Annex Operating System:
Good morning, Ryan. The weather today is fine. Some announcements. Don't forget that Phil's Samurai Sword demonstration is Thursday. Attendance, as always, is mandatory. Also, the cafeteria ice cream machine is no longer operational.

Ryan Simmons:
Damn it.

Annex Operating System:
Destination, please.

Ryan Simmons:
Perfection.

Annex Operating System:
Destination, please.

Ryan Simmons:
Perfection.

Annex Operating System:
Traveling to perfection. Thank you. Welcome to the Annex.

Ryan Simmons:
Hey, do you remember the adventures of Pete and Pete? It was this live-action Nickelodeon show about two brothers who are both named Pete and live in this cartoony version of New Jersey with a bunch of wacky characters. Anyway, in one episode, it's revealed that the entire town of Wellsville gets their underwear from the same company. All of this underwear is manufactured to perfection and approved by one inspector whose tag is found in every single bag, Inspector 34. And Little Pete becomes so fixated on Inspector 34 that he writes to the underwear company to arrange a visit from this guy who finally does show up in the neighborhood. One day.

Ryan Simmons:
Now at first, having Inspector 34 around rules, his dedication to perfection rubs off on the whole town. Suddenly people are more efficient, they're happier. Inspector 34 falls in love. Everyone discovers how great perfection can be. But then, after a while, of course, people start to get miserable. Inspector 34's girlfriend gets salad in her teeth, everything falls apart. Eventually, Little Pete turns on him and challenges the inspector to a gauntlet of perfection-proving tasks, which wraps up with him eating a whole barbecue chicken, which Inspector 34 does to such a degree of perfection that after setting down the last completely bare bone, he refuses Pete's offer of a moisty nap. Of course, this is his fatal mistake.

Little Pete:
Barbecues are supposed to be messy. Eating perfectly is imperfect. You fail.

Ryan Simmons:
So true, Little Pete. What is perfection? Who gets to decide what that is? In a lot of cases, is achieving perfection even practical or possible? Sometimes it's subjective, right? There's a defined metric of optimal performance or success and then someone achieves it. Sometimes it's far more subjective. My perfect sandwich might be completely different from yours. That's where we're headed, to explore all of that, including the sandwiches, we also have Joe Ali with an Annex welcome presentation for you.

Ryan Simmons:
Jiazhen Zhang and Seth Rosenthal are working on something secret. Me on one NFL quarterback's perfect passer rating, and Will Buikema on cricket legend, Sir Donald Bradman. But first, let's check in with Jon Bois, who's in the laboratory right now. By the way, thank you so much for tagging along. Here's the deal, every time we visit the Annex, we'll hit a different floor and explore a new theme just like this. It's going to be very different every time and a lot of fun. The rest of the info is in your orientation packet.

Jon Bois:
Hey, Ryan. Hi everyone. I'm Jon. Today, I'm attempting to design the perfect baseball player. By this I don't mean the best, most valuable, or most representative baseball player. I simply mean the perfect baseball player. These are the 42 qualities I have identified that the perfect baseball player must present. Number one, he is a designated hitter. Number two, he has been a designated hitter his entire life and has never owned a baseball glove. Number three, he has also never worn a soft baseball cap even once in his entire life. Number four, he is 47 years old.

Jon Bois:
Number five, his walk-up music is a recording of himself singing happy birthday to himself with no instrumentals. Number six, his birthday is in the off-season. Number seven, he is an excellent singer though. Number eight, although he is exclusively left-handed and has no true switch-hitting ability, he has taken half his career at bats right-handed because he steps into whichever batter's box is closer. His career statistics have suffered tremendously as a consequence.

Jon Bois:
Number nine, on occasion, he wears a batting helmet without ear flaps to the plate. This type of helmet was made illegal in 1983. Each time he does this and refuses to change his helmet, he is called out by the home plate umpire. This is also a significant contributor to his lifetime batting average of 147. Number 10, he hits an average of 33 home runs per year. Number 11, despite his terrible batting average on base percentage and slugging percentage, he somehow to the astonishment of statisticians, tends to rate very highly in advanced metrics.

Jon Bois:
Last season, his wins above replacement or war was somehow a considerably high 5.7 despite an on-base percentage of two 13. How he does this defies all explanation and he has single-handedly done a great deal to devalue Sabermetrics at large. Number 12, he could quite likely approach as many as 55 to 60 home runs per year were he ever to play a full season. He never does because of his numerous suspensions for wearing the helmet with no ear flaps. As well as number 13, accruing numerous and increasingly long suspensions for charging the outfield and fighting the outfielder who caught his pop fly.

Jon Bois:
Number 14, in a related matter, after recently watching the film Rudy, he called the character Rudy a "little who ruined the movie." And upon learning that Rudy was a real person, issued a challenge to fight him at any time and place of his choosing. Number 15. He has never however been suspended for using performance-enhancing drugs despite it being very visibly apparent that he uses PEDs persistently. It's clear that he's found a cocktail of steroids of unknown origin that is undetectable by any tests. Although how he's obtained these steroids is entirely unknown.

Jon Bois:
Number 16, his physique is so abnormally muscular that it inhibits his ability to run. Also slowing him down is number 17, his insistence on wearing the exact same back support belt that is issued to Home Depot employees. Number 18, he also wears the exact same safety goggles that are issued to Home Depot employees. Number 19, despite his steroid use, his exercise routine is considerably limited. He exclusively works out on the elliptical machine and even then he straddles the machine such that his feet are on the floor rather than on the pedals, simply going to town on the handlebars instead.

Jon Bois:
Number 20, he has on multiple occasions evaded pick-offs because the first baseman mistakenly tagged the first base coach instead. Number 21, upon learning that a hit is recorded as soon as he reaches first base and the hit stands even if the runner is thrown out going for extra bases, he is very commonly thrown out after trying to stretch singles into doubles. Number 22, he often tries to incite pickles, many of which result in him being tagged out after diving and rolling around in the dirt trying to evade the tag. Typically, his entire uniform ends up covered in dirt.

Jon Bois:
Number 23, prior to the game will often take an entire tray of catered food to his locker and eat it using the serving tongs. Number 24, his manager arranges the batting order to accommodate his regular sixth-inning bathroom. Number 25, he still missed a number of plate appearances on account of this, but fewer ever since he began wearing pants with a tear-away butt flap. Number 26, he missed most of a recent season due to numerous injuries. In the 16th inning of a game in May. With his team having exhausted their bullpen, he was sent in as an emergency pitcher. It was the first time he had thrown a baseball anywhere for any reason since 2008.

Jon Bois:
He threw a 106 mile per hour bean ball and tore an elbow ligament, both ACLs and most remarkably, the rotator cuff on his non-throwing shoulder. Number 27, afterward, he said that his greatest regret was that this injury precluded him from taking the plate at the bottom of the inning in a pitcher's jacket. Number 28. Despite his high home run totals, his batted balls on those home runs have the lowest average distances on record, typically sneaking just barely over the fence near the foul balls where the distance is 330 feet. Number 29. However, he is the most prolific foul ball hitter ever seen. He averages eight foul balls per played appearance. His strikeouts have been known to last six or seven minutes, thereby almost single-handedly offsetting the league's efforts to speed up the game.

Jon Bois:
Number 30. He is also the most powerful foul ball hitter ever seen. While his longest-ever home run measures only 375 feet, some of his foul balls have been confirmed to land upwards of 600 feet away. Number 31. On opening day some years ago, on his very first swing of the season, he hit what is believed to be one of the longest-batted balls in history with a 648-foot foul ball. His bats shattered upon impact, sending fouls fragments of cork all throughout the infield. He was suspended 60 games for corking, his bat.

Jon Bois:
Number 32. In June of that year, he returned from his suspension in his first played appearance. He swung at a pitch a foot outside with such intensity that he fell down. Despite not making contact, the lid at the end flew off and the bat once again sent cork flying onto the field. He was suspended for the remainder of the season. Number 33, all the same. He was credited for multiple plate appearances that season and as a consequence, received his one and only championship ring when his team won the World Series that season.

Jon Bois:
Number 34. When his team was invited to the White House, he insisted upon bringing his $20,000 gaming rig. He is absent from team photos as he was wandering the White House looking for a power outlet. Number 35. He brings this gaming rig, which includes a haptic feedback gaming chair to the clubhouse for both home and away games. Beat reporters often observe him somehow playing Civilization VI with a joystick. Number 36. He loves chewing tobacco and frequently travels internationally to appear in commercials and countries where advertising chewing tobacco is still legal. Number 37. His most recent trip to the injured list occurred earlier this year when he was once again called upon to be an emergency pitcher in the 17th inning.

Jon Bois:
On his first pitch, the ball slipped out of his hand and flew high in the air backwards behind him, his shortstop managed to field the errant baseball, throw it to first and pick off the runner for the third out to end the inning. Number 38. In the bottom of the inning, then he at long last, was able to fulfill his dream of making a plate appearance in a pitcher's jacket. Leading off the inning, he hit a single to right field. A series of throwing errors allowed him to advance all the way around the bases and toward home plate. Having never slid before, he opted to belly flop directly on top of home plate. He fractured two of his ribs after falling directly on top of the can of dip he carried in his front jacket pocket. Nonetheless, he scored the game-tying run that advanced the game to the 18th inning.

Jon Bois:
Number 39. When the team's athletic trainer observed him and determined he was able to walk, he nonetheless refused to walk and demanded to be loaded into the team's bullpen car and carried off the field. After the umpiring crew threatened to assess a first-of-its-kind delay of game penalty if he did not leave the field in short order, the team decided to send out the bullpen car. This bullpen car had not been used since 1987. It was a golf cart fashioned to look like a very large baseball. Upon igniting the engine, the car's loudspeaker played tunes such as Hot Cross Buns and London Bridge is Falling Down, on loop and at ear-splitting volume.

Jon Bois:
Number 41. After some effort, he was loaded into the car, which broke down 10 feet into its journey to the left field fence. However, personnel were unable to disable the loudspeaker. Most of the remaining fans in attendance headed for the exit as his teammates spent 15 minutes struggling to push the rusted-out bullpen car through the outfield. Number 42. Halfway to the fence, he frantically waved his arms outside of the car, demanding it to stop. After an inaudible yet animated argument between he and his teammates lasted several minutes, a bat boy was finally summoned from the dugout.

Jon Bois:
He ran to the car in the outfield and handed him a fresh can of dip, as well as his favorite spit cup, a 32-ounce tactical thermos with camouflage print. It is labeled conspicuously and in all caps, do not drink, not beer. These are the 42 qualities I have outlined to describe my interpretation of the perfect baseball player. Since he has not yet presented himself, the sport of baseball must conclude until he does. Thank you.

Ryan Simmons:
Thanks a lot, Jon. I've never seen it, but that whole baseball thing sounds really cool. Anyway, if you follow me down this way... Oh, this bathroom right here, really nice. Bidets. No toilets, just bidets. I'm really excited about that, that's a new edition, and then down here around the corner, we've got... Oh my God, what is all of this stuff? This is chaos. JZ, this is... Jiazhen, he's one of our director and editors. JZ, what is happening?

Jiazhen Zhang:
I'm just taking down this statue that Seth made me build, it's Daniel Gafford.

Ryan Simmons:
I'm sorry, you guys built a giant bronze statue of Daniel Gafford?

Seth Rosenthal:
You're obviously familiar with Daniel Gafford-

Jiazhen Zhang:
Do you even know who that is?

Seth Rosenthal:
... and his achievements.

Ryan Simmons:
Kind of, not really. Who's Daniel Gafford?

Seth Rosenthal:
Wait, hold on. Can I ask you a question?

Ryan Simmons:
Yeah.

Seth Rosenthal:
What's the point of basketball? What is the goal objective of basketball? The goal of basketball, we can agree, is to put the ball in the basket. If I were to say what's a numeric representation of someone who was the perfect basketball player of how many shots they would hit?

Ryan Simmons:
All of them, 100%.

Seth Rosenthal:
100%?

Ryan Simmons:
Yeah.

Seth Rosenthal:
Guess who hit 100% of his shots?

Ryan Simmons:
Daniel Gafford?

Seth Rosenthal:
Daniel Gafford, perfect bats of all time.

Jiazhen Zhang:
Well, for a period of time.

Ryan Simmons:
For a period of... Well, that doesn't-

Jiazhen Zhang:
Well, I might be a little salty, but let me fill you in.

Ryan Simmons:
Yeah, please someone explain to me what is actually happening.

Jiazhen Zhang:
As I was saying, Seth made me build this statue because he almost broke Wilt's record for all-time most consecutive shots made without a miss. He stopped at 33, so he made 33 shots in a row.

Ryan Simmons:
What was the record?

Jiazhen Zhang:
Wilt had 35 shots in a row back in 1967.

Ryan Simmons:
I see. Okay. So Wilt Chamberlain gets 35 shots in a row. Years later, Daniel Gafford gets close to beating that record. You, Seth, have JZ build a giant bronze statue in anticipation of him beating this record?

Seth Rosenthal:
Yeah, you think you can build a 40-foot-tall bronze statue in one day? No, we got ahead of it. We wanted to unveil it on the day he broke the record and then I think he missed.

Jiazhen Zhang:
Well, first to my defense, he didn't break the record. Second, I just don't find that record that impressive to begin with.

Seth Rosenthal:
What?

Jiazhen Zhang:
Come on.

Seth Rosenthal:
Did somebody shoot better than 100%?

Jiazhen Zhang:
No disrespect to Wilt, he's an all-time great, but I just don't find him making 35 shots in a row against players much shorter than him that impressive.

Ryan Simmons:
Oh, so you don't think the consecutive shots record is all that big of a deal to begin with?

Jiazhen Zhang:
If you look at the record, will also had the second-best all-time record at 32 and-

Seth Rosenthal:
But there's already a statue of Will Chamberlain.

Ryan Simmons:
Yeah, there's a few.

Jiazhen Zhang:
I mean, come on. I just don't feel like that deserves a statue to begin with.

Seth Rosenthal:
Then who does?

Jiazhen Zhang:
If you look at the shots, man. Seth, take a look at all the shots that Daniel Gafford made in March. Over five games, yes, he made 33 shot-

Seth Rosenthal:
100%.

Jiazhen Zhang:
Okay. Come on. Come on, please look at the shots. Have you looked at the shots he made? He was literally making dunks after dunks after layups after wide-open dunks again, spoon-fed by Luka Doncic and Carrie Irvin of all people. Nobody was guarding him and he was literally dunking the ball in from under the basket. All of those shots, 33 of them came in the paint. Seth, come on. How is that impressive?

Ryan Simmons:
JZ, you're saying this is a low-risk thing. So kind of not a super-

Jiazhen Zhang:
That's mid.

Ryan Simmons:
That's mid.

Seth Rosenthal:
So does impress you then? We got to get this statue up.

Jiazhen Zhang:
So what I do find impressive is actually playing in the game where you are the man and you're taking a lot of shots, but those are high-risk shots and you're helping your team win. For example, Gary Payton made 14 out of 14 back in 1995 against the Cleveland Cavaliers. I find that really impressive.

Seth Rosenthal:
That is 100%.

Ryan Simmons:
That is a hundred 100%.

Jiazhen Zhang:
Well, that is more impressive than the 33 shots made consecutively by Gafford, in my opinion.

Ryan Simmons:
Because it's happening over several games and Gary Payton was taking more impressive higher-risk shots.

Jiazhen Zhang:
Yeah. Gary Payton is a guard, is a point guard and he's like 6'2". So he is taking shots and he is the man on the supersonic [inaudible 00:18:33] 1995. So to me he's more impressive because he's taking more difficult shots.

Seth Rosenthal:
Okay. I'm convinced. So how hard would it be to pivot this statue to a Gary Payton statue?

Jiazhen Zhang:
Come on.

Ryan Simmons:
Look. Yeah. First of all, this is a ping-pong room, so I don't really think we should be building any statues in here. And my next question is-

Seth Rosenthal:
I'm really feeling like we need a statue in here.

Ryan Simmons:
Why? I can't help but feel like there's some other reason here that's...

Seth Rosenthal:
Okay. I'm sitting on a lot of bronze right now. Okay?

Ryan Simmons:
Like asset-wise, you have a lot of bronze that you need to-

Seth Rosenthal:
I got a lot of bronze bars in my house. Bronze comes in bars.

Ryan Simmons:
Why? I know. Does it? I actually had no idea how bronze comes. It comes in bars and you've got them all in your house?

Seth Rosenthal:
I have a lot of bronze bars in my house as we speak.

Ryan Simmons:
How did you come into all of this bronze?

Seth Rosenthal:
It involves pirates. I don't really want to get into too much detail.

Ryan Simmons:
Okay. Those bronze-hunting pirates?

Seth Rosenthal:
I just think it would be really cool if we had a statue and people came to see it. And maybe, I don't know, paid a few bucks and I could maybe take a cut of that since the statue was my idea, and then I could maybe not be pursued by pirates.

Ryan Simmons:
Okay.

Jiazhen Zhang:
Hey, can I be in on that, actually? On second thought, I'm all for building this Daniel Gafford on statue. Can you cut-

Seth Rosenthal:
Yeah, we need a statue, man

Ryan Simmons:
All right. Listen, you're both going to need to submit a request in the Google form and we'll talk about it. We're going to have to run it by Will and everybody else.

Seth Rosenthal:
Come on. Don't be weird about this.

Ryan Simmons:
I'm not being weird about it. I'm just trying to do it the right way.

Jiazhen Zhang:
Just keep this between the three of us.

Ryan Simmons:
Look, I won't mention a thing, but in the meantime, you got to clean up all of this stuff for now and set the ping-pong tables back up because we've got a tournament later tonight.

Jiazhen Zhang:
Oh, fine.

Seth Rosenthal:
Do you want a bar?

Ryan Simmons:
A bronze bar?

Seth Rosenthal:
Yeah, you want a bronze bar?

Ryan Simmons:
I'll take a little bronze bar.

Seth Rosenthal:
Yeah. $12.

Ryan Simmons:
Sure. I have no idea what bronze is worth, but I'm going to just kind of go for it. Speculative market.

Seth Rosenthal:
Thanks, Ryan.

Ryan Simmons:
You're welcome. All right.

Seth Rosenthal:
All right.

Jiazhen Zhang:
Bye, Ryan.

Ryan Simmons:
Oh, sorry about that. That was Seth Rosenthal and Jiazhen Zhang. And obviously, they're working some things out between the two of them. It's not usually that here in the Annex. We tend to get along, and the working environment is pretty positive. Not a whole lot of crazy stuff happened.

The Mummy:
Mortal.

Ryan Simmons:
Can you just... I'm sorry.

The Mummy:
Mortal.

Ryan Simmons:
Can we just pop into this utility closet really quickly?

The Mummy:
Open my sarcophagus.

Ryan Simmons:
Let me just grab this [inaudible 00:21:04].

The Mummy:
Times scavengers, I have a new task.

Ryan Simmons:
Okay. So this is a mummy as you can plainly see, and what we have found working here in the Annex is that this mummy, we don't entirely know what his deal is, but he occasionally asks us for things-

The Mummy:
Time scavengers.

Ryan Simmons:
And we find it easier to just give him what he wants. Yes.

The Mummy:
Time scavengers, I have a new task.

Ryan Simmons:
Yes, Mummy Lord, we are here to appease you.

The Mummy:
For eternity, scarabs have snacked upon my flesh.

Ryan Simmons:
Indeed.

The Mummy:
If you do not do my bidding and complete my time-scavenging task, the scarabs will descend upon you and your family with haste.

Ryan Simmons:
Again, we've never actually seen him do that, but like I said, it's just easier if we kind of do what it-

The Mummy:
Do you want to know what today's task is?

Ryan Simmons:
Yes, please, oh Immortal One. How can we serve you?

The Mummy:
Travel through the annals of time to find me the perfect sandwich.

Ryan Simmons:
The perfect sandwich?

The Mummy:
The perfect sandwich or you shall suffer.

Ryan Simmons:
Is there any particular criteria that you're looking to hit?

The Mummy:
That's it. Back into the sarcophagus.

Ryan Simmons:
Okay, well, it looks like we are going to have to tap into our research skills and archival tools to find this "perfect sandwich" for the utility closet mummy. Listen, I'm going to have to wrangle some of the team to get on this, but in the meantime, let's stop by Joe Ali's office. I know he has put together a nice little welcome presentation for you about expectations here at the Annex. So hang tight and I'll be right back.

Joe Ali:
Whoa, buddy. How the hell did you get in here? Whatever. Doesn't matter. Welcome to the Annex. Kick off your shoes and get comfy because all we want you to do is have a perfect day. No need to get nervous. Perfect can mean a lot of things. For example, let me tell you about my boy Tony Snell's Perfect Day. In a February, 2017 matchup against the Jazz while playing for the Bucks, Tony put up zero points, zero rebounds, zero assist, zero blocks and zero steals. That was all in nearly 29 minutes of gameplay balling.

Joe Ali:
The point of basketball is putting the ball in the hoop. So Tony didn't really do shit. So you're probably asking yourself how is that a perfect day? So I asked you this, why does the hypothetical perfect work session have to consist of nonstop grinding where we achieve all the goals we set up for a particular day? If achievements define success, then let's recognize the achievement of getting nothing done.

Joe Ali:
If you think grinding five days a week at a 40-hour clip for the rest of your life is essential, then maybe you're built different. But that shit sounds draining to me. Look, I'm not telling you to be lazy or whatever, but in today's age, employees are more disposable than ever. So why not take advantage of a rest day if you can? And Tony's position as an NBA player, the dude lived that dream to the fullest. One, he got to play ball with some of the best players in the world. Two, 29 minutes of gameplay. The man got a good sweat going for sure. And three, being an NBA player comes with a massive game check.

Joe Ali:
If you factor all those together, the man essentially got paid to run around and hang out with top-class athletes. So which sounds like a more perfect day to you, working yourself to the point of exhaustion or having the chance to take it easy and still get paid? I know my answer, and maybe some people are too prideful to go out like that. But to me, it can't get any better. Clock in, clock out and go home without doing a damn thing while still getting paid. Honestly, we should all aim for one of those days. If you're taking any of this as a way for me to diss Snell, then you caught the wrong vibe. They don't let just anyone into the league.

Joe Ali:
I mean beyond having the perfect possible day of work, the dude is also in the damn NBA record books. A few years after he achieved perfection, Snell became the NBA's first 50/50/100 player, with 51.5% from the field, 56.9% from three, and 100% from the free throw line. You got that right, Tony fucking Snell. At the end of the day, mans is a professional athlete. I'm sure you didn't go out there and strive to have a quintuple nothing, but we can't be great every single day. And that's just fine. Whether you're crunching numbers in Excel or talking into a microphone like me, remember that. And now I'm going to take my own advice, pop an edible and disassociate for the rest of the night. Peace.

Ryan Simmons:
Thank you guys so much, by the way, for meeting up last minute to do this.

Seth Rosenthal:
Yeah, no problem.

Will Buikema:
We get it.

Ryan Simmons:
You guys know the mummy in the utility closet?

Seth Rosenthal:
Yeah.

Ryan Simmons:
Yes. Okay. So he wanted us to find him the perfect sandwich and again, thank you for going and doing research. I've done a little bit of my own, but I-

Seth Rosenthal:
I actually did a lot of research for this.

Ryan Simmons:
You did?

Will Buikema:
This is great. We're all on the same page. I for sure researched because I have all the time in the world for Mummy.

Seth Rosenthal:
Dude, are you not a little...

Ryan Simmons:
For mommy?

Will Buikema:
Yeah.

Ryan Simmons:
No, Mummy. The Mummy.

Seth Rosenthal:
Have you not opened that closet?

Will Buikema:
No, I have.

Ryan Simmons:
Oh, you just call him Mommy.

Will Buikema:
That's what he says.

Ryan Simmons:
You're right. Sorry.

Will Buikema:
Carry on. Sandwiches.

Ryan Simmons:
Right. So he asked us to find the perfect sandwich. How did you guys-

Seth Rosenthal:
I took this seriously.

Will Buikema:
So did I. Ultimately, there is not a perfect sandwich. Can we just agree upon this real quick?

Seth Rosenthal:
The mummy seems to think there is. And I don't know, what was the thing last time with locusts? I'm just not trying to roll the dice on any potential familial curses.

Ryan Simmons:
I feel like his threats tend to be empty. I've never seen any locusts in here.

Seth Rosenthal:
I'm not trying to find out.

Ryan Simmons:
He threatens them frequently, but I don't even know what a locust looks like, to be honest with you.

Seth Rosenthal:
I also like if he's going to claim my firstborn son, there's still time for that.

Ryan Simmons:
That's true.

Will Buikema:
We can deal with grasshoppers.

Ryan Simmons:
I feel confident that with the research that we've done, one of us has gotten a perfect enough sandwich that we can satisfy his endless his craving.

Seth Rosenthal:
By the way, is he coming to this?

Ryan Simmons:
He is. So he's going to be on... He's calling him from Zoom.

Will Buikema:
The beautiful thing is no chance he's actually eating a sandwich, right?

Ryan Simmons:
I don't think so.

Seth Rosenthal:
I've never seen him eat anything.

Ryan Simmons:
I've never seen him leave the utility closet.

Seth Rosenthal:
Yeah. Wait, so should we set up-

Ryan Simmons:
Oh, yeah.

Seth Rosenthal:
Okay.

Ryan Simmons:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just going to let him into the room. Let's see. Mummy, hey, can you hear us?

The Mummy:
Time scavengers. Can you hear me? Time scavengers.

Will Buikema:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we can hear you.

Ryan Simmons:
We can hear you.

The Mummy:
Sorry, there was a lag. Time scavengers.

Will Buikema:
Maybe if you turn off your virtual background. I feel like that's slowing you down.

The Mummy:
You don't like the cats?

Ryan Simmons:
Yeah, it's a little difficult to see you with all the cats.

Will Buikema:
Just go video off.

The Mummy:
How about now? How about now?

Will Buikema:
Just go video off.

Ryan Simmons:
That's good.

The Mummy:
Now?

Ryan Simmons:
Yep, that's fine.

The Mummy:
Time scavengers, to avoid eternal punishment, I demanded that you bring me the perfect sandwich. After a little bit of management training, I have learned to be a more active listener, so I'm going to go on mute, and let you guys off the floor. Go ahead.

Ryan Simmons:
Great.

The Mummy:
The floor is yours.

Ryan Simmons:
Did they ever tell you that locusts are a microaggression Okay, we don't need to get into that right now. We don't need to get into that here.

Will Buikema:
All right, fair.

Ryan Simmons:
We'll set up a one-on-one with the Mummy.

Will Buikema:
I think Seth is really scared. He's really quiet when the Mummy is around.

Ryan Simmons:
Yeah, I know you clammed right up.

Seth Rosenthal:
Guys, the locusts are coming for you this time.

Ryan Simmons:
They're not-

Seth Rosenthal:
It's not going to be me.

Ryan Simmons:
Would it make you feel better if you went first?

Seth Rosenthal:
Yeah. So, hi, Mummy. I went through our Newspapers.com subscription and I constructed the perfect sandwich. People throughout the centuries have been writing about, mostly in advertisements and weird little op-eds, about the perfect sandwich ingredients. And so I went and I found like what's the perfect sandwich bread. I just did search terms over the years, perfect sandwich bread, perfect sandwich meat. And I assembled what I believe to be the perfect sandwich for the mummy. Do you guys want to hear?

Ryan Simmons:
Yes, I do. Yeah.

Will Buikema:
I think it's an interesting premise for how you started out. Because At the end of the day, you are still deciding what goes into the sandwich. You have sought out the perfect-

Seth Rosenthal:
I didn't decide-

Will Buikema:
... Toppings within a genre that then you are still choosing what goes into the sandwich. I'm just saying, I'm excited for this because-

Seth Rosenthal:
It feels a little bit like you're negging my sandwich.

Will Buikema:
Are you saying there's Seth and fusion? When I hear perfect sandwich. I think of the sandwich as a whole.

Ryan Simmons:
And you're saying he made a custom sandwich that in his mind is perfect.

Will Buikema:
Which I'm excited for.

Ryan Simmons:
Yeah, we're getting a little bit a window into how your brain works.

Will Buikema:
If you want me to neg you, I'll neg you. But this isn't that.

Seth Rosenthal:
This isn't my mind at all. So, for instance, the perfect sandwich bread according to this newspaper from 1916 is Taggart's Merry-made Milk Bread. It's the perfect bread for sandwiches, moist and sweet.

Will Buikema:
Wait, sorry, what year was this?

Seth Rosenthal:
1916.

Will Buikema:
Okay.

Ryan Simmons:
Okay.

Seth Rosenthal:
So that's the bread to start with, milk bread.

Will Buikema:
Nice and moist.

Seth Rosenthal:
Moist and sweet.

Will Buikema:
Okay. Okay.

Seth Rosenthal:
And then obviously need some meat for the bread. So there's a 1979 newspaper that says Hickory Farms Beef Stick is the perfect meat for sandwiches. And then I also thought some Red Sockeye Salmon, which is perfect, would go well on that sandwich. The ad says, "Red Sockeye Salmon, one of the most economical foods you can buy today." This is from 1950 and it says it's perfect for sandwiches.

Will Buikema:
Okay, so you have salmon and-

Seth Rosenthal:
A beef stick.

Will Buikema:
A beef stick on a milk bread.

Seth Rosenthal:
Milk bread, yeah.

Will Buikema:
Untoasted?

Seth Rosenthal:
It doesn't say anything about toast. I'm just reading it right off the page here, man.

Will Buikema:
The page you wrote. Yes.

Seth Rosenthal:
I didn't write it. Look. So anyway, there's a paper from 1900 where there's an ad for Dr. Price's onion relish, which also says it's the perfect, because you need condiments, the perfect sandwich condiment. So I thought that might be nice on there alongside-

Will Buikema:
Is onion relish literally relish where instead of pickles, you've used onions?

Seth Rosenthal:
I don't know. Ask Dr. Price.

Ryan Simmons:
Is there anything more about the healing qualities of this, because it very much sounds like a thing that [inaudible 00:32:14].

Will Buikema:
However, there is snake oil on it.

Ryan Simmons:
You go down to the apothecary and get Dr. Price's onion relish and rub it in your open wound or something like that.

Seth Rosenthal:
If it's healing you want, we will get there. We're going to get some Kraft Cheddar on there. There's a lot of ads from the 1930s that say Kraft Cheddar is the perfect cheese for sandwiches.

Will Buikema:
I didn't know Kraft was-

Seth Rosenthal:
Kraft has been around.

Will Buikema:
... going around that long.

Seth Rosenthal:
Might have some sketchy origins. I don't know.

Will Buikema:
Sure.

Ryan Simmons:
Is this like a Volkswagen Nazi thing?

Seth Rosenthal:
Yeah, I don't know. There are not a lot of perfect sandwich vegetables I could find. So we're going to get some fresh California dates, which in 1963 were described as the perfect thing to put on a sandwich. But then because I was struggling to find a perfect vegetable to put on the perfect sandwich, we're going to go with, I think it's pronounced podophyllin.

Will Buikema:
Pedophile?

Seth Rosenthal:
Podophyllin. I'll tell you what it is. So this is an ad from 1870 and it says it's a perfect vegetable alternative, I guess at a time in history where it might've been difficult to find a lot of fresh vegetables. So podophyllin apparently a supplement that's a perfect vegetable alternative. I looked it up. It is also a traditional cure for genital warts. So-

Will Buikema:
Two for two.

Seth Rosenthal:
Part of what makes this sandwich perfect is that if you are suffering from general warts...

Ryan Simmons:
No judgment.

Seth Rosenthal:
No judgment. [inaudible 00:33:43].

Ryan Simmons:
Mummy, you're on mute. You're on mute.

Seth Rosenthal:
Yeah.

Ryan Simmons:
That's okay. We'll move on.

Seth Rosenthal:
But just to run down really quick, milk bread, beef stick, salmon, onion, relish, California dates, Kraft cheddar and general warts pills is the perfect sandwich.

Will Buikema:
So it is in pill form that-

Seth Rosenthal:
It's pills.

Will Buikema:
Okay. Okay. Versus like-

Seth Rosenthal:
Maybe you crack those doggies open and sprinkle it on there.

Will Buikema:
Sure, sure. Like how you would pill your dog.

Seth Rosenthal:
Just I was told to travel through the annals of history, scavenge through time and find the perfect sandwich and that's exactly what I did.

Will Buikema:
That's really good. That's

Ryan Simmons:
Pretty good.

Will Buikema:
It sounds like dog shit.

Seth Rosenthal:
It's perfect.

Will Buikema:
Let's be real. I do think, workshop, not criticism, I do think you need to toast the bread.

Seth Rosenthal:
Then toast the bread.

Ryan Simmons:
Yeah.

Seth Rosenthal:
But also don't shoot the messenger here.

Will Buikema:
Oh, no, no, no, no, no. For the-

Seth Rosenthal:
I found you the perfect cheese, the perfect bread, perfect condiments.

Will Buikema:
I am just looking to level up for scarab avoidance purposes. If you toast the bread, maintain a little bit more structural integrity.

Ryan Simmons:
Lets hear your sandwich.

Seth Rosenthal:
How about you present yours?

Ryan Simmons:
Yeah.

Will Buikema:
So a couple things. I believe, in general, if you were to try to rank a sandwich from one to 10, there is not much difference between an eight and a 10.

Seth Rosenthal:
Okay. Bad start.

Will Buikema:
I think the median is where the bulk of sandwiches lay. Part of this is informed by... For a long time I didn't really like sandwiches because I didn't like bread.

Seth Rosenthal:
Sorry. Any?

Will Buikema:
I didn't like bread.

Seth Rosenthal:
And you're not no intolerance or allergy here. I have never heard of that.

Will Buikema:
I think what this comes from is the two types of bread I knew were white and wheat.

Ryan Simmons:
Just straight-up sliced-

Will Buikema:
That was it.

Seth Rosenthal:
In the '90s.

Will Buikema:
Yeah.

Ryan Simmons:
That was kind of it.

Will Buikema:
And so it was like I knew Wonder Bread. I really didn't like Wonder Bread, I think for texture and sweetness reasons. And then there was just a little too much going on in the wheat sliced loaf that my parents would go for. So it took me a while to understand there are very good breads that are worth appreciating and now I do love bread.

Seth Rosenthal:
Congrats.

Ryan Simmons:
Yes. I'm extremely happy for you.

Seth Rosenthal:
Welcome to civilization.

Will Buikema:
Here is my thought on the perfect sandwich. I did not do research per se, but I did lived research.

Seth Rosenthal:
Mummy's going to love that.

Ryan Simmons:
Memories.

Will Buikema:
A method researcher, if you will. Ciabatta. I'm starting with ciabatta.

Ryan Simmons:
Okay.

Will Buikema:
Warm, not toasted. Fresh. A good prosciutto.

Ryan Simmons:
Okay.

Will Buikema:
A fresh mozzarella. Those two ingredients are evenly distributed. And on the top piece of ciabatta, a hot pepper spread.

Ryan Simmons:
I think I have witnessed you eat this actual sandwich in real life at the office.

Will Buikema:
Yeah, I'm sure you have.

Ryan Simmons:
Yeah. Okay.

Will Buikema:
Before you put top piece of bread onto meat and cheese, a little bit of olive oil on top of the mozzarella.

Ryan Simmons:
Okay.

Seth Rosenthal:
Sounds good.

Will Buikema:
One cut. Here is why-

Ryan Simmons:
No dates. No dates so far.

Will Buikema:
No dates.

Seth Rosenthal:
Do you understand how arrogant this is?

Will Buikema:
Your warts will remain. Okay. To me this is the perfect sandwich because you can taste every single aspect of it when you eat it.

Ryan Simmons:
I bet you could taste every single piece of salmon and cheese on that one too.

Seth Rosenthal:
I am the messenger for the historical record here. You're claiming to have eaten in your own life the perfect sandwich?

Will Buikema:
And regularly making it, yes.

Seth Rosenthal:
Dude, I love prosciutto, but how do you square your own personal experience with the fact that in 1979 the Shreveport Journal said that Hickory Farms Beef Stick is the perfect sandwich meat? That's in the record.

Will Buikema:
Look, this is an exercise in the perfect sandwich. We're all just taking a stab at what Mummy wants and I think-

Ryan Simmons:
It's not Mummy. I don't think it's Mummy. So your perfect sandwich is more of a personal thing. Seth, you found the perfect of every ingredient to put what was a perfect sandwich together.

Seth Rosenthal:
I just did the assignment.

Ryan Simmons:
I took a third and slightly different tack. I wanted to find one specific sandwich that was made at one point in time that hopefully, Mummy could go back in time and enjoy. Again, we don't know the depth of Mummy's true powers. I don't know if this is just going to get filed away or if Mummy is actually going to go back in time and eat these sandwiches. I found one of two possible specific sandwiches that I think could be perfect and that is one of two debated origins of the Reuben sandwich. Got to love a good Reuben sandwich. I truly believe to take a page out of the will book.

Seth Rosenthal:
Will book.

Will Buikema:
Will Buikema.

Ryan Simmons:
The Will Buikema. You have to start from a place of personal love and I believe that what I know about Reuben sandwiches, which is a lot, is that whatever the perfect sandwich is, it's got to be Reuben-esque. It's in there. You know what I'm saying?

Will Buikema:
Reuben adjacent.

Ryan Simmons:
It's Reuben adjacent. And I found in my research that there is one of two sandwiches that could be claimed as the first Reuben sandwich. There's a bunch of apocryphal stories and weird menus dug up in people's basements because I guess it's like a big point of contention. But one of them was potentially in Omaha, Nebraska. That's-

Seth Rosenthal:
No way.

Ryan Simmons:
... the general way. Okay, so now we're starting already. That's like the general, I'm sorry to say, some more accepted birth of origin of the Reuben sandwich is Omaha, Nebraska at a Poker game in a bar and hotel called the Blackstone, the Blackstone Hotel. The other one, and this is probably where your reaction came from, is New York City, baby. Of course, there's the second point of origin possibly of the Reuben sandwich-

Seth Rosenthal:
Come on.

Ryan Simmons:
... at a place called Reuben's Delicatessen-

Seth Rosenthal:
Makes a lot more sense to me.

Ryan Simmons:
Which makes a lot more sense to me. But when you go back in history, their purported firsts are variations on what we know of a Reuben. Sometimes they have Turkey, sometimes they have coleslaw instead of sauerkraut. So there's not like one specific document that either of these places can point to and say, "This is the specific proof that our Reuben is first and that's why it is the Reuben sandwich."

Ryan Simmons:
There's all these weird little stories like in Omaha, it's the granddaughter of the guy who owned the hotel and she was like, "He used to make these Sandwiches for my dad and he called them the Reuben sandwich." And it's like then there was a contest years later where a guy named Reuben knew this woman who cooked at the hotel and she entered the sandwich contest and she won.

Seth Rosenthal:
Sorry. Can we unmute ourselves real quick? Mummy, just one second. Can we unmute ourselves for a second?

Ryan Simmons:
Sure.

Seth Rosenthal:
I think it's adorable that you guys went and found sandwiches that you like. Are you guys not legitimately concerned about being punished?

Ryan Simmons:
Listen to me, one of these sandwiches changed the course of sandwich history as we know it. In one of the best categories-

Seth Rosenthal:
Is the Mummy going to agree with you?

Ryan Simmons:
Possibly. I don't know. Look, the Mummy gave us, "Find the perfect sandwich." I went in a direction of what was the perfect sandwich that it was so good, literally altered the course of history. One of these two sandwiches has to be it because not only did it create the Reuben that we know and love today-

Seth Rosenthal:
I feel like I'm the only one that-

Ryan Simmons:
It was so powerful that its place of origin is in contest.

Seth Rosenthal:
I took this seriously and now I feel like I looked dumb in front of an immortal being.

Ryan Simmons:
And I had a lot of meetings today. Mummy, are you there?

The Mummy:
Hello?

Ryan Simmons:
Yes, you're on.

The Mummy:
Oh, sorry. I zoned out, but this sounds great guys. Have a good one.

Ryan Simmons:
Wait, did you want it... Oh, he already logged off the call. I thought he was going to pick which one was his favorite.

Seth Rosenthal:
All right. Now I feel really dumb.

Ryan Simmons:
I guess you don't have to worry about the locusts.

Will Buikema:
No, it's fine. I canceled some revenue meetings for this.

Ryan Simmons:
Yeah. How much revenue were we talking about?

Will Buikema:
I don't know. I'll get notes from Mummy.

Ryan Simmons:
Mummy was also supposed to be in the revenue meeting?

Will Buikema:
I'm serious, CFO. The Mummy is really good about bringing up scarabs, but I'm pretty sure it's always an idea, he had it right before he came in the room. And then you never hear about it again.

Ryan Simmons:
And it becomes the most important thing and then-

Will Buikema:
Well, it started as locusts and then it moved to scarabs like he already forgot about locusts. I'm not sweating his ass.

Ryan Simmons:
If you're not already familiar with pro football quarterback Kerwin Bell, there are two really remarkable things that I think you should know about him. The first is a YouTube clip called Quarterback Spikes Ball and hits himself in the nuts. It's from October, 2000 and it's pretty much what it says on the tin. Bell is playing with the Toronto Argonauts in the Canadian Football League for a playoff spot against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, which happens to be Bell's former team.

Ryan Simmons:
Early in the second quarter on his opponent's nine-yard line, Bell snaps the ball, calls his own number and rushes it in for a touchdown. He is elated. Bell turns and finds Bombers cornerback Juran Bolden standing next to him and Bell, a 12-year veteran of the game wants to show off a little bit. Now what I'm about to describe to you happens in the space of less than three seconds. Bell looks Bolden directly in the eye and spikes the ball as hard as he can between his feet. The ball bounces off the ground and immediately hits Bell squarely in his own nuts with force.

Ryan Simmons:
While Bell instinctively cups himself in pain, Bolden who is visibly annoyed at such a display of arrogance, shoves Bell away from him. The force of the push combined with his self-inflicted injury, sends Bell to the ground tripping up another Bombers player. While they both fall to the ground, Bell receives a penalty for taunting and the flag lands somewhere near his limp body. It's genuinely very funny to watch and widely considered one of the best sports bloopers out there. Anyway, that's the first thing you should know about Kerwin Bell. The second thing is that he has the NFL's only perfect career passer rating.

Ryan Simmons:
Kerwin Bell doesn't go in much for records, he said so himself as he finished up his senior year as the starting quarterback for the Florida Gators in 1987 with SEC records and career passing yards and career passing touchdowns. Kerwin Bell wanted to win and he wanted to win playing for a team in the NFL. Bell grew up on his family's tobacco farm in a one-light town called Day Florida, population 250. He picked up a football in seventh grade and never looked back.

Ryan Simmons:
Bell never lost a junior varsity game and posted a 32-4 record with his varsity Maya Lafayette High School team, including a state championship his junior year. But when it was time to leave for college, Bell received only one scholarship offer from the small Georgia College Valdosta State, which initially promised Bell room and board, but then scratched the offer after budget shortfalls.

Ryan Simmons:
Bigger schools just didn't think a backwater kid, talented though he might be, would stand a chance in the competitive world of college football. Instead, Bell attended the University of Florida as a walk-on eighth-string quarterback. Bell was red-shirted his freshman year, warming the bench for the entirety of that season. But after a series of graduations, transfers and injuries on the depth chart, Bell worked his way from eighth to being the Gators backup QB at the beginning of the 1984 season. Then four days before their week, one matchup against reigning national champ Miami, Gators starting quarterback Dale Dorminey went down with a knee injury. Bell was now the starter. Kerwin took the opportunity and ran with it.

Ryan Simmons:
Under Bell, the Gators claimed the '84 SEC championship. He was named SEC Player of the Year that freshman year. Throughout his college career, newspapers floated his name as a potential Heisman candidate. But Florida was hit with NCAA sanctions the following summer, vacating that '84 SEC title and Keeping Bell and the Gators out of bowl games and off of TV for all of '85 and '86. By the end of 1987, the turbulence of those years had worried. Some folks that Bell's draft stock might take a bit of a hit. No matter, Bell knew he had what it would take to succeed. All he needed was a shot.

Ryan Simmons:
In April of 2020, the NCAA published an interesting set of statistics on the estimated probability of high school athletes competing in NCAA programs and beyond that, professional athletics. In it, the organization estimated that in 2019 there were 1,006,013 high school football players. Of those, 73,712 would compete in an NCAA program. That's 7.3%. Of the roughly 73,000 collegiate football athletes, 16,380 were draft-eligible in 2019, 254 were drafted by the NFL. That's only 1.6% of eligible NCAA football athletes of any division making it to the pros. I can't imagine those percentages looked much different in 1988. Kerwin Bell was drafted in the seventh round pick number 180. This was his shot.

Ryan Simmons:
It's 7:00 AM. on Labor Day 1989 and the phone is ringing, but Kerwin Bell already knows who it is. "They always call you first thing in the morning," he later tells a reporter, he knows this because this is the third time in 17 months he is being cut from an NFL team. Bell was drafted by Miami in the seventh round of the 1988 draft, but he never made it out of training camp. Later that season, he signed with the Atlanta Falcons but never played it down. After that '88 season, Atlanta left him as an unprotected free agent, and Bell was picked up by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who were now the ones calling him that holiday morning to tell him he was once again being cut. The year following that a knee injury that required surgery had, in his estimation, pretty much killed off any remaining NFL prospects.

Ryan Simmons:
Kerwin Bell knew he had the goods, but it was time to acknowledge he might've been out of shots. Bell briefly turned to coaching, working as a graduate assistant in Florida with Steve Spurrier and fellow Gators alum Jon Reeves. But Bell never stopped looking for that shot on the field. He spent the 91 season with the Orlando Thunder in what was then the World League of American Football, an NFL-funded minor league.

Ryan Simmons:
Then he moved to the Canadian Football League, continuing his journeyman career for the Sacramento Gold Miners in Edmonton Eskimos. Bell had his best professional season with the Eskimos, but the team cut him anyway saying that their plan all along was really to only keep him for a season or two. So back to the drawing board for Bell. But that summer, Bell got a call from Indianapolis Colts head coach Lindy Infante, himself a Gators alum as well.

Ryan Simmons:
Infante was familiar with Bell. In fact, Infante had called Bell once before in 1988 when he was the head coach of the Packers. They were looking to recruit talent in Green Bay. But Bell, a family man chose to entertain the offer of the local Buccaneers instead. But now Infante was calling again, this time from Indiana. They wanted Bell on the roster as a third-stringer, sure, but on an NFL roster nonetheless. Bell joined the team in May of 1996. On November 29th of that year, bell told the Tampa Bay Times, "People ask me, 'Why don't you get on with your life?'" "Well," he said, "this is my life," and maybe this was his shot.

Ryan Simmons:
There are lots of ways to measure the performance of a football quarterback, and the NFL has used a few official metrics over the years. In the 1930s, it was passing yardage, then completion percentage. It changed a bunch until finally in 1971, Commissioner Pete Rozelle had the league Stat heads come up with one consistent all-encompassing ranking metric, the passer rating. It's really easy, and because this is a podcast, I'll just tell it to you with no visual reference needed. All you have to do is divide completions by attempts, subtract 0.3 and multiply by five, then divide yards by attempts, subtract three and multiply by 0.25.

Ryan Simmons:
Next, divide touchdowns by attempts and multiply by 20. Then divide interceptions by attempts, multiply by 25 and subtract that number from the number 2.375. It must be 2.375. That will leave you with four figures, which you now add together divided by six and multiply by 100. And by the way, if any of those four figures are greater than 2.375, you can just go ahead and leave it at 2.375, of course. This very simple process means that a perfect passer rating is, of course, the very intuitive number of 158.3. The calculation is as meaningful as it is elegant.

Ryan Simmons:
On December 5th, 1996, the Colts suited up to play against the Philadelphia Eagles with their backup quarterback Paul Justin, ready to start in place of injured first-stringer Jim Harbaugh. But when Justin went down early in the third quarter with a shoulder injury, Kerwin Bell was called up. He walked onto the field to take his first snaps in a regulation game as an NFL quarterback. After two handoffs to Marshall Falk, Bell threw his first real, honest to God, NFL pass to Falk from the Eagles 34-yard line, good for 11 yards. Three plays later from the 20, another pass to Falk. Touchdown.

Ryan Simmons:
On their next possession after five running plays bell to Marvin Harrison good for 30 yards. Later in the fourth quarter, Bell to Sean Dawkins for nine yards. A few plays after that, Bell to Vince Workman for five yards. And then that was it, the Colts would blow out the Eagles 37-10. Bell finished the day five for five with 75 yards and one touchdown. Kerwin Bell had gotten his shot. Kerwin Bell was perfect. Kerwin Bell never threw another NFL pass.

Ryan Simmons:
I'm sorry to say I've lied to you. Kerwin Bell does not actually hold the only perfect career passer rating. In fact, nobody does. Heading into the 2024 fourth season, the best career passer rating currently belongs to Aaron Rodgers at 103.6. This is because according to pro football reference, the NFL requires players to reach certain minimums to qualify as a leader in certain categories. For passing statistics like passer rating, for instance, a player must have, among other criteria, a minimum 1500 attempts and 64 games to appear on career leaderboards.

Ryan Simmons:
But if I might be blunt for a second, who gives a shit? Yes, Bell's sample size of five pass attempts in a single game is incredibly small. And yes, it would be unfair to a veteran with many more years experience to be usurped on the leaderboard by one dude with a lucky day. But can we really discount everything we just heard? A talented high school kid from a nowhere backwater town walks onto the collegiate team of his home state's rising regional competitor, jumps seven spots in the depth chart through skill and luck wins a conference title, beats out over 99% of the competition to get drafted into the NFL, gets cut a bunch, spends six years as a journeyman in three different leagues, returns to the NFL, gets a shot on a random-ass December night and executes on his job with an efficiency that is considered by that league to be perfection. But no, sadly, according to the official record books, that simply doesn't count. Officially, it's just one really good night for backup's backup. And isn't that a shot to the nuts?

Will Buikema:
The Australian writer and historian Brian Fitzpatrick once said that Australian people are a tough-minded lot who made heroes of none and raised no idols. Except perhaps an outlaw Ned Kelly and Carbine, who was a thoroughbred racehorse. For one reason or another. People are hell-bent on glorifying others to an extreme that places that being of greatness on the highest pedestal imaginable. When it comes to sports, we attempt to do this with unbearable routine. Debating the goat has become so cliché that we ignore the fact it is a perpetually premature argument of all time, includes we future, we can't know.

Will Buikema:
But there is a different label of interest, this whole idea of perfection. Can an athlete be perfect? I believe so. And jumping back to Fitzpatrick's statement about Australians making heroes of none, it also seems like there's one more name to add. It's finally time to talk about Sir Donald Bradman.

Seth Rosenthal:
Okay, Will, Donald Bradman is a name that I know from the YouTube comments, and I'm really happy that you have finally gone and pursued this man's story. What did you learn?

Will Buikema:
It might be a comment on every single one

Seth Rosenthal:
Of them. Every video?

Will Buikema:
Yeah. I didn't want to go too, too far back, but to part the curtain a little bit, the only reason I know about him, and I assume the majority of Secret Base knows about him, is from the YouTube comments. I checked the first-ever beef history episode, which is kind of like in my mind, the mark of Secret Base's era, even if we weren't named that yet. And six years ago, the comment dates back to when this video came out. Michael Hall 5, 429 said, "Sir Donald Bradman, please."

Seth Rosenthal:
He's always so polite about it.

Will Buikema:
Yes, always very polite about it.

Ryan Simmons:
Yeah, there's a little SB at the end too always.

Will Buikema:
Right.

Seth Rosenthal:
Sir Donald Bradman, please, SB. It's got this extra little beg to it like, "Please, SB, please."

Will Buikema:
I would love to meet Michael Hall someday and know what was the tone you were leaving these comments on. But he was consistent and he was polite, and I think at various points, he got other people as well commenting this, and I don't know if that was bandwagoned or-

Seth Rosenthal:
He sort of become a fixture. Yeah.

Will Buikema:
Yeah. And the thing is, so Sir Donald Bradman was a cricket player, RIP, and we're a bunch of idiots who don't know cricket and-

Seth Rosenthal:
American idiots.

Will Buikema:
... American. For the most part, American idiots on the team. And we're making content for a primarily North American audience, and we don't have a passion for cricket, we don't even have a series that really makes sense to tell a cricket story, let alone Sir Donald Bradman's story, until the Annex came around. And he didn't even come to mind when we were talking about perfection, initially. I think it took a couple of meetings before... Ryan, I think you were like, "Oh, hey, what about Sir Donald Bradman?"

Ryan Simmons:
It might be time.

Will Buikema:
It might be time. And so I finally used this as a chance to look into this dude. Either the first thing or the only thing that comes to mind when someone thinks of Sir Donald Bradman, it's his career batting average, which is 99.94.

Ryan Simmons:
Dang, that's good, I think.

Will Buikema:
Right, that's the thing. I think that regardless of the context, that is a lofty number and it's worth being celebrated. And, Seth, not a percent.

Seth Rosenthal:
Not a percent, okay.

Will Buikema:
So I would say this was the first thing I really had to come to terms with was when I think of batting average, when I read batting average, I think of how baseball does it and it's a percentage, and in theory, the bottom is zero and the top is a 100%. In baseball numbers, I understand they don't just say 100%. But you look at 99.94 and it's so close to a 100 that it's easy to assume that's out of 100. It sounds like it should be a percent. The way that cricket does batting average is it's the number of runs a batter scored, divided by the number of times that they were out.

Ryan Simmons:
Right. Whereas an American batting average is how often you get on base, right? That's how often you get a hit to get on base.

Seth Rosenthal:
How often you get a hit?

Ryan Simmons:
Yes.

Seth Rosenthal:
There's also a slight [inaudible 01:00:14] on base percentage, but baseball batting average is success over total opportunities. It sounds like cricket average is success compared to failure.

Will Buikema:
Right. Because it's very specifically number of outs, not number of appearances because a batter can be done without getting out. So in-

Seth Rosenthal:
Blasphemy.

Will Buikema:
So for Donald Bradman, this is specifically his test cricket average. And test cricket is its own form of cricket, but it is essentially the highest, the most respected version of-

Seth Rosenthal:
Is that the one with the multi-day games and stuff?

Will Buikema:
Yeah, they'll have multiple tests that then go into, if you win three of five, then you're the winner of this.

Seth Rosenthal:
See, to make one fucking rewinder about this sport, we would've had to learn all of this. And this is the obstacle that has been in the way.

Will Buikema:
Right. And honestly, what I found out about Sir Donald Bradman had nothing to do with his metrics, ultimately. I didn't really need to understand how cricket was played, I just had to understand, "Okay, cool. Don Bradman really good at cricket."

Seth Rosenthal:
So is that the best batting average ever? Is that what you're saying?

Will Buikema:
By far.

Seth Rosenthal:
Okay.

Will Buikema:
So the way that they break down cricket batting averages, if your average is over 50, you're a good batter. If it's over 55, you're a great batter. If it's over 60, you're top-notch. And as of today, if you're over 63, you're Donald Bradman. The second-greatest career batting average is an active player who is around 62 point something.

Ryan Simmons:
That's a long way from 99.94. Which I think is also what makes it sound so... It's so close to 1000. They shaved it down to the 100th, which is what makes it sound like it should be 100.

Will Buikema:
And it's just like, it's wild that he was out 70 times in his career and he scored 6,900 nice 96 runs. So it's like he was so close to 7,000 runs scored. He happened to get a nice round number of outs to divide that by his final at bat was I think second pitch was out, didn't score any runs, and he just walked off being like, "Huh, isn't that funny how that goes?" And that was the end of his test career. But yes, the gulf between him and him and number two is massive. This will never be broken. It's viewed by people in the know as one of the greatest sports statistics of all time, and it really just makes it like there's no debate over who is the greatest batsman to ever play cricket.

Seth Rosenthal:
So is this the extent of why you think our commenter kept asking us to talk about this? What is this guy's deal? What era is he from?

Will Buikema:
So he played in the '30s, '40s. I think he debuted in Australia late '20s.

Seth Rosenthal:
Okay.

Will Buikema:
And here are some quick beats for why I think he is a name worth exploring in general. He's on money, he was knighted for being good at cricket. And so that was why in the opening, Australia makes heroes of none. But this dude, they have certainly put into this... He has a cricket video game.

Ryan Simmons:
Oh, sick. Really?

Will Buikema:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Seth Rosenthal:
I can play like Bradman 98?

Will Buikema:
Yes. Yes. In my mind, perfect is a label that we have embraced in the same way that we embrace any other label to attach to an athlete. We're holding off on it. It's used much more sparingly than good. But it's like on the flip side, if I described a performance as dogshit, you guys know what I mean. I'm not saying literally, "This is the textbook definition of dogshit," I'm just saying this was really, really stinky. I think perfect is the same, it's just on the other side of the spectrum. This is the colloquial use of perfect.

Will Buikema:
When I think of perfect athletes, I think of Serena Williams, I think of Wayne Gretzky who embody the creative player mindset of if you were to make somebody who could be the best at this sport, it's hard to make somebody that looks different than Gretzky, Serena or in cricket terms from a batsman perspective, Bradman. To go back to your question Seth though, that's not why I find it that interesting. I think what demonstrates how perfect he was at batting in cricket was the fact that he caused an international incident. He caused a global dispute because of how good he was at hitting a ball with a bat.

Ryan Simmons:
Like between two states, two governments?

Will Buikema:
Between Australia and England. And this basically came about because the Australian national team, and I might be getting some of these terms wrong, and I apologize for anyone who's listening and shaking their head.

Ryan Simmons:
Right again, stupid Americans.

Will Buikema:
Stupid Americans, stupid, stupid. And Texan of all things.

Seth Rosenthal:
Used to not be America.

Will Buikema:
Fair.

Seth Rosenthal:
Pretty recently.

Will Buikema:
Anyway, the Australian national team and the premier English cricket club, they would play a test match, I think once every other year.

Seth Rosenthal:
Is that the Ashes?

Will Buikema:
The Ashes. How did you know that?

Seth Rosenthal:
Because there used to be a really cool online, like a flash game where you'd do the Ashes.

Will Buikema:
A cricket flash game called-

Seth Rosenthal:
Yeah-

Will Buikema:
Oh that's sick.

Seth Rosenthal:
... on movieclip.com or-

Will Buikema:
[Inaudible 01:06:50]?

Seth Rosenthal:
Something like that. It was awesome.

Will Buikema:
So yeah, that's the Ashes. And the quickness with which I'm so impressed...

Seth Rosenthal:
I swear to God I didn't look that up. I know that from, I think it was miniclip.com had that game. Sorry. Yeah, the Ashes.

Will Buikema:
It was the 1928 version of the Ashes. I think that was when Bradman made his debut, the 1930 edition of the Ashes. He was phenomenal. This was kind of still early in his career, but he was already making a name for himself as just could hit absolutely anything. That was his whole thing. How do you get such a good batting average? He found a way to hit the ball no matter how it was coming at him and at all sorts of angles, and could put it anywhere on the field so no fielder could know, "Oh, here's the position, I'll get him," because he'd be like, "No, no, I'm just going to hit where you aren't, easy." Super watered down, but that's how we got really, really good.

Will Buikema:
And the English team saw his capabilities. He dominated them in 1930. And they basically said like, "Okay, cool. We need a plan to get the better of Bradman. And we noticed he really struggled with balls that were coming towards his body and bounced close to his body." There was a tactic that some of the English team in the early 1900s came up with called Leg Theory that was basically-

Ryan Simmons:
Leg theory?

Will Buikema:
Leg theory. Yeah, like-

Seth Rosenthal:
It sounds like a workout class.

Ryan Simmons:
Yeah.

Seth Rosenthal:
You just have to pay $27 for.

Ryan Simmons:
Yeah, my theories are Tuesdays and Thursdays after Body Pump.

Will Buikema:
And then ends up as a Netflix cult mini-series. Leg Theory was basically like, "Let's put the ball in a place where it's really hard for the batter to hit it."

Ryan Simmons:
Sure.

Will Buikema:
It sounds pretty basic-

Seth Rosenthal:
Isn't that what you always do? Although, yeah, I see what you're saying. He was really good at hitting a ball that was even reasonably within reach.

Will Buikema:
But I would say the equivalent of this would basically be if a pitcher was like, "Oh, I'll just..." And baseball was just like, "I'll throw it inside every pitch. I'll keep brushing them off the plate." And it's going to annoy the other team, it's not super sportsmanly. It's bad sportsmanship. It makes for a bad product. And this is an era, the 1930s where people are very, "Cricket is a gentleman's game."

Will Buikema:
So it was frowned upon. So 20 years later, the English were like, "Oh, you know what we're going to do? Were going to do that on steroids. We're going to do Leg Theory. But even faster we're going to throw it at Bradman and other Australian batsmen, and just make the ball so hard for them to hit to get the upper hand and not have Bradman just running all over our asses." And it worked pretty well. They did this during the Ashes. Bradman had some degree of success. He still hit for a century at times, which is basically in one at bat scoring 100 runs. But-

Ryan Simmons:
Wow. It sounds awesome. I have no idea how to play cricket. But the idea of scoring 100 runs at one at bat is like a cheat code. That's like a baseball video game cheat code.

Seth Rosenthal:
I am not expert enough in cricket to be the one saying this, but I think that the scoring is kind of like a home run derby where you're up there just hitting and hitting and hitting until you get enough outs. So that's why you can say 100 runs in a-

Will Buikema:
Basically, the inning per se is all 10 batters go until there's only one batter left. Because in order for the batting team to stay active, you need two batsmen. There's two-

Seth Rosenthal:
And they switch sides.

Will Buikema:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Seth Rosenthal:
It's cool.

Will Buikema:
And so that's how a run is scored in cricket. Once the ball is in play, both Batsmen run to the other wicket. And if they make it to the other wicket before the ball has been able to be delivered and somebody knocks the wicket off and whatever, then that's a run if they make it in time. If the wicket is taken off of it's post, then it's an out.

Ryan Simmons:
That sounds cute.

Seth Rosenthal:
Do you remember running bases? Did you ever do that?

Ryan Simmons:
Yeah. It's a little bit-

Seth Rosenthal:
It's like the midway point between running bases and baseball.

Ryan Simmons:
Sure.

Will Buikema:
And so part of why this was really difficult, the Fast Leg Theory, I think they called it. But it would become known as body line. Body line was really difficult because you were more deflecting it than hitting it. And the fielding team planned for this and stacked their fielders on the leg side of the batsmen, knowing that the deflections would likely just come bloop over to this guy and they could either catch it on the fly or catch it off the bounce and throw him out. And everyone watching hated it. Everyone watching was just like, this is a terrible product. I think the Australian press came up with the term body line because they're bowling the ball in line with the body.

Will Buikema:
Multiple batsmen were injured. I am blanking on the name of it, but the position equivalent to the catcher for the English side fractured his skull during this. Granted, that was just on a normal play. It wasn't a body line pitch, it was just a normal, I think it deflected and then caught him in the skull, fracturing it.

Ryan Simmons:
But still, who can say his attention probably was off of all the other body line pitches?

Will Buikema:
But even though it was not a body line pitch, that moment, because everyone was so fed up with all the body line shit, almost led to the crowd rioting and the English fielders were starting to look for like, "Oh, what can I use as a weapon to defend myself?" It was getting bad. I think that was test number three of five. And so while the Ashes were still going on, the cricket club affiliated with this team kind of primary Australian cricket body, sent a message over to their peers in England saying like, "Yo, cut this out. This is bullshit and it's unsportsmanlike." And that term, that concept fired up the English side so much that they're like, "No, we're just playing cricket. This is not-"

Ryan Simmons:
Oi, mate. [inaudible 01:14:11].

Will Buikema:
Like, "How dare you take our sportsmanship into question?" These letters started going back and forth. Diplomats started getting involved. I think one of-

Ryan Simmons:
You know you're in trouble when the nerds start getting into it too.

Will Buikema:
The governmental nerds?

Ryan Simmons:
Yeah.

Will Buikema:
I think one of the Australian diplomats who was based in England was talking to folks over there just like, "Yo, this could be really bad for trade." And-

Seth Rosenthal:
For trade?

Will Buikema:
Yes. Because it became a us versus them nation, versus nation thing. We've accused your team that represents your country of ungentlemanly behavior. Therefore-

Seth Rosenthal:
We're going to stop importing Vegemite.

Will Buikema:
It reached a point where the prime minister of Australia had to just step up to be like, "Y'all, this will be bad for us. We Australia need to maintain good trade with England. Can we all calm down a little bit and tell them that we're sorry?"

Ryan Simmons:
The Australian Prime Minister was saying the Australians should apologize?

Seth Rosenthal:
Stop throwing around accusations?

Will Buikema:
Yeah.

Ryan Simmons:
Oh wow.

Will Buikema:
Just like, "Look, chill out."

Seth Rosenthal:
Yeah. So they just backed down and that's it?

Will Buikema:
So they sent a message, and this was months and months and months, they sent a message that finally was like, "Look, we disagree with the use of body line. We really hope you stop doing that, but we rescind our statement about y'all being unsportsmanlike. We'll take that back. We just wish you would stop doing this thing that we do think is unsportsmanlike."

Seth Rosenthal:
Okay. It's like you found a loophole in the rules such as life, you can't be held to account for that, but maybe we ought to change the... Did they change your rule or something?

Will Buikema:
Over time they started changing the rules, but I think Australia could make the argument that part of the cricket rule book has to do with gentlemanly behavior. And so it's one of those vague things that then how do you govern it, unless somebody's wearing a baseball hat backwards, then you know you can fix that.

Ryan Simmons:
That was a thing we encountered with weird rules a lot, where the old dying and giving birth to the new was a lot of, "We need to get rid of these rules that are like, 'You can't be mean.'"

Will Buikema:
Right. It's like-

Seth Rosenthal:
Just don't.

Ryan Simmons:
"Just don't be mean."

Will Buikema:
Right.

Ryan Simmons:
It's like, "Well, okay, it's 1960, we're going to be mean. We got to get this rule out the rule book."

Seth Rosenthal:
What do you mean?

Ryan Simmons:
What does that mean by mean?

Will Buikema:
This rule was actually used to prevent witches from running on the field, but we should let left-handers pitch. So the Prime Minister had to step in to prevent it from all blowing up. And keep in mind, the Ashes were still going on. The ashes had not been completed.

Ryan Simmons:
Oh, this is all in real-time.

Will Buikema:
Because the tests took place over a span of time that then made it so at a certain point, they just started delaying because they were like, "We don't know. Are we going to have to take an official stand and boycott this as a team? Or what are we going to do?" Eventually, it cooled down. They finished the series, which became known as the Body Line Series. England won. But yeah, over time they started implementing language about just like... That basically, they didn't flat-out say, "You can't use leg theory in any form," but they made it so you couldn't bowl the way that the English team was bowling in this series. And part of that came because later that same year, England played a West Indian team that used body line against them and just destroyed them. So England was able to just be like, "Oh yeah, that was not cool to be on the other side of this."

Seth Rosenthal:
"We're allowed to do stuff to colonies, but not vice versa." So this all stems from Donald Bradman being that good at cricket.

Ryan Simmons:
He was him.

Seth Rosenthal:
They had to change their tactics. They had to do something that was gentlemanly. Australia had to respond, and eventually, the rules of cricket had to be modified because this one guy was too good.

Ryan Simmons:
Too unstoppable.

Will Buikema:
Yes. And to me that, anecdotally, is perfect. I think it's a really good encapsulation of just like, "You are doing something so well that you've ruined the sport for everyone else, but then the way that they try to get the best of you is in turn to ruin the sport in a different way."

Seth Rosenthal:
I was sort of hoping that this would go in the direction of the sport having to change. That's why I asked about that. I was glad that someone had to change the rule because in everything we've been talking about in this entire episode about perfection, we've avoided the fact that the whole thing that makes a sport fun to play and fun to watch is that perfection is impossible. Let's say for [inaudible 01:19:29], for the types of sports where everyone does everything, someone like Serena Williams, who I guess doesn't play a team sport, but someone like Wayne Gretzky, who is as close to perfect as they come, has numbers that are unassailable perhaps unapproachable is still performing at... I don't know. I don't know what an example of a percentage with Wayne Gretzky is, but like-

Will Buikema:
But the concept of perfection, he would need to be scoring a goal on every shot-

Seth Rosenthal:
Yeah. You can't do that. The dude famously has a quote about how you miss shots. The best players ever hit about half their shots. The best baseball players ever make contact less than half the time. Sports are designed and tweaked and redesigned so that the greatest, most perfect players don't even come close to approaching perfection. But this guy who, if you look at the numbers, it sounds like is basically operating at about a 50% success rate, Donald Bradman. He has almost exactly as many runs as outs. That to me sounds like-

Will Buikema:
No, it's significantly more. For every out, he has almost 100 runs.

Seth Rosenthal:
Oh, it's 100.

Will Buikema:
Yes.

Seth Rosenthal:
So as soon as this guy operated at a level that was so far above everyone else, that it ruined the magic. The magic of we have concocted this really elaborate scheme to make the best athletes in the world to perform at a coin flip rate, then you have to actually change the rules of the sport. The only exception to that in the major team sports is the fringes of the sports, the sports that have mini games built into them.

Will Buikema:
Sure.

Seth Rosenthal:
So when I heard that you were doing the Bradman thing, I went looking around at like, "Okay, who does get to approach actual perfection, not better than everyone's status, but actual perfection in sports?" And I was thinking about placekickers, closers, goalkeepers, people who perform a very specific task.

Will Buikema:
Which I do think is why I like somebody like Kerwin Bell and Ryan talking about Kerwin Bell is really interesting because that is a position that is not that, is the game, that is not a mini game within the game.

Seth Rosenthal:
That was JZ's thing also. Jiazhen talking about Daniel Gafford, who does as close to a specialty task as you can in sports. So yeah, Kerwin Bell is a super small sample. You can get perfection in a tiny sample or in Daniel Gafford's case, you have a tiny sample and you were coming as close to Goalkeeping or placekicking as one can in a relatively positionless sport like basketball. And I think what he demonstrates is that if you are going to do something as general as batting or play a sport as generalized as basketball or soccer or even hockey, you're not allowed to be perfect.

Seth Rosenthal:
If someone were so good as Donald Bradman seems to have been that their numbers either exceeded everyone else's by such a wide gulf or approached perfection, then they have to change the game. The game stops being fun. And the only exception to that is if you play a mini game within the game.

Ryan Simmons:
If you are in video game parlance, your OP.

Seth Rosenthal:
Yeah.

Ryan Simmons:
Your OP. And so they have to change the-

Will Buikema:
They Nerf and they buff and [inaudible 01:23:13].

Seth Rosenthal:
Screen peep.

Will Buikema:
And I guess that is also what then allows us as sports fans to appreciate perfection in the forms we know it as. A perfect game in baseball is sick because it's so rare.

Ryan Simmons:
Because it's so hard. Yeah.

Will Buikema:
Right. And we're ignoring the fact that what a perfect game really is a bunch of dudes on the other side failing to do their jobs for a day and sucking shit at baseball.

Seth Rosenthal:
If that happened every night, baseball would be bad, that would be a bad sport.

Will Buikema:
Perfection is boring,

Ryan Simmons:
Right.

Seth Rosenthal:
Yeah.

Will Buikema:
Bowling a 300.

Seth Rosenthal:
Well, so then that's what we've left out so far is there are some individual sports, sports with judges like gymnastics, figure skating. Or then just sports with very... Not very achievable, but have been achieved many times perfect scores like bowling. Perfection is attainable. And what happens if 300 has just become par for the course in bowling?

Ryan Simmons:
No longer lanes.

Seth Rosenthal:
Yeah, for feal.

Will Buikema:
They'll change the tech. They'll change the wax. Yeah. You could argue that perfection is boring in sports because we're all watching organized chaos and you don't want perfect within that.

Ryan Simmons:
Well, it looks like the day is just about over. Thanks again so much for coming through. Go ahead and keep that key card for future visits. We've got a near infinite number floors to cover, so don't be a stranger.

Annex Operating System:
Thank you for visiting the Annex. How would you rate your experience today? Please speak loudly and clearly. Wow, five stars. Thank you.

Ryan Simmons:
The Annex, a Secret Base podcast is produced and directed by Ryan Simmons with contributions from Joe Ali, Jon Bois, Will Buikema, Seth Rosenthal, Ryan Simmons and Jiazhen Zhang. Executive produced by Jon Bois and Will Buikema.