No Crying In Baseball

Patti 0:17
Hi and welcome to episode number 443 of No Crying in Baseball. The It's Buzzing episode. My name is Patti. I'm here with my friend, Pottymouth. Hey, Pottymouth, what the heck is happening in our world?

Pottymouth 0:28
Hey, there. I'm glad that, like other folks are buzzing right now. I'm still on the buzz after shoveling, but that's gonna settle into like aches and pains any moment. I am definitely trying to put that off with some cerveza here, and a backup beer. What are you drinking? I am drinking, Mr. Potty mouth. And I split the last sorry rye pa from from tree top, because it was our last big beer, sure. And then I brought in a little beer. So this will go further than usual, because it's split two ways instead of three.

Patti 1:00
So yeah, so we're actually recording remotely, because, you know, winter storm and all of that, and I, too, just came in from shoveling, and I'm an old lady, and it felt like I was an old lady when I was shoveling. So I did the bare minimum, sorry neighborhood, including breaking my ergonomic show snow shovel, snow shovel. That's it. I can still pronounce it and immediately coming inside and saying, I'm gonna make a hot toddy.

Pottymouth 1:21
Yeah, that's a really, I think I'm following this with a hot toddy. So I've got a

Patti 1:24
little smoked bourbon from 10th Ward and a little good little homemade cinnamon orange simple syrup from my niece. Wow. And it's very, very delicious.

Pottymouth 1:36
That is some quality post shoveling, you know, resuscitation, or whatever

Patti 1:41
it is helping at least I will relax, I will feel better, and then I just won't care.

Pottymouth 1:46
And so also, like, shout out to everybody all over the fucking country that's dealing with this snow. I know that people have various sort of mixes of snow and ice to deal with. The South is frozen over. We're that lovely wintry mix. And we were talking to my kid in New York this morning, and they're getting like, a foot or two. I got to check in on my dad. There's just lots of winter happening all over the fucking place.

Patti 2:10
Can I just say, pay the kids? You know, there's neighborhood kids who like to earn some money. Don't knock yourself out shoveling. If there's a kid coming by, say, Hey, can I give you whatever to to shovel the thing? Had there been a kid coming by, I would have done that immediately. But there weren't any right away. But I would say our intern use this opportunity to meet his neighbors. Oh, that's a great thing. So, you know, there's some things. So you go outside and you do shovel, you meet your neighbors. If you don't want to shovel, you make some kids happy. Who are, you know, enterprising and trying to earn couple bucks. There are ways to get around this. And if all else fails, there's hot toddies.

Pottymouth 2:39
Yeah, yeah. And also like to do another segue. There are lots of immigrant day workers out there looking for extra money, and we have a couple of centers near us that hire out day laborers. So if that's a thing that you can do, it's a really good time to support the immigrant community, because, oh, my god, things are fucked up. And I'm really happy that we can be here for you for a little bit of distraction. And I'm glad that we're here for us for some distraction, because I need to use, you know, my brain in other ways than just Doom scrolling. Things are so, so fucked up, but we're going to, you know, use our podcast to get out the good word and to develop community, and, you know, make those connections that we can see through the lens of baseball to that bigger, scary world out there. But, you know, we're all in this together, folks.

Patti 3:26
Yeah, we are. And I realized when I started, like, with the kind of a doom intro, it's like, no, no, it's not worldwide doom. It's just that it's cold outside and there's some snow and we have to do some manual labor.

Pottymouth 3:37
And, you know, that's all doable. That part is, yeah, getting shot in the streets is not so it's not okay.

Patti 3:42
Is that okay at all? So let's, yeah, I guess we're gonna distract you a little bit with some baseball, just for a minute. But don't take your eye off the prize,

Pottymouth 3:50
right, right? And also inspire you to be, you know, part of community, to come together in this stuff. That's right. All right.

Patti 3:57
So on today's show, we've got boyfriend news featuring some pricey swag, some contract extensions and some citywide cross training. We've got new Midwest boyfriends, Detroit and Cincinnati, both of which we may hit on this epic road trip if we get to planning. We've got a winner ball update, and we've got some labor teasers for the upcoming CBA negotiations for the MLB.

Pottymouth 4:18
Pa, cheers, cheers. I blew it. My one thing that I was gonna say during the intro I forgot, which is thanks to our new friend Alexander, who joined our Patreon. So hey, Alexander, great to chat with you on Patreon. And anybody else who's interested can find out how to join us at the end of the show, welcome aboard.

Patti 4:38
Nice to have you. All right, a little bit of boyfriend reports from things that have happened the past week. So my new athletics boyfriend, Nick hurts, had a record setting almost purchase of his tops debut patch card. If you remember, these rookies now on their debut, have a patch they were on their jersey, and then that patch gets sent off to tops to be. Packaged with an autographed baseball card. So it's a one of a kind, right? And the record for the, you know, at auction for these one of a kind debut patch cards is Paul schemes, which sold for $1.1 million and Dick sporting goods bought it, and they're displaying it one of their stores in Pittsburgh. So that's kind of cool, right?

Pottymouth 5:21
That's the best use of it, because more people get something out of that. $1.1 million for a small piece of paper.

Patti 5:27
Nick Kurtz, his just sold for half $1,000,000.05 $116,000 at auction on Friday. So he's in the number two position, and that's so far above like the number three is Jackson holiday at $198,000 so new Kurtz joked when he was autographing the card to begin with, no, maybe it'll go for a few 100 bucks. Hmm, huh? So that was before he had his, you know, incredible rookie season. For perspective, I mean, these often go for what any of us would consider real money, as opposed to ridiculously real money. Baby Acuna, for instance, has sold this week to for $30,000

Pottymouth 6:05
Hey, and maybe that's due to his Venezuelan performance. Right now he is lighting it up in the LV, BP, crazy, but still, like, that's so many 1000s of dollars for a small square of cardboard.

Patti 6:19
I know I don't either. I mean, both of us have, like, walls full of bobbleheads because they're fun, but we take a box right away, yeah, and they're free. We want to play with these. We want to play with these. Jose Ramirez, who was my 2019 Cleveland boyfriend, just had his contract. He had an existing contract with Cleveland for three three more years at $69 million he just signed an extension to bring that to seven years at $175 million so he will be a guardian for life, which is very exciting. He'll be 40 years old at the end of this contract, $70 million of the 175 is deferred for 10 years, which I kind of like as a budgeting way this sort of, you know, solidifies an incredible income for well past his, you know, time as a baseball player, and also it frees up salary, you know, room for the guardians to spend on new guys. So I'm thinking it might finally be safe to buy a guardians jersey.

Pottymouth 7:18
That's a good plan. That is a good plan. That could be a thing.

Patti 7:21
So, um, we haven't talked about Pete crow Armstrong for a while. He has picked up cross training with other Chicago sports in a big, big way. He just attended a Blackhawks game, an NHL game with bears quarterback Caleb Williams, which is the day after the bears got booted from the playoffs. Right? So both of these teams, you know, took both these guys, took their teams, you know, to the playoffs, and then had, you know, exits before they wanted, but there you go. But Pete was in town for the Cubs convention, but he, apparently, he goes to a lot of Chicago sports in the offseason. He He says that the atmosphere is buzzing because they're so into sports in Chicago, which I really, really appreciate. That's cool. Met Caleb Williams, the quarterback, via social media, but, but he goes to, they go to each other's games, right? Okay, so, you know, Pete shows up at bears games and Caleb shows up at Wrigley Field. But also, Pete volunteers at Williams. He's got his own foundation, and Pete shows up and helps out his his his fundraising events, because a lot of like, you know, food insecurity work, like, food distributions and stuff, and people show up at those which I really, really like. But he talked about watching other sports right at stressful times. And he said, like, at the bears final playoff game, had the stress I've been feeling watching another team that I give a crap about, it's on another level. And then he was asked about, you know, you're going to a lot of sporting events. You're hanging out, you know, you're doing the Chicago thing, right? You're not, like, leaving town forever on the off season and going to a warm place, whatever. I'm just trying to act my age and live here and spend time here before it becomes about my job, my job I love so much. I've just really enjoyed getting to do everything that's so cool. I think it's pretty cool. I mean, like, he's, I'm Chicago now, so I'm gonna do Chicago now.

Pottymouth 9:03
Yeah, I really admire that about I've seen that with some of the players who have been, you know, newly signed or traded, like Bregman went to a Chicago Bulls game, and it's just it. I think it's good for the fans to see players that invested in the city overall.

Patti 9:18
In fact, the story said that Pete was actually at a Bears game when he got the text about signing of Bregman while he was cross training.

Pottymouth 9:27
That's awesome, yeah, and then Bregman cross trains, so yeah. All right. So baseball boyfriends, these are the guys that we pick every week in the off season, because there's something a little cool about them. And this week, we are on to Detroit for our American League picks and and just side note, we can't pick anybody we've picked before, so that limits things a little bit. But so far, I think we've been doing pretty well this year, despite that. And I'm very excited. I mean, talk about things being buzzing. I have a couple guys this week who are both described as high energy guys, which I really. Admire. And I just love, especially positive energy, just looking on the bright side of things, which I need today, like I need this energy. So I'm going with Wenzel Perez, right fielder, 26 years old. And what sucked me in was AJ hinches comment, saying this guy is so fun to be around. He's energetic. Big smile bounces around the clubhouse. Yeah, I've been known to bounce a little bit. Actually, I was complaining about my knees because I was bouncing. So appreciate it, bounce and others. Yeah, I appreciate bounce. So, yeah, so this has got to be my guy, bouncy guy signed, but in 2016 also. So here's another sign, you know, I just look for like cosmic things that say this is the guy you should pick. He's from aswa, which is where my adopted minor league player is from. Aswa, which so I know a little bit about aswa in the Dominican Republic. It's in the countryside, very humble sort of place. And he talked about in one of the videos I saw that he grew up with, like, kids just play in the streets. Like, where'd you start playing baseball all my life in the streets of aswa, and that's just the way things are. Everybody gets around by motorcycle. You know, the few people have kind of beat up cars, and people are a community because people hang out outside. So he was in the minors for a while, from 17 to 22 all in field. So now he's, I just said, I'm taking him as a right fielder. He played only second base, third base and shortstop from 17 to 22 no outfield at all. Continued, actually in the minors in 23 double A and triple A, all over the place, including outfield that I think Detroit just realized that that's where the need was, and they were going to try to, you know, segue him a little bit. So he had some time both in 24 and 25 at the major league level, in right field, but also center field, and last year, one left field game. So I'm hoping, like I would love, to get such versatility points for this guy, because he can basically play anything except for catcher. He debuted April 8, 2024 and he was brought up when the guy that I picked last year for the Tigers and the Ibanez got injured. So more of my Cosmic Connection. And he pinch hit in that game for your 24 pick, Zach McKinstry in the seventh inning. So things didn't go well. In the seventh, didn't get a hit, and then in the eighth, he faced a role this Chapman who was pitching for Pittsburgh at that time with the bases loaded, and he said, I had a I had in frontado. He I had been against him before, but in PlayStation, so not and, that's unfortunately, it didn't train him enough to actually get a hit off of worldis Chapman in his second at bat ever. But in his first actual start, not subbing in on April 13, he went two for three with a double and a steal, and then not too long after April 30, was his first two home run game. And the cool thing about that is he hit that from both sides of the plate. So he was the first Tiger. Yeah, totally. He was the first Tiger since Victor Martinez, who I adored, because, of course, he had time in the Red Sox, 2018 August 3 was his first walk off hit. It was really close. All you needed was a double to score the guy and win the game. But it was super close to a home run. And through all that and the excitement of 2024 he kept waiting for his parents to be able to see him play, but his parents were in the Dominican Republic and couldn't get a fucking visa all year, despite the Tigers working on it. So, you know, it all comes around, folks, 2025 you know, ready to do the opening day thing. But he was injured during spring training, lower lumbar inflammation, which was just a slow going thing, and I think it was probably a reoccurrence. And once you hurt your low back, man, it's it's a big struggle. In 2024 he was going to play with the aguiles in the lead arm season, and he couldn't play because of the same injury. So he started off 25 on the 60 day. Il not a fun place to be. Slow, hard rehab. He spent a little bit of time rehabbing in the minors, both A a plus and triple A for two games each, and just went four for 18. And they brought him up anyway. So it sounds a little rocky there. End of May, 1 at bat, home run on the first swing. So I guess he got the kinks out in those minor league games ended up, ended up making it count when he needed to. On July 29 he had a three for five game when he was just a home run short of the cycle. But to make up for not doing the Homer, along with the single and the triple and the double, he stole two bases. Yeah. So the last tiger with a single, a double, a triple. In two stolen bases in one game. Was Ty Cobb in 1915 I hear he was good at baseball, yeah, and that's a long time ago, 1915 thanks to the Tigers being persistent through 2024 and into 2025 his parents finally got a fucking visa to see him in July of 2025 they got a three week travel visa. They hadn't seen him. So not only did they miss that his debut year, but they hadn't seen him play in the minors either. So they hadn't seen him play since the Dominican summer league in 2017 and he talked about how his dad was just so freaking happy to be there. He said he was smiling all the time and taking video of everything. I was like, Man, I know you're happy. Just a side note, Dominican Republic is not part of the travel ban. People should be getting visas to travel here, especially family of baseball players. So this is super fucked up. So on that note, there was a lot of talk when all this immigration enforcement started up, and you mentioned several episodes ago about how MLB has advised players to just keep your papers with you. And so the Detroit Free Press had an article last season talking to the immigrant players saying, like, what's going on and and Wenzel said, I guess I'm going to tell them that I'm a tiger player. I hope they can release me like, holy shit. Like, I'm nervous about this, but that's what I got. Yeah, yeah, totally. That's all I got. But he said, like, what I love about his positive energy is, in general, this is what I've worked for. And every day that I come, I try to have fun as much as possible, and try to keep a smile on even in the difficult moments. So even through the struggles many years in the minors, that positive attitude always smiling and bouncing in the dugout. That makes him my guy for Detroit this year, it sounds

Patti 17:01
perfect for you. I love it. I picked Colt Keith, who is listed as second base, but he plays a lot of things, and he's 24 and we've talked before, you know how sometimes when you're at a game and they put up the guys information on the big board, and they say, What city he's from? And it's like, no, right? Like for James, they say rockville, but

it's really only because, but it's smaller. Well, for Cole Keith, it says Zanesville, Ohio. What a great name. Well, it's named it's for Zane Gray, author of westerns. We pass it all the time when we're on the Ohio Turnpike heading into visit our friends in Cleveland. Well, maybe on the epic road trip we'll pass it turns out he's actually from a town called baseball, which is about 30 miles away. So colts dad, Troy, says it's a small, old coal mining town. It's not rich. Only one traffic light. Your door is never locked. You don't knock to come in. You just come in. Oh, I love that, right? So you got a little picture there, right? We're gonna come back to that. We're gonna come back to how that is hometown, no matter what happens, right? His dad was a wrestler, his mom played basketball, so that, you know, very athletic house, right? So his mom's job resulted in them moving around the country a little bit. So they went to Utah when he was eight, ended up in Phoenix when he was 12, while at Phoenix, while living outside of Phoenix. You know, he had been a wrestler, but he started focusing on baseball, and, in fact, committed to Arizona State after his freshman year in high school. Right Then again, mom's job, they moved to Biloxi, Missouri as a high school junior at the best was such a big deal for this little high school that this guy who was that good at baseball was showing up that there were interviews with him as this, like high school kid moving, just moving like I just moved to town. I'm joining the baseball team. It was a big deal, but one of the interviews said that Francis golden door is one of his role models, and he said he's a great player. Loves the game. He plays with respect, respects the game, but no matter what happens, he's having fun, yeah, when I play, right? So that rolled into him becoming the Mississippi Gatorade Player of the Year. And that's not baseball player of the year. That's like this the athletic player of the year. It covers all the sports so, for example, other people who have won this in the past, Peyton Manning, cheater, Abby Wambach, I mean, they just sound like, you know, pretty big deals, right? So in 2020 he was drafted in the fifth round by the Tigers out of high school in Biloxi. And remember, this is 2020 so remember, the covid draft was only five rounds, so he just got in there in the fifth round and drafted out of high school. So this is a very big deal and a close call, right? If you really want to do that, and instead of going to college if you want to get drafted, that, you know, you didn't have another 25 rounds to worry about. So his dad's best friend, Rusty, who this is from, you know, the baseball This is from little town in Ohio. Rusty was friends with with Cole's parents from a long time ago. They played in a co Ed softball team like before, like the couple was even married, right? So Rusty's been there for a. Long time. So he, at the time that Colt was was drafted, he said, I promise not to cut my hair until Colt gets his call up to the bigs. Kind of a big deal because he's a Navy vet and has always had super short hair. So like, you're not going to do this. But in fact, hold this. Thought, we'll get to his call up in just a minute, right? So in 2022, in high a there was a story about him that said he's not old enough to buy a beer, but he's jacking home runs and hitting nearly 300 in a league with an average player age of 22.4 Crazy, right? So he's playing way beyond his years, right? His high, a manager said, I played with Mickey, I played with Joe yvado, I played with Salvador Perez. I played with a lot of great players, future Hall of Famers. Colt Keith is only 20, and his he's hitting the ball that hard. He was hitting home runs regularly over the scoreboard ad signs like the really tall ones, he said, and not just one lucky shot. I mean, he does that in BP quite often. I mean, at 22 zero, I saw Miggy, but Mickey was a grown man. I saw Josh, Josh Hamilton. I saw Barry Bonds, you know, I saw those guys do that, but those guys are grown men. So apparently, he quite impressed this manager in 2023 playing for double A Erie in May, he had two home runs in the first four innings of the game. By the end of the seventh, he had completed a cycle, and then he had another single in the eighth. So they called it a mega cycle. So he had a cycle on a six hit night with two Homers. And that's something that's never been accomplished by a major league a major league player, right? He did this at double A Erie, right? It was his first cycle, his first six hit game, and his second multi Homer game. So during this game, they batted around in the first inning. So he not only homered in the first, but he tripled in the first. So we got that hard triple out of the way early, right? Of course, you got to get the cycle, because get the hard ones out of the way. All right. In 2024 he became a very big deal nationally, because early that year before he's been called up, while he was in triple A, the Tigers signed him for a six year $28.9

Pottymouth 22:13
million contract, wow, which means a lot of money,

Patti 22:16
and it's early, and it's not that isn't that much money. That's the trick. That's the trick because it's early, right? He hasn't proven himself yet for a kid is, yeah, for a kid, right? And so he's giving up his arbitration years and a possible huge payout as a free agent if things go his way. So here was his thought process, right? This is a big you know, you can gamble and say, when I'm a free agent, I'm going to get you know that one of those $300 million things, or I can just be safe now and do a $28.6 million he said, I think at the end of the day, the worst case for both of us, the organization and myself, is that I don't pan out and I end up with security financially for me and my family for the rest of our lives. Best case for both of us is that, you know, all the option years are exercised. We win a couple of World Series and bring it back to Detroit. I make myself a boatload of money, and I'm still a free agent at 31 you know, so see Jose Ramirez, right, signing a contract extension that's going to go to lose 40 right above. So I it was a reasonable choice for him, and I think he was, he would have been criticized either way, right? Yeah, but I think made the right decision for him and for his family. All right. So he's going to debut on opening day in 2024 versus the White Sox. So remember our friend rusty, the guy with the hair right? Rusty comes today the debut game with the whole family. Colt's fiance at the time, his hair is down in the middle of his back. All right, wow. So okay, so we're at this game, and Colt singles off of Garrett crochet in the fourth for his first hit. And then he runs to first base at 29.2 feet per second. 30 seconds is elite speed. So this is like, incredibly fast, right? And he said, that's probably my fastest home to first I told you guys I could run. Nobody believed me. So all of them those day off, the next day, all of them, the whole family and rusty and the gang all went to a salon to deal with this whole haircut thing. Right? He said he's talking about rusty, saying he was my T ball coach. He coached me in wrestling, and he supported me the whole way. So rusty gets his haircut. And then he says, All right, if you win Rookie of the Year, this Navy guy who has never got a tattoo, if you win Rookie of the Year, I'm going year, I'm getting a tattoo of you. No pressure. Unfortunately, there was pressure. Yeah, his first month, he was not good. He hit 154, it was bad. But then he got used to everything, and it came around. So by mid season, he was batting 327, he had seven home runs in like a 27 game stretch. He reached base in 13 straight games, and going back to May 11, he led all MLB rookies with 509 slugging percentage, and he ended up one of four finalists for the Silver Slugger award at second base. So turned out pretty good that year. So so I'm excited to see what happens this year for Colt Keith.

Pottymouth 25:00
Wow, that sounds fun as rusty goes to the spa. Sounds like a children's book.

Patti 25:05
Yeah, yeah.

Pottymouth 25:08
All right, we are on to the National League with Cincinnati, and I am going with Sal Stewart, who might be playing first or third or DHing only 22 years old, but there's a lot of who's going where with Cincinnati for next year, so I guess they'll shake it out in spring training. We'll see. Sal is technically still a rookie. He played one month last year. He debuted September 1, right? So right when the rosters expanded, and that's important, because a lot of folks said that he should have been brought up earlier he was lighting it up in the minors. But there was controversy with a former baseball boyfriend of mine who actually picked, I think, when he was with Toronto, Santiago Espinal, who was having a rough year, but he was out of options, so it was either DFA him or keep them in and hope for the best. And apparently, Santiago had a really good relationship with Tito Francona, so he stayed in meanwhile, while that was going on in AAA. So Sal didn't have that long at AAA, they brought him up to AAA for just 38 games, but he batted 315 with a 1023 ops in those 38 games, and hit 10 home runs in 38 games for the milb season, the minor league season between double A and triple A averaged 309 with 907 ops. Not too shabby. So you can see why folks were itching for him to come up. There was just not quite the place to put him. He was drafted in the first round. So I'm going to, you know, file that in my memory banks for immaculate grid. First round draft in 2022 out of High School in Miami. And he had agreed to go to Vanderbilt, but ended up not going because, well, maybe because. But in addition, he got a $2 million bonus for that signing. By the way, much to my dismay, the last first round pick from his high school in Miami was a rod. And this actually, he was associated with a couple of players that I don't particularly like, but I understand they're very good, and I'm trying to you know, admire them for their skills. Senior year, he was one of the Miami Herald's co baseball players of the year. They had chosen two that year because at that his senior year in high school, his average was 514 with nine home runs, 23 RBI, 46 runs scored, 30 walks, and in that time, had only struck out nine times. His coaches talked about that he was 18 years old and hitting home runs that went further than 470 feet, which is really fucking far. That's crazy for Major League let alone High School. 2324 he was between single a and high A, and then in 2024 they decided to move them into the lead off spot, and he hit a home run in his first pitch as lead off. He hit, also got a hit in his first major league played appearance on that September 1 Date and his dad, South senior, has a really beautiful interview with him crying in the stands with his mom, his mom, Rosie, his sister, Lindsay. His dad is from Cuba. And I tried really hard to find out why their last name is Stuart, with a dad from Cuba, but dad talked about for them that this country gave him a lot of opportunities. He coaches basketball. So Sal grew up playing both basketball and baseball, but Mom is more of the baseball fan. Dad noticed, and sort of had to come to grips with the fact that Sal was really good at hitting growing up, and despite the fact that he was the best three point hitter. I guess that's not the word three point score in basketball. And yeah, that's it in the family. Thank you. I need the vocabulary help. Hitting was his thing, so dad said, but when he played basketball, he was the energy guy. He took that basketball mentality into baseball, and he's been that guy the entire time. So here's my second Energizer Bunny of the day, and I am just here for it. In his fourth game on September 6, was his first home run, and he was so excited. He's like he is. I saw an interview with him. He is super animated. He waved his hands around running the bases. But he said, I don't know who was more excited me or the 40 people would come to watch me, his family. And like big family, family is really important to me. And then recognizes his family. He says, they've been they've put in so much time and effort, going to pick me up from school, taking me to practice, going home, making food, going back and. Giving his family that credit for where he got to at that point. So as a rookie, just playing September, he led the reds and home runs for the month of September with five. Ellie de la Cruz had three. So did ka Brian Hayes, who is, yeah, a guy I picked my 22 Pittsburgh boyfriend. Who is that guy at third base? So Ka Brian Hayes, I think, came over to the Reds last year, and he's a two time gold Glover. So Sal, trying to figure out where to go is just a little bit dicey. They put him at first at his debut, he was 21 and 268, days old, which made him the youngest red since 1908 to debut at first and he was the youngest red period at first base in a postseason game. But that first base thing wasn't really fleshed out too well. He had only played two games at first base in the minors, so he had that adjustment period in that month of September, he was on first for 11 games, and he only made one error. However, it was a biggie, and I guess it might have been in October. It was in Game Two Wild Card Game Two against LA. And that was a hard wild card game, because it was the Reds against the Dodgers, and you know, it was the cards were stacked, but he also nervous, overthrew and missed an easy out to end the inning, and then la ended up rallying and scoring four more runs, and they won eight to four. But that said LA. So I was thinking that maybe second base would be a possibility for Sal next year, but Matt McLean is penciled in there. He had a rough 2025 so who knows? And Tito Francona, he talks about how he's fortunate to have a future Hall of Fame manager on his team, and so he's going to do whatever Tito Francona says. And so that seems smart. I think, you know, I would take that advice outside of baseball anyway. Tito tells me something I'm there. Tito told him to slim down a bit over the out season and to get ready for both first base and third base. So so far, he's slimmed down 25 pounds, and he's training with and here comes the other name drop that I'm not really excited about, but I'm going to do it anyway. But I am, yeah, Manny Machado and but I can get happy because of yonder Alonso. So I picked yonder Alonso as my Cleveland boyfriend way back in 2018 and apparently yonder is a family friend of the Stewarts, and that kind of makes sense, because they're all Miami Cubans. I mean, I mean, I know there are a lot of Cubans in Miami, but anyway, there is that connection. And then Manny Machado is yonder Alonso's brother in law. So it's all together. But Sal's been training with them since freaking High School. Like, talk about opportunity, maybe that, you know, says a lot about why he got so good so fast. And he said, I trust them with everything, and they're like older brothers. What I love about his attitude is in this quotation where he says, a lot of people play sports because they're good at it, or their parents want them to, but I genuinely just love to play the game. That's totally what you want to hear from a guy on your team. They did a recent poll of MLB execs for their opinions of rookie of the year next year. And he didn't come out, but I'm going to put my bets on him right now. He said, I want to take care of my family. I want to be that guy who tells my parents they don't have to work another day. I want to be that guy who wins a championship here and everyone is watching us play in the World Series.

Patti 33:39
Yes, I hope he's that guy. That sounds great. I like it, dude. I like that's totally boyfriend attitude.

Pottymouth 33:45
My backup beer, I wasn't sure if I was going to bring in a backup beer, and then I thought I should bring a backup

Patti 33:52
beer that this seems like a weird thing to read, you know, to even consider the first time. Like, no, right back up here. I mean, it's not

Pottymouth 33:58
gonna go bad. Yeah, and we still have Oktoberfest, and we're in freak in January, so we really need to polish these off.

Patti 34:05
I mean, I do feel like we do our best at any opportunity, but see now I'm slacking, so I'm not there to

Pottymouth 34:09
help you today, right, right? We still have a couple more wait till next week. All right, dug out, but

Patti 34:15
we'll be dug out. It's a matter of the ice. I'm worried about the ice, ice, baby, yeah, for sure. Anyway, my Cincinnati guy, Spencer steer, listed his first base, but very much a utility player. He's 28 Spencer grew up in Long Beach, California, and this meant that he and his family went to a lot, a lot of angels games. The whole family, parents and three brothers, so they regularly sat in left field, and he remembers clearly $7 seats that included hot dogs, holy shit, because that's a big family to take to a to a game. So that's what you're gonna do, right?

Pottymouth 34:48
But so Wow, what a price I'm gonna go worth the airfare, right?

Patti 34:53
There we go, all right. So he was drafted kind of low by Cleveland in 2016 out of high school. I was like, nope, going to college. So he went to Oregon as a pitcher, and when he shows up at Oregon, he's like, oh, you know, I play the infield too. You know he's a utility player now, right? So as a freshman, he was an All American. His last two seasons, he had 349, he set school records for single season and career RBI. So when the draft came around 2019 the twins picked him up in the third round. So Minnesota, things happened, but we don't care about them, because we're talking about the Reds today. So he was traded to the Reds at the trade deadline in 2022 where a story begins. Okay, so his debut was a month later, because he played only in the miners until the trade, and then he was in triple A for the Reds for a month before they called him up. So in his debut game, he hit a homer for his first hit. He got on base four times, including a 10 pitch walk. Wow, he hit a double and he's he scored the game winning run in a walk off. Right didn't hit the walk off, but he was the one who scored the scored the run. He said, you can't really know what to expect until you do it today. I made memories that will last me the rest of my life. I didn't have much expectations. Whatever happened today happened. I was just trying to soak it all in and enjoy the moment. So when all of this occurred, right? He became the first reds player to reach base four times in his debut since Jay Bruce did in 20,008 he has the highest ops of any player in his debut in the modern era who had at least three played appearances in the game. So this is a hell of a debut. The thing that made the debut just extra fun was, you know who was on the play by play call Joey freakin vado, who was in the stands for like he was, he was at the park for some like celebration of him. So he was actually calling that inning that Joey Otto, who also homeward in his very first inbound his debut was in the TV booth. Did play by play for the call for Spencer steers home run.

Pottymouth 36:58
That was my original Red's boyfriend, by the way, yeah, he was adorable.

Patti 37:02
So in Spencer's first five games, he played, yeah, okay, drinking game, yeah. When potty mouth says cheers, in a sports context, we all drink adorable. In a sports adorable, wow, then we say cheers, and then we say cheers, wow. I haven't even, I can't I have no I have no excuse

Pottymouth 37:23
while you're drinking. I just wanted to comment also that soak it in. Whenever I hear about somebody soaking it in as their first, I remember Adley Richmond, who, like, was the image of that just, like, around, yeah, you got to do. I love what he said about that too. You just like, take that moment, man, it's your time take it, yep.

Patti 37:43
So here's how you know he's a utility player. In his first five games at the major league level, he played first base, second base and third base, and they worked him out in the outfield, just in case they would need him there. And apparently he's, well, I'm a natural shortstop, but when asked about all of this getting moved around so much that I actually like it. I think it's fun not knowing where you're going to play. I enjoy, I enjoy bouncing around. No more bouncing and in case it interesting, obviously, the more you bounce around, the more opportunity you have to be in the lineup. So by the end of the season, he became one of only four reds in history to make at least 15 starts at four different spots. So I'm hoping that Yahoo will give me a lot of flexibility

Pottymouth 38:23
with Yeah. We got some versatile guys today. Yeah. So 2023,

Patti 38:28
he was opening day. He was the starting third baseman. By August, he led Cincinnati in home runs and hits. His first trip home to Los Angeles. They were going to play in Anaheim. He hadn't been back to Anaheim since he started his profession. Now he has, you know, has been his, you know, his big league career, right? His mom, Dana, said it was very surreal. I think coming here to Angel Stadium made it feel real for the first time to be here where he grew up, and came to all the games with us, and we went to many games every year. It made it so perfect to me. And here we are soaking it in again. He said, I definitely took a couple of moments out there to soak it in a little more than I have at other places I grew up, going to that park. It's crazy looking back on it, knowing that it was my dream to play at this level. It's a pretty cool moment for me to take it in and realize where I'm at. The icing on the cake, as he said, was that was a three game sweep. He would he went five up, five for 10, and he had four RBI and the three game series. So that was a pretty nice homecoming for him. That's awesome. All right? 2025 season is starting. Austin Hayes is supposed to start. Ends up on the Il. So Spencer steer ends up on the opening day roster. He was originally going to be on the IL because he was recovering from a shoulder injury, right? He had never been on the IL Ever. He's always, like, played through or had work arounds for any injuries. So he's still recovering from the shoulder issue. So they just had him DH while he was recovering, before he went back to the field, and then we went back to the field, they had him playing at first base to accommodate that shoulder, right? Because, you know, less throwing you're catching when you're playing first to, like, build on this whole never on the IL, instead. September, he popped a rib out of place in the batting cage, which caused him back spasm. So the chiropractor popped it back. And it's only playing every day. You got to be playing through

Pottymouth 40:10
stuff, yeah. But, oh, a dislocated rib that sounds fucked up, yeah? Okay, so you're

Patti 40:14
gonna recover from this. I'm gonna tell you why I really picked this guy so I can talk about Mike Napoli, my very favorite Halloween costume ever, of potty mouth is yes, Mike Napoli.

Pottymouth 40:26
Okay, so, all right, but the best part of that is that you got to tell him.

Patti 40:31
I did. We met him at the All Star game in Cleveland. I said, Hey, she's you for Halloween. Anyway, the Reds refer to Mike Napoli as the Swiss Army coach, right? Because he's coaching all over the place. So Spencer steer ends up as a Gold Glove finalist for first base and Mac Mike Napoli said about him playing first he's playing the fuck out of it, and that's why I was Mike Napoli for for Halloween. It was not a stretch. Okay? In June 2025 versus San Diego, Nick Martinez took a no no into the ninth steer homeward each of his first three played appearances in that game. There has never been a complete no no and three home three home runs by one person in the same game. So they didn't get there, because the NO NO didn't happen all the way through. But apparently, science or steer had been golfing the day before with some of his teammates, and he said, I shanked every ball I hit on the front nine. So maybe that locked me in. It was the first Cincinnati player to have a three run homer since my previous boyfriend, Jesse winker, did it in 2021 the fans were going ballistic, right? They wanted him to come out for a curtain call, but he didn't do is, it's not about me, right? This is not, you know, my this is not like my personal achievement is a team thing, right? I'm not going out there for this. He struck out on his last at bat, and the fans still gave him

Pottymouth 41:46
a standing ovation. Oh, that's good fans. Yeah.

Patti 41:49
And then a nice thing, a little a little bit of a, you know, community thing for players weekend. TJ Friedel, another former boyfriend of mine, organized that 20 of the players on the Reds worked with kids at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. They go in, they hung out with the kids and their families and met each other to know each other. And then those kids designed cleats and painted cleats for these 20 players to wear for players weekend, which was pretty cool. So Spencer steer was one of those guys, so I'm looking forward to rooting for Spencer when I see Cincinnati games, ooh.

Pottymouth 42:22
And if we get to stop in Cincinnati, so I am clueless about golf. What does it mean? Shanked? But it's

Patti 42:31
not, it's not a good thing that's pulled the ball the wrong way.

Pottymouth 42:35
It doesn't sound like a good thing, okay, yeah, no, it's pulling the ball all right. I'm gonna start incorporating that into my vocabulary. When I fucked up, I just shanked it, yeah. All right,

Patti 42:46
that's crisp for the way you said it too behind it.

Pottymouth 42:51
All right. I just need more excellent I'm gonna go to where they're playing baseball right now, down south of the border, winter ball update, Dominican Republic. Patty, you have a fucking sweep in the DR, yeah, I do. Eloy Jimenez, your pick for a baseball boyfriend, 2020 White Sox was the MVP of the round robin stage. He was playing with the Toros, who are kindly currently battling against my Leones. So I'd like him to calm down a little bit right now, but in those 18 games of the round robin stage, he had 10 hits, 16 RBI, a Homer, and scored nine runs for the season. The MVP is Brian De La Cruz, your 24 Miami pick. And I don't I guess round robin. I don't know what kind of prize he got, besides the freaking plaque, and you know, the honor of being Ron Robin, but Brian De La Cruz got a car for MVP of the season. And I learned a new word in Spanish because I had to look up yippeeta. They said they had a ype that tipo Jack. And I was like, the fuck is a yipetta? It's a SUV, and it comes from the word Jeep, Jeep. Yeep is jeepeta, like a little Jeep, or, like, I don't know, yippeeta Jack. And Jack is actually a Chinese brand. So there you go, with China coming in, when, when there's the availability in 44 games played over the season, he had a 301 batting average with the 887 ops, scored eight home runs, 40 RBI. And that 40 RBI is really what got him the award, because number two only had 29 RBI. So that's like a huge gap. Everybody else was like 2928 like around there at the time of recording. So right now, the Leone escogido, my team is playing against the Toros for the championship, and the weather has not been. Cooperating. So two games so far have been postponed due to rain, but the two that they have played, leonos del escogido, won in a very exciting manner. So there are games scheduled this week, Monday through Friday, as needed. It is out of seven in Venezuela that I've been watching lately. If you too, want to watch Venezuela for 799 you can get a subscription to baseball play, which will carry you through the end of the season, which is still just a couple more weeks. The caribes, de and swatigi, actually, at this point, I think it's like another week. Yeah, the caribes and swatagi clinched. They are going to the finals. Now. Mind you, the Venezuelans season has been postponed due to political upheaval, with the President being kidnapped and brought to the United States and all but, you know, they seem to have gotten over it, because the game that I watched last night was fucking sold out the cardinales de Lara against the Navegantes de Maga Yanes. And when I had seen watched a game like maybe a week ago, it was very sparse, and I was thinking, Oh, that must be due to political discomfort of going out. But last night, they seem to be over it. It's all back to normal. The The most exciting thing, well, one of the most exciting things about the Caribbean, swatigi clinching. The best thing is, I get to keep saying and swatigi, the second best thing is a struba Cabrera, you know, World Series nationals champion from 2019 is their manager, and he has gained some QR. I remember have him having short hair when he was on the Nationals. He's got the long blonde, flowing locks now, and he has a lovely champagne soaked speech in the dugout that I think I put in our link so y'all can see that I have been, you know, faithful for my cardinales de Lara, but it is not looking good. They had to well, so there's two games left. Actually, I totally lied on baseball play. That not a total lie. The finals are coming. So the finals will be next week. These are still the semis. So in order to get into the finals, the cardinales de Lara were tied with the navagantes. Now, the key thing about the navagantes is yarde Molina is their manager, who I love and adore. The key thing about the cardinales is they've been my team for years. And Luis angelicunia, your previous pick, and il de Mario Vargas are both on that team, as well as Tortuga Williams estradiol, who made an amazing outfield play against the wall that I was just blown away by. So there's a lot of emotion going on here, but the Cardinale is lost last night, so that means the navagantes are up by one today is the last Gay Day of Round Robin. So cardinales have to win today against sulia in order. And I guess, yeah, they have to win today, and the Caribbeans have to lose. So you guys can know before me, but I don't know even if my card No, ladies lose estruba Cabrera against yarda Molina as managing is pretty fucking cool. Yeah, it is pretty amazing. So I guess that is, you know, the light behind that in the Puerto Rico that I haven't talked about a while that my takeaway here is more teams. Need dogs. So for sure, I think that that's a great thing to have a dog. You know, it's like so many roles that the dog can take. They can be efficient, fetching bats and balls and stuff like that. It's the moral support, emotional support, yeah, so many things. And back in episode 434 I talked about how the congrajjeros de centurse in the Puerto Rican League have their very first league endorsed bat dog, and they won the championship. So there is a correlation right there over the Leones de Ponce, their championship series can go to nine games, but it only went to five because they swept. And here comes sort of the cosmic part. So Omar Lopez is the manager of the congrajeros. He's also the Astros bench coach, and he's Venezuelan, and he's going to be managing the Venezuelan World Baseball Classic team. Now, I had just mentioned yader Molina, who might be on his way to winning the Venezuelan League. He's Puerto Rican, and he is managing the Puerto Rican team in the World Baseball Classic. So everything is just, you know, I don't know cosmic poof. I want to give some credit to Salvatore's trainer, Viviana, Rivera Marrero, and she says that he is calm and cool when he's working. She's always there, and that he loves what he does. So that's like our baseball boyfriend. So this dog is our first baseball dog, the pitcher Eduardo Rivera talked about the other part, and he said, For me, it's that he. Brings down the bad times. He gives me tranquility, and he is a dog that has won the love of all the people who come to the ballpark. So the good news for Salvatore is even though the season's over, he is not out of a job, because the double A season is starting now in Puerto Rico, and he's going to be working with Javier Baez new team, the Bravos de Sidra. So serial de Caribe is coming, and the Puerto Rican team has been formed. It includes my pick for this year. So I am kind of blown away that the Minnesota Twins are allowing Emanuel Rodriguez to play in the serial de Caribe, which bumps up to spring training, but I am really glad, because he has the best average in the Puerto Rican League, and I'm excited for him. I just hope he does well, twins, too. And then my 2020 pick from Miami is on Diaz is also on the team. They are both coming in as reinforcements. They're not originally from the Congress. They were on the My ways team. But Christian Vasquez, former Minnesota twin and former Red Sox, is has been on the congrajdos all season, and he is going to continue to play. He is a free agent. I think that the Red Sox are looking at him. He actually had a big dip with the twins, but was so good with the socks. So we'll see what happens. And just by the way, the whole rebrand thing that I talked about at the beginning of the winter leagues, where they they're doing the Liga Roberto Clemente, and they had the LA Pro and new swag and stuff like that. It seems to have worked. Average game attendance in Puerto Rico was up 14% this year. So nice. Maybe you need to do a rebrand when times get tough, I like it

Patti 51:43
all right. A couple of quick thoughts about the labor situation in baseball. If you remember, the current collective bargaining agreement expires December 1, and there are lots of doomsday predictions about what's going to happen there. One of the things we talked about as we came into the hot stove season is, there were there were guesses, there were hypotheticals about, will the idea of a possible lockout change what's being offered to free agents or considered with trades? Because if there is a lockout, that means there will be lost time next year, right? You won't have that player for part of the time, although it was a blackout that players also not getting paid for that time. So it's an interesting balance to consider. So the athletic actually took a look at that. They said it doesn't look like things are different in in the free agent market, although a lot of players are getting one year, like contracts that have, like a an option after the first year. So this year is a sure thing. Next year is not. So if a player would opt out of their second year, they would, you know, they wouldn't get paid by that team. But also, if there were a lockout, they wouldn't get paid by that team. So in effect, it might not have, you know, it might not really weigh into the finances of the team that's signing them for this year, although there is a guess that the potential lockout may be changing how teams are looking at possible trades, like if you want to bring somebody out who's under two more years of Team control, that may not be great, because you know you'll have them for this year, but you may, you know, next year may be a loss. So are you. You are basing a trade on having two full years of Team control, but you may actually have that in effect, depending on what happens and what is likely happening is because of, say, the Kyle Tucker $240 million deal with the Dodgers, all the owners, except for maybe the owners of the Dodgers and probably the vets, because they just have that big deal with Beau Bichette, are pissed because these teams already have the highest payrolls and are still putting out so much money to buy other players, and that the owners are like, they've got to stop that, because it's, it's hurting us. We poor, you know, millionaires fucking buy players. Thank you. Thank you so but that means that there will likely be plenty of owners who will be voting for, pushing for a salary cap, you know, as they go into bargaining. So Tony Clark, who is, you know, for the players union says we just completed one of the greatest seasons in MLB history with unprecedented fan interest and revenues, while the free agent market is far from over, it's gratifying to see players at all levels being rewarded for their incredible accomplishments by those clubs that are trying to win without excuses. Yeah, yeah. So it will be fascinating to see how this plays out. The negotiations will start once the season starts, which I find interesting, because, you know, there's player representatives who are doing, you know, bargaining, but they'll also be doing their day jobs, yeah. But anyway, lots to watch out for. I'm very curious to see. Be, I think a lot of this is going to be bargained in public, through the media good. So that should be, I'm curious to see which way that the public is going to be swayed on that.

Pottymouth 55:11
You know, I felt much better when when Matt Max Scherzer was on the players reps, because it's like I just had very faith in Him representing solidly. Yeah.

Patti 55:23
Oh. Interesting thing for him. He is an unsigned free agent right now, and he said he's willing to wait till after opening data, sign with somebody to get the right deal. Good for him, isn't that fascinating? I think that's yeah. So yeah. A lot of the like the executive board, again, is largely pictures, which I just I don't know if it's because pitchers have some predisposition to be, you know, labor positive, or they have more time who's only playing whatever, right? It's every five or six games. Or, I don't know what it is, but it seems like it's always a lot of pictures. I always want to say because they're the smart ones, but, you know, I don't know. I don't know.

Pottymouth 55:58
I would think catchers would be the smart ones, but maybe they need the extra time to, like, stretch out their quads.

Patti 56:06
They're doing all the work approaching a lot. What do you have going on this week? You're not going to work

Pottymouth 56:11
for a while. Oh, wait, I just read, did we say what? Who we're doing next week?

Patti 56:15
Oh, we did not wait. It's the Houston and the Mets. Yeah.

Pottymouth 56:20
So I'm super curious about the Mets, because, Holy shit, that I like it. They're spending money and and they're buying lots of our former boyfriends, so I don't know who's gonna be left. So yes, school has so here we are recording on Sunday School has now been canceled for Tuesday, so I was originally and still just a teeny bit bitter about this snowstorm falling on a Sunday, which is not a school day, and then Monday is the end of our semester, so we weren't going to work tomorrow anyway. So having Tuesday off, I'm kind of glad, and we'll see, but yeah, plenty of time for watching some Venezuelan Dominican ball, I think, as much as I can, while I can, until the series happen, and then it'll be one right after another. I don't know yet how to watch either seria de Caribe or seria de las Americas, but I will share that information as soon as I figure it out. I feel like you're highly motivated to get that worked out. I really am, and I have this whole, like, a couple of days off, although I'm like, staring at my drums right now too, I'm gonna, I think you should

Patti 57:29
bounce that with maybe also doing a little bit of road trip planning, getting something I could do that I figured how our three dimensional Google Sheet is gonna work, and color coded, you know, like, orb

Pottymouth 57:39
of Yeah. And I think there's some interest from folks meeting us in Kansas City for a Negro Leagues museum tour. So yeah, let

Patti 57:48
us know if that's thing that interests you, and we can maybe set up a group tour of the museum. Please find us on social media.

Pottymouth 57:55
Yep, there's that blue sky ncib podcast. We will check the Twitter messages as well. And then there's Facebook and Instagram. Instagram, oh, man, I am working my way through the second beer, which is no crying and B ball. Patreon, P, A, T, R, E o n.com/no, crying and B ball. And for a buck a month, you can rest assured knowing that you are helping us continue in having this podcast happen, because we can only do this with our Patreon friend support, and I love especially in this day and age of organizing, if everybody does a little shit happens. So if we get we have lots of folks giving us $1 a month and we can pay our bills, which is awesome. And also, if you can do one little thing in your community these days, whether it's packing up a bag of food or throwing your money at an organization who's doing stuff, or talking to your neighbors, or writing a fucking letter to your representative, or calling Congress, all of those things, everybody does a little and then it all like adds up. So don't

Patti 58:59
forget to shovel out your neighbors that too. Yep, yep. All right, my friends, that sounds fantastic. I need you to make sure you stay safe and healthy. So get get your shots, get your get your boosts. Fight the man all the time. It's the right thing to do now more than ever, send your game balls to Meredith and until next week, say goodnight.

Pottymouth 59:17
Potty mouth, good night. Potty mouth, you

There we go. Nothing like starting with

Patti 59:39
I get so excited, and then, you know, I gotta cough up a lung or something. You.