A Few Videos

So, I was planning on posting this lengthy video interview with Smoltz and Francoeur before I heard about Smoltz’s divorce last night, but it’s kind of interesting to look at it now in light of that. The interview was done at a Baptist church in Augusta back in November. It’s about forty-five minutes long and pretty good, about 50% Christian testimony and 50% baseball.

Smoltz comes off as quite intense but not too preachy, and actually pretty funny – I liked the joke about his family being atheists, which no one in the church laughed at! Frenchy of course is all sincere and adorable. I’ve never seen him look so nervous and fidgety before an interview, though.

A few of the more interesting bits:

-Frenchy quit baseball when he was 12 to play golf for a year! But I thought that was the year he met Heap?

-There’s a pretty good anecdote about the day of the draft, when Frenchy was watching it live with his family and waiting to see who would pick him, and right when the Royals’ turn came his phone rang and they all freaked, but it was his brother.

-Frenchy talks about how his first major league hit, a three run homer, came on a 3-2 count and he almost pulled a hat trick, then says he’s “had a few of those since then” and gets this totally depressed look on his face for a moment, which makes me hope that maybe he’ll listen to people about looking at pitches? Maybe?

-The best part: Frenchy makes a comment about Smoltz taking him under his wing when he came up, and telling him “about everybody and certain guys and where [he] need[ed] to watch [his] back.” Whoa! Who’d he warn him about, I wonder? Hampton, definitely, but who else?!

I liked both of them better after seeing this video. Smoltz had always seemed a bit snobby to me, but he doesn’t really come off that way here (except for bragging about playing golf with Tiger Woods). He mentions that he and his wife were trying to open a Christian school in Atlanta (and had been since 2001, I think), so I imagine that must have been pretty stressful. I hope he won’t be too bummed out this season.

Anyway, on a much more cheerful note, please enjoy a video of Heap at Fan Fest, where he gets confused by someone who wants to shake his hand.

Not as awesome as the time he got confused by rally caps and had to have Hudson fix his for him, but as far as Heap getting confused by things on camera goes, it’s pretty good.