The Dan Patrick Show had a big-name guest on today in Pittsburgh Pirates rookie phenom Paul Skenes. The show not only had him, but they had him the day after he threw seven no-hit innings with 11 strikeouts before being pulled from the game. The interview was made even bigger when Diamondbacks manager Torey Luvollo called in to announce live on the show that Skenes would be the National League starter for the All-Star game next week.
Patrick’s producer Todd Fritz notified him in the middle of the interview that Luvollo was on the line and Patrick said, “Torey is the National League All-Star manager. Hey, what’s up?…I’m conducting an interview here, what’s going on?”
With that, Luvollo made the announcement live on the show saying, “Paul… I just wanted to congratulate you; I’ve chosen you to be the starter for the National League in the 2024 All-Star Game. I’m really, really excited for you. It’s an unbelievable honor and one that is so well deserved.”
After a round of applause, Skenes said, “Thank you, sir that’s unbelievable, that’s awesome,” although he said so without much emotion and barely smiled as he said it.
“So well deserved and we are super excited to make this announcement,” Luvollo continued. “You represent so many great things that this game craves. It is such a great story the way you have come on the scene and done it with such humbleness, it’s noticeable.”
After a few minutes, Patrick said, “It’s awesome you called in, thank you Torey.” He then said to Skenes, “Well, how about that?”
“That’s cool, that’s really cool,” Skenes said, again without much emotion. He would later add, “That was pretty dang cool…That was a surprise, I wasn’t expecting that.”
Skenes thanked Patrick for having him on and for sharing the moment with him, to which Patrick said, “We will always have this, Paul. We did it. We got you on the All-Star team as the starting pitcher.”
After the interview, Patrick congratulated Fritz for pulling this off and explained that he was not certain if this was actually going to happen until Lovullo called in. “And thank you to MLB,” Patrick said. “I just said, ‘Todd, ask them if they are going to announce it, do they have a press conference and if they don’t, can they join us?’ …And Torey, thank you, great sport to be able to take time. I wasn’t sure and then Todd goes, ‘Torey Lovullo is on the phone’…And then I put it together, it was like oh, he is the National League All-Star manager, alright.”
Hilariously, as Patrick and company talked about Skenes’ lack of emotion for a few minutes, he noticed Skenes was still sitting on the Zoom and had not clicked off the interview. Patrick ended up bringing him back on and officially letting him know the interview had ended.
