Wednesday, November 27, 2024
I’ve been doing sports-related podcasts since July, and I’ve heard some interesting stories from the 11 people I’ve interviewed in my basement “studio.” I’ve even started putting the podcasts on YouTube myself, potentially saving me hundreds of dollars a month.
When I started podcasting five months ago, I knew nothing about the nuts and bolts of the popular format. Yes, I’d listened to podcasts produced by the Iowa Cubs and one of the late Ron Santo’s sons. When the company I worked with to publish my latest book suggested I set up a podcast, I agreed knowing I’d have lots of questions.
Fortunately, the podcast app called Riverside is relatively easy to use. I can set it up on my laptop computer at home, invite guests via email and carry on one-on-one conversations for as long as I want. I try to limit my podcasts to an hour at most because I know a lot of people have short attention spans these days. There is a way, however, to produce clips or much shorter versions of the podcasts to put on Facebook, Instagram, etc. to tease people. One full-length video can generate as many as 12 or 13 clips.
To get my feet wet so to speak, my first guest was my brother Jeffrey Dunn, an author of some note in the world of fiction and poetry. I followed that up by talking to Sam Bernabe, president and general manager of the Iowa Cubs; John Liepa, an Iowa baseball expert with an extensive collection of Iowa baseball memorabilia; Randy Wehofer, vice president and assistant general manager of the Iowa Cubs; Alex Cohen, the I-Cubs’ broadcaster; Judy Borwick Renoux, a former employee of the Iowa Oaks; former major-league outfielder/first baseman Jim Marshall; Yankee fan Carmen Lampe Zeitler; former major-league outfielder Byron Browne; former major-league pitcher Rich Nye; and fellow author Tim Grover. I also was a guest on psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Bittker’s podcast from Reno, Nevada.
Baseball evolution
So far, the podcasts include a glimpse of the future as well as the past. For instance, Bernabe discusses the evolution of tickets to baseball games and the ticket offices at stadiums such as Principal Park. In the not-too-distant future, “you’ll have something in your pocket, walk through the gates, go through security and we’ll know you’re here,” he predicts. The ticket windows will be transformed to customer service windows. “It’ll be digital to the point we know a lot about you,” he added, citing how technology is used elsewhere. For those of us who prefer paper tickets, that may be hard to accept.
In another clip, Wehofer discusses his role as the radio broadcaster in the movie Sugar that was filmed in Burlington in 2007 while he was working for the Burlington Bees, a single-A affiliate in the Midwest League at the time. The movie about a 19-year-old product of a Dominican baseball academy trying to make it in professional baseball in the U.S. came out in theaters in 2009. The movie was written and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, an Oakland Athletics’ fan from the San Francisco Bay Area.
When asked about the impact of the pitch clock in triple-A baseball, Cohen says, “I love not having a three-hour 45-minute game on get-away day.” The pitch clock has shortened games by about 30 minutes on average. Speaking about another rule that requires relief pitchers to pitch to at least three hitters, the veteran broadcaster believes the rule affects situational relievers more than anyone else. Before the rule was implemented, situational relief pitchers often faced only one batter.
First major-league start
Nye remembers his first major-league start against the St. Louis Cardinals to this day. “I had a shutout going into the eighth inning,” the former Cub left-hander says. “I got a couple of men on base. Mike Shannon came up. I threw him what I thought was a really good pitch on the outside part of the plate and he lofted the ball over the fence in left field for a home run.” While Nye’s major-league career lasted only five years, he became a noted avian veterinarian after his playing days.
Former outfielder Byron Browne had four teammates with the Cubs and Cardinals who eventually were inducted into the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York: Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Fergie Jenkins and Lou Brock. When people hear that, “they go, well, what happened to you? You know what I tell them? I was a player to be named later.”
Former major-league first baseman and manager Jim Marshall says computer-assisted balls and strikes calls have their advantages. He saw the system used in the Arizona Fall League two years ago. “I thought it was outstanding,” Marshall says. “It went pretty smoothly.” The home plate umpire would get a signal from a device in his ear whether the pitch was a ball or strike, then he would physically make the call. Baseball people I’ve talked to, however, don’t believe home plate umpires will be replaced entirely by technology. They still have other duties to perform such as calling plays at the plate, calling balks by the pitcher, calling catcher’s interference and cleaning the plate with a small broom, etc.
Early days with the Oaks
Borwick Renoux recalled an experience that made me chuckle. The retired teacher worked in the Iowa Oaks’ ticket office when she attended Iowa State University in Ames in the 1970s. After counting the money from a game’s ticket sales, she would put the money in a big a canvas bag and climb on the back of a security guard’s motorcycle. Next, “he’d drive me down to a night deposit [at a bank] and then I was done for the night,” she says. “It was a little unusual.”
Lampe Zeitler still remembers when she hit a pitch from a 9-year-old pitcher over the fence at the Little League field in her hometown of Mount Pleasant in southeast Iowa. She was managing a Little League team at the time, which was unusual for a woman to do. (Her assistant was none other than Tom Vilsack of Mount Pleasant, who later became governor of Iowa and secretary of agriculture under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.) Later, she became the first female president of the Little League board of directors in Mount Pleasant.
Liepa watched the Iowa Cubs win their only American Association championship in extra innings on September 15, 1993. Tuffy Rhodes’ home run off the Nashville Sounds’ James Baldwin in the 11th inning accounted for the winning run. The I-Cubs took two out of the first three games at Nashville, then lost two of the next three at Sec Taylor Stadium. “The crowd wasn’t big because school had started, but they just went nuts,” Liepa recalls.
I’ve also enjoyed reminiscing myself. When I talked to Browne, I recalled watching Billy Williams hit a game-winning homer in the 10th inning off the Cardinals’ Bob Gibson on Opening Day in Chicago in 1971. What a day that was for Cub fans. It took some of the sting off from falling out of the pennant race in September 1969. I and 40,000 other fans nearly froze to death but the game was worth it!
In my conversation with fellow author Tim Grover of Pleasant Hill, I recounted hearing about Babe Ruth hit the final home runs of his career at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh in 1935. My uncle Howard Dunn was there and wrote his oldest son, Jack, a note about seeing history made that day in the Steel City.
Holiday break coming up
I hope you find the podcasts as interesting as I do, even if you’re not a big baseball fan. Hearing former major leaguers like Brown, Marshall and Nye talk about their experiences in major-league baseball are fascinating. (Marshall also played in Japan after his playing days in the U.S.) Bernabe, Wehofer and Cohen offer insights from their perspectives as front office personnel and broadcasters or former broadcasters. Liepa’s knowledge as an Iowa baseball historian and historian in general is invaluable. Borwick Renoux’s insights give the listener an idea what it was like to work with the first triple-a team in Des Moines, the Iowa Oaks. Lampe Zeitler’s love of the New York Yankees shines through her podcast even though she grew up in Mount Pleasant, not New York City.
To listen to my Pug, Fireball and Company podcast, go to https://www.youtube.com/@SteveDunn-o9i. I plan on taking a break for the holidays in December, but I’ll resume the podcasts in January 2025.
By the way, I plan on participating in a meeting via Zoom with the central Illinois chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research on Thursday, December 12. Two days later, I’ll be at a book fair at In Tandem Arts & Authors Gallery and Bookstore in The Plaza at 3rd and Walnut in downtown Des Moines. I’ll have autographed copies of my latest book, ‘Pug,’ ‘Fireball,’ and Company: 116 Years of Professional Baseball in Des Moines, Iowa, for sale. You can find more information about the book and myself at https://pugfireballandcompany.com.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
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