Play Ball....Laboratory Style

We are in the glorious first days of baseball season. And of course we hear the usual debates about tradition vs. the multiple efforts to bring young people into the game…. about the way it used to be, vs. the way it really is for 21st century baseball.

While few games cling to tradition more than baseball, the game IS changing. One of the ways is with respect to the cybermetrics we’ve all heard and read about. Some have embraced and others have pushed back on.

But imagine a living baseball laboratory in which numbers were the ONLY rule. Imagine if a whole team could be constructed not on a fantasy baseball program, but in real life and in real time. That what my guest Sam Miller got to do with a minor league time, the Sonoma Stompers.

He tells his story in The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team

Beat L.A.

One of the ongoing conundrums in sports is whether it’s about the team or the individual? Back in the early days of the NFL, Pete Rozelle believed passionately, that in a game played only once a week, the team was the key to marketing. In Basketball, former Commissioner David Stern saw the value of individual stars as the draw for fans.

For Baseball it’s been a mixed bag. Even for iconic teams like the Dodgers or the Giants, the question of team vs. the individual is hotly debated.

For the Dodgers, at least the current team and its current ownership group, the answer is clear. With players like Yasiel Puig, Clayton Kershaw, Hanley Ramirez, Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford, stars outshine the team. The individual player is king, second only to the dollars they are being paid.

Looking at this team, a team that was in bankruptcy just three years ago, as a result of a a messy divorce, is my guest sports journalist and former ESPN reporter Molly Knight. She takes a hard look at this team in her new book The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers' Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse

My conversation with Molly Knight:

Batter Up

As sports stories go, the legendary rivalry between the Giants and Dodgers, is one of the best and most enduring. Yet it’s a rivalry that has had it’s had its dark and ugly moments. One of the those moments came a couple of years ago as Giants fan Bryan Stow was attacked and beaten in the parking lot at Dodger Stadium. A sad incident that perhaps reflects the mean-spiritedness of our times.

Another ugly incident happened back in 1965. It had a better outcome. One where the rivals, Juan Marichal of the SF Giants and John Roseboro of the Dodgers, would turn to violence. A violence that reflected the tensions of that time. Yet it would also turn to forgiveness and redemption.

That’s the story that John Rosengren tell in The Fight of Their Lives: How Juan Marichal and John Roseboro Turned Baseball's Ugliest Brawl into a Story of Forgiveness and Redemption


My conversation with John Rosengren:

Wall Street, Gambling and Baseball

What do you do if you are a veteran Wall Street trader who worked for Lehman Bros. when the collapse came?  To make matters even worse, you were struck down by an ambulance and had to go through months of recovery.  Then when you finally returned to work, you were fired.

What you might do is turn to a new job in the 380 billion dollar industry that can return profits even bigger than Wall Street....sports gambling.  That's what Joe Peta did, but with a difference. He used his skills as a Wall Street trader to bring discipline and metrics to sports betting. Riffing off the work of Bill James and Nate Silver, he would turn his dark days into a 41% profit and in the process, share his story in Trading Bases: A Story About Wall Street, Gambling, and Baseball.

My conversation with Joe Peta:

Click here to listen on your iphone or ipad

Baseball as a Road to God?

This past week saw the pageantry of religion in the selection of a new Pope. Next month we will experience a different kind of pageantry, as the baseball season opens and for many it will be a kind of religious experience in its own right.

Long the national pastime, baseball has a special place in the pantheon of sports and entertainment. But with all of the competition these days, does baseball still have the same kind of appeal? Has it’s superstitions, streaks, luck, and it’s sense of “you gotta believe," been flattened by metrics? Has William James been replaced by Bill James, and has the inspiration fostered by a father and son praying at the altar of driveway catch, given way to Nate Silver and Billy Bean?

This is part of the story told by controversial NYU President John Sexton in Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game. A book based on his wildly popular class at NYU.

My conversation with John Sexton:

Click here to listen on your iphone or ipad

The Summer that changed Baseball - and America

1968 was certainly one of the most tumultuous years in American history. It was a year of political turbulence, civil unrest and violence; the Democratic Convention in Chicago, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. It was a time that some thought the country would never recover from. It was also, although not quite as profoundly remembered, an unforgettable season in the history of baseball. Baseball had reached its apogee of popularity and it was a much need national distraction. Writer and journalist Tim Wendel takes us back to the Summer of '68: The Season That Changed Baseball--and America--Forever.

My conversation with Tim Wendel

Click here to listen on your iphone or ipad

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