A pitcher throws a great game in the World Series and is congratulated by a backstop unknown to him, but once he was known to the game. Then we travel back to 1917 when gamblers tried to fix a White Sox-Red Sox game by throwing their bodies in front of it—and the one player who struck back.

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseball reflects, anticipates, and even mocks the stories we tell ourselves about our world today. Baseball Prospectus's Steven Goldman shares his obsessions: history from inside and outside of the game, politics, stats, and Casey Stengel quotations. Along the way, we'll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out? 

Cartoony Clang #6.mp3 by AUDACITIER; kick_w_bone_crunch_inspired_by_tmnt_2012 by Artninja

In this week’s new material, we compare a team signing a low-OBP player to the girl you were crushing on choosing the only suitor you would have had her avoid (not that it was up to you, but also not that the universe isn’t cruel that way), all of which may turn out to be a tortured political metaphor. Then we return to 2016 for the Dodgers at third base, the tragic and not-at-all funny tale of Giants pitcher Bugs Raymond, and a lot of talk about Yoenis Cespedes falling off a horse.

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseball reflects, anticipates, and even mocks the stories we tell ourselves about our world today. Baseball Prospectus's Steven Goldman shares his obsessions: history from inside and outside of the game, politics, stats, and Casey Stengel quotations. Along the way, we'll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

We look at an ordinary day of baseball, May 8, 1949, and some extraordinary—and tragic—things that happened. First, a couple of good pitchers get shelled, then we witness some typically disposable regular season games before noticing a young woman who was treated as if she too were disposable, though she very much was not.

Trigger Warning: The second half of this episode contains discussion of a violent crime and some images may be disturbing.

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseball reflects, anticipates, and even mocks the stories we tell ourselves about our world today. Baseball Prospectus's Steven Goldman shares his obsessions: history from inside and outside of the game, politics, stats, and Casey Stengel quotations. Along the way, we'll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

In the new commentary segment of this week’s reissue episode, we talk about childhood fears of the end times, the degraded state of Times Square in the 1970s and 1980s, the slugging 1964 Twins, and one way the Colorado Rockies might go out in a blaze of fire, weird new GM hire or no. Then we go back to episode 21 for two tales of Hall of Fame catchers under extreme duress.

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseball reflects, anticipates, and even mocks the stories we tell ourselves about our world today. Baseball Prospectus's Steven Goldman shares his obsessions: history from inside and outside of the game, politics, stats, and Casey Stengel quotations. Along the way, we'll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

We spend the episode in 1933. First, Will Rogers comments on the broadcasts in a way which suggests that not much has changed between the start of on-air baseball commentary and its current state. Then we turn to the World Series and the government anti-hunger programs that arose at the precise moment that the Washington Senators were about to make their last bellyflop off the championship high-dive, and what each says about their time and ours, when we are (as we speak) fighting about some of the same issues. 

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseball reflects, anticipates, and even mocks the stories we tell ourselves about our world today. Baseball Prospectus's Steven Goldman shares his obsessions: history from inside and outside of the game, politics, stats, and Casey Stengel quotations. Along the way, we'll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

A slightly discursive rainy-day episode in which we question the unlikely players who have hit three home runs in a game and ask if the Rockies-Pirates season series was really necessary before examining two players who were called “Fat”—Fothergill and Fitzsimmons. 

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseball reflects, anticipates, and even mocks the stories we tell ourselves about our world today. Baseball Prospectus's Steven Goldman shares his obsessions: history from inside and outside of the game, politics, stats, and Casey Stengel quotations. Along the way, we'll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?  “Bear Angry Growl” by celldroid

First we make amends to a great of the game who was not only left out of last week’s Shohei Ohtani-Babe Ruth approbation, but was poorly served by baseball (and Baseball). Then we jump from the bizarre Muncy double play of NLCS Game 1 to the most famous baserunning mishap of the Dodgers’ Brooklyn years.  

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseball reflects, anticipates, and even mocks the stories we tell ourselves about our world today. Baseball Prospectus's Steven Goldman shares his obsessions: history from inside and outside of the game, politics, stats, and Casey Stengel quotations. Along the way, we'll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

In both this week’s new remarks and our reissue, we go back to pre-Pearl Harbor 1941 and the days when Joe DiMaggio was, day by day, counting up hits and the president, without the medium of television available to him, spoke on a nationwide radio broadcast—an event so new that it caused a major league game to be put on pause. Meet the old boss, different than the new boss, because the world was demonstrably on fire. Then we return to a segment about a manager getting too much credit for helping, which seems timely in a postseason in which managers are taking a good deal of deserved credit for inflicting harm.

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseball reflects, anticipates, and even mocks the stories we tell ourselves about our world today. Baseball Prospectus's Steven Goldman shares his obsessions: history from inside and outside of the game, politics, stats, and Casey Stengel quotations. Along the way, we'll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

We observe the passing of the Milwaukee Brewers out of the championship picture via Casey Stengel (who once managed the minor league Brewers to a championship) mourning a day Whitey Ford was outdueled by a journeyman. Then we go back to 1965 to note the difference between a protest and a riot, theorize about what the latter implies about its participants, and finish with a sincere attempt to alleviate the pain of one of America’s worst urban riots by making a new kind of bat.  

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseball reflects, anticipates, and even mocks the stories we tell ourselves about our world today. Baseball Prospectus's Steven Goldman shares his obsessions: history from inside and outside of the game, politics, stats, and Casey Stengel quotations. Along the way, we'll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?

In this week’s new remarks, we observe how quaint the racial dialogue of 2018 was (or at least your host’s was) in light of what was coming down the line for the nation. After a brief discussion of protest and backlash, we proceed to flash back to episode 72’s discussion of how the same message can be heard differently in the context of race (that’s the quaint part), revisit an oft-injured left-hander who was a low-key Red Sox great, and drop by Casey Stengel sailing uneasily through the great hurricane of 1938.

The Infinite Inning is a journey to the past to understand the present using baseball as our time machine. America's brighter mirror, baseball reflects, anticipates, and even mocks the stories we tell ourselves about our world today. Baseball Prospectus's Steven Goldman shares his obsessions: history from inside and outside of the game, politics, stats, and Casey Stengel quotations. Along the way, we'll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?