Viral video shows Joe knows baseball
Joe Smeltzer knows baseball.
The evidence? A video of the 19-year-old Waynesburg University student rattling off statistics from Major League Baseball World Series games, which has gone viral.
The video was first posted on Barstool Heartland, a sports fan website, Nov. 4, and ended up on Instagram, where it has been watched more than 1.7 million times.
The clip caught the attention of ESPN, and Smeltzer said the sports television channel contacted him for permission to use the video on SportsCenter (it hasn’t aired yet).
In the video, a random number generator on a Waynesburg University student’s cellphone selects a year between 1903 to 2017 (113 World Series have been contested during that span) and Smeltzer shares significant facts about the Fall Classic played that year.
Take 1961.
“The Yankees over the Reds in five games,” Smeltzer says on the video. “That was the year Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris had the home run race. Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth’s record with 61 home runs, and the Yankees won the World Series and they won the next year. And after 1962, they did not win another championship until 1977.”
Or 1920.
“The Cleveland Indians beat the Brooklyn Robins five games to two. It was the first grand slam in World Series history, it was the year Ray Chapman died after being hit by a pitch.”
Smeltzer grew up in a Coraopolis “sports family” and describes himself as a lifelong Pittsburgh Pirates fan.
His parents, Harry and Ann, who have had Pirates season tickets for more than two decades, took him to his first Buccos game a month after he was born.
More than 10 years ago Smeltzer was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, to which he attributes his ability to remember facts and events.
Asperger’s, a developmental disorder along the autism spectrum, affects a person’s ability to socialize. It also can be accompanied by exceptional memory.
He described the first time he showed an ability to recall information.
“(My family and I) were in Florida on vacation and I was in the swimming pool, and I recited Lou Gehrig’s ‘Luckiest Man’ speech.”
He was 4 years old.
When Smeltzer was 5, he received a DVD, “Major League Baseball – 100 Years of the World Series,” narrated by Bob Costas and featuring archival footage and interviews with baseball greats.
He was hooked on the World Series.
Smeltzer also has encyclopedic-like knowledge about championship games in professional football, basketball, hockey and about U.S. presidents.
“It just comes naturally to me,” said Smeltzer, describing how he recalls events.
“I can just hear somebody’s voice. I can hear Bob Costas explaining something, so I’d say it’s more auditory.”
Smeltzer has learned to live with Asperger’s.
“I think of myself as a normal kid despite my diagnosis. I go about my days like everybody else does,” said Smeltzer. “Yeah, it does get hard sometimes, but I try to do the best I can and I like to think I’m doing a pretty good job with it.”
Smeltzer is a communications major at Waynesburg, where he writes for the university’s newspaper and hosts a radio show called “The Nameless Baseball Show.”
He plans to be a sports writer. On campus, Smeltzer often gets quizzed about his baseball knowledge, and he enjoys it.
“It happens quite a bit. If I’m walking to dinner, I’d be surprised if at least one person doesn’t throw out a random year and then I’ll have to say what happened in that year,” laughed Smeltzer. “God blessed me with this ability to know a lot of this information that a lot of people don’t know. I look at it as a blessing, and hopefully I can use that going forward.”