Hooks & Runs · A podcast about baseball, music and culture.

278 -- The one and onlys, the Grammy Awards and Rex pulls a HOF rookie card!

·1 hr·3 clips

Elmer Flick hit four triples in four at-bats across two games in Washington.

Craig and Rex open from Crazy Carl's Music and Portions in Midtown Bay City, behind the massage parlor and between two fried chicken joints. It is a straight two-host episode with no guest. They keep coming back to one-and-onlys. That means rare baseball feats, strange stat lines, and the sort of record only one player can claim. Guy Hecker comes up early as the model. His seven-run game in 1886 is the kind of oddity the hosts like to pick apart. The conversation stays with trivia that does not lend itself to easy Googling. Craig says he has been trying to make TikToks around questions like that. Some of the questions overlap with material from the show, so listeners may hear a repeat if they follow Hooks and Runs on TikTok. From there the conversation shifts toward music, copyright, and AI. They talk about singers, likenesses, voice, and mannerisms, using Gene Simmons as the example. That leads into a Seinfeld-style joke about someone selling their life story and then no longer owning the right to tell it. The episode then turns into a broader complaint about the Grammys. They say independent records do not usually win and that the same big-label names keep getting pushed. Kendrick Lamar, Adele, and Billie Eilish are named as examples of the artists that keep surfacing. The point is not just who wins, but how attention gets concentrated. They connect that to the shrinking space for independent music and independent radio. A pirate-radio impulse hangs over the whole argument. Craig also mentions listening to a podcast about whether culture has become stagnant. He says the guest there made some good points, but missed the larger point the hosts are making here. The episode ends with the usual loose, friendly sign-off. They say they will be back in two weeks. A guest is planned, though Rex cannot quite remember who it is. The closing keeps the same easy mix of baseball lore, music talk, and dry banter that carries the rest of the show.

As heard by us

Baseball oddities, music business gripes, and a conversation that keeps circling back.

The episode starts with baseball oddities and then slides into music business gripes, AI likenesses, and the question of who gets heard. Craig and Rex are strongest when they return to Guy Hecker and the other one off feats, then widen the view to Grammys, tribute acts, and the…

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Why you'd press play

For when you want baseball one-offs and music-business talk in the same seat.

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