No Crying In Baseball

Patti 0:17
No, Hi. Welcome to Episode 453 of No Crying in Baseball, the Best Teacher is Consequences. Episode. My name is Patti, and I here with my friend Pottymouth, who I think

Pottymouth 0:27
I was about to say I thought I was the best teacher. I mean, you are to me.

Thank you.

Patti 0:31
You are to me. But we're gonna talk about Stephen Kwan and what he has to say.

Pottymouth 0:34
All right, yeah, we can go ahead.

Patti 0:36
He think, he thinks the best teacher is consequences. All right, it's learning. It's teaching moments.

Pottymouth 0:41
Yeah, it's that you know child rearing concept of natural consequences, right? Exactly, choices and you have to deal with

Patti 0:47
whatever your choices are, sure, and you chose to bring baseball into your Passover observances. This weekend, I had so much fun. Thank you for including me in

Pottymouth 0:54
your Seder. It was really fun. I highly, highly recommend the baseball haggadah. We were singing a rousing rendition of take me out to the Seder. We did the wave, all sorts of

Patti 1:06
other I feel so much better, but during the wave around your very large dining room table, as opposed to in a baseball

Pottymouth 1:13
park, for sure. Yeah, highly recommend. Highly recommend. So happy Passover to those who are still celebrating. If you Yeah, Tuesday, it'll be still going on. It's Easter Sunday today.

Patti 1:22
So Happy Easter to those folks.

Pottymouth 1:25
Yeah, so much celebrating. And then there's so much commonality. There's the egg thing. Eggs are important. And there's the finding stuff thing that's right in Passover, we find the efficament. And then there's lots of kids running around finding easter eggs today. I guess tomorrow is the White House thing, and that's a whole nother, oh boy, hot mess. You guys know more than us. I'm excited to see how that goes.

Patti 1:46
Well. I I went to that once with the intern. Had a great time on the basketball court. Course, it was Obama's basketball court at the time, so we were very happy

Pottymouth 1:57
to be there so much better. Yeah, yeah. Who knows? That's probably ruined that as well. But we also did super fun stuff. It was the NATs home opener on Friday. I love,

Patti 2:09
I loved having two opening days. I so had such a good time with two opening days, and I got to share at least one of them with you. It was really good.

Pottymouth 2:15
And it was a beautiful day for baseball. It really was. It started, it was actually like three seasons in one day, because it started off a little bit chilly and drizzly and foggy, and then at the time of baseball, the skies just kind of lit up and got blue, and the sunshine came down, and CJ Abrams hit a home run, and we had, like, high hopes for just a couple innings. Well, we kept our high hopes. Okay, so it was the

Patti 2:38
Dodgers, so our expectations were low, and we did better than I think I anticipated. Also, if we're going to feel bad about the Shohei home run, right? It was his first home run of the season. So we got to see, you know, Shohei Tonya, his first home run of the season. Oh, that's pretty cool. So I mean the fact

Pottymouth 2:57
that, what about Freddie's or mookies?

Patti 2:59
I don't know, Tucker was their first home runs or not. There was so many. There was so many. It was, yeah, it was bad for the nets, but it was so good for baseball. And it was a beautiful day.

Pottymouth 3:13
It was, and I am not bitter that Andy paques is like. He has the best average, I think, in all of MLB right now. And he was my baseball boyfriend last year, and was not doing quite as well, but I am so happy to see him do well.

Patti 3:25
You know, I think the sun came out. I think Maybell Blair brought the sun out. We told you last week about how excited I was about the first pitch at the Orioles game, because it was, like 109 year old Orioles fan, how cool this was, and that was the best ever. And then the NAT said, Hold my beer. Yeah, it was so funny, because

Pottymouth 3:41
it was right before the first pitch, and you're like, what can they do to like, up 109 year old? They made this so meaningful. It was, I feel like it was a recognition of the foundations of baseball that get ignored and the influence that it's being passed down. Because they literally had a baseball that they passed down. And I have a link in the show notes to the Instagram post that shows the whole ceremony. You've got to see it because it started with William Douglas Foster, Jr, who's the grand nephew of the founder of the Negro Leagues, one of the founders, Andrew Rube Foster, and also grandson of William Henry Foster, who was a pitcher in the Negro Leagues. And of course, foster played in the Negro Leagues as well. So they passed that off to Dale and Lyle, current nationals, your boyfriend, and then he gave it to Maybell, and she gave it to Skylar Kaplan, who is on the women's professional baseball league team for San Francisco. But she's from Glen, Burnie, Maryland. She's local to us. Yeah. So, so cool to see that. And I wore my WB, wpbl hat, and I was super excited to be like, hey, it's almost like I knew this was going to happen, not quite. But then she handed it to the first class of graduating class of the Nationals Academy. And the Nationals Academy, I know a lot of teams do this, but it's really impressive how they give back to the city of DC. See. And they call them scholar athletes, because it's both homework help and and coaching. And so Amir Michael was from the very first class, and he's a recent magna cum laude graduate from Morehouse. They talked about that he was on the Morehouse baseball team. He still comes back and coaches with the NATs Academy. And then he gave it to this kid. I don't know, what do you think it was like 10 about, yeah, little kid, Trey, got on the mound, foot on the rubber current, he's currently in the NATs Academy, and he threw what, I think Mr. Primary mouse said it was a little outside, I think is a strike. It looks

Patti 5:35
so good, too. Dalem, yeah. So it was, oh, yeah, that's right, yeah. So it came full circle. You know, just about it was beautiful. It was this great recognition of all the things that make baseball baseball, and it made it feel inclusive and a generational and it was lovely. And remember the old days when it used to be like the head of state throwing out the baseball. We don't even come in conversation anymore, right? It's like, No, we got, we have a better idea, yeah.

Pottymouth 5:56
And is there, like, an important political person in the Washington, DC area.

Patti 6:00
Then, no, I like how this went.

Pottymouth 6:03
Much better, much better. Wait, did you want to say what Maybelle said?

Patti 6:07
Oh, you know what Maybelle said?

Pottymouth 6:09
What did Maybelle say? There's a little

Patti 6:11
interview with her. Of course, that and she said when she was done with the ceremony, she needed to go find a concession stand. Because she said, Oh, I always have to have a beer and a hot dog before I leave. You can't go to a ballpark without a beer and

Pottymouth 6:23
a hot dog unless it's Passover.

Patti 6:24
So she's, she's, well, she's my people, right. There you go. Yeah, you feel generally that way. Oh, yeah, a couple of caveats. Any other time of year, yeah, no,

Pottymouth 6:35
I definitely, and I appreciate the veggie dogs that there are at nats Park, and they're much easier to come by and more clearly labeled these days. So so much appreciation on

Patti 6:45
today's show. We've got so many boyfriends doing boyfriend things, including yelling and jumping. We've got we're checking in on the ABS challenge system one weekend. How's it going for everybody? We've got the women's baseball World Cup. We're cross training with the wphl, and we've got some international baseball

Pottymouth 7:00
cheers, cheers. And you'll notice that in because it's Passover and we're here in my house, we're not drinking beer, but we're making do with a lovely cocktail made from the smoked Cha chose that we talked about a couple weeks ago, and it has a little bit of pineapple juice and a little bit of coconut

Patti 7:21
water, a lot of smoke touches, and a

Pottymouth 7:22
lot of smoked tachos. So we'll see how this goes. It'll be super fun. It's very

Patti 7:26
delicious, yeah, and it tastes as smoky as I sound, yeah.

Pottymouth 7:30
All right, we're gonna start out with our baseball boyfriends that we picked in the off season. And we did this so carefully, because they're all our type. We want to have a beer with them. Want to hang out with cocktails? Sure, sure. And I'm pretty sure that Justin Crawford is drinking age. I think he's over 21 Yeah, Justin Crawford's my Philly's baseball boyfriend. So those of you who have been listening for a while know that at this point we've taken our baseball boyfriends, that we have one from each team, and we've made a fantasy team, and Justin Crawford is very important on my fantasy league. I'm really excited, because when I chose him, I didn't know a lot about him. Young guy wasn't totally sure. I mean, people were saying that he would make the team, but not only did he make the team, but he is so a team member now. Like to see him hanging out with the dudes. Is adorable. He got a walk off single on Wednesday to be at our national sigh six to five and take the series from the Nats. And the way that all his teammates greeted him after the walk off was super sweet, and him hugging folks and high fiving and all that stuff. He is the youngest Philly with a walk off RBI since Hall of Famer Scott Roland did it in June of 1997 and he's the third Phillies rookie since 2000 with seven or more hits in his first five MLB games, the other two being Nick mayton in 2021 and Jimmy Rollins in 2000 currently at the time of recording, Justin Crawford has the highest average for all of the Phillies. He has a 321 average with nine hits, one walk, one stolen base in 28 at bats. Now you may remember that when I last talked about him and his mom asking for a vegan cheesesteak in Philadelphia at a place that didn't do vegan cheesesteaks, and getting laughed at and Justin realized, you know, got to do something about that with mom.

Patti 9:22
Well, well, 20 days mentioned,

Pottymouth 9:25
two days later, the day before Passover started, we went to our local roscoe's Pizzeria here in downtown Tacoma Park, and they had vegan cheesesteak on the menu. And I thought, Oh, I must get this in honor of Justin Crawford's mom, I did. It was delicious. So I looked at the schedule. The Phillies are gonna be here in the end of June. Justin Crawford is taking messages on his Instagram. I don't know if he reads them, but I did write to him and say, Please share this with your mother. I would like to invite her to a vegan cheesesteak in takoma park. So we'll see what happens with that. But that would be very cool. I love that. I was like, might as. Well, next step will be looking up hers. Matt Chapman, former baseball boyfriend of yours, needs to hold his temper a little bit at his teammates. And I understand it's all good now, but I feel like it's worth saying a little. You know, word of warning, when you get frustrated at the way that the play is going, it's a team effort, right? Everybody's part of the team, and you don't want to single out that guy, especially if it's my baseball boyfriend, Casey Schmidt, for fucking up, when actually it's kind of everybody fucking up, a little bit like it would be one thing if it was just Casey's fuck up, but they were losing to the Padres on April, 1 of all days being fools in the fifth inning, and Matt Chapman made an error. It was called an error on Matt because of Rush throw to first base and Casey's on first and at the mound visit afterwards. So Casey didn't make the play. You know, bass base loaded or run scored. They went to the mound, and he said to him, according to the lip readers, catch the fucking ball. Apparently, there was a similar situation in the first inning where Casey got the error. But the deal is here. You know, when you're frustrated, you want to say, let's all get better together, not catch the fucking ball. Although I yell that at the screen on the regular basis, catch the fucking ball. But it's different because they can't really hear me. It's interesting that even though I think they can, Casey is not a first baseman. He's a utility guy, which means he, you know, should be able to do a little bit of everything, but it's only his 18th career all time start at first base. Raphael Devers is supposed to be there. He's been DHing because hamstring injury. Yeah, I don't know about that, but, you know, they talked it out. Matt said, we're all brothers here. It's the heat of the moment. I already talked to Casey. It's all good. Well, Casey said we're trying to win games. I mean, obviously I'm not mad about it or anything. That's baseball. I mean, those are the things I should have done and didn't. So both guys are kind of appropriately admitting a little bit of fault there. But, you know, protective my guy. And speaking of admitting a little bit of fault under the use news, you lose category, I got an alert on Thursday that Carter Jensen was day to day. And I was like, Oh no, what's happening? And then I got a next alert

Patti 12:24
that, could you share what team your boyfriend's around?

Pottymouth 12:27
Oh yes, yes, sorry. The guys that I just talked about were on the Giants. So Matt Chapman, that's very important many things. Casey Schmidt on the Giants. And now Carter Jensen, Kansas City Royals. He I didn't know why he was day to day. I wasn't watching the world's Royals game. He was okay the next day. Turns out, he over slept. Yeah, how is that possible? Apparently, he maybe, I don't know. He didn't set his alarm. He didn't set enough alarms. He ended up getting to the to the park on time. But he's a catcher, and catchers have a lot of prep to do and a lot of equipment to get on. So he ended up not catching until the top of the ninth, a pinch runner was brought in for Sally. Salvi had to cover for him, so in the bottom of the eighth, Salvi made it through eight innings. Brought on a pinch runner because salvia gotten on base, and Carter didn't even, you know, get in that bat to make up for his snooze, and the Royals lost one to five. So the big problem with this, you know, you don't show up late number one, but also Salvi, who had to cover for him, is old and old guys need preparation before they crouch for up to nine innings. And not only that, but the day before, Carter had DH and Salvi had caught the whole fucking game. So a day after, like, they're trying to do this back and forth thing because Sally's old, like, that's the whole purpose of having Carter Jensen there as the backup catcher, who's gonna be catching a lot. So Vinnie pasquintino said, you got a 36 year old catcher preparing to DH today, and then his world gets a little rocked an hour and a half before the game that he's not going to be d aging. But the other really important, and I loved it, Vinnie. This is my baseball boyfriend from last year. Vinnie said, first and foremost, we're glad Carter's Okay, right? They were worried. They were, like, legit worried, because in this day and age, in our digital age, you can find text people immediately. They couldn't get in touch with him. His parents couldn't get in touch with him. The kid was just like dead asleep. So to give Carter credit, he fessed up immediately. He went to the press right after the game, which is, I think, intense, because you must be sort of like on the verge of tears at this point. He said he woke up in a panic, you know. And I that that feeling like that ongoing dream where you wake up right before a test and you have to, like, run into the testing place or whatever, like you woke up and not wearing pants, yeah, right, yeah, I think he wore pants to the ballpark. He said he had no excuse. He apologized for letting everyone down, and he said he's taking steps to make sure it doesn't happen again. And so I'm sure he has alarms all over the fucking place manager, Mark quettra, oh, said it's not something that's been a pattern or any of that kind of stuff. Nobody feels worse than he does. And I think he'll admit to that, and we'll move on. So the next day was a rain out. Saturday, he got the second game of the double header and got a two RBI double. So I think he's like, trying to make up for oops. Big oops. I feel like, man, it's I've never done that that I can think of, even in my 30 years of teaching, I've never overslept. There's my co teacher does it all the time, but I've never slept quickly. My Red Sox guy has been really sucking. So this is Caleb Durbin. Poor dude, slow Boomer. He hadn't gotten a hit before the opening day at Fenway Park. You know, side note here at the time of recording, the only games the Red Sox have opened have won were the opening day away and opening day at home. And I'm a little concerned, because there's no more opening days. What's gonna happen? So Caleb Durbin had not gotten a hit. He was over 19 coming into Fenway, and I knew, like days before, I was like, Please let him get a hit. So this doesn't happen. The crowd warmed up by booing the mayor and the governor, which I'm a little pissed off about, to tell you the truth, because I like the Boston mayor and governor, so not cool for the Fenway faithful, but they also booed Manny Machado, very understandably at Fenway Park, because he is, he is the villain of ruining their beloved Dustin Pedro his career, of course. But then Caleb gets back in his at bat. He grounds into a double play his first at bat, so of course, he gets rained on the boos. Luckily, his second at bat. He did get an RBI single, so there was momentary cheering and forgiveness, and he even said, That's Boston, right? You want fans that are poured into it. That's Boston for you. It's honestly a good thing, because you want the fans to be on you. That's what makes Boston special. Well, dude, they will be on you because you haven't been doing shit since then. Chorus said, I think honestly, as far as expectations, yeah, we know what happened at third base, and now he's the third baseman, and he's little like the ex second baseman. So there's, like, all these feelings about Pedroia, that little ex second baseman, and there were all these comparisons about the two of them being the same size and Pedroia being his idol, but he's not living up to it. And that third base. You know, was Devers, and then it was Bregman, and now it's this guy, and he's got to do well super quick. I think are the players of the week are both ncbib Baseball boyfriends. Woo hoo. Your guy chase to Lauder for the American League, and my guy's Sal Stewart for the National League. He's 11 for 27 and eight games, with two home runs. He's batting fourth between Ellie de la Cruz and Eugenio Suarez. And this is yet another guy wasn't totally sure he was going to even make the team. And here he is. He got the first hit of the season for the Reds against Garrett crochet at opening day. He has another Red Sox connection, though. He played travel ball as a kid on the same team with Roman Anthony. I think I missed this when I did my bit on Sal. Turns out that they were not only close friends, but like they hung out with each other's families, like they were Uber super close. They were in different high schools, so they played against each other in high school, but with each other for many summers in travel bowl. So that line drive that I talked about last week that hit him in the wrist on opening day. And we're like, oh shit, is it broken? Is something wrong? I was actually Roman Anthony's back that hit that off his old buddy. So apparently Roman Anthony is like, texting him, are you okay? Are you okay? Multiple times. And Sal says, Yeah, I'm good. What are you doing tomorrow? On the day off? And then he says, it sucks to see him hitting homers against us, but deep down, you go so far back and you're just happy for him and his family and the person that he is nice.

Patti 18:47
Cheers. Cheers. So my guy, Drake Baldwin from the hammers the Atlanta team, on Tuesday last week, it was his bobblehead night, and he accepted his Rookie of the Year Award from last year. He was honored for that at his bobblehead night. And so because the fans are, you know, there to see him do all these things, he homered in his first at bat, which is the thing that you want to do on your bobblehead night. Yeah. So on Thursday, when he scored a run in the fifth inning versus Arizona, that brought his total to scoring a run in the first of each of seven games of the season, wow, each of the first seven games of the season. That hasn't happened since Henry Aaron. Aaron did it in 1957 he's in a sentence with Henry Aaron now, right? And before Henry Aaron did it, Jimmy Collins did it in 1900 Wow. This doesn't happen a lot, right? So he scored a run in each of the first seven games of the season, he is doing great. So when we did our notes, it was before the Sunday games happened, I got a notification that he has hit other home run today. Wow, before that, that's crazy. He was tied with a boatload of people for the National League best at three home runs and. Including two home runs we saw at nats opening day. CJ Abrams and Andy pa has both were tied with, with, with, with Drake Baldwin for a number of Homers.

Pottymouth 20:11
Dang, both former picks of mine,

Patti 20:13
yeah, was tied with Jordan Alvarez, Josh Bell and Xavier Edwards with a league leading nine runs scored. Wow. Again. Josh Bell, yeah. Josh Bell scored nine. Has scored nine runs so far. So again, this was before the Sunday games, so those numbers might be a little bit different. So there's this guy from Boston on the Boston team.

Pottymouth 20:33
Will your brain? Oh, my God, thank God for will your bra you. I am so appreciative of this man.

Patti 20:38
So what I like to do with the baseball boyfriends is when I look at my fantasy team, I hit the button that says, show me the stats for the last seven days. Yeah. So you say, see a week's worth, and that helps you pick out what was exceptional that week. But it also makes math fun, because you're doing math on a much smaller sample size. So over the seven days, start, you know, ending this morning, basically, Sunday morning. William Ray you had a 409 average and a 1.208 ops. Wow. In his first six games, he hit three homers, had six RBI versus the whole rest of the Red Sox team combined, which had three home runs like everybody else together, had three home runs and 10 RBI versus his three home run six, RBI on his own. And four of the first six games for him were multi hit games. So he's kind of a star

Pottymouth 21:31
right now. It's crazy. I know he got some today. I don't remember how much. Yeah, he went fucking three for four today.

Patti 21:37
Sure he did.

Pottymouth 21:39
Sure he did. Geez, bless him. Thank you.

Patti 21:42
So my Cleveland guy, chase the Lauder, who you know also, I want to say also my pick for rookie of the year. I'm gonna keep saying that I learned more important things about him today. Good pick. One of them is his walk up song is, take me home country roads, which, you know, I feel good about. It's, it's also a hockey goal song for, you know, for one of the capitals, which makes me very happy, and I feel good about John Denver at baseball games because of Baltimore. Sure, he has again this morning before the game started today, out of the nine hits, he has five or home runs. Wow. He is tied with Shay langeliers For the most home runs in the league, the whole league at five again this morning before today's games, Friday was the Cleveland home opener. So it was the first time he got to play in Progressive Field in front of the home crowd with his walk up song, which everybody sang loudly. And that's one of those songs that even when the music stops, the crowd does not stop. So the crowd was still singing like into his second pitch, and because it's just that. So we'll hopefully get to experience that. And what he said was hearing that from the first inning on its chills every at bat. So on the for the home opener, he went three for four, including a cheer on homer in the seventh in their four to one win over the Cubs, which meant that his five home runs in his first seven games is second only to Trevor story. He says it feels like a dream come true. Beautiful day, packed crowd. What is there not to be

Pottymouth 23:14
happy about? I wish Trevor story would hit the fucking ball again. So we're

Patti 23:19
not talking about him. We're talking about chase the water. And we're talking about the Cleveland home opener, which there was another really good first pitch. Is a cross training first pitch. I'm so excited. I did not know this that that Layla Edwards of the women's Olympic gold medal winning hockey team is actually from Cleveland. I don't think I was aware of that she's from. She's from Cleveland Heights, so she got to throw out the first pitch to Austin hedges. And I don't know why, but that they play Leonard Skinner's Free Bird. Well, she had the first pitch. I'm just amused by that they also use some Emerson Lake and Palmer at the beginning. When they open the gates, you get to hear, welcome back, my friends, to the show, which just gives me chills, because it's Cleveland, it's the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We like the old stuff there. We also follow past boyfriends, especially when they do something exceptional, spectacular. So Joe Adele was my angels guy in 2021 still an angel's guy Saturday night versus Seattle. He had three, three spectacular home run robberies, right? I just like, amazing. They the angels won one nothing. Joe Adele saved three Homers. Okay, so that's the math, right there, right? Yeah. So the first home run robbery was Cal Rowley, who was the second batter of the game, which, of course, led to Joe Adele being a big jumper, a big jumper. That's so good. The second was almost the identical spot, and it was Josh Naylor in the eighth inning, and then the third one, JP Crawford in the ninth inning, went into the corner, which. Had Joe a dog like, diving over, or falling over, actually, the low wall and coming up, like with a glove in the air, holding the ball. So of course, they had to do like the instant replay, making sure he really had it. But what he said was, I just got there, was able to fall over and end up in somebody's lap. I don't know, but it was a softer landing than I thought it would be. It's kind of crazy. That's so good. And then later on, Cal Rowley said about this whole like three home run robbery. Said, baseball can amaze you, night in and night out, you can see something you've never seen before. I've never seen anything like that.

Pottymouth 25:36
It's amazing. And like when when I saw it first happened and I watched the film of him jumping over that was impressive enough, but now they've gotten fan footage of the folks behind him. Oh, wow. There's this majestic picture of him from behind, like, holding up the ball with the field in front of him. It's just like, Yeah, put that in the louver. It's just like, gorgeous, gorgeous. So what a guy, and that's just like, that's not in your average or your ops or anything, that he won that game, right?

Patti 26:05
No, absolutely. And the general feel is like that's never happened before, because that's not a stat that's tracked. Really, journalists have found maybe a couple, like two games where there have been two home run robberies, maybe, wow, and never three by the same guy, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, this is historic. This is historic.

Pottymouth 26:24
Wow, awesome, awesome. A cute thing about Fenway Park. Despite my deep sadness at the current state of the Red Sox, it's gonna get better. It's gonna get better. I'm like, trying to talk myself into that, or be Zen or something. But apparently the Fenway faithful, faithful wanted a break from the Boston archdiocese on Good Friday, so opening day was on Good Friday, and opening day comes with Fenway Franks, which Catholics don't eat on Good Friday. So it was brought up to be clear,

Patti 26:59
they don't eat any Franks, right? Fenway ones, right, right.

Pottymouth 27:02
No meat, right. This is my understanding from outside of the faith, but that Fenway Franks and other assorted things sold at the ballpark would not be good for Lent, the Boston archdiocese said, Too bad no special dispensation for Fenway Franks on home opener Good Friday, they should have realized that this request wasn't going to go well, because apparently, in April of 2004 the same request was made and the same request was denied. That year turned out really well. That was the first, you know, Red Sox World Series in 87 years. So yay. Maybe that is, you know, showing that this year things will get better. On a side note, though, this, like special dispensation, can happen in 1995 2002 1023, all those years, the same Good Friday dispensation was granted for St Patrick's Day. So apparently, corned beef, okay, Fenway Frank's not okay. Somebody said, Can we eat corned beef? And the Archdiocese said yes, for St Patrick's Day, feast of St

Patti 28:12
Patrick Okay, so if it's a Catholic feast, you can have whatever you want. Apparently, apparently, that nice Irish Saint outranks, right? Good Friday.

Pottymouth 28:22
I still find this very hard. I don't know. I'm not my origin. All right, all

Patti 28:26
right, okay, hey, so we're a week into the season, and we've been doing this automatic ball and strike challenge system, which I'm kind of digging. Yeah, I think it's smooth, it's smooth, it's, it's, it's not adding extra time, really, to the game. Maybe, you know, a minute here or there, but it doesn't feel like it's like, oh God, here we go again. It seems fast, solved quickly. And things are working out. The teams are still working out their strategies. Like, some teams are like, challenge everything. You know, if you if you feel it, go ahead and challenge it. Other teams are like, No, we need to be careful with what we do, so they're still working that out. So some teams have challenged an enormous number of times. Some have not. I got to enjoy San Diego a little bit because they have a color coded challenge play sheet that sort of, like, puts together, like, in this kind of situation, go ahead and challenge. If this is the situation, don't. And you say color coded. And I say, Oh, yay.

Pottymouth 29:21
Yeah, our friends, here we go with Stephen Kwan.

Patti 29:25
They're talking to him about, how do you feel about this ABS challenge thing? And he says, I think the best teacher is consequences. So if you get it wrong, it's like, okay, well, I don't want to feel stupid to challenge this pitch. Like, no, no, you just you remember that this pitch is a strike, like you learn from that challenge, right? So then you recognize that pitch next time for whatever, however it's really going to be called. One of the other things that's happening is it's putting a lot of pressure on the position of catcher, who already has a lot of things to do, like calling the entire game, right? So, but they are the ones who are the most successful at challenges they have. The best view of things. So JT REO mucho, who actually has, like, a very high rating for successful challenges, he's doing great, but he says it creates a little more stress on my nights, I'm constantly second guessing, having to think about every single pitch that we go through. But overall, I

Pottymouth 30:15
like it for the game, all right, right. So he's willing to take on that extra stress for the benefit of the good of all

Patti 30:20
right, right, for sure. And then our pal, Alex Cora is very funny. He says, my whole career career, there was a lot of screaming and complaining about the calls we didn't agree with, you know, getting the dugout right. So when you have the challenges, it's very quiet. So apparently it kind of chills though the dugout a little bit. You and I talked about this, I think just kind of in person, maybe not on the show, yeah. But, you know, we joked about glamor height. You know how like players need to be round up? You know how tall they are? Well, they're all they've all been cut out because in order for abs to work, every single player has their own custom strike zone based on their height. So to do this, every player had to be measured three times, all between the hours of 10am and noon. And it turns out a lot of players are a lot shorter than either we thought or they thought. Sometimes they were all surprised. It's also very funny that a lot of them get really salty about no longer being six feet or over. That's the whole thing. The six, the six foot line, has got the Mendoza line beat, right? Okay, so here's what happened. There's 430 hitters plan on opening day, right? 225 of them lost at least one inch. Wow, off their previously listed heights from last year and the year before. That's crazy. It gets crazier. Six have lost three inches.

Pottymouth 31:43
What of their height? I want to know who that is.

Patti 31:45
Can tell you some of them, 48 of them have lost two inches, and 171 have lost one inch. 45 players gained an inch. Two players gained two inches. So what we're learning is sometimes players are measured, and sometimes they just ask the player, how tall are you? I guess I have this height, and that just never sticks. And nobody ever checks a little bit of social math so you understand how much height was now removed from like the volume of height in Major League Baseball. Baseball players in total, lost nearly 20 feet worth of height. That equates to three full Aaron judge sized human beings. Wow. Although some of the players like, that's okay, because when you're shorter, you have a smaller ABS strike zone. Oh, so it could work in your favor. So some people were joking like, well, maybe, maybe it's better that I'm not one of you six foot tall people. An interesting thing that happened this past week. Samuel Vasayo, from you know, was catching for the O's challenged a ball four call at the end of a game and won the call, which meant the game ended on an ABS walk off. Jason Starr called it a tap off, sure. Yeah. I found on ESPN, they have a tracker, which is kind of fun, a link to it so I can always look at it. It lists players separated by batters, pitchers and catchers, and how successful they are with challenges, and also teams and how they are across the board. And also umpires. There are umpires who have 100% held up, wow, which is pretty cool. There are others who don't. It's one of the other things is, like, how do you feel as an umpire, right? Right? Especially because it is a different strike zone for every batter. It's a total right? So I'm finding, I think I like it, yeah, I think it's been a pretty smooth, smoothly, like, begun, like, you know, it was incorporated into the game very easily. There wasn't a lot of, I don't know. What do we do now?

Pottymouth 33:44
Yeah, we think it's turning out okay. I'll be super curious. And, like, I wonder if, like, the number nerds will like crunch numbers at the end of the season to see if this adversely affected tall or short folks differently. You know what I mean? Like, like, who got the win in being more exact, yeah. And I also like that, that comment by Cora about things getting quiet. I'm wondering, in a couple games that I've seen recently, if the next frontier is going to be the check swing, because there were some ugly ones with the Red Sox. But also, the Orioles manager got thrown out of the game today because there was a check swing that was called a strike that wasn't a he hadn't swung.

Patti 34:23
Well, yeah, that's being tested in one of the minor leagues right now, right? So that that you can, in fact, challenge a check swing. And also, before, they didn't define what that was, and there is now a working definition of what that means. It knows it did you cross the 45 degree plane. So now everyone has that definition, and in one or more leagues in the minors that's being tested that you could actually challenge a check swing call. I bet that'll

Pottymouth 34:47
happen next year, and then there'll be no chirping in the dugout, right?

Patti 34:51
Sure. Be peaceful. Well, it's interesting because, you know, like watching the last O's game, they burned their challenges. They were not successful. They lost them both, and there was death. What should, what could have been a strike three call, which would have changed the game, and they couldn't challenge on it. So it was like, Well, shit, yeah,

Pottymouth 35:09
same thing happened with the Red Sox. I was thinking they'll be just in the dugout chewing their gum, because that one cute thing about the baseball had got as it mentioned, that in the old days, players used to chew this, this substance called tobacco, but nowadays they don't. And I'm like, Well, there's a little bit wishful thinking there. We'll just, we'll just project that and expect that, you know where there's not going to be tobacco chewing. I don't think would be in the women's baseball World Cup, because women know better. This is happening starting this summer. Two groups with there's going to be two groups with six teams each happening this summer, July, 22 to 27th in Rockford, Illinois, home of the Rockford peaches, and also in Tainan, Taiwan, from August, 23 to 27th so you can watch all of the action at the two different times, the time, on games, breakfast, baseball, lots of fun. The top three from each of these group stages are going to go to the finals, which is going to happen next year. So the last women's baseball World Cup did it the same way with having the group stage the whole year before the actual finals, which is a choice. I guess it worked out well, I don't know. Sounds fun. I think that that means that we can put July 19, 25th 2027 on our calendar right now. And that might be the road trip of the future to see the actual women's baseball World Cup finals. Be super cool. So the countries that are facing off in the group stage in Rockford. And this is kind of weird. In Rockford is playing USA, Mexico, Hong Kong, which is a team, even though it's part of China, but I think it's like the Puerto Rico us thing, maybe Australia, Korea, and the winner of the series between Canada and Puerto Rico. That's happening April 29 to May 3 in lovely Puerto Rico. But Rockford, Korea, Australia and Hong Kong are coming over here, and then in Tainan and Taiwan, they're going to have Japan, Venezuela, Taiwan, Cuba, Great Britain, and some wild card team decided by the World Baseball and Softball Confederation.

Patti 37:23
So not great at geography, but it seems like teams who are coming from Asia might appreciate the shorter travel to actually play somewhere else in Asia,

Pottymouth 37:32
rather than halfway around the world, right? You'd think that at least Venezuela and Cuba could have swapped with Hong Kong and Australia and even Korean Great Britain. Great Britain, it's like, you know, probably closer to here. Yeah, I don't know who's planning this stuff, but, you know, put, put next summer, July, 19 to 25th, 2027, on your calendars.

Patti 37:53
Super fun, quick little bit of cross training. You may remember I was very proud to have been to a record setting attendance game for the wphl here in Washington, DC, a couple of months ago, that record has been broken several times since then, most recently with a sold out game at Madison Square Garden between the Seattle torrent and the New York sirens. The new attendance record is 18,006 important to note, this game was just about sold out before the Olympics, so like the new interest in women's hockey that was generated by the US team winning the gold medal in the Olympics, which has absolutely increased attendance at wphl games, is not the reason that game sold out. That game, sold out. That game sold out because people watch women's hockey. Wow. People already watched women's hockey. So that's pretty exciting to me. Billie Jean King is on the Advisory Committee for the league, and she said women's sports is on its way finally,

Pottymouth 38:54
yeah, yeah. Didn't she drop the puck or something? Like she was there, I

Patti 38:58
think her partner, oh, wow,

Pottymouth 39:02
super cool. And my kids comment was like, finally, the New York teams playing in New York. Like, enough of this. Like New Jersey New York situation. All right. Quick international update. Last week, I talked about the baseball Champions League, which was like a little tournament thing happening in Mexico City, and it was down to the finals. And I just wanted to give an update. An update that, in fact, the gringos won the game. The Kane city Cougars defeated the Diablos rojos to win the baseball Champions League seven to three last Sunday, and the Kane city Cougars were undefeated. So go back to last week's episode where I talked about everybody else that was involved, and pretty much they were champions from kind of random places around, except for Taiwan was their second place team, but I don't know, go figure. So I was curious about the Kane city cougars, because this is not quite the same level, it would seem, as the other international team. That were participating. They're currently in the American Association of Professional baseball, which is connected to MLB somehow, but not part of the minor league system. In 1991 they moved from Wausau, Wisconsin to Geneva, Illinois, and started an actual MLB affiliation. So they were a minor league team until 2020 when, well after 2020 2020 was their last season. And then the minor leagues got, you know, reshuffled, and they lost the shuffle. They had been connected to the O's, the Marlins, the A's, the Royals, the Cubs and the D backs, before the rug was pulled out from under them. I did check them up from our road trip, because they're an hour west of Chicago, halfway to Rockford. Rockford's on the way from Madison to Springfield. I don't know if it can fit, but there's a possibility what I liked about them, looking into their history, is from not 18 way back 1888 goes to this, this team's history. They started until 1973 Their name was actually the Decatur commies. And I was like, well, that's a cool thing. And if you go into like the eBay, you can see Decatur commies merch that looks very commie to me, like I would like a commies hat. But it's not the commies that you think it is, or that I thought it was. It's named after Commodore. I know buzzkill right there, Stephen Decatur. And there's the Decatur too. I was like, where's Decatur? He was a US Navy officer in the baby years of the United States when it was just barely a country. And did you know military things? And got honored by this baseball team. The commies are famous in history because they hosted the first night baseball game in Illinois. You know, famously, Wrigley didn't get lights for a very long time. The Decatur commies actually beat them. And march 14, 1930 they had the first evening game. So check out the vintage merch.

Patti 42:03
And pretty cool. Yeah, you know, I, I sort of repacked my baseball t shirt tour, and it is overflowing, and yet, there are things that I would make room, right? T shirt might be one of those things. So good, yeah, for sure. Hey, so we have this fantasy league with ridiculous rules and super fun teams playing on it, and again early days, and we have shuffled yet again. So the big changes are wicked awesome and Bono's boyfriends were tied for third place last week. They're now one and two with wicked awesome in the first place spot. So congratulations, guys, um, try to answer. Oh, I'm so sorry to say that tri dance and tap rooms fell from first place to sixth place. That'll happen all star cobalt, 112, rose from seven to four. Everybody else sort of shuffled a little bit. For instance, you're no longer in the basement. I was

Pottymouth 42:57
in eighth last week too, which I stayed the same. Yeah. Sorry I missed that. I'm just hanging out, me and sunny. All right, all right.

Patti 43:05
So it's, it's super fun. I hope you guys who are playing are having a good time with that, and we will keep, keep in the loop on where people stand. And again, we I grab this standing list before the Sunday games start. So things may, of course, have changed already during the course of the day,

Pottymouth 43:20
probably and hopefully. And just as a side note, the wicked awesome team absolutely has me to thank for that first place slot, because he would have taken Red Sox pitching had I not taken it, and so he would have been the one wallowing with the Red Sox pitchers.

Patti 43:36
So just go there and take credit for,

Pottymouth 43:38
yeah, absolutely taking credit for that first place standing. Because I'm down there, I also want to give a shout out. Thanks to some of our friends on Patreon, our villa Tom and Montana girl, for playing predictions with us. So at the end of the season, when we check in on how well our predictions went, we can check in on their predictions and see if they beat us. I love it.

Patti 44:00
Yeah, I love it. Oh my gosh. So I have to go to work tomorrow, and you do not.

Pottymouth 44:05
No, I'm gonna be editing this, I think, okay, and doing laundry so you get in and out, all right, but, yeah, one more day vacation is a good thing. Well, thanks for you. Yeah, sorry, yeah, that's okay.

Patti 44:16
I'm glad you have it, and I'm glad you know some of those things actually work out for me. I did enjoy. I will, I will share with the class that, um, I enjoyed your spring break because we did some work on their epic road trip. So while I was at work, my phone went off consecutively a whole bunch of times saying you've been sent a ticket to a baseball game. You've been sent a ticket to a baseball game. You and over and over and over again and so many it's so fun to look at my ballpark app and see our epic road trip actually coming to fruition. Very excited. Hey, when do you get

Pottymouth 44:44
beer again? Four days? Thursday, sundown. It's, you know, it's not a hardship like this. This cocktail was lovely. Pretty much lasted us through the whole episode. I could drink more chachos. You. Can check it. You just can't talk about it. But you know, Thursday evening, at sundown, I will be opening a cold frosty one for our our happy hour that we have on Thursday. There we go.

Patti 45:11
Very nice. Okay, our friends out there, please tell us have did you get to any live baseball yet this season? How do you feel about the ABS challenge? Do you have any recommendations for us on our epic, epic road trip. Get in touch with us on social

Pottymouth 45:23
media, please. Yeah. And if you want to meet up with us too, you can have access to where we're going to be when check us out on blue sky, n, C, i, b podcast, Facebook and Instagram are no crying and B ball, but the very best place always is Patreon, P, A, T, R, E, O, n.com/no, crying and B ball. You can join for free and get a couple of updates. There, you can give us a whole dollar a month, and we'll be incredibly appreciative, because we are a grassroots movement, and it is working, and it's because everybody does a little bit. So a buck, three bucks, whatever you want to give, it honestly keeps us going, and maybe it will help us fund new travel microphone so that we can, you know, let let you know what's happening on our very, very fun, epic road trip

Patti 46:07
this August. Yeah, we're so looking forward to figuring out what kind of extras we can provide and other content when we're on our two week adventure. So we'd love some suggestions about that as well. Wow. Okay, my friends, go see some live baseball. Send your game balls to Meredith, fight the man. It's the right thing to do all the time and until next week, say goodnight.

Pottymouth 46:25
Potty mouth, good night. Potty mouth.

You I figure if I just like, don't touch the settings, yeah, between the weeks, that it should theoretically be the same. So far so good, sure, so far so good. Wait till we take this show on the road.

Patti 46:55
That's gonna be exciting.

Pottymouth 46:58
Oh, wow.