This is a free preview of the paid episode. For more, please visit our Patreon.
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley argue that JR Ritchie should want to keep his first major league homer, José Soriano’s first-season hot streak, and other Yankees uniforms, as well as follow-up foul calls, pucks, jersey numbers, the anthem and the No. A historically hot start for the Rockies (compared to last year). Then (50:36) they take a break from interviewing former octagenarian players to interview a younger, quadragenarian former player: former All-Star Brad Lidge. An infamous manager once said, “What comes close is close because he is close.” But what if the closest one becomes an archaeologist? Ben and Meg chatted with Lidge about his post-playing archeology pivot: what drew him to the field, how he pursued a second career (and how it differed from his first), the ancient Etruscans, misconceptions about archeology, what he could learn from digging in the ballpark, finding out: not gambling ad), discussing reinventing his career at cocktail parties, the fun and processes of communicating with the past, archeology moneyball, and more, followed by his thoughts on fellow fastball artist Mason Miller.
You are not a FanGraphs Member
It appears that you are not yet a FanGraphs Member (or signed in). We’re not mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we’d like to point out a few good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Free Viewing! We will not mistake you for this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited topics! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles per month. Members are never cut off.
3. Dark mode and classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, the way you want.
5. One-click data export! Use our predictions and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove images from the home page! (Honestly, this doesn’t sound that good to us, but other people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. More Steam guesses! We have offer, percentage, and context neutral predictions available only to members.
8. Get the FanGraphs Walk-Off, a custom year-end review! Find out how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don’t fall prey to FOMO.
9. Weekly mailbag column, for Members only.
10. Help support FanGraphs and all of our staff! Our members give us valuable resources to improve the site and bring new features!
We hope you will consider Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize that this has been a very long marketing article, so we’ve removed all other ads from this article. We didn’t want to overdo it.
