Fungos & Fastballs: Baseball History & Trivia

Send us Fan Mail October baseball has us on edge, so we take the best possible detour: a trip to Japan to see how the same sport can feel completely different. We start with “Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams,” a baseball documentary that captures Japan’s national high school baseball championship and the intense pressure teenagers carry when a single-elimination tournament becomes a whole town’s p...

Send us Fan Mail A reliever’s job isn’t just throwing hard, it’s living on the edge of “maybe you’re in” for nine straight innings. We bring you inside that world with college bullpen arm Josh Gregoire, who shares what it actually feels like to train, wait, warm up, and perform when the timing is never fully yours. We talk through the routines fans rarely see: how a college relief pitcher balances...

Send us Fan Mail A Jackie Robinson musical with songs about out-of-shape spring training? A Bull Durham stage adaptation that got called a bunt? Before we get anywhere near the mound, we’re having a little fun with the fact that baseball somehow finds its way into every corner of American culture, even Broadway. We dig into the hits, the flops, and the wonderfully weird attempts to turn baseball s...

Send us Fan Mail A single foul bunt can flip a game, a fantasy matchup, and your mood, and it all traces back to baseball’s earliest arguments about pace, fairness, and what counts as a strike. We start with the surprisingly sharp “foul bunt with two strikes” rule, why it exists, and how the late-1800s game forced MLB to evolve from endless foul balls to a cleaner, faster rhythm. It’s baseball rul...

Send us Fan Mail One inning from a fifth championship in six years, the 2001 Yankees watch the unthinkable happen and it still stings. We dig into the World Series that felt prewritten for a New York dynasty, then swerved hard when the Arizona Diamondbacks refused to play the part of overmatched newcomer and turned Game 7 into a baseball gut punch. We walk through why this matchup was so charged:...

Send us Fan Mail A lightning bolt knocks a pitcher unconscious and he still demands the final out. A Hall of Fame manager argues in a downpour while holding an umbrella and gets tossed on the spot. A big leaguer takes a swing at a racing sausage mascot and it somehow ends with fines, a suspension, and a story that will live forever online. If you love baseball history, weird MLB trivia, and the ki...

Send us Fan Mail The standings say one thing, the vibes say another. We start by going round the horn with our friend Edwin Nolan for a rapid-fire MLB update as of August 30, 2026, sizing up who looks real, who looks shaky, and which races might go down to the final week. The AL East is a traffic jam of contenders, Kansas City suddenly refuses to go away, the AL West can’t decide who wants the cro...

Send us Fan Mail Dusty Baker keeps popping up at the exact center of baseball history, and once you see the pattern, you can’t unsee it. We walk through the unbelievable reel: Baker connected to the Bartman NLCS chaos, Barry Bonds’ 73-homer season, the 1989 World Series earthquake, Reggie Jackson’s October fireworks, Nolan Ryan’s no-hit history, and even Hank Aaron’s 715th homer. It’s the kind of...

Send us Fan Mail A shutout in under 100 pitches feels like a glitch in modern baseball. We start by unpacking the “Maddox,” a rare pitching feat named for Greg Maddux that combines dominance with ruthless efficiency, and we talk through why the stat matters, how it’s tracked, and what a recent gem from Brewers flamethrower Jacob Miszrowski tells us about command, pace, and the thin line between po...

Send us Fan Mail A 20-game winning streak feels untouchable until you ask one question: what’s the longest winning streak in Major League Baseball history, and what does it say about how teams actually win? We use Billy Beane and Moneyball as our launchpad, starting with a straight-up review of the 2011 film and why it works even if you aren’t a “stats person.” Then we compare it to Michael Lewis’...

Send us Fan Mail A frying pan in the bleachers, a cowbell that becomes baseball folklore, and a closer who lives and dies by three outs. We tell the story of Hilda Chester, the legendary Brooklyn Dodgers fan known as Howling Hilda and the Queen of the Bleachers, whose voice and presence at Ebbets Field became so big that players, managers, and even the Hall of Fame couldn’t ignore her. If you love...

Send us Fan Mail (this is an edited version) The trade deadline is coming, the standings are shifting fast, and baseball history is giving us a brand-new reason to pay attention. We start with a rapid-fire MLB update around the horn with our returning baseball guru Edwin Noland, tracking the teams surging at the right time and the ones starting to wobble. From the AL East chaos to a tight AL West...

Send us Fan Mail Cooperstown is about to get loud, crowded, and emotional and we couldn’t wait until Monday to talk about it. With Baseball Hall of Fame Induction Sunday here, we take a bonus lap through baseball history, starting with a trivia question every fan should have in their back pocket: who made up the original Hall of Fame class in 1936? Then we dig into the 2026 inductees and why each...

Send us Fan Mail A movie cast quietly buying a minor league baseball team sounds like a punchline, until you hear the name Richmond Flying Mummies and realize baseball is still the best sport for pure, delightful weirdness. We start there, digging into why the team name exists, how fans show up for the spectacle, and what this kind of ownership says about the community heartbeat of minor league ba...

Send us Fan Mail Rankings bring out the real baseball opinions, especially when the position is catcher, where greatness is part statistics and part survival. We put on the backwards cap, crack open Baseball Reference, and take on an impossible question: who are the best catchers of all time in Major League Baseball history? Jordan Dove joins me for our first ever rankings show as we each build a...

Send us Fan Mail One random found ball near Cooperstown turns into an eight-year mission that sends a baseball fan deep into cemeteries, card shows, and the awkward seconds of face time you get with living legends. We sit down with baseball historian and SABR contributor Ralph Carhart to unpack the Hall Ball Project: photographing a single baseball with every National Baseball Hall of Fame member,...

Send us Fan Mail A baseball game that starts at 10 p.m. with no stadium lights sounds impossible, yet Fairbanks pulls it off every year. We kick things off with the Midnight Sun Game, a summer solstice tradition that has been running since 1906, and the Alaska Goldpanners, a legendary college summer team with an alumni list that includes Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and more. If you love baseball t...

Send us Fan Mail A World Series disappears from baseball history, and it has nothing to do with war. We start with the odd, dramatic story of 1904, when the New York Giants refuse to face the Boston Americans, turning the sport’s biggest prize into a feud about leagues, rivals, and pride. It’s a reminder that MLB history isn’t just stats; it’s people making stubborn decisions that end up shaping t...

Send us Fan Mail The warning track sits in every ballpark like background scenery, yet it has a darker origin story than most fans realize. We start by pulling the camera into the outfield dirt and unpacking why Major League Baseball mandated the warning track in 1949 after a run of frightening wall collisions. We talk about what it’s made of on natural grass versus artificial turf, how wide it’s...

Send us Fan Mail The baseball is the only “player” guaranteed to show up for every pitch, and it has a bigger impact on the game than most fans realize. We start with a quick curveball: the switch pitcher, one of the rarest roles in MLB, and the hilarious logic trap that led to the Venditte Rule when a pitcher and a switch hitter kept countering each other. It’s a perfect reminder that baseball’s...

Send us Fan Mail You can measure Wade Boggs with numbers, but you can’t really understand him without the stories. We start by checking the current MLB landscape with our friend Edwin Noland, moving division by division and hitting the surprises, the contenders, and the little controversies that make a long season feel alive. Then we pivot hard into baseball history and trivia with one of the most...

Send us Fan Mail Seventeen ejections in one night should be impossible, yet baseball found a way. We start with the 1984 Braves Padres beanball brawl, where one hit-by-pitch spirals into pitcher retaliation, managers getting ejected, and a benches-clearing pileup that somehow doesn’t even end the game. We walk through how “beaning” worked as baseball’s old language of payback, why umpires kept tos...

Send us Fan Mail Link to the National Assoc of Historic Base Ball Clubs  Baseball changes completely when you strip away gloves, modern habits, and the assumptions we’ve all carried since Little League and it becomes Base Ball (two words!). We sit down with Tom “Big Bat” Fesolowich, a 30-year veteran of vintage 19th century baseball, coordinator at Old Bethpage Village Restoration in New York, and...

Send us Fan Mail A single baseball episode can feel like four different road trips, and that’s exactly the point here. We’re clearing out a backlog of “first pitches” with a grab bag of baseball history, MLB trivia, and the kind of oddball stories you only hear when fans start swapping favorites. Before we dive into the time capsule, our friend Edwin Nolan calls in with a sharp MLB rundown, includ...

Send us Fan Mail A Cubs legend doesn’t have to be loud to be unforgettable, and Ryne Sandberg is the proof. We sit down with longtime friend and die-hard Cubs fan James Maumus to trace how a kid in New Orleans became devoted to Chicago baseball thanks to cable TV, WGN superstation broadcasts, and the simple magic of day games at Wrigley Field. The result is part baseball history, part fan memory,...