Crime in Sports - #265 - I'm Matt F#$*&$% Bush!! - The Fruitlessness of Matt Bush

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

This week, we explore the tale of someone who had greatness written all over him. He was a number one overall baseball draft pick, but it all fell apart from there. Arrogance, ignorance, and a complete lack of empathy for others leads him down a terrible path, that leaves people hurt, and an elderly man, nearly dead. He was given chance, after chance, but will he ever get it together, and actually make the major league, or will he end up back in prison, instead?? It's Matt Bush!! Be tapped for greatness form a young age, blow every chance that you're given, and try to make it back to baseball after 4 years in prison with Matt Bush!! Check us out, every Tuesday! !We will continue to bring you the biggest idiots in sports history!!  Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman  Donate at... patreon.com/crimeinsports or with paypal.com using our email: [e-mail]  Get all the CIS & STM merch at crimeinsports.threadless.com  Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things CIS & STM!!  Contact us on... twitter.com/crimeinsports [e-mail] facebook.com/Crimeinsports instagram.com/smalltownmurder See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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It's an all-new season. Judy Justice. Only on Freebie. Hello and welcome to Crime and Sports! Yay! Yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you folks so much for joining us on another absolutely insane edition of Crime and Sports. And this is going to be a fun one.

This is one of those, every once in a while, there'll be wild stories, but sometimes a story has a couple of high points in it that I'm like, oh, this is going to be memorable. We're going to be referencing this for a while. It's one of those. You know how we reference Mitch Bloodgreen taking over the gas station and instead of robbing it, just working a shift behind the counter and pocketing everybody's shit. What can I get you?

Pack of Newports. Here you go. Taking the five bucks with his pocket. What can I get you? Pack of new ports. Here you go. Taking the five bucks, putting it in his pocket. It's one of those kind of days. So banner day in the crime and sports household over here. Right. So that said, thank everybody, first of all. Thank you so much for everything you do for us.

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It's a musical based on ABBA songs. So they sing ABBA songs through the whole thing, Jimmy. How do you think it is? How many ABBA songs are popular? They've sold 350 million albums. Did they? Yeah, worldwide. They're a worldwide sensation.

Well, I guess that makes sense. All I ever knew was Dancing Queen, but apparently it's bigger than that. So anyway, check all that stuff out there. Patreon is where we're cooking, though. Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports. This week we did, and we just posted these the other day, and they are awesome. For the Crime and Sports episode, we did off-field injuries. Yes, we did, and we just posted these the other day, and they are awesome. For the crime and sports episode, we did off-field injuries. Yes, we did.

Avoidable, most of them, I would say. To the extreme, a lot of them. Really, really avoidable. Had to really go out of their way for some of them. It's just hilarious hearing how people screw themselves up off the field. Had a great time. It was awesome. And then Small Town Murders, which you also, of course, get access to because you get access to everything.

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makes sense i guess that's why the alligator was there that makes sense all right so check all those out patreon.com slash crime and sports patreon.com slash crime in sports. And in addition to the episodes, you'll also get a shout out because that means you're a producer. So at the end of the show, we have our shout outs and Jimmy will try as hard as he can to get your name right. And possibly not doing that. Probably it could happen. So do that. We thank everybody who does and hope you enjoy the Patreon episodes.

And if you just want to be a producer, get your name said poorly at the end of the show, you can do that as well over at PayPal using our email address, crimeandsportsatgmail.com. That said, let's dive in here, Jimmy. Let's do this. Head first, let's get back to baseball. It's been a while. Oh, man. Yeah, last baseball episode we did was Oil Can Boyd.

That was a while back. And we're right in the middle of baseball season right now. It's going. And I'll be honest with everybody. This is the reason why we don't do as many baseball players. We don't have as many. That's all there is to it. There's like three players left, really, on the list, maybe four or something.

There's really not a lot of guys that can fill out a whole episode in baseball anymore and there's a you're gonna see more boxers shit loads of football players yeah is with 53 guys on a team they can really put out some criminals the nfl i'll say that there's just just in terms of numbers they really have it covered and then you add in brain damage and uh an aggressive nature to begin with you're gonna get a lot of yeah loads of money and shit loads of money baseball's i'm not really that and it's not really a physically aggressive sport so you end up getting there's a lot of money but it's mostly for like giant superstars right yeah every baseball people make good money the problem is you

have to be like a starting player for a few years before you make good money then you make great money and it's guaranteed money which is also money yeah fantastic but you have to be a huge star it's different basketball is the best one that has the best average salary the yeah you know the ninth guy on the bench is making seven million dollars a year yeah and he plays like three minutes a game there's not a lot of there's not a lot of utility guys in baseball making seven million dollars who were never stars like they weren't a star when they signed the contract they just you know well there's only sign our backup and there's only 12 guys on the team well that just tells you how much rarer they are it's just there's not athletic six foot nine people that can soar through the air and shit just don't exist in that

grade of abundance and that's why they get paid air and shit just don't exist in that grade of abundance. And that's why they get paid more and there's less of them. Period. You know, you can teach baseball a little bit better. You can get down on that ball. Don't be afraid of it. Fundamentals. But if you don't have the height or, you know, like you can say Muggsy Bogues and Spud Webb,

but their athleticism is you don't have that. Unrivaled. Yeah. If you're listening right now, you don't have that. You do not have a 50 inch vertical jump. I guarantee you, if you do, more power to you. I hope you do well, but I bet you don't. So anyway, let's get into our guy here, Matthew Brian Bush. Matt Bush.

Do you know who he is? No. Okay. This is one of the most, this is like you're going to hear certain parts of it and go, isn't this Josh Hamilton? We did Josh Hamilton. It's a scarily similar story, and that's why we're doing it, except a little bit different. Josh Hamilton had a real self-destructive streak, remember?

He loved it, yeah. He didn't really lash out at others very much he was more it was very contained in terms of I'm gonna hurt myself mostly idiot and you can film it yeah less asshole unless he's at uh the devil's advocate he's at a bar he's gonna be an asshole and that's the other thing too I don't know what it is with phoenix bars but it's you never i i challenge you maybe maybe miami but i i even doubt it i challenge you to find athletes having problems at bars over the last 30 years i guarantee you the highest percentage of them are in an arizona bar it's every time safety that they feel here it's got to be right they feel just safe to be a dickhead.

They're always hanging out there. Number one, because of spring training and it's also warm and it's kind of next to L.A. So proximity to a bunch of different places. Yeah. Phoenix seems to be a gathering place for athletes. But then on top of the golf courses, James, they're fucking everywhere. I think it's the heat and I think it's the dry and the booze. I think they don't realize how, this is going to sound weird, but I watched Below Deck,

you know, the show about the yacht people. One of the shows, they were by Thailand over there. And it was, usually it's like in the Caribbean or something. It's nice out. There's a breeze. They were in Thailand. It's like 112 degrees and, you know, 8,000% humidity. And they got like, and I watch the show all the seasons,

and this is the only season where these people got mean drunk every night. Like, mean, where they would be like, I'll stab you when you're sleeping. Like, you're like, holy shit. And then afterwards, the next day they'd be like, dude, I don't know what the fuck is going on here, but we get nasty. This is bad. Like, because it was the heat. They weren't used to it, and it affected them different. It is a different animal. I think that know what the fuck is going on here, but we get nasty. This is bad. Because it was the heat. They weren't used to it,

and it affected them different. It is a different animal. I think that's what it is. Drinking in the heat is not easy to do. I can't. Yeah. People doing that consistently are fucking nuts. It's not easy.

And you wouldn't think of it, but like in March when it's 80 degrees, people think, oh, it's gorgeous, and you drink and drink. But it's still like 4% humidity, so you're just, it's just the booze is the only thing staying in you, and you turn into a monster by fucking 630. It's terrible. You're replacing the water in your body with alcohol, and that's horrifying.

You turn into a goddamn monster. It's really scary. It happens. So Matt Bush here, he's born February 8th, 1986. So a young guy. And wait till you hear the end of the story. You will be shocked to hear what's still happening here. He's 35.

He's 35. Yeah. Now, he is from San Diego, Matt. And which I just, man, that's just a great way to. What a life to start. Imagine growing. Yeah. Whatever I see. That's starting like three quarters through the just, man, that's just a great way to. What a life to start. Imagine growing. Yeah. Whenever I see.

That's starting like three quarters through the game, man. That's beautiful. I know there's shitty parts of San Diego and everything. Of course. But I mean, there's shitty parts of, you know, everywhere. There's shitty parts of a candy store. You know what I mean? Like.

Yeah. That's like saying, I don't like those titties that much. You know, like, they're boobs. You should be excited to see them in San Diego. Like, relax. yeah it's not that's like saying i don't like those titties that much you know like they're boobs you should be excited to see them in san diego like relax you know don't be picky if you could be in fucking flint michigan would you rather be there in february the nipples are a little bigger than i yeah i mean you know i don't like that oh yeah i'm sure you'd really turn them away it's a titty you asshole it. With vigor, as a matter of fact. Show some enthusiasm here, you dickhead.

Try your best to make that smile into a circle and put that titty in it. That's right. God damn it. Insert here. Yeah, I don't get it. So San Diego, if you grew up somewhere, it was not San Diego like you grew up in the fucking desert right and uh you know i grew up in poughkeepsie new york so neither of us the beach wasn't really an option or like you know san diego beaches are a different beach so it's the only beach in california south of san francisco that's worth a fuck it's fantastic yeah the la beaches

are gross they're disgusting they're disgusting san San Diego still has some nice beaches and places. Don't mark. It's fantastic. Yeah, so he's from San Diego, grows up. His dad's an electrician. His mom is a janitor. So, you know, they're blue-collar people. They work for a living.

Nobody's like, he's not independently wealthy. He's not a poor kid. He's just a middle-class kid. You know what I mean? Making ends meet to enjoy that lifestyle. Yeah. I mean, electricians make good money. Fuck yeah.

And if she's a janitor, I don't know if she's worked somewhere a while, she could make good money too. So they could be doing just fine. I think they were. They didn't see, like I said, they weren't broke or poor or anything like that. So he's like really athletic. Not a big guy. It says he's either 5'9 or 5'10 whenever i see both i'm

gonna go with the shorter estimate probably it's probably best bet that's probably the real one so he's like 5'9 160 pounds so not a not a big giant guy by any stretch of the imagination but uh a very very very good arm on him just a cannon for an arm which is one of the funny things that i love about baseball i like baseball because it's the most quirky least predictable sport in terms of things like that like you you look at a guy if you look at a guy who's like six five and he's 300 pounds and he can like move a little bit if you watch him dance for five minutes and he's pretty agile you can make an offensive lineman out of that guy okay you know but you could take a guy that's huge and be like throw this baseball and he might throw it 38 miles an hour right because it's just not

like that and you could take a guy that's 5'9 160 pounds they throw this baseball and he'll throw it 98 miles an hour and you're like how the fuck is that possible if he punched me he'd kill me if this guy punched me i'd laugh at him yet with a baseball it's no contest it's wrong right it's the freaky you never know who can just fucking gun a baseball it's the weirdest thing in the world you know it's not so unpredictable it's you know pedro martinez was a monster he was five seven and when he was dominating he was like 145 pounds and he was throwing 98 blowing people off off their asses like randy johnson it makes sense that he throws 100 miles an hour back in the day. You look at him and go, okay, he's got a big whip on his arm.

Yeah, he's whipping that thing in there. The physics makes sense on that thing. And the face on him, he wasn't chasing girls, so he clearly had to. Well, I mean, you'd be angry too. That's the thing. It's like, you know what it's like to walk around looking like me? I'll get you out. Here comes a slider.

He took a beating so hard with that ugly stick. He's lucky to be alive, truly. It was tragic, really. But he's real athletic, Matt, and he's good. He ends up playing track and soccer and baseball and football and all this different type of shit. But another thing he takes up, in addition to many, many sports, is drinking. Oh, yeah. He takes up drinking at a young age.

He enjoys the drink here. Age 11, he picks that up. So that's like Scranton, Pennsylvania-level alcohol consumption. That's scummy, yeah. That's young. That's like there's a keg in your house kind of young. Like my relatives in Scranton is why I say that, because all their kids, they had kegs in the house, so they just drank constantly when they were-

Full kegs or like pony kegs? They owned like a bar restaurant. Okay, so they had actual kegs in the house. They had like restaurant kegs. Oh my God. Yeah, they had this thing with like a keg built in thing with all the kegs right there. Yeah. And you just had it on tap

they have built like a whole like a whole apparatus yeah yeah it was pretty neat it's pretty badass i gotta say not a bar though it wasn't a bar it was like off just a keg just a fucking tap he just that was just some beers yeah the beer section was over there and then they had a bar over here in the basement and uh yeah and a pool table it's a great basement if you go there as a kid yeah it was a lot of fun it was good feel like a real grown-up you do you do well there they just drinking as normal for some reason back then and they're just you know little kids drink period i mean what the fuck what are you gonna do let them go it's actually very i mean you're not the only person that i've heard of from in pennsylvania who's like children are sitting in a bar stool like in the bar with their parents it's wisconsin it's

pennsylvania it's that whole kind of it's cold here yeah we're all just gonna drink and then you know it's all in the house anyway so don't worry about it type of thing we'll deal with this in-house yeah we'll deal with this don't sweat it so he starts drinking at age 11 which i don't know san diego that's considered aberrant behavior yeah this isn't this isn't this isn't lacrosse wisconsin this is a different it's beautiful out this kid should be skipping rocks and shit yeah nope not at all so uh in high school he's really baseball's his main passion uh he was also a quarterback in high school uh he's placed for mission bay high school in san diego he's also anything with bay in the title i feel like and

mission bay is the most popular one that's that's the most popular beach there that just that sounds nicer than you know where we went to high school i'm sure but mission bay is the shitty one it's not it's a touristy one it's not even it the good one. But it still sounds nice. Yeah, it does. It looks nice on a high school. Again, you're saying that's not the best titty, is what you just said. That's the touristy beach. Fuck, are you kidding me? It's a touristy titty.

Yeah, it's a touristy titty. There's a, you know, a lot of other people have drooled all over that thing. A little bit of hair around the nipple. You know, but yeah, again, it's it's you can't yeah it's it's better than north phoenix isn't it right it's better than closing my eyes and imagining a great titty it's what it is that's what i mean yeah so he basically had to make a

decision a coach one of his coaches said that he should concentrate on baseball yeah number one because he's like five nine and who knows if he's going to grow any taller. And you play quarterback, and that's really not the best height for that, unless you're Russell Wilson or Doug Flutie, who is even shorter. But still, it's not really, he says, that's not what you want to do.

Concentrate on baseball. And Matt himself said, quote, let's face it, football is the big sport in high school. I had a lot of fun playing football, really enjoyed it, but I can make something of myself in baseball. I work hard, but baseball comes naturally. Oh, lucky fuck. Yeah, it's almost like it would have been better for him if it didn't come so naturally, though, as we'll see. If he had to put a little more effort into it?

A little more effort. as you will as we'll see because he's if he had to put a little more effort into it a little more effort if maybe i feel like the guys who don't have to make any effort they don't understand what they have to lose i feel like because to them it's just there you know easy come easy go yeah whereas we had a guy we get a guy like dennis rodman and he didn't start having problems until he had like mental problems like you know i'm in i'm in my car with the gun and I'm thinking about shooting myself kind of a mental problem. Otherwise, he and even then he didn't want to fuck up his career. He never fucked up his money. You know, he got crazy, but it would be in a way that would make him even more money.

He knew better because he had to work his ass off. He had to work his ass off. He was stealing watches from a fucking airport display case when a lot of these kids are getting their asses kissed in college and getting their dick sucked by cheerleaders. You know what I'm saying? So he knew better. He knew that life isn't all. Controlled chaos is much more conducive to a professional environment. Exactly. Yeah.

And I feel like life isn't all cheerleader blowjobs is a good lesson to learn young because you're going to learn it eventually. Thank you for kicking me in the balls, world. Yeah. You're going to learn it. So I found an article in a newspaper from March 14, 2003, and it's Mission Bay baseball team versus Escondido. And it is 12-0 the game as mission bay kicks the shit out of escondido i think it's the beginning of the year here um mission bay's matt bush went four for five with six rbi four of which came on a grand slam in the third inning sweet jesus he's

just fucking raking yeah absolutely raking um he and before his senior year he like baseball you can be drafted right out of high school obviously and if you're a phenom you can get paid like you can get millions of dollars in a signing bonus right out of high school so he knew that he needed to really put a lot of work into his senior season and uh before his senior season he was working out a lot lifting weights he's not a huge guy so he's trying to get some more power so these teams look at him as you know something more than just he's a shortstop okay uh because he's got a great arm and you know how that kind of works kind of the best athlete on the field plays shortstop in the

up until the you know professional league but it's uh yeah he's he knows he's got to get into this shit and get it going so he does lifts weights and exercises with tony guinn jr no shit yeah because he's tony guinn and tony guinn jr both from san diego so that is dope yep he um ended up uh he had ended up uh i'm sorry Bush originally signs to play college baseball at San Diego State. It's going to stay home. Yeah, which is where Gwynn went to school. Tony Gwynn went there. No shit.

Yeah, so San Diego State's one of those. A few colleges have big baseball pedigrees. ASU is one of them, actually. Barry Bonds, Reggie Jackson. Yeah. Oh, yeah, ASU is one of the biggest producers of shit. I mean mean those are two giant stars right there yeah fucking you know a lot of the the midwest ones too all those like

wichita and shit like that they have that makes sense they're into baseball but uh auburn i think has a because that's where bo jackson went and i think that kind of built their program if i'm not mistaken i don't know shit about college baseball because florida too right i'm sure i don't know how they would around shit i think the gators are a good right? I'm sure. I don't know how they wouldn't. Because of all your round shit? I think the Gators are a good team. Probably, I would assume so. I don't know how you wouldn't be. You have access to the kids who play it 12 months a year,

so you should probably do that. And also in baseball, you'll say you're going to go to a college, but that's based on your draft position. I mean, if you just do that to have a backup in case you don't like where you're drafted, then maybe you go play there for a year, light it up, and then you get drafted even higher the next year. So a lot of guys do that.

A lot of guys get drafted four or five times before they sign. So that's a very normal thing. So coming out of high school, he is considered basically one of the best five-tool guys ever. So, you know, run, hit, throw, you know run hit throw you know everything he's he's badass like he's uh he can he can do it all uh shortstop he's really great defensively like noticeably awesome defensively great arm and offensively he uh his senior year he hit 450 and had 11 home runs and 35 RBI. Dear Lord.

Yeah, and they don't play that many games. No, and he's putting up numbers. That's a lot. And when he's not playing shortstop every few days or so, he also pitches, as a matter of fact. He's got a 95-mile-an-hour fastball, a decent curve. Do you know how great his high school life was good lord i can't imagine finished his senior year with a five and run five and one record two saves and a 0.73 era in san diego 450 0.73 plus san diego equals cheerleader blowjobs.

Let's be realistic. So much San Diego pussy. Holy shit. Wow. And if you think that sounds crass, if you're a lady listening, you go, that's kind of crass. That's how high school boys would think of it. Oh, my God. That translates to all the girls like me.

That kid's a monster. Yeah. Yep. And he said that just comes naturally so jesus if you can do that naturally you're really probably feeling pretty good about yourself at 18 you know like you got to be feeling like oh look at me i'm so good right how do i get to be this good i must i guess i must just be blessed you know like feels great with the with the whole world under me. Not even on me. It's all under me.

This is just a great. I'm living it. It's laid before me. And I can just like stomp on it like it's a board game and I'm a giant. Like, that's how you would feel. I had nothing going for me. Imagine if you were like that sought after in high school. The only thing I was sought after in high school for was selling weed to somebody.

Like, we gotta... Where's James? We have to find him for weed. That would be the refrain. Not, you know, let's check him out. I think he's got a bright future or something. That was never brought up. Let's find James before he gets arrested. That was really good at blunt rolling.

Like, really good. james can save our night and the police don't ruin it be like we want to roll this triple philly can can you do this for us that was but unfortunately that's not a marketable talent unless i was going on the road with snoop dogg or something like that wasn't going to help me at that point in my life that's brutal so uh he also played soccer and ran track in high school just to round it out. You know, keep the game going. Well, you know, he didn't want to. He didn't want anybody to think he was a one dimensional kind of guy.

He wanted to show everybody that he could do anything he felt like doing like an asshole. So this leads up to the June 7, 2004 Major League Baseball draft. Yeah. So this is the big one here. And number two overall draft pick, by the way, this year. Number two overall is Justin Verlander, the multiple Cy Young Award winning Detroit pitcher here. Also in the first round, Phillip Hughes. He's a pitcher, Phil Hughes.

He was the Yankees. If you're a Yankee fan, you'll understand what I'm talking about. Yankees always have one untradeable guy in their farm system. They're talking about getting guys with like, we won't trade him though, and that's who they want. Phillip Hughes was their guy for a while. Before him, it was Nick Johnson. They always have one down there. They never quite pan out to be the greatest thing that we thought they were going to be you know it's always somebody weird that pops up that

you didn't know about we just keep him down there just in case he shows us some spark yeah it's like well we'll keep phil hughes and then here comes robinson cano comes up and hits 330 and we're like where the yeah good thing you didn't trade him fuck phil hughes so phil hughes was good though he's not a bad pitcher so anyway uh decent uh uh billy butler of the royals and was number 14 in this round uh jared weaver of the angels went number 12 so a lot of you know pretty decent size names in this first round uh oh well i didn't ask you number one overall pick though yasiel puig matt bush oh is that right number one overall pick ahead of justin verlander wow so when i tell you this story just think about these paths by who who picked him think about oh san diego padres home team

get the fuck out of here home that's how great his life is well i mean yeah the home team picks me number one overall of course doesn't that happen to everybody he's a hero to the whole town he goes to college to be a hero and then he gets to stay in the majors he gets to stay in san diego wow he uh out of the top eight picks he's the only non-pitcher, by the way. Because pitchers are easier to forecast. 98's 98. Whether he's throwing it to high school players or he's throwing it in the majors, it's just whether you can teach him to throw fucking breaking pitches better. That's it.

But 98's 98. And put it where it belongs. Yeah. You know 98's good, and that's what it is. If a guy throws high 90s, he throws high 90s or some shit. So he's playing shortstop when he's drafted playing shortstop when he's drafted and he's uh shit i mean there's not a lot of high school players drafted in the first round in the first top either they're all you know old dominion for justin verlander a couple guys from rice

vanderbilt university three guys from rice drafted in the top 10 by the way that year they must have a great team, huh? I guess Rice is a powerhouse. I didn't know that, but there you go. So Matt Bush, though, number one overall fucking pick. Fascinating. Wow, not bad. Stephen Drew, number 15

overall, too, by the Diamondbacks that year. All sorts of guys in this. Homer Bailey by the Reds. A lot of different guys here. He becomes the first high school shortstop to be drafted first overall since Alex Rodriguez in 1993. He's got a lot of shoe to fill there. Yeah.

By the time he gets drafted, A-Rod's got like 400 home runs already. So that's, you know, and he came up in like two years a rod too i mean he was he was up when he was 19 he was hitting fucking rockets that's one thing like a rod's one of those guys where you're like yeah i know he did steroids and he did all that but when he was 20 and thin as a rail he was fucking hitting 46 home runs a year still so yeah you know yeah he needed steroids to continue that but not like not like he wouldn't be in the majors without it like right you know guys like that those steroids also didn't give him those unbelievable eyes those natural too didn't make him so handsome that's the thing

that's a steroids can't make you handsome he was dreaming his fuck prior to the needle so uh matt bush ends up signing with the padres which in baseball the signing is another thing if if you don't like your bonus then you're gonna go back and play college sure that's how it works and uh they end up ponying up the money hometown guy that's what the you know they know the fans would love this someday they give him a 3.15 million dollar signing bonus oh my fuck here you go old james he's 20 years old 18 years oh my god he is 18 years old he graduated high school a week ago what a dream he graduates heights high school gets picked by his hometown major league team and then they hand him over three million dollars in one check welcome what the fuck kind of life is this what kind of life

is this nothing's been given to me like that ever can you get any higher no i mean you know what you can't so grace this is grace you right there you can't get any better than this this is the greatest thing the greatest fucking 18 year 18 of anyone's life here this is amazing oh man age 18 i should say so not too shabby that's definitely going to be grace and um the problem is he um he ended up kind of getting into some shit basically here because once he has $3.15 million and he's like graduated from high school, he got drafted, he ends up moving in with his brother. His brother and he get a place. Yeah. And I think this is his dad talking. He said, quote, nobody i knew had ever

once imagined having a million dollars so uh you know it was weird three of them it's a yeah that's i mean so this was crazy he moves in with his older brother but who by the way has two duis at the time perfect so his older brother is not probably the best influence for a young guy right and basically he spends his day hanging out by the pool drinking i would that's with his brother talking about how much money he's had fuck yeah hey sweetheart yeah i got three 3.15 million how you doing that's his that's his intro to people he's like that'll get the ladies right that's what they want i would sit by the pool with that stack of cash and every day i'd be like one two and just count it just making sure it's all here that's all what you

want to do today i'm gonna count that money again that's what i'm gonna do yeah no shit uh matt ends up saying quote it was non-stop craziness thinking i was big time just not caring about anything yeah and uh he said those were my devils money fame and expectations which should be kind of the crime and sports money fame expectations are the devils to most of our guys be your reward and what you've worked for this whole time mr bush that's the thing but if your ego you're thinking like a person who doesn't think highly of themselves though you're thinking of someone like us who's like oh they're we're gonna go out on stage and everyone's gonna hate us that's how comics think but unless they're psychopaths but uh athletes have a different way of thinking they're that to

them this is like it's just different i don't know it's just different. I don't know. It's just a different thing. So he signed. Life is good. I mean, Christ. Fuck yeah, it is. He just, he signs. They sign him like right away, too. So less than two weeks after he signs, he's drafted June 7th, mind you. Yeah.

June 20th, 2004. Yeah. Not long after. He is in Peoria, Arizona. See what I mean? Oh oh you know why james that's where the padres train yeah right and it's right by the padres training facility at mcduffie's which you've seen there yeah so he's over at westgate yep he's hanging out at mcie's here. Oh, it's not at Westgate. It's that one that was just out the bell. I know exactly where it is.

Yeah. Over there. Yeah. I was going to say, not Westgate. That's a different one. It's across the street from the Peoria Sports Complex where they had spring training. And he and his older brother, Jeremy, who's 23, what they did is they slipped into the bar through a back door because because matt's 18 and he

can't come in because he's either fucking underage so he slips in this is about 12 midnight ish yeah i figure you know a lot of stuff going on a couple of drinks in there things have laxed out a little bit maybe we can just kind of slip in yeah and be cool uh and he said they said somebody found out he was underage and reported him and that's when things kind of got a little out of control yeah uh security approached them to kick them out because he was underage and this is when matt started resisting the bouncers and started a fight with at least two of them what an idiot and while they're restraining him, he bites one of them. Yeah, that's what five, nine guys do.

He bit a fucking bouncer. Yeah. He fucking bit the guy. Yeah. So then the cops ended up showing up. Sure. And he fought with them. What?

He struggled with the cops, too. Didn't take any swings or bite anybody, but he's tried to get out of, you know, they're holding his arms. He's trying to get away from him. He resisted. Eventually, he chilled the fuck out. And while this is all going on, his brother tries to make a run for it. He just takes off running and they end up fucking tackling him and dragging him in there. Yeah. And Jeremy is arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct and trespassing.

Jeremy is arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct and trespassing. And Matt, on the other hand, is arrested for felony assault, misdemeanor trespassing, disorderly conduct, and alcohol consumption by a minor. Matthew. If you don't know when Crystal Pepsi was discontinued, what was in Al Capone's vault, or which famous meteorologist is Lenny Kravitz's second cousin, then you haven't spent enough time on Wikipedia. But that's okay. I am here for you. I'm Darcy Carden, and I'm inviting you to listen to my new podcast,

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Not good. Not what you want to do two weeks after you get drafted. Peoria's a little different than fucking San Diego, isn't itdie jesus dude and peoria is a disaster you can do anything out there you just can't sneak into a bar underage unless you know who you're dealing with this is lawless shit out here dude this is this is imagine you're at a job i've had a lot of jobs as have you i know the first two weeks no matter how shitty of an employee you are, you're on your best behavior for the first month or so. You're trying to at least make a good impression. So when you fuck up, they give you the benefit of the doubt and go, he's usually good.

That's what you're trying to do. You're trying to build that. Matt's like, I don't know. I'm here. They're fine. Right out of the gate. They already paid me. So what can they do?

It's fucking crazy. And minor league players are... I actually, in Phoenix, in a bar, had a run-in with a minor league baseball player, who I believe was in the Diamondbacks organization at the time, at a bar I worked at by the stadium where I was a bouncer. And he tried to physically assault this little kind of... Our little manager, who was about... He was this little tiny of uh our little manager who was about he was this little tiny dude and uh this guy thought he was real tough and uh one of our out of the bouncers there one of them was a guy who ended up being a long snapper for the baltimore

ravens for five years and backed up brian erlacher in college at linebacker so an absolute monster of a fucking guy. He just went over and tackled him. And then this other guy who was like an Olympic alternate in the heavyweight wrestling division of fucking shit. He comes over and starts jacking him up. And of all of this shit that happened, I somehow apparently choked him and got blamed for it. And he sued the bar and they were very mad at me for that and i'm like you have these giant guys manhandling him all i could get in was a choke this guy's an asshole he was fighting us

he's trying to fight a little time he was drunk and a dick and so i've had a thing against minor league baseball players for a long time because they're dicks and this is the behavior i'm talking about right here this is exactly the same guy. Five, ten years old. Just lose his mind. Yeah. Losing his mind. I'm rich. I'm rich.

Don't you understand this? I don't have to listen. So as you can imagine, the team is not thrilled about this. I can't imagine. Yeah. Team President Dick Freeman, which is a great name. Perfect. Dick and he's free.

Yeah. He said the Padres are looking into the arrest, and they're going to look further into Bush's background, too, which you'd think you'd look into before you draft someone number one overall. And pay them $3.5 million. Yeah, ahead of a guy who's definitely won Cy Young awards, so probably not great. He said it was too early to say what disciplinary action would be taken, but he does say, even without any further investigation, I know he was in a place he shouldn't have been.

We wanted to visit with him and get his side of the story and see if there's anything we missed as far as his history when we did our scouting on him. No, I think you got it. He was trying to go get drunk underage. Yeah, I think that seems like it's all there. there's not really a lot to this story right what could possibly be his side of that fucking story was there the bouncers grabbed me in the parking lot and dragged me inside and then beat me up and threw me back out again that's the only that's the only relevant thing

somebody shined the matt bush spotlight from the roof of the place and i thought there was trouble i was going to save lives. I thought I needed, I was needed there. My brother said he'd help out. Yeah, I said, fuck it. Two's better than one. Let's get going. You know, we're just in our apartment in Peoria.

We were real bored. So Dick Freeman went on to say, we got input from a number of people before the draft, not only about his baseball ability, but the type of kid he is. We want to go back and verify and make sure that information's correct. You already gave him $3 million. That ship has sailed, Dickie. Hey, Dickie Freeze, it's, you know. I will give it to Dick, though. He is right.

They definitely misread this kid. Yeah, well, they also missed something, as we'll get into also. And so he says, we want to go back and verify it's all correct as well as we need to find out what his history is in some of these areas and make sure our original evaluation was proper and hopefully this was an isolated incidence uh incident under any circumstances it's bad business and uh he called the arrest a huge disappointment and he said quote certainly you would like to see your first draft pick uh you you don't like to have your first draft pick have an incident two to three weeks after you drafted him that's not a good situation

the reality is no matter how hard you try to figure people and understand them these things happen yeah they do people are fucking nuts no matter what you do there's yeah that's a fact too um so following all this after he says all that he is then suspended indefinitely by the team so what's he gonna do now yeah sit around a pool of drink yeah it's summer in peoria he's gonna sit around and get drunk and that's it so that So that's what he does. Eventually, though, he is sent to the minors and sent to the rookie league Padres there. What is it? They're in Phoenix. Are they?

They're in Peoria out there. Yeah, there are some. What's it called then? Who the hell knows? The Arizona something Padres. Sidewinders or some shit. In the Arizona league, yeah. And from there he well

what does he do there he bats 181 not great not great in the rookie league yikes um yeah 181 not terrific zero home runs 10 rbis four stolen bases but i mean you're only hitting 181 so that's kind of pointless at that point so they bring him up they're like well maybe he just needs to get adjusted so uh maybe he we got to get him out of arizona too maybe he's you know fucking around there so they send him up to eugene oregon hell yeah to play for the eugene emeralds okay have fun there asshole there you go you like sitting by the pool well i don't think so pal so uh he uh there he plays in eight games and he hits 222 so disappointing but that happens a lot when you draft an 18 year old a lot of sometimes it takes him a year to figure out how to be away from home yeah and also it's only eight games so who knows yeah that could be that could just be some jitters who Who knows? Yeah. The whole season, he only plays 29 games for them.

So, I mean, that's not a sample size large enough. It takes longer than that just to get adjusted to not living with your parents anymore and being on your own and figuring out how to manage your money and go here and do things and be an adult. And also, 29 games, who knows what the game situations were that he played. You know what I mean? He may need to hit a sacrifice fly. There's all kinds of things that could come into play there. It's 99 at-bats. You can't judge anybody on less than 100 at-bats.

That's nothing. So in a season, you get six times that in a full season for major leagues so 2005 he was scheduled to appear for an arraignment in san diego court and never showed up and uh that triggers a warrant for his arrest that's active for years it's active for years a warrant when he was 18 yeah just uh maybe 19 now let's give him you know he's come on jimmy's 19 so he is the reason why this is this isn't for his uh mcduffie's incident as a matter of fact this is because he's supposed to appear that day on an underage alcohol possession charge after being cited by an officer who saw him consuming a 32-ounce beer in April 2004. This is before the draft.

San Diego didn't realize that he was. They had no idea he was just arrested. He was just arrested for underage drinking. Drinking a high life in public. Just drinking a steel reserve on the corner. Just hanging out. That is not. Bad form, dude.

Bad form. Not good. Not terrific. And that is two months before the draft form not good not terrific and uh that is you know two months before the draft are you out of your fucking mind i would have wrapped myself in cellophane i'd lock the fucking doors yeah but then again we're not i don't have the confidence of this guy i don't feel like especially in high school i certainly didn't have the james he owns san diego he doesn't give a fuck what he's doing out there i think he feels like that too you know so that's the problem and that's when they realize that oh he's doing out there. I think he feels like that, too. That's the problem, and that's when they realize that, oh, this is an ongoing

problem for him. He likes to drink a lot. Maybe we should keep an eye on that. 2005, they bring him up to regular A ball, because the other one was like low A. There's low A and regular A. He goes to Fort Wayne, Indiana. Oh, Jesus.

The Midwest League. Oh, oh baby there you go buddy that's long way from mission bay huh wouldn't mind seeing some of those fucking tourists right about now would you you wouldn't be complaining about shit crowded beach don't you miss those dumb shitty tourist shops with the big plastic bucket shelves on the fucking side of the sidewalk. You miss them, don't you? You miss them. Sidewalk cafes. You miss them.

You miss them all. Shitty fish tacos, as far as the eye can see. There are good fish tacos, too. There are some, yeah. There's some that are shitty that are making their reputation. The good ones are buried in, like, Old Town San Diego or somewhere away from a beach. That's where the good ones are. The bad ones are on the beach. garbage at taurus right so in fort wayne he actually has a better

you know a big sample size here 126 games okay so that's something 453 at bats that's a lot that's a good that's almost a whole season that's a good you know. He has 100 hits for a.221 batting average, which is still not bad, but it's less than what they want out of him. It's not good. It's not good. They expected him to get a little bit better at it this year. Only two homers, 32 RBI, and stole eight bases, but he was caught four times.

That's not good. And has twice as many strikeouts as walks as well so they're not thrilled with their uh their investment at this moment in time good but this is also part of drafting a guy out of high school yeah sometimes it takes guys four years and that's usually if you draft a guy who was in college that the college ate that time and then you know allowed them to mature physically and mentally so that's why they like drafting college guys uh you know you have to you have to invest more money in a in a younger guy you're trying to hire a man not a boy exactly yeah and you draft a boy to you know and project what he'll eventually be as a man right that's what's hard yeah because baseball you're going

well he'll fill out some and maybe he'll get some more power. There's no sport with the amount of projecting like baseball is. Basketball, you're like, he's 6'11". You're not going to like, hopefully he'll sprout to 7'3". Like, that doesn't happen. It is what it is. He's 6'11". We'd like him to put on 15 or so pounds to bang around in the paint a little bit. But, you know, he's going to be fine.

He'll draft a 6'11 guy and be like, we see him now and we just think his assist numbers are really going to go up. Yeah, exactly. We just think it is. Baseball, you have to imagine. You have to have imagination in baseball to see. When you watch a guy play other children right you know when you're watching high school baseball the guys he's playing against aren't going to be in the majors

the guy pitching against him probably is not going to be in the majors so you have to really just you have to see this thing or think you see this thing and you you know project it onto them and like it's so strange it's a the weirdest thing picking baseball talent so that's why it doesn't work out so often so much so much um so 2006 he goes he's bouncing around here he starts at the they kick him back down to the rookie league again in 2006 which is an embarrassment yeah to be your you know third year in the organization and they're putting you back in the starting place. But there's only one game there. I don't know why they – I think maybe that was just to teach them a lesson or something.

So in Fort Wayne, he plays in 21 games, 71 at-bats, hits.268. No homers, so still not that great. No homers, so still not that great. 2007 comes along, and at that point, he only plays in six games in 2007. They put him back down in the Rookie League. He's also in Fort Wayne, and he's in Lake Elsinore. Oh. Elisnor.

Elsinore. Elsinore, There you go. And that's the high A league there. And he hits 204 in that league. So midway through the season, after 29 games, they go, what the fuck are we doing here? Hold on a minute. Let's do something here. Remember in high school when you had like a.73 ERA?

Let's see if you can pitch now. Oh god which is not abnormal actually trevor hoffman was a shortstop really he was drafted as a shortstop and like two three years into the minors they convert he couldn't hit for shit so they converted him to a pitcher and he's the second all-time leading save guy um yeah all sorts of pitchers started out as uh as position players it happens all the time and very very very very common for that to happen hitting's fucking hard yeah and if you've got a good arm go with that it's easier so uh i mean it's hard but it's not hitting is ridiculous like and then half the games you play you don't have to bat anyway yeah that's that's the thing so it's it works out so they could decide they're going to

convert him to a pitcher he hits 98 miles an hour in workouts my word so they're like well fuck i mean you know shit he's only 21 years old or some shit he's barely 21 and he's throwing 98 why can't we work with this like this this is this is good and he last pitched in high school so this isn't bad that he's still got that kind of velocity. He said that he thought he was going to be a reliever right away. Never thought he was going to be a starter. He said, quote, starting is something I feel like you need to do in high school and college. You can't just jump in with starting at a high level.

It's a lot to ask of the arm. Guys, arms who are starting have been conditioned since childhood. Sure. That's the truth. Yeah. You're you either have a short arm or a long arm it's just a lot of pressure man to be the guy that's doing that yeah and the other thing that's strange is if you when he's talking about arm conditioning and this goes for like you know they limit guys and what they do so much kids now can only throw this much like they shouldn't be throwing i have a different i'm not a doctor obviously but just anecdotally when you watch over the years like

it seems like the guys that threw a lot but didn't throw like pitches every day were just throwing the ball a lot those are the guys that didn't get hurt a lot sure you know what i'm saying like you know satchel page used to pitch every fucking day but he just always threw every day and he didn't get hurt it was just one of those things and you know the less muscle you have to i think the better off you are with that you're probably right you're not all highly tuned and shit you're you got you know it's rod's thing i've never seen anybody on the dl with pulled fat right so it's one of those whether you're wiry or fat either way you can't you can't pull what you don't have yeah so what ends up happening is not long after he switches over he quickly tears a ligament in his arm oh no pitching arm and requires tommy john surgery so if you don't

know about baseball that's a complete reconstruction of It's a bad one. They have to redo a ligament in your elbow that you really need to pitch. So it's hard stuff, and it's one of those where it's a two-year procedure. You're going to be recovering for a year, and then you've got to build up strength for a year after that. And some guys come back stronger than ever. It's happened a lot. I mean, Christ, Tommy John, the guy that's named after, and uh some guys come back stronger than ever it's it's happened a lot i mean christ tommy john the guy it's named after pitched for fucking 15 years after he had that surgery or 10 years or something

so uh for him though he's gonna miss the next two seasons with uh with a problem here he did end up what he pitched here he uh had he was one and oh in uh 2007 uh one-0 with a 1.17 ERA in 7.2 innings. Not bad. That's much better than he was doing hitting. Yeah. So, yeah, while he's injured, he's, of course, fucking around. What's he going to do while he's injured, do you think? Hell yeah.

Enjoy San Diego. Yeah. In a cast. Who gives. Yeah. In a cast. Who gives a shit? In a cast. I'm going to get hero pussy and sympathy pussy. This is going to be crazy. Great.

Yeah, yeah. It's going to be, oh, when I come back, I'm going to be fucking Dwight Gooden. Don't worry. Remember him, ladies? You don't. Let me tell you about him. Sit down. That's his in.

Well, I make up stories about him. Yeah, that's what he does. He tells them about somebody he knows. Because I'm too young and don't know. Yep, he knows they won't know about it, so he's like, let me tell you. Let me tell you a little story. So he's hanging out in here, and February of 2009, the Padres are looking at him, because that's when pitchers and catchers report, uh you know they're expecting it's two years now they're expecting him to be back and ready and uh apparently they don't like what

they see yeah but they can finally do something about it because he's not on the injured list anymore he's actually healthy to play so they designate him for assignment on february of 2009 what does that mean that's basically you're basically you're cutting him at that point it's basically a cut and this is a few days before they find out about an incident that they would have probably made him do this anyway even if he was throwing well what'd he do james oh boy uh february 5th 2009 jimmy yeah this. This is, I mean, we've heard, we've had guys do a lot of dumb shit on the show. It's really, we've, it's really like, I mean, honestly, think about our show. It's crime and sports.

It's crime and sports. Just drunken people with brain damage doing insane shit, taking over airplanes. We've had crazy shit. Drunken men with brain damage and hubris and hubris and lawyers and money and fucking publicists and shit right this is fucking insane um he is at the i don't know i can't imagine why he's here. He's at the Granite Hill High School campus in El Cajon, California. Why would he go there? El Cajon.

I don't know why he's at the Granite Hill High School campus. Is that where his girlfriend goes? What's he doing? I sure as fuck hope not. Because he's, you know, what, 23 at this point. So he better not be doing that. El Cajon is the little town that's like west of san diego where like everybody starts that's that's where the kids move out

of their parents house in san diego and they go out to el cajon because they can't afford san diego we hope to move back to a better place at some point but we're gonna we're gonna save up money in el cajon work their way back to the ocean. Yeah, that's how it works. Well, we're starting out here and work our way toward the water. I don't know what the fuck he's doing here. And I don't know why he would be at the high school boys lacrosse team party. What? Because that's where he is.

He's at the high school, the boys lacrosse team at the Granite hills high school in el cajon california i'm gonna tell you why i'm gonna tell you why is he there being a man and being in the majors is no fun you know what was fun in his life being in high school being that was a blast so he's just matthew mcconaughey and dazed and confused just hanging out babe he's like got a lacrosse stick and they're like not on me he's like be a lot cooler if you did that's it that's how it works do you know where a high school party is because it'd be a lot cooler if you did but this isn't this isn't a high school party this isn't like hey cool i'm having a party high school he's at the school so it's like a this

is like a you know a hawaiian punch and domino's pizza type affair you know what i'm saying this is a party there's probably parents there or something this is this isn't fucking fun what are you doing here matt this isn't fun this isn't like i'm gonna go to that high school party and looking i'll just walk in and have everybody stare at me oh that, that's that guy. No, that's not what this is. This is weird. They don't smoke weed like a professional while they all choke.

Yeah, I'll show them what's up. Whatever weird instinct that is that some people have. But he's going to do this, and he's hanging out there. Apparently, he is shit-faced, by way when he shows up when he got there he pulls up in his mercedes to the boys lacrosse team party yeah at the granite hill high school in el cajon california rocks up in his mercedes shit-faced okay yeah um this is fucking awesome. He was drunk. He apparently got mad. He got mad at some of the players.

He threw a golf club. He took somebody at a golf club, and he took that and threw it into the dirt as hard as he can and made a big scene out of it and yelled. Then he... This is amazing. to the dirt as hard as he can and like made a big scene out of it and yelled then he this is amazing he picked up a freshman lacrosse player not an object okay a human being a child he picked up a child a 14 year old child and hit another one with him. He beat one child with another child. He had a kid with a kid.

He picked up a freshman and said, he got mad at the other guy, picked up one guy and hit him with it, because that's all he had to hit him with was another child. That kid didn't even do anything. Now, that's not even the funny part. Yeah. Okay? I mean, that's funny. It's pretty. We've never had that. It's a crime in funny part. Yeah. Okay. I mean, that's funny. It's pretty.

We've never had that. It's a crime in sports first, everyone. We have never, ever had an athlete. What weapon do you choose? A child. A 14-year-old. A freshman. I've never heard.

No one has ever used one high school student to beat another high school student in our entire history of crime and sports yeah and small town murder as fuck we're i think we're gonna hit 500 this week total episodes of things and we not this well the problem is while he was doing this he then stood over the two fallen children yeah children jimmy he stood over the two fallen children and screamed at the top of his lungs i'm matt fucking bush yeah we yeah you are okay that is awesome i'm fucking matt bush and they're like you know they're children they're horrified by this professional athlete beating the shit with each other repurposing i am sparta for this okay basically oh, that and I am a golden god. He's mixing them together and going, I am Matt fucking Bush. Then he also stops and yells, motherfucking East County.

What? I'm Matt fucking Bush. Motherfucking East County. Okay. Then gets into his Mercedes and plows into a curb and fucks his wheel up and drives away oh god damn it cost two thousand dollars worth of wheel damage you know it does yeah so he fucks up a wheel expensive knocks his alignment all out of whack i'm sure fucks his whole shit up and drives away, leaving two very confused freshman lacrosse players,

and I'm sure the rest of the team, too, wondering what the shit just happened right there. That is fucking intense. Why is he even here? Can you imagine that? That is... Wow. That's a bridge too far, babe.

That's too much. That's Matt fucking Bush after he beats up children he thought he was in high school for a minute i i swear to you it has it has to have something to do with but is he on like a on a high school uh kid beating circuit like what is why is he even there yeah this isn't like that bully show where like this is like you know that one those kids were bullies and he went over to teach them a lesson. He just popped up. He's the bully.

I feel like he does get blackout drunk, too, as we'll find out later. He's a blackout kind of a guy. That's not good. So do you think that he blacked out and thought he was in high school? Who knows? Is that a thing? People think that there's something else. I don't know.

I'm in high school. I don't know if he's... I mean, you kind of go into autopilot if you're in blackout mode. I don't know something else i don't know i'm in high school so i don't know if these i mean you kind of go into like autopilot if you're in blackout mode so maybe i don't know but as soon as you get into a fucking mercedes you that might make you realize oh yeah i own this because i have shit loads of money because i'm not a kid anymore that's weird he does know that he's that he is matt fucking bush anyway he does know that and where Matt fucking Bush anyway. He does know that. And where he's from, apparently, he's got that down. So, I mean, that's something. He's aware of at least that much.

Yeah. You got to give him that. So that is maybe one of my favorite stories of anything that's ever happened to any of our athletes. How many times is that story recounted by every one of those kids? Right. Do you remember that time a major league baseball player kicked my ass with you he picked billy up and hit me with him it was fucking crazy he hit billy with tommy it was fucked up he just picked him up and threw him at

him he threw a child at another child he certainly certainly hits better with people than he does with bats. He does. Maybe they should let him use it. He's batting 1,000 with a Timmy. Let him use a 14-year-old, I think. That's good. He could fucking, he'll hit at least 300 anyway. He can break the 220 mark.

That is, wow. What the fuck is wrong with you, Mike Bush? So February 10th, 2009, right after this, like days later, Toronto's like, we'll take him. Really? The Blue Jays are like, you know what? That's that guy you designated for assignment put out on the waiver wire. We're going to go ahead and take a flyer on that guy.

Really impressed with his uh with his with his torque when he hits kids it's i mean you know what though it did show his arms healthy he picked that kid up no problem i didn't see any form of grunting i feel like he's healthy tommy john worked for him yeah i mean maybe that's what he's using kind of like a you use like a donut on your bat so it feels heavier than you knock it off and the bat's light. Maybe that's what he's doing. He's like, if I throw a kid, that ball's going to feel light as shit. It's going to feel like a pill.

It's like one of those heavy balls, but better because it's a child. It's like a cotton ball. It's like a 160-pounder, I think. It's going to work out well. Yeah. He's a fucking mess. So they pick him up, Toronto does, and they're rewarded for their chance taking you know what i'm saying because i mean you know a guy you take this is the guy kind of wore out his welcome

and it's on his home team which is terrible to do you know wore that out his five-year contract and whatever so i mean after that i mean it's for someone to take a chance on you. You want to pay them back. You want to pay them back, really. You know, just think about it. You're not going to get that from everybody. You're taking a chance on somebody at that point. You should really be grateful. And he does that.

He does pay them back. And it's sweet. It's very sweet. March 30th, 2009, he is at a party um and he uh someone he fell asleep apparently or more likely he passed out right from being shit hammered because he is fucking wrecked as we find out here later um while nodding uh somebody had drawn made marks on his face with marker didn't even draw a dick or anything or you know whatever but just made some marks on his face with a marker okay

because he's passed out at a party i want to know okay it wasn't anything it wasn't a drawing it was just like a couple of lines no but i heard a description yeah they just like made a few marks on his face and then ran away he oh we got that one whoever fell fall asleep i think they were running around marking them up that's just how it was so he woke up and realized this uh-oh and lost his motherfucking mind yeah i'm matt fucking bush you don't draw on matt fucking bush are you kidding me have you heard what I do to children? Do you know who I am? Well, I don't know if this is a step up in targets as far as resistance or what here, but he moves from a 14, multiple 14 year old boys to a 23 year old woman.

Now he's blaming for this. He's blaming a woman for this, a 23 year old uh accusing her of doing it she denies it so um to scare her he picks up a baseball and throws it right by her head oh boy pretty fucking hard apparently like you know real real real hard and uh he can throw you know 95 miles an hour right and um he's thank fuck he didn't miss you know i hit her in the goddamn head he would have really damaged so he apparently was trying to scare her so she left the party after being scared shitless you know that goes. Went out to her car where he followed her out there and started banging on her car window and her hood and trying to scare her and yelling at her. I'm sure I'm Matt fucking Bush came out of his mouth at some point. And East County, East County, I'm not fucking Bush.

He's like, you don't draw dicks on Matt Bush. Nobody draws cocks coming into my eye on Matt Bush. It never happens. Won't allow it. Yeah. So everybody there said he was very intoxicated and acting very, very, very belligerently. I mean, I could have told you that. That's belligerent behavior.

The cops end up coming. There's reports made. No files end up being, no charges end up being filed in the whole incident. I think the cops are just like, we don't care about this. Nobody got hurt. Let's just call it a day. He's telling a story with Sharpie on his face. And they're like, all right, listen.

He's like, they disrespected me. And they're like, is that a dick? He's got a dick on his cheek. Okay, well, I mean. They're laughing at him and shit. Let's just go back inside for the neighbors to see this shit. he's like they disrespected me and they're like is that a dick he's got a dick on his cheek okay well i mean they're laughing at him and shit go back inside for the neighbors see this shit they're cracking up laughing at him he's like see this is why i got so mad because it's funny get it you get it so taylor swift is soaring high her every move captured in the news cycle and devoured by her devoted fans. She's broken

billboard records and made Grammys history, not to mention becoming a billionaire in the process. But along the way, Taylor has had to wage war, first by taking on a very powerful, very famous manager, Scooter Braun, and then by going up against the biggest live events company, Ticketmaster. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wondery's show, Business Wars. We go deep into some of the biggest corporate rivalries of all time. And in our latest season, Taylor Swift will shake up not only the music business, but Hollywood and the NFL. Follow Business Wars wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. But Bush had, in effectively doing this, just having any kind of police interaction due to being shit-faced and throwing a baseball at a woman, that violated the zero-tolerance policy that's a part of his contract with the team. Toronto's got a zero-tolerance. Look at them. On him, for him. He had a zero-tolerance because he had fucked up a part of his contract with the team toronto's got a zero tolerance look at them him

for him okay he had a zero tolerance because he had fucked up a couple of times they're like you're not biting bouncers on our watch asshole no so uh april 1st 2009 the very next day he is released by the toronto blue jays so he they get nothing out of him essentially he's on the team for one month and uh you know a month and a half and he uh his stats are one scared woman and and one dick drawn on his face and a dent in some drywall and a dent in a dent in the drywall and probably a dented hood at some point as well so he's released from toronto he's he's so he doesn't get it no he doesn't get it he thinks like what the fuck i am i don't understand why everybody's coming down on me and that's the attitude he has everybody says really yeah he's blaming everybody else for this shit this is

ridiculous i'm just out having some fun somebody's drawing marker on my face i just threw a baseball to be like hey you know fucking throw markers at my face bitch you know that's what you do and then they just release me from my contract i mean what the fuck so what if i fucking threw a kid into another kid because i was shit-faced and then fucking smashed my mercedes leaving a high school that's i mean it happens but i'm so what you should have heard what that kid said he's a a dick. It's his fault. That's what he's like. Okay. So he's got nothing to do. So he's sitting alone.

And he's got, by the way, he has, he's a real car nut. So he's been spending shit loads of money on cars. $3 million doesn't go anywhere when you like nice cars. Absolutely. Especially after taxes and agent and all that shit. He just had recently bought a range rover for 75 grand oh that was his first one a 75 000 range rover then he got like a real tricked out beamer probably an m you know one of those m series beamers uh then he got an escalade

all fucking done up then he got like a super crazy audi after that. Oh, no. Then he said, what am I doing? Audis, Range Rovers, Beamers, Cadillacs, those are nice and everything, but a man of my stature, of my high regard, should be driving a Bentley, obviously. That's what I should be driving. You buy a Bentley when you sign

a 10-year, $180 million contract with your team. When you've been in the league for five years. When you can afford to spend $800 grand on a car. When you've been in the league for five years and you're a star and you literally get your long-term deal that's guaranteed of $200 million, then you buy a Bentley. Because you don't buy a Bentley when you've got three million dollars and your prospects of you've never even pitched in the major so you're out of your fucking mind wowza you should be embarrassed driving a bentley up to a minor league stadium you that should fucking embarrass absolutely you know you are not successful yet sir no you're you're definitely jumping the gun here you're like

one of those comics who does two open mics and then gets fucking 17 different headshots taken and get them you know has a website made knowledge you're like chill out get a joke that works first and then get headshots fuck um also four or five different mercedes he's bought over the time so he's he thinks highly he's fucking broke james uh he's not doing well and uh you know he's got can you imagine him just pacing yeah this fucking son of a bitch the insurance alone on all those cars would destroy you yeah he didn't own all those at once okay not all at the same time he had you know a couple here and then got rid of one and then got a couple more he's always got a couple but never like eight but those in the last five years those are all the cars he's

bought them jesus that's like if even if we say four mercedes four five six seven eight like eight to nine luxury cars in a five-year period is that's bonkers yeah that's crazy for a young guy too he's only 23 right you gotta imagine he's losing 40 50 grand on each car he's he's lost a lot of money it's so much money he's just sitting around pissed off stewing at everybody yeah and uh he's looking he wants an opportunity he's like this is bullshit i deserve yeah i'm matt fucking bush i deserve an opportunity and it's just at that very moment when there's a knock at the door oh boy and you know who's on the other side who's that opportunity better known as vince mcmahon ceo and chairman of the wwe and he says How is it you've come to arrive here? What are you doing?

Look at you. I'm going to be honest. Mad, mad, mad. I'm going to be honest. I like your spunk. I like it. I like everything you got going on. It's drawn all over your face.

You understand me? You're willing to draw on your face. Ultimate Warrior had a lot of success with face paint. The Road Warriors was a precedent for this. This could work for you. We could draw just dick markers all over you, and you could be Dick Man. But I'm thinking about it because not everybody is willing to toss a child into another child and then scream his own name at the top of his lungs. That's something I'd be very interested in.

I'm going to be very honest with you, Matt. Very, very interested. Let me ask you one thing. I have one question to ask you, Matt. How do you look in a pair of overalls, Matt? Good? I bet you look good. Tell you what, why don't you get that shirt off, Matt? There you go.

Let's see what allows you to throw, to have the power to throw a child into another child let's see you dominate a lacrosse team do it matt do it poof and in a cloud of 1099s his head explodes with lust for her for matt bush and overalls for s punk that's what we're gonna call him because if you put the two words together it comes up with spunk and that's what she drew all over his face i like that jimmy so he's basically at this moment in time april 1st 2009 he's released he's got he's got a i get before being like okay you know hey it's everybody's fault but at this point you almost have to say i don't care whose fault it is like

i've been released one way or another i'm fixing it i've been released from two fucking teams here i'm getting this isn't good i'm getting a bad reputation i've never even played in the majors i gotta like you know i gotta pull this shit together here. So June 28th, 2009, he takes a big step toward that. And police say they received a report of a man at 140 p.m. What? Two o'clock in the afternoon. 140 p.m. Yeah.

Most of ours were like, all right, 338 a.m. No, no. cars were like all right 3 38 a.m no no this is 1 40 p.m as broad daylight as broad daylight could be in the mission hills area so i mean the sun is shining yeah right now uh they receive a report of a man who obviously is matt bush the report is he is throwing objects at passing cars oh no you can't do while standing he is pulled over stood outside of his vehicle and just practice just warming up just practice on the side i'm not signed to a team i this is the only place i have to warm up this will get news coverage and i'll get all the publicity i need uh while standing up then, what he did is he when the police pulled up and started coming, he saw them coming. What he did was he got into his car and tried to take off and backed into another vehicle, smashed into that and then drove away and was was arrested in the parking lot of the Fashion Valley Mall.

God, Jesus, what a life, man. Now, it gets worse. Yeah. This gets way worse. He hit at least, they said, he was throwing things. He also, before he got back into his car, there was another car nearby that he had his belt in his hand and he used it to smash the car with his belt buckle god damn it man he's just angry when he's drunk he's an angry drunk this

guy and in 2009 he probably had one of those like giant fucking eagle belt buckles or some shit yeah i mean just do she wants yeah i'm sure with a goddamn bottle opener on it too so it's got extra weight to it and yeah you know you know it's got a bottle opener absolutely guy so uh yeah he ended up backing into the same car he hit with the belt buckle so now it's got a belt buckle mark and it's been bashed into damn it by an suv and uh when he's arrested it's on video yeah oh and it is not good it is he is screaming and crying at one point and dude he's like the guy on cops i described in the bonus episode where he's just like losing his mind he's on the ground he's going you hear i don't care he's screaming like that going i don't care i don't care. I don't care. He's screaming like that going, I don't care. I don't care.

I don't fucking care. Fuck you. Like that's what you hear. Shit like that. Like they're murdering a farm animal. That's what it sounds like. Wow. He's losing his fucking mind.

They have to hog tie him with the fucking handcuffs and lift him the fuck up and put him you know lay him on his stomach in the back seat of the police car while the whole time he's gone screaming crying i mean he's sobbing while he's doing this too he has lost his fucking mind there's something about a good public cry that i can't get enough of that's when you know i don't want to hear celebrities you've hit rock bottom until i until you've you've been seen crying on the ground of a mall parking lot while police try to handcuff you yeah it tells everything in the mall parking lot i don't know why that makes it there's probably people coming out with their kids watching this you know oh no we were school

shopping and this is terrible so i mean obviously he's got a problem and clearly he's having an emotional breakdown but i'd feel much worse for him if he didn't bash into a car and throw shit into moving traffic and smash shit with a belt buckle right beforehand. You know, I go, oh, this poor guy's having a breakdown. Had he not brought this upon himself, it would be much sadder. If he was just sitting in the mall parking lot crying and they were like, hey, buddy, let's hog tie you. I'd be like, hey, maybe fucking try a different approach, you know, but no, this guy is a fucking asshole. So the only approach.

Fuck, man. Oh, by the way, when he pulled into the parking lot of the mall, he the only way they caught him is because he crashed the Escalade that he was driving into another car. So that's what stopped him was the another car. So he smashed two cars now and it took six police officers to subdue him. And he's and he's screaming, I don't care. Like we said. And yeah, they sob him. He's sobbing and they carry him away and put him in the back of a police car.

I should say they deposit him in the back of a police car. That's the best way to put it. Like back in the day when you return a movie to Blockbuster after hours and you're just going to deposit it in that slot. That's what that's what they did. They just deposited him in the like the overnight backseat of the police car. Jesus. Sad shit. So what the fuck was he doing?

What was he thinking? He's drunk. Obviously, he was very drunk. And this, by the way, this is rock bottom for life, I think. Well, it should be, it's not for Matt. It gets worse, but,

um, this should be rock bottom. He says, quote, I was so depressed. I was going to kill myself or die or do something. That's understandable. Yeah.

I get it. First, first emotion he's had so far that I can relate to. Yeah. Uh, you know what I mean? Like your life is falling apart and you want to die. Okay, that I get.

That's normal. Life is falling apart and you feel like you've done all you can to keep it on the rails, and yet it's still, granted, he's not. But for him, it feels like it. Yeah, because everything's been given to him because he's a fucking hero of San Diego. And now he has to earn it, and it's not easy. Like he said, to me, it just comes naturally. I know I have to work at it, but baseball just comes naturally to me.

It stopped coming naturally, my friend. That's weird. I can just hit 450. It's really strange. His life is like a 65-year-old man's dick. It's not coming naturally anymore. It's not working. We need some help. It's fucked up, too too because maybe that's why he was mad at the lacrosse people he was like pitch to me i want to rake finally again you're one of you come on and they were like we don't we play lacrosse he's like you fucking pussy and just

threw him into the other so he said he was so depressed and he said when i was the first pick and i wasn't performing the way a first pick should have i couldn't handle it i felt like a failure i hated myself at practice or during the game until the end of the day when i could grab and I wasn't performing the way a first pick should have, I couldn't handle it. I felt like a failure. I hated myself at practice or during the game until the end of the day when I could grab my keys, hop into my nice expensive car, and feel like somebody. That's when he said, those are my devil's money, fame, and expectations. I was hollow inside. So, yeah, once he got off the field,

hey, I'm a cool guy with a fucking expensive car now. But on the field, you're not performing as well as some guy who has no signing bonus and, you know, grew up in the fucking Dominican and needs this so he can feed his entire family. And you're like, shit just comes naturally, man. I don't know what's up. They just give me money and I'm cool. The guy that came from the farm system, an actual farm in the Dominican, knows how hard life really is. Yeah. He's like the sugar farm.

I come from the sugar farm system. It's a different farm system. Our beaches aren't as beautiful. That's all. It's a little more difficult. Yeah. So July 10th, 2009, he's in court for the lacrosse incident and the driving incident and all of this stuff here. A litany of incidents.

A myriad of problems here. He ends up pleading guilty to assaulting students at lacrosse practice slash party at Granite Hills High. Jesus Christ. And also admitted

to reckless driving and vandalism as well. And that's in the other case. He pleads guilty to four counts of misdemeanor battery. That's in the high school case. And in reckless driving with alcohol, vandalism, resisting arrest in conjunction with the other case. He also pleads guilty to misdemeanor reckless driving involving alcohol.

And he is sentenced to, for all this, he needs some kind of lesson here, because he's had a few incidents. You, sir, may fuck off 120 days in an alcohol rehab center. Okay, that's good. He needs rehab, so that's fine. I'm not sure if jail's the right answer, I don't know, but he needs rehab or something.

But three months, James, that's a lot. Three'm not sure if jail's the right answer. I don't know, but he needs rehab or something. But three months, James. That's a lot. Three months. Is it four? Four months. That's four months. That's four months. That's a good chunk of time.

You're going to go there for a while. So I don't know if it's all inpatient or if there's like a weekend. I don't know how that works. Right. So January 25th, 2010, I don't know. Obviously, if you're a team, he's irresistible. He's just irresistible. I don't know how you wouldn't sign him.

And Tampa feels the same way because Tampa signs him as a free agent that day for some fucking. Why? Taking a chance on him. Going to take a shot at him. Why not? So he ends up, you know pitching there uh he throws for what is this uh the charlotte team in florida they also first of all they sent him down to the rookie league first where he's in there that's got to be when he's 24 there is something about the words uh

first overall draft pick james that will get you an unbelievable amount of chances they saw that potential at some points there's like they know it's in there yeah no it's in there and he at this point still hasn't made it to the majors yet and he's kind of working against being trying not to be only the third draft pick in the history of baseball to not make it for the third top overall pick in the history of baseball to not make it. The third top overall pick in the history of baseball to not make the major leagues ever. It's only been three. It was that Steve Chillicothe guy in the 60s that the Mets picked over Reggie Jackson. Whoops.

Good job, guys. Nice job, Mets. And then it was Brian Taylor, who we did an episode on, the Yankees' Brian Taylor, because he destroyed his arm fighting with people and being an asshole. Defending his brother or some shit? Yeah, fighting outside a trailer. That's all I remember. That's not good.

Not good at all. Never good. This is only the third one. Yeah, this is only the third so far. So he's signed. He's got a chance still to not be in that group. He's signed with Tampa. Let's see.

What does he have here in one appearance in uh in rookie league he has a 169 era he's one and oh uh oh four games he's a reliever so 5.1 innings 169 era not bad so they send him to charlotte yeah which is high a ball there um he only pitches in a couple games there so then 2011 they move him up to double a so this is as high as he's ever been this is it double a um and double a is where they put the prospects double a is where they put people that they think are going to end up in the majors yeah that's kind of how that works so he has he has a five and three record kind of how that works so he has he has a five and three record there 36 games he pitches in 50 innings so he's a he's a reliever 483 era um which isn't terrible though because you got to think about you know he has never really pitched this much before so this is his first real time 77

strikeouts 24 walks so three to one strikeout to walk ratio shows very good control for a guy who's not a pitcher by until this fuck that's good that's really good so they're looking at 2012 he's he could you know they're looking at him he might make the team at some point here in 2012 so uh spring training comes around and uh you know this is what he's looking for march 22nd 2012 the heat of spring training i mean the cuts are coming soon you know um he has been clean and sober for a few months now since he signed with the team he's been a good boy he's been doing his thing uh one day though he asked his roommate brandeyer, who's on the minor league team there. He was a roommate of his in spring training.

And he said, do you mind if I borrow your truck quick? He's got a Dodge Durango. And yeah, he said, I'm going to drive home from practice. It's a half mile away. I want to drive your truck. Is that cool with you? And he said, yeah, sure. What the hell?

I mean, you're driving a half mile away. Not quite, though. He ends up driving to mean, you're driving a half mile away. Not quite, though. He ends up driving to Sarasota, which is 40 miles away. Sarasota, Florida. 40 miles away. Yeah. And buying beer at a gas station. Why so far?

There are so many closer gas stations. I think in his head, though, he had to be like away from everybody, like somewhere where nobody would notice him or recognize him or where nobody from the team's wife would drive up or something and say, I saw Matt chugging Mickey's big mouths on the side of the fucking AM, PM. It's a bad look. Also, he's still wearing the uniform. Yeah, he's just wearing the cleats and everything. That click clack of the cleats really gets you noticed in a convenience store,

you know, in a convenience store, you know? In a fucking gas station. So he's buying beers. He says that he told himself just a few. He's going to have a few beers. That's it. Haven't drank in a long time. You know, a lot of pressure mounting and cuts are coming up, all this shit.

I could use a little relief. Yeah. You know? So he has a few beers. And then he said, man, you know what else would be good i'm gonna stop by the liquor store just a couple i need a couple of things and uh what he ends up getting is a shitload of those little airplane bottles yeah tons of those and he decided for himself that it would be quote one final bender okay today one final bender let's do this yeah i'm gonna get shit hammered fuck it man i drank some beers now it's just i'm gonna pound these little liquor bottles

until i can't see straight anymore so from then on well let me introduce another character that'll come up a little bit later here okay here's a guy named tony tofano yeah hey, Tony. Tony Tufano. Tony Tufano from Florida. He's from the Northeast originally, obviously. He is 72 years old, Tony Tufano. He's basically getting back into shape at this moment in time.'s he's a runner and he was a marathon runner even and in very good shape but now he's not not in great shape he would does like a kind of uh basically like an eight mile loop that he'll do for his exercise which is for me is amazing i would be like i fucking walked eight miles eight miles was crazy but for him that's a little short you know a little controlled walk a little jaunt james a little jaunt i'm gonna go out and walk about eight miles i'll be back uh so this is to lose weight and everything like that because he's uh he was a little bit depressed because his wife of 50 years died 10 months earlier oh my god so yeah he'd been married for 50 years to this woman a little spaghet at home

so he's depressed been putting a little bit too much romano on it i get it a little too much i get it you know order you're ordering a piece of cheesecake for dessert that you normally wouldn't order those cheesecakes add up by the end of the month you know life is gone i've been with her for 50 years i'm realizing my own mortality i need to get this shit together he's lucky he didn't drop dead too because a lot of people end up somehow just dropping dead. They're so lonely. I don't know. Broken heart, man.

Yeah, their bodies give up. But his wife died, so he's recommitted himself, though, to getting himself in shape. Good for you, Tony. He's been doing that over the last 10 months. Tony Tufano's pulling it together. He's struggling, obviously. It was hard because his wife's last 22 months she'd been in and out of the hospital 16 times god damn it which is just brutal i mean obviously on the

on her the person who was dealing with the problem but it's also torture for him for any family around because it's just he's gonna watch it for helpless yeah not only do you have to actually do all this shit logistically but then you have to care for this person. It's somebody that you care about. So apparently he said he dropped everything to be by her side. And that's all he did for the last 22 months of her life was just take care of her. And then he said, quote, I had a tough time getting over it. But he said he was starting to do better.

He was running three days a week. I guess he used to be a marathon runner he once finished the boston marathon in under three hours is what the article says which seems very good i couldn't give a fuck about the amount of time it took yeah the answer is he finished it that's a lot that's incredible if i called you and i said i just just finished the Boston Marathon, you'd go, holy shit, really? Yeah. Are you kidding me? Yeah, I've been doing it for the last three months. I don't care, James. That's amazing.

You would freak the fuck out. Well, it only took me. You'd be like, don't care. Jimmy, you don't understand. I stopped in hotels. I don't care, James. You did it. That's amazing.

You went back to it. It's impressive. I don't care that you stopped for dinner in the middle of it that's fine so he was he did that he also ran the Disney marathon in three hours and 14 minutes at age 57 holy shit just so he could get the Mickey Mouse shaped medal for his granddaughter who loved all the mickey mouse what a darling tony is tony tifano's a nice fucking guy who's you want that medal i'll run 26 fucking miles watch this i'll do it i'll get it don't worry about hey sweetheart you wait right here i'll be back in about three under three and a half hours don't you worry about it grandpa tifano's got you covered she wants the fucking

medal i'll get her the fucking medal i'll get her the fucking medal. I'll get her the fucking medal. That's incredible. So he's a good guy, and he's obviously been having a tough run of it. And that really sucks, too, to lose your wife at like 71, 72. You've been together. They probably planned their whole lives to retire and then do this and this, and now he's by himself. Fuck. That sucks. So this particular day, Matt's out driving, like we said, drinking and driving.

You know how that goes.'s always fun yeah yeah um at one point after he's drank uh he drank all the the beer and then he drank all the little liquor bottles he backed into a car while performing an illegal u-turn that makes sense at one point yeah according to the venice Police Department report here, around 2.20 p.m., he is a day drinker. I get it, man. It feels so good. It feels so good. But not to get blackout. Not to drive and drive around.

You've got shit to do. This is wild. Yeah, this isn't like, hey, I had a couple of shots and took the edge off or something. This is like hammered. I had a couple of shots and took the edge off or something. This is like hammered. He attempted to make an illegal U-turn and he side swiped a vehicle owned by Nelson Chafee, a 70 year old from Massachusetts. So different guy. This isn't Tony Tufano who had stopped at a red light on SR 45 a northbound.

The report states Bush fled the scene on a us-41 bypass so uh the venice police department issued an attempt to locate otter on bush's vehicle based on all of that and um they said he's a male in his 20s wearing a hat and driving a black suv yeah um and included a bunch of numbers on his tag to attempt to a Tampa Bay Devil Rays jersey. And yes, he's also number 51 on the Devil Rays. So they had part of his tag. It was a Maryland tag, and it belonged to Brandon Guyer. It wasn't even his goddamn car.

So Chafee, he was driving his Jeep Cherokee with his wife Judy in the passenger seat, and he said that he was going north on US 51, and he saw Busch's SUV, which he estimated was going about 70 miles an hour. It's a 35-mile-an-hour. Wowza. So he's just cruising. And he said that he, quote,

nearly hit a car in the right lane before pulling into a left-turn lane at the intersection at Venice Avenue. Chafee said he then pulled up next to Bush, looked at him and then straight ahead and waited for the light to change. He said when Bush's light changed, Chafee said Bush backed up, angled his car directly at his and hit the rear door before then making an illegal U-turn and going southbound on

US 41. Wow. So this was like, he was mad at him basically. And, uh, Chafee says that he nor his wife was hurt, but they did have to replace the rear door. And he said, quote, I must've angered him. I made him. Yeah. Yeah. You pissed him off apparently. Cause Jesus Christ, he fucking, I made him. Yeah. Yeah. You pissed him off, apparently, because Jesus Christ, he fucking. Wow.

He put it in reverse in an intersection, James. Yeah. No shit, man. So then he and then made a U-turn. He like he's like, look back like that's the right angle. Yeah. OK, good. Fuck you.

So then about an hour later, this is just these are like Easter eggs just chasing this guy all over town. So the cops keep getting all these reports. An hour later, about 3.30 p.m., Sarasota County Sheriff's Office advised Venice police that the State College of Florida just had a hit and run that involved a black Durango. Could this be the same car? It fled the scene southbound after hitting a light pole. He plowed into a pole. They filed a non-arrest complaint for leaving the scene of an accident with property damage, saying, quote, the light pole had been struck on the campus near the roadway. The light pole was cut in half, and he took down a fucking light pole, dude. And there were still multiple pieces of uh black uh black

pieces of vehicle lying on the ground from the impact yeah so first of all i would love to say poor brandon guyer yeah he better be being seen wherever he is because so many people tell cops oh my car was stolen obviously i'm not drunk he lent it i lent it to my friend right what's your friend's name matt bush turn around sir hands behind your back they're gonna arrest him for sure so he he flees the scene from there they don't find him so from there i can let you where's he going jimmy where do you think he's headed is he going back to spring training nope or farthest thing from that he can go into the beach no is he going, Jimmy? Where do you think he's headed now? Is he going back to spring training? Nope. Farthest thing from that he can find. Going to the beach.

No, Jimmy. Is he going to San Diego? He's going to the strip club. Where else do you go in fucking Tampa or wherever the fuck they are in Florida when you're shit hammered and you've already had two hit and runs fucking in the course of an hour and a half? You go to a strip club and see some of them titties. Yeah.

He's no sucker. He's looking at the Florida beaches here. These are not San Diego beaches. I need to see titties. But you know what the great part is? You were actually half right. Because the strip club he went to was about a mile away from the Devil Ray Spring Complex.

Okay. He did a fucking loop and came back is what he did. He did a big loop, shit face, banged into some shit, came back and was like, oh, let's start with the strip club. That sounds like a fun thing. I'll see some titties. That's what he does. Sounds like a fun thing.

I'll see you in some titties. That's what he does. So he hangs out, has a few drinks in the strip club, obviously, before being kicked out of the strip club. What the fuck? Why is he kicked out of the strip club? Because he grabbed titties. Getting up onto the stage and dancing with the women. He tried to get on the pole twice in one

day jimmy two distinctly different types of poles but he's on the pole twice he broke one and then got kicked off of the other one hilarious he's having bad pole luck this guy so well the well the sarasota police are driving around looking for a black suv he's in here trying to get on the stage with the strippers he's on stage going i'm matt fucking bush trying to grab fucking people's vaginas and shit and they're like well get them out of here and nobody even cares that you're matt bush anymore no one knows who you are now you're just some fucking you're some minor league washout basically no one cares who's drunk at 2 p.m not just drunk fucking falling all over himself blackout drunk wasted because we find out at this point he's pretty much blacked out by the

time he leaves the strip club uh by the time he leaves the strip club he of course gets in the car drives more obviously um he starts driving this is us 41 is the road now uh remember tony tifano yeah our buddy here tony tifano is also on us 41 no he is driving his harley davidson oh that's no match for a drunk man in a durango james durango oh my god on us 41 near state road 776 on a thursday afternoon this is about 5 p.m so he hung out in the strip club for you know 45 minutes or so tony he's dry bush is driving a 2011 dodge durango on the inside uh the inside the inside left lane on us 41 and uh tofano apparently uh he had spent the afternoon babysitting his granddaughter.

Like a hero does. And then he decided he needed to move into the left lane so he could turn into a Publix to pick up some milk to have at his house. Or, you know, I'm sure to give to underprivileged who the fuck knows. He's going to stop by the children's hospital and give it to the lack of calcium ward. Yeah, he's going to give it to the kids with weak bones. They got an osteoporosis wing down there with the kids. It's very rare. Childhood osteoporosis.

We're going to really, we're going to dentsen them bones up. We'll get these kids playing football in no time. He's going to pop by the animal hospital and give some to the baby kittens whose mother was just hit by a car. Well, after this, he was going to stop by and adopt some to the baby kittens whose mother was just hit by a car well after this he was going to stop by and adopt a couple of baby kittens just you know ones that were found you gotta be like anyone's that are sick that were just found kind of maybe with a

missing eye or something like that i could take in i just picked up a gallon of milk i don't care if they're weaning yeah that's fine i got him covered so he said that he checked his left mirror and checked his blind spot and make sure the lane was clear. Didn't see anything coming. Didn't see shit. But it's at that moment that Matt going well above the speed limit plows into him from behind. Fuck. Just rear ended. A motorcycle is the most horrifying thought by a Dodge Durango, which is an SUV.

If you're not a car person or live out of the country, it's a big fucking SUV. Yeah, it's it's big. It's a big car. So he yeah, this ends up happening. Tofano is ejected from the motorcycle. Obviously, that's not the worst part does not happen yet yeah because you either go up or or down well what ended up happening he stopped i guess everybody stopped and all this sort of thing and then matt looked around and decided at the top tofano said at this

point he didn't even know what happened he said he woke kind of came to on the ground and he said he was reaching for his handlebars when he came to just kind of came to on the ground and he said he was reaching for his handlebars when he came to just out of habit because that's where his mind thought he was and he's not even on the fucking bike anymore matt just looks around and says i better get the fuck out of here yeah i mean uh let's go for three for three here today i'm gonna take off he takes off and as he's driving away he runs over to fano's head god damn it he i'm gonna repeat that he runs over this poor man's fucking head with his tire jesus his head jimmy is he wearing a helmet james not his leg thankfully for him at the insistence of his daughter he wears a helmet good man well done sir he ended up surviving because only because of the

helmet right he would have been splattered on a fucking florida freeway yeah yeah he said not from impact oh my later on later on matt would say he all he remembers is he thought he ran over a motorcycle, but he didn't think there was people involved at all. And Tufano said, that was me. Ran over. He fucking ran over my head. Let's talk about his injuries. First of all, this poor guy, because he just got his head ran over. Yeah.

Ten of the 12 ribs on his right side and two on his left side are broken. So he's going to have trouble breathing for a while. Fractured eight vertebrae. Yep. Eight. Yeah. Oh, my God. That's what an SUV does.

His right lung is collapsed and bruised. Fuck. And he fractured his right cheekbone, his left shoulder blade, and his left hand. And he has brain hemorrhaging. Of course he does. So that's horrifying, those injuries. That is like you're just broken. Also has road rash on his arms and his back and all that sort of shit.

And, yes, it was his granddaughter whom he got the medal for who insisted he always wore a helmet, so he did it. Helmet, by the way, huge crack on the right side. He broke the fucking helmet. That's why his face is fucked up and he's got brain hemorrhaging. Imagine if he doesn't have a helmet. Your skull is not as strong as that helmet, first of all. He would have popped like a grape on the freeway.

Oh, yeah. He would have been a headless man. It would have exploded like scanners. It would have been fucking ridiculous. man it would have exploded like scanners it would have been fucking ridiculous so um yeah well he does that uh the reports are a witness from there said quote literally the tire on the suv ran over the driver's head without the helmet the gentleman would have been dead instantly yeah and i can't disagree with that that's that's just insane so he's takes off though he's doesn't stick around to figure out the consequences he takes off uh several witnesses told authorities that the black suv continued down on us 41 and uh the county sheriff's department

joined in the search because now this durango is i mean it's fucking yeah it's murderous it's yeah it's a it's a real menace and finally the durango is sighted traveling south on toledo blade boulevard near price boulevard and uh yeah they end up somehow getting him i guess i don't know if he stopped somewhere and they ended up pulling him over and getting him uh they said that he had red blurry eyes slow movements your basic characteristics of shit-facedness and uh at 8 30 p.m is when they did the blood alcohol test oh my he ran the guy over at five right he's been out bashing into shit shit face since 2 30 right so they're 140 i'm sorry so think about this so it's been that long since he's been drinking seven hours yeah yeah he drank at the strip club like five

hours ago so i mean his blood alcohol level is 0.18 wow still still he was like a point two something at least oh he was fucking ridiculously hammered 0.08 is the legal limit so more than twice that and that is well after uh during questioning he told the officers that he had a serious drinking problem we know that yeah you know your turn now you're like btk you broke in with a gun and said i have a sexual problem we get it yeah i know you're fucking yeah i'm tied up i understand your sexual problem right i have a serious drinking problem do you now yeah you're a btk with a with somebody tied up with your dick out we get that you have a serious problem we understand that so uh he said that he stopped quote stopped and bought a few and then kept driving and uh the officer uh uh told bush that the arrest should serve as a wake-up call to his problem

like well if anything this should work for you in this way and bush said that that quote i've already been there like yeah tried and failed motherfucker don't care the worst problem bush is that your life now is over because you have so many legal problems right now. It's insane. He told the officer that he'd been shopping at a Sarasota mall earlier in the day, hit a pole with the SUV. He said he didn't see the motorcycle or remember hitting the motorcycle. Then later on he says, I might have ran over a motorcycle, but I thought it was just on the ground.

Also, he's driving without a license. There's the other thing because, you know, what the fuck, why not um the tofano family is super pissed off i'm sure yeah uh his daughter-in-law who's kind of the family spokesman shannon she said that uh she was angry that anyone could hit a person and not stop or show any remorse she said quote i just can't understand how somebody could run over somebody's head and just take off and when he's caught he doesn't even think it's a big deal right that's the other problem yeah he wasn't like oh my god i'm a monster he was like i don't know i just had a few drinks whatever it's fine i don't remember that yeah who cares so he is charged with uh two counts of dui with property damage one count of dui with serious bodily injury one count of leaving the scene of an accident with an, one count of DUI with serious bodily injury, one count of leaving the scene

of an accident with an injury, one count of driving with a suspended license, and two counts of leaving the scene of an accident with damage to property. So, the silver-haired middle-aged response from the devil rays is, quote, the Tampa Bay rays organization is deeply saddened by today's tragic news our thoughts and prayers go out to the victim and his family we will reserve further comment until we learn more about the incident that took place play ball we're gonna let this die in the media for a few days and see if people stop asking us questions about it and if it goes doesn't go away then we'll have to answer something but for now we're not involved and the rocket

that's it man buy me some peanuts and cracker jack and a bunch of those little airline liquor bottles buy me some peanuts and cracker jack and a shitload of tiny one ounce liquor bottles and it's root root root to get shit face 99 bananas goes down fast and we run over grandpa's old head at the old ball game fucking horrific and it's one two three shots i'm drunk at and it's one two three charges i'm in jail at the old what a bunch of it doesn't rhyme but how do you not as a as a professional who's i get that your livelihood depends on these people but how do do you not, as a professional baseball team owner, say something like, we are

horrified that this is even a thought that I can't believe this day exists to be honest with you. If this shit is true, I'm going to kick him right in the dick. That's what he should be saying. And Tony is the newest owner of season tickets. Thank you so much for coming. No shit.

Yeah, they should give him tickets for that so his bail yeah is set at over one million dollars well that's tough that's a they're not fucking around with this that's a hard time yeah i mean that they they push for a smaller bond and in doing so they argue that this guy here matt bush has only two thousand dollars to his name in his bank account two grand two thousand dollars left wow and the judge says well it's his fucking problem yeah stay in jail then and he's gonna remain in jail till his trial good um that same exact day by the way that same day uh chicago white socks pitcher bobby jen, remember him? Big guy. He was arrested. He was on the 60-day DEL recovering from back surgery and was charged with one count of driving under the influence,

three counts of driving under the influence and damage to property, one count of leaving the scene of a crash. He did the same shit. Same shit, except didn't hurt anybody. It was the only difference. He just damaged property. Major League Baseball was having a field day that day. When they arrested him, he told the officers, man, just took too many muscle relaxers, I guess. I guess?

I guess. He was recovering from two off-season back surgeries, so he has prescriptions and everything, but he can't go driving around on them. That's the difference and uh he was driving recklessly because he hit a car at a nightclub and quote had to get out of there so that's why he was driving fast because he was trying to get the fuck out of there why are you driving so fast i just hit a car officer i'm fucked up yeah no shit i'm i'm tore up did you see that driving and it was shitty i gotta get the fuck out of here you can see by my driving how fucked up i am so this is fucking wild i mean matt is a disaster he's like i feel bad like i said brandon guyer is the other guy i feel bad for because who knows if they were even like looking for him or some shit like that you know like this guy that you destroyed

my car now my name's all in the paper connected with this shit. And that doesn't look good for me. When you Google my name, that's all that comes up. Evidently, the police have your phone number. You know what I mean? They could have called him and been like, Brandon, could you stop the car? I'm not driving.

What do you mean? What do you mean? I'm at practice. You hear like, you know, you hear shit like that in the background. We're throwing balls over here, officer. Two down, two down. Let's round the horn.

Round the horn, everybody. Outfield, go two. Six, four, three. Six, four, three. Let's do this. Now bring it home. One hopper. So it's very, you know, for a fact that that's not the case so uh october uh 5th 2012

uh matt is finally released by tampa it took so uh too long took him a long time to release him so you got brandon guyer tofano the the the chafee there got his car backed into. I'm sure that dancer who was on stage really didn't need Matt Bush getting all up in her business either. She remembers that day still. Yeah. I wonder if it was with a dancer. I think it was. Or if he just like it was between some dancers. He's like, I'm getting up there.

I'm showing these people who Matt fucking Bush is. That's what they need to know. I'm Matt and here's my Bush. What do you say matt the bush the bush so uh either way i mean it's just uh jesus christ he's left uh just a shitload in his wake he has a girlfriend too that's got to deal with this shit like he's just a fucking disaster i feel bad for these people i really do jimmy but not nearly as bad as i feel for matt bush executive executive director of business development at accelerated enrollment solutions in belerica maine uh let's

see here uh matt bush vice president of engineering and innovation yeah at kpi solutions in murfreesboro tennessee the fuck do they do i don't know but it sounds technical he's engineering sounds important yeah um matt bush senior associate at king and spalding in new york new york and he looks like a lawyer or something this this guy, by his picture. Dr. Matt Bush. Up in Maine is a board-certified orthopedic surgeon who is fellowship trained in hand and upper extremity. A graduate of Dartmouth College. Wow. He received a doctorate from Columbia University.

He completed his residency in orthopedics at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. He specializes in hand and upper extremity procedures, including surgery for fractures, tendon and nerve repairs, carpal tunnel surgery, surgery for arthritic conditions, and total shoulder joint replacement. He says, quote, there is nothing more rewarding than playing a role in returning patients to their recreational activities, artistic endeavors, sports and occupation. That's a guy that does Tommy John surgery. Yeah.

So he does all this shit. And his brother is the same thing. His brother joined at the same time. The Bush brothers. So he's got it. We have our Bush brothers who get shit faced in Peoria and get thrown out of fucking uh mcduffies and bite bouncers and then these two bush brothers on the other hand uh join the experienced team of smhc orthopedics and sports medicine providers so different people let's just say and then finally

i always feel the worst for these people, Matt Bush, real estate agent. This poor bastard in Michigan. Oh, he's got to sell that fucking shit, too. He speaks German and English, so that's a plus. His specialties, though, I feel like he's casting a wide net. New, luxury, first, commercial, investment. So everything is what you're saying. Real estate. Yeah.

His passion to help homebuyers find the perfect home for their family and helping to educate them through the process. So, yeah, that's good shit there. He wants you to know that he's there for you. So give Matt Bush a try. No matter what the fuck you're buying, he can take care of it. He'll take care of it. And more than one person has probably Googled him and went, oh, God, he Bush a try. No matter what the fuck you're buying, he can take care of it. He'll take care of it. And more than one person has probably Googled him and went, oh, God, he's a monster. He ran over a man's head.

I'm not doing that. So not that Matt Bush, though. So in court, Matt, basically his attorneys are saying you are fucked. Yeah. They have a very good case against you. You obviously did it. You have a history of this this is a an escalating thing that has led to this uh you're in deep shit and you're gonna do

a fuckload of prison time if they convict you of all this stuff uh you're you're literally you're gonna go to jail for 20 years um you better you need to plea we need to find a fucking thing so they arrange a plea bargain and he pleads no contest to one count of DUI with great bodily injury. So they get all that. Still open to simmer it down to that giant lawsuit. It's that's the other thing. Yeah. Huge lawsuit.

December 15th, 2012 is the sentencing for this. He is told you, sir, may fuck off 51 months in prison, actual prison time and seven years probation wow as well and on top of that 10 years of no driving 11 years of his life is fucked man fucked yeah he's he's pretty fucked uh 51 months is that's that's four years that's four years and uh he'll end up doing almost four years wow is what he ends up doing that's a little over four years that's four years and uh he'll end up doing almost four years wow is what he ends up doing that's a little over four it's like four years and three months i think that it would be uh 51 months but he does almost four uh they ask his father daniel bush how he's taking the news and he said quote he's taking it pretty good he's not crying or sulking he's

preparing for it everybody in our family is backing him up it's a bad situation but you've got to make the best of it life goes on um the next day after his arrest by the way not after his conviction but the day after his arrest for this his mom suffered an aneurysm from uh they think it might have been like a some sort of stress induced type of certainly caused by your fucking son. Yeah, so he ran over an old man's head and then gave his mom an aneurysm. So a bad weekend for this asshole. Wow.

He just manifested his mom to have a head injury. What an asshole. Yeah, I'm hurting heads. Now, in prison, he spends most of the three and a half years behind bars at the Hamilton Correctional Institute in Jasper, Florida, which is about 90 miles west of Jacksonville. Yikes. Yeesh. That is rough country. Yeah.

He is in prison. He's got $600 in the bank when he goes in there. That's what's left. Going hard. Longtime girlfriend who he's been going out with since forever. Stopped writing him letters. Stopped talking to him. Ouch.

Left him. His agent drops him. of course because what's for what uh his parents couldn't afford to fly to from california to florida all the time to visit him so they just call him and uh that's it only one person requested to see him in all four years of jail one person somebody from espn a cameraman a cameraman filming a story about the dangers of alcohol. That's what it was. Some. So somewhere there's some like high school class watching a movie, watching a video,

their teachers putting a video on and it's fucking Matt Bush in jail going, don't fucking drink. And if you do just stay home, just don't run over people's heads it's just ruin your baseball career you know what i mean all right have a good one that is fucking depressing james that it's it's bad hilariously depressing 2013 the tifanos file a five million dollar civil suit against bush there There you go. But they settle for, are you ready for this, Jimmy? $600,000.

$200,000. Really? $200,000. It barely covered the medical bills. He wanted nothing more out of it, Tony Tufano. He didn't want to, he just said, I just want to have my medical bills covered. Okay. Oh, that's good.

That's, again, a saint of a man. I was going to say, could this guy be any not even the guy who ran over his head? He's like, you know what? Just cover my shit and I'll be OK. I never want to see you. Then publicly forgives Matt in a newspaper interview as well. As heroes do, James. This guy is ridiculous.

That's what the Pope did back in the day when somebody shot him. They were like, I forgive him. Like, he's, you know, this guy's nicer than the Pope for fuck's sake. Which isn't really hard to do because that Pope also let kids get molested repeatedly. So let's be honest here. That's not a high bar. No. So Matt said he thinks about the accident.

He says, quote, I force myself to think about it every day in prison because I deserved to suffer. He says that he went over the facts. He said that everything was, you know, he went over the whole thing. He thought about it. And he heard that Tufano has a walker now and he has to rely on pain pills just to be able to tie his shoes. And, you know, he went from being still running eight miles at 72 years old to just being a broken man.

He went from being still running eight miles at 72 years old to just being a broken man. He also wrote to Fano from prison to apologize as well and even called him as well. He called him. Fano didn't want to speak with him, but he did say to tell him that he forgives him and that's good enough, basically. So I don't want to talk to him. Just tell him I forgive him and it's fine. I just don't want to really be buddies with the guy which makes sense i would um i can't i can't i can't yeah tell him i can't tell him i said to go fuck himself how's that tell him uh tell him i'm tony fucking tifano and he can suck my cock how's that just read the script from true

detective that matthew mcconaughey part where he says if i were you i'd do uh i'd kill myself the first chance i got fuck you don't call me again don't call me but bush said quote that gave me a tiny bit of peace really uh he also didn't touch a baseball for his first two years in prison he uh avoided the baseball is not the problem man no no no but i mean in prison doesn't touch a baseball doesn't look at any sort of sports stories doesn't watch tv when sports is on doesn't read the newspaper avoid sports and any mention of it okay for two years um he said that it felt good to be free from the game at some point a little bit because that's the you know source of his greatest failure okay so i didn't

talk much and then at some point someone a few of the inmates asked him to play on the prison softball team softball and he was like all right fuck it i'll play softball so he played right field stuck him in right field he played right field for the softball team they played a visiting church group in his first game okay and uh a line drive was hit off the right field wall and this guy was trying to extend his his uh double into a triple and apparently matt fucking gunned it from the goddamn wall to the third basement and hit him on the fly with the thing and tag the guy out and everyone went holy shit what the fuck was that yeah oh my god you could play baseball or something.

It's like someone gave you $3 million for this at some point. That's the difference between someone who's decent at baseball and a major prospect. They can do shit like that. So a fellow inmate said, Lee Caranti, said, I've never seen anybody do something like that. Everybody figured out who he was real fast after that. They're like, oh, shit, they were asking were asking him, who the fuck are you, dude? And then he was like, I played ball. Did you play baseball or something?

Yeah. He must have played something at some point. About a month before he's sent to a halfway house, he actually gets his hands on a real baseball. He was out with a prison cleanup crew picking up trash off the side of a Jacksonville highway. Yikes. Yikes. with a prison cleanup crew picking up trash off the side of a jacksonville highway yikes yikes when he found a you know kind of fucked up baseball lying off in the weeds on the side of the road and he picked it up and he gripped it and they knew who he was at that point so the the inmates started saying hey can you hit like that tree over there can you hit that road sign all the way over there so he started firing off the ball you know hitting the fucking road sign across the street and hitting a tree over there isn't dude perfect

yeah he's like all excited the guys i guess it was like everyone was laughing when he was hitting shit they were all like laughing and clapping and shit like it was just a source of entertainment if somebody's like him juggling basically that's what it was so um he was like, shit, maybe I could do this. Maybe I can do that. And he said, quote, I started thinking that, wow, I started thinking that all these organizations would contact me. Like, oh, he's out, Matt Bush, the prospect. Oh, no. I saw him on the side of the road throwing baseballs into a tree, and I think he's ready for the bigs. He's hitting no U-turn signs on the fly.

It's amazing. It it's wild not even with his car this time either with a baseball so uh he uh is sent to he gets work release basically which is you know like halfway house type of deal uh he has nine months in a halfway house to you know re-establish himself into the real world and he uh he said that he had thrown a baseball every day during childhood and everything like that and he said that's when he felt most relaxed playing some catch and he never got to do that now so his father mailed two baseball gloves and three balls to jacksonville for him and he recruited a friend of his who was an inmate with him another guy on work release to play catch with him and to like play catcher for him basically well you catch and i'll pitch to you

but travis couldn't catch curveballs or change-ups or you know 90 plus mile an hour fastballs so right because he's not fucking pudge rodriguez he's a fucking thief and yeah he's like i don't play baseball i just you know i used to play catch with my dad or like a friend of mine but uh after that i kind of like i said i got into selling meth and it was less baseball in my life you know he said that this is a great line his return throws often went over bush's head and into a drainage pond so i even throw him back to him um he said that quote it was pretty this is bush it was pretty obvious that this wasn't the straight path back to the major leagues no i would say not now his

first visitor at the halfway house is a baseball person a former minor league manager named roy silver yeah jimmy get right silver his fucking name is Silver. That is amazing. And he is very silver. Bush had lived at Silver's Baseball Academy in Florida for a few months in 2010, and Silver had become a mentor in matters of, quote, religion and sobriety. Those are two things I don't want to mentor, religion or sobriety. i desert and mentor and two things i don't want to mentor religion or sobriety leave me alone um so roy is also the texas rangers player development assistant who helped josh hamilton deal with his own substance abuse problem we know how that worked out um silver

forged a bond with bush as well and he had remained in touch with him and silver says quote i thought he was done i thought he had run out of time and run out of chances and probably baseball wasn't a good thing for him yeah fucking silver but then he drove to jacksonville from clearwater and he found bush working at his work release job which is making eight dollars and five cents an hour yikes at the golden corral oh no i use that term loosely restaurant oh boy that's the worst place ever there is nothing golden about that corral no i have i have described the tuna fish water remember the tuna fish lagoon i I've described that. This is disgusting.

And once again, this isn't looking down my nose. I love a shitty buffet that's $7.95. I'll eat shit. I'll eat sweet tomatoes. I don't sweet tomatoes. I'll eat hometown buffet. I don't give a fuck. Do you understand?

I'm gross when it comes to shit like that. If there's a pile of it, whoa, gross. I can't eat that shit that's the one place where i draw the line of cheapness like nope not eating there it's very similar to the the joke buffet in vegas vacation i'll take a little bit yellow yeah yeah some of the yellow and they just slop it on your plate except you slop it on your own plate so he was there and they started talking and um you know doing all that this guy would give him a ride apparently and then they started throwing a baseball around a little bit yeah and all that sort of thing and uh finally bush asked

permission from the owner of the restaurant if he could play catch in the parking lot because they ran out of like he wanted to throw like good long throws and hard throws and they didn't have any room okay so he said can we play catch in the parking lot like when i'm on my break we have a giant parking lot and it's fucking always empty yeah well he's only allowed to go to the golden corral and back he can't go anywhere else so this is the only place he's allowed to play catch right basically or that or the halfway house and they only have a little area there so he's like fuck so he asked them and they gave him permission the owner janet murphy said quote he was a nervous nelly very quiet eager to please we figured if he was really that good he could avoid hitting any cars so they let him do it in the parking lot um he said that

he wanted to play baseball again and uh silver told him to slow down he said quote he wanted to play baseball again and silver told him to slow down. He said, quote, that's not why I'm here. I'm not even, I'm not even ready to go there yet. You know, what makes you think you can handle that lifestyle and, you know, going to play baseball again. And Bush said that, quote, it's just one good decision at a time. He said that he's been attending 12 step programs doing all that shit and he said the problem is alcohol once i got started i could never stop

there you go so couldn't do it and stop doing it completely so silver said he wasn't real sure about it he was like this isn't gonna work out he said quote initially it was like i it wasn't like i was all excited about him playing professionally again because who's to say he could handle it? Physically, not sure where he was at. It all kind of came together seeing that his arm was in good shape and his mind was in good shape. And he said it's different when you're 29 and now 30 and you've grown up a little bit. A lot of things had to come together for us as friends for this to happen. So he said, you know, none of this is normal.

Matt said, he said, quote, it wasn't normal for me to be throwing a softball in prison either. But my last three and a half years weren't normal by any means by throwing in the parking lot. But throwing in the parking lot was fine. I got to play catch with a real baseball player and coach mentor and everything else. I thought it was a blast. I enjoyed every moment of

it so the texas general manager john daniels called it quote a highly unusual scouting process to say the least i would say playing catching a golden corral parking lot in jacksonville is a weird one jesus so he would do his new routine ride three miles from the halfway house to Golden Corral on a donated bicycle. Work the morning shift in the Golden Corral bakery. Eat at the Golden Corral buffet. Dear God. And then play catch with Silver. He eats Golden Corral every day.

Oh, God, help him. I mean, there's so much there. At least you're getting a variety. You're not eating the same thing every day. Yeah, that's something. Yeah, that's true. I guess I'll have some tuna water today today i'm having rangoons i'll have yellow today i guess he said he was throwing well he rediscovered his curveball um enough for silver felt confident he

said i come send over a couple of scouts to take a look at him i think he's you know get a radar gun over here let's see what he's got his first two pitches hit 93 and 95 wow so when the scouts saw that silver said everything kind of changed after that they started taking this seriously and yeah then the rangers did quote the rangers dispatched a succession of scouts to the golden corral. That's what it said. You're not going to believe it, Coach. He's throwing 93 in an apron. So get him down here. It's wild, man. He's got a baker's hat on.

It's just this big hat and he's doing it. And then every time he throws it, if it hits 90, he says, I'm Matt fucking Bush. But I think it's good for him. The V-cips are running low. Then he's like, shit, hold on a minute guys everybody hold on i gotta go refill the tuna water so uh weeks a couple weeks before the release from his halfway house the team flew two of its top executives the senior director of player development and the senior director of pro scouting out there they designated a yellow parking stopper to act

as a pitching rubber and then measured 60 he's doing this not even off a mound too that's the other thing off flat fucking concrete they measured 60 feet six inches that's the distance to the plate and he wore sweatpants and sneakers while he did this um he had his tracking device on because he's got his you know his ankle bracelet and uh they said quote his golden corral beeper flew out of his pants pocket when he kicked his leg up to throw um daily who's the uh the player development guy he said there's still that rare unmistakable gift jesus these silver these fucking they're so silver they love it they hear this it like tunes in like radio waves, and they're like, oh, there's a kid throwing hard somewhere. I can sense it.

John Daniels, the team's president and general manager, he said his response was, quote, Matt Bush. That Matt Bush? No. No, no, no way. Not that guy, right? We're not going for drinks? They were like, that guy?

He's still around? He's alive? That guy dyers him he said he remembered bush's name from scouting reports before the 2004 draft and he said quote drinking problems even back then yeah so they knew about it san diego even though it happened in their own city it happened in their own city they couldn couldn't fucking. They had to know, James. They have to. You can't tell me that somebody got the organization can't call some police captain in the goddamn fucking San Diego to police department and go, hey, you got anything on this kid? They do that shit.

Got to put in Texas. They knew about him drinking problems. Even back then. And he remembered all that, too. He said, quote, this wasn't just somebody who had a few too many beers and accidentally rolled through a stop sign no he rolled over an old man's head right uh he said it was a third fourth or maybe a fifth chance anytime we take a chance on somebody or it's a little bit of a gray area the question is where is that line

i'd like to think we have some things we stand for that aren't flexible. And this was kind of out there. Yeah. October 2015, released from prison. Again, he wrote a letter to Tufano. He offered an apology and outlined his remorse. And they initially planned to meet up. But then Bush said Tufano told his lawyer that while he wished him well, he feared reliving the day when the whole thing happened. He didn't want to relive it. Yeah.

But he wishes him well, and it's fine. Bush said, quote, it's good for me to get that off my chest and for him to be able to understand, hey, I just didn't go out there one day looking to find somebody to hit in my car and ruin their life. It wasn't even your car. It's the other thing. It wasn't just looking to borrow a car and running over an old man he wanted him no they didn't do it on purpose basically like i wasn't like fuck you i'm gonna bash you into you and run over your head because i don't like you i'm very sorry for my mistakes i'm going to do everything that i can to stay sober and not to ever put anybody in that situation again yeah um he moves back home which normally i would say that's one of our rules but this is

to move in with his parents in san diego so they can keep an eye on him yeah good yeah um in december of that year daniels decided to fly bush and his father to texas for a tryout bush threw well then interviewed with about five team executives and um basically what they did is they said look we're thinking about signing you there's a long list of restrictions that we got to put on you and they said that bush interrupted him and said quote i need to make sure i'm safe and i'm being held accountable he said that he wanted to be contractually restricted from drinking driving or living by himself oh he's like i want it to be I have to do this shit because that's when I'll do it. I need a sponsor.

Yeah, that's what it is. He said he wanted a zero tolerance policy written into his contract that guaranteed if he broke it, he'd be released. And they said that they wanted him to report to spring training even earlier than normal to keep an eye on him. They believed he needed to attend 12-step meetings and complete community service as part of his contract. They also wanted his father to travel with him at the family's expense throughout the season and stay with Bush in the hotel rooms. What ends up happening, though, is he ends up staying with Silver on the road and with

his dad at home. That's how he does it. Silver shares a room with him. Daniel says, in the back of your mind with these issues, there's always that thought that something could happen, and that's not a comfortable feeling. I guess not. They said that one thing that was good,

he said that he admits he's an alcoholic, he's been sober since 2012, and he's doing well so far. Silver says, quote, there are no guarantees we're not naive something could happen this is life but you hope and you pray and you pray and you hope and you have to choose to have faith and believe yeah so december 18th 2015 they officially signed him as a free agent the texas rangers um what a ride they said quote obviously if he was throwing the ball 85 miles an hour we wouldn't be here but i would still have been there i still think i'd think i'd still be in his life i've always told him that yeah i'm sure if he couldn't throw a baseball you'd have all sorts

of time for him maybe he is maybe he's just a saint but i'm just having to think how many people are you mentoring right now to any of them silver i Silver, I drink too much and I can't throw 93 miles an hour. Are you going to come hang out with me? Probably not. You think anybody with a sub-95 mile an hour fastball is getting this guy's attention for their drinking problem? And they especially keep drawing attention. Once they sign him, they're like, oh, look at this. And they start bringing up the other people in the 2004 draft who are huge stars yeah drew verlander weaver they're all like

entering their 10th big league seasons and dominating and winning awards and giant houses and beautiful cars and 100 million dollar contracts wives and really crushing it. Fuck. March 4th, 2016, San Diego Union Tribune, written by Bryce Miller, big old fluffity fluff piece on him. Oh, what a good guy. Yeah, they talk about how his team has implemented the no tolerance policy. He's prohibited from even driving.

His dad's staying with him. They attend 12-step programs uh multiple times a week uh dad says quote it seems like it's been longer than almost four years because time seemed to go real slow after that happened things weren't moving so good yeah uh he says quote that threw a wrench in the machine it took a lot of thinking a lot of digging digging deep becoming more religious finding god oh no no don't do that guys and respecting people even more rather than taking things for granted he's breaking all the rules besides the junior role here yeah um he says quote baseball baseball my boy is going to do this and that i told myself i should be cool because

every time i start getting all happy and everything, something might happen to bring it down. So it was pretty rough. Now, Matt, he says, quote, I think of the trauma to my family and Mr. Tufano and the devil and the Tampa Bay Rays. They didn't have trauma. They just had PR problems. That's all they just they had to prepare a statement. That's what they had to do.

They didn't have to rebuild their vertebrae fuck don't put them in the same sentence as mr tifano were you nuts he says in his neck you fucking jerk yeah idiot he walks with a walker he said it was i wonder how long it'll take him to do the boston marathon now considerably longer i'll still be impressed. Yeah, I will, I will. He said it was a disaster. He says, you know, he's, quote, they said, do you think you can actually make the big leagues? And he said, if it wasn't realistic in my mind, I wouldn't be out here.

He says, you know, I think he can do it. He says, quote, when things start to get a little scrambled in my mind, I have plenty of people I can reach out to that I can talk to. Life is always much better here than there, meaning prison. So, yeah, I would say. He said, I don't want to be the guy that always screwed everything up and always threw everything away. You're that guy no matter what you do after that. He even says that his longtime girlfriends decided to give him another chance. Oh, she's coming back around.

Oh, isn't that nice? Gee, thanks. You know what? Fuck you now. How about that? No. Now you want another chance? No.

You abandoned me at my worst? Yeah, which she should have, but then don't come back to him when he signs a contract. Yeah, that's ridiculous. So spring of 2016, I guess there's this one, there's articles there, and this is kind of how stressful it is for his dad.

His dad's watching, and he says, is that Matt? And he's pointing to him, and someone says no, and he says, nope, not him. What about this guy? No, that's not him. He goes, why can't I find him? And Danny is also under contract, the father father to keep an eye on his son. So he's got to know where he is. He can't find him on the field.

And he lives with him. He monitors his curfew, takes him to 12 step meetings. They said those are just, you know, some of the conditions here. And so he eventually finds him. And then he's he's like, OK, there he is. That's fine. You know, no problem. All right.

But he gets worried. He says, oh, quote, oh, there's Maddie. OK, he's out there. OK, he all right but he gets worried he says oh quote oh that there's maddie okay he's out there okay he's right where he needs to be that's good so that's the stress of like i lost him i can't physically like like you have a four-year-old at the mall you know what i mean like where'd it go oh god i can't find him you know that feeling yeah he's 30 so uh 2016 he says matt says quote i view this as a large blessing he's back on the rangers 2016 i'm very grateful very honored to have this chance i really want to make the most of it it feels really good to come to the park every day wear the rangers gear and mingle with

other baseball players he lives at the hotel next to the Rangers complex with his father, Danny. He said that he attends multiple AA meetings every week and walks to the complex every morning. He says little things. It doesn't take much to make me happy. Every day I walk back to the hotel. That makes me happy. I feel free. I love the view and the setting the baseball field the whole

atmosphere he's just jacked 2016 rangers by the way are 95 and 67 first in the al west they do get swept in the playoffs by the blue jays but still they didn't really need him around a team yeah exactly but in may of 2016 he is finally called up to the majors for the first time. Stop it. Called up to the majors 12 years after being drafted. Wow. 12 years and, oh boy, a host of problems. This is wild.

I mean, that's crazy. He says that he actually felt like a pitcher today is what the Rangers manager said. He said in the past he was just trying to throw the ball as hard as he could. Today he actually felt like a pitcher. He was trying to use his cutter. It was really good to see. He was really excited coming out of it. To throw the ball well, throw strikes, stuff like that is a real positive force.

And, yeah, he says that he's been a good guy for him he said he shares his experiences with the younger pitchers every day the ups and downs and you know don't fuck up and you know treasure this fucking chance you have because it takes a long time and all that sort of shit they said he does all sorts of public appearances and they said he's particularly popular and those with people coming up to him with similar backgrounds see him as a role model. OK. You know so that's a big deal. And he says it's very good to be a role model in the aspect that you can show that and show that you can get back on your feet and still accomplish goals and dreams in your life.

And he says he wants to. He'd like to talk to teenagers so they can learn from my mistakes before they do the same thing. Just don't hit them with each other. Yeah, that's the thing. Keep them away from, not if they play lacrosse. He said, I've had plenty of obstacles to overcome in my life. Self-placed obstacles, Matt. Let's relax.

You had zero obstacles to overcome. Not a one. Not one obstacle, not one hardship. Your life was a fucking yellow brick road and then all the sudden the trees started throwing apples at you and then it turned into a problem but you were the trees you were the one that picked the apple that started it that's the problem you know so that's the issue tin man he uh yeah he said that's what happened there. Plenty of obstacles. I'm just really excited to be here. I feel like God put me in place with this organization.

There you go. And with all the help and them treating me like family from day one, I've just been trying to follow through with the commitment the Rangers have given me. And he does say that he is very happy that he's been forgiven by Tufano. Silver says, quote, that was a blessing from Tony. Part of Bush moving forward was that gentleman who was most affected by this gave Matt his blessing, and that was important to me. Forgiveness is a great thing, and it's appreciated, but it's not forgotten. So that's nice.

Shannon Moore, the family's Tufano's daughter-in-law she says that uh she understands how bush can be seen as a success story from prison to the big leagues is a big deal and all that uh he said yeah she said yeah great story redemption blah blah blah she said quote but when you know the victim it's different yeah yeah not exactly that they were like aren't you excited for him and she's like slow down i watched my dad have to recover from this in his fucking 70s yeah ran over my father-in-law's head and now he lives with us so no i'm not real thrilled with him uh tifano at this point is taking 26 pills a day good in 2016 summer to stop the knocking around his head he said and the ringing in his ears,

you know, cause his head got run over by an SUV summer for pain in his feet and the result of nerve damage. He said that his chest always tingles where he had a tube inserted to clear his lungs out when it was collapsed. He said, it's the sensation similar to when your hand falls asleep, but in your chest,

he has it all the sensation similar to when your hand falls asleep, but in your chest. He has it all the time. Asked how Tufano's doing these days. A reporter said, how are you doing these days? He said, quote, not wonderful. Jesus Christ. Every day is a little bit worse than yesterday. Yeah. Fuck.

He said his son, Tony Jr., said he stops by his house. He'll come see him and his father will sleep through the entire visit. He said he's on so much medication it makes him drowsy. He doesn't, quote, he doesn't act or look like he did before the accident. It's really sad to see. He used to be in great shape. Now he's over 200 pounds as well. Shit.

Because he can't exercise. And he said, quote, the way I look at it is I'm deformed. I was crushed. That's what he said. That poor guy. That poorformed. I was crushed. That's what he said. That poor guy. That poor fucking son of a bitch. Horrible, man. Matt, on the other hand, said sometimes people are mean to him as well.

He's got problems, too, you know, to overcome. You know what? Let's let Matt tell us all. Let's let him. With, what do you say, Jimmy Little, in their own words? Terrific. Let's do it. Let's go in their own words.

Quote, I hear nasty things. People talking about prison and my drinking. you say jimmy little in their own words terrific let's do it let's go in their own words quote i hear nasty things people talking about prison and my drinking just stupid stupid stuff obviously people are trying to get under your skin any way they can some of the people want to go to the game just to give people a hard time they'll drink beer and then yell things at me i understand it but i try not to be too judgmental i try to focus on what i have to do and try not to pay attention to the hecklers when it gets bad i think of jackie robinson gosh look what he had to endure and go through and he didn't do anything wrong it was just because of the color of his skin jackie robinson didn't run over an old man's head.

You know, when they start hollering at me, calling me a drunk and a vehicular manslaughter, I like to remember Jesus was on a cross. They beat him. It's more like think of Barry Bonds being yelled at and chanted Balco at for steroids. That's what you think of. That's the one you think. I think of Barry Bonds and his inspiration. He think he said gosh look at what he had to go through so in the rough suge compared himself to martin luther king yeah and then this guy compared

himself to jackie robinson like fuck off matt jesus christ so jackie robinson was a hell of a ball player too sir he's great fuck so you are you are piss poor piss poor matt pitches in 58 games this year for the texas rangers 58 games uh he is 61.2 innings he's a seven and two record with a 248 era not bad pretty fucking good more than not bad that's goddamn good 61 strikeouts uh how many walks here 61 strikeouts 14 walks that's can you imagine if he never drank this dumb fuck yeah that's what i'm saying he'd be great um tofano says he's a baseball fan too yeah he says he watches games on the mlb network all the time he recently saw bush bush pitch an inning for the rangers he just came into a game he was watching he said he had no reaction he just you know he said he figured he would get another chance because

he was a good athlete he said quite quote his life went on it was a blessing that he was in prison he was fortunate the right people got a hold of him. I wish him well, but I don't want to meet him. This Stefano, man, what a nice guy. He's a hero. Yeah. He said, quote, how ironic is it that his life was turned around, which is good, but now my life was turned into something bad. When Bush was in jail, he had a chance to think about his life and reflect on his choices. If only I got another chance.

I didn't get those choices oh my god poor guy he's right both both both lives went and took a u-turn right there he's they asked him how does the guy behind the wheels life get better james that's what i mean it's doing great they asked if he was angry he said quote no not really i look at it if i'm angry if i'm bitter it's only going to affect me. I can't do anything about it. This is the way I am. This is the way it is.

He bought another motorcycle, he said, a 2006 Harley Road King. But he doesn't ride it much because he seldom leaves the house now, he said. He said, quote, I'm kind of a recluse. And his family thought maybe he was suicidal and he laughed at that was like no i have grandkids that i like playing with i'm not gonna kill myself i'm just fucking lonely like he's he's like it sucks that doesn't mean i'm gonna kill myself it just sucks you know so matt uh during this year hits a hundred miles an hour on the radar gun wow somehow this is just giving him strength uh i don't know he uh he says he's not

even allowed to go into a barf to get a soda by the way good he's not even allowed to do that shit he says that uh he doesn't feel any pressure on the mound he says his pressures are all off the field said i've always had the talent and i've always loved this game but i had demons that had have held me back they kept me down now I've got another chance and I'm making the most of it I'm not the same person I was I don't ever want to be that person again I'm sober I like myself uh really it's the happiest I've ever been in my life so 2017 Rangers are 78 and 84 Matt pitches in 57 games 52.1 innings he's three and four with with a.378 ERA. Not bad. 58 strikeouts, 19 walks. As a

reliever, your ERA isn't as important as your hits to innings pitched, and he has 57 hits to 52 innings pitched, which isn't as good as last year. It's not that great, but it's okay. $544,920 he makes that year. Yeah, that's

great money. 2018 rangers 67 and 95 fifth in the al west yuck good he pitches in 21 games uh has a no i'm sorry has a 470 era because he gets hurt yeah he has a partial tear of the uh ulnar collateral ligament that will keep him out for the first all the way until the past basically till the second half of next season fuck he's out that whole time um he says quote i don't have social media but i'd like my fans to know that my surgery was successful i'm doing well looking forward to be to being back next season at full go he made 900 or 555 950 bucks that year november 2018 he he wants to go to arbitration because he's only it gets paid like the minimum and uh he's you know he should get

paid like a mil three or something so that's a lot of money to fight over. I'd fight for another 800,000. But he just misses the cutoff, apparently. The cutoff for eligibility is two years, 134 days of Major League service. And he just missed that. He's fucked. But the Rangers like him so much, they do him a favor and grant him free agency on november 30th and then re-sign him on december 17th really so they give him the money he wants they couldn't do it through arbitration so they just give it to him that's they cut him to re-sign

him just because they want him to be happy why why is his life so easy imagine being talented as a child that's all just being this is from being good when you're 16 so uh yeah december 16th he's uh what was that yeah he signed by texas there and uh that's when he's out for the season but then he's he's signed again in november 2019 2020 didn't happen as we know really so really. So 2021, he makes the Rangers out of spring training, I guess, for the first time. Yeah. The manager informed him that he made the roster opening day. Even after the surgery, even after all this, he makes the opening day roster. He says, quote, it's just kind of hit me really quickly.

I was just like, wow, my wife is going to be so happy and my family is going to be so happy. Everyone that's been along with me for this journey. It's not just myself. I'm just so thankful. And it's only a start. You know, this is spring training and we have a lot of work ahead of us. I can remember from my past experience on closing and some of the things I did really well when I, and some of the things I needed to improve about just taking the past and molding it and learning the mental part of it and understanding situations mentally and on the mental side so 2021 currently he has a nine era he's only pitched in three innings so

far i don't know if this is up to current date or not exactly because it's from baseball reference so they usually do it kind of at the end and uh but he's up in the majors so far uh he's thrown 140 innings in the majors in his life he said quote i've always had the talent the drive the desire i love this game i could never i have never quit mentally and i feel like i have so much to offer when you make people proud especially family and friends i really enjoy it i really thrive off of it and i love the game of baseball i want to stay as long as i possibly can and uh can't get enough of matt bush oh well you can go shit the 27th what is that tuesday night you can go see him at home play against the d-backs at 70505. It's, quote, Texas twofer night, whatever the fuck that is.

And then the next night, still, Diamondbacks, it is Nolan Ryan beef dollar hot dog night. Oh, I got it, yeah. They have the dogs are named by Nolan about. He makes them. Oh, he does? He makes steak and shit. Yeah, Nolan Ryan steaks.

They're in the grocery store in Arizona. Brilliant. They even have them there. And if you can't get enough of them there, you can buy an official Matt Bush signed baseball here. This is one, like, all official on eBay for 80 bucks. And ships, that's too much. Or you can find, and this is particularly great, a 2005 bowman heritage baseball card it's the quote signs of greatness series and it's it's his bowman rookie and it's autographed and uh that

shit never happened how much is that 10 goddamn years only a few bucks like 12 bucks or something here so that everybody is matt bush i don't like when he uh makes references to his journey you when you have done what you've done you don't get to say things like life's been a bumpy road or any shit like that not when you run people over i'm sure lucky to be here yeah that's all he should be saying all the time i'm just lucky i'm just lucky i'm just lucky journey or road or path any of that shit none of that shit boulevard is out anything anything just i keep driving myself forward nope no you don't get to say that's not gonna work can't happen i'm sorry nothing you know sometimes tank no you can't say that

sometimes in life you just got to make a big u-turn and come up with a better plan you know nope sorry matt You're out. Anyway, that is Matt Bush, and that's one of the craziest stories we've ever done, right? The whole thing? The unlikeliness? I can't believe he's back in the majors. I can't believe you made it.

Yeah. It's like Ron LaFleur-level unlikeliness of the whole story. Like, it's wild. It's like Ron LaFleur meets fucking Josh Hamilton. That's what we have here. I totally expected him to die in a car accident. Right. Yeah. That's what I flip and roll over or something or just, you know, nowadays I think he's working

in a warehouse in Des Moines or some shit. But there he is. Listening to this show and being served by him at the Golden Corral. Yeah. Goddamn sons of bitch bastards as he Googles himself. So if you do like this show, you can tell the whole world about it. Get on Apple Podcasts. Give us five stars on that purple icon.

It does help just drive us up the charts, and it helps a lot. So do that. Help your boys out here. Also, head over to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com for everything small-town murder and crime and sports related. You can get merchandise, and we have lots of it on there, all sorts of new stuff all the time. Lots of merchandise. You can get tickets to live shows,

which we really hope are going to still fucking happen. James, I'm so fucking scared it's not going to happen. I know. I know. As a function of like, we fucking delayed it till then, and we thought, ah, I think I'll be fine by then, and now we're going to fucking not have them again, and I'm going to lose my goddamn life. We're so proactive.

We pushed them so far. We did. We were like, this will be good. We'll really give a good buffer so we don't have to fucking reschedule them again. Unbelievable. Oh, my God. Un-fucking-believable. Yeah, it's wild.

And so, yeah, we really hope we end up having those shows. But, I mean, who knows? We're not in control of the whole world here. So we can't control i can't people and diseases and all this stuff and places to i can't force get on board i can't afford i can't force anybody to do anything so all we can do is sit back and hope and wait so here we are doing that get your tickets to live shows and uh in addition to that follow us on social media please uh we are at crime and sports on twitter and facebook

at small town murder on instagram as well as uh patreon is where you want to be i'll tell you right now patreon.com slash crime and sports is where you find the amazing stuff this week no exception the episodes we just uploaded are they're fucking hilarious i'll be honest with you they're hilarious we did they really are first of all for crime and sports we did avoidable off-field injuries which are hilarious i'm sorry someone who has millions of dollars and lots to lose and they're like fuck it i'm not going to be careful with my body that makes me all my whole living at all that's kind of funny even when it's sad it's pretty so uh yeah it's why people get bit by coyotes and shit it's sad. It's pretty good. So, yeah, it's wild. People getting bit by coyotes and shit.

It's just weird. Check that out. Then for Small Town Murders bonus episode, which you'll also have access to as you have access to everything under the sun, we have all sorts of weird Florida murders. That's what we have. It's just strange Florida stuff over time,

and there is really some weird, weird shit. People will look up to steve irwin you guys yeah one guy one guy tried to quote teach an alligator a lesson we'll put it that way and obviously bad shit ensued so here you go he was pissed off at him you can get all of that at patreon.com slash crime and sports and uh in addition to that you'll also be a producer which means you my friend gets get a shout-out. And Jimmy will mispronounce your name horribly while trying his best to make a really good run at it.

Working my balls off at it. He's going to do it, and you can do that here. And as a matter of fact, if you want to just get the shout-out and be a producer and have great karma and our undying affection, you can do that over at PayPal as well using our our email address crime in sports at gmail.com that said i think it's time because what the fuck it's been a long week we had a crazy show i want to hear the names of the greatest goddamn people in the world who would never knock me off my motorcycle and then run over my head jimmy hit me with them right now this week's executive producers are uh you know this

week's executive executive uh ceo of the company is clay thorson thank you clay thank you clay you're the best man you're a sweetheart i can't tell you how much i appreciate you truly he's been down with us forever and we fucking love you clay thank you and he donated under a name of dixon ds uh are you proud of yourself, Clay? It's not bad. We'll give you that one, Clay. For the effort, that was not bad. Not bad at all.

Other executives this week, again, Jordan Bennett doing everything for us that she's ever not. She's always in our club. She's the best. We love her and Simon. They're awesome people. Thank you, guys. Nadine Ozubko, Angela Williams, Atreyu Falkor.

I think, is that? That's our both never-ending story reference. James Fogel and Lauren Hoffman. You guys, thank you truly for what you do for us. You're incredible. You're the best, all of you. Other producers this week are Neil Page, Allison Fearfile, Fail, Fearful, and Gabe Sullivan. They are a couple.

fail fearful uh and gabe sullivan there they are a couple uh and james james genbauer gay bauer uh christopher foyer janice hill madison rave rave hall what is that ray madison ray hall and she's pregnant and the baby kicks when she uh when she listens to the show so well congrats clearly uh are pregnant with either a demon or a great child a A good taste child. One of the two. Maria Kip Susley, Jennifer Visconti, Jennifer... Nope, that's Steve. Steve Schnell. Not Jennifer at all. Thank you, Steve. Appreciate you.

Susanna Platt, Liz Vasquez. Thank you, Liz. And Liz sent you the Homicide book, and it's signed. Yes, thank you. Unbelievable. That's beautiful. It's up in the office right here in our studio.

We fucking love that. Thank you so much. It's awesome. Appreciate it. Richard the office right here in our studio. We fucking love that. Thank you so much. It's awesome. Appreciate it. Richard Johnson, Tarnia Goodsell, Her Fluffy Kitties, TK, and Posh Robb. Peyton Meadows, Thomas Smith, James Marder, Craig Ventura, Michelle Mixell. Dave Thomas at the Ghostwriter Podcast is dealing with a cancer fight in the middle of a fucking pandemic.

I can't imagine. Keep fighting, Dave. Hang in there, buddy. Shit, that's miserable also marks marks marvelous tommy amy griffith uh kylie brin sanders emma pilo pilo uh john barnett matt matt watson melinda hollingshead cory knox jesus or jesus it's probably jesus just jesus ryan ryan john nicole stanford ty bow david higgins ernesto gonzalez falcon or falcone It's probably Jesus. Just Jesus. Ryan. Ryan. John. Nicole Stanford. Ty Bo. David Higgins.

Ernesto Gonzalez Falcon or Falcone. Brent. Nope. That's Gregory. Gregory Borelli. Kyle with no last name. Trenton Boak. Kristen Morris.

Aaron Aldrich. Alan McLaren. Brad Croke. Eric Burdick. Kevin Morris. What? Devin Dotson. Hey.

Samantha. Samantha. Your Kennedy watering. What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? Kevin Morris, Devin Dotson, Samantha Yor, Kennedy Wattring, Cooper Lynn, Mallory Bradenburg, Troy Williams, Aaron Booza, Michael Haynes, Matt Torres, it was just Matt Torres, no, Mike Haynes. There you go. God damn it. Matt Tompkins, Vanessa Northcutt, Jake Duvall, Brad Newbert, Dan Bailey, Mike Parker, Elizabeth Hubert, Vanilla Nutsack. Proud of yourself. Emma Tyrell, Jojo Amah, Brian Kaiser, Jessica Edwards, Kelly Pelletiere.

Pelletiere. Nice. Brad Johnson, Zachary Coyne, Tom V, Heather Ferris, Alicia Elbert, Nicole with no last name, Jeremy Samdahl, Keith with no last name, Sin AK, Matthew Nations, Stephanie Brink, Cecily Moreno, Brandon Bennett, Jessica Rideout, Jake Herndon, Big Pappy Pump, what? Sean Kent, Lisa- Variant. Or that could be a rapper, James.

That's true. Lisa Moriarty. Mariotti. Moritz Schmidt. Thomas Mason. Byron Webb. David Stewart. Chicks.

What is this? Chicks V. The... What? Chicksie? The Bin Chicken and Dutchie. Al C. Garcia. Say again. I said thank you.

Yeah, truly. Mia May? Mia Rowe. I said thank you. Yeah, truly. Mia May? Mia Rowe? I'm not sure. Bridget Corrine? Karen? Nicholas Warnecki?

Maren Herkim? These are all tough, James. Pete Sanok? Michael Black? Shane Shallick? Joe Downing? Susan Ellis? Mills?

That's Mills. Lisa Eaton? Jude Doyle? Tyler Taylor, Blodell, Bloudel. We could have a lot of Johnsons and Taylors and Tuckers and Thomases donating. That'd be much easier on Jimmy. Andre Sandoval, Derek Caldwell, Sean Newton, Taylor White, Cat Lamadori, Peter Hudasek, Katie DeJarines. What is the fucking, what is happening? You're a mess. Aaron Vaughn, Michael Schmidt. Nope, that's Smith.

Byron Allen, Casey, see, Schmidt, Smith. It doesn't matter what the name is. You'll still mess it up. It's fine. Kacen Merrill, Brandon Wickham, Dustin Barton, Izzy Day, Gabby O'Neal, Ronnie Bailey, Cameron Star IV, Claudia DaCosta, Lisa Osborne, Anthony McKenzie, Mighty Dad, Andrew with no last name, Daniel Malik, Jenny Harvey, Jacob Kalahir, oh boy, Brian Cal, Pryaniki, what, Priyanka Kornapillakar. Chelsea Gets Gerstenhofer.

Krista DeAntonio. DeAntonio. What? DeAntonio. DeAntonio? No, there's no I. DeAntonio. A-N-T-E-N-O.

Antonio. Natalie Legrand. Cynthia Donson. Nicholas Thomas. Brooke Dickey.O. Anteno. Natalie Legrand. Cynthia Donson. Nicholas Thomas. Brooke Dickey. Melissa Neumeier. Rena Hampton. Matt Leo.

Amy Stottlemeyer. Hillary, no last name. Randy Combs. Josh Cable. Liz Stalheber. Oh, boy. Caleb Grace. Elizabeth Collaren.

Stephen Cook. Elizabeth S. Collaren? No. Jenna Black. Then Martin Tanya Ortiz, Britt Vogel, Stephanie Sophie, that's Sophie Rodriguez, Brian Murphy Kern, Will Blaine, Kim Hensley, Dan Hanrahan, Benjamin Ressler, Dave Short, Chris Collins, Mika with no last name, Andre Archuleta, Sakubi Like It Hot, Jacob Miranda, Kate Westerhout, Valerie Grenier, Casey Ostrander, Karen with no last name, Eddie Pinhead, Matt Mattei, Sir Maze, what? Never gonna happen.

Taylor Nelson, Jordan with no last name. Debbie Schmidt. Zoe Erickson. Mr. Slim. Todd Clement. Darren Foreman. Jim Gebauer. Leslie Leatherwood. Rachel Peebles. Melissa Plath.

Natalie Weiss. Christy Pauly. Miranda Murs. Chris McFall. Amanda Grimes. Amanda Lord. Sam Borsten. Liddy with no last name.

James Sweeten. Abraham Nebgen, Stephanie Matlock, Jeff Keene, Stephen Wilhoit, boy, oh, boy, Jennifer Jasper, Courtney with no last name, Melissa Lundell, Tracy Purocini, Shay Puro, nope, Tyre Bjorn Bracken-Hugin, Brandon Hamlin, Tyre Bjorn, Brandon Hamlin, Ryan Frost, John Schiffer, Matthew Sweeney,

Alana, oh boy, Pete Luani, Chad Walden, Tara with no last name, Katie DiMario, Lisa Andrews, Jordan with no last name, Jason Cole, and Chris Smith, and obviously all of our patrons. You guys are terrific, and we can't thank you enough. Thank you! Thank you so much, everybody. Honestly, you're the best and we hope you love the Patreon material

because we have a lot of fun doing it. We really put our hearts into that. We feel like for any dime that you give us, we really want to give you like 20 times the value. So that's what we're working on. You deserve it. Thank you for everything you do, for having faith in us enough that we'll produce cool stuff that's worth paying for. So thank you so much for doing that. And what if people wanted to think you were a cool something worth paying for? How could they get a hold of you? I'm around.

I don't know that anybody's going to do that. But if you would like to, I'm on the internet at Wisman Sucks. Where can they find you to do the exact same things? Hey, you can find me at jimmy p is funny or just google the show and you'll find us on there we're on there if you google hosts of small town murder crime and sports we'll come up we'll see my face i'm sorry no one else no one else will no one else does it but us so it'll be just us yeah so do that keep coming back hope you enjoyed one of the craziest fucking stories we've ever done because i did that was a

lot of fun sorry to to Tony T there. I hope he's doing better. I hope he's still alive. I hope so, too. That was five years ago last I heard from him. He'd be 81 right now. So fingers crossed that he's doing better. And I don't know.

Live from the Crime and Sports Studios, we will see you next week. Bye. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Crime and Sports early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus and Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.