Episode 326 - The Best Worst Crawfords Team Ever

0:00hello everybody welcome to another episode of two strike noise i am one of your co-hosts as always my name is jeff joining me as he always does from the pacific northwest this week from the john marzano studio it is mark a johnston mark how are you doing you know i almost forgot that

0:31marzano was a mariner i think i i know him from the red socks which is where i came up with that because i was watching a yankee an old yankees red socks game this last week oh okay wow you know that's just gonna make us more of a red socks podcast oh shoot that's right i forgot anytime we mention that team from boston our standing goes up in the boston red socks podcast list and yes geez that's my bad climbing yeah that one's on me well i'm gonna tell you red socks fans will

1:05probably be a little disappointed in this episode there's just not a whole lot of red socks talk going on this week but mark let's go ahead and get into our bp segment because we do have things that we need to discuss so we're gonna let the grounds crew get the cage out there because we need to take some cuts this week i talked a couple of weeks ago about a new baseball movie being made about chris pine and emma stone where essentially the elevator pitch is that emma stone is somebody that is a fan

1:36that accidentally alters the trajectory of a game-winning catch we're gonna assume that that's chris pine trying to make the catch so this is more of a jeffrey mayer story than a than a steve bartman story but that was kind of all of the information we had well thanks to me actually being a mets fan and watching the games continually for some reason last friday there was a mets game it was at home mets at home on fridays wear their black uniform their throwback black uniforms which everybody but me

2:09apparently likes i'm not not a huge fan of them but whatever but they were wearing home lights and so i was excited i was like oh what did i do to to win this prize well apparently emma stone was at city field that day and they were filming scenes during the game with her in the stands so i don't okay maybe i was gonna say maybe they had them wear the home white so they could get some b-roll from old games and it'd be easier or just thinking of it now they probably had no idea that the mets had black

2:44uniforms and wore them on fridays and they had not purchased black uniforms for everybody in the cast is probably yeah that i'm i'm honestly thinking that is probably what the answer really is that makes total sense actually yeah it you know and it shows that the mets have truly given up because now hollywood has more influence that's right than anyone else that's right so the mets wore their whites they showed pictures of emma stone during the game she had on like a i call it a casual

3:16mets hat you know not not the kind that the players wear on the field but it's like you know it was it was khaki and that looser fabric it's not a it's not a new era on the field type of hat it was casual is what i say but they showed her throughout the game and she's basically just making different expressions like she's watching the game and reacting to it and getting all the shots that they need but i'm excited for this now because i hear that juan soto made some cameo or is supposed to make

3:47a cameo he does some film some scenes during batting practice that day we'll see if they make the final cut or not no that's cool you know maybe uh maybe he'll score some points if we do pop culture oh yeah need some newer cards yeah that's right he he will get on the uh he'll get on the spreadsheet for that pop culture yes which wondering does he have any other anywhere else i don't know he's he's a huge star but yeah yeah i don't know all right mark i talked a couple of weeks ago another thing

4:17that's coming back up where elmo was at the philadelphia phillies game he and john crock together a match made in heaven while the sesame street crew is making the rounds apparently only the national league central rounds cookie monster showed up at wrigley field this week which is not nice a sentence you say every day no and it was good boog powell was in the was in the the booth i don't mind marquee network i don't mind their broadcast i like boog powell and cookie monster was there

4:48chopping it up with those guys also something that we've covered in the harry carrie episode how the whole singing of take me out to the ballpark and the seventh inning stretch up in the booth came to be well this week it was cookie monsters time tonight c is for and cookies all right let me hear ya a one a two a three

5:21three knee out to the ball knee out to the ground all right so that you know not bad better than uh steve mcmichael well that's yeah remember steve

5:54mcmichael got kicked out because afterwards he yelled at the umpire and the umpire threw him out oh my gosh yes don't don't mess with mongo cookie monster stuck around in the booth which was entertaining because here they asked cookie monster who his favorite cub is do you have a the favorite cubby oh show me love show me no can pick a favorite cup pca me no can pick a favorite pca what did you hear something no me never pick favorites pca no

6:26no not me no me me want to be fair to everyone pca so mark you know i i market my podcasting 101 class to you know anybody that wants it six times yeah i know i still haven't gotten paid for any of them oh it's coming this is what is called a segue because cookie monster there while claiming he doesn't have a favorite cub obviously is a big pca fan pete crow armstrong was recently on a podcast called let's be honest with kristin cavallari

6:59who i believe she might have been like a reality show person but i think she also married somebody on the the bears quarterback and then they got divorced jake cutler i think but she's she's doing her own thing now she's got this podcast which i think is pretty popular and pca is on this podcast and a question was asked of him about an unpopular opinion he had let's just listen to this genius

7:33um okay what's an unpopular opinion that you have like any conspiracy theory stuff or like what's what's an unpopular opinion this is gonna be crazy babe ruth never existed is one that i love oh wow really he never existed i heard uh some pitcher with the mariners uh what's his name salcedo you remember him salcedo yeah lefty i think he did some podcast on on zoom when he was like

8:05going down the the rabbit hole with somebody about how babe ruth never existed existed and i was like i was like dude that's awesome wow so you're gonna double down right now it's like we always talk about how like the game's evolving and people might as well have been like underhanding the ball to that guy and and he's regarded still as one of the best players ever and you might as well dive further into it and be like well maybe he just never existed i love it i love it i heard something about this yes all right so mark what say you

8:37about the the opinion that babe ruth never existed well i'm sure it had nothing to do with the lack of everyone having a camera on them their person 24 7 but maybe maybe it was just something like that however i am of the belief that babe ruth never landed on the moon i i'm denying that ever happened okay i am of the opinion that babe ruth never called a shot but we've gone over that as many times as we've gone over why i can't stand tinkers to evers to chance right agreed so we won't

9:12go into that now there are some great comments on this video listening to listening to pca tell us why babe ruth never existed some of them are it must be a strange feeling for kristin cavallari being the smart one in a room someone said it sounds like pca has been hitting the pcp nice this is a good one this is actually a great point it says there are people who will think that wilt chamberlain didn't score 100 points because there was no footage of that game well true it makes

9:47sense yeah well if it didn't see it i just can't believe this i'm i like i like pca but now i kind of don't like pca well it's a it's pretty silly to to have that oh it's not silly it's stupid we're calling this if if you want to call us boomers fine but this is stupid babe ruth i'm thinking did exist now i was born a little bit after babe ruth passed away the day after but yes the next day

10:17and i i did not attend his funeral but there were a lot of people there so if he was fake they paid a lot of people off i'm literally flabbergasted this is stupid pca is stupid and someone needs to someone this is like remember mookie wilson that was fake about the dinosaurs but there are plenty of people that think dinosaurs never existed pca might be one of those people as well if he doesn't think babe ruth existed babe ruth is kind of a dinosaur himself yeah yeah are we gonna have to

10:48well true you could exhume him and what's it it's just gonna be bones it doesn't mean anything bones and half digested hot dogs i think because i think that was his meal of choice i wonder if he ever i wonder if he ever accidentally ate a cigar or lit up a hot dog because they look very similar and he liked both i i it you know what the reason i eat so much junk food is because of all the preservatives and because i want it to be i want to be preserved yeah you

11:20want to be mummified i have a great looking corpse all right enough pca i okay yes i really hope to find out that this was all just a work yeah let's hope so i mean that's just too stupid for for me which takes so that's so trust me that takes a lot we talk about seinfeld quite a bit here we talk about bobbleheads there is another one coming out this one is an actual yankees one at yankee stadium it is the george costanza calzone bobblehead on august 27th oh that's awesome they should i wonder if

11:55they could add a scent to it coat it with what what kind of calzone did george have that steinbrenner could smell it who was it i'm not prepared for we're gonna lose we're gonna lose our seinfeld cards here on this one but that was the whole gist is that george was hiding but george steinbrenner could smell the calzone i'm coming for you george yeah all right let's go ahead let the grounds crew come out and do their thing and we were gonna get into the main segment of our show all right we're

12:27gonna head back to 1935 september 19th 1935 we're at penmar park in philadelphia it's game six of the negro national league championship series the pittsburgh crawfords and the new york cubans and the crawfords are all out of outs it's bottom of the ninth inning they're down six to three on the mound for the cubans their player manager the guy who bob hendrix calls right here on this very podcast he said perhaps the best negro league player of all time martin de higo is on the mound he's their

13:04best hitter he's their manager and he also started game four in the series this is now game six and today he has inserted himself as their closer he's looking to end this best of seven series he does it all i mean he's the maestro after all so first up he's got a face cool papa bell maybe you've heard of him uh yeah he was he was a tough out so i hear yeah no problem for the maestro one out don't know how it happened there is absolutely no game log of this game because i'd like to think it was a great

13:40play by the shortstop firing over there to get him by half a step yeah just half a step like they probably would have challenged if there would have been right yes all right so there's one out next up chester williams chester reaches again don't know how we're gonna assume he beat it out he's faster than cool baba bell oh yeah yeah good old chester that brings the tying run to the on deck circle again the score six to three bill perkins now he is up there at bat for the crawfords he

14:11goes down swinging or grounds out or flies out maybe he's out on batter interference a pitchcock violation i don't know again couldn't find any sort of game log for this game so use your imagination there's two outs one runner on josh gibson now the batter how exciting is this how much would you want to watch this game this is got to be considered a victory honestly for to he go because gibson is held to a single wow good for him that literally he didn't hit it six miles yeah that's right so

14:44now we've got runners on first and second the tying run is now coming to the plate in the form of a 38 year old player manager for the crawfords oscar charleston so we've got player manager versus player manager and this is not the in his prime oscar charleston this is a 38 year old oscar charleston sure sure but he's still dangerous and dihigo knows that but hall of famers are gonna hall of fame in big moments so dihigo challenges him bam three run bomb game is tied wow somewhere in the

15:24cubans clubhouse according to one account the owner of the cubans alex pompez and his business manager are literally in the middle of counting the winner's share in cash on a table and then charleston hits that homer and as the story goes somebody threw a stack of bills across the room out of pure disgust the crawfords though they're not done yet dihigo gives up a double to pat patterson now that is not wwe hall of famer pat patterson oh i was gonna say man that guy's been around yeah he's been

15:57around a long time it is switch hitting infielder pat patterson so two outs patterson's on second game's tied the wheels are turning in the crawfords dugout so charleston's back in the dugout because he's hit that home run so now he's managing you know not from the base pass that's good and he looks down his bench and he sees another future hall of famer no shortage of future hall of famers in this series apparently it may be why we're talking about it but he looks down and he sees future hall of famer judy johnson sitting on the bench and he says jude let's go now judy johnson is 0 for 10 in

16:33the series not looking good at the plate but he picks up a bat heads to the plate now i'm not gonna tell you what he did yet i'm gonna instead answer the question how did we get here how did we get to a game between the two negro league dynasties wait how did we get to a game between the negro league's dynasty team of the 30s and a team in its first year of existence well let us find out how do you get two teams on the field with multiple hall of famers in the middle of the depression on a negro

17:05league budget well you have to get creative gus greenley was the owner of the crawfords and he's the one obviously as the owner bankrolling the crawfords he made his money by running a numbers game in pittsburgh's hill district now i don't know what a numbers game is well i do now i didn't before right gotcha so my wife explained it to me seriously she grew up in new york in the asian community and these things still happen today these still go on it is essentially an illegal lottery

17:37right at this point in 1935 penny and nickel bets are placed on a three-digit number that number is usually something like the last three digits of the stock market for that day so it's easily verifiable it's not fixable you would think and that's where you go but the house has the odds in their favor here regardless of how much money the winner gets the house is still going to make money on all of these things so add in some prohibition bootlegging on the side and by the late 20s

18:12greenley has got a good business model at least for making money you know morally less so he's a small businessman he is a he is a successful small businessman at its peak something like a hundred separate operations were collecting bets across the country at an estimated $25,000 a day moving through its hands a day $25,000 a day in 1935 that is a heck of a lot of money during the depression and here's the thing in a neighborhood that actual banks wouldn't touch greenley basically became the

18:48bank to all of these residents loans rent money a soup line during the depression you mentioned it he was named the hill district businessman of the year of course later on which is a hell of a line from a resume that starts with ran in illegal watery yes so in 19 i don't put that on my resume i mean i did it but it's not on my resume it didn't work out very well people weren't calling you back so in 1930 he buys a semi-pro outfit called the crawford giants he buys them outright he builds

19:24his own park for them two years later called greenley field a hundred grand out of his own pocket and then he starts doing rich guys with a ball club and no salary cap do he buys the best players in the world sounds like the dodgers yeah so who did he buy you ask well cool papa bell we already mentioned him you want speed he's got it an actual newspaper timed cool papa bell circling the bases in 13.6 seconds and that was on a wet field they could have waited a day you would think and just do it on like

20:00a dry track but hall of famer charlie geringer lay old mechanical man he played against against cool papa bell in a barnstorming exhibition he's not on this team this is just a quote the story about charlie geringer after he played against cool papa bell geringer told reporters that he'd seen ty cobb play but he never saw ty cobb do anything on a ball field like what cool papa bell did that night in st louis against his team where the crawfords beat the cardinals 18 to 3 yeah

20:35rough day for the cards then we got sam bankhead one of the negro leagues players that doesn't get a lot of attention but he really probably should one of three baseball playing brothers the brothers bankhead not scott bankhead by the way no but boy this sam bankhead he had an arm i mean he had two of them but his right arm is the one that i'm talking about there's a quote about sam's arm from the outfield it says quote nobody tagged from third on a fly ball against bankhead he'd throw you out from

21:07the warning track ouch so it's kind of like dave parker in that world series in seattle or yes i was there yeah or bo jackson or ramon laureano when he when he robbed the home run in center field and then threw back the first yes that kind of arm is what we're talking about yeah that's impressive stuff yeah sam played every position including pitcher that rifle of an arm though didn't translate particularly well on the mound he struck out a lot of guys sure but he walked some but it seemed like

21:38he was just around the plate he gave up a lot of hits yeah never gave up a home run 20 uh 77 and two-thirds career innings never gave up a home run he was throwing too hard i guess yeah pat patterson we've talked about him just a minute ago quietly the best hitter on the team maybe he was slashing 376 405 and 575 this team was so good they were giving players away literally the crawfords had a rookie shortstop named ted bond that people were calling the best first year prospect in the entire

22:14league less than a month into the season greenley gave him away to another team he donated him along with a pitcher to the worst team in the league the newark dodgers did they have trolleys in newark because otherwise that that nickname doesn't really make sense yeah i'm not sure they maybe they did i don't know regardless greenley gave bond as a gift because the dodgers drew 4 000 fans against the crawfords and greenley needed them to survive so that next time they went they could collect that kind

22:47of gate again purely self-surfing but still he did it now the crawfords did or at least were supposed to have yet another hall of famer on this 1935 squad the hall of famer greenley had a good reason to feel good about the 1935 season i'm not telling you who that hall of famer is just yet but i will hear okay all right we can we can imagine you can imagine yeah the crawfords won the negro national league they'd done so the previous two seasons he's got four future hall of famers already locked in

23:19in bell charleston josh gibson and judy johnson and he's expecting that fifth satchel page wow page had been on the crawfords the year before he went 13 and 3 with a 1.61 era and 152 strikeouts the best pitcher on the planet by most accounts and he was going to be the anchor the ace of this pitching staff but that never happened instead here's how you lose satchel page for an entire

23:50season what you do is you do something nice because no no good deed goes unpunished right so greenley owned a bar in pittsburgh and at that bar satchel page met a waitress a server and they fell in love and they got married and gus greenley threw him a wedding for free so in october of 1934 page marries this waitress the crawford grill is what it was called makes sense bill bojangles robinson is his

24:21best man of course i'm assuming he was a baseball player as well yeah greenley foots the bill for the whole thing his star pitcher why not he's printing money anyway we've already gone over that now mark you know how people make speeches at weddings oh yeah sometimes they ask specific people not to make speeches at weddings yeah well that didn't happen here greenley takes this opportunity to make a speech of his own he announces that page is signing a new two-year deal now satchel by his own account

24:51was in on this the whole time it's not like he sprung this on him at his wedding he sits down and they signed the contract while the room is cheering for him at this wedding reception so page and his new wife go on honeymoon to california he pitches some winter ball there he records an eight no record comes back to pittsburgh and discuss and discover something that married men have known for quite a while and since then for sure paychecks don't stretch the way they used to now that you've got the old

25:21ball and chain ordering from amazon every day so page goes to greenley he's like yo boss remember that contract i signed at my wedding where you paid for the wedding appreciate that and then you gave me a raise from last year well i need more greenley says sorry no can do so page packs up his belongings presumably his wife as well i didn't say that but i'm assuming and they head to the bustling

25:51metropolis of bismarck north dakota the state capital if i recall correctly of north dakota i believe so yes so greenley is if you can believe it a bit mad he calls the owner of this bismarck team that has signed satchel page since he's in north dakota which this team by the way has no nickname officially it is just referred to as bismarck okay so greenley tells the owner that he is going to carve him to pieces if he ever gets within knife knife slashing distance that's a nice thing to say that's an

26:29official distance of measurement by the way knife slashing knife slashing distance it's like a quarter of a throwing dish at you from across the room distance something like that i mean it's exactly i think that's right yeah seems a bit extreme the overreaction there but the bismarck club is a very interesting club first of all so page was joined on this club by future hall of famer hilton smith also there is ted double duty radcliffe not a hall of famer but a very noteworthy player

27:03obviously won the 1935 national baseball conference semi-pro baseball tournament this year that they had they were considered a semi-pro team because the team was actually integrated oh okay page recalled that they won 104 out of 105 games with him starting every single game now if you look at the baseball reference page for this club it lists their record as two and two so i'm gonna guess that their actual record is somewhere in the middle and page probably started most of but not all of the games right

27:36greenlee couldn't be bothered to drive all the way to bismarck to get within knife slashing distance so greenlee tries to sell page's contract to somebody else since as far as he's since as far as he's concerned page is still crawford's property he signed that contract that didn't work out so greenlee officially bans page from the league and reassigns him to the house of david oh really can you just see the house of david like wait you're doing what i mean they're probably happy about it but you know

28:10oh yeah greenlee is undeterred by all of this though and actually keeps advertising games as if satchel was still with the crawfords in june a pennsylvania paper previews a crawfords game against the local semi-pro team and lists satchel page as the starter which obviously is going to help the gate everybody's going to make money off that and the fans are going to be pissed so satchel page is playing in the baseball crazy state of north dakota the crawfords though just keep winning ball games without him leroy matlock is the ace in page's absence he won his last four decisions in 1934 and

28:46then somewhere between 15 to 18 straight in 1935 nobody agrees on the exact number which if you've heard us talk about the negro leagues before should not surprise you they were often lucky just to have enough money to pay umpires let alone official scorers or statisticians a couple of noteworthy games from the season for the the crawfords august 5th they're in chester pennsylvania and this was called a revenge game against a white semi-pro team because they had beaten them earlier in the year

29:17josh gibson hits two long home runs oscar charleston the local paper took a dig at him and called him the long past his prime oscar charleston and jokingly said that he weighed 355 pounds right okay so this 355 pound man steals third and then steals home straight sounds like he was proving a point yeah an old 350 pound man with a straight steal of home you're you got it right he was proving a

29:52point august 24th in chicago versus the chicago american giants this game went 19 innings 19 innings mark that they played in three and a half hours wow that's awesome three and a half hours that's like six innings of a yankee red sox game in 2012 my gosh the crawfords trailed seven to four heading into the ninth they tie it and it takes until the 19th inning for pittsburgh to finally win it 11 to 8 cool papa bell gets six hits in that game but no stolen bases josh gibson had one though

30:25willie foster got the loss for chicago after going 14 innings just wow ran out of gas i would think so yeah meanwhile the cubans are having a rough first half again this is a first year organization here but then they catch fire in the second with help from newly acquired rap dixon they end up winning the second half national league title they went they end up winning the second half negro national league title and set up the championship series the cubans pitching staff it's helmed by a 19 year old kid

30:59named johnny taylor also in the staff louis tion the first one who's also the father of the second one works funny how that works out also a guy named neck stanley okay now mark i found a picture of neck stanley perfectly normal neck length interesting a good neck like walt williams is jealous of this walt williams of course being nicknamed node neck as well as head and shoulders yes very jealous of of next day stanley's neck it's

31:32just an average neck nothing to write home about nothing to be ashamed of so to the championship series we go the crawfords versus the cubans best of seven games here's how we actually got to that ninth inning of game six that we started out with game one rap dixon has two hits he leads the cubans to the win they're up one to nothing game two neck stanley shuts down the crawfords four hitter that perfectly average neck got it done so the cubans are up to zero just a note on

32:04this game it started 35 minutes late because three of the four umpires didn't know where they were supposed to be they went to a different park now to be fair this game was played at a neutral site versus the first game that was at the cubans park so i'm assuming they probably showed up at the cubans they didn't have ways no yeah and they weren't paying attention to their texts so it was hard to get a hold of them they'd run out of minutes because minutes was still a thing for for mobile phones at that point that's right all right so game three the crawfords get on the board leroy matlock started

32:39for the crawfords matlock had not lost a start all season he was eight and oh with a 1.52 era oscar charleston hits his first homer of the series cool papa bell triples scores on a bad relay throw the crawfords win still down two games to one game four martin dehigo pencils himself as a starter gives up one run and the cubans get the win and are now only one win away from taking the trophy the belt the turducken i don't know what exactly they were playing for i'm guessing a paycheck

33:14is probably the most the most accurate thing i could say there game five crawford's lead to nothing into the ninth the cubans send up a pinch hitter named cocaina garcia now not like you know what we think it was cocaina i yeah guessing not i don't i don't know maybe this was the this it might have he might have liked coca-cola a lot i don't know that's all he needed cocaina garcia ties the game with a two-run shot so we head to bottom of the ninth roosevelt davis

33:46singles bell pinch runs for him imagine mark a championship game where you're an elimination game and cool papa bell is not in the starting lineup crazy yes but he's available on the bench to pinch run he does that bell moves to second on a ground out chester williams squares to bunt taps it back to the pitcher and bell just takes off for third the throw to third by dehigo is wide and cool papa bell just keeps running scores game over we'll see you tomorrow evening folks

34:20it's three games to two so that gets us back to where we started game six which you already know the ending of sort of i didn't give it to you but i think you can guess down six three in the ninth dehigo on the mound to close it out charleston's three run homer judy johnson 0 for 10 stepping in johnson fouls off three straight pitches then chops one down the first baseline cuban's first baseman dave showboat thomas gets a glove on it but can't make the play now this is not the uh the owner of wendy's dave thomas oh right no he wasn't showboat no this is

34:55dave showboat thomas and within with a nickname like showboat i hope it was a legit like bad hop not like right he was showboating and if if he would have got it would the pitcher you know have been covering in time for the out i'm asking for bill buckner yes patterson scores from second base crawford's win at seven to six series is now tied at three we're going to game seven game seven this one's for all the marbles mark maybe maybe that's what they were playing for

35:28again yeah i was thinking that marvels but it's under the lights in philadelphia both teams trade the lead all night crawford's up to nothing cubans three to do crawford's four to three cubans tie it crawford's go back up six to four it's back and forth homers by gibson and charleston then sam bankhead the guy who we've determined definitely has two arms one of which may have been an actual canon scores an insurance run on an air it's eight to four cardinals but the cubans will

36:01not go silently into the night independence day quote yes they claw back to an eight to seven score on a two-run homer by clyde right turn spearman with two outs in the ninth right turn clyde i like that i didn't think clyde had a nickname but but for my every which way but loose fans out there i wanted to be inclusive hey i got it immediately but a routine grounder to pitcher roosevelt davis

36:32and it's over the crawfords take the series four to three so champions crawfords right they're gonna take a trip to disneyland party all night maybe a parade nope one day off and the cardinals are scheduled to play in a 14 double header at yankee stadium crawfords against the philadelphia stars the cubans are gonna be there they are going against the nashville did i don't remember did bob tell us it was i light or e light i like e light better that's yeah the e light the e light giants yes and

37:09greenlee's been promoting this game hard because it's not just any exhibition it's a rematch from a from a game the year prior in 1934 where page and philadelphia left-hander slim jones through what people still call the greatest game in negro league history extra innings one nothing greenlee wants to recreate that and he pays page 350 to show up for this one game the thing is mark satchel pages in chicago where he pitched five shutout innings for the kansas city monarchs instead

37:47slim jones was there he showed up in new york but he gets knocked out after one inning so regardless of who was there or not the game drew a huge crowd figures anywhere between 15 and 27 000 which was more than the major leagues had drawn the week prior very nice so the 1935 crawfords were truly a talented team in the opinion of some of its own players though it might have been the weakest crawfords roster in four years but it still won a championship without its biggest name ever even putting on a

38:22uniform satchel page would return to the crawfords the next season and did satchel page stuff the crawfords would once again win the negro national league pennant but most of the players left to go barnstorming before there could actually be another championship series so it just wasn't scheduled and that would be the last season of the crawfords dynasty as they didn't win the league again in the club's existence now i mentioned that satchel page was sent to the house of david by greenlee after he didn't show he didn't actually play for the hod as we say in the biz but the crawfords

38:56did square off against the bearded brothers twice that season they beat them both times by a combined score of 26 to 8 page could have no doubt helped the the house of david there yes there you go that is the 1935 which i always thought was considered the best negro league team ever but i have determined they are they are not they are barely close uh that was awesome man that's good stuff same franchise

39:27just no they were better the year before and maybe before that with all those hall of famers that would yeah that's crazy yeah all right producer mitch is holding up his wrist and slowly tapping at it while staring at us without blinking it is very unsettling it's weird because he doesn't have a watch on nor does he know how to tell time so i don't know what what he's doing but i can infer from how long

39:59we've been talking that it's time to head into the final segment of the show it is time for wax pack hello again friends it's time for another installment of wax packs heroes before we can start though

40:29let's go over the rules mark and jeff are going to play an old-fashioned game of war except this is more like baseball reference war they'll each get one card and will score the baseball reference war of the year of the card but wait they can add or subtract points depending on certain aspects of the card and the player's season any 80s baseball aesthetics the card displays will earn an extra tenth of a point or if they don't like something like two and one stirrups they can subtract a tenth of a point as well also if the player won any awards that season they get a

41:04half a point for each if the player led the league in any categories they'll get a tenth of a point for each positive category but minus half a point for each negative one if there's a hall of famer anywhere on the card that's a whole extra point if the player had a costakos brothers poster made of them they get a half a point for that if ricky henderson or nolan ryan get pulled the round is over jeff automatically wins if either pulls a ricky card and mark wins if nolan is pulled if the player

41:34has any pop culture references they get a half a point unless they appeared on seinfeld the simpsons or sabrina the teenage witch that friends is a whole point for each if the player was suspended for off the field mischief during their career or are on the 2sn don't talk about list that's a minus a half and a whole point respectively so with that out of the way it's time to play wax pack heroes mark today we are gonna we're gonna do some newer cards we're gonna we get some 2010s here looking

42:08at the scoreboard right now i am on a bit of a hot streak here knock on wood i am up 16 to 11 so i've got a larger lead than games i need to win so we're playing to 20 you've just heard the rules so you should be up on that all right mark you are uh you've elected to go first here mark your first card is pitcher for the angels matt palmer i am not familiar with matt palmer

42:40he's a film director isn't that de palma brian that's brian de palma yeah how about my directorial knowledge though very nice let's see matt palmer overall played for five years in the big leagues three with the angels and then parts of seasons with the padres and the giants in 2010 with the angels he had a minus 0.1 war with a one and two record 4.54 era 32 and three to 33 and two-thirds innings

43:1438 hits allowed and an 88 era plus minus 0.1 not great but it's better than a lot of them that i've had lately what do you think about pop culture you think there's gonna be a lot of it oh i'm sure there's tons i in fact i'm already looking in man he's got a suspiciously like long wikipedia page for yeah his length in the the big leagues but you know what maybe this is what keeps him busy i don't know

43:47i don't see anything shocking enough pop culture related though on the card mark he does have facial hair oh good something that will get you to a score of zero yes so we'll see how that works out all right my card is with the pirates delwin young now it's delwin not not delman this is delwin d-e-l-w-y-n

44:23okay in this is a cool card it looks like he's probably a short stop although he's listed as outfield on this card but mark de rosa is sliding into second base trying to break up a double play he's already gotten rid of the ball and he's in midair jumping over d-row it's a good card um now here's the thing mark he's got his pants pulled up but there is no stirrups being shown here so i'm not going to get any points for that he does have sunglasses on so i will get that but

44:58gotta be able to see the sanitaries that's the whole point of the thing delwin young played in the big leagues for five years three with the dodgers two with the bucks in 2010 he hit 236 286 on base 414 slug 88 ops plus the same as your era plus he had seven home runs 28 rbi but a minus 0.3 war oh good i mean rough year yeah minus 0.3 is not great not a lot of not a lot of exciting stuff going on there

45:37in his transactions and i'm gonna guess the same will be said about his uh pop culture life i would guess so let's see hit a hit a the first major league home run off of manny corpus isn't that how you say like a male body in latin that's right yeah you can catch our baseball history in latin yes uh that this is the only words i know how to speak in latin uh i'll take your word for it

46:13i don't do a lot of talking in that one so maybe that's why it's so popular let's see anything else here that is exciting played in a lot of independent ball and in mexico as well father was drafted by the reds in 1981 doesn't say a whole lot about much success there though not much going on there mark you have won that round easily let's see if i can win three of them with a score of zero now we should mention last week mark you and i asked listeners who they root for in wax pack

46:49zeros if they root for anybody and you shared with me one listener that said that they root for you because i seem too thirsty for the wins i love that i want to win i don't do anything halfway i'm telling you i don't if i'm playing i play to win all right you're up one to nothing mark your next card is wow these cards are awful they've like gold stamped the the names in and it's with a black like border and it's just impossible to read you have pitcher for the nationals chen meng wong

47:25let's see yankees is what i certainly think of when i think of chen meng wong nothing on this card is going to help you out unfortunately let's see overall nine years in the big leagues the yankees for five the gnats for two and then kansas city and toronto for one apiece the bad news for you or maybe it's good news we don't know yet is that he took 2010 off okay you see i got a zero i'm gonna assume he was probably hurt he did not play anywhere that year probably had maybe had tommy john i don't

47:55i'm not sure but yeah because he played from 05 to geez 2016 and yeah that was the only year he had off i think well 2014 and 2015 as well oh he he went okay well too he might have gone elsewhere where did it where else were it see than those years no just in the in the minors so yeah not gonna help you out there never traded just signed release signed release signed release so potential nothing

48:28nothing and nothing pop culture wise these newer cards don't seem to have as much pop culture relevance no they don't wow this is a very very long page coach the fuban guardians in the chinese professional baseball league in 2018 and then uh with the ctbc brothers they were my team they i guess they still are my squad there i love that he has two sons jj and wellington i love those names

49:03very traditionally asian names jj and wellington absolutely well he was uh recovering from a shoulder injury in 29 admitted to having an extramarital affair he was too bored rehabbing jeez oh yikes the paragraph after that is not great i think this counts though as pop culture he's uh there's a documentary about wong late life the chin ming

49:36wong story debuted in theaters even oh wow in 2018 so yeah there you go you that's uh that's pop culture baby do i get the affair points yes that's a minus half of it dang it all right so that's a half point of war for you going up against my card oh i i like i like that i've got this card i've got pitcher for the blue jays i've got the sheriff roy halliday

50:10all right so yeah i think you got my number here nothing on this card is going to help me out i mean except for the fact that he's a hall of famer yes two times cy young award winner eight time all-star 16 years in the big leagues 12 with toronto four with the phillies in 2010 good news for me he was an all-star won the cy young that year led the league in one two three four five six seven

50:43eight nine categories you realize this is going to be overkill yeah we're not even going to we don't need to add this up he went 21 and 10 with a 2.44 era led the league in complete games with nine and shutouts with four pitched in 250 and two-thirds innings only gave up 231 hits he struck out 219 that's 219 and had an era plus of 167 for a war of 8.5

51:14wow yeah that was that was not close no i we might have broken the the counter here 8.5 that's all i'm going to put in there let's see i mean obviously a hall of famer obviously unfortunately passed away through a no hitter in the playoffs you know literally just one of the one of the best pitchers of the 2000s um any points for being on the cover of major league baseball 2k 11 i think we should i

51:47mean i've given points for for having video games before yeah i think we could do it but not needed honestly we don't even need to need to continue that is a obvious easy win for me and we are tied up at one a piece all right mark your next card is catcher for the minnesota twins drew butera sporting a soul patch and a chin what are those called something i don't know what that is just

52:19like a a little brush on the end of his chin but that's all that you're gonna get there from the card itself all right let's see drew drew drew drew butera 12 years in the big leagues he played for a lot of teams kansas city minnesota for four years colorado for three years and then the dodgers and the angels for two a piece 2010 mark was his rookie year he hit 197 237 on base and a 296 slug for a 46 ops plus and two home runs and 13 ribs that's still good for a positive two war

52:57wow well he's a catcher maybe mr defense yeah he's a good good defensive catcher maybe he's got that facial hair i don't know if that's added in there traded by the mets to the twins for luis castillo former mariner luis castillo no longer a mariner you sure that was a different luis castillo i think is it well it's his name's luis castillo that's all i can oh yeah it's this guy how could i mess this this guy is the guy we used to mess with in atlanta behind home plate the

53:31second baseman for the marlins that's my ah yes find me go ahead try it let's see drew butera pop culture wise i'm guessing there's not a whole lot here played for team italy in the 2013 world baseball classic his father also sal butera yeah not uh not going uh not gonna have anything else there for you unfortunately so that is a positive 0.3 not too bad for drew butera something interesting

54:05about him that i found here uh became the fifth catcher to catch a no hitter in both the american league and national league so i thought that was cool the other four are i have no idea well i see now you've left it wide open for listeners to that's right find something for them to do yeah if you want some busy work go ahead and do that i'm guessing emails ray fossey's got to be one of

54:36them well now he was in cleveland and then oakland i don't know you know what mark you need to you need to figure that out for next week i'm gonna i'm gonna leave that up to you all right mark somebody email me the answer please i don't feel like mark you are going up against for me infielder for the chicago white socks alexi ramirez alexi's got some sunglasses and some facial hair here as long this must have been on mother's day

55:06weekend because he's got pink sweatpants on i see the cuban missile that's a great name the cuban missile especially when he would have a crisis they would they would yes really resigning him it was called the cuban missile crisis that's right let's see overall alexi nine years in the big leagues eight with the white socks and then the padres and the rays in 2016 2010 for the white socks wow a great year he hit 282 313 on base 431 slug he was a silver slugger

55:43this year 18 home runs 70 ribs 13 stolen bases for a 5.6 war very nice not for me though i might get all-time high for three cards in war here let's see here on the 2015 world series team it's got a ring to his name um his wikipedia page is for some reason green and gold which i like but i'm not sure why

56:16i don't know i i i do not know why the color is like that for uh for his pages that's interesting looks like he's still playing in in cuba he played in the uh 2024 he played in cuba wow so i mean yeah plays long play make them make them wheel you off the diamond in a body bag even all right mark i

56:47have won that round quite convincingly again i am up two to one and your card is with the st louis cardinals former mariner brendan ryan so you're gonna get some points here he has got eye black on i cannot see stirrups i see he's got his pants pulled up but mark he has got a sweat band with his number on it nice so you are going to get the eye black and you are going to get the

57:20we're just going to call it what i guess i'll put it under mims bands sweat bands same thing all right so that's good news for you didn't brendan ryan didn't he do it didn't he do impersonations or something and he did some impersonation that everybody loved i don't remember i don't recall i think it might have been a mariner specific thing but drafted by the cardinals from lewis and clark state college lewiston idaho i think we've talked about that before 10 years in the big league

57:53st louis for four mariners and yankees for three and the angels for one in 2010 for the cardinals he hit 223 279 on base 294 slug those are some low numbers i'm not gonna lie he was mr defense 57 ops plus but a war of 2.1 he was awesome defensively just a wonder let's see what else did mr ryan do if i may quote omar viskell you may he's pretty flashy for a white guy

58:29okay uh let's see the yankees traded him to the cubs for adam warren and starling castro hmm okay brendan ryan pop culture wise broke up cc sabathia's perfect game with one out in the seventh as a mariner nice of all people you know yeah also was the final out in philip humber's

59:00perfect game so he was around a couple perfect games against the a's in 2011 he had the unusual result of reaching third base on an infield hit ground ball fielded by a shortstop eric sogard throws off balance to first was late it went behind connor jackson the a's first baseman ryan ran for second which was left uncovered by sogard and immediately for third which was also uncovered this sounds this sounds like an a's team from 2011 yes yes let's see here and it just says ryan is

59:39married and has two kids no names i don't think his wife has a name it's a weird thing well it says yeah ryan is the youngest of four children no no names there his father was jim though well yeah jim's the one with the name yeah yeah but nothing there that's gonna help you out so brendan ryan will get you a 2.3 score and you will be going up against logan on drosek wow kind of sounds like like

1:00:10anders from workaholics yes logan on drosek i love that he's his cousin he's not a swimmer he's a baseball player though there is nothing on this card that is going to help me out it's spring training i'm not even sure if logan was in the big leagues this year he was look at that what do you know overall six years in the big leagues actually for logan five years with the reds one for baltimore 2010 was his rookie year he appeared in 60 games out of the bullpen with a perfect 5-0 record

1:00:4358 two-thirds innings pitched 49 hits struck out 39 111 era plus and a 0.4 war i i don't think it's going to get much higher for me than 0.4 war might be where you end up at logan here let's see interesting things about logan besides his last name also played in uh japan for tokyo before coming back and rejoining major league baseball and then spent some time in

1:01:13mexico and the independent league also the chinese professional league i mean he's been all over the place but nothing nothing pop culture wise nada so that'll be a 0.4 which is not enough to beat the 2.3 and mark we're going to sudden death we are two a piece very tense your card is oh this might be good for you with the royals alex gordon oh yeah on this card he does have sunglasses on

1:01:44all right alex gordon 14 years in the big leagues every single one of those years was with the kansas city royals won a world series in 2015 eight gold gloves two platinum gloves he was a pretty good fielder but something went haywire this year wow easily the worst year in the big leagues 2010 for alex gordon hit 215 on base was 315 slug was 355 for an 84 ops plus eight home runs

1:02:2120 rbi one stolen base five caught stealing and a minus 0.5 war okay that hurts that is i he never had a minus war well he had a minus 0.1 in 2017 but that's it everything else a career of 34.9 war and i got the minus 0.5 that's nice he was drafted in the first round he was the second pick overall in 2015 gordon's 2006 baseball card gained notoriety after he was drafted tops issued his rookie

1:02:59card prematurely as only players on the 25 man roster or who had played at least one major league game were eligible as a result they had to stop producing the card cut holes in some of the existing card examples though found their way into retail stores and have garnered bids in the thousands on ebay now that's just what wikipedia says i have no way of knowing if that is true or not but good story yeah nothing else i'm a little bit i guarantee you he did like local spots but

1:03:32nothing that we can see here in terms of pop culture so mark you will end up with a minus 0.4 score yikes awesome yeah let's see let's see i've i've lost in this situation many times before my card is oh bay area black ace with the tigers here don trail willis but he was not great when

1:04:03he was not with the fish and he's not with the fish here yeah could be anything here he is with detroit here there is nothing on this card that is going to help me out either overall nine years in the big leagues florida for five detroit for three cincinnati and arizona for a season apiece 2010 he split time between detroit and arizona overall he went two and three with a 5.62 era pitched in 65 and two-thirds innings 72 hits 41 earned runs 47 strikeouts for an era plus of 76

1:04:38and a war of minus 0.2 so don trail i don't i can't remember him being in any trouble so i think i might be safe but i'm not sure let's see 2002 he was traded by the cubs with julian tavares to the marlins for antonio alfanseco and matt clement then the marlins traded him a couple years later with miguel cabrera to detroit for nobody i mean cameron may been in andrew miller that's

1:05:16essentially what it was yeah okay very lopsided trade there let's see traded to the by the tigers to the d-backs for billy buckner not bill buckner right billy billy looks like that's about it for that willis's favorite player was former athletics pitcher dave stewart nice favorite player yep raised in alameda county or not alameda raised in alameda california right there where willie stargill's from his mom was an elite level softball player never knew his father

1:05:52though his father though was a minor league player in the 70s but never knew him went to arizona state obviously a powerhouse baseball program there willis i know does tv now he's been on he's been on some of those sunday night games as well rookie of the year let's see oh dui pleaded guilty to reckless driving and did community service and had six months probation do we minus for that or do we just

1:06:23like kind of grit our teeth i think i think we just sort of go well that's not a good thing we go yeah hit a grand slam off of robert person in 2002 or no i remember that for some reason no he hit it off of jose lima it was the first and that was in 2006 he was the first pitcher to hit a grand slam since robert person in 2002 yeah i remember him hitting the grand slam and then he in 2006 same year he hit two home runs in one game did he win did he win a silver slugger at any point

1:07:00or was uh no he did not well hold on let's go to batting no he did not win a silver slugger he had three home runs that year he had two the next year wow like who uh it might have been it might have been hampton might have been winning them still at that point well let's see here overall that is a minus point two for me that's what i said right yeah minus point two so with a minus point

1:07:34two score i have won the round and i have won the game we can't pick up anything no you realize i'm i could put this baby to bed before the regular season's over in major league baseball and we don't have baseball again for another two years yeah i know i'm a little worried about that yeah but there i'm happy with that i'll take it i'll accept it i've accepted the results and i urge you to as well okay i accept all right there we go 17 to 11 mark i am up i gotta have a real big

1:08:14streak here yeah you really do need it all right there's people rooting for me man i know you do you've got the people on which i don't understand all you you win every every time root for the underdog i play to win i can't oh i don't i can't i can't go i was the other last week in my baseball league i we were up big and i hit a hit a line drive in the gap and i took second base unabashedly i was trying to get my slugging percentage up but i probably should have just

1:08:49held on with a single but i kept going and got a got a double so there you go all right who can blame you yeah well the other team but they didn't they didn't i knew that i knew them they were fine with it all right that'll do it for wax packs heroes mark that's also going to do it for the show if you want more of us you can do so by checking out our socials they are all there in the show notes or you can just look up to strike noise that's t-w-o strike noise you can find us there also just a reminder i stream on youtube monday wednesday and friday for an hour hour

1:09:21and a half each morning at nine o'clock west coast time we do baseball dailies we play the grid we recap what's gone on in the baseball world and we talk a lot about pop culture it's just the way it goes it's a lot of fun well at least for me uh come on and join uh join us if you want or you can always watch the the vod later at your leisure mark what about an email address do we have one of those yeah hold on i gotta look it up here it is two strike noise spell it out t-w-o strike noise at gmail.com you should really put that on a post-it note just right on your yeah i keep forgetting

1:09:54so you can remember it's kind of hard to remember very hard to remember all right that'll do it for uh this episode thank you very much for hanging out with us we will uh hopefully see you again on the next episode of two strike noise thank you god bless you have a good day you