The Hall-of-Famer (and "One Shining Moment") That Fans Deserve

Speaker 1 Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Speaker 2 Red Panda deserves to be in the Basketball Hall of Fame. Let's make it happen.

Speaker 1 Right after this ad.

Speaker 3 You're listening to DraftKings Network.

Speaker 1 Journalism is why we're here today. We got voicemails.
We're a detective agency. We solve journalistic curiosities.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 should we just get to the first one?

Speaker 2 Let's do it. Yes.

Speaker 4 Oh, hi, Pablo. This is Terre from Berkeley.
I really like your show, and I do have a question.

Speaker 4 My boyfriend and I were talking last night, and we're wondering why there aren't any performers in the NBA Hall of Fame. You know, like the dancers and the mascots.
Shouldn't they be eligible?

Speaker 4 Because they're all part of the game show, right?

Speaker 4 Okay, thank you.

Speaker 1 So shout out to this listener.

Speaker 3 Shout out to Terrell in Berkeley.

Speaker 1 It's a great question.

Speaker 1 And so it's such a great question that the reason Charlotte is here is in fact because Cortez, we dispatched her to solve the mystery of why aren't there any performers, halftime performers of any kind in the Basketball Hall of Fame?

Speaker 2 She's one of the best reporters we know. So this is an important subject, obviously, mascots and so forth, halftime performances.
So we put one of our best reporters on it.

Speaker 3 Stop it. That is so nice.
You're also. Unless you're trolling me.

Speaker 1 No, because you're also just like the type of person who I think just.

Speaker 3 No, you're also just a clown.

Speaker 1 So we thought it would be a good fit. You're a bit of a freak, Charlotte.

Speaker 2 You dressed up as a hot dog once, I mean.

Speaker 3 I didn't dress up as a hot dog. I became a hot dog as a mascot and crashed a wedding.
So big difference.

Speaker 3 I talked to the lead historian at the Hall Hall of Fame, Matt Zeising.

Speaker 3 I asked him

Speaker 3 what the process was, how it would all take. And before we get into that, I do want to say that I think a performer getting into the Hall of Fame might be...

Speaker 2 Should happen.

Speaker 3 Yeah, should happen.

Speaker 3 Might be a little bit of an uphill battle

Speaker 3 based on the conversations I had.

Speaker 1 Now, but this is where I fully am on the side of the aisle that Charlotte is on.

Speaker 1 Like, people need to respect

Speaker 1 what these people are doing. And it sounds like the Basketball Hall of Fame is already like,

Speaker 3 nah. So I don't know that I would say that they are that dismissive.
They seem to, they took it seriously.

Speaker 3 And I want to make it clear to everybody listening and to you guys and to the Hall of Fame especially. This is not a bit.

Speaker 3 I'm not trying to call, you know, make a joke of the Hall of Fame or the sanctity of it. I really believe that these types of performers are crucial to the game.

Speaker 3 You know, you know, heat games, the golden oldies.

Speaker 2 Don't get me started on the golden oldies. That's Hall of Fame material.
That's a group of people that range from like age 62 to 82. They dance their ass off at every game.

Speaker 2 Dale.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I took that video.

Speaker 1 That's your. Yeah, that's my video.

Speaker 3 Every time I go to heat games,

Speaker 3 I record. I didn't know which to choose to bring you guys because I have like 15 videos of the golden oldies.

Speaker 3 And when I walk by them, you know, in the concourse before they're going to perform, I'm always like, oh my God, you guys are amazing.

Speaker 3 And one of them was like, oh, thank you. Yes, we know.
And I was like, good. Okay.
Well, I'm glad you're aware.

Speaker 1 That was, I should say, that was pretty impressive. Just not who I consider to be like the obvious Hall of Fame inductee that I have in mind.
But who else is out there?

Speaker 3 Well, so at NBA All-Stars at the Skills Night, there were the perch pole performers. What?

Speaker 3 For those of you who cannot see this and are listening, there is a very large strong man in a leotard and pants, I will say, holding up a pole that is balanced on his shoulder with a little brace.

Speaker 3 And a woman has them climbed that pole and is pole dancing in a very safe-for-work way.

Speaker 1 Taylor Swift is wiling.

Speaker 3 Yes, the hair is a little 2009 Taylor Swift.

Speaker 1 That shit looks dangerous.

Speaker 2 Look what she's about to do.

Speaker 3 Look what she's about to do. She's wrapping her legs around this.

Speaker 1 It's a little king of diamonds in this act so far.

Speaker 2 What is that?

Speaker 3 Look, she drops all the way to the bottom.

Speaker 1 That's even more king of diamonds.

Speaker 3 KOD. I don't know what that is.

Speaker 2 Well, you should know. It's for the best.
Okay.

Speaker 3 And then she is on, she's holding herself up.

Speaker 2 I haven't seen herself on his

Speaker 2 toe.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yo.

Speaker 1 Nick Offerman, the forearm strength.

Speaker 2 When did you get this ability?

Speaker 3 The core strength, the plank like that on someone's head.

Speaker 1 I want to throw dollar bills at that.

Speaker 2 Pablo, calm down. Yeah, Jesus.

Speaker 1 I know. I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 Whenever I go to basketball games,

Speaker 3 first of all, I'm blown away by the basketball players.

Speaker 3 Then you have these acts like this that are very different types of physicality, but require balance, require in front of a crowd, crazy public pressure.

Speaker 1 If you mess up your act, it's deeply humiliating.

Speaker 3 For a lot of time, for TV timeouts, for halftime, for coaches' challenges, like a lot of these fit for replays, whatever, the players aren't on the floor. And somebody needs to keep the energy up.

Speaker 3 It is an integral part of the game for players to keep the crowd locked in, to make it feel like a big moment.

Speaker 1 So this is where we need to talk about the panda in the room.

Speaker 1 I don't even know how to begin to describe for someone who has never seen the red panda act what she is doing.

Speaker 3 Here's Red Panda. Her

Speaker 3 embarrassing. Embarrassing if you don't know.
Her real name is Rong New. She is on a unicycle that is seven feet tall, wearing two and a half inch heels.

Speaker 3 She has five bowls balanced on her head already, I believe. She is stacking.

Speaker 1 She has four right now on like the on her foot.

Speaker 3 Yes, she is with one foot. She is steadying the unicycle, moving her foot back and forth to keep the balance.

Speaker 1 And everybody is enraptured by this.

Speaker 2 It's all the credit. Like they know.

Speaker 3 She just tossed those bowls. Each one of them flipped the perfect amount and landed on top of the other bowls on her head.

Speaker 1 It's the gold standard. It is the obvious case for the first halftime performer to be into the Hall of Fame.

Speaker 1 The question I have, now that we officially understand no one who does this job has ever made it in.

Speaker 1 And in fact, when you began to look around this, you didn't exactly get the sense that, oh, this is obviously going to happen. Yeah.
How do we get this to happen?

Speaker 1 How does the process work of actual election?

Speaker 3 The Hall of Fame is something I appreciate about it. It's sort of shrouded in mystery.

Speaker 3 And I think a Hall of Fame actually should be. shrouded in some mystery because there is this level of like people around a crystal ball being like who's gonna get the illuminati Yeah.

Speaker 3 So Red Panda would be considered a contributor. The Hall of Fame has categories for how you get nominated and what bucket you go into.
There are players, coaches, teams, and then contributors.

Speaker 3 And contributors can be executives.

Speaker 3 There's Metalark Lemon, the famous globetrotter. Another example of a contributor, Denny Biason, who owned the Syracuse Nationals, and he came up with the 24-second shot clock.

Speaker 1 Media people actually do under the Kurt Gowdy Award every year. There are a couple of people who get in as

Speaker 1 media figures deserving of enshrinement.

Speaker 3 This is where talking to the lead historian was very helpful because I straight up asked him, I said, would Red Panda be eligible? Could she be in the Hall of Fame?

Speaker 3 And he said a performer like Red Panda would be eligible for the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame under the contributor category. So it's good news.
Yep. The doors are open.

Speaker 1 We have a goal.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 3 The bad news is that

Speaker 3 I got the sense that there is a real emphasis on basketball, on like the development of the game,

Speaker 3 how have you shaped teams, executive, like really basketball-y elements.

Speaker 1 Literal with the sports.

Speaker 3 Yeah. The way that this works is that once someone is nominated, which requires a form, you fill out a form.
Anybody can nominate someone to be in the Hall Fund.

Speaker 2 You can nominate the Minister of Heat Propaganda for how he's impacted the Miami Heat, Parakeet Cortez. Yeah.
Sounds like it.

Speaker 3 Honestly, like maybe we should.

Speaker 2 Okay. Noted.

Speaker 3 Once someone is nominated, this goes directly to that lead historian, Matt Zizing,

Speaker 3 who I talked to. And he then goes about putting together a dossier.

Speaker 3 He researches them. He talks to people who know them.
He dives into their stats if they're a player. and then presents that to the screening committee.

Speaker 1 And there's another committee after this committee.

Speaker 3 There sure is, and it's called the Honors Committee. And that is the committee who votes on whether someone will be enshrined or not.
And it's a very high bar. There are 24 members of this committee.

Speaker 3 They are coaches, some current even.

Speaker 3 No players, though. So former executives and media members.
You need 75% of the vote.

Speaker 1 Okay. And so look, I'm looking at this research, Charlotte, that you brought us, and there are 73 media members in the Hall of Fame via the Kirk Gowdy Award.
There are 76 contributors.

Speaker 1 And so I am thinking like a political strategist. Like,

Speaker 1 these are electoral votes we can win. We can do this shit.

Speaker 2 You just got to call Bob Brian. That's it.

Speaker 1 Michigan will be ours. I've interviewed Red Panda before.
I've told her that I want to have her be a Hall of Famer, but now I want to formalize it.

Speaker 1 And what I realize is that we media types, we gas bags.

Speaker 2 I'm a member of the media.

Speaker 1 That's right. Unfortunately.

Speaker 1 We are uniquely qualified to make the case because at halftime, the players go to the locker room, the coaches go to the locker room.

Speaker 1 Fans who love vaping go to the bathroom to Ooz Tank.

Speaker 2 Oh. But the media, that's what that is.

Speaker 1 We're typically there. And so, what I did was I went to my Rolodex.

Speaker 2 I said, we haven't been to a game as a media member since I've known you probably. How dare you? You sit in the front row with Sudakis is how you would go to games.

Speaker 2 How dare you? My God.

Speaker 1 What I have is the credential of somebody who knows a lot of media people who have been elected to the Hall of Fame via the Kurt Gowdy Award. And so I have a campaign montage.
I have endorsements.

Speaker 1 I want to formalize this process.

Speaker 2 Awesome.

Speaker 1 And I think what we need to do is make sure that Red Panda herself is okay with what we've been cooking up.

Speaker 2 Let's talk. That's a good idea, dude.
Let's talk to her.

Speaker 2 Do you think she'll answer if we call her? I'm not entirely sure.

Speaker 1 Yeah, let's try.

Speaker 2 But I believe.

Speaker 3 Oh my God, guys, I'm going to flip out. This is, my heart's beating really fast.

Speaker 1 Let me go to the section of my phone that says

Speaker 1 Asian Immortal Hall of Fame candidates.

Speaker 1 And let's give her a call.

Speaker 1 So, Rune, it's good to see you again. I told you that I was going to get you into the Hall of Fame.

Speaker 1 And in an attempt on behalf of me and Charlotte and Cortez to make this a reality, we have a special video from some friends, some Hall of Famer friends that we wanted to play for you, if that's okay.

Speaker 2 Of course, I'm anxious to hear it.

Speaker 1 Hi, this is Mike Breen, and I'm proud to say I'm a charter member of the Red Panda Fan Club.

Speaker 2 Hi, this is Jackie McMullen, retired sports journalist and ardent Red Panda fan. I'm David Aldrich.

Speaker 2 Now, we all agree the world is not a great place right now, and there's very few people who bring us joy.

Speaker 2 One person who does, no matter your standing, no matter your station, no matter the team you root for, is Red Panda.

Speaker 2 I'm Jay Billis of ESPN, and I've spent my entire life in basketball arenas, literally all over the world.

Speaker 2 And there's only one person that can go into any basketball arena in the world and is instantly recognizable and gets a standing ovation every time, and that's Red Panda. What's up everyone?

Speaker 2 This is Mark Spears from ESPN's Anscape. There have been some other acts and Frisbees and people on stilts and stairs stairs and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 Ain't nobody like Red Panda.

Speaker 1 I've probably seen her perform close to 100 times. And every time I'm amazed by her skill, her talent, and her joy.

Speaker 2 Can I balance a ball on my head? Probably. But can I balance it while I'm riding on a seven-foot unicycle? I mean, that's not happening.

Speaker 2 And then we could never do what happens from there, which is watching the balls go from the Red Panda's feet, one after another, after another, onto the top of her head, while wearing two and a half inch heels.

Speaker 2 Every time I see her, I stop and pay attention.

Speaker 2 Every time, no one else has that kind of impact.

Speaker 1 Her dedication to her craft, the amount of work she puts in so she can perform every single night in front of a packed arena is truly extraordinary.

Speaker 2 And that is why I wholeheartedly support Red Panda being elected and selected for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. If they can have me, they certainly should have her.

Speaker 1 As far as I'm concerned, she's a Hall of Famer.

Speaker 2 Their Panda. Hall of Famer.

Speaker 3 Let's see what we can do to get her into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Speaker 2 Red Panda deserves to be in the Basketball Hall of Fame. Let's make it happen.

Speaker 2 Oh, you guys, I am so humble. Oh, my God.
That was wow.

Speaker 2 Oh, that was wow.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Oh, my God.
You guys are all the other holos.

Speaker 1 And so, me and Charlotte and Cortez and everybody at my show,

Speaker 2 we're the campaign.

Speaker 1 We're the campaign staff that you have not asked for, but we're now going to be working on your behalf to get you into the Hall of Fame. So, do you approve? Do you approve this message?

Speaker 2 I'm humbly approved. I'm so dense.

Speaker 2 I'm speechless. I dance.
Thank you.

Speaker 3 Rung, have you ever thought about being in the hall of fame? Has it ever crossed your mind that you

Speaker 3 should be in there?

Speaker 2 Never.

Speaker 2 Never, even at all, but

Speaker 2 I still,

Speaker 2 I will be grateful. I will be speechless even.

Speaker 1 Do you know that there are no halftime performers in the Hall of Fame? You would be the first one if we successfully, if you get your fair due and get elected?

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 2 That would be amazing to me.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 2 I can't imagine.

Speaker 1 Can you explain

Speaker 1 the connection that you feel to the fans in a basketball arena?

Speaker 1 Because something that I'm worried about is that the Hall of Fame committee does not appreciate the job of the halftime performer in the way that they understand and, of course, respect players, coaches, even media members, broadcasters.

Speaker 1 How would you describe the feeling, the connection you have to the people in the building, the fans of the game, when you get on your unicycle and do your act?

Speaker 2 I think people more enjoying for

Speaker 2 how can he do that, how the balls can turn upside down and one turn a full circle, one turn half circle, all leaning in the same direction. It's amazing how supportive they are.
I'm amazed

Speaker 2 sometime in Boston, I mean in pretty much all arenas,

Speaker 2 they're right behind that goal. And then

Speaker 2 yeah, they're very supportive.

Speaker 2 I can feel that, I can feel this positive

Speaker 2 energy

Speaker 3 when I start performing.

Speaker 2 I just wanted to ask you: there are a lot of teams that have halftime max. The Miami Heat have the golden oldies.
It's a bunch of people aged 60 to 80 and they dance.

Speaker 2 Personally, I'm not as impressed with them as you. And I just wanted to know if you agree that the golden oldies are cowards and that you're number one.

Speaker 2 Oh my

Speaker 2 sweet. I appreciate that.

Speaker 2 I'll take that as a yes. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 I'm not sure I will take that as a yes.

Speaker 2 They're pretty fun.

Speaker 1 Rune, thank you so much for your help. Thank you for taking time.
And we're going to get you to the Hall of Fame if it's the last thing I do on Earth.

Speaker 2 Thank you. So good to see you again.
Really, my honor.

Speaker 3 Always. It's our honor.
I'm starstruck talking to you.

Speaker 2 So thank you. Thank you to everybody.
Thank you.

Speaker 2 I love her. Oh my God.

Speaker 3 She was the best. She's an absolute delight.

Speaker 2 She inspired us.

Speaker 1 Yes. If you're not watching on YouTube or the DraftKings Network, we have bowls on our head.
Charlotte is better at this than me. I have my...

Speaker 2 Well, you're cheating big time.

Speaker 3 Pablo has the bowl upside down with the headphones over it, securing it to his head. I, on the other hand, am not a cow.

Speaker 3 God damn it.

Speaker 2 Not a coward is what you tried to say.

Speaker 3 I am not a coward.

Speaker 2 Oh!

Speaker 3 Cortez has fell. I still have three bowls balanced on my head.

Speaker 1 It's really, it's legitimately impressive.

Speaker 3 I'm also cheating, though, because I think the curvature of the headphone fits very nicely into the curvature of the bottom of the bowl.

Speaker 2 You say that, but mine has fallen a number of times. So I'm not sure what the cheat code is.
You just seem to be better at this than Pablo and I.

Speaker 3 I have poise.

Speaker 1 How can we be better at getting her elected to the Hall of Fame, Charlotte? Like, what's the process from here on out? Because I want to get a petition going.

Speaker 1 I, we're going to put a link up here to get signatures. I want this to be more than just the media Hall of Famers that we got.

Speaker 2 I want a link or a petition.

Speaker 2 Nobody saw that unless you're watching on the DraftKings Network, in which case you did see that.

Speaker 1 The ball files.

Speaker 1 I want everything we can get. I want signatures.

Speaker 1 I want, I guess it's illegal to solicit donations, but I want signatures.

Speaker 3 Well, look, I think that there are media members on the honors committee. So I think we start there, which we've already done.
I think then we've got to infiltrate the coaches, the executives.

Speaker 3 I think we've got to start making some serious inroads.

Speaker 2 Wow, Cortez, you are very bad at that.

Speaker 1 Don't even increasingly spastic.

Speaker 3 I'm still somehow balancing them. If you've noticed, though, my tone of voice has gotten much more even than it was

Speaker 3 at the beginning of this episode. I can't gesture very emphatically.

Speaker 1 The nomination process, right? So we're going to get our our petition. We're going to get our art.
We have our campaign artwork.

Speaker 2 Oh, bowls,

Speaker 1 eat it, Shepherd, fairy. Oh, my God.
Slash, thank you for inspiring us.

Speaker 2 Slash, go to hell.

Speaker 1 We have a movement underfoot. Yes.
And so, how do we get this nomination to the right people at the Hall of Fame?

Speaker 3 We send it to my guy, the lead historian.

Speaker 2 My guy. I got you.

Speaker 3 If you get the form, if we get this process going, I can get this to the Hall of Fame.

Speaker 3 That is my promise to you.

Speaker 2 Jesus, Cortez.

Speaker 1 I think Ryan Cortez is having a stroke.

Speaker 2 Bro, I thought that's part of the bit: the ASMR have been balling. Oh, they foul.

Speaker 1 Red Panda 2024, Bulls.

Speaker 2 Bullies.

Speaker 2 Bulls.

Speaker 1 We should be spamming this number, Cortez.

Speaker 2 Everyone needs to be calling this goddamn number.

Speaker 1 51385 Pablo. Red Panda petition on our social feed, all that stuff.
But 51385 Pablo, leave us questions, voicemails.

Speaker 2 Like this one.

Speaker 1 Like this one.

Speaker 4 Hey, Pablo.

Speaker 1 It's Mike from New York.

Speaker 4 Happy starting baseball season. Look, I've got a question that's been gnawing at me for some time here, and it's why can professional athletes fit so well? For me, I can barely hawk a loobie.

Speaker 4 Can you help me out?

Speaker 4 Oh, God.

Speaker 2 Oh, dear God. That was disgusting.

Speaker 1 That was gross, Mike. Thank you for the call, nonetheless.

Speaker 1 To answer this question, because, of course, yes, spitting is synonymous with baseball and with sports at large, arguably. We got Charlotte out of here and welcome in the only person.

Speaker 2 I can think of only one person for this.

Speaker 1 Truly. The man who was born to do this.
Phlem, David Fleming.

Speaker 2 Hello.

Speaker 6 Finally, my name pays off.

Speaker 2 Finally. Yes.

Speaker 2 Great name, David.

Speaker 1 We turn to you on matters of the human spirit, of human physiology, of culture, and also, of course, of Phlegm. And so

Speaker 1 what did you do with this assignment that we gave you? Thanks to Mike.

Speaker 6 Well, first of all, can we, I want to give a shout out to Spit, right? Spit needs a glow up because

Speaker 6 you guys sent me me around the world to investigate this topic. And what I found out was, oh my God, spit is like one of the most important liquids of the human experience.

Speaker 6 And it definitely is a key to sports.

Speaker 6 I mean, think about this.

Speaker 6 It aids in speech. It aids in digestion.
It's a part of homeostasis.

Speaker 6 It is how we seal a handshake with a spit. It's how we insult somebody by spitting in their face.

Speaker 6 One time, in fact,

Speaker 6 because my name is Phlem, I counted the times that Drew Breeze licked his fingers before each pass, and it was something like between 9 and 13. So sports cannot exist without spit,

Speaker 6 and especially baseball.

Speaker 1 Flem, why?

Speaker 1 This fixation that we have, this oral fixation we have with spit that is most apparent in baseball of all the sports. Um,

Speaker 1 why, why is it that way? Having now reported this story,

Speaker 6 yeah. So, we reached out to a sociologist in England, I reached out to an anthropologist in San Francisco who used to play minor league baseball for the Detroit Tigers.

Speaker 6 And then we talked to a uh, it was like a food and sensory expert at Penn State, and we ended up with like three major

Speaker 6 possible reasons why there's so much spitting. The first one that's interesting is there could be

Speaker 6 an evolutionary component because spit contains proteins that contain our DNA.

Speaker 6 And so the idea is: if you're spitting and spitting toward opponents or spitting on someone else's home turf, you're marking your territory. It's a way to mark your territory.

Speaker 6 It's a way to say, I own this.

Speaker 6 But one of the anthropologists we spoke to said, if that were the case, then female baseball players and softball players, they would spit just as much as the male players.

Speaker 6 They would mark their territory just as much. And that's not really the case.
So that theory kind of falls to the wayside.

Speaker 1 Okay. So if it's not.

Speaker 1 isolatable to just a marking of ourselves upon our territory, then what, what's theory number

Speaker 6 Players are self-soothing. There is a sort of like infantile need,

Speaker 6 oral fixation to sort of calm themselves in the pressure of a sport where there's so much failure. And the one that we talked to the most was Dr.

Speaker 6 John Hayes, who is a professor at Penn State and an expert in food and sensory science.

Speaker 1 I mean, not to get all Freudian about it, but I think we really don't, again, the other thing that's underappreciated is how many nerves there are in our mouth and our tongue and our face.

Speaker 1 And that, you know, there is some self-soothing that's going on there, those oral behaviors. I mean, you talk to people that smoke and like a lot of the rituals around that are really important.

Speaker 1 A colleague of mine at Ohio State has shown that people's sense of touch on their tongue and their lips and some people is even more acute than on their fingertips.

Speaker 1 So when you're thinking about like all that touching, yeah, it could be to get that grip on the ball.

Speaker 1 Absolutely, if you're going to throw that tight spiral, but it could also be just sort of the habit and the ritual.

Speaker 6 But it's interesting when you start to piece this together.

Speaker 6 Remember in COVID, where first in Korean baseball and then Major League Baseball, for health reasons, they tried to ban and cut down on spitting. The players reacted like a bunch of little babies.

Speaker 6 They were like, absolutely not. I can't.
I won't stop spitting.

Speaker 1 And yet spitting in football or soccer is not nearly as endemic.

Speaker 2 Hold on, hold on. Because this is something I've been thinking about this whole time.

Speaker 2 You see my Tottenham kid, if you're watching on DraftKings Network, I've been watching a lot of soccer, also known as football. And when I watch football, they don't spit necessarily, but they...

Speaker 2 do this thing. They blow a snot rocket out of their nose relentlessly.
On every play, every team, they're just got a snot blown out.

Speaker 2 And it's like, are they clogged in the nose that bad in soccer versus any other sport?

Speaker 2 Or is this just another, you know, symbol of being an infant and wanting to express yourself and blow snot on the field or whatever?

Speaker 1 Or is there something phlegm is there something cultural to the rituals that people have inherited and and now feel like are uh are forever are forever practices that cannot be taken from them the third theory which is my favorite and i think is the most accepted and prevalent is that the the players without even knowing it and just like the the football players

Speaker 6 they've been socialized until i sort of started reporting this this piece. I had no idea the power and the influence of socialization just in our everyday lives, in baseball in particular, and as Dr.

Speaker 6 Hayes pointed out, in things that we don't even know that are going on all around us.

Speaker 1 I have a really colorful example for that outside of sports, but well within this

Speaker 1 view. Have you ever noticed how every commercial airline pilot has that

Speaker 1 sort of like breathy, oh, we reached 47,000 feet? Believe it or not, they're all imitating Chuck Yeager. Goes all the way back to General Yeager flying early in the 1950s.

Speaker 1 And that was the laconic drawl that he had. And so there was a whole generation of pilots that grew up imitating them.
And then it became a cultural phenomenon.

Speaker 1 The degree to which we are all mimicking a cliche is now a little, making me a little self-conscious about myself.

Speaker 2 But it just speaks to like not enough creativity. Why are we just copying each other over and over? Like be original.

Speaker 1 I like it. I actually like it, though.
It is very reassuring when I get on a flight and the pilot is,

Speaker 2 this is your captain speaking. We have

Speaker 2 a bit of a weather, a bit of weather. Bro, get me off this flight.
I don't trust you at all.

Speaker 6 If you did get on a flight and your pilot sounded like that, you'd be like,

Speaker 6 get me off this flight. I'm going to take a train.
And I wonder if it's the same thing with baseball where you're like, oh my God, if they all stop spitting, you would be like, well, this isn't.

Speaker 6 You know what?

Speaker 1 This doesn't. You know what I would would lose confidence in is a closer who took out a hanky and hawked a loo gie delicately and folded it up and put it into his pocket.

Speaker 1 He's trying to blow his nose, and I'm going to blow this goddamn game.

Speaker 6 It's funny, I always thought it was like, oh, the baseball players need to spit. I, I, I think we all need it too.

Speaker 2 When's the last time you spit, Flem?

Speaker 6 Good question.

Speaker 1 Oh, no.

Speaker 2 Are you about to pack? Are you about to pack a lip? For the DraftKings audience, he just put

Speaker 2 a wrestler in college.

Speaker 1 So this, this, like, um, for the podcast audience, Phlegm is

Speaker 2 about to have some phlegm. He's reaching.

Speaker 1 Oh, my lord.

Speaker 6 This is delicious.

Speaker 2 Oh, no.

Speaker 2 Stop it.

Speaker 1 No. You've learned nothing.

Speaker 2 Oh, he's chewing it.

Speaker 1 He's like a like a goat eating a bale of hay, except it's tobacco. It's it's plastic bag of tobacco, and he's now rimacing.

Speaker 2 I feel like like a baseball cannot be good.

Speaker 6 I feel like a baseball player. I'm out.
No, no, I got a cup here.

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 2 uh,

Speaker 1 this is your pilot speaking.

Speaker 1 We need to get the out of here.

Speaker 2 This is gross.

Speaker 2 I've had enough of your pilot voice for the rest of time.

Speaker 1 All right, what is the next voicemail, please?

Speaker 4 Hey, Pablo, this is Dennis from Flushing in Queens.

Speaker 4 Great fan of the show.

Speaker 4 I have a question about baseball history.

Speaker 4 I seem to remember the greenies in the 1970s and 80s,

Speaker 4 and everybody remembers the steroid era of the 90s.

Speaker 4 Performance enhancement. When did that actually begin?

Speaker 4 Thanks for checking. Bye now.

Speaker 1 I love that Dennis seems to remember greenies in the 70s and 80s.

Speaker 2 Wink.

Speaker 1 I hear you. I hear you, D-Dog.

Speaker 1 The apothecary, though, that Phlem is for us on today's show continues. You know, he's like an old-timey medicine man.

Speaker 1 He's exploring the folk ways and the customs of science through the ancient times. Thank you for explaining it.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Phlegm, what did you find out about PEDs at the very beginning of baseball history?

Speaker 6 Boy, you sent me down, you guys sent me down quite the rabbit hole on this one.

Speaker 6 And a lot of it is just pure nightmare fuel. But what you learn the minute you start looking into this is, number one,

Speaker 6 performance enhancing has been going on since the dawn of sports. And it goes all the way back to the first Olympics, the first modern Olympics in 1894.

Speaker 6 And then a sub

Speaker 6 genre of that is this incredible infatuation that athletes have, male athletes have, with consuming the testicles of animals to try to improve their performance.

Speaker 2 I mean, go on. What kind of animals?

Speaker 6 Oh, God. What kind of performance? That's a very good question.
I mean, really, any animal with testicles

Speaker 6 has been used by an athlete for performance

Speaker 6 enhancing.

Speaker 6 The athletes in athletes.

Speaker 2 Hold on, we're talking fried or steamed testicles.

Speaker 6 Raw.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Okay.
So, all right.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean. Devil's testicles.

Speaker 6 So the athletes in 1894, they chewed on raw testicles and animal hearts before the competition, thinking that that would increase their performance.

Speaker 6 Babe Ruth consumed animal testicles to try and increase his performance what and yes yes and and this is not a part this is not a part of the story when we talk about uh the purity of these home run records phlegm there should be an asterisk shaped like a testicle

Speaker 6 exactly and that leads us to the answer to dennis's question which is the original juicer in major league baseball and a guy who also enjoyed consuming the the the uh an elixir made up of the

Speaker 6 juice from the testicles of guinea pigs, dogs, and monkeys.

Speaker 2 Huh. Interesting.

Speaker 1 I should confess that none of those words in that combination have ever been presented to me before. So who is this guy?

Speaker 6 So you guys need to meet, his name is James Pud Galvin.

Speaker 6 Jim Pud Galvin was, in my mind, the guy who

Speaker 6 the Cy Young Award should be named after this guy. It's really an incredible story.
He played for 18 years late in the 19th century, and his numbers are incredible.

Speaker 1 Wait, wait, so you talk about this guy being the real Cy Young, meaning the pitcher award for best pitcher should be named after Pud

Speaker 1 Galvin.

Speaker 1 How good was he?

Speaker 2 Yeah, what are some of these stats?

Speaker 6 First of all, he's still fifth all time in wins by a Major League Baseball pitcher, which would be like a guy in a leather helmet throwing a pig bladder, like having more passing yards than Tom Brady.

Speaker 6 So he's fifth all time in wins with 365.

Speaker 6 He pitched for 18 years. He pitched 6,000 innings,

Speaker 6 645 complete games.

Speaker 2 Holy shit.

Speaker 6 57 shutouts. He threw the original perfect game in Major League Baseball.

Speaker 1 baseball and his name his nickname what's the origin of that it's not pud it's put

Speaker 6 because even though he was like five foot eight 160 pounds he his fastball would turn batters legs into pudding and that's how he got his his nickname wait so okay batter's legs were turned to pudding but Pud was preparing his testicles from three different types of animals.

Speaker 1 How? How is he preparing them in his kitchen?

Speaker 6 So this is, Hood is the original PED user in Major League Baseball. And it's a common kind of sad theme, right? He's, he ends up, he's been pitching for 18 years.

Speaker 6 He has, over the last three years of his career, he had averaged something like 50 games a year. He's 32 years old,

Speaker 6 and he's starting to lose his stuff.

Speaker 6 And so he turns to this famous elixir. It's called the Elixir of Life.
He turns to the Elixir of life to rejuvenate his career.

Speaker 1 So, all right. So, I didn't realize there's like a Zelda dynamic to this as well.
So, he's looking for the elixir of life, the Ocarina of Time or whatever. And that contains what?

Speaker 6 There's a, it's like a 72-year-old world-renowned physiologist, neurologist.

Speaker 6 His name was dr charles eduard brown seccard that sounds like a dirty limerick and he creates this potion made out of water blood semen i never did find out whose semen was that was my question and then the juices from pigs dogs monkeys filtered right filtered and then injected a brita filter ran that through uh

Speaker 2 that's supposed to make us feel better. It was filtered,

Speaker 6 and he starts selling it as like the Red Bull of their time.

Speaker 6 Hood injects it to get a sort of a new lease on his career. He pitches a 9-0 shutout against the Boston bean eaters.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 1 baseball was whimsical, man.

Speaker 1 The bean eaters, Hud,

Speaker 1 everyone's eating testicles.

Speaker 2 The question about whose semen it is is one I can't stop thinking about because if he was saying a lot of people are taking it, it got popular. It was in medical books.

Speaker 2 If a bunch of people are taking it, who's providing all that semen in each vial? Like, is it all from this original?

Speaker 1 So this is where we should question before we continue to slander the legacy of Pud.

Speaker 1 Did he find someone who could speak on behalf of his estate? On behalf of

Speaker 1 the legacy of one of the greatest pitchers we never knew and now only know because of this whole semen testicle thing.

Speaker 6 Well, we were able to track down his great, great, great, great granddaughter in Pittsburgh, Amanda Menardi, and she was kind enough to

Speaker 6 lay out the debate and the family stance on how unfair it is to have Pud compared to modern day steroid users.

Speaker 7 I actually talked to my aunt about that as well. And she said, you know, from her understanding, it was one time that he tried that.

Speaker 7 And I think back then, they were doing things back then that we considered weird. And I'm sure nowadays, you know, taking vitamins might have been something a little weird back then.

Speaker 7 So, you know, I think that it gets a negative connotation about it. It was not, from my understanding, a lifelong thing that he did.
It was something he tried once. It was,

Speaker 7 you know, 1800 science. So really,

Speaker 7 how much, you know potency could have been in that from what i understand it had some really gross things in it so

Speaker 7 i was always told it had something to do with monkeys but i and i was told it was like i said one time but

Speaker 7 again that was 130 years ago so who knows

Speaker 2 he's out here off monkeys

Speaker 2 That is wild.

Speaker 2 Somebody called Pete. Are you doing what to monkeys, bro?

Speaker 1 Statute of limitations have passed since I believe the 1800s.

Speaker 6 No, at one point during this interview, we were talking about the monkeys, and I was like, once they got rid of the elixir, I was like, boy, I bet the monkeys were happy to

Speaker 2 maybe they weren't. Maybe they enjoyed the process.
Who knows?

Speaker 6 Because Portez, they were, they were,

Speaker 6 he was, this doctor was, Brown Sicard was, he was taking the, he was castrating them and then grinding up the testicles and using that liquid in his elixir. That's what was

Speaker 6 helping put.

Speaker 2 Wow, that got dark really quick. That's not what I was imagining.
I was imagining the happy day for the monkeys that come and go, literally. No.

Speaker 1 You thought that this was going to have a happy ending,

Speaker 1 as it were.

Speaker 1 51385 Pablo, we promise not to prosecute you for things your great, great, great, great, great grandfather may have done 130 years ago.

Speaker 2 Or castrate you.

Speaker 2 Allegedly.

Speaker 1 I love the NCAA tournament.

Speaker 2 I love the women's tournament.

Speaker 1 The women's tournament is kicking the shit out of the men's tournament, to be clear.

Speaker 1 I will not look at me, Louis, myself. Just know that I have witnessed it personally.

Speaker 2 We all saw your social media. We know where you were, Pablo.

Speaker 1 I mean, it was pretty great. Well, actually, Albany, New York.

Speaker 2 We didn't see you on the TV. We saw your photo.

Speaker 2 We didn't actually make the broadcast.

Speaker 1 Play the voicemail.

Speaker 4 What's up, Pablo? This is Quasi from Brooklyn.

Speaker 4 So I've always thought that the one shining moment, like that whole montage, was really corny and super lame.

Speaker 4 And I was wondering if you think that anyone has ever tried to replace it or if like we could expect a new one or they're going to refresh it or make it cooler. Um, I hope so.
I hate it.

Speaker 4 All right, thanks, man.

Speaker 1 So, do you know the story of One Shining Moment, the song that ends the whole tournament every year in a very dramatic, familiar way?

Speaker 2 Cornyway. No, not only do I not know it, this is gonna sound crazy.
I don't know if I know what One Shining Moment sounds like.

Speaker 1 Try to sing what you think it sounds like.

Speaker 2 Okay, god damn it.

Speaker 1 Did I get it right? No.

Speaker 2 The ball is tipped.

Speaker 2 There you are.

Speaker 2 You're running for your life.

Speaker 2 You'll be shooting staring all the year.

Speaker 2 No one knows.

Speaker 2 That is not One Shining Moment. God damn it.

Speaker 1 One Shining Moment is a song that was born apparently in 1986 before the Super Bowl. This is the hidden history.

Speaker 2 I wasn't alive. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 Hazlet, Michigan. There's a bar.
There's a songwriter. His name is David Barrett.
And we talked to him.

Speaker 5 The short version of where the song and the title came, I had been playing in this

Speaker 5 little bar doing shows.

Speaker 5 Arguably one of the more beautiful waitresses in

Speaker 5 the Midwest was working there.

Speaker 5 But I'd never talked to her,

Speaker 5 as those things go.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 at the end of

Speaker 5 a Wednesday night or whatever, I just sat down at the bar and had a beer

Speaker 5 with the bartender, and ESPN was on with Larry Bird. And

Speaker 5 then out of the blue, out of the darkness, came the

Speaker 5 Helen of Troy, so to speak, who sat down next to me. And

Speaker 5 I thought, now what?

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 5 I panicked and began to explain to her

Speaker 5 the poetry of basketball because

Speaker 5 I used to play and I love basketball and

Speaker 5 what magical time it was for Larry Bird because he was better than most everybody on the court and what that felt like and so forth. So she sat there for

Speaker 5 a few minutes. I turned to look at Larry Bird again.
and off she went into the darkness. After her disappearance, as I prefer to think,

Speaker 5 I realized that

Speaker 5 I knew something. You're a songwriter.

Speaker 5 And I jotted on a napkin.

Speaker 5 Literally, I give you a pencil or a pen, and I wrote one shining moment about it.

Speaker 5 And it seemed to all make sense that at that point, Larry Bird was in this slow time when you're that good, everything is, and the moment changes.

Speaker 5 For some reason, that was, it came to me like a thunderbolt. So I wrote down one shining moment on a napkin, stuck it in my pant pocket, went home,

Speaker 5 slept on it,

Speaker 5 and then I was supposed to meet a friend for brunch.

Speaker 5 He showed up 20 minutes late.

Speaker 5 So I literally wrote the entire set of of lyrics on another set of napkins waiting for him to show up.

Speaker 5 And then after brunch, I went home and wrote the music in half an hour, and that was that.

Speaker 1 So I just want to just stop for a second and point out that this Helen of Troy waitress person, the face that launched a thousand montages. Yeah.
That's the inspiration for One Shining Moment.

Speaker 1 I did not know that.

Speaker 2 The origin story is a horny dude at a bar. Shout out to David Barrett.

Speaker 1 Yes. Who did not get what he wanted, but instead gave us all something that we cannot.
I mean, truly, like, we can't escape.

Speaker 2 Well, also, no disrespect to him or anyone involved, but that's not a banger. That song is not a banger.
Oh, it's holding it.

Speaker 1 So Luther Vandross did it. Teddy Pendergrass did it.
Jennifer Hudson did it. None.
And that was controversial. That one was kind of controversial.

Speaker 2 But Neo did it. I remember Neo.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was pretty good.

Speaker 1 But it turns out, if you go read the research on this, the highest level executives at Turner and CBS apparently did have a discussion that is a lot like what you're saying, which is maybe we should find a way to

Speaker 1 really finally change this thing.

Speaker 2 To put a banger on instead? Yeah. Well, maybe.

Speaker 1 Look, what one executive told us, an executive familiar with the partnership, what they told us here, Publitori finds out, is that, quote, no one was trying to kill it.

Speaker 1 CBS really wanted to maintain it, end quote, but clearly the CBS wanted to maintain it, the oldest network ever. The thought has been, how do we update this, right?

Speaker 2 I got an idea. Rick Ross.
Okay, no, we're not doing that.

Speaker 1 Although I am intrigued by that. What I have instead, though, Cortez, and it turns out

Speaker 1 you may appreciate this in ways that you don't even realize yet, that

Speaker 1 a remix may not be the worst idea.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 1 And so, what I did as a gift for our audience for them to play throughout Final Four weekend, maybe instead of one shining moment when they watch it on television, is this thing that is, yeah, part parody, we should say that, but also part remix.

Speaker 1 We got permission actually from David Barrett, the author that we met in that video.

Speaker 2 The horny man.

Speaker 1 We also got permission from our horny friends at the Dan Lebetard show, who had gotten permission from another artist that I think you'll recognize.

Speaker 1 And I would like to thank formally here, DJ Steve Porter.

Speaker 1 Shout out to dj steve porter remember his work from espn back in the day yeah and porter house media for a very special treat from us here at pablo tore finds out on final four weekend this metal arc meter production is going to go out like this with a banger

Speaker 2 the ball is tipped and there you are

Speaker 2 you're running for your life

Speaker 2 and you're a shooting star and all the years

Speaker 2 No one knows

Speaker 2 just how hard you worked.

Speaker 2 But now it shows

Speaker 2 in one shining moment. It's all on the line.

Speaker 2 It's one shining moment.

Speaker 2 It's all on the line. And when it's done,

Speaker 2 win or lose.

Speaker 2 You always did your best.

Speaker 2 Cause inside you knew

Speaker 2 it's sunshine, oh, man.

Speaker 2 It's sunshine, one shine,

Speaker 2 one shine,

Speaker 2 one shine,

Speaker 2 one shining always.

Speaker 1 Thank you to John Tesh.

Speaker 2 Who the hell is John Tesh? Oh my god.

Speaker 2 That's the part you got to keep. One shiny moment, not so much.

Speaker 1 This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Meadowlark media production,

Speaker 2 and I'll talk to you next time.

Speaker 2 city.