TORONTO – Naturally, given his engaging manner and well-spoken insights into the game, Ross Stripling would occasionally be asked by friends and colleagues if he saw himself as a broadcaster once he’s thrown his final pitch in the big-leagues.
No, the Toronto Blue Jays right-hander would reply, not really. His thought has been to move on from baseball when he’s done playing, and as an established financial advisor, he already has one potential pathway in place.
Nonetheless, a couple years ago when close friend Cooper Surles pitched him on the idea of doing a podcast together, Stripling agreed. Aside from getting to banter with a buddy, the show was a way to get some broadcast reps, allowing him to gauge if he enjoyed working in the medium, while simultaneously honing his skills.
Two-plus years and 132 episodes later, The Big Swing is going strong, eventually linking up with the Jam Street Media network. Whether the podcast becomes a springboard to a future broadcast career is uncertain, but working on it has provided Stripling with a weekly “hour escape from the everyday grind of baseball, which can kind of beat you down.”
“I put my phone down and I have a conversation with one of my best friends from back home and usually an athlete, or someone from another sport or whoever we have, and you just don’t do that a lot anymore,” Stripling continues.
“Like really sit down and have just an open-ended conversation with someone. I really enjoy it. I enjoy preparing for them. I enjoy, obviously, the actual conversation and doing the podcast. A lot of guys will go home and play four hours of video games. That’s never been me. I don’t play video games. So this is my escape, my hobby away from baseball that kind of clears my mind a little bit.”
The escape has been so rewarding that over the winter, Stripling agreed to do a limited-run second podcast entitled GOATS: On The Bump, in which he and a guest pitcher breakdown an all-time great.
Matty Staudt, the president of Jam Street Media, was looking to do some type of show on baseball history and pitched the idea to Stripling, who was immediately intrigued. “I knew there wasn’t anything out there like it, so I thought it had a chance to be successful,” he says, and because the chats are evergreen, he liked that he could pre-record them during the winter.
There are episodes on Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Pedro Martinez, Greg Maddux, John Smoltz and Steve Carlton and Tim Lincecum, among others, while Stripling tapped his impressive network to bring in Clayton Kershaw, Trevor Bauer, Michael Wacha, Jameson Taillon and Blue Jays teammate Robbie Ray to discuss them.
“I just love the content of the podcast,” says Stripling. “How often you hear two big-leaguers really dissect a Hall of Famer that came before them? I’ve never heard anything like that. You’ll hear guys on MLB Network do it. But this is two current players talking about the guys that did it before them. I thought that was really neat. It just didn’t seem like across all of sports I really knew of anything quite like that.”
It is unique, and part of what makes the concept work is that each episode is like eavesdropping on two fans totally nerding out on a giant of the sport, only on a much higher plane of thought.
The discussion with Kershaw on Koufax is especially compelling, as the Dodgers ace and Stripling both have a personal connection to the legend who occasionally visits the defending World Series champions to work with pitchers.
“Have you ever seen Sandy’s hands wrapped around a baseball?” Kershaw says during the episode. “He’s like, ‘Hey, you should really try this with your curveball.’ His middle finger and his thumb are literally touching on the other side of the baseball. And I’m like, ‘Sandy, I can’t do that. My hands are normal-sized.’ That big of a hand can make a curveball do some crazy things.”
“I have that in all-caps (in my notes) here, HIS HANDS, because I have the exact same story,” Stripling replies. “He came up to me was like, ‘Strip, sometimes I feel like I can see your curveball pop out of your hand. If you could just throw it like this …’ and I was like, ‘What?’ He has paws. He doesn’t have hands. He has paws.’”
Be sure to listen to this weeks brand new episode as @RossStripling and @RobbieRay have a discussion about 10x All-Star, and Hall of Fame lefty, Steve Carlton. Listen here : https://t.co/SUY46kAQNk pic.twitter.com/zTp947d7ec
— GOATS: On The Bump (@GoatsOnTheBump) June 2, 2021
The way they genuinely marvel at one of the game’s all-time greats is part of the show’s charm and is repeated episode after episode. Particularly fascinating is the episode with Bauer not only details how he integrated some of the principles from Lincecum’s mechanics into his own delivery, but also discusses how better biomechanics might have extended the diminutive righty’s career.
Along the way, Stripling delivers quick-but-thorough biographical breakdowns of each subject, learning a great deal about each through his own research.
“The guys from back in the day, I didn’t know jack squat about those dudes, man,” says Stripling. “You go research them and you find out all this cool stuff. Some of the guys fought in World War II, are crazy decorated soldiers and then come back and pitch for 20 years in the big-leagues. It’s stuff that you maybe kind of knew but didn’t really know until you dug in.”
That’s part of the idea with GOATS, which could end up serving as a vertical across different sports. As things stand, Stripling doesn’t expect to do a second season on pitchers, leaving the 31-year-old to open up guests with his affable approach on The Big Swing.
“The podcast has given us an ability to bring on some really special athletes and people around sports and show a different side of them, that is laid back, I’m just having a conversation with my friends,” says Stripling. “I think that’s going to get more out of them there than just the ‘God willing, you work every day,’ kind of stuff that you get after every game in sports.
“I’ve been able to get some guys to open up way more than we’ve ever seen from them, which is really the reason that we do the podcast.”
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