Smylie Kaufman Talking PGA Championship, Knicks Whomp The Celtics, Thunder To The WCF, Miami Marlins Kyle Stowers And Tyler Phillips In Studio And A Goodbye To Mr Bing Bong

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Today is part of my take.

We've got a ton of sports to talk about.

A lot of sports this weekend.

We're going to talk about NBA playoffs.

We had some duds in game sevens.

We had the preakness, which was incredible.

Celtics Knicks are over.

We're going to get our thoughts from Hank from Friday night.

We got a great interview with Smiley Kaufman talking PGA championship.

Scotty Scheffler is back in the winner's circle.

He's got his third major.

We also have a really fun interview with Kyle Stowers and Tyler Phillips from the Miami Marlins.

They came into the studio last week.

Awesome dudes.

A little baseball talk.

I think we're going to hit everything.

We're going to hit all the sports today.

Let's see.

We got hockey, baseball, basketball, golf, horses.

Horses.

We'll have to talk some football.

We'll figure out some football.

So, and Max's bachelor party recap after the interviews.

So, pack show for you.

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Okay, let's go.

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Today is Monday, May 19th.

And holy shit, we got sports, baby.

Game seven weekend.

Duds.

The anticipation for the game seven is way better than the actual game sevens.

This is making me disagree with LeBron's take.

And he's the first person I've ever heard say this.

The two best words in sports, game seven.

Yes.

That actually,

this kind of puts me back onto game sixes.

I might be a game six guy.

Listen, game game sevens are great.

Game seven duds, I don't even want there to be a game seven when it happens.

And we had two of them on Sunday.

I agree with you.

Game sixes may be more important.

Did we have any game sixes?

That's the new game seven.

The new game seven.

Hank, what would you like to talk about first?

Because we have every sport.

We're literally going to talk about

Scotty Shappa.

WNBA.

Well, I had WNBA on there.

We have everything.

You want to start with Scotty or do you want to start with basketball?

I feel like major championship or game sevens.

That's pretty easy.

You know, one of those two.

What about your game seven that you had, Hank?

Didn't have a game seven.

Oh, why not?

It's Monday night.

Oh, okay.

So the Celtics lost.

No, you want to start.

You want to start with MBA?

I don't know if it's, but yeah, sure.

Let's see.

No, let's

easily get off.

Let's just get easy.

Let's go.

Let's get started with Bandaid off.

Let's do it.

Let's do it.

No, no.

Hank is so egotistical that he thought that we were talking about the Celtics this whole time.

No, we were talking about the Thunder and the Nuggets, and we were talking about this Game 7.

Yeah, we were talking about Scotty.

Let's wait.

Okay, let's wait.

Okay, great.

Let's talk about the Game Sevens today.

Let's talk about the Thunder Nuggets.

By the way, I should have started the show.

Parody is back.

NBA Parody is officially back.

This now, with the Thunder beating the Nuggets in Game 7, there are going to be, it's guaranteed seven different champions in seven different years in the NBA.

And we also have the chance for two franchises who've never won a title in Indiana and

Minnesota.

I guess actually three because

I don't think OKC claims any of Seattle's history.

Well, even Kevin Durant's.

Yeah, Kevin Durant.

And then the Knicks last title was 52 years ago.

So no matter what, the final four

in the NBA, we're going to get a new champion

for half a century.

I don't think that Seattle would allow OKC to claim any of their past successes.

Correct.

I think they'd put up a pretty big fight for that.

Right.

It's obviously the same franchise, but it's not.

So we're going to say three out of four have never won a title, and the fourth is the New York Knicks, who haven't won a title in 52 years.

So parody is back, and it's just kind of cool because out of maybe a passing of the torch, SGA, Anthony Edwards, Jalen Brunson, Tyrese Halliburton, one of those four is going to win their first NBA title.

It is pretty cool.

It is pretty cool.

And the Thunder, it looked like the series was just too long for the Nuggets.

They were too old, too banged up.

Aaron Gordon was playing on one and a half legs pretty much.

He couldn't jump off his left leg.

What a beast.

He's a beast.

And by the way, just to put it into perspective, Aaron Gordon played in game seven with a grade two Hammy.

And if the Lakers were in this game, LeBron would still be two weeks away from coming back.

It's true.

Because LeBron remembered when he got hurt in the last game of the Lakers season,

for some reason put out a timetable for his return, which no one needed or asked for.

Right.

So the hypothetical return, if they had won, here's what I would be able to do.

Steph Curry had the same injury, didn't play at all.

It's true.

I missed a softball game with the same injury.

These are all like elite athletes that aren't able to will themselves to do it.

And somehow Aaron Gordon was.

He led the game in rebounds.

Pretty incredible.

And the final score won't tell you the full story because up until about three minutes left in the first half, it was a one-point game.

And it looked like it was going to be a defensive struggle.

Looked like it was going to be an ugly game.

The exact kind of game that I think the Nuggets would want to be in, that they might have a chance to win.

And then then in the last three minutes of that first half, it all fell apart.

And

I believe it was 42-41 with three minutes left in the second.

Well, and then Oklahoma City went on an 18-5 run to close out the half, and then it was just never closed from that point.

Yeah, I was going to say, it all fell apart for the Nuggets.

It all fell into plan for the Thunder.

I feel like this series was the Thunder growing up in front of our eyes because they had, in this series, they had the game three overtime game where it was like, ooh, is this moment too big for them?

Then they come back, have the game four and five wins.

Don't close it out in Denver, game six, and then even in game seven, the way this game started, they were down 10 almost like instantly.

And you're like, uh-oh, are they getting a little tight?

Is this like a championship DNA kind of game?

And then the Thunder, again, grow up.

And like, that's a game where they're deep.

They play defense like, I mean, it's insane watching them play defense.

They are so good as a unit.

Caruso is such a menace.

There's a little bit.

I know there's a lot of argument about fouls and all this.

I enjoyed watching because I feel like Jokic and Caruso were going back and forth.

Like, they were both kind of being very physical.

And I do think the Thunder have a little bit of the Seattle Seahawks.

There's our football talk of like they can't call everything.

But Caruso was such a tone setter and so good.

And I threw out there on Thursday night, I believe, that he's so underrated.

And someone was like, dude, he's not underrated.

He's, you know, been all defense a couple times.

And I was thinking about it.

He is underrated because two franchises basically got rid of Caruso for nothing.

The Lakers let him walk because they were cheap and didn't want to go in the luxury tax.

And the Bulls didn't get a pick for him, even though they should have because the Thunder, I think, have 7 billion picks.

And Alex Crusoe is like,

Thunder are great as a team.

And Alex Crusoe just takes that defense intensity to another level.

And they are so fucking ferocious defensively.

And shout out to SGA because I feel like he grew up as well.

He went games 5, 6, and 7, 31 points, 32 points, 35 points.

And he went game 5, 52% from the field, then game 6, 68% from the field, game 7, 63% from the field.

The best player on the Thunder stepped up his game when they needed him to.

And they had like, you know, the role players step up today.

The Thunder are so good.

They are such a good team.

And I don't even know, like, I don't even know where to start with the Thunder Thunder versus Wolves because both defenses are just going to eat each other alive.

Yeah, I mean,

it was one of those games where Caruso, as a defender, proved that he's worth everything that you're paying him and then some.

And I feel like the games that the Thunder as a team do really well are the games where Caruso is not a top scorer on the team.

You know,

the Alex Caruso games, I think we talked about them losing one of the Alex Caruso games.

Yeah, where he tried to bring him back at the end of the game.

Yeah.

Yeah, when he's just like fighting people in the background, when he's playing hard defense, those are the games that fall into place for the Thunder.

Yeah, they did kind of grow up.

But again, it was a close game.

It was a very close game until the end of the first half.

But can you call it a close game if it was only a close game for less than a half?

No, it was.

I don't think you can.

I'm going to say it was a close game until that's back to my point about just it being a long series for the older team.

Yeah.

And they seemed to just run out of all the gas that they had stored up.

Well, I mean, the Thunder are a better team.

They were a better team.

And

you go back to that game three.

That's a game they could have have won, should have won.

And it could have been, like, I do give the Nuggets a ton of credit for even getting to game seven because I do think they were overmatched, and they have a lot of questions going into this offseason because it's like, you got to get more help for Jokic.

But Jokic, we love Jokic on this podcast.

He's awesome.

He could have played better this series.

Yeah.

And I know that he needs probably

a little more spacing and some more help.

But games four, he only took nine shots today.

He was at the free throw line a lot.

But game four and game seven, and again, this is all relative because Jokic, even in a bad game, still impacts the game in a way that few people do.

But I think it's fair to hold him to the standard of best player in the world.

And if he was the best player in the world, game four and seven, he could have played better and they could have won this series.

Yeah, what do you have 20 points today?

Yeah.

Yeah, 20.

He has like flashes in these series where he'll like explode for 40, but he did not play up to his own standards.

And that's a lot of credit to the Thunder because they had him in a torture chamber.

Yeah, when Caruso was just banging with him down low, Jokic, he said, like, my last resort is I'm going to have to flop against Alex Caruso.

Yeah.

And he got rewarded for it a little bit, but yeah,

he was in a bad spot.

He couldn't get it done all by himself.

And Aaron Gordon, I think that was the big difference in this game because going into this game.

Well,

the Nuggets wouldn't have won with the healthier Aaron Gordon.

They lost by 35 points.

Yeah, but I'm saying into this game, the Nuggets were plus 32 with Gordon on the court and minus 68 when he was not on the court.

Yeah.

So it makes a difference.

Of course.

I'm trying to give a little bit of context.

Obviously, the Thunder were the better team in this series.

It went seven.

So it's not like it was a blowout one way or the other.

It was a dominant game seven performance for sure.

But in context, I think that it was a closer series than we're making it seem when we say that, like,

Jokic sucked.

No, no, I didn't say Jokic sucked.

Yeah.

I said Jokic,

if he's the best player in the world, he had two games in this series that if he had played better, they would have probably won the series.

And again, he needs more help around him.

I'm more saying like the conversation of Jokic is best player in the world.

Best player in the world can sometimes be like, I'm going to take over this series and win this series.

Yeah, he didn't do that.

And that didn't happen.

He did not suck.

Although game four, he sucked.

He was like seven for 22.

And again, I think it's the Thunder defense.

They are so good defensively.

And, yeah, I mean, remember game one because that feels like forever ago.

That was a game the Thunder almost won and then, you know, crazy heroics at the end.

They lucked into that one, yeah.

Yeah, so

I feel like the story of this series is

not as much as like, oh man, the Nuggets are right there.

I feel like it's the Thunder grew up and like the demons of going through the wars in a playoffs and being a young team, they almost like speed ran it in this series alone.

Yeah, I have no idea what to expect at all from the Timberwolves Nuggets or Timberwolves Thunder series because

both teams play great defense.

Both teams have emerging superstars that you think that you can trust, that are fun to watch when they're great.

But one of the guys is going to be obviously able to elevate their game to a next level and the other's not.

Yeah.

And it's really going to be,

I have no idea which one's going to be.

I think it's going to come down to the guys around him.

Like Jalen Williams today was awesome.

And that's what the Thunder need is like the second guy who can step up.

And Julius Randall has been awesome.

So it's like

the Wolves feel like like they might have that.

Did you guys see Jokic's quotes after?

I liked it.

He had two that I really enjoyed.

One was

he was asked how this offseason would be compared to last offseason.

He said the next couple of days is going to be a lot of beer, probably.

Okay.

Which, okay, that's relatable.

There's a lot of beer.

And then I really like this one.

He was, because this happens with every team

when they lose, they get asked about like, you know, window and all this stuff.

So they asked him if this team can win a title.

and he said, we didn't.

I don't believe in if stuff.

There it is.

They didn't win a title.

You can't be like, can they win a title?

They didn't win a title.

Yeah, no, they'll have to make some changes.

Yeah.

But I really wish this game was better.

That's all.

Game seven.

Scott Foster didn't do his fucking job.

That's my problem.

Game sevens are, they need to, they need to always deliver.

We don't talk enough about the bad game sevens.

The bad game sevens are the biggest bummer.

There were a couple bad game sevens today.

Yeah.

Although, credit to the thunder, I want to say for anyone who had one TV, they did do a good job of

making it a no-doubter at the end of the first half and in the third quarter so that everyone could switch to the PGA championship.

That's for one TV guys.

The problem was the PGA also became a no-doubter at the same time that the basketball became a no-doubter.

Should we do our PGA recap right now?

We can do that.

I was going to say, embrace debate, big cat.

Is it better to lose in game six, like get the shit kicked out of you, get your teeth stomped in, get your guts pulled out of your belly button, or then to go on to lose game seven and get the shit kicked out of you?

How bad do you lose in game six?

Game six is really bad.

Like, it's worse.

It's the worst loss for a defending champion in an elimination game ever.

Yeah, but it's also on a Friday, so it's kind of like a news dump.

Got it.

But Sunday is in front of the world.

Got it.

Max, you didn't know that's that.

No, that's a good stat.

Let's do PGA.

Okay, let's suck off.

PGA.

All right, so Scotty Scheffler, incredible.

So I was thinking about it.

Do you think

there's probably a few guys out there who timed their nap where they never thought this tournament was ever in doubt?

Because they basically timed their nap and fell asleep in the middle portion of the day when John Rahm tied it.

And then they woke up and John Rahm was like six shots back.

You're like, oh, yeah, I knew.

Perfect nap.

There was no

knew that Scotty Schoffler was going to run away with it.

There was no drama whatsoever in this for that guy.

Yeah.

It was tied.

It was, in fact, tied.

And it was like, oh, shit, is Scotty going to melt down?

Is he going to fall apart?

Had a couple bad bogeys on the front nine.

And then Rahm looked like he was being mentally strong.

Yeah.

And then everything bad possible happened to John Rahm.

And Scotty just kept being Scotty, just dialed in.

There was, we're going to get into it with Smiley in a little bit.

We would do a full recap of Smiley.

There was some controversy about Rory's driver and his driver face, but we have an update to that now, big case.

Oh, okay.

We have an update to the driver that was pulled from Rory because the face was too thin on it.

Scheffler, Scotty Scheffler, the champion, just admitted that his driver was also tested this week and did not comply, that he needed to switch drivers before the tournament.

Wow.

And he said, if we're going to do it right, we need to be more robust, even test guys every single week.

Wow.

Every driver tested every single day.

But he won.

But he won, but he talked to the media about getting the driver taken.

He did not use the bad driver in this tournament.

Huh.

Interesting.

Just an interesting point of fact.

I feel very vindicated that we rooted against Rory for the Masters after he didn't talk to the media any of the days.

That should be illegal.

You have to talk to the media.

We do your job.

Or are we going to do our job?

Yeah, listen, we are actually the reason why professional golfers exist.

Yeah.

Is us talking about the golfers that exist.

I love watching Scotty win.

He's the man.

It also just...

Like, from a personal perspective, the fact that he's intimately knowledgeable of Stu Feiner just makes it even better.

I was thinking about that.

Oh, I think about it every time he's leading in a big tournament.

I'm just like, this guy fucking watches Stu Feiner say, eat-ass, lick, clit.

Yeah.

Also, before going to church.

Massive respect to Mrs.

Scheffler because after Scotty makes the final putt on 18, the first thing she does, she's like, you take the baby.

Yeah.

Like immediately.

She's like, I've been carrying this baby around all day.

You take the baby.

He's your thing to deal with now.

And then Scotty takes him into the clubhouse and has to distract him with a hat and like another toy.

Be like, hey, just focus on this real quick.

I have to sign my scorecard for for this major championship to count.

Can you just look at this hat for a sec?

The most relatable dad moment because you do, like, I remember once I was in a car with my kids and they were screaming bloody murder, and I got one of them to stop by just handing them a bottle, and they just, like, were just playing with the actual empty bottle.

They just look at it.

That was Scotty Scheffler being like, dude, notebook hat.

Those are your toys for the next three minutes.

You got this.

Yeah.

And that will distract the kid for about three minutes, and then you got to find something else.

I've done that before, but with remotes, where I'm like, here, look at this remote.

And then they just pick it up and start hitting all the buttons for it.

Remotes are dicey, though, because then you just change everything on your TV.

Yeah, well, it wasn't my TV, so it was like free play.

Yeah, yeah.

But it was an awesome tournament.

Hank, did you have any thoughts on the tournament?

Yeah.

It was an awesome tournament for Scotty.

It wasn't an awesome tournament in terms of like drama.

No, not a lot of good drama.

I mean, Scotty going five under in his last five holes yesterday.

Like, I'm sure there's a lot of guys who were like, all right, you know, they finished their round maybe a couple, a couple of holes ahead of Scotty.

Like, all right, I got a shot at this.

And then they just see him come in five under four shot lead going into Sunday.

Like, it's over.

Yeah.

Wanted John Rom to come back.

I wanted to be closer just for just for the drama.

But I like seeing Scotty win.

Yeah.

I mean, on Sunday morning, when you can bet on it online, it was, you couldn't even really bet on Scotty.

The odds were just so crazy.

It was minus 450.

The first odd that was that was at the top of the screen was who is going to finish in second today?

Yeah.

And that became the new champion that you could bet on.

Yeah.

And it was all, I mean, we will talk about it with smiley, but I was, Scotty

was in like seventh place and he was plus 250.

And I was just like, this, it's just, it's almost like they knew.

Scotty's coming and there's nothing you can do about it.

Yeah.

And he was pumped when he won.

Let us scream.

Kind of, remember I said I got a little

hate for my take that Scotty had that moment in the Butler cabin where he was like, oh, it's on now.

Because people were like, like, no, dude, he just wanted to get out of there and didn't want to take away from Rory's moment.

I was like, this might be the fuck you tour from Scotty.

Looks like it might be on.

He looks pretty good.

Looks like it might be on.

Golden Slam.

That'd be pretty cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've watched every major championship for the last, I'm going to say, 15 years.

I had forgotten that Scotty had only won two.

Yeah.

It felt like he had won four, right?

Because he wins everything else.

I know, he wins every other thing, and he's won two masters, and he's so dominant when he wins that you're just like, this guy is clearly the best golfer in the sport.

I had completely forgotten that he had only won two.

I knew he had the two masters.

I thought maybe, I don't know, maybe he had sprinkled in a PGA or U.S.

Open at some point.

But yeah,

if there's one knock against Scotty Scheffler, how is he so good?

He's only won three.

Well, here's the thing.

The other part with Scotty is he looks like he's 40 years old.

He's 28.

Yeah.

That's what fucks everyone up.

And you're just like, you see, he has looked like he's a 40-year-old man.

And I don't say that in a disrespectful way.

He just has like a, he's kind of got like an air to him where it's like he's he's 12 years younger than us, and I would call him sir.

What really is that?

I was 20, 22, like, yeah,

right.

He's only, yeah, 20, yeah, 22 major starts.

He's won three of them.

Crazy.

So he's only, what's his age again?

He's 28.

He's going to be 29 in a month.

Okay.

And John Rahm is how old?

John Rahm is also a sneaky.

John Rahm, I think he's 30.

He's probably like 31.

John Rahm is 30.

So John Rahm is younger than Hank.

Yeah.

And Scotty is younger than Max.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, the young guns.

Scotty has looked, yeah.

He's just, he's just, he's had a man look about him.

I don't know what it is.

I think it's the beard.

It's the size.

It's the size.

John Rahm's same thing.

Yeah, but John Rahm's got one of those faces that he could pass as like 45, I think.

They just got size to him.

I got heft.

Scotty.

Density.

Scotty's also just too mature for his age.

Yeah.

That too.

Do you think we're going to get a period where Scotty just goes absolutely wild?

No.

You don't think so?

I would say no.

I think we're going to get a period where Scotty, like,

it would be like two bottles of wine.

Two bottles of wine.

I guess, listen, we like Scotty, friend of the program, current guests.

I guess you can't ever say no because if you had the same conversation about Tiger Woods in like 2006, people would be like, no way.

I don't know.

But that's the truth.

That was his shit.

That was

Marian Supermoder.

I think Scotty

is a pretty safe bet that he.

I feel like Scotty has like five best friends that he gets fucked up with, and they're they're those best friends don't even tell anyone that they're best friends with Scotty Scheffler.

Like, that's how, how good of like an inner circle he has.

Yeah, if I was a sponsor, I would be just looking at Scotty Scheffler, take all my money, but you know what I'm saying.

Like, Tiger did kind of ruin the whole everybody's good, everyone, no matter what, you're good to say that nothing will ever, you know, be bad about this.

I mean, if we had had this exact same conversation, Big Cat, a year and a week ago, and we were to say, Scotty Scheffler, lifetime odds to ever be arrested.

True.

Plus $500,000, we would say, yeah, don't take that bet.

Yeah, this was his revenge.

Yeah, it was.

Yeah, Nike put out an ad, best golfer in the world.

Question mark, guilty.

Pretty good ad.

Pretty good ad.

All right, so that was PGA.

Do you want to talk about...

This game seven just ended.

Oh, Florida, Toronto?

Florida, Toronto, yeah.

Yeah, bad game seven.

Do you want to do hockey?

Well, this game just ended.

All right, we'll do hockey.

Let's do hockey.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Hank's just betting on that volcano in Yellowstone to erupt at some point before we get to the Celtics.

Running out the clock.

Hockey.

Leafs.

Turns out it wasn't their year.

Not their year.

Panthers look great.

The first period, Leafs were okay, but

once that ref got his face caved in by a stick, everything just tilted towards the Panthers.

And the thing about the Leafs is

if you get two quick goals on them, they just crumble.

Oh, yeah.

They turn into the biggest pile of snot that you you could see.

I feel like, though, even in the first period, the Leafs were kind of holding on.

Whereas, like, you saw the shots

in the zone.

Like, the Panthers felt like it was not an if, just when.

And

the Panthers are a better team than the Leafs.

They are.

They just won a cup.

They played perfect hockey tonight.

This was about as perfect of a game seven as you can play.

Doesn't help

Leafs fans dealing with this loss, but I don't think you can.

This wasn't one of those Leafs choked, ha ha, Leafs choked seasons.

They played a better team and went to seven games and lost.

Yeah, Marshawn turns out was a great pickup by the Panthers.

Yeah.

And then we also had the Stars.

What team let him go?

The Bruins traded him.

Oh, okay.

We also had

the Stars.

Awesome.

The Stars are very good.

They finished that in six against the Jets.

Overtime winner, which

overtime winner to finish a series at home.

What a moment that has to feel.

Pretty incredible.

The barn was rocking.

Pretty tough loss to bounce back from with a handshake line.

Yeah.

But you got to do it.

Yeah.

Got to do it.

Got to always do it.

And now I'm outside of Carolina.

No offense to the Carolina Hurricanes, but after watching them play against your caps, I don't like watching them play hockey.

Yep, that's fair.

I'm very excited for Stars Oilers.

That's going to be awesome.

And I'm excited that Biz is going to get his life back.

And maybe we'll like...

Did you see?

So we're going to have Biz on Wednesday's show to talk about the conference finals.

Credit to TNT because they just let Biz do whatever he wanted.

He was before the game tonight, he had a candlelight vigil for the Maple Leafs.

And he was lighting the leafs each candle being like, got to get Marner going, light the candle.

If that was your first time tuning into hockey, you're like, this guy has lost.

his complete mind.

Yeah.

Listen.

But it was great TV.

He's like a fan, except he's only really been a fan of the team for a couple seasons.

Yeah.

But he's gotten like off the deep end for him.

I do think that the Leafs discussion is going to be interesting this offseason because they cannot come back with that same team.

It's not going to happen.

Again, the Panthers are so good.

They are, Bob.

Bob was

locked in.

Locked in.

I thought for a second Oldie might have saved the Leafs going down to Florida for game six.

That was bullshit that they kicked Oldie out.

Did they actually kick him out?

Because he shook hands with the police officer.

That's because he is the best at neutralizing any situation of anybody that I've ever met in my child.

True, like the cop went down there, he's like, Hey, yeah, we've heard some complaints that there was a guy demonstrating side pouch up against the glass.

We're gonna have to kick you out, sir.

And then by the time they got to the top of the steps, the cop was probably like, Hey, you want to come to my kid's birthday?

Yeah, you seem like a fun guy.

I think he just got moved.

I think his sections got moved.

I don't think he actually got kicked out because he is that good.

Yeah, he can neutralize anyone.

Um,

what else, Hank?

Oh, breakness.

I was gonna say incredible.

I think the uh, the Mark Schifley, Shifley story of the Jets, that was some things are bigger than sports.

Big time.

His dad unexpectedly passed away before the game.

He scored a play, scored a goal.

I know.

Handshake line after the game was Waterwork City.

That was one of the, I mean,

best, like, tears in your eyes handshake lines I've seen in a while.

Yeah, I mean, that's unreal that he was able to do that.

Yeah.

To play in that game.

It's crazy.

Bigger than sports.

A lot of things are bigger than sports.

Yeah.

Perspective.

Did you watch the preakness?

I did watch the preakness.

Journalism, maybe the coolest stretch run there ever.

He got fucking bought.

He got form tackled.

Horse form tackled.

The guy, the caddy cheetah, not the catty cheetah.

Yeah, the caddy.

Yeah, no, you got it.

The caddy.

The jockey?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Was that just haters?

No.

No, there was some bumping and grinding.

Yeah, it's how we, it's old school horse racing.

They were elbowing each other.

It's 1990s horse racing.

Yeah, but journalism, like

it was so cool to watch the last, I don't know, 100 yards where he it looked like he had nitrous in his ass.

Yes.

He was going in a different speed than every other horse on the track.

Yeah, and the jockey was saying afterwards, like, yeah, I've run this type of race with him before.

He has that ability to do it.

And it was, I'm glad that he won.

Look at me.

Yeah, that's some old school shit right there.

That's some bumping and grinding.

That's some full-contact horse racing right there going up to the 18th Fairway.

Yeah.

It was fun.

That was a fun race.

You enjoyed it?

Yeah.

Were you happy for journalism?

Yeah, I love journalism.

Journalisming.

Journalism.

Journalism.

Journalism is.

You love all of it.

Yeah.

Did you guys see that foul on Angel Reese?

Let's say that.

Let's save that.

Let's save that.

Yeah.

Why don't...

Should we talk about Friday night?

The boat.

The boat?

The dumb boat?

Yeah, that was crazy.

That was Saturday night.

The Mexican boat that ran into the Brooklyn Bridge.

I think a couple people might have died.

That was pretty sad.

But Hank brought it up, not me.

Yeah, you said it was awesome, right?

Yeah, you said it was awesome.

You said it was wild.

A couple people died.

Yeah, a couple people died.

I said it was awesome.

It's not awesome.

It was a Mexican Navy training ship.

It's an insane video.

There's a lot of stuff going on with ships running to bridges these days.

Insane video.

What do you think about that?

I know.

I know.

The first person I thought about, this is sad.

The point that Hank's broken my brain, but the first person I thought about when I saw this video was Hank and what kind of dots he's connecting to try to pull this all together.

Yeah.

So, what's your theory?

I don't know.

They're saying they lost power and just floated into the bridge.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Scary stuff.

Speaking of bridges, Mikael Bridges plays for the Knicks.

He does.

And that was Friday night.

And that's where the video is from.

That was Friday night.

Should we talk about that game?

You got to see the Joe Biden.

Let's see how many things you can get.

Yeah.

Empty the clip.

Go ahead.

Yeah, Joe Biden has cancer.

Hope he's okay.

Former president, yeah.

Yep.

Prostate, stage four.

Mm-hmm.

What else you got?

Paul Skeens struck out Bryce Harper.

Yep.

Three fast.

Yep.

Okay.

Okay.

That was crazy.

MLB debut, six innings, scoreless, nine case.

Yeah, that's cool.

Yeah, I was actually, that was going to be my debt.

That was the only way to get me going.

Yeah.

Anything else?

What else you got?

You want to do WNBA?

Yeah, I mean, that was a wild, wild opening night.

Yeah.

Like, at first, I was kind of like, why are they, you know, there should be basketball on tonight, but they delayed it for the WNBA, and it makes sense why they did.

It was action everywhere.

I think I'm addicted to WNBA discourse because

that was the first game of the season, and

I've never seen racism thrown on both sides so quickly.

First game of the season, everyone was just calling each other racists.

It was fucking awesome.

Yeah, so racism everywhere.

When it comes to Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, there's a lot of people that don't care about the WNBA who have thoughts about the WNBA.

Correct.

And there's also a lot of people that care very deeply about the WNBA that don't want all the discourse from their fan base growing to a point where it becomes, where it reaches critical mass in America, where you get assholes rooting for your sports.

But here's the dirty secret is if you want to be a successful league, you have to reach that point where the world's biggest shitheads have very strong opinions about all your athletes.

Correct.

It's like a little catch-22.

And it's fun to see a league deal with those growing pains because, obviously, people are talking more about the WNBA in the last two years than they have in a very long time.

And that's not to say that they didn't have fans.

Their fans were just, it was a smaller group.

And now it made that leap all of a sudden to becoming a national talking point on not just sports media, but just

mainstream media in general.

It's not, yeah, it's just race, racism.

And now every game is a race war.

And now think about all the shitheads out there that pay attention to any sort of like news pro like if you deal with a national news program, you're reaching millions of people, a lot of whom are very dumb.

Yeah.

And now they're going to have strong takes on your sport.

How do you deal with the idiots now becoming fans of your sport?

The foul in question was a regular foul.

I thought that was a pretty right.

It was hard.

She put some stank on it.

The only criticism of Caitlin Clark fouling there was that Angel Reese misses a lot of layups.

She just let her shoot.

She probably would have missed it.

And that's my biggest takeaway from the Angel Reese versus Caitlin Clark rivalry, if you want to call it that.

I actually feel bad for Angel Reese at this point, and it has nothing to do with like how she's handled herself or anything.

It's just simply Caitlin Clark is so much better than Angel Reese at basketball that it's not, it doesn't feel fair.

Yeah, I think Angel Reese is struggling with the fact that Caitlin Clark is

better

at her best thing than she is.

She's better at everything.

She had a triple-double.

She's tied for the third most triple doubles in WNBA history, and she's played 50 games.

Yeah.

She's just better.

And they don't like each other, which is, again, I think good for the sport.

Great for the sport that they don't like each other.

But then, how do you deal with having a bunch of weirdos out there that now care very deeply about your sport

without trying to actively push them away, which is also a mistake to push away the attention that your sport's getting?

Do you agree that, like, in a weird way, I feel bad for Andreessen, the fact that

she wants a rivalry and she has history with Caitlin Clark but it's no it's nowhere near equal footing in terms of play and it's like almost an awkward fit like Caitlin Clark needs a different rival because this one is just not fair yeah well the thing that she does have and I think this actually contributes to why she's really not having a good time with all the Caitlin Clark publicity is the fact that they did beat Caitlin Clark in the championship in college.

Correct.

So she's got that in the back of her head.

Now she's struggling to realize that, oh, shit, she's way better than me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's triple-double.

And she's not going to be able to get over that.

And racism by everyone.

Racism by everyone.

We had the LeBron is,

there was LeBron congratulating Caitlin Reese and people being like, LeBron's

Caitlin Clark, Caitlin Reese.

Thank you, Hank.

You're really sharp, too.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

LeBron congratulating Caitlin Clark and everyone's like, LeBron's a sellout.

And then our guy, White Boy Rick, saying Angel Reese can't is dribbling at her chin and then saying he's racist.

And I was like, I love all this.

Everyone's racist on both sides.

I do love Angel Reese getting all those rebounds off her own missed layups, though.

Yeah.

It's fun to watch her miss like four in a row and get four rebounds in a row.

Yeah.

That's good basketball to me.

I just, I can't remember the last story where we've had the equal claims of racism on both sides.

And it's like, guys, we're talking about basketball.

Yeah.

It's like, what are we even doing here?

But people have just gone nuclear and it's just so toxic that I'm addicted to it.

It's like Angel Reese is Caitlin Clark's Achilles heel.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was mean.

Is it not?

Yeah, no, it is.

I think it's mean.

I think it's valid.

But it was mean.

You want to talk about Paul Skeens again?

No, I mean,

a little more, you know, not as national sports podcast, but you know, local to us, Chicago.

Cubs swept the White Sox this weekend.

PCA is the man.

They're hot.

Cubs are hot.

Everyone's talking about it.

It's all the city's a buzz.

Yeah.

Cubs fever.

How's it the game on Saturday?

I love PCA.

I'd die for PCA.

Did they call it a subway series here?

No.

What do they call it?

It's just

White Sox first Cubs.

I mean, it is connected

by a subway, but it's that I feel like Subway Series in New York.

And it's the L.

They actually had a Subway Series this weekend, too.

That's right.

Yeah.

People are mad.

Oh, yeah, you got that?

People are mad at Wan Soto.

Both sides are mad at Wan Soto.

Yankees Crossstown Classic.

They tried to do a trophy.

I don't think they have it anymore.

The Crosstown Classic trophy.

It was so sad.

It's a hot dog.

When both teams were not good, and it was like, they literally had a trophy.

And it was just like, what is this?

It should be the bean.

The bean should be their trophy.

Take a picture of that.

The Crosstown Cup was so sad.

But yeah, Yankees fans are pissed at Soto because he left and they booed him.

I actually like Soto.

They might still do the response to it where he just tipped his hat to all the Booing fans in right field.

Yeah.

He was just like, yeah, bring it on, bring it on.

And then now Mets fans are mad because he didn't run out of the batters box.

Yeah.

And Yankees fans doing the, we're turning our back to him.

That was kind of weird.

He doesn't care.

Yeah.

Also, he doesn't.

He doesn't really do anything.

He doesn't really owe you anything.

No.

Like, why would, why would, why is Juan Soto the bad guy in this situation?

Yeah.

By the way, Max, he's looking out for Crosstown Cup.

The best part about the Crosstown Cup is the tiebreaker would be who won it last year.

So there was a year where there was no winner.

It was like 3-3, but it was because the team had won it last year.

They get to keep the cup.

It's fucking so stupid.

I love that.

So stupid.

All right, Hank,

you got a...

I mean, what else you got?

I think it's time.

It's time.

It's time.

It's time.

It's time.

We have a video pulled up of everything that Hank

said.

I want to know if we want to start.

I want to start with giving the Knicks their flowers.

Same.

I think we need to give the Knicks their flowers because I think that's appropriate because the Knicks are shout out Knicks fans.

They have gone through a lot of shit.

They've seen some really bad basketball for a lot of years.

I think there was a lot of weird gatekeeping going on on Friday night because Knicks fans were going crazy in the streets and like guys on billboards.

This podcast is very much in favor of enjoying the ride.

If you're a fan,

you can't be like, oh, jobs not finished.

Jobs not finished for the players.

The players should say jobs not finished.

Jalen Brunson actually said that.

They had a team meeting game five after they lost in Boston, being like, that was piss poor effort.

Job's not finished.

They didn't really celebrate.

They said, if you watch, they celebrated game four victory

a lot.

And then they on game six, they didn't really celebrate that much after on the court.

The fans should celebrate.

The fans should enjoy every moment of this and soak it in and have the best time ever, especially like basketball and hockey.

When the weather turns, there's no better celebration.

Yeah, shut down 7th Avenue, climb up the foul poles.

It rocked high five uh timothy chalames is hanging out the side of a limousine yep do all that stuff you should absolutely celebrate it you got to the eastern conference finals which is obviously difficult to do first conference finals in 25 years first yeah in 25 years and you've got a very fun team to route for a tough team a mentally physically tough team i i would say the the toughest in the fact that you had There was two moments on Friday night where I was like, this, I mean, the game was over pretty quickly, but Mitchell Robinson basically playing defense on the entire Celtics team on that one possession where he was just hustling his ass off.

And then Josh Hart having a triple-double and like diving for offensive rebounds when they're up 40.

This Knicks team has grit.

They have guts.

They have like, they've done a good job with their roster making the moves they made.

And yeah, they're, and, and Jalen Brunson.

And I'm sure Knicks fans, I would, I would love for you to chime in and tell me if I'm close or where I'm at.

What do do you got memes what are you pulling up langston gallery galloway uh alexey schved andre barnyani lou uh uh amundsen and lance thomas knicks fans have been through this this this franchise has been a joke for a long time and they and new york cares about basketball so them celebrating the way they did i'll actually say you know what My only critique of New York on Friday night, you didn't go hard enough.

You should have gone crazier.

I think that

you are well deserved to celebrate this absolute New York Knicks fan.

And the team is fun to root for.

They're so fun, in fact, that I find myself rooting for the New York Knicks, which is crazy when you think that New York fans, they're also Rangers fans, they're also Yankees and Mets fans.

It's insane, but this is a likable team.

Yeah, and New York.

And somehow New York has become the underdog.

Well, we, like, living in New York, you know that, like, the Knicks, and it happens when

there's split teams everywhere in a city, uh, like New York, where there's Mets and Yankees fans and Jets and Giants fans but New York is the one team that everyone gets behind you know what I mean like so they the the the city does feel different when the Knicks are doing well we didn't even get to see it we saw a couple like runs but

Knicks fans do not apologize for anything go as crazy as you want to go fucking talk any shit you want to talk this is the whole point of playoffs and watching sports and watching you know Langston Galloway you know six years ago seven years ago this is the whole point is that you get these moments and you should embrace it and enjoy it as much as you possibly can.

Two years ago, your main focus was Charles Oakley getting kicked out of MSG for trying to fight your owner.

Yeah.

Now you're in the Eastern Conference Finals.

And I appreciate also that New York did not give a shit when the Nets were good.

No.

They're like, we don't care.

No.

No.

But the Knicks, now that's the stuff.

No, I remember

I walked out of

the game seven, the Kevin Durant foot on the line game, Bucs Nets, and walking out of that game, there was like a crossing guard who was a Knicks fan.

He was just talking all this shit to the Nets fans.

He's like, You guys fucking suck.

And everyone's like, Dude, the Knicks suck.

He's like, I don't care.

At least we're not the Nets.

Yeah.

I have a question, though, and I'm sure memes, you could chime in, but I want to hear from Knicks fans as well.

I think Jalen Brunson is already a top-five Knick.

I think it's not, I think it's the

list now is Patrick Ewing, Willis Reed,

and

Clive Frazier.

And then it's like, yeah, Earl of Pearl, and then Mello is somewhere in there.

Obviously, Lynn Sanity has a special place in Knicks fans' hearts, but I think he's a top five Knicks.

He might be top four.

He might be.

The New York Knicks, in the last 20 years, before Brunson got there, they won eight playoff games.

In the three seasons he's been a Knicks, they've won 21 playoff games.

And he's like, he's also,

I think it's just like the undersized guard kind of thing that everyone can get behind.

Second round pick.

Second round pick.

Dallas, like being like, no, we're good, which is still crazy.

Went to a small school.

Small school, not known for basketball.

That part's wrong, but you can continue.

Yeah, no, I think he's the top five Nick of all time in the three years that he's been there.

And it's he's he's awesome, and he's the heartbeat of that team.

And yeah, they're fun to root for.

And Tibbs is like, you know,

he's Tibbs.

He had those guys in there

with 10 minutes left.

Like I said, the Knicks being scrappy underdogs, it's an interesting position for New York fans to be in.

And Big Cat, do they lose that going up against the Pacers?

Because they were going up against the defending champions.

So it was, you know, it was easy to root for the Knicks against the Boston Celtics for a lot of people out there that didn't have a dog in the fight.

Going up against the Pacers, you think they lose that?

Or do you think they just lean heavily, heavily into the past of like Reggie Miller versus the Knicks, and they just stir up those old emotions.

Well, it is on TNT.

So, Reggie Miller will be calling the game, so we'll get a lot of that.

It won't be the Stephen A.

Smith show.

So, I think

I love this.

I love the Eastern Conference trial.

There's like the this is going to be Bad Blood City because these teams have legitimate real history.

They played, I think it was like six times in eight years in the 90s.

You had the Jon Starks headbutt of Reggie Miller, which was more of a Reggie Miller flop.

You had the Reggie Miller eight points in nine seconds.

You had the Larry Johnson four-point play.

Like, you had the Reggie Miller doing the choke to spike lead.

There's history between these two teams, so I'm excited.

I think it's gonna be toxic.

I think it's gonna be good.

People don't like the Pacers.

People don't like the Knicks.

There's gonna be moments that everyone's gonna be mad at each other.

It's gonna be awesome.

I think that the Knicks are fun to root for, but then you see one or two examples of them celebrating this win that makes you think, I could see myself being motivated to hate this fan base.

I'm going to take it on a game-by-game basis.

I like rooting for the Knicks right now, but I can see a world in which I completely flip on them.

And Exhibit A might be your very own Knicks fan here.

Memes.

Memes.

Yeah.

Memes win.

And you should celebrate, memes.

You should celebrate.

Memes have.

But you went on a war page.

Memes.

Warpath.

I wrote down what you did on Friday night.

It was crazy, man.

You went.

For people who don't follow us on social, pardon my take.

First, for a little bit of back behind-the-scenes context, I texted the group text, like, congrats, memes.

And I think he just said, stay offline for the next 24 hours.

Yeah, he warned you.

And then he went to do

Hank as Bonnie Blue twice.

Bonnie Blue and Lily Phillips.

And Lily Phillips.

They were calling him Bongy Blue.

Bongy Blue.

That's great.

He did,

he hit Max with a stray.

He had the graphic ready for Kat being in the Eastern Conference for one year and already being in the Eastern Conference finals.

On his personal account, he had, I don't know if you saw this one, PFT, he had the Tropic Thunder Ben Stiller holding Hank's decapitated head.

Did you see that one?

I did.

I did.

That one was good.

But then, memes, so we alluded to this when we were having dinner tonight, and we're like, we're going to have to discuss it.

This one is crazy.

This is just gruesome.

Yeah, it's good.

That's good stuff.

It's crazy.

You just, you have some deep-seated shit against Hank.

I mean, you could tell that this was something that memes put a lot of effort into because

I don't think you did a Max Photoshop.

No, you didn't put Max's face on anybody.

That's a great point.

You weren't even

high off the prize.

Yeah, memes, if the Knicks lose in the Eastern Conference Finals, you have to do the Statue of Liberty with Max's face.

Oh.

Deal.

All right, so, and then I want to get to the video, but

I have to question one thing, memes.

Yes.

Because you were just taking shots, shots, shots.

The Banner 19 one made no sense.

What do you mean?

The Banner 19, the Celtics 4-0 in the regular season versus the Knicks.

What Celtics fan ever said, like, was like, hey, we're 4-0 against the Knicks.

Hank.

He did?

Yeah, it did.

But he raised the Banner 19?

There were

a lot of fans of the Thunder, of the Celtics bringing up regular season records for the Knicks.

And the Cavs, too.

It was like those three teams beat the shit out of the Knicks in the regular season.

So understand that.

That was the only one that I was like, wait, what?

But I guess you had context there because you take meticulous notes and you're always ready for this.

So do you want to play the clip

that you were in your bag?

You did a compilation for Hank.

Tank, did you watch this?

I think I got like 10 seconds through.

Oh, okay.

So now you're going to have to watch it like clockwork orange.

We don't have to watch the whole now.

No, we got to watch

the whole thing.

Let's watch the whole thing.

That was nice.

I was like, Max, trying to save Hank, but

today it was reported that Cat is going to

on Friday it was reported that Cat is going to be traded to the Knicks.

Hank, how do you feel about this trade?

I don't think it affects much.

I think New York's going to eat Cat alive

to be Cat's point.

Solid team.

Great.

Embiid will probably take his knees out as well.

And I'm not worried about them in the playoffs.

Let's just fast forward to the finals.

It's self-ishunt here.

That was satire.

That was PFT.

That was the PFT.

Not worried about the Knicks.

Not worried about the Knicks.

Even if we lose, I'll say it right now.

If somehow we lose game one, we could lose two games, and I wouldn't be worried.

If you go down to 0-2.

0-2, not worried.

Celtics aren't afraid of anyone.

Healthy Celtics beat anyone.

That's still crazy.

You were down three.

That could still be a good one.

I was in the national media this week, this past week, saying that the Knicks were actually going to be a good test for the Celtics.

They might be coming for the title.

They played on Sunday, and the Celtics waxed them.

What do you think about the Knicks?

They're not going to go anywhere.

It does feel like they're still away from the Celtics and the Cavs.

Bing Bong.

Right?

Far away.

Yeah.

Bing Bang.

Big Bang.

Does that do anything for you?

Yeah.

Not clutch at all.

But Hank, when you say that

you have the Knicks, do you have the Knicks or do the Knicks get you?

Because after the game, the Knicks fans, they were outside MSG, and you know what they were chanting?

What?

We want Boston.

We want Boston.

We want Boston.

Yeah, they don't have a choice.

Yeah, but sure.

So they got you.

I think we have an amazing perimeter defense.

I think we're going to lock them up and make other players beat us.

And the Knicks don't have those players.

Bing bong!

Who's got the better Jalen?

Celtics.

Bing bong, bing bong, bing bong, bing bong.

I feel good.

I'm happy I said I wouldn't be worried if they went down 0-2.

They came out.

They

showed what they needed to do.

I feel like that's going to be...

They're going to win this Series in 6.

Oh, so that's it.

That's it for the Knicks.

Yeah.

Listen, I didn't think the Knicks were going to be in the Eastern Conference final, but Hank,

you never, let's talk about this from your perspective.

You never led this series, and you also called this series over twice.

I did.

I got a little bit ahead of myself.

When I said that I wouldn't be worried if they were down on two, I didn't think there was a prayer, like a chance in hell that they would lose one game, let alone two in a row.

So that didn't look great.

And then, yeah, I mean, obviously before the injury, I felt good about our team coming back.

Yeah, they probably still would have lost game four, even if Tatum was fully healthy.

So that was wrong, too.

I give credit to the Knicks.

Jalen Brunson, that take the most incorrect take in that clip is me saying not clutch at all.

He is unbelievable.

He took over multiple games.

Fun to watch.

Also knows how to dribble with his left hand.

A little bit.

Well, he's a lefty.

Well, but still, Jalen Brunson.

A little bit of, you know, got to work on some flopping.

But that's NBA.

That's an NBA thing

across the board.

Like, players flop a little bit too much, but

he's a really good player.

Mikhail Bridges, again, give him credit.

He hit every single mid-range shot.

Like, he was everywhere, hit shots when he needed to.

And the Knicks beat us.

I think

the talking heads in the national media saying the Celtics might be better without Jason Tatum clearly got shown to be complete idiots and fools.

One and one without

one and one.

That's a good point.

One and two in the playoffs.

In this series, one and one.

But one and two in the playoffs.

What about

when we started the playoffs, you said over under two and a half losses before the finals?

You said take the under.

You ended up having

was that in one series or was that the four?

Five losses.

Five losses.

So you had.

Yeah, well, I did say multiple

times.

You went six and five.

You went six and five.

I said if the I said the Celtics are fully healthy, they're not going to lose championship.

That obviously, you know, we lost one of of the best players in the league, in the world.

So it's tough to come back from that.

We did our best.

We'll always have game five.

That was fun.

But now the offseason's here.

It's sad.

It's the end of an era.

A lot of people being really mean online.

I don't let that get to me, though.

I don't, you know, everyone has to deal with it.

But people are nasty, means especially.

Jerry O'Connell, especially.

But that's fine.

Heavy is the head that wears a crown.

Yeah.

No longer, unfortunately.

Well, no, you still still do.

Yeah.

There's not a new champion.

You have the crown.

No.

Let's talk more about the offseason.

The crown is dead.

Like, the king is.

It's the way we're in.

What's it?

Conclave or conclave?

Terrorists.

Do you think, can I ask you this question?

Yeah.

Are the Knicks a better team than the Celtics?

The Knicks were the better team than the Celtics.

They are a better team than the Celtics.

Yeah, I mean, you can't.

I can't.

I'm not going to argue that.

Because I was wrong, too.

I thought the Knicks, I did not think the Knicks would be in the Eastern Conference Rounds.

They have greatly.

I don't want to say the S-word again because it got taken as an insult.

Say it.

They're scrappy.

Yeah.

This is the happiest team to get to the Eastern Conference final.

That was so cute how you guys beat the shit out of this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And for you.

What happened Friday night?

Let's talk Friday night.

Because

somehow this series not having a single show night was crazy.

We had Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

That was unfortunate.

That was really unfortunate.

I mean, the game, they just, they came out so flat, so, so flat.

I think there was just a lot of pressure

and shots weren't going in, and then the Knicks just took, like, just dominated.

Second quarter, it was over.

Like, the way they closed the first half, they're down 27 at halftime.

It was, it was over.

It was never even like, I think the first quarter was somewhat close.

We stayed in it, but after that second quarter run, it...

It never felt like we had a chance of coming back.

I still blah, bet them like five times.

Oh, shit.

I think that this was great for the Boston-New York rivalry.

I guess, yeah, because it's a rivalry now.

Yeah.

Yeah, back.

The Knicks have

woken up.

Yeah.

What do you think about Cat?

Cat was wearing a fuck Boston shirt today.

He was, I, and that's, I respect, I respect that.

I respect that shirt.

It was a clip of Cat after, too.

Talking like he's from New York.

Well, he's from New Jersey, yeah, but yeah.

He he might have changed his

the tone of his voice changed a little.

Yeah.

No, it's good for the rivalry it's good for the rivalry you know it it it gives the guy some fire in the offseason if the Knicks you know go on to win the championship it'll give him even more fire it's good for the rivalry

and you know we got to just get better in the offseason and try and get back next year so about that because I'm kind of glad in this way that we didn't have a show on game night now you've had some time to process it and you've really thought about how bad things could look next year for you personally.

So where do you see this team going this offseason?

Max just nodded and went like this.

Good point.

I don't know.

I think the Max.

Wait, wait, wait, Hank, Hank, we'll get to you in a second.

Max, how good was that point that I just made?

Great point.

You just went like this.

You went like this.

Yeah.

Yeah, because

it needs to be talked about.

Because there's a lot.

Listen, credit to the old owners of the Celtics because they did what I think most of us would have done, which is let's just give out some fucking contracts before we sell the team.

We're not going to have to pay them.

And then somebody buys a team, and now you're talking luxury tax.

You're talking all these superstars, all these great players.

New owner is a Boston guy, so maybe he kind of just does the same thing where he's like, fuck it, let's just do whatever it takes to win.

I thankfully, unlike the Sixers organization being a dysfunctional shit show, the Celtics are a great top-down organization.

I do trust Brad Stevens.

I do feel like

they're going to go for a route where they

start stockpiling.

Like trading away.

You're in a stockpile.

Trading away players, going young.

So you're in a rebuild.

Getting picks.

I think.

I don't know.

It's crazy.

It's a process.

Are you ready to announce the rebuild?

It's crazy to see.

I'm not a math guy.

Someone needs to figure out how we can keep Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum and still have good enough players around them to compete.

I have, from what I've seen, again, not a math guy, not a luxury tax guy, not a contracts guy.

It's just not a tax guy.

It doesn't, not a tax guy at all.

It doesn't look,

I can't.

wrap my head around it yet.

If someone can explain to me how we're able to do that and like not just have all of our money with two players and then kind of get stuck with shit guys around them, I would be open to that information.

Max has a question.

I keep talking about these two players.

Are both of those players playing next year?

They're going to be on the roster.

I don't know.

That's two

different things.

It's also a bad question because they still have them on the roster for next year.

Okay, that's fair.

Yeah.

When one's not going to play because he's hurt, but he's still going to be getting paid.

Yeah.

No, but I'm saying, like,

you don't know how how to win

if the player's not playing.

What do you think about the allegations that the Sixers are in a worse spot than the Celtics are?

Are you asking me that question?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, Hank asked.

The door's open.

Hank asked it, and so I'm relaying Hank's question to you.

Hank said they're not the Sixers.

Tatum is going to be out for you.

Well, it's an Achilles injury, so we have an idea.

But they say, you know, he got the surgery really quick.

That's a good sign.

So what do you think?

I don't know.

Those two days are going to be a good thing.

It's going to be a huge difference.

Because they would make no sense to come back at the end of the season.

Correct.

I think Dr.

Bing Bong ruled him out for all next year.

He also has some thoughts on Christophs, but it's not for air.

Last sec.

Would love to be a part of one of those inside joke text messages one day.

Well, no, I just said it's not for air.

He's got swine flu.

Yeah.

Got attacked by a bear.

We'll see.

I trust Brad Stevens with my life,

but

I'm leaning towards

rebuild.

Ish.

Wow.

That's crazy.

You just hit the rebuild button.

Ish.

Probably.

Memes.

Make a graphic.

He hit the rebuild button.

Memes.

How happy are you right now?

How awesome was Friday for you?

Friday was one of the greatest sports moments I've had in a while.

Well, Mets last year and then this.

Yeah.

And you just were locked in.

I was dialed.

I said to our production group chat, I was just like,

there's a 10% chance I get fired for doing that.

Mimes, how long did it take for you?

Like, when did you start compiling the list of shit that you're going to put out the instant that the Celtics lose?

It was after the Knicks went up 3-1.

Okay.

I texted Pug and Jack.

I said, go back to October 2nd and get the cat cake

and then start compiling.

That's pretty reasonable.

And to be fair to Hank,

to take Hank's side just a little bit, when Hank said that he would not be worried if they went down 0-2, he never actually thought that they would be down 02.

Yeah.

No.

So it was really easy for him to say that in the moment.

As someone who's been on the other side of one of those memes joints, they hurt, but it's also like a hat tip.

Like, you did your job, man.

I also respect, like, as much as I want to chirp, and

I do still want to chirp, I respect the fact that, like, memes does his best work strictly fueled by hate.

Oh, yeah.

Like,

if it wasn't the Knicks, or it wasn't me,

no one's doing that much work to go back and make that.

No, no, no, no.

If If the Knicks beat the Pacers to go to the NBA Finals, it's not going to be, it's going to be like, yay.

It's going to be graphics.

It's going to be graphics.

The two Bonnie Blues was a bit much.

Yeah,

the first Bonnie Blue, I gasped a little, and then when the Bonnie Blue hit the second,

what's the other?

I saw the second Bonnie Blue hit the tower.

I was like, oh my God.

I think it makes sense.

I think we could have used all of the Bonnie Blues.

Do you have a Bonnie Blue that you kept in the chamber?

No, it was just the two Bonnie Blues.

Is there any that you kept in the chamber that you would like to release right now?

Because then people can see it and then hear this point in the podcast.

No, no, the two Bonnie Blues, I felt was the line.

Yeah, but you don't have anything saved?

No.

Anything that you were thinking about?

Because you didn't even put this one on the main.

The Ben Stiller, Hank decapitated him.

Yeah, I felt that was too graphic for the main

blues.

Hank, you look hot as Bonnie Blues.

I think it looks hotter as Lily Phillips.

Hank, all right, spin zone time.

Summer's kind of opened up.

Doesn't matter.

But summer's kind of opened up.

You don't have to.

Game for at night.

You don't have to do the duck boats.

Don't have to make any trips to the wood.

Keep your hair.

Extra golf.

No, I was looking forward to the skullet.

I've been planning out the skullet with

I might because that's maybe a little bit too cocky.

But we've been, you know, for the last three months, I'm like, let's keep the back long.

I got to get a skullet.

Give it to us.

Doesn't matter.

A little bit of, you know, you got less travel, more golf.

Did you play a sad round of golf on Saturday?

I played, no, no, I did not.

Not really affected.

What did you do Saturday?

I just went out.

My cousin was in town.

Nice.

Hit the bars.

What did you do on Friday?

Friday, I golfed.

But Friday night?

Friday night, I just sat on my couch sad.

I've stared at

all of the losses.

I've just been on that couch.

It's been a sad, sad couple couple weeks for my couch yeah do you regret not going to the new york office and streaming there no i would have if if that's what i was asked to do but you know i knew clemer had that tim was on the wood so yeah

also memes clemmer memes maybe maybe the biggest piece of shit move memes did was uh

dave like i said dave threw me under the bus saying that to chal me being like this guy called you performative and i said in real time i'm like i don't think i said that i don't remember saying that then i texted the group talk so i was like memes i say this and he just responded yes so i said that i was like yeah my bad I did say that.

I don't remember it.

I said it on the show.

I don't remember saying that.

And then after, I was like, can I see that clip by the way?

Because I really don't remember.

And he's like, oh, no, you didn't say it.

That was fucked up.

So, Chalamet, the Chalamay rivalry, he just dominated you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So guys got it all.

He's got it all.

I'll give it a hand up.

Chalamay, you got me this time.

I bet you he doesn't have a sad couch.

No, no.

He's probably got it all.

Yeah, his couch is probably fucking awesome.

So at least you got that over.

Yeah, no.

It went from, you know

me and Dave to bad bunny and like the best night ever in New York.

Like the clip of him in the limo is awesome.

Yeah, he's the man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that he actually cares about his teams.

Like you can tell that he really does.

Brought up Chris Duon.

That's what I knew.

He's the man.

Yeah.

There's the old picture of him rushing to Grand Central to get free pictures or free tickets from

who is that?

Maurice Doddemeyer.

No, it's like

Landry Fields.

Yeah.

it's great.

So,

alright, reset button, rebuild button.

That's it?

Yeah, just hopefully our new owner is like Daddy Warbucks, like part two.

Is it Billy Strings?

Do you regret calling this series over twice that you were never leading?

Yeah.

Yeah, I do.

The 2-1 was probably, I got a little ahead of myself.

Yeah.

And then I was, I will say, like, I was fully, you know, I was in full denial and just really just trying to procrastinate things after the wood game, game five.

That was, I was probably over, overextending myself.

You didn't want game six to happen.

You didn't want to get to game six.

I was, yeah, I was just so happy with how things went in game five, and I want to just bottle up that feeling forever.

Yeah.

What would you do this offseason, Hank?

If you owned the team, golf.

If I own the team,

would just

spend a lot of money, yeah.

Yeah, yeah,

I'll blow it all.

A lot of golf.

A lot of golf.

That's the thing.

Celtics are no self-disc.

I'm playing a lot of golf.

Yeah, no, I know, but

it's not like, oh, the Celtic season's over.

Now I can play more golf.

I'm going to play the same amount of golf.

Maybe just not go to the games.

Right.

You were going to have to go sit courtside at an NBA playoff game, which would have been brutal.

You were going to have to go on the duck boat and get drunk with Joe Missoula.

You were were going to have to do a lot of stuff.

Now you don't have to do it.

Have you looked up golf courses in Indiana?

Because you're like, we might be playing the Pacers.

Let's see if there's something close by.

No, no, I did not do that.

You could have gone to games there.

Yeah.

That would have been cool.

Oh, man.

It would have been cool.

I'm excited for Pacers, Knicks.

I'm excited for how much golf Hank's going to get to play.

Yeah.

Max, how are you?

Max is mad.

Max was mad that it was a Friday night game.

Yeah, no, it's bullshit.

This isn't the same reaction that we would have gotten on Friday night.

No, Friday night.

No shit, dude.

We would have got tears.

It would have been so embarrassing.

You would have been so upset.

It's bullshit.

You had two days to, like, not even think about it.

That sucks.

But I am happy that you're fucked and the Celtics are fucked going forward.

But that's the thing.

We're going to be back sooner than the Sixers.

Oh.

Let's start another clip.

Start the clip.

Start a new clip.

Start a new clip.

Because everything that you say is wrong going forward.

The booth has.

The booth.

They have your number right now.

This is the booth's revenge.

Like, you keep calling me a loser.

I literally just won a Super Bowl.

He's got you there.

Dude, it's been a while since Hank's been right about anything.

Oh, man.

This is brutal.

Hank has never been in this position where the booth has owned his ass.

No, yeah, it sucks.

It fucking sucks.

They're laughing.

They're having the time of their life.

This is why you lift all those weights, boys.

This is why you stay up until 4 or 5 in the morning editing the podcast for this moment.

This was was probably the last time Boston was good.

Actually, that's not true.

It's also just one.

We'll back that one.

Max went too long.

I have one last question.

Just a thought starter question.

Then we'll do who's back in the week.

We'll get to our interviews.

So the Knicks fans going crazy was awesome on Friday night.

I think the Knicks might be the number one city to proverbially burn down in a championship.

And I was thinking about this.

So

obviously you could throw in the Browns or the Lions or the Bills, Bills, but those teams play winter sports.

It's definitely different if you win a Super Bowl, like it just is, versus winning an NBA or a Stanley Cup and it's nice out and everyone just takes to the streets.

The only other one I can think of is the Toronto Maple.

That was going to be my.

Yeah.

Maybe.

I would definitely put the Browns on there, even though it's the wintertime.

Their river catches on fire.

Yeah, that's very flammable.

I would also say Montreal.

Montreal.

Because Montreal has a a culture where it's like you riot after good things happen to you.

Yeah.

Like in Europe.

But the Knicks might be number one right now of city to burn, to proverbably, but not actually burn down, but like just the most chaotic scenes possible after a champion.

What would be great about New York is that you get snippets from like seven different neighborhoods all celebrating in their own crazy ways.

Yeah.

I will say that I have given some thought about the rest of the playoffs.

Yes.

Oh, this is good.

This is a big announcement.

Wait, you said that you weren't going to watch the rest of the playoffs.

I will.

No, I will.

Even I'll say, I will say after.

I'd hope so.

We have a sports podcast.

Yeah, no, I know.

And after Tatum's injury, like watching the games, I was just kind of like, damn, I am just watching this as a neutral fan.

I don't think we're going to play the Thunder or the Nuggets or the Timberwolves.

I will be rooting for the Knicks to win the Eastern Conference.

That's huge.

And I will be rooting for the Thunder, Alex Caruso.

Really, the only connection

within the world is the Thunder.

He's super fun to watch play.

Great recurring guest, friend of of the program,

loves golf.

I'm pulling for him.

I literally texted Caruso after game seven.

I was like, dude, you're my playoff team.

Yeah.

You personally are my playoff team.

Yeah, as I was watching it, I was like, yeah, fuck yeah, Caruso.

Like, guys, man, I hope he wins.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's Thunder over Knicks.

Yeah.

Because I want

the Knicks to get their heart broke.

Oh, that's very mean.

I think the Knicks.

I now...

I'm not betting.

I'll be betting on the Knicks.

Definitely game one.

I think I'll go game by game after that.

But it would be crazy.

Like, you can't.

How would you bet against this team?

I'm now in the

mindset of any of these four teams.

I really do.

I could see any of these four teams.

I think the Thunder are probably the best team still standing.

But if you flash forward and you tell me the Pacers, the Knicks, the Wolves, the Thunder all win the championship, I'm like, yeah, they're really fucking good.

I think it's a good place to be.

It's a fun Final Four that it really feels...

chaotic and awesome.

And someone's going to have a championship for either the first time ever or the Knicks first first time in 52 years.

Yeah.

Knicks could absolutely win the title now.

Yeah.

It's crazy, though.

The Cavs and the Celtics.

You should have put that in the injuries, man.

PFT laid the death knell when he was like, Can we just fast-forward the Eastern Conference to the Cavs and the Celtics?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I said, all these other teams, get the fuck out of here.

It was the Celtics.

I was also egging Hank on a little bit with that.

But the ESPN analysts, this is now the 3-0 for him.

So they all picked against the Timberwolves against the Lakers.

They all picked against the Pacers against the Cavs.

And they all picked against the Knicks against the Celtics.

So if you get that graphic going,

you know they're about to be wrong.

Yeah.

Memes and I both said Knicks and Six before the series started.

There you go.

Only two media members.

That counts.

The booth is up.

The booth is up huge.

All right, let's see who's back.

Then we'll get to our interviews.

We've got two great interviews.

Smiley Kaufman talking more golf.

And then an awesome interview with Kyle Stowers and Tyler Phillips in the Miami Marlins in studio.

So it was great hanging with those guys.

The big thing for us here.

Let's get it done.

On paper, it's easy.

Win and advance with the truth.

It's harder than the road they drive on.

12 drivers remain, hoping to match dreams

with destiny and claim a cup filled with history.

The NASCAR Cup Series playoffs brought to you by Xfinity at the Charlotte Roval Sunday at 3 p.m.

Eastern on USA.

Okay, Hank, who's back to the week?

My who's back?

I got, I emptied the clip.

Yeah, trying to filibuster.

I'll go because I'm looking at it on the screen right now.

The librarians, the next chapter, they're showing these commercials in all these games.

I can't believe it's a real show that is being made.

It looks like

this dumbest fucking show of all time.

Is this one where Nicole Kidman's like a shooter?

No, no, no.

This is a movie.

This is, no, have you seen the commercials, though?

It's like, looks like, I don't think it is Lynn Manuel Miranda, but it looks like him.

Yeah.

And it's like a bunch of action hero, superhero librarians.

A guy that looks like Lynn Manuel Miranda.

Look it up.

Look it up.

I can't tell if it's him.

I literally think, I'm guessing that he wrote the show or something.

It was like, let's get an action double of myself.

But the commercials, every time I see him, I think it's like a spoof commercial for like a different product.

And then at the end, it's like librarians.

Wait, hold on a second.

Rebecca Romaine is in it?

Yeah, she's a star.

She's a star.

No, she's not.

Damn, hey, she's first listening.

Sam, man.

She's not.

How could you?

No, no, she's not.

Wait, this is the Librarian's 2014 TV series.

Oh, yeah, all right, all right, all right.

That would have been crazy.

That was season one.

That would have been crazy.

Wait, but is she in season two?

I don't know.

I hope not.

Oh, my God.

The next chapter.

Season.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

So there's four seasons.

I think she's in them.

Is she in the new one?

I've got to pull it up right now.

Let's see.

Starring.

I don't see her name in this.

Okay.

I also don't see Lynn Manuel Miranda's name.

I think Hank just.

Look at the guy.

Okay.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I see Lynn Manuel.

No, no, he is.

That is him.

Is that him?

No, no, no.

I don't think it is.

Look at him, though, because he's Callum McGowan.

That does look like him.

I'm looking at it.

Yeah.

Like, he had to have written this show.

Why?

Because the guy.

Is that also...

Is that Olivia Munn?

Yep.

No.

It's fake Olivia Munn.

Olivia Morris, isn't it?

So it's a fake Olivia Munn and a fake Lynn Manuel Miranda?

Well, Olivia isn't the one that looks like Olivia.

Jessica Green looks like Olivia.

Got it.

Yeah, I guess he's not.

I don't see him on the executive producers or anything.

I just, when I see the commercial, I'm like, is that Lynn Manuel Miranda?

I'm like, no.

And I'm like, he must have been like, let me see.

All right, good who's back.

An action version of myself.

But yeah, I'm going to have to watch this at least an episode because, again, I just can't believe it's a real show.

Is the Rebecca Romain?

Is that the same as this show?

I think

that was the previous chapter.

Because

this is the next chapter.

Yeah.

Got it.

It's about crime-fighting librarians.

Great who's back, Back, Hank?

Thanks.

It's on the TV right now.

You're just looking around the room.

Okay.

Well, I did give like eight before.

Yeah, I mean, to be fair, Hank did take like everything

before Who's Back came up.

So my Who's Back of the Week is Vanny Woodhead.

Oh.

How's Vanny Woodhead looking?

Oh, good.

Vanny Woodhead's good.

I just, we sent an invoice for some parts.

It's getting fixed up.

Okay.

Because when was the due date on Vanny Woodhead again?

It was

spring summer-ish.

So it would be right now.

I just hadn't heard anything about him, so I figured we might check in, see how he's doing.

We're about to hit summer.

Memorial Day is the start of summer.

So

we're like seven days away.

Are we on track?

No.

Oh, okay.

Because that was your thing.

I'm working on it.

I'm still working on it.

It could happen still, but I don't want to.

You know, there's been some delays and possibly me just forgetting to send an invoice.

Well, the Celtics.

Because if we went through the list, like memes, your thing is to meme Hank to death.

Check.

Max, your thing.

Baseball team.

It's against the baseball team.

Max, your thing is to freak out and make good content about getting tricked and

bastard party, check.

Hank, Vanny Woodhead.

On it.

How far would you say we're behind?

I don't know.

My hands aren't dirty.

Wait, what does that mean, though?

Like, I don't know exactly

what needs to get fixed and how long it's going to take.

If, you know, if you were on a flight, it would be a delay where you're not upset about it.

You're not going to change any plans.

You're just like, all right, minor delay.

Why not?

Like someone, they're just fixing a light in the bathroom.

So we shouldn't be looking for alternative routes?

No.

So it's no longer spring-ish summer.

It's still

solidly summer?

Never say never.

Because summer doesn't start till like July, right?

June 21st.

Yeah, so never say never.

June 21st, are you taking the over or the under?

Over.

Okay.

Yeah.

But, you know,

you would have taken the Celtics going into the series.

Like, anything can happen in this game.

Yeah.

I would have taken it.

So you're saying we get an upset and downloaded?

Yeah, you wouldn't.

We'd probably get some good value on

the under.

Okay.

All right.

I have two who's back.

The first is Giannis because he did a QA while everyone's wondering where he's going.

And it was very funny because he was answering.

I think Giannis, like...

People were asking him very loaded questions.

He was answering them honestly.

Like, someone asked,

out of all the cities you've ever been to, which city made you the

happiest to be there, not counting your hometown?

He said, Florida Cities.

He said, what's your favorite city to play in on the road?

He said, New York.

He said, there was something else about, I think there was something with Texas or something, but he's basically just throwing red meat at the internet, being like, here you go.

And I think he's actually being genuine.

Like, I don't know if he's doing this on purpose.

Florida Cities.

Yeah, Florida Cities.

All Florida Cities.

All Florida cities.

Florida, Orlando.

Orlando would be a a good fit.

Apollo.

It would be great.

My other who's back is PEDs.

Because did you guys see Brittany Mahomes?

No.

I did not.

I did.

Yeah.

There's been some upgrades.

Let me look at this.

Respectfully.

All due respect.

Developing.

Developing.

Respect.

All due respect.

I think she's always been a lovely person.

She's always been a lovely person.

I'm just saying there has been some alterations.

Good for her.

Yeah.

All due respect.

Cannons.

Mahomes' always been a big TD guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The overused joke of the weekend online was,

look at the weapons Mahomes got to play with this year.

Oh, I like that.

That's good.

It's a pretty good one.

Very nice lady.

Yeah.

Looks great.

Respect.

Looks great.

Always has.

Also, the real PEDs is Jose Alvarado.

Philly's closer.

Got busted for PEDs.

No.

Big-time bust.

80 games.

80 games.

Ineligible for the postseason.

Not good.

Not good.

That sucks.

Max?

Not great.

Not great, especially because the bullpen's already very bad.

But we also just brought up a prospect.

He threw six scoreless, nine Ks today.

We have like eight starters and like two relievers.

Okay, so what happened with Jose Alvarado?

You know, he was a little bit overweight, and I think he.

He's he's a fat boy.

It was it was it was a fat, it was a fat loss drug.

Okay,

that shouldn't be a problem.

You can't get fat loss with a fat pill.

You can know it probably has like meth in it.

Yeah,

you can take fat pills.

But it was

listen,

sometimes you feel like a fat boy and you want to be less of a fat boy.

And he has a clip about calling himself a fat boy.

It's very funny.

Yeah, play it.

And this is what did him in.

Is that the key for any pitcher, though, though, Jose, is make make sure your legs are strong?

You know, I am the grizzly bear.

Yeah, you are.

I am the grizzly bear.

I got

sometimes I call

to my people in the glue house.

Bro, I feel like a fat boy.

Yeah, they shouldn't have busted this guy.

Yeah, no, we laughed over it, but he's like, yeah, fat boy.

I'm fucking fat.

I'm looking up what he got busted for.

It looks like he got busted for

taking supplemental testosterone.

So I don't know if that's necessarily a fat boy move.

I don't think the way you made it seem was.

No, there was rumors that

it was a fat loss drug that had testosterone in it.

Ah.

Okay.

Got it.

But I actually believe him that he was not trying to do it in a steroids way.

He was just trying to get lose weight.

Well, so it was exogenous testosterone, which is not one of the fat boy drugs.

This is what, I don't know, this guy, he's got, you know, 15,000 followers.

Okay.

Jose Alvarado

accepted the suspension.

Dave Dombrowski said it was a weight loss drug that caused him to fail.

Phillies will treat it like losing to someone to injury.

I think that's why the MLB came out and said what it actually was.

Yeah.

Just because they said.

That's bad, Max.

That's bad.

Yeah, I mean,

deadline, pick up guys.

We got eight starters and two relievers.

You're buyers.

Okay.

Man, I'll tell you what.

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That's where Snickers comes in, man.

That thing is packed.

Roasted peanuts, nugget, caramel, milk chocolate.

It's like the MVP of candy bars.

And when you bite into it, boom, it sorts you out, gets your head back in the game of life, satisfying your hunger.

Remember this: Snickers handles your hunger so you can handle everything else.

Snickers satisfies, man.

That's a winning play.

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Okay, here he is.

Smiley Kaufman.

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

It is Smiley Kaufman.

You can see him on NBC Sports.

You can see him coming up with the U.S.

Open and the Open Championship.

You can also can listen to him, the Smiley show.

He just did a live stream after the PGA Championship.

And he was there in Charlotte all week.

Smiley.

I don't really know where to start other than Scotty Scheffler is just the best golfer in the world.

And it feels like, maybe you can explain it to me.

It feels like the gap is larger than we let on because obviously Rory and Xander won two last year.

But it does feel like when Scotty plays his best, there is no one close to him.

Is that a fair assessment?

I think we're back to regular scheduled programming and great to be back on with you boys and always enjoy coming on.

Yeah, I mean, guys, Scotty Scheffler,

it's absurd what he can do with the golf ball.

And I think maybe most of us and maybe members of the media were blinded a little bit by the grand slam with Rory McRoyd at the Masters and Augusta National and just how important that was, not only for Rory's legacy for the game of golf, but even after that, I'm thinking, oh, gosh, Rory could potentially win the next six majors in my head.

And I'm just somehow forgetting about how good Scotty Scheffer was over the past couple years.

And then

Scotty Scheffer goes to the Byron Nelson, wins by, what was it, eight shots at the Byron Nelson, then shows up this week and gets the job done.

It didn't ever feel like it was going to be a five-shot win in the end, but there was a lot of drama that happened over the last couple of hours that made it kind of a boring ending, but a very exciting hour or two in there, just not knowing what exactly was going to happen.

Yeah.

Did we see a little bit of that emotion from Scotty as he won?

Like, you guys forgot about me?

Is this bad boy Scotty that we got to see drop the gloves?

Because, I mean, he made that putt on 18.

Spikes the hat.

That's an outburst the likes of which we've never even imagined from Scotty to throw his hat on the ground.

And everybody was like, oh my god, I can't believe this guy showed emotion.

How rude was that, right?

I mean, we're trying to play golf out here.

It's a gentleman's game, and he's out here throwing his hat around in celebration.

But to me, dude, PFT, this guy's a competitive psycho.

It's unbelievable how this guy is wired, but he's got this soft side of him too, this like emotional dad side that any

dad can relate to.

Just at any moment, he could cry and you just don't know when it's going to happen.

But then when he's, you know, when he's playing, and before he gets that moment where he gets emotional, he is legitimately just a competitive freak.

He never gets out of the zone.

Oftentimes, when I'm out watching him out on the golf course and walking the grounds with him, I know when to stay away and when he's not going to talk or when he's not going to joke around.

And

he was in the zone today and it was fighting it on that front nine, guys.

He would have all these left misses going.

And you're thinking to yourself, is Scotty going to blow this today?

Yeah.

Yeah.

There was that moment where John Rahm tied him, and it was like, oh, man, is this really going to happen?

And then John Rahm completely melted down and Scotty just kind of stayed steady throughout it.

I want to go back, though, the start of the tournament.

And obviously, you know, the odds don't tell everything, but I thought it was crazy because on Friday, I believe it was, I was looking at the odds.

Scotty's in like fifth or sixth, and he's probably four strokes back.

And he's by far the favorite to win the tournament.

If you're one of, and the, in the argument in the beginning of the, the tournament was like, look at these guys.

They're not like the known, they're not the known guys at the top of the leaderboard.

If you're one of those guys who came out and shot a 64 or 65 on Thursday, and you're in the lead, are you the whole time thinking like, well, Scotty is four strokes behind, and I'm fucked?

Hopefully those guys aren't going to look at the odds boards after they're 65 on a Thursday.

But, dude, I mean, Scotty was plus 450, I think, coming into the week.

I believe he still had the the shortest odds and then after his two under round on thursday he moved up uh and like you said he was still four strokes back of the lead uh actually no five strokes back of the lead because because because vegas shot seven under and he moved uh up to plus 350.

yeah and that's and that's crazy and that's when you're thinking to yourself okay the so the lead is actually 200 it's not seven under uh the scoreboard is wrong everything that you're seeing it it says what the lead is oh no it's actually scotty down here uh five strokes behind.

And, you know, what's even crazier, guys, is that I just looked at what the odds are next week at the colonial.

Scotty Shaff was playing next week.

He's plus 250 to win next week at the Colonial, which is the most absurd number.

Like, that's Tiger-like.

I think

Tiger got like maybe into

like, he never got to where he was like minus on a week to where that you were weighing money down on a loss.

But I, it's, we're entering a territory that's crazy.

And Jordan Speeth, I think he's the next best odds next week at the colonial at, I think, 22 to 1.

So we're talking just the biggest gap.

That's crazy.

It is nuts, and it is Tiger-like because Tiger, I remember, like, there was a year where Tiger, like, to win the Masters, was like plus 150 or something.

It's like, this is ridiculous.

So, I know this is a lame thing to do, but I do love to talk about it.

Is Scotty officially on Tiger Watch?

I know he's got a lot of things to do, but I saw a stat, 22 major starts.

I think Tiger had three wins in his first 22.

Scotty, or sorry, Tiger had five in his first 22.

Scotty has three.

Scotty had more top 25s, more top 10s, and the same amount of top fives.

Like, I know I never thought when Tiger happened, you're like, it's never going to happen again.

But it does feel like Scotty is, and maybe the competition is just harder because you see the guys that week in and week out are so good.

But

if you had to put a number on Scotty, if everything stays like, you know, if he stays healthy and plays for 15 more years, like it does feel like he will be in that double-digit major territory.

You're right.

And health is going to be, you know, a big key to that if he's, if he remains healthy and continues the form that he's on.

The strokes gained, that's something that we can kind of compare generations a bit.

When we can go back and look at how well did Tiger Woods strike the golf ball and then compare it to how well Scotty Scheffler has done it.

And it's comparable data.

So when you look at that, you say, okay, he's as good as controlling his golf ball as Tiger Woods.

And then you look at, all right, how has he done since 2021?

You look at all the top events that he's played in.

And he constantly puts himself in contention week in and week out, especially for the majors.

So when you look at that and you think about just what he's accomplished to this point and how crucial it was for him to win this week.

Because if he would not have gotten the job done this week, all of a sudden you're thinking to yourself, okay, he's only got two majors.

He's only won the Masters.

And we think about what he's going to be measured against over the course of his career as far as how many majors can he win and can he pass Tiger, can he catch

Jack Nicholas?

Well, he definitely needed to get it done today and he did.

And all of a sudden you start to think, okay, is he going to be the next player to complete the grand slam?

And actually, somebody tweeted this out.

I can't remember who it was, but they actually said it would be considered the golden slam because he's won a gold medal.

Now,

if he's able to win the U.S.

Open and the Open Championship, he would be the first to complete the Golden Slam.

I wish I could give credit to whoever came up with that, but that was.

As first reported by Smiley Coffin.

Yeah, like

the Golden Slam.

Pardon my take, Mark.

Yes.

So I was looking at a bunch of the stats that you were kind of alluding to, and he's on all these lists with Tiger and Jack Nick Laus, as you mentioned.

The only golfers to win two masters and a PGA before their 30th birthday.

Like, you can look at the stats, and I'm a little bit upset at Scotty because it was going to be fun to say that he's just a masters merchant, that he's like raffin the doll, and he can only

win at Augusta, and nobody, he doesn't even bother like competing in the other majors.

So we can't talk about that anymore.

But when we're talking about strokes gained and all this data that you brought up,

where can you see that?

Where can an average casual golf fan watch him play?

Like, was it Saturday this year, where it's like he's dealing with the same conditions as everybody else, but he's just hitting the ball that much better?

Oh, gosh, man.

He, uh, I think he gained like eight strokes down the stretch over the last five holes in the round yesterday.

And this is, it's, it's not an anomaly.

This is what he does.

He finds a way in the most challenging conditions when we talk about the firm greens, we talk about holding 15-mile-an-hour crosswinds and shots that extend past wedges.

We're talking like seven, six irons, where really proximity gets shrunk to an an average shot would be, you know, 30 or so feet.

And he finds a way to break the mold down the stretch and hit shots inside of 15 feet, having the best shots of the day and later in the day, where typically it's firmer, faster, and it's more challenging.

He put the tournament to rest, we thought last night until all of a sudden he's tied with John Rahm, with Rahm with seven to play and with him with nine holes to play.

But yeah,

I was very excited to see Scotty get the job done because you want to see you know a player of his caliber uh be able to to reach the heights that we think he can in the game so for him to get the this win uh what a what a start to the major season rory macro win the grand slam and now scotty uh win the pga it just gets you excited about uh the next one where it you know the last six majors have gone to to to scotty shuffler twice sander shoffley twice Bryson DeShambeau, and then Rory McCroy.

And I don't know who's going to win a major outside of a group of of about eight guys.

These guys are that good right now.

Yeah, it is pretty crazy.

So, Bryson, you mentioned, I wanted to ask a question about that.

Bryson, like, he just, he gained so much from his drives, and he's bombing it so much farther than everyone else.

But then it feels like his iron play was just all over the place and his putting wasn't there.

Is there a fix for him?

Or is it like, no, dude, he's like in the last six majors, he's been in the contention in pretty much all of them.

It will happen again for him.

I think I I talked to you guys after the U.S.

Open last year when he changed to the bulge-faced irons, which is just, it's, it's so awkward to say as a technology in the game of golf, but there's so many weird sayings in the game of golf that bulge-face technology just kind of fits right in.

And with Bryson, apparently, he was talking about this after the round that it's adding extra curvature to shots for him.

And he really only plays a draw and he hits it so high up in the air.

Where the difference between, I think, him and Scotty Scheffer when it comes to Iron Game is that Scotty Scheffler has the ability to always make his golf ball fly straight, and they both hit it just as high.

They hit it, you know, if you're looking at them both hit an eight-iron, they're both of the same apex.

But Scotty Scheffler with crosswinds can hold a right-to-left win to make the golf ball fly straight, where Bryson DeChambo, for the most part, just plays a little push-draw shot.

So, right-to-left shots are going to get overemphasized to where they go too much to the left, where Scotty's ball is always landing softer on the greens because when you're fighting up against a breeze, it's adding spin to the golf ball.

It's going to make the ball land softer, where Bryson doesn't hit many shots where he controls the trajectory and brings it down.

So it's something that he 1,000% needs to improve on, but he hits it so good off the tee.

And his short game around the greens is putting, his chipping, his bunkering, is all at such an elite level that in major championships, he's always going to be in contention.

Right.

Yeah.

I saw this was from John Sherman.

He was watching the round today and he said that Scotty came out with his club face too closed.

But as the round went on, he found a way to manage it and that he'll go down as an all-time great because of his face control.

So I think a lot of he has terrible face control.

Bad face control.

The worst face control.

Resting bitch face is what he's got.

So Scotty had resting bitch face today, but he learned how to smile through it somehow.

Is that something that you can see on a broadcast?

Like, can you tell like he's figuring this out as the round goes on?

Or is this like something that you say when you're watching it to try to sound smart?

Yeah, I think Randy Smith, Scotty Scheffler's coach after Friday, went on the range with him.

And they were like,

Randy was basically holding his hips and working on getting his hips to turn correctly.

Yeah, so part of that helps with sequence and just knowing how to clear out at the right time.

And I would say earlier this year, Scotty's biggest issue was a left miss, and it came out

a lot of times in pressure moments.

What you've been dealing with will come out.

And that's kind of what Scotty dealt with on the front nine.

And you're right, PFT, his face control is absurd.

And maybe we can ask Scotty to ask Big Cat how to exactly set up to the golf ball because Big Cat, of course, maybe has one of the best setups in the game of golf.

That's facts.

And you, I would say, probably struggle to clear your hips through the golf shots as well.

And I would say that maybe Scotty had maybe watched you play too much golf recently heading into Sunday because the knees were locked, the hips weren't clearing at the right time, and maybe just watching too much golf podcast or YouTube content.

Yeah,

I never clear my hips.

No, and Hank does have an issue with not being able to close his face.

Yeah, the big time.

All right, so

I want to talk about the course real quick.

Well, actually, no,

what's up?

Explain to me the driver saga that happened this weekend.

They test 50 people randomly their driver and apparently scotty uses backup driver still dominated rory uses backup driver was a baby and didn't talk to media

The only reason it's a story is that Rory didn't talk to the media the entire week.

So I think people were upset that Rory wasn't just making himself available, especially coming off of a grand slam.

And typically is one who always is one to talk to the media.

The only time really that it comes to mind was, of course, after the U.S.

Open last year, where uh you can't blame the guy for not wanting to talk to the media oh we could we did we did oh you did okay yeah i mean he he like pulled he peeled out it was he almost ran over like six kids in the parking lot yeah yeah i just feel vindicated that he didn't talk to the media because we rooted against him at the masters i feel a little vindicated but what's what's up with the the testing of the drivers so it's it's kind of interesting because there isn't uh exactly a protocol that that tests the entire field, which you would think if you're just like a casual fan, you would think that they would test every single player's equipment.

So that it's not just random.

You just want everybody to be playing under the same conditions.

And so that was the conversation where was people asking the question as, well, was Rory's driver, was it conforming to the week of the masters?

And so I think that's why

the narrative of Rory not doing media kind of got overblown because his driver wasn't conforming for the week.

To me, it was was a big nothing burger, but I think people just wanted just to hear Rory's thoughts on it because typically he gives so many thoughts on a lot of things in the game of golf.

So what does that mean, though?

What is conforming?

My understanding was that the drivers, as you use them more, as you hit more shots with them, the face gets thinner.

And so then as like through natural wear and tear, as the face gets thinner, it becomes almost a springboard.

Yeah.

Because the face has a little bit of give to it.

So it could be something where it's not like it's a driver that he got from a store.

Like he didn't see an infomercial for like get 20 extra yards as you drive.

I did that.

Yeah, with this, with this fake driver.

But it was like just through overuse.

And the same thing happened to, was it Shoffley a couple years ago at the open?

Yeah, no, it happens all the time.

And you explained it perfectly.

You know, when guys' face gets thinner, typically that's when you start to hit it the furthest.

And you'll start to notice maybe a little bit of difference in a ball flight at times.

And all of a sudden you'll look down at your face and then it's cracked.

So that's a lot of times what players are looking for is if their driver face cracks, especially if they start hitting shots offline.

But the protocol,

there's a certain way they measure it, and apparently it doesn't take very long for the fact that they could measure the entire fields, clubs, week in and week out, but for whatever reason, it's randomized.

It just seems like a situation, just hire more people just so where you just know everybody's playing under the same conditions.

Yeah, that should test every driver.

Should that be on the players?

Like, do the players monitor how their driver looks at all?

Because I wouldn't think, like, unless there's a crack on your driver and there's something screwed up about the ball flight, I wouldn't think that most players are like self-reporting.

Hey, you checked us.

I think it might be thin.

You know, when I was playing on tour from this was probably 15 to 2019, I can think of maybe one time that I remember my clubs got checked.

Maybe my caddy was asked to get them checked and took them over.

But me personally, I don't remember it happening.

But when I was talking to some journalists in the media center this week, they said that from 2019 up until now, that they've kind of activated a little bit more to where it's being tested more frequently.

And even that number being...

you know, a third of the field being tested, that number seemed high to me.

I always thought it was closer to like 10 to 12 guys being tested week in and week out, which really didn't ever really make a whole lot of sense to me anyways.

So what I'm taking away from this is Rory had an illegal driver.

He was a baby about it.

Didn't talk to the media.

Had to use his backup driver.

That's why he sucked.

But that also means that he had an illegal driver at the Masters asterisks.

He needs to still win the Masters to complete the Grand Sled.

So you're going to run it back.

That's what you're saying.

That's all I got out of it.

I think the driver was at its best in the playoff.

Yeah.

Right?

Correct.

Okay, so here's the spin zone I'm going to throw at you guys: is that I watched him play at the Philly Cricket Club last week, and he hit that driver.

That same driver that was non-conforming, that he had to take out of the bag.

He hit it pretty bad.

Like, he was not hitting fairways with that.

Well, yeah, it probably cracked.

It was probably right before it cracked.

Okay.

Right.

So, so there you go.

Maybe, maybe, maybe it was already non-conforming.

Yeah, the most non-conforming of his driver was at the Masters.

At its peak.

That's what I was doing.

He won the Masters.

He was a thin-face driver.

I got another question about the course because there was a lot of mudball talk this week.

Oh, mudball.

Mudball.

So Shane Lowry, I loved his,

he took it out on the course.

He beat the course up.

First question is, the story came out afterwards that it actually was a ESPN employee that was the one who pointed out that that wasn't his, like he tried to claim, and he wasn't trying to cheat.

You can just say, hey, I think that divot was already there.

That's why my ball is half submerged.

There was an ESPN bystander who was like, no, that's actually not true.

That was your divot.

If you were in that spot, would you report that?

I've thought about this so many different times because the person that would have reported it is exactly what I would be doing on the ground.

So you're up there, you see that the ball lands and then ends up in somebody else's pitch mark.

And by rule, you do not get relief in that, which by the way, is so stupid.

If your ball is below the level of the surface, I think you should always get relief.

It's a ground under repair type of situation in my mind.

I was thinking about it.

And a lot of times, too, there's enough people around to where I wouldn't ever have to stick my nose in this.

And maybe I wasn't there, so it's hard for me to really say, but I

don't know, man.

It's a hard one to call because it just, I don't, I don't want to say it depends on who it is, but also.

Yeah, it does.

Yeah, gosh.

All right, so 100%.

So let's just say, who would you definitely not call it on?

Who would I not call it on?

JT, Max.

Yeah, I mean,

you better not fucking call it on Max.

I'm not calling it.

Jeez, you better not call it on Brooks either.

We're gonna have problems.

Yeah,

this is a tough one.

You are putting me in a bad spot here.

Now I'm gonna just start looking away when balls laying in the fairway just so I'm not, yeah, just so I'm not held liable, you know?

Nothing to live, guys.

Don't want any smoke with MBS.

So, so my real question, though, is,

and you can maybe tell me that I'm wrong and you can spin on this.

The complaints about the mud balls is like the softest thing ever.

Like, come on, golfers, there's mud on balls.

So, you tell me how wrong I am that it's actually impossible to hit a mud ball.

Because, like, this is one of those situations where

I love watching the majors.

I love watching golf.

You know, there's times when, you know, if the crowd says something and someone flips out, I'm like, come on, don't be so soft.

Mud balls, are they that hard?

Is it that hard?

Am I way off?

Yeah, I was about to ask you, have you ever hit a mud ball?

No, I mean, I just pick it up and clean it.

I play scramble rules whenever I'm playing just by myself.

Well, it's the same with me now, too.

So I personally don't hit any mud balls anymore either.

But I could tell you the challenge is ridiculous.

It is very, very hard, especially when you talk about Quail Hollow in a major championship test

and just not having really any control.

And I've seen veterans, kind of old school players kind of really kind of say that, guys.

There's a way around this.

There's a way to hit these shots to where you can keep it in front of you and it's part of the game.

It's just kind of rub of the green and that you should just deal with it.

And then other players like Scotty, who is a just when he's in the fairway, he's so good that it's a disservice that you don't let him hit the iron shot that he's capable of hitting and that he's now has to basically be punished for hitting in the fairway.

I think that there's an argument to be made there because the PGA tour, if it was a PGA tour event on Thursday, so Quail Hollow for the truest is

played there every year.

I would have said that Thursday, the PGA tour would have probably played it up ball in hand to where they would have cleaned the golf balls in the fairway.

But because there was a major championship and that the PGA of America is making the call on whether the ball is being played up or played down,

that was a significant impact because majors, they don't want to be defined by

the golf ball not being played down.

you know guys just had to deal with it it wasn't the rest of the week it wasn't a big storyline but thursday it was a big deal that makes sense too because i've always thought that the pga championship has a little bit of like little brother going on where like you know they moved from the last one to this one they also like there was that one year where the scoring was outrageous and everyone was like well this isn't the us open so they're trying they're trying to be a little bit more like the rest of the majors so maybe if it were another like they're like hey we got it we got to make sure they they hit these mud balls

well you know they got five inches of rain i think on monday tuesday and wednesday leading up so the fact that the golf course was even to a point where they could get mowers down uh wednesday night just tells you how how good the golf course was from an agronomy standpoint and just how good the drainage was but uh yeah mud balls are they're really really hard to hit i don't know if you know understand how they work but no i don't typically so when you i'll tell you right now i never will

i i think you need to go try it out for yourself

so when the mud is is caked on the left side of the golf ball uh there's there's some type of aerodynamics that make the when the mud flies off, it makes the golf ball shoot to the right.

So it's the opposite, the side the mud is on, it's the way it's going to go.

So it's on the left, the ball is going right.

The mud is on the right, the ball is going to the left.

So my bit now that I don't play much anymore, when I tee the ball up off the tee and I just hit a big slice, I'll just say mud ball.

You know, it's just such a shame.

You just described every shot I've ever taken in my life, and I'm just only hitting mud balls.

Exactly.

You got a new bit.

You got a new bit.

You got a new bit.

What happened with the that shot that John Rahm hit where it hit the dude in the head and then bounced off his head and went onto the green?

How did it bounce that far off his head, number one?

And two, did anybody check on that guy to make sure he's okay?

Because that seemed like it was pretty intense.

I'm 99% sure, PFT, that that guy played fullback in high school.

Yeah.

Because that guy just went up to John Rahm and was like, hey, man, sorry about that.

Like, we're all good.

Don't worry about that.

I was like, dude, that shot just hit your head as hard as it possibly can, and then it bounced 50 yards.

He's a dude's dude, a a true football guy, a guy that uses the crown of the helmet, a guy that would have definitely been thrown out of plenty of games in high school.

I mean,

if you're listening to it live, the sound that it made when it hit his school,

he's 20 yards left of the green guys, and it rolls.

I mean, the green from a width standpoint is probably a good 13 yards.

I mean, it ricocheted a good 30 yards, which is just absurd to think about.

Yeah, I was concerned about the man's health, and the next thing that I saw, he's like shaking hands with John Rahm and like getting an autographed glove from him.

And they're like hooting and hollering.

Like that was awesome.

I mean,

I saw some pretty funny tweets that said that he should have milked it and

should have tried to get about a billion dollars from the PIF, knowing that John Rahm's employers could have maybe helped him out there.

So I thought that was a pretty good tweet.

Yeah.

Let me ask you, did you watch the final round?

Are you in Louisiana?

No, no, I'm actually in, I live in Birmingham, Alabama.

So I flew home late last night, watched the coverage today.

So, yeah.

Okay, because I heard that people in Louisiana couldn't watch part of the final round because it cut to a press conference about escaped inmates at a prison.

Oh, I did see that on my social media today, and I've been following the storylines.

I think they've caught, I think, about six of the guys that have escaped.

So, maybe I can follow that live stream later because that would be some good content.

I can only imagine how upset golf fans in Louisiana were that they had to deal with that.

You alluded to it earlier, but maybe if you could narrow it down just a little.

You said, like, with all these great players that we have right now, you don't know who the next major champion is going to be from the list of the guys that don't have one yet.

Can you just give us like a short list of guys that we should keep our eyes on?

Oh, so players that have not won a major championship that could be next up in line.

Is that what you're asking?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, gosh.

Victor Hoblin to me,

he's been all over the place at times

when it comes to his golf game over the last really year or so.

He won earlier this year in an an unexpected fashion, but still,

he's still, to me, is

one of the most talented players that hasn't won yet.

Ludwig Oberg would be another guy, too, who's, I think his game is built for major championships.

Ludwig is already contended at the Masters a couple different times.

So those would be the two that come to mind first.

But there's plenty of other guys that you can maybe reach on.

I think Joachim Neiman is a very talked about player from the live golf tour, but he finally got his first top 10 in a major.

That was a knock against him is that he's won all this time on the P tour, excuse me, he won on the PJ tour, but he's also won five times on the live and had yet to have a top 10 in a major championship and got his first top 10 this week at Quail Hollis.

So maybe that's all he had to do is get his first top 10 to maybe go in potentially at the U.S.

Open at Oakmont.

I got a question.

So not only Shane Lowry beat up the course, but we also saw Wyndham Clark launch his driver.

People were trying to say that that was the same as when Max launched his driver.

If you watch, Wyndham Clark could have killed someone.

Max was, did it in the most gentlemanly way where he like tossed it up the fairway where there's no one there.

It was perfect.

And he also tossed it where he was walking, which was efficient.

Does the PGA say anything after these kind of things?

Are they like, hey, man, you can't do that?

Or do they just, they're like, hey, emotions happen.

What are you going to do?

Well, typically you get fined.

And on the PGA tour, the guys understand kind of what the there's like certain certain levels.

I'm not sure what the numbers are exactly for fines because they don't, the PGA tour doesn't make that available public information on what the number is.

But I can tell you that when Shane Lowry and I played together, this is the Honda Classic back in I think 2016.

Him and I both got fines on the 15th hole of Par Three there.

You can find it on YouTube.

It's actually quite entertaining.

They come live to the 15th hole for the first time.

And I get up on the tee and hit one in the water and snap a club over my knee, Bo Jackson style.

And then Shane Lowery hits one in the water right after me and then proceeds to, you know, just a give old, good old classic like Shane Lowery, oh, you fucking idiot.

And that's like how he got fine.

And I, Shane Lowery didn't apologize.

I did.

So he had like a double version of what my fine was.

So for the PJ of America this week, to answer your question, Big Cat,

I think if you like look at the levels of what the fine would be, Wyndham's would be on a very high level because when you do the no look throw and not know if anybody's behind you, especially with a little bit of heat, that's where, you know, Brick could have killed a guy type of situation comes out.

And my favorite part about it too is there's a picture too.

I think one of his sponsors, I think is T-Mobile, and there's a hole of his driver that goes right through the T-Mobile sponsor sign on the back.

You got to find it.

It's absolutely hilarious knowing that it's one of his sponsors.

And of course, he wasn't trying to throw a club.

Well, I guess he did throw the club, but just throw it right through one of his sponsors at on the back was, I thought, funny for us.

Luckily, everybody survived, but I imagine there was probably going to be a fine.

I found the video of you snapping the club here.

Do you remember what iron that was?

It was a seven-arm.

Yeah.

Seven art.

So what do you do for the rest of the round?

You're just like...

Like afterwards, I imagine that you have a couple minutes where you're like, or a couple seconds probably, where you're like, sweet, that was awesome.

And then reality sets in where you're like, oh shit, I actually don't have a seven iron.

You can't use it.

You're just hitting little chippy six irons and big eight irons.

That's all you're doing.

Luckily for me, it was on Sunday.

And so I didn't, I didn't necessarily have to worry about it too much.

That was a good snap.

Yeah, it was.

Because I would be nervous that I wouldn't be able to snap it.

So that would be, that's the most like, if you're going to go for the snap and you don't snap it.

Yeah, what I try to do.

That was a horrible moment.

I tried to tell the PJ tour I was not trying to break a club over my knee.

Like, it wasn't my intent to break the club.

I wanted to just put it up next to my knee and just like try to act like i was breaking it yeah but like bo jackson um you know i i just have these quads that just unfortunately just that just can't match a seven iron shaft yeah this might be a dumb question but what is what is the drug testing policy like on the tour how often do you get randomized randomize it i remember that happening often and and it there would be a guy with a clipboard after your round typically uh they would say hey we need to get a drug test for you and so you go pee or whatever but every single single time it always happens ask any pga tour player you always bogey the last hole it just happens every time like that to where you leave and you're just so hot and you can't turn out a like if you if you walk away from uh a one of these urine tests to test if you uh are taking peds wherever it is um

that that counts as a uh as a as a false like it yeah it would be or a positive test so that's the one you can't walk away from so you got to sit there and uh sometimes you you can't pee at the end of the day when it's really, really hot and you're drinking all these fluids.

And so you just got to sit in there for 30 minutes, just make it small talk with the guy with the clipboard.

Yeah.

It's not necessarily fun.

We know with the NFL guys, they actually watch you pee.

They have to be in the room.

They're like, come on, let's see the hog.

I got to see it coming out.

I have to imagine that in golf, they might be, maybe they're a little bit more gentlemanly.

Well, you just hope to be drug tested during the summer, not like, you know, at Pebble Beach when it's 50 degrees out and you can come off off the course.

You say, can I go just kind of, we're on the treadmill here for a minute,

get some blood flow.

I got a couple last questions.

John Rahm, so we didn't talk about, I mean, he was tied at one point in this

final round on Sunday, and then it fell apart.

Do you think he, watching him in this tournament, you think he's closer to being back?

Or is it like, man, this was just another moment where things just haven't been going his way ever since he kind of went to live.

Well, I think you got to look at the three, the three holes that were the most crucial ones for John Rahm.

13, 14, and 15.

13, he hit a 25-foot putt.

Excuse me, that I can't believe how it didn't drop.

Like such a good putt.

And, you know, gravity's wind, everything's helping him out for this ball to break.

Somehow, it doesn't break, and that doesn't go in.

And then 14.

You know, John Rahm is a fader of the golf ball, and the wind direction at 14 today was off the left.

So not necessarily a comfortable shot, but he hit a three-wood, a club that he can turn over, and it lands on the right edge of the green.

If it lands maybe two steps short of that, it's probably has enough of the draw spin to where that ball bounces onto the green, but it bounces just in a place to where it takes a right kick, goes into the bunker.

But it got far enough into the bunker to where that was not, I didn't think it was that difficult of an up and down compared to Scotty, who his ball just barely rolled into the bunker at 14.

I thought a more of a challenging up and down.

So it really did come down to similar type of shots.

So Scotty Scheffler and John Rahm, similar type of bunker shots at 14.

And then 15, John Rahm and Scotty Scheffler both end up in the same place over the green at 15.

Scotty Scheffler gets up and down at 14.

John Rahm doesn't, hits a poor bunker shot.

And then 15, John Rahm misjudges the putt from off the green, hits it to 13 feet, hits a poor putt coming back where Scotty Scheffler hit it to nothing.

And then all of a sudden, John Rahm is in a chasing mentality, heading into the most difficult part of the golf course, was forced to play aggressively, and then it just unfolded.

Right.

The one thing I'll leave you with here with this big cat when you ask about is he closer to winning.

Um, I, he's still one of the one of the top five most talented players in the world.

There's no doubt about it.

Uh, yes, he can win a major, uh, he can win the next major.

That's how good he is.

But now we can look at a bit of a theme that's kind of happened.

When you go back to the Olympics, where John Rahm had the lead, I believe, gosh, I wish I had the numbers in front of me, but he was comfortably looking like he was about to win the Olympic gold medal.

And

I think with five holes left, he found a way to work his way off of the medal stand.

So John Rahm leaving the 11th green, had a seven-shot lead over CWoo Kim, who he was playing with.

And at the end of the day, him and C.

Woo Kim finish a T8 at four under.

And of course, walking to the 12th T's tied with Scotty Scheffler.

Right.

So

heading into the day, John Rahm wasn't expected to win the golf tournament.

But when John Rahm was on 12, 13, 14, 15, anybody who was watching felt like John Rahm could have done more to challenge Scotty Scheffler, to make him hit more shots on 16, 17, 18, just to make it more interesting, not only for us as fans, but to make Scotty Scheffler prove that he can hit the shots shots to win his third major championship.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It makes sense.

It does.

So

how should we feel about Max's tournament?

Because he had a great Friday, right?

Like an absolutely fantastic Friday.

And then things kind of went a little bit downhill.

But I would say that making the cut and having that great day to get you to make the cut, I'm going to choose to look at this as a positive weekend for Max Oma.

Oh, totally.

I think he feels confident about his game.

He got a little bit maybe exposed on Saturday, Sunday, which more challenging conditions.

And that's what major championships do.

And have y'all looked at his scorecard yet on Sunday?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Crazy.

Big cat.

Have you seen that, Big Cat?

Yeah, it was all over the place.

Okay.

All right.

Because if you hadn't, I was going to try to quiz you a little bit because

being two over through,

I think it was five holes and then shooting six over, but also making five birdies is the most psychotic scorecard I think I've ever seen.

It is crazy.

If you look at the circle, the

cards that you see online with either the color-coded or the circles, it's just a very festive-looking scorecard.

Yeah, the Christmas tree on the back night.

We ride with him, so I had him, and on Friday, I was like, ooh, this is going to be incredible.

But I mean, Friday's in there.

That's the thing.

I take away like, yeah, Friday was a great round.

I mean, PFT, I think it reminds me a little bit of the Washington football team and the LSU Tigers.

We could play some offense, like when Max Home of the offense is there, but unfortunately, the defense doesn't show up a timer too.

That's kind of how it's been lately.

Yeah, yeah but it's an entertaining brand of football yeah it sure is put points on the board yeah

put butts and seats all right i got one last question

in theaters tomorrow spinal tap is back time to make some noise with christopher guests michael mckeeon rob reiner and harry shear we're still short of drama why he sneezed himself into a plebeias spinal tattoo the end continues in theaters tomorrow my last question i'm going to give to hank hank uh do you have a question for Smiley about your game?

Hank shot a 93 at a member guest on Friday.

Nobody.

Okay, Hank.

All right.

Humble brag.

Yeah,

I struggle making consistent contact and getting the ball in the air.

I just hit a lot of thin shots.

I don't know if you have any tips or any drills I could do to just try and get some more heightened in my shots.

Good question.

Have you considered starting to drink earlier?

Maybe before you get to the golf course?

Yeah, that happens.

That's not usually usually the problem.

That's usually taken care of.

Okay, all right.

Well, we just wanted to check that off, that box off first because that's where I would have started you, just to make sure that all of your limbs are, you know, firing on all cylinders.

Man, I'd have to see it.

You're going to have to, you have to send me a DM or text me just a video because I can take a peek.

I love looking at Big Cat swing.

That's an easy one to

diagnose.

But a lot of times when guys can't get good contact and get the ball up in the air, for the most part, it's a pivot issue, meaning like your pivots not getting through the the golf ball you're using a lot of hands and your pelvis is moving into the golf ball i know i'm throwing all these words at you hank uh but i could simplify it if you can just send me a swing and uh we'll have you uh hitting making a divot out in front of the golf ball and making the ball go up in the air indeed all right great yeah thank you hank you got it we gotta help hank he's having trouble getting it up so we got to get those hips and everything going in the right direction yeah the pelvis i think you accurately diagnosed as being mostly a pelvis issue yes it's a pelvis issue that's right that's right

um all right right.

Well, Smiley, thank you, man.

We love having you on.

Appreciate it.

And we'll talk maybe U.S.

Open or Open Championship because you're covering both.

You got it, guys.

And I got to leave you with this.

I was on a plane.

This was, I don't know how many months ago it was when y'all did the Andrew Luck interview.

And I'd fall asleep.

A lot of times I'll throw it on y'all's podcast.

And I'd fallen asleep and I woke up to Andrew Luck doing the snap count.

And not only did I wake up, I literally did one of these.

And I know I couldn't have been the only person that that happened to, but man, that interview was great with Andrew.

That was an all-timer.

You should take that sound isolated, make it somebody's like alarm to wake up in the morning.

It just, it threw me off, guys.

It was good.

I love it.

All right.

Thanks so much, Smiley.

Hey, guys, it's Rhea from Chicks in the Office.

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And now for something completely different.

Okay, we now welcome on two very special guests from the Miami Marlins.

It's Kyle Stowers, Tyler Phillips, boys in studio.

You guys have been in Chicago for what feels like forever, playing the White Sox and the Cubs.

First of all, how's the season going?

I know the record's not great, but how's the season going overall?

Vibes?

Yeah, I think the vibes are still good.

I mean, I feel like we're in a lot of these games, you know, and close to winning more of them.

Obviously, you know, you want to win them, but, you know, I think we're pretty close.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, man.

I can't complain.

I mean, I'm new to the team.

Got here opening day, so building relationships with guys.

But yeah, like you said, I think we're in all the games.

So you guys both got traded recently.

You got traded last year, Kyle.

You got traded in the offseason from the Phillies.

I got traded opening day.

Opening day.

Like the day before opening day.

That's crazy.

Was that like that had to kind of be a bummer?

A little bit.

But I mean, you know, I heard Miami.

I was like, oh.

Cool.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's pretty nice.

Yeah, you can't complain.

There's definitely worse places to be.

Is it like weird knowing that like at any point you could get traded?

Is that feeling kind of just suck, like where it just doesn't go away?

Where you're like, I never feel fully safe?

100%.

I was with family friends at dinner yesterday, and they were reading some article where I was talking about last year's trade deadline, and they thought I got traded again.

Oh, and they're like, you just have moment where you're like, fuck, this is happening again.

So, yeah, I mean, that's 100% a real thing.

You know, I think in baseball that you just kind of, you kind of never know.

Yeah.

How did you guys find out that you got traded?

Um,

I was trying to avoid it all spring.

I was at options.

Um, I was with the Phillies, so kind of an impossible team to make if you're a rookie and you're not like the guy, right?

Um, so it was kind of like inevitable for me, it felt like.

Um, I just found out literally the last day of camp, like all my stuff was in Philly.

I shipped it all, thought I was making the team, um,

like transitioning from a starter to a reliever.

I was like, oh, cool.

And last day, like the sixth inning of the last game, they pulled me in the office, like, hey, hey, we claimed a guy.

You're going to be traded.

I was like, okay.

What about my stuff?

Yeah, right.

Right.

Yeah, it was definitely a weird scenario for me.

Yeah.

And you, Kyle, you knew you were going to get traded.

You didn't know, but you had a good feeling in Baltimore that you were going to get traded.

Yeah, I had a pretty good stretch of baseball with the Orioles last year, kind of around this time of year, and still kind of got sent back down.

And after that, I was like, okay, well, maybe this won't be the place where I'd be for a while.

And I was actually in the tubs when I found out.

I had just gotten out of the Tubs, and they said, hey, Connor Norby and one other player got traded to the Marlins.

And I went and checked my phone, and I had a missed FaceTime call from our GM, Mike Elias.

And I was like, yeah, I think I'm the other player.

Yeah.

Wait, so how about a positive thing?

Because you guys both, how long were you guys both in the minors?

19 to...

22 and then 23 and 24.

So yeah, and then Tyler, you were in the minors.

I was a little bit longer.

Yeah, 15.

High schooler.

So what was

What was the moment like when they actually called you up?

Because I love those videos.

They're so awesome.

Go first.

Yeah, mine was unique.

I was a COVID replacement player.

So

what does that mean?

Yeah, so when the team traveled to Toronto, if the guys weren't vaccinated, they couldn't go.

Oh, so this is like well after COVID.

So yeah, so I was getting I was getting texts from like our travel guy like the week before he was like hey do you have your passport on you and so I was like looking at the schedule and I saw that Toronto was coming up.

And I was like, oh, shoot, like this could be happening.

And so, yeah, that's how I initially debuted.

Did they do any like fun, fun video?

I would just prank.

If I were the manager, I would do all pranks for all the videos.

Yeah, no, just fake them.

I'd be like, we're sending you down.

Just kidding.

We're sending you up.

Yeah, no, they didn't give me

any special video.

After me, they were starting to do like the call-up videos for guys.

And so, yeah,

it wasn't as special as the other ones.

What about you, Tyler?

Did you cry?

Did you cry?

No.

You cried?

No.

I wanted to.

I was trying to force it.

I was trying to forge something out.

There was no video.

I didn't see a camera, so it didn't matter anymore.

So I didn't send you back down if you cried when you get brought up, right?

Like, it means so much to you.

Yeah, dude.

I mean, no, mine was weird, though.

Like, it's, I took my opt-out.

So I had an upper mobility.

Wait, what does that mean?

I just, I told the team, hey, I'm not going up.

want to take my chances being a free agent.

Oh,

got it.

Pretty much.

Like, I had my opt-out.

um

we i think we were in durham and like the week before korea was offering me um

and it was like they were offering me like the max like for the prorated amount i think somewhere around there um that's just really far and i was stressing out like i just remember it um i was like sitting outside my hotel uh my family wasn't with me and i'm just like ripp pulling my hair out sitting on the steps like i don't know what to do like they wanted a decision i got a call like a tuesday morning they wanted the decision the tuesday night i was like i i need you guys to buy me more time.

I think like Wednesday, I ultimately turned it down.

Pitched Thursday, threw really well.

And then the first of the month was coming up, July 1st.

My agent said, like, hey, dude, like you turned Korea down.

We're taking your upper mobility, like your opt-out.

So basically the team, the Phillies had to put me on the table for all the other teams to possibly take.

And if anyone wanted me, then the Phillies had to decide if they wanted to protect me or not.

Ah.

So kind of.

so if they protect you, then you go up automatically?

Yeah, you have to be on the 26 miles.

Oh, so you forced their hand.

Kind of forced their hand.

That's kind of baller.

It felt weird because like I told my hedge, like, whatever, man, I trust you guys.

And I knew, I think, like, the first day that teams were interested, and now it was up to the Phillies.

So the second day,

I was getting some calls like, hey, this might happen.

Right.

And there was like some weird scenarios where it was like, if you pitch this day, then you're going up with this team.

If you pitch two innings this day, then you're going to be in the bullpen this day.

And if you don't pitch at all, you're being traded.

I'm like, okay.

So I'm just, again, still stressing out, don't know what's going on.

And my manager called me on a double header day when I was supposed to pitch the night game.

And he said, where are you?

I was like, I'm at home.

It's 9.30.

Why would I be at the field?

Like, I'm pitching at 7.

He goes, well, what if we needed you?

And I was like, why would you need me pitching at 7?

And he's like, oh, well, would would the roster change?

She's like, just get in here now.

I'm like, my pitching coach texted me like, hey, like,

like, where the fuck are you, man?

Like, you got to be here.

I'm like, oh, dude.

So I'm thinking they're canceling my start and I'm being traded.

Showed up to the field.

And they hit me with kind of like a, like, kind of like a prank like you were talking about.

They hit me with, um,

like, why weren't you here?

Like, you're late.

I was like, no, I'm not.

They said, well, you think you can do whatever you want?

I said, no, I don't.

Well, what do you think you're a big leader or something?

I I said, yeah, I do.

They're like, okay, well, good, because you are.

Oh, that's awesome.

Like, I already knew.

Like, I knew like two days before.

So it wasn't like this magical thing.

And then they didn't know what move they were making for me yet.

So I just sat at this.

I sat in AAA for like another two days, not doing anything until the team was able to make a...

roster move.

Was everyone judging you being like, oh, you're

a bad man.

That's true.

You're a big leaguer.

I just thought I was lying.

They said, what the fuck are you still doing here, man?

What do you just like want to watch this series?

Like, I don't know.

The rules of, or the, like, just the roster rules of baseball is unbelievable to me.

I've never heard of the upper mobility clause.

You know, people always ask, how much longer are you going to be with this team?

And I go, I don't know.

They have control over me for forever.

Yeah.

It's so weird.

It comes from them, too.

Like, a lot of guys told me these never work.

Yeah, because what would be the like if you if you do it and no one trades you then you're just shit out of life yeah pretty much yeah your team knows yeah no that they're like yeah fuck this it's like practice squad in the nfl except if you if you have a downside to making the practice squad, too.

Yeah, that's crazy.

With you, Kyle, you have a different story because when you got brought up, or you made the team after spring training, right?

And then you just didn't play.

So they were like, you know, we got to send you back down because you're not getting yet bats.

Yeah.

So that's kind of crazy.

It's like, I made it, but then through something outside of my control, I'm no longer in the big leagues.

Yeah, that was 23 for me.

I had a pretty good spring, made the team, and just wasn't playing.

And, you know, I had a pretty good 22 and thought, you know, maybe I was going to get the chance to play more frequently.

But

obviously with the Orioles, there was a ton of good players.

And

definitely some mind games happens with that when you feel like you're doing everything in your control and then

still not kind of cracking the roster consistently.

Yeah.

What's it?

I always wondered this in minor league baseball.

Like, is it weird?

You're playing with your teammates and these are guys that are your teammates, but you're also competing against them every single day.

Is that a weird feeling to be like, hey, I know we're all on the same team here trying to win games, but at the end of the day, like I want to do better than you because I want to get called up before you get called up.

Yeah, I mean, I think of it as kind of like an iron sharpens iron.

You know what I mean?

Like you're all trying to, you know, kind of lift each other up by pushing each other.

And, you know, I've always kind of felt like for me that if I take care of my stuff, then like I'll end up where I'm supposed to be.

Yeah, I agree with that.

I don't think that anything good really comes from.

like trying to compete with a guy like oh like i'm gonna beat you out like i think if you at least in my experience like i just try to help everyone, like, just being a good teammate, you're going to learn something from the next guy.

And you don't know who you want people in your corner.

Right.

You don't want to get people like, oh, like, this guy don't be, he's not a good teammate.

Right.

Yeah.

I'm sure there are some guys in the minors who can feel it.

Yeah, and they get frustrated.

Probably.

Did you guys ever have a moment where you're like, it's not going to work out?

Like, I'm, I'm done with baseball.

I feel like it happens semi-frequently, you know, a couple of different times, you know, whether it's performance or injuries.

You know, I had a lot of injuries in the end of 23.

I ended up getting like hit in in the face at the end of the year and felt very, very fast.

I was fat

by the pitch.

Yeah, yeah, like how fast?

Yeah, 93 fastball.

Damn.

Why don't you turn, dude?

Yeah.

I would have ducked.

That's a shitty thing for me to say.

Hey, bro, did you think about turning?

And then I actually wanted to show my toughness, so I just stayed in there a little bit longer.

Yeah.

Kept my eye on the ball.

Bounced right back up.

Like right, like kind of like in between my eye and my nose.

Next time you get up to bat after that, that,

it's got to be in your head a little bit, right?

Yeah, so I missed like two weeks, and the rest of the year when I was facing lefties, I was like stepping out of the box like I was scared of the ball for, you know, for the rest of the season, which was only a couple more weeks, but it took me a little bit to get comfortable in there again.

Yeah, that's a natural reaction, I would imagine.

Like if there's something wrong with you, if you get back in, you're like, I'm not afraid of it.

Yeah, hit me again.

Yeah, I did a ton of stuff with, we had a bunch of like performance psychologists like with the Orioles or performance coaches and a couple of them worked with the Navy.

And so, you know, it was also really humbling to talk to them about like something I was like scared of from a performance standpoint because they're, you know, like, it's also like, oh, like, you guys deal with people who actually deal with life and death.

Right.

And so

put me in a little bit of my place.

I love that.

They're like, oh, you're afraid of the baseball.

It's not a grenade button.

Yeah.

You'll be doing live rounds.

Have you, Tyler?

Have you done sports psychology for pitching?

I mean, pitching pitchers, I feel like that's such a mental game.

It's pretty big, yeah.

I was fortunate, like, with when I was with the Rangers when I got drafted, I had a really good peak performance coach over there.

Um,

just pushing, like, routines, pushing all, like, the, the mental stuff, um,

staying confident.

You know, it's like, it's weird.

Like, a lot of stuff goes hand in hand, like confidence and success.

Like, confidence leads to success, success leads to confidence.

It's weird.

But yeah, just staying on top of stuff.

Like, I've been, I took up reading a little bit like once I had

my Tommy John.

Just finding a way to just get better.

I took up reading.

A little bit.

What do you read?

A lot of self-help books.

Stuff that just helps the mind, I guess.

Yeah.

Did you go straight from high school to

AA?

No, it was different.

The game's different now.

That's what everyone does.

I went.

high school to rookie ball, AZL.

Okay.

And surprise, Arizona.

You didn't think about going to college?

I don't think I could have.

Oh, really?

I did not take up reading at that time in my life.

I mean, Kyle went to Stanford.

Is he the smartest guy in the clubhouse?

Are you?

I don't know.

Would you graduate at Stanford?

I did.

Would you graduate at Stanford?

Communications?

Okay.

Yeah, you're the smartest.

You're a communicator.

Yeah.

At Stanford,

are the baseball players cool there or are the cool guys on campus, like the Silicon Valley, we're going to be heading some AI company next year, guys?

Yeah, I would say probably probably probably more those guys the baseball guys you know people some people care about sports some people don't you know like you'd be surprised by how many people are not out on a Friday night yeah you know but did you meet any of those future billionaires you know I feel like I did not do a good enough job of networking there

I was like kind of just in my own world trying to survive a little bit you should have given like cool kid classes yeah just been like come hang with the baseball yeah you want to see what how we party yeah just like learn locker room etiquette you always knew the athletes on campus because of the red backpack.

If they had the red Nike backpack or like the Gatorade like water bottle, that's how you knew who the athletes were.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You can't just go out and buy the red backpack.

I think you can, but if you do, stolen vows.

Yeah, you can't do that.

So, so, uh, Kyle, with you, you know, the importance of routines.

We're talking about pitching, uh, but for hitting, I'm always fascinated by the different routines guys get into in the batter's box and how kind of the pitch clock might have screwed some of those up.

Like, you look at dudes like back in the day, Nomar, would have like nine, ten different things.

You can't do that with a pitch clock.

Now, how did you come up with your batting routine?

Yeah, like pre-pitch.

Yeah.

Like, yeah, for me, it's deep breath.

And I look at the name on my bat.

I used to look at the logo when we had metal bats because it looked like a field.

But now I look at the name on my bat and I just remind myself that I'm the same guy playing the same game and that, you know, nothing, nothing's changed.

And I try to just get in the present moment.

Just lock in, like tunnel vision.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what about you on the mound?

Yeah, I mean, that breath is important.

I I don't necessarily love the pitch clock.

But, you know, you get used to it.

I think in the beginning, I was really sped up where, you know, especially out of the bullpen, like I was a starter before, so it's not that far of a run.

I usually walk out of the bullpen or out of the dugout.

But yeah, I get on the mound, and now

you feel the heart rate going.

You feel the adrenaline.

So you have to take, like, make sure the breath isn't fake.

That makes sense.

I just try to make sure that I'm doing it the dugout can see it even if they can't like it feels right um

and then at that point you know you're in the game like it's it's you're going to war so my thing i took it from uh mike tyson um

he always stared his opponent down in the eyes and when he when they broke eye contact he knew he won so that's kind of something that i do um

I'm not as scary as Mike Tyson, but

it makes me feel, makes me feel like, hey, like, it's on now.

Remember the Madison Bum Garner with the ump stare down?

Yeah, that was all.

Which ump was that?

Was that Angel?

I can't remember.

I don't remember.

That went on for like a minute and a half.

He just stood there staring about.

I don't know how the umpire kept that going.

Yeah, yeah, respect.

Kyle, this is a dumb question because I'm assuming the answer is just going to be, it was fucking sweet.

But

how awesome was it to hit a walk-off home run?

It was wild.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, that was sad.

Had you hit one before in any other

level?

Like at a summer ball of like

in between college season during the summer, you play with a random team.

And I did one then.

Never in the big leagues had I hit a walk-off home run.

And you hit it off a very good closer in Lisa Miller.

Yeah,

it was crazy.

So when you hit it, did you go extra slow around the bases?

I would take so long going around the bases if I hit a walk-off home run.

It would take me like five minutes.

Yeah, I mean, to your point, it's just like, you know, felt like I probably didn't soak it in enough.

I hit it and I kind of knew it was getting over his head.

I just was kind of watching to see if it was going to get over the fence or not.

And kind of seeing this video, I kind of be like this weird point where I'm kind of going up and down, and I can't really tell if it went over the fence or not.

But it was awesome.

Yeah.

How fast was that pitch that he threw you?

It was 101.7.

How was the fastest pitch that you ever, like, I'm sure that you've seen some fast pitches in games, but when you get in the cage, what's the fastest you've ever dialed it up to?

Yeah, I feel like the machine, we try to dial it up to like over 100.

Like, but, you know, it's just when you do it off the machine and you know it's a fastball coming, like you kind of like, you know, you can kind of predict a little bit more.

Um, I don't think I've ever hit a ball over a hundred in a real game before, so that was cool.

What was the exit VLO on that?

I think it was 107.

That's got to feel good.

Yeah.

Do you even feel it when you hit it?

No, you don't feel it off the bat.

It's the best.

It just goes with it.

Oh, it's just your caught barrel, man.

Yeah, yeah.

There's no feeling like it other than going down the middle of the fairway.

Yeah.

That's the closest thing I think that is like that.

When you hit a walk-up, I have to imagine that the trot around the bases is usually faster because you got the adrenaline.

Which runs like, okay, yeah, you almost end up sprinting around the bases.

But if you hit a go-ahead in the ninth, then you can kind of pimp it a little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I couldn't pimp that one.

I didn't know for sure that I got it.

Miami's a little bit bigger of a park.

That would have been the only thing that could have made it better is if I knew it right off the bat and got to kind of look at it for a little bit.

You'll also never be the biggest pimp in that park because Marlin's man's there.

Yeah.

Do you guys know?

Do you guys know Marlin's Man?

No, I feel like he doesn't come to our games.

Is he still off the team?

Like,

is he away?

They kind of fucked him over, though.

Like, to be clear, yeah.

All he wanted to do was like throw out every first pitch.

Yeah.

He offered Dergier a blank check to basically run the Marlins.

Yeah.

So you want to be the GM.

Yeah.

You want to have Marlins Man Appreciation Day at the park.

He wanted like six tickets for him and his mermaids that he brings.

Yeah.

It's really, yeah.

All the reasonable stuff.

Two things missing from the Marlins is the giant fish statue in center field.

I know they moved it outside the park, but the giant fish that would jump in the air at a home run, and then Marlin's Man not being there.

It's kind of, I yearn for the days of like 2018, you know, Marlin's man showing up to the game.

Yeah, he was, that was his heyday.

I have a dumb hypothetical for you guys, and this works because hitter-pitcher.

I don't know, you probably didn't see it, but last week, Ryan Presley, the Cubs closer, had maybe the worst outing I've ever seen.

He gave up eight earned runs, a walk, five hits, zero outs.

So 25 pitches, zero outs, eight earned runs.

I think I honestly could get an out before that because it would fuck you up so bad that I'm throwing 55 miles an hour and like you'd probably fly one out.

Do you think that's fair?

I think that's fair.

I mean, position players.

Have you seen the position players when they come in?

It's the weirdest thing.

Like, if usually when you bring in a position player, your team's giving up a ton of runs.

Right.

And the position player will come in and get three outs super quick, and everyone's just like

doing that the whole time.

So that has one of our good relievers.

Yeah.

So you think that I could get a single out in a a big league game just be just and again, it's obviously not like I'm striking anyone out.

It's just they would hit one to the warning.

I think you get three outs.

Yeah.

Like honestly.

I don't know if the Max has to do that.

Somebody

the ball is bound to go to somebody.

Yeah.

Like there's no like it just goes against odds for the ball to just keep landing in the grass somewhere.

Right.

It's like the weirdest thing because like when you face a position player as a hitter, it turns into like this like fear-based thing of I don't want to strike out.

What if I get out versus like, you know, when you're facing a real pitcher, you're like, you know, you're locked in.

Yeah.

And you know that he's going to be actually planning his pitches and you can kind of like get inside and say, okay, this feels like a fastball.

This feels like maybe some off-speed stuff.

If it's a guy from the outfield, it's like, here comes some junk that I'm not going to have any idea, you know, how to hit.

It's going to be 55 miles per hour.

Right.

Yeah, no, we did.

We have a dingers-only league, fantasy league, where it's just home runs

because we don't really, like

fantasy sports are just confusing and annoying after a while.

So we just do home runs and loser has to pitch against a college team.

Last year, PFT pitched against UIC.

Did well.

I think they scored three runs in two innings.

Yeah, so I was pretty pumped about it.

Yeah.

But again, I was like so slow.

I was pitching.

I think it was like 68, 69.

Yeah.

But I was pretty wild.

Yeah, it was pretty nice.

Big Cat was behind the plate, so I had a nice big target.

Yeah,

I did drop a third strike, but threw him out after.

I was going to say, pretty much double play.

How bad did your arm feel after?

It was very sore the next day.

Very, very sore.

Yeah.

Was that all you had?

I gave it everything.

Like you were letting it go.

There were a couple where

I was like, I'm really going to dial it up on that.

I was so judgmental.

Listen,

I mean, I don't know.

Like, the position players come in and just flip it.

Like, I don't know.

I'm 40.

I'm 40 years old.

There were a couple where I'm like, you know what?

I'm going to reach back and really let this one eat.

And I think those got all the way up to like 71.5 miles per hour.

Wait, so Tyler, how fast could you throw just playing catch?

Like, not even trying to throw hard?

I don't know.

You're probably in like the mid-70s.

It's probably, yeah, I guess.

If I'm taking it easy, probably.

Wait, what's the fastest fastball you've thrown?

97.

Okay.

Yeah.

That's pretty good.

Trying to get it up there.

That's pretty sick.

When you guys were in little league, were you just dominant?

Oh, yeah.

You just like scaring people?

Yeah, I was a really good little league pitcher.

Good hitter, too.

But I was, yeah,

I think I threw 72 at 12.

Oh, that's pretty good.

I feel like if you're a major leaguer, you're probably the best little leaguer in your town.

Yeah.

It just has to correlate that.

Yeah, I know, but then there's some of those guys that

grow early.

Right.

And then they'd stop growing after that 13, 14 years old.

And then they kind of plateau.

That wasn't always good.

Hank was a great little leaguer and he, because he was also, he had like the age thing where he was the oldest.

Good birthday.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was younger.

Yeah.

I was like two years above for everything.

Did you guys play other sports?

Played basketball in high school.

Were you good?

Yeah, I was pretty good.

I mean,

I mean, I played a small, small high school, but I was decent.

Yeah.

Were other parents like scared of you when you were pitching?

It's like, I don't want my son in the box against that guy.

Me?

Yeah.

New Jersey baseball.

I mean, I threw strikes, but I threw hard, so maybe.

Yeah.

Maybe, yeah.

New Jersey, like if you're throwing over 90, you're like Nolan Ryan.

Yeah.

So.

I feel like Southern California, like they just, everyone's a baseball player.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They just, MLB players just sprout out of the ground there.

Normal for them.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah.

I actually have a, I remember when I was like in, not t-ball, but it was like when, you know, started being like player pitch, not coach pitch.

And I remember crying one time because there was one guy who hit a person, and I was like kind of coming up next.

And I remember like crying because I didn't want to get in the box.

That's funny.

That's probably like every bit of like six years old.

But yeah,

not good at dodging the ball.

I got hit in the face.

We got to work on that.

I don't know what I could teach you some tips.

I'm a big business.

Babby Gorsey.

Yeah, I'm just terrified of the ball.

Yeah, all the way back.

Yeah, I'm really good at not getting hit by anything because I just don't even try.

Hey,

we threw this out there to the brewers.

And I know, Kyle, you play in the outfield, so you can't probably do this, but Tyler, maybe you can.

Why don't you guys do a hidden ball trick?

Can you try?

One time this year?

Because it looks, it looks like, you look like a pussy, I guess.

Yeah, but still,

not if it works, though.

Yeah.

I had a kid try to do that for me in short season.

Like, I was...

Throwing pretty well, and he came up to me.

Like, someone got on third somehow, and he comes up to me.

He goes, Tyler, give me the ball.

I was like, why?

Why?

I'm pitching.

I got to throw this ball.

He's like, No, just give me it.

Trust me.

And he walks.

I give him the ball.

He walks over to third.

He stands there.

And like, the ball's dead.

Like, it's not even in play.

And he goes and tags the guy.

And the umpire's like, What are you doing?

So, like, I felt stupid.

My coach was like, What the fuck are you doing, dude?

Like, I'm like, Yeah, that's never happening again.

I will never let that ever happen.

Especially in like short season.

Yeah, like it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter at all.

Have you ever successfully talked your manager out of not pulling you in a game?

I love when pitchers do that.

I think that's a Haas thing.

You got to try.

I don't think it's ever worked because trying to protect you, especially how baseball is now.

I feel like Tommy John's just like a normal thing.

I've definitely tried.

I didn't think Philly was going to let me go.

I had my whole speech ready to go, too.

It was the eighth inning in my CG.

You got a complete game shutout.

Yeah, I had it all ready.

I was sitting down down in the tunnel, like legs bouncing.

I'm like, if he comes in here and tries to pull me, I know what I'm going to say.

Like, there's no way I'm letting this happen.

But yeah, other than that, like, I don't think the managers will ever let you go.

I even try here.

Like, I'm a reliever.

Very likely.

Nah, dude, I'm good.

Like, let me keep going.

He's like, we need you tomorrow.

Yeah.

How fun is it in the outfield for relievers?

Because I feel like that would be really fun.

Like, the guys just hanging out.

I know, obviously, once it gets later in the innings, you're like, oh, shit, someone's up.

When I first got here, I was sticking the mud, man.

I was so locked in like i'm like studying hitters because like i'm a starter like i was a starter and i didn't know how it all worked now i'm kind of keeping it loose like

it's it's still the baileys like you still need to be locked in for the most part but like the minor leagues you know everyone's like beef gazing or whatever like just just trying to trying to see who trying to see who's out there like what the talent's like um

yeah and now i just now i just mess around one of our bullpen catchers he came up from like high a or something and i just messed around with him the whole time.

Just trying to learn Spanish.

He's a Mexican kid.

Try to learn some Spanish, teach him some English, a lot of bad words.

Dude, yeah, bulletpen catcher.

That's got to be the best gig.

I mean, the kid was in Beloit.

Is that what it is?

Yeah,

he was in Beloit.

And, you know, he misses playing, obviously.

Like, I love the dude so far, but you're in the big leagues, dude.

Like, you're, you're, he saw, he got to see L.A.

He's in Chicago right now for a week.

Good spreads, good food.

Good hotels.

Does he get treated like he's on the team or is it kind of...

I mean, I try to treat him.

Yeah.

Like, I mean, I

buy the kid drinks at the hotel.

Sometimes I'm like, come here.

Like, where are you going?

Let's go.

Yeah.

You know, they take care of me.

Yeah.

He's out there getting, taking a beating like every single night, like bullpens, whatever.

I think that's probably honestly a pretty cool gig.

Yeah.

Would you used to get nervous on days that you had to start?

Sometimes.

Like, I think like depends.

Like, if if I had a bad outing, the one before, I'm like, oh, shit, here we go.

Fuck, man.

I hope this doesn't go bad again.

I think, like, Seattle last year, I got banged up, and I had LA, literally, like, the Dodgers, the next, the next series, or the next game.

I was like, fuck.

Yeah.

Dude, I got Shohei leading off.

I was like, a little nervous, but once you throw the first pitch, you're good.

Yeah, I feel like that's got to be a change mentally going from being a starting pitcher to a relief pitcher.

It's like you could, any given day, you go to the ballpark, you could have the ball in your game.

Yeah.

see that's see that's where it's different like starting i knew like i knew how to like it was like a buildup yeah relieving it's like

you could go in at any point i don't like we don't have many like set roles with this team like everybody could go in at any point um i just know that i'm one of the longer guys but if they need me in a close game it's like you got to be ready for that and like you you feel the blood flowing i don't I think it's a little nerves, little butterflies, but it's a lot of just like the adrenaline.

You just feel it like leaving your brain, just coursing through your body it's crazy do you pitch differently coming in as a reliever as opposed to getting a starting like if you're if you're starting the first inning top of the first you know who you're going to be facing yeah yeah i mean all the game planning is a starter i was talking to matt strom about it last year um

said yeah starters like the swat team man like you get everything all the planning like you know the map of everything you know who's hitting what who isn't relievers you you pay attention to the game

but he told me hey man just go in and throw your best shit like you got your plan If whatever you do to the lefties, do it with the lefties.

Whatever you do to the righties, do it to righties.

Like, just go out there and try to throw it as hard as you can.

And

don't bring the team VLO down.

Don't bring the bullpen VLO down.

And don't bring the URA up.

I was like, okay.

Yeah.

Cool.

Kyle, how many home runs are you going to hit this year?

You have seven?

Yeah, seven.

I think so.

You've hit two home runs in two separate games.

So maybe we got to, I mean, keep doing that, but like spread it out a little, too.

Yeah, no, I mean,

it'd be a huge honor to get get drafted in that Dingers Only League.

Oh, okay.

Put my name in the hat there.

All right.

I mean, seven home runs is not like that's you could be you could be a pick in that.

I'm trying to try to put a little bit of an audition tape out for you guys.

For sure, if it was Dynasty,

it also helps that I have your phone number now because I might call you and do a draft video being like, hey, you want to play for my team?

Kind of like what you guys did with Gunner last year.

You want to get on the team?

Okay.

So how many are you going to hit, though?

Yeah.

Make your pitch to us for the Dingers Only League.

Yeah, I mean, seven home runs.

I think, you know, it's a decent start.

You know, it's not necessarily a league leader, but I think it's a good number.

You know, I've always considered myself to get better as the year goes on.

Yeah, that's good.

Because the league doesn't start till July.

Yeah.

We just let half the season.

So what if I made a promise to save some?

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's going to a couple posts.

Yeah.

Post-all-star breakout.

You do need to get a, you need to be in, to basically be drafted in the Dingers Only League is like somewhere in July, you need to be in like the top 10 in your position group because that's basically how we draft is everyone just looks at how many buttons have been hit and it was like, all right, that guy's going to keep doing that.

So, like, if I hit my grand slam like right before the draft, that would have been like huge.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, but that's almost too huge because I don't want to have to compete against anybody to draft you.

Yeah.

Like, I want you to be my hidden gem that I picked.

Yeah.

But yeah, if you got to hit a couple grand slams, then I would probably encourage that.

Yeah.

I mean, in all seriousness, I think like 20 is a cool number, but I think I have the ability to do more than that.

But bullpen's been talking.

We're putting a bounty out for like 35.

I'm serious, dude.

We play the hat game out there.

There's a hat down for you every single ep-at.

Oh, yeah, I know.

Not to put pressure on you, but that is $20 coming out of all of our pockets.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, if I started to play poorly, I'll just blame you guys then.

Okay, yeah, that's fair.

I'll take that.

Absolutely fine.

If you ever need BP, we got you, too.

Yeah.

Tyler, we got to bring up your son hates Blooper.

Yeah.

Is he scared of him or he hates him?

Maybe a little bit of both.

Shit.

We can't show weakness.

Maybe a little bit of both.

He just hates him.

Well, now he's getting bigger, so I think he understands.

Right.

Like, I've tried to groom him into a fat.

Blooper's getting bigger.

I mean, he's fat.

Blooper's a fat fuss.

Yeah.

No, my son's getting bigger.

He's getting a little bit more brave with mascots.

Okay.

And I've had the conversation with my girl, too.

She thinks I'm lying.

I don't know.

You guys found an article.

Was it in an article that I said?

Yeah, I think you say, yeah, you had it.

She would have told me that.

I was playing.

How would I know?

But yeah, I just, I think he just doesn't, doesn't fuck with it, man.

Like, I've groomed him to like the fanatic, man.

That's my guy.

That's like a smart kid, a four-year-old being like, I don't fuck with that.

He doesn't poop.

He doesn't like any mascots, but the fanatic he's friendly with.

Okay.

Like a little bit more so than the others.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you said after your MLB debut about your son, he was crying after the game.

I was hoping it was happy tears, but he was really just scared of the Braves mascot.

Yeah,

that sounds about right.

Like, he doesn't watch.

Now, I hope he watches the games now, but he wasn't watching then.

He just wanted to play.

Where's the playground?

Where's the playground?

Give me some treats.

Where's the cotton candy?

That's all he cared about.

Yeah.

The treats at games.

Yeah, I take my kids to games, and it's just like, I have to basically have a manager having

a set plan for the game, being like, all right, first thing, we're doing hot dog.

Third inning, we're going to do some candy.

Fourth inning, maybe we'll mix mix in a pretzel.

I couldn't even imagine what it's like for my girlfriend, like,

to even try to manage that.

Luckily, like the Phillies,

they had a daycare system going on there.

So they had their kids' playroom.

He was just there, and she got to sit back and relax for once.

But the minor league games, that's got to be miserable.

Yeah.

What's the biggest difference behind the scenes for you guys?

Going from minor leagues to major leagues?

Like the spread in the clubhouse.

Yeah.

The spread is definitely huge.

Yeah.

Spread.

You're flying commercial like you're usually flying out like 6 a.m on mondays oh dude um the bus rides were brutal yeah longer bus rides uh

locker rooms aren't as nice hotels aren't as nice um food's not as nice yeah you pretty much just turn into a king like overnight yeah it's like like you it's

pays less yeah pays less what who's got the best clubhouse in the majors

I'd say for a visitor,

Yankees or Rangers.

I've heard the Yankees.

The Rangers brand new.

Yeah.

Yankees just have their food.

The visiting food there is unbelievable.

Do you think they do that on purpose, trying to fatten you guys up?

Yeah, for sure.

Slow you down.

What was the spread?

It's always like some form of steak, fish, and like chicken.

And then sometimes there's like a pasta bar, and then there's a carving station.

It's crazy.

Do you have carvings?

I would get so fat.

Do any teams have like a frozen yogurt machine?

Two of them.

The

Red Sox.

Yeah.

Okay.

And the one we just won, Seattle.

Yeah.

That's sick.

They got like Oreos and ⁇ Ms and shit.

That's so sick.

The guys have been trying to get one.

They've been trying to get one in Miami.

I want to be in Major League Baseball just for the ice cream.

Just for spread.

That's pretty sick.

It's like a golden corral every time you go to a different ballpark.

Yeah.

I mean, you always have options.

It's crazy.

How long after a game does it take you guys to actually wind down and go to sleep?

Is it like are you wired for a long time?

Yes.

I mean, pitching, yes.

I don't know how you guys are because you play every day, but pitching, once you're out there, I mean, you're

at the earliest, it's like two o'clock.

Really?

Yeah, like you're just wired.

I usually just go home, get on the game or something, wire myself up a little bit more

until the crash happens.

Yeah, I usually stay up till about probably one,

stay at the clubhouse for a little bit while after to try to wind down so I don't bring anything home to my wife.

Yeah, that's smart.

That's a big thing, man.

That's very smart.

Like a lot of guys try to rush out.

Like, I don't know what you're rushing to.

Because we usually like to get in the middle of the day.

We've been in there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's 30 minutes after the game.

Like, where is everyone?

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I picked that up from NOLA.

Like, he had his, he had his little corner.

He had a little whiskey corner where a lot of the guys would just go over there and you just decompress, talk the game.

Right.

It's good for team building, too.

Yeah.

I like talking about the game for sure with someone.

Yeah.

What game do you play when you get home?

A lot of them, mainly COD.

Yeah.

Nice.

You got a squad.

Nice.

A couple boys back home.

Yeah.

Big Soldier, Ben Mercks.

I'll shout him out.

That's my guys.

I got Demayonnaise.

Yeah.

Demones?

Yeah.

A couple boys from back home.

Shout out to Mayonnaise.

Demandes, you said Big Soldier.

Big Soldier.

Yeah.

Soul, like S-O-U-L.

Of course, yeah.

Yeah, of course.

Love that.

Yeah, man.

We get going.

Those are my late-night guys.

Demonese is married now, so

he's the daytime guy.

Oh, I would have loved to have seen Demanes' wedding.

Just Mayo everywhere.

Just mayo on mayo.

Yeah.

Yeah, man.

It's a lot of gaming.

That's like one of my vices.

Yeah.

Max, do you have any questions for these guys?

Because Max at one point wanted to be a big leaguer.

He played college ball at Hofstra.

Matt stares with the CAA.

No big deal.

Do you have any questions about

big league life?

I mean,

I didn't really have many questions about big league life, to be honest.

I mean,

I never really thought I was going to be a big leaguer.

I just wanted to play college college baseball just to like tell people I played college baseball.

And then when I got there, I was like, this sucks.

That wouldn't be the first time I heard that.

No, yeah.

So I played two, I played redshirted one year, played one year, and I was like, this is, this is it for me.

Summer, you said summer ball, summer ball is the worst.

The first year, I didn't want to do it, and then I just didn't play my freshman year a lot.

And I was like, okay, I have to do it.

Why is summer ball the worst?

Just because you're living

so much baseball all year round, and and you're like waking up at 5 a.m.

And then you finally finish the season and you're like, nice, summer's here.

And then it's like, nope, you have to move to like Wisconsin.

Live with a host family.

And live with a host family and play every single day again.

What's that like moving into just a totally random stranger's house and being like, hey, I'm kind of going to be a son for you for two months?

I've been pretty lucky with my experiences, but it is different.

It's just weird going into it.

You know, and you're kind of just like you have your bag and you walk in and you're like, well, nice to meet you.

And

do those guys, do those families get paid?

Do they get a stipend?

I think so.

They get like, they get something, some form of compensation.

Yeah, I think they're just, they're big fans, too.

Yeah.

I did it in the minor leagues, short season.

You hear some crazy stories about like guys like staying with like families that have like daughters.

You hear some crazy stories.

There was a one, I threw out a first pitch when we used to live in New York in the Hamptons, and that seemed like a pretty good summer league.

That'd be a good one.

Probably not very competitive, but it seemed like those guys were living a pretty good life.

Well, the Cape Cod's a big one.

Yeah.

That's a great place to be.

Yeah.

You got like three teenage daughters, and then you invite a baseball player into your house.

I feel like there's something going on with that dad.

Yeah.

He just really wants a ball player grandson.

Yeah, yeah.

What were you going to say, Max?

The Hamptons was like the summer league transplant of like all the kids on my team.

And I like chose not to do the Hamptons league.

Why?

Well, I went to California.

I played in the West Coast League.

Yeah, that's right.

I played there.

Yeah.

And I thought that it was going to be

way better baseball.

But

it was brutal.

I lived in this house with like 15 other guys.

What teams do you play for?

The San Francisco.

We weren't even like a.

It was also this guy pitched me on the West Coast League.

It wasn't a real West Coast League team.

Oh, okay.

It was the San Francisco Seals.

Stephen Kwan was on my team, though, so that was cool.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

That kind of sounds like the California league.

I don't know.

We played teams on the the West Coast, in the West Coast.

Okay.

But

we had like 10 guys living in one house with like the GM.

Sounds like a good time.

And it was like, no, it was not a good time.

It was a bad time.

I feel like the bad time.

But like everyone else on my team played in the Hamptons League with the sickest setup ever.

My one buddy lived in a guest house of this like super rich person on the beach.

So he had his own house.

on the beach in the Hamptons and then he played he was a pitcher he like pitched every fifth day every fifth day and then just chilled so hard

sounds like a big leader

is the point of summer ball if you're if you're a hitter just to track pitches all the time because if you don't track pitches you kind of that's a big part that you lose yeah I think you just like generally speaking in baseball for hitters is just getting as many at-bats as you possibly can and so like you see guys like if they get injured like and miss a lot of the season they'll go play winter ball now and like the DR or something like that so I think it's just always about getting as many at-bats as you possibly can because pitchers need more rest time for their arms and hitters you you can just keep going.

Yeah, we were talking to Schwarber when he came.

It was after he came back from his ACL, and he said that when they were thinking about bringing him back up for the playoffs, he just stood in the batter's box and would track like a thousand pitches, not even swing, just to like watch pitches come in.

Yeah.

What's the longest you've ever been without stepping into the box, whether it's against the machine or a person?

Yeah, I'd say during the offseason, I usually don't pick up a bat from October till I try to get as close as I can to January because like when my mind, when I start picking it back up, I can't stop thinking about it.

Yeah.

So usually about two months, I'd say.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

This has been awesome, guys.

I got one last question.

It's a Roback question.

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This is a good question because you guys are obviously in different spots during the game.

Kyle, you're in the dugout.

Teller, you're out in the bullpen.

If there's a brawl,

what's your move when you, when you, I love the bulb, when the bullpen runs out, it's always so funny because you guys are always so late and it's just like it's already over But what's your move?

Are you trying to brawl or are you just are you just going and just trying to separate things?

Have you been part of one?

Um I've been a part of benches clearing we I can't remember who it was with me.

I think it was the blue jays when I first got called up and

I was in the cage because when you're coming off the bench, you're kind of getting ready to pinch it potentially.

And,

you know, the inning ends.

We see it on like the live feed.

So I'm like strolling down the stairs.

I get down the stairs and everyone's out of the dugout.

And I see everyone's on the field, and I like run on.

You kind of see me running on late, and I was getting texts from people going, Oh, like, you're the last one out of the dugout for

benches, clearing.

Yeah, so I think my goal is just to get out there early, yeah.

Get out there early, try to find work, look busy, yeah, guys are out there, like find one guy that you can just kind of grab his shirt, yeah, hold one guy a little bit, yeah, maybe, maybe say a couple like obscenities, and that's that's you know, dude.

I wouldn't mind, I wouldn't mind getting in a big old fight.

Yeah, I've never been in, but then you got to get out there earlier because

the moment is late.

Just before the pitch is even thrown, just start running at the pitcher.

Yeah.

Like, I can feel it's about to go down.

John Boy had a breakdown of the Orioles and the Yankees one recently, and you see the bullpen, like the Yankees waiting for the Orioles guys to get down the stairs, and then like they're all like running right next to each other.

It's like, hey, we could just square up right here.

Yeah.

There's two fights going on.

I wouldn't mind it, though.

Like,

I've had a lot of thoughts about this.

For some reason, as a starter, like when I was on the mound, if it was me, I think that I'm like John Wick.

Like the guy's going to come at me with a bat.

I'm going to catch it under my arm.

Ryan.

But yeah, no, I mean.

It's good to be mentally prepared.

You've got to be mentally getting on.

I took some jiu-jitsu during spring training.

Yeah, the Phillies had a guy there, so I'm ready.

You might see me just crawling on the ground, just scooting around.

Nah, I'm ready.

I'm ready for whatever.

I want to get in one.

The shoving or just like the

bouncing around in a circle just it doesn't do it for me.

You want to be with the actions.

You got to make an arrangement with the opposing bullpen before the game.

Like, hey, if shit goes down, it's, it's you and I.

It's like hockey's in goalie.

You got to pick the biggest guy.

Yeah.

You either pick the biggest guy or don't show up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, guys, thank you.

This has been really, really fun.

Best of luck rest of the season.

And yeah, Kyle will hopefully be giving you a call when the Dingers only.

Dingers only do.

You ever sprint the first base on a walk?

No, I love when people do that.

That's a big thing.

That's a good thing for my team.

When we're scouting guys, that's the number one thing we look for.

Yeah.

Usually I kind of like throw my stuff, like a little bit of like pissed off that I don't get to hit.

That's kind of like, you know, kind of like try what the vibe I try to get.

But I'm going to take that into account.

Yeah.

Put my bat down and just sprint.

That would take off my stuff.

Yeah.

If you just do it once, I think that's enough to get you to the top of my big board.

Yeah.

Okay.

Or for the fight, maybe just walk to first.

Just do it.

Just piss the pitcher off.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Walk real slow.

Because you're pissed off that he walked you.

Like literally go in slow motion.

My work, man.

All right.

Thanks, boys.

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All right, let's wrap up.

Max

bachelor party.

Give it to us.

How was it?

It was great.

It was great.

How's the ankle boys' weekend?

The ankle is better, is better.

We were playing some backyard football.

I was playing quarterback.

You know, we had like a three-Mississippi rush to quarterback rule.

The pass rush came.

I tried to do a little cut, and then

I rolled my ankle one way, and then I tried to get back to it, and then I rolled it the other way.

Max coming back with a foot injury was like minus 6,000.

Yeah, yeah, but it feels a lot better today.

I'm walking pretty normally.

Did you get up?

You were laying it on.

Yeah, you were laying it on so thick.

You like skipped into the office today.

The clip you posted on Saturday, I was like, oh, he's out for like a month.

That's how I felt.

That's 1,000% how I felt.

Did you see the picture of it?

It was massive.

And

the entire bottom of my ankle.

It might just be your ankle.

It was purple.

You think my ankle is just purple?

Might be.

Might be.

That'd be Frank the tank.

Did you make any lifelong friends?

Yeah, of course.

Who knows?

Who knows?

Shout out to the AWLs.

Yeah, of course, who knows?

Tell us about the setup.

It was about as

cabin in the woods vibe as you could possibly put cabin in the woods.

Best bachelor's part.

So it was a cabin in the woods is what I'm hearing.

Yeah.

But like when I say

we had to go to a Walgreens on Saturday, or whatever, we had to go to a pharmacy on Saturday morning.

You could say Walgreens.

The closest pharmacy was 25 minutes away.

Yeah, that's the best basher party.

So when you're with your boys and there's not like a, oh, like, let's go out to this bar and then everyone gets, you know, separated.

It's like just the boys hanging.

It was great.

We played beer dart where everyone just sits in a circle on a lawn and then we all had trulies in front of us and then we were throwing darts at each other.

And if you hit the dart, you got to drink the truly.

We played football.

We played wiffle ball.

Wiffleball's the best.

People were playing hoops.

And then we just did like a bunch of drinking games.

It was great.

It was, you know, it was great boys bonding session.

Did you make a speech?

Oh, did you make a speech?

But I made no speech.

There were no speeches by anyone.

Do you think you represented us well?

Like, they walked away from it being like, Max is a cool guy.

Those guys are awesome.

Of course.

We had a great time.

We started putting on like YouTube highlights

at the end of the night.

We watched like John Wall highlights,

Lamar Jackson.

It was the perfect, like,

and it was the perfect summation of a boy's night.

Yeah, and then what about the wild card?

The wild card was crazy.

The wild card was everything I was expecting the wild card to be.

He wore a dart to his ankle and he just kind of like let it sit there.

We have a PM TV coming out on Thursday.

Love that.

Jack actually got that part on camera.

So you guys were playing lawn darts and then somebody got hit in the ankle with a long dart and they were just like, fuck it.

We ball.

Yeah, he also chose to go barefoot when everyone else was wearing like long pants and shoes.

He was wearing shorts and no feet nor socks.

Love that.

He had no feet.

Or no shoes.

Yeah.

No feet.

That would have been crazy if he had no feet.

That's a true wild card.

That would have been crazy if he had no feet.

No, it was good.

I wish I could have played paintball on Saturday morning, but I'm telling you, yesterday this morning, I couldn't walk.

All right, so we should see how this video does.

If it does well, maybe we'll run it back for another punishment because it seems like it was a good time and it was good time for the AWLs.

Yeah, no, I think it was good all the way around.

That's awesome.

Good job, Max.

Yeah, love my voice.

And he's walking pretty much actually normally.

Yeah.

He's fine.

Yeah.

You're fine.

You guys are the worst.

What do you mean?

I walked in today thinking that you were going to be like on crutches and you didn't have a limp.

I know.

I felt like that's good.

I wasted like thoughts and prayers.

No, I walked in dad practicing post-moves.

Yeah.

What?

You were.

You were doing the dream shake on the baseline.

Now we're lying.

Now we're in fiction.

Now we're in fiction.

All right.

Oh, Hank.

We didn't ask.

Did you have any last thoughts for Mr.

Ping Pong?

No.

What?

A worthy adversary, at least?

Worthy adversary, yeah.

He earned that win.

Shouldn't have taken game five off, but

he, you know, he made good content.

He won fair and square.

Have you moved on from thinking that he's around every single corner?

Yeah, I'm happy I don't have to see his nonsense anymore.

Yeah,

I'm always here.

I'm never leaving.

I'm inside of you.

I'm like a parasite.

I'm so fucked up.

This is so fucked up.

Oh.

He took all this energy.

I want to make a promise to Hanky and all the AWLs.

This is it.

Mr.

Bing Bong's gone.

Thank Christ.

He has no connection.

So you're just giving up on the season?

No, well,

he's found a different show.

Yeah, I'll be moving on to another barstool show called Mostly Sports, where they're a co-host.

I'll tell you, though, I don't, and this is no offense to anyone who works on mostly sports

they're so

nice like i i'm feeling like like

bing bonging hank is like something the entire internet needed me to do

they were all rooting for me but with titus i'm getting like messages like

Don't be too mean to Titus, Mr.

Bing Bong.

He's a nice fellow.

Yeah, if it was Brandon, then I think you could go even harder.

Yeah.

But it's tight.

Also,

Jerry,

and I want Hank to you and Hank to put a cap on the series, but just as a side,

my feelings were hurt today, what you did to me.

That was fucked up.

Hey, listen, I was at a Girls Beach volleyball tournament, watching my daughters lose

every single game.

No, no.

And you, in one text, said, no.

Can we have you on tonight?

Yeah.

So for the AWLs, this is what Jerry thinks of you.

He's thrown us to the side.

I was sexting with PFT and Jerry, and I was like,

Jerry said, hey, can we get, can I get Titus's phone number?

And I was like, yeah, no problem.

I made a light joke being like, no problem.

We'll have Josh Dumel on to talk about the Knicks this series.

We don't need you anymore.

I mean, we would take you, but we don't need you.

You've just gone on.

And then I said, hey, can you come on tonight to a final blow to Hank?

And no response.

No response.

And then I put him on.

No, hold on, hold on.

Then I put him on a text with TJ, the producer of mostly sports, being like, hey, TJ, here's Jerry.

Jerry, TJ.

You know, we're family here.

Want to make the connection so that Jerry can go on mostly sports.

Jerry responds to TJ instantly, being like, whenever you need me.

Still no response on the text with me and PFT.

And then I texted PFT on that text chain.

I was like, Jerry's responding to another text chain and not responding to us here.

It's hurting my feelings.

And then like an hour pass, and he responds again to TJ and not to us.

You know who's really good at responding to textbook?

Yeah.

Adam Schefter.

Yeah.

Good points.

Really, really good.

Good point.

That guy never puts his right.

He's got two of them.

Points.

Two phones.

Oh, my God.

PFT, you're so.

I forgot that Jerry was here.

Sorry, Jerry.

Listen, in my defense, a lot was happening today.

That Mexican ship crashed into the Brooklyn Bay.

True.

Yep.

Good point.

Homeboy got prostate cancer.

I was like, look that shit up.

Oh, Caleb.

But your phone worked for TJ.

Listen, I'm so sorry.

I actually missed that text that was in there.

Again, I was outside.

It was very bright.

Yeah.

Instantly responded to TJ.

Oh, no, no.

No, no, no.

He's in the middle of a parking lot.

I don't know where the fuck he is.

I love that he's always got his car behind him.

Yeah.

We just lost him.

All right, what were you saying?

I was saying it was really bright.

I couldn't see anything.

The second I saw that you would text me, ask me to come on.

Of course, you guys are my first love.

But I do have a little bit of an issue.

I texted Tege and I was like, hey, TJ, I'd love to come on Titus.

And TJ was like, well, let me talk to everybody and see if we want Mr.

Ping Pong.

I was like,

fuck you, man.

Like,

listen, you always have a home.

You always have a home here.

Thank you.

Listen, I didn't mean anything.

I just didn't see the text, big cat.

You know, you're my first love.

Like, I literally,

when that hotline ran twice, it happened twice, and there was multiple texts that he didn't see.

And also, he was replying to TJ.

Wow, wow, I sent he replied to TJ, then I sent another text he didn't see, then he replied to TJ again.

In the glare, though, right?

There was glare.

So he was seeing something.

Yeah.

Okay, listen, uh, listen to Big Cat.

You used to call me on your cell phone.

All right, so

I need, oh, but listen, listen.

Before we put Mr.

Bing Bong to sleep, don't worry, AW Wells.

Mr.

Bing Bong's done.

Next time you see me, I'll be doing a fantasy recap by myself.

It'll be great.

That's also not true.

If the Knicks go to the finals, we want Mr.

Bing Bong.

Listen, I do have to say, I read all the comments.

AW Wells, I read your comments, and some people are really sick of Mr.

Bing Bong.

Okay.

All right.

Like Hank.

Hank's writing those.

You're a lot of person.

Yeah, you're,

you, you just listen, whatever way the wind blows is whatever you're doing.

Like, I'm retiring, Mr.

Bingbong.

Oh, he's back because I got one comment.

Hey, listen, I took one game off.

I didn't feel it would be right to do that to Jason Tatum.

Yeah, I mean that.

I sent fucked up voice notes to them privately.

Not for air.

Not for air.

Not for air.

We haven't disclosed the contents yet.

We have not said any of them.

Not for air.

I gotta, oh man, wouldn't it be fun to just do, hey, Dr.

Bingbong here?

So, yes, it was

a complete tear of the tendon and uh pozingus has terrible disease that was pretty funny yeah really funny that was really that was really that's your best stuff yeah that's a prayer

all right so what

let's finish this series

yeah i just wanted to um as we say goodbye to mr bingbong hank is it okay if mr bingbong just has one last conversation with you as as the celtic season is now over yep let a rep chair

all right um

Hey,

remember what the AW said to you in the comments before you start.

Hey, Hanky, Mr.

Bingbong here.

You know, it's kind of ironic this Celtic season.

It turns out the Celtics Achilles heel was,

well, an Achilles heel.

Bingbong.

You know what the problem is with the Celtics after that?

terrible, horrific injury is that no one took control of the team like Jordan Jordan is taking control of Coach Belichick's life.

Bing Bang,

yeah,

Jalen Brown.

You know what?

Jalen Brown,

he was supposed to pick up the slank after that horrific injury.

You know, I mean, all he was really good for was jerking off Josh Hart.

Bing mine.

It's a good one.

Hey, one for three.

Word is, uh, hey, Hanky, word is your boy Robert Kraft saw that that uh jalen brown josh hot play and immediately saw him jerking him off and wanted to hire him

he loves getting jerked off

for games who doesn't

hey

listen hanky i gotta say uh i've noticed on the show there's a lot of

tension a lot of friction between you and max a lot of back and forth a lot of friction just like jalen brown's hand on josh hot stick the friction oh Bing Bang.

Hey, Hanky, I wanted to apologize.

Game one of this series, Mr.

Bing Bong blew out your eardrum just like you blew it.

Hey,

Hanky, Hanky, you know, this whole series.

No, we got a couple more here.

Hanky, you know, it's so interesting.

You know, the Knicks and Seltz going toe-to-toe.

Yeah.

Speaking of toes, Tiffany, show us your Tootsies.

Misha, we want to sing a Tootsie.

We don't want to pay for that.

Give it to us for free.

By the way, I just want to say I'm getting at a Big Bog character.

I've been on X now for, you know, usually I do a TV show and they're like, hey, will you live X and all this stuff?

And like, maybe I get like 10,000 likes and everything.

When the Knicks won game two, and I just started screaming, Show us your Tootsies, Tiffany, Show us your Tootsies.

Literally, it's by the way, I think there's like 2 million views on that.

It's just me going, Show us your Tootsies, Bing Bong, show us your Tootsies, Tiffany.

Why won't you show us your toes?

You fact the algorithm, yeah.

Um,

oh, yeah, okay, here we go.

Here's a big closer: you are you ready, Hank?

This is it.

You and the AWLs don't have to endure Mr.

Bing Bong anymore.

I'm still working this one out.

All right, let me figure it out.

Okay.

Hey, Hanky,

I saw your boss.

I saw your boy on Club Shay Shea on Shannon Sharp's show.

It's so interesting.

You know, your boss and you, between the Celtics and Shannon Sharp, you love chokers.

That's actually a good one.

Nikki, I love you.

We are drafting

Drake May, and I'm going to send you your hat, and I got a little picture and everything.

I'm going to send you a little package for all you endured.

I'm sorry, I allegedly hurt your eardrum, which just ended up being a head cold.

Yeah, it's all right, Jerry.

Congrats.

Also, we were talking earlier in the show about librarians, the next chapter.

And I was wondering if you could give us any context on librarians, the first chapter, because I got worried because I said it looks terrible, and they said rebecca remains in it but it was actually that who still doesn't follow us by the way

but what are you expecting with the librarians what is it all about she's tweeting at us but she doesn't follow us pretty pretty rude

um you know um

my wife was in the original series the librarians and this is the reboot uh my wife knows everyone who's involved so we don't want to say anything rude but um i i we we haven't seen it but uh i'm sure it's good it's a great franchise i'm sure it's good stuff hank's going to be watching.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Look at us, Hank.

What a ride, huh, Hank?

Yeah, what a ride.

What a ride.

Who would have thought two weeks ago in Arizona this is where things would have ended up?

Man, it's crazy.

Jerry, do you want to participate?

This is the end of the show.

You want to participate in numbers?

Three.

Yeah, let's go.

Oh, who said three?

Somebody already said it.

Hey, Hank did.

Shoot.

Let me go.

What was it, 20 last week?

Let me go 20.

Let me go 23.

Okay.

I will go 6.

I'll go

75.

I'm going to go 90.

I'll go 1.

I'll go 99 pug.

21.

What's up, Jerry?

What was your guest memes?

Six.

Makes me six.

Any predictions for

63.

63.

Any predictions for Nick's Pacers, everybody?

Seven.

Nick's in six.

I think it's going to be Pacers and seven.

I'm just going to be.

Knicks and four.

This team is different, Jerry.

This team is so good.

There's no way they lose even a game.

I think he's mocking you, Jerry.

I have no idea who's going to win.

I really don't.

All right.

I'm in like a parking garage.

Like, the security's looking at me.

I got to get out of here.

All right, Jerry.

We love you.

Love you guys.

They

make a big deal.

They did

make it.