The Futility Infielder

While most of the world was sleeping, my second appearance on Baseball Prospectus Radio aired last Saturday morning. Host Will Carroll had me on for the second time in a month, this time as part of a Yankee-themed roundtable which also featured Prospectus' Joe Sheehan, Bronx Banter's Alex Belth, and Pinstriped Bible's Steven Goldman. The results have yet to be posted at the BPR site but Will has cleared me to upload the files here for your listening pleasure (these files are copyright 2003 Prospectus Entertainment Ventures/Pilgrim Communications and may not be redistributed -- right, Will?)

Broken into two MP3s that are about 4.5 MB apiece, the roundtable is about 19 minutes long:
Part 1 Part 2

The four shared some thoughts on the Yanks for the coming season and ruminated on the nature of success and failure in the Bronx. Particularly up for discussion was the popularity of Derek Jeter. The show came out well, and from my standpoint, it was a blast to do. But listening to my own performance, I can charitably give myself only a B- grade. The weakest link on a strong panel, at least on this particular day.

Content-wise, my only regret was not having a better example of a harsh back page tabloid headline, and I think I handled the last question, about the Yanks' aging lineup, the best (though I think Joe had some good points about Yankee money bailing them out if the roof caves in). But my form left something to be desired. I can't help but think that I sound rushed and nervous every time the mic comes around -- full of flubs, sputters, and excessive giggling (eek, everything but a Howard Dean shriek). You can hear the wheels spinning as I try to get a handle on the questions. Maybe it was the awkwardness of the conference call format or my inability to anticipate the questions, maybe it was that I didn't have notes in front of me like I did for my BPR debut on the Hall of Fame articles (sadly lost to the ether, but let me tell you I was perfect), maybe it was just the radio equivalent of a bad hair day. I wasn't relaxed and in the zone like I was the first time we did it, I was literally pacing around my apartment.

Oh well. Long season, pants one leg at a time, stay within myself and throw strikes... it was still fun as hell. For what it's worth, BPR host Will Carroll gave me a B+, chalking any difficuties up to the roundtable format. And Alex said he thought I sounded fine but that he stumbled over his own words. So maybe we're just being overly self-critical... you be the judge.

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I've been having some real techinical diffficulties with my home connection over the past week, resulting in about 50% downtime since my little headhunting experiment last Friday. As a result, I've been taking it mobile with the laptop about once a day. So if my productivity is low here and my email response time lags, now you know why.