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Hey, last night Hall of Fame game for Pro Football on Sunday. We had the induction into the baseball Hall of Fame into Cooperstown for Major League Baseball. We had the trade deadline take place last night. We're getting ready for the stretch run as things are really starting to heat up. On the baseball diamond.
Joining us right now is someone who's covered baseball for a very long time, someone who has written books and articles for the New York Daily News, has a book out right now, a baseball memoir, Yankees' Typewriter Scandals in Cooperstown. Joining us right now is Bill Madden. Bill, how are you? Thank you for the time. I'm good.
How are you? I'm very well. Thank you for being here. I mean, we had so much that has taken place just over the past forget twenty four hours, just the past week we've had so many trades. What has really captured your attention as we headed to and then also after the trade deadline?
Well, I think the most one of the most interesting parts of the whole trade deadline was the fact that almost every team involved was looking for bullpen help. Um Granted, there were a lot of teams looking for starting pitching as well. The problem was there were no starting pitchers available to be traded. The best ones, Sandy Alcantara down in Miami and uh Mitch Keller and In um Um Pittsburgh and uh Joe Ryan and and uh Minnesota were The word was out that they weren't going to be available.
So all these teams looking for starting pitching didn't get it.
Well, everybody just about everybody got the relief pictures they wanted. And of course we all know in October The name of the game is relief pitching and closers and and Lights out, late inning pitchers. That's why everybody was looking to stock up on them.
Well, Bill, what does that say to you about the the state of the game and how it's evolved? I mean, we know that starters are no longer going out there, top of the line guys giving you seven, eight and nine. Everything is more of a bullpen game. How has the game and how it's constructed changed?
Well, that's what it is the analytics People have turned it into a bullpen game. You know, it all started with the pitch counts. and you know a hundred pitches or whatever and then And then people started to realize that the analytics people came up with this whole credo about Not Facing the batting auto a third time around. And before you know it, all of a sudden the average Innings per game for starting pitchers. was lowered from six to 5.5 To five point three to five point two and now it's barely five innings.
It's under five innings per startup, I'm pretty sure. And that's what's happening. I I was very good friends with Tom Seaver, who wrote his book. And uh Sever was at the end of his life, he was really lamenting The emasculation of starting pitching. He just couldn't understand it.
He says, Let these kids out of the corral the minute they sign them. out of college or high school, they put them on a pitch count and He was just beside himself as to what's happened. You look back and. The history of baseball. I mean, A 200 inning pitcher was commonplace.
Now we is it's it's a freak of nature if we have more than one. 200 starting 200 innings starting pitcher and anywhere in baseball. And what we're going to see soon is We're going to be electing people to the Hall of Fame. That never had 200 innings. As a starting picture.
And um you know back in you know, the Stone Age when Seaver and Gaylord Perry and and uh and all the Don Sutton and these other pitchers were pitching. Three hundred endings was not the commonplace, but it was it was There were a lot of pitchers pitching 300 innings. And now We don't have anybody, hardly anybody, pitching even two hundred innings. Baseball writer Bill Madden is joining us here on the JR Sport Re Show Coast to Coast. You talk about how the qualifications or who might get into Cooperstown, how it has changed and will change.
I mean, there were folks who looked at Cece Sabathia going in as a pitcher this past Sunday and going, Well, why is Cece here? But as you mentioned, it has changed. It will continue to change. What else is there left to change about the game from a pitching perspective? God, I hope nothing more.
It's bad enough as it is. Um Yeah, I think Cece got elected largely from the fact that people looked at him as one of the last. of the uh of the durable multi-inning starting pitchers. Uh because you're not going to see them anymore. Um and um It's sad.
It really is.
Well, Bill, knowing that whether it's the bullpen or the starters, we had multiple teams try to go for it. The Texas Rangers adding Kelly to DeGrom and Evaldi. You think about the Padres and the Mets and Yankees beefing up their bullpens. What teams are you favoring right now to go on a run? We know it takes time.
Who gets hot in September and maybe even late September? But who are you favoring? Who's well equipped?
Well, that's an interesting thing. I I think You know, this has been such a streaky season. I mean, anybody who watched the Yankees over the month of July. And from mid-June over the whole month of July, he would say, this is not a very good team. They were bad fundamentally, they were bad defensively.
And the starting pitching was not that Certainly wasn't that deep, especially when Schmidt went down. And um and their bullpen was pretty bad. And yeah, here they are. After the trade deadline, one of the things Brian Cashman did, he couldn't change all of that. Yeah.
I mean, it's hard to change a team that's fundamentally deflawed. or a team that's defensively flawed, but He did go out and really bolstered that bullpen and as we were talking about before. That's the name of the game in October is Bullpens. And over on the Mets side, Davis Cearns did the same thing. Both teams needed starting pitching, and they couldn't get it.
And Stearns And Stearns went out and, you know, helped himself with uh Boasted his bow pen really well with Hellesley from the from the Cardinals and And uh the uh side armor from the Giants. And Um There Oh in pretty good shape now even though Especially in the Yankees case, you know, I think now the Yankees may be able to actually win the American League East. I wouldn't have said that a week ago. Wow. Bill Madden is here with us on the J.R.
Sport Brief Show.
Well, you talk about them winning the American League East. The Blue Jays have even gotten themselves. I don't want to say it's an embarrassment of Richards. He's coming off of Tommy John and Shane Bieber. Their rotation is stacked.
Their offense has been rolling. You think that the Blue Jays, you're confident or don't feel good that they'll maintain that lead?
Well Um I the last time I looked, they were losing tonight, but this is only one night. Um No, I think the Blue Jays still probably have the best team of a lot of reasons. I have a good friend of mine. Buck Martinez, who is the Blue Jays broadcaster. And he brought this point up to me a couple of weeks ago when the Blue Jets were playing the Yankees.
The Yankee Stadium and the Yankee Blue Jays won two or three of those games. They should have won all three of them. And he made this point. He said, you know, the Yankees, the problem. The difference between the Yankees and the Blue Jays is The Yankees are a one.
Or a one one hip, a one homer tango. They're a team that has to win the games with home runs. That's their style of play. Whereas the Blue Jays put the ball, they have a bunch of players who put the ball in play, and they can beat you 10 different ways, whereas the Yankees can only beat you one different way. And it was kind of an exaggeration, but it wasn't all raw.
And he said on top of that Because the Blue Jays put the ball in play, and the Yankees have all these defensive issues. With Volpe at shortstop, at the time they had a third base problem. Outfield all these things and he said No, it it You know, it's a combination of, you know. of uh a car up a combination of uh the difference between these two teams because This is how the Blue Jays can beat the Yankees on a regular basis if they play themselves on a regular basis.
So Um, I still think the Blue Jays Uh Have the best team in the division for that reason, but I'm not counting out the Yankees anymore. Because of what Cashman did with that bullpen. A bill map From your fryer to the table, it's a quick trip for crispy fries. But how about a crosstown delivery? McCain Shurcrisp fries are designed to go from fryer to container to carrier to passenger seat across town during rush hour down a shortcut that wasn't all that short to a doorstep before they hit the table.
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You talk about the Yankees, your new memoir, a baseball memoir: Yankees, Typewriters, Scandals. in Cooperstown, a memoir of my fifty years writing baseball. Why now, Bill?
Well, it's a funny story. I've written about eight books, I think. The last one being Tom Seaver's biography. My agent came to me a couple of years ago and he said What's your next book? And I said, I think I'm booked out.
And he says, no, no, no, you've got another book in your bill. And I said, well. Tell me what it is. He says, your own book. I said, my own book.
Who wants to read about my life? And he says, no, no, no, it's not about your life, it's about all the great stories you have. from covering baseball all these years and all the people you've known in the game. And I said, well, look, I'll tell you what, I agree with you. I do have a lot of great stories that I haven't put in my previous books.
If you can sell it, I will write it. And he sold it, so I have written it. And uh it's a It's a different kind of it's a memoir, but it's not. It's not about me, it's about my experiences and the people I've known in the game. There's one chapter that a lot of people don't know about me.
It's uh I call it the uh the great the great baseball card explosion. In the 80s, I was a major domo in the baseball card business when I was hired by Don Russ. when um tops lost their uh Monopoly on baseball cards uh in uh nineteen And two teams two companies, Don Russ and Fleer, Got Into the baseball card business, and I got to know that I was introduced to the president of Donruss. They were a little confectionery company down in Tennessee. And um A subsidiary of 3M.
And I called the guy to congratulate him on getting... a license from the Players Association. And and he said to me, he says, Well, I have a confession to make. We don't know anything about baseball down here. And I told him, I said, that's going to be a little bit of a problem.
He says, yeah, I know. Do you know anybody who can help us? We need somebody who can write the bios and introduce us to people in baseball. And And select the players for us and And I said to myself, As a matter of fact, I do know someone. He said, really?
Who was that? I said, me. And It's a long To make a long story short, he hired me and I wound up being We had a whole bunch of different things we did at John Russ, which I was very proud of. Among the things were our rated rookie cards, which became a big hit. in the baseball park industry.
And at the time I had a meeting with his name was Stuart Lyman, and I had a meeting with him. In 1980, before they had started. putting their set together And I told him, I said, There's one thing you need to understand. You need to come up with a concept or an idea. It's going to separate the Donruss cards from the FLIR cards and the Topps card and make you the set that all the kids want to buy.
And he said, well, what do you think we should do? And I don't know if you ever saw the graduate, the picture of the graduate, it was one of the great pictures of all time, but there's a scene in the graduate. Where Dustin Hoffman plays as graduate and And he's having a graduation party at his house, and one of his father's drunken friends comes up to him and he says, I have only one word for you. plastics. And I thought of I just thought about that sin and I said, Stuart.
I have only one word for you: rookies. And there's some What do you mean? And I said, well my idea is to flood our sets with rookies. Because this is what the kids want today, rookie cards. And this is at the same time.
That the Pete Rose rookie card from 1963 was somehow, I have no idea why. had sold for something like $100,000. Even though there were millions of them printed. And that started the whole rookie card uh further that s goes on to this day. And that's what we did at Zonrus.
I said, forget about all these utility infielders and backup catchers. We don't need to put them in the set, the kids don't want them. What they want is kit cards of people that they've never had before. And that's what we did. Yeah, you wanna g you wanna get in and people who are are cool, hot and Yeah, it is still to this day.
Even in different ways, digital, physical. all the ways.
Well, Bill, thank you so much for the time. Hey, please tell everybody where they can get their hands on on your latest book, The Memoir. Yeah, it's called It's called Yankees Typewriters. Scandals and Cooperstown and you can get it anywhere I Go to Amazon. books online or Barnes and Noble books online.
And it's in most bookstores right now because it's new. It just came out in in uh April.
So, um That's where you can get it. It's available. Readily available.
Alright, well, we're going to go ahead and check that on out. Bill, thank you so much for the time. Enjoy the rest of the baseball season. We'll catch you down the line as well, okay?
Okay, thank you.
