Hello and

Effectively Wild

Hello and welcome to episode 2493 of Effectively Wild, a Baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, not joined this time by Meg Rally of Fangraphs, who is day-to-day with a wisdom tooth extraction, and so I've got two great guests for you.

Later on the episode, I will be joined by Thomas W. Gilbert. He is the author of an excellent baseball book called Death in the Strike Zone, the Mystery of America's First Baseball Hero. It came out right around opening day. I just got around to reading it. I highly recommend it. Thomas is the author of How Baseball Happened, a history of the origins of the sport that came out in

2020, won the Casey Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year. Death in the Strike Zone, I'm sure, will be a contender. It is the first biography of James Creighton, who more or less invented pitching, as we know it today. And by extension, gave rise to the sport as we know it today. For better or worse, maybe a bit of both. Craton predated professional baseball, died very young after revolutionizing the

sport, as we know it today. For better or worse, maybe a bit of both. Creighton predated professional baseball, died very young after revolutionizing the sport, and so he has been shrouded in mystery ever since, and Gilbert has solved a lot of those mysteries. If you enjoyed my Ella Black docu series from last year, which was my 19th century baseball history investigation, you'll like this book. You'll like this book regardless.

So stick around to hear Tom talk about it. But before we do our baseball book club segment,

we will be devoting most of this episode to a conversation with a cherished coworker of mine and one of my favorite podcast people period, Van Lathen. You may know Van from one of his many shows.

He's a big baseball fan. We've been planning to pot about it for a while. So we're going to talk about his baseball background, how he got back into baseball, how he feels about the evolution of the sport. I will help school him on some stat stuff. We will talk about black players in Major League Baseball or the lack thereof. Some cross-sport comparisons. fans read on how baseball's labor battle is perceived,

and much, much more. I could talk to Ben about anything, I could listen to Van talk about anything,

hopefully the same will be true for you. One warning, we tend to work blue at the ringer.

We don't do bleeps, and so Van was podcasting by ringer rules here. And Van is an artist with a

swear word, so you will get the

unvarnished van in this segment. Be warned. If you're concerned about your kids' tender ears,

your tender ears, anyone's tender ears. Blanket language warning here. I'm not sure anyone would

want to hear the number of bleeps that producer Shane would have to add otherwise. But you will

want to hear vans every word, profane or otherwise. So let's get to talking. All right, it's time for an incredible crossover event. As seen and heard on CNN, the ringer verse, higher learning, ringer tailgate, raise the roof, and beyond. It's a baseball fan and a baseball van.

Van Lathen.

Hi, Van.

What's going on?

Okay.

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