No Crying In Baseball

Patti 0:18
Hi and welcome to episode 483 of No Crying in Baseball, the Some Sort of Wedding or Bar Mitzvah episode. My name is Patti. I'm here with my friend Pottymouth. Hey, Pottymouth, where are you?

Pottymouth 0:28
Good to see you. I am currently in South Hadley, Massachusetts. I've been all over Western Mass today. I went to Montague yesterday. That was a lot of fun. The Montague Book Mill, whose tagline is "Books You Don't Need in a Place You Can't Find." So of course I got the bumper sticker.

Patti 0:46
Of course you did, but did you get books you don't need in the place that you actually did find?

Pottymouth 0:49
And actually, it's really good that I got them because they're currently propping up the microphone. Oh, perfect! It's the right

Patti 0:55
tool for the job, then.

Pottymouth 0:56
Yes, it's very cobbled together. And actually, one book is thematic. It's first class citizenship, the civil rights letters of Jackie Robinson. Oh wow! And I sat in a comfy chair at the bookmill and read a good chunk of it, and it's really lovely. The bookmill also for for those of you who want to get lost in Western Massachusetts, it's such a cool place. It's just a great place to just hang out for the day. There's a cafe downstairs, and we met a bunch of folks that I haven't seen in a bunch of years, like a lot, a lot of years. So I want to just give a huge shout out to everybody who I just told about the podcast, which is Julie and Dan and Doug and Mary Jane and Melanie and Tony. Well, he's in the the promo shot, and Chuck and Cheryl. So everybody said that they were going to listen, and now I get to quiz them and see if they heard their shout out

Patti 1:46
or they were just being nice. Yep, I am going to shout out our kids. I'm going to shout out Junior Potty Mouth and Potty Mouth Junior because they went camping a few weeks ago and they they delivered our presents to me. I have current custody, which means I am currently drinking a from the Rocket River Brewing Company the Puck Drop Sour Ale, which is very delicious, and the the label has a blackberry and a lemon facing off in hockey gear. So, which means

Pottymouth 2:18
it's black and gold, which is

Patti 2:20
so, which means it's adorable. So, you know, whatever you're going to say, I'm going to say it's adorable and delicious. And there are three more beers of different kinds, and those will come to your house next time I'm at your house. So, this is the down payment for you know cabin custody of the present.

Pottymouth 2:32
That's fair. That's fair. We can use the the next ones for next week's recording. Sure. And for this week's what? Sorry.

Patti 2:39
What are you drinking?

Pottymouth 2:41
I am drinking Bee Hoppy, which we have had together before at the Wusox. This is a Worcester beer, and it is from Wormtown Wormtown Brewery in Worcester, and it's one of my favorites for Massachusetts beers. So grab that at the local packy, and also grabbed a special bottle of Jameson's because you know I have to edit with whiskey for quality control, and it comes with a Jameson's Bruins flask. So I kind of had to get it because there's the black and gold hockey theme.

Patti 3:14
Look at we are just cross training with hockey in all the ways.

Pottymouth 3:17
Yeah, yeah, and actually this this be hoppy can is black and gold also ish? Yeah, that's yellow.

Patti 3:22
That's that's yellow. That's a nice try though. Nice try though. Oh my gosh! All right. Okay, you want to hear about today's show?

Pottymouth 3:29
What are we doing today? Well,

Patti 3:30
on today's show, glad you asked that question. On today's show, we've got boyfriends featuring awards, possible awards, and a really sad addition to the no fly list. Our hot stove has super twos and qualifying offers. The labor update includes it's still a salary cap, even if you kick it down the road a year. Baseball United is having fun in the sun. Winter ball is in a lot of places with a lot of boyfriends. So cheers,

Pottymouth 3:54
cheers!

Patti 3:55
All right, we're going to start with boyfriends and awards because, as you know, it's award season. We kicked that off last week as well, the new award that has been bestowed is the platinum glove, which is the fan vote on all of the gold glove winners. So not really surprising anybody. Pete Crow Armstrong, my former Cubs boyfriend, won his very first platinum glove. Also, Cody Bellinger won, so that was kind of exciting too. The silver slugger nominations just came out. We have a lot of current boyfriends on the on the nominations list, which is pretty fun. For American League, William Brayu, Jack Caglione, Chase Delauder, Carter Jensen, and for National League, Sal Stewart. We did great. We did great. The nominations for the big awards have been announced. Now it's not conjecture; it's here. We've narrowed it down to three. I personally swept the National League MVP nominations with Carl Armstrong and Shohei and Bryce to rank, which I didn't. These are all

Pottymouth 4:55
former baseball boyfriend picks of yours, right?

Patti 4:57
All former boyfriend picks, and. Then for American League, we between us we've got all of them again all former boyfriends, Jordan Alvarez and Bobby Wood Jr. for me, and Junior Caminero for you. So we did pretty well with you know previous picks. We also did great for the National League Rookie of the Year because Sal Stewart and JJ Weatherholt are both in the finals for that. Also, Carson Bench is the other one of the three. Not a single American League Rookie of the Year candidate is one of our current boyfriends. So there's that. But

Pottymouth 5:29
all in

Patti 5:30
all, I think we did pretty well. So all most of these most of these awards will get announced the course of this week. I think Silver Slugger is next week.

Pottymouth 5:40
Okay, and when you started, sorry, I'm a little spacey. Did you say what baseball boyfriends are for, especially my six or seven or eight friends who are listening for the first time?

Patti 5:49
You know, I didn't. Let me do that. Um. So in the off season, each of us picks one guy per team that we're gonna focus on. We do a profile of him. We pick him because he's good at baseball, or we think he's funny, or he's got a really good backstory, or we think he's cool because of the kind of philanthropy. Whatever the thing is, we pick a guy per team. Bottom line is, is it somebody we would want to go out and have a beer with? That kind of category. So when we say former former boyfriends, that means guys we have picked in previous years that we still keep an eye on because we picked them for good reasons. And if we say current boyfriends; those are the guys in this season. We're going to start in a couple of weeks, selecting a new slate of boyfriends for the upcoming season. You know that won't stop if there's a lockdown. So that's some baseball things that will still be happening. Is our our boyfriend profiles in the off season? So just letting you know about that. We also have ex boyfriends. Ex boyfriends are guys we've picked in the past, and then they have disappointed us deeply, almost never, never in a baseball way. Always in a, you said what, or you did what, or I'm sorry, this no, this will not stand, and I got a new one, and I'm really sad about this one. Anthony Santander, who was my Orioles guy from 2020? Who's been with Toronto the last two seasons? Is the kind of guy that you always say we always say, "Oh, he's such a good guy," because as far as we knew,

Pottymouth 7:10
yeah. And I enjoyed his walk-up music for a good long time,

Patti 7:13
right? And you know, he's he's Venezuelan, so that influenced the walk-up music for sure. But he's always been such a good guy until, until we finally notice that he's not. I mean, I don't know how long he's not been, but he made it public during right after the elections last week when he reposted two anti-Islam videos. He deleted them Thursday. I mean, clearly he knew he did wrong, but nothing ever goes away. We all, you know, they're they're out there. Things like a preacher saying there's no such thing as kind Muslims. Other things like in relation to Al Sayed's election, they're just not not okay, not okay, bud, not okay. Toronto distanced themselves immediately. The Blue Jays said, "Uh, not on our watch." They released a statement saying, "Baseball is for everyone, and the Blue Jays have created an inclusive experience where all fans feel welcome at our ballpark. Individual comments do not represent our organization's values and beliefs. So, again, he was with Baltimore for eight years, and then Toronto. He played for a year. Then he was out all last year on injury. Maybe his year of being on the on the injured injured reserve made him marinate in bad things. Maybe he picked up a terrible hobby of reading and believing things that are not okay. I don't know. I don't know what happened. So now, the community is talking back to him because I think they all thought what a nice guy until then. So, for instance, there's a National Council of Canadian Muslims, and they've said, "Okay, a he needs to apologize, and b they want him to meet with people in Canada's Muslim community, so he better understands why the posts that he shares are, and I quote, are so hurtful." And that's exactly what we talk about all the time. It's like it's one thing to give lip service to yeah, I'm sorry if you feel that way, but it's another thing to try to understand the hurt you caused, the damage that you caused. So I hope he doesn't. So far, as of when I did notes earlier today on Sunday, he had not released any sort of a statement, not you know AI generated by an agent or you know or anything, he said nothing. I'm hoping he says something and then acts to fix it. This same article interviewed some of the Blue Jays Muslim fans, and one fan said he's really happy the team responded quickly, but he wants more from the team, including inclusivity training. He's like the team is not off the hook by just distancing themselves. Clearly, there's a problem that can be fixed, and you, as an institution, hello baseball team, can take action. So I was really happy to see that piece too. Not just what the hell is this guy saying? It's. Can we? Is there a thing the team can do so this doesn't happen anymore? So the guys on the team learn better, right? To be to to understand the diverse community that exists in the fan base.

Pottymouth 10:13
Yeah, and for our benefit, it would be really nice if they make it super public because I think one of the problems with our ex boyfriends is we haven't if we don't see what they're doing to make up for their aired ways, especially sometimes it has to be pretty substantial and putting you know some actual like you're saying like their their actual body into what they're making up for, not just making a donation or not just issuing an apology. They have to do shit to make up for fucking up. And I want to, you know, I would love to see these recommendations, a report back on on what they what he actually did and what the Blue Jays actually did.

Patti 10:48
Yeah, and and I'm I'm going to be keeping an eye on it as best as I can because it matters. It matters a lot. And again, you're right. It's not going to get publicized, so I'm going to have to like really pay attention, and I will do my best.

Pottymouth 10:58
And you know, this is actually a pretty good segue because maybe he could spend an off season playing for Baseball United in the Middle East. So, Baseball United, we talked about about three years ago in episode 326 when it was just forming, and I was a little bit skeptical at the time. The goal is to increase baseball in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent, and so their mission is quote to inspire 1 billion new fans to fall in love with baseball. They started with an All Star game, which made no sense at the at the time, but there were a whole bunch of former MLB players involved with starting this this new league. And then they actually did have a brief season of 27 games in November and December of 2025. So the majority owner and I was just kind of wondering. Well, I mean, I guess they're sitting on a lot of oil. It is in the United Arab Emirates where they got all the cash for all of these former, former, famous MLB players to be involved. The majority owner slash president slash CEO, the guy whose like vision was behind this whole thing, Cash Shake, actually left in March, and I didn't report on that at the time because I didn't know much about what was going on. It was for family reasons, is what he's saying, and the the league is continuing even in his absence, and it's being run not by anybody of Middle Eastern descent, which you know, I'm wondering how well they're going to be able to connect with the the local population, especially if the real goal is to increase players from that region, which is what we would like when we see baseball expanding into into other places. Hall of Famer Barry Larkin is the chairman of the board, and the two vice chairmen are another Hall of Famer, Adrian Beltre, one of my very famous, one very favorite former Red Sox players. Even though he was with us for a short time, he made a major impact. And Orioles special assistant Robinson Chirinos, who also played for I don't know something like 11 seasons. They're sort of the the flashy names behind it, but there was a co-founder along with Cash, whose name is John Medrick. I don't think he has Middle Eastern connections personally, so I'm not sure where his funny money is coming from? I didn't mean to say funny money. Funny money. I'm slurring already after two sips of hoppy. But he's going to be sort of you know the the controlling behind the scenes situation. They decided not to have a season this year, and I was wondering because I thought it was just that they weren't together, maybe you know it's it's hard when things are just getting started, but they announced it soon after the conflict in Iran started, in which a lot of Gulf states are involved on some level, including the United Arab Emirates. So they were not feeling safe to bring players there at this time, so that sucks, and that's just yet another reason for us to follow or bring politics into our podcast, right? Because baseball and and politics go hand in hand. So what do they do? They go to Cancun. They take Big Poppy's advice. This past weekend, they had a lot of fun in Cancun, and I'm actually kind of like frustrated with myself for not seeing this ahead of time because as I was looking into it on the website, there was a big old "Do you want media credentials to to come to this?" and I was like, "Holy shit! I bet we could do that." So if this is like an annual event, we need to look into media credentials to cover this stuff in Cancun. It seemed really accessible. They had a celebrity golf tournament, and yeah, I mean, I'd like to talk to them in between holes. Not not play. The playing fee was a lot, but you could go watch for not much, and media maybe nothing at all. A premium cocktail event and a celebrity softball game, and the softball ticket started at six bucks. Which is like why not? I mean, you got to get to Cancun, but still. And while they were there, the important part it wasn't just like hoity-toity stuff.

Pottymouth 15:07
They did a youth baseball clinic, school visits, and other quote community initiatives that I am not aware of exactly what they are, but sounds good to me or potentially good. They partnered with the Tigres de Quintana Ru, which is a league team in the Mexican League, the Liga Mexicano de Baseball, which is the one that goes at the same time as MLB, and so they got to use their facilities. And I encourage you very strongly to go onto the social media links to see the highlights of that softball game because some familiar faces like oh Bartolo Cologne hit a home run big sexy home run

Patti 15:46
God I love when big sexy sexy hits a home run

Pottymouth 15:48
isn't that crazy I remember when he finally hit that home run when he was with the Mets and it was just like everybody cracking up Robinson Cano also hit a home run off of big sexy pitching they come

Patti 16:00
they go

Pottymouth 16:00
right, right. Easy, easy come, easy go. Take one, give one. Felix Hernandez was pitching. Starling Marte, Althus Andrews, Didi Gregorius, plus Julio Franco, who is 68 years old, hit a home run. So seeing these guys play baseball, softball. Sorry, baseball. I think would be a little bit much, but a softball game is sounds mighty entertaining and worth a trip to Cancun next year if we can pull that off.

Patti 16:26
All right, so we'll start saving our pennies right now. Exactly, exactly. Perfect. All right, so hot stove, of course, is happening now for at least a couple of weeks until the the plug gets pulled and no no more action can be taken. So here are some things that happened this week. So the super twos were identified. As you are well aware, players become eligible for arbitration once they have between three and six years of service time, right? So that's and after that they could become free agents. So that's when they can negotiate for higher salaries. The CBA, the the bargaining agreement, allows for super twos, which increases the number of players who become arbitration eligible. So these guys are the the top 22% of players by service time, with at least two years but less than three years, who have played at least 86 days and had 86 days of service this year. So instead of having to wait for year three, you can have year two if you're in the top bunch of people with of service time, right? So it increases the number of people who become arbitration eligible, which means have access to getting themselves more money if they can convince the teams that they or the arbitrators that they deserve it, so 28 players were part of that 22% this year. So that increases the the free agent pool by another 28 players. The other thing that happened this past week is qualifying offers were made, and I always have to look that up to figure out how that's figured out. So a qualifying offer is what a team can make when they have a player who's entering free agency. They can give them an offer of a one-year contract at a set salary, and which that that player can take or leave. And if they they take it, they stay on that team for another year. If they decline it, and another team signs them as a free agent, then the team they left gets a compensatory draft pick, and the team they go to loses one. So that's kind of the trade they make there. So they figure out the amount of this one-year contract by taking the average of MLB's 125 highest-paid players this year, that's 23.15 million dollars. So, eight players were given a qualifying offer, and they have until November 17th to say, "I'm going to take it or not. So here's the kind of math they have to do. Almost nobody takes these. Although last year there was like a record four players that took them, but usually they don't because what players believe, and they're often right, is they can get more on the open market if they become a free agent. Maybe there's bidding wars. Maybe they played so well that they think they're going to get more than this 23.1 5 million, or maybe they really they don't want to mess with this one-year contract. They want a multi-year contract. They're going to hold out. So sometimes that bites them in the butt. Every once in a while, someone turns one of these down and does not get a better offer, and they end up getting paid less when you know they get signed eventually, but yeah, they're rolling the dice, right? So, almost everybody who got one of these offers was sort of rated by the Athletic as medium to not likely to take it. So we'll keep an eye on that. Again, november 17 is the day they've got to decide by. So we'll hear more over the course of the next. So those are the things that are happening right now. Again, everything shuts down december 1 at midnight when the when the CBA expires. So this stuff is a little bit ramped up right now. There's a lot of players and agents and teams that want to get stuff done right now so they can get things locked in before the the plug gets pulled.

Pottymouth 20:18
Wow, I do. You think there's any chance that it's not? Wow!

Patti 20:24
Not in a million years. More on that in just a minute. But you know what? If you tell us about winter baseball, maybe we'll learn about what we're going to do when there's no MLB to pay attention to this winter.

Pottymouth 20:35
All right. Once when the hot stove gets cold, there is stuff happening in other places, and actually, even though I didn't give you give you enough warning to get tickets to Cancun, if you want to hurry up and go to Miami next weekend, you can see Venezuelan baseball in Miami, the Choque de Gigantes. I've talked about this a little bit already, but I have an update. And then there's the whole like, do we want to go to Florida? And this is why we didn't go to any World Baseball Classic games last time around because they were only either in Florida or Houston as far as domestic. Well, Puerto Rico actually we could yeah couldn't get our act together. That would have been a nice thing, but maybe next time around we'll feel better about going to Texas because hey, good news happening in Texas, Florida was so close. I have hope for Florida. The thing about the the weighing whether to go to this or not, if you're from out of state and you kind of want to justify it, it is a fundraiser, and money is being going is going toward earthquake relief in Venezuela, which is very needed. So you can make your decisions on that. The Tibronees de la Guayra are play, and La Guayra was the area that was most affected. So the the fans of La Guayra are very much in need of relief. Playing against the Navagantes de Magallanes, the cool thing about those two teams is well, one of the cool things is their managers. The Tibarones are being managed by Fernando Tatis Sr. You know Fernando Tatis Jr.'s father clearly, who had been managing for many many years with Estrellas Orientales in the Dominican Republic and jumped ship this year. He's Dominican, but he's managing in Venezuela for the first year, he's managing against Yadier Molina, who's in his second year of managing the Navagantes. Did well last year. This year, he's gotten off to a rough start, and I think he's been ejected three times at this point. A little hot-headed, but that's you know always fun to watch. More reason to watch Venezuelan baseball. Lots of action happening. If you do want to go to Miami. There are plenty of tickets still available. They're pretty reasonable, from 20 bucks to 100 bucks. And knowing they're going to have 50-50 raffles, and so a portion of the tickets plus the 50-50 plus there's going to be merch that's going to go to earthquake relief. We have plenty of former baseball boyfriends involved on the side of the Tiborones, Ronald Acuna, who was your 2019 Atlanta pick, Jerkson Profar, my 19 A's pick, Gabriel Arias, my this past year so current baseball boyfriend, Cleveland pick. Even though he moved around a lot, and shit, where did he end up at the end of the year? He went to the Mets. I think the minors.

Pottymouth 23:22
Yeah, he went to the minors, but at the end, fuck after the Mets, I I got to do my homework. So we'll see what happens to him next year. But he clearly needs a little bit of more play time in the winter to get his act together. Brian Rocchio, though, however, your last year's Cleveland pick is playing, and Miguel Rojas, your 2020 Miami pick most recently with the Dodgers who announced his retirement and this is going to be his big like goodbye to his U.S. fans. On the other side, on the Navigante side, we have the Panda Pablo Sandoval. Neither one of us have picked him, but boy, I definitely followed him for a while. Sandy Leon, who played for both teams that we love and adore, and Rugnadore, Francisco Alvarez recently of the Mets, and the only baseball boyfriend on the Navagantes team is Tyro Estrada, who I picked for the Giants in 2023 and hasn't done a lot since then. So maybe this will get him back together a little bit, they played in the last choke in Miami was 2024. Ronald Acuna Jr. played for the Tiberones during the season last year for 16 games and did pretty well. Four home runs, 12 RBI, which is CI if you look at the stats in Spanish, carreras impulsadas, and 16 walks. BB still works in Spanish. Bases ambolas, and 11 stolen bases, which is BR, bases robadas. If you go on Saturday, there's a cool salsa concert after the game that is included with your ticket coverage. Do we watch if we're not going to be on my in Miami? There was coverage in 2024 when they had the choques, but it hasn't been announced yet. Despite the family connection with the Acunas, Michael Garcia, who is my royal pick in 2024, had been playing with the Tiburones, is not going to be playing in the choque de gigantes and probably not playing at all this season with the Tiburones because he had a clash with the ownership. It's unclear where the bad blood came, but he asked to be traded, and it didn't go over well. He said, "I asked for the change, and they didn't give it to me." He said, "I wish that there was a a union, a strong union in Venezuela, like there is in the U.S., because you can't tell me that you're not gonna you're not gonna change me, you're not gonna trade me, and also you're not going to give me permission to play for another team. Then he said that he actually was thinking of playing for the Tiburones, for the people that had died, and for the the fans of the area, he said, "I wouldn't do it for the the owners, but for my people." He only played 82 games for the Royals this year because of injuries, so he really wants and needs winter reps, but he wants them with Another team, the owner actually tweeted just this past week on november 4. If Magallanes wants them, they know what to give me. Oh, so I guess there's a deal in there somewhere. Meanwhile, there's a third party that might be interested. So Ravayana, who is a Venezuelan fantastic musical group? Go check out their music. They are part owners of the Bravos de Margarita now, and they tweeted that Michael Garcia should come to their team. So we'll see what happens by next week, and if Michael Garcia gets to play, Margarita is like a lovely island off the coast of Venezuela. I think you should go there. Luis Angela Cunha, baby Acuna, does also does not play for Tiburones, and he's not playing in the Choque, but he is playing with the team that I love and adore from the Venezuelan League, the Cardinales de Lara. He played his first game with them just this past Thursday. Went two for five with a stolen base and two carreras anotadas, two runs. You can watch Venezuelan baseball on Baseball Play. We will include the link in the show notes, and it does cost some money, but not a lot. I think it's like 20 bucks for the season. It's it's totally worth it. Although, if you have MLB.com for the season, you should be able to watch both Lidam, the Dominican League, and the Mexican League, which I wasn't aware of.

Pottymouth 27:48
Thank you to Julie, one of our one of our listeners, who wrote in asking about more information about how to watch this, and told me that the Mexican League is covered by MLB. So it's just hard to figure out where, I did put some links in the notes that hopefully will help you figure out how to access these. I'm excited because one of my current baseball boyfriends from this past season, Ramon Loriano, who I didn't watch play basically at all because he was injured all season, he is playing in the Dominican Republic for my Dominican team, the team that I follow, and I wish I brought my hat. Leones de Escojido. He played 17 games for them in 2024. Did not play for them at all last year, but this past Thursday night had his first hit. He had a three-run walk-off home run on two strikes, four and shit. I got to look at this up. It was the ninth consecutive win by the Leones. After that, they made it to 10. the The record for the league is 14 consecutive wins. So I don't know if the Leones blew it or not yesterday. It was his first hit of the season and his fifth at bat. So check it out on MLB TV, and hopefully I'll do better homework next week when I'm back at home. But check out Ramon Loreano, and finally La Pro, which is the rebrand we talked about last year of the Liga de Baseball Profesoral Roberto Clemente in Puerto Rico. They were the last winter league to start on November 4, and you might remember us talking about Yasiel Puig, who is playing there for the Senatores de San Juan, he has been found guilty of lying about the whole gambling kerfuffle that that happened. The the one that you know took down Otani's translator and was a big old mess. And there's still no sentencing date or any mention of a sentencing date. So we sort of surmised that he's playing in Puerto Rico because he can't leave the United States because he's been found guilty of a felony. So he needs to. He's in the past. He's played in Venezuela. He's played in the Dominican Republic. He MLB does not want him at this point. Sentencing usually happens between 75 and 75 to 90 days after a guilty verdict. His guilty verdict was february 7, so it's really unclear about why there hasn't been sentencing. If they're just shelving it, what's going on behind the scenes? The Senatores have got to be really happy to have him stuck in Puerto Rico because they were dead last last year. However, they won the first game of their season against the Crioles de Caguas, Alex Cora's team, and Puig got a two-run sacrifice fly in the sixth inning when the team was down one to nothing and hit a single in the fourth, and basically help them win the game. There is a little bit of a kerfuffle about how to watch La Pro because they have advertised recently, reaching out to Puerto Ricans in the United States, and not in we are they are all in the United States. Puerto Ricans in the mainland United States who are not in Puerto Rico, but living elsewhere within the country, that we want you to continue watching Puerto Rican baseball, and so it's going to be on vixvix.com. However, you can't get it by just going to vix.com. You have to buy the premium package. So it's a little bit of a bait and switch. From what I can tell, you can get six months with ads for 15 bucks, which seems reasonable. I don't know how many ads there are, but you just have to remember to cancel after six months because then it shoots up. But that gets you through the season anyway. Or if you want no ads, that's 1099 a month. But people are starting to complain, so we'll see what happens.

Patti 31:37
Wow, wow, that's so much. I'm still stuck on the how is there no sentencing,

Pottymouth 31:41
right?

Patti 31:41
For Puy, this is we're talking about U.S. courts.

Pottymouth 31:45
Yeah,

Patti 31:45
we're not talking about a court system that we are not familiar with in another place. That's fascinating.

Pottymouth 31:52
Yeah, I'm really wondering. I mean, he's clearly has a lot of high high paid lawyers, but then we talked about how bankrupty is now. Like he's he's he was claiming bankruptcy as well, so I I don't know, I don't know what they're doing behind the scenes. It'll be fun to find out, I guess.

Patti 32:06
You know, speaking of U.S. court dates, the Clase Ortiz trial started this past week, and I was going to do an update on it, and decided not to. But the one thing I think I do want to mention is it took them forever to seat a jury. They thought it was going to take a few hours on a Monday morning, and they ended up like interviewing more than 100 people because they kept asking questions about are you familiar with this? But then also they asked questions about sports betting, and so many people that were potential jurors had bet on sports, and so they were out. So between this being like a highly visible case, if you pay attention at all to baseball, you're aware of this. So people have their preconceived notions. Sports betting, like experience, like access in your history, can was disqualifying people from being on the jury. So that's kind of fascinating. So more about that later, as things as things happen. Bo Naylor was a witness this week because he he caught both of them back when he was a guardian and he said okay I'm doing quick update he said the pitches that are in question are actually within the scouting report like they were legitimately pitches that should that could have been thrown to those batters like one of them was this says right here low and outside is a weapon against the spatter, and one of the pitches or two of them were low and outside. So, I don't know, but I mean, how do you figure this out? I don't know. Okay, I'm gonna go away on on that one.

Pottymouth 33:31
I trust Bo. Bono.

Patti 33:33
Bono. Bono's

Pottymouth 33:34
right.

Patti 33:35
Bono scouting reports. All right. Quick, quick little labor update. Quick little labor update: The league was feeling very generous and very good about itself this past week on Tuesday when they offered to delay that salary cap an entire year to the 2028 season. You remember that salary cap that nobody wants except for like you know a couple of owners and and the commissioner of baseball. We'll give you another year. So what they said was, you know, they they they finally recognized and admitted that implementing that cap is going to be hard. It's not just saying, okay, from here on out, ta-da, magically you have to fit between this floor and the ceiling for your your team's entire, you know, the the payroll for your team. It does not have anything to do to recognize that it's a non-starter. It's like the players don't want it. They have said no, no, absolutely no. The fans don't even want it, no matter what. The fans don't. The fans don't want baseball to shut down. Exactly. So that's

Pottymouth 34:36
a huge thing.

Patti 34:37
So you know the management is coming off as as the bad guys here, but they are saying we understand that implementing this system would be difficult. One of the things in the MLB statement was that with the proposed cap and floor, which had been modified a little bit from the initial, 12 clubs, 12 franchises would need to increase their payroll by. $636 million to reach the floor, and eight clubs would have to decrease their payroll $528 million to reach the cap. So that's a bunch of teams that would have to change salaries amongst their entire team in order to fit in this window and in this little tune, this this floor and this ceiling. Again, nobody wants this. Why would anybody? Why would the players say, "Oh yeah, please limit our earning potential, but don't put any limits on ownership. They can earn as much money as they want, but we should have limits, right?" So there was an article in the Athletic that I enjoyed because it was about how the agents, who normally are like competitive with one another, because I want that guy, I want that guy, are absolutely all united on the salary cap thing. Now, definitely, it's well, you know, they get more money if their players have a higher salary. So sure, there's that, but also they understand the unfairness of it as a whole. So Joel Wolf, who is an agent who represents Chris Sale and Zach Wheeler and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, among others, said this, which I just loved. He said, "I find it incredibly obtuse and offensive that the commissioner's office is scheduling a lockout like it's some sort of wedding or bar mitzvah, instead of taking the best minds in baseball, GMs, presidents of baseball, people in the front offices, some at the union, and doing this quietly and saying let's put our heads together to get something done, he's going on a PR campaign trying to sell something no one wants to hear and no one wants to buy.

Pottymouth 36:39
Yeah.

Patti 36:40
Wait, isn't the motto of that bookstore you went to?

Pottymouth 36:42
Yeah, that's pretty close. That's pretty close. That's going to be the byline of the Montague. Oh my gosh.

Patti 36:47
Also related to this, related to this limits earnings for players and no limit on earnings for teams. Atlanta, you may recall that the Atlanta baseball team is the only team in the major leagues that have to report their earnings because they are publicly traded, right? So they have to report. We have no idea how much other teams earn, but Atlanta is the only one we can count on. So here's some news, right? Atlanta reported a record third quarter revenue of $324.6 million, up 4% from last year, so they're doing fine.

Pottymouth 37:25
Yeah,

Patti 37:26
they're doing fine. But okay, let's limit the players' salaries. Oh, I just got up on a high horse, or a podium, or a soapbox, or I was up on something, or maybe your horse

Pottymouth 37:36
on a podium.

Patti 37:37
Oh, that's daring. Yeah, see, I have half half a puck drop sour and look what happens.

Pottymouth 37:42
I just feel like it's not like that's the only expenditure. Like why is it just focused on the players as the issue, right? It's just like that's the problem. Is there the scope the scope going the players because that's the shiny thing? That's what people see. They're they're sort of demonizing them without opening books, and I just wish that more clubs were publicly publicly traded. Because

Patti 38:06
freaking capitalism! I'm just saying,

Pottymouth 38:08
right? Well, it's going down, right? Like, didn't we smash fascism last week? I was

Patti 38:14
pretty sure we did. Yes, this is all going to go away,

Pottymouth 38:16
right? Yeah, no, it's going

Patti 38:16
to be great.

Pottymouth 38:17
Wait for six weeks, and shit's going to happen, boy, folks, those of us who live like within spinning distance of the nation's capital are really excited to see a different kind of fireworks happening in the in the near future. Damn, I went down actually with our guests. I went downtown and saw the the construction site of the at the White House, and it's fucking disgusting. It's terrifying. I'm glad that that those of you out there who voted did so because we're making a difference, and it's important from baseball and everything else around

Patti 38:52
it. And if you can't see that at a national level, quick story about our local election: they're still counting votes because everything was came in by mail. But at some point, some of the races were single digits apart in ballots. So if you ever wonder if your vote matters, absolutely. So thank you, thank you for voting. And if you didn't vote this time, please vote next time because you've learned this from us, and now you're going to do better.

Pottymouth 39:17
Yeah, and I mean, look at Mississippi and Alaska. Man, right? You know, maybe if you guys vote more in Mississippi, Alaska, you get some baseball too. I'm talking about spreading baseball. We need to do that nationally as well as internationally. We need more baseball, more. Yeah,

Patti 39:34
we do. Yeah, we do. All right. Okay, that's the thing. Okay, so if baseball is going to expand someplace, pitch us on social media. Tell us why baseball should come to your town if you don't have a team. Where can you find us on social media? Glad you asked that question.

Pottymouth 39:46
You can find us in the blue sky, or we will check those Twitter messages at NCIB podcast. Facebook and Instagram are No Crying in B ball, or you can join the fun on Patreon. P A T R E O N dot. Com/slash/no crying and b-ball, and you will rest assured knowing that you are allowing us to continue recording because our idea is everybody does a little bit. We do some grassroots organizing. You pitch in a buck a month, or maybe three or five if you want. Those are our very reasonable rates, and that keeps us going. That keeps the lights on. That keeps the bills paid, and it keeps us busy. And now that I'm retired, you know what am I going to do if we're not podcasting? So,

Patti 40:26
other than like keeping toppling patriarchy and fascism and all of

Pottymouth 40:30
that, yeah, things like that. Yeah, I do have to get back to that, right? But set the woman on

Patti 40:35
vacation

Pottymouth 40:36
as well, right?

Patti 40:38
Oh my god! All right, so we've got awards every day this week. By the time you hear this, you'll know who Rookie of the Year is. But in the meantime, find some live sports to watch. I mean, I'm just going to drink the the hockey themed beer. But I bet you could actually find some hockey or some basketball or some football to watch. Fight the man! You did. Keep it up. You're doing great work. It's the right thing to do. Send your game balls to Meredith. And until next week, say good night, Potty Mouth.

Pottymouth 41:01
Good night, Potty Mouth. And I realize that I have no idea about the quality of the Wi-Fi here. It's saying that I'm unfocused, but then it said I am focused. So

Patti 41:29
mine says I'm not focused, and I feel like I'm zeroed in. Like I am like so so focused.

Pottymouth 41:34
You're much more focused than me.