- [Ryan] Seth, do you know that meme
of the guy with the dominoes?
It's used anytime someone wants to communicate like,
this really small thing led to this giant thing
and they would otherwise not be connected.
- [Seth] I do, and I am very fond of that meme.
- So this story is a little bit like that meme.
- Oh, I'm thrilled to hear it then.
- I'm going to start with the littlest domino.
In the sport of baseball, you need
to use a bat made of wood, right?
- [Seth] Sure.
- Pretty simple, like the most basic equipment rule.
The actual rule is that,
"the bat shall be a smooth round stick,
"not more than 2.61 inches in diameter
"at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length,
"and the bat shall be one piece of solid wood."
- Hmm, and they don't specify what type of wood,
'cause I know there's like ash bats,
maple maybe. - Right.
It just needs to be one solid piece of wood.
- So you could just hop out there
with a stick of balsa and just.
- If you, if you roughly carved a stick of balsa wood
to these really strangely exact dimensions,
yeah, you could do it.
- Cool.
- They also later have a rule in the rule book about
what a bat should not be.
It says, a batter is out for illegal action when,
"he uses or attempts to use a bat that in
"the umpire's judgment has been altered or tampered with
"in such a way to improve the distance factor
"or cause an unusual reaction on the baseball."
- It's funny, 'cause it does leave room for you
to make the bat worse.
You could fill the bat with vanilla pudding,
and if the umpire is like, well that doesn't
make it any better, then yeah, go for it.
- Now, what players have done because they think
it will help them hit ball farther, is replaced some of
that wood with not wood.
That's the next domino, right?
We know of this as corking your bat.
A lot of people think that corking a bat because it makes
it lighter, it means that you can swing it faster.
A lighter bat would mean that you can delay your swing
by like a fraction of a second.
The whole thing feels like more trouble than it's worth.
Can we agree on that?
- We can.
I've always wondered like how do you even go
about corking a bat?
Is there a guy that you call to do that?
By definition, the guy who does that is kind of sleazy too.
So you might, you might not be getting
the best quality of craftsmanship.
- Yeah, if you're getting your bat illegally corked,
you're probably just taking it to like a Home Depot
or like a guy you know who's got the tools in the shed.
Our generation's greatest scientists, and by that
I mean the MythBusters, actually did test the theory
of whether a corked, hollowed out bat that's been replaced
or modified in some way is better for hitting baseballs
farther, and what they found was actually that
the sheer act of corking the bat destroys
the structural integrity of the bat and makes it worse.
So the whole argument, and this is now,
we're at the next domino, why do we need this rule?
Like, is the, is this rule necessary when like,
let them modify the bats if it just means
that they're just gonna screw themselves over.
- Yeah, and based on the text of that rule,
if the umpire happens to be a MythBusters fan,
they might see that you cork their bat and be like, eh,
it doesn't improve the effectiveness of the bat so godspeed.
- In fact, you're making things, you're making
your life harder, buddy, so go ahead.
- Yeah, enjoy.
- There's no rule that says you can't show up to the plate
with your shoes tied together because no one would do that
because it would make things harder for you.
- Except me, and that's why they won't let me play baseball,
'cause I'm the bad boy of baseball.
- [Ryan] That's why you were famously were cut
from the New York Yankees.
- [Seth] Mmhmm, no regrets.
- So, keep all of this in mind as I take you
through the following anecdote.
- What domino are we on now, like kind of one
of the meatier boys, right?
- We're sort of in the meatier domino.
So it's 1994.
Cleveland is playing the White Sox
at Comiskey Park in Chicago.
Cleveland has on their team a guy named Albert Belle
and he is corkin' all of his bats.
He's just a well-known cheater, especially among his team,
and then later it would come out that he was just like
kind of a sleazy dude, right?
So in the first inning of this game, the White Sox manager,
whose name is Gene Lamont, he summons umpire Dave Phillips,
and he goes, look, we think that this guy's bat is corked,
and he asked for it to be inspected right then and there,
which is also allowed in the MLB rule book.
You can stop play and be like, I think this guy's equipment
is helping him cheat in some way,
and I'd like you to check it out.
So they do that, and they're looking at the bat
and they're like, eh, it's kind of suspect,
but we're going to keep playing the game.
They take the bat and they put it in the officials'
locker room slash office in the clubhouse at Comiskey Park,
and they put it in a locker and they are like, okay, great.
Let's test it later, and then the league can decide like,
what kind of penalty or whatever they want to dole out on,
on our friend Albert Belle.
So Cleveland is like right on the bubble for making it
into the playoffs, right?
Like they kind of need Albert Belle to have any hope
of making it into the playoff, and if he gets suspended
or whatever because of this bat,
that's bad news for everybody.
Over in the Cleveland dugout, a relief pitcher by the name
of Jason Grimsley starts to put the pieces together.
He comes up with a master plan and now we're starting to get
into the really bigger domino here because now we have
an actual law-breaking heist. (police siren wailing)
Jason Grimsley goes back inside.
He puts on some tennis sneakers and some gloves
and he grabs his teammate, Paul Sorrento,
who plays first base, grabs his bat, 'cause it looks similar
to Albert Belle's bat, and then he climbs into
the drop ceiling of the clubhouse.
- Yeah, my guy's gotta be careful.
That's often asbestos.
- Particularly in a somewhat dated place like Comiskey Park.
- Yeah.
- He pulls a full-on Mission Impossible heist to get
into the officials' locker room.
At one point he claims that he thought he found
the officials' locker room and he takes a peek
and he sees a groundskeeper in there,
like enjoying a coffee break or whatever,
(groundskeeper gasping)
and gives him one of these.
- It'd be funny if he popped in there, he's like,
this must be it, swaps out a bat for like a rake.
Like, I guess this is it, and leaves.
- Right, yeah, and Albert Belle has a hose now.
(Seth laughing)
So he continues on his little, his, his little
thievery heist and he finds the locker room.
He climbs down a refrigerator.
He finds the locker with the bat in it.
He replaces Albert Belle's bat with Paul Sorrento's bat,
sneaks back into the dugout.
Jason Grimsley was only climbing around the bowels
of the building for about six innings,
which is like seven hours, I think in baseball time,
and no one was any of the wiser until of course,
the game ended and the officials found
a broken ceiling tile, presumably asbestos-ridden dust
everywhere, shoe prints, like if it's some sort
of old-timey comic book crime, and Paul Sorrento's bat,
and they know it to be Paul Sorrento's bat
because both his bat and Albert Belle's bat
have their names inscribed on them.
(Seth laughing)
- Damn, it sounded like he was doing such a good job.
- So, I disagree with you that he was doing a good-
- I'm saying he worked really hard.
- Okay, so that's, yeah, that's an important distinction,
and that's sort of what is fascinating about this story
to me is because we've already established that corking
your bat is really probably not a big deal.
- Right, and all in service of a microscopic
and possibly negative influence on the pop of a bat
of a guy, Albert Belle was really good at baseball
with or without some crap like that.
- Precisely.
- This is why as a society, we really needed MythBusters.
- What ends up happening, to offer you a quick coda
to the story, is that the league doesn't really
do a whole lot.
They do suspend Albert Belle for 10 days in a suspension
that then gets reduced to seven,
and then Jason Grimsley ended up not getting any
disciplinary action against him at all,
and I think the league in that instance
was more embarrassed that it happened.
From what he has said in interviews, they asked him
not to talk about it until his career was over,
which he respected, and the whole reason we're talking
about this now is because he gave an interview where he gave
the details of the story after he was done playing baseball.
- I see.
So they bought his silence and ultimately like,
his shame is the real punishment
that he got caught that easily.
It's like, you know, like my mom found a lighter
in my pocket once when she was doing the laundry
and she didn't get me in trouble.
She just put the lighter on my desk and I,
I got the message.
I was embarrassed.
- It's that old line,
I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed.