Here's your primmer on Beef Boys, Baseball's end, Roger Angel and Super Pretzels.

Williams asked to deal and Mike Trout hypotheticals, waiting for the perfect bat from a volcanic

corruption. Ladies and gentlemen, the Effectively Wild introduction.

Hello and welcome to episode 2217 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from

Van Graffs presented by our Patreon supporters,

I am Belenburg of the Ringer.

Meg Raleigh is on vacation, and while she was gone, Fangrass turned on a paywall.

When Meg is away, the readers do pay. Won't she be surprised when she gets

home? No, don't worry, she was not unaware of the paywall. Nor did she time her vacation to

coincide with the erection of this paywall? It's pretty permeable, as walls go. Lots of free articles. Everything else is still free, including this podcast, which continues in Meg's temporary absence. But when Meg is away, it takes a nation of millions to replace her and so as usual I have a few

guests for a few segments today. Later on this episode I will be joined by

frequent Statblast correspondent Ryan Nelson who will be here to do some in-person

Stat blasting. I will also be joined on the next segment by Mojo Hill, who is a sports

reporter who covered Derek Bender, whose name has been in the news this week he

covered Derek Bender last year when he was in the Cape Cod League. This is the

Twins Minor Leaguer I guess I should now say former Twins Minor Leaguer, I guess I should now say former Twins

minor leaguer who evidently gave away upcoming pitches to his

opponent so that the season would end sooner and that his team would not qualify for the playoffs.

This has been a big story, but wanted to dive a little deeper into who Bender is or has been,

and we got some good background on him.

But first and foremost, I'm joined by a

pal staff writer for CBS Sports, RJ Anderson. Hello, RJ. Hey, how you

...