The DHC Podcast
Ever wondered what it’s like to be truly involved in sports? Wonder no more!
On this podcast, I’ll sit down with players, GMs, owners, and passionate fans like you to uncover how they fell in love with sports. We’ll dive into their unique journeys, explore the business side of the game, and discuss the endless possibilities that the sport offers.
From behind-the-scenes stories to deep conversations about the sport, I’m here to explore it all—while having a ton of fun along the way!
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The DHC Podcast
The Kudzu Effect: How Grassroots Baseball is Taking Over North Carolina PT1.
Sandlot baseball is experiencing explosive growth across North Carolina with a collective of nine teams creating a welcoming environment for players of all skill levels. Mike Ghilardi, a team captain for the Carolina Kudzu, shares how this accessible, pressure-free approach to baseball focuses on community and joy rather than competition and statistics.
• The Carolina Kudzu formed in 2022 as part of the "Sandlot Revival" event, with their team name referencing the invasive plant species introduced to North America in 1876
• Sandlot baseball welcomes everyone regardless of experience level - teams will loan equipment to newcomers and help teach the game basics
• The movement has roots in Austin, Texas, where they've built dedicated Sandlot fields with bars, live music, and old-timey scoreboards
• The annual Sandlot Revival at the historic Durham Athletic Park (where "Bull Durham" was filmed) has grown from 6 to 13 teams in four years
• Teams keep score during games but don't track records, championships, or statistics - "if you're taking it too seriously, you're missing the point"
• Open pickup games happen most weekends across the Triangle area, with information posted regularly on social media
• The Sandlot collective raises money for local charities including the Long Ball program serving underserved teenage boys and the LGBTQ Center of Durham
Want to experience Sandlot baseball yourself? Follow @carolina_kudzu and other local teams on social media to find information about upcoming open pickup games happening every weekend across the Triangle area.
Make sure to follow the Dad Hat Chronicles: https://linktr.ee/TheDadHatChronicles
Yeah, you can walk right into the stadium. It's not a ticketed event. You can come into this historic ballpark where the Bulls played and where the movie Bull Durham was filmed, and you can just sit down anywhere, and they've done an excellent job keeping the stadium maintained. Not only is the field pristine, but the grounds and the grandstand, like they've all been kept up and sort of preserved. You know, is anybody there?
Speaker 3:All right, all right and welcome everybody to yet another episode of the Dad Hat Chronicles podcast. Well, as you guys already know, my name is Ed, also known as the Dad Hat. I'm flying solo my co-host. She's not here. I guess she's working out, I have no idea. But with me I have someone who I've gotten to know over the last couple of weeks here because I, as you guys already know, I'm very excited and have been getting into Sandlot baseball. I'm very sore, but in a good way, and his name is Mike Ghilardi. Mike, thank you again just for coming on the podcast and having the time to talk Sandlot baseball and actually just baseball overall.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, man, I'm excited, so you know, let's get to know a little bit about you. And then how you got involved in Sandlot baseball. Man, I'm excited, so you know, let's get to know a little bit about you. And then how you got involved in in solid baseball man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm a helper on the Carolina Kudzu in Raleigh with two of my friends, brian and Joseph, and we started playing sandlot baseball together about four years ago. Okay, joseph had been doing it for a while with the Raleigh Reapers, who was the first Sandlot team in Raleigh. Okay.
Speaker 1:And they were hosting an open pickup game every Saturday and he asked me and Brian to come out. So we did and we had a blast. And we talked to each other on the phone a couple days later. I was like, hey, that was awesome, do you want to go out and do it again next saturday? And my friend brian was like I'm at dick's sporting goods right now picking up a new bat, new cleats, new glove. I was like, all right, I guess we're going back out there then and we started going every saturday. Back out there then and we started going every saturday. And then, uh, you know, fast forward to the following year, 2022.
Speaker 1:Um, tyler northrup, with the raleigh reapers, was putting on this sandlot revival event for the first time and he needed a bunch of teams and we had all these extra guys who've been showing up to the open pickup and so all the extra people, the kind of overflow from that formed the kudzu and that was kind of the. The name of the team was the brainchild of joseph. He had been coming up with these invasive species team names. He's got a bunch of other ones too, which are great. Um, but I won't. I won't divulge him because he's saving him for for the right moment I love it um yeah, so that the invasive species was the carolina kud.
Speaker 1:The tagline is invading your field since 1876, which is the year that the kudzu plant was introduced to north america.
Speaker 3:So I love it.
Speaker 1:There's a whole backstory to it, but uh that's actually, that's great, that's genius, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like you know, I was like honey. I I mean I'm looking at watching all these teams and like one was called the kudzus and like I mean obviously I knew about the reapers because of um the work, uh, that um mlb rally has done and all that stuff, so I kind of knew about that one.
Speaker 1:But kud's, I'm like man, that is just good stuff yeah, we get a lot of looks when we wear our gear out in public and people ask us about it.
Speaker 3:It's fun, you know yeah, so you've been running it since.
Speaker 1:It's since, like you know, or you know, early 20s, the 2020s, and you know like, so you like the first time you got hooked right, I'm guessing oh, yeah, the first time you went in there you were like that's it, I'm in yeah, we couldn't wait to go back every weekend and, you know, bring more friends out and get more people involved so we can make sure we had at least 18 guys or girls to play a pickup game. You know, because eventually you get a little tired of doing bp and ground balls and fly balls and you want to play an actual game. So, yeah, you know, every weekend it was like a hustle to try to get more people out there so we could have a scrimmage. You know, um, but as, as things evolved now, like we werimmage, you know, but as things evolved now, like we appreciate all of it, you know, sometimes we just want to go out and take a bucket of ground balls and that's just like a great form of cardio, you know.
Speaker 3:I can tell you this from experience and you know I've actually made a couple of videos already on this. But like Saturday, like you is I literally Saturday morning. Well, the Friday night, I told my wife I'm like, listen, babe, like they're having an, they have an open on Saturday morning at 10 o'clock in Raleigh. So I just want you to know that I'm going to go right. Like, coincidentally, my daughter who goes to gymnastics her class was like in the mornings on Saturday, but she went up in in um her level, so she's now on friday. So I'm like this is the perfect time. Let me go. I'm gonna go 10 o'clock and then I'll just I'll be back. So I was there till like almost one o'clock and by the time I got home, I'm like, listen, I just want you to know. Like this is this is it? Like? I mean, we, we're going to go get I gotta go get a bat and I need a new glove. Just so you know, I'm just putting it out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so it hit the bug oh yeah and then it's, it's addictive what's really cool is that, after you know, shortly after the kudzu formed, um, people were coming from durham and chapel hill and carborough and all around the triangle to come to this Raleigh open pickup. And the people that were doing that from those outskirts of the triangle, they all started. They were like we got to bring this back to our town so we don't have to drive all the way to Raleigh, and they started their own open pickups. And then that's what started forming all these other teams around the triangle. Now we're up to eight teams in the Sandlot collective.
Speaker 3:So it's just like I know I know of a couple of them already. So you got the fruits which are in durham. The wombats, um, you got obviously the kudzu, the reapers, the nines. That's five of them. What are the other ones that are missing?
Speaker 1:uh, the eno river possums that's right, yep the car borough freight trains.
Speaker 1:Um, we, we consider the port city pickles, uh, from wilmington, part of the collective too. They, they were actually. They've been around for longer than the reapers have, I think. Oh, wow, um, so my friends matt and lacy emmerichich from Wilmington, they, they started that team when they moved down from Pennsylvania, so they've been doing it for a lot longer. Yeah, and they were. They were kind of around living in the Chapel Hill area at the time when the Reapers and the Kudzu spun up, so they, um, they helped it get, yeah that's awesome.
Speaker 3:So like that, yeah, you got eight. It's just, it's crazy how it just evolves. And listen, I've only been here in in raleigh three years now. Uh, and the fact that there's so much baseball here in this state, it's absolutely wild it is, and I just remembered I forgot the durham dirt bags.
Speaker 1:So it's really nine teams.
Speaker 3:The other.
Speaker 1:Durham dirt bags. They're, they're, they're great. They're great too. I love all them, and they'll probably be mad at me that I just I omitted them off the bat.
Speaker 3:Oh, you're about to get in trouble, Mike.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they'll get me on that one. But yeah go ahead. The baseball is just exploding here and it's awesome because we only have, like, the two minor league teams, but we have a lot of college baseball and now the MLB movement. To try to get a team here is really cool, and you know the guy that started that is involved in Sandlot too, lou Pascucci. He's a Reaper, that's right, yep. So you know it's really cool to see the community like rallying around that and the that it's sustained.
Speaker 3:So let me ask you this, because you know a lot of people will say I was like all right, ed, like you know, all right, you're doing, you're doing baseball. Great, good for you, awesome. You know what I mean. But like, and they, they try to ask me what is Sandlot right? I'm like, listen, everybody's invited to this. Like it's not just like you know, you know the, the, the best of the best, you know, it's like everybody's invited. If you've never picked up a glove, have at it. You know, and that's pretty much how I explain it to them. How would you, you know, explain it to someone who's trying to figure out or find out more about Sandlot baseball?
Speaker 1:I mean, you hit the nail on the head. It really is baseball for everyone. It doesn't matter how good you are, if you've ever even played the game. I mean, you're going to be welcomed onto the open sandlot pick up on saturdays or sundays. Um, if you don't have a glove, somebody will let you borrow one. Don't have a bat? Same thing.
Speaker 1:You know, if you just want to learn about the game or you just want to try it out, that's the perfect place to do it. Everybody there is going to welcome, welcome you. There's going to be no judgment. You know, and like it's true that, like, some people are there for different reasons too, not everybody is there for the same reason. You know, some people are there to meet new people, some people are there to get a good workout and some people are there just because they want to mash balls, you know. So you know, if everybody comes from the same place of understanding, which is that we're not going to turn anybody away, it becomes more fun for everybody um, okay, so let me ask you then, as far as, like, the teams, right, um, you guys have are part of what is called the sandlot collective.
Speaker 3:You know, give me a little bit of background on that, like how, if you can, like you know how that formed, and and and all of that it was originally called um, the raleigh sandlot social club, um, and it was really just the reapers.
Speaker 1:I mean, they, they would just get out there every saturday, and I think it was. Lions park is where it started in Raleigh and we still try to get out there as much as we can. Right now it's happening at green road because somebody else has lions reserved on Saturdays, but that's where it was originally when I started and they had been doing it for a few years. But so Raleigh Reapers were the first team and then the Kudzu formed for this first revival and then by the second revival we had even more teams the Cargo, freight Trains, durham Dirtbags, wake Forest Wombats, and then just new people keep coming out to these open pickups and it's like, well, these teams are kind of full. So if you want to start a team, that'd be great, because then we'd have another team to play, you know.
Speaker 3:I was just going to ask you about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and like the way it works is that these teams just kind of talk to each other. We just reach out to another team and be like hey, do you want to get a game this weekend, next weekend? We, the team, be like, hey, do you want to get a game this weekend, next weekend? We try to set a schedule at the beginning of the year but it's very loose, you know, it's loosely organized, and we'll just throw some dates on the calendar and be like all right, it's a schedule we can probably agree on for the next three months and then we'll try to start adding more games as the season goes on. But we typically play games um, almost year round, kind of start in March and end in November.
Speaker 3:But oh, wow so it's a long, long ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you know you'll get a couple of nice days in December or January and if that happens you'll see some somebody out in the field on a Saturday in January when it might be 70 degrees and the grass might look brown, but they'll still be out there taking grounders and fly balls see, that's the beauty about being here in north carolina, because I'm in cleveland, where I'm from.
Speaker 3:There's it's not happening in january.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you that right now it is not happening yeah, I grew up in new york, in, uh, central new york, and yeah, we, you know we started our season sometimes with the snow on the ground, so and it's like 20 degrees out there and you're freezing your ass off trying to play.
Speaker 3:It's never fun. Yeah. I love that, look. So let me ask you this. All right, so because I went to the Open and I was like man, this is cool. So there's like different members from each of the teams that have already been formed Right. So, for example, like a couple of questions that I have, you know, just so that way we can, you know, I can bring light to how this works, is all right. So let's say that you know you're someone who is coming in you're new and all that.
Speaker 1:You come in at a couple of the opens and everything, but they want to. They want to be part more of a of a team. How does that happen? Um?
Speaker 1:honestly it just usually happens kind of organically. You make friends with some people that are on another team. Um, you know you, you express interest and, and usually you know, if you, if you build up a good rapport and you get along with everybody and they enjoy having you around, they'll ask you to join their team. Or they might ask you to just like, come out and be a guest player for a game. If they need some extra bodies, you know, and they'll see how you mesh with the team in an actual game. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And if that works out, they might offer you like an official roster spot. But for people that that doesn't happen to, and they still have the itch. You know, man, if you could convince eight of your friends to start a baseball team, you can do it, yeah, and you could just get some plain white T-shirts and a magic marker and write a team name on it and that's your jersey. Put it on and off, we go right.
Speaker 3:And then you can call on to the other teams Like, hey, listen, we want to be part of this. Yeah. I would like to put our team out there to go play. This is how we, and then go from there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is happening all across the country. This kind of started in Austin, texas, with the Texas Playboys. It exploded there. They probably have at least 30 teams in Austin. I could be wrong, but Tulsa, oklahoma, is another hotbed. Los Angeles has a Sandlot League out there that's been around for 10 years and, uh, you know things are spinning up in new york. Um, it's just everywhere.
Speaker 3:Everywhere you go now you can look for, uh, sandlot teams forming from what I understand I know and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think doesn't austin have their own sandlot stadium or ballpark per se?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of like their field of dreams and they actually have two fields now. There's one called the Long Time, which is the original one, and then there's a new one that opened last year called the Wishing Well, which is also operated by the same people, and you know the Kudzu the the fortune of going down there and playing. Last year we played on both fields oh, wow and uh, it's, it's incredible. I mean, it really is like a little field of dreams down there on somebody's private property oh really.
Speaker 3:So yeah, this is private property.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's like a party it. They have a bar, they sell drinks, they have a stage where live music is going on during the game. They've got old-timey scoreboards with the placards, the numbers they hang up there.
Speaker 3:Oh that's amazing.
Speaker 1:They've got little kids up there operating the scoreboard for everybody and people are having picnics and they're bringing their dogs out and it's it's honestly just. It's a huge party and the baseball is really just like part of the entertainment that's, that's awesome yeah, yeah and it's. It's really cool and special and they have, you know, have probably, I think, the last time I read they're up to having like 60 games a year hosted down there and people coming from all over the country to play there.
Speaker 1:So it's like the early version of what you guys are putting here together as far as the Sandlot revival, pretty much yeah, yeah, the Sandlot revival was actually modeled after an event that was happening at the actual Field of Dreams movie site in Iowa. Really, yeah, One of the people that is on the Tulsa Rumblers Sandlot team, Brett Spears he organized an event at the Field of Dreams two years in a row and he invited a few teams from around the country to meet there and play on that field and they raised money for charity and they had after parties and meetups there in Iowa and it was really special. We got to participate in the second one that was held there and then he didn't do it again. It ended up being too much to manage and he stopped doing it after that. But the Sandlot revival has been sort of modeled after that event.
Speaker 3:That's cool. Talk to me a little bit about that, because I was there this year at the revival at the old DAP, the old Durham Bulls Athletic Park, and I'll tell you this it was a great experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I appreciate you saying that it takes a lot of work and we had a huge number of volunteers that stepped up this year to help organize it. So you came to the fourth annual revival and, honestly, all of them have been really special events with great participation, with great participation, participation, um, but this year was the biggest. We had 13 teams there this year. I think the first one had six teams, so it's really grown um.
Speaker 1:You've doubled your teams already yeah four years only yeah, and the way it's set up is there's 10 games over three days, and so the first year each team got to play two games and the way it is now the all the with all the local teams that we have each local team only got one game, but we still made sure our five out of town guest teams got to play two games.
Speaker 3:That's cool. That way, you know, make their them coming. Yeah, a special time for them to be here as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we've. We've made it like it. The first year was not a charity event, but we made a conscious effort after that to make each, each event charitable. So we raise money for the long ball program of Durham, which is a MLB RBI affiliate, so they they run a baseball league for teenage boys and in Durham that are underserved. And then we also decided to add a second charity this year and raise money for the LGBTQ center of Durham.
Speaker 3:That's awesome.
Speaker 1:And one of the reasons we were able to do that is because PF Flyers stepped up and helped sponsor the event and helped cover the majority of the costs of what it takes to rent the facility and some of the other costs that go into running the event, and so we were able to take some of the money that would have gone to that and push it to these other charities.
Speaker 3:That's cool, right, like I mean, and you know, awesome for them to step up. Because, like that's cool, right, like I mean, and you know, awesome for them to step up because, like I mean, like you said, those are really two good charity events that obviously you know it's near and dear to you guys and everything, and like it really does serve the community, which you know it goes part to be. What is?
Speaker 1:you know, my guess will be to be part of a Sandlot team, right, it's like everybody's welcome you know, regardless of sexual orientation, your race, any of that yeah, yeah, and that's really the message that we want to send um. The hardest thing to do is to convince people to come out, you know, because you you might think like, oh, I'm gonna get hurt playing, or like there's no way I could. I could hang with these, these baseball players who've been out there doing it for for years. But, um, once you get there and you see how welcoming the community is and how much fun it is, um you, you understand what sandlot baseball is really all about.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and let me tell you, I spent some money there.
Speaker 1:It's not. That's not a requirement, but that does happen.
Speaker 3:It is not, but I, I, I really wanted to make sure that I did my part and I um, there was obviously a lot of hats I'm a collector of hats and then I had a good friend of mine who was there from Georgia. He also purchased some hats and some shirts and everything. So we're like this is one of the coolest events that we were part of, like you know, and the event was free, right, Like I mean, you were just you can just come in and watch and I got to meet cool people, which is awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can walk right into the stadium there's, you know it's, it's not a ticketed event. You can come into this historic ballpark where the Bulls played and where the movie Bull Durham was filmed, and you can just sit down anywhere and and they've done an excellent job keeping the stadium maintained not only is the field pristine, but the grounds and the grandstands, like they've all, been kept up and sort of preserved. You know there's not as many seats as there was in the movie. They've taken the bleachers along the sidelines down, but you know, all the, all the little buildings are still there. It's, and obviously the the landscape has changed there's, it's surrounded by, you know, condos and high rises, some bars and restaurants and all of that around it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it still has the charm, though oh, 100, I was like man I feel like I've been, you know, to be part of be there and have that part of be part of, like you know, history of durham and the movie and all that was awesome, incredibly fun. But I believe that I think it's nc central that still plays their games there well, they don't have a team anymore.
Speaker 1:I think two or three years ago they cut that program but they were playing there and I think two Durham high schools still play there and the long ball program their league plays on that field.
Speaker 3:Oh, plays there as well. Okay, so it's really. I mean it's being played all the time. Yeah, yeah. Now the Durham Bulls are the ones who upkeep that ballpark.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, the people that the grounds crew at the historic stadium. I think they still do some time at the big stadium.
Speaker 3:Awesome, I love that. That's pretty cool. I like that a lot, all right, so let me ask you this then you know these opens, right. That that's pretty cool. I like that a lot, um, all right. So let me ask you this then you know these opens, right, uh, how, um, how is it organized? Like you know who's who's done it because, like I mean, you got a couple of areas within um, within raleigh and durham, that you guys have throughout the the weekend. How to like, who organizes that? How is that ran?
Speaker 1:you know all of that, um so the raleigh open pickup is organized by the reapers, the kudzu and the nine um. So you know, we have like a a captain's group chat and we all kind of agree where the open pickup is going to be and um, you know, each team usually brings a bucket of balls or an L screen, and then the Durham open pickup. You got the Dirtbags and the Eno River Possums, and then the Durham Fruits have a separate open pickup that they do, and then you've got the one in Carbro, in Chapel Hill, that the freight trains do. Some of these happen on Saturdays, some happen on Sundays. I think the fruits do some weekdays as well. So you really just you hop on social media and you follow all them and they're always posting. You know where their next game or open pickup is going to be.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's, that's a. That's one of the coolest things that I saw was like everybody was very welcoming and then it's just like we were just there playing ball. Like I mean, we, we, you know, we actually obviously we we did some ground balls and then all that fun stuff and hitting and all that and but at the same time we did play a game, which was cool, as all you know, as someone who's like, like I said, I haven't picked up a bat or a glove for a while, like that and um, to be able to feel like a 15 year old again playing baseball, it was, yeah, that's feeling in the world it is, it's a.
Speaker 1:It's a very freeing feeling and, um, I think sandlot baseball is like the, the, you know, most free expression of baseball that there is. When we play a pickup game, we can make our own rules. We can decide if there's going to be steals or if you can go on a pass ball, or I don't know.
Speaker 3:If you want to play a man down, we could put eight people out there, it doesn't matter, you know it's just, I saw and then I read the rules like you know, the guidelines and everything is just like you know. Yes, you're, you know. Obviously you want to play, you want to take a little serious, but at the same, at the end of the day, it's like you want to got to make sure that you have fun in two.
Speaker 1:As soon on in two, as soon as the game's over, you forget about the score. That's it. It's always done, it is, it is what it is at that point, like it's. Yeah, you know, a lot of people call our collective a league and when they hear the revival they're like, oh, that's that baseball tournament. You know, it's none of those things. It's not a league and the revival is not a tournament. Um, yeah, we kept score during the game, but there's no records, there's no championships, there's no trophies, we don't track wins and losses, we don't do batting averages.
Speaker 3:Because then at that point you're just going down into the weeds of things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the baseball game itself is kind of like an expression of art, and it is what it is, and if you're taking it too seriously, you're missing out on it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're missing the point at that point. When it comes to the Sandlot baseball, I want to take a quick hold here for a second. I want to introduce my co-host, who decided to show up here at the end oh no, no, no. We're just having a full interview Half hour in girl, and then you just decided to show up. Okay, cool, I see how this goes excited to show up.
Speaker 4:Okay, cool, I see how this goes. I am so sorry y'all. I'm gonna be honest with you. I I will never get my time zone down correct like I'll. I'm not even kidding. Yesterday we were watching the, we were looking at the hockey schedule and I'm like, oh my gosh, the Golden Knights play at midnight their time and it's like like no 9.30 their time. I just suck at this.
Speaker 3:She's full disclosure. She does live. She's in Vegas right now. She lives in. Las.
Speaker 1:Vegas.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is my co-host Val Stadium Food Girl.
Speaker 1:How you doing.
Speaker 3:We are talking with Mike of the Rally Kudzu. He is one of the captains for the Sand uh teams that we have here uh in uh, north carolina that I am starting to partake in um. So that is, it is. Listen, I'm telling you right now it is one of the most fun I've ever had on a baseball. I had fun. I felt like a 15 year old, you know, during the game, but I can tell you my age showed up as soon as I got home and I stopped playing, you know.
Speaker 4:I'm so sorry. The first impression of him is me opening. Don't fire me, it's all right.
Speaker 3:There it is. There it is, Mike. Obviously you are part of the Sandlot Collective, which is something cool that you guys are doing here. From your point of view, what do you think the long-term vision of Sandlot Collective is? And Kudzu and all of that, as far as what you see happening here.
Speaker 1:I talk about my teammates, about this sometimes and we're all like we're just gonna play till the wheels fall off. Man, we're gonna, we wanna be doing this, you know, into our sixties and seventies and like maybe we'll like let our kids join the team when they're adults, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And they can start turning it over as we move on. But I mean, we've played teams with much older people on it and they've been doing it for a while and they've given us a lot of good advice about longevity within Sandlot baseball. You know things like take some yoga classes or do some Pilates and don't practice too much. You know, take it easy. Yeah, there's actually. There's a Sandlot manifesto that you can get your hands on. The guy that started the texas playboys, and one of one of the items in there is don't practice, do like, do something more productive to prepare yourself to play a baseball game, because you're going to get hurt. So, you know, go for a jog or take a yoga class I did a lot of stretching.
Speaker 3:I'll tell you the next day I was. You know that was like my regular cardio day I'm going for a run. I went for a long walk, yeah, just to get my legs stretched, cause if not, I can tell you it would have been, it would have been bad for me.
Speaker 1:I think what I've seen over the last four years is this you know, this huge growth of more teams, starting from all these people that keep coming out to the open pickups, and what we're seeing now is a lot more games being scheduled amongst those teams, because we have a lot more teams to play now. But I think what you're going to see over the next few years is getting back to these open pickup games, because I know a lot of people on my team miss that. You know, as much as they enjoy, like the competitive games that we schedule and play, they miss the the casual atmosphere of the open pickup. So I think you're going to see that continue to grow and that's going to lead to more teams and, uh, you know, in 10 years the reapers and the kudzu are going to be the old, the old timers yeah and we're going to be challenged by all these new younger teams um, and you'll probably see a lot of cool matchups because of that that's awesome, though.
Speaker 3:Like I mean, that's the beauty about baseball, right? Like I mean, we watch minor league baseball. We watch, you know, at a at a much, much, you know higher level and it's been. It's like, yeah, I want to be part of that. But, like you know, we're like the. The pickup is what really was like, what enticed me to go out there and be like man, I gotta be part of this. Like I I told you, I was like at the, at the event, and I'm like I'm texting my wife right there and my friends. I'm like I want to.
Speaker 1:I want part of this, like I want to be in this and we're going to make we're going to make a bigger effort in the Raleigh Open Pickup to make it more of a scene. You know we're going to bring out grills and coolers and try to like to make it really fun for anybody that doesn't feel like breaking a sweat or breaking a bone out in the field. You know we want there to be as much fun behind the backstop as there is on the field.
Speaker 3:What's up everybody, and thank you for watching part one of this episode. Okay, now make sure you guys are following the Sandlot Collective Kudzu. Okay. The R collective kudzu. Okay. The rally kudzu. The reapers make sure you guys are following all of them. This is sandlot baseball at its finest. Listen, I'm part of it. Um, I am. I'm actually starting a, a team in the sandlot here league here. Because, why? Because it's fun, guys. It is a lot of fun and wherever you're at, you should go and find your Sandlock League and go and join, go play. Listen. I'm 43 years old, about to be 44, and I am having the time of my life, all right, so make sure you guys are doing that Now. Also, make sure you guys come back next week so you guys can go ahead and finish this episode, okay, and while you're at it, like I said, get yourself a new glove, get yourself a, a ball, a baseball, whatever it is. Go out there and play some baseball and make sure you hit this, like and subscribe. All right, guys. Until then, support the minor leagues.
