1.0 x2FS Pitching Badger

Recovering ex-baseball dad. Father of NC State Wolfpacker and a Rambler.

[1.0 x2FS Pitching Badger @Pitchingbadger]

They listen and they hear you.

That was the lesson I finally learned from my son on the 23 hour, 2 1/2 day drive ride from Dallas to NC State to drop him off for his junior year.

23 hours is a drop in the bucket compared to the hours we chewed up on hot Texas roads going to baseball practices, the batting cage, Whataburger, and tournaments throughout the state of Texas.

Many of life’s lessons I was taught by my parents, and those I have learned in 53 years, and those that my wife learned that we have tried to pass down to both our kids, were discussed during those long, hot, trips.

Our last baseball ride was 2023. His last game was 2024.

Aug. 13-15, 2026 was our first long drive together as adults. We talked about family, politics, music, Green Lantern, House of Dragons, why Marvel has sucked since Endgame (other than Spider-Man), his upcoming classes, AI’s utility to his future, how to pick a jury, what MLB pitcher has the best WAR, how to listen to people, and how to talk to them. We listened to his music and my music ( a lot of Metallica and Slipknot overlap in our playlists) and true crime podcasts. He asked lots of questions about lots of different things.

And while he slept between Memphis and Knoxville, I listened to Eric Cressey podcasts on pitching — which is exactly how we spent so many of those long summers on Texas roads coming back from tournaments.

But what I learned is through it all, he listened.

And he heard.

My back is killing me as I sit in a hotel waiting to fly to Chicago to move my daughter into college. While I know some day she and I will go through a similar transition, I am in no rush for it.

We spend the first 18 years of their lives trying to be a parent, and the rest of our lives trying to establish an adult relationship, without the paternalism.

So those of you that still have miles to ride in whatever activity your kids pursue — I’m jealous.

Make the best of your ride with them. It’s shorter than you think.

And always remember, they are listening.

The Pitching Badger (8-15-26)

[1.0 x2FS Pitching Badger @Pitchingbadger]

The time it takes to hand write things out allows the brain to better absorb it and for emotions to cool down. Journaling in general is a good thing (Google “journaling studies and mental health”). At the start of this college this year I sent both my kids leather bound journals with a recommendation they use them to write down whatever. https://t.co/dw3VgEovSb

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

The best pitcher in baseball refuses to lift weights, warms up by throwing a javelin, and scouts hitters with a paper notebook. The Dodgers paid him $325 million and then hired his sensei too.

The notebook makes sense once you see the rest of his system.

Yamamoto trains under Osamu Yada, who has never told him to touch a barbell. Javelin throws instead of long toss. Handstands, back bridges, breathing work. The Dodgers studied the routine, decided they couldn't improve it, and hired Yada rather than change Yamamoto. During free agency, one team's recruiting gift to him was a team-logoed javelin, just to prove how deep their research went.

The results broke baseball's assumptions. Last November he threw 96 pitches in World Series Game 6, then came out of the bullpen and closed Game 7 the very next day.

Now look at the dugout. Every MLB club runs Hawk-Eye, a dozen cameras per stadium tracking spin, tilt, and swing path on every single pitch. Yamamoto has all of it on an iPad ten feet away.

He writes by hand anyway.

Japanese player development bakes this in. Kids keep baseball journals from little league on, charting every at-bat in their own words. The logic survives contact with analytics. League data tells you what a hitter does on average. A pitcher's own notes capture what that hitter did against him tonight, pitch by pitch, while the at-bat is still fresh. By the third time through the order, he's working from a document no analytics department can generate.

Mookie Betts watched this for two seasons. This spring he started throwing javelins too.

Baseball built the most surveilled playing field in sports. Its best October pitcher still trusts the notebook in his back pocket more.

[1.0 x2FS Pitching Badger @Pitchingbadger]

@TreadAthletics Great minds think alike:-)

[1.0 x2FS Pitching Badger @Pitchingbadger]

@jacthlete Avenged Sevenfold is legit.

[1.0 x2FS Pitching Badger @Pitchingbadger]

Just awesome!

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Minnesota's head coach just launched himself into a mob of his own players at full sprint. P.J. Fleck crowd-surfs after every win, today's was his 100th, and the mania took 15 years to build. It started with the worst thing that can happen to a person.

In February 2011, Fleck's infant son Colt died of a heart condition. Fleck was a 30-year-old receivers coach at the time. He came up with a phrase to get himself out of bed. Row the boat. Your back faces the future, you can't see what's coming, all you control is the oar.

Two years later Western Michigan made him the youngest head coach in the FBS. He went 1-11 his first season and people laughed at the boat stuff. By 2016 the same program went 13-0 and made the Cotton Bowl.

When Minnesota hired him away in 2017, there was a catch. Western Michigan had trademarked "Row the Boat." The school owned the legal rights to the phrase he created for his son. Fleck paid them $50,000 out of his own pocket, structured as a scholarship for a walk-on player, to take the words with him.

Nine years of rowing later, today happened. Minnesota beat #24 Michigan 20-14, took back the Little Brown Jug for the first time since 2014, and beat them at home for the first time in 49 years. 51,012 fans stormed the field.

So yes, the man flies into that pile looking slightly unhinged. He knows better than anyone in that locker room that you don't get to choose which days are the good ones. You just keep rowing until one shows up.

[1.0 x2FS Pitching Badger @Pitchingbadger]

If you aren’t watching the Padres/Brewers - you are missing it.

[the Sports ON Tap @thesportsontap]

He threw for 298 yards and four touchdowns on Saturday.

His father died on Friday.

And until February, his father was the head coach of the team he plays for.

His name is Dante Reno. He is the quarterback at Yale. His father was Tony Reno, and Tony Reno was 52 years old.

Reno coached Yale for 14 seasons. He went 83-49 and won five Ivy League championships, in 2017, 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2025, second only to Carm Cozza in the history of the program. Before that he was a free safety at Worcester State, a Massachusetts kid who became the first native of that state to coach the Yale Bulldogs since 1910.

His son was a four star quarterback out of Sturbridge, Massachusetts, and he had his pick of schools.

He chose South Carolina. The SEC. The biggest stage in the sport.

Then in June of 2025 he left it.

He entered the transfer portal and went to Yale, to play quarterback for his father.

They got one season.

In 2025 the Bulldogs went 9-3, shared the Ivy League title, beat Harvard to clinch it, and won a playoff game over Youngstown State 43-42. Dante threw for 2,943 yards and 24 touchdowns.

Now look again at the list of his father's five championships. The last one is 2025.

The final title Tony Reno ever won, he won with his own son playing quarterback.

That was the whole thing. One year. A championship, a father on the sideline, a son under center.

In February, Tony Reno stepped down. Health. He had been on medical leave since the end of that season.

On Friday he died. The family has not shared a cause, and that is their business.

On Saturday, his son played.

Yale fell behind the Merrimack Warriors 21-7 in the second quarter. Then Dante went 22 of 39 for 298 yards and four touchdowns, and Yale outscored Merrimack 24-3 after halftime to win 41-24.

Afterward he explained it without being asked twice.

"I know him, and I know my dad, and he would want nothing less than for me to go out there and play. Not miss practice. Go to school. Be around the guys."

Then he posted five words.

"This one's for you pops."

Yale athletic director Victoria Chun said that while Reno's accomplishments on the field were remarkable, it is the relationships he built and the lives he changed that will define his legacy.

Be careful what you take from this. There is no correct way to grieve and this is not a standard. Plenty of people could not have put a helmet on Saturday, and they would be right not to.

Dante Reno just happened to know exactly what his father would have said.

He turned down the Southeastern Conference to spend one season with his dad.

They won a championship. Then they ran out of time. And the day after they ran out of time, he went out and played anyway.

[1.0 x2FS Pitching Badger @Pitchingbadger]

This is my new ring tone for my wife!

How can you not be a romantic about baseball?

[Ben Verlander @BenVerlander]

You didn’t know you needed to hear it…

But you do.

The Japanese call of Munetaka Murakami’s first career MLB Postseason HR

[Dr. Tyler Winfield @Velo_doc]

Dudes barrel speed is insane

I’ve also seen him catch 20 bullpens in a row and not complain

If someone needs a physical bat with tools behind the dish

This guy

[1.0 x2FS Pitching Badger @Pitchingbadger]

Mason Miller 103 mph 4S overlay against 88 mph SL.

Dude throws the SL like he’s mad at it for being a slider.

[1.0 x2FS Pitching Badger @Pitchingbadger]

Mason Miller - backing up every inch of walking out to Korn - Blind.

https://t.co/kbfiheAweo

[1.0 x2FS Pitching Badger @Pitchingbadger]

The sheer nerve it takes to stand in the box, much less swing a piece of wood, is part of what makes baseball awesome!

https://t.co/X21U00kZbB

[Ben Brewster @TreadAthletics]

Of course velocity matters. The velo bros are right.

Of course pitch movement and angles/deception matters. The stuff+ bros are right.

Of course command is important. The Maddux-era boomers are right.

Of course mental toughness is important. The Omaha Challenge we-are-navy-seals college coaches are right.

Of course strength and power are important. The “that-was-all-you!” 1RM-testing-obsessed college S&C coaches are right.

They’re all right.

But they’re often only looking at one piece of the puzzle.

How do you balance training demands and shift priorities as the athlete adapts, ages and hits plateaus?

That’s the whole ballgame.

[1.0 x2FS Pitching Badger @Pitchingbadger]

That is a lot of sacrifice to get a few wins. Good on him!

[SMB Attorney @SMB_Attorney]

Be Case Keenum.

> Grow up in West Texas. Two-star recruit. One scholarship offer.
> Take it. Rewrite the NCAA record book at Houston.
> Marry your high school sweetheart, the girl you took out for snow cones before any of this started.
> Go undrafted anyway.
> Spend your rookie season on the practice squad.
> Get cut. Get claimed. Get traded. Start over.
> Get your chance in Minnesota when the starter gets hurt.
> Throw the Minneapolis Miracle.
> Help take the Vikings within one win of the Super Bowl.
> Keep moving after that, too.
> Eight franchises. Different jerseys. Different playbooks. Another chance to prove you belong.
> Through all those moves, keep building a life with the girl.
> The girl from the snow-cone date becomes the mother of your two children.
> Spend years preparing for opportunities that rarely come.
> Go 1,009 days without a start.
> Keep showing up. Keep doing the work. Stay ready.
> Then, at 38, get the call. Chicago needs you.
> Walk onto Monday Night Football.
> Throw two touchdowns. Run for another. Beat the Eagles 27–7.
> Do it with both your kids watching you play in person for the first time.
> Finish the night on SportsCenter with your little girl beside you.

All those years. All those moves. All those Sundays waiting for a chance.

And when this one finally comes, you fucking crush it with your kids looking on.

Imagine what that feels like.

There are a lot of ways to teach your children to keep going.

Letting them watch you do it has to be one of the best.

Absolute legend! 🫡

[1.0 x2FS Pitching Badger @Pitchingbadger]

@sam_elrich @relleummas @JLeverton10 @CarmichaelPJ @mccbaseball1 @BodzinPitching GEAUX Sam!

[1.0 x2FS Pitching Badger @Pitchingbadger]

@5280Bsblr No one beats Vitus Geralitus 17 times in a row!

[1.0 x2FS Pitching Badger @Pitchingbadger]

Next time call me, I’ll talk to them. First question “Who hear thinks Timmy will appear in the Show, other than by Jumbotron Accident, and Timmy doesn’t get a vote?” Anyone raises their hand - “You should get out of the canoe as I’m not sure your paddle hits the water and we are all trying to row little Timmy as close to his never going to exist MLB career as possible.” Problem solved :-)

[1.0 x2FS Pitching Badger @Pitchingbadger]

Can confirm!

[Rangers Nation ⚾️ @Rangers__Nation]

The Rangers and Astros competing for the AL West:

[1.0 x2FS Pitching Badger @Pitchingbadger]

@Velo_doc Tell me you are a pitching coach unwilling to see your pitchers throw with an arm fracture, without telling me.

[1.0 x2FS Pitching Badger @Pitchingbadger]

Do the little things when you can.

[kira 👾 @kirawontmiss]

Arm wrestler is going viral after letting dad win in front of his daughter 💙