🏈 He Retired from MLB to Play College Football

I caught a lot of heat online last week for saying there are too many NBA playoff games.

I’m sorry to all of you NBA die-hards, but I didn’t need to see OKC beat the Pelicans four times to know they were the better team.

Let’s go back to how it was before 2003 when a first-round series was only five games. Hell, why not make the first two rounds a best-of-five series and give your aging stars a break?

An equally “spicy” story is in this week’s newsletter (pun intended)…

🗞 The Big Story: Meet Arkansas’ 28-Year-Old Freshman WR

📉 Biggest Loser: Josh Hart is the IRL ‘Rookie of the Year’

🏆 Winner’s Circle: The Most Impossible Baseball Promotion Ever

🗞 The Big Story

This 28-year-old MLB player is quitting professional baseball to walk on with Arkansas’ football team, but who is he?

Background: Monte Harrison is a 10-year baseball veteran who was drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers in the second round of the 2014 MLB Draft.

However, he was almost never a professional baseball player at all.

That’s because, besides being a talented centerfielder in high school, Harrison was also a four-star WR recruit who was ranked as the No. 7 overall player from Missouri in the class of 2014.

Harrison had offers from schools, including:

• Iowa

• Kansas

• Kansas State

• Michigan State

• Missouri,

• Arkansas

But he eventually decided to sign his letter of intent with Nebraska to play for then-coach Bo Pelini.

However, a few months after signing with the Huskers, Harrison was drafted 50th overall by the Brewers, a deal that came with a $1.8 million signing bonus.

Money Talks: Harrison decided to make the pivot to baseball and grind his way through the minors, eventually making his Major League debut in 2020 with the Miami Marlins after he was traded in a package for Christian Yelich.

That year, he played 32 games for Miami, hitting .170 with one home run and six stolen bases.

Cup of Coffee: Harrison would go on to play nine more games with the Marlins in 2021 and another nine for the Angles in 2022 before spending the 2023 season back with Milwaukee’s Triple-A team, the Nashville Sounds.

In 57 career MLB at-bats, Harrison posted:

• .176 AVG

• 2 home runs

In his ten seasons across all levels of professional baseball, Harrison had:

• .242 AVG

• 97 home runs

• 230 stolen bases.

Career Change: After getting released by the Brewers last September, Harrison decided to use his remaining four years of college eligibility to try and play football at Arkansas.

And he has a chance to be decent since, as a senior in high school, he put up some impressive stats:

• 60 receptions

• 1,007 yards

• 13 touchdowns.

He’ll enter the 2024 season as a 29-year-old freshman walk-on, looking to become the only person to retire from MLB to play college football.

📉 Biggest Loser

How did one missed half-court shot turn one of the NBA’s most average three-point shooters into a playoff hero?

Nothing Special: Before April 7th, Knick’s guard Josh Hart had been playing through a sprained wrist, an injury which seemed to affect his shooting even on his best nights.

For example, on April 4th, Hart scored 31 points on 14-of-19 shooting without taking a single 3-point shot because of the injury.

But then, before half of an April 7th regular season match-up against the Milwaukee Bucks, everything changed.

Flick of the Wrist: According to reporter Fred Katz, Hart felt his wrist click back in place after heaving this last-second shot. That’s when he turned to Brunson and said, “I can shoot 3’s now.”

And Hart’s regular season splits back it up:

Before “the shot” on April 7th, Hart was averaging:

• 9.7 points

• 34.3% shooting from three

However, after “the shot,” Hart finished the regular season averaging:

• 15.3 points

• 48% shooting from three

Playoff Push: He carried this momentum into the playoffs, averaging 17.9 points per game with 44.7% shooting from beyond the arch.

That’s good enough for 4th in the playoffs in terms of three-point shooting percentage (minimum of 30 attempts).

This man is literally living the plot to ‘Rookie of the Year’…

🏆 Winner’s Circle

This baseball team just launched one of the most impossible promotions in all of sports, but it’s going to help them make hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Let's break it down.

Background: The Tri-City Chili Peppers are coming off a mediocre season in the Coastal Plain League—the same league the Savanah Bananas used to be in.

• 23-23 record

• Averaged 1,057 fans per game

But it was during one of those games, owner Chris Martin had a crazy idea: What if they played a game without any lights on?

An Impossible Ask: Obviously, there needed to be lights to see, but when he had this idea, it was '80s Neon and Glow Night', so Martin immediately thought of the next best thing:

Black Lights.

But as Martin started sharing the idea, he kept getting shot down. Every lighting company he contacted said it couldn’t be done, but then he stumbled upon JW Electric, which promised they could find a solution.

And a few later, in September 2023, they did.

But then the issue became how the team was actually going to play the game. So, the Chili Pepper’s front office started brainstorming and testing different ideas, like spray-painting balls and bats with neon paint and taping the pink jerseys to add neon yellow pinstripes.

Even though it was hard to see the final vision with the lights on, everyone got used to it once the team started practicing under the black lights.

A First Time for Everything: This will mark the first time a baseball game has ever been played under black light, and for their creativity, the Tri-City Chili Peppers have already sold their first “Cosmic Baseball Game” on June 1.

At an average of $10 per ticket, the team will earn over $55,000 in ticket revenue alone, not to mention concessions and merchandise once fans are at the game—in fact, Martin has noted that these jerseys have already become best sellers.

The team is set to play four Cosmic Baseball games this summer, and if each sells out, that could mean over $250K in revenue in just four nights.

I’m sure Jesse Cole and the Savannah Bananas would be proud.

⏱ In Other News

• Ohtani’s interpreter faces 33 years in prison.

• Is this the end of Inside the NBA on TNT?

• The craziest high school stadium in America? (Subtract points because their logo is a Confederate flag, though).

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👋 Happy Friday! I wish I had better news to report, but my high school baseball team hasn’t won a game since we last talked.

So far, the most telling stat from our season has to be regarding our ace pitcher.

Last Friday, he went 6 1/3 innings in a competitive 5-2 loss against a really good team. After that impressive start, I checked his strike percentage but stumbled into a much more interesting stat.

When he throws a first-pitch strike, that at-bat ends in an out almost 78% of the time.

So all we have to do is throw more first-pitch strikes, right?

Well, we’re dealing with 15-year-old kids here… it isn’t that easy. In his next start, he threw 44% strikes (bad) and walked six batters in a 12-2 loss.

It sums up our season pretty well; we know what to do; we just can’t do it.