Hi Everyone —
Thanks to all who joined us for our Live PosCast on Tuesday — we’re going to try to do one of these every week — so much fun. They will usually happen on Tuesdays at noon Eastern, but next week I will be in Cooperstown on Tuesday doing research for my super-secret new book, so we’ll pick another day and time.*
*Yes, another book. This is different from BIG FAN, which Mike and I wrote together and is completely done and will be coming out on May 19. This is also different from the young reader version of WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL, which I’m working on and will come out in 2027. I’m working on a lot of stuff here.
Anyway, if you want to listen to this week’s PosCast — and it’s a fun one because Mike and I are joined by Molly Knight, and we’re all utterly exhausted after the 18-inning game — you can find it on all your favorite podcasting filling stations.
P.S. If you love these stories, come be part of The Clubhouse — the community that keeps all this going.
You’ve probably heard the very famous (and utterly wonderful) Earl Weaver quote about momentum — “Momentum is tomorrow’s starting pitcher.”
That’s not exactly how it goes, though. I’ve been chasing after that quote for years, and I’m now convinced it comes from a glorious 1979 interview Weaver had with my old Cleveland pal, the legendary sportswriter Terry Pluto. He was a rookie reporter with the Baltimore Evening Sun, and he nervously spoke with the Earl as the Orioles prepared for their ALCS matchup with the California Angels.
I’m actually going to stay on that interview for a few moments, if that’s OK, because it’s so filled with baseball goodies. If I do this right, it will take us right up to the Blue Jays’ dominant 6-2 pasting of the Dodgers Tuesday night that evened up this World Series. If I don’t do this right, well, at least you’ll get some fun Earl Weaver stuff.
The O’s won 102 games that year after eating Yankee dust for a few years — and Pluto apprehensively asked Weaver about his team’s momentum going into October.
“Young man,” Weaver said, “I’m gonna let you in on a secret. There ain’t no such thing as momentum. All that psychology stuff they talk about is baloney. It comes down to one thing: whoever plays better wins. Remember, the better team always wins in the end.
“Let me give you an example of #%#&^ momentum [Editor’s note: I don’t actually know that Weaver used an expletive here, but I’ve got to believe he did, and I couldn’t help but add it — you can add expletives throughout these quotes. It’s fun!] Your team has won six in a row. They’re playing great ball. And then Tommy John comes along and throws a great game and wins a 1-0 shutout. So what happened to momentum? Tommy John took care of that. And no amount of psychology is gonna beat him when he’s got everything working.”
I believe that’s your renowned “Momentum is tomorrow’s starting pitcher” quote.
But it’s more than that. Weaver was so far ahead of his time on so many baseball things. Just from this one article:
Earl on radar guns: He used them at every home game when few around baseball did. “With the radar gun, there’s no such thing as a pitcher who’s ‘sneaky fast,’” he said. “We tell our hitters that this guy is throwing 90 mph, and they know exactly how fast that is.”
Earl on pitcher-hitter matchups: “I have a record of how all my hitters fared against all the pitchers in the league. When I make out my lineup, I put the guys who have hit the starting pitcher in the past. It’s not foolproof, and you need to get a guy 15 at-bats to get a good reading against a pitcher. But it’s the best system I know.”
Earl on what a manager relies on: Baseball judgment, statistics, research, and a little superstition.
Earl on how you build a team: “You don’t always take the 25 best athletes. You pick the 25 guys best suited for what you want them to do. … I want guys on my bench like Pat Kelly and John Lowenstein who can go in there and pick the team up. They do things to win games. Ideally, everybody on the club is able to do something to help win a game.”
Earl on in-game strategies: “That’s the easiest part. Anybody knows when to bunt and things like that.”
Earl on how many games per season a manager wins or loses: “Every single one.”
Nobody has ever understood baseball quite like The Earl. But perhaps his greatest insight was on momentum — not just that it's tomorrow’s starting pitching, but that it's baloney. He was poo-pooing the hot-hand fallacy years before psychologists even invented the term. And finally, we arrive in Los Angeles on Tuesday night.
If EVER there was going to be a game shaped by momentum, this was it. The Dodgers beat the Blue Jays in a soul-crushing 18-inning opera (or soul-lifting symphony, depending on your perspective), and just 17 hours later, the two teams were playing again. The Dodgers had the best player on the planet on the mound. The Blue Jays had a former Cy Young winner still trying to find his way back after a devastating injury. The game was in Los Angeles, where the fans smelled blood. This was the momentum game of all time.
And what happened?
Vladimir Guerrero Jr didn’t give a damn about momentum and hit a two-run homer off Shohei because Vladdy is a bang-bating, bell-ringing, big-haul, great-go, neck-or-nothing, rip-roaring, every-time-a-bullseye hitting savant.
Shane Bieber didn’t give a damn about momentum and used all of his experience and moxie to work his way through the Dodger land mines without, as John Candy used to say on SCTV*, getting himself blowed up.
*Colin Hanks directed a heartwarming new documentary called “John Candy: I Like Me,” that is streaming now on Prime Video. Watch it! There’s an old line that nice people don’t make for great literature or movie-making. Maybe. Maybe not. But there’s something so sweet about connecting with a guy who went through life just treating people well and making people laugh. I don’t know — that seems like something to strive for.
Dave Roberts didn’t give a damn about momentum, and he put Blake Treinen in the game long after that guy should have been put up on the shelf BEHIND the elf. You would think that at some point, pharmaceutical companies would develop a Treinen patch — call the drug Treinominym — that Roberts could wear on his arm to help him quit Blake Treinen.
Here’s the commercial song:
I grew tired of the whinin’
And my reliever redlinin’
And my ballclub declinin’
I finally … understood
That I could do some redesignin’
My strategy needed refinin’
And now I’m done with Blake Treinen
And I’m done with him for good!
The Blue Jays didn’t just win this anti-momentum game; they made the Dodgers look pretty helpless. Los Angeles managed just six hits, none of them with runners in scoring position. Shohei Ohtani — who had been so good that everybody wondered if he would ever see another pitch — went 0 for 3 with two strikeouts. Mookie Betts, the Greatest Living American, continued to look out of sorts.
Meanwhile, the Blue Jays did what they’ve been doing for a while now — they kept poking out hits and annoying pitchers until they could string together one rally. And one rally was all they needed.
So now what? The series is 2-2; this thing is definitely going back to Toronto for at least a Game 6, and it sure feels like the same strategy holds: The Blue Jays will try to irritate and exasperate tonight’s Dodgers starter, Blake Snell, enough to get him out of the game so they can face Treinen and the Argonauts. The Dodgers will try to regain their power stroke off 22-year-old Trey Yesavage and ride Snell as long as they can.
Unless a completely different storyline develops.
And a completely different storyline absolutely could develop. This is baseball. Momentum is baloney, as the Earl said. So are predictions. The team that plays best will win.
