BONUS - From The Clubhouse: The Story Of Retrosheet And How It Saved Baseball (Bonus Episode)

Our game has such an immense, rich tapestry.

I feel exactly the same way, and I have conflicting feelings about that, however.

[laughs] Um, I think one of the reasons that play-by-play and the details of the games have always appealed to me is because that gives you one way in to that rich history.

I- I've got a book on the shelf, uh, called Pure Baseball, which was primarily written by, uh, Keith Hernandez, um, where he watches two games and provides his insights into what he sees in front of him.

Uh, it's from, uh, the early 1990s.

And what that book does is give you two things: one, an insight into how a, a professional, a talented player watches and the things he notices, which is...

That's wonderful.

The other thing it does, though, is he is pulling out all kinds of details and adding notes about the players he sees, and he knows their stories, you know, because he played with a lot of those guys.

Um, but what you realize from a book like that or really any baseball history, um, product, book, podcast, uh, film that you dip into, there are so many things going on at the same time during any given game.

So as you said, so many stories playing out, that that can be completely intimidating.

Um, so one thing I do is if I'm focused on a single game, um, I'm entering the play-by-play or I'm, I'm reading the play-by-play, um, I can notice a specific detail and I can dip into just that player or just that season or just some aspect of that one game and not overwhelm myself with all the information I don't know.

Because, um, there is so much that you don't know and will never know, um, simply because of the volume o- of the history, uh, of the sport.

So, um, that history can be a wonderful thing, but it can be intimidating if, uh, if...

I find, if you don't approach it in the right way.

Certainly when I'm doing the recreations, you know, one of the things that I always worry about is that I'm gonna completely misrepresent somebody from history by mistake.

It's, it's relatively easy for me when-

Sure

... there's a big name comes up or someone who's got a storied career.

We've just mentioned Dave Winfield.

Um, we've, you know, Cesar Cedeno has been mentioned in there.

But, you know, those smaller names that maybe just played two to three years, you know, am, am I-

Yes

... doing right with them? Can...

I know, yeah, I can't find out anything about them, yet I still need to spin something.

But at the same time, it's just play-by-play.