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So as some of you guys already know, I was on “vacation” in Santiago, Dominican Republic with the wife and promised to take a baseball / work break for a few days to relax. Our first day in Santiago, and who do I meet in our hotel? Royals’ Catcher, Brayan Pena. When we first met, I got to chat it up just a bit (he was a really nice guy). I was going back and forth about asking for an interview. I didn’t want to bother him on vacation, BUT NLB is my baby and I have to do what I have to do to get you all great interviews. Long story short, I had a flashback of my Kevin Youkilis debacle (different story for a different day) and decided not to ask. I told him it was nice talking with him, good luck, and that was it.
I was bummed, though trying to act like it wasn’t a big deal when I told my wife the story back in our room. Until the next morning… I’m walking by the hotel pool, and sure enough, there’s my main man Brayan Pena (I use main man loosely here as we’d only talked 5 minutes the day before) who yelled over to me to ask, “What’s up?” Another long story short, I wasn’t going to pass up on the opportunity twice. Brayan was nice enough to sit down for the interview with me while on vacation.
Pena has been a catcher in the big leagues for 8 seasons. The first four with the Braves, and the last four with the Royals. In this interview, he sits by the pool with NLB to talk about the importance of having baseball routines, his personal game day routine, why discipline is the key to having a long career, how staying positive has led to eight years in the big leagues, his advice to ballplayers wanting to make it to the next level and more.
