Hey, starting nine listeners, you can find every episode on Apple podcasts, Spotify or YouTube.

Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon music.

Action and welcome back to starting nine and welcome Jake Arietta to Barcel Sports.

It's great to be here, Carl. You know, I didn't really envision this happening the way it has,

but then just pumped to be a part of the team. Yeah, looking forward to it.

It has happened though. We should say off the top for people who followed starting nine before,

obviously Dallas and Jared have moved on. But baseball lives on, baseball at Barcel live on,

and it is now firmly in our hands. And like you said, I'm looking forward to it. And I should say

congratulations on the retirement. It was a beautiful letter. I think that's the first time anybody's

retired in a letter and then at the very end unretired. Yeah, it didn't last long. You know,

when we were talking, it was probably, I think it was March 22nd. You reached out to me,

said, hey, we should do a show together, right? My response is you that I signed with the Tokyo

Giants, right? Yeah. And probably not even good enough to sign with the Tokyo Giants, which is

kind of funny in its own right, but cricket's from you. Yeah, no response. I ghosted you. And

there's what were you thinking during that time? I owe you an apology for this. I ghosted you

because I wanted to talk you out of moving to Japan. I was like, that's a horrible idea. Like,

if you're going to move to Japan, you should probably just like hang it up. But then I didn't have

like the right words. And then I forgot to send it to you. And then it was like a day later. And

I was like, fuck, I didn't, I didn't get back to him. And I like, and then like I was in the

process of coming up with like, I should, I should just call him and, and buzz him or I got,

I got to send something to him. And I was kind of thinking the same stuff, right? Hey, like,

okay, it's been five, six days. I got to reach out to this guy and at least say something,

...