382 episodes listed below
Baseball history, weird records, fast banter.
Two Strike Noise is a baseball-history hangout built around odd facts, loose arguments, and names pulled from deep in the scorebook. Jeff and Mark A. Johnston move quickly from current baseball chatter into stories about Opening Day weirdness, deadball players, old scoring rules, and players history tends to misplace.
PRESS PLAY
Two Strike Noise is a baseball-history show for people who think the side note is often better than the headline. Jeff and Mark A. Johnston move like two people sorting through a stack of scorecards, jokes, memories, and half-remembered names until the best detail shakes loose. The pace is quick. A segment can begin with spring training chatter, a studio-name bit, or a Mariners aside, then shift into a real historical thread before the listener has time to settle in. Recent episodes show the range. Opening Day oddities lead into young players, huge contracts, and no-hitter context. New rule talk opens the door to missing coaches, dugout stories, and the shortest night game ever played. A baseball-card segment can sit comfortably beside wartime attendance math or an old Tacoma memory. The show likes players with strange afterlives in the record book. Billy Hamilton becomes a way to explain how nineteenth-century stolen-base rules worked. Addy Joss becomes a story about a benefit game, grief, and how much a player meant to the baseball world around him. Mickey Lolich, Jackie Jensen, Ken Williams, Elroy Face, Andre Dawson, Ben Davis, Darnell Cole, Hideki Matsui, and others pass through as names with stories attached, not just trivia answers. The comedy is dry and loose. The research is real. That combination is the point. Two Strike Noise does not flatten baseball history into tidy greatness or nostalgic reverence; it treats the game as a messy archive full of good players, weird rules, questionable decisions, and records that need context before they make sense. It also keeps a hobbyist streak, with baseball cards, listener emails, decade-team roster ideas, and simulated matchups giving the show a clubhouse-table feel. The result is warm without getting sentimental and nerdy without turning into homework. It is best when a joke cracks open a fact, then the fact turns out to be better than the joke.
Made for: For baseball fans who enjoy old players, obscure records, card talk, and lively arguments about how the game used to work. It especially fits listeners who know the sport well enough to enjoy a tangent about Mariners contracts or nineteenth-century scoring rules.
What sets it apart: The show pairs genuine baseball-history research with a loose comic rhythm that makes forgotten names feel active again. Its strength is not grand mythology; it is the odd rule, the stray box-score detail, and the player nobody expected to spend twenty minutes caring about.
Jeff and Mark talk about the funny, odd and always entertaining history and characters from the greatest game there is, baseball. It’s like if the San Diego Chicken and the Philly Fanatic had a baby that was raised by Max Patkin. Grab a hot dog and an adult beverage and ”let’s play two!”
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Baseball's old rules, forgotten games, and dugout oddities become clear, funny stories in Jeff and Mark A. Johnston's hands.
Jeff and Mark A. Johnston turn baseball history into a lively conversation between fans who care about both the record book and its stranger margins.
Advancing on a fly ball once counted as a steal; Jeff and Mark hand you the argument.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A loose Opening Day tour where a no-hitter and a teenage debut lead baseball into stranger territory.
Opening Day becomes a rambling tour through baseball's stranger corners, as Jeff and Mark A. Johnston move from a 21-year-old pitcher throwing the first of his three career no-hitters to Connor Griffin's debut for Pittsburgh at 19.
A loose, curious baseball-history episode where a 75-minute game and a 25-person roster challenge share the same dugout.
Two Strike Noise treats baseball history as a place where odd side roads are part of the appeal. Jeff and co-host Mark A. Johnston move from fatigue with the WBC to Hideki Matsui's extensive adult physical media collection, then into a wartime game billed as the shortest night…
A benefit game for Addy Joss shows baseball turning grief into collective generosity.
A benefit game for Addy Joss opens into a compact portrait of how baseball mourned, gathered its stars, and raised money for a player's family.
Billy Hamilton's 1890s numbers are set inside the old rules, odd medicine, and scoring conditions that shaped them.
Billy Hamilton's speed lands in a more useful frame here, as the episode rebuilds the baseball conditions that made base stealing much broader than modern listeners might assume.
A loose, coarse clubhouse legend gets retold through player memory, comic timing, and Two Strike Noise banter.
Episode 308 brings Two Strike Noise back from the holidays with its usual mix of baseball history, casual studio rhythm, and jokes that wander before landing. Mark A.
Spahn's long duel unfolds through scoreless innings, contrasting pitching styles and the wait for a run.
Warren Spahn's pitching duel gives Jeff and Mark a simple question to follow: how long can the starters keep going? On Two Strike Noise, they move through the scoreless innings and the different ways each pitcher works.
Twins therapy with a box score.
Daily Tigers tension, sorted fast.
Nebraska athletics, close up and week by week.
Jeff and Mark discuss Mark's trip to Cooperstown for the Hall of Fame induction and meeting Johnny Bench.
Two Strike Noise Episode 316 opens with Jeff and Mark A.
Jeff and Mark open Episode 315 of Two Strike Noise with Hideki Matsui being invited to speak at the 44th annual meeting of the Japan Society of Fertilization and Implantation because he was a middle-school classmate of the conference president.
The hosts discuss baseball history, including Hall of Fame news about Andre Dawson's cap request, and share personal anecdotes about spring training and the World Baseball Classic.
Jeff and Mark discuss a recent chainsaw accident involving baseball figure Ben Davis on their baseball history podcast.
This episode of Two Strike Noise explores the life and career of baseball player Jackie Jensen, from his MVP season to his career cut short by a fear of flying.
The hosts of Two Strike Noise discuss the upcoming baseball season and introduce a story about Mickey Lolich, a Detroit Tigers pitcher who was replaced by a mailman in the World Series.
The Addie Joss benefit game on July 24, 1911 drew 15,281 fans and became a first all-star style game.
Billy Hamilton scored 198 runs in 132 games in 1894 and still did not lead his own team in average.
Hosts Jeff and Mark A.
Jeff and Mark discuss the historic pitching duel between Warren Spahn and Juan Marichal, and the season's playoff races.
Jeff and Mark discuss Mark's trip to Cooperstown for the Hall of Fame induction, including meeting Johnny Bench.
This episode discusses the 1942 World Series, which was played without a true home field due to World War II travel restrictions.