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Graig Kreindler
198 Plays4 years ago
Graig Kreindler grew up in Rockland County, New York. In 2002, he graduated with Honors from the School of Visual Arts in New York City with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration.
His award-winning sports work has appeared in juried shows and museums across the United States, and has been featured in nationally-distributed books, newspapers, magazines, on the Internet and television.
To Graig, no other sport embodies the relationship between generations and the sense of community like baseball. His goal is to portray the national pastime in an era when players were accessibly human, and the atmosphere of a welcoming ballpark was just as important as what happened on the field. He is proud to act as a visual historian, recreating a history that he has never experienced, yet, like millions of fans, maintains a profound connection with.
https://www.graigkreindler.com/
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Transcript
Journey Into Cool Papa Bell's Story
00:00:16
Speaker
It was a crash course because I was like I want to find out
00:00:21
Speaker
the story of Cool Papa Bell, but you never know what's out there, and I get involved in reading a lot of things, so I look up and just happenstance. This book came out a few years ago, and then I read about the author who died a few months before its release, which I didn't even know any of this. And listening to the book, which I really enjoy, but it's interesting because the introduction is like poetry. It's like, look,
00:00:46
Speaker
The legend is in there. There's some facts in there. We got some box scores. We got some legend. And it's like it's going to be all these type of things, but it's in there. Cool Papa Bell is in there. And you know, it's like that's an interesting approach, you know, and the history isn't there in spots, but we have more of it now than we ever would have. Yeah, absolutely.
Baseball Research and Negro League Insights
00:01:11
Speaker
I mean, new stuff comes to light.
00:01:13
Speaker
all the time, I mean, especially with players like Bell, you know, and you have a lot of baseball researchers who kind of specialize in in Negro leagues and uncovering things. And it's funny because I kind of feel like if you're into baseball, if you're into the history of it and learning about it, I feel like there's never been a better time to kind of be into it. I just think that there are so many
00:01:44
Speaker
different, you know, different avenues that you can kind of go down that you probably wouldn't have been able to go down before, you know, whereas you just have, you'd have like one or two books on a subject and, and, you know, maybe a firsthand account, but now it's like you have that times everything on the internet and, you know, interviews and all that stuff is just, you know, the tip of your fingers. Yeah. And it's like,
00:02:09
Speaker
data information and kind of like you can put out the fishnet. Yeah, exactly.
Introducing Greg Kreindler, Baseball Artist
00:02:15
Speaker
Yeah. This is Ken Volante with something rather than nothing. And I got to tell you, I'm really excited. I got Greg Kreindler, a painter who does a lot of depictions of historical baseball figures and portraits and scenes. Greg, great pleasure to welcome you to the podcast.
00:02:39
Speaker
Thank you, Ken. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. Thanks for staying up late. Or I guess I'm staying up late. Well, yeah. It's great to chat and fit in some time here to chat about philosophy, art, baseball. It's all in your work. But prior to getting into the conceptual stuff and getting into all the different things you do with your painting, were you an artist when you were born? That's a great question.
Early Artistic Influences
00:03:09
Speaker
Here's the thing, I started drawing when I was very young. I probably was seriously, quote unquote, seriously drawing when I was three or four or something like that. And I think I always kind of had a, I hesitate to use the word talent, but there was a little bit of a talent or a gift there.
00:03:36
Speaker
Uh, that I guess kind of just gave me more of a natural proclivity to drawing. Yeah. Uh, but you know, I, as I tend to think, uh, you know, now with talents and gifts and things like that, I really think that you can have that, but it's kind of up to you to, to kind of, you know, fan that flame and, and, and build on it. And, and that's kind of where you kind of shine, you know, it's like,
00:04:05
Speaker
You only have so little of that gift, and it's really in your hands the rest of the way. So I think in that sense, I think that somewhere inside of me, I was an artist when I was born, and I think I kind of pulled it out of me over 20, 30 years. I guess I'm still pulling it out of myself, trying to figure out where I am with it.
00:04:30
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, we on the podcast recently, I mean, certain themes that have come up and some of them have to do about kind of history or coming from from artists or or not having a history or connection to art and how you develop. But also, you know, as as another matter, like you said, around, you know, talent and, you know, having a proclivity or an ability
00:04:54
Speaker
And then whether you get to develop that or not, right, whether it's cultivated, identified, cultivated in that. And it's, it's, it's, it's great to hear, you know, how you recognize that, that, you know, something was there and, you know, looking to, you know, looking to build on that. So, um, obviously we're going to get into the baseball stuff and, and, and we talked about as a primary piece of, you know, what you create.
00:05:19
Speaker
But did we always doing that when you were creating something or starting to paint when you were younger?
Combining Art and Baseball Passion
00:05:25
Speaker
I mean, was it was it I'm going to put baseball together and painting and that's it for me or how did it develop with your subjects? Well, so OK, so I I grew up in the 80s and I was born in 1980. So the first drawings that I remember doing were kind of the cartoon characters that I that I was watching on television.
00:05:49
Speaker
you know, whether that was He-Man or G.I. Joe or Thundercats, stuff like that. You know, I remember my parents literally taping some of the episodes off of the television, and I would kind of play them back over and over again, and I would kind of pause them, you know, at this spot where you just had a, you know, a nice portrait of He-Man or, you know, maybe him doing this, you know, heroic pose, and I would just sit in front of the television and I would draw. And, you know,
00:06:21
Speaker
You mentioned before that art was kind of cultivated. I'm really lucky in the sense that I have two parents who were always very supportive of that. They're always supportive of me being an artist or me drawing. They took my brother and I to museums all the time and like Broadway shows.
00:06:49
Speaker
you know we were we were getting cultured and a lot of a lot of my friends weren't getting those same kinds of experiences that uh that we were so i'm very lucky in that sense but uh the baseball thing it kind of it started a couple of years later i think you know when i was five or six or so i discovered what was left of my father's baseball card collection so
00:07:17
Speaker
He was born in 1944 and grew up in New York City. And he was collecting baseball cards, I guess, in the late 40s, early 50s. And these were kind of like the Bowman and Topps issues of the day. And each card, I'd say maybe not each card, but for the most part, those sets were illustrated.
00:07:46
Speaker
They weren't necessarily done from photography. So I think when I discovered some of his baseball cards, I guess I noticed that. I noticed that, let's say the cards he had from the 40s or 50s or whatever were different from the cards he had from the 80s. These were drawn. These were illustrated. These were painted. So I think subconsciously, something kind of clicked. And I thought that it was something that I could do, not
00:08:15
Speaker
you know, not as a vocation, not as a job, not as a career, but, you know, I could draw, maybe I could draw Mickey Mantle, you know, for my dad, because he loves Mickey Mantle. And, you know, I'd get like the proverbial pat on the head. Good job. So I did that for a bit and, you know, still kind of, you know, just getting getting a little bit older and
00:08:44
Speaker
into different things. I kind of went through puberty and got into comic books and got really weird around girls. And all of a sudden, I'm like this kid who is not necessarily drawing all the time, but is kind of known for being an artist, for being a draftsman. And I guess at that time, I kind of figured I would
00:09:13
Speaker
do something as a career with it, I just didn't know what. And that was when I kind of learned about being an illustrator. I specifically kind of gravitated towards being a science fiction and fantasy book cover illustrator, because I kind of always been in love with
00:09:35
Speaker
Those are great. That stuff. Yeah, like that, that visual storytelling, just the look of that, just right in my wheelhouse. And I went to the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan for college. And that was kind of like, that was where I was going to go. But, you know, a couple years into it, I, you know, I was working my butt off and it just, at some point, I just realized that I didn't love doing that kind of subject matter. It didn't really
00:10:06
Speaker
I didn't tug on my heartstrings the way that I thought it should. And everything kind of just became more of a struggle, became more of a struggle to do those paintings and to do that kind of work. So I floundered for a bit. I still kind of worked on my technical chops, so to speak.
00:10:28
Speaker
You know, here I am senior year of school and I don't really know exactly what I'm gonna do when I graduate because I don't wanna be a science fiction fantasy book cover illustrator anymore. I don't know what I wanna paint. So I'm in class one day. This is kind of like my general portfolio class. And the teacher gives an assignment to everyone in the class to illustrate a relationship. And for whatever reason,
00:10:57
Speaker
the first thing that I thought of was the relationship between a batter and a pitcher. And, you know, all of a sudden it's kind of like I went back to being a young kid again, looking at my father's baseball cards. And I ended up, you know, getting involved with research and, and, and, you know, thinking, okay, let's make a painting of Mickey Mantle for my dad. You know, just be, it'll be just like it was when I was, when I was a young kid. And I,
00:11:28
Speaker
made this painting and I absolutely loved it. I loved everything about it, not the painting itself. I mean, I was happy with the painting, but the process of doing it, you know, the research that went into it, like everything, I don't want to say that it was effortless, but it just, it hit all of those notes that I wanted, I guess, art to hit for me. And kind of,
00:11:57
Speaker
that's what it's been like for the past. This is this was 2002 that I did that painting at SVA. And basically, I've been doing it since then. It's just been baseball. It's like that that was kind of like the turning point where I realized that baseball is kind of where my heart is. And that's where I want to be. Yeah, yeah. And I, I, um,
00:12:23
Speaker
I had actually, until you had brought up, I had actually forgotten about some of the older baseball cards, as you mentioned, being painted, and now I'm connecting it more how I've seen the type of representations that you have, and remember how it was a particular style, even back then, of painting the players.
The Art of Historical Accuracy
00:12:44
Speaker
One of the things I wanted to ask you, Greg, is
00:12:49
Speaker
And you talked about the research that's in your process. And I'd imagine you don't want to get into all the details of the research. But one of the things I was wondering is you have what I've read about as kind of like a measured approach to capturing the accuracy of what's going on there. So for our modern eyes with all the different colors and all this type of thing, but you have a photograph, but you're also trying to capture the color.
00:13:19
Speaker
how it looked um how does that happen i've had a lot of great conversations with painters about color and things like what goes on right there because i think that's has to be part of the magic in the universe that's right in there yeah well that that's kind of a big part of it for me uh or big part in you know in that attempt uh because the majority of the work that i'm doing uh it's you know baseball players that
00:13:48
Speaker
to most people kind of only exist in like this drab black and white world. So a lot of the photography that I work from is black and white. So the the research that kind of goes into it, you know, just from kind of like a from a practical standpoint. So that kind of thing happens where I'm
00:14:15
Speaker
I'm searching, I'm scouring, should I say, the internet or I'm looking through my files. I'm trying to look for examples of, let's say, a specific jersey from a specific year. What does the jersey look like? What color should the jersey be? What color is the trim on the jersey? If it's a ballpark, what did the ballpark look like this particular year?
00:14:41
Speaker
You know, sometimes ballparks would be renovated and the signage, the advertisements that you would see in a ballpark would usually change from year to year. So I would try to kind of focus on getting those details right, especially in color because
00:15:02
Speaker
Basically, I have access to a lot of, whether it's kind of like color home movies or color photography, just from 20 years of building a library. Chances are, if it's from, let's say, the 1940s on up, I can usually find the proper color reference that I need to kind of imbue into the painting.
00:15:32
Speaker
But it kind of goes beyond that in that I'm trying to kind of recreate a scene. And in doing so, not only do I need things to kind of be historically accurate with colors, but I have to kind of be aware of what is affecting these colors. And for me, that is kind of always involving light.
00:16:03
Speaker
I have to kind of be conscious of of how the light is going to affect the colors of these things in the particular piece that I'm making. So, you know, a sign might look complete like a yellow, red and blue sign might look completely different. You know, if it's if it has sun shining on it, then it would say I'm kind of like an overcast day.
00:16:28
Speaker
And I think being sensitive to that sort of thing is a big part of the process. When I was in school, I did a lot of drawing and painting from life, which you tend to do in art school, drawing and painting from a model all the time, or drawing and painting outside. And when I was doing it,
00:16:57
Speaker
It's kind of like I was doing it because I'm in a class and I'm trying to kind of just become a better painter and I'm trying to learn how to paint, you know, quote unquote, realistically. But what I realize now is that I was kind of learning, I guess, why I was painting these things the way I was painting them or why they looked the way that they looked, you know, why, why is,
00:17:24
Speaker
painting a model that is being illuminated by like northern light, why is that different than painting a model that's being illuminated by sun, whatever? So I had to take that kind of thinking and put that into the baseball stuff. So it's kind of like a mishmash of all of that, with being accurate to the moment, getting the light right, getting the weather right, getting the temperature right.
00:17:52
Speaker
But also making sure that the colors of a particular jersey or scene or whatever are accurate to what actually existed. Making Mickey Mantle look like Mickey Mantle. Making a 1955 jersey be as baggy as it needs to be compared to one from 10 years later.
00:18:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's just like the minutia that that, you know, like we were talking about before the minutia that that baseball fans and history lovers are really, really anal about. Yeah, it's like, you can't get enough of the the inference, the information and more, you know, the rest of the story. Hey, Greg, I want so
00:18:38
Speaker
I mentioned, you know, James, James Cool Papa Bell at the Negro Leagues. My my favorite player is also a player who I never saw play. I've read about and I've read the legends. I've heard the stories, all these different sources.
Depicting Legends: Cool Papa Bell
00:18:53
Speaker
And so I see your painting of James Cool Papa Bell.
00:18:59
Speaker
and your connection to these depictions in the Negro Leagues. And I am floored. It's an amazing piece. And I say, thank you. You're welcome. I say, what a work of art. But Greg, what is art? For me, all that's in there for me, you caught it.
00:19:26
Speaker
It did it from, but for you, what's art? What's going on there? What's going on? What's art? Oh, man. That's a tough one. You know, it's like I never really thought about what art was or what art really meant to me. I never was really able to kind of articulate it. But I think
00:19:55
Speaker
with the kind of work that I do, you know, I'm trying to kind of communicate with people who are, you know, who are viewing the works. And I'm trying to kind of, this sounds corny, but it's true. I'm trying to elicit, you know, an emotional response. So,
00:20:19
Speaker
I want the person to think of their mother and father bringing them to a game when they were five or to think of what life was like in the 60s or whatever. I feel like that's what art is to me. It's just something
00:20:42
Speaker
You know, it doesn't have to be a painting or a visual thing. It's just, I feel like it's just something that, that is created and, you know, and elicits some sort of emotional response. Yeah. It's, it's like such a broad, you know, definition, but, uh, that's kind of all I end up, you know, I think at a certain point too, a lot of times I end up talking about like,
00:21:11
Speaker
um like healing creation uh processing emotions getting things out the process getting things out the end result getting things out you know so it is um a lot of the answers definitely get um get into that uh into that territory i wanted to ask about um
Complexities of Negro League History in Art
00:21:33
Speaker
And I encouraged all the listeners to check out Greg's, all his paintings. But I wanted to reference back again to the Negro Leagues painting and on the question of what I had mentioned about legend and lore and fact and all the deep social issues and exclusion and stardom and all the things that went on with Negro Leagues baseball.
00:22:02
Speaker
With that record being incomplete and with the kind of what's known, what isn't known, when you get to the point of how you're trying to represent them, was that a more difficult problem or did you feel more responsible to try to extract that or bring that out with those paintings? Well, you know what? I'm lucky in that I kind of knew where I was going with those paintings.
00:22:29
Speaker
All of them, they were commissioned by a collector who is actually based out in the Pacific Northwest in Seattle, who is a huge baseball fan. And he's very much into the Negro Leagues and Latin American Leagues and whatnot. And it was really because of him that I took on that project.
00:22:58
Speaker
I think what I set out to do when I first started painting these players, not Negro Leaguers specifically, but I just mean painting baseball players to begin with, I was always really concerned with depicting them in an honest way. And the whole idea that you mentioned that we talked about a little bit with myth and legend in baseball, I do
00:23:28
Speaker
I do appreciate that that is there, but that's not really the kind of stuff that I want to depict. So in a way, I like giving the viewer the opportunity to come to their own conclusion about the player. So I don't want to take any of my whatever nonsense I have going on in my head and
00:23:58
Speaker
make a work of art or whatever that reflects that. So there's this story. I don't know if you've ever heard it, but this had a profound effect on me and kind of how I do this stuff. It's about Red Barber. And when Red Barber was told by Branch Rickey, I think it was in 1940,
00:24:28
Speaker
might've been in 47 or might've been in 45 when Robinson was actually signed by the organization. I don't remember. But anyway, Branch Rickey told Red Barber that Robinson was coming and Red Barber was the play-by-play announcer for the Dodgers, so he was going to be talking about Robinson.
00:24:53
Speaker
He, Red Barber, he grew up in the South. He went to segregated schools. And you could say that he was kind of, I don't want to say that he was a bigot, but he was a product of his time. And he probably had misgivings about Roberts coming over and kind of integrating the game. And he kind of had a hard time with that in the beginning. He had a hard time with
00:25:20
Speaker
I guess being okay with the fact that he was going to be talking about Robinson. And he tells this story about recalling his first World Series that he covered, which was in 1935.
00:25:40
Speaker
And he, along with all of the other newspapermen and announcers that were covering the thing, they get called into the office by Kennesaw Mountain Landis, who was the commissioner at the time. And Landis is saying that your job here is to report. If somebody makes a bad play,
00:26:06
Speaker
Um, then, you know, you are to talk about the play. You're not supposed to give your opinion about it, you know, and saying that, you know, this player made a dumb decision or, you know, boneheaded player, whatever. If, if a player, you know, comes up to me in the stands and spits in my face, you know, you are just to report and, you know, leave, I think the phrase was leave your opinions in your hotel room. And.
00:26:34
Speaker
Barbara says that when he remembered that, when he thought of that moment, he was able to kind of, I guess, be at peace with the fact that he was going to kind of talk about Robinson and, you know, kind of go through his conversion. And that's kind of, that's kind of how I look at my work. And what I try to do is that I just, I try to just report, you know, I try to kind of
00:27:02
Speaker
be as honest and accurate as I can be with those players and just let the viewers, you know, kind of do what they're going to do with it. It's just my job to be like a conduit for that information. Yeah. I think, um, I think in, in, in, in just that, that approach, I think, um, there's that approach has made me think a lot, uh, recently I think of like, maybe like
00:27:30
Speaker
We're talking about all the information like that we're able to gather and things, you know, baseball being like that obsess about data and information. But there's also stuff that seems to be slipping away, you know, because there's less storytellers like out of the Negro League tradition. So when I was a kid, you know, I wrote the cool Papa Bell and I got his autograph like he was going blind. His site was going in and out. And when his site was in,
00:28:00
Speaker
Cool Papa Bell is writing to me and my brother, two white boys out in Rhode Island, sending us his autograph. And we, you know, we have that. But as I've thought about some of those experiences in my childhood and some of the interactions or meeting players and things like that.
00:28:17
Speaker
Baseball history is one thing history as a whole like things seem to be kind of slipping away at a time. We're kind of like all overwhelmed and I guess what I'm pointing to is like my appreciation maybe right now for your approach of
00:28:32
Speaker
Maybe seen it for how it was and how it looked like. There's something attractive about that. Thank you. Yeah. I appreciate that. Nowadays, it seems. I don't know. It's kind of a sense that I have. I got a question, Greg, that I've been asking guests lately. And it has to do, well, let me ask the question. Sure.
00:28:59
Speaker
What do you think your art is? And what do you think other people think your art is? Oh, wow. What do I think my art is?
00:29:16
Speaker
OK, what do you what do you mean? What do I think it is? Or is that up to me to decide? No, no. The idea is like to bring in a great question is to bring in intent, right? Like the intent of like what you're trying to do. And the way I look at this question has to do with like I have an intent towards it. And then if I'm putting it out there, people are like talking about it this way or that way or it's just you feel there. It has a life of its own that's not connected to you.
00:29:45
Speaker
I'm guessing maybe, though, you feel like a little bit more of a closer connection with the intent of what you're trying to put out with your art in what how people are receiving it. And that's a good thing, but I don't want to answer it for you. So right. Well, I mean, you know, the intent, I guess, you know, I might have mentioned this phrase before. So excuse me if I'm repeating myself, but I think
00:30:16
Speaker
I think giving people a window to kind of peer into the past, I think that's kind of the intent. From what people tell me or from what I see on social or I guess people who are into my work enough where they want to hang it in their homes if they want to own it.
00:30:46
Speaker
like to think that I guess I'm doing an okay job. It's, but it's hard for me to kind of accept that I'm doing an okay job.
Perfectionism and Artistic Standards
00:31:02
Speaker
And this might sound crazy, but you know, I'm, I'm very much a perfectionist. And, you know, being, I guess, you know, student of art, it's like, I
00:31:15
Speaker
I know about all of these other artists who have been dead for however long they've been dead for, but people who I admire who are absolute beasts, giants in the field, for whatever reason. And I just know that on an artistic
00:31:35
Speaker
technical level or even kind of conceptual level, I could never touch where they are. You know, I couldn't wash their brushes, I like to say. And I'm just I'm kind of uber critical of of all the stuff that I do. And I always kind of want to get better and I always try to get better. But still, it's like the end result. It's
00:32:05
Speaker
And maybe this is because I create it. The end result is just not good enough, if that makes sense. If people think that these paintings are transporting them back to an earlier time, and they think that that's really effective,
00:32:33
Speaker
I usually think that I've failed in doing that in some way. I mean, that's also part of my own, like I said,
00:32:44
Speaker
obsessive nature and and the fact that i'm the drive well well and the nervous drive i mean the dynamic you describe i'm very familiar with it it's this nervous drive of whether it's towards perfection or towards doing it right or towards doing it better or towards absolutely you know absolutely making that portal the right way yeah that nervous energy you know can keep you going and i talked to a lot of artists about that and with the nature of the question which is
00:33:10
Speaker
you know, is an odd little question. But I'll tell you, like, you know, I've asked it and folks be like, Look, I make my art. I don't I don't give a crap what anybody like, you know, or others are like, there's they're like so compelled on like, I am an artist, I have to put out stuff, people seem to enjoy it, whatever. And they're just like this, you know, like putting out art and everybody likes it.
00:33:31
Speaker
And other folks could be like, here's what I'm trying to do. And I haven't talked to one person in five years who understood at all, you know? And, you know, so I think it's not to, it's also in a certain sense, not to problematize, but also recognize that you put something out there, then you could kind of giving it away a little bit and people start to, you know. Well, yeah, I mean, you're giving, it's like you're giving people
00:34:00
Speaker
a part of yourself in a way. And it's so weird being an artist or just being a creative or whatever, because everybody just has a different way of doing whatever it is that they're doing. And everybody thinks of it differently than the other person. And for me, it's like, I love doing what I'm doing. I love doing these paintings of baseball players.
00:34:26
Speaker
you know, it's my passion. It's what I I have to do it. Like I you know, when I don't do it, I get I know that things aren't right. And I feel like I feel like a failure or whatever. It's like I just I feel good when I'm working. Yeah. But you know, at the same time, I'm also like, Oh, God, this painting is garbage, you know, because it doesn't look like a Rockwell or doesn't look like you know, a John Singer Sargent painting or whatever. And sometimes
00:34:55
Speaker
You mentioned the thing about not being able to talk about it to anyone for five years. Sometimes I feel the same thing because I have a few artist friends, but I don't have many. And it's like when I get to hang out with them, I feel like we get to speak a language that I can't speak with other people. Sure.
00:35:25
Speaker
you get to flesh things out with them, you get to talk about, you know, qualities of, of, you know, this pigment in this brand of oil paint, as opposed to the same pigment in another brand of oil paint. And, you know, and they understand that they understand those issues. Yeah, man, just understand those issues. Yeah, it's like, these are these are really hard, really hard things like, Oh, man,
00:35:52
Speaker
You know, this yellow ochre, this yellow ochre, when you tint it up with white, it's just too warm. I needed a different brand. You know, do you have a yellow ochre that cools down more when you tint it up? Stuff like that just kind of runs through my head all the time. Hey, Greg, I wanted to ask you all
Baseball as a Reflection of Society
00:36:12
Speaker
I wanted to I wanted to ask you the big question because I want to make sure I don't forget to ask it, which which is just why is there something rather than nothing or is baseball a game of something or baseball is a game of nothing? I don't know. Oh, man. Wow. That's a heart. That's a really hard question, too.
00:36:45
Speaker
I mean, you know, the game, baseball is, you know, it's us, it's humans, you know, it's us doing what we do, playing games. I mean, the idea of playing a game with a ball or a bat and a ball has been around, you know, since, you know, at least ancient Egyptian times.
00:37:13
Speaker
It's you know, it's like for some people it's kind of a life and death or life or death thing But at the same time it's just a game and the grand scheme of things doesn't mean anything So it's it's weird I feel like it kind of it can straddle both sides in a way in that you know, you look at the history of the game and you kind of I
00:37:39
Speaker
You kind of see how it parallels the history of our country. You see the parallels of the rise of different cities and how that mimics the rise of teams in those cities. And the integration of baseball kind of being the precursor to the civil rights movement.
00:38:06
Speaker
You know the the idea of labor, you know labor disputes, you know among workers and management You know that that's a part of baseball, too. It's it's I guess it's both it's both everything and you know again nothing because the game so No, I know one of the things I find and I brought it up in the baseball episodes Before when I have some guests who you know
00:38:33
Speaker
or, um, involved in baseball is, uh, you know, the kind of idea of like the American frustration with the wrong approach of expecting baseball to be like fast or something that it's just not structured. It's structurally not set up to be something that American consumers need right now. But, you know, so there's this tension, but there also the different type of approach that you might see in Japanese baseball or a different way of interacting with it.
00:39:01
Speaker
where I've read books about the kind of philosophy of like, of Taoism of like, there is really not that much going on, right? All the downtime, all the hanging out before the game, after game batting practice. And then, you know, a few moments of this and that, you know, happened. And so there's a, it's kind of like how you go to the game and what you expect from it is going to affect your experience because
00:39:29
Speaker
If you're expecting something, you might not be getting as much something as you wanted. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, that's the thing that I think baseball is having a real problem with now. Uh, you know, just as you've mentioned, you know, the pace of the game is such a big turnoff to a lot of people and, you know, the excitement of say football or basketball. That's not baseball. I think baseball is even more exciting than those games, but it's not exciting in the same way.
00:39:58
Speaker
So I think that I think that, yeah, it just kind of depends on the person and what it is that they want from the game. And, you know, nowadays, you know, the way that media is disseminated, you know, everything is quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. And and it's just it's like a world filled with nothing but sound bites. And baseball is a leisurely game. So it's definitely. Yeah. Yeah.
00:40:28
Speaker
Yeah, maybe that's why it's so exciting because of those tensions. I find it exciting because of those because of those tensions because there's tons of baseball history. Like I don't like because it's steeped in some, you know, highly problematic like American history. And there's other parts that I think are just.
00:40:42
Speaker
You know, the fantastic entertaining what I did when I was a kid, whatever the stories are intrigued. And for me with numbers my head's always calculated numbers so that attracts people to baseball because you can figure out batting averages and you had you know the drill so
Exploring Greg's Online Presence
00:41:00
Speaker
Uh, Greg, Greg, I wanted to, uh, I wanted to let the, have you let the audience know like how to come in contact with you, like where to find your, you know, where to find your stuff. I know, um, I saw depictions of your work. Um, you know, on Instagram, some social media, I know they've been collected in a books of short, but could you tell us about, you know, tell the listeners how to, you know, get in contact, how to find your stuff?
00:41:29
Speaker
Well, I mean, I, you know, I have a website, which is basically, you know, the main landing point, I guess, for my work, which is just GregKreinler.com. Basically, if you can spell my name or spell, you know, spell it approximately correctly, then you can find it.
00:41:50
Speaker
But it's, you know, GRAIG, K-R-E-I-N-D-L-E-R. And, you know, if you find me, you can find me on social, pretty much on every major platform on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. I haven't gotten into TikTok yet. I don't know if that's going to happen. But there's always a chance. There's always a chance. I won't rule it out. Good. That's the point.
00:42:17
Speaker
As long as you have a computer and you can kind of spell my name right, you can find me somewhere, I think. Hopefully in not a too compromising position. And thanks for laying that out there. As I mentioned, I
00:42:39
Speaker
saw the paintings you've done and they're striking. They're also connected to, you know, a game I love and players to honestly be, and I asked you the question about the Negro Leagues players being lifted up heroes in my head when I was a kid and I read about them and, you know, classic stuff like the Red Sox. I grew up watching the Red Sox and grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island where the AAA team was. So it was around me a lot. And I just want to tell you, I really appreciate
00:43:07
Speaker
Your painting and what you create in your art but also the ability for me to kind of like connect to it that way for love at a game that I have and to you know get into that universe because It's a nice one to go into and spend some time, right? Thank you. Yeah, I you know the goal I I used to say that like the goal of connecting baseball and art was kind of
00:43:34
Speaker
you know, paramount, you know, just the idea that that art doesn't necessarily have to be about, you know, elevated subject matter, it doesn't have to be super conceptual, it can just be, you know, a reflection about a reflection of us and what we do. And baseball is something that we do. So I guess that's what's that's what's appealing to me about it.
00:44:02
Speaker
Yeah, I really appreciate that, Greg. It's been an absolute pleasure to chat with you. And I know you've done a lot of great paintings. I'll be strolling, thumbing through a lot of the ones I haven't seen. And look forward to the great stuff that you put out. Thanks so much for visiting the podcast. Thank you for having me, Cannon, and a lot of fun. All right, great. Take care, Greg.
00:44:35
Speaker
This is something rather than nothing.