What's It Like Switching MLB Teams

All right. So today we're talking about what happens when you move to a new team. And this can happen in a few different ways. It might happen during the season where you get released, maybe you get traded, maybe you get designated for assignment and you move to a new team. This happened to me multiple times. It could also be during the off season where you just get a fresh start, you show up to spring training, you know no one, and you get your start that way with a new team. And so we're going to talk about both of these situations or all of these situations because they've all happened to me before. So the first thing, let's just say you're in season, you get traded, you get released, whatever happens. First thing you're going to do is you're going to say goodbye to all your teammates. Hopefully you've made some friends while you're there. Even people that maybe aren't your friends, you're going to say goodbye to them. You're going to give them a hug, a high five, maybe a middle finger if you don't like the guy. I'm just kidding. I've never done that. I'm sure it's happened before. But you're going to say goodbye to everyone and you're going to head out. Now when you get to your new club, right, you're going to usually get on a plane, you're going to fly to the new place you're going to. The first thing you do when you get to a new club is, and I don't know if I said this before, you could also get moved up or moved down. So I forgot to mention that. You could get sent up to the next level, you could get demoted to the level before that. But regardless, when you get to the new club, the first thing you're going to do is you have to find the manager's office and you have to say hello to the manager and introduce yourself. Now if you've been sent up or sent down, you might already know that manager, right? They're in your organization. You probably know them from spring training. But even so, you're still going to go in and say hello. If it's a new organization, then, you know, you're definitely going to have to introduce yourself because they have no idea who you are. They know you're coming, but they don't know who you are. So as I said, this has happened to me a lot. And fortunately for me, especially when I was with the Padres, well actually never in my career did I get sent down during the season. I've only been promoted up to the next level. But if I just go through my head and think about all those times that I got sent up during the season, it happened almost every year. My first year I played in short season A ball, got moved up to low A ball. So when I got to the stadium, I had to go find the manager's office and I had to say hello to Randy Reddy, who was our head coach or our manager, I should say. The next year I went from high A to double A. I got to San Antonio. I had to go find the manager. I had to say hello. It was actually Randy Reddy again. And so I had experience knowing Randy at this time. But I still had to say, hey Randy, what's going on buddy? I'm here. And he said, okay, cool. Nice to see you. And I went to the clubhouse. Now the next season I was in triple A. I got called up from major leagues. Same exact process. I flew in the Dodger stadium. I walk into the clubhouse. I got to figure out where the manager's office is. Usually just ask someone, hey, where's a skip at or where's the manager's office or where's buddy's office? You go in there and you say, hey buddy, how you doing? I'm happy to be here. He says, hey, nice to see you. You're in the lineup tonight or you're not in the lineup tonight. That, that night he actually said, and I was not expecting this. I thought I was going to have a night off because I woke up super early. I jumped on a plane in Seattle or in Tacoma. I flew to LA, get off the plane. I get into a taxi. I go to the stadium. I'm pretty exhausted. I walk in. He says, you're in the lineup tonight. I said, holy crap. I got to face Greg Maddox and I'm facing the Dodgers. So that's how that happened. The most eventful time during my career was when I got sent to the Yankees. So I was with the Orioles. I got sent over to the Yankees. I went to AAA. I, it's in Columbus, Ohio. I walk into the clubhouse. I find the manager's office. I walk into the office and I've told this story once before, I walk into the office and I say, hey guys, how you doing? I'm Matt Antonelli. And our hitting coach goes, go shave your effing face. That's the first thing they said to me. So I was like, I was kind of in shock because that had never happened to me before. You usually walk in, they say, hey buddy, what's going on? Nice to meet you. If you don't know him, they introduce the rest of the staff to you. First thing they said was go shave your effing face. He didn't say effing, but I might have some young children on here watching. So I was like, okay. So what I usually had was a little bit shorter than this, but I've always had kind of this like scruff. I don't like to be clean shaven. So I was like, okay. So I turned around, I went to, I found the bathroom. Usually in the bathroom, they have these razors in there. Now I'd never shave with a razor. I always shave with like a trimmer, just like a electric trimmer. So I'm looking at this thing. I'm like, okay, how do I do this? I'm, I got the shaving cream and I'm put, I'm like, I don't know. I put her on and like people are walking in and out of the bathroom. They're probably like freaking new guy over here. He has no idea how to shave his face. He's 27 years old or however old I was. So I like put this stuff on, I'm shaving, I'm cutting myself. I look like a disaster at this point. I walked back into the manager's office. I'm like, okay guys, I shaved my face. Nice to meet you. So I say hello, shake everybody's hands. Now I got to go to the clubhouse. So you walk into the clubhouse. It's always awkward. You don't know anybody usually. And so you walk in, maybe you look for somebody, maybe you know somebody and you're like, okay, where do I know anybody on this team? Maybe you do research beforehand and see if you know anybody. Maybe you've played with someone in the past. If you do, maybe you go over, Hey Johnny, what's up, man? Good to see you. And then maybe Johnny will kind of introduce you to people and then you feel more comfortable. There's been times like with the Yankees. I didn't know anybody. I walk in, I look around, find where my locker is. Oh, there's my name over there. Usually have your name plate above it. And so I do that. If there's no name plates, just got to go find an open one. I sit down, you know, hopefully there's some people around me so I can be like, Hey, how you doing? I can meet a few guys right away. There's been times when I, when I went to spring training with the nationals, I went and I sat down in the clubhouse and there was no one around. Like everyone was like kind of talking to themselves. And it's almost like if you go to, um, you go to like an old person's party, like say I, kids probably don't do this, but you know, I go to like an old person's party. You walk into a place, you walk into the house or wherever it is. And like, everyone's talking to each other. And so there's not like random people. There's like two people talking, two people talking, four people talking, two people talking. You're like, I don't know any of these people. And I can't go and like, just jump in. Hey, what's going on guys and jump into their conversation. I'm not really good at that anyway. Some people might do that. So I'm sitting there and I'm like, no one's here. Everyone's talking. And they're probably looking at me like, look at the idiot new guy over there. And so you just kind of sit there for a while. And then, you know, eventually someone comes back and sits down and then you're like, Hey, how you doing? Uh, Matt Antonelli. Nice to meet you. I'm the new guy here. And then you slowly start to, to meet people. You slowly kind of start to introduce yourself to people. Um, except there's some people that you, you might not want to introduce yourself to, but usually eventually talk to the entire team, except when I was with the Padres, uh, a year in spring training. It's always, it's always a little intimidating to talk to the veterans. So you go around, you introduce yourself to everybody, but like, you know, Greg Maddox was on that team my first year in spring training. And like, I didn't say hello to Greg and, um, he didn't say hello to me. And, uh, well he, the way he introduced himself again, if you've seen this channel and you know, is, um, we're sitting on the bench in my first game and he came and sat next to me. He didn't say hello. He just kept spitting his dip all over my leg and all over my foot. It was like, kind of like rookie hazing, I guess his version of it. Um, but he spit it all over me and I was sitting there and I wasn't going to say anything because it's Greg Maddox and I'm 21. And, uh, so I just let him spit his dip all over my leg and then he got up and walked away. So that's the closest, uh, Greg and I ever came to speaking with each other. Um, so you're not going to talk to everybody, but you will introduce yourself to most players eventually. So one thing that's not going to happen, and I get asked this a lot is, you know, is the manager going to introduce you? Is someone going to introduce you? Are you going to walk in like it's first grade and you know, you're going to get up in front of the class and the manager's going to introduce your name or you're going to be like, hi guys, I'm Matt Antonelli. I'm from, uh, Boston, Massachusetts. I'm 22 years old. I enjoy pizza and cookie dough ice cream and long walks on the beach. You're not going to do that. You're not going to introduce yourself in front of the whole team. And the manager's not going to introduce you. Nobody's going to introduce you. You have to be a big boy. You have to walk around and shake people's hands, or you have to go and shake and quiver in the corner. Um, but you're not going to get introduced. So that's how it works. That's how you get to a new team. Um, figure out who your teammates are, who your manager is. Then you're going to go play the game. The only other real thing that you're going to have to do is you're going to have to find a place to live. And usually when you're with a new team, either people on the team will tell you, oh yeah, stay at these, uh, apartments or over here, over there, or maybe somebody within the organization can tell you. Your first few nights, you're probably going to stay in a hotel because you don't have a place to go to. And so they'll put you up in a hotel for the first couple of nights. I can't remember exactly how many, I know when you get to the big leagues, I think we got two weeks to be in a hotel. So they put you up for like two weeks and the minor leagues are not that generous. I think they put you up for a couple of days and then you have to figure out really quickly where you're going to go and where you're going to stay. Maybe you can jump in with a teammate. Maybe they, you know, they lost a roommate. Maybe the guy that you're taking over for left. And so you can jump in there, better hope that you like that person. Um, so that's kind of how it works. So let me know if you have any questions in the comment section below, subscribe to the channel, hit the notification bell, all that good stuff. We'll talk to you later. If you've enjoyed this video and want to learn more about building the elite swing, check out our new course. We have over two hours of content, almost 30 hitting drills. We break down the exact mechanics that you're going to want to implement into your swing. I've put the link in the description. If you want to go check it out.