Ben Lindbergh, Rany Jazayerli, and Neil Paine discuss the death of Willie Mays, Mays as the last legendary link to an earlier era, the statistical cases for Mays as the greatest all-around player and greatest player, period in major league history, and (36:45) baseball’s new greatest living player, plus (46:02) banter about Kansas courting the Royals with public funding and (50:38) the competitive trajectories of the Royals and Mets. Then (1:01:08) Ben brings on frequent Stat Blast correspondent Ryan Nelson for Blasts about teams that hover near .500, pitchers replacing same-surnamed pitchers, prolific umpire-player ejection combos, the most players with the same first name in the same game, and Alex Verdugo’s grounders.

Audio outro: Jimmy Kramer, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Rany’s Mays article

Link to Neil’s Mays article

Link to FG’s Mays obit

Link to Mays statement

Link to Manfred statement on Mays

Link to Carig on Mays

Link to Mays fielding slump

Link to EW 1927 on Mays

Link to Mays stumble story 1

Link to Mays stumble story 2

Link to B-Ref career WAR leaders

Link to Ben on quality of competition

Link to Posnanski on the GLP

Link to EW 2161 on public funding

Link to Kansas funding details

Link to deMause on Kansas funding

Link to race to the bottom wiki

Link to FG playoff odds

Link to BP playoff odds

Link to BaseRuns standings

Link to Grimace explainer

Link to Neil on team true talent

Link to Neil on Witt and Brett

Link to Neil’s Substack

Link to Podracing podcast

Link to Kauffman Corner podcast

Link to Mike Conte’s Stat Blast cover

Link to Wolf of Wall Street quote

Link to Langs on .500 teams

Link to Ben on .500 teams

Link to .500 teams/Ryne Stat Blast

Link to Kelly/Alexander game

Link to Retrosheet ejections data

Link to ejections Stat Blast data

Link to ejections-per-G graph

Link to SABR on ejections

Link to Evers wiki

Link to “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon”

Link to “Luis” game

Link to The Bob Emergency

Link to same-names data

Link to swimmer David Young

Link to 2024 grounder leaders

Link to 2021-4 grounder leaders

Link to 2019-24 grounder leaders

Link to ballpark meetup forms

Link to meetup organizer form

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