Left of Baseball

The panel reflects on the disappointing way the Dodgers and Major League Baseball have responded to harassment and domestic violence issues from Mickey Callaway to Trevor Bauer.

Jose Alamillo (Deportes: The Making of a Sporting Mexican Diaspora) joins the panel to discuss the impact of Fernando Valenzuela when he emerged as baseball's biggest star 30 years ago.

Baseball is gripped by grip-enhancements, or is it the other way around? The panel considers the way the lack of enforcement in the area of ball-doctoring has led baseball into some of the same blind alleys that now trap other areas of American culture and politics. Craig crashes Gaylord Perry's house, Steve goes for a Nazi analogy that may be a bit overwrought, and so much more.

Columbia University historian Mae Ngai joins the SIAC panel of Craig, Lincoln, Adrian, Tova, and Frank to discuss the rise of anti-Asian sentiment in the US, its long history in this country, and how it coexists with the majesty of Shohei Ohtani.

The panel looks at American race relations a year after the murder of George Floyd and wonders if today Curt Schilling could accuse Adam Jones of manufacturing an incident at Fenway Park without facing a greater backlash, plus we remember Reggie! bars and Lincoln objects to Steve's choice of ending.

Tony La Russa throwing his own player under the bus for hitting a home run off of a position player during a blowout leads to a consideration of the other places unwritten rules lurk in American life.

The SIAC panel considers the threatened move of the Oakland A's and the precarious state of players' mental health in an increasingly pressured game.

Dan Epstein joins the SIAC panel to talk about the book he co-authored with Ron Blomberg, THE CAPTAIN & ME: ON AND OFF THE FIELD WITH THURMAN MUNSON. Come spend an hour in the land of 1970s baseball where the suits were polyester, the dance was disco, and the Yankees had a catcher who should have been in the Hall of Fame 35 years ago already.

Craig, Lincoln, Tova, Adrian, and Steve look at MLB's (not "the MLB's") response to the Chauvin verdict, then examine the short-lived soccer "Super League" in the context of baseball's big- and small-market divide.

San Francisco civil rights legend Reverend Arnold Townsend joins Lincoln, Craig, Frank, and Steve to reminisce about being born into a segregated nation when there was still hope for equality, in part by meeting halfway--in the country of baseball. "If you can't appreciate Bob Gibson, you're not a baseball fan, you're a racist who watches baseball."