No Crying In Baseball

Patti 0:18
Hi, and welcome to episode 461 of no crying in baseball, the Bro, Celebrate a Little Bit episode. My name is Patti. I'm here with my friend Pottymouth. Hey, Pottymouth.

Pottymouth 0:26
I am so up for celebrating. Can I celebrate, even though I'm not a bro?

Patti 0:29
Yes,

Pottymouth 0:30
I can't be an honorary bro.

Patti 0:31
I can celebrate the fact that you're not a bro.

Pottymouth 0:33
Excellent, yeah, you, we can both celebrate that. Here, here, cheers. We had a really cool week, or we had a momentary critical

Patti 0:42
moment.

Pottymouth 0:42
Yes, there we go. We had part of a really cool day in this week. That's it.

Patti 0:47
Can I say we are so old that our best connections to greatness are now through our children, and you know, you know, other other people that age, as opposed to, you know, our contemporaries.

Pottymouth 0:58
I don't know. I think let's hold out for our contemporaries. It's, we've got a, we're going to put the challenge out there to see if anybody can be as cool as our friend's kid or a kid's friend, depending on which way. Yeah, actually both. So, this, this friend's kid's kid's friend happens to work in the Governor's Office of Maryland, and was last minute offered tickets to the Governor's suite at box, whatever you want to call it, at Camden Yards, and we went, and I am almost embarrassed that I hesitated a moment, because I had a field trip on Friday, and I didn't want to be a disaster, but oh boy, was it worth going.

Patti 1:33
I believe my, my text to convince you were just the words Governor's Box and all caps, like over and over again, Governor's Box,

Pottymouth 1:41
yeah, and we ended up having the whole thing to ourselves.

Patti 1:44
We did,

Pottymouth 1:46
had a party in there,

Patti 1:47
so it's right above home plate, a beautiful view of Cal Ripken's head, the top of his head.

Pottymouth 1:51
That was great, that was so great.

Patti 1:53
Right above that, he was there, he wasn't the chairs, the seats, they moved, but the, you know, for the old people like me, there was back support,

Pottymouth 2:04
and what I love for short people like me is you could scoot it up, so like I wasn't so far back from the ledge where I could put my drink, I could scoot my chair right up,

Patti 2:12
and you had a ledge where you could put your drink.

Pottymouth 2:13
Yes,

Patti 2:14
there were so many good things. So we're very grateful to our kids' friend and our friend's kids for making this possible. It was really super fun,

Pottymouth 2:22
so good. And the game was.. I mean, I know it didn't end the way that you guys wanted, but it was a close game. There were a couple of really good pitches. It was great to see Patrick Corbin doing well, sort of, sort of, except for that the fact that he won the game against the Orioles.

Patti 2:35
We saw debut. I love a debut so much.

Pottymouth 2:37
That was amazing. So, I.. and maybe you can explain this to me, so Cameron Weston, they debuted him in the top of the ninth in a tense situation. He had to hold the lead, it was two to one lead, so his job was to prevent Toronto from scoring, so that theoretically the O's could then walk it off, which Colton Kauser took a night off, and he didn't do it, but this kid did so well, he seemed totally under control. First batter strikeout was like three pitches, four pitches, it was a very fast,

Patti 3:05
very efficient. Yeah, and

Pottymouth 3:06
then he got a little like flustered in the second batter and walked him, and so like had that momentary, like, you know, don't lose it, you did so well, you can come back. Third batter, double play, that's it. It

Patti 3:17
was gorgeous.

Pottymouth 3:17
Boom,

Patti 3:18
it was such a good day for him.

Pottymouth 3:19
Yeah, and so they sent him back down, that was it, it was his cup of coffee, espresso, but hopefully he's tagged for I don't, do you know if anybody else was going the other way and they had to send him down,

Patti 3:30
I am, I am not clear, but we've had so many guys going on and off the IL at a rapid pace, I just do not

Pottymouth 3:36
know, okay, all right, cool, I just wanted to do a quick reminder myself, I'm not sure, so next weekend we're gonna have a little retirement celebration gathering at a brewery of all places, and so after drinking with my colleagues, there's a chance that I might mention the podcast. It might happen, I'm not sure, unveiling it might be the unveiling, do the unveiling, sure,

Patti 3:56
but you still have a couple days to go.

Pottymouth 3:58
Yeah, so this is a small group, it's not like the entire school or anything, but it's folks who I know. Oh, I think you'd be drinking. I will be retiring soft

Patti 4:06
launch.

Pottymouth 4:08
I, so

Patti 4:08
I think you know we should pick a day for you to actually do the unveiling for the podcast, if that's our listeners,

Pottymouth 4:14
get like a smiley face shot on our Instagram or something like that,

Patti 4:18
right? And maybe even get your whole first name and everything.

Pottymouth 4:20
Oh, right,

Patti 4:20
right. There's things that people don't know about you.

Pottymouth 4:22
There's so much

Patti 4:23
on today's show. Our boyfriends feature Blaze, Nick, Cam, Caleb, and hundreds of shirtless guys. Christopher Sanchez is totally on the Cy Young path. MLB and the MLB PA give us their opening salvos in their bargaining negotiations, are we done with Wander Franco yet? We're cross-training with cage fighting and some philanthropy we can get behind. Cheers. This is the prettiest can I've ever seen.

Pottymouth 4:53
We are drinking a dragon fruit sour, I kid you not. And it is from.. you want to read the can? It's called Eavesdrop Brewery,

Patti 5:02
and where is it?

Pottymouth 5:04
In Manassas, Virginia. It's a lovely place to go hang out and have a very nice sour. This is.. it's not sweet, it's definitely the puckery sour. It actually has 7% alcohol, which is pretty high

Patti 5:14
called

Island Music Dragon Fruit,

Pottymouth 5:16
and it's definitely tastes like Island Music.

Patti 5:18
It's pretty, but the can is pretty, and the drink is pretty,

Pottymouth 5:20
yeah, yeah, it's rainbow with a bird on it, so it's Partridge Family vibes, for sure, for sure. Oh, hey, I'm kicking this off. So we're gonna start with our baseball boyfriends. These are the guys that we picked in the off season. We each picked one guy per team because there was something cool about them. Ideally, they also play baseball well. And then we made our fantasy teams, and you know, mine's been struggling a little bit, but it is not Blaze's fault, because I didn't have him on my roster, so that's the other thing, you know, we picked 30 guys, not all of them made the cut, Blaze is now on my team, however, he was not on Wednesday night when he had a six RBI game, and I have to tip my hat to you for informing me as the game was going on, and I was like, oh, fuck, I meant to

Patti 6:04
do all

three of his hits were two RBI hits, every single one of my god, yeah, he had a game,

Pottymouth 6:10
and last week, I think I was on the podcast last week that we talked about him, and I was like, I am gonna put him on my roster, and I snoozed, and I lose, so to speak, he went three for four, and it was his first home run of the season. He had six RBI. That six RBI in the game was his career high. And then the night previous, Monday versus Tampa, he had gone three for five, but they were all singles, although one included an RBI, and he scored two runs. So I got him on my roster on Thursday when we went to the actual game, and I saw him in person, and I screamed my little heart out every time he came to bat, I was, you know, pretty subdued for me at a baseball game, I think, that night, but not for Blaze. He hit a double, that was nice. I appreciate that he did something. Overall, his average was 348 with a 940 ops this past week, news that I missed about him two weeks ago is he had an Instagram post with his girlfriend, Kylie Diaz, and they are expecting their first child in September. So, Kylie is not only incredibly gorgeous, but she graduated from Arizona State University in three years with a major in both biology and biomedical sciences, so she's smart, she's beautiful, and she's gonna be having a baby with Blaze. That kid's got

Patti 7:29
some good genes,

Pottymouth 7:30
super good genes, super, yeah, he is adorable, he's got great QR. So, speaking of guys that I am paying attention to, this is kind of the opposite, so I've talked on the podcast before about when the Red Sox are playing against a team, I tend to take that team off of my fantasy roster, whether that makes any sense or not, to try to win. It's just like the I feel like I can't be rooting for the opposite team in any way on that day. So, conversely, if I have a Red Sox guy for the season on my roster, I keep him there no matter how he's doing, and this year has really tested my patience, because I chose Caleb Durbin with super high hopes coming off this off-season trade when you know nothing else was going well with the Red Sox with trades, and finally they got somebody that looked hopeful, and he has just been struggling all season, he is still a ways under the Mendoza line of a 200 average for the season, but this past week, and I checked this this morning, so it's gotten better since then, because he did well in the game this afternoon. So, in the past week prior to the Sunday game, his average was 357 for the week with a 904 ops. Now he was benched twice because things were going poorly, and the Red Sox had a day off. So this is, you know, based on basically four days, and it's also thanks to Gratum G Swing facility in Andover. And I swear to God, like all the posts and articles that I read about this, nobody made a snide comment about the name G Swing.

Patti 9:02
Really,

Pottymouth 9:03
I can't.. I

Patti 9:03
mean, I went there immediately.

Pottymouth 9:05
So Caleb's hanging out with G Swing, yeah, in Andover, Massachusetts, right next door to where my dad lives. We've been there, so I was wondering what's going on with Gratum G Swing. It turns out that Andover is not their only location, they have many facilities over 11 states, and not just Caleb Durbin, but 55 MLB players have gone there. So Caleb went apparently on one of his bench days or day off days, because after he came back from G swing, he went two for four on Thursday, and then he had an RBI double on Friday. He went two for four with two RBI on Saturday, and today I saw him hit a triple. So, before this spurt of these past four games with an amazing amount of impactful hits, in the 12 games prior to that, he was two for 26 Oh dear, he was last in oh. PS, in all MLB now. When I checked this morning, it was Nasim Nunez, which is another baseball boyfriend pick of mine, who is not on my roster, mind you, but Nassim has the sort of, you know, compensating characteristic of being number one in MLB for stolen bases. The only thing is, if you can't get on base, he can't steal a base, but he's still managing to be number one in stolen bases, is getting on base somehow. But my question is, what about the Red Sox trainers? So Caleb Durbin went to Andover to get hitting coaching from a private facility, and I know that there's lots of ML player B players who have gone there, and I saw their video on their website, and one was Harrison Bader, who talked about how much he improved from their facility, but I'm wondering if they did that in the off season.

Patti 10:49
See, I would expect the off season, sure, you're going to stay in shape, you're going to do it, yeah, you're going to get some extra viewpoints and ideas, and sure, but during the season

Pottymouth 10:56
that seems weird,

Patti 10:57
that seems weird,

Pottymouth 10:57
it seems. So I am really concerned about what's going on with the Red Sox coaching, because you know they've got a bunch of minor league coaches up there too. You know, he was being threatened with being sent down to AAA. He's under team control through 2031 which is quite a while, so they have the time to, you know, let him develop if that's what it needs to be. But meanwhile, what he, who he got traded for, you know, as a group trade, it wasn't just one for one, but the two headliners were him coming from the Brewers to the Red Sox, and Kyle Harrison, pitcher, going from the Red Sox to the Brewers. Kyle Harrison is having a breakout year, he is sitting on a 157 ERA and a six one record with the Brewers, so Caleb has a long way to go to make me feel really good about this trade, but I'm hoping it happens. I have a little sideline, of course, a tangent, as usual, because of something funny that got announced in today's game. So, there's the on-field announcer, Jamai Webster, for the for the Red Sox for Nessen. He had to bring his lucky pants to the game from the game yesterday, so I totally appreciate this. Like, if I am wearing something and the team is on a streak, I will definitely continue wearing that hat or that shirt or something like that. So yesterday, you know, the Red Sox have been doing super shitty before the game. Jamai was in the dugout or something. He went to jump onto the field, and he was wearing linen pants, and apparently the linen pants didn't give and ripped open, and so his new nickname is Cheeks. Apparently, that's what was showing, not for the I was before the game, so nobody saw this, besides the Red Sox dugout, who apparently really let him have it about the situation, and then he, you know, called in, like, I gotta run home. Apparently, lives near Fenway. I'm gonna just run home, grab my pants, and they were like, "No, the game's about to start, you cannot go home. So he got duct taped, taped up his linen pants, and did the game with taped-up linen pants, but they won. They won crazy yesterday, and so he brought the, he didn't wear them, but he brought them to the game today, full respect, full respect, and he's not going to live down the nickname Cheeks anytime. What?

Patti 13:09
How did they

Pottymouth 13:10
went? They went today. So the pants are coming back,

Patti 13:12
the pants are coming. Yeah, good to know. All right, I always start with Nick Hertz, because Nick Kurtz is always doing something. Unfortunately, I'm announcing the end of history, he had the longest active on-base streak in all of baseball of active players. Hit it ended at 48 straight games, getting on base on Tuesday versus Seattle. He went oh for four with three strikeouts. So that's very, very sad. He did end up tying Mark McGuire for the longest streak in team history with the Athletics, and that was from 1996 So, that's pretty impressive. He still, regardless, still leads the league in on base percentage. He's at 432 Jordan Alvarez is second, or is right behind him at 419 He's third in walks, he's behind Mike Trout, and I'm Taylor Ward.

Pottymouth 14:01
Wow,

Patti 14:03
he ended up like Seattle was so bad for him. He ended up going oh for 11 against Seattle. Seattle went away, they went to the Yankees. All of a sudden, hello, bat, his bat is back. He homeward consecutive days versus the Yankees, Friday and Saturday, and their Yankees game is currently going on, so I know how he's doing today, but, but, yeah, two in a row, so he's that's back.

Pottymouth 14:22
I'm knocking on wood, because that's great that the A's beat the Yankees, that's my two cents.

Patti 14:29
So, well, that he's, he humbled against them. I don't know what the final score was,

Pottymouth 14:32
but yeah, they did them yesterday.

Patti 14:34
Okay, so Potty Mouth, you know, talked about the game against Toronto that we saw at Camden Yards. I was watching for my Toronto guy, Kazuma Yokomoto, who really didn't do anything.

Pottymouth 14:45
Oh, he had that bauble.

Patti 14:47
Yeah,

Pottymouth 14:47
that was the funniest like replay field replay that I have ever seen in my entire life.

Patti 14:52
Oh yeah, he was trying, he was like trying to like tag somebody out at third base, and like the ball was like three feet behind him, and he's. Attacking him with it's like, yeah, no, that's,

Pottymouth 15:01
but he, but the funny thing is that the um, or whatever next to him believed it, like he had a very, and he called him out, and it had to go to the replay, and when they showed it on the screen, like the

Patti 15:12
ball is so far away, like, yeah, we're gonna overturn this one, so that was amusing, yeah, and then, of course, the next day I'm watching the game from home, the game, the game after the one we went to, and the O's are up five to nothing in them, and there's all of these like back to back home runs. I'm like, oh my god, why weren't we at this game? We weren't at this game because I would have wept, because the seventh inning after the Toronto was down five nothing, and my guy, my guy comes up, Yokomoto comes up and hits a two run homer, which gets them going, and they ended up winning six to five. So glad we went to the game that we went to, that was just fine. My Houston guy, Cam Smith, had this - that's this weird thing happening where he's been really good on the road and awful at home, like so awful at home, like going into Friday, he had 47 total bases on the road, 14 at home Friday. We isn't that weird. Friday, he kind of broke this wide open against Seattle. He homered, he doubled, he walked on Friday. So, like, that's okay. But the, the real, the real highlight of the week for Camp Smith was a home run robbery of Brandon Nimmo, currently playing for Texas. Nimmo hit a fast ball off of Spencer Araghetti on Thursday. It's sailing over the wall, Cam goes up and gets it, but he gets it in a way that no one can tell if he got it or not. And he came down and he's like facing the wall, and everyone's like, "Oh, crap, it's a home run. And he turns around, he's like, you know, today I have the ball. He kind of flips out of this glove, and everyone's like, holy crap. He was like, way too cool about nobody knew that he caught the ball. So he said, honestly, I didn't even know how to react. I hadn't done that before. It was pretty cool. I'm glad I could do it for him, and him being the pitcher. Jeremy Pena says his teammate says great catch, he tried to act cool, no emotion, like he does it all the time. I was like, bro, celebrate a little bit, shout out Cam,

Pottymouth 17:07
yeah.

Patti 17:08
And then the pitcher, again, he said that guy's gonna win five gold gloves at minimum in his career, and it's interesting, because, like, last year he was playing third base, I believe, so he's new to the outfield, and he was a gold glove finalist last year for the infield, and now he's in the outfield, so it's pretty good. That's

Pottymouth 17:23
crazy.

Patti 17:23
Um, you may remember that I talked about Spencer Horwood, so I called up last weekend, officially made my roster on Wednesday. He has a 1.2 ops for the week, so that was good yesterday. He had a lead out, lead off home run in the 10 to nine win over the his May stats, including he finished the month of May with a 333 average for the month of May,

Pottymouth 17:48
so month,

Patti 17:49
so woo hoo for that. Yeah, so welcome.

Pottymouth 17:52
Nice timing to get him on your, your team, yeah. I, we also talk about our former baseball boyfriends, the guys that we picked in past years, and we can't pick them again, because we, this is what we talk about in the off season. You want to hear about the same guy twice, although that is going to be up for discussion if we get, you know, too slim, because we're, we're really rookie heavy in general, because of that. But Von Grissom, I picked when he was going from Atlanta, the Red Sox in 2024 and I had super high hopes because he had this great, you know, start with Atlanta. He had done amazing in their minors, and he was going - that was a one for one trade with Chris Sale. So, here's another situation where the Red Sox are acquiring a position player, and they're giving away a pitcher, and at that point Chris Sale wasn't doing so well, but you know, you might have heard that this year he's doing really fucking good,

Patti 18:47
little bit.

Pottymouth 18:48
Yeah, so Von Grissom didn't stick around, he spent a lot of time in Worcester and AAA, and they traded him to the Angels in the off season for a minor league outfielder, Isaiah Jackson, who I checked up on, and he is currently batting 237 19 ops in double A with 27 RBI and six home bars, but this, so this is the equivalent, I'm thinking, by the, you know, whatever property of acquisition of trading Cy Young Caliber Chris Sale for a double A outfielder who has a very low average. I don't know, you know, you win some, you lose some. Von Chrism with the Angels is starting to perk up a bit. He hit a go-ahead grand slam Tuesday night against the Tigers in the top of the eighth, now his stats on the season aren't that impressive. 233 average, 687 pretty comparable to Isaiah Jackson in Double A, but that's because May was lousy. No, yeah, that's because May was lousy. In April, he had been doing much better, 342 939 Ops, so maybe he's coming back now. I don't know. We'll hope that Vaughn is going to get it together, because I do want the best for him. And my very, very favorite previous baseball boyfriend, former baseball boyfriend, is Kique Hernandez, and Kik is allergic with cono y carajo, which are two swear words in Spanish, so those are your vocabulary lessons for today. I don't think that they translate directly, and Caracal is only a swear, depending on where, what countries. Some countries, this is one where, like, it's not so bad, some places, other places. No, Cono is definitely Dominican. I'm not so sure about Puerto Rican swearing, but I'm sure I can ask Kike about that. Anyway, Kik, last I talked about him, was out for the season on the IL. Had been out all season this past week, and I was going to mention this last week that he was almost ready to come back. The Dodgers DFAd my 21 Toronto baseball boyfriend, who's now playing with the Dodgers, Santiago Espinal, on Monday to make room for Kique. Kiki comes up first game of the season Monday night, two hits, including an RBI double. And then came the talk about what the elbow injury was that he had gotten the previous season, because you remember that he really wanted to play for Puerto Rico in the world baseball class, and he couldn't because of this elbow surgery that he seemed to sort of put off into the last minute, and he talked about how the Dodgers team doctor was amazed that he played through this injury, that it was the worst he'd seen of that type. He said that in the in the playoff games, when he was at bat, it felt like it was like on a burner, like a red hot fire on his elbow, but he still played through it. I do not condone this, by the way, like, I don't like guys who suck it up and play through injuries. I think it's just long-term stupid, and I don't want anybody to be, you know, incapacitated because of pushing yourself too far for baseball. Anyway, he is up for two whole days and tears, not strains, tears is oblique.

Patti 22:00
Oh dear,

Pottymouth 22:01
he's out indefinitely now, and he feels really, really bad, especially because somebody was DFAd for him. So Espinal ended up clearing waivers, so he's still with the Dodgers and AAA, so he could come back. So it's not as bad as it could have been. My guy, Alex Freeland, who's my Dodgers pick for this year, gets called back up. So I guess there's like a silver lining for me. He had been sent back down when Mookie Betts came back up, so he was my 2018 Red Sox pick. So all of my guys, I've got three formers and one present who were involved in this situation, but I feel really bad for Kiki, because it's got to be super depressing to have one really bad injury and come back and have another.

Patti 22:40
So I just want to clarify, so the swear words are your feelings about,

Pottymouth 22:44
yeah, this, yeah, this

Patti 22:45
is not like a key, K-generated,

Pottymouth 22:47
no, no, okay, nothing from him, although I'm sure he would approve,

Patti 22:51
okay, all right, last year Pete Crow Armstrong was the boyfriend that I talked about every week, because he was always doing something fantastic, he's been having a terrible year, and people, fans, have not been shy about telling him just how terrible he is, and he got in trouble for that a couple of weeks ago. He talked back, he got fined, he apologized, and he's like, "I should, I need to do better. I was just hearing it all day, it was too much, but I shouldn't be doing that, but I did it, and it was bad, and but he's hearing, he's hearing it all the time. Finally, he responded in the right way. Finally, he responded the right way. So, Saturday versus the Cardinals, you know, they, these guys are our rivals here. He started the game with a strikeout, so everybody is starting up, you know, in St. Louis. Yeah, you know how terrible he is. He ended up a triple short of the cycle. He went four for five in a six to one win. The part that I like the best, we haven't talked about the shirtless guys, and I don't really want to, but in this context I have to, and here's why. His homer in the seventh inning, while all the fans were chanting overrated to him,

Pottymouth 24:01
yeah,

Patti 24:02
he had a 440 foot home run into the tarps off section, which was the hardest hit ball of his career, and the hardest at Busch Stadium this season. That's how you prove your point, right? You don't talk back, you prove it, you prove it, you come, you know. So he did, and later he said they got like hundreds of shirtless guys out in right field, interesting theme for the year, but they're rowdy and they're showing up like they're buying into something, so I can appreciate

Pottymouth 24:28
it. So, I have two comments, I'm not sure which one to do first. One is shirtless guys, one is PCA, so maybe shirtless guys, because that was the last thing you said. I do think it's worth kind of mentioning this is something that's happening in pretty much every ballpark that there is a section in the upper deck that's all shirtless male chests, and and at first I was amused, and it started, I believe, in St. Louis,

Patti 24:54
that they're the tar soft guys, yeah,

Pottymouth 24:55
and and Ollie Marmel, the manager, actually like. Bought them tickets to another game because they made a really good impact on the team's performance that first night that it really came out, so that I

Patti 25:08
mean they didn't like rip lead in pants or anything, for sure.

Pottymouth 25:10
Okay, so it's just, you know, shortly. So at that point I was kind of like that. I love fan involvement, but now I am not so keen on it. It just looks very male, like, once in a while you'll see a woman up there, or I don't know, I just..

Patti 25:26
I've not yet seen the woman. I think the way to stop it is, as soon as women start pulling their shirts off, they're like, "Oh, maybe we should do

this

Pottymouth 25:32
right. So, the one thing that I saw that made me feel kind of good about this, and I put the link below, so maybe you can put it in the show notes, is one of our favorite dudes, Brett Baseball is fun, Phillips at the Tarp, joining in,

Patti 25:45
huh?

Pottymouth 25:46
So he is super rowdy, you know, former former Tampa Bay player, and a bunch of other places too, and we always admired his just positive attitude. So I like that. The thing I just want to go back to briefly is what happened with PCA a couple weeks ago, because I was gonna bring it up, because I feel like it is problematic what he actually said to the woman, so she.. so it was a.. it was on rivalry weekend, it was a White Sox Cubs game, so yes, the tension is high. There's a woman who is right behind him in the outfield, who yells to him, 'You suck, and he turns around and says, and it's on camera, 'Suck my fucking dick, bitch. I think that that is the equivalent of like a lot of other things that we're like that, that just draws a line, like if that's coming out of your mouth that easily, like if he had said 'fuck off' or 'fuck you, I would have been fine with that.

Patti 26:43
Okay,

Pottymouth 26:44
but I have a problem with him speaking to a woman like that personally. So,

Patti 26:49
if you said that to a man,

Pottymouth 26:50
if he had said that to a man, probably I would also have an issue with it. Yeah, I don't know, you know, and I'm pretty good with swearing. It's just I don't know that something about the direction of that, and then ESPN that night asked him about it, and his first reaction was, quote, some lady decided to start talking shit, and I felt the need to say it back. The next day, he apologized for his language, so I feel like he spent a long time like okay with that statement. I don't know. I just kind of feel like when I am frustrated with someone, like I'm just "fuck you" sounds a lot more civil than "suck my dick.

Patti 27:32
You have a weird line,

Pottymouth 27:33
it's weird.

Patti 27:35
Yeah, I don't know that I draw a line between those so much. Okay, I don't think so.

Pottymouth 27:39
I don't know. I think it's it, and I think maybe it does make a difference.

Patti 27:43
We were talking before, I can't remember who it was who was yelling back at fans, and I was like, yeah, no, you got to be above this, you got to not yell back at fans, and you were saying, oh well, you know, it's.. and I know it wasn't, it wasn't this right, they weren't saying this, but you were like, oh no, you can stand up for yourself in this, and I know this is, this is way past that, yeah, I get that,

Pottymouth 27:58
what that one was, I

Patti 28:00
might have, it might have been Duran.

Pottymouth 28:02
I mean, I wasn't okay with that, for sure. I didn't defend it.

Patti 28:04
No, no, no. Somebody was like, no, it wasn't that when it was different, but I think it might have been still Duran yelling back at somebody.

Pottymouth 28:11
Oh yeah, that I was okay when he said it was something that was not insulting. I think it was like, fuck off or something like that, like it was not this direct. I think it's the really intimate part of this.

Patti 28:23
Yeah, so I am.. you need to not do it at all.

Pottymouth 28:27
Okay?

Patti 28:29
Yeah, then it's a slippery slope, and I don't.. I don't.. I don't.. I don't care about the line in between. Once you've done it, it's like that's bad, don't do that. And I need to make up for

Pottymouth 28:36
it, right?

Patti 28:37
So I felt good about his apology when he got around to it. It felt okay. He's, you know, I'm not excusing, excusing, but you know, I don't know that this is a continual.. this, I don't think this is really a signal that he's got this whole bad thing going. I don't know.

Pottymouth 28:55
All right, we will hope. We will hope. I'm also hoping that the prediction that I put out there for Cy Young winner this year is looking good this very, very early in the season, so I hope to hell I'm not like jinging myself right here, but Christopher Sanchez has had at this point 39 consecutive scoreless innings in May, plus a few in April, so his overall consecutive scoreless innings pitching 44 and two thirds innings without giving up a run. This is a record for a left-handed pitcher starter in the live ball era, which is since 1920 Although if you look at the MLB article and you look at the athletic article, they have different definitions of this, so I think we'll link the athletic article, because I like their explanation of why he's actually number one, but it is definitely the record for a Phillies starter. He is currently seventh overall in a scoreless streak by any live ball pitcher in the live ball era. Earl Oral Hershiser holds. Record with 59 so that doesn't like it's possible it's going to take a few more games, but 59 in shutout innings in 1988 and after his very next game, so Sanchez last played last Wednesday, where he won three to nothing over the Padres, or he, and you know, the whole Phillies team won three to nothing over the Padres. It's been three games since, so I'm guessing he's going to be back this Wednesday or Thursday. There's no official thing on the Phillies website, but if he manages to come out of that game scoreless, he will probably go up to number three on this list, because right now in the number three spot is Bob Gibson of the Cardinals with 47 consecutive innings, so Sanchez is at 44 and two thirds. 47 is pretty close, and I don't know, but I can't count those chickens yet. Nothing is hatched. There is so much competition for Cy Young. We've got The Miz, you know, with the Brewers, we've got Ohtani, always we've got Chris Sale, who knows what's going to happen with Paul Skeens, like there's a lot to keep watching, but I'm happy for Christopher Sanchez.

Patti 31:10
Oh yeah, no, absolutely, yeah, he was, he was one of my last year when I had the Philadelphia pitching flock, so I'm very happy to see him doing well. It finally happened in the CBA, in the contract negotiations for Major League Baseball and the MLB PA, the players union, they have finally presented their initial proposals to one another. There are many, many things in these proposals. I am not going to go through all the many things. I'm just going to give you a couple of top line things, and we could go into more of the other things later. The union's proposal wants to up the minimum salary, like once you're on the 40 man, like once you're officially in the banks, to $1.5 million That's actually doubling the current minimum salary, right? They, my favorite thing is, you know, there's that competitive balance tax, the luxury tax that already exists. Yeah, the union proposes a competitive integrity tax, which applies to clubs that don't meet minimum payroll benchmarks. So, you've got to do at least as well, or you're going to be penalized for it. You know, you're going to have to like pony up to some level, or you're going to be penalized for it. And I like the way that counters the the overspending competitive balance tax, they want to increase revenue sharing in a way that every small market club is going to get a million of 240 of two $40 million every season, so that kind of like makes that a little bit more equitable, but also, again, penalize clubs who don't use that to apply to payroll, right? So, it's like, if you're going to get all this extra money because your team is good, or because that we've made things more equitable across the board, you need to spend it on players, please.

Pottymouth 32:54
Yeah,

Patti 32:55
they also want to do other things that allow younger players to succeed financially sooner, like expanding free agency eligibility, a couple more guarantees around salary arbitration. There is that salary pool, that bonus pool for the pre-arbitration players that want to increase that a little bit. So that's kind of how the union's proposal is looking. The league's proposal has a very has a hard ceiling and a hard floor for salaries, and they want to start this next season. So, the 2027 ceiling for payroll for a team would be $245.3 million and the floor, you can't, your payroll cannot fall below $171.2 million That's starting next season. That means those teams that are spending a lot of money right now have to cut their payrolls drastically in a very short period of time, and those teams who are not spending that much right now need to ante up super fast. There is not,

Pottymouth 33:58
do that, there's

Patti 33:59
not a ramp up period. Well, they're the, you know, that's what their proposal is,

Pottymouth 34:04
a lot.

Patti 34:05
So, the I haven't seen a formal response from the league to the things that are proposed by the union, but the union has a statement out about the initial proposal by the league, and keep in mind the last time the owners proposed a hard salary cap, which was in 1994 and what happened in 1994 The players struck right, longest longest work stoppage. So, all right, the union says, quote, for generations our members have fought against cap systems because they harm players at all levels, erode or eliminate contractual guarantees, pit player against player, lead to more work stoppages, not less, and get worse for players over time. Caps don't lower ticket prices for fans, eliminate tanking, or ensure teams are run with equal competence. They suffocate competition by offering owners an all-purpose excuse for inaction and mediocrity. So I'm just picturing. I can't spend any more, because this is, you know, I don't need to do any better than this. They won't let me, those people won't let me do any better than this. So, a lot more things were proposed and are going to be discussed, but these are the ones that, hello, are going to totally cause a lockout by the owners.

Pottymouth 35:15
Yeah, because there's not much wiggle room there, like it doesn't seem, doesn't seem like it's gonna work out well.

Patti 35:23
No, and the things they, that the owners say that this is gonna solve can be solved in other ways. Yeah,

Pottymouth 35:29
shit,

Patti 35:30
yeah,

Pottymouth 35:31
that's no fun.

Patti 35:32
Also, no surprise. So,

Pottymouth 35:34
damn it. All right, and I'm going into bad news here too. Yeah, it is no surprise. I mean, I was hoping that you'd give some more update on that. We do have a police bladder segment when things go awry, and Wanda Franco has been a frequent flyer in our police bladder, and I would like to update everybody. I mean, this happened the day after we recorded last week, so it's a little bit of a bummer that we missed the first call of it, but it gave me the opportunity to look at a few sources and explain things a little bit, hopefully, hopefully more clearly. So, refresher on the situation, in August 2023 Wander Franco was found to be having a relationship with a 14 year old. You back up even further, Wanda Franco, who is he? He was a. he is somebody who played for the Tampa Bay Rays, and was was really known for having a huge contract with a team that doesn't do huge contracts, something like, shoot, I'll get to it later, but I think it was like 11 years, $182 million and that's unheard of with the Tampa Bay Rays, and it didn't, you know, didn't pan out so well for them, although we'll see, we'll see what happens for the team. So he was found out to have this relationship, and he was immediately put on administrative leave. So his season that year, 2023 stopped in August, took until January for him to actually get arrested for this in the Dominican Republic. He was out on bail because of he's been paid a lot of those millions of dollars, not a lot of them, but some of them. And at that point he couldn't leave the Dominican Republic, so that was a deal. You're out on bail, can't leave the island. July 2024 is when MLB moved him to the restricted list, which meant that he stopped getting paid, so this is kind of fascinating, though. Like, from when the relationship was found out, it's almost a whole year of him getting paid before he stops getting money. That's

Patti 37:31
millions of dollars for not playing

Pottymouth 37:32
baseball, crazy. Yeah, that November you mentioned on the podcast he was arrested in a very unrelated weapons charge due to firearms being found in his vehicle after a scuffle in a parking lot. The firearms were the property of his uncle. At this point, he's doing monthly check-ins for that, and the trial is still pending. Back to the statutory rape charge, there were plenty of postponements, for, you know, he has very well-paid lawyers who were just finding reasons to push this along, and finally in June 2025 last year there was a trial, and he was given two years, he was found guilty and given two years suspended sentence, which at the time we said this is fucking ridiculous, the prosecution only asked for five years, which also seems ridiculous for statutory rape. This is a 14 year old we're talking about now. It got deeper, and I talked about this a lot in past episodes, because it turned out that the victim, he was paying the victim's mother, so the victim's mother was making this whole relationship happen, essentially, and she got 10 years, so that sticks. She still got her 10 years. His verdict that June was appealed by both sides in December. The appeals court voided that verdict, and the retrial concluded may 25 so this past Monday, so there was a retrial after appeal. He was found guilty, but he is exempt from being jailed. So, how does this happen? Patty, I wish I could broadcast Patty's confused face. His mom is getting all the blame, so they're saying that she blackmailed him, and she's the culpable one, and actually they threw Wanders mom into it. She's not being charged with anything, but she got mentioned in the statement for arranging and sponsoring some of these payments. So, how does somebody get pardoned for statutory rape? May you ask? Well, I looked into Dominican law, and this judicial pardon, despite being found guilty of quote physical and psychological abuse of a minor,

Patti 39:44
holy crap,

Pottymouth 39:45
isn't that this is obscene. So the judicial pardon comes into play in quote extreme circumstances. The court can exempt or reduce the penalty, including under the legal minimum of that penalty. So, for example, if. Were a legal minimum of two years, which I'm guessing is what it was. The court in this judicial pardon can let that go, so if, but they can do that only if the sentence applied isn't greater than 10 years, and he had bargained down to five to whatever it was, which was the legal minimum, so there are nine ways to qualify. I'm not going to go through on nine ways to qualify for this judicial pardon, pardon, and I'm guessing that they're banking on number two, where it says that the incident was provoked by either the victim or other people. None of the other eight made any sense, but the judge said that Wander was a victim of extortion and blackmail by the victim's mother.

Patti 40:48
It seems to me like extortion and blackmail are a separate piece of this,

Pottymouth 40:53
exactly.

Patti 40:53
That is completely separate from the act of statutory rape.

Pottymouth 40:56
Exactly,

Patti 40:57
like, sue them, you know, charge them with extortion and blackmail.

Pottymouth 41:01
Yeah, so of course, like all the comments on social media, like he's bribing people, like he's just bribing people, you know. That's got to be, maybe there's no other explanation for this. So, not only did the mom get 10 years in prison, but a shitload of fines, she had to give up some land, which I don't know why, and a car that they were very specific about Suzuki model Swift white color, which I think was a gift to her from Wanda Franco. I kind of remember talking about this car before. I think there was a car gift that we, that was mentioned. Yeah, so she's having to like forfeit anything that she got from him. Apparently, there will be more details coming on june 16, there, that's when the full written verdict will come out. And so, of course, the question is, can he play baseball? He's still guilty, so if he's guilty of a crime, whether or not he's going to jail, he's not going to get a visa to go into the United States. If he doesn't get a visa to go to the United States, the MLB thing is moot. Also, lead them follows MOB, so he's.. I thought that he'd be able to play in the Dominican Republic, apparently not. Elsewhere is a question mark. It depends a little bit on his contract, which is actually hasn't been voided yet. So, there's still this contract in limbo. He's on the restricted list. It hasn't been totally canceled, so if the contract is voided, there is a slight chance he could play in Mexico. They don't have the agreement that lead on does, and I think Venezuela does as well with MLB, but it wouldn't look good, and Mexico's, you know, really trying to have developed a relationship with MLB, so I don't think they would. The Rays still have $160 million tied up in this, so of the 180 $2 million contract, he has been paid $22 million and there's the rest of this that's they can't do anything with until this contract is voided, apparently. He, so over that time that he was on leave, whatever, that he was put on administrative leave before restricted leave, he earned 250,000 for the rest of 23 There was a pre-arbitration bonus pool that he got that off season of $706,000 and then he had, he got about $1,077,000 in 2024 before the move to the restricted list in July, so that's about $2 million You did all the math in your head at the beginning of this statement that he was paid, which I tried to factor out into how much money I've earned in my life, and I, and I think it's pretty comparable of what he got and what I've gotten for 30 years of teaching. The other kicker here is, I think he's still married. He's been married since 2021 He has two kids, one was born in 2018 and the other was born in 2022 He and his wife bought a $1.55 million Tampa home in 2023 and it, as far as I could tell, it hasn't been sold yet. So he's not going to Tampa. I don't know if she's in Tampa, like maybe in Tampa without Hill, and with the kids, right, who now are old enough to, like, you know, read things or see things on TV about their dad, so probably less.. I don't know, it's probably still in the Tampa news, I don't know, but yeah, I hope we don't hear much more of Wanda Franco, except for the Rays getting out of that contract and him staying in.. it's just sad, it's just sad. He's not going to jail.

Patti 44:42
Wow,

Pottymouth 44:43
no,

Patti 44:43
wow. I have 117 follow-up questions for that, but we don't time for that today. So, I'm gonna move on to cross training. We are gonna.. it's a sentence I've never said before in my life. We're cross-training with cage fighting. I mean, we talk about, you know, baseball being America's pastime, but apparently the fascist in chief would like to make. Like cage fighting, the official sport, because here's what's happening. The Fascist in Chief is hosting a UFC cage fighting event on the South Lawn of the United States Capitol Building on june 14, which happens to also be his birthday, but ostensibly it's in celebration of the 250th anniversary of this country, which nothing says let's celebrate our 250th birthday like you know martial arts cage fighting mixed whatever. I, this is not my thing here, so it gets weirder. I'm already ticked about this. I'm ticked about, like, building this whole thing on the South Lawn, which, like, the people's backyard right here, to, like, support this, but the idea, the fascist in chief's vision is that 4000 people will come and see this quote, mostly military. So, how do you get service people?

Pottymouth 45:58
Aren't they busy now? We have a war.

Patti 46:00
Well, the Pentagon is recruiting volunteers. It's not clear if they can get out of, you know, fighting a war by doing this, but they're trying to recruit service members out of the pool of junior enlisted or junior officers, which are the lowest paid military pay grades. So, keep this in mind, they are not well paid for this level of the job they're doing, serving their country. So, are they being invited to attend this? They're being invited to pay their own fucking way. So, here's what's happening: they have to pay their own way, getting there, and I think ticketing and accommodations - it's like, you can come. It's on you, but you should come, and if you come, you have to be exceedingly physically fit and meet the military's current, like, height, weight, like, you know, so you have to, like, look a certain way to come, and you have to wear your short sleeve dress uniforms, because we want to see the guns. This is what we're saying, and we are making these guys pay their own fucking way, so 4000 mostly military people, can stand on the South Lawn and watch cage fights.

Pottymouth 47:15
So, there's, I mean, I think it's notable how much destruction has happened at the White House, right? So, there's the paving over the Rose Garden, which was obscene, heartbreaking. There's the East Wing demolished, like there's a hole in the ground right now, because you know that's caught up in legal battles, but he decided to smash it down first. So, what are they going to do to put, like, a lovely drape over that during the the event, so that nobody notices this gaping hole behind,

Patti 47:42
no, look at this big shiny thing over here.

Pottymouth 47:44
This thing that we just demolishing the lawn, and now they're gonna have to redo the lawn right underneath this thing.

Patti 47:49
And may I just say tax dollars over and over and over again. Now, I do believe the actual event is being sponsored by whatever the org, the FCU organization is, but there's so much here that is your tax dollars at play,

Pottymouth 48:05
right? And not things free. People only sponsor things because they're going to get something in return

Patti 48:10
for real,

Pottymouth 48:10
so whatever that money is, it's not free. The

Patti 48:12
important thing is, on June 14, while all this is happening, I will be in Baltimore watching Manny Machado's return to Oriole Park, watching it. What, then the Padres are going to be hosted by the Orioles, and I'll be there watching that happen, instead of being here watching this happen.

Pottymouth 48:28
Wow, that weekend I will be at Pride night at the Cyclones, the Brooklyn Cyclones. That Friday, yeah, I will be there all weekend.

Patti 48:36
All right, we have this crazy fantasy week.

Pottymouth 48:39
It's so crazy,

Patti 48:40
it's so crazy, now the top has settled down. Now the middle is in flux, right? The top is still Trident Tap Room, is followed by Bono's boyfriends and Karen's crew. All-star Cobalt 112 just hopped over Wicked Awesome team, so therefore Wicked Awesome is five. Sunny Slammers broke the tie with my team and took over number six, and finally I have been pushed down number seven. I have been number six for ever, and I've been pushed down number seven. Congratulations, Sunni Slammers, for that. And then followed by Patty Mouse Posse and McLean Mean Pitching Machine. So, yeah, all the excitement this week was in the middle.

Pottymouth 49:17
Shout out to Tridents and Tamp Rooms for their first season with us, and being there, right, that's pretty impressive.

Patti 49:22
I have good philanthropic news. I, it's very likely that other teams do this. I am aware of this because I was watching the game at which this happened. We've talked before about how the Orioles adopted a local elementary school in 2024 the Harlem Park Elementary school, so on Friday night they awarded the very first Birdland Next Up scholarship in partnership with a foundation called College Bound, and the winner found out at the game there was a PA announcement, and like I guess the kids were all there, and they found out who won at the game. So the winner was surprised, and Amina Rice is the name of the young, young woman who was awarded this. She's graduating the eighth grade from Harlem Park, so I think I think they went, you know, with their adopted elementary school, and so she's just going into high school knowing she has a full ride to college when she's done with high school, it's just outstanding. The official statement from the Orioles say the Orioles chose Rice as the recipient because of her discipline, work ethic, and relentless drive.

Pottymouth 50:30
That's great. Yeah, that's great.

Patti 50:32
So, that's pretty cool.

Pottymouth 50:32
Yeah, I think the Orioles are been more and more clear about being a neighborhood team, that they're really supporting the community and doing things that make a difference in the city of Baltimore that really needs something like that, so they're doing good things.

Patti 50:46
Yeah, I know. I saw an interview with her after she found out, and she was just so excited. She was like this, that it takes so much pressure

off. She

said, "I'm still gonna work hard, I get good grades, and I'm gonna keep getting good grades, but the relief of not having to also worry about how do you pay for it, is so huge. Big

Pottymouth 51:03
deal.

Patti 51:03
Yeah, it was great. It was great to see. I hope, I hope other teams are in fact doing this. Yeah, yeah. What do you got going on this week? You got fun things.

Pottymouth 51:12
Yeah, I'm on the countdown for days left of school, and I usually do this because we're approaching summer, but now this is so weird. It's retirement, and I have a celebration for a friend who's retiring this week, and then the aforementioned brewery situation to celebrate my retirement with some colleagues, and I think it's just going to be some, you know, reflecting, celebrating, enjoying a little bit of these last week. So it's good thing,

Patti 51:37
very nice. I am looking forward to next Sunday is Pride in our little hometown. Here's Takoma Park Pride. There'll be a parade, there'll be a good all afternoon sort of festival in the old town area, and I'm very excited about that. Hundreds of people come to our tiny, tiny little town, and it's really super great. And it was interesting to me, I thought of this when we were talking about going to the governor's suite, and we said, are there like dress code things or whatever, and we were told nothing political, and the question came up, is wearing a pride jersey political, and it didn't even occur to me that that would be political, because you know, I mean, stuck, but of course we're going to have this like very family-friendly Pride festival here, it's like, huh, we're in a bubble, yeah, but also it was at Orioles Pride, like I think there was nothing offensive about it, was Orioles Pride jersey, that's well, yeah, but you know it's Mary, it's Maryland, whatever, but like that's what I'm saying, like the context is such, like that's not at all political, but I'm thinking, oh my goodness, there are

Pottymouth 52:36
this is where we

Patti 52:37
got a lot of a lot of contexts in which that is a political statement, so whether it's political or not, I'm going to Pride Day right here in my hometown next Sunday.

Pottymouth 52:45
Yay,

Patti 52:46
okay. All right, all right, my friends, we remembered what we meant to ask you last time for our, we had our very sultry voices going last week, and we didn't, we asked, we know, we didn't know who are the current sultry voices like, if you kind of have like that sort of cigarette voice, and someone's like, 'ooh, you sound really sexy, you sound just like who do people say. Well, sure, but more than those of you listen to our show, like, like, who are who are those sultry voices now? So, if you have ideas about that, we'd love to know about that. So, please find us on social media.

Pottymouth 53:20
Sure, tell us about your sultry voice on Blue Sky, that's NCI B podcast. Also on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram are No Crying and B Ball. You can join the fun on Patreon, P A T R E O n.com/no Crying and B Ball, and we throw some pictures on there. We take requests, we chat with you guys, and you can rest assured knowing that your dollar a month or more, if you'd like, keeps our show going, and we have an epic road trip coming up, and we have some expenses on the road trip that are podcast related, like clearly our travel is on us, but we're gonna do some recording, we need a microphone, little things like that, it'll be fun, go see some live baseball,

Patti 54:00
fight the man, it's the right thing to do, and please tell him to like get into the whole cage fighting.

Pottymouth 54:04
Yeah, get

Patti 54:06
off of my lawn. Send your game balls to Meredith, and until next week, second night, Potty Mouth.

Pottymouth 54:11
Good night,

Patti 54:18
Potty Mouth, you. All

Pottymouth 54:30
right, we're not going to the bygone era. I'll leave those open here. That's going to be our Kansas City by byline for sure, bagels, not bygones?