FanGraphs Audio: Celebrating Opening Day With Matt Bowman & Craig Calcaterra

Episode 969

FanGraphs Audio is here a day early this week in celebration of Opening Day, and we have a pair of great interviews to ring in the season.

• At the top of the show, David Laurila welcomes Matt Bowman, a former Cardinals and Reds pitcher who is now in the Yankees system. The pair first talked years ago, and the right-hander shares how he has evolved both as a pitcher and as a student of pitching in the time since. Bowman also discusses his first Opening Day on a major league roster, talking to Amir Garrett about his slider, recovering from Tommy John surgery, and how impressed he is by Yankees pitching development. [2:59]
• In the second half, Jay Jaffe welcomes long-time baseball writer and friend Craig Calcaterra, who recently published his book Rethinking Fandom: How to Beat the Sports-Industrial Complex at Its Own Game. He and Jay talk about how the challenges of authoring a book compare to daily writing, as well as how the book came to be. The pair also discuss how our fandom changes as we grow as people, the inherent conflict of criticizing an industry you work in, and the occasional value of embracing being a fair-weather fan. [31:38]

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 62 minute play time.)

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