Jack Flaherty Talks Free Agency, Manny Machado Trash Talk & More

“Whatever ends up happening, happens. I grew up here. I still have no words for having the chance to come here and win a ring. It’s been so special and even seeing the love from around the city from people is unbelievable. But whatever ends up happening happens. I’ve enjoyed my time here. If I’m back, I’m back. If not, then I’m going to look forward to trying to win a ring wherever I end up.”

“There was one moment that I did not remember, which was my mom actually taking a shot of tequila, because she doesn’t drink tequila, and I saw a video of her doing it on my phone afterwards. I was like ‘I forgot about this.’ That’s what sparked everything. She did it and I was like, ‘that was incredible.'”

“Between me, Walker (Buehler), Kike (Hernandez) too. Kike said he forgot about bit of his speech the other day when he was on the mic. His speech was incredible. But it’s probably one of us for sure.”

“So, we make the World Series and one of my best friend’s family friends runs Erewhon. My friend’s little brother texted me and says ‘Erewhon wants to run a smoothie for the Dodgers. Would you be interested in doing it?’ I’m not going to say no to that, so it was a little bit of it being the right place, right time, and knowing some of the right people. They asked me what I wanted to put in it, and I’m like let’s just make it taste good. We go through some bananas, some protein, and go in and try it, and did an hour shoot. It was pretty cool.”

“If you grew up in LA, you didn’t grow up a Clippers fan. The Clippers had some guys that were coming through, but it was hard growing up here and not be a fan of Shaq (Shaquille O’Neal) and Kobe (Bryant). I was still really young, but it was hard not to be a fan of that that was going on. Maybe it was because they were winning, and you can call every single one of us bandwagon fans if you want because all of us young guys hopped on the train when they were winning. I’ll never get off the train.”

“Those words normally are running through my head as I’m pitching. It was a big spot in a big moment in a big game, and Manny (Machado), to get him out in that spot, where that was going on was one of those that it was just, it all just came out. He’s a huge competitor – I’m not surprised he didn’t take it too kindly, like, by all means, he should be upset that those words came out, especially right there. It kept going on afterwards and you can’t really hear what anybody’s saying at that point, you’re too far away. But he’s going to compete. He’s not going to let somebody say that to him and we kept going back and forth. But you know, things happen.”

“You can see it – when you throw a good pitch, he’ll nod at you and he’s like ‘OK, you’re coming with it, I got you.’ It’s fun to compete with him when he’s like that and locked in because it’s tough to get him out. He’s one of the best hitters in the game. If you don’t like competing with a guy like that whose got his own mind games and is as confident as they come, then it’s going to be tough to get him out. It’s really like a head nod competition back and forth – he takes a good pitch, I make a good pitch, and you just keep going.”