Effectively Wild Episode 1533: It’s Baseball O’Clock Somewhere

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about beverage consumption, foreign baseball leagues’ potential for popularity in the U.S., and the life and death of legendary flamethrower Steve Dalkowski, who passed away this week. Then they talk to Rob Liu of CPBLStats.com (25:48) and Dan Kurtz of MyKBO.net (58:22) about two leagues that have beaten MLB back to action, Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) and South Korea’s Korea Baseball Organization (KBO), touching on how their seasons have started, the best ways for American baseball fans to follow them, the players and teams to know, the aesthetic and stylistic differences between them and MLB, the histories and evolutions of the leagues, their fluctuating home run rates, their foreign-player presences, their embraces of sabermetrics, their engaging ballpark atmospheres, the CPBL’s playoff format, and the KBO’s bat flips. Audio intro : Alec Benjamin, " Steve " Audio interstitial 1 : Sturgill Simpson, " Fastest Horse in Town " Audio interstitial 2 : James Chen, " Summer in Taiwan " Audio outro : Nadan, " Play Ball " Link to Pat Jordan on Dalkowski Link to John Eisenberg on Dalkowski Link to Joe Posnanski on Dalkowski Link to Posnanski on Dalkowski again Link to Steve Treder on Dalkowski Link to Dom Amore on Dalkowski Link to Dalkowski obit Link to CPBL Stats Link to info on CPBL home run rates Link to Chin-hui Tsao’s Wikipedia page Link to story about Tsao as a prospect Link to Eleven Sports Taiwan Link to CPBL streaming guide Link to Jay Jaffe on the CPBL Link to Marc Carig on CPBL broadcasts Link to MyKBO Link to MyKBO Stats Link to bat flips feature Link to Sung Min Kim on KBO ball de-juicing Link to story about ESPN and KBO Link to KBO streaming instructions Link to Jaffe on the KBO Link to order The MVP Machine iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!) Sponsor Us on Patreon Facebook Group Effectively Wild Wiki Twitter Account Get Our Merch! Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com var SERVER_DATA = Object.assign(SERVER_DATA || {}); Source