Central Plains FFA Chapter

12/10 13:52 CST New contracts and newborns go together for Phillies' Kyle Schwarber New contracts and newborns go together for Phillies' Kyle Schwarber By RONALD BLUM AP Baseball Writer ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) --- For Kyle Schwarber, his new contracts and newborns seem to go together. Hours after Schwarber struck a $79 million, four-year deal to join the Phillies in March 2022, his wife, Paige, gave birth to the couple's first child, Kade. This week, Schwarber reached a $150 million, five-year deal to remain with the Phillies, just before the expected birth of a daughter. "I was able to rush up to Philly yesterday and to get all the physicals and all that done with to get back here to Ohio to make sure that I'm not going to get beat up or anything like that if I miss my child being born," Schwarber said during a Zoom news conference Wednesday. "This is a little reminiscence of four years ago to where we agreed to the deal but she actually went into labor that night. Here we're getting close. It could happen any day, but I'm happy that they were able to accommodate that, get me up there, get me back, so now I will be here, make sure whenever our little girl comes into the world that I will be here." Their daughter will be their first following a pair of sons. Schwarber, who turns 33 in March, set career bests this year with a National League-leading 56 homers and a major league-high 132 RBIs along with a .240 batting average and .928 OPS. He scored a career-high 111 runs as he led the club to its second straight NL East title. His 23 homers against left-handed pitching set a major league record for a lefty batter. "I don't want to just be a quote-unquote ?one-hit wonder,' right?" Schwarber said. "I want to play this game for a long time and I want to continue to still be great and I want to continue to help the Phillies try to win a World Series and multiple World Series throughout my time here." Schwarber met with his home-state Cincinnati Reds during the free-agent process. "I was impressed,'" he said. "Me and Paige went down to Cincinnati and we were able to meet, sit down and have the conversation with them and hear them out. And I would say that they were not pulling chains and that they were wanting to try to get me to Cincinnati." Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski made keeping Schwarber a priority. "He's been a difference-maker for us since the day he got here to kind of help change the culture," Dombrowski said. "We didn't have anybody else in our clubhouse when I came on board that had won a world championship." Schwarber was selected by the Cubs with the fourth pick in the 2014 amateur draft and two years later returned in the World Series from a torn left ACL and helped Chicago win its first title since 1908. He was demoted to the minors for two weeks in 2017 and was let go after hitting .181 in 2020. He signed a $10 million, one-year deal with Washington. "At the top of the mountain, you win a World Series, then you're hitting 170. You're in Triple-A the year after. 2020, non-tendered and then kind of able to get back and (be) the player that you know that you could be. And then you come to the four years in Philadelphia and you really feel like that you've hit your stride and you've got the identity of who I wanted to be in the big leagues, right? And there's still things to improve on." On June 25, he hit a pair of two-run homers in a 12-5 victory at the New York Yankees on Friday night. The first drive, his 319th career homer, topped Mark McGwire for most home runs among a player's first 1,000 hits. His milestone hit was grabbed by a Phillies fan attending with his friends in Yankee Stadium's right-center field seats. He met the trio after the game, gave an autographed ball to each and exchanged hugs. When he went to get a third ball to autograph, one of the three said he just wanted Schwarber to re-sign with the Phillies. "Resonating with an organization and resonating with a fan base is a huge part of why you do it," he said. "You want people, you want young kids, you want anyone at a game and at the end of the day look up and you want 'em to be wearing your jersey or look at their mom and dad and say, ?Hey, I want to be like Kyle.'" ___ AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB