True Tales from the Big Leagues By cover art

True Tales from the Big Leagues

By: Martin Coleman
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  • Summary

  • As a kid, I fell asleep with a transistor radio tuned to Oakland A’s baseball games almost 2,800 miles away.


    Listening to those games that originated from what might as well have been the moon for a kid in South Carolina fascinated me.


    It was a time when information was garnered from the back of baseball cards bought from the 7-11 with every penny of my allowance.


    I still have thousands of those cards that my son and I occasionally reference.


    The images on those cards are often hilarious, but the information on the back was the gold.


    Far-off birthplaces, remote minor league cities I’d never heard of and quirky statistics or oddities about the player were for me like being an archaeologist and discovering an unknown sarcophagus of an Egyptian King.


    I was on a hunt for the unusual and unexpected and I’ve been hooked on the weird and unusual in baseball ever since.


    My son and I bonded over baseball, but more than that, we’ve bonded over the weirdness of baseball…the player that hit .247 for four consecutive years, the 11-walk complete game debut, or the pitcher that won 108 games in 2 seasons...


    Today we find these stories online and we share our discoveries with each other…it’s almost become a friendly competition to one-up each other…And now we want to share our stories with you.


    They’re silly, fascinating, weird, quirky and a lot of times unbelievable…


    …these are True Tales of the Big Leagues..




    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
    Martin Coleman
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Episodes
  • E8: Twelve Minutes and Thirty Seconds

    E8: Twelve Minutes and Thirty Seconds
    Jun 5 2024

    Most baseball players spend thousands of hours practicing, playing and learning about baseball on their way to the to the Major Leagues, IF they’re even good enough and lucky enough to be one of the tiny fraction of players that make it to the Big Leagues.


    Some become stars and/or stick around for 10 or more years, living out their childhood fantasies.


    Some go up and down between AAA and the Big Leagues and of course, there's everything in between.


    Today, Parker and I talk about a pitcher whose dream came true on a rainy June evening at Citi Field in New York in 2010.


    Jim Leyland once said “15 minutes in the Majors means you’re a great baseball player”, when describing how hard it was to make it to the Big Leagues.


    That rainy day in New York, Jay Sborz fell about 2 and a half minutes short of that 15-minute mark as he debuted for the Detroit Tigers and the dream he had worked for most of his life came true, fell apart and ended, all within 12 minutes and 30 seconds…


    Sources for this episode are


    Baseball-Reference.com (Jay Sborz)

    YouTube.com (Sborz enters the game around the 2:09:00 mark)

    “Where Nobody Knows Your Name”


    True Tales of the Big Leagues is a Seldom Used Reserve Podcast and is narrated by Marty Coleman and Parker Coleman.


    Co-executive producers are Parker Coleman and Marty Coleman.





    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    11 mins
  • E7: The Weirdest Game

    E7: The Weirdest Game
    May 22 2024

    One of the things Parker and I like to do is meander through baseball-reference.com in our free time. OK, we're not very exciting.


    But every once in a while we come across a gem like the one that took place on July 6, 1916 between the Phillies and Reds.


    It started as a blowout, with the Reds taking a 10-0 lead. Then the 9th inning happened.


    Parker found this one and he tells the story of what he believes is the weirdest game he's heard of.




    Sources for this episode:


    Baseball-Reference.com


    True Tales of the Big Leagues is a Seldom Used Reserve Podcast and is narrated by Marty Coleman and this week mostly Parker Coleman.


    Co-executive producers are Parker Coleman and Marty Coleman.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
    Show more Show less
    29 mins
  • E6: The Unlikeliest Perfect Game

    E6: The Unlikeliest Perfect Game
    May 8 2024

    Phlip Humber was the third overall pick in the 2004 MLB draft, but things didn't go as planned. He spent years in the minors and was released twice before making the White Sox in 2011.


    Then, on April 21, 2012, in Seattle in his second start of the season, Humber did something only 20 pitchers in MLB history had accomplished at that time.


    25 of the outs were relatively routine. One required a leaping grab on the warning track. The last out is the story of the game.


    This is the story of the unlikeliest perfect game ever and Humber's journey that followed.


    Sources for this episode:

    MLB.com (includes video of final out).

    Baseball-Reference.com

    Wikipedia.com - Philip Humber's Perfect Game


    True Tales of the Big Leagues is a Seldom Used Reserve Podcast and is narrated by Marty Coleman and sometimes Parker Coleman.


    Co-executive producers are Parker Coleman and Marty Coleman.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
    Show more Show less
    14 mins
Politics & Government Baseball & Softball
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