Why Jake Arrieta Was Inspired To Have Kids Early | Clips | Dad Saves America

0:01 - Let's talk about that balance. So you, through your career, ended up being at the absolute, like, the highest level of professional athleticism and competition, and baseball's got a lot of travel. And you married your high school sweetheart. How did you balance maintaining like a functional relationship with your wife, and then, and place your kids' birth in the timeline of your career? Like, when are they born in the arc of your career?

0:33 They were born before the World Series, so? - Yes, yes, both of them. - You've got a wife and kids as you're about to like, break this ceiling for the Cubs. How did you do that? - We decided early on she was gonna teach in Frisco, north of Dallas. But, you know, when I was drafted, I was like, "You know what?" And this is maybe a naive thing to say at the time, I'm like, "I'm gonna get to the big leagues quickly, like, don't teach, let's buy a house, travel with me, and let's have kids, and start having kids soon."

1:07 - Well, that's a really, so okay, so you're like, "I'm gonna go into the big leagues, let's, like, get right to having kids." That's like the opposite of, like, today. Nobody in our culture's really saying that's the strategy. - [Jake] That's true, you know, and I, - Why did you pick that strategy? - Because I knew that she was gonna be a terrific mother. She was, you know, amazing to be in a relationship with for me and my companion.

1:32 And we balance each other out very well. And we wanted to have kids early so we could experience, you know, so many different things in life with them while we were still pretty young. And we could still compete with 'em and move around and not be, you know, our knee's not killing us. So, and it's funny 'cause most of our friends now have kids in diapers and they would kind of give us shit, you know, when we had kids super early, like they're, they wanna travel and do all this and that, which is great.

2:00 You know, I totally understand people getting married or not getting married until a little bit later and they have to focus on their career, 'cause the last thing you wanna do is start a family. And, you know, you haven't established your career yet. Fortunately for us, - This is the conventional wisdom. I'm not, I'm not sure. I don't, I'm unconvinced, I'm 45, my son just turned 18 and he was a supercharger for my vision of my life, like.

2:23 - Well, and that's amazing. And so for us, we were financially secure, quote, unquote "secure pretty early on." So we wanted to kind of start that process early.