All About Baseball with Byron Copley

From 1871 to 1928, no Major League Baseball team featured numbers on the backs of their jerseys. This episode of All About Baseball discusses the origin of numbered jerseys and their impact on those who played and watched Major League Baseball. Originally, numbers were instituted as a means of identifying players. No one saw the reverberation of what numbered jerseys became in the decades to follow — a means to identify and associate ourselves with legends.

Not to mention superstition — and a numerically based decision that I made as a high-school senior Varsity baseball player that reverberates to this moment.

This episode is dedicated to Steve, my high-school baseball teammate.

A home run in the 2026 ALCS by Tampa Bay Rays’ third baseman Junior Caminero spurned this episode. It prompted me to comment on the out-of-proportion manner in which many current MLB players “celebrate” home runs, triples, doubles, and even singles. I think that this lack of circumspection seeped into MLB “culture” around 20 years ago, when MLB players began to express “childish” rather than “child-like” behavior, to the detriment Major League Baseball. Before then, players who hit home runs usually got around the bases in quick order — even in the post season. Now, each home run is a festive occasion that diminishes the actual reason for celebrating in the first place.

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“Field Grass,” by Sergei Pavkin

This episode of All About Baseball exists because I met a man named Ed in an Italian restaurant.

Ed soon introduced me to Tim Manners, who, in collaboration with Hall of Fame pitcher Waite Hoyt, authored Hoyt’s memoir in 2024 — 40 years after Hoyt died in 1984. That is just the beginning of this captivating story, told by Tim in this interview.

Schoolboy: The Untold Journey of a Yankees Hero is a must read — told with stunning candor and detail in the very words of Waite Hoyt, assembled and organized expertly by Tim Manners. Hoyt, who was a long-time teammate of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, reveals himself as a man who asked many questions, applied many talents, possessed many vulnerabilities, suffered many disappointments, and yet who ultimately found the peace and prosperity that so many pursue and that so few achieve.

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Music: “Field Grass,” by Sergei Pavkin

Detroit Tigers’ manager Mayo Smith moved Gold Glove center fielder Mickey Stanley to shortstop in the 1968 World Series, with only 68 innings at the position under his belt. Many sports writers, baseball people, and even members of the Tigers’ team initially questioned the move. This episode of All About Baseball presents the case that Smith’s choice to insert Stanley at shortstop was a main reason why the Tigers won the World Series that season.

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Music: “Field Grass,” by Sergei Pavkin

Mickey Stanley’s triple, Game 4, 1968 World Series

On March 18, 2024, Nick Goerg (George) launched a website and app called RateGame, which has helped thousands of sports fans share their personal experiences about specific games — including Major League Baseball — in a way that preserves the wonder and the joy being a sports fan that originated from our childhood. Ironically, a significant personal setback inspired Nick to create RateGame so that other people like himself could avoid a similar — or worse experience. Nick explains it all in this unique episode of All About Baseball.

Link to RateGame Website: https://rategame.io/games

Contact Nick Goerg at [email protected]

Music: “Field Grass,” by Sergei Pavkin

Dale Alexander played Major League Baseball for the Detroit Tigers and the Boston Red Sox from 1929 to 1933. He achieved a lifetime batting average of .331, with 2,450 plate appearances.

Throughout his career, Alexander exhibited humility and gratitude — even when he was summarily benched in April, 1932 by Tigers’ manager Bucky Harris and then traded to the Boston Red Sox in June of the same year. What happened next gave Alexander every reason to remind Harris what a substantial mistake that turned out to be.

In his 18 years of playing professional baseball, from 1924 to 1942, Alexander hit under .300 in only two seasons, including his final season in 1942, when he only made 19 plate appearances. Alexander is one of thousands of MLB players whose careers began and ended, in the words of Ernest Hemmingway, in reference to the sunrise, “gradually then suddenly.” In my opinion, Alexander’s MLB career ended too “suddenly.”

Currently, the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) limits, as an example, a 34-inch bat’s minimum weight to 31 ounces. It’s called a “Drop 3” bat because the weight in ounces is three “units” less than the length of the bat (34 inches; 31 ounces.)

Beginning in the spring of 2028, high-school baseball players across the nation will be able to use lighter bats, and the minimum weight allowance for a 34-inch bat will be 28 ounces, or a “Drop 6” bat. “Drop 4” and “Drop 5 “bats will also be legal in 2028.

To Samuel Skinner, Head Varsity Baseball Coach at South Mecklenburg in Charlotte, North Carolina, these are significant — and unexpected — changes in bat specifications. In this episode of All About Baseball, Skinner offers his pros and cons of the relaxed weight restrictions, and offers his bottom-line reason as to why they were implemented.

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Music: “Field Grass,” by Sergei Pavkin

George ” Sparky” Anderson managed the Cincinnati Reds (1970-1978) and the Detroit Tigers (1979-1996) his way. Though Sparky was not a fan of the math- and probability-driven savants that introduced new metrics and measures of a team’s and ballplayer’s performance, his approach to on-field strategy aligns quite neatly to the principles that men like Bill James and his successors established in the late 1970s and beyond. This episode demonstrates how Sparky managed in a manner that many advocates of advanced statistics would approve, but also how and why he managed from the heart as well.

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Music: “Field Grass,” by Sergei Pavkin

Call this episode the “sequel” to “Swings and Misses,” which posted on August 20, 2026. After an innocent post on X, in which I merely noted that Pete Crow-Armstrong had 151 strikeouts (currently 161) to go with his 30 home runs, the response to that accurate statistic was less-than-charitable. It gave me reason to investigate the hypothetical: what if Crow-Armstrong and other hitters who generate runs well above league average worked to reduce their strikeouts? I was surprised by those findings, and, consequently, remain baffled as to why many think Crow-Armstrong’s 26.7% strikeout percentage is acceptable, when sluggers of past eras struck out far less than they do today.

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Music: “Field Grass,” by Sergei Pavkin

That’s the question that this podcast answers. Virtually non-existent before the MLB baseball strike of 1994, the walk-up song was ubiquitous by the end of the 1990s. Yet, its origins can be traced to the woman who accepted the job as the organist for the Chicago White Sox in 1970. Listen in as we explore the evolution of the walk-up song from a happy accident to part of the design of an MLB game experience.

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Music: “Field Grass,” by Sergei Pavkin