Hi, Meg. Hello. We're doing a kind of cold open today because Sam is away this week,

and he and I recorded the rest of this episode on Sunday before the tremendously sad news about

the passing of pitcher Tyler Skags. And before we proceed with podcasting, as usual, we wanted to

take a few minutes to talk about Skags and about the tributes to him that have poured out of players

and friends and media members since he was found unresponsive in his hotel room in Texas. And

you know, I know that in this situation when this happens to an active player, particularly in the

middle of the season, I know there's a disbelief that I think we all feel. This is someone who

pitched Saturday and yeah, suddenly he's gone. And so you always say that sort of thing about how

this feels wrong. And he was not even quite to his 28th birthday and everything about this just

feels like it's not supposed to happen. And you know, I wish that it were even less

familiar than it is. That's something like this happens because I feel like I've had much more

practice than I would like to have had responding to news like this because we've seen this happen to

Darryl Kyle and Corey Leidl and Joe Kennedy and Josh Hancock and Nick Aidenhard and Greg

Halman and Oscar Tavarice and Tommy Hanson and Jose Fernandez and your Donovan tour and Luis

Val Boena and the list goes on and on. And of course, you're aware of prior players who were gone

before we were around to see them. And I wish that this were an even less frequent occurrence than

it is, but as fairly and frequent as it is, it's still pretty shocking when someone in the sport

that you cover and that you've watched is there one day and gone the next. Well, I think it's such a

strange, it's a strange awful thing for everyone. You know, it's a strange and awful thing for fans

because you have this sense that you know these guys and we don't of course, right? Like we don't

exchange Christmas cards with them, but they are part of, you know, if you're an angel's fan in

particular, like even on days when Skags wasn't pitching, you probably saw him in the dugout,

...