Tiger’s Tarik Skubal, World Chess Number 1 Magnus Carlsen, Panthers Dominate Game 3, Plus Guys On Chicks

Hey, pardon my take listeners.

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On today's part in my take, we have a two-for for the people.

We have two geniuses at their craft.

Tarek Skubel, AL Cy Young winner, Detroit Tigers,

in studio.

Awesome interview with him.

He's a great dude.

And then we have Grand Master, number one in the world, chess

genius, Magnus Carlson.

The goat.

The goat.

Great interview with him.

We're going to talk some hockey.

We have, we're getting ready for game three of the NBA Finals.

We have some hot seat chill throne.

And we finish up with listener submitted FA, or sorry, Guys on Chicks.

We did Guys on Chicks.

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Okay, let's go.

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Today is Wednesday, June 11th, and the Florida Panthers are a major, major problem after not only beating the Oilers

on the ice in terms of goals, but beating the fuck out of them in fights.

This feels like the Oilers are on some dangerous, dangerous territory.

Yeah, I was happy that the Oilers, in theory, fought against the Panthers at the end of the game.

As a hockey expert, my plan, whenever you're getting your ass kicked in a series and you want to shift it around, just get into a massive line brawl at the end of that game and just try to change the energies up somehow.

I'm glad that theoretically they did that, but then they kind of all got their ass beat.

They lost all five fights fights by the panthers now there was one move that they should have done that they did not do

why didn't skinner fight bob

would have changed everything it would have changed everything yep if you lose five fights but your goalie beats up their goalie that's that's a wash yeah that's like that's even as far as i'm concerned but both goalies kind of chose to stay out of it at the end but on the ice there was nothing that the oilers could do sam bennett Shift of the year.

Shifted the year for that one shift where he knocked the fuck out of McDavid and scored a goal.

He's insane.

That might be the best shift I've ever seen.

He has, I think he has like 10-plus playoff goals right now.

He's out of control.

Marshawn still, he started the scoring.

He's just scored in every single game.

The Panthers, too,

they're in some pretty crazy territory.

Teams in NHL history have four-plus goal victories against four different opponents in a single playoff run.

It is the 1981 Islanders.

That was a dynasty.

The 1983 Islanders, dynasty, they won four in a row.

And the 2025 Panthers.

Pretty cool.

So every single round, they've just been kicking the shit out of their opponent at least once a series, sometimes more.

And I don't know.

Listen,

I believe Whitney and that this is going to be a long series, but game four, I'm going to say it, must win.

Must win for the Oilers.

But then I was thinking about it because I was like, oh, this is a must-win.

The Oilers did come back from down 3-0 last year to force a game game seven, so there's something in there, but I feel like this is the way that game went, and we said if Bob is going to get locked in, he was locked in, it feels like it's going to be a big, tall task for the Oilers if they lose on Thursday night.

I'm trying to see what were the scores of the first two games last year?

Last year?

First three games.

So game one, Panthers three, Oilers zero.

Game two, four to one, and then four to three in game three.

Game four is where it all flipped.

The series flipped.

It ended up flipping back again.

But

the Oilers won game four last year, eight to one.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I would say it's a must-win.

It's a must-win.

I would agree.

Because you just,

it will sound stupid, but being down, if the Panthers win, especially like they did on Monday night, if they do the same thing on Thursday night, I would say that it feels different than being down 3-0.

And I know that's crazy, but 3-0, 3-0 always, you have

the game after

game four where it's like, the team that's up 3-0 is probably not going to, there's no urgency yeah and then they got into that like going back to Edmonton dragging him back and all that stuff I don't know but you're also gonna win this we're also talking about the what they did last year after they were down 3-0 they did end up losing that series correct so that's why you don't want to be down they do have game seven at home this year that's true which Whitney I gotta say, I love Whitney so much.

What a fucking genius move by him because I opened my eyes on Monday morning and the first

three tweets I saw was Whitney gives you guys so much, and you guys won't go to game seven with him.

And it was just, I don't know if he did that on purpose, but a genius, genius move by him.

There was a lot of guilt-tripping, yeah, which is all fair.

This is fair.

So perfectly.

This is good.

This is good stuff.

I want to see this go seven.

I still do.

And I don't think that the Oilers are done.

And that was a great mathematical breakdown that we did right there, which is like, you'd rather be down

3-0 than 3-1, or would you rather be down 3-1 than 3-0?

I'd rather be down 3-0 than 3-1.

What about you, Hank?

3-1.

You'd rather be down 3-1?

Yeah.

I think statistically, more teams are 3-3.

Probably.

Yeah, you're right.

You're right.

It does sound stupid, but I just think vibes-wise, 3-0.

I know what you're saying.

3-0, you can kind of sneak up on them.

3-1, you can't.

Again, they did lose the series.

You're down 3-0,

you're probably going to, like, game four, that's a gimme.

Right.

You're going to win that one.

Right.

And then it's like, all right, now we're.

And also, when you're down 3-0, if you can win game four and five, all the pressure flips back.

Whereas if you're down 3-1, it's not like it's never happened where

3-1 lead has been blowed.

You know, that balance of pressure where it's like, holy shit, are they going to blow a 3-0 lead?

You don't want to be tied 3-3 because you're going to lose that game 7.

Correct.

That's what we've learned.

Correct.

Except for last year.

No,

the Whalers lost games.

The Whalers lost it.

Oh, I thought you're talking about the Panthers.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

No, the Panthers are a problem.

They are really fucking good.

So, so good.

And they just, like I said, it's one thing to win by five goals to then win five fights.

You can't have a better, you can't annihilate a team more than that.

Yeah, I would have liked to see Skinner throw, chuck some knucks out there.

Drop the gloves.

They're not sponsored by Superglue.

I agree with you.

I agree with you.

Goalie fight, something like goalie fight just hits perfectly.

All right, so game three of the NBA playoffs is tonight.

Do we have any thoughts?

I have one bad thought for the Pacers.

The Pacers,

Indianapolis, they have renamed some of the streets for some of the players on the Pacers.

Okay.

That feels like a.

We just went through this.

Why?

Why would you do this?

What are they naming?

Again, I'm not blaming Pacers fans or the Pacers.

I'm blaming the

politicians who try to get involved in sports.

Top and Ave, Turner Lane.

Top and Ave actually sounds like a pretty cool spot.

That sounds like an awesome spot.

Halliburton Road.

I don't know.

This

feels ominous.

Halliburton Road doesn't really roll off the tongue.

We tried that in Iraq.

Yeah, that's true.

That's true.

Toppen Ave is.

That's a keeper.

Yeah, Top and Ab.

Leave that street sign up no matter what.

Yeah, that is absolutely a keeper.

I'm not changing my take, even though I was thinking this in the middle of game one, which the Pacers came back to win, but it just seems like this is going to be a blowout series

4-1.

But again, I was thinking that in the first half of the first game, and I was like, the Pacers don't stand a chance.

They obviously won that game, but after game two, I'm sticking with it.

What are we thinking the court's going to look like?

Has Silver told us anything about the Indy court?

I don't know.

They had time.

They have time.

They could easily make a fix.

I think I'm going to stay with 4-2, Thunder.

Okay.

I feel confident in that as well.

I'll piggyback with you.

Do we want to put together a parlay, which we haven't been able to hit, but we're going to hit one?

Yeah.

Can we all just...

Can we all just agree to just hit it?

Why don't we just take a beat just to make sure that we feel good with our bets?

Yes.

I just My pick.

All right, take a beat.

Three, two, one, beat.

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Okay, boys, what do we got?

What do we got?

I'm keeping it simple.

Thunder minus five and a half.

Thunder minus five and a half.

Okay.

Should I do an alternate?

Or is that because we just gotta see?

We gotta win one.

We gotta see one go in.

We gotta win one.

All right, throw in.

But then Jackie Tables always screws us.

Aaron Neesmith.

What's your pick you love, PFT?

Give us your pick you love, PFT.

Okay, my pick that I love, I'm actually, I've got two that I love, so I got to sort it out.

All right, I'm going to do Aaron Nismith over 20

or sorry, over 19 and a half points, rebounds, and assists.

Okay.

I haven't done a pacer yet in this series.

Time for me to get involved with the pacer.

I love this one.

This is also a pacer.

Okay.

Nimhard,

12 plus points.

Okay.

Let's get Nimhard in here.

That's good because when Neesmith and Nimhard, like, you can get them confused on the court.

And you're like, oh, shit.

At least we get something.

Yep.

Yeah.

Let's get Nimhard in.

Which one did you say?

How many points, BFD?

12 plus.

12 plus.

Let's go.

I am doing

Ludort.

Oh.

8 plus.

Wow.

Going

reverse of what he did.

He scored 3 the other night.

Yep.

I will say this.

6-1.

Odds aren't great on this one.

But you know what?

We need to see one go through the hoop.

Exactly.

We got to see one go through the hoop.

Who's screwing up the odds?

Mine was minus 125.

Okay, that's fine.

Mine was minus 55.

Mine was minus 165.

Oh.

Huh?

12 plus points for Nee Smith.

I got Nimhard.

Oh.

I said Nee Smith, 20 points rebounds in a second.

Hold on, hold on.

Come on, check that.

Zach, this is why we got you.

You should be.

Well, I'm trying to come up with a pick and do the same thing.

Yeah, because we didn't know we were going to do this.

Zach, you should have been controlling this.

I also got to find it.

Like, I am learning your guys' picks on the spot, and you have to navigate the DraftKings app

and do it at the same time.

He severed.

Max, are you excited for the new?

What did you pick?

Neese Smith over points, rebounds, assists, 20.

Oh, I keep doing Nee Smith for PFT.

Nee Smith and Nemhart are confusing.

You know this.

I do.

We just said that.

That it's great that we have both of them.

Max.

Okay, 13 to 1.

We're back.

Oh, let's go.

Great.

Love it.

Max, are you excited for

the new Philly stadiums being built by the guy who built the sphere?

Maybe he'll build a sphere?

Did you?

I did not know that.

Yeah, pretty cool, right?

I thought you guys had new stadiums.

Yeah, the bank.

No, we're just getting

a new basketball.

Yeah.

Is it basketball hockey?

No, I think it's going to be separate.

Where are the flyers going?

I think they're staying.

Oh.

So Josh Harris is

this the New Jersey thing?

No,

that was a thing.

Now that's no longer.

So are they building

a basketball arena right next to the old basketball arena and keeping the old basketball arena?

I don't know.

They change like literally every 15 minutes.

First, it was going to center city, like in the middle of center city, Philadelphia.

Then it was going to Jersey.

Then it was going back to where it originally was.

I agree with you.

I feel like going forward, every new sports arena that gets built, don't fucking tell us anything until the ground is in the shovel.

I'm so sick of it arlington heights soldier field like all this back and forth it's hard to keep up with when you put a a a a shovel into the ground i will pay attention yes it's just it's all dates that are just so far out there and it's just how long does it take to make a stadium i think it's like two or three well football i think it's like two or three years two years okay i also don't know it probably i i i got caught right there in a let me just try to say something confident i i would guess it matters what part of the country it's in too because some parts of the country you can't build, you can't, you have permits, and also you might have to sell the parking rights to the UAE, and then that takes some time to get the deal done.

Okay, soFi took four years.

Okay.

Well, that's also good weather.

Yeah.

So, like, if it's up north, maybe longer.

And also, they did weird shit with it.

Yeah, they left the roof kind of open.

They built that, like, go ahead.

2031 is when, like, that, why do I care about 2031?

Are you sure?

And it is still going to be shared with the Flyers.

Oh, okay.

So, you were long.

How long does it, all right, so how long does it take to build a NBA arena?

Three years.

I'm going to say that's probably two.

Yeah, 18 to 30 months.

Okay.

So

that's about two years.

And the Sphere Guy's doing this one.

The Sphere Guy's doing it.

That's kind of cool.

Of Sphere fame.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that means that Josh Harris has the Sphere Guy on Speed Dial.

So maybe my stadium might get done by the Sphere Guy, too.

You're going to get sphered up.

Fuck yeah.

NFL stadiums are usually two to four years.

U.S.

Bank Stadium, I think that's Minnesota, right?

Yep.

That was two and a half years.

So SoFi did some weird shit.

Yeah.

They definitely tried to make it all LA.

Well, Rich Eisen was personally approving each blueprint, so they had to go back and forth.

And they also were like, let's make sure we build an indoor stadium that could be delayed by thunder and lightning.

We were at the first game ever at U.S.

Bank.

We were.

Yeah, that's right.

Holy shit.

That was a preseason game.

Jeff Fisher.

Yep.

Yeah.

Good call, Hank.

Oh, my God.

That Minnesota State Fair was a lot of fun.

That was our milk chugging days.

Yeah.

We were just chugging milk all the time.

And chaw.

And chaw.

She's like, oh, here's a video, but let us add some chaw and milk.

We should do that.

We should do that again once.

10-year anniversary.

Yeah, just like, yeah, like a throwback.

Like, just one day do all of our...

The milk mile?

Get a goldfish for one day, kill it.

It would probably die on its own because we have a bad history with it.

All right.

Do we have other sports stories?

You have a C.J.

Stroud update.

Oh.

So C.J.

Stroud, we were very concerned about his shoulder because he wasn't throwing because he was dealing with general soreness.

And he spoke to the media today and he said, I'm fine, man.

So he's fine, man.

Oh, he's fine.

Man.

Man.

I'm fine, man.

He said also, I did not have surgery.

Oh.

I did not get surgery or anything like that.

So just to go out there and say, like, it's the my I Did Not Get Surgery t-shirt

has people asking a lot of questions that are already answered by my t-shirt.

Yes, yes.

Okay, so he did not get surgery.

And he's fine.

Stop asking.

Okay.

Also, we saw Aaron Rodgers in a Steelers uniform.

What do you think?

Helmet's still weird.

Yeah.

He said about playing in 2025,

I don't need it for my ego.

I don't need it to keep playing.

This was a decision that was best for my soul.

Okay.

Huh.

That feels like he does need it for

his ego?

Maybe not ego,

but he said, I don't need it to keep playing.

That feels like you do because your soul needs you to play.

Yeah.

Yeah, I would say so.

Also, J.R.

Alexander got cut, and Mark Murphy just probably the meanest quote ever when he said, we're used to not having him.

Mm-hmm.

Kind of facts.

Yeah, very big facts.

And then they asked Miles Garrett about Aaron Rodgers in the division.

He said, I think it's a good opportunity to put him in the graveyard.

Oh.

So I like this.

Oh, also, Aaron Rodgers has been married for a couple months.

Yeah, apparently.

Apparently, he's got.

He confirmed it's a wedding ring on his finger.

How long has he been married?

Been a couple months.

Okay, good for him.

Is he married to the game or is he married to another human being?

Love is love.

Love is love.

I personally go with the no girls aspect for my quarterbacks.

The Jared Krabis, married to the game.

Yeah.

He wore a ring for a while.

I also got a little excited because they did announce the first game day.

So that was, it was just like, hey, week one's coming soon.

Lee Corso.

It's going to be Ohio State.

And

in Columbus against Texas.

But it was just like, oh, yeah, football is.

I'm not wishing away the summer.

People get mad

when I do countdowns for football.

No, I love it.

You can appreciate the summer while also being like, I can't wait for football, which is kind of a part of the summer.

Right.

I can't wait for football.

I'm sorry.

It's okay.

I've been kind of daydreaming about it.

Whenever I tweet, I can't wait for college football.

That is literally, that's the only thought in my head at that moment when I tweet it.

That's what that pops in my head randomly.

It's usually like it's nice outside, just driving, like, man, you know, could be better?

Football.

I'll tell you who looks good in a Steelers uniform is DK.

DK doesn't.

DK looks like he was fierce.

Like he was born a Steeler.

He looks fierce.

Zach, do you have a college football team?

So I didn't go to a university big enough that would have a team that would play.

I do,

as a child, we would root for the Miami Hurricanes, but I would like to say any team coming out of the state of Florida when they progress, I do like to see the state win.

Okay.

Rooting for the state.

That was a tough year a couple years ago.

Remember they lost, like, there was that first weekend ever that all the Florida teams lost?

There's quite a few of those.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Catch a pop.

Let's do an all-time ranking of Florida football teams.

Okay.

1-1, I'm going to go with Tim Tebow Gators.

No, I mean, just like the schools.

Oh,

that was good.

You're ready to go.

Okay.

We're stress testing you.

All right, so one, I'm just going to go.

I like Miami Hurricanes.

As of recently, they're pretty sure they had the most NFL athletes to the league ever for quite a long time there.

Then, second, I'm going to go with the Florida Gators.

No, I'll go second.

Florida State.

Shout out to my brother, graduate, big degree.

Shout out to him.

Florida Gators, third, and then I'll go

Florida Golf Coast, fourth.

FGCU.

FGCU.

Dunk City.

Wow.

All right.

UCF, Blake Portals.

UCF, cool campus.

Ciao, Blake.

Okay, nice.

All right,

let's do hot seat chiltro, and then we got two unbelievable interviews coming up, and we'll finish up with guys on chicks.

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Hot seat, chill thrown, Henry.

My hot seat's Terry McLaurin.

Oh,

I just don't understand.

You know,

the Commanders had such a great year.

They got a young quarterback.

You would think they'd be excited to return and go after that Super Bowl.

And I'm just hearing rumors from everyone, Steelers fans, Jets fans.

It seems like they all think they're getting Terry McLaurin, and I can't figure out why.

Are the Steelers and Jets fans?

Are they in this room with you right now?

Well, I spent about five hours with Jersey Jerry yesterday.

Okay.

And then today, before we recorded, memes were just like, Terry McLaurin, jet.

But why would they even think he, like, how is it even possible?

Okay, let's have a look at that.

Hank, this is, I know it's your first season watching football.

Sometimes receivers, they get, they want more money.

Because if you play really well, you get paid more money.

And so

the commanders give that to him.

I think they're going to give them that money.

Let me just do, let's do a visualization.

Put yourself in Terry McLaurin's shoes.

Okay.

You've been in the NFL

for a long time.

You are Terry McLaurin right now.

You've been in the NFL for a long time.

You just played last season with the only good quarterback you've ever had in your entire life.

Do you want to leave and then go somewhere else with not so great a quarterback?

Right.

You don't.

No, I don't.

You don't.

You don't.

I don't.

So Terry wants to stay.

The commanders want to keep him.

You just want the most money you can get.

That's what's happening.

It's called a holdout

in sports.

He wants money.

So he's coming back.

He's coming back.

You just got to pay him.

He wants his money.

He'll be back.

If Terry McLaurin is not a commander next year,

I was about to say something dumb.

They got to pay him.

Yeah, they got to pay him.

That's all.

They got to pay him.

They're going to pay him.

I think the Trey Hendrickson situation is a little bit different.

Yeah.

They got to pay him.

But they're going to.

They're going to pay him.

He's going to be a commander.

Guaranteed.

Yeah.

Yeah, we have, yeah, this is just part of, this is just part of, you know, the spring, late spring.

Do you think he's mad about Debo?

Or is he excited about Debo?

I think he's excited about Debo.

Yeah, he's excited about Debo.

I think he's mad that he wants to get paid more.

It's nothing.

It's nothing personal.

It's business.

This is sad you trying to find drama.

It's business.

No,

I've been hearing,

it made no sense to me what Jerry was saying.

It made no sense what Memes was saying, so I came to the source to figure it out.

But that makes sense.

He'll be a commander.

He wants more money.

No doubt.

Yeah.

Guaranteed.

Guaranteed Guaranteed money.

Wait, guarantee.

I personally guarantee that they're going to pay him more guaranteed money, and he's going to be a commander next year, and that's a guarantee.

Okay.

What's your chill throne?

My chill throne is Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds.

Oh.

We talked about it a lot on the show, the lawsuits.

And all that.

I remember a couple of shows.

We did

two times in a row.

We talked about it.

They're okay, right?

The two of them.

Yeah.

The suit got thrown out.

A judge threw the suit out.

Okay.

Threw out the lawsuits,

dealing a huge blow to the Bell Doni camp.

Okay.

So the suit is over.

So they're back.

They're back.

Blake of the year.

They're back.

Blake of the year.

Okay.

I still don't fully understand the whole thing.

I don't know.

I'm not a lawyer guy, but I feel like they probably just had better lawyers.

You know what?

I'm going to release a statement.

Just

be nicer.

Be nicer to each other.

And that's just for, that's not talking to one side or the other.

That's just blanket.

Hey, guys, cut it out.

Be nicer.

Be a nice person.

That's my take on it.

Be a decent human.

It costs zero dollars to be nice.

That's true.

I hope they learned a valuable lesson.

Yeah, be better.

Be better.

Be better.

We can all be better.

I expected more out of them.

I'm just going to leave that out there.

I expected more.

Both sides.

I just said them.

Them.

You don't know who them is.

It could be talking about this.

I just expected more out of them.

Same.

okay I'm not taking a side I have not well I

no I'm not I was gonna say I think I have but I don't I don't have wait so are Blake and Ryan are they on the same side yeah they're buried okay so you'd hope so otherwise that would be an awesome betrayal I that's what I'm rooting for yeah I'm rooting for one of them to flip over to the Baldoni camp and then turn on their spouse yeah that would rock sick love is dead in a moment but that would be nice Kank did you get your Sydney Sweeney soap yet I did not Oh, this must be in the mail.

It's on the way.

Did you get some?

Yeah, he did.

You know he did.

First of all, you know he did.

I love that.

PFT.

I got Napoleon's hair.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's on the way.

Sick.

Do you think I could implant Napoleon's hair into my face?

Yes.

As like a beard strand?

That would rock.

My hot seat is golfers.

Oh.

Golfers are on the hot seat because I saw we're starting to get the content that we predicted would happen from the U.S.

Open of like, holy shit, this course is going to be impossible.

One was just a picture of a 289-yard par three,

which is awesome.

Insane.

Can we bet on the winning golfer to have a score that's over par?

Yes.

Yeah, you can, you can, there's going to be, listen, DraftKings, there will be like a winning score.

I want to bet on winning score over par.

I think this U.S.

Open is going to the course officially.

I've seen enough of the content where now I fear this course.

Is it bad that I'm, you know, you don't want root for favorites?

Obviously, I would love to see our guy Brooks do well.

I'm going to bet on him, but I kind of want to see Scotty just dominate again.

Like, I'm in this, I'm in Scotty zone where it's like, if he just keeps just kicking the shit out of everyone, that would be awesome.

What are you looking at, Hank?

I don't.

Any player to be bogey-free through 72 holes, what do you think the odds are for that?

I think this is plus $150,000, $50,000.

Yeah, I mean, that's

impossible.

$2 to win $3,000.

Yeah, that's an impossible.

Bad bet.

That bet will be done by halfway through Thursday.

But I am rooting for Scotty.

Does that make me lame?

I don't know.

I'm kind of in the greatness mode of it.

I like rooting for greatness, but I also like rooting to see greatness fail at the last second.

Who would be your second pick?

Because

I think the, tell me if I'm wrong, Hank, you're looking at it right now.

The odds are Scotty's a favorite, then it's Bryce, and then it's Rory.

And I don't want to root for Rory or Bryce.

Rory's given given up.

He doesn't care anymore.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Is that a fact?

He said it after the

when he was doing media last week.

He was like, yeah, I just, it's after I won the Grand Slam, it's harder to, you know, practice as hard.

Oh, man.

Which is fair, but also

he's.

Me?

I win the Grand Slam.

I'm going even harder.

Scotty Bryson, John Rahm, Rory Xander.

Okay.

All right, Xander.

Xander would be in the middle.

Xander would be awesome.

Brooks would be nice.

Brooks would be awesome.

Brooks would be awesome.

If Max was in, he would win.

Yeah.

But absolutely.

He's ran out of time.

Yeah, if Jake Knapp was in, he'd probably win too.

That's a fact.

All right, yeah, so I'm excited to watch golf.

Yeah, me too.

And also, we get the Father's Day U.S.

Open, which is great because I'm just going to be like, my Father's Day gift is I want to watch the U.S.

Open.

Yep.

That's it.

Then my cool throne is TJs who have a love-hate relationship with Pittsburgh.

So TJ Watt is one of them.

I think he's gone.

I'm hearing he's going to be a commander.

Oh.

Yeah.

You're going to, Hank, are you listening?

TJ Watt.

He just reversed it.

So check this out.

He just reversed.

He's been a great player on the Steelers.

Haven't really accomplished that much besides making the playoffs recently.

Every year.

He's going to cost a lot of money.

I think he's unhappy, and I think he wants to go.

Who's going to pay him?

I think the Commanders don't have money.

I think the Commanders don't have money.

The Commanders have money.

They're already paying Terry.

So we had TJ Watt.

It was TJ Watt, Terry McLaurin, and then there was one other holdout.

Trey Hedrickson.

Trey Hedrickson, which that one is, he's been holding out forever.

Yeah, that one to me seems fractured.

I do think that TJ is going to go back to Pittsburgh.

The only other place I can imagine.

He's a Jersey guy.

I could imagine T.J.

Watt wearing a Green Bay Packers strip.

Yeah, we said that a couple weeks ago.

It feels like that would be the only one that would make sense.

Oh, also Jalen Ramsey, who

he might get traded, too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then the other TJ, TJ Oshi.

who has had some ups and downs with Pittsburgh as a Washington capital.

He retired yesterday.

And he retired at the fountain in Georgetown where he went for a swim after the Stanley Cup.

Now, Captain America.

Captain America, go back and watch the highlights of him competing against Russia in those Olympics, 2014, I think.

The best.

Where

it was the Penguins coach, and he just brought TJ because he's like, one of these games is going to go into shootouts, and I'm just going to run TJ Oshi out there against Bob.

And it was just TJ dominating Bob to win that game.

Over and over and over.

Which was good.

Yeah, it was great to watch.

But TJ didn't play this year.

I thought that he was probably going to retire like two years ago, actually.

Yeah.

But he finally made it official.

So great player, Captain America.

Thank you for your service, TJ.

Okay.

And then your chill throw.

That was my chill throw.

Oh, that was your chill throw.

Chill throw.

It was TJ.

TJs who have a love

relationship with Pittsburgh.

All right.

My hot seat is the Washington Wizards.

Okay.

You ready for this?

Oh, wait.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

The Washington Wizards.

All right.

You ready for this?

So this actually is kind of a combo hot seat for the Pacers.

So game three is Wednesday night.

Did you know that a former Wizards player has won each of the last eight championships?

And there is one singular with ex-wizard in these finals on the Pacers, Thomas Bryant.

So, they are now the Wizards are on the hot seat.

They got to win this to keep the streak alive.

So, 2017, Sean Livingston and Javal JaVale McGee.

2018, Livingston and McGee.

2019, Raptors, Jody Meeks.

2020, Dwight Howard, McGee, and Markeith Morris.

2021, Bobby Portis, 2022, Gary Payton, the second, Otto Porter Jr.

and Chris Chioza.

And then 2023, the Nuggets had KCP, Jeff Green, Ish Smith, and Thomas Bryant.

In 2024, Hank, Chris Dopps.

So now

you're on the hot championship DNA in Washington.

It's like the NBA's farm system.

Yeah.

That's where you go to learn how to win.

Yeah.

Because first you have to learn how not to lose.

Right.

And then the Lakers, when they almost beat the Nuggets that one year, and they would have won the championship when they lost 4-1.

Except they lost 4-1 in the series, they had Rui Hachimura.

Yeah, that's true.

So these are all the greatest teams of the last, what, six years, seven years?

This is a fun little wrinkle streak that we, you know, the Pacers are, the Pacers and the Wizards are on the hot seat.

So, but if the Thunder win, no one.

No dice.

No one.

No dice with them.

And then that means maybe Chris Paul, championship loading for next year.

Wizards legend.

Yeah, well, no, it would break the streak.

It's a Thunder.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah.

So we'd have to start a new streak.

My My cool throne is the Detroit Tigers because they're really good at baseball.

We're going to have Terek Skubel on in a minute, which was awesome in studio.

But the Tigers are averaging over 26,000 fans per game, 40% jump from this time last season.

It's more, it's partially credit, you know.

Tigers fans showing up, but also a reminder that anytime a baseball owner says no one shows up, if you put a good product on the field, fans will show up.

And I hate that when that happens in sports, where an owner will be like, well, we got to move because the fans don't support us.

No, you've been like gutting the team and gutting the

city for years and years and years.

Yeah, because you can make money as an owner with a bad team.

And so a lot of owners are just like,

I want to see my investment increase.

I don't really give a shit about the product.

That's always bullshit.

Did we talk about it on this show?

I can't remember.

I think they should have a new rule

in all sports that if

call it five years.

If you don't make the playoffs in five years, automatic sale.

I like that.

Like, whatever the threshold is, that would be awesome because relegation is never going to come to American sports.

But if you could relegate owners, that would be sick.

That's probably for the same reason not going to come to American sports.

Of course.

But I'm just talking about dumb rules that I'm going to start.

Next time we have a commissioner on, I'm going to start saying it to him.

But

maybe not playoffs.

Maybe it's have to be, you have to be over 500 because obviously playoffs are tough to get to in certain sports.

but

some type of rule that if you don't field a competent team once at least every five years, you automatically have to sell.

And maybe, you know what?

We say that you have to sell like 15% off.

Or

you get suspended as an owner.

Whatever it may be.

You don't get to suspend.

There's

no sweet.

You have to pay for it.

If you're an owner and your team doesn't make the playoffs in the first five years, you have to sit in the stands.

Right.

You're not allowed to sit away from the people.

Because baseball does the floor, the spending floor now.

but that still doesn't incentivize them to be good.

It just incentivizes them that they have to spend a certain amount of money.

So, I don't know.

Just a rule out there.

Gonna throw it out there.

Gonna pitch it to people.

What are you looking up?

The cellar cap floor.

Yeah, I know.

Baseball has one now.

I can't remember what it is.

Zach, are you Googling?

I think they're talking about it.

I thought there was one.

No, because in order to have a floor, you have to have a cap.

Oh, that's what they're negotiating.

Oh, that's right.

That's what they're negotiating right now.

And I do think the salary cap floor has a possibility to pass.

I think that there's a good chance it could pass

because of this problem that we have.

So we need the floor.

But right now.

NBA is the one.

Yes, right now.

NBA has a floor.

Right now in baseball, the owners don't have to spend anything if they don't want to.

That's right.

Which is why you get teams like the spending.

The Oakland A's.

Yeah.

The baseball one that I was thinking of is they have changed it so that you can't tank every year and get the first pick.

Yes.

They move where you are on the order, but the NBA salary floor does exist.

Yeah.

So we might.

How about it should just be owners?

If your team sucks every single year, you have to sell the team.

Yeah.

And

we get to decide the price.

Yeah.

And don't make your money back.

Don't make your money back.

Oh, that would be sick.

Because then you buy a team and you're just like,

I have to do it.

There's pressure.

If you don't make the playoffs within the first five years of buying a team,

you have to sell the team and the max you can get is exactly what you paid for the team.

And that means that all the money, which is probably not that much if your team sucks, all the money that you've spent in the interim, that's all just lost money.

Yeah.

I kind of like that.

And also, think about how thrilling it would be if you root for like a Colorado Rockies and you're on year five and you haven't been to the playoffs or say be over 500.

Like that's a now that season becomes very interesting because you might be rooting.

You're rooting for your team to maybe win some games, but you're also rooting for the automatic sale to take place.

And then all of a sudden, some shitty teams would become massive, massive buyers at the trade deadline and get like one-year rentals, and then they could go back to being shitty.

But still, but at least they'd be good for a little bit.

It'd be interesting to watch.

I think we need this rule.

We're going to pitch it to Adam Silver when he comes on again.

Rob Manfred.

Just forget salary cap floor.

Ownership.

Ownership relegation.

Maybe they have to go own like a triple-A team.

I like that.

That would also bump up.

You just relegate the owners.

I do think making them sit in the stands with the the fans would be...

That would go a long way.

Have them face the music every single game.

Yep.

Yeah.

Okay.

Zach, you have a hot seat colour on?

Yes, sir.

I can do that for you.

Yeah.

I got one for you.

Let's go.

Hit us.

And so, hot seat, I do have Tim Cook from Apple is in the hot seat today.

Oh.

iOS 26 previews are coming out, and it looks atrocious.

So I don't know if you guys have seen any of the...

No, what's going on with it?

So

it looks like finger painting and a little bit of abstract art everywhere.

The themes is like

it looks like paint and glass.

So they're stacking the notifications up over there.

You can't see anything.

Oh, yeah.

All the notifications are clear.

That's weird.

They're stacking clear notifications on clear wallpapers.

I'm also in the zone where my phone is just breaking because the new phone's coming out.

What are they trying to condition us to do here?

Why are they doing this new thing?

What is this?

I just think it's too far of a reach.

They're like, oh, the people are going to love this.

We need to be more innovative.

And they're just taking away all

things you can see.

It's just clear.

It's just unusable.

It's very frustrating.

Are they trying to make us

the iPhone so that we'll be more likely to get a chip implanted in our brain?

An Apple chip in the brain?

Yeah.

I mean, it's coming, dude.

Are you guys now for a chip?

I don't want it, but it's coming.

It's going to happen.

And I'm going to have to get it.

And then when I chip up, then when I get it, I'll be like, how did I ever live without this chip?

Yeah.

Chip to death.

So it's chip or be left behind.

No choice.

We'd have to chip.

Correct.

Everybody chips in.

Would you get the chip?

I'd have to get the chip, yeah.

Well, you'd make.

Okay, yeah.

We'd probably make you get the chip first to see how it goes.

Yeah.

Yeah, you're getting the chip.

Yeah.

I can do that.

That's a good hot seat, though.

I didn't even know they were doing the iOS.

So is this automatically updating our phones overnight?

If you have auto updates on, maybe if you have storage, yes.

If you don't have storage, probably not.

If you don't have auto updates on, no.

You can't opt out.

What was the reaction like when they unveiled this?

Because I love, I love watching the Apple conferences where they like unveil, they show like a pair of glasses on the screen, and then everyone like claps and they're like, oh my god, oh my, they clap for products, like little seals.

So, you know, in the room, they're all going crazy for Tim Cook and Apple, but the response online is just like, we don't know about this, Tim.

Okay, we got to bully.

Listen, we're going to have to bully.

It's facts.

All right.

What's your chill trone?

My children for today is DDG, who's a YouTuber,

former flex rapper, current Twitch streamer.

Okay, I know what all those words mean, but I looked at Hank and he was like, what are those?

So,

what's a flex rapper?

Yeah, let's start with flex rapper.

Flex rapper would be a YouTube rapper.

So, the flex position, not always rapping, sometimes rapping.

Oh, flex.

Yeah, like a YouTuber one day might go in a booth, do something.

Fonte creator that does rap.

Slash.

Got it.

Yeah.

Slash, perfect.

That would have made more sense.

Slash, the Cordell Stewart.

And so

now he gave us a little peek behind his analytics recently, reporting $12.3 million for the month of May between

ad revenue, AdSense, Twitch Prime subs, Spotify streams, et cetera.

And he's also been spotted quite a few times with Instagram sweetheart India Love recently.

Oh, which is all-time.

It is all time.

That's an all-time dog move by him?

All-time.

Yeah.

Really?

Certified.

Stamp it.

Are we living vicariously through him?

A little bit, yeah.

Yeah.

Certainly.

Massive dub, DDG.

All caps, W, DG.

Shout out to India Love.

Yeah.

Is India Love on your list?

She's like first round, second pick, probably.

First round, second pick?

So who's one one?

Yeah, who's one one?

One one would probably be Tay Money,

Texas-based rap woman.

Oh,

is this hot rappers or hot?

That's hot women.

Hot women.

That was hot women.

And what would your third pick be?

I don't have a theory off the top of my head.

They'd be interchanging.

Who's on your Mount Rushmore of women?

All time.

In

what facet?

Women.

Just women.

Open-ended women.

Top four women.

Not open-ended in that sense.

Yeah, no, yeah, I understand.

Kind of.

Open-ended,

top four women of all time.

Listen, we're about to give out Mount Rushmore season, so we got to stress test you.

Top four women of all time in any capacity.

Any capacity.

There's a lot.

Yeah, there's a lot of women.

We want to pigeonhole this at all.

They're just straight from the middle of the moment.

There's one that you got to make.

There's one pick you got to make.

There's one I have to make?

Yeah.

Your own mom.

You have to pick your own mom.

Can she go on the Mount Rushmore?

Yes, yes, yes.

Mom's 1-1.

Yeah, there you go.

If we're getting a little personal there, mom's 1-1.

Yep.

And even if you guys pick mom, I'm taking mom as well.

Okay.

Sorry to overstep.

So we'll do mom 1-1.

We'll go

Tay Money?

Not on the Route Rush Road.

I don't know.

Yeah.

But you can mix it up.

It's open-ended.

I had too much respect for my mother to put Tay Money next to her on the Mount Rushmore.

Would your mom get along with Tay Money?

I'm not sure.

Okay.

Not really sure.

Don't know her well enough.

No, my mom well enough, not Tay Money.

Okay.

So yeah, mom's up top, 1-1.

Other women, we got other one.

There's tons of other women, but we put on the Mount Rushmore.

Are you Catholic?

No, I don't practice the Catholic religion.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

So you were thinking maybe Mary?

I was maybe Mary trying to save you with God.

I appreciate that.

Shout out to Mary.

I think Mary does great for, I think religion is great for a lot of people.

You know what I'm saying?

So shout out to Mary.

She's a good guide.

So we can throw Mary on there.

So my mom, Mary.

I think you go, mom, Mary, Tay Money, Susan B.

Anthony.

Done.

We'll swap that for Michelle Obama, and we're done.

Oh, okay.

Which one?

Now we'll go Susan B.

Yeah, yeah.

Susan B.

Well, I thought you were going to swap Tay Money for Michelle.

We're not swapping anybody.

No, Tay Money.

I'm sorry about that.

That's a good Mount Rushworth.

Your mom, Tay Money, Susan B.

Mary.

And then if one of them does something to get canceled, canceled, we could replace them with Michelle.

Yeah.

Like if your mom said something, but then Michelle Obama goes on there.

We'll take Michelle out of the

flex bottom.

We'll put the Little Debbie woman up there because I love those stuff.

Oh, okay.

Good pick.

Good pick.

Okay.

Good job.

That felt good.

Stress testing Mount Rushmore.

Wendy's going to be upset.

Let's get to our interviews.

We got Tarek Skubel and then the GOAT chess grandmaster Magnus Carlson.

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Okay, here he is, Tarek Skoogle.

Okay, we now welcome on a very, very, very, very special guest.

Recurring guest.

It is AL Cy Young winner, Tarek Skubel, Haas, number one pitcher in baseball.

Can I say that?

Right now?

Yeah.

You can say it.

I won't say it.

Okay, I'm going to say it.

Cy Young winner.

Cy Young winner.

That's like that.

Yeah.

And you're also doing it again this year, like crushing it.

So in studio.

Awesome to see you.

I actually, let's start with just pitching.

Let's just go straight to pitching because we, last time you were on, after you won the Cy Young, you were saying something.

I think PFT asked a question about like

getting it like going faster than like 102.

And it's like, you're like, I'm kind of topped out at that.

That's kind of what it is.

You had a game this year where you had a complete game shutout where you went 103 in the ninth.

How did that happen?

Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I don't know.

But I think, you know, when I took the mound for the ninth inning and I'm going back out there, the whole stadium is kind of chanting your name.

And you don't really think that, like when you're young

you don't think that that's a possibility to have that happen so I just kind of took a moment and enjoyed it and then the adrenaline like spiked big time and then I got into an O2 count and I knew a fastball was coming and

I'm like this is either going to be the hardest pitch of my life and be nowhere near the zone and then I have to make another one or this game's over and uh it just so happened he swung I mean it wasn't really close to the zone but he swung over it and it just kind of that is what it is it was it was an awesome moment also i did i read correctly the pitch calm like didn't work in the ninth inning because it was so loud it was loud yeah so i had it i have it on like so it goes up to like 20 or whatever and i have it on like 14 for most games and then if you're in a dome you turn it up a little bit because it's just naturally louder but i had it on uh 14 couldn't hear a thing with two strikes there and then i was you know putting my glove over still couldn't hear turn it up to 20 and then it got quiet when that whole thing happened and now i'm like dude i think he can hear what pitch is coming because it's so loud uh but yeah i mean it was going to be a fastball, I think, no doubt.

And then you just kind of let it rip and that's what happens.

I think everybody knew what pitch was coming.

It was like, you're going to reach back.

You're going to throw this hard.

That was the last pitch of the game, right?

Yeah.

You hit 103.

Is that...

102.6.

Did you round up?

No, it's 103.

Do we count that as 103?

I don't, but you guys can't.

I count that as 103.

It showed 103 on the broadcast.

Yeah, it always rounds up for us, which is sweet.

Dump.

Yeah, I love it.

103.

You've been throwing less fastballs, though.

Has that been like a conscious...

I mean, obviously less since when you first came in.

I think you were throwing like half your pitches were fastballs.

Now it's your change-up.

Was that something in the offseason?

You're like, this is just a way I'm going to get even better?

Those are good questions for our catchers.

Because I'm like,

you know, I don't shake a ton and we go over game planning stuff.

And you have a plan of what you want to do.

And then the game tells you what you need to do.

The lineup tells you that bats dictate what pitch is thrown.

And

our catchers do a great job.

And if the changeup's working, working and they're swinging and missing and I'm getting a lot of positive results, I'm going to keep throwing it.

And I think that's kind of where the uptick in usage is.

And I get nine righties a game damn near every time.

Right.

So I need something to go to my arm side so that way they're not just the ball just consistently coming into them.

So

that's kind of the point of it.

I saw on the last pitch of the game, it looked like the leg kick was just as high as it normally is.

Do they have advanced stats to show how high you're getting the leg?

I bet I could pull some Hawkeye data.

It was at home, so I bet I could pull something to see.

But yeah, I mean, that's as hard as I can throw a baseball no matter.

You know how I said that last year?

I actually think that that's as hard as I can throw a baseball.

Yeah, then next year you're going to come in and we're like, hey, remember when you threw 104 in the playoffs?

You're like, oh, yeah, I guess that's the hardest I can throw.

Well, if I'm in the ninth inning in a playoff game, then that's something different.

I bet that would actually be harder than that.

But you were feeling

it was the adrenaline from the crowd.

No, no.

And you were in the ninth inning, so you just need the crowd to be exactly that loud and you can keep dialing it up.

Yeah, I guess so.

Yeah, you're right.

I mean, there's 36,000.

It's an 1135 game.

So like the fact that the fans showed up for an 1135 game, I got a ton of, you know, respect for.

And then, you know, you're doing something like that.

And we just lost three to Cleveland in a row and we're kind of trying to salvage a series.

And there's a lot of kind of emotions that went into that game that made it special.

Sounds like you love Detroit.

I love Detroit, yeah.

Yeah?

I do, yeah.

Like for the rest of your life, love Detroit?

Sure.

Like we could sign a contract right now.

We'll only take 5%.

I I think Scott Boris, we've met him.

We've been to his offices.

Yeah.

PFT

in his office.

I took a big shit in his office.

That's awesome.

Not in his assistant.

I mean, I'm drinking a coffee right now.

I might take a shit here, if I'm being honest.

It's about that time.

No, but that's a sign of dominance.

I waltzed into his office.

I took a dump.

And

I feel like now Scott Boris looks up to me as a man.

Yeah.

He respects you for sure.

He respects me.

So we could get this done today.

Yeah.

You guys walk in and see all the baseballs and stuff.

Oh, yeah.

He's like a Darth Vader of baseball.

When you walk in, you're just like, holy shit, this office is impressive.

So,

the real question, and then we'll do the negotiation.

Is it difficult sometimes to be playing in a season like this being like,

there's a lot of money coming?

Like, it's like,

you're human.

You know what I mean?

You can't not think about it at all, but are you able to compartmentalize?

Yeah, I think when our team's doing what we're doing, I mean, we got.

40 wins or whatever.

It's the whole contract and money stuff kind of goes to the side because

we're winning so much.

And that's the ultimate goal: to win.

You want to be the last team winning with a win in the season.

So

it makes it easier in that aspect.

And last year when we traded away, guys, it did become a little bit more difficult to pitch because I knew that I was chasing down an award and stuff.

And then we went on that run and it kind of took all that shit away.

So winning, I say this about winning cures everything.

Winning is, it's a band-aid that, you know, it doesn't matter if it's a bullet hole whatever you know it cures everything and you just kind of go play baseball so um

that's kind of the

yeah i think winning is it takes a lot of that stuff off your mind as a player dumb question maybe but when because the season is so long in baseball when does losing when is what's a losing streak that like okay it becomes a bummer because obviously you can lose two games in a row you can lose three games in a row that's just baseball what is there a number where you're like well this fucking sucks i was actually joking around this year when we got swept by the dodgers to start the season i I was like, I walked to AJ.

I go, hey, Skip, are we ever going to win again?

Three is a long time, but like, I mean, three happens.

You know, we just did it to Cleveland and then we rattled off five straight wins.

So the game, the ebbs and flows of baseball are a little bit different.

But I mean, if you're losing four in a row, if you get swept by a team for four games, that's like, that was a long series, you know, and it's half a week of games playing, you know, four or five.

I've been on teams that have lost 13 in a row, and that is like, that is legitimately miserable.

You don't even want to go to the yard anymore.

You're like, when's the last bus?

When's the first bus out of here?

Can I get treatment during the game so I don't have to watch us lose again?

There's, yeah, there's a

losing sucks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is there always some guy that's like trying to lighten the mood in the clubhouse, and they try it in different ways if it's a losing streak, and at some point you just have to like stop trying to like joke your way out of it.

What is that like?

Yeah, I think sometimes it's like when you start losing,

guys tend to try a little bit harder, and then you realize like that's probably the wrong thing to do.

Maybe try a little bit less and just play the game of baseball and no stress.

And I think that we have guys in our clubhouse that keep it light.

You know, Jake Rogers is like that guy, you know, where

our team is funny, too.

You know, Tork's one of those guys too, where he can have a horrible at-bat.

you know, like horrible at-bat and come in and be like, I saw him well.

You know, like that's like, I see what he is.

Like Greeny yesterday in the first inning, I think we hit like two homers or whatever, but he's the one who struck out in between the homers.

And he comes in and he's like as happy as anyone.

And he's like, yeah, I saw him well too.

But I'm like, dude, you struck out.

And he's like, no, but I saw him well.

Yeah.

You know, so like, that's like, that's that running joke, you know, or when our team has a horrible swing, you know, we'll scream to the umpires, like, check him.

No, like, ask for help.

You know, he's like, no, he's not even close to hitting it.

So

our team does a good job of keeping it pretty light and we enjoy it.

I feel like that's important in baseball, too.

It's a play every day.

You have a batted bat and you say, like, I saw it well.

even if you're joking and you're lying about just saying it out loud, like, there's a part of you that might believe it.

And it's such a mental thing where it's like, okay, I'm still in a positive mindset.

So next time I go up, I'm not going to be bummed out thinking about all the negative things that could happen.

No doubt.

No doubt.

I think it's funny as pitchers, you know, we'll throw a pitch that's 40 feet, right?

And I bet everyone watching is like, how does a professional athlete do that?

And then our dugout is probably screaming like, hey, you can't get beat there.

You know, get a pitch.

You can't get beat there.

They can't swing.

Or you throw a fastball to the back of the, you know, off the netting over them.

It's like, hey, you can't get beat there, man.

Yeah.

You can't get beat.

They can't put the bat on it.

So whatever.

On to the next pitch.

I feel like I get my ass kicked right away because I just, someone would strike out and be like, that was a great cut.

Like, just keep saying that over and over.

No, great cut.

No, it's hilarious.

I mean, there's moments where maybe bigger moments, these things kind of tend to happen earlier in the game, later in the games.

It's a little bit, you know, you kind of pick and choose when you're going to mess around.

And then score of the game kind of dictates that, you know, if we're getting our ass beat, like there's, I'm not going to, and when our guy checks swings and it's a bat swing, I'm not going to yell out, like, hey, check, you know, the umpire or whatever.

But I think that's our team's fun in that aspect, too.

Right.

We just, we're young, we have fun, we enjoy it.

You know, you have a bad swinging bunt that's like goes five feet foul.

You'll, you know, you'll hear someone from the dugout like, straighten it out.

You know, I think that that's that's hilarious to me.

And then we just kind of keep that same vibe.

Yeah, I heard a nasty rumor about you.

Well, first, I'm going to give you some credit because in your last 10 games, you're 5-0, your ERA is 1.66.

You've got 0.03.

0.03 from being really good.

0.03 from being really, really good.

Yeah.

89 strikeouts and three walks in your last 10 games.

89 strikeouts and three walks.

That's crazy.

We want to give you all the credit in the world.

Again, we want to build you up.

We want to see you get this massive contract.

Hopefully stay in Detroit for a while.

But I came across something very concerning about you.

Oh, no.

You cheat at crossword puzzles.

Oh, dude, they're fucking hard.

We got a guy here who just got exposed for cheating at crossword puzzles is a big deal.

It's a big deal.

But do you feel accomplished?

Do you feel like you did something if you cheat at the crossword puzzle?

Yeah, I try my best to do it by myself every day.

I try my best to do it.

How fast do you cheat?

Like what

point are you going to cheating?

Okay, yeah.

So if I, you know, I'll go through every single clue, right?

And then, you know, you, you go through the crossword.

Sometimes they flow, you know, like you'll have the top left and it'll flow to the middle and you get some letters and it'll flow to the bottom right.

And then you kind of got to start taking some shots in the dark on the bottom left or top right.

Yeah.

And once I get to a point where I literally don't know how to do anything, I've read every clue twice.

I've done it all twice.

That's when I usually call Jake Rogers.

I'm like, hey, Jake, like, can you change one of these clues?

Look at what I have.

What's the most important word for me to go forward?

You know, what's going to give me the most?

Usually it's like a, it'll be like something down because it'll give you the start for like five other words.

Yeah.

And he'll just like change the clue for me.

And then I'm like, oh, yeah, way better clue for me.

And I'll write it in, you know, and then I'll go.

And if I get stuck again, then, you know, I'll ask again.

But that's kind of the.

Oh, so you don't Google it.

You just ask him.

Well, some, yeah, I mean, sometimes I have to if he's not around.

If he's not around, I have to.

Like, if I can't find him.

And is he the best?

It's crosswords?

On our team, yeah.

Yeah.

So he's the worst, Torklesson.

I don't even think Torque could start it.

No, right.

That's what I'm saying.

Jackson Jove.

Jackson Jove couldn't do it either.

Historical Z would look at it and just be like, what is this?

What is this witchcraft?

He's like, is this algebra?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think there's a lot of guys that

couldn't do it because

you got to know the lingo and the jargon.

You know, there's a lot of words that repeat every day.

Yeah.

You know, if they ever talk about a cookie, it's an Oreo.

You know, if they ever have a lake in there, it's eerie just because there's vowels and stuff in it.

Wait, are we talking about the full crossword or are we talking about the mini?

Well, the crossword mini is pretty easy.

Yeah, okay.

I just want to make sure that we're not cheap.

We're talking about

New York Times.

Yeah.

Yeah, is it USA Today or New York Times?

The New York one, I think, is really hard, and the LA one is like, that one is fucking impossible.

Okay.

Like, you can't do it.

You can't do it.

Yeah.

Well, I can't do any of them.

Yeah, but I think it's USA Today.

I think that's the one that...

That one, I think, has pictures in it.

Yeah, it's pretty easy.

It's like an IHOP menu.

What is this?

I have it on my phone.

It's a picture of a pancake.

So that way on off days, I can do it.

You got to get a newspaper and do it.

No, it's USA Today.

There's no

pictures yeah no there's pictures oh we're looking at it right now this is not pictures

what is this and it's a picture of snoopy yeah look this is usa today it's like this color is

three letter words

three letter word for we need to print it out and i want to see how far you guys can get you're literally just coloring a cheesecake factory menu every day yeah and being like wow jake rogers i need your help we got to get a newspaper in detroit on on game like days that you're starting to make the world's easiest crossword post and put it out just just so that you can get in get out do you do it just on days that you're starting or do you do it every day i try to do it every day sometimes schedule dictates if i can do it before my day starts versus after my day starts but i usually try to carve out you know 20 or 30 minutes to do it but that's

you know sometimes if i can't get it in 20 minutes i'm i mean you're pissed off too yeah it's like this isn't even worth it anymore but probably sharpens your mind probably kind of wakes you up a little

i don't i don't you'd think i'd have a sharper mind but i don't think that there's much i was trying to give you a compliment yeah going on for me you should actually all right so let's let's talk about the contract.

Maybe start doing the LA crossword and then throw that in that big Boris binder being like, this guy's actually the smartest pitcher that's ever been created.

No.

Look at how many times he's done the crossword post.

We could get four guys that do the crossword every day, the USA Today one, and we could all sit on a table and try to do the LA one, and we won't get it.

Okay.

Okay, so what you're saying is the bright lights of LA and New York are too bright for you.

They're too big for me.

Yeah.

Okay.

More.

That's exactly what that was.

Okay.

10 years, 425.

That sounds good, doesn't it?

That sounds good.

That sounds good.

I feel like if you get anything over that, you should probably kick a little piece to us.

If you guys are have

your contracts up, we'll tweet about you non-stop being like, this guy, we could just say he needs $1,200.

We anchor the negotiation there.

Yeah,

we could negotiate some stuff.

You'd have to talk to Boris about it.

Let's be honest, what we can do is after every single good pitch you throw, after every single quality start you have,

we'll be your propaganda department and just raise awareness of how incredible the season that you're having truly is.

And then I think

you already said 10 years for 425.

425?

425 would make you happy.

So anything beyond that, you're just being greedy.

Yeah, so you are.

So you got to give it back.

It's all expendable that you can cut to the business.

If I get above 425, then you guys can have the.

Yeah.

A bad deal.

Yeah.

I think we need to go to Boris's office and just sit down with him and be like, listen, Scott,

we've taken a shit in your office somewhere we didn't flush.

We're not going to tell you until you're choosing.

I will upper deck him if he doesn't cut me out.

There are multiple shits in your office right now, and none of them have been flushed.

If you want us to leave,

get us in on this deal.

So back to your complete game.

It's been a story this year.

You've been pulled a bunch before 100 pitches.

I did a bad job of saying the complete game.

It was technically a Maddox, which is one of the coolest things when you pitch a complete game under 100 pitches.

I think that's like the height of efficiency.

Maybe cooler than a no-hitter.

Just going to throw that out there.

So you did it under 100 pitch.

No?

No.

I mean, no hitter.

Everyone throws a no-hitter.

No, no, that's not true.

There's so many no-hitters.

Yes, there are.

There was a no-hitter in the World Series a couple years ago.

No hitters.

Non-stop.

Wasn't that Roy Holiday?

It was Max.

You remember that game?

Yeah, Max.

Who threw the no-hitter?

No, no.

Wasn't there a no-hitter in the World Series a few years ago?

I think Roy Holiday did it in the post-game.

This was, I forget who's playing.

Your mic's not on.

Max knows.

That didn't count.

No, well, did you get any hits?

Did the Phillies get any hits?

That didn't count.

Did the Phillies get a hit?

Combined no hitters do not count.

Does a combined no-hitter count?

Those aren't as cool as doing it.

Yeah.

That's fine, but it's no hitter, right?

But ask Max the second question.

Ask Max if the Phillies got any hits in the game.

The Phillies got no hit in a World Series game.

It didn't count.

Combined no hitters don't count.

It didn't count.

He just said combined no hitters don't count.

He's saying combined no hitters don't count.

But ask him again, did they get a hit in the game?

When was this?

In the World Series.

What year?

What year was it, Max?

It was the year against the Astros.

I don't know.

The Astros.

Let's see.

Yeah, they had no hits in the game.

Well, that's because it was a combined no-hitter.

No one cares about combined no-hitters.

Yeah, combined no-hitters aren't as cool.

Yeah, but still, instead, did they get a hit?

This is like a perfect example of why it doesn't count.

But is it a no-hitter?

It's a no-hitter.

Yeah, I mean, I guess it's a no-hitter because they got no hits.

No, yeah.

I mean, you're right.

Right.

It's pretty sad.

It's not as cool as a starter doing it himself.

That's fine.

We never disagreed with that.

Yeah, but the fact is, no hits.

Max calls it a zero hitter, which is just insane levels of cope.

Yeah.

All right.

I think that makes sense.

Either way, the Maddox

was awesome.

So did you talk to AJ Hinch after when you pitch your complete game?

Did he say, like, hey, if you had had gone over 100, we would have had to pull you?

No, I mean, sometimes

when you're walking off and his thing's the handshake, right?

And when you get the handshake, you're done.

Have you ever just not done, like, what if you just don't shake his hand?

I've never done that.

You should try that.

So then he can't pull you.

It doesn't really go over well.

I've shook his hand and then argued it a little bit.

And then that's straight to the tunnel.

Well, that's straight to the tunnel.

And then you hash it out down there.

Give him a little of this next time.

Yeah, it's not going to go over well.

He makes a good point, though, because if you do the handshake, that's sealing the deal.

Yeah, he's like, there's no conversation after the handshake.

You're agreeing with a man.

You're giving him your word.

But if you don't shake the hand, then no agreement has been made.

And it's all up for negotiation.

Yeah.

I probably won't.

He's so smart.

AJ's, I mean, he's the best manager in the game.

So wherever he wants to take the game or whatever he wants to do, the matchups that he wants to create from the bullpen coming in, I'm never going to doubt that.

Like,

I'm never going to doubt that.

And during that game where it was a complete game, I didn't think I gave him a reason to take me out of the game.

And most times, you can give him a reason to take, like, if you watch the last couple innings, maybe you're spraying a little bit, you're not getting as much weak contact, it's getting a little loud.

Okay, we're going to the bullpen, right?

So, um, he's very smart about that, and he does a ton of research.

You know, you walk by his office, he's got his laptop up, and if you just walk in to just talk about whatever, he'll be going over matchups of pockets he wants to create for relievers that come in to to face this certain part of the lineup, and then they're going to pinch hit for these guys.

And then I actually want this guy to get the pinch hit for.

It's like, it's insane.

He's really good at his players.

He's sticking plays ahead.

No doubt.

No doubt.

It feels like we're always, it feels like every move that is made.

during the game, pinch hit, bullpin move, whatever happens, it feels like it's always in our advantage, which I love.

Yeah.

And at the end of the day, I'm trying to win.

So if he's giving me the handshake, it's like, one, I probably gave him a reason to take me out of the game.

Maybe I'm walking, guys, or my velocity is starting to decline, or

it's getting a little loud.

You know, maybe the quality of contact, it went from being, you know, pretty low exit V lows to now they're getting to the hundreds or 104 and there's maybe a play at the at the fence.

And he always protects his guys too.

He always protects his starters.

He doesn't ever want to start, like if his starter is pitching really well,

he doesn't ever want the starter to kind of pitch himself into a loss after a really good day just because it puts a sour taste in your mouth.

So I trust him a ton in that.

But going back to the complete game thing,

they hadn't hit the ball really hard at all.

I felt like I was in complete control of the game.

I had 11 strikeouts at the time through eight.

I was at 80-something pitches.

I knew who was coming up in the lineup.

I think Jose Ramirez was, I just, or he had just like hit 109 to left field single.

And I'm like, thank God, great at-bat for me.

Like, he's one of the best hitters ever.

And I knew I was kind of in control of the game.

So if there was going to be a handshake there,

that would have been maybe one of the few times I would have strongly disagreed with it.

Don't give him the handshake.

Yeah, but I don't think there was a doubt in anybody's mind.

It didn't even cross my mind that I was coming out of the game.

I kind of knew I was at least going to go out there.

And then

I didn't, at no point was there ever a reliever warming up.

So I knew I was in control of that game.

I got a really dumb question.

I don't know why this is the first time in 40 years of my life that I've had this pop in my head, but you're a lefty.

Is it weird shaking hands with your right hand?

No.

Okay, yeah, that's kind of like a sound.

We've just beaten you into submission.

Yeah, it's just,

we just have forced all of you lefties to do that.

That's society.

Yeah, you just kind of, it's always right hand.

If I were to walk up to you today and been like, I would be like, what the hell is this guy doing about it?

I would think you're injured or something with your right hand.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, I go.

It's just, you know, the biggest thing being left-handed is growing up, the scissors.

are for right-handed people to cut scissors.

Yeah.

And they don't fit the same for lefties.

Like, they're not like ambidextrous scissors.

My son's a lefty, so he's going to have to.

Buy him left-handed scissors, seriously.

He'll thank you for that.

Okay.

Wait, let me try a left-handed handshake with you.

It's going to mess you up.

Okay, you can stay sitting.

It's going to mess you up bad.

If Scoobel shakes my hand, then he's going to give us 10% of his new contract.

Oh!

You hate that.

It's hell.

That's good.

That's hell.

That's the deal.

You hate that.

Oh, that is weird.

Are left-handed handshakes enforceable in court?

Yeah.

I don't know.

I think they're more enforceable.

Yeah.

Because you had to go out of here.

It's sound mind and body.

Like, no one would ever do this with their left hand.

It's not an auto pin.

That's a left-handed.

Like, I have intent behind this right now.

I got a question about you had a very funny interaction with Alex Bregman earlier this year where he was beating you up.

Someone in there loved it.

Yeah, Hank loved it.

He was beating you up this year.

I think he had three hits off you.

And you just told him in between innings, take the first pitch.

And he actually did.

And then he got a hit.

Yeah.

So he went

first pitch

107

to the center fielder.

It may have been a double or something, a single.

And I was like, oh, okay, swing at the first pitch.

That's nothing new to me.

Everybody swings at the first pitch.

So he does it.

Second pitch,

homer.

And I get back in the dugout.

And I have fun when I'm playing.

You know, you're competing, but like, I also enjoy just the game.

And

I like Bregman.

I like the way he plays the game.

I love everything about him.

He's a grinder.

I've heard great things in the clubhouse about him.

And so I go down to the other side of the dugout and I'm like, hey, take one.

Can you please take one?

You're next at bat.

And then he steps in the box for his third at-bat and I kind of give him the hands like, hey, just take one.

Yeah.

And I threw a strike and he took it.

And I go, I started laughing because he did it.

Yeah.

And then the next pitch single.

Yeah.

Well, I go, and then he gets the first.

I go, maybe take two next.

Yeah, right.

You just take, maybe I'll just walk you.

How about that?

Do you think you maybe, I actually talked to Bregman about this because I wanted to get it, like, figure out what you were throwing.

He said that the splitter, that was what, that's what he can hit off you so splitter yeah i don't even throw it or what is it what no uh shit maybe it wasn't the splitter what did he say hank fuck well that yeah i mean if this what did you throw what did you throw there it wasn't the four seam maybe it was two seams maybe it was sinker yeah said he hit one off the wall in the playoffs last year off you and he he feels like that gave him a little confidence so

well if you watch the rest of that game i don't think there was go you should go you should not have said that you don't throw a splitter because now everybody's gonna be like well i used to

i used to throw a splitter and it was horrible, so I had to stop throwing it.

Maybe just ought to have sent back to Toledo if I kept throwing that pitch.

Just tell people that you're bringing it back, then that's one more pitch they got to look for.

Yeah, I got it in my back pocket.

Yeah, you do.

Yeah, yeah, I throw a sweeper, gyro,

yeah.

I'll throw an ephis.

Have you ever thought about throwing an ephis?

You should do it once, just for us.

I've thought about it, but

in the reason I don't think I'll ever do it is the slim chance that it gets just destroyed.

And I would would be

funny though.

I would have no answer to anybody if I gave up a homer on a 65 mile an hour pitch.

Granky, I think, threw one.

Yeah, but Grankie's weird.

Yeah, he is weird.

I think he threw it a couple times.

It's just always, but it's like, that's part of his game, though.

Yeah.

You know, the Ephesus is not part of my game.

Have you ever thought about the gyro ball?

The gyro ball?

Yeah.

Like slider?

I don't know.

The gyro ball.

That's when Dice K came over, everyone was like, it's a pitch that no one's ever seen.

Yeah, they just all call, I mean, it's the fork ball now.

It's like, it's a different splitter.

You know, that's kind of what it is.

But,

you know, gyro now is called, those are called sliders.

So that's like the gyro slider.

You're looking for bullet spin.

That's what gyro means is bullet spin.

What's bullet spin?

So like the ball is literally, you know, the axis is through the baseball this way, and it's sideways.

Yeah, yeah.

Like a bullet would get it.

So a right-handed...

gyro is going to spin this way, a left-handed gyro is going to spin that way.

And you're basically just trying to kill vert and kill horizontal.

It's going to, like, gravity is going to pull this ball down.

Yeah.

And the nose will get pulled down.

And then, I mean, there's a whole, I could get about as nerded out about it as if you want.

We were talking to Paul Skeens a couple months ago, and he still carries around a baseball with him.

And he just, you know, does like different grips on it, always trying to figure out what a new pitch that he could throw is.

Do we have a new pitch that's coming out of the Arsenal soon?

I try to throw a sweeper.

Once in between every start, I try to get a sweeper grip that I like, and it doesn't work.

I can't throw it, but I keep trying because it's like, oh, well, maybe if I put my finger here or maybe if I put this finger here, you know, you constantly are tinkering with things.

What about a knuckleball?

I have a tough time spiking my...

I don't have the most mobile fingers.

And for a knuckleball, you kind of...

I can't really spike anything.

Guys will throw spiked curveballs where they're knuckles like this, and it hurts my knuckles to do that.

I don't have very mobile fingers, I don't think.

So I don't know if that'll ever come.

How many change-ups do you have?

One.

Just one?

Just one grip.

And then counts dictate if I want to throw it a little bit harder, a little bit slower.

At-bats dictate that too.

The change-up is awesome.

I feel like Greg Maddox.

You've thrown it more.

I think it's your most thrown pitch right now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think Greg Maddox had like five different kinds of change-ups that he would throw.

And at some point, you're like, dude, it's just pick like maybe one, maybe two, if you're feeling frisky.

Well, yeah.

I mean, if you want to throw change-ups like that, like he did, I mean, he's throwing like cut change-ups on purpose.

He's throwing like straight change-ups.

He's throwing change-ups that sink.

He's throwing change-ups that go straight down.

I mean, Hendrix kind of does this too.

Yeah.

He'll throw like cut change-ups, cut change-up, cut, change-up, and then, like, he throws cut change-ups to righties, and then later into counts, he'll throw like the backdoor sinking change-up, and you think it's going to cut off, so you take it, and then it runs back on.

So, I think you got to have a ton of feel to do that.

Yeah.

To really do that with change-ups.

You were just talking about a 109-mile hit that you gave up, a single, and you're like, I was okay with that.

That's fine, he's a great batter, I can live with that one.

He wasn't a homer.

Do you have a uh, do you have a favorite hit that you've given up, like an at-bat that you worked really hard on?

We've acted, we've asked quarterbacks this: like, do you have a favorite interception that you've ever thrown?

But do you have a favorite hit that you've given up where you feel like, okay, that was a massive win after that at bat?

I mean, anytime you keep like

the best players in the yard, you know, like Aaron Judge, Jose Ramirez, Otani, Mookie, Freddy, like anytime you just give up a single to those guys, you're like, you can live with it.

Great, great at bat.

Yeah.

Great at bat.

You know, even if, I mean, with runners and scoring position, maybe a little bit different.

But like, I gave up a single to Aaron Judge, I think maybe in Williamsport last year, and he hit it like 114 on the ground.

And

he got to first base, and I was like, hey, nice job, man.

Yeah.

Thank you.

It wasn't a homer, so thank you.

Yeah.

But yeah, you try to keep, you know, really good players just if you keep them in the yard.

And if especially if they're not like, you know, trying to steal bags like that, where they're not running a ton,

it's almost, it's kind of an advantage for the pitcher because you know you can get a ground ball and get a double play and,

you know, get two outs for the price of one, especially when those guys are so good.

Yeah.

What about a favorite strikeout?

Favorite strikeout?

I mean, that one to end the complete game is probably the best one.

I mean, it's the hardest fastball I've ever thrown.

There was one in that game in the seventh inning to

Manzardo that was a sinker, like down and away, kind of off to back on, and that was 102, and that one felt good out of the hand, too.

Was you swearing, walking off the field, and your mom getting mad?

Was that off of a strikeout in the playoffs?

That was off of double play.

Okay, all right.

That was maybe the best double play.

It was a big moment, you know, and then,

I mean, I don't know what happened that day.

I think, I mean, the Cleveland fans were great, too.

I like going there.

It's fun.

And then the playoff series was, that's like, that's playoff baseball.

You actually have a big-time hater in this office that I think.

I know.

I was wondering if I was going to see him.

You'll see him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tate is a big Guardians fan, and

he just writes blogs constantly.

Like, he had an entire campaign that Clause A should have won the Cy Young last year.

I can't keep my name out of his mouth.

Yeah,

and then he's writing like the Tigers should trade you right now because you're not going to re-sign.

So, yeah, you'll get to meet him.

Here's a question.

This might be insider trading, but we're just going to do it anyway because

we're basically part of your agent team now.

I think that was clear.

Do you have like a very good friend starting pitcher on another team?

Like, who's your closest friend?

On another team?

Yeah.

See,

I've had a cool opportunity to just play on like one team my whole career.

Yeah.

Like, no trade.

I've been drafted by the Tigers, play with the Tigers.

So like on the team is

Casey Myes.

Okay.

Me and him have come up together.

But on another team, it's

it's probably Matt Boyd.

Okay.

Yeah.

So he's a pitcher, and he can, so here's what we need to do.

We need to figure out whenever you play him,

you need to be like, hey, Skip, I'm ready to bat today.

And you go up, he throws you a meatball, you hit a home run, and then when we get that big binder from Scott Boris, we're like, Tarek Skubel, if you actually did the math, he would have 450 home runs if you gave him the show, hey, you know, full treatment of bats.

I always say, yeah, I like that.

Yeah.

It's a good idea, right?

There's no chance I could hit first off.

What do you mean?

Dude, I can't hit.

Go pull up the table.

We're going to cut this part.

Not with that end.

We're going to cut this part.

We're going to.

We're going to, at the end of his career, I mean, great player, right?

But he was throwing 84, 86, and I thought it was like 102.

Like, I can't see the ball.

And then

I do say this, though.

I do say I'm the best bunner in Major League history.

Okay, okay.

I worked with Bryce Wilson.

I faced him in Pittsburgh, and I got, I went, you know, 0-0, got my sack bunt down, and I have one bun attempt, got it down.

So

in any big situations, I always say I'm the best bunner in Major League History.

You take that away from me.

I'm one for once.

Never.

How are you at base running?

Well, I was out.

I sacrificed myself because I'm a team guy.

So I got my bunt down.

I'm a big team guy.

I ran to first base.

I was out by 10 steps.

Did you run it out?

Yeah, I ran it out.

So you were slow.

No, I was pitching.

So, you know, you kind of, it's a courtesy.

Once I knew he fielded it, I was like, well, the only way I'm safe is if he, you know, yips it up the line.

But

so I got out of the box, all right, made him think that I maybe could be fast and then shut it down.

But are you fast?

I wouldn't claim that I'm fast, but I'm not, I don't think I'm slow.

You should either.

I mean, you're a hoss.

Haases can't be fast.

Yeah.

Like if you wanted to be fast, you'd have to give up hoss.

I'd rather be a hoss than fast.

No doubt.

No doubt.

But I'm not slow.

I don't think I'm slow.

I think I can run.

I don't think I could run the bases, but I think like

it takes me a little bit to get going.

It takes me a little bit to get going.

But once I get to my, you know, my stride kind of opens up, I think I run decent.

You run for power.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like that.

Yeah, I'm not built for the 100-meter dash, but I'm not built for the 400 or the 1600 or any of those other ones, but maybe like a 250-meter, maybe if you only counted from 75 to the rest of the race.

Yeah, the finish.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

How fun is Javi bias?

I'm pumped for Javi.

I love Javi forever.

Him having kind of a resurgence this year and also like playing center field.

Has that like

your defense obviously very important.

Like is Javi just a guy?

He seems like a very fun guy in the locker room.

Yeah, I love him.

I love him.

He's always taking care of us.

You know, no matter what the results are on the field, he's the same guy in the clubhouse.

And he's taken care of us ever since he came over.

You know, he was the first, I mean, he's he's great too, but you know, what goes under, you know,

overlooked, not under, overlooked, was he's he's playing center field for Parker when Parker gets hurt, right, in spring training.

Parker comes back, he plays his first game at shortstop last night for the first time.

It felt like in, I don't know when was the last time he played shortstop.

And he makes an insane play up the middle to save two runs.

You know, one run scores, but he picks the ball, throws it from his knees.

We get an out, and then we get the next out.

So he saves two runs in that aspect, too.

And that's like such an underappreciated aspect of his game is he'll go from center to third to short to second.

We move him all around and he doesn't complain about anything you know he just wants to play baseball and and i love that about him yeah back in 2016 when we started this podcast big cat took me to a cubs game and he was like watch javi baez watch how he tags yeah it's and i was like this guy's the best tagger in the history of major league baseball i didn't know that was a skill tags and slides

tagging no tagging's like a legit thing yeah like if you're really good at tagging guys out it makes a huge difference yeah for your catcher for games like he's so good at that yeah and his slides are also like he'll you know over a course course of a you know, there's some times where Javi will have some weird things happen on the base path, but he will have like you know I would say call it once a month where it's like that slide There's no one else can make that slide.

Yeah, he looks fine

when he slides really

he looks when he's slide like he slid in the home.

There wasn't even a play at the plate, but he slid

well It wasn't I mean it kind of was the throw was like you know 15 feet up the line So there really wasn't a play at the plate, but he slid and just like as he's sliding just kind of smacks his hand on home and I'm like dude, you're really cool.

Yeah, I think him and Trey Turner have the best slides in baseball.

Yeah, Trey, Trey, I mean, he just like, he does, there's no slides, he just like glides on the ground.

He glides and then stands up in one motion.

It's like a Michael Jackson music video.

Yeah, I don't know how he does it.

It's crazy.

And also, I love Javi's tattoo, the MLB tattoo.

Yeah.

Have you thought about getting an MLB tattoo maybe on your neck, like the front of your neck?

It would show that you love the game.

Yeah.

This might be something we could do.

It looks great on him.

Yeah.

I don't know if it'd look good on me.

I went to a Cubs game on saturday and they employed an interesting strategy with their starting pitcher so they had their starter for a one inning and then they brought in the other guy yeah ben brown who historically doesn't pitch that well in the first innings then he pitches after that do you think that that baseball managers are ever going to get into a phase where they have you know some of their best pitchers pitching every single or as as much as possible

What do you mean?

That's like an opener situation.

Yeah, yeah, an opener.

But like, if you're the best pitcher by far.

You're not having

you're not going to have an opener, but wouldn't it be nice to have you go out there every single game for a few innings?

He's saying, like, if you, like, you're off-day throwing, when you're ramping it up, like, instead of off-day throwing in the bullpen, you just are an opener one day.

I don't know.

I mean, I would love to, right?

Like, I have a bullpen today at the field.

I would love to just throw it in the game.

Opener.

Yeah, opener.

That's like college ball.

Yeah.

You know, where it's like, oh, you're starting Friday.

Okay, well, if we're winning on Tuesday,

this is small.

I'm mid-major guy was where I went to school.

But if we were like playing U-W or something on a Tuesday, our coach would be like, hey, don't throw your bullpen today yet.

If we're winning in the eighth inning, you're going to throw it in the ninth.

And I'm like, well, that's not really a bullpen.

This is the game.

High leverage.

This is like, I'm letting it rip.

Yeah.

But yeah, it's.

I don't think that'll ever happen just with like arm injuries and the risk of all that stuff.

But I get your point.

I think it would be fun to throw a lot.

But then you're just a reliever.

And I'm pretty sure everyone wants to to be the starting coach.

Everybody does want to be the starter, yeah, but you're right.

I think if there was one injury that happened, then whoever that manager was, you're staking your career on that decision if you've got your best guy going out there.

Yeah, and like, I think historically, you know, you see it in the postseason where guys will jump back on short rest or whatever.

I think, I mean, I'd be curious to see the numbers, but I don't think it's like as

good as you'd think.

Like, you want your best pitcher out there, but you want your best pitcher out there on five days' rest.

But on four days' rest or three days' rest, like,

I think the numbers would probably say that your best pitcher doesn't isn't your best pitcher on three days rest yeah you know what i mean yeah so i think the numbers kind of back that too but everyone wants you know like the bum garner thing in the world series where it's like this guy threw one three you know seven like all these games right yeah i mean he's one of the best he's probably the best postseason pitcher of all time maybe if you looked at the numbers but like that is such a rare case because there's also guys that have bounced back on short rests that haven't been very good so can you feel a difference in your arm like what's the difference between four days rest and five days rest?

Just waking up in the morning.

It's a big difference.

It's a big difference.

Just having that extra day.

You know, I think even from five days to six days, you know, seven days I think is always too much.

Like if you're throwing once a week, I think you almost feel too good.

So you don't want to feel that because then your arm, you just don't even know where the ball's coming out.

Yeah.

But from even from five to six is a difference, you know, I think in just the stuff that comes out of your hand.

And then if you go backwards the other way, like

last year, my last start was, you know before the all-star break was whatever and then the the game was on four days rest and i was trying i mean i'm pitching my first all-star game i'm thinking it's going to come out hot my first heater was like 94 seven and i'm like what the hell like i don't throw 94

and uh yeah i just didn't have much with me that day and that game was a little bit unique too like Nothing matters, so your adrenaline doesn't flow the same.

You know, you're like, I don't care if I get rocked or if I, you know, this game doesn't really matter.

I mean, there's a little bit of incentive, but so so maybe that's why the adrenaline was suppressed.

But even then, I think I would have fed off the crowd a little bit better and I was letting it rip and it was like 95 and I'm like, oh, this isn't, this isn't normal for me.

Yeah.

When does the adrenaline start to like, when can you feel it?

Like where it's like game day?

Is it 20 minutes before?

Is it right before?

Because that's got to be like the best drug to be like, holy shit, I'm just ready to go.

Yeah, it's insane.

You get addicted to it.

Yeah.

Like you get addicted to it.

It's probably, you know, on days I go, on days I'm pitching, I'm pretty, you know, relaxed and I like to enjoy and have fun.

And then once I start my routine and I've had, you know, coffee, probably my, you know, I drink three shots of espresso like three hours before the game.

That's kind of my dosage to where I know I'm awake, you know, for the game and I'm ready to go.

Probably

an hour and 15 minutes before the game, that's kind of when I'm like, okay, and you start to feel it, you get the nerves, you're not you don't get like shaky, but you get like you're ready to go.

And then you get out there and you start playing catch, and then it starts to kind of like go down.

And then you hear the anthem, and then that's for me.

Once I hear the anthem, then it's like, okay, okay, it's ready to go.

My next four or five pitches in the bullpen are I, you know, I do a batter, and whether I walk, I don't really care what happens, but I just like go through some sequencing.

And then, you know, once you throw that last pitch, you know, you're ready to go.

Did you have to tinker with that caffeine regimen?

Was there a time when you're going to try five, six shots?

Yeah, I didn't drink caffeine

until 23.

I didn't ever really have caffeine.

That's crazy.

And then

it's like one of the best drugs for performance enhancing, like to make you better.

There's a lot of research about it, you know, to make you like your brain stimulus, all that stuff better.

And

yeah, I didn't start drinking caffeine until I went on rehab assignment.

And I started tinkering it with it on days I pitched.

And I figured four is too much three hours before the game, but three is good and two is not enough.

enough.

So it's always like three.

I'm just gonna slap a stellar blue logo on that entire speech right there.

Yeah, four is too much, two is not enough, three is kind of perfect for me.

It's like martini.

Yeah.

And now I'm like, now I'm addicted to coffee.

That's how we're gonna do it.

We're gonna do it.

I'm gonna get like paid Instagram ads of Scoobel saying all that stuff and we're gonna cat, we're gonna we're gonna basically reel in Boris where he's gonna try to sue me and I'll be like, hey, listen, buddy, let's talk.

Now that we're at the table together, let's talk about some of that.

I need to get some beans.

Yeah, I'll give you some on the way out and I'll send you some.

All right, I got a couple last questions.

First is, I need you to address something.

I was looking at your name on Twitter and just seeing what the buzz is, and I found this one.

This is from at Detroit vs.

Everyone29.

He said, hey, Tigers, I'd love to watch my favorite team play with my kids, but I won't let them watch when Tarek Skubble starts because his pants are too tight.

Can this be addressed?

That's a bad take.

That's a bad take.

You do wear tight pants.

Do you think that maybe you're too tight for the kids?

I don't think so.

Okay.

I made that tweet up, by the way.

I like tight pants.

I like my pants tight.

I've never been like a baggy pant guy.

I mean, I'm wearing joggers right now, and this is kind of how I like my pants to fit.

Yeah, I mean, I won't let my son Chris watch you pitch anymore after you told the Guardians to shut the fuck up.

That was bad.

Your mom was right about that.

Yeah, she was.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

But I was impressed this season you apologized for pimping a strikeout.

Which what are you talking about?

Wasn't that against Netto?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that was,

there was some stuff going on there, and, you know, you kind of handle it on the line.

I'm never going to hit anybody for anything.

Like, I just don't think that's in the game anymore.

And,

yeah, there was some stuff.

And I just didn't want, I didn't want retaliation against our guys too, you know, for me acting like that on the mound.

So that was kind of like, hey,

the moment happened.

We're all good.

You know, I don't need anybody getting hit on our side either.

Great teammate.

Great teammates.

Yeah, great teammates.

We saved lives that self-proclaimed great teammates.

Those are the best guys.

Everyone knows that.

Great teammates.

Yeah, I think that that was

that moment was, you know, I think, I mean, he's a great player, too.

He's doing a hell of a job this year.

But

yeah, you kind of.

Other Twitter question.

Scoobel is God.

You actually responded to him.

That's the guy who gave me the kid who gave me the envelopes to.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, okay.

So have you, we got to get him out to a game.

He loves you so much.

And he sent you a bunch of, he sent you a DM, and I think you responded to it a couple months later being like, yeah, we're friends now.

Very cool story.

It's like, you don't have to do that.

You're the Cy Young winner and you're responding to a random guy on Twitter.

I love that.

Well, I said I would.

I said I would to you guys.

And he's messaged me a couple different times and I've kind of got back to him a couple of times, but I haven't gone over the whole ticket situation.

Okay, we got to get into a game.

Yeah, let's get him out there.

Yeah, why not?

Because he's your number one.

I mean, the fact that you gave me that envelope is still, it will go down as one of the best bets I've ever made just because of the story behind it.

Yeah, that is cool.

That That is unique.

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This This isn't even a question.

This is just Hank has a story he wants to tell you because Hank's a huge fan of yours.

We're all huge fans of yours.

You are a Haas, but Hank, he told us his story a couple days ago.

Go ahead, Hank.

Yeah, huge fan.

Obviously, I was a lefty pitcher.

They're a little bit slower, but

same, same.

Love watching you play.

And I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan last weekend.

I was in an absolute dive bar.

I think it's called Anchor Bar.

Carpeted floors, dim lights.

The TVs were the size of this TV that's above us, like just tiny little monitors.

It was like midnight, 1 a.m.,

and they just had Tarek Schubal highlights on a loop.

I was like, that's what you want in a hometown bar.

And that's what I'm saying.

Grand Rapids isn't a really cool city, by the way.

Yeah, yeah.

I had a great time.

That's where Hai A team is.

That's where West Michigan White Caps are.

And I played there for a little bit.

I loved it there.

I think that's our best city for any affiliate we have in the minor leagues.

It was awesome.

And that's a great sign of like, you know,

the city loves you.

Yeah.

We're just just going to throw on, like, what should we put on this TV?

Like, just throw on scuba highlights.

Yeah, just have it.

Yeah, it's a 15-minute YouTube.

Just have it play all night.

You know how nasty you have to be as a pitcher to have like a long highlight mix that people want to watch at a bar while they're drunk?

You have to be really fucking good for that.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Anchor bar?

Yeah.

I got some buddies that live in Grand Rapids.

I'll have them go check it out.

It's a great bar.

Yeah.

What do you plan on doing against the Cubs on Friday?

Just tearing them apart.

I mean, ideally, got some lefties.

Yeah.

So, wait, you said earlier you hardly ever pitch against lefties.

Is that an anomaly for your division?

Well, it's just

no one likes the left-on-left matchup, really.

And

if they can stack a bunch of righties, they will.

And then the lefties you get are dogs, you know, like Kyle Tucker, Schwerber, Harper, Otani.

Like, you're getting those lefties that are like superstars.

Didn't say PCA.

Lordon Alvarez.

Didn't say PCA.

Yeah, that's bulletin board material.

Not a dog.

Yeah, PCA.

He's going to go yard on you.

He says a kitty cat.

No, but I mean, they're a good team.

It'll be a fun, you know, it'll be a fun weekend.

And, you know, our crowd, I think we've already, I've seen some stuff about how it's going to be a sellout pretty much all three games.

So it'll be fun.

It'll be fun.

And, you know, you look forward to throwing at home in front of your own crowd and going out there and competing.

It'll be a good game for sure.

Who's starting?

I don't know.

I mean,

we might have an opener again.

Let's see.

Not Buido.

Tyone pitched on Sunday, so maybe.

Yeah, yeah.

Or Ben Brown, if they did the opener, he pitched on Saturday.

Wait, Max.

We're also going to run this next week.

So

how'd it go?

How'd that game go?

Yeah, the game go.

We're going to run this on like Wednesday.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I went seven shut.

Yeah, that's what happened.

Seven shut.

I love it.

Max, have you been doing the crossword in there?

Or is that memes?

That would be

no.

Wait,

because they were doing that.

It's so entirely disrespectful.

I'm like, that's actually the most disrespectful thing.

Terrence, this is bad for you.

That Hank's doing this.

Hank didn't go to college.

Wait, Barstool is an answer.

Yeah, that's why Hank got it.

The question is.

I got to stop looking because what company do you work for?

No, no.

It was

at a pub.

I was just like, you know, we pulled it up, but we were talking about it.

And I'm actually pretty proud of my progress.

I don't know.

You can't look at that.

Is that today's?

Is that today's?

Today's.

Okay, yeah, don't look.

Just give him one clue.

Give him one clue that you haven't gotten.

Jerry O'Connell is obsessed with Tiffany Gomas's

feet.

And he calls him this.

Child's word for foot.

Yeah, give him which one across.

You guys haven't gotten one across yet?

No.

Do one across.

Vicinity.

Close?

How many letters?

Four.

Area, probably.

Ooh.

That's a wild guess.

This is bad, though, if Hank can do this crossword.

You might have to go to New York Times or L.A.

Oh, yeah, there we go.

All right, now you go one down.

What's one down?

One down.

Seek permission, ask.

There we go.

Down starts with an R.

Two down, R, insecure, actress, Issa Ray.

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know who that is.

Oh, Ray.

Oh, you got it.

Three down starts with an E.

Lamb's mother.

You.

E-W-E.

E-W-E.

Yep.

Nope.

Four down.

E-W-E.

W.

What's four-down?

Starts with a starts with an A.

Characteristic.

Attribute.

How many letters?

No.

It ends with CT.

And it's.

Well, as long as you've got that right.

Oh, yeah.

Aspect?

Characteristic.

Yeah, maybe try to get two across or three across.

I got aspect.

That's right.

Okay.

Five down.

Bad.

It's a 2021 Edge Reen song.

Edge Shereen.

I don't think that's how you say his name.

Yeah, I don't know that one.

I just love that, Hank.

You said E-W-E, and Hank put E-U-E, and he goes, nope.

All right, Tarek, you're the man.

Keep crushing it.

And we're big fans.

And let us know when you need us to negotiate.

We're ready to go.

All right.

You're in some change.

Okay.

All right.

Just put us in.

Put the ball in our hand.

I appreciate it.

Yeah.

Thank you, guys.

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And now here he is, the GOAT of the chess world, Magnus Carlson.

And now for something completely different.

Okay, we now welcome on a very, very, very, very, very special guest.

First ever Grandmaster chess player on this show.

I believe so.

It is Magnus Carlson, the greatest chess player of all time.

And I'll start with that, Magnus.

Am I allowed to say you're the greatest chess player of all time?

Or is it the goat debate is settled?

You are the goat?

I'm not sure I'm the right person to ask, really, but

I don't mind.

That's completely fine by me.

I am the right person to ask, so I'll just say you are the goat.

Undisputed goat.

Who else would be in that conversation?

Well, there's Garrett Kasparov, who has a very good

pace,

I think.

And then there's Fisher as well, who Bobby Fisher kind of had, I would say, the highest peak in terms of the difference

between him and his competitors, at least in recent times.

The problem with Fisher is that he kind of stopped playing right after he became world champion.

He had like that three-year peak from 70 70 to 72.

So

it's hard to say, but

I'm getting there.

So, okay, that's all I can ask for.

Let's make the case for you because that is what we want to come out of this interview being like, Magnus is our goat.

We'll fight anyone who goes after him.

The case I would make for you is, so you have been world number one for what, 14, 15 years?

Is that correct?

Yeah, I think continuously now

since 2011.

Love that.

15 years.

You also are playing in the most difficult era of chess, I would assume.

You can correct me

because the computer assist, the computer analysis has gotten so smart that I think I heard a quote that you said in the past, you know, 20 years ago, to learn an opening in chess would take you a month.

Now people are able to learn it in five hours because they have the computers helping them.

So I would say that you're playing in the most difficult era era because people are able to get up to a top level faster than they were 20, 30 years ago.

I agree to some extent that it's kind of harder to set yourself apart

these days.

Preparation has kind of become less important because everybody kind of agrees these days that the engines sort of know everything and your phone can pretty much come up with the same result as somebody could come up with with days and days of

research.

So

yeah, that part has become a lot easier.

As you said, it's so much easier to attain information and to get to a certain level.

So

I think, yeah, in many ways, it's harder to set yourself apart in these days.

Honestly, if you're talking about normal chess as well, the best openings are kind of unplayable these days.

And if you look at just Gary's area, he was way ahead of his competitors when it came to opening analysis.

And he would win a lot of games purely based on that.

And you just, you just cannot really do that anymore.

Go confirm.

But Gary was playing against plumbers.

Yeah, it was a different era.

And also, I think more people are playing these days, right?

He was playing against plumbers.

He was playing against construction workers.

Yeah, the rules have changed too.

It's harder to succeed in this era.

But

when you were talking about the opening, I'm always interested to hear chess players talk about it because the opening for me would be like if I learned four moves.

It's like, okay, I know this opening.

At what point does the opening stop and the middle of the game commence?

Yeah, the openings are very different, of course, because the openings that we play, the openings that we're worried about are not necessarily the same as that we would be on average level, right?

On most recreational level, people learn like a certain setup and they don't necessarily want to play the most sterile lines where you're just going for

a draw with

the black pieces.

I would say the opening these days

often ends a little bit earlier

than it used to because we're going out of

kind of the charted most charted territory a bit earlier.

So I would say these days, maybe on

after

12, 13 moves on average,

we can say that the opening is over and the middle game starts.

I will say, though, that this is one of the reasons why

I've been pushing to play a different form of chess, call it Fisher Random or Freestyle or whatever, where you actually sort of eliminate the opening completely and start

and start from

the middle game.

But

yeah, we'll see what the what the future uh holds on that.

So, that that style of chess that's where you randomize the back row, right?

Yeah, you randomize the back row.

There are a couple of rules: like the king has to be in between the rooks, so you can castle on both sides, and the bishops still are in opposite colors.

Uh, but it the idea is basically that you use the same skill set that you're that you have in chess to a to a large degree, but it's supposed to be kind of harder to mask your weaknesses because you you cannot like count on a certain amount of setups uh that you use because uh it's it's more

um it's more complicated than than that if the the major pieces start on on different um different squares but for now that is more of a game for for professionals than than uh than amateurs really because for at most levels like i i i when people ask for advice for openings and so on i said like play whatever play whatever you want right and anything anything works as long as you've um

uh as as long as it suits you and you got practice there yeah what what what uh a little bit about your your history at what age were you like i i can do this i'm i have a mind for this that is different than everyone else was there an aha moment uh and when did you start playing chess

i've never looked at myself that way that i that i am necessarily that much different like i've understood at some point that yes i can understand the game better than others but i i don't really know why i don't feel like i'm like i've necessarily got um

a better mind, better memory, and so on.

So I started relatively late in chess terms, I would say.

I played my first first tournament when I was eight and a half.

And at that point, I would say I had had roughly half a year of quite significant chess training on my own.

And

I would say, so I played the Norwegian championship under 11.

I finished in middle of the field, which, you know, I didn't have any expectations.

I thought that was good.

And then the next year, I won it.

And i thought well i've now beaten a lot of the kids that started a few years earlier than i did who are a couple of years older and i've sort of gotten there in one year then i started thinking well maybe

at least

at least i was doing it a different way than the others like

you know how we go to to soccer practice or um whatever other ever other sport you're doing like most kids if they do that they do it once or twice a week and then maybe you have a match at the weekends or something and this is what kids would do with chess as well there were very often this kids tournaments in the oslo area i wasn't doing that i was studying on my own a lot apart from that like i was i wasn't merely playing chess like i was already living chess to a large degree back

then.

And so it was in that sense, it wasn't a surprise that I surpassed the others.

But that's when I felt like, yeah, I could actually be quite good at this.

And what was the moment?

How old were you when the world started noticing like, oh man, this guy,

when did you go world number one?

Were you still a teenager?

The first time I was world number one was only for...

I was for about a week, but that was late 2008.

So it was a little before my 18th birthday.

Okay.

And that was pretty cool.

Like that was

about nine years after I played my first tournament.

So

the progress until then have been pretty good.

Yeah, that's insane.

So yeah, you were talking about how you live it, how it's part of your life more so than it is like an activity or a recreation.

When you're playing,

do you

get the same joy out of winning as you used to?

Or is it more about the process for you?

Unfortunately,

the sad thing about chess as in life is that negative feelings are kind of

they're enhanced a bit.

So,

like a really painful loss, as people may have seen from my last tournament, like it hits a lot harder.

You hate losing.

Yeah, it hits a lot harder than

the wins.

So, I'll have like

I'll be very satisfied often when I when I win.

I may not always show it,

but it like the reaction to losing is unfortunately stronger still.

But I saw how you lost, and I said, I like that because you show me a good loser, I'll show you a loser.

Like, you're going to get back in the lab and you're going to be stronger.

Yeah,

but

I don't know.

Part of me, honestly, when I had that loss recently, just felt

it was so dumb and so unnecessary.

and it just made me feel so kind of washed and useless that my my thought for a few days was just

i i'm not sure like why why am i doing this when i when i win it's

it's good but it's it feels kind of normal and then when i lose it's just

um you know for for a moment the the world's the world just falls apart It was so funny when people were like, Yeah, he's the bad boy of chess.

I love that nickname.

Like, you just get mad after a loss, and you're like, Wow, what a bad boy.

Look at this rebel.

Well, you also wear jeans.

Yeah, true.

Yeah, the jeans.

It's a good one.

So, you are the bad boy.

Are you the bad boy of chess?

I don't aspire to, sorry, I don't aspire to be

to be

a bad boy.

Sometimes I think I'm in a position compared to some of my

peers, I'm in a position where I can afford not to take shit.

Yeah.

So I think that's when,

but honestly, like those moments I had like banging the table, like I'm generally not going to apologize for outbursts in the moment, as long as you kind of, you realize afterwards, well, you show your opponent the proper respect and and and so on.

I obviously like, I wish I could have avoided that by winning the game, but I honestly think that there should be room for

that in

chess as well.

It's a little bit like smashing your racket in

tennis.

Like, it is such an uptight sport to begin with that I think.

Yeah, human emotion is good for the game.

It's growing the game.

Now, you said something there that you had moments afterwards where you're like, am I washed?

I want to come clean.

I'm not a big chess fan.

I saw two clips that week, and both of them were your losses.

So I was like, I think I made the comment on this podcast.

It's like, all this dude does is lose.

And so, and then everyone corrected me.

It was like, he is literally the best chess player of all time.

He's been world number one for a decade and a half.

So I'm going to come clean on that.

That's on me.

You're now my goat.

But like,

when you lose a game, do you have those thoughts of like, hey, chess is a

young guy's game.

It's a young kid's game.

You see the child prodigies.

Are you worried about, you know, how much longer you can go?

It has to be said, though, the way that I lose, it depends.

That particular loss felt so bad and so unnecessary.

And I guess part of it was, well, this guy is young and

he's the official world champion.

And I know that.

you know this is going to be a big thing but there was another game in the last round where i was losing for parts of the game but it was a very interesting game and i still had chances to come back and in that game i was very comfortable with the thought that i i might lose because

you know it's it's it's a good fight it can it it it can happen um

and yeah you know i managed to pull through but if i'd lost well that would have that would have sucked but it wouldn't have been

wouldn't have been the end of the world um

you know the time the time when the kids surpass me it's gonna come for sure

but it's not there yet yeah i love that wait so you're saying it was the way you lost and also by the way you won the tournament you ended up winning the tournament so like that should be

stated

as you said the the clips that you see

i i said it before as well that if people stop caring when i lose then that's not a good thing that's true don't boo nobodies.

That's the famous saying in American sports, Reggie Jackson.

So wait, so it was how you lost that you were more mad about than losing because losing happens in chess.

How, how did you lose?

Like, what did you, is it a specific tactical error that you made that you're like, how did I miss that?

Or was it overthinking?

Yeah, it was a combination of a

combination of a few things.

Basically, I dominated that game most of the game.

I was basically just choosing between the most comfortable ways to win, and then he started like digging in, really fighting back.

And I

it's one of those where my time starts ticking down, and I could feel that you know my blood sugar was dropping a bit as well, so that that didn't help either.

I got short of

time, and by the end, I had completely,

completely lost my mind, which is which is why I felt so

washed, because I felt that that kind of thing wouldn't have happened to me five, six years ago.

But I can definitely

accept it if

somebody plays a great game and beats me.

That's fine.

It's still going to suck,

but

I'm fine with it.

If somebody like in that game just kind of gets outplayed with the white pieces and then I just like

implodes

implode in that way, that was, yeah,

pretty bad.

It's fascinating to read about what chess players go through during a tournament because I feel like a lot of people that don't follow chess don't realize how much stress these guys are under over the course of a tournament.

I read, I think it was in the New York Times that said that you can lose like 15 pounds over the course of a tournament just from anxiety and sweating.

Do you go through that at all?

Or are you able to kind of like keep a level mindset?

I don't know.

It depends on the tournament.

But what I will say is that

I got to where I am now, which is at my

in-laws summer house with my wife.

I got here a couple of days ago.

And like my appetite since I've been here has just

been eating non-stop.

So I probably

love that.

Probably had some energy

to recover after that tournament.

Can you get a snack if your blood sugar drops?

What are the rules about that?

No, you can definitely get snacks.

And

I usually am quite good at regulating that during games.

And

I mean, that particular day, I mean, okay, the excuse train starts, yeah, but that particular day, um,

I had walked to the city, which is about a 45-minute walk because a lot of roads were closed because of a bike ride.

And then, because of that, well, I also be golfing earlier in the day with my coach.

You gotta golf, you gotta golf, yeah, you gotta golf.

Like, we started five o'clock, so yeah, why not?

Yeah,

and then

uh, there, yeah, I was everything was delayed, so I only had time to

get some Chinese takeout.

Like that was right by the playing hall.

I brought it into the playing hall and started eating it during the game.

So

I was kind of fine, but my body was like a little bit more stressed than usual.

And so I felt that I needed to be a bit more vigilant.

And the thing is,

as I said, I'm usually very,

very conscious about those those things if i know that i have a winning position but it might go on for another another half an hour i will regulate based on on that get an extra snack or something but you know sometimes when the brain just malfunctions you forget about you forget about those things

And then it is just a good old-fashioned meltdown.

It sounds like you beat yourself.

And also, you got to have a snack coach.

You got to have a guy that's at your side with a suitcase filled with pretzels, ice cream.

We can learn.

We can improve from this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's my go-tho.

You beat yourself and we get to get you started.

I know.

I mean, usually I have to give my opponent credit.

Like, it doesn't come out of nowhere.

If he doesn't start fighting like a lion in a lost position, then we don't, then we don't, don't get there.

Like, he could have laid down, but he, he didn't.

But yeah, of course, I

large.

That's the game I win 98% of the time.

Yeah, I've got

it is what it is.

I've got a couple of dumb questions for you.

Is there such a thing as like a fantasy chess league where

I can draft, I guess not players, but you know how like if you play, I know you play fantasy soccer or fantasy football,

but you know how you can get the team and you can get like certain players on the team.

What if I were able to draft like your knights on my fantasy chess team?

The funny thing is we're we're actually working on that.

There's a company called Take, Take, Take, which does a little bit of chess app.

It was like a watch zone for chess, and we do a lot of YouTube stuff as well.

And we are working on exactly that thing you're talking about, in that if you think about it as a normal fantasy team, that the chess players are sort of the teams, and then the pieces are the players that you draft.

Yeah.

So

so yeah, we're, we're, we're, we're definitely working on that and other kind of like simpler fantasy games as well that are more based on on predictions.

But

but yeah, there, there definitely is

something to be to be said for that in chess.

And it it we want to give people an extra incentive to watch, let's say, you got my H-Pawn, and there's some kind of endgame where you know, like, if that pawn

becomes a queen, you win your, you win your mini league, and, and, and so on.

Yeah, yeah.

So, like, what would be, what would be the big board if you were to look across the chess landscape?

Would it be your pawns, Magnus's pawns, rank number one?

Would it be, uh, what's his name?

Uh, Hikaru, his, his queen, or would it be like Neiman's anal beads?

Which one would be 1-1?

That's a good question.

Uh, there's a guy, we've done a few tests, and there's a guy called Alaris of Irusha from France.

His queen does

he just plays like wild, complicated games.

So, his queen should be the

um, you know, the number one draft pick in any his queen work is insane, the best queen in a league, yes,

yeah.

What's your what's your number one piece?

Um, honestly, probably

my

queen as well.

Although I do feel like my flank pawns, like if you want to get in cheap on something,

that's those are those often live very long and important lives

in my games.

The pawns are the offensive linemen of chess.

They are.

What would be your worst piece?

Somehow, my

light square bishop

does worse than my dark square bishop.

And I don't understand.

It's just something about the way that I play.

It was not about Bobby Fisher that he much preferred his light square bishop to his dark sword bishop with playing with the white pieces.

But

I don't know.

From me, it's for some reason the opposite.

Yeah.

You solved a 50-piece puzzle when you were two years old.

Do you remember what that puzzle was?

No, no, I don't remember it.

But what I do know is that my

four-year-old nephew,

he's better than I am.

He's been better than I am for a couple of years already.

So

we definitely got some

talent in our

bloods.

Do you know how long it comes to that?

Yeah.

Do you know how long that puzzle took you when you were two years old?

I don't know.

I have very few memories.

All right.

I'm just trying to figure out because I did a 50,

a 50-piece puzzle with my son, like, maybe a few weeks ago, and it took me about like 35 minutes.

So I'm thinking you were smarter than you as a two-year-old are smarter than me as a 40-year-old.

I don't know.

Honestly, I think the last time I did, I did a 200

puzzle piece with my nephew.

I think that took a couple of hours.

That was embarrassing.

Okay.

I probably think that I was better at two or three than I am now.

That's crazy.

Is your nephew, he's playing chess?

No,

I don't think he started with that yet.

What's the youngest you can be to actually learn the game and to get good?

So

there's an Indian kid who's three years old and who's rated 1600.

What does that mean?

What does that mean for us?

Because we have no idea what that means.

Yeah, that means you're a very decent amateur player.

You beat.

you're like a

middle-of-the-pike player in like a normal chess club anywhere.

That's crazy.

And I like, I've seen him play.

He can definitely move the pieces around.

Let's say, and I think you're the goat.

You're our goat.

You're going to be the goat for a long time.

But let's say 10 years from now, you get passed up.

Would you rather get passed up by

a five-year-old or maybe someone who's in his 20s?

Because

I think you'd want to get passed up by a five-year-old in like the most hilarious fashion.

I don't think it's possible to get to that level at five.

You're the goat.

But, you know,

I want to see somebody.

I want to see somebody among the kids

really stand out.

and be

a serious threat to be that new number one guy who can actually dominate because that has been the norm and

in chess that there's there's always kind of been that one guy who's who's been better than the others and with the kids right now i don't i don't see it like there are a lot of them are really talented but it's not obvious that some one of them is gonna is gonna dominate so yeah uh i would i would love for that to happen and then i probably you know

um try my very best to to hang on for another few years that would be so funny if Mir Big Cat were playing against this three-year-old there's there's a good chance he would just absolutely destroy us and then he would 100% yeah and then he'd have to get his diaper change like that's a possibility that that could happen yeah he's like he's peeing himself and just ruining us mentally um so so for you uh i know that being number one for so long for the longest the longest the longest of anyone uh in chess history ever born in the history of the world.

Actually, Kasparov was about 20 years, and I'm 15 years.

I don't want to be hurting my case here.

Okay.

All right.

All right, fine, but that was also.

Listen, that's let's just throw this in there.

That's the plumber area.

Yes, the plumber and also

USSR geopolitical shit.

I don't know.

Yeah, they were cheating.

People figured out Russia.

They were doping.

That's why they're not in the Olympics.

Yeah, actually, here's what we'll go with.

Kasparov had two different times.

He wasn't number one for 20 years because he was Kasparov USSR Kasparov of Russia different two different guys different guy yeah the flag changed the flag did change I'm looking right now the flag had changed head to head yeah you versus him who won

I only played him a couple of times um

at you know 21 years ago I managed one draw okay

and then

We're actually working together back in 2009, which was extremely after he'd retired.

So he was my coach for a bit, which is extremely helpful for me.

But then we played a few training games.

We didn't play too many, many because it got too competitive.

And, you know, I love that.

It would kind of ruin the whole vibe.

Yeah.

But I think then it was barely even like I had slight edge, but it wasn't, there wasn't a huge, huge difference.

So, so as you've been so good.

He's really good.

Yeah.

As you've been so good for so long, do you have to find new ways to keep yourself engaged?

Or are you ever like, I've played all the chess, I've thought about every possible combination of moves?

Like, how do you, how do you stay at the top if you've been that dominant for that long?

Easy answer is that

I love playing.

And to me,

the next tournament is the most important, right?

The next game is

what I'm concerned with.

So

there is nothing particular that

I would love to win,

except for the next game.

So

I'm still living and breathing when I'm at tournaments, but honestly,

I don't have a lot yet to to achieve.

So I just, yeah, I just love playing.

Have you thought about maybe trying checkers?

Honestly, I don't

even know the rules of checkers.

So I could beat you at checkers.

You're a bum.

I didn't mean to.

You're the goat.

That's very funny.

I mean, and also, we definitely couldn't.

Yeah, you would.

You would sit down at the board and immediately you'd say, okay.

Two seconds to figure it out.

Can you explain the jeans thing?

The fact that

you got fined, most ridiculous thing ever.

Is that just the chess has to figure out a way to kind of get with the times?

Because you actually got fined for wearing jeans to a tournament?

Yeah.

The thing was that there was

a dress code and a general dress code was,

I don't know, business casual or smart casual, something like that.

But the thing is,

I was

in a lunch that ran a little bit late

and I went back to the hotel, got changed.

I just forgot to change my jeans.

It was an honest mistake.

These were decent jeans.

Like, I had a nice shirt.

I had a jacket.

I definitely

met the general criteria for the vibe that you wanted for that tournament.

And the most ridiculous part was that like chinos were allowed, jeans were not.

And players were checked for

pants that well these looks look like jeans but they're actually chinos so it's okay so it was about the material somebody came up and had to think when it when it when when it's uh it was it's it's like a 200 player tournament it in a big hall and most people like they

they don't make a ton of money from from chess.

Like they cannot necessarily afford to have nice, nice suits and so on.

But in my case, it was an honest mistake.

And

I was told that I was going to get fined.

And if I don't change for the next game, then I will be forfeited,

which I thought was

so insane that I thought there was no way they were going to enforce that, seeing as I looked,

I looked perfectly presentable.

And well, then then it turns out they did.

And then I was like, yeah, fine, whatever.

Yeah.

I don't like,

I didn't.

I understand that,

you know, they have certain rules and they wanna want to enforce them.

But I think

the,

you know,

I still think it was absolutely ridiculous, but yeah.

Bad boy.

I'm not sure if I'm the best ambassador for

the whole jeans thing because you know, I like wearing jeans, but as I said,

it was an honest mistake, but it's it's become a thing now.

So now I'm obviously wearing jeans to everything.

Yeah, I like that.

Yeah, can you wear shorts?

No, one player was actually forfeited for wearing for wearing shorts at a tournament.

That's crazy.

And his explanation was that, well, this is a knockout tournament.

And honestly, I expected to get knocked out in the first couple of rounds.

I don't have any more clothes to

use.

This is all I got.

You see, like, this is the level we're at

at chess tournaments.

But

that's why I loved playing from home online tournaments during the pandemic.

Like, you can be sure that I was rocking shorts under the table

in a lot of those online events.

Would you play better if you're wearing shorts?

Yeah.

So

I was living like by the sea.

So a lot of times I would use the breaks in between games to like go for a little swim.

I would come back with my hair all wet

and with my bathing shorts dripping and just sitting down on the towel and playing the games.

Love that.

Love that.

Do you think that your hair gives you an edge?

Like, can you tell that your opponent gets mesmerized sometimes?

Yeah.

I don't know.

I just'm too lazy to do anything about it, unfortunately.

But that has also become a thing now.

So whenever I actually make my hair, people just get freaked out.

Well, you're a heartthrob as well.

Your bad boy heartthrob goats.

One last thing about the goat, and I have one last question after that because I know you're going to run, but

you're being humble by saying, you know, Kasparov and everyone else, there's no one who can touch you right now, though, right?

Like, no one

in a full tournament setting can touch you right now.

No, I mean, I will lose a game here and there in a tournament here and there, but at the moment, I would say that I'm definitely the best at

every format that we play.

And honestly my closest competitors are still the uh the old guys guys around my age

so yeah the kids they're good but they're uh they're not quite uh quite there yet i love talk that chat i love that yeah we gotta start talking more can we talk on your behalf you did you did post a uh omar from the wire uh post you know that was that was kind of talking some i like that

can i is is it wrong if i admit that that was not me and that was my social media guy?

And I probably wouldn't have done that myself.

Okay.

Are we allowed to post clips from the wire on your behalf?

Yeah, for sure.

Like you make a great move with your light squared bishop and then we do the weebay where he's like looking around like, holy shit.

Yeah.

That one?

This one?

Sure one.

Sure.

Okay.

Are we allowed to tell people that you'd fuck you'd fuck a bitch up with your light squared bishop any day of the week?

Dark squared.

Dark squared bishop.

I knew that.

Fuck.

All right.

I got to tighten that up.

I got to tighten that up.

But we're working on the light square.

Yeah, we're working on it.

No, that's actually.

No, I said it right.

It's your, you'd fuck him up with your off bishop.

Even the one you're not even good at.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You'd kick your ass, that's true.

You'll beat their ass, you know, left-handed.

I don't know what dominant hand you are, but yeah, that's how you've got to be.

Yes.

I'm left-footed, though.

Oh, that's okay.

All right, Magnus, I got one last question.

We really appreciate it, man.

It's been awesome.

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So my last question is,

so in the future of chess and where you're going,

how, oh, no, actually, I have a different question because I heard this about you and I find it very interesting.

There's a timer for chess, right?

So what is the timer in a tournament setting or is it varied tournament to tournament?

It varies tournament to tournament, but you can say that classical chess is usually about two hours per game and then you have rapid chess which is like 15 20 minutes and you have blitz chess which is five minutes or less okay so i was listening to an interview and it was really interesting to me that you said that basically uh there are time there are times when like someone who you're playing they will take forever to make a decision and you know in your heart of hearts like if you go past about 10 15 minutes you're you're not going to find something that wasn't there and i feel like that's that's a good way to live life where it's like people overthink everything now.

And you're like, in chess, I will have, I will know, like, I will go through my list of what strategies I want within the first 10 minutes.

If it's not there, you, you got to just make a move.

No,

that's, that's true for for sure.

And that is something that chess teaches you as well.

Exactly that, that you have to make decisions constantly, and they're not going to be based on perfect information.

But

how much much better is it going to get if

you procrastinate?

That's uncertain.

Before we go, one last thing that I will say, because I'm going to get in trouble after otherwise.

What's that?

It's that my wife loves the pizza reviews.

Oh, okay.

That's fine.

One bite.

We got to get you.

Listen, do you come to America for tournaments?

I'm coming to Vegas for a freestyle tournament

in

July.

Does a freestyle tournament get crazy?

Freestyle, is that the Bobby Fisher one with the randomized?

Yeah, that's where you randomize the starting position, yeah.

Okay, well, we'll exchange contact information.

Maybe we'll get you on a pizza review.

That would be fun.

Yeah, that would be fun.

Yeah, yeah.

She'd love that for sure.

Okay.

Awesome.

Well, awesome.

Thank you so much, Magnus.

You are our goat.

We will defend you now.

Who's your biggest rival?

Like, who should me and Big Cat set our sights on and make sure that they know that they're not the goat?

I would say

it's yet to come.

There's no way.

Yeah, you know what?

Actually, the real answer to who your biggest rival is is you not eating Chinese food during a game after playing 18 holes of golf.

That's the problem.

That's the only way you're going to lose.

Yeah, sadly.

Yeah.

All right.

Thank you so much, Magnus.

We appreciate it.

Thanks.

Magnus Carlson was brought to you by State Farm.

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Magnus Carlson was also brought to you by Experian.

We're going to take a moment to talk talk about BFFs.

Zach, who is your BFF?

Memes.

Memes, I love that.

Memes, who's your BFF?

Big Hat.

Nice.

Oh, nice.

Big Cat, who's your BFF?

It's you, PFT.

Hank, who's your BFF?

Zach.

Everybody's getting love.

I like that.

Did anybody say Hank?

Hank didn't get love.

Ask me who my BFF is.

Who's your BFF?

It's you, Big Cat.

Nice.

There's one BFF who always looks out for you.

Hank and I, we have a business relationship.

Yeah,

not personal.

There's one BFF who will always look look out for you in the financial space and that is experian they are your big financial friend your bff experian has a bunch of legit ways to help you save and get this the experian app helps it lets you check your fico score and it does a bunch of more totally bff kind of things to help you manage your finances bet your other bffs can't do all that experian is here to support you in making smart financial decisions and maximize your financial potential.

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And now, here's guys on chicks.

Okay, let's wrap up.

We got guys on chicks.

Hank.

Yeah.

Let's do it.

My boyfriend cannot stop golfing.

I bought him new clubs for his birthday, assuming he would want to play golf with me, but he has an addiction.

He has played seven days in a row, only watches YouTube golf videos, and claims he's going to break 90 this year.

What is a way to get him away from the course or to be able to get me involved in golfing with him?

He takes practice swings constantly at home and claims if he did it full-time, he could become pro or make a cool YouTube channel.

Okay.

So you bought him the clubs, though.

Yeah.

So this is.

You bought him the clubs with an understanding that he would golf with you.

Do you have clubs?

Does this lady have clubs?

Probably not.

I honestly think if she just said, hey, can we golf together?

He'd probably be like, okay.

Yeah.

And this is also, we've talked about this lesson a million times, but before you start dating, you have to have all your hobbies set because you can't just add golf.

You can add golf, but you can't add golf addict.

No.

There's a difference.

You could be a golfer, but if this guy's playing seven days a week and YouTube tutorials and practicing a swing in the living room.

That's gonna, you're gonna need to ease into that one.

Yeah.

Hank, are you addicted like that?

No, you're not even, you're actually, I wouldn't say you're a golf addict like that.

No, I, that, that described me pretty well.

Oh, okay.

I like, I, I, like, I watch, I just watch golf.

Like, I'll put it on a TV show and watch like an episode and then just like throw on YouTube golf.

Do you practice your swing?

Uh, not really.

I mean, I messed around here.

I had some putts, like a little putting green.

Oh, nice.

Okay.

But yeah, I mean,

every guy just wants to be Ryan Whitney after he's stopped playing hockey.

Yeah.

That was like the greatest statement I've ever heard in my life.

Yeah.

My problem with golf is it's not four hours.

No, no.

If you're playing around in golf in most urban locations, if you have to go for a drive to get to the course, you're looking at probably, I'd say, six and a half to eight hour investment.

That's my thing: 12 holes.

Make 12-hole golf courses.

12-hole golf courses would be perfect.

You'd be in and out in

Done.

Yeah, or yeah, like you said, it really is that you can't pick it up after the fact because

all the free time they want to be golfing, you want to be doing whatever else it is.

It's just going to come to a head.

You can't even substitute a golf addiction for a former addiction that you had.

Yeah.

Like you have to, you have to start the relationship being like, just so you know, I've got

really 19 holes in my life, and I spent a lot more time with the first 18 than the last one.

Or, and that's where it's like, it's also, it's, it's, no,

I was talking about the butt.

Oh.

Exclusively butt.

It's not really feasible because, like, it's an, it's actually insane, like, how expensive country club memberships are.

But, like, if you are at a country club that has a pool and, like, a restaurant and stuff, you're like, oh, yeah, like, you know, just let's hang out at the club.

But I'm thinking about it now.

The move, now that we're talking it out, is for any single guys out there and you're not addicted to golf, pretend you're addicted to golf.

And then you can slowly ease it back and look like a hero.

Ahead of time.

Yeah.

Yeah, because you think one day you might get a golf addiction.

Right.

Or even if you don't get a golf addiction, you're being like, yeah, I play golf seven days a week, but for you, I'm going to do five.

I'm going to quit.

Yeah.

And then just use that time to go to the bar and watch games.

My fiancé is starting a new job and now is telling me he can't take a day on.

day or two off for a trip we had pre-planned for my birthday, which is in his third week.

I've told him the trip was pre-planned and his job will understand, but he's insisting he can't go because it's a bad look for his new job, which has turned into a big fight.

Am I crazy or is he right?

You got to try.

No, he's a pussy.

Yeah, you got to try.

He should have

no.

He should have said when he was applying for the job, hey, I have a vacation in three weeks.

Yeah.

Like, is that cool?

Yeah.

He just was a pussy about it.

And now.

I also think that's one of those things that's smart.

And I guess I haven't really ever started a new job, but when you start a new job.

That's a great statement to have.

I've never started a new job.

Are you a one jersey guy?

One jersey guy.

Just go in and say, I have a pre-planned vacation in two weeks or three weeks in.

Because that's always yes.

As an employer, you have to be such an asshole to be like, yeah, no.

Yeah, it happens all the time.

They're not going to say, we're not going to hire you because you're taking a Friday office.

Right.

Right.

But as you're going through the application process, you might think that in the back of your head, you got to make sure that they want you more than you need them.

yeah this guy yeah you to this woman you got to just tell you tell your boyfriend to nut up what do you say max my first week at barstool uh my brother was getting married that weekend and i missed the rehearsal dinner because i was too scared to tell dave oh early on friday

it's rehearsal i know but my brother was mad how'd you do huh how'd you do at the wedding

i had i i was good you said you have to rehearse in practice oh

rehearsal dinner isn't like no it's not a rehearsal or a real no that's where the game plan that's where the install goes in.

But it was also around the same time of like the

this is

this will be real real ones will remember this like the the the golf guy that was missing work for golfing and then Dave fired him.

Yeah, so it was at the you remember that Hank.

Yeah, well, this is why whenever you apply for a job you you tell the gambling intern, you tell the employer, like I have a golf addiction, even if you don't.

Yeah, and then you can just be like, I'm leaving for a golf trip.

But I feel like real jobs is no, no, no, real jobs is different.

I didn't, I mean, I didn't, I didn't do anything.

I was scared to do anything for like five years with Dave.

That's a little different, but I feel like now we're a real company.

When we interview people, they say that.

It's like, yeah, no problem.

Yeah.

I've had that happen like multiple times in the last year where someone says, oh, yeah, by the way, like four weeks, I have a vacation.

Okay, great.

Happened with Pug when he first started.

Yeah.

Happened with Dom, my assistant.

He was like, hey, I have a wedding.

He's like, yeah, no problem.

Just say that, even if you don't.

Yeah.

We're just teaching everyone how to just kind of skirt around.

You take your first two weeks the second you start.

Yeah, that's how you really get

system.

Yeah.

Honeymoon.

Sup, Big Cat PFT and Hank.

I've been dating my boyfriend for six months now.

We both love to travel and we go into Italy at the end of the month.

My boyfriend handled booking the flights for us and I just logged on to Delta to confirm everything was put in correctly.

Uh-oh.

I was shocked to discover he booked himself in business class and me in economy.

I'm a teacher and he does very well at his job.

And I feel like this is 100% a slight.

What do I tell him?

That is

insane.

You know what he's saying?

Diabolical.

He sounds like a good guy.

Sounds like this will work out.

Dude, why?

He basically is just setting up for a fight in Italy.

He's basically going to a boxing match in Italy.

I'm going to read this the best possible way and say

he's going to say when you get to the airport that he's in business, you're in economy, and then at the last second, switch and let you go in business.

No.

And if that doesn't happen, you need to just not get on that flight.

Wow.

You need to say like something's off about this flight.

I don't feel good.

I'm going home.

That motherfucker's not real.

Yeah.

Something like that.

Yeah.

There's one thing that I

oh.

If he has, what if he has like points?

This status, like a certain status that he can sit anywhere on the flight for free.

You got to let her know, though.

Yeah.

Because

I've had this fight.

Wait, you've done this?

You both.

not, no, it's both economy, but I get

I can sit, I can sit like

six aisle, and then she, and then my girlfriend's like 30 aisle, or 30 window, and then I have to go back to 30 aisle, and I'm like, I had six, I had six aisle

with more legroom

and the first off the plane.

But it's because

I can sit wherever I want on the plane, right?

All right, so, oh man, this is a brutal one.

If the guy's listening, here's what you got to do.

You got to be like, hey,

I thought that at least one of us should have some sleep on this flight.

I'll handle everything when I get there.

But you're screwed.

Or he also could play the, well, I thought that we could split it.

When one of us is sleeping, we can go up to business

and the other person can go back.

Or maybe it's like, I'll take business on the way there.

You get business on the way back.

Here's guys of moron.

Here's what not to do.

The second you book those flights yeah you know what's coming you know it here here's what's not to do and because i've i've tried this in varying points in my life where i'm like i'm i'm taller i need i need this you don't that's a bad idea tried that doesn't work i've done the reverse because i don't really care that much and it's a great he just passes out yeah yeah what a crazy move though you he he basically just signed and sealed his vacation to be a knockdown drag out fight for at least two days.

This is, it's such a weird move to do that.

He can't possibly be like, I'm going to sit in first, you sit back there.

But he would be

comfortable.

He's going to move.

He's going to let her.

You lose the fight every time.

You got to lose that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, there's no way to win the fight.

There's no way to win the fight.

Even if you get to stay in your seat,

you're going to lose.

She should leave him.

He had to have gotten that seat.

How long?

He had to have gotten that six months.

If he doesn't give you the seat, you break up with him.

If he spent extra, like, if he spent five grand, like out of his own pocket to move on to that scene.

He said he does well.

And not also move, then this is the worst guy in the world.

You know what?

I'm like choosing to believe that this guy isn't that much of an ass.

You know what?

Pig Cap makes a good point.

The guy,

he works hard.

He does well.

She's a teacher.

He does very well financially.

She should not get it.

Get your cash up.

She probably wouldn't even like it.

No, this guy's the one.

She'd probably be like, what is this bubbly water?

Yeah.

That's champagne.

Come on.

Yeah, maybe what you should do is go back in the middle of the flight and give her like an eighth of a piece of pizza and a little sip of like a dipepsy.

I'll give you the here.

You go, pizza party.

I'll give you the crackers that they give me.

You get all my snacks.

All right, is that it, Hank?

One more second.

One more?

What happened?

Lost it.

Wait, is he a troop?

He might be a troop.

If he's a troop,

that's his seat.

Yeah, respect.

Could Big Cat eat an entire machine of ice cream?

Genuine question after seeing him down numerous cups of milkshakes during the Doug Doug challenge.

Hmm.

What would be the amount of time?

I mean, that's what that's gallons.

How much ice cream?

There's Zach,

what goes in there?

Don't take off your headphones, Zach.

Zach, how many gallons hold in there in the machine?

So it's 20 quarts each side, 40 quarts total, 4 quarts in a gallon, 40 divided by 10 gallons.

10 gallons?

No.

Four.

Right.

Four gallons.

How many gallons in the whole thing?

Four.

He's taking out.

One second.

super calculated

super calculator he's got the calculator out 40 quarts

yeah so there's so 10 gallons of mix but each gallon of mix makes 1.5 gallons of soft serve oh my gosh so it's even more

15 gallons 15 gallons of soft serve ice cream would be our max if we filled it all the way up there's no way no chance it would take me it would take me a month

so much ice cream yeah drowned in ice cream yeah uh all right let's uh wrap up the show zach i have a question for you.

Yes, sir.

I drove you home on Sunday night.

I had a great time.

I appreciate the ride very much.

Yeah.

What floor do you live on in your

14th floor?

Oh, 14th.

Okay.

14th.

How long, PFT and Hank, how long do you think...

14th floor.

He lives on the 14th floor.

How long did you avoid standing next to the windows?

Roughly between one and a half to two weeks.

Okay.

You just didn't go even close.

I didn't want to go through them.

Yeah.

What do you mean?

Like, I didn't want want to get close enough.

Like, I didn't want to get close enough to the window.

Like, say, God forbid, I asked the leasing lady, she said this double pane thick glass, but like, if you were to go through a window at the 14th floor, you're Fenito, you're done.

Right.

So I just stayed a little bit back.

Are these

like floor-to-ceiling windows?

Yeah, they start at the ground so you can kind of like peek and see, like, ooh, you know, like, oh, shit.

Like, if I go down there,

it's over.

But you have, you live in a studio.

Yes.

So you

took like a quarter of your apartment away.

I did avoid a decent amount of the square footage yet because the window's right there.

But I'm more comfortable with it now.

I've got reassurance.

And then

most people let me know I was an idiot and I should just get to the window.

How much room would you give yourself between where the window was and where you had to stand?

Just like a good foot.

And then I made sure I wasn't like putting pants on or anything close to it getting dressed in the morning.

So I would avoid things that I would have to balance for near the windows too.

Are you a fall risk?

Not a fall risk, no.

But a window avoider that high sometimes.

Window avoider.

I think those windows are built that they could take you i they say yeah sure it's always until i just like the idea of you being in what how many square feet is your apartment i think it's like 399 and you were just you just cut off just say 400 yeah

399 yeah you just oh yeah

you just cut off a portion of your apartment because you're like i can't get near these windows but it's it's on the wall so you just it's not like it was

it was easy easily avoidable yeah very easily avoidable we're comfortable near the windows now pretty much for the most part pretty much now are you afraid of heights uh

It's the fear of falling that gets me.

So, I guess, yes,

heights, a little iffy on.

Yeah, I hear you.

Yeah, people

terrified of heights.

Terrified.

Although I went down the brewer's slide last night and they warned me, they said, Bernie's slide, if you're afraid of heights, it's a very tough, tough thing to do.

No problem.

I've been working on myself.

Love that.

I've been working on myself.

Oh, it's impressive.

Yeah, you can do it too.

You can get yourself kids in the playground.

But

slides are scary.

Good job.

No.

I mean, no, they're good.

There was a moment where the kids love slides.

The lady that worked for the brewer was just like, you were so brave.

Oh.

I was like, thank you.

I was.

I was a brave boy today.

All right.

Good show.

Number.

Three.

Oh, wow, memes.

God.

Sick.

Today's the day, memes?

60.

Could be.

What's your backup number?

Six?

Backup number 92.

92.

I'll go 92.

I'll go six.

Okay.

I'm 60.

I'll go 55.

99, Poke.

Go 14.

63.

21.

Good luck, Zach.

Usual.

What was your number, Zach?

14.

Oh, 94.

Oh, that would have been so good if it was 92.

Love you guys.