All About Baseball with Byron Copley

A listener posed a question to me: "Is there a correlation between competitive baseball and competitive match play golf?" It inspired me to propose alternate method of scoring baseball games that could apply especially well to youth baseball. In the light of the radical rule changes that Major League Baseball has instituted in the last several years in the interest of accelerating the pace of play, my suggestion, in my opinion, isn't all that revolutionary. Listen and see if you agree.

Music: "Field Grass" Sergei Pavkin

email: [email protected]

A childhood neighbor relates an experience of fielding a ground ball off the bat of Ron LeFlore, whose rise from the Jackson State Prison in Jackson, MI, to major-league all-star is well-known and -chronicled. This story, until now, was known by only a handful of witnesses and those who heard it first-hand, as I did.

Music: "Field Grass" Sergei Pavkov

email: [email protected]

The importance of base running is undervalued. This podcast seeks to illustrate the value of base running and the consequences of making mistakes on the base paths, which, in virtually every instance, are avoidable when the key ingredients of aggression, awareness, focus, and hustle are applied.

Music: "Field Grass" by Sergei Pavkin

email: [email protected]

Baseball is unique in that the smallest margins of error can determine which team wins or loses games or even World Series championships. In this podcast, I dissect two memorable and minute events that affected the outcome of the 1962 and the 1968 World Series. Get ready to examine them through the lens of a microscope -- millimeter by millimeter.

Music: "Field Grass" Sergei Pavkin

email: [email protected]

The Physics and Timing of the Outfield Bounce Throw: https://tht.fangraphs.com/the-physics-and-timing-of-the-outfield-bounce-throw/

Tiny Margins and the Math and Science of Baseball: https://www.talknats.com/2016/08/24/tiny-margins/

This podcast examines in detail the events and circumstances of bottom of the sixth inning of the 2001 Little League World Series Championship Game between Apopka, Florida and Tokyo, Japan. I watched this game live, and I relate, here and now, my observations at the time as a way to offer an alternative approach to the strategies and tactics applied by both coaches, that possibly may have changed the outcome of what turned out to be a narrow 2-1 Tokyo, Japan victory. What I did not question, but rather celebrated, was the way that the boys from both teams comported themselves after that tense contest.

email: [email protected]

2001 LLWS You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkpt8RKdZh8

I was an assistant coach on a travel team in Southeast Michigan from 1999 to 2003, and one of our main priorities was to protect the arms of our young pitchers -- with large measures of communication, conditioning, and common sense. This podcast goes into some detail about our approach to preventing even sore arms, and there's nothing complex about it. We considered as one of our most important accomplishments over those four years to be that every single pitcher under our supervision and tutelage remained healthy and avoided even minor arm injury. However, in 2002, I was involved in a circumstance of my own creation that may have contributed to the well-being of an opposing pitcher's arm -- a circumstance that I wish I could take back, even though all I did was talk to the home plate umpire.

Music: "Field Grass" Sergei Pavkin

email: [email protected]

Youth Baseball Pitching Study: https://www.littleleague.org/partnerships/pitch-smart/overuse-primary-cause-arm-injuries/

Young Arms and Curveballs: https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/2012/03/young-arms-and-curveballs-the-real-story-behind-it-all/

In this podcast, I make an appeal for those who sit in the first row of a ballpark to let the ball come to them. There have been several famous and countless not-so-famous incidents of spectator interference that have possibly affected the outcomes of entire post seasons. I mention both and also make some recommendations that may or may not be acceptable to you listeners -- I look forward to your input and feedback -- that would minimize the opportunities for fans to inject them selves where they don't belong: on the field of play.

email: [email protected]

Music: "Field Grass" by Sergei Pavkin

A text with a friend who is a fan of the San Francisco Giants inspired this podcast that talks about John McGraw's style of baseball, which has gone the way of the maskless football helmet, the demotion to Triple A of the National League's 2023 save leader, 27-year-old Camlio Doval, and a comparison of Doval's 2023 season to the 1973 season of reliever John Hiller, the life-long Detroit Tiger, whose life was nearly drastically shortened by a heart attack in 1971.

He was 27 years old at the time.

This podcast delves deeply into numbers, splits, and some sabrmetrics -- to illustrate the difference between what it took to earn a save in the two eras (pun) which are 50 years apart.

Camlio Doval 2023 Game Log

John Hiller 1973 Game Log

This listener-requested topic spawned a podcast that burrows into several different rabbit holes, from how to grip the bat correctly to a discussion on the revenue-generating power of the batting-glove industry, to a Monet painting that was on display in The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts in Little Rock, Arkansas. This journey into the logic -- and illogic -- of the grip that the batting-glove marketplace has on the hearts and minds of virtually every ballplayer from Little League to MLB is just a slice of the story you are about to hear.

MLB Team By Revenue 2024, Statista

Baseball Gloves Market, Factmr.com

Music: "Field Grass" Sergei Pavkin

In the brief three-month summer window of June-July-August, from 1964 to 1967, we packed in countless hours of playing baseball on the neighborhood vacant lot just down the street. The value -- and the values -- we took away from that all-too-brief experience still resonate with me, and I hope with the kids who came from all around to play the only game we really loved, because baseball was in our DNA -- we were hard-wired to play it. We learned to compete fiercely and fairly, and we honed our baseball skills with endless repetition. Progress, in the form of two symmetrical ranch homes with attached garages, supplanted our field before we were ready to surrender it before the summer of 1968.

NOTE: I updated this podcast because I wanted to add content that was not included in the initial version. For those of you who have already listened to this podcast, I encourage you to listen to this more detailed, comprehensive update.

email: [email protected]

Music: "Field Grass" by Sergei Pavkin