Long-time followers of this blog know of my love for the NPR news quiz, Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!
Once in a while they’ll have some baseball-related topic or guest, as was the case this week in the opening segment, “Who’s Bill This Time?” (The transcript is as accurate as I care to spend the time. making it.)
Guest host Josh Gondelman, sitting in for Peter Sagal: You’re next quote is from a professional athlete named Manny Machado.
Official judge and scorekeeper Bill Kurtis: “I’m going down in the history books!”
Gondelman: Machado was celebrating that he is the first player ever to violate new rules designed to make what sport move faster?
Guest: Is that baseball?
Gondelman: It is baseball. That’s right. Major League Baseball announced they’re taking steps to make the games shorter, including a pitch clock. But don’t worry, baseball purists; while the game is shorter, it’s still really boring.
Alonzo Bodden: I will say that I grew up a baseball fan, so when you grow up with baseball, it’s not as boring as people who just try to watch it and don’t get it. But the pitch clock has sped the game up so much. They had a video side-by-side [where] they completed half an inning. They got three outs in the time it took one guy to throw one pitch.
Gondelman: That’s nice.
Mo Rocca: It basically looks like a Benny Hill skit now. (Hums the song). [And] they need to pick up the pace. What’s this business about a seventh-inning stretch? Come on, there’s just two more innings. Stretch afterwards.
Gondelman: They’ve replaced the seventh-inning stretch with a sixth-inning “keep it going, keep it moving.”
Maeve Higgins: Are women allowed to play? Because you know sometimes women can be a little more efficient ’cause they have to get back to the kitchen.
Rocca: They can make the hot dogs.
Gondelman: That was a real zig and a zag, Maeve.
Rocca: She really covered every constituency there. You are so electable.
Gondelman: She got the Ron DeSantis voters and the Disney supporters on her side.
Bodden: I wonder if there’s a rule against women playing or if they just don’t play? I don’t know if there’s a rule.
Higgins: I guess there’s probably not a rule. It’s just one of those unspoken things.
Gondelman: Well, you saw that documentary about they had their own league but you’re not allowed to cry.
Manny Machado gets an automatic strike called on him 🥴
(via @MrMatthewCFB)pic.twitter.com/IO1gy6ttg2
— B/R Walk-Off (@BRWalkoff) February 24, 2023
My fascination with Wait Wait and baseball began way back in 2009 when Moose Skowron was the guest for the “Not My Job” segment. His recollection of certain events during one particular game was so precise that it made me wonder and I did a little digging, based on one of my favorites, Rob Neyer’s Big Book of Baseball Legends: The Truth, The Lies, and Everything Else. The results are here.
Here are some other Wait Wait entries. You’ll notice there haven’t been many posts over the last few years. That’s probably because I don’t listen to the show regularly these days, since my podcast time is curtailed by a very short commute to work.
Wait wait, Mr. President-elect (12/29/2008)
The latest Wait Wait baseball moment (7/20/09)
Wait Wait, tell me again (2/1/11)
Wait Wait, Don’t Taft Me (1/24/12)
National Pastime Radio: Wait Wait, don’t eat that! (5/28/13)
National Pastime Radio: Wait Wait on A-Rod (8/7/13)
National Pastime Radio: Doris Kearns Goodwin on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me (1/21/14)
National Pastime Radio: Talkin’ baseball with Amy Schumer on Wait Wait (4/7/14)
National Pastime Radio: Wait Wait on the future of baseball (8/4/14)
National Pastime Radio: Dick Flavin on Wait Wait (4/21/15)
National Pastime Radio: It must be important; I heard it on Wait Wait (6/23/15)
National Pastime Radio: Wait Wait, Tom Ricketts (9/21/15)
National Pastime Radio: Wait Wait remembers Yogi Berra (10/2/15)
Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me… (11/6/19)
is available on Amazon.com,
Comments on this entry are closed.