Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Welcome to this week's edition of in the Clubhouse with EMD Baseball. I'm Andy Kirakidis, joined by my wonderful co host, Keith Blasser. How we doing?
[00:00:18] Speaker A: Great. How are you?
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Good. We're gonna talk about the weather today.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: So this comes up inevitably when you start talking about school lists and target lists and where kids want to go and play.
I think we just. We just need to get this out into the. Into the universe so that people can wrap their head around this, because I think there's a little bit of a misconception, specifically with kids in the Northeast who think, well, if I go to Virginia, like, I'm down south and, like, it's going to be warm all the time.
It really isn't the case, right, with. With guys trying to go down south to play. To play baseball. And the idea of, like, well, I'm going to get into warm weather and, you know, it's going to be vastly different than, you know, being in the state of New Jersey. And I think it. It gets misconstrued sometimes and not really fully understanding that if you want to get into that warm weather where it don't really matter what time of year is, you can go outside and play baseball. You kind of got to get to Georgia and Florida, Texas or California, you know, probably throw, like, Louisiana in there. But, I mean, shoot, I've opened up at Ole Miss as a coach, and first pitch on Friday was 38 degrees.
So it's a little bit of a misconception. Just want to take a minute to kind of talk about this so that people understand kind of when the baseball season starts, how that weather impacts it, and take a couple minutes to unpack this, since it's something that seems to pop up quite a bit. So what are your thoughts on this one?
[00:01:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the weather thing is, by and large, when you get to the end of the process, I think it's one of the things that you'll look back and think is not the most important thing. You know, obviously, everyone, you know, this has been going on since the dawn of time that everyone wants to go play baseball in the south, you know, and it's, you know, for the weather. Right. I should say that it's not all that different. Like, obviously, is it going to be a tad bit warmer? Of course it is. Like, that's just the nature of how this country is set up. That said, you know, baseball is opening up in February and March, you know, unless, again, unless you're in Florida, you know, Louisiana, even, they had Snow this year, Texas, Arizona, I'll throw in there. California, you know, you're going to be playing in suboptimal weather sometimes, you know, and you get into these distinctions of like, well, I don't want to go to this section of the country, but I'm okay with this section. It's like, well, it's geographically, it's kind of the same. You know, the weather is generally the same there. We might be talking about a couple degrees up and down, but for the most part it's generally the same. And I've just always found it kind of weird, right? And I'm not saying that it's a bad thing. I've just always kind of thought that's such a weird thing to say.
That's a determining factor in where it is you want to go to school, not the coaching staff or the program or the level of play, whatever it might be. Like, well, I want to play where it's warm. Like, okay, so does everyone. But, you know, I thought it was interesting just because I remember watching, I don't know, it wasn't opening weekend. I think it was the second weekend of Division 1 play this year. So we're talking the third week in February.
Dartmouth was playing at Texas, and I think it was like 38 or 41 degrees first pitch for all three games. I mean, it was cold enough to where obviously the guys from Texas were bundled up, but the guys from Dartmouth were, you know, who are from Upper New Hampshire. We're playing, we're all in cold weather stuff and jackets and hats and stuff. So, you know, if they think it's cold down there, like, it's likely cold, you know, So I think that it's something that, you know, does the weather get a little bit better, you know, in March and, you know, early to mid March and into April? Yeah, it does, but it's not something where you're playing in 90 degree weather and 26 degree weather, you know, you're playing in 50s and 40s, you know, so it's, it's not necessarily the thing that I think should be a determining factor for you when you're, you're going through your recruiting process, you know, And I think the other side of it too is just that there's, there's way more baseball teams, programs, schools in the Northeast, Mid Atlantic than there generally are in the rest of the country. So if you kind of just narrow your search to one geographic reason or region, excuse me, based off of weather, you're really cutting out a lot of schools where you could potentially play at solely based on something that is literally out of the control of anybody and can change year to year, day to day, month to month, week to week, you name it.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: Yeah, it's probably, it probably needs to be very low on your list of things that make a difference right now. If you're making a decision between a school in Florida and a school in Pennsylvania and all things are created equal. Yeah. All right, maybe go down to Florida. But to your point, like writing schools off because it's going to be cold there when you start the season. Well, I can tell you, living in Virginia, you know, two weeks ago, that cold streak that went through New York, you know, and everybody was complaining up there, it was 35 up in New York City, there's 37 down here. You know, it's. It's really not much different. You're talking about, you know, two or three hour drive, four hour drive, depending on where you are.
You're really splitting hairs when you talk about the weather in terms of the timing of it during the college baseball season. The fact of the matter is, is that you open up in mid February. There's very few places in this country, south included, where you're going to go down there and it's going to be 75 and sunny on opening weekend.
So don't restrict yourself because of temperatures. I just, I. That conversation inevitably comes up and it's something that we seem to have to cover that, you know, we don't, we don't need to be closing doors on schools because, you know, the average temperature there during the season is 58 and somewhere it's 61, you know, so had to be said, Wanted to take a couple minutes to talk about it. Don't make that something that's high up on your list of importance or make that a driving factor in how you go about pulling together your school list, your target list. Like it needs to be about fit, socially fit, academically fit. From a baseball perspective, if it happens to line up that you get to go play in a school in South Carolina or Georgia, awesome. You're probably going to be on the field a little bit more often than you are if you're going to play in Massachusetts. But with the indoor facilities, a lot of programs have division one, two and three. They all have space. You can get better, you can develop. They got weight rooms, they got everything you need. Anyways, I think the weather should be very low on your list of things that are taken into consideration when you're making a decision about where you want to go to school or as you start to accumulate a list of schools that you're going to target, I would advise strongly that looking up the temperature averages isn't going to be all that fruitful for you.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: No.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Anything else you want to add?
[00:08:19] Speaker A: No, I just think that it's. I think you hit the nail on the head that it's not the.
Should be low on your list of things. You know, if you're comparing two different places at the end of the day. Sure. But, you know, I just think it's. It's foolish to wipe out entire sections of the country and schools just solely based on the idea that, you know, heard it a billion times, like, want to go south, like, okay, but there's.
It's. It's not all the same. So don't do that, please. All of you that are listening, don't wipe places out solely based on something that's literally out of everybody's control.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Well, I think you had a. You had a good example of it the other day. We were talking like, well, if. If the University of Michigan called.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: Be upset about the weather, like.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Right. Like, you can't tell me that you don't want to go to, you know, Western New York and then University of Michigan or Michigan State calls. It's like, yeah, I'll go there. Like, it's very similar weather conditions in those two places.
[00:09:27] Speaker B: Possibly colder.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: Could be very well. Very well could be. But I think it's like, it's all relative. Right? Like it's, you know, but I don't think that it's. Or I shouldn't say it's relative. I think it's all. In those situations. It's.
It's showing you that it's not necessarily as big a concern as you're making it out to be. You're making it out to be. You only want to play Division 1 baseball in the south instead of, you know, looking for the place that's going to be the right fit for you and using weather as a factor to cross things off the list, because that's why.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Well said. Well, we'll keep this one short and sweet. Don't let the weather be a determining factor or at least a guiding. Don't let it be your North Star, if you will.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: Oh, good.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Came up. Came up with a good one. Tune in next week. We'll have some more tidbits for you. We'll talk recruiting. We'll talk baseball. Talk to you then. Thanks, everybody. Thank you for listening this week. If you're watching on YouTube. Go ahead and hit that subscribe button and smash that like button for us. Check us out on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts as well as Spotify. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram MD Baseball if you want to find out what me and Keith do to help families and players navigate the recruiting process, go ahead and check us out on emdbaseball.com take a few minutes to check out our new online academy. I promise you'll get some good information out of that. Thanks again for listening. Check in with you next week.
