JT Realmuto

Yeah, I mean, I had other opportunities for sure, but obviously the Phillies had things going on their end as well.

So that's the nature of the beast.

So we had to be ready to go somewhere else if we needed to.

And we had those opportunities, but obviously that's not what we wanted to happen.

Okay, let's go to Jason next.

Jason?

Hey, JT.

You kind of just referred to it, obviously, the business part of this game.

It became apparent throughout the process.

But after that final game in L.A.

when we were talking to Kyle, he mentioned just even aside from baseball, just the other things, how the community has embraced him, how his family feels welcomed here, how important that has become to him.

How much did that kind of play a part into you wanting to come back?

Obviously,

everyone's going to have their own prerogative.

But just what do you feel about this community and how comfortable have you gotten here in Philly and being one of the leaders for this franchise and one of the faces for the franchise?

Yeah, I mean, that honestly played a huge role in it.

like I mentioned for that brief period where we weren't certain whether we were going to be Phillies or not, you know, the, it's funny, the thing that my wife and I thought about and spoke about the most were just the people that are involved in the organization and the fans.

And I mean, I could go on and on with a list of names and people in this organization that have just welcomed us and embraced us and really been a family, family to us.

So that was the hardest part was thinking about not being able to be with those people, my teammates and,

um there's like i said there's so many names that i could name off to you that we were thinking of and speaking of and like almost going through a period where we're mourning not being with these relationships that we've built so that's really what it came down to for us like that was so important to us and to be able to continue those relationships and build on them go to todd zalecki next todd