Green Light with Chris Long - John Kruk on MLB Restarting. Patrick Mahomes, Twitter vs Instagram, Cliff Diving, and Mailbag.

Episode Date: July 8, 2020

0:37 - Twitter vs Instagram, Cliff Diving and Patrick Mahomes. 26:00 - John Kruk on Baseball Restarting, Best Mullets, and his Retirement Story. 1:10:30 - Quick Hitters with John Kruk. 1:15:52 - Mailbag: Music, Football and Books. Waterboys Hometown H2o Program - https://waterboys.org/ Chris's IG - https://www.instagram.com/laflamablanca95/ Cliff Media IG - https://www.instagram.com/clifflifemedia Green Light with Chris Long: Subscribe and enjoy weekly content including podcasts, documentaries, live chats, celebrity interviews and more including hot news items, trending discussions from the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NCAA are just a small part of what we will be sharing with you. 🌍🏀🏈SUBSCRIBE NOW ⚾🏒⛰️ http://bit.ly/chalknetwork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People don't act like they act on Twitter in real life. You know how many times I've had people cuss me out, call me names on Twitter? That doesn't happen to me in real life. Maybe it's because I'm 6-4-250 covered in tattoos and can likely whip your fucking ass. So I've been up here a week in Montana and that is flown by. I don't know if I ever want to leave. I feel like this every time I come up here. But I got my tree dashers with me from all birds.

And they were made for this. I thought they were made for Virginia. they're made for Montana too. They're lightweight, they're tough. They're made of all natural materials. And Allbirds is the sponsor of the Greenlight Pod. So we're batting a thousand there. They look fantastic.

Listen, guys, you know, some of these athletic shoes really functional, but they don't look great. I need to be in style at all times, okay? So I'm thrilled that Allbirds gives me an opportunity to look good. You know, as I've said before, look good, feel good, play good. That's what we said in football. Same thing with shoes. Just walking around as a dad.

Allbirds checks all the boxes, functionality, good looks, the whole thing. And I'm thrilled that they are sponsoring the Greenlight Pod. Go check out tree dashers at allbirds.com. Good looking shoes. So before we get into the pod, quick announcement on the philanthropy front. You know, I do podcasts. I did football. I still do charity.

And I'm very proud of the work we do at the Chris Long Foundation. I don't talk about that a lot on this pod, but we have a big newsletter coming out today. But Nicole Woody, who runs my foundation and is terrific, was excited about us posting on social, that sort of thing. I said, Nicole, we have a pod. Let's get this out to my people, my green light listeners, subscribers. We got a real platform here. So let me tell you what news we're breaking today. If you're not familiar with the foundation, the work we do is largely,

but not limited to the clean water space. We started something called Water Boys about five years ago, enlisting the help of my peers in the NFL to pick up the megaphone on the clean water crisis, raise money, raise awareness. We've been able to bring numerous players over to East Africa to, Tanzania, where we do most of our work to Kenya, where we do some of our work, and show them firsthand what a crisis it is. And anybody who's traveled a lot to tell you that we take water for granted in our country. We've had basketball players join on and work with us through

our Hoops 2-0 program in the NBA. We've enlisted the help of veterans, men and women who have served to raise money and awareness for the cause as well. We've climbed Kilimanjaro every year. That's what brought me in Tanzania in the first place with veterans, with football players, with influencers, MMA fighters. We're going to keep doing all that. But something I've always longed to do was bring our work home. People always ask me, what are you doing in America? And that's a fair question. I don't think a lot of people asking that question know how fair of a question is when they ask it. There are 2 million people in the United States living without clean water. That is a ridiculous number.

And it's certainly not the scale of the problems that we see in a Tanzania or Kenya or many other places you might have visited. But that is a staggering number. What's more staggering is that indigenous populations in the United States are 19 times more likely, to live without clean water than us, white folks. And black people and Latinx two times, two and a half times more likely to find themselves without access to clean water. So it's certainly a social issue. So while these disparities are very real, we've also worked with Xylem to launch this hometown H2O effort is what we call it. state side in very rural areas.

And we'll continue to serve Americans of all ethnicities in all types of communities. But, you know, the important and glaring statistic here is that, you know, indigenous people are 19 times more likely to live without running water. So we have wanted to work on Navajo Nation for some time. And we're going to start today. My wife and I are donating $50,000 to dig deep. which is a partner that we found that's worked extensively on Navajo Nation. And we are matching that $50,000 donation from the foundation as well.

So it's going to be 100K, going to the nation through Dig Deep. And this is a place where 30 to 40% of the population do not have access to clean water. It's insane. All water access needs to be clean. But a lot of these houses don't even have a faucet. So thousands of families direct. impacted by COVID right now without water. Not only do we want to work long term there, but people need help right now. And the first part of this gift will be water storage tanks

that provide access to people who don't have running water and are directly impacted by COVID. You cannot stop a pandemic without running water. And second, once it's safe to be back, installing in-home systems, we'll be doing that. We hope to continue working on the nation as part of our hometown H2O initiative for the foreseeable future. In long term, I think it's really important to note that we are looking at solutions like Deep Warhol Wells, like the ones we do in East Africa with our partner, World Serve, World Serve, International with shout out to John Bonjourno, Doug Pitt, those guys. Those guys have been with me from the start, and they have been a tremendous partner in

East Africa. we are brainstorming on how we can do the same type of long game work that we've done there on Navajo Nation and make a big difference here as well, stateside. So thanks for listening. Pod's coming up here in a second, but if you want to learn more, waterboys.org forward slash hometown H2O. Big newsletter coming out today. But you heard it here first.

Happy Wednesday, everybody. Chris Long, Greenlight Pod. I am of course your host and you are a loyal listener. I appreciate you. I took this show on the road recently. I'm out here. I don't know what you call this. What did they call this back in the day?

Like in Oregon Trail days, I'm on the frontier. I'm in the majestic corner of the country that I guess this would be called the Pacific Northwest. Where does the Pacific Northwest stop? I'm in Northwest Montana as I usually am in the summer in a little place called. Oh, I can't tell you where I am because it's like the first rule of, Fight Club. If I start telling you all where I am and you see how beautiful my Instagram pictures are, everybody's going to come up here and fuck the whole Serenity thing up. It's gorgeous. The weather's gorgeous for those of y'all down south, just breathing in moisture and garbage juice. Like you put

garbage in your dumpster and you literally breathe it in because it's 100 degrees and humid. I don't have to deal with that. 80 degrees, no humidity, beautiful. It's hoodie weather at night. I'm up here in Montana. I took this thing on the road. And of course, as you probably noticed, if you are a loyal listener, we didn't have a pod early in the week this week on Monday, as has been kind of tradition. The past few months, we've been going three a week, scaled down from five a week, which was insane at the beginning of the pandemic.

That was as much for me losing my mind sitting around the house feeling I had to do something as it was for you. I hope you've enjoyed all the podcast. pods during quarantine. And it's been nice because we've busted our ass to bring you good guests. I know we had that kind of highlight reel of June that popped out on Friday because I had to get my Fourth of July on. We've had great guests.

We've had a good run here. And we are picking up Steam. Again, thanks to you, the listeners. Keep it up. Keep telling your friends about it. Today's going to be a good day. Okay. It's a good pod.

I can tell you because I've already done the interview, the main event for this pod. and that is John Crook. John Cruck, Lifetime 300 hitter, Padres, most notably the Phillies, white socks, ton of swag, okay, dripping with swag. Love the guy in the 90s. I was a first baseman. I was pretty decent, by the way. Now he's Philly's color commentator doing NBC Philly, doing all the games up there.

getting ready for maybe a season, maybe not, some semblance of a season. They're pushing hard. I'm going to ask him. I did ask him all about that. And I can tell you, this guy is really insightful, but he also has a ton of great stories. I don't know what it is about baseball players. I don't know if it's the fact they sit around a lot and really, like, get to kick it with their buddies all day, even though they're playing a professional sport.

I'm not saying it's easy. It's one of the hardest sports in the world, probably. Not from a toughness standpoint or an endurance standpoint, but these guys, are incredibly skilled athletes, they do a lot of sitting around. And I'm wondering, and they have fun, they're on the road a lot, there's no athlete that's better equipped to tell great stories

or recall great stories than baseball players, in my opinion. And this guy's got him for days. He told some great stories during the interview. You're definitely going to want to stick around for that. He's a guy you'd want to have a beer with. And let's just say you're going to enjoy it. I'm also going to have Coach Wookie, recurring personality on the pod, my high school baseball coach, former Virginia baseball stud.

And he's going to kind of chime in and kind of be my resident baseball expert as he's been lately. And hopefully we'll see more a wookie. You know, wookie's a local dad as well, but he loves podcasting. So he's pretty good at it. He's a natural. He's going to pop on with Kruk when he pops on. So as I was saying, we're down to two pods a week.

That's what I meant to say. We had three for a while. We had five in the beginning of the pandemic. Two is most manageable for me. And honestly, that's going to allow me to do better work and enjoy my life and my family late this summer. We'll see what happens with the football season, whatever that's going to be. It might be more pods. There might be some collaborative stuff that I'm going to do in the fall.

The schedule is in flux, guys. It's like, it's called going with the flow. That's what I tell my son all the time. We're working on going with the flow, my four-year-old whale. He likes to plan everything out. I don't know if any of y'all have four-year-olds, but my son, he has to get the like the agenda for the whole fucking day. I'm like, dude, you're four.

Okay? Go with the flow. I'm going to go with the flow here. Take my own advice. We're doing two pods for the time being. And, you know, we'll see what happens in the fall. Also, notable today. Patrick Mahomes deal.

We're going to talk about that. Cliff jumping, my morning jacket, a big fat mailbag. with my IG crowd. First off, I want to talk about IG and Twitter. Okay. I've been a Twitter guy for a long time. I've done pods, you know, in the Stone Ages of this green light progression here. Literally on the thing I'm about to tell you again.

So, you know, don't hold me to this because I've done this before. It just feels more real now. I think I'm done with Twitter. And by done with Twitter, I don't mean I'm like done. off it. It's deleted off my phone. So if any of you all have to leave the app off your phone, it's great. You can't compulsively click on it and get sucked into all the bullshit that exists on that site. It just turned out to be a major efficiency drag. It turned out to be a life drag. It turned out to be one of these things that just made you more negative affecting my attention span, you know,

the amount of time I waste. I called it this last week. It's a drug with no buzz. Usually you do a drug, you expect the buzz because that's what addiction is. You know, like something feels good. You want to keep doing it. There are millions of people that just keep doing the same shit over and over again on that site, on that website, as I call it.

And don't get any good feelings, I don't think. It's literally a drug that just makes you feel bad. and you keep coming back to it. It's like stubbing your toe a million times, and you don't stop doing it. You just stub your fucking toe on purpose. I mean, it's just death by a thousand paper cuts. And anytime you log on, there's no shortage of bullshit.

And this isn't one of those things where I'm just heaping it on the people, the bots, the Russian bots, the people who are in my mentions. This is about everybody on Twitter. I'm talking about people that agree with me politically or ideologically. This is people that I wouldn't care. to talk to on the side of the road because we're just that different as far as what we believe and the ideologies we subscribe to. Everybody, pretty much everybody's annoying on that site.

I'll say 5% of the accounts that I see on my timeline are accounts I'm excited to hear from or see. This is a bit of a, I'm going Christopher McCannless on this thing of Into the Wild fame on a much smaller scale when it comes to social media. Catch me on IG. Catch me on my IG story. That's going to be the new mechanism for me getting my thoughts out. And I will still promote my pod and drop an occasional jewel on Twitter.

If I feel so inclined, I'll download the app and say something here or there. And I don't know what it's going to be like in football season. But for now, I'm on vacation. I need that shit out of my life. It's a drug with no buzz. It's not real life. People don't act like they act on Twitter in real life. You know how many times I've had people cuss me out, call me names on Twitter.

That doesn't happen to me in real life. Maybe it's because I'm 6-4-250 covered in tattoos and can likely whip your fucking ass. Now, Instagram's been good. I did post a video yesterday of me cliff diving. I want to address that really quickly. That is not my second career. I know that a lot of people were like in the comments, hey, great cliff dive. really well done.

I'm a cliff jumper. It's different. Cliff diving would constitute going head first, in my opinion, into the water. I'm not that ballsy. I don't do gainers. I don't do flips. Maybe I'll get there. But I found this cliff up here.

It's about 50 feet high. And I jumped off it. I've been staring at this cliff for 11, 12 years as an NFL player. And I always was like, man, like, what if I land wrong? What if I hit the bottom and tear my ACL? What if I get a concussion? You can only get so many concussions. What if I separate my shoulder?

I'll be the biggest idiot in the world. Like they'll take my money. I got nobody to answer to anymore. I'll be doing more stuff like jumping off cliffs. And I got to tell you, pretty scary. You kind of pull up by jet ski, of course. You pull up to this or your parents drive your 35-year-old ass to the cliff like mine did. great parents, they waited for me to jump as well.

You come up, you swim to shore, there's this, you know, rock scramble that you kind of got to snake your way up the side of the hill. And when you get to the top, it's one of those things, anybody who's jumped off something high, and, you know, it's only year one of me being a cliff jumper. So who am I, you know, to speak on it with authority. But once you're up there, you're up there. And the climb up can be pretty sketchy to wherever you're jumping. I got to tell you, it looked way higher when I got up there.

And I'm not a big fan of waiting a long time before I do something like that. So I had to just look down and go. And then the pressure of like my mom watching and my dad watching, like A, don't get hurt, don't die. But B, don't look like a little bitch up there. Like just thinking it over for five minutes. the bottom of my feet when I hit the water, I thought they were going to be bruised. Now, that's not the case.

It wasn't painful in any other way, but it felt good to conquer a fear. I don't like heights, which is funny because, you know, I've done some climbing and that sort of thing, but, you know, I don't like jumping off. I like jumping off of high things, but it just doesn't make sense to me. I think like anybody else jumping off of high stuff. I was reading about it. You got to go check this Instagram page. out called Cliff Media. I've followed it for a little bit. It's just a bunch of like literally dudes that look like Brian Brayman jumping off of high structures. And if you're an

Eagles fan, you know who Brian Brayman is. Brian Brayman is a poster child to me for somebody who does like a gainer off of an oil rig into the Gulf of Mexico like 100 feet in the air. Like just white dude, long hair, board shorts, maybe lives in a van, but not like because he has no other choice, but because he's like, I'm just about. that life. You know, Tevas, that sort of thing. I don't know what Cliff divers listen to, but I would imagine slightly stupid could be in the rotation.

These guys have balls so big, you got to put them in wheelbarrels. Like Stan's dad on South Park. Cliff Media, go check that feed out. Dude, these guys are nuts. Way, way, way ballsier than football players. I've seen some dudes jumping out of like, you know, jumping off a crane, 100 feet in the air, 50 feet felt like a lot. I'm imagining the dude that set the world record at 192 feet. Insanity.

In sanity. Hitting the water at like 75 miles an hour. So I'm going to stay in the minor leagues. You know, don't give me too much credit. Not a cliff diver, just a cliff jumper. So we talked about Twitter. We talked about cliff jumping. Patrick Mahomes real quick before we get into John Kruk and then into a mailbag.

Everybody saw the big eye-popping numbers, okay, and we do this sometimes. And I was a victim of this thing too. You see it, you say, holy shit, Patrick Mahomes, a deal that's going to be in effect till 2013, hopefully three presidents from now. I'll be 46. There will definitely be sex robots. The world might be ending. like,

2013 is going to be, I don't know what it's going to be like. Like Miami could be underwater. I don't know. But Patrick Mahomes, if you believe your eyes on ESPN.com yesterday morning is going to be a chief in 2013. It's a $503 million deal is what they listed at

and touted as the largest in sports history. But it's not as steep as you think, you know, especially early on. And we'll delve into that. And Bill Barrow, Barnwell, who wrote a really, that article is, Bill Barnwell has a huge brain, man. And I'm not great with contracts, admittedly, but I'll take a stab at this thing.

He mentioned that Texas and Cowboys might be actually happy with what they saw out of this contract. And I'll talk about why. You're definitely not going to see the final few years of this deal under these terms. And Bill put it well, he'd have to be kind of somewhere in the middle. He'd have to be good enough to get all his bonuses and hit all these benchmarks, but not good enough to demand a new deal. because that's likely what's going to happen. People are talking about 2025 when he might get a new deal. Again, $503 million is eye-popping, but the guarantees are in the hundreds, measly, $183 million.

I haven't looked at the Kansas City tax laws or whatever, but it's a lot of money no matter what. And, you know, people are comparing it to Mike Trout's deal. It's not a realistic comparison. All that's guaranteed. 141 actually of Mahomes contract is guaranteed. The real comps here, I'll get to it in a minute, but I think if you look closely at this deal, it's actually kind of team friendly. It's a win for everybody.

Looks good for Patrick Mahomes. It is good for Patrick Mahomes. It's good for the team. I'll get into that in a minute. And it's good for the agent, okay? Lee Steinberg, we can't fall for the okie-doke of calling it the greatest contract in history, already a team-friendly deal by calling it that because it makes them look like, hey, we pay.

And they do pay. But the reality is it's not what Mahom is going to get, 140 guaranteed. He might re-up in five years with the TV money that comes in. Things are going to be different in five years. He won't see the end of the deal because of things we mentioned. And he'd have to be probably in the middle, which is highly unlikely to see him play that out. also this forecast that Reed and Veach stay put

and I think that's a possibility you know for the next decade but I don't know now on the player friendly side it does seem like they have to act two years ahead of time because of the guarantees and the way they kick in

and that's good for Pat now I don't know how that in practice actually helps him but you know the guarantees are structured in a way that he's very well protected. You can compare this contract. I think I'm not into the cross-sport comparisons for the reasons I mentioned,

the guarantees, and also the unlikelyhood that it even plays out. But you have to compare to the six guys who read up after the rookie wage scale changed. Tanna Hill, Luck, Wentz, Gough, Newton, Bortles. When you look at this thing, he's only making $14 million more than Gough did the first four years of his re-up adjusted for cap inflation. And that's Jared Goff. And we know how we feel about Patrick Mahomes.

We know how he feel about Jared Goff. I'm not a dump on Jared Goff guy. I think he's a fine player. He got paid a lot of money. I think that, you know, we'll find out in the near future who he really is, who McVeigh really is. But it's safe to say that. And I'm not here. People like to do this.

McVeigh ain't read yet and golf ain't Mahomes. And, you know, there's a $14 million. dollar difference between the first couple years of that deal adjusted for cap inflation, there's not a big difference. It could be argued that it should be astronomically higher when looking at those two players. Michael Vic had a deal 10 years ago. It did not create a precedent. It was huge.

It was kind of record-breaking in length and money. It did not set a precedent. I don't know that this one's going to set a precedent either. I think some people are looking at it. And my first reaction was like, what does this mean in the big picture? Oh, look at $500 million. What's, what's, what's this going to do for, you know, I fell into that shit too. I'm not a great contract got.

Okay. When I played, you know, I paid an agent, good money to do a good job. You know, I'm not one of these do your own deal guys. And it worked out well for me. Play well, get paid, try to maximize your earnings while you're in there. Not a ton of first rounders in the history of league have won a Super Bowl this early. which is actually even surprising when you look at the list. Patrick Mahomes doesn't have a lot of peers when it comes to his early successes.

There's not going to be another Patrick Mahomes here real soon. Even with Lamar's success, he's got to play that out another couple years, which people will tell you all sorts of reasons why that might be unlikely. I think that as much as Pat is dependent on Andy Reid, I think that, you know, Lamar might be even more dependent on a Greg Roman in that system. So, you know, another Pat Mahomes ain't coming along tomorrow. I don't think we're going to start seeing this for every quarterback that gets paid. But do know this.

He's got Andy. He's got a dynamic scheme. He's got a great football atmosphere. It makes Kansas City a really attractive destination for everybody and free agency for years to come. And not just like, hey, I'm coming in a one-year deal. This is attractive for me. It was like that anyways with Pat Undercenter. But knowing that he's going to be there the next five years,

you know, anytime you get more Pat Mahomes is a good thing for attracting more players. And he'll probably get read up before this even expires. So I would look for another big deal for him in the next five years. And TV money will change the game. So that's that. Let's get to John Kruk and Coach Wookie. Okay. So this is great.

I got my high school baseball coach, Wookie, as Greenlight Pod listeners know. And John has joined us, the legend himself, somebody who I coveted his baseball cards in the 90s. I thought he had the best swag on the field. John Cruck, how you doing, man? Where are you at? I'm down in Florida home, waiting to see

when I'm allowed to go up to Philly for the start of the season. So if they started, who knows, Chris, what they're going to do. We're definitely going to get into that. I got a group text for about 15 bucks. bodies back home. And sometimes they're like a question farm for my guests. And I said, I got John Kruk on today. They said, I got a buddy from the south side of Chicago. And he got real excited. He said, ask him about how he retired. I didn't know you retired this way. Is this true that you kind of impromptu said, I'm out? Well, it wasn't impromptu. It was a, it was a,

it took a while to get this. So we had, uh, Jim Abbott was on our team. And, uh, They all kept talking about trading him. So I said, you know, if they trade Jim Abbott, that means that they've given up on the season or, you know, they don't think we can make a run. And so I said, you know, my knees were done. And so I told Jim, I said, if you get traded, I'm going to retire. Well, we're on the bus going from, we landed in Boston, and he gets a call that he got traded. So we go up to his room in Boston and had a few beers with him, me and Ozzy Gien and Kurt McCaskill and a couple other guys were up there. Robin Ventura, but Jim asked me, he said, are you going to retire?

I said, yeah, I'm done. I was planning on being done at that moment. These damn dumb asses talked me into, hey, let's figure this out. Let's figure out a good way for you to retire. So he said, how about you just get a hit and you walk off the field? I say, yeah, I can do that. I can get on board with that. I didn't get a hit in Boston.

Right. Three games, no hits. So then I go to Baltimore. And, you know, I grew up in West Virginia, a couple hours from Baltimore, about, you know, two and a half hours, three hours from Baltimore. So my parents came down. And my dad doesn't mince words. So Friday afternoon, I met with my mom and dad, you know, and some other relatives

were there. And I said, you know, hey, if I get a hit tonight, I'm walking off the field. I'm not hurt, but I'm done playing. And my dad, in all his intimate wisdom, he said, well, you better get the effort in the mother effort tonight because it's, supposed to be hot as hell all weekend. I don't want to set up in this damn sun. But I didn't get a hit Friday.

I didn't get a hit Saturday. Now I'm like, man, if I have to go back to Chicago, that's a hell of a long drive back to West Virginia. So I got to get this hit today. So the closer on the Orioles at that time is a former teammate of mine, Doug Jones. So I asked Jonesy Saturday. I said, hey, who's pitching Sunday? He said, Scott Erickson.

I said, good guy. He said, oh, yeah, great guy. You'd like it. I said, tell him to throw me a nothing fast. I got to try to get one more hit so I get the hell out of here, man. So he said, all right, I'll tell him. And if he come down the dugout, he said, your first hit bat, he said, if I come down the dugout, tip my hat, that means he's going to do it.

Man, I'm walking up the on deck circle, Chris. I can't find him. And I'm like, God, I got to try to do this on my own and this ain't going to work. That's how bad it was. Yeah. So I'm almost to the batters box, and Jonesy comes running down. and he's tipping his hat. I'm like, oh, thank God.

And he did. He threw me a BP fastball. I got the crap jammed out of him. He hit a little bloop over Kyle Ripkin's head, and that was it. He sent him out. I went home. On a bloop. Yeah, it wasn't a rocket, that's for sure.

But that's all I had left. But I actually got home and watched like the last three innings at home. But I heard the White Sox announcers, you know, I had the West Virginia State flour, the satellite dish. and so I watched the last few innings on TV and the announcers were Ken Harrison and they were saying, you know,

we don't know what happened. It looked like he was limping. I think he pulled a hamstring or whatever. Because I forgot to tell people. They had to call this kid up that waited for six days for me to get a hit so he can join a roster. And every day, every day he'd come a hate.

Thanks today's today, nope. I'm going to be honest with you. It ain't going to be today either. You just knew, you know. Yeah, but did you ever fantasize about like one of these storybook retire? I think that's a storybook as it comes because you go out on your terms in the biggest way. Yeah, and you know when I got to first base, the first base coach didn't know.

Papa Jack, Ron Jackson didn't know. And he said, where are you going? I said, I'm done, man. I'm retiring. And Rockmore Palmero's like, God, no, he's trying to talk me in his stand. He said, you're hitting 300, whatever. I'm like, yeah, but it got to the point, Chris, where if I was on first base, I prayed no one hit one in the gas.

right have to run that's how bad it got and uh so as i'm talking to raphael you know i'm thinking well cow's in the middle of this street you know he's closing in on his street to you know the all-time games list streak and i thought well let me get the second talk to cow cow and i were talking while the third out was made so i go into you know i go in ozi guienne i go in the clubhouse done whatever and ozi has a bottle of champagne because ozie and i i've known since he was 16. We came up through the Padres organization together. He had a bottle of champagne.

We toasted. I don't even think I shower. I just took my crap off, put in a bag, and went home. But usually, usually you would shower after a game. Sometimes. No shower pills. How prevalent were shower pills? That's what we called in the NFL when a guy's like,

he tries to sneak out of the locker room after a game without taking a shower. We call that a shower pill. No, I took a shower pill. Yeah. We always showered. When I was in high school, they made us, like football, basketball, baseball, whatever. But not baseball, because we had to play at a different place.

But we always had to shower after practice. We always shower. These guys now, man, they're out of there quick. So you're calling into question the hygiene of 2020 baseball players. No, because when they get on the bus, they all smell good. So I don't know how that works. I don't know. That's a different kind of shower.

That's where you spray the cologne so heavily that people can't smell your musk. You know, I think that was the only. day that I didn't shower after the game. It's good to clear that up. That makes me feel, you know, you say never meet your heroes. It's great to meet you and know that you had good hygiene as a baseball player. Wookiee, did you shower as a baseball player at UVA? That's how I got my nickname. No, you got your nickname to get that hair on your chest.

Exactly, because I was 17 years old, show up first day at UVA for practice, take my shirt off, and some senior across the locker room goes, and he was like, hey, Wookie the rookie, the rookie. Why don't you up in the shower? And it was done from there. I can remember the first time you went on vacation with my folks while you were a coach in high school. You took your shirt off on the dock

and my dad told you to take the sweater off. It's a year to get you down. Hey, John, you know, like the current events with baseball, you're saying you're not sure about the season. But the main thing they got to do if they wanted to happen is they need a really efficient testing situation, which the 113-page guideline for 2020, which I did not read, admittedly, I don't think I've read 113 pages of anything since high school,

says that they're going to test every other day. You think the MLB could pull that part of it off? I don't know. I think that's what the players are questioning right now because, you know, they've had, I know Freddie Freeman from people I've talked to in Atlanta said that he was in real bad shape after he got tested positive. But, you know, the Giants canceled practice today because their test results didn't come back in time or something so they didn't want to push it.

I read today where Mike Rizzo, the general manager of the nationals, is even discussing having the nationals not play this year, just out of feet. So that would be devastating. And, you know, some of the players have opted out, and I don't blame them. You know, I think, though, you know, if Mike Trout, it would be like, you know, Tom Brady. Yeah. Ron James opting out of the season. If Mike Trout decides to opt out, and if Mike does, I don't blame him a bit because his wife's pregnant with their first child.

So I know that's a fear of his moving forward with this coronavirus. But I think if, look, Freddie Freeman's a big enough name. But if Mike Trout decides, you know, I'm opting out of the season, that could be a red flag to Major League Baseball. I say, you know what, we might want to think about shutting it down. Yeah, you know what? I don't know if they could survive the Mike Trout thing. So far, I mean, Nick Marquakis, David Price, Felix Hernandez, Zim, Ryan Zimmerman has opted out, which, you know, Sean Doolittle's on the fence. I know Sean's always very, very vocal about, you know, players rights and that sort of thing.

And this is one of those situations where I know it's got to be tough. If I was a football player this year, if I had any ounce of wanting to come back as a player, and I've been out of the game for a year and I almost came back last year, I wouldn't do it. There's zero chance I'd come back. If a team called me this year, I don't want to play in front of no fans. I don't want to risk my family safety. I don't want to risk my safety. So it's a tough situation. How about, like, I mean, teams that are in the middle of an abbreviated spring training, right?

I mean, it's condensed. And then teams are missing, like, the Nats and some other team had to cancel on Monday because they didn't get their test back from Friday. If you lose three, four days, is that a deal that you can overcome as the other teams are kind of charging ahead? No, not this quick. you know, it's a three-week spring training, basically. Because, hey, look, the guys were hitting. I know I talked to a lot of players.

They were hitting. They've been thrown. But you can't simulate what you're going to see once the season starts. And I know that I read today the Yankees and the Mets are going to play like two exhibition games in New York somewhere. But, you know, the thing that's disturbing to me is not disturbing. It's sad, but like, you know, the Phillies best pitcher, Aaron Noah. Right now he tested positive for coronavars. He has to wait 14 days.

He's not going to be ready. I don't care how much he's been throwing. I don't care what he's been doing. In 14 days, he will not be ready for the season to start. So that hampers the Phillies right there because they had a player tested positive. You know, Freddie Freeman, Nick Marquake is your technically weighed two huge bats in the middle of that lineup of the Braves. So it's not fair to the Braves either. So I don't know how the commissioner is going to go about, you know, what happens if, you know, X amount of players test positive on a team.

Do they have to forfeit those games if they're supposed to play or do they make them back up at the end of the season like they do if there's rainouts or snowouts or whatever? It's going to be a tough decision for Major League Baseball moving forward to just to have them decide how they're going to handle if, you know, more than one player test positive for a certain team during the same. season how they're going to go about making those games back up if they can't play. So about, you know, the pitcher getting, you know, testing positive, if you're a manager, are you going to rethink how you travel your pitchers versus your position players? I mean, is there a scenario where you quarantine your pitchers or you fly them private? Yeah, because Bruce Ariens, when we had him on the pod, the football coach down there in Tampa said, I might quarantine a third quarterback, you know, because I don't want them in the building.

Yeah, I, you know what? The problem is, is not many teams have five good starters. So, you know, that's a scary part. But, yeah, it's going to be interesting. I know that, like, the announcers aren't allowed to travel with the team. The only people are allowed to travel or the coaches, players, limited front office, you know, and then the strength coaching dietitian, I guess, or whatever. But, you know, what the NBA is doing down here in Orlando, you know, they're going to quarantine.

like they call it the bubble. They're just going to stay there and play all the games there. But, you know, when you're traveling, and I, look, I get it. They charter and all that. But can they really get those planes as clean as they want to get them after, you know, some other people have flown in it that non-players have flown in it like two hours before or three hours before? And then they come back and teams have to go somewhere. I know a lot of teams are skeptical about coming to Florida because the test of really ramped down here.

you know, I just think players are smarter than I was. Like, we wouldn't even a question. We might not even know there was a coronavirus when I was afraid because we were so oblivious to life outside of our little, you know, our little capsule we were in that these guys know now. And I think that if I was Rob Manfred for Major League Baseball, I think I would sit down with a lot of the key players and do a call like this, a Zoom thing. I'm clueless about. but so are we i mean i just started doing this zoom shit as soon as uh the covid hit zoom whoever started zoom uh is making bank i know they're not happy about the pandemic but uh it's worked out well for them how about though like you mentioned the bubble i see the plains is an issue but

each city's different and you know each you could have you know a franchise in a city that doesn't have any spike of cases and then the next city could be and you know you've got guys with families you're going to expect your wives not to take their kids to school if they have school or, you know, not go out to get something to eat. That's a lot of guys in a bunch of different cities and you can't really plan for which cities worse and it's not in an equal playing field that way. So we'll see. Well, I think it's going to be interesting to see. I know when the players get to the hotel, they have to stay in the hotel. Yeah, yeah, good luck with that. And I was just talking to Matt Barnes. Yeah, exactly. And for those of y'all that can't see John

and are listening. He's laughing because, you know, I had this conversation with Matt Barnes. I said, you know, it's a bubble with the NBA. But there's something called Tinder that I don't know if John's heard of this app, but Tinder is the biggest threat to the basketball bubble. And it might be a big threat to baseball quarantine as well. How about pitching catching up or hitting catching up for the pitching?

Because you mentioned hitting, there's no way to replicate live arm, you know, on a field. Like, is there going to be a big gap? in the skill level of a pitcher picking it up from square one in a hitter? I think it's going to be tougher on the hitters because, look, they're going to face their own pitchers. You know, I know, I mean, I guess you heard that, you know, John Carlos Stanton hit a line draft off his teammates head the other day, to Masahira Tanaka. He's in concussion protocol now, I hear.

But, you know, when you're facing your buddies, your teammates, there's not an adrenaline rush whatsoever. It's just like I can't wait for this crap to be over. And so, you know, that's when the game started in spring training. That to me is when you got your, you know, the adrenaline started, your heart started beating a little harder and stuff. I don't think you can get that. So they're going to have to find that adrenaline and how to control it. And day one of the season, which, you know, normally they have 30 something games to prepare for that opening day. Now they have None. So it's going to be tough. Well, it's going to be extra hard for the Astros because I don't think you get beaned in practice and inner squad scrimmages.

You can't charge a mound this year. Yeah, that was my next question. Okay. You're a first baseman. First off, are you not going to talk to people on the other teams? I think this is working right into baseball's hand. No more stolen bases because a lot of the saber matricians don't think the stolen base is a high average play. even though if you're a great catcher, you only throw out about 20, 25% of the runners who steal. So 75% of the time you're really safe. I don't know what they're going to do. You're not allowed to hold a guy on because you have to have six foot social distancing. I don't know how that's going to work.

Someone said it, someone tried to tell me once that he heard that the first base he's going to have to play behind the guy and then I'm like, yeah. Yeah, it's going to be tough. I feel like you have to trust that that team is no different than your team. Like the variation in infection within the team has to be, I mean, it's kind of random. So, I mean, you're trusting the guy on first just as much as you're trusting your buddy in the dugout. And so you're saying no charging the mound this year. We won't see it.

Yeah, that's no charging. This is what I've heard. No charging the mound. Players aren't allowed to spit. If you spit, I don't know what happens. What about seeds? Can't spit. No spitting, nothing.

You can have gum, but you can't. What do you do with your gum when you're done chewing it? They want guys to swallow their gum. Throw it in a garbage cat between innings, I guess. But I heard that the bench players who aren't in the starting lineup that they have to sit in the bleachers. Oh, that's wild. Because of the social distancing thing. I think there's only like I heard that the manager, bench coach, pitching coach, hitting coach are only ones allowed in the dug out of a trainer.

The rest of the guys have to be sitting up in the, uh, uh, bleachers six feet apart. How do you meet with a pitcher? When they call out the manager to say whatever he says to the pitcher, which I always wonder what's going on out there? Like, what are they doing? I, you know, I'm assuming an earpiece, maybe that, you know, can't get on the mound, right?

Six feet? How are you going to talk to your pitcher? Especially with no fans, they're going to hear everything. And all these coaches have rabbit ears. You know that. Yeah, especially those baseball coaches. So, I mean, it's one thing in football, the fans are going to hear a lot of motherfucks that they wouldn't normally hear,

which is a very colorful game day experience and very realistic and trash talk. That's another thing. Y'all don't have it as much, but you're going to hear some really ugly things said to each other on a football field. Y'all's problem is going to be everybody is accustomed to being on each other's shit, and now it's going to be even more. How about the rules? There's three main rules that jumped out to me, the DH thing. there was the there's the pitching three hitters at a time you can't you can't change pitchers that

quickly and then extra innings runner on second is there one that you hate is the one that you're like this is a good idea uh i like the pitching one yes as a hitter i bet you do yeah yeah especially like if you look at how the philly's line it might be constructed harper could it third Hoskins hit fourth or Rio Muto kid at third, Harper, fourth, and Reese Hoskins. So what are you going to do if you're a manager? You have to bring in a guy to face him, has to face all three of them. Do you bring in a lefty for Harper, but then he has to face Rio Muto and Hoskins? Or do you bring in a righty and hope that, you know, your right, he can combat Harper?

The one I hate is the DH, the universal D.H. There's something about the National League game that was pure. Are there a strategy involved? I mean, I'm a dummy. I am clueless at a lot of things in this world. I think I could be an American League manager. I really do. Shots fired.

You know, all these managers, I talk to American League, once you make the lineup, you know, especially if your pitcher's dealing, you ain't got a whole lot to do. Right. National League, if this game's close and your pitcher's dealing, do I pinch hit for him here? Do I let him go?

There's a lot of strategy involved in a national. National League, double switches and all that junk. But the thing I don't understand is like is the universal DH this year? Like what the hell does that got to do with the coronavirus? I mean, it's not like it's going to speed the game up, Annie. Normally a pitcher goes up and he's either three pitches and he's out or he bunts in the first two pitches. What about what about the schedule?

Do you think they botched that thing? Because everybody's kind of like, like I talked to a Cardinals fan, you know, because I played in St. Louis for a long time. I got buddies there. They're like, the cards have to go to Milwaukee like a bunch of times, like it's criminal. And then you talk about the Nats who are the defending champs. They get the Orioles and I think it was the Blue Jays a whole bunch and the Braves get them half as much. So how do you distribute a 60 game schedule equitably? Yeah, that's the biggest thing. I think with you know, moving forward for this year is, is it really fair to all these teams?

you know if you have to play the blue jays have a ton of young talent the Orioles are rebuilding we all know that but if you have to play them and then your opponent you know let's say the Phillies have to play them and then the Braves have to play you know the Yankees and Red Sox more is that really fair to the to the Atlanta Braves no So there's no way they can ever get this schedule thing right and it just I mean for 60 games too if it's a hundred and 162 games you can overcome a tougher interleague schedule because you have that many. But if you go into New York and Boston for five games or six games and they beat you up pretty good, not only you're going to lose those five or six games, your pitching staff is going to take a beating with the offenses that those teams have.

And that's a big thing moving forward because there's not going to be many off days. And so pitchers aren't going to get as much rest. So that's the biggest thing with me is how they're going to, you know, people have asked me, say, well, if you win a World Series, is it really winning a World Series? Well, hell yeah, it is. I mean, you're going to get a trophy, right, and a big ass pack. Yeah, and every season has different challenges, and I've heard NBA players talk about this. I mean, like, this is going to be one of the most challenging seasons if they make this happen.

I'm sure in baseball, it's going to be, especially for some position players. I mean, pitching is one thing. I get that, and I'm not, you know, you guys understand that better than I do. but, I mean, a catcher, 66 days, 60 games, certain positions. It's going to be a physical grind, isn't it? Yeah, it's going to be very, very physical demand for the catchers, especially. You know, that's where you hope you can find. Now, the good thing is that they have expanded roster.

So the Phillies, most teams will be able to carry three catchers at least. Yeah. So it's like you said, you might want to get that third catcher in quarantine until he's absolutely needed because of, you know, the starter, starting catcher goes down and the backup, you have to, you know, double switch for him or something, you know. Yeah. It makes it, it makes an interesting situation moving forward for the catchers, but the Phillies have a horse behind a plate. So I kind of enjoy that. J.T. Real Muto, I'm sure if you ask him, he's going to catch all 60, but, you know, I think they have to be smart with him.

But, you know, the way the catcher position is now, the way they protect him with collisions and all that stuff, they still get beat up. don't get me wrong, but they can play more games, you know, and they become like an offensive force, you know, guys like Buster Posey, Yaddy Molina, guys like that. Yadi, yes. And guys like that, you know, they're an integral part of the team offensively, not only defensively, but offensively. And so, you know, with 60 games of 66 days, you know,

how much are you going to afford having a guy that basically, you know, can crash for the Cubs too? they hit in the middle of their lineup. You know, it's going to be tough, tough on them to see how many games they can play. And you take a big hit from your starter to your backup. Hey, I know Wookie has a good question here coming up. But while you're on Yadi, you mentioned Yadi. I was always jealous of the Cardinals because we sucked at football and they were really good.

And it's baseball heaven. And nobody gave a shit about us. But there was one guy I had to love and it was Yadi. Is he a Hall of Famer, guys? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I love him. Not even a question.

He is. I've gotten the opportunity to talk to the Cardinals' pitchers, and they talk about how much he means to them. And one day I was down in Jupiter at their spring training, and I got there like 630, and I see him coming off the field. So I asked one of their pitchers, I said, what was he doing out here? He said he comes at, as soon as the sun comes up,

he's there every day, and he has every catcher in camp, and they work. He said he wants to do it before any media gets there because he doesn't want like, you know, the media to know and, you know, bother him or whatever. He just wants to go out there and work with his young catchers and the backup catchers. Brian Payne was a backup catcher one year. Brian was telling me, he said, he goes, I learned more in the first week I was in Cardinal Spring training with Yadi than I had my whole life catching. He said, he's a genius.

I said, well, probably why he's going to be a Hall of Fame or without doubt. I don't think it's any question. There you go. So we were talking earlier about equitable schedule and, you know, would the World Series count? You know, without the All-Star game determining home field advantage, who gets home field advantage this year? Maybe they'll play it in a neutral spot. I think that's what I would do for the World Series. Playing in a neutral ballpark, coin toss, decide who the home team is or best record or whatever.

But again, that's not fair because of the difference in scheduling this year. But I think they should play it at a neutral spot. That way they can contain the players, you know, in one hotel. And, you know, they're not traveling back and forth because how bad would that be? Yeah. Game four of the World Series and your starting pitcher that day test positive for coronavirus. I think they have to do something to protect the players. And I think at a, you know, one place.

you know, Central, and that way they can, you know, each team can have their own hotel or they can just, basically, baseball can run out the whole hotel for just baseball people and doctors and whatever to test these guys. And so they can hopefully stay safe and not miss any games during the playoffs or World Series. I think it'd be cool if they picked some really exotic neutral site. Like, you know, UFC did Fight Island, you know, just do something just totally off the wall. I don't know if it's a cornfield or one of those really nice. We used to come down to Jacksonville a lot and play those Jacksonville teams our high school. There's plenty of great baseball fields down there in Florida. Florida's doing any better by the time World Series comes around.

Wookie, you had a connection here, a mutual friend maybe. You want to ask him about that one? Yeah, so we, so when Chris and Kyle played at St. Anne's Belfield, I coached with a guy named Larry Mitchell who used to pitch for the Phillies. Okay, yeah. So he tells me this funny story about you in spring training that I've always wanted to know, which was you'd show up to, you know, all the ballparks that got, you know, the all home plates kind of come together in a clover and you can just walk from, you know, game to game that's going on. And he told me the story that you used to like to, you would basically go up, tell an on deck hitter, hey, back up, Bob, I'm going to go take to bat. You'd go up, you'd rake a single, you'd stand on first, pinch runner, somebody come and

run, you go to the next park, step up, rake a double, get somebody to pinch hit, and you'd get like six at bats in the span of 20. minutes. Was that true? I went over there one day to our minor league complex and I got I think 20 something at bats in like an hour. It was great because it, you know, just I literally would hit, run to the different field hit, run to a different field hit. Like I was worn out. Sometimes I'd go to a different field and hope that the other team was hit and so I could take a break. But yeah, I used to do that. I probably did that two or three times every spring training. I take one day. where I just, I need it bats, so I'm going to go run around and take these at bats.

I felt bad for some of the kids, but, you know, have a bit bad. Not bad. You need your bets, I get it. Yeah, I mean, they got plenty, though. Those, those, that, they get too many of bats, I think, but it was a blast. I mean, it was tiring, but it was fun. I enjoyed it. And then the other thing that stands out to me about your, I mean, obviously,

300 hitter. idolized you as a hitter, but you had this streak of 2,682 at bats between getting hit by pitch and the first time in your major league career and your second time. And it might still be a record. And my question is,

2682 at bats between getting hit by a pitch. How do you do it? How is that even possible? Is it fear, John? You know, feet of a ballerina, man. Yeah, it's funny because I used to get drilled a lot in the minor leagues. And apparently I just learned how to get the hell out of the way. You know, someone said, how come you didn't let that hit you?

I said, well, I thought I had a better chance of hitting a double than I did. What the hell am I going to do? First. It's not like I'm going to steal second. What's the most painful spot to get hit? I got hit. I got, it grazed my shoulder and hit me right here in winter ball. That one hurt.

that one that one opened me up a little bit i didn't like getting hit on the ass in high school because that's that kind of like pain that makes you like you know they get you right on the side of the butt cheek i'm not a big fan of that i never got hit in the face i got hitting the rift once uh actually a former teammate of mine hit me in a rift so apparently we weren't great teammates but uh he i mean that one hurt it felt like the thing just impaled me and i got uh i got hitting a kneecap and it fractured my kneecap. And it was, you know, it's the last day of the season in minor leagues. So I'm thinking, all right, I'll be home by August or, you know, October 1st.

I'll be playing golf with my buddies. And last day of the season, I lasted bad. The guy hits me right in the kneecap. I'm like, you son of a bitch. What was it? Yeah, that's like week 17 in the NFL when you get hurt. You're on a losing team. You're about to go on vacation.

And somebody, I was week 17. Marshawn Lynch exploded my hand. trying to arm tackle him and there went my offseason with three minutes to go in a meaningless game. How about the, what's the scariest hit by pitch or, you know, hit by, you know, pitcher getting hit by a baseball that you saw in person? The guy that was hitting when I got hit in the kneecap, the guy who was hitting before me got hit, he turned the wrong way and hit him right in the mouth. And so when I went up the home plate, it's Edwin Rodriguez. Edwin used to manage the marlins.

That Edwin got hit. And I remember going up the home plate and there was just blood everywhere and teeth laying on the ground. And that was probably the scariest one I've ever seen was, I mean, he took it. I mean, it hit him about 90-something miles an hour

hit him, flushing the mouth. And that was, that was ugly. Yeah, those hockey players are fucking crazy because that's way more regular than I would want to. That's perfect. because unwritten baseball rules. You know, there's a code of hitting guys. There's a code of pimping home runs.

Where are you on unwritten rules? I'm always like, Wookie, this shit seems so dumb, some of these rules. But where are you on it in 2020 and where were you when you played? You know, I, well, I hated it when I played. You know, but I came up in an era where, you know, you had Nolan Ryan's and Pedro Martinez and, you know, guys like that I wasn't afraid to throw it your, you know, throw at your head when you did something stupid. Yeah.

But, you know, I started talking to more pitchers the last few years because I was always against the pimping a home run and all that stuff. But, you know, the pitchers are like, you know, if he hits it good, I don't really care. So I started thinking, well, if the pitchers don't care, why should I? So it's, some of them are pretty comical. Yeah. The bat flips and the whole deal. The only thing I don't like is like if a guy hits a home run,

he wings his bat over toward the other team's dugout. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but if he just stands there and watch it and flips the bat, I can give a rat's ass anymore, you know, it's just. Fans, fans and pitchers, baseball fans can seem really hypocritical sometimes because, you know, I was in St. Louis and Pujols would, you know, hit these moonshots and watch them and flip his bat or whatever. And then the minute an opponent does it, it's, hey, we don't do that here.

That's classless or pitchers. who throw a fucking conipion, a shit fit when they strike somebody out, the next thing you know, somebody hits a dinger, and you're not allowed to do anything. You run the first. Well, I played, when I was playing in San Diego, we were playing the Giants up in Candlestick, which is probably the most awful place in God's Green Earth ever go.

Yeah. Hey, listen, my wife wasn't allowed to wear Rams jerseys at Candlestick. And it gets really cold at night in Candlestick, really cold. It's freezing in July. Yeah. So Keith Moreland was on our team in San Diego, and he hit a home run. And like back then you did, like we didn't know what home run, what the significance was of the home run. But apparently it was this like 200th home run or something.

Well, he, I'm on deck. So I go up the home plate to congratulating. He does a freaking cartwheel. Now, if you know Keith Fordham, he played football at the University of Texas. So he doesn't look. like a baseball player. Right, right. And he did a cartwheel, and I'm like, are you shitting me?

Like, you know, all right, where's this going to hit me? And I forget who was catch. It might have been Kurt Manwaring was catching. And I said, I said, where does he think this is going? I said, look, just don't hit me in the head, man. Yeah. I know it's common, but just don't hit me in the head. He goes, yeah, he said, I think I'd be light on my feet if I were you.

I said, I would just do it. And they threw one close and. And then that was it. But I went in the dugout after. I told Keith, I said, what the doing, man? You're doing a carwell. He said it was my 200th home run. I said, well, congratulations.

Who cares? You know, do a cartwheel when you get in the dugout. Don't do it when I'm at home play. There he is. I'm looking at him right now. And the first thing I notice is he's got the obligatory lipper in the back pocket there. And I was going to ask you. You all always had the lippers in.

It's not allowed anymore. Definitely not in COVID season. But how do players get around it now? I think players still do it. I think it's just like they don't want to see the skull can or whatever in your back pocket or putting in a dip on camera if a camera can catch you. Some guys still do it. They just go up in the tunnel.

They just go in the tunnel and put it in so no one can see it. the timbers can't catch you, but I mean, some of these guys come up the home plate, man. Come on. What was the dip of choice in the early 90s in Philly? Philly, 1992, what was the dip of the thing? Copenhagen. Copenhagen was, you know, Red Man. Yeah.

You know, you want the pouch, you wanted the leaf, you go to the Red Man. Yeah. I started, I was never one to take care of myself. and so like if I ever got a toothache yeah from you know the doc the dentist would say well it's because you chewed a back who said you were you know I grew up in West Virginia man we started when we were 12

you know yeah well we were just east of you so yeah I mean you know we were dipping in little ligage yeah you know little did we know but like so instead of getting like teeth fixed to take the time during a season to get like a root canal and I'd have to go back and pull the son of a bitch just pull

keep pulling. So now from chewing the back, I don't, I'd only have like one or two of my real teeth on this side, but I couldn't chew on the other side for some reason. I don't know. I don't know because I was Polish and didn't, couldn't figure it out. Or George Brett always had a chew on this side. He said it helped keep his eye open when he was hitting. Hold on George Brett. Hey, George Brett and my dad are buddies, okay? And I had no idea. I got a little signed baseball from George Brett. I thought he was the nicest dude in the world. George Brett used to shit himself. That's the story. He used to just walk up to people and tell him about he shit himself in Vegas at a casino. He just shit himself at the game last night. What's up with that? Apparently he's very proud of his bowel movements. The only way I can see it.

I love George. I mean, that was one of the great things about spring training because there was no interleague. Whenever we go play, the Royals, like I always made a point to speak to him. And so I got this buddy in Kansas City that does ribs. So every time I go to Kansas City, this guy brings ribs to wherever, you know, our booth or whatever. So he said, hey, next year when you come, he said, I'm going to be, I looked at the schedule.

I'm probably not going to be in town, but I'll have my buddy George bring you some stuff. So I'm texting this guy, George, for almost a year. So we go back to Kansas City the next year and I get a text, but I said, hey, I'll be up. I got some ribs for you. And I said, well, so caught some salmon. We smoked it. So we have some smoked salmon and made a dip out of it.

And I'll bring your crackers, the whole deal. I'm like, shoot, that's great. I said, do you need credentials to get up to our announcer's booth? And he said, no, I think I'm good. And it was George Brett. I was texting George Frickin' Brett for a year. Didn't know it. Oh, boy.

You know what? Oh, well, he seems like a guy would take it pretty well. It's funny because now every time he texts me or something, he'll say, hey, this is George Mitch's. Mitch was this guy they did ribs together. He said, this is George Mitch's partner. Speaking of George Brett and bowel movements, I actually had this written down.

This is a burning question for me. Because in football, if you got to go, it's a problem. Like sudden change, turnover, that sort of thing. Guys will take leaks on the sideline. If you ever see a guy taking a knee, not to take it a knee that's famous right now, but taking a knee behind the Gatorade cooler

with a bunch of trainers around him, they're taking a leak. But number two, you guys have a really nice setup. You've got these cushy bathrooms. It's very quiet. And I always wonder, if you're running in the dugout to take a deuce,

is it wildly peaceful to do that knowing there's 50,000 people upstairs and you can't hear them? Or is it, like, terrifying? It depends on where you're at. Like, these new ballparks now are beautiful, but, like, Riggily, Wrigley was an open, like you go down the tunnel, like literally 10 feet, 5, 5, 10 feet from the dugout,

and there was just a toilet sitting there in a little cutout area, no door, no nothing. So you could go back up there like to just, you know, relieve some anxiety, you know, or whatever, they're pissed off and try to break something. And someone could be in there taking one. And in Houston, the Astrodome, it used to be right above the dugout. So you know, like two or three steps and it was literally up on a little platform, but it was fully exposed, no doors, no nothing. That's not peaceful, John.

No, but you really know how much you like your teammates if you don't mind it. Well, you know, in Candlestick, we used to have to run across the field. they didn't have a bathroom in the dugout. So to get to our clubhouse, we had to run across the field. We were on the third base side. We had to run across down the right field line. There's a little trap door by the Giants bullpen. And you'd have to go in there, going to a clubhouse to have it.

So then they put one in. And they literally had a box with a door on it. And our pitching coach one day had to go in there. Johnny Padres. Love Johnny. But he went in there. had to go to the bathroom. He couldn't get the door back open.

No. It was funny as hell. And everybody knew you'd run into that bathroom. And he smoked too. So, I mean, he's in. There's smoke coming out. And, you know, he's in a cup and one while he's taking a dump, you know. And then he's like, get me out of this goddamn place.

Jesus crazy. Yeah, it was funny, man. So they had to get a maintenance guy to come down and try to get the door open to get him out. Oh, God. Like the jaws of life at the side of the highway. they're just extracting this this dude with a heater in his hand smelling like a porta pot.

How about ballparks you miss that aren't existing anymore besides the vet? Oh, you know, I grew up going to Memorial Stadium in Baltimore and three rivers in Pittsburgh. You know, my dad would take

us, you know, once a year to go, my brothers and I and some friends or whatever, and we go, watch your Orioles one time and then the pirates. But the stadium I've missed the most is Yankee Stadium, the old Yankee Stadium. Now it's more corporate. You know, you look at behind home plate and they have those whatever $1,000 a game seats back there. And it's just not the same atmosphere when you go there.

Even the players will tell you that, that, you know, it's just not the same. But like, I remember my first hit bat in old Yankee Stadium. And I walked in the box. You talk about wanting to crap yourself. Babe Ruth hit here. Luke Garrick hit here. Mickey Mantle. I mean, it was like, you got to be kidding me.

What? Like, who doesn't belong here? And that person was me because, you know, these guys are like some of the greatest players that's ever played the game of baseball. And you're in the same batters box with them. That's incredible. That's pretty cool.

Yeah, that is cool. So another thing that Chris and I joke about is superstitions, right? you know, pitchers, you know, some refuse to step on the line. They have to jump over it. You know, hitters have their, you know, fix the batting gloves two times. Were you superstitious? And then what are the weirdest ones that you've seen are the ones that crack you up the most? I wasn't that bad.

But I would, if I was going good, I'd made sure I put the right sock on first and then the left one second or, you know, when I was going up to hit, I put one batting glove. on first and the other. When you're going bad, you just go up there and whatever. But the guy that to me, Lenny Dykstra was, he was special. Yeah. We were wondering what Lenny would go back from the outside. Well, he had to have a new pair of batting gloves for batting practice every day.

And then a new pair for every bat. So he would go through like 700-something pairs of batting gloves in a year. but I remember one game we were playing and he he made it out of his first at bat he made his out his second at bat and it was a pitcher he thought he should handle pretty well so after the next inning I come up in the in the clubhouse to cool off you know because we had at least we had air condition in there so I went up there just to cool off for a little bit Lenny's in there butt naked and I'm like what to hell I mean did they take him out of the game or what he had taking his entire uniform off and threw it in the garbage because he said he thought it was bad

luck and the equipment guys bringing him out all new stuff like took everything off that's so bad dude oh god he was also you don't want to walk in and just see lenny dice you're naked i would imagine so no no it wasn't my first choice of sights when i walked in there but you know hey it could have been worse let's do a lightning round grab bag and get you out of here man again we appreciate the time um How about best baseball movie? Oh, hey. Oh, I'm proud of the Yankees about Lou Gehrig. Wow.

Love that movie. McGrain, you seen that one? No, I haven't. I thought you were going to talk about the cat that you grew up with, Chris, Joe Boo, that your dad gave. Yeah, I had a cat named Joe Boo from Major League. And when I met that actor who, unfortunately, he's a great actor. I can't remember his name. I couldn't wait to tell him I had a cat named Joe Boo.

He'd heard enough one-liners about Major League. I think he was over it. How about cheese steaks? You still got a shop? I heard you have a shop down there in Florida. What does it take to make a good cheese steak? The right meat and the right bread. I think the bread is more important than the meat.

We get everything shipped down from Philly, so we wanted the original, as close as we can get to an original Florida. So I think the biggest thing is the bread, the role. I've never had one in Philly. This is the shameful admission by me, and I've admitted it once or twice. But, you know, it's been since I fell in love with that city as an athlete, you know, I was there two years. But I can't be hammering cheese steaks late at night, let alone drink and beer at 33, 34 years old.

So, you know, I'll get those love handles sticking out the side of my jersey, which is not great in football. So I got to try one first. in Philly. What should that be? I know this is your competition, but no, we don't have any up there. You know, I, uh, the ones at the ballpark are good. God, now the name's escaping me, but, you know, everyone says Pat's and Genos, uh, you know, you have to go try both because they're different. Yeah. One of them has the, it's just like a slab of meat that's not chopped up. I prefer the chopped up because like I mentioned previously about my teeth and stuff.

I don't need to be chewing a lot of things right now. But I like to chopped up meat the best in this cheese steak. And I forget which one is Patrick Gino's one does it that way. And the other does it the other way. All right. Well, there you have it. What about favorite swing of all time? Tony Gwynne, my former teammate, roommate.

Tony was impressive. But I think the prettiest swing was probably junior. Ken Griffey Jr. had put for everything. Average power, the whole deal. I mean, he had, it was sickening watching him as a 19-year-old when he first came up with that swing. You're like, how did he get that swing already, you know? Beautiful.

His dad had a good swing, too, though. From my group text, the boys back home, most beers drank in one sitting. Well, that would be golfing with my buddies in West Virginia because normally we play Saturdays. When I go up there to visit, we play at least 45 holes. So I'd say we hit personally. I'd say back in the day when I was young and scrapping, probably in the 30s. Do you go back there a lot to hit the casinos back there? In West Virginia.

Yeah. Aren't you, are you Charleston? No, I'm born there. But no, where I grew up, man, we ain't near nothing. I mean, what's the name of the quote-unquote? town. Kaiser's the town I went to high school in, but the town we grew up in was New Creek. It was, well, I think someone said 500 people, but it might not be that many now. We used to go play in Beckley, but I can't think that's probably away from you.

That's down to south. Yeah, yeah. How about best mullet in baseball? This was Wookie's burning question. It's like who's got the better power mullet, pitchers, hitters, or who had the best bullet in baseball back in the day? Well, Randy Johnson had the best because he has a really long neck and it still looked long. And so, you know, that to me is a great accomplishment in life.

You know, you can take away his perfect game and all the strikeouts and all the wins and, you know, the Hall of Fame and all that stuff. But when you have a neck as long as Randy and you can still have a legitimate mullet that came down below your jersey, your name on your jersey, Jersey. He's my idol, man. Look, look, you had one that you, you said was your goat, uh, mullet rocker. Pete Bukovic. I thought he had a solid, I thought he had a solid mullet. Yeah, yeah, he had a good one. But Randy's side, it's just amazing.

Like, if you put Randy's mullet on my no neck. Yeah. Like, like, I'd have to move it away to go to the bathroom. One last question. Who's going to be? win the quote-unquote world series this year and you can't say a Phillies okay if i can't say the phillies i would say uh the Yankees they're okay yanks loaded they're pretty loaded all right well john we appreciate your time man so much and uh we get back up to philly let's get a beer or something when this thing passes just call me man i'll be there you got it brother you got it great talking to you uh be safe and see in philly thanks yeah man all right so uh that was john cruck

one of the best storytellers we've had on this on this podcast and we haven't had a lot of I don't if we've had any other major league baseball players I mean we had do little in the fall but it's been a while and certainly one of my childhood favorites and wookie coach wookie as well so mailbag first Instagram source mailbag and my IG crowd is really really positive they're really happy now they're not all emo like my Twitter friends like listen I see the world's fucked up. I don't need Twitter every day to know the world's fucked up. I don't need that. So the Instagram crowd, it's very welcome for me. You know who I like on Instagram who seems to have a nice little groove on IG as little Duval, who is obviously a comedian who does a lot of, I mean,

consistent, great content on IG, really positive. As he says, he's living his best life and I'm going to strive to live my best life. And IG is a lot more conducive to that than Twitter. So thank you to those of you that hit up the DMs with the Mabag questions today. Peggy Thompson, okay, first one. I mentioned my morning jacket earlier. One of my favorite bands of all time, they are coming out with a new album on Friday, Waterfall 2. she asks Peggy does if I am excited about the new MMJ

I'm beyond excited listen as I said one of my favorite bands one of the last real rock and roll bands out there one of the best live bands of all time I wasn't around the 60s but I've seen a lot of live music these fucking guys are first class performers and really rangy and also good people

I know some of guys personally. I try not to bug them about the music or pry. I've talked about Pat Hallahan on this show as being one of my favorite, like quote unquote celebrities outside of football, drummer for MMJ. As much as I talk to Pat in particular, I try not to bother them about like,

hey, what's going on with Jacket? Like, you know, are you all going to keep making music? Are y'all, you know, are you all going to come out with an album this year? Like I heard somebody say earlier this year, oh, you know, kind of in passing, We're out in Cali recording, which I was like, oh, that's a good sign. They're out in Cali recording.

They're doing some new music. We'll see. Maybe we'll get something in the fall or the winter. I did not see this coming. Admittedly, I've been knee-deep in this podcast, so I haven't been following the rumor mill on when Jacket was going to come out with another album. They dropped an announcement, like a little tease announcement, like yesterday on IG, with a little snippet from one of their songs, presumably.

sounded great. And I was like, oh, it's coming. I had no idea it was coming this Friday. I'm so excited. Everybody's been anxiously awaiting a new project. It's been about five years. And, you know, I'm looking forward to it. They were supposed to play in this festival called Ohana this fall in California,

and that was going to be the big guy's trip. Pearl Jam, I think, was out there too. That's going to be awesome when it comes back in the fall. I can't wait. If you're not a jacket fan, I'll make you a jacket playlist and post it to Twitter. Yes, Twitter. For beginners, I'll find a way to put it on IG as well. But start with their live album that you can get on Spotify, Okunokos, and listen to I think I'm going to hell, Don Dante, lay low, steam engine. And you'll get it. I promise you'll get it. But I will, it's rock and roll. You know, I turned Jason Kelsey onto these guys.

I've turned a number of people onto these guys. And like any good, you know, musical act or band, you need somebody to put you on, then you try to spread the gospel. And shout out to Tom Pawkett for spreading that gospel to me about 10 years ago. You know, I started listening to Jacket, like my first or second year in the league. I can't remember what year exactly, but kind of caught the bug. And I'm not one of those OG Jacket fans. was around in the late 90s, but I've seen them play in the teens. I mean, at least 10, 20 times

probably. I've seen them everywhere from Red Rocks to Charlottesville. I've seen them in Mexico. I love that band. And I'm so happy they're continuing to make music. So I'll make a little playlist and whatnot. Kirby Shaw asks, what are your thoughts on Freddie Gibbs and Alchemist album, Alfredo, followed you for a long time. I know you're a Gibbs fan. Listen, I love Freddie Gibbs. top five out for me. I haven't done that homework or that math, but he's got to be top five for me out right now. Freddie and Alchemists are great together.

It makes a lot of sense. 1985 bangs. I love some guitar on a hip-hop production. And, you know, from time to time, and they nail it on 1985. I wish the song was longer. The sample makes it. Scotty Beams Fire.

my kind of production. It's a 35-minute album. And with a new album, I never know where I'm going to stand on a rap album for a couple months. And I really like this one to start. But I can only like it more and more, because that's usually how it goes

the more I listen to an album that I do like. I can remember listening to Good Kid, Mad City, which to me is an all-time classic. And Kendrick is, if not my favorite, still out. He's definitely one of them. I didn't like the album at first. Two months later, I thought it was one of the best of all time.

And let me tell you something. My favorite project that Freddie probably did was, to this point, was Bandana, followed by Pena. Bandana was my favorite album of the year, probably. And Palmol was probably the hardest song in the album, Janus, Cataracts is a song. you're going to get a speeding ticket to. I used to drive so fast to that song last year, last summer. Also, an album that came out, you know, when I was retired, I was free.

And, you know, when you're going through a big stage in your life like that, music is very nostalgic. For me, it's going to be hard to top Bandana, which I thought was the best album of that year. But Alfredo keeps getting better every time I listen to it. Education's a great song, too, off of bandana. and you know you got black thought on there he has to be a top five active rapper from a standpoint of respecting his craft if not top three i haven't done the math again love freddie gibbs they killed it um yeah in the sky asked me and this was a loaded one for

the first day on ig are you guys going to touch on the shan the dishean stuff or probably not too soon Never too soon to touch on something. I'm not afraid to touch on it. I like Deshawn. Every time I've been around him, seems like a really good guy. That was disappointing because maybe I don't get it. I saw a ton of people defending him on Twitter somehow,

which is another reason why Twitter sucks a big fat ass. The guy made a mistake. It's a bad mistake. I don't know, you know, it's not for me to decide, you know, as I said with the Drew Breeze or something like that. Not that I don't do the comparison thing with this stuff because this is also nuanced and that, I mean, these are heavy topics. But just like with Drew Breez, like I don't get to decide when, you know, his apology or his learning process on this thing is complete.

I'm not all the way caught up on Deshaun thing, to be honest. All I know is he talked bad about Jewish people and somehow managed to use a fake Hitler quote doing it. And that is a fucking disaster. And I can't speak for the many people in the media or on Twitter who kind of bite their tongue on this thing because when it comes to anti-Semitism, it's not in vogue to denounce it or, you know, they have some geopolitical inclination or political inclination that complicates denouncing it. I think it's fucked up unequivocally. And I try not to paint faith or religion with a broad brush. You know, I don't care what religion it is. And I know it's in vogue to punch Nazis.

We love doing that. We love doing memes about that. We all would say we would punch a Nazi. But it's not, it doesn't seem like it's invoked to call out anti-Semitism. We're not so keen on that. I mean, quoting Hitler is really bad business,

but quoting fake Hitler quotes is like a cherry on top. I don't know if it'd be worse, if you'd be quoted a real one or the fake one. Needless to say it's wrong. And I'm sure some people are like, because it seems like, I don't know what it is, but it seems like we're not allowed to say, hey, that's not good. It's not good.

It's wrong. And I'm sure I have Jewish listeners. I am against anti-Semitism. And I didn't see, and I haven't seen nearly enough people saying, yeah, man, this was a misstep. And I'm not going to do the thing where we say, well, Riley Cooper didn't get cut. Why should Deshaun? I'm not doing the comparison thing. I'm not asking for a certain type of punishment for Deshaun.

I'm not saying that he should get cut. Come on. Riley didn't get cut for saying what he said, and I'm not equating the two, but that's the thing that I've seen everybody what abouting today. You know, come to think of it with Riley. When it happened, I thought he should have gotten cut. And this was Riley Cooper in Philly, coincidentally. But as I thought about it more, you know, knowing I had no control over the punitive measures,

the league takes, I mean, this was only hypothetically of what do you think should happen to him. all I know is that Riley Cooper, the best way that he can come out of it better, if that's what we want, we want somebody to change or learn from their mistakes. He kind of couldn't have a better crash course in learning from his mistakes than re-entering, you know, a locker room full of black guys. And that's your career. Like, kind of awkward when that video surfaces and you got to go back to work, it almost do him a disservice to cut him. because, you know, maybe he would just kind of hang out with everybody that looks like him. He had to go back to work, and I'm sure he had some tough conversations. And I'm sure he learned from it.

I would hope, you know, we want people to change. I think it's going to be tougher for Deshawn to get that opportunity in football. You know, it doesn't look like he's going to get cut. I think that's fine. I'm not saying he should, but he's a role model. And we gave it to Drew Brees pretty hard for being at the very best extremely tone deaf. and certainly anti-Semitism is not the main event in this country, but we can walk and chew gum here.

I am just not willing to accept anybody saying, you know, stick to the task at hand. We can't address, you know, people making anti-Semitic comments. Hopefully Deshaun learns from it from people outside the building, because that's the thing.

I don't know if you haven't noticed. There's not a lot of Jewish guys walking around playing football at the NFL level. So I'm sure he's got a lot of fans who are Jewish and disappointed. I think he's better than that. And I hope he's learned from it. And I'm not sure if he's apologized yet. Certainly not a main event on this pod. But it popped up in the mailbag and that's how I feel about it.

So hopefully he learns from it. Bill the bear asks what BLM or anti-racism systemic inequality book or title I'm currently reading or anticipate reading in the future. Listen, I went through this process like four years ago. And a friend of mine gave me a list of like five books. And I've read all of them at least in part. Now, the one to me that was the most eye-opening. And this was not somebody who was like arriving at a place from a place where I don't think racism exists. Like I know undoubtedly racism exists and has existed for a long time.

And, uh, but you need anecdotes. You need information. You need, you know, um, evidence that you know is there, but you've got to be able to talk about this stuff to be able to convey your convictions to other people. And I thought the book for me that was, uh, was really information rich and effective and eye-opening was New Jim Crow. And New Jim Crow is a book by Michelle Alexander that you need to sit down and focus as you read because every page has a lot of information, revelations that will explain a lot of why you can't just say, well, slavery ended X amount of years ago. America has found ways to perpetuate inequality that are a lot more covert than slavery and aren't even really that covert.

New Jerome, really eye-opening, and that would be my first one. I want to send you like five books. Read that one, start there. Appreciate asking. Dennis Begley asked me about a Mount Rushmore of Stapleton songs. That's a tough one, because here's the thing with Stapleton.

Stapleton's music's awesome. Chris Stapleton, one of my favorites, but his music with the steel drivers was just as good and better. And if I'm doing a Mount Rushmore of his, it's almost like you need two of them. The steel drivers are more of a bluegrass band, and they kicked some serious ass. I'll give you a Steel Drivers Mount Rushmore,

where rainbows never die, higher than the wall, ghost of Mississippi, and Heaven Sent. Those are my four favorite steel drivers. driver songs. Now, he's also covered some good songs. He's a solo artist. Last thing I needed, that's Willie Friendship, Tennessee Whiskey. Those are all good. But his songs, let me go death row. That was a song that me and Fletcher Cox used to listen to every game in the corner of the locker

room. Yeah, that song takes me back. It's just a great song. It's probably my favorite Stabled in the song. Either way is vocally amazing. Devil name music. I identify with it. He's talking about being burnout on the road, missing his family, missing his kids, like missing life because he's playing music. Towards the end of my career, I kind of felt that way about football. And then might as well get stone. I would love to get stone with Chris Stapleman is a great one as well. So yeah, Stapled in to Mount Rush. Rushmore is there for you. Who said you don't get what you want in the mailbag? It's even better on IG. Patrick Kennedy, do you own a MMJ vinyl? What's your general take on vinyl? Do you have a lot of

it? Do you like it? I got a ton of vinyl. I got more than I can listen to because that's the thing with vinyl. You really need to sit down and focus. And although the sound quality is as advertised and I've just gotten into it more so recently, I had a record player the last five years and I hadn't plugged it in because I was living in apartments and cities and that sort of thing. I had two young kids. like when can I really jam out and play loud music but man that shit is high quality you get good speakers I got some you know at the office I got a you know a record player at home now and when I can find the time I do have a jacket I have a few jacket records and it definitely elevates the quality of the music I'm not some like hipster where I can explain to you why but it sounds better but one time early on I called our producer cowboy reed one night at like eight o'clock I was working at the office and

I had thrown on Sound and Fury. It was a Sturgyle album. And, you know, A-side finished. And here I am thinking my record player is broken. It's just clicking. And I am stoned as fucking as stone can be. And I call Cowboy Reed. It's like one of his first weeks on the job.

And I'm like, hey man, like something's wrong with my record player. And, you know, he drives in from his house. Luckily, he lives five, ten minutes away. I'm sure he's thinking, what the fuck is wrong with my boss? And he walks in and he says, have you tried flipping the record? And I said, yeah, I'll try that. That sounds good. And I did.

And it worked. I like vinyl. I'm going to get more into it. Shane of Penn asks, how do you think COVID could affect recent efforts of expanding the league internationally? it's a great question it's one that I've grappled with a little bit and I think it's undeniable this year is a real setback for that now I don't know this catastrophic that would be an exaggeration London has always been the play and I've played there against the Patriots although I forgot it because we got beat by 44-7 I blacked it out nice fan base when I played there you know definitely like our soccer fans you know it's kind of probably a hipstery thing to do in in England like kind of like being a soccer fan is here you know, like me, I don't understand everything about soccer. I feel like maybe a lot of the English fans don't quite get football yet,

but they're working on it and they love it. And the NFL sees that. Now, I don't know about the functionality of having a team in London, but the fan base is there. Ironically, they're all Jaguars fans. So not to mention they're not going to have a game this year in London, but the Jags are going to be an absolute dumpster fire, and that's the London team.

So I think in a few ways this year hurts. Now, if, you know, Jags were good this year and they couldn't go to London, that's one thing, but they're going to be bad, no games in London. It's going to be a tough year. They can overcome it, but it's going to be a tough year. The NFL is going to, whatever the NFL wants to do, as you're seeing with COVID in the season in 2020, like, they're going to try to do it. And they're going to be hellbent on getting a team out there. Now, I don't know if it's going to work, players are going to go for it. But eventually on the horizon, we're going to see that.

And finally, I want to do a couple shoutouts here. I want to shout out Brad Kerr, who messaged me a really nice message. When he was 14, he came up to Montana to this thing called the Hoop Fest that, you know, this is probably years ago. We're both 30-something-year-old dudes now. The Hoop Fest is this three-on-three tournament that people come from all over the place like in the Pacific Northwest to play in the streetball tournament. And of course, it is just a bunch of like white dudes. There's some Native American ballers.

There was a dunk contest. I was in it when I was in high school. It's at night. It's in this small town in Montana out in the street. They shut down Main Street. I saw a white dude that looked like white chocolate jump over a Mustang. It was a black and gold Mustang. It was fucking insane.

I was like, where am I right now? Am I at Rucker Park or am I in a town with a population of 800, mostly white dudes? But, you know, there was a judge's panel that year. when my friend here, Brad Kerr, came out as he filled me in in the DMs on. You know, he came to the Hoot Fest. There was a judges panel. It was my dad. And it was Phil Jackson, where two of the judges.

He obviously bypassed Phil Jackson and his six championship rings to talk to the star of Firestorm and told him what a great movie he thought it was. And my dad was evidently very kind and gracious. And Brad Kerr is a listener of the pod. So shout out to Brad Kirk. Final shout out. Shout out to Eric Shulman. He's evidently a D-Coronator and history teacher at Hamilton High School, I suppose, the Blue Devils.

So shout out to the Blue Devils and Eric Shulman. What a killer combo there, history teacher and a D-coordinator, my type of guy listens to all the pods. Shout out to all you listeners. Check me out on IG, on my IG story. That's my new Twitter. IG is the new Twitter. And I'll be back on Friday. with another hopefully very good pod to a week now so it might be a little longer bear with us

talk to you all soon take care