No Crying In Baseball

Patti 0:18
Hi and welcome to episode 480 of No Crying in Baseball, the Unnecessary Night of Nonsense episode. My name is Patti. I'm here with my friend Pottymouth. Hey, Pottymouth.

Pottymouth 0:27
Hey there. How's it going?

Patti 0:29
Crappy.

Pottymouth 0:30
Oh no, it's bad.

Patti 0:31
It's bad. So we're recording immediately after the conclusion of Game Five, where Cleveland did not win, so they broke the even odd pattern. It makes me very sad. So I'm a little testy right now. So we are recording Sunday night, later a little later than usual. You will know more by the time you hear the show than we know now. So you know, we'll we'll just tell you what we know.

Pottymouth 0:55
I had been hoping so much that everything would be wrapped up by the time we recorded, and of course, wrapped up in your Cleveland's favor, but alas and alack,

Patti 1:05
alas and alack didn't

Pottymouth 1:06
happen. And yeah, I guess I still have a little bit of holdover from being at the Maryland Renaissance Festival all day. So I just time transported back. I think it's 1540 was the the year of whatever this year. So I'm sort of like readjusting to modern day.

Patti 1:22
Sure,

Pottymouth 1:23
there was a little bit of beer consumed because that's what one does at a Renaissance festival, and then it got chilly, and here I am getting reacquainted with notes in baseball, and I had totally missed that game. So I'm sad to have missed it, and clearly I can't comment on it because I have no fucking clue what happened.

Patti 1:42
No, it was it was ugly. It was it was ugly. Yeah, Cleveland played poorly. It was not good. Low so high though,

Pottymouth 1:49
right?

Patti 1:49
So I yes, I so I resorted to a little bit of whiskey, and then I find out that you are crying exactly the same. So we are not in the same place. We are recording remotely because of the aforementioned Ren Faire and you know whatever. Anyway, so we're in two different places, and it turns out we independently chose the same beverage. We are both drinking the sour mash from Michter's Distillery in Louisville from the epic baseball road trip, and it's hit in the spot.

Pottymouth 2:16
It seemed it seemed appropriate.

Patti 2:18
Yes, yes. I have PTSD, rain delay. PTSD is real. As soon as things started happening late last week, I was like, "World Series 2016. Whenever, whenever there's rain involved, doesn't go well for my people.

Pottymouth 2:33
Shit. Maybe they're getting it over with early this time, though. Maybe.

Patti 2:38
Yeah. Okay. Sure. Right. Sure. You. Um. I see that you had um some company for game two.

Pottymouth 2:44
Oh yeah. We. So you know, I I always sort of like project after game one, and so after watching Cleveland win game one, I just thought that's what the way it's going to be. They're doing so well, and then we were watching game two, which didn't go Cleveland's way, but we were watching with mr. Potty Mouse cousin, who's a Mets fan, and watching Freddy Peralta do that well was really painful to Mets. Oh, sure. And he just turned it around. I mean, you know, who knows where the credit goes? But it's it's Mets fans had a lot to suffer through this year, and you know the suffering keeps going in the postseason, even though they're not in it. So my heart goes out to them. But man, Freddie Peralta has really kicked it in. I know, unfortunately for Cleveland.

Patti 3:30
Well, you know, on that note, I feel like I'm watching Cleveland play Baltimore South because you know, you know, Tyler Wells pitched today, and Brian Baker pitched today, and Cedric Mullins was in the game. Jorge Mateo came in as a pinch runner. I'm like, you have all these guys. These are our guys, and I still don't want them to win. I mean, I want nicely for those guys as individuals, but not this week.

Pottymouth 3:54
Yeah,

Patti 3:54
not this.

Pottymouth 3:55
Damn

Patti 3:56
it, damn it. All right, on today's show, we've got boyfriends, past and present in the postseason. We've got some fun facts. We've got heroes and villains, and a little love for Joey Votto. Award season begins, and it is chock full of boyfriends. We aren't the only ones a little shocked by the ads. There's weather, so much weather, and international baseball or winter ball, as we like to call it. Cheers!

Pottymouth 4:19
Cheers! All right, so we have to remember to do a squad shot. I didn't do a video this week because I am not sitting across from you, so that means we get to do a picture at some point before we drink all our whiskey. Right? Oh shit! Maybe we just have to refill for the picture. All right.

Patti 4:36
So much walking.

Pottymouth 4:37
Um. Gosh, I suck at singing, but I'm gonna try David fucking Hamilton, and there's a million things he hasn't done. Just you wait, just you wait yet. So maybe I'll re-record myself. But you know, we had been so enthused about David Hamilton on the Brewers, and we were trying to make that work. And if you add the. Fucking in the middle than the than the syllables work for David fucking Hamilton, and he deserves the title because holy shit has he outlasted or overdone people's expectations of how he would be? You know, he was a bottom of the lineup player, platooning with Joey Dortis at third base, depending on what side the pitcher was pitching from, and every time he's shown up, he has really shown up. And of course, I have been talking way too much about his Red Sox roots, and kind of unfairly because he actually came up in the Brewers system, and then was traded to the Red Sox, and then went back to the Brewers last year for Caleb Durbin, who at this point I'm happy with. But you know it's it's kind of sad. And at this point, since the Red Sox aren't in anything, it's an easy time to smack them down. I just noticed a headline by Heavy, which I don't know much about this news, I guess outlet. But it was quote Red Sox cast off David Hamilton makes big impact for Brewers in NLCS. Now that wasn't necessary. He wasn't really he wasn't a cast off. It was a three person trade, six total, three on each side. It was win win until the Red Sox stopped playing because because Caleb Durbin isn't playing anymore. He did well. Anthony Siegler got hurt. I don't know. I'm happy for David Hamilton. His 2026 postseason stats are crazy: five for 11, which calculates out to a 455 batting average, 1227 OPS, three stolen bases, and a home run, and there's so much no to about that. That's all super squished math because he only played two out of the four games, so it's you know

Patti 6:51
small sample. There you

Pottymouth 6:52
go. There and it works in our favor at this point. With that home run, he's not a home run hitter. We had seen the last home run that he hit before that game, and we saw that on august 14. So two of those. And by

Patti 7:06
seeing, you mean we were in American Family Field with the roof closed and a tornado warning happening outside the up the wall. Yep. So a lot of things were going on there, and

Pottymouth 7:14
and blown away that like he did that for us. Like we show up and he hit us his fourth home run of the season. So this is his fifth home run of 2026 that he just managed to do to help you know the Brewers win, and we knew that he would be fast on the base paths. He and Bryce Turang are the only Brewers apparently in franchise history with multiple steals in a postseason game, and Tarang did it a couple years ago, so I should I should have written down the year, but not this time around. So game two and game four is when he was because he was a lefty in the right up, and he was batting against righties. So in game two, David Hamilton was on base four times, stealing two bases and scoring three out of the seven runs that were scored, so major impact player that nobody really expected. He was hit by a pitch in the bottom of the sixth, and you know the friendliest first baseman, Freddie Freeman, who is getting a little shit about like, do you still have to be friendly to everybody when things are going your way for the Dodgers? And Freddie, you know, he's like, yeah, that's that's just a game.

Patti 8:24
We're playing a game. Yeah,

Pottymouth 8:25
and so he was joking because so David Hamilton was hit by a pitch, shows up on first base, and to make sure he's not hurt, manager Pat Murphy comes out to check on him. And friendly Freddie made a little joke about like, ah, you just getting some extra time so that he can steal second base, and Freddie, unfortunately for him, anyway, kind of made his prophecy come true. He didn't even have to steal, but Freddy made an error on a throwover, so he made it without having to really work at it so hard. And then he made it to third base because of a good jump on a ground out, and so again David Hamilton pretty much manufacturing a run when he scored on Baby Contreras' single. Game four, he went two for four with two RBI and two runs scored, including the tying run, and then the insurance home run was in the ninth inning. I when did you know that Daniel Vogelback was a hitting coach for the Brewers? No. Yeah, I found that out during whatever game this was, where they showed him

Patti 9:34
that just now. Yeah,

Pottymouth 9:35
like wow, that's wild. So he said basically that the Brewers, you know, as as a hitting coach, have made Hamilton come out with his natural talents. And he said, "Quote: Murph didn't try to make Hammy something. I don't know about this Hammy nickname. Anyway, Murph tried to make Ham didn't try to make Hammy something that he's not. He said when you do the right." Things and you're a good teammate. You are rewarded, and he is getting rewarded, which is just super super sweet. And then David Hamilton gets you know interviewed about this afterwards when everybody's having fun and just said, "I can't wait to play in the World Series with these guys right now. I'm popping bottles and drinking some beer, so I appreciate the popping bottles and the drinking some beer.

Patti 10:22
So they're training really hard while they're waiting to see if their opponent's going to be. Is what you're pretty much,

Pottymouth 10:26
yeah. So you know who knows which way that'll go at this point for sure. So that's my only boyfriend, active baseball boyfriend. Did we say what baseball boyfriends were? No. Okay. Baseball boyfriends are the guys that we pick in the off season because they're pretty cool, and we want to have a beer with them, and we each pick one guy per team, and then we follow them, we stalk them for the season, we talk about them, and now we're down to just a couple. So my Dodgers guy got sent down, so I didn't have somebody to talk about. There had David Hamilton for the Brewers, and now in the other matchup right now, the Tampa Cleveland one, I sadly don't have a Cleveland guy, and Jonathan Aranda, who I just last week I was talking about how he was doing amazing things. He went zero for 10 in the first three games against Cleveland, and people were worried: is he broken? And then there was Game Four, and he. I guess he was just waiting. He went three for four with two RBI singles and two runs scored in the seven to three win, tying the series. And I think potentially that that backup power came from his belt, because I saw only for that game a close up on his belt that he was wearing a baby shark themed belt, and we all know how those of us in D.C. know the power of the baby shark. And in the baby shark pictures was also a little cute, like Christmas cardy looking picture of him and his wife and his kid on the belt with the baby sharks. He did use baby shark as his walk-up song on Father's Day, so I don't know. Can you get like baby shark points out of just spirit of 2019 nationals in Robert Opara?

Patti 12:12
I I just want to know if it's okay to have things on your belt, or is your belt part of your official uniform? And if it's not, can I please retroactively subtract all of his good work in the last two games, which might flip the script for Cleveland?

Pottymouth 12:27
Yeah, I guess he got two hits today too, huh?

Patti 12:29
Yeah, he's been doing all right. Yeah, all right. Let's talk. I'm talk about about Milwaukee a little bit too. So with our boyfriends, we're allowed to carry over one guy from year to year, and one of the first guys, I think the first guy carried over was Christian Yelich. He was my once and forever boyfriend for a while. You know, he's not anymore, but that's okay now. You know, but but he's still doing things that make me feel good about that choice. And I'm also going to talk about Sal Frelich, who was my last year's Milwaukee boyfriend, who is learning a lot from Christian Yelich. We talked about that a little bit last week. What he's learning from Yelly, when the Brewers swept and he had the postgame interview, Pottymouth texted me right away and said he sounds like a captain because he really did. He was saying the things that a good clubhouse leader is going to say after you sweep a powerhouse like the Dodgers. So some of the things that he said between that interview in another post game interview he did was I'm proud of the guys we stuck together as a group we kept finding ways to win. You can say you want to win, but you have to practice those winning habits. You have to be accountable. And then he talked about how there's consequences. Like if you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing, there will be consequences, right? He said, but nobody gets their feelings hurt because it's geared to a bigger goal, right? So if you if you're telling a teammate, hey, you need to improve this, or you didn't do that the way we were supposed to, you need to do it better. They get it. It's not like, oh my god, you're picking on me. It's like, nope, that's my job. Got to do it. I got to do it. And he said, you know, the job's now finished. We got to stick with each other, and we got to rely on each other and finish it. And then Sal Sal was a little bit more covered in champagne for his post sweep interview because you know he's not the captain he's younger but he said he repeated a lot of those same things like we're not done yet we've got the right group of guys together so that's like the Brewers mantra is like it takes all of us we're working together we know what we're supposed to do and we're gonna practice the right the right things to do and and you know we're going to keep moving forward. I have a couple of fun facts for you about the Brewers. One is my favorite thing is that because they swept Los Angeles with the highest payroll on the planet, it totally undermined the league's salary cap argument going into bargaining for the new CBA. You know the the league is like, oh my God! If we don't have a salary cap, things like the Dodgers are going to keep winning, and and you've got to stop this. And it's like, well, Milwaukee's payroll is 19th out of 30 teams, and their opponent for the World Series is either going to be Tampa Bay, who's 28th, or Cleveland, who's dead last at 30. Easy. So I'm sorry that that salary cap argument does not hold any water. Please drop it now. So in the celebration, they had the Brewers had custom champagne bottles in both of the two celebrations. So this current one, the the NLCS, every player who played in at least one postseason game from Milwaukee had a label on one of the bottles of champagne, so each bottle was for a different player in Brewers history. It could have been last year, it could have been 44 years ago, and every one of them had a bottle with their name and the year they were in the postseason. That was totally cool. So they're kind of like honoring, like this is how we got here. Like we're building on on this history to get here. So the last round, the NLDS celebration, those bottles were labeled for different Wisconsin cities because to hear them talk, they'll say we are Wisconsin's team. We're not Milwaukee's team. We are the team for the whole state, and they they build themselves that we we are Wisconsin's team.

Patti 15:59
So that was pretty cool. Okay, one more thing. Back in 2015, I don't know why they did this. I don't. I don't know what's in it for people who bought these tickets. The Brewers ran a promo. They sold 1,000 what they called timeless tickets for $1,000 each. They were. They are one pound of brass. That's actually kind of beautiful. It's this big rectangle, and it's engraved with you know things about the Brewers and the owners, like the the owner of that timeless ticket. Wow, their name is engraved on it, so it's it's like you know it's a giant, very expensive paperweight, right? But those can be redeemed for any future home game, no expiration date for the entire history and future of the Brewers. So people who bought these in 2015 were like, "Huh, World Series ticket! Wow! I'm gonna get me one. I'm gonna get me one. So I, of course, went to the page. I talked about how to redeem these, and they had a very, very careful message saying, "We are receiving an unprecedented amount of emails at this time. Of

Pottymouth 16:57
course,

Patti 16:58
we are processing timeless ticket requests in the order they are received. So if you've got one of those and you want to you want to blow it on the World Series, I mean, come on. I mean, people were using those for opening day tickets and whatever because you know when other brewers ever going to go to the World Series? And the people who hang on to them, like, huh? I wonder if I should use this for like a potential game seven. Wouldn't that be great?

Pottymouth 17:16
That's amazing.

Patti 17:18
Yeah, yeah. I don't know what would have inspired people to spend $1,000 for this to begin with, but now they're like, I got one. All right, let's talk about Cleveland. So my current guy, Chase Delauder, is still in there. You know, previous very very favorite boyfriend, Jose Ramirez, and I'm auditioning little Petey. He's doing

Pottymouth 17:40
so well, and Jose is today. Really, so much today.

Patti 17:44
Today he struggled a little bit. I think he peaked real hard, and then he's struggling a little bit. But all of these guys, every one of them, is having a hero moment and a villain moment over the course of this this series, right? So, like Chase and Jose both had really important hits, and they both had disastrous errors. You know that resulted in you know the other team scoring runs, right? So, in Game One, Chase hit had three hits, including a home run. He became the third youngest player in Cleveland franchise history with at least seven total bases in a postseason game. The top, the other two are Manny Ramirez and Josh

Pottymouth 18:17
Naylor. Yeah,

Patti 18:19
and like Joe Adell said of him, "I'll just say this: the future is bright for that kid. There's no doubt about it. He's going to be special. He already is.

Pottymouth 18:26
Yeah.

Patti 18:27
Then game four, terrible error. He misplayed, you know, a grand ball from Aranda, ended up being a single that led to three run scoring. Right now, granted, other things could have happened. Those runs could have scored anyway. Different, but in fact, that happened. But he took responsibility, and I appreciate that. Didn't brush it off. He said, "Put that one on me. You miss the ground ball and give up two runs. Essentially, gave up three. It's my fault. He's on third base. It sucks. I got to move on and come back and be better tomorrow. I am looking at this whole Christian Yelich South Frelich, thinking I'm thinking Chase De Lauder might be paying attention to Jose Ramirez, right? Because Jose Ramirez had a single score to run in Game One. You know he had those heroic homers in the previous series, awful errors in Game Two that probably cost the game. He came right back and got to work. He got to work, right? He's like he's still that guy. He's still pitchers still fear him. The crowd still loves him because he's got that work ethic, and he's like he's got to brush it off and go right back to it. So I'm I'm auditioning PD because who doesn't want to have a boyfriend named PD, right? So he had that hilarious running error a couple of games ago when his whole bullpen reminded him to stop, you know, to stop running, you know, because he took tried to take the other base and got thrown out, and the whole bullpen-I mean, the whole dugout-is like, "Yo, stop, stop a second, right? But then he had that heroic home run and the epic back bad flip, and then he had that super dramatic catch at the wall, which was freaking incredible. So, you know, kind of and. And you know today I was like, but anyway, like any given day, you could be a hero or a villain, and I just need more on the hero side. Maybe the next two games, but that's what I'm saying. And I really like these guys.

Pottymouth 20:11
Yeah, tomorrow's another day. I watched that catch like 10 times because it was so beautiful because it was in the very furthest point of the outfield possible. Like

Patti 20:21
I don't know how he didn't get a concussion because I don't think he whacked his head. That was really close in

Pottymouth 20:25
that corner. All right, I just want to talk about Kiki Hernandez for a minute because he was my very first baseball boyfriend for the Dodgers a long time ago, and he's come so long since then. And I think one of the cool things about doing this show for so long is remembering, like, oh, when they were just baby players and when Kike was wearing the banana suit in the dugout and was you know Joe utility guy and then he became October Kike until this year he peaked early and then just wasn't doing it but none of the Dodgers were like it's who knows there's plenty of blame to share there, but for Kike, the past couple years he's been brought back like beyond at the last minute. So the question is: Are the Dodgers going to do it again? Especially given the fact that he did not live up to his usual October stats. So his his post, you know, on social media was very sad, and you know, saying to the to the fans, and if this is it for us, you know, I want to let you know how important yada yada all the all of the the wonderful things. His wife is amazing. His wife and kids are amazing, adorable, and his wife posted, "quote You always show up with a grateful heart, determination, curiosity, and care for those that surround you. So he is officially the Dodger with the most postseason appearances in Dodgers history, with 98 postseason games, 12 homers, 98. That sounds like a lot. I gotta look that up. How could that be? It could be. Yeah, they've won the World Series a bunch of times, and he was with the Red Sox also. So I think I don't know if those games count, but 12 homers, 35 RBI, 721 OPS in postseason. But this year, the only hit of his postseason was his two-run home run in Game Two of the division series against Atlanta, and at that point it was like this is it-he's back. He locked in. LA won that game three to one, but then he didn't hit after that, and he didn't hit as many Dodgers didn't didn't hit at all against the Brewers, his average for the postseason this year was 0.71, bringing his overall postseason way down. So I feel bad for Kike. I hope that something happy happens with him, and if he's not playing with the Dodgers, that he gets to either play somewhere or contribute somehow, or just enjoy time with his gorgeous family. Another like favorite from our very first season was my very first Cincinnati Reds pick, Joey Votto. Of course, classic for the Reds, and he just continues to be the best. I mean, he's doing the announcing stuff, and he's hysterical. But he posted, and he hasn't been posting a lot lately. But he very recently posted on Instagram a picture of Ally Schroeder's WPBL Women's Professional Baseball League bobblehead, with the statement, "Can anyone get me one of these Ally Schroeder bobbleheads? I'll sign a jersey. So he wants that bobblehead. Now, for context, he's Canadian, she's Canadian, she's a pitcher and a firefighter in Canada. She was one of the the women who was focused on in the in the documentary "See Her, Be Her. Amazing, and she was the Hunters captain, the Boston Hunters, this past year. So I am a big fan. So of course she sees it and freaks out and reposts his story, saying, "Quote: No big deal. Just my childhood idol asking for my bobblehead. Then he reposts her story, reposting his story, saying, "Now it's your turn to inspire a generation of players. And then in parentheses, he had three emojis that were like shaky, shaky looking, and said, "It's the bobblehead shaking. So cute emoji guy. And then finally, at least the last I saw was her reposting his repost of her repost of his repost, saying, "Quote just two legends of the game, Ali Schroeder and Joey Vado. So, oh,

Patti 24:43
I love that so much. Everything about them

Pottymouth 24:45
exactly. Like you love to see these guys. I would love to see so many more of our baseball boyfriends being vocal about supporting women's baseball, and for him to do it in that way is just awesome. And just as a reminder. For anybody who needs a flashback Joey Votto story, one of my favorite, as I was going through like our past episodes on him, was when he was the French narrator for the SpongeBob Musical Youth Edition in the Children's Theater of Cincinnati. Now it's not quite like Jose Iglesias on Broadway, but you know the Children's Theater of Cincinnati is a pretty big deal, and SpongeBob-you can't go wrong with that. So,

Patti 25:25
sure, I hear people like both of those things, right? Cincinnati and SpongeBob. It's true. Sounds good. Award season is here, and it's all about the teas because none of these awards-the final awards-are never going to be announced until pretty much the end of the postseason. The first one I want to talk about are the Players' Choice Awards because I find these a little bit fascinating. This is sponsored by the Players Union, the MLBPA, so it's voted on by players, right? And they vote in September, so before the postseason happens. So none of the postseason activity, you know, it has anything to do with it, and the awards themselves are going to be announced the week of october 26. We have so many boyfriends that show up on these nominations, but the only currents we have are for the outstanding rookie award, Sal Stewart and JJ Weatherholt, who we've both talked about a lot because they are both favorites for the rookie of the Year award, you know, Player of the Year, Shohei, PCA, Yorn Alvarez, and there's a bunch of other categories like that. You know, Best Picture, you know, best this or that, and in each league. But the the categories I want to just call out because they are I find them fascinating. There's the Marvin Miller Man of the Year award, and it's for and I quote the player whose leadership most inspires others to higher levels of achievement. I love this as an award. The finalists are Chris Bassett, Nico Horner, and Pablo Lopez. They have a Philanthropist of the Year award, which I love. Again, you're holding up. This is an important thing for players to do. You know, the union is saying we have val. This is a valuable thing. Do this thing, right? So the cool thing about this one is, if you win this, the union donates $25,000 to your charity, the charity that you represent. If you are just one of the two runners up, it's $5,000, right? So the three philanthropists of the year finalists are Matthew Boyd, Jake Berger, and Christian Yelich. And I've talked about Jake Berger and Christian Yelich both in in the context of their incredible philanthropy and community organizing, the kind of work they do. There's also a Curt Flood Award, which goes to a living or deceased former player who quote who in the image of Curt Flood demonstrates a selfless, long time devotion to the Players Association and advancement of players' rights. Right, these are the union guys. So David Cohn and Ted Simmons are those nominees for that. All right, Gold Glove came out. The Gold Glove finalists came out this week as well, as you know, sponsored by Rawlings. These are voted on by the 30 MLB managers and up to six coaches from every team, and they vote on a pool of players in their league, in their league, but not from their own team. Like they can't vote for their guys. So I think that's kind of an interesting little control on that. And that those votes count for 75% of a player's score. The other 25% comes from the Saber Defensive Index, right? So here are the numbers. So part of it is numerical, and part of it is what the managers, coaches see by observing these players in their games. Utility players, which was added a couple years ago in 2022, has kind of a secret formula. The managers don't vote on utility players. That's all done by math. Wow, but they're not saying what the math. That's

Pottymouth 28:37
complicated math.

Patti 28:39
We have we have some guys. We have some guys.

Pottymouth 28:42
Yay!

Patti 28:43
Okay, current boyfriends who are up, who are finalists for Golden Glove for the American League. Your guy for third base, Caleb Durbin,

Pottymouth 28:51
despite the broken pinky, despite

Patti 28:54
the broken pinky, right? So his gold glove might have a little splint to make it work. I don't know. Maybe the gold will really help hold it in place for right field. Cam Smith, my guy for Houston. I'm putting Willier Abreu there because I did select him initially. I then had to give him up because I was keeping Adley Ruchman when Adley went to Boston. But I I wanted I want the the credit for you know having picked a good one. Yeah, absolutely for National League. Fred Fermine from San Diego was my catcher boyfriend from San Diego. He's nominated in that category. JJ Weatherholt, who we knew was going to get nominated for for second base, and left fielder Dalen Lyle of the Nationals. So that's pretty cool. We have a lot. So we have a bunch of active boyfriends, a current current boyfriends nominated for Golden Glove. Almost everybody else who was nominated was a was a previous boyfriend of ours. A lot of them were your guys that you picked last year, so you were so close. That's good. That's good. That means you could spot talent. Yeah,

Pottymouth 29:50
that's right. We're just setting up the other folks who want to play in our fantasy league for like good picks, right? We've got it all picked out for you. Holy cow! Last week and the week before, I think Patty mentioned the questionable choice of advertising that's happening during these games and the moments of discomfort, say like when one is watching with their parents or with their children because of inappropriate ads. And you mentioned both the Sydney Sweeney Novig ad, which is about bedding, even though what everybody's watching is her lack of clothing and carefully placed sporting equipment, and then there's the Megan Fox Row, which is you know for erectile dysfunction. Is that the right way to yeah medication, and it's just bad. They're both bad to watch once, but really frustrating to watch repeatedly throughout the game. So we've noticed that, and a whole bunch of folks online have been commenting. Notably, the only player that I could that I saw, and it was reposting a few articles, was Alex Call of the Dodgers, who said, "Quote: Can we please get the soft porn ads off playoff broadcasts, TBS, Fox, NBC, MLB? Tagging them. My son wants to watch baseball with data, but how do I justify that when a half-naked woman could come on screen anytime. This is America's pastime. Parents shouldn't have to worry about this. Now, I don't think the issue is necessarily the half-naked women. It's more, actually, you know, Megan Fox is not any.

Patti 31:34
There's no skin showing. No,

Pottymouth 31:35
it's just the

Patti 31:37
tightness. There's a lot of innuendo, and it just it feels kind of NC 17. Yep, is that still a thing? And it's just they're fine. They're fine for what they are. But it used to be that things that were sort of NC 17 ish wouldn't be shown in the context of programs that would likely be watched by children or during the hours where children were likely to be watching, and that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

Pottymouth 32:02
It's so fucking mind-boggling. So you know, after Alex Call commented, the Athletic has an article which I read way too quickly before going back a couple 100 years today. But what I gleaned from it is they basically tried to figure out who's responsible for these ads being repeatedly shown, and why isn't there a withdrawal kind of mechanism or any kind of check on that? So they reached out to MLB, no comment. Reached out to Fox Network, not Megan Fox, but the network Fox responsible for this, no comment. TNT, no comment. No vig, no comment. And Roe, of course, no comment. So they looked into the sort of guidelines that MLB has as far as appropriate and not appropriate advertisements, and apparently sexual content is prohibited unless quote it is approved in advance in writing by MLB. So, who knows? I haven't seen the writing. Maybe it's elsewhere in the article. And there's also apparently a clause on quote approved sports betting operator because that also had limitations. But as long as you get your special permission, you're in there. I think that everybody should make their voices heard as consumers and write tons of emails to all of the above places saying this is not what I want to see when I'm watching baseball. It's just not appropriate. I do want to give credit when credit is due because I saw two ads that made me smile, and I think that's a good thing. I liked the one; it's an insurance ad, and and of course, it's so effective that I don't remember the name of the insurance company. But it's the one where the woman goes outside to the to the deck to get something, and they lock her out there because something good happens in the game, so it's like superstition. You are out on the deck when this happened. You have to stay out there. I could relate to that. It was a bunch of friends just hanging out. It was a great message, and apparently, it was not completely effective at making me remember the insurance company. But I enjoyed watching it, and I wasn't offended. And the other one that I really liked was an animated one by MOB called Context Matters, and it's like all these old plays, but they're they're drawn animated so that the the pictures match the words, but it's not exactly baseball. And the one that jumped out at me was quote Oh my goodness, Big Christmases tied it, and it was the the audio from that playoff game where Big Christmas tied it up at the at the end. That's a John John Kenzie Noel, and that was for Cleveland two years ago, I think.

Patti 34:54
Yep.

Pottymouth 34:54
But it was Santa Claus tying a bow, so it's you know the words. Come from baseball, but the pictures are very entertaining, and I found a link that has it like all compiled on YouTube, so it will be in the in the notes for your viewing enjoyment.

Patti 35:11
Yeah, and and for the record, I mean, if you know us, we are not prudes. We're not prudes. It's not about oh no, we can't ever talk about things or show things or whatever. It's the context, and also when we first talked about this, I also included the HBO commercials that were highlighting their horror movies and series, which were very scary visuals. And I'm always of the mind that you know kids can read whatever they want to read because they can only picture what their imagination wants them picture. But once they see something, they can't unsee it, and so maybe so even that it's like just be aware of you want to be you know America's team, you want to be about families, then you need to think this through. Yeah, that's where I'm going.

Pottymouth 35:53
Yeah, no, absolutely, and betting, like, damn it, betting, like it's everywhere. Stop the betting ads, period, with or without. Well, the commentators are

Patti 36:03
talking about. I mean, the in-game breaks that the commentators read; those promos are also about sports betting.

Pottymouth 36:08
Yeah,

Patti 36:09
so that's a lot. So I'm going to tell you one more thing about. You might get the feeling that Major League Baseball is in it for the money, and I'm going to drive that home a little bit, so can't stand the rain again. PTSD about rain delays regarding Cleveland in the postseason. So last Thursday's game, which was scheduled for Thursday night, was moved to Thursday afternoon because the day before it was moved. The day before on Wednesday they saw the forecast and said, "Oh, it's going to get bad in the evening. Let's move this game up so we get it in. They did it. It was fine. It was a full house. It was a thing of beauty. It was easy peasy. It was great. Friday, they had that forecast the day before, where they knew it was going to rain all day. But instead of taking any action to prevent this delay and everybody suiting up and all the people showing up, they waited till the last minute. So the gates opened on Friday. This was going to be for Game Four. The gates opened three hours before the scheduled first pitch. MLB postponed the game an hour after the scheduled start time, which means there were four hours of fans paying for parking and buying concessions and hanging out, and all the commentators like, "Oh, these Cleveland fans aren't leaving. Well, of course they're not leaving.

Pottymouth 37:30
It's a expensive ticket, and if you don't know what's happening, you got to go.

Patti 37:35
Right, you got to be there until you know, because who knows if they haven't canceled the game yet? Maybe the game is gonna gonna happen, right? So the athletic referred to it as an unnecessary night of nonsense and said this. They said MLB treated fans and players like inventory, trapped in the rain until the books balanced. The storm didn't do this. The league did. The storm showed up on my

Pottymouth 37:57
god. So

Patti 37:59
which

Pottymouth 37:59
we've done that at Nats Park before and been pissed off, but that's been for like random game in the summer. For the championship series, there's no fucking excuse.

Patti 38:11
So, to be fair about this, I am glad they postponed the game because those conditions were very dangerous. People would have gotten hurt. It might have been not just season ending, but career ending. If they're like trying to slide, trying to slipping, whatever. It's it was bad, but they could have booted it to the next day on Thursday when they started seeing these, you know, seeing the the forecast. Right. So here we go. They postponed Game Four to Saturday, which is when Game Five was supposed to be. They postponed Game Five to today, to Sunday, when it was supposed to be a travel day. Now, I initially said they were very concerned about you know losing Sunday as a travel day. So I'm thinking, why didn't why are they playing at five instead of earlier? Then I realized, oh, there was the home game. The Browns were hosting the Ravens, and those those you know facilities are right across the street from each other. So that would have been a mess. So I get the whole 5o'clock thing, but why couldn't they bump the St. Pete's games back a day and had a day off on Monday and play Tuesday and Wednesday? The World Series starts on Friday. There would still be a break in the middle. If you were really concerned, you could have done it that way. Okay, so the other problem that happened when moving game four to Saturday and five to Sunday, Friday's game four tickets became Sunday game five tickets. So the people who had had tickets for Saturday still had tickets for Saturday. Those people spent extra money and very specifically ordered Game Five tickets because what if they clinched at home? That would be the game where they did it, and now they're watching Game Four,

Pottymouth 39:50
yeah,

Patti 39:51
instead of Game Five. MLB says we wanted to disrupt the fewest number of people, so everybody that was there on Friday should come back on. Sunday, if you can, and Saturday is still Saturday. So I get both of those. I completely understand why people would be pissed if they very specifically plan to try to be there on Game Five in case Game Five was a thing, and then, as it turns out, none of them were a thing. Right. So at least there's not

Pottymouth 40:17
that.

Patti 40:18
But but I totally get. But I I am pissed that they didn't. the The forecast could not have been more clear, right? Even if the rain stopped at what was supposed to be game time, the field was flooded.

Pottymouth 40:31
That's crazy. There was

Patti 40:32
so much. They they would never have been. It would never would have been safely cleaned up in time to have a game. So I was like, that was, yeah. I'm a little fired up again. I would like to blame Cleveland's losing the last two games on the rain because I feel better about it. Because then it's a thing. Then it's like a, you know, it's it's it's I don't it's superstition or something.

Pottymouth 40:53
I get it though. Like that's it just adds an extra layer of resentment. Yeah, it's like that. You didn't need to make this unnecessary nonsense.

Patti 41:03
Yes.

Pottymouth 41:04
Damn it. Yes. Yes.

Patti 41:05
Unnecessary night of nonsense. Damn it. Let's go somewhere else for winter ball.

Pottymouth 41:09
So there's baseball happening. Venezuela and Dominican Republic have both started their winter serieses, and and it's exciting. So just a quick for Venezuela. I talked about it more last week. So when when we have a player on our team, we take a page out of the scorebook of queer fancy stats, which has taught us that it's good to donate toward a whatever that player is harming. So for example, if you have a player who's an abuser, like say a Worlus Chapman, who we still don't know, you know, where he's come from his initial suspension many years ago for for domestic violence, which was a really horrific incident. So now I pay money toward a women's shelter for every save he has, so that I can feel better about rooting for the Red Sox and deal with my conflicting feelings about this particular player. So I kind of have, you know, my my hands full paying for the Red Sox between him and Jaron Duran at this point, and I really was looking forward to taking the off season off from paying for players. However, I do have a long time devotion to the Cardinales de Lara in the Venezuelan league, and they have Rafael Ortega playing. He is a former baseball ex ex baseball boyfriend. That's what we call baseball boyfriends who fuck up. So I picked him several years ago, when he was on the Cubs, and then I spotted a transphobic post that he had on his Instagram story, and I was like, "We're over, dude! Like that, you just that's horrible. But he's now doing well for the Cardinals de Lara, so now I'm thinking, "Fuck, do I have to come up with a new donation thing? Probably, I can find some charity. I wonder if I should look at something in Latin America that might be appropriate. Anyway, he went three for four with two RBI, which are Carreras Impulsadas in Spanish, and three runs scored in the Cardinales' second game. Their win eight to five over the Aguilas de Sulia. Over in Dominican Republic, I don't have to pay any money for these guys. So far, so good. I am just really happy to see that Fernando Rodney, which is like one of our favorite Energizer bunnies of times ago, threw out the first pitch for the Leónista Escogido, which is my my Dominican team that I love and adore against the Tigres, Fernando Rodney not only played for half of the games in MLB, more or less. I don't know a whole bunch of them, including ending his career with the Washington Nationals World Series team. So yay for him for that. He played 15 seasons in the Dominican Republic between 2002 and 2021, including three championship teams with the Leonore del Escogido. On the other side of the Dominican League, the Toros del Este, not my favorite team because there I feel like they're very Yankee esque, but for aforementioned Big Christmas is with the Bulls. The Toros del Este, John Kensi Noel, is in his second year with the Bulls. He only played 10 games last year, and the previous year he played nine games. No, no, two years before that, in 2023, he played nine games with the Estrella Intales. So apparently this is his third year in Dominican League, and so the question is: Will Big Christmas be playing until Christmas this year? Like here we are in mid October. The past couple times he's been in, they've only let him go a handful of games. However, we know at the beginning of December when the if. The lockout happens. Then, if he's in Dominican Republic when he's locked out, he gets to keep playing. So I don't know if he'll be able to make it that long. But he did hit two RBI in the five three win over the Aguilasi Bayenas. This was a bad weekend for the Eagles in both countries for their second game of the season. So I will keep my eye on our guys who are playing in winter ball and let you all know because there's whole bunches of them.

Patti 45:27
There sure are. Just a brief note in the labor category: there's a professional softball league, athletes unlimited softball league, and their commissioner is is Kim Ing, who you might remember was the first female manager of an MLB team. She managed the Marlins. They are taking their first steps to unionize.

Pottymouth 45:46
Yay!

Patti 45:46
And they hope to have a CBA in place for the 2027 season. They had a super majority of their members sign cards, so now they're asking for voluntary acceptance of the union, and we'll move on from there. So we'll keep our eye on that and report back to the class.

Pottymouth 46:00
Awesome. All

Patti 46:01
right, we've got a whole bunch of baseball games to watch this week to wind up the the American League series and then move into the World Series starting next Friday. What else do you have going on besides

Pottymouth 46:12
that? Oh gosh, I was just looking at my calendar. I don't know, so I I need to. I said this last week. I need to go through our summer audio things just keep happening. I'm so sorry, folks. I I really look forward to next week's episode when I get to say I have this really great stuff up on Patreon. I've been doing a lot of volunteer work, folks. Please still stay aware of all the folks who are being abducted by ICE in your community. I'm going to be going to jail detention center again on Friday, so I can come back and report to the class at how that is. But keep your eyes open, protect your neighbors, and you know do what do what Patty tells you to do in the end of the the sign off of the podcast.

Patti 46:55
Also, you know early voting has started in a lot of places. You may have received mail and ballots if you have requested those. So please do your best. Get your votes in. Vote early. You can't vote off, but you can vote early to make sure you get it done. So do that if you can. And get your get

Pottymouth 47:13
your neighbors to the polls. Like find out. Make sure your neighbors are voting. Make sure your family and friends are voting. It's really important.

Patti 47:20
And please have conversations about candidates, and don't just believe the first thing you read because that's not always the right thing, right? So do a little bit of research, dig a little deeper. I'm going to the beach next weekend, so I may be watching some World Series games with my book club from a very cozy beach house, eating delicious food and drinking delicious drinks and and chilling, nice and doing yet more stress crocheting. So there's that. All right, my friends. So let us know how you're hanging in there with these final couple of teams in the postseason. Please reach out to us on social media.

Pottymouth 47:53
We would love to hear from you. You can check out Blue Sky NCIB podcast. We'll check Twitter messages as well, Facebook and Instagram. There are no crying in no crying in bee ball, Patreon. Super appreciate you guys hanging in with my flakiness. P a t r e o n.com/no crying in baseball. There's still a lot of the stuff up from our summer, and more is coming. Honest, honest, honest. Just like Brianna's prize package is going to be out right after the World Series.

Patti 48:20
I believe you.

Pottymouth 48:21
Yeah,

Patti 48:21
I know. I know you mean what you say. Absolutely. All right, our friends, please, please go see some live sports if you can. Fight the man. It's the right thing to do. Send your game balls to Meredith, and until next week, say good night, Potty Mouth.

Pottymouth 48:34
Good night, Potty Mouth. The good news is I got to eat. Now I am gonna drink whiskey.

Patti 48:56
Oh, look, me too.

Pottymouth 48:57
What kind of whiskey do you have? Sour mash. Me too.

Patti 49:01
Look, we're so matchy matchy with the booze.

Pottymouth 49:03
Cheers! Cheers indeed. That's awesome.