Doppelgängers

René Magritte, La reproduction interdite, 1937

Baseball is full of echoes, starting with the name itself--those concatenating "b-" sounds, admittedly differentiated by vowel length--and continuing to how we talk about players (e.g., "That guy swings like Danny Cater"). We look for resonances and similarities everywhere, if only to clarify how we're distinctive--or to find out how we're not. While it's not unusual for a baseball blog to go a bit into hibernation during the off-season, I've been slowed up far more than anticipated because I've been steeping in the work of our evil twins. Yes, there is a duo of baseball nerds out there who (thankfully) outstrip us in geekery but (inevitably) also know way, way, way more about minor-league ball than Rob and I ever will.

I'm speaking, of course, of Kevin Goldstein and Jason Parks, the impresarios of the Baseball Prospectus podcast "Up and In," which I have now listened to all 34 episodes of--a real feat and/or waste of time considering that each one runs around two hours, if not more. I started listening with episode 19 and then listened to numbers 0.9 (did I mention they are appealingly pretentious?) to 18 interwoven with 20 through 34. This has led to a great deal of confusion on my part. I'm really looking forward to the World Series, though--the Reds look like dark horses to me.