If you want to find the heart and soul of a Major League Baseball team, start with the “mic guy” at the front of the bus.
When a team lands in a new city, it is often the task of one dedicated player to play emcee on the ride to the hotel. The goal is to keep things light and loose over the course of a long season, and there are no strict guidelines or topics for the man with the microphone.
“It can be about anything – where we’re going, who we’re playing, what we did, why we stink, someone messed up in a funny way,” Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber explained to me.
The only real rule?
“You have to try to entertain the group,” said Dodgers mic guy Miguel Rojas. “You’re not a good mic guy if you’re just talking with your ego and saying stuff about yourself.”
It is a role fit for a team leader. You need some feel and an understanding of the temperature in the room. You have to be funny, but not a clown. You have to be respected, but you can’t take yourself too seriously. You need to be comfortable ribbing teammates — and yourself. Self-deprecation and humor are welcomed, perhaps even required, especially for a team in a funk.
Sometimes, the production can go off the rails. But it takes a certain personality and fearlessness to stand there in the first place.
Along with being an All-Star slugger, Kyle Schwarber is also the ‘mic guy’ for the Phillies. (Photo by Isaiah Vazquez/Getty Images)
“Half of it is spitting out crap,” Schwarber said. “Half of it is not even entertaining. You’re trying to think of stuff to make people laugh and nothing’s really happening. Like, yeah, we had a great series but nothing really funny happened. So then I just bury myself most of the time.
“That’s how it goes. I’m not very good at it. There’s a few rare times that I’ll have the whole bus laughing, which is fun. But I’m sure half the time everyone’s sick and tired of hearing my s—.”
They are not.
In fact, Schwarber is beloved in the clubhouse for his affable, approachable nature and style of leadership, which makes the designated hitter the perfect fit to also be the designated mic guy.
“He’s a guy that’s really good at making fun of himself, which makes it a little easier to talk to him,” said Phillies rookie Otto Kemp. “He’s a perfectionist, but no ego. He kind of puts that aside and is a guy you can go up to at any point and ask about whatever. That’s special with a guy that’s been in the league as long as he has.”
‘He just brings us all together’
On the field, Schwarber’s value is measurable and significant: He led the National League with 56 home runs and all of MLB with 132 RBI in a career year.
Off the field, it is immeasurable yet maybe just as significant, from the bus to the batting cage, from his work in the community with Schwarber’s Neighborhood Heroes to his influence in the clubhouse with the team’s younger players.
Take Kemp, for instance, an undrafted Division II prospect out of Point Loma Nazarene University who made his big-league debut on June 7.
He did not know many players on the roster before the Phillies called him up, and he wanted to make a good first impression. He did not want to step on any toes. So, in his first couple weeks up, he tried to get his work done early before the rest of his teammates.
Well, most of them.
Schwarber, as Kemp would come to find out, “lives in the cage.” That provided him time to pick Schwarber’s brain.
“Just having that time to shoot the s— with him and bounce ideas back and forth and kind of get to know him a little more, what makes him who he is. That was a cool little thing for the first couple weeks when I was getting used to life up here,” Kemp said. “He helped out quite a bit.”
Kyle Schwarber giving Otto Kemp a celebratory bath earlier this season. (Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)
Weston Wilson, a 2016 17th-round pick who signed a minor league free-agent deal with the Phillies in 2023 and made his big-league debut later that year, had a similar experience with Schwarber two years ago.
“He just was one of those leaders you looked up to right away,” Wilson said. “Very welcoming, didn’t treat guys that had no service time differently than he treated guys with service time, so I respected that. I just think he’s the same guy every time, whether he’s doing good or bad, always encouraging others.”
Making teammates feel comfortable, Schwarber believes, is the most important trait to a winning culture. But it can’t be forced. He’s not sitting in his hotel room before a game trying to plan out which player he’s going to pull aside for a chat.
“It just happens,” Schwarber explained. “Being able to be approachable and being able to have good listening capabilities is also more important than just being able to spew it out. You can talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and it might not click. But also, if someone’s got something, you want them to feel like they’re getting whatever they have to say off their mind, whatever it is. That might be way more valuable than you talking.”
Schwarber possesses a distinctive ability to impact players at all different points of their careers — mainly because he can relate, wherever they happen to be.
After a promising debut season with the Cubs at 22 years old, Schwarber famously tore his ACL and LCL and severely sprained his ankle in the second game of his second big-league season. The Cubs announced that he would be out for the year. Schwarber tweeted two days after the collision that it was “a test of character.”
Six months later, against all odds, he etched his place in Chicago lore when he returned, miraculously, for the World Series and went 7-for-17 in the Fall Classic to help end the Cubs’ 108-year curse. But four years later, an unceremonious departure awaited. The Cubs weren’t interested in holding onto the past when they non-tendered Schwarber after a down year in the COVID-shortened 2020 season.
Now, that experience is just part of his story, a moment that makes him even more relatable to those whose big-league journeys are either just beginning or at a crossroads.
“If you’re struggling, you’re worried about being sent down, I’ve been there,” Schwarber said. “Feel like you might get non-tendered? Been there.
“To experience it and come out on the other side, you just know there can be a light at the end of the tunnel. You have to keep fighting, keep pushing forward.”
Kyle Schwarber rather let his play do the talking – expect when he is on the mic. (Photo by Emilee Chinn/Getty Images)
It’s easy to remain upbeat in a season that will end with MVP votes, as Schwarber’s almost certainly will this year. It’s not as easy when you’re hitting under .200 for a season, as Schwarber was two years ago.
But back then, Wilson saw the same guy he sees now.
“A lot of it has to do with the type of person you are away from baseball,” Wilson said. “He’s always leading, always treating people the same way.”
Schwarber cringes a bit at the “leader” label, mainly because he’s not doing anything beyond being himself.
“It’s a compliment, don’t get me wrong,” Schwarber said. “But I’m not a guy who likes to compliment myself.”
That’s fine; his teammates can do it for him.
“When we go into a new city, not all teams go out to dinner with each other,” said Garrett Stubbs, whose arrival in Philadelphia coincided with Schwarber’s in 2022. “But he seems to be the guy that continuously puts those dinners together — and not just financially paying for it but actually getting the guys going out to dinner together, hanging out outside the baseball field.”
More than anything, it’s Schwarber’s approachability that sets him apart. That ability spans age, race, language, background and tenure. Panama native Edmundo Sosa described his time with the Phillies to me as the “best four years of his life in baseball,” and it started with how he was treated by Schwarber and the established players in the locker room when Philadelphia acquired him from St. Louis at the 2022 deadline.
“He is a real leader,” Sosa said. “I say that because outside the field, inside the field, he takes care of everybody. Young guys, [veteran] guys, he tries to get everyone on the identical web page, staying collectively. He’s humorous generally, however when it’s critical, it’s actually critical.”
Added Kemp: “He simply makes it much less annoying, slightly extra snug.”
It’s potential that consolation has helped manufacturing.
What makes the Phillies feared this October is their elite rotation and the bats of Schwarber, Harper and NL batting champ Trea Turner. However they’ve had that earlier than. What set them aside in 2025, serving to them accumulate extra wins than they’ve had in any season since 2011, is the supporting solid.
Amongst that group is Kemp, who offered a lift for the membership because it handled accidents, logging time at 4 totally different positions. Sosa, in the meantime, performed 5 totally different positions whereas hitting above league common in among the finest seasons of his profession.
On the deadline, the Phillies’ new additions assimilated swiftly, taking part in a few of their finest baseball upon becoming a member of the membership. Jhoan Duran provides Philadelphia the elite nearer it has lacked in current Octobers. Harrison Bader, in the meantime, had an .824 OPS after the commerce, a tally that trailed solely Schwarber and Bryce Harper for one of the best mark on the staff. Over the past two months, he observed the impression Schwarber had on these round him.
“He simply brings us all collectively,” Bader mentioned. “He’s the identical man on daily basis. He’s actually very informal. He’s bought a variety of poise…tremendous constructive. He’s at all times speaking concerning the subsequent swing, subsequent alternative, getting your thoughts proper. That’s the calm vitality you want.”
Particularly now, because the Phillies put together to host the Dodgers within the Nationwide League Division Sequence, seeking to wipe away the ache of the previous couple of postseasons.
In 2022, the Phillies received 87 video games and ended a 10-year playoff drought regardless of ending in third place within the NL East. They made it to the World Sequence, the place they misplaced to the Astros. With a core that included Schwarber, Harper, J.T. Realmuto and most of the identical gamers nonetheless with the membership now, the arrow was pointing up.
Their October manufacturing, nevertheless, regressed. They received 90 video games in 2023 and misplaced within the NLCS. They received 95 video games final yr and exited after 4 video games within the NLDS.
This yr, in what might be the final hurrah for this nucleus — Schwarber, Realmuto and Ranger Suárez are all among the many veteran members of the Phillies core who might be free brokers at season’s finish — they received 96 video games. Schwarber, who began each recreation this season, performed an important position within the success, with an OPS over 1.000 in Phillies wins.
However he additionally made the journey gratifying within the 66 video games that didn’t go Philadelphia’s manner.
“You might be struggling, you might be going nice,” Schwarber mentioned. “So long as you sit up for strolling by the door, you recognize it’s not going to be as unhealthy a day because it might be — or it may be a greater day than it may’ve been.”
‘Thoughts-boggling’ energy
Past the welcoming nature that has made him one of the revered clubhouse presences within the sport, Schwarber’s worth to the Phillies’ lineup is clear.
On Sept. 15, the Dodgers determined to make use of reliever Anthony Banda as an opener in entrance of longman Emmet Sheehan, as a manner to make sure they’d get a lefty-lefty matchup early towards the Phillies’ prime sluggers. Banda bought Schwarber down 1-2, watched him foul off a sinker, bought an computerized ball on a pitch clock violation, then snapped a 2-2 slider that painted the black on the outer fringe of the plate. Not a nasty pitch.
“It sucked, as a result of I really feel like I did every little thing proper,” Banda mentioned.
In hindsight, he wished the slider was slightly extra off the plate and down.
That is the hazard of going through Schwarber, who hit 23 dwelling runs off left-handed pitchers this yr, essentially the most by any left-handed hitter in a single season in MLB historical past.
He had an OPS over .900 in each the primary and second half. He had an OPS over .900 towards each righties and lefties. He doesn’t chase. He’ll take his walks. However give him one thing his bat can contact, and also you won’t see that baseball once more.
On that pitch from Banda, Schwarber hunched over, a bit out in entrance, but with a one-handed swing one way or the other pulled the skin slider 103.8 mph off the bat. Banda described what occurred subsequent as mind-boggling.
The Dodgers reliever was fairly positive he popped him up. As a substitute, the ball saved carrying. The end result, a solo dwelling run that discovered the right-field pavilion to place the Phillies on the board, left Banda incredulous.
“Everyone was considering the identical factor, scratching their head,” Banda recalled. “Like, ‘How?’ Or, ‘wow.’”
The identical reactions passed off a month prior in Philadelphia, when Schwarber grew to become the twenty first participant ever to report a four-homer recreation. And the month earlier than that in Atlanta in July, when Schwarber went 3-for-3 within the first ever All-Star Recreation dwelling run swing-off to earn MVP honors. His remaining dwelling run in that competitors got here on one knee.
“Schwarbs, if he touches it, it’s 110,” mentioned Dave Roberts.
That night time, Schwarber helped make Roberts the All-Star Recreation profitable supervisor.
This week, that type of energy manufacturing may finish the season for Roberts’ reigning champions.
Final yr, Schwarber grew to become the one Phillies participant ever to hit not less than 30 homers in every of his first three seasons with the membership; he’s now the one one to do it in 4 straight. An exorbitant payday is definitely forward. However earlier than he turns into one of the desired bats on the open market, unfinished enterprise stays for Philadelphia’s steadying power.
The Phillies enter October with an opportunity to redeem their current shortcomings. They’re the upper seed in a powerhouse showdown towards the Dodgers that options a number of the sport’s greatest names, from Harper to Shohei Ohtani, Turner to Mookie Betts.
Schwarber, in a yr wherein he set profession highs in hits, homers, extra-base hits, RBIs, runs scored and even stolen bases, is after all amongst them. He’ll quickly discover his manner onto MVP ballots, even when the unicorn he’s going through Saturday in Recreation 1 in the end wins the award.
However that’s not his concern proper now.
For the tenth time in 11 big-league seasons, he’s postseason certain, with pretty much as good an opportunity as ever to expertise that feeling he had as a champion 9 years in the past in Chicago. It is what makes all these hours within the cage, all these airplane rides and mic classes, all these jokes at his personal expense price it.
“That’s what you dream of, that’s what you hope for, that’s why you fall asleep at night time, that’s what drives you each single yr,” Schwarber mentioned. “If you happen to do make it, you wish to do it once more. If you happen to don’t get there, it retains you up at night time, like, ‘What extra may I’ve accomplished?’ That’s why you play the sport.”
Rowan Kavner is an MLB author for FOX Sports activities. He beforehand lined the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved again to the West Coast in 2014. Comply with him on X at @RowanKavner.
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