Podcast Audio Episodes

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 pa...

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 diff...

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 playe...

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 ...

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 b...

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 g...

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...

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 upcom...

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 su...

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 b...

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 fir...

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 (...

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 o...

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 ...

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 v...

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 Branc...

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...

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 tra...

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...

Send us a text Just like the MLB season, we made it through this our last episode of Season 1. We talk a bit about the excellent Dodgers-Rays World Series and reminisce over the short 60 game season. If you have an idea for ...

Send us a text There was even a movie about it - Mr. 3000 with Bernie Mac. Yes he actually swung a bat. 3,000 career base hits has been am almost guaranteed ticket to Cooperstown. The only players that have 3,000 hits and...

Send us a text Future Hall of Famers as you'd expect are not normally traded at the height of their careers. But it does happen for a variety of reasons. Being a future HOF'er, being traded and then winning a World Series w...

Send us a text We talked about the National League teams best player ever in the franchise in Ep. 20. Since franchises can move around there are questions about teams like the A's (Philly, KC, and Oakland) and the 'new' Wash...

Send us a text Having the designation of being a MLB 'best player in the history of the franchise' is both a fun and dicey topic. Some of them are true no-brainers but others are not as crystal clear. Franchise length has som...