Brilliant Reader Questions!

Time for a few Brilliant Reader Questions, and a new kind of Brilliant Reader Challenge! But first, a few items…

For you free readers out there, over the next couple days you may get an email that looks like this (some of you may have already gotten it):

This is a real thing. Apparently, Substack is giving out a month-long, free subscription to JoeBlogs to free readers… I think the deal is that they’re trying to get more people to download the app. It’s obviously and totally your call whether you want to download the app and get a free month’s worth of my ramblings, but I did want to let you know that this isn’t spam, it’s an actual thing.

I’m heading to Cherry Hill., N.J., on Monday, Nov., for a cool WHY WE LOVE FOOTBALL event with my friend Chris Willis—head of NFL Films research and one of the most knowledgeable football historians anywhere. This one is going to be so much fun, I’m sure there will be lots of Eagles talk. Tickets here!

Then I’ll come home on Nov. 5 to commemorate “End of these $&#^@ commercials and texts” day, and then I’ll fly up to New York for two events:

• I’ll be at the JCC Rockland in West Nyack, N.Y., at 2 p.m. on Nov. 7. Register for free here.

• I’ll be at the gorgeous Spring Lake Community House for the marvelous Thunder Road Books in Spring Lake, N.J., at 7 p.m. on Nov. 8. Tickets here!

Mike and I recorded our longest-ever PosCast—which is saying something since we’ve been doing the PosCast now for 53 years—and that should be dropping sometime today or tomorrow or sometime soon, depending on our producer Sarah’s ability to get through that much Yankees talk. Sarah is a Yankees fan (yes, the PosCast is produced by a Yankees fan), and I hope she listens long enough to find out that at some point we each talk about the Yankees we actually feel sorry for after their soul-crushing defeat.

She, admittedly, will have to get through a lot of anti-Yankees glee before she gets there, though.

Before we get to some questions, I want to give you a fun challenge. Our pal Tom Tango came up with the idea: We want you to send in your craziest idea for making baseball better. Then, Tom and I—along with a few special guest stars I’m lining up—will rank your ideas based on (A) Creativity; (B) Viability; (C) Effectiveness.

Here’s the key, though: We don’t want sensible ideas. Like, we’re not going to choose ideas that have been kicked around, such as “shorten the season to 154 games,” or “make all playoff series seven games,” or “go to four divisions with the four champions each making the postseason,” or “use an automated strike zone.” It’s not that there’s anything WRONG with those concepts—in fact, I think there’s a whole lot of value to each of them—but that’s not what this is about. This is about truly out-there ideas that MLB would NEVER DO (at least right now) but would potentially make the game more interesting and more fun. Tango calls them “viable insane ideas.”

Here’s a VII idea: What if they just reset the lineup every two innings? This way you’re guaranteed to be at the top of the lineup in the 3rd, 5th, 7th and, most importantly, 9th innings. This way, you would have a whole lot less Alex Verdugo and a whole lot more Aaron Judge, a whole lot less Gavin Lux and a whole lot more Shohei Ohtani, a whole lot less Bo Naylor and a whole lot more José Ramírez, a whole lot less Maikel Garcia and a whole lot more Bobby Witt Jr.!*

*Hold on, I’m being told that Maikel Garcia and his .281 on-base percentage led off all season for the Royals. Stop doing that! I don’t care how many bases he steals!

Point is: This idea might be nuts, it might get you thrown out of the big MLB office faster than an anti-gambling advocate, but it’s fun and interesting and something to talk about.

So, send in your VII ideas! Go crazy, folks, go crazy!

Happy Friday! Just a reminder that Joe Blogs is a reader-supported newsletter, and I’d love and appreciate your support.

Our first Brilliant Reader question comes from Leah: “I miss your Halloween candy rankings. What do you think is the biggest pixifood today?”

Ah, thank you, Leah! Pixifood! Way, way, way back in 2008—my gosh, what a different world it was then—I coined the word “pixifood,” which I defined as “Any food substance that is highly pleasant as a child and tastes shockingly unpleasant once you become an adult.” I am still angry that I have not yet heard from either Merriam or Webster about putting “pixifood” into their little wordbook. I keep checking the mail!

So, I actually have a few thoughts about Halloween that I need to get out there now that another one has passed.

Thought 1: I’m shocked by how many kids do not say “Trick or Treat” when coming to the door. I mean, that used to be half the fun of trick or treating; it was the one time as a little kid when you could make a veiled threat to an adult. I’d say on Thursday three out of every five kids, maybe even a higher percentage, would come up to the house and stand there quietly and expectantly with their bags open. It was jarring. It threw off the whole timing of the exchange.

Everybody knows the TV movie version of trick-or-treating goes like this:

Kids: “Trick or treat!”

Adults: “Oh my! What are you supposed to be?”

Kids: “I’m an astronaut! … I’m Goofy! … I’m a ghost! … I’m Nobel prize-winning physicist Anne L’Huillier!”

Adults: “You look wonderful! Take as many full-sized candy bars as you want!”

Kids: “Yay! … Thank you! … Hurray! … Mon équipe a établi le record du monde de l'impulsion laser la plus courte!”

That whole thing doesn’t work if the kids don’t say “Trick or treat” in sing-songy, cute voices. Kids, you have to fulfill your duties.

Thought 2: These newish teensy-weensy, bite-sized candy bars—one tiny square of Snickers or Milky Way or (heaven forbid) 3 Musketeers—are an abomination, and I want to know who I need to talk to about fixing it.

Thought 3: I am currently having a very important argument with friends, and I need you to weigh in on this. I don’t think anybody would disagree that Reese’s Cups are the very best candy item, and that nothing else is even close, and if you are right now racing to the comments to disagree, well, I can’t stop you (actually I can!). But the point is that there were two super-popular Reese’s Cups this year—the regular cup and the pumpkin-shaped Reese’s.

So, here’s what my friends—and, oh by the way, my wife—thinks: The pumpkin-shaped Reese’s is significantly better because of its shape and higher peanut-butter-to-chocolate ratio.

And my feeling is that my friends and wife have entirely lost their minds, and that the pumpkin-shaped Reese’s is not even CLOSE to as good as the regular cup. I’d say the gap between the real Reese’s and this pretender version is at about the same as the gap between delicious peanut M&Ms and bank-lobby mediocrities that are regular M&Ms. THERE IS TOO MUCH PEANUT BUTTER IN THE PUMPKIN VERSION! WAY TOO MUCH PEANUT BUTTER! IT THROWS OFF THE ENTIRE BALANCE!

But in the end, here at Joe Blogs, we let you decide.

Thought 4: The idea of pixifood was inspired, of course, by Pixy Stix, those sweet and sour powders that we used to mainline as kids, and now, as adults, taste a bit like ground-up muffler parts encased in sugar. Those are the original pixifood, and they will probably always best represent the concept.

I went back to the original Pixifood thing I wrote—I somehow found it—and here were a few of the foods I chose then:

• Baseball card gum (I wrote “as a child, it tastes like bubble-blowing magic. As an adult, it tastes like sugared sandpaper.” That still feels right).

• Beanie Weenies

• Dinty Moore Beef Stew (“as a child it tastes like a camping trip; as an adult it tastes like dog food).

• Fluff

• Necco wafer

• Pink snowballs

• Pop-Tarts (particularly untoasted)

• Tang

I really should update this Pixifood list—I’ll try to do that next week. But I’ll tell you one more pixifood that I’ve come across lately: Count Chocula cereal. Our daughter, perhaps as a joke, bought a box of Count Chocula for me, because I often talk about how much I love the very concept of Count Chocula (equal to how much I loathe every single thing about Frankenberry), and I tried some for the first time in many years and… I don’t think I’ll be doing that again. There was a time when those Count Chocula marshmallows were the very height of tastiness. Now, yeah, not so much. Now they taste like erasers.

Brilliant Reader Phil offers a wonderful thought: “There have been two guys called Mookie who have played Major League Baseball. And now both of them were involved in soft ground balls to first base that helped win the World Series.”

Both the Mookies are wonderful. I’ve always wished that Mookie Betts was named for Mookie Wilson—he was born in October of 1992, a short time after Wilson finished his career (for the Toronto Blue Jays!). But, alas, Mookie Betts was actually named for another delightful Mookie: Mookie Blaylock.

This is still cool, but a little bit disappointing—almost as disappointing as finding out that Spike Lee’s Mookie from “Do the Right Thing” was not named after Mookie Wilson, either. He was named for a left-handed softball pitcher around Brooklyn who Spike Lee admired.

Brilliant reader Matt had me sign his copy of WHY WE LOVE FOOTBALL in a very fun way:

Well, yes,

Critical Hit Parader

is definitely my favorite newsletter about the intersection of music and role-playing games. I’d say nobody else comes close.

BR Jack asks: Which team has the most retired numbers? Wait, sorry, I meant to say, who has the most retired numbers after the Yankees?

OK, here goes: Retired numbers by team in order of retired numbers (with a brief mention of non-Hall of Famers with their numbers retired):

Yankees: 21 (The Yankees have retired NINE jersey numbers of players who are not in the Hall of Fame).*

*The Yankees famously have every number from 1 to 10 retired. They also have No. 15 (Thurman Munson), No. 16 (Whitey Ford) and No. 20 (Jorge Posada) retired. At this point, they should just retire every number from 1-20. Let’s go ahead:

• Pre-retire No. 11 for Anthony Volpe

• Retire No. 12 for first DH Ron Blomberg

• Retire No. 13 for Mike Pagliarulo (or, I guess, A-Rod, though I think most Yankees fans would prefer Pags)

• Retire No. 14 for Lou Piniella

• Retire No. 17 for Mickey Rivers

• Retire No. 18 for Scott Brosius

• Retire No. 19 for Dave Righetti

I mean, let’s go all in, Yanks!

Cardinals: 15 (No. 14 is retired for Kenny Boyer, who is the only non-Hall of Fame player to have his number retired by the organization).

Dodgers: 14 (No. 34, thankfully, was retired for Fernando Valenzuela, in 2023—about 14 months before he died. We hear so many opposite stories, where teams and organizations wait too long to honor great players. Best advice: Don’t wait).

Giants: 13 (No. 25 is retired for Barry Bonds. That and Will Clark’s 22 are the two Giants’ non-Hall of Famers who have their numbers retired).

Mets: 12: (No. 16 was retired for Dwight Gooden this year—12 seems like a lot of retired numbers for the Mets, especially when you realize that Gary Carter’s iconic No. 8 is still not retired).

White Sox: 11 (Three non-Hall of Famers—No. 14 for Paul Konerko, No. 19 for Billy Pierce and No. 56 for Mark Buehrle).

Braves: 11 (No. 3 is retired for the great Dale Murphy; he is one of only two non-Hall of Famers to have his number retired by Atlanta. The other is Andruw Jones).

Red Sox: 10 (No. 6 is retired for Johnny Pesky. He is not only the one non-Hall of Famer to have his number retired by Boston, he’s also the only one to have a foul pole named for him).

Reds: 10 (Five of the Great Eight have their numbers retired—the only three who do not are George Foster’s No. 15, Ken Griffey Sr.’s No. 30 and Cesar Gerónimo’s No. 20. Well, technically, Geronimo’s No. 20 is retired, but for Frank Robinson).

Astros: 9 (No. 32 is retired for Jim Umbricht, a relief pitcher who was diagnosed with malignant melanoma. He pitched through excruciating pain in 1963 and died six months after his final game, five days before the 1964’s Opening Day).

Phillies: 9 (The Phillies retired Dick Allen’s No. 15 just months before he died in 2020, and even though it was a COVID ceremony, I’m so glad that they did).

Pirates: 9 (No. 1 is retired for Billy Meyer, and this is one of the strangest retired number stories in baseball. Meyer was a part-time catcher for the 117-loss Philadelphia Athletics in 1916; that was pretty much the apex of his playing career. Later in life, he managed the Pirates to mostly terrible seasons, including a 42-112 season in 1952. He was just a beloved guy, particularly by the press, and the Pirates retired his number for that. I’m kind of happy about it).*

*Meyer is also the guy in the background of perhaps the most famous baseball painting of them all, Norman Rockwell’s “Tough Call.”

Tigers: 9 (Two non-Hall of Fame players have their numbers retired: Lou Whitaker’s 1—I expect him to get elected to the Hall sooner rather than later—and Willie Horton’s 23).

Twins: 9 (No. 14 is retired for non-Hall of Famer Kent Hrbek. This is pure awesomeness. It’s time to retire No. 24 for Tom Brunansky).

Guardians: 8 (No. 18 is retired for Mel Harder. He’s the only Cleveland non-Hall of Fame player with his number retired; Harder was both a fine pitcher and an excellent pitching coach. I will say, though, that it’s LONG PAST TIME for Cleveland to retire No. 27 for phenom pitcher and beloved announcer Herb Score).

Cubs: 6 (No. 31 is retired twice, once for Fergie Jenkins and the other for Greg Maddux. Funny thing, if the Cubs had retired Fergie’s jersey BEFORE Maddux pitched, he would not have worn that iconic 31 that’s also retired by Atlanta).

Athletics: 6 (No. 34 is retired for four-time 20-game winner and all-around good guy Dave Stewart; he’s the only non-Hall of Famer to have his number retired by the Oakland A’s).

Orioles: 6 (So far, the Orioles have retired only the numbers of Hall of Famers, which means that Boog Powell’s No. 26 is not yet retired. Ridiculous. This year, three different guys wore No. 26 for the Orioles).

Angels: 5 (No. 50 is retired for coach Jimmie Reese, who it is said could do infield and outfield practice magic with a fungo bat).

Brewers: 5 (No. 44 is retired for Henry Aaron. He’s one of eight players to have a number retired by multiple teams—Atlanta also retired his number, obviously).

Padres: 5 (No. 6 is retired for Steve Garvey; it’s kind of funny and somehow perfectly descriptive of Garvey’s career and life that his number is retired by the Padres but not by the Dodgers).

Rangers: 5 (No. 10 is retired for Michael Young, the only non-Hall of Fame player among the group. Nolan Ryan’s No. 34 is retired, making him the only player to have his number retired by three different teams—the Angels and Astros also retired his number—though the Angels retired No. 30 for him).

Nationals: 4 (No. 11 is retired for Ryan Zimmerman; he’s the only Nationals player. But three numbers are retired for the Expos).

Rockies: 3 (Well, technically, only two “numbers” are retired, but the Rockies have retired the initials KSM for former NFL player Keli McGregor, who was president of the Rockies when he died in 2010 at age 47).

Royals: 3 (There’s a lovely mathematical rhythm for the Royals numbers—5 is retired for George Brett, 10 for Dick Howser and 20 for Frank White. I thought they should have given No. 40 to Bobby Witt in anticipation of the upcoming ceremony. One thing that’s absolutely certain: The Royals will someday retire No. 13 for Salvador Perez).

Diamondbacks: 2 (No. 51 is retired for Randy Johnson, obviously, and No. 20 is retired for Luis Gonzalez).

Mariners: 2 (They’re the two you would expect: No. 11 for Edgar and No. 24 for Junior. I assume that there will be a blowout ceremony in the next year retiring No. 51 for both Big Unit and Ichiro).

Rays: 2: (No. 12 is retired for Wade Boggs, who played 213 games for Tampa Bay and hit .289 overall).

Blue Jays: 1 (No. 32 is retired for Roy Halladay. You might know that Robbie Alomar’s number 12 was retired and then unretired after a sexual misconduct investigation by MLB. It’s kind of hard to believe the Blue Jays haven’t retired Joe Carter’s number yet).

Marlins: 0 (The only current MLB team that has not yet retired a number. I’m a little surprised that Jose Fernandez’s No. 16 has not been retired yet).