David Price: ‘I just want to help take care of the next generation of baseball’

David Price was a guest on Ross Stripling’s The Big Swing podcast this week, and touched on various topics, including nationwide Black Lives Matter after the killing of George Floyd, MLB labor discussions, and how baseball has changed in the dozen years since his major league debut.

Stripling also lauded Price for giving $1,000 to every Dodgers minor leaguer. It was a plan Price hatched with his agent Bo McInnis in April, amid rumors that a minor league season was in jeopardy in 2020.

“I just want to help take care of the next generation of baseball. I never even thought about the fact that I never played a game for the Dodgers, or any of that stuff. It never even crossed my mind,” Price said. “It was something I talked to my agent about, and they took care of. Maybe eight weeks, or a month and a half ago is when I told my agent what I wanted to do, and he went to Andrew [Friedman], and they have a very good relationship and talked about how they can work it all out.”

Price didn’t plan on publicizing the gesture, though news broke at the end of May.

“I got text messages from people I don’t usually get text messages from, telling me they were proud of what I did,” he said. “I was like, ‘Wait, where did you hear this from? Do you have a buddy with the Dodgers or something?’ They said, ‘No, I saw it on social media,’ then I knew it was out then, and my phone started blowing up.”

Price recalled having six players in a two-bedroom apartment in Montgomery, Alabama, in Double-A while with the Rays.

“Those are some of the best memories of my baseball career,” Price said. “I had teammates that weren’t well off, money wise, coming up throughout the minor leagues. Those were always the guys I wanted to take to lunch before the game, or take out to eat after the game, whatever it was. I know we have those guys in our organization as well in the minor leagues, and I wanted to lend them a helping hand for the time being.

“Major League Baseball is trying to take care of Major League Baseball right now, and Minor League Baseball is kind of an afterthought, and that hurts my heart.”

Links

• Jared Diamond at the Wall Street Journal said MLB owners and players had “a Grand Canyon-sized window to return to the field before its major competitors and stage a triumphant return around the Fourth of July,” but they blew it.
• Will Leitch at MLB.com picked the hottest hitting month by a player for each team since the year 2000. His Dodgers choice is Cody Bellinger last March/April, when he hit .431/.508/.890 with 14 home runs, 37 RBI, and 32 runs scored in 31 games.
• Craig Edwards further broke down MLB owners’ latest proposal at FanGraphs, noting that the owners’ claims of losing money every game doesn’t hold water.