The Infinite Inning

Scott Lemieux returns to talk about the presidential election, reforming the Supreme Court, the greatness of Joe Morgan, and the controversial usage of Whitey Ford. Plus: Tales of Pittsburgh Pirates teams (and local banana factories) gone wrong.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Pittsburgh Banana Company Has a Bad Day*Babe Adams Gives His Answer*Scott Lemieux: Traditions vs. Rules*“Originalism”/“Court-Packing”*Bipartisanship is Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose*Infinite Supreme Court*Non-Delegation Doctrine*Breaking the Feedback Loop*The Marketplace of Ideas*Truth and Reconciliation*The Lost Hall of Famers of 2020 and Joe Morgan*Casey Stengel and Whitey Ford*The 1960 World Series Revisited*Time for a Backyard Bunker?*Goodbyes.

WARNING: There are one or two cusswords herein. Your dog will not be corrupted if it overhears.
The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’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?

David Roth returns to discuss the sale of the Mets, postseason aesthetics, and the launch of The Defector. Plus a Reds outfielder with way too much swing and miss in his game, Rogers Hornsby’s time versus Joe Morgan’s, and how a failed White Sox rebuild relates to both.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Rolando’s Room*Joe Morgan in His Time/Johnny Evers Loses a Job*David Roth: America’s Boyfriend Meets Bob Mould*Concertgoing*“Never Talking to You”*Live Reads*The Mets are Sold*Working for “Albert”*Going Out a “Winner”*Jacob deGrom vs. Craig Swan*Dodging the A-Rod Bullet*In the Best Interests of Baseball*Mystifying the Obvious (Election Talk)*Turning Off That Voice*Why We Needed Domestic Propaganda Posters in WWII*Laser-Focused on the Present *“But Her Emails”*Presidents on Speed*The Aesthetics of the 2020 Playoffs*Were the Yankees the Good Guys? Are the Rays Steely Dan?*Launching Defector*”The Office” Cliché*Goodbyes.

WARNING: As with most Roth episodes, there’s some extra-cussin’. Spare the children!
The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’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 rare solo episode features 3.5 tales of brawls, zoos, and recently-departed greats of the game, plus a brief explanation of why mask-wearing is controversial.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Babe Ruth Has a Cold*Notes/ Jay Johnstone/China’s Fault*Bob Feller Gave Names to All the Animals*A Home Run in Boston (Casey Stengel Rides Again)*Bob Gibson vs. Tom Seaver*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’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?

Craig Calcaterra returns to discuss “the newsletter lifestyle,” review the 2020 “season,” and explain the banality of meh. Plus: Tales of Casey Stengel shopping, Connie Mack building fences, and a Cubs shortstop provokes a theory of depression and elation.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Casey Stengel Buys a Tie*Ballparks Go Condo and the Shibe Park Spite Fence*Broadway Bill (Absolutely Bill’s Mood)*Craig Calcaterra: The Newsletter Lifestyle*People Won’t Hate-Pay*Cat Content in the Newsletter and Groin Pulls*The Blogosphere Without the Bad Parts*Getty Images A La Carte*Role to Resist/Saving Throw*The 2020 MLB “Episode” in Retrospect*The San Diego Padres and Real Estate Porn*Wall to Wall Cussin’*Trading Fernando Tatis Due to a Downturn in the Rental Market*Mike Ferrin’s Rule of Perception*The Banality of Meh*The 1000 Deaths of the Pittsburgh Pirates*You Won’t Know When Things Go Bad*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’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?

Cliff Corcoran returns to try to figure out who deserves which awards out of this crazy attenuated season in a disaster of a year, plus tales of players and people neglected in their post-career years and a requiem for the lost pennant races of the future.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Man in the Green Uniform*Ron Gardenhire*1980 in the AL East*Cliff Corcoran: Negro Leagues Caps*Inconclusion, the Negro Leagues, the All-American Girls*No Astros Caps*Gilmour Field at the Movies (“Bodyguard”) and “Bimbo” Cartoons*Arte Moreno Gets His Way in Anaheim/The Yankee Stadium*Awards Watch*Fluke Seasons of 2020*Qualified Regulars Under .200*Mike Yastrzemski*Mike Trout in the Field*Abreu vs. Anderson*Awards and Narrative*”The Willem Dafoe Most Valuable Veteran Award*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’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?

Jesse Spector returns to debate which players are overrated and remember Tom Seaver, plus Big Ed Walsh fails to parent and Ed Whitson is betrayed by Yankees fans.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Big Ed’s Kids*Failing Ed Whitson*Jesse Spector: Tom Seaver: The Yankees Years*The Serious Seaver*Aroldis Chapman vs. the Rays*Twitter Homerism*“J. Guerra”*Mike Clevinger: Persona Non Grata*Most Overrated Players*“Jeter Wouldn’t Have Had That”*Is Yadier Molina a Hall of Famer?*Andy Pettitte Career vs. Peak*Still More Yadier (and Ted Simmons’ Worst Year)*“Specious is the Wrong Word”*Bo Knows Overrated*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’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?

Ginny Searle (Baseball Prospectus) discusses the aftermath of the Thom Brenneman slur and gives a scholar’s insight into Shakespeare. Plus racially-motivated violence in the Negro Leagues and the PCL, with a voyage into one of the great nicknames.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Consequences of Being Boojum Wilson*A Fight in Oakland: “Here’s My Chance”*Ginny Searle: What Can Be Done to Make Baseball a More Welcoming Space for LGBT People?*“I Wouldn’t Say It’s a Lifestyle, I’d Say It’s My Life”*Empathy*Is Jackie Robinson an Inapt Comparison?*Why is Homophobia the Last Socially-Acceptable Prejudice?*There’s More Than One Way to Be Male or Female*That Kissing Scene in Ball Four*“Love and Theft”*What Has Been Good About the 2020 Season?*Fake Crowd Noise*Shakespeare Can Make You Feel Dumb*The Most Confusing Sentence in Shakespeare*Editing Mistakes and Jo Adell in Right*Some Old Texas Rangers Who Didn’t Quite Work Out*Midlife-Crisis Sonnets?*Shakespeare Wants to Have Your Babies (or Vice-Versa)*“Who Gets to Speak?”*“Romeo + Juliet?”*Is There Hope for Understanding?*Goodybyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’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 look back at Tom Seaver stories we have told over the years on the occasion of the great man’s passing.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Rest in Peace Number 41*From Episode 23: Tom Seaver’s Prayer for Peace*Tom Seaver at Twilight*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’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?

Paul Dickson returns to discuss The Rise of the GI Army, an increasingly hard-to-imagine moment when the country overcame resistance and demagoguery to pull together. Plus a tale of two terrible first basemen going to war and a reply to Thom Brennaman.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Mahan, Sturm, and the Lost Players of 2040*Thom Brennaman: “Bye Bye Blackbird”*Paul Dickson: A Timely Recollection (An Army in Yankee Stadium)*Charles Lindbergh and the Isolationist Gang (And Their Enemies)*The War After the War Before*“The Veterans of Future Wars”*Bipartisanship in a Time of Crisis*General George Marshall: Hall of Famer*The CCC Saves the World*Discovering Eisenhower and Scouting Patton*Marshall and the Plattsburg Movement*Grenville Clark*The Struggle for a Desegregated American Military (The Double V)*Robeson and Robinson*Did Patton Cheat During War Games?*A Peacetime Draft and Wearing Your Mask*Playing Politics with Safety*We Could Do That But We Can’t Do This*Goodbyes.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’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?

This one has everything: David Roth, the Defector, a mysterious player with a name that suggests a large animal with a slack colon, a rumored Mickey Mantle trade of 1958, the Mets, and more.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Frank Lane’s Hypothetical Mickey Mantle Trade and the Media*Three Announcements Invoking Craig Calcaterra*New Baseball Song: “The American Game”*Bevos and Hippos (Oh My)*David Roth: “Jeopardy” Category: Bad Royals Trades, All Thing Gabriel Byrne, and other Trivia*What is The Defector?*Freelancing is a Drag*The Vanishing Internet*The Defector Elevator Pitch/A Blogging Fresca*How Can a Website Have a Broad-Based Appeal When Fox Exists?*The Walt Disney Formulation and Ursine Copulation Coverage*How Will the Nation React to College Football Being Cancelled? (The “Sham of Amateurism”)*…And the MLB Model*The Marlins and the Cardinals*Are We Enjoying the 2020 Season?/Low Offense*Andres Gimenez: Blogger-Sized*Marcus Stroman Opts Out*Have All Teams Become the Mets?*Summing Up the Cespedes Era*Albert Pujols and the Long, Long Contract*Goodbyes.

Warning: One or two cusswords and mature animal subject discussed. Hide the hippos.

The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’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?