Myles Garrett Tried To Kill Mason Rudolph, Rick Ankiel, We Pranked Florio, Week 11 Picks

Speaker 1 Hey, pardon my take, listeners. You can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

Speaker 2 Sweaters and denim for casual plans, party dresses for nights out, and comfy matching sets for everything in between. Keep the chaos cute this season in Abercrombie.

Speaker 2 Shop their new holiday outfits in the app online or in stores.

Speaker 1 On today's part of my take, we have Rick Ankeel. Awesome interview with him.
We have Mike Floria. We pranked his ass real good.
And oh yeah, there was a huge fight on a football field.

Speaker 1 And holy shit, Miles Garrett, you lost your mind. You're going to be suspended for the rest of the season.
Just a little news there. Holy fuck.
Glad we stayed up for this one.

Speaker 1 We stayed up, so we're going to recap it all. We have the week 11 preview, our bets, we have Firefest, we have Fantasy Fuck Boys.
Holy shit, this is going to be a great show.

Speaker 1 And we're brought to you by the... Ball's here.

Speaker 3 Kids are back in school. Vacations are over.
And cozy season is officially on. You know what that means? Bombus season is on.
Bombus makes the most comfortable socks ever.

Speaker 3 And they even make slippers, tees, underwear, all crafted from premium materials. Perfect for this time of year and cozying up for football watching.

Speaker 3 Their slippers are also Sherpa lined, which feels like you're walking on the clouds. Bombus really has it all.

Speaker 3 And if you head over to bombus.com/slash audio, you can use the code audio for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S.com/slash audio.

Speaker 1 Code audio at checkout. Okay, let's go.

Speaker 1 Now in the street, there is violence.

Speaker 1 And I not like the solve fucking be done.

Speaker 1 No place to hang all over washing,

Speaker 1 and then I can't blame all of the sons. Oh, no, we're gonna rock it down to Elite Trick Avenue,

Speaker 1 and then we'll take it higher.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Part of My Take, presented by the Cash App. Go download it right now.
Use code Barcelona. You get $10 free and $10 to ASPCA.
Today is Friday, November 15th.

Speaker 1 And holy shit, Miles Garrett almost killed Mason Rudolph. All hell broke loose at the end of the Steelers-Browns game.
Now, this is

Speaker 1 the only game I've ever seen a team win that

Speaker 1 actually lost. They lost because the Browns have their biggest win of the season.
They're back in it. They feel good.
They beat an arch rival.

Speaker 1 And then, oh, yeah, they lost their best player probably for the rest of the season because he went absolutely insane and tried to smash Mason Rudolph's skull in with his own helmet, with Mason Rudolph's own helmet.

Speaker 1 Can I just say, and I don't want to make this about us, or you actually had the Browns, but I think that everyone should be refunded who had the Steelers because I wanted to start this show by saying Mason Rudolph has a huge fucking face and is a terrible quarterback and is not the guy in

Speaker 1 Pittsburgh. And he's the classic quarterback where every time he drops back, if you're a Steelers fan or you bet on the Steelers, you're like, oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck.

Speaker 1 Only bad things can happen, but I can't say any of that stuff because he almost died. Because he got hit in the head with his own helmet.
He robbed me. Now, here's the thing:

Speaker 1 I was prepared to say something similar.

Speaker 1 I was going to say, I'm not going to say it now, but I was saying. Don't say it, but say it.
No, no, no. I was going to say, I'm not going to say it that Mason Rudolph is,

Speaker 1 at best, a perfectly perfectly average quarterback under the best conditions possible. So, like, if he was playing in a dome when it's 70 degrees and all his relatives

Speaker 1 make up the entire stance, it's only his relatives watching. He's playing against Baylor's defense, against a Big 12 defense.

Speaker 1 He can be a perfectly average quarterback, but I can't say any of that right now.

Speaker 1 What I will say is, unpopular opinion, you shouldn't be allowed to take another player's helmet off and try to kill him with it. Yeah, I think that that way.
Maybe that makes me soft.

Speaker 1 Maybe I'm a snowflake. Pussification of the NFL.
But actually, Roger Dell is probably going to throw the ruleback book at him because he made illegal contact with Mason Rudolph's helmet. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Not the part about him hitting in the head with it. And Mason Rudolph, by the way, is coming off a brutal concussion like a month ago.

Speaker 1 The whole thing was insane. We actually were ready.
We're about to tape. And

Speaker 1 in my gambling degeneracy, I had bet the Browns second half. So I was like, hey, can we watch the end of this game? I want to see, make sure that I win this.
And then all hell broke loose.

Speaker 1 And it was absolutely insane. So if you didn't watch, if you fell asleep early, go watch the highlight, but we'll explain the highlights.
I'm sure a lot of Browns fans turned the game off.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they might have. So it was third and I don't know, 25 or whatever.
There's no time left. There's maybe eight seconds left.
And Mason Rudolph drops back to pass, gets hit by Miles Garrett.

Speaker 1 Now, Mason Rudolph did sort of push Miles Garrett in the face. No, he tried to take Miles Garrett's helmet off.
So he definitely provoked it. And Miles Garrett then ripped Mason Rudolph's helmet off.

Speaker 1 And I think if it had stopped right there, it would have been a, oh, that was not nice. Like, that wasn't good, guys.
That's AFC North football. Yeah, like, oh, all right.
Well, maybe, maybe a fine.

Speaker 1 Maybe

Speaker 1 everyone gets a $15,000 fine. But no, it did not stop there because then Miles Garrett took...
Mason Rudolph's helmet and smashed Mason Rudolph over the head, like full contact.

Speaker 1 Now, then, to his credit,

Speaker 1 he hit hit him with the open side of the helmet down.

Speaker 1 So he could say, like, he was trying to, he was concerned for Mason Rudolph's health. He said, hey, man, it's not safe to be out here without your helmet on.

Speaker 1 Let me very aggressively put it back on your head. Get it back on your head.
Yeah. And then

Speaker 1 Pouncey.

Speaker 1 Pouncey happened. Mike.
Shout out to Mike Pouncey. Mike Pouncey, the Pouncey brothers.
They have to be the most ride or die guys in the world because let's just go back in time here.

Speaker 1 The Pouncey brothers, after I I think Aaron Hernandez was in jail, already convicted, felon, murderer, they were like wearing free Aaron Hernandez hats at the club.

Speaker 1 Like they stuck with their guy a little too late, a little too far.

Speaker 1 So Pouncey just goes insane on Miles Garrett, hits him, kicks him, which, by the way, hitting a guy with a helmet on is always just a really stupid thing.

Speaker 1 Pouncey, again, credit to him for being ride or die. I actually think that Pouncey could injure somebody by punching them in the face mask.
I think that's within his skill set.

Speaker 1 He shouldn't be suspended, by the way. Because I feel like he should just be like, hey, that was ride or die.

Speaker 1 And also, he shouldn't be suspended because if we're looking out for Mason Rudolph's head and concussions, we can't let that offensive line get worse.

Speaker 1 Well, also, if I'm Roger McDowell, I don't want to suspend Pouncey because then I have to deal with the Pouncey brothers at that point. And then I'm not safe.
Correct.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, I'm willing to overlook Pouncey's aggression in this because he had his guys back.

Speaker 1 Miles Garrett, probably gone. I would imagine he's gone for the rest of the year.

Speaker 1 You could make the argument this was attempted murder. So this was, so there's six games left on the schedule.
So now the Browns are, what, four and six? Yep.

Speaker 1 We looked it up. Albert Hainsworth is the closest corollary here.
He got suspended five games for stomping on Garad's head and making him bleed.

Speaker 1 Sue, who, by the way, Nagama De Sue, is off the hook as dirtiest guy in the league immediately. Yep.

Speaker 1 He got suspended two games for stomping on a Packer. So I think this is going to be six.
And it's like a perfect, all right, you're suspended for the rest of the year.

Speaker 1 So, like we said at the top, the Browns won, and now they're basically their season's over because they just lost their best player on defense.

Speaker 1 There are definitely some Cleveland Brown fans that went to sleep with a win that are going to wake up tomorrow morning and somehow have lost overnight after a big win. So Brown.

Speaker 1 And here's a fun little stat. This was the first time that the Browns have ever

Speaker 1 beaten Pittsburgh and Baltimore in the same season. Wow.
In the history of the Browns. The new Browns.
Well, yeah, no, Baltimore. Yeah, yeah, yeah, ever, ever.

Speaker 1 Because they were the Baltimore Ravens.

Speaker 1 Somewhere Greg Williams is watching and he's like, these are my guys. Holy shit.
These are my guys.

Speaker 1 It was, it's insane. I don't know what you do as a Browns fan because you actually did just finally get a convincing win.

Speaker 1 And again, we're not going to bash Mason Rudolph because Miles Garrett already did that for us. But

Speaker 1 Mason Rudolph is a very bad quarterback. If we were to bash him, we'd say, you threw four interceptions.
You look like a joke out there. Duck should be starting, and your face is too big.

Speaker 1 But again, not going to bash him. And again, not to not pile on him.

Speaker 1 But I also think that if I was coaching that Browns defense on that final series, I would say, no matter what you do, do not hurt Mason Rudolph because we get to play him again in two weeks.

Speaker 1 Two weeks, which is awesome. Can we flex that game? Can we flex it to another Thursday night? I don't know.
Please do do it. This feels like a nice nightcap for a Thursday night game as a brawl.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm going to be disappointed in every single Thursday night football game that ends without an all-out fight. Do you think that the size? Now, I don't want to do the Stephen A.
Smith.

Speaker 1 We have to ask the provocation. But do you think the size, the sheer size of Mason Rudolph's head had anything to do with it? Because that's a big target to hit.

Speaker 1 No, yeah, I think that we might have to consider that. The gravity pull, the gravitational pull of his fucking huge ass head.
Right, it's like a planet.

Speaker 1 Miles Garrett's hand was drawn into the face mask, and then he got stuck on the face mask, and he tried to take his hand off because you shouldn't be doing that to a quarterback.

Speaker 1 Then he tried to put it back on, but he couldn't get rid of the helmet because it was stuck to his hand. Unbelievable.
I mean, and the game kind of sucked, to be honest.

Speaker 1 It was pretty bad. It was.
Am I not allowed to say how bad Mason Rudolph was because he was absolutely fine? No,

Speaker 1 you can. No, you can't, but you can say that

Speaker 1 if this hadn't happened, what you would have said. I don't even know that what what happened even affects it because he was that bad.
No,

Speaker 1 don't do that. That's crossing the line.
Hank, he could have been

Speaker 1 severely injured. So we don't say that.

Speaker 1 If we were able to speak freely about Mason Rudolph, I would agree with you. He's a fucking terrible quarterback, but we're not going to do that.

Speaker 1 Okay?

Speaker 1 He was attacked. He was assaulted.

Speaker 1 Are you going to blame an assault victim? He's an assault victim. He was trying to pull Garrett's helmet off.

Speaker 1 There you go, Hank. There you go, Hank.
I think it's. This is going to be, by the way, Brow, I can't wait.
And I'm not even going to be mad at it because this is just what sports fandom does to you.

Speaker 1 There will be a large push of Browns fans tomorrow getting in everyone's mentions, being like, that was Mason Rudolph's fault. We're going to get some freeze frames.
We're going to get some stills.

Speaker 1 We're going to get some Photoshops done with arrows. Actually, it's probably just going to be screenshots people take from their phone and then attaching that little emoji sticker with the blue arrow.

Speaker 1 Please see his hands on his helmet. Now,

Speaker 1 I think what should happen in Cleveland, the judge who is adjudicating the guy that tried to punch Miles Garrett in the face in traffic, let that guy off. That guy should go free.
Who knows?

Speaker 1 Maybe that guy was from the future and he was coming back trying to save Mason Rudolph by Terminator. Exactly.
So we don't know. I say let that guy go.

Speaker 1 So the other thing we should talk about here is the Browns have solved their red zone offense, which has been completely buried by the fact that Mason Rudolph was terrible and then got assaulted.

Speaker 1 But they were awesome in the red zone. They seem to have figured out how to use their offense against a good Steelers defense.

Speaker 1 Although, again, Mason Rudolph turned the ball over like a million times, so it didn't really help their defense. But the Browns, like,

Speaker 1 it wasn't even a question they were going to be able to score from the red zone. I don't know what happened.
They were winning. I don't think their play calling was that great throughout the game.

Speaker 1 Well, they used the sneak. They finally used the sneak.
Yeah, they used the sneak. They punted a lot.

Speaker 1 Their play calling when they weren't in the red zone, I think, was pretty bad. Yeah.
Like the guy that drafted Johnny Manzela got demoted from general manager to offensive coordinator or whatever.

Speaker 1 They were unimaginative for the most part, but they won. They were going to get out of there with a win.
Swagger Jr. is 2-0.
Yes,

Speaker 1 as mascot. SJ.
You know what? This was a revenge game for Swagger Jr. against Michael Vicks last team.
So a little bad blood was boiling over even before kickoff.

Speaker 1 So, Joe Buck. Credits, Joe Buck.
We have finally, it's been 15, 16, I don't even know how many years. We are finally able to move on.

Speaker 1 He said this is the ugliest thing he's ever seen take place on a football field so randy moss doing a fake mooning in lambeau you're officially off the hook because joe buck has a new thing that he's disgusted by and actually

Speaker 1 joe buck's a good friend of ours it works here yes like that call works here it just makes it look how ridiculous it was that he said that about randy moss doing a fake moon but this was

Speaker 1 probably the most like

Speaker 1 i we all were just kind of sitting here like, Are you serious? This is really happening? Holy shit. It was crazy.
It was crazy. It was really bad.

Speaker 1 And the thing is, the Browns could have put themselves in a position to win another five games going down the stretch off the schedule.

Speaker 1 And then we would have gotten an entire off-season of Brown Super Bowl hype again, which would have been a lot of fun to deal with. Freddy Kidd.

Speaker 1 Does it matter if Mason Rudolph passes concussion protocol? What do you mean? If he's okay? If he's okay, you think there's no suspension? No, not no suspension, but I feel like it makes it less of a.

Speaker 1 Hank is firmly on Miles Garrett's side. Listen, I'm with Hank that, like, if this hadn't happened, this would have been a bash Mason Rudolph podcast all the way through.

Speaker 1 I had a whole list of things that I was going to say about how terrible he is, but we can't do it, Hank. But he didn't say it, yeah.
We cannot do it.

Speaker 1 He really does remind me, like, as someone who's watched a lot of quarterbacks play for both the Bears and the Wisconsin Badgers,

Speaker 1 when you have that quarterback who every time he drops back, nothing but bad things can happen. Yeah.
It's the worst feeling in your world.

Speaker 1 It's bad, but you know what? I like that feeling compared to a quarterback that doesn't make you feel anything. That's worse.
Yeah, but Johnny Hucker, he looks like Johnny Hecker when he throws.

Speaker 1 Like the interception that he threw. You know what it is? The Rams.
Yeah. Last week, that was Mason Rudolph.
Every time he throws it in the barrel, you know what it is? He wears number two.

Speaker 1 No good players. True.

Speaker 1 Matt Ryan is the best player you can probably name that's ever worn number two. It's not a good number to wear.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, it's, I guess he's got a

Speaker 1 better, what are the better number twos, or sorry, what are the better quarterbacks, quarterback numbers that they should be wearing? Five,

Speaker 1 seven, five, yes, seven, eight, eleven,

Speaker 1 twelve, twelve, twelve, ten, ten's a good

Speaker 1 quarterback number.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's really good. Ten got six, uh-huh, six, anything but two.
Yeah, anything except for two. I can't think of a good quarterback.

Speaker 1 Seriously, Matt Ryan is the only one

Speaker 1 who said, yeah, he's the number two king. But yeah, Mason Rudolph.

Speaker 1 We're not going to say anything bad. No, of course not.

Speaker 1 I'm glad he's okay. I'll say that.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Marcus Russell was two.
Great quarterback. Jason Campbell wore two.
No. For the Bears, I think he might have.
Oh, at the end? Yeah. He was good.

Speaker 1 When he had that one game in San Francisco, he actually, to tie everything together, he had the game that spawned Colin Kaepernick. Okay.

Speaker 1 That Monday night game was Colin Kaepernick's coming out party when Jason Campbell played the worst quarterback game of all time. Okay, yeah, it was uh what it would an ending to that game.

Speaker 1 I feel like I've been in a fight, watching a fight does that to me sometimes. I know, I feel jacked up, and it's you know what the worst part about it is?

Speaker 1 It's burying the big news of the night: Carmel Anthony's back, yeah. Hoodie season is back, Trailblazers.
Did you see Doug Gottlieb had a really great tweet? It was the

Speaker 1 Portland Trailblazers, Portland Trailblazers, no, Portland,

Speaker 1 Portland. I I don't get it.
He took out the D.

Speaker 1 Okay. I like that.
Yeah. All right, Doug.

Speaker 1 All right, Ugg. Oh, you got it, dude.
That's solid. Oh, man.
But yeah, Carmelo is.

Speaker 1 I hope he sticks around because it seems like that contract is basically like, hey, we're going to let you hang out for a week.

Speaker 1 And then when you demand to play 30 minutes and get like 15 shots, we're going to cut you.

Speaker 1 Well, once he sees Dame start jacking up threes from like 30 feet, Carmelo is going to get in on the action, too. He's going to be like, that looks like a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 But also, if Dwight Howard, like, he's basically on the Dwight Howard contract, and I feel like that will help him where it's like, if Dwight can do it with the Lakers, he's with LeBron.

Speaker 1 I have to do it with the Blazers, otherwise, I'm going to get shit.

Speaker 1 And he's been begging to come back. He hasn't played in 300 days.
Yeah, I need a playoff series where the Portland Trailblazers play against the Lakers, and Carmelo demands that he D's up LeBron.

Speaker 1 That's what I need. That'll be great.
That's what I need.

Speaker 1 Now is Mellow. I don't want to get into the conspiracies, but he's pretty good friends with LeBron James.
He's right.

Speaker 1 So he probably will want to de-up LeBron and let LeBron score. Yeah.
Get a little bit of that Space Jam money on the side.

Speaker 1 And a little sheesh after the game. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 There's good wine in Portland. There's really good wine.
What else is there up there? Weed. Weed.
Food trucks. Hipsters.
Carmelo is definitely going to own a food truck. Hoodie goodies.

Speaker 1 Oh, it would be sick if Carmelo, like, to ingratiate himself, got

Speaker 1 a super deep hoop earring, you know, the barista kind where it's like not, it's like it makes your earlobe all weird. I'm actually thinking his entire career, Carmelo has been a hipster.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He dropped out of college, went to go chill in Denver for a while, got real high, tried to go to New York because that's where all the arts and stuff are happening.

Speaker 1 Didn't work out there, didn't make it in New York, so he leaves. He owns a bunch of really obscure records.

Speaker 1 His greatest accomplishments all happened when he was traveling abroad. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 Yep. Those Olympic gold medals.
So it's hipster Carmelo. He's going to get a bike.

Speaker 1 No, he's going to get

Speaker 1 a unicycle. Yeah, unicycle.
He's going to learn to juggle. He's going to do slacklining.
Yeah, he's going to do it all.

Speaker 1 He's going to get some carabiners, belay on.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Blay off.
He'll definitely forget to belay on, belayoff. Just fucking fall.

Speaker 1 All right, let's do our weekend preview. We have week 11 of the NFL.
We have week 12 of college football. I wish they would just make that the same.

Speaker 1 It's not, though, because it's week zero to begin, right? No, but they're only week one. They're two ahead.
Week zero is two ahead. Either way, because there was no year zero.
Right, got it.

Speaker 1 Screws it up. It just messes me.
Us small brains, we can't figure this out.

Speaker 5 So, so week 11 of the NFL were brought to you by we drove 1,700 miles of old Highway 61, the whole country top to bottom, just to prove one thing. Comfort food can make anywhere home.

Speaker 5 Crave New World makes the classics you grew up with, cleaned up for right now. High protein, no fake stuff, no shortcuts.

Speaker 5 Bison meatloaf, chicken enchiladas, turkey lasagna, the kind of meals that taste like Saturday night, even on a Tuesday. Crave New World.
Find it in Kroger Isles this October.

Speaker 5 The road trip might be over, but dinner's just getting good.

Speaker 1 And here is my can't lose parlay. You ready? I'm ready.
Did the one last look? Okay, just I want to make sure. It's one of the actually,

Speaker 1 the juiciest part of it won. The Steelers won outright.
That was a risky one. The Saints, forget about it.
All right.

Speaker 1 Bills, the Bills are playing the Dolphins. Bills' money line.
Panthers are playing the Falcons. At home, the Panthers are playing the Falcons.
No way the Panthers win two in a row. It's not happening.

Speaker 1 And no way the Falcons win two in a row at this point. Right.

Speaker 1 Dan Quinn already saved his job last week. Correct.
And then finally, the Raiders playing against the Bengals. That one is just put it.
Like, listen, I set it up so you have the one o'clocks.

Speaker 1 Maybe you sweat a little. The four o'clock, Raiders, just watch your money grow.
It is plus 135 regularly. Bet MGM has boosted it to plus 170.
That's the can't-lose parlay. It cannot lose.

Speaker 1 I'm going to win this one. Let me ask you.
I might take the reverse parlay of that. You can go fucking fade them.
Complete fade.

Speaker 1 Big cat, what's your policy on when you're engineering your parlay?

Speaker 1 When you're sourcing your teams? Do you like to spread them out and go early, late, and then night game? Oh, yeah. I like that too.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 If you can keep yourself alive for as long as possible, then your chances are greater. I like like to do it even one more PFT.

Speaker 1 I like to go, usually I'll go Saturday, Sunday, like a four-team parlay, stretching all the time zones just

Speaker 1 so that I can just watch it and feel good about it and be like, all right, here we go. I got this waiting for me later on.
Do you ever really fuck around with things and do a Thursday night game?

Speaker 1 Early Sunday, late Sunday, Sunday night, and Monday night? Yeah, I'll get crazy. I'll do anything.
So that's my can't-lose parlay is can't-lose weekend preview. We should start with,

Speaker 1 not to brag, but we called it because Adam Gace is safe. He's safe and sound.
And we did call it. They're not going to fire him.

Speaker 1 Because we said it was the Pat Shermer versus Adam Gase game, it was literally for their jobs.

Speaker 1 And also, the fact that Sam Darnold said we can run the table, I think that helped Adam Gase, too, because now even the Johnsons are like,

Speaker 1 we might run the table. Can't fire him now.
Seems interesting. I have an easy schedule.
Yeah, I used the playoff machine, which, by the way, is back on ESPN. The playoff machine is back.

Speaker 1 You can do all the simulations. There's still a MetLife Super Bowl in play.

Speaker 1 We could get Giants Jets if everybody runs the table. That would be two tables.
No, that would be too much. That would be too much.

Speaker 1 Where's the oh no, the Dolphins aren't going to have a home Super Bowl game. I had a dream

Speaker 1 team one and all the game. They're still in it.

Speaker 1 What the hell? Where was it? The Dolphins absolutely could make the Super Bowl mathematically. Okay.
According to the CR, Sean Gruden and Mark Davis the first year in Vegas.

Speaker 1 Is that what you were dreaming of? Oh, that might have been it. That would be.

Speaker 1 I really did have this dream, and I can't remember what team it was, but I dreamt that there was a home Super Bowl win. That's very weird.

Speaker 1 And it was a future Super Bowl, so it must have been either that, Vegas, Tampa Bay, probably not. Cardinals, maybe.
Same Cardinals.

Speaker 1 Saints, yes, maybe that's what it was, because the Saints are having a Super Bowl in like four years or so. That would be amazing.

Speaker 1 Also, LSU, I think the national championship game, that's in New Orleans. That might have been it.
That would be.

Speaker 1 I think we should go to that. This was the fun segment of.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we definitely should. Yes.
This is the fun segment of trying to figure out my dream that I can't remember.

Speaker 1 Because talking about dreams is so fun. How about we talk about dreams that we can't remember? I think it goes...
Deception. Yeah, it goes in order of things that other people want to hear about.

Speaker 1 First is your dreams that you had. Second is your fantasy team.
Yes. Yeah.
And then third is your dreams that you can't remember that everyone tries to figure out. Yep.
All right.

Speaker 1 We have a loser-leaves town game. It is a Sunday night game.
The loser of the Rams Bears, I think, is out of the playoff picture, wouldn't you say? I would agree with that. I would say

Speaker 1 you talked yourself into it. You think that the Bears have a chance? Well, the portal is open.
The time portal portal is open for me.

Speaker 1 And the offense, I mean, the Rams' offense recently hasn't looked much better than the Bears' offense. I think it's going to be a very ugly game.
I think both offensive lines kind of stink.

Speaker 1 Both defensive lines are good. So it's going to be one of those games that, like, third and longs, a lot of incompletions, a lot of punts.
Maybe some, you know, maybe the under.

Speaker 1 Maybe that's a preview for my pick. I'm a little bit concerned about the Rams quarterback situation.

Speaker 1 When you have two studs like Blake Mortals and Jared Goff, and you're throwing passes with Hecker, your punter, give me a break. That's true.
Let the boys that can air it out air it out.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, that game is officially a loser-leaves town game because the loser really does, like, that's it. That's it for the season.

Speaker 1 The Rams would go to, what, five and five, and the Bears would go to four and six.

Speaker 1 I feel like it's going to be tough, especially considering how the Seahawks and Vikings have been playing for those other two spots in the wild card. Where's the game? It's in LA.
It's in L.A. Okay.

Speaker 1 Not bare weather. Not bare weather.
Well, I don't know. Maybe there's

Speaker 1 maybe there's a wildfire going on.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah,

Speaker 1 would that be bear weather? Smokey the bear weather. Smokey bear weather.
Yes.

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 for Carolina this weekend, I have them, they're the single part of Loser Leaves Town, so it's a can't-lose game for Carolina.

Speaker 1 I think if they lose this game to the Falcons, their season's done. I like that.
Yeah, we might put the dungeon on them twice. A little fun stat here.
It's Maddie Ice's first outdoor game this year.

Speaker 1 It's the Falcons' first outdoor game. Uh-oh.
So

Speaker 1 I'm betting on the Panthers this weekend. I like that.
We have a hype train game, the Lamar versus Deshaun game, which is going to be awesome. The Texans are going to Baltimore.

Speaker 1 I'm very excited for that. I feel like we're going to get at least four to five ridiculous highlights from that game where we get the gift and it's like, oh my God, how did they do this?

Speaker 1 Just pick a side. Both guys are going to do it.
That's going to be a fun game. And then I also had one, Are We Sure, they're good game? Which one's that? Bills at Dolphins.

Speaker 1 Hear me out. Hear me out.

Speaker 1 PFT's Dolphins, kind of hot. Two in a row.
Very hot. If they win this game, I don't know if we can definitively say, are we sure they're good? Because the opposite of, are we sure they're good?

Speaker 1 No, they're bad. I don't know if we can say they're bad, so they might be good.

Speaker 1 Are we sure they're good? That might be the worst win in the history of the Miami Dolphins franchise if they win that game. Right.
And then the Bills are on a two-game losing streak.

Speaker 1 Oh, no, actually, sorry, they beat the Redskins in between the Eagles and the Browns. Not looking great as of late.
This is a get-right game for them.

Speaker 1 If they pound the Dolphins, I think we can go back to confidently saying the Bills are not only good, but they'll be in the playoffs. I think it's also a show-me game.

Speaker 1 I just came over to it right now. I like it.
It's a show-me game for the Raiders. Yeah.
Because they're taking on the Bengals. They need to beat the shit out of the Bengals.

Speaker 1 If they don't, I'm out on the Raiders. I think the Raiders might be able to play.
Complete playoffs.

Speaker 1 I mean, they could. I really do.
They could.

Speaker 1 I'm kind of in on the Raiders making the playoffs because I just think they have enough. Derek Carr is playing well enough.
I actually think Derek Carr is

Speaker 1 very close to keeping his job in his house next to John Gruden in Las Vegas. So here's why I think Derek Carr has been playing better recently.

Speaker 1 He grew up in the shadow of David Carr, his older brother, first overall pick, people forget. He grew up as like the second fiddle in the Carr household.

Speaker 1 You're always like, you know, the second one to get brought up and had family get together.

Speaker 1 So how's how's david doing he's really lighting it up in college yeah he's getting sacked a lot yeah and how's your son who wears mascara yeah the other kid the goth one yeah the goth one is he into is he still going through that phase is he listening to a lot of the cure still in his room or what's going on is a soprano uh so With Derek Carr, he grew up in that type of environment.

Speaker 1 Him getting together with John Gruden, who consistently negs him and hypes up other quarterbacks around him, I think that's when Derek Carr is at his best, when he's getting overlooked by his own father figure.

Speaker 1 I agree with your theory. I'll throw on the practical theory on top of that.
We forgot that John Gruden made Rich Gain an MVP and playing in the West Coast offense is pretty fucking easy.

Speaker 1 I'm going to choose to believe like deep-seated. No, no, I agree with yours.
I agree with yours.

Speaker 1 But this is like, like, Derek Carr is doing the right things where he doesn't have to throw the ball down the field all that much. He still can,

Speaker 1 but he's doing a really good job of hitting the short, medium, you know, medium passes and doing, you know, running the offense well. He's playing very well.

Speaker 1 Also, I don't think that the bangles are gonna be ready for him because they've got andy dalton running the scout team offense right now last year or last week andy dalton simulated lamar jackson getting ready for the ravens that was his job was to emulate lamar jackson uh this is probably more in a skill set i think andy dalton at his best right now is like derek carr with the flu yeah or like i'll put it this way he's like a mix between all three of the raiders quarterbacks that they have yes i'd agree that he's like the perfect combination of mike lennon nathan Peterman, and Derek Carr.

Speaker 1 What would their collective name be? It's the shittiest version of that old YouTube video, Does It Blend? Yeah.

Speaker 1 They just throw Nathan Peterman, Glennon, and Carr into a blender, and then whoop pops out Andy Dalton. Dereken is what he is.

Speaker 1 Okay, so here we go. So, yeah, I think Peternan.

Speaker 1 Mate,

Speaker 1 Nate Vid. Mate Keterman.

Speaker 1 Mate Vic Keterman. Mate Vic Keterman.
I like that. Okay, so that's what Andy Dalton is.
I think that the Raiders are going to beat the shit out of it. I'll put it this way.

Speaker 1 If the Raiders win by 20 points or more, I think Playoff Town.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I'm in on Playoff Town Raiders.
I think, listen, there's going to be one of these teams. We talked to Warren Sharp about it last week.
One of these teams that is in that 5-4, 6-4,

Speaker 1 5-5, wherever it may be. One of them is going to get hot, and the Raiders have a pretty easy schedule down the stretch.
It's like them and the Steelers kind of staring at each other from across

Speaker 1 the nation.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's do some picks. Hank, why don't you start with your favorite?

Speaker 1 Your favorite favorite? My favorite favorite, I am going to take the Patriots. Okay, minus three and a half.
Minus three and a half. It is the classic.

Speaker 1 I think I wouldn't be surprised if they lose, so I'm going to take them because that means they'll probably win by seven plus. This is a classic game.

Speaker 1 I would not be shocked at all if they lost this game.

Speaker 1 Are you afraid of their uniforms? Are the Eagles wearing all blacks?

Speaker 1 No, I'm just saying, like, are you saying that you wouldn't be shocked because you still have flashbacks of the Eagles in those uniforms?

Speaker 1 Just the Eagles' entire aura beating the Patriots in the Super Bowl. No, I mean, we beat them in the Super Bowl as well, so it's really that.
I don't even worry about it.

Speaker 1 That's just a complete wash in terms of Super Bowls. I'm just focused on this season.
But no,

Speaker 1 yeah. Okay, so

Speaker 1 here's the thing. If you want to bet on the Patriots this weekend, it's the perfect case where you can bet it.

Speaker 1 And then if you lose, say, did you see the numbers of Bill Belichick off a buy or off of a loss? Because it's the perfect storm. It's off a buy and off of a loss.

Speaker 1 And I think they're like 70% off of each

Speaker 1 throughout the years.

Speaker 1 Alone combined. Yeah, so you can just say, well, it was the sharp play.
It was the right play. If you look at the numbers, it was the right play.
What do you want me to do? Material change.

Speaker 1 I also love every underdog game. I have a problem.
Every single one. When you're back on,

Speaker 1 I got off and I was like,

Speaker 1 it's not going to hit. And then like nine underdogs hit last week and I was like, which makes it even dumber to get back on.
Yes. But then I looked at the board and I'm like, holy fuck.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Let's get all the underdogs. I think I might do it with you just because I'm so sick of being opposite of you and having to deal with your giggles on Sundays.

Speaker 1 That actually sounds kind of fun. Yeah, we should just do it.
The entire board? Here are some stats for you. Ready? Patriots are

Speaker 1 47 and 9 straight up off a loss since 2003, 40 and 16 against the spread. Off of buys, including playoffs, they are 24 and 4 straight up, 17 and 10 against the spread.
Okay, we got to do it then.

Speaker 1 I mean, those are insane numbers. So if you just say, I play the numbers, not the team, there you go.
And by the half point. And by the half point.
Now you're getting crazy with it.

Speaker 1 Well, now you're introducing math.

Speaker 1 I was fine with you talking about numbers, but once you insert math into it, I'm out.

Speaker 1 If you lose this, now it will count as buying that half point on our very meticulous records we've been keeping all year that we're going to reveal to everyone week 17. Understood.

Speaker 1 PFD, go ahead. My favorite, last week, what was it? My double platinum lock hit with the Saints and the Falcons, the under on that one hit.
This week, I have a triple enriched plutonium.

Speaker 1 It's radioactive. That's how much I like this favorite.
Damn. If you want to follow me on this one, you can.
$4.99 a month on my Patreon. Saints minus five at Tampa.

Speaker 1 Last week for the Saints, I'm chalking that up to an aberration. Okay.
I'm not sure what aberration is. A stinker.
It was a stinker.

Speaker 1 Aberration is French for we lost another war that we should have won. Every team gets a stinker.
Yeah. No, that's what you have to pay after you lose a war.

Speaker 1 Aberration. Yes.
You have to pay aberration. A lot of aberrations.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I think the Saints are going to steamroll the Buccaneers. I hope you.

Speaker 1 The only thing that makes me nervous is the Bucs actually do have one of the best, if not best, run defenses, but that's just a Drew Brees stat game.

Speaker 1 So their secondary is terrible. A little added bonus radioactive play for you is to take the overnight game today.
I like that over the bonus. The Bucs, here's a stat for you.

Speaker 1 The Bucs this season in their games, the total has been averaging 59.9 points. Oh, I love that.
Yeah. So the over 50, you got room to spare, as they say.

Speaker 1 I actually have that as, oh no i don't have that as my over but i like that over as well all right my favorite i'm gonna take the raiders minus 11 they're gonna steamroll that's gonna be a shit pumping if you will uh hank your underdog uh my underdog i gave you the falcons money line last week plus 400 no you didn't yes i did you did yes really yes i don't remember you said that on this show a hundred million percent i was like falcons money line i love the falcons money line if that was gonna take one it would be the falcons money line okay and the problem with this is that hank could easily go back and insert that into last week's.

Speaker 1 No, people can tweet at you, though. I was getting, I mean, my tweets were flooded with people thanking me.
Your notes? Yeah. Your nodies were layered at PR.

Speaker 1 So I feel responsible to give another plus 400 underdog this week, the Broncos. Okay.
Okay. Bye, Brandon Allen.

Speaker 1 I actually don't mind that one. All right.
All right. Yeah, Kirk Cousins.
He always has to come back down to regular Kirk Cousins levels. You've been playing well.
All right, PFT, your underdog.

Speaker 1 My underdog is going to be the Jets at the Yard Words. I love it.
Yeah, love it. I loved it at Jets plus one and a half.
I love it even more at Jets plus two and a half.

Speaker 1 So load up on the New York football Jets.

Speaker 1 This is absolutely locked. This is definitely.

Speaker 1 Jamal Adams, he did it last week against Daniel Jones when he just took the ball out of his hands. I'd expect him to do that at least twice against Dwayne Haskins this week.

Speaker 1 Yes, Dwayne Haskins has not proven that he can control the ball, whether it's on his person or in the air yet. So take them.
All right, I like that. I'm going to take the Texans plus four and a half.

Speaker 1 I think think that game's going to be close. I think that's going to be one of those instant classic ones that comes down to a field goal and the witching out.
I hope so. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That game really needs to be later on in the day. It should have been a four o'clock game.
Yeah, they should have flexed it out of the Sunday night.

Speaker 1 I really would prefer not to have the Bears on Sunday night.

Speaker 1 A game like that deserves to be like one of four games going on at the same time.

Speaker 1 It should not be lost in the mess early. Yes.
Hank, you're over. Sunday night, Bears-Rams, absolute slug fest.
The quarterbacks will be going back and forth, touchdown after touchdown, lighting it up.

Speaker 1 Minimum eight touchdowns combined between the two. Minimum eight touchdowns.

Speaker 1 What was the game? How are the Bears going to score?

Speaker 1 How many interception returns are the Bears going to score off Johnny Hayes? You did this last week, where you gave us the special teams, pick six, all these

Speaker 1 lines for the Bears over last week, and it didn't hit. Nope.
Okay. But this isn't special teams.
This is quarterback play. Quarterbacks.
All quarterbacks. Quarterback plays.
Okay, lighting it up.

Speaker 1 All right. That's my under, by the way, so I'll skip my under when we get to it, but I love the under in that game.
I don't I do not trust either offensive line, and I trust both defenses.

Speaker 1 PFT, you're over. My over is very simple.
Eagles, Patriots, same five. Same.
Easy. Take it to the bank right now.
Spend that money. It's payday.
You just got paid earlier. It's the 15th.

Speaker 1 Go ahead, spend that money because you're going to recoup it on the back end on Sunday when it's probably going to be a 31 to 30 Patriots victory.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 1 I like that over as well, just because it's in that time slot where it's like, hey,

Speaker 1 that's late on Sunday. 90% of the time.

Speaker 1 I would like to just bet an over and just chill out. Yes.
Hank, your under, we'll finish up with that. Panthers, Falcons.
Panthers, Falcons. Okay.

Speaker 1 You like the under in that one? Yeah. Maddie Ice.
Yep. Okay.

Speaker 1 My under is Broncos at Vikings. Okay.
I just think I get the feeling that Zimmer loves playing low-scoring football games when he runs up against another low-scoring football team. Yeah, that is the.

Speaker 1 He gets in the mindset, like, we're going to run the ball and play defense. Right.

Speaker 1 When Vic Fangio and Mike Zimmer meet each other at half, you know, at the middle of the field before the game, they're like, hey,

Speaker 1 we're going to do what we agreed on, right? Like, no points today? It's a gentleman's agreement. We're going to go 12 to 9.
Yeah. We're going to end up winning.
Nobody gets embarrassed.

Speaker 1 And then after the game, we can just say, that's good old school football. Yeah, let's say, let's just agree.
No deep throws. All right.
Yep. Cool.
All right. Good to see you, coach.
See you later.

Speaker 1 All right. My under is the Bears Rams game, which I think is going to go under easily.

Speaker 1 Let's do Fantasy Fuck Boys, and then we'll get to Rick Ankiel.

Speaker 1 What's up, boys? It's Brandon fucking Bolling. Yo, Brandon.
My stardom this week is Austin Rivers. He got teed up.
Or no, he told his dad to get teed up. He said, fuck his dad.
Fuck your mother.

Speaker 1 Get teed up. He doesn't give a fuck.
He doesn't care that his dad's sperm is the reason he exists. He said, fuck him.
He's star number three. That's right.
Let's go. Anapis red style.

Speaker 1 My sidem is Paul Bissonette. Oh.
I beat him up once.

Speaker 4 I'll beat him up again. He's chirping, my boy Hank on Twitter.

Speaker 1 Fuck him. I was wondering if you knew who Brandon Bullig was, so good that you do.
My sleeper is Lions. Not Maddie P, even though he's pretty good, but actual Lions.

Speaker 1 There was a protest in Iraq and they took... They had the police and dogs.
Tell me about geopolitical situations. Fucking Lions.

Speaker 1 I don't know about the geopolitics of it, but having lions to go against dogs is fucking gangsta. RIP Cecil, my man.
Oh man, fuck that dentist. Fuck dentists.
Never been, never gonna go.

Speaker 1 What's up, fuckhead? fuckheads? It's Mike Torico. I'm starting shorts.
I'm starting shorts this weekend.

Speaker 1 You see the story up in Canadia. There was a Winnipeg Blue Bombers fan.
He hasn't worn pants in 18 years. He said he wasn't going to do it until they won the Great Cup.

Speaker 1 Well, they're in the semifinals, so he should tell those shins, enjoy the vitamin D while you still can, because I got a feeling the Blue Bombers are going to win a Gray Cup. Love it.
Love the shorts.

Speaker 1 Get those tender little calves burned. Where I'm from, we call that that veal.
I'm sitting DK Metcalf. He's on a bye week.
True, true. He's on a bye week.
True. Sit him.

Speaker 1 Last week, I don't know if you saw this guy try to turn. He looked like an aircraft carrier trying to steer himself upfield instead of going out of bounds.
What the hell was going on with that guy?

Speaker 1 He can't go sideways. Popcorn muscles.
My sleeper is weighted blankets. I'm bringing them back.
I brought mine back out. Feels like I'm getting a hug from a burrito.
It's super comfortable.

Speaker 1 I put it on. I'm calm down.
I take it nice and easy. I don't care what's inside of him.
It could be any... It's like eating a Twinkie.

Speaker 1 Just load me up with all the toxins as long as I feel good afterwards. Love it.
All right, what's up, guys? It's Lorenzo Linguini. My stardom is Zlottin.

Speaker 1 He retired from the galaxy or he left the galaxy. I don't fucking know, but all he said was, you're welcome.
You're welcome. That's my boy.
That's how you leave, and that's talking football.

Speaker 1 Amen, Enzo. All right, my sit-em is burner accounts.
Everyone just assumed every account on the internet is a burner account.

Speaker 1 If I have to see another tweet saying, hey, we found this person's burner account, shut the fuck off. Start a cooler account.

Speaker 1 God used a burner account when that bush was on fire. He was just like chirping him.
He's like, hey, hey,

Speaker 1 hey, man, what's you? All right, my sleeper is Mike Trout. He won his third MVP this day.
Okay. Today.

Speaker 1 And I'm starting to think this guy's pretty good. Who cares? He must be good.

Speaker 1 He must be good in the playoffs. Wait, right? Are you talking about that guy that's always at the Eagles game on October 22nd? Mike Trout.
Okay, Mike Trout. Mikey.
Mikey. Mikey fishes.

Speaker 1 Seven fishes.

Speaker 1 I'm impressed you did know who Brain Bull. I was like, what are you doing? No, I didn't.
I literally just searched Paul Bissinette fight. Oh, and it was.
Yeah, Bully kicked his face.

Speaker 1 I should have said Ryan Reeves, though, because he was the one. He dummied him.
What's up with Biz? He's just chirping you? We put up a picture on PMT. That was

Speaker 1 from Picture Day, and he was like, Great picture minus Hank.

Speaker 1 And then he came in with a chirp about my suit like two weeks later, like with the least unoriginal chirp of all time.

Speaker 1 I can't believe I'm saying this, but I expected something more clever out of Paul Bissinet than just Great Picture Minus Sang. I mean, he's an all-time chirper, right? He's a locker room guy.

Speaker 1 He keeps the boys loose. You'd think that he'd be able to do that.
We'll have to have him on the show to discuss

Speaker 1 this very disappointing development here. All right.
Catch these hands. Let's get to our interview with Rick Ankill.
Fascinating interview. Fascinating guy.
It's one of those guys.

Speaker 1 It's like, I can't believe this story is real. He was a pitcher.
He had the yips.

Speaker 1 He then went all the way back down to the bottom of the minor league, retired, and then came all the way back up as a hitter.

Speaker 1 Before we do that, though.

Speaker 6 Whether I'm hosting game day at my place or taking my talents to the tailgate, Boar's Head is my go-to for a spread that's as exciting as the game itself. Their platters are a hit every time.

Speaker 6 They've got everything you need to keep your guests coming back for more. And if you want to take it up a notch, grab a few dips.

Speaker 6 My personal favorite, the Blazing Buffalo Chicken, Hummus, or even one of their charcuterie collections for game-changing flavor.

Speaker 6 Boarshead helps me elevate my entertaining every time, whether it's for a tailgate or a home gating celebration.

Speaker 6 To upgrade your spread, visit your local Boarshead Deli for platter options or build your own to make it perfect for your crowd. Boarshead, committed to craft since 1905.

Speaker 1 Okay, here he is, Rick Ankiel.

Speaker 1 Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest. It is former MLB pitcher and outfielder Rick Ankeel.
Thank you for joining us. We appreciate it.
You have a book.

Speaker 1 It is called The Phenomenon, Pressure, the Yips, and the Pitch That Changed My Life.

Speaker 1 Do we want to start there? I'm sure you get a little tired of that, right?

Speaker 4 It's okay.

Speaker 4 I would say sometimes it can get old. But because of recently what just happened,

Speaker 4 Brendan Todd, who won the Bermuda event, mentioned my book in the interview saying that he read it and helped him because he went through the yips. I think that's fun.

Speaker 4 And just, you know, being able to go through it with the yips and, you know, help whether it's MLB, alumni, kids, and the career summit that the alumni of, you know, alumni puts puts on.

Speaker 4 You know, I think it all ties in.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Before we get into, you know, the pitch that did change your life and how you kind of got out of it, the ups and downs that you went through, I got a question about you at your best as a pitcher.

Speaker 1 When you were at your best, could you strike out you at your best as a hitter?

Speaker 4 Without even blindfolded, probably.

Speaker 1 Really? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. You could definitely strike me out.

Speaker 4 Throw the hammer. Hammer, high fastball.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I was reading some stories about

Speaker 1 you coming up as a pitcher, and I would say that you as a pitcher definitely could strike out you as a hitter because of some of these.

Speaker 1 Actually, let's start there because we'll get to the pitch that changed your life. But how about your high school when I was reading your letter to your former self?

Speaker 1 Did you write that, by the way, or did the Players Tribune just write it?

Speaker 4 Players Tribune wrote it.

Speaker 1 You interviewed the interview and they write.

Speaker 1 Sarah Trita wrote it, right? You talk to Derek. What is Derek? He edits it.
Ryan Duffy. He blogs it.
You use it in WordPress.

Speaker 4 Ryan Duffy wrote it.

Speaker 1 You said in that that one day you're going to wake up and you're going to be able to throw 94 and you were able to throw 84 the day before. Is that actually how it happened?

Speaker 4 So I grew. Yeah, I was teeny in high school.
And growing up, I was just always the smallest one in my class. And I graduated at 17, but over a summer, I grew.

Speaker 4 So I went from throwing 84 to 94 over a summer. It was just like,

Speaker 1 that's crazy. And you could just feel like, oh my God, this is actually a thing now.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 Well, so I was a good pitcher, right? It wasn't great, but I was good. I made my all-star teams.

Speaker 4 And when that happened, it was like, whoa,

Speaker 4 this is real. College is real.
Maybe pros. Who knows? But that's when it started.

Speaker 1 So the stat that is insane to even look at, you struck out 162 batters in 74 innings in high school. That must have been awesome.
That must have been so sick.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to do the math for you. 162 batters in 74.

Speaker 1 That's more than two strikeouts an inning. He didn't give up a single run or earned run in regular season in high school.
Yep.

Speaker 1 How sick was that?

Speaker 4 It was unbelievable because you're, you know, my junior year was good too, right? So now you have scouts there and it's like everybody there is watching.

Speaker 4 And what I felt like, I kept, every time I had more success, I kept working harder. And it was like reinforcing that hard work is the way to go.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 It just kept making me work harder and it kept getting better and it was incredible.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 You played on easy mode. He played a video game on easy mode, but in real life.
Was there anyone that you would face in high school that you were even slightly concerned about?

Speaker 4 You always read, of course, right? So there's always the prospect list. And when you're in high school, you're checking it.
You know, I'll never forget, like, Troy Cameron. He went to St.

Speaker 4 Thomas, and that was a huge school back then. That was ranked number one in the nation.
But anytime you play those guys, right, you're raising it to the next level.

Speaker 4 Like, there's no way I'm going to let this guy beat me.

Speaker 1 So, yeah. I mean, it must have been fun.
It just, I can't imagine being able to strike that many people out.

Speaker 1 Just domination.

Speaker 1 Were you also a good hitter at the time? I was. So that's not fair.
So you were just striking everybody out and you were slugging dingers.

Speaker 4 I wasn't as as good as a hitter as I was a pitcher, but I could hit. And there was a little bit of talk of, we'll draft you to do both.

Speaker 4 The Expos were one team that said that, but I think that was kind of like a ploy of let's just get him in the system and he's going to pitch.

Speaker 1 We're going to

Speaker 1 go a little bit. We're going to be like, hey, yeah, we can let you do whatever.
Yeah. All right.
Here's another stat that's ridiculous.

Speaker 1 In

Speaker 1 single A, you went 17.2 consecutive innings without giving up a hit.

Speaker 1 So you threw basically two back-to-back no hitters.

Speaker 1 Almost.

Speaker 4 because you know what they would put me on a hundred pitch limit. So it was like five innings, five innings, five innings.

Speaker 4 And then the two, and the guy who got the hit was Jerry Harrison Jr., who will never let that, never let it go.

Speaker 1 I mean, hilarious. That must have been a lot of pressure, though, when you, when you get to the third game and you're like, wait, I still haven't given up a hit in three games?

Speaker 4 You know what, though? I didn't look at it like that. And the person who held the record before that was Dwight Gooden.
And growing up, that was my brother's idol. And then I idolized him.

Speaker 4 So I'm like, oh my gosh, I just beat Dog Gooden's record? Like, it was just this empowering moment, really, of like,

Speaker 1 I'm just going to keep going, you know, versus like, I'm going to give up a hit. And then the last one I had to bring up about, you know, coming up as a pitcher.

Speaker 1 I read the story that in maybe it was double-A, that your catcher used to tell the hitters what pitch you were throwing just to try to make it harder for you.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so I didn't know that until I wrote the book, and his name was Keith McDonald. Okay.
They called him Fat Kid, but great guy.

Speaker 4 But they were like, we need to try to get this kid some diversity because nobody's hitting him.

Speaker 1 I'm still mad about it, to be honest because i was still trying to put up records like you know what i mean i'm i was i don't know i was six and oh or something and what are you doing bro so he would actually say like here comes a curveball yeah he was later he told me he's like yeah i was telling the guys and at first they didn't believe me and then you would throw it and i and he was like look dude we need to get the kids some diversity you know what i'm saying holy that's that's you're so good they had your own team had to cheat against you they were trying damn so what point during during the three consecutive no-hitters were you like why don't they just call me up yet

Speaker 4 like they're wasting all these after the second one um No, you know what? And back then I was effective, I'll call it effectively wild. I was young and the strikeout was glorified back then.

Speaker 4 So I was just trying to throw as hard as I could. So it would be a lot of 3-2 counts, right? Not that that's good or bad.
I still struck you out.

Speaker 4 But when you look at it like that, you have to understand too, like in the big leagues, you might not get the swings on those balls out of the zone as much as you're going to get them down there in A-ball.

Speaker 4 So I understood that. Okay.

Speaker 1 Have you always been a Soul Patch guy?

Speaker 4 Pretty much.

Speaker 1 I had a little bit down here,

Speaker 4 and then I had a smaller one. My wife's like, I like it, keep it going.

Speaker 1 So happy wife, happy life. I think when I think Soul Patch, I think you, I think the singer Smash Mouth, he's got one.
But yeah, you're like the longest-standing ball player that I can think of.

Speaker 4 Tim Hudson, too. Yeah,

Speaker 1 he had one. It keeps like the late 90s, early 2000s baseball players alive.

Speaker 1 It does. You are the soul of those years.
It really is. That was the look.
The fighting necklaces we always talk about.

Speaker 4 Did you wear one of those? I had one. I had something similar to it.
I don't remember. It was an 07

Speaker 4 because that's when I came back to hit. And I remember because my wife bought it for me.

Speaker 4 You know, baseball players are superstitious. Yeah, yeah.
You start playing well, it's never coming off.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So that's what happens.
Yeah. There's the copper bracelets.
That's one that they wear. And then there was one postseason I remember when everybody showed up with a fighting necklace.

Speaker 1 And I thought that there was like one medical sales rep that got in real deep with the right people in Major League Baseball just made a killing that one year and then jetted.

Speaker 4 No question, right? Because you would come in and on your seat, there would just be a couple necklaces, you know, like on your chair.

Speaker 1 In your locker, yeah.

Speaker 1 If you give me a free necklace, I'm going to put it on, at least the first time. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, so

Speaker 1 let's talk about the transition in your book, the yips and everything. We are big-time spin zone guys, so we would like to look at it from a different point of view.

Speaker 1 The Cardinals won that game, and Greg Maddox lost that game. Future Hall of Famer at the time lost that game.
People don't talk about that enough. So the game won 2000 NLDS.

Speaker 1 You're up against Greg Maddox. You pitch the first two innings fine.
Greg Maddox gives up six runs in the first, which is unheard of. Which we should talk about more.

Speaker 1 And then he switched his whole game around in that ESPN commercial because he said chicks dig the long ball. Yes.
Which you were also better at. Yes.
So,

Speaker 1 yeah, Alfred.

Speaker 1 Love it. You own Greg Maddox.
We remember this game. Thank you.
I'll take that.

Speaker 1 I don't think I own him, but I like it.

Speaker 1 What exactly happened in that third inning?

Speaker 1 Did you know right away? I lost it. Yeah, would you know right away?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 4 um i bounced a curveball and then um let me take that back i threw a cutter in that just cut and it wasn't even that bad of a pitch and at the time you know the entire season mike mathiny was my catcher he cut his hand he couldn't catch so we brought in carlos hernandez who was just a different catcher when i would try to throw into righties because i'm left-handed so i was kind of firing across my body i'd cut it on accident sometimes so sometimes you have this 95 mile an hour fastball that cuts when nobody's telling you it's cutting but methini knew that from catching me but in my mind for whatever reason I'm thinking, man, I just threw a freaking wild pitch, right?

Speaker 4 Like my family, everybody's watching, and usually you shake that crap off and it doesn't even matter. All of a sudden, I spike a curveball.
It starts to unravel.

Speaker 4 I had no idea what was happening. Everything that I had always used up to that point to get myself back on track wasn't working, you know, mechanically, mental thoughts,

Speaker 4 you know, the keys that guys have. And, you know, before I know it, I'm getting taken out of the game.

Speaker 4 You know, it's like I would try to throw a pitch and all of a sudden it would launch off the backstrop or bounce something. And, you know, I had no idea what the heck was going on.
So, no question.

Speaker 1 So, after that inning, you get pulled after the five wild pitches. Did you go out later on that day and just be like, I've got to be past this by now? The Yips are gone.

Speaker 1 And throw any more pitches, or did you wait till the next day, or did you take your standard amount of time, throw after two nights' sleep? What was that like?

Speaker 4 Well, I remember saying to the media, I was a mechanical issue. This will never happen again.
I really didn't know what the yips was at that point.

Speaker 4 Not even sure I knew what the word anxiety meant because I was young. Everything just came so fast.

Speaker 4 The next day I came to the field. You definitely kind of have a little like, all right, you know, because everybody's watching out of the corner of their eye, like, what's this going to look like?

Speaker 4 But I'm playing catch,

Speaker 4 everything's fine. I throw a bullpen the next day, I was lights out.
So Tony LaRussa calls me and is like, hey, I don't think we're going to use you. You know, like, I think we're just going to.

Speaker 4 So I went somewhat ballistic, like, bullshit, this is my time. I want this game, you know, blah, blah, blah.
He's like, all right, you sure you're fine? I'm like, yeah, man, I got it.

Speaker 4 So I end up starting the next game against the Mets and, you know, won a few pitches, you know, start spraying it all over.

Speaker 4 And it was like, it's this anxiety feeling where, you know, I can definitely feel more nerves than I ever felt before warming up in the bullpen.

Speaker 4 I remember walking from the bullpen to the to the mound in New York, and it was like, all right, I got this. And it's like, you throw one pitch, and it's kind of close, and it's fine.

Speaker 4 But then you throw one that's maybe not, you know, a strike, but the catcher can catch it. And it's like, My mind goes, oh no, here we go again.

Speaker 4 And then this feeling comes over where it's almost like I couldn't feel the ball and you go to fire it and it's like you have this mini blackout and you're like, where'd the ball go?

Speaker 1 Wow. Yeah, that's crazy.
Now, Tony LaRussa said that that decision to start you game one of the NLDS against Greg Maddox will haunt him forever.

Speaker 1 Do you think that it was the moment or do you think this is something that would have happened to you regardless at some point in your career? Yeah, great question.

Speaker 4 And I think it's the unanswered question that'll never be answered.

Speaker 4 I didn't go back and watch it for a long time. I didn't.
And recently, when I wrote the book, when we did the documentary, I sat down and just really tried to study it.

Speaker 4 And, you know, there were some pitches in there that Mike Matheny would have caught, and maybe

Speaker 4 he would have caught it, and I would have been fine. And then maybe it would have happened next game, maybe it would have happened five years, maybe it would never happen.
I don't know. But

Speaker 4 what I do know is it's one of those things that sometimes we don't always know why, and it's

Speaker 4 what are we going to do about it? Right. Then what are we going to do about it? So now we need to fix it.

Speaker 1 Right. Yeah.
It's, it's, it, it must be crazy to watch yourself in that moment when you finally did go back and watch it. Did it feel like out of body?

Speaker 1 Did you, or did you, you know, all the memories kind of flash back to you and like, oh yeah, I remember thinking this was it. Like I was about to lose it.

Speaker 4 So I was thinking that I was going to get this like pit in my stomach. And the first time that I went back and watched it was with the writer Tim Brown who wrote my book.

Speaker 4 And we sat down because obviously we needed to go over it and write about it. And I thought I was going to have this.
whatever and he opened the computer and I felt fine.

Speaker 4 I watched it and I was and I was actually surprised at how under control I looked on the mound as it was happening in the dugout after they took me out.

Speaker 4 I was like, that's amazing because inside, you know, my body and my brain was going haywire. You know, you're going, oh, my, you know, I just let my team down.
You have all these, all those feelings.

Speaker 4 You let the team down, your town down, your friends down. You know, all those things that come with that, that was just, you know,

Speaker 4 that's what I was surprised by.

Speaker 1 That's really interesting. So it's like getting out of your own head let you see the in the larger perspective that it wasn't as bad to everybody else else as it was to you.

Speaker 1 You were making it worse by putting all that pressure on yourself in the moment, which I guess is like a natural thing. Yeah.
But then what do you, you know, how do you how do you replicate that?

Speaker 1 How do you tell yourself, like, in the moment when you're going through something like that, it's not as bad as you feel right now? You know, how do you regulate that anxiety?

Speaker 1 And I don't know if there's an answer to that.

Speaker 4 No, I don't know if there is either because when you, you know, the anxiety is such a powerful,

Speaker 4 it's such a powerful thing, man.

Speaker 4 And that's, and the people who go through the ips, right, whether it be golf, whether it be, whatever it may be, I think what some people don't realize is that it consumes you.

Speaker 4 And especially with athletes, you know, most of these guys or girls are obsessive about that sport. And usually you're obsessing over, how do I get better? What do I do?

Speaker 4 You're thinking about that all day. You're in that world.

Speaker 4 So now when you get the yips and you're going down that road, now you're obsessing about bad and negative things and like it's taking you down a bad spiral.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I was always curious,

Speaker 1 what are your teammates doing in a situation like this? Because you said, you know, baseball is obviously a very superstitious sport.

Speaker 4 I would would imagine baseball players thought they could catch the yips from you they thought it was like a cold or something like how what was the support like on a day-to-day basis when you're battling this um you have both uh you have where you have guys putting your arm around you trying to support you hey what can you do and then and then the fear is real because if you know you would have been my teammate back then and known me at the at the time you would have thought this isn't something that would happen to this kid um and i think then the thought becomes real with everyone like this can happen you know this is real so it is a scary thing because, you know, I say this all the time.

Speaker 4 When you watch hitters, they go through the same thing. You see a hitter going through a slump and he's over 30.
You could call it the yips. I mean, let's be honest.
They're swinging it.

Speaker 4 They could have a tennis racket and not hit the ball sometimes. But it's a reaction.
And pitching, like golf, is an action, right? You create it. So the hitter, you can kind of mix into the slump.

Speaker 4 Oh, I had a mechanical thing. Like, you know, eventually you get a hit.

Speaker 1 Oh, you relax.

Speaker 4 You get out of it. But it's about the minutes are the same thing.
And maybe some guys are better at not taking it home with them. They can leave it at the field.
No big deal. I'll figure it out.

Speaker 4 It's hitting. Three for 10 is the Hall of Fame.
You know, it's different.

Speaker 4 But, you know, pitching, because of the action, you know, obviously, you can't hide and mix in the line. You can go for four.
Maybe you make a good play. You're still a hero.

Speaker 1 It doesn't matter.

Speaker 4 Pitching, you're out there alone.

Speaker 1 It's true, because

Speaker 1 five wild pitches would be kind of similar to like five strikeouts. And five strikeouts happen.
You know, guys happen. It doesn't happen often, but it happens.

Speaker 1 Whereas five wild pitches, everyone's like, whoa, what's up? You never talk about a pitching slump. You never use those words.
It's just like, oh, this guy stinks now. You just get sent down.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you get designated. So when you were making your comeback as a hitter, did you find that the fact that you could fail two out of three times and still be successful? Was that helpful to you?

Speaker 4 That's a fantastic question. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because

Speaker 4 it was like a relief.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 4 I go three for 10 and I'm fine.

Speaker 1 I can go 0 for 4 and I make a diving play.

Speaker 4 I'm like, I'm high fiving because I made the great play of the game.

Speaker 4 It's definitely a different dynamic, but it is a different grind on your body. Mentally, it can get hard also.
Don't get me wrong.

Speaker 4 But because of the pitching thing and then the ability to fail, like you said, absolutely. It made it like I got nothing to lose.

Speaker 1 So this is just a very simple question, but like I always wonder

Speaker 1 what I would prefer to be, a pitcher or a hitter, just from a chilling out standpoint? Which one's better for like a chilling out stand?

Speaker 4 If you want to chill, you need to pitch.

Speaker 1 But are you, if you're a pitcher in the days that you have off, can you truly chill out? Or are you just thinking about the next day that you have to pitch?

Speaker 4 Well, I mean, you probably got a tea time at Pelican Hill if you have a San Diego.

Speaker 4 And then you're showing up and you've got your regular shoes on because there's no chance you're going to get in the game.

Speaker 4 And, you know, yeah, so no, you could truly chill unless you're one of those, maybe you're a guy that

Speaker 4 the manager may use you to pinch hit, right?

Speaker 1 Ratani, he ain't chilling. Right.

Speaker 4 But yeah, starting pitching.

Speaker 1 I chill.

Speaker 1 You can chill.

Speaker 4 So this would be something, right? So as a starting pitcher, you know, I played golf a few days in between if guys were were going or whatever.

Speaker 4 As a position player, I tried that, but because of the physical demand of playing center field, I couldn't play 18 holes and then go out there and play some fit.

Speaker 1 I was tired. Yeah, I couldn't do it.
What about when you have a bad outing and pitching and then you have to wait five days to play again?

Speaker 1 That's got to suck versus, you know, being in the center field and you're like, okay, well, if I suck tonight, I have tomorrow, like less than 24 hours and we're playing again.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's definitely different.

Speaker 4 And like you said, I think

Speaker 4 that can be the hardest part is the hours surrounding the competition, right? Until your next one and how you handle that. And usually, you know,

Speaker 4 veterans on the team will try to help you with that, whatever. You know, you throw your bullpen, there's stuff you do.

Speaker 4 And you're right. And as a hitter, like, you know, whatever I got tomorrow.

Speaker 1 Right. It doesn't matter.
Right.

Speaker 1 When you were making your comeback as a hitter, were you pissed off that you weren't allowed to wear that sweet jacket when you got on base to me and when you're a pitcher?

Speaker 1 Because that's the best part about pitchers getting on base. Tossing on the bullpen jacket for like the 30 seconds that they're going to be on first.

Speaker 1 No, because at this point now i was trying to prove that i was an athlete and i'm trying to steal second or third but right yeah great point why why do you wear those those jackets just to keep your shoulder like 10 degrees warmer yeah it's like they're going to keep you warmer now right but if i feel like recently you don't see it no they've taken them away which kind of sucks it does suck i used to love that yeah i i've got um i'm kind of an expert when it comes to uh busting through the yips and by expert i mean i interviewed barry zito on the show we interviewed him like what a month ago he taught us about transcendental meditation Did you ever try any of that?

Speaker 4 I did not.

Speaker 4 You know, and I know Barry went through some of the Yosta stuff, and I don't know if you guys got into that, but he went through a little bit of that. And what a phenomenal guy.

Speaker 4 But no, I haven't, but I have been watching a few podcasts and kind of reading up on that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it seems interesting. That and ayahuasca are the two things that I know.
You go to South America, you drink the tea, you hallucinate, and throw up for two days, and then your brain's fine.

Speaker 1 Have you done that? I haven't done it. I've watched several documentaries.
You could try because you might be able to pitch 94.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I could brainwash myself into being a great athlete. Maybe I could brainwash myself into being taller.

Speaker 4 Maybe you could bring the Sherpa here and you could do it on TV.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I think they do that.
We'll do that for Barstow Gold. Yes, that would do that.

Speaker 1 It's a live stream of us throwing up for two days and crying in this room and then coming back and being slightly better.

Speaker 1 Weirder, yeah. That's true.

Speaker 1 So I want to talk real quick about the comeback because the comeback's the best part of the story. And it's incredible that you went through all this and then you became

Speaker 1 outfielder in Major League Baseball, like basically reinvented yourself. It starts with Scott Boris, right? So he called you up and was like, hey, let's do this.

Speaker 1 And did you have, were you like, all right, fine, I'm in? Or did it take some convincing?

Speaker 4 So he calls me the day that I retired from pitching, quit, retire, whatever you want to call it. I'm at home and it hasn't been two hours and I'm getting textes and phone calls.
You're okay.

Speaker 4 Hey, what's going on? Scott calls and he goes, hey, are you ready to play?

Speaker 4 Ready to play? What, man? Have you not like are not understanding? Like, I'm done, man. I just shut it down.
It's over. He's like, no, no, go play outfield.

Speaker 4 I'm like, what are you talking about, Scott? He's like, no, I'm serious. Like, I'm serious.
Do you want to be an outfielder?

Speaker 4 And it kind of stunned me. It was a silence.
I'm like, hey, man, I got to, I don't know, man.

Speaker 1 I got to think about this. And I hang up.

Speaker 4 Because coming to that decision to stop playing was a huge deal for me.

Speaker 1 That was my entire life.

Speaker 4 So now I'm in the house and I'm walking around and I'm laughing and I'm looking for a bat, right? Find a bat.

Speaker 4 I'm now in my living room taking practice swings and I allow myself to visualize myself making it back into the big leagues and hitting a home run.

Speaker 4 And this feeling like came over me of like almost like it was happening. And I picked up the phone.
I said, heck yeah, I'm in. He goes, and I'm going to call the Cardinals.

Speaker 4 I'll call you back in five minutes. And in five minutes, my phone rang.
It was actually Walt Jocchatty of the St. Louis Cardinals, who was the general manager at the time.

Speaker 4 He's like, hey, Aank, if you're in on this, we're in. We're behind you 100%.
Show up tomorrow. You're an outfielder.
Shit. I said, all right, man, I'll see you tomorrow.

Speaker 1 That's awesome.

Speaker 1 And then it all happened. You hit the home run.
You hit a lot of home runs. What coming back, was there a moment when you were in the minor leagues, you're like, this might not work out?

Speaker 1 Like, this actually might not be for me, or or was it similar to when you were going in high school where everything just kept on going as planned as you could work harder?

Speaker 4 No, you know, about the first hundred at bats, um, it didn't go as well as I don't, but here's the thing: I went into it with this might take some time.

Speaker 4 I don't know what this is going to be because I always had power in BP, but a lot of people have power in BP, right? They're just lobbing it so you crank as hard as you want to, right?

Speaker 4 But could I hit for average? And could I hit when the pitcher was actually trying to get me out, right?

Speaker 4 Here comes the sinkers and the cutters and the high fastballs or whatever, not just the here's the fastball, see what you can do with it.

Speaker 4 Um, I would say that first hundred at bats, um, and then after that, my timing like really started to click. And then, to be honest, I was kind of surprising myself.

Speaker 4 I was starting to cover some stuff that, whatever, and I had a pretty decent first year. I think it was, um, I hit, I don't know, maybe 26 homers or 21 homers with 276 and 300 something at bats.

Speaker 4 And then that offseason, I trained with Chris Duncan and Gabe Johnson, who were in Jupiter at the time.

Speaker 4 And we were like crazy about it, obsessive. We're all trying to make it at the time.
And when that spring training started,

Speaker 4 something happened to where like, I mean, it was crazy what I was doing, the balls I was covering now and the home runs I was hitting in spring training. And

Speaker 4 I ended up blowing out my knee and I missed that entire year. But Tony LaRusso was like, you were going to make the team right then and there.

Speaker 4 Like I was leading almost everyone in the stuff we were doing.

Speaker 4 So that, when I seen that moment, I knew like, I can do this. I got it.

Speaker 4 So even though I blew out my knee and missed that entire year, when I came back the next year, that what had happened in that spring training, I was like, here's a really generic question.

Speaker 1 I'm sure you've been asked a lot, but I am interested in like the real-world application of it.

Speaker 1 So you come back as a hitter, having been a pitcher your entire career, I assume that gave you some sort of a leg up or an advantage over somebody that hasn't been in those shoes.

Speaker 1 But I'm curious what specifically those advantages were.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so

Speaker 4 as a pitcher in different organizations are different, right? a lot of counts you're taught to do certain things and i mean

Speaker 4 you know the regular fan knows stuff two and no count you're probably getting a fastball yeah um there were things at first for sure i felt like i could read people's body language a little bit but the more i got into it the more you realize not everyone pitches like you pitch so they might not attack me like i would attack me and i started you know you start selling out or cheating for a certain pitch and you get crossed up a few times and it really has to go back to look fastball and adjust to the off speed because that's the only way you can kind of cover both.

Speaker 1 So you hit that first home run in Major League Baseball or in MLB back at Bush Stadium. I mean, was that, did you even feel your feet touching the ground when you're running around the bases?

Speaker 4 Man, I felt like I floated around on a magic carpet and I remember hitting it and when I hit it,

Speaker 4 my, you know, kind of my top hand, my bottom hand came off the bat. My top hand stayed on it.
You kind of stayed through it.

Speaker 4 So it wasn't that I crushed it, but I got enough of it to think, oh my God, I think I got it. And I'm running the first, watching the ball, looking at the outfielder.
You're judging it.

Speaker 4 And as soon as I could tell that it was over, it was like,

Speaker 4 I mean, the biggest burst of emotions you could ever have. I could feel the ground shaking from the people cheering.

Speaker 4 And I remember when I was rounding second, my third baseman, Jose Kendo, I'm looking at him and I'm thinking, oh my God, I did it. Like this just happened.
You know, you can't draw it up any better.

Speaker 4 And it was incredible. No, my whole body was numb.
It was just a surreal experience. It's nuts.

Speaker 1 It's nuts. It's a crazy story.
And I hate the Cardinals. I'm a Cubs fan, but the Cardinal fans, I'll give them credit.
You called them the best fans of baseball.

Speaker 1 They did have your back pretty much through the whole

Speaker 1 ordeal of going down, retiring, coming back. Did you ever feel like they were

Speaker 1 wavering on you? Or do you ever think maybe, hey, if I was in social media age, like I'd be kind of screwed here? People would make a lot of jokes and people would be like this bum and all that stuff.

Speaker 4 Um, yeah, of course, I've thought about that. Um, one, I'll just start with Cardinal fans.

Speaker 1 Um, no, you don't have to, no, okay, okay, no, no, go ahead. Go start, go ahead, no, no, go ahead.

Speaker 4 Um, no, it felt like they always had my back, and whenever I would show back up, it was just the ultimate support, and still is.

Speaker 4 I mean, they treat me like I'm Willie McGee or a Hall of Famer, or it's unreal the way that I'm treated there. Um,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 when you look at the social media side of it, I'll compare it to baseball.

Speaker 4 So when I went, when I was to the Yips, when I was pitching went through the Yips, I couldn't, I had to stop watching baseball.

Speaker 4 I couldn't watch it at all because I would start thinking about, oh, he's okay, but he's doing that. I might try his mechanics, go outside and throw, all these feelings.

Speaker 4 I had to just give up watching baseball, which was my entire life.

Speaker 4 So the way I look at social media now,

Speaker 4 yes, I think it would have been harder because of that, but I would have just turned it off. Right.
Because that's, you would have to.

Speaker 1 Right. What are you going to do?

Speaker 4 You can't fill yourself with negativity all day. And if that's what it'd be, then it's got to be turned off.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because I just think, you know, I remember watching the game in 2000 and now looking back at it, like the amount of jokes, the amount of, you know, like clips that would have been shared, it would have been crazy.

Speaker 1 Because that's kind of what we do as a society. Like, someone falls, someone screws up.

Speaker 1 It's a roast.

Speaker 4 But it might have been marketing genius.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 True. Could have spun it in that direction and ran off.

Speaker 1 I mean, your comeback would have been incredible on social media. Like, as much as you would have been roasted, people would have immediately felt

Speaker 1 for having roasted you and been able to win bigger now.

Speaker 1 Oh, way bigger because that's really what we are: is like Americans, we like to tear people down, then build them back up. Of course, yeah, and then act like we had something to do with

Speaker 1 that. Pat ourselves on the back for that, yeah,

Speaker 1 makes us feel good. Yes, uh, what was it like playing with uh Angels legend Albert Pujos?

Speaker 4 Um, he's the best hitter that I've ever played with line-to-line, there's no question about it. So, when he came up in 2001, he came out A-ball, right?

Speaker 4 But in spring training, you're looking at it and going,

Speaker 4 where did he come from? Right? It was like just bursted on the scene. And I think that first year, he was 40-something homers and 130-something RBIs.

Speaker 4 And I always considered myself a hitter, even though I was like pitcher. And that hadn't happened yet.
But I just, I paid attention to hitting, and I'm like, that.

Speaker 4 isn't who does that right who does that their first year and the way he was doing it the power that he was showing to the opposite field and then somebody tried to throw him in, and he could pull his hands in and keep it fair.

Speaker 4 I was just sitting there, like, I had finally watched someone where I was like, I can't do that. He's better than I, he's better than the better swing than I'll ever have.

Speaker 4 That's what you know, that's you're always judging yourself against right or wrong. You just do, man, oh, I could be better than that guy.

Speaker 1 No, I'm not better than that guy, yeah.

Speaker 1 Did it help having Joe Buck as your announcer than just knowing that he was up there hating every other team that wasn't the Cardinals?

Speaker 4 He's a good friend of ours. Um, yeah, no, it's all good.
Um, I love Joe, and I had Jack at first. Um, I have a scorecard signed from Jack in my office at home.

Speaker 4 So, you know, no, I know their family, and you know, it's, I think if you understand Cardinal baseball, Cardinal World, Cardinal fans, it's really hard not to be a homer.

Speaker 4 It's just what everybody, everybody's a Cardinal fan. It just is what it is.

Speaker 1 You grew up in St. Louis, you cheer for the Cardinals.
That's about it. Yeah, that's how it is.
It's religion.

Speaker 4 It really is religion.

Speaker 4 As much as the Cubs fans are. How about Dan Ross, too? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Do you like that movie? Love it. So

Speaker 1 from a player's perspective, if you had a manager, because obviously Tony LaRusa is a little older, if you had a manager who had played with you a couple years before, don't you think that'd be a little weird?

Speaker 4 I think in some situations it would be in this one, though, because David has always been that leader on the team anyway.

Speaker 4 I played with David on the Braves, and this is when we had Eric Hinsky and David Ross basically kept the clubhouse together.

Speaker 1 Eric's back tattoo.

Speaker 4 Yep, awesome. A lot of work.

Speaker 1 That guy has put a lot of money on his back for a really shitty tattoo. Yeah.
I like Eric Hinsky.

Speaker 4 A lot of work. I do too.
He's a great guy. But so they kept the clubhouse loose.
And what they did was, you know, they didn't let a superstar get outside of the team.

Speaker 4 So at the time, it was like Chipper Jones, who was older than everyone. We know he's going to be a Hall of Famer, like busting jokes on Chipper, but keeping everybody in line.

Speaker 4 Like you see somebody not doing what they're supposed to do. Hey, you need to do that.
Well, he was that guy.

Speaker 4 So I think when you understand what he was as a player, who he was, him stepping into the manager role, it's not, I don't think it's really going to be much different for him to be like, hey, man, we got to, you know, we want to get that done.

Speaker 1 Right. What about the idea that if you're, if you're a rookie coming up and you see your manager,

Speaker 1 he went through a World Series run with several guys on the team? Would that be a little concerning, showing favoritism, dynamic a little bit off that way?

Speaker 1 Because I feel like if I were a rookie, I would always have that in the back of my mind. He'll always be closer with Rizzo than he is to me.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I would answer that with if you don't like it, play better, right? Because you start playing good, you're going to be his favorite real quick.

Speaker 4 And I don't care what team you play on, there's always favorites. I don't care what school your kids go to, that teacher has favorites.
It's the way the world works.

Speaker 1 It's a good life lesson. Yeah, no, it is.
It is. It's definitely true.
Who is Tony LaRusse's favorite?

Speaker 4 Whoever was playing the best, Albert Pujos at the time.

Speaker 4 But yeah, I mean, that's, you know, Tony kind of played mind games like that a little bit. Like, if you weren't playing good,

Speaker 4 you know, he might not talk to you. That's just kind of the way he was.
So it was funny. So if we were losing, you know, usually you have everyone on the rail.

Speaker 4 And sometimes you'll have a couple guys like maybe standing in the dugout back.

Speaker 4 If we were losing and you see Tony like starting to look this way, you would run towards the rail because like it would be your fault that we were losing if you're seeing the back of your head.

Speaker 1 When you were playing in the outfield, did you ever fuck around with your teammates and on a hit the cutoff man with like a curveball and just screw with them in practice?

Speaker 4 In practice I did.

Speaker 4 Never in a game because it's a game, but

Speaker 4 we would always mess around in the outfield and I did this as a pitcher. Sometimes I would just throw a curveball without telling them.
Yeah. You know, whether they could catch it or not.

Speaker 4 And they'd be like, what the f?

Speaker 1 And I said, well, if you can't catch it, they can't hit it.

Speaker 4 So I just wanted to say that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. What about when you would throw someone out? Would there ever be a part of you in the back of your head? You're like, maybe I still got it.

Speaker 1 Like, I threw a strike there from fucking 150 feet away or whatever. Well, that was the screwed up part about it.
I was more accurate from 300 feet than I was 60.

Speaker 4 But when I got into that close range, there was just this feeling that wouldn't let me do it.

Speaker 1 Did you ever ask Tony if you could pitch from the outfield?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 4 I actually talked about throwing out the first pitch to a cargo from the outfield.

Speaker 1 We did talk about that.

Speaker 4 That would be sick. But I have a story that's a problem.
So one of the things that we did mess around with in the outfield, Chris Duncan, who I loved dearly,

Speaker 4 you know, he had a little bit of anxiety when it came to making plays and making catches. So

Speaker 4 we started to mess around and making jokes. So the big joke became when the ball was in the air, we'd be like, watch out for the kayak.

Speaker 4 Like the craziest thing you could think of when the guy was under the ball trying to catch it. Right.
Because hopefully we're a thing to take your mind off of whatever.

Speaker 1 So you're over there and you're like, watch out for the baby carriage here.

Speaker 4 it became a running joke. It's pretty fun.

Speaker 1 That's, I mean, that's kind of messed up of you to do that to other people, yeah,

Speaker 1 but it was fun. We did it to each, we did it to each other, so it didn't matter.

Speaker 4 It was who could come up with the crazy thing.

Speaker 1 Imagine if, at one point, though, there was a coyote in the outfield. You're like, watch out for the coyote.

Speaker 1 You just got mauled to death by the dog.

Speaker 1 All right, I have one last question. Seek geek question: promo code take.
Go to a baseball game next year. Promo code take.
You get $10 off. Thanks to SeatGeek.

Speaker 1 I was reading that you were talking about a comeback as of like this past year.

Speaker 1 What happened there, and are you officially officially retired?

Speaker 4 So I had to have a second Tommy John, and then

Speaker 4 they gave me a procedure where you can actually come back quicker. It's a newer procedure.
But anyway, so I was along that path of coming back. I got to my throwing program.

Speaker 4 We got back to about 90 feet. I strained the flexor tendon.
I took some time off. They're like, really, you probably need about six weeks off.

Speaker 4 And when you take a look at the season mathematically, by the time I'd have been done rehabbing, if I had zero setbacks from that moment um the season was almost over i have kids that are seven and eight and honestly um i was really felt depressed i would say darkly depressed going through the surgery just sitting around not being able to be active is not not my who i am and just going through that um and then looking at it i felt like you know what if i

Speaker 4 God forbid, if something happened, I had to have another surgery. I don't know if I could handle it.
I just wouldn't want any part of it.

Speaker 4 And it it made me think, you know what, being with my kids, they're seven and eight. I got a chance to coach their little league games.
I was like, this is where it's at.

Speaker 4 I'll go to TV and, you know, continue on Fox Midwest.

Speaker 1 So what were you throwing?

Speaker 4 Well, so I was only back to 90 feet, right? So you're not letting it eat yet.

Speaker 1 I love that. We love when we had Barry Zito on, he was saying some stuff like letting it eat is such a great pitcher thing.
And also the way you do this is like, I wish I could fucking you got it.

Speaker 1 No, I don't. You're like, hey, you know, you throw the curve and then you throw the five.
Like, that's just a cool thing pitchers do. Like,

Speaker 1 did you get it?

Speaker 4 So before I threw in a tournament, that's the whole comeback thing came about. I felt strong.
It felt good.

Speaker 4 It would have been coming out hot. Shit.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Coming out hot. How old are you?

Speaker 4 I just turned 40 last year.

Speaker 1 And do you play softball?

Speaker 4 Sometimes when I get a call. That must be awesome.
Yeah. Monday nights every day.

Speaker 1 That must be like high school. You just fucking dominate people, just hitting bombs.

Speaker 4 Try to hit it as far as you can.

Speaker 1 Damn, that's not fair.

Speaker 1 Yeah, if I was going up against you and you stepped into the box, I'd just throw four outside. I'd be like, go chase the issue.

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah. You know what? Most guys laugh about it because I'm not there to be that guy.

Speaker 1 You're just there to hit bombs. Well, I live like across the street.
You're not going to not hit a bomb, right? There's times I don't hit runs. It's not your man.

Speaker 4 There's times I don't hit them. No, there's times I don't hit them runs.
But I live across the street from the softball fields.

Speaker 1 And sometimes I don't want to hit your house. I just stand on the front porch like, you guys need an extra.

Speaker 4 Hey, there are times when I text a couple guys, like, hey, if you need a guy, I'm not doing anything tonight.

Speaker 1 Guy you cleats on. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But when they need a guy, man, I'm like, yeah, I mean, I'll come over. Oh, that's some bombs.
Fuck it.

Speaker 1 That's great. I have one last question.

Speaker 1 When you were going through all this, or even afterwards, did you ever get,

Speaker 1 did you reach out to anyone else that's going through it? The names I'm thinking of, Chuck Knoblock, he had a similar experience, or did those type of guys reach out to you?

Speaker 1 Do you have a group text where you're like former Yip Savers

Speaker 4 support groups? No, but there should be. No, I didn't.
And what happened was I got with Harvey Dorfman, who was my agent's mental guy. And we just worked on it non-stop.

Speaker 4 When I was going through that, I felt like I don't give a crap about anyone else. I just want to know how to fix it.

Speaker 4 But one thing I would say, and it took me a while to get to this, is that talking about it does help.

Speaker 4 So when you talk about a group text, I think guys that are going through it, when you can just admit it, and almost like Eminem did in his movie, when you just admit it to the world, like you're not hiding it.

Speaker 4 Everyone sees it. And I feel like the more you talk about it, the more you can just kind of relax and be like, okay, I'm going through this.
So what? Yeah, let's try to fix it.

Speaker 1 You take the power away from the yips by bringing it into the light.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because you, like you said, you know, when you went into the dugout after the game one, you're like, oh, yeah, it's just a mechanical thing.

Speaker 1 Not saying, like, hey, yeah, there's something else going on here.

Speaker 4 I was in denial. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Interesting. All right.
Well, this has been awesome. Thank you so much.
Rick Ankiel. He's got his book, The Phenomenon, Pressure, the Yips, and the Pitch that Changed My Life.

Speaker 1 We appreciate that. Anytime you're around, come on through.
Thanks, guys. Yeah.
Thanks. Awesome.

Speaker 1 That interview with Rick Ankiel is brought to you by.

Speaker 7 Aldi is now on Uber Eats. So whether your fridge is empty and you're too tired to shop, or you just ran out of essential ingredients, don't worry, we got you.

Speaker 7 Get 40% off your first Aldi order on Uber Eats with code New Aldi25. Orders $30 or more, save up to $25, and it's 1231.
See out for details.

Speaker 1 I'm not going back to college to be your friend. I'm going so I can get Uber One for students.
It saves you on Uber and Uber Eats.

Speaker 1 I'm there for $0 delivery fee on cheeseburgers, up to 10% off smoothies, and 6% Uber credits back on rides. Just to be clear, I'm there for savings, not whatever you think college is for.

Speaker 8 Get Uber one for students. A membership to save on Uber and Uber Eats.
With deals this good, everyone wants to be a student. Join for just $4.99 a month.
Savings may vary.

Speaker 8 Eligibility and member terms apply.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's get to Fire Fest. Then we're going to do a little baseball talk.

Speaker 1 Then we have the much anticipated Mike Florio talking to Colin Kaepernick, but really we just pranked him to talk about fantasy football.

Speaker 1 Let's go first, big cat. Firefest.
Want me to go first? All right, so my Fire Fest

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 I scheduled a dentist appointment for 3.30 on Friday afternoon. That is the dumbest thing I've ever done.
What is it? Is that like a month and a half ago?

Speaker 1 Because Friday afternoon is like the end of the week. Okay, so.
And I'm just dreading it.

Speaker 1 If you had a regular job, that's actually the perfect move. You schedule your dentist appointment in the afternoon on Friday, then you just don't go back.

Speaker 1 Right, but I have not a regular job, and Friday afternoon is like the only time that we basically

Speaker 1 shut it down for a minute, and I'm going to a fucking dentist, and I'm going to get

Speaker 1 root canals and cavities and all this shit because I don't take care of myself. It would actually be great, though, to do a podcast while you're still on the Novocaine.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you couldn't talk that way. Well, that's why I did it Friday because it's like, I can't, I don't, I can talk, you know, like I can't talk after for a while, and our job is to talk.

Speaker 1 So I did it on Friday, but it was stupid. That was.
And I'm probably, there's a

Speaker 1 75% chance I just don't go. It would sound great if we, if you just slow it down right now, you slow down this podcast to half speed.

Speaker 1 This is what it sounds like after you go to the dentist and you're slurring your words and you're speaking slowly.

Speaker 1 Charlie bit me.

Speaker 1 Charlie bit me. My other fire fest is that I legitimately 100% have bought into the fact that if the Bears beat the Rams on Sunday night, they're going to the playoffs.

Speaker 1 Yeah, your brain is a fire fest right now. 100% bought in.
If they win on Sunday night, they're going 11 and no, 10 and 6.

Speaker 1 It's a very fine line between having your brain be a fire fest and just a dumpster fire. Correct.
You're dancing on the edge of that fault line.

Speaker 1 So I'm, it's, I don't even know what, I mean, it's going to happen. They're going to go to the playoffs.
Okay. Done.

Speaker 1 Hank.

Speaker 4 PFT.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah, I'll go next.

Speaker 1 All right, my Firefest I had this week.

Speaker 1 Wait, now Hank for Joseph, breaking moves.

Speaker 1 I just saw this on the lower bar. Daniel Jones has

Speaker 1 put out the trademark for Danny Dimes. Oh, shit.
Yeah. Okay, good thing we already sold shirts that say that.
Okay, cool.

Speaker 1 That breaking news is brought to you by Tom Milton for real cover that tastes real good. Dude, just trademark real swag is no swag.
Danny Dimes, I feel like you shouldn't be able to.

Speaker 1 Especially after the way he's been playing the patent. Well, yeah, and like there's going to be a.
They'd like to do that after coming off a win. Right.

Speaker 1 Like maybe if there's like a point guard with the name Dan or if there's another quarterback who's better, like you.

Speaker 1 I don't think we're ready for... That should actually be the patent lawyer.
The Coke dealer. Yeah.
Or Coke dealer.

Speaker 1 Patent lawyer or the patent judge, however these things work, should essentially say, like,

Speaker 1 you need to go to a Pro Bowl before we let you you have this patent. I agree.
The patent lawyer should be a sports fan. You have to be over 500.
You can't suck

Speaker 1 and get a patent. Also, be sweet.
If he was like, you know what? Retroactively, I'm not going to accept this patent application. I'm going to give it to Dan Marley because I'm a big sports fan.

Speaker 1 That would be sick. All right.
Hank, what was your Fire Fest? I had a few. One was losing to you guys in fantasy.
We're going to talk about that later. It's tough.
You stink.

Speaker 1 Tough to just have a fantasy football podcast and lose that way.

Speaker 1 My other one was that we had Picture Day again, and I got, besides getting roasted by biz for no reason, I got absolutely roasted roasted because my shoes were a little bit dirty, and it was just unnecessary.

Speaker 1 Shoes were for wearing,

Speaker 1 agreed. Shoes were for wearing better myself.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 shoes are for wearing. That's it.
Your shoes were a little dirty. Yeah.
Okay, big, big roast. What did Biz say? Hey,

Speaker 1 hey, what are those off-whites? Listen, I'm not going to say it again. It's tough to come up with Fire Fest week in and week out.

Speaker 1 I rack my brain. Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, start fucking off. You guys are just so easy to work with and so enjoyable to be in there all the time.
Life is so good.

Speaker 1 My Fire Fest of the the Week is for all the kids that are going to be going to game day at Baylor. It's going to be Baylor against Oklahoma.
Okay.

Speaker 1 And there are going to be tons of kids that show up with a sign that says OK Boomer on it, making fun of the Sooners.

Speaker 1 And they're going to look at everyone else in the audience that has that same exact sign and be like, oh, shit.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't be shocked if Lee Corso has an OK Boomer shirt on. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's actually not unrealistic.

Speaker 1 He might put a mascot face on that's just an old man that says okay boomer on it.

Speaker 1 It's a big-time Fire Fest advance. I guarantee there will be at least, I'd say like 12 to 14 signs that you see on Saturday that say okay boomer

Speaker 1 in Waco, Texas, the home of the original Fire Fest, might I add.

Speaker 1 I know that Big Cat was getting a little bit triggered earlier about OK Boomers, like saying that they're on the way out.

Speaker 1 I think you said that like last week, maybe? Earlier.

Speaker 1 Earlier than that? Say you're done with OK Boomers, I think is what you said.

Speaker 1 The okay boomer. I don't remember, did I? The okay boomer is the new crying Jordan.
So if you

Speaker 1 said that because if you get caught in the streets, if

Speaker 1 I don't think I was mad, I can't even remember if I was. If you say that you're done with okay boomers, people can just hit you with an okay boomer.
You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 That's how it used to be out in these streets with crying Jordans. I don't remember if I was mad about it or not.
I don't,

Speaker 1 yeah, I mean, I get what you're saying.

Speaker 1 It's just gotten too much. There's just too many of them.
And also, I think it's when the boomers started co-opting it. That's when they ruined it.
They took their word back. Right, right.

Speaker 1 And they're like, I saw some like. And the Gen Xers feel uninvolved.
Yeah, this is the first time. That's the other one where it's like,

Speaker 1 what about us? Gen X. Someone had some op-ed in New York Times where they're like, okay, Boomer, how about okay, Millennials, Boomers have all the money? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's like, dude, but that's the point. That's why we're saying okay, boomer, because you guys are fucking assholes who took all the resources on earth and left us with this shitpile.

Speaker 1 Oh, my other Fire Fest is I forgot to give two picks during Pifty's ad reads. Okay, okay.
All right, that's a good Fire Fest. One of them is Larry's picks.
What they do after they score a touchdown,

Speaker 1 they celebrate,

Speaker 1 they dance.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 I do not know.

Speaker 1 What do they do after they score a touchdown?

Speaker 1 They

Speaker 1 have to

Speaker 1 kick a field goal goal or a

Speaker 1 Pat, the Patriots. There you go.
Nice. Took us while while to get there.
Wow. Ah, and this one is a U.S.
currency.

Speaker 1 Dimes. Nope.
The Giants.

Speaker 1 I don't know. Shit.

Speaker 4 Bills. Nope.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's a good one. That's a good one.
That's a good one.

Speaker 1 Fuck. I hate your riddles.
Your riddles suck, man. Same letter as Bills.
Bills. The Bills.

Speaker 1 The B's. The Bears.

Speaker 1 No, we already did the Rams. These suck.

Speaker 1 People are yelling right now. Like, how could you not think of this? How could you not think of this? Broncos.
Nope. Damn it.
You know?

Speaker 1 Bucks. The Bucks.
Oh, U.S. currency.
Gotcha. Gotcha.
Okay. Bucks.
The Buccaneers, dude. That's not currency.
The Bucks. The Buccaneers.

Speaker 1 That rule was invalid because it had two correct answers.

Speaker 1 All right, before we get to the Florio prank, we need to talk a little baseball because the Astros, this is getting deeper.

Speaker 1 Seems like they've been cheating a lot, a lot, and it's gone to a point where people are very mad.

Speaker 1 Although, I think that the only thing that hurts the anger is that it's the middle of football season. So, literally, by the time the first game kicks off on Saturday,

Speaker 1 no one will care. I'll say this about baseball: they do a very good job at timing their scandals to come out when it's not during baseball season.
Right.

Speaker 1 So, when it's football and a scandal comes out, it's usually like right in the middle of it. Right.
And everyone's talking about it, it becomes an on-the-field story.

Speaker 1 And baseball, they do a great job of just kind of burying it. If this was August, it would be the only thing that people are talking about.
Yep. But now it's like, okay, Astros, you kind of fucked up.

Speaker 1 We probably won't remember until baseball starts again. And then we'll be like, oh, yeah, the Astros.
So I had an idea that the punishment for the Astros should be that A.J.

Speaker 1 Hinch has to be DH for every AL game next year. He played in Major League Baseball.
He won't be, he'll be terrible, but he'll be funny terrible.

Speaker 1 And it's a competitive disadvantage to the Astros to have that in their lineup every night. Okay.
And guys can throw at him. I like that part.
That's the best part, I think. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What about also having him pitch one inning a game? Or no, pitch until he gets an out every game at home. Oh, how about this? How about he has to pitch?

Speaker 1 How about he has to start every series as the pitcher until he gets an out. Okay, yeah, I like that one.
So every new series he has to start, and then he can finish once he gets that out.

Speaker 1 Also, I'd like to see the punishment kind of be spread out evenly across all the leagues, have a little bit of

Speaker 1 reciprocity with the NFL. So when the Patriots got caught doing this, Hank,

Speaker 1 you probably don't remember this, but they got caught taping opponents' signals as well. What was the fine they got? Was it $500,000? Mm-hmm.
And it was

Speaker 1 a first-round draft pick? Yep. Okay, so they should fine $500,000 and take away a first-round draft pick from the New New England Patriots.
This is much worse. So, they were cheating in-game.

Speaker 1 So, two picks from the Patriots.

Speaker 1 No, very funny. Very funny, PFT.
Just saying, let's make it even.

Speaker 1 No, disavow.

Speaker 1 I have a question for you guys. Are you guys in the camp of who cares, everyone cheats? Or are you in the camp of this is actually the worst thing that's ever happened to baseball? How could they?

Speaker 1 We got to fix this. I'm in the camp of.
This is banner taking down territory. Oh, uh-huh.
Death penalty for the Astros program? Yeah.

Speaker 1 The only problem I have with that is then you'd have to raise a banner and Clayton Kershaw would get a ring. I'm down for that, though.
Just to eliminate.

Speaker 1 Could you imagine the Twitter moment of everyone having to be like, hey, he actually is clutch? Kershaw got over the hump two years later. Yeah.
Maybe this is what we do.

Speaker 1 Maybe we have Clayton Kershaw. We take the Astros banner and Clayton Kershaw.

Speaker 1 has to raise the Dodgers banner, but he has to do it by free soloing up the pole, knowing that it's a clutch moment and he'll just fall and die. Okay, yeah, I'm down for that.

Speaker 1 Or just put the banner up in Louisville Stadium in place of their old one. I like that, too.

Speaker 1 Maybe that is it. Rick Petino has to get a Dodgers tattoo.
We should act, yeah, he should get it. We should make Rick Petino's back just every banner that's had to be taken down.
I like that.

Speaker 1 Like the scoundrel's version of the Troll Bollins avatar. Yeah, that actually.
Vacated back, yeah. Yeah, that should be the deal.
Rick, you can come back to NCAA basketball.

Speaker 1 You can coach, but all banners that have ever been taken down, like the fucking White Sox, you know, shoeless Joe Jackson, boom, banner on your back. Yep.
I'm down for that. Okay, perfect.

Speaker 1 Tell me why not, Rick. I think we still have to.

Speaker 1 I actually think that what we should do is we should go back to some of the Astros games this year, and we should get the footage, and we should edit in

Speaker 1 basically a drum solo before an off-speed pitch, and then release them on Twitter from an anonymous account. Yes.

Speaker 1 And because that's big right now, people are combing through every Astros game, every at-bat with a fine-tooth comb. Let's get real fucking weird with it.

Speaker 1 Stay woke, they basically made a controversy that made people watch more baseball. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You probably have to go buy whatever Major League Baseball package is to have access to every bat from every single game. That sucks.
That's great job, baseball. Going back and watching them.

Speaker 1 I mean, I saw the clip of like the White Sox versus the Astros in the middle of August or whatever it was. Like someone went back and watched all of that.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Actually, John Boyd does because he's done like every clip, which he is the perfect case of.

Speaker 1 I understand if you're a Yankee fan, you should be furious because the Yankees lost in 2017 in the ALCS, they lost in 2019 in the LCS. So they should be very, very upset.

Speaker 1 Every other fan, I don't know. Who cares? I feel better as a Nationals fan.
Again, it makes it worth more for me. So I'm totally fine that this came out.

Speaker 1 I also saw that there was one other thing that happened in baseball yesterday. I don't know if you know this, but the winter meetings are happening soon.

Speaker 1 There's a tradition at these winter meetings where they award a championship belt, like a wrestling title belt, to the executive that does the best job at keeping arbitration numbers down when it comes to salary negotiations.

Speaker 1 That's awesome. It's just been like a gentleman's agreement to say, hey,

Speaker 1 nice job beating a player in arbitration. Right.
They're not doing it anymore because they think that it's a bad look. So they just now decided to stop officially.

Speaker 1 Let's just say it's going to be Derek Jeter, anyways.

Speaker 1 I would imagine Scott Boris would come in with like a steel chair and just smash that executive over the head. Yes.
Take the belt. That's exactly what it is.
That should be

Speaker 1 the highest arbitration should be

Speaker 1 the executive who has won the belt versus Scott Boris in a ladder match.

Speaker 1 Yeah, or you can keep doing the belt for the guy that wins the lowest arbitration number, but then the guy that fucks up the most, Scott Boris, gets to have a free show, gets to jump off a cage.

Speaker 1 The guy's laying on a table, and what's it called? Who's the guy that does the really high-flying ones? Shane McMahon. Shane McMahon, yeah.
Get Scott Boris to Shano right onto that executive sternum.

Speaker 1 Yes. Okay, let's get to Mike Florio.
We had him on under false pretenses because we wanted to trick him into talking about his fantasy football team, which was hilarious.

Speaker 1 So you'll hear Roan and Tank do a little fantasy football factory. Yeah.
And then we actually do talk to him about Colin Caepernick and get to the bottom of what's going on with the league.

Speaker 1 But don't fast-forward totally to his fantasy football advice because he does have a theory that we very much enjoy. He has a take that is so spicy and so Mike Florio.
We loved it.

Speaker 1 We took everything in our body to not say anything at that moment. Welcome back to the Fantasy Football Factory.

Speaker 1 Usually we have guests from inside Barcelona, inside inside our league, but today we have a very special guest, the first outside of Barcelona guest on the program.

Speaker 1 It is Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk. Mike, thank you for coming on.
How are you doing today?

Speaker 9 I'm doing great. How are you guys?

Speaker 10 Fantastic. We're doing well.
We'll jump right into the questions, if that's all right.

Speaker 10 The paramount position in fantasy football. Some people would argue that it's running backs, but this year it seems so mercurial at quarterback.

Speaker 10 And I wanted to get some of your insights on maybe some prognostication as far as going forward. Are there any quarterbacks that might be getting benched?

Speaker 10 And if so, what kind of backups can we be looking for to really pick up that slack in production?

Speaker 9 I think one that comes to mind most immediately is Brandon Allen in Denver. He's just holding the spot, I believe, until Drew Locke is ready to go.

Speaker 9 The expectation is Allen's going to be the quarterback this weekend when Denver plays at Minnesota.

Speaker 9 My guess would be sooner than later, Drew Locke's going to be on the field.

Speaker 9 Now, I don't know what kind of numbers he's going to generate, whether he's he's going to be better than whatever other option someone has, but I could see Drew Locke getting on the field, not by way of a classic benching, but more along the lines of, hey, this is the guy we drafted in round two.

Speaker 9 The season's lost. He's healthy now.
Let's put him out on the field.

Speaker 1 Is there any truth to the Chad Kelly rumors? Is he worth picking up in a league, or do you think he's not going to see the field?

Speaker 9 I'd be surprised if Chad Kelly plays because he's now third on the depth chart in Indianapolis. Jacoby Brissette, when things were going well, when they were five and two,

Speaker 9 he was an MVP candidate, at least on the fringes of the discussion. Then he has the knee injury, misses most of the Steeler game, they lose, misses the Dolphin game, they lose another five and four.

Speaker 9 They're going to be five and five. They lose the Jaguars this weekend.
And Nick Foles is back. That's a guy that I grabbed in both of my leagues, not that anybody cares.
And let me just mention this.

Speaker 9 I thought this whole thing was a setup by Big Cat. To get me to talk about

Speaker 9 so you guys can say nobody cares and hang up on me.

Speaker 1 I really did. No, I mean,

Speaker 1 I've had to deal with that. Obviously, I produced a part of of my take, BitCat and PFT.
I always say that. It's something we've had to overcome because people do care about fantasy.

Speaker 1 People want to hear.

Speaker 1 The slogan of the show is that just because no one cares doesn't mean you shouldn't talk about it.

Speaker 9 You know what? That's probably the best slogan you can come up with for fantasy football because nobody does care, but we still talk about it. Yep.

Speaker 10 As you're going down the stretch, are there any teams that might be quitting on their coaches? Any guys we might see a dip in production from this year, guys, to avoid? Maybe we want to sit?

Speaker 9 Yeah, you know, the Cincinnati situation is strange to me because here they are at 0-9. They already put Ryan Finley out on the field in place of Andy Dalton.
And

Speaker 1 look,

Speaker 9 how desperate are they going to be to get a win, to play hard? You're going to have guys who are thinking, let's just stay healthy. Let's pack it in.

Speaker 9 Let's just get through this season and worry about next year.

Speaker 9 Since there have been two teams that have gone to 0-16 since 2008, I don't know that the stigma is what it used to be.

Speaker 9 I mean, we just had the Browns do it two years ago in the same state where the Bengals are. But I'm fascinated by that.
Is A.J. Green going to play at all this year? I doubt that he will.

Speaker 9 What's the upside? So, you know, Ryan Finley most likely continues to play, but I don't know whether or not the Bengals are going to do anything that anyone would really care about.

Speaker 9 And another one that I'm just kind of keeping a weird eye on, I don't think this is going to happen.

Speaker 9 But if the Chargers keep losing and Phillip Rivers keeps looking as bad as he did last Thursday night on that last drive when he threw seven straight in completions, you have to try to throw seven straight in completions with the game on the line.

Speaker 9 Because they put Tyrod Taylor on the field just to see, just that, just like, hey, we know we're not bringing Phillip Rivers back next year. That would be the thinking.

Speaker 9 Let's see what Tyrod Taylor can do. And does he get a game or two down the stretch? I'm kind of fascinated by how that one can go.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I feel that it will be very interesting to see.

Speaker 1 Who are, if you're looking at teams, you know, players to pick up with teams with easy schedules because they're playing cupcakes going down the stretch, who are some of those teams with players that you'd be looking to pick up?

Speaker 9 Well, I don't know how cupcakish any of the schedules are, and that can change, too.

Speaker 9 I remember saying not that long ago, the Browns schedule gets very easy after week 10 when they play the Bills, and now all of a sudden they got two games in three weeks against the Steelers, who aren't the easy win that they were several weeks back, and the Dolphins in between who have won two in a row.

Speaker 9 So I don't know that any schedule is quote-unquote easy.

Speaker 9 But one guy that fascinates me when we get into the final weeks of the season, and of course, you know, every league is different on how many weeks it goes into the regular season.

Speaker 9 Some wrap up by 15, some take it all the way to week 17.

Speaker 9 I'd be tempted at some point to hold Eli Manning in my back pocket because I feel like he's going to get at least one farewell game.

Speaker 9 There's going to be pressure on the Giants from the fans and the media standpoint.

Speaker 9 And really, if you're the Giants, what other reason do people have to show up on December 29 for the last game of the season when they play the Eagles than to give Eli Manning one last game?

Speaker 9 And maybe he comes out and rips it up in his farewell performance in the NFL, depending upon how badly the Eagles need that game.

Speaker 9 So that's one I've been watching ever since he got benched, that if the Giants aren't a factor and they're clearly not a factor, could there be one or two or even three games for Eli down the stretch?

Speaker 9 They've got three home games in December, and ultimately this is a business, and you've got to get people to show up. That's true.

Speaker 9 And it will not surprise me at all if there's a quote-unquote injury to Daniel Jones that really wouldn't keep him from playing, that lets Eli Manning finish out the season.

Speaker 10 So, the year-end rush on Eli Manning, we are going to keep our eyes on that. Now, I want to pivot a little bit to how you kind of personally come at this at your strategy for your team.

Speaker 10 So, any strategies that you've used, Mike, down the end of the season that have made your teams elite and taken those teams over the top?

Speaker 9 Well, here's the problem. I suck at fantasy football.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 9 my late season strategy is survival at best or racing.

Speaker 1 Nobody gives a fuck about your fantasy team.

Speaker 1 We're here this whole time. You fell for this? God damn it, Mike.

Speaker 9 Are you serious?

Speaker 1 Listen, we had to change the game. The only way we're going to get you is if we had Hank and Roan lure you in for seven seven minutes about just trivial, stupid fantasy stuff.

Speaker 1 Although, I love the Eli Manning take

Speaker 1 the Eli game is going to happen, but yeah, we don't care.

Speaker 9 Are you guys? I can't fucking believe this

Speaker 9 because it was my first reaction when you texted me, big cat.

Speaker 1 You said, sure, I'm in. I love talking about fantasy.

Speaker 9 Yeah, sure, sure, it was. And then you play this.
Oh, I'm going to be on your show the day after thanks, giving cards.

Speaker 1 Is there even a real real podcast that you guys do no we actually okay so can you get off speakerphone because now you're on the real we're gonna do part of my take real quick we actually did so here's how everything went down i'm gonna explain it to you can you get off your speakerphone yeah i'm off my speaker all right so pft texted last night to the group he's like hey we should have florio on uh pmt to talk kaepernick for a few minutes for friday's show and i said that's a great idea but hold on Let's have Hank and Roan pretend that they're having him on the fantasy football podcast so we we can get him to talk about his fantasy team and then punk him, but still have him on to talk about Kaepernick.

Speaker 1 So here we are. I'm sorry, Mike, by the way.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 Roan and Hank, well, Roan, maybe not so much, but Hank felt bad. Ron's a prankster.

Speaker 9 Yeah, look,

Speaker 9 I knew this was coming, and I knew it was coming. And somebody, I swear, and that was the quote, I swear it's not a prank.
I swear we're not punking you. Hank's a great guy.
Help him out, please.

Speaker 9 I'm coming on your show on Friday after Thanksgiving. I mean, you pulled every card to get me to do it because you knew that I knew it was bullshit.

Speaker 1 Well, you know what? It's not bullshit because they are going to use that audio on their fantasy football podcast, too. Yeah, so it's true.
We just happen to be in the room. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 Well, and also, Mike, you can claim that you knew and that you had your feelers up, but you let them down because that comment you made like 30 seconds into it, you're like, I just want to say before we get going that I thought this was a prank, but I'm really happy to be here with you fellas.

Speaker 9 Well, and you know what? And it did occur to me because I knew you guys do a Friday show, and I think it's 4 o'clock. And that's too early.
They're still asleep at 4 o'clock on a Thursday.

Speaker 9 So, yeah, they're not in there then. So, hell well.

Speaker 1 All right, can we talk about Kaepernick, though, for real, for like five minutes and put it on PMT?

Speaker 9 Pick him up on your fantasy team.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there you go. Can you start from the beginning and just explain it like we are children? What exactly is going on with the NFL and Kaepernick?

Speaker 9 Well, what's going on between the NFL and Kaepernick as of Monday night was absolutely nothing, and nobody expected anything to be going on.

Speaker 9 His agent issued a memo a couple of weeks ago addressing some of the false narratives, as he called them, that are out there about Kaepernick, about he doesn't really want to play football, and

Speaker 9 he is a vegan, and he wants too much money, and he never was really any good in the first place. All that crap that's been churning ever since he became a free agent in March of 2017.

Speaker 9 My favorite one is he opted out of his contract in 2017, or he would have been employed by the 49ers that year, which is complete and total bullshit because the 49ers were going to cut him anyway.

Speaker 9 John Lynch, the GM of the team, has told me that. He said that in other contexts.
They were done with him. So he hasn't really had a fair opportunity with any team.
He had one visit.

Speaker 9 That was in May of 2017 with the Seahawks. Nobody ever invited him in for a workout.
The Ravens almost did. The Ravens were looking at him in July of 2017.

Speaker 9 His girlfriend posted something on social media that Ray Lewis and Steve Bashoti didn't like, so they canceled it. And he's just been there.
He's been available.

Speaker 9 There's been nothing.

Speaker 9 And now, out of the blue, months after he settles his collusion grievance with the NFL, three months into the season, the NFL sets up this workout, doesn't tell him about it until it's set up, leaks it to the media before they tell him about it, gives him two hours to make up his mind as to whether he's going to do it.

Speaker 9 He says, I really don't think it's a good idea to do it on a Saturday because teams are kind of busy on Saturdays. Can we do it on Tuesday? The league says no.

Speaker 9 Then he says, well, can we do it next Saturday, not this Saturday, so teams have more time to get ready for it? And the league says no.

Speaker 9 I mean, it doesn't feel like a genuine attempt to help the guy out.

Speaker 9 It feels like some sort of strategy, whether a PR strategy or a legal strategy, to make the league look better because they know how bad it looks right now.

Speaker 9 for the NFL and its teams to have just ignored this guy over and over and over again.

Speaker 9 It's just so odd that now all of a sudden, this deep into the season, somebody felt the urgency to do something about it.

Speaker 9 And I really do think that they are worried that they're going to get another lawsuit filed by Colin Kaepernick for this ongoing collective and individual decision to shun the guy.

Speaker 9 And the second lawsuit can actually be stronger than the first one because the second lawsuit would be, hey, now you're ignoring me and not giving me a fair opportunity because you're mad that I filed a lawsuit against you and forced you to pay me somewhere between $1 million and $10 million.

Speaker 9 So that's where it it all is in a nutshell. They won't tell him who's coming.

Speaker 9 They've gotten Hugh Jackson to come in and run this workout, reportedly, which I don't know that that makes it any more attractive at all. 11 teams have committed to attending.

Speaker 9 But here's the thing that drives me crazy about it.

Speaker 9 Anybody can bring him in for a workout anytime they want. Last Tuesday, 39 players worked out for NFL teams.
They fly guys in all the time for a workout. They don't need to do this.

Speaker 9 If somebody's interested in Colin Kaepernick, you bring him in for a workout. If you like what you see, you talk to them about a contract.

Speaker 1 If you don't, you move on.

Speaker 9 And since no one has for nearly three years, I don't know why the NFL felt this urgency to do it now.

Speaker 1 Now, you're saying, like, without a doubt, that the NFL set this up, got all the wheels in motion, scheduled it before even talking to anyone with Colin Kaepernick's camp or his agent or to him directly.

Speaker 1 He was blindsided by this?

Speaker 9 Yeah, they set it all up, and then they dropped it on Kaepernick. They actually called people in the media last week, a select group of reporters.

Speaker 9 I was not selected, but a select group of reporters were given a heads-up last week that there would be something on Tuesday that would be worth their while and newsworthy and whatnot.

Speaker 9 So the league knew this was coming. The league laid the foundation for it.
And then on Tuesday, they dropped it on Kaepernick and said, you've got two hours to tell us what you're going to do.

Speaker 9 And it just...

Speaker 9 It's not something that feels like a genuine effort to help the guy. It feels like it's some kind of a chess match.
It's some kind of a game.

Speaker 9 It's, you know like i felt when you asked me to do this today something else is going on here and it's ultimately not going to be in my interest to do this that's pretty much how kaepernick feels they might be punking kaepernick and nobody's going to show up and then roger giddell is going to be like gotcha

Speaker 9 well and here's what i think here's what i really do think will happen i think no matter what he does at that workout The assessment is going to be he doesn't have it anymore.

Speaker 9 And we're going to have anonymous scouts who leak that to select reporters who they know will pass along that BS,

Speaker 9 and then it's over. Hey, it's done.
We gave him this chance. Our conscience is clean.
We gave him this workout, and nobody signed him, and that's that.

Speaker 9 That's why I think they'd like to have all 32 teams there so they can all collectively decide. We see what he can do.
We don't like it, and we move on. Because think of it this way.

Speaker 9 If he works out, and the scouts who are there are blown away, and all of a sudden there's a rush to sign him, how glaring does that make it look that they've ignored him all these months?

Speaker 9 Yeah, like, why wouldn't you just brought him in to see what he can do? It's obvious he can do it, and you've ignored him for nearly three years.

Speaker 9 So, I really think that the end result is going to be, well, well, thanks for playing along, Colin, but you just don't have it anymore. All those narratives out there about you are 100% accurate.

Speaker 1 Okay, so here's the only thing I don't understand in the entire timeline and everything you've said, and how it's kind of a farce: is why did the NFL wake up, whatever it was, November 12th, and decide here is the time that we are going to tackle this issue, even if it's a fake, you know, ruse of a workout where we give no one any, you know, warning and we fly everyone in, and it's all kind of thrown together.

Speaker 1 Why did it happen now? Like, what, why did the NFL now decide this is when we're going to make it seem like we actively want Colin Kaepernick back in the league?

Speaker 9 If this is an effort to take steam out of a second lawsuit that he could file for collusion and retaliation, et cetera, I that what happened was when his agent several weeks back issued that memo attacking point by point the BS that's been out there for the last two and a half years.

Speaker 9 My guess is that got the attention of Jeff Cash, who's the NFL's general counsel.

Speaker 9 And that's when he decided we better do something here because the foundation has been laid for him to come after us again, and we eventually may have to cut even bigger check than the first check that was cut to Colin Kaepernick for blackballing him from March of 2017 until February of 2019 when they settled that case.

Speaker 9 And then it takes time to put the wheels in motion. You get the teams on board with it.
You come up with your strategy. You come up with how it's going to happen.

Speaker 9 It's very carefully planned to best protect you against the liability that you're hoping to minimize, but also ensure that people are on board with doing this.

Speaker 9 And it just so worked out that this was when, this was the week when all the pieces fell together. That would be my theory, because there's no rhyme or reason to it.

Speaker 9 If you're going to do something like this, somebody suggested to me yesterday this was part of the settlement of the grievance that was resolved back in February, and I said, it can't be, and I've since found that it's not, because if you're going to do that,

Speaker 9 his lawyers aren't going to say, yeah, let's do it in the middle of November. You're going to do it in July.

Speaker 9 You're going to do it when there's a chance to get this guy to training ten, when there's an opportunity to compete for a spot on the roster. Everybody's got their roster set right now.

Speaker 9 The only way you're going to get a chance is if somebody has an injury. Nobody's going to say, say, oh, you know what? Hey, we don't really like our backup quarterback.

Speaker 9 Let's go ahead and cut him and let's sign Colin Kaepernick instead. Even though he doesn't know our roster, he doesn't know our coaching staff.
He doesn't know our offense.

Speaker 9 Let's just go ahead and dump our backup quarterback and sign Colin Kaepernick during the playoff run.

Speaker 9 I mean, the best case scenario for Kaepernick is if he really is great at this workout and then there's an injury, like to Lamar Jackson or Robert Griffin III in Baltimore, because that's the offense that he knows best.

Speaker 9 Greg Roman was his offensive coordinator in San Francisco. So you bring him in if that occurs.

Speaker 9 But the chances of somebody just coming out of this workout saying, well, we must have Colin Kaepernick and we're going to cut one of our current players and put him on the roster.

Speaker 9 It's very, very minimal. I'd be shocked if it happens.
But that's my take on how I think we got to this point. Somebody got scared.
that they were setting themselves up for more liability.

Speaker 9 They put the wheels in motion, and this is the week that it all fell together.

Speaker 1 I think the biggest piece of evidence that maybe how the NFL is overplaying their hand, that they're setting them up to fail, is that Hugh Jackson is going to be coaching them up during this.

Speaker 1 You went a little bit too far with that. You should have brought in like Spagnulo or Jim Hazlitt to run it.
Somebody that's bad, but not like historically bad at coaching to run it.

Speaker 1 Now, Mike, you used to be an employment lawyer. You dealt with employment law all the time.

Speaker 1 Is it commonplace that somebody who sues a company successfully for collusion or anything else for that matter would then go ahead and return to work for that company?

Speaker 1 Have you ever ever encountered like, or have you ever encountered a double lawsuit where you sue for collusion and then you sue again for a continued collusion?

Speaker 9 Yeah, usually in the normal workplace, what happens is that first lawsuit is for some form of illegal discrimination based on age, gender, race, et cetera.

Speaker 9 Or if you've engaged in some sort of protected activity.

Speaker 9 Like one of the cases I handled involved a guy who complained about a safety condition at an airplane, at an aircraft maintenance facility that could have caused a serious problem.

Speaker 9 And he complained about about it. And then after that,

Speaker 9 he was the guy that they couldn't wait to get rid of. So here's what usually happens.
When you resolve a case like that,

Speaker 9 the the settlement will have a clause in it that says you won't accept future employment with this company and you won't seek future employment with this company.

Speaker 9 Basically, everybody walks away and they don't have to worry about somebody who's already sued them once suing them again.

Speaker 9 And I figured that when Kaepernick settled his lawsuit back in February, that his settlement would have that term in there. So they don't have to worry about Colin Kaepernick.

Speaker 9 They buy out his employment rights for the remainder of his career. The problem is the payment they made was far too low to buy out his employment rights.

Speaker 9 It would have cost a lot more than that for Colin Kaepernick to go away for good.

Speaker 9 And once the amount started to leak and it became clear that he didn't sign a term like that, I was like, well, you know what? He still could sue them again.

Speaker 9 And as I said, the second lawsuit can be much stronger than the first, because think of of it this way.

Speaker 9 If you've got somebody who sues for some type of discrimination, age, gender, race, whatever, usually in most workplaces, there are other people who have those same protected characteristics.

Speaker 9 It's very tough to show that there's a bias. It's always a challenge.
They always have some legitimate reason or semi-legitimate reason for firing the person.

Speaker 9 But when the second lawsuit is, you have a specific bias against me because I sued you and I forced you to pay money, that's when people get it.

Speaker 9 That's when they understand why the employer is pissed off at this person. And most people think it's okay.

Speaker 9 Most people don't realize the law protects everyone against that kind of a situation where if you bring a lawsuit against your employer and they don't like it and for some reason you're still working there or you're trying to still get employed there and you haven't waived your right to get employed there, you have a better case than you had the first time.

Speaker 9 You have rights and it's easier to advance them. And that's kind of where Kaepernick is right now.

Speaker 9 And it could be that the NFL's effort to make it harder for him to bring that second lawsuit is going to blow up in the NFL's face and make it easier and provoke him to do it.

Speaker 9 He may come out of this exercise so pissed off about the way they handled it and maybe he wasn't going to file that second lawsuit and maybe now he will.

Speaker 1 It's a classic case of just like, it's just the NFL just kind of fumbling and bumbling something huge like this.

Speaker 1 Mike, thank you.

Speaker 1 We care about your fantasy team. Thanks for appearing on both podcasts.
Everybody let Mike know what a great job he did talking about fantasy football.

Speaker 1 Yeah, tweet him and say, hey, good call about Eli. We're going to pick up Eli.
Everyone tweet Mike showing them that they're picking up Eli Manning.

Speaker 1 Yep, and also ask him your start sick questions on Twitter. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 9 You like the Eli Manning take, though. I do.

Speaker 1 Our faces lit up. We were like, whoa, Eli Manning.
Eli Manning farewell game. I can see it happening.
Week 17. Two more interceptions.

Speaker 9 And it would be a much better take if he didn't completely suck at this point.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but if week 17, the Eagles maybe have the East wrapped up, and then it's like Eli can go in. They maybe do a handshake like when they grooved a fastball to Cal Ripken Jr.
in the all-star game.

Speaker 1 Let him go out. Let him look like a hero one last time.
Ooh, now, Mike, what if Eli throws for five touchdowns? What if he has his own little Matt Flynn game? Is there going to be a demand?

Speaker 1 Is there going to be a demand for Eli coming off week 17?

Speaker 9 Yeah, I think everybody learned their lesson in week 17, 2011. Don't get fooled by what a guy does in week 17.
So

Speaker 9 look, in all seriousness, I don't think Eli Manning is going to want to play for a second team. He's never been wired to do that.
I think he's done after this year, and he just moves on.

Speaker 9 And I don't think anybody's going to want him anyway, which makes it easy for him to walk away.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right, Mike.
Thanks so much, man. We appreciate it.
You're the best. Great to have you on in football season.
Thanks, Mike.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Yeah, thank you. I've been waiting all year.
I've been waiting all year.

Speaker 9 And last year, you guys had me on like four or five times. And this year, not a single phone call, not a single request.
That's fine, though. And I told you, that's fine.

Speaker 9 I got plenty of other things to do. But that's good.

Speaker 9 I appreciate having the chance, even though you completely and totally screwed me under false pretenses to get me on. I still appreciate being on.

Speaker 1 That's why we love you. Thanks, Mike.
We love you, buddy. Later.
All right. See ya.
Bye, Dad. Love you guys.

Speaker 1 Did you get that love you guys? Yeah, that was me kicking her.

Speaker 1 Hank, make sure not to delete the love you guys this time.