The DHC Podcast
Ever wondered what it’s like to be truly involved in sports? Wonder no more!
On this podcast, I’ll sit down with players, GMs, owners, and passionate fans like you to uncover how they fell in love with sports. We’ll dive into their unique journeys, explore the business side of the game, and discuss the endless possibilities that the sport offers.
From behind-the-scenes stories to deep conversations about the sport, I’m here to explore it all—while having a ton of fun along the way!
The Dad Hat:
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The DHC Podcast
5 Questions: Jinxes, Road Trips, and Japanese Baseball
Paul Caputo shares his baseball journey from Little League to international stadiums, exploring how the sport connects generations and creates lifelong friendships. Through personal stories and reflections, he reveals why baseball remains America's most beautiful game.
• Baseball as a family legacy spanning three generations
• Lying about age to play Little League a year early
• Witnessing Ryan Howard's record-breaking three home runs in 2006
• Game 3 of the 2022 World Series as a peak baseball experience
• International baseball experiences in Japan and Puerto Rico
• Annual Jersey Shore family trips centered around the All-Star Game
• "Baseball Palooza" road trips with college friends - four games in four days
• The unique beauty of baseball's aesthetics and dimensions
• How different levels of play showcase distinct aspects of the game
• Baseball communities providing meaningful connections across distances
Follow Paul on Instagram, Threads, and Blue Sky @baseballbydesign, and listen to his podcast Baseball By Design wherever you get your podcasts. Tune into The Dad Head Chronicles Sports Show Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8pm Eastern.
Make sure to follow the Dad Hat Chronicles: https://linktr.ee/TheDadHatChronicles
well, you know, we'll say something stupid, but that's how it goes thank god we weren't recording just now, though I know right all those things we just said oh, all those things we said about people, the humanity truly, if people actually truly do believe that.
Speaker 1:Hi, ed, hey, hey, hey, okay, let's go um, welcome everybody to, and I'm calling this so far, uh, baseball roots. Okay, um, I think it has a nice uh, but this one is gonna be baseball roots with my good friend, paul caputo. Uh, baseball by design podcast, very small podcast also. He also it happens to be, uh, you know, um a what was it uh new york times bestseller uh author that our friend uh calls you patrick larson of?
Speaker 2:uh mlb had history I don't like to claim that, largely because it's a lie. However, I did self-publish a collection of essays on Amazon, which is easy to do. Anyone can do it?
Speaker 1:No, it's not. It is not easy. I can't write worth a lick, so you know what I mean. That's why I'm a podcaster.
Speaker 2:Well, it's more fun. You know, when I wrote those articles that are in the book, they're all based on like conversations that I had with designers and front office people and I'm like the conversations are the fun part of that, right, yeah, absolutely the transcribing and the writing. That's a pain in the neck.
Speaker 1:I agree with you, my friend.
Speaker 2:So that's how I'm doing a podcast too, Ed.
Speaker 1:Hey, now we're talking, so, all right, my friend I got to say welcome to Baseball Roots. My name is Ed, also known as the Dad Head, and, like I've already introduced my friend, paul Caputo. He is also a co-founder of this little media company that we both have. It's called Curve Brain Media, a company that has, you know, network with a bunch of podcasters, right, you know, looking to spread the love of what is minor league baseball.
Speaker 2:That's how come we're so rich is because of this podcast Super rich, exactly Very rich. Every day I check my bank account to see if I'm rich yet from corporate media Still waiting. Not there yet.
Speaker 1:One day.
Speaker 2:One day we'll get there, one day we'll get there I'll be like where did all this money come from?
Speaker 1:I know, right, all right. So, my friend, I got five questions for you, okay, and if you guys have already showed, this will be episode number four, numero cuatro.
Speaker 2:So we had Virgil Yep, Then we had Donnie.
Speaker 1:We have Donnie, correct? And then the third one hasn't been released yet at the time of this recording, at the time of this recording, correct? But, um, it will be released, right? Uh, it, his name is kelly robinson. Oh, the minor league nerd. Minor league nerd, that is correct. So he is number three. So you are number four, okay, uh. And then, uh, if you're listening to this, patrick, you might be number five, you might be number 100, we don't know yet. Pat larson, pat larson, uh, it's, you guys will get it eventually. All right, my friend, I'm going to start with the very first question, and here it is when did you fall in love with baseball?
Speaker 2:So my parents tell a very funny story from when I was a kid, because I have an older brother. He's about two and a half years older than I am and he was playing little league. You know, we grew up playing wiffle ball. We went to Phillies games. I don't remember the first Phillies game I ever went to back in veteran stadium and you know it was just always part of my life. My grandfather played baseball like as a semi pro. My dad loved the sport.
Speaker 1:My grandfather was a.
Speaker 2:Philadelphia A's fan and then switched to the Phillies. Yep, Yep, Yep, Switched to the Phillies. Uh, when the A's moved to Kansas city. My dad was raised on baseball. I was raised on baseball, so I don't really remember a time when, you know, I I fell in love with it because I was. I was always in love with it. You know love with it for my entire memory of my life. The funny thing, though, is my brother was older than I am, continues to be older than I am.
Speaker 1:To this day.
Speaker 2:He was playing Little League and apparently, according to my parents telling of the story, it killed me that I was not also out there, like on that field, playing Little League. My birthday is in August and the cutoff was september. Oh no, yeah. And so when I was a month shy of being old enough to play little league baseball, my parents took me into little league, lied about my age and got me in a year early because it was driving me crazy that I was not allowed to play yet, which meant, by the way, that I was always, for the next six, seven years of Little League.
Speaker 2:I was the youngest and smallest kid on the team, so maybe it wasn't the best for my baseball player development, but it got me out of my parents' hair and onto the ball field, so it's always been there, I think, having an older brother and playing wiffle ball, playing with his friends, playing, you know, with my dad, all of it it's, it's, it's wonderful, right?
Speaker 1:I mean that's, that's what it's all about yeah, yeah, yeah I loved going to veteran stadium.
Speaker 2:I used to love going and we had a friend in the neighborhood, paul o'donnell. Shout out to paul o'donnell if you're listening. His dad used to take us to philly's games. They had season tickets but he liked to leave early and it's oh, no, no, no, no, no no we'd be there and I would be like, come on, please, let us stay.
Speaker 2:And he'd want to leave, like right in, like the seventh inning, and I, like I used to, I used to love going to the games, but like it would, hate it at the same time, because you knew you were gonna be, you know, and I'll say yeah if I have to leave early.
Speaker 1:I mean, I have left early. It's not by my choice, right? But there has to be things that happened in order for me to have to leave, like, for example, a couple weeks ago when we were together at the time of this recording. Of course, I had to catch a flight.
Speaker 2:You had to catch a flight. Staying to the end of that Schomburg Boomers game would have cost you a lot of money.
Speaker 1:A lot of money and a lot of headaches. So let's not although they did come back and win, from what I understand.
Speaker 2:They did. It was an exciting game and it was like 115 degrees while we were there watching it. But we got to go out on the field beforehand. I loved this. Every Sunday home game they have have a catch on a field day and we got it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:That was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:That was a great time we got to go out there and throw the ball around.
Speaker 1:That was fun. I enjoy that a lot. There's pictures on the Instagram page, so that way, if you guys want to take a look under the Ad Hoc Chronicles Instagram page as well as Baseball by Design page, all right, my friend. Here's question number two All. Question number two. All right, give me a couple of your favorite baseball memories.
Speaker 2:I know you have a bunch of these obviously.
Speaker 2:There's a lot. There was the time when, in Little League, the last year I played Little League I I had aged out technically because of the number of years I had played. And then my parents went back to the little league and they were like, guess what? We lied to you like six years ago and Paul's birthday is actually August not September, and they were like desperate for players. And so they were like great, great Paul's eligible to play another year, cause hell, yeah, yeah. So I got to play another year and that was the one and only year that I was an all-star uh in for for wayne little league in pennsylvania outside of philly, and in the all-star game I hit a an extra innings double and scored the winning run uh league, so that's one of my favorite.
Speaker 2:Uh, uh, yeah, I hit a gapper and uh scored the scored the winning run later on in that inning in extras, so that was fun, but the two, well, I yes so many stories. I was just on tv the other day. By the way, this is hilarious. My brother to tell my brother, the fancy lawyer, uh has long had these really awesome Phillies tickets, correct.
Speaker 1:I'm not jealous at all, by the way.
Speaker 2:There was one period of time where these tickets were directly behind home plate so that you were on TV with every single pitch. In 2006, september 3rd 2006, ryan Howard hit three home runs in one game to become the single season record holder for the Phillies. We were right behind home plate for that game and I was watching the game the other day and they decided they were going to like flashback to that moment.
Speaker 1:So here.
Speaker 2:I am sitting on my sofa and they're like flashback to Ryan Howard and I'm like, wait a minute. That's me on TV watching the Phillies.
Speaker 2:Wait a second I know that I know that guy, One of my other favorites. When I was in college in 1993, I was at the University of Richmond and the Phillies were about to clinch the division and some buddy of mine and I drove from Richmond to Philadelphia to watch the Phillies play a very important game against the Atlanta Braves, who were then in the National League West, not the National League East, and it was. It wasn't the clincher, but it was like it got them within like a game or two of finally clinching the East. It was. There was no question that they were going to clinch, but it was because they had like a 10, 12 game lead over the Expos. But like driving all the way up there to Philly from Richmond watching this game, going absolutely crazy, Mike Zimmer, Tina Nancarrow, Melissa Casper and we all drove up there, saw this game and then it turned right around and drove back to Richmond, got in at like three in the morning that night. It was all totally worth it, I'd have to say.
Speaker 1:My absolute favorite memory, uh if you say world series, I will kill you the game three of the 2022 world series, phillies won seven.
Speaker 2:Nothing. I was there. My dad, my brother and my nephew were also in the ballpark, not sitting with us because they had different seats. That you know, I've never experiencing. I've never experienced anything quite like that amount of noise, that level of excitement watching the Phillies take a two games to one lead in the world series. They would eventually lose that world series four games to two. That was a bummer. And then I know you guys all make fun of me because I'm always bringing up Japan, but I got to say, going to Japan to see two games in Osaka to see the Hanshin Tigers, that's a signature baseball experience for me. It was incredible and I talk about it all the time for a reason. I've never experienced anything quite like that the singing, the music, the environment.
Speaker 1:Wait, you've been to Japan. Enough with this, oh my God. No, you know what, though? I'm actually super jealous of the fact that you've actually been to Japan to actually watch some baseball in Japan, because that's always been. You know, you and me we talked about this. It's been on a bucket list of the places that us, as baseball fans, we should go and watch, right? Yeah, I always say, go to the Caribbean, watch some baseball in the Caribbean, which both of us have done, obviously, me being from Puerto Rico, and you were in Puerto Rico watching the Caribbean series, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was cool.
Speaker 1:Definitely here, and then Japan, and then also the Midnight Sun game. Those are places that people should go to watch baseball. So I still have not watched midnight sun, which we still got to do our friend anna just went there for the second time that's hard to believe yeah, I know we should, we should definitely go uh, you know what's on my bucket list too is the world baseball classic.
Speaker 2:Love to get to a world baseball classic I've done that yeah, where was that? You went in? Miami, right? No, puerto rico. Oh, you went to puerto rico. Yep, yep, yep, so cool puerto rico against spain.
Speaker 1:And that was like I got lucky because we were looking for tickets. Obviously the most popular one was puerto rico, dominican republic, just because that's just a, you know, rivalry of countries, right. But let me tell you, it doesn't matter. You're there and it's a party.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I believe that.
Speaker 1:Baseball in Japan, baseball in Puerto Rico, in the Caribbean, it's totally different than baseball here in the US. Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely different.
Speaker 2:When I go to a World Baseball Classic game, I would like to go, ideally, somewhere outside the continental United States, right like so you're seeing it in puerto rico. That's super cool, you know, maybe like a game in mexico city or something that would be cool too, you know as much as I want to see a game, a world baseball classic game, I'm not sure if it would be the same going to like chase field in arizona or like going to miami or something like that I'll tell you this.
Speaker 1:Okay, caribbean baseball series in Miami.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I believe that I believe that that was unreal. Yeah, that's what I was thinking of when I thought you went and saw it in Miami, right?
Speaker 1:No, that was a Caribbean baseball series which is again for all. Of you fans of baseball got to go and watch that. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:Caribbean baseball series is all of the winter league champions. Right At the end of the season, all the champions, they get together in what is called the Caribbean baseball series and then then you are. You know, you play a series, round Robin or whatever, how they set it up each year, right Cause every every year it changes. At the end of it, one team becomes the you know, the champion of all of the winter leagues.
Speaker 2:So I saw Venezuela play Mexico in Puerto Rico.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:That was great.
Speaker 1:Venezuela's a powerhouse.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, mexico is actually. Don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1:Mexico is gaining in popularity in.
Speaker 2:Mexico.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, my friend, are you ready for question number three?
Speaker 2:Question number three. We're at three already.
Speaker 1:We are at three already. Can you believe it? This one, it goes by quick. There's only five questions, guys.
Speaker 2:That's what the series used to be called was five questions.
Speaker 1:Five questions. Right, baseball for five questions. Whichever one you want to call it, I'm okay with this. All right, give me a couple of baseball traditions or rituals uh, you and I cannot wait for this one.
Speaker 2:Um well, every year we go to the jersey shore. It is, uh, you know, one of my favorite times a year. That trip at the time of this recording is is coming up and my brother will get. He will collect as many tickets as he can for all of us to go together, and so we have a bunch of people who go to the Phillies games who, you know, my kids aren't necessarily the biggest baseball fans in the world, my, you know, my mom is certainly not a big baseball fan, but it's just like a big, huge family event, right, like everybody loves, going to the phillies game together and sitting in my. It's a treat because my brother has his like fancy seats and everything. So we will go there, we go, they we have access to like the fancy restaurant. That's only this the fancy ticket holders have, and so we get there and we'll, you know we'll. We'll uh, load up on yinglings and cheesesteaks and and my parents will go to the salad bar. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right, right, so that that to me is a.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know, I don't know if that qualifies as a, as a tradition, in the sort of classical sense.
Speaker 1:The other one that's most definitely a tradition. I mean it's every year you do this right with your family here for the Jersey Shore.
Speaker 2:The other thing that we do is we're usually at the Jersey Shore for the, for the All-Star game, and so will my. You know my brother will either order like pizza from one of the awesome pizza places that they have there. My brother will like fire up the grill and we'll do. You know, burgers and corn on the cob, and you know new jersey corn on the cob, you can't beat it right like it's tomatoes and corn on the cob it's the garden state for a reason.
Speaker 2:Um, so we'll. We'll watch the all-star game on tv at the shore after, like, a long day swimming in the ocean. You know we'll have a couple of horrible.
Speaker 2:have a couple of gin and tonics and some chips and guac on the roof and then we'll all watch the uh, the all-star game. One of my favorite stories from watching the all-star game at the shore was when my nephew, who was going to be a freshman in college next year, he um, when he was real little, he's like a, you know, a huge baseball fan, huge sports fan and we were watching the game and they were introducing the lineups and he was young enough that he was missing his two front teeth, right Like his two front teeth had come out at the same time and they're panning from player to player to player and he is naming the players before the announcers name the players, right?
Speaker 2:So that's how good he was. He was like the all-stars for every team he was naming. So that's how good he was, he was like the all-stars for every team he was naming. And so they pan, they pan to a player and my nephew, like super confidently, with no front teeth, goes that's Yonath Thethbedeth. So I spent the rest of the game trying to get Matthew to say Yonath Thethbedeth.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:No teeth. So and then also the baseball tradition in my life, I mean the. You know we've established something of a tradition in the last couple of years with the curb rim meetup. That's been a lot of fun. That's three years. For the last decade I have been doing baseball palooza with my college buddy friends. We do four minor league games in four days. I used to think that that was like a big deal until I got on social media and saw the road trips that some other folks take.
Speaker 1:We're talking to you, Eric Prophet.
Speaker 2:Or mapping the path right, Like he does like 29 games in like 30 days with his dad.
Speaker 2:But the Baseballpalooza road trip, it's 10 guys, pretty much the same 10 guys year after year after year, and it's just amazing to me that, like there are, you know, there are 10 of us who have known each other for 30 years at least, who all live in different parts of the country.
Speaker 2:You know, we represent all four time zones in the continental United States and all of them, every one of these these guys, like every year, prioritizes I'm gonna do baseball palooza and you know the guys make fun of me because I get like a little excited about planning it and everything. Uh, but no right, but the, the road trip that we take with that group is just it's so much fun and I'll be honest, like, I used to post about it on social media and it reached a point where I guess, you know, when the, when the podcast got, became a little more popular and I got a little more followers, that people would just start showing up. So I've actually stopped posting about it because, like the dynamic of this, you know this group- you want it to be with you, just you and your buddies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's it it's the opposite of the curb room media meetup. Right, curb room media meetup is so much fun. Come one, come all um and then the other. Uh, more recent tradition that has been a lot of fun is uh, minor league baseball designer extraordinaire dan simon gathered, gathered Anna DiTomaso and Ranger Amy and me, and every year we do a different part of it's been mostly the Southeast actually, now that I think about it, but-.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you guys go to the Southeast a lot.
Speaker 2:Take a road trip with Dan Simon, who is a super interesting and fun guy, and Anna DiTomaso, who we love. You know that's another minor league baseball. So my minor league baseball road trips are growing every year between the CBM meetup, ana Danna Palooza and the baseball Palooza, I'm doing a lot of travel to get to minor league baseball games.
Speaker 1:Oh God, what a horrible life.
Speaker 2:Look, I know what I'm doing. I love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know right, I'm an adult, I can do this.
Speaker 2:I'm a grown-ass man. I'll take a minor league baseball run.
Speaker 1:I'm a grown man Do it live. All right, you ready for question number four?
Speaker 2:I am ready for question number four.
Speaker 1:I think these last two are really good and very interesting. That will get into the psyche of people of how they really think about baseball. How they really think about baseball. How has baseball changed your life?
Speaker 2:Well, I think about, I mean, the main thing, especially in my life right now. I was thinking about this yesterday, I think, before we started recording. I was telling you how my daughter, maya, who is also going to be a freshman in college next year, challenged me to name 100 baseball teams in the 10 minute drive on the on the way back from our little adventure that we were having out paddle boarding at the, uh uh, horse tooth reservoir. So we had 10 minutes and I for me to name a hundred baseball teams and I was just like, all right, but what are we going to do with the other eight minutes of this drive?
Speaker 1:True, story guys, this guy, he knows his baseball but it was.
Speaker 2:You know, honestly, for me and this is it's going to sound sort of cliche, right, but, like the, the baseball community is so important to me. This group of friends that we have made this community that exists online with CurveBrim Media, is hugely important to me. The friendship that you and I have, the friendship that we have with that core group of folks, the CBM crowd, that means a lot to me. You and I talk a lot outside of the world of baseball. I know every time my phone rings at six o'clock in the morning, either someone in my family has died or ed rivera wants to check in and say hi.
Speaker 1:I wake up.
Speaker 2:So I wake you up so early uh, my college friends who I do baseball palooza with, you know it's these are. You know these are friends I've had for 30 years. But like the baseball palooza with you know it's these are, you know these are friends I've had for 30 years. But like the baseball Palooza trip, texting about baseball, you know, I mean, my phone's been sort of lighting up over here because the Phillies beat the Padres for nothing tonight and you know it's that, that community that I have with my friends, the closeness that I have with with my family, like my, you know, my brother, my dad, my nephew, we, you know we'll text about the Phillies all the time and we'll, you know it's always something that we can, we can talk about.
Speaker 2:So, the, the memories, the conversations, the, the, the looking forward to, you know, future baseball events, all of that is things I'm doing with people in my life that you know, the people in my life who I love, and it it's. You know, that baseball is about so much more than just the game, um, and then it's also, you know it's, it's the routine, it's the ritual, right, like I came home tonight, uh, before you and I, you know, hopped on this to record this episode I had the Phillies game on. I was watching the Phillies and the Phillies were winning 4-0 in the middle of the ninth and I had to turn the game off and come record this, and it took me until just now to see that they had won 4-0.
Speaker 1:You know you could have, just we could have waited. You know, I have no issues whatsoever with hey let me finish the game real quick.
Speaker 2:I'm like absolutely, you know full well that that is a jinx.
Speaker 1:The phillies would have lost the game if I had said let's delay our recording. And, by the way, he does not believe in jinxes at all.
Speaker 2:There's no way no, what is this witchcraft?
Speaker 1:it's uh, it's ridiculous, it's silly oh my god, there's no way that I would take my jersey off and put it back in the closet because they're losing.
Speaker 2:Or sit on a different sofa, cushion or pace behind the sofa.
Speaker 1:Or tell my wife, during the middle of game six, I believe, to stay in the bathroom because they were, you know, scoring. You know, while she was there, they were winning. So I told her to go back.
Speaker 2:One of my proudest moments as a parent was in 2018, when the Eagles were in the Super Bowl against the Patriots. My daughter Olivia realized it was one of these back and forth games, and my daughter Olivia realized that when she was watching, the Patriots scored and when she was not watching, the Eagles scored. And so in the fourth quarter of that game, for the entire fourth quarter of that game, she stood with her back to the television in the kitchen.
Speaker 1:That's hilarious.
Speaker 2:And I was like I'm so proud and I wanted to be like, no, that's ridiculous. Come watch, the Eagles are going to win the.
Speaker 1:Superbowl no, no, no, no no. Like you can't Listen. We all know that fans, you know, is short for fanatic, yeah Right, you know we have our crazy things, but you cannot go against that, so do not test. You know, with fate or here, that I mess with fate. So Right, all right, my friend.
Speaker 2:Here we go. I can't believe we're already here.
Speaker 1:I know it went by so quick.
Speaker 2:I know, but that's how these episodes have been.
Speaker 1:I do have a question for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the one that you recorded with Kelly, episode number three of this series did you call it five questions, or did you call it?
Speaker 1:I don't know, I can't remember.
Speaker 2:I, you know let's keep it going with five questions. Oh well, I was just going to say I'm kind of proud to be the first episode of baseball roots, baseball roots.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:All right, I'm first.
Speaker 1:You are the first. I was going to say something stupid, but I'm going to keep it All right. All right, Paul, my friend.
Speaker 2:All right, ed Rivera.
Speaker 1:So why baseball?
Speaker 2:That's the whole question. Why baseball is the whole question?
Speaker 1:That's it. Why baseball? Why not all the sport right Like? Why baseball?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well, I think this goes back to the community thing that I was just talking about. Right, like I'm sure if I had been born somewhere where soccer was the sport or if I had been born into a family where it was basketball, I actually was. You know, for many years my very close second favorite sport was college basketball. Second favorite sport was college basketball. My dad taught at Villanova and when I was 12 years old, villanova very unexpectedly won the college basketball championship in 1985 over Georgetown 66 to 64 on April Fool's Day.
Speaker 2:No but who's you know? No one's going to remember that, Right? No, no, certainly not.
Speaker 1:No 40 years later.
Speaker 2:So you know it's really goes back to, I think you know the the having this community to share this experience with. You know, I wonder about that sometimes. I mean, I have friends who are like big fans of British soccer, right Like they're like man U fans or whatever, and I certainly get that soccer is in its own right a beautiful, nuanced sport. I don't follow it closely because I don't have a team. It wasn't part of the community that I grew up in. You know college basketball I liked because I, you know, my dad taught there. But like that sport has changed quite a bit. I follow the NFL. I care a lot that the Eagles just won the Super Bowl. Nothing compares to the Philadelphia Phillies winning the World Series in 2008,. Right Like, there's just no experience sports wise in my lifetime that holds a candle to that. That matters the absolute most and it's I think I want to feel that.
Speaker 1:I want to feel you should.
Speaker 2:everyone deserves to feel that honestly, like there's nothing quite like it and you probably can relate, right, because you had the cavaliers yep who won, uh, all those browns championships in Cleveland. Like that's a big deal. Sorry, what happened? Thanks, is this still on? Is this thing on?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but no, but like.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think that's a pretty comparable thing. Right Like the Cavaliers winning for you.
Speaker 1:That was an experience, that's a big deal right, oh, it was a massive deal for Cleveland. We, which we haven't, you know, we haven't won a championship in in such a long time, right, that it was like the the closest thing that we got was the indians, right in 95, 97, you know, six, like you know. So there was like these, these, these moments, but it was for, not because they never, they never won.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks, marlins, thanks waves, so so you have a similar thing where it's like your city has experienced that, but not your favorite sport, your favorite team, correct? And I do have the Phillies in 08, and that was amazing. And I have the Eagles with two championships since 2018. So that's cool, right, like that's. I. I do feel lucky to have gotten to experience that. I watched the highlights over and over again. I mean, trust me, I, I live in that.
Speaker 2:But baseball, you know, any fan of any sport is going to wax poetic about their, their favorite sport. You know the sounds, the, the sites, the, the dimensions, the sort of perfect moments. And you know the sounds, the sights, the dimensions, the sort of perfect moments. And you know baseball, baseball is all of that for me.
Speaker 2:I had the experience recently of going to a Rockies game with Eric the peanut guy, who was visiting Colorado. He and his wife, carina, were in town for a wedding, and so we we got to spend a day together and we had these awesome seats right behind the first base dugout and then, after, like the third inning, eric's like okay, it's time to go wandering and we like we. You know the Rockies field. Obviously it has an open concourse and so you can follow the game while you're wandering, but we, like, wandered the concourse. We went up to the rooftop bar. We ended up in the purple row of a mile high above above sea level, ended up in the very top row in the outfield. Mind you, we had seats 20 rows behind first base and by the end of the game.
Speaker 2:We're like at the top row because it's just such a beautiful game, right, like the dimensions, the aesthetics, the ballpark itself is so beautiful and you know, I always feel a little, you know, like I always want to say like baseball is objectively the most beautiful sport, it's the most aesthetically pleasing from a sound perspective, from a visual perspective, from a dimensions perspective. Oh, you know, and I'm sure any fan of any sport is going to say that about their own sport. Um, you know, I've been watching. Welcome to Rexham. Uh, on uh yeah, and it's.
Speaker 2:It's sort of cool to see people who are as passionate about you know their sport as as I am about baseball. But one of the funny things that was, um, that I was really enjoying. My daughter, maya, was with us that day with Eric, uh, and Karina, and Ranger Amy was there too, and we we went to, uh, we went to a couple of sort of historical baseball sites and and Maya was just enjoying being along for the ride and she said, uh, later on I was just like Maya, is this all like a little insane for you? And she said, you know what she's like. I really enjoy seeing people who are this passionate about anything, and let alone two of them in the same room, and I'm like, well, man, you should have been at the cookout that Kelly Robinson had for us, you know, because it was all people like that, right.
Speaker 2:It was all of us, and so I think that's, that's the short answer to how come baseball right? Like is this community, the community I grew up with, my college friends, who I take the baseball palooza trip with. All of that, you know, reinforces my belief that you know my own personal opinion that baseball is the most aesthetically beautiful sport and the rules themselves lend themselves to these incredibly tense, amazing athletic moments that, in my mind, the other sports just can't quite replicate 90 feet, right?
Speaker 1:You know how do you even quantify that.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's just yeah that's how it is right and to see the plays that are routine for the major leaguers, you know the game at its highest level, the, the plays that are routine, versus the plays that are not routine. Correct, as you get further down the, the, the rings of, you know, or the the levels of play the other thing that I think is you know, right, yeah, you're playing.
Speaker 2:You're playing sandlot ball now and I think that's super cool, um, but you can the. The other thing that I think is is really beautiful about baseball that the other sports in many ways do not have is the levels, the classifications that you can go experience as a fan. I mean, the NBA has the G league, but who really you know who's taking G league road trips out there?
Speaker 1:right.
Speaker 2:Football, you really have the pros, and then you have college and maybe you have, like I don't know, arena football or whatever. I guess soccer really, you know you've got the levels of soccer with the promotion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got USL, and so you've got different levels.
Speaker 2:But being able to go see baseball as a fan at AAA, aa, high, a single, a independent collegiate summer level, like I mean, all those different levels of baseball and seeing how the nuances change from level to level it is, is really incredible. I have pioneer league baseball, used to have pioneer league, pioneer league baseball close to me here. Uh, as of this afternoon, at the time in this recording, the owls with a z are no more, so I've got to go a couple hours down to colorado springs now to see, uh, pioneer baseball. You can't say ils with a z are no more, so I've got to go a couple hours down to colorado springs now to see a pioneer baseball you can't say I was with a z anymore I can't, I can't, uh, but like that league is a an mlb partner league.
Speaker 2:the moment a pitcher learns how to throw anything other than a fastball, they get snatched up and signed to an affiliated team's system, and so what that means is you've got all these teams out in the mountain time zone with pitchers who can only throw fastballs, which means that every single game is going to end in a score of 15 to 12 because it's all fastballs. It's high elevation and that's like a beautiful nuance about this game. You know it's. You know that that one little detail right there completely changes it.
Speaker 1:So you can definitely tell the level of the player's ability.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Sometimes between indie ball and affiliated like the say double, a triple, a right Like major leagues yeah. It's there's a. There's a contrast leagues. Yeah, it's there's a. There's a contrast here.
Speaker 2:Right, there's a yeah yeah you can definitely tell and then the the flip side of that is and you're gonna laugh at me and I know pat larson is gonna make this joke as well but when we were in japan, uh, watching japanese baseball, it was contact hitters, it was slap hitters, it was trying to manufacture runs.
Speaker 2:I actually subscribed to the Hanjin Tigers streaming service and you know, and I'll put the often those games happen overnight. But I'll get up in the morning and I'll sometimes like with my coffee, I'll put on the previous night's game just to watch a little bit, totally fun.
Speaker 2:But man, man, like, if a team has a two nothing lead in the sixth inning, that game feels over. You know it's like, you know you how, how in the world are you going to score three runs to win a game now? And uh, it's just totally different, totally, totally different.
Speaker 1:Still every bit as good, but totally different you know the the way that baseball is looked at in different parts of the world is fascinating and that's a conversation obviously for another podcast, right, yeah, for sure. But it's fascinating to see, like, the level of detail that in Japan they pay attention to certain things rather than here in the us and that's okay I mean there's no, there's no right or wrong.
Speaker 2:Right like I mean, it's just that you can play baseball however you want yeah, but in japan, if you're, if you're down one and you get the lead off, runner on, I guarantee you there's a sacrifice bunt coming, whereas in major league baseball they're trying to get away for the rally with the field. Yeah, yeah, exactly they're. They're playing for the rally, they're playing for the big hit, and it's just, you know, and it's not to say one's better than the other, but man, it's fascinating to watch.
Speaker 1:I'm a fan of you know the sacrifice. I'm a fan of a small ball, so there's that. Yeah, my friend, my friend, thank you so much for doing this. Obviously, I knew a lot of this stuff already beforehand, just because we do talk all the time and obviously we're both massive fans of the sport of baseball.
Speaker 2:But where can people find you on the socials? Well, I am on, largely I would say, instagram, and threads and blue sky are probably the ones I'm on the most, and those are all at baseball by design. Um, you can also follow my writing. I write for the website sports logosnet. That's been since 2014. So that's been fun to uh to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so uh, but then also the podcast itself. Anywhere you listen to podcasts, it's baseball by design and uh, that has been a really fun passion project and I've gotten to meet so many interesting people through it, so it's a ton of fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and make sure you guys follow the data chronicles on uh blue sky on threads Instagram. Uh, the Dead High Chronicles on Blue Sky on Threads Instagram, youtube, heck, even Facebook as well. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9 pm Eastern time is the Dead High Chronicles Sports Show. Okay, paul, don't forget. 9 pm Eastern time.
Speaker 2:Tuesdays and Thursdays 7 o'clock. Fake mountain time.
Speaker 1:The time zone that doesn't exist. That's correct.
Speaker 2:Ed, did you order yourself a moon?
Speaker 1:mammoth's hat. Today I have not. Okay, I'm very close. I love the logo that will be discussed again on a Tuesday of the Dead Hat Chronicles Sports Show, just so you guys know.
Speaker 2:I placed my pre-order. I love it.
Speaker 1:Again, make sure you guys are following corporate media. We are again on all socials and until then, guys keep on playing baseball and support the minor leagues.
Speaker 2:Thanks, ed, okay, bye.
