Fungos & Fastballs: Baseball History & Trivia

Send us Fan Mail Cooperstown tells one kind of baseball story. The Baseball Reliquary tells the one that lives in fan memory, strange artifacts, and the people who shaped the game’s lore even if they never fit a Hall of Fame template. We sit down with Joe Price, Professor Emeritus and co-director of the Institute for Baseball Studies at Whittier College, to explore how an “alternate hall of fame”...

Send us Fan Mail A home run derby sounds like a modern invention until you stumble on a 1960 TV series where Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and other legends went head-to-head for cash at Los Angeles Wrigley Field. We start there because it’s baseball history hiding in plain sight, and it helps explain how the sport’s love affair with the long ball kept evolving long before today’s MLB Ho...

Send us Fan Mail The MLB season moves fast, and so do we: quick division check-ins, the kind you can actually remember, followed by the sort of baseball trivia that instantly upgrades how you talk about the game. We hit the recent headlines and early surprises across both leagues, including why some starts feel real and others look like smoke, and we keep ourselves honest with a speedy pace. If yo...

Send us Fan Mail A runner gets lifted off first base. A ball disappears into the Metrodome plexiglass. A Game 7 stays scoreless so long you can feel every breath in the stadium. The 1991 World Series isn’t just a classic, it’s a blueprint for why people fall in love with October baseball in the first place. We’re talking Minnesota Twins vs Atlanta Braves, seven games, constant tension, and the kin...

Send us Fan Mail You can learn a lot about a team by the player it chooses to follow when things get loud. For my birthday special, I bring on my son Griffin Dynes (calling in from Denver) to talk about the toughest kind of baseball greatness: the quiet, gruff, unglamorous leadership of Yankees catcher and captain Thurman Munson. We start with a quick New York detour through Billy Joel and a trivi...

Send us Fan Mail A rally monkey that only appears under strict rules, a capuchin celebrity from Friends, and fans waving stuffed primates like it’s a sacred rite. That’s where we start, because baseball’s superstitions aren’t just funny, they reveal how the sport builds meaning out of moments. Then we jump to a place where the weirdness isn’t a gimmick at all: the Polo Grounds, one of the most imp...

Send us Fan Mail Jerry’s new Mariner Moose plush turns into a full blown tour through the strangest and most lovable corner of baseball culture: MLB mascots. We dig into why mascots work, why a few teams still refuse to have one, and what separates “cute” from cringy (“why does that thing have a human body”). Along the way, we hit the origins of the word mascot, the design choices that push charac...

Send us Fan Mail Email us at fungosandfastballs@gmail.com

Send us Fan Mail 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 t...

Send us Fan Mail One bad idea can become baseball history, and sometimes it takes the form of a crate full of disco records wired to explode in center field. We go from a quick, colorful detour on the Mendoza Line (baseball’s infamous .200 batting average benchmark) to one of the most chaotic nights ever staged at a ballpark: Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Along the way, we co...

Send us Fan Mail A fastball that “blue bayou” sounds like something you’d hear in a music documentary, not a baseball broadcast, but that’s exactly why we love the game. We kick things off with one of our favorite bits of baseball terminology: Tim McCarver’s “Linda Ronstadt,” his nickname for a pitch so nasty it just whizzes past the hitter. It’s a perfect reminder that baseball history and baseba...

Send us Fan Mail Baseball doesn’t pause for history, even when history is at its loudest. We pick up a question that hovered over America after Pearl Harbor: should Major League Baseball keep playing during World War II, or should the season shut down? From the owners’ worry to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous “Green Light Letter,” we walk through how wartime baseball became part of the home-front r...

Send us Fan Mail What if you could step into the batting cage and face tonight’s starter without burning a single pitch? We open with the Trajekt machine, the AI-powered pitching system transforming batting practice by recreating big-league arms with lifelike release points, spin, and sequencing. From a gunpowder “cannon” in 1897 to arm-style throwers to modern programmable wheels, training tech h...

Send us Fan Mail A rivalry doesn’t become legend overnight; it’s built pitch by pitch until one swing echoes for decades. We’re stepping into October 1978 at Fenway Park with an eyewitness who felt the bleachers shake, as the Yankees and Red Sox fought a one-game tiebreaker that turned role players into symbols and routine plays into folklore. From the bathroom ticket hustle at dawn to a cracked b...

Send us Fan Mail A lefty so electric that catchers stuffed sponges in their mitts. We dive into the speed, the swagger, and the scars of Vita Blue’s remarkable career, tracing how a high school quarterback from Louisiana turned a blazing fastball into stardom, magazine covers, and a central role in the Oakland A’s three-peat dynasty. From a 1970 no-hitter at just 21 to the 1971 MVP and Cy Young sw...

Send us Fan Mail Two weeks, twenty nations, and a bracket that turns March into must‑watch baseball. We dive into the World Baseball Classic with Ian Goymer—lifelong Braves diehard and returning guest—to unpack how this tournament became the sport’s most electric international stage. From the halting history of Olympic baseball to the streamlined WBC format, we draw a clear line from scattered sho...

Send us Fan Mail A great baseball story doesn’t always start with greatness. We open with the joy of a Major League rewatch—Bob Uecker one-liners, fan-favorite gags—and then steer straight into the heart of baseball folklore: Marv “Marvelous Marv” Throneberry and the 1962 New York Mets. The stats say “lovable losers.” The fans say family. And somewhere between a missed base and a walk-off blast, a...

Send us Fan Mail We start today with the meaning of the baseball acronym NobleTiger. No spoilers here - you'll just have to listen. Then we're on to the Seventh Inning Stretch. It feels timeless, but the story behind that stand-up-and-sing moment is far messier, funnier, and more revealing than the folklore suggests. We follow the ritual from scattered 19th-century notes and the “lucky s...

Send us Fan Mail A single swing can rewrite a night, but a philosophy can define a franchise. We dive into the legend of Chipper Jones—why his switch-hitting precision, calm under pressure, and team-first choices still shape how Braves fans watch the game. From the TBS era that turned living rooms into nightly bleachers to the 1995 title run that cemented Atlanta’s modern identity, we connect the...

Send us Fan Mail Listen to Jerry, along with producer Brooke, to hear about a forgotten record holder Pud Galvin. Our first pitch is on Geddy Lee's baseball book. A coffee table book opened a door: from Geddy Lee’s unlikely baseball shrine and a donation to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum to a web of autographs that includes Ruth, Eisenhower, Sinatra, Fidel Castro, and all four Beatles. Tha...

Send us Fan Mail A 37-foot wall shouldn’t hold this many stories, yet Fenway’s Green Monster keeps surprising us. We bring a diehard Red Sox fan into the studio to unpack the history, the hidden details, and the real people who make that left field slab feel alive. From the old days of ads and tin to the deep forest green we know now, we trace how a practical fix for rooftop freeloaders became one...

Send us Fan Mail A busted podcast name. A stack of fresh hats with the wrong logo. And a perfectly timed pivot into one of the most electric careers in baseball history. We kick off Fungos and Fastballs with a candid origin story and sprint straight into Lou Brock’s life, legacy, and the steals that changed the game. We trace Brock from Southern University in Baton Rouge to a career-defining trade...

Send us Fan Mail We've got the list of ideas, booked a few baseball lovers, and have the mics warmed up! Join us on Mon 2/2/26 as we launch into left field! Come along and touch the bases through this journey. We're taking suggestions on ideas and if you know someone who would be a good guest, let us know! Let's go! Email us at fungosandfastballs@gmail.com