PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Dodgers intimidate fan into giving up Shohei Ohtani home run ball

Episode Date: April 6, 2024

Getting a home run ball is one of the greatest joys a baseball fan can experience. But that joy was stolen from a Dodgers fan who found herself in possession of Shohei Ohtani's first home run ball as a Dodger. We discuss how this situation turned from a dream to a nightmare, how easy it could have been avoided, and more! We also discuss how JJ Hardy building his own personal Field of Dreams is pissing off his neighbors in the East Valley. An ALLCITY Network ProductionSUBSCRIBE to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/phnx_youtubeALL THINGS PHNX: http://linktr.ee/phnxsports PHNX Events: Get your tickets to Suns Takeovers, Coyotes & Suns Watch Parties at BetMGM, and MORE here: https://gophnx.com/events/Factor Mealkits: Use code PHNXDBACKS50 to get 50% OFF your first Factor box and free wellness shots for life with any active subscription at https://factormeals.com/phnxdbacks50Arizona Lottery: Visit http://www.AZAdventure.com for more information on how you can take an adventure with the Arizona Lottery and for a chance to win $1 million in cash and Arizona travel prizes! PrizePicks - Download the PrizePicks app today and use code PHNX for a first deposit match up to $100! Pick more. Pick less. It’s that Easy!Desert Financial Credit Union: Open a free checking account online with Desert Financial Credit Union and get $200 in bonuses https://www.desertfinancial.com/200Empire: Schedule a free in-home estimate with Empire Today! Receive a $350 OFF discount when you use the promo code PHNX. Restrictions apply. See https://empiretoday.com/phnx for details.Gametime: Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code PHNX for $20 off your first purchase.Circle K:  Join Inner Circle for free by downloading the Circle K app today! Head to https://www.circlek.com/store-locator to find Circle Ks near you!OGeez!: OGeez! is not your average cannabis-infused gummy. Head over to https://www.ogeezbrands.com to find where you can purchase. Must be 21+. Enjoy responsibly. Four Peaks: Follow on social @fourpeaksbrew & @fourpeakspub! Must be 21+. Enjoy responsibly. Someburros: 20% off your order of up to $100 when you use code PHNX at checkout for the whole month of March at https://www.someburros.com/When you shop through links in the description, we may earn affiliate commissions. Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to another edition of the PHNX Debacks podcast right here on PHNX. My name is Derek Montia, occasionally known as a fan of Saturday morning cartoons. Welcome into our Saturday edition of our show. Of course, I am joined by the one and only vice mayor of Saturday mornings. Jesse Friedman, your thunderstick. And Jesse, we have some potential criminals to talk about today. We have some potential, I guess we'll let the audience. really decide here. We're going to present the facts for you. We're going to talk about some people

that are behaving badly, at least maybe in my opinion. Jesse's going to be a little bit more impartial about it. But the first thing that we want to talk about, of course, is MLB memorabilia, Jesse. I'm a big fan of owning MLB memorabilia. I have a lot of pieces that mean a lot to me. And I even have a few pieces that might be worth some money, but not nearly as much money as as Shohei Otani's very first home run ball as a Los Angeles Dodger, because that, I imagine, is worth some cash. And there was a fan who actually acquired this ball. Essentially, it rolled to her feet, and she picked it up.

It's like the skies opened up and provided her with the winning lottery ticket, if you will. Yeah. And that's a pretty cool experience for something that unique and that expensive. This Dodgers fan name is Amber Roman. And again, there is a story about her interaction with the Los Angeles Dodgers after picking up this baseball. So this is the seventh inning, I believe, of the Giants Dodgers game on Wednesday. Shohei Otani hits his first home run as a member of the Dodgers, which somehow hadn't happened yet. That's weird.

I mean, I guess this is only like game number nine for the Dodgers. Uh, yeah, this is, I mean, if you're Amber Roman, you're in the stands, you are lucky enough to find this baseball. In that moment, it's basically like you've won the lottery. Correct. Right. Yeah. And, and I mean, I guess it's because it's not all luck in some ways because you do have to, uh, probably do some pushing and shoving in order to get that baseball for yourself. It sounded from the description a little bit like other people did the pushing and shoving, uh, including her boyfriend.

and then the ball eventually kind of rolled out. We know how this works, Jesse. I just described on the show this week about how Jack Summers and myself almost got killed by a Blaze Alexander Feld ball, right? Right. This is true. We wanted it to cleanly hit the back of the TV. It did not.

Nick the corner, became a ping pong ball, smash Jack's water, smack the ball and wall in between two of us. But the most damning part of it, the worst part about it. Where's the ball? Where's the ball there? Where is the ball, Jesse? The ball bounced back into the crowd, damn it. We didn't even have a chance to make a play on the ball, right?

That's the worst part about it is no matter how close you are to where the ball actually lands. You never know where it's going to end up. And in this case, it was very much luck that it ended up with Amber. So Amber gets this baseball and she's there with her husband, Alexis Venezuela. So it's both of them. Oh, excuse me, it was a husband. I said boyfriend earlier. I'm very disrespectful.

That's disrespectful. I'm very presumptuous. Yeah. Exactly. Unacceptable. So there are apparently, according to a story from the athletic that I'm looking at, there were like more than a dozen Dodger Stadium security guards that show up because they want this baseball. This is show this show.

This is show Hey Otani's first home run as a member of the Dodgers. They very much want this baseball. That's not at all intimidating at all to have a dozen security guards approach you like you did something wrong simply because. you got a home run baseball, which last time I checked, it was it was something that was allowed for fans to take home when they ended up with it. Yeah. So a dozen or more security officials, they come to where these two people are sitting. And people around them, of course, other, their fellow Dodgers fans around them,

heroes are telling them, like, be smart. Like, don't just give this, this very, very, very valuable base. ball away without doing some negotiating. They were even telling the security that was discussing with it, they were yelling, reward them for, you know, reward them, reward them, right? So it was there was definitely. Yeah, the security official told them that they would reward them for catching the ball. And they really didn't because the offer definitely was lower than you would think for a home run

ball that could be worth up to and most likely above 100. thousand dollars jesse yeah and the part of this story that i really don't like is this next bit it's what happened to amber it was it's what happened in general right you didn't have a member of the dodgers front office or like you know what i mean you didn't have a uh some sort of goodwill ambassador reach out to these people come over have a discussion ask them if they want to go to a suite you had a dozen security officers go over there, surround them, and then split them up so that her husband could not advise her when being asked what she wanted to do with this ball on his thoughts. And I think there was a coordinated effort specifically on purpose to take advantage of this

fan and to get the home run ball back for as little as you can, which is outrageous, outrageous considering that this team supposedly has so much money and so many resources. Well, they did before this office. Before this off. That's a narrative. Like, hey, we got all the players, but we can't, like, we no longer have the resources to rightfully, you know, give people what to reward people who catch any of the valuable memorabilia that we come across along the way. Yeah. So they wind up leaving Dodger Stadium with two sign hats.

a signed bat and ball. That's the reward that they ultimately walk away with. They said that they obviously considered it a low ball offer, but took it. And it took it in part to the fact that team officials included the threat of refusing to authenticate the baseball should she decide to take it home. That's bullshit. That right there is bullshit. And I mean that because Jesse, the authenticator, which I have met at Chase Field several times.

I've met two of them. And they're very nice gentlemen. They actually have several jobs besides just authenticating. They tend to, if I'm getting this correct, because these are the guys that have, they have the little sheet of the hologram MLB logos. And when you catch a ball, you catch a fly ball or whatever, they are the ones that authenticate that it actually came from a baseball game by applying that hologram sticker. to it. They also write down in a book what the number is on that serial number that's on the

little hologram. And then they write down the date, the inning, everything about what happened with that ball. So they're also kind of, you know, timekeepers. They are historians. They are logging these events and they are making sure that this ball is forever tethered to being the correct ball from this event. They are impartial. They are of nothing to do with the team. They also, So I think, like I said, this is another one of their duties. They collect like broken baths and they send them back to a lab so that the lab can analyze how the bats broke and make sure that bats. But things continue to get safer in Major League Baseball for players and everybody involved, right? They want to try to make sure the bats don't shatter in a certain way.

That could be dangerous. So they're trying to study that. These guys have other jobs there, but their job is from Major League Baseball. They are not employees or shouldn't be employees of the Dodgers or any particular team. are impartial and their job is to be there to make sure that these items get authenticated. The threat of not authenticating it is if that is correct, if that is true, because of course, this is this is their account of it and we have no way to really know if they were in fact told this, right?

But based on their account, that is just absolute horseshit. Yeah, that's pretty messed up separating this woman from her husband. husband also just like I don't if I were in her shoes no matter no matter what the situation is like any any scenario that I'll always be being like intentionally separated from the person I came with would just be very uncomfortable but how safe how safe do you feel at Dodgers stadium period she's a Dodgers fan she was at Dodgers stadium like the fact that your own home stadium security did this to you like yeah it would make me feel uncomfortable going to baseball games going forward and speaking of going to baseball games, they could have given this woman free season tickets for next year, right? Like, they could have offered them so much more than the amount that they offered him. Instead, they gave them two hats, a bat, all signed by Shohei Otani and a baseball signed by Showo Yotani.

And that was a bump from the initial offer, which I believe was just the two hats. Two signed hats. Right. Now, on top of that, you also have another controversy here where Shoahe Otani said, in his post-game press conference, according to his interpreter, and this is not the same interpreter that stole a bunch of money from him. This is not Ipe. This is Will I mean.

Great theater. It would be great theater if it was Ipe. But through his interpreter, Otani said, I was able to talk to the fan and was able to get it back. Obviously, it's a very special ball, a lot of feelings toward it. I'm very grateful that it's back. And then, of course, that fan proceeded to say they never actually met Show Hey Otani. So there was no meeting. There was no, you know, none of this.

Never met nor talk to Otani. And that, of course, makes this even worse because it makes it feel like, you know, they, it makes it feel like they knew that they were low balling her. And they had to kind of lie about the situation just to make it seem like those people got more than they actually did. Yeah. And that's a customary part of this process as well. It is. If you catch like a really important baseball for a specific player, generally you get to, meet the player. You get to have a kind of a cool one-on-one interaction where you, you know,

you take a picture, you get all your autograph signed and all that stuff. And the Diamondbacks are wonderful about this. I have seen them do this. And again, I've seen them do this even with a guy that did not give the ball up. He still got to meet like Christian Walker and take a photo with them. If I'm not mistaken, one person that caught a important home run ball, like got invited back to like throw out a first pitch and stuff. That's the kind of way that a team should honor someone, especially if they do give up that item and they do allow for the team to have important, you know, control of an important historical item like that, right? But they should be compensated and compensated well. The total value of these items, I mean, Jesse and I kind of poked around on eBay and such tried to find out.

The article has them listed as about $1,000 each. Yeah. So about a total of $4,000. We went online and found a couple of Otani items. They are very rare. You're not going to go on eBay and find a lot of them. autographed Otani merchandise. But the items we found, it ranged in value from 1,500 for a hat to about, we saw bats,

special edition bats that were like $6,500, maybe even $7,000, $8,000. Overall, you could probably price this at a high estimate of about $10,000, but still that is 10% of what we know that this ball is worth, not to even mention what this ball could potentially be worth should this fan have just held on to it and waited years to sell it down the line. Obviously, authenticating it is the most important part of that process should the fan have wanted to do that. So when you talk about the most dirtbag move here, if it is true, it's the threat of not authenticating it for the fan. That's the part that really makes this just absolutely atrocious, a bad look for a team that claims to have so much money. And honestly, so much

Like so much control of this situation. They could have given this person so much more than they did. They could have actually let this person meet Shoay Otani. They could have followed through on all the things that they said that they did. And that probably would have made this a non-story. Imagine if Otani just pops his jersey off right then and meeting it and gives it to him. And they get like sign hat, sign bad. He gave him a game worn jersey.

He got to meet them. They got pictures with them. Like those small gestures that wouldn't have cost the team even that much more money because they have fucking closets filled with jerseys would have at least made this go a little bit further. The jersey is a good point. That feels like a glaring. Like there's a glaring lack of a jersey in the in the bounty that the Dodgers ultimately gave to these people. And I'm curious if you're Amber Roman and you're in this situation and you're there with your wife out at the ballpark and you get separated from her and they've got you.

sequestered and they're trying to get this baseball from you under the threat of not authenticating it if you don't give it to them. What do you do? Do you just, do you walk away with it? Do you just say you're going to keep it? I know too much about baseball myself because I know that the authenticator is an impartial MLB employee. I would stand there with the ball and not fucking leave the stadium until they authenticated

it. And I absolutely wouldn't have taken anything for that ball. Nothing, not a thing. There was not enough you could offer me unless I walked out of there with a barrel full of cash. If that's what you offered me, then you can have the ball. Outside of that, you ain't getting that ball for me. And I am not leaving until they're authenticating. And see, I would, but see, I'm not a fan.

I know the process. So I would contact people in MLB. I would start sending messages to like the fucking MLB Twitter account. I would totally see this as the team doing this to me and not MLB because I know Major League Baseball would never approve. Would not stand for that kind of stuff. Right. So like that's the route I would go.

So the Dodgers have to write you a check for a hundred grand before you leave that ballpark without the baseball. Honestly, like even if it's worked that much, I probably wouldn't have expected that much. But if the Dodgers sat there and if their first offer. If their first offer out of the gate was, we are going to write you a check for $50,000 right now. I would, I would, I'd be like D-E-R-E-K, space, M-O-N-T-I, 2-Ls, and an A, here's your ball, give me my check. Like, they could have given me half the amount, but if they paid it to me in cash, and it's going to be that right there in that moment, especially if, like, I might, the only reason why I might have held off is that they came out of the gate with 50, grand i'm like oh they're definitely going to give me more like i'm not i'm gonna wait for off or maybe

three before i start to accept this but in my head i'm already deciding on what tropical island i'm going to go to with that 50 grand jessi you know like i don't know i mean i guess like because it is one of those things that show hey you never know what's going to happen with those showy otani he could go on to be the player we all know and think he's going to be or yeah i mean likely first ballot hall of famer right i mean someone will forever just a generation talent. Yeah. However, there is that chance in sports because we've had players this happened to where

maybe he doesn't go down that path from this point forward. Maybe he has a mediocre career going forward. And if that's the case, that feels very impossible. It does. It absolutely does. I almost think Otani, like, I almost think Otani would already be a Hall of Famer if he retired tomorrow. Yeah.

Just because of the legend, the legend status that he's built and the fact that you cannot tell the story of baseball. without him at this point. That's fair, but he hasn't had a chance to really mess it up yet, right? Yeah. I mean,

he's only, this is only his seventh, his seventh season in the majors. Well, this gambling thing has been the first thing that kind of, you know, any kind of anything against him, right?

So, but my point being is that like even a guy, um, I don't know. There's, there's players in baseball I've seen that seem like they were unstoppable and then they just weren't anymore. I don't know why,

but Ryan, that's true. Ryan Howard comes to mind once they, yeah, it's not really, unusual for players to be really, really good for their first six or seven years and then kind of creator after that. But it's just that Otani being the two-way player and all this stuff. It almost feels impossible that he wouldn't get that kind of recognition.

And I'm not saying, I'm not saying that he would, but I'm just saying as far as value goes right now, I don't know if I'm going to see tomorrow, Jesse. I don't know if I'm going to live to the end of this week. So I mean, sometimes you, like, that's what I'm saying. When you ask me that question, that is my answer 100%. Like, I'm not saying I wouldn't take nothing for the ball, but. I would take money. I'm not taking.

I don't, I have so much stuff in my house. What if they gave you enough, like enough memorabilia and, and jerseys and hats and stuff that you knew you could sell for whatever the rough equivalent cost of the baseball is, $80,000 or something like that. Yeah, I mean,

that's probably something I would consider, but that would probably be like a hall so big that it would be hard to say no to. Yeah. Like, again, you're like, all right, here's what we're going to do. The entire starting lineup tonight, every single one of them is going to give you their jersey. They're all going to autograph it every single one of them. That would be pretty sick. Right.

You know what I mean? Like, and again, in the grand scheme of things, that probably cost the Dodgers nothing in comparison to real money because they have more jerseys for these guys. Yeah. And those jerseys are just jerseys. Like a lot of times, oh, you snagged your jersey. All right, well, we're going to go sell this in the, you know, in the authentic shop and we'll get you a new one. Right.

So it's like, it's not like they don't do that. those jerseys are worth money because they can sell them in their authentic shop. I'm just saying it's a hard thing. It's a very, very hard thing to believe that a team couldn't have made this offer so big. Also, not as a terrible experience, not feeling like we were separated. That's really the big problem here. It really feels like you did everything intentionally. Like you really wanted to separate this poor woman from the person she was with.

It could be a husband. It could be a brother. It could be her dad. It could be just a friend. and, you know, being separated is intimidating, you know. I don't really react well in these situations. So when you say, how would I have gone? You would have been a mess.

Oh, well, no, because like one time Megaran and myself went to the Fiesta Bowl and we were invited guests. We were invited as influencers to come to this, like lounge area that they had set up in the Fiesta Bowl where you could hang out on like couches and stuff and watch the game. When we got there, we had like this faux ticket thing from these people that was supposed to be scannable. And the security guards just refused to believe that we had real tickets. They kept telling us that our tickets were for like a tailgating event that had happened earlier in the day. And it got to a point where the security guards at the state farm stadium all circled around us, which I did not care for one bit, Jesse. And it's like sometimes you don't know.

how you're going to react in those situations, I did not react well. I was ready. I was ready to fight any one of those security guards that wanted to step into the circle with me and duke it out, right? So it's like I felt like I was moments, moments away from being basically thrown out of the event and banned whether my ticket was correct or not. And luckily, a supervisor came in told every single one of those security guards how wrong they were for what they were doing and told them where the like area was and next thing you know we're up watching the the football game but that could have turned very bad simply because of the way that they chose to handle it there was no need to have eight security guards come over and surround to be in my friend just because i was getting a little

irate at the idea that they had no idea our tickets were real tickets when we were invited guests of the fiesta bowl itself like yeah that's pretty it's pretty outrageous and now it was a it was a failed opportunity on both the people organizing the event and security like everybody kind of added up there. And like this might be that same thing. This might be security guards being overzealous when they were never told to handle a situation like this. Somebody, somebody, yeah, there must have been a breakdown at some point because I can't imagine that like everyone in the Dodgers organization was universally like, yes, this is how we treat people. This is how we handle these situations.

Right. Right. Legendary baseballs in our franchise's history. Yeah. And it seems like my last thing on this, just looking at, uh, they're, their quotes here kind of at the end of this story at the athletic Valenzuela or Valenzuela, sorry, Amber's husband. He said, where was the Dodger love that we see every day, every time we go?

It just disappeared. We were kind of left stranded. It's not necessarily that we wanted a million, just something nice, take care of your fans, especially when they got something that's way more valuable. So, yeah, it's just about valuing your fans well. And the Dodgers did not do that in this situation. It sucks. And it feels like you did something wrong when you simply bought a ticket and attended a game and we're lucky enough to have a home run ball land near you. That's supposed to be a fun experience. It's supposed to be exciting. But when it's a historic baseball, it is kind of like you won the lottery, right? We have stuff like this happen. You know, we have the 50-50 raffle, right? That's a game of chance. You go in, you throw your money in, you win it. Can you imagine winning the 50-50 raffle and then having Chuck Boyer come over and shake you down for it back? I know you won 50 grand

tonight but I want that money here's a baseball signed by Christian Walker and a Brandon fought you know hat like get out of here Chuck I just had to read Chuck would never Chuck would never I love Chuck so much he's the best but speaking of people here in the valley

that might not be the best we do have a situation involving a local former baseball player maybe maybe going a little crazy with his own personal field of dreams. J.J. Hardy is upsetting his neighbors, Jesse. And this is East Valley problems. So I might

need you to step in and help me out with this a little bit. But building a baseball field in your backyard, very cool. Building one that has poles that go up all the way to touch the sky, maybe not so much. Yeah, this is, this is one of my baseball, my favorite baseball stories of the year already. And I'm not, it's not going to be easily supplanted by anything else. So apparently, former major leaguer j j hardy lives right here in our backyard in uh in chanler arizona about 30 miles away from downtown phoenix where we're currently at for those who don't know j j hardy was a pretty good baseball player uh never never played for the diamondbacks brewers oriels oriels i always remember him as an orio yeah 13 13 year career uh 188 career home runs had himself uh himself pretty

pretty solid major league career. But yeah, he decides that he is going to build, as you said, his own field of dreams in his backyard in Chandler. And for people who are familiar with the East Valley, some of you might live there. There's just, I mean, the whole thing is a bunch of HOA neighborhoods. Like, that's what the East Valley is. Right. It's supposed to be. It's a bunch of, it's a bunch of families who are, you know, often my parents still live in Chandler. It's, It's a very friendly. A lot of neighbors are friendly. It's a good place to raise a family.

I understand my people live there. I know you don't want to besmirch your parents' neighbors. It's very clean and they get really mad when you put junk and crap outside. That's why they have HOAs. Thank you. They have HOAs because they don't want to let their neighbors, let their trees get overgrown or park 20 cars in their garage or their driveway. And that's why HOAs exist.

In reality, they just- My parents have an HOA in their neighborhood. and there have been no shortage of incidents over the 20 years or whatever it's been since they've lived there where they're taking pictures of pretty like minute things and being like, yeah, you have to, you cannot leave that trash can there. Yep, you can't put it out two days out. Yeah, you can't do that. I remember my parents when they painted their house, there was a big deal about them painting like the fence next to it.

The HOA was not on board with that. So yes, HOA's, East Valley HOA is very uptight about things. But this is one situation where I could maybe understand why they would be a little bit uptight. Here's the problem, though, Jesse. Here is the problem. Hardy, his home, is on a county island where he does not have to adhere to any HOA rules. It is absolutely fucking lawless over there on JJ Hardy's property. You can do whatever you want.

The police can't stop us at all, Jesse. But yeah, no, I mean, right? Like, that's got to be the most frustrating part. Because with an HOA, even though they do do that, like, they do it to me all the time. They do it my damn palm trees. My palm trees are always overgrown. And then even one time I had a landscaper slip and my palm trees aren't skinned, but he kind of skinned it a little bit. They sent me a letter telling me how I just skin the rest of it.

You have no idea how angry I got about that. That's a whole other fight I had. But this man, again, lawless island that he lives on as far as HOAs are concerned. J.J. Hardy just outsmarted the system here. I mean, let's be real here. Like, JJ Hardy, he hasn't figured out. But his Pam Lang lives across the street, and she is the one who reached out to our friends of her AZ family and wanted to tell them this whole story.

And this is a quote from her. She said, everybody has the right to enjoy their own yard. But this is something that is beyond what is reasonable. to expect your neighbors to tolerate. And later in the story, she says, I didn't sign up to live next to a baseball field. It's like a commercial, like living next to top golf, you know? Yeah.

Which is understandable. We can't show it because obviously this is an audio podcast and things don't work that way. But basically what she's seeing as a neighbor on the other side of the wall right now are these giant poles. 20 feet, yeah. 20 feet poles, 20 foot tall poles, those poles, presuming what they're going to to hold is a net that they can hit the ball and make sure that the ball does not go out of the yard. I'm conflicted here, Jesse, because on one hand, what do you want?

Do you want the poles there? Do you want your car getting it with baseballs all the time? Right? Like, when we hit diggers, I don't want to fucking hear you. If I take this net down, I don't want to hear it from you because this baseball field is happening whether you like it or not. The pole and the net is for your safety, not ours, lady. I mean, it's the backstop, though, right?

Like you wouldn't have dingers going. I don't think this would prevent dingers. Oh, I see what you're saying. I think based on what I've seen. Well, because if not, you're going to hit. No, no, bullshit, Jesse. Because if not, you're hitting the ball at the house. Yeah, I think, I think, I think J.J. Hardy's putting his house on the line here, man.

I don't think so. I don't think that's going to be an outfield wall. I think they're going to have. I mean, we, I don't know. We have to wait until eventually we're going to see how this all works out because he will finish it. We're going to figure out which neighborhood this is. Oh, we're going to. We're going to.

Shane is going to have some. drones just like kind of circling the area for the next few months and we're gonna we're gonna keep an eye on this for sure i i think as a homeowner i feel both ways here right like because i've had some stupid shit i've had to deal with right and like including someone the house behind me burned down oh and then they just abandoned it and left it there for five years and i just had to stare at this burned down house uh i had cats that went missing that probably presumably died in that house? I don't really know. Yes, because it's a giant burned down house. And it's like cats are hard enough to keep inside, let alone if it's like a cat that kind of gets out, goes on your fence, kind of walks around. Yeah. They're going to be tempted to go into a structure like that. And I like my cat used to bring mice home from that building. Like it was a, it was a nightmare for me. And no matter how much I contacted the HOA, there was nothing they could do about it because it was beyond their reach. It wound up being like a city and a county issue more than anything. And until these people like, basically gave up their property, I had to deal with that.

But now I have this beautiful view of the sky. There's no home there. The lot is completely empty. But I don't know what could be built there, Jesse. At any time, someone could come in and build some giant two-story house and just stares down in my backyard all the time. My life could be changed that quickly, and I would be furious about it. I also have a go-kart track in my neighborhood that's not close to me. It's like actually quite far away.

But they're so loud because these are like real racing go-karts. This isn't like a go-kart track just for fun. These are people actually racing each other in like race go-karts. And it is so loud, Jesse. I can't even sit in my backyard and just hang out because it sounds like I live like five miles away from PIR during a, you know, during a NASCAR race. It's just me. It's all night long. All night long.

It's like midnight. That's what's happening in my backyard. I hate all of that. At the end of the day, though, there's nothing I can do about any of this stuff. And it's like as much as it bothers me, it's just a fact of life. This guy's house is across the street from this lady. There is a street in between it. Like there might be another neighbor here also that also has to back up to it.

Like this sucks. And I'm not saying that Hardy is in the right for being able to put up gigantic 20 foot tall poles and have that be okay. Unfortunately, though, like we said earlier, he might have outsmarted the system on this one. Because if he is not part of your HOA and he is not part of any HOA, there's very little that you're going to be able to do about this besides go over there and ask him if you can play ball.

Look, as avid supporters of backyard baseball, it's really hard for me to hate on this too much. Right, I get it. Like, I am so intrigued at what the final product is going to look like here. Like we have, as we said earlier, we have to get over there and, you know, absolutely play some baseball at the stadium. Knock on the door with my hat on backwards. It'd be like, I am Pablo Sanchez.

Let me get the ball. My only question here, Derek, the only question I would post to J.J. Hardy is you made over $78 million in your major league career. True story. I'm on baseball reference right now. JJ Hardy's career earnings over $78 million. Could you not live in a different neighborhood that what, like that's the kind of money where you can buy a house and have tons of property and not have anyone anywhere close to you?

I see. And you can build an entire stadium in your backyard at that point. So that's my one gripe here on JJ's. side. I love the idea, but I wonder. Right. Like, I don't want to drive out to where Johnny Venerable's house is to play baseball. Nobody wants to go out to Jani's house. No. I want to play in my backyard. In Johnny's defense. That's true. He moves

closer to civilization now. The problem here is, is that even when things are close, how long until that baseball field isn't being used anymore, right? You know, in the grand scheme of things, it's cool, it's neat. Trust me, this is, I'm speaking as a man that has an arcade in my house. How often do I play those games? I'm not even going to answer that question because it's definitely, it's going to make a lot of people sad. They'll be like, why do you even have those if you don't play them? I don't know. I just want them there. That's the way it happened. I had disposable

income at the time, which I don't anymore. But that's, that's why those are there. I don't know. I mean, I really do think, obviously, if he's building this from the perspective of having like his kid play there, his kids play there, club ball, you know, like using it as an actual facility to help younger players get better at baseball and come there and use it because they don't have a field, then that's cool. But if there is a baseball field, a half a mile away from you, that's perfectly fine, and you're just doing this in your backyard because you want a baseball field in your backyard, you might kind of be a dick.

I don't know. I don't know. I just really hope he finishes it somehow. Maybe he finds a way to make it a little bit nicer for the neighbors. Sure. He puts his house up for sale. and then when we're looking for a new P.HNX headquarters in the matter of, you know, a year or two, whatever it is, maybe we target J.J. Hardy's former house. I love this idea. He's definitely putting stadium lights up in there and it's going to set that woman off.

She's going to lose her mind when she sees the stadium lights. I would fully, fully feel so bad for everyone in that neighborhood if we reach the stadium lights phase. But Maricopa County officials, according to this AZ family story, did say that. that Hardy has until April 22nd to get the proper permits to finish his field of dreams. So, you know, it is a county island, but apparently it's not completely lawless. I guess there are still some hoops that he has to jump through in order to pull this off. So stay tuned. We'll see how this turns out. Well, we do appreciate you guys being here for our pH and X Sports Audio Only podcast here. If you haven't subscribed to our channel yet or subscribed on your favorite audio

podcast. Do so now. We love when we get those reviews. Those five-star reviews help us out quite a bit. Of course, you can also follow us on Twitter. I'm at K-Ur-K-M-A-K. Jesse is at Jesse N. Friedman. Our show is at PHNX underscore D-Backs. But of course, all roads do lead to at pH&X underscore sports on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. We thank you guys so much for being here today. We appreciate your time. We'll see you next time. And until then, remember kids, baseball is fun, but it's so much more fun when you play it at an actual field. and not in your backyard.