Nine Innings In: a baseball fandom podcast. DSARM leads off.
Nobody grows up loving a sport because of a box score.
They grow up loving it because of a road trip, a friend group, a city going insane in October. That’s why Nine Innings In, Sideline Sports’ new baseball fandom podcast, exists. It’s the first original show from the brand, and it’s not interested in scores. It’s interested in the people behind them.
Hosted by Vincent Samperio, whose own fandom was sealed the day his parents met at a baseball field, the format is simple: nine questions, nine innings, one fan telling their story. Not analysis. Not hot takes. Just the real, often deeply personal path that leads someone to caring about the diamond the way fans do.
A Cut List, a Road Trip, and a Fan Born
For the inaugural episode, Samperio sat down with Dan Sarmiento, known across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram as DSARM. He’s covered the Tokyo Series, worked out with MLB players, and launched an elite youth travel team. One of the clearest voices on what hardball culture actually looks like right now.
But the story anchoring the episode isn’t about any of that access. It starts at 11 years old, when Dan got cut from his All-Star team.
His dad didn’t sit him down for a talk. Didn’t sign him up for extra reps. He booked flights, loaded up a car, and took his son through six MLB stadiums across the Midwest, ending the whole trip at the Field of Dreams in Iowa. The one from the movie. The one with the corn.
“He saw I was slipping,” Dan says. “My grandpa’s from Cuba, and the sport is all he knew. It’s in the family.”
Ten years later, at 21, he did the whole trip again with his dad. Same stadiums. Same Field of Dreams. Different everything else. That ten-year bookend, a father making sure his son understood why the sport matters, doesn’t fit inside a highlight reel. It’s exactly the kind of story Nine Innings In was built for.
The 12-Year-Old Problem Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud
When Samperio asks for a take Dan would die on, he doesn’t hesitate.
Around 12, a kid has a choice. Keep grinding through the transition to the big diamond, where home runs get rarer and the game gets harder. Or drift toward lacrosse, soccer, something that keeps delivering immediate excitement.
Baseball’s losing some of those kids.
“I’m trying to get these kids not to play lacrosse,” Dan says. “We need to lean into the gear, lean into social, make the sport feel cool where kids are actually paying attention.”
It’s not that MLB isn’t moving. The pitch clock worked. Automated balls and strikes are coming. Creators are getting more access. But the creator-league relationship the NBA built with people like Jesser, where 40 million subscribers already know your name before they fall for the sport, that pipeline’s still forming in hardball. Dan’s trying to help build it.
Ken Griffey Jr. Dapped Him Up in Front of Everyone
Dan has a story from MLB All-Star week. The day before, he’d interviewed Ken Griffey Jr. at a Nike event. Ten minutes, no screened questions because Griffey trusted him. Good interview. The next day, he’s on the field when Griffey spots him across the grass, walks over, and daps him up in front of everybody.
“Everyone’s looking around like, who are you people?” he laughs. “How does Ken Griffey Junior just come and dap you up?”
A Hall of Famer treating a YouTube creator like a VIP insider doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because the culture’s shifting, and some people inside the sport already know it.
Why This Is Sideline’s First Original Show
Sideline Sports covers everything but the pitch: the fashion, the food, the music, the stories that orbit sports but define how we actually experience them. A show about the sport’s fandom fits that mission precisely.
Nine Innings In isn’t a baseball analysis show. It’s a show about why people love the diamond, and what that love looks like when it comes from a New Hampshire kid whose Cuban grandfather saw the sport as a birthright, or a creator who figured out a YouTube career would give him better access than an 84 mph slider ever could.
They’re not baseball stories. They’re people stories. The sport’s just where they happen.
Listen to the Inaugural Episode
Nine Innings In With Vincent Samperio is available now on Sideline Sports and everywhere you get your podcasts. The inaugural episode features Dan Sarmiento (DSARM) on fandom, Field of Dreams, Ken Griffey Jr., and why MLB needs to win over the 12-year-old before lacrosse does.
Find Dan at @DSARM on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Find Vince at @vincesince91.
