The Futility Infielder

I've apparently stumbled into a sweet little radio gig that will be a recurring feature throughout the season; Joel Blumberg of WGBB Sports Break has invited me to talk baseball on his show on a monthly basis. The first installment, recorded this past Thursday, will air on Monday at 6 PM on 1240 AM in the New York area. Over the course of about 20 minutes, Blumberg and I discussed the Yanks, the Mets, the Red Sox (he's a Sox fan), and my predictions for all of the division races in the coming season. It was a lot of fun, particularly because Blumberg is very receptive to the sabermetric angle which colors my take on things, and I look forward to continuing our discussions in the coming weeks.

In addition to touching that dial, you can also tune in to the show over the Internet at the station's website, and even better, you can hear it right here even before the spot airs. It's about 22 minutes long with commercials (sorry, couldn't cut those out).

Blumberg, according to his bio, is "a former sportscaster, whose credits include play by play of football, baseball and NCAA basketball and hockey, and the producing of many of the top sports events that have taken place in the last 3 decades." He is also a vintage movie buff, and has a website and radio show devoted to that angle; my pal, former roommate and current Criterion producer Issa Clubb was his most recent guest, discussing a heralded three-disc release of Orson Welles' The Complete Mr. Arkadin which he produced and which has recently been reviewed by The New York Times , among others. Cheers to Issa for passing my name along to Mr. Blumberg. The least I can do is give his product a plug.

Back to baseball and the radio, I finally got around to listening to Baseball Prospectus Radio's April 1 doubleheader, which could have been called "Shake a BP Writer Out of Bed and Ask Him About the Season." With just half a cup of coffee to my credit at 10:30 AM on a Saturday morning, I was part of the second hour of coverage (roughly 20:30 in), along with Steve Goldman, Christina Kahrl and Nate Silver; the first hour featured Kevin Goldstein and Clay Davenport as well as Game of Shadows author Mark Fainaru-Wada. Despite the dearth of caffeine, I think I held my own on that show.

I was far more caffeinated for the first of three installments of the audio from the recent BP roundtable at the Yogi Berra Museum. There's a video version -- thank you iMovie and iDVD -- which will hopefully be made available via BP's servers; if you feel like getting the Futility Infielder Director's Cut, you can send a blank DVD and a few bucks to cover postage and handling; email me and we'll discuss.