Episode 3: Former Pitcher Blyleven, Plus the Scout Who Signed Tulo!

We've got ourselves a streak: three straight episodes with absolutely outstanding guests! This week, we have Todd Blyleven, who has lived at least four different interesting lives in baseball: the son of a Major Leaguer (Hall of Famer Bert Blyleven); a pitcher who spent several seasons in the minors and had highlights such as playing in big league spring training and meeting Jeff Snider; a Major League scout for the Angels and Rockies who signed superstar Troy Tulowitzki; and now working hard at a job he loves in an awesome blend of the sporting world and corporate America. Todd is fascinating and intelligent and all sorts of other positive adjectives, and he just casually mentions Juan Berenguer, which is pretty boss. Interview starts at about 15:30.

In our first segment, we talk a bit about the Sadlock Curse, where Josh wrote on Baseball Essential about Jonathan Schoop, and then later that day Schoop suffered a knee injury that might have ended his season. We also talk about the bad blood brewing between the Red Sox and Orioles and between the A's and Royals, with some talk about how umpire Jordan Baker blew it by ejecting Ubaldo Jiminez early in Friday's game for hitting Pablo Sandoval. No mention was made of just how big a target Sandoval is, because that would be immature. But seriously, he's a big dude.

After the interview with Blyleven, at about 55:07, we play a nice round of Six Degrees of Kevin Stocker (with a very clear winner this time), discover that everything in baseball goes back to the Doubleday Farms Field of Dreams, and discuss all the upcoming milestones the Yankees mentioned in a press release that failed to mention Alex Rodriguez's upcoming 660th home run.

For music this week, we have the standards of "Talkin' Baseball" and "Baseball Boogie," as well as "The Baseball Song" by country singer Corey Smith and "Looks Like We Made It" by Barry Manilow, who Jeff will be seeing in concert in Salt Lake City on Monday night.

As always, we'd love to hear from you. Send us an email for our as-yet-nonexistent mailbag at [email protected], follow us on Twitter at @Spitball_BBE, @snidog, and @JoshSadlock, and tell your friends about us. Thanks for listening!