MLB Preview With Jeff Passan, Caitlin Clark Gets Revenge, The A's Ownership Is A Joke Plus We're Getting A Turtle

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Speaker 1 Today's part of my take. We listen to the people, and we have a baseball preview, a real baseball preview.
We've been wanting to get Jeff Passing on for a very long time, and it did not disappoint.

Speaker 1 Awesome dude. Great interview.
Tells us all about the game, some teams we should be looking out for. We're also going to talk some women's Final Four.

Speaker 1 We had Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese on Monday night.

Speaker 1 We also have an update to the Oakland Oakland Athletics and fuck John Fisher. We are joining the cause even more.

Speaker 1 We're going to do Hot Seat Cool Throne. We're going to do FAQs.
We're going to have a great show.

Speaker 1 Hey, what's going on there, pal?

Speaker 5 We saw you at the hockey game.

Speaker 4 Do I know you guys?

Speaker 5 I'm Ryan Whitney. I got a drink named after me.

Speaker 1 Not a big deal. Pink Whitney?

Speaker 1 That's what I thought.

Speaker 4 See you, fellas.

Speaker 1 I invented the thing, you pigeon. Pink Whitney for legendary moments.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 let's go.

Speaker 1 Now in the street, there is violence,

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Speaker 1 and then a candle game all on the sun. Oh no, we're gonna rock it down to Electric Ivenu.

Speaker 1 And then we'll take it higher.

Speaker 1 Oh, we're gonna rock it down to electric.

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Today is Wednesday, April 3rd, and Caitlin Clark is her. Her.
Hermaty. Hermothy Clark.

Speaker 1 That was an awesome two games. I'm going to say it right now.
That was awesome two games because I feel like people were just focused on Caitlin Clark. Angel Reese, we love women so much.

Speaker 1 I watched the second game, Juju Watkins versus Paige Beckers, and that was awesome. Paige Beckers might be my goat.

Speaker 4 Yeah. We love women more than any other podcast in America.
I love women. I love women.

Speaker 1 Love all. Hank, did you watch? Do you love women?

Speaker 1 I do love women. I did watch.

Speaker 4 What was your thought, Hank? What was your big takeaway?

Speaker 1 Great play by both sides. She's She's her.

Speaker 4 Which one's her?

Speaker 1 They're all her.

Speaker 4 They're all her. Yeah, it was honestly a great play.

Speaker 1 Even Van Lith?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 1 Yeah, she might not be her. Well, I don't.
Oh, you all. Hank.
She's her. Her my take.
No, no, she's no, she's her. I don't bad game.
I don't define a career.

Speaker 4 I blame Kim Mulkey. Yeah, because Kim Mulkey just refused to make an adjustment.

Speaker 4 And then at the end of the game, when she put Johnson on her,

Speaker 4 that was like, why hasn't she been defending Caitlin Clark the entire game?

Speaker 1 Well, she did have a few fouls, but yeah, Johnson was, I think she had three fouls in the first half, but she was awesome. She's the one to watch.
Also, her. Also, big time her.

Speaker 4 Future her.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Kim Mulkey, it felt like she was like, there was some kind of grudge, maybe like a Malcolm Butler thing going on where she was like, I'm going to punish Van Lith and just make her guard Caitlin Clark one-on-one.

Speaker 1 Someone, I think one of our colleagues, and I'm sorry that I didn't, I think it might have been Reigs, but I probably got this wrong, but he said that Kim Mulkey is perfect because it's like

Speaker 1 if Bob Knight dressed up as

Speaker 1 in the birdcage. Yeah.
Yeah. That's really what it is.

Speaker 4 It's a good point. And it was, yeah, it was a very bad job coaching by her to not make an adjustment on that.

Speaker 4 I knew that something was off with Kim from the second she stepped out in the court, and she was wearing the most understated thing that she could possibly.

Speaker 4 I want Kim Mulkey to be like full-on Kim Mulkey, but wearing the technical or dream court coat. Instead, she looked like Leslie Nope celebrating St.
Patrick's Day.

Speaker 1 But we can't be hypocrites because we've always said like, when Cam Newton used to dress in his crazy hats and then lose a game, I think Kim Moki knew that they were in trouble.

Speaker 1 And that's why she dressed down.

Speaker 1 That was her ass whooping. That was her get-my-ass whooped suit.

Speaker 4 She didn't want to wear like a magic eye dress to the podium afterwards.

Speaker 1 She didn't want to wear a full tiger skin.

Speaker 4 Yeah, now, to be fair, I thought that LSU was just pounding the shit out of Iowa in the first half. And also,

Speaker 4 it was a great sporting event because we were very excited to watch it. We had talked about it for a few days.
It was highly anticipated.

Speaker 4 And then it lived up to the expectation, which is rare well let's wait to see if it's a great sporting event because we don't have the ratings yet okay yeah we'll wait to see that uh

Speaker 1 we think it was

Speaker 1 we think it was if it had been on abc then maybe it would have been better than we was we have to argue the ratings uh no matter what yeah what whichever way they go we have to find a way to argue about it uh constantly because as everyone knows we watch sports only that other people want to a lot of other people want to watch and if a lot of other people aren't watching it then that sport means nothing and it's funny because the ratings, when they are on network as opposed to on cable, there's always a massive difference.

Speaker 4 Like, if you look at the men's side of the bracket, when they show like the highest-rated games of the season so far or of this tournament, they're all the CBS games. Yeah, the other ones, which I

Speaker 4 understand that it is a thing, but still to this day, I don't understand who has CBS and doesn't have ESPN, or who has ABC and does not also have ESPN.

Speaker 1 Hospitals, hospitals, yeah, maybe, old people,

Speaker 1 maybe,

Speaker 1 maybe some hotels.

Speaker 4 And you know what? I realized watching this game: who doesn't have ESPN?

Speaker 1 Because I got it like 20 years ago. You understood.
Like, remember when ESPN got Monday Night Football and people are like, this is bullshit. Yeah.
Like, how could you do this? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Or even when they had Sunday Night Football, I was like, this is bullshit. No one can watch.
Like, well.

Speaker 4 Can you even get a cable package that doesn't have ESPN?

Speaker 6 I would like to. Yeah, there's like a 10-channel basic package.

Speaker 1 It's like CBS Box, NBC, ABC.

Speaker 1 Just thought of our next punishment. Yeah.

Speaker 1 God, that was so. Oh, my God.
Maybe dorm rooms.

Speaker 4 That act might not have ESPN.

Speaker 1 That would be torture. No, because

Speaker 1 when I was in

Speaker 1 dorms, they're not using. 20.

Speaker 1 Oh, shit. We just got aged shit.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's a fair point.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 4 I realize that Hank is right.

Speaker 1 No, but I had ESPN when I was in college. I remember PTI'd, like, the first episode of PTI.
That's right, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Again, aged us. God damn it.
We just, Hank just set a trap and we just walked further into it. They're just using YouTube TV.
Damn it.

Speaker 4 They don't even have, they don't have the women's college basketball game for my Sega Saturn. It sucks.

Speaker 1 We got to get off this topic because I've been having a couple days where yesterday I thought that Draymond Green actually bought a bedazzled

Speaker 1 testicle necklace.

Speaker 4 Oh, the nutsack, yeah.

Speaker 1 It was NBA Cental.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that was going on. They get you sometimes.

Speaker 1 But yeah, the games were awesome.

Speaker 1 Kim Moki, no idea what she was doing, but Caitlin Clark, like that was something about great athletes and rising to the occasion and being like, you could tell it was very personal for her, even though she was saying it wasn't.

Speaker 1 But it was very personal. Getting the revenge, dropping 40, like hitting shots out of nowhere.
It was awesome. It was a great watch.
It was a great game.

Speaker 1 I think UConn's going to beat him, though, because I think Gino, like, if you watch the second game, Gino had a game plan for Juju Watkins that Kim Mulkey just didn't have for Caitlin.

Speaker 4 Kim Mulkey's game plan was one-on-one and then have all your bigs drop back. Yeah.
And so she was just getting open look after open look. I think you might be right because

Speaker 4 I think it's going to be Yukon and South Carolina in the finals, but it would be awesome if we had dueling NC State UConn finals.

Speaker 1 That would be great.

Speaker 4 Both brackets. But I think I like the format of the women's game better.

Speaker 1 What do you mean the quarters?

Speaker 4 The quarters. I like the quarters.

Speaker 1 You know, I was thinking about this as well because

Speaker 4 I quarters makes more sense. The fouls reset.

Speaker 1 But I like that

Speaker 1 college basketball is the only basketball that does halves. Yeah.
They're the only basketball that does.

Speaker 6 Also, I like one-in-ones. Women's doesn't do one-in-ones.
They do five fouls per quarter is the double bonus.

Speaker 1 One-in-ones are fun because you can just be like, well, this guy's got a chance.

Speaker 4 But I mean, if you're watching, my one knock against the NCAA tournament on the men's side is that down the stretch, if there's like two minutes left in the game, it just turns into a foul fest.

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah. Where the game's stopped every five seconds.
And you don't get that in the women's game.

Speaker 1 Well, you get it sometimes. Remember Caitlin Clark versus who was it? Oh, yeah.
Otto or no. Yeah.

Speaker 4 At the very end of that game. Oh, West Virginia.

Speaker 1 When she hit her. And she shot like 17 free throws.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but I think it minimizes it. Yeah.
Like it lessens it, whereas sometimes at the end of men's games, it becomes like, okay, there's really no action going on. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Either way, it was a great night of basketball.

Speaker 1 I was very, like, I was glued to my TV. I think women's basketball already arrived, but arrived even more.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think it's here.

Speaker 1 It's here. It's now.

Speaker 4 They're her. It's very now.

Speaker 1 Until we see the ratings.

Speaker 4 We're going to have to wait to see the ratings. And the one group of people that did not like the game last night, the city of Albany.

Speaker 4 Rebecca Lobo just took a wild shot at the city of Albany. They got a stray shot.
When she's like, yeah, there's really nothing to do in this city.

Speaker 4 And Albany's just sitting there watching it, so proud that they're hosting a game. All eyes are on the city, and then Rebecca Lobo just taking a big steaming dump all over it.

Speaker 1 But did they have any arguments against? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 So McKinsey works here at Barstool. She's from Albany.
Okay. She was quick to respond: we actually have the biggest Walmart in the world.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 Also, State Capitol.

Speaker 4 So, yeah, so up yours.

Speaker 1 State capital's got to count. Yep.
Something.

Speaker 1 How many people do you think? Here's something nice to say about Albany. I would say out of any state in the United States of America, people get what's the state capital wrong more with New York.

Speaker 1 Yeah, maybe people are going to be able to get it. So then it's like the fun, like, no, actually, it's Albany.

Speaker 4 Yeah, Albany's the capital. It's also.

Speaker 1 I don't know if that was a compliment.

Speaker 4 It might be the most corrupt city in the world. Really? I think most people that serve at the head of the New York state government end up getting arrested after out of office.

Speaker 4 I think it's like 90% of them. Chicago's got to run for it.
Chicago's pretty good, too. Baltimore.

Speaker 1 Baltimore.

Speaker 4 What do you call somebody? Are they

Speaker 1 just basing that off the wire? I've been re-watching the wire.

Speaker 1 It's such a good show.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I remember Hamsterdam.

Speaker 1 But don't you think that if you asked like a hundred people what's the capital of New York, they'd be like New York?

Speaker 4 I think most people would say New York. What about New Mexico? That's another one.

Speaker 1 Santa Fe. Damn, Hank.
Nice, Hank. Florida.

Speaker 1 Tallahassee.

Speaker 4 Hank, Mr. Geography.

Speaker 1 What about Pennsylvania?

Speaker 6 Oh, this one's tough. I know this one.

Speaker 1 Pennsylvania, Montpelier.

Speaker 1 Oh, so what about the state you reside in?

Speaker 1 Chicago? Yeah. Oh, fuck.

Speaker 1 Wait, Chicago's not a

Speaker 1 capital. I live in Illinois.
This capital of Illinois is.

Speaker 1 Montpelier. Yeah, correct.
Just keep saying Montpelier. Springfield.

Speaker 1 Springfield. Yeah.
Yeah. Nailed it.

Speaker 6 I think there's a Springfield in all 50 states. I read that like 10 years ago.
Yeah, Simpsons.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's why Simpsons, everyone can claim The Simpsons.

Speaker 4 Is somebody from Albany called an Albanian? Yeah. Tough to do.
Tough night for the Albanians. You'll rise up.
Or in New York.

Speaker 1 You got it. They probably have good pizza and a lot of snow.
Someone brought a pizza, a pizza shop brought a pizza to Dave and they gave it to him on the way out.

Speaker 4 It looked amazing.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And there's a SUNY there.
There's a SUNY. Oh, I got it.

Speaker 1 Billy Dale. Every part

Speaker 1 of TGI Fridays. Yeah.

Speaker 4 So awful. Dragged you to TGI.
Jake, you should be so lucky. TGI Fridays is fantastic.
Dragged you there.

Speaker 1 All right.

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Speaker 1 Other things we got to talk about. We got to talk about the Oakland A's.
So PFT and I have

Speaker 1 unveiled a gambling strategy this year. We're betting against the A's minus one and a half every single game.
So far, we're four and one.

Speaker 1 But, and we've have a long history of John Fisher, fuck John Fisher, piece of shit. We'll never buy anything from the gap.

Speaker 1 I think that's what he, I think that's where his money's from. So the A's are a joke.

Speaker 1 The A's have great fans. The A's are moving to Vegas.
The fans are losing yet another team. We feel really bad.

Speaker 1 And there's this website called The Last Dive Bar that uh is supporting the fan movement they did for opening day they did a big uh tailgate thing outside of the stadium a ton i think it was like 20 000 people basically showing hey we have fans you just don't put out a product and you're moving the team you pieces of shit So The Last Dive Bar has a bunch of merch, which is great.

Speaker 1 And they have these bracelets. And a couple A's players were wearing the bracelets and mysteriously got benched and sent down.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think there were four four players that they've spotted, but the biggest names, Ruiz, Estuary, Ruiz, he was your hit-by-pitch guy.

Speaker 1 He was my hit-by-pitch guy.

Speaker 4 I think he led the majors in stolen bases last year. He's very fast.
He started out, I think he went three for five. Yeah.
And then they sent him down to AAA.

Speaker 1 He was wearing a last dive bar bracelet.

Speaker 4 He was wearing a last eye bar bracelet. There was the other guy.

Speaker 4 They're all star from last year. He got benched.

Speaker 4 So it seems to be that they're punishing the guys that are wearing these bracelets. Right.
They're basically saying, we like the Oakland Coliseum.

Speaker 1 And we like the fans to support us. We want to support it.

Speaker 4 So they're punishing their own players allegedly for going up against the ownership. And it's sad, man.

Speaker 4 Like, I'm going to get a little bit serious, but there's nothing more evil than an owner of a sports team that treats their fans like shit. And this guy is the king of it.

Speaker 4 It should be illegal what he's doing.

Speaker 4 He's taking away joy from an entire city. He's taking away families growing up and becoming fans of the team and memories that you're going to have with your family going to these games.

Speaker 4 He's taken away the community because he wants to make a little bit more money, even though this guy, he's a fail son. Yep.
His parents owned the gap.

Speaker 4 He inherited all of his money, and he wants to be like, Oh, I want to make a name for myself. I want to make my own money.

Speaker 4 I'm going to steal a team away from a city that loves it, and we're going to move it to a city that does not give a fuck about it.

Speaker 1 Yes, and they're cowards. Because

Speaker 1 he never faces the music, he never answers to what he's been doing. He's been putting out a terrible product and basically saying, look, no one's here.

Speaker 1 When we know when the A's are rocking, that place is awesome. The Coliseum is one of the coolest places when they've had these runs.

Speaker 1 You know, the 20-win game, 20-game winning streak back in the Billy Bean days, the playoffs where they had guys dressed up and all this fun stuff. They're passionate fans.

Speaker 1 And this fuckhead, John Fisher, has basically robbed them not only of their team, but kind of of their dignity because the way they're going out is so sad and what he's putting on the field is so sad that he's like, oh, well, no one's showing up.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, you did this. You created all of this and you're a piece of shit.
And we stand with the city of Oakland and the fans of the A's. And

Speaker 1 it's so petty that he's...

Speaker 1 We don't know for fact that he, you know, made these roster moves because of the last eyebar bracelets. But a coward like him would make that type of move.

Speaker 4 Well, if you listen to the way that the manager had to justify the moves, you could tell he did not believe what he was saying.

Speaker 4 It sounded like he was just he had to say something that was not the owner told me to do this. So he came up with something with Ruiz where it's like, yeah, you know, last year

Speaker 4 he needed some things that he had to work on. Yeah.
And he did not address at all what he's, you know, he's obviously one of the best players on your team.

Speaker 4 And when you're trying not to lose, it's a big double middle finger to your fans. And credit to A's fans because they have organized boycotts.
They've organized reverse boycotts.

Speaker 4 They've organized protests. They're doing everything that they can.

Speaker 4 Like, normally, when a team gets moved, it's usually, you know, people are upset about it, but you don't have this big uprising against it like you saw in

Speaker 4 European soccer for the Super League, where people flip their shit.

Speaker 4 The A's fans are actually going out there and making their voices heard. And it just stinks having a guy that just is outwardly hostile to your fan base.

Speaker 1 So I don't know if you don't.

Speaker 4 And they turn their replies off on their Twitter. Yeah, they turn their replies off.
That's the most cowardly shit you can do. They're cowards.

Speaker 1 So here's another thing that is crazy in the cowardly nature of the A's front office and ownership.

Speaker 1 So last night we were talking via text and we were talking about how we won again because the A's stink. Again, this is not a, we're betting against the players.

Speaker 1 We're betting against John Fisher because he's a piece of shit.

Speaker 4 And he's actually going to do everything in his power to make sure that we keep winning our bets. Correct.

Speaker 1 Crazy. Correct.
So we were talking about it and we were talking about the last dive bar and how cool it was that these guys are

Speaker 1 so passionate about the A's and trying to get the fans, you know, being like, hey, we're still here. So

Speaker 1 I was like, let's go buy some of these bracelets, support them. I went on the Last Eye Bar website.
Their merch is awesome. I got a little crazy because I was going to buy merch for all of us.

Speaker 1 So I ended up buying a lot of merch. So I hit submit on the merch.
And Brian, who runs the Last Eye Bar, emailed me like two seconds later and was like, this is his email. Whoa, what an order.

Speaker 1 Just want to make sure you intended to buy all those items. And it wasn't a slip of the thumb.
Mind blown. So I was like, shit, he probably thinks that I mess up.

Speaker 1 And so I replied to him, and I was like, you know, I'm Dan. We have part of my take, like, we support you guys.
And he sent me a couple links.

Speaker 1 And the story with The Last Die Bar and the A's specifically just shows how cowardly these people are.

Speaker 1 The Last Die Bar has been doing this for a while, where they've been making incredible merch and being a part of the community and helping the community.

Speaker 1 The A's actually commissioned a bunch of The Last Die Bars' work,

Speaker 1 and MLB sent like a letter to them and was like hey you're in copyright infringement and Brian was basically like but you don't understand like like all of these designs the A's commissioned this from us

Speaker 1 and essentially the A's once the once the it was clear that they were going to move they ghosted the last eyebar completely never thanked them for anything they had done for them never said like hey these guys made a lot of cool shirts and promos and all this stuff Like, Brian was saying that they did bingo night that he ran.

Speaker 1 They basically pretended they didn't exist and won't even look them in the face. This passionate fan group that has been doing a great job for the A's.

Speaker 1 So the A's used them the minute they were going to move. We're like, oh, we don't know those guys and have ignored them.
So if you're looking to support the A's, they have a couple other groups.

Speaker 1 The last eye bar, we're going to be, I bought a lot of stuff. So we'll be wearing it.
We'll be wearing their bracelets.

Speaker 1 And we want to support the city of Oakland because owners like like this are pieces of shit. They should not just sell the fucking team.
Sell the team to someone who wants to keep it in Oakland.

Speaker 1 It's like we're at a point now where fans are smarter than they've ever been. We know what's going on.
It's happening actually right now kind of low-key with Jerry Reinsdorf.

Speaker 1 He's pulling the same shit right now. And if he tries to move the White Sox to Nashville, we will absolutely be like, fuck you, and do the same thing.
So it's just...

Speaker 1 We're at a point now where fans can figure out we're not stupid. We know what's going on and we stand with the city of Oakland and fuck John Fisher.

Speaker 4 We do. And nothing would make me happier than if every single player on the A's wore that bracelet.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 You can't fire all of us. Yeah.
And that's a little unfair because they have jobs.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they want to get paid.

Speaker 1 They have families.

Speaker 4 They want to be in the big leagues.

Speaker 1 They're in a bad spot.

Speaker 4 I'm not saying that they're bad people if they don't do it at all. It would just be funny to see what the A's would do if everybody on that roster also wore the bracelet.

Speaker 1 Just sell the fucking team, man. Like, just do it.
And go fuck off.

Speaker 4 And you can make a lot of money.

Speaker 1 You can make a lot of money in the middle of that.

Speaker 4 Sell it to that. Fuck off.

Speaker 1 Sell it to that Oracle guy.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Make a lot of money in the Bay Area.
Find another.

Speaker 4 Just one billionaire. That's who we should be putting pressure on.

Speaker 4 Any of these weird Silicon Valley type people, as we've said on the show before, if you're a billionaire and you don't own a sports team, you're a fucking weirdo.

Speaker 4 One of those people needs to step up to the plate and just offer them a big, big offer, buy the A's, keep them in Oakland.

Speaker 1 I have thought.

Speaker 1 The thought crossed my mind, because our betting strategy is that we're betting the same amount against the A's every single game.

Speaker 1 The thought crossed my mind that what if we just won a game, doubled it, won a game, doubled it, so we had a billion dollars and we'd buy the A's.

Speaker 4 That would be an awesome story, wouldn't it?

Speaker 1 Also,

Speaker 4 Major League Baseball, you're currently embroiled in a gambling scandal right now. Do you think it's the best optics to move a team to Las Vegas?

Speaker 4 If Rob Manford is serious about the gambling issue, I think the first thing he should do would be to not let a team move to the city of sin. I agree.

Speaker 1 I agree. But either way, the Last Diebar guys, and like I said, I wish I had a list of the other ones.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry that I'm not, don't have all of them, but there's other AIDS groups that are doing great, great work. We are

Speaker 1 in preliminary talks, depending on where our travel takes us this summer, to potentially come out and support Last Ibar.

Speaker 4 Yep.

Speaker 1 We should do a live podcast in the

Speaker 1 maybe we could trick John Fisher to come on.

Speaker 1 How could we do that?

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 4 He doesn't talk to anybody.

Speaker 1 We just put like a big box and a string and a pair of like khakis underneath.

Speaker 4 With a big

Speaker 1 striped polo.

Speaker 4 Disregard everything that we've said. We are the biggest John Fisher fans in the world.
Love to talk to him, pick his brain about how to be a successful businessman.

Speaker 1 Hey, you know what, John Fisher? You're probably misunderstood. Want to come on, pardon my take, and explain your side of things?

Speaker 4 Because we're just getting one side right.

Speaker 1 Softballs only.

Speaker 4 And it seems like in today's culture, billionaires are the easiest targets for people, and they don't get to stand up for themselves. So we would like to be your mouthpiece.

Speaker 1 Oh, man. How great would that be if we could trick him to come on, and then he walked off?

Speaker 4 Yeah, that'd be great.

Speaker 1 He's a piece of shit, man.

Speaker 1 Oakland 68 was the other one. Oakland 68 is the other fan group that I think does great stuff.
Say worked in conjunction with Last Eyebar.

Speaker 4 Say something nice about the A's as well. Their outfield grass is awesome.

Speaker 1 Dude, the Coliseum rocks.

Speaker 4 I love the grass in Oakland.

Speaker 1 I know. I even bought,

Speaker 1 I'll say it, I bought a couple

Speaker 1 art prints.

Speaker 4 Oh, of the Coliseum?

Speaker 1 Yeah, from Last Sidebar. We're going to put it up in the studio.
Yeah, because we're going to stand with Oakland.

Speaker 4 And if you've seen the artist rendition of the stadium that they're planning on moving to, or the one that Fisher just threw out there, it looks like the Sydney Opera House. Yeah.

Speaker 4 It's just ridiculous. They're not going to move into that stadium.

Speaker 1 It has me juiced up, too, because it's like

Speaker 1 we have...

Speaker 1 you know, an awesome platform that we're very lucky to have. And it's like, if we can use it to stand stand up for the regular fans, like fuck John Fisher.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 This is a fuck John Fisher podcast unless he wants to come on and then we'll have him on. And again, softballs only, John.
Yeah. We'll be so nice.

Speaker 1 We'll ask you, oh, hey, what's your favorite type of gene cut?

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's good. That's a very

Speaker 1 good first question, John. Hard question.

Speaker 4 Tech vests, are they back?

Speaker 1 Yeah. When you thought of making polos with vertical stripes, were you like ka-ching?

Speaker 4 You remember those swing commercials that you used to have with the all-white background people jumping over each other? That was brilliant. Yeah.
You're an advertising genius, John Fisher.

Speaker 1 John Fisher.

Speaker 4 I would like to just put this out there. I will fight John Fisher.
I would too. In Rough and Rowdy.
Yep. I will fight him with one hand tied behind my back.

Speaker 1 I will fight him with both hands tied behind my back. So you fight him with one hand, I'll fight him with none.

Speaker 4 Just headbutts only from Big Cat. Fight us, John Fisher, you bitch.

Speaker 1 Fight us. You won't.
He's probably just sitting in his little mansion like, oh, Vegas won't like you. That's the other thing.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you're going gonna go out there they've already got their billionaire mark davis yeah and he rocks he's not gonna he would never move a team never he would he's not gonna invite you to pf shanks

Speaker 1 damn it we got ourselves in that one hey call us old again you're old okay okay the pro football football show is presented by the chevy silverado built for the hustle ready for the game chevy silverado is america's most dependable full-size truck whether you're grinding through the week or gearing up for kickoff the silverado is one ride that's always game ready just like football it's about grit grind and getting it done head to chevy.com to learn more and build your own chevy silverado uh can i talk real quick about a fan base since we're we're on fan base talk uh that i want to give a quick shout out to and that is the providence twitter providence basketball twitter fan base because i don't know if you guys have seen this but they're basically gaslighting ed cooley into resigning yeah they started there were i think it was an april fool's joke with a uh fake account blue check mark account being like ed Cooley's about to resign, story coming soon.

Speaker 1 And they've taken that, and the hashtag the resignation is trending. And I actually think if there's one fan base that could get someone to be like, wait, am I resigning?

Speaker 1 It's the Providence basketball fan base.

Speaker 4 They're an army.

Speaker 1 They're crazy. I love them so much.

Speaker 4 They are a weapon. I do not ever want to be on the wrong side of Providence.
They got John.

Speaker 1 I mean, it was once John Fanta did the windmill dunk, they're like, our powers are unlimited. Yeah.
Yeah. So they're going to get Ed Cooley to wake up and be like, am I resigning?

Speaker 4 There's probably somebody in the Georgetown, in the university that has seen that and been like, wait, is Coach leaving?

Speaker 1 Listen, I know that he's probably not resigning, but it was 0% chance on Sunday, and it's at least a 5% chance today. Yeah.
All because enough people are tweeting the resignation.

Speaker 1 Max, you agree, right?

Speaker 5 Yeah, no, I just love that you said it probably because you don't know for certain whether he's resigned.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 1 The thought has been put out there, and now he has to do a press conference saying he's not resigning. That at least has happen.

Speaker 4 You think he's going to do one? He has to address it. I think he might issue a statement.

Speaker 1 He has to do something to stop it. The world is talking, and he has been weirdly silent.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 Throughout all of this, it is weird.

Speaker 4 It's a very funny situation. Shout out to Providence Twitter.
They are.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I saw the video Rico did with them. They're psychos.
Oh, yeah. They're psychos.

Speaker 1 But it's a great, they're just passionate about Providence basketball and they have time on their hands.

Speaker 1 By the way, Breaking Moose.

Speaker 1 Breaking Moose.

Speaker 1 Zach Edie has been named National Player of the Year back-to-back.

Speaker 1 Great. Great.
Good.

Speaker 4 Brilliant day for basketball. My theory was that,

Speaker 4 you know, Acemus from Texas. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Everyone's like, why does he pronounce his name like that? It dawned on me when we were watching the games. I was watching with Titus.
And I was like, remember Joe Theisman?

Speaker 4 His name used to be Thiesman, and he changed his name to Theisman so that he would help a marketing campaign for winning the Heisman Trophy, which, by the way, he did not win.

Speaker 4 I think Acemus changed the pronunciation of his name to rhyme with Naismith.

Speaker 1 Think about it. Yeah, I am.

Speaker 4 Makes sense. I am thinking about it.
But yeah, Zach Edie won. Congrats.

Speaker 1 So that wasn't enough for Acemus.

Speaker 4 That wasn't enough for him.

Speaker 1 Not nearly.

Speaker 1 He got close, but not enough. Yeah, Zach Eady is National Player of the Year, back-to-back.

Speaker 1 And we'll see if he can. Did you guys see the clip of Zach Edie playing baseball? Yeah.
Very funny. Gas.
I would have fucking taken that 300, 350 easy.

Speaker 4 Respectfully.

Speaker 1 Respectfully knock it out of the park.

Speaker 4 He threw, what, 75?

Speaker 1 74, I think, yeah. Yeah.
He just looked so.

Speaker 4 I bet it'd be hard to hit, though.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 1 it's hard to look at on the mound. What were you going to say, Jake?

Speaker 6 Acemith's father said the B was originally a sharps S.

Speaker 4 No, he changed it to mean the Nasmith Ward. Eh, wrong.

Speaker 6 It's a German letter that resembles B, but it's actually respectfully.

Speaker 1 You're wrong, dude, whose name it is.

Speaker 4 You are wrong. We're too smart for you.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. Let's do hot seat cool torone, and then we will get to Jeff Passon.
Great interview. We touch on the A's with him.

Speaker 4 Man, I'll tell you what.

Speaker 9 When you're hungry out there, you start acting like a rookie quarterback in his first game, making bad decisions, messing up the basics, being all out of sorts. That's where Snickers comes in, man.

Speaker 9 That thing is packed. Roasted peanuts, nugget, caramel, milk chocolate.
It's like the MVP of candy bars.

Speaker 9 And when you bite into it, boom, it sorts you out, gets your head back in the game of life, satisfying your hunger. Remember this.
Snickers handles your hunger so you can handle everything else.

Speaker 9 Snickers satisfies, man.

Speaker 11 That's a winning play.

Speaker 1 Hank.

Speaker 1 My husband's fanatics. We've talked about it a few times, but

Speaker 1 it's starting to bother me now that I'm watching a little more baseball, just like not being able to read the pitcher's jersey. And it seems like every single night there's a new example of

Speaker 1 the jerseys just being pieces of shit. Seeing it in person, I was like, those are really small.

Speaker 1 The Nationals coat, like they have the first base coach had like different colored gray top and bottom. Yeah.
The Yankees pitcher who was sweating, he just sweat through his jersey completely.

Speaker 4 The sweat seems to be an issue for the road uniforms.

Speaker 1 And I just feel bad for the fans because if you order, it used to be like if you order, you know, the most expensive jersey, it comes stitched, it comes everything.

Speaker 1 And the ones that the fans are getting are also shitty. So it's reached a point where I don't know what, like, they're on the hot seat.
They have to solve this.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Now, if you want to get a good jersey, you have to order a knockoff jersey online.
And it comes and you're like, wow, this looks awesome.

Speaker 1 You have to order an old jersey.

Speaker 1 Tom, Tom Layer, one of our great producers here at Barcelona, had a perfect tweet when the Mets and Brewers were brawling, and there was a screenshot of McNeil, Jeff McNeil,

Speaker 1 going crazy. And he was just like, it's so hard to look tough in these jerseys because, look, his.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I saw it.

Speaker 4 You have like size eight foot.

Speaker 1 It's so small.

Speaker 1 You can't be a tough guy in that. Cannot.

Speaker 4 The side by side with Jason Kelsey and Fletcher Cox throwing out the first pitch was tough because Kelsey was rocking the old uniform. Cox was rocking the new one.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and you saw it.

Speaker 4 And you're like, wow, Kelsey looks way stronger.

Speaker 1 The Cubs had the Cubs' logo, the secondary logo patch on some players had it on their right, some players had it on their left.

Speaker 4 That's bad.

Speaker 1 It's crazy. Crazy.
Crazy. Hot seat.

Speaker 1 And then my cool throne is Big Al.

Speaker 1 Dingers. Yeah, he's back.
Kid from Jersey, Little League World Series a few years ago said, my name's Big Al. I hit Dingers.

Speaker 1 Okay, I don't want to bosco you, but he never made it to the regionals.

Speaker 1 Little League World Series coverage.

Speaker 1 He never made it to Williamsport. Williams Sport.
Okay, you're right.

Speaker 1 He gets very upset when people say that because they're like, he never fucked it up. He made it on TV.
To celebrate this kid and he never made it to Williams Sport. No,

Speaker 1 it's hard. Were you on TV? Yes, I was.
Okay, so that's impressive. That was highlights.
That. I have, yeah.
You have highlights? We need those.

Speaker 5 One for three with a ribbie.

Speaker 1 Did you do a camera thing? What do you mean? Like, my name is Maya. Like, Max Valente.
I love Max on Max Plays. I can send this to you guys.

Speaker 4 I'm Big Max, and I drink Sodys.

Speaker 5 My name is Max Valente. My favorite player is Shane Victorino.
Wait, just put a shot.

Speaker 1 Wait, your favorite player is Shane Victorino? Send it to yourself.

Speaker 1 I haven't seen this. He sent it to us.
Yeah. Pull it up.

Speaker 1 You never told us. Max Delente.
I like two sodas and getting angry. All right.

Speaker 4 My name is Max Delente. I like second place.

Speaker 1 My name is Max Delente. I'm never cutting my hair after this video.
And I'm going to grow into some big meaty clappers.

Speaker 6 Yeah, Big Al's skinny now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he looks like he's skinnier than he was in that video, and he hit a home run in his high school game. Yeah, yeah.
Philly and Dingers. He was jacked up.

Speaker 4 I think he's just Lil Al now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he is Lil Al.

Speaker 1 Oh, here we go. Oh, yeah, I remember watching this.
Weird.

Speaker 1 Play it again.

Speaker 1 You were cute.

Speaker 4 Big Diddy.

Speaker 1 Delenny? Yeah, what? Were you saying that now?

Speaker 1 I thought

Speaker 1 it was a fancy.

Speaker 5 I swear to God, I used to say that because I thought it sounded more Italian.

Speaker 1 Delenny? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It sounds Irish.

Speaker 1 You kind of had that, I look like I'm going to face. Delenny? I look like I'm in a cry face back then, too.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 He has rest and cry face. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 4 Max shared something interesting with me the other week. We're talking about soups.
Did you know that in Philadelphia,

Speaker 4 they eat turtle soup? Like actual turtles? Like turtles. They eat turtles and soups.

Speaker 4 Snapper soup. Max's dad eats turtle soup like three times a week.
Red snapper?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I actually have an update on that. I talked to my dad about that this weekend, and he couldn't fathom that other parts of the country don't eat snappies.

Speaker 1 Well, and here's the thing is, like, it is funny because you would think, like, we eat all types of meat, but turtle, i think it's because turtles it's probably tortoise and the hare probably did the did enough good pr for them yeah

Speaker 1 yeah where they yeah like there's they're all in children's books little bunny rabbits little turtles that they they've skirted our appetites yeah

Speaker 1 yeah but if you were even in the if you were in the wilderness like bunny you'd think is fair game i would never think like if we get a turtle we can eat this no they swim around the mud

Speaker 1 although yeah but think about it

Speaker 1 get a bunny we can we can catch a bunny and then we can cook it. You can't catch a bunny.

Speaker 1 No, probably not. No.

Speaker 1 You could catch a turtle. I would go for the river and just catch a bunny.
But that's the thing is, you could catch a turtle. My bare hands.

Speaker 4 Easy to catch a turtle. Not easy to eat a turtle, though.

Speaker 1 It's like a lobster. No, just crack it over a rock.
Like a, yeah. Smash.
But yeah, turtle. Giant gusher.
Turtles and bunnies, they've gotten great.

Speaker 1 Whoever did the PR on turtles and bunnies got a lot of fun. Chickens and bunnies.

Speaker 4 Chickens, though, got great PR, and we can't stop eating chicken. Do they have great PR? They do.
They're a little red hen.

Speaker 1 No, I don't like that. I don't think that's good PR.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah. Did she say the sky is falling?

Speaker 1 No, that's not good PR. Because they're not like cute.
Yeah. Like turtles and bunnies are cute.

Speaker 4 Turtles are just so slow that it seems unfair to you. Right.

Speaker 1 They're just like, whoa, I'm going to get there eventually.

Speaker 4 Yeah, there's a bunch of guys like in the 1600s in Pennsylvania. Let's go hunting.
Yeah. You just walk outside and they walk slowly after a turtle and got it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It actually is like the easiest thing to catch, I would imagine.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Turtle.

Speaker 1 My other cool throw is Ray rayjan rondo oh yeah retired didn't know he was not retired at least i thought he's been retired for three years yeah i thought that was nba central when i saw that that kind of rules though to just be like a drop of retirement when everyone's like what you were retired yeah but yeah shout out to rays on rondo great career all-time great

Speaker 1 Yeah, we actually had a funny, were you with me, PFT, when we were in Indianapolis and we saw Blake Portal's agent and we were joking.

Speaker 1 We're like, yeah, remember when he retired just accidentally on the show? He's like, Yeah, that caused a lot of problems.

Speaker 1 Like, we got a ton of people hitting us up for comment and like interviews. And Blake just said, No, I'm only talking apart my take.
That's awesome. He rocks, yeah.
Good for him.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, your hot seat cool to run.

Speaker 4 My hot seat is USPS, the Postal Service. Okay.
Because they're seeing a big, big uptick in traffic via Cooper DeGene.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 So, Cooper DeGene's

Speaker 4 cornerback at Iowa, gritty guy, hard worker, coach's son, coach on the field, plays the game the right way, smart, ham and eggs, shifty, gritty guy, sneaky athletic guy. Yep.
Tough. Tough.

Speaker 4 He's a tough guy.

Speaker 1 First zone in, last one out. Yep.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 he's recovering from a leg injury. He had a broken leg.
And he has sent.

Speaker 4 a letter to every NFL team informing them that after suffering the broken fibula in November, he has now been cleared to return to all football activities.

Speaker 4 He's going to do his own workout April 8th at Iowa. He's going to do on-field testing and position work without any restrictions.
He sent a letter to every team in the NFL.

Speaker 4 I need to know, was this letter written? Was it mailed? Was this an email? If so, Adam Schefter reporting it as a letter, not the correct story.

Speaker 4 Whatever it is, one NFL franchise is going to absolutely love this guy. Everyone else is going to be like, fuck this guy.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I saw that. It's a try-hard move, but you got to try hard.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 If you're applying for a job, you have to stand out somehow. Yeah.
How many other defensive backs sent a letter? None. To every GM?

Speaker 1 None.

Speaker 4 My cool throne is women's college basketball. Oh.
Because it finally made it.

Speaker 4 As we talked about at the top of the show, big matchups, but it didn't officially make it until Bob Ryan weighed in about it. Oh, yes.
And Bob Ryan had this following tweet after the Iowa LSU game.

Speaker 4 I applaud the greatness of Caitlin Clark, Paige Buchers, Angel Reese, and Juju Watkins, et cetera.

Speaker 4 But in fairness to their predecessors, predecessors, I don't see a better point guard than Don Staley or a better post player than Lisa Leslie. Great women's basketball skill set is not new.

Speaker 4 You have not officially made it as a sport until Bob Ryan hits you with a Back in My Day, the players are better.

Speaker 4 So, this is the highest compliment that Bob Ryan can give the game of women's college basketball by saying it's actually not as good as when he was watching it.

Speaker 1 And just flexing on everyone that I've been watching for a long time.

Speaker 4 Also, the Back in My Day here isn't even back in Bob Ryan's. Bob Ryan was old when Lisa Leslie was like 50 years old.

Speaker 1 older i think yeah and dawn saley were playing we it was a one-two combo because it was bob ryan and then it was ravel saying still believe caitlin clark could have gotten a better deal for herself and a better deal for us sports fans if she returned to iowa versus going to the wnba she's got a shot to change w nba but it's still a long shot just the perfect we watched an awesome game we should celebrate it well actually

Speaker 4 and then fuck you and then people were replying to him basically calling him a clown which revell has to be used to that by now.

Speaker 1 That's the default. He probably has the clown emoji muted on Twitter.

Speaker 4 Definitely. So people were calling him out, and then he said, it's not a great deal for us sports fans, even in the replies.
So I don't know what Ravel means by that. Us sports fans.
Us sports fans.

Speaker 4 Yeah. We deserve better.

Speaker 1 We do. We demand better.
All right. My hot seat is,

Speaker 1 we didn't talk about it on Monday, but it happened late Sunday night. Russell Westbrook getting into an argument with a Charlotte Hornets fan wearing a balloon hat, a grown man wearing a balloon hat.

Speaker 1 Now, Russell Westbrook has been very clear that if anyone calls him Westbrook, he will confront them, and I respect that.

Speaker 1 But Russell Westbrook also has to realize that you are in an argument with a Charlotte Hornets fan, grown-ass man in a balloon hat.

Speaker 1 Never get in a fight with someone who has nothing to lose. That guy has zero to lose in life.

Speaker 1 He's a diehard Hornets fan in a balloon hat. He has nothing.

Speaker 4 There's a great quote that is completely proven by this video. Never get into an argument with a fool because from a distance, no one can tell the difference.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and then you watch this video and you're like, and he's two fools.

Speaker 4 Russell Westbrook, excuse me, I almost said the B-R-I-C-K word.

Speaker 4 Russell Westbrook looks like a much bigger fool than the balloon hat guy because he's arguing with the balloon hat guy.

Speaker 1 And I just, I don't want

Speaker 1 people to antagonize NBA players,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 it would be funny if we could just see how ridiculous of a costume someone could get in an argument with Russell Westbrook wearing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Just keep upping it. A guy in a literal balloon.

Speaker 4 I feel like if you wore a balloon hat, the malice at the palace doesn't happen.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Slows down.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he's like, oh, although a bigger target. It was this guy.
Also, seeing the balloon fly off with a punch would have been awesome. Awesome.
It just floats up into the sands. Yeah, but

Speaker 1 can we get Russell Westbrook arguing with a furry? Yeah, we could probably do that. My little

Speaker 1 brony, the My Little Pony Bros.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that could definitely also happen.

Speaker 1 Maybe someone who's just actually naked.

Speaker 4 I don't know if you'd want to fight a naked guy. That's also a great way to get out of a fight.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Just take all your clothes off and try to fight. But it would be funny to see how far.
Because he will argue with anyone, including balloon hat man who's a Hornets.

Speaker 1 The Hornets fan is definitely the saddest part of this. Do you think he would be a fan of the family? Like the balloon hat is like, whatever.
He saw a balloon hat, he put it on.

Speaker 1 Being that hard of a diehard of a Hornets fan, you got problems.

Speaker 4 Do you think he would get into a fight with somebody wearing a Russell Westbrook jersey?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 That'd be great.

Speaker 1 I think there's no limits. And then my cool throne is Adam Schefter, because Shefty finally got his revenge for

Speaker 1 the whole Aaron Rodgers saga, lose my number, Adam, all that stuff.

Speaker 1 Schefter, I didn't even know this was a thing, but Schefter treated Jets QB, Aaron Rodgers, earned $81.14 through the NFL's performance-based pay system, the lowest amount among all NFL players last season.

Speaker 1 I didn't even know this was a thing. It's kind of cool that it is, but the system rewards all NFL players based on their playtime and base salary.

Speaker 1 If a player has a low base salary, but plays a significant number of snaps, he earns more through the system. With Rodgers having the opposite, a high salary and playing just 30.
0.33%

Speaker 1 of snaps due to his torn Achilles, his total amount came to $81.14. That rocks.
Schefter, that was Schefter getting it back, and he did it with facts.

Speaker 4 There's a reason why he did it to Aaron Rodgers and not to DeMar Hamlin. Yeah, I want to see the DeMar facts.
How much did DeMar get paid last year? Yeah.

Speaker 1 This is a cool system though.

Speaker 1 If you're on a shitty contract and you play a shitload of snaps, you should get more. Yeah, I like it.
Yeah, but good job, Scheffter. I know he was smiling when he sent that gun off.

Speaker 1 Jake, your hot seat cool thrown.

Speaker 6 My hot seat is studying. A student at NC State

Speaker 6 emailed a professor saying he's lit AF right now and asked if he could move the test to Wednesday and he did.

Speaker 1 Smart. The professor was like, this is awesome.

Speaker 6 This is possibly my favorite email of the year. You've convinced me.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I like it. That's really strong work.

Speaker 1 Usually those don't work.

Speaker 4 And great job. Like, you not only helped yourself, but the rest of the class that was too cowardly to send that exact same email.

Speaker 1 Lit AF. Lit AF.

Speaker 4 I always hate the stories this time of year from professors that are like, we're still in school to go to school. Yeah.
You have to come to class every single day, 9 a.m.

Speaker 4 I don't care if there's a parade.

Speaker 1 Although, I do think this is very specific. Like,

Speaker 1 if it was like Duke or Kentucky or Kansas, I feel like the professor has an ability to be like, we expect to be here.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? Like NC State, you have to let them take the test a day later because no one expected this run. Whereas a Blue Blood, you'd be like, listen,

Speaker 1 we don't celebrate Final Fours. We celebrate championships.

Speaker 4 Kansas, I could see it happening because it's the biggest thing there.

Speaker 4 Duke, definitely not.

Speaker 6 Also, if I was a professor, I just wouldn't schedule an exam for the three weeks of the tournament because you never know.

Speaker 4 But if you're NC State.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you didn't even think you're going to be in the tournament. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Michael throwns no hitters. The Astros did it again.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 6 And this time it was one person. Again.

Speaker 4 They did it again. They've thrown a lot of big no-hitters.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm so over no hitters. Remember when no hitters used to be like you'd even go to bonus coverage?

Speaker 4 So I'm over no hitters, but I can pinpoint exactly when it started. I think it was the start of last season.
I believe.

Speaker 1 Oh, I think I've been over. Oh, yeah.
You became over no hitters. Right at right.

Speaker 1 Opening day 2023.

Speaker 4 I was like, no more no hitters. Yeah.

Speaker 6 This is pretty crazy. Since June 2022 via Jason Stark, Astros, four no hitters.
The rest of the league, three.

Speaker 4 Oh, so that's a big

Speaker 6 season.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's important.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Let's talk some more baseball. We got Jeff Passon on.
Awesome interview with him, PFT. You got a quick word from our sponsors before we get to Jeff.

Speaker 12 Hey, this is Rhea from Chicks in the Office. And this season, we're heading home for the holidays with Abercrombie and Fitch.
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Speaker 4 Now here's Jeff Passon.

Speaker 1 Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest is Jeff Passon from ESPN talking baseball. Jeff, first of all, thank you so much for joining us.
We've wanted to have you on the show.

Speaker 1 We're light on baseball coverage, so this is something that we've wanted to do and have you on. So thank you for joining us.
We want to do a little baseball preview with you,

Speaker 1 talk about a bunch of different things, but I think we need to start where everyone is thinking right now. Can you tell us when we're going to get an answer to Shohei Otani's situation?

Speaker 11 I think it's going to be a long time. And here's why.

Speaker 11 This is such a tiny little speck of a much larger investigation that's going on right now into this alleged illegal gambling ring in Southern California.

Speaker 11 And there are ties to Las Vegas, and there are ties to casinos, and there are ties to all sorts of other things involved here.

Speaker 11 And because it's such a small thing, I understand like it's a big headline because it's a big name. It's Shohei Otani and like International Man of Mystery.

Speaker 11 and we don't know a whole lot about him to begin with and now our insight into him is that uh he's you know from his account 500 000 wire transfers like at least nine of them being sent to you know this bookie uh and maybe it was his translator and the money got stolen from like it's a it's a patently ridiculous story um but in the grand scheme of things It's just a tiny part of the bigger one.

Speaker 11 And because Major League Baseball doesn't want to step on the toes of federal investigators, its investigation is more or less going to be going parallel, but waiting until the end of the federal investigation.

Speaker 11 And because of that, it could be a while till there's any sort of, I guess, resolution is maybe the right word, but more than that, clarity. Because this thing is still so opaque and so odd.

Speaker 11 And there are so many unanswered questions at this point. And I think that's the issue that everyone has with it.
Like, what's the fucking truth? Right. Yeah.

Speaker 4 That's smart by Major League Baseball, by the way, to wait for the federal investigation to happen. They get to play it as slowly as possible.
But you're right.

Speaker 4 So it is, it's a tiny speck in that investigation, but also Shohei is saying that there's been a big crime committed against him personally. So that's another investigation that could happen.

Speaker 4 But to my knowledge, there haven't been any charges pressed against him for the crime against Shohei. Is that true?

Speaker 11 You are correct, PFT. And that's the part of this that's that's really confusing to us as reporters right now trying to figure this out.

Speaker 11 If a crime is committed, generally authorities are involved and they get looped in and they get told what the alleged crime was and they start investigating it.

Speaker 11 Now, Otani's camp has said that they've referred these allegations to authorities. They just don't say which authorities they've referred them to.

Speaker 11 And until we get a sense that there's an actual investigation going on into this alleged massive theft,

Speaker 11 why should we believe that there was a massive theft? Because Shohei Otani says so, because there's incentive for him not to lie? Sure.

Speaker 11 Like if you go out in public and say, I got stolen from, there's no reason not to believe you, but

Speaker 11 we'd like to at least verify that. And we haven't been able to figure out at this point which agency is investigating, if any, Ipe Mitsuhara, the translator.
And that to me is the confusing part.

Speaker 11 That That to me would answer a lot of the questions.

Speaker 11 Like if they, if we know who's looking into the alleged theft, then all of a sudden we realize, okay, yeah, you know, this isn't just Shohei Otani's word.

Speaker 11 This isn't just his lawyer or his people going out and saying he got stolen from. The cops are actually looking into this.

Speaker 11 We just don't know which cops, if any, at this point, are looking into it and what they found.

Speaker 1 Right, right. The whole story.
And I mean, adding the fact that he is the face of baseball, I would assume that

Speaker 1 it would be dealt with a little bit differently if it was a journeyman player and this had happened. They have to obviously be very careful with this.
Okay, so I'm waiting for the forensic accounting.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm banking on. I didn't even know.

Speaker 11 That's a forensic accounting guy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I didn't even know that existed until this story happened. I was like, oh, shit, that's a job.
Okay. Isn't that what Ben Affleck did? Oh, when he was just killing people?

Speaker 4 Yeah, the movie The Accountant.

Speaker 1 He had an autism and he was just killing people.

Speaker 4 A forensic accountant is an accountant that has a gun.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Okay, gotcha.
It's a hired hitman. All right, so in terms of this season,

Speaker 1 in a little preview, I read your story about the fact that this is a weird spot for baseball right now because the playoffs have expanded, but also the collective bargaining agreement has changed.

Speaker 1 Now, I'm not very smart.

Speaker 1 I understand the playoffs expanding part. Yes, thank you.
I am not. Because I read it and I was like, I just couldn't understand it.

Speaker 1 Can you explain it to me, like I'm five, how the collective bargaining agreement has now made it so that more teams feel like they have a chance to compete and get into the playoffs?

Speaker 11 So let's look back at the last three October's. The team with the worst record.
in the league three consecutive years among playoff teams has made it to the World Series.

Speaker 11 And so what that suggests to teams is October baseball is a complete crapshoot. You know, this isn't like the NBA or the NFL that quite often it's pretty chalk in the playoffs.

Speaker 11 Like, you know, if you have Patrick Mahomes, you are probably going to be making it to at least the AFC championship game unless you just have a complete garbage roster surrounding you.

Speaker 11 And even if you don't have a wide receiver room that's worth a damn, you still can go and win a Super Bowl.

Speaker 11 In Major League Baseball, your regular season record, you know, the Baltimore Orioles won 101 games last year, got bounced early. Atlanta, two years in a row, 100-plus wins, bounced by the Phillies.

Speaker 11 Dodgers, bounced by the 84-win Diamondbacks, who finished 16 games back of them.

Speaker 11 What that says to teams is: as long as I got like a lottery ticket, as long as I got a chance in the postseason, that's all that really matters.

Speaker 11 And so instead of playing for those 100 wins, teams are content to go out there and spend enough money to go and play for 85 or 86 or 87 wins and hope that they catch a heater.

Speaker 11 And so, what has happened, even though there's immense payroll disparity in baseball, you know, you've got the Mets, the Yankees, and the Dodgers all with payrolls over $300 million,

Speaker 11 and you've got nine teams above the luxury tax threshold, and then you've got nine other teams that are $100 million plus dollars below that luxury tax threshold.

Speaker 11 Like, you've got this enormous payroll disparity, but you only have four teams really in the Rockies, the White Sox, the Nationals,

Speaker 11 and the A's that don't really have much of a chance this year. I mean, let's look at the Pirates.
Like the Pirates have a low payroll. They have a young team and they have started 5-0 this year.

Speaker 11 And I understand 5-0 start in baseball. You know, it's like 2% or 3% of the season.

Speaker 11 At least it shows like they have the opportunity to be competitive. And in Major League Baseball in 2024, guys, you don't have to be great.
You just have to be competitive and get to October.

Speaker 11 And then once October comes, anything really can happen.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I'm still, I'm upset a little bit with the Nationals. I can't be too upset with them because we did win a World Series just a few years ago.
So that buys me like 10 years of goodwill for them.

Speaker 4 But the other teams that you mentioned, particularly the A's, we've stumbled across a

Speaker 4 market inefficiency in baseball. We have a betting algorithm that we figured out, which is just bet against the athletics every single day.
And it seems to be pretty profitable thus far.

Speaker 4 But on behalf of A's fans, what the fuck are they even doing with their team?

Speaker 4 They're trying to move the team. The owner is not trying to be competitive at all.
In fact, he's like trying not to be competitive. They sent Ruiz back to AAA.

Speaker 4 They benched their all-star from last year. Word on the street is they did it because they were wearing protest bracelets, which we stand with those players.

Speaker 4 And they were, in fact, wearing the last dive bar bracelets.

Speaker 4 If you're the Oakland Athletics, how is this not a crime to just not even try to be competitive in the sport?

Speaker 4 Like, how, what's, what's the motivation for the other owners to be okay with certain teams not even trying to put forth a competent product?

Speaker 11 Because the second that there are constraints that are put on one team, all the other owners worry that it's going to be put on them if at some point they try to move a team, they try to lose games to get higher draft picks, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 11 Like owners, owners never, I mean, think about it. Like billionaires don't like regulations.
Yeah. And that's essentially what you're asking for here.

Speaker 11 And it's a really reasonable thing because I'm sorry, but as somebody who grew up in Cleveland and who worshipped the movie Major League, I never thought I would see it in real life. Yeah.

Speaker 11 That's exactly what's going on here. They are.
sucking as bad as they could possibly suck in order to facilitate a move that shouldn't have necessarily been made in the first place.

Speaker 11 And I think that like the saddest part of this whole thing beyond Oakland getting its last professional franchise ripped away from the city is poor Las Vegas inherits the A's of John Fisher. Yeah.

Speaker 11 Like,

Speaker 11 there is, oh, I can't, I can't wait for all of the excitement when a complete horseshit franchise with an owner who has proven for five years going on once they get there that he does not care.

Speaker 11 That's what we want to have as Las Vegas fans that's what's going to draw us out to the ballpark it's just backward and and it shows you like when there are poor incentives in place this is the this is the consequence of that like this is the upshot of of there being incentives to stink and be rewarded for it and you know in the in the last collective bargaining agreement i think mlb did a did a better job of disincentivizing tanking.

Speaker 11 You know, they put a draft lottery in place.

Speaker 11 If you have a player who is a top 100 prospect who comes and wins rookie of the year, you get an additional first-round draft pick. Like, there are things there now.

Speaker 11 It's not perfect, but it's better than it used to be. The A's are just like, I don't care.
Our draft pick is going to get moved down because we've sucked for so long. Okay.

Speaker 11 Like, it's just, you know,

Speaker 11 it's unfortunate that owners. didn't take a stand on this and that their self-interest got in the way of the greater good of the sport.

Speaker 1 Is there any hope that the A's don't move? Because it does feel like Vegas, there's, there's, so it's, it's dead.

Speaker 11 We, we, we should. It's not, it's not, it's not dead.

Speaker 11 You know, there, there's a, there's a group of teachers, uh, for example, who are trying to say, hey, the hundreds of millions of dollars that you're spending on this stadium that you are gifting to a billionaire.

Speaker 11 Yeah, that should go to kids. That should go to education.

Speaker 11 But it's a, you know, it's a last-itch effort.

Speaker 11 In all likelihood, it's probably not going to work. And this is going to happen.
But here's the thing, guys,

Speaker 11 is as badly as the A's have screwed up their on-field product, they have screwed up in many other ways business-wise, too.

Speaker 11 They have been trying to get a stadium deal done in Oakland for upward of 20 years now and haven't been able to.

Speaker 11 So the notion that they're going to be able to land on the plane here and move things to Vegas, it's not a done deal. It's just that all the momentum is going in that direction.

Speaker 1 Okay, so we're rooting against, obviously, John Fisher. We hate him.

Speaker 4 I'm pro-teacher and pro-kids.

Speaker 4 This is a pro-child podcast. Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 Okay, so other question about the disparity.

Speaker 1 And this is maybe you can tell me this is crazy to think, but I have the feeling that if the Dodgers keep losing in the playoffs the way they have, they're going to try to change the playoffs so that it's because like we've heard the rumblings where they play a five-game series and they're like this isn't fair we should be in the playoffs still can is that is that a real fear of mine that they're going to try to tinker with it because they're going to basically say these teams like you mentioned the last place team to make the playoffs has made it to the world series is that going to happen uh it's certainly possible after the 2026 season when they get into new collective bargaining discussions because remember like it used to be just a one-game wild card.

Speaker 11 Now they've expanded it to a three-game wildcard series. It's like to Major League Baseball, more playoffs is never a bad thing.
Right.

Speaker 11 When you have a sport whose national audience has dwindled to the point that MLBs has, where it's become like a completely regional sport that has a postseason that, you know, some people watch, but a fraction of what used to, still, more eyes are on those playoff games.

Speaker 11 And more playoff games equals more TV money. And more TV money is a good thing when the TV money that you have right now isn't necessarily going in the right direction.

Speaker 11 So, I absolutely could see that. Now, you can make the argument, Big Cat, like you want your postseason to closer represent the regular season, right?

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 the easiest way to do that is to have longer series because over longer series, you know, it's not quite as small of a sample.

Speaker 11 And the weird shit that happens in baseball may not happen quite as much as you would have in a three-game series. So if that first round were to expand to five, it wouldn't surprise me.

Speaker 11 I don't know if it's for the sake of the Dodgers, though.

Speaker 11 I think it's for the sake of when you have people saying,

Speaker 11 hey, what's the point of the regular season if you win 100 games and then like, you know, that you can get bounced in the playoffs.

Speaker 11 It's a reasonable argument.

Speaker 11 It's just that if the Dodgers weren't choking things away in October, the Braves weren't choking things away in October, then the discussion wouldn't quite focus on them the same. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 What about the Yankees? Because it feels like this entire postseason discussion is all for naught because the Yankees are just going to win everything for the next five years.

Speaker 11 Definitely not.

Speaker 4 No,

Speaker 4 we say hard no on that. Juan Soto does look.
Here's my problem with Juan Soto being on the Yankees. He's too fun of a player to be on the Yankees.

Speaker 4 Like, I want somebody I can hate on the Yankees, just, you know, ruining everybody's dreams. Juan Soda was a very difficult player to root against, but does seem to be.

Speaker 11 Do you hate Aaron Judge?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I kind of hate Aaron Judge. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 11 Because he's very large and intimidating.

Speaker 4 If I was that big, I would be an all-star too. I would hit 70 home runs.

Speaker 4 I didn't like when they celebrated that home run ball that he hit like it was the major league record.

Speaker 1 Yeah, which was the dumbest thing ever. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I guess I don't really. Yes, I hate Aaron Judge, but the Yankees aren't as hatable overall as I would like them to be.
But it seems like they're built to be just a powerhouse.

Speaker 4 And I feel like we did our season preview, not our preview, but our picks. And I wish I could go back and change them and just say it's going to be the Dodgers and the Yankees.
You can.

Speaker 4 It's going to be the Dodgers and the Yankees in the World Series.

Speaker 1 But what would be the like, I would.

Speaker 11 I would be okay with the Dodgers-Yankees World Series. It's been a long time since we've had one of those.
And the Yankees, let's remember, like their last World Series win was in 2009.

Speaker 11 Like Yankees fans, I mean, I understand they've had 27 championships, right? So they can rest on that, and there's no complaining about that.

Speaker 11 But 15 years for a fan base that every year comes into the season thinking we need to win the World Series, it's totally World Series or bust. Like Yankees fans right now are salty.

Speaker 11 I mean, they wanted to get rid of the general manager in the offseason. They wanted to get rid of the manager.
Like this was a seminal year.

Speaker 11 And then Garrett Cole gets hurt, you know, the best pitcher in baseball for at least two months. And

Speaker 11 I wasn't quite as bullish, frankly, coming into the season on the Yankees. I worried that they were too old.
I worried that their pitching wasn't deep enough.

Speaker 11 But these first five games, they've looked awesome. And the fact that they have come back, especially in sweeping Houston, which the day after they play the Yankees, they go out and throw no hitter.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 I mean, it shows you like this Yankees team means business right now.

Speaker 11 I just want to see it continue.

Speaker 11 And not on a personal level, but on a,

Speaker 11 I'm still not fully in that the Yankees are a juggernaut. I think the Dodgers are a better team.
I think the Braves are a better team. And I picked the Orioles in the American League East.

Speaker 11 And honestly, I still think the Orioles are a better team than the Yankees.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Yeah.
They're a very fun team. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Jeff, what's the next money ball?

Speaker 1 What's the next thing that front offices are doing that is different, that might be at the head of the, you know, the tip of the spear here, where it's like in 10 years, we're going to be like, oh, what they did was genius and they won titles and they had such success.

Speaker 1 What's the next like market inefficiency in baseball that teams are now going after?

Speaker 11 Cheap plug here. Back in 2016, I wrote a book called The Arm

Speaker 11 and it was about the idea that Major League Baseball every year wastes about a billion dollars on pitchers who are injured. It's not quite that, you know, it's not quite that.

Speaker 11 It's a lot of money that they spend on guys who get hurt and

Speaker 11 you know when you see the number of pitching injuries that there have been this year the number of big name guys who are out because of arm injuries figuring out how to keep pitchers healthy is the holy grail of major league baseball and the first team that can truly figure out how to do it is going to win championships because of it now The problem is, I don't know if that's an achievable goal, right?

Speaker 11 Because all of this starts in youth baseball. All of this starts when you're 12 and 13 and 14, and you have some dickhead coach who's going and throwing you out there much more than he should.

Speaker 11 So, this is a problem

Speaker 11 that,

Speaker 11 frankly, a lot like concussions.

Speaker 11 It's not the same thing because concussions, it's a life or death thing, but it's similar to concussions in the fact that it starts at a really early age and then manifests itself when guys get to college and when they get to Pro Bowl and when their bodies get bigger and they're throwing harder.

Speaker 11 Figuring out how to save arms, it's not just individual teams. Major League Baseball as a whole is taking this on because I think they realize just how big of a problem this has become.

Speaker 1 So is there one front office that you know of that feels like they're, you know, they're being very proactive or one front office that you're like,

Speaker 1 this group of people are, they're doing something that could eventually lead them to the right path of figuring this problem out?

Speaker 11 I mean, in terms, it's interesting. You, you look, when you look for something like that, you're looking for the teams that do process the best, right?

Speaker 11 Because this is going to be a very process-oriented thing if they can figure it out.

Speaker 11 You know, there's not going to be like some mad scientist who's just sitting back there and goes, aha, I figured out how to do this.

Speaker 11 I was looking at spreadsheets and this tells me, no, this is a combination of doctors, of trainers, of performance folks,

Speaker 11 you know, analytics, like everyone is trying to get together to solve this. And when you look at the teams that have understood and developed good pitchers,

Speaker 11 you think that they would be able to apply those same principles to pitching injuries as well.

Speaker 11 And that's the Dodgers, the Guardians, the Rays, you know, teams that are very, not just analytically inclined, but understand that.

Speaker 11 uh when you're approaching a problem uh you have to do it in a very uniform way to try and get the best solution Yeah.

Speaker 4 What about this, Jeff? What if some teams just started doing preemptive Tommy John surgeries on every pitcher that they drafted?

Speaker 11 Well, PFT,

Speaker 11 to quote from my own book, the greatest predictor of a future arm injury

Speaker 11 is a past arm injury. And if you have surgery, you are far likelier to have a surgery in the future because of it.
So I love the preemptive Tommy John surgery idea,

Speaker 11 but you're a moron.

Speaker 1 Okay. All right.

Speaker 4 Listen, there are no wrong answers except for that one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 None, of course.

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Speaker 1 Okay, similar to the question about who's gonna, what's the next money ball, I love thinking about the teams that are on the rise that have the young

Speaker 1 rosters that people don't know about yet. Obviously, the Orioles people know about, but that was a couple years ago.
They started to put it all together.

Speaker 1 That evolution is one of my favorite parts of baseball, the year before they become real good teams.

Speaker 1 I've always said that the 2015 Cubs were one of my favorite teams because they completely overachieved.

Speaker 1 But what teams should we be looking at this season that they might be a year or two away, but they're going to play some really fun baseball and they're going to have some guys that people are going to want to watch?

Speaker 11 I love the Cincinnati Reds.

Speaker 11 And we saw a little of it last year and

Speaker 11 Big Hat like you see it with the Cubs. This is a dangerous team.

Speaker 11 They hit a lot of home runs and whether it's Spencer Steer, Christian Encarnasio on Strand, Ellie De La Cruz, you know, Matt McClain is going to be an all-star.

Speaker 11 He's out for the year with shoulder surgery. Noel V.

Speaker 11 Marte out with the PED suspension, but someone like Will Benson, you know, he was with Cleveland for a long time, never, never got a crack there, goes to Cincinnati and is playing a pretty damn good center field for a really big guy right now because TJ Friedel's on the shelf.

Speaker 11 So, like, that's three good bats that are out. Cincinnati's still winning because of their hitting.
And they just have a lot of pitching depth, too.

Speaker 11 And when it comes to pitching, you know, I almost look at it like the Royals once upon a time before their championship had like five really good left-handed arms.

Speaker 11 And pitching is such a crapshoot that if out of five guys, you can get like a good starter and a good reliever, then that's a pretty good outcome. Some of these other organizations have done better.

Speaker 11 at developing pitching, frankly, but I look at Cincinnati and they've got like seven, eight big league rotation arms right now.

Speaker 11 If they can get three good pitchers there, they're going to be a problem in that National League Central division for a while.

Speaker 11 And while that division right now doesn't look the greatest, Cubs are going to be good soon because I think they're going to start spending some money this winter.

Speaker 11 And they have one of the three best farm systems in baseball. So they're going to be good.

Speaker 11 I just can't imagine the Cardinals continuing to be as mid as they have been for a long time. I don't think the fans are going to stand for it, honestly.
Pittsburgh is on the come up.

Speaker 11 It's not just a 5-0 start. Paul Skins is coming soon and he's going to be probably, you know, as long as he stays healthy, he's going to be one of the 10 best pitchers in baseball for a while.

Speaker 11 And, you know, Milwaukee's just constantly solid. Like they're a process team that does the process well.
And so the NL Central has a chance in the coming years to be really, really good.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I agree. I mean, it was not too long ago that we had, i think that 2015 year where it was you know the pirates won 98 games the cubs won 97 the cardinals won 100.

Speaker 1 um yeah and the cubs also they spent they they saved all their money on the pyrotechnics for opening day so they're gonna be able to spend it on free agency so that was good

Speaker 11 how can you do that well

Speaker 4 how can you just

Speaker 1 is there any explanation for how it can be so bad i i don't know the explanation here's the my only my only take when i saw it because it was at the game yesterday i got there a little bit after they had this incredible I don't know if you saw it, PFT.

Speaker 1 I'm looking it up right now. It was one of the craziest pyrotechnics I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 All I said to myself when I saw that video was, thank God, thank God the Cubs won a World Series because that was old Cubs that would have been a front page story.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you remember, but there was like, it was like 10 years ago when Ron Santo passed away and they had a bunch of kids sign a card and then a reporter found the card thrown out in the trash, like in the dumpster outside Wrigley, like immediately after.

Speaker 1 So they used to do all this shit. It was one of the worst pyrotechnics ever, but thank God they won a World Series.
I think you can get away with it when you win a World Series recently.

Speaker 11 You can't stop laughing.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 they keep coming out of the dugout. And then they only have two of the sparklers.

Speaker 4 And then one of them doesn't even really work that well.

Speaker 1 It was so pathetic.

Speaker 4 It's not good.

Speaker 4 At that point, you just got to not have sparklers at all.

Speaker 1 I kind of like it, though. It's just like we had to do something to make it feel different.
It is different. Yeah, I'll give you that.

Speaker 1 It's quite something.

Speaker 4 It's definitely different.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Speaking of young arms, Yamamoto out in LA, he stunk in his first appearance. He was really bad.
Second appearance, pretty good. So

Speaker 1 where are we at?

Speaker 4 Are we, if you're a Dodgers fan, if you're in the Dodgers front office, are you not concerned at all with Yamamoto?

Speaker 4 You just chalk that first start up to nerves and you think, okay, this guy's as promised. He's going to be great for a number of years.

Speaker 11 Yeah, they're not going to give $325 million to a guy who they're going to be out on after one start. But them giving $325 million to a six-foot-tall right-hander,

Speaker 11 there's a lot of risk involved in this contract, especially because he doesn't do things the way that pitchers do now.

Speaker 11 Like if you're a pitcher in 2024, the goal is to get as strong as you possibly can and to throw harder than everyone else. And

Speaker 11 the way you do that is in the weight room. It's in training your arm.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto does things completely differently. Like, have you seen the javelins that he throws?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I actually have. Yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 11 So, so he goes into the outfield and he throws, they're not like real javelins, like stab you in the head javelins.

Speaker 11 They're, they're like the, it's, it's, it's almost like a, like a combination between a real javelin and like a nerf one. Yeah.

Speaker 11 And he goes and throws these things and he does stretching and yoga poses and handstands.

Speaker 11 And he just has this extremely functional strength that reminded people in the Dodgers organization of Tim Lensico.

Speaker 11 That's the comp that they're making on this guy, because when you look at him, you know,

Speaker 11 he's not a big guy. He's not like a traditionally strong guy.
He just makes his body move better than. anybody else out there.
And that's what they're banking on.

Speaker 11 And it's the sort of thing that, listen, like we're, we're all older now.

Speaker 11 We're, we may not be professional athletes, but we realize that your body creaks a little bit when you get into your 30s and your muscles don't work quite the same.

Speaker 11 And to sign him to a 12-year contract, they did that because he's only 25, right? And they're spreading out the risk over multiple years. But man, when you get into your 30s, that sort of regimen,

Speaker 11 I will be very curious to see how that plays as he ages because it works now and it works really well now. And I think he's going to be really good now.

Speaker 11 But long term, you do wonder how his body is going to react to that.

Speaker 1 Do you think Major League Baseball, from a front office perspective, has kind of figured out Japanese baseball and the fact that they feel a little more confident getting these guys?

Speaker 1 Because there was a time when it was, you know, Daisuke, Rabu, Kazmatsui, some of these guys, Fukadome, like they,

Speaker 1 they were good, but they were not what everyone kind of thought they would be.

Speaker 11 And then you have Shohei and, you know, even the cubs yesterday starting with uh iminaga who is great like have are teams more confident when they bring a guy from japan in their translation to mlb a hundred percent and that is strictly because of the data that we have now like you're able to take every characteristic of a pitch that a guy throws and compare it to people around MLB and see the effectiveness and translate it accordingly.

Speaker 11 In the past, you were just going on eyeballs. Like you were just going on the word of scouts who said that, hey, I think this guy is going to be this and we're going to go out and bet on it.

Speaker 11 Now they bet on the numbers. And, you know, in the case of Imanaga, I think his health and the long-term viability of the shoulder and elbow was the only reason that he got $53 million.

Speaker 11 There was an expectation that he was going to be a nine-figure type guy because the stuff, even though like we just look at on screen when a game's going on at a fastball, that's, you know, topping out, like that last pitch he threw was 93.

Speaker 11 Right.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 11 it was down the middle, but the characteristics of his fastball, even if the velocity is not there, play really well.

Speaker 11 You know, he gets a lot of induced vertical break, which in a non-nerd term essentially means the ball has carry to it. So a normal fastball, right?

Speaker 11 As a hitter, your eyes are trained to expect a fastball to drop a particular amount before it goes to the plate. When you have a really high vert number,

Speaker 11 the ball stays up on a higher plane for a longer amount of time. And that's why you see swings underneath those fastballs.

Speaker 11 And so because the pitch characteristics of Imanaga were so successful, and because the metrics say that this guy stuff is going to play, teams are a lot more confident that what they think they're going to be getting in terms of performance, they're actually going to be getting translated to MLB.

Speaker 11 That's interesting.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Yeah, interesting.

Speaker 4 I like that. So with the World Series last year, Rays, or excuse me, Diamondbacks Rangers, it felt like the Diamondbacks came out of nowhere.
We are seam heads.

Speaker 4 We understand that Dan Heron turned that finishing staff around.

Speaker 4 By the way,

Speaker 11 can we talk about Dan Heron for a second? He's the best.

Speaker 11 He is the best. The best.

Speaker 1 The best.

Speaker 11 He is one of my favorite human beings in baseball. And getting to see him in the World Series last year, like, it brought joy to me because nobody deserves it more than that guy.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he deserves all the credit.

Speaker 1 So now this year. He's a Hall of Famer.

Speaker 1 We're still working on his case.

Speaker 4 He had the best postseason

Speaker 1 ERA of all time. Savings or less or something in the World Series.
We got a bunch of stats, Dan Heron stats. We're going to get them compiled and we'll get you voting for him.

Speaker 4 He should be in the Hall of Fame, yes.

Speaker 4 So this year, are the expectations for the Diamondbacks, are they a legit contender again? Because it seems like they kind of came out of nowhere last year.

Speaker 11 Nobody expected them to reach the World series is that now the expectation for the diamondbacks it should be they just happened to play in a division with a team that spent a billion dollars this offseason and so any headline that the diamondbacks were going to generate uh you know the the dodgers they they just wash over everything i mean they're they you know they're like an unstoppable juggernaut who also, by the way, got swept by the Diamondbacks in the postseason last year.

Speaker 11 And the Diamondbacks, by the way, like they're a better team this year than they were last year. They go out and trade for Eugenios Suarez.
They resign Lourdes Goriel. They sign Eduardo Rodriguez.

Speaker 11 They get Jordan Montgomery on an absolute steal. Like we saw Jordan Montgomery carve in the postseason last year.
Like he's a guy who's got big balls and wants to pitch when it matters.

Speaker 11 And to get him for a one-year, $25 million contract and to pair him with Heron and Brent Strom, you know, guys who both pitched in the big leagues, both were really good pitchers in the big leagues, but also have embraced numbers in a way that Montgomery has too.

Speaker 11 Like, it's a perfect pairing, I think. So this is a better Diamondbacks team than last year.
That division is just nasty. Like, the Giants spent a lot of money this offseason.

Speaker 11 Got Jung-hoo-li from Korea. He's been really good to start.
Got Jorge Soler, got Blake Snell toward the end of spring training, and Matt Chapman as well. They are a much improved team.

Speaker 11 San Diego sucked last year. I think they're going to be better this season.
Like, there are four

Speaker 11 potentially excellent teams in the National League West.

Speaker 11 And I don't anticipate all the wildcards coming out of there, but it wouldn't surprise me if two of the wildcard teams in the National League came from the West. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And the other side of that World Series, the Rangers have the opportunity. I guess every team has this opportunity after they win a World Series.
But when was the last time we had a repeat?

Speaker 4 Was it 1999?

Speaker 11 99 and 20, 98, 99, and 2000 when the Yankees went back to back to back. There has not been one this century.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so do the Rangers, do they have a chance? Are they well positioned? Would you expect big things out of them this year?

Speaker 11 I'm going to be able to answer that question better, I think, in August. And here's why.
Right now, what the Rangers have is a devastating offense. You know, Marcus Simeon at the top of the order.

Speaker 11 Corey Seeger, who's just as clutch as it gets after that. Wyatt Lankford, who at this time last year was playing for the University of Florida, is like near the top of the lineup right now.

Speaker 11 And the Rangers stole him in the draft with the fourth overall pick. He is really, really good.
Like the comparisons from scouts have been to Mike Trout.

Speaker 11 He's not as good as Mike Trout, but he has like that linebacker build, six foot, six foot one, 225 pounds, just like a ball of muscle. And he can hit the ball really, really far.

Speaker 11 They got a full year Evan Carter, and I can go on and on about their lineup.

Speaker 11 The reason I want to wait until August, though, is because they have three pitchers right now who are on the injured list who are expected to be back by then. DeGrom.

Speaker 11 Mac Scherzer, Tyler Molly, and Jacob DeGrom. And DeGrom is, you know, Scherzer, like, he's going to be effective.
He will be fine.

Speaker 11 It's him and Verlander. They're just.
freaks who pitch into their 40s and still find a way to be power pitchers then.

Speaker 11 Molly's coming off Tommy John surgery and has been solid like an innings eating type guy. But DeGrom, when he's healthy, guys, is the best pitcher on the planet.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 11 Um, and and having him back in that rotation down the stretch and knowing that you're not going to have too big of an innings limit on him because he doesn't have to pitch the entire season, like the fact that you can crank him up in

Speaker 11 August and September and send him out there in October.

Speaker 11 If Jacob deGrom is all well and good this year, the Rangers, I'm not sure that they they become favorites again, but I'm not sure either that there's a better team in the American League.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 By the way, I looked up preemptive Tommy John surgery. I'll just, you called me a moron.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 There are a lot of people that have thought about this and discussed it, so it's an actual conversation.

Speaker 1 There's more morons.

Speaker 11 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 1 They're morons, too.

Speaker 4 They're all on message boards.

Speaker 4 But a lot of people are talking about it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you got morons backing you up. You mentioned a name there, Jeff, that I wanted to bring up.

Speaker 1 And I was thinking about it yesterday when I was at the Cubs game and I saw Chris Bryant and it made me sad that Chris Bryant was it's kind of fallen off and he also went to an organization that has not had success and he's almost lost.

Speaker 1 But Mike Trout, will we ever get to see Mike Trout play in the playoffs? Will Mike Trout ever be either freed from Los Angeles or

Speaker 1 maybe they put a team around him?

Speaker 1 Because it's crazy that we're this deep into Mike Trout's career and he is such a surefire Hall of Famer and we still don't have that like seminal Mike Trout playoff run.

Speaker 11 Yeah, because Mike Trout's one playoff series that he's had

Speaker 11 over a career that is now in its 14th season. Like that's a that's a ridiculous thing to think that you can have a guy who is a first ballot inner circle hall of famer.

Speaker 11 Like when you talk about the greatest players of all time, Mike Trout is going to be in that conversation.

Speaker 11 He's had one playoff series. It was against the Royals, and they got swept in three games.

Speaker 11 Yeah, it's

Speaker 11 as ugly as it can possibly get. And it just shows you how baseball is different.
And I think that

Speaker 11 it's one of the things I love about the game that

Speaker 11 you can have the two best players in the sport, and you can make a pretty damn good argument that Shohei Otani and Mike Trout were the two best players on the same team.

Speaker 11 And that team is still garbage and has been garbage for a while. Now, building around him, I don't see it.

Speaker 11 And here's why I don't see it because the Angels are a fundamentally broken organization starting at the top. I don't know if this is the same in capped sports.

Speaker 11 Like, when you have a terrible owner in football, can you still win? No.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 you can.

Speaker 11 I think if you have a great quarterback,

Speaker 1 terrible, terrible owner, no.

Speaker 11 Bad owner, yes definitely okay all right that's fair um art artie moreno last year had the opportunity to do something that would have changed the trajectory of this franchise

Speaker 11 he could have traded chohe otani near the trade deadline in fact the angels front office was going around soliciting trade offers for otani in hopes that there was one moment of weakness from Artie Moreno where he said, you know what?

Speaker 11 Fuck it. Go do it.
Trade him. And they wanted to have offers ready because

Speaker 11 if given that opportunity, they knew that 10 minutes later he might change his mind and that the window was that minuscule to go out and get this deal done, which would have brought back,

Speaker 11 I mean, I'm not exaggerating here, like top 10 prospects.

Speaker 11 a huge, huge return that would have allowed this team to weather this transition better.

Speaker 11 Instead, what Artie Moreno chose to do was to build around Shohei Otani and to add Lucas Giolito and to go out and trade for guys, to add to a team that was fundamentally flawed and that anyone out there who knows baseball knew was never going to make a run.

Speaker 11 Yeah. It was never going to amount to anything.
And what happened in the process is that an already mediocre farm system got gutted completely. And now they're in a position where they don't have,

Speaker 11 I mean, don't have really any good prospects. You know, I think they're the 30th ranked

Speaker 11 team in terms of farm systems by Kylie McDaniel at ESPN.

Speaker 11 Their major league roster has a few guys, like they have some interesting guys on it.

Speaker 11 In a division like the AL West that has the Rangers, the Astros, and the Mariners, the Angels aren't competing there. And they're also not willing to go over the luxury tax threshold.

Speaker 11 So when you don't have prospects, you don't have a reasonable big league roster and you're not willing to spend money, explain to me how you're going to be any good.

Speaker 11 The answer is they're not.

Speaker 11 And so because of that, you know, Mike Trout has been enormously patient and he desperately wants to win in Los Angeles. Like he so badly wants to have a good team in Orange County that

Speaker 11 allows him to complete his story, right? His story, he wants it to be the guy who stayed with the franchise for his whole career. You know, he's somebody who that matters to.

Speaker 11 But the intersection of that desire to remain with the team with the desire to be able to walk around with a big fat ring on his finger, like those two things are buttoning up head to head right now because the man's not getting any younger.

Speaker 11 Time is wasting away. And at some point, you would have to think that his desire for a championship is going to overwhelm that desire to stick around with the Angels.

Speaker 1 So free Mike Trout. Free him.
I just want to see him play playoff baseball. I want to see him hit balls, you know, a million miles an hour.
That home run he hit the other night was incredible.

Speaker 1 Max, our producer, wants him in the Phillies because he's obviously a Philadelphia guy. So maybe we get that.
Speaking, by the way, of that home run,

Speaker 1 are they juicing the balls again?

Speaker 11 I hope so.

Speaker 1 I think they are because the overs are 66% in the first week of the season, which obviously small sample size, but you also got some really bad weather games where they're not conducive to runs.

Speaker 1 Right. I'm hoping they're juicing the balls again.
Something to like, why wouldn't they?

Speaker 11 I mean, pitchers would complain.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 11 I remember talking with Justin Verlander at an all-star game a few years ago, like when they were like, when the balls were really flying and he just went off.

Speaker 11 And, and the problem with juicing balls is Major League Baseball, like, we're always on the edge of an integrity problem with the sport after the Astros.

Speaker 11 Like, is that not the lingering consequence of what Houston did?

Speaker 11 It's that we always are going to wonder, are things on the up and up with Major League Baseball? So, in the wake of the trash cans,

Speaker 11 with your biggest star by far

Speaker 11 enmeshed in a gambling scandal,

Speaker 11 do you want to be juicing balls? Like, do you want that to be the storyline there?

Speaker 4 I'm okay with it, too.

Speaker 1 Maybe Shohei just needs to bet overs and he gets out of the debt. Yeah.

Speaker 1 There we go. We solved all the problems.

Speaker 4 Maybe Shohei being on a team where it's profitable for him to win if he bets on his own team.

Speaker 1 Maybe that's good for the sport, too.

Speaker 4 Maybe he was $4.5 million in debt because he bet on the angels every day.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I want the balls juice. I want to see the balls.
I want to see dingers. People like dingers.

Speaker 4 With baseball, it's like the most important thing to the old-timers, to the custodians of the game, are the numbers. And so

Speaker 4 you wouldn't see anything in basketball if

Speaker 4 points are up in basketball, but nobody's complaining about it, right? Everyone's like, okay, more points, good for the game.

Speaker 4 In baseball, it's like, well, you can't make the balls easier to hit because Babe Ruth. You know, like, what do those, what do all those numbers that I grew up loving mean? Yeah.

Speaker 4 If the new numbers are way bigger. And I think baseball needs to just embrace or not, they need to reject that and say, you know what, screw it.
If the balls are juiced, the balls are juiced.

Speaker 4 These are the new balls now.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 11 I think, honestly, I do think a new generation of baseball fan is looking at it from that perspective more than the like the numbers or everything because the numbers have just been so skewed.

Speaker 11 And beyond that, we need to look at numbers by generation, not like baseball is this one enormous continuum that you have to judge on.

Speaker 11 Like, I'm sorry, but Babe Ruth wasn't playing against like black players, Dominican players, Venezuelan players.

Speaker 11 The 60, you know, the 60 home runs, the 61 home runs that were hit back in the 30s with Ruth or the 20s with Ruth and the 60s with Georg, like

Speaker 11 completely different.

Speaker 11 It was just a different game entirely. Babe Ruth was going against guys who worked day jobs in the offseason who threw 85.

Speaker 11 If you had Babe Ruth playing baseball today, right now, he would stink. Now, you could give, no, it's true.

Speaker 11 You could give him a year to train, right? And I think

Speaker 11 you could give him new equipment so he's not swinging like a three-pound bat up there.

Speaker 11 And I think if you gave Babe Ruth this guy with immense physical talent, the ability to adjust, then he would be a really good baseball player.

Speaker 11 But if you took 1927 Babe Ruth and dropped him into the big leagues today, he'd be down in AAA.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 He was eating like 14 hot dogs a day and drinking a pint of whiskey every day. A real man's man.

Speaker 1 That's what I was going to say.

Speaker 11 Sounds like an awesome life.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So wait, so off of that, Jeff, I was curious because you're our generation.

Speaker 1 We're all similar age, and you have entered, you know, your career's been incredible entering into this game and the way it's covered by older guys and some people who are a little curmudgeony.

Speaker 1 You had a famous, you, you boycotted your Hall of Fame vote one year. Is that correct? Did.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 I still have not voted. I still have not voted for the Hall of Fame.
It's been like five or six years now. I love that.

Speaker 1 So what has the pushback been by guys that you see in the press box and some of these older guys who are adamant that, you know, steroids, we should just pretend it didn't happen. It's like,

Speaker 1 we're with you and that, no, it happened. It actually saved baseball.
Let's stop pretending that it didn't happen.

Speaker 1 Has it been weird or awkward for you in those moments where it's like you're kind of a new generation and speaking for a new fan base, guys our age, going against some guys who are like, no, we have to keep baseball sacred, which is so stupid.

Speaker 11 You know, I think I was really lucky because I started doing this when I was 23 years old. Like I, you know, I

Speaker 11 got hired at the Kansas City Star to be the national baseball writer because another guy turned the job down because he wanted an extra week of vacation that they wouldn't give to him. And

Speaker 11 I was single and I didn't make much money. And my editor at the time knew that he could kick my ass and make me work all the time, and I wouldn't say anything.
So, that's how I got started.

Speaker 11 And I think because I've been doing this for 21 seasons now, um, you know, the older guys in the press box, it's like I'm a veteran at this point, like I've been doing this for a while, so there's not a whole lot of pushback.

Speaker 11 I think there's like there's, there's mutual respect. Like, when you do anything for 20 years, like

Speaker 11 it's tough to stick around in any job for that long at this point. So, I think, I think they respect

Speaker 11 my opinion because not just the tenure, but because there's logic behind it.

Speaker 11 I found the way that the Hall of Fame handled steroid users to be appalling. And I found it that way because it was rooted in this

Speaker 11 halcyon notion of what baseball is.

Speaker 11 Baseball is green grass and baseball is a hot dog at the ballpark and sitting there with your arm around your kid and going, hey, old pal, we're going to have a good day at the ballpark.

Speaker 11 No, baseball and the hall of fame especially is not that. The hall of fame is a museum that should celebrate the good, bad, and ugly of the sport.

Speaker 11 And if you're going to honor the best players in the game, you can honor them. while still acknowledging their misdeeds and the issues that they had.

Speaker 11 Barry Bonds is is the best hitter I have ever seen.

Speaker 11 It's honestly, it's not even close. Barry Bonds, on account of the accomplishments that he had even before he started using performance enhancing drugs, is a Hall of Famer.

Speaker 11 So are you telling me years at the end of a career are going to essentially nullify and erase the incredible things that he did before that? It just, it didn't make any sense to me. And

Speaker 11 the moment where I decided to stop voting, and I'll just say this, like it makes me sad that I don't vote because there are some cool things in this job.

Speaker 11 And that time, like when I filled out my first Hall of Fame vote, I was so proud.

Speaker 11 I was like, I've done this long enough to earn the privilege to do this and to be part of something that, you know, it's an important thing in baseball history.

Speaker 11 Like, if you're a Hall of Famer, that still means something.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 11 So, so to not vote, it made me sad. But, you know, Joe Morgan sent out a letter letter

Speaker 11 through the Hall of Fame, and it was an email.

Speaker 11 It was like a thousand words, if I recall correctly, essentially saying why players who have used performance enhancing drugs don't belong in the Hall of Fame.

Speaker 11 And you want to talk about like the epitome of moralizing and excluding people who don't align with what your thoughts are on what something should be.

Speaker 11 That to me is antithetical to a history museum. Like a history museum is a place that should welcome all, even if it is ugly as it gets, because we learn from history.

Speaker 11 And that's how, as human beings, we understand the world by looking back and seeing what things were like. So we can understand how to place them in the present context.

Speaker 1 Yeah, very well said. I mean,

Speaker 1 the short version of what you just said very eloquently is, I think I speak for PFT and I, the steroid era rocked. It was funny.
It did. It was fucking

Speaker 1 hidden movie shots.

Speaker 11 It was fantastic. It was the last time that baseball was nationally relevant.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah. The Maguire Sosa Chase.

Speaker 1 That was a point map celebration across America. Absolutely.
Jeff, I had one last question. This has been awesome.
We're definitely going to have you back on later on in the season.

Speaker 1 So y'all know that we're big fans of Cracker Barrel. And this holiday season, I will be sat at their table with a big plate of country fried turkey.

Speaker 8 And Brandon, I'll be right there with you, and I'll check it off my Christmas list in the country store while I'm at it. It'll make a nice holiday tradition.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's so cute of you.

Speaker 8 Enjoy all the more holiday traditions only at Cracker Barrel.

Speaker 1 A personal question. You got your back blown out by a tree?

Speaker 11 I sure did.

Speaker 1 How, how, so for people who don't know, who don't follow baseball, Jeff works constantly. He's always present.

Speaker 1 There was a time, was it last summer where you were kind of absent for a little bit, and then you pop back up and you're like, hey, guys, just a heads up, a tree fell on me.

Speaker 1 I'm working through this, but I broke my back. What,

Speaker 1 like, what, how and what? And are you okay?

Speaker 11 I am okay. So thank you for asking that.

Speaker 11 Okay, so I live in

Speaker 11 like suburban Kansas City. And,

Speaker 11 you know, our neighborhood, it's a town called Prairie Village, and it looks exactly like it sounds. Like there are giant oak trees everywhere, very bucolic place.

Speaker 11 And in our front yard, there's like a probably 7,500 foot tall oak tree. And a huge storm just like blows through town.

Speaker 11 And off of the oak tree, all of a sudden, like you hear a snap and this huge branch goes down. Now, I'm not that big of an idiot to be outside during a storm.

Speaker 11 So I'm like looking through my front window, like, holy shit, that like, thank God I wasn't out there.

Speaker 11 But a piece of this, this branch, which was really like the size of a normal tree, uh, landed on my neighbor's truck. And so,

Speaker 11 god, I'm gonna sell my wife out here. I feel terrible, but um,

Speaker 11 so our power is out, and my first instinct is not to go and help the neighbor, it's to go and find an internet connection so I can book a hotel that night because I didn't want to sleep in the middle of summer in Kansas City when it's hot as shit in my house.

Speaker 11 So, uh, my next door neighbor somehow still has an internet connection. I go over there and my wife says to me, she's like,

Speaker 11 hey, lazy shit,

Speaker 11 come out and help with the neighbors. I'm like, five, five, five, five.
So I go outside and my next door neighbor has a chainsaw. And let me tell you,

Speaker 11 there's been this axiom that I've heard throughout my entire life.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 it's that Jews don't do yard work.

Speaker 11 And there's a reason that we shouldn't do yard work. It's because we don't understand what happens when chainsaws are being used, right?

Speaker 11 My neighbor cuts a branch and

Speaker 11 all of a sudden,

Speaker 11 this limb that is about 25 feet up in the air,

Speaker 11 it starts to roll.

Speaker 11 I didn't know what a rolling tree meant because, you know, I don't do yard work.

Speaker 11 But by the time I realized that this tree was falling and it was about to hit me, I turned around and tried to run.

Speaker 11 But again,

Speaker 11 43, Jewish, not the most athletic guy in the world. I could not get out of the way in time.

Speaker 11 And by the time it was all said and done, I was pinned to the ground underneath this enormous tree and had broken the L1 vertebrae in my back. And I knew, like,

Speaker 11 I stood up and It was pure adrenaline. Like I didn't realize at the time that I was a foot away from being paralyzed.

Speaker 11 I was, you know, 18 inches away from it hitting my head and killing me.

Speaker 11 I got very, very lucky and had really good medical care.

Speaker 11 And that night,

Speaker 11 I got to thank the doctor because he introduced me to ketamine. And let me tell you, like medical grade ketamine, it was, it was, it was that night that I broke my back.
I was sitting in the hospital.

Speaker 11 The doctor gave me ketamine. I ordered Taco Bell to be delivered to the hospital at 3 a.m.
Nice. And I watched wrestling.
And it was one of the best nights of my life. That sounds incredible.

Speaker 1 Oh my God, that's a wild story. I'm glad that you're okay now.

Speaker 4 But it's

Speaker 4 at the time when it's like, oh, a tree fell on Jeff. Everybody was like, what?

Speaker 1 Yeah, huh?

Speaker 4 That doesn't make any sense at all. But, Jeff, I have one last, last question for you.
I did a little research on you. I want to give you the opportunity to explain this.

Speaker 4 I heard a story that you had a really excellent senior prank when you were in high school.

Speaker 11 Yo!

Speaker 11 How did you hear about that one?

Speaker 4 I got dirt on you, Jeff. I got dirt on you, dog.

Speaker 11 Clearly, this is like some Nardwar stuff right here.

Speaker 11 Have you seen it, by the way?

Speaker 4 Have I seen the senior prank?

Speaker 11 Oh, yeah, it's on the internet.

Speaker 1 No, no, I haven't seen it. So

Speaker 11 it most certainly is out there if you find it.

Speaker 11 This is going to sort of tie together a couple stories um

Speaker 11 so

Speaker 11 where does it start somebody in my journalism class senior year

Speaker 11 i don't remember if it was me or a friend but we thought hey wouldn't it be hilarious to bring a stripper to school

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 11 the answer is actually yes it would be um and and so as senior year is winding down the the beauty of journalism class is that we were allowed to go down to the teacher's lounge and use the phone there to make calls for stories.

Speaker 11 And so, I went down to the teacher's lounge and used the phone to call up local establishments and see if there was a lady who might be willing to come to a school.

Speaker 11 And in fact, there was.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 I had arranged, so it was our principal.

Speaker 11 He was a new principal that year. And I had arranged for him to sit in the senior commons area where all the seniors eat at the school.
Like the nerdy kids had said, Mr. Stire,

Speaker 11 it's your first year here. We just want to have like have a good time and sit around with you and celebrate your first year.

Speaker 11 And so it was like, it was everyone was involved in this, from like the nerds to the football players, everyone in between. And the plan was for.

Speaker 11 the stripper to come in dress like a teacher and go up to him and say mr styer

Speaker 11 I'm looking for the anatomy room. And he would say, we don't have an anatomy room.
And then she would say, well, I'm the anatomy substitute. And he would say, we don't have an anatomy class.

Speaker 11 And then she'd say, well, I guess I should give you one then. And then like, I would hit the music and the whole thing would start.

Speaker 11 So

Speaker 11 go to the back of the school.

Speaker 11 sneak her in. The problem was this was before like

Speaker 11 Venmo Venmo or anything like that, and before I had any money. So I had to go around like soliciting donations from people.

Speaker 11 You know, people were given like a dollar or two at the time to get the fund to pay for this to go on. Well, when you tell a lot of people that a stripper might be coming to school,

Speaker 11 they tend to tell other people. And so word had circulated around.

Speaker 11 uh and and the whole like this is like a 1500 kids school in suburban cleveland i would say like almost half the school was in the area just looking for it.

Speaker 11 And a bunch of teachers were around too, and they were, they were trying to nullify this as best they could.

Speaker 11 Thankfully, some football players, I think, like started a fight as a diversion. Like it wasn't a real fight, but it was to get all the teachers off the scent.

Speaker 11 And I was able to sneak her back into the commons. Well, she walks up to the principal.
Immediately he knows. Like immediately he knows exactly who it is.

Speaker 11 Grabs her by the wrist, takes her over, like toward the weight room and into the gym. And a mass of people start rushing over.

Speaker 11 It's like, I'm not going to say it's a riot because it's like suburban Cleveland, a bunch of white kids going over there, but it was a, it was like a, it was like a Woodstock 99 riot.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 11 And, and, and so they end up going over, uh, they bring her out. Uh, three cop cars pull up.

Speaker 11 Um, yeah, like, this was a deal.

Speaker 1 I, I ran to the bathroom.

Speaker 1 That would be great.

Speaker 11 I ran to the bathroom. I had a list of everybody who had given me money.
And so I needed to get rid of the evidence. So, like, I burned the list in the bathroom.
And that day,

Speaker 11 I'm worried because we're supposed to pick up our caps and gowns after.

Speaker 11 And I'm wondering if word is going to get back to the principal by the point at which I'm supposed to pick up my cap and gown that I was the instigator behind

Speaker 11 the stripper kerfuffle. And

Speaker 11 I grab my cap and gown after I tell him my name, and I have, I was like I used Sane bolted out to my car because I knew if I had that cap and gown.

Speaker 11 And as I'm like the coup de gra to this whole thing,

Speaker 11 I'm walking across the stage and I go up and I shake the principal's hand. And he leans in and says, I owe you one.

Speaker 11 And you can see on the video that my parents have, like I have this big smile on my face. And I feel really good about that.
And

Speaker 1 do not regret it one bit.

Speaker 11 You know who deserves credit? My mom. And here's why.
That morning, she comes down and is going to work and sees this enormous stash of cash just sitting on the table. And she's like, what's that for?

Speaker 11 I was like, well, we're doing a prank and we're going to bring a stripper to school. And she says, are you sure that's a good idea?

Speaker 11 And the answer, of course, is yes. Yeah.
And you know what?

Speaker 13 She let me do it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That rocks.

Speaker 11 She let me do it rather than like, if my kid tried to pull that these days, I'd be like, no fucking way, you moron. But my mom was willing to let me do completely stupid things.

Speaker 11 And all of this is memorialized.

Speaker 11 in a camcorder video that was taken and uploaded onto youtube it's have you have you seen those videos on tick tocks like school back in the 90s was so cool yeah it's that it's that video actually oh wow and and that also includes uh the aftermath of the stripper being taken away and all the kids getting pissed off about it i'm gonna have to watch this video that sounds awesome it also sounds like your principal recognized the stripper yeah and was like no not you and that's why you didn't get into trouble his name like oh man i didn't know this is your job that's crystal why are you here

Speaker 1 oh man well jeff this has been awesome man like i said we've wanted to have you on for a while, and I'm happy we did it. And we'll definitely have you back.
Talk more baseball.

Speaker 11 I look forward to it. And I apologize for my rambling stories there.

Speaker 1 No, no. Listen, we interviewed Bill Walton.
No one rambles. So when you have that as the bar, we can handle it all.
Thanks so much, Jeff.

Speaker 11 Appreciate you guys having me.

Speaker 1 Thanks, man. Have a good one.

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Find it in Kroger Isles this October.

Speaker 1 The road trip might be over, but dinner's just getting good. Okay, let's wrap up.
We've got some FAQs.

Speaker 1 By the way, I had a question that just popped in my head.

Speaker 1 How much money do you think Liver King's spending on Twitter ads?

Speaker 4 A ton. Infinite.

Speaker 1 Everywhere. It's crazy, man.

Speaker 4 Pussy and bio.

Speaker 1 It's nuts. I just can't get away from him.
He might, or it's either that, or he's the only person that actually is paying money to advertise that. That also could be it.
Yeah. He's everywhere now.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Well, he admitted to using steroids, said that he would stop using steroids, and now he's definitely not using steroids, right?

Speaker 1 Definitely not.

Speaker 4 That was the funniest apology ever when he was like, I've let my fans down, I've let the primals down.

Speaker 1 There's a ton of people who still follow what he's doing, right?

Speaker 4 I'm sure. Yeah.

Speaker 1 There's, I mean, the world. Future Congressman.
A lot of Billy footballs, yeah. Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Hey, PMT.

Speaker 1 Since the new studio is completed in Chicago, are we going to see the return of Larry the Gambling Goldfinch? Oh!

Speaker 1 I would love to see this tradition brought back to honor the legendary fish that came before. Thanks.
I would. There's one legendary fish.
Yeah. What do you mean? Six were kind of duds.

Speaker 4 Yeah, the one that you have on your thigh.

Speaker 1 Ish.

Speaker 4 I still can't get over the fact that you got the dead goldfish's body tattooed on your thigh. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I can't believe you kept it for a while.

Speaker 1 You would have brought it up every show. Oh, yeah.
Yes. I actually, if anyone knows any tattoo removal places in Chicago, I got to finish it out before the summer.

Speaker 4 Yeah, we might bring Larry back. Larry was a legend.
I don't...

Speaker 4 The reason why we haven't done him recently, it's because it's hard to recreate the magic that we had with that one special fish also keeping a goldfish alive is very difficult for us

Speaker 1 and people were getting mad yeah whenever a goldfish that but yeah i would if we could have someone

Speaker 1 someone has to be in charge of larry

Speaker 1 And we have to have him living in a place that we could easily put a camera up to, and PFT and I could just stand there and be like, here's this week's picks, I'm in.

Speaker 1 What? Nah. What? It's dumb.
It's

Speaker 1 animal abuse. It wouldn't make sense.

Speaker 1 It's not even realistic. What were you going to say? Like, what if we could put him in the lottery ball machine somehow?

Speaker 4 Fill the machine up with water.

Speaker 1 But then, like, every day, he would just get.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I feel like you wouldn't survive one of those. That thing goes.

Speaker 1 No, but imagine if he got selected. Yeah.
You know what? You're right. It is sick.
I know. I didn't say it.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I was just looking at it. I was like, imagine.
Dots would splatter all over the world. Yeah, that would kind of rock.

Speaker 1 Here's what I'm going to say

Speaker 1 to the AWLs.

Speaker 1 My pledge to you is: I am going to

Speaker 1 ask Paige, who runs our office, who's incredible, if she could get a goldfish and keep it alive. And if she says yes, then maybe we'll bring it back.

Speaker 4 Memes.

Speaker 1 What do you got, memes? What about a gambling turtle? Oh, I would be in for a gambling turtle.

Speaker 1 But that also would take forever for him to do the pitch.

Speaker 1 That would be very funny. Have you ever done a turtle race? It's sick.
Yeah, turtle race.

Speaker 1 How I became a gambler. Wasn't a rubber duck? No, it's turtle race in Key West, Florida won $100.
But it was 12 years old.

Speaker 5 If a goldfish dies, it's like, okay, it's a goldfish.

Speaker 1 Like, if a turtle died on our watch, like, turtles never die. Dude,

Speaker 1 this predates you, Max. Like, people were very mad about the goldfish dying.
But could you imagine? Because we had a lot of goldfish.

Speaker 1 People forget my sister, the only time she ever visited the office, she found dead Larry. And then they got mad that I flushed it down in the toilet.
That's what you're supposed to do with a goldfish.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's exactly right.

Speaker 4 If you flush a turtle down,

Speaker 4 it's going to turn into a ninja.

Speaker 1 We kept the second one in the freezer for six months.

Speaker 4 We should actually

Speaker 4 get a turtle. I like the way that you're thinking, memes.
I think this is a good idea because his picks would be very funny.

Speaker 4 We would just set up a camera and go live with it and be like, okay, we'll just wait till he makes his pick.

Speaker 1 He could actually, wow. It just never worked in the third office.
No, wait. We got one, and we had Billy take care of it.
It was just a turtle.

Speaker 1 What if we got a turtle and

Speaker 1 when we take the Thursday shows, we just have for like 20 minutes or whatever it is, a picture and a picture of him just doing the pick right here. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So while we're doing the picks, he's just doing his pick.

Speaker 4 I like that a lot.

Speaker 1 I like that a lot.

Speaker 4 And if he dips five games below 500, we eat him. Yep.
I think tournament is soup.

Speaker 1 We crack his shit. I think turtles are so much more difficult

Speaker 5 to keep alive than gold.

Speaker 1 All right, so what we need is we need someone who has a turtle.

Speaker 1 I'll take care of the turtle. Okay, memes take care of the turtle.
All right.

Speaker 1 Memes taking care of the turtle. So memes,

Speaker 1 what we really should do is the turtle shouldn't live in the office, it should just come in on Thursdays for his pick.

Speaker 1 What? This is memes.

Speaker 1 This is next question.

Speaker 1 All right, but so I like this. So, if we could set up,

Speaker 1 like, how funny would it be if we're doing our picks and then people who are because shout out to everyone who watches the show now.

Speaker 1 I love that we have so many people watching the show, but if you had a turtle just slowly in the picture in a picture while we're talking about the games, the turtle's making picks. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What about a mini horse? No. Down.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's too much.

Speaker 4 Not a pony? It's too much work. No, I don't.

Speaker 1 We've talked about this before.

Speaker 1 What? Me and you? I feel like our kid just asked us if we get a mini horse. I said down.
And you said, no.

Speaker 4 Ask your father. Yeah,

Speaker 1 we're down.

Speaker 1 Anything that I don't have to worry about.

Speaker 1 I have too many things. I have three kids, a dog, a Jerry, a Rico, a fucking Brandon.
I have a lot of things.

Speaker 4 What if we get a snake? A poisonous snake?

Speaker 1 I hate snakes. I hate snakes.
Actually, if we got a snake, I'd kill you.

Speaker 1 That means your brain was gone.

Speaker 4 Like the most poisonous snake possible.

Speaker 1 Okay, maybe then. Yeah.
No. Speaking of animals.
Turtle's in, though. Memes? Yeah.
Get your turtle. What are we going to name it?

Speaker 5 This I'm in for that's forcing memes to get a turtle.

Speaker 1 What should we name the turtle? Football? Football is a good name. Football, the turtle.
I feel like if it's going to be memes is turtle, it's something with an M.

Speaker 1 Like memes and... Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 Do we want to limit it to just football picks? Max?

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, we could test them out in other picks.

Speaker 4 In other sports. Memes and Max.

Speaker 1 Yeah, name them Max. No, football.
Football. Name him Max.
Football. Max.
No, name him Max because then we'll have to always be like Max, or are we talking about Max?

Speaker 1 No, because you're going to like Max shit is picking.

Speaker 5 He's going to be mean to this turtle if he's bad at picks, and it's just going to be a

Speaker 1 Max pooped himself. Are we talking about Max the turtle or Max a human?

Speaker 6 Oh, we just got the ratings.

Speaker 1 Oh, tell me, did I?

Speaker 6 Schefter tweeted it.

Speaker 4 That's what he did. The most watched NCAA women's basketball game ever, 12.3.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Didn't beat the men's.

Speaker 4 What was the men's?

Speaker 1 15 for NC State Duke.

Speaker 1 Decent question. That doesn't matter, though.

Speaker 4 That was on CBS.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's true. That's huge.
Yeah. Well, last year was like $9 million, so yeah, that's a huge jump.
Shout out to the women. And now I feel comfortable saying that was a great watch.
I liked it.

Speaker 1 Do you feel comfortable?

Speaker 4 I thought it was good, but I liked it

Speaker 4 8% less than the NC State Duke game.

Speaker 1 I would have liked it a little more.

Speaker 4 Yeah, if other people had watched it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What's the deal with the thing in front of Hank?

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah. So.

Speaker 1 You should know.

Speaker 4 You should know. We actually had a sponsor come in.

Speaker 4 Salesperson was walking them, giving them a tour of the office. And he saw that thing and was like, what the fuck is that? And I had to explain to him what it was.
That's the octopus that we had.

Speaker 4 when we did one episode of Barstall Van Talk. And so it's an octopus.
It's a dead octopus inside formaldehyde.

Speaker 1 It's funny when you don't even explain it because we had Alex Crusoe came into the office today. He's going to be a great interview with him coming Friday.

Speaker 1 He's like, what is that? I said, it's an octopus. He's like, he just looked at me like, were you going to say anything else? Like, no, it's an octopus.
Yeah, we can probably move it somewhere else.

Speaker 1 We found it

Speaker 1 in a box. And I was like, oh, the octopus.
We'll put it in the studio. We just haven't really found a better place.
We should drink it.

Speaker 4 I thought about that earlier. That's formaldehyde, though.

Speaker 1 So?

Speaker 1 Probably die.

Speaker 1 Probably. We're old.

Speaker 1 Probably die or would you?

Speaker 4 I think you would die. If you drank all that, you would die.

Speaker 1 Like, Ed Cooley's probably going to resign, or he is going to resign.

Speaker 4 No, I'd say you would die.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 4 A sip would be fine.

Speaker 1 How much formaldehyde?

Speaker 1 Maldehyde, can you drink?

Speaker 1 Hey, PMT gang. Kind of serious question.
Is Pug okay? He's been the vet for what seems like weeks, and our AWLs are genuinely concerned about his well-being.

Speaker 1 If you guys have to make the decision to put him down, we understand.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. We, as award-winning listeners, have to know right now if he's going to pull through or not.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 Not pulling. It's too early.

Speaker 1 By the way, two tablespoons of formaldehyde would kill you. Yeah, that would kill all of you.
So we have to have one.

Speaker 4 Yeah. You just get a wicked buzz.

Speaker 4 Pug's fine.

Speaker 4 He was dealing with an inner. He's internal.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Oh, he is?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I just got into the garbage I'm doing.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 4 He ate a chicken bone. And you got to keep those.
Or did you eat a chicken bone or was it icebreaker's gum?

Speaker 1 Both. Yeah, both.
Yeah, Pug lost a lot of weight, though, from his ailment. He's looking good.

Speaker 1 He's looking lean.

Speaker 1 And we just put a bench press next to it right behind his desk. And do we know what's wrong with you, Pug?

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah, garbage.

Speaker 10 The vet gave me medicine. Doing better.

Speaker 4 Didn't Pug. Do you have all your shots?

Speaker 6 I did not. Now I do.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Pug.

Speaker 1 How are you feeling today? Doing good. We're doing better.
Pug. Pug.

Speaker 1 All right, last one. Fun one.
Hey, PMT gang, was there ever a point where one of you, Big Cat and PFT, mostly thought about quitting slash leaving the show?

Speaker 4 Not, no, not really.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 4 I don't think it's ever happened.

Speaker 1 Closest is no.

Speaker 4 We were like upset after Barcelona Van talk, but I don't think we... Yeah.

Speaker 4 It was never anything that was like imminent to happen.

Speaker 4 And with contract stuff, it's just something that you have to go through every couple of years and then you just come back because you didn't want to leave.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't think

Speaker 1 I'm trying to think. I mean,

Speaker 1 I don't think I've even been close to being a free agent at Barcelona, so that part has never been an issue. But yeah, after Barcelona Van Toc, we were upset, but I don't think we ever.

Speaker 4 I think after the JMU Wisconsin game.

Speaker 1 Well, no, that was, I wanted to kick Hank.

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah, Big Cat wanted to just get away from Hank. Yeah, that's all.

Speaker 1 No, I don't. Hank, how many times have you wanted to quit the show?

Speaker 1 I once suggested taking myself.

Speaker 1 And we said, no, no, no no yeah that was crazy that was a long you wanted to be corporate hank no no no no I was just like I was editing the show and I hated listening to myself and I was you know this is before Billy before Max before anyone so I was the one that was catching all of the like if you're not big hat or PFT we fucking hate you so it's getting in my head

Speaker 1 and I was like if you guys want to you know I won't take offense that's I think that's what I said I was like I'm not you know I get it You could probably put someone in that's more entertaining, that people like better.

Speaker 1 Like, I won't take offense. And we said, fuck no.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 it was the fastest fuck no ever aren't you glad that we did that very glad are you you're welcome yeah sure yeah okay

Speaker 1 we basically pfd and i actually met about it and we're like we got to wait till the patriots are bad

Speaker 1 we got to wait this out just a few i think that was i think that was after this was like 2017 yeah it was before the sixth super bowl so we had to wait it out a little bit hank are you a little bit nervous about the

Speaker 1 fifth super bowl no no it was after the fifth before the sixth. Right.
And we were like, we got to wait it out. They're going to be bad.
And then they won another one.

Speaker 4 You should be nervous about the Celtics now.

Speaker 1 I'm excited. No.
Brooks Kepka always said, if there's nerves, to me, I think that's excitement. So I am nervous, but I'm excited.

Speaker 4 If that makes sense. Pressure is a privilege.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm not nervous. I'm excited.

Speaker 4 You're not thinking about what happens if the Celtics lose in the playoffs.

Speaker 1 No, you can't. That's a loser mentality.
You're a fucking loser, so that's why you're doing that. But I'm not thinking like that.
I'm excited.

Speaker 1 We've worked so hard to get to this point, and now it's our time to shine.

Speaker 4 Hank, I have more Stanley Cups and World Series than you since we started doing this show.

Speaker 4 I think we're tied in World Series. Yeah, you're tied in World Series.
Yeah, but more Stanley Cups than you.

Speaker 1 Okay, sick.

Speaker 4 You root for the Cowboys.

Speaker 1 Not anymore.

Speaker 1 You don't have Max to pick on, though. Well, maybe you will.

Speaker 1 One of you guys. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And And beats back this year.

Speaker 1 This year? And this week. So that will, Max, are you going to get your hopes up? Oh,

Speaker 1 what if you beat them, though, 8-1?

Speaker 1 Hank, you'd have to shave your beard. You'd have to shave your beard.
Say yes. Right now.
Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 If the Sixers beat

Speaker 1 or the Bulls beat 8-1, I don't think the Bulls. In a series.
In a series. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And if we sweep. No.
Nope. Yes.
No, I'm not doing it without stakes. Do you guys have to stop? You already said yes.
You already said yes. You already said yes.
I didn't say yes to the bells.

Speaker 1 Fine. The bulls are probably not going to make it.

Speaker 1 I'm all tangled up over here. All right, numbers.
40. If I get this, you have to shave your beard.
Eight.

Speaker 1 Fine. If I get this, you have to shave yours.
No.

Speaker 1 Huh. 18.
Not so tough now.

Speaker 1 Three. No, you're the one that just does these bets and no stakes.
12. 99 puts.
I mean, 20. There's no way that this.

Speaker 1 You guys didn't do a fucking bet for JMU, Wisconsin. Shut up.
I should actually say that every time we ever do a bet ever when you're like, do a bet, do a bet, do a bet.

Speaker 1 You guys,

Speaker 1 both of your alums played a game. You're like, we don't care.
The game already means so much. Did you come up?

Speaker 1 I had a fucking meltdown. It did mean so much.

Speaker 4 Did you come up with a bet?

Speaker 1 We tried to. You guys were like, no, no, we're not doing a bet.
I don't think you came up with a bet.

Speaker 1 We're getting fucking tangled over here.

Speaker 1 God damn it.

Speaker 1 Let's name the turtle. Damn it, these wires.
All right, what?

Speaker 4 Let's name the turtle Tony. Tony the Turtle?

Speaker 1 No, what about Max? What about football?

Speaker 4 Football's not a bad one.

Speaker 1 Football's a pretty good one.

Speaker 4 Sports. What about just sports?

Speaker 1 What about... What about sport?

Speaker 4 Ooh, sports the turtle?

Speaker 1 Sport.

Speaker 1 What about Mr. Pear?

Speaker 1 I like it. Done.
Mr. Pear.
Mr. Pear.
Mr. Pear.

Speaker 1 Mr. Pear.
Yeah, we'll feed him pears.

Speaker 1 He'll have to go get the pear for the pick.

Speaker 5 What about Mr. Pear? Yes, Mr.
Pear, Mr. Pear.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Yeah, Mr. Pear.

Speaker 4 Mr. Cream?

Speaker 1 No, it's Mr. Pear.

Speaker 1 Mr. Pear.

Speaker 1 And we'll just, yeah, we'll.

Speaker 1 I bet you we can get someone. I bet you we can get like the

Speaker 1 food coloring stamps, and we can stamp the slices of pears with the different logos. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that will be how he picks his games. Which pair? Mr.
Pear.

Speaker 4 And we should never discipline him.

Speaker 1 Never.

Speaker 1 Or we should really discipline him. Mr.
Pear. Whoa, that sounded kind of like torture.

Speaker 5 No, just be like strict parents.

Speaker 4 No, that sounds like you want to eat them. That's the Philly coming out.

Speaker 1 Memes, I'm not saying don't do this, memes, but because turtles, I guess their shell is like their skin.

Speaker 1 Like, it can be hurt if you pierce their skin, but it would be cool if you put a handle on them. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You just pick them up. I won't do that.

Speaker 1 Don't do that, though.

Speaker 4 Or if you sew laces into the back of them like a football.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 Mr. Pear.
No, Mr. Pear deserves better.
I fucking love Mr. Pear.

Speaker 1 When Mr. Pear dies, I'm going to be very sad.
When Mr.

Speaker 4 Pear misbehaves, I'm just going to be like, Mr. Pear,

Speaker 1 Mr. Pear.
Oh, Mr. Pear, Tommy Tax.
Mr.

Speaker 4 Pear, you need to fix the door on the spaceship before you get to the next step.

Speaker 1 We're all going to kiss Mr. Pear and get weird turtle diseases.

Speaker 1 All right, numbers.

Speaker 1 Mr. Pear's going to rock.
I mean, we're going to sell some shirts. You got to get this turtle like ASAP.
Mr. Pear.
Can you get this turtle soon so we can have him start picking shit? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Just go to Tin Lizzie. Yeah, I got to hit up my turtle guy.

Speaker 5 Yeah, any turtle guys out there, let us know. Let us know.
I also need to find a dentist in Chicago. I've been meeting the same.

Speaker 1 All right, what is this? Is it a fucking Craigslist right now? Come on, Max, figure it out. You eggs.
If you do temporary tattoo removal, let me know.

Speaker 4 If you have an El Camino that you're looking for, so.

Speaker 1 All right, numbers: 40,

Speaker 1 3,

Speaker 1 77, 8, 18,

Speaker 1 99. Poke.

Speaker 1 Actually, you say 20.

Speaker 5 21.

Speaker 5 That's our first time. Kind of went off the rails.

Speaker 1 91.

Speaker 1 See you everyone Friday. Alex Crusoe in studio.
Love you guys.

Speaker 1 Talking away.

Speaker 1 I don't know what

Speaker 1 to say and say it anyway.

Speaker 1 Today is a mother day to find you. Shine away.

Speaker 1 Oh, I've been coming for your love, okay.

Speaker 1 Shy it away.

Speaker 1 I've been coming for your love of king.

Speaker 1 Needless to say,

Speaker 1 I wanna sing it.

Speaker 1 Somebody

Speaker 1 stunned a blink

Speaker 1 certain

Speaker 1 about things I've been.

Speaker 1 Drink on me,

Speaker 1 drink on me.

Speaker 1 Things that you say,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 just a way that worries away.

Speaker 1 You are the things I've got to remember.

Speaker 1 You shine away.

Speaker 1 Love you coming for you anyway.

Speaker 1 You shine away.

Speaker 1 be coming for you when you light.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 come

Speaker 1 take on me. Take

Speaker 1 me

Speaker 1 on me.

Speaker 1 Take on me.

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 you,

Speaker 1 take on me

Speaker 1 all

Speaker 1 me,

Speaker 1 take on me,

Speaker 1 take on me.