Prospect gives Red Sox wild, shirtless US history lesson, assisted by Joey Chestnut

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Every now and then, you need to lighten things up to break up the monotony of Spring Training.

In lefty Payton Tolle, who is probably the most fun-loving person on the Red Sox’s Spring Training roster, manager Alex Cora found the perfect person to do so.

In anticipation of the upcoming World Baseball Classic, Cora enlisted Tolle, MLB Pipeline’s No. 19 prospect, to do a presentation to his team about United States history.

Leave it to Tolle to somehow get Joey Chestnut, the legendary consumer of Fourth of July hot dogs, to make it into his school-style oral presentation (slides included).

After connecting with Chestnut by phone, Tolle had the most famous connoisseur of franks send him a video he could share with the Red Sox.

Did Chestnut devour any dogs for the video, which he DM’d to Tolle on Instagram?

“He didn’t, but he sure talked about them,” Tolle said. “It was pretty electric.”

Tolle started his presentation with his shirt on. By the time he was dramatically introducing Chestnut as the “sultan of sausage,” that shirt was tied to the back of his shorts, revealing the letters "USA" shaved into his chest hair.

Three years ago, Alex Verdugo wowed the Red Sox with a Mexico presentation that included a live Mariacci band parading from the clubhouse through the Spring Training complex at Fenway South.

Tolle brought his own bit of fun in celebrating his country, which teammates Roman Anthony and Garrett Whitlock will be representing in the upcoming WBC. In all, the Red Sox have 16 players going to the WBC, including 14 from Major League camp.

“He was awesome,” Cora said of the 23-year-old who is trying to win a spot in the rotation. “It's what he's all about, right? I mean, you're here for two months. And trust me, there's certain days that I'm like, ‘Man, what are we going to do today?’ So we decided a few days ago that he was going to give us a lesson on the United States of America. And he did a good job. I was like, ‘He's gonna kill it.'"

Tolle said that Cora gave him about a week’s notice to get his homework assignment in.

“It was a process. I was joking around, ‘I don’t think I’ve worked that hard on a presentation, other than maybe in middle school.’ It was fun,” said Tolle.

When did he find the time to do it?

“I would get home at night, have some dinner and throw a few slides together,” Tolle said. “I was able to work on about five slides and a script just came to me. I’m going to try to give everything I’ve got. I sure had fun with it. It was about 10 minutes. It was fun.”

What was his best line?

“I had a pretty good intro for Joey Chestnut. Went through all the accolades and all the nicknames,” Tolle said.

Cora didn’t offer many specifics on Tolle’s work, but he did offer this: “A lot of flying beer.”

While Tolle called the depth of his project “elementary,” he made it entertaining.

“With Nate Eaton being on Great Britain’s team, I made sure to mention that we beat them in the Revolutionary War,” Tolle said. “That was a fun moment.”

Though ace Garrett Crochet was making his first start of Spring Training on Thursday, he set aside a few minutes to see what his teammate put together.

Did Crochet learn anything?

“Nothing that I didn’t already know. I learned a lot about Tolle though,” Crochet said. “He’s a character.”

And there is now a video -- no doubt soon to go viral -- that proves it.