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Howdy everybody. Reading is tough, so I thought that we'd try something new today: listening! As the above summary aptly summarizes (I lost my thesaurus, sue me), I do a weekly interview on a sports podcast called The Phil Naessens Show. Since I go on as a representative of Athletics Nation, and we talk about A's baseball, I thought that it would be appropriate to share it with you. I have posted links to previous episodes in various FanPosts, but I'm not going to link them here. You see, I get a little bit better at this with each episode, which means that if you listen to them in reverse chronological order, it will seem like I get progressively worse. We just can't have that.
My episodes go up every Friday, so I am going to link to last week's episode here. Soon, I will also put up tomorrow's episode (or "today's" if you're reading this on Friday, or "yesterday's" if you're reading this on Saturday...time is a tricky thing), and then I will start posting each episode in its own new post, with all of them StoryStreamed together for easy access. Use this post as an Open Thread to discuss the topics covered in the episode, or how wrong I am about some particular issue, or how sexy my voice is, or whatever.
Click that link, and it will take you to Phil's page. Scroll down, and you will find a little media player embedded on the page. Press the play button and you'll be good to go! If you just want to skip to my segment, it starts at 31:45 and goes for about 11 minutes. In this episode, we talk about Spring Training, Jemile Weeks, the prospects who are opening eyes in camp, the starting rotation, Bartolo Colon, and some other stuff. Remember that this is a week old, so some stats and opinions might sound a bit out of date (for example, this was recorded before Arnold Leon joined Team Mexico, so I state that Oakland has no one in the WBC). Also remember that this is meant for a general audience, not specifically for die-hard A's fans, so don't look for anything too ground-breaking.
In this episode, we talk about the bullpen, FIP, and pitching depth...but I totally forgot about my favorite sleeper, Mike Ekstrom. D'oh! I'm the "leadoff hitter" in this episode, so my segment starts at 4:25 and goes for about 11 minutes, but if you just start from the beginning then you can hear "Centerfield" by John Fogerty. Frankly, if you ever pass up a chance to listen to that song, then you're probably just not a very big baseball fan.
Let me know what you think, or if there are topics which you would like me to cover, or anything at all! Hope you all enjoy it.
