So trees will bend, and some will fall, but then again, so will us all.

Let's turn our prayers to our richest theirs, and mark our pitch in the future age.

Good morning and welcome to episode 998 of Effectively Wild.

The daily podcast from baseball perspectives brought to you by the play index and baseball reference

and our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN along with Ben Lindbergh, of the ringer. Hi Ben.

Hello. We moved our router. You know, we moved from our house and then we moved back to our house.

We moved our router. And so tonight I was planning to record in the Honda Fit, and I went over, sat down, logged on to the Skype, and it said no internet connection.

Things changed. How fitting.

Because the fit. Yeah, I wasn't even thinking about that. Also fitting because we have an announcement to make, and it's an announcement that I think a lot of you have maybe expected to hear and hoped not to hear after each of our many job changes and were up to four combined job changes since the start of this podcast.

And somehow we have managed to keep podcasting together all this time despite a couple of close calls, but I am sorry to say that our luck has run out in that respect. Yeah.

We're not going to podcast together anymore. No, that's your last week as the co-host of Effectively Wild after four and a half years and what will have been a thousand episodes or even more if you count the one we recorded from the future.

Oh, that's true. One thousand and one. Yeah. You did go on vacation a few times. But, but yes, close enough. But Ben, it's not all that bad, is it?

Well, I'm going to miss you and everyone's going to miss you. And yes, in a minute I will have additional news about the podcast future, which I hope will be bright, but we can take a moment to celebrate your contribution, I think, to this podcast, which would not have existed at least in this form without you.

And I don't know about you, but this podcast has been, I think, the maybe the most consistently rewarding part of my professional life over the past four and a half years.

And I've worked at a bunch of really good places with a bunch of great people and had a lot of really great opportunities. But this podcast, I don't know whether it is something that is true of all podcasts or whether this one is unusual or whether it's just a product of the fact that we have done so many years ago.

We have done so many episodes and we kind of became a part of people's routines and help them go to sleep at night or wake up in the morning or wherever it fit into their busy lives. But the reader interaction and listener interaction and feedback that has been a constant part of this podcast has been great.

And I guess that is the best thing about kind of living your your life on the internet and maybe also the worst thing sometimes depending on what you write, but for us, it has been great.

And I'm very grateful for all the things that this podcast has led to. I mean, we wrote a book together. We ran a baseball team for a summer. None of that would have happened without this podcast and all the people that we have met and be friended and gotten to know, whether it's actual in person.

We didn't know or internet know because of this podcast. I never would have anticipated all of that. So I'm really glad that we had as much time as we did.

Yeah, me too. The first few hundred episodes. It was when it was truly daily when it was sincerely daily to the point that various famous dead people's birthdays weren't even acknowledged because Ben was so intent on it being daily.

I never, you know, I never did understand why it was so important to you that we never miss a day. And in the same way, I mean, to some degree, in the same way as an editor, you were always intent on there being, you know, 11 pieces up every day. And I always used to wonder also this is sort of this. I think this was the same part of your character, your personality, but never understood why.

I would submit like if I was supposed to write Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and I'd finish something early, I'd turn it into you on, like, say Monday and be like, here, this is for Wednesday and 10 minutes later, it'd be up.

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