Effectively Wild Episode 2383: How to Call a Collapse
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley
4.7 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 4 October 2025
⏱️ 110 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary

Ben Lindbergh brings on Michael Baumann, who immediately makes Ben regret it by subjecting him to a lyrical ode to Effectively Wild inspired by the Taylor Swift song “Wood.” Then they play “College Baseball Player or Make and Model of Car?” before recapping the three decisive Game 3s of the wild card round (with an emphasis on the absurdity of the Guardians’ immediate elimination after their historic AL Central comeback, a bad call on Xander Bogaerts, the heroics of Cam Schlittler and Ryan McMahon, and converting from Red Sox fandom to Yankees fandom) and ranking the four division series matchups. Then (1:15:44) Ben talks to Tigers TV broadcaster Jason Benetti about calling the team’s 2024 comeback and 2025 collapse, how to process their reprieve from elimination after a historic blown lead, players to pay attention to in the ALDS, and naturally, John Brebbia.
Audio intro: Benny and a Million Shetland Ponies, “Effectively Wild Theme (Horny)”
Audio interstitial: Philip Bergman, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Guy Russo, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Link to “Wood” lyrics
Link to reliever familiarity effect
Link to call on Bogaerts
Link to Padres postgame video
Link to Padres frustration
Link to ump scoreboard
Link to Schlittler fun facts
Link to Schlittler pitches piece
Link to Jeter catch
Link to McMahon catch
Link to Schlittler’s mom’s account 1
Link to Schlittler’s mom’s account 2
Link to article about Schlittler’s family
Link to Ben on first-year pitchers
Link to Ben on the Brewers and Jays
Link to 2024 Benetti appearance
Link to Brebbia EW episode
Link to Benetti’s podcast
Link to Cal award
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Well, it's moments like these that make you ask, how can you not be horny about baseball? |
| 0:07.0 | Every take hot and hotter, entwining and a budding, watch them climb a mountain |
| 0:13.0 | nothing's about nothing, every stitch wet with sweat, breaking balls back, darn me on effectively |
| 0:20.0 | while but can you not be horny? |
| 0:24.2 | When it comes to podcasts, how can you not be horny? |
| 0:30.5 | Hello and welcome to episode 2383 of Effectively Wild, |
| 0:36.0 | a baseball podcast from Fancrafts presented by our Patreon supporters. |
| 0:40.7 | I'm Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined now not by Meg Rally of Fangraphs, who is on the mend, |
| 0:47.4 | but not yet men did. |
| 0:49.3 | And filling in for her in multiple professional capacities this week, including on this episode of Effectably |
| 0:55.3 | Wild, it's Michael Bammon of Fancraft's Hello, Michael. Yeah, I've been spending this week |
| 1:00.3 | being the emergency backup goalie from an editorial standpoint, because Meg has been sick, |
| 1:06.1 | and Matt has been, he's spent all week on a train back and forth to Yankee Stadium. |
| 1:11.3 | Man, that's a lot of power to hand to you, the keys to WordPress. |
| 1:15.7 | The first thing I told Matt was I was drunk with power. |
| 1:18.7 | Yeah. |
| 1:20.2 | They don't give me that kind of edit access at Fangraphs. |
| 1:23.0 | I can edit my own podcast posts, and that's it. |
| 1:26.1 | They don't trust me with editing anyone else's, |
| 1:28.0 | nor should they. I'm not actually on the Fangraph staff. You are, but still, that is a lot of |
| 1:33.6 | responsibility, a lot of harm you could do. It was very much like the first episode, or first |
| 1:38.8 | season episode of Star Trek the Next Generation, where Captain McCart and Commander Riker get |
... |
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