UCLA baseball coach John Savage participated in Southern California Baseball Coaches Media Day Wednesday at ESPN Zone in Anaheim.
The event included a coaches cook-off in which each coach had to prepare a dish of sliders, or miniature hamburgers (pun intended).
Savage’s jalapeño sliders won the award for best presentation. He called it “Fillet de Gillespie” after his coaching mentor and current UC Irvine coach John Gillespie.
In this video, Savage starts by talking about his relationship with Gillespie and goes on to talk about this year’s team and the exposure they’re receiving.
Here’s a transcript of the first few questions posed to Savage because the Flip Cam wasn’t cooperating at first.
DB: What’s harder, making a slider at this competition or teaching a kid to throw one?
JS: Making a slider in the kitchen is much more difficult.
DB: So “best presentation,” huh?
JS: I don’t know how that happened. I think we had a ringer on the panel.
DB: How much help did you have from the chefs?
JS: I had zero help. No one gave me any advice and my wife didn’t have any time for me so I just focused on building the slider when I was here and thankfully we had a Bruin on the panel.
DB: What did you call your dish?
JS: Fillet de Gillispe. He was my mentor and a great coach at Irvine and a guy that gave me an opportunity at USC and it’s more of a running joke than anything but I just named it after him.