Speaker 1: You're listening to part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Guess what Mango?
Speaker 1: What's that will?
Speaker 2: Did you know?
Speaker 3: The chance of hitting a home run in baseball actually
Speaker 3: varies from city to city. And maybe this isn't that
Speaker 3: surprising when you think about the length of certain fields
Speaker 3: or you think about the Green Monster in Boston, But
Speaker 3: actually it goes beyond that. It has to do with
Speaker 3: the city's elevation. So the higher a city is above
Speaker 3: sea level, the easier it is to hit a homer
Speaker 3: in that city.
Speaker 1: That's so weird.
Speaker 3: I'd never considered that, But why is that exactly? It's
Speaker 3: actually because air density decreases the higher you go up,
Speaker 3: and that allows objects to move through it with less resistance. So,
Speaker 3: for example, when you throw a baseball at a higher elevation,
Speaker 3: it tends to fly farther than it would at sea
Speaker 3: level because there's less drag to pull the ball down.
Speaker 3: And this thin air effect works to the batter's advantage
Speaker 3: in two crucial ways. So, first of all, the lack
Speaker 3: of air resistance basically rules out curveballs, meaning that pitches
Speaker 3: will travel, you know, straighter, and they'll be easier to hit,
Speaker 3: and then the second one. When a batter does land
Speaker 3: a hit, there's a better chance of it becoming a
Speaker 3: home run again thanks to that air.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious how big an impact is this having
Speaker 1: on games? Like how many home runs are we talking
Speaker 1: about here?
Speaker 3: Well, it depends on a few factors, including the equipment
Speaker 3: that's being used, the skill level of the teams, and
Speaker 3: of course the elevation that they're playing. So for example,
Speaker 3: in the case of Denver's home team, the Colorado Rockies,
Speaker 3: the effect of the low air density was significant enough
Speaker 3: to bag them an extra home run per game for
Speaker 3: the first seven seasons they played at Coors Field. So
Speaker 3: from nineteen ninety five to two thousand and one, the
Speaker 3: team averaged one point nine home runs on their away games,
Speaker 3: but scored three point two home runs when they played
Speaker 3: in their own mile high home turf.
Speaker 1: Isn't that wild? That's incredible? But like, you know, you
Speaker 1: think about the fans and like playing at home, not
Speaker 1: even to travel, Like, how do we know those extra
Speaker 1: runs were due to altitude and not some other factors?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, actually this is kind of amazing. So
Speaker 3: once the Rockies realized that the mountain air was impacting
Speaker 3: their performance. An engineer at cors Field named Tony Cowell
Speaker 3: again looking for a way to even things out, and
Speaker 3: what he discovered was that Denver's lower atmospheric pressure had
Speaker 3: been causing the team's baseballs to actually dry out, making
Speaker 3: them bouncier and a little bit lighter. And Cowell reasoned
Speaker 3: that the moisture loss had made the baseballs harder to throw,
Speaker 3: more likely to fly when hit, and this resulted in
Speaker 3: more home runs. So to correct the problem, Cawl did
Speaker 3: something pretty ingenious. He installed this giant walk in humidore
Speaker 3: at corse Field, specifically for storing these baseballs.
Speaker 1: Like one of those climate control rooms for fancy people
Speaker 1: who have cigars.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, exactly, And it looks like one of those
Speaker 3: big walk in coolers that they use at restaurants, except
Speaker 3: this one maintains this steady temperature of seventy degrees fahrenheit
Speaker 3: and fifty percent humidity, which is the optimal conditions for
Speaker 3: storing a baseball, which I'm sure you knew already.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, of course, So I'm guessing the human door
Speaker 1: did the trick. Then.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The Rockies started using it in two thousand and two,
Speaker 3: and over the next nine seasons, the average number of
Speaker 3: home runs at Corsfield dropped twenty five percent. It was
Speaker 3: such an effective way to ensure the integrity of the
Speaker 3: game that many other teams have since installed humidors of
Speaker 3: their own.
Speaker 1: That is so weird that baseball teams across the country
Speaker 1: have humidors for the baseballs. But it's kind of unfortunate
Speaker 1: it hurt their home run stat right, Yeah, well, you
Speaker 1: know it wasn't completely a selfless act. The team's reputation
Speaker 1: was on the line since the elevation was clearly affecting
Speaker 1: their home games. Anyway, since we're talking baseball, I thought
Speaker 1: it'd be fun to celebrate the start of this year's
Speaker 1: baseball season by shining a light on some of the
Speaker 1: sport's unsung heroes, from the fans of the bleachers to
Speaker 1: the ballpark organized high above home plate. It's a big
Speaker 1: roster to cover, But now that we've warmed up a
Speaker 1: little bit, let's die. Hey their podcast listeners, welcome to
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm
Speaker 1: joined by my good friend mangesh Hot Ticketter and on
Speaker 1: the other side of that soundproof glass, munching his way
Speaker 1: through a big box of crackerjack.
Speaker 3: Actually, I didn't know they made them of this size.
Speaker 3: It's a giant box. That is our friend and producer,
Speaker 3: Dylan Fagan. Yeah, but I don't think he likes it
Speaker 3: very much. Every time he takes a bite, he seems
Speaker 3: to be wincing. Well, that's because Dylan insisted on getting
Speaker 3: a box that still had a plastic prize inside. But
Speaker 3: you know, since the company phased those out decades ago,
Speaker 3: he had to resort to buy in an old, sealed
Speaker 3: off box from eBay. So I'm guessing these aren't the
Speaker 3: most you know, fresh Crackerjacks that are in there, so
Speaker 3: we'll have to check that expiration day. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 3: that popcorn was popp during the Reagan administration, if I'm
Speaker 3: not mistaken here.
Speaker 1: I really hope the prize is worth it. And that's
Speaker 1: what nostalgia I really remind you of, Like Cereal boxes
Speaker 1: used to have toys in them, Like kids don't get
Speaker 1: any of that anymore, like all the surprises and things.
Speaker 1: But speaking of Crackerjacks, I was curious how the snack
Speaker 1: got so intertwined with baseball, and it turns out the
Speaker 1: product launch at Chicago's World Fair in eighteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: and by the turn of the century it had become
Speaker 1: one of the top selling concessions at American ballparks, right
Speaker 1: up there with peanuts and hot dogs. And then in
Speaker 1: nineteen oh eight, the link between baseball and Crackerjacks was
Speaker 1: cemented forever when this lyricist named Jack Norworth wrote baseball's
Speaker 1: unofficial anthem, take me out to the ballgame.
Speaker 3: That's right, And of course there's that line, buy me
Speaker 3: some peanuts and crackerjack I don't care if I never
Speaker 3: get back.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But what's really interesting is that when Jack Norworth
Speaker 1: wrote the song, he'd actually never attended a baseball game,
Speaker 1: and for that matter, neither had the song's composer, Albert
Speaker 1: von Tilzer. They wrote the most famous baseball song in
Speaker 1: the world with zero firsthand knowledge of the sport they
Speaker 1: were talking about.
Speaker 3: That is amazing, And so I guess it's like the
Speaker 3: song's really a cry for help, then, like they're begging
Speaker 3: to be taken out to the ballgame because they've never
Speaker 3: been before.
Speaker 1: Not exactly. So the pair just recognized there was a
Speaker 1: growing market for songs about baseball, and they managed to
Speaker 1: write one of the catchiest choruses. Ever, But believe it
Speaker 1: or not, there is some long forgotten context to this
Speaker 1: song because while most people are familiar with the song's
Speaker 1: iconic chorus, you know that it actually has two full
Speaker 1: verses that are rarely sung. And you might think, well,
Speaker 1: how big a difference could a few extra lines really make?
Speaker 1: But honestly, those verses kind of recontextualize the song.
Speaker 3: I feel like this is a big setup to tell
Speaker 3: us that the song is actually about football this whole time.
Speaker 2: Is that what's happening here?
Speaker 1: No, Weirdly, the song is a feminist anthem. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: all there in the missing verses. So when you look
Speaker 1: at the original lyrics and the original sheet music, the
Speaker 1: lyrics tell the story of Katie Casey, a young woman
Speaker 1: with baseball fever who turns down her boyfriend's invitation to
Speaker 1: a vaudeville show and insists that he take her to
Speaker 1: a ballgame instead.
Speaker 3: Oh God, so like the chorus is like her counter
Speaker 3: offer or something exactly.
Speaker 1: And apparently she gets her way because the second verse
Speaker 1: takes place at the ballgame and describes Katie's efforts to
Speaker 1: rally support for the team. And I'm going to play
Speaker 1: the recording here adk the game? Do the players right there?
Speaker 2: For name Holy Empire?
Speaker 1: He was when the far was just do up, Dodo young,
Speaker 1: doer up.
Speaker 3: The boys Tea made the gang thing this they take me,
Speaker 3: I'll do the ball game. You know, I thought you
Speaker 3: might be over selling by car at a feminist anthem,
Speaker 3: But once you lay it all out, it does feel
Speaker 3: progressive to write a sports song from a woman's perspective,
Speaker 3: especially in the nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she's really a dynamic character. She's up on
Speaker 1: her feet, she's arguing with the umpire, she's leading the
Speaker 1: crowd in a cheer like Katie doesn't feel out of
Speaker 1: place at all in this ballpark. And what's more is
Speaker 1: that she seems to have a better grip on the
Speaker 1: game than most of the men there do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting because the songwriter didn't seem like much
Speaker 3: of a baseball fan, but he created this song that
Speaker 3: seems like it comes from the point of view of one.
Speaker 3: But do you think he based her on somebody that
Speaker 3: he actually knew. Well, that's actually why I brought this up.
Speaker 3: So historians now think that Katie Casey was inspired by
Speaker 3: Jack Norworth's real life girlfriend. Her name was Trixie Fraganza,
Speaker 3: and she was a famous vaudeville actress and outspoken suffragist
Speaker 3: in New York City, and the two were dating at
Speaker 3: the time Norworth wrote the song. Now Friganza was even
Speaker 3: featured on the covers of the two original editions of
Speaker 3: the sheet music. That's interesting, you know, it's actually kind
Speaker 3: of a shame the verses have fallen by the wayside.
Speaker 3: Thinking with the theme of hidden meaning and take me
Speaker 3: out to the ballgame. What do you know about rooting
Speaker 3: for the home team, mango?
Speaker 1: Well, I'm a Philadelphia fan, so I generally know a
Speaker 1: lot about heartbreak.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's very true. Well, the verb root has always
Speaker 3: stuck out to me as odd, because what do plant
Speaker 3: roots have to do with cheering on a sports team.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess ideas that fans feel rooted to
Speaker 1: their home team the same way that they feel rooted
Speaker 1: to their hometown, like they're all connected by that shared
Speaker 1: sense of places. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Actually I was thinking something pretty similar to that, but
Speaker 3: when I looked into it this week, it turns out
Speaker 3: we've got it all wrong. So, according to I know,
Speaker 3: this is a big one to get wrong. So, according
Speaker 3: to Canadian etymologist Gerald Cohen. The idea of quote rooting
Speaker 3: for a sports team likely comes from animal rooting, like
Speaker 3: when a pig digs up the ground in search of food,
Speaker 3: and Cohen had a pretty firm support for this theory too.
Speaker 3: He cites an eighteen eighty nine New York newspaper in
Speaker 3: which a baseball fan was said to have quote rooted
Speaker 3: more in energetically and with twice the freedom of a
Speaker 3: Yorkshire porker.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a great quote, but it still seems
Speaker 1: pretty weird, Like, what was it about cheering for a
Speaker 1: team that reminded people of pigs rooting for truffles or whatever.
Speaker 3: Well, Cohen suggested that some excited fans had stomped their
Speaker 3: feet so ferociously while cheering that to onlookers it appeared
Speaker 3: as though they were frantically digging a hole.
Speaker 2: That is so weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, speaking of pigs, this is the fact I love,
Speaker 1: and I think real pigs might appreciate it as well.
Speaker 2: All right, what's that?
Speaker 1: So? This fact is about a substance known as magic mud,
Speaker 1: and for decades it's been smeared on every game ball
Speaker 1: in Major League Baseball. So, according to players, coating a
Speaker 1: ball with magic mud increases friction and gives pitchers a
Speaker 1: better grip on the ball. And the strangest part is
Speaker 1: that the magic mud is real mud. It's harvested from
Speaker 1: a secret spot along a Delaware River tributary in South Jersey,
Speaker 1: and then it's distributed by the MLB to each team's
Speaker 1: equipment measure.
Speaker 2: How weird is that is super weird?
Speaker 3: And I always think a baseball is like, you know,
Speaker 3: there are things that are banned from being able to
Speaker 3: apply to baseballs, But so Major League Baseball has a
Speaker 3: secret mud that sort of imbues baseballs with magical properties.
Speaker 3: I mean, this honestly sounds a little bit made up.
Speaker 1: I know. And the wildest part is that until just recently,
Speaker 1: nobody knew if it was just another weird like baseball superstition,
Speaker 1: or if the mud really does make the balls perform better.
Speaker 1: But then in twenty twenty four, researchers that UPenn finally
Speaker 1: got their hands on a sample of the mud and
Speaker 1: they were able to conduct a series of experiments to
Speaker 1: gauge its spreadability, its stickiness, and its grip potential.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is one of those jobs that just
Speaker 3: sounds pretty fun, like getting the play around with mud,
Speaker 3: slopping it onto baseballs, measuring how sticky it gets.
Speaker 1: Sign me up for that, I know. But it was
Speaker 1: a little bit more involved than that. So in the end,
Speaker 1: the team's work wound up confirming what the MLB knew
Speaker 1: all along, which is that the mud really is magic.
Speaker 1: As one of the study authors puts it, this is
Speaker 1: the magical thing. The mud spreads like face cream and
Speaker 1: grips like sandpaper.
Speaker 3: Okay, I mean those properties, are they really unique to
Speaker 3: this specific mud in New Jersey, Like, there's no way
Speaker 3: to replicate this in a lab or something.
Speaker 1: So the weird thing is that MLB has looked into
Speaker 1: replacing the magic mud with synthetic lubricants, but so far
Speaker 1: all of their attempts to recreate the MUD's mechanical properties
Speaker 1: have been a bust to this point. So right now,
Speaker 1: it's actually much easier just to keep the tradition going
Speaker 1: and keep using the real thing, which I kind of love.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I do too.
Speaker 3: I mean it is interesting with this magic mud stuff
Speaker 3: clearly being sanctioned by the league, and like I was
Speaker 3: saying earlier, you know you still hear cases of pitchers
Speaker 3: applying other sticky substances to balls to make their pitches
Speaker 3: spind faster and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is obviously considered cheating, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in the cases of things other than this magic
Speaker 3: mud from New Jersey, I guess. But you know, players
Speaker 3: aren't supposed to doctor the ball with any foreign material,
Speaker 3: so there's a limit to how sticky a baseball should be.
Speaker 3: But as we've shown, this is a sport steeped in tradition,
Speaker 3: and one of the oldest and most readily embraced traditions
Speaker 3: is covertly smearing goop on the ball when nobody's looking.
Speaker 1: Well. I definitely want to hear all about it, but
Speaker 1: before we do, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 3: You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about
Speaker 3: the lesser known heroes and of course villains of America's
Speaker 3: favorite pastime. And since we just talked about magic mud,
Speaker 3: I think it's a good time to examine one of
Speaker 3: the worst kept dirty secrets in American baseball. That is,
Speaker 3: of course, the dreaded spitball pitch. Mango, I know this
Speaker 3: was one of your favorites. You love throwing the spitball.
Speaker 3: But before we get to that, Mango, were you much
Speaker 3: of a baseball player.
Speaker 1: Absolutely not. I mean I wish I played more. We
Speaker 1: played my neighborhood of course, and things like whiffle ball
Speaker 1: and whatever. But in terms of rec league, I really
Speaker 1: only played T ball, and I was a terror on
Speaker 1: the field. Like I would get so excited when I
Speaker 1: hit the ball and I would fling the bat behind
Speaker 1: me and race the first base. I injured the volunteer parent.
Speaker 1: There's so much like the shin so much they had
Speaker 1: to watch from behind the fence.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And also my position was shortstop, and the ball came
Speaker 1: to me like every single play, but our first baseman,
Speaker 1: who was the coach's kid, could not catch a ball.
Speaker 1: So I would get the ball and then I would
Speaker 1: race over and tag people on their way to first
Speaker 1: base regularly. And in T ball you play like you
Speaker 1: know there's not three outs an inning. Like every single person.
Speaker 3: Reade, I could picture you doing that because you were
Speaker 3: always fast. I could picture you always just trying to
Speaker 3: chase them down every single time. You know, it was
Speaker 3: around that same age where I broke my arm one year,
Speaker 3: and that and that dreaded dodgeball accident. You may remember
Speaker 3: hearing about when when my pe teacher threw the ball
Speaker 3: so hard at me I flipped over and broke my arm.
Speaker 3: So what it meant for baseball is they actually allowed
Speaker 3: me to bat one armed and then have somebody else.
Speaker 2: Run for you. So still got to play.
Speaker 1: And that's how you ended up on a cover of
Speaker 1: Sport magazine.
Speaker 3: That's right, exactly, all right, Well, let's get back to
Speaker 3: the spitball. So the spitball is known by many colorful nicknames,
Speaker 3: including the spitter or the wet one. Throwing a spitball
Speaker 3: was a common technique used by pitchers in the early
Speaker 3: days of baseball. Now I involved coating a ball with
Speaker 3: foreign substances like salve actually most of the time, and
Speaker 3: it was thought to provide a distinctive dvantage on the mound.
Speaker 1: You know, I've never quite understood this, like how to
Speaker 1: spitting on the ball actually help?
Speaker 3: Well, Sometimes the spit was used to reduce the friction
Speaker 3: between the pitcher's fingers and the ball, causing it to
Speaker 3: kind of slip out of their hand with less spin
Speaker 3: than a regular pitch. And other cases, though, the spit
Speaker 3: was actually used to change the aerodynamic properties of the ball.
Speaker 3: Applying spit to one side change the ball's wind resistance,
Speaker 3: and weight just slightly, you know, would affect how it
Speaker 3: behaved in the air. So, when thrown correctly, a spitball
Speaker 3: would drop straight down as it flew, causing the batter
Speaker 3: to hit the top part of the ball on a swing,
Speaker 3: and that would result in them hitting just a ground ball. Now,
Speaker 3: the downside of this tactic was that it frequently led
Speaker 3: to fewer home runs and more low scoring games, which
Speaker 3: you'd imagine weren't exactly riveting to watch. In fact, these
Speaker 3: dole outcomes became so routine that early twentieth century baseball
Speaker 3: is now referred to as the dead ball era.
Speaker 1: That's weird. I've never heard about that. But I'm curious, like,
Speaker 1: do we know who's to blame for this? Like, is
Speaker 1: there an inventor the spitball that's credited for this?
Speaker 3: Well, nobody really knows when the first spitball was thrown
Speaker 3: or who it was thrown to, but the pitch has
Speaker 3: definitely been used since, you know, at least the early
Speaker 3: nineteen hundreds. So George Hildemran of the Brooklyn Superbus is
Speaker 3: known to have experimented with a technique in nineteen oh two.
Speaker 3: He's also said to have shared the trick with several
Speaker 3: other spitball pioneers, including Frank Cordon and Elmer Stricklett, who
Speaker 3: in turn taught the move to others. Now the first
Speaker 3: pitchers to lean heavily on the spitball were Jack Chesbro
Speaker 3: of the New York Highlanders and Ed Walsh of the
Speaker 3: Chicago White Sox. Now, the dirty pitch helped them become
Speaker 3: the only American league pitchers to ever win forty games
Speaker 3: in a single season, which is a tremendous number of games.
Speaker 3: So that success encouraged other pitchers to follow their lead,
Speaker 3: and by the nineteen tens, throwing a spitball was a common,
Speaker 3: if not controversial practice in professional baseball.
Speaker 1: I love that this was something pitchers had to learn
Speaker 1: from a fellow player, like there's some secret art to
Speaker 1: spitting on a baseball something.
Speaker 3: I don't think they needed lessons in proper spit application.
Speaker 3: It's the throwing technique that's pretty hard to nail down.
Speaker 3: Not to mention that spitting on the ball wasn't something
Speaker 3: that most players would organically think to do, so the
Speaker 3: idea had to be introduced by someone who already knew
Speaker 3: its advantages. I should note, though, that despite the name
Speaker 3: not every spitballer used saliva to make their pitchers less predictable.
Speaker 3: They also doctored baseballs with lots of other slick substances,
Speaker 3: and including petroleum, jelly, hair products, and of course good
Speaker 3: old fashioned mud.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like this was an open secret. Did
Speaker 1: anyone ever object to it in this early era?
Speaker 3: Oh definitely, I mean the ethics of the spitball were
Speaker 3: always hotly contested. In fact, there were rules dating back
Speaker 3: to the eighteen nineties that prohibited players from defacing or
Speaker 3: otherwise damaging the ball, and people argued on both sides
Speaker 3: whether it was appropriate to cover a ball in saliva,
Speaker 3: which is just the weird sentence to say gross. But
Speaker 3: it didn't matter either way, though, because the only penalty
Speaker 3: for an illegal pitch was a five dollars fine, and
Speaker 3: even that was rarely imposed, And that ambiguity allowed spitballing
Speaker 3: to thrive for a time. But the arguments against it,
Speaker 3: of course continued to multiply.
Speaker 1: You mean, like how gross it is to throw a
Speaker 1: ball code with human spit argument in.
Speaker 3: Itself, Yeah, that was the most frequent complaint, But others
Speaker 3: worried that throwing a spitball put too much strain on
Speaker 3: a pitcher's arm and could actually do serious damage if
Speaker 3: used to frequently. End Though, the spitball wasn't banned because
Speaker 3: it was unsanitary or unfair or dangerous, the real reason
Speaker 3: it was outlawed was to make the sport more exciting
Speaker 3: for fans and profitable for the team owners. So spectators
Speaker 3: were tired of these low scoring games, mixing the spitball
Speaker 3: and others so called freak pitches was a way to
Speaker 3: inject some much needed life into the games. Generating more
Speaker 3: fly balls and home runs. Kind of keeps the crowd invested.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, and so when did this spitball band
Speaker 1: go into effect?
Speaker 3: So officially, the nineteen twenty season was the last year
Speaker 3: in which spitballs were allowed on the field, and after
Speaker 3: that any player caught defacing the ball with saliva or
Speaker 3: anything else was supposed to be expelled from the game
Speaker 3: and possibly for an entire season. However, in a surprising
Speaker 3: show of diplomacy, seventeen spitball pitchers were quote grandfathered in
Speaker 3: as an exception to the rule, which just also seems
Speaker 3: so strange to let them play by a different rule,
Speaker 3: But they were all players who had made a living
Speaker 3: on throwing doctored pitches, and who wouldn't have had much
Speaker 3: of a career without them, so out of respect for
Speaker 3: their livelihood, that handful of players, dubbed the bona fide spitballers,
Speaker 3: were allowed to keep throwing the pitch for the remainder
Speaker 3: of their time in the league is so unfair, and
Speaker 3: as a result, the last player who was legally allowed
Speaker 3: to throw a spitball was Burley Grimes. And of course
Speaker 3: that's got to be his name, right, like Burley Grimes
Speaker 3: throwing the spitballers. He played for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and
Speaker 3: he used the pitch to help defeat the New York
Speaker 3: Giants on September tenth, nineteen thirty four, and then he
Speaker 3: retired from the sport ten days later, taking the league
Speaker 3: sanctioned spitball with him.
Speaker 1: I love that. It's such a crazy fact, Like can
Speaker 1: you imagine if, like some people were used to tackling
Speaker 1: with a horse collar football? Oh no, you keep doing it, grandfather,
Speaker 1: and everyone else has to tackle different.
Speaker 2: I bet I bet Burley Grimes did that too.
Speaker 1: So obviously there were players who kept throwing spitballs after this, right, Oh.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and pretty blatantly in some cases. So for example,
Speaker 3: up one of the most famous players to use the
Speaker 3: dirty pitch was gay Lord Perry, a star pitcher in
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies. Throwing spitballs and making the batter think
Speaker 3: he was throwing spitballs were a huge part of Perry's
Speaker 3: pitching style, and he leaned hard into that reputation too,
Speaker 3: even going so far as to name his memoir, Me
Speaker 3: and the Spitter.
Speaker 1: That is so ridiculous.
Speaker 2: It is super ridiculous.
Speaker 3: But despite his flagrant flawing of the rules, Perry wasn't
Speaker 3: ejected from a game for using the spitball until his
Speaker 3: twenty first season in the major leagues, and even then
Speaker 3: he came right back the next year for a final season,
Speaker 3: and was later inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Now,
Speaker 3: I do want to note, though, that in recent years,
Speaker 3: the MLB has cracked down quite a bit on the
Speaker 3: use of foreign substances on baseballs. Beginning in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: pitchers who violate the rules are now subject to a
Speaker 3: ten game suspension, and while the harsher punishment isn't likely
Speaker 3: to end the practice altogether, it should at least make
Speaker 3: pitchers think twice before they you know, Hakelugi on the.
Speaker 2: Ball or whatever.
Speaker 1: That we've totally groast out our listeners. We switch gears
Speaker 1: and talk about a much cleaner way to line up
Speaker 1: with baseball game.
Speaker 3: That sounds good, But before we do that, let's take
Speaker 3: a quick break.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to part time Genius. Okay, well, so we've
Speaker 1: talked about a few different baseball icons today, Crackerjack, the Spitball,
Speaker 1: take me out to the ballgame. But there's one major
Speaker 1: part of the baseball experience that we still haven't covered yet,
Speaker 1: and that is pipe organ music, the stuff that drifts
Speaker 1: over a ballpark during just about every game.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I've always wondered that.
Speaker 3: I mean not that I mind that it's actually sort
Speaker 3: of a fun and funny part of the whole experience,
Speaker 3: But why is there so much organ music in baseball?
Speaker 3: Like it's hard to imagine the sport without it, and
Speaker 3: yet it still feels kind of random.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So to answer that, we have to go back
Speaker 1: to a largely ignored milestone in sports history, which is
Speaker 1: the day when the Chicago Cubs became the first major
Speaker 1: league team to have live organ music performed at a ballgame.
Speaker 1: So the story goes that in the spring of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty one, the Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley wanted a
Speaker 1: way to give fans a little pregame entertainment as they
Speaker 1: took to their seats, So he installed a pipe organ
Speaker 1: behind the grandstand of Wrigley Field, and he hired a
Speaker 1: local organist named Ray Nelson to provide the tunes. The
Speaker 1: inaugural concert took place on April twenty sixth that year,
Speaker 1: just before an afternoon game between the Cubs and their rivals,
Speaker 1: the Cardinals.
Speaker 3: And I'm guessing one of the tunes Nelson provided was
Speaker 3: back to what we were talking about.
Speaker 2: Take Me out to the ballgame.
Speaker 1: Weirdly, there isn't a record of which songs he played,
Speaker 1: but that seems pretty likely. But we do know some
Speaker 1: other odd details about the concert thanks to local reporting.
Speaker 1: According to the Chicago Tribune, more than eighteen thousand fans
Speaker 1: were in attendance that day, and all of them were
Speaker 1: completely delighted by Nelson's performance. And that's despite the fact
Speaker 1: that the music wasn't allowed to continue during the actual game.
Speaker 2: And why is that so?
Speaker 1: Apparently no one had bothered to clear the rights for
Speaker 1: the songs, and because the game was set to be
Speaker 1: broadcast on the radio, they had to stop the music
Speaker 1: before the first pitch was thrown. The same thing happened
Speaker 1: at a game the following day, but the team's manager
Speaker 1: promised that by the time the Cubs returned from their
Speaker 1: upcoming away games, they would have a deal worked out
Speaker 1: with BMI, the music publishing company.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had never thought about that before.
Speaker 3: So once they got the music right squared away, the
Speaker 3: concerts became just like a more regular thing at Cubs games.
Speaker 1: That was the plan, but unfortunately working out the details
Speaker 1: with BMI proved much much trickier than they'd expected, so
Speaker 1: by mid May, both the organ and the organists had
Speaker 1: disappeared from Wrigley Field. Aside from that one day in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one, the Cub's home turf was actually organ
Speaker 1: music free until the late nineteen sixties, which is kind
Speaker 1: of unimaginable. Wow. But in the meantime, other MLB teams
Speaker 1: took notice of Wrigley's experiment and they decided to try
Speaker 1: it for them. So over at Ebbitts Field in Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: Gladys Gooding was hired to play the organ during Dodgers games,
Speaker 1: making her the first full time organist in Major League Baseball,
Speaker 1: and Gooding continued in her role as quote the Ebbitts
Speaker 1: Field orgon Queen from nineteen forty two to nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: but then she stepped down when the Dodgers moved to.
Speaker 3: LA And I'm curious, was organ music kind of the
Speaker 3: norm at baseball games by that point?
Speaker 1: I mean, it was definitely on its way, but the
Speaker 1: instrument didn't truly become a fixture of the ballpark until
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties and actually the early seventies.
Speaker 3: Oh really, I'm actually surprised that was that late in
Speaker 3: the game, like right.
Speaker 2: In the middle of the rock and roll era.
Speaker 3: It seems kind of a weird time for people to
Speaker 3: be embracing this pipe organ music.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, the doors had made it popular, so.
Speaker 2: They had too, right, right, of course.
Speaker 1: But you know, nostalgia's always been a big part of
Speaker 1: baseball's appeal, and by that point, plenty of fans had
Speaker 1: fond memories of hearing ballpark organ music in their youth.
Speaker 2: That' said.
Speaker 1: A lot of the credit for the organ's late stage
Speaker 1: ascendancy belongs to this woman named Nancy, who was the
Speaker 1: longtime organist for the Chicago White Sox. When she first
Speaker 1: took the job at Kamiski Park in nineteen seventy, she
Speaker 1: pretty much stuck to the baseball playbook right like, she
Speaker 1: played the Star of Spangled Banner at the start of
Speaker 1: every game and take Me out to the Ballgame during
Speaker 1: the seventh inning stretch. And she also carried the tradition
Speaker 1: on of musically introducing the players at bat by playing
Speaker 1: the anthem of their home state. But after a while,
Speaker 1: she realized that the state songs were kind of feeling
Speaker 1: a bit dated and didn't get much of a reaction
Speaker 1: from crowds that were now used to rock and roll,
Speaker 1: So from then on she started playing songs that fans
Speaker 1: were more familiar with, while always trying to, like somehow
Speaker 1: tie the song to a player's name, or their number
Speaker 1: or their disposition.
Speaker 3: Wait, so is Nancy Faust the person that created walk
Speaker 3: up music?
Speaker 1: Yeah, she actually did, but she didn't stop there. So,
Speaker 1: fueled by the crowd's positive responses, she started using the
Speaker 1: organ to react to the game itself. So when someone
Speaker 1: stole a bass, she plays smooth Criminal. And if someone
Speaker 1: streaked naked or cross a field, as often happened in
Speaker 1: those days, she would play an organ rendition of Is
Speaker 1: That All There is? Classy but hands down though, Nancy's
Speaker 1: most famous addition to the baseball songbook has to be
Speaker 1: the one that she played during strikeouts, which is nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine. It's Nana Hey Hey kissing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, actually, here's a clip of her playing it at
Speaker 1: a game.
Speaker 3: You know, I see what you mean about this livening
Speaker 3: up the game, Like there's more than just background music.
Speaker 3: She was giving the crowds something to laugh at or
Speaker 3: sing along with, and you.
Speaker 2: Can definitely see how this heightens the whole experience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was basically scoring the action of the game
Speaker 1: like you would a film, which you know was kind
Speaker 1: of a full circle moment for organists because that's exactly
Speaker 1: what they'd done during the silent film era. Right. Nancy's
Speaker 1: knack for knowing what to play and when to play
Speaker 1: it like it really made her this living legend among
Speaker 1: baseball fans. Her talents were so renowned that other teams
Speaker 1: started sending their organists to Kamiski Park just to watch
Speaker 1: her in action, and pretty soon her soundtrack approach to
Speaker 1: organ playing became the standard of her trade. But allpark
Speaker 1: organ music has definitely had its up and downs over
Speaker 1: the years. In the nineteen eighties and nineties, some teams
Speaker 1: moved to new stadiums and they didn't bring their organs
Speaker 1: with them. Others had their organists retire and then just
Speaker 1: didn't hire new ones. But even during that downturn, organ
Speaker 1: music didn't fade from the stadiums completely. As you know,
Speaker 1: teams would play pre recorded tracks over the loudspeakers to
Speaker 1: add just a touch and nostalgia to the games. But
Speaker 1: that last tactic worked a little too well, and the
Speaker 1: can music made a lot of people pined for the
Speaker 1: old days of hearing live organ music at a ballgame,
Speaker 1: and all that feedback actually led to a full on
Speaker 1: resurgence in the twenty tens, so teams started hiring back
Speaker 1: their organists, and as of twenty twenty four, more than
Speaker 1: half of the thirty teams in the MLB now employ
Speaker 1: an organist. In many cases, the organist is now pair
Speaker 1: with a DJ who spins more contemporary tracks between the classics,
Speaker 1: and because of that compromise, the organ's future in American
Speaker 1: baseball is actually looking brighter than it has been in decades.
Speaker 3: Contemporary hits and the organist I started thinking about the
Speaker 3: SNL sketch with Will Ferrell, and I think it was
Speaker 3: on a guest tire doing the they were the music
Speaker 3: teachers and singing the modern hits. But I do have
Speaker 3: to say I was not expecting such a rosy outlook
Speaker 3: on the state of ballpark organ music in the year
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: But I'm happy about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too, And I think that's the perfect note
Speaker 1: to go out on. But before we hit the showers
Speaker 1: and call it a day, I think we should take
Speaker 1: a few swings at the fact off.
Speaker 3: So it's still early in the twenty twenty five season
Speaker 3: so far, but there's already a breakout start taking the
Speaker 3: sport by storm.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: It isn't a player, though, but a new piece of
Speaker 3: equipment called a torpedo bat. Now, unlike a traditional bat,
Speaker 3: this one is wider in the middle than it is
Speaker 3: at the top, and that change in shape means there's
Speaker 3: more mass concentrated in the sweet spot of the barrel,
Speaker 3: right where the player makes the most contact with the ball.
Speaker 3: This not only provides much greater impact when the ball
Speaker 3: and the bat collide, it also makes the bats swing
Speaker 3: faster because the weight of the wood is distributed more
Speaker 3: evenly instead of being clustered mostly at the top. So far,
Speaker 3: the New York Yankees have demonstrated these advantages to great effect,
Speaker 3: racking up nine home runs with a torpedo bat in
Speaker 3: their first three games alone. We'll have to wait and
Speaker 3: see how many other teams adopt the new style of
Speaker 3: bat over the rest of the season, but given the
Speaker 3: results so far, I imagine just about all of them will
Speaker 3: at least take it for a test swing.
Speaker 1: Okay, so, another baseball innovator who doesn't get enough credit
Speaker 1: is Harvard athlete James Ting, and in April of eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, he became the first known baseball player to
Speaker 1: don a catcher's mask during a game. Wow Prior to that,
Speaker 1: the only gear a catcher used was a rubber mouthguard
Speaker 1: similar to that of a boxer, but there was no mask,
Speaker 1: no chess guard, no shin guards.
Speaker 2: Not even a blow was terrifying.
Speaker 1: Reckless approach led to frequent injuries, and as a result,
Speaker 1: the career of the average catcher in the early days
Speaker 1: of baseball was only three or four seasons. But that
Speaker 1: finally changed thanks to Ting's new headgear, which was actually
Speaker 1: designed for him by the Harvard team captain, a guy
Speaker 1: named Frederick Thayer. It was made from a modified fencing mask,
Speaker 1: which was meant to keep ting closer to the plate
Speaker 1: without fear of being injured by either the bat or
Speaker 1: a ball. Despite the obvious benefits, other catchers were initially
Speaker 1: hesitant to adopt the mask because most players and fans
Speaker 1: considered it unmanly to wear protective gear. But in the end,
Speaker 1: keeping their faces intact proved more enticing than appeasing to
Speaker 1: a few angry fans. By the late eighteen eighties, the
Speaker 1: catcher's mask had become a fundamental piece of sports equipment,
Speaker 1: and baseball catchers have been all the more handsome for
Speaker 1: it ever since.
Speaker 3: Well, something I never knew until this week is that
Speaker 3: the silent film star Buster Keaton was actually a lifelong
Speaker 3: baseball fan and a pretty good play or two. But
Speaker 3: sometimes his love of the game got in the way
Speaker 3: of his actual job, which was, of course making movies.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: For instance, whenever one of his productions hit a snag
Speaker 3: on set, Keaton would stop filming and he'd organize this
Speaker 3: impromptu baseball game with the crew until someone came up
Speaker 3: with a solution. And while filming at MGM in the
Speaker 3: late nineteen twenties, Keaton would often put a game together
Speaker 3: at the end of every lunch break, usually taking half
Speaker 3: the crew with him. Now, in light of these frequent setbacks,
Speaker 3: studio exec Lewis B. Mayer reportedly considered adding a no
Speaker 3: baseball clause to the actor's next contract. But luckily for Keaton,
Speaker 3: he turned out to be bluffing.
Speaker 1: So he covered some major baseball milestones today. But here's
Speaker 1: a quick one. I forgot to mention the first known
Speaker 1: reference to the game being played in the United States,
Speaker 1: and this dates all the way back to seventeen ninety one.
Speaker 1: And the funny part is that it doesn't come from
Speaker 1: an article about the sport, or an ad for an
Speaker 1: upcoming game or anything like that. Instead, the reference appears
Speaker 1: in a vintage by law from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, which banned
Speaker 1: people from playing baseball within eighty yards of the town Meetinghouse.
Speaker 1: Apparently they were worried that a fly ball might break
Speaker 1: the building's new windows.
Speaker 3: Okay, this next one provides a little vindication for all
Speaker 3: of the Katie Caseys of the world who like to
Speaker 3: argue with the umpire, because, according to a twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four study from the University of Quebec. Yelling at the
Speaker 3: ref does get results, and I hate to admit this
Speaker 3: because I hate watching people yell at the refs. The
Speaker 3: team analyzed data from ten years of Major League Baseball
Speaker 3: games and found that after being verbally criticized quote, homeplate
Speaker 3: umpires were less likely to call strikes to batters from
Speaker 3: the complaining team and more prone to call strikes to
Speaker 3: batters on the opposing team. So while berating the umpire
Speaker 3: won't score you any points for decorum, it might just
Speaker 3: help your team win the game, which is really depressing.
Speaker 1: I know, and it's going to shape how long going
Speaker 1: to be as a parent on the field for all
Speaker 1: my kids soccer.
Speaker 2: Right, scream your head off.
Speaker 1: Well, here's a very quick one to end this, and
Speaker 1: I think it's super fun. So I think we both
Speaker 1: know what a ground roll double is in baseball, where
Speaker 1: a ball is hit and then bounces out of play.
Speaker 1: So most often the ball will get hit and then
Speaker 1: bounce on the ground over the fence, or sometimes it
Speaker 1: rolls under a scoreboard or something and the player at
Speaker 1: bat gets an automatic double or it gets to advance
Speaker 1: to second base. But do you know There's something called
Speaker 1: a ground roll triple according to never heard of this.
Speaker 1: According to MLB dot com, this occurs when a player
Speaker 1: attempts to use his hat to stop a ball on
Speaker 1: the ground.
Speaker 2: Were they okay?
Speaker 1: Using a hat is a penalty of three bases to
Speaker 1: both the batter and any runner on base, which is
Speaker 1: just so crazy. I just assumed that you could, like
Speaker 1: Willie May's basket, catch a fly ball with your hat,
Speaker 1: But apparently if you do, that's an automatic three basis
Speaker 1: for anyone on the field.
Speaker 2: I did not know that rule. I'd never heard of that.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, I think this fact off is basically
Speaker 3: a tie. But between the baseball mud facts and the
Speaker 3: ones about taking me onto the ball game, I think
Speaker 3: I'm going to give this one to you, Mango.
Speaker 1: Well, I will take it. There is so much great
Speaker 1: baseball trivia we didn't get to, from the blind adaptation
Speaker 1: of baseball called deep ball, to the minor league player
Speaker 1: who was once traded for twenty baseball bats, the time
Speaker 1: two Yankee players announced in a press conference that they
Speaker 1: were dissolving their marriage so that they could switch wives.
Speaker 1: There is a lot of craziness that we've missed, and
Speaker 1: we'll have to do another episode down the line, but
Speaker 1: for now, that's going to do it for today's Part
Speaker 1: Time Genius from Mary Gabe, Dylan, Will and myself. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for listening. Be sure to send us
Speaker 1: your favorite baseball facts on TikTok and Instagram and we'll
Speaker 1: be back in your feed soon with another new episode.
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongaishatikler
Speaker 1: and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan
Speaker 1: with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive for
Speaker 1: iHeart by Katrina Norvel and Ali Perry, with social media
Speaker 1: support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viny Shorey.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.