No Crying In Baseball

Patti 0:17
Hi and welcome to episode 432 of No Crying in Baseball, the A Lot of Trash Talk episode. My name is Patti. I'm here with my friend, Pottymouth. Hey, Pottymouth,

Pottymouth 0:26
hey, I will gear up and enjoy the trash talk. I guess maybe I'm doing some trash talk. Maybe I'm included. Yeah, I am. There's

Patti 0:33
trash talk happening. All right, shocking. Can I just interrupt this for a very important public service announcement? Is potty mouths, birthday was this past week. Happy birthday, potty mouse, I really had a great time at your party, expanding vitriol and postcards to policymakers while you guys fed me. Papoose, it was a beautiful thing. Yeah.

Pottymouth 0:52
Well, so that came from, like, our sort of, like collective decisions, that one of the things that you can do, and you all can do this too, to do something in these shitty times is to support immigrant owned businesses. And so we thought for my birthday, hey, let's buy a bunch of papooses and have people over and papooses alliterates with postcards. So we'll write postcards to get out that, um, yeah, that vitriol, that anger, that frustration, and then also some happy postcards, too. I was

Patti 1:22
so glad you came up with those as well, some really supportive ones. And some of them were just because the policymakers, some of our policymakers, are doing good things. You want to reinforce that, but some were actually to support people in need.

Pottymouth 1:32
Yeah. So think about little things that you can do, because I think we all, on a daily basis, just get overwhelmed, which is what the bad guys are trying to do, is to sort of, you know, stifle us by giving us too much shit to deal with. So anything you can do, whether it's buy a pupusa or write a postcard, if we're all in it together, we're gonna make stuff happen. Yeah, we are. Yes we are. And I want to give a special shout out thanks to a new Patreon friend. John arminio, thank you so much, and I hope I didn't butcher your name there, but thanks for joining the Patreon posse, and we will tell everybody at the end of the show about how you can join us and make sure our podcast keeps doing that stuff.

Patti 2:15
Yeah, take a moment for a very sad note. Last week, we talked about how the Dodgers and also the Toronto bullpens were supporting Alex vesia, who was out on what was called the deeply personal matter. He and his wife Kayla, just announced that they they lost their infant daughter Sterling on October 26 which is why he was not participating in postseason games. And it's very sad, and they are grateful for the support they have received, and they continue to get messages of support. So our hearts are with you in this very, very horrible, tough time. Yeah,

Pottymouth 2:48
it's been, you know, endearing to see other Dodgers coming out still with supportive messages. As you know, this is nothing that's easy to get over, so it's going to be a long haul, but it's good to have community in times like this.

Patti 3:03
Yep, yes, for sure, on today's show, we've got the hot stove kickoff with some vocabulary and some contracts. We've got boyfriend award news. We've got things happening in Dodger land. We've got new manager hires. We've got winter ball, and we have the longest police plotter Everest covering everything from fixing pitches to Royal apologies and some fascist in chief looking in the mirror. Cheers. Cheers. So every year, as we go into the hot stove season, we have a little bit of this conversation, because you'll hear a couple of phrases, some vocabulary words, being thrown around that you might not know or you might not remember, how that all gets worked out. And also, well, let's start with hot stove. So do you remember why hot stove? Is the

Pottymouth 3:44
hot stove? Something about sitting around the hot stove waiting for news to come? Isn't that how you

Patti 3:50
sort of, yeah, it's like, the equivalent of, like, you know, the water heater, the water cooler, right? It's like, you know, you just like standing, you're sitting around. There's no now, we know there is baseball, but as far as MLB is concerned, there's not, there's no game. So what are you going to talk about? What are the things that are happening in the in the offseason? One of the things that's happening are qualifying offers. So let me define what those are for you. They're offered by teams to players who are entering free agency, and you're not eligible to get a qualifying offer if you were, if you were a free agent last year and got traded like mid season to somebody else, or if you previous, previously accepted, or, I think even were offered a qualifying offer. So what this offer is, it's a one year contract, and the qualifying offer is the same for everyone who it's offered to, and it's calculated as the mean of the top 125 salaries in Major League Baseball, right? So it's a pretty decent amount, yeah, but decisions will have to be made. So this year, that's $22.025, million sounds like a lot for a one year contract. Yes, it sounds like a lot. And the deadline is November 18. If the player who's offered this declines it, they become a free agent. And. Of the team that signs them loses a compensatory draft pick, right? So for some players, if they're not sure about how they fall in the grand scheme of things, they might just take this contract. Because, like you said, $22 million is no nothing to sneeze at. There are other players who are I'm better than this. I'm going to get offered more than this, or I hope I'm better than this, and get offered. So it's kind of a crapshoot.

Pottymouth 5:25
I'm thinking it's players, especially, who are looking for multi year contracts, right? Because this is just a year that you're guaranteed. So if you are at the stage where you think you're going to be able to, like, if you had a really good year, you're going to be a locked lock down a long term contract. Scott Boris is your agent, for example, you might go for so

Patti 5:42
hard, yeah, hardly anyone ever, ever takes these because everybody believes they can get more, whether it's more years or more money or whatever it is. So this started in 2012 there have been 150 qualifying offers since that time. Only 14 have been accepted in all of that time. So it's not a common thing. So 13 players this year were tendered these qualifying offers, including a bunch of players who are sort of the top five, actually top 10, of free agents this year that, you know, people are guessing who's going to be, who's going to go for the highest who's they're going to be like, the most conversation about, or the most competition for. So that includes, you know, Kyle Tucker and boba Chet and Kyle Schwarber. And among pitchers like Dylan see soon and Ranger, Suarez and for Amber, Valdez are all in that like top 10 predicted free agent. So they're not going to take these offers because they're already identified as they're going to go for big bucks or multi year, or both of those things. Also Trent Grisham and gleyber Torres might take it right sometimes, sometimes players take it if they had a bad year or if they were injured, so didn't play a lot, and they kind of need to, like, have a year to prove themselves. Like, get that one year contract, prove that you're back. Yeah, and then maybe next year you can go for a higher number among the pitchers, Edwin Diaz and Zach Allen and Shota emanaga, Michael kings and Brandon Woodruff is one of the maybes because of, we're playing through being injured for part of the season and all that. Mostly, probably not. But there are maybe, like, two guys out of this list that may take

Pottymouth 7:10
it. How long do they did you already say this? Do you know how much, how long they have to accept it? November 18?

Patti 7:16
Yeah, it's not a lot of time. It's, it's like, it's like a week, it's like a week. And you know, they've already been thinking about it. They've had conversations with their agents about what they think they're able to get as a free agent, and is it going to be more than this amount. And again, as this amount changes every year, it gets calculated and recalculated every year, and it goes up as salaries go up, you get a couple more superstar contracts, and that pulls this average up a little bit. And so maybe next year is even more. And people say, Okay, I'll try this for a year and see what happens. The other category. So, so there's, that's the free agency pool, right? That gets that's part of that free agency pool. There's also the arbitration pool, right? And these are the players who have, like, three to six years of service time. They're not free they're not gonna be free agents yet, but they're they've been in. They've been playing long enough to be able to try to negotiate a better contract. Right? In addition to the three to six year service time, there's what are called the Super twos. The Super twos, these are the top 22% of players by service time, the players who have been there the longest, but not yet three years, right? So with at least two years, but less than three years, they're eligible for arbitration, as long as they had at least 8586 days of service this past year. So who are the players that have played it for at least two years, but if we've played the longest, right? So this year, the cut off is two years in 140 days, right? So if you've had more than that, you're in that top 22% so that also moves some years. It's, it's a lower, lower bar, because, you know, there, there aren't as many players who fit that category. So again, it's that they have to math this every, every single year, right? So 34 players made this cut off. So what you'll see in the free agency pool, I'm sorry, in the arbitration pool, is everybody with three years or more of service time. It's not yet a free agent, plus these 34 guys that are the top 22% of like of everybody else in service time, they will all do that thing where they exchange their their their arbitration numbers on January 8. That's where the player writes down, I think I'm worth this, and the team says, we don't think so. We think you're worth this. And they pass those back and forth. They don't come to an agreement. Arbitration will happen between January 26 and February 13. So you will see a lot of these folks start to drop, because they'll get offered contracts that they'll take, and they'll negotiate those ahead of time, if they don't come to an agreement by, you know, by January 8, then that's when they put those numbers back and forth, and then an arbitration committee decides how much they get. I hope that. Clears things up, and I may have confused the heck out every bit, but those are some vocabulary words you can hear a lot in the next couple

Pottymouth 10:05
weeks well. And the good news is, I know that you're going to be walking us through when we get to those dates, so just hang on, and if you didn't get it the first time, you'll get it the second time. And if you're like me, you'll just learn it, relearn it every year when Patty teaches you, because I've heard this a few times, and I'm still like, oh, yeah, I remember that word.

Patti 10:22
What's that? What is the calculation again? What is that formula? Yeah, there's

Pottymouth 10:26
math. And I just, you know, look around to see what's happening. Is that stove actually hot? And actually, it seems like there is a lot of stuff that shook out this week, and it was too much stuff for me to know where to focus. So I just picked a couple of guys that I'm interested in. So we usually talk about our baseball boyfriends. Right now, guys that we pick in the off season, because they're cool, and we each get one guy per team. And right now we have a spreadsheet full of former baseball boyfriends, so many doing this for a long time. So it's really good that we can search and see. You know, did we actually pick this guy? What year was it? What's their credibility? Did we dump them because they did something stupid? And there's always a few, you know, favorites, even though we try not to pick favorites, they're all our boyfriends. That's not true at all. No, we totally took favorites. Salvatore Perez has been a longtime favorite. I believe that I picked him our very first year. I think so the podcast, because he is, you know, the elder statesman, and he is what fans want. You know, I think, in general, as a fan, you really love somebody who sticks with the team and who is that face of the franchise. And Salvador Perez has been with the Kansas City Royals for his entire career. He's 35 years old. He's going into his 15th year with the Royals, and adorably, he was signed at age 16 in 2006 he has done well with the Royals. He was part of that world series team in 2015 nine times, all star five Golden Gloves, five silver sluggers, and he got the Roberto Clemente award in 2024 which is one of those, you know, super credit for a baseball boyfriend. He hit a bunch of home runs last year, 30 home runs. He is definitely not hitting for average, but he's hitting for power, and that makes a difference. You know, it's getting the runs in last season was a big year for him, because he hit home run number 300 joining only other seven other catchers in all of MLB history who have had 300 home runs and RBI number 1000 so you'd think like this would be, you know, all these round numbers, 35 years old, 15 years this is, it seems, very Hall of Fame. However, he is only 14 home runs away from the Royals record for most home runs, and that would be George Brett with 317 so I can see why he'd want to be coming back. And he's coming back, and he had, there was a club option that probably could have taken him through next year, but I think the Royals and he both did the right thing, and he signed a two year contract. So he was on a four year contract. He would have had this extra year with a club option. Now he has a solid two year contract, but at the time of recording, the amounts were unclear. But I kind of feel like it doesn't matter at this point, if he's happy, they're happy, the fans are happy, it's doing the right thing. He'll probably be DHing a lot, but they have a new prospect, catcher, Carter Jensen, yeah, one of their top prospects. And what better way to get a new guy on than for two years to know that you have two years with the you know, elder statesman coaching him? Yeah, that's so smart. I like it. Good for the Royals. Good for the Royals fans. Congratulations to Alia. I'm wondering where our buddy Kyle Schwab is going to go, because he has not stayed in one club. He's been all over and he's been, you know, I was excited to have him on the Red Sox. We're excited to have him on the Nationals. Philly's fans love him. He fits Philly really well. He's going into free agency with coming off a hot, hot year, 56 home runs, 132 RBI. He's going to be offered that qualifying offer, I doubt. So this is a good example of somebody who's gonna get a big contract somewhere.

Patti 14:14
Yeah? So again, he's older, so he's probably not gonna get a lot of years, but he's gonna get more an annual Yeah, then that 22 probably.

Pottymouth 14:23
So I hope he's somewhere that we get to see him a lot. Yeah, so much fun. He really is. All right, here is my coming clean moment. So at the beginning of the season, as a Red Sox fan, I was feeling pretty shitty about some of the players on the team, and we took pointers from our old friend at queer fancy stats, who years ago, when Daniel Murphy was on the known and long time homophobe was on the Nationals. And what do you do when a shitty person is on your team? And so they came up with a really, much more sophisticated mathematical way. Of basically a Tony or whatever, you know, being able to still root for a team even though there's somebody on it who's shitty. So I had to do this sort of times two, almost three at the beginning of the year with the Red Sox, because Jaren Duran at the end of 2024 so the previous season, homophobic slur came out of his mouth very naturally. He had a very clear, I'm gonna do better apology. But I feel like players owe it to the fans that part of his apology was to learn and grow and shit like that. So like, you need to show us that, right? It's really hard because Duran has done some really positive stuff for mental health awareness. He's done amazing stuff with fans. He's that one guy who will stay out until like two in the morning, until every autograph is signed. He did some visits to Children's Hospital. But as I've been trying to watch, and I have not seen but there is this thing, and this thing is really important, because this is a whole chunk of fans, and a whole chunk of people that you just, you know, completely offended, and it came out of your mouth really easily. So what's behind that? So I said that I would donate $1 for each RBI and $2 for each home run to Bagley, the Boston area gay and lesbian youth organization. And so this morning and I posted on Instagram, I sent them $116 plus the, you know, little bit to cover their fees too badly. So I feel like, all right, that wasn't too tough. I got to do that. And I, you know, even though the Red Sox didn't go as far as I had liked, I felt okay cheering for them through the off season. You know, in that teeny three games worth of wild card. But notably, when I go to games, I don't cheer for him out loud. You know, it's still that little bit of I just feel yucky. And I had promised to write to his mom. I haven't done that yet. I'm chicken. I gotta write in the off season. I really should. I did tag him on the post where I said that I put this money in this place. And also Bagley has a really good form where you're allowed to dedicate it to someone. So I did that with a lot of words. It didn't have a word limit. So I said this is for Jared Duran because and then it had an address, if you know, if you're doing something in honor of someone, that they can send it. So I put the Red Sox address in there. Oh, that's fantastic. We'll see if they actually you did that. Yeah, when it when they kept typing, I was like, All right, I'm gonna explain this whole

Patti 17:26
keep talking till you told me to stop. Yeah, things to say. So there's

Pottymouth 17:29
that the other past homophobic remarks, or at least in his social media. Sean Newcomb was on the Red Sox briefly at the beginning of the season, and I actually didn't have to pay for him. I had promised $10 a win, thinking that he wouldn't get wins, and he didn't get wins. And not only did he not get wins, he went to the A's on May 27 and was primary relief with them. Did a little bit better. But where I did have to pay more than I had anticipated, for sure, was with our oldest Chapman. So Chapman, we knew from a long, long time ago with horrific domestic violence. He was the first guy with a big charge on the MLB Domestic Violence Policy. Yes, that was a long time ago. No, I don't know what he's done since then, but I haven't seen again, like there's been nothing public about him. Say it was a firearm involved. Yeah. I mean, that was her bad. It was a long time ago. It was horrific. And he signed up with the Red Sox again next year. Jaren Duran actually also they got him in a one year contract for next year, which is an interesting thing. And they're surprised with that. Yeah. Well, there people are taking that different ways. It's very tradable. So I think that, and I hope to fuck that. That means that he's on the trading block. He has been very vocal about really wanting to stay with the Red Sox, but the outfield is way too fucking crowded. We've got two other gold Glover's out there. So, you know, there's, there's and then Roman Anthony. There's a lot of, who knows what's going to happen with Duran Chapman. On the other hand, they really want to keep him. He i It's fucking unreal. He's still throwing over 100 miles, over 101 miles an hour. He is, I mean, you know, as far as dedication goes, he is really, really focused on his health and his workout and his regimen, and it's working. And I hope somebody can bottle it and package it to all these pictures who are getting injured. I mean, it helps. You know, he's built like tree trunks for arms at this point. But I said five bucks a save split between a recommendation from our friend Callan for the Sojourner House in Providence, Rhode Island, which is within, you know, Red Sox fandom dome, I would say, and Rosie's Place in Boston, which is a shelter that I've known since I was a kid, very long time. Shelter in Boston for abused women Chapman had 32 fucking saves this year. 32 fucking saves. So I didn't have time this morning to actually get the money in. But that means $160 Split between those two places. So here we go, and I'm really going to hope that the Red Sox make better decisions next year, or at least that these guys do something I need to spend some time, although queer fancy sets. I was looking at their stuff today, and they had done open letters. And did an open letter, very clear to Jaren Duran when this issue happened. And I, you know, I appreciate having that out there. And I feel like shit. I got to do more of that. Yep, yep, good work. I like the way you're, you're, you're being a good role model for this. These are things that can be done. And thank you to queer fancy stats for showing us the way to begin with. Very briefly, awards, it's award season, and gold gloves came out this past week, and my center field is really, yeah, just rocking this year. So two current boyfriends I got both the American League and the National League center field. Gold gloves was say Don Rafaela, and also Pete crow Armstrong and potty mouth has a catcher, Patrick Bailey, who was a Gold Glove winner, the Pat, the platinum glove, which was the fan vote. We each have a former Junior as a boyfriend as the winner. So Bobby would JR and Fernanda tatis Jr got the platinum gloves. And for silver sluggers, our former boyfriends are almost a complete sweep. So yay. I don't know if that's because we're really good at picking the guys, or we've been picking guys for so long. There's we've got all the guys. Yeah, I don't think that's it. But what the heck? Maybe some sort of comment combo there. You're like, huge props for I think center field Gold Glove is really an impressive Yeah, because that's a lot of terror. You're covering a lot. You got to do a lot of shit out there. So, yeah, that's awesome. And Patrick Bailey, I'm glad that his glove is working because his bat not so much. So he's got got that going for him. Yeah? All right, I'm going to start the shit a little bit so I think, all right, we're talking, we're trash talking. Yeah, I'm gonna start nice and go into trash talk. So I'm gonna segue into the police blotter, and then Patty's gonna go full steam ahead. Absolute all engines blasting. I want to talk about the Dodgers, our new World Series, reigning champions, and there's been a lot of press out there saying that they have donated money for in the game, but it's not them, it's their fans. So yay to Dodgers fans. Dodgers fans have donated about, and counting, $30 million to sick kids Children's Hospital. Sidebar, Sick Kids, is that a really good name for Children's Hospital? I don't know. I I feel weird about that. I thought Canadians were like, pretty sharp way generally, why we're talking about Canadians, we're talking about the Dodgers, right? So the the what they're doing is sort of paying it back in in the same style that the Canadians did. So basically, we should give the Canadians credit, because what happened when Toronto beat Seattle as like a friendly Canadian gesture, as Canadians tend to do, they donated so Canadian fans donated money to Seattle Children's Hospital after the ALCS. Okay? So I think the Dodgers were like, Huh? So if they did that one, you know, one series below, we should probably suck up and do this now. So they did the same thing, except for its fans. This is a fans organizing themselves, and they donated about $30 million about 400 donors at last count, and 20 of them signed up to give monthly so power to those Dodgers, donors with money putting it in the right place, and power to the Toronto Blue Jays, donors with money putting it into the right place. That's all a good thing. And you had mentioned Alex vesia earlier, and many of them did $51 contributions for his you know that both pitchers had put on their caps. So that is a classy thing, and appropriate too, in the in the situation. Sadly, this sort of so with thinking about donating money brought me down shocking another rabbit hole, because I thought, What happened to that million dollars that the Dodgers pledged on June 20, when all the ice shit was going down. So if you'll recall, and you can go back in the old dregs of the past episodes we talked about when the big ice invasion first started, end of May, beginning of June and LA that Dodgers fans were upset. What did the Dodgers do to sort of support the community at that time? And there was a lot of nothing. And then we talked later about how Dodgers ownership is actually profiting from the detention industry. Because Walker, should I forget his first name. Is invested in GEO Group, which runs detention centers and Palantir technologies that does you know, technologies to identify folks for detention all sorts of shitty, shitty situation there. So at least at that time, they said, Okay, we're good. And this is after they were shamed. The soccer teams too. We talked about this, right? The soccer teams actually jumped right in. Did very visible stuff, dodgers, nothing, nothing, nothing. And finally, they were like, Okay, we're going to donate a million dollars. So what happened to that million dollars? I still don't see any really clear evidence of where it went. There were a couple articles that said that in August, it was given to the California Community Foundation, la neighbors fund, and that it was distributed $1,000 each to 1000 families, 1000 Los Angeles households who were quote, struggling to meet their basic needs due to the immigration raids. So maybe you know, the breadwinner of the family was detained, and everybody else is struggling to make ends meet. Or, you know, there's so many different ways that that could be interpreted. USA Today had an article, and they said that more than 200 donors, including the Dodgers, have helped raise $2.6 million for the cccf, la neighbors fund. So if you go to the CCF, that's the California Community Foundation. Website. Seems like a great organization. This fund is really solid. It kind of links to a page where you can donate to it if you would like to add the fund. Link says that $853,000.06 853 681, one. Was raised by 370 people with no mention of the Dodgers. I couldn't find any mention of the Dodgers on their website. So those of you with better googling searching skills, please see if you can find any like have you? Have you found something quickly? I see you. No. All right, if you can find any evidence of this actually having been distributed. But my other point here, so even if it has been distributed a C above that Dodgers, ownership is still involved in really shitty stuff. So no matter what, the guy who is who is profiting the most off the team is using some of his wealth to

to impact negatively, to to oppress people in that community. And according to government records, so I went to the Homeland Security website as of August 26 Nome herself, Christine no herself, announced that over 5000 people have been arrested in the LA area. So mind you, above it said that they were helping 1000 families. 5000 arrests have happened, and more. And if you go to the Human Rights Watch research on this, 66 of those arrests had absolutely no criminal record whatsoever. 60, yeah, sorry. Thank you very much. 66% of those arrests no criminal record, nothing, not a parking ticket, nothing out of the 34% who do have the criminal record, only 5% of those were serious. So 95% of these arrests are either nothing or something like maybe changing lanes wrong? Yeah, what they are is cruelty. Yep, exactly. There is no end in sight. And so as far as the Dodgers acting on this, fans are starting to put on pressure. So cheers to Dodgers fans who are organizing around this. Kike Hernandez is still getting a lot of credit as being the only guy to speak out so far, and as far as I can tell, it was only that original statement. Yeah, he's due to be dad again any day. But come on, Kike, speak out more, and everybody else should be too like especially there's a lot of immigrants on the team, like we talked about before, but it's not just their job. It's everybody's job to do the right thing. Endalon, which is the national day labor organizing. I forget that last n, anyway, it's an organization for day laborers across the country, but I think that they're based in LA, and they're very active in LA, and they've got a lot of stuff going on online, urging no White House visit, and so, you know, they went last time. There was a lot of to do around it. And Dave Roberts kind of said, you know, it's, it's the honor, not the person in the office, yada yada. But they went fucking last year. They don't have to go back. If you go and please, I would like, here's, here's your easy action for the week. So we wrote postcards, we bought papooses. Here's another thing that we can all do. It's very easy to remember, go to ice out of la.org That's ice out of LA altogether.org and you can sign the petition that says, Don't go to the White House. And I think any baseball fan, and you can add your own wording, any baseball fan can, can do that. If you want to post it, repost it on social media, would be great. And tag the players, you know, tag the Dodgers. Just if we can keep reposting and supporting and Elon's efforts, then the more the better, and hopefully they'll get the fucking message. There's a great video that I think will link. A local pastor, and it doesn't have his name on it, but his like, passionate speech is really impressive, and he said, we're asking for one more intentional walk past the White House. Oh, beautiful. Then he addresses the team and says, we sat with you for 18 innings. Give us one extra inning of empathy so that there's my rant, and I will sit back and drink beer while you tell us everything else.

Patti 30:27
What the beer drinking is very delicious

Pottymouth 30:30
is it is Manor hell brewing companies, fest beer. It is festive. It has a really cute little festive guy on it, with lots of mugs of beer in front of them and big wide eyes, as I would be if I had that much beer in front of me too.

Patti 30:44
Yeah. No, it's very delicious. And yay, Manor health, yeah. But okay, police plotter has so many things, so many things. The first one happened just today as I was on my way here to record, the news broke that Emmanuel Class A Luis Ortiz from the Guardians, both pictures with the Cleveland guardians were indicted today on a bunch of charges, all related to sports betting, including rigging pitches in games that they were pitching. That's really so that's pretty horrific. They've both been on paid leave since July. Luis Ortiz was arrested today in Boston. Class they apparently is out of the country. So you know, to be determined, what happens there? Probably will stay there. Yeah, I'm guessing if they are found guilty on this whole long laundry list of of what they're being accused indicted for, possible 65 years in prison. There's a lot of things that are that can be stacked on top of each other. So class A's the investigation went back to 2023 and they said his conspirators, right scored like $400,000 in winnings based on his actions. Ortiz has only been only went back until June of of this year, I think, and so it's like $60,000 so they were paid for throwing rigged pitches. You know, the first pitch you throw to a batter is definitely going to be a ball or whatever they were. They took bribes. They were paid ahead of time for like, you know, creating this whole structure in which bad things happened. No other member of the Cleveland team, or the whole franchise is involved or affected by or impacted by. This is just these two particular pictures. And the MLB still has an investigation that's ongoing. And typically they wait to see what the what the criminal investigation shows, and then they they have theirs. These guys are not coming back. This is too much, unless something happens that all of a sudden they're, you know, found innocent. But, I mean, the team says we notify everybody about everything. And, you know, everybody knows, everybody knows. And I know there's concerns about, like, language stuff, but, but fixing pitches seems like that's got, it's a pretty obvious one.

Pottymouth 33:00
I just, I have so many questions. I mean, this is still, you know, alleged, and there's, they still get their day in court and all of that. And I'm just because they're both immigrant players, I wonder about how things are communicated, what expectations are, what understanding is, it's I feel like there's got to be so many people around them, like, I feel like there must be a mastermind that put them up to it, like, I feel like they're going to be taking the fall for something that's probably more than just them.

Patti 33:33
Yeah, yeah. They're pretty clear that these guys definitely threw pitches, I mean, like there were pitches that were based on they were paid to pitch, but a certain way, I think somebody coached them. No, no, I know, organized. So, yeah, so they are, they're guilty to some level. And the question is, you know, can they trace it back up? Could they figure out, is this some, you know, big network or whatever? But yeah, yeah, it's a lot.

Pottymouth 33:57
And it shows that sports betting is causing so many problems.

Patti 34:02
And these are those prop bets that we talked about that MLBPA is like, can we just get rid of the prop bets, at least? Because those are the ones that are centered on what one particular player does in one particular instance. And if those weren't allowed, none of this would happen, because these are all absolutely those kinds of bets that we're talking about here. Yeah. So, yeah, they did something wrong, but boy, that wrong thing was made easily available to them. Yep, exactly. That didn't have to be exactly. It just did not have to be. Let's talk about the royalty for fun, because right? So Prince Harry, you might remember him, married to that actress, person you know, Meghan Markle, right? Harry's the good one, because they defected, yes, well, okay, but here's what happened. Harry had to apologize to the entire country of Canada because he wore, and bear with me, he wore a Dodgers cap while attending a game in Dodger Stadium. He was at the World Series game four in Los Angeles, the front row wearing a Dodgers cap because he was at Dodger Stadium. So Harry and Megan were there. Guests of the owner of the Dodgers, or one of the owners, which could actually be Michael Jordan. We don't know, because he was sitting in front of Michael Jordan. It may not be like the owner. It may be one of the owners. We don't know. They live an hour outside of Los Angeles. This is their home team, okay, so I'm painting a picture for you right now. Meghan Markle did live in Toronto for several years while she was filming suits. Right? That series was filmed in Toronto,

Pottymouth 35:22
but that's just living that's like, I live here, sure, sure.

Patti 35:26
But I mean, like, you know, I moved to different places and I picked up teams. I get that. I get that then, and when they defected, they, you know, Harry and Megan lived in Toronto briefly before settling outside of Los Angeles. We have rules for what you wear in a ballpark when it's not your and then this is their home team. Yeah, it is their home team. But it's always like, if you don't have you know, if you don't feel strongly about either way, then you support the home team because you're in their backyard. So what the heck? But Harry's Dad, you may have heard of him. King Charles third is the head of state of Canada, right? Which is a weird so they're like, oh, is your loyalty to, like, your new home or to your old home? Because he's from freaking England, so he should be rooting for the Canadians. And that, to me, makes me think that perhaps the whole King thing, right, is more of a problem than what baseball cap you're wearing. I mean, I think it's a deeper, deeper issue than you know you have to apologize to Canada because your dad's the head of state, and he's probably been to Canada three times in his entire life. I have opinions, right? Prince Harry's remark about this when he was on his apology tour to the all of Canada, he said, Well, he's trying to brush it off. When you're missing a lot of hair on top and you're sitting under flood lights, you'll take any hat that's available.

Pottymouth 36:46
That's good. I yeah, I don't think he has to defend his choices. No matter where you're from, you can choose whether you're gonna keep like I'm, you know, born, bred, Red Sox fan, living outside of DC, I've chosen to continue my Red Sox fandom, but that's me. Harry is clearly rebelling against his family anyway, like he's left he and Meghan Markle and she was treated by shit by them, right? He has no fucking allegiance in this situation. I should be apologizing to him, right? In this situation, it's, I think, for him to adopt the Fandom of his new home, makes a lot of sense. And then there's the whole like, Canada, do you really owe anything to the UK? Like it would be one thing if it were a UK team, maybe, but it's not. It's a weird fucking relationship. And I don't, I don't know he can do whatever the fuck he wants.

Patti 37:36
Hey. So the fascist in chief decides that he wants the new stadium for the Washington football team named after

Pottymouth 37:42
him. Just fuck right off. So that where I was this afternoon the I was hanging out with a friend whose husband and kid were at the

Patti 37:49
game where the President was

going. Yeah, so do you know if he showed up? I don't know. I was busy to show up. Who showed up? Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland. So we got while we were hanging out when we were expecting, like, a text with a picture of the jumbotron with the fucking fascist on it. We got a text of a picture of West Moore, and we're like, Oh, hey. Like, that's kind of gutsy for you to show up at a game where theoretically the President is going to stake his turf and say, you know, and to be clear, where the team plays is, in fact, in the state of Maryland, exactly. So what's happening is there is going to be a new stadium built on the site of the old RFK Stadium, which is, in fact in Washington, DC, which will in the future house the Washington football team, the commanders, right? It's got a $3.7 billion home, right?

The press secretary said that, in reference to like Trump stadium, that would surely be a beautiful name, as it was President Trump who made the rebuilding of the new stadium possible. Blatantly untrue. Right? What he made, what he made was threats. He threatened that if they didn't go back to the former racist name of the football team, that he would like block the stadium all that. So he made threats he didn't make the stadium possible. So he's being absolutely ridiculous. More on the fascist in chief being ridiculous. He just pardoned Darryl Strawberry, and I think what he did was look in the mirror and say all of these things that he was accused of. I've done those things, and he can't possibly be bad. Here's the story. He pardoned Darryl Strawberry, because who, basically, they pardoned his tax evasion conviction, right, which was in 1995 to which he had pled guilty. Right, it was not in question. Right, he did, in fact, not report 350 $100,000 did I say that? Right? 350 K in income for sales of memorabilia, autographs, appearances, right? He hid that money. He was wrong. He served 11 months in a Florida state prison. He also was suspended from Major League Baseball for cocaine possession. Yeah. And listening a prostitute boy and these all happened while he was playing for actually, both in succession, the New York City baseball teams famously home to the fascist in chief. Does this sound like they have a whole lot in common? I'm just thinking, oh yeah, I should. I could pardon him, because those things aren't really wrong, because I also do those things. So Darryl Strawberry said President Trump spoke warmly they were on a phone call. Spoke warmly about my baseball days in New York City, praising me as one of the greatest players of the 80s and celebrating the Mets. Then he told me he was granting me a full pardon from my past. So from my past,

Pottymouth 40:41
I have so, like so many questions like, why? How did this fucking occur to him? There's something behind the scenes that happened. Also the book that I read or listened to, or something of the Mets 86 win it was like the bad guys one or something like that. Darryl Strawberry was an asshole, like a complete asshole.

Patti 41:03
You'll be pleased to know he has now. He's now a Christian, and he's cleaned up his act. He's been sober, so, you know.

Pottymouth 41:11
But he's also like not going back to jail, like the why, pardon him. Why does he need this clean slate? It is fucked up, I don't know, because something's going on behind the scenes. Yeah,

Patti 41:23
it's because of the laundry list of things. It's like, well, those weren't real crimes, because I do that stuff all the time, not a real crime. I have a little bit of gossip for you as we're going into the negotiating of the collective bargaining agreement for the players union. We talked last summer about how Rob mad friend was on his tour of all 30 teams to, like, meet everybody in the clubhouse and talk about what's important to you guys and all that. And he had an altercation with with Bryce Harper while in the Phillies clubhouse, as people do, where Harper said, you know, if you're talking about salary caps, you can get the fuck out of the clubhouse, right? And then, and Manfred did not, in fact, get the fuck out of the clubhouse. He stayed and talked about things, not so much the salary cap. Turns out, more happened, more happened, and it's just, it's really juicy gossip, and it's like mafia level juicy gossip, right? So a sports agent, Alan Walsh, reported last week that one of the commissioners, deputies, so somebody who was speaking for the commissioner, said to Bryce Harper, don't ever say that again. To the commissioner, don't ever respect him again. Publicly like that. Respect right? Disrespect him again. Publicly, like that. Thank you. That's how people end up in a ditch

Pottymouth 42:36
with cement shoes, a ditch, right?

Patti 42:39
And what is this The Sopranos here. What are we talking so that just tells me that we're all warm and fuzzy going into contract negotiations with with the players union.

Pottymouth 42:49
It kind of feels like that's the new normal in this country. You know, it's just that is so fucked up, yeah, all right, increasing my never ending respect for Rob Manford. But also, you know, Harper has his way of getting an altercation. Well, he does, yeah, but this way, this one, we're on his side, yeah, all right. So, you know, I think we just got all the shit out of our systems. And we're gonna end on some happier notes. I'm going to go into winter baseball. So, as Patty said, before baseball is still happening. You just got to know where to look for it. There's all sorts of winter leagues going on. And this week I want to focus on the Puerto Rican League, the League of baseball professional de Roberto Clemente in Puerto Rico, because they just started, actually. So we're recording Sunday night, November 9. Their opening night was on Friday night. And the big news is Javier Baez, who you picked as a baseball Boyfriend Back in 2018 with the Cubs has announced that he is playing with the Congress de Santurce. That's the crabbers. He last played with them way back in 2014 to 15 and 15 to 1626, games total, he played for Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic in both to set 2017 and 23 and very, very likely is going to be there next year for 2026 so he's just getting a little bit of a head start. He this past year sort of was emblematic of what happened with the Detroit Tigers. He had a very strong first half before the all star game made the all star game. And he was batting 275, before all stars 752, ops. And then he and the rest of the Tigers went on a major drop. I think he started first, and the rest of the team caught up to him, you know, heading into the postseason. Sorry, Tigers fans, painful, painful post. It was all star game. He was only batting 223, 548, ops. So I think Javi has some training to do. He has some time to make up for and so he's doing it in his home. I want to say country. But you know, whatever Puerto Rico, that's the situation. Yeah. And before he. Announced that he was going back to play. He bought one of the semi pro teams, the double A League, so the Bravos de Sidra, he bought, and he said at the time that he was trying not only to to own a team, but also to support baseball in his country and to support a community that loves this sport. He said he wants the Bravos de Sidra to return to be a strong force in double A. The double A season is not going on now. So right now, the Roberto comment, a league is going on. Double A is from March to August. So kind of MLB time? And there's a shitload of them. There are eight sections in this tiny island, and each section has five to six teams. So last year, Sidra came in fifth in the central section. So we'll see what happens to them under jave bias next year. But it seems I'm so semi pro. You know, it seems a little maybe beerly In some ways, but there's definitely guys who have higher aspirations, and I'm sure Javi biases team will be like that. Martin Maldonado is on the move. I think just last week, mentioned I was all excited about him playing with the Leones de escogido, mentioning that he's Puerto Rican, so wondering what was happening there. And it turns out that he's back in Puerto Rico, so he is now playing with the Maya West team, and his the announcement is super fucking cute, because he has a little he has three kids. He and his wife and three kids live in Puerto Rico, and he walks on the field in his catcher gear, and there's a little number 15 machete behind him, which is his, one of his little ones. Roberto comment, a league is going through. And I thought this is hysterical. The whole article was in Spanish, and it mentioned el rebranding. So their rebranding is called La

Patti 46:47
Pro. I know so much more Spanish, you can

Pottymouth 46:51
follow that right along. So la Pro is now the new nickname for the Liga de baseball Professor commenting, maybe they got sick of saying La Bay, ESA la Pro and it has a whole media plan complete with a jingle. I didn't hear the jingle, but I did see the video, and it's very moving. It's a kid, you know, wearing a la pro jersey at bat and then sort of visioning in sort of field of dreamsy kind of way adults playing like he's gonna make it someday. Sure thing, yeah. And so all the the big guys and their different jerseys from the different teams, and then it flashes back to this little kid playing really hard and the sweat going down his face. So yes, you can do it too. Oh, I lied. The season kicked off Thursday night with Mayaguez, so my ways won last year. So they're the reigning champions, and they played against senadores de San Juan on Thursday to kick it off. It's only a 40 game season, only six teams. This is just humorous. So looking into how the six teams goes toward the playoffs, when you get to the playoffs, there's a four team semi finals and then a two team finals. That makes sense. If you get to the point where you're headed, toward the 70 finals, and the fifth and the fourth place team have a one game difference. There's a wild card game, but it doesn't end there. So it doesn't just get decided on the wild card game. If they play the wild card game and the fourth place team wins, done, they go to the semis. If the fifth place team wins the wild card that very same day, they play a seven inning game after that, and if that team wins both of them, then they get it to go on to the semis. Well, thank

Patti 48:28
God, straightforward or anything, right? Isn't that crazy?

Pottymouth 48:31
So I'm kind of rooting for the wild card scenario, because

Patti 48:35
there's always more baseball is better than less baseball.

Pottymouth 48:38
Absolutely. Semifinals start January 2. So I guess that wild card situation will be like our New Year's Eve present or something, fourth against first, second against third, best out of seven. Their finals are best out of nine. So again, more baseball better than less baseball. If you are in Puerto Rico and you want to see a game and you want to bring a kid who's under 12, they can go free this year as long as they're entering with an adult. So I think it seems like there's just a big push to, like, expand the love with the Puerto cane League, and then they get to run the bases on Sunday for the first time. Rawlings, sponsor of MLB Gold Glove, is sponsoring Golden Glove in the league of Professor no Roberto Clemente. So there will be nine gold gloves, just like gold gloves here they have two Roberto Clemente days, not one, because you know the guy on and it's on the 20 firsts, on the 21st of November and on the 21st of December. And everybody wears 21 this season is dedicated to Carlos Beltran, who, you know, famously, was Rookie of the Year. He won the Roberto Clemente award when he was shit. I don't remember which team he was on at that point, maybe Mets nine time, all star nine time, all star three Golden Gloves, two silver sluggers. And the beginning of the end for him was his World Series win with the Astros, where he got a lot of the blame. Him, and then didn't get the Mets managing job and sort of fade into the sunset up here, but he does sponsor baseball Academy in Puerto Rico, and is very much a hero there. So we'll see. He's, I think he's on the All Star ballot this year. So we'll see what happens with that. My last bit of international news, I talked about the Copa America, and it was canceled. So it's unclear. This was going to be another internationalism with the World Baseball and Softball commission, and it was going to be very important qualifier for other competitions. And I did all this research with AI episode 430 if you want to go back to that, it was going to include 11 countries plus Puerto Rico. The countries had, just like the day before, announced their rosters, because the tournament was supposed to fucking start November 13, right? I mean, no, no, this is the one that was going to be in Panama. Oh, Panama, yeah. So that was so a very similar situation. So the Citi Field, one that got canceled was between two Dominicans, right? That's right, that's and it was canceled because of something that the promoter fucked up. This one, even though it's huge, 12 different teams, international situation, World Baseball and Softball commission, they're rescheduling it because of, quote, a breach of contract by the private promoter in Panama. Wow. So there will be a press conference. They're getting their stories together on November 12, and you can be assured that I will listen and let you know exactly how they excuse themselves out of this mess. But I feel bad for all those teams and for countries like Argentina and Brazil that don't play a lot, this is going to be a really big deal and and possibly qualify them for another for another competition, and who the fuck knows? I don't know. That's a lot. That's a lot travel, yeah.

Patti 51:48
So the other thing is happening in this hot stove season is lots of teams are hiring managers, rather like front office staff and all of that. And there was a piece in the athletic about how a lot of these are. They were joking about the, like, novelty hires. What they meant was, like, non traditional hires. And in some ways they are, and yet they're all white guys, right? I mean, the difference is, they don't necessarily have a lot of experience, but they're mostly that's a big fucking deal white guys. Like, okay, this is not all that out of the ordinary. So Miami just promoted their assistant general manager, Gabe Kapler. You might remember him from managing the Giants in San Francisco. He's been promoted to General Manager of of the Marlins. He's been in Miami since 2023 San Diego. This one's one of those things makes you go. They promoted their special assistant and their former reliever, Craig stamen, to manager out for a three year deal. He has no managing experience, but, and this is my I worked in HR for a couple of years, had on he was participating in the interviews of other candidates for this position, and then was hired for this position.

Pottymouth 53:04
Seems a little bit slimy. It does. It does so as the sidebar, he is the second former national player to be managing a California team because of Suzuki. Up with the angels. Look

Patti 53:17
at that. Yep, look at that. Yes. Again, this is Suzuki, again, not really managerial experience, but you know, he's, he's, he's, you know, caught some games. So what could possibly go wrong there? So we talked before about Craig Albert as being named the manager for the O's, and also how he had turned down other opportunities because he wanted to stay working under Stephen Vogt in Cleveland for a while longer before, you know, branching out and having his own thing. So he had his official announcement at Oriole Park Camden Yards this week. Stephen vote was there to support him and also to trash talk him, because they're, you know, they're gonna, they're, you know, American League teams, right? So Stephen vote says there's gonna be a lot of trash talk back and forth. Apparently, Craig has kind of a Massachusetts accent. Oh and so. So owner David Rubenstein said, We think he can learn to speak Baltimore. Yes, the interim manager who had been who you know this past season, who'd actually did really well, Tony mancelino, who I was kind of rooting for, for a manager, but Craig sounded pretty good to me right now. He was hired Friday to be the third base coach in Atlanta, and he was, in fact, the third base coach in Baltimore before he was promoted to the interim gig. So he's got a good soft landing there. I wish him the best, and I'm looking forward to seeing what Craig does. But come on, can we hire somebody who's not a white guy somewhere? Please, please, yikes, yikes. What do you got going on? What's happening this week?

Pottymouth 54:48
No, oh, shit. What's happening this week? I don't know. I think we have some more awards coming, but I don't write down what they were.

Patti 54:54
Yeah, yeah, MVP and work of the year, managing all those things are happening. And saw young girl. Happening?

Pottymouth 55:00
Yep, so that'll be fun to check in on. And actually, we need to bump next year, next year's next week's recording a day, because next Sunday is Mr. Potty mouths birthday. Oh, yay. Yeah, that's exciting too. Instead of having him on cooking detail and beer back up, we'll do something else and hopefully record afterwards. But happy, almost birthday to Mr. Potty mouth.

Patti 55:23
Well, that's super nice. I just want to, like, reiterate a couple of the things that potty mouth and others mentioned. That mentioned today are things that you can do when you read horrible news and you wave your hands around, saying, How can I stop this? What can I do? Think about little things, like, if you are not an immigrant yourself, so you're not being targeted. Make decisions, intentional decisions, to order in visit immigrant owned restaurants, buy from immigrant owned businesses, because their usual demographic is afraid to go outside. Yeah, so make up for it, right? That's something small you can do to keep these businesses running. Again, the postcard thing that we did for your birthday was great. It's easy to find the addresses of folks, and it's really good to kind of do that as a community. We had, what a dozen of us around a table, and we were like, talking about what we were writing and who we were writing to, and that was super great. You mentioned community foundations as somebody who received some of the Dodgers money, and I was actually at a community foundation fundraiser today for our local small town Community Foundation, if you have one in your community, they are terrific to support because they are because they are so small and so community org focused, yeah, they can be very flexible in how they use their funds, right? And so they can target money where it's needed the most on a dime they don't have, you know, quite as much bureaucracy as larger grant making organizations. So that's a good place to check out. And if you like what they're doing, throw them a couple of dollars. So there's a lot of things that you can do. Please, please do them, and please tell us what you're up to and then. And you can do that on social media.

Pottymouth 56:58
Yeah, you can find us on blue sky ncib podcast. We will check Twitter, but we recommend blue sky. Facebook and Instagram are no crying in B ball, and if you want to join the fun on Patreon, we would really, really appreciate it. So I think the wonderful thing about our Patreon, and it's a lot of people doing a little, and it keeps us going, because we don't need a lot, but we do need a little bit from everybody to keep the podcast running. So that's P, A, T, R, E, O, n.com/no, crying and B ball. And for $1 a month, you can join the community, and then you can put your other donation dollars elsewhere. But that's right. I think $1 a month, if you are a regular listener, it would make sure that we keep going, and we would really, really appreciate it.

Patti 57:41
That's right. That's right. Think about getting your booster. Holidays are approaching. You might be doing some travel. If you can get a booster, you should get a booster. And if you can get some travel, because you can get some travel, yeah, we're on we're driving everywhere because, yeah, yeah, flying right now, not something to count on in the near future. So, yeah, so, so get your booster fight the man is the right thing to do. Send your game balls to Meredith and until next week, say goodnight.

Pottymouth 58:06
Potty mouth, good night, pie mouth.

You and I was like, Well, that seems reasonable, so you got to have your fun. Yeah, so that was good, but then I was on, you know, their time, and we all had a drink, and then everybody's time gets a little Yes, timey wimey, i.