If you were a fan of baseball in the 2010s, you knew how electric pitcher Madison Bumgarner was.
Wracking up three World Series titles with a combined 0.25 ERA in those games with the San Francisco Giants by the time he was 25, it was easy to see that the guy had the potential of being the best to ever do it.
Although the long-haired country boy from North Carolina hasn’t quite pitched as well as he did during that five year stretch of Giants dominance, the now 32-year-old still has a lot in the tank, pitching for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
He was at the top of sports headlines yesterday, after getting ejected in the first inning for confronting the umpire for staring at him while he was checking his hand for foreign substances.
I mean, what the hell is he starring at? He’s not even looking at his hand…
Of course, Bumgarner is still one of the most intense pitchers to ever play the game of baseball, I mean you don’t get a nickname like “MadBum” for no reason (yeah, I know it’s his name, too), so things got pretty heated.
That ejection yesterday led me to finding this old hidden gem, when the then 25-year-old pitcher made an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon back in 2014, where they discussed the World Series, pitching in big games, and more.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the interview, was when he joked about singing country music with fellow teammate and pitcher at the time Jake Peavy.
When Fallon talked about all the accolades MadBum had won by the time he was 25, he asked:
“I mean what’re you gonna do next, cut an album? We could do a country record!”
MadBum responded:
“We’ve been thinking about it… my buddy of mine Jake Peavy actually sings on the team, so I was thinking about singing with him.”
And when Fallon said he should do it, he quickly responded:
“NO.”
Damn man, he really had me convinced there for a second. We’re talking about a dude who once got caught competing in roping competitions at rodeos while using a fake name during the offseason for baseball…
All we need now is a country record.
Back in 2015, a band called Tim Hall and Buffalo Country released a country song dedicated Bumgarner.
Titled “Outlaw Southpaw,” it’s not half bad:
