Late one evening at the winter meetings* this year, I found myself at a bar next to the despairing editor of Every Time You Go To The BallPark You Have The Chance To See Something You’ve Never Seen Before! Monthly. His job had always been pretty easy, he said, but the world was running out of unseen baseball things. The magazine had invested heavily in staff when Shohei Ohtani had arrived in the American League, but how many iterations of “the first player to steal a base, double and drive in three or more runs while striking out at least six batters…” could they run on the cover?
“Nothing to look forward to but pitch clock shenanigans this year,” he moaned. “That’ll get us one issue. After that, it’s layoffs. We might as well close up.”
Never! said I. And I pledged to pitch him no fewer than 15 things still left to see, and he said if I did that then his magazine just might be saved, and he shook my hand and told me “it was great talking to you, Steve,” and I didn’t bother to correct him.
1. I’d like to see Shohei Ohtani hit a particular type of home run during a particular type of game that we do not talk about while it is in progress.
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