No Crying In Baseball

Patti 0:17
Music, Hi and welcome to Episode 402 of no crying in baseball the if they had anybody in the room episode. My name is Patty, my voice is not with me, but my friend potty mouth is Hey. Potty mouth, how's it going?

Pottymouth 0:29
Yeah. I was thinking like you sounded great until we hit the record button, and then all of a sudden, a little at a cackle, kind of, or, I don't know, what is it? A

Patti 0:37
little, a little larynge, I don't know. Yeah, it's springtime in your nation's capital, which means even people who don't normally get allergies have allergies. So I'm a little stuffy. I'm a little coffee. Oh, a little coffee. That sounds better. So a lot of things are happening. So sorry if I don't sound the way I should sound. I

Pottymouth 0:54
think the cider is helping. So we're a little cidery actually, right now. But, yeah, it's delicious. What is it? It is all right, I'm gonna have to scooch it out here. It was brought to us by the intern and friend on their visit a while ago, obviously knowing that we would need something for Passover. So hugs a mech to everybody who is celebrating. It is the adventure series. We are full of adventure Hudson, North cider company, New York caramel apple. And what I love about it is even though it has a good caramel and Apple taste, it is not too sweet.

Patti 1:24
Yes, I do like a dry cider. And this is very delicious. Thank you guys for bringing it. Thank you guys. We needed this on today's show. We've got all the catchers and some kids books. We've got sort of, not really police blotter featuring missed opportunities, not Mookie a nightclub and the White House, we've got trailblazers, so we have things that happen in Sacramento. Cheers,

Pottymouth 1:45
cheers to that my catchers are not catching. So this is so when we did our we're talking baseball. Boyfriend, sorry to start off with. These are the guys that we picked in the off season, because there's something super cool about them. We each picked one guy per team, and then from those carefully picked guys, we made our fantasy teams. And at the time in the off season, I knew I needed a couple extra catchers, but then I got four, and we were kind of commenting that maybe that was too many catchers, and excessive. There I was excessive in the catchers, but it turns out no, because now I'm going to call them the Crouching wounded. All my catchers are almost all I've got one surviving catcher. So if somebody please wrap Patrick Bailey in bubble wrap, because I need him to survive. The rest of my catchers are very problematic, starting with Connor Wong, who's my forever boyfriend, the guy that I get to keep next year if I want to, we get to hold over one guy every year he broke his pinky, which is bad. I looked it up, it's like several weeks. You know, it's not, it's problematic for me, because I really like having a Red Sox guy on my lineup, because that's my team, and he broke his pinky on a catcher's interference call on April 8, so it was a George Springer swung and hit his pinky, and he gets called on catcher's interference. So I was trying to figure out, like, a good analogy for this is what I thought of, that it's like dropping your ice cream cone, and then you get in trouble because you made a mess. Yeah? So, like, you know, you're sad because you lost the ice cream cone, and then on top of it, damn it, you get blamed for the mess on the phone pretty close, I could buy that. So I feel bad for Connor Wong and me. And then it's weird, because catchers

Patti 3:28
interference always sounds to me like it's intentional, right? And it's not. I mean, I can't believe, why anybody? Oh, here, let me put my mitt in the in the path of this very quickly swung bat. That would be great,

Pottymouth 3:40
right? Yeah. And as we can see, it turns out that it's really no, not a very good idea. So the poor dude and so right. Then I was like, All right, I need a backup catcher, because I'd still had Patrick Bailey, please. Patrick Bailey, stay sane, stay stay safe, stay healthy. So I put in Corey Lee from the White Sox the day. I swear to God, hours before he went on the IL another ice cream story, he rolled his ankle trying to get back to first base, and he was tagged out. Oh, so, oh again, injured and punished. So that's very sad. And then my third catcher that is now no longer available, I is just wounded in spirit, and that's and so I'm going to count, count that in this sure same group of crouching wounded that would be cha cha champ. And this is a Trump womp, womp, womp, I kind of hate, don't you hear like that? I do

Patti 4:30
that. You didn't need to explain. That's good, right there. You get it right on.

Pottymouth 4:34
He is now a free agent because he chose that instead of going to triple A in the Atlanta system. So you know, you gotta make your choices. He's checking out the fields. You know, with all these other catcher injuries, maybe somebody's gonna pick them up for the White Sox or the Red Sox. Who knows? It's because, and I know you're gonna go into Sean Murphy being back, and they have a rookie, Drake Baldwin. And there's just no room for Mr. Trump. Fun fact, though, if he had gone to triple A, he would have been in really good company, because both Sandy Leon and James McCann are in the Atlanta system, which I did not realize. Wow, yeah. And those are two, like, very experienced, knowledgeable catchers, who are, you know, hanging in there because it's something to do and have a lot of knowledge to impart. So I'm thinking, I don't know if Chadwick made the right decision there. I just want to make an honorable mention to a non croucher who is injured, and that would be Jackson Merrill. This also hurts my lineup measurably. This is my star outfielder from the Padres. I'm gonna take ownership, sure. Why not? Pulled his hamstring one week I talked about him last week, that big extension. Well, sure he pulled his hamstring soon after. It wasn't like a major event that happened. It seems like it's just general soreness. So we're hoping it's not gonna be long. He's technically eligible to be back on the 18th. So one would think, with all of these injuries happening, that I would have to make some adjustments to my lineup. And I did look into that despite, you know, along with fucking no no catcher available for me, but you know, at least I needed a bat. And what would have made sense would be for me to eat a little bit of humble pie with a side of rice. Yes, that would be Ben rice, from the Yankees, who has the highest hard hit rate in Major League Baseball, 72.7% of his hits are hard hit. That sounds like a lot, insane. So we talked about how he bulked up over the off season. While that bulk is doing a lot his he also has the second highest increase in bat speed since last year after Nolan Sean well. And Nolan Sean well was my pick from the angels. So what I decided to do, instead of picking Ben rice, was to pick up Nolan Shawn well, because he's not a Yankee, and he also increased his bat speed. Now his increase, like the percentage from last year to this year, is more than Ben rice. However, Ben Rice's little section there range. Range is the is, the word is higher. So his bat speed is faster than Nolan. But Nolan's been doing really well, and so I'm super excited about him. I don't know. I might be totally fucking up, because Ben rice does have a 310, average with a 1.121 ops as of post game last night. I don't know about today. I know the Yankees just lost. Oh, too bad to the Giants today. So the big question in Yankees world, anyway, that I spy on once in a while, is what happens when John collar Stanton comes back because this is the DH spot, and they talked about Ben rice, maybe trying some other positions, but they haven't yet. So it's going to be a big question. It's going to be a while. Stanton has just been taking a few hits off of the machine, but nothing actual live yet. And I don't know, grab your popcorn. See what happens. So we

Patti 8:02
got a once and forever boyfriend, a guy we carry over our minds. Adley rudgman, that's such a good choice. He's such a good choice. And we have said in the past that one thing he has in common with the intern is they share a birthday, yeah, right? They also apparently share a childhood fondness for the Magic Tree House books. And here's why I know this. Did you want to just say a jack and in? Yeah, right now, right. Okay, so we have talked in the past about how post season bonuses work with teams, right? Depending on where you end up in the postseason, your team was awarded an amount of money that gets, and then your team decides how to divide it up. You figure out what a share is, and how you pay out those shares. So like every player gets a share, they often give shares or partial shares to like the clubhouse staff or whoever right they so the Orioles adopted Harlem Park Elementary school a year ago this week, and they agreed before the postseason last year, no matter what their share is, they're going to donate one of their postseason shares to this elementary school, which means they donated $11,870 which was matched by the Orioles Charitable Foundation, the Orioles themselves and the heart of America. And what they did with that money is they they funded an outdoor classroom for the elementary school, which has a pergola, permanent musical instruments, art easels, a mobile whiteboard, picnic tables, playground benches and two little libraries. And the little libraries are stocked with books that are favorites of Baltimore Orioles players and Adley says, Magic Tree House, please. There were a lot of other books that got listed, including books in Spanish. So this is great. And also the other one that I recognized was picture. Kate povidge recommended the bone series by Jeff Jeff Smith, which is a, you know, a graphic novel series which is incredibly popular and old enough that I know what it is, so I remember that too, right? So this is really cool. And again, it's like this, the aura. Skills, getting involved more writing the check is super, super important, but also staying involved and getting involved in those kids come to games the the team goes to the school and meets with them. It's really nice relationship. And

Pottymouth 10:12
Baltimore City Public Schools is a rough, rough situation. So that means a lot like, that's going into a really play, a place that really, really needs a little bit of help.

Patti 10:22
So the other notable thing is, Adley hit his first home run since opening day this weekend against the Blue Jays. That's who he hit against for opening day. Tyler O'Neal also hit a home run against the Blue Jays, and not shocking, not, but not since opening day. So I'm, weirdly, you know, I'm a little concerned that Tyler O'Neill and Adley Richmond can only hit dingers against the Blue Jays because they don't play them enough to really take advantage anyway, as potty mouth mentioned, Sean Murphy is back. Sean Murphy was my backup catcher, and he has made all the difference in the world to my lineup. He came back from the IL on Tuesday. He went five for 15 with three home runs, six, RBI, four, one scored across 18 plate appearances with a 1.377 ops since he came back this week, already in this less than a week, he has tied for the team lead in home runs, and he's played 10 fewer games than azuna. And obvious, who are the other two that he is tied with for Team home runs. Of course, he also came back with prescription sports goggles. He used to wear contacts. Now he's got the sports goggles so, and he wore those at his first at bat when he had a three run, home run first at bat, back from the IL and so now everyone, everyone says, oh, clearly, that's a good luck term. Okay. Also, he's good at baseball, yeah. But okay, let's do that. Everybody gets when my phone wasn't going nuts this week with alerts about Sean Murphy home runs, it was going nuts about James Wood home runs. This kid, man,

Pottymouth 11:49
it's, I'm so excited to have him here in DC. Four home

Patti 11:53
runs this week, three of them, three of them versus versus the Dodgers. Two of those were two run homers in one game versus the Dodgers. He's got a 1.373

Pottymouth 12:04
ops this week. You know, I feel like I maybe it's definitely too early to say this, but that we kind of overestimated the Dodgers, like the Nationals did well against them, or maybe underestimated and the Cubs like, oh my god, they're the not the Dodgers are not cake walking. They're not leading. You know the division right now, at the time of recording,

Patti 12:21
yeah, the Cubs gave them their their worst shut out loss in history this week, 16 to nothing at home

Pottymouth 12:27
for the Dodgers, right? Crazy, not on my bingo card. Kyle

Patti 12:31
Stowers in Miami. Super hot start, and he's one of those guys like last year, it was Joey Ortiz who had the spot. There's a lot of guys that came up together in the Oriole system. They were all the young guys, and they was crowded, and so a lot of these guys weren't getting a playing time, so they couldn't really. Shelley worked for Joe Ortiz to go to Milwaukee last year, and I think it's working for Kyle Stowers to go to Miami. He's Batting second. He's like, they had a series against the gnats the first two games. He went four for eight with two doubles, a triple and four RBI. So he's getting a chance to shine because he's a starter instead of one of the kids. Right? Very much like what you said about Jackson Merrill. We talked about Wyatt Langford last week and how great he was doing, and how he's probably next in line for an extension. Well, he's on the aisle for an oblique strain. It's actually a 10 day aisle, but they're thinking it's probably going to probably going to be the end of April until he comes back. Oh,

Pottymouth 13:26
I wish the best for that kid, because he's got a lot of promise for rest up. Rest up. All right, we're going to do a police blotter segue. So we're going to get to the police blotter, but first we have a couple of items that are almost the police blotter, or used to be the police blotter. And I just want to quickly mention Jaren Duran, who is a past baseball boyfriend pick of mine from the Red Sox. And before this whole series came out, we talked about him last year when he came out with the fuck him shirt, and we talked about his mental health struggles. And I know that the documentary that just came out recently for the Red Sox has really magnified that and made it very personal, because it's a whole episode where he discusses it and the fallout, or, I guess, the reaction, better said from it, has been really positive. He's gotten a lot of support around it. The Samaritans phone, the hotline, showed a huge increase after so you

Patti 14:23
said he talks about it, but he didn't say what the it

Pottymouth 14:26
is. Oh, sorry, it talks about his mental health struggles, and especially his his attempted suicide. So that is apparently the part that came out, and I haven't seen it yet that came out a lot more clear in the in the documentary, and I do want to watch it, and I agree with the people who are, who are lot in this, who's saying that this is an important thing. Clearly, it's a really important issue to come out there. Clearly it's something to sort of destigma. De stigma fi. Did I say that right? Stigmatize? That's it. De stigmatize. I. Um, and to encourage other people to be honest about their struggles and to look for help when they need it. And apparently he was very, very close to actually having having gone through with it, and is very grateful to be alive today. And that's part of his fucking thing. My point right now is that after that last year, there was the point where he dropped the wrong F bomb. I am usually very okay with F bombs, but not this one, and it was shocking at the time, and upsetting, and especially shocking to all of the LGBTQ community, feeling, you know, very attacked. And he apologized in the way that felt, you know, like apology that he had to do at the time. I want to

Patti 15:44
put air quotes around the word apology to talk about this exactly,

Pottymouth 15:47
exactly. And we always say that the words of an apology are one thing, but you've got to back it up with some sort of action. And we haven't seen that. And yes, I mean, I'm not his buddy. We're not texting. I don't know what he's doing with his day to day life, but now that the spotlight is on him, is the perfect time for him to acknowledge that he is a white, cis male with mental health struggles, and somebody who is not those characteristics with mental health struggles has a shit load of more pressure and more to deal with, more shit to deal with, and especially the community that he literally slandered. And so he suicide is a huge issue, right, right, right? The suicidality rate for LGBTQ, especially for trans youth, is so much higher than this is population, and it would be a great time for him to to educate himself about that and to make some sort of statement, to say that I understand that this issue that I struggle with is even more prominent in this population, and I did something to hurt that population, and I regret it, and I'm gonna donate to Bagley like like I'm doing in his stead. So I've been trying to comment where I can on social media under our podcast to sort of suggest that, and people seem to appreciate it, but he has not yet. So damn it. You know, I feel for him. I know that it's horrible to have to go through stuff like that, yet he could also use this moment to do so much more difference than he's already doing.

Patti 17:21
Not a lighter. Not quite police blottered note, what happened to Mike Trout is not what happened to Mookie. Please stop saying it's the same thing that happened to Mookie in that the in the World Series Saturday the angels played Houston. In Houston, trout was playing right field instead of center field. He was going for a fly ball in Fall territory, he put his glove up into the stands, which means it's no longer his ball, necessarily. He no longer has dibs on the ball. It. This part is a little sketchy. It may have bounced off of a fan's hands into his glove. Fan pulled it out of his glove, some combination of those things. But the important thing is, it was in the stands. So it wasn't, he didn't have dibs anymore, so would, would never have been interference. Whereas Mookie was not in the stands when the fan reached over and yanked the ball, trying the ball out of his glove, that was, that was fan interference. The fan entered the field of play, as opposed to the player entering the stance. So that is different. It was rule the foul ball. The guy who grabbed that ball apologized immediately on the spot, and he said, I just saw this ball COVID at my kid's head, and I just needed to stop it. I don't know. I couldn't tell from whatever, but he did, in fact, apologize to me. He looked pretty sad about his side is nine, so the fan, so he was really he was like a rewarded for a bad behavior. He and his nine year old son met Mike Trout after the game. Trout gave the kid a bat. I mean, there was this thing, but, but what Mike Trout said was, I got kids myself, the way he reacted. He obviously didn't do it on purpose. Well, I don't know if he didn't do it on purpose, but just the way he reacted and his kid and they got moved, they probably spent hard earned money on those tickets. So, you know, trout being trout and being a good dude, but it's not what happened to Mookie. The fan was allowed to go for that ball. It's still bad form, right? But not against the rules. That fan is not gonna get, you know, you know, suspended, a kicked out of, you know, banned from all stadiums for the history of the world and all of that. But not what happened to Mookie? Yeah, looking

Pottymouth 19:27
at the video of it, it is really interesting, because it's not clear how the ball got into the glove or how the ball got into the guy's hand, but what is clear is the guy like looking mortified right afterwards and trying to give it back. Yes, yes. So it's like, he clearly wasn't. It's not like the Yankee fans who are, like, literally holding his hand and ripping it out. It's,

Patti 19:50
yeah, I don't think it was intentional. I don't know how much it was really I'm throwing my body between this ball and my child, but okay, that sounds good, sure.

Pottymouth 19:57
All right, I'm taking deep breath. I'm sorry this is long and sad, but I feel like it's really important, because it's been hugely important to many of the players that we know and love. In MLB, there was a horrible tragedy in Dominican Republic, if you haven't heard, a nightclub that collapsed and the roof caved in, and it's affected lots and lots of people across the league, and I'm bringing it in now because Junior Camero is one of my current baseball boyfriends on Tampa, and he hit his first home run of the season on Tuesday night, which was the night after the roof collapsed. So the roof collapsed that morning at 1244, in the morning. This is in Santo Domingo and Dominican Republic, killing 221 people. There was 53 non stop hours of rescue and recovery, literally digging through rubble for people, finding people dead and alive. 189 people were rescued from the rubble. Of those, 155 were seriously injured and brought to the hospital. 64 were hospitalized, sort of long term, and 17 of them are still there. So this is April 13. So this is a few, you know, five days later, with some in very critical condition. So the morning, or, yeah, the morning of the game, Junior obviously upset being from Santo Domingo, living, actually, his house in Santo Domingo is about 10 minutes away from jet set. And that's the that's the name of the nightclub. Yeah, and the winter team that he was on. When I talked about this a lot in the off season, he was an amazing factor in the Leon is de los Cogito taking the lead on championship. They celebrated their victory there in that night club, January 29 so Junior Camino, between probably knowing a lot of people there, living so close, having just been there that morning, he said, I'm gonna hit a home run tonight in honor of these people. And he did it. And he did it. He also changed his walk up song to volvere by Ruby Perez. So that night, Ruby Perez is a 69 years old, merengue singer. He was the performing band at the night club that night. He also died in the accident. So VO very means I will I will return. And it's one of his most famous songs. Christopher Morel, also on Tampa, changed his walk up song to another Ruby Perez song, sobre vivere, which means I will survive. Ruby Paris's daughter is planning to sue not for money, but for purpose, because she says it was negligence. And a lot of other people have said the same thing. She said that the emergency exit door was locked, and other people reported, like recently, pieces of the roof have been falling off into like people's hair and drinks for a while, and apparently that was happening also a couple hours before the collapse. Just like pieces of the roof were falling there was a fire in this building about two years ago, and so there's a lot of questions about what happened to the repairs after that fire. The government is just starting. I mean, the first step was the rescue. So the rescue is pretty much over at this point. So now the government and international organizations are investigating, and maybe there's going to be some sort of legal action. The owner right now, from what I can see, is just mortified and cooperating with the whole situation. So how does this affect baseball? Well, the first notice that I saw, actually, was Nelson Cruz, 42 years old, sister of Nelson Cruz, you know, one of the players that we have just admired so much, not only for his incredibly long playing time and his mentoring of other players, but the work that he is constantly done giving back in the Dominican Republic, and apparently his sister also worked with him and his foundation in doing a lot of good things in the DR she was the governor of the Monte Cristo province, and had been appointed as governor by the current president, Luis abinader. She actually, from the rubble, called the president two minutes after the collapse, and that's how he found out. And also, like other you know, emergency calls were going in, but she said, send everybody right now. And she, I think she died in surgery. Oh, dear, yeah. Luis Arias of San Diego had rip Nelson Cruz written on his cap. He was very close with Nelson Cruz. They played together on the twins. And from that time, cruise became like his, his main mentor, when Luis did his franchise cycle, first cycle for the Marlins in 2023 he called Nelson Cruz, was his first phone call, and he said he's like my brother. Everything I do here is thanks to him. Nelson Cruz just an amazing human being. Go to I shit. I hope I linked it, if not, go to his Instagram. There's a really beautiful post where he is just grateful for all the support that he's been getting from all the people. People, and also expressed his condolences and his heart to go out to all the other families who are mourning and sending hope to those who are recuperating. Did all the right things. Thank the firefighters, the first responders, Civil Defense volunteers. So that was the first thing that I actually saw, was Nelson Cruz's post about his sister, and then more came in about two other former MLB players who also died in this horrific accident. Octavio Dotel, 51 years old, was really the big name that you see around it was initially thought that he was rescued, but he died on the way to the hospital. He was a relief pitcher, and you know, I'm not sure if he was a starter originally, but he played for 13 teams between 1999 and 2013 so there were a lot of teams showing their respects to him. He was mostly in Houston, five seasons in Houston, from 2000 to oh four, and had two World Series, rings, 11 with the Cardinals, 12 with the tigers, and was part of the World Baseball champs the 2013 Dominican Republican year. And everything that you can see, so many players are posting about him. I go to Yadier Molina's Instagram because he posts karaoke videos with him that are just super endearing. There's just so much love. I guess he was just a super friendly person, very charismatic, great singer, actually, lots of stuff to see on that. And then also Tony Blanco, 43 years old, was only up one season in the majors, 2005 with the Nationals. Played 56 games. But he also played for three different teams in Japan and played for estrellas Orientales in lead on. He was he died right after saving a friend, Esteban Herman, who was also a major league player, played for Oakland, Texas and Kansas City. Apparently, Esteban was coming back from the bathroom. The pieces of Ruth were starting to fall, Tony Blanco pushed him out of the way and then was trapped himself. Horrific, horrific. They were teammates in Japan on the oryx buffaloes in 2015 so you can't go far to you don't have to go far to see many reactions. You know, tip of the hat to rob Manfred for doing the right thing and giving a good, long statement, including the part of the quotation I just want to repeat here is the connection between baseball and the Dominican rep runs deep. So this is important, not only for the DR, but for so many people around the league who are connected to the people who are connected to the people in this tragedy. If you look at Juan Soto, Vladimir Guerrero Jr, David Ortiz, all with very heartfelt statements. Pedro Martinez's video is the most intense to watch. He said that he know about 50 of the victims, including members of this family. So this was a horrific thing that happened this week. I'm hoping that the investigators get some information, and the most important thing is to protect this from not happening again in the future, that hopefully that some regulations can get into place, because this has just, you know, affected so many people that we know and care about.

Patti 28:15
Tough one, I want to rant, of course, about the Dodgers going to the White House. I appreciate that, but I don't have to wrap because Kevin Blackstone wrote a wonderful piece in The Washington Post that I'm going to link to about how Jackie Robinson's team should not have gone to the White House. And here's what he said. He said, I have argued before that there is nothing Congress between Trumpism and the principles of sports, not regard for meritocracy, not deference to rules, not adherence to fair play as arbitrated by impartial observers or their participants themselves, not gracious acceptance of losing. So for the Dodgers of all teams with their history of confronting racial discrimination, a current manager of Black and Asian heritage and a Japanese player of generational talent to visit this President is blasphemous. I'm just gonna stick with that and let you read it. I

Pottymouth 29:10
think that's very well said, you know, and watching Dave Roberts kind of be the everybody go is just so hard to see, so hard to see. But you know, we are gonna keep our hope for the future and things getting better, and girls and women in baseball are one of those things that is on the upswing. And, you know, hang my hope on that shout out to the trailblazers. This past weekend was the eighth. That means we've been talking about this pretty much every year that we have been doing this podcast, which is exciting, eighth annual weekend for girls, age 12 to 14 at the Jackie Robinson complex, very purposely in Vera Beach, Florida. And they do this every year leading up to Jackie Robinson day, which is going to be the day that you hear us. So go out and celebrate and commemorate Jackie Robinson day on Tuesday. Day, April 15, there were 100 athletes from 26 states and four Canadian provinces. And again, you know, check that article, because we've talked about this so many times. There were lots of wonderful people involved, including may Belle Blair, who we talked with cat Williams about couple weeks ago. If you haven't heard that, go back to it, and the amazing Veronica Alvarez, just seeing her interact with the players is so inspirational. She's just so cool and so inspiring. So I'm glad that that is happening will continue to happen. Power to them. I'm

Patti 30:34
gonna tell you two quick stories about things that happen in Sacramento. So as you know, Sacramento's Sutter Health Park shared by two teams, the A's, which have no city name in front of them, and the Sacramento River cats, who's triple A team whose home state of this is they're sharing it with the A's. Why not? The A's spent a lot of money, like millions, renovating the clubhouses to get the clubhouse up to the major league standards, but they couldn't move them. The clubhouses are behind Sutter field. They're not adjacent to the dugouts, and that's important, because Jose Siri filed a pitch off his D while playing in Sutter Home, Sutter Health Park, and lived to the dugout with a little bit of help, and they said, Oh, you know what you need to get to the clubhouse. And of course, the clubhouse is not right there. It's across the field. So they need to send the cart. And they sent the cart which ground to a halt. It either broke down or ran out of gas, depending on who you are paying attention to there were two carts happening. One of them broke down. It had to be pushed off the field, like all the way across the field to go out the door in center field. Very classy, very classy, also rivaling this on the classy schedule scale. Yet another team, yet another team has picked an alternate identity without writing goodbye, really, anybody? Oh no, at all ever the river cats. Now this makes sense on paper. They're going with the gold diggers because they're the closest ballpark to Gold Country, right? And you could be about, like, digging for goals,

Unknown Speaker 32:21
right, sure, but

Patti 32:24
they weren't. The ad campaign, the video had women watching ball players go by and that they put dollar signs on the eyeballs. No, oh, the women that didn't stand for more than like, a minute and a half.

Pottymouth 32:38
So they apparently have no women in their clubhouse.

Patti 32:42
So the video got deleted. The campaign got ditched, like moments later. The best backlash was from the Sacramento Bee, where one of the the editors actually did, like a mystery, size 3000 like you taught you talking over the video, but referred to it as like 1950s area 15, 1950s era tropes about women only seeing dollar signs when sizing up men. And then she said, if they'd had anybody in the room. I mean, this had to get approved. So I know you're thinking about another career, like working with, like GED programs, or, you know, teaching English to, you know, to players. I think I would like the job of, would you please just run all of these alternate identities by me? Yeah, I can. I can spot the problems. Yes, for you before it gets too late, before it becomes a problem. Is there anybody in the room? No,

Pottymouth 33:35
right, right? This is just another like example of why diversity, equity and inclusion is important in every

Patti 33:43
there goes our funding. Thanks for that. Sorry Beth.

Pottymouth 33:47
We just lost out on a grant, right there. But damn it, like if you have people on staff who can pick up on stupid shit like that, and that's so sad, because they could have made it fine, like, gold digger, you know, yeah, that's right there. But

Patti 34:02
like, players with, like, picks, you know, like, like, you know, like, good gold picks up there. So was, they could have had a really fun sort of thing about that. But,

Pottymouth 34:10
no, no, they fucked it up. They fucked it up. Oh, well, oopy, doopy, and that golf cart. I mean, can you imagine Jose Cerise sitting there pain

Patti 34:19
the the announcers were saying, you know, when we used to call minor league games and this stuff would happen, we would say, that's why it's the minor leagues. But this is not a minor league game.

Pottymouth 34:29
I hope he's okay too.

Patti 34:31
I think he is. Yeah, he's just bruised. All

Pottymouth 34:34
right. Time to make some vacation plans. What are you doing? March 6 to 11, 2026 so this is like dependent on safety of air travel, which I genuinely question these days, which is the scariest shit we're talking about, having to go to a family thing in Las Vegas, and only way to get there from here is to fly. But you know, if we're feeling secure about air travel. Next March, maybe Puerto Rico. The World Baseball Classic groups have been finalized, and the only place that I feel comfortable traveling to, if airfare, airfare, if air travel were safe, which maybe it will be, I don't know, would be Puerto Rico, because the the other options are Tokyo, which is far inexpensive, Houston, Miami, which are just towel holes these days, and doing lots of bad things to people that we care about. So damn it, it looks like it could be Puerto Rico, which would be a lot of fun. So if we go to Puerto Rico, we would see Puerto Rico, Cuba, Canada, Colombia and Panama. Honestly, out of the four groups, it is kind of the hottest group, for sure. I forget who I mean everybody else. Look up everything else, because I don't want to talk about it all. But the US has, like Great Britain and Italy and Mexico or something like, and then I'm missing somebody, but so it's, it's, it'll be fun, like, I like all those countries, but I think this group is going to be, you know, intense and contentious. It's like,

Patti 36:05
sort of like the Caribbean

Pottymouth 36:05
series, plus Canada, that's right, and we like Canada, sure. It's like, Canada's so much fun. Freddie Freeman could be there, right? I hope so. I hope he sticks with it. So the semi finals, unfortunately, are in Houston and Miami, and the finals are in Miami. So it was fun while it lasted, when we went last time. But Florida, man, you have so much shaping up to do. It's not even funny. The exciting thing for the US team, though, is that their coaching staff was announced, and they're sticking with the same manager, which is Mark DeRosa, who was an MLP player from 1998 to 2013 with eight teams, but mostly Atlanta, and since then, has mostly been on the microphone side, but he did pretty well last time they came in second to Japan. Not too bad. Also returning Michael Young, Brian McCann Andy Pettit and Dino EVO, all esteemed former players and coaches in their own right. New folks I think are super fun. David Ross, yay coming in. I think he's going to be the bench coach. I forgot to write their positions, but I love David Ross. You know grandpa and dancer and all that kind of stuff. Skip Schumacher, Matt Holliday, George Lombard and Freddie Gonzalez. So, oh, that sounds like big fun. It's, I think it's a good coaching staff. The lineup is bound to be, you know, everybody wants to be on the US team. I don't know. I'm excited. It's still going to be the World Baseball Classic. It'll still be fun. We just can't go to Miami, right? We're on good conscience, right,

Patti 37:32
right? So we have this wacky fantasy league with stupid rules, and we love it. And this year has been super fun, because it's not like a given. From the get go, things keep moving around like crazy. So when I report the standings, I take a shot of the standings at brunch on Sunday, so before the Sunday game starts. So weekly, every Sunday, that's what I'm telling you here, because they've been moving around a lot. Well, lucky for wicked awesome, because I took so this morning, wicked awesome jumped from fourth place to first place. That's big. Bring back. Ronnell dropped from three to seven. I ended up solidly in the middle, which is exciting, considering my infield is really not all there. So the top five right now are wicked awesome team pandemonium, leftist field, Bono's boyfriends and me, how exciting is that? For me,

Pottymouth 38:29
that's quite a top five, all with really great names. And, you know, everybody is great people, so it's lots of fun, even though I'm going to be hanging out in the bottom. You're Nadia. You are not all the way. No, no, I've been like, you know, going up and down a little bit from there. And I just want to get huge shout out and appreciate to the Canadians, because, you know, hanging in there, glad to have the Canadians here. I know that it's hard to get a team full of Canadians, but doing their best.

Patti 38:54
Yes, yeah, for sure. Yay for that.

Pottymouth 38:59
All right, that's what we got. All right?

Patti 39:00
So, as you mentioned, we got Jackie Robinson day on Tuesday, which is the day you'll hear this, the road. I'm saying, How about you're hitting the road?

Pottymouth 39:08
Yes, on Wednesday, we are heading north, which is exactly what people do for spring vacation, right? Her to enjoy

Patti 39:15
this, the sun and the beach. Yeah, by we, you mean the potty mouth family, not we, the no crack at baseball. Gotcha.

Pottymouth 39:21
Gotcha. Me and Mr. Potty mouth are heading up north. And actually, right now, as you guys can see, I am wearing this. Mr. Potty mouth did a little bit of scouting ahead of time. He went to Boston last week on business air quotes. Right here. It was really business. But while he was there, there was this really cool hockey shirt giveaway at one way Park, and I am wearing it because he's a really good share. And it's a combo Bruins Red Sox hockey jersey, which is pretty cool. And it was, you know, just checking out the scene he but he was there in, like, literally, sub freezing temperatures. It was like 24 degrees with a wind chill the night that Mr. Potty mouth was there. I am. Hoping that next Friday, when we are at Fenway for Grateful Dead night. So there's that Venn diagram action working on our favor. I'm hoping it's above freezing. We do get really cool. Grateful Dead Red Sox beanies that I will be wearing, hopefully when we record next time. But maybe not, maybe it'll be so sultry warm I won't be able to wear my beanie, but, you know, April in Fenway parks, they knew that beanies would be would be a thing, but I'm excited. There's gonna be a band. It'll be fun. And I really, really, really hope that the Red Sox pull it off. They're playing the White Sox that the White Sox just took two out of three, meaning the Red Sox one today, yay. But um, we'll see what happens on Friday. We're running out of pictures.

Unknown Speaker 40:44
Sorry to hear that. Yeah, yep.

Patti 40:47
Deeply, please let us know if you do anything special for a Jackie Robinson day, if you've got good plans for the week, if you have any rants to share, we do love a rant. You can find us on social media. We're at

Pottymouth 41:00
sure Find us on blue sky, n, C, i, b podcast, or we're there on Twitter as well, also Facebook and Instagram. No crying and B ball. If you can scrape up a buck a month to keep this podcast going, we would so much appreciate it. That's Patreon. P, A, T, R, E, o, n.com/no, crying and be ball. Yes, I always like take a moment there. I really should write down our Patreon thing that is, that is it you can write every time, please join us. We put our transcripts there, we put any extras that we have, and we are very open to other suggestions of what would make our Patreon pals happy, and it's a good community. And if everybody gives just a little, we can stay afloat. And that's the motto. Everybody give a little and we have a community, and we have a podcast, and things can keep on going. I thought the motto was teamwork, because the dream work that's too There we go. Sure, that sounds much more concise for all sure words I just said,

Patti 41:57
Oh my gosh, get boosted. Fight the man, now more than ever, it's the right thing to do. Send your game balls to Meredith and until next week, say goodnight. Potty mouth, good night. Pot. You.

Speaker 1 42:20
I feel better. I feel much better. Okay, I want that

Patti 42:26
like I 10% of you wants to push it back the other way, but no, there's no need for that. I.