As far as player development wins go, where does your mind come in there?

I think there's a lot of really, really cool things that have happened this year in player development.

Certainly, you think of some of the debuts at the major league level.

So we saw Connor here last year help the Altoona team make the playoffs, lose a tough series to Erie.

Still feeling that one too.

Being in person, that wasn't fun, but that's okay.

But starting the year that way with Connor making his debut at such a young age and the electricity of that game against the Orioles, his first at bat, he puts it into the notch.

Tell me a little bit about the process of sort of onboarding a draft guy, right? And what it might look like for somebody like Derek, who was picked in the first round this year, and what it might look like for somebody like Aiden Ruiz, right? Who's a high school draftee that comes a little bit later in the draft.

And where did addiction start for you? What was the moment that you realized like, oh, I kind of, I like this.

I mean, if I'm being totally honest, I think the first time I remember it was the summer between sixth and seventh grade.

And I was really good friends with this girl, Danny Nash.

She was like my best friend.

Her parents kind of took me in as their surrogate son.

They had a house in the Hamptons.

And nobody I grew up with really before that had a house in the Hamptons.

When did you meet your wife and how did that happen?

Girls need it, too.

Of course.

And that's what I was after.

And this guy, Dan, very strategically watched what happened around me, saw that I got picked up from.

He also drove the school bus.

He also drove the school bus where he would pick up kids from school.

So this dude was so good at what he did.

Period.

Yeah

... those players.

And, and so that, that's, like, s- that's a hard mentality to break 'cause we're so accustomed to watching guys graduate up the system.

I was a coach in Bradenton.

"Oh, next year I'm gonna be in Greensboro." But, but in reality, that's not, that's, we're not, we're not looking at it in that regard.

And so how we sort of assess, um, you know, the coach development piece...

And, and I wanna give Sean Johnson, he's the assistant director of our department.

Um, before we get into specific guys, how do you guys do that? How do you-- how does that work? How does that process of filling the minor league organization with a bunch of top talent take-- What kind of, uh, work does that take from you guys?

Yeah

... they're, they're scared.

They're gonna go to jail, whatever.

So instead of calling the ambulance, she like put me in the bathtub, turned on the cold water, and just prayed that I was gonna not die, and luckily I didn't die.

But I remember walking west on 13th Street saying to myself, "This is it.

You've just gone to the darkest side of life.

You died.

[laughs]

To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wegovy clinical study information and restrictions, visit forhers.com

I wanted to really put an emphasis and a highlight on positive habits being the catalyst to happiness and success, and that's my story, right? When I gave up the bad habits and started replacing them with good ones, everything in my life changed.

My life has only gone up from the day I got sober in August of 2004.

My life has only gotten better.

It's just a fact.

Like, if you, if you, if you look at my life as, as a bar graph prior to August 2nd, 20- 2004, it was, it was like, it was, it was this way.

It was, it was all downhill.

... sometimes is proving people wrong? 'Cause I have that feeling.

Why don't, why don't, why don't you first, 'cause there's a lot of new audience here for you, first tell everybody what Creatures of Habit is first and foremost?

foremost?Yeah, Creatures of Habit is a lifestyle wellness brand rooted in nutritional healthy habits.

We have a product called Meal One.

It is breakfast.

It is the, you know, the old school breakfast of champions, Wheaties.

We have taken, we have taken center stage, and it's, uh, it's a high protein overnight oatmeal.

It's packed with 30 grams of protein, chia seeds, flax seeds, pumpkin seeds, pink Himalayan salt.

[laughs] You know what I mean? Just like the most competition, super hard, super complicated, and, um, he's an operator.

Yeah.

The fact is, is that it's, it's really hard because I always explain it like this.

You walk into your favorite retail store for, for clothes, right? You wanna go buy a pair of jeans.

You know you're gonna walk in there and spend 100 and s- $160, right? You walk in.

Maybe somebody greets you at the door, maybe they don't.

But you know that you're going in for the jeans.

You walk over to the rack.

Would you get back into the restaurant game?