SABRcast with Rob Neyer: Mark Rucker (Episode #46)
Baseball fans, tune in this season to SABRcast with Rob Neyer, a new weekly podcast hosted by award-winning author and longtime SABR member Rob Neyer. SABRcast will feature insights and analysis of what’s happening in modern baseball on and off the field, plus compelling interviews with figures from around the game — and music from The Baseball Project.
Subscribe to SABRcast on your favorite podcast networks, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play, and listen to each episode as soon as it’s released.
Neyer is a longtime baseball writer and editor for ESPN.com, SB Nation, and FoxSports.com. He began his career as a research assistant for groundbreaking baseball author Bill James and later worked for STATS, Inc. He has also written or co-written seven baseball books, including The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers (with Bill James), winner of the Sporting News/SABR Baseball Research Award, and most recently Power Ball: Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game, winner of this year’s CASEY Award.
Episode #46: February 10, 2020
This week’s guest is Mark Rucker, a photographic historian and founder of Transcendental Graphics and The Rucker Archive, which provide access to rare and surprising sports images from the past two centuries. He was co-founder of SABR’s Nineteenth Century Research Committee with John Thorn and has been involved in publishing since the mid-1970s. He served as the Visual Consultant for Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary series and collaborated notably with Peter C. Bjarkman on Smoke: The Romance And Lore Of Cuban Baseball , with David Nemec on The Beer and Whisky League: The Illustrated History of the American Association — Baseball’s Renegade Major League, and to universal critical acclaim with Lawrence Ritter on The Babe: A Life in Pictures. Rucker was the recipient of a SABR Salute in 2001 and the Bob Davids Award in 2010.
Click here or press play below to listen to Episode #46:
What’s Rob reading this week?
“The Mookie Betts Trade Is Unprecedented in Baseball History”
By Ben Lindbergh, The Ringer
The Boston Red Sox ended months of low-level disbelief and bemusement—and incited several news cycles of intense disbelief and bemusement—by following through on their long-rumored intention to trade right fielder Mookie Betts. Boston reportedly sent Betts, along with pitcher David Price and cash, to the Los Angeles Dodgers in a three-team trade, netting 23-year-old Dodgers outfielder Alex Verdugo and 21-year-old Minnesota Twins pitcher Brusdar Graterol in return. (The Dodgers sent pitcher Kenta Maeda to the Twins to seal the deal.) To put it plainly: This swap is unprecedented. No player boasting Betts’s combination of excellence and youth has ever been traded before.
- Also reading: Andy Martino: “What MLB found when it investigated Chris Young, the Yankees and Red Sox during Apple Watch scandal” (SNY)
- Also reading: Gil Imber: “Manfred Lists MLB Staff Moves, Torre Takes Step Back” (Close Call Sports)
- Read more: Click here to check out Rob’s full list of book recommendations on Goodreads.com
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