Clemen Geek, Clemen and the Geek.

Clemen and the Geek.

And welcome to the third try at the Glemen of the Geek.

Episode 35C.

We've got technical difficulties here.

We almost always seem to have technical difficulties lately when we had a third mic. Don't blame the guest, John. Don't blame the guest. That's right, I'm blaming the guests. That's John's way of saying we have a guest, which we do, because we're going to break down the roster. That's basically we're going to do the whole episode. There are a few other stories to go along with that

But you know next time we speak to you guys

We'll have actual games that discuss which is kind of exciting because we've been you know talking about scenarios and

Roster spots and I keep telling John that spring training doesn't matter so we shouldn't even talk about those games

For so long that it's exciting we're going to have some actual games to talk about but in the meantime

we're going to talk about the bench the bullpen who got sent down and what better way to do that

than to have a guest on who has actually been at spring training to see some of these guys in action

and is the newest twins beat reporter ben gesslingessling from the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Clap, clap, clap, sorry, studio, I'm giving him a round of applause. But welcome. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. Glad to be here. Ben is a local guy. Where did you go to high school? Somewhere around here. Apple Valley. Apple Valley, U of M. and also he covered, I first got to know his stuff when he was covering the Nationals for the Washington Times. Yep, first to Washington Times. And then Masson Sports.com, which Masson is like, I guess it's sort of like FSN North has a website here and it's sort of like that because Masson, they do, they have the Orioles games too, right? They do. It's a do it's a mid-atlantic sports network yeah it's the network for both the nationals and the orioles it was basically conceived as the the olive branch to peter angeles when the nationals were coming to town saying if we give you their tv rights will you not sue us and it worked so far out worked which is a big it's always a consideration with him will you not sue us it seems like sue us? It seems like almost everything with him. So yeah. He made all his money as an asbestos lawyer. Yeah, it's a fair concern. I didn't know that. Yeah, that's, it makes sense now that I think about it. But yeah, so part of the reason we want to have Benon is, first of all, he can speak with some level of expertise that we don't have after watching a lot of these guys in spring training, but also because he's the newest guy in the Twins beat,

and I wanted to sort of kiss his butt a little bit and also encourage our audience to check

out his stuff at the Piner Press, his stuff, and also John Shipley's stuff. There's tag team in the

beat now. But Ben, I couldn't care less about the nationals, really. But I read all his

stuff on the mass and sports.com. And, you know, as part of my day gig at NBC Sports, we linked to,

you know, reporters from all over the country. And I found myself more often than not, I mean,

Washington had a bunch of really

good reporters.

The MLB.com guy, Bill Ladson was good and Adam Kilgore from the Washington Post was good, but

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