Joel: Hey guys, welcome back to episode three of trash talk. My name is Joel Carpio and I’m here with…

Emily: Emily Maciel.

Joel: And today we’re just going to be talking about ballpark food, all the new stuff that they have for different ballparks talking about the Dodgers and Angels, Ohtani, the Astros, the pitch clock, the wave and how Nike may have ruined baseball uniforms.

Emily: Okay, so to start off, we’re gonna talk about our favorites and our not favorites of food at the ballpark. So me personally, I always get a hot dog, but I feel like more recently, I’ve been trying to stay away from those. I feel like I’m just tired of them and I’ve been trying to get other foods because a lot of ballparks are coming out when they were foods, but I do always make it a necessity to get an ice cream helmet. Because they’re fun, they’re cute and sometimes the ice cream is not good, but I keep it as a little memory.

Joel: For me, I try and get a Dodger dog, which they haven’t been the same since they changed from Farmer John’s. They used to be good and now they suck. So in general Dodger Stadium does not have the best concessions. I think we ranked as the fourth worst, which I agree with. We have terrible concessions, but they used to have good food. I remember they had a Italian chicken parm sandwich, which was delicious. And they had a chicken tender bowl with a pound of fries, which was also great, but I’m trying to venture out and try different foods at the ballpark. Even though there isn’t a whole lot at Dodger Stadium that I like, but I’m looking forward to going to the ballparks and trying what they have because I know Angels have a lot of new food.

Emily: Yeah, the Angels have this new place called Walk off waffles and I’ve already tried the strawberry waffle. That one’s really good. It’s just so it’s like the regular waffle and it has strawberry, I think frosting and syrup and I think there’s some kind of like cream I don’t know, but then there’s a s’mores one which I really want to try too. And they have something called a cake brownie which Joel wanted to try.

Joel: Yeah, I want to try the cake brownie. It looks good. It would look better if I had a ice cream on top of it, but..

Emily: Personally, I think it looks a little dry in the photos but I think ice cream could pair well with it too.

Joel: It just looks delicious. It comes in like a little tin type container, but yeah, I’m looking forward to trying the cake brownie and whatever else the Angels have.

Emily: But overall the angels have decent food. I mean, I think everywhere I go I’m just sick of the hotdogs now, but they are like the Big A Burger. I really liked the burgers and the fries and the shakes are like everything’s good there and they have a bunch of food trucks there that are different pretty much each game.

Joel: The Dodgers also added a lot of new Asian cuisine type foods to their menus, which I think is because they signed Yoshinobu Yamamoto and of course Shohei Ohtani, which I think it’s nice. They’re expecting more Asian fans coming to Dodger Stadium because of those two players. They’re very they’re been very inclusive with the food options they have now. Something that I want to try is a Korean fried chicken bucket with a pound of fries, which that sounds delicious, but they also have a homeroom platter that has chicken teriyaki egg rolls and potstickers with tempura.

Emily: I want to try that.

Joel: I don’t really wanna to try that

Emily: I like Asian food more than he does. That one looks good. It’s I think it’s a little expensive maybe but at the same time.

Joel: $35

Emily: $35 at the same time, it’s what you’re getting. It’s like a pretty decent sized food and I like pretty much everything there. I’ve never had the tempera but it looks pretty good. I don’t want to try the Korean fried chicken because in the photos they look like they have some kind of like sauce or glazed over it and I’m not…

Joel: It’s honey BBQ

Emily: See I’m not too big of a fan of that.

Joel: Now they also have some odd desserts. They’re adding fried cheesecake and fried PB and J which I don’t think I’m ever going to try.

Emily: I will not be trying those either.

Joel: And they also have a hot dog, Cheeto corn. It’s a it’s a hot Cheeto corndog which is basically a corndog with Hot Cheeto flakes on top of it, which also sounds disgusting.

Emily: I agree.

Joel: But overall, I think Asian food is a nice inclusion to the Dodgers menu Other than that, their inclusion suck going off the topic of Ohtani. So there was a whole scandal of Ohtani’s interpreter gambling and stealing his money and then people started recruiting conspiracy theories about Ohtani also gambling but I just think that that’s a dumb conspiracy theory because had Ohtani not been on the Dodgers, he probably wouldn’t be being accused of gambling. I feel like because he signed with the Dodgers and so many people hate the Dodgers. They want something bad to happen, even though they won’t say it, but I just feel like he did nothing wrong and a lot of people were saying that. Well, how did Ippei have access to his bank account and his money? Well, I think that’s the whole point is that it was theft. So Ohtani wasn’t going to know, and didn’t find out until the Seoul series, I think, at the end of game one, when Ippei told everybody in the Dodgers clubhouse that something was going to come out and that he was sorry for what he did.

Emily: Okay, it’s time to address the elephant in the room, something I’ve been avoiding because obviously, it’s not fun to talk when your team sucks, but we’ve been sucking and we’ve been sucking since I feel like it started last season 2023 in the All Star break because I think after that is when I started to notice or when I started to get worried. But even like in 2023 we lost, like the first game like the home opener or the opening day game and I was like, No, we’ll be fine and last season was a roller coaster, obviously and this season. I feel like I’m just not fazed anymore like I am, but I’m not. So I’m at the point where I’m just like, oh, we won today. Nice. Like it’s really cool when we win, but we lose I’m just like, oh, again, LOL okay, but yeah, it’s sucks, but I’m still gonna hold it down and we have a lot of issues with pitching mainly in our starting rotation. We’ve lost a lot of guys there’s at least five guys out: Justin Verlander, Framber Valdez, Lance McCullers, Luis Garcia, Jose Urquidy, those are big pieces to our rotation and they’re all gone with like elbow issues and that’s a big reason is we think is because the pitch clock that is a new rule and it’s just causing a lot of people across the league not even just for the Astros like Gerrit Cole, Spencer Strider, there are some other ones Jacob deGrom. So a lot of people are being forced to change their pitching ways and it’s causing a lot of injuries and it’s going to become very dangerous really soon.

Joel: You could throw Shohei Ohtani into that mix. I think he tore his UCL on his elbow, or I’m not sure, but he hurt something really bad to where he can’t pitch this season and a lot of people are saying that it’s the pitch clock and that it’s not being enforced correctly and it’s rushing the pitchers and making them not feel comfortable to the point where it started to hurt them physically and it’s gotten so bad that Tony Clark, the MLBPA union president has come out with a statement basically saying that the pitch clock needs to be better enforced by the MLB needs to do a better job of keeping the players health as the number one priority.

Emily: Okay, now we’re going to talk about the wave. You love it or you hate it. There’s no real like in between people either love it or they hate it. Me personally, I feel I say there’s no in between, but I feel I don’t really care. Like I’ll do it the first few rounds. It’s fun, woo hoo but after a while, I’m just kind of bored of it, but people who say it’s distracting to the team and to the players. It doesn’t make any sense to me because the entire time we’re in a ballpark. It’s a distraction. People are loud fans are yelling, good and bad things. So I don’t really think there’s anything wrong with it.

Joel: The wave I think I like it. I don’t see anything wrong with it, but I know a lot of people do say that it is distracting, like you said, which doesn’t make sense to me. Because what about just the crowd chatter. Like at Dodger Stadium everyday is like 40 something thousand plus fans and just them talking as loud. Not just that they also have the music going, they have just a whole lot of other stuff that can distract the player and if they’re looking and paying attention at the wave. They’re not doing a good job as a player, they shouldn’t be focusing on the wave, they should be focusing on trying to pitch or trying to hit, which I feel like the wave has no correlation to hurting them in any way that they feel distracted.

Joel: Where do I begin? Um, it started in spring training when I saw the bad, bad quality of the jerseys and how the lettering seemed very spaced out and kind of crooked and not up to the quality of what MLB jerseys used to be and then it got worse when I ordered my Ohtani Jersey, and I got it, and the material is lighter, and it is more, I guess you can say, when you wear it, it feels fresher, and there’s more air coming through it. So eventually it’s better. But it just feels very cheap. It’s not like the jerseys that were that the players were wearing in 2023, which Nike came out and said that they were trying a new one, a new type of jersey, and that Fanatics was making it and now Fanatics is a whole different ballpark. Fanatics are just terrible. They’re there’s such a bad company when it comes to sports apparel. I’ve gotten so many different shirts from Fanatics for different teams and the print is either bad, it’s tearing off or it’s crooked, or it just looks so wonky, whatever, like it just doesn’t. It’s not worth the money you’re paying for and fans aren’t just complaining about it, it’s also players. There’s a few players that have complained, saying that it’s like a TJ Maxx type jersey, which is really bad that’s coming from players, it’s bad and there was an instance on Twitter (X), where Michael Chavis, he posted his jersey, and Fanatics has this automated robot to where, if anything, any of their products gets posted on Twitter (X) or any social media, and it looks off, the robot will respond saying they dropped the ball and that they want you to reach out to them so they could help you fix the issue, but no, that was an official Fanatics/Nike jersey and the Fanatics bot replied, saying that they wanted to help fix the issue, which is just bad, because that’s the official jersey and the robot had basically saying that they dropped the ball, which they did for sure and the jerseys are not the only issue players have complained about the pants being see through, which isn’t nice, because you have some explicit photos

Emily giggles

Joel: Of a, there is a giant player where one of his I guess you can say family jewels was sticking out, kind of you can see and it’s just overall, not good. MLBPA also addressed it and the Fanatics president has come out saying that he feels like the criticism isn’t fair, which I completely disagree with. I feel like it’s totally fair and it sucks because it’s not just going to be the MLB who’s going to have fanatic jerseys but it’s also going to be the NHL. So all your sports apparel is basically ruined, Fanatics is just a shit company.

Emily: When the Astros won in 2022 World Series I ordered a jersey from Fanatics but it was like Nike replica or whatever, I ordered the kids size because I was like I’m gonna save money where I can it was like $50 Cheaper instead of getting like the women’s and I thought when I got the jersey the back like the name it was like printed on and I was like oh man like where’s the stitching? And I was like okay, maybe it’s just because I ordered like the kid size I thought like maybe they’re not going to go all out for the kids, but I feel like even back then they were already lacking and I just didn’t really notice but now it’s um definitely I mean I still gonna want to buy a jersey but I’m gonna feel like it’s not really worth it.

Joel: Yeah, they have like three different types of jerseys now that Nikes trying to come out with and I think the most expensive one is obviously the authentic one which feels like a replica not no authentic at all. I missed when Majestic used to do our jerseys. I wish they would come back but I think the authentic for Nike is around 420 something dollars, which is an absolute rip off for how the material is it’s not even stitched on anymore. It feels like it’s printed on and it’s just it’s a terrible product all around.

Emily: Alright guys, that’s all we have today. We’ll try to get another episode out, maybe in the future we’ll see hopefully the Astros pick it up. If not, I’m gonna have this guy talking to my ear all season.

Joel: Hopefully they don’t. I’m glad they’re doing bad and it makes me feel great, but at the same time I do hopefully pick it up because I would like to see another Astros Dodgers World Series and in this one I hope there’s no cheating or trash banging.

Emily: Go Stros.

Joel: Go Dodgers.