A Project 3.18 Midsummer Extra
Featuring a new video, a collaborative photo hunt at Globe Life Field, and a confounding game of darts.
Hi friends,
Thanks for your continued readership and always-welcome engagement during the Substack summer doldrums. I hope you’re enjoying a Project 3.18 story at the beach, during your luxury safari with satellite Wi-Fi, or on your couch during a much deserved staycation.
Yes, it’s quiet, but we like to go against the grain around here, and it’s actually been a busy week for us in terms of collaboration, so we’re going to go ahead and post again. Our fifth-grade teacher referred to this as “reflexive obstinance,” but we digress.
A Programming Update: Project 3.18 On the Air!
Our latest visit with our friend
came out on Saturday, and we hope you’ll check it out! If you’ve been waiting for us to condense a four-part, 13,000-word, old-timey opus on Ty Cobb and the replacement Tigers of 1912 into a snappy, well-produced video, well, your ship has come in, thanks to Gordon’s fantastic YouTube channel.(The number of exposed teeth in these images shows you how much fun we’re having.)
We know you’re going to have just as much fun, and when you do, we hope you’ll like, subscribe, and help us get our work out there to those who’d enjoy it. Here’s the (cleaned-up) response from a viewer who received the video from a relative:
I loved it. More big-mouthed [jerks] deserve a public [comeuppance].
Ah, another happy customer.
Thanks to all of you for supporting sports storytelling platforms like the Athlete Archives—and us here at Project 3.18.
P.S. — Gordon, you were one Al Travers away from the perfect title: “A Priest, a Chauffer, and an Escaped Convict…”
A Banner Day in Texas
On our recent trip to the Society of American Baseball Researchers (SABR) conference we had the pleasure of meeting
, the powerhouse interviewer behind podcast and a fellow Substacker and SABR member.As a part of the festivities (and for an added fee) everybody got to go to a Texas Rangers game at Globe Life Field in Arlington. It was apparently Dan’s 22nd major league ballpark, and our (counts fingers) 7th, so we can’t really improve on his assessment of the Rangers’ home digs:
The roof was closed and the air conditioning was on, which made the temperature bearable, but it also enclosed the sound and made the acoustics echoey and displeasing. There were hundreds of seats with obstructed views thanks to the gigantically wide foul poles, which (I have a sneaking suspicion) were probably only made to be so wide to accommodate the size of an advertisement for Chick-fil-A which must have been agreed to prior to erecting them. There was one insanely large video board above the right field seats, and another smaller video board above the left field seats, but both were hung so high that unless you were in the first 10-15 rows of a section, your view of them was obstructed by the overhanging section above you.
The experience and views from the lower level were much better than those on the higher levels, but you needed a specific ticket to get down there. Unfortunately, while walking around the concourse of the lower level to get to your seats, there were almost no points when you could actually see the field. It felt like you were walking through a fancy shopping mall food court, and every once in a while there would be a long hallway you could walk down to get to the field. It’s an engineering marvel, and I’m glad I was able to check it off my list, but I’m also glad it’s not my home stadium.
Same, Dan, same.
Our great friend Ted from
also attended the conference and we both had a fun time at the game. The bewildering highlight came somewhere in the middle innings, as we finished off our hotdog flight (yes, a real thing). As the teams changed sides, a very urgent-sounding lady at the end of our row started shouting for everybody to “stand up, stand up!”There was no perceptible reason to stand, but this person seemed serious, so we rose to our feet and awaited further instructions. A few seconds later, this happened:
The only thing was, we couldn’t tell what the banner said. What red-and-white message were we made a party to? Were we under a State Farm ad? A marriage proposal? What was the deal?
Once the banner had rolled back from whence it came, we enlisted Google to try and answer that question:
“globe life field red and white unfurled banner”
“globe life field red and white outfield flag”
“rangers red and white outfield flag”
“can eating three hotdogs give you bad heartburn”
“rangers outfield sign unfurled”
All these carefully calibrated inputs returned nothing relevant, and as we departed Dallas, we feared we’d never know what we’d held aloft that night.
Well, it turns out that as the banner rolled open, none other than Dan Wallach was on the other side of the park, in perfect position to photograph what was happening on top of our heads and eventually publish that picture on Substack. Thanks to Dan’s photo, we at last got our answer!
“Rangers Fans, GET LOUD!”
We were joking about being under a State Farm ad, but lo and behold, look what’s right under that banner in matching colors. Today’s hype was brought to you by your friendly neighborhood insurance conglomerate.
Still, we’re glad we know, and thanks to Dan Wallach for helping us solve the mystery. Teamwork!
Darting Around
In our just-released story on Dave Parker, vigilant reader Jonathan was there to catch us when we stumbled, pointing out that an anecdote in the piece inaccurately identified the Yankees’ Chris Chambliss as the team’s third baseman. The offending passage:
In Boston, a fan returned the favor with interest by throwing a steel-tipped lawn dart in the direction of New York third baseman Chris Chambliss.
This was Graig Nettles erasure, and we apologize.
Eager to correct Chambliss’ position, we headed to Baseball Reference to make sure Chris Chambliss was still playing first base in 1980 and not DHing or something. Imagine our compounding befuddlement to find no hint of Chris Chambliss anywhere on the Yankees’ roster that season. Did we hallucinate all this?
Well, the Chambliss dart incident did happen—in 1974—and the dart wasn’t a lawn dart; it was a throwing dart (one of several). In fact, said dart actually struck Chambliss. He had to get a tetanus shot afterward. What’s more, this all went down during an absolute banger of a Red Sox/Yankees game.
Poring over the details, we realized we’ve yet to do a Red Sox/Yankees story here at Project 3.18, so that’s another mistake—one we’ll correct next week, when we tell you about this wild one at Fenway.
On July 21: “That Kind of Game”
I'm a big fan, Paul. Can't wait for the book. Thanks for joining me on YouTube again.
The banner tells me a lot as a Rangers fan and frequent visitor of that park. Your seats were in section 133, which has the unofficial designation of the "Rangers Nation" section. The owner of the RangersNation instagram/X/fb account invited his followers to purchase tickets in that section, and for the last couple years they've been showing up in force.
Tends to be loud, rowdy and active crowd. They'll stand for entire games, bring banners like the one you were under, chant as loud as possible, and generally make themselves known however they can. The Rangers ticket site now warns that the section is "not for the timid." Haven't sat there yet, but it's on my list. And if you'd been to a mid-summer game in the other two ball parks that preceded Globe Life Field, you'd have no complaints about this one.