The Departed
Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2021 10:40 pm
The Mets will activate him immediately and he’ll throw six scoreless innings this weekend.
Blake Lalli is one of the coaches for the NL Futures Game team. For those on the OBN who never heard, and the PMB guys who forgot (or could care less about) Lalli was a teammate of Neil Walker at Pine Richland. Blake was a senior Neil's freshman year.
Blake was a catcher who bounced around to a lot of teams. But he had two memorable callups, once as a Cub and once as a Brewer, when they visited PNC Park on weekend series in back to back years. He got the celebrity treatment by the Pirates television crew, I think they were ROOT sports then. Neil was interviewed about him, Blake got some air time being a local boy done (not quite as well as Neil) good.
His mom was interviewed in the stands during one of the games, I think it was his turn as a Brewer. He got the Saturday Night starts both times as the backup catcher. His mom works at HealthSouth, now Encompass health.
She was my boss for a number of years. When his teams came to Pittsburgh, a lot of employees went to the game.
Pretty cool seeing his name. I keep tabs on him through his mom. Can't wait to congrat her for this honor. He's working as the bench coach for Vinny Castilla, who is the NL team manager.
Blake is in the Arizona organization and the manager for the AAA Reno Aces.