From RBIs To Reality: Baseball’s Data Myths And What They Teach Every Industry

What if the numbers you trust most are telling only half the story? Mike Chung sits down with Ben Orlando, host of The Midnight Library of Baseball, to explore how baseball’s most beloved stats—wins, RBIs, errors—became powerful myths and why context changes everything. This is a conversation for statheads and story lovers alike, where the romance of the game meets clear-eyed analysis.

We dive into the 1990 Bob Welch paradox: 27 wins and a Cy Young Award, yet teammates and rivals outpaced him on ERA, strikeouts, and complete games. That puzzle opens a bigger question: which metrics actually isolate individual performance, and which are shaped by teammates, ballparks, and managerial choices? From Joe Carter’s RBI surge behind elite on-base talent to Barry Bonds hitting 73 homers with surprisingly modest RBI totals due to empty bases, we expose how batting order and lineup construction warp the box score.

History adds its own twists. The spitball era and Ray Chapman’s tragic death led to cleaner balls and better visibility, boosting offense and safety in one stroke. Ball color experiments—yellow and orange—nearly stuck, while a quiet 1957 innovation, the glove hinge, expanded one-handed range and redefined defense. We also unpack error scoring and how risk-taking can penalize bold fielders while rewarding caution, plus the subtle influence of grounds crews tipping the scales with surface prep.

Beyond the diamond, we connect these lessons to smarter analytics in business and life: understand what a metric truly measures, know the system around it, and slow down enough to look beneath the headline number. If you care about performance, incentives, and how tools shape outcomes, this conversation will give you a sharper lens and a deeper appreciation for the game’s soul.

If this resonates, subscribe, share it with a friend who loves baseball and data, and leave a review to help others find the show. What stat do you trust the least—and why?

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Transcript

Setting The Mood And Mission

Mike Chung 0:07

Welcome to Autocare on Air, a candid podcast for a curious industry. I'm Mike Chung, Senior Director of Market Intelligence at the Auto Care Association, and this is Indicators, where we identify and explore data that will help you monitor and forecast industry performance. This includes global economic data, industry indicators, and new data sources. Hi everybody, I'm Mike Chung of Auto Care Association. Super happy to have my friend Ben Orlando join us for a talk about baseball. Not often I bring props, but you'll see why we do this today. And really excited to talk with Ben. Ben is a friend of mine, I know, from a tennis league, and he has his own podcast called The Midnight Library of Baseball. Ben, welcome to the program.

Ben Orlando 1:00

Thanks, Mike. Happy to be here.

Mike Chung 1:02

So tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us a little bit about the podcast and how it came about.

Why History Beats Hot Takes

Ben Orlando 1:08

Sure. So I am I was a former uh English professor, I'm a writer, author, uh, and I'm uh currently uh full-time psychotherapist. So I wrote a book about a female knuckleball pitcher. Um and my agent and I were talking and thinking of, you know, what would be good to just uh you know get the word out and through through something that you can do consistently that you enjoy. And I had a history podcast before, um, and so I really had gotten back into baseball, which was why I wrote this book and reading baseball, reading fiction. Uh and so for me, doing a deep dive, uh, doing deep research and going uh beyond the normal day-to-day, which is what most baseball podcasts are. You know, who's getting traded here, what's going on in each game. To me, uh it was much richer to discuss the history, uh, untold stories, overlook stories, kind of turning perspectives on their head, uh, asking questions that people weren't even thinking about. Uh so for me, that's what got it started, and that's what led to Midnight Library Baseball. So it's a podcast, and I also have uh Instagram, Facebook, um, you know uh hundreds of thousands of downloads, millions of views, and it's really connecting with people in terms of slowing down and kind of remembering what it can be like if you do slow down.

Mike Chung 2:47

Thanks for that introduction, Ben. And you bring up an interesting point about the stories of baseball slowing down. I've listened to almost all of season one, and I love your intro and the sort of mood that you set in terms of nostalgic stories of baseball, no loud noises, and it's something that you encourage people to wind down with and really get deep into these histories and the stories of baseball. Am I getting that right, Ben?

Ben Orlando 3:17

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. The the point is uh as you're listening, it's like you said, it's not winding you up. There's plenty in our life, right? There's plenty in society to wind you up every day. Nonstop action, you know, all of the external stressors. And so it's it's really necessary, not only uh mentally, but uh physically, physiologically, for our bodies to rest. And so this podcast, it's meant to entertain, of course, but also to help slow you down so that you can rest, so that your bodies can rest, which is necessary for uh repair.

Linking Baseball Data To Business

The Bob Welch Cy Young Puzzle

Mike Chung 3:59

Thanks for sharing that. And some of our listeners are might be thinking, okay, Mike, you talk about data, you talk about statistics, and it's a natural fit, especially if you listen to some of the episodes that Ben Hump has on his podcast, because when I listened to the top the episodes on the topics we're going to discuss today, it made me think about the automotive aftermarket, some of the data that we look at longitudinally. For example, vehicle miles traveled, a bell weather for how people are repairing their cars, maintaining their cars, and what the supply chain, whether manufacturers, distributors, service providers, retailers, might expect in terms of demand generation. So for all of you automotive aftermarket folks listening, certainly you'll be able to apply some of the sort of vignettes that Ben and I are gonna discuss today. And I think across any industry, thinking about longitudinal data, their sources, what happens when technology changes? What type of data is being collected? Is it good enough? Are there viable substitutes? These are gonna be really interesting things that I hope that all of you can take away when you listen to not only this podcast episode, but also some of them. And baseball, right? It doesn't get more American than that. All I need really are a slice of apple pie, a hot dog, and maybe a Chevrolet. But why don't we go ahead and dive in then? So some of the episodes that I listened to were on the things that I just mentioned, statistics. So I'm thinking specifically of runs batted in, RBIs, wins, losses, errors. I know that's a lot of them, but do you want to maybe pick one or two of those and just tell us a little bit about how these are defined, the histories, maybe the limitations of some of these stats?

Ben Orlando 5:56

Sure. I mean, so the thing about statistics is you know, they're numbers, and you might see them as just numbers, but at least in baseball, statistics can represent stories. They can represent your idea, your image of a person, of a player. And that can, you know, for better or worse. So I think one great example is you know the mystery of Bob Welch. So this was in let me just so in 1990, uh, Bob Welch won the Cy Young Award. He was a pitcher for the Oakland Athletics. And you know, the mystery here is how could he have won the Cy Young Award, which is the most coveted award given to a pitcher each year, uh, if he wasn't even the best pitcher in the league? Not only that, he wasn't even the best pitcher on his team. So if you put these things together, um how could he win the Cy Young Award? And people who know about baseball, who know a little, or even know a lot, they're going to see that uh and they're gonna say, oh, this guy, he must have been the best pitcher, right? But he wasn't. His teammate Dave Stewart had a lower earned run average. He gave up less runs uh throughout the season. Even Roger Clemens that year, he had a 1.93 earn run average, which is unbelievable compared to Welch's 295. And the answer here is Welch won 27 games. Right? So he had a lot of wins. And wins was given a lot of emphasis, the number of wins you have. But the number of wins you have is not uh determined on your play alone, right? It's about other factors. And so this skewed statistic led not only fans and people, but the the powers that be in Major League Baseball to award this guy um the Cy Young Award. And you know, not to take away from Bob Welch, anything we're talking about here, you get to this level, you're a great player, right? You're you're a great athlete. Um, but when you uh attribute uh credit, you have to consider these different factors. And so he had 27 wins, which was a ton of wins, uh, but he wasn't actually even close to the best pitcher in the league. Uh so you know, looking at statistics and going deeper into them, you can find the truth.

Mike Chung 8:41

Really interesting point. So a couple, so much to unpack there. I'll start with this. 27 wins is certainly a lot. I'm not much of a baseball player, but I remember 20 being a pretty high watermark. Am I remembering that correctly for a season?

What A “Win” Really Measures

Ben Orlando 8:55

Yeah, yeah. I think it was 1968. Then McLean was the last 30-game winner. Um, and Bob Welch had the most wins in 18 years. So again, it was a significant feat. And the question is, um, I think it was uh who said it in uh smart baseball. Keith Law has this book, Smart Baseball, which is I I uh referenced that for this episode. And he said, you know, to really attribute wins completely to a pitcher, you would have to believe that he's magical, that he can will his teammates to create runs around him, right? Which is of course absurd. It has nothing to do. You can be a great pitcher. Um, and to to point this out, in 1959 for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Harvey Haddocks, he pitched 13 perfect innings. A perfect game is extremely rare. You give up no hits, no walks, no errors. He pitched 13 perfect innings.

Mike Chung 9:56

But innings or games, I'm sorry. What's that? 13 perfect innings or games?

Ben Orlando 10:02

Innings, yeah. Okay, but his teammates did not give him any runs, right? So it was 0-0 going into the 13th, and he ended up losing the game, and then ended up losing the credit of a perfect game because he didn't win. Right. So individually, it was uh an amazing feat, and yet he didn't get the win, and you know, that skewed how people saw it. So it's really about attributing credit where it belongs, and wins is uh kind of a false assessment.

Mike Chung 10:36

Well, that's a great point because when you're pitching, you are on defense and you can't control what your offense is doing. That's borne by the example you just gave. And then tell us a little bit about how a win is defined, because I can't remember if you have to start the game or if you're pitching the majority of the innings. Can you shed some light on that?

Ben Orlando 10:56

Sure. This came way back in the in the late 1800s when uh they were trying to attribute it and they gave it to okay, um the per the pitcher with the most innings, and it ultimately came up, came to five, right? So five innings, but then you know the it starts to change when it's tied or different uh relief pitchers are coming in in terms of who gets a win, so it can get a little complex there. But normally it's uh five innings. If you pitch through five innings, then you'll get the win.

Mike Chung 11:28

Okay. And you mentioned something else that was interesting. You talked about the 30-game winner that was 30 years ago, 60 years ago. And I think about how long pitchers are allowed to pitch in terms of their pitch count, how what the rotation is. Can you speak to that a little bit too? Because I think that would certainly affect the number of wins any pitcher could be perhaps have as their denominator or that they could possibly win, right?

Pitch Counts, Workloads, And Records

Ben Orlando 11:57

Absolutely, yeah. So today the the number one concern is well, I mean, it's funny because you would say the number one concern is saving your pitcher and keeping your pitcher healthy. Um and so pitchers don't they don't throw complete games anymore. Um I think it was Yamamoto last year for the Dodgers who threw a complete game, and it was a big deal because they don't do that. But years ago, you would throw complete games, you would pitch more innings, you would pitch more games, which gave you the opportunity to have more wins. So it's a that's a really good point because a lot of these statistics, a lot of these records, we can't they can't be broken anymore because uh players aren't given the same opportunities uh because you're trying to preserve a pitcher's arm, right? Meanwhile, you're trying to have them throw 100 miles an hour, which is counterproductive. Uh, but because of the changes in the game, and you know, pitchers, players are making millions and millions of dollars, they're not going to risk hurting their arm to pitch one more inning or get you know a couple more wins a year. So that really backers in.

Mike Chung 13:07

Thanks for that perspective. And in the beginning of this conversation, you talked about was it Bob Welch? Am I getting the name correct?

Speaker 2 13:14

Yeah.

Mike Chung 13:15

You said that he wasn't necessarily the best pitcher even on his team. So I'm just kind of curious who was the best pitcher on his team and what were your criteria for what was your basis for that?

Was Stewart Better Than Welch

Ben Orlando 13:29

Sure. So when you look at individual statistics for a pitcher, things that can point out, regardless of your offense around you, um, his teammate was Dave Stewart. So um Dave Stewart had a lower earned run average, right? Runs per game, which is significant, right? And that's something that you can pin directly on an individual. Dave Stewart also had more strikeouts. And, you know, we're talking about um number of innings and complete games, which really doesn't happen much anymore. Dave Stewart had 11 complete games that year compared to Welch's two. So, you know, when you put these statistics together, it adds up to, yeah, overall, individually, Dave Stewart was much stronger than Bob Welch. But he didn't, I think he had 21 wins or 22 wins.

Mike Chung 14:20

So still a significant number, right?

Ben Orlando 14:22

Still significant, but not 27. And that was the determining factor.

Mike Chung 14:27

And something like the Cy Young Award, certainly some subjectivity, you mentioned emphasis, I think weighting, you know, as a statistically oriented nerd type of guy. But does the do the criteria change from year to year? Because I I can imagine where you have statistics, but do they tell the whole story? And maybe as a manager, it's like you're looking at certain things, but the certain presence, the non uh intangibles. Can you tell us a little bit about how those factors can get uh are they consistent from year to year? And a little bit about how the Csai Young Award or other awards might be based on the Peter.

Rethinking RBIs And Context

Ben Orlando 15:07

Yeah, they they certainly do change as it it takes a while, right? It takes a while for the culture to shift. So um the wins is less important now, certainly, and it had become less important after the 1990s, and they're starting to look at what statistics do matter. And you know, a good example is runs batted in. So um runs batted in is a statistic that measures how many people you're driving in. So a guy's on second base, you hit a double, he comes around and scores, right? So you get an RBI, you get a run batted in. But it's not based on just you. You have to have men on base. And uh a good example here is uh well, Joe Carter in 1990, he was playing for the Padres, he had the third highest number of RBIs in the league with 115. His batting average was 232, which is extremely low. So what it depended on, what what happened that year was he had possibly the three best um teammates in front of him to get on base. He had Roberto Almar, he had Tony Gwynne, he had Jack Clark, and they had high on-base percentages. And so whenever he stepped up to the plate, there was likely to be someone on base that he could drive in. Now, of course, he had to drive them in still. But you look at Barry Bonds, a controversial player, but still great. In 2001, Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs, right? He destroyed the record. But he only, well, he had 130 some RBIs that year, which okay, that's a lot of RBIs, but for 73 home runs, it's not that many. Because 54% of the time when Barry Bonds stepped to the plate, the bases were empty.

Mike Chung 17:06

Interesting.

Ben Orlando 17:07

So he only drove in his players 64 times. He drove himself in 73 times. So, and and for years, you know, these statistics, as you said, they they gain weight, they become symbols. And so you just look at, oh, he had this many RBIs, he must be great. And it was so significant that it permeated the game to a degree that you know, players would get better contracts, they would get more money because of these statistics that weren't actually accurate in representing their defensive or offensive output.

Mike Chung 17:46

Hmm. And I can imagine, and I think you've already alluded to this in a way, batting position matters, right? If you're the leadoff batter, does that put you in a harder position to have RBI?

Ben Orlando 18:00

Absolutely. You know, it dep I think if you look statistically, um it changes, but yeah, because you know, depending on uh you know, the fourth inning is going to be different from the first inning, but you know, if you're the third hitter or the fourth hitter and you have men in front of you who consistently get on base, then you know your odds are just going to go up. So that makes a huge difference.

Mike Chung 18:26

I'm guessing there is a master's PhD level thesis out there somewhere that looks at batters who bat first, controls for that variable, and looks compares RBI for leadoff batters versus other batters. If that hasn't been published and somebody writes a thesis about it, please make sure you credit this podcast for that idea.

Ben Orlando 18:48

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean you can plug that into Google right now and get information because it probably is out there. Like every position, all of that, it's so stats heavy now that all of that information is is out there and readily available.

Mike Chung 19:02

Absolutely. And um another consideration are some of the props that I I brought up here at the baseball. I loved your episode talking about the spitball. As well as things like the composition of the ball. The no, there's a lot of topics I'll just highlight now, but and we can dive into as many as we reasonably can here. But the uh the composition of the ball, the cost of a ball, how long the ball was used, because if you watch a game these days or in the last decade or two, many balls can be used as a singular at bat, whereas it was different decades ago. So certainly those can affect the statistics. So maybe let's talk a little bit about the baseball. So any of those topics you want to kind of uh pick and run with for a little bit, Ben?

Spitballs, Clean Balls, And Safety

Ben Orlando 19:56

Sure, sure. I mean, like my mind pings on so many directions when you talk about the spitball and um what changes because of it. There was um I just talked about this. There's there's a quote in the baseball research journal. I don't remember what year it was, but um the writer was talking about um when so just going back a minute, the spitball was banned, and part of the impetus of that was um it was 1920, uh Ray Chapman was killed because he was hit by a pitch, and part of the reason was you know the ball was dirty, it was hard to see, as you know, in the the gray of the day, and so he was hit in the head and he died, and so um the spitball was banned. Now, part of an interesting aspect of this is they grandfathered in people who were still throwing the spitball, so they allowed them to continue pitching, um even though it was banned. So some pitchers were still throwing the spitball for years until they retired. But this change allowed the ball to be replaced, allowed it to be cleaner, and it was bright, so you could see it, which definitely changed the impact for hitters, because now you can see the ball coming in at 89, 90 miles an hour, and it's going to affect the offense.

Mike Chung 21:18

Absolutely. And if I can just pause for one second, for listeners who may not be familiar with with what a spitball is or what exactly is in that spit, Ben, could you just illuminate us?

Ben Orlando 21:29

Yeah, I mean, spitballs, um it's gross. It's it's disgusting because a pitcher will spit on it, but you know, tobacco chewing was a big part of the game in you know the early days of baseball. And so pitchers would chew tobacco, they would spit on the ball, they would rub it in. And because they didn't replace baseballs very frequently, the ball would have all this spit and disgusting juice on it, and the the dirt from the ball field. And You know, it would turn brown. And it was very difficult to see and to hit. And so this was a huge advantage for the pitchers. And it also made the game dangerous.

Mike Chung 22:54

Thanks for that commentary. And just kind of going back to that prop. I mean, a ball like this is this was the cleanest one I had in my house, but I'm pretty sure if this hit the dirt on a pitch, the umpire would just get rid of it, right?

Ben Orlando 23:08

Yeah, even that ball as it is is not as bright as a brand new ball. Definitely. And and to just to this point of, you know, they preserved balls because of cost and um culture, but it wasn't until uh a fan sued um he sued the Giants, I believe it was, in the 1920s, because he caught a foul ball and then they tried to take it from him, and he said no. Right. And then they put a a little kid in jail, the Phillies did, because he kept a foul ball. And this started to change the policy, and finally teams like, okay, fans can keep foul balls, but part of it was because of the the balls were rare, right? The balls were expensive.

Mike Chung 23:55

But the litigious nature of the United States continues to live on, apparently.

Ben Orlando 24:02

Yeah. We're better in this in this example. Yeah.

Mike Chung 24:05

So so you you mentioned something interesting, and it was the ball was kept. So the ball back in the early part of the 20th century, if I'm remembering correctly, wound nylon, or was it cork? Can you just tell us a little bit about the composition of the ball and how it changed over the years? And then certainly, if you just use one ball throughout the whole game, it's probably going to get a little mushy, right? And that could perhaps be an advantage for the pitcher, I believe.

Why Ball Color Experiments Faded

Ben Orlando 24:36

Yeah, and and I can't recall right now the material, but yeah, it was cork, and then they used different substances. But in different periods, um, for example, when Babe Ruth came along, there were more home runs that offense, offensive output went up. Um the ball was like the it was tightened, so it it had more pop, right? It's it's harder, and so it's gonna pop more off the bat. Um and then in 1961, when Roger Merit broke Babe Ruth's record, again there was talk of okay, well, the ball is livelier. And so that made a difference in um in these cases.

Mike Chung 25:16

Interesting. And just for the uh our our listeners and viewers, uh um, illumination as well and edification is certainly the standard baseball white with red stitches. You talk a little bit about how different colors were experimented with and how it was maybe like a one-game test, and the players were like, ah, right. So I thought that was pretty interesting in terms of for visibility, some advantages to the to the hitters, but to the pitchers and fans, perhaps there's something about the classic that is just hard to kind of move away from.

Ben Orlando 25:55

Yeah, well, in the late 1800s, um Henry Chadwick, who's known there are many people, men known as the father of baseball, but he's one of them uh because he wrote extensively and was uh weighed in a lot, and he said the white baseball was ridiculous. Right, and he uh he suggested or recommended a red baseball, which uh is kind of connected to cricket. But so there was a red baseball in the late 1800s, and they experimented with different types, and then um they experimented with a yellow baseball, which and that was I'm trying to think if it was in the 1950s, was it 1950s or 1940s? Um but there was a scientist, an engineer, who implemented this, and like his argument was yellow is the best color overall to see, especially moving. Hence, stop science. You know, a lot of the signs are on roads are yellow, and so it's the best sign to see, and it was actually successful. And players during that game said, Yeah, we we could see it well, batters could see it well. The problem was that the die in the baseball was rubbing off on the pitcher's hand and clothes, and they didn't have the technology at the time to uh rectify that, and so it kind of quietly went away. Um and then um let's see. One second so in the 70s, Oakland A's owner Charlie Finley um tried the orange ball, right? And and he was one for really experimenting and getting publicity for these different things. But again, you know, it was successful, and they didn't test it long enough to see, you know, will a yellow ball, uh, will an orange ball um be better? Not only would it um lift the offensive numbers, which makes the game more exciting and entertaining, but would it make the game safer because players can pick up the ball better? And so they have just a little bit more time to react if the ball happens to be coming at their head.

Mike Chung 28:16

Right, right. Fascinating. And um, you know, I feel like we we have enough time, we can go into another um statistic and some of its influences, and that is say errors and fielding. So maybe before I pull out the glove here, can you tell us what an error is and how that is decided?

Errors, Risk, And Subjectivity

Ben Orlando 28:38

It's I think an error is actually maybe it's not as much now, but it it can be subjective, right? Um for instance, I remember reading something recently about uh Derek Jeter and not having as many errors uh playing shortstop. But people argue that yeah, he didn't have as many errors because he didn't take chances. So if you imagine uh an infielder, right, and the ball's speeding by him and he doesn't go for it, it's like, oh, he didn't have a chance. But if an infielder actually makes an attempt and he misses it or muffs it, then it's more likely an error. Right? So in that case, the more risk you take in going for a ball, um, the higher likelihood if you make a mistake, it's gonna be an error. And the same for the outfield. Right? If you're you could you see this all the time. There's a line drive or a or a fly ball, and an outfielder will take a few steps and then he'll let it drop in front of him and he'll you know throw it in. Now, if he makes a severe attempt of going for it and makes a mistake, then he'll likely get an error.

Mike Chung 29:49

So it's almost like a risk mitigation technique on an outfielder. If I let it drop, maybe it's only a single. If I go for the diving ESPN top 10 play, it might become a double, right?

Ben Orlando 30:01

Yeah, yeah. And this fact this goes back to uh it goes back to wins, it goes back to you know, if a perfect game. So again, a perfect game, and you see perfect games, you're likely to just remember the pitcher. But a perfect game requires the fielders to not make any errors, and that's completely separate from the pitcher. And so you have all these intertwining factors that we often don't think about when we look at statistics.

Mike Chung 30:29

And an error is essentially a mistake that is attributed to a defensive player when he bungles something. And as you're saying, if he chooses not to go for it, typically that would not count against him unless it's so obvious that he really tanked it, I would think, right?

Ben Orlando 30:47

Exactly. Yeah, and it could be right, it could be like a shortstop mishandling the ball, it could be it goes under his glove, it could be he makes the he gets it, uh, but then he makes a throwing error to first base, right? All of that could add up to an error.

Mike Chung 31:03

Right. And there's probably some subjectivity, I'm not sure about the nuances of a bad bounce, because I feel like the field is pretty uniform. I mean, they sweep it, there's inevitably going to be some imperfections that might lead to a bad bounce, but I would guess that the st statistician, the record keeper, has a little bit of latitude and discretion on ascribing error or not, right?

Fields, Groundskeepers, And “Cheating”

Ben Orlando 31:27

Yeah, and then that opens up a whole other topic because you're talking about uh you're talking about um the the people who tend the grounds or the groundskeepers. And at the turn of the nine, at the turn of the 20th century, baseball fields were uh uh not in the best shape. So you had a lot of irregularities. So if you listen look at errors and statistics from that time, you have to factor in the the baseball fields, right? And um it's interesting too, and I think this was season one, I did an episode on cheating, the role of groundskeepers can play because it was a game versus it was uh the Giants, the San Francisco Giants versus the uh LA Dodgers, and the Dodgers had a really fast team. So the Giants groundskeepers were told to make the infield muddier, and so it would be difficult for the runners to steal bases. Interesting, right? So again, this is a hidden factor in terms of okay, this guy doesn't have that many stolen bases, but maybe the fields were set up against him, right? It's something. Interesting.

Mike Chung 32:38

Yeah, and I mean, not to go down this rabbit hole too much, but certainly baseball diamonds and the the shapes are different in terms of the depth of the outfield, what the walls look like. And I think as tennis players, you know, we notice the subtle differences between say courts at Marcy Park versus say Yorktown High School. And those are hard courts, but they're they're gonna have their subtleties. And then you look at different surfaces for tennis courts, whether clay, grass, hardcore. And you know, that that's that could be another interesting line of discussion, I would think. But yeah, great point about the uh the fields and could there be collusion to make it harder for the visiting team, right?

Ben Orlando 33:22

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, the answer is yes, there certainly has been and is because it's it's accepted, right? It's people say, well, it's part of the game, they're allowed to do that. It's not against the rules. And in baseball.

Mike Chung 33:33

And I think just talking about the errors, I brought my softball glove from the 90s, and you had an interesting episode on the history of gloves. And when we think about gloves from the late 1800s to the 1900s or lack thereof, certainly this can affect errors, hitting rates, wins, saves, etc. So can you tell us a little bit about the gloves?

The 1957 Glove Breakthrough

Ben Orlando 33:58

Sure. And this is one of the, for me, like when I find uh a fact or a story that just blows my mind, of course, I want to uh you know put that together and share it with listeners so they have the same effect. And one of the moments came when I was researching the baseball glove and this idea that uh for almost 90 years, uh baseball glove designers were missing a key factor, a key aspect of the glove. Because until 1957, the baseball glove, um, and if you hold your glove up, right, so your glove, it has what's called a built-in hinge in it, okay? So what that means is it makes it easier, it almost closes upon itself, right? But this didn't exist before 1957. So gloves were gloves were based on the human hand. And but they're based on the human hand at rest, like this. And it's very hard to catch a ball. You can catch it, you know, you can keep it like this, but if you hold your glove up, if you hold it like this, it's gonna fall out. So players, yeah, players had to use both hands most of the times. Outfielders, infielders, they had to use both hands. So it took almost 90 years to think of this. And to me, that's amazing. Like, because you know, coaches, players, baseball glove designers were trying to innovate. They were trying to make the glove better, but they could not break themselves from this notion that the glove had to look like the hand. And so as the glove evolved, it looked less like the hand, but it became more functional, the pocket grew, and now you have outfielders who can extend their arm with one hand and make catches that were not possible before. And that again is going to change the statistics, it's going to change everything about the game.

Mike Chung 35:58

Absolutely. And I mean, catcher's myths, right? There are those have been around for a long time. But as you highlight the evolution of the glove, I mean, the first baseman's glove is probably a little bit different than another position, whether in the infield or in the outfield. Am I remembering that?

Ben Orlando 36:16

Yeah, right. You have different gloves for different positions. Uh, the first baseman's glove is is bigger because he's fielding so many balls. The catcher's glove is thicker. Um, and you know, early early gloves in the 1800s, because of course there was a time um prior to the 1870s up until 1896 when players wore no gloves at all.

unknown 36:39

Right.

Ben Orlando 36:39

And catchers had broken fingers, mangled fingers, obviously, because it was very hard to catch a ball without a glove. And even when they got gloves, they were very thinly padded. And so some catchers would actually put meat, right? They would put beef slabs of meat in their gloves to uh uh cushion the impact. Like they would do whatever they could because it was painful.

Mike Chung 37:03

I can imagine the conversations. Hey, hey Joe, I've got a New York strip today. What do you got? Oh, I got the Rebbe, you know, and I play a lot better with the Rbeye. Oh, I'm I'm a T-bone kind of guy, or whatever the case may be.

Ben Orlando 37:15

Yeah, and I wonder if they grilled that up after the game.

Mike Chung 37:18

It's tenderized. Let's let's cook. I love it. So um, yeah, certainly the equipment, the broken fingers. I mean, and in baseball, you're playing defense and offense. I can only imagine how hard it must have been to be a batter if you're playing with a very thin glove, if any at all, and you're trying to wrap your hands around a bat and hit something that's coming at you at 80, 90 miles an hour. It sounds pretty painful.

Ben Orlando 37:49

Yeah. I mean, you're talking about the invention of the batting glove, right?

Mike Chung 37:54

Um, well, I think even just if you're if you're handling a ball, you're spraining your fingers, and I know as a tennis player, you know, if my finger is sore, I have a blister or uh chapped hands, it can make a little bit of a difference, and that gets into your head. So I can only imagine as a baseball player when you're hitting something with that much force.

Speaker 2 38:14

Yeah.

Mike Chung 38:14

Um but yeah, batting gloves is certainly another area of exploration. So yeah.

Ben Orlando 38:20

Yeah, well, it really brings up this conversation about manliness because that was one of the key reasons men didn't wear gloves. It wasn't manly, it wasn't tough to wear to wear gloves to protect yourself. And so they would suffer these terrible injuries, and you know, their their careers could be shortened, their functionality was decreased because your hands are mangled for the rest of your life. And so, but um, you know, whether you're at the plate and you can't see the ball, or you don't have a helmet, or you're in the field and you don't have a glove, this toughness really covers fear that's unconscious inside because you know you're going to have that fear of a dirty ball coming in that you can't see that might hit you in the head. You're going to have that fear in the field. Even if, like, I'm tough, I can't admit that uh I would love a glove right now. Um, it's going to factor in when that ball comes flying towards you, you're, you're, you might flinch unconsciously. And so the more people could admit that they needed protection, they needed help, the actual the more courage, the the less fear they had in the field or at the plate.

Toughness, Protection, And Fear

Mike Chung 39:32

Yeah, I mean, a little bit of humility can certainly go a long way in the baseball field and so many other avenues of life. So um, you know, this has been so much fun talking with you. And I just want to talk a little bit about our hat. So I'm sure some of you might be wondering why Kansas City might uh what's the story behind that? So the story is this um my family and I we went to uh a cousin's wedding in Kansas City uh maybe about 15 years ago, and we fought a day game at the Kansas City Royals. So it must have been July. So you're probably already putting your head together in terms of, yeah, that would have been a very painful experience. So when you look at the pictures of our family throughout the game, we just like, huh, huh, huh? We're just gradually wilting as the game goes on. A lot of fun, and we even got to have my our son go out to the field and run the bases because it was one of those promotional days. We got him a hat, he ended up getting it got lost a few years later. So on a business trip to that area a few years later, I was able to get a replacement hat for him. So that's kind of the story of the Kansas City hat. And am I a Kansas City fan? Not necessarily. I grew up in west central Ohio between Cincinnati and Detroit in a town called Lima. So most of the uh folks in Lima would root for the Cincinnati Rabbits. I was never really that much of a baseball player, so I just kind of cheer for the home team. But so when I wear this, I just think it's representing part of my family lineage. My middle name is Kim, which is my mother's maiden name, and then my last name, Chunk. So we got it represented on this hat. So probably a little bit more than you might have bargained for or expected, but that's the history of my hat. So your turn, Beth.

Stories Behind The Hats

Ben Orlando 41:24

Um, so my hat is uh Field of Dreams, right? Those are the the letters on there. Um this as I was working on season one, I uh uh actually started to hear a voice inside of me, kind of like the movie, and I doubted it for a while, and it was like, oh, this is cheesy, right? Like, what's going on here? But it it happened when I did a story on Moonlight Graham, and I found out that you know one of these main characters from this film, Field of Dreams, was actually a real player who uh had a shot at the majors, played in the field, but never got to uh get his at-bat. Like, wow, this is crazy and sad, but also he turned out to he became a doctor then and now helped so many more people than he probably could have as a baseball player. And I decided to really look into this, and um my whole second season of Midnight Library Baseball is on the making of Field of Dreams. And so I dove deep. I ended up talking to um the director, Phil Alban Robinson, all the all these people involved. And it's just there are so many amazing stories surrounding the making of the film that to me rival anything that uh occurs in the film. So that was really meaningful, and um now I have listeners who have listened to the season uh multiple times. It's um it was a labor of love, and it's probably the most intense that I've done. Uh, but it was just really rewarding and fun to do.

Mike Chung 43:05

Well, congratulations on producing that series. I'm looking forward to listening to that season. And I think as we close up, we've talked a lot about statistics, the history, the interpretation, the context. What might you recommend for our listeners or anybody to consider when they're looking at statistics, whether in sports, in business, or any aspect of life?

Ben Orlando 43:29

And I think the reality is that we take shortcuts. It's how we evolved as humans, right? We have to take shortcuts in order to keep moving. And so we go on autopilot. Uh, but if you really want to learn the truth about something, then it's often worth digging a little deeper into the first story you see, into the statistics, you know, what's behind it. And I think overall that can be more helpful, you know, not only individually, but you know, as a society, to dig a little deeper into statistics to find out what actually is true, because so often, you know, the first thing you see is is not, but it's widely accepted, like wins, like RBIs. And um I think that can be really helpful.

Mike Chung 44:19

That's a great point. And it's a nice segue and kind of looping us back to the beginning, slowing down, taking your time, especially in this supercharged society and pace of life that we have, where we are getting so many inputs from so many different directions. Taking some time to absorb, ponder, investigate, and sort of clue the way can really be beneficial. Well, Ben, it's been such a pleasure talking with you. Is there anything else you want to add for our audience regarding statistics and baseball?

Ben Orlando 44:57

No. There's too much to get into. So I think we talked about uh a plenty.

How To Read Stats Better

Mike Chung 45:02

Okay, great. And just a couple of fun questions to close out. I mentioned you and I know each other from tennis, but are there other hobbies that you'd like to share with our audience or vacation spots, favorite foods? Anything else you'd like to kind of leave behind for our viewers and listeners?

Ben Orlando 45:19

Um vacation spots.

unknown 45:30

Yeah.

Ben Orlando 45:34

And we yeah, my wife and I have have gone there uh from time to time, and you know, we're excited we're going to uh Sedona in a couple months. And so like for me, just checking out this different scenery. Uh to me, the the west, the southwest has amazing uh scenery and you know views that you don't get anywhere else. So really excited about that.

Mike Chung 45:59

Absolutely. Well, thanks so much for sharing and remind the audience where they can find your podcast and materials.

Ben Orlando 46:06

Sure. So uh the podcast, Midnight Library of Baseball, you can find on most podcast platforms, uh, iTunes, Spotify, YouTube. Um, you can also go to the website Midnight LibraryBaseball.com. And then I have I have a Patreon page where I have extra episodes. So I have 17 uh episodes that you can't find on the regular feed. Um and so that's uh Patreon backslash midnight library baseball. I also have full interviews there um and other content. And then I have uh an Instagram page at Midnight Library Baseball, TikTok, Facebook. Uh so uh you can find me in all of those places. And if you have questions or or um show ideas, you can reach out at midnightlibrary baseball at gmail.com.

Mike Chung 46:56

Terrific. And Patreon, how do you spell Patreon?

Ben Orlando 46:59

P-A-T-R-E-O-N. Terrific.

Personal Notes, Travel, And Wrap

Mike Chung 47:02

Well, Ben, as always, it's been a pleasure having you and seeing you. So thank you so much for joining our program. And to all of our listeners and viewers, thank you for taking time to listen to this episode of Indicators. Have a great day, everybody.

Ben Orlando 47:16

Thanks so much, Mike. Great care.

Mike Chung 47:19

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Auto Care on Air. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast so that you never miss an episode. Don't forget to leave us a rating and review. It helps others discover our show. AutoCare on Air is proud to be a production of the Auto Care Association, dedicated to advancing the autocare industry and supporting professionals like you. To learn more about the association and its initiatives, visit autocare.org.