Speaker 1: Before we get started, please rate and review our show.
Speaker 1: It helps people find us. On this episode of Sports
Speaker 1: Illustrated Weekly, it's been a minute since Pablo Sandoval played
Speaker 1: Major League baseball, which doesn't mean he hasn't been playing
Speaker 1: baseball at all. Writer Joseph being conjoins me to discuss
Speaker 1: his g Q story on what Sandoval has been up to,
Speaker 1: where he's been playing, and whether the man affectionately known
Speaker 1: as Kung Fu Panda has designs on making it back
Speaker 1: to the big leagues. I'm your host, John Gonzalez from
Speaker 1: Sports Illustrated and I Heart Radio. This is Sports Illustrated Weekly.
Speaker 1: Joseph being Con, Welcome to Sports Illustrated Weekly. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me, John. I used your full formal Christian name here.
Speaker 1: We're gonna call you Joey though, because that's what you
Speaker 1: go by. But you wrote an excellent piece for GQ Magazine.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend everybody go and read it. Will make
Speaker 1: sure to link to it in our show notes. But
Speaker 1: it's about Pablo Sandoval, who was one of the big
Speaker 1: guest him best known players in Major League Baseball for
Speaker 1: a long time. He was affectionately known maybe still is,
Speaker 1: as Kung Fu Panda. I guess you don't really shake
Speaker 1: a nickname like that. But before we get to what
Speaker 1: he's up to these days, give people a little synopsis,
Speaker 1: a little background on his MLB career, When did he
Speaker 1: last play in the majors and what was he known
Speaker 1: best for. Yeah, so I am from San Francisco, so
Speaker 1: I kind of saw the whole, uh, at least the
Speaker 1: high point of the Pablo Sandoval experience. But he arrived
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight halfway through the season and
Speaker 1: just kind of came on in that mythical way that
Speaker 1: rookies sometimes do. He wasn't a big prospect, but he
Speaker 1: showed up. And he was this five ten at the time,
Speaker 1: listed at two forty six pound third baseman who would
Speaker 1: jump and grab line drives and blow bubbles while in
Speaker 1: the air. He would also stumble and fall around the
Speaker 1: bases every once in a while, and uh, late in
Speaker 1: that season he jumped over a Dodgers catcher to score
Speaker 1: a run. And that's when Barry Zito gave him the
Speaker 1: name that stuck to Kung Fu Panda, and even by
Speaker 1: the end of that year, Giants fans and started showing
Speaker 1: up wearing panda hats. He was just kind of this
Speaker 1: like you know, lightning in a bottle kind of player
Speaker 1: that comes around. And he never hit as well as
Speaker 1: he did as a twenty two year old. You know,
Speaker 1: he had a very early peak, which is part of
Speaker 1: what fascinates me about his story. But he won three
Speaker 1: World Series with a team that hadn't won a World
Speaker 1: Series since nineteen fifty. He caught the final out in
Speaker 1: the World Series, Salvador Press but two two popped up, said,
Speaker 1: and then he left. And that's kind of what always
Speaker 1: is fascinated about the Pablos story is you're this made
Speaker 1: man in San Francisco, three time World Series champion, World
Speaker 1: Series m v P. And then he left to Boston,
Speaker 1: and as anyone knows about the Boston media, it's not
Speaker 1: a great place to go and fail. I spent some
Speaker 1: time in Boston. All East Coast cities are very tough.
Speaker 1: That's a particularly tough spot, especially if you're a baseball player.
Speaker 1: With all the history with the Red Sox. But Pabo
Speaker 1: was still a fan favorite. So when did he wash
Speaker 1: out of the majors? What happened there? Yeah? So he
Speaker 1: is stuck around like he started the season last season
Speaker 1: on the Atlanta Braves and he was a glorified pinch hitter,
Speaker 1: but he was a good vibes guy in the locker room.
Speaker 1: He was well liked, and halfway through the season he
Speaker 1: was traded to the Indians for the eventual World Series.
Speaker 1: MVP was part of that fantastic trade and then continued
Speaker 1: to struggle with the Indians and no one came calling
Speaker 1: this year. So he got a call from Mexico and
Speaker 1: signed on with the team in mont Clova in northern Mexico,
Speaker 1: seven hours south of Austin, Texas, to play for the Acereros.
Speaker 1: I love this story. I mean, when athletes are, you know,
Speaker 1: holding on, trying to stay in their sport, he decides
Speaker 1: to go down to Mexico. It's a fascinating piece. You
Speaker 1: went to Mexico. Set the scene for everybody. What's that
Speaker 1: league like, what's that town like, and what does he
Speaker 1: look like in that atmosphere. So I was lucky enough
Speaker 1: to write about the Mexican League in from Medium. I
Speaker 1: went down to Tijuana for that story, and Tijuana the
Speaker 1: stadium is seventeen thousand capacity. It kind of feels not
Speaker 1: big league ish, but definitely bigger than the Miners. But
Speaker 1: driving into mont Clova. It is a there's one big
Speaker 1: street that runs through the town. You know, there's some
Speaker 1: H E. B s, there are a few American businesses,
Speaker 1: but it definitely feel is like a small town. I
Speaker 1: love the small town man. It's unbelievable how the people are,
Speaker 1: how the people threat you. I saw a bankbull citium.
Speaker 1: When you can't do a city like God, you want
Speaker 1: to want to play, you want to be do you
Speaker 1: want to do for the city In mont Clova? It
Speaker 1: is very hot when I was there, there were highs
Speaker 1: of one oh eight on some of the days. It's
Speaker 1: very humid, and it's very small town ish. But this
Speaker 1: eight thousand capacity stadium fills to the brim. Fans bring drunes, noisemakers,
Speaker 1: there's I think three or four mascots, there's cheerleaders, there's
Speaker 1: music playing through the entire game, and probably most importantly
Speaker 1: of all, for all of this energy, there are two
Speaker 1: dollar beers at uh oh yeah, that's the good stuff,
Speaker 1: like a man. Iconic games. So it's more like you're
Speaker 1: at a basketball game, or soccer game or football game.
Speaker 1: Then what we picture Major League Baseball games. I'm sure
Speaker 1: something like a nice picnic, uh you know, quiet little
Speaker 1: day in the park. They love the game, They respect
Speaker 1: the players, say, you know, playing in other countries is
Speaker 1: different because you know more things about that country, and
Speaker 1: that's things from this country and in John the time here.
Speaker 1: So as we mentioned, he's obviously a fan favorite. He's
Speaker 1: a big name. He also told you right when you
Speaker 1: were talking to him, Joey that especially down there, everybody
Speaker 1: knows him. Yeah, so he I think I was, as
Speaker 1: you do with these sports stories. I kind of came
Speaker 1: in with a question, which is, why when you've won
Speaker 1: four World Series rings and made a hundred and sixteen
Speaker 1: million dollars do you continue to play? And if you're
Speaker 1: going to continue to play hymn Clover, which I explained
Speaker 1: as the Pittsburgh of Mexico and it's kind of a
Speaker 1: small steel town, Like why do you choose that place
Speaker 1: of all places? And that was a question I had
Speaker 1: continue to try to ask in different ways to Pablo,
Speaker 1: And as far as I could tell, they were one
Speaker 1: of the teams that called. They were a team that
Speaker 1: kind of expressed that they trusted him and believed that
Speaker 1: he could be you know, we know, Manny being manny.
Speaker 1: They were okay with Pablo being Pablo down there and
Speaker 1: uh that he would have a chance to win and
Speaker 1: compete Uival Gloa. That the in the organization, the owner,
Speaker 1: the ownership, they're they're so nice with me and my family.
Speaker 1: Is this This is one of the mat sited to
Speaker 1: play baseball at the lot Baseball and the thing the
Speaker 1: Chemist movie guys super nice. Soon after I was down there,
Speaker 1: he was cut by the team and I signed on elsewhere.
Speaker 1: So it kind of created some narrative tension in the
Speaker 1: story when you see a guy choose a town that's
Speaker 1: a little off the beaten path because of trust and
Speaker 1: then that trust is broken. Yeah, that's tough. So he made,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, a hundred and sixteen million dollars in
Speaker 1: his career. What was he making down there? Mexico Baseball
Speaker 1: contracts are not public, but I did some digging and
Speaker 1: the best guests I have is about twenty thousand per
Speaker 1: month plus room and board, and then for the foreign players,
Speaker 1: who are usually the highest paid in the league, taxes
Speaker 1: are covered as well. So I spoke to one pitcher
Speaker 1: for a different team who said he was called up
Speaker 1: to the majors in September of last year and actually
Speaker 1: made less money that month than the months he was
Speaker 1: playing in the Mexican League because of taxes, expenses, all
Speaker 1: of that. So it doesn't pay well compared to you know,
Speaker 1: Prime Pablo, but it pays better than the minor leagues,
Speaker 1: and you get to live kind of the not big
Speaker 1: league experience, but closer to big league experience because this
Speaker 1: is in mont Clova. This is the biggest show in
Speaker 1: town and there's no question about that. And how's the
Speaker 1: competition in the Mexican League? Is league anna good? So
Speaker 1: after that twenty sixteen rule change I wrote about in
Speaker 1: the earlier article, the rule change basically allowed teams to
Speaker 1: count Mexican American players as native players on the team,
Speaker 1: and each team gets seven players born outside of Mexico.
Speaker 1: But this kind of led to a talent surge because
Speaker 1: these teams would start searching, you know, for a great
Speaker 1: grandmother who maybe was born in California before California was
Speaker 1: part of America and that would count as Mexican heritage,
Speaker 1: or you know, they would go searching for Mexican heritage
Speaker 1: wherever they could find it, and that kind of brought
Speaker 1: an influx of talent into the league all at once.
Speaker 1: In since then, the league has definitely gotten better. There's
Speaker 1: days where you're watching a game and it kind of
Speaker 1: feels like you're playing David Roths. Let's remember some guys
Speaker 1: like it'll be like, oh, remember that Cubs prospect who
Speaker 1: never made it? Or remember Addison Russell, who was you know,
Speaker 1: a startering, burgeoning star on the Cubs. Or Josh Reddick
Speaker 1: or Chris Carter. There's some guys you know. But pitching
Speaker 1: is light years behind hitting. Now. I was looking it up,
Speaker 1: and uh, four guys hit four hundred this year. Two
Speaker 1: guys hit thirty eight homers during the ninety games season,
Speaker 1: and they were averaging twelve runs a game in these
Speaker 1: Mexican League games. So it is a hitting bonanza. But
Speaker 1: it's not bad, Like it's a fun product to watch, alright.
Speaker 1: So it's a hitting bonanza. And yet he goes down
Speaker 1: to the small, landlocked steel Town gets cut. Now he's
Speaker 1: with a new team. Team. How did he look to
Speaker 1: you when you went to see him? And how's he
Speaker 1: playing with his new team? Yes, so he was cut
Speaker 1: because he was hitting two forty in this league where
Speaker 1: hitting is balloon the numbers are ballooned, and the team
Speaker 1: was right at five hundred when I was down there
Speaker 1: in early May, so I had someone in the front
Speaker 1: office tell me, like, the owners are concerned. We've spent
Speaker 1: a lot on all of this talent, and uh, we
Speaker 1: shouldn't be a five hundred team. So they made a
Speaker 1: lot of changes, one of which being Josh Reddick retiring,
Speaker 1: one of which being Pablo being cut, and a few
Speaker 1: others followed, but they ended the season as the three seed.
Speaker 1: Pablo then signed on with a team called the Old
Speaker 1: Mecca's the Tabasco and they are the two seed in
Speaker 1: the Southern Division and playoffs have just started. Once he
Speaker 1: got to his second team, he started hitting three hund
Speaker 1: dred He's done a lot better and uh, fingers crossed.
Speaker 1: They meet up in the World Series of the Mexican
Speaker 1: League in a couple of weeks. All it's a part
Speaker 1: of the Pablo Sandoval story, as you mentioned at the top,
Speaker 1: is how he's looking. And you know what, you and
Speaker 1: I discussed this before, and I mean not just how
Speaker 1: he's looking on the field, but how he actually looks physically,
Speaker 1: and you and I discussed this before. We don't want
Speaker 1: to do any fat shaming here. However, he is named
Speaker 1: Kung Fu Panda, so how's he look these days? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I've always been of the belief as long as
Speaker 1: you could get around the bases and hit and you're
Speaker 1: not making a bunch of errors, I don't really care
Speaker 1: if you have a little gut. I was grew up
Speaker 1: a Movan fan. You know, it's fine, it's baseball. We're
Speaker 1: not playing soccer here. But he's definitely looks like Pablo Sandoval.
Speaker 1: He doesn't look like late career, you know, Mo Vaughn
Speaker 1: or something. It's not like he's put on an extra
Speaker 1: twenty or thirty pounds. But yeah, I mean, one of
Speaker 1: the fascinating parts of this article was going and reading
Speaker 1: back through all these clips to do your research on it.
Speaker 1: And the world has changed in a few short years
Speaker 1: where the stuff that the Boston guys, especially but also
Speaker 1: bar Stool were writing about Pablo would just not fly
Speaker 1: today at all. Dan Shaughnessy had a line get a
Speaker 1: load of that gut in his twenty sixteen spring training
Speaker 1: column about him. There was mentions of Colonel Sanders, Sarah Lee,
Speaker 1: the Delhi counter at Publix, and then uh, bar Stool
Speaker 1: being bar Stool had a headline, look at this fat
Speaker 1: fucking piece of ship Pablo sander Bals. So the amount
Speaker 1: that this guy got raked over the coals for being
Speaker 1: overweight is something special, but I don't think it will
Speaker 1: happen again in sports. I like him is the way
Speaker 1: he is thick with two sees. That's my kind of
Speaker 1: ball player. So obviously this is not the majors. He's
Speaker 1: taken heat for his body type, he's taken heat for
Speaker 1: his game, and yet he's still trying to play. And
Speaker 1: you asked him if he ever lost his love for
Speaker 1: the game. What was his response. I mean, it's pretty
Speaker 1: magical to talk to a guy because obviously all of
Speaker 1: these athletes have their guard up a little bit in
Speaker 1: these interviews. And at first I was talking to Pablo
Speaker 1: and I was just like, there's some cliches coming. And finally,
Speaker 1: once you start to get into more of the poetry
Speaker 1: of baseball is when he started opening up and he
Speaker 1: talked about, you know, this is the game that's like
Speaker 1: created life for me. It's one of the things that
Speaker 1: I still do with love and passion because that's the
Speaker 1: way they teach me when I was young. People don't
Speaker 1: realize them when you lost that it's time to walk away.
Speaker 1: But I'm never going to lose that because I love this.
Speaker 1: It's this guy who is just I mean. He tells
Speaker 1: the story about scouts beginning to arrive out in a
Speaker 1: Puerto Cabio, Venezuela starting to talk to him when he's
Speaker 1: a fourteen year old, and his mom is like, I
Speaker 1: want to talk to these scouts and tells them my
Speaker 1: son is not going to come to America at fourteen.
Speaker 1: He's gonna finish high school. He's gonna get his life
Speaker 1: in order as much as that's possible by seventeen years old.
Speaker 1: But then he finally is signed and comes over to
Speaker 1: rookie ball as a seventeen year old with barely any English,
Speaker 1: arrives in America and is forced to find his footing
Speaker 1: and obviously all about is inextricably tied to baseball, loving
Speaker 1: the game, you know, Like I said, I don't know
Speaker 1: nothing to beside baseball. So I'll be talking with my family,
Speaker 1: so they're having fun, like he's having fun to see
Speaker 1: him playing, and uh and during the time with me,
Speaker 1: you know, so I still hear the baseball. I're gonna
Speaker 1: keep playing until I don't know. My wife tell me,
Speaker 1: oh my kids, tell me stop So it's this guy
Speaker 1: who has just now spent more in half of his
Speaker 1: life away from his home, but also has made a
Speaker 1: home wherever he's playing through baseball. So it's this kind
Speaker 1: of magical story. And he talks about his son starting
Speaker 1: to get into the game just as a swing happy
Speaker 1: as he is. And yeah, I think I was trying
Speaker 1: to answer the question why I'm on clover, why I
Speaker 1: keep playing? And you try to dodge in duck cliches
Speaker 1: and all of that, and you think there must be
Speaker 1: some ulterior motive here. But like, the man has made
Speaker 1: enough money, he's comfortable. He just really likes to play baseball,
Speaker 1: and he's not ready to quit. Are just s happy
Speaker 1: to keep playing baseball, keep swinging, Like I always I
Speaker 1: was making a job. I'll get paid to swing to
Speaker 1: don't get walks. So yes, if I hate the ball,
Speaker 1: gonna be fine next week. I always say that. So
Speaker 1: he loves the game. I get that. But he's thirty six,
Speaker 1: he'll be thirty seven in August. He's still going. Does
Speaker 1: the harbor illusions of making it back to the Biggs
Speaker 1: or does he know that it's probably not gonna happen.
Speaker 1: That's a great question. I mean, he would not say
Speaker 1: directly one way or the other. I think he is realistic,
Speaker 1: and I think I talked to a few guys in
Speaker 1: the league who talked about how hard it is to
Speaker 1: be a veteran and rEFInd your footing, especially in Major
Speaker 1: League Baseball these days, when often there's a premium put
Speaker 1: on the cheaper option and the younger guy under team
Speaker 1: control all of that. But I also think there was
Speaker 1: something Josh Reddick told me which became extra interesting because
Speaker 1: he retired days after I left, and after he told
Speaker 1: me this quote. He told me, you're a former player
Speaker 1: a lot longer than you're ever a current player, so
Speaker 1: you just try to play as long as you can
Speaker 1: and enjoy every moment. You don't want to look back
Speaker 1: and go, man, I really wish I would have played
Speaker 1: two more years. So I think that tells the story
Speaker 1: as much as anything is. The Mexican League is not
Speaker 1: the big leagues. I don't think Pablo believes he has
Speaker 1: anything else to prove in a career is four rings.
Speaker 1: He has a World Series m v P. The Pablo
Speaker 1: Santoval stories always this kind of idea that if only
Speaker 1: he had changed his body, or if only he had
Speaker 1: stayed in San Francisco, or if only he hadn't torn
Speaker 1: his laborum, what could have been. But I think I
Speaker 1: kind of believe him when speaking with him, that he
Speaker 1: doesn't have regrets. He thinks he had a career worthy
Speaker 1: of what he his talent and everything else, and he
Speaker 1: just wants to play baseball, and Mexico's is good to
Speaker 1: the place as anywhere to play, as good a place
Speaker 1: as any I always liked watching him play. I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed reading about him playing in Mexico. Go read Joseph
Speaker 1: being CON's excellent story about Pablo Sandoval in g Q.
Speaker 1: Will have a link on our show notes. Joey, thanks
Speaker 1: for this, Thank you John, thanks for listening everybody, and
Speaker 1: a reminder to please rate and review the show. It
Speaker 1: helps people find us. And a special thanks to our
Speaker 1: friends at g Q for passing along Sandoval's interview audio.
Speaker 1: Sports Illustrated Weekly is a production of Sports Illustrated and
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Speaker 1: This episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly was produced by Jordan Rozsieri,
Speaker 1: Jessica your Moski, and Isaac Lee, who was also our
Speaker 1: sound engineer. Our senior producers are Dan Bloom and Harry
Speaker 1: sward Out. Our executive producers are Scott Brody and me
Speaker 1: John Gonzalez. Our theme song is by Nolan Schneider. And
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