Ep. 2: Batting Order

Discover the deep hidden strategy of baseball’s batting order. Free bonus tales of childhood embarrassment.

Transcript at https://podcast.unwieldylocutions.com/podcast/ep-2-batting-order/

 

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TRANSCRIPT:

[Theme song: “Drone” by Chastity Belt chorus]
He was just another man, tryin’ to teach me somethin’
He was just another man, tryin’ to teach me somethin’

PATTI: So, welcome to Mansplainer. This is Patti.

SPENCER: This is Spencer.

PATTI: I have a cold, and it’s Spencer’s birthday, so–

SPENCER: Yayyy

PATTI: Happy birthday, Spencer.

SPENCER: Thank you.

PATTI: Yeah.

SPENCER: So, first order of business, we have some follow up from the last episode. The primary author of the research paper that we spent a lot of time on has responded, and I am vindicated. She has said that comparing the ant sleep behavior of the queens who cuddle up and then split apart is analogous to cats and cat behavior, so I’m taking that as a win.

PATTI: That’s fantastic. All right, so, in any event, so it’s fall, and that means that the extreme number of sports tweets in my feed are going to transition from my least favorite sport, which is baseball, to my probably second least favorite sport which is basketball, but, um, you know why I don’t like baseball, right? We’ve talked about this. Aside from the fact that it’s boring.

SPENCER: We have, and I’ll, I’ll try to give the short version of it. The short version is you were forced into it, you didn’t do well because you were forced into it, and now you hate it.

PATTI: Kind of right. Little league. I think most children are forced to participate in little league at one point. I was small enough that it was when the teams still had boys and girls on them. So, uh, I was the only girl on my team. I was also the only left-hander on my team, and no one had ever taught me about baseball before I got on this team whereas everyone else on my team had either played catch at least with a sibling or a parent. Um, and you know what is really interesting? I think that that is my problem with most sports and gym activities. Kind of like running, right? Like, I never thought that I could run, because in gym class for the presidential fitness test you were expected to just run a mile, and no one ever took the time to teach me how to run. Likewise, no one taught me how to play baseball. For example, that you don’t carry the bat when you run after you hit the ball. I mean, throwing it seems dangerous, so why would you throw it? But apparently, you throw it; you don’t take it with you.

SPENCER: So, that’s a very good point. And I’m thinking about it, and like, baseball has been around for, depending on how you count baseball, like 150 years. The thing is, like, jogging wasn’t a thing people did for fun until like the seventies.

PATTI: Oh, no one does it for fun.

SPENCER: No–okay, no one does it for fun.

PATTI: [laughs]

SPENCER: But jogging wasn’t A Thing for exercise until the seventies, so you’d think people would teach you how to run, but you’re right. In my gym class experience, it was just “Go run.”

PATTI: Yeah.

SPENCER: “You haven’t done any running all year, but now you’ve got a time.”

PATTI: If you’re someone who has undiagnosed asthma, ahem, you could see how that would be hard. Also, I was just not a physically active kid, and I think, you know, that’s why no one taught me anything about baseball. All right. It wasn’t just that I was inactive as a child, none of my siblings were athletic by the time I was cognizant enough to be on a sports team. I will say that I think one of my brothers played soccer when he was really little, and one of my sisters was a pop warner cheerleader at one point, and my oldest sister, now this, here’s the rub, right? She’s fifteen years older than me, so this was done by the time I was aware. She played softball, and she played softball really well. I actually think she was a catcher, and I think they went to states. I’m not entirely sure. But I remember there being a lot of talk about Debbie being very good at softball. And my mom grew up in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania, which is where we lived when I was forced into little league, um, and I don’t know if you know what South Williamsport, Pennsylvania is. If you are super into little league or baseball, you will probably know that it is the home of the Little League World Series. So. Baseball wasn’t fun there. Right? So, even though I was a really tiny kid, you know, these were the first, the first teams that kids that ostensibly would, that would go onto play really competitive ball were on. So there was nothing fun about it for me. So I spent a lot of time in the outfield kind of like Lucy. Picking flowers. Watching butterflies.Watching the clouds change shape. You know. With my little velcro sneakers. Because I was the only left-handed person in my family, and no one could figure out how to teach me how to tie my shoes when I was little.  [laughs] The babysitter taught me. It all worked out. [laughs] I can tie my shoes.

SPENCER: I think it is wildly unfair that anyone expected you to play sports when they never bothered to teach you how to tie your shoes.

PATTI: [laughs]

SPENCER: What?!

PATTI: But listen. Velcro shoes were very in then, at the very least. Right? I mean it was 1983 / 1984. They were pink. I think they were Pumas. No. They were Roos, because they had that little zipper pocket on the side. You are too young for any of this. They were very cool. I think you can still get them. I looked them up not that long ago.

SPENCER: I saw them on an episode of Psych.

PATTI: Oh yeah. My mother also, I actually think last year for his birthday or maybe it was Christmas, sent her–him her favorite photo of me which is that little league photo where I’m missing both of my front teeth, and if he was a more organized person, he would be able to find that and put it on the website, but I don’t think he can.

SPENCER: You’re very lucky.

PATTI: [laughs] Yeah. So.

SPENCER: Okay, if I remember right–

PATTI: The question.

SPENCER: We were watching, rather rewatching, one of our favorite shows which is My Boys.

PATTI: Right. Her name is PJ. She lives in Chicago. She’s a writer. My initials are PJ. I lived outside of Chicago. I’m also a writer. Granted, she’s a sports writer.

SPENCER: And this show is the closest you’ve ever come to actually liking baseball.

PATTI: It’s true, because they’re all very invested. Although I will say this, the entire state of Illinois is very invested.

SPENCER: And in the first episode of the show, there’s the thing where the new guy to the group is joining the main cast’s softball team, and PJ is like the manager, and she’s in charge, and they’re teasing each other back and forth, and she puts him ninth in the batting order, which is last.

PATTI: He’s cute.

SPENCER: He is cute. She puts him last in the batting order, and he’s like, “Come on, you can’t take a little teasing? You’re batting me ninth?” and she goes, “No, I’m batting you ninth, because you might suck.” And the question becomes what’s the deal with batting order? How does it work? Why is what?

PATTI: I have a lot of questions about batting order, because I also was under the false impression, actually, that pitchers don’t bat. Which you, I think informed me is not right. Pitchers bat.

SPENCER: Largely yes. Ish.

PATTI: Or do they put them at the end of the batting order? What? Oh my god. And does the batting order–oh! Okay. Okay.

SPENCER: [laughs]

PATTI: Should you start, or should I ask this now?

SPENCER: Go ahead and ask it now, and I’ll forget it later.

PATTI: Nice. How many players are on a baseball team?

SPENCER: On the field, during a game, nine.

PATTI: Okay. I was gonna guess sixteen, but all right. Okay.

SPENCER: You might have, like, a full bench with many, many more.

PATTI: Okay.

SPENCER: But you have nine that play. So you have nine batters/nine fielders.

PATTI: Okay. What?

SPENCER: They’re all the same. So it’s the same nine batters, same nine fielders. But if you have someone come out of the–like if you have a relief pitcher take the place of the pitcher during the game, that person is also replacing them in the batting order.

PATTI: Oh.

SPENCER: Should we get into this after I cover the basics?

PATTI: Well, maybe, but I guess my question was, so you have these nine people and it’s your turn to not be on the field. It’s your turn to do the batting.

SPENCER: Right.

PATTI: And let’s say you’re not great, or I don’t really know how baseball works, let’s be ser–I know that the games take a very long time, and that’s part of why I have no patience for it. Let’s say you get through four of those people, and then you’ve got all your strikes, and you have to switch, which is three, right? You get three people out, you have to switch.

SPENCER: Yup. Three outs.

PATTI: Um. And then, you get their outs, and you switch back, do you start back at the beginning?

SPENCER: Nope. You pick up your place.

PATTI: Oh. So you can only game the system so far.

SPENCER: Right, so–

PATTI: Ah. All right. And only those nine people bat?

SPENCER: Correct. Ish. I’ll get into the ish-ish part in a minute, but, um, there isn’t a super lot interesting about this. Wikipedia was the only place that actually is kind of easily–

PATTI: It’s because it’s about baseball. Oh, we’re gonna get hatemail. It’s our second episode.

SPENCER: From our friends!

PATTI: [laughs]

SPENCER: We’re gonna get hatemail from our friends.

PATTI: If it helps, I support that other people really enjoy baseball.

SPENCER: Yeah.

PATTI: Good for them.

SPENCER: Yeah.

PATTI: Not for me.

SPENCER: Yeah.

PATTI: But go on. Explain this.

SPENCER: Okay. There isn’t like a lot of easily accessible batting strategy that’s particularly available. There’s a lot of weird batting order stuff that’s available and out there in terms of on deck and what you need to do on deck and all kinds of weird stuff, and there are different rules for different leagues. Like, there’s, uh, there’s professional baseball, but there’s also a lot of really well-regarded softball leagues, and other baseball leagues that aren’t triple-a ball or professional ball that have slightly different rules, and all of that is super minutiae that doesn’t really come up. The general way that batting order works is essentially every team pretty much lines it up so that at the beginning of the game, they have their strategy set out, and when they run out of that, it’s just hopin’ to hit a good cycle. So, the first batter, the first person up, is usually the person with the best on-base percentage, which is one of the 10,000 stats that also bore you to tears.

PATTI: Does that mean they’re most likely to get on base?

SPENCER: Yes.

PATTI: Okay.

SPENCER: So. Pretty self-explanatory. So, basically, you just want people on the bases so that you can try to get runs. So the first person has a good chance of getting on the base, because they’re a good hitter, not necessarily for–not necessarily for, uh, long drives, home runs, that kind of thing, but for getting the ball out there enough that they can get on a base.

PATTI: ‘Kay.

SPENCER: Second person is usually the person with the best bat control, which means they’re, again, a really good hitter, but they can pick where the ball goes pretty well when they’re hitting.

PATTI: Okay.

SPENCER: And that’s so that they can either bunt or ground it or drive it so that the person who has hopefully already gotten on base can progress further around the bases to try to get a run. The third person to bat is usually just the best hitter overall. Um. So that they can, you know, if they’re the best hitter overall, the chances of doing or batting doubles or triples or home runs goes up. Try to stay awake.

PATTI: [laughs]

SPENCER: People. People can’t see that your eyes just drooped and you shook your head.

PATTI: [laughs] I am very sick. This is also very boring. [laughs]

SPENCER: Yeah. Well, okay. So, the third person is usually the best hitter to try to bring in runs and drive more people around bases.

PATTI: Oh my god, is there a reason each of these nine people is in the position they’re in?

SPENCER: It get–it shortens up real quick.

PATTI: Okay. [laughs]

SPENCER: So, after that person, the fourth person is usually the best long-distance hitter, and this is to really drive runs. Long distance means more people haver a chance to–

PATTI: Okay. Gotcha.

SPENCER: –run the bases. Right. Fifth person–

PATTI: Hopefully at that point the bases would be loaded.

SPENCER: Yeah.

PATTI: Right. Because you’ve had three people hit, and ostensibly, hopefully, they are on three bases. So you’re trying to bring at least one of them–

SPENCER: Right.

PATTI: –air quotes “home.”

SPENCER: Right. Then fifth is your second long-distance–second best long-distance hitter. Same idea. And then after that, it’s essentially whoever can get you RBI’s which are Runs Batted In, which means when they’re up to bat, after they hit, someone makes it across home.

PATTI: Does anybody understand that sexual metaphor with the bases? Does anybody actually–

SPENCER: Everyone makes up their own.

PATTI: Okay.

SPENCER: Everyone makes up their own.

PATTI: Okay.

SPENCER: And then, so, you have, we just went one, two, three, four, five, and then it’s RBI, RBI, and then it’s your crappy hitters. So, your hitters who can try to get people across the plate, runs batted in–

PATTI: That’s what that means?

SPENCER: Yes.

PATTI: Wow. All right.

SPENCER: It’s, it’s–

PATTI: I have never heard the acronym said out loud.

SPENCER: It’s like an assist would be in any other sport.

PATTI: Huh. ‘Kay.

SPENCER: And then the bottom positions, like seven, eight, nine, are your crappy hitters.

PATTI: [laughs]

SPENCER: So, your pitchers. ‘Cause pitchers are notoriously garbage hitters.

PATTI: Well, because they’re really good at making it so other people can’t hit, right? They sort of do it on purpose.

SPENCER: Yeah. And, whenever, so, I got most of this information from my dad, because he was a sports photographer–well, he was a photographer for a local paper for, pfft, tw–wow! twenty years.

PATTI: [laughs]

SPENCER: Holy cow. And when I was growing up, we would watch baseball games together on a 13-inch black and white TV. Right? He knows baseball. He’s been around baseball for a long time. He watches baseball. He knows his stuff. And–

PATTI: It’s not rocket science.

SPENCER: Yeah. And my argument since growing up was always you’d think pitchers would be really good, because they know all the ins and outs of pitching–

PATTI: But do they work out differently? Maybe they focus on different muscles?

SPENCER: Yeah. It’s, it’s kind of like their skill is so specialized, they spend so much time pitching–

PATTI: This is really interesting; it’s kind of like medicine, right?

SPENCER: Yeah. So, they’re a specialist, they’re not a GP.

PATTI: And why you don’t want to ask your general practitioner about diet issues, you need to go to a dietician.

SPENCER: Not a nutritionist.

PATTI: Not a nutritionist.

SPENCER: A dietician.

PATTI: Go on. [laughs]

SPENCER: [laughs] Okay, so, that’s the gist of it. And that’s the general strategy overall. And you load this all up in the beginning, because that’s, in the first inning, when you have these people come out, that’s the time you have the most control over who’s up when and what they’re doing. So you set this out early so that you can actually try to get the runs and let the strategy play out.

PATTI: Hm. Okay.

SPENCER: As soon as possible.

PATTI: I have no idea what the average score of a baseball game is. How many points do teams usually get?

SPENCER: It–

PATTI: Is it a high-scoring game?

SPENCER: It’s a very low-scoring game, typically. Uh–

PATTI: Not as low as hockey, though.

SPENCER: Not as low, but a lot of scores–

PATTI: Closer to hockey than basketball.

SPENCER: Whvv–oh yeah. Very much so.

PATTI: [laughs]

SPENCER: The outs work such that if you get your first three batters out, like, you get swept in the first inning, when it’s your turn to start in the second inning, you’re starting your fourth batter. You continue from there.

PATTI: Okay.

SPENCER: If you skip a batter in the order, it’s a problem, and there are actually rules about counting that as an out and other stuff.

PATTI: Ooh.

SPENCER: Depending, yeah. So, don’t mess that up. Managers are required to give the opposing team their batting order as well as the umpire their batting order before the game so everybody knows who’s batting before the game, in what order.

PATTI: Is it the same time, though? Like exchanging hostages.

SPENCER: It’s just before–

PATTI: So you can’t see the other team’s line up and then rig yours?

SPENCER: Yes, but it’s also–

PATTI: Oh wait, maybe that wouldn’t–nevermind, that wouldn’t matter.

SPENCER: It also isn’t particularly valuable, because there are so many games in a season, and everybody pretty much has a decent idea of how everybody else’s teams are doing when you’re at a professional level.

PATTI: Twitter. Twitter would seem to indicate that there are a lot of games. So many. Still going. Right now. Is that it? Is that all I need to know?

SPENCER: That’s probably even more than you need to know, honestly. The — [sigh] I am still hung up on the fact that no one taught you to tie your shoelaces in your family.

PATTI: They–! Well, not my family–she was a family friend, though, the woman who babysat me, and she was left-handed.

SPENCER: Again, how did they ever expect you to play baseball if they didn’t even teach you to tie your shoes.

PATTI: Well, you don’t have to be able to tie your shoes to play baseball. I…don’t…think.

SPENCER: Yeah, but if they’re not gonna teach you–

PATTI: Yeah.

SPENCER: Like, if they’re not gonna play catch with you or whatever, throwing you on a team, like–I played, like, on a rec league with the city when I was little–

PATTI: Brag brag brag.

SPENCER: Oh. No. Okay.

PATTI: [laughs]

SPENCER: Do you want to feel better?

PATTI: No. Don’t tell me this.

SPENCER: So, my first season playing, I was an outfielder.

PATTI: Hey, me, too.

SPENCER: And I was very young.

PATTI: Well, yeah.

SPENCER: And I learned–like, they actually taught us the basic mechanics of throwing.

PATTI: Well, see, I had that.

SPENCER: Like, they went over that in detail for everybody. How to–how to throw, how to bat, that kind of stuff. How to catch.

PATTI: You don’t have to tell me. Did you get hit by a ball?

SPENCER: No…

PATTI: Did you hit somebody with a ball?

SPENCER: It’s more embarrassing…

PATTI: Did you fall asleep?

SPENCER: No. I–

PATTI: Did you sit down in the grass and hang out? ‘Cause that’s what I did.

SPENCER: It’s more embarrassing. I tried to–

PATTI: Did you roll down a hill?

SPENCER: No, we played on a–it was flat.

PATTI: Oh. All right.

SPENCER: I tried to play, like, four positions simultaneously–

PATTI: That’s not possible… all right.

SPENCER: It’s not. It went very badly. I only did it once, ’cause I got heckled a lot by parents.

PATTI: Aw. What?

SPENCER: And the coach was also like, “uhhh, don’t do that,” after the inning was over.

PATTI: I don’t think that parents should heckle children. All right. [laughs] Listen, they don’t, and that’s why we don’t have children, because I can’t guarantee I wouldn’t do it, but I don’t think it’s right.

SPENCER: Think about every sitcom you’ve ever seen where parents are at a little league baseball game.

PATTI: There are rules against that now. It’s no longer the 80’s.

SPENCER: But even in–

PATTI: Oh my god, that was the nin–oh my god.

SPENCER: Like, every single sitcom. And the thing is it’s based on real–

PATTI: Yeah.

SPENCER: When, when I was better, when I was much better, when I was playing catcher–so I transitioned from playing outfielder to catcher between fifth and sixth grade, because what I discovered is I was no longer really a righty. I couldn’t throw right-handed as well as I could left-handed, but I also couldn’t catch with my right, I was still really good at catching with my left. So I’d throw and catch with my left hand which isn’t great for speed, you know, when you’re trying to field. So I got moved to catcher, because I didn’t have to be quite as good throwing from that position, and I was good at catching. And I was playing, and the problem with being a catcher is that you’re real close to all the parent heckling, so even though I was actually a much better at that point I got heckled way worse, because they could yell at me much better: I was right there.

PATTI: That’s terrible.

SPENCER: There’s a reason I didn’t play after sixth grade.

PATTI: Yeah.

SPENCER: Yeah. That, and I didn’t want to have to learn how to throw better with my right hand. I was fine.

PATTI: So thank you. For explaining that to me.

SPENCER: You’re very welcome. Thank you–

PATTI: Does it usually happen that they get through the nine people more than once?

SPENCER: Yes. Okay. Good point. So, they cycle however many times they get through. Like, if they’re having a really good batting inning, if like your team is having a really good batting inning, you can go through your people as many times until you get three outs. So, if, if the team you’re playing against is terrible, and you’re really good, and they’re just not getting you out, you can just keep playin’ and playin’ and playin’–

PATTI: Does that happen?

SPENCER: Not a lot at the pro level.

PATTI: Slaughter rule, though, right? That’s like a thing for little league.

SPENCER: Yeah. Because if you get 27 points in one inning, that means you batted everybody at least three times.

PATTI: Aw.

SPENCER: And they all made it through.

PATTI: That’s sad.

SPENCER: Yeah. And if you can’t get them out and they’ve gone all through at least three times and made it across, you aren’t comin’ back from that. So.

PATTI: That’s all right.

SPENCER: But–

PATTI: Baseball’s not for everyone.

SPENCER: It is not for everyone. Substitutions. We sort of talked about that a little bit. But substitutions are, at any point in the game, you can have a player substituted in a position, typically relief pitchers, because, again, highly specialized, throwing a ball–

PATTI: Their arms get tired.

SPENCER: –real hard, real fast. Their arms tire out, and just to prevent them from injury, because if they overuse it, they’re putting themselves at risk.

PATTI: Did you know a huge problem with high school athletes now that the amount of training that they do, they wind up damaging their shoulders before they ever get to college sports.

SPENCER: Yeah.

PATTI: I spent a lot of time with orthopedic surgeons. I don’t–I am not a parent, but I will just say this: kids need to have fun, and if someone is playing enough baseball that they are hurting themselves, they’re probably not having fun playing anymore if they are sixteen years old. So, just, keep that in mind, right? It’s everything in moderation. And kids should be kids. And sixteen-year olds shouldn’t be under that kind of pressure. That’s my two cents as not having children. Just observing human nature.

SPENCER: My, my parents were pretty great. They wanted to make sure I had fun. My mom’s rule for summer was I either play a sport or I go to school, and I played a sport for six years. And it was baseball, because that was the summer sport, right? And after sixth grade, I went to school, and I took extra classes that were required classes to get them out of the way so I could do more electives in the school year.

PATTI: So, two things that are wild to me. First of all that they would have you playing baseball outside in summer in Arizona. That feels abusive.

SPENCER: It actually didn’t feel that bad because I didn’t know any better. But, I mean, it wasn’t great, and we had to make sure we stayed hydrated, but it really wasn’t terrible when I was little. If I had been playing in high school baseball, I would have been miserable. And I, I had a friend who was a pitcher on the, on the high school baseball team, and I don’t know how he did it. He was good.

PATTI: And then the second thing to me is growing up in a totally different region of the United States, and in a different school system, it is wild to me that you could elect to take courses during the summer. At school. For credit.

SPENCER: Yeah.

PATTI: That is not a thing that we did here. It was not an option that was ever offered. It was never offered, because I was a big enough nerd, that although I went to choir camp for a couple every weeks ever summer, I would have made time to take classes just so I could leave early, but instead I didn’t even take a study hall until my senior year, so. And then I thought to myself, “why didn’t I do this sooner? This is enjoyable.”

SPENCER: I took P.E. in the summer the year before freshman year of high school. That was a bad choice. But I did it so I could have three electives my freshman year.

PATTI: That’s nuts.

SPENCER: It was bad. So bad outside.

PATTI: [laughs] So, this is Mansplainer. I’m Patti.

SPENCER: I’m Spencer. Our theme music is Drone by Chastity Belt.

PATTI: Thank you, Chastity Belt for letting us use your song. And thank you to Spencer’s father, Steven King, for giving us some information about batting order. And uh, we’ll see you next time.

SPENCER: Bye.

[Theme song: “Drone” by Chastity Belt chorus]
He was just another man, tryin’ to teach me somethin’
He was just another man, tryin’ to teach me somethin’
He was just another man, tryin’ to teach me somethin’
He was just another man, tryin’ to teach me somethin’

PATTI: I was just siting here trying to think of how many baseball players I could name, which weirdly translated into “how many soccer player names do I know?” but I think I might only know two? Wait, maybe three. Because I’ve got Pelé, right?

SPENCER: Yeah.

PATTI: That was [laughs] David Beckham.

SPENCER: Oh yeah.

PATTI: And then Hamm. Female.

SPENCER: Mia Hamm.

PATTI: Yeah. Mia Hamm. I’ve got three. Three soccer players.

SPENCER: Yeah, what’s really sad is I didn’t even really think of Pelé or David Beckham when you said soccer players. All I could think was Mia Hamm, Hope Solo–

PATTI: Isn’t Hope Solo a volleyball player?

SPENCER: No.

PATTI: Oh. Who are the two volleyball players, the Olympians?

SPENCER: [strained noise]

PATTI: [laughs] Yeah, that’s pretty bad, right?

SPENCER: I feel like one of them is Kate Two Last Names, and one of them is I don’t know.

PATTI: Like baseball–

SPENCER: Kate Walsh hyphen Something. I think.

PATTI: So baseball, we’ve got Ty Cobb, Jose Canseco, right?

SPENCER: Yeah.

PATTI: Um. Babe Ruth.

SPENCER: Yeah.

PATTI: I don’t know what his real name is.

SPENCER: Baby Ruth.

PATTI: Ha. Ba-dum-ching. Mickey Mantle?

SPENCER: Yes!

PATTI: That’s right. Joe DiMaggio

SPENCER: Yeah, I’ve–

PATTI: I really only know, because of, you know.

SPENCER: Thank you Simon and Garfunkel.

PATTI: Well, Marilyn Monroe.

SPENCER: Oh, yeah. All right, yeah. Okay. We came at that from different angles.

PATTI: [laughs] But we both got to the same place. Uh. Um. There’s one with the last name Jeter, and I know he plays on the Yankees, because a friend of mine has a cat named Jeter.

SPENCER: Used to. He’s retired now.

PATTI: Oh. All right.

SPENCER: But yeah. Derek Jeter.

PATTI: I think that’s all I know. I feel like sometimes I remember more.

SPENCER: Usually–

PATTI: Is Willie Mays a baseball player?

SPENCER: Yes!

PATTI: Hey, look at me. Apparently, I only know really old dudes, and … I dunno, I got nothin’.