Speaker 1: Before we begin, a reminder to please rate and review
Speaker 1: our show. It helps new listeners discover us and grow
Speaker 1: the program. What are the odds of catching a foul
Speaker 1: ball at a game, or being dealt a royal flush
Speaker 1: and poker, or even being struck by lightning? Some things
Speaker 1: are rarer than others, But today we're looking at some
Speaker 1: occurrences that are truly unlikely, and they're all tied to
Speaker 1: one guy, Philadelphia. Philly's outfielder Nick Castillanos isn't exactly having
Speaker 1: his best season, but while his numbers are down, he
Speaker 1: still leads the league in a pretty remarkable category that
Speaker 1: you won't find in any traditional stats. On this episode
Speaker 1: of Sports Illustrated Weekly, s I, senior writer John Wortheim
Speaker 1: tells the tale of how Costaianos became a meme by
Speaker 1: hitting home runs that have been, let's say, oddly and
Speaker 1: hilariously timed, again and again and again. And we should
Speaker 1: note this piece also includes the voice of the late, great,
Speaker 1: legendary Dodgers announcer of In Scully, perhaps the only person
Speaker 1: who was castaganos Pero. May he rest in Baseball broadcast habit,
Speaker 1: I'm your host John Gonzalez from Sports Illustrated and I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. This is Sports Illustrated Weekly. Here's John Wortheim
Speaker 1: to calculate the long odds on the timing of Costallanos's
Speaker 1: long bombs. Never mind the honey delivery, the wit, or
Speaker 1: the accumulated baseball wisdom. For all his various and sundry
Speaker 1: broadcasting gifts, Vince Scully was blessed above all with exquisite
Speaker 1: timings for all the high five of the goes back
Speaker 1: to the fan. He may have called baseball games all
Speaker 1: those years, but he would have been a wonderful conductor
Speaker 1: or musician, says Al Michael's a Scully protege dating back
Speaker 1: to his Brooklyn boyhood. He just has this intuition for
Speaker 1: the rhythm of the game. A viable woman for baseball.
Speaker 1: What a viral vomit for the country in the world.
Speaker 1: The running joke was at baseball waited for Scully, not
Speaker 1: the other way around. If Ben was in the middle
Speaker 1: of an anecdote and it was a two two count,
Speaker 1: says Ted Robinson, a long time MLB announcer, you could
Speaker 1: be sure the batter would foul off the next pitch,
Speaker 1: just to be sure Vin would get through his story.
Speaker 1: All of which is to say, it's a good bet
Speaker 1: that's Scully never much intersected with Philly's right fielder Nick Castianos.
Speaker 1: By now you likely know the story or stories all
Speaker 1: three of them. On October, Castianos was playing for the
Speaker 1: Reds during an otherwise somnolent summer game devoid of much significance.
Speaker 1: Cincinnati's played by play ban at the time, Tom Brenneman,
Speaker 1: spoke carelessly and cruelly into an open mic during the
Speaker 1: seventh inning of the first game of a double header.
Speaker 1: Brennaman didn't realize the broadcast was back from commercial break,
Speaker 1: and he made an anti lgbt Q slur. By the
Speaker 1: second game, as social media did its thing, it had
Speaker 1: become clear that Brenneman's vile comment was going to be
Speaker 1: a problem. In what was both an apology and a
Speaker 1: clear attempt to salvage his job, Brennaman began the fifth
Speaker 1: inning with a soliloquy, I made a comment earlier tonight
Speaker 1: that I guess UH went out over the year that
Speaker 1: I am deeply ashamed of UM. If I have heard
Speaker 1: anyone out there, I can't tell you how much I
Speaker 1: say from the bottom of my heart I'm so very
Speaker 1: very sorry. I pride myself and think of myself as
Speaker 1: a a man of faith. As he was winding up,
Speaker 1: so was Kansas City reliever Breg Holland, who offered a
Speaker 1: fastball to Castianos, the batter at the time. As Brennaman continued,
Speaker 1: castiano'ss bad collided violently with a pitch, resulting in a
Speaker 1: towering four hundred and ten foot drive. And we got
Speaker 1: this from Brennaman. As there is a drive in a
Speaker 1: deep left field by Costiganos, it will be a home
Speaker 1: run and so that'll make it a for nothing ball game.
Speaker 1: When that awkward interruption was over, and as Castiano's rounded
Speaker 1: the basis, Brennaman went back to doing damage control. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I would be putting on this headset again,
Speaker 1: As ESPNS public Torrey puts it perfectly. Watching Brennaman break
Speaker 1: the fourth wall and then suddenly reconstruct that wall in
Speaker 1: the same breath remains one of the funniest things I've
Speaker 1: ever seen. Brenneman was indeed done in the Red s booth.
Speaker 1: He finished the apology, then turned the broadcast over to
Speaker 1: Jim day mid Gay. The team suspended Brennaman that night,
Speaker 1: and he resigned a little over a month later. He
Speaker 1: now broadcasts high school sports in the Greater Cincinnati area. Castianos,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, was just getting started. The next
Speaker 1: time the Reds visited Kansas City, he struck again George Gorman,
Speaker 1: a World War Two veteran and the father of Royal's
Speaker 1: longtime equipment manager Patrick Gorman, had recently died. Coming out
Speaker 1: of the break at the top of the seventh inning,
Speaker 1: Kansas City announcer Ryan la Fever began a poignant eulogy
Speaker 1: of Gorman. Nick Castiano Snow was batting, and he chose
Speaker 1: that precise moment to go deep with this seventeenth home
Speaker 1: run of the season. Here's the call delivered by La
Speaker 1: Fiver as it coincided with the first pitch. Well, we're
Speaker 1: gonna tell you about a great man, and it's a
Speaker 1: loss for the Royals family. That's a great life. Nineties
Speaker 1: six years and Pat, just like his dad, went to KU,
Speaker 1: he also went to Bishop Ward High School. And there's
Speaker 1: a drive in a deep left center field. And there's
Speaker 1: never a great time to eulogize someone during the broadcast,
Speaker 1: So we apologize for the timing. But by this point,
Speaker 1: a drive into deep left by Castianos had become a
Speaker 1: full fledged me But he wasn't done using his bat
Speaker 1: to interrupt somber moments acquired by the Phillies in the offseason.
Speaker 1: Castianos was in the box on the final Monday in
Speaker 1: May when NBC Sports Philadelphia announcer Tom McCarthy saw fit
Speaker 1: to deliver a Memorial Day tribute the Gold Chair, which
Speaker 1: will sit vacant here at Citizens Bank Park, honoring UH
Speaker 1: those who paid the ultimate sacrifice, and as if choreographed
Speaker 1: Castiano's rips on a deep left field, it is god.
Speaker 1: Three successive seasons, three earnest moments, each broken up by
Speaker 1: a nick Castiano's home run unlikely, comically unlikely, The question
Speaker 1: just how unlikely? To try and grasp the improbability, we
Speaker 1: consulted sports statistician and NFL dor actor of Data and Analytics,
Speaker 1: Michael Lopez. He was kind enough to help us come
Speaker 1: up with an answer and to show his work. The
Speaker 1: first and most basic question, how often does Castianos hit
Speaker 1: the ball over the fence? In twenty one, he had
Speaker 1: combined forty eight home runs and eight twenty seven plate appearances.
Speaker 1: The home run he hit on Memorial Day was his
Speaker 1: seventh home run of the two season. In his two
Speaker 1: hundred plate appearance, that's a home run five point four
Speaker 1: percent of the time he steps into the box. But
Speaker 1: that's too broad. What Lopez rightly calls grief announcements came
Speaker 1: early in the plate appearance, as baseball broadcasters stories usually do.
Speaker 1: Over the last three seasons, through his Memorial Day blast,
Speaker 1: Castianos hit nineteen home runs on the first or second
Speaker 1: pitch of his plate appearance, which is to say that
Speaker 1: there's roughly a two percent chance that in any given
Speaker 1: plate appearance he would hit a home run in one
Speaker 1: of the first two pitches. Extrapolating that the likely hood
Speaker 1: that he would hit a home run in each of
Speaker 1: those three plate appearances, it's about one in a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty thousand. But the probability really plummets when we
Speaker 1: ask how likely was he to have three plate appearances
Speaker 1: in grief announcement settings. To answer this question, we first
Speaker 1: need some sense of frequency. How often to broadcasters depart
Speaker 1: from the game to offer the sorts of sombers soliloquies
Speaker 1: that Castiano's has an uncanny way of interrupting the sonic
Speaker 1: equivalent to photo bombing. We put this to Ted Robinson,
Speaker 1: a veteran of calling more than MLB games, mostly for
Speaker 1: the Giants and Twins. But how often a broadcaster would
Speaker 1: deliver a somber monologue. His estimate once a month, and
Speaker 1: that's maybe, he says, there's a question of what do
Speaker 1: we want to impose on an audience honoring Memorial Day. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: maybe there's an unfortunate death of someone close to the
Speaker 1: team or an arrest you feel you have to acknowledge,
Speaker 1: but weeks can go by between those that. As a guide,
Speaker 1: a monthly grief announcement would equate to ten such announcements
Speaker 1: over the last three seasons, accounting for the pandemic short
Speaker 1: and twenty campaign. Given that Castianos has played in most
Speaker 1: games over that period, one can assume that in a
Speaker 1: given game with a grief announcement, he'd have a one
Speaker 1: in twenty chance of being a bad after that. Extrapolating
Speaker 1: that to the ten grief announcements, the likelihood of his
Speaker 1: being the bat or after three such announcements is one.
Speaker 1: Combining castianos Is early plate appearance home run rate with
Speaker 1: the odds of Castianos would be batting when the rare
Speaker 1: grief announcement was made. Rate Lopez makes the back of
Speaker 1: the envelope calculation. We'd say there's one in ten million
Speaker 1: chance that Castianos would follow three grief announcements with first
Speaker 1: to pitch home runs. Those are literally powerball odds. Lopez
Speaker 1: points out that the odds improve if we consider the
Speaker 1: probability that any member of the population of Major league
Speaker 1: batters do what Castianos did. The odds also improved when
Speaker 1: we consider that the grief announcement could have been made
Speaker 1: by broadcasters of either team. Then again, the odds become
Speaker 1: longer if we want to refine this and note that
Speaker 1: Castiano's not only hit home runs, but did so to
Speaker 1: left field each time, and though it wasn't a home run.
Speaker 1: Castiano's interrupted a fourth grief announcement. Earlier this season in
Speaker 1: spring training, Blue Jay's announcer Buck Martinez was awkwardly addressing
Speaker 1: the d u I arrest of Toronto pitching coach Pete
Speaker 1: Walker when Castianos laced a single to right field, fittingly
Speaker 1: his first at bat with the Phillies. But little that's
Speaker 1: gonna drop for a basic Castianos reached out of propin
Speaker 1: in the right fair no sport revels and coincidence and
Speaker 1: numerology and statistical cork quite like baseball does. Pictured Joe
Speaker 1: Nicro's only career home run, it came off his brother
Speaker 1: Phil niekro a stand Musual's thirty six hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: hits eighteen fifteen came at home in eighteen fifteen, came
Speaker 1: on the road. Mutual incidentally was born on November twenty one,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty and Tiny Dinorah, Pennsylvania, population four thousand, five
Speaker 1: d eighty. That's the same unlikely birthplace as Ken Griffy Jr.
Speaker 1: Who was also born there on November twenty one, nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine. Castiano's speak, though, set the standard for improbability
Speaker 1: one in ten million for perspective, the odds of being
Speaker 1: struck by lightning in your lifetime. For the National Weather Service,
Speaker 1: it's one in fifteen thousand, three hundred. The odds of
Speaker 1: getting bitten by a shark one in three point seven million.
Speaker 1: The odds of getting struck by a meteorite. The astronomer
Speaker 1: Allen Harris once haded it one in one point nine million.
Speaker 1: The odds of being elected president of the United States
Speaker 1: one in ten million, which is to say the awe
Speaker 1: and amusement we all have for Castianos, who's grief announcement
Speaker 1: triple Crown is well placed with that kind of timing.
Speaker 1: When his baseball career ends, he might have a second
Speaker 1: career as a baseball announcer, the successor to Vince Scully.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and a reminder to please rate and
Speaker 1: review our show. It helps people find us. Sports Illustrated
Speaker 1: Weekly is a production of Sports Illustrated and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
Speaker 1: favorite shows. And for more of Sports Illustrated It's best
Speaker 1: stories and podcasts, visit SI dot com. This episode of
Speaker 1: Sports Illustrated Weekly was produced by Jessica Armoski, Jordan Rizzieri,
Speaker 1: and Isaac Lee, who was also our sound engineer. Our
Speaker 1: senior producer is Dan Bloom. Our acting senior producer is
Speaker 1: Harry Swartout. Our executive producers are Scott Browny and me
Speaker 1: John Gonzales. Our theme song is by Nolan Schneider, and
Speaker 1: if you've stuck around this song, we leave you with this.
Speaker 1: He might have a second career as a baseball announcer,
Speaker 1: a successor to Fid Sculling. That's all I got. I mean,
Speaker 1: you'll you'll cut in the audio there. You don't need
Speaker 1: me saying right like yeah yeah good good h