E14: Ball Four Book Review And The Seattle Pilots, The One-Year Team

The fastest way to puncture a sports myth is to show the day-to-day life behind it and Jim Bouton did exactly that with Ball Four. We start with a quick detour into Jerry’s battered tennis hand, then get serious about why this 1970 baseball book still sparks arguments: it broke the clubhouse “what you say here stays here” rule and made MLB confront what it wanted fans, kids, and the media to believe about players.

We talk through what Bouton actually put on the page: greenies (amphetamines), drinking, crude behavior, and the kind of juvenile pranks that feel unbelievable until you remember how insulated team life can be. That leads to a bigger question Brooke presses: do we expect baseball players to be better than everyone else, or do we just romanticize baseball history more than other sports?

Then we follow the thread that makes Ball Four truly unique, the 1969 Seattle Pilots. We break down MLB expansion in 1969, the rushed stadium upgrades at Sick Stadium, the losing season, and the financial spiral that ends in bankruptcy days before Opening Day. From Bud Selig’s behind-the-scenes push to bring a team to Milwaukee to the Pilots becoming the Brewers so late that Topps cards still said “Pilots,” it’s a baseball business story that still echoes in Seattle’s Mariners legacy.

If you like baseball history, sports scandals, and the weird details that connect books, teams, and culture (yes, including Big League Chew), subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a quick review so more fans can find us.

Email us at fungosandfastballs@gmail.com

Transcript

Cold Open Tennis Injury

Jerry 0:00

Jam-packed episode today, listeners, as we uh Brooke, I gotta interrupt here. We we usually focus on baseball, but I'm the walking wounded today after my tennis fiasco.

Brooke 0:12

Yeah, I was there to see it. You tried to be a hero. I'm very proud of you. But just remember, winners can't have any complaints. I mean, you and your partner blanked the other team.

Jerry 0:23

It was a good match, but I hurt my hand. And you know, if I get very excited about the podcast today, what if I ardently slam my hand and yeah, be careful.

Brooke 0:31

Be careful. Keep it, you know, keep it up to the side.

Why Ball Four Still Matters

Jerry 0:35

Well, I'm going to endure because this is a cool episode today. We're going to open on a discussion of the baseball classic book, Ball Four, and its author, Jim Bouton, and talk about the rise and fall of the Seattle Pilots, a team that lasted only one year but endures today as the Milwaukee Brewers. So here we go. Hello and welcome to Fungos and Fastballs, the podcast of baseball history and trivia. I'm your host, Jerry Dynes. Let's jump into today's episode. Here at Fungos and Fastballs, we cover all facets of baseball, and that sometimes extends into high culture, including sometimes talking about literature.

Brooke 1:27

Literature.

Jerry 1:29

Well, baseball literature, at least. Today we're going to talk about an iconic baseball book, Ball 4 by Jim Bouton. Now, if you are into baseball, there are a few must-reads that you have to have in your library, such as Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer about the Brooklyn Dodgers, Roger Angels, The Summer Game, and the non-Roger authored Ball 4 by the aforementioned Jim Bouton, to name a few. Well, Ball 4, which came out in 1970, caused a lot of waves in the baseball community because it was one of the first locker room tell-alls showing a side of baseball players, including lewd behavior, alcohol, drugs, which, you know, while really not terribly surprising, was something that affected the images of players and the quote integrity of the league. Well, now, 56 years later, tell-all biographies are just commonplace. And, you know, books like Jose Canseco's Juiced about steroid uses in Major League Baseball was far more damning. So reading ball for today, you know, Bouton's account seems, uh, shall we say, Brooke, quaint. Now, my producer, as I just found out, is not a fan of the word not a fan.

Brooke 2:45

It just sounds so old-timey.

Jerry 2:47

It sounds quaint.

Brooke 2:48

Well, but I know that you're such a hip dude. You shouldn't use words like that.

Jerry 2:53

Well, there are far worse words.

Brooke 2:56

I guess so. Like onomonopoeia.

Jerry 2:59

Well, Jim Bouton started off as a pitcher for the New York Yankees in 1962. He stayed with them throughout the decade, initially as a starter, then a reliever. And with arm issues, he started developing the knuckle ball, which he was hoping to extend his career with and would use for a majority of his pitches. He was sent from the Yankees to the expansion team Seattle Pilots for the 1969 season. Now, for that season, he would write a diary of his time on the pilots and then the Astros, which he was traded to later in that season. The problem was Bouton was felt to have betrayed a fraternity. He would say that in every clubhouse there's a sign, and that sign says, What you say here, what you do here, let it stay here when you leave here. Bowten admits that he broke that rule. Clubhouses are like Vegas then. Whatever stays in Vegas.

Brooke 3:56

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Yep.

Inside The Ball Four Confessions

Jerry 3:58

Oh, yeah, what happens in Vegas. That's true. It should all everything. Happens, stays. Well, in fact, after the book came out, baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to get Bouton to sign a statement saying that it was all lies, and to try and blame his editor for the book's stories, but Bouton refused to sign it. And what's in that book? Well, we learned a lot of stuff. We learned about greenies, which is a nickname for the amphetamines that were used throughout baseball in that era at that era. Alcohol use was also prominent. I don't know if that's a real surprise. Several beloved players were mentioned, like Mickey Mantle and his alcohol use. That's not really a surprise either. But at the time, Mantle and other players were idolized by kids, and the book, you know, brought some unseemly light to uh the kids about these players. And of course, there was the womanizing. They talked about womanizing with flight attendants and uh even baseball players' habits of going under the bleachers and looking up skirts. Oh my gosh, really. How old were they? Like 15? My gosh. Well, not just that, they also use binoculars from hotel rooms and hotel rooftops to check out women. And Bouton uses a term that Brooke does not want me to use here. Do not crude.

Brooke 5:15

Do not read the book.

Jerry 5:17

You can read the book if you haven't already. You know, uh baseball players, you're right, were quite juvenile. There were games mentioned like using ethyl chloride to freeze hair off players' arms and legs. Gosh, lighting shoes of teammates on fire, the so-called hot foot, which I actually didn't think was a real thing outside of Bugs Bunny cartoons, but apparently it works. I guess so. And even some non-juvenile games, like they once got an attorney to write a fake letter to a teammate claiming that player had a paternity suit against him.

Brooke 5:50

Oh man.

Jerry 5:51

The player, needless to say, was not entertained.

Brooke 5:55

I bet not.

Idolizing Baseball Versus Players

Jerry 5:57

But when read today, where the curtain has already been opened on sports figures throughout the years, these practices are really seldom surprises. But the book's still a good read. It's more iconic than great. It's definitely something you want to look at if you want to look at that era or old-time baseball. Nothing's gonna shock you. It's a bit tamed by today's standards.

Brooke 6:20

You know, Jerry, you mentioned back when we had Jordan Dove on this episode for the World War II one, that you idolize baseball. And I'm wondering, do you have expectation that baseball players are held to any higher standard than other sports athletes?

Jerry 6:39

Well, that's a good question. I think I tend to elevate and even idolize the sport itself, the history and the lore, which is why we're doing this podcast, rather than put any specific players on a pedestal.

Brooke 6:51

I see. So did Bouton explain his purpose for writing this book? Was it all money, or did he want to see baseball cleaned up, or or was he like one of those goody two shoes and he just wanted everyone else to get in trouble?

Jerry 7:03

Ooh, I feel the uh shoes on the other hand. I feel like such a celebrity being interviewed by my producer.

Brooke 7:10

People want to know.

Jerry 7:12

Well, critics would say that uh Bouton loved the publicity, and I'm not denying that. He certainly, despite getting, as he put it, blackballed from baseball, he was got a lot of writing jobs, media appearances. I won't be cynical and say that it was all about the Benjamins, but I I just don't think he thought that baseball, you know, the the secrets of baseball needed to be protected.

Brooke 7:36

What about him? Did he ever misbehave?

Jerry 7:38

Well, Bouton doesn't point out a lot of the nasty things or bad things he did in his book. I know his wife after divorce, after their divorce, she and another baseball wife got together and you know did claim he was unfaithful. And he did admit to using a greenie here, although kind of like Bill Clinton saying he didn't inhale. I think he said he tried a greenie once and it made him feel jittery.

Brooke 8:02

Of course, of course. So his wife his ex-wife wrote the The Real Housewives of Baseball, the MLB. That could be an episode of the whole series out there.

Bouton Trivia And Big League Chew

Jerry 8:11

Yeah, instead of Real Housewives of Atlanta or Dubai, a bit of the go for the baseball league. Well, if you come to this book from a baseball fan's perspective, and certainly looking for that baseball history and trivia that I mentioned earlier, it is a fun gold mine. It's a great look into the single year of the Seattle Pilots and the struggles of an aging player to extend his career, the challenges of getting traded to other teams or going down to the minors and up again, you know, the relocation of your families. So, you know, there's a lot in the book. Well, before we get to our rating of Ball Four, because my intention was to, you know, rate books and movies for segments like this, I want to lay some Jim Bouton trivia on you. Oh boy. First of all, in 1978, after seven years away from Major League Baseball, Bouton staged a comeback at age 39. Ted Turner, the owner of the Atlanta Braves at the time, always a businessman, thought it would be a great story to have an aging knuckleballer back. And Bouton did well in the AA Savannah team at 2.82 ERA. But you know, he was called up to Braves. He pitched five games, he had a one-and-three record and did okay, but retired for good afterward. Secondly, even more interesting, Bowten was one of the creators of the bubblegum Big League Chew. Remember Big League Chew Brooke? Yeah. Kind of an odd product, you know, because it kind of emulates or mimics chewing tobacco with the shredded gum, you know, appearance. It is actually the quote, official bubblegum of the made of the baseball hall of fame, uh, which I guess makes sense. You know, or what are you going to make trident the official gum?

Brooke 9:50

Well, Trident would be the Mariner's gum. Since that's Trident, I get it, yeah. So I then I wonder if if this is such an official type of gum. Every time I watch the baseball games, they have those huge buckets of double bubble gum. Yeah, yeah. Just a game last night. They were putting the double bubble buckets on the guy's head. It was a little weird. But I must say personally, I miss gum. I have permanent retainers, and I'm not allowed to chew gum anymore. They just get stuck. I know.

Jerry 10:21

Well, you know, sometimes with our fantasy baseball league, I'll buy something like Cracker Jacks for all the Cracker Jack. Cracker Jack for all the uh all the uh the owners, the team owners. But uh next year I think I'll do double ball. I mean maybe not double ball, but big league chew.

Brooke 10:35

Yeah, I've just remember that little flowery texture it has, but uh I'll uh you know, I'll smell it at least.

Jerry 10:43

Well, ranking Ball Four. You know, I I didn't want to just use the the you know one to five star ranking that's so classic. I wanted to kind of do make it baseball themed. And then I thought to myself, you know, should I call five stars an unassisted triple play and four stars a four-home run game? But they're both pretty rare, you know. A no-hitter, three stars, but three stars is is good, not great. A no-hitter is pretty great. So I I couldn't come up with it. But you know, when we post something on social media or like TikTok, we'll uh maybe we'll have it nailed down by the good visual symptom. Okay. So I'm gonna say, you know, it's four stars, you know, or maybe an inside the park home run if I keep that for. So uh we'll work it out.

Brooke 11:26

Sounds good.

Jerry 11:29

Well, now, listeners, I chose Bouton's book Ball 4 for because, as I said, it's a fascinating look into a major league expansion team, the Seattle Pilots, that despite its only one year of existence, nonetheless has a legacy in current franchises in Seattle and Milwaukee. Now, a look behind the curtain of our podcast that you don't see when the mics are off. Like most baseball wonks, I enjoy, which I don't think Brooke likes either.

Brooke 11:57

No, not really.

Jerry 11:57

I'm like, She doesn't like quaint, she doesn't like wonks, she's very opinionated as a producer. But, you know, baseball fans enjoy the nitty-gritty, like specific years and stats that are essential to the game. But anytime I start throwing out year after year on a topic, my producer Brooke gets concerned that people are gonna tune out, start watching TikToks of guinea pigs running away from Roombas.

Brooke 12:21

And uh I think they ride on the Roombas.

Jerry 12:25

So we're gonna make Brooke happy today because the pilots were only around for one year, 1969. It should make it easy.

Brooke 12:32

Yeah. Well, I have a funny feeling I'm gonna hear more than the year 1969, but uh maybe I can use your hotel bell and ding it every time you are off track. I'll have to go look for it.

Jerry 12:42

Yeah. So it was a big year in league expansion, as we'll see. Uh the year prior in 1968.

Brooke 12:51

I found it.

Jerry 12:52

Well, you have to look at the year before.

Brooke 12:54

You're right, you're right. I'm joking. That's it. I won't do it. I understand. So you gotta understand how the league was set up. You know, Jer, I'm gonna share some research before you go on. That I I did look into this podcast. Listeners, sometimes I come in pretty fresh. I've mentioned before, I I'm not I don't have the the history of baseball that Jerry does. But this one I definitely look into, so I might pipe in a little bit here and there.

Jerry 13:16

You did some Seattle pilots research, did you?

Brooke 13:18

I did. Well, I figure it's one year of baseball. It's somewhat limited. Just one year, 1969. So listeners, bear with me.

Jerry 13:26

So going back to 1968, at that time there were 20 teams in Major League Baseball, 10 teams in each league, and it was simple. The best team in each league went on to play each other in the World Series. Nowadays, you have 12 teams going on, six teams in the playoffs in each league. They're playing wildcard, they're playing divisional, they're paying championship. Back then it was simple. Only the top team went on to the World Series. And, you know, competition was pretty tough. Major League Baseball was also realizing the benefit of moving into other markets southwest. You know, there were four teams there already in California: the Dodgers, the San Francisco Giants, the California Angels, and the Oakland A's. And Canada was a potential market too. Seattle seemed like a great potential market. Baseball was popular out there pretty soon after the town was founded in the mid-1800s, and they had professional leagues out there since the late 1800s, including the minor league Pacific Coast League, which has been around 123 years now. You know, Brooke, players like Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams got their start in the PCL.

Brooke 14:36

Yeah, I read that. And you know, Lou Piniella, who is written up in ball four because he was actually friends with Bouton. Piniella played in the PCL and he was drafted by the Pilots. That's how they got to know each other. But just a little side note before he played any games for the Pilots, he was actually traded to the Kansas City Royals where he became the American League rookie of the year. So not a good start for the Pilots on that player.

Jerry 15:01

Not the wisest trade by the Pilots. No. And we, of course, heard about Piniella's success, you know, in the Yankees Red Sox uh episode we did. So in that wonderful tiebreaker game. Well, as I said, the PCL is still around today, and they've got some great team names like the Sugarland Space Cowboys, the Salt Lake Bees, and of course the Albuquerque Isotopes, Isotopes, who many listeners might know got their name from TV's The Simpsons. So with a long baseball history in Seattle, it seemed like a great place for a new team. But the NBA had just put a team there, in fact, with the Supersonics, which are now the Oklahoma City Thunder. So, you know, at first it looked like some established teams were going to relocate there. The Cleveland Indians in '64 were looking there, but the stadium that had been used for the Seattle minor league teams, the Rainiers and the uh Angels, had been built way back in the 30s. It only had capacity for 10,000 people, and ultimately the Indians decided to stay in Cleveland. Similarly, Charlie Finley, owner of the Kansas City Athletics, you remember Charlie from our Vita Blue episode and Vita's uh great love.

Brooke 16:19

How can I forget Finley? So so listeners go back to the Vita Blue episode.

Jerry 16:25

Well, Finley wanted to move the athletics from Kansas City to Seattle, but saw the same downside as Cleveland did. And as you fans know, I mentioned above, he chose to move the team to Oakland instead. Of course, the A's are now in Sacramento awaiting their New Vegas home.

Brooke 16:41

Do any of these teams just stay put, for goodness sake? Well, just so listeners you know, Seattle was actually on the map a few years earlier because they hosted the 1962 World Fair to much success. The theme back then was space and it focused on innovation, and the space needle was the main attraction.

Jerry 16:59

Hey, Trivia Alert. Oh, we should have a sound effect for Trivia Alert.

Brooke 17:02

Oh, well, that's a good idea.

Jerry 17:07

The Space Needle at the time was the tallest structure west of the Mississippi. Now, since the 1970s, it's like a ginormous chimney in Utah.

Brooke 17:17

A chimney? Yeah, like a smokestack. Oh, a sm just not sitting by itself, like just No, like part of a part of a like a power plant or something.

Jerry 17:29

A smelting business.

Brooke 17:30

That makes more sense. All right. Well, well, back to the World's Fair. So there, again, just an aside, they had a monorail that took people all over the city, and it actually looked exactly like the current ones in the Disney parks. And Disney actually went to the World's Fair. Although he was impressed by this base needle, he was quite unimpressed by the rest of the fair, uh, feeling it was not up to par with his standards and his parks. So wait a minute. I'm getting off track here. Yeah, but I miss Disney. We need a trip to Disney. Maybe we could combine it with a game in Tampa Bay.

Jerry 18:06

Well, it's easy to get off track. Uh I've gotten off track about three times this episode. Certainly is. So a local investment group, Pacific Northwest Sports, led by Dewey Soriano, who was a former pitcher for the minor league Seattle Rainiers, uh, was able to get funding a lot through a former Cleveland Indians owner, William Daly, and these names will come up later. Daly was not a local, but yet he became the team's largest shareholder with 47%. Now, to get a franchise, the agreement was they had to expand the local stadium, six six stadium, tough to say, S-I-C-K-S or apostrophe S, from 10,000 seats up to 30,000 seats, with a long-term plan relocating to a bigger domed stadium on the former World's Fair site. So Seattle got a franchise. They named it the Seattle Pilots because of Soriano's former job as a harlot harbor pilot, actually, so a boat pilot, but it also referred to Seattle's aviation industry with Boeing up there.

Brooke 19:10

Their logo is on our Instagram post, listeners. It has a ship steering wheel plus attached wings. It it's it's a joy to see. That's the best of both worlds.

Jerry 19:22

See ity there.

Brooke 19:23

No words. I have no words.

Stadium Mess And Losing Season

Jerry 19:26

Well, one big problem, the Pilots were not supposed to start until 1971. But Missouri Senator, Stuart Symington, pressured the league. Now, at that time, Kansas City had just lost the athletics, and Kansas City was up for the expansion team, but they Missouri did not want to wait for its expansion team, and you couldn't have an odd number of teams. So they moved up the expansion of Kansas City and Seattle to 69, and Seattle wasn't ready, nor was Sick stadium for such a quick expansion. 1969 was a big year in the major in Major League Baseball. The league added four teams, two in each league, up from 20 for a total of 24 teams. In the American League, the Kansas City Royals, and the Seattle Pilots, over in the National League, the San Diego Padres, and what do we have here? A Canadian team, the Montreal Expos.

Jerry 20:27

Now, with 12 teams in each league, having one team, one winner, excuse me, from each league going to the World Series is just not going to work. They had to restructure the playoff series and the divisions. They divided the 12 teams in each league into two divisions of six, and the winner of each division would play each other in a league championship, and those champions would then meet in the World Series. So not only did you get four new teams, but you uh started to have the development of a completely different playoff system, one that developed further, you know, into what we have today. Well, the Pilots got their team through an expansion draft, essentially of players released or cast off from other major league teams. Uh the Royals, the expansion Royals, focused on drafting younger players, hoping for potential, but the pilots went for older players, many unfortunately past their prime, hoping to capture the magic of their former playing years. As I said earlier, Seattle was not ready for this expansion. And SICK Stadium, which was is named after Brewer Emile Sick, who helped put baseball on the map in in Seattle, they were putting in new seats well into the Seattle's first season or only season, eventually reaching twenty five thousand seats in June.

Brooke 21:50

You know, Jerry, I heard a few stories about that stadium. First, there were no working showers so that the players uh after a game Get in their cars all sweaty and dirty and have to go home to shower.

Jerry 22:04

Bet their wives appreciate it.

Brooke 22:05

Yeah, exactly. And as for the fans, when the capacity was over 10,000, fans wrote that the toilets would stop flushing. So I don't know what to say about that stadium, but the name Sick, I think, was a very appropriate name.

Jerry 22:22

Well, with all the new seats, minus the toilet issues, the other problem was Seattle's ticket prices were high. And with multiple losing streaks, attendance unfortunately did fall. How did the ragtag team do by the end of the year? Well, Bouton described the team as a Frankenstein monster of players sewn together. They didn't do so well. Early on, they were decent, but they got the injury bug, and the long season soon led to a lot of losses. They finished the league last place in the American League West, 64 and 98. They were 33 games back from the Minnesota Twins who won the division.

Brooke 23:04

Yeah, and I noticed their records, though, were ahead of their National League expansion counterparts, both of whom had 110 losses. So there's some positive there.

Jerry 23:16

It's tough being an expansion team. Yeah, clearly. Well, more problems. Investor William Daley, who I mentioned earlier, refused to invest any more money in the team. Plus, the voter-approved Dome Stadium project hit delays. Many didn't want the World's Fair site as the new location. There were also other forces afoot. We heard of all this relocation drama earlier. Well, Milwaukee had also lost their team, the Milwaukee Braves. They left for Atlanta in 1966. And, you know, Milwaukee, this the town, and especially Car Salesman, car salesman and baseball fan Bud Selig, familiar name, Brooke.

Brooke 23:57

Is he not a future Major League Commissioner?

Jerry 24:01

He certainly is.

Brooke 24:02

Oh no, I'm learning stuff about baseball.

Jerry 24:05

Look at you. Yeah, Sealeg worked tirelessly after the Braves left for Atlanta to get baseball back to Milwaukee. He even tried to buy the White Sox, but Major League owners vetoed that. And then he secretly met with Dewey Soriano to buy the pilots with the intention of moving them to Milwaukee. I kind of picture Selig with one of those long movie mustaches twirling it like a villain.

Brooke 24:31

He actually looks like Drew Carey when he was on the Drew Carey show.

Bankruptcy And Move To Milwaukee

Jerry 24:36

Yeah. I mean, if you've never seen you you probably remember Selig when he was commissioner older, but yeah, when he was young, he did. He had the black glasses. Yeah, yeah. Well, efforts were made to find a local Seattle buyer, but eventually the pilots would declare bankruptcy, and the league agreed to let Se lig buy the team and move it. He would rename it to, as you know, the Milwaukee Brewers, which was the name of the Milwaukee minor league team that Selig uh loved as a child. It makes sense with all those breweries in Milwaukee, Brooke, like the uh Schotz brewery that Laverne and Shirley uh worked at.

Brooke 25:10

Wait, I thought they worked at Hoff and Pfeffer Incorporated. Isn't that in the song?

Jerry 25:15

No, that's the song. That's just silly words in the song. It was Schotz. It was the Schotz Brewery.

Brooke 25:19

Oh my goodness. Well, we're really grabbing the younger viewers with that 1970s flashback. And oh, Jerry, about that bankruptcy. Because they weren't sure what was going on with the team, the team had spring training in Arizona, and the van was full of all their equipment and their uniforms, was sitting in Arizona waiting to be told whether to drive back to Seattle or to drive to Milwaukee. So I guess they got the call and off to the brewery city they went.

Jerry 25:48

Yeah, the the bankruptcy was declared like six days before.

Brooke 25:51

Six days before opening day, yeah. Yeah.

Mariners Lawsuit And Lasting Legacy

Jerry 25:53

So poor Seattle lost their team. But hey, you know, Seattle's doing great and would do great. Eventually the Kingdome would be built, and with it, Seattle was granted an NFL team, the Seahawks, in 1976. And in the next round of baseball expansion, the new Seattle Mariners, both of whom would play there. Now I should point out that the decision of Major League Baseball to place the Mariners there was not exactly out of the goodness of its heart, but at least in part because of an agreement for the City of Seattle to drop its lengthy lawsuit against the American League for breach of contrast and antitrust violations over the loss of the pilots. Still, despite the league's brief existence, the royal blue and gold team colors of the Seattle Pilots live on in the Milwaukee Brewers colors.

Brooke 26:46

And they actually were the original colors of the Seattle Mariners at first.

Jerry 26:50

Yeah, they were. You know, Selig wanted to change the pilots' colors to red and navy, which were the original colors of that earlier minor league Milwaukee Brewers. But the final purchase and team move was so close to the 1970s season that he had to keep the pilots' colors and the uniforms. He just removed the logos.

Brooke 27:09

Yeah, because they were in the van with all the equipment. They literally just took the logos off and put a new logo on.

Jerry 27:15

Well, in fact, the move was so late that Topps couldn't even change the 1970s baseball cards. Oh my gosh. So there's actually a 1970s, the 1970s top set actually includes cards of pilots players. Oh my gosh. I was actually looking at uh on eBay of maybe buying one of those cards.

Brooke 27:32

What? Are they how much? How much? Are they really expensive? Like hundreds of dollars?

Final Thanks And Subscribe

Jerry 27:37

Don't worry about it. They're fine. Oh. So that wraps up today's episode. Thanks always to Brooke.

Brooke 27:43

You're welcome.

Jerry 27:44

Shout out especially to Ronald Acuna Jr., who is my first pick at number 10 in my fantasy draft, and who assured me. Well, he probably won't be listening. But I hope he does well for me this season. Well, we're happy that you're listening and hope you'll keep listening. Don't forget to like us, subscribe to us on your podcast platform. Heading back to the locker room, this is Jerry Dynes and Fungos and Fastballs.