Just me and my destiny, and it shows all over me.

Said it was so great that I know I would fly.

Just me and my destiny, and it goes all over me.

Said it was so great.

Good morning, and welcome to Episode 528 of Effectively Wild, the Daily Podcast from

Baseball Prospectus, presented by the BaseballReference.com Playindex.

I am Ben Lindbergh, of Grantland.com.

joined as always by Say Miller of Baseball Prospectus.

Today we have a guest who is the author of one of the most interesting books I read in 2013,

the sports gene. He is a former senior writer at Sports Illustrated, a current

pro-publica reporter, and his name is David Epstein.

Hello, David. Hey, thanks for having me.

Sure, thanks for being on, and we want to talk about a few topics.

It's sort of a wide-ranging book that explores the intersection between nature and nurture,

and genetics, and why certain people are good at certain sports, and there are a few

topics that come up on this podcast pretty often, or on the baseball internet generally,

that are related to that, so I wanted to have you on to ask about a few of them.

So the first one, the issue of women in baseball, specifically women playing baseball,

has come up lately in the wake of the the Monet Davis performance in the Little League World Series,

and some things that have been written.

Of course, there has been this unofficial or technical ban on women playing organized baseball,

or professional baseball since the 50s, which is probably not actually enforceable,

...