# Baseball Is Back (and So Is the Debate) | East Meets West Sports Crossover Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/talkin-politics-religion-without-killin-each-other-3353845/baseball-is-back-and-so-is-the-debate-east-meets-west-sports-crossover Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/talkin-politics-religion-without-killin-each-other-3353845/baseball-is-back-and-so-is-the-debate-east-meets-west-sports-crossover.md Podcast: [Talkin‘ Politics & Religion Without Killin‘ Each Other](https://stenobird.com/podcast/talkin-politics-religion-without-killin-each-other-3353845) Published: 2026-02-20T10:34:00+00:00 Episode link: https://www.politicsandreligion.us/e/emw2-17-26_feeddrop/ Audio file: https://pscrb.fm/rss/p/mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/c97en8wjskhb9bb9/EMW_Feeddrop2-17-26_Produced.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/talkin-politics-religion-without-killin-each-other-3353845/episodes/baseball-is-back-and-so-is-the-debate-east-meets-west-sports-crossover Duration seconds: 1901 ## Resource A Note for TP&R Listeners From time to time, it helps to talk about something other than politics in order to understand politics. Sports is one of the last shared civic spaces where identity, loyalty, disagreement, trash talk, and even tribalism can play out without destroying relationships. In other words, many of the same human instincts we explore on Talkin’ Politics & Religion Without Killin’ Each Other show up in a baseball season just as clearly as they do in an election season. So today’s episode comes from another show in the SCAN Media family, East Meets West Sports, co-hosted with veteran broadcaster Rick Garcia. Same curiosity about why people care so deeply about what they care about. Just with box scores instead of polling numbers. If it’s your thing, great. If not, regular TP&R programming resumes next episode. Talkin’ Politics & Religion Without Killin’ Each Other is proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what is broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it. And thank you to Pew Research Center (pewresearch.org) for helping make conversations like this possible. East Meets West Sports with Rick Garcia and Corey Nathan Rick Garcia and Corey Nathan kick off baseball season with a deep dive into the offseason moves that have everyone talking and at least one list that has Corey fuming about West Coast bias. They break down the Dodgers' superteam additions of Edwin Diaz and Kyle Tucker, the Mets' stacked roster and farm system, and why teams like Pittsburgh can scout great talent but can't hold onto it. They also get into the salary cap debate, Steve Cohen's "no captain" declaration, and whether meddling owners ever really help their teams. And in Pop That Culture, they tackle the biggest c… ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/talkin-politics-religion-without-killin-each-other-3353845/episodes/baseball-is-back-and-so-is-the-debate-east-meets-west-sports-crossover/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/talkin-politics-religion-without-killin-each-other-3353845/baseball-is-back-and-so-is-the-debate-east-meets-west-sports-crossover.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.