Category: radio

Items related to the sound-only broadcast medium.

The answer you’ve been waiting for

Here’s the answer they gave on “Car Talk.” (Had to wait for it to be posted to the web site, since the show airs in L.A. while I’m at work on Saturday.) Levi is correct in the comments on the question (back on April 13) that this is a hard situation to plan for, and Luke is correct that they’d mention his pick-off move to first. If only we’d sent in the answer, perhaps we could have won a gift certificate for “Car Talk” merchandise.

RAY: The fact that his nickname was Lefty should help. Lefties have good pick-off moves. So imagine this: It’s the top of the ninth, and the game is tied. The opponents have a guy on first base and there are two outs. Lefty’s brought in. He doesn’t throw a single pitch. Instead he picks the guy off of first base.

Inning over. Did he throw a pitch?

TOM: No.

RAY: Bottom of the ninth, one of his teammates hits a home run, end of game, Lefty wins, gets his bonus, gets his thousand bucks, and the manager gets fired anyway.

"Things we should have thought of", or "Pat and Ron, Nor DNA Tap"

On the WGN Radio broadcast of today’s Cubs game, Pat Hughes thanked a listener for sending him and color man Ron Santo a book of palindromes. “Well be getting to that later on,” Pat said. I can’t think of a better gift for those two.

Now we get to see how Luke spells a weary groan in the comments.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject, here’s Ron Santo on the Opening Day weather (This is from memory, so it’s not exact): “I remember Opening Day back in 1997 was so cold I couldn’t feel my toes. Of course, I can’t feel my toes today, either.”

Original comments…

Luke, hanger-on: !OooooooooO!

Steve: “Florida Marlins 4, Chicago Cubs 2 Day Game Played on Tuesday, April 1, 1997 (D) at Pro Player Stadium”

That must have been a cold day in Miami…..

Luke: Heh. Clearly Levi is remembering this cold day and this humbling loss to the Marlins. Low of 24, gusts up to 31 mph! My first Opening Day, and I think the first time I met Jim.

Levi: How embarrassing. Luke and Steve are right. I had the wrong week. By the time we saw the Cubs for the first time that year, they were already something like 0-6.

Steve will remember attending this game with me two days later. I remember the heaping plate of futility that Alex Fernandez served the Cubs that day, but I was surprised to learn it was so cold. I guess when you go into a game expecting a no-hitter and you come very close to seeing one, you don’t notice that you don’t notice your feet.

Levi: Also, if you look at that box score, you’ll see that “third baseman” Bobby Bonilla had already committed three errors.

Jim: And from today’s L.A. Times: “On this day in 1997, the Chicago Cubs set the mark for the worst start in National League history, losing their 12th consecutive game, 4-0 to the Colorado Rockies, and breaking the record of 11 losses in a row by the 1884 Detroit Wolverines.”

Ah, yes, that was the trip to Chicago where I had some sort of 24-hour stomach flu and spent the first day on the floor of Stacey and Nikki’s dorm room (although if you’re going to have stomach flu, Stacey and Nikki’s dorm room is a pretty good place to have it). Perhaps I caught the virus from the Cubs as they were leaving Miami, flying over Florida a few days before I followed them up north.

The secondary purpose of that trip was to meet up with some game show fans I knew from the Internet, and I was supposed to go with them to another Cubs game that week that ended up being snowed out.

Well, Wrigley Field still has less signage (modern euphemism for advertising) than any other ballpark. Actually, at one point during the broadcast, I think Bill Murray was joking with Chip and Steve about putting ads on the wall behind the ivy, at a reduced price, of course, since they’d only be visible in April and perhaps October. Or maybe it was Senator Dick Durbin doing the joking and not Bill Murray. I forget. What did come up during their conversation with the senator was a suggestion that he introduce legislation to force the Cardinals to trade Albert Pujols, preferably to the Cubs, or to the American League.

Anyway, here’s this week’s “Car Talk” puzzler, posted here because it happens to be baseball-related:

RAY: Lefty McDougal, star pitcher of the Kenosha Ramblers, had an incentive clause in his contract that guaranteed him an extra thousand bucks if he won 20 games during the season.

TOM: This sounds like 1925!

RAY: It’s last game of the season. Lefty has 19 victories, and is scheduled to be that day’s starting pitcher. The opponent is a lousy team. They’ve got a terrible record, and Lefty knows he’s going to get the bonus.

As luck would have it, an hour before the game his manager approaches him and says, “You ain’t starting, Lefty.”

Lefty asks, “Why not?”

The manager says, “The owner of the team came and said, ‘If you start this bum… if he throws even one pitch, you’re losing your job!'”

Lefty’s dejected. He says, “Jeez, I was going buy a new house in the Hamptons with that thousand bucks!”

Lefty’s discouraged, and the manager is discouraged too, because he has great regard for Lefty. The manager wonders, “How can I get Lefty to win his 20th game and collect his bonus– and not throw a single pitch?”

And that’s what happens. Lefty wins the game without throwing a single pitch.

How did he do it?

Original comments…

sandor: Here’s a guess. I’m not an expert on how win-lose records are figured, so I may have this wrong.

If the game is away, the Ramblers will bat first. Assuming they get a run in in the first inning, they’ll have the lead going into the bottom of the first. Lefty starts the game, but gets pulled for a reliever immediately before throwing a pitch. Assuming the reliever does his job, and the offense does theirs, and the Ramblers keep the lead for the entire game, wouldn’t Lefty get the win?

Levi: No–to get a win, a starting pitcher has to go five full innings.

The rules for relievers are much less solid, and I’m trying to come up with an answer. The problem I’m having is that so far, the only scenario I can come up with (pitcher comes in with 2 outs, runner on first in a tie game, picks him off, team takes lead in the bottom of the inning, he gets the win) is not a situation that the manager could plan for. And technically, that pitcher ought not to get the win, because the rule for awarding wins for relievers says that they should be the pitcher of record when the team goes ahead to stay, but it also mentions that, in a game featuring multiple pitchers, the win could be awarded to the pitcher who pitched most effectively. Wins are almost never parceled out that way, but in this case, I think even the official scorer might have to agree that a different pitcher deserved the win.

I’ll keep thinking.

Jim: I have here a link to a recent example of a pitcher getting the win without throwing a pitch. It’s similar but not identical to the situation Levi described, and it would still be hard to plan for.

Luke: Who gets the win in a forfeit? Maybe the manager persuades Lefty to offer half of his bonus to the other team if it forfeits.

Or maybe lefty balks four times to each batter, thus walking him, then picks him off the bag. He is left-handed, after all. He probably has a wicked move to first.

Luke, hanger-on: Oh, what happens when a starting pitcher dies after the game starts but before he’s thrown a pitch? Is it like when your roommate dies in college and you get a 4.0 for the quarter? (It’s probably a 5.0 now with grade inflation.) Assuming it’s a home game, let Lefty take the mound in the bottom of the first, then right as he’s about to start his wind-up, he takes a big lick of the hemlock he’s hidden in his glove, next to the emory board and Vaseline.

Luke, hanger-on: Well, what was the answer?