Ruth Has a Cold*Notes/ Jay Johnstone/China’s Fault*Bob Feller Gave Names to All the Animals*A Home Run in Boston (Casey Stengel Rides Again)*Bob Gibson vs. Tom Seaver*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 Calcaterra returns to discuss “the newsletter lifestyle,” review the 2020 “season,” and explain the banality of meh. Plus: Tales of Casey Stengel shopping, Connie Mack building fences, and a Cubs shortstop provokes a theory of depression and elation.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Casey Stengel Buys a Tie*Ballparks Go Condo and the Shibe Park Spite Fence*Broadway Bill (Absolutely Bill’s Mood)*Craig Calcaterra: The Newsletter Lifestyle*People Won’t Hate-Pay*Cat Content in the Newsletter and Groin Pulls*The Blogosphere Without the Bad Parts*Getty Images A La Carte*Role to Resist/Saving Throw*The 2020 MLB “Episode” in Retrospect*The San Diego Padres and Real Estate Porn*Wall to Wall Cussin’*Trading Fernando Tatis Due to a Downturn in the Rental Market*Mike Ferrin’s Rule of Perception*The Banality of Meh*The 1000 Deaths of the Pittsburgh Pirates*You Won’t Know When Things Go Bad*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 to try to figure out who deserves which awards out of this crazy attenuated season in a disaster of a year, plus tales of players and people neglected in their post-career years and a requiem for the lost pennant races of the future.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Man in the Green Uniform*Ron Gardenhire*1980 in the AL East*Cliff Corcoran: Negro Leagues Caps*Inconclusion, the Negro Leagues, the All-American Girls*No Astros Caps*Gilmour Field at the Movies (“Bodyguard”) and “Bimbo” Cartoons*Arte Moreno Gets His Way in Anaheim/The Yankee Stadium*Awards Watch*Fluke Seasons of 2020*Qualified Regulars Under .200*Mike Yastrzemski*Mike Trout in the Field*Abreu vs. Anderson*Awards and Narrative*”The Willem Dafoe Most Valuable Veteran Award*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 debate which players are overrated and remember Tom Seaver, plus Big Ed Walsh fails to parent and Ed Whitson is betrayed by Yankees fans.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Big Ed’s Kids*Failing Ed Whitson*Jesse Spector: Tom Seaver: The Yankees Years*The Serious Seaver*Aroldis Chapman vs. the Rays*Twitter Homerism*“J. Guerra”*Mike Clevinger: Persona Non Grata*Most Overrated Players*“Jeter Wouldn’t Have Had That”*Is Yadier Molina a Hall of Famer?*Andy Pettitte Career vs. Peak*Still More Yadier (and Ted Simmons’ Worst Year)*“Specious is the Wrong Word”*Bo Knows Overrated*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?

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?