Hour 1: Best Back In My Day

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This is the Dan Levatar Show with the Stu Gats Podcast.

I know we talk about leadership as if we know what a football coach is supposed to do in the managing of people and egos.

But when I bring up the Mike McDaniel Tyreek Hill thing, or let's bring it to America's team here and the Dallas Cowboys, where you have a coach who hasn't done anything.

He's got a name that his father made famous, a coach that hasn't done in the league what Micah Parsons has done in the league.

And these people are not to be trifled with when it comes to respect and disrespect.

You saw the sound we played of Shaquille O'Neal saying, what happens?

He wants to fight Pat Riley, and Pat Riley has to trade him the next day.

So what do you do if you're the Dallas Cowboys, if you're in charge of Micah Parsons, when one of the things that keeps happening here, Micah Parsons is the biggest star on that team.

I mean, we could say Dak Prescott, we could say CeeDee Lamb, but as a personality that represents what the Cowboys of past represented, he's got his own power, his own podcast, and now he fights with management.

Jerry Jones loves to make spectacle of these things, but he's disrespected now an important player who now disrespects back in the modern age of football.

Players can now make requests and demands of trades that you that unthought of five years ago the idea of somebody's going to go up against the culture of the power with, I either request or demand a trade, maybe 10 years ago.

It's just not a, I know there are holdouts, but it's not a normal thing to have players all over the league requesting or demanding trades, especially players of this kind of value.

This is a classic Jerry Jones misplay for the sake of attention, in my opinion.

Micah Parsons is not just a really good defensive player.

He's one of the best in the league.

He's on a Hall of Fame track for all pros in his first four seasons.

I mean, this guy is extraordinary.

I don't think he's the biggest star on the team.

He's certainly the best player on the team.

He's going to get his money, and they need to give it to him.

And the hassle they're putting him through, where he's dissatisfied, he's asking for a trade, this is just Jerry Jones being Jerry Jones.

Put it on the poll at Lebatt Show.

Biggest Cowboy star, CeeDee Lamb, Dak Prescott, or Micah Parsons.

I should clarify.

It's been since the late 90s that star players have been demanding trades.

Eli Manning did it before he even entered the league, bled so on down.

So this is pretty normal in the league.

It's not necessarily normal for someone to come out the gates.

Usually this is in the public a little bit longer than it was for Michael Parsons where he just came out and demanded a trade, but it's not a failed attempt at getting attention.

If you think that's solely the reason for this, then he's gotten the attention, Greg.

And we've seen this before.

I have a hard time working myself up in terms of having genuine interest in this story because we've seen a lot of Cowboys holdouts play out in the public space.

The first take talks about it ad nauseum.

And then what inevitably happens is Jerry Jones caves, gives in the big contract, and it usually aligns itself with kickoff of the war.

All right, but let me make a correction to your correction because the quarterbacks have had the power to do it.

They're the only ones who have had the power to do it.

Carl Pickens, Randy Moss, Deion Sanders.

It goes on and on.

This is not uncommon in the NFL.

Yeah, I mean, I sort of agree with Mike, but I also think that Jerry Jones right now cannot afford what is happening with Micah Parsons.

He has to get him sewn up with a big contract because Jerry Jones, imagine the frustration he's going to feel and the short leash Brian Schottenheimer has.

As far as I'm concerned, Schottenheimer is one and done with this team.

If they don't make the playoffs, I don't think he's back for a second season.

You've got Philadelphia, the best team in the league right now in that division.

You've got an up-and-coming Washington with Jaden Daniels.

Dallas is a low third right now in that division.

and Schottenheimer has to win right now, or he's out.

And part of that is you have to have Micah Parsons on your team.

But what do you do, though?

Like he's lying on a table during the game.

What do you do if you're the coach?

He says he's going to meet with him.

He says he's going to ask him questions.

But when you start with the back and forth on disrespect in public, and it's part of your owner's blueprint, I want to get back.

Have any of you seen the Cowboys documentary on Netflix?

Because I did something with it that I've never done in my life on a documentary before.

I got seven-eighths of the way through it and gave up on it at the end because it was so formulaic about how NFL films they were doing it, how they were going and covering games from 30 years ago to do this the way that Jerry Jones wanted done and as opposed to the true way to do it, like the real way to do it, where you're not just covering Michael Irvin's infidelity, but you're also covering Jerry Jones's public missteps on this front.

But Jerry Jones told the story he wanted to tell where he still wants the credit for a Herschel Walker trade.

He had nothing to do with, nothing to do with, and he's still out here with the petty grievances of trying to tell his own story because he's trying to attach himself to all these things in the most jock sniffer of ways.

He wants to be responsible for the football success, the attention, the circus.

That was not worth eight episodes.

It was fat by four episodes because they told no further story on past details and did the least possible amount you could do with those particular people on camera.

Five instances in which there have been star players for the Dallas Cowboys that have held out only to sign a big-time extension just days before the season started.

And that's not even counting

examples like Dak Prescott, which Jerry made a whole big deal of wanting to announce the day one of the season, but Tyreek Hill had the nerve to go ahead and get arrested and take it out of the the headlines.

We have a holdout from Michael Irvin in 1992, held out there in training camp signed days before the regular season started.

Ezekiel Elliott had one.

Zach Martin had two of them.

CeeDee Lamb had one in 2024.

This all follows the formula.

Big spectacle for cable TV to chew on these things.

Jerry Jones inevitably caves.

To your point, if Jerry Jones is the de facto producer of your documentary on the Cowboys, you know it's going to be sugarcoated.

You know what I'm saying?

I was just so bummed by it because my expectations were so high because I know how rich that story is, but they added so few new details that hadn't been in Jeff Perlman's book and were just stealing from Jeff Perlman's book without giving him any of the credit for it.

It was also rushed because they had to get it out before football season.

And Jerry Jones insists on being the center of an eight-part story when all they're doing is covering things from 30 years ago.

And yeah, you can do the nostalgia of that.

People will eat that up.

But you're again, I asked the group here because it doesn't seem like most people care what's happening to the truth in exchange for access.

Because all this was was, look, we can get George Bush to do it because Jerry Jones asked him.

We could get Rupert Murdoch to do it because Jerry Jones asked him.

We could get Roger Goodell to do it because Jerry Jones is telling people, go tell my story.

Tell them how important I am to this entire thing.

The league, the show, the team, when I don't actually do anything other than try and take the credit from Jimmy Johnson.

And the parallel between this documentary and Micah Parsons is that it's all about Jerry.

He has spent an entire career from the Jimmy Johnson signing to Micah Parsons demanding the attention that feeds his ego.

And

for 30 years now, his team hasn't been super relevant beyond its America's team title, but yet here he goes still.

I like to think that at one point Jerry Jones and Micah Parsons have had a conversation that went, Micah, we're going to sign you.

You're going to get your money.

Let's just have some fun with this.

I wouldn't put that beyond Jerry Jones.

I understand what you're lamenting, Dan, but that's just the way it's been.

You only get the participation in the documentary if they can make money on it.

And they'll give you access and, in turn, their own truth.

You said earlier, get me Avery Johnson's dad and his older brother.

They're more likely to start their own podcast and give them your truth as opposed to you actually getting them to answer questions truthfully.

All right, so let me ask you these questions about this documentary because I imagine it'll be very popular and the nostalgia stuff works.

Old men tell stories is something that can reach across demographics because with one age group, you're reliving glory days and with another age group, you're just giving them an entertaining history lesson.

So they spent six episodes on 30 years ago because it's the last time they did anything.

And the hole in Jerry Jones's heart that must exist because he's roaming the earth for 30 years.

And yeah, yeah he won with Barry Switzer but Barry Switzer won with Jimmy's players the rest of the time the only way he can be Jimmy's equal is to fight with him it's the only way other like he'll never have the respect that Jimmy Johnson has where Michael Irvin is saying in the documentary I would have played after my paralysis thing if it had been Jimmy but I wasn't going to do it for Chan Galey equal in terms of achievement in the game yeah he's probably going to be chasing that Jimmy ghost for a long time but they are not equal in terms of relevancy Jimmy Johnson's retired Jerry Jones is the first topic on first.

I get it, but that hole never gets filled.

You can make all the noise in the offseason.

You can get all the attention in the offseason.

The hole will never be filled.

He built that, you didn't.

And you're still making documentaries, trying to get the last word where you get all your powerful friends to go out there and do your bidding.

And you won the money.

You did win the money, but you will, they're talking at the end of that.

And when I checked out on that, it's the Jones family of nepotism talking about, man, we got to do this before dad dies.

Like, that you don't understand what this means to him this is kobe with it winning without shaq like jerry jones will he can have all the money in the world all the money that hole will never be filled for him unless he can do it without jimmy johnson and and the whole the crater has only gotten bigger because for the first time in a long time dallas is third in a four-team division there are two teams clearly better than him and that hasn't been the case in a while put your feet in the machine now because that is a storyline that is even more pronounced thank you to this propaganda that makes us very clear on his mortality as a guy that fought stage four cancer and conquered it over a 10-year battle.

This is what he needs to conquer before he leaves this earth, America's team.

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Hey, Tony.

Hey, Mike.

Hey, man.

The summer's almost ending, man.

I can't get it.

There's no way.

There's no way.

I am excited about cooler temperatures, but down here in South Florida, that just means slightly less boiling.

Hot.

It's been a pretty incredible summer.

We've had a parade down here.

We've grown our family down here at Metal Arc Media.

A lot of exciting things, a lot of memorable benchmarks.

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Oh, that beautiful white can.

Or the brown bottle.

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There's been so many great special times.

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Don Lebatard.

Is there Back in My Day?

There is, actually.

Are you not going to tell anyone?

Wait a minute.

You guys,

guys,

it's a Tuesday.

Stugats.

Here's your guy, Greg Cody, with Back in My Day.

Shut up, hopefully.

Okay, here it is.

Sorry.

Adultery.

That's it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wait a minute.

I've been waiting for this one.

This is the Don Lebatar Show with his two guards.

Let me ask you guys this question off of the college football of the weekend.

Stanford loses to Hawaii.

And it got me to thinking about Andrew Luck in the position of overseer of Stanford football, all of us look at that and say, sure, that makes sense.

Your father was an administrator.

You would go right to the front of the line

and grab the top of the power at Stanford, and that would be something that would matter to you education-wise, symbol-wise.

You left the sport early.

What an amazing thing for Andrew Luck.

Why would he be good at that job?

Just in terms of qualifications.

I think we all assume he'd be good at that job, but what about leading a team down the field would make you a good administrator that would make you be able to lead the finances of a program because you're over budget over here in this part of the athletic program?

I asked the question thinking he'll probably be good at the job, but only because he was smart as a quarterback, not because I think he's actually got qualifications that would lead to being a manager in this particular setting.

I would say the short answer is nothing.

Nothing on his resume indicated he would be a great general manager of a major college program.

He knows ball.

He's good at football.

That's fine.

And I say this not because he lost his opener, but he's already made one monumental mistake when he names the coach an interim coach.

You don't do that in college football.

Okay,

all the recruits are going, what, interim coach?

I don't know if I'm signing with somebody.

I don't know if he's going to be here now.

He's a lie to the recruits.

No, you name him the coach, and then you fire him if you have to.

It's going to take a minute.

Look, it's going to take them more than a year, and I understand that decision.

I'm just asking what it is that we're extending to Andrew Luck that we don't necessarily extend to everybody just because he was a smart quarterback.

If you think that that family doesn't have deep ties to some of the biggest fundraisers in Stanford, you're fooling yourself.

No one has a deeper understanding of Stanford athletics than arguably Andrew Luck and has great relationships with all the money there that he needs to.

And on top of that, he knows ball.

He did it at a high level.

He knows what that looks like.

He played under Jim Harbaugh when they were clicking on all cylinders.

I'd say he's plenty qualified, and he has his dad to lean on.

And his dad was an uber successful administrator in the sport.

I actually think it's a pretty natural selection.

He also has a bachelor's degree in architectural design.

Boom.

Good for him.

And a master's in education.

Look, he may turn out great.

And I also think that the Andrew Luck name has a little bit of nobility attached to it because he's the rare athlete who got out on top.

It's not a little bit of nobility.

There are very few.

There are very few athletes in the history of Stanford that would matter to Stanford the way that Andrew Luck does.

And Mike's not wrong when he says, well, he's close to the donors.

That's what makes him qualified.

And that's important.

I understand the hiring.

I just don't know that the name is going to make him great at a job.

I'm not even, I'm not, again, I want to preface all of this by saying I too,

when they hired him, just immediately assumed, yes, that makes perfect sense.

I also assume it's going to take a minute.

But Stanford losing to Hawaii, like in terms of a, in terms of a start,

when Frank Reich is your coach as an interim, because you just need

something that's a bandage, somebody who doesn't have aspirations beyond this one year of trying to get Andrew Luck to help build this bridge.

But you guys don't understand how much he has to learn here, right?

Frank Reich also took the job because they fired their coach Troy Taylor in late March, which is very late in the coaching

hiring process because of the fact that he had investigations into mistreatment of employees.

So this was a band-aid from the beginning, not just for Andrew Luck, just we need to kind of get on to the next season.

And Frank is not our long-term goal here or solution, but he's going to navigate us while we get this set up.

It's not an easy job that he took over.

Sanford is twisting in the wind, really struggling with the modern age of college athletics.

Look where they're playing in the ACC.

They travel more than any other team.

There's loads of reasons why they're struggling.

They had a terrible time in the portal since it ever was a thing.

It's a long road ahead.

The reason I bring some of this up, and again, I'm saying I too jump to the same conclusion, but I see Tom Brady come over, okay, and immediately insult because he's the owner and he's used to power Wayne Rooney and all of his players with the criticism, they don't work hard enough.

He gets there.

He's Tom Brady.

Like, what, what, when I say Andrew Locke has credentials in Stanford, yes, Tom Brady has all of the credentials, but we keep putting him in jobs that are at the very top of where other people have to train all their lives to get those spots.

And they learn certain things on their way to the top of that.

I think we underestimate how hard this job has become and how hard it is to do for Urban Meyer, Nick Sabin, Andrew Luck, any of it, because when you take away the rules and the money just starts flowing in from every avenue, I love that Andrew Luck would choose a degree of difficulty challenge like I need to stay motivated with with some sort of sports work effort that doesn't ruin my body for my child.

Like I like the nobility of all of that and I don't have a better candidate for you for that job, but he's got no training for it.

Right.

Like you can say he played at Stanford and you can say he can play in the NFL, but he's got no training for the position because

it's a position we've invented five years ago because nobody knows what the hell is happening right now.

Yeah, and now the college football realm is more complicated, more difficult, more multifaceted than it's ever been.

Likeability factor through the roof with Aaron Andrew Luck.

We're all rooting for him, but will he succeed in what Mike rightly says is a very tough situation?

You know, I wouldn't bet on him.

There are administrators that are ADs right now that have administrative experience, but Dan, I'd venture to say that not a lot of people have experience for what college athletics is right now.

It's this amorphous thing that you have no idea where it's actually headed.

You know what the NCAA wants to have.

You don't know what's going to get challenged in court.

I think you've often said athletic directors, thoroughly unimpressive as a breed.

What is their main job?

Raise money.

Andrew Luck can do that.

Raise money and solve problems.

Yes, I think he's also the rare administrator that can help a coach walk into a living room and talk an athlete, any athlete, not just in football, to come to our school,

building a beautiful thing in Palo Alto.

I should probably also mention that in their first game, Stanford lost to Hawaii's kicker who is from Japan and learned how to kick on YouTube.

Figured out how to kick on YouTube and figured out how to get a scholarship and kick game-winning field goal against Andrew Luck after learning how to kick on YouTube.

But Andrew Luck could have had the job for six years and that still would have happened.

So what difference does that make?

Correct.

That's one nihilistic viewpoint.

Anything in sports can happen with anybody in charge.

But in Andrew Andrew Luck's first game, Andrew Luck had, again, a Hawaii team that most of us just associate with losing every time in that spot, unless sometimes the team has had some flight issues getting over to Hawaii and they're at home.

It can be problematic.

It's hard to come out of the TC Ching athletic complex alive.

But Stanford, the expectations for Stanford are substantively higher in football than they are for Hawaii.

Yeah.

Smart school, though.

Good GPAs.

Got to give him credit.

Andrew Luck would be what

the athletes that Stanford claims are John Elway and Tiger Woods, right?

And Andrew Luck is somewhere in that stratosphere with those people, a history of both academics and athletics.

Katie Ledecky?

Oh, there you go.

Hope you guys.

Yes.

Boom.

Who's an ally?

Congratulations, Mike.

I don't think that that should have been an outer thought.

I think that should have remained an inner thought.

Boom.

Jim Plunkett, Richard Sherman, ACC legend, Katie Ladecki.

Yeah, Katie.

We'll get to the SUE for Best Back in My Day.

I wonder who will be the winner of that category.

The Greg Cody Show, featuring Greg Cody, features also Mario Cristobal this week as Greg Cody does his annual interview with the coach.

Did you get uproarious laughter?

Did you slap his back and throw your head back laughing because there's no pressure on him and just it's grand to be Mario Cristobal?

No pressure on him.

Well,

I just don't assume that you and Mario Cristobal, like, I don't assume that you just had roaring laughter because he's in a real relaxed space

toward Notre Dame.

Yeah, he's not in a relaxed space.

I mean, we didn't talk to him on game week.

We talked to him a few days ago, so he was sort of relaxed.

We had some laughs.

There was some genuine connection there.

Like, it seemed like Mario was excited to see my dad, which was fun.

If there's anything to tune in for, tune in for my dad asking what is the longest first question in podcast history.

I had to jump in twice and say, get to the question.

What happened?

He does this thing, and you know, Dan, sometimes you can do this thing where it's like, I'm trying to, like, I'm trying to set up everything, and it's just three minutes in.

I'm like, let the man speak.

We only have 12 minutes with him.

No, we had about 25 minutes with him, but your point is well taken.

I'm glad you interrupted me, but it was a good conversation.

Mario and I go back a long way.

That's what got your dad into the exactly.

He's just like, oh, he's delighted to see me.

Oh, I know your brother.

I've known you for years.

And And then he's breaking down like

the first three seasons.

And his first season, this happened.

And then last.

It's just like, get to this.

I'm giving him a proper introduction.

I'm a professional.

But it was nice.

Mario and I have become text buddies.

Wow.

We have a good relationship.

Tutties.

It's all good.

It's all good.

But I encourage people,

that's a big guest for my podcast.

I'm proud to have him.

Great interview.

I encourage people to listen to it.

Make or break season for the Canes, Greg?

Yes.

When you say text buddies, like you text them good luck before the game or like good night, some nice.

What's the last thing you texted?

It's journalism related.

I asked for something and blah, blah, blah.

I don't want to go into details, but, you know, journalism related.

He really threw a shadowy curtain over everything he's doing there.

He volunteered.

We'd become text buddies, but then he shut it down.

Okay, so that's more business than like buddies, honestly.

Just like if you need something from him, you text him.

That's a one-way.

Give him like a good restaurant rap.

Yeah, happy birthday text, nothing like that.

I went to this new restaurant.

You should check it out.

Do you have to disclose to your readers and listeners now that you are now now friends with Mario Cristobal?

No, I wouldn't call it friends.

It doesn't seem impressive.

Tech buddies is what he said.

We don't socialize.

Did you tell Mario Cristobal that he's one in six versus ranked opponents at Miami?

That did not come up, actually.

That did not come up.

That's why we get Mario on our show.

No.

I'm kidding.

It was a good interview.

I'm very proud of the conversation.

The Greg Cody show featuring Greg Cody,

also back in my day, is a staple of his.

It is out in book form where you can find what is largely recycled material now that he doesn't do any fresh stuff anymore.

Here is the SUI category, Greg Cody's Best Back in My Day.

And now the SUI nominees for Best Back in My Day.

Cruise ships.

It's all about the action and excitement now.

You see any of these ads?

Just watching them makes me exhausted.

People dive bombing feet first down terrifying vertical water flumes, bungee jumping out over the ocean, surfing simulators, tidal waves, indoor skydiving,

scaling a rock, zip lines.

What am I in a marine boot camp?

I didn't sign up for a thrill ride.

I don't want to compete.

I want to relax on my cruise, get my money's worth on the drink card and doze on the deck in a chase lounge with a dog-eared paperback on my lap, preferably pride of a lion.

Can't even do that.

Nowadays, the decks are a raucous boulevard with serpentining conga lines of dancers and Carmen Miranda hats and ping-pong tables.

Tell me the genius who thought that up.

A ping-pong ball weighs less than a tenth of an ounce versus gale-force ocean wind.

You can't relax anymore on a cruise deck because the ship has jogging trails as health nuts who forgot they were on vacation are huffing it past, constantly checking their smartwatch to see if they're on pace.

On pace for what?

To be a more fit corpse?

And why are there gyms on cruise ships in the first place?

It's an oxymoron.

It's like having a cocktail lounge in a synagogue.

I don't need a gym to work out.

I'm doing 12-ounce curls with a Miller-Light bottle.

You won't catch Greg Cody doing anything more strenuous on a cruise than playing a couple of holes on mini golf, watching my wife lose at bingo, getting annoyed during some trivia contest, or praying at the roulette wheel.

One other thing, it's not a Broadway or a cirque de sole.

I'm on a big slow boat.

I don't need a concert or a show production.

Just give me an open buffet and a bar every 25 feet.

Make cruise ships dull again.

I'm Greg Cody, and that's how it was back in my day.

That's it?

Come on.

Hey, no.

One?

You did one fresh one, and it's, I've even, I've heard all that material.

Who are you going to vote for?

I think that one's got a good chance.

I don't know.

That's ridiculous.

No?

You guys aren't respecting.

You can vote for Best Back in My Day at leopitzardAF.com.

Thank you.

I was thinking, how long is this?

How long is this category?

And then I realized he hasn't done any fresh ones.

Do you have a fresh one this week?

I do not.

You know, with all the SUI work I've been doing.

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Boost Mobile is a legit nationwide network.

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population.

Don Lebatard.

My wife says this is a sexy voice.

It really is.

Yeah, I'm hard.

Thank you.

Wow.

Stugats.

So am I, actually.

I don't know why.

This is the Don Lebatar Show with the Stugats.

I've got a couple of other things that I want to get to from the weekend, but let's gearhead it first.

Go get the Richard Gere gearhead so that we can have a fluid transition, transmission fluid.

Let's

transmission fluid.

Is that a thing?

Yes, yes, it is.

Left turns, baby.

Gearhead is presented by NASCAR for all the latest insights and storylines.

And to find out where and when you can watch, visit NASCAR.com.

Guys, it was a night

at Daytona, the world's most famous racetrack, and it was the last race of the regular season.

And the storyline here was: Alex Bowman, the 48 car, much maligned at Hedrick Motorsports.

You have all the resources in the world.

Why aren't you better?

You hold the last playoff spot.

You need a good performance here to clinch your way into the playoffs.

Crashes out very early in the race.

Now he needs a repeat winner, or he is OLI.

Well, thankfully, thanks to the closest finish with the top four in NASCAR history.

That's right.

Four cars within 4.9 milliseconds of one another.

Wow.

Zero, four, nine

milliseconds.

That sounds close.

So the photo finish isn't even helping you.

You're like, how the hell are you doing this?

You're doing this technologically, electronically.

Ryan Blaney came from Mars to win that race.

He was 12th.

with two laps to go.

With the next-gen cars, you really don't see this.

But you had him and Cole Custer kind of partner up.

One was toe on the other, and they just blazed their way to the front of the pack.

And he kept Alex Bowman in the playoffs.

Playoffs start now this week.

Really exciting season for NASCAR so far.

Really happy that Ryan Blaney, the worst part of the life, is no longer losing and having hard luck.

He had a really great race there.

What is the worst part of the life?

I'm waiting for the rest of that.

Are we still in the silence?

I thought that we were still in the silence.

That's the awkward thing.

Yeah.

wrecking.

Yeah, there's that too.

Good answer.

It is a good answer.

No bad questions.

Only bad answers.

Other than that one bad question.

One of the things that I feared, you guys know that I was a youth league umpire.

My career ended one time when I made a t-ball kid cry while he was sliding into third base because my out sign was so dramatically flamboyant.

But I hated being behind home plate umpiring because, and I don't, I think this is one of the great underrated dangerous things in sports, being in and around the batter's box on foul tips and stuff that are going 100 miles an hour.

And I was always afraid of my junk.

I never owned a cup of any kind in my youth, nor did I know to do so.

And so

the umpire, I mean, what do Cuban parents know about cups?

Like, what do I, like, I don't know.

But as an umpire, I was scared of what this one umpire got.

This is just unbelievably bad luck.

This is over the course of a full game.

Really bad luck for this umpire, who, for people not watching, seems like an older guy.

I'm putting him at like my dad's age.

Okay, and this is a dangerous spot, and this is what I'm afraid of.

I'm afraid of this for the catcher.

I'm afraid of this for the umpire.

But let's just go through this guy get hit three times down there.

That was the first one.

Yeah, that's now we cut to later in the game.

The undercarriage.

Oh, that's straight on.

That's not even foul tip.

That's just a bad catcher.

He's struggling.

That's just a bad catcher.

Well, that one didn't even go in the takes a step.

And now the third one.

Oh, my God.

That one, not my.

His arm sees there.

He fell to the ground.

The podcast audience were watching an umpire hit hit and deck over the bottom.

And the third one, he fell to the ground in the field.

You gotta isolate those sounds for me.

The third one is

look for the arm twitching.

Before we relive the sounds, guys, can you just get that third one back up there?

I just have a question off.

All right, for the audio audience, the umpire going down as if a sack of potatoes had been dropped from a helicopter.

All right, we got the third one here.

Here we go.

The umpire going down on the third one in a way that we can all imagine.

No!

No!

Just laying in the field position and he never got up behind home plate.

He did get up.

He was not buried there.

That did not

terminate.

That did not end his life.

But can I hear the escalating sounds

one after another?

Okay.

Oh, my God.

I want to hear the three of them, and I want to hear them in order, and I want to hear them isolated so that we could just see this escalation.

But on the third one, he does give up.

His body is lifeless behind no plate,

and it came with the sound you'd expect.

My favorite is this one, where afterwards, you hear a little coaching.

No one's worried about the umpire.

Way to stay alive, Brian.

May have been the umpire.

Maybe the umpire.

Maybe the umpire's name, Brian.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

That's the second one, but the third one is the worst of these.

You can't play it enough over the rest of the show.

Poor guy.

Does it sound like he's a poor guy?

Because this is universally funny.

This is almost like the original joke, is it not?

This is...

The things that are universally funny are somebody falling down.

This has two of them.

This has two of them because at the end he gives you the punctuation, but always funny, somebody falling down.

Always funny, somebody being hit in the groin.

You combine the two of them, and you've got gold.

And then, of course, the original joke, the farm.

There may have been one of those two.

He's got to have a cup.

Like you, he wouldn't wear it a cup.

No,

but it sounds like it sounds like he does have a cup.

It does sound like that.

It sounds like it's made of cardboard as well, but it sounds like that is hitting something that is not human flesh.

I just love the third one so much.

I mean.

well

the third one is great for a number of reasons but one of them

yeah well but it's just both arms judgy jutting out like where he's like really like he knows at this point the cosmos are playing a joke on him once he gets hit with the third time and and then he just quits he quits on he quits on the game he quits on dignity

He's on the ground thinking, I'm getting $12 for doing this little league game.

I got to get a real job.

And then it sounds exactly like Homer Simpson.

And on the video, the coach just waddling to him.

Right.

Well, you got you got a coach who's got a substantive belly.

A few soda bodies on the diamond.

This is more than a soda body.

This is someone who leads with his gut and he is very much

Couldn't have been less like eager.

He's just like, oh, let me go.

Let me check on an umpire who is prone and if police showed up and put police tape around him would look

dead or alive.

This is how it would look if he were dead.

And then, helpful beer belly coach comes out and just sort of steps over the umpire.

I could look at that umpire laying like that.

I'm gonna maintain that's one of the greatest sports photographs ever taken, the one that is presently on our screen.

I think before it used to be, Muhammad Ali was standing over Cassius Clay on the Fifth Street gym.

Thank you, Roy.

Good correction.

I thought that this photograph on Miami Beach would never be topped, but I've got it wrong.

You put this photograph in front of somebody and ask them, what happened here?

What do you think happened here?

Nobody's answer is this is the third time in one game that that umpire has caught a foul tip and he's yeah and he's quit because he thinks because the cosmos are clearly against it

this counts as little league world series coverage

the poor pitcher he's kneeling on the mound thinking oh what did i do That's what you do when someone goes down.

You take a knee.

What I'm telling you, though, that I was afraid of as a little league umpire is exactly what I think happened to that umpire on either two or three of the occasions.

I can't tell.

It's not the foul tip in the dirt catching the undercarriage, although I was scared of that too.

It's just I can't trust a nine-year-old catcher to not let that fastball just hit me square.

That's not, that's not, are all of those, which of those are foul tips?

And which is just the catcher whiffed on catching the ball?

I don't think those were all foul tips.

I think that's just one bad catcher is making it very difficult to do that job for $12 an hour.

I mean, you heard the aluminum bat, right?

On one of them.

I heard a foul tip on one of them, but on the second.

I've gotten the tip every single time.

Did you like that one, Roy?

That was good.

Coach sauntering down the baseline all the gas.

No, that body.

Like, you'd think there'd be a little jog here.

No, but it's not.

It's Bert Kreischer wandering in with a t-shirt that's too tight, and he's just in control of everything, and he just needs the umpire to get over his whimpering and get back out there.

And rub some dirt on it.

Way to stay alive, Brian.

Would you guys do me the favor, please, of putting up on the screen, since we are now shaming bodies here,

one of the great nicknames now that exists in baseball.

I mentioned the other day with Tim Kirchin that I thought that the fat baseball player had gone extinct, and he agreed that the fat baseball player had gone extinct.

But Big Sugar, Zach Maxwell, a pitcher for the Reds, oh, look at this.

Yeah, he's got a belly on him.

And how tall is that person?

He is 6'6, 6'7.

He is another one of these people who throws 100 miles an hour.

That's the best part of it.

Not just a hunt like 102, 103.

The kid throws Ched.

Well, I saw somebody the other day, hit a home run off a 103, 104 mile an hour pitch off of one of these Mason throws.

Somebody hit a home run.

Mason Miller.

Yeah, I don't even know.

I don't even understand how people do that.

So this person throws 102 miles an hour.

For me, it's the glasses, too.

It's the combo of the belly and the glasses that do it for me.

If he doesn't have the glasses, it's not the same for me.

He is 6'6 ⁇ , 275 pounds, and hits 102 miles an hour in the radar gun.

Yeah.

Wow.

Big sugar.

And you know what?

In the same category, Cal Raleigh just hit his 49th home run.

Most ever.

Chubby.

Most ever for a catcher in a season.

That's a dumper.

Are we doing chubby there?

Because I feel like square more.

It's like Schwarber.

It's not chubby.

Thick.

Okay, I'll take thick.

I think we would all be impressed if he took his shirt off with two C's.

Really?

You don't think, like, what do you think?

He looks like me?

Yeah, maybe.

No.

Take your shirt off.

Let me see.

We'll start with him and then we'll work backwards.

You belly button.

You believe that he's out of shape?

I don't believe.

I believe he's out of shape by the pro athlete standard.

For you and I standard, no, I think he's in great shape.

But for a pro-athlete, I think Cal Raleigh, with all due respect.

So he's not a 70-year-old man.

Right.

That's exactly right.

Okay.

Yeah.

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