I was curious if you knew Jr- he was probably the first athlete I ever knew and recognized as a kid. Hell, he made it into most versions of Backyard Baseball, so u kno he was the real deal. (Side note, there have been some fun modern day posts about these games and trying to map their statistics to real life, but I would love to give it a shot myself, I've just had trouble finding working versions of a few of them.)
Anyway, absolutely loved this episode. An impressive feat in both story telling and data mining (if you could call it that- it’s just real neat that MLB has stats going back to the 1800s). The way they tie important events together in a narratively interesting way, even when they’re non-sequential, is great. The part about Dave Niehaus made me a little teary eyed tbh, something about someone living their passion by helping others feel that love and excitement too is a soothing balm in a time of increased toxic gatekeeping for leisure activities. I think that's worth something.