Braves 2B Ozzie Albies Talks NL East, Dog Rescue & Exotic Fish with Rich

Ozzie Albies walked into the studio leading the team with the best record in baseball, and when Rich asked what was clicking, the Braves second baseman did not point to a swing or a stat.

"We're playing tremendously great baseball and we just enjoying the moment," Albies said. "As a team, we're all together and we have each other's back and enjoy the game and have fun with it."

Pressed on what was actually producing the wins, Albies pointed to routine.

"It starts with the preparation since we wake up in the morning," he said. "We get together, we have our breakfast, we talk baseball. Then we get to the field, we do our preparation of meetings."

He credited manager Walt Weiss for the culture, and he did it with a warning.

"He's a leader," Albies said. "I know Walt for more than eight years now and he always has been the same person. He's one of the greatest you will meet. And if you mess around with him, you will find out."

The Braves had a little fun with that reputation. After Weiss went low to break up a near-brawl, the team made a shirt of the moment. Albies has his at home.

Asked which team Atlanta most wants to beat, Albies did not hesitate.

"I'll definitely say the Phillies," he said. "It's our rivalry in the East. Every time you go play there you want to beat those guys."

The second half of the conversation moved away from baseball, and it was the better half.

Albies and his wife Andrea run the Ozzie Albies Foundation, built around dog rescue in Atlanta. They have eight rescue dogs of their own. The foundation re-homed more than 100 dogs last year.

"We don't want to see the dogs on the street," Albies said. He described the long-term goal of building a full-time facility, a place dogs could be homed rather than euthanized after long shelter stays.

"Even when there is a dog in the shelter for more than 100 days and it never got adopted, we want to give them a chance again," Albies said.

Then there are the fish. Albies grew up in Curaçao, where his grandfather kept six special koi in a pond and tended them every morning over coffee.

"I grew up since I was like 4 years old watching those fishes," Albies said. One day, the six fish all died at once. The memory stuck. He told Andrea that when he had the chance, he would build a koi pond of his own to carry the tradition forward.

He now keeps roughly 100 koi at his house. He knows the number exactly, because during a deep clean he counted them, landed at 92, and went and bought eight more to round it off.

There is video of Albies in the pond. It is not a hot tub. It is the koi pond, and it was snowing in Atlanta the day he jumped in.

"Why not just jump in a cold koi pond and then go straight to my hot tub after that?" he said. "That's my cold plunge of the day."

He closed by asking Rich for help with his 40-yard dash. Albies wants a few more stolen bases this year.