POPULARITY
2 episodes with Ball Four
2 episodes with Ball Four
2 episodes with Ball Four
2 episodes with Ball Four
2 episodes with Ball Four
2 episodes with Ball Four
2 episodes with Ball Four
2 episodes with Ball Four
2 episodes with Ball Four
Jeffrey Rainey is an avid Audiobook listener and he will be joining us for a Rapid Fire Review. Today's theme for RFR is Baseball book titles! Mentioned book titles: 1. The Soul of Baseball, A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America 2. Ball Four, by Jim Bouton 3. The Big Chair by Ned Colletti, Joseph A. Reaves 4. Hello, Friends! by Jerry Howarth 5. Where Nobody Knows Your Name by John Feinstein, Life in the minor leagues of baseball
August 24, 1989, Pete Rose signs an agreement that bans him from baseball permanently. Commissioner Bart Giamatti announces that the agreement does not contain either “an admission or a denial” that Rose bet on baseball games. The ruling will prevent Rose from seeking employment in the major leagues.August 24, 1971, Ernie Banks of the Chicago Cubs hits his 512th and final career home run. Banks' homer helps the Cubs to a 5-4 victory.How many fans wish they had a owner like this? August 24, 1951, St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck pulls off another one of his famous stunts. Veeck allows over 1,000 fans to act as “managers” during a game at Sportsman's Park. The fans use placards to vote on lineup and strategy decisions.August 24, 1969, the expansion Seattle Pilots trade knuckleballing pitcher Jim Bouton to the Houston Astros for pitchers Dooley Womack and Roric Harrison. Bouton will become a celebrity one year later when his book, "Ball Four", is published and becomes a best-seller.Joe Glenn catches baseball's best hitters:Left fielder Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox pitches the last two innings in a 12-1 loss to the Detroit Tigers. Williams allows three hits and one run but strikes out Tiger slugger Rudy York. Joe Glenn, who caught Babe Ruth's last pitching appearance in 1933, is Williams'catcher.1919 - Cleveland pitcher Ray Caldwell is flattened by a bolt of lightning in his debut with the team. He recovers to get the final out of the game, and defeats Philadelphia, 2-1.Historical Recap performed by:Robyn Newton from - Robyn SaysThis Day In Baseball is Sponsored by - www.vintagebaseballreflections.com - Join the membership today and listen to 50 years of baseball history told to you by the folks who were there! As a special offer, all our listeners can use the term - thisdayinbaseball at the membership check out.
August 24, 1989, Pete Rose signs an agreement that bans him from baseball permanently. Commissioner Bart Giamatti announces that the agreement does not contain either “an admission or a denial” that Rose bet on baseball games. The ruling will prevent Rose from seeking employment in the major leagues.August 24, 1971, Ernie Banks of the Chicago Cubs hits his 512th and final career home run. Banks' homer helps the Cubs to a 5-4 victory.How many fans wish they had a owner like this? August 24, 1951, St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck pulls off another one of his famous stunts. Veeck allows over 1,000 fans to act as “managers” during a game at Sportsman's Park. The fans use placards to vote on lineup and strategy decisions.August 24, 1969, the expansion Seattle Pilots trade knuckleballing pitcher Jim Bouton to the Houston Astros for pitchers Dooley Womack and Roric Harrison. Bouton will become a celebrity one year later when his book, "Ball Four", is published and becomes a best-seller.Joe Glenn catches baseball's best hitters:Left fielder Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox pitches the last two innings in a 12-1 loss to the Detroit Tigers. Williams allows three hits and one run but strikes out Tiger slugger Rudy York. Joe Glenn, who caught Babe Ruth's last pitching appearance in 1933, is Williams'catcher.1919 - Cleveland pitcher Ray Caldwell is flattened by a bolt of lightning in his debut with the team. He recovers to get the final out of the game, and defeats Philadelphia, 2-1.Historical Recap performed by:Robyn Newton from - Robyn SaysThis Day In Baseball is Sponsored by - www.vintagebaseballreflections.com - Join the membership today and listen to 50 years of baseball history told to you by the folks who were there! As a special offer, all our listeners can use the term - thisdayinbaseball at the membership check out.
Stefan Fatsis and Josh Levin reflect on hosting Slate's sports podcast, which debuted in July 2009. Retrospective (6:51): How the show attempted to be an antidote to traditional sports talk radio. Old Afterballs (30:55): Josh on a 1934 battle between a scorpion and a spider. Stefan with an update to “Proud to Be an Astro” from Ball Four. New Afterballs (51:17): Josh on listener comments after the first episode of Hang Up and Listen. Stefan on a decade and a half of Afterballs. (Note: time codes are only accurate for Slate Plus members, who listen ad free.) Want more Hang Up and Listen? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you'll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page, or visit slate.com/hangupplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Stefan Fatsis and Josh Levin reflect on hosting Slate's sports podcast, which debuted in July 2009. Retrospective (6:51): How the show attempted to be an antidote to traditional sports talk radio. Old Afterballs (30:55): Josh on a 1934 battle between a scorpion and a spider. Stefan with an update to “Proud to Be an Astro” from Ball Four. New Afterballs (51:17): Josh on listener comments after the first episode of Hang Up and Listen. Stefan on a decade and a half of Afterballs. (Note: time codes are only accurate for Slate Plus members, who listen ad free.) Want more Hang Up and Listen? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you'll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page, or visit slate.com/hangupplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Stefan Fatsis and Josh Levin reflect on hosting Slate's sports podcast, which debuted in July 2009. Retrospective (6:51): How the show attempted to be an antidote to traditional sports talk radio. Old Afterballs (30:55): Josh on a 1934 battle between a scorpion and a spider. Stefan with an update to “Proud to Be an Astro” from Ball Four. New Afterballs (51:17): Josh on listener comments after the first episode of Hang Up and Listen. Stefan on a decade and a half of Afterballs. (Note: time codes are only accurate for Slate Plus members, who listen ad free.) Want more Hang Up and Listen? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you'll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page, or visit slate.com/hangupplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Willie Mays tribute, Braves win another squeaker, 1st win for rookie, robo umps delayed, Iron Man meets Iron Man (Downey Jr & Gehrig), Pat McAfee gone? Blank & Ryan in Falcons Ring of Honor, Jerry Sandusky still rots in prison, Straight Cait vs Reese WNBA cat fight, fat Scottish toadie Montgomerie hates America and American golf fans, NBA season ends, win for Horford, Dechambeau not in Paris? Schmeling vs Louis, underwater tricycle race, Holyfield beats Holmes, highest cricket score ever, Cha Cha Muldowney, Peter Warrick, Mungo Park, Len Bias, Manute Bol, Elks Lodge baseball, only pitcher to strike out Joe DiMaggio 3x in one game, Big Poison, Jim Bouton's "Ball Four", Gary Carter, oldest player ever in baseball, Kyle Farnsworth 'nolanryans' a hitter who charges the mound, Blyleven runs his mouth & loses his hair, amphibious pitcher, hot dog mascot fired & no it's not Joey Chestnut again, Baby Shark song begins our long national nightmare, plus Pete's Tweets, This Day in Sports History, Ripley's Believe It or Not! and quotes from Jeff Torborg & Mel Allen
I discuss the 1 year run of the Seattle Pilots of the American League - why they lasted just 1 year and the lasting legacy of Ball Four.
Jedidiah Collins is the "Fullback of Finance." After a successful career in the NFL, he's on a mission to empower one million people to own their financial stories. He's an author, a speaker, a podcaster, and a teacher…his story is one of grit and determination. There are 380,000 collegiate athletes, yet only 1% percent of them make it to a professional level. Despite having success in college, Jed knew it would be challenging to make it as a pro. But that didn't stop him. It wasn't a smooth ride by any means, and he shares his story of getting cut over and over again before finally landing a starting role for the Super Bowl-defending New Orleans Saints. Not only did he become a starter, he was even named to the Pro Bowl team. Jed was part of what he calls the "Breakfast Club," when he would be one of the first people in the locker room learning and understanding what it takes to be a peak performer. A consistent theme for Jed is he was able to steal success from each of the organizations he was a part of. We get a first-row seat to hear the fascinating stories of how he learned from iconic athletes like Drew Brees. After realizing that only 30% of retired NFL athletes walk away with their financial dream still intact, Jed decided to become a Certified Financial Planner during the off-season. On the show, we cover a lot of ground, including why thoughts are things, the difference between external and internal success, why repetition matters, how to silence the voice of quit, and why we should focus on most vs now. A the core of Jed's philosophy is a belief that we must eliminate potential. Jed has a winning mindset and shares how one-on-one basketball competitions with his brothers as a kid made an impact on his entire life. We also learned why he feels his greatest asset is his lifelong habit of journaling. Links and Resources: 03:10 NFL Fullback 07:57 Ball Four by Jim Bouton 13:14 Train your mind, change your brain Book 20:40 "Silencing the voice of quit" 28:15 "You don't lose until you quit" 32:24 "Successful people do not sacrifice, they prioritize" 50:34 Jed Collins - Money Vehicle Course 50:37 Your Money Vehicle: How to Begin Driving to Financial Freedom You can find Jed: Jed's course: https://your-money-vehicle.teachable.com/p/home Personal website: https://jedidiahcollins.com/ Social Media: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jedidiah-collins/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fullbackoffinance/ Podcast: Rookie To Veteran Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=23010497) This is an encore episode and was originally published on August 3, 2020 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“Is our relationship with the wealth you have more about fear or more about joy? If you are experiencing any sort of poverty, what a difference would it make to be freed from that burden? Actually to “not be anxious about your life, what you all will eat or what you all will drink, or about your body, what you all will wear.” And if you are among those of us who are not, what a joy would it be to be a part of freeing each other from that? For all of us, whether what has us in our grip is wealth or debt, fear or anxiety, what would it be like to let go of that so we can embrace the God who is love and let that God who is love embrace and provide for us through one another?” Sermon by Mike Kinman from worship at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday, October 29, 2023 at All Saints Church, Pasadena. Readings: Psalm 61 and Matthew 6:19-27. Watch the sermon on YouTube. Read a text of the sermon here. Please consider donating to support the mission and ministries of All Saints at https://allsaints-pas.org/donate/donate-now/. Any donation, big or small, is appreciated! Follow All Saints Church on Twitter @ASCpas. Like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AllSaintsPasadena/. Check out the rest of our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/allsaintspasadena1/videos. Subscribe, like, get notifications every time we post! Enjoy our extensive archive of stimulating and inspiring content!
As baseball celebrates another World Series champion, we decided awhile ago to read the classic baseball book, "Ball Four" by Jim Bouton. A sensation, when it was released in 1970, we discuss how much Bouton's book still shocks and what seems relatively tame nowadays. A must read for baseball fans but Bouton's talent as a writer makes for an interesting read for not just the devoted fans of America's pastime. Along the way, we discuss our history with baseball, favorite moments, and biggest heartbreaks. Enjoy! Contact Us: Instagram @therewillbbooks Twitter @therewillbbooks Email willbebooks@gmail.com Goodreads: Therewillbebooks ko-fi.com/therewillbbooks patreon.com/therewillbbooks
Gerry Hamilton and Rod Babers break down the four NEW Texas Longhorns recruiting offers, talk takeaways from Steve Sarkisian's press conference and more on this week's edition of Talkin' Ball! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On August 24, 1989, Pete Rose signs an agreement that bans him from baseball permanently. Commissioner Bart Giamatti announces that the agreement does not contain either “an admission or a denial” that Rose bet on baseball games. The ruling will prevent Rose from seeking employment in the major leagues.On August 24, 1971, Ernie Banks of the Chicago Cubs hits his 512th and final career home run. Banks' homer helps the Cubs to a 5-4 victory.How many fans wish they had a owner like this? August 24, 1951, St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck pulls off another one of his famous stunts. Veeck allows over 1,000 fans to act as “managers” during a game at Sportsman's Park. The fans use placards to vote on lineup and strategy decisions.August 24, 1969, the expansion Seattle Pilots trade knuckleballing pitcher Jim Bouton to the Houston Astros for pitchers Dooley Womack and Roric Harrison. Bouton will become a celebrity one year later when his book, "Ball Four", is published and becomes a best-seller.Joe Glenn catches baseball's best hitters:Left fielder Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox pitches the last two innings in a 12-1 loss to the Detroit Tigers. Williams allows three hits and one run but strikes out Tiger slugger Rudy York. Joe Glenn, who caught Babe Ruth's last pitching appearance in 1933, is Williams'catcher.1919 - Cleveland pitcher Ray Caldwell is flattened by a bolt of lightning in his debut with the team. He recovers to get the final out of the game, and defeats Philadelphia, 2-1.Historical Recap performed by:Robyn Newton from - Robyn SaysThis Day In Baseball is Sponsored by - www.vintagebaseballreflections.com - Join the membership today and listen to 50 years of baseball history told to you by the folks who were there! As a special offer, all our listeners can use the term - thisdayinbaseball at the membership check out.
2012 CY Young Winner, RA Dickey joins us on the podcast today. He came from a low-income, broken home. He learned how to survive through extreme adversity, trauma and abuse. Sports Illustrated wrote a review of his book and said, "The finest piece of nonfiction baseball writing since Ball Four." We had a great conversation about his life and what he's learned, especially what he learned through failure. He's a deep-thinking guy who know's how to tell a story. We had a lot of laughs, excited to share this one with you. God uses all things for the good, even when it's a NY Met winning the CY Young. How do you get the Ego out of your way and develop a posture of humility? What was winning the 2012 Cy Young like? What is the difference between stubborn and relentlous? Why is it imortant to learn from failure? How can you use your influence to change someone's life? There is an old saying, the teacher will appear when the student is ready. RA shares many examples of God bringing men into RA's life and picking him up and guiding him. So many little lessons in this one! Check out RA Dickey's Book, Whereever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball HERE Join our FREE FB Community The Journey of a Christian Dad HERE Check out my wife's new children't book HERE
Mid-season tournament & other gimmicks (0:10) Strikeouts are boring & expansion is coming (2:37) Thomas Boswell & the delighted Englishman (9:26) 1998 (11:57) Play naked (13:10) AB testing ABS (15:43) Fading fandom (17:54) Players want more time (19:29) Jim Bouton's Ball Four (21:52) The Ripkins (22:52) Too hot for baseball (26:20)
Jedidiah Collins is the "Fullback of Finance." After a successful career in the NFL, he's on a mission to empower one million people to own their financial stories. He's an author, a speaker, a podcaster, and a teacher…his story is one of grit and determination. There are 380,000 collegiate athletes, yet only 1% percent of them make it to a professional level. Despite having success in college, Jed knew it would be challenging to make it as a pro. But that didn't stop him. It wasn't a smooth ride by any means, and he shares his story of getting cut over and over again before finally landing a starting role for the Super Bowl-defending New Orleans Saints. Not only did he become a starter, he was even named to the Pro Bowl team. Jed was part of what he calls the "Breakfast Club," when he would be one of the first people in the locker room learning and understanding what it takes to be a peak performer. A consistent theme for Jed is he was able to steal success from each of the organizations he was a part of. We get a first-row seat to hear the fascinating stories of how he learned from iconic athletes like Drew Brees. After realizing that only 30% of retired NFL athletes walk away with their financial dream still intact, Jed decided to become a Certified Financial Planner during the off-season. On the show, we cover a lot of ground, including why thoughts are things, the difference between external and internal success, why repetition matters, how to silence the voice of quit, and why we should focus on most vs now. A the core of Jed's philosophy is a belief that we must eliminate potential. Jed has a winning mindset and shares how one-on-one basketball competitions with his brothers as a kid made an impact on his entire life. We also learned why he feels his greatest asset is his lifelong habit of journaling. Links and Resources: 03:10 NFL Fullback 07:57 Ball Four by Jim Bouton 13:14 Train your mind, change your brain Book 20:40 "Silencing the voice of quit" 28:15 "You don't lose until you quit" 32:24 "Successful people do not sacrifice, they prioritize" 50:34 Jed Collins - Money Vehicle Course 50:37 Your Money Vehicle: How to Begin Driving to Financial Freedom You can find Jed: Jed's course: https://your-money-vehicle.teachable.com/p/home Personal website: https://jedidiahcollins.com/ Social Media: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jedidiah-collins/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fullbackoffinance/ Podcast: Rookie To Veteran Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=23010497) This is an encore episode and was originally published on August 3, 2020 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 575, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Jim-Boree 1: Wherever she was, Mrs. Calabash knew he was the schnozzola. Jimmy Durante. 2: Seen here he won the Best Actor Oscar for 1940s "The Philadelphia Story". Jimmy Stewart. 3: In 1976 he said, "I have looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times". Jimmy Carter. 4: He's the only man who's been the head coach of both the Dallas Cowboys and the Miami Dolphins. Jimmy Johnson. 5: This baseball player hit a literary home run with his memoir "Ball Four". Jim Bouton. Round 2. Category: 10, 11 Or 12 1: Number of biblical commandments revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai. 10. 2: November is this number month of the year in the modern calendar. 11. 3: The highest roll possible using a pair of standard dice. 12. 4: X is the Roman numeral for this number. 10. 5: Total number of the labors of the mythological Hercules. 12. Round 3. Category: Anagrammed Hitchcock Films 1: "PORE". Rope. 2: "TO ZAP". Topaz. 3: "ZEN FRY". Frenzy. 4: "POUND BELLS". Spellbound. 5: "BOIL FATE". Lifeboat. Round 4. Category: "B" 1: Appropriately, the stock ticker symbol for Sotheby's is this 3-letter word. BID. 2: Let's hear it for this capital of Idaho. Boise. 3: "Streetwise" nickname of the Super Bowl III MVP. "Broadway Joe" Namath. 4: Oh, you can call it Istanbul, or you can call it Constantinople, or you can call it this. Byzantium. 5: A carillon is a set of 23 or more of these. Bells. Round 5. Category: Veterinary Affairs 1: Contrary to myth, this part of a dog doesn't need to be cold, but should usually be moist. nose. 2: It's another common name for foot-and-mouth disease. hoof-and-mouth disease. 3: Vets use antibiotics on fish suffering from "rot" of this, whether dorsal or caudal. fin. 4: The Association of Avian Veterinarians says that to protect other birds, do this to a new bird for at least 6 weeks. isolate it. 5: In 1987 researchers found a new virus in cats, known by this 3-letter abbreviation. FIV (Feline Immunodeficiency Virus). Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia! Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/
The Creativity, Education, and Leadership Podcast with Ben Guest
The beauty of the Amazon Adwords is everybody who's searching on Amazon Books is a book buyer. You don't have to convince them to buy a book. You only have to convince them to buy YOUR book.This is a bonus episode of my miniseries on how to PLAN, WRITE, EDIT, and PUBLISH your book. This episode is how to MARKET your book.My co-host for the series is Greg Larson. Greg has written and edited more than 80 books.In Part 1 we reviewed how to PLAN your book.In Part 2 we reviewed how to WRITE your book.In Part 3 we reviewed how to EDIT your book.In Part 4 we reviewed how to PUBLISH your book.Today Greg and I and special guest Mark Paul review how to MARKET your book.Mark's self-published book The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told: A True Tale of Three Gamblers, The Kentucky Derby, and the Mexican Cartel, has sold more than 40,000 copies which puts it in the 99.99th percentile of books sold. The Los Angeles Times says, “It's light, it moves quickly, it's fun.”Greg's book, Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir, has sold more than 4,000 copies which puts it in the 98th percentile of books sold. The Los Angeles Daily News says, “If Clubbie isn't the best piece of baseball literature since Ball Four, it's the leader in the clubhouse.”My book, Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball: Memoir of a Namibian Odyssey, has sold more than 400 copies which puts it in the 60th percentile of books sold. The New York Daily News says, “I was hooked from the start. A terrific read of the can't-put-it-down variety!”In this episode I first interview Mark and we talk best book marketing practices and what he learned moving 40,000 books. Then I take the best marketing advice from a previous interview I did with Mark and present that advice. Finally, I take the best marketing excerpts from Greg from our first conversation and present those. Enjoy!TRANSCRIPTBen Guest:Hi everyone. This is Ben Guest, and I've just finished a four part mini series with Greg Larson on how to plan, write, edit, and publish your book. So this is a bonus or companion episode on an important part of publishing your book which is, after you publish it, you have to market it. What good is a book that no one reads, right?So this is a special episode where I've taken three different interviews and taken the best parts of those interviews about marketing and combined them. The first is a brand new interview with the author, Mark Paul, who I've had on previously. Mark self-published his book called The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told, and at this date, he's sold more than 40000 copies, which is amazing. If you sell more than 4000 copies, you're in the top 2% of books sold in one calendar year, to sell 40000 is in the 99.9999 percentile.It's an astounding number of books, especially self-publishing, the other distribution and marketing muscle of a traditional publishing house. So Mark knows his stuff. In the first interview, which leads off this episode with Mark, we talk two things. We talk genre choice at the beginning, before you even start planning your book, thinking about genre choice and using a great tool called Publisher Rocket, which is available on kindlepreneur.com.I'll link to that in the show notes. And then we talk about Amazon Ads and kind of the back end after you've published, how to market your book. After that is the first interview I did with Mark several months ago, and that was Episode 34. I've taken the best parts of that episode that apply just to marketing and chopped that up and included that. And then the third part of the episode is the very first interview I did with Greg Larson also several months ago, and I've taken the best parts of that interview that applies solely to marketing and chopped that up.So you're getting a brand new interview with Mark Paul, the excerpts of the best bits of marketing advice from Mark Paul from a previous interview and the best marketing advice from Greg Larson from a previous interview. So this should be a helpful introduction to book marketing. If you enjoy this episode, please recommend it to others. Please like the podcast on the platform of your choice and subscribe to my weekly newsletter at benbo.substack.com, B-E-N-B-O, .substack.com. Benbo is my family nickname. So, benbo.substack.com. I put all of this content out here for free. So if you enjoy it and you find useful advice or information in it, please take a minute to like and subscribe. Thank you and enjoy the episode.Ben Guest:Mark, thank you so much for coming on.Mark Paul:Glad to be here again.Ben Guest:You are the man when it comes to moving books, you've sold over 40,000 books of your self-published fantastic book, The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told.Mark Paul:Thank you. I love mark getting my book. I never stop. If you're around me, you're going to hear about my damn book, I guarantee it.Ben Guest:So somebody comes to you, they have an idea, they want to write a book. How would you advise them to think about the process of marketing before they even start writing their book?Mark Paul:The number one thing I learned that I didn't know until after published my book and started marketing my book is, unfortunately, you're not going to sell many books unless you're in a genre that people buy a lot of books. You can sell a lot of books with an average book in a high demand genre, as opposed to having a magnificent book in genre that nobody cares about, nobody buys books.Mark Paul:But I mentioned to you that I wrote a book that in its premise is about a female, a filly trying to win the Kentucky Derby against the male colts, something that had only occurred twice in 150 years. And that's a great story, but there's not a lot of people out there looking to buy books in the horse racing genre. So I would've really probably not sold a lot of books, but I got lucky because my book had a big component to it, is that the guys that bet on this filly to win the Kentucky Derby made the bet at a little rinky-dinky racetrack in Tijuana, that they found out late was owned by the Mexican cartel.Mark Paul:So now they were faced with this dilemma, which kind of a cool thing where could a filly, a female beat the colts in the Derby. And of course now you've got, women are interested, you've got women engaged, sports fans, horse racing people, but now I have a genre of true crime and I'd probably have sold 10 books in true crime genre for every book I sold on horse racing, even though you could say my book is about ...Ben Guest:And you've mentioned that either on the first episode we did or off air, that when your book broke into the top 10 on Amazon of true crime, then I think you saw a bump in sales. Is that correct?Mark Paul:Absolutely. One thing I learned is you have to always be afraid. I lived in fear of falling into the well, and once you get into the Amazon algorithm well of not selling books and not being something that they think their audience wants, I don't know how you ever crawl back out of the well. One thing that I did is I really studied Amazon ad words and I realized quickly in marketing that Amazon is magnificent in one way.Mark Paul:And that normally when you run an ad, if you were going to run a Google ad words about your book, the problem is, is that most people, 99% of the people that are seeing it, aren't there to buy a book. So, you're up against it and you're wasting your money. The beauty of the Amazon ad words for books is everybody who's searching on Amazon books for a book is a book buyer.Mark Paul:So you don't have to convince them to buy a book. You only have to convince them to buy your book. So you already, you've got a real buyer on your hands there. So now you need to get into that algorithm and its success to get success. One thing that I did, I was not out afraid, especially in the beginning to spend money on buying ad words and having a budget for my book.Mark Paul:And they always tell you, well, if you're on Amazon basically, and you're self-published, you can get about 70% of every dollar of sales. So they say as long as you're spending money and you're not spending more than 70 cents per dollar received, you're at least breaking even, which was kind of my immediate goal. But I actually thought about it after a while. I was saying, well, I'm selling books, but I'm not making any money because I'm spending 70 cents every book that I sell.Mark Paul:But then I realized something, this might seem self evident, but it wasn't, it dawned in me, I said, well, hold on, I'm getting 70 cents for every dollar I spend, but that's only for my Kindle books, for my eBooks, but for every ebook I was selling, now I was shocked at this, for every ebook book that I sold I'd sold two paperbacks, and I wasn't paying anything for my paperback.Mark Paul:So although I was spending all this money to sell my eBooks, I wasn't realizing that I was selling twice as many of this on my paperback books. So don't be afraid to spend money on your ad words, especially out of the gate, and especially, obviously find a category or two that you can dominate. Find a little niche category that you can be the number one author in. And that'll give you that cool little Amazon orange banner, that you're a number one author and when you die on your gravestone, you can write that I was a number one author. It might have been in the category where I was joke is, gay dinosaurs. It's a very small category, but by God, I'm number one.Ben Guest:Here lies John Smith, beloved father, son, and best selling author in.Mark Paul:They can never take it away from you.Ben Guest:They could immediately leave off the category. Love it. So let's talk Amazon ads. Can you kind of break down for the listener how Amazon on ads work? I think there's a bidding process.Mark Paul:Yeah, the best thing that I found, and I don't get any money for this, or what is it? Rocket-Ben Guest:To Rocket ...Mark Paul:Fantastic. They're really cheap. It's $35 a year or something to join. And when you go on Publisher Rocket, you finally understand there's all of these categories. Well, first of all, when you go on Amazon, they tell you, you get three categories, but you really don't. You really get 10 categories. All you have to do is email them and tell them the 10 categories you want your book in. So, that's really important. So if you go and you study all these categories and you know similar books to yours, what categories they're in, then I would try to pick five of them that are big selling categories, like true crime.Mark Paul:And then I would try to pick a few of those that are really minuscule little small genres that perhaps you can be number one or at least top three in for that. And one thing about that website is they'll actually tell you all of the keywords that those books are using in their ads. So you need to know all the ad words. And then what I did too, I created these lists and listenings of any book that was like my book, any categories, words that were like my book.Mark Paul:And also then I would actually advertise all the competing books and all the competing authors. And I would bid on all of those keywords as well. The best course racing book ever written was Laura Hillenbrand, Sea Biscuit. And so, I would bid on Laura Hillenbrand, her name. I would bid on Sea Biscuit and I would want anybody who's looking for Sea Biscuit, I would hopefully have my I book come up before Sea Biscuit because I was paying good money for it, because I wanted to dominate the horse raising genre.Ben Guest:And that advice is so key, and that's exactly the advice that you gave me before I published my book and I followed it to a T. So you identify some categories that are big categories and then you identify a couple of categories that are super small and niche. Just to give the listener an example, a funny example. So I downloaded on my phone the other day, Twitter and Facebook. So I go to the Apple app store and I search for Facebook. And the first thing that comes up is Facebook, right?Ben Guest:So I download it. Then I search for Twitter. The first thing that comes up is Facebook, meaning Facebook has bid well in that ad space, right? So Twitter comes up second under their own search. So it's the same thing, whatever book you're writing, you want to find, my friend, Greg Larson calls it, your pilot author.Ben Guest:Somebody that the author in the book is comparable to yours, and then you can see like Mark is saying, on Amazon ads, you can say, Stephen King, when people search for Stephen King Misery, my book comes up first. Now something like that, a huge book, a huge author, you're going to bid really high. But then I identify more niche authors in niche books because again, to your point, someone going on the Amazon bookstore is going to leave with a book, it's going to be someone else's book or it's going to be your book.Mark Paul:Exactly. And you wouldn't want to bid on Stephen King because it'd be too expensive. And you don't want bid on things that aren't related to your book because people aren't going to buy your book. So you have to make sure that if you wrote a book on basketball coaching, I'd be bidding on Phil Jackson and Showtime and Coach K and all that stuff. That's what I'd be bidding on, not Stephen.Ben Guest:100% and so jet us to break this down for the listener. So I wrote a book about the power of meditation and the impact that it had on coaching basketball. Obviously Phil Jackson is a number one for that. And so when I did my Amazon categories, which Mark mentioned, not category, sorry, keywords, when I did my Amazon keywords for my book, one of the keywords I put in was Phil Jackson and basketball.Ben Guest:And then Phil Jackson has several books and I included the titles of all his books. So that means when it's a keyword, that means when someone searches for that keyword, your book is going to show up in that search. Now that's totally free. Then separate the Amazon ads that you bid on, I would bid on Phil Jackson, I would bid on More Than A Game, which is the title of one of his books, Sacred Hoops, another title, things like that.Ben Guest:So there's keywords, which are free, there are categories which we've talked about. So again, my book would fall under basketball, coaching, sports, things like that, memoir, travel writing. Those are free when you register your book and upload your manuscript to Amazon, and then you pay for the Amazon ads, but it's the same principle. The same principle applies across all these things.Mark Paul:So I would say that was the number one thing that I did was spend money. And then what's great is that if you start doing well, then as you have more revenue and more sale, you can spend more money. And as you spend more money, you climb up these charts. And so I'm sorry, I just, it's a vicious capitalistic system, but if you can either accept it or fail, it's your two choices.Ben Guest:Yes. And so we've talked about the back-back end, right after you've published your book, after you've done all of that work, but you mentioned at the top, something you should think about even before you begin writing, even before you begin outlining, which is genre choice. And again, Publisher Rocket is very helpful in that. Mark, can you talk about genre choice? And if you were advising someone who wants to write a book, what they should think about when it comes to genre choice?Mark Paul:Well, you'll quickly realize that there's, I don't know me, maybe 15 genres that are big sellers and that's a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is that if you can get into those genres, you could sell a hell of a lot of books. The bad thing is that the bigger the genre is, the better selling it is, now you've got to compete with all of the romance novels and all the things that are selling, but you need to be aware of it up front and realize that if you're writing a book that's in a genre that people don't sell books in, nobody is searching for your book and you could have a magnificent book.Mark Paul:And I still would tell you to write it if it's a story that you want to tell in your heart, it's important to you and you write a great book, that's a goal unto itself, and there's nothing wrong with that at all, but then don't be disappointed when it doesn't sell, because nobody in the history of mankind has ever sold a lot of books in that genre.Mark Paul:But the good news is that these genres are diced up in a lot of different areas. I mentioned true crime. I learned right away, I could not ... Even now, actually one thing nobody really talks about is paperback versus ebook sales. And that's an interesting thing as I said a moment ago that I sold twice as many paperbacks, I sold two paperbacks for every ebook that I sold, which surprised me, but that's kind of a standard thing in the industry.Mark Paul:But I also learned that I cannot compete, I could not compete as a self published author in hard copy crime segments because I was just dealing with all of the true crime books in paperback that are sold at the airports, that are sold at Barnes And Noble, that are sold by the big publishers.Mark Paul:I didn't have that behind me. And there's an area that I couldn't compete in, but I could sure as hell compete in the ebook categories of that. So even now I have bookmarked on my computer and my book has been out now for almost two and a half years, I've bookmarked horse racing, Kindle horse racing books, best sellers.Mark Paul:And I'll click on a couple times a week and see how my book's doing. I don't even bother to click on any true crime category for hard copy or for paperback, because I know that I'm not going to do well in that area. Because I don't have the infrastructure, the physical distribution channel that the big publishers have. You're not going to compete there, doesn't mean you're not going to sell paperback, I'm not telling you. I would absolutely tell you to do it, ebook and definitely a paperback.Mark Paul:And you can do a hard cover if you want to or not. It's not that important, but I definitely would tell you to do a paperback because you'll sell more paperbacks than you do eBooks, but just basically market your ebook because that's the only area that you can really be competitive. And then realize too, when you check your sales, you can check your sales specifically, oh, how am I doing in best selling basketball books in eBooks and how am I doing in best selling basketball print books?Mark Paul:And I guarantee you, then you're probably getting your ass kicked in paperback basketball books because you're not in the airports, you don't have that distribution, but you actually can compete in the ebook category.Ben Guest:Mistake I made was, so Amazon now offers paperback, hard cover and I published in all three at the same time, but the sales report is broken up into ebook and print, meaning combination, paperback and hard cover. So especially the first couple of weeks say coaching basketball, I was number one in ebook and then I was number five in paperback and number 12 in hard cover.Ben Guest:So my hard cover and paperback sales cannibalized each other. So one way I encourage authors to think about publishing, one of the few things that the traditional model has correct, I think is you publish your hard cover first, hard cover and ebook together, then paperback later because on Amazon, your paperback and hard cover sales are going to cannibalize each other. Mark, last thing for you-Mark Paul:I wouldn't agree. I always-Ben Guest:No, go ahead.Mark Paul:When you have people with differing opinions, I wouldn't do that because if I'm taking the time out of the gate to sell books, you are always going to sell more books early than you are late. My wife has to put up with me all the time now. I will come in and I will say to her, "How are you doing?" And she'll say, "How are you doing?" And I go, "Oh, I'm really depressed. My book isn't selling well anymore."Mark Paul:And it's like, what do I expect? I expect two and a half years later, I'm going to sell just like I did in day one. You think, well maybe you should, you have a best selling, you have a lot of great reader comments, I have over 1700 reviews, why wouldn't I sell more books now? And I think the reason is, is that people that are going to buy basketball books, you've saturated after a few months. People that are going to read books about the cartel like my book, horse racing like my book, sports like my book, after a while you run through your core audience.Mark Paul:But if you're going to launch early because for every paperback, for every ebook you're going to sell, you're going to sell more paperback. So I'm not sure. I would probably do them both at the same time. Points well taken.Ben Guest:No, I always love disagreement because then there's learning there. So my take on this is, so right now Amazon's always changing a little bit, with eBooks, you take home 70% of the sales and with paperback and hardcover, you take home 60%. So for example, my paperback is priced at 7.99. My hard cover at, I think 14.99. So obviously you make more money on the hard cover.Ben Guest:So my thinking, but Mark, tell me if you disagree or you have a different approach or you would advise someone differently is, next time publish ebook and hard cover because I'm going to generate more profit from the hard cover and more sales on launch week and launch month, publication week and publication month. Therefore, if people don't have the option for paperback, whether they're going to take home 70% of ebook sales or 60% of the more expensive hard cover.Mark Paul:It would depend on how expensive your hard cover because my ebook was 7.99, my paperback was 14.99 and my hard cover was 24.99, you're just not going to sell a lot of stuff at 24.99. So I'm not sure I would agree with that.Ben Guest:That makes perfect sense. You'd have to weigh sort of how many sales are you losing by not having to paperback because like you, the vast majority of my sales have been paperback. Go ahead.Mark Paul:Stay at the top with that algorithm, you have to fight and kick and you've at least got to get into that bloodstream somehow, at least. Again, in your little genre and your little niche, you have to be at the top of that or you just, you're not going to get the rankings you want.Ben Guest:And we've talked about this and you mentioned this on the first episode we did, one of the best ways to stay on top of the algorithm, and this isn't something you or I have done, is to have a series. If you're dropping a new book every three months or six months of, the virtuous cycle of that, virtuous circle of that is your third book is going to generate sales for your second and first, your fourth book, so on and so forth.Mark Paul:I couldn't agree. If you said to me, what did you learn in your five year saga of writing a book and publishing it and marketing it, and you said, Mark, you have to feed your family by being an author, what would you do? First of all, I would be scared to death because do not do this for money, by God do not do this for money.Mark Paul:It's difficult. I sold 40000 books and I'm telling you don't do it for money, but I've definitely, I would do a fictional series. And that gives you a lot of things you can do. And you can give away the first book in your series and get people to like your characters or you can sell it in 99 cents and you could do a lot of promotions. And I also, this is probably completely wrong, but first of all, I'm no expert, I've written one book in my entire life, one nonfiction book.Ben Guest:You're no expert, you've only sold more books than 99.999% of authors.Mark Paul:I've only done one. And I can tell you that, I think that writing a non-fiction book is so much harder than writing a fictional book because first of all, you're going to wind up spending six months or two years just doing the research to be accurate in your book, even if it's about your own life.Mark Paul:So that's going to take a lot of time and then you can't just make stuff up. You can't just get creative and start banging out 10 pages a day freelancing. It's got to follow very narrow script and times. But in writing fiction, if you're just creating, then I think you could bang out a lot more pages and you could do a lot books. And I definitely think the only way to make money, only way to make money as an author would be to have a series of books that you're always promoting. No question.Ben Guest:100% and then that back list just generates steady income. Last question, back to genre choice, and again, Publisher Rocket is a great tool to help select which genres, which categories to be in. So let's say someone's writing travel memoir about Namibia, very small interest built in audience for that. Would you recommend trying to identify a more popular genre that you could in a truthful way, in an accurate way link your book to, or would you say just don't write it?Mark Paul:If you told me, oh, I would tell you, well, you have to ask yourself why you're writing it. Are you writing it to sell books? Are you writing it to get it shared or you're writing it for, do you want to share it with your children and your two neighbor? I would market that book. I would never talk about Namibia. I would talk about Africa, but more importantly, I would talk about overseas travel in that I would try to somehow tie in Anthony Bourdain or some famous guy who has a well known genre. And I'd say, I want anybody who's thinking of buying an Anthony Bourdain travel book to look at my book.Mark Paul:I would say and I would go, how does he do it? Where do they advertise? What are their keywords? What's the imagery that they want? That's what I'd want to capture. If you get too narrow, you have no chance to sell. But travel, that's a really good comparison, Ben. And if you had a travel book about a small place, don't make it about the small place, make it about the grand experience of travel to far away, dangerous, unique places.Ben Guest:And for the audience, Mark has a fantastic website with an unbelievably kick ass book trailer for his book, which in the first episode we did, he strongly recommended doing a book trailer. I took that advice. So I can't encourage you strongly enough to go to Mark's website, which is markpaulauthor.com.Ben Guest:And he also has a couple blog entries that he's put together, talking more in depth about all these topics.Mark Paul:And all our podcasts, my podcasts are there, including all the ones that are done with you and you do a great job, Ben. And by the way, what a great book, I really enjoyed your book a lot.Ben Guest:Thank you very much. Oh, and so you mentioned your book at the top. For the audience out there, you place this incredible bet with what ended up being a cartel in Tijuana. Did you collect them?Mark Paul:Well, everybody thinks that my book, because it's about a filly trying to, a true story, it's a true story about a filly trying to win the Kentucky Derby, they think that in ... I will tell you part of the ending is that she actually is successful and she actually wins the Kentucky Derby, but that's not when the book ends. In many ways, that's when the book starts because now these guys are faced with, can they get into Tijuana and can they collect their prize without getting killed? And no, I'm not going to tell you that, you have to read a book.Ben Guest:I love it. And that was the advice off air Mark gave to me about, don't tell people the ending, right?Mark Paul:They've got to buy the book, so don't give away my ending.Ben Guest:You worked hard on it. I worked hard on mine so people can buy it. And Mark's book, we were talking off air and came up with this sort of description of it. It's sort of a combination, heist story, right? So now you've got all this money in Tijuana, how do you get it out? And it's a buddy ...Mark Paul:It's a buddy cop movie combined with Ocean's 11. We've thrown a little bit of the Me Too movement in with the girls kicking ass on the boys.Ben Guest:And as listeners may know, I'm now out in Los Angeles and Mark lives in Beverly Hills. So Mark, I will see you Thursday for dinner. Thank you so much for coming on.Mark Paul:Great. Great talking.Ben Guest:Thank you. So, that was my interview with author Mark Paul. Now here are clips from my first interview with Mark that I did last year. Here, we talk about the importance of an author website, making a trailer for your book, like a movie trailer, but it's a book trailer. And we do a deep dive into using Amazon ad words.Mark Paul:It doesn't matter how well edited it is or how great the cover is, if it's a boring topic that people don't care about, you're in trouble. One of the things I've been fortunate with my book on is that my book was actually number one in 10 Amazon categories. And one thing I learned about categories of books that's hugely important, in other words, I'm number one in horse racing, almost always [inaudible 00:30:48], number one in sports gambling, number one in gambling, those are great and I'm very proudly be number one in there.Mark Paul:But typically, I just checked the day, I always check this, [inaudible 00:30:58], I just checked today after two years, I just checked today, I'm number two or number three in biographies of true crime, white collar crime and organized. And the funny thing is that, if I was number 10 in organized crime, I would sell five times more books than I would be number one in horse racing, number one in sports gambling and number one in gambling because not a lot of gamblers and horse racing people buy books, but people are searching for true crime books all day long.Mark Paul:So one of the things that we'll talk about with ad words and the like is, what really helped my book, why did I sell so many books? I sold 10000 books in the first 90 days and right now, I've sold about 35000, the reason which is not like James Patterson or something, a big author, but for self-published authors they're good, is that I'm like a country music song who crosses over onto the pop charts. And you could sell a lot more songs on the pop charts than just the country charts along.Mark Paul:So that's a really big thing is if you write a book, try to figure out how not to market it to just one genre, try to market it in many genres, but specifically, gosh, darn it, figure out how to sell it in categories that people are looking for, because you could have the greatest book in the world but if it's about some obscure topic, it doesn't matter. Nobody's going to find you because nobody's looking for you.Ben Guest:I think that's so key. And maybe we can talk about keyword selection, Amazon keyword selection in a second. And one of the benefits of all of what you just described happening is that of course, as you know the Amazon algorithm kicks in and starts recommending the book to like buyers. You said young authors, when you're talking to them and you give advice, what are some of the pieces of advice you find yourself telling multiple people?Mark Paul:Definitely hirer a professional, having a great cover is super important. Having a great title is important. I had a title that I liked much more than the title that I used. I like in horse racing, the Kentucky Derby's referred to as the greatest two minutes. And initially my book was titled the greatest two minutes. I love that title, but it doesn't do anything.Mark Paul:Now, my title's almost confrontational in face. The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told, all the gamblers go, no, it's not. I know a better story. My cousin Jimmy, well, now they know about it and they're talking about it, right? So, title's important, cover's important. And then really I would say looking at lots of different categories and you mentioned Amazon, which is the dominant place. I probably sold 92% of all my books solely on Amazon. Even though I published wide, I'm on Barnes And Noble and I'm on Apple Books.Mark Paul:The thing is on Amazon., you can spend money and you can market and you could affect your sale. I don't know how to affect and change my sale on Amazon or Barnes And Noble, I'm kind of at their mercy. And Amazon, you can spend money and get results. So one thing I learned at Amazon early is that when we self-publish your book, they tell you can be in three categories.Mark Paul:So you could be in history. You could be in American history and history of civil war. But what they don't tell you is that you actually can be in 10 categories. All you have to do is ask. And if you email them, you go to the chat rooms, just so you need to go research really carefully, all those specific categories. And one of the things that I learned right away, I would try with those 10 categories is try to pick two or three categories that you can hopefully dominate or be number one in, and then try to choose other categories that are maybe much more competitive, like true crime.Mark Paul:And true crime or I have to compete with Bill O'Reilly that. I have to compete with these really big, well known authors, but by being next to Bill O'Reilly I sell a lot more books. So I would say pick an easy category. To me, there's a category called track betting, well, there's probably, two books published every 10 years in track betting.Mark Paul:So how can I not be number one in track betting when I go to do my ad words and pay for ad words, I make sure I just outbid everybody because you know what happens, by being number one in this dinky little category I get to have that really cool number one orange banner on Amazon, it says, number one best seller. It is. And maybe you're in a category of gay dinosaurs or something. It's not a lot of competition, but figure it out, and then find some categories or a lot of books that are selling.Mark Paul:I tell you, I don't get any money for [inaudible 00:36:13] I'm associated with. Going to Publishers Rocket is a really great tool to be on. For next to nothing you can go on in, they'll give you all the categories. And when you click on it, they'll give you the categories and the keywords and they'll tell you how many, each of those books that are in the top categories, how many they're selling, how many books they're selling, how many published paperback books and hardcover books they're selling, and really look at those categories. That's huge.Ben Guest:100%. I use that tool all the time because it helps you know your competition.Mark Paul:Exactly. Also, make sure that you also do your book in hardcover, in paperback, not just in ebook. One of the things that I learned earlier is, when I first started advertising on Amazon keywords, they're going to tell you, you're getting about a 70% commission split, so if you sell a book for $10, you're going to keep about seven and Amazon is going to get about three.Mark Paul:That's true, but that's also minus your ad cost. So they tell you really, they call it ACOS, average cost of sale, how much you're paying for your ads versus how many sales you're getting, that number and you shouldn't be spending more than 70% of your ACOS, your average cost of sale, where you're advertising, you're selling books [inaudible 00:37:40] money.Mark Paul:Well, first of all, like I told you, I don't mind in the little categories, I don't mind this money because by God, we work so hard, at least come out with a couple of these cute little Amazon batters, you can cut and paste, do a paint version, and save that image and you'll have it for all the time and put it up in your wall and you can say I was an Amazon.Mark Paul:So definitely, don't be afraid to dominate in the little categories. But one thing that I learned is I would say, sometimes I would go oh, my ACOS with 83 cents. I would go, oh, that's shitty. I'm getting my ass kicked here. I'm spending more money than I'm receiving in my commissions. But then about four months later, I got my first commission for my paperback sale.Mark Paul:And then it dawned at me because one thing that was really shocking to me in this world of wifi and internet and online and Kindle readers and everything, I still sell about two thirds of my book are prints. People go ahead and buy my book for $15 instead of $8, because the paperback's $15 and the ebook is $8, but I still sold two times as many paperbacks.Mark Paul:So what I'm saying is that if I wound up spending 83 cents to get a 70 cents sale, I wasn't doing any ... I was also getting my paperback sales out of that number. I started realizing that maybe I could actually be spending a hundred cents. I could be losing by my ebooks, as long as I'm selling a ton of print books, I'm making money. So, that's okay. I also did an audio book.Ben Guest:Talk to us about that.Mark Paul:I really enjoyed doing my audio book. First of all, I would not recommend being your own narrator unless you're exceptional. I'm pretty comfortable with public speaking. I never showed up, I'm always talking, but it doesn't mean I'm a good narrator. The narrator that I had [inaudible 00:39:47] is really fantastic. So I would do that. It's really enjoyable. I don't know, I've made money at it, but I probably three, four, 5% of my books sales have been audio books, but it was really enjoyable.Mark Paul:I'll tell you what, one thing that I would really encourage everybody to do, when I die and go to my maker and I go, what are your five proudest moments? I'll tell them that marrying my great wife and having my two sons but in the top five will be the book trailer that I did. I did my own book trailer. It's on my website, makrpaulauthor.com. That book trailer is 58 seconds long and it's had 38, excuse me, over 310000 downloads, if you could imagine.Mark Paul:300000 downloads. And that was a really good way for me to sell my book. And I really enjoyed doing that. What I did is I don't have any video on it. I used all still photos, photos that I purchased combined with some stock video footage, a little bit of stock video footage that I was able to purchase from Shutter Stock for one of those places.Mark Paul:And then I did do my own narration and I went to a sound studio and I paid, it wasn't that expensive, I think I paid about $180 for the hour in the sound. And they recorded that and spliced it together for me. But I really think having a book trailer in today's visual world, particularly for young people is really valuable. I was out at a cocktail party getting, I ran into a big movie person, right?Mark Paul:I was telling them about my book. And they were fading in interest and I said, "Hey, do you have 57 seconds?" And I just took out my cell phone and I put on my download by ... I showed them my book trailer and within a minute they were like, oh, you've got to see this, bringing other people over. And I emailed them my ebook and they're reading it right now, people that are not interested, visually they can see that link, I will definitely do a book trailer.Ben Guest:Ah, that's such great advice. I mean, I'm just making a list here, Mark, of the gems that you're dropping. So just keeping track, book trailer-Mark Paul:Author website, you've got to have a good author website. It has to be there, it has to be something of interest.Ben Guest:Talk to me about that please.Mark Paul:Oh, I just, again, I hired a company that does ... I used Author Bites. I did promotion with them. I was very happy with them. I like going to one of these companies that's already done 800 off their websites. So, they know what they're doing and then you can go on and steal all the best ... There's no reason to reinvent the wheel. Just go look at the five author websites that you think fit your book the best and go copy what they're doing. I probably spent, I don't know, $1000 on my website. It wasn't importantly expensive, maybe a little bit more.Ben Guest:Imagery is really important, having some good pictures and visuals that you can market with are important.Mark Paul:So, my book has a lot of different genres in them. I think that's one of the reasons it was successful. Yes, it's about sports. Yes, it's about a race horse, and a female race horse. And that helped me because women buy two thirds of all books and women don't buy books typically about sports gambling but they do buy books about horses. So I found places, there's horse lover websites, and I would publish my book and promote it and pay to be on the horse lover's websites. So, everybody else has got a romance novel about a woman being swept off her feet by a handsome young rodeo star.Mark Paul:And there's my book next to it, but it's there, I sell books there. And then I sell books in gambling. But I sell more books in true crime because the gamblers had to try to [inaudible 00:43:50] the cartel. So again, every book was different, but if you can get knowledge and spread it out and try to be a crossover hit, you'd have a lot better chance of selling than just being, just one book in one narrow genre.Ben Guest:Of all the different things you've done to market your book, what's had the greatest ROI?Mark Paul:Amazon as words, that's by far, that was the game changer for me. Authors are very analytic and we're the kind of people that when we buy a car we'll actually read the owner's manual before we drive the car. When I was already to launch my book, I probably spent 30 hours every week for the first month looking at Amazon ad words, really studying it, trying to understand it. There's another, you probably know it, there's other service called-Ben Guest:Kindlepreneur.Mark Paul:That's it. Thank you. Kindlepreneur is phenomenal. And one of the things that I realized when I would look at the book descriptions, book descriptions are really important and you have five seconds to grab people, so when you're going to write your book description, and you're going to get your book reviews up there, a couple of really important pieces of advice, one, it's more important who gives you the review then what the review is.Mark Paul:Because I know me, when I'm reading a review, I don't really care whether it's a glowing review that was written by the guy's mother, right? But if I can see the review that is written by some name, maybe written by somebody from the LA Times or, even something that has some credibility with me, that's really important.Mark Paul:So I'm an [inaudible 00:45:40] author. I didn't know anybody. I didn't have any reviews, critical reviews. I didn't have Laura Hillenbrand who wrote Sea Biscuit giving me a review. So I said, what the hell can I do to get names up there? Well, I live in Beverly Hills, there's a lot of movie people here and I got all my movie friends, some of my friends had been involved with maybe they were the cinematographer for a big movie, maybe they were a publisher.Mark Paul:So I could write, cinematographer for Lone Survivor, and then I would put Lone Survivor in bold, but now people go, oh look at this. The guy that was involved in Lone Survivor like this. And then over time I would get, eventually I started getting more reviews. I did get an LA Times and of course that featured among LA Times. So the other thing with Kindlepreneur is that when you go online and you look at book descriptions, or look at books that don't sell and look at with James Patterson or these top selling authors, I noticed something, drop off over here, the bigger selling authors, their copy has a lot of white space, but it also has bold. It has italics, it has quotation marks.Mark Paul:It isn't just a bunch of uniform, two paragraphs of tightly spaced information that nobody's going to take the time to read. And the way that you have to do that is just free in Kindlepreneur, you write what you want it to write, and it has to convert it to this unique code that Amazon uses. And it just, you print what you want and you drop it into this online tool at Kindlepreneur, and then it publishes it the way you want it to be.Mark Paul:It's really important. If you look at my copy in The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told, it lays out in full, it shows that I have the LA Times as a review and I have people that they might recognize it that wrote reviews because people are scanning, they're probably having a glass of wine and they're on their iPad. They're not reading every detail word, they're making a decision, do I want to spend $7 on this book, and make it really attractive. That's super important.Mark Paul:And your copy needs to grab them. Don't tell them about some esoteric thing. Tell them about why this is exciting and why they're going to want read it. One of the tag lines that I use a lot is, would you bet your life on a 50 to one shot? [inaudible 00:48:27] something that's a book, something that grabs them. And the other thing is you can see, always be marketing. I'd swear to you when I go out, I sell books when I'm in an elevator.Mark Paul:I love my book. I found out how to make it really exciting where people want to buy it and I'm always selling books. I can books at a picnic. And one of the things that I do on my website, I do get people to contact me. I go back to anybody who talks to me, and I have kind of an epilogue that I have in there, but in my epilogue and the only thing that I have highlighted in yellow is please leave a review. And I have the link because they don't know how to leave it, they don't know what to do.Mark Paul:And you just give them a link. And my friends that I wanted to post a review, I send them a link and I email them, please give me a review. Do not publish your book until you have at least 10 reviews.Ben Guest:I've seen that advice over and over again, even to the extent that some people say, if you're writing a fiction series and you think you have something, write the first two or three books before you publish the first one, just so that they're lined up, ready to go. You mentioned Amazon ad words and I've heard advice about that, but I haven't yet started with Amazon ad words. Could you talk to me about that process and what you've learned and KDP, it's called KDP select or whatever it is?Mark Paul:You just go to KDP and you can upload your book. Although I really would encourage you to hire a publisher, a paid publisher who will do all the things that you need to do, put it in the right formats and all published properly. They do all of that for you, although you certainly can do it yourself. If you're on a limited budget, I would not publish my book because I couldn't afford to pay somebody to do these services.Mark Paul:I fortunately could pay somebody to make sure all the wording was done and formatted properly. I elected to publish wide. In retrospect, I don't think I'd bother. I think I'd just go to Amazon. You can't fight them, they're just too big and powerful and you're going to sell majority of your books there anyway. And then they have, how you can do campaigns and they break down the ... I haven't been doing this as avidly as I was two years ago, they have different ...Mark Paul:You can. I did multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple campaigns. And I came up with about 600 ad words that I could market my books and that might seem crazy. But again, that Publisher Rocket really helped me because what I would do is I would look at okay, in the 10 categories that I'm competing, what are the 10 books that are in those categories?Mark Paul:And then I would see, I would put in their books in Publisher Pocket and it would tell me what the most popular keywords are in those categories. So I would go, I sell books in true crime. What are the most popular keywords for true crime? I would put together a list of all of them. And then I would go, all right, I sell books in the horse race. What are the keywords in the horse race? All these different categories.Mark Paul:And then I would do separate campaigns. I would start a campaign just for horse racing. I would start a campaign just for gambling. You know where else I sell books? I sell books in the history of sports and there's some big books in there. There's a book called Boys In The Boat, which is a really good book. But [inaudible 00:52:09] and I would study that book and I would see what the keywords that they used in order to sell books.Mark Paul:So I'd come up with this really broad ... The other thing that they do, that's really good again, Publisher Rocket is they'll print this out for you. And it's $50 a year. [inaudible 00:52:31], they'll tell you all of the books that are the top sellers and those books, and those book's authors become keywords.Mark Paul:So in other words I said, all right, my book, the number one book of all time, maybe in horse racing is Sea Biscuit. So I advertised Sea Biscuit and all my ad words, I advertised Laura Hillenbrand, the author. If somebody's searching for Laura Hillenbrand, they're going to see my book come up. If somebody's searching Boys In The Boat, they're going see my book come up.Mark Paul:And so, I really did a lot of keywords, a lot of advertising. And there's a saying, it's not my quote, [inaudible 00:53:14] but he says, when I was first starting to market and advertise, there's this saying that says, I didn't think, I experimented. And that's kind of what I did. I didn't know what would work. So I just did it all, but I wasn't afraid to spend money either. And I know that I had an advantage there that I could spend money.Mark Paul:And if I lost five grand, that was okay. Turns out I didn't, I made money, but that's because I was willing to spend money. The other things that they do is they have these campaigns that are basically auto fill campaigns, where Amazon will go out and choose the keyword for you. I'm not online right now, I don't know exactly what they're called, but you can't miss them.Mark Paul:And I can tell you that those Amazon auto campaigns that they do, where Amazon chooses the words are far better than anything you could do on your own. So if you said, I'm not techy, I don't want to come up with 600 ad words, I don't want to spend 30 hours a week, fine. Then just go with their auto campaigns, but you need to monitor them every single day. I don't need to monitor them every day now after two years.Mark Paul:But when you first start, I would monitor them twice a day because I would see a campaign that's selling, maybe I'm spending money, I'm spending $200 a day on that campaign. But if I'm bringing in, especially if I was spending $200 day in that campaign, I was bringing in $150 of revenue, I was okay with that in the first month. I didn't care if I lost money, I wanted to see what worked.Mark Paul:I figured out how to fine tune it. And I've done that. So now after a month or two, I can pair it down to what doesn't work and spend more of my money on what does work. As an author, you cannot sit in your room and wait for the world to find you, the world doesn't work that way. You have to put yourself out there and unfortunately you have to spend money, right? I really believe you really do have to spend money in order to let people know that you're there.Ben Guest:I mean, there are eight million ebooks on Amazon Kindle, on the Kindle store.Mark Paul:And when I was at the top, when I was selling the most books, some months, let's say I was selling 5000 books a month, I was probably the 5000th best seller on Amazon means, that means that I never got to be in the top 100 on Amazon, even top 1000 on Amazon. But I was still selling 5000 books [inaudible 00:56:02]. So, it's a big world.Ben Guest:If you extrapolate from eight million books on the Amazon Kindle store, you're in the 1% of sales.Mark Paul:What's great about Amazon ad words, I will say this is that if people are on Amazon Kindle and they're searching for books, they're going to buy a book. If you go and do an ad on YouTube, the chances of the person on YouTube that actually reads books is maybe one in 100, right? But if they're on Amazon Kindle searching for books, they're going to buy a damn book. All you have to do is convince them to buy your book. That's a lot easier to sell.Ben Guest:Let's end with a question. Oh, do you think it's a better use of time and money to do the auto Amazon ad word campaign or to fine tune your own keywords?Mark Paul:If you can only do one, the auto's absolutely. I don't know how they do it. They are better at it. I can say now I do, I spend a lot more time with the auto campaigns than I did before because I learned how good they are. But I also think that I can't give you the analytical backup for this, but I think that the fact that I was out there and I was doing lots of campaigns, I think also helped Auto campaigns.Mark Paul:I think that the computer algorithm saw, this guy is spending money, people are clicking his links, they're buying books and you need to go up into that food chain where they think they have something to sell. Also, I did something now. I just went on to Kindle Unlimited. I resisted it 18 months, but now after 18 months or so of my book being on the charts, I've noticed that my sales, they're still good.Mark Paul:I was selling, when things were really going good, I was selling 5000 books a month. Now I'm selling about 700 and I don't like that. I go, what do I got to do? So I started doing, I noticed a lot of the top selling books are Kindle Unlimited. So I did that and I've only been doing that for four days.Mark Paul:So I don't know what I'm doing there either. There's a certain joy of that. I clicked on it this morning and I saw that I'd already had, I forget-Ben Guest:The page reads?Mark Paul:Yeah, 2000 page reads today. I thought, well, my book is 200 pages long, 10 people have read my book. And as an author, isn't that really what it's about? I mean, if I could have done all of this and lost money, a little bit of money, it still would've been one of the greatest joys of anything I've ever done in my life. It's fine.Mark Paul:And so going on this morning seeing, wow, 10 people, because I could see the page reads have read my book, that was good and it made my day. That's cool. I think that if you do things, not for money, but for passion, you'll probably make money that'll come through.Ben Guest:And now last but not least, here are excerpts from the very first interview I did with Greg Larson way back in August of last year and the best marketing advice that he had. We talk about creating an ecosystem around your book, creating a website, a YouTube page, et cetera.Ben Guest:Greg goes into detail with all of that. We also talk about finding your pilot author and following the same path that your pilot author followed. Tons of great advice in this. Enjoy. Greg, thanks so much for coming on. Let's start with book promotion, and maybe we can start with your website. The website is fantastic. Let me make sure I have the right address to send everybody to. It's clubbiebook.com. So that's C-L-U-B-B-I-E, book.com.Greg Larson:Yes, sir.Ben Guest:Can you talk about putting the site together and your thoughts with book promotion.Greg Larson:Yeah. As far as putting the sites, I'd actually asked a lot of authors about their advice on creating a website. A lot of people say, oh, it's not necessary, hire somebody else to do that. I have just enough experience with say web design or SEO marketing, all that kind of stuff to be dangerous enough. As far as book promotions go and creating the website, my only thought process with creating the website was for people who add a good time reading the book, I want to give them extra content to enjoy for free as much as possible.Greg Larson:So, that's the way it's designed. It's for you read the book and you show up and there's a bunch of behind the scenes pictures and old videos from the years of being a clubhouse attendant in 2012, 2013, and as far as promos in general go, I mean, I take every single opportunity that comes my way. I created my own podcast, I chop up into clip up on my YouTube channel.Greg Larson:My thought was I need to create as much content as I possibly can around this book. And that's the only way people are going to find it. Otherwise, a lot of people just put a book out and they expect the world to just find it and make it great. Sorry, art is not a pure meritocracy. It is meritocracy plus marketing.Ben Guest:100%. One of the best nonfiction books written in the past 30 years or so is Freakonomics. And I was listening to an interview with one of the co-authors, Steven Levit. And he was saying, because of Freakonomics, he gets sent books all the time to blurb and he thought at first there was going to be a lot of mediocre books and not well written books. And he is like, there are so many great books out there and they're just undiscovered because there's so much material in the market.Greg Larson:Oh yeah. I don't know. I mean, there are millions of books self-published on Amazon every single year. And what is it that separates a book that's never discovered, that nobody reads and a book that a bunch of people read that enters the cannon or the zeitgeist? A lot of it is marketing and quality. I don't know. Nobody wants to hear that. When I was in school, I would've preferred not to hear that. My professors would've told me that, that's not true. But here we are.Greg Larson:What's the lowest level media outlet that I can get attention from? And maybe it's a local news station. Boom. I take that local KUT Austin, Austin's NPR station gives me some attention. And then I use that to leverage into a pitch to CBS Sports radio. And I use that to leverage into a pitch to the LA Times.Greg Larson:And then it's just like, boom, boom, boom, climbing up the ladder. And to be perfectly frank, not all of them directly correlate to book sales. I can usually see a jump whenever something new comes out. But what it does create is this perception of being everywhere. You know what I mean? I have to think about it as a branding effort. It was a piece of art that I created my book Clubbie, but once it became published, it went from being an artistic endeavor to a business. And that's how I had to think about it. So now I'm thinking about what's my brand strategy and my brand strategy is make sure every person who enjoys baseball books finds out about my book.Ben Guest:So here's the million dollar question based on what you just said. What does correlate?Greg Larson:What I've found especially in the last year has been doing podcasts has, the most concentrated book sales I've seen have been doing podcasts and oddly enough radio shows, which I never would've expected. It's one of those people expect that to be a dying medium and maybe in some ways it is, but a lot of people still listen to the radio in their car.Greg Larson:So for example, I was on The Fan in Baltimore. My book takes place in Baltimore. After I did that show, it's a 15 minute spot, the next day I saw my sales jump up. I don't know exact numbers. I can just see the Amazon sales rank, but it jumped up tens of thousands of spots on the Amazon sales rank, which shocked me because everybody says radio is dead.Greg Larson:As far as book promotions go, I don't think that's accurate. Podcasts are actually better because once this goes up on your website, it stays there. Radio is one and done unless I capture it somehow, which I try to do as well. That's another one. I try to record as many radio interviews as I possibly can and then put it on my YouTube channel.Ben Guest:This is all great stuff. What is it about radio shows that bump up sales, do you think?Greg Larson:Part of it, there's still this perception that, because there's a higher barrier of entry, there's still this perception that radio is, I don't know, a more classic medium that has more prestige as opposed to podcasts, there's still this perception of anybody can do it, therefore being on a podcast, doesn't hold the same social status. That's going to change and that is changing, but there is something about it.Greg Larson:It's analogous to traditional publishing versus self-publishing. Self-publishing is going to dominate traditional publishing. But those old morays are hard to fight again, TV versus YouTube, it's all the same exact sort of change there. A lot of my readers are still stuck in some of the old morays of the past, as far as media goes.Greg Larson:And I'm going to use that to my advantage and get on the radio. And I don't know, it's not only old people. When I tell people that I was on CBS Sports radio or ESPN radio or something like that, it's still, there's a little ding that says oh, that's official, right?Ben Guest:So how do you get on radio programs?Greg Larson:I send out pitch emails, I try to send them out every single day. Today I sent out two pitch emails, every weekday at the very least. So what I started with is I start with local stations and try to work my way up from there, like I said, but what I'll start with is I try to frame my book as part of a larger discussion. I don't say, I'm an author and you should promote my book. I say, here's, what's going on in minor league baseball right now.Greg Larson:There's a bunch of in income inequality issues in minor league baseball, there's contraction going on. And not only are those issues a microcosm of what's going on at the US at large, but I'm the perfect person to talk about it because I wrote a book about minor league baseball that came out this summer. And I word that in a way that's, I don't know, more nimble than that, but then I include a couple of status markers, like for reference here's my interview that I did on MLB Network, that kind of thing.Greg Larson:And my success rate is, if I get a 12% success rate in a week, that's good for me. So sending out media pitch emails, I expect a huge rate of failure. And I think that's what keeps a lot of authors from doing it.Ben Guest:And I think that's also helpful because we talked earlier about how marketing is an important component of the process. And I also think sometimes, we mention this off air as well, authors, we can be so internal that we don't pay attention to that. And it's such a closed world that being able to share this information is just so helpful.Greg Larson:Oh yeah, where I didn't even know who to pitch in the first place. And most people don't. What I did was, it seemed so obvious after I thought of it, but it was such a revelation to me, I found an author who had published a book similar to me the year before. And I just pitched every single media outlet that had covered his book.Greg Larson:And then not only do I know who's interested in my work, but then I can actually use him as a launching point of saying, hey, I noticed that you covered Brad Balukjian last year. My book is very similar from the same publisher. Here's what it's about. That has been a godsend to me, because a lot of authors don't even know who to reach out to.Ben Guest:Greg, that is so smart. So the pitch email, the structure is something along the lines of, here's some things that are happening in baseball. Here's how my book is connected to that. Here are some other interviews or media hits that I've done. Is that right?Greg Larson:You want me to read you a pitch word for word? Would that be helpful for anybody?Ben Guest:That would be fantastic.Greg Larson:Here's a pitch that I just gave to NPR using my local NPR as a launching point, I say, hi person, I'm Greg Larson. And I recently published a book with university of Nebraska Press that helped bring light to income inequality issues in minor league baseball. Some baseball fans know the facts and figures around these problems. And then I give a couple of facts about minor league baseball, but most people don't know what that world looks like on the inside and how it is a perfect microcosm of economic issues in America.Greg Larson:With the changes taking place this summer and rampant income inequality across the country, I believe this story helps highlight issues that plague the US at large and would be a perfect fit for NPR programming. What do you think? And then I give them my cell phone number and then I send them a link to a media kit where it's just a Google drive that has pictures and has blurb images that I created and a full PDF of the book.Greg Larson:And then I say also for reference, here's my recent interview in Austin's NPR station, KUT, best Greg Larson. That gives me a 10 to 15% success rate. So I think about it in terms of opening with personalization. Why am I contacting you? What have I seen of yours, liked recently, why is this issue important? How does my book fit into the conversation? Let's schedule a time.Ben Guest:So, let's go back to the website for a minute.Greg Larson:Sure.Ben Guest:What were the fundamentals of the website design for you?Greg Larson:So I chose Square Space, which is a software that I'm somewhat familiar with. It's just plug and play. And I was just, as far as design goes, I created a logo with somebody on Fiverr, I think, and that cost me a couple bucks, maybe 15 bucks. And then I used that cheap logo to take it to a more expensive designer, then I paid 300 bucks to have them make a more professional looking one.Greg Larson:And so have I seen a direct ROI on say, that logo design that's all over the website? Probably not, but again, it just creates this whole aesthetic. I can put that logo on my newsletter. I can put that logo on every piece of media that
Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 370, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Chronicles 1: You'll find the deeds of Emperor Jimmu in the "Nihon Shoki", or "Chronicle of" this country. Japan. 2: Here is the actual diary given to this girl on June 12, 1942. Anne Frank. 3: Jim Bouton, on Nov. 15, 1968 in this book:"I signed my contract today to play for the Seattle Pilots at a salary of $22,000". Ball Four. 4: Jim Bouton, on Nov. 15, 1968 in this book:"I signed my contract today to play for the Seattle Pilots at a salary of $22,000". Ball Four. 5: From his July 25, 1947 diary entry:"Ike and I think MacArthur expects to make a Roman triumphal return to the U.S.". Harry Truman. Round 2. Category: The Shape Of Things 1: This 4-letter word for egg-shaped comes from the Latin word for "egg". oval. 2: In case you were wondering, yes, C and H still makes sugar in this shape. cubes. 3: It's the geometric shape with a circular base in one plane that tapers to a point in another plane. a cone. 4: Something pinnate is shaped like this (it's what "pinna" means in Latin). feather. 5: The Earth is this type of spheroid, meaning flattened at the poles. oblate. Round 3. Category: 4-Letter Verbs 1: As a noun, it's the rear portion of an aircraft; as a verb, it means to follow and keep under surveillance. tail. 2: This animal verb means to down your food voraciously. Wolf. 3: What a barber does, or the "joint" in which he overcharges for the service. Clip. 4: A housewife might do it to the mantle; a forensic expert would do it to look for fingerprints. Dust. 5: (I'm NFL defensive end Kevin Carter) One of my favorite words, it means to tackle a quarterback behind the line of scrimmage. sack. Round 4. Category: Phrases That Sell 1: "Obey your thirst" and drink this. Sprite. 2: "Be all that you can be" in this military branch. the Army. 3: This network says it's "The most trusted name in news". CNN. 4: This shipping company asks, "What can Brown do for you?". UPS. 5: It's the popular query in Verizon's TV ads. Can you hear me now?. Round 5. Category: Recipes 1: Blend mayonnaise, vinegar and sugar, then add shredded green and red cabbage to make this. Cole slaw. 2: To make this, combine butter, brown sugar and corn syrup and pour over popcorn. Caramel corn. 3: The main difference between recipes for white cake and yellow cake is the addition of these. Egg yolks. 4: This popular pigeon that may be broiled, grilled or roasted is farm-raised and hasn't yet learned how to fly. Squab. 5: There are 3 types of pork ribs you can barbecue: spareribs, country-style ribs and these, which include riblets. Baby back ribs. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia!
If you love a good sports book, then this is the podcast episode for you. We each go over our ten favorite sports books of all time, from baseball to golf to hoops to football (barely). We also talk the NBA Finals, argue over the Cubs, make expert recommendations, and extol the "greatness" of Titus Welliver. We also made our triumphant return to the hardwood, and dissect our respective shooting and defensive performances. Tune in to the final episode of Season 1!
Hawks tripped up by refs, Braves split again, time to put up or shut up, Euro 2020 heats up & that's just the women in the stands, MLB power rankings, CWS & NCAA screw NC ST, college pitcher misses dying in condo collapse by just a few feet, PGA 8-hole playoff manages to make the Travelers watchable, horrific outfield collision injures Indian, dumb broad almost takes down entire Tour de France but don't worry Chief Inspector Clouseau is on the case until the case is sol-ved, disrespectful childish fatass comes in third & still want all the attention, petedavis.buzzsprout.com, Pete's Tweets, This Day in Sports History. Come for news on Trae Young's injury, stay for the book that paved the way for Jim Bouton's "Ball Four"
Legal scholar and baseball historian Mitch Nathanson discusses the amazing and interesting life of Jim Bouton. He talks about his early days as how he wasn’t even the best pitcher on his high school baseball team. Scouts went to see his teammate Jerry Colangelo. He goes into his early baseball success with the Yankees in the 1963 and 1964 World Series. Nathanson explains how Bouton’s life changed with the release of Ball Four, Bouton’s baseball account of life with the Seattle Pilots. Bouton became a controversial figure basically being blacklisted. Mitch then discusses Bouton’s life on TV and his role in the invention of Big League Chew. He finishes with the importance of Jim Bouton on the game of baseball.HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Natural Light, Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis, MOBOOK: Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Originalhttps://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496217707/MUSIC: Bones Fork
Uno de los escándalos de Grandes Ligas (MLB) fue el libro del pitcher de los Yankees Jim Bouton, Ball Four. Hoy, les traemos la historia de ese libro prohibido de los Yankees de Nueva York. Ball Four o Cuarta Bola. Esta publicación en 1970, creó una gran controversia y su autor, el lanzador de los Yankees Jim Bouton, se vio en serios problemas con sus compañeros y hasta con el comisionado de las Grandes Ligas. En este libro, Bouton cuenta muchas interioridades del equipo nunca antes reveladas. En este video, te contamos la historia del mismo, de su autor y todo lo que su publicación generó en el beisbol.
This week, we look at a man who was signed at 16 years old to come to the states & play baseball. Everything started out well enough, being called "the next Willie Mays", but it quickly deteriorated. Especially after a woman was found, shot to death in his hotel room. Somehow, it gets worse, with a lifestyle that leaves a lot to be desired, especially by the woman he hits, and police he fights! Secretly learn hoe to play baseball, while your father thinks you're working, pull a nightstick from a cop's belt, and pay $100 for a human life with Cesar Cedeno!! Check us out, every Tuesday! We will continue to bring you the biggest idiots in sports history!! Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman Donate at... patreon.com/crimeinsports or with paypal.com using our email: crimeinsports@gmail.com Get all the CIS & STM merch at crimeinsports.threadless.com Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things CIS & STM!! Contact us on... twitter.com/crimeinsports crimeinsports@gmail.com facebook.com/Crimeinsports instagram.com/smalltownmurder See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
What is the right percent profit margin you should target for your products? How do you get the most out of your Facebook ad buys? How much should you really pay attention to conversion rate? These are just a few of the questions that every small business and Ecommerce shop wants the answers to. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, we picked the brain of Andrew Faris, the CEO of 4x400, a company that has helped grow numerous Ecommerce companies from less than 500,000 into the tens of millions. Today, Andrew spills some of his advertising secrets, including how to make Facebook your core driver for customer acquisition. Here’s a mini spoiler: human bias is leading you astray, but there is a simple way to correct course. Find out that, and more, on this episode! Main Takeaways: Conversion rate is so context-specific that it's not that helpful of a metric. Instead, analyze conversion rate relative to average order value and relative to the traffic sources the customer came from. Before you invest in anything else, you need to drive traffic to the top of the funnel. Currently, Facebook ads are the core driver of customer acquisition for online shopping. Andrew suggests that most Ecommerce brands should invest in the platform and then trust the algorithm to put you in front of the right audiences. You have to take big swings with your experiments. Don’t get hung up on micro-details like the color of your buttons or rewriting your copy. Instead, find big ways to make changes and then see how the outcomes stack up. Because we are all riddled with our own biases, we often cannot predict accurate models of the future on our own. Instead, use data as your guide as you peer into the future. For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length. --- Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce --- Transcript: Stephanie: Hey everyone. This is Stephanie Postles, co-founder of Mission.org and your host of Up Next in Commerce. Today on the show, we have the CEO of 4x400, Andrew Faris. Andrew, thanks for taking the time. Andrew: Stephanie, I am very glad to be able to do this. I have never been accused of not liking to talk about Ecommerce in particular, but just in general. So this is fun. Stephanie: Well, you're my perfect guest then. I was creeping as one does on your LinkedIn. I saw an interesting thing that you have a background in religion and theology. I was wondering how you transitioned into the world of business from that background. Andrew: Yeah. I can always tell when somebody has looked at my LinkedIn or not because that's maybe the only place where that's found anymore. Stephanie: You're welcome. Andrew: Yeah, yeah. No, I went to school for biblical studies, and then got a master's degree in New Testament. So that was my whole pathway, was to go into that and actually was a pastor for a while. Did that, and then about ... gosh, how long ago? Five and a half years ago stepped out of that not because anything in my faith changed per se, but just because I was just rethinking a bunch of stuff in my life and reworking a bunch of stuff in my life. So it's just total life change in all kinds of crazy ways. I didn't have a clue what I was going to do actually. Andrew: That educational pathway doesn't have a direct connection to almost anything that's not work in a church or academic setting or something like that in theology. So, I really loved that education a lot, but I was figuring it out. So I called a friend of mine named Taylor Holiday, who ... and I was talking to him about if there's any available work in his world of work. Just basically as an in between thing while I figured it out. I just thought I'll just go do something for a couple months to figure out what I want to do. He said, sure, and brought me to a company called QALO, Q-A-L-O. If you've seen the silicon wedding rings that are for- Stephanie: Oh, yeah. Andrew: .. on the internet a lot, QALO was the first big company of those. QALO went zero to 20 million in a year and a half and was not funded. So, I was bootstrapped. I went there and it was just growing super, super fast. Also, being not funded and being a bunch of people like that, it just meant that they just were, in those worlds probably some of your listeners probably know this story a little bit, which is like, you just find people who can do stuff in that setting. I literally started in the warehouse. At one point, I sat down with Taylor, who's now one of my partners. Taylor was running marketing for QALO at the time. His brother was one of the founders. Taylor said, "Hey, you've got a mind for numbers," which he knew because we were in a Fantasy Baseball League together and knew that I was a big baseball stat nerd. Andrew: May not be interesting to many of your listeners I'm sure, but I have a lot to say about the interplay of thinking about sports through statistical lens and thinking about Ecommerce. Anyway, so that was the origin. We had been in this fantasy baseball for a while, "I know you have a mind for numbers, why don't you learn Facebook ads and Google ads and learn digital marketing?" I said, sure, but still I was not really sure what I wanted to do in the longer term. But I was like, "All right, that sounds fun." So, did that and loved it. Andrew: I mean, I was so totally unaware of what was happening, but I still remember the first conversation I had with Taylor in a bank where he told me what I'd be doing. He's explaining to me how Facebook ads, Google ads worked and said, "Is it okay? Well, here's the deal. You get customers into the funnel with your ads and then you drive ..." and I stopped him in the middle of that sentence and said, "What's the funnel?" That was where my digital marketing knowledge was at. From there, that ended up being the pathway to the digital marketing and Ecommerce career growth. So I was at QALO for a while, went to CTC, the agency that owns our company, owns the majority of it and became the head of strategy there. And then now I run 4x400. Andrew: Yeah, it was a crazy set of circumstances with Taylor. We actually went to junior high together, but had not reconnected because of that. We reconnected outside of that. So, just weird circumstances. Stephanie: That's interesting. Andrew: This gets into my life philosophy a little bit. I'm a believer in divine providence and think there was some of that happening around. Stephanie: For sure. Yeah, that's awesome. Always good to be in business with someone who's willing to bet on you because you have that beginner's mindset and it's probably why you're doing so well. But I'd love for you to detail a little bit about the structure of CTC and 4x400 in the holding company structure because we haven't had anyone on the show quite like this. So, any details around what 4x400 is and how it's connected to CTC would be great. Andrew: Yeah, sure. Common Thread Collective, it grew out of ... Taylor was building the agency alongside the growth of QALO. Started really focusing on Facebook ads. CTC does a lot more in that now, but CTC is now a full service digital sales agency. We said digital sales sell digital marketing because what we're doing is selling things on the internet, it's consumer goods, really focusing on Ecommerce entrepreneurs. The mission of CTC is to help entrepreneurs achieve their dreams. So that's really what we're about. We're specifically really good taking people in somewhere in the journey from zero to 30 million. Andrew: I was a strategist there and then became the head of strategy there. CTC continues to grow and do well. Taylor Holiday, as I mentioned is the managing partner of CTC. Andrew: In the midst of that, we also were like ... I mean, we came from this background of starting QALO. Taylor also was early on with another one of our partners named Josh Rodarmel who founded Power Balance. If you don't know Power Balance, Power Balance was the really popular silicon bracelets that were worn by athletes for a long time, still are worn by some. Andrew: That company was another super crazy fast growth company. I think they were zero to 50 in a year and a half. Yeah, I think that was the number. But anyway, I did on the brand side selling consumer goods in those worlds. We're like, why don't we launch our own brands as well? So, that's how 4x400 started. Eventually I went over to that side of the business. We started with building our own brand from scratch. It totally saw giant failure called [inaudible] company, just a huge waste of money. It doesn't exist anymore. It was sports themed baby goods and it just ... there are a lot of reasons that didn't work Stephanie: Wait, sports themed baby goods, so- Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Stephanie: ... like onesies. Andrew: Yeah. Like onesies that look like football uniforms. They're adorable. I don't know why nobody bought them. Stephanie: Okay, that's super cute. I'll buy one from you. Andrew: Yeah. I think that you'd have to go find a flea market in Northern California somewhere. I had to go get it every day. Stephanie: I will find one, I actually need to for my twin. So, it'll be a long journey, but I'm going to do it. Andrew: Okay. You're in Northern California, right? Stephanie: Yeah. Andrew: Yeah, I think that's who we sold to, so [inaudible] don't worry. We did that, and then realized actually most of our skill at this point ... most last couple years that we have really been spent after we'd gotten out of the brand side so much growing brands, not so much building brands. So we thought, why don't we just do that? Now our model is, at 4x400, we work with entrepreneurs who are in early stages and feel a little stalled out. We provide them with a team around them that can help them grow it. 4x400 mission is also to help entrepreneurs achieve their dreams. We just do it in a different way than CTC. Andrew: CTC does that the traditional client relationship 4x400, takes the majority share of the brand. And then our goal is to make it so that by bringing us on as a partner and all of the expertise and resources we have around finance operations, marketing, growth customer service, even just really thinking through the whole system of what it means to be a great Ecommerce brand, we can help brands grow. We just closed actually our fifth brand that is currently in our portfolio. We're hoping to close another one soon. Who knows by the time it comes out, if that will happen? We're trying to work with brands who are doing less than half a million in revenue and saying like "We can try to grow you from there." CTC is the majority owner 4x400. 4x400 is the majority owner of these brands. So there's this giant web of relationships there. Stephanie: Yeah, okay. That helps me understand the landscape a bit more. How do you think about acquiring brands, how do you find brands that are willing to say, "Okay, we'll give you a majority share and come under your company"? Andrew: Yeah. Well, there's a few ways. CTC is a magnet for some of them. Sometimes brands will come to CTC and CTC will say, we're not the right partner for you. You're not a place where you can afford us. One piece of advice I have for a lot of it was like, if you are paying an agency not very much money you should really think about whether the agency is good because agency economics just require, for you to get great service, they typically require a pretty good investment. Just think about it. Agencies exist by marking up people's time. So, an agency works well if they are able to attract and train great talent by nature of access to large amounts of information. Andrew: The value of an agency is that they are spending millions and millions of dollars of other people's money on stuff. So, it's information arbitrage in that respect. You can come to an agency and get that information applied to your brand in a way that maybe an in house resource can't always do because they just are not going to have the visibility to as much of what's going on. For that to work, then you have to mark up that time of high quality, talented people who are probably not cheap. And then also for something like Facebook ads, Google ads, and then oftentimes there's a creative element of that and a writing element of that, and a strap gentleman have that, so that means you got to pay designers and other people like that too. And then there's web dev parts of it. You start to put that all together and if it's too cheap, then you have to be going like, wait a minute, what am I actually getting here? Andrew: Some brands in the early days, will come to ... they'll be stalled out or come to CTC for resources. CTC will say to them, actually you can't really afford this. What we actually think is a better solution for you is to talk about a deeper investment where we can really surround you with more stuff. What we find is a lot of entrepreneurs love product building and customer communication in certain ways. They love their customer, they love their product idea people, but they don't necessarily have all of the skills around everything else it takes to grow a brand. In fact, they don't want to do those things. Andrew: Most entrepreneurs don't start brands because they love finance, they don't. They don't even necessarily love tactical marketing. A lot of times what we can say to them is, "Let us take all that stuff that you hate doing anyway from you, you feel overwhelmed and stalled all the time anyway. You come with us, we'll pay you a consistent salary," which is also a big help to some people who are going like, I just don't even know if I can perform this anymore. We'll help you grow. Some entrepreneurs want to stay on, some don't, some just wants to take it. So it really depends on each entrepreneur, but that's basically a lot of how we think about it. Andrew: And then for us, we evaluate the brand by saying like, "Does it have basic product market fit and basic fundamentals to where we think as we bring in all of our tactical expertise and all of our specific expertise in various disciplines that we can then apply that to the brand and grow it?" A brand who comes to us who hasn't really invested much in paid media, but has done 100 to $300,000 in revenue, we look at that and say, "That's ..." Actually, we have a really high amount of respect for that. It's really hard to do that, it's hard to do $100,000 without being good at Facebook ads. It's not easy. So we look at that and say like, "Good job. We don't think you're a failure. If you come to us and want our help, we think we get it." We look at that and say, "That's very impressive. Let us surround you now with resources that we can scale this to 10, $20 million in revenue." Stephanie: Very cool. How are your brands performing now? Andrew: Yeah, good. They're doing good. Andrew: I think COVID really helped Ecommerce brands massively. Two things happen at the same time. One of them is that large corporations who have diversity of sales channels, but were spending lots of money on advertising, pulled their advertising budgets the way the heck back. Of course, lots of other companies couldn't produce products. So they couldn't sell products in retail settings, so they pulled a lot of the budget back. They couldn't produce products because of supply chain problems. And then at the same time ... So that meant that in large auction based advertising work universes like Facebook ads and Google ads, ads got suddenly way cheaper really fast. Andrew: The way that works is that because those are built on an auction, if a lot of people leave the auction everybody's prices get cheaper. We've looked at this data across CTC accounts. There was a giant plummeting of advertising CPMs in those worlds. And then at the same time in the last couple months, conversion rate on websites went up because the only place to capture demand was online. You couldn't go buy stuff in the store. So if you're selling things on the internet, that's where people are buying things from. And then of course, the stimulus checks it. As people have noted, that actually ended up being one of the largest increases in revenue to the average American family in history. So, all of a sudden, people have money to spend. Whether or not they should have spent it on consumer goods is a different question, I don't really know. But they had money to spend. Andrew: The less places for that demand to be captured mostly on Ecommerce stores. And then also, it got a lot cheaper to reach those people with ads. You put that all together and Ecommerce did really, really, really well for a couple months. So that really helped us. There's no question about it. We're still feeling some of the positive effects of that. It feels weird to be a winner in COVID, but there's no question that Ecommerce brands were .. To varying degrees depending on the category you're in, for sure. Andrew: We have three brands that are in the established stage and not in the start it up stage. Stephanie: What account is established, is it a revenue metric or- Andrew: Yeah, a good question. I'd say a million dollars during 12 months, or a million dollar run rate. We would look at and say, "Okay, we're growing at the pace that we want." I can just give you some numbers. We're projected this year to go to have one of our brains go to 8 million, that brand did 100,000 in 2017. Last year, we really took it over halfway through the year. I think we ended at 750 for the year. So, that's definitely our fastest growing brand right now. Stephanie: That's [crosstalk 00:16:47]. Andrew: Another one- Stephanie: ... some good growth right there. Andrew: Yeah. We feel good about that. That's profitable too, which is definitely in our model. We took on a little bit of funding early, but not a ton of funding. We function more like a bootstrapped company. And then another one went from ... just a little over two years ago, we acquired it. It was basically doing no revenue, it'll do 3 million this year. Yeah, that's a different story. And then another one went from 250 to a million to just under two, this year, we'll do four to four and a half probably. So those ones are all we feel established growing at the pace we want, we feel really good about. Stephanie: Yeah. That's some impressive number. How do you grow these brands? What are some of your tactics and strategies that you rely on those, what do you see success with? How can someone else learn from what y'all are doing to grow their Ecommerce companies? Andrew: Yeah. Facebook ads is the core driver of customer acquisition for us. I mean, selling consumer goods direct to consumer online, Facebook ads is still the most powerful tool in the world for reaching people. I'm hearing chatter about other things, YouTube, Snap, even Tik Tok, Google ads, product's changing. I just think still at this point, at scale, depending on what you mean by scale, people define that word differently. But for us, that's the core, top of the funnel way that we get traffic to our website. Andrew: I mean, you think about what Facebook ads is, it's not buying ads so much as buying traffic. I guess it's both really. But we look at that and say, "If we can make the traffic worth more than we're paying for it, worth enough more that we're paying for it to cover the cost of goods and things like that," I should say, "Then we can win." That's how we drive top of funnel traffic for us. And then after that, we try to do everything that we think great brands should do, which is like create a beautiful website that treats their customers great, has generous returns and shipping policies as much as we can afford to do it basically, which varies from brand to brand, depending on a number of factors. Do a great job with your retention email and other automated flow stuff. Constantly testing conversion rate optimization on our site in various ways. There's just a whole bunch of that kind of stuff that we're doing on the backend of that. Andrew: We are also certainly looking to invest in other top of the funnel type metrics, our traffic drivers as well. I would think of Google search as mid funnel and Google shopping as mid funnel. So, we're definitely investing there as well. I think we'll keep doing other stuff. That won't work forever. There's going to be a cap to how much Facebook ads does the driver work and we fully intend to add to our customer acquisition approach when we can. But our goal has been to grow profitably and we think that's one of the best ways to do it right now. Andrew: The other thing is it's not just one of the best ways to do it, it's just that we also have deep expertise in it. So, I'm just a believer that do the thing you do well as much as you can. I think it works for leadership and working with teams. Just as much as we can set up our team members to be doing the things that they love doing and they're good at. As long as the things that people love doing and are good at create value for the company, then you should pay them to do it. So that's the way we look at it too. Andrew: Just coming from the agency side, I personally have managed, I don't know, 25 ad accounts, that's probably more than that. Seen a lot more of that when I was the head of strategy and working with other strategists. I don't mean that to brag. It means that now I have some intellectual capital built up on what works. So, that's what we use from there. Stephanie: Cool. To drill in a little bit deeper then for the Facebook ads because I think a lot of companies probably have looked at Facebook ads, maybe they're using it. I haven't heard of anyone growing liked you guys are growing your brands consistently. So what tactics are you using specifically, or what do you see works well? Andrew: Yeah, there's a lot I can say about that. I think this is going to sound so fishy, but if you're getting serious about that, there's a couple of things ... The thing I would actually tell you to do, if you don't know where to start and you're getting serious about it, is to go visit your admission.co. I don't know, maybe I can give you a link to this, Stephanie, at some- Stephanie: Yeah, we can link it up. Andrew: Cool, yeah. So that is CTC's education program. It's not a course, it's different than every other education thing I know of in this world. It's actually a moderated community with access to ... Taylor, the CEO of CTC is in there doing webinars like our team members, our brand managers and people like that. Also, might jump in there and do webinars exclusively for that community. What we're doing is teaching all of the things that are ... what we believe are really the best practices for Facebook ads from the perspective of creative, from the perspective of targeting, bidding, all that kind of stuff. Bringing people through all of those things and then giving them continued support with access to the actual CTC teams who are doing that same thing that I was describing, which is spending millions of dollars of other people's money, so you can have access to that knowledge set. I think it's 500 bucks a month right now. Andrew: I even say sometimes there's even executive level people who will take their whole team through it. It's not like you're going to be in it for forever. The point is that you can do that and get access to what we believe works best. We're always evaluating that. There are certainly other things to do there, but that'll give you what we ... We try to be really honest and transparent where we can about what we're seeing. So that will give you mental ways to think about that problem. Andrew: I think one of the things that can go wrong is you could listen to me talk about this, and maybe you're an entrepreneur and you hear my numbers and you go like, I'm going to go do that. You just blow money because you make simple mistakes that somebody could help you not make, if you've just got some support. There is no way to learn besides doing it really. You're going to make mistakes, it's okay. In my view, creative needs to be really product focused in the sense that it's on Facebook ads and Instagram ads. You are driving high quality traffic by giving people a clear sense of what your product is right away. Clear wins over everything else first as a baseline. Andrew: Clear doesn't make you give you the best out in the world. They're clear plus some other things do that, but clear establishes a baseline of what you can expect and at least drives what I consider high quality traffic to your side. People who are interested in you because of your product. So that's probably the first basic principle I would say is focus on being clear in your creative before you focus on being clever or funny, or any of those kinds of things. You can drive a lot of very cheap traffic to your website with Clickbait tactics, but they won't buy anything. Ultimately, it won't matter how cheap the traffic is if they don't buy anything. So that's the kind of thing I would say. Andrew: And then the other big thing I'm a huge believer in is trust the algorithm. There was a world where people talk about Facebook ads as the value of micro-targeting that was one of the phrases people would talk about. This idea that you'd go find exactly your customer really specifically target them without everybody else. I think there was a time when that was part of how you did it. Those times are gone. What I would say is what you want to do is give Facebook as much information as possible and let Facebook's algorithm predict the future for you because humans are terrible at predicting the future. Algorithms are pretty good at it. So, algorithms do a really good job of looking at the data set of who's responding to your advertising. And then going and saying, here's some more people like that to put you out in front of. So, we believe in really broad targeting. Andrew: Let Facebook have as much freedom as you can to go and find the next person to put you out in front of. Over time, not even over that much time, Facebook's amazing in this regard much quicker than Google is at this. Facebook will find who those people are. So that's the broad principles I would say is trust the algorithm, be clear with your creative. There you go. There's just so much more I could say about the Stephanie, but I'm going to stop there. So I don't take up the entire rest of the podcast. Stephanie: Okay, cool. Yeah, we will definitely link that up. I think it's a really important point too to segment a piece of your ad budget for testing. I know we do that internally as I'll tell. Our team members are like, "Hey, you have this much money. If you spend it and you just learn from it, that's okay. Versus this amount let's actually protected and make sure we drive results with it." So I think it's good to go into a mindset being okay with using a portion of ads for an R&D type testing project. So, you feel like you can learn from it, but not blow your entire budget on it. Andrew: Okay, no question. Constantly testing is super crucial. What I'd say about that is, when I want to test on Facebook ads, the place I want to test most is take big swings with your tests. The common thing you hear people say with testing, you'll hear people like, I've seen so many articles trumpeting like, oh, we changed our CTC button color or we changed it from [inaudible] now and it was a 15% lift. Andrew: First of all, I just don't believe those studies anymore. Secondly, the reason you're writing about it is because it's exceptional. It doesn't happen all the time. I just think that's a waste of people's time. But most people need to do, if they're looking to go from not successful to successful, the larger the difference in outcome you want, the bigger the change you need to make. You can't just change the background color of your ad and expect that it give you wildly different results. That's once you have results you like and now you're just dialing in and trying to grab an extra 2% of value here and there. I just rarely see that thing work. Andrew: What I would say is much better to think to test is something like, what's the offer that you're giving people? What's the product you're starting with and leading with? That can create wildly different results. We just ran something for our jewelry company that we ... 31 Bits, which is our other most recent acquisition, our fourth brand. We started with a batch of ads focusing on one set of products were necklaces and bracelets and things like that. We were getting a dollar of 50 clicks, low click through rates, et cetera, and very poor conversion rate. Andrew: We changed the product set, same exact brand, similar styles of photography, but just different products to a whole different category of product and saw triple or more the performance suddenly CTC went way down. Click through rate, went way up, conversion went way up. The reason why is really obvious, it's jewelry, some people like some bracelets better than others. If you just use the same stuff all the time, people are going to respond to it the same way over time. There's no magic to that. That's how people shop for something that you wear. It's about what it looks like. So, by changing the products that we led with that made a huge difference. So that's what I'd say is for Ecommerce consumer good people, that's the kind of test you want to be running. Andrew: Give it a whole different products out, a whole different offer, a whole different way of framing the offer, don't just change little bits of the creative and copy if you want to change your outcome in a big way. Stephanie: Yeah. I love that. People I talk to sometimes are focused on those micro adjustments that you're talking about or just the minimal incremental pieces that they could change, whether it's button colors or all that. That's a good point too. Yeah. Focus on the higher level things. But how did you decide on what new products to show? Andrew: In that case, part of it was what new products ... there's a change in our product development, that's going to make it so, or in our manufacturing that was going to make it to that, we're phasing out some products anyway. We always start by looking at most products over various periods of time. This is a simple way to start. I mean, there's not a lot of science to it in that respect. I think we're just looking around- Stephanie: Just seeing what it's doing well in the market. Andrew: Yeah. And what's done well on our side. Honestly, part of it is for a place to start your testing just like make a hypothesis and test it. I mean, it's not- Stephanie: Yeah. What timeframe are you looking at? When you do the test, are you looking at 30 days? Let's see how it does and try something new, or is it like after a couple of days you'll know and try something different? Andrew: Yeah. I'd say budget is probably a bigger factor than time. So if you're spending thousands of dollars a day, it doesn't take very long good answers. If you're spending a couple $100 a day, it takes a little longer. It also changes relative to your average order value. What you need is a statistically significant number of responses and really a statistically significant number of conversions. You can think of conversions as micro conversions as well. For example, a click on an ad is a conversion in a sense. Clicks as a percentage of impressions is a conversion. Because it's pretty cheap to run Facebook ads, you can actually figure out a reliable statistically significant performance in a click through rate pretty fast without having to see how those clicks convert. Andrew: In that case, it took us, I mean, I think we're got 100 bucks, when we knew that this new round of ads was way, way better performing because the gap and click through rate was so significant between the two. That's another core principle here. The larger the gap and the outcome, or the larger the disparity in the outcome, the more likely it is that it's a reliable result, if that makes sense. In that case, I think we spent between the two products, that's a total of 1,500 bucks. The whole goal of that was to test those while we went and ordered new products to try and start scaling a little bit for a larger test in the future. I didn't really care what the actual result was. The goal is a bigger goal to win bigger over time. Stephanie: Yeah, that makes sense. When talking about growing, I saw that you guys live by a central Ecommerce growth formula. I was hoping you could go into that a bit. Andrew: Yeah. This is changing a little bit in some ways. I'll give you the baseline version of it, which is visitors tasks conversion rate times average order value. This is actually really simple. Every business in the world only actually has three factors that make up the value that you get from a purchase, or that make up your revenue actually. The first factor is how many people come to your business. This could be people walk into your store, it doesn't have to be a website. But just never people who show up. And then you multiply that by the conversion rate. So, what percentage of those people buy something from you? And then you multiply that by how much they spend. Andrew: When you look at that, that will equal your revenue. If you just say, how many people get there, how many of those people buy and how much they spend when they do? That's the entirety that makes up the revenue. That's incredibly simple and intuitive in a lot of ways. But what I find is that in the fog of war, people lose sight of that very simple concept. So, they start making tests and changes without a really clear idea of which one or multiple of those variables they're actually trying to affect. Of course, those all relate to each other. For example, your average order value goes up, your conversion rate goes down, that's a general rule of thumb, it's true across everything. It's intuitive when you think about it. Andrew: A smaller percentage of people are going to buy a $1,000 item than a $10 item. As you drive more traffic, it's highly likely that you're driving lower and lower quality traffic. Everybody exists along in the world, exists along a continuum of people likely to buy your product and unlikely to buy your product from your mother, who's the most likely person in the world to buy your product to- Stephanie: That is number one. Andrew: Yes. To a subsistence farmer who doesn't have the internet is the least likely person. The farther you go from your mom to the subsistence farmer, the more expensive it is to acquire that customer. So as traffic grows, then your conversion rate is likely to go down. That's just another helpful concept, I think. These are rules of thumb to heuristics they're not always true, but that's a basic way of thinking about it. We think about those three levers in what we do and really try to understand when we test something at any point in our funnel, whether it's on the website or ad level or whatever, which one of those am I actually trying to affect? Where's the problem in my business? Andrew: I've talked with friends of mine who own CrossFit gyms, and I've said to them like ... I'm thinking of a friend in particular whose gym was struggling. I was trying to help him think this way, which of these is the problem for you? Are not enough people showing up to your gym? Or when they show up, do they not buy a membership? Or do they buy a cheap membership or you give them a month free and then they don't spend any money after that? Which one of these is the problem? That probably gets towards LTV as well, or CLV, Customer lifetime Value as something to think about in the midst of all this as well. This is where you can make it a little more complicated, but that basic principle is true. Across the gym, just like on my consumer goods websites, it's the same problem. You just have to figure out which one of those things has the highest upside at the lowest cost to fix next. That's where you should put your energy. Stephanie: Yeah, I love that. Have you ever pitched a brand to be taken over by a 4x400 that you believed in where everyone else on your team didn't believe in it? Andrew: Oh yeah. This is where it helps to be coldly rational. Gosh, I don't mean rational like smart, I'm always right. I just mean my approach is unemotional to a lot of this stuff. To the probably emotional dysfunction in other ways in my life or something like that, I'm not saying you should emulate this necessarily. But that's why there's therap, so it's fine. So, sorry? I know there's some noise there. A lot of times, if we're tweeting about a new brand acquisition. People will say privately like, "I do believe in this," or "I don't believe in this." I just started think that's like ... I think without having the view that I have in the acquisition process, I just don't even know what somebody is judging that on. People just go by their general sense of what they believe about if it's a good brand or not. Andrew: First of all, other people are not like you. Your subjective sense of that may not reflect at all what I brought population to potential customers is. Secondly, to me, you can validate this pretty clearly by looking at simple product market fit, things like margin is a huge question, which makes businesses work and it makes other businesses fail, is one of the problems of opening day. We made a huge mistake by just giving ourselves away too little margin on the products. Stephanie: What's the little margin, what do you consider small? Andrew: Yeah. Well, I think if you're going to try and grow a brand with ... I'll just tell you, we target 70 points plus of margin for brands that we are trying to grow with our method of growth. And then that's really important. If you have other growth mechanisms that might not matter as much. But for us, we want 70 points plus landed margin. We can deal with a little less than that, but if you're going to try and grow a brand with Facebook ads, you're going to need to be able to exist at a two to one return on your money on ads probably. It's hard to really beat that number, if not withstanding something like coronavirus throwing those small. So we target that. That becomes a big question for us, if we think we can do that. Andrew: Sometimes actually it's part of the first thing we have to fix for a brand is, we see supply chain processes that are in our view broken and we would say like, "We love everything about this brand. It's convergent on site, is great relative to its average order value, relative to its traffic sources." We dig into all that stuff, and say, "But your margin is not good enough, but we think we can solve that. W can help with getting your shipping cost down by repackaging it differently, or thinking about what products to focus on or not, or changing your manufacturer or something like that." We don't want to ever do that at the expense of giving people a good product. We haven't compromised on that at this point, which I'm happy about. But yeah, those are all the things that we can look at as potentially something to fix. But in our view, 70 points plus, makes the game a lot easier for sure. Stephanie: Got it. I like that point too about, what would someone know when they're doubting a brand? Because that is definitely a human flaw thinking about ... even when I'm thinking about those rubber bracelets from a while back, for me to say, "Oh, that's dumb," I don't need to be balanced or anything, or I need help with that. It's funny because it's like, well, apparently a lot of other people did because look how many people bought it. Yeah, I think that's also a good lesson for anyone starting something up. If they hear someone say like, "Oh, that's dumb, you shouldn't do that." Probably good to take a step back and be like, well, that's just one person's opinion and not let it deter you from trying at least. Andrew: Yes, especially relative to the set of metrics I have in front of me, which are going to tell me something a little bit different. This is one of the things that's so great about data is that I'm just wrong, Stephanie, about so many things in life, I just know I am. So having some source outside of my own brain that I can look at. When my own eyes are lying to me, humans are just biased machines. We're just machines of bad thinking about stuff. So, finding ways to be aware of my priors going into something and my bias going into something, check those against some sorts of truths that exist outside myself. Of course, people can lie with data and data can be poorly collected. There's all kinds of ways that can go wrong too. But in light of all those things, I just think that it becomes really helpful to do that, to go and have a source like that to go check in. So that's what we do in our process. Andrew: There's various levels of excitement about brands even internally. But there's no question that ... We sincerely believe it can work based on the data set in front of us and a few other old principals. So that's what we do. Stephanie: That's cool. We're mentioning data, stick with the data when it comes to it and don't just listen to unfounded opinions. What kind of metrics do you look at that you think a lot of other brands aren't utilizing enough? There's obvious ones like conversions and click-through rates and all that kind of stuff and revenue obviously, but is there anything that you look at that you think enough people aren't paying attention to? Andrew: There's no magic here. After we acquired 31 Bits, this jewelry company ... really super cool brand. This brand was started by women who were anthropology majors in college and wanted to provide good quality jobs to people who could not access them by nature of where they lived in the world. So they started in Uganda after a trip there and had these women making these really cool beads. This started in 2009. These women were out to change the world with this brand. It's just totally authentic, beautiful brand story around all of this stuff. When we acquired that, I on my podcast, it's called- Stephanie: What is your podcast? Andrew: Yeah, yeah. I feel so lame doing this right now, but- Stephanie: Oh, sorry, Andrew. Andrew: I know. There's a tangent there. But anyway, if somebody really wants to hear how I think about this question, I spent about 45 minutes with Taylor, the head of our agency, talking about exactly why we acquired 31 Bits. We did an episode about that. I'll find it and send it to you for the show notes as well. And then we interviewed the ladies from the brand for the next episode after that, so people could kinda hear why they chose us as well. We tried to be really honest about why we think it'll work and why we think it could fail. I would say the metrics related to that, that I care about, it's not just conversion rate it's conversion rate relative to average order value and relative to traffic sources. That's a huge one for us. Andrew: Conversion rate itself is actually so context specific that it's not that helpful of a metric. I mean, think about the conversion rate of a direct click. Somebody comes to the website, types in 31bits.com, presses enter. Let's take a 45 year old female on a desktop computer direct versus a 25 year old male on their cellphone through a display ad on the internet, saying conversion rates to describe what both of those people are doing and getting a baseline is not going to be helpful at all because the baseline for those two different customers of what you'd expect, they're so different. I mean, just the device issue you're twice as likely to convert on desktop than you are as mobile before you talk about any of the rest of the demographic's software or anything like that. Andrew: We try to really give some specificity of the context of something like conversion rate. Even one thing you'll see there is like, sometimes the brand's conversion rate will look low, but it's actually not low. The reason it looks low is because they're getting a ton of blog traffic via organic search SEO essentially. That blog traffic is technically on their URL, but it's not at all related to their product and it's not people looking for their product. Therefore, that blog traffic will have an incredibly low conversion rate and will therefore negatively influenced the total conversion rate. If you bucket that blog traffic out, it turns out the conversion and the brand is fine and their website works great and you just didn't realize that. I don't know if that example made sense. But there's- Stephanie: It does make sense. Andrew: ... there's just all of these kinds of contexts, things like that, that I think are really crucial to look at all the way around. We look at some other stuff like we've looked at entire funnel on our site, so we'll look at not just the conversion rate thing. If somebody doesn't buy something on your website, there's a question of why did they not buy? Because they made it to your website, so what happened next? Did they never add anything to cart or did they add to cart and then drop off once they got to checkout or did they never even make it to checkout or what? We look at each of those things and try to understand what's going on. Andrew: If somebody adds to cart and makes them check out and then drops off, why? The answer to that question is probably because you're shipping cost is too much a lot of times, or it's going to get shipped slowly, or they're not confident in return policy or whatever. So we'll look at some of that stuff too. We have a value of 4x400, which is understanding before you act and paired with that is hard problems require deep focus, or require deep work. The basic concept is like, before I go and throw out a million solutions, I want to really understand as clear of terms as possible exactly what's wrong. Andrew: When I hear somebody say my Facebook ads are broken, the thing I want to say is, "What do you mean? What's happening? What broken- Stephanie: What are you doing? Andrew: Right, yeah. "Is the conversion rate broken? Are the clicks too expensive? Where is the problem? Are you not getting a high enough AOV? When you say it's broken, what do you mean?" To try to help people answer that question because then it can guide where to think about the next problem. Stephanie: Cool. I love that. Yeah, that was a really good example. Stephanie: Are there any things, technology or otherwise tools that you're using right now that are maybe new that you're excited about? Andrew: Well, I'll tell you what I think that is, it's not the answer you're looking for, but I think it's the answer that I get. Stephanie: Go for it. Andrew: My answer is no I don't. We will get there to where we'll need to do that, but I just think this is a massive distraction for a lot of people. I think people love to go chase the next new thing. They'll even say things like, "well, my customer is on Tik Tok." I don't really know what that means. Yes- Stephanie: I don't really know who's on Tik Tok right now. Andrew: I'm 36. First all, I'm 36, I'm too old and I don't get Tik Tok. I've never had Facebook on my phone, so I'm just the worst social media marketer ever in that respect. I do not understand what's happening in the world. I just don't always know what that kind of thing means. I think your customers probably also want Instagram because there's a lot of people on Instagram. So I could be wrong about that, I guess. I'd be so happy for somebody to correct me if that's the case and reach out and tell me, "You're not looking at this right." Anyway, I just think it becomes a huge distraction for people to go and try and find another new thing to go do instead of to get really good in one or two areas. Andrew: We will expand channels over time. I think we're really trying to build out more search and shopping as a next step for us, that is not a new channel at all. It's actually the oldest digital marketing channel, search in particular,. I'm playing around with some ideas from SEO, but really I'm just trying to make my customer more valuable at this point. So, just trying to really get better via email, post-purchase, via my unboxing experience, trying to think about how unboxing and product experience creates retention in word of mouth. I'm trying to dig deeper and get better at the things I'm already doing rather than adding a whole lot, I think. Stephanie: With everything happening in the world right now, it does seem like there, like you mentioned early on the show, there're a lot of changes happening, especially around Ecommerce. I know you're talking about focusing on what's working and all that, but is there anything you're preparing for over the next three to five years that you're anticipating around Ecommerce trends? Andrew: Yeah, all right. This is my coronavirus beat right non. This is a really fun question and is a great podcast fodder. I do not fault you for asking it and I don't want you to hear my answer to this as condescending. But there's no possible way in the world that I could predict the future that far out. Here's what I believe about predicting the future. The more complex the system you're project predicting with the more inputs that there are there, over the longer the timeline, the harder it is to project. So, I might be able to give you some sense of what's happening next week, but then also last week, all these companies started saying they're going to pull their Facebook ad spend. Stephanie: Yeah. I didn't why I mention that, but I'm like well, that seems like it's a good opportunity then, like you're mentioning to get on Facebook. Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Stephanie: I think Zuckerberg even said they'll be back or something like that, which is just funny. Andrew: First of all, who could have predicted over that timeline, that kind of thing would happen? Before you even talk about Zuckerberg, who ... There's just so many elements. The system of macroeconomics in the U.S., before you even talk to the world, is so big with so many inputs and so complex that I just don't believe in anybody's ability to really predict that. So what I think is that it's not helpful generally to do that. I'll say three to five years, the one thing I feel broadly, fairly comfortable with though, I think even this has, there's some basic questions is that Ecommerce, as an industry, Ecommerce is a share of U.S. retail spending, will continue to grow. Andrew: I mean, I just have no possible way of predicting that. So I feel like it's a good place to be if you're in Ecom, I think you should be investing in Ecom broadly. I just don't think otherwise it's very possible to do that. I mean, just look at what we were all saying about coronavirus two months ago and the models that we were all looking at about what this thing could be. It's been devastating. I don't want to underplay that, but it has not been in the U.S. the millions of deaths at this point, at least. Who knows that people were predicting? I just look at that and go like, that's because predicting that many things for something with that much unknown is really, really hard. Andrew: My take on this is to go read Nate Silver's book, The Signal and the Noise and to hone your skills thinking about what kinds of things you can and can't project, and even how to think about projecting things. And then to go from there, which means the way you win is not by predicting the future, but by honing your fundamentals and carving really good thought processes. This is what I really believe in the most. To think about this all like poker, which is that good poker players don't win by winning a hand, they win by playing lots of hands really well and by making the right move over and over. Understanding the game that there are going to be times when they're going to be in a big spot with a lot of money in the pot and the card will come up and go the wrong way. But if they play enough big pots and enough money in it, the law of large numbers says that they'll win over time. I think that's the way to think about it. Andrew: Get really good at understanding something like visitors and conversion rate times average order value and asking the right questions about that. Get really good at following your profit margins everywhere you can . Get as much clarity about them as you possibly can that way you know where your money is going and where you're making money and where you're not. If you can do those things over a long period of time and just get good at finding good people to work with and get good at those sorts of things, you will win. So ultimately, I bought into the partnership at CTC with my own money, I'm not rich. Andrew: The reason I put my money into that is because I believe in the humans that are the partner group there, and I believe that those people overall given enough chances will win. That's the way I think you should think about your brand and your business is find partners and find brands and businesses that you believe will play the right hand the most times and are people of high character. That is part of the right hand of what you're play, you're going to have a relationship with these people. Every part of your business, if you can do those things, then I think over the aggregate, you're going to win. Stephanie: That's great. That actually took a very nice spin because at first I'm like, okay, no one's going to disagree with you that Ecommerce is going to grow. But I like the spin that you just took on it about what you should focus on instead. So, good answer. Andrew: Thanks. Yeah, I know. It's a compound answer in some ways, but it's really what I believe is true about the world. It's so sexy to say, okay, over the next month, this is going to happen and this is going to happen. Next time somebody on the show gives you that answer, bring them back on in six months and ask them what happened and- Stephanie: I was just going to say that. I think the world is still missing a little bit of the accountability piece because I see people still on Twitter, even the people who are talking about the end of the world, no one's following up with these people, how come this guy has had a billboard out around California for a long time saying the end of the world was going to happen, I guess, a few weeks ago, and it didn't? What now, are we going to follow up with him and be like, "Hey, what happened?" Andrew: Yeah, that's a very California story. I like that. Stephanie: All right. We're going to shift now into something called the lightning round brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a quick question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, Andrew? Andrew: I am. But this is the ultimate challenge for me. Stephanie: This will be the hardest part of the interview. Andrew: Yeah, it probably are. All right, I'll do my best. Stephanie: I actually feel like you're going to have some great answers, that's why I've been excited to get to this. All right. If you were to have a podcast, who would your first guest be and what would the show be about? Other than the podcast that you're running now, you can't say that one. Andrew: Okay. I think it would be about exploring. Does it my guess have to be a live or can I pick anybody? Stephanie: No. Andrew: Okay. I think it would be about exploring big ideas about the world like theology, philosophy kind of stuff, but for the every man or woman. So, it would try not to be too much in the clouds, my guess would be C. S. Lewis, not because he's the most interesting thinker in the history of the world, although he's a really interesting thinker, but because he says things in really interesting ways. So, I think he would be a fascinating guy to just sit and talk with. When I think of a historical person I'd want to talk with most, would be that. Either that or a baseball ball guest. Stephanie: All right. Well, that's cool. That's a good answer. What's up next on your reading list? Andrew: Books I'm in the middle of or after? Stephanie: I'd say, you can do both, middle of and ones that you're looking back on like, that was a good book. Andrew: Okay. The Color of Law is the book I'm in the middle of right now. Richard Rothstein going through the history of government and forced racism in the U.S. incredibly helpful book for me so far. I'm three quarters away through. Highly recommended to try and get your head on straight about what's going on with race in the U.S. just pure history. It's really good. And then I am reading a Christian book called Money, Possessions and Eternity about how to use your money for compassion and care for people instead of for yourself. So, that's what I'm in the middle of right now. And a baseball book called Ball Four, which is a famous book. Stephanie: That's cool. If you were to pick a country to focus on to maybe buy a new brand from, what country would you look into? Andrew: A country? Stephanie: Yeah. If you were to bet big, I'm going to go for something in India, that's top of mind right now because I just read the whole thing between India and China and turning off Tik Tok in India. So, it's very interesting to me thinking about, if you were to bet on brands from a certain country or are you looking to go international, where would you go? Andrew: I think the answer is India. I think that's probably the right answer. The cost of reaching people in India is very cheap and India's economy seems to be growing very fast. But I'm just bullish on global economy in general. So, I think you could probably broadly pick out. In the last 50 years, massive amounts of extreme poverty have been alleviated in the world thanks to globalization and technology and all kinds of things like that. The world is a much better place than people make it sound. That's another book record recommendation, Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Go read that book- Stephanie: Factfulness. Andrew: ... it will help you look at the world totally different. Factfulness. Forget my other book my other book and finish reading that one. Stephanie: I'll link of that one. Yeah, no, I think that's where I would bet too because I think I just read that, it's a billion and a half people there only a third of them, I think have cell phones right now. They're coming online at a very quick rate. So, I think- Andrew: Yeah. I mean, it's incredible how much better life has gotten in the world for so many people. There's very hard life in the world for a lot of people, so to not to underplay that. But it's just crazy and it's going to keep happening. Stephanie: Yeah, I agree. What's up next in your travel destinations? Andrew: Anywhere- Stephanie: When you can travel. I think, just outside my neighborhood. Andrew: Yeah. I like Austin, Minnesota where my family is, hopefully in a couple of weeks, but we'll see. As far as other places, I love Boston. Would like to go with my wife there. I have a seven month old though, so the actual answer to this question is probably nowhere for a while. Stephanie: Yeah. That's my life too. I have four month old twin boys and a two year old. Someone asked me like, "Oh, where are you going to go on vacation?" I'm like, "Nowhere outside of 10 miles away." It's a mess to get into the car that would be- Andrew: Four-year-old twin boys? Stephanie: Yeah, yeah. Andrew: I think it's awesome. Congratulations. That's beautiful. Stephanie: Thanks. Yeah, it's a wild ride. All right, the last one ... Yeah, you know. What's up next on your Netflix queue? Andrew: I just watch the same shows over and over again with my wife. Stephanie: Does she get to choose? Andrew: She does most times, yeah. Stephanie: So you guys are watching Selling Sunset and things like that? Andrew: No. We watched Parks and Rec, 30 Rock and The Good Place- Stephanie: Okay, those are very ones. Andrew: ... over and over and over again. That's probably all we watch. I don't know. The decision fatigue I have on this particular issues, we just created a Slack channel that worked for media recommendations because I just don't know even what to do anymore about where to look next. So, I wish I had a better answer than that. It would- Stephanie: Let us know if you find something from your Slack channel. Andrew: Yeah. It's probably another episode of The Good place. My team is really hot on Yellowstone right now, so there you go. Stephanie: Okay. I don't know what that is, that just shows I am not with it either. So I'll have to check that out. Andrew: Kevin Costner intense ranching family season three. Stephanie: Okay. I'll have to dive into that one. All right, that was a good lightning round. Is there anything that you were hoping to cover, are there any last words of advice before we hop off? Andrew: I think just that in situations like this, I always just want to say that when somebody asks you for answers on a podcast, it's super easy to make it sound easy in some ways. But it's really hard actually to do these things and to grow business and to work in a team and all these things. So, I think the parting word for me is always just to say, it's not actually as easy as it maybe. I hope I didn't make it sound like that. It's just challenging at times. So, keep at it and surround herself with good people. Yeah, I think that's it. I think I just properly took all the wind out of the point that I was making by monitoring it at the end there. Maybe out of [inaudible 01:02:52]. That's the big piece for me, is just you can do it, it is harder than it sounds a lot of times. Stephanie: Yeah, I like it. Well, Andrew, thanks so much for coming on the show. It was a lot of fun and ... Yeah, thanks for taking the time. Andrew: Thanks, Stephanie, for having me. It's super fun.
The impact of Jim Bouton, author of Ball Four, on the game of baseball and collecting.
This week's episode featured a discussion of Jim Bouton's Ball Four. In recognition of the book's 50th anniversary, Rob chats with authors Mitchell Nathanson and Mark Armour about the drama in the book and surrounding its initial publication. Nathanson is the other of Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original. Armour is the president of SABR' Board of Directors and founder of SABR's Baseball Biography Project. For show notes, extra content, and a list of what Rob's reading, visit the SABRcast website at https://sabr.org/sabrcast.
Today we are joined by Dr. Mitchell Nathanson, author of the book Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original (University of Nebraska Press, 2020). Nathanson, a professor of law at the Jeffrey S. Moorad Center for the Study of Sports at Villanova University, examines the life of Jim Bouton, a journeyman pitcher whose 1970 book, “Ball Four,” was a lightning rod for controversy and became one of the best sports books of all time. Nathanson examines the dynamics behind the crafting and publishing of “Ball Four,” Bouton’s diary of the 1969 major league baseball season. He examines the contributions of Leonard Shecter, the former New York Post sportswriter who helped shape Bouton’s narrative. More importantly, Nathanson presents a more well-rounded portrait of Bouton, a free-thinking man who marched to his own beat and was not afraid to buck the establishment. Bouton’s youth, his early successes with the New York Yankees and fall from grace are chronicled. Well-researched with interviews from key figures in his lifetime, “Bouton” provides context and reveals the man behind a work that was vilified fifty years ago as a “kiss-and-tell” book but is now lauded as a sports classic. Nathanson brings fresh perspective and delivers an unvarnished, critical view of Bouton. Bob D’Angelo earned his master’s degree in history from Southern New Hampshire University in May 2018. He earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Florida and spent more than three decades as a sportswriter and sports copy editor, including 28 years on the sports copy desk at The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune. He is currently a digital news producer for Cox Media Group. Bob can be reached at bdangelo57@gmail.com. For more information, visit Bob D’Angelo’s Books and Blogs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Welcome to UnforMETable, an Amazin’ Avenue Audio show that looks back on less heralded, more obscure Mets players from the past. When the Mets acquired Greg Goossen from the Dodgers organization for $8,000 prior to the 1965 season, the young catcher with power potential quickly became one of the more promising prospects in the young organization. Goossen never lived up to his potential with the Mets, though he caught the notice of—and was the subject of memorable anecdotes from—both Yogi Berra and Casey Stengel. Afterwards, his most successful season in baseball—in the sole season for the Seattle Pilots—landed him a supporting role in Jim Bouton’s iconic Ball Four, before his post-baseball career led him into the orbit of Gene Hackman, which he parlayed into a lengthy career of minor movie roles. As always, you can listen or subscribe to this and all of our wonderful Amazin’ Avenue Audio podcasts through Apple Podcasts, where we encourage you to leave a review if you enjoy the show. It really helps! And you can find us on the Stitcher app, or listen wherever you get your podcasts. If you’ve got an idea for a player to be featured on UnforMETable, let us know in the comments. Make sure to follow Rob on Twitter (@WolffRR), and you can now follow the show, too (@unformetable). Tune in next week for another tale from the Mets’ past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today we are joined by Dr. Mitchell Nathanson, author of the book Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original (University of Nebraska Press, 2020). Nathanson, a professor of law at the Jeffrey S. Moorad Center for the Study of Sports at Villanova University, examines the life of Jim Bouton, a journeyman pitcher whose 1970 book, “Ball Four,” was a lightning rod for controversy and became one of the best sports books of all time. Nathanson examines the dynamics behind the crafting and publishing of “Ball Four,” Bouton’s diary of the 1969 major league baseball season. He examines the contributions of Leonard Shecter, the former New York Post sportswriter who helped shape Bouton’s narrative. More importantly, Nathanson presents a more well-rounded portrait of Bouton, a free-thinking man who marched to his own beat and was not afraid to buck the establishment. Bouton’s youth, his early successes with the New York Yankees and fall from grace are chronicled. Well-researched with interviews from key figures in his lifetime, “Bouton” provides context and reveals the man behind a work that was vilified fifty years ago as a “kiss-and-tell” book but is now lauded as a sports classic. Nathanson brings fresh perspective and delivers an unvarnished, critical view of Bouton. Bob D’Angelo earned his master’s degree in history from Southern New Hampshire University in May 2018. He earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Florida and spent more than three decades as a sportswriter and sports copy editor, including 28 years on the sports copy desk at The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune. He is currently a digital news producer for Cox Media Group. Bob can be reached at bdangelo57@gmail.com. For more information, visit Bob D’Angelo’s Books and Blogs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today we are joined by Dr. Mitchell Nathanson, author of the book Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original (University of Nebraska Press, 2020). Nathanson, a professor of law at the Jeffrey S. Moorad Center for the Study of Sports at Villanova University, examines the life of Jim Bouton, a journeyman pitcher whose 1970 book, “Ball Four,” was a lightning rod for controversy and became one of the best sports books of all time. Nathanson examines the dynamics behind the crafting and publishing of “Ball Four,” Bouton’s diary of the 1969 major league baseball season. He examines the contributions of Leonard Shecter, the former New York Post sportswriter who helped shape Bouton’s narrative. More importantly, Nathanson presents a more well-rounded portrait of Bouton, a free-thinking man who marched to his own beat and was not afraid to buck the establishment. Bouton’s youth, his early successes with the New York Yankees and fall from grace are chronicled. Well-researched with interviews from key figures in his lifetime, “Bouton” provides context and reveals the man behind a work that was vilified fifty years ago as a “kiss-and-tell” book but is now lauded as a sports classic. Nathanson brings fresh perspective and delivers an unvarnished, critical view of Bouton. Bob D’Angelo earned his master’s degree in history from Southern New Hampshire University in May 2018. He earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Florida and spent more than three decades as a sportswriter and sports copy editor, including 28 years on the sports copy desk at The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune. He is currently a digital news producer for Cox Media Group. Bob can be reached at bdangelo57@gmail.com. For more information, visit Bob D’Angelo’s Books and Blogs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today we are joined by Dr. Mitchell Nathanson, author of the book Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original (University of Nebraska Press, 2020). Nathanson, a professor of law at the Jeffrey S. Moorad Center for the Study of Sports at Villanova University, examines the life of Jim Bouton, a journeyman pitcher whose 1970 book, “Ball Four,” was a lightning rod for controversy and became one of the best sports books of all time. Nathanson examines the dynamics behind the crafting and publishing of “Ball Four,” Bouton’s diary of the 1969 major league baseball season. He examines the contributions of Leonard Shecter, the former New York Post sportswriter who helped shape Bouton’s narrative. More importantly, Nathanson presents a more well-rounded portrait of Bouton, a free-thinking man who marched to his own beat and was not afraid to buck the establishment. Bouton’s youth, his early successes with the New York Yankees and fall from grace are chronicled. Well-researched with interviews from key figures in his lifetime, “Bouton” provides context and reveals the man behind a work that was vilified fifty years ago as a “kiss-and-tell” book but is now lauded as a sports classic. Nathanson brings fresh perspective and delivers an unvarnished, critical view of Bouton. Bob D’Angelo earned his master’s degree in history from Southern New Hampshire University in May 2018. He earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Florida and spent more than three decades as a sportswriter and sports copy editor, including 28 years on the sports copy desk at The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune. He is currently a digital news producer for Cox Media Group. Bob can be reached at bdangelo57@gmail.com. For more information, visit Bob D’Angelo’s Books and Blogs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today we are joined by Dr. Mitchell Nathanson, author of the book Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original (University of Nebraska Press, 2020). Nathanson, a professor of law at the Jeffrey S. Moorad Center for the Study of Sports at Villanova University, examines the life of Jim Bouton, a journeyman pitcher whose 1970 book, “Ball Four,” was a lightning rod for controversy and became one of the best sports books of all time. Nathanson examines the dynamics behind the crafting and publishing of “Ball Four,” Bouton’s diary of the 1969 major league baseball season. He examines the contributions of Leonard Shecter, the former New York Post sportswriter who helped shape Bouton’s narrative. More importantly, Nathanson presents a more well-rounded portrait of Bouton, a free-thinking man who marched to his own beat and was not afraid to buck the establishment. Bouton’s youth, his early successes with the New York Yankees and fall from grace are chronicled. Well-researched with interviews from key figures in his lifetime, “Bouton” provides context and reveals the man behind a work that was vilified fifty years ago as a “kiss-and-tell” book but is now lauded as a sports classic. Nathanson brings fresh perspective and delivers an unvarnished, critical view of Bouton. Bob D’Angelo earned his master’s degree in history from Southern New Hampshire University in May 2018. He earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Florida and spent more than three decades as a sportswriter and sports copy editor, including 28 years on the sports copy desk at The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune. He is currently a digital news producer for Cox Media Group. Bob can be reached at bdangelo57@gmail.com. For more information, visit Bob D’Angelo’s Books and Blogs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jim Bouton was a true baseball revolutionary, challenging a conservative baseball establishment that was desperately trying to keep a changing world at bay. Mitchell Nathanson joins us to discuss the extraordinary life and legacy of the man who wrote "Ball Four" and did so much more.
From the day he first stepped into the New York Yankee clubhouse in 1962 at the age of 23, Jim Bouton was baseball’s deceptive revolutionary. Behind the all-American boy-next-door good looks and formidable fastball, lurked an unlikely maverick with a decidedly signature style – both on and off the diamond. Whether it was his frank talk about MLB front office management and player salaries, passionate advocacy of progressive politics, or efforts to convince the Johnson Administration to boycott the 1968 Summer Olympics, “Bulldog” Bouton fearlessly – and seemingly effortlessly – confronted a largely conservative sports world and compelled it to catch up with a rapidly changing American society. On the field, Bouton defied tremendous odds to reach the majors – first with the champion Bronx Bombers (making 1963’s AL All-Star team in his second season, and winning two World Series games in 1964) – and later, with an improbable post-retirement comeback at age 39 with the Atlanta Braves. But in between, it was his memorable 1969 season with the woeful one-year Seattle Pilots – and his groundbreaking tell-all account called Ball Four – that literally and figuratively changed the game (not to mention Bouton’s career) by reintroducing America to its national pastime in a profound and traditional-altering way. Author Mitch Nathanson (Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original) joins the show for a look at Bouton’s unconventional life, and how – in the cliquey, bottom‑line world of professional baseball, Bouton managed to be both an insider and an outsider all at once.
Hello friends! Who's up for a second episode in a row...about Baseball?? I talked with Mitchell Nathanson, Professor of Law at Villanova University and the author of numerous books and articles on the subject of baseball, about his new book on the one and only Jim Bouton, whose 1970 book, Ball Four, was a rite of passage for fellas like me! It was a must-read as a kid, known for its honest and very revealing look at the life of a major league baseball player. But it turns out Bouton's significance goes well beyond that - and that's the topic of Mitchell's book. Mitchell was granted access to Jim's extensive archival material that supported the writing of Ball Four and got to know Jim Bouton and his family personally. The result is a book that will prove to be unique and invaluable, in what it brings to the table about an extraordinary individual. You can learn more about Professor Nathanson and his many books and publications on his excellent website, and you can follow Mitchell on twitter at @MitchNathanson. His book can be ordered on Amazon here. And a tip of the hat to Mitchell - thank you so much for chatting, and I am looking forward to reading Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original!
Professor Mitchell Nathanson, author of Jim Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original, joins Jacke for a discussion of athletes, heroes, and A.E. Housman. Why do we celebrate athletes? How do we view them when their athleticism fades? And what does it all mean? We'll look at the problems of male vulnerability, the groundbreaking work Ball Four by Jim Bouton, and the criticism of that book, most notably by esteemed sportswriter Roger Kahn. Close your eyes and imagine a world where the grass is green, the leaves are lush, and kids are outside playing without a care in the world. We're celebrating spring at the History of Literature, even as we continue to stay indoors to avoid the coronavirus. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Welcome to Baseball Buffet our monthly roundtable focusing on recent baseball events. Today we celebrate our third anniversary with some highlights from the past three years. With all of us Baseball Buffers sheltering in place, due to the corona virus, there is no buffet for us this month. But we hope you enjoy some our best segments from the last three years. --We start with an eternal debate: Pete Rose, Hall of Fame or Hall of Shame. --In our next segment we ask, why do teams keep shooting stuff at their fans? --Next up is a discussion of our favorite baseball songs. --For a Christmas show, we shared memories of our favorite baseball toys. --Fans love to get free stuff and see wacky happenings at the ballpark. Here are our favorite baseball promotions. --This year we lost the Bulldog, Jim Bouton, author of Ball Four. Our group remembers. --2019 was the 100th anniversary of the Black Sox World Series. We attended a special SABR conference on the scandal. Here is what we learned.
With Tom Brady gone and St. Patrick's Day cancelled, can someone check on Boston? News News News: Tom Brady Breaks Up With the New England Patriots, Sports Throughout History - Pankration. Interview: Robert Kraft Talks About Hard Times Losing Tom Brady. Wide World of Weird Sports: Ball Four.
Ryan Fineman and host Chris MacLean are both Indiana University alums. They reminisce over Kilroys, Sink the Biz at Nick's, candy stripes and the rise of Indiana baseball. Ryan was the subject of a viral video at the end of an NCAA Regional game against Louisville. He shares the details as far as why things escalated and what was said during the scrum. We both agree the called strike was definitely BALL FOUR!
The Work in Sports Podcast - Insider Advice for Sports Careers
Esports is more the just an opportunity for programmers and gamers, the business is broad and growing as Kevin He explains on today's edition of the Work In Sports podcast.Hey Everybody, I'm Brian Clapp VP of Content and Engaged Learning for WorkInSports.com and this is the Work In Sports Podcast…Back in 2003 when the book Moneyball was published by Michael Lewis, everyone I knew in the industry grabbed a copy and read it. Most of us were a bunch of knuckleheads who couldn't tell you the Pulitzer Prize-winning books of the era but had all read Friday Night Lights, The Natural, Ball Four and the Boys of Winter. At this time though, Moneyball was all any of us could talk about. This was pre-Brad Pitt movie release - this was just a book that had been whispered about and we were all excited to get a copy of. What we read, changed our knowledge of baseball, but also formulated new methods of decision making. Ever since that day, I knew two things -- 1: analytics was going to be a thing 2: I always wanted to stay ahead of what is next.I hammered it into my head - you have to keep seeking what is next because the world and the industry will not be static. The next big wave that was obvious and plain to see, it didn't take a soothsayer, was social media. The growth, reach and the opportunity was obvious -- but in some parts, the sports world was still really slow to adapt to this change.I left a really great prestigious job in part because I thought they were way too slow to see social and digital media as a necessity, not a luxury.Well… I bring all this up to say -- I didn't see Esports coming. Not only that...but I didn't see the sports world adjusting to the phenomenon so quickly.../ and then not only that but I sure as heck didn't see institutions of higher learning adjusting to the demand this quickly. Esports is a special case. And what may have seemed like a playground for computer programmers, animators, and gamers - is actually a huge business with multiple levels of employment opportunities far beyond programming. This is why we have on today's guest Kevin He, Instructor for Esports Project Management t UC-Irvine…Questions for Kevin He, instructor Esports Project Management UC-Irvine1: In my experience – advanced education is often slow to respond to newly emerging trends. They tend to wait and see rather than set the trend in motion.You've been in the Esports industry for around 5 years, and we'll get into the details of all of that soon, but I'm curious how this opportunity came up for you to become an instructor in Esports Project Management at UC-Irvine – that's a pretty forward-thinking decision by the university to see this need and do something about it – how did it come about for you?2: Let's go back a bit before we move forward… what is your personal history with Esports, was this something you always had an eye for? Something that developed over time? How did you find your niche on this side of the industry?3: Your first big move into this industry after you graduated was in Community development. Explain this a little – I think this is an area where Esports really stands out in almost a grassroots way, building their audience in a very personal way, can you explain the role and importance of community in Esports?4: Community is common ground amongst people, and I think the Esports world does a better job than most in the sports industry of building this sense of community.As I looked through your bio, I kept seeing the word Tespa come up over and over…so being a good researcher that I am I looked it up on Google. I want you to explain it to all of us… but before that, I want to read the vision statement at Tespa to set the context -- “We believe in a world where gaming is celebrated by people of all ages, recognized as a force for good, and a catalyst for bringing people together.”This should be the tagline for all of us in life!So tell us specifically, what is Tespa, and what is your role in it?
Ann plays the classic Sports Innerview cable interview she did with the late Jim Bouton during the baseball strike in 1995. The former Yankee’s pitcher talks about issues affecting baseball then, why his book, ‘Ball Four,’ caused such controversy, his feelings about Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, what his average salary was and stories about Yogi Berra, Phil Linz and others. In the second half of the show, Ann replays her Sports Innerview cable show with guest, former Pittsburgh Steelers Rocky Bleier, who overcame tremendous odds after getting injured in the Vietnam War, to rejoin the Steelers and help lead them to four Super Bowl titles.
When it was first published in 1970, Ball Four stunned the sports world. The commissioner, executives, and players were shocked. Sportswriters called author Jim Bouton a traitor and a "social leper." Commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force him to declare the book untrue, but fans loved the book and many critics hailed it as an important social document. 50 years after his chronicling of the 1969 season, and just months after Bouton’s passing, we were thrilled to be joined by Mark Blakemore to discuss and celebrate Ball Four, as one of the most loved and significant baseball books ever written.
07.31.19: We break down the likely moves at the MLB Trade deadline! Plus...Robot Umpires! and should we kill the shift and hot takes on other baseball innovations...BMOC's History Corner and Maestro's last cancer question of the year . Finally: Sports Trade trivia!
Remembering Rip Torn, Jim Bouton, The Chicago Defender, and Gene Pingatore Rip Torn was the actor from the Actors Studio who went on to a memorable, but tempestuous, career in television and the movies. A combative free spirit in real life, he is best known for his recurring role on television in The Larry Sanders Show (1992-1998) and in movies such as Men in Black (1997) and Dodgeball (2004). Jim Bouton was the fastballing pitcher for the 1960’s New York Yankees, who went on to be more famous for his behind the scenes look at baseball in his 1970 memoir Ball Four. The Chicago Defender was the prominent newspaper for African-Americans in Chicago and across the South from 1905 until it closed its print edition in 2019. Gene Pingatore was the most successful high school boys basketball coach in Illinois history. He was also featured prominently in the 1994 movie Hoop Dreams.
Jim Bouton's Ball Four started as a colorful documentary of baseball life, and it turned out to be a legacy journey. With 5 million copies in circulation and multiple editions of the book still in print, Bouton's story will continue to be passed down across generations of baseball fans.Gelf magazine recently had our lead writer Nick Diunte at their Varsity Letters event in New York City to read his favorite passages from Ball Four. Click here to listen to the hilarious passages of Joe Schultz's malapropisms on the latest episode of the Baseball Happenings Podcast.
2019-07-26 Friday Full Edition features guest expert Scott Pianowski, of Yahoo Sports, discussing speculative callups, Ball Four, and a bunch of players, including Nathan Eovaldi, Travis dArnaud, Wade Miley, Tyler ONeill , and Danny Santana, and his plentiful Boons and Banes for the rest of the season … Also NL/AL News, Talk With Todd, Frequent Flyer, Weekend Pitcher Matchups, Master Notes ... Runs 2:57:45
On July 18, 2019, five writers appeared at Gelf Magazine's Varsity Letters at The Gallery at Le Poisson Rouge to pay tribute to Jim Bouton, who passed away last week. The pitcher-cum-author wrote the seminal work "Ball Four," which gave fans an unprecedented look inside the world of professional baseball. Speaking in Part II: Neil deMause, Deadspin contributor and co-author of Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money Into Private Profit Read deMause's rememberance: http://www.fieldofschemes.com/2019/07/12/15068/friday-roundup-remembering-jim-bouton-and-the-latest-in-stadium-shakedown-absurdities/ Nick Diunte, SportsMoney columnist at Forbes Read Diunte's article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickdiunte/2019/07/12/bouton-marveled-at-how-ball-four-went-from-5000-to-5-million/#29ba1eb44652
On July 18, 2019, five writers appeared at Gelf Magazine's Varsity Letters at The Gallery at Le Poisson Rouge to pay tribute to Jim Bouton, who passed away last week. The pitcher-cum-author wrote the seminal work "Ball Four," which gave fans an unprecedented look inside the world of professional baseball. Speaking in Part I: Jay Jaffe, senior writer at FanGraphs and MLB Network guest analyst Read Jaffe's interview with Bouton and Dr. Paula Kurman: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/ball-fours-big-bang-a-conversation-with-jim-bouton-and-dr-paula-kurman/ Mitchell Nathanson, Professor of Law at Villanova University and author of a number of books, including the upcoming Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original Read Nathanson's retrospective: https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/ny-jim-bouton-death-ball-four-dreams-20190712-fypt23rpvnedddl4wijqd6fegy-story.html Paul Lukas, former ESPN.com columnist and founder/editor of Uni Watch Read Lukas's rememberance: https://uni-watch.com/2019/07/11/jim-bouton-1939-2019/
Josh Levin and Stefan Fatsis talk about how Novak Djokovic and Simona Halep won at Wimbledon. Sam Anderson also joins to discuss Russell Westbrook and the end of an era in Oklahoma City, and John Thorn helps assess Jim Bouton and Bouton’s classic book Ball Four. Wimbledon (01:26): On Novak Djokovic’s incredible win over Roger Federer, why fans don’t love Djokovic, the greatness of Simona Halep, and Serena Williams’ continuing quest for her 24th major. Westbrook and OKC (21:36): Why Oklahoma City fell in love with Russell Westbrook, and how we should think about the last decade for the Thunder. Ball Four (42:50): Jim Bouton’s book exposed the underbelly of baseball, but it’s about so much more than ballplayer carousing. Afterballs (55:38): Stefan on Dick Young and Jim Bouton, and Josh on the Cricket World Cup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Josh Levin and Stefan Fatsis talk about how Novak Djokovic and Simona Halep won at Wimbledon. Sam Anderson also joins to discuss Russell Westbrook and the end of an era in Oklahoma City, and John Thorn helps assess Jim Bouton and Bouton’s classic book Ball Four. Wimbledon (01:26): On Novak Djokovic’s incredible win over Roger Federer, why fans don’t love Djokovic, the greatness of Simona Halep, and Serena Williams’ continuing quest for her 24th major. Westbrook and OKC (21:36): Why Oklahoma City fell in love with Russell Westbrook, and how we should think about the last decade for the Thunder. Ball Four (42:50): Jim Bouton’s book exposed the underbelly of baseball, but it’s about so much more than ballplayer carousing. Afterballs (55:38): Stefan on Dick Young and Jim Bouton, and Josh on the Cricket World Cup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A Metsian Podcast enters the 2nd half with a glorious collection of Mets fans gathering to lament the season so far and the season yet to come. Tonight, LIVE at 9pm ET, we are joined by Taryn "The Coop" Cooper, John "Metstradamus" Coppinger, "Mets Daddy" aka John, John "Mets Rewind" Strubel and Stephen "Kranepool Society" Keane. We'll first recap the Home Run Derby win by Pete Alonso and how he and the other Mets, Jacob deGrom and Jeff McNeil, fared in the All-Star game...and Cleveland's flub putting deGrom's face where McNeil's should have been on the scoreboard. Jim Bouton, author of "Ball Four," has passed at age 80. We'll look back on his career and the impact his book had on the culture and the game. The trade deadline is right around the corner and as much as the front office hopes to go on a major run, they have to be realistic with how they approach the hardened deadline with no waiver period in August this time. What to do, what to do? Will even Noah Syndergaard be included with Todd Frazier and Zack Wheeler in the possible moves made? All that plus MUCH MORE! So, join us LIVE at 9pm ET for the latest edition of A Metsian Podcast!
A Metsian Podcast enters the 2nd half with a glorious collection of Mets fans gathering to lament the season so far and the season yet to come. Tonight, LIVE at 9pm ET, we are joined by Taryn "The Coop" Cooper, John "Metstradamus" Coppinger, "Mets Daddy" aka John, John "Mets Rewind" Strubel and Stephen "Kranepool Society" Keane. We'll first recap the Home Run Derby win by Pete Alonso and how he and the other Mets, Jacob deGrom and Jeff McNeil, fared in the All-Star game...and Cleveland's flub putting deGrom's face where McNeil's should have been on the scoreboard. Jim Bouton, author of "Ball Four," has passed at age 80. We'll look back on his career and the impact his book had on the culture and the game. The trade deadline is right around the corner and as much as the front office hopes to go on a major run, they have to be realistic with how they approach the hardened deadline with no waiver period in August this time. What to do, what to do? Will even Noah Syndergaard be included with Todd Frazier and Zack Wheeler in the possible moves made? All that plus MUCH MORE! So, join us LIVE at 9pm ET for the latest edition of A Metsian Podcast!
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Ball Four and Jim Bouton, Million Dollar Coin Flip, Christian Yelich’s pursuit of the first 50-30 season and which combination of power and speed would be most impressive, a baseball scene on Cheers, how the MLB All-Star Game differs from other sports’ all-star games, Bubba Starling and the […]
Rosie tells us of the interesting life of Jim Bouton, a major league pitcher who was probably more famous for his tell-all book about baseball, "Ball Four", than he was as a relatively average major league pitcher. Bouton died Wednesday at the age of 80.
In the first hour, Cliff Avril and Mike "The Gasman" Gastineau, sitting in for Jason Puckett, discuss Cliff and his son going to the ESPY Awards last night in Los Angeles, then Matt "Slickhawk" Mikolas joins the show to set the record straight and predict the Seattle Seahawks record before Gas discusses the sad death of Jim Bouton and his book "Ball Four".
Before speaking with his old friend Scott Miller of Bleacher Report (29:06), Buster talks to Keith Law about his favorite moments from the Futures Game as well as Jim Bouton's impact on baseball (2:14). Plus, "The Numbers Game" with Sarah Langs (23:06) and "One Last Thing" on the life of Bouton (52:05).
:19 - The late Jim Bouton was a former Yankee pitcher who had fallen on hard times with injuries, so he turned to becoming an author. His 1970 book, Ball Four, caused a stir because he told many tales out of school about his fellow players, and he was essentially blackballed by the league. Ray and Tony talked about the legacy of Ball Four, which related in a lot of ways 35 years later with Jose Canseco’s Juiced. 10:09 - The Bridgestone Senior Players tournament is going on at Firestone Country Club, and many spectators will look at the greens with jealousy, wishing their lawns looked that good. Our master gardener Jeanne Poremski talked about manicuring lawns in this warm summer, and she answered listener questions, as well. 17:27 - What films would be on your Mount Rushmore? A classic film? A gripping drama? A knee-slapping comedy? The panel shared their favorite flicks.
Adam and Joe, heard weekdays 3-7 on 99.9 The Fan. On this edition of the show Lauren Brownlow sits in for Joe. She and Adam discuss the notice of allegations the NCAA sent to N.C. State, Serena Williams moving to her 11th Wimbledon final, the Chicago White Sox extending protective netting from foul pole to foul pole, and Russell Westbrook's future. Also, Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe joins the show to discuss the death of "Ball Four" author, Jim Bouton and why it didn't work with Kyrie Irving as a Celtic.
Ben Maller calms the nerves of fellow Clipper fans by explaining why Kawhi Leonard will be around much longer than the 3 years of his deal. Wrestling legend Rusev calls in to give Ben flack for forgetting to invite him to the studio during Rusev's time in Los Angeles. Ben pays his respects to Jim Bouton, who passed away Wednesday, and discusses the significance of his famous tell-all "Ball Four." Ben responds to James Ennis' claims that the 76ers are the clear favorite in the East now that Kawhi is gone, and takes a look at the possibility of the MLB adopting the "steal of first." Plus, the latest editions of Third Degree and Ask Ben! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
Kevin and Thom opened with Josh Norman's running with bulls in Pamplona. They talked Skins' playoff chances in 2019 and Albert Haynesworth's plea for a kidney. Kevin tripled down on Russell Westbrook and Thom talked about Jim Bouton's passing and his legendary book, "Ball Four". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On April 11, 1969, The Seattle Pilots debuted for their first home game at Sick's Stadium. Gus Bell fires a complete game 7-0 shutout over the White Sox as the paid attendance of 14,000+ watches on a perfect Seattle day. The story of the Pilot's though is a deep complicated one and in this podcast, we will discuss - Ball Four, William Daley's Role, how the ballpark although clearly unusable for Major League Baseball was not the main issue and neither was the attendance. How two bids to buy the team failed to keep them in Seattle and how they were the only team in MLB history to go bankrupt. Also - the website celebrating the Pilots. Or, watch a promotional 17-minute videothe Pilots produced about their season-including footage of opening day at Sicks.)
Mike Silva wraps up opening weekend by featuring former Mets closer Skip Lockwood who talks about his book “Insight Pitch: My Life as a Major League Closer.” Skip remembers the late former teams Ed Charles and Rusty Staub, talks about his transition as a starting pitcher to a reliever and being part of the subject of the book “Ball Four” as a member of the Seattle Pilots. Mike talks about opening weekend and his early observations of the 2018 club. He also reiterates the importance of Matt Harvey’s first start and the upcoming series with the Nationals in DC.
Mike Silva kicks wraps up opening weekend by featuring former Mets closer Skip Lockwood who talks about his book “Insight Pitch: My Life as a Major League Closer.” Skip remembers the late former teamates Ed Charles and Rusty Staub, talks about his transition as a starting pitcher to a reliever and being part of the subject of the book “Ball Four” as a member of the Seattle Pilots. Mike talks about opening weekend and his early observations of the 2018 club. He also reiterates the importance of Matt Harvey’s first start and the upcoming series with the Nationals in DC.
Just in time for Major League Baseball opening day, we revisit another What We Want to See segment now that we've seen it. This time, Mike saw an episode of "Ball Four," the baseball sitcom based on Jim Bouton's book of the same name. Will the players really spend "A Quiet Day at the Iroquois Hotel"? Will their antics live up to the real ones Bouton described in his book? Will that one guy ever go to the bathroom? Find out on What We Saw!
I met David Hallberg at the midtown offices of the American Ballet Theater, where they'd set aside a conference room for us to talk about his new memoir, A Body of Work. It's about his relentless quest for perfection, from his earliest days as a ballet student in Arizona to his role as a principal dancer at ABT (and as the first American to hold a position of comparative stature at the Bolshoi's dance company). But it's also about realizing that, even though he thought he was pushing himself to the limit, he was really holding himself back—and about how a career-threatening injury drove him not just into physical therapy but into a complete overhaul of his emotional approach to his craft. As I was reading A Body of Work, I started thinking Jim Bouton's classic baseball memoir, Ball Four. Both books are by young men who've dedicated themselves to their field but find themselves coming face-to-face with the prospect of no longer being able to do the thing they love, far sooner than they'd ever anticipated. Fortunately, Hallberg was able to make the comeback, and as this episode goes online he's approaching the first anniversary of his return to the stage.
Controversial hockey star offers a revealing look at high living and bad behavior in the NHL—coupled with behind-the-scenes glitter of celebrity and media nightlife As one of the NHL’s most polarizing players, Sean Avery turned the rules of professional hockey on its head. For thirteen seasons, Avery played for some of the toughest, most storied franchises in the league, including the Detroit Red Wings, the Los Angeles Kings, and the New York Rangers, making his mark in each city as a player that was sometimes loved, often despised, but always controversial. In Ice Capades, Avery takes his trademark candidness about the world of pro hockey and does for it what Jim Bouton's game-changing Ball Four did for baseball. Sean Avery discusses: · Every aspect of an athlete’s life, from what they do with their money and nights off to how they stay sharp and competitive in the league. · How while playing the talented villain in the NHL, Avery broke far away from his on-ice character in the off-season. · Some of the unexpected and unprecedented roles that Avery inhabited, including Vogue intern, fashion model, advertising executive, restauranteur, and gay rights advocate. Love him or hate him, Sean Avery changed the way professional hockey is played today. Ice Capades offers a rare, unvarnished glimpse into the world of 21st century hockey through the eyes of one of its most original and memorable players. About the Author Sean Avery is a Canadian former professional hockey player. During his time with the NHL, Avery played left wing for the Detroit Red Wings, Los Angeles Kings, Dallas Stars, and New York Rangers. In addition to hockey, Avery has also worked as a Vogue intern, a model, an advertising executive, and a restaurateur. He is married to model Hilary Rhoda and lives in New York. Twitter: @imseanavery / Instagram: @imseanavery / Snapchat @seanavery
Special guest star Harrison drops back in the pocket and smashes a home run right down Broadway! That’s a 12-0 lead for the What Happending podcast over the Mighty Fightin' 15,000 meterers! Laugh tracks, cry tracks, traffic obsessions, Ball Four, catering, Nick Kroll, Latin, the Knicks chances at taking home the hardware, and Bus Lady are also discussed.
Nobody’s in Right Field podcast, Episode 1 (recorded 1/23/17) RUNDOWN: (00:00) Intro (2:00) Why we are doing this thing in the first place (16:53) Justin Verlander named Opening Day starting pitcher (23:32) R.I.P. Yordano Ventura (40:06) Let’s move the save the Oakland A’s and move them out of Oakland (59:58) Quiz time (1:13:04) Curiosity: pitch counts; reading Ball Four
NASCAR driver P.M. Stevens’s talks summer road trip tips. News News News: Johnny Manziel Sued for Wrecking a Hollywood Mansion. Sketches: NASCAR star P.M. Stevens Teaches Us How to Have the Perfect Summer Road Trip, Coach Ten Talks Coaching Luminosity for TBS’s ELEAGUE ‘Counter Strike’ Tournament. Wide World of Weird Sports: Ball Four (the book).
El podcast de béisbol de Sportsmadeinusa.com y As.com. Comenzamos con la actualidad con Fernando Díaz (@FernandoDiazMLB). Hablamos de Max Scherzer, el duelo Nationals-Mets, la crisis de los Royals, la última temporada de David Ortiz, la mega-pelea entre Rangers y Blue Jays, las mejores series de la semana y una duda de un oyente sobre cómo funcionan los abonos y tickets en los estadios. La segunda sección la centramos en hablar sobre el softball, con Ramiro Blasco (@RBlascoMLB). Origen del softball, diferencias con el béisbol, sus diferentes variantes, el softball femenino, mejores ligas internacionales y cómo se configura el panorama internacional por selecciones nacionales. También contestamos una duda de un oyente sobre la MLB en Argentina. Cerramos con un fragmento del mejor libro de la historia sobre béisbol, ‘Ball Four’. Agradecimientos a Fernando Díaz, As.com, Ramiro Blasco, Luis Alberto Casado e Iván Mateos. Podéis enviarnos comentarios, sugerencias, preguntas, etc, vía nota de voz (no texto) por WhatsApp a +34 665 10 56 55 . Los pondremos en el programa, así que poneos guap@s.
WorldCat is the largest online catalog in the world, accessing the collections of more than 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories. Using the catalog, a subject search of particular sports turns up the following tally of book titles in the world’s libraries: Boxing: 5164, Hockey: 7083, Cricket: 10,881, Horse Racing: 11,933, Basketball: 12,875, Golf: 16,660, Football: 18,592, Soccer: 19,933, Baseball: 31,206 That’s a lot of baseball books. Fortunately, Ron Kaplan has cut that number down to something a bit more manageable in 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die (University of Nebraska Press, 2013). As host of the Baseball Bookshelf blog and bibliography editor of the Society for American Baseball Research, Ron has read a few thousand books on the sport, give or take a couple hundred. His book doesn’t rank them. As he explains in the interview, it was hard enough to pare down his list from 1001 to 501. Instead, he offers an annotated guide, with books grouped by subject. There are instructional books and novels, data-based analyses and tributes to ballparks, biographies of the great players and memoirs of ordinary fans. Ron includes the familiar classics, like Mark Harris’ Bang the Drum Slowly and Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, and makes the case for books that deserve the status of a classic, such as Michael Bishop’s novel Brittle Innings. And Ron reveals a trove of older, overlooked gems: a 1915 instructional manual for college players, Bob Wood’s 1988 guide to ballpark food, and a compilation of Charles Schulz’s baseball-themed Peanuts comics (more than 600 strips when the book was published in 1977). Ron’s expert guide will help in your choices of summer baseball reading. Indeed, you’ll be eager to start on your baseball list after putting down Ron’s book. That is, if you can put it down. Ron’s thoughtful choice of titles and his insightful summaries of the selections make this not only a useful introduction to the baseball library but also a worthy–and enjoyable–addition to its shelves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
WorldCat is the largest online catalog in the world, accessing the collections of more than 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories. Using the catalog, a subject search of particular sports turns up the following tally of book titles in the world’s libraries: Boxing: 5164, Hockey: 7083, Cricket: 10,881, Horse Racing: 11,933, Basketball: 12,875, Golf: 16,660, Football: 18,592, Soccer: 19,933, Baseball: 31,206 That’s a lot of baseball books. Fortunately, Ron Kaplan has cut that number down to something a bit more manageable in 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die (University of Nebraska Press, 2013). As host of the Baseball Bookshelf blog and bibliography editor of the Society for American Baseball Research, Ron has read a few thousand books on the sport, give or take a couple hundred. His book doesn’t rank them. As he explains in the interview, it was hard enough to pare down his list from 1001 to 501. Instead, he offers an annotated guide, with books grouped by subject. There are instructional books and novels, data-based analyses and tributes to ballparks, biographies of the great players and memoirs of ordinary fans. Ron includes the familiar classics, like Mark Harris’ Bang the Drum Slowly and Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, and makes the case for books that deserve the status of a classic, such as Michael Bishop’s novel Brittle Innings. And Ron reveals a trove of older, overlooked gems: a 1915 instructional manual for college players, Bob Wood’s 1988 guide to ballpark food, and a compilation of Charles Schulz’s baseball-themed Peanuts comics (more than 600 strips when the book was published in 1977). Ron’s expert guide will help in your choices of summer baseball reading. Indeed, you’ll be eager to start on your baseball list after putting down Ron’s book. That is, if you can put it down. Ron’s thoughtful choice of titles and his insightful summaries of the selections make this not only a useful introduction to the baseball library but also a worthy–and enjoyable–addition to its shelves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
WorldCat is the largest online catalog in the world, accessing the collections of more than 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories. Using the catalog, a subject search of particular sports turns up the following tally of book titles in the world’s libraries: Boxing: 5164, Hockey: 7083, Cricket: 10,881, Horse Racing: 11,933, Basketball: 12,875, Golf: 16,660, Football: 18,592, Soccer: 19,933, Baseball: 31,206 That’s a lot of baseball books. Fortunately, Ron Kaplan has cut that number down to something a bit more manageable in 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die (University of Nebraska Press, 2013). As host of the Baseball Bookshelf blog and bibliography editor of the Society for American Baseball Research, Ron has read a few thousand books on the sport, give or take a couple hundred. His book doesn’t rank them. As he explains in the interview, it was hard enough to pare down his list from 1001 to 501. Instead, he offers an annotated guide, with books grouped by subject. There are instructional books and novels, data-based analyses and tributes to ballparks, biographies of the great players and memoirs of ordinary fans. Ron includes the familiar classics, like Mark Harris’ Bang the Drum Slowly and Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, and makes the case for books that deserve the status of a classic, such as Michael Bishop’s novel Brittle Innings. And Ron reveals a trove of older, overlooked gems: a 1915 instructional manual for college players, Bob Wood’s 1988 guide to ballpark food, and a compilation of Charles Schulz’s baseball-themed Peanuts comics (more than 600 strips when the book was published in 1977). Ron’s expert guide will help in your choices of summer baseball reading. Indeed, you’ll be eager to start on your baseball list after putting down Ron’s book. That is, if you can put it down. Ron’s thoughtful choice of titles and his insightful summaries of the selections make this not only a useful introduction to the baseball library but also a worthy–and enjoyable–addition to its shelves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Our Pastor brings a message regarding Fathers utilizing passages from Romans 8 and from the book Ball Four by Jim Boulton. Reading several sections from Jim Boulton’s story, as well as sharing some of his memories of Pastor Harvey Meek. Elaborating on how as time went by they grew in understanding each other better in certain ways. This message hits home on so many levels. Pun intended!
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