Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about homerless White Sox second basemen, the recent history of teams with homerless positions, and the upsides and downsides of the trend toward focusing on present-season performance in All-Star selections, then (37:11) answer emails about an award for utility players, a player’s debut age matching his debut number, whether an infielder could rob a home run, whether fatigue would make a four-player batting order of stars worse than a regular, nine-player lineup, whether championships reside with a city or a franchise, whether umpires could wear shorts, the definition of a “clean inning,” what it means for a throw/tag to be “not in time,” and the requirements for breaking out of a slump, plus closing banter (1:33:23) about Paul Skenes as an All-Star starter.

Audio outro: The Shirey Brothers, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to 2B HR leaderboard

Link to White Sox 2B

Link to 2B projections

Link to White Sox 2B tweet

Link to Neil Paine’s Substack

Link to Neil on All-Stars

Link to Neil graphic

Link to ASG roster rules story

Link to WAR and ASG story

Link to 1989 Canseco/Schmidt story

Link to Reddit post

Link to Pujols/Miggy ASG

Link to Castro selection story

Link to Castro record tweet

Link to debut age/number sheet

Link to Kenny Jackelen’s Twitter

Link to HR hang time comment

Link to sprint speed leaderboard

Link to Elly speed quote

Link to 1917 Stanley Cup info

Link to World Series doc thread 1

Link to World Series doc thread 2

Link to 2019 umpire manual

Link to umpire shorts forum post

Link to EW on pants-splitting

Link to Dickson on “clean inning”

Link to Pudge/Eno underwear ad

Link to Julio power slump story

Link to Friends hair scene

Link to NL pitcher WAR

Link to Skenes gamer

Link to Jones max-effort story

Link to listener emails database

Link to ballpark meetup forms

Link to meetup organizer form

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