Podcast Audio Episodes

Send us a text In MLB today scheduled doubleheaders are almost extinct. Rainouts and Covid-19 protocols have caused there to be a few more DH's than in a normal year. 7-inning DH's are, well just weird but might be here to stay. We're ok with that for the most part but not if there are two separate admissions at full price! Two for the price of one does not work well for team owners in today's baseball economics. Players are probably ok with it since they get paid the full amount even if only 77...

Send us a text Official scoring in baseball is very different than it is for all the other professional sports. Part of it is due its own history. It was not all that long ago that baseball reporters doubled as official scorers. The box score 'invented' by Henry Chadwick in 1859 is still in use today! But official scoring has been the bastion for males almost universally except for just a small amount of females. Starting with E. (Eliza) Green (could not use her name in 1882), and including Susa...

Send us a text Aren't we already tired of hearing about the doctoring & defacing of baseballs? @MLB has decided to do something about it mid-season. It's always been illegal to use sticky stuff or anything on the baseball. Now the rule is going to be enforced. We just had to talk about it! Thanks for listening and if you have a suggestion for an episode please drop us a line via email at Almostcooperstown@gmail.com. You can also follow us on Twitter @almostcoop or visit the Almost Cooperstown F...

Send us a text Most fans would argue that their favorite team had a period of time in which they were a very good team, maybe won a WS, but fell short of winning more than once. Yet there are also teams that over-performed expectations to win it all more than once over a relatively short period of time. Are the 2016-2021 Dodgers overrated? They are the current WS champions and might have actually won another WS (if you ask Dodger fans), but should they have won another already? Thanks for list...

Send us a text What makes a player a good baserunner? Speed helps for sure but there have been many adept, even good baserunners who have lacked foot speed. Picking up the ball, knowing the field, taking longer leads and reading the move home of the pitcher are all important if not underused skills. The shift to power and home runs over the past 30+ years has robbed the game of exciting plays like scoring from first on a double, or just a good old fashioned triple! We talk about the good baseru...

Send us a text Partly because baseball has been around the longest, there have been more MLB players who played other professional sports than pro athletes from other sports playing MLB baseball. Baseball players were not paid much in the early part of the 20th century and being paid for two sports beat out having a regular job! We talk about what we call the big 4 - all NFL/MLB players as well as some notable names from sports like basketball, hockey and golf who were also major leaguers! Tha...

Send us a text Do you know the 10 oldest ballparks currently in use in MLB? Sure you'd expect Fenway & Wrigley but some of the other names might surprise even the most knowledgable fans. How about groundskeeping and the differences between baseball parks? Baseball is really the only major sport in which the playing field differs depending on the park in which you're playing. What's going on with the future of the Oakland A's? We talk about all this and more in this episode. Thanks for listening...

Send us a text Ichiro Suzuki has the all-time #MLB record for hits in one season with 262. He broke George Sisler's 84 year-old record of 257 in 2004. Since then there have been a number of 200-hit seasons recorded by players but the number is decreasing. And we talk about why that is the case. Thanks for listening and if you have a suggestion for an episode please drop us a line via email at Almostcooperstown@gmail.com. You can also follow us on Twitter @almostcoop or visit the Almost Cooperst...

Send us a text Good teams always seem to have a guy or two who's a versatile utility player. This helps keep the roster efficient since a good utility player can cover a variety of field positions. We discuss that being a versatile player is a good thing but overall a utility player is most often not quite god enough to have an every day place in the lineup. Have there ever been any utility players elected to the Hall-of-Fame in Cooperstown? We answer that question and more in this episode! Tha...

Send us a text Bench-clearings still happen fairly often in #MLB. Actual bench-clearing brawls are less common due to the players being suspended, losing pay, and generally hurting the team. But in the heat of the moment a batter can snap when a high hard one goes right at his head or upper body. Fortunately baseball brawls don't end up having players injured such that they can't play but even that has happened. We talk about which current MLB teams might be poised for a fight in this quick and ...

Send us a text Do you recognize the photo of the AL Rookie-of-the-Year from 2004? Jackie Robinson won the very first Rookie-of-the-Year (for both leagues) in 1947. Since then one team has dominated ROY selections. Can you guess which team it is? We talk about the Hall-of-Fame Rookies of the Year as well as a few winners whose ROY winning statistics are less than impressive. Thanks for listening and if you have a suggestion for an episode please drop us a line via email at Almostcooperstown@gmail...

Send us a text Before our podcast started, we like so many others, sat around and talked about baseball. What recently got us going was the idea that Ty Cobb's .366 career batting average back before and after the 'Dead-ball' era was fattened up by facing tired pitchers in innings 7/8/9. Pitchers today rarely throw complete games and today hitters have to face a bevy of hard throwing late-inning relievers who have nasty stuff. How did Cobb perform in the first six innings vs. the last three? Ho...

Send us a text Thanks to Mark Rickard for the show concept! With some sense of certainty this will be the last year in MLB in which there will not be a DH in the National League. This will be negotiated as part of the upcoming Collective Bargaining Agreement between the Player's Association and MLB in what promises to be an acrimonious negotiation. No pitcher has finished the season with a .300 average since 2008 when Micah Owings hit .304. In general MLB pitchers are lousy hitters and getting ...

Send us a text It's a new season already and the start of a 2nd season from Almost Cooperstown! Only 10 months after the delayed start of the 2020 MLB season, here comes the 2021 season. A planned 162-game season that is sure to test the pitching staffs across both leagues. 7 inning double-headers are back as are some of the new rules introduced in 2020. We talk about the rule changes from last year and how they worked out, some new ones that are being experimented with at the minor league level...

Send us a text Pitchers don't often get hit by line drives and get it to the skull even less frequently. But it does happen, as much as 2 - 3 times per season. We note a number of well known current MLB pitchers that have been the victim of a shot to the head. Currently there are no MLB pitchers wearing protective headgear on the mound. There are a number of reasons for that and we discuss all that and more with former major league pitcher Willie Blair who was felled by a line drive off the bat ...

Send us a text Remember there used to be a MLB statistic for GWRBI - Game Winning RBI's? The one that gives your team a lead it never relinquishes. Because players could get the GWRBI conceivably (and in reality) in the first inning @MLB junked it after 1988 which was about 8 years too long. One of our 'Almost' guys Keith Hernandez has been in no way helped by the stat that he has the all time record for GWRBIs. Because and rightly so, it's a dumb stat! Are pitcher starts as important as they u...

Send us a text Here at Almost Cooperstown we believe there's room for more at the Inn. We're not talking about boxing BTW! When it comes to Gold Gloves (only awarded since 1957), a player who is a borderline Hall of Famer (an 'Almost' guy we like to say), can be pushed over the top by superior fielding and a collection of Gold Gloves. There have been 8 players to win GG's in both leagues which is kind of hard to do since often the incumbent would need to be unseated. In the past Gold Gloves seem...

Send us a text The 2020 World Series ended up being a very exciting and interesting one. Seven game series have a way of being just that much more memorable. An anti-climatic game 7 can take away from the overall greatness of a World Series. We start with the 1960 World Series which was one of the greats and highlight the best 7 game World Series of the past 60 years. Thanks to Bruce McClure who points out that reason Mazeroski did not win the '60 series MVP with his walk-off HR, was that the r...

Send us a text Every second people use expressions borne out of baseball lingo and lore. We know there are Yogi Berra-isms and Dizzy Dean's oddball expressions, but what about normal everyday conversational responses? There are many of them that are used everyday and a surprising amount of food/dining references. America's Pastime does intersect baseball with eating! We can't wait to have peanuts and hotdogs at a real MLB game! Thanks for listening and if you have a suggestion for an episode pl...

Send us a text No we don't actually HAVE a vote but if we did... On January 26 the votes for the 2021 Hall of Fame will be announced. Hopefully the ceremony in Cooperstown, NY will take place this summer. Actual voters can vote for up to 10 players that have played 10 years in MLB and appear for the first time or remain on the ballot for a total of 10 years. If a player does not receive 5% of all votes cast he drops off the ballot for the following year. At that point it's up to various committ...

Send us a text As fans know, there was no Minor League (or college) baseball this past season. To make things more challenging MLB has made the biggest changes in MiLB in nearly 60 years. The farm systems developed by Branch Rickey in the 1930's are nearly unrecognizable today. There are many notable Minor League Baseball players like Michael Jordan and Tim Tebow (who will try again this season to be a NY Met). What kind of future does Minor League baseball have in the U.S.? Should MLB consider...

Send us a text The last teams to come into MLB are now 23 seasons old (1998 the Rays and D'Backs). For 60 years there were only 16 teams in MLB. After the Dodgers and Giants moved in 1958, expansion really began to take off in 1961 with the Los Angeles Angels and another incarnation of the Washington Senators when the previous Senators team moved to Minnesota to become the Twins. With franchise valuations continuing to increase it's highly likely that baseball will further expand both domestica...

Send us a text In the pre-1900's days of professional baseball teams did not travel all that far to play games which often were played on Sunday afternoon. By 1901 with the birth of the American League, teams traveled by train and even by boat. No other sport to this day has scheduled road trips like baseball. With a 162 game schedule, players still leave home and go on the road for as long as 2 weeks. Sportswriters no longer get to travel on the team plane as they once did on the trains that wo...

Send us a text A baseball game can be started with a few players, ball and a bat. Organized baseball started in the 1850s and there were no baseball gloves. We don't talk much about gloves and catcher's equipment but we do talk about how far technology in baseball has come and how it impacts the game. Technology is not always about gadgets. Think of 'Tommy John' surgery and how that procedure has impacted and will continue to impact the game. How about robot umpires? The article Gordon mention...