“Did I ever tell you about playing the prison team when I was playing winter ball,” John Kruk asked his broadcast partner Tom McCarthy during the 7th inning of the Phillies game against the Padres on Saturday night. McCarthy, nor fans watching at home, could have any idea what was coming but they were in for a wild ride.
Baseball has a lot of idiosyncrasies that once made it America’s Pastime before football came to dominate the national sports conversation. One of those is the ability to connect and relax and have the time to tell some stories. John Kruk talking about playing a prison team while playing winter ball in Mexico is one of those things that can only happen given the time and space during a baseball game.
There’s not much that can be said to prepare you for where this story exactly goes, so just take a few minutes, clear your mind, and enjoy what is probably the wildest story ever told during a professional sports telecast.
.@JohnKruk is a wild man with wild stories https://t.co/vJ5RPjbxdz pic.twitter.com/pg8bK4dMqY
— Nick Piccone (@_piccone) April 28, 2024
The fact that this story just happened to come to Kruk’s mind because he saw a hard-throwing lefty on the mound for the Padres is perhaps the funniest part of all this. Thankfully the Padres pitcher did not burn up his ex-girlfriend’s car with her and her new lover in it.
You never know quite what you’re going to get with Kruk and McCarthy, which is a beautiful thing. All credit to McCarthy for somehow being able to naturally weave in a double down the left field line immediately after hearing a story about a man being in prison for committing a double murder. That’s baseball.
