 Elville High School is in a town in Texas with a population of around 4,200. That's where Lucas Lipke grew up. One of his best friends from back home is NFL wideout, Emmanuel Sanders, who signed with the Bills last month. Meredith recently had the chance to talk about their friendship with Emmanuel. Emmanuel, you know one of the members of the New York Yankees. Better than probably anyone else in the New York area. And that is Lucas Lipke. What did you think when you first found out that he had made the team? I was excited. Not only that, just through his resilience in terms of being hurt and then battling back, but also just to be a part of the Yankees organization. That's huge. I mean, we come from a small country town and the chances of just one person making a professing out of Belleville, Texas is hard, but two of us to make it. And not only that, that was one of my best friends in high school, right? It was me, him and my cousin, Josh. We all roll together. We play baseball together. We grew up together. And so it's just amazing. You kind of sit back and you think like, what is God up to, right? Or is just energy, or is it energy? What was it, right? And it's just so cool. And to play for the Yankees organization, the top-notch organization. And now I'm in New York as well, playing for the Bills. It's just a crazy story, man. It's a crazy story. But you know, only thing I can sum it up to is, you know, I text and I tell him, man, God is the greatest, man. He's God is the goat 100%. What do you remember about him in high school? When I spoke to him, he said that you guys never really necessarily spoke about going pro. Did you ever? And not in a million years did we ever think that we were going to go pro. I mean, we grew up playing little baseball together. And I stopped playing baseball to kind of focus on football. Once we got to high school. But then I was able, my senior year, I just wanted to play baseball a little bit. So I went out and played baseball on the team. But I was really a guy who just stole bases. Like, really, that's all I did was steal bases. So, Emanuel, I know your focus is football, and it's been a long time since you've been in the batter's box. But if you were, could you get a hit off of Lucas Licky in 2021? I mean, I can't sit back and say that I won't. Because if I close my eyes and just swing, you never know. Like, I might get lucky, but I highly doubt it. I don't know the last time I swung a baseball bat. And even when we were coming up, like, I was OK at baseball, but I never really, you know, took baseball serious as I took, like, basketball and football. But I would love the opportunity just to sit in the batter's box and see how hard he throws though these days. Because man, back in the day, he used to be able to throw it. Like, I mean, I remember even, you know, like, Homer Bailey was from La Grange, Texas, which was like 45 minutes away from Belleville, and him and Lucas was like the hot commodities. I remember one time I went up against Homer Bailey, he threw like 95 miles on our fastball, 98 miles on our fastball. And I was like, yeah, I think that was the day that I quit playing baseball. Smart man. Smart man. He throws correctly. He's coming way too fast. Now that you guys are both in New York, I understand you are much further north, but there's a good chance you'll wind up in Manhattan one day. Who's going to pick up the check when you go out to dinner to talk about two kids from Belleville? Yeah, that's going to be interesting. But I think we put ourselves in pretty good positions to even be debating on that topic is a beautiful thing, right? Two kids from Belleville and a big apple, right? And a big city of New York. New York, like, that's just amazing. And I'm happy for him. I told him, I talked to him, I said, man, I can't wait until, you know, me and my cousin, we can make it out there and go to a game and really see a pitch. Just being Yankee Stadium, man, that's going to be, that's going to be amazing, man, watching a kid from Belleville, right? Now he's pitching in the major leagues and I'm extremely proud of him.