Name: How Trevor Bauer Became Baseball's Most Polarizing Player
Uploaded: 2024-02-12T18:07:25.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How Trevor Bauer Became Baseball's Most Polarizing Player' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-02-12. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How Trevor Bauer Became Baseball's Most Polarizing Player' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-02-12. Transcript available.

the young kid that like never thought he'd play big league baseball because big
league baseball
players are like they're superstars they're like different than me and all of a
sudden I
end up being one of those people and have this thing that like only the best of
the best get
and it's like still when I see it up there I'm like this is crazy like yeah I
have a note from
my high school coach threatening to kick me off the team next to like the Cy
Young award like
the disparity between those things is like such a such an interesting contrast
you know
bro it's that oh that's so many feelings that's so much at once dude yeah what
was what was he
threatening to kick you off or do you remember dude I was I have like four or
five of them uh
I got thrown out of a game one time I was hitting and uh umpire made a bat what
I thought was a bad
call so I flipped my bat and I like drew a line in the sand of like where the
ball crossed the plate
didn't say a word I got tossed and then of course like you're getting thrown
out of a game not good
look for the high school program I'm not really the most like social person
like a lot of my social
interactions I learned a little later in life starting in college and pro ball
and stuff I just didn't
I viewed things differently as a kid I was kind of different I dressed
differently I thought about
different stuff my sense of humor was different than the normal kids so I
struggled I struggled socially
um in high school all you know junior high all the way up into high school I
didn't have a large peer
group um you know I was kind of I was part of two different groups I was like
part of the athlete
group right but I didn't fit in with them because I was also a nerd oh yeah I
didn't really fit in with
the nerds because I was a jock and so I kind of got pickled between both of
those where I didn't
really have a group that I fit in with like Clark Kent almost in a way you know
I mean
that's not quite as uh as super but yeah but well you would turn out to me oh
here you are right
there yeah Trevor in this throwback to when the Astros didn't have to cheat to
win that's it
that's sweet oh that's cool dude does that does that kid look like uh someone
that would fit in
so that's actually a uniform like I would wear my baseball like pants and
uniform and stuff to
school and grade school so I got I got picked on a lot yeah I I remember the
the morning um that
that kind of like changed for me I was 17 in high school I had gotten up in the
morning to go to
the YMCA did my pre preschool workout came back showered was looking in the
mirror I was like you
know why what what is it about me that like I don't have friends that people
like don't like me that
they bully me that they pick on me like all this stuff and I just made the
decision that day I was
like I like myself like I'm good in school I treat people well I'm hardworking
I'm whatever
like I like what I see looking back at me so I'm going to be okay with that and
I'm not going to
I'm going to stop chasing like approval from other people and as long as I can
be proud of myself
like I'm cool with it and so that gave me the freedom internally to like have a
voice and when
someone would say something to me I'd fire back and I would feel better about
myself because I felt like
I was defending myself and standing up for myself and my life got a lot better
uh through the rest of high
school and into college because of that because I felt like I had a voice and I
was being heard
instead of just being like swatted down all the time when did you start being
good at bait like
when did it start to add up because if you're doing all those unique pitches
like some of the like you
just have such a cool like assortment of pitches I almost feel like yeah
somebody's rolling up to the
mound this is from your channel right here yeah oh this is back in uh 11 years
ago yeah wow you've had
your channel for a long time yeah I started I think 2011 um to do like you know
try to connect with
baseball fans and like give some information and then I actually stopped it for
like six or seven years
there from 2013 through maybe 2019 or 2020. I should have kept it going I'd
have a lot more subscribers
you got a great amount of subscribers 690,000 is amazing yeah um and did what
made you stop what was
the break was you were you getting busy with baseball no so I actually got in
trouble I would take video
clips from the games make a little highlight reel I called it weekly whiffs and
I would put it up on
youtube channel I did two episodes of it and then the organization at the time
that I was with at the time
was like yeah you can't do that because it's just different no one was doing
that it was right you
know it can be looked at as like you're trying to embarrass the other hitters
or whatever it had
nothing to do with the hitters I was just trying to entertain the fans yeah um
and so I made a couple
more videos after that like the pitch grips video in 2013 and a couple slow
motion videos here there but
um it kind of in a way it took a little bit of the fun of like trying to
entertain fans out
and so I just I was off of it I went more towards uh twitter at the time which
is now x but um
trying to just have that like back and forth connection with fans and grow it
that way
and that ended up getting me in a lot of trouble as well unfortunately people
like you have your own
voice a lot of times yeah you know which is where you know if you're involved
in something that's
bigger like when you have to go into organizations like major league sports
college sports where there's
a lot of big business interests on the back end of things they really don't
like a lot of guys to have
their own voices yeah it seems like they don't you're not really you're allowed
to but are you
really allowed to yeah I do see how someone like me coming up that has these
opinions especially when
I would be like critical of the league like here's an employee of the league
who's being critical of
their boss publicly and like at the time I was like well this isn't right and
this isn't right and
I disagree with this and the blah blah and so I would just say it and then
without considering the
opposite perspective and I think I was a lot more like I can identify this
problem and I'm just going
to say there's a problem and blame instead of now what I really try to do is
look and say okay I
identify a problem but what are some potential solutions let me present the
solutions that I
think and have a discussion about it instead of just like hey you're wrong you're
wrong do this this
way yeah so some of that like evolution over time growing up and getting older
and learning from
past mistakes starting a business seeing other perspectives um what about did
your ego did ego
start to build up because that's one thing I always talk about a lot in here
just like our ego and what
that's like you know because what was it like when you start to get like a
claim for that if you're
kind of have this social uncomfortability yeah I um I've always tried to
separate ego on and off the field
I haven't been great at it but I think having an ego on the field is super
important like when you
walk out there you got to know that you're the best you have to believe that
you're better than him and
him and him and you got to feel like you're the best guy out there to be like
the true like competitor
you know off the field like going around telling everybody that you're better
than them and acting like
that's not great right so uh I'm not naturally like inclined to be egotistical
I because the way I view
things it's never like a static point everything is I'm improving or I'm
getting worse it's all it's a
fluid situation and so if I'm either getting better or getting worse I'm on a
journey just like you're on
a journey you have your struggles and your your successes I have my struggles
and successes I view
myself as like even with every other person but on the field like when it's
competition time like I am
the best person on the field and if I'm not that day it's because like I didn't
work hard enough or
I need a better process but like every time I step on the field I have to
believe that I'm the best
person there and I've had times in my career where I lost that belief and it
was those were very dark
times performance wise I was terrible on the field and I had to like trick
myself and like fake
like fake it in my own mind that I was still good and then when I started doing
that the results came
back but um I think I'm a little predisposed to uh depression for whatever
reason I don't know if
it's something chemical or or what it is I'm a very like kind of flat
personality I don't have like a ton
of highs and lows so when baseball would go bad like my mood would go really
bad and I had to find a way
to kind of pull those two things apart and be regardless if baseball is up or
down I needed to
be able to like be okay in my life um and would you do to go did you like would
you like if when things
got bad how would you would you booze a little like how would your world so I've
never I've never been
drunk I've never done drugs um wow yeah you are you are riding the fucking
world like yeah that's in that's
intense it's it's incredible man I didn't I didn't have friends to invite me to
the parties in high
school so I never got started but um I don't have those like blank moments or
blank hours where I
yeah I would I would fill those early in my career I'd fill them going on
twitter for three hours
and it was so much fun it was so much fun and I I had fun with it yeah but I
think me having fun
with people is usually like playful banter like I'll kind of like throw a
little like jab your way
and you throw them back my way and it's like because it's jousting match and I
like that because it's
witty and it forces me to think and like it's and I'm having these
conversations with people and I'm like
laughing and joking with them in person yeah and you get a sense of like I'm
not being serious you can
tell very clearly that I'm not being serious but on twitter doesn't come across
that way and especially not even
if the person that you're doing it with may feel that way may not other people
reading it might get
really confused yeah and so I would banter with a lot of people and I think it
got construed negatively
by the media I know it got construed negatively by the media the larger media
as a whole and then I get
this reputation of being combative and stuff and I was never doing it from a
competitive standpoint I
understand how it looks that way and how it came off that way and so those
blank hours where I was just
had nothing to do and I was just like joking with people on twitter firing
stuff off god you know
got me in trouble um trump has a great dave portland interviewed donald trump
and he goes you ever just
like he like would you son was he asking nick about proofreading some of his
tweets or something
trump's like yeah you ever just fire something off and just go to bed and just
hope it's okay
and trump was like yeah all the time yeah you know you're like what the hell is
going on yeah half the
time it's like damn I didn't even I never and I never would have thought that
that would be interpreted
that way thought twice about it yeah when you start to get the entertainment
aspect how did that kind
of come into you do you feel like I think when I got comfortable that I was
good and that I
had largely like established myself where I was going to be able to have a
career like early in your
career you're just fighting to stay there and it's like if you have a bad outing
you might not be there
the next day but once you get to a certain level it's like okay I have some leeway
here
I can't be bad forever but if I have a bad start or two it's not going to be
like I'm gone and so
that gives you a little it becomes manageable yeah and it gives you a little
sense of like
settle in you can take a breath you can be a little bit more comfortable
I like the banter like we talked about I like the kind of witty interactions
and so I like figuring out the
puzzle of how do I like take this normally mundane thing and just put a little
twist on it like make
it more entertaining for people and then yeah starting in like 2020 really
after I started the media
company momentum in 2019 it was like okay this is an attention economy so in
order for baseball to grow
there have to be clips that are viral enough to get to the youth that they see
it like oh baseball is
fun right and then I'm like okay how do I start making some of these viral
clips well let me study
nba what goes viral in nba uh when people do something like they dunk on
someone and they celebrate it
like when lebron's flexing on someone like that's everywhere right when curry
hits a three but before he
the ball's in the bucket he's already running down the court like celebrating
it because he knows it's in
like that's everywhere it's like okay how do you apply some of that to baseball
it's like all right
what can you do in baseball like are you going to celebrate a strikeout that'd
be comparable to like
flexing on someone when you dunk on them right are you going to call your shot
on you know the day
before the game oh i'm going to do this with this person are you going to have
some sort of you know
what does that look like in baseball it's a good point yeah and so i started
getting the entertainment
aspect of it because i was settled with the performance like i can entertain or
and compete
at the same time right so i can compete and just not do any entertainment and
you're going to get
the same level of performance out of me that you'll get if i'm also doing a
little bit of entertainment
um because i've it's like my base operating level is intense competition you're
interesting dude bro
i'm all messed up my mind's my mind's but you're right though if you're trying
to build this sport
that's what you have those are that you need some of those moments yeah you
know like the um there's
a video out there and it's a bunch it's it's a view just impersonating some of
the other players
on your team i think you're with the um yeah the indians we're in pittsburgh
the indians it was uh
shout out sunshine clevenger over there too dude yeah you know mike yeah yeah
definitely uh been around
mike man he's a he's such an entertaining guy yeah um so this is uh this is a
funny story a lot of
people don't know like the follow-up to this story so you can see the guys in
the background this video
have rain uh like tarps on or whatever so it's raining right so you're in a
raining game and this
is here cleveland versus pittsburgh what year is this this is 2018 maybe 20s
and as you come up to
bat here you keep kind of impersonating i guess different players on your team
they're batting stances
yeah yeah so we had a lot of unique batting stances this year um and so always
like we
get four days off in between starts as a starting pitcher so we're in the dugout
just messing around
like we don't have anything to do and so i was always grabbing something and
trying to impersonate
you know mike avilis jason kipnis rayburn brantley like some of these guys that
had really unique
characteristics and so um at one point i think it was mike avilis like hey when
are you gonna do that
for real like you won't and i was like i'll do it so i go and i have this at
bat where i
you know do rayburn and kipnis were they all shocked they were all if you look
at the dugout
i don't know if there's a view of it they're all like laughing yeah that's mike
right there
yeah kipnis seems like such a neat guy huh kip's awesome yeah so the follow-up
to this though
is i get i walk in this at bat and so i'm on first base and i'm just a stupid
pitcher like
you know running the bases and whatever and so the catcher you know obviously
the pittsburgh wasn't
super like other applaud again yeah pittsburgh wasn't super like pleased with
that because they're
like you guys are joking around out here yeah so right after that the next
pitch like i take my lead
off first and the catcher catches the ball and like fakes like he's gonna throw
it down first baseman was
nowhere close but i'm not used to being on base because i suck as a hitter i'm
never on base right
so he goes to throw it down to first and i freak out and i like dive back and
there's no first baseman
there and it's muddy and i stick in the mud and i don't even make like my hand
sticks i don't even
make it back to the base i'm just laying there by the base looking around there's
no one there the
catcher never threw the ball and i'm covered in mud yeah and he just like
pointed at me and like
threw the ball back to the pitcher i'm like all right all right that's good you
got me yeah
that's good i respect that yeah that's classic that's such a neat thing about
life too how it
works it's like the second you start to get on your high horse even just a
little life knocks you down
here you go there's another really good example that we're playing the padres
2021 we're at dodger
stadium um and i facing i'm facing eric hozmer now i knew hoz from he was in kansas
city when i was
with cleveland so we played each other a lot so we have a little bit of a you
know a history like
playing each other so the first at bat i throw him a curveball he like half
swings at it and strikes out
and i like hit him with my sword celebration and uh the next at bat he comes up
i throw him a curve
ball instead of missing it he hits a rocket right back at my face like it would
have it would have killed
me if i didn't get out of the way i end up like laying on my back and i'm like
slinging on the
mound like what just happened fortunately it didn't hit me and he's over at
first base and i start to sit
up and there's actually a picture of me yeah this is probably it is this yeah
that right and i don't
know if this video clip goes long enough but uh see if i laugh right here yeah
yeah right there so
he's at first base he like hey and i look over at him and he uh he gave me the
sword back so i got him
the i got him the pitch the bat before and then he just like got me back and
then let me know about it
tatis had a great one he hit a home run off me like put one one hand over his
eye because in spring
training i had like thrown in with one eye closed and then against the padres
and then they waited
and then when he got me back he put his eye his hand over do you mind the stuff
you think it's fun
i love it yeah it's cool actually dude if people if people would like celebrate
on me all the time
i don't care like that's good for the game
Thank you.

How Trevor Bauer Became Baseball's Most Polarizing Player

the young kid that like never thought he'd play big league baseball because big
league baseball
players are like they're superstars they're like different than me and all of a
sudden I
end up being one of those people and have this thing that like only the best of
the best get
and it's like still when I see it up there I'm like this is crazy like yeah I
have a note from
my high school coach threatening to kick me off the team next to like the Cy
Young award like
the disparity between those things is like such a such an interesting contrast
you know
bro it's that oh that's so many feelings that's so much at once dude yeah what
was what was he
threatening to kick you off or do you remember dude I was I have like four or
five of them uh
I got thrown out of a game one time I was hitting and uh umpire made a bat what
I thought was a bad
call so I flipped my bat and I like drew a line in the sand of like where the
ball crossed the plate
didn't say a word I got tossed and then of course like you're getting thrown
out of a game not good
look for the high school program I'm not really the most like social person
like a lot of my social
interactions I learned a little later in life starting in college and pro ball
and stuff I just didn't
I viewed things differently as a kid I was kind of different I dressed
differently I thought about
different stuff my sense of humor was different than the normal kids so I
struggled I struggled socially
um in high school all you know junior high all the way up into high school I
didn't have a large peer
group um you know I was kind of I was part of two different groups I was like
part of the athlete
group right but I didn't fit in with them because I was also a nerd oh yeah I
didn't really fit in with
the nerds because I was a jock and so I kind of got pickled between both of
those where I didn't
really have a group that I fit in with like Clark Kent almost in a way you know
I mean
that's not quite as uh as super but yeah but well you would turn out to me oh
here you are right
there yeah Trevor in this throwback to when the Astros didn't have to cheat to
win that's it
that's sweet oh that's cool dude does that does that kid look like uh someone
that would fit in
so that's actually a uniform like I would wear my baseball like pants and
uniform and stuff to
school and grade school so I got I got picked on a lot yeah I I remember the
the morning um that
that kind of like changed for me I was 17 in high school I had gotten up in the
morning to go to
the YMCA did my pre preschool workout came back showered was looking in the
mirror I was like you
know why what what is it about me that like I don't have friends that people
like don't like me that
they bully me that they pick on me like all this stuff and I just made the
decision that day I was
like I like myself like I'm good in school I treat people well I'm hardworking
I'm whatever
like I like what I see looking back at me so I'm going to be okay with that and
I'm not going to
I'm going to stop chasing like approval from other people and as long as I can
be proud of myself
like I'm cool with it and so that gave me the freedom internally to like have a
voice and when
someone would say something to me I'd fire back and I would feel better about
myself because I felt like
I was defending myself and standing up for myself and my life got a lot better
uh through the rest of high
school and into college because of that because I felt like I had a voice and I
was being heard
instead of just being like swatted down all the time when did you start being
good at bait like
when did it start to add up because if you're doing all those unique pitches
like some of the like you
just have such a cool like assortment of pitches I almost feel like yeah
somebody's rolling up to the
mound this is from your channel right here yeah oh this is back in uh 11 years
ago yeah wow you've had
your channel for a long time yeah I started I think 2011 um to do like you know
try to connect with
baseball fans and like give some information and then I actually stopped it for
like six or seven years
there from 2013 through maybe 2019 or 2020. I should have kept it going I'd
have a lot more subscribers
you got a great amount of subscribers 690,000 is amazing yeah um and did what
made you stop what was
the break was you were you getting busy with baseball no so I actually got in
trouble I would take video
clips from the games make a little highlight reel I called it weekly whiffs and
I would put it up on
youtube channel I did two episodes of it and then the organization at the time
that I was with at the time
was like yeah you can't do that because it's just different no one was doing
that it was right you
know it can be looked at as like you're trying to embarrass the other hitters
or whatever it had
nothing to do with the hitters I was just trying to entertain the fans yeah um
and so I made a couple
more videos after that like the pitch grips video in 2013 and a couple slow
motion videos here there but
um it kind of in a way it took a little bit of the fun of like trying to
entertain fans out
and so I just I was off of it I went more towards uh twitter at the time which
is now x but um
trying to just have that like back and forth connection with fans and grow it
that way
and that ended up getting me in a lot of trouble as well unfortunately people
like you have your own
voice a lot of times yeah you know which is where you know if you're involved
in something that's
bigger like when you have to go into organizations like major league sports
college sports where there's
a lot of big business interests on the back end of things they really don't
like a lot of guys to have
their own voices yeah it seems like they don't you're not really you're allowed
to but are you
really allowed to yeah I do see how someone like me coming up that has these
opinions especially when
I would be like critical of the league like here's an employee of the league
who's being critical of
their boss publicly and like at the time I was like well this isn't right and
this isn't right and
I disagree with this and the blah blah and so I would just say it and then
without considering the
opposite perspective and I think I was a lot more like I can identify this
problem and I'm just going
to say there's a problem and blame instead of now what I really try to do is
look and say okay I
identify a problem but what are some potential solutions let me present the
solutions that I
think and have a discussion about it instead of just like hey you're wrong you're
wrong do this this
way yeah so some of that like evolution over time growing up and getting older
and learning from
past mistakes starting a business seeing other perspectives um what about did
your ego did ego
start to build up because that's one thing I always talk about a lot in here
just like our ego and what
that's like you know because what was it like when you start to get like a
claim for that if you're
kind of have this social uncomfortability yeah I um I've always tried to
separate ego on and off the field
I haven't been great at it but I think having an ego on the field is super
important like when you
walk out there you got to know that you're the best you have to believe that
you're better than him and
him and him and you got to feel like you're the best guy out there to be like
the true like competitor
you know off the field like going around telling everybody that you're better
than them and acting like
that's not great right so uh I'm not naturally like inclined to be egotistical
I because the way I view
things it's never like a static point everything is I'm improving or I'm
getting worse it's all it's a
fluid situation and so if I'm either getting better or getting worse I'm on a
journey just like you're on
a journey you have your struggles and your your successes I have my struggles
and successes I view
myself as like even with every other person but on the field like when it's
competition time like I am
the best person on the field and if I'm not that day it's because like I didn't
work hard enough or
I need a better process but like every time I step on the field I have to
believe that I'm the best
person there and I've had times in my career where I lost that belief and it
was those were very dark
times performance wise I was terrible on the field and I had to like trick
myself and like fake
like fake it in my own mind that I was still good and then when I started doing
that the results came
back but um I think I'm a little predisposed to uh depression for whatever
reason I don't know if
it's something chemical or or what it is I'm a very like kind of flat
personality I don't have like a ton
of highs and lows so when baseball would go bad like my mood would go really
bad and I had to find a way
to kind of pull those two things apart and be regardless if baseball is up or
down I needed to
be able to like be okay in my life um and would you do to go did you like would
you like if when things
got bad how would you would you booze a little like how would your world so I've
never I've never been
drunk I've never done drugs um wow yeah you are you are riding the fucking
world like yeah that's in that's
intense it's it's incredible man I didn't I didn't have friends to invite me to
the parties in high
school so I never got started but um I don't have those like blank moments or
blank hours where I
yeah I would I would fill those early in my career I'd fill them going on
twitter for three hours
and it was so much fun it was so much fun and I I had fun with it yeah but I
think me having fun
with people is usually like playful banter like I'll kind of like throw a
little like jab your way
and you throw them back my way and it's like because it's jousting match and I
like that because it's
witty and it forces me to think and like it's and I'm having these
conversations with people and I'm like
laughing and joking with them in person yeah and you get a sense of like I'm
not being serious you can
tell very clearly that I'm not being serious but on twitter doesn't come across
that way and especially not even
if the person that you're doing it with may feel that way may not other people
reading it might get
really confused yeah and so I would banter with a lot of people and I think it
got construed negatively
by the media I know it got construed negatively by the media the larger media
as a whole and then I get
this reputation of being combative and stuff and I was never doing it from a
competitive standpoint I
understand how it looks that way and how it came off that way and so those
blank hours where I was just
had nothing to do and I was just like joking with people on twitter firing
stuff off god you know
got me in trouble um trump has a great dave portland interviewed donald trump
and he goes you ever just
like he like would you son was he asking nick about proofreading some of his
tweets or something
trump's like yeah you ever just fire something off and just go to bed and just
hope it's okay
and trump was like yeah all the time yeah you know you're like what the hell is
going on yeah half the
time it's like damn I didn't even I never and I never would have thought that
that would be interpreted
that way thought twice about it yeah when you start to get the entertainment
aspect how did that kind
of come into you do you feel like I think when I got comfortable that I was
good and that I
had largely like established myself where I was going to be able to have a
career like early in your
career you're just fighting to stay there and it's like if you have a bad outing
you might not be there
the next day but once you get to a certain level it's like okay I have some leeway
here
I can't be bad forever but if I have a bad start or two it's not going to be
like I'm gone and so
that gives you a little it becomes manageable yeah and it gives you a little
sense of like
settle in you can take a breath you can be a 