Casual Diehard

EDITOR’S NOTE: This post was sent without this video, which Andrew and Roger asked me to include, but which I forgot to do because… I don’t really know, I don’t have a good reason other than a bad brain. —JS

Congratulations to the winner of our men’s bracket challenge, munkyjk_09, who had a Final Four of Baylor, Tennesse, Texas, and UConn — only the last of which even made it to the final weekend of the tournament. What glorious chaos.

On the women’s side, Stuart Kliternick holds the lead right now, with South Carolina as predicted champion, while Andrew Mitchel has Ohio State going all the way. Should be some really excellent basketball still to be played there.

Use promo code WCPIO for 10% off anything in our shop, including our new line at alabamatrucknuts.com. It’s very difficult to come up with a tagline for alabamatrucknuts.com because it’s alabamatrucknuts.com, which is already quite intriguing, so we’ll just say alabamatrucknuts.com again — that’s alabamatrucknuts.com

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This episode of Willets Pen is brought to you by alabamatrucknuts.com. It’s very difficult to come up with a tagline for alabamatrucknuts.com because it’s alabamatrucknuts.com, which is already quite intriguing, so we’ll just say alabamatrucknuts.com again — that’s alabamatrucknuts.com.

One note on this show — an actual show note — is that we were wrong about Bill Veeck, who did not own the Cubs. Bill Veeck Sr. was president of the Cubs when the Veeck of Veeck as in Wreck was young, and returned to Cubs fandom after selling the White Sox… in part because Major League Baseball rejected the man who was Veeck’s first choice to own the White Sox when he sold the club to Jerry Reinsdorf in 1980.

That was Eddie DeBartolo Jr., best known these days as the former owner of the 49ers until getting caught up in a classic scandal over a Louisiana riverboat gambling license and $400,000 in dirty money, which cost him the team, and brought him back into the spotlight in 2020 when he got a pardon from Donald Trump.

Jerry Reinsdorf was the second choice in the White Sox sale, and if it hadn’t been him, the next bid was Charles Dolan, uncle of now-Guardians owner Paul Dolan, failed bidder for the Red Sox in 2002 to John Henry, and father of… still another Dolan.

We’re going to need to have a Britt episode where we ponder the DeBartolo-owned White Sox, and how they might not have avoided being an embarrassing trash fire of an organization, but they probably would’ve been a different and more fun embarrassing trash fire of an organization. That’s the Chicago way.

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There’s a lot of reasons to be feeling, hmmm… if a picture’s worth a thousand words, then who knows what a video is ...a lot of reasons to be down, including the garbage world of hockey.

But this is a place for joy, not for shredding Marc Staal (his dipshit bigot-using-religion-for-cover brother Eric, too, but especially Marc because of all the years he spent in New York, including when I (hi, it’s Jesse if you’re new here — Andrew and Roger have nothing to do with these “show notes”) covered the Rangers for the Daily News.

So, we’ll put that aside and dive into a question raised by Ryan Lambert and Sean McIndoe on the latest Puck Soup.

In December of 2016, the Blues fired Mike Keenan, and replaced him with Joel Quenneville. In between, interim coach Jimmy Roberts got nine games behind St. Louis’ bench, going 3-3-3.

Between them, Keenan (672) and Quenneville (969) have won 1,641 games as NHL coaches. So, does Roberts hold the very niche record of Interim Coach Between The Pair Of Coaches With the Most Wins?

This isn’t super hard to figure out. Quenneville is second on the NHL’s all-time wins list, behind only Scotty Bowman. Keenan is 15th. You might figure this out a different way, and that’s cool, but here’s my process: go through the top coaches until you reach a place where you can’t get a combo adding up to more than 1,641, and Roberts has the record — or someone else has a bigger number before you get to that point. For clarity’s sake, we’ll call an interim coach one who does not finish out the season.

Bowman himself was never replaced by, nor replaced, an interim coach as such. Bowman’s career reads funny because he coached the Sabres in 1979-80, then for 35 games in 1981-82, then for the next three full seasons, plus 37 games in 1985-86 and 12 more in 1986-87 — because Bowman was also GM in Buffalo and stepping behind the bench himself sometimes.

Quenneville got the ax in St. Louis in 2004, replaced by Mike Kitchen on a full-time basis, so no worries there. Same with Jeremy Colliton, while Andrew Brunette finished out last season in Florida before the Panthers turned to Paul Maurice.

Barry Trotz (914 wins): Never fired in-season.

Ken Hitchcock (849), Lindy Ruff (827): Part of in-season coaching changes, but never with a team that had a true interim in the mix.

Paul Maurice (811): The 2004 Hurricanes — hey, that’s shit-for-brains Eric Staal’s rookie year, and he was teammates with Ron Francis and Artūrs Irbe, which is excellent to keep in mind for your Six Degrees Of… hockey games! — went straight to Peter Laviolette, who has 751 career wins and counting, and with Maurice also being active, they’re at 1,562 wins and counting, which is… not a record for combined career wins by the coaches of one team in a single season, because you’ve not only got those 1,641 career wins for Keenan and Quenneville with the 1996-97 Blues, but also Roberts’ 50 (three with those Blues, 21 for the Bowman-run 1981-82 Sabres, and 26 in his one full season as coach, with the 1991-92 Hartford Whalers). Stay tuned?

Al Arbour (782): One of those wins was actually as an interim coach, when Arbour got what amounted to a testimonial match with the Islanders. He’s officially listed that season as the coach between Ted Nolan and Ted Nolan again.

And it wouldn’t matter if Al Arbour had coached between Al Arbour and Al Arbour, because 782+782=1,564, and that’s less than 1,641. No two coaches on this list can combine to get there, and while Darryl Sutter and John Tortorella (sort of, but congrats on win number 700, man, hope you’re real proud of Staalsie today, too) remain active with 700-plus wins, Roberts, who died in 2015, remains the voice between the two biggest voices, as far as NHL history is concerned.

It’s a garage league full of spineless dweebs, but the history is interesting.

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No extra sports nugget today! Sorry! But it’s because we recorded the next Willets Pod “Heavy” last night, with another one tonight, and there’s sports-adjacent content on not one, but two, of our Instagram reels. So, enjoy!

Oh, and, remember that the WCPIO discount code is good for 10% everything in our shop, including at alabamatrucknuts.com!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willetspen.substack.com

This might be the single best pitch ever thrown.

Like, not hyperbole. That might be the single best pitch ever thrown.

Since Shohei Ohtani is beyond describing with words, numbers, music, electromagnetic fields… let’s let baseball sit for a moment and focus on the home front.

The folks at Hell Gate have presented a field of 64 for NYC hot takes, and, yeah, okay… it’s good to have this forum because this could be an entire day’s worth of tweets.

So, I’m just gonna go through their bracket, give you the winners, and provide all the correct analysis along the way to find out the champion take. My analysis in bold, winners in italics.

BROOKLYN REGION

(1) The best pizza in NYC can be found at Domino’s. Domino’s is underrated, but no. vs. (16) No one should live remotely close to Newtown Creek or the Gowanus Canal. Probably, and Willets Pod just touched on this.

(8) Free concerts are a trap. You get what you pay for. vs. (9) Coney Island is a better beach than the Rockaways. If you’d said Brighton Beach, maybe. Coney Island is a lousy beach.

(5) There are too many bars in NYC. No, there are too many bars in close proximity to each other. vs. (12) Jazz in bars should be banned. This is ludicrous. Don’t go to jazz bars, then.

(4) Public urination should not be against the law. Correct, especially given the public bathroom situation in this town. vs. (13) Chinese food ranking: Sunset Park > College Point > Flushing > Chinatown. How are you even quantifying this? Remarkably stupid to even try wading into it. Go away.

(6) We should bring back speed dating. Okay? Isn’t that just what apps are now, basically? vs. (11) The City MUST subsidize beer at BRIC events (should cost no more than $5). Oh please.

(3) You should be able to park for free at metered spots on Saturdays, too, not just Sundays. If anything, you should have to pay on Sundays, too. vs. (14) To find the best Italian food, look for an elderly man whose political views are not for public consumption. This is a lazy take, but at least it’s not completely wrong.

(7) Prospect Park > Central Park. In some ways, at least, sure. vs. (10) Prospect Park is boring and I don’t want to go to your birthday picnic there. That’s a you problem.

(2) Rats are fine. They’re not, but this is a better take than its more obnoxious opponent. vs. (15) If well drinks cost more than $10 at a bar, vandalism should be legal there. Good lord, people, dive bar attendance is not a personality.

REGIONALS: (4) Legalize public urination > (8) Free concets are a trap; (7) Prospect Park > (14) Old racists know good food. Winner: (4) Public urination should not be against the law.

MANHATTAN REGION

(1) The Astor Place cube sucks. Yeah. vs. (16) East River park was falling apart and it’s fine to rebuild it. They should expand the park and close the FDR forever.

(8) The Oculus is actually pretty cool. But it still sucks. vs. (9) Cars should be banned below 96th Street. Cars should be banned on the entire island.

(5) The NYU student who hated studying abroad in Florence is right – studying abroad sucks. This is another you problem. vs. (12) The Empire State Building is ugly and the Chrysler Building should be more famous instead. The Empire State Building is maybe the most overrated place in the entire city.

(4) All Broadway musicals are terrible. Ludicrous blanket statement. vs. (13) Gramercy Park should be municipalized. And all of the key holders should be egged on opening day.

(6) The Elizabeth Street Garden should absolutely become housing. Eh… there are so few gardens, and turning that one into housing is not going to solve anything, really. vs. (11) It’s fine to wear open-toed shoes out and about. Grow up! Why are you looking at everyone’s feet, Quentin? Mind your business.

(3) The new white CitiBike e-bikes are too heavy and bumpy and bad. They look ridiculous, too. vs. (14) Tammany Hall was good. I’m gonna do the whole Matt Damon “do you like apples” scene if this becomes an actual topic.

(7) Everyone should shop at Whole Foods – it’s cheaper! This is just weird? vs. (10) We must drain and pave over the East River. Pave, no. Turn into a miles-long wildlife preserve? Let’s talk.

(2) The Vessel is actually cool/good/beautiful. No it ain’t. vs. (15) Food halls are overrated. It’s not exciting on I-95 and it’s not exciting in the city.

REGIONALS: (13) Municipalize Gramercy Park > (9) Ban cars below 96th Street; (3) Disappointing CitiBikes > (10) Drain and pave the East River. Winner: (13) Municipalize Gramercy Park.

QUEENS REGION

(1) George Santos rules. Way funnier than the last fascist we sent to Washington. vs. (16) Kiss > Ramones > Simon and Garfunkel. Put Simon and Garfunkel according to your taste, but the order is Ramones > Kiss, and that’s not up for debate.

(8) Clubs and dive bars should have a separate bathroom for people who want to do drugs. Suck it up. Or snort it up. Whatever. vs. (9) Breezy Point should be seized through eminent domain and turned into a public beach. Obviously.

(5) People who say there’s good BBQ in NYC are lying to themselves. It’s not as bad as people make it out to be, but it’s also not GOOD BBQ. vs. v(12) Either the Whitestone Bridge or the Throggs-Neck must be torn down – we can’t have both. Put trains on them.

(4) Street cleaning should always be just once a week. Duh. vs. (13) There are too many firehouses. What drugs were you doing in that bathroom?

(6) The NYC public school year should end in May, not the end of June. Then they’d start in August, which is worse. vs. (11) The subway should have a smoking car. Deranged, but in the new weed capital of the world…

(3) The Mets are not uniquely cursed. Oh baby, how much time do you got? vs. (14) Douglaston is on Long Island, not in Queens. You can’t just make shit up and call it a take.

(7) The Queens/Nassau border doesn’t exist. This is a way better version of the 14 seed, and spiritually accurate. vs. (10) People that throw bread for pigeons are assholes. Mind your business.

(2) Actually, the street numbers make sense, you just want an excuse not to go to Queens. It’s a little confusing in Astoria, for about 30 seconds. But keep not coming to Queens, you don’t deserve it. vs. (15) Sunnyside Spider-Man > Forest Hills Spider-Man. This isn’t even a hot take, it’s just true. Unfortunate matchup.

REGIONALS: (4) Die, alternate side parking! > (1) George Santos; (3) Mets > (7) Queens/Nassau border isn’t real. Winner: (3) The Mets are not uniquely cursed.

THE BRONX REGION

(1) Bill de Blasio is the best mayor NYC has ever had. LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. vs. (16) Riverdale is not in the Bronx. Spiritually, again, understandable, but stop arguing with maps.

(8) The New York City Council should be dissolved. I’d like to hear more? Useless organization for the most part. vs. (9) The ferries are the best way to get around the city. From a comfort standpoint, absolutely.

(5) The Yankees should allow facial hair, but only full handlebar mustaches and failing that their players must be completely hairless. Are we talking full body wax, too? vs. (12) City outdoor pools should be open year-round. In some form or another… yes.

(4) The city’s health rules for restaurants are too strict (and racist…….) The famously strict New York City restaurant health codes??? vs. (13) We should have corporal punishment for a select few absentee landlords, just to keep them all in line. Embrace having to live in the places they neglect as “corporal punishment,” and let’s roll.

(6) Showtime subway dancers deserve more love and respect. A lot of them suck. Standards have dropped. But they’re still out there putting on better shows than Jerry Seinfeld reading a list of complaints. vs. (11) Staten Island should be given independence (come what may). Here’s my hot take: Staten Island is actually good.

(3) We need to give firefighters more things to do. THEY. FIGHT. FIRES. vs. (14) Park conservancies should be abolished. NIMBYs dressed up as environmental advocates. 100% accurate take.

(7) Just make Marble Hill part of the Bronx, this is stupid. Unlike some of the others, this one is a good take. They changed the course of the Spuyten Duyvil Creek between the tip of Manhattan and the Bronx, and it left Marble Hill, once part of Manhattan Island, as part of the mainland. If you redraw the river, redraw the map. vs. (10) New York City should not have any zoos. Quite possibly the worst take on the list.

(2) Bagels have become too big. You’ve become too weak. vs. (15) All cars entering the city must have internal horns that are louder than their external horns. It’s really not the horns that are the problem, but love the idea.

REGIONALS: (5) Yankees must be either mustachioed or fully hairless > (9) Ferries; (7) Marble Hill should be part of the Bronx > (14) Abolish park conservancies. Winner: (7) Just make Marble Hill part of the Bronx, this is stupid.

CITY CHAMPIONSHIP

(13) Gramercy Park should be a public park > (3) The Mets are not uniquely cursed.

The nature of the Mets’ cursing may not be unique, but the way they go about living through it sure is. Way too many of these takes were simply awful, so here’s the First Four Out, as I see it anyway…

Brooklyn: (17) The Nathan’s on the Coney Island boardwalk is better than the main Nathan’s on Surf Avenue.

Manhattan: (17) They should’ve built that stadium at Hudson Yards even though NYC didn’t get the Olympics, at least everyone expects the Jets to suck.

Queens: (17) LaGuardia > JFK and it isn’t even really that close. MUCH LIKE KENNEDY AIRPORT.

Bronx: (17) Orchard Beach is the best beach in the city.

Staten Island (1): The Hudson-Bergen Light Rail should be extended over the Bayonne Bridge and to the St. George ferry terminal along Richmond Terrace.

But the champion of all NYC takes? Every road in the city with multiple lanes for automobile traffic should be reduced to one lane, with the rest of the space given to bikes, light rail, green space… anything but cars.

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It feels unfair that Roger Salkeld caught a stray at the end of Ohtani: The New Name For Sturgeon, yesterday’s Willets Pod episode with guest Jesse Black. It’s not Roger’s fault that he was born with the S***eld name. In fact, he’s got more claim to S***eld than Rick Springfield, whose name is actually Richard Lewis Springthorpe. What in the name of Hans Sprungfeld is that about, and then he has the nerve to scar an entire generation of Jesses by misspelling our names? Get bent, Dick Lewis Sprungfeld, and also Dick Lewis, dystopian nightmare villain of my childhood dreams thanks to his electronics store commercial.

They’ll come for you and that whistle, one day, too, P.C. Richard.

Where were we? Roger Salkeld. His grandfather, Bill Salkeld, also was a major leaguer, hitting 15 home runs as a 28-year-old rookie with the 1945 Pirates, then never reaching those same heights — he played for the Boston Braves in 1948 and 1949, and one game with the 1950 White Sox. The trade that sent Salkeld to Boston was the November 1947 deal that brought Danny Murtaugh to Pittsburgh.

Murtaugh paid instant dividends for the 1948 Pirates, taking the second base job and batting .290 with a career-high 71 RBIs and 10 steals (never mind that he was caught stealing 11 times and his .365 on-base percentage was accompanied by .356 slugging). Murtaugh finished ninth in that year’s MVP vote (won by Stan Musial), right between Ralph Kiner and Enos Slaughter ahead of him, and Stan Rojek and Richie Ashburn behind him.

Murtaugh played three more years in Pittsburgh, splitting time at second base with Monty Basgall, and then volunteered for a demotion to Double-A New Orleans, where he became player-manager in 1952 and started working his way back to Pittsburgh. Murtaugh got there as a coach a few years later, took over as manager in 1957, and won the World Series in 1960 and 1971.

All after being traded for a guy whose grandson who is mostly part of the answer to the trivia question: who were the six guys drafted before Frank Thomas in 1989? It’s Salkeld, who was third, along with Ben McDonald, Tyler Houston, Jeff Jackson, Donald Harris, and Paul Coleman.

More to come about The Big Hurt on an upcoming episode of Willets Pod, because we need to talk about this fit.

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This episode sets a Willets Pod record for Jesses, with two. Jesse Black can be found at Sludgefest being serious and on Twitch streaming fish video games. He’s been asked here for his ichthyological expertise, as we try to determine which fish should be renamed after Shohei Ohtani.

You already know that it’s sturgeon, what with the episode title being Ohtani: The New Name For Sturgeon, but it’s not about the destination so much as the journey. On this week’s journey, we discovered many things that we do and do not like. After review, all of these takes are 100% correct, and it presents rather nicely as a what’s out/what’s in list for 2023 in an extremely strange slice of the universe. (That’s us.)

I’d say that we’ll check back on these trends later in the year, but how would one even do that? Unless, that is, you’re hanging out at the World’s Fair Marina waiting for Jerry Seinfeld to show up either for his apology, or me shoving him into Flushing Bay to endure a Judge Doom-style melting.

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Late in Arizona Iced Tea Cans In A Microwave, I realized that we were recording on the ides of March, so I brought up the subject of favorite baseball Caesars… or Césars, as there’s never been a Caesar in MLB… and while my mind went right to César Izturis – always love a guy who winds up on nine teams in 13 seasons – I feel guilty for having neglected to mention César Cedeño.

This was a galling (Gauling?) omission, so let’s dig into a rabbit hole with the four-time All-Star and five-time Gold Glove outfielder, shall we?

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Although Cedeńo played for the Reds in the early 1980s, cementing him alongside Dave Concepción and Tony Pérez and others in my mind as a Cincinnati guy because of the prevalence of 1983-85 Topps in my foundational baseball years, it was Houston where Cedeño had his best years. What happens in my brain is that I, born and raised in the 1980s, meld together Cedeño (72-year-old Dominican who won Gold Gloves with a non-coastal NL West team in the 1970s) and César Gerónimo (75-year-old Dominincan who won Gold Gloves, four of them, with a non-coastal NL West team in the 1970s).

Gerónimo played for the Reds from 1972-80, arriving in Cincinnati from the Astros as part of the Joe Morgan trade (Morgan, Gerónimo, Ed Armbrister, Jack Billingham, and Denis Menke for Tommy Helms, Lee May, and Jimmy Stewart. Two months before I was born, Gerónimo was traded to the Royals for Germán Barranca and, in his final season of 1983, entered three games against the Yankees in the late innings… but none of them was the Pine Tar Game.

Cedeño debuted with the Astros in 1970, getting the start on June 20 in Atlanta and collecting his first career hit against George Stone, later of the 1973 Mets. Gerónimo did not get an at-bat in the game, but did replace Tommy Davis for defense in Houston’s 9-6 victory.

So, they even played two years together, with Cedeño remaining in Houston through the 1981 season. The Reds, having gone a full season without anyone named César, and posted the NL West’s best record at 66-42 but missed the playoffs because they were second in each half of the strike-split season, traded Ray Knight to Houston to get Cedeño.

A thing I didn’t realize until now, in 2023, is that the 1981 Reds were managed by John McNamara, who of course managed the 1986 Red Sox in the World Series where Knight was the MVP. That 1981 Cincinnati team also included George Foster, who was released by the 1986 Mets, Bruce Berenyi, who didn’t pitch for the 1986 Mets after July, and a two-time ex-Met named (checks notes) Tom Seaver, who was on the 1986 Red Sox but didn’t pitch in the playoffs.

Cedeño didn’t play much for McNamara, though, because the Reds canned him in July. Like Gerónimo, when Cedeño left Cincinnati, he wound up in Missouri. In 1985, Cedeño was traded to the Cardinals for minor league outfielder Mark Jackson at the then-extant August trade deadline, and all he did there was hit .434/.463/.750 with six homers in 28 games to help St. Louis win the East over the Mets by three games. Fat lot of good it did in the playoffs, where Cedeño was a combined 4-for-27 between the NLCS and World Series, and the Cardinals lost to the Royals in the Fall Classic.

In 1986, Cedeño wrapped up his career as a member of the Dodgers, with his last game coming on June 2 at Veterans Stadium. He went 0-for-2 with a walk, a stolen base, and a run scored in a 13-2 Los Angeles loss.

Just to get it straight once and for all, here are the National League Gold Glove outfielders in the 1970s.

1972: Cedeño, Roberto Clemente, Willie Davis

1973: Bobby Bonds, Cedeño, Davis

1974: Bonds, Cedeño, Gerónimo

1975: Cedeño, Gerónimo, Garry Maddox

1976: Cedeño, Gerónimo, Maddox

1977: Gerónimo, Maddox, Dave Parker

That’s half the outfield Gold Gloves in the league, over a six-year span, to two Dominicans named César, both of whom started in Houston and then went on to Cincinnati and played almost entirely before I was born. I’m gonna forgive myself for mixing them up in my mind. It’s hard enough out here dealing with all the contemporary Wills Smith: Will Smith and Will Smith, neither of whom is even the most famous Will Smith, nor even the most famous Will Smith in baseball – if you include the proposed name of Penn’s baseball field in a quote that Quakers right fielder Kevin McCabe gave to Willets Pen musicologist Ryan Kelly back in 2000 in The Daily Pennsylvanian when the new Penn field opened under a radio station billboard featuring the Fresh Prince.

I actually felt they should have named the field Will Smith Field at Q102 Stadium. We need to get a Penn baseball sign up there or something like that. I was joking around with the guys, saying, “If you ever lose focus, look at the smiling Will Smith and you can't be upset.”

No word on if Chris Rock is to be awarded an honorary degree by Princeton in light of this information.

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Welcome to the party, Sickos of Summer.

So long as you’re here, go check out The Sickos Sentinel. If you’ve already done that and have come here because you’re a fellow Sicko, hello (it’s specmotors from the Discord) and welcome to you, too! And check out our Discord, because, can you ever really have enough places to post?

Anyway, you were promised a sports rabbit hole yesterday, and it is time to deliver on that promise.

Since we’re not going to see Edwin Díaz pitch again for quite some time (sigh), here’s the list of the most strikeouts in a season, by a pitcher with 3.0 walks per nine innings or fewer, a 2.00 ERA or lower, and an FIP of 1.00 or lower. A list of 3-2-1… K, if you will.

Eric Gagne, 2003 Dodgers, 137

Díaz, last season, 118

Craig Kimbrel, 2012 Atlanta, 116

Sergio Romo, 2011 Giants, 70

Devin Williams, 2020 Brewers, 53

Ed Cushman, 1884 Brewers (Union Association), 47

The 1884 Brewers played 12 games. Cushman pitched four of them, won all four, and gave up a total of four runs, two against the Boston Reds and two against the Baltimore Monumentals (do not get any ideas from this, Ted Leonsis).

Cushman, in his career, pitched for the 1883 Buffalo Bisons in the National League, then had those four starts for Milwaukee the next year, and moved on to the American Association in 1885, pitching for both the Philadelphia A’s and the New York Metropolitans – at the original Polo Grounds, the place that had actually been built for polo in 1876. It was those Metropolitans who converted the field, across the street from the northeast corner of Central Park, into a baseball park.

In 1886, the Mets moved to the St. George Cricket Grounds on Staten Island, and Cushman won a career-high 17 games… while losing 21, those Mets weren’t so good. Cushman was fourth in American Association pitching WAR that season, and ranked seventh in the league at 4.62 strikeouts per nine innings.

Here are the Mets pitchers who had fewer than 4.62 strikeouts per nine innings last season: Nate Fisher (one strikeout in three innings, 3.0 K/9) and Darin Ruf (zero strikeouts in two innings, 0.0). Among regularly-appearing pitchers, Adonis Medina checked in at 6.5 K/9, Taijuan Walker at 7.6, and Chris Bassitt at 8.3. In 1886, the American Association leader was Matt Kilroy of the Baltimore Orioles at 7.9 (513 strikeouts in 583 innings).

Kilroy completed 66 of his 68 starts, just shy of half the Orioles’ 139 games – shoutout to their other two main starters, Jumbo McGinnis and Hardie Henderson. The Orioles were the only team the Mets finished ahead of that year – the St. Louis Browns won the league, then beat the National League champion Chicago White Stockings in the 1880s version of the World Series.

Chicago outhomered St. Louis, 3-2, getting dingers along the way from George Gore, King Kelly, and Fred Pfeffer, but only managed a .195/.254/.300 line against St. Louis pitching in the series. The Browns, led by Canadian legend Tip O’Neill (who really went off the next season) going 8-for-20 with two triples, two homers, and four walks.

Cap Anson was 5-for-21 in the series. He’s the son of a bitch that Shoeless Joe and the rest of the ghosts in Field of Dreams should’ve told to stick it.

Cushman, meanwhile, spent 1888 and 1889 out of Baseball Reference’s data set, but according to Wikipedia playing in Des Moines. When the manager there, Charlie Morton, took the job managing the Toledo Maumees, Cushman returned to the American Association with him.

And no, of course not that Charlie Morton, but the manager of a previous Toledo team, the Blue Stockings, that had Moses Fleetwood Walker and Weldy Walker — and whose presence on that team gave Morton a chance to be someone other than a footnote in the history of racism, as both the manager of the Walker brothers’ team, and the first guy to get steamrolled by Anson’s racism. Morton declined the hero role, although his Wikipedia page (this is already a tangent on a tangent, at least, but important)  makes it very clear both that he had the chance and that his motivation was not racism but something even more American, dollars.

On August 10, 1883 before a scheduled exhibition game, Cap Anson and his Chicago White Stockings had told Morton that his team would not play on the same field as the Walker brothers. Even though he had initially given Walker the day off due to injuries, Morton then re-inserted Moses in the game. He did this to force Anson to either play or lose his portion of the gate receipts. Anson decided to play that day, but when Chicago came to town the following year, they had already signed an agreement that the Walker brothers would not play.

To be clear, Morton isn’t exactly a villain here, either. Some 19th century racist comes to town with his National League team, and Morton and Toledo are in the minor league Union Association in 1883, so he bamboozles Anson — great! But he’s still basically an NPC (well, not really, he was a player-manager) handing a brief L to this main character of baseball racism. 

In 1884, the Blue Stockings played their only year in the American Association (it wasn’t promotion/relegation, just more free-flowing alignments in baseball’s early days, Addy can tell you more after all that Ken Burns). Weldy — who is listed as Welday Walker in some places, but we’ll go with SABR here — was fresh out of college at Michigan and a reserve for Toledo. No sweat benching him, he’s already there. And Fleet was a catcher, the one position where a 19th century team would have depth, because of the necessity as they got hurt all the time. Morton could’ve made a stand, but it only would’ve hurt himself and the rest of his team — his teammates — including the Walker brothers, what with the team being run on such a shoestring that they were calling players’ brothers out of college to play for them — that they were the only team even willing to play Black players — defunct by 1886.

It was in 1887 that Anson really enshrined racism in baseball by refusing to play agianst Fleet Walker’s team in Newark, the Little Giants, who featured a Black battery of Walker and pitcher George Stovey. The big Giants, back in New York, had an eye on Stovey, and maybe he could have been the first of MLB’s Black Aces, but not in a league where the game’s most influential figure was racist even by 19th century standards. Let’s go to John R. Husman from SABR:

Cap Anson was not entirely responsible for baseball’s more than half-century of segregation, but he had a lot to do with it. The incident of August 10, 1883, in Toledo certainly brought the issue to the forefront and began an open, blatant, and successful effort to bar black players from Organized Baseball.

One of the obvious effects of institutional racism is all the greatness that never gets to emerge, because it’s held back. Cap Anson was a generational talent who helped set the game back about three-quarters of a century, from the Walker brothers to Pumpsie Green.

(That would’ve been a clever little ending had I gotten it together to post this episode on St. Patrick’s Day, which I did not, rather obviously. Sorry.)

And now, some Midjourney art that did not become the title of this episode:

And now, the actual cover art for this episode… not made with Midjourney!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willetspen.substack.com

No sports rabbit hole today, but the good news is, there’s now two episodes of Willets Pod in the can — one joyful dance through spring baseball that ends with Edwin Díaz getting hurt right as we finished recording, one screed against Jerry Seinfeld for his culpability and continued refusal to apologize for putting a hex on Díaz. We’ll have the first of those episodes up for you to have a nice weekend listen… and then start scorching the earth of S***eld celebrities (you’re on notice, Rick Springfield) next week. So, please subscribe if you haven’t, tell a friend, all that good stuff, and come on back for today’s sports nugget with that first Willets Pod episode.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willetspen.substack.com